Learning Guitar

Am enjoying learning guitar these days. Little by little, as I have begun playing sounds that make musical sense, it feels awesome! I want to play it well. And I want to be able to sing along. Can't wait to get there. Hope I do get there this time :-)

A Win Down-Under

Finally the Indian Cricket team wins a match down under. I suspect it's all been one smart strategy - to not waste energy playing hard to win those boring 5-day so-called test matches and to focus on one-days and 20-20s, which are smaller in length, more exciting and more lucrative; and while Indian team did this, let the Australians get exhausted. It's too early to make this conclusion though, coz this last victory may just be an aberration. But still, what the heck... I'll make it nonetheless.

A funny comment I read under a TOI article last night said that India, Pakistan, West-Indies, Sri Lanka etc. should all voluntarily and officially move out of test-cricket altogether. And let only Australia and England play the boring version and feel proud about it if they will. I couldn't agree more.

Even if indeed this victory is not representative of the Indian team's abilities, the fact still stands that test matches are terribly boring and need to be gotten rid of ASAP. Although I am proud that it was a test match in which Bhuvan and his team defeated the angrez to shut their mouth that shouted teen goona laggaan, they really had no choice and power to decide or enforce the version.

Let's hope now that we win a few more matches and our team of uncles makes us proud. Don't stop expecting from them. Remember the times when the team had only one uncle - Robin Singh - who was more active and energetic than every youngster in the team. (Handsome kahaan hai aajkal?) I am sure he can still come back and dive like a kid, if only some of the youngsters could retire.

Got Some Change?

Let’s talk about one common problem with the available denominations of the Indian Currency – the fact that there are things available at prices for which coins/notes of right denominations are scarce, and which is forcing a lot of vendors in the unorganized sector to price their products at the higher and nearest round figures, or charge somewhat like that with the difference either covered with Dairy Milk Éclairs or just a plain simple thhenga. We may even be adding, as a result, to some inflation (unaccounted) and consumption (unwanted) in the economy. (Who would buy Dairy Milk Éclairs otherwise?)

There is one Panipuri shop in Magarpatta (Pune) where the shopkeeper refuses to give any change that is not in multiples of 10. But his Panipuri is priced at Rs.15.00 per plate. So you have to either pay him the exact amount of Rs.15.00, or eat 2 more Panipuris by paying Rs.20.00 or not eat there at all, which he doesn’t mind. Interestingly, he always readily accepts when you pay him exact Rs.15.00, but whenever I didn’t have change, he didn’t have it either, or he just said so, and he didn’t bother if I went away and ate somewhere else. And this kind of stuff keeps happening very often with me these days. And probably even with Chikni Chameli, jo pahua chadha ke hazaaron ke note khulla chhutta karaane aayi! Some vendors even forgo a few bucks here and there, as running around for change is not always worth the effort.

So the point is - most of India still transacts in cash and coins, but sadly, we are not minting them enough to allow ourselves all combinations so as to easily arrive at any odd natural number.

Bollywood Bonanza

Actual Answers by Callers:
Konkona Sen - Ranbir Kapoor
Diya Mirza - Imran Khan

Vidya Balan - Bobby Deol
Sushmita Sen - Upen Patel
Rimi Sen - John Ibrahim
Madhuri Dixit - Sunil Shetty
Katrina Kaif - Akshay Kumar
Aishwarya Rai - Tushar Kapoor
Vivek Oberoi - Manisha Koirala
Deepika Padukone - Ashmit Patel
Sonam Kapoor - Aftab Shivdasani
Esha Deol - Harman Bhaveja
Vidya Balan - Sunny Deol
Sunidhi Chauhan - Karan Johar
Sonakshi Sinha - Salman Khan
Rani Mukherjee - Salman Khan
Sonam Kapoor - Salman Khan
Shilpa Shetty - Salman Khan
Lara Dutta - Salman Khan
Kareena Kapoor - Salman Khan
Bipasa Basu - Salman Khan
Asin - Salman Khan
Juhi Chawla - Salman Khan
Anushka Sharma - Salman Khan
Neha Dhupia - Salman Khan
Karisma Kapoor - Salman Khan
(At this point a hint was given that the gal's name started with the letter "P", and after this hint, last 4 calls were to be taken...)
Priyanka Chopra - Salman Khan
Prachi Desai - Salman Khan
Pooja Bhat - Salman Khan
Preity Zinta - Salman Khan

Can it get crazier? Can I sue Zoom (or whoever makes this stuff) for fraud?

Have you ever tried calling them up to play? I did once, but only ended up wasting a lot of money without even getting connected. Ya, I was stupid. Is there anyone else like me? And someone who got connected by any chance?

CAAAR!

It's foolish to own and use a long so called CAAAR in India. Nissan Sunny is simply not for us. Our roads don't have turning radii that suit a Nano, let alone a CAAAR. And our roads don't have exits, so when a car wants to take a sharp lane out, it ends up causing a traffic jam. And where the hell will you park the CAAAR? Forget all that, I even sometimes feel that having a car, a normal one, for use on Indian city roads is itself a bad idea - it requires extremely careful driving, has to be driven extremely slow, and parking is a big problem. But interestingly, a lot of people in India do buy cars, coz the metallic chariot that runs on oil is still a status symbol here. And besides, there is indeed the necessity, when a few people have to travel together, however bad the roads might be, coz the public transport is sometimes even more horrible. And high smoke and pollution levels often make you want to travel indoors, and you don't mind investing that extra time, coz of the extra space you occupy in the traffic, and extra money you've to spend on fuel. And many still hope, although against much hope, that this state of infrastructure will turn around and they will have the roads where they'll be able to unleash the power of their powerful cars.

I still remember the surprised look on the face of guys at an exam center in US when I told them I did not have a car, and needed a place where I could keep my bag (the way we keep them in front in exam halls during exams in India!). Yes, there are very few in the US who write CFA exam and yet don't have a car.

Just another parallel thought which sprang from this - most guys in US start their companies in garages. It's understandable, coz it's decent space, totally not necessary, without rent to be paid, and huge office space for a start-up. In India we keep cars under our buildings, or in open air and covered at times with plastic. To make a sweeping conclusion, it's easy to start companies in spacious countries like America, where the basic physical infrastructure is virtually everywhere.

I'm cold, but...

It's getting less and less cold now, with each passing day. I love winters, especially very cold ones. The two winters I lived in Lucknow were my coldest and the most memorable and pleasant. The cold in Bilaspur is nowhere close to the spooky foggy chill of north India, of which I got great experience in Lucknow. Of course, if you go further north, you have snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures, which I experienced only for a couple of days when I went to Sikkim. But cold feels awesome only as long as it does not start freezing stuff around...

Snow and Ice reminds of the thing going on at Davos right now - The World Economic Forum. I wish I could be there. The thought of so many intellectuals and crooks at the same place talking stuff that shape the world definitely gives an intellectual erection to anyone suffering from paralysis of analysis, like I do. But the way I am going about my career, I don't see that possible in my whole life-time. I know that at the core of nature, there are stuff called quantum leaps, but they might just be the operating procedures of god to execute this world. Not that steep rises at macro level are rare - we have people turning billionaires in USDs within short time-spans - but I am deeply pessimistic at this point of time. Although I often feel these are not quite normal in humans (but important to note that one's concept of normality is only relative assuming himself/herself as normal), I wish I had a single strong passion to drive me in some direction, a single strong goal and motivation to pursue it or a single strong pain I would have fought with all my energies.

Religious Intolerance & Conflicts

Just like some people cannot live without praying to the god they believe in, some people cannot live without talking shit about others' gods. And for atheists, criticism of the concept of god and of specific gods is the biggest source of strength for their belief in non-belief. Sometimes, I find it totally illogical that we humans should respect each other's choice of religion and gods (and being sensible and logical species, humans indeed have this difficulty in accepting religions, gods and such faiths not our own), coz anyone would agree that the actual god or creator must be the same for all humans - basically for the following resons: (1) No religion speaks of co-existence of other religions or of different gods creating and ruling different sections of humanity, (2) All existing religions are fairly recent, i.e., only a few millenia old, whereas human beings have been hanging around for lacs of years, and other creatures for hundreds of millions of years, (and therefore, I am afraid, the first point I made becomes redundant), and (3) History of human evolution indicates common geographical and ancestral origins. Therefore, it is hard to imagine many gods independently working on different non-overlapping sections of human beings.

Furthermore humans evolved from apes, to whom human gods with human characteristics kind of funda cannot apply coz apes were there even before humans existed. Although this argument cannot stand in front of the counter-argument that evolution is false theory, same god created everyone, that same god is human-like, coz humans are some ultimate species meant to rule this planet and represent god's loved ones and all that shit. You cannot argue with logic to counter things said as facts with disclaimers that those facts need no proof. Although, I agree that logic too fails after a point coz of human ignorance, but it evolves with time and does not refuse to change its shape in light of new learnings and evidence. For example, all arguments of religious folks to support their beliefs are based on what someone said 1000-2000 years back or what someone wrote in some book such long time ago. Whereas, all arguments of atheists, who generally argue in light of evidence, are based on recent discoveries, learnings and knowledge - like the theory of evolution or quantum physics.

What about animals? I am sure each of our human-like gods created all of them too, according to respective ancient scriptures. If however there is some possibility that there is a bunch of gods, perhaps playing video game or something using us, each creating stuff living and non-living... What can I say? The thought itself is too human, in the present sense of what 'human' means. May be gods behave differently. May be only gods are qualified enough to talk about gods. Some humans have also spoken about them. Can't tell now whether they were just schizophrenic and told stories out of illusions or they were results of some bug in the video game software that resulted in some guys knowing stuff of the gods. The latter is also a possibility, besides the former, coz of late, we've had fewer such genuine enlightened guys, possibly coz the bug is fixed now!

Whatever be the case, the point is, that religious tolerance just does not come naturally to humans, although religion probably does. We'll always have people fighting over gods. Unless by some iron fist, we can achieve a gradual convergence of all religions to one concept of the almighty creator, which we all agree upon, with the best of human understanding and knowledge. Unfortunately, this is never going to happen, unless the world is flushed of its shit a couple of times (which I heard is going to happen once in 2012), coz none of the religions has a sunset clause and coz powerful humans use the human propensity for religion and the existence of different religions, to play politics and derive more power, so as to rule other humans.

If humans are part of nature and nature is perfect in the way it evolves, then all that is happening must definitely lead to something good. Of course, we don't know if nature really evolves in ways that are best... and best for whom?