And the chocolate goes to....

DK. (Darshan Kadia, to the uninitiated..) who actually searched long and hard on orkut before he found the offending profile. Please give him a big hand of applause, everyone....

Bad bad testimonial.

After a long, long sabbatical, I'm back here...been in Philadelphia for the summer, and there were a lot of things worth writing about during those months, but procastrination got the better of me...(as always). I'll get to down to writing about the Philly trip soon enough, but in the meantime , this post is dedicated to an increasingly common phenomenon that recently caught my eye....god-awful testimonials on orkut. From the sucky english, to the asinine content, and of course, the desperate, pathetic attempt to sound cool, by imitating hip-hop, skipping vowels, etc, these are testimonials that are not just bad, but so bad, they make you want to hunt down the offender and slap him/her a few times. (or insult them on orkut...but then again, procastrination...) Here are a few sample ones: (now, I've collected them all from the same profile, which I ideally shouldn't, I guess, but when one single profile is such a repository of shit, you can't blame me for not wanting to look too far.) Anyway, a chocolate to anyone who can identify this profile. (AND who doesnt know the person in question beforehand) Also, what do you think? Is it worth it to send vicious, contempt-filled scraps to the testimonial offenders? Or is it better to just silently observe, and move on?

Profile dude: X (real mofo, but you wouldn't know it from the testimonials, where he's described as the second coming of brad pitt and jesus christ, put together.)

Testi. writers: Y, P, A (let their writing speak for themselves)

Y: X X X..wat should i say abt him..i mean u can ask me nethin abt him....i know himm frm top to bottom..(but stilll at times i feel i donno him)but thats ok...neways...hes a gr8 guy...he has a gr8 zeal in him which everyone wld get attracted to...
he lll doo the thing wat he decides n wld never loose hope...actually this testi wat i m writing is also coz he decided n not me...n finally i had to give up..ne ways u guys wnt understand this..soo leave it...
one thing that X has is his habit of gettin up early in the mornin..oops m sorry early in the afternoonn thats gr88..believe me..not all can hav this thing..hehehhe
but still hes a sweetheartn he ll always be my best fren...may god bless u always...n always be urself coz thats reflects ur inner purity...all the best 4 ur life in the US ....take care...bye


P:X... hmmmm lot 2 say abt him... so X here is the chance to tell every1 abt u huh...??? anyways its only around 6 months tht we hv been close frnds... but in these short span we have shared all types of talks from serious talks to jokes n playin pranks, etc etc..... abt him i can say that he is a true n genuine frnd, a patient listener n can understand u very well.... he can know u from top to bottom.... he is the smartest guy of our coll with gr8 physic :)) rite.....??? so gals dnt miss the chance to meet him even if it may be only 4 split of seconds... driving is his passion... n he does good DJing... boss humko yaad rakhna.... US jaake bhul mat jaana!!! i wish u all d very best 4 ur future... god bless..... tk cr :)

A:V bth used to hate each othr due 2 ego clashes & atti.probs bt nw hes 1 of my bst buddy :))really means a lot

gr8 physic,cute face,smart .... total eYe CaTcHer... gr88 taste in clothes muzic and GALS!!! :))
BIG flirt!! ( gals beware )

V moody and unpredictable...V possessive abt his ph,car,laptop and close frenz ... v sensitive abt his rships
has gr8 values in life his belief EVERY1 HAS TO PAY4 DER DEEDS GUD OR BAD .... gem of a frien can count on him durin bad times ..thnx a lott

passionate abt politics , cars , muzic
luvs partyin , drivin carz, havin vodka ,tryin out new & happ things
v ambitious and wants d bst in life & m sure will gt it by hook or crook :))
highly influenced by his BIG B ,his idol .....his mom is his necessity and dad strength

bottom line ... hes simply a genuine person and a true frien ... hope our rship continues d same way in future !!

TIME.com: Global Warming Heats Up -- Apr. 03, 2006 -- Page 1

TIME.com: Global Warming Heats Up -- Apr. 03, 2006 -- Page 1

A must-read article. Skip the middle pages if you wish, but do read the first and last ones.

Tagged

Umang tagged me...and although I would normally not have had a second look at this silly game, these are not normal times. I recently had the good fortune....nay, the blessing, of watching one of the most profound, heart-wrenching movies of out time...Brokeback Mountain. It's a tragic love story which thrusts the point that Love is, above all, a force of nature. It cracks open our rigidly closed minds, and provides an opening into the besieged lives of differently-oriented people, showing how they are made the butt of a whole lot of scorn and ill-humored innuendo (What bastards would do bend so low?) . So, let us all keep in mind the penetrating message of this movie.

Rules of tagging: Specify the sex of your perfect lover, 8 qualities he/she/it should have, and tag 8 others.

As for my perfect lover....although BM aroused my umm..conscience, my er..heart still throbs for the wonderful female form.
So, in addition to being a female, the afore-mentioned perfect lover should have the following qualities (in that order):

-Awesome body
-Appetite....and not the kind that can be satisfied by food
-No brains
-On a related note, total faith in me and my goodness =))
-Money...lots of it
-Ability to cook
-Affinity to silence
-Equally hot friends who aren't opposed to thre.....no wait, now I'm getting carried away..

Bring on the feminists....:))

P.S.
Can't really think of anyone to tag right now....but if you're kind enough to comment, consider yourself tagged. (Or not, whatever, don't let that stop you from commenting.)

Note

Author's Note:

Am back with a vengeance, after a very long lull. Two new posts added (aside from this one), and if you go to the trouble of reading them, please also go the additional distance of COMMENTING on them. :)

Sweet Home A'bad

On a completely different note, I just went home a couple of days back, for a weekend. Now, although it's been three years since I moved out, I still find myself deeply contemplative on the return flight, and always end up learning a little bit more about myself every time I make the trip back to A'bad.

One reason why these trips have more of an impact on me is because all my childhood friends are still back home, unlike in the case of most of my kgp comrades. So everytime I go there, it's a vision of what my life would have been like, had I not come to this place, and decided to stay back. And I'm glad about how everything turned out, including my leaving, because it put into perspective a lot of things which I'm sure I wouldn't have realised until later in life, had I decided to stay back.

I'm not comfortable with silence. I realised this sometime back, but during my school days, although I would shut myself up in my room studying most of the time (;-)) , the silence was always comfortable, because I knew that I had a family outside that door. Now although I have some amazing friends here, there's just no substitute for family. Unconditional love, and all that jazz. Guess this explains my desire to escape my room everytime I'm alone and awake, even if it means escaping academic responsibilities in the proceess.

We all want to succeed in life, although our definitions of success vary wildly. But maybe what gives our existence meaning, what defines us, is our loved ones: Our family, and to a lesser extent, friends. I know it sounds utterly obvious, but hopefully I've managed to convey that emotion, that sense of kinship, that I wanted to. And doesn't it all come full circle? I don't think all the wandering, and excitement we have in mind for the next decade of our lives (I know I do), would be so much fun, without the prospect of returning home sometime after that.

PS. there's something about watching a sunset from an aeroplane....you get the feeling, that even if the aircraft crashes after that, it's worth it to have seen that sunset as your last memory. Heaven couldn't possibly look much better.

Damn Commies, and other Left-Wing Idiots

Before i get started, a small complaint: if you had an opinion on any of my posts, any kinda opinion whatsoever, comment on the blogspot...not just to my face. it's disappointing to see just one or two comments for any of your posts. on that note, allow me to suggest an excellent blog, one which will become quite prolific in the days to come: http://itsmedrdre.blogspot.com/

Also, check out newsweek's latest cover story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11571348/site/newsweek/
its' about asia's second rising superpower (no prizes for guessing which nation i'm talking about.) real inspirational stuff for anyone who cares even a smidge about India.

I keep bitching about Indian communists, much as I'm about to tonite, but it's not my fault: They're just so full of shit. Take for example their desire to use the Iran issue to play vote-bank politics, their silence on muslim violence in the aftermath of the Danish cartoons, but what really takes the cake is their advocacy of non-alignment, and their paranoia of the US.

Fareed Zakaria says that India is probably the most pro-American country in the world, after America itself, quoting a survey that shows that 71% of all Indians view the US favourably. Speaking on behalf of these 71%, let me send a message to India's commies: Go and get mental help, and in keeping in line with your philosophy, the rest of us will 'subsidise' your treatment. :)) Foreign policy must always be based on self-interest, not morality. If we had kept this lesson in mind, Kashmir would never have been referred to the UN in 1948, and we wouldn't have a 'Kashmir issue' today. India wouldn't have allowed filthy words like 'Third world solidarity', 'Non-alignnment', 'Disarmament' to drop from its tongue, and wouldn't have come across as the nation of fools that we proved ourselves to be. But I digress, returning to the present, the need of the hour is to grasp this one moment we have been given, to return to the glory of our halcyon days. We must align ourselves with the US, and take all that they have to offer. If they want us to be a counter-weight to China, that's a fantastic idea! I'm not talking about sub-ordinating ourselves or our interests, but we must draw a line between protectionism, paranoia and isolationism on the one hand, and sovereignity and self-interest on the other. The communists spout their bullshit because the world as it is today scares them. And they are afraid of playing the role of a Superpower, in fact they're afraid of playing any other role than that of beggar, because that's all they're used to. And just because these misfits happen to be a part of government, we must not let them hijack our future. (What can we do? Vote for the BJP the next time, even if you think they're 'communal'. Better than being ruled by an italian, or worse yet, being a communist). And WE MUST REFORM. Cut taxes, make the whole process easier. (Music to your ears, right?) But at the same time, downsize the government. Change labour laws, and allow companies to fire people at well. (Allow governments too, come to think of it). Cut subsidies. Get rid of idiocies like free power and controlled petrol prices. Set a fixed 4 or five year term for all state and central governments, and if neccessary, incorporate a provision for recall elections. Defang the damn beauracracy. Get rid of all the red tape in the country. Don't be pro-poor, concentrate on elevating the poor above the poverty line. Don't dole out money to villages, use it to construct better roads and facilities, so that people might actually invest in those villages, and give their inhabitants a source of employment. Look at the obvious truth: The state has no business running or owning businesses. But this is what the government must do. What about us? At the expense of sounding pedantic, those of us emigrating or intending to, must always remember to give back. Not neccessarily come back, but give back.

Of course, the beauty is, this government has been almost the same as the BJP one, except for a slightly enhanced propensity to dole out money to bums. But other than that, in areas of foreign policy, economic reform, national security, it's pretty much the same thing. If only the left could open it's eyes for a second to look at the import of this: It's become irrelevant, whether in or out of power. Except for West Bengal.

Your Taboo, Not Mine

This is a reproduction of an article in Time International, by renowned blogger Andrew Sullivan. I couldn't possibly put it any better than he has.

"The iconic image of last week was in the Gaza Strip. It was of a Palestinian gunman astride the local office of the European Union. All the diplomatic staff had fled, tipped off ahead of time. The source of the militant's ire? A series of satirical cartoons originally published in Denmark. Yes, cartoons.

A Danish paper, a while back, had commissioned a set of cartoons depicting the fear that many writers and artists in Europe feel when dealing with the subject of Islam. To Western eyes, the cartoons were not in any way remarkable. In fact, they were rather tame. One showed Muhammad with his turban depicted as a bomb--not exactly a fresh image to describe Islamic terrorism. Another used a simple graphic device: it showed Muhammad surrounded by two women in full Muslim garb, their eyes peering out from an oblong space in their black chadors. And on Muhammad's face there was an oblong too, blacking out his eyes. The point was that Islam has a blind spot when it comes to women's freedom. Crude but powerful: exactly what a political cartoon is supposed to be.

The result was an astonishing uproar in the Muslim world, one of those revealing moments when the gulf between our world and theirs seems unbridgeable. Boycotts of European goods are in force; demonstrators in London held up signs proclaiming EXTERMINATE THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM and BE PREPARED FOR THE REAL HOLOCAUST; the editor of the French newspaper France-Soir was fired for reprinting the drawings; Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the publication; and protesters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. The Egyptian ambassador to Denmark expressed disbelief that the government would not prevent further reprinting. Freedom of the press, the Egyptian explained, "means the whole story will continue and that we are back to square one again. The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world."

Excuse me? In fact, the opposite is the case. The Muslim world needs to do something to appease the West. Since Ayatullah Khomeini declared a death sentence against Salman Rushdie for how he depicted Muhammad in his book The Satanic Verses, Islamic radicals have been essentially threatening the free discussion of their religion and politics in the West. Rushdie escaped with his life. But Pim Fortuyn, a Dutch politician who stood up against Muslim immigrant hostility to equality for women and gays, was murdered on the street. Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who offended strict Muslims, was killed thereafter. Several other Dutch politicians who have dared to criticize the intolerance of many Muslims live with police protection.

Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive. They're blasphemy--the mother of all offenses. That's because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the Prophet, even benign ones. Should non-Muslims respect this taboo? I see no reason why. You can respect a religion without honoring its taboos. I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite. As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before an altar. If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one. Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.

Blasphemy, after all, is commonplace in the West. In America, Christians have become accustomed to artists' offending their religious symbols. They can protest, and cut off public funding--but the right of the individual to say or depict offensive messages or symbols is not really in dispute. Blasphemy, moreover, is common in the Muslim world, and sanctioned by Arab governments. The Arab media run cartoons depicting Jews and the symbols of the Jewish faith with imagery indistinguishable from that used in the Third Reich. But I have yet to see Jews or Israelis threaten the lives of Muslims because of it.

And there is, of course, the other blasphemy. It occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when fanatics murdered thousands of innocents in the name of Islam. Surely, nothing could be more blasphemous. So where were the Muslim boycotts of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan after that horrifying event? Since 9/11 mosques have been bombed in Iraq by Islamic terrorists. Where was the rioting condemning attacks on the holiest of shrines? These double standards reveal something quite clear: this call for "sensitivity" is primarily a cover for intolerance of others and intimidation of free people.

Yes, there's no reason to offend people of any faith arbitrarily. We owe all faiths respect. But the Danish cartoons were not arbitrarily offensive. They were designed to reveal Islamic intolerance--and they have now done so, in abundance. The West's principles are clear enough. Tolerance? Yes. Faith? Absolutely. Freedom of speech? Nonnegotiable. "

Reservations about Reservation

Don't you ever get the feeling that you could do a much better job of running the country than the bozos currently in charge ? I do, sometimes, and I know it's easy to be an armchair critic, but hell, at least I care enough. The other day, I was thinking about all this talk of adding further Reservation to the IITs. And this is such a step in the opposite direction comapred to where we should be headed. And I'm not saying this because I am on the wrong end of the resrvation stick, but because it is fundamentally bad policy.

It's not the case that I or any of my close friends lost something they rightfully deserved to some SC/ST kid who deserved it less. Even from a neutral point of view, it's apparent that the nation is on a dangerous path, if it continues to find new ways to divide its people. I could go on and on with arguments against reservtion, but we've heard all of them before, and all of us who are sensible tend to agree on them. Instead, I have a suggestion for a solution: Set a time-table, and phase out reservations in five/ten years.

First, get rid of them from the education system. Forget adding new reservations to the IIT's, get rid of the ones that already exist. And not just here, but at all colleges and all schools across the country. This doesn't mean leaving all the minorites high and dry. Far from it. Give them all the facilities, all the assistance that they need, but send a firm message: We're going to do everything we can to give you a level playing field. But after that, you're not getting through if you're not good enough. And just because you're poor or you're discriminated against, doesn't mean you're inferior. I know, I know, this is too fantastic to work in real life, but discrimination that has existed for thousands of years is not going to be gotten rid of in an instant, no matter how hard you try. And that's exactly what reservations try to do. And fail at it miserably. The ultimate aim is to integrate various sections of society, not insulate them.

Reservation might work if we have a very small nominal minority, like the Native Americans in the U.S., and all we want is to prevent them from fading into oblivion and extinction. But that's not the case. The U.S. doesn't erect new reservations for all the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Indians, etc. that exist there, and God knows they have even more minorities than we do. And why do people who emigrate there from India end up getting so much more and so much better work done over there? Because they have an incentive to. Because merit is rewarded. Because if you're good enough, there's no glass ceiling. Anyway, after we've sterilised our education system, get rid of reservations from government jobs. Of course, a few people who are used to getting things easy because of reservation, who are too used to the status quo to want to give change a chance, who are used to playing on peoples' insecurities to get votes, will look upon all this as blasphemy. Which is why this is going to be tough, and will require immense political will, and knowing our ountry, will hence probably never happen, but then again, nor will anything else I've mentioned, so what's the harm in dreaming a bit more? :)

Using the JEE as a metaphor, do everything you can do to help disadvantaged people, give them special tuition, scholarships, hostels, whatever they need, while they prepare for JEE, but do NOT have a separate category for them. Do not lower the bar for them. And I don't see why the same approach wouldn't work for Public sector employment either. Now, by some miracle, if all this actually ended up happening, it would set off a chain reaction. Caste-based parties would lose ground, a lot of the resentment that exists on both sides of the reservation barrier would ebb, the quality of education would improve markedly, better institutions and companies would spring up, labour laws would be easier to pass in parliament, it would give Indians abroad one more reason to consider returning....oh who am I kidding? Mandal zindabad.