A tag came my way from the girl from South of the Border, West of the Sun. It asks me to say nine things about me, one of which is a lie. Though it would've been a lot easier the other way around. In the past I received similar tags twice, the first required me to note 20 things about me and the second, only eight. This time I can't just copy-paste from the previous, as the one lie that I have to fit in would become obvious. So here's my fresh list:
1. I'm a netoholic
2. I had my first girlfriend (or whatever that meant then) in kindergarten
3. I frequently visit online chat rooms for some sultry talk
4. My family wanted me to be a civil servant and I cherished filmmaking dreams
5. I didn't cry on my first day to school
6. I dislike Himesh Reshmmaya, Emran Hashmi, Upen Patel and their ilk
7. I have a penchant for collecting movies
8. Gizmos and gadgets keep me busy and I love to take them apart (that I'm occasionally unable to put them back together is a different story)
9. I hate getting wet in the rain (being born and brought up in cloud-infested Meghalaya)
Picking up the lie isn't that tough. A surprise prize awaits the one who gets it right. In case there is more than one winner, I'll draw lots. And the winner will also get automatically tagged with this tag.
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As the Gaizabonts pointed out "we haven’t done tags in a long time," and put this my way. I'll first go along with the tag, since it requires immediacy and then will explain the intricacies.
There was a loud murmur in the crowd and Zauq sat with a complacent look on his face counting the beads of his pearl necklace.
"Is it true, Mirza Nausha?" the king emperor wanted to know.
"Yes, huzoor," Mirza Ghalib admitted, "It's true - it is the first verse of the concluding couplet of my new ghazal."
Zauq let the necklace go from his hand. The expression on his face was reduced to one of curiosity.
[From Mirza Ghalib - A Biographical Scenario by Gulzar]
Ten sentences:
Why is it that great abilities come piggybacking on equal egos? It is the mastery of ability over the ego that defines greatness and Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib possessed that. His spontaneous wit got him out of numerous cornered situations which he got himself in. Great that he was, was acknowledged in his lifetime, albeit a little late. But hailed he was, after his demise. Heard about him since childhood, only now that I'm getting to him better.
Ye masail-e tasawuff ye tera bayaan Ghalib
Tujhe hum wali samajhte jo na baadaa-khwaar hota
(Ah Ghalib, the magic of your words and your ways with mystics!
You would have been a saint - if you were not addicted to drink)
And now the reasoning behind the text above:
Pick up the book closest to you. (OK, you can cheat, pick up the book closest to you that you like; but that’s about it - no more cheating). Go to page 123. Go to the end of the fourth sentence (not line). Write the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth sentences in your post. Follow it up with ten words or ten sentences about what that sentence means to you - then and there. Spontaneous!
I didn't cheat (except for the concluding couplet). This book was the closest to my PC as it was the last book that I read. Was planning to write about the Mirza for sometime and this tag coincided.
Go ahead, pick your book.
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If someone asks me the question, why do I blog? Atul framed the question in a different way. My answer would be a one liner (the best answers are) - accha lagta hain, it feels good. This 'feel good factor' is unlike the ad agency fabricated campaign generalising the feel of five percent of the nation for the entire populace.
This blog thing has been around for quite some time and I was a late starter (May 2005). Had earlier experimented with personal webpages, but found the experience quite unsatisfactory. One they were quite cumbersome to build and the free hosts never supported the features that I wanted to incorporate. Then I discovered blogging and felt that this was my kind of thing.
I read a lot of magazines, rather purchase a lot. Every morning the newspaper boy shoves in a sizeable bundle through the gap in my door. On reaching work there's another pile waiting on my desk. But I never wrote a single letter to the editor. Well, there was one, again that was just a cross posting of a blog post exemplifying my stand on what the editor of the magazine had written about on an issue that was (and is) a boiling one. The thing that I liked about blogging was that it is an impersonal sharing of thoughts extendable by personal threads.
I was never the chatroom types, even social networking couldn't (yet) suck me in. I liked the evening addas over cups of tea, samosas and sweets (many people find it amusing that Bengalis relish sweets with tea). The blog isn't exactly an adda, chatrooms are thought to be closer. For me the blog is my adda (somewhat reflected by its title). The people I talk to, know me (through what I write or shoot) and the ones I speak too seem familiar, just like college buddies of different sensibilities, ideologies and abilities. The blog gave me to space to speak out and the time to listen.
When I began, I was choked. The flow started coming much later and am still waiting for the full spout. There are still a few hiccups, but that is reminiscent of what we were told as kids - a hiccup is indicative of someone thinking of you. Have written a lot on this blog (this is the 374th post) and the topics fill up my category/label list. Some posts are a big hit, while most stay ignored. Some get me feedback, others leave the reader speechless (uninterested might be more appropriate). That only encourages. Blogging for me is first about what I have to say and then about what others listen.
Friends, initially, couldn't be more discouraging. What's there in the blog? They asked. Later a few started their own, only to give up midway. Today, they provide me with the ideas to blog about. "You should write something about this," they say. "It's only a little blog," I retort. "It's at least something," they reason. Some even ask me to start a guest column and like a snobbish editor, "I'll think about that," I reply.
Sometimes I get the feeling akin to the frog in the well. The blog is my well, but then it has a lot of windows. The blog is my well with windows. I can open or close them whenever I feel like. Sometimes a stale wind might force them open or bang them close. But that cannot make me leave my well. For that I have a full-time job which also pays for the activities in the well.
I don't get paid in dollars to do this (yes, I have Adsense, but do you think that I'll ever make money out of that?). I get paid in satisfaction, that I have done something, however worthless it might seem to someone else. I talk of war and peace, I rave and others rant about the clothes I wear. I justify the things that I (and my kind) do. I let my opinion known. I fulfill unrealised desires. I do a lot more. I blog.
[This is a part of an unstructured tag/meme. If you want to be a part of this, please feel to shed some light on your blogexperience. Details are available here.]
Other blogexperiences
* Letting the Light Through
* Why I Blog
* Still On Blogging
* Dexterous Doings: A story
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It's been over six months since someone last tagged me. Thanks Appu for the tag.
Here are the rules:
1. Name the person who tagged you.
2. Eight things about you.
3. Tag six people.
The following isn't exactly an original but excerpts from a previous where I was required to list 20.
1. As a kid I was afraid of crocodiles hiding beneath my bed (monsters didn't scare me)
2. In school, I once faked injury in a fight to get my rival punished. I again faked injury during selection for the inter-house cricket match to avoid humiliation of being dropped from the team (no I'm not Saurav Ganguly)
3. Black is my favorite colour (but doesn't black signify the absence of any colour whatsoever?)
4. I had a fetish for weapons and collected quite a many (no guns), but never used them for their intended purpose (maybe it has something to my momentary desire to become a mafia don)
5. I hate chain letters. Nothing good has ever come to me forwarding them and ostensibly nothing ill happened by ignoring them
6. While eating oranges, I swallow the seeds (and no orange tree has sprouted from my tummy yet)
7. I prefer fountain pens over ball pointed ones
8. I like to break rules (this isn't from original list of 20)
The requirements of rule no. 1 and 2 have been fulfilled. For rule no. 3, refer to no. 8 above.
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Was doing a story on the mad rush for money at the B-schools and was somewhat lost in the highest, mean, median, laterals, PPOs, foreign and domestic. The last time I saw so many numbers together was writing my dissertation for that master's degree. Got the degree but didn't master anything. Atleast not yet. After a mind numbing day eight hours at a stretch before an obsolete PC which takes an entire Himmesh Reshammiya song just to launch MS Word (you can imagine how excruciating the experience is), I come home to spend another five (if not more) hours before a-still-not-yet obsolete PC. And what do I find? A tag!
It's been ages since the last one came my way and I was already feeling excommunicated by the blogging community. Thanks to the makeover girl - AFJ - I have something to post about tonight. But she, like a shrewd public prosecutor wants me to confess my guilt. I'm in the dock and all evidence go against me. Do I have a choice?
Culinary Guilt: I'm a reasonably good cook. Atleast my friends tell me so, purportedly because if I wasn't they would have to do all the cooking. The secret behind those tingling taste buds is monosodium glutamate. It may not be healthy, but I use it a lot.
Literary Guilt: The books on my bookshelf are not an indicator of my reading habits. The stuff that I usually read is under the mattress.
Audiovisual Guilt: I claim to be a movie maniac and have built a sizeable collection of movies without having watched many of them.
Musical Guilt: In middle school my favourite music director was Bappi Lahiri
Celebrity Guilt: In school I was the House Captain and maintaining the house bulletin board was one of my responsibilities. Then the Shahrukh bug bit me. Next day the principal summons me to her office and orders all the Shahrukh pics and articles off the board. "'Negative influence' on the juniors," that's what she termed me. The next year I was caught on camera wearing Bobby Deol 'Barsaat' glasses.
I now summon five others sinful souls to confess their guilt:
Adi
Aklanta
Atul
Rita
Rohit
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Double tagged by Aquamarine and Rita there was no escaping this. A few more tags and my uncensored biography would be online on this blog.
Four jobs I’ve had:
Poster paster
Office inventory sequencer (actually a painter who disfigures your office stuff scribbling stupid codes on them)
Pollster
Documentary filmmaker
Four movies I could watch over and over (actually the ones that I feel like watching right now):
Hera Pheri
Dil Chahta Hain
Sholay
Forrest Gump
Four places I’ve lived:
Shillong
Delhi
Bhopal
Karimganj
Four TV shows I love to watch:
The Simpsons
Sarabhai Vs. Sarabhai
Biography
Any of FTV's lingerie shows
Four places I’ve been on vacation:
Khajuraho
Bombay
Calcutta
Agartala
Four of my favourite foods:
Shutkir Chutney
Steamed Momos
Aloo-Piyaz ke Paranthe (the non-tandoor type)
Misti Doi
Four places, I’d rather be right now:
Shillong
New York
The Amazon
Sub-Saharan Africa
Four sites I visit daily:
google.co.in
soumyadipc.blogspot.com
gmail.com
and the website on which I work upon
Four bloggers I am tagging:
You
You
You and
last but not the least, you.
The following doesn't deserve a separate post, therefore am appending it here.
This is no do crore ka question. A simple one that even a school kid will answer without thinking twice.
Which is India's most respected civilian award?
Bharat Ratna, you say?
The wannabe toothpaste model who prefers to be addressed to as a 'management guru' believes it is the Padmashree, or atleast his article on Shobhna Bhartia (Vice-Chairperson and Editorial Director, HT Media Limited) in 'India's Most Influential Business and Economy Magazine'[1] (he's also the E-in-C) says so. He goes on to add that she won the award in 1996, but as far as my short-term memory stretches, it was a good nine years later in 2005. Wasn't getting the facts right one of the basics of good management? Or is there another 'alternative' theory on the lines of 'Survival of the Weakest', the 'Trickle-up Theory' and the 'Law of Increasing Marginal Utility?'
[1] Chaudhuri, Arindam. "Reprisal of the Oracle." Business & Economy Vol. 1 Issue XII 13-26 January 2006: 68
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Some days you are too busy and preoccupied to sit at leisure and write something for your blog. Then a tag comes along. You want to take it along immediately but the forces of work and pressure makes you procrastinate.
This tag by Rita made me wonder that whether this is a sting operation perpetrated by my aunts who are desperate in seeing me 'settled' (in Indian parlance this implies married with kids). They have tried all the tricks in the book to know of my preference so that they could shortlist some prospective brides for me. But thankfully their unrelenting efforts have only met with with various degrees of failure. Sting or no sting the unwritten rules of the blogosphere requires me to take this along. Here I am.
The rules:
1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover.
2. Need to mention the sex of the target.
3. Tag 8 victims to join this game and leave a comment on their comments saying they’ve been tagged.
4. If tagged the 2nd time, there’s no need to post again.
It might be difficult to find someone with the following qualities that I seek, but in case you do find someone who fits the bill please do let my aunts know. They will shower you with blessings to counter the curses that I heap upon you.
Target: Female
My perfect lover should:
1. Have eyes that I can gaze into for hours
2. Have an understanding of my eccentricities
3. Possess a sharp memory to balance my absentmindedness
4. Be a good cook
5. Be a cleanliness freak
6. Be talkative to break the silence that usually envelops my abode
7. Have the X appeal
8. Be good at her 'job'
The victims:
1. Atul
2. Anthony
3. Varsha
4. Avik
5. Shivangi
6. Dwaipayan
7. Shyam
8. Rohit
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Remember those horror stories which granny used to tell you. The ones where the soul of one enters another and does all mischievous things. Many kilometres of celluloid also told similar tales. I always half-dreaded that something like that might just happen to me. Thankfully it never did, until now. Dwaipayan passed on this tag to me, which requires that I imagine myself in someone else's shoes. But mine is an odd size, I didn't feel very comfortable in all the shoes that I tried stepping into. Therefore am performing the rites in an imaginary realm. This infact violates the spirit of the tag, but I as the presiding spirit of this blog can veto out some undesirable spirits.
Since my last few posts focussed on the other half of the species, which we on the darker half cannot comprehend. I will for the purpose of this post defect to the other and possibly more 'interesting' side. But here too I find myself spoilt for options. Women say "All men are the same," but this doesn't stand true vice versa. After some serious segmentation and amalgamation in the age group that interests me, I come to the controversial conclusion that give or take something women can be broadly classified into two broad (but not necessarily all encompassing) categories - the behenji and the babe (I'm already bracing for those hate comments).
Babes are too boring, you know all about them. They are all over the newspapers, magazines and their ultimate home - the idiot box. Whereas, the behenji is an enigma. There exists a lot of untapped potential in there.
If you all aren't wondering what I plan to do as a behenji, I already am. First things first - I'll have a proper look and feel (first hand) of the stuff that men lust after and evaluate whether all that effort is worthwhile? Anyway my observations and understanding will serve no historical purpose, because men will continue to be men.
Second, I'll size up men as Thalassa_Mikra explained (hopefully my preferences will restore to their original self on return). Then I'll go on about the most important mission - putting the babes in their right place. I haven't yet decided on the qualities of the 'rightful' place and the 'how' associated with the act.
I'll also walk into a mall and try to figure out why the women who accompany me to such places waste so much time in choosing a stuff which they didn't want in the first place and also try out the bikinis the King of Good Times likes to see his women in. Walk out of the trial room to get a second, a third (and keep counting) opinion. 'Behenji in a Bikini' would scream an imaginary headline in a city supplement.
I have a lot of other ideas cramping my head but wouldn't like this blog turn out be a Letters from Penthouse replica. I'm after all a bhalo chele (good boy) and I also have to live up to the behenji image. I'll go home and sleep - alone. Not taking any chances. Would want to wake up as an un-pregnant male with no missed periods. Period.
Psst... The untiring always on the walk blogger living in a 4D world has stepped into another new year of his existence on planet earth today.
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