Friday Freakout..

Young, upwardly mobile....the hip, chic, "in" crowd people....hardworking college kids....not so hardworking college kids....your neighborhood working class folk....your neighborhood white collar folk....

What do they all have in common?

The Friday Freakout Fenom (or Phriday Phreakout Phenom if you will)..the need to freak out on Friday night.

As referenced in an earlier post (look at the second photo in that link)....there are quite a few of us who live for the weekends, present company included. And we make grandiose plans to ____ ______(fill in your choice of favorite regular weekend activity).

And then boy, we go out and get wasted on a Friday night.....and the domino effect is just begun....and voila..in a short span of just two days and three nights, your weekend is history, but your hangover and an unfinished chore (see above blank for your chore!) are the present...and yes...Mr Monday Morning Blues just came by to say Hi..

It is one thing to get out and hang out on the town with friends and family or whatever else it is that floats your social skirt...but it is totally another thing to get drunk and wasted...and that thin line that separates the two is possibly the most violated line in the world this side of the signal stop line.

As Bill (Cliff Huxtable) Cosby so humorously put in his early 80s standup performace at Toronto (available on DVD) the violators, quite often end up acquainting themselves with the toilet seat..

Quite often too, civility gets kicked right out of the window as well...its no small wonder that the cops are generally busiest on Friday nights....

Now, I am gonna doff my pontificating hat, and confess to one thing though......
there is something hilarious and amusing in the sight of an out of control drunk embarrassing himself/herself or in the "conversations" between two seriously drunk people....its a pity though there are so few people around to see it...because most everyone is quite like that person....too drunk to know..or getting there. And that doth make me the one-eyed man in a land of blind people...

As they say in the Gangetic plains...phir milenge (see ya later)

Are we men in danger?

Disputed claims and reports that human sperm count is down 50% over the past 50-odd years.

There have been several reports in the media over the past several years that claim that male virility is in danger. And typical with some research claims that we are not comfortable hearing, there are counter-arguments, that claim that these reports are not true.

If there is something that is indeed worrisome, it is the fact that the claim, if true, implies that we are just about half the men that people in our fathers generations were...(hey, the world needs population control, and what better way to get to it than by naturally reducing the cause of child birth, right :P)

Typical of all the ancillary noise that this kind of claim generates, there is some other claims that are related to female contraceptives.

How far fetched is this? Well, it has been observed in many specimens of fish in Europe and North America. And it is suspected that the hormone oestrogen, which supposedly enters the sewage system through the urine of women taking contraceptives (yeah, the drug companies put up huge doses of the hormones in the pills, and almost half of them are dumped by the human body...), finally ending up in the water ways, is the primary culprit behind the gender-bender tendencies observed in trout in the UK in rivers downstream from sewage treatment plants. Similar tendencies have also been seen in Carp in the US.

Guess what, the rivers provide drinking water for considerably large population groups. So, are we men at risk too? Are the excessive female hormones in the water system affecting our hormonal balanace?

If you believe some of the nuts, it is the male that is in danger of extinction...

As for me...

What..me? Worry? Phtt.....can someone pass me a glass of water please?

A-Fraud..at it..again

A-Fraud, who used to be also known as A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez of baseball's New York Yankees), is at it again...yapping on and on about how someone else is mouthing off. That slouch is so out of enthusiasm that to dress up for the sport that pays him and his family for about a million generations to come, that he needs the fodder provided by another equally loud-mouthed jerk (Curt Schilling of baseball's Boston Red Sox)..albeit a jerk with championship rings.

Here is a suggestion A-Fraud...quit being the impish jerk that you are coming out to be, and play the game like you used to play in Seattle...you know...before you became the rich guy that you are today...when you played the game so well to earn the moniker of the best ball player today.

Quit whining about how you beat up on Schilling in the regular season, because you are front and center, a prime member of the team that endured arguably the biggest collapse ever in the history of Major League Baseball. So, STFU for a few months, concentrate on the game, and play it because you want your team to win a championship..not because you are driven by retribution against someone else....

I am in love with the world

So goes the croon..."I fell in love with the world, when it gave me a place to be.."

If a blind girl can love the world so much, then what are we slouching about?
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Lissa Hermans, a blind 8 year old child, sang the song "I am in love with the world" as part of a performance at the Chicken Shed Theater company in London. Princess Diana, who was at the performance, took further interest in the group which included many a disabled people.

This led, in late 1997, to the Chicken Shed group re-creating the song as part of a tribute album to Diana.

Wonderful lyrics...made even more wonderful and moving, when you consider that it is a blind girl singing with so much feeling...

I am in love with the world
With its fires and its seas and its pain
I am in love with the world
As it spins round my soul again

I fell in love with the world
When it gave me a place to be
You cannot fall out of love
With your world shining through
Let your world fall in love with you

You think you're lost to the world
With your life lived in shadows of fear
Days lost without you too long
No-one close no-one kind no-one near
You try to hide when your world dies inside
Never fade away
Dreams turn to stars so you don't lose the end of your day
Let your world fall in love with you

I felt your feelings before
And the world tried to pull me through
Through all its time and its space
It is speaking to you

Considering all this, lets show some love to the world one person at a time.
Make this a better place. Make us a better race.

Concorde...

Its a bird..no its a swan...no..its a plane..no..its CONCORDE..the majestic bird with its characteristic deltoid wing..taking off on a trans-atlantic flight..photo via airliners.net..copyright Laurent Patry


A profile look of the now-grounded Concorde..shows the four air-intake valves fronting the Rolls-Royce engines that powered the bird. Pause for a moment and consider the marvel of engineering achievement in the air intake valves alone...when flying at Mach 2+, air coming in at about 1300 miles an hour has to be slowed down by about 1000 miles an hour in those short length tubes...yeah...amazing...

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'" and other impressive movie lines

The Shawshank Redemption (MMIV): The prison outbreak drama based on a novella by Stephen King is high up there on my list of favorite movies, and its not hard to see why. The dialogs, the characterizations, the fleshing out of the story, and the gradual but surely lolling waves that lead you ashore to the wonderfully uplifting climax..it is indeed a pity that this movie went over a lot of peoples heads when it released theatrically in 1994. But atleast as a partial saving grace, it ended up as one of the best ever rented movies..so a lot of people did get to see what the fuss was all about. To me, much of the fuss can be summed up in the following four lines

"Get busy living or get busy dying",
"Andy Dufresne swam through a river of foul-smelling shit and came out clean on the other side",
"On the outside, I was straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to become a crook", and the clincher "Hope, is a beautiful thing. Maybe the best of things. And no beautiful thing ever dies"

Oceans 11 (MMI): That excellent comic/heist caper Oceans 11, starring George Clooney as Daniel Ocean was not memorable for its story. In fact, the story was not even original. But it does stand out for something that is as impressive as is memorable, something as confident as it is perky, something that is so full of itself, you cannot help but just laugh at and with it.

But what stood out from the entire movie was this clip that was oft shown on the promos for the movie..the scene in a bar in Chicago where Danny "offers" Linus Caldwell's character a job in the heist.

You're either in or you're out. Right now! Yes, I was all in, right at that moment. One of the few movies that had me hooked from the trailer on and did not disappoint the expectations. True, if you want to be that humorless person who wants to surgically take this movie apart, you can find holes so big you could fit the entire Yucatan peninsula into it. But hey, come of it will ya? This is entertainment at its very best..."Walk before you can crawl.....reverse that".

"Look, we all go way back, and I owe you for the THING with the GUY in the PLACE, and I will never forget it"
"They have watchers, they have timers, they have locks, they got vaults. They have enough armed personnel to occupy Paris!"

A Few Good Men (MCMXII): You want to know the truth? I am entitled to the truth. I want the truth. You cant handle the truth!

This excellent legal drama involving the JAG corp and a battle-hardened marine who thinks his way is better than their way, again stands out for a well-paced plot with good acting sustained by dialogs that help the characterization of the person, which otherwise would have to be redundantly portrayed on-screen. Many a memorable scenes stand out from this movie, notably the second meeting between Lt. Cdr JoAnn Galloway and Lt Danny Kaffee in the ball field, which ends with Kaffee pleading ignorance to what "Code Reds" meant.

And the dialogs are the spring board that push the movie into stratospheric heights.

"Who did she handle, the Rosenbergs?"
"Why do you think a Lt. junior grade, with a track record of nine months and a reputation for plea-bargaining gets assigned a murder case? Is it so it never sees the inside of a court room?"
"I like you navy boys. Whenever we have to go fight somewhere, you boys give us a ride!"

Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu

Lokah Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu (May there be happiness in the entire world!)
Sarveshaam Svastir Bhavatu (May there be good health in the world!)
Sarveshaam Shantir Bhavatu (May there be all pervading peace in the world!)
Sarveshaam Mangalam Bhavatu (May there be harmony in the world!)
Sarveshaam Poornam Bhavatu (May there be completeness and totalness in the world!)

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

When do you feel most at peace and happy?

Is it when you have achieved what was a set goal? Is it when you eat your favorite dish? Is it when you have done your favourite physically-exerting activity (any sport/hobby)? Is it when you are listening to an orchestra perform the subtlest of mood altering music? Or, as Col. Frank Slade, Retd, so succintly put it across in Scent of a Woman, is it driving a Ferrari, making love to a terrific woman, and drawing on a finely rolled Cuban cigar?

Whatever it is that is your cup of tea, one thing sure does stand out..all of the above are material or physical pleasures, with the exception of the terrific woman, who of course, I think, could be a life altering event! :) And yes, I have strayed wide off the point am trying to make.

What if, we all went about our lives wishing happiness and prosperity and health, not for us, but for everyone around us? Would that make you any less happy than you are, right now? Would it make it any more happy than you are, right now? Would it be a life-altering experience to you?

The Sanskrit poem/edict/prayer I quoted above, was taught to me pretty early in my life. I was taught to never pray for my own self, but to generally pray for the prosperity and it was reinforced by the ideals that were taught as part of the morals instruction class at my high school.

To this day, that is something I strive to do, and hold dear to me. And it is something that, while costing me nothing, has been the beacon that took me through some of the roughest times of my life, sort of like the light house beckoning to the safety of the shores through the bleak and fog of a rough sea.

What do you have to lose in wishing well upon others? What do you have to lose by wishing prosperity to others? Why do we have to envy others happiness and success? Why can we not be happy for their success? Will it not make for a better world if each one of us, starts to wish others well?

After all, remember, you are not a lonesome dove, alone in the branch of a solitary pine tree that is lost in the shifting dunes of the desert. You are part of this immense "tree" of civilization, where your prosperity is a reflection on your neighbors prosperity and theirs, on yours. It is, to paraphrase a cliche, the case of the whole being better than the sum of the invidual parts.

It is easier said than done, but all it takes, is for one person at a time, to start wishing for the worldly wealth and peace. Let us never forget, this is the celebrated Hindu way of life that is supposed to make it a great religion. So whatever your religious belief may be, or even if you are atheist/agnostic, just remember to celebrate the life on earth and enrich your life, and the life of people around you.

Instead of living a me-first closeted life, it would not hurt to be courteous to the person next to you in the bus or the subway car, it would never hurt to hold the door open for someone who is following you and letting them pass. Wishing others well can begin with activities as mundane and routine as I just mentioned above.

You are not required to, but do strive to put a smile on someones face everyday.

Om Shantih Shantih Shantih

Living with nature..the joy of south India's thanksgiving..

The Tamil calender, based on the lunar position in the skies, indicates that the month of "Thai" (no stress on the a as is the case with the pronunciation for Thailand) rolls around in mid-January. This is the conclusion of the winter harvest (if you could call it winter that is) for the farmers and their harvest has been packaged and shipped off to the local markets.

Now, comes the time for these farmers, the framework of the Indian diaspora, the skeleton to the Indian identity, the backbone of the Indian economy, to offer thanks to the nature and the elements. The festival of Pongal. Spread over three days, to the average joe it signifies three things, on three different days...

The first day of Pongal, called Bhogi, actually falls on the last day of the previous month of the Tamil calendar - the month of Margazhi. Typically the coldest month in the southern parts of India, the beginning of Thai is considered to be a time of good start. The time to step out from the old and into the new. In fact, there is a saying in Tamil that amounts to "when the month of Thai dawns, a new way dawns..."

People celebrate the fact that a new "year" is about to begin by doing away with the old, typically in bonfires. This would be akin to spring cleaning in many parts of the world, when the people would dig out from the snow and slush of the winter, but not by much.

The second day, is the day of Pongal (two syllables, the first syllable Pon almost rhymes with the French word "Mon", and the second syllable gal is pronounced exactly as the second syllable gal in legal). This is the day of offering thanks - thanks to the Sun for blessing his bountiful rays of light on the farmers crop, and in general sustaining life on this earth. Part of the reason that the traditional style of celebrating the festival involved cooking outdoors was the fact that the people wanted to pay their obeisances to the Sun and ceremoniously offer their food to the God.
The food cooked during that day, was typically the fare that the farmers could grow on their little corner in the world - rice, lentils, some root tubers, sugar cane (directly, and also processed, as sugar), and it was the day they finally got to reap the rewards for toil of the days past.

The third day, is Maattu Pongal (Cows Pongal). The traditional farmer in India tilled his land with his two cows and a plough, exacting tough labor from his beasts of burden. Also, his oxen would be the driving power for his cart, when he had to take his harvest into town to sell and make money. This was the day he would get to symbolically repay his gratitude to his animals, for their part agriculture. The cows are bathed, and they are decorated as best as they can be (usually involves tying jingling bells around the cows neck, painting the horns with exotic colours and garlanding with flowers), and then taken around the village in a sort of parade. Probably so the proud farmer can show off to his neighbors of his pride in his animals. On this third day, in the morning, the women folk of the house also lay out the food left over from the previous day for the animals of the neighborhood to eat. Typically they are meant for squirrels, crows, pigeons and other domesticated birds that flock the back porch of homes in south India.

It is yet another way that the old lifestyle of the folks, one that we are so far removed from now, was one that was in tune with nature and kept the humans as a sustaining part of the chain of nature.

To most Tamil folk, pongal is probably the most celebrated of festivals. It is definitely the case in my family because of our ancestry as a line of farmers/landowners. Hey, I am just one generation removed from being a one myself. So this tradition is still fresh in our memories and hence an integral part of my household.

Pongal-o-Pongal

Predicting the future..the science of self-fulfilling prophecies..

Quite a few of us have, at various times, been tempted to know what is in store in our futures. Maybe we will not care to admit it, but we are sorely tempted to know what is coming.

And we are not alone..people are so desparate to know what is in store for them in their futures, it has spawned a thriving industry in the so-called science of fortune-telling. Also known as divination, and astrology, it is becoming increasingly popular than ever before, what with the break-neck speed at which the world seems to be moving these days.

Now, this begs the all important question..are these so-called predictions really true? Are the celebrated examples of divination and predictions just flashes in the vast pan of astrological predictions? We are treated to this example of a wonderful temple in Tamil Nadu, where supposedly the history of your life and your future is written in "olai chuvadu" (engraved palm leaves). We are shown spiritual gurus who, supposedly, just by looking at your face, and by holding your hands near your wrist, can tell you what has happened in your life and what is coming. Sometimes it just goes beyond the realms of normal understanding for a human mind. I mean, come on, there is only so much logic you can attribute to the fact that an absolute stranger has just recited your family history.

But, with all these examples, there is the cynical mind in me that still asks the question..arent most astrological/divinations just the beginning of what must be called a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Let us take an example of an oft-heard prediction..you are bound to have success when you are &* years old. Now, it is ingrained in your mind that you are bound to be successful when you reach that age. And boy, Lady Luck and Senorita Success do smile on you at that time, and you end up believing that it is the prophecy that rang true. Or is it? Isnt it just as likely that you heard that prophecy, and you believed it to be true. And hence it found a place in your subconscious mind, where it kept driving you toward this "goal". Yes, I am saying that your hearing this prophecy actually caused you to set that as your goal. And your every day actions and reactions that followed it, were just your actions gearing you toward achieving that goal.

Like that street-smart song in Rangeela "Yaaron sun lo zara.." which chides people for believing in the fate as predicted by lines of the hand (palmistry) as opposed to their own hard work, I just wish people would quit trying to "see" what is coming, and instead, plot their own strategies and plans for the future.

The future is what we make of it, and not what is purportedly written in the fate. Afterall, fate is what we make of our lives and the lives of people around us. So instead of indulging in the inexact science of fortune-telling and then trying to gear our lives toward what some stranger predicted, let us, for a change, try to re-gear our lives to achieve what we are truly capable of.

Like Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in the epic poem Mahabharath, we are not here to question our existence and to worry about consequences of our actions. We are here to do a duty, and to do our duties to the best of our abilities. Let us not get our capabilities muddied in the predictions based on the lines drawn up in our hands and on our heads. And then, the future will be what we want it to be..

Seconds from Disaster...

National Geographic Channel has some wonderful lineups of programming through out the week, and one such outstanding program is the ominously named "Seconds from Disaster" which deconstructs the terrifying sequence of events that led to unimaginable tragedy.

Not to sound voyeurisitic or sadistic, but it does astonish the mathematical and methodical intellect as to how investigators are able to piece together seemingly unconnected and oftentimes absurdly random chain of events that colluded and conspired to cause that disaster.

The domino effect, Chain Reaction, Snowball effect, whatever you might want to call the entire sequence of events. But, essentially it boils down to this. Events and actions, occurring continents away and across a time frame of years, have colluded to cause disasters, which, with the perfect vision of 20/20 hindsight, was avoidable in the first place.

You could almost hear Mr. Murphy shout in the background his now infamous law - if something can go wrong, it will go wrong....

The high-speed train crash of the ICE in Eschede, Germany in 1998 - according to the report presented in the program, the groundwork for this accident was laid during the early to mid-90s when, the train operators, with a view to increasing the rider comfort, opted for a different kind of wheels, where the flange in contact with the rail was not part of the solid wheel base, but rather fitted onto it.

During that fateful day, this two-part wheel would be the primary culprit in that staggering chain of events that ultimately led to the disaster. Essentially, the first straw set the ball rolling on a series of events that would not have resulted in the magnitude of disaster to the train had the location been different - the train was at the exact wrong spot at the exact wrong time and the exact thing that should not have gone wrong went wrong.

Same with the Concorde flight AF 4590 that crashed just after take-off from the CDG in Paris.

Sometimes it makes you think of the odds of occurence of that random yet interconnected-in-disaster sequence of events, and you are left thinking and wondering..rather pondering...

Are all of our little every day actions, seemingly random, seemingly harmless, seemingly run of the mill,and yet so interconnected and jumbled up? Are we, in our supposedly mundane lives, setting in motion various things and events that, while inconsequential now, could lead to profound events later in our lives?

In short, I think the littlest answer is Yes.

Yes, for both the good and bad.

Can we do much to change it? Not really, for, if we were able to predict this far in advance what would/could be the potential outcomes of each and every one of our daily actions, we probably would be God.

Or worse, we would be so damn terrified of our actions that we would even forget to live our daily lives.

About the only thing that we can really control, is the effort...to paraphrase the Bhagavad Gita...
You are here for a reason, to discharge a duty...so...just do your duty, and while at it, do your duty to the best of your abilities.