The Madras Mail

Excerpt from the Washington Post.

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes—followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won.

Now, I’ve actually seen everything. Dubya and his band of goons have resorted to new lows. Not happy with owning their land and their government, they now own the only remaining sliver of independence the fiercely proud Afghans used to call their own – their erections.

The next war will be fought with condoms, in China.

I’ve changed the layout of my blog, it looks pretty nifty, but this means that I have to limit the amount I crap out to a paltry 300 words, or my columns will lose their aesthetic appeal. Blah! There is too much wisdom in me to let go unshared, and here is my finger to aesthetic appeal and the CSS, RSS, or whatever they’re calling it. (By ‘they’, I refer to one Mr.K who happens to have a job with a blood-sucking, capitalist organization that charges $499.95 for a certain piece of software engineering done in suburban Hyderabad)

I was in Chennai for the past week. My friends have a lot of money with them. I have 10 rupees plus assorted change. I am going to a small hamlet about 2 hours from Chennai to spend the New Year’s in the company of some very friendly and very wasted French people. And if all calculations are precise, the next year’s party will be spent in a small hamlet in France, with some very friendly and very wasted French people.

I’m off. Au revoir.

PS. A ‘Save Vignesh Relief Fund’ has been created in the noble spirit of providing for one of India’s brightest minds to be able to finish his education in style. All proceeds will be tax free under Sec. 21 of the ‘Students for Alcohol Act, 1983’ and detailed accounting records will be available at … *hic hic…*

PPS. I wish all my esteemed readers a very happy new year, and may 2009 bring forth a shitload of fun. Cheers.

PPPS. The falling snow is to signify the extreme winter that Chennai and it’s very South Indian inhabitants are facing.

I haven’t been in a temple in over a year. It’s something that I’ve never seen the need to do, considering that I now think it’s very cool to be Agnostic, a rather questionable way of saying that I simply don’t fucking care about God and his/her supreme power, or at least the way people prescribe to it presently.

In a rather quirky turn of events, I found myself in the Kapaaleeswarar Kovil yesterday a couple of days back. It’s a majestic expression of what Tamil Nadu is most famous for, and I don’t mean Rajnikanth. A towering stone creation that has a nondescript board that says, ‘Non-hindus not allowed inside’. This board actually made me laugh out loud, scaring that poor maami who was praying for her daughter’s health and her daughter-in-law’s painful demise. I think this was about the time I started asking my Dad, what he and my tribe were trying to do by all this. A bit of history here, my tribe refers to the ubiquitous gangs of people you will find all over Chennai, wearing their religion on their foreheads and making it so very clear to their children that they were born into a special family who could trace their lineage back to stoned sages from yore. Ah!

I’m not even going to bother.

I’ve just realized what I am, I’m what orthodox paatis tell their grandchildren to stay away from, ‘…andha payyan –oda pogathe da, avan cigarette, drinks ellam kudippaan…’, I’m what people like my brother consciously try to stay away from owing to the rather obvious rum stench, I’m what the class toppers decide is a waste of useful space, I’m the guy that wears his underwear on his clothes and decides it’s formal enough.

Dammit! … I’m Superman.