The Madras Mail

My friend wrote on BMWs a while back. I wholeheartedly disagree.

Germany has BMW. We have SJ.

There are certain specific things that translate to thrills when driving.

• Speed. We, the 3 of us and a myriad of illegal substances, averaged 100 kmph in a car that was designed to do 40 kmph with 2 people.
• The Road. Chennai – Dindivanam – Pondy is a 6 lane montrosity that is for the most part inhabited by fiercely protective locals who engage in a challenging sport known as TVSChamp Thillalangadi. This sport requires unsurpassed skill in handling the machine itself- a lean, built-down, racing version of the ubiquitious and rather popular TVS50.
• The Driver. Clive Owen did the Hire series for BMW, SJ will soon be acting in the KenaPundai4U series, which would involve SJ and some Mc. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Scarlett Johannson is to make her debut in Indian cinema alongside SJ.
• Efficiency. We managed a trip, Pondy and back, in 3.5 litres of petrol, at an estimated mileage of 85.7kmpl. Al Gore is purported to have offered SJ a multi-billion dollar deal for his next movie.
• Collateral Damage. One Toyota Qualis, assorted lane dividers and markers, one leg, and 2 cows.

Bottomline: An Alto, dum and SJ driving has produced more adrenaline in one trip than all the BMWs ever did since World War II.

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.

My brain is fried now. I’ve never had to bullshit more in my life than I did in the past few days, and yes it did pay off. I now have an internship with Ernst & Young, and I’m quite happy. The next few weeks are going to be quite interesting as well, am participating in the XL Dream Run, there’s Ensemble, and then of course there’s XL itself.

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I would right now kill for a beer at Bronx, some chicken at Sea Shell and a dum at Bhai.

I’m bruised and cut in 14 places, have something like 10 stitches in my head, and most possibly have lost a lot of blood in this process, but somehow, at 3 in the morning, with a bandage around my head, 3 injections of random shit in my body, and a LOT of drugs prescribed by the really good doctor at the Tata Hospital, I’m somwhow sitting at my laptop churning this out.

I’ve been missing from the blogging scene for a while, I guess it’s been more than a month, a lot of stuff has happened, me turning 21, SJ doing random shit, visiting the ‘Pondy Mother’ again, carving our names into the wood, coming back to good ol’ XL and getting hammered, and remaining hammered for most of the time, and today, this was a first, I somehow love my life because of all this, because of all the shit that I do and has happened to me, this is probably why am such a flippant asshole, but then, what is happiness in life without all these.

I’m considering different career paths now, an author (of erotic novels for children, … nah … jus’ kidding, for adults of course), a tee shirt seller in Brazil, a bartender in Goa, and a professor. Life is interesting!

I’m in a very … ‘apt’ stage to write. (Excusr the spelling errors)

One term at XL is done. I’ve been through shit, I’ve wallowed in the shit, and I’ve learnt that shit is bound to happen irrespecitive of how careful you are. These last few months have been some of the best I’ve had.

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The comma and the dot next to it are almost merged into one button now.

I shouldn’t be writing now.

Chennai beckons.

XL meri jaan!

There’s mind numbingly funny, and then, there’s this.

I should be studying now, I have a quiz tomorrow, two the day after, and one the day after that, … well, you get my drift. To cap it all, the next week will consist of 6 days of pure torture and pain when I have my endterms, the culmination of all knowledge that has been gained till now.

I am so fucked.

I spent this weekend doing things that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to in my life. I went through an obstacle course which consisted of crawls under barbed wire, rock climbing, hanging on ropes, doing a Tarzan, et cetera. I crawled through caves (read, fossilized batshit, not so fossilized shit of other animals, wet mud, and assorted stuff of the smelly kind), slept on the rocks alongside 20 or so dogs, and built a raft and tried to cross a lake. I’m bruised, cut, have pains in all my joints, look like fried bacon, and somehow still want to do all of it again.

I’m now back at a more demanding bootcamp, where I have to spend the next 2 weeks forcing, begging and pleading with my brain to absorb the oh-so-required management knowledge, and on the 8th of December September I leave all this behind to 10 days of sleep and vetta kuzhambu. I now hear from Koshal that some retards have broken into his car in Portland and he’s lost all his documents (read passport, IDs, bank info) and he can’t come down to Chennai. This just sucks. Bigtime.

Right now, I’m just hoping for the random miracle to help me get past the first term, and am looking forward to 10 days of release from IR, HR, QT, Law, …

One advice to all bschool aspirants, ‘Drink a lot, if you don’t, start now’.

I haven’t laughed properly in 4 days. Stress has taken on a whole new meaning. The only thing that is keeping me going right now is the night of the 16th. I hope that by the morning of the 17th, I can neither see the light nor the tunnel, but just stars and Carla Gugino.

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