Chandler

Like a good whiskey, every now and then, I pamper myself with a Chandler. I have already gone through the Big Sleep over four times and into my third reading of The Long Goodbye.

No one wrote similes like him. No one.

Sample these from the Long Goodbye -

'XXX', she said in a voice like the stuff they use to line summer clouds with.

He looked at me like i was a cigarette stub, or an empty chair. just something in his line of vision, without any interest to him.

His hair was as smooth as a bird's breast.

Nobody, [...], looked at me as if my face meant as much as the hands of a clock.

The commericals would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.

Not one of them could hit hard enough to wake up his grandmother from a light doze.

She was unclassifiable, as remote and clear as mountain water, as elusive as its color.

All these picked randomly from the first forty pages I have savored. Like a chilled beer in the summer heat.

One that I gleaned from the net: The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.

Read Chandler.

Catch them before they go

Mah mush!

Mah religion

I have embraced a religion. It's called Guturguturism.
According to my religion, this is the list of activities that offend it -
1. The name of God in either the masculine or feminism gender. My God is a eunuch.
2. The portrayal of any god or goddess in the man-invented shackles of clothes. This means that I will be raiding all Hussain exhibitions that depict the goddesses in saris.
3. The evocation of any prayer without the acknowledgment that besides being all-powerful and all-knowing, God is also all-sexy.
4. I am against the killing of plants and can have them only by means of the flesh of other beasts. Hence, I expect all restaurants to abide by my tastes. That means, McD, which already doesn't serve cheeseburger and hamburger in India, would be picketed to drop the buns and the plant-grown seasoning too. Only the chicken patties would remain.
5. We believe that the most offensive part of a woman's body is her eyes. If we let women see the fuck we're making of everything, they will ultimately put two and two together, and upset the delicate unequal balance we have foisted on them. Hence, all women are expected to wear the antiburkha where their eyes would be covered by the black cloth and the rest of the body with guaze.
6. We regard all books by Harold Robbins to be the very words of our God; describing his narcotics-driven fantasies.
7. Our sons will have everything, but their foreskins, removed.
8. Our gods might not have invented the first airplane (as seen patently in the udankhatola) or nuclear missiles (sudarshan chakras). But we claim that he did invent the dildo and the middle finger. That, and the expression - Fuckin' A!'
9. Our Gods cannot be depicted in either idols, cartoons or portraits. However, carvings on turds are permitted.
10. Our first God appeared in the form of Bruce Lee. But he died before we could crucify him. We are waiting for the second coming that will happen three weeks after the Apocalypse. According to the epic, the God appears in the fom of a ram on heat and buggers all the other Gods doing the judgement right in the very courtroom. Then he bellows and tells the gathering - 'Go home you good-for-nothing c***suckers! Whaddya think this is - a f***ing exhibition?!?'


Any room for my religion?

Who are these people?

snap coursey - Indian Express.

Who are these people?

What do they do?

How do they find the time to collect and protest over the misgivings of a small still-to-make-it-big idol like Sreesanth?

In fact, any other guy - be it a Bachhan?

Don't they have a life?

Don't they have financial responsibilities?

Don't they know that their protest actually means nothing to the guy?

Why are they not looking grief-stricken in the snap (in fact, one of the guys has a gentle smile playing on his lips?

If they're Sreesanth's fans, why are they holding Bajji's snaps?

Can I hire them to protest against my own pay hike?

Does it work? If so, how?

I am sorry. I am not from the South and hero-worship still puzzles me.

Sadhus alight

Conversations

'There was this lady in ITT. Not exactly beautiful but very... very humpable. Really great ass. Matlab samajh raha hai na...’

Yup, I am.

‘ Uska, na, divorce ho chukaa tha. And she had a six year old son then. She was a single mom’, he takes a deep drag and passes the joint to me, ‘Woh office mein ek bande ko thokte huye pakdee gayi!'

I take a drag and watch the fumes hang like a cloud in the still, hot air, ‘You mean make out.’

‘Nahi. Thokte huye!’

It’s still probably just make out.

‘Someone from the office?’, I ask.

'Nahi, I don’t think so.'

‘So did they turn her out or anything?’

‘Of course, bhai. What do you think?!?’

I think that it’s not exactly an ‘of course’ case.

‘So was she financially liquid at that time?’

‘Huh??’

‘I mean you said she had a kid...’

‘Arre, mere ko kya pata, bhai!’

‘Ok’

We finish the joint between us, looking out at the eighth-floor power-cut darkness beyond the balcony.

V sort of moans, ‘Yaar, if she was looking out, she could have asked me!’

‘Hmm? Yeaa...’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing. Damn hot. Let's roll another one.'

'Hmm.'

V lights a flame under the hash while I sit waiting in the darkness staring at the red-white blip of an airplane climbing the sky.

Be a good son, kid. That’s the least you can do.

Falling standards in articles

I read for content.And perspective.

Blogging is a amazing confluence of both; the only caveat being the veracity of the facts stated is not set in gold standard.

Call me old fashioned, but I expect more from syndicated columns. A little beyond facts. If possible, insights that can make me pause beyond a second.

This article on how credit cards cheat customers is an OK blog post but a column in Rediff Money section?

The authoress has not delved into any of the processes working behind the twin issues she had. No dissection at where it is going wrong and some fix-its.
It's a rambling - the sort you hear around your cubicle all day from people who can't actually be bothered to open the bonnet and see how the goddamn thing works.

This article should have been slotted in Blogs. It is only "You know what happened one day to me..." It has no value add in a Money section.

The few understanding I have of the publishing industry, I am distressed at the falling standards in quality and depth. Apparently, one of my friends is supposed to turn in an article within a week on a topic that prev. she had little clue on. And she does this in her free time since she is freelancing along with balancing a job. And the magazines in question are supposedly reputed.

Previously, you could tell a well-read man by the perspectives and insights he had had the advantage to go through and introduce in his thinking - beyond the everyday drawing-room discussions. Now these discussions, rather narrations, pass for insights.

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