Vande or not to Vande, that is the question

Recently, I felt an ephemeral twang of nationalistic pride when someone filed a writ petition in some state high court asking that Vande Mataram should be sung every day at all government-run and government-funded educational institutions. I say ephemeral because it was short-lived. As I started thinking about this petition, I found it a bit too far-fetched. Moreover, it feels wrong to compel someone to sing a song that they don't want to sing. Even if they do sing it, if it's not going to swell their chest with pride, what use is singing it anyway? It would be like making a monkey hit a green button precisely three times. What does the green button do? Nothing with a capital n. What would they think of next? Should everyone have a peacock in their home? Should everyone play field hockey, have a Bengal Tiger as a pet, a Banyan tree in their backyard, and sport a Lotus on their head to be termed a patriot? I think not.

Tom, Dick & Harry…& Jerry...& to be continued…

My name is Bhaiyya and as my dear friend “Ball” in utter disgust once said, I come from the deep ravines of Bihar. However, I do not live in Bihar anymore (fortunately or unfortunately); I have been living in Baltimore, MD for the past four years. A period of four years is a long time (just like prison time is a long time), I have seen a lot, done a lot during this time. Still remember the day I arrived, the day I met Ball and due to similar interests in Metal and bad habits (deemed by some), quickly became friends. I have met many jerks and the few good men who later on became my good friends after initial scrutinizing (sometimes I feel Airport security should learn scrutinizing luggage from me) and conflicts.

I have seen at least six generations of graduate students here, this experience is very common if you are a PhD student, however becomes unique in my case since I happily graduated from school two years ago but had to unhappily start working in the same area. Lots of people know me and I know many people in this town and somehow my position has become like an old clerk who knows everybody and everything about the office. Or to put it in a better way, a well-off old goon in the village who doesn’t do the real job anymore but every gang still holds him in high regards for his prior achievements. I am your man if you want the job done; most of the jobs being helping people move to Baltimore, away from Baltimore, join a new job, and a change of job. Here I have been inspired by Amitabh’s words from Coolie (with a slight ‘Bihari Club mix’): Sabki Naukri ka bhoj hum uthathe hain

My main expertise is to find cheap accommodation for you in Baltimore, to arrange for transportation; in a nutshell to make sure your transition is very smooth. If I cannot find a place for you; I will accommodate you with me, if I can’t suggest you something convenient for your transportation, I’ll give you a ride. Now getting inspired by Sanjay Dutt and the GREAT Dipak Tijori from ‘Sadak’ everyone in and around Baltimore started singing: Rehne ko ghar nahin…Sone ko bistar nahin….Apna to Bhaiyya hai rakhwalaa…Ab tak usee ne hai paala.

It all started when one of my undergrad friends from UT Austin, called me and said that his buddy, Tom, (The names of characters have been changed to protect their imbecilities) was moving to Baltimore to start his career. Career is a big word and somehow I got the impression that his career was in my hands! Next thing you know I was all over it, starting from asking somebody to give me a ride to the airport so that I can bring Tom home, offered him everything that I could. Helped him buy his car, helped him get his pathetic insurance quote because he had jumped a signal, was under 25 and was buying a new car. I patiently listened to his troubles until Tom moved to his apartment some 30-40 miles away from here.

I forgot to mention something here, Tom sent me his mugshots (before I met him for the first time) so that I could identify him, he also asked about the weather in Baltimore. Tom was coming in May, so I presumed that he was asking me about the winter. I told him, “dude! the cold will freeze your ass”. When I reached the airport, I saw a guy who had striking similarity to Tom’s mugshots and was wearing a winter jacket. I cautiously approached this guy and confirmed that he was Tom. The guy thought the cold weather in Baltimore in “winter of May” will freeze his ass. Holy cow! Is everybody from Texas so dumb? Anyway, so I had this feeling “you are a good man, Paul Rusesabagina”, you took care of everything for somebody, what a sense of achievement! Tom is very nice to me and all but somehow, I don’t hear from him a lot, he has become very busy with his life. Guess the next I would probably hear from him is when he would change his job and come to Baltimore…in essence to me for all of the above!!

Jerry was an acquaintance through Baba who became a good friend of mine before he decided to start his career in Baltimore. The friendship curve of Jerry is very steep, he may sound arrogant initially, but suddenly he would do something so ridiculous (scarred me for life), that you can’t stop laughing saying “Sala….ch***** hai”. I actually enjoyed helping out Jerry. It was a pleasure to spend time with him, have him as a roommate. I will not go into the gory details of my services (and let me be very clear here…NO! IT DID NOT INCLUDE A COMPLIMENTARY BJ) and to keep this blog short and not become like the one from Yatin. Services to Jerry were smooth transition to Baltimore and later on transition to far west, which resulted in the 3500 miles Great Road Trip. Overall, it was the best I had.

Along came Dick. BTW, Dick is short form for Richard, like the vice president’s short name (This piece of worthless trivia is one of the after effects of helping Jerry out…inane information!). The case with Dick was slightly different. Although he has been here for a while, which means the usual 2 year life of a “typical” graduate student, I had to be involved. Not only involved, but stretched the limits of my service domain by getting involved in pre career steps like ride for the interview and stuff. It was like taking a class 9^th kid for JEE preparation where every other kid had cleared 10^th exams.

On Saturday, I got a similar call from one of my buddies in California saying he had a FOB friend in Baltimore and wanted me to help him out. Seriously, FOB, he got off the boat couple of days ago. Let me call him Harry (Now inspired by Hari Narayan Shrivastav a.k.a Harry from Gol Maal….WHAT A PLAYER SIR!). So, after speaking to my buddy from California, I thought, okay I should call this guy up. I was in a party that afternoon and I didn’t want to go out again so later on I kind of postponed the call. About an hour later I got a SOS call from Harry. I appeased him saying don’t worry, I will help you out. And the same saga again, house and car (thank god! not the ride). Fortunately, he is not an engineer so I can’t really help him in his career moves. I drove about 25 miles one-way to meet this Harry guy, I drove because he doesn’t drive in the night :). I parked my car and on my way to the Marriot entrance I am stopped by a desi guy, and here he is in a nice party shirt, Levi jeans and chappals, wow! I suggested him to take some form of ID in case he wanted to drink. In response, he said something, which I didn’t quite get but it sounded like bouncers and bartenders in the old country recognized him that he was some guru in drinking. Apprehending his excitement, I was little worried that he might try to hit on the “bitches”. This kind of excitement is bad and has two types of consequences, worse and worst. Worse being, he is constantly hitting on somebody while he does not have a clue about doing it thereby creating an awkward situation. And, the worst being he actually gets a girl and I have to drive him so that he can get laid!!!

While driving by the shops to find the pub in Harry’s part of town, I had to tell him the brand of every car that was parked in answer to his questions. We found a nice bar and restaurant and we entered. While I stopped at the entrance to be seated, Harry kept walking and the server was shocked for a moment. I jumped in to tell the server that we wanted to go to the bar and Harry heard it and came back. While having the drinks, I gave Harry a short tutorial about life and culture in America like how to drive, how to say phone numbers and how to hunt, something, which I think puts me in gray area (the same old loop-de-loop). Turns out Harry is definitely better than the scary FOBs, he didn’t pay 1000 Rs for his drinks rather he paid 20$s and asked me about the tip. I am hoping to quickly get over with his business. I wish Tom, Jerry, Dick and Harry all the best in their career and I hope that my bit helped them achieve their career goals. Do I feel a sense of Power in Baltimore…Hell no! Thinking about it, what is power? Don Vito Corleone was powerful, everybody came to him for his help. What I did not realize was “with great power comes great responsibility”. I’m in a way institutionalized in Baltimore, I feel like a Guide singing the same song (again inspired by Amitabh from Don) to whoever comes to Baltimore for the first time : ‘Ee hain Baltimore Nagariya tu dekh babuwa…’

Through the lens of a loser lesser sociologist

Furiously chugging away, on a Friday night, several delicious Smirnoff Oranges straight off rocks, Tool’s unique brand of psychedelic-metal playing on my laptop, I happened to be on our blog reading Sri's hilarious moment of frustration with MTNL and at the same time, recalled that he now has an offer from IBM India. So after writing a congratulatory note to him, my mind somehow, without the bearer's permission (you know how it is when you're down a few rapidly-consumed drinks), donned a pseudo-sociologist's robe and started pondering over the race of Indians, a race that's been copiously infiltrating the American soil since the 1960s.

It got a bit bolder and then decided to segregate the male desi population in America into 4 categories:
Category 1: Good old homegrown desis wishing to pursue Masters with average/above-average educational qualifications and many of them, with a resume that's as well-oiled as their scalp.
Category 2: The above category with a Masters diploma and 2-3 years of work-experience - the now-half-smartass, “ain’t nobody wiser than me”, complete-wannabe types.
Category 3: Thoroughbreds with a high-school (or equivalent) diploma and probably a dad with a very fat wallet, wanting to pursue undergraduate studies in the US, and
Category 4: Desis sown and grown in India, but only for a little while, who then migrated with their parents at age 9-10 or thereabouts, did pre-high school, high school, Bachelors, Masters (only if they didn't get a satisfactory dose of spanking inflicted by this education system) or a Ph.D (only if they had serious mental issues or an unfathomable love to be in school for that length in time)

For a quick second then, in that blissfully alcoholic state, my mind paused, much like the way my tongue does before it jets out a river of thoughts not before having translated them into stuttering sentences, and I could hear it say "How could I miss one of the most interesting categories? – The ABCDs!!"

Continued here....

Make hay while...

Today morning was just like any other except for a gentle sense of relief borne out of an escapist’s realization of the approaching weekend. I adjusted the chair in my cubicle which had been facing away from the computer, a byproduct of my enthusiasm to rocket out of the workplace the previous day, and began sipping on a cup of coffee. My life’s marked with constant endeavor to earnestly evade hard work and the hour or so that I devote every morning to reading news and surfing for the same information over and over, seems to quite nicely fit the creed I live by.

It’s been in the news everywhere since yesterday – “British authorities foil a terrorist plan to blow up multiple airliners traveling between the United Kingdom and the United States of America, a plot to create mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.

Now it’s interesting to note the verbal grandiosity of the phrase “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” and its repeated occurrence on almost every site that has covered this episode. I don’t know about you, but I sure do smell a distinct whiff of Uncle Sam here.

US political honchos were quick in their propaganda of “being actively involved in working concertedly with the British government in identifying and nullifying this threat”. “The co-operation on this venture was excellent”, quoted Bush on NY Times. Right after I read the news yesterday morning, I had an uncanny feeling of America taking such a stand during the course of the day – and sure enough, they did not disappoint me.

Ever since 9/11, men with political power in the United States have tried to instill and disseminate fear in the minds of Americans. They invented a system of grading the possibility of a terrorist attack which anyone can get a glimpse of on any airport in the country. Periodically, they have got accustomed to messing with the “threat level” and making people aware of an unknown fear that lurks around the corner. When they were unsuccessful in burrowing out the alleged perpetrators, they turned their attention to Iraq. Using media as their weapon, they created an illusion of Iraq being involved in building “weapons of mass destruction” (again, note the verbal grandiosity I was talking about earlier) that could endanger lives of Americans, and you know the rest – no such weapons unearthed, commencing war on Iraq, apprehending Saddam, continuing war on Iraq, losing lives of American soldiers, killing Iraqi civilians, war continued, Private Green raping an adolescent and killing her family, and the list (and the war) goes on.

Ladies and gentlemen, with the US House elections around the corner in November, it’s time for another dose of fear! It’s time to join hands with the media again and make people believe that their safety and well-being ultimately rests in the hands of Republicans, a conglomeration of the noblest of men, who have relentlessly strived to wage a war on terror!

I strongly believe this incident is going to be well ruminated over by Bush and gang, in the next few months. They so desperately need this to distract focus of the American populace away from the stalemate in Iraq!

And to provide comic relief, Tasnim Aslam, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry joined the bandwagon today and was heard spitting on media microphones – “Pakistan played a very significant role in breaking this terrorist network”.

Oh yes baby! There’s absolutely no doubt about Pakistan’s intelligence quotient when it comes to huddling heads with the likes of The Scotland Yard and the CIA. There’s absolutely no doubt Pakistan would want to embrace this stance, especially after several of the suspects arrested so far, have their origin linked to that country. And we can understand if you want to divert the attention of the international community away from you after a spate of bomb explosions in Mumbai raised suspicion of your involvement. And not to forget, Pakistan has been lobbying hard to play tit-for-tat and nominate one of their own against Shashi Tharoor for the post of the UN Secretary General, and a “contribution to world peace” effort would stand them in good stead, if at all they find a wanker capable of nomination.

My friends, we ARE living in a Hollywood movie.

What is in a name???

My name is Balakrishnan Ramachandran (and no Marw I’m not putting my full name here to increase the hits on me from Google ;-). Over the past 25 yrs or so since I’ve groped reality, my name has been raped to good effect. It started off with people calling me Bala (fair enough). It’s probably the most clichéd nick to any loser by the name of Balasubramanian or Balachandran or Balamurthy. As friends reached puberty, it gave them enormous thrill to tweak Bala to something lewd – Balls. Most of my childhood I lived with being called Balls except in one case where an idiot who for some reason started calling me ‘Bullock’.

I kinda liked it in a way…Balls sounded too cool till I arrived at UMBC and met a bhaiyya from the deep ravines of Bihar. Having failed in English a zillion times in high school, he didn’t understand the subtle nuances of a prefixes or past participles…Balls became ‘Ball’ and eventually in his native earthy Bihari translation became ‘Gota’. I sighed and accepted it thinking its one of kind from a person who is one of a kind too! How naïve was I!!! Whilst working at LCS, a Russian lady (reiterate it’s LADY not a girl…desp MOFOs) asked me my name. I sensed trouble but still held my breath (which was stinking anyways) to utter : B A L A. She shot back : How do you spell that “B A L L” ? We all know that the Russian alphabets are more or less mirror images of the English letters but this was just sodomy! I decided not to kill her thinking about her hungry relatives in Siberia.

Another person who has raped my name time and time again is my dear friend my Rupil Sant. He is one of those hard core Wren and Martin lovers who is fascinated by adverbs so much that every sentence of his has to have one (many a times a lot) ADVERB atleast. “Pathan kya fantastically bowling daala re….brilliantly daandi nikala maadarchod ka….level dekh re…GODLY hai”….so there you go. He had to contort my name into an “adverbly” name and thus….Ball became Bally. To add more misery he turned me into half Cantonese…Ballee. And to top it off and add Tata Namak to my carcass, he wrote a song-

Kissi Shayar ki Ghazal…BALEE
Kisi Jheel ka kamal…BALEE
Kahin to milega…Kabhi to milega
Aaj nahin to kal…BALEE

My dad doesn’t know of this…else he would die the most painful of deaths.

Apart from this, hordes of 'insignificants' have molested my name time and again.

Office - There is this Redneck accountant who calls me ‘Beala’, and Chinku who calls me ‘Bowla’ and a Sindhi wannabe white who calls me ‘Bayllah’.
Out side of Office - Dr. Phatak used to call me by my email address 'balakri' and one smart ass named Mahesh remixed that too to call me 'balki' on the cricket field.
I’m not sure if you guys have ever heard about a show on Animal planet called ‘The most Exxtreme’ where they rank animals according to most ferocious, protective, caring, predator etc. If there ever was to be a show “The most Exxtreme” name rapes, you sure do know who the winner would be!

Well the reason I started to write this blog (other than to make my boss think im really working) was another case of name molestation that happened today morning. I had to visit an eye doctor to replenish my contact lens quota. I filled out the application form and handed it out to the doctor who just screamed after looking at my name – “Holy Smoke!!! How in God’s holy name do you say that??” I condescendingly said – “Just call me Bala”. She still was pretty shell shocked as to how long my name was and quipped – “No offence meant but the entire thesaurus is in there.” I smiled wryly (yep another adverb ;-) and said “I don’t quite think so unless the Thesaurus is just 24 letters."She took notice that I wasn’t too impressed and pressed on to say – “Well in that case I’m just going to call you Bala24”

So there you go folks…another feather to my dad’s cap for making my life miserable. I’ve faced so much misery and ignominy regarding my name that it just doesn’t bother me anymore. But I’ve decided that I’m not going to make my sons life miserable. He would have a short name which nobody would be able to fuck around with….he would live happily ever after….I’m would name him Vekantachalapathi Balakrishnan.

Immigrant !!!

This is a collection of events which has occurred with my friend Bhaiyya. Bhaiyya commands such respect in the country now, that he is considered a naturalized citizen rather than a non-immigrant.

Bhaiyya, comes from the same location, where Nalanda University existed in ancient times or where Laloo rules now. IIT educated Bhaiyya is a typical Indian. He has black hair, brown skin and Hindi which will put guys like me from Mumbai to think if its a foreign language. His English language is accented.

So our story starts at the beginning of this year, when Bhaiyya was searching for a new apartment to stay. He wanted to move to a new apartment after Mike left for the west coast and his inability to get a roommate for a 3BHK apartment was turning out to be a costly affair.

Bhaiyya was visiting a lot of rental places to enquire about rates and see apartments for himself. However, his applications are rejected by Rental agencies for "Having too high an income". Yes, dear readers, I was also surprised to hear of that being one of reasons to get rejected. Now, he is tired after a month long search accentuated by the rejections, strikes up a conversation with a random white guy at the gas station. They talk about different locations where apartments would be available and Bhaiyya discovers that some of them maybe available. However, the guy tries to warn him with good intentions, those areas contain a lot of foreigners, Asians and Indians. Imagine a white guy warning Bhaiyya about Asians ... Well Bhaiyya thought maybe he was considered a white. We said, maybe you are black.

This long weekend, we went to Raleigh, NC. Since we were 4 of us, we decided on travelling luxuriously in a big car. However, we got Nissan Sentra .. the smallest possible. More to our surprise, we saw that the car doesnt make 65mph without flooring the accelarator for more than 5 minutes. However, our dear Bhaiyya in a near stroke of genius while returning back, makes higher 70's for couple of minutes before climbing down. By the time car is back to speed limit, we pass an unmarked stationary cop car. The cop flashes its lights and asks us to get off the road. Resultant, Bhaiyya gets a speeding ticket at 78mph. However, after the initial tense situation of the cop and ticket, on our way back Bhaiyya discovers that the ticket has been marked as Caucasian White. Bhaiyya was now a White brother.

These incidents have emboldened Bhaiyya to consider himself a citizen. Infact, at a 3 way stop, near my school, which is a little wierd, the right turn does not need to stop, while all others are required to stop. Even the ones going straight are required to stop. So this guy who is from a different country stops, waiting for Bhaiyya to proceed. Bhaiyya waves him to go and then turns and tells me "Immigrants I tell you" !!!!

Note: Some actual events and related sequences have been modified for this article.

Kuwaiti Landmark Elections

So I hear from BBC that Kuwait goes to the polls. So nu u might ask. Guess what this is the first time that women in Kuwait are allowed to stand for elections. That is quite archiac you would think...well let me just let the parrot out now. Its also the first time when women in Kuwait are allowed to vote!!! I was quite stunned to hear this quite frankly with Kuwait being a free port and stuff (correct me if I am wrong here).

As I delved more into the issue I was appaled to learn that Kuwait is the first country in the Gulf region to actually take this step. We are living in the 21st cenury for Christ's sake where women have gone on to become good leaders (and no I am not talking abt the Nasbandi psychotic Gandhi). I became more curious as to what the outlook of Kuwaiti women were as they take this historic step forward. I was stunned beyond belief to read quite a few women actually saying that its an extra burden on them! To come to think of it, such a bedouin outlook would evolve only with lack of proper education and a closed-box mentality.

57% of the electorate in Kuwait is of the fairer sex. That means for however long there has been a democracy in Kuwait, it has the veto only of less than half the population of the country. Pretty disturbing stats those. I also read here that a woman did't want to vote for other women as she thinks woman candidates needs to develop politically?? How does that make any sense. There is always going to be a first time and being a woman yourself you should be giving them the opportunity to lead your constituency. Isn't anti-incumbency a factor in your country? Shouldn't you try to give others a chance when the previous leaders have failed?

Its all very disturbing for me to read this when women have excelled in every sphere known to mankind and surpassed men in quite a few. Guess its hard for me to take this coming from a country with the largest democracy in the world. But its still going to be interesting to know if any woman actually gets elected!

-Balls