Isthmus of Ignatz

Brick by Brick

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Bye Bye Bangalore

At long last, I shift my base out of Bangalore - to Kerala.

Monday, August 30, 2004

Am I so wasted I'm farting through my pores? and other realizations

I herenow declare that I am beyond most certain doubt: unemployable. All the interviews I have waltzed into, battled through and tumbled out of, have without further ado: fallen through. So here I am twiddling my tits, reading philosophy, basic rendering and architecture, and indulging in further narcissistic fantasy. I have little intention of meeting up with acquaintances who demonstrate the remarkable facility for holding on to employment while smugly nursing bulging bank accounts at their jugs; and the trek i blundered through last week was a prime fiasco, leaving only the ulcerating love bites of leeches for remembrance. I even secured a frigging leech love token in the middle of my neck to add to my titillating position at the base of the desirability stakes, which I was officially voted out of a few hours after birth. Right now my sister just walked into the room and asked: 'Did you fart or something. Place smells like avacado.' And had I eaten avacodo a few minutes back? Yes I had, but i certainly hadn't farted a whiff, let alone avacado. Am I so wasted I'm farting through my pores?

But to get to the middle of the steaming pile of rising crap : I believe IT and the smutty community of techies is turning Bangalore into a banana republic. Pleasant, sensitive lackadaisical Bangalore of independent bungalows, aesthetes, values and langorous lowing while mowing down your love in one of the several deserted parks; Bangalore of fair, representative education for all upholding the necessary and the uniting primacy of English, has given way to the frantic male creatures of IT and their wasted lives, spewing filthy Hindi and scratching their balls and dandruff out at work in a van huesen or in some o-yeah really cool keds, and T: fashion directions courtesy the enlightening, necessary 'America!' visit. America that pays them dollars while theyre there and sexy glorious sals and familial adoration while theyre here. Adoration of this kind: my son, software engineer just cum from America. o your son in a call centre? chae chae chae. Chow min.

Ok that's getting personal: but their income standards are leaving every other profession behind and lets leave out the IT-industry's poor cousin: ITES, more notoriously, call centres. You have to know: one's cerebral, the other's quick money: I could argue for neither, the way i see it: both are sweatshops - in one you work shifts; in another keep inhuman times. Clever prostituion.

If I were a lawyer, struggling to earn 7,000, and made to watch techies buy everything that flashes and flash it to make up for their worthlesness; or modestly nurse their secret bank accounts at their jugs, I would find a way to frame ballsitic charges against techie neighbours every week: over a month, wait for them to turn up their nifty Bose Acoustimass® 6.1-channel surround sound system an extra decibel after 8 pm, stand by with an Integrated SLM to catch it, and the police officer at hand to match it; enough to frame charges of repeated and continued wilful disruption of a reasonable level of peace and quiet in the neighbourhood.
I'd prove that his vehicle hasn't been emission-tested, that his tax returns are suspect, lifestyle/assets perfectly proportionate to known source of excessive income, on and on, what a neat secondary parasitic industry i'd have, feeding off the fat of the frat. But I'd have to be careful not to target the same techie; before long he'd be so tied up at court, my little secondary industry won't have anything to feed off. Ensuring I widen the net of controlled damage, all in all, I'd be flamingly properous, I'd have a little IT dept to write up programs for other lawyers who want to streamline the working of an indutry of secondary wickedness; I'd even have a call centre that employs the previously-prosperous ex-techies (lay-offs, pay cuts, why work for little money?) for insider gems like when's a techie's weakest moment, his predelication for smut (potential charges of sexual deviousness hurtful to the nation's moral fabric), unhygeinic spiffy Jockey underwear carrying never-before seen strains of jerkisia vulgaris.

But to complete what I began with:
Today, you can forget about loving in the park, no less than 21 human faces begin to deliver themselves from the underbrush, hedges, memorial statues, and yes, trees, expecting you to break into manic, instructive sex. Some walk right up and watch with the dual fascination for a park curiosity and a conviction in the role of moral policeman as deterrent. And to be fair, these voyeuristic sparrows are not at all techies, theyre just a certain pecking breed; Vatal Nagaraj would say they're either unemployed tams, telegs or mals; in truth theyre probably from Bavaria - they certainly look it.

And then there's the greatest scourge of all: Hindi. The shame of Bangalore's formerly 'hip FM music station' turning 24-hour Hindi. Like what was that? Sudden realization that Bangalore favors the removed, distant language of a dark region that has lorded it over the South for too long. Did you say: but it's the national language? And why exactly is that? - Why not a south indian language as national? We needn't be slaves to historic blunders. The shame of the 'hip' crowd struggling to be in with the North, with faltering, defiant Hindi. Conservative, intellectual South Indians squeezing in a henna ceremony into the sacred marriage ritual with a gagra and sherwani for dress. Are South Indian cultural preferences making similar creeping inroads into the liberal, let alone conservative North?
Nay, knowing countrymen, part not your lips to answer this. You know the truth.

Deliver me spirit of the South!

Here I would like to thank Fisheye Crea
tives for their inspired campaign for Worldspace that took a brave frontal jibe at the Hindi-sickness that has struck many FM stations and lives in non-Hindi-living India.


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Sunday, August 29, 2004

Heck of a trek

Was back last weekend from a trek to chikmagalur after which naxalite violence erupted. I don't find any of this surprising going by the supreme arrogance of many trekkers and sometime visitors who splash money and/or personality disorders for respect; and bangalore by the measure of widening income divide, deserves more violence. The trek itself taught me many lessons:
-Never expect to have fun going with strangers on a trek:
-especially if you turn out being the only one not in a gang
-especially if it features a certain gang from ms ramaiah engineering
-especially if the others are a techie gang - burning panties! - thats what i wanted to get away from in the first place!

The points where the leaches got to me are festering nicely; told maybe its a reaction to the hirudin in their saliva - the suckers.
But Chikmagalur was divine, wish the company was more insipred.

Friday, August 13, 2004

Under seige but a great topping

Today received a letter from a genius in Sudan and it changed the day. I ambushed an auto as soon as I could and made him take me to Sankar's on Museums where I found they had no postcards; so i walked to Fountainhead and found a couple, walked to the library and wrote furiously to my sudanese doppelganger. I had the pleasure of interrupting my work to inform 2 nyphmets of regular aishwarya looks to shut their traps on their worthless mobiles and the inconsequential feathers complied and moved out. Looked around and considered martin amis, by then it was 6 and had to go - walked to shivajinagar and the moment i was a foot from the busstop, the clouds burst. so along with 500 men vyed for space under the eaves of some shop in the Hotel Select complex. I didnt have to endure the regulation fondle which i am sure is because i was wearing soda glasses. one man though quite innocently used my hips to hoist himself under the shelter while all other men looked in perfect delight. when i asked him what the hell he thought he was doing he genuinely apologised and it wasnt too bad. The point is i was under the weather by the time i arrived chez moi. But by 9, when i got around to checking my mail - what a great end to the day!
(To be contd.)