If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my Full RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

My elders would have me believe that the world is a terrible place. They would have me believe that it is filled with terrible people, all of whom are out to do me harm. Strangely enough, they themselves are magically exempt from that particular character assassination of the world population. They have only my best at heart, or so they claim. They aim to educate me on the morass of evil that is daily existence. That evil sludge doesn’t include them, of course, because they have found some magical elixir to ward off selfishness, jealousy, greed, and every other misuse of the human mind that plagues the rest of us. Yet they refuse to share this magical elixir for my protection, and only stilted, pessimistic wisdom is on offer.

These exemplary individuals would have me believe that they have the answers — the answers to every human question, and the key to all that haunts me. All it would require of me would be to accept their view of the world and existence as they know it — an existence filled with cloak, dagger, and bickering - an existence where everyone is a lousy human being except me, and them, of course, because they must be exemplary to tell me what I am doing wrong on such a conveniently regular basis. They must have all their worldly affairs in perfect clockwork order to advise me on what my actions lack, and they must be perfect employees, perfect citizens, perfect parents, perfect siblings, and perhaps even perfect human beings to have the leisure to find and point out my hourly blunders.

I am thankful for such incessant support towards my moral betterment. For I know that I am flawed, and I know I have no answers, only questions. Questions that I ask myself to find my way and decide on right, wrong, and grey. Being such a habitual questioner, where would I be without their distrust, their insecurities, their fears, and their sludge-tinted glasses? Where would I be without their truth?

Perhaps I would never settle into the delusion of knowing all the answers and all the questions. Perhaps I would never stumble upon the misconception of knowing everyone’s motivations, their scheming plots, their twisted minds, and their sordid plans for my downfall. Perhaps I would take nothing or no one for granted, and perhaps I would even find myself on that illusive dirt track through the lush forest of life called happiness, without ever expecting to reach a hidden palace of the same name.

Perhaps I will abstain from their truths, because as seductive as the answers are, I do not like what they say. I prefer my questions. I prefer my complex chaos of illusive knowledge than their convenient truths — truths that would raise me to their level of superiority, from where I could look down and survey the world without ever needing to study my countenance in the mirror. I prefer the agony of staring at my imperfect features and striving to higher humanity than the path to wisdom and preeminence that they tantalizingly lay before me.

I do not want to be that person.
Do you?

Samir

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I really need to learn to take my own advice about getting things done. Wait! Hold the presses, I see a new post in this: “How to Take Your Own Advice in 13 Easy Steps”. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. I dazzle myself sometimes.

I’ve been back in Dubai from my trip to Bombay for a good many days now. Every since then I have been planning on my grand comeback post. I’m guessing you have gotten to the realisation that I haven’t written it yet. The task of writing that perfect and (in my mind) ever growing post finally seemed so improbable that I decided to just get it over with and write the afterword of sorts that I had planned for that post.

In short, I wanted to inform all you wonderful people out there that I’m back. As some of you have mentioned, I do plan on writing much more about my trip and various things about India. It’s quite an inspirational place really, and it always fills me with a million good ideas. Unfortunately my trips there rarely give me time for relaxed writing stints, and once I’m back here and do have the time, the buzz of India isn’t there to spur me on anymore. Purely an excuse, I know, but true none the less. What life in Dubai is sorely in need of, is life.

But write we must, because what else is there? So, once I mange to kick myself out of my hibernating huddle I plan, nay, I promise to write a whole bunch of articles about the trip and the many days I was silent. My story of a bus ride still remains to be continued and completed. Besides that one, I will also be writing these:

• The Perils and Promise of the Great Indian Binge
• Manifesto of a Social Malcontent
• What You Can Learn By Staking Out a Small Bank
• Memories Incorporated
… and perhaps even others that I haven’t named or planned yet. Hopefully, I can do more than just recap throughout the coming weeks and also slot in some fresh content. Stay tuned!

It’s strange how much fun writing can be (as it is now while I type this), and also how completely (but secretly) scared you can be to start, to commit, to write the first sentence. But write we must, because what else is there?

Samir

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Greetings to my long suffering regular readers and all you fresh faces who might have stumbled upon this blog during this extended silence. I’m on a holiday in Mumbai. Sort of.

A break has been in the offing for months now, but it was postponed many times for various reasons. Now it has finally come to be but for more practical reasons than relaxation. A few years ago my Father had a fall for which he needed some serious hardware surgically added to a bone in his leg. Recently this old implant had started causing some problems and it was time to have it removed. So, this trip came about more as a medical mission than a vacation.

All the metal is now out, and it was the mining of it that kept me busy and this blog silent for the past few weeks. The Father is now doing fine and has given birth to a bouncing baby hardware store. It truly is astonishing how much metal it takes to shore up just a small section of the femur. It makes me marvel at the strength and design of human bones with renewed fervour.

That’s my story for the day. I hope to be less delinquent in my writing and my replying to your comments over the coming days, but then I am supposed to be on a holiday and you know how unpredictable those can be.

Samir

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Yes it is true. The rumours of my disappearance in a freak alien invasion or my retirement into the mountains of Antarctica are greatly exaggerated. I am still alive, but this blog has been a bit dead for a while — more hibernating really. I thought it was only fair to say hello to my growing tribe of RSS and email subscribers (Greetings!), who I like to narcissistically imagine as hanging on to my every digital word.

As Vishal has so colourfully explained, we’ve been a bit busy with a small archaeological dig within the confines of our home. The layers were many, the sediments rich, and the finds extraordinary. To say I’m a bit of a bibliophile would be a gross understatement. While I’m sure there are many with a larger and more extensive stash of books than I have, I assure you the only reason for that is that I hold myself back for practical reasons. All those books need somewhere to be put, and sedimentary layers are not the best storage system. Once that minor organisational glitch is solved, you just try and stop me from accumulating the largest collection of completely insignificant tomes that I absolutely adore.

While all this reorganisation was in progress, my online activities languished greatly. Unfortunately, I can’t say my house and my books are now in order, but domestic archaeology is very hard work. For a lack of energy and time I had to stop, and the last few days have been spent introducing my visiting cousin to the wonders and horrors of the maddest “metropolis” on Earth: Dubai. The good part of that, besides the company, has been some decent photographs which I will make sure I share with all of you here some time soon.

In the meantime, fear not, brave readers. This delinquent shall be back soon to expand your minds, entertain your senses, menace society, and ruin your children in an infinite number of easy steps. Stay tuned, thank you for your patience, and wishing you a wonderful holiday season.

Samir

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Once upon a time, at the height of the Soviet era, Russia and India were good friends. And not just the kind of casual acquaintances who exchange pleasantries across high-level conference tables; We were friendly enough that the two peoples were interested in how the other lived and thought and dreamed. During this era of cultural exchange, it was quite common to come across Russian literature and Russian published technical books on the bookshelves of academia and the street corners of Bombay. Mir Publishers was a well recognised name in Indian geek circles and I still have some of their books on quantum physics and other miscellanea in my collection.

But that is now. At the time I was one of the millions of kids growing up in metropolitan India whose staple for entertainment was Star Trek (The Original Series) on the single terrestrial television channel on Sunday mornings, and comics that included a healthy dose of The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician and the entire cast of swash buckling Indian Gods and Goddesses from the talented people at Amar Chitra Katha. But if you were really lucky, like me, and you had parents and family members who were book nuts, you were also treated to the weird and magical world of illustrated Russian story books.

(Read more…)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

A couple of days ago Vishal woke up in the morning to find that one of our computers wouldn’t start up. In that monochrome text graphics limbo world of PC BIOS screens, it was deciphered that one of our hard drives was missing. Well, not physically missing, because it couldn’t disconnect itself and walk off for a stroll now could it? But it wasn’t listed in the hardware detection screen that shows up when a computer does its initial starting and beeping (POST). That meant trouble!

Drive Errors

My first reaction in situations like this (at least in my head) is to run around screaming while throwing my arms into the air in utter despair and panic. I have a lot of por… err documents and work files stored on all our drives and losing one can be quite disastrous if I haven’t backed-up for a while (which like all human beings is most of the time). So after doing a silent mental panic run, to which I added in the elements of being naked while in a class room taking an important exam just for maximum effect, I settled down and decided to get on with the rest of my morning business and come back to the computer issue in a while.

“When in doubt, use a screwdriver”, is my motto when it comes to anything mechanical or electrical that dares to malfunction on my beat. I opened up the old tower and stared into the abyss. Being a very small box very far from a window, it usually gets very dark in there, but even in that darkness I realised after a bit of wire shifting and cable moving that I was looking into a disaster zone. I quickly forgot about the malfunctioning hard drive because I was mesmerised by the tenuous tangles and enough accumulated dust to fill a small desert. When I tried to blow away a little dust and was greeted by a storm of fine fluff that cover my head, I knew this was going to be a long day.
(Read more…)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

After a lifetime of observation, study, and first-hand sociological research, I have finally distilled the complex art of conversation in urban India down to a simple formula. I am very proud of my achievement.

How to start a conversation with an urban Indian is a matter of paramount importance in the current world economic climate. Along with being one of the quickest growing economies, India has the largest English speaking population this side of Neptune. This makes English conversations, which is what I assume most readers of this blog would be interested in, more of a viable option. It’s not all for the betterment of the world through the rampant spread of the ideal free market economy though. These conversation skills have a more basic and human utility.

In the age old quest for universal brotherhood, cross cultural understanding, and getting your IT staff to fix your computer quickly during an emergency, you really need to figure out how to start a conversation with the Indians that you are bound to find around you. After all, there are a lot of us — every sixth person in the world or something like that.

These new-found conversation techniques should also come in handy should you choose to make small talk with that strange sounding individual you always speak to when you call your ISP help line. He insists his name is Bob, but you’re pretty sure he’s actually Andy, which is what he calls himself when you call your credit card help line. Maybe this mysterious cloak and dagger story of schizophrenia intrigues you and you really would like to get to know this loveable psycho better. If this is your situation, these tips are just the thing you need.

But, in case all this talk of striking up conversations with those crazy Indians is alienating the 1/6th of you who are my cohorts in the great Indian experiment, fear not. I just realised that the people most in need of instructions for talking to Indians are other Indians. In case you haven’t picked up on these tricks yet over many family get-togethers and festival celebrations, my step-by-step formula will allow you to become an Instant hit at any Indian party.

(Read more…)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!