My Addiction

I was sitting and doing my pre-read for my Consumer Behaviour class, and there was this case about people who are loyal followers of coffee, and I was amazed to think see how coffee can act as a substitute for so many different things to different people; for one person choosing gourmet coffee provided the only variety in life, for another it was the means for social acceptance which she lost because she was a lesbian (I am serious this was present in a B-school case study) and another person received virtually orgasmic pleasure (not mentioned in as many words)by observing the process of espresso coffee being made. And I couldn’t help but think to myself that these guys must be absolute losers, for their lives to revolve around a brand of coffee. And then it just stuck me, that this thought came from a guy who vehemently follows a football club which plays several thousand miles away from my home, whom I have never ever seen play in person, after whom I named my blog, and last night I spoilt my throat shouting at a television, in the hope that my sound waves will cause that tiny ripple (akin to a butterfly’s wings) which will become the cyclone in Rome which causes one of their bitterest rivals to lose a football match (in all fairness it worked as cyclone Barcelona literally blew Manchester United out of the park).  Yes folks, the realisation dawned on me, I too am one of those losers, I too have an insane, unjustified addiction and it’s called Arsenal Football Club.

But I am not the only one, all across the world there are several thousand football fans (and sports fans) who behave like addicts, often driven to anger and violence by their addiction. For instance 200 Barcelona supporters were arrested last night after celebration of their win went violent, this like the delirium of an addiction which causes you to lose control. On the other end of the spectrum, you had the case in Africa, where a bus of Manchester United supporters ran over and killed 4 Barca fans, deliberately. This is a case where the addiction takes you to new levels of despair. Following a football team (or any sports team for that matter) is not only a passion, but can be an addiction. And this post is about that addiction, to an extent and perhaps few other things I can’t classify.

Let me start, the way they do in Alcoholics Anonymous and those other addiction centres, by stating the fact that I am an addict. I am a crazy fan of Arsenal. I have stayed up till 12 30 Am watching Arsenal beat Tottenham Hotspur to win the EPL championship, the day before my 12^th Std board exam. I travelled for 10 hours last month from Coorg, only to be able to watch Arsenal vs Liverpool, I have title my blog in its honour. And I abuse random people I don’t even know, with most profoundly disturbing insults, simply because they are not supporting Arsenal. I guess that should qualify for a mild addiction at least. But there are a lot of people who have such an addiction, at some level or another. So I got to thinking why people support certain football clubs, and I realized that what football club people support seems to reflect a lot on their psychology (just like the coffee study and the brand that the people followed revealed a lot about their life). For instance in my brief experience, I have observed, Arsenal fans, seem to be the most talkative vociferous type, who often like to engage in debates (intellectual or otherwise), they tend to talk a lot and will take you up on an argument on any topic (often also characterized by a strong sense of cynicism and sarcasm). Manchester United fans usually are quieter, and have a sort of silent arrogance (only in matters of football, no offence meant to any Man U fans, what the heck I am an Arsenal fan, all the offence meant), who require serious goading to get into a debate. Delving a bit deeper, why are Arsenal fans like that, or rather why do people with the above mentioned personality support Arsenal? Probably because Arsenal as a team lends itself to a lot of debate and usually such people like to be on the side of the debate which requires a bit more argument. For instance one of the arguments I frequently get into, is why Arsenal are a better football team, and represent the game better than Man Utd, despite the fact that Man Utd are not a bad team (footbalisticly speaking, otherwise they are the pure embodiment of evil) and are far more successful. Also people like us have a very high opinion of ourselves and perceive ourselves to be the ‘intellectual ones’ who are true admirers of beauty and aesthetics, and follow the truly pure brand of football. Man Utd fans on the other hand support the team which exemplifies the notions of ruthlessness and the killer edge, which characterize modern sport and modern society in general. These fans often aspire to have these values, think they have them or simply like to revel in the glory of others who do. Lastly, like any addiction, there is a certain takeaway. Fans who support successful teams, usually do it for the fact that their team’s success gives them solace when things don’t go right for them personally, fans who support their local community’s team do so because it transfers a portion of the feeling of success from their team on to them by virtue of the community connect (unfortunately it is also true for failure, which is why generally fans under this category are the one who react in the most extreme manner) and then there is me. This is where the post gets a little personal.

Why do I support Arsenal? Why do I continue to spend energy in this pointless pursuit (incidentally my one outstanding desire in life is to watch Arsenal play live)? Why have I named my blog after Arsenal, because, Arsenal in a manner of speaking represents the motivation of my blog. I usually tend to write my blog at the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum, either when I am delirious or severely pissed. And Arsenal represents that flip flop between the two extremes. And that is the ultimate answer to the addiction question. Most addictions, like sports teams, coffee brands and even religion, are the desire for the emotional flip flops which sometimes normal life can’t provide. Just to expand a little, a professor of once explained to me how cigarette addiction works. When you smoke cigarettes it releases a hormone which produces chemicals in your brain which give you a ‘high’, and over a course of time that level of chemicals ultimately becomes the normal amount required to maintain mental stability, hence it forms an addiction. Similarly people follow sports teams initially when they need a pick me up or some excitement, and soon it becomes a common place part of their emotional needs. Sports teams not only give us an outlet to express our emotions but often generate them. That’s why Arsenal games (and other football related activity) in addition to other events of my life act as a spur to many of my blogs.

Finally, why this post? A dear friend of mine once said she couldn’t understand why I was crazy about a stupid football team, and wrote angry rants and ridiculous appeals to God because of them. So I started thinking myself and it leads me to some of these conclusions. And at last, you might wonder whether this is an agony blog or an ecstasy blog. Well, Barcelona just hammered the crap out of Manchester United last night, and I spent tonight at a party dancing with some lovely ladies. So what do you think?

Ciao

Note: I am not a trained psychologist or an expert on any human behaviour (except mine), so a lot of these ideas could be just hot air, and the observations are based on my limited observation set. So if I have offended anybody with these generalizations, my sincerest apologies (unless you are a Man Utd Fan). It was probably the fact that I am beginning a course on consumer behaviour tomorrow and this is my mind’s way of doing warm up

Forgotten Hero

There were quite a few things left undecided as the IPL came to a close. For instance, was the strategic time-out a disaster or a catastrophe, is Robin Uthappa a talentless buffoon or just plain retarded, is the KKR team universally popular or universally hated, and finally the toughest one of them all, who is the bigger moron, Rameez Raja, Pommie Mbangwa or that idiot in obnoxiously garish suits who was in the studio for the first half of the tournament? But one thing was certain - the IPL 2 took cricket commentary to never before seen depths of intolerability. In fact the commentary during IPL 2 was one of the reasons why some smart gentleman once remarked, “the mute button is one of the greatest inventions of mankind”. But there a few precious moments, during the nauseating dribble that was IPL 2 commentary, when cricket was cricket again, when even people like Yusuf Pathan were made to look like cricketers, rather than the cricketing equivalent of a construction worker whose only task is to smash a wall down with a sledgehammer, moments when Harsha Bhogle finally returned to cricket commentary after a terribly long hiatus.

When I look back at my life, I can lay the responsibility (or blame as some might call it) for my obsessive pursuit of sports (despite my complete ineptitude at playing any of them) squarely on the shoulders of two people - Harsha Bhogle and John Dykes. While one of them continues to be the face of football for Asian football fans, the other, who was once probably the second most recognizable name in Indian cricket, has slowly drifted in anonymity and has now been relegated to brief appearances on IPL broadcasts. In fact ever since the emergence of a plethora of sports channels in India all of whom are looking to make instant money with cricket, the cricket coverage has become splintered, and with each channel following the Set Max approach, of dumbing down as the only approach to make cricket more accessible, a true cricket enthusiast like, Harsha Bhogle, now seems to be superfluous to requirements. But enough of my rant on the state of cricket coverage in India, that’s a blog for a different day. Today’s blog is about a man who for over a decade made cricket come alive.

No other person I have seen has the same enthusiasm and passion for the game that Harsha demonstrated. And he spoke with a kind of sincerity that made you believe in him and the game, all this combined with an almost instinctive appreciation of the fine points of the game, made him one of the prime reasons why a generation of Indians were addicted to the game. In fact one of the reasons why we complain so much about the idiots we see in the commentary box today, is the fact that we have been spoilt by years of Bhogle’s presence, which more often than not compensated for the ignoramus sitting next to him. And watching the sport of cricket through the eyes of a person like Harsha, you cannot but gain a greater appreciation for the beauty of the sport. A marketing person from Set Max once told us that they bought in the likes of Mandira Bedi to describe the game because they wanted to simplify commentary. But the whole beauty of the sport is that sometimes someone needs to point out the artistry and magic of the game for it to really sink in. Sachin Tendulkar’s straight drive has become a part of cricketing folklore not just because of the beauty of the shot, but partly because of the way Harsha Bhogle described it. My fondest memories of cricket include the magnificent innings played by Sachin Tendulkar under severe stress at Chepauk in Chennai, in Pakistan’s return to India test in 1998, a match which India ultimately lost. And I can remember, almost as if it was yesterday the battle between Sachin and the Pakistani spinners on a minefield of a pitch. And every time the memory replays in my head, it always plays to the same familiar voice. Historical events owe their magnificence as much to the commentators as they do to the event itself. And in Harsha Bhogle, we have been privileged to have the finest commentator possible. I genuinely feel sad for the little kids of today, who will have to grow up to the sights and sounds of the IPL, which include the likes of Rameez Raja and Yusuf Pathan, particularly because we were privileged to grow up to those Sachin specials in the sandstorms of Sharjah and Harsha Bhogle’s description of them. Can you ever imagine the words ‘There goes Pathan and he hoiks its over mid-wicket for a DLF maximum’ becoming cricketing legend? And it wasn’t just during those great times that you remember that magical voice, even when Indian cricket went through the doldrums, in Harsha Bhogle you always had a calming influence, in the form of a voice which with unabated enthusiasm was always trying to highlight the beauty of the game. It’s funny how as cricket evolves, it has actually become a simpler sport, as a friend of mine pointed out to me the other day, T-20 has taken the complexity out of the sport and along with it the aesthetics also, when musclemen and innocuous off-spinners become match winners, you know that the space for sheer beauty in this game is increasingly becoming smaller. And it is in these times that I miss commentators like Harsha Bhogle even more. And as I write this, the future isn’t much brighter; the latest batch of cricket presenters includes former soap stars and reality contest winners, whose only claim to fame is their marketable personalities. Just as the evolution of cricket will deprive the future generations of classical cricketers, so too will they prevent the rise of enthusiastic young men, whose love for the game can infect you through a television screen. This post is a much a farewell to the future Harsha Bhogle’s and Gautam Bhimani’s as it is a tribute to them.

But let’s not lament the future just yet; with the Cricket World Cup in 2011 in India, not being telecast on SET, there might be hope yet. In the meanwhile a toast to the man who turned cricket commentary into an art form, the ultimate romantic of the game, who made me fall in love with the sport as well – a toast to Harsha Bhogle. And to the man, who in a speech in my college, said that he is going through the toughest phase of his professional career today, I wish him the best of luck.

War of the Rats - A Really Short Story

Disclaimer: The events in this post are all based on true incidents but might be exaggerated because the author is prone to sudden and uncontrollable bouts of melodrama.

Once upon a time there were 3 boys, Harry, Troubador and Satan, this is a story of what happened when they were sent away from Bangalore to Coorg on a mission to save the universe.

Cough Cough!!!

That was the universe politely telling me to leave it out of the story.

This is the chronicles of the experience of Harry, Troubador and Satan (names changed to protect their identity and because these names are much more cooler) in Coorg, where they were sent to fine tune their (mis)management skills by Doc (an all powerful entity suffering from occasional bouts of seniltiy), using an NGO as a Guinea Pig, after all only if you learn to screw up at the grass root level will you be able to commit the large scale blunders.

The three amigos arrived in Gonikoppal, Coorg, the lovely little two-faced hamlet, a bustling centre of activity which was mysteriously transformed into a dark deserted alley after 8 P.M in the night. So the three amigos were forced to stay at home and then one night as they lay nestled in their beds (with mosquitoes eating away their heads) and they suddenly heard a creature stirring all through the house (and it wasn't a mouse), it was a rat (don't ask me what the difference is).

Now before I describe the amigos tryst with the rat, a little background. This was the first time the Amigos were staying at a rural place (well at least semi-rural) for any length of time. It didn’t particularly bother the Amigos, but their mothers (God bless mothers for they never ending desire to feed their kids) thought that food did not exist on the planet where the Amigos were going, hence they sent along a lifetime supply (at least it was more than enough for 6 weeks) of junk food. Now generally food left uncared for in hostels attracts 'friend' you have never before seen in your life, so being away from the hostel, the Amigos thought their food was safe, but little did they know that another little furry  friend had his eye on the food.

So we come to the fateful night when the battle began.

Harry and Troubador lay comfortably snuggled in their beds, using their free time to catch up on crappy movies which they might otherwise not have seen , when they heard an almighty scream, which shattered the peaceful silence of the little 2 room cottage. It was Kisna, the annoying pink haired, silver shirted, caretaker of the motel, who screamed like a girl (and according to Troubador scratched like one too) asking them to turn off the water in the bathroom, because apparently there was a leak somewhere, so Satan, being the least laziest of the three (possibly due to his experiences working in the anti-unemployment committee of a Bee School) went to check on the water, and on his way there he came face to face with that ghastly countenance which would soon become his nemesis. It stood there and just stared at him and the three-quarters of a second that he stared at it almost seemed like eternity, and in that eternity he could see the evil in its eye which made him cringe with fear (either that or he just stepped in his nemesis' excreta). Whatever it was, it was enough to send him to an uncontrollable panic (which could have also been due to the realization that there was no water in the bathroom and he had just had a very heavy dinner). Satan immediately claimed that we were under attack by the forces of evil and that they needed to protect their supplies - before mentioned food. So they decide to erect a tower and by that I mean, they dragged a table from the office and put it in Satan's bedroom and placed the food securely on the tower, in the belief that the enemy couldn't climb a table (that also proved to be a misguided belief which stemmed from the panic and bloated stomachs). So they went to bed secure that their food was safe, but suddenly, in the middle of the night Satan was awoken by a frightful noise, which actually turned out to be Harry's snoring, but as he was about to go to sleep, he saw those evil eyes again, staring at him, to his shock, from the top of the supposedly impregnable tower. As he tried to ward of the evil by shining a powerful light in its direction, the enemy reacted by launching its own counter offensive and leaped at Satan, nearly taking his head off in the process, a attack which Satan barely managed to survive without getting his hands dirty, literally.

So the next day the Three Amigos, got up and assessed the damage, it seems that their food supplies were compromised, but thankfully they still had enough to survive the summer (and possibly autumn, spring and armageddon). So they looked for alternative solutions to protect their precious cargo, and decided that they should just lock it in a cupboard with a door like other normal human beings, a thought which was highly damaging to their Em-Bee-Aa egos which after one year of mismanagement training was used to looking at problems and spending time to come up with the most complicated solution conceivable, by applying atleast a few dozen frameworks which all spoke about the same thing, but they nevertheless pursued the simple solution because the rule of mismanagement says that complex thinking is not required when you are neither getting money or marks for it. So the food was safe and the problem was solved. Or so you would think!

For Satan it had become a personal battle, it usually does after you step in rat crap. So Satan lay awake in the night devising evil schemes to end this war once and for all. And as he tossed and turned, wondering when he would get his shot at vengeance, the opportunity literally dropped itself in his lap; actually it was paint from the ceiling as the rat made its way towards their stronghold, making yet another unsuccessful attempt at reducing their food supplies. But this time Satan was ready, he slowly slid out of his bed, and went and locked the room, no one was going to disturb them, it was between him and the Rat. He blocked all exits from the room and picked up his weapon, an ancient and powerful device, which for decades had dealt with menace like this, the all conquering broom. As he picked up his weapon, he felt like a mighty gladiator (a feeling aided by the fact that the broom looked old enough to belong to ancient Rome) facing off against the vicious lions in the Colosseum. And he moved slowly towards Rat, with determination and murder in his eyes, and he lifted the broom and with all the strength that God had given Satan he struck at the Rat.

Alas, the broom unlike Satan was not up for the fight and collapsed under the pressure, disintegrating into a million pieces. And in an instant, Satan went from being the aggressor to the cornered, and it seemed like it was going to be a fight to the finish. Then in sudden bout of reverence towards each other, the 2 rivals backed off, and decided to end their hostilities for the night. And Satan who was moments away from glory was left picking up the pieces of a broken room (in hindsight Satan it was good thing that he did not emerge victorious that night, after all, it’s better to be cleaning the debris of a broken broom rather than disposing of a dead rat at 3 A.M in the morning).

 

The next day, Satan exhausted physically and mentally after a tumultuous night, decided to take a break and think about the events which just transpired, and took a trip home (it might also have had something to with his desire for a bathroom with running water and the need to escape the menacing eyes of Kisna). In the mean time Harry took up residence in Satan's room, and when confronted with the problem of the constant gnawing attempts made by the Rat on their fortress, decided that the best way was to ignore its presence, by shoving ear phones in his ear, a task made much easier by his chronic laziness.

And so it continued, for a few days, until the Rat committed its fatal mistake, it messed with the Troubador. The Rat decided to venture out of Satan's room in search for unprotected food, and began to venture into Troubador's room. Annoyed by Rat's constant nocturnal movements, Troubador decided to put an end to this nuisance. He decided that if food was what Rat wanted, food is what he will get!

So on a dark night, Rat ventured once more into the cottage he had learnt to call his home, and found waiting for him, a delicious piece of bread, dipped in cranberry sauce, and POISON. And the unsuspecting rodent devoured this offering, not knowing it was his last. And suddenly as he swallowed the last morsel, he realised what had just happened. he realised the great deception which had just been played out, the trap he willingly walked into. And he began to wonder, just what he had done wrong, was it wrong to want a little house of your own and some food and three amigos for company. He had just paid a price for these basic human desires, and then it struck him, he wasn't human, and so he had been struck down for wanting that which his species did not deserve. And his last thoughts as he saw the bright light approaching, was that it wasn't a bad way to go, a delicious cranberry flavoured treat, at least his last thoughts were those of culinary ecstasy.

The next day Satan returned, the relaxing break had given him new perspective on life, and he was fully prepared to share the cottage with the brave warrior rodent. And as he entered the room to the stench of death and a look of satisfaction on his friends faces, he realised what had just happened. And suddenly the brave exterior crumbled and he broke down at the loss of a truly noble spirit, and when his friends heard of the almighty tussle that had taken place between Satan and Rat, they were overcome with sadness and shame at the their actions.

As they lay the poor rodent down to rest, they shed a solitary tear in the memory of the Rodent who had for a brief period filled their mundane existences with adventure. As this chapter in their lives came to an end, Troubador, penned a verse to remember the furry creature who went from foe to friend in a short span of time.

"I see the stars a lot more clearly.

 I have become to you a little more dearer.

 I see rats with harps and wings

 I see a plate of fried cheese rings.

 

 I drop.

 I leave.

 

 I ascend.

 I'm gone."

 

Note: The poem in the end is the creative product of the gentleman referred to in this piece as the Troubador, not yours truly.

‘The War of the Rats’ is name given to the battle between Russia and Germany for Stalingrad during WWII. It is also the title of a novel on the topic which focuses on the personal battle between 2 snipers, which was the inspiration for the  movie ‘Enemy at the Gates’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Rats

Social Contracts

A couple of days back I was watching an episode of one of my fave TV shows, House M.D., and it has a case about a guy who suffers from frontal lobe disinhibition (or something like that), which basically removes the filter between your brain and mouth, and the guy ends up saying whatever comes into his mind. The episode uses this to touch upon the idea that all of share a certain ‘social contract’, whereby we deliberately conceal our thoughts from our social circle, and it works as a sort of mutual arrangement whereby you don’t tell me what I don’t want to here and I reciprocate the feeling. It’s kind of like, me asking my friend his opinion on my blog, and he says, “very nice, typically you”, where he really meant to say, “Get a life you jobless left wing freak who hates all things under the sun”. But it was a very interesting thought, wherein you are conscious of an underlying insincerity (for the lack of a better word) existing in those whom you socialize with, and what is more is that we actively encourage it. So I really began wondering whether all of our relationships, which in turn are the building blocks of society, built upon a mutual contract to deceive.

And as I got to thinking more, the whole idea of a universally accepted social contract changes your definition and understanding people. Do you judge people by how well they maintain the social contracts or, by what they really think and really are?  And if you perceive the social contract as an obligation to another individual (I used to believe honesty and forthrightness were obligations to other individuals) then, is a person who puts on the best social mask actually the best person? For example, you have these people who seem to be universally popular and you think that he/she is an all in all great guy, and suddenly someone props up to you and tells you that he is a jerk who behaves differently behind your back (I am sure a common occurrence in social circles). What would you think of the person? Is he really a jerk because he is two-faced, or is he really a nice guy, because he takes extra care to fulfil his social contract towards you, although he might thoroughly despise you? And this leaves me really confused, if you look up idiotic psychology manuals, you will probably be exposed to jargon like – relationships are built on trust and honesty, and crap like that. And I my sudden opinion, which flows in the face of what I have always thought, was that sometimes, society as a whole has progressed because of this social contract, because a lot of the time what we really need to hear is that which we want to hear.

Imagine this, you have a crush on a girl and ask 2 of your friends what your chances are, one says – “ Sure go ahead, she is perfect and won’t be able to resist you”, and the other says – “yeah right, you as much chance of dating her as the Knight Riders have of winning the IPL”. Who’s the better friend? One who save you from potential embarrassment and a possible slap (physical or psychological) or one who provides you with the confidence which might help you score a date way out of your league? Honestly I have no clue?

But I then tried to think, that by taking this whole ‘social contract’ into consideration, how I would change my expectation of behaviour from different groups of people. This is what I came up with and the results were very confusing indeed

·         Total Stranger I meet for a brief while – Total honesty

·         Acquaintance of Acquaintance – Maintain Social Contract in totality, tread carefully in conversation

·         Acquaintance – Either depending on whether he/she is Mr. Popular or Mr. Sarcasm

·         Friend/Hangout Group – Honesty

·         Good Friend – Follow Social Contract (cares more for what I feel than an average friend)

·         Really Good Friend – Absolute honesty

It’s funny how a simple television episode, which just points a fact of society which has actually existed for ever, can actually cause you to reconsider the whole basis of human relationships. Of course, perceptions may change over a course of time, but human beings, they will forever be the same. For instance this blog writer has a brain to mouth filter, which is perennially turned off, even without frontal lobe disinhibitions. 

(Why the hell are you) Doing that thing you do?

Why do people do crazy things? I don't mean crazy things like jumping of bridges for fun, or auditioning for MTV Roadies or supporting the Kolkata Knight Riders. In fact there are plenty of jobless scientists examining bodily functions which lead us to do those crazy things. Instead I want to know why people do ridiculous things like go to a big building with a funny looking dome and circle it 'N' number of times ('N' being odd or even depending upon your race, creed caste and sub-caste) in a specified direction, or starve themselves on certain specific days, or refuse to do productive work at certain times of the day. Unfortunately the entire amount of research which I was able to do on these topics by asking those who do these crazy things, lead me to only one answer - It is our culture/religion.

So you must have pretty much guessed that I am talking about weird religious customs which people follow for no good reason, at least not one that people have told me. Now most of these customs probably began at a time when somebody had something to gain from them and have since then stuck around because most people have been thoroughly indoctrinated with them and don't bother to or are just too damn lazy to ask why. So in my continuous quest for the answer to everything (and my perennial desire to be as blasphemous as possible) decided to rationalize my own reasons for weird customs. Since the list al of weird irrational customs would probably not even fit on the hard disks of all of Google's computers, I have picked just a few to set the ball rolling (also, beyond a point there is no rational explanation for the craziness, not even made up ones).

1. It’s that time of the Day

I am sure many of you, especially Tam-Brahms (Tamil Brahmins) out there have been told, not to do things at certain periods every day, each lasting for precisely 90 minutes. Now the funny thing is that the exact timing of these 90 minutes varies every single day, it’s almost like Gods wants to keep us on our toes by smiting us at different times of the day, I mean what’s the point of being all powerful if you become predictable. But seriously, what could possibly the reason for having different timings? I looked at each of the timings and came up with a pretty good idea, here's the list:

Mon : 7.30 - 9.00 AM

Tue : 3 - 4.30 PM

Wed : 12 - 1.30 PM

Thur : 1.30 - 3.00 PM

Fri : 10.30 AM - 12 PM

Sat : 9 - 10.30 AM

Sun : 4.30 - 6 PM

Now I am guessing these timings were suggested by some big shot priests who basically found them most convenient, and positioned these timings to best make use of the free time. Look at how Monday has the earliest time slot, after all who wants to get up early in the morning on a monday. Tue, Wed and Thur, right in the middle of the afternoon, so that they can have their lovely afternoon siestas, Friday, a little earlier, so that the work can be finished in the afternoon and they can party on Friday evenings (I think ancient times didn't have much of a night life, so the evenings were the party time) and of course nothing on Saturday morning, cause you need to get over the Friday hangover. And since then we have been following these ridiculous times to determine when we can work, pray, I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who coordinate their bowel movements to these timings.

2. That Crazy Music

Ever heard the music at a Tam-Brahm wedding? Well it’s not possible not to hear it, nowhere will you find more annoying music, particularly this one large instrument, which can not only can knock your head off if you're not careful, but also makes a sound which very closely resembles a man passing wind. And this instrument is played in a very peculiar manner, it starts at a slow pace on the first day of the wedding and slowly builds up pace till right at the time of the wedding, it goes bonkers, virtually taking the roof off. Now this is what I think lead to this ridiculous music becoming a part of Tam-Brahm marriages:

I guess way back some cheapskate must have thought – ‘How do I get these useless free loaders to stop coming to my wedding and eat all the food?’. Simple solution: get the most annoying instrument and start playing it; people will probably leave before lunch. So they start playing, but of course freeloaders being what they are were not to be deterred and stood their ground steadfast against the barrage of awful music. So they play it faster and faster, but people still stay (probably feeling that if they have endured this ridiculous music, they might at least get some food for it), so the speed increases. Until the final wedding moment when the guy puts all his effort into the instrument to take one final shot at driving people out of the hall. Over the course of time, our Tam-Brahm ears evolved to tolerate and in some cases even love this sound, thus cursing us forever

Note: The real fast crescendo at the end is also like a last minute warning sign to the couple, run for your life, get out while you still can. Its kind of like how in Christian weddings they ask - 'If anyone objects to this marriage please raise their hands'.

3. Not So Fast

This one’s probably the trickiest of the lot, what could possess people to starve themselves on a highly arbitrary basis. Honestly I couldn’t think of too many explanations for this one, actually I thought of way too many and rejected them all as being as ridiculous as the practice itself. But nonetheless here are a few plausible ones:

·         Big shot priest decides he needs to lose weight (have you seen the average Pandit, they are fatter than Homer Simpson, no wonder they pray so much, that’s what keeps them from getting heart attacks), but he can’t resist the temptation of all that food, so he sets aside designated days for fasting when everybody suffers with him.

·         Developed as a cost cutting tool during Ancient recession times.

·         Probably started as method of Mother-in-laws to torture their bahus. It’s like ragging, started off once upon a time and people just continue it because they want to reciprocate the torture that they went through.

 

As ridiculous as these explanations sound, if someone could back into time and look into how a lot of our so called ‘culture’ came into place, you will probably find that it had to with somebody setting a trend probably for their selfish reasons or out of sheer stupidity and the rest of the world just followed it. And some people allowed these customs to remain, simply because they had learnt to profit from them, and now through centuries of indoctrination, they are a part of our lives. I once got a forward with a list of ridiculous laws, like ‘Carrying a fish in your pocket in some XYZ state of the USA is a crime’. Show this list to any sane person and they will laugh them off, but tell the same the person that these laws are no different from some of the things they have come to believe as ‘culture’ or ‘religion’, they will probably bite your head off.

Ciao

Pepsi or Coke - Congress or BJP

Once upon a time, I heard someone say - "There are only 2 kinds of people in this world, those who drink Coke or those who drink Pepsi". For years now Pepsi and Coke have built an intense rivalry between each other, and have managed to become the only 2 names in the world of Cola. And they have each other to thank for it. Both Coke and Pepsi, who spend gallons of money on advertising, have tried their darnedest to claim that they are the best, at the same time they also, by competing only with each other, virtually imply that the other is the only viable alternative. Hence you have what we call in the business world an oligopoly or in this case Duopoly - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly.

Why is this relevant to the Congress and BJP?

Well, because, considering that the 2 seem to have been very busy learning marketing this year, this is one trick that they did not learn, and now it has finally come to haunt them. In fact take a look at the majority of the developed nations, you will find that most of their political systems are Oligopolies. And it is this failure of the 2 largest political parties which has left the Indian voters spoilt for choice and our democracy, well that is just plain spoilt.

In the book "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing", Jack Trout and Al Ries, say that, in any industry, over the course of time, there are only 2 dominant players, there is no room for 3rd place.And so too in Indian Politics, there is no 3rd National Party, all the rest apart from the Big 2 managed to carve out a niche' for themselves and stay there, but the fact they have jumped to national prominence and can today aspire to host the next Prime Minister of India, is largely down to the short sightedness and ineptitude of the big 2. The once little known parties have piggy-backed on the larger parties and have grown in prominence and fame, using the resources and the reach of their much larger brethren. At a time when the big boys had a chance to assert their size and ignore the midgets, they chose the easier course, and entered into several unholy alliances all for the purpose of gaining immediate power, not imagining what the alliance could do to their own strength in this country. Back when the BJP gained power by forming the NDA, the Congress had the option to continue on its own, but they chose to take the coalition route, failing to see that the BJP was crumbling under the weight of its own size. 

So what could the National Parties do to form an Oligopoly:

1. Do not form a coalition - The Big 2 are forming a coalition only because they can't get enough seats across the country. If they both don't form a coalition then they might not sit in the government, but then neither will regional parties. And initially there might be a little unrest and chaos, but ultimately through sheer neglect the regional parties will realise that they cannot compete at a national level, and that contesting Lok Sabha elections is an unnecessary strain on their resources (the Big parties could force their hand in this by conducting state elections vehemently, forcing the regional parties to concentrate on the Assembly elections).

2. Fight within Yourselves Only - If the Big 2 fight only amongst themselves, then they have the power to hog all the media attention, and starved of media attention a political party is nothing.

3. Recognize the other as the Only Viable option - The Big 2 have to state unequivocally that the other one is the only option for forming a government. In fact the 2 parties started doing that this year stating that a third front was not possible but again have begun to loosen their stance on that fcount.

These were just a few ideas of how India might get to becoming a 2 party Nation, for purposes of a National election. Of course any of this is very difficult to actually bring about and requires immense amount of political courage, a quantity, which currently is a rare commodity.

The other side of this issue is that a 2 party system good enough. People often say that 2 party systems lead to little or no choice, especially when it is ultimately the party which decides who the leader of the Nation is going to be. However I do believe that there is a need for reducing the sheer number of parties in a coalition, and more importantly bring ideology back into politics. We need parties which are different from each other in terms of belief and approach and not just some motley assortment cobbled together at the Nth hour.

May 16th is probably going to be the biggest day in the history of Indian Democracy (ya I know they say it every time), but this time we are at a crossroad. The coalition system has obviously become very unsustainable and might be reaching the end of its life cycle. If any of the Big 2 can form this government with minimum coalition, then it well might be the beginning of an Indian political oligopoly.

Update: Its the day afte the election and the birth of the Oligopoly has taken place. Congress got 200 seats and will form a government with around 3-4 firm allies, no more. And the fact that they have upped their individual seat count by over 50, means that the number of allies could go down further in the future. In fact but another 3 elections (2025 or so), provided they do reasonably well and the likes of RJD, SP and BSP and the Left continue their downward trend, we could easily see the Congress contesting the election more or less on their own, which apparently is Rahul Gandhi's vision. In the long term this could be the best thing to happen for India, in the short run, honestly speaking, the DMK and Trinamool Congress are not 2 parties I want to be at the centre in the current economic scenario right now. But democracy has never been about perfection anyway, so we live with what we have.

Armageddon Avoided - For Now

Last night we were two minutes away from the end of the beautiful game and just as I thought that for the second year in a row I would have to endure the torture of having to sit around and watch Chelsea and Manchester United run around like headless chickens on a football pitch testing each others stamina and the audience's patience,  Barcelona scored in the 92nd minute against Chelsea to reach the Champions League final. yesterday I was thinking that if Chelsea and Manchester United met for the 2nd time consecutively in the Champions League final, then that was it for football, the game of football would have been shot in the face and left for dead in the streets, to be defecated on by street animals. Sounds a little extreme? Well the fact is simple, between the two of them, Manchester United and Chelsea, represent most of what is wrong with modern football.

Chelsea, well for starters their performance over two legs against Barcelona was shameful, it typical personified the modern day philosophy of 'doing what it needs to win'. Chelsea have long forgotten what football is all about a fact so succinctly reflected over the two games against Barcelona, made even more obvious by the beautiful game of Barca. Chelsea have always succeeded by playing the ugly form of football, something you would expect from teams struggling to avoid relegation in the Premier League, not a championship contender. It's made uglier by the fact that they have some of the most despicable footballers on the planet, John ' I can get away with murder' Terry, Frank 'Kick the ball on the opponents foot to take it to goal' Lampard, and of course Didier 'I can dive better than Michael Phelps or Cristiano Ronaldo' Drogba. Over the course of the last 4 years, Roman Abramovich and his Russian revolution at Chelsea, have been the prime cause for football to become billionaire's playground and it was Chelsea who started the trend of football teams growing mountains of unsustainable debt which might ultimately one day come back to bite them, and possibly the whole of football in the ass. And not to mention that their behaviour last night was deplorable, I mean, Drogba spent so much time on his back, that beyond a point it was difficult to make out whether he was trying to earn a penalty or was issuing some primitive mating call. And after the whistle, the Chelsea players literally assaulted the referee (God Bless the utter ineptitude of that imbecilic Norwegian referee). 

And Manchester United are evil personified, and what is worse is that just because they are successful, they seem to get away with it all. Its true they are successful and play decent football, but their utter lack of sportsmanship makes them the worst ambassadors for sport in the world. And instead of listing all that is wrong with them, I will just say this, they are like the Australian cricket team under Waugh, and for every Indian cricket fan that should be enough.

So ultimately on May 27th, it comes down to the Battle of Good vs Evil, and the fate of football rests in the hand of a little maestro supported by a noble team, which kind of reminded me of the Lord of the Rings, so I got to thinking, if this was a footballing version of LOTR,then who would be the main characters. So here goes 

The Good Guys

Gandolf - Pep Guardiola (Barca manager)

Frodo - Lionel Messi

Samwise Gamgee - Samuel Eto'o (well he's got the name Sam)

Arragaon - Theirry Henry (the King will return)

Legolas - Xavi (he passes with the stunning accuracy of an expert marksman)

Gimli - Yaya Toure (he's big strong and not so bright)

Merry and Pippin - Andres Iniesta (the way he's playing now he's equal to 2 hobbits at least)

Boromir - Dani Alves (well he kind of dies before the real fun begins, just as Alves won't be playing the final)

Elrond - Sylvinho (wise man, has been around for a while, doesn't actually do much in the war)

Arwen - Gerard Pique (well he looks like a Girl a bit and also he's a former Manchester United Player)

Army of Evil

Mordor - Old Trafford (the seat of all evil, with it's evil eye turned towards Rome)

Sauron - Anything Manchester United (the very embodiment of evil)

Saruman - Alex Ferguson (very skilled and powerful, but equally arrogant and all in all annoying pain in the ass)

Army of Orcs - The Rest of the Manchester United team ("Although not dim-witted and even crafty, they ugly, miserable beings, hate everyone including themselves and their masters, whom they serve out of fear. They make no beautiful things, but rather design cunning devices made to hurt and destroy" - Wikipedia)

There you go, the stage is set and hopefully forces of good will triumph.