It's getting Christmas-y!

I can't believe I did one of those corny jitterbugs to this jingle( and many more). It was reminiscent of the old times, times together and times we shared. I had pretty much stopped living the Christmas spirit during the past years at B-School.Loved the concert. And to HR, wonderful party by a brilliant host.You rock, lady!Looking forward to the one on Christmas eve. Martin Saxton!

Though there should be a dedicated post on Christmas some time soon, this one is for the group and their hollies and the ivies ;-) .

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
had a very shiny nose.
And if you ever saw him,
you would even say it glows.

All of the other reindeer
used to laugh and call him names.
They never let poor Rudolph
join in any reindeer games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say:
"Rudolph with your nose so bright,
won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Then all the reindeer loved him
as they shouted out with glee,
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,
you'll go down in history!

Let the West Side Story descend on to West Asia in it's true colors and spirit!

Snow-Covered Dreams

It's December. But is it my December? Is it indeed my time of the year? Is it all so clear?
Because I don't see a snow covered home.
But I do stop to feel the chilly winds blow.
And I do see myself alone.
Because I don't feel something was missed.
And I still don't know where the void comes from.
Because I see my snow-covered dreams.
Freeze up, yet yearning for life.
But I would give it all away just to have somewhere to go to.
Yet, not let someone come home to.
Do I see a hand? A cold December hand? Or is it the world pretending?
Or may be I am just being Holden. His constant wrath against the middle-class version of "love", twisted definitions of success & feeling of a misfit.For me though,abundance fuels cynicism, unlike inadequacy.
It's indeed the Anti-Hero in me. And how I love him, always!!

P.S: Some parts are from a fitting song, but a not-so-fave-band of mine. Tribute to Holden Caulfield is a regular on any of my blog in some form or the other. He is my magician. My Harry Potter.

Concert

This is regarding the "Ahmadi Music Group" Christmas Concert that is to be held on 5th December, British School Of Kuwait.

For tickets and further details, all you readers from Kuwait, can mail me @ mookharjee@gmail.com.

Alternatively you visit www.ahmadimusicgroup.com and contact the concerned authorities.
Hope you have a date with us on 5th December.

Cheers!

C-R-A-P

The C(omplete)-R(elentless)-A(sinine)-P(ricks) manifest in many forms. The forms might be living creatures.The forms might be people you might be associated with. Primarily the animate objects, if I could objectify them . If I could, I actually would, ofcourse of the lifeless types.
The one with questionable allegiance.With barefaced sheepish smiles. With besmirched shrewdness. The one who belong to the ill-spirited cabal, celebrated atop devil hills in North Carolina.The one with the condescending veteran tones of their oh-so-holy bitchiness. The ones who highly assume the imbecility of the other party and who themselves underestimate the predictablity of stupidity. The ones that try real hard to deprive you of propellers in their own ways depicting all the above characters.
So the Animate Object reminds me of the basic assumption that people are b@stard coated b@stards with a b@stard filling. And the taste is well, y-u-c-k-y-e-w-w.
Now this category belongs to the people who have been assumed as b@stards from the day you catch up with them, you see them grow and then you realize that the b@stard in them has acquired new dimensions over time and space and well, change of coordinates.
Change is an insidious creature. What if the creature that is changing is insidious in itself. B@stard filling coated with b@stards, eh?
So what could be the trait that separates these employees of B@stards & B@s-Turds Inc. from B@-Studs LLC.?
There could be many, for me though the all time favorite is being selfish. Yes, that is the simplest way I could put it. So I am not saying that I am an academic from the school of altruism with golden credits in Samaritan courses. But I certainly did not excel in the egoistical subjects that are offered in the B(itch)-School!
The issue lies in the fact that I had been forewarned of the consequences of walking alongside with pricks and landing into a pretty bad rut. And having been in a land devoid of humidity, dust and duds like these, it is quite difficult to change.
So what is the magical solution. Subject them to indifference. Care lesser than you want to. Find your own way out being the mean little b@stard you never have been.
May be a combination of all these. Amen!

W ; T!!

One of the things I love about Jason Steele is his idea of humor and the sense/sans of it. And it's not even one of those cheesy lines that sound so ph-oo-king dumb. It's a very well demonstrated construction of intelligent ideas and concoction of wacky characters in it.A bunch of unicorns, a leopluredon which actually is a Liopleurodon( an aquatic dinosaur), a fugu fish, the Banana King, the candy mountains,
the eventual temple of doom with marxist symbols. I mean that is perhaps one of the most random selection of unworldly objects from the galaxy and the older versions of it.And having selected that lot,it is easy to identify the lyrics for a song that competes with the story line for being disgustingly funny:

Charlie, you look quite down.
With your big fat eyes, and your big fat frown.
The world doesn’t have to be so grey!

Charlie, when you’re life’s a mess,
When you’re feeling blue, always in distress,
I know what can wash that sad away.
All you have to do is;

Put a banana in you’re ear!
(A banana in my ear?)
Put a ripe banana right into your favourite ear.
It’s true (says who?) So true.
Once it’s in your gloom will disappear.
The bad in the world is hard to hear,
When in your ear a banana cheers,
So go and put a banana in your ear!

Put a banana in your ear!
(I’d rather keep my ear clear.)
You will never be happy if you live your life in fear.
It’s true (says you.) so true,
When it’s in the skies are bright and clear.
Oh every day of every year,
The sun shines bright on this big blue sphere,
So go and put a banana in your ear!

So go put a banana in your ear!
Cheers

Of rain and imperfect acoustics

There’s this thing about rains and Dave Matthews Band.

Not that they have written tomes on rains. Or may be when Julia Roberts walks out of the washer as everyone’s dream girl in one of those teen videos, you sure want to follow the water drop down her spine.

Yea, DMB and rains lie in the complementary strands of my DNA may be. So when I was watching DM playing “Stone”, a song that with my limited guitar skills always wanted to play but never get closer to the level of perfection displayed by DM, I was as always swayed.

Getting back to the rains, and the nostalgia associated with it, rains in this part of the world are as rare as bringing Warren Buffet & Che Guevara on the same table with one offering Bush candy and the other Castro. So, it was a major revelation having been exposed to a phenomenon in desert land. The best part is that the rains come with the chill. The chill usually leaves you cold. Now with the rains, that make you nostalgic, the combination is fairly “nostalgicold”.

It’s a lot like memories. And this weighs on me, as heavy as stone and as blue as I go. It’s that time of the year again. Though the shelf life of the event here has been short as can much as it can be, it doesn’t seize to amaze me that the life of memories could be so much longer than you can expect. And currently it’s all scrambled.

I sometimes see a choir, with their brazen faces, singing swansong based on asinine pursuits and canards.

I sometimes hear an aria, from the solo singer above, telling me that the rigmarole isn’t worth it.

It has somehow come down to pens, papers and poison.

Any ways,

Go Obama! And I missed on a bumper sticker. But who cares! The “Brother” still rules!

Con-Slut-Ant!!!!

I am into a profession that a lot of you corporate friggin da-ba-doos may hate. The thespian with a million more melodramatic species from the planet of Ummo have been bitched about in one corporate lifetime or the other.

I tell you what you already know. And guess what, I charge every nasal inch, of the same nose through which you pay. So while I dart around the corridors of my hallowed portals, with that smug smile, I know that every mortal that I have served must have imploded his head with the same question “Why on Jupiter did he let his monetary reserves deflate”.

Yea, I am a consultant. I have no religion. I belong to the union of all those deified aliens who sermonize their heart out and make the corporate wheels rolling. Yeah right!! ;).

So when I landed in West Asia( and not the middle east as the yankees refer to it), I let the wheel rolling of many industries and sectors. And well, it was William Henry “Bill” Gates III who though born 55 years ago (He turns 56 this 28^th October: Happy Birthday Billy! J ), made the world a worse place, especially for tyros, just out of college.

And well, it is not about the skills you have. They jargonize it using those lame HR terms: Hard Skills & Soft Skills.

As a greenhorn into this world, it’s not the hard skills, soft skills; it’s the MICRO-Soft skills you require. And it’s got nothing to do with how oober super micro mini you can get in your attempt at softening you soft skills.

It’s how you deal with those sermons presented in MICRO-Soft copy. And you format them until the sermon and its (non) content plead mercy. And you format them until the genes of Linus Torvalds start untwining and Billy adds another million dollar to his inflated reserves and dethrone Warren Buffet, who is wobbling on the hill top already ;) .

And guess what, all these demi-gods, including me, hate it. It feels like your fucking bones have gone bad and sore. The blood is fucking intoxicated.

But well, I sing along with Paul Evans “ Ha Ha Happy Go Lucky Me”.

So it’s all nice and wonderful as it always has been. And I love my job. Absolutely do. And the people. And the place.So before some of you accuse me of being a part of the jittery crib fest, I am not. We all are, in some ways. But well, we all need to chin up, and worship Paul Evans :P .

Cheers to the last few months and the ones that lie ahead!

Adios

Blue Jays

It's about the jays. The blues and the beautiful blue jays.
The Jays are the Js I know. Joni Mitchell. Joan Baez. Janis Joplin. The female Js trio of the 70s. Haven't I adored each one of them. And its something about the blues and the jays. Not that it's sine waving off the human trail and fad. Neither is it the inkling of human life left in itself. It's something about them. It is probably because of Me and Bobby Scottish Mc Gee. Or the veteran sermon having seen love from both sides. It ain't me babe.
Some years ago,when I realized that the gush of hormones has slowed down in the body, this one song stuck in my playlist. This song has suddenly gotten back into the list again. And yesterday, it was my player that hung up on these last lines, as if it was some cosmos conspiracy to crop the lines out.

Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid.

Here is to the three ladies I absolutely love and adore.

Bongindo-Voyage

So it was supposed to cleanse me. Cathartic Trips they call it yea?

It was a trip that began with me walking into a year shorter than a quarter. The abscission from my previous year was something that I didn’t want. Though towards the end, it was bitter and quite acerbic, I still have loved every bit of it. The largess would be an international job and a lady from the darker side.

Though the job remains very international the lady remains on the darker side of the world, irrespective of time zones and distance that don’t quite separate the two. The usual tyranny of the “Pain Clan” post the lost battles of life and love keep haunting the mortals across the “Foe-cean”.

The demotic tendencies, the wannabes achieving the demi-god status, the damsels trying to look for gold on the outset, the zephyr that blows the life out of walking zombies, the institutionalization of no-names, the sleep lost over naming it and walking beyond the lines that make you trip bad and hard. The willingness to lose it in the middle of those dark nights and the futility of it all, between the lines of fear and blame on lonely days. The (un)foreseeable future, the burdens of the past, the wonder of memories. I have always loved Julie Delphy in her magical attempt at saying memories would have been a wonderful thing if you didn’t have to deal with the past.

This abstract part is for A.

Airbourne. Indian Soil. Cognate Couples. Homogeneous Existence. Instant Gratification. Disparate Visuals. Wonder World. Bodies in Wonderland. Spinning the wheedle. Fight for Might. Shards of snippets. Sheikhs of Arabia. CEO from Amritsar. Maggi. China Gate. Castrol. Nirvana. Calvin Klein. Provogue. Indigo Nation. Cool Cabs. Motorola. N 98. Images. Rains. Mumbai. Phonix Mills still rising. Zodiac. Inspirations. Exclusions. Scrubs. Baadi. Dada n Didi. Wiseling wannabes. Bade Miyan. Theobroma. Hazelnut Choclates. Marine Drive. Birthdays and bumps that follow. Bangali. Durga Pujo. Bhog.Payesh. Chatni. Khichudi. Dhonuchi Naach. Notun Jaama Kapod. Dhaaker Awaaj. Maaer Ranna. Hilish Maach. Sourav Ganguly.

Though parts of the above section is only meant for the bong souls, the rest is very much Indian and possibly Chhattisgarhi too( Sable Badhiya ;) )

Though the words above don’t quite sum up my India trip, still captures quite a bit of it. Though I am not looking forward to a trip in the near future, I don’t repent this one either. A trip that taught me a few lessons, the hard way and pushed me out of an existence that could pass easily off as a good excuse for a wreck.

I thank my $irajs©.

Inshallah, I would have another one of these. Till then, Cheers.

:)

Dr. Cox: ...And bam! The shine's off the apple. And that's when you find out that that pretty little girl you married isn't a pretty little girl at all. No, she's a man-eater. And I'm not talking about the "whoa-whoa, here she comes" kind of man-eater. I'm talking about the kind that uses your dignity as a dishtowel to wipe up any shreds of manhood that might be stuck inside the sink. Of course, I may have tormented her from time to time; but, honest to God, that's what I thought marriage was all about. So much so that, by the end of that relationship, I honestly don't know who I hated more -- her or me? I used to sit around and wonder...why our friends weren't trying to destroy each other, like we were. And here, it turns out, the answer's pretty simple: They weren't unhappy. We were.

Under the dog star sail
Over the reefs of moonshine
Under the skies of fall
North, north west, the Stones of Faroe

Under the Arctic fire
Over the seas of silence
Hauling on frozen ropes
For all my days remaining
But would north be true?

All colours bleed to red
Asleep on the ocean's bed
Drifting on empty seas
For all my days remaining

But would north be true?
Why should I?
Why should I cry for you?
Dark angels follow me
Over a godless sea
Mountains of endless falling,
For all my days remaining,

What would be true?

Sometimes I see your face,
The stars seem to lose their place
Why must I think of you?
Why must I?
Why should I?
Why should I cry for you?
Why would you want me to?
And what would it mean to say,
That, "I loved you in my fashion"?

What would be true?
Why should I?
Why should I cry for you?

Courtesy: Sting

Ode to the Flogged Blog

It’s been sometime that my blog has not been fed. It’s complaining. It’s better than being mal fed. The fact is sometimes the blog is better unfed. I must tell you there is a sense of Déjà Vu in things these days. I guess the turmoil in the lives and times of two great men bring in that sense. The fact is, that though this is a familiar territory for some people, it just struck me last night of a similar experience.Yes, taking the relationships and its dynamics away from the mortals, which can become ever so complicated, the relationship with my ex-blog and me also started turning sour at the fag end of the abrupt end it had, which pretty much coincided with the termination of all things human with an I-Banker cum Ma(e)ch Engineer. The relationship was marred by the consistent randomness inside my head. The randomness that found no vent whatsoever. The blog rejected the randomness. Every time a post was forcefully injected into the blog, it fired up. Reacted. Puked. Suffered from severe content-poisoning. Then I thought it had to be taken to a consultant, a general (B)logician. Though I have worshiped the Greek Logicians Euclid, Aristotle, Plato to the most contemporary Bertrand Russell, I failed to get the logic here. Because logicians could be consulted with a mind that accepts logic. The cortex that refutes logic needs to be taken to a Blogician, that’s BEYOND-logician. Sounds like a magician, doesn’t it?I so wish it actually was a magician. Nothing worked. Somehow the blog started showing feminine traits. Had mood swings. The mood swings majorly resulted in the blog being so erratic, that it stopped posting on its own. The battle shifted to my head. The war sounds were heard, felt and internalized at the heart.
There was a huge amount of misunderstanding as well between me and my blog. And the fact that the blog speaks it’s own language to the world, I guess the world conceived me very differently. The world though is pretty much human, in thoughts and in action. It is just one human of the fairer species. So the blog and its mankind connection somehow started to snap. The signs were there. The blog would whisper in my dreams. I am going away from you. I being the random one couldn’t care less.It got worse with time. Came my final years. Mistrust. Lonely Roads. Mean Machines.I had to make the blog burn out than fade away.I don’t like the act of fading away. Though it gives the blog time to cope with the parted ways and a life afresh, it becomes increasingly difficult for the heart. Having internalized the pains of the war, it gives up.Having seen me through many times, god or bad, the blog deserved a proper farewell.But I didn’t give it. Poor thing died a sad death. I repent it though.
I miss my blog. The old glories. The glamor. The shine and sizzle.I hope the same doesn’t happen to you. Though there is a striking similarity between what happened in the early days of 2006, I am fairly confident that there is more effort this time. More pragmatism too. I guess saner individuals as well who can make it work.

Kuwait Diaries

And then we spent a month in this country. The fact is it hasn’t been the easiest of rides that we took. Though I don’t know when do I hit my mid life, with all the pressures and the loneliness of it all, I almost felt I am having a mid life crisis. The crisis manifested in the form of homelessness, work pressure, boredom and all that falls under the gambit of alien land blues. As A put it, amongst all the people who have gone through change, I have gone through it the maximum while I resist the least.

Through the past couple of days, the monster of miscommunication has not only plagued me and my fellow Egyptians here, it has taken a new dimension within my private life. And as a consultant I am to identify gaps in the current processes of communication and fill those up by communication process reengineering.

When you know, that you are made of words, by words and for words, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand the gaps therein. But then, when I look back, the early medium of communication was touch. Like Nicolas Cage dying to touch Meg Ryan in City of Angels. So it was touch. The feel of it all. Palms. Hands. Beyond.

The auditory means were avoided. You acted more on the physical level. Though what brings us together is the facilitative medium of languages. The more verbal ways of communicating. But the touch is missing. I miss it. One touch. Just One. Gap One.

Socrates and his theories have always dished out the best in logic. Speech follows logic. The lack of it is barking. Did we just bark? Sure we did. Gap Two

Expectations. Diktats. Proximity. Gibberish. Gaps Galore. What turns a Mashi-Fantasizing Mumbaikar, Trip-Spoiler Kolkatan, the wind beneath your sails into the creature that misses the carnal touch, who is losing the words that made him and barks?

Alien Land? Invisible Pink Unicorn?

Within you, I lose myself... Without you, I find myself craving to get lost again!

Talk like An Egyptian! ;) Sure they have influenced me.

The Bhery EG EGYPTIANS!

Insipid Emotions. Infertile Thoughts. Late night Moorings. The days are long. The nights are longer.

The nights are harder because we are scoffed being a part of the debauched bachelor species. We are alienated by people because of our ineptitude to have a trans-gulf battle of minds.

It’s been a long time we, that’s me n KP, haven’t been able to manage the lower rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy. The basic needs. Wants. Blah. (Hate me for being a marketing faffer now). The redlings of bluelands from the netherworlds of Mars have killed the desire to communicate amongst the earthlings. I wonder how I get my daily kicks in that. These very wiselings apparently gave our planet the Pharaohs, the Sphinx, the people from the other era apparently control your destiny which though is anyways attached to a million more strings. Yes, they are the Egyptians.

And you better dread every birth and rebirth, and wonder why did the phoenix arose out of the ashes, while you are inching closer to the revolutionary discussion you may have with them.. Because that’s how long it would take for Che to turn around the economy of the entire Copacabana beach and bring democracy to Cuba.

You see them on their asses with a mafia-like air around them which would of course be intoxicated with the Sheesha fume. So you maintain the basic etiquette of some distance between the Indian and Egyptian nose, not because your moral science teacher taught you when you didn’t know you are going to meet the citizens of Pyramidland, but because as u move perilously closer, the Extra mouth freshener that you might be chewing would pop out of your mouth and pop into the alien’s mouth.

Whoever said we could avoid the Indian stink when you get out of the country.

And just when you thought that you knew English better than Queen Victoria’s grandmother, you would say “English Maafi”. When you devour English down to the basic anatomy, and feel bad that this is the language you love so much, you would give it away to the non-English speaking breed. But still, this urge to be a superman and take the world and its grandmother is strong. So, its more like rape. When you can’t resist it you might as well enjoy it. I have started loving the conversations as much as the Egyptian lemon. Pretty much in love with them.

So with Nicolai Machiavellian flair, I have basically been ruling many a conversations these days. Official spokesman I have become.

To A, here’s a post that’s basic. For a change, I didn’t sit with my lexicon ;) .

That’s dictionary BTW. ;)

Pre- Alien Land Woes

So I toiled through my drudgery in a PSU-like unit, which proudly claims itself as NIT. Yes, it’s the institute of national (un)importance.

It apparently belts out engineers from the land that till yesterday was preaching tribalism. Fissures appeared in a monolithic state and the world and its grandmother doffed it’s hat for all the “Sable Badhiyas”.

Till today I am ( or perhaps was ) proud to belong to this unit and beyond.

The trouble started brewing with the plans of joining a risk-consultancy in an alien land. The consultancy’s first faux pas was to take an uncalculated risk of hiring a not so lesser mortal like me. Then there were more risks involved with the denizens of this netherworld to go through the Sarkari hierarchies to be a part of the elite consultants on foreign shores.

The point is that the University of the Same Institute (yeah that’s how MS-Word turns it into, definitely not the name of the university ;)) which very reluctantly gave me the certificates I needed has already achieved eminence for being the crown-prince of all the losers by setting the worst benchmarks of all time. Having achieved that feat conspicuously, the institute is willing to do a comparable job in pushing people for a Japanese forte called hara-kiri.

Through the circuitous ways of their life am still valiantly surviving the ordeal of getting a, what we call in our world, signature. Much to my chagrin, the work never gets completed. For a long while I thought that “Mind Fucked” was in the unlimited vocabulary of my better half. It ceases to amaze me at the Recency-Frequency-Decency-Blahcy of the usage of the same term at my end. The downgrades from the pleasing to plebeian ways of mine have not been very smooth either. Neither do I particularly appreciate it. Never at my clairvoyant best would I have thought of an existence like this.

For all these saturnine days because of the asinine slovenly B@s-Turds at the institute am mind fucked.

For the road to the legendry kingdom of El Dorado which is paved with obnoxious dickheads, am resplendently ready.

For all those who empathize with my feelings, my gratitude and those who don’t, I don’t care.

For all those people who have invited expletives enough from my side to deserve the hottest furnace in hell, I can’t find what the French call Mot Juste.

Speaking of French, I just recalled that I learnt German. Ich spreche Deutsche. The German air force and one of my quizzing roomies’ team was called Luftwaffe. They should perhaps obliterate the above mentioned species.

May the force be with me.

Adios.

Completely Ignorant Comments

First Documentation. Complete Ignorance.

That’s how the world’s supposed to react to me. I like it. Completely oblivious of the crappy existence of a lesser mortal. Boy! Do I love it or what!!

It’s nice to see the wicked ways of our existence. The anonymous ways of trying to touch the world at large is good. The ways that we all love-hate in our own respective ways. The way we react or comment. But the comments don’t always turn into critics. Or do they? Is it preferable if the comment has a critic’s tone in it? Is it also preferable that the comment also ends up with a word of appreciation?

Somehow the whole concept of anonymous writing forms a perfect ouroboros of arguments, ideas and concoction. Being argumentatively democratic that we are, it certainly supports a platform. A platform that is full of little gems as pieces written by authors of all sorts. Gives us a neat insight. With age and time, some pieces also stab the rich variety of pseudo-intellectualism that sometimes exist on various young campuses. We don’t expect a septuagenarian to comment on the youth’s blog. That would mean a critic. He may pass off the piece in his wave of social satire as completely flaccid. We want genuine comments. People can easily comment from the blog’s style of writing to the very content of it. A crisp good comment is always appreciated. An accurate demurral is invited. A remonstration is expected. And of course, at the heights of perversion, a lass’s blog is peppered with goody-good comments from losers of the first order.

Comments Anyone?

Not that I give a damn, but just in case…

New Beginings

A gestalt of pulchritude, passion and pessimism emerged out of the ashes. The name signified Invincibility.

Inspired me to revive and rejuvenate the long dead art of wielding my pen. To make it more contemporary, pressing my keys :). And Sweetness sure knows the right keys. Some wrong ones too ;).

Things have been highly atypical, multifarious and surely divergent from mine. It’s another form of gratitude that I feel. I also feel pleased to have unraveled the thoughts and mind-processes of Invincible Sweetness suffering from tapestry of incoherence.

Though the sphere of communication largely remains in the real dumsweet existence, which feels surreal as it approaches a month, it’s the same invincible pursuits that inspired me to connect to the world at large.

Was I safe, tucked away, consigned to obscurity? Is this another sweet effort to illuminate the chimera? Have I really gotten back to the olden days? Has the shimmer and sparkle gone away? Do I still have refracted thoughts? What’s the story? Morning Glory?

With some positive notes, thoughts and expected positive answers, of the aforementioned line of thoughts and questions, a heartfelt thanks to Sweetness.

Cheers to your Invincibility. May the force be with us.

P.S: - Dumsweet is not inspired from Dimwit.