Thats-so-Raja !

If you are as old as me, you would have stood in line in front of a ‘Printer Room’ with your ID card to collect your print outs from Printer Admins aka people who thought they ruled the world. If you are slightly older, you would have traveled with Lift Operators who had a control over your life for those few minutes. If you are as old as your father (hehehe) you might have thought a career as a Telegraph Operator would get you the fattest dowry and a gorgeous girl. And if you have survived the medieval period, you might have come across wood cutters, armor smiths, hostlers, furriers, shoe polishers … Simply, these jobs are extinct now. And jobs keep becoming extinct as I am typing this now. I am reading about Cloud Computing these days and I am beginning to think that my job - the IT Architect , would become extinct in another 5 years too. For my non IT friends - IT Architects design how a group of machines and software can be put together to run a business. These are nerdy, un-pr...

Once, a wealthy and a powerful family man decided to embrace the Zen way of life. So he renounced everything – except for his loin cloth. But the rats in his hut were prying on the loin cloth (good that those were not squirrels) and hence he brought a cat to take care of the rats. Now, the cat needed milk, so he had to bring a cow. The cow needed to be attended, so he brought in a maiden. Shortly, he fell in love with the maiden and went back to square one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I remembered the ‘simple life’ days when we used to hop rental homes. All that mattered would be 2 sky bags and a taxi. This time home moving was a few bruises, a sore back and shoulders, a loss of 2 kgs of body weight and a week’s time off from work. Mentally, it was like moving Mount Kinabalu. All the time, I had been wondering about how junk got accumulated. And that’s when the story above came to mind. I consulted Sujatha’s thick yellow ...

If I have not informed you earlier, I have moved out of Pasir Ris. The primary motive was to get closer to Trisha’s school. The other objectives include sniffing, if not rejoicing, some finer things in life. You know, like most filial Eastern men, I had dedicated half my life for others. So I shall make my ‘fine list’ now before its time to make the ‘bucket list’ soon. This house was love at first sight and my mind refused to even flirt with the other choices. Its bigger, brighter, windier, has sea views AND fits my thin wallet. After all, finesse is directly proportional to how much one can pay through his nose. So we bought this house and the rest of the story is me fulfilling my artistic quest. I drew inspirations from cubism, Zen interior design and minimalism. Cubism is Picasso’s post modern response to breaking traditional patterns in painting. It is simplification of natural forms into cubes, cylinders, spheres, and cones (And there is a lot more to it. Beer session topic!). I h...

What happens if a frog and a rat are tied to the 2 ends of a rope? One pulls towards the lake and other pulls towards the land. This is Hegelian Dialectics. Everything is made out of opposing forces (the terms are “thesis” and “anti-thesis” ). And eventually, they result in a state of equilibrium, (called “synthesis” ). Now, the road it takes to reach the “synthesis” state varies from simple sighs to heads rolling under the guillotines. Imagine you have a wall to paint. You want it white and your wife insists black. Lets say you give in to her with a sigh (here, your synthesis is ‘its good to be happy than to be right’ ). Now, what if this pattern repeats a 100 times? That’s when you start a revolution. Because you have been oppressed. Hehe, at 2AM, I can’t think of a better analogy. Anyways! The French revolution was started by the oppressed to abolish Feudalism. Similarly, Capitalism created another social divide. Marx believed that the Hegelian synthesis state is where there is no ...

Have you combed an Indian metro recently? What struck you as the blinding flash of the obvious? The shining India? AND also in a few meters, a POOR nation caught in the slip stream of capitalism? An economic divide ? AND hence a cultural divide ? In short, did you notice the Class Conflict ? It’s the same class conflict or “alienation” that Karl Marx saw in the late 1800s. This has been a cause of my reluctance to move back to India. Because common sense and history tells that such class conflicts will result in social unrest and ugly revolutions as small as “mangalore bar attacks” (google it) to something as catastrophic as the French Revolution. What is the cause for this great Indian divide? The answer is “Knowledge Economy” and the “Knowledge Workers”. Let me dummify these terms first. Think of a line (like the poverty line) called the machine line . You are above the machine line if machines are your slaves. For example, a biotechnologist or a banker who uses a computer to get hi...

My last blog question was, “What makes people popular (in facebook)”. I was busy as a dung beetle to post anything about it. Blaming again my father, mother, mother-in-law and my wife for not being rich people, here I am squeezing some time on it. Remember the “7 deadly sins”? If not, let me be the badass to whisk them up - Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Envy and Pride . Now, I think the 7 deadly sins is a fantastic framework that explains one’s popularity. Believe me, thousands of years of research has gone into this. Let’s take ‘ lust ’ for example. Everybody loves seeing naked bottoms? We invented fire to see them even in the darkness. We invented printing press to enjoy seeing their images too. Motion pictures to see them in action. And, not to forget - The Internet. What is the internet full of? Okay, that’s stretching it too far. But lust plays an important role in making one popular. I am seeing my circle of friends in facebook. The sexier ones are almost always popular (...

I have reached a slump in blogging. Oh, the well has not dried up yet. But, in the first place, why does one blog anyway? Expression of creativity? Making people happy? Contributing to the collective intelligence? Rubbish! Freud and Maslow would say it’s the pure primitive urge for the feeling of importance. Yes, I want to be noticed. I want people to know the depth in me. I want followers. I want to change things. I want to rule the world. Ok, that’s asking loads too much. But you are getting the drift here, yea? But my blog remains crumby and unnoticed. Like a pigeon poop in a crack of a cheap hotel in Mozambique. My muddy soup of cartoons, parody, post-modern elements… All have failed to tickle a little too many funny bones. My cacophony of science, philosophy, economy… All have fizzled reaching a little too many ears. I want to try writing on Karl Marx, world music, Kim ki-duk, non linear and transgressive narration styles… am I encouraged now? Hell, No. Cutting all the hyper-venti...