All hail Google Almighty!!!

I’ve been a believer, an atheist and an agnostic at different points of time. Quite a statement to make, I know. Well, people say all sorts of crazy things to sound profound. This is my pick for the day. However, I’ve spent considerable amount of time on google reading about spirituality, mysticism and religion to rid myself of guilt, anger and lust (see what I meant about trying to sound profound). The irony of the situation is that half an hour on google and you forget the ‘getting rid of’ part and start appeasing the lust.

Moving on……  my quest for nirvana has taken me to some very weird  places. The most recent and the most amusing of the lot is ‘The Church Of Google’. They are a group of people who acknowledge that Google is the closest thing humans have experienced to God. ‘Googlism’ (sounds so cool.. doesn’t it?) is being touted as a new religious movement and ‘Googlists’ believe that google fits the conventional idea of God better than the traditional Gods of various religions. I don’t know why I find it funny but it seems that they have this concept of google being a ‘She’ God(hmmmm... more power to women I guess). They’ve put forward some 9 proofs to establish their claim and surprisingly all of it makes sense.

Google satisfies most of the conventional qualities attributed to God. Traditional religions say that God,

       is omnipresent (google too is everywhere)

                              is omniscient (google indexes 9.5 billion web pages… hence all-knowing)

                              is immortal (theoretically google too can last forever)

                              is infinite (theoretically the internet and so google can grow forever)

                              answers prayers (type in a search string and google answers your query)

Anything you’ve uploaded can live on forever on google’s cache. So in a way google promises an ‘Afterlife’. To top it all, according to search trends the word “google” is searched more than all the other Gods combined.

All this kinda tweaked my curiosity and I decided that it was time for a rendezvous with this new God. I thought long and hard about what knowledge I would like to receive from God if I ever met him. Once I had made up my mind I opened google.com and started typing my prayer….

No sooner had I typed in the word “how”, google’s  search autocomplete literally read my mind and displayed results for….

“how to kiss a girl”

Wow… omnipresent, omniscient, immortal, infinite and… telepathic too.

All hail Google Almighty!!!

Media Sensationalism

This july was an eventful month, and eventful here doesn’t mean that it was any different… but that the media took the meaning of ‘sensational news’ to a whole new level.  It’s not about the CM being in the news for all the wrong reasons or the petname for a notorious scam being coined out of a promising source of renewable energy(being an electrical engineer I honestly resent the word ‘Solar’ being drawn into the mess). Nor is it about the alternate ‘brand’ of politics and governance which is seeing a lot of hype referred to as ‘NaMo’. Talking about such heavyweights (or more aptly tweeting about them) usually lands oneself on the other end of one or the other political organizations’  ire. Let’s just stick to the amusing ones which cropped up the past month.

Celebrities making a comeback, let’s face it is a potent enough news to interest us. We’ve seen it fairly recently with Madhuri Dixit and Sreedevi. Empathizing with the fraternity of film buffs, I’m willing to go as far as to say that these news are worth our acknowledgement if only that,  which is why it baffles me that leading newspapers of our state found Manju Warrier’s comeback so important as to give it lion’s share of their front page(with photographs as vivid as one could hope for in a daily). They didn’t stop at that. They had to record Amitabh Bachan shower praises on her while caught in a press ambush, and then show it repeatedly to everyone who owned a television. Media sensationalism at its best.

‘Coming back from the dead’ is kind of a thing in popular literature and movies. Hence, who could be better than a yesteryear silverscreen beauty at the center of a plot involving this cliché. Actress Kanaka this july became one of history’s few unfortunate people who had to deal with their obituaries while still very much alive. TV channels reported her death and social networking sites were abuzz with mourners while she was resting in peace(pun intended) at her home in Tamil Nadu.
 

On a more serious note, highlighting non issues as real issues or reporting false news is only the tip of the iceberg. There are bigger problems such as paid news and defamation attacks rampant within the media circles. Take for instance the so called sting operation carried out by Asianet news, the fake call to Minister Anilkumar aimed at implicating him in the Solar scam. Can their actions be justified by the novelty of their intentions? , that being ‘to bring out the truth’. Then how come people the world over condemn similar acts of two Radio Jockeys from London, which led to the suicide of the nurse Jacintha Zaldana?

As the press council chairman Justice Markandey Katju pointed out recently, there are two solutions to the misdeeds and shortcomings of the media. Either self-regulation by the media houses themselves or government imposed restrictions. Being the democracy that we are, we must give them a chance to amend their mistakes and commit once again to the original objectives of the fourth estate before resorting to the latter option.

Conversations with my psychiatrist…

You can only look at a woman for a really short time before it gets counted as a stare. He had read that somewhere. In fact whatever he knew he had read from somewhere.

‘How long have I been looking at her…?’

‘Does she think that I’m staring at her…?’

The voices in his head would not shut up. He could see her lips moving but couldn’t make any sense of it. She was saying something. He closed his eyes and willed his mind to quiet down. …….

‘Are you all right..?’, her voice brought him back from his trance. She was watching him intently.

‘Yes doctor, I’m all right.’ , he answered after a moment of awkward silence. He studied the nameplate on her desk, ‘Dr. Neha Gupta’. She looked too young to be a psychiatrist.

‘You appear tense, do you want to lie down..?’ , she pointed at the couch near to the window. It was the first time in his 21 years of life that a woman had asked him to lie down…. he complied. She pulled a chair and sat down near the foot of the couch. Then the talk began……

‘Pranav , right..?’

‘hmmm..’

She sat there taking notes in her notebook with me lying on the couch staring blankly at her. After taking sometime to organize her thoughts she resumed.

‘So Pranav, what should we talk about..?’ , a friendly smile appeared on her face.

‘I don’t know doctor,  I haven’t really talked to a woma… ahem, psychiatrist before.’

‘It’s okay… So, what seems to be the problem that you wanted to see a psychiatrist..?’

‘uhh… I thought you could tell me that… that’s why I came.’

‘Oh.. then, what’s troubling you..?’

‘Doctor……’

‘Yes, you can tell me… there’s no one else here.’

‘Doctor… I think I’m insane…’ , though used to such patients she was amused at his directness.

‘Is that why you came..? because you think that you are mad.’, she asked… a grin on her face. It was obvious she was trying to get him to relax and it seemed to work too.

‘….. yeah, I thought what’s the harm in getting yourself checked.’ , she let out a chuckle and he felt himself calm down.

‘don’t worry… a lot of people who come to me think they are.’, she told him as a matter of fact.

‘ well… do they feel cured when they leave…?’

‘hmm… I can’t tell you that… but I can tell you no one has ever discontinued their sessions with me, they always come back.’

He eyed the contours of her body and said with a smirk, ‘ I can see why…. I mean, I’m sure they do.’

Before she could retort, her phone rang and she answered it. It seemed like someone of importance. He scanned the room for photos or any other evidence for her being married or having a boyfriend. It seemed unlikely that a beautiful woman like her would be single. She hanged up and started apologizing…

‘Sorry about that…’ , a moment’s hesitation and then she continued.

‘Is it okay if we reschedule this session for another day…? ,family emergency..’

He was feeling really comfortable on the couch, it took him some time to reply.

‘I guess so.’

‘I’m really sorry..’, she said, stood up and walked to her desk to check her list of sessions for the week.

‘Friday, 5 pm..?’

He sat up on the couch, ‘Fine by me.’

The session was over and he stood up to leave. She was rearranging her desk and gathering some things into her handbag. Before seeing himself out he glanced back at her one last time reveling in the grace with which she tucked the locks of hair that fell onto her face behind her ear, the earring shining in the rays of light that reflected off it. The door closed behind him and he whispered to himself….

‘3 more days till Friday..’

2 States, the story of my first love…

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Chetan Bhagat or his popular novel with the same name. It’s just that the circumstances of the story warrants the borrowing of the title.

I was 10 years old and I was in Love. Yes, that’s L.O.V.E , Pyaar, Ishq , Mohabbat , Aashiqui or whatever fancy name you call it.

How did I know…?

Well…. I knew because whenever she came in view, my eyes would blur out the background….. my ears kinda switched off and the only audible sound would be my heartbeats(that too in 5.1 digital dolby)….. and the entire ‘Shahrukh falls for a girl’ sequence follows, you know the violins and the whole wind-on-her-hair-in-slow-motion effect.

I had gone to my Grandpa’s house in Karnataka for summer vacation and she was our neighbor,  3 years older than me and a Kannadiga. She didn’t know Malayalam and I didn’t know Kannada. English was the only common ground and I didn’t know much of it either. So I took Kannada lessons from my Grams and when they invited us over for coffee a few days later, I talked to her. It was awkward at the beginning with the language barrier and her parents looking. Then she showed me her room and once we were in it  her dolls, her fairy tale books and all the other ‘cindrella stuff’. It was like entering Barbieland.

With time we learned to communicate without speaking much and soon enough we were best of friends. Every second that I was with her, I was very much aware that I was a boy and she was a girl… the prettiest I had ever seen. Thin, brown eyes, dark hair that reached down to her shoulders curly dangling like small springs at the tip. She used to wear all those girlish pink/red frocks and when she smiled, she owned me. She watched me from the balcony when I played cricket with the other boys and her face would light up every time I hit a boundary. Her lovely lips would curve into a smile and I would hit the next ball harder and higher to see that smile again.

One day she asked me to teach her how to bat. My happiness knew no bounds when I stood close behind her, reaching around her and gripping the bat over her palms showing her how to swing the bat. I made up silly names for the shots I was teaching her. I held onto her hips to show her the correct stance and I kept bowling for her until she was confident of what she had learned. From that day onwards I had to disappoint the boys and play with her for she had to practice her cover drives and square cuts. I did everything that would make her smile.

We spent every waking moment of the summer vacation together but when it was over, it was time for me to come back to Kerala. From the bus, I kept looking back at her waving to me until I could no longer see her. That was the moment it happened. Something snapped inside me and I felt a void in my heart.

.....................................................................................................................................

It was only four years later that I could go back to claim my lost love. Walking up the road first thing I did was to look up at her balcony. What I saw stopped me in my tracks… my legs refused to move, my arms went frigid and my breath laboured.

She wasn’t pretty anymore…….. she was more than that, she was sexy. Girlish frocks had given way to womanish Salwar Kameez. Her hair was longer and straight. She was still thin but in a curvaceous sort of way. After the Shahrukh sequence all over again, I stood there waiting for her to look at me… the recognition in her eyes and for that smile on her face. But none of it came. She was looking at something ahead of me. “Look at me”, I was whispering to myself. “What is she looking at..?”, I searched ahead of me.

What the….. Bloody hell!!!

(Background Music changes to horror)

She was looking at my cousin and he was looking at her and they were smiling. The smile stretched on for too long for me to bear and I pulled him with me into our house. It was a terrible idea bringing him along, that bloody son of a………

As the days went by, their smiles led to Hi’s and Hello’s which led to them talking and all I could do was watch from a distance. She never even so much as smiled at me. They were of the same age and clearly they liked each other. My narcissistic mindset caused me pain which was eating me up from inside because there was no one I could talk to about it. The one person I always trusted was the one flirting with my girl.

“What does she see in him…?”, I thought to myself….. the guy didn’t even know how to hold a cricket bat.

Sometimes when he and I went for a walk, she would come along. A few minutes into the walk, they would fall behind walking slowly hand in hand. Then one day they fell too far behind that I had to go back looking…… and……………….. and I saw him kissing her. Whatever was left of the 10 year old me died that day…… I had had enough. I started acting homesick and persuaded my Grandpa to send us back home. My cousin almost begged me not to, but I was adamant. We climbed onto the bus back to home, our vacation cut short by 13 days. She was there waving at him all the time the bus speeded away. He kept looking back till he couldn’t see her anymore and I could feel the void forming inside him. We sat beside each other, brothers…… his heart was set behind, seeking her…… my heart was set ahead, fleeing from her.

The bus took us forward. Mathematically, he was losing and I was winning. But, was I…?

The Nose Job

There comes a phase in everyone’s life when it’s time to take a long and hard look at oneself in the mirror and introspect. For me, it was today. I just stood there staring at myself in the mirror for what seemed like eternity (or an hour of engineering graphics, whichever sounds longer). As the cliché goes for such situations, I had a question only God could answer. Words eluded me as I searched my tormented mind for the perfect way to phrase the question. Ironically, the question was about the perfection with which God created everything, every other damn thing except one tiny little detail…… why the hell did he carve an ugly protrusion smack at the centre of an otherwise perfect face…? And again why the hell did he put two holes on it..? Granted we need to breathe, but couldn’t he have found some other place to put these orifices on us? For those still in the dark as to what I’m talking about, the object of concern here is the human nose. Forgive me if I’m being nosy, but what follows is my thesis on this weird facial feature.

Is it just me or does somebody else understand my dilemma..? Let me then tell you what prompted me to write about this seemingly silly thing. The other day I was scrolling through TV channels and stopped at MTV because... hmmm... because of the scantily clad women of course. Also, we don’t subscribe to FTV(despite my insistence) since my brother is dead set on cracking the All India Medical Entrance Examination. Anyways, the song ‘Tum Mile’ from ‘Tum Mile’ is playing and as I watch at one point Soha Ali Khan’s and Emraan Hashmi’s faces are so close to each other that I gear up for the Kiss(you know, given his reputation).

It is then that I noticed..... God her nose is huuuge. I remember thinking that if she breathed any harder Mr Hashmi would have had first hand experience on the mechanics of a vaccum cleaner. Giving myself a mental Hi-Five for that thought I opened up Google Images to pick some noses(huh..? :D). I crack my knuckles organizing my thoughts and then start my quest....

‘Aishwarya Rai nose’

‘Priyanka Chopra nose’

‘Katrina Kaif nose’

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.

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‘Kavya Madhavan nose’, ‘Bhavana nose’ (can’t leave our local belle’s out now, can we.?)

We’ll leave the Angelina Jolies and Halle Berrys out of this coz let’s face it, we Indians get a special kick out of finding faults with our fellow Indians(“ Why is there nothing like ‘Game of Thrones’ on Indian Television...? Why dont Indian filmakers make a movie like ‘Inception’..? blah blah ”).

For inexplicable reasons I couldn’t picture myself typing ‘Ranbir Kapoor nose’ or ‘Hrithik Roshan nose’. Sounds like something only a gay person would do(Hell even they wouldn’t do that, there’s something seriously wrong with me..).

After all the hard work, unfortunately my thesis didn’t lead to any path-breaking findings. My research kept me up till midnight and I recall going to bed unsatisfied.
God came in my dream that night. She (it’s always a she when it comes to my dreams) came close to me and reached out lovingly. Waiting for answers, I let her hand approach my face. Her fingers touched my nose and her expression slowly transformed to anger and then...................................... she plucked it off my face. I woke up screaming in a puddle of sweat, my hands reaching for my face to see if my precious little beautiful nose is still there.

This is a tribute to the memories of all the weird and strange google search strings that we’ve tried, inorder to.... well boys, you know what I mean.................huh..?