Order... the basic premise of the universe and the ultimate goal of every system. Order is essentially bound by a set of concrete principles aimed at preserving it and maintaining its continuity. You were born within the perimeter of those rules, grew up within those rules, thought, played, ate, drank within those rules... and then suddenly you find that rule is broken and no longer in effect. The human mind cannot accept such harsh and blatant truths hurled at it calmly. It naturally denies it at first, dismissing it as a figment of its imagination, then enters a region of compromise as a glitch within the system, but when rule is being broken daily, the mind is consigned to disbelief, melancholy, and disllusionment, all fighting for their share of torment in the mind.
I experienced exactly such a situation when I noticed city busses with route numbers like 434, 430, or even 900!!! I always grew up with the notion that bus route numbers can NEVER go beyond 299... but here they are. And no one says a thing!! Such callousness... such non-challance...such lethargy of our Hyderabadi people speaks volumes about our attitude towards the rules of our very own system. I bet if this had happened in Mumbai, Chennai, or Kolkata, there would have been riots and CRPF would have been called upon... but NO! not here! Call it stoicism, call it poker-faced mentality... I would never accept it, and I know who ever is reading this empathises with me.
Finally, I would like to point out to those readers who dont look from my point of view.. well let me tell you I am not the only one who feels this way Good'ol Lingam yadav also shares my perspective.. and readers, you poeople have to believe him at the least because....
"When Lingam Yadav is eating Osmania bisuit, he never lies"
Kedar.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Osmania biscuit-I
Ok! listen up...
Every once in a while, when all the astro-geo-psycho-physical conditions are met (and you will be suprised to know how often these conditions are satisfied, the proof being the mount of information dished out by raving lunatics like, well, yours truly!), I will come up with something on Hyderabad and/or not Hyderabad (if a contradiction and a tautology appear in a single sentence, is the result not a contradiction again?).
In view of its 400 year old history, architectural achievements of the qutub shahi dynasty and the fact that kohinoor was "born" here, I have decided to aptly name the series on Hyderabad "Osmania biscuit."
Once there was a grocer in a Hyd lane named Lingam Yadav manning hyper-protectively, his ancestral fortress of his shop and still selling those antique eatables such as gottams and of course osmania biscuits. But he was especially famous for his talks during late afternoons when all the jobless folk gathered around his place for a chat. He told them totally unbelievable stories of how he saw a nizam king swim the musi on the back of an elephant, or how he was attacked by giant birds of prey while walking near Mir-Alam Tank. Nobody used to believe him, and they were of course blatant lies, until he showed them the absolute proof.. and it really was an absolute proof beyond doubt...
"Everybody knows that when Lingam Yadav is eating Osamia biscuit, he never lies," he used to say. For new aquaintances of Lingam Yadav, it may seem strange, but it really is true! He never lies while eating Osmania biscuits!
So folks, before you sleep tonight, remember the only sentence in this whole post that matters:
When Lingam Yadav is eating Osamia biscuit, he never lies!
Kedar.
Every once in a while, when all the astro-geo-psycho-physical conditions are met (and you will be suprised to know how often these conditions are satisfied, the proof being the mount of information dished out by raving lunatics like, well, yours truly!), I will come up with something on Hyderabad and/or not Hyderabad (if a contradiction and a tautology appear in a single sentence, is the result not a contradiction again?).
In view of its 400 year old history, architectural achievements of the qutub shahi dynasty and the fact that kohinoor was "born" here, I have decided to aptly name the series on Hyderabad "Osmania biscuit."
Once there was a grocer in a Hyd lane named Lingam Yadav manning hyper-protectively, his ancestral fortress of his shop and still selling those antique eatables such as gottams and of course osmania biscuits. But he was especially famous for his talks during late afternoons when all the jobless folk gathered around his place for a chat. He told them totally unbelievable stories of how he saw a nizam king swim the musi on the back of an elephant, or how he was attacked by giant birds of prey while walking near Mir-Alam Tank. Nobody used to believe him, and they were of course blatant lies, until he showed them the absolute proof.. and it really was an absolute proof beyond doubt...
"Everybody knows that when Lingam Yadav is eating Osamia biscuit, he never lies," he used to say. For new aquaintances of Lingam Yadav, it may seem strange, but it really is true! He never lies while eating Osmania biscuits!
So folks, before you sleep tonight, remember the only sentence in this whole post that matters:
When Lingam Yadav is eating Osamia biscuit, he never lies!
Kedar.
Friday, April 15, 2005
uber!
1)Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein
2)Catch-22, Joseph Heller
3)1984, George Orwell
4)To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee
5)The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
6)Animal Farm, George Orwell
7)Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
8)The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
9)Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
10)Zen and the Art of Motocyle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig
Once, there was a God-fearing citizen in a village. He had everything--money, fame, a god-fearing wife and two god-fearing children. One day, an ascetic came to their house asking for alms and predicted a great predicament upon their house. They called him in and asked his advice. He told them some pujas and vratas to perform. In return they graciously offered him some gold coins, some clothes and some grain. While this was going on, the youngest son noticed something weird with the beard of the ascetic, and pulled at it.. and Lo! and came into his hands... that ascetic was a charlatan! They kicked him out of the house and they all thanked God for revealing them the truth in time. From then on, they decided not to trust any ascetic who come to their door. One day God wanted to test them, and he went in the form of an ascetic and asked for alms..they called him in, and offered food which he graciously accepted and blessed them a long healthy and prosperous life, but secretly they were all looking at his beard. Then while he was starting to leave, all of them suddenly lunged on to his beard... it didnt come off, but the ascetic (God actually if you remember!) got might angry and cursed them to a mean lowly life from now on. It turns
out that even the blessings of the God-ascetic became useless and the charlatan-ascetic was right after all!
Oh and By the way, the ten books mentioned above are the top ten widely read books of the twentieth century.
Kedar.
2)Catch-22, Joseph Heller
3)1984, George Orwell
4)To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee
5)The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
6)Animal Farm, George Orwell
7)Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
8)The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
9)Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
10)Zen and the Art of Motocyle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig
Once, there was a God-fearing citizen in a village. He had everything--money, fame, a god-fearing wife and two god-fearing children. One day, an ascetic came to their house asking for alms and predicted a great predicament upon their house. They called him in and asked his advice. He told them some pujas and vratas to perform. In return they graciously offered him some gold coins, some clothes and some grain. While this was going on, the youngest son noticed something weird with the beard of the ascetic, and pulled at it.. and Lo! and came into his hands... that ascetic was a charlatan! They kicked him out of the house and they all thanked God for revealing them the truth in time. From then on, they decided not to trust any ascetic who come to their door. One day God wanted to test them, and he went in the form of an ascetic and asked for alms..they called him in, and offered food which he graciously accepted and blessed them a long healthy and prosperous life, but secretly they were all looking at his beard. Then while he was starting to leave, all of them suddenly lunged on to his beard... it didnt come off, but the ascetic (God actually if you remember!) got might angry and cursed them to a mean lowly life from now on. It turns
out that even the blessings of the God-ascetic became useless and the charlatan-ascetic was right after all!
Oh and By the way, the ten books mentioned above are the top ten widely read books of the twentieth century.
Kedar.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Wrath of a Goddess
I have stood as a silent testimony of the unrelenting fury of a Goddess one day at a forsaken place in Himalayas. For more than 1200 years, I have chosen to accept with outspread arms all the dark incidents of that day, to remain as an objective observer, for therein lies my doom laid on me by the Goddess.
I am a lake situated at an altitude of about 5000 metres in the Himalayas, sacred to Goddess Nanda-Devi. I am, now, ordained to open the secret pages of the history that none knew before...
A large family of more than 500 travellers came along with some natives towards me. I knew not whence they came, and where they were heading to. They camped at my side that day. After a while, I heard a wail from one of the tents and out came two men, and after them, there came out stumbling shape accompanied with heart-wrenching cries . She took the shape of a young native girl...the same girl whom I had noticed for her heavenly appearance when she had come earlier.
The girl went to her elders, but they chose to keep quiet as the travellers belonged to a higher status. Then she went to the head of the travellers to plead for justice. They were enraged at the girl's audacity to talk of such a matter directly to them. They took no notice of the girl and ordered the natives to abandon the girl as she apparently went mad. She was laughed at, cursed, and insulted.
The girl, enraged at not only her violators, but her own people who failed to protect her, cursed herself at her inability to defend herself. She failed to understand why the Goddess she loved had forsaken her. She wiped her tears, went up a hillock and yelled out, so that all can hear, infernal curses laced with such vitrious venom and intoned with such destructive power that no one could endure her ghastly voice at that moment. They could see their doom upon them writ clearly upon their faces. The bravest of men crouched with fear and closed their eyes and women and children huddled together as the monstrous wind of the Himalays mingled with her horrendous voice created a demonic echo that laid bare, for a fleeting moment, a sample of the power that lay hidden the deep vaults of the very Earth eager to reassert itself, and the ground began to shake with the power of her petrifying curses. The wind howled like a hungry warg and dark clouds expedited themselves into a vortex at the summons of the power of her intonations. Could this be the end of this world? Has the destroyer opened his third eye? Nay... to them, it seemed worse than that apocalypse that would engulf everything that exists in all of the infinite universes.
Then, she, laughing and dancing, as in an impassionate trance, went near a deep gorge and with a shriek, unendurable yet everlasting in my memory, offered herself to the Goddess and those that saw her fall then knew she was dear to the Goddess.
It started raining, and they realised it was no ordinary rain. There was a condescending laughter of an infuriated Goddess in the lightning, and the wind brought unutterable curses from forbidden lands into their very lap. The rain, later, revealed itself into its actual gruesome form as a hail-storm from the other world. They were being pelted with hail-stones bigger than any-one had seen before. One by one, people started falling dead on the ground. Women, children, aged... the fury of the Goddess recognised none. In a short while, all the people there became victims of the fury of the Goddess. I bowed my head to the unsurmountable supremacy of the Goddess... once again!
Yet, this incident lived on for centuries... in the folk songs sung by native women who still remember the avenging fury of the Goddess.
Kedar.
P.S.: It has been recently proven that the a group of people travelling near the lake Roopkund up in the Himalayas were killed by a killer hailstorm with giant hail stones.
I am a lake situated at an altitude of about 5000 metres in the Himalayas, sacred to Goddess Nanda-Devi. I am, now, ordained to open the secret pages of the history that none knew before...
A large family of more than 500 travellers came along with some natives towards me. I knew not whence they came, and where they were heading to. They camped at my side that day. After a while, I heard a wail from one of the tents and out came two men, and after them, there came out stumbling shape accompanied with heart-wrenching cries . She took the shape of a young native girl...the same girl whom I had noticed for her heavenly appearance when she had come earlier.
The girl went to her elders, but they chose to keep quiet as the travellers belonged to a higher status. Then she went to the head of the travellers to plead for justice. They were enraged at the girl's audacity to talk of such a matter directly to them. They took no notice of the girl and ordered the natives to abandon the girl as she apparently went mad. She was laughed at, cursed, and insulted.
The girl, enraged at not only her violators, but her own people who failed to protect her, cursed herself at her inability to defend herself. She failed to understand why the Goddess she loved had forsaken her. She wiped her tears, went up a hillock and yelled out, so that all can hear, infernal curses laced with such vitrious venom and intoned with such destructive power that no one could endure her ghastly voice at that moment. They could see their doom upon them writ clearly upon their faces. The bravest of men crouched with fear and closed their eyes and women and children huddled together as the monstrous wind of the Himalays mingled with her horrendous voice created a demonic echo that laid bare, for a fleeting moment, a sample of the power that lay hidden the deep vaults of the very Earth eager to reassert itself, and the ground began to shake with the power of her petrifying curses. The wind howled like a hungry warg and dark clouds expedited themselves into a vortex at the summons of the power of her intonations. Could this be the end of this world? Has the destroyer opened his third eye? Nay... to them, it seemed worse than that apocalypse that would engulf everything that exists in all of the infinite universes.
Then, she, laughing and dancing, as in an impassionate trance, went near a deep gorge and with a shriek, unendurable yet everlasting in my memory, offered herself to the Goddess and those that saw her fall then knew she was dear to the Goddess.
It started raining, and they realised it was no ordinary rain. There was a condescending laughter of an infuriated Goddess in the lightning, and the wind brought unutterable curses from forbidden lands into their very lap. The rain, later, revealed itself into its actual gruesome form as a hail-storm from the other world. They were being pelted with hail-stones bigger than any-one had seen before. One by one, people started falling dead on the ground. Women, children, aged... the fury of the Goddess recognised none. In a short while, all the people there became victims of the fury of the Goddess. I bowed my head to the unsurmountable supremacy of the Goddess... once again!
Yet, this incident lived on for centuries... in the folk songs sung by native women who still remember the avenging fury of the Goddess.
Kedar.
P.S.: It has been recently proven that the a group of people travelling near the lake Roopkund up in the Himalayas were killed by a killer hailstorm with giant hail stones.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Irony of Mother Nature
Once upon a time, there lived some organisms on a planet. They use to breathe- in a gas they called "the-good-gas" and breathe-out another gas called "the-bad-gas". They were all happy, content, and too innocent to notice that "the-bad-gas" was accumulating in the atmosphere at a really fast rate and that meant danger to them. Now, there was this slave creature that fed on what these organisms breathed out, and gave out "the-good-gas" and since it was different from them, no one used to really pay attention to it.
By and by, "the-bad-gas" got accumulated to dangerous levels and these organisms started dying. The slave took this opportunity, and consumed a lot of "the-bad-gas" and grew so strong it started replicating and creating more of its kind. Some other stupidly inert organisms saw this chance and invited these slaves into their cells and let them have their way. They grew in power, and strength and even joined together to form newer creatures. They soon staged an easy coup and started ruling the planet. The first thing they did was changed the name of "the-bad-gas" to "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually-good", and that of "the-good-gas" to
"the-good-gas-that-is-actually-useless".
Time passed on the newer creatures discovered that they were aging and dying far too sooner than the earlier organisms. Investigation pointed out to the slaves that took "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually-good". When they work, they also produce some by-products that are really harmful and cause aging. And so, the name of "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually-good" was changed to "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually- good-but-causes-aging"
In another ironic twist, someone discovered that "the-good-gas-that-is-actually- useless" can be used to make a kind of ice that preserves things and keeps them cool.
So they changed its name to "the-good-gas-that-is-actually-useless-but-proven-to-be- really-useful"
Finally, one day, a sensible creature came up and changed the names of the two gases to "oxygen" and "carbon-di-oxide" respectively, which meant "necessary evil" and "useless tinsel" respectively in the language of its country. Ironically, it died soon afer because of toxic fumes containing "carbon-di-oxide" emitted by the machines that were the new trend.
Kedar.
By and by, "the-bad-gas" got accumulated to dangerous levels and these organisms started dying. The slave took this opportunity, and consumed a lot of "the-bad-gas" and grew so strong it started replicating and creating more of its kind. Some other stupidly inert organisms saw this chance and invited these slaves into their cells and let them have their way. They grew in power, and strength and even joined together to form newer creatures. They soon staged an easy coup and started ruling the planet. The first thing they did was changed the name of "the-bad-gas" to "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually-good", and that of "the-good-gas" to
"the-good-gas-that-is-actually-useless".
Time passed on the newer creatures discovered that they were aging and dying far too sooner than the earlier organisms. Investigation pointed out to the slaves that took "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually-good". When they work, they also produce some by-products that are really harmful and cause aging. And so, the name of "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually-good" was changed to "the-bad-gas-which-is-actually- good-but-causes-aging"
In another ironic twist, someone discovered that "the-good-gas-that-is-actually- useless" can be used to make a kind of ice that preserves things and keeps them cool.
So they changed its name to "the-good-gas-that-is-actually-useless-but-proven-to-be- really-useful"
Finally, one day, a sensible creature came up and changed the names of the two gases to "oxygen" and "carbon-di-oxide" respectively, which meant "necessary evil" and "useless tinsel" respectively in the language of its country. Ironically, it died soon afer because of toxic fumes containing "carbon-di-oxide" emitted by the machines that were the new trend.
Kedar.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Akhallabeth
Akhallabeth...means "she that fell"...title of the story that tells of the fall of Numenor (a huge isle granted to those men who fought against Morgoth in the past ages) under the rule of Ar-Pharazon the Golden when he violated the rule of the valar. Then, Illuvatar, the One, rose in anger and so, the isle of Numenor was broken and forever consigned to the depths of the seas....
Akhallabeth... thats the title I have chosen to give to an episode here involving a young girl who ran away from her parents' house with some guy...lets see what happens later.
Kedar.
Akhallabeth... thats the title I have chosen to give to an episode here involving a young girl who ran away from her parents' house with some guy...lets see what happens later.
Kedar.
Friday, March 04, 2005
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