I’m not sure why the title of this post is what it is. I just really liked it and thought it’d be a nice title for the post. Ah well.
Change is a weird thing. It’s talked about endlessly; most famously in the recent past by Independent electoral candidate from Mumbai South Meera Sanyal, M.S. Dhoni, a burly, violent and mustachiod resident editor of a national daily and some geezer called Barack Obama. But no one succeeds in unravelling its intricately woven sub-levels of weirdness. Its weirdness begins long before it occurs and when it’s only the sapling of an idea. And the weirdness carries on, even when you’re left staring at your blood-stained hands and the mutilated carcasses of eighteen middle-aged women.
Err... well anyway, this seems as good a time as any to bring Steady Eddie back. You might remember him from such posts as “Humans v/s Seals: The Path to Victory”, “735 things you can make from earwax” or “Piles: God’s way of telling you to cut back on the Chilli Chips”. This one, however, is Eddie’s only non-fictitious appearance on The View. Revisited it? Ok good. Now, what Steady Eddie says about change is that it works in a number of phases. Using chapters from his own life, let’s try and piece these phases together.
1) Change is desired: Eddie was stuck in a job as a pencil salesman once. It started off as an interesting job, providing him as it did, the opportunity to meet all sorts of interesting people, with uniquely quirky approaches to pencils. The man with a 12 pack of HBs lodged in an uncomfortable body cavity was particularly interesting. Despite getting to travel all over and meet aforementioned interesting peeps, Eddie wanted to break out of his cycle. He wanted a change. A completely revolutionised look at the world of formal employment was what he desired. But of course, he had now way of knowing exactly what he wanted. All he knew was he wanted a change. He made it a point to meet his granddad every week, without fail.
2) Change is needed: A few months on, the job was thoroughly tiring and uninspiring. The task of meeting new people that previously brought a twinkle to his eye, had now turned laborious. Drastically so. The pencils frustrated him with their propensity to keep breaking. And out with the sharpener again. He recalled how much he loved sharpening pencils and keeping them all nice and pointy. Now it was just another chore that had to be done. He didn’t know or care how, but he just had to get out. His visits to his granddad’s place became more frequent, consulting him regularly as he did.
3) Change is around the corner: Finally, Eddie was done selling pencils and was about to start a new job, marketing fountain pens online. He’d gone through endless interviews and sent his CV to more places than he cared to recall. Nevertheless, it all seemed worth it. It was finally about to turn around for him. Maybe life would stop sucking so hard. He’d gone and customised his keyboard, bought a new mouse and was waiting for his new job to begin. While he wasn’t gearing up, he was excitedly talking to his granddad on the phone. You see, it wasn’t really feasible to go and meet him all that often anymore. He needed to be ready for his new job.
4) Change is here: First week on the job and it ruled!!! The work itself was fun, new and exciting, the colleagues were brilliant, the bosses were understanding, encouraging, supportive and nothing, it seemed could go wrong. Those pencils and sharpening them seemed so idiotic and redundant now, he thought to himself as his little finger caressed the side of his brand spanking new keyboard with its new keys that made a crisp clackety-clack sound as he kept typing. Eddie felt a part of a real organisation and went the extra mile to ensure that his work kept his employers happy and kept him an important part of the organisation. Obviously, there was hardly any time to never mind visit, but even call granddad. A couple of “Hello granddad. Yes, work’s great” seemed to suffice every few weeks or so.
5) Change is hell: What a bunch of morons, thought Eddie to himself after another stonkingly moronic decision by his bosses a few months after he began his now-not-so-new job. There’d been a series of foolish directions given to him by people around him, but this one was a total doozy. It was getting harder to get home from work at a reasonable hour and his colleagues were just pricks. Who the hell wants to market fountain pens anyway, he asked himself as he looked at other job opportunities, where people could market colour pencils, sketch pens, magic markers online or even on the streets. Person-to-person marketing. P2P, now that’s the gig for me, thought Eddie to himself. And then there was that routine. That mind-numbing routine. Watching reruns of Happy Days was all that kept him happy these days.
(Take a break for a bit while I finish laughing about that one for just a second. Happy Days kept him happy these days. That’s a good ’un.)
Right, so then one day, he decided to call up granddad. It’d been a while since he’d spoken to the old boy. Would be good to talk to him. It would help Eddie clear his mind and think things through clearly. Granddad could always be relied upon for that: good, sensible and sage advi—...
(Too predictable? Tell me how far back you saw this coming and try not to be ridiculous about it with “Yahhh duuuude, I knew it even before you thought of blogging” type of shit)
That’s right, granddaddy was no more. He’d been unwell. He’d called Eddie to say his final farewell, but after Eddie cut the call, because he was ‘interfacing’ with some colleagues, granddad figured he’d let Eddie be. Poor chap is probably working his socks off, reasoned granddad and tried to sink into the fitful sleep that had now become a daily routine. He’d lived a good life and imparted as much knowledge as he could to Eddie. Eddie, after all, granddad knew was a good smart kid destined for big things. He could take care of himself.
So after that whole experience, now Steady Eddie believes in his new 5-step theory of change and goes around ominously telling people something about how you must always buck trends, speak your mind and among other things, be the change rather than to let that change become you, because according to him, that’s dangerous.
What a dweeb that Eddie is.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
What a Cartoon!
Who remembers the What a Cartoon Show? The one that later called itself Cartoon Cartoons. Sadly, if you were fans of those shows, you may be disappointed to note that this post has about as much to do with either show as Sean Paul has to do with quality music.It’s been quite a while since I indulged myself and of course you, dear readers, in a spiteful, hate-filled and bile-laced rant. I could almost hear you wondering if I’d gone all soft and mushy in my old age. So without further ado, the topic of today’s rant is cartoons — in animation and in flesh.
The more astute among you will have concluded or at least, have an inkling as to the fact that I am a journalist. As such, it is an almost daily occurrence in my life to
encounter strange things and stranger people. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re a bloody joke. The following series of events falls under the latter.One of the elements of being a better organised reporting team — or so I’m told — is conducting and attending Monday Meetings. A lack of time and energy prevents me from detailing the agony of these meetings in my own words, so I shall leave it to a wiser source to explain (and explain he does, here). For want of a better purpose, the only real use of these meetings is an excuse for your editor to hand you a public de-pantsing.
Sometimes people come up with story ideas. Sometimes they are excellent. Sometimes they are horrible. Sometimes they are so dire that one can only laugh. And finally, sometimes they are just a ruse to disguise one’s paucity of ideas. Usually these ruses fall flat and earn a round of laughter. Last Monday, happened to be the day an irresponsibly lame idea about cartoons promoting violence was mooted and approved. Yeah!! Because that is such a newsy story and no one has ever even heard of something like that before.
The idea was somehow accepted and the genius who suggested it basked in his serendipity (that’s a great name; let’s refer to him as ‘serendipity’). When the time came to make good on the story, Serendipity duly typed it out and I opened the file to have a read. A newspaper is supposed to be a responsible source of information and so naturally, the facts need to be in order (more on facts later).
What I read next was the most high-handed, generalised and outsider-point-of-view tripe that I ever did read. Lines and lines of complete stupidity jumped off the screen and at me, leaving me wondering if I did indeed work for a national English daily or some regional newsletter that is distributed to 17 houses by an old man on a bicycle in some far-flung little town like Gangamasala, where people still believe that television is the Devil (maybe).
“All cartoons indulge in violence”, “Male and female characters in cartoons are always involved in a relationship and can never just be friends. This is an unhealthy thing to show kids.” and “Female characters like Barbie and Minnie Mouse are scantilly clad and portrayed as perfect women, which gives kids an inferiority complex”. It’s quite alright if you want to go back to the head of the paragraph and re-read it, in case your eyeballs shot out of your head midway through. I’ll wait.
So I asks Serendipity, “What gives?” and he tells me, in a feeble effort to substantiate his dumb-ass “observations” that seem totally accurate and substantial in his mind. “Popeye is after Olive Oyl, Mickey Mouse is after Minnie Mouse; so all cartoons are in relationships,” he tells me with all the conviction of Steve Jobs teaching a kid to use a calculator. What worried me was that his three points sounded like a more accurate generalisation of Bollywood than cartoons. And what worried me more was whether these were the sort of views we, as a responsible newspaper wanted to put out.
That’s when Serendipity delivered the line of the century and one that is probably going to stay with me for the rest of my life. It will be inscribed at the top of the slate in my mind that bears the title “Dumb ass things people say”. And so he clears his throat and says, “Never let facts get in the way of your story.”
What a cartoon!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Rewind, Retrace, Reason
June 20 (geddit? RED-LETTER day? hehehe)
Alongside being the day Queen Victoria took to the throne in 1837 and Mali and Senegal were liberated in 1960 — neither of which are especially important to me — the date to me has always reminded me of one of my most treasured ‘firsts’. To put it into perspective, June 21 that year was the day of an English Language exam I had and so the decision of whether or not to follow through with the June 20 plans wasn’t exactly difficult.
Oooh, turns out the German Parliament decided to move its capital from Bonn back to Berlin on June 20 in 1991. But that’s neither here nor there. So, I woke up on Sunday, June 20, 1999 to the sound of floorboards creaking — as they do in houses made of wood — and looked out of the condensation-covered window. “Please be sunny. Please be sunny,” I recall saying to myself. No such luck as a damp, overcast and drizzly morning awaited me.
Then, it gets a little personal and more importantly, irrelevant to the crux of my story, so I’ll jump ahead. Getting off the tube hurriedly at Marylebone station in London and trudging towards St. John’s Wood tube station — I can’t recall why there was any need to walk, when another train would’ve happily gone to St. John’s Wood. Nevertheless, walking down wet roads and watching fallen flowers floating in little puddles, dodging children bouncing around in gum-boots (Wellingtons, as they are called in some places) and hearing the sssshhhhhhhwwwssss sound of car tyres on wet tarmac just made my nervous energy levels go through the roof.
Of course, those levels hit something of a crescendo as we finally reached the venue. In addition to my presence, ‘we’ would also comprise my grandfather’s dear friend who just so happened to have a spare ticket for the 1999 ICC World Cup Finals at Lords — Grand Stand 2nd tier. This would be the match that would go on to be the first ever cricket match I would watch at stadium. LIVE!
I recall being awe-struck at the sight of the towering Natwest Media Centre. I recall feeling incredibly out of place overhearing elderly gents sporting suits and yellow-and-red MCC ties talking about how “ripping” that Shoaib Akhtar fellow was. I recall feeling my heart thump louder and louder on the walk from the merchandise stalls to the ticket collector, who stamped my ticket. I recall being turned loose inside to find my seat. I recall finding my seat and brushing off the droplets of rainwater that covered it.
Sure, it was an Australia-Pakistan showdown, but it didn’t bother me. And yes, the match was about as much of a showdown as one would expect between a great white shark and a french poodle (the damp squib of a match saw Pakistan make something like 130 and Australia barely breaking a sweat chasing it). But none of that mattered. Even eating from an overpriced packet of the finest salted, fried potato slices didn’t affect me.
The match was over in no time and a kindly old man smiled somewhat sympathetically at me and said something like “Chin up, there’ll be another one in four years”. I smiled back and said something about it being ok because I had a good time. That’s when the layout of wrinkly lines in his face suddenly began transforming into the shape map of a whole different country. He’d seen my India jersey under my jacket. He apologised. I told him it was all good. He scuttled away. It was all good.
Ten years on, June 20 still sends chills up my spine.
Alongside being the day Queen Victoria took to the throne in 1837 and Mali and Senegal were liberated in 1960 — neither of which are especially important to me — the date to me has always reminded me of one of my most treasured ‘firsts’. To put it into perspective, June 21 that year was the day of an English Language exam I had and so the decision of whether or not to follow through with the June 20 plans wasn’t exactly difficult.
Oooh, turns out the German Parliament decided to move its capital from Bonn back to Berlin on June 20 in 1991. But that’s neither here nor there. So, I woke up on Sunday, June 20, 1999 to the sound of floorboards creaking — as they do in houses made of wood — and looked out of the condensation-covered window. “Please be sunny. Please be sunny,” I recall saying to myself. No such luck as a damp, overcast and drizzly morning awaited me.
Then, it gets a little personal and more importantly, irrelevant to the crux of my story, so I’ll jump ahead. Getting off the tube hurriedly at Marylebone station in London and trudging towards St. John’s Wood tube station — I can’t recall why there was any need to walk, when another train would’ve happily gone to St. John’s Wood. Nevertheless, walking down wet roads and watching fallen flowers floating in little puddles, dodging children bouncing around in gum-boots (Wellingtons, as they are called in some places) and hearing the sssshhhhhhhwwwssss sound of car tyres on wet tarmac just made my nervous energy levels go through the roof.
Of course, those levels hit something of a crescendo as we finally reached the venue. In addition to my presence, ‘we’ would also comprise my grandfather’s dear friend who just so happened to have a spare ticket for the 1999 ICC World Cup Finals at Lords — Grand Stand 2nd tier. This would be the match that would go on to be the first ever cricket match I would watch at stadium. LIVE!
I recall being awe-struck at the sight of the towering Natwest Media Centre. I recall feeling incredibly out of place overhearing elderly gents sporting suits and yellow-and-red MCC ties talking about how “ripping” that Shoaib Akhtar fellow was. I recall feeling my heart thump louder and louder on the walk from the merchandise stalls to the ticket collector, who stamped my ticket. I recall being turned loose inside to find my seat. I recall finding my seat and brushing off the droplets of rainwater that covered it.
Sure, it was an Australia-Pakistan showdown, but it didn’t bother me. And yes, the match was about as much of a showdown as one would expect between a great white shark and a french poodle (the damp squib of a match saw Pakistan make something like 130 and Australia barely breaking a sweat chasing it). But none of that mattered. Even eating from an overpriced packet of the finest salted, fried potato slices didn’t affect me.
The match was over in no time and a kindly old man smiled somewhat sympathetically at me and said something like “Chin up, there’ll be another one in four years”. I smiled back and said something about it being ok because I had a good time. That’s when the layout of wrinkly lines in his face suddenly began transforming into the shape map of a whole different country. He’d seen my India jersey under my jacket. He apologised. I told him it was all good. He scuttled away. It was all good.
Ten years on, June 20 still sends chills up my spine.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Simon, go back,... mate
Why is it always that an inspired piece of stupidity (whether by me or in a rare instance, by someone else), gets my blogging juices flowing? Like the fact that I just spelt the word stupidity as s-t-u-p-i-y and then wondered why it looked a bit odd. This time fortunately, the stupidity isn’t mine.
I refer to a remark made by a leader of a right-wing political party where he said something along the lines of, “In light of the recent racist attacks on Indian students in Australia, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should ban all Australian nationals from the Indian Premier League (IPL).” His logic stemmed from the fact that after the November 26 attacks on Mumbai, Pakistani nationals had also been banned from the IPL, through suspensions or annulments of their contracts.
This, presumably, is meant to make the attackers rethink their strategies and mend their ways. I can think of at least three people who will not think too kindly of an Aussie extermination from the IPL, one of whom is Deccan Chargers’ owner Ram Reddy, after all Australian Adam Gilchrist led his team to the title in this year’s edition. Regardless, this is a stupid “solution”. So I’ll move on.
Over the past few days, it’s my understanding that there’s been more than 10 attacks on Indians on Australian shores. Remarks like “All Indians should be called back!” and “What do you expect? The island was a giant prison to begin with; they’re all of criminal descent!” have been doing the rounds with alarming regularity. Local ministers there are saying they’ll work towards ending it. Ministers here are asking for Australia to do something. People are telling both governments to do something... meh, I don’t know.
I was so enthused about write about this particular phenomenon that I began with full pelt and a bagful of serrated one-liners. But somewhere along the way I just stopped “feeling” the subject anymore. Indians getting beaten up abroad suddenly didn’t seem that novel anymore. South Africa, Britain, Uganda, USA, France, Vienna (although that was Indian v/s Indian violence) etc. etc.
What is it that we do to enrage people so much that they want to kick the living dogshit out of us, regardless of who we are or what we do? One could say the colour of our skin seems enough to get them salivating like sharks sensing a drop of blood. But then, skin pigmentation in Indians is about as varied as it gets from the palest of shades to some of the darkest ones around.
Is it the accent or the way we speak? Can’t be that, because Indians have all sorts of accents — some South Mumbai trollopes even have a faux American accent scene going. What’s left? The fact that we’re at times, willing to settle for lower salaries and “take away their jobs”? Well, considering it was students who got beaten up, it seems unlikely.
Well I’m out of ideas. If you get a chance to take a break from some fishing in Darwin or a round of XXXX while watching the Rugby Sevens or whatever it is you like to do, do drop me a line, mate.
I refer to a remark made by a leader of a right-wing political party where he said something along the lines of, “In light of the recent racist attacks on Indian students in Australia, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should ban all Australian nationals from the Indian Premier League (IPL).” His logic stemmed from the fact that after the November 26 attacks on Mumbai, Pakistani nationals had also been banned from the IPL, through suspensions or annulments of their contracts.
This, presumably, is meant to make the attackers rethink their strategies and mend their ways. I can think of at least three people who will not think too kindly of an Aussie extermination from the IPL, one of whom is Deccan Chargers’ owner Ram Reddy, after all Australian Adam Gilchrist led his team to the title in this year’s edition. Regardless, this is a stupid “solution”. So I’ll move on.
Over the past few days, it’s my understanding that there’s been more than 10 attacks on Indians on Australian shores. Remarks like “All Indians should be called back!” and “What do you expect? The island was a giant prison to begin with; they’re all of criminal descent!” have been doing the rounds with alarming regularity. Local ministers there are saying they’ll work towards ending it. Ministers here are asking for Australia to do something. People are telling both governments to do something... meh, I don’t know.
I was so enthused about write about this particular phenomenon that I began with full pelt and a bagful of serrated one-liners. But somewhere along the way I just stopped “feeling” the subject anymore. Indians getting beaten up abroad suddenly didn’t seem that novel anymore. South Africa, Britain, Uganda, USA, France, Vienna (although that was Indian v/s Indian violence) etc. etc.
What is it that we do to enrage people so much that they want to kick the living dogshit out of us, regardless of who we are or what we do? One could say the colour of our skin seems enough to get them salivating like sharks sensing a drop of blood. But then, skin pigmentation in Indians is about as varied as it gets from the palest of shades to some of the darkest ones around.
Is it the accent or the way we speak? Can’t be that, because Indians have all sorts of accents — some South Mumbai trollopes even have a faux American accent scene going. What’s left? The fact that we’re at times, willing to settle for lower salaries and “take away their jobs”? Well, considering it was students who got beaten up, it seems unlikely.
Well I’m out of ideas. If you get a chance to take a break from some fishing in Darwin or a round of XXXX while watching the Rugby Sevens or whatever it is you like to do, do drop me a line, mate.
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