Lit AF (Adnan-Fawad)

One event can hold several ramifications and can even mean different things to different people. Similarly, one event can lead to another and so on but the reactions displayed during a given point of time may or may not lead to more reactions. That's how we are. And by we, i mean can't-reason-with Indians and born-for-denial Pakistanis—the lowest of lows on the face of this planet. 

Uri attack: An event that left 17 Indian soldiers dead and 19 injured while they were sleeping turned the tide towards Pakistani artists in the country. Interestingly, only one city and one industry seemed to matter: Mumbai and Bollywood. All of a sudden, popular opinion was demanding the departure of Fawad Khan. They couldn't think of anyone else but the Karachi-based actor; although, eventually, a blanket ban was proposed by the producers body IMPPA. The reasoning behind why Fawad was particularly targeted was as hollow as it can get after a terrorist attack. Logic becomes the last refuge in such scenarios. Some even called him a mediocre actor—which either means they haven't seen his films and can't accept the fact that the guy is a showstealer—and someone Bollywood can do without as if the Hindi film industry ever cared about talent as much as surname. It's a shame on so many fronts when artists are not able to travel freely but a bigger shame lies in the denial of what's really going on at the border. 

Surgical strikes: Less than two weeks later, Indian Army responded to the Uri attack by carrying out surgical strikes (lasting less than an hour in actuality and killing more than 50 terrorists) at LOC. If you are in the know, these two words are mostly associated with countries like Israel, not India. But then, times are changing and India isn't the nice ol' restrained duck anymore looking to score moral victory. Retaliation is back in fashion and this critical move was greeted with support from nooks and corners of the country. For a change, even the businessmen vocally supported the strikes despite the market crashing when the news broke out. Adnan Sami, a naturalized Indian singer of Afghan-Pakistani origin, too joined the bandwagon by tweeting in support of the Army. This didn't go too well with Pakistan Twitterati. Even though Adnan's tweet didn't mention Pakistan at all, it didn't matter. His anti-terrorism endorsement got (mis)construed as anti-Pakistan, especially because his father had served in Pakistan defence forces! What's most interesting is Adnan has continued to stick to his gun so far.

The contrast between the situations facing these two artists shows us that, at the end of the day, what really matters is where you wish to stand for your own benefit. Fawad could have easily avoided scorn (to some extent, at least) by condemning the cowardly terrorist attack in Uri but he chose not to. On the other hand, Adnan didn't have to trumpet his nationalism on social media but he simply chose to.

Pep talk

“Guardiola is a young coach with a lack of experience, sometimes he talked too much…football is very simple."

That's what Franck Ribery had to say about Pep Guardiola. Of course, he has all the rights under the sky to voice his opinion but there are some depths he obviously misses in his statement because of sentimental reasons. First thing first, yes, Guardiola is indeed young for a football manager. He's 45 and if you put Totti's age (he turned 40 this week) into perspective, you'll get how young Pep really is. But that shouldn't come in his pedigree as an extremely ingenious strategist. With a managerial win rate of 75%, we're talking about one of the most successful football managers in history here. He certainly knows more than just a thing or two about football. To rewind, when he was appointed Barcelona's manager, the first thing he did was get rid of Ronaldinho. Now, who in his right frame of mind would do that? Well, Pep. He belongs to the old adage of placing the club above players, especially those who don't fit in his stratagem. He has little patience for nonsensical arrogance. Ibrahimovic wouldn't fit in for a reason. Yaya wouldn't either. When he was done with Barca, there was a pretty fine breeze about him moving west to England (read: Manchester United). He moved wester and holidayed in the USA instead. Why? He wanted to locate his inspiration once again. Here's a guy who listens to himself before speaking out his mind. That's where the talking bit comes from. Success is merely something that happens but the road you choose towards success defines you. Besides, isn't football more philosophical than any other sports out there? It's basically life served within a 90-minute window. But due to the importance placed on winning, we keep forgetting this piece of truth. Which is why managers like Pep are essential; they are rare. Also, football ain't simple. It's made to look like that by artists like Ribery who spent hours at practice. Without a manager to guide them, they'd stray. 

Murder and memes

Harambe is perhaps the only dude who got killed in a dubious manner in 2016 and yet extracts laughter like no one else. You look at his pictures and that grumpy look stretches a smile out of you and if you go through the memes, you are rolling on the floor in no time. Isn't this interesting given how misunderstanding and dearth of utilities resulted in his murder? Maybe he did die for our sins.

To see and to be seen

Being a filmmaker must be the most boring as well as the most exciting profession in the world. 

Boring, because you've already seen the film you wish to make in your mind. That's like the greater spoiler crisis. In fact, the very fact that you already know everything about the film even before it's made makes your reality a downer. For what it's worth, the filmmaker takes the onus of making life interesting for the audience at least by persisting with what's in his head and working towards translating the mental picture into a physical reel. 

Exciting, because the filmmaker gets to create an alternate reality; a world that is controlled by none other than him. He moves things around like a chess-master who is basically playing against himself as there are no opponents in the field of cinema. It's only you and the time. So many things can go against you. The sun may not shine when the camera wants it to. Anything can happen. And anything does happen on a movie set. 

PS. During my interview of Ang Lee for Life of Pi (2012), i couldn't help but ask what inspired him to become a filmmaker. His reply was as enlightening as his aura: he has always been a curious person, looking for answers and he found out early in his life that you can't always get them too conveniently. 

PSS. A (great) filmmaker bounces the questions off the canvas of cinema while the audience often seeks the easy way out by paying closer attention to the answers derived instead of the questions posed.

Ingrate's Syndrome

"Gandhi is overrated."
"Gandhi's contributions are grossly exaggerated."
"Gandhiji didn't win us freedom. It was a natural outcome."

Statements like these are overrated, grossly exaggerated and often blurted out by individuals who don't get the price of freedom but somehow seem to enjoy it way too naturally. For several reasons, actually. The most pertinent being the truth that somebody didn't read up a lot. But that didn't stop them from cultivating absurd opinion about a person who accomplished far more than humanly possible. We are talking about someone who created the idea of a nation-state in us. Before he happened, people were happy looking out for themselves. There was nothing Indian about us. Bombaywallahs cared for Bombay while Madrasis were happy worrying only about Madras and the Punjabis about Punjab... The script pretty much remains the same for other provinces and presidencies as well. (The Revolt of 1857 wasn't India's First War of Independence; it was merely a series of underplanned revolts. Period.) What Gandhi managed to do, over the decades, was inculcate the idea that we too can have a nation of our own. A nation where people could be together under one umbrella. It was a massive project and he was our first national leader and so far, our last national leader. No one since his death could call himself a national leader. Nope, not even Nehru, whose shortsightedness in lingual matters made him a figure of mistrust in the South. It's been almost seven decades and we are yet to find Gandhi's replacement. Going by the standards of politicians our society offers, that pedestal is going to stay vacant for a long(er) while. Discrediting others is a common desi trait but the plot gets thicker when people who are benefiting from the seeds sown about a century ago do it. Seeds that were sown by a man who could peek into the future. A man who travelled far and wide to grasp what kind of people we really are. A man who didn't care for taking the credit for a job well done. No wonder you don't see him releasing pigeons into the sky in the pictures celebrating our independence. He had bigger things to do: mitigate the effects of riots at the border. 

The next time people around you spew historic crap, try to remind them that they are being ungrateful. It's like saying Dhoni didn't win us the World Cup (or Messi can't win Argentina the World Cup in the future) because we clearly know how important a captain is to the team. Similarly, freedom is not a candy to be bought from a store. It's a long, strenuous process which takes enormous fortitude and patience. The journey only gets wilder without a leader because keeping people together is a headache-y task. (If you're a manager who is responsible for even 10 people, you'd understand the analogy here.) Fortunately, we had a great leader in Mr. Gandhi whether we take it upon ourselves to give credit where it's due or become a nation of ingrates that is too commitment-phobic to stick to the facts.

PS. It's hard to imagine the likes of Nehru, Ambedkar, Jinnah and Bhagat Singh sprouting without Gandhiji's influence as all these great figures (and many more) got directed towards independence struggle because of an old man with a stick.

The decline of the decline of Indian television

We got our first television set when i was in second grade. It was a B&W TV by a company called CROWN. I couldn't have been happier. It barely mattered that my school friends had colour TV and watched several channels while we were stuck at the mercy of a rooftop antenna. This was years before we got access to cable. Many things changed between these two phases of entertainment except one: the TV shows (or programmes, like we called them) were predominantly women-centric with strong female protagonists. Be it Swabhimaan (co-written by Shobhaa De, when she used to be more responsible with words) on DD or Hasratein on Zee. The 90s was the season of women empowerment for television. It was subtle and there was no chest-beating about it. Very matter-of-factly. There were shows (not just on the two aforementioned channels) that featured women who could think for themselves and weren't afraid to express what they felt. Unlike the goody-goody-good halfwit characters paraded nowadays, these women were remarkably believable. Tara. Shanti. Sailaab. Heena. Dastaan...the list goes on and on.

So, what really went wrong? 

I believe the laws of economics came into picture. The aforementioned shows were screened once a week. One episode, half an hour long, with two to three mini-breaks in between. Things changed drastically with Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) when it piloted in the July of 2000 on STAR Plus. Now, you'd wonder how a quiz show managed to help change the course of soap opera in our country. Well, when Amitabh Bachchan asked us "9 baj gaye kya?" in the ads leading up to KBC's debut, he was basically summoning India's attention the way Ramanand Sagar and BR Chopra did (sans any ads, of course) with their Ramayan and Mahabharat in the late 80s. Once STAR Plus had people's attention, with the 9pm-10pm slot, it was easier for the production house to keep the audience entertained around—before as well as after KBC. The resulting shows (read: Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (KKSBKBT), Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki (KGGK), Kasauti Zindagi Kay, etc) were slightly different from predecessors as they boasted 3-4 episodes a week. Each episode, half an hour long, with 3 not-so-mini-breaks in between. Instead of waiting for a week for the next episode, the audience were being fed wholesomely by Ekta Kapoors of the world. The only problem being, an assembly production line approach to screenwriting made sure that the quality of the show suffered. No wonder they (the writers) introduced the painfully cringe-worthy exercise of shots focusing on the face of all the 3847592 characters in a given show with blaring metal music in the background that would put even WWE to shame and a person with BP to premature death. This gimmick was for the writers to buy time; in other words, stretch the episode as much as possible. Anand Gandhi, who went on to direct the gorgeous Ship of Theseus (2013), was one of the writers for KKSBKBT before having an epiphany! 

Speaking of filmmakers, the likes of Anurag Kashyap and Imtiaz Ali used to make short films (one-hour specials) for Star Bestsellers. Epic stories, touching chords the way Netflix and HBO is currently doing, were portrayed in these weekly episodes. This was before the K-fever took over the television. The worst part is, the imitation game is so strong in India that any trend becomes endemic after a while. Something similar happened to TV as well. Like India blindly apes the West, the regional TV apes the Hindi TV opera. The regressive show plots were fondly copied by vernacular mediums as well. And even today, in 2016, the paradigm shift that took place at the turn of the century has the same repercussions on television where it's almost impossible to come across shows wisely written for the society. The thirst for TRP is so high that it's beyond ridicule now. Dumbing down comedy is one thing but isn't dumbing down drama next level idiocy? Exactly what has happened with Indian television throughout. Instead of enlightening the housewives (the primary targets) and other family members of the country, the ongoing shows—barring a few notable exceptions—are degrading the collective intelligence with their heavy reliance on petty characters who have nothing to offer. It's worth wondering when are we going to pull ourselves out of this nauseatingly lame swamp of sub-mediocrity. Especially when the disease has reached a point where even news channels are gladly sounding like Hindi TV opera.

PS. If there was one genre that remained uncontaminated by this wave, it has to be horror. There's no doubt that Zee Horror Show inspired the writers of the TV horror series that eventually followed, be it Aahat or Mano Ya Na Mano or Ssshhhh...Koi Hai. These shows managed to do what Hindi horror films STILL can't: scare you instead of making you laugh. And they did so primarily because of two reasons: they hired good writers who cared about the genre and they weren't asked to churn out four insipid episodes per week!

Ballot that happen?

Some reports suggest that Donald Trump would become the POTUS tomorrow if elections were to be held. If anything, this election—or should we say these two candidates—effectively reminded us how hollow democracy can get. Democracy, for all its gifts, doesn't always leave us with the best of choice at times. On one hand, you've got a candidate whose records are blemished thanks to several avoidable events and on another hand, you have a guy who doesn't care about anything. Literally anything. Except himself, of course. His records, both entrepreneurial and otherwise, don't make you swoon. If words are what it takes to identify a person's character, Trump's draw a picture of a man who doesn't really believe in anything. He'll utter whatever is required to capture attention. He's a performer; a jester without a court. A dreamer who firmly believes White House is within his grasp and he may not be mistaken either. Compared to him, Hillary appears like a saint but whoever has followed her (at least through reportage) would attest that she's a crooked personality with a preference to sweep things under the rug. It's a clear pick between the devil and the sea. We just don't know yet which is which. 

The only good thing that has come out of this trumpeted election campaign is the levels to which democracy can seem overrated. If there are three fools in a group of four, there is no hope left for the unfool. In any case, it doesn't really matter whether Trump wins or lose. By all measures of probability, he has already won by making it THIS far.

Unidimensional bullshit

The fastest way to turn a correct statement into a dubious one is to introduce politics to it. This is so because politics isn't only about slimy old corrupt men ripping the society off for personal gains. There are anthropological and etymological repercussions to the Big P. Being politically correct is perhaps the way to go. It's 2016 and the world has finally come to terms with what happened on 9/11. There's no denying that if we are to reevaluate (human) history, the chronology can be bisected into pre-9/11 and post-9/11. On that fateful day, lot of things came down real hard along with those two tall buildings. The way we speak today, especially online, has a lot to do with the political correctness unintentionally instituted by that day. All of a sudden—15 years is not sudden, to be accurate—sentiments are back in fashion. Which is ironic given how our species is fast losing its collective moral compass. In our quest to be forward and cautious, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction by being overcautious. It's a practical sin to NOT take a side. Almost reminiscent of what Dear Dubya said to the international community right after 9/11: "You're either with us or against us!" Remember that bullshit? This rigidity is so nauseous that if you like something about someone who is perceived as a bad guy, you'd be questioned. In other words, you can't laugh at a joke cracked by Putin. He's a bad guy so if you are laughing at his joke, you are encouraging him. If that sounds crazy, you should read the backlash Jimmy Fallon got for having Donald Trump on his show. Apparently, the so-called liberals couldn't bear to see their tangerine villain 'being humanized' for TRP. Seriously? That's what it has come down to; the repercussion, i mentioned earlier, of political correctness. First thing first, Trump, no matter how stupid his thoughts are—and they are beyond stupid, they are atrocious—he has every right to showcase his light side. All candidates do so. And Fallon, in his defense, is a host whose favourite word happens to be fun. If he made the presidential candidate comfortable as he does to his other guests, he didn't do anything wrong. Besides, if the American people are going to ignore what Trump says and rather be swayed by the sway of his breezy air, maybe they deserve him as the POTUS. Similarly, heaps of verbal dirt were poured on Tim Cook and Jack Dorsey yesterday for tweeting birthday wishes to PM Modi. Apparently, they aren't supposed to do that because by doing so, they are encouraging an anti-LGBT politician and a mass murderer who—for the record—also happens to be the prime minister of the world's largest democracy. There are no dimensions to personalities anymore; only one of your choosing.

Decoy

Ever felt like you are the supporting cast of a biopic on you? Like you are always in the shadow lurking around like a crestfallen butthurt that won't heal? As if the universe is against your moments in the limelight? Because you are always in the background instead of the proscenium where you think you belong? Here's a theory that would soothe you, if nothing else: Looks like even cinema follow this trick of making us assume that so and so is the protagonist of the show when they are not. The storytelling is tailored in such a manner that you build up your curiosity for ABC but it later turns out that XYZ was the protagonist. For instance, in The Night Of (2016), you are made to believe that the script is centered around a Pakistani-American who is arrested for an alleged murder. By the end of the show, your opinion has evolved too: the protagonist is his eczema-ridden lawyer who seems to have found a purpose in life thanks to this hopeless case. The same is true for House of Cards (2013-) where we presume everything displayed is about the thirst for power and an otherwise failing marriage but in hindsight, the show is primarily about White House. Similarly, The Sixth Sense (1999) is more about Bruce Willis' character than about that boy who can see dead people. This shimmy is not restricted to movies and TV series. Sometimes, you can notice it even in documentaries and songs. For instance, Room 237 (2012) ain't about Stanley Kubrick and neither is Citizenfour (2014) about Edward Snowden. Or for that matter, Coldplay's Yellow isn't about jaundice and Rihanna's Cake isn't about cake; at least not the one that leaves you with a sweet taste. It'd be safe to conclude that nothing is what it seems whether you are at the front or in the back photobombing a picture that was supposed to focus on you.

What's in the name? Everything!

Do you know the name of your maid? If you don't, chances are you'll be the first to accuse her of theft if you misplaced your earphones (only to find it in your car two weeks later). When you don't familiarise with people, the communication and emotional barrier is always present. And what is the first step towards building a relationship? Bingo! Knowing each other's name. Something we tend to ignore mainly because of laziness than anything else. The immediate excuse is, why include one more contact to your phone? There's already more than enough on your contact list whom you haven't met or heard from in over a year now. Fair enough. But the people i'm talking about here happen to belong to the lower rung. People who are perennially overlooked for some reason best explained by the fast emerging middle-middle class. These are the very folks who serve you in the cafeteria on a daily basis; the guy who salutes you (as if you won PoK for the country) while opening the colony gate; even your office boy whose job is to clean the mess your leave on your desk. They are everywhere and yet nowhere. They remain nameless. The most basic tenets of civilization is not accorded to them. And then we wonder why some restaurant didn't let a driver have a meal. Chances are racism might go out of fashion someday soon. But classism? Can't say.

P for patience; P for photography

I'm not a photographer. I get lucky sometimes. On Instagram, i often put up pictures which are liked more for their one-word captions than the actual photography invested in them. On top of that, my ASUS Zenfone 5 sucks. In my defence, the essence of photography is distilled to such a level that the question "who isn't a photographer anymore?" rings true to our generation. Everybody clicks and shares. The whole idea of capturing a moment is to share sooner or later. And it's never been truer than now. We've come a long way from getting clicked by professional photographers in a dingy studio to owning a camera to double-clicking a mouse to clicking round the clock on our phones. Small surprise why there were more photographs clicked in the last decade than in the last century. Very few of them would make Henri Cartier-Bresson or Ansel Adams proud though. But then the bigger question looms: how many of us are aiming to be them? They saw photography as an art form. A majority of us see it as an attempt to document our life; from the mundanest of things like cafeteria food to the awesomest like a mountain dew. Whatever space art gets to fit in these circumstances is accidental. Photoshop and Illustrator leave little scope. On the other hand, a good photographer shall adhere to photography through incredible amount of patience; something our generation seems to lack. The finest photographs appear flawless but they occurred because the person behind the lens was willing to wait longer. Like one rainy evening, i saw Ashish Rane (the then photography editor of mid-day) did at the entrance of the office building. He was standing with his camera, in his hands, facing the sky. It was obvious he was waiting to capture a lightning. I don't know for how long he was waiting or how much longer he waited after i said bye to him but i know one thing for sure: an amazing sky picture was printed in the paper the next day.

Madness

When a riot is going on and properties are set on fire, i can't help but delve into the kind of people we are. Of course, few rowdies don't get to define the majority but they come from our society. And we are responsible for building something we have no control over today. If athletes win us medals, our society takes pride in them for a heartwarming reason: they are one of us. The same yardstick should be applied to the goons who beat up autowallahs before destroying their source of livelihood in the name of protest. In a democracy, only one form of protest should be entertained: the one where voices are heard and nothing else. Maybe it's too much to ask for. Maybe it's too early. Maybe we'll never mature because nothing seems to change in our language of madness. The vocabulary remains the same. The volume remains the same. Just the characters with anger in their eyes and contempt in their behaviour change from one city to another. Once we understand what is really going on, we might be able to find a cure. Until then, we can only bear (silent) witness to destruction and fruitless chaos. Like the way we are supposed to.

Gone in 6 seconds

"Where are they?"

"They are gone for smoke."

Here, the reply, if you read at once, sounds fine. Or does it? Actually, it doesn't. It's incorrect on so many levels. However, if a person says it quickly enough, the other person won't even notice because s/he would be more interested in what they are up to. In such a scenario, the urgency of the required information is so high that you damn grammar completely. However, when you are writing things down, the level of grammatical scrutiny goes up. Which is why the following conversation would have been (more) apt. 

"Where are they?"

"They are gone for smoking."

Hmm. Well, this sounds OK-ish but it still, there are room for improvements here. For example, if you truncate the answer to gone, it makes sense to some extent.

"Where are they?"

"They are gone."

But then, it's not enough as the key data is missing. You need to convey that they are on a (slow) suicide mission of roasting their lungs under the Indian sun. Which is why the following would be the most appropriate answer.

"Where are they?"
"They've gone for a smoke."

Fin. 

Millennial issues

The Berlin Wall crashed before we could even say hello to 1990. However, the 90s kids fail to grasp the most basic principles of capitalism. Which is ironic in so many ways, especially when they are enjoying the fruits of capitalism like no else did before them. In this world we've created for ourselves, money rules. And it's immature to believe that it's going to change anytime soon. At a rudimentary level, when you find a job and agree to a salary, you become responsible for a life that drags much beyond the salary that was agreed upon. Let's not even get into the concept of inflation. The value of money keeps fluctuating but your salary remains constant unless there is an unseasonal appraisal. When you agree to ABC job at MNO salary hoping to get PQR raise next fall, you are ONLY going to get MNO at the end of the month. That's the bottomline of your relationship with your company. What you do with MNO is your business. It doesn't matter (and it shouldn't, anyway) to the company whether you switched cities to get the job or whether you worked 12 hours a day or whether you had your hopes high for pay hike. For the company, you are just another employee who gets paid for his/her services. Nothing more. Nothing less. The HR department might go out of their way to make you feel like a family but that's a something they are paid to do. When the time comes for appraisal and if you feel like you deserved the world but got far less than PQR percent hike, it's nobody's fault. The company is at its discretion to retain you or get rid of you. In fact, the moment you resign, it will be accepted. That's how organizations function nowadays. Nobody is indispensable anymore. If one dies in a silly car accident, another replaces. [Of course, Bill Shankly was an exception.] The point being, you are only worth your time as long as you are working. Once you quit, you are out of the picture. You'll never be able to annihilate a company. You are never going to help buds of compassion bloom in the dark hearts of corporate bullheads. Your sympathy-hungry posts on social media will be able to get you some likes and retweets and hollow words of encouragement, if that's what you're aiming for. On the flip side, these posts will jeopardize your chances of getting employed again; which could be a blessing in disguise if it makes you venture out independently. If not, you will be seen as someone who smears the company AFTER quitting. Had you created some noise while you were still an employee, things would have been different. That PQR could have been achieved perhaps. But most importantly, you'd have been taken seriously. As of now, that's far from happening. Because, capitalism. 

You get the gist here? No? You must be a 90s kid. 

Thanks in advance

Damage Ctrl+Alt+Del your negative thoughts.























...and when you manage to do that, tell me how!

Emo? Everyone and always!

On Twitter, there is a ridiculous practice of accusing others of tweeting emo stuff. Emo tweets, they are called. I've been online for about eight years now and i still can't wrap my dozy head around these two words. What exactly are they? According to popular myth, these are sentences poured out by emotional/sentimental (Senti Kumars and Senti Ganeshans of the world) mostly to poetic effects. Personally, i don't approve of this definition. It's grossly misplaced for three reasons: 

• Everything you tweet—be it a lame joke or a super-intelligent statement or a political spiel—you are emotionally invested in the thoughts that go behind it. Which by all practical reasons makes your tweets emo. There's no tweet out there of yours which doesn't have a connection to you; no matter how faint that connection might be. 
• You can notice that the people who are accused of posting emo tweets are usually the ones who stay away from Twitter outrage. They are too busy doing their thing. Which is ironic because for someone to participate in something as frantic as an online outrage, certain level of emotional attachment has to be there, right? Which is also why it's safe to conclude that those who participate in Twitter fights and whatnot are the ones tweeting "emo" tweets. 
• It's your platform. You can tweet whatever the shit you like. 

Irrespective of these etymological arguments, happy tweeting!

D for not giving a damn

There are always some people in your life who keep posing questions you don't have answers to. D is one such guy for me. One of my dearest colleagues, he turned 25 last week and is bulky but fit. The reason you're reading about him is he doesn't give a shit. And that's a rare quality i seek in people nowadays. If a crowd of 215 people are on a railway platform and say that the train is moving this way, D will claim that it's moving that way. Of course, he's fucking with you but he'll do it in a manner that will convince you that he actually believes in his absurdity. An intense humour, if you may. That's his way of beating the mundaneness of existence, i suppose. You never know what is really going on in somebody's head but you've got to give them a benefit of certainty too. We don't want to be assholes but we end up being one unknowingly, now, don't we? D, on the other hand, takes extra precaution in ensuring that he is asshole to only those he intends to. For a guy who enjoys his rum and cigarettes as much as missing his breakfast, he is a paragon of paradox. And when you are 30 like i am and finally coming to terms with the fact that you're too old to die young anymore, you appreciate such souls in your ambience. What if they never walk by your way again?

Ahalya

I've been writing on this blog for almost a decade now but i've never before uploaded a video. So, why not break the mould with my adorable niece? This clip here captures her lovely reactions to stuff she finds funny one moment and serious, the very next. 

Warning: Kids are wonderful as long as they aren't yours. 

What inspires you to go to office?

She works everyday. Officially, she is in office from 9 to 7 on weekdays and has a regular holiday on Sundays. But she is basically working all the time. Her laptop, which her company gifted her, makes sure she does. Well, she's not complaining. Not yet. She is known for being the most dedicated member of her team and colleagues respect her for her diligence. Coming from a humble background, she values time, resources and people equally. However, if you ask her what's the highlight of her day, she'll go blank for a bit before gathering an answer. She'd tell you that on her way to work, she spots a mare and her foal on the side of the road. She endeavours to not miss them. It's a brief episode of sheer joy for her to gaze at those two lovely creatures. Most of the time, they are just standing there, tied to the fence post, staring into something she'll never understand. Sometimes, she finds them in adorable postures; the mother affectionately licking the back of her young one or the latter suckling while the former stands steady. These little moments provide a kind push to our protagonist's hectic schedule. Not bad, you'd say, for someone who is otherwise mundane to seek beauty in something which might get completely overlooked in the traffic. The interview gets interesting if you ask her what's the lowlight of her day. She'd again go back to the equestrian presence in her life. On her way back home, she feels bad if she doesn't see them at their usual spot. And it gets even worse when she spots only the mother, not her child. Although she's a mere spectator in a car, she can't help but wonder whether the baby is doing fine or missing his mother. In mysterious moments like these, our heroine can't wait to go to work again. 

Don't count the sheep

It's not everyday you stumble upon a WhatsApp post which you feel like sharing. This one here makes you think. Which is ironic given the 'trap' it so vividly warns you against.