I wanted to write something here while connection to the Internet ethers lasts, but forgot what it was. Guess it was this: I kind of miss writing something here now and then.

Like all of you good people, I too miss the Good Old Days^TM when livejournal used to thrive. I miss those conversations.

There's this new guy in the family; and a new mother, new father, new grandmother, new grandfather. And a brand new uncle.

Grow up quickly mister. We have things to learn, things to do, things to break, things to mend, places to go, places to come back from. Quickly quickly grow up.

Just received this screenshot in email. Well, I thought that was kind of acceptable, but I just can't stand this. So let's just speechify this a bit.

I am not apolitical. I have never voted Congress, not even in a panchayath election. But I have this much to say: no matter how disappointing you think Manmohan Singh is as Prime Minister (I actually tend to think that he's severely underappreciated), he's a thousand times more respectable and acceptable than all Indian right-wing combined. No amount of spindoctoring, no amount of whitewashing, no amount of autobiography writing, no amount of blogging, no amount of Internet advertisement, is making me forget the blood trails of Advani's many a rath yathra.

So I'm anxiously waiting to see how a billion unwashed and undereducated are going work their magic this time around. They overthrew Indira Gandhi when her autocratic tendencies started to show up, they overthrew Vajpayee in spite of India Shining. Or consider this: 1984, Delhi riots, in which Sikhs were violently persecuted. 2004: a Sikh for Prime Minister, leading the same party some of whose leaders were accused of inciting the 1984 violence. That was as thrilling as anything else. You all can celebrate Obama as much as you want and wait for an Indian avatar of Obama, but we've already had people like K R Narayanan (a dalit President) and Manmohan Singh. Our media will project Advani, Mayawati, Narendra Modi or whoever else they think will manage to fool the nation, but one thing is sure: they will get it wrong this time around also.

And then I will have my laugh at this banner ad.

You had no idea old Ganapati was a secret Jedi Knight, had you?

(In the interest of full disclosure: the only Star Wars movie I've seen is Revenge of the Sith. And I slept through most of it. But that doesn't make a lightsaber on Ganapati any less cool, does it?)

Hello class. Welcome to this sheema nellikka eating lecture demonstration. Here we examine the delightful procedure of eating sheema nellikka in detail. Sheema nellikka, as you might know, is a tropical berry that keeps a raw-tart-sweet taste when ripe. You can pick one from the ground, or pluck one from the tree, and then plonk it into the mouth, chew away, savour the tanginess... crunch crunch. Slurrrp. Mmmm. Mmmmm.

( +4 )

Just a very happy person contributing to raising the per capita happiness of the nation.

I, like this young man here, would like to belive that our collective acute awareness of the silliness of everything is the answer to everything. Terrorism, television, stomach fat, advertisements concerning thereof, road widening, roads not widening, too many cars, not enough cars, global warming, peak oil, perils to biodiversity, cyclic economic recessions, the state of Pakistan, yellow press, now-whining previously-apathetic middle class, not having enough to worry about, the goddamn doomsday. Everything.

Keep that smile on, boy. We're going to need that.

Expecting to stay impervious to all this by staying away from newspapers, television, and blog noise as I usually do has turned out to be quite ineffective. Now that the weekend is here, I wondered if I could perhaps contemplate at my slow pace how we are all taking ourselves too seriously, how the murderers had taken themselves too seriously, and how all this could have been avoided had we all agreed upon our own insignificance and insignificantly short lifespans and the silliness of religions and national borders. Or dig out the significant news bits and factoids. Or dig out thoughtful analysis pieces and be able to think further.

How wrong I was. Clearly it does not work that way. I did worry about friends in Mumbai, and about those who deserved none of this. I however did expect myself to be able to give a nonchalant look, and avoid the standard emotion-led response. I am after all this guy who could stand by my own uncle's body and perform his last rites with complete detachment and could find humour in the rituals -- hey, he would look great at f/2.8 on Provia 400RXP in the glow of all these flames, and such.

How wrong I was. As I'm poring over the news, I find it hard to hold tears and fury and anger. Not breaking down is hard, close to impossible. Clear thinking is the last thing I can do now. I'm writing this down with hopes of revisiting this from another time, to gladly find out how wrong and uninformed I was again. That faith-foolish thing again.

***

Even in the recent history, India had this immense capacity to absorb everything, and set itself straight in its course -- the Delhi mass murder of Sikhs took place only two decades back, and look who we've for a Prime Minister now, for example. Or how a largely illiterate population set Indira Gandhi straight when she showed her fangs. Despite the numerous mutinies, we still manage to hold ourself together.

My intuition however says things will never be the same this time around. Pretty soon, quietude and normalcy will return on the surface, but only on the surface. Resentment and vengeful fury will seethe underneath, and eruptions are going to be far more frequent. What could be a more perfect recruitment chance for right wing militancy now? Aren't chances of living under further state control greater now? And greater amount of surveillance, and numerous associated inconveniences to be faced by ordinary citizens like us? To that extent, aren't we allowing the murderers to achieve their target? I'm afraid these are wounds time cannot heal, now that the rhetoric around deficiencies of Hindu tolerance will find greater voice and more takers.

I remember wondering at the somewhat self-inflicted ghettoising of communities around Delhi's Jama Masjid, Hyderabad's Makka Masjid, and the shrine of Hasrat Baal in Srinagar; and wondering why it has to be so. There's so much common to them. I remember how different my Muslim friends' lives are from what I'd seen there. I worry about them, as much as I worry about what future holds us for all. If subjugation was the problem as claimed by one of the murderers, every single community -- dalits, adivasis, Brahmins, north Indians, south Indians, north-east Indians, majorities, minorities, everyone -- in this country could take up arms.

My country, we did not deserve any of this. We never did.

People, this is to announce that mat_attack is comfortably middle class by his own admission. But you could tell that already.

It was so much like cooking food for the first time. Only difference is, I still, or rather ever, would not dare feed anyone what I cook. But I don't mind showing pictures I developed, because I'm really proud that I haven't totally messed this up. :-) Although the scene of development was a manly mess.

( pictures and blathering )

HPTDC's "Himachal Paryatan" bus was to start at 11am from Manali bus stand, but it started at 11:40am. At the rows of dhabas along Rohtang pass, we were allowed half an hour to eat lunch. But nothing, not even a boiled egg, was served at the end of that half an hour. Our bus conductor was annoyed, and asked his driver to start anyway. My friends were equally annoyed, argued and stayed over until everything ordered were served and plates were licked clean.

You could say that it was a slow start day.

And then the bus broke down around 3pm, as we were climbing Rohtang La. Help arrived from Manali at 7. They worked through fog and dark and cold, and finally the bus could be started again at around 10am. We were supposed to reach Keylong and settle into our tents (the fare included tented accomodation in the HPTDC complex in Keylong and dinner), but we reached there at 2:30am. We ate dinner, slept for maybe two hours, and were ready to start again at 5:30am.

The driver, like everybody else, must have slept for two hours. And this guy was under the bus in the night, helping to fix it. After this he was driving through that thick foggy dark night for quite some distance. And he's to take us through the rest of this rough road, for the entire day, until we reach Leh. You would expect that there would be another driver or an assistant for such a long (two days) trip, but there was none. This is supposedly a luxury bus, but clearly HPTDC did not want to risk a real luxury bus on this route.

It was kind of unsettling to sit right behind the driver, knowing that this guy has hardly slept the previous night. We reached Leh at 10pm without incidences -- except for an overtuned oil tanker blocking our way for about two hours.

And I thought I knew what hard work is.

"Hard work is hauling bales of hay or cleaning sewers. Scientists and engineers should be grateful that society is willing to pay us to have fun," said Leslie Lamport in an old interview. So true.

(picture dump.)