The View–1 more reason not to leave Kerala (PART 1)

The view from my office window.
I can gaze at hours at this serene meditation centre and come away feeling refreshed. When it rains, the pigeons cluck around and after reaching a quick consensus huddle under the eaves. When it doesn’t, bigger males patiently follow roaming females who lead them round and round in circles. Sounds familiar? ;-)



The view as I enter office (a.k.a. “I AM watching”)
Four churches within walking distance and the smell of frankincense and wax wafting through the air every time I come near office. Considering that I spend almost 10-12 hours every day at work , the fact I can drop into a quiet church for a few silent minutes whenever I feel like is a small perk which gives me severe happiness.



The view from my conference room
Students, parties, villagers, women–everybody comes to the Marine Drive to protest, march and create general mayhem. Nothing like a view with barricades, banners and a bunch of cops to break a dull coffee filled meeting. Note the barricades on the wrong road; on seeing the barricade, the students took a quick diversion to the opposite road and the startled police quickly followed suit. Student activism - Malaise? Menace? Must? Great arguments never end in Kerala–they just take a different route.



The view from the boss room
It helps that one has a decent boss. It really really helps that the decent boss has a room with a decent view and decent appetite-a stock of Hersheys and Oreos for those mind-crunching brainstorming sessions. From cruise ships to breaking thunderstorms to oil tankers to noisy tourists to fishermen in catamarans to funny birds with bright green wings, I never get tired of this view. At night the glitter of the harbour, the swaying of the giant cranes and the steady drizzle of the rain make for a wonderful end to the day. Corner room, here I come.

Chicago GSB @ Bangalore

Attended the Chicago GSB reception at Bangalore yesterday. Along with approx. 100 other talented, extraordinary Indians who all want to make it to the Windy City. Amen.

The presentation moved on a semi-formal note; Kurt Olsen (?) the Adcom head introduced himself and a couple of alums and went on to explain about the school.

Main points touted about the school were:
 70 Nobel Prize winners as faculty (tempted to ask how many of them teach but desisted)
 Chicago has the 2nd highest no of Fortune 500 offices next to the Big Apple.
 If you are going to do your 2nd MBA, you need to clearly explain Why.
 Alumni network is very strong and quite dedicated (is what one would assume based on the ppt)
 All the alumni present there had worked for quite some time in the US before applying for Chicago.
 Being in a top school is like getting invited to the dance; what you do at the “recruiting” dance is upto you.
 New Hyde Park centre which is like a giant glass lobby in the middle of the Univ.
 Guaranteed loan without cosignors available for international students.
 TOEFL can be waived for good English speakers.
 Other arbitrary points adding up to saying that you need to spend approx. 50 lakhs for 2 years.

Alumni
 “Cool dude” looking alumni casually mentioned “Started a company in 2000; sold it in 2003; started and operating my 2nd company”…and audience is like “oooooohhh” Am like “Me, I do that every week”.
 Another squeaky voiced current student explained how he is “discovering himself” and learning to do all kinds of dancing over there. Expensive classes, these $100,000 dollar dancing classes.
 Another s/ware techie alum explained how he had come out of the US and was working with HP out of B’lore. Bugger got irritated about how the audience wasn’t sticking to the question format

Grub
 Looked appetizing but I missed it since the bus to Cochin was at 9pm.

Conclusion
 Chicago was in my original list of schools for 1st round applications. Now decision stands firm.

1st Anniversary

Been 1 year since I started blogging, so here we go again…reprint of one of my oldest favourites.

• This was in response to a British Council competition where one had to create a poem with the following words:


• Paint/ hue/ Chi-chi/ riff-raff/lava/ jasmine/ dolourous/ gorilla/ sinuous/ whorl/ avant-garde/ mish-mash/ cubicle.


• Came out better than I thought it would in the half an hour that I took to write it. I hope they appreciate such bursts of creativity at Tuck or Harvard or Wharton ;-)

LAB REPORT 312: SPILT QUICKSILVER.
She was just that type,
Who did not paint her toenails,
Hue her lips,
Shadow her eyes,
But dared you to imagine them
Painted.She was just that type
Who kissed all dogs on the mouth,
All the Jimmys,Chi-Chis,Babus,
Blackies,Manis,Brunos.
All veteran riff-raffs,
Of the mongrel world.
And it was thus that,
An initially enchanted Dr.Seetharaman-Very famous veterinarian,
Her fiancee of 2 months
18 hand-holdings,
3 kisses-2 full,2 halfs(Kisses being what they are,
she was quite precise)
5 hushed dinners,And one Solitaire ring,
Broke off the engagement,
Citing hygienic reasons.

She was just that type,
Who lets you burn
In dark green envy,And then dips in the lava
That you pour forth,
Burns herself,
And so diffusesA smouldering scent so
Unlike the fresh smell of jasmine,or the slightly wet lily after rain.
This was that burnt,sandalwood incense-smell
That promised hidden Garba-grihas
The sanctum sanctorums
Inside her Sanskrit mind,
For those who dared to stroll
Those nether regions,
She offered dark Chidambaram temples With small lamps in damp corners
Where the stone sculptures
Cannot be seen, only felt.
Such were the perceptual promises of
Her sinuous mind.

She was just that type,
Pretended to murmur secret invitations
To your best male friends,
Chaiwallahs, melon-sellers,
And the traffic policemen.
Just to see
That red rage of a matador's muleta
Wave so well on your windy cheeks
Just to hear
That angry Wagner refrain
Dancing in your lighted eyes,
And then when you start to
Silently trade sound for frozen fury,
She would coyly become
Amy,the amazing African gorilla
Who could speak
Over 2000 words
With only her fingertips.
And dolourous eyes.


She was just that type,
Who could and did in a moments glance,
Make mish-mash of your
Carefully rehearsed proposal,
Gleefully unaware that you had
ractised it for 4 hours


In front of the toothpaste stained bathroom mirror.
And so would make you slightly crush that
The outermost-whorl of that
Hidden red rose in your jeans pocket.
Slightly.
And suddenly all the soft pink words
On ribboned paper,
Start sounding silly
For avant-garde Athena,
Who proceeds to explain
The Fibonacci sequence
On a paper napkin,
With vague arrangements of peanuts,
For analogy.


She was just the type,
Who hungrily devours,
All the arguments that
You had carefully stored
In your mind's cubicles.
And proceeds to fill those shelves
With bottled kerosene
Which she can at will
Set afire
By shooting and so shattering.

She was just the type,
That 25 mercuric years
And 30 inches of Levis
Could barely contain with quiet restraint.
And so she jumped
Out of the 6th floor window
On a clear, sunny,
Sky-blue evening of Darjeeling's sunshine,
Twelve months after she said Yes,
Nine months after her father punched me,
Six months after we walked down
A flowery-arched aisle,
She in snowy white, me in Armani blue.
The day those giggly piggy-tailed flower girls
Almost lost our ring.


But in passing mention, I must say that
She was just the type who
Could and did carefully remove that ring,
Posted it,
From a 6th floor room,
On a clear, sunny,
Sky-blue evening of Darjeeling's sunshine.


I am bored; therefore I tag – Silverine/ Alexis/ Tyler Durden/ Mind Curry – to try this out.

Truth Vs Good.

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
- Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1938- )

1000s of words...

She did this to me. She who is called Silverine .

1.Most desired celebrity


Why Angelina?
Not because she’s bisexual. Not because she adopted Maddox from a Cambodian orphanage. Not because she’s got luscious lips and a figure to match. Not because she founded the National Council for Refugee & Immigrant Children. Not for being delightfully nude in Original Sin. Not because she adopted Zahara from Africa and not because Zahara means flower in Swahili. Not because she chose to be a mother and gave birth to a daughter in Namibia. Not for saying “Why sodomize dragonflies?”. Not for naming her daughter Shiloh-“The Peaceful One”. Not for that wet T-shirt photo. Not for being the god-daughter of another famous wet T-shirt wearer – Jacqueline Bisset. Not for that slinky sexy voice of Lola in Shark Tale. Not for publishing a collection of notes while travelling across the world as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Not for the half a million she got for allowing People to photograph her while pregnant and not for donating it to a Haitian charity. Not for the "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages" tattooed on her left forearm. Not because her name means “Little Angel” in Italian. Not because she collects knives. Not because she likes her “sex to be wild”. Not for her $1 million to Afghanistan….What at all could it be?!?

2.Want to do this some day






Backpack through Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Spain...(If I said Europe, I know someone who will bash me up ;-) Trace the marble folds of The Pieta, ride a gondola in Venice, drink coffee in Rome, toss a coin into the Trevi fountains, eat sprungli in Zurich, sacher-torte in Vienna, breathe the rarefied air of Jungfraujoch, see the sun through stained glass at Notre Dame, tread the ruins of the Acropolis and sleep for a night in the hills of Sicily. One at a time - the money is the only thing holding it back.


3.Want to visit this place

ALASKA
Touch a whale, watch bears, walk across glaciers, mush with huskies, aurora borealis, kayak down the Kenai, sea lions on a rock, bull-moose in the wilderness, mirror-lake at noon, the mountains at midnight.


4.Random Favorite
“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man”
- Bob Dylan.

The trappings…
Lord Horatio Nelson, Viscount and Baron Nelson, of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe in the County of Norfolk, Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hillborough in the said County, Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Vice Admiral of the White Squadron of the Fleet, Commander in Chief of his Majesty's Ships and Vessels in the Mediterranean, Duke of Bronte in Sicily, Knight Grand Cross of the Sicilian Order of St Ferdinand and of Merit, Member of the Ottoman Order of the Crescent, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of St. Joachim.

The truth…
- Started as a seaman, ended as an Admiral.
- Captain of HMS Hinchinbroke, HMS Boreas, HMS Albemarle, HMS Agamemnon, HMS Theseus, HMS Captain, HMS Fourdroyant, HMS Victory.
- Sufferer of chronic sea sickness & near death malaria.
- Lost an eye. Lost an arm. Went to sea again.
- Originator of 1.The Nelson Touch 2.“England expects that every man will do his duty” 3. “Thank God I have done my duty".
- Leader of Men, Master Mariner, Volcano Lover.

5. I was tagged by Silverine
.
Danks u for the image posting tip, lady.It was a pain, but looks like its well worth it

Ithaka!

- Constantine P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find the things like that on your way
as long as you keep thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS POEM....

ITHAKA - THE TITLE
I have always been enamoured by history, myth, places & journeys; One of my other favs is Ulysses (Tennyson). And the title of the poem, like the label of a wine or the name of a woman, is a fascinating precursor to what is yet to come. Sometimes in flowing harmony, sometimes in crashing discord! ;-)

THE CORE
The journey is the reward...it was Ulysses' choice to go on "a" journey and go on "this" journey...too often we miss out these journeys and and prefer to stay at the safe harbour of home...and caught in the humdrum of everyday life, we dont even realize what we are missing out...and am not just talking about a physical journey from moor to mountain, but the journey to a decision, to a career, to a relationship where we often prefer the taken path, the broken road...at these times, we need the vision to see our own Ithakas ...with firmly rooted feet ofcourse.

Also what I have come to know as my locus of control funda - what you are decides what the world is...
"you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you"
What we see and what we feel during a journey is as much as what we want to as much as what is there...a nights wait at a strange airport, a 5 minute stopover in some foreign field, a funnily named dish...think adventure!

THE IMAGERY
"Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon"
"mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony.
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can"
WoW!

THE END
"you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean"
In utter awe of this line...what an end! The poem ends in the same way that Ulysses would have ended his journey...a rugged man with his proud scars and Penelope, reminiscing, on the white cliffs of Greece with a cup of wine gazing at the crashing sea and the wild wild sun...as it goes down.

UNKNOWN FACTS ABOUT BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. AKA GANJA TURTLE.

My Accent: Not South Indian but definitely Indian. For a brief 1 week in Zurich, it was for a while all-American and sometimes zee Française, but after concerted coercive efforts by fellow travelers, had to come back to Indian.

Drink: Cherry brandy, Johnie Walker, Breezers…so on and so forth…but my favourite is water.

Chore I Hate: Cleaning the mess made by a roomie…dirty clothes, wet towels, unwashed cutlery…some people.

Dog or Cat: Doggie lovers of the world unite.

Essential Electronics: Laptop/Computer, Digicam, mobile phone with a stereo headset.

Perfume: Azzaro when I am myself, Boss Dark Blue at work. (Yes, that's decidedly supposed to sound like an old favourite Raymonds ad “If it’s Tuesday, it must be the Aston Martin” – does it? Lol.

Gold or Silver: Na, I don’t like adornments…like you know…my biceps usually serve da purpose.

Home: Home is where-ever my mom, brother and dog are.

Insomnia: Twice– Eve of an Operations Research Exam during 1st year MBA; then 1st month in sales – the fear of failure kept me running all night long into dawn.

Job Title: Product Manager.

Living Arrangements: Flat + 3. In probably the most beautiful state in India.

Most Admirable Traits: Ugh…I don’t like talking about myself. I am told that I am helpful, loyal, modest, creative and passionate about what I believe in. Sometimes am told otherwise ;-)

Number of Sexual Partners: Ah…une questione delicatesse...we are what we are as much as by what we do not do, as much as what we do…Yeah, that means that GT scores a 0.

Number of times in hospital: Countless times! Never for myself– am the resident expert on hospitals admissions, treatment, payments, insurance, how to arrange shifts, make payments, request for doctors, what to say to patients, how to help nurses etc etc. God bless all the good doctors and the gentle nurses of the world.

Phobias: A death in the immediate family.

Quotes:
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.
The journey is the reward.
That awful daring of a moments surrender,
which an age of prudence can never retract,
by this and this only have we lived.
Ask not what the meaning of life is, for life is the question – And you...you are the answer. (Me? Na,not me. Hes talking about YOU)

Religion: Catholic

Siblings: A younger brother

Time I Wake Up: GT considers this question…dribbles it along the corners of his mind…jiggles like it a jelly…juggles it like a joker and finally comes up with a classic shot that almost wins the Nobel prize for its universal applicability… “It depends”.

Unusual Talent or Skill: I can crack my right toe as many times as I want to. Hey, hey, you are the one who said unusual! Ok, ok…here’s one more - I am the fastest SMSer in town.

Vegetable I Love: I like Avial and all that goes into it – the drumstick, the brinjal(Go BBLC!), the raw banana, the carrot. Besides this I love rajma, butter beans and soya beans. How did I miss out on tomatoes! And raw carrots! And spinach & lettuce when my mom makes it. Also mom’s secret recipe for beans+tomato fry. And also the grilled ladies-finger mixed in curd. If mushrooms are a vegetable, I like them too, luuuuv them in fact. And I think crunchy boiled broccoli is yummy. Fried cauliflower dipped in bread crumbs too. Er, u did say vegetableS, didn’t you…

Worst Habit: I think faster than I can speak and this makes me sound confused and garbled at times. While this is not particularly a problem when am talking to myself or to my dog (who after two bowls of Pedigree is the very epitome of patience), it does become a problem when you need to explain the rationale behind a product launch in 2 sentences to your bosses’ big boss. Am working on this-watch this space (And if you see a big black dog in it, you will know that not much progress has been made)

X-Rays: Twice. Once when I fell backwards and hit my head on the pavement. 2nd time when my motorcycle skidded and got caught under a police van. The protagonist and his loyal black bike were inseparably dragged along for about 20 meters before the police van decided,sparks et al, that we weren’t about to commit any crime while being dragged along the main road in Madurai and detached us from its metallic grip.

Yummy Food I Make: Am usually the fast & reliable assistant during this complicated cooking business – I clean/cut stuff quite fast. But what I can cook really well is the simpler stuff - the pastas, noodles, jellies, custards and fruit salads of the world. Yeah, fruit salad is a dish. And you kinda cook-make it. Savvy?

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn.

People tagged to do it: Since the bevy of obliging women who usually throng around Ganja Turtle seem to be in shleepy shleepy land, GT leaves it to blog-mosis to carry out his supreme will. Spread forth, admirable & gentle tag!

Le GMAT est mort! Viva Le Ganja!

The renowned and respectable Ganja Turtle took the GMAT ON 19th June.After digitally signing, videographing, fingerprinting about 10 times and finishing a bottle of water + 3 bars of Kitkat, Ganja managed to get a score...

Overall Score - 710/ 94 percentile
Quant - 48/ 86 percentile
Verb - 39/ 89 percentile

Considering I would have been happy with exactly 700 and dreamt wild about getting a 720, this was a bonus. Considering I was scoring just about 40 in Math during prep, this was a lottery.Considering that all my prep & dummy test scores were hovering around the 660-680 mark, this was a godsend.

Thanks to all of Ganjas friends for their unstinting support - right from Arunther Dent in the US of A who reminded me that I didnt want to be stuck in a cubicle in Kerala all my life, to peoples in Bangalore who have been checking my prep once a week, to peoples who woke me up early everyday at 6am so that I could study, to peoples who made me so afraid of failing, to people who by already did "it" & set a clear example, to peoples who wished me the very best as I was about to go in. More than the fact that they did it, is the fact that I seem to be worthy of their time and effort ;-)
Thank God for everything.
Thanks to the squeaky talking characters in the Kaplan Software who shout "yaaaaaaaaay" everytime you answer correct.
Thanks to my....er....we dont want this becoming an Oscar acceptance speech, so we will hold on to that for now.

Now a man can get back to his regular work, drink, blog and books. Feels like someone just lifted a millstone off my chest - cant believe it could be such a relief to go back home after work and not study! To wake up in the morning and not study! To go home for the weekend and not study! Whew!

Ivy League, here I come!

Ars Gratia

Sometimes past midnight, I like to step out onto the balcony of my 10th floor apartment and stare at the sleeping sentinel that is Cochin. Tonight is one of those nights.

One part of me just likes to observe the stillness of the infinite night that seems to have lulled this ancient city into inaction; the other part of me quietly revels in mundane Ansel Adam-like snapshots of the night  - a row of autos napping outside a sodium-lit street; the simulated fluttery panic of drying trouser legs in the night breeze; the surreal mists of the distant refinery drifting about, searching for a place they can call home; the occasional glimmer among indigo waves as ships seek respite from the depths of darkness.

At such times, one feels compelled to let the mind wander on its own accord, sweeping through childhood memories, existential dilemmas, imagining grandchildren, wondering why Million Dollar Baby had to end thataways, why Erich Segal had to kill her, why do men kill whales, why our next generation will not probably see a magnificent live tiger…or why one wrote the blog that one did. It also helps that when one wants to sound unearthly and philosophical – in sync with the god-like feeling that a 10th floor view at midnight can inspire - one starts saying “one” more often that “I”.

It is this that brings me to recant some of what I wrote about martial arts in my previous post – as an immediate penance, let me affirm that there are obvious and serious benefits that practicing Martial Arts can bring about:

Health
Unless you are a diehard aerobics practitioner or have your own personal trainer, it is very unlikely that you are doing enough exercise to justify the tonnes of Lays, Pepsi and Black Forest  that you inflict on your stomach (Speak for yourself, you say?- I hear you!).

An hour and a half of martial arts can take care of this – normally any martial arts class starts with warm up exercises which would include stretching, pushups, jogging etc. Next in line would be slightly more rigorous muscle group exercises like crunches or squats or swinging your limbs. Now comes the more serious business of specific punches, blocks and kicks – variations on upper/ lower/ middle/ left/ right themes…and then katas – these are sequences of punches, kicks, blocks which usually involve movement.  Next would be sparring with an opponent and then the warm-down.

At the end of this, your joints creak and the muscle pain kicks in after the endorphins wear off – but it is such an exquisite pain – the pain of realizing the limits that you can push your body to perform – the pain of growing new muscles – the pain of putting in 2 hours of effort and having reached that ledge on a mountain face where you can take a glance at the rising sun & then move on to the next narrow toehold…now that’s a tad too poetic, so to get back to where we were – yeah, you definitely do get healthier if you start practicing tae-kwon-do or karate or kalari. You choose.

Confidence
No, its not the adrenalin rush of that last para that’s talking – its me – really! For a species that claims to have evolved enough to start measuring EQ, there’s still a considerable amount of respect reserved for brute physical/ muscular power among us peoples. And that’s where yours truly ancient Japanese/ Chinese/ Indian practices can kick in – like the much blamed Drill Sergeant of generations of army cadets, the Arts (ahem!) whet your body and mind into a fine fighting weapon – like the respective presidents of both India & Pakistan would like to claim, the possession of power (nuclear or otherwise) has a far superior effect than its actual exercise. That you go through a regime of self defence exercises and therefore have a finely honed body and mind can be at times extremely exhilarating, but mostly bring out that quiet sense of self-assurance that “situations” can be “handled”. I remember imitating “Clark” after reading Tom Clancy - scanning the environment constantly for any deviants/ anomalies – human or otherwise; assessing threats and adjusting oneself to handle a situation should one arise. While this gives a few initial fake rushes of blood to the head, over a period of time, this habit gives a clear sense of confidence to a practitioner arising out of superior knowledge leading to control in the event of exigencies (my GMAT vocab prep, how it shows!).

Focus/ Concentration
Surprising but true – when you are in the dojo floor against an opponent, you are in a parallel universe where nothing else matters. To succeed in this case, to get in a punch, to  force a block or to snap a kick, your mind has to handle more than 10 different vectors of thought – the terrain, your position, what blow should be used, from which direction, what is the fall back option, when should one attack and what should this blow achieve (for e.g., make your opponent retreat/ immobilize him/ create an opening for a more powerful blow/ block a potential offensive blow while you get into position etc). At the onset, all this is total chaos meets sheer survival instinct – you just need to last there for 5 minutes vs. a taller, fiercer opponent without going down – and so one does all that is required to fill the 5 minutes – including kicking up dust, hugging your opponent in sudden gushes of affection, prancing (dignified running ;-) around the ring while your pal tracks you like a wolf circling around a lamb. But over a period of mind, if one is interested enough, you can bring about the power of focus to the arena – for e.g do a quick check of height/weight/SWOT of the opponent beforehand, deciding when one needs the adrenalin rush and what the mind need to conjure up to deliver the rush of hormones, checking out which side the light is and therefore which angles are likely to be blinding etc. Once the fight is underway, you can even do better – there is the classical argument about what reveals more about your opponent – his body or his eyes – I have heard enough cases arguing for either. Then there is the special arsenal that one builds up and uses – a specially devised series of punches/ locks or throws that one practices and gains reflexive expertise to execute in half-a-second. All these do not appear on enrollment or do not develop in a week’s time – sometimes one earns a broken nose or a twisted ankle or a kick in the balls for the wisdom to be driven home – but what you gain out of such lessons and what you start doing to avoid these is of immeasurable use – inside and outside the ring.

Fine Arts 101-Ars gratia, vita brevis
If despite my New Year resolutions, am quoting Latin, then gentle reader, it must be good Latin – in this case “Art is Long, Life is short”. It is no accident that these are called
Martial “Arts”.
As much as they are self –defense techniques, as much as they are physical exercises, “Martial Arts” are also an indulgence in a world of art no less exquisite than the sight of a Van Gogh or a Henry Moore…I would go on to add that it is precisely because of their inherent quality of possessing life and the impossibility of exact repetition (If I was Murakami, I would have called it Monoganashii – the beauty of that which is fleeting- but me, am just your everyday burnt-out martial artist ;-), that they qualify for a far more appreciative and concentrated approach as compared to, say that used to evaluate everyday paintings or literature. (Ah! The danger of being carried away by verbal convolutions disguised as arguments on aesthetics…tch tch).

Martial Arts are obviously so much closer to the performing arts such as music, dance or drama – but because of their very unpredictability, they bring a sense of spontaneity that needs to be discerned keenly to be appreciated in its entirety. Regular performing arts demand that you appreciate their subtleties at some levels like
1. Understanding/ appreciating the context of the performed piece
2. Understanding/ appreciating the very personal grace or glory that the artiste brings to the piece by sheer force of his/ her unique personality.
3. Understanding the subtler nuances – those subtle shifts in tempo, mood or direction, those points of fulcrum around which such performances rest.

But watching a combat performance by martial artists on the other hand requires your understanding not only on the above but also demands that you tread on different mental planes apart from the levels mentioned above (NO, this isn’t supposed to evoke the image of a critic stretched out in all directions multidimensional space – if it does, you are doing something wrong with your mind – go back to your Ishiguro and try again later) - One, to appreciate what has driven the artist to make any move; Two, the execution of the action (the actual artistry as seen in other arts) and Three, the evaluation of alternatives to that particular move and the results that they might have delivered.

This of course would be impossible for a regular bystander to appreciate - all one sees is two figures approaching each other, a series of indecipherable blows and pummeling that results in either the two separating to fight again or one of the artists biting dust. But for one who has been in the heart of combat, such a fight (how vulgar of me, such a performance!) is much more than mere grappling around – it is at once a revelation of how two minds work, seeking in milliseconds to draw the knowledge of countless practice sessions and the seamless flow of thought into action and intuitive counteraction.

I would love to go on – about the beauty of a 1000 layered katana, the deep perambulations that the Five Rings of Musashi can evoke, about how the stilled mind becomes that single thought which flows into the edge of your hand that launches itself into the universe at your opponent…but…but apparently these subtleties are lost on the high-flying mosquitoes of Cochin; a well-coordinated attack is on its way and I am afraid I must retreat into the Mortein-enveloped confines of my room and seek somnambulistic respite.

And Bolero, which was playing, is winding its way to a crashing crescendo – signaling the waning of my waxing…so here ends a night-induced defense of the very special Arts that I swore to live by.

Someday I shall smite again…until then, watch your Jet Li and read your Musashi.

Good night, gods of the darkness.

The Slightly Desirable Agony of Being Tagged By Irrefusible Women

6 people who top your shit list..... and why:

• G.B&$%u@#$@s&*$@#h – for everything.


• A former boss who made sure everything got personal. I forgive you.


• Specific Hindu/ Muslim/ Xian leaders for their noble  attempts convince others through various disgusting means that their religion is the best for India. May a hundred suns set on you.


• People who hunt animals/ birds for fun – try it with your God-given bare hands, bravehearts. (The people who hunt them for money are also jerks, but a degree less darker in my book)


• A priest who made me run around a lot on the starkest of days, get 7 signatures, asked for proof of belonging to the parish and finally refused to conduct the funeral mass for my father. I give him the same line my cousin did when people laughed at him trying to imitate a solemn church ceremony and later tried apologizing to him “Don’t say sorry to me, say sorry to Jesus”.

Close brushes with death/danger:

• Velankanni - Age 5. Fell into lagoon. Before I went in I waved; Dad dove in, pulled me out – hung me upside down to dry. Apart from the weekends, am so far dry! Hic.

• Highway off Madurai. Hero Honda Sleek stickered BMW @ 70kmph, no helmet. Traffic at halt due to railway crossing. Old woman jumps into road. I swerve, she screeches, we roll over. After the world stops spinning, wake up – head on the road 12 inches away from a lorry’s double tyres and neck against the silencer. If the train had been on time, this blog would be going thru an existential crisis right now. Since then my Guardian Angel’s been asking for stress allowance.

• Halfway into French class. Class XI – a bored and hungry hand slips into someone else’s bag searching for something to eat. Comes out with bunch of letters. Love letters. Lovely long love letters. Smuggled them out. Read them a lot. Xeroxed them, just in case we lost them. And then did nothing with them ;-( Death? Danger? When loverboy is 6 foot tall at age 18 and is the son of a CBI officer. That’s danger. Or rather Death.

• Main road @ Madurai. 2nd year college. Friend getting beaten up in front of college in middle of Madurai town by 8 thugs with various assortment of weapons for proposing to a girl-and for other related incidents, shall we say. Approx. 60-70 bystanders with traffic halted to watch the fun. GT trying to hold a 7 foot tall, 4 foot wide specimen from pulling a long dagger from his belt. Other courageous classmates trying out gentle holds on thugs but not working. At this point, thugs decide to temporarily transfer violence to another name mentioned by the much maligned “proposee”- into this melee, floats a gentle question “Who is Ganja?” All familiar eyes turn to me. As shakes off an ant, an elephant – the 7 footed giant shakes me off and lifts me by shirt and says “Are you Ganja?. Silence of 5 seconds in which the world slows down to a snails crawl...Me, in what’s supposed to be angry growl, but more an enraged squeak: “Hello baas, my name is Turtle – please put me down”. Ever since then I have stopped cursing all concerned for the 5 names that I was baptized with.

1 preferable(?!?) mode of suicide:

• Disappear down an abyss.


• Without a mess for anybody else.


• With a lingering sense of mystery.     


• Hopefully after everyone I know is no longer around or remembers me.


• God forbid.

9 Guilty pleasures:

• Random Poetry @ Work.


• Beer; Toddy; Sake; Vodka; anything with generous hints of alcohol.


• Madchen Amick in Dream Lover.


• Running fingers through somebody else’s hair. Preferably PYTs ;-)


• Revving the throttle, roaring at 90. Forgive me, o fossils, am a cretin, crude at times.


• Giving just that perfect gift to people and watching their face shine. Why guilty you ask? My credit card sighs.


• Chocolate.


• Petrichor.


• Giving Gyan on life, love, management, Mars…anything.

8 things you never want to forget:

• My 1st nursery rhyme for which I won a recitation prize and still is recounted fondly at family functions much to the embarrassment of the protagonist “Piggy on the railway picking up stones, Down came the Engine Driver and broke his bones; Oooooh, said the piggy, that’s not fair. BAH, said the engine driver, I don’t care” The protagonist as he likes to call himself on such distressing occasions, was well known for his long drawn “Oooh” with pursed lips as well as the Calvinesque screwed-up-face “BAH”.


• The life of my father – from scraping barnacles to sighting the stars...that such a man lived on Earth.


• My 1st interview – the interviewer told me to get out after 5 minutes; I refused; at subsequent intervals of 10 minutes for the next 45 minutes, I was told in different various ways to leave the room. I stuck around pointing out the various facets of my personality that he hadn’t explored. I got the job. Am still at it. And sometimes wonder why.


• Again what my bro & me shared with my father – from waking up at 4am to get “fresh” beef or fish, to riding a brand new Sunny  - triples-a hard & hefty 90 kg man,2 boys of varying sizes- to church to bless it on the 1st day of purchase, to waking up at 5am  and splitting into teams on Dad’s orders to help mum cut vegetables  for breakfast, lunch, dinner and the next day (even if she wasn’t interested too much) and vacuuming/mopping the floor. He loved her, you see.


• Challenging an English teacher that I could teach Tennyson’s Ulysses better than her. And finishing with applause the day after.


• All my pets.


• The way my mother smiles.


• The rush of blood with which I wrote a poem for the 1st time. Didn’t even know it was one.


• 3 days in  Switzerland which included…Finding that you can hire a free cycle by just showing your passport…Listening to a live organ concert in the 12th century Grossmunster church and writing a poem as I listened to the music…Watching the ethereal beauty of stained glass inside The Fraumuster Church…Sitting by the Lake Zurich and feeding popcorn to the swans…Gobbling sprungli on the go…Flirting with a Swiss Bank teller (I always found exhange rates rather fascinating, y’know)…A little blonde angel who wanted me to lift her from a pier- by frantically gesturing with her hands and smiling at me and finally grabbing at my legs until I gave in, held her up, hugged her and put her on the ground – in return, a smile that was worth so much more….Watching car drivers smilingly halt and gesture me to go ahead as I fumbled with the gears on my cycle at traffic crossings…Finding that beer was the same price as water….Drinking water from the many fountains in the city…Watching amateur musicians play amazing classical music at various “platz”s in the city…Stalls on the platform with noone to watch over them – if you want to buy something, you select it and look around for the owner of the stall – who would be nowhere near the stall – Trust Works…Finding out that when you put on an accent, foreigners understand you better; and then realizing that I was speaking like that to some colleagues also…They way the Swiss Landesmuseum was maintained – from suits of armour in humidity controlled rooms, to paintings of the Virgin by Renaissance masters to a miniature of a battle scene – The Swiss do so deserve Switzerland. Being startled by a Swiss girl at a souvenir shop in Lucerne: You are Indian,right? Yes. Indians don’t eat meat right? Yeah, lots of proponents (Ok,ok…I didn’t say proponents – I said something which I don’t remember…) of Hinduism, the majority religion in India, don’t. YOU PEOPLE don’t eat meat but wear leather shoes YOU PEOPLE don’t eat cows, but wear leather belts, carry leather bags, wear leather straps. ME: DUH?!?!? (After consideration of this ultimate question, I came up with the best alternative availability theory; however the next day when I went to the souvenir shop to explain it to her, she was missing ;-(

4 things you wish to forget but never will
Beating up my brother black and blue with a cycle tube. Forgive me, MM, for I did not know what I was doing :-/
Losing in the tiebreaker round in two different national level quizzes.
The day a woman said No. Maybe she didn’t know what she was missing. Maybe she did.
The last few months of my Dad’s life.

5 really exotic dishes you have tried:
1. Homemade Sweet & Sour Pork which my father supposedly learnt from a Chinese friend. Remember the Indo-Chinese Conflict? This was how it started.
2. Cherry Brandy – what goes inside your mouth is a dish.Period.
3. The groom figure made with icing on a wedding cake. My cousin got the bride. Grotesque you say? Tasty I say.4. Various homemade pickles attempted by mom. By the time shes finished with them and after they are discovered 2 years later, declared “NICE & TASTY” and force fed at lunch, they become exotique.5. 3 scoops of Movenpick icecream at a restaurant atop Mt.Titlis. 18 Euros; Rs.900 for a minute of pleasure; Rs.300 a scoop. Yes, I am an Indian. But the pleasure was all Swiss.

5? 5?!?! YOU KIDDING?!?! crushes/loves in your life... Divya-sister of Selma (that was the way I prayed so that God doesn’t confuse her with any other Divya and therefore possibly forget the showers of blessings! ;-), Urmila, Vaishnavi, Sindhuja, Uma, Devi, Arti, Saranya, Naushine, Annie, Vanita, Amita,Vinita, Rebecca, Shalini, Yasmeen, Anjali.


Strangest dream you ever had:
Machine gunning a switchboard that refused to break.
Why machine gun? Why switcboard? Why not break?
Ha Ha Ha (evil laughter) Strange you ask, strange you get.

5 most valued personal possessions:My mom.
My books – all of them.Ring(rosary) gifted by mom.
My poetry. Amazing but true, I do.
My biceps. Next question.3 favorite superheroes..... and why:
Phantom – The Skullring was too good. And his nom-de-guerre too – The Ghost Who Walks.
Mandrake- for a long long time, I dreamt of Xanadu and of course the beautiful Narada.
Karna – Yeah, an obvious superhero  - after reading Amar Chitra Katha, no one would think otherwise.
Doc Savage – After reading Doc Savage, I tried isometric exercises with the legendary Bullworker. My biceps said Yes. Everybody else said Naaaahhhhh.

A wise man once said “The extent to which some men can go to, whilst pandering to the yearnings of strange therefore exotic women is mostly ridiculous, sometimes funny and rarely sensible.”

Ganja Turtle was once a wise man.