Gotcha Suckers!!!!

I say it best, when I say nothing at all. Specially if nothing can be blown up into a 600 +/- 300 word blog post.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A Tribute to my Landline

On sunday, the 6th of April, the land line rang at our house, and for a minute everyone was startled at having heard a noise that was so distinctively familiar, but at the same time, was something that hadn't been heard for so long that it sounded unusual all the same. It was similar to listening to the voice of an old friend, but after he'd hit puberty, with a time gap of nearly eight years or so, such that the voice had changed but you knew it was him nevertheless.


Caller: Hi! Can I speak to so-and-so?
Me: May I know who's calling, please?
Caller: I am XYZ.
Me: Hold on for a minute, I'll just pass on the phone.
Caller: Thanks!


A pretty regular and random exchange between two people, but it was something that seemed like a blast from the past. I began thinking of how long it had been since I had such a conversation with anyone. With the presence of cell phones being the norm, its rare that anyone in the present times would usually get to talk that way.

Before cell phones paved their way into our lives and changed forever the way we went about with our daily existence, the grand old land lines ruled the roost. At home in Mysore, we had an antique piece for our telephone, the one which people used in the late 50's or early 60's movies to relay secret messages or locations where the kidnapped would be exchanged for ransom and then fail to show up.

It had an old fashioned dial, and a heavy receiver and with the two together, nobody in our family was required to go to the gym for bicep workouts, and one's fingers became sturdy and well exercised to bear the brunt of canings received in school for not completing assigned homework, or being late to class, or being inattentive during lessons or for being an errant student, though invariably it ended up being a hitherto unseen ecclectic combination of more than one of the four aforementioned misdemeanours.

Needless to say, the butterfly effects of us having had the phone model we did made my teachers in school healthy as well, and gave them their much needed workout cum catharsis, something that I would get good Karma for. Now who'd imagine one'd be entitled to good Karma for not having been a good student, eh? Loopholes aplenty!

As times changed, and as the locations of the rented houses we lived in changed, so did the corresponding telephone exchange whose jurisdiction we fell under, and it was the norm for each of the telephone exchange officials who came to connect the phone and hand us the telephone directory to implore with us to upgrade to the new telephones, complete with push buttons and speaker phone and caller ID to ignore blank calls.

I was certain the blank calls were because I had turned 13 and hence fallen into the eligible male category, although we later found out that it was some toddler in the neighbourhood whose baby-sitter's idea of keeping the kid occupied was for him to press random numbers on the telephone. That sort of explains why the voice on the other end was goo goo gaa gaa over me! Story of my teenage love-life.

Repeated requests notwithstanding, it was a collective decision for us not to upgrade to the new models, even though the exchange offered them to us for free! We were dinosaurs and were proud of our prehistoric phone. Plus, the management at home sort of figured out that the most loquacious ones who'd use the phone copiously would be dissuaded from doing so if one got extensively tired of holding up the receiver, or having to repeatedly dial the number in the absence of a lovely redial key.

The increase in telephone bill amounts in arithmetic progression with a high common difference between two successive members of the series disproved this assumption, and other means, including asking the teachers use the cane with greater frequency had to be then resorted to.

That was the saga of the outgoing calls from our phone. The tales related to the incoming calls was something else altogether.

It is a well established fact that until a boy's voice breaks, and the vocal chords are fully developed at the onset of puberty, that it is sort of hard to tell if it is a male voice, unless one would, at the tender ages between 6 and 12 resort to using expletives with gay abandon. However, at that formative stage of my life when I inculcated within me everything that my folks, the television, the newspapers and Indrajal comics taught me, I was expletive free.

This led to pretty funny situations (in retrospect) as I had been made the de-facto answering machine when nobody else was around to receive their calls. I was mistaken, on some occasions to be my Mum, my sister or my grandma, and they sometimes in turn were mistaken to be me.

Not that I was a stud in voice recognition either. Most of my friends' sisters I thought were their Mums and so on and so forth. This let to a situation that had a veritable comedy of errors associated with it, as one went about trying to navigate through embarassing situations in order to take the right message or get through to the right person in the household.

There was one instance where a family friend had remarked about the fact that I had impeccable phone manners, and how hard it was for the kids of today to be polite to elders and all that. My head was swollen no end with the praise meted out, as the center of gravity of my body shifted, as a result of which I had trouble walking for the next few days thereafter.

I think I would have been unceremoniously ejected out of my household in order to go out on my own to earn money had call centers sprung up then the way they've done now, more so if child labour laws hadn't been passed by then and the UNHRC hadn't raised such a hue and cry about it.

Thankfully, all that I got was a pat on the back and a few extra pieces of chocolate as I was indulgently let off to play when the adults continued their conversations, for I had my 3rd grade final exams the next day, and I still hadn't learnt where the Manasarovar lake was located, and I was not able to plot the course of the Narmada or the Tapti river.

The times they are-a changing now. Everyone at home has their own cell phones. In fact, I am certain that this is the way things are headed in every household in the country, and its not something I am particularly sanguine about.

Its been a move long pending, but over the past three weeks, I've finally reached the place where I've made up my mind to make minimal use of my cellphone, except under exceptional circumstances or to talk to people I know I can't see, but would still want to talk to. Friends and family who are geographically removed from my current physical location would fall under that category, and I'm subsisting on the usage of my office extension for intra-office telephone calls.

I'd prefer to meet people the old way as well, plan for a time and a place and make sure to get there as promised, rather than use the cell phone as a mechanism for constant updating of one's position.

I know cellphones have become a necessary evil, and that although what I am saying sounds nice in theory, and might be hard to put into practise, every time I reach out for my cell to lead me into temptation, my mind wanders back through the recesses of time and space to my old antique earth-quake proof landline with its shiny black dial and 1 kg receiver, and I think of all the fun times that I've had thanks to it, and I wonder whether it will ever be possible for things to be that way again.

For better or for worse, I think those thoughts are better off as memories. Plus, my current ring tone, should I ever choose to remove my phone out off silent / vibrating mode is that of an old phone ringing, as a dedication to the times gone by.

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Saturday, April 05, 2008

Trick or Treat ? "Meh."

In true customary fits of arbitness that the owner of this blag is prone to under normal circumstances, he has chosen to write this post in third person.

Call it a strong inclination to not write in a hitherto observed manner, call it an overdose of Asterix comics featuring Julius Ceasar where the subject in question also refers to himself in the third person, name and all, call it the blog owner's need to satiate the reader's need for reading the same garbage over and over again, albeit packaged differently each time or call it Ishmael, your call.

The blog owner, who will henceforth be referred to in the third person singular pronoun (he / him - in lowercase ONLY) turns 25 tomorrow. Yeah, its time for you, dear reader, to acknowledge that and wish him, should you choose to. The thing is, he's not really too keen on your wishes, and this post is being written for posterity simply because its nice to reflect on one's thoughts a few years down the line.

He thinks his archived posts are really fun to read, narcissistic or egotistic though it might sound. He wants this post also to fall under the aforementioned category.

Now, he's not particularly excited about turning 25. On being asked to make a statement to the general public regarding this supposedly monumentous occasion, he had this to say - umm...ahh...ah ha! Meh.

Maybe he also said it because its an intensely private emotion that he'd like to keep to himself and celebrate and enjoy it with those close around him rather than get screen printed t-shirts about it each time he finishes another complete revolution around the sun or go engage in something other than acts of random kindness, it is something for you to figure out, but he's sure its futile to write beyond this paragraph because he thinks he's lost your attention already.

Turning 25 is not a big deal. Turning 18 is. Then one can sing that Bryan Adams song '18 till I die' and mean it. Its eligible to be sung only by those above 18. If you're a 15 year old singing '18 till I die' like you mean it, you have acromegaly, and it is imperative that you get a medical check up. Go on, the rest of the blog is for adults only, anyway. 18 also gives you the right to vote, the right to drive a geared motor vehicle of any sort, and to watch adult movies, though it has been proven statistically that more sub-18s watch stuff meant for the above 18 year olds.

Turning 21 is a big deal. Now you can sing '1921' by The Who, because even though the song title is misleading, the song is all about how Pete Townshend feels that '21 is a good year, and by the principles of self-interpretation of any situation to suit your convenience, one could also assume that this is a song for a 21 year old. In addition, if you are a guy, you can get married and if you are a girl, you could be having your third child post matrimony (in theory), should your need to have great-great-great grandkids and SEE them while you're still alive is so very strong. Also, one can elope in a manner similar to a Hindi movie starring Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla, and then commit harakiri simply because the script demanded so.

Turning 25, however, awards you no such privileges. No dramatic deaths, no extra incentives, no confetti parades (thankfully) and no pay hikes. It earmarks what the Times of India or the Bangalore Mirror calls a quarter-life crisis, especially for those like him, who've been trying to find themselves for so long, with varying degrees of success.

When asked about how he is going to deal with the possible onset of a quarter life crisis, he had this to say - 'Meh'.

He is alarmed about the possible onset of relatives who would now be hounding him as a last resort to get some poor unsuspecting girl married off to him, after every other guy who is more eligible than him has rejected the said person on various grounds.

It is widely claimed and acknowledged among those of his community that despite his apparent reputation of being a 'software engineer', that he associates himself with 'musician types' and other such riff-raff and is 'anti-social' and is consequently probably going to turn up as a match only if one were to try and scrape the bottom of the barrel one last time, and the upturn it, give it a vigorous shake, to see what might've been stuck there.

The other alarming prospect that fills each of his two hundred and six bones with dread is dealing with birthday wishes which are invariably followed by the statement - 'Where is the treat?'. He understands perfectly the sentiment behind the wish, and can acknowledge it gratefully with extreme courtesy, politeness, a brilliant 28-teeth Pepsodent smile, but the request that follows it is baffling.

He is of the opinion that this is similar to a guy speaking to a girl and exchanging perfunctory greetings with her on a few occasions, and then randomly saying - 'You're beautiful, will you marry me?'. Its almost as if the guy expects the girl to marry him simply because he said she was beautiful.

If you want a treat, it should be accompanied by a present. Or else you should not ask for one. That is a sure-fire way of making him treat you, because he's a big fan of this whole reverse-psychology thing. Plus he's already got a treat white list, and these special people will be treated no matter what. Its his way of being able to spend time with them when he can if he can.

The whole 25 thing is not bothering him one bit. He's sure that the next 25 years will be as eventful if not more, if he has any say in how circumstances will transpire.

To quote Longfellow from 'A Psalm of Life':

Let us then be up and waiting
with a heart for any fate
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labour and to wait.


PS - Comments disabled for this post. he is more comfortable this way.

Dear Blog, I stuck to my word. I hope you will give this post a 5.5 on 10.

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Thursday, April 03, 2008

To My Dear Blog

Dear Blog,

I love you. From the bottom of my heart. I love you like I have loved no other blog in my entire life. You are the only blog I will ever have. However, I also have a live journal that I have been updating much more regularly than I have been writing in you.

At the outset, let me clarify that the relationship I share with you is not one which requires me to be monogamous, despite the fact that I am a huge fan of the same. I somehow don't think I am off my rocker enough (yet) to correlate the concepts of monogamy and blogging in the same breath without wondering whether I've finally reached the tipping point that will have me institutionalized.

I like writing, its just that I think of you as an exclusive space where I write things that really make other people laugh or react in ways that would make them think I write better than the average Idiot who talks about his foreign trips and about the food he ate there and the basketball games he saw, the concerts he had been to and all that nonsense.

You are not a random sounding board for me, just so you know.

There are about six posts that I began writing to you, all of which I thought had significant enough content to be rendered publishworthy in your hallowed online space, but a multitude of factors conspired against my being able to do so, including the fact that I was getting paid to write stuff in a couple of online publications as well as in a print magazine, and having felt the urge to let the necessary evil of Mammon, the God of Wealth, into my life if ever so shortly, I had expended all my creative energies and my valuable time reserved for you in that pursuit.

I shall try and see that such things don't happen in the future. But circumstances might dictate otherwise, as a disclaimer.

However, this open letter to you is just to let you know that my love for writing started with you, and unless the blogger server conks out or we are ACTUALLY living in the matrix and some machine is making me do this until my purpose is served and I am then converted into some gross protein shake for the next set of code monkey babies to be 'born' into this world, I shall always keep updating you whenever I am able to.

I apologise for not having written to you earlier this year, but to make up for it in my own little way, I will be putting up another post in a day or two. How does that sound?

love,
Hari

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