Faux News

One of my favourite sub-genres of humour is spoofing - news, brands / ads, characters, etc. I discovered this site called theonion.com which creates spoof news on a daily basis. I visit this site every now and then, and some of the articles over the years have been really hilarious. I haven't visited this site for quite some time. I was reminded of it, however, when I was reading some other blogs on the net.

Last year, I was one of the persons in charge of bringing out the daily newsletter for our fest. Running short of articles to fill up our newsletter, we thought of spoofing some ads that appear in the papers. This is what I am most proud of ;) -

Visitation of a Verbose Verbiage

I do not know how many of you have seen 'V for Vendetta'. It is a 2006 film with screenplay by the same guys who created 'The Matrix' and it stars Natalie Portman and a masked character. They meet very early in the movie, and he introduces himself to her in these words :

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Whew... ! Needless to say, I was tempted to commit it to memory !

Risk-management

Today, we had our "Principles of Management" paper. There were a couple of problems based on the 'Pay-off' matrix and the 'Opportunity-Loss' matrix. I just wanted to find out whether both will give the same answer, given the probabilistic distribution of each event. While going through some pdfs, I came across this :

In decision-making under pure uncertainty, the decision maker has absolutely no knowledge, not even about the likelihood of occurrence for any state of nature. In such situations, the decision-maker's behavior is purely based on his/her attitude toward the unknown. Some of these behaviors are optimistic, pessimistic, and least regret, among others.

Optimist: The glass is half-full.
Pessimist: The glass is half-empty.
Manager: The glass is twice as large as it needs to be.

Optimists are right; so are the pessimists. It is up to you to choose which you will be. The optimist sees opportunity in every problem; the pessimist sees problem in very opportunity. Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.

Nice, eh ? Especially the last line.

The GRiP of the Wealthy

I am an MBA aspirant, hence, read a lot of business and corporate news. I read articles on rich Indian companies and rich Indian people. I read interviews of and articles on the various owners, CEOs and MDs of Indian companies. I can't help noticing that more than 95 % of the richest guys are basically from Gujarat, Rajasthan or Punjab. Basically, the Indian corporate scenario is ruled by a combine of Marwadis, Gujaratis, Sindhis, Punjabis and Parsis. These five communities control most of large companies. Not only that, a majority of the high posts in most MNCs as well as other companies are with this guys.

I have opened in an alongside tab, the Forbes 2006 list.

The list goes like this : (the ones in caps are not from the GRiP !)

l n mittal
m ambani
a ambani
A PREMJI(nb : gujarati speaking! )
k p singh
s mittal
k birla
t tanti
R CHANDRA(I don.t know where he is from !)
p mistry
a agarwal
s & r ruia
a godrej
SHIV NADAR(Tamil Nadu, I think)
i jain
d sanghvi
r bajaj
so on and so forth.....

Basically, Mittals, Birlas, Ambanis, Agarwals, Singhs and Jains rule the roost.

A favourite poem of mine

While in school, we had two textbooks for English. One was the Radiant Reader (RR) and the other was the Bal Bharti (BB). These textbooks used to comprise of an assortment of short stories and poems. Among all the poems, the ones I liked the most were Daffodils and Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast. There was also that poem "Home they brought the warrior dead" which was quite nice.

Surprisingly, the poem on Colonel Fazackerley is not very well known. I think it is a wonderful and wonderfully funny poem. I googled for it, and here it is. From what I remember, the 2nd para begins like this
"On the very first evening, while waiting to dine,
The Colonel was feeling rested and fine,"
and, I don't think the fourth para was included in the textbook.

COLONEL FAZACKERLEY BUTTERWORTH-TOAST
by Charles Causley

Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast
Bought an old castle complete with a ghost,
But someone or other forgot to declare
To Colonel Fazack that the spectre was there.

On the very first evening, while waiting to dine,
The Colonel was taking a fine sherry wine,
When the ghost, with a furious flash and a flare,
Shot out of the chimney and shivered, 'Beware!'

Colonel Fazackerley put down his glass
And said, 'My dear fellow, that's really first class!
I just can't conceive how you do it at all.
I imagine you're going to a Fancy Dress Ball?'

At this, the dread ghost made a withering cry.
Said the Colonel (his monocle firm in his eye),
'Now just how you do it, I wish I could think.
Do sit down and tell me, and please have a drink.'

The ghost in his phosphorous cloak gave a roar
And floated about between ceiling and floor.
He walked through a wall and returned through a pane
And backed up the chimney and came down again.

Said the Colonel, 'With laughter I'm feeling quite weak!'
(As trickles of merriment ran down his cheek).
'My house-warming party I hope you won't spurn.
You MUST say you'll come and you'll give us a turn!'

At this, the poor spectre - quite out of his wits -
Proceeded to shake himself almost to bits.
He rattled his chains and he clattered his bones
And he filled the whole castle with mumbles and moans.

But Colonel Fazackerley, just as before,
Was simply delighted and called out, 'Encore!'
At which the ghost vanished, his efforts in vain,
And never was seen at the castle again.

'Oh dear, what a pity!' said Colonel Fazack.
'I don't know his name, so I can't call him back.'
And then with a smile that was hard to define,
Colonel Fazackerley went in to dine.

Guest Columnist : Takla

I thought I would display some articles that I liked in my blog. This one, written in some other blog by a friend of mine called Takla (It is not that he suffers from premature baldness and we make fun of him. It so happened that when we all first met him, he had just returned from Tirupati with a shiny scalp as blessings, and since we weren't very familiar with his name - Anantharaman is quite some name - the name Takla stuck. In fact, many students in our campus don't even know him by his real name. Sample this piece of conversation.

Someone : "Hey, do you know anything about the robotics event to be held ?"
Me : "Why don't you go and meet Anantharaman ?"
that Someone : "Who Anantharaman ?"
Me : "Arre, don't you know him ? 3rd year mech.. I think I saw you talking with him the other day."
that same Someone : "No.. who ?"
Me : "We all call him Takla ... well how do I describe him ?"
Someone : "Ohhh.. Takklllaa .. I thought that was his name... so his name is Anantharaman is it.. ?" )

Anyway, here's the piece.

"Ah! Home at last". This was the only thought that raced through my mind as the train hurtled past the final stations of the journey. I was only too aware of the fact that my mood was going to change drastically in the next few minutes. "Oh! Home at last?" was to be the updated version of my thoughts, and sadly it hasn't changed a bit over the past few days. My mother had arrived at the station. The conversation was quite normal till we arrived at the parking lot. Till then it had been quite harmless, seasoned with occasional remarks regarding changes in my anatomy over the past semester. It was only when we were comfortably seated in the car that she looked me in the eye, and asked THE QUESTION (Er.. you know what they are bound to ask the day after your exam ends). I quickly browsed through the gallery of my 'ready – to - wear expressions'. I couldn't find any of the latest 'fraudo' looks. So I decided to execute the backup, which was a part of the ' winter 2004 ' compassion show. It was of a pale hue, and made me look like a quarter quintal of cow dung. But it served the purpose and some temporary, well-earned mercy was shown. Phew! That was close. Unfortunately this was only the beginning. The toughest times were yet to come. They were those moments in the middle of some arbitrary conversations when I knew that if I were to utter just one more word, the outcome would be an hour's sermon on how to revamp my CGPA. I would have to spontaneously change the topic from, "The funniest professor on campus" to "Hey! That dog's pissing on our car!". The first time I was successfully caught off guard was over dinner yesterday night. I was explaining how beautiful our campus was, to my grand mom, and the freedom that we were given here. "Are also allowed outside at night?" "Oh! Yes we are!" was my prompt reply. "Then, do you roam around when it's dark?" Engulfed in a fit of machoism, I replied "Oh yes we do!"(With due apologies to manu and venky). That was enough for her to conclude that I missed the first lecture frequently, to which I pleaded guilty after a few minutes of desperate attempts at defending my cause. The outcome can be assumed by anyone who has read this far. Please pray for me guys, till the results arrive. Jai Yanthra Dharma!"

Airport Blues !

A few days back, I had taken a flight from Bombay. I was accompanied by a friend of mine, N, and while we were wandering about in the lobby, we met another friend of ours, A, who was basically from Ahmedabad, and who would be flying on the same flight as ours. This was not a coincidence really, because college was reopening the next day. Soon it was time to board, and we had to walk through the security check. I am very particular as to what I carry in my handbag - batteries, nail-cutters, pointed objects, matchboxes, anything that can be construed to be harmful. Those who travelled by air in the 15-20 months following 9/11 will remember the extreme precaution taken by most airlines.

Next in line was N. His first handbag, a backpack (Jansport if a remember aright), came through clean. There was apparently some problem with his second bag. The airline official asked N to open the bag so that he could sift through the contents. The main compartment did not reveal anything even remotely suspicious, much to the airline official's surprise. N was giving me looks like - "Phaltu mein tang karte hai... ". The guy then opened the side compartment. Out tumbled 1 plastic box, 1 plastic pouch and 2 deodorant tins. The plastic box contained, much to my disbelief, 2 long thin razor sharp cutters, 1 tester, a couple of screwdrivers, something that resembled a time-bomb - that too digital, lots of wires and an assortment of small electronic objects. (At this point, it is important to note that N was studying Electronics in our college !)

I blurted out, without thinking, grinning from ear-to-ear, "Dude, you can assemble an entire bomb here !". (A few years ago my dad had the chance to visit Turkey, and since at that time foreign good-quality deodorants weren't available in India, he purchased quite a few of them. Since many of them were quite expensive, he innocently kept them with him, in his handbag. At the security check, he was held aside. As many of you might be knowing, deodorant cans are inflammable. At that time my dad didn't know that. The Turkish officer wasn't very fluent in English. And my dad decided to play it safe by keeping a poker face throughout, as if he wasn't understanding anything. The officer couldn't fathom why somebody would want to carry so many deo cans in a flight, unless it was to blow them up midair. He tried asking my father the same. Blank face. Finally, the Turk took my dad into another room, took a lighter, held it alight in front of the deo can, and sprayed the deo through the flame. He then turned to my dad and said "See - fire !". My dad stilled maintained his poker face. The guy got exasperated, and let off my dad, as a hopeless case ! )

Anyway, the airline guy looked up at N with a look that said "?". N started explaining, ofcourse. Meanwhile, both me and A, or J- as we fondly call him, went a little ahead and laughed our heads off. Later, N joined us, looking very sheepish. It turns out that the thingamujjig was an ammeter-cum-voltmeter, and that N didn't know about the explosive nature of deo cans. Luckily for him, he got to keep the deos, the razors went straight into the dustbin, and the remaining kit was given to the steward for safekeeping for the length of the flight, with instructions to hand them over to N after the flight landed safely at the other end !

That, was one hilarious experience.

Feet larger than a Foot

I have something in common with Bipasha Basu and Esha Deol. All three of us have large feet. (We have something else in common too - we are all muscular !)

The size of my feet (thankfully it has stopped growing now) is 14. It had shot beyond 12 when I was in 8th itself. This has led to a series of unusual predicaments for me. Initially, when I was in school and brown leather shoes were compulsory, I had to make do, till I passed out of school, with a really old pair of shoes whose leather had stretched enough to fit me. However, I could not find a pair of sports shoes or sandals of my size in the whole of Bombay and Pune. As far as I know, as of now, footwear beyond size 12 isn't available in most places. It wasn't as if you couldn't get shoes at all - you did, but either they were of bad quality or they were custom-made and ugly !

There are only two advantages of having gargantuan sized feet. Firstly, the chances of your footwear getting stolen are very tiny. Who will want to steal my sandals - they are double the size of most sandals, and occupy an unbelievably large amount of space. Secondly, large feet provide free temporary air-conditioned sitting lounges.

A few years ago, me and my family had gone to Simla, and on our way, we stopped for a couple of days at Delhi. After seeing Lodhi gardens, India gate, the Lotus temple, etcetara, we had nothing else to do. So we decided to see the real Delhi. We went to Palika bazaar, Nerula's and just walked around Connaught place and Ring road. We were tired and just wanted to sit for sometime before making our way back to our hotel. Then, I came up with an economically viable solution ! So confidant was I of not getting footwear of my size, (after years of shoe-searching), that we went to the nearest shoes store, and asked for shoes of my size. Now, the shop keeper wasn't willing to admit immediately that he didn't have shoes of my size. (they always do that.. and we wanted to capitalize on that) So, they pretended to search for shoes, in the meantime trying to engage our interest in other things. Blah, blah, blah ... basically we got what we wanted - the comfort of a soft seat and an a/c. The rest is history ... !

README

There are different styles of writing blogs. After reading quite a few blogs, I think I can classify blogs.

1. Intimate Personal Diary blogs
2. General blogs with a mixture of personal thoughts, quoted articles and other stuff
3. Information blogs
4. Quiz blogs
5. I-think-I-am-the-next-Bertrand-Russell blogs

I hate the first and last kind of blogs. I sincerely hope mine doesn't fall under either category !

The Inauguration

Nowadays, I have started reading a few of the many blogs on the internet. After having read many-a-blog, I have come to the conlusion that besides being very entertaining, they are also very informative. I had started my own amateurish efforts at blogging about a year back. This was what I had said in my first post : "I thought that even i should have a blog of my own - blogger / blogspot is owned by Google - so it was an automatic choice ! Funny, my life revolves around Google. The start page for my browser is google.com. I use gmail for my mail, orkut for socializing, google-earth (extensively) for looking at maps and studying roads, gtalk sometimes, and now - blogger !"

However, I didn't quite like the name of the link to the blog. It was very unimaginative, I thought. So, I have found a better one. One that describes me a lot. I guess, people who know me, even those who have known me for only minutes maybe, will find this title quite apt !