An Excerpt

An excerpt from one of my favourite books 'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller.The following is an excerpt of a conversation between Nately and an old man hee meets in a whorehouse:

Nately was instantly up in arms again. "There is nothing so absurd about risking your life for your country!" he declared.

"Isn't there?" asked the old man. "What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for."

"Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for."

"And anything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for. ........."

Pedestrian Tales

It has been more than one year since I graduated. It wasn’t your everyday academic graduation. I graduated from being a pedestrian to a motorist. And I have never looked back. Because I couldn’t. The eyes have to be alert and watchful searching for flicker of movements (or the lack of it) when you are driving in India. The only looking back I did was via my rear view mirror (one of which broke one slippery, rainy day. For details, see this post).

Well, there is nothing pedestrian about Pedestrians. In this post, I try to classify them along with their attributes knowing fully well that it is an impossible task. Still, it’s a try. Here we go:

1. You have a thing called a brake in your vehicle, don’t you?: You are on a highway cruising at seventy kph and you see a bloke standing in the middle of the road. You lean hard on the horn from a good fifty meters away and all he does is stare at you nonchalantly. You brake hard, slow down and after ascertaining that he has no notions of moving aside, take your vehicle around him.

2. Don’t walk on the road as if you own it, walk as if you don’t give a damn who owns it!:Well, this class does exactly just that! And that makes it quite a difficult proposition. And guess what? They also don't give a damn who is driving on it!

3. You talking to me?: Now this class is different. Not only they don't heed your frantic calls seeking way, they are always ready with a mouthful of choicest words. And more often than not, they are usually women.

4. Cattle class pedestrians: I hope blogspot isn't as famous as twitter. Else I may have to backtrack this entire post the way Tharoor did his statement. One observes that the more our civilization has advanced, the more our people exhibit what I call, for want of a better phrase 'cattle like behaviour'. The varied response that cattle usually exhibit in response to repeated honking of horns is reproduced in the human populace and is characterized by unexpected behaviour on the part of the pedestrian. To be fair to the cattle though, it has been observed that they have been exhibiting calculated responses to horns. A vehicle has to come, slow down and blow its horn and they spontaneously make way for the vehicle. And we humans call ourselves civilized!

5. Fight or Flight?: A bloke is walking across the road- lost in his thoughts, dreaming of a someone somewhere, of pleasures attained, of the girl living next door... well, you get the drift. Popo goes the horn quite close to him. He is startled. He freezes in mid stride, legs planted wide apart, arms slightly held away from the torso with a look of sheer terror on his face. Its the moment of truth! What he does next decides the fate of all concerned- himself, the vehicle and its occupants and the other pedestrians. Luckily, for me, I have come out unscathed from such encounters.

Well, that sort of sums up what I can think of right now. The next time you are on your vehicle, cruising along, do spare a thought (a good deal of thought, rather) for those pedestrians if you are to have an uneventful ride.

AD MAD

1 year, 1 month and 20 days late. But here it goes, with due apologies.

Ads. I love them. Well, most of them. It is a real pleasure to watch those carefully crafted movies made within specific time constraints conveying their necessity to the targeted audience. And if they are humorous too, it makes your day! 

I love the zoo-zoo ads. Also the fevicol ones. And there are many more in the list. But I don't understand certain ads or the logic which the producers think will make them sell like hot cakes. Here are some of them:

1. Akshay Kumar in Thums Up Ad: Want to 'taste the thunder'? Want your Thums Up? Our resident khiladi of Bollywood behaves rather irrationally when it comes to the bottle of blackish aerated drink. Rather than go to the nearby store (you can get them at the paan wallahs too), he starts off in bizarre ways. Thankfully advising viewers not to repeat the actions, he sometimes gets to the bottle without touching his feet to the ground causing destruction evrywhere(and yeah, there's a twin involved too!); sometimes he is chased by someone on a bike for the bottle; sometimes its his girlfriend playing the thief! The point is: "Have you ever seen him pay for those bottles of fizz?" Never! And why go to such death defying levels when you can get the same thing at 10-15 rupees at the nearest store? I can never understand it!

2. Hero Honda ad featuring Aryan Baruah: Yeah. This guy is broke too! His girlfriend sends him an sms wishing Good Night and he has to ride out all the way to her place to reply. It seems his vehicle's mileage is better than his network's plans (or his financial capabilities). So touching! 

But wait, may I suggest something Mr Baruah? How about using those monthly sms packs or the 1 paisa per sms plans? Fill them, no need to shut them and forget about them (at least for a month!). Just my suggestion though.

As an aside, the ad also shows the mean side of a girl's nature. The poor guy has just reached home and she sends him another message wishing 'sweet dreams'. You know well what the poor guy does (all over again!!!)

3. Karbonn mobile ad featuring Viru and Gambhir: Another pair of broke celebrities! (I hadn't started this post to enumerate famous guys who are broke but it seems it is now!). They are so broke that they buy a dual sim phone shared between the two. The guys are relaxing, probably after a grueling net session. And then it happens. Vidya calls. I don't know about Gambhir but I think Viru is married and his wife's name probably is not Vidya. Anyway, the call comes and they fight over it while no one claims the call from the team coach (wonder where he was during a net session!). 

4. Micromax ads featuring Dhoni: This time they think we are broke! And worse, they accuse us of stealing too. Dhoni came on screen numerous times claiming that his seven micromax mobiles were stolen during the IPL. (Wonder what he was doing with a phone in the dressing room!). Anyway, I have half a mind to file a case in court!

5. The VIP Guy:  There's something about these VIP guys! Remember the ad featuring a guy dressed in a chaddi with a robe over it and saving the girl? Well, this time he saves an entire train bogie by delinking the succeeding bogie containing a bunch of merrymaking ruffians. And a sideways glance at the girl. Now this explains the numerous train accidents in India. The links between the train bogies is weak enough. There are too many bogies lying around the tracks stranded as a result of those VIP men's heroics posing potential danger in wait.

Well, this is enough for now. Now you can wait two more years for the post titled Ad-Mad 2. :)

PS: The name Ad Mad devised by self for use as the title of a round in the quizzes I conduct.