Coffee is for closers only

I know a few people who could do with this pep talk.

The rest of the movie's equally amazing, Glengarry Glen Ross. It plays out like a play (of course it would, it is based on one). There's hardly any 'action'. Just a few great actors slapping well written dialoges and monologes over each other. (F words and "leads" rule the word count). Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin - the cast's a director's wet dream really. Must watch.

The life of your ride.

Bikes. Ubiquitous symbols of testosterone-spiked Y-chromosomes. Mean male machines. Dripping coolth and screaming attention.

Exactly a decade ago, those were the precise machinations of my mind as I stepped into a showroom and picked one up for myself. Like any correctly-wired male, I too am a bike fanatic. I dig them. Immensely. They are clearly more than ‘Point A to Point B’ transporters.

But I never came around to loving it more than my life. (Notice the ‘it’ and not a ‘she’ which is to further infuriate bike “lovers”). Mine was a case of natural selection. It just felt right to grow old with.

It had the right amount of firepower, enough acceleration, and optimum stealth to be invisible in spirit, but certainly not in sound. Its valve-less double-stroke heart never allowed it to be that way. So, along we went on our parallel roads that intersected every day.

I was relatively young then. So was it.
Life was stereotypically fearless. So was its throttle.
I freewheeled into a rock band. So did it, on campus roads.
As middle age approached, my body slowed down. So did its top speed.
Thirties rattled my bones a bit. Its chassis started wobbling.
Today, reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Its electrical system has also given way.
I still can’t have more than three large ones in a single sitting. It is still averaging what it did ten years ago.
Bad cholesterol has clogged up the pipes. Its exhaust is making strange noises.

Like I said, it has grown old with me. And I’m happy it did that.

Otherwise, what’s the point in spending your life in keeping your partner in good shape, when you yourself are victimized by time? I chose not to take the path of being a non-performing Hugh Hefner stuck with a supermodel everyone else letches at.

I didn’t give it any special privileges. No stickers. No rear-view mirrors. No dust-cloths tugged in between the handle bar. I remember watching, with unhidden amusement, newly-wed bikers turn into vacuum cleaners at the first sight of a speck. The only time I put cloth to my bike is to wipe off pigeon or rain droppings. And usually that cloth is my handkerchief. (Because the handle-bar is undersupplied, remember?)

So, yes, the bike has as many scratches as I have greys, and as many dents as I have wrinkles. It hasn’t honked in the last 4 years, neither flashed its indicators. Both because of the faulty electrical system. And I wear glasses.

It still remains, like me, very young in spirit (or that's what I'd like to think). And, unarguably, the most reliable piece of engineering I have ever laid my hands or legs on. It still ignites at the first kick. Like it did seven years ago, right after a 720 degree rotation that followed a head on collision with an auto. (Yes, those were our freewheeling days). But it still started after we both got up. That accident left a permanent dent on its tank and a bruise mark on my left thumb.

Nowadays, I sometimes let my eyes linger over it more than needed. Trying to catch a fleeting signal it might give me. Like how will it end its journey. Or, at least, how will it go from here on. See if I can pick some cues there.

And also to see if the exhaust really, really needs a cleanup.

You can't handle a bigger logo

Time wounds all heels.

You give a habit some time, and it becomes OCD.
You give civilization a few centuries, and it defiles.
You give freedom to people, and over time, fanatics emerge.
You give clients some weeks to ponder, and they start disliking what they had approved earlier.
You give love some years, and you take it for granted.
You give life a few decades, and it betrays you.

I wanted to be a painter, a cricketer, a scientist, and a rockstar at different stages of my life. Today, I'm in advertising, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be. And throughout life's course, at any given point, I was always at a place I hadn't ever imagined I would be at, five years before that point.

Makes you wonder. Isn't 'long-term' overrated?

Hello, Urban Comfort.

Last week, us office folks went for an off-roader to Muthodi. (Near Chikmangalur, adjacent to the Bhadra forest reserve.) Cool place, this. Chilly streams, coffee plantations, fireflies, noisy trees and birds, the works.

We did the usual nature-boy things. Bathing in the stream, bonfires, tents, mosquito bites, and lots of spirited liquids. Away from uncivilized world. No electricity, no networks; basically left to our own (and the caretakers') resources. I don't recall when was the last time I survived a whole 48 hours without my phone ringing.

Three days. Lotsa gung-ho. Doing nothing proved to be a fun thing to do.

During the customary song & joke sessions 'round the fires, I often pondered though. Can we last here if it wasn't a recreational trip? I mean, we observed the people who lived and worked there. Quite a bunch. They climbed up & down the slopes without puffing for lung power. They could find their way around the dense foliage in the dark. I have trouble finding the light switch in my home in the dark; or locating the candle during a power cut.

These guys were probably made for this life. It's an evolution thing I'm sure. The giraffes grew necks, the polar bears sprouted fur, and these people got night vision and intravenous odomos.

We, on the other hand, have been fed on urban comforts all our lives. It's one thing to take a break, and talk about how nice the rusty life is, while swimming amidst rocks, pebbles, and imaginary water snakes. Doing it for life is quite another. Honestly, I don't think we can handle it long term. Not just us, even those "earthy" nature-lovers who go round the country on their Bullets, in their cargos and with their rugsacks, Canons flung across their necks. No, the jungles aren't for them too. It for those small kids in shabby clothes, wandering without shoes, living off the land, and reassuring poor souls like us that there are no snakes in the stream.

Albeit, the three days were memorable. The views were breathtaking. So were the scents and sounds of the wild. There was a jungle safari too where the most junglee thing we spotted was a squirrel and a cow with blue horns.

On our way back in the bus, as we reentered familiar stratosphere, we started getting our bearings and our networks back. At the sight of the first bar on the screen, everybody started calling friends and family telling how great the trip was. At the lunch halt, we saw ourselves in the mirror after a long time, secretly hoping we'd resemble Tom Hanks in Castaway. No luck. Same face, more stubble.

The first thing I did after reaching home was turned my ceiling fan to top speed, plugged in my mobile for recharging, switched on Good Knight, turned on my comp, downloaded all the pics from the trip, opened the fridge for a can of beer, and slouched on the sofa to watch the IPL, before reminiscing about how great and natural the rustic life is. Just then the power went off, and I stumbled in the dark looking for the candles. No place like home.

Barely Illegal

.

Hypothetical situation.

Imagine I want to watch a movie. I log into a chat room. Have a few pings and pokes with several people. From the random sample, I manage to strike a conversation with a couple of blokes. The conversation meanders towards movies. One of them happen to have that movie with him/her. I talk him/her into sending the movie over to my place, on returnable basis. He/she agrees. I get the movie. I watch it.

Now imagine this process , with just the first and the last line. Nothing in between. I want to watch a movie, I go online, I get movie. (It's akin to walking up to that hot chick in a bar, and getting straight to "your place or mine" without the unnecessary fluff in between).

Hardly fair. Hardly moral. But barely illegal. No?


As long as no one is selling/buying, there shouldn't be a conflict of copyright interest. (Cory Doctorove for President of Sweden, anyone?)

So, why this?

Those Swedish blokes have 'cuffed the poor pirates. Sad.

But the authorities have got it all wrong. This isn't going to change anything. ANYTHING. Music sharing didn't die with Napster; it only spawned better ways to do it. (Like piratebay, hello irony!)

The whole thing loops like a mobius strip - you won't know where it begins, where it ends, or where it leads to. They might have to sue Google next to throw up any of these sites. Because, in the end, all the torrent sites do is connect two (or more) people who want to share files. It DOES NOT store any material on servers. Technology is beautiful.

Any which way, this trial is like spitting on a forest fire. This runs too deep and too wide to be controlled by a Swedish court.

Coming to the intellectual property/moral issue, there isn't much. The big studios are called so because they earn that much - big. And a community of benign buccaneers is not that big a hole in their pockets. So they should just stop whining, and focus more on making better movies. If the movie's really good, a majority of these pirates will go out to watch it in the theaters anyway, or buy the DVD. The independents / lesser known movies actually gain from all this. Because their movies are seen by more people than a small film festival audience. You don't expect otherwise for some of these people who share files, to actually get an opportunity to see nice little independent films from, say, Siberia.

Meanwhile, during such time the Swedish pirates cool their heels in the cell, everyone will just google other torrent sites, some even better than bay. Like this. Or this. ?

Long live Google. And Mr. Doctorove.

And then he said the words

.

Place: The Commercial Street Signal, Bangalore.

It is late evening. I am driving down dispensary road, approaching the Comm Street signal. This guy in a white WagonR has been playing the normal Bangalore driver since Infantry Road: Cutting across lanes, zig zagging, no signals etc. right in front of my car.

At the signal, it's gotten red and I am about to stop at the front line. Suddenly, this guy cuts across from the left and stops at a diagonal tangent to two cars - one of which is mine.

Road-rage syndrome happens; and I turn Hulk-like green in my mind. But given the physique I've been endowed with, I am just content with a random finger gesture in his general direction.

Uhhhh... that really pisses him off. He gets out of the car, and approaches me with a look that is seeming to say "I've had enough of this shite dude, that's the last straw...." Yeah. Right.

Pretty well-built this chap, with a swagger of a RGV underworld movie sidekick.

In the surety of not surviving 30 seconds in a physical duel with him, I gather courage to roll down my window, so as to make our philosophical talk more convenient and comfortable.

He raises his finger, his voice, and spews out something about how he is being polite and i shouldn't have done what i did, and how he can bash me up, to which I nod in agreement. Actually I'm just waiting my turn to speak.

He manages to finish, and waits for my reply.

I blurt out something "Hey, you were driving rashly, you were cutting across, you were not following lane discipline," etc. to absolutely no effect.

This guy ponders over it for a moment. Then points at the road behind us, and asks "What lanes? Do you SEE any lanes on this road, dude?"

A quick WTF moment occurs in my head. I actually turn back to see the road, before realizing he was being unknowingly rhetorical.

I gather my temporarily-lost sense of perception back, and repeat the same set of questions, a bit more quasi-aggressively this time.

He ponders again, the questions probably too much data for his head to analyze.

An answer coming, finally, I can see the enlightened look on his face.

"Dude, THIS is how we drive in Bangalore....

I wait, with bated breath.

And then he finishes his proclamation with these words.

... live with it."

Multiple WTF moments occur in turbulent fashion.

He, once done with this traumatizing exercise of answering an actual question, rants off again in the 'bashing up' zone.

Just then the signal turns green, and my saviour.

He goes back to car, and drives off.

"Live with it" the words are ringing in my head as I drive back to home, along with other words that ALWAYS come to your mind after everything is over; words that you think you should have said at that time. But you never.

But "live with it" stays in my mind longer.

Everybody, including me, know that this has been our problem since ages. Living with it. Which I always translate the vernac "chalta hai" into.

But this is the first time someone has actually retorted with these words in an actual situation. Someone has actually used these words as defense (or attack, as in this case) for their actions.

Did he really think before he said that?

Yeah, he probably meant it too.

Ok, I said to myself.

We should all probably try and live with it; and wait to die of it.

Whatever it means.