Leaks

Since this is the age of Wiki leaks, here's part one of an unofficial office e-mail chain that did the rounds during a Christmas of yester years. There was this fellow called Secret Zatan, anti thesis of sorts to the Secret Angel campaign running at that time. Some mails are pretty long, especially if you have the time to go through parts 2 and 3 in this chain.

From Secret Zatan
To meoffice>

It was a sad rainy day. I went out for lunch and came back to the office slighly drenched.
Should I make it a half-day, I'm thinking.
I notice some movement in the corridor. It's the HR lady.
She walks into the floor and stands next to me.
She has this bunch of chits in a sad looking box.
She thrusts the box into my face and says "pick one."
I blink. "What for?"
And she says "Secret Angel!!! ofcourse" with a look as though I should've been playing this game all my life. I asked her if it was optional. Nope. No luck there.

I picked one praying that the chit would be mine. No gifts, no funny emails or messages. Nope, no luck there either.

So I'm playing this clunky game, playing angel to a jellybum I never knew existed. I tried smiling at her the next day and she had this "yew, why are you leering at me" look.

#x*%, I suck at this. Why push me into this socializing campaign. Let me alone!!!!
The worst is listening to giggles from neighbourhood cubicles:
"Look what my secret angel send me?"
"Let me have a look...Oooh flowers soooo cuuuute."
Aaaargh!
BTW I got a card from some moron who is playing angel to me. He/she has asked me in a chweet way to guess the angel. Guess what? I don't know who you are and I don't care. But I sure do know that you gotta hell of spare time on your hands to decorate and paint a silly little card.

Now I gotta figure what to buy for the jellybum. Something that will make her purr and say "oooo nice." Any ideas?

-Secret Zatan
---
X to me,
details 12/11/07

Hey Satan, you were too nasty!!! Grrr...

-----
Y to me
show details 12/11/07

I AGREE!!!!! Ahem :D

II. How Ayda came to be

Every child in Ayda knows about its origins. Their knowledge isn't complete, but it goes like this.

Hundreds of years ago, there existed beyond the Eastern ridges of the Kshitidarr, a land called Halyian, one that was more bountiful than Ayda, thirteen times its size, with a huge sprinkling of people. The world of Eywa was not known in its entirety then. And before then, nothing is known, except that people loved what they had, hunting game and perfecting the fine art of growing seeds into food that fed their clan. They settled in Halyian, at the time when the Great King united their clans into one common brotherhood.

The kingdom flourished, but like every thing else, all good things must come to pass. There came a wave of destruction and death, so forceful and unforgiving, that the Great King had to flee. And away they moved to the mountains to escape, where two fears crossed. They feared to step on the mountains, for the Gods they did worship dwelt there. But, overcome by fear fed by evil, they did decide to make the traverse over the Eastern ridge. At what cost, they were to lament, for all the seasons to come.

On the lower reaches, they waited. Much to their relief, the reconnaissance party that had gone ahead had found a pass, dangerous but not insurmountable for the strong and able. Some of the weak were to be left behind. On the next day, the Great King and his best horsemen started first, with prayers of forgiveness on their lips for stepping on the abode of the Gods. Little did they know that pleasant weather was soon to give way. Storm clouds whirled over the mountain in a matter of painful moments engulfing the royal party. When the weather finally cleared, all movement that could be noticed from below was an eagle that circled close to the pass.

Led by their Queen, the remainder of people who made their way to the pass the next day saw below them, in the depths of the mountain, the remains of twenty horsemen who had fallen to their deaths in an icy lake. The storm had blinded the Great King and his best men to their fall. Saddened, but spurred on by what lay behind them, the party pressed on with their march into the unknown. They moved very slowly, weary from hunger, cold, wind, and fear.

The marksmen guarding the rear were the last to make the traverse. When they finally joined the party, they brought with them the news that all those who were left behind were never shown the mercy of death by those whom they were fleeing.

One more day passed, till all could finally rest. When they did, they made a cairn just below the snowline on the other side of the mountain, in memory of the dead and all whom they had left behind. The Queen decreed on that day that no man, woman, or child was ever to cross the cairn of the Great King, for evil lay on the other side. And the noblest of the royal family, no less, would stand guard. From the highest foothill there, as the mist lifted, they sighted Ayda, and they were indeed the first men to do so. They felt a strong warm wind in their faces, one which gave them some relief from despair. It was from a sea, which they did later discover and name Valle Annar.

I. The Pain of Ayda

The Queen Mother looked around from the window in the morning, as the first rays of Vetar kissed her kingdom. Perched at a small elevation, the nucleus of the kingdom was a perfect vantage point. She watched with contentment the numerous villages that surrounded the palace and the lush farmlands that stretched beyond them as far an hour’s flight for the strongest eagle in her aviary. In the distance she could see the foothills and the permanently snow-capped peaks of the Eastern ridge that marked the end of the Kshitidarr, the Great Mountains. It was said that Kshitidarr kept all the rainfall sent from the heavens from escaping the realm of Ayda. Beyond the ridge, lay lands of barrenness for distances obscene, where birds died of exhaustion before they found a trace of life, if the bards are to be believed.

There were signs of peace, and peace alone, all around. Peace, along with the years of prosperity brought boredom alongside. A little kid in a farm far outside the crown couldn't help notice that even the corn was bored by the constant iAydanaction, even when it swayed freely to the westerly breeze. The western winds picked up some speed toward noon and carried with them a wailing that was unnatural, nothing like the kid in the farmland had heard before.

The Princess had passed away, and the golden vibrance of the palace suddenly seemed to have peeled away to welcome shades of white, grey, and black. The Queen Mother, however, was not one to cry. Her watchful eyes carefully flitted from the eyes of one courtier to the other, whose sorrow knew no bounds. She was looking for a sign behind those tears and beneath those voices, for the princess died not a noble death. Moments after the spirit of the Princess of Ayda drifted away from the world of men that noon, her body had turned a ghastly blue. For strange as it may sound, poison was unheard of in Ayda, and not a snake ever hissed in anyone’s living memory.

A few moments passed and the Queen quietly made her way to the antechamber. Moving the linens from the windows, she saw the fluttering regalia of the dispatch riders, eight of them, on the best beasts in the kingdom move swiftly to the East. Leading the pack was Aniveh, her eldest son. They soon would pass the news to the King, the seer who dwelt in the highest foothills of the Kshitidarr. Much ahead of them riders, she saw Garde, the fiercest of her kind, with the mournful message tied to her talons. The Queen sensed discomfort, watching Garde flap her huge wings in the horizon, the span of which became a tad smaller with each passing moment, to her anxious eyes. She looked down at the fields, and found her anxiety heightened by the rays of Vetar that bounced off the polished shields tied to the backs of her dispatch riders.

The Queen Mother looked away.

Ad for good times

Scientific research has shown that the intake of beverages like beer does influence the amount of micturition (yeah).
Nobody's paying me for this. In a generous display of generosity, here's a free ad for Kingfisher beer.

Goddesses of petty things

Arundhati “Booker” Roy is an interesting person. She does have some jaded techniques in her arsenal. Before we start with her, let me tell you a personal experience. I’m using one of Roy’s cheeky techniques here.

Somewhere in the early part of this decade, I was in Mumbai. Fresh from college days of student activism, I got an invite from one of my friends to go to a tribal village near Panvel with activists from an NGO based in the US. Boy, was I happy. So the crew was my friend, three Indian activists from the US - a haggard and intelligent looking man, two ladies, a student of Physics from IIT Powai, and me. All three of them had come down from the US. The two ladies, if I remember correctly (I have a bad case of dementia), were studying in US.

So we land in this tribal village late afternoon. The village was perched halfway on a hill, somewhere near the Mumbai-Pune expressway. Those were the days when the opposition to the expressway had been raging because of displacement issues. We just hung around, had some yummy local food, and just casually chatted with locals, and the day was over. Next morning, we started trekking through forests up to another village. One of these ladies had (in the morning) changed from her casual attire to what seemed to my fashion sense as a cotton Saree. On the way, we reached a nice vantage point, which offered a clear view of the expressway at a distance, snaking its way. And the Saree Lady remarked “what an ugly sight!” I could not see anything ugly about the expressway, but I knew she had the pangs of the displaced people in her mind when she said that. At that point I was wondering about the hypocrisy embedded in her statement. She goes to US for studies or whatever, takes advantage of the infrastructure there including (but not limited to) the Interstate, comes back to the tribal belt, looks at a similar infrastructure project, and says “fugly”.

She then climbs on to a rock and raises her hand up in a sloganeering posture, and asks someone to take a picture. And I was thinking, “dude, you have some cheap thrill issues here.” And we reach the destination village before noon. Now this is not a tribal village that you might normally envision. These folks have normal lifestyles, even though they have a tribal ethnic background, and they are perched atop a wooded hill. They had one or two shops, and stuff like that. We had a good lunch there. While lunching, the Saree Lady kept questioning people whether they regularly participate in morchas (sloganeering and stuff), and how many morchas have they participated in. From their reaction, I felt this village was cool to those questions, noncommittal in a way.

I learnt during the course of our discussions that this village was funky. They were self-sufficient because they brew booze, what is known as desi daaru (liquor made from fermented fruits and flowers) in local lingo. They supply to nearby villages and townships. Desi daaru is even available in Mumbai. No wonder, the folks were looking well-off.

And then we had this open ground meeting, where the whole village assembled. There was some rhetoric about the expressway and the loss of land. People were more or less indifferent. Our Saree Lady shouted some slogans in Marathi and asked them to repeat, which they promptly did. I take them to be staple slogans of the resistance.

Three or four villagers then took us to their source of water, higher up in the hills. All along this way, we had a projection in the ground on our sides, which they explained were pipes. After a few kilometers of walk, we reached the Adivaasis’ Dam. They had stopped the waterflow from a few streams and constructed a small dam of sorts from mud and stuff like that, laid pipes for kilometers at their own expense to make sure the water was there. I did not wear a hat that day, but I took one off for these entrepreneurs.

Walking back, I was a different person, in awe of these tribal folk, who identified their key competency. They had the resources of the forest for their brew, they solved the water problem, and they were making good money. The NGO was trying to convert them by telling them to grow/sell vegetables (and participate in morchas). Cmon, you don’t ask the Mallyas’ to grow cucumber!

Back to Arundhati Roy. Some people, (I'm borrowing some lines from a pal) are not happy with the oppressed joining the mainstream. For them, the oppressed have to be there facing further injustice, they have to fight, they have to take out morchas . The vigilante needs the so-called oppressed to remain where they are, when the rest of the world is running crazy just to play catch-up. If the oppressed dares to move on, the vigilante would have the potatoes to ask them to grow veggies. These are indeed the times for the goddesses of petty things.

Stok Kangri

Stok Kangri @6127m is taller than most mountains.
In fact, if it were located in Africa, Europe, Antarctica, or Australia, it would have been the tallest mountain in it's continent.

Too bad for you Stok, that you are in Asia, which has all the fourteen 8000m + peaks in the world. It's a shame.

But wait. May be, it's good that you're in Asia. And for me, may be it's too good you are in Ladakh, India.

9-10 months more Stok. Let's forget eight-thousanders for now. 6 thousand will do.

Perfect Storm ain't so perfect after all - Part II

I was apprehensive about the Commonwealth Games. I still am. People told me that the inauguration was terrific. So I watched some videos on Youtube. I think what we saw was fair and decent. Now, that does not absolve corruption. But we'll save "corruption" for a day when there's nothing else to talk about.

What struck me was the "average" Indian crowd. They booed when they felt like it, they clapped and roared when they felt like it - and this behavior was spot on, which makes me an average Indian, if not an over-age one. Kalmadi got his share of boos. Maadi means "do" in Kannada. Kal could mean yesterday or tomorrow in Hindi. Weird - Hindi - that ways. We don't know if KalMaadi did it yesterday or will do tomorrow, now that 2020 Olympic talks are in the air. He's already done shit, the glitz of the opening ceremony notwithstanding.

Back to the topic of the crowds. I can almost feel like Shuja-ud-din-Malik, the flag-bearer for Pakistan, a few seconds before he walked into the stadium. And this is what he'll probably say to his grand children. "I was feeling awkward. Was thinking, will they boo me and my country? It would be a slap on my country's face that cannot be erased with a thousand Kargils. Charles prince was watching. And out I step into the stadium named after Nehru, and you know Nehru as the opposite of Jinnah don't you, and would you believe it, I walk into a cheer and a roar that even the Indian contingent could not even have hoped for. I didn't know what to think of. I mean, what the hell was wrong with these people? They were to throw their shoes...whatever. But then I thought, enjoy it....I think they meant it. So before you take up guns, know that..."

Delhi means it. Cheers to the people of Delhi and to the rest of us who were there. This was the biggest message that we could have sent to our brothers from across the border. F$%# the pointless peace talks. The common man in India wants you to be good - with us and with yourself.

P.S: All that said, where have all the beggars in Delhi gone? My sources tell me there are none to be seen.