Sunset at TIFR

forgive the bad adobe...twas the best an amateur on his first attempt to merge photos could do.


Here in the land of milk and honey, I am fast seeing the season of eternal darkness. Not to say that the sun doesnt rise, it does and drags its lazy arse over the horizon faster than a tropical person would think possible.I miss sunshine and more than anything else....the beautiful sunsets that were forever a part of the life at tifr, the sunsets we so took for granted. Alas!

report on an american thanksgiving

George Bush Refuses to Pardon Turkey
Adding to the list after Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, President George Bush the Lesser, refused to pardon the presidential Turkey this thanksgiving. While the reasons for this clemency refusal is not clear, it is thought to have something to do with a alleged recent attack by the turkey on the president's pet dog.

Opinion Poll: Worries over turkey's withdrawal of ambassador
In an opinion poll, 79% of americans reported that they were worried about turkey's recent withdrawal of its ambassador. the other 21% were vegetarians.

Cornell Deserted:
Reports from Cornell university suggested that 99.2% of the students were busy thanking someone else outside cornell and hence no one was left at the university town. About 0.8% were wandering around the campus to see how many were walking around the campus. In this poll, none of the ghosts were counted.

The solitude of the socialite

Tiny sharp glances scamper through,piercing through the crowds, between the pizza, beer and gossip. Glances to make note of the million imperfections of every face in the crowd. Glances to note the innocuous comment, the skirts should they swirl and mouths if they should talk. Its the world where the individual is revered but where uniformity and conformity are worshipped. The party going socialite, stands by himself and herself....alone in the crowd..all ears and all eyes....detecting glances, shielding himself and herself, slobbering and slandering. Slobbering and slandering to villify and cast down those outside the earshot. Each unto himself, slandering together with the rest about the individual who stands without. More pizza, beer, beer pong and bed. More glances for the imperfections, more voices for the slander. The clock ticks by. The lone socialite waits, watches, listens, to pick up the slandering voices that would target him and her. There may be none...yet he slanders and listens...slanders and listens.

The American highway

The highway is long and winding.....its an interstate that according to uncited and unchecked conspiratorial brains, were desgined to be straight enough for nuclear armed planes to land and take off during the cold war. I bet that you need a plane to land vertically on this highway. It was nice and pretty in the couple of afternoon hours that the sun hung up there. The sun...it was nothing more than the size of a quarter, as dim as a fully lit moon. The woods, to copy Frost...were lovely, dark and deep, covered with frost and mist and all those symptoms of late autumn. I like the word autumn, it echoes much longer ...reflecting and giving a taste of the beauty, of the wind coloured by the falling leaves and the golden sun.I hate to use 'fall' to describe it.Its a word- american in body and soul. Shortened to save time,typewriter ribbons and telephone conversations. Autumn, nature's last dance before the white winter monochrome sets in.

Its early evening if you are an Indian, but late afternoon if you are american. Its very dark now...the sun snuffed by the gnawing winter and the rain. The rain is not heavy, its just a spiteful drizzle. Its probably icy cold. From where I sit, I see it only in the persistence of the windscreen wipers and in the dipping lights of the weekend traffic-wierding and snaking its way,away from city life and its cancerous existence.

The weekend traffic rumbles on, to find a place they call home, out in the deep dark woods. They ride the american road-ambition, innovation and the free market.Free to buy, to sell and to get up and run to places they wonna go. I hope I dont ever need my forgiveness, but I am on this road.This is America, the land of confusion-the land where Hunter S. Thomson is god and Robert Frost is feared and loathed.This is the land where speech is free but everything else costs.There is an Indian driver, with a North Indian accent thats driving this bus. Welcome to the land of nylon, dreams and the first amendment.

The rain is transmogrified to sleet now. I like calvin.Its the sketch of america, a nation we all ape. America is a nation, that to quote another mass manufacturer of such lines, knows the cost of everything, but many a times, the value of nothing.

note: My views in this essay are influenced by my limited experiences here,my patience and the silly undergraduate in the seat next to me who is testing my patience with three hours of non-stop gossip. I hope that either I get where I am going soon or that her battery fails, or her voice dies!

save the day

In the US of A, time is always in short supply.People are always in a hurry to save it. Many an ingenious device- including instant noodles, expressways and speed dating have been invented to serve this purpose. However, the most interesting invention of all has been that of saving the day. So once a year, when the winter gnaws at your bones, a device known as daylight saving goes off line. Along with it comes a minor perturbation of your circadian rhythm. You wake up assuming that you are late for class anyway and might as well burrow back under that quilt. However, you look at the clock and you know that you are in time and that have to trudge your way through the freezing wind to class. Unlike the other circadian rhythm disruptors such as PhD and Jet lag, this is neither demanding on your wallet or your life.
US of A is an interesting place......there has been one innovative invention for every hamburger eaten, I am just waiting for the right orientation of stars, saturday night football games, beer pong and pizza-cum-hangover parties that would give rise to night time saving....I need to save my sleep you see!