Confused Critique - Clients & Daemons

If you reverse engineered from the topic and figured out that this is the review of "Angels and Demons"(AD), pat your back with a nice turkey towel. You going to crack algorithms, fix bugs, create processes and design new patents. You are a certified geek (applause). Women ?? Err, no mate, not in this birth atleast. Why do you think i suggested a turkey towel ?? Thatz the closest you are going to get to a soft pat in the pack for the next hundred years.

After the supra-hugea-mega-grossa-monstra success of "Da Vinci Code"(DVC), dan brown (DB) has become a household name. So much so that everyone who claims to be capable of reading english has read it, and keeps talking about it until you drop dead. It has also become an additional baggage along with a makeup kit for look-i-read-english-books women. Just to make sure that there is something else about dan brown that i could talk about, picked up his other books and got through this one first.

After reading AD, the first thing that strikes you is that DVC is an eloboarte joke played on all the reading public by DB. Replace france with the vatican, the priory of sion with the illumanti, an albino with an arab and a long legged mademoiselle with adventurous signorina, and voila, you have Angels and Demons. The start, the clues, the unravelling of the plot and the standard description reading "all art works in this book are true" make you turn back to the cover pretty often just to make sure that you are reading a new book and not DVC again.

So, what do we have in AD ?? As usual, we have a historic and occult brotherhood, which has lived through the ages in secrecy, swearing to wreck vengeance on its sworn enemy, and while all this is happening, we have an unsuspecting villain pulling strings with an hidden agenda. Langdon wakes up one fine day, gets pulled into a quagmire, meets a bold-and-beautiful lady who is related to a principal character who got killed in the opening chapter, keeps running, solves clues which only he can solve, runs again, solves more clues, keeps running till you wish he should probably stop, take a deep breath and enjoy life and in the end gets the better of the bad guys and takes a break for a romantic weekend with the lead lady. Sigh, no matter how hard i try, it sounds like DVC again and again.

One refreshing thing about AD is the fact that it is definitely better than DVC, but suffers from the sibling curse, where talented folks are and would remain relatively less popular than illustrious siblings. The last act in AD is a bit far-fetched too, but definitely better than the oh-so-he-was-the-bad-guy-all-along lame ending in DVC. Langdon tries hard to be the american bond, trying too hard to be a hero whom someone can take home and introduce to your friends, unlike bond who ends up in bed with most of them.

All this doesnt take anything away from DB's extensive research and usage of symbols and paintings to further the suspense. The ambigrams used in this book are so true and intelligently designed. All this looking for symbols gives you a nice feeling until you end up trying to read almost everything that you see and find some occult phenomenon from harmless scribblings. Heck, I tried you read some coded message inscribed in my wardrobe, in the universal language of mathematics, and eventually figured out thats just the measurements written in pencil by the carpenter. So much for my symbology.

My cast :
Langdon - Hugh Jackman/John Cusack (for all the women who wanted richard gere, he sucks .. oh yeah, he does)
Vittoria - Charlize Theron (or monica belluci)
Kohler - Ben Kingsley
Olivetti - Jean Reno
Carlo Ventresca (the camerlengo) - Guy Pearce
Hashashin - Art Malik

In the end, does AD deliver ?? Yes it does. Is it better than DVC, most likely. Would one recommend it to others?? Yep. Would one bother reading it again ?? Errrm, No. AD is a good read, even unputdownable at times, but a second read is required only if you are an aspiring symbologist or if you lied to your girlfriend that you have been to the vatican. It is no piece of booker-worthy literature (if it had been, i wouldnt have read it to begin with :-) ), but nevertheless a very good company to kill time unlike some recommended robin cooks i was cursed enough to have read.

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...

Always

This has to be some plan and a real picture-perfect plan at that. I left work to book tickets on the train. Now, all those real enthu-cutlets out there who want to know why i had to go the railway station to book tickets when i could have booked tickets over the web:

1. Am a onlinie-transactiono-phobic
2. Did you ever ask Tolkien "why was the ring even forged in the first place" ??

I left my desk to pick my bike and voila, some symbologist had parked his bike cryptically. The front of his bike was almost locked with the silencer of mine and the back, right across the parking lot such that only nadia comancei in her prime can reach my bike's ignition.Working out gives you a false sense of confidence that you can move mountains. But the bikes these days, do they make them with some sort of adamantium alloy ?? Harder than moving that monstrosity that someone had the nerve to call a bike, was withstanding all those curiously sneaky visits from our security folks who were puzzled at a thief being so conspicous and noisier while stealing a bike. Everytime they come murmuring something into their walkie-talkies like they are going to take me down, had to stand up, turn around and show them the embroidery on my tshirt that has my company name, and they would give a broad smile as if they came there to check if i needed a drink. Some sighs and lots of high-squeaked grunts later, got my bike out and left.

After a failed collision attempt with a toyota qualis, i reached the station. Someone should have spread out a rumour saying they are distributing rasagollas with tickets. There cannot be any other logical reason behind that mad crowd in the station at that time of the day, this time of the year. Ran into a slightly older localite who was very possessive about the ticket counter. "you werent in the queue".
"Yes ma'am", i wasnt .. i came to.. "
"I'm telling you, you werent in the queue". Didnt she hear what i said, or is she simply trying to emphasize how right she was to fellow middle-aged men ??
"Yes, am just trying to .."
"You have to come in a queue"
"But am only trying to pick a reservation form"
Embarassed silence for a few seconds followed by this: "youngsters these days have absolutely no sense or respect for elders". Mental Note: Next time around carry a nice, polished, hattori hanzo samurai sword, just in case.

Out of all the 9 ticket counters, i find one. The next counter looked enticingly lesser-sized and i moved in just at the right moment to nudge out another chap who wanted the place. He should have a liking for white doves i suppose, he just accepted his fate and stood behind me. Our counter moved quick enough than most other, until a monster, who was holding only one form till then, picked up a bunch from inside his folder. Before anyone could say anything, he threw the whole lot into the counter. The clerk looked ahead just to make sure he received it from one guy and not from the entire queue in one go. The clerk cursed his fate and started typing and stopped.
"Train Number ??" he asked.
"Ooo .. Sorry .. What is the name of the train that goes to howrah .. some express it is".
"Howrah express"
"Ooo .. Sorry .. I forgot". Someone should recommend him for the next "Brittania - Monster Genius".
The clerk started again and stopped.
"Which class??"
"Oooo .. Sorry .. I forgot .. Second class".
The rest of the queue was happy he didnt say something to the likes of "First Class with Distinction".
Clerk started and, as we all guessed, stopped.
"Your address"
"Why??", pat comes the answer.
The collective groan of the queue probably sounded like the death knell and he started writing the address in not one, not two, not even three, but four darned forms.
"RAC 25" says the clerk.
"Will it move ??" asks Monster-man. The last time i looked, the clerk didnt have a parrot to pick out chits, nor did he have a magnifying glass. For chrissake, he is a clerk, not a clairvoyant. The clerk looked up, gave a resigned look and gave a non-committal "maybe".
Our man started "what about the other train ??". I thought i heard a few in my queue drop dead.
The clerk replied "There are no other trains". No one knows if he simply lied to get MM out of his view, but we all appreciated it. Monster-man gave up saying "Its okay".
"4420 Rs" (or some such) says the clerk.
Our man opens his purse, and one look into it, the lebanese finance minister would've let a sigh of despair considering his limited annual budget. Takes out a wad of beans and throws it the clerk. Whoever groaned mildly before, took a step back and kept safe distance. The inch-thick chain and that vadakayiru ("rope that pulls juggernauts") bracelet started to give a strange feeling and everyone unanimously decided that they did not need it clarified.

With all this happening, i take a look at the other queue where i was originally standing, and the nudged-out chap was collecting his change to leave. While i was busy minding someone else's business our peace-loving white-dove just moved to the next queue and got his tickets. If a crooked leer can be called a smile, yes, he smiled at me. But it was more like a taunt. Thankfully i hadn't lost my parking ticket, which is actually my speciality. Some saving grace.

By the time i reached work, I was fuming so much that you could light a few city blocks.Cursing the species as a whole, as i entered workplace, i noticed the big conference room was full, jam packed, the screen changing between pie-charts and manhattans in varied colors and someone reading an annual report. Yeah, as in most meetings, tears in every engineer's eye, smiles from ear-ear on management folks' faces. As I walked across them, with the smile of a holocaust survivor, wistful faces turned and fogged the windows with sighs.

Strangely, i felt lucky. Monster Man, Local Lady and Psychotic Symbologist, __Anything__ should be positively better than __that meeting__. Maybe there is still hope, heck, there is __always__ hope :-).

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...

Repeat After Me

1. Change That Tag

So, what are we ?? software engineers. A statistic : If every 10th person is an indian, every 7th person is a chinese, Every 3rd would probably be a software engineer. And guess what it does to our already depleted sense of humour ?? If the girl keeps talking the same thing, we laugh tell her she is in "an infinite loop" (bwahahahaha) and if she doesnt understand something then we ask her to "switch to an interrupt context" (muahahahaha). The girl runs miles before you even think of anything to whisper in her ear. Can't blame her really. With bangalore overflowing with our kind, and more often than not, every man competing against each other without a sense of brotherhood, where is that USP for a software engineer ?? Shouldn't there be something that makes the girl think that one more time inspite of such appalling sense of humour ?? If we were meteorologists, or paleontologists or atleast gasteroenterologists chances are that the girl would think twice since these would be seem to be cool professions in the girl's clique where the norm is a software engineer. Something like bragging with a broken down ferrari amidst all those camrys and vitaras. Make a decision, throw the monitor out of the window and start digging for fossils. Godspeed.

2. Never Hunt In Pairs

Havent we seen enough movies already ?? This plan of "you find the right girl for me, and i would find the right girl for you" usually works in only one way. "Hopeless Hero" does his part pretty well and the girl he found for "Fiendish Friend" swoons at the mention of anything that remotely sounds like his name. Perfect. The predestined girl was all set to fall for HH, and according to the grand plan, came to HH's place one day, read all his poems, music tapes and other romantic stuff, but then either our HH so intelligently wrote all his stuff using FFs name as pseudonym or the poems were piss poor that she started hating HH so hard and fell for FF on the rebound. As a consolation prize, HH gets to be the witness at the grand marriage ceremony and if he is really lucky, gets to sing that standard "Unna nenachen, paatu padichen" ("I sing thinking about you") outside the showerroom for once. Things are even-stevens now.


3. You Are Always Scratching A Level Down

You got a 180 cc bike, the girl just graduated to a 350cc thunderbird. You stretch a bit, cutting on that fancy shades, super-cool sneakers, and manage a thunderbird, but the girl just realised that its difficult to ride in the rain. you borrow a 800 from some long lost relative who has hardly seen you for the weekend, but zen rules. you beg for a zen with another friend, but ain't the chevrolet optra looking cool ?? you steal an optra, when she just set her eyes on a landrover. Optra turns out to be the incumbent MLAs. You get arrested and go to jail. Girl lives happily ever after. Credits start rolling.


4. The Golden Rule

The girl is taken. Yes, you read that right. The girl is taken. If you are really drooling over someone, having all those strange dreams running around in all whites, chances are she is taken and the chances are 100%. Frankly, What makes you think that the girl is going to wait playing bhajans, when you are as old as four donkeys ( this "four donkeys" is patently thamizh and is attributed to people, whom others think ought to have been married atleast once by now, while in reality, the guy pledges his life to finding life on mars than finding a girl) ?? Although it still hasnt been conclusively proven if guys fall for taken girls or if the girl is eventually taken because the guy fell for her, its just that it works that way and the gods are under no obligation to explain why it is so. The bottomline is that, once you start getting all those mushy-mushy dreams, mail-order a hurricane light and a shawl, preferrably a black one with red and white strips on it, anytime soon to walk into the sunset.

5. The Other Golden Rule

Never look for advice in blogs. I mean, blogs, what are they ?? They are just textual representations of someone's neurotic self. If one actually came down to reading blogs looking to lighten up his love life, oops, things are worse than they seem. Such desperation can be hard on the digestive system. But do not lose heart, you just picked the last straw. Usually, in such cases an outside chance springs up from nowhere, when the girl actually gets to know of this plight of reading blogs, maybe you'd win by a sympathy wave. Remember to share the good news if something works, or else you would be cursed to spend the rest of your life with some "backstreetboys-are-god" girl. Until then, have andhra meals and majaa maadi.

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...

Of Mice and godMen

The TamilNadu Police Force dropped the biggest bomb for deepavali 2004 by arresting Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal, the headpriest of the Kancheepuram Math (A Religious House). The media, the police, hitherto unknown politicians and retired old men are having a field day. The deal being, the headpriest of a very powerful math in south india, is accused of being the kingpin of a criminal conspiracy behind the murder of another individual. For all non-indians (permanent and temporary) who had seen the likes of Jim Jones and The People's Temple and wondering what the big fuss is all about, oh yeah, this __is__ big deal out here. We have had embezzlements, power-brokering and even sex scandals, but murder, nope.

The first moron off the block is Sun TV. One of the seriously stupid television channels around, second only to Jaya TV, you got to see it once to believe the kind of nonsense they are capable of creating. Everytime they show him walking out of the police van, it is always accompanied by some psychotic background music which you last heard when norman bates was stalking marion crane in the shower. The next piece of joke starts with Sun TV going down amidst the "general public" to gather their "unbiased views." One look at those luminaries who offer their views, and you have a faint feeling that this guy was so similar to one of those pictures in the rogue gallery in your nearest train station. They read out from a standard script which has keywords like "No man is above the law" and "The law would take its course". If rehearsing those geniuses is a tough ask, atleast teach them some modulation for chrissake. They sound like they are testifying on deathbed with the Grim Reaper dangling his scythe from behind.

The next two bunch of idiots are similar in one aspect in that they choose to wear some sort of uniform, either saffron or black, depending on who pays them the most. At the blow of a whistle, we get our own version of "World Wrestling Entertainment meets World Rugby Union evolves into Whose Line Is It Anyway". It is only then you understand why they so wisely tie their colors to their foreheads than anywhere else. When you are running in with a stick in your hand, you dont care to look at the other guys face, only the color of the turban suffices. Look, match turban color, and hit if it doesn't. Simple. Sometimes, due to busy schedules and ambitious deadlines, over-worked individuals forget what color they are wearing currently and end up whacking their own team. Since all those cuts and gashes look well on their resume, they have accepted it as another occupational hazard and get on with their beating.

The last bunch of morons are the ones who hire the aforesaid. If you have more money than you could ever spend, let me give you a number to leave it for some other worthy reasons for spending like DVD buying and bungee jumping. To top all this idiocy, guess where they organise all these agitations ?? No, not in kancheepuram where people are busy knitting those world class silk sarees, caring in the least for all this chaos, but in every other city where there are a bunch of cameramen on the loose to shoot just about anything. The politicians choose to call it political mastery, while the general public calls it simply "lack of common sense". Usually, the public is right. One after other, a familiar set of folks go on air talking the same load of gibberish, using eloquent vocabulary, but beating the horse to death about how justice prevailed. By sheer talent and practice over the years, they suppress their laughter while generating all those pearls of wisdom. Yawn. Continue to watch that, we'd become the last bunch of morons to join this illustrious list.

For Steinbeck fans, If the title led you believe this was metaphysical review of his works, whoops. If you really wanted to know about Kanceepuram and the Math, you probably need to read your IXth standard history book for once or buy a Sthalapuranam ('History of the Holy Site') from the temple premises. If you wanted to know the history behind this case, read Junior Vikatan or Kumudam Reporter (Investigative Journalism Magazines of the south) or sit close to some jobless relative of yours who would be discussing this to tooth and nail, with his fellow professionals (read another jobless relative) over filter coffee. If you are really disappointed due to any other reason, dont be, life is like that. Maybe another blog.

This blog did not take any stand. If you started reading this looking for some staunch viewpoints, do remember that one of the things about this blog is that, more often than not, it does not take a stand on anything. If "Kareena Kapoor Sucks" is a stand, then yes, this blog has one, but apart from that, i dont think this blog stands for anything at all. Personally, i think godmen is an oxymoron and most godmen are morons. There have been a few of them who deserve respect, but reading the future, they safely left this world for another, and now they are chuckling at what we got the whole thing reduced to. The average godman's 'statement of purpose' reads that they 'take you from the world of mortals to the world of Gods'. That makes them more or less similar to those limo drivers who take you to your date with that girl. Yeah, the limo driver takes you through all that maddening traffic and gets you to your date before she gets bored and leaves for another table, and you sincerely appreciate his service, but you stop with thanking him, probably a generous tip and thatz it. You save the gifts, roses, kisses (and all else, depending on how romantic you are) for the girl inside. The driver is happy enough with his limo, or atleast he is expected to be, and let him remain that way. Don't let him get ideas by asking him what your girl friend needs to wear for dinner next time around. If you do, you have serious relationship problems. If you dont have a girlfriend or you think limos are snobbish or you hate analogies which go round and round, the grand idea is that you should talk to your wife before investing in something, talk to your daughter if you want to get her married, and talk to your parents if you are thinking about relocating and if you want to start a new business on, say recycling seagull refuse, talk to an oceanographer or an ornithologist. Leave godmen to do what they do best, whatever it is, it definitely isnt an opinon on the composition of seagull refuse.

Limo drivers, Oceanographers, Ornithologists and Communists, please excuse. No offence meant to any of them, I so badly wanted to use that analogy. The rest, leave the heavenly creatures to fight over whose right and who is wrong, mere mortals have other important things to do. Now where was that exclusive winona ryder montage site ??

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...

Bushwhacked

All news sites, news channels, discussion forums, weblogs and some sophisticated tea-kada benches were discussing this as if their lives depended on it. It is official now, and Spot gets to generate as much trash as it could inside the white house for another four years, while others get a chance to do the same outside of it. Bush joins the elite club of defiers alongside JJ and Rabri as extraordinary specimens who play a practical joke on the press when they are looking elsewhere by somehow conjuring a victory, something akin to creeping up from behind and saying "Boo".

With bush and kerry appearing on all forms of media, the creative heads in india racked up their brain that bit too hard and guess what, they came up with a mock-election for the american presidency in chennai at the Taj, jointly organised by some american cultural mission and the embassy, reads The Hindu. Some sort of black humor i presume. Our folks got so over-enthu that people came and queued outside the hotel long before the mock-voting started. Folks have gurgled a keresone-looking liquid when pepsi called it "The Color of Team India" during the cricket world cup, and bought tonnes of Fair and Lovely when dark-complexioned women are stereo-typed (am so glad nandita das didnt fall for these ads, that would've been heart-breaking) during beauty paegants, but being bored to death sounds an infinitely honorable option than to go early for a mock election of the american president.

For all that i know, the american elections are so slow that they would give balumahendra's telefilms a run for sweet money. There are only two parties, which means, you vote for one guy or you vote for the other guy or you vote for some millionaire who wanted to be on prime time television. Is that it ?? No freedom of choice ?? When we have elections here, one would see harmless-looking next-door neighbors file nominations and scream their throat out about how they are just that one step away from making saidapet the next singapore, while in reality their wives keep kicking them out of bed for not fixing that leak in the gas pipe. Their aspirations are pretty limited though; Their vote count needs to be just one more than the number of adult blood-relatives they have, and if they do, they'd feel victorious and later return to fix up leaking gas pipes with double the enthusiasm.

So, let me get this straight. There are no book length ballot papers, no buying of opposition MPs, no hiding them in unheard-of resorts and making them appear in the house out of nowhere, no veshtis but only pin-striped shirts and suits, no ballot snatching and most of all, the loser actually concedes defeat instead of ranting. Gee, Is this an election or some sort of spiritual exercise ?? In accordance with the latest trends, I guess they should start outsourcing elections to india and the pros will tell them how to go about running one.

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...