. : : Valar Morghulis : : .

Early Riser?

Someone is boiling milk at 4:00 AM. I can hear the milk boiler’s whistle.

What do you mean what am I doing up at 4:00 AM?

Oh How I Hate Them

I was all packed and ready to head to Chennai for a 4 day extended weekend when a classmate calls me up and tells me about some train accident in that route. Turns out that a bunch of assholes took a train for a joyride and crashed it into a goods train, killing 6 people and injuring 11. This shut down all rail traffic to and from the city including my train scheduled to depart 5 minutes ago. So I’m stuck in my room watching TV hoping for news that those motherfuckers were among those who died. Bastards.

Chennaied

Ran into more gutter scum on the way to work today morning. The retard kept honking with his extremely noisy horn and ended up behind me at the Anna flyover signal. The second the signal turned green, he started honking again, prompting me to stay put and turn around to look at him.

Blocked, he cursed at me, hit my bike’s rear mudguard and managed to get around me. I gave him the middle finger as he passed me. He missed the signal (ha ha!) and I caught up to him at the stop line. This was the typical Indian hooligan, without a helmet on a beaten up bike sporting the single engine guard piece every loser in India uses. When he saw me calmly ride up next to him and stop, he made a lot of funny faces (including the classic tongue-fold face) and gestured wildly from which I gathered that I was supposed to be scared of him. I told him to first put on a helmet and fix his horn. The loser got really ticked off and kicked at my front wheel. I ignored him and looked away. He made as if to get down and start a fight, at which point the signal changed and he was forced to move or endure the wrath of fifty (and more) officer-goers running late.

What if he had stopped and taken a swing at me? I’m always up for a fight, even if I couldn’t win against a low-life such as him that grew up brawling everyday in whatever slum he crawled out of.

Isolated incident? You wish. This is everyday life in this great country.

WTI.

I need a taser…

Wondering about the title? See Mangalored.

I Support The Power Holiday

Noticed the daily power failures? It turns out that there is a power shortage in Tamilnadu and so the Electricity Board has decided to declare Power Holidays. This means that we get to enjoy a few hours of no electricity every day.

I fully support this decision to cut power every day because we live in an underdeveloped country. We can’t really expect the Government to properly manage our natural resources and generate enough electric power. How can we blame the Electricity Board for being incompetent? They have better things to do than their jobs. Supply of 24 hours electricity is a nice dream but it isn’t realistic.

We just have to accept that sacrifices have to be made in an underdeveloped poor nation such as India. Until then we should ask other countries that are on the same level as us (Nigeria, Sudan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia) for some tips on how to manage our resources properly.

Cursed Land of the Eternally Incompetent

Getting a passport is a ridiculously difficult task in this fucked up country.

Went to the passport office on Wednesday. Stood in the queue for 45 minutes. Came back since they didn’t accept my Airtel landline bill for address proof.

Went to the passport office today. Stood in the first queue for 30 minutes. Finally they tell me it’s the wrong queue. Stood in the second queue for 30 minutes. They close down for lunch. So I go back home and then head over there in the afternoon. I stand in the queue again but some policeman guy comes and asks me to get a sign from Deputy Passport Office. Stood in third queue for 30 minutes and got the sign. Then went to the fourth queue and waited there for 2 hours 15 minutes. They closed the counter down just as I got to it. I was the last person in the queue but the fat bald asshole at the counter refused to process my application. Even if I had managed to reach this counter in time the cash counter had been closed.

Queues everywhere. People wandering around clueless resorting to asking other applicants for help. Security personnel walking around and chatting without helping anyone. Indifferent government employees more interested in gossiping than processing the damn applications.

Add to this the traffic, the unbearable heat of Chennai and the lack of information or guidelines in the passport form or the passport office makes this one horrible experience I would not force upon my worst enemy. Well maybe Tamilselvan, Viswanathan and Narendra Modi but no one else.

All you people who say you like India, you’re just dumb. No one can like this dirty overpopulated disorganised place knowing everything people have to endure here. Me, I’ll get out first chance I get.

‘Current Off’ Day

Three hours without electricity. And in a furnace like Chennai you cannot survive without the ceiling fans. What possible excuse could they have for a three hour power cut in a metropolitan city? Do you still think that India will become a super power in a few years? Stop deluding yourself.

From 3.30 PM to 6.30 PM I sweated it out, entertaining myself by reading the book about tanks that I bought recently. Already we have to take two baths a day in this horrible weather and with no power I might as well sit in the bathroom all day immersed in a large tub of water.

The title of this post was inspired by Ganesh.

A Little Rain

It’s always nice when it rains. The temperature goes down and it’s a nice respite from the perennial scorching heat Chennai is cursed with. The lighting becomes gloomy and it’s easy on the eyes. It also makes it easier to sleep at night. On the other hand it’s harder to wake up in the morning but these days I don’t have to. (The last day of college was yesterday, you see.)

The only problem is all the mud, garbage and whatnot lying around the city turns into a disgusting slush that makes walking absolutely revolting. Sure, you can go by your motor vehicle… if you don’t mind having to send it in for a complete wash at the end of the rains.

My Epic OMR Equips

Above is a photo of me in full OMR travelling gear.

Sunglasses of the Shadow
+80% resistance to vision affecting effects
+2 luck

Skull Cap of Wisdom
+4 intelligence
-8 hair fall
Reduces effects of hereditary baldness by 2%

Face Scarf of the Earth and Sky
Immunity to Poison Gas and Dust attacks
-3 stamina

If you’ve travelled by the Old Mahabalipuram Road recently you would have seen the billowing clouds of dust that are generated everyday by the people ‘working’ on the road. To avoid a layer of dust settling into our hair, faces and lungs we have to come up with solutions like these.

The expected date of completion of the Old Mahabalipuram Road is 2142 A.D.

Madrasas In Chennai?

Arun and Harikumar alerted me to a Times Now news item about engineering colleges in and around Chennai passing off their bullshit rules as Tamil culture.

Regressive separation of the sexes?
In 21st century India, if you thought we had done away with archaic ideas about men and women, thing again. TIMES NOW has found that certain colleges in Chennai have forced male and female students to keep out of each other’s way, so much so that students cannot even walk on the same roads. This is all ostensibly in the name of Tamil culture.

The outskirts of Chennai are home to scores of engineering colleges where discipline it appears is an obsession – sometimes even bordering on the ridiculous. Some rules even bar students from talking to the opposite sex.

Read the entire article here and click ‘Play Video’ at the bottom of the page to see the news item.

This is what we have to put up with. The colleges mentioned in the video are the extreme cases of course but this is the management’s approach in most engineering colleges. Now who’s at fault? It’s the bloody parents who support their ridiculous rules. Now how can students revolt when their own parents won’t support them?

Also, why does the news article claim that this happens only in deemed universities. What about the hundreds of colleges under Anna University that have banned cell phones on campus simply because of some misguided fellow?

Retards On Roads

Today, I was driving towards Adyar signal from the Adyar Depot side and was on the left side of the road slowing down for the left turn. There was this short dark chap that was walking well away from the pedestrian area of the road and refused to get out of my way. I went straight at him and he eventually moved away but at the last second he hit me on the chest and continued walking. What the hell?

I wasn’t going to let that pass so I kicked out the bike’s side stand, left the bike (engine still running) and ran after him. He didn’t expect that and so didn’t see me coming. I shoved him hard from behind and he stumbled a bit and ran away across the road before I could do anything else. As I walked back to the bike I could see him cross the road again further away, smiling to himself. What a nutcase! I should have punched his face in.