It is extremely necessary to write all your answers in POINT FORM

1. There is supposed to be a blogmeet. Where, no clue. When, no clue. Why, because all our kids will be intermating someday. More on this topic here. If you will be present in Kolkata during May end- June beginning session and connected somehow to the Calcuttan blog world (that, my dear friend, is a necessity) you are pleej to note that you are invited. There are talks of freely flowing booze, and a chance its going to end up being one of those Babylonian orgies Wodehouse used to love talking about. There are also rumours of moo-lah being taken to task for his atrocious behavior towards the next generation bloggers and unfounded comments regarding their sexuality, career prospects and societal status.
2. I have completely forgotten what the second point was supposed to be. Righteous anger directed against moo-lah makes me forget everything all the time. Oh, yes, now I remember. Chennai is apparently leading. Yay :D Being a staunch Bengali, the first and foremost task of mine is to pretend I am a Tamil changeling and that Chennai is Mecca. Anyway, go Chennai, whatever your name and whoever your IPL owner is.
3. I realize I should devote a new post to the third topic. It should not be clubbed along with booze, orgies and moo-lah. So please remain all agog and twiddle your thumbs in anguished expectation till the next installment.
4. I have decided to be the next Pablo Neruda. Considering the fact that I have never written, understood or willingly read a poem, this decision is a brave and commendable one, even if I say so myself. My poetry is supposed to inspire rebellion against suppression which I thought I should mention on early in case everyone fails to understand it. The first poem in question goes

Dear blog world
Why will not you comment on my comment space
Why? Why? Why?
If you are reading this and yet fail to comment
I will poke you in the eye.

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The Dudes Abide

It is very easy to recognize economists when the budget season nears. They go about looking pale and sickly, heedless of all sights and sounds, except when wincing painfully at the sight of a copy of The Economic Times. It is not hard to reason why. Most economists forget all they have learned ten minutes after they get their degrees. Some do not even wait till the end of the examinations. After that, all theories propounded by them are a result of assumptions made and an imagination active. Many are the theories I myself have created on ill prepared examinations. Three of the papers easily deserve a Nobel. John Nash is a classic case of famous economists. No one but he could have created something which reads "Complementarity is the source of multiplicity in the Nash equilibrium". One requires the aid of an imagination fueled idea and a psychological disease to make up that.

The lot of an economist is a hard one. In the olden days, most people would join the Foreign legions to help them forget. With the legions having now been disbanded, they try to fall in love. Love after all, always makes you forget everything. However, most economists are a bunch of snobs, assuming (which is their business) that every other human is inferior to them intellectually and they deserve no less than Fellows from Oxford. Of course they do not get them. But economists are extremely persistent. If nothing else works, they go and take to drink. And they forget.

(N.B. If the economist is a female, she does not even need to take to drink, she takes to weight loss. That makes her forget everything, including love and foreign legions. It is an unstated general rule that female economists who take the subject seriously are fat. The fact that there are not enough female economists proves it. Who really wants to remain fat nowadays?)

But then drink brings out all that is base in man. Which is why perhaps when we got drunk, all we could do was whine about "Cournot equilibrium" and "Todaro-Harris model" and then sob in a corner.

But I digress.

(Click to enlarge)

Every man meets his Waterloo. And economists, despite all rumours, are humans. Albeit with slightly different Waterloos. While the misogynist finds the woman of his dreams, business tycoons find brothers constantly reminding them of their share in the business, politicians find unsuitable son-in-laws, economists have the budget thrust upon their unwary faces.

For in this world, there still remain a few of little faith. Judas is the name which comes to the mind as an example. Some who do not trust enough in the healing power of forgetfulness. And they keep on remembering. Then they go join newspapers as columnists. Or the "Gor-ment" as financial advisors.

It can never be a very pleasing sensation when served with your early morning coffee are the screaming headlines referring to cost push inflation. The Fates band up against you and you realize there is a family member looking down expectantly and asking you to explain the meaning of cost push inflation as opposed to other kinds of inflation. The hurriedly mumbled line defining cost push inflation as inflation pushed by cost, rather than by other, say, non cost, what do you call it, thing, is not accepted in a spirited manner and the economist goes back to face the world, a mere shadow of his former, jubilant, coffee sipping self. The Fates are a cruel lot though, once aroused by the Furies, and questions regarding the subtle difference between fiscal and revenue deficit haunts the economist's mind till he receives the next day's paper, which speaks glibly of various anti inflationary measures and waiving of farmers' loans.

However, the budget question, once admirably settled, does not raise its head again for a considerable time. No more is the economist tormented by the general, misguided public to explain something the general, misguided public happily imagines the economist knows about. The economist, what with the daily cares of the world on his shoulders and the severe concern for the income of various alcohol fermentators, gets involved in the grind again. And forgets. Time, as usual, remains the best healer. And the economists, as spelled out by this very fascinating movie called The Big Lebowski, abide.

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The Perils in the Life of the Indian Student

While the whole country discusses in a hush tone the degeneration of the moral responsibility of students regarding the all important question of the health and mortality of their fellow classmates, one remains tolerantly amused. Yes, murder is a serious threat to the peace our society is accustomed to, but it is such a rare occurrence that one glances over the newspaper, tut-tuts, and promptly switches over to semi-naked pictures of Hrithik Roshan in the entertainment section.

OK, one does not do exactly that, but one does exaggerate a bit. But let one go on to what one means to post about.

The average student life is fraught with enough mortal dangers. Even if one decides to forgo the possibility of self annihilation, education is not exactly a path of strewn lilies. There are blood thirsty teachers, spending years of their lives waiting for that one particular bit of homework, which inspires and alleviates one to the level of hair pulling younger siblings. Of course, they take it too literally, and there is a certain amount of one sided hair pulling involved, but one does not go further into it either. The case in point was never very satisfactorily solved. Of course if the teacher does not get you, there are always your classmates. Even if most do not have access to revolvers, they could always get you with a good hard shove in the back. Of course if you manage to dodge classmates, its usually the volleyball which has it for you, or the chair has a faulty leg, or the chalk gets you in the eye. If not facing enough impediment from the inanimate world, you could of course get yourself. Let the shot put drop on your leg, be a boy, or just find yourself dozing in the class. Danger lurks at every corridor corner, behind every library shelf, inside every cobwebby desk shelf.

But these, are of course common dangers. There are also the more unusual, though not unknown forms of dangers. These kind of dangers are first intimated the day before voting day for election of the college union. Knowing one's perfectly apolitical stance, party members and hopeful representatives, people who never look twice at one during average, non-political days, begin calling you up and talking about providing bodyguards on your way to the college. When the same one is not exactly built on slender lines, and is accustomed to carrying The Suitable Boy as a light read in ones bag, one begins to wonder on what diabolical plans the opposition might be planning to actually nullify the effects of both of ones strongest weapons. Kidnapping- possible. Threatening- probable. Sexual Harassment- not unheard of. But one braves all odds. One refuses guards. One goes to college and immediately realizes both parties are waiting for one because most votes are known except one's. One revels in the importance. Then one feels foolish. Then one gets disgusted. One somehow manages to elude the hypocritical fools and vote for one she hopes is lesser of the two evils. One thankfully goes back home. Then does the excitement start.

News starts pouring in. Two members of one of the parties have been kidnapped. There has been a lathi charge. The winning CR has been gheraoed. The principal has been gheraoed. Students have been arrested. You switch on the news and see the person you usually sit behind of getting beaten up. It becomes an unreal world. Not the place you drag your sorry behind to morning classes. More so when the kidnapped guys actually have been arrested for eve teasing a woman. And these are the people we vote as our representatives.

The actual danger all this while had been the idea that a couple of eighteen year old students actually believe they realize what political ideology is all about. But then, how many older people can claim knowing it either?

Of course, there is another sort of danger, which does not really lead to physical harm...I think. At school, a girl with lovely, shiny hair used to sit in front of one. One and her were never particularly good friends. But one envied her lovely hair. One used to wonder whether ones superior intellectual skills ( modesty is not one's besetting sins) was a compensation enough.

One day, one grows up. One enters college. One decides to do the ultimate grown up thing. One consults a few friends. One goes out and buys beer. One drinks beer illegally at Forum. One actually opens it with her teeth in the bathroom at BURP! Transfers it to a cold drink glass and drinks beer openly. One gets a little high. Ones friends actually get drunk on beer, having no constitution whatsoever. One meets the lovely haired girl. One knows she is in one of the city's premier colleges studying some obscure subject. Girl says she is very happy. Girl is 18 and she is getting married to someone seven years older than her in a matter of two weeks. Ones friends and one keel over in shock. One thinks one is having hallucinations. Three weeks later, one meets the same girl, in jeans and sindoor.

An year later, when one struggles with her first University examination paper, shiny haired girl struggles to bring the first of her many babies to this world, education and ambition long forgotten. Girl is perfectly happy. One is perfectly happy too. In different worlds. Where one is still a child and another a mother of one.

One wonders, is one too judgmental?

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Onion Soup for the Drunkard's Soul

(Dedicated to the only professor who thinks I am of Tamil parentage)

Have you been stopped receiving indirect hints about the membership openings at Alcoholics Anonymous? Does a half empty glass appear half full to you when you are on your penultimate peg? Is the first thing you desire every morning a black coffee? Can you actually pretend to be sober while you are stuffed to your gills? Then, hold your drunken breath, you are not being true to the code of the drunkards, the oaths and protocols of the distinguished few who have managed to immerse their whole lives to boozing and staying inebriated in all their waking hours, if, they can be called awake. So here is another vignette, chosen carefully and written with the toil and sweat of a few sober people, in an attempt to rouse the world to the joy of staying sloshed and never to put down the cocktail until you are being dragged homeward bound.

The Reformation

J.D. was a drunkard. He also was in love. Usually one begets the other, but he managed to perform both individually, with neither of the sets intersecting each other, though, of course, the lightheadedness associated with his drink did create an illusion of his beloved having more beauty than the Lord had bestowed on her. But the illusion helped and thus, every day, in every way, after his fourth peg, J.D. realized what he really needed was a woman in his house, in front of his favourite armchair, with limpid eyes to gaze into through the end of a glass and eager hands eagerly bringing in soda every half an hour. The future was not unthought of either. He already had plans to open a brewery with his eldest son while his youngest son would own a vineyard. In fact, everything was settled upon except for the asking of the woman's hand. Our brave protagonist did not cringe there either. Without the assistance of any additional alcohol to his regular amount, he went and braved it, the odds not withstanding.

However, the girl's acceptance had the predictable condition, she wanted her future husband to abstain from all alcoholic drinks. The reason behind this seemingly lay in an unhappy childhood consisting of a drunkard father, a long suffering mother and midnight brawls in front of their home with the renegades of the night. She refused to foresee a similar future for herself despite J.D. 's forceful recital of the midnight brawls being sources of general knowledge, usually regarding natural history. It pertained, she was not very fond of natural history, due to having a Ph.D. on it.

Such was the power of his love for the girl that J.D. actually contemplated taking up sobriety as as a natural form of existence. J.D. had never drunk to lessen pain, there had been no sorrow gnawing at his heart. He drank for pure pleasure. Intoxication came to him as inspiration comes to a writer. The artist in him took delight in discovering different forms of drunkenness, and, though not a well known fact, he had even composed and published essays on this. It was to explain this and beg for understanding and pity that he landed up, late one evening at his betrothed's.

It was his future mother-in-law who received him, informing him that her daughter was away. Seated in a very feminine living room, with more drink sloshing in him than he was used to, the motherly concern shown by his fiancee's mother regarding his pallid looking skin and a distraught expression made J.D. break down into fierce hiccups, an emotional outlet to his real feelings. Not being able to hold them any longer, he cried out all his troubles and worries and begged the woman in front of her to have mercy on his pitiful state and ask her daughter to reconsider her decision. It was the eerie silence of his audience which woke him up to the fact that this woman herself was a victim of a drunken husband and was not wont to sympathize with his case. It was while he was trying to find a tactful comment about the weather when she quietly spoke, "It wasn't her father. It was me." While J.D. blinked away his confusion, she explained her husband had always been a strict teetotaler and it was she who had been addicted to the glass. It had meant a painful childhood for her daughter who adored her father, who disliked his wife's little luxuries. An impressionable girl, she felt her mother to be in the wrong and sided with her father when it came to the question of the habit of drinking and found the act reprehensible. However, her father having died due to natural causes a few years ago (possibly because he did not drink, everyone knows alcohol kills germs), it was he his daughter attributed the drinking habit to, too ashamed to confess she had a drunk mother. She finished her story by offering a glass of whiskey to J.D. who rose to the occasion by asking for two.

It was while consuming his fourth glass while the lady was on her fifth that he realized he had met a kindred soul. Not only did she gulp down whiskeys with the fine artistry of a camel, she had a rare, shining, truthful spirit, who was not ashamed to own up that she drank, nay, was actually proud of it. He compared her to her daughter, who not only deceived him, but also disliked alcohol, classifying her as a lemon in the garden of paradise. It was on his seventh glass that a sudden realization shook him to the core and he saw what a fool he had been going to make of himself.

J.D. and his once-upon-a-time future-mother-in-law are happily married today with two adopted sons, both of whom, though young, show a healthy interest in the making of alcohol. Though their father does not allow them to consume it till they are of age, it is clear that his dreams for his sons will surely come true.

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