On Skydiving

The first analogy which comes to my pervert mind is masturbation (from the male point of view), more than 3 times a day and it hurts, and instead of your mood, it depends on nature’s, but as with all analogies, it breaks down at some point, and in this case, its the first jump itself, for unlike masturbation, the first time you jump, you have 2 people guiding you through it!

All the excitement turns to dread when you mount the plane. Murphy starts haunting your mind. You revise your jump in your head, simple though the procedures may be, you recall the first time you dived into the swimming pool and the loss of all conciousness till the water hit you (or you hit the water, same difference!), and that was just 5 mts!! The first thing you notice when you board the plane is, there are no safety belts! and to make matters worse you are packed inside a plane like indians in a general compartment! The altimeter hand slowly and, to your dread, steadily makes a clockwise motion. for those 10 minutes (they seem more like 10 seconds) your head is completely blank! At 3000 mts, you put on the helmet and the goggles and say ‘bon saut’ to everyone, but the politesse seems cruel to you! 4200 mts and the door opens. Freezing wind blows in. people start jumping off, and you think you are a fool to be wanting to jump off a plane. The 2 monitors understand all thats going through your head, and they try to put you at ease, but they know better too! And before you know it, you are at the gate, you take a deep breath, go slightly in, and bham, you are out. The first 3 seconds are something hard to describe, infact i have quite forgotten how they were like, but i do remember i had never felt like that. Finally you open your eyes and are overjoyed to see there is a dude in front of you, who seems to know what he is doing. He asks you to touch your parachute, you try, but you kind find it! you panic, but a hand grabs yours and takes it there! Damn, this was so simple on the ground! During the first jump, you just have 2 neurons!! 2000 mts, and its time to prepare for the opening of parachute. but you forget to see your altimeter, and you are already below the prescribed limit. The monitor tells you, ‘open the parachute, god dammit!’ (in sign language of course) and you again go searching for it, and again the helpful hand helps you find it. Bhoop opens the parachute, but your misery aint over yet. The parachute doesnt open as it is supposed to be. and you are not even able to move your head to figure out whats the problem. Murphy does a LOL(or a LMAO, or maybe even a ROTFLMAO for I was too stressed to notice) in your mind, and 4 seconds later, to your greatest relief, you are back to a normal position (or your impression of it)! its then that it hits you, you will be safe. the worst that can happen to you now is getting electrified. Beats crashing into the ground at 200 kms/hour anyday (or so you think at that moment atleast)! This is the first time you are flying under your own control, and you amuse yourself for some time, after which its time you concentrate on the landing, for getting electrified isnt an outcome you would prefer anyway. And by some miracle, you manage to do the right things and reach the ground as if you had jumped from 2 mts. you gather your parachute and return to the base with a big smile on your face.

And this was only the first!!

The next day you do the same thing thrice, this time with only 1 monitor, read no ‘helping hand’. You notice that its not just you who has murphy loling in your mind. You can literally (apparently!) smell fear (read farts). You notice a sign saying no farting on top of the door. You understand the protocol a little more. You say ‘bon saut’ to everyone in the plane, and not in a bon appetit kind of way, this time, you really mean it! You see a person who doesnt even smile at you when you are on ground, but now, he (she) gives a high five and wishes well for you from the bottom of his heart. Commentators always say, cricket is a great leveller, well, skydiving doubly so!!

Before you know it, you have been declared fit to jump solo, and the fear strikes back, with a vengeance. the same old story repeats itself, just that mid air, alone, you realise how big an achievement this is for you. you get over it unscratched, and in the evening, you buy everyone a round of drink, to celebrate the fact (not that you have a choice, its part of the tradition). From that day on, every day seems like a gift (atleast till you keep jumping everyday), and carpe diem, for some reason, doesnt seem too cheesy a motto.

Classtime fiction

I am sitting in a class right now. An Economics class, though I would rather call it a statistics class. Of course it is boring the shit (read this piece of crappy fiction) out of me. I had thankfully done my homework before coming to the class, that is to say printed a few Jerome K Jerome stories for classtime reading. Unfortunately, I finished them even before the halfway mark, and hence, to amuse myself, I have taken to writing, inspired by Jerome that I am!

Our story has at its base, a conventional oft-repeated tale of the gallant who woos and rides away, leaving the maiden to weep. Just that in our story, the gallant doesn’t really manage to woo the maiden, though he does ride away leaving noone but himself to weep (figuratively of course, for he is a gallant!). He nevertheless leaves a little packet for her containing the most precious thing he ever possessed, just to be as faithful to the clichéd story as possible, hoping that if he plays his part of the fairytale story faithfully, his real story would somehow manage to become the fairytale, complete with a ‘happily-ever-after’ ending.

He writes to her as often as he can, being as romantic as his unacknowledged love permits him to be, always getting a reply which makes him fall more in love, but also cementing the fact that there lies no hope in the morrow of his story. The correspondence shrinks as there remain less and less ways of writing the same flirting-with-romance letters. He always gets replies, but he never recieves an unsolicited letter out of the blue, though he checks his mail everyday hoping for one of them.

To repeat the phrase used in oft-repeated stories, ’seasons come and change the time’. The gallant hero is no longer a gallant hero but more of a middle aged man who has seen his share of the world, but still has the lovely maiden he once left at the back of his mind. One fine day, for its always the fine days which move the stories forward, acting on a whim, he books tickets to go back to the place he once called home, more importantly, the place where perhaps, though logic dictates otherwise, the love of his live (for he never came around to love anyone else, though hard, he did try) still resides.

He goes back to the neighbourhood he once resided in, and though much has changed, he is still able to sense a sense of belonging to it. He is somewhat scared of being in that place, of accidentally meeting old acquaintainces, even his ancient love, though he cannot figure out why? He somehow finds the courage to check out her house, or the house she used to reside in, all the time hoping for the latter. It’s perhaps the Beatles song playing in his ipod, thinks the writer of this story, but that is irrelevant.

[Knock Knock]

fem. voice : Who’s that?

The no-longer-gallant-hero-but-a-middle-aged-man (The Man from now on) : me

fem. voice : me who?

The Man : erh…

The door opens anyway, and the eyes are unmistakingly hers, or well atleast at 99 % confidence level. Our man is at loss of words, Part of him wants to run away, Part of him wants to faint, and the remaining majority is wishing it did not exist.

Anyways, the class is about to get over, so I will cut to the chase. They catch up with their life, the man learns that she always remained single, and when he quizzes her about the reason for that, she says she didnt think relationships last, and if they dont, she was scared for the guy involved. The man goes to the bathroom, just to see the look in his eyes.

A quickie

this is not a blog post as much as it is a diary entry/travelogue.

As some of you know, I am finally making the voyage i had planned for all my years in CMI! so, here i was in manali, for one, and only one thing, well two, but i could have lived without the second. weed, and a cafe called bob dylan cafe, and of course it being a stopover on the way to ladakh, three reasons. (the spanish inquisition format here was unintended!)

so i was walking around, and i asked someone where i could get some weed, he seemed like a nice bloke, he said, i can give him the money and he will get it for me. having had just lost my valet, i should have been more careful about trusting strangers, but then, it was me who had asked him, and that always increases your trust. he got me some weed, at a decent price, though i am sure one can get cheaper, and i offered to smoke a joint with them (a group of 4)

while smoking they were talking about all the kinds of weed here, and they ways of trafficing them, and current developments in the trade front, from their talk, they seemed like hardened trafficers, but my guess is that they were all small time blokes who loved smoking, and liked acting like tough boiled eggs to borrow wodehouses’s expression which i have been reading a lot lately.

then i went to bob dylan cafe, which was an absolute bummer, no bob dylan music, very closed groups of people, bad coffee and worse cheese toast, thankfully the prices were affordable! made me feel like even if i had nothing to do in life, i could always open a better cafe than this and make money!

so, i moved on back to my hotel (100 rs/ night for a double room. great price i say!) and there were 3 foriegners sitting around, playing chess, and drinking beer. looked like a good party to crash, so, i crashed. but it was getting awesomely boring, with just silence and a chess game to occupy us. then i offered them my weed, and thats where the craziest conversation that i have been a part of, started. they got their weed too, and soon, we were rolling joint after joint, someone got brandy, someone got rum, and the characters got more eccentric. one guy (a swedish bloke), was a chess fan and appeared a bit cool (at the outset) with fat belly, no shirt, and torn pants. looked like a guy who doesnt care. another guy from USA would laugh to himself out of nowhere, keep saying yo every 2 minutes, and give high fives for no apparent reason. the third dude was an italian, who used to keep zooming out of the conversation, his contibution to it was his rolling the joint skill. add to this, the hotel owner, who seemed pretty shrewd and kind, in short, a good businessman.

so, the chess fanatic, played chess with all the international rules, incuding the rule that the players cant talk to each other. the american (like all americans) disdained such rules, and used to constantly tell the opponent, oh man, you are so fucked, i am gonna whoop your ass. this made the swedish guy go crazy, and thus began the cold war. after that the american guy said that the swedish guy is playing horrible music, to which i said, i have got some good music on my ipod if the swedish guy would let me plug my ipod, and of course the motherfucker didnt. he thankfully had dire straits, and he put it on, but meanwhile the american dude started listening to my ipod. he made a drum out of some plastic glass, and starting beating it and singing. this ennerved the swedish guy no ends, and he told me that this guy has been to mental hospital 10 times, which the guy in question confirmed later on. he said he has what the doctors call paranoid schizophrenia, and said that his brain is apparently bipolar, and that the doctors injected lithium into him and all sorts of crap that i dont remember. the swedish guy on the other hand used to travel from thailand to india and back all the time, and apparently didnt do any work. but my guess would have put him under drug trafficker. it started getting crazier, because they started arguing about my ipod, and fearing crazy shit, i decided to go and sleep and rescue my ipod in the process. had an awesome idea for a science fiction novel, whose crux i forgot, but i remember it had something to do with a mathematical realization, which changes the order of the society or something. asimov kind of stuff. i remember being awesomely impressed by my idea, only to forget it i also got some manal cream in the process, supposed to be the best in the world. Leh awaits

Eurotrip

First things first, brussells and amsterdam come highly recommended! awesome cities, both of them.

anyways, The trip. we were 12 of us. when the idea was concieved, it was just me and the romanian, it has been six months, and well, the group grew, grew on to include her brand new boyfriend, and south americans and vietnamese. anyways, as they say, the more the merrier, i dont quite agree, but people take you for an antisocial if you tell them that you dont think 12 people together in a group is a good idea, especially when they come for cultures as different as we do, so i let them find out for themselves!

I have always had the hots for travelling without too much of plans, money and hotel reservations. of course the others thought i was mad, with the exception of the romanian, who thought it was cool, but now that she was with her boyfriend, she couldnt possibly be doing this kind of hobo shit, could she? so everyone booked their hotels and hostels and whatevers, while me and a cambodian, decided to rough it out (also when i planned this shit, i really had no money, i wasnt just being miserly!) the itinerary was to be brussells-bruges (of In Bruges fame) – antwerp (of Snatch fame) – Rotterdam (bhanu lives there) – Amsterdam (of Pulp Fiction fame). not too tough to see who made the plans, is it

anyways, off we were to brussells, a city which i didnt have very high hopes for,  i thought it would just be another city with those big monuments and shit, the kind you find in dozens in paris, but this city really impressed me a lot. unlike other big european cities, this city aint too touristic, which means it really feels like a normal city, where there seem to be inhabitants and not just tourists everywhere. the first people we met, gave us lift till the hostel (where the other guys had booked for the night), because they thought it was a bit far away, and it was too dangerous to be going there on foot. how nice is that!

apart from nice people, there is what the belges are famous for, the beer, awesomely cheap beer, and shops which are open till very very late! (paris sucks in that respect, everything is closed by 11 here!). needless to say i drank cans cafter cans of beer, my favourite being carpillis (75 cents for 500 ml).

of course, drinking this much on the go means one has to pee in the exterior, and drunk with carpillis that i was, i went all the way to the toilet, seeing that is locked turned to the monument, and started peeing, taking my own sweet time, singing beatles, whistling mozart, after 2 minutes of pure bliss, i turn, to see 2 policemen looking at me, looking right fucking at me, as if to say, come one boy, square go. what does our man do, gives them his trademark smile, of course. they ask for identity card. our man skips a beat. he normally doesnt carry identity cards around, as he is too scared he will get drunk and loose them in some freak accident. he puts his hand in his pocket, to buy some time and make an excuse, but to his surprise, finds his fucking id card, he thinks, this should take care of the fucking policemen! what he forgot was, he was peeing on a national monument, hell it might be some world heritage site or some shit. the police looks at the card and asks, you are from france eh? in france can you pee anywhere you wish? have you peed on your eiffel tower? i started to think of the possibility, peeing on might not be too interesting, but peeing from it could be! drunk that i was, i didnt say much, except that, sorry, i didnt know that peeing on world heritage sites is not allowed and i shall take care next time. he said that this offence is punishable for upto 150 euros. i was like, dude! the toilet is fucking locked, a man needs to do what a man needs to do, and i needed to pee! the police there were apparently sensible, he understood my pain, and asked me to pick up my remaining beer and go away. i misheard it as, take your beer and come to jail with us. i said, sorry dude, please dont put me in jail for this!! he repeated me to leave. i repeated that i am sorry, and that jail doesnt seem to be the optimal solution. when he repeated it the third time, my friends told me, achal, just do what they say, its good!! and i picked my remaining beer and made way to the bar, which is the most awesome bar i have been to, but more about it later

on being drunk

Drunk on what, you ask. I would like to give a long, winded and almost irrelevant, and yet, weirdly funny, strangely sensible, and most importantly, cool(?) answer! You must have seen those characters in cinema and television and literature, who drink, to drown their sorrow, for whom, alcohol is but a painkiller! I often wonder if it is really a good remedy, for I often end up being more depressed than before! But, I digress!

 

Yes, I drink often (thankfully a word which is relative, and hence cannot be debated!), clinging to the hope that the artists of the world are not fooling us, (after all, what reason they could have!) and that there is some truth in their depictions, though every time I do, I realise I should have known better. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I am often depressed.

 

They (the artists), my dear friend, are fooling you. Alcohol does not relieve you of your sorrow! If your girlfriend just dumped you for a dick (this is a pun in English!)

, if you realised you are 21 and a virgin, if life suddenly did not seem worth living (you realised you will be virgin till 40), do not buy a bottle of vodka to relieve your sorrow. It will not, after all its Russian. It is just a myth, just like countless things you have always wanted in life but never got! The only thing the alcohol could possibly grant you, not you, you in all probability don’t need it anyway, but you my dear shy depressed friend, is the temporary courage to see the things you always wanted (girls in my case) being taken by someone else. It is anaesthesia. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

Don’t think that booze is good for nothing though, firstly because never ever believe what people write, for one should form his own opinion, and secondly because I don’t think so anyway! Spirit does wonders for people in good spirit, and I, sometimes, rare as the occasions may be, am happy enough. yes, I do not question my happiness, it ruins it! I shall urge you to do the same, and not ask “why are you happy” when you see a man laughing for no reason. But, I digress again!

 

Being drunk, is like being in love, one could write countless books about it, but the reader (and what a voracious reader it must be!) will still not comprehend what, in the name of god’s arse, does being in love feel like. That, as many of my luckier(?) friends tell me, is something which one can only experience. I think there is another analogy which will convey what I am trying to say better, but it is unsuitable for the readers of this journal.

 

I, once had a friend, who would always say, “I don’t drink alcohol, but I have enjoyed many a drinking parties”. I asked my wise friend, “What’s better? Watching porn or having sex?”. He has been having sex (to continue the analogy) since. I am sorry, but I could not come up with a better analogy except this, and well, this is a real life incident, I am merely reporting the truth . Sorry if I have offended anyone, I did not mean to. For those who know me better, stop giggling!

 

Alcohol is the last refuge of the losers say some so called wise men (in Indian literature, there is a character called devdas which would be a better word than loser, but …). I wonder if the wise men agreed for their group to be called wise men. I am sure there existed wise men who did not quite agree that the other wise men were very wise, and that they do not deserve to be in the same group, and that if they had to be in the same group, let that group not be called wise men anymore. So where was I, yes, if you think alcohol is for losers, you are either a very happy man, and you should grab brandy or rum as soon as possible, or you are beyond the point of salvaging (read religious or health conscious), or yes, you are one of those people who are afraid you might get addicted. I don’t think I have anything more to say.

 

Did I answer your question? No? Could you repeat your question?

on being drunk, encore

i retrace my statements i never made. drunk when you are depressed is awesome! if anyone (including me ever told you, its not) fuck him, and i am sure he would be happy whether you were a guy or a girl, though if you are reading this you are a guy, and i am not very sure he would be very happy about it, but one could try…

sucks, as i already noticed in my incisive, and some claim seminal article on being drunk. i think its just to vague a topic for drunk man to write on, and too tough a topic for a non drunk man to write on. lot of people quote this stupid example (its really awesomely stupid). one man once tried to describe the taste of cyanide but he died before he could write it. no man knows it taste yet! wtf! code language dude, it was invented for just this reason, but i guess you wanted to die, without contributing, i empatise with you, but atleast lie intelligently!

Derriére

lets see if you understand

Epiphany

What does it take to achieve enlightenment? surprisingly, nothing much. All one needs to do is, miss dinner, wear half pants in real cold weather, and try and open metacafe (after a dream shattering week) only to realise that it doesn’t work, and it wont work, and there is nothing you can do about it. I wonder what the fuck buddha was doing under that tree for so many years! He didn’t have the internet though, but i guess there was porn in those days too?

How does it feel? It feels awesome (duh!)! Suddenly all the depression related to girls disappear! the mind becomes free and clear of all the planning and plotting it was doing to get a girl (the girl, any girl) in the near future. there is one simple, painless, clear and well defined path. well, atleast it looks clear and well defined, for quite some length!

The Path? just forget trying to get girls. enjoy the free beauty at display. Be rash nash (rash, nash?). Stare at boobs. Ask girls for sex point blank (drink vodkas if it helps). If cant, just enjoy the view. there is too much beauty for one to fret over a small part of it hidden away.

Footnote  – well, add a girl showing her pink panties in the list of things needed for enlightenment. so cute and hot! oh and add ‘comfortably numb’ playing in the mp3 player too.

Bottomline – just be cool. No, be yourself and hopefully that entails the being cool part not much of an epiphany eh?

Ah, fuck!

1 week almost over. french nurses are hot, but it aint fun when they are taking out ear wax from your ears! it aint fun when you are the only one nude in a room with 2 hot french nurses. it aint fun when you have to carry a 2 litre can full of urine around, with people lolling all over.

it aint fun when chicks smile to you, but seem ungettable. it aint fun when there is a really hot moroccon chick in your group, but 2 other morroccon dorks too, who have an unfair advantage! it aint fun when you hear russians talking russian all day long! it aint fun when you have dinner at 7 pm!

it is fun though, to have free beers after running around like mad dogs. it is fun to hang around romanians. it is fun to be with a girl, all alone in the room. but it aint fun, when the girl discusses politics, and philosophy! it aint fun, when she whips out conspiracy theories about 9/11 and how americans suck! but its nice to know she has a really hot romanian friend, but it aint fun to see her and realise that she is totally ungettable, and that your dreams of loosing virginity any time soon, were just dreams after all.

it definitely aint fun to know that you will be screwed like mad bitches for 2 months, once the course starts. but well…thats the only screwing i can expect in this life….bring it on bitch!

some cool things i will love to do

jump over a car ong bak style!

bungee jumping (of course)

show a middle finger right in the face of the prime minister/president of some really big country

get an oscar/nobel prize/fields medal and auction it during the acceptance speech and wear half pants to the ceremony

have sex (obviously)

Publish 1 paper atleast! in pysics hopefully.

oh..my airport login is going to go down soon….so i better save before it all goes to waste