Slaughter House 5 and a family affair

One of the books that really influenced me both for its style and its content was Slaughter House 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. The famous books begins with the line "Billy Pilgrim came unstruck in time"... there is also a prayer on Billy Pilgrim's wall which goes like-

GOD GRANT ME

THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT

THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE

COURAGE

TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN,

AND WISDOM ALWAYS

TO TELL THE

DIFFERENCE.

Below this prayer is the following line "Among the things that Billy could not change was the past, the present and the future"

What can you say to that. What can Billy change....... well like Billy I cannot change anything....

Hmmm... as usual it is the beginning of the week and this is the time I do some sort of intellectual masturbation. Now that we have gotten out of that let me tell you about this god awful, horrid, utterly despicable and thoroughly enjoyable family gathering that I was forced to attend under severe emotional blackmail ranging from-

" We will not be around forever"- Mom
" Friends will come and go but a parent's love......."- Mom
" Your mom wants you to come" - Dad
" You could find yourself an eligible woman.."- Old ladies in the family dying to get me married off and thoroughly horrified that I might marry someone outside my community

So it was under this sort of terrible strain that I was forced to comb my thinning hair, put on a shirt ( "Not those plain ones, they make you look older"-aunt),put on new trousers and even new shoes(why! Why does it matter that my shoes are slightly old, why do I care!) and... and the ceremony was taking place in a religious place ( thats right! Take an athiest fish and put him out of water and into the dry land of godliness)

So here I am on the fateful day looking bashfully at the ceiling-Trying not to make eye contact with this chubby guy in front of me who is waiting to burst into a well meaning conversation about nothing. trying not to look at the old ladies who have gone into a feeding frenzy searching wide eyed for eligible brides and grooms for their nubile fledglings.

Half an hour later prayers begin- simpering girl's faces turn pious though the copious and meretricious jewelery still dazzles hapless bystanders. Being an atheist I have no clue how to pray, when to bend, when to sit, when to look with woeful eyes at the heavens. The chubby guy in front of me is breaking into a sweat. He is wearing what can only be called a unisex maternity gown, though I know he would beg to differ. From the corner of my eye i can see a kid with an evil gleam in his eyes- the kind when they are about to destroy furniture or spit at guests or tug at and extract clumps of hair from some poor skull closest to them. Well this kid is slightly older and has been grown up to know that the things described above are unacceptable to his parents, but age also makes kids wiser (and more ingeniously evil). The kid sneaks up between the chubby guy and me and tries to look inconspicuous as he ties one end of the gown of the chubby guy to the end of the curtain next to the chubby guy. The chubby guy is too engrossed with prayer to notice. The kid disappears into the belly of the crowd behind me. Turns out that religious places only have power over grown men and women.

Soon the prayers end and I am waiting for the chubby guy to stand up or show some form of movement both out of anticipation and boredom. A curvaceous woman from the woman's section walks over to the chubby guy and taps him on the shoulder. A little eavesdropping on thier conversation reveals the curvaceous cutie is actually the chubby guy's wife. Pious bastardly men, I tell you... and I , I have nothing!

The chubby guy rises, so does the curtain, chubby guy moves towards the exit and so does the curtain and the rod that was holding it in place. The rod falls making a noise that helps to disguise my laughter. I break out into a long uneasy cough to cover up. (God bless you kid!....... Yes! even atheist say god bless you)

Then the dinner is served. It is a feast and I am happy to gobble it all down. Later on some mom enquires about me to my mom and her daughter is looking at me. All right! I now have a devastating confession. This does not feel as bad as I thought. In fact it feels good. All my life I have dated woman whose parents would disapprove of me simply because I do not belong to their religion/ caste/community. The woman were always scared to tell their parents about me and this would piss me off a lot. This was a turn of the tables.



The evening ended and I was driven home by my doting aunt and uncle. I had a couple of beers. Watched a movie and felt more in my own skin. The seductive power of social acceptance, its lure and its magic were never alien to me, but beneath the magic the penalties for non compliance loomed large and it was just a strategy like all evolutionary stable strategies (ESS). All right I think I am tending towards more intellectual masturbation so I shall take your leave.......

A black humourist's rants: Birth of the cynic

So it is a Wednesday morning and I have a mail sitting in my Drafts folder since the last three days. The mail is about a complaint about the lighting over my workstation:-

" Dear Sir/ Madam/Infra team members, In a horrific event of cataclysmic proportions, the preponderance of the light in my work life has severely diminished leaving sullen gloom and plunging my spirit into the darkness of ergonomic inefficiency. It is hence my endeavor through this mail, to outline the urgency of this problem and ask you to make the necessary amends and changes. Also as I am quite insignificant, the action on your part shall not bear any fruit on the functioning of the universe and will not warrant any permission from higher authority. I request you to rescue me from the limbo of this darkness. Warm Regards/ Thanking you/ Yours sincerely"

The mail has not been sent out of fear that I might offend someone at my workplace. Nothing of what I say is usually meant to be malefic but then again I have had problems before. For instance just because I am sarcastic and bordering on dark humour people will often tell me about some brutal murder or horrific riot and expect me to say something mean and scathing about it. I now understand that these people have never gotten me in the first place nor will they ever. Just because someone likes dark humour (or enjoys Southpark) does not make them evil, deluded or cruel. I think black humour is perhaps among the last few fragments of free speech left in our world.

I have learned not to seek acceptance since I do not need it and since it is a futile exercise in self abasement. Rephrasing I can say that the monks have indeed sold their monasteries leaving cynics of tired dreamers..... and to celebrate black humour here are the funniest images I have seen on the net today-


This one is from something awful. It is a spoof children's book-


Hey I think these are damn funny.. think what you will.... till next time!!

The week that never was ( Jan 19-23)

I figured that this blog is dated. I mean all I do is rave and rant about self help books written in the past. So I think I should do something about it.
Well, I think I am going to post weekly news on this blog (of course it will not be factual.... what were you thinking?). These sections will be called " The week that never was"

Here goes....
The week that never was (Jan 19-23)

Day traders who got fired express shock and horror

A day trader who got fired yesterday expressed shock and horror at the circumstances of his exit. " I mean Obama won," he said, " How could I get fired after that."

Satyam founder's well wishers and close relatives claim "external influence"




In a bizarre twist of events the relatives of Mr R. Raju have claimed "external influence". Producing the astrological charts in court, they have shown how Mr Raju was going through the dreaded Saade Saathi or the seven year itch where Saturn or Shani exerts its malefic influence on the hapless victim.
Another well wisher added that it was normal to commit great financial frauds under such malefic influences. "Providing the charts of ex CEOs who had committed similar frauds, the pattern is quite clear. Financial fraud is directly linked to moon signs and hence during such times a person must not be allowed to deal with other people's money."
A PIL has since been filed with the higher courts asking for the dismissal of cases against several contract killers who had killed under malefic "external influences". A famous scholar of financial frauds and its links with malefic influences of Saturn laughed as he explained, even great bards get deluded when it comes to the truth: take Shakespeare for instance, in Julius Ceaser he says
" The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves." Alas! If only he had known how stars can affect the man.
In a related story religious people of many faiths came together and agreed that while astrology may not be a universal explanation, it is indeed true that if man has to be free he must completely subjugate his will to the scriptures. When people do not follow the scriptures we have events like the financial meltdown. A famous cleric proclaimed that the financial crises is "God exacting revenge from the indolent heathen masses of flesh and bone who are devoid of fervent religious feeling and the virtues that are needed to have a stable cash flow and liquidity in the market."
So next time before we judge people involved in the sub prime crises or the ex-Enron, ex- Satyam CEOs remember that the stars were never aligned in their favour. After all the fault lies not in ourselves but in our stars



A hipster becomes the New York Times bestseller for his book about the financial crisis "The audacity of dope"




A book loosely patterned on a book with a similar name by Obama has become a best seller. Our famous book critic Mr Porlock has the following review for our readers:

" Imagine a book that starts with an earth shattering quote like

" Like man, all my life, people have like, called me a junkie, like for all you yuppies out there a junkie is like a drug addict, but like I am not a junkie, I never dealt with junk bonds"

The author Mr Green (short for Greenspan {not the federal reserve chairman}) says " It was like man, I thought, this career thing, it is like such a 20th century invention. I mean, man, what about like experience and shit. I rememeber when I was young. My guru like told me, Allan, man, (Allan is the author's first name) , human beings are like powerful creatures that can harm the things around them, they can like, alter the karmic cycles or something. The key is to never make decisions that affect thousands of lives. The key is to make yourself so insignificant that you have no effect on humanity. You may, like, you know take orders from other people and all, cos that way the onus of altering the karmic cycle does not fall squarely on your shoulders and man must never let responsibility fall on his shoulders." It is this philosophy that I, like, want to share with the world. This empowering philosophy has been the bedrock of my happiness.

All his life Mr Green has been called a dope head and a junkie, when Mr Porlock our book critic asked him about how it felt to finally be heard, the colourful author had this to say, " Like being heard and being respected are such a 20th century thing. I mean I use to get stuff made by Owsley ( Stanley Owsley, the sound engineer of Grateful dead who also made pure LSD) and I could not even hear myself after that. I heard voices of course, and there was colour and dreams. The painful voices were of the karmic slaves who have been bound by the effect of thier actions on others, the colours are their dreams that have like left their minds abode and wandered into ether. A lot of people ask me if I endorse like drug addiction, but I like am so against drugs man, I mean I had my guru's help and so I did it for karmic reasons but I am not like into dope and all. i mean like I once was but that was like years ago when I was 40 years old and inexperienced. I mean like come on. Now I only do it for karmic purposes."

The title of the book comes from the author being called a drug addict all the time. The paradox is as he explains " Like they think I have the audacity to say what I am saying because I am high, hence the audacity of dope but I am saying it when I am sober, since, I only take dope for karmic purposes."

The book which also goes on to talk about the financial meltdown provides certain critical viewpoints that help align one's understanding to the "shock of the hour". Green says " Man must essentially not affect another man's life. Man should be, unlike what great poets have said " An island unto themselves." I mean like free love, and free everything man. Dependencies are the bane of civilization. I mean can you imagine the interdependencies we have built. All the market linked to one another, globalization, phew! Such complexity cannot allow for decisions that will affect others which should never be taken in the first place themselves."

A blatant confession

All right... have to make a confession. Why is it that I keep attacking a certain self -help author (oops! self help coach) in this blog. Why so much spite? Why this almost personal vendetta...... cos he stole my idea! Thats it. Thats the truth out in the open. He stole my idea.

From my early manhood days I knew that I had a healthy self deluding capacity. I had the ability to make towering phrases which meant nothing. I was from a land of as Mr Shobin Verma puts it " exotic and cultured people". I could have been a self help coach. I knew that if I spent my life advising others on how to live their lives I would not give a f**k about my own. Someone else out there is living the life I want to live, saying the things I want to say

... and to top it all.. I could have said it better.. my quotes would have been smarter and with caveats....... for instance..." Say yes more often (except when people tell you to go f**k yourself or immolate yourself), yes is a karmic word that opens up the poetic possibilities of the mind to achieve transcendental harmony with the spirit which governs everything". You see, do you see how the caveat works.. do you see how quotable I am. Alas.....if only I had learned to believe in the poetic possibilities of my transcendental dreams and had consumed a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, I would have had a healthy mind and spirit and have been on the way to achieving my true potential.

Pearls of wisdom

"It gets better," chuckled Julian. "The Japanese sumo wrestler is naked! Well, actually he is not totally naked. He has a pink wire cable covering his private parts." -Julian Mantle (The Monk who sold his monastery)
Notwithstanding the kinky interplay of pink wire cables on the privates of a large and sweaty sumo wrestler, there is deep wisdom that can be gained from this brilliant line by Shobin Verma. I understand that other self help authors ( who call their spouses "brides", diseases-"karma" and death- "divine doorway to the afterlife") have found profound wisdom in Shobin Verma's book( Paulo Coelho{ author of a famous book " The malchemist" which is the story of a mentally retarted boy called Santiago who gets a "divine vision" - more on this later} says that this is a captivating book. I agree about the captivating power of this book but I have an alternate analysis to this gem of a literary piece.

Firstly, the sages of Sivana are an allegory of a deep mental loss experienced by the teacher (Julian Mental) of the narrator. Observe the following lines:

" Julian, who could scarcely believe what he was experiencing, was offered a feast of fresh fruits and exotic vegetables, a diet that he would later learn was one of the keys to the treasure trove of ideal health enjoyed by the sages. After the meal, Yogi Raman escorted Julian to his living quarters: a flower-filled hut containing a small bed with an empty journal pad on it. This would be his home for the foreseeable future."

The absurdity of this whole idea is the ultimate key to unlock the puzzle. The absurdity is infact the thread that holds the whole plot of the story together. Next observe these lines-

"Adorning his obviously supple body was a long red robe topped by an ornately embroidered blue hood. And though it was another sticky night in July, the hood covered his head. "Greetings my friend," Julian offered enthusiastically. "Greetings." "Don't look so alarmed, what did you expect me to wear — Armani?" " We both started to laugh, softly at first. Soon our giggles had turned to guffaws. Julian certainly had not lost that wicked sense of humor that had kept me entertained so long ago. As we relaxed in my cluttered but comfortable living room, I couldn't help but notice the ornate necklace of wooden prayer beads dangling from his neck. " What are those? They're really beautiful." " More about these later," he said, rubbing some of the beads with his thumb and index finger. "We have much to talk about tonight."

Now as you can imagine when these three pieces are read together they give off a whiff of a strong current of homo erotic behaviour, both in the way that the sages talk about the sumo wrestler, as well as in the way the narrative flows when Julian Mental comes to the house of the narrator. ( b the words "supple body", "sticky night", " wicked humour". Also notice that if you remove the beads from the last few sentences they read:

"What are those? They' re really beautiful."
"More about these later," he said, rubbing with his thumb and index finger. We have much to talk about tonight"

Like every great self help author before him Shobin takes utmost care to guise the true meanings of his words. One has to understand the narrative and look at the flow between the chapters to really gauge the depth of what the author is saying. Please play along with me. I am simply trying to prove my point as I explain the true meanings of this book which can only be understood from the befitting conclusions of the book


"The Universe favors the brave. When you resolve to lift your life
to its highest level, the strength of your soul will guide you to a
magical place with magnificent treasures."

Now we are in a position to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. The pink wire cable that adorns the privates of the sumo wrestler is an allegory for Julian Mental's desire of the narrator. When the narrator works as an intern for Julian, he cannot help but be attracted to his chubby ( the sumo wrestler imagery) intern. According to the doctor on the Oprah's Look at all the horrible things that happened to me before I got on this show show, " Julian seems like a tight lipped conservative lawyer. Falling for a chubby intern and wishing to see his privates (note the last line "magical place with magnificent treasures") is " wrong " for him on two grounds: firstly the narrator is an intern and secondly the narrator is married chubby (although exotic) man. The real challenge in life is to face such taboos. To spit at the cruel face of societal rules is mankind's ultimate destiny and Shobin Verma brings this out through the internal war that Julian Mental fights.

The sages represent the inner dogs of purity. As a Nietzsche says in the chapter " The pale criminal" of Thus Spake Zarathustra." The pale criminal who perhaps believes in the laws of good and evil set by society ultimately becomes its victim. Living one's life as per one's feeling is very important. Kudos to Mister Shobin Verma for defending the feral desires of mankind and asking them not to cower to the rules of society.

PS: There are some malicious bloggers and critics who have called the novel an allegory of a rape. According to them Julian was basically abducted by large bears (sages of sivana- sumo wrestlers) and was violated by them...a process of deep purification when he realized the futility of his life( thus the bears get transformed into sages). This view is highly subversive and should be ignored by all discerning life forms. Until next time...........................................

Thought prisons : Death and Disease at the bottom of the Pyramid

No problem is so large it cannot be run away from.
- - -Charles M. Schultz (Peanuts)

No problem is so large that it cannot be theorized and put into a management model
----- Crash Zeppelin

Thinkers are ofter victims of thought prisons. A dear friend of mine called Markus once scribbled in my book " Cogito Ergo Dolero" ( I think therefore I am sad). Thinkers somehow fall into their own thought prisons and their mind collapses into itself leaving them a mass of jelly without a spine. The decisiveness gone, thinkers turn into several things. Nietzsche said that thinkers would turn into sensualists when confronted with the devices of the world unless they embraced " the superman". There are often times I think that this is perhaps a reflection of his inner desire to break free from his thought prison. But enough about thought prisons and of this intellectual masturbation. Lets get down to the brass tacts. Let us talk about the famous book by a famous management thoerist: " Death and Disease at the bottom of the pyramid"- P. K Aulad

Before I get into the wonderful and magical world at the bottom of the pyramid let me put this book in context with a famous quote by a discerning diva whose albums have sold millions of copies:

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff."

- Mariah Carey, pop singer

"I want to change the world but it is not economically viable"

- Overheard at the place where I got an MBA and became a superior and discerning life form


One can address both the viewpoints expressed above with this management gem ( and although environment activists have accused P K Aulad of being among the biggest gas producers and contributors to global warming, this is a good book). There is money to be made from the dying starving, although enviously skinny masses. There are courses to be introduced in business schools, there are papers to be written and dissertations to be presented.

Honestly though I think some of the models used by Indian business houses like E- Choupal and Shakti have done exceedingly well for themselves and for the skinny but diseased people, this article is not about that.

This is a book which addresses the loftiest of our global goals. In fact P K Aulad himself says " I want to turn the situation 360 degrees"

An Interview with a famous management theorist

Excerpts from an interview of a famous management theorist and noted author of " Get the Fuck Away from me"

Crash Zeppelin:

Sir, as a fan and lifetime follower of your work I would like to know what was your frame of mind when you wrote this books?

Author:

In the summer of 2008, as was the case with all underutilized top rung management theorists, I felt a pang of hopelessness. The markets were doing really badly then and I was busy trying to pen down a book on how to deal with the same. The key idea of that book was around cost cutting through severe truncation, a process I liked to call corporate circumcision. I remember making a speech about this. The reason I call it circumcision is to differentiate it from amputation. Theorists and practicing managers tend to mistake rightsizing and divesting businesses as a sort of amputation, but it need not be. Circumcision on the other hand hardly takes away anything. Now you might think that circumcision also represents an unnecessary process, but I am not interested in that part of the analogy, I just want to demonstrate a different way of looking at rightsizing and cost cutting......Halfway through the book I had realized how my analogy was not apt and I decided to abandon writing the book. It is then that it struck me. The fire had somehow escaped from my belly. Time and age had smothered it with gastric juice or whatever the hell that smothers fires in the bellies of people. In olden days, days before the Management wars, days before religious schisms and blind faith in God, I would have finished the book no matter what. I would have defended it against any venomous ardent practicing manager. I would have sneered at the sneering sales people at my training sessions, but now. Alas! The golden age is behind us, perhaps rightly so. Perhaps it was all right for the fire to escape my belly, but it should have been replaced with another kind of fire- a fire of truth.

Crash Zeppelin:
But sir, I understand that you went through a lot of personal trials and tribulations while writing this book...

Author:
It is now in my ripe old age, that I write this. My last attempt to really saying something- something I mean and something I stand for, something unlike all the management books I have written so far. This is my attempt to purge my sins. This is my catharsis. As I sit here watching the sun go down I think of Firdous, the poet manager, who died in the management wars, I think of Mrinalini, the business journalist, who perhaps was tortured by cruel economists in her office. I picture her face as the bastards throw statistics and logic at her. I picture her writhing in agony. They say she was electrocuted, but I know that it was no accident. She was killed or worse she killed herself.

Crash Zeppelin:
But, how did you come up with the famous title of this worthy book?

Author:
As I think of all the past, I resist feeling the pride of a survivor. I resist feeling the hatred that I have nurtured like my identity. I resist the anger and the feelings of revulsion for what humanity has done and has let loose upon itself. As I begin to write this book, I mostly think about what is the one thing that I really want to say upfront. What is the one thing that I really believe makes life worthwhile and that is worth dying for. It is then that the title of this book dawns on me: Get the fuck Away from me!