I'll know

I know it’s a difficult world to live in these days. Trouble in Iraq, civilians shot and tortured in Afghanistan etc, we hear this everyday. Anyway, while on the subject, it also seems to me that a lot of people are getting married lately. My younger cousin got married, which to me was more of a surprise than my own impending marriage, for various reasons.
As a practising sadist, I occasionally like running through marriage photographs. I always find myself saying “tsk tsk”, by the end of it. I’m sure we can all agree that the costumes can make anyone look like a chump. However, that’s not the biggest worry here.
The pics look like a frame by frame dissection of the art of self-realisation. The pictures before the ceremony arguably show evidence of disorientation with a moronic expression in the groom’s face. With gradual transition toward complete self-realisation, where the pics show evidence of an “Uh oh!” state. Arguably, in some cases, the bride has an unexplained smug look. We will never know. But I have a feeling I’ll be able to help, soon.

All is flux

While walking down the road, I suddenly realised I had lost something. My mind’s focal point has always changed directions quicker than a fly, more so these days. This makes resolving blurry pixels in the mind almost impossible. The annoying buzz of the white noise does to my mind what my cooking does to the ingredients. But then suddenly the noise is tuned out for a split second. The feeling is not much different than finding your thick spectacles for a second before losing them again. These are the times when I realise if I have lost/gained anything. It was precisely one of these moments, on the road the other day.
The million calculations in the mind have brought a million expectations of what the future should hold. Every inch of nerve has been claimed by ruthless calculations. However, I forgot to add change as a variable in my calculations.
To be fair, I have been pelted with hints like they were rotten tomatoes and eggs. The hints were all over the place like pink neon signs. Change of tube timings when I’m about to miss the train, change of locks on my office door just when I had managed to get a spare key for the old ones, overnight change of MY career plans by someone else, change of voice in people, all of these passed before I could move an eyelid. I still didn’t get it. But god tried his best. He made sure the goal posts were moved every two seconds. It is frustrating, and you feel exactly like you have peed on your foot ‘cos someone moved the potty.
All this makes my planning skills look like Hitler’s. Or maybe I need to let out a philosophical discharge of methane, and convince myself that change is the only constant. What a gip.

What I had lost and found was the point that everything has flown, and will continue to do so.

These days

These days I’m intrigued by intelligent people. I’m talking about people whose intelligence is obvious. Or at least, it is made obvious to my eyes. The endless sentences on the fallacies of life, the streams of words about philosophy are taking their toll on me. They are slowly corroding my Kevlar-like mind shell. Years of practice has rendered me immune to irritation by an outsider. At the same time, it has left me prone to irritation and intolerance on the inside. Of course practice makes man perfect, or bored. So I’m still working on it.
Intelligence and intelligent people have hogged most of the limelight on my fascination list. I always wanted to be one because I never really got to be one. This was confirmed time to time by my folks. Teachers, marks card, degree all included. The question mark on my mind whether I belong to the Intelligent or effing stupid category slowly faded as I grew up. By the time I reached adolescence, I pretty much knew I was stupid.
So what in the name of god’s beloved earth is the problem now ? I know which category I belong to. So that means my life is sorted. Job well done, so let’s move on, I thought. Strangely it never proved to be so easy. Incidents in life always left me bewildered. They left me thinking, “is that magic ? no wait, that must have been my intelligence kicking in”. The choices still remained. Stupid, Mediocre, Intelligent. When asked, I’m biased towards being mediocre. The idea is, it upgrades my stupidity and humbles my intelligence. Smart.

The super car

Being a car nut is a great job, especially if you live in Surrey. When I first saw the Ferrari Maserati dealership in Egham, I thought I had seen it all. Scagliettis, 360 Spyders, 360 Modenas, F430, a bunch of Maseratis and a couple of Aston Martin all lined up in the sun made for one of the most evocative pictures of my life. Of course I visit this place almost every weekend and drool over it endlessly. The meaning of a “rare car” changed tremendously in the past few months. The usual Ferraris were not rare anymore thanks to the Dealership. To top it, the place seems to be filled with rich slobs with ridiculous amounts of money to spend.
So as rarity goes the rarest automobile I have seen in my life has to be the Honda NSX. I know the name “Honda” is as rare as a bus, but you see, only 7 NSXs reportedly exist in the whole of UK. A McLaren SLR comes next (it does indeed sound like a Spitfire), but the rarest of all of them beasts has to the Ferrari F40. I couldn’t believe my eyes for a moment. One of the greatest Ferraris ever made.

The museum

I finally made it to the British Museum. Though it has been nearly three years since I first set foot in this country, I had never really got on with discovering London. Though previously I had trashed London as being uninteresting, I do admit it can be quite promising at times. Two weeks earlier, I had been to the Imperial War Museum. This time around, it’s the British Museum. I had gathered a lot of hype about it. Almost everyone marvelled at how fabulous it was.
Admittedly, I’m not an arty person. I really have no clue about paintings and laundry stains people pass off as art. My friends convinced me that this was no art gallery but a vast collection of things from around the world.
The place indeed is fabulous. The collections are massive. But, you see, it is all loot from around the world. It’s not like the Egyptians gave up the mummies. “Yeah o’right mate, you can ‘ave it”. Nor can I imagine the Brits asking the Egyptians “Please my good Sir, could we have the mummy?”. They are more likely to have said “Ahmed, load the trucks”. The same applies to the Indian and Tibetan idols. I am quite sure they didn’t ask anyone before borrowing them either. In that scale, this is probably the world’s largest collection of stolen goods.
In the entrance of the huge building is a sign sanctimoniously proclaiming that the entry to the museum has been free since 1753. And a box next to it is marked for any donations. Loot the world and ask for donations to keep the loot.