Can Read

As promised, if anyone is keeping track, we will talk about the novels that you ‘can read’, or I’ll do myself good to read.

The problem with me is I am always on the move. Never on one thing for long enough to see it through. Now, I am following the markets, next week, I am on some TV series, and the week after, I am back on market, or doing something different altogether, like brushing my technical subjects. Last week, I was thinking of reading up an epic novel. If I spent as much time on reading some novel rather than on searching the best there is, I would have completed one. There are too many things to do. And hence, one thing is always at the opportunity cost of some other extracurricular activity. In fact I firmly believe that if I can stick to one thing for long enough, I’ll be good at it. The problem with me, as I said, is I am always on the move.

So coming back to novels, you – must - read ‘Fathers and Sons’, it is epic, believe me. I read it like a few months back and it moved me. No lessons, a story too good to pass up.

Also, I was searching the net for the list of best novels there are. As it turned up, I don’t even know names of any of the top ten. What, Godfather and Fountainhead are not even in the top hundred. And I thought I was a scholar having read them. Well, got to do more, got to be more. And so, I made a resolution to read the best novel ever as per the authority there is, the Times – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy . The eBook version has, take a deep breath, one thousand seven hundred and fifty nine pages. Without bothering you with my personal reasons, let me just say ‘This novel will have to wait’. I humor-filtered the top hundred list and then sorted it by the no. of pages column in ascending order. The result is ‘Three men in a boat’ by Jerome Klapka. The eBook version has one hundred and sixty four pages in total. Just the size my lethargic life style demands. The novel is funny as hell. Only five-point someone brought made me laugh so much in the first 30 pages. Well, I can’t comment on the rest of the book having not read it but it has promise.

The plan is, somehow get a hard copy of Anna Karenina or War and Peace, read it up and pretend I am a scholar, having now contributed to the world of literature by providing it the audience it doesn’t need, but deserves.

This article has to finish with a funny quote, I resolve. Search the internet – ahh, powers off (with it, the modem) – Here’s a compromise, the first line of the best novel ever, Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

That must get me going.

Wait, the powers up in the last minute, let’s see if I can use my talents to pull the rabbit out of the deep hole with ‘Google’ written above it –

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” - George Burns

Can watch

As usual, let me start out with a pointless note:

Well, where were we when I last wrote? Same place where we are when I am writing this. If you draw a line from the point we were, say, a couple of months back, to the point we are right this moment. It will be a dot as a general rule. Nevertheless, the noises are loud enough to distract us from this calmness and stability. We go hence and forth, moving around, in circles, it takes a toll on us and then after all the effort, we find that we are not much far away from where we thought was the starting point, and we get exhausted at the thought of it. Too tired to go forward, we rest on the idea of using the experience to actually go forward. The circus goes on.

Now that we got that out of the way:

“There are two kinds of people in this world my friend, those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.” You did not hear this only because you are too busy not to watch the last few minutes of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ on YouTube. Got nostalgic about the time I watched this movie, but couldn’t recollect the plot and so looked it up. Someday, I plan on watching a full movie and remembering it for some time.

Now since we are taking on movies, Django Unchained is a movie you’ll want to watch while you are not eating. Torentino is the real deal. He isn’t afraid of blood. It shows.

Well, real deal can also be used to describe Lincoln. Some movies are like novels. They are to be savored and shelved. They are to be understood. In fact, you’ll need to read up a lot of Civil War notes to make sense of the movie. It is quite worth it. Without watching any other Oscar contestants of the year, I can argue why this deserved to be the winner. Never mind the actual winners; consolation is that Daniel Day-Lewis got the Best actor award. It was unanimous in his case.

I am making this up as I am moving over this screen, as you can see, as there isn’t much of a fresh idea that comes to mind to enlighten you with. Take this as my faithful confession and bring your kind self to bear with me because, I promise, there will be a lot more blabber/ information/ wisdom/ BS coming up your way. Might do you good to get out of the way as well.

Give you a heads up, we'll probably be doing something on lines of few novels you ' can read', and such , or you cannot.

Better Than Ever

There are a lot of things about the way people go about their lives. There are certain givens - assumptions – which are incorporated into our thinking and attitudes, the way we deal with our worlds, which have their influence in most of our decisions and indecisions. Sometimes one of these assumptions act as pillars for what a person is. Many people go through their entire lives without addressing what these assumptions are and what they stand for. The one such belief which is most addressed is religion. People choose to specifically accept it or reject it. But many other axioms go unnoticed. Passively accepted or rejected but never addressed.

One such feel, a certain hypothesis that doesn’t get analyzed enough: Life as a whole right now isn’t as good as it used to be in the old times. Old times can be a person’s childhood or teenage or their grandparents times depending on whether the person is question is a teenager or middle aged man or a loser. I can’t say that majority of people feel this way but a significant bunch do. And majority of us feel this way with lesser consistency.

For instance, how many times have I heard - Yesterdays songs are gold. Today’s, just too ripe. Yesteryears lifestyle (with barriers and scarecrows) was too good. Today’s lifestyle (With Independence) is messed up. It is kind of a curse to have a drunk around you unless you are drunken enough yourself to ignore him coz this is the stuff that inevitably pops up with drunkards. Too much philosophy with too much bias. As if philosophy of any kind is good at all.

Yet, let’s philosophize. It can be fun if I you know how to take it.

We need to go deeper into the concepts of Music and Independence the drunkards talk of, as they define a lot of who we are in general. Also, because this space isn’t about stuff that matters.

Music is subjective. It is dependent much on the quality of the musicians as the genre. And on the person listening. So when we say old time music was good. Mostly it was the melodious music of 70s/80s/90s (which was the only kind then) which is good. Wait, 90s was shit. It was the transition of everything (at least that is how I feel as I grew up then) where they were just learning to use guitars in places of veenas. The music currently seems messed up because there is too much to take from too many musicians. But if you choose with ears, the music today was not even conceivable 20/30 years back. In types of music available, whether classic Bollywood hits or western albums on charts, history is being made every week with music so beautiful than ever before. This goes for many things apart from music. You can always say there is nothing as soothing as Kishore Kumars Tere Bina Zindagi.. But Kishore Kumar may have done much more today, and better! 

You know what else was not conceivable 20/30 years back? Technology. Just by the presence of all that is available to us, we of today are superior to ourselves of yesterday. And technology takes everything with it. To some extent, mindsets. Independence is such a victim. People take it, play with it, misuse it. When it backfires, they say that its evil. It’s like writing ‘the bike was drunk’ on an insurance claim paper.  Fact is, our education, especially at home, doesn’t take into account the freedom a man gets after he turns 16 or so. 

When there were restrictions on how to live. People asked for freedom. In fact it was fought for and rightly earned. But, when their loved kids get spoiled because they were not taught how to deal with all the options freedom gives, the confusion the options create and the threat pushing the wrong button poses. When the naïve click the bad habits button which is colorful and gives immediate returns. When a kid suddenly turns stops showing respect. People confuse their failure as failure of independence. The failure of ‘today’s generation’. Fact is, yesterdays generation must have been knowing what’s coming and prepare for it. Too bad our that dads didn’t. We can safely say today’s generation will be equally screwed when the tide turns and the next generation shows up. Planning is for losers anyways.

As a sub note, it must be said that not everything is getting good and creamy. I Look at the IT engineers out there who don’t know as much about SQL as me (I don’t know shit) and think, where are we anyways! Population just stinks. This has to be the major negative today. Children everywhere. I am getting allergenic to kids (and people in general). Maybe a huge cleaning program takes away one-third the whole population and there will be smaller Qs in petrol bunks and Theaters. Fingers crossed. 

Foolishly hopeful, wandering mind, mine.. Anyways, what was the bottom-line again? Evolution says that we learn from our shortcomings and learn do things better without/despite those shortcomings. 

Another thing that is degrading, other than population, is the quality of articles I could think of for this page. Wait, this one looks fine.

PS: confused whether the above constitutes philosophy.

Markets

It’s like this, they take a Mango tree, they auction it, each branch at a time, and the branch with highest number of mangoes sells first for highest price. In the next season, the buyers get to sell their branches on their own and the tree of scenarios is:

Everyone buys the branches with the highest mangoes last season expecting the same to repeat. Making the prices for them rising.

Some buy branches with fewer mangos last season at cheap rates expecting that it is the turn of these branches to shine now.

Some don’t buy thinking that mangoes don’t matter.

Well, it is a bit more complicated than that, like, say the tress have pests..

What actually happens is all the branches have mangoes, more or less, randomly, or not randomly but with too many factors to take a call. And people draw patterns after a couple of seasons like in races or news channels.

In the end, the persons conducting these auctions live guilty lives in costly cars knowing that they cheated many mango lovers. Some mango lovers live happy lives in costly cars knowing that they’ve been lucky. Rest of the mango lovers turn to haters and advocate that mangoes are unhealthy. There will always be newbies aspiring to be the lucky-happy ones. And everyone has taken a bite of the mango at some point in life.

And then there is the farmer.

(Inspired from a professor who tries to simplify the world of Forex derivatives with mangoes. I have lesser ambitions)

By-line

Well, I am yet to write about Sachin’s best Innings but tonight a great match is scheduled too. Tonight, at 1 am, technically tomorrow is Football, FC Barcelona.

I, too, wasn’t aware that football is also a sport until Sachin played less and less and no more. Look up Wikipedia if you doubt me, but cricket is lame without Sachin. Never mind all the people still watching it, they actually know the schedule of the World T20.

 And one can’t play Chess for weeks together. To be simple, entertain as many hobbies as you can with whatever little talent you think you have and chances are you won’t be much bored.  Not to talk about the no-talenters but they can go and vote for BJP for all I care.

Because you can take only so much torture of talking to other human beings just for the sake of talking. (And by other human beings and talking, I mean the people who are your friends but not good enough, your relatives, but blood enough. Otherwise, you can talk to your good friends and blood relatives to the tune of 10-15 words per week without running the risk of dying of an infection spread by words)  

Waiting games

This day that year, when memories come back, it’s like I could have done this differently, I would have had a better chance if I started earlier. Why did I not take that course. And why did I not prepare for the Campus placement. And if I did decide to do something, why not go all the way? To the bitter end, Like Charles Bukowski says.

Well, did I give up? No.

Then am I doing anything in the right direction? Presently, no.

So what’s the plan? Wait.

How long? Not very long.

Anything Specific? No.

So I don’t like what I do and don’t know what I am going to do about what I like? It’s not exactly like that.

Life is gray in color. A Bit dark shaded at that.