Gawd.

What set me off on this is The Militant Atheist's display of her formidable ire against judicial sanction for State Sponsored Religion. At the time of going to press, the hapless Mr. Anthony Kennedy and others hadn't stumbled upon her page yet, so we can only conjecture how the tirade will affect their nervous systems.

IMOVHO, ninety nine percent of The Ten Commandments (nos 1, 2 and 10, to be precise) are pure balderdash. Particularly, my grouse is with "Thou shalt not covet your neighbour's house". Now, my neighbour happens to be a Friendly Neighbourhood Software Company, with central AC and heating, an extremely comfortable Yellow Couch in the lobby, a 4 mbps dedicated internet line, several dozens of PYTs all over the place, and, most importantly, a young chief who drives there everyday in her hip Camry (I must reiterate my staunch allegiance to Commandment 7 here, but I don't think she looks the married type). How, I ask you, can one, in such an unsupportive environment as this, not covet one's neighbour's house?

Likewise, "Thou shalt have no other Gods besides Me". I wonder what makes whoever it is that write commandments, write a set of fine, fine commandments and then spoil all the good work with one or two (and, rarely, like in this case, as many as three) utterly foolish ones. This is simply not done. You can't just, in one stroke, mercilessly delist all those millions of Gods, Goddesses, Godlets and Godettes, whose names we learnt at the knees of our doting mothers, and who we have grown to know, admire and love so much. And, what about the Gods and Goddesses of the neo-Greek variety? It is a most cruel experience to be told, every time you swoon over a Keira or a Preity, that you have acted in direct contravention of Commandment-2, and have hence earned yourself 200 princely lashes. No siree, not done at all.

For the sake of completeness, though, I must concede that I also sort of like, if that's the word I want, one or two of them Commandments. Like "Thou shalt not murder", which I think is a very, very noble motto to live by. And I mostly try to abide by it. For example, when I went to the friendly neighbourhood grocer yesterday and asked for a tube of Close-Up, and he tried to sell me a tube of Fevi-Kwick, I did not murder him. Also, importantly, one mustn't ignore the fact that the concept of God itself hasn't been entirely without some few fringe benefits. Like a few holidays round the year. In fact, in one of my better moods, I might even stoop to arguing that this one benefit far outweighs any of the aforementioned drawbacks. A few days' less work means the world to me.

So, essentially, it all simmers down to this: in every atheist in the world, including me, beneath all that superficial anti-God rhetoric, if you care to look deep enough, you will find a real, and even more utterly hopeless atheist. But, like many other luminaries of our time, I am also a very practical man; I like my holidays. And many of them are, as stated, thanks to the Lord, our God. May His clan increase. (To hell with Commandment 2!)


Fine print: When I am not ignoring God, I am usually hunting for thirty-ton, thirteen-legged, fire-spitting, man-eating dragons in my cupboard. But because I'm bored of hunting for thirty-ton, thirteen-legged, fire-spitting, man-eating dragons in my cupboard, I don't do it anymore. So I have no choice in the matter, really. If you, however, generally do not like ignoring the dragons, you are welcome to ignore this post instead.

The AmBush of English

All of us are guilty of an occasional botch-up or two in grammar. It is perfectly natural, and shows that our metabolic systems are well adjusted. But among the most notorious botch-uppers of our time, only George Bush can lay claim to have elevated it to an art form. So much so, that now other prominent leaders seem to be hotting up to the limitless possibilities that an occasional misundermining, if I may, of English grammar has to offer. The general opinion is that Bush's particular brand of English, for want of a better word, played a not insignificant role in his re-election to the office (pardon the negatives, they are in keeping with the theme). Much like our very own "daliton, pitchdon, aur alpsankhyakon ka masiha" Laloo Yadav, who can probably claim to have discovered this decades ahead of the others. His legendary status has now been immortalized in the delicious, and often very poignant, film Padmashree Laloo Prasad Yadav. Ok, I'm kidding, I haven't watched it, but you get what I mean.

Anyway, Tony Blair is said to have spoken thus in the House of Commons recently, talking about the Tsunami disaster:
"Scarcely any of us here will not know someone whose life has not been touched by this event. None of us will have not been moved to tears as, each night, we saw, and with mounting horror, the human tragedy that followed the natural disaster"

Though I love the extra negative in the first sentence that radically alters its intended (assumption) meaning, my 'personal favourite' is the uglier, if more semantically correct, "None of us will have not been moved to tears...". Mr.Blair, I am utterly delighted to report that you have done an absolute bloomer this time. And a most beautiful one at that.

Most authorities seem to agree on the point that there is something rummy about the way Blair goes about toeing Bush's line all the time, showing special enthusiasm when it comes to bombing the crap out of unsuspecting folk. This faux-pas, I think, apart from confirming the trend, also shows, beyond all reasonable doubt, just how far the rot has spread. In fact, I will go as far as to say that, at this rate, Blair should soon consider having a stab at running for the US presidency or something.

Wrong number

I have very set rules about what I post here and what I don’t. And how-my-day-went and what-I-generally-did, apart from ten-things-in-people-that-reaaally-piss-me-off, strictly fall under the heading “what I don’t post here”. But, I had a most curious day yesterday, which I think merits an exception. I mean, even as lucky days go, this one really takes the biscuit! And the mottled oyster too, for good measure. Sample this conversation I had over SMS sometime in the evening:

(Dunno Who: DW. Your Truly: YT)

DW: I heard Reji is only NSM and he is not heading marketing. Ramesh's version was true, I think. They have started the launch with one product, Tobramycin. FYI.
YT: On account of me being Ahab, and not the person you wished I was, I'm afraid a certain bloke has been deprived of this very useful piece of info. FYI.
DW: Thanks for the communication. It was a typo error. Sorry for the inconvenience.
YT: No harm done. Just mail me Rs. 6500 for the trouble. Thanks.
DW: Please send me your account number and password. I shall deposit it on the 29th of this month.
YT: Capital idea. But I'd rather that you left it in a plastic bag, all in unmarked bills, in the roadside bin on 4th cross, 10th main, Indiranagar at 5 PM tomorrow.

(End of Thread. I intend to go and check the bin in the evening. You never know, and I need the money.)

Now, before you conclude that this time I've absolutely done it and have gone right off my rocker, you must understand the peculiar frame of mind that I was already in, due to the events preceding this.

I got a call at 6:30 in the morning (I use the term loosely – mornings, of course, start only much later). An enthusiastic “Yello, Rajashekara?” By any standards, 6:30 is way too early. And for me, the established procedure in case of calls that I get way too early in the morning, is to mutter something in Greco-Dutch into the phone and go right back to sleep. I stuck to it and hung up. But even before I completely resumed my dreamless, the chap was back, and this time he had a retort ready in Kannada. Now, my reflexes at the best of times are dulled, and at 6:30 in the mornings, they trade in negative territory, especially in the Kannada counter. I was left with no option; I heaved a sleepy sigh and resorted to plan-B. But it did feel a little sad to have to crush his enthusiasm finally, with a curt "Nimmajji".

Cut to work. There was an FYI inflicted on me by a sweet sounding, but completely alien, Ms. Ambrose, saying that I should make myself available for a VC at 12 noon, without fail, to discuss, inter alia, “PBS & PS Web SPOCs”. I, naturally, had a few choice words to say in the reply. She, also naturally, did not reply. As an aside, that’s one of the disadvantages of having a popular name and working in a large company – there are about two hundred thousand people with your name whose mails invariably make their way to your mailbox.

And now, the piece-de-resistance. Just when I was showing signs of recovering from all the Tobramycin, a dear, and usually quite coherent, friend of mine chose to inflict this SMS on me: "You went good? It did of the acco held stir to user content". I was still reeling under it when she told me a short while ago that she’d struck upon this brilliant idea of leaving the mobile’s auto-suggest on, and typing the message in French. If that, L and G, doesn’t qualify to make your day, then I’d say that all civilization has been a failure.

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All the learning of my vast experience boils down to this: that quotes make for excellent fillers (and, if push comes to shove, starters and end-ers too) - I mean, if you're ever at a loss for words, wondering what to write or say, dropping a quote, it seems, is the very thing to do. Still, as with everything else, there's only so much of it you can take. Unfortunately, only some people share that sentiment, to the utter merriment of those who don't. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for quoting people and quoting from books, for "what are they but the noblest recorded thoughts of man"? But, I mean, what?! There - if anybody previously held any illusions that I'm any different, I've hopefully just dispelled them. But, at least, I'm slightly better than a certain 'corporate visionary' (come on, how many can you think of?:-D), who, in an interview recently, was found quoting liberally from "a book that my wife read". Tut tut. That's intellectual degeneracy taken too seriously. Anyway, coming back to the point, erm...ok, there wasn't one? Just as well.

Which, nevertheless, brings me to a related point - if one is so compulsive about the whole wonder-what-to-write thingummy anyway, why go to the effort of creating blogs and such others in the first place? Therein, I think, lies the answer - because this 'effort' is negligible effort, practically no effort at all. Tell me, if instead of getting to pick these ready-made templates, you had to actually build your blog, tag by painful html tag, and ftp it to the server every time you changed the font of the sub-footer, would you still have a blog? Would I still have one? You would?! Well, too bad.

Anyway, I can plainly see about two dozen chinks in this line of argument already, but heck, what the heck! :)

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Back,

Jack, do it again...