Your Personal Disguise Bible:Guide to Surviving the Society

The kind of things you do, not to be branded a social outcast:

You smile whenever and wherever possible,even though you hate that person.As soon as you understand that the person chattering in front of you is just some flesh bones and has an empty skull for head,you smile even more.DO NOT discuss and DO NOT try to explain.Sample this: the person talking to you uses sentences like,"I hate this country,it is so filthy"," municipality guys suck, they can't keep this place clean!" Relax, that person might not even be aware when the last Municipal elections were, worse yet which Municipality he belongs to.
Make people believe that to you 'chilling out' means idling out in a lounge, smoking up hookah and quaffing down mugs of beer and discussing which girl is going out with which girl or setting up the singles in your batch!
Sitting idle in your house,listening to some music, playing some blues on your guitar are so un-cool(oops,should have used multiple 'O's and dropped the 'S' for 'Z',still trying!)
When you visit a new place be sure to check out for the pubs and eat outs and other 'cool' places first.

Places of interest as defined by the Ministry of Tourism(read popular tourist destinations) etc totally suck (see, I am picking up!)
Start wearing tee shirts with prints of hard core death metal bands and say that you have been listening to them since the time you were a kid,even though you must have heard their just a week ago.

Say that you love Kurt Cobain and Bob Marley and buy posters or tee shirts of them smoking up.You need not know that they never quite endorsed marijuana,weed or even grass.If you could get one poster or anything in print of the Jim Fitzpatrick's version of the Guerrillero Heroico,sorry Che Guevara you are stylish(could you spot the twinkle in here?!).Forget the fact that you do not know if he was a communist or a marxist,worse yet which country he hailed from or what he stood for.
Start watching those obscure Korean and Japanese or even Hollywood movies, stock all of them on your portable hard disk and start writing and talking about them on public forums.
How much so ever you like and/or want to talk about,DO NEVER mention the name of any Indian movie,in any language,worse yet those in South Indian languages.
Buy and flaunt all the latest gadgets you see on any top tech website, else you are technologically illiterate and supremely uncouth!
Just a call-and-text mobile phone proves that you have just walked out of your jurassic aged cave!You are a dumb tramp if you think a tablet is a medicine,cell is biological,iPod is a vegetable and chips are edible.
Your gadget cool-ness index is directly dependent on the processing speed of your laptop or the storage space at your disposal or amount of data that you download or a million other things that would not make any sense to my granny.
Buy one DSLR and post photos of an ant crawling up a leaf,a random smiling kid on the streets,clouds in the sky,hawkers etc with some pathetic postprocessing(preferably some selective coloring etc. using Picasa).Club it all together in an album,call it something with a 'Random' in the name somewhere and post it on Facebook.Start your own photography fan page on facebook,call it something using the words: Photography, Clicks and/or Creations and ofcourse your name.
These should get you going on the path to becoming socially acceptable.Once you are there it is just plain cream.And if you go on to becoming some superstar in your own league do append your learnings onto this for the benefit of other not-so-socially-hit people.

Cheers,
The Yo Man!
The Author of this post is still an amateur and intends to inculcate more and more such popular and 'cool' techniques.For free seminars please mail in your details to kktech@gmail.com ,with "I am so Coool" in the subject line.

Non-Sense of Humour

Long ago,when I was studying my engineering,I had read a news item wherein a fine arts student,Chandramohan from the Maharaja Sayajirao University was arrested and charged under sections 153B and 295A for the said depictions of some gods in his own way.Which I would say should be referred to as his own renditions of his Gods!Then a few other popular references that,to me, have been pretty disturbing could be a Taslima Nazreen for Lajja or a Salman Rushdie for Satanic Verses or a million more.Time and again a person's right to expression has been tied down with the bureaucratic chains.There can be no state that can say that it is a developed one if it has so many curbs on free press.The reason we call it 'free press' is because of the fact that they can report what they see.(let us not discuss, poor reporting and masala-fication of news here).Our loyalty to anything borders on the lines of fanaticism.Religious,regional,ethnic,cultural,caste-based even a simple emotion like love;anything, we have to lay down the 'my way or the highway' rule.If we want something we get it else we protest.A near 100% of our protests involve one or all of these: slogan shouting,window breaking,bus burning,if that doesn't work we resort to the next level that involves strike and more often than not,a total shutdown of the machinery.If it has to do with the entertainment industry we call for a ban on the movie/play/actor or a heavy censorship,which would anyway kill the movie.

Let alone art we cannot even handle humor in a mature way.The 'cattle class' tweet by Shashi Tharoor,which in a way,if not directly, cost him his ministry is still etched fresh in our psyche .His indication was to something miles apart from what was made out of it.Things that we hold in supremely high esteem should not be criticized,be it something mighty obvious.But no, you dare not say a word against them.We are never open to discussions.Our sense of humor may sting others but when and if it even remotely comes down to us,we unleash hell,show the world how crass we can get. We watch so many foreign production talk shows on television and laugh at their jibes on their actors yet get pissed when something similar happens here.We get furious and release a press statement with the words culture,respect,women,dare,sad,India distributed randomly across sentences.Maturity in thought and humor reflects in the intelligence throughput of the state.We are a great nation(well that is what we like to call ourselves) with a rich history and a beautiful culture which is the envy of the world,then why do we react the way do.

I was talking to one of my friends,when she mentioned to me that Russell Peters had,apparently, made some remarks which,as many believe,are not in a very good taste. One of the main reasons why I decided to voice my views about this,here and now.Well,knowing his genre of comedy,I was not expecting anything new or alien.I later read that he had slung some mud on Hindi movies and some actors and actresses.

This is how we reacted:
We demanded a ban on the movie which featured him,and is currently in the cinemas.
We asked for a ban on him from entering the country.
We started doing what we do best(read often) ,start calling names and abuse him.Statements like,"Russell Peters should die".

What sort of a big and mature nation reacts in such a manner?First things first,every individual is entitled to his own opinion and he has every right to speak it out.Now,here is where the,"speak responsibly" part comes in.That would be a different story altogether.

This is how we could have reacted:

If someone chooses to say things that we do not like,ignore him!
If the popular media doesn't like what he said,they should refrain from giving him coverage,at all.
Better yet,pay it back,in his own currency.Think of innovative and witty ways to get back at that person.

Well,there are a million other ways.Also,what we tend to forget is the fact that movie making is an art and art is any form is liable to criticism.Honestly,hasn't anyone from the north ever criticized a Tamil/Telugu/Kannada movie?I can quote a dozen examples,randomly without much digging!A majority of people all across India find the movies of other languages,silly and their actors dumb.So,why did we get so offended when someone pointed out the same thing,yes,that was tad brutal,yet!Inspite of the likes of Shahrukh Khan mocking the South Indian style of movie making and its characters,the movies are made and they continue to reign at the box office and ring the cash registers.Just because that is what pleases the audience.That is how simple the proportion is.What someone said against our leading actors or actresses would never deter us from going and buying a ticket at the counter,ideally on the first day of release.Yet,we continue to over-react!

It is high time we show the world how a nation with a history spanning thousands of years and a population of over 1.2billion thinks and talks like.If we say we are mighty and mature we should as well act and react so!

Suggested Reading:Bandh and Associated Telangana Fiasco,art?

I am Anna,who?

I was walking down the street adjacent to the Regal in Mumbai when a procession passed by with Nehru topi donning youngsters shouting slogans in support of Anna Hazare. A curious onlooker, conspicuously foreign, asked a young couple standing next to him, who this Anna was. That charming lady responded after stammering and faltering for a couple of seconds,picking up whatever came to her mind,"He is a Freedom Fighter". Unable to see some person from outside the nation form an opinion on how ill-informed our youth is about matters pertaining to national interest I pitched in and explained to him what this whole ruckus was all about.

In the dark and for how long?

That young lady,I had referred to a while ago is a precise representative of how we are. No, she was not extolling Anna, she was ignorant.So, is everyone among us.We are the youth of the nation,we love slogan shouting when we are in a mob,we love to be herded,we don't reason,we don't debate!

Any voice against the government would sound euphonious to us and if it is a peaceful war cry,as is the case now,it would enspirit us to no end!Anybody(that would be like saying everybody) who knows the prosopography of this current young generation would tell you that sporting the currently concupiscible Nehru Cap would appease the fob in them!You could as well spot people fighting for that cap when the media is around.We have aggression, loads of it but this is uncalled-for aggression.As in this case, the reason is justifiable but directionality and intent are flawed.How many know who or what they are supporting?Anna or the Jan Lokpal Bill?Wonder how many of us would have actually read the draft or even gone out for an open debate on the issues and implications of it.We would rather go out on a protest,shout some slogans,wave that flag,update our Facebook statuses or display images, but not debate.If one has the right to fast then he has the right to formulate his own opinion which might be open for speculations.Branding anyone who chooses not to go with the mob as 'not a "pure" Indian' or a traitor is as foolish as terming one person who did not stop his bike and dance when India won the World Cup as a Anti-India! You not supporting Anna does not mean that you support corruption, you might be against the concept of holding the government for ransom or the fact that you feel that establishing a Lokpal would create a totalitarian monster in the name of fighting corruption. I must have asked at least 20 people if they know the difference between the Lokpal bill submitted by the government and the Jan Lokpal bill and the only answer I got was 'we support Anna, we don't want corruption'.

Faux-Gandhian

Not to launch a personal attack but as many pointed out,though his means are Gandhian, Anna’s demands are not, his modus operandi has been questionable in the past,on many counts!Be it support for forced vasectomies as the only method of family planning or flogging people who used to come home drunk or supporting Raj Thackeray's xenophobia, the list goes on..

Why he did he never come out and support the plight of Vidarbha or any other case that needed immediate attention? Did he need time to fletcherize his ideas and think of something that would get the eyeballs? The palingenesis of Kisan Baburao Hazare as Anna Hazare is an entirely different story. He is no saint nor are the people in his so-called self-proclaimed “Team Anna”, sample Kiran Bedi, she has always been known for leaking official information to the press, abuse of power(fight against corruption, eh?),instigating junior police officers to defy administration,attempts to disrupt the President's visit among scores of others and as was pointed out by one of the journalists, sure, no one is perfect. And people should indeed get a second chance to redeem themselves. But this always comes with a pre-condition: admit your sins first, and then atone for them. Kiran Bedi has not done any of that. To exonerate Bedi for her transgressions would be nothing short of self-indulgence.Decentralization of power would have never been consistent with what any great leader would have ever demanded,let alone someone like Gandhi! You could not have easily gainsaid whatever we knew of his past or of the people in the Team Anna. We are not realizing that this is a coup of a different sort, might be not military but yet more potent, for it has started in people's minds.

Wildfire

I was just surfing through the channels on my TV when I paused at one that read “We kiwi Indians support Anna”, funny as it might sound, there are people from all across the globe esp. from the United States and the UK. I wouldn't have thought about it till AR pointed it out here. The campaign is being run by NGOs which have been generously funded by some of the leading corporate houses. Kabir, for example, which has the Magasasay award winner Arvind Kejriwal in the Governing body had been receiving largess from giant corporate bigwigs like the Ford Foundation to many other small time organizations. This protest seems to have made way into their respective CSRs as well. They are throwing out fistfuls of lagniappe towards them and it is getting redirected towards fuelling a single person’s whims and fantasies. The whole labyrinth seems so byzantine, there is something runic about the whole affair!Why else is it that Irom Sharmila’s ten year fast doesnot gain currency and headlines whereas this does. Just because we are still not sure of how to deal with the states in the North East India, as usual o

r is it because it did not have the support of these money minting houses. Or even the fast by

one Nigamanand to stop illegal mining on the banks of Ganga in Haridwar. We would never even have heard of them.Then there are people who want to generate positive awareness among the junta. With an irenic spirit they join the debate, at times ugly and vicious but we would not want to listen. You might see this as a fresh start but what we should do is just start by finding out the reasons and rationale behind whatever you voice your opinion about. With so many indices and surveys telling us where we stand as a nation, in terms of corruption and other worse things, such a bill which gives the ombudsman the power to prosecute and punish would been seen as a desiderata but also think about the repercussions that any such bill might cause. We are a mighty huge nation and also considering the fact that passing of a bill from the houses in the Parliament is therefore dilatory. Everything that we, the youngsters, the future of India support should be properly debated, discussed and then demanded for.

Peace, Lo♥e and Aliens

I was in my couch spending my meticulously planned weekend munching on some chicken I had made and watching few movies that I had downloaded when it struck me, why is it that aliens are always projected as dumb mindless creatures who want to annex our Planet Earth . Yeah, I know there have been quite a few movies which tried to cleanse this blot on their character sketch which, needless to say, has been plotted by Hollywood script writers, diligently, as if tarnishing the aliens' image was their only goal!

Given a chance, I would rather show these aliens as we-mind-our-own-business-and-don't-give-a-damn-about-your-planet creatures or as a smart/intelligent or both or as a supremely advanced race.Like the Automatic Robotic Organisms aka Autobots from the Transformers,I just loved the way Ironhide complains,"Humans are a primitive and violent race". But again there were the Decepticons who wanted this planet.Shyamalan tried something in Signs but Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix had already been fed on the anything-extraterrestrial-is-lethal-and-wants-our-planet porridge and loads of it.So, they were too blind to see what that small girl notices quite matter-of-factly.Why couldn't the aliens be some art-loving beautiful organisms whose definitions of world and peaceful coexistence are way too evolved than our one-eye-blind approach to it.They could probably harness our satellite signals and be watching our television series and sitcoms and jibing at things that make us laugh.They could be, for all we know, following our news and political stories and wondering as to what drives humans against fellow beings or what is it that could probably motivate us to gradually kill our own planet.WE don't need anyone from outside earth to wipe us all off, we are on the path of doing it ourselves;suicidal!

Since the time man had started 'developing' or getting 'civilized' , he has been mercilessly raping the very source of his existence, his home.We talk of humanity but the fact remains that we tend to use this "human" word way too liberally, mean it or not!All of us together are no better than that conceited school boy who thinks he is the best and goes about bullying others and calling names.May be, those out there feel the same about us, as we do of that vain kid!It is time we start working towards the common goal of giving our children something beautiful, the world as we see it today and not like that alien invaded Earth in 2150A.D they show in a typical Hollywood flick.It is time we start working together and not against each other!Love Thy Planet!

~Captain Planet

not just a four letter word!

Ever since we were at the doors of adolescence we've kept falling in love.For some it started early with the class teacher,for a few others with the one pretty girl in the class and this would continue till almost half of our lives or to a few hours before we'd die.While some would have the cheek to express, others chicken out, but what stays consistent is that fact that our heart never gives in on this.No matter how much a person takes refuge in the I-will-never-fall-in-love-again rhetoric, he does fall for another girl.

Almost everyone under the sun would have written or said something about this 'love' concept and would have his/her own ideology regarding the same;people have written reams on this, painted miles,done a zillion things you would not even dream of.So,I would not want to go into the details of it.Rather what amazes me is the way it grows and how people adopt to its ways.

As kids or teenagers we were into heavy mush and cheese,flowers,chocolates and excitement over Valentines Day;dream dates,surprise gifts,stolen kisses,slurpy smses,long drives and lengthy phone calls.Our take on love was a mighty shift from what it might be now.We lived on expectations then,loads of it.Waiting post college,giving a call as soon as you are free,spending the weekends together,preferring your partner over your friends,come what may!

As time passes by we look for maturity in thoughts and relationships,look out for partners who might understand that even though you do not give that person a call or return it within that stipulated time-frame you love that person.Even though you could not take your partner out on a weekend because you had a prior appointment with your colleagues;even if you went out for a party without your partner for once;even if you do not think the way she does or do not have a similar take on things and life as that person,you can still be in love.

In this hustle we usually tend to ignore how big life is and that before you met him/her you grew up in a different society,sometimes different culture as well;friends were different and so were the people around.So the way you think or act or even react to anything might not comply with what your partner has on mind or as she would ideally do.Your partner's take on a few things might be poles apart from yours.But that does not imply that you would not or need not be together.What you are is what makes You and that is and will be your identity,so changing yourself to adopt,so much so that you lose yourself would be uncalled for.

So,I believe that loving your partner is not just about snuggling up while watching a supremely romantic flick or kissing them good night every night or not even just going out for those romantic dinners,it is also about having these,for a few of these are quintessential to telling that special someone how important she is,but not having just these alone.It is more about space and understanding.Understanding the dynamics of beautiful symbiotic romance and still loving the other person like crazy.But everyone to his/her own,please!

Celebrations

As we grow older cynicism tends to rhyme with philosophy and sometimes seems synonymous as well.There is no denying the fact that I'm no longer a teenager and hate to be called as one for the gyan bank I have developed all these years is through my experience and learnings and this is what adds the maturity angle to my thoughts and makes it all the more concupiscible. May be this is precisely why I fail at comprehending certain personality and character traits.Flaunting your principles seems to be the modern society's inexorable imperative.Having a set of byzantine ideals is one thing and tweaking them one at a time as you fancy is another.

As days progress we tend to get more and more shallow at heart..What seemed wrong a decade ago seems plausible now and worse yet,is termed as thrilling/adventurous.If you had noticed this major phase shift from the past you could as well wonder why we tend to stick to a few things just because we had been doing this for the past many years.Blindly trusting and following is one thing and not questioning or feeling for it is another.

Come 26th January,we all get decked up to 'celebrate' our Republic Day.Schools start practicing march past and an entire line up of drills and cultural programs; corporate offices call in for an ethnic wear day and some people visit various orphanages and donate stuff to the underprivileged.I wonder how many of us look at it as the day India was declared as a Republic rather than one extra holiday.Some crib about it being a dry-day.But how many of us know the true meaning of a Sovereign Republic.

It is not just the 'celebration' of our national holidays but applies to adapted 'days' like Mother's Day or Father's Day or the ever famous Valentine's Day.

How did this come into being?We don't care.

Why do we celebrate this?No idea.

How do you want to celebrate this?Just like everyone else does

Primarily we showcase a generation of youngsters who do things just for the heck of it.Leave the festivals which have a heavy nationalist sentiment attached to them,even those like Valentines Day,which attracts so much of attention,gung ho and protests tends to lose its significance and is limited to exchanging cards,gifts and flowers or worse yet,going on a proposing spree.Holi,our improvisation is using of water filled balloons and eggs.Ever paused to think,it is a puja?Deepavali,we see only the loud crackers.Ever wondered why your mother takes so much time for the puja and insists on cleaning the house,decorating it and lights those lamps(diyas).

It is not a crime to not know the history behind anything but not even trying to understand the spirit behind it,definitely is.Everything we celebrate got to have a soul to it.So this Republic Day atleast wake up in time for the flag hoisting and spend some time watching the effort our defense and school children put in to showcase our nation to the world.Before you switch that telecast to the next music channel,pause and appreciate what we are and celebrate being part of something; let us start with the nation.

Cliché Nazis

We are a bunch of cliche nazis! We love to see people from our own perspective, from our own looking glass, filter them through our sieve and if someone does not comply, we brand them 'not good' or worse yet 'sick'. What a few people would never understand or do not want to understand would be the fact that a person is defined by the society he grew up in and the friends he keeps.Even pretty mundane things like what or how you would judge right from wrong or otherwise. This situational and circumstantial prudence could be regarding anything or everything.It is how you see things and people around.

I understand that overt forms of bigotry are strictly proscribed fortified by culture and ensconced in the conscious but if you are ruling a person out or looking down at way he looks at things or understands his world or choose to vilify that individual for this reason,then please understand that this act of yours is insanely foolish.

Exempli Gratia, most of the people in and around the southern part of India would believe that you have no ambition in your life if you are not doing your Engineering or got done with it and are not planning to do your masters in Management.You are a person of flexible morals and gullible principles if you had been into more than one relationship in your past;for them you have,if you do, to have been into only one relationship in your past and should get married to that person else in all probability you would be looked down at as a person who fools around and philanders or as they would put it,'no one might take you seriously'.I am yet to figure out why people around would not take you seriously because of what you were to or with some person or some other person was to you,sometime in your past.Life is big,it's bigger than anyone of us,sometimes things happen,and you have no say in that,most of the times.What happened or how you reacted to certain things or how you perceive your environment now depends on an equation that has a heavy weighted variable for uncertainty.