Noggyisms

Today is Father's day. So we shall have inane cards, offers on food and clothing, crazy ideas et al. Everything except true emotion. Right, down to me dad, who I would assume would read this some days hence (when Mom actually gets him to sit, saying your son has written something about you.) Love you Dad. My memories of my dad revolve around 3 stages of my life - learning to cycle and drive, the time I was pursuing my Chartered Accountancy and ofcourse now. The first part about the time I started to learn how to cycle. I remember it was a BSA (I forget which one, though). So weekend mornings, we would go off to the lake (for the benefit of non 'Calcuttans' - it's a nice green area with a lake surrounded by roads where vehicles are not around, dominated till today by morning walkers, toddlers and cyclists. So that is where we would go - me cycling, dad walking behind holding on to the cycle. I think the walk did him good though! :P That slowly graduated to him wa...

So the D-day dawns. The wait should be over today. Flashback April '06 - 4 months into living in Bangalore and life had come to be defined by "arguments with auto drivers". That is when I first realized the importance of owning a vehicle. It saved the 'lazy me' a lot of unnecessary auto to auto walk before finding one and still getting fleeced. City traffic necessitated the owing of a second hand car at that time (and the financial situation). Buying a car, at that time, did not involve extensive research. I walked into a True Value showroom (had no predetermined notion on what and what not) looking at the various options and mentally calculating monthly outgo. I test drove only one car - a silver Zen and quite liked how small (can park anywhere including on the road in front of the house since there was no parking), easy to manoeuvre (have you seen the traffic), smooth it was. One test drive was enough for me and I was ready to buy it. On hindsight (which...

Read this  piece from the New Yorker. It is written by Jhumpa Lahiri and is a brief about the journey to becoming a writer. A couple of things stood out. "I listen to him, and at the same time I have learned not to listen, to wander to the edge of the precipice and to leap. ... Born of my inability to belong, it is my refusal to let go." I know a few friends of mine who have followed their heart. The X is one of them so is  Theater  Namesake. I admire them. In a way, they have managed to do exactly what they want and quit what they were doing for no other reason other than wanting to follow their heart. I want to do it too. But I haven't figured out what it is that I want to do. And till the  catharsis  is complete, I am holed up here today. The X called it a parking spot. Then I used to make fun of her. Today I realize it is exactly what I am doing. I am not going to the edge of the  precipice  and taking the plunge. Years earlier, in...

Considering the nature of posts here and comments on FB of late, I have been asked whether I am gay (more often than not, not in jest). And the logic of that being my support for gay rights. The response I have is asking the same person whether they support rape. On hearing an answer in the negative,  my query being whether the reason behind such support is due to having been raped before. You see the idea that only homosexuals can support the gay movement could well draw the analogy that only a rape victim must support the anti rape campaign. 

A review of a book on the history of the gay movement in the United States reminded me of another book ( Aids Sutra ) I had read a long time back about the LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transvestite community). It had contributions from a wide variety of writers and was a good read, did a lot to throw light upon the various sub groups that form the LGBT community. The only thing they have in common is the violent reaction they faced when they come out of the closet. Last year, or was it the year before, we had a lot of brouhaha over the repealing of Article 377 by the Delhi High Court. Suddenly, you had the entire political community en masse crossing ideological borders and coming together to save India from aping the West it seems. The wannabe politicians who would today be yoga gurus, random community leaders weighed in with their bit of nonsense and suddenly it was as if repealing the law was the worst thing that could happen to India after the Emergency. So what is it ab...

From the Independent  and thanks to Sweta Sorab 1.  "Ghastly." Prince Philip's opinion of Beijing, during a 1986 tour of China. 2.  "Ghastly." Prince Philip's opinion of Stoke-on-Trent, as offered to the city's Labour MP Joan Walley at Buckingham Palace in 1997. 3.  "Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf." Said to a group of deaf children standing near a Caribbean steel drum band in 2000. 4.  "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes." To 21-year-old British student Simon Kerby during a visit to China in 1986. 5.  "You managed not to get eaten then?" To a British student who had trekked in Papua New Guinea, during an official visit in 1998. 6.  "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." To a British tourist during a tour of Budapest in Hungary. 1993. 7.  "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?" Aske...