The Magna Carta Joke

From about the age of 10, I could remember that the historic signing of the Magna Carta happened in the year 1215. How? Thanks to this joke which I read in Reader's Digest:

A tourist guide is with a group of visitors at Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. He tells them: "this is where the Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, was signed in 1215.

One visitor looks at his watch and remarks: "Damn, we just missed it by about an hour, then".

Jaspal Bhatti, comic revolutionary

It is perhaps a left-handed tribute to the enduring nature of the "Indian system" that even today, the day after Jaspal Bhatti passed away in a road accident, a child watching his immensely intelligent satire "Flop Show" would instantly recognise how similar its India remains to that of 1989, when the show first began. Sure, you can now get a working telephone connection without resorting to shamans, but even today "do-shabd-vaale" chief guests arrive late, people produce fake medical bills, property sharks have only become more bloodthirsty, buildings fall at the drop of a feather, and as for TV serials, well, the tragedy is we still don't know if they were intended to be comedies.

We of the eighties, the Doordarshan Generation, often talk of how good television was during the times of DD. While garden-variety nostalgia is probably to blame for most of it, when it comes to comedy, we do have a strong case. And leading the charge, your honour, would be "Flop Show". Bhatti's creation was preceded by "Ulta Pulta", five-odd minute pieces in DD's morning show that I would often catch while getting ready for school. I can't remember a single one of them now, but I do remember an awakening to the idea of satire, of which, sadly, mainstream TV and films in India have produced very little. Even "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro" was a fortuitous coming together of youthful insouciance ending in noir and comedy, but "Flop Show", a worthy expansion of the promise of "Ulta Pulta", was a planned and sunny "oye chal yaar" saunter through middle class angst. Underlined by the weekly pastiche of Hindi film songs that was a high point in TV creativity. If you consider that DD, that same media org that often filled entire 20-minute news bulletins with speeches of Rajiv Gandhi wanting to make bananas, has greenlit satire of the highest order that pulled down the pants of most things smug, you do have to give its officers credit.

Of course, "Flop Show" never took potshots at real people or pointed fingers at the highest of places. Nor did Bhatti really touch the high notes of national popular attention again. But he did pursue his talent, through films and notably surfacing during elections to make merry at the expense of politicians. But this part of India had changed: now humour was an excuse to get offended and buy free outrage-time, or just make Archana Puran Singh guffaw - a task achieved even when she watches paint dry. Whatever little had been achieved during the few years of comic liberation had been ceded to buffoonery of the Cyrus Broacha variety, to plagiarised stand-up of the Shekhar Suman style, or to a laughter track stuck in an infinite loop. Note milord, "Flop Show" never needed a laughter track.

You can draw neat parallels in this demise of purposeful and intelligent satire with the withering away of R.K. Laxman, or indeed even in Bhatti's own career. A few months ago, I noticed that he was on Twitter (where a semblance of satire - or at least attempted satire - has gone to live) and still had the occasional touch. Evidence:

"A chair thrown at Nitish Kumar...what else a politician wants?"

"#HappyBdayNamo ..Astrologers say nxt PM again will be bearded.Modi,Nitish,MMS already have.Rahul G's beard will grow with d worries"

People have started using diesel & petrol as body perfume to show off.

Sachin Tendulkar bowled thrice in a row...Members of parliament are not performing much anywhere

One of "Flop Show"'s best episodes was its last one, where it memorably poked fun at itself. Bhatti often did that to himself, and earned a lot of appreciation in the process. One can only attribute his untimely demise to a tendency, also followed by his old comrade Vivek Shauq (who passed away last year), of keeping a meeting appointment too early. Hopefully the gods, who will undoubtedly be the butt of a few jokes now, did him the honour of greeting him, despite this inconvenience.

In his creations, Jaspal Bhatti would be credited with "Misdirection". This was a fitting description, given that the people he poked fun of think of themselves as providing "direction" to society. It was and is an "Ulta Pulta" world, and very few Indians threw a spotlight on it like Jaspal Bhatti.

The Rahul Dravid of the year

December 31st is the Rahul Dravid of the year - everyone is waiting eagerly for the next guy to come in, about whom everyone is exceptionally hopeful about, irrespective of how great Dec 31st was. (Eventually they'll blame that guy for practically everything in their life that year, instead of realising that the days are different, but they remained the same).

December 31st is always overshadowed by the promise of the next wicket.

(Previous December 31st commiserations. Have a super 2012, but have an even better Dec 31, 2011!)

Paperback Raita

Paperback Raita

Dear Sir or Madam, will you tell my cook?
It took me days to ferment, will you take a look?
Based on a lactobacillus named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback raita,
Paperback raita.

It's the saucy story of a dahi pan
And his non-fat wife doesn't understand.
His son is working for the Mishti Doi,
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback raita,
Paperback raita.

Paperback raita

It's a thousand boondis, give or take a few,
I'll be culturing more in a week or two.
I can make it minty if you like the style,
I can chill it round and I want to be a paperback raita,
Paperback raita.

If you really like it you can have it white,
It could make the menu for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break fast and I want to be a paperback raita,
Paperback raita.

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With apologies to The Beatles, once again.

Previous Beatles apology is here ("All you need is Spam").

Freshly "Pre-owned" stocks

First it was "pre-owned cars". Now its "pre-owned video games" (seen at Landmark, Pune). Further proof that the world of marketing is often in bed with the dictionary of euphemisms (this last phrase was a metaphor, by the way).

Suddenly, no one wants to say it like it is: the car is second-hand, the game was sold to us by someone else, that is just something the previous diner threw up. "Pre-owned" simply sounds corny. Before it was owned, it was manufactured, assembled, retailed, distributed, displayed, packed, thrown-away-at-never-before-seen-rates-at-export-material-reject-sales.

But before it was owned, it was never owned.

Try saying: "Oh, this is my post-owned car. I've had it for three years now. I'm thinking of selling it to a new post-owner and become a proud owner of a pre-owned car".

Soon everything will achieve new pre-ownership. The raddi-wallah, previously mistaken for a mere recycler, is actually an enabler of pre-owned items, a mobile purveyor of modern antiques. If information from 'trusted sources' is first-hand then grapevine data is no longer rumour, but 'pre-owned' gossip.

Try saying: "Oh, these undies are not second-hand, they are merely pre-worn".

We have an old car at home - we are its 3rd owner. That makes it a pre-pre-owned vehicle. It also sounds like a spiritual guru.

I suppose there is no point in continuing these rants; after all this is the land that also gave "prepone" to the world. I will wait to recycle them another day. Maybe the day I see matrimonial ads for "second marriages" claiming:

"Dynamic, fair, 42 (looks 30) /5"8', IIT-IIM. Innocent, issueless pre-married."

Till then, this is just pre-post-erous.

The Tamil Diwali - a SiNi-matic experience

Many people ask me why is it that the Tamil Diwali (or Deepavali as it's more likely to be called in the land) starts at 4 am with an oil bath and ends at 6 am after some crackers. This is not the case and I will attempt to undefame this (possibly North Indian) defamy.

(image: Geetham.net)

The simple and practical purpose behind getting your Diwali chores out of the way is so that we can indulge in the Sun TV Deepavali 'sirappu nigazhchigal' (i.e. 'special programmes', as you unentangle your Northie tongue after an ill-advised attempt to pronounzh that). In fact, some dispassionate but misguided anthropologists have even been led to believe that this communal partaking of the dawn-to-dusk Sun TV feast is the true essence of the Tamil Diwali. (Some rascally fellow has also submitted a thesis saying Naragasuraa, was misheard on his deathbed: he wanted us to do 'videos', not 'vedis'. This is just more defamy.)

In reality, this is how things unfold. A week before Diwali, Sun TV will begin announcing its line-up of this year's SiNis (Ed.: carpal-friendly abbr.; its similarity to "Cine" is purely coincidental).To make sure each and every viewer of Sun TV is able to by-heart the schedule, the kind souls in charge of programming will show this lineup every 15 minutes. This often means that the 9 pm nightly soap will start the next day at 6 am, instead of 10 pm the same day.

One of Sun TV's core beliefs is eternal consistency ( which is why they only recently began accepting the helio-centric theory of the solar system), so each year, the SiNi line-up is the same:

1. Nadaswaram (a.k.a. Nagaswaram) performance
2. Devotional Carnatic song (preferably by siblings)
3. Spiritual guidance (depending on judicial status of seer's police cases)

At this point, Sun TV will lean heavily on our rich (5000+n)¹ year-old cultural heritage i.e. 21st century Kollywood. The schedule becomes:

1. Interview with Tamil Music Director
2. Interview with reigning Tamil comedy superstar (i.e. Vadivelu)
3. Interview with the super-talented cast of a about-to-be-super-hit Tamil film releasing today

At this point, we will have one hour of the 'paTTi manDram'.

The 'paTTi maNDram' is literally 'the debate forum' in which several Tamil professors will humourously discuss serious topics such as:

• Who watches more 9 pm nightly soaps: daughter-in-laws or mother-in-laws?
• Is the use of soap by daughter-in-laws antithetical to our (5000+n) year-old heritage?
• Mother-in-laws are more likely to break-up the home after watching the 9 pm soap: True or False? Comment with references to 9 pm soaps (one 8 pm soap rebuttal allowed)
• What is the correct spelling: mother-in-laws or mothers-in-law?

One hour of lively debate by the professors with humorous interruptions by the Chair (a gentleman called Solomon Pappaiah) ends with victory for the mother-in-law or the daughter-in-law (ever since records were kept, the scoreline has been 37-32 in favour of the m-i-ls). Just how wildly popular these debates are can be judged by shots of wild laughter from the audience in the debate hall (even after an ad break) and that the speakers and the Chair often get to have wild cameos in Rajnikanth films. (See example paTTi maNDram video

After such cerebral sparring, the rest of SiNis are:

Afternoon Film (from two years ago, which was aired last year)

Interview with star (not superstar, mind you)

Recitation by superstar poet (i.e. Vairamuthu)

Interview with reigning heroine (who speaks one of Punjabi, Tulu, Gujarati, Marwadi, Czech, or Dogri)

Evening Superhit Film (that flopped last year)

Interview with editor/sound recordist/art director (the South takes its technicians very seriously)

An important note about the film is that it is never just a film, but a <dramatic>"Film that is being telecast on TV for the first time in this universe or any of its parallel universes"</dramatic>

And there are two in a day. It really must be Diwali.

The great thing about Sun TV is, as we have already remarked, its remarkable and secular consistency. To ensure people aren't put off balance, it follows this same template for Pongal, for Vinayagar Chathurthi, for Christmas, and other festive days. For Tamil New Year day, it gets even special: by interviewing A.R.Rahman, Vijay, or Dhanush. Or if we are very, very lucky, Vadivelu twice.

And people say the Tamil Diwali ends at 6 am.

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1. (the linguistic constant 'n' is introduced to ensure that Tamil remains older than Sanskrit or Proto-Aryan or Trans-Elvish).

Yeh hai dungistan ka wow

The only thing keeping pace with inflation is the sales in pet dogs. Each morning (and doubly so on weekends), the streets are filled with pooches attending to nature's urgent calls, while their masters (or more commonly their slaves) remain on call waiting. Observe these masters and you will realise that to them, the pet dog is a true member of the family. As the humorist Pu La wrote, they talk to them in intimate tones and adamantly claim the pets can understand them.

But I have never seen pet owners lead their kids or any other equally prized members of their family out to relieve them in the middle of the roads. The morning constitutional belongs not just to them, but to us as well, but we are forced to slalom past remains of their privileged motions. The yellow road is not one that leads to Oz, but to public nuisance.

Of course, one can claim that pets are merely following citizens in a country long used to treating outdoors as the natural repository of the insides. When can we expect that owners don't take our streets for granted and teach both pets and children the value of the commons? Perhaps it is time to raise an equal and opposing stink of some kind.

The last word belongs to that great philosopher of our age, Jerry Seinfeld, a citizen of a city where they make you clean up after your pet:

On my block, a lot of people walk their dogs, and I always see them walking along with their little poop bags, which to me is just the lowest function of human life. If aliens are watching this through telescopes, they're gonna think the dogs are the leaders. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume was in charge?

"One Serving Moon" - a story

A little story that I wrote last year. Thanks to Harish, George, Vinay, Aditya, and others for suggestions and criticisms.

No sooner had the car left to take its owner to his early morning tennis session that a buggy rolled to a halt outside the house. The driver, a pale and sweaty man, peered outside. He was blessed with a natural talent in looking like the kind of person you did not want appearing outside your house, especially early in the morning. This was fortunate for Kato, for it contributed to his successful career as legal summons executive (recently promoted and now on overseas assignment).
Kato was not a morning person himself, but he had a long list of people to confront that day. This town of plagiarists, copyright-violators, and inspiration-thugs slept late into the day and was most likely to be at home at dawn. It was also a good idea to let the young intern with him know that in this job, comforts such as a leisurely start to the day did not exist. But there were compensations: for instance, the satisfaction of personally delivering bad news to the doorsteps of reprobates.
"This seems to be the house of 'Singh, S', said Kato, looking around. "You got the papers, kid?"
Aftab, the intern, nodded. He pulled out some papers from a cream envelope, and appeared to be checking that he had everything. But he continued to fiddle with them, unwilling to step out.
Kato had seen this before. One of the perils of seniority was being saddled with namby-pambies, of having to "show them the ropes". Such phrases always made Kato feel like a master executioner. He found himself drifting into a daydream involving a pair of gallows and some unknotted nooses, but snapped himself out of it. It was the heat, he reminded himself. He longed for some tranquility instead of this noisy, sun-lit city.
"See, kid, it's just as they tell you in training. You walk up, you knock, you ask for the guy - in this case, Mr. Singh. You serve him the papers. If he has any questions, you tell him the answers are in them. If they press on, you point to the toll-free helpline number. If they begin to sob, you simply walk back, without leaving yourself vulnerable to an attack from the rear."
Yeah, the agency had got it down to a business process.
"I've heard other agents have had things thrown at them. Just last week..."
Kato cut in. "That happens, yes. But these war stories are often exaggerated. Get going kid, we got lots of other places to go to."
He watched Aftab reluctantly pull himself out of the buggy, and drag himself down the walkway past the gate, and to the front door. Kato looked at the print-out in his hand, trying to figure out the route to the next villain in fake-town.
Even before he could finish, he heard footsteps and looked up to see a relieved Aftab.
"Done already? Good start, mister."
"No, no", said Aftab, trying to catch his breath. He's fled back, thought Kato. There were no signs of blood, so perhaps whatever was thrown at him had missed its target.
"I couldn't deliver the notice - he wasn't there. Mr. Singh, I mean. Oh, he's not Mr. Singh. Gulzar sir has gone to play tennis. I mean he must be Mr. Singh, but he's not there."
The scaffolds, the blindfolds, the last meals...the images came flooding back into Kato's head. The guillotines and electric chairs patiently awaited their turn.
"Rubbish! What are you talking? - sober up, fella. Explain yourself."
Aftab was a roly-poly law school graduate whose fifteen-plus years of formal education had rendered him unskilled in presenting a cogent explanation of anything outside the syllabus. Yet he tried.
"Sir, what I am trying to say is like this. Gulzar sir lives in this house. I saw a photo of him inside. In the living room, behind the person who answered the door. That person who told me 'sir is not there, he has gone for tennis'."

The rest of the story continues (on page 3) below:

"One Serving Moon"

Can't access the document above? Download a pdf from here.

Where Trolls come from

(not to mention their stand-bys)

If you've ever been beset by trolls, and wondered where they came from and conjectured it would have to be some kind of dark, stinky place, well, you might be right.

Babies, Babas, Bappis, and Bas Karo

Outgoing Kerala CM V.S.Achutanandan called Rahul Gandhi an "Amul Baby" a few days ago, in a desperate attempt to remind us that much of the country is in the midst of assembly elections. Predictably, the Congress and its minions have seen red (ha!) , and dismissed this as being uncivilised and disrespectful.

I don't think there's anything wrong in being called an "Amul Baby". Assuming the usually bombastic VS was referring to the chubby "Amul Girl" and kids who've been reared on butter, Rahul Gandhi (who has previously been described as heading the "babalog") is being compared to an iconic figure says more clever things in a week than many of our politicians manage in years.

Of course, Kerala has lots of Babys of its own - none more prominent than the current Kerala Minister of Education M.A.Baby.

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Apparently, Bappi Lahiri is some sort of an official cheerleader for the Pune Warriors IPL team. That team has the least amount of golden colour on its uniforms, so perhaps Bappi-da has been roped (though no lasso is big enough to...) into lending his auric presence to the proceedings.

Speaking of the Sonar Fella, here's an extract from a recent book about the making and impact of "Disco Dancer". Writer Anuvab Pal goes to Bappi Lahiri's house, where:

Now, during the walk, on either side of me, what I saw could be best described as gnomes. [...] It was a garden gnome, a little sculpture in ceramic.

But not of a random old white man but of Bappi Lahiri himself, wearing tuxedoes of different colours, almost as if fourteen midget marble versions of him, or a series of oversized tiled Bappi Lahiri action figures, we[r]e welcoming you into a room whose central decoration you were manipulated into observing -- a wall with two roman columns on either side. The wall had a huge framed photograph. In the photo were three people -- Mr Lahiri, Sonia Gandhi and Jay Z.

The article is here.

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Speaking of gold and IPL, we're into the fourth year of the annual parade of extreme colour clashing combinations. The addition of the Kochi Tuskers and a revamped Bangalore outfit has taken the discolorations to stratospheric heights. Watching an overhead shot of the players during their match reminded me of some of the worst Powerpoint slides I've seen. And this supreme example of this website of a Japanese children's hospital (who must be undoubtedly, just to spite me, doing great humanitarian service during the current crisis).

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(It has become exceedingly difficult to make pithy observations such as the above at home. As soon as they are made, the reluctant smile on people's faces gives way to grave concern. "You are going to tweet about this, aren't you?")

Iyers around the World

South India : Iyer
North India : Madrasi
Punjab : Oye Yaar
Sweden : Ijer
Spain : Iller
Germany : Iër
Ireland: O'Eire
England : 'yer
America: Oh yeah
African-America: Yo!
Australia: Oi-yah
North Africa: Iyah
Central Africa: Oiyo
Japan: Iyo
Russia: Iy
France: Àixer
Iceland: Ambisson
Netherlands: Iyeer
Italy: Ambiino
Brazil: Da ãer
Pakistan : Iyengar
China: "aiyo! no meat or eggs, please"

Sleeping with the fishes

You have had a long day ascending the hills. You see the hotel-cum-safehouse approach. You begin to relax. You think you are safe.

You trust the bellhop with your bags. He leads you to the room. You walk in. It's quiet all around. You hand him a fiver. He leaves.

You make the mistake of plonking down on the comfy chair. Then you look at the bed. The towels are made in a familiar form.

You recognise it instantly. The brief gulp of air that escapes your mouth isn't hidden from her. You explain about the towels; the fish on the bed. You wonder if you'll be sleeping with the fishes tonight.

The alarm on her face is unmistakeable. Yes, you have had a fatal dose of the movies.

Backs to the Future

The other day Harsh pointed out the immense increase in the numbers of pre-schools (and nurseries, unless they are all the same), measured purely by the number of vehicles carrying children to these pre-schools. This was further underlined by an ad in the ToI for an exhibition on pre-schools.

That's right. A pre-school Expo (termed "Future Kids" - which seems wrong. The kids are already present, aren't they?). Cars, real estate, pots and pans, handlooms, and even plant fibre have had such shows dedicated to them. But this is the first time I've heard of a pre-school expo.

Of course, children are going out of the house much earlier than their parents used to (some of their grandparents never even left the house). I'm sure that as a result, they will grow up to be better informed and more socially confident than us (err, than me). Kind of Virat Kohli vs. Venkatapathy Raju. There's no contest, really.

Calculating using the current rate of acceleration, by 2030, pre-schools will also begin offering IIT-JEE coaching. It's not that absurd - this is the land of Abhimanyu after all, and perhaps Kota's famed coaching classes will have auxiliary maternity rooms where the immortal words of Halliday and Resnick will echo throughout the day.

And remember kids, unlike in Abhimanyu's case, the answers to equations involving concentric circles will be available at the end of the book.

The 404s of life

A few days ago, a door in a cafeteria sported this sign:

It is true, wisdom is all around us.

Prepositional Proposals

In India, boys (or "youths") often "propose a girl", instead of "proposing to a girl". Exactly to which post they are proposing her for is not very clear, but in their fragile state (esp. on days like yesterday), it must be for high offices such as "Dictator of my Life for Life" or "Plenipotentiary Extraordinary to my Anatomy". But who seconds the proposal? It must be the ubiquitous "friend", a staple presence of the Indian youth's life, as illustrated by Indian rom-com-dishum-films.

Such language gladdens the hearts of those that previously thought constitutional thought among Indians would never take firm root. Even though political parties have become increasingly autocratic, here are young men keeping alive the democratic game of proposing a name, seconding it, all the way through to unanimity, via consensus junction. The High Command approves.

One way for the lad to propose a girl is to write to her. If you were in American parts of the world, this expression is sometimes rendered as "write her a letter". This used to confuse me earlier. If you were allowed only one letter, which letter do you pick? "X" is perhaps safest.

Anyway, democratic or not, boys will be boys, and Indian lads will remain youths for life (ask the Youth Congress). V-Days will come and go, and girls will be nominated and impeached from tall towers of the heart. All we can say to them is "Best Luck".

The malli-puu revolution was here

Further proof that Tamil Nadu seceded a long while back and we didn't really know.

this is a screen grab from a News X TV Channel news ticker that said 'Karunanidhi on a 3-day visit to India' - on Sunday, 30th Jan. He was in Delhi on coalition business. 'malli-puu' is 'jasmine' in Tamil.

Would you like kanda-pohe or murrukku-chiidai with your filter coffee?

Today is as good a day as any to record a personal anecdote that was recounted in a Twitter conversation by Shamanth yesterday.

In mid-2006, we were organising a quiz along with a well-known Pune school, so Salil and I hopped over to meet the teachers involved. Eventually, I met the teacher who would be doubling up as compere for the event, who had been handed a lengthy bio (thanks, world wide web) and wanted to know how my name was pronounced etc. (i.e. she wanted to separate the meagre facts from unqualified fiction). From my full name, it's easy to guess the region I hail from, and so the conversation proceeded thus (excerpts from my sieve-like memory):

T: So are you a Tamilian?
Me: Yes, I am.
T: Oh, I am too. So you are studying now?
Me: Yes. So you've been in Pune a while?
T: Yes, my husband has been working here for sometime.
Me: I see

Then the fun part:

T: I have two daughters. [beat] One of them is married.

(ok, it might not have been so abrupt to begin and end, and the good lady may not have insinuated anything, but real 'reality' just ruins a good story, doesn't it?)

You, Me, aur We

I know a lot of people who watch football on TV. Usually, they watch the English Premier League, which is perfectly timed to give them their weekend excuse for not going out to meet relatives (at least the non-football-ones). The even more committed will stay up to watch La Liga and Serie A. The absolutely crazy ones will perhaps even watch Dempo vs Salgaocar on a Thursday afternoon.

But it is the first lot that I want to talk about - the ones that watch 20 English clubs in one of the world's most commercialised sporting leagues. Talk to some of them, and a curious linguistic-social oddity will strike you: they refer to their teams with pronouns such as "us" and "we". People have attained a curious level of self-identification that lets them attach a part of themselves with a team based in a place most of them would struggle to pick out on a map. Mind you, only the top clubs, nay marketing wonders, have managed these psychological feats - I have never met someone in my local circle who would use a "we" for Sunderland or West Bromwich Albion.

I recently stumbled upon a fabulous satire on the dependably hilarious show That Mitchell and Webb Look - to me, the definite summary of the nonsensical nature of this kind of feeling among some fans. Watch it even if you aren't a football buff:

Kodos and Kang's World Cup of Horror

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(original Kodos & Kang image from Wikipedia)

The Accidental Click

You're busy. Or you've been on vacation. You're depressed. You are detoxing from information overload.

Result? The little unread monsters pile up. One by one, they show up at your door - the door you left open for them (well, you did feed them that invitation in big, bold 'blog' letters). And they wait in your living room (they are polite) for you to have a look at them.

They are like the Squeeze Toy Aliens from Toy Story - they are irritating in their eternal gratitude that you showed some tiny long-forgotten interest in them. Even before they were created.

When you finally have the strength to look at your RSS feed reader, you realise the slow poison that's accumulated in there. You can't read the group with 100+ unread posts, so you resolutely look at the ones with just 1 new post. Soon, the law of exponential unreadness kicks in, multiplying like rabbits descended from Gandhaari. It's outta control already.

You tip-toe around the reader, trying not to set off a minefield of will-read-ness. Here a click, there a click, everywhere a click-click.

And one day, when you are not paying attention it happens. It's like visiting the Tomatina festival. You click on a folder by mistake. Blast! All the feeds open. But one ohnosecond later, it's the best thing that happened to you. You know you can't read all of these posts, and there was probably nothing useful in them anyway.

As you sip sour wine from these grapes, you close the browser tab.

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Images courtesy: Squeeze Toy Aliens, Tomatina