Full Circle

So, Giancarlo Fisichella takes pole for Force India and Luca Badoer sits last. In a Ferrari.
We have come full circle.

Maybe its because Badoer has been driving in the protected environs of the test track and suddenly being thrown into the big bad world must be traumatic. But when you have been depositing a Scuderia Ferrari paycheck at the end of the month for 9 years, you don't come in last.

This is how it should be:
Luca di Montezemolo summons Badoer to the conference room. He takes a seat. Montezemolo reaches into a drawer and pulls out a .38. He places it on the table and looks at Badoer. There is sadness in those intense eyes. Imperceptible at first, but its there. With a slight shake of the head, he leaves the room.

As he nears the end of the corridor, a gunshot echoes down the silent space. He pauses, lost in thought, shakes his head and keeps walking.

Ctrl+Z?

The funny thing is that life offers no undo buttons. And it holds true in the virtual world too. A couple of posts which I was asked to delete are still present in my RSS feed for whoever is bothered to read them.

You can change the whole look of your webpage but the google cache won't forget. Not for a long time.

It just doesn't matter.

(:

Walk Unafraid

As the sun comes up, 
as the moon goes down
These heavy notion creep around
It makes me think
Long ago I was brought into this life a little lamb
A little lamb
Courageous, stumbling
Fearless was my middle name.
But somewhere there I lost my way
Everyone walks the same 
expecting me to step
The narrowpath they've laid
They claim to walk unafriad
I'll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me high.

Say "Keep within the boundaries if you want to play."
Say "Contradiction only makes it harder."
How can I be what I want to be?
When all I want to do is strip away these stilled constraints
And crush this charage shred this sad masquerade
I don't need no persuading
I'll trip, fall, pick myself up and walk unafraid
I'll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me high.

If I have a bag of rocks to carry as I go
I just want to hold my head up high
I don't care what I have to step over
I'm prepared to look you in the eye
Look me in the eye and if you see familiarity
Then celebrate the contradiction
Help me when I fall to walk unafraid
I'll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me high.
Walk unafraid
I'll be clumsy instead
Hold my love me or leave me high.

~R.E.M.

Lately there is this phenomenon of a totally appropriate R.E.M.song playing randomly. Makes me think what kind of weird soul searching intelligence must be dwelling inside Winamp.

(:

So R.E.M sings

Everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends.
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. oh, no. Don't throw your hand.
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone.

It would be funny if it wasn't so ironic.

Condemn the word...

From the ToI:

President Pratibha Patil, Vice President Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have strongly condemned the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai and asked people to maintain calm.

"Such acts are highly condemnable," the President, who is on a four-day visit to Vietnam, said in a statement from Hanoi today.
...
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while condemning the terror attacks last night, assured all help to Maharashtra in meeting the situation.

Well, nice to see they have done what we elected them to do. Oh, wait. We didn't. Sorry.

We Might as Well Be Strangers

I don't know your face no more
Or feel your touch that I adore
I don't know your face no more
It's just a place I'm looking for

We might as well be strangers in another town
We might as well be living in a different world
We might as well, we might as well, we might as well

I don't know your thoughts these days
We're strangers in an empty space
I don't understand your heart
It's easier to be apart

We might as well be strangers in another town
We might as well be living in another time
We might as well, we might as well, we might as well

Be strangers
Be strangers
For all I know of you now
For all I know of you now
For all I know of you now
For all I know

~ Keane

From bad to worse

It happens suddenly. One moment your life is going on as it does, you think it could not possibly get worse. So obviously it does. Perhaps there is a rule somewhere that fate adheres to. Of striking you when the chips are down.

Its things like these that drive a person over the edge. You imagine human beings as resilient creatures, with deep reserves of patience and perseverance but it takes one little incident to throw that picture out of the window.

Especially when this has happened to you before - at one time, twice in a month - you begin to think that fate has nothing to do with it. "Its my fault", says your subconscious but you don't want to believe it. You know it just happened. But did it?

These are things you keep to yourself. No one talks about it. Its never out in the open. You just carry on like nothing has happened and smile and bob your head. But for what? Why this pretense?

I wish these things would never happen to anybody.

Because its really very annoying when one side of the headphones dies on you.

I wonder why a land that can turn out brilliant advertisements, TV and print, sucks so much at the other stuff that plays on television.

Lonely no more

Now I know why I feel so lonely. All the chatting with pretty girls is not the solution, its the problem! Damn!

Storms, Teacups and Uttappas

It just occurred to me that if I ever go to Mumbai to sit for the Railway Recruitment Board Exam, I would have the shit beaten out of me on account of my last name. And if I protested my innocence by producing my school certificates, the fact that I went to a Jesuit school and scored more in Hindi than Marathi, would probably get me lynched.

There goes one career.

And the less said about being a pilot, the better.

Amidst these negatives, there is one ray of light.

When I was five, I really wanted to be a road-roller driver. The power to render most things as flat as an uttappa has a certain attraction at that age. Plus, it occurs to me now - that industry doesn't have any downturns, not in Pune.