Breathing in

I have been away so long I don't know where I've left off...Lemme start with a "Hello" Nico must be wondering why I did not update my blog...well I must inform her that I am plain busy, and have no time to think straight outside of work....
Political happenings: RTI (right to information) Act is being utilized in Aizawl and all the MLA's are shittin in their pants when all their travellin allowances and what not Sheets were published, I have a lovely time reading it while sitting on the POTTY:) Scandals Scandals I love it .
carry on with the verse.....

Mobile phone free

I of all people am free of this junk called the cellular phone, and sheesssh I am loving it. I can be where- ever I want without nebody nagging me, and I can just be alone without being asked why i switched off my phone...or why I did not reply to their dum sms'eses.
Now I snicker @ those who use the mobile phone ....suckers... and they all fight with their bosses. girlfriends, boyfriends, common friends whatever frens they stay in touch with thru wireless connections...
Its a good device but hey now that I am free i feel compeled to share it wit ya...call me in eon years when I marry a butterfly in july. And yes BSNL Sucks.....
- MADMAN


THE DOWNSIDE OF BEING MOBILE PHONE-FREE
There are only a few things Madman and I disagree on and BSNL’s cellular phone service is one of them. I can’t understand how a peace and nagging-free environment loving Madman can hate BSNL! Because if remaining untraceable is what you want, you gotta go for BSNL cellular services.

There’s a twin advantage to this. By subscribing to BSNL, you allow the rest of the world to remain under the delusion that you’re ‘connected’ hence available anytime. At the same time, you buy yourself complete peace of mind, knowing fully well that they can’t reach you. BSNL will make it their utmost duty to make sure either ‘all the routes are busy’ or that you’re simply ‘not within the network area’ every time someone tries to call you.

Ditching a phone is never a good idea. It’s just like buying yourself some temporary relief. As long as people know you have a phone connection, even one that doesn’t work, they get the feeling that they can always get even with you some other time. They’ll try calling you up a couple of times and when they don’t get through, they’ll just say to themselves, “Oh, there’s no hurry. His/her phone is not going anywhere.”

However, when they get to know that you’re no longer connected, they freak out, y’know! It’s like if they don’t hunt you down personally, pounce on you and give you grief, they’ll miss out on nirvana or something.

So the moral of the story is don’t go hating on cell phones and BSNL. Together, they make a perfect team if you don’t want to be disturbed by phone calls, text messages and personal visits of the unwanted kind ;)
- NICO

7 days in the rain / 4 nights in the dark

My Government has banned Da Vinci's Code...the Information Minister has asked the good christian citizens of mizoram to turn in all Dan Brown's book so they could incinerate it. What a joke. What am i gonna do with all my copies HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

So It was my B'day on the second last day of last month ( 30th May, dimwits) and thunder struck like AC/DC and all went dark <> and it continued till five thirty pee yam IST!!! It was boring, Very Very Very BORING.
Imagine no TV, No Winamp, no nothing just Unplugged from the gr8 prowess arrrrrrrr...It's a killing joke...Wish I could use all the F word in the world to describe what I went through during those gruellin 4 nites.

My Beezzeeness also plunged due to seven days of rain, Landslides and road blocks due to that...What could be the factor leading to these misfortunes...well again THE GOVERNMENT who else. But It stopped as of last evening and now what I am concerned about is jumping back.

Nico love ya for what you wrote...lets kick ass again.

THE GANGTOK CHAPTER

A word of advice to Mizoram Information Ministry: why incinerate when you can recycle them and save some trees? *wink*

I’m fed up with these governments and political parties who think it’s their God-given right to do all the thinking for the people, as if the latter can’t think for themselves, and impose ‘their’ decisions on others! Yea, they can take all those books and shove it up their shit-hole. That should stop them from churning out more crap for some time.

Ahh… talk about rain and landslides! It’s been a little more than a week since Gangtok has been suffering a water crisis, following a landslide on the intervening night of 7 June that wrecked the supply line from the main source to the reservoir. Though the concerned department has been saying they have made operational an alternative supply line, water from that particular alternative supply line has somehow failed to flow through the taps installed at my home.

Oh, and the ‘bucket race’ going on in my neighbourhood has not stopped either. It starts every morning with people running to the nearest spring or jhora to fill their buckets and lasts till the time people have to go to work. Then the race resumes after they come back home from work. And I wonder why!

Happy Birthday, Madman

When you are sad,
I will get you drunk and help you plot revenge against the scummy bastard who made you sad.

When you are scared,
I will laugh at you and tease you about it every chance I get.

When you are worried,
I will tell you how much worse it could be and to quit complaining.

When you are confused,
I will use little words to explain it to your dumb butt.

When you are sick,
I will hold your hair while you pay homage to the porcelain God.

When you fall,
I will point and laugh at your clumsy butt.

This is my oath.I pledge till the end.

Why you may ask?
Because you're my friend.

Love & lotsa birthday bumps

- NICO

Myspace Graphics

Back from Hibernation

GANGTOK: Guess who’s back… back again? Nico’s back, tell a friend… la la.. dum de dum…

Okay, that was a lame attempt at making a grand (re)entry. I know neither the Madman or I have been regular lately when it comes to updating this blog. And we have perfectly valid reasons as to why.

About a month back, being a madman that he is, Zoe climbed into a time machine and went back to the dark ages… you know the era when there were no telephones, no computers or internet connection. And for some profound reasons known only to him, he refuses to come back. Maybe he likes it there. May be he hates me for hogging a good portion of his blog space here ;) May be he hates people who read but don’t post a comment or two. It could be anything… really!

As for me, you can call it sheer laziness. On second thoughts, if you promise not to tell anybody, I’ll let you in a secret – I’m doing a self-funded research on the spiritual benefits of indolence, which obviously is aimed at exposing the myth that sloth is one of the seven mortal sins. I’m out to disprove that and that explains the long silence.

Allow me to give you a few pointers:
Laziness is extremely beneficial for your spiritual growth. See, what happens is, when you renounce worldly labour, you get more time to meditate... and you can meditate over just about anything.

Meditation, in turn, accelerates your chances of earning spiritual brownie points. For instance, you can contemplate on whether or not you should drink that last can of coke sitting on the refrigerator shelf on a frigging hot summer day. After mulling over it for half an hour, you realise you already knew the answer even before you asked the question. So you lazily stroll towards the fridge and do the needful. Though your roomie might not appreciate it, at least initially, you will be happy in the knowledge that you helped him/her stick to her diet plan by eliminating wicked temptation.

And in reward, not only do you get to drink a can of coke, you also earn good karma. For extra good karma points, try emptying the entire fridge. Yes, your roomie will hate you for it; he/ she may even either throw you out or move out themselves, but then great people are never appreciated… not until they’re dead. And if you endorse laziness, sit around doing nothing, eating and drinking junk, you’re already on your way to being dead. Shortcut to sainthood via Laze Ville, what say you!

Oh, by the way, I kinda miss the way you used to follow up whatever I posted, my dear Madman. So bring on the good ol’ times back!

Peace.

- NICO -

A Caller Fumes Over Caller Tunes

I don’t know what’s with cellular phone service providers these days! Seems like they are bent on scaring their existing subscribers away. I’m like running fever big time when I get a call from this Bengali speaking woman. After my numerous attempts to make her understand that I do not understand Bengali, she finally sees the light.

She then asks me, “Do you understand Hindi?”
“Uh-huh, a lil,” I tell her. Big mistake!

Like an athlete reacting promptly to the whistle of the referee, she launches into a verbal marathon in Hindi where she tells me she’s from Hutch and I’m one of the ‘lucky’ subscribers ‘selected’ to avail of a limited time discount on ‘caller tunes’. Okay, first thing, I find caller tunes pretty irritating. Try as I might, I fail to understand why the hell should I pay anything to torture my friends with sorry half-assed renditions of so-called popular songs every time they call up! I wouldn’t even download it even if it came absolutely free. Besides, I do not appreciate tele-pushers. Plus I cannot be sure if she’s the real deal.

I say ‘thanks but I’m not interested’ and hang up.

My phone rings again. It’s the caller tunes lady again. While it’s apparent that my command over Hindi is not exactly enviable, it seems the lady pusher here had somehow managed to skip all her English classes in school. So while I try to make her understand that I’m simply not interested in the ‘offer’, she doggedly continues enlightening the ignorant me what a caller tune is for something like 10 minutes.

Exasperated, I say: “Look lady, I know what a caller tune is but I don’t want it.”
She says (in English): “No, no, caller tunes. Caller tunes, you understand?”
I say: “Yes, I understand perfectly well what a caller tune is. I just don’t want it.”
She insists: “No, caller tunes, caller tunes. Big discount!”

I try taking deep breaths. It doesn’t help. I bang my head against my bedroom wall. My forehead hurts but it still does nothing to improve the situation. I put in everything I got not to give into that urge to holler!

Quite certain that it’s no use wasting her energy on explaining what a caller tune is to the dumb me, she then quite sternly demands to know my name and how much talktime I got left on my phone. Hullo! Since when did service providers start gathering info on their own subscribers over the phone? Even though at my wits end, I calmly tell this lady peddler that I would prefer not to give that kinda information over the phone, especially when I have no way of ascertaining if she actually is who she claims to be. She does not understand a fucking word I say.

After another 10 minutes of me trying to make her understand that I don’t want to download caller tunes on my phone, she lets out a big sigh (you know the kind that says “Okay dumbass, I’ve had it with you and your stupidity”!) and says the magic word I’ve been dying to hear – “Okay”. Though I’m not exactly sure what that okay means – it could be “okay, I understand you are not interested in the offer” or “okay, forget I even called”. But this I am dead certain of, she is tired of her attempts to beat some sense into, what she thinks, my thick skull and wants to end the conversation. God in heaven be praised!

In retrospect, I can laugh at the incident. But it was no laughing matter for me yesterday when I was being made to go through something that was no less than torture by that stupid, condescending bitch! Already we subscribers are being made to pay through our noses even for basic services and we can do without further harassment. If mobile connectivity means this, I’d rather remain immobile and be spared the harassment.

- NICO -

This Doesn’t Smells like Teen Spirit!

All apologies to late Kurt Cobain

GANGTOK, 10.15 PM
The Madman says “Nico you are too anti-establishment”. Hell, I’m anti-everything that does not seem or smell right. Whoever coined the phrase ‘shop till you drop’ (and I bet my skinny ass it was a woman and a shopaholic at that) should be made to shop at Lall Bazaar, y’know that car park turned Sabzi Mandi, to understand the full and literal implication of the phrase she unwittingly gave such a rosy tint to.

SHOPPING HORRORS: I hate shopping, any kind of shopping. Yes, even those involving clothes. And a reluctant ‘trip’ to Lall Bazaar today has done little to help me change the way I feel about this particular activity. You know what, somebody should put up a massive signboard right at the Lall Bazaar entry point: ‘ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE’. An hour long shopping with my mom in this cluttered inferno of vegetable stalls has convinced me that this is surely a glimpse of hell on earth. Trust me, I’m reeling from after-effects.

WAR WITHIN A BREATH: The first thing that hits you is that curious smell of vegetables in various stages of decay, dried fish, spices, fermented soybean and god knows what else. Add dragon breaths and smelly perspiring armpits to complete the picture. Welcome to the war zone. The moment you enter, your eyes sting, your nostrils and throat burn and you go on a coughing fit. With one hand you feebly try to cover your nose and with the other wipe tears off your eyes. Is this one of the infamous gas chambers used by the Nazis during WW II?

CALM LIKE A BOMB: Just when you think you have finally acclimatised yourself, they drop the F-Bomb. This Fart Bomb, or Weapon-F if you please, is a very potent assault weapon. It can immediately disorient the victim or, as observed in some cases, hit the pause button of his / her brain seconds after the bomb is launched. It can hit you anywhere, anytime without the slightest of provocation.

KNOW YOUR ENEMY: Be paranoid. Be very paranoid. You never know that harmless looking lady over the corner or that ruggedly handsome chap at the fruit stall could be your potential enemy. It’s a real test of patience out there. Plus it’s essential you learn the ‘moves’, especially those that involve dodging porters with 12 cartons of whatever on their heads or the lady / gent with a loaded shopping bag without losing your balance and your belongings. You cannot trust them not to thump you on your head, back or wherever with their cartons, bags, elbows or whatever. Because everyone thinks they need to be somewhere [wherever that might be] before anyone else, get their greedy hands on the best goodies before anyone else, get out of the inferno before anyone else and get home before everyone else. It’s a selfish world out there and Lall Bazaar brings out the worst in all of us.

Oh, by the way, there’s still this tingling sensation in my assailed-beyond-imagination nostrils and my throat is itchy. Damn!

- NICO -
AIZAWL: Whoever told you that this land is free is your enemy...all of which are our dreams all of which are our dreams...Been stayin in my world for too long for me to post such aforesaid stories from Gangtok. Here there was a bank strike for a week and I was hung dry...got really drunk for no aparent reasons every night except this night,by the way Alcohol is prohibitted here in Aizawl...So who's laughing now...Will post more when words comes to me...Nico my condolences again...Striking out THE MADMAN