The 'H' factor

Dear people reading this, people not reading this, Barrack Obama, the pretty girl that travles with me in the same bus everyday, Lalit Modi, the unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests, and everybody in general, my name is Vasanth Kumar and my patience is running out.

You must be wondering what went so wrong with me that I had to suddenly come out and proclaim my name. I had to. I am fed up of (almost) everyone spelling my name wrongly. For heavens sake, my name is not Vasant, its Vasanth. This is a trend I have observed especially in north India. Yeah I know, being a domicile of Tamil Nadu, the rest of India is north for me. But I still find solace by using 'north India' in the conventional sense. I don't understand what is wrong with them. What do you call that that comes after ninth? It is tenth. Not tent. Nint is not even a word! You get my point? This is how the English language is supposed to work.

Forget the esoteric nuances (?!?) of the English language. Can't you people respect somebody's name? Can't you see the e mail signature and just copy the name written there? Or are you simple oblivious to the letter 'H' when used in such connotation? Disrespecting somebody's name is as serious as disrespecting that somebody itself. When will you learn that? The worst part with this behaviour is the look on their faces as if they are completely innocent and the fault is mine to have had such a wierd name! I don't know how I am supposed to explain it to them that this is not how the rest of English speaking world (what? where does it exist?) percieves the 'H' factor. I am growing tired, really tired of this. Please spare my name!

I have nothing against north India (again) or north Indians (AGAIN!), its just that I feel like biting your head off when you misspell my name... whoever you may be, even that unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests!

No cheers this time...

Vasanth Kumar K

P.S - For those who still don't get the drift, I am trying to stir a controversy against north Indians (oh come on...) by blaming them for their magical talent. Spread the word, make me famous. I see myself giving interviews to 24x7 news channels. Make it happen.

P.S2 - If I REALLY become famous (half hour interviews in at least two national news channels), I will sign autographs for free to all those who comment on this blog. Hurry, offer valid till stocks last!

The curious case of my fellow human's brain!

Again, no blog for two months. I prefer to blame it on my tight schedule rather than on my lack of motivation :) Well, now I have motivation on my right hand and time on my left hand (I wear watch on my left hand :P), I decided to do this thing - write random things in the hope that it will come across random people's monitors when they are randomly searching the web for random items!

The last sentence was completely random. Anyways, getting to back to my story, the curious case of my fellow human's brain. We have all been told humans are blessed with a special something called sixth sense. Might be. But the problem is most of my fellow humans refuse to even accede that they have it! (No, no, not you. The rest of 'em!) Unlike that genius Calvin opting to ignore common sense, our friends ignore their sixth sense inadverdently. One leadership guru once said, "Don't ask why, ask why not". As usual, we listened only to the first half of his speech (slept through the rest) and followed it diligently. We never ask why. We never conteplate why we do stuff. We never realise we appear plain stupid in the eyes of who ask that dangerous question, why! Let me quote a few instances.

The scene is set in an airport where I am waiting for my boarding call. The aunty with my microphone finally announces my flight is ready for boarding. Immediatley everybody picks up their luggage, go stand in the long queue in front of the boarding gate. It is ok if a coupe of ladies do it, but smart gentlemen in suits doing it is just hilarious. No offence ladies. I don't mean you are dumb, I just mean it appears dumber when men do the same thing as you! Now, I have my boarding pass with my seat number printed on that. Its not like if I go late, I might see an adamant kid sitting in my window seat refusing to get up. (Even if it happens, you anyways get to see nothing after take off!) Now that I have a boarding pass, the airlines cannot operate the flight without me on board. They have to find me and throw me in. So why can't I use it as a privilege? Why should I go stand in a queue for 15 minutes carrying my luggage waiting for them to open the gates? When these people do it, it gives me a feeling that they are waiting to board a B.E.S.T. bust at Andheri bus stop, not an aircraft! Why?

This is one scene I watch everyday. Mumbai, central railway line, train compartment. From the outside it seems damn crowded, from the inside it appears half empty! Yeah, these commuters pick the most strategic position to crowd - the passage between the doors on both sides of the compartment. It causes great inconvenience to other passengers alighting and boarding the trains but they never seem to care. These are not the bunch of blithe college kids hanging on the foot board for some fresh air. I would know them, I was one of them. These are family men, mothers, grown ups, all regular commuters. They just stand there, they don't care if there is space to stand inside the compartment, they don't care if there are vacant seats in the compartment. I have to wrestle my way everyday to get off at my station. There are also other kind of people, the ones who come and stand in between seats even when the compartment is half empty. Dude, did you drop your brains when trying to board the train? Why?

There is a theory that we are living in a 'Matrix' style simulation of some extraordinarily smart aliens. Seems right! The above mentioned are just some flaws in their 'code'. Areas were intelligencce was forgotten to be programmed into the omnipotent (what?) human brain. May be the aliens' testing department is not as competent as the one at my office!

The more I think about it, the more similarity I find in humans' outlook towards brains and money. For instance, we always think we need more of both. We always think our neighbour has more of both. Even if we were given copious amounts of both we would simply misuse them and waste them. At the back of our minds we know, if not used both gets wasted and we never cared to change our outlook towards both of them! I rest my case here. Don't ask why.

Cheers!  :) 

P.S - It seems if I don't blog for a long time, I compensate by writing a long post!