Fear has a Large Shadow

I thought I was playing with the sharks last night but before not too long, my vanity took over. Playing with the regular Hyderabad Circuit players, it was a table set for four.

A thousand chips buy-in and I scored the high card for the dealer. A sip of the beer and a raise after the big blind, figured Pee (Yeah, well), the guy on my right, was eliminating the non-significant hands. Competition was now limited to the face cards, pocket pairs and straights and flush hands. The Small Blind, Cee, folded yet the pot was big stakes this game. Pee lost out eventually to a bad beat on a flush on the River to Moi. I could eat the sharks too… Guess, I always knew that :P

Caught Pee’s bluff in another game on the turn card, yet challenged him till the River killed every odd. I folded when he raised after the river, looked him in the eye and both of us smiled at the same time- Boy, I knew what you were doing but my stars were not in my cards…The mischievous glint in our eyes crossed each other’s, and I knew I had established myself as an authority at the table. And as far as I am concerned, fear is good. And making the sharks fear you, is very good.

Next target: Straddle

Poker is War in Disguise of a Sport

Poker is war in disguise of a sport. Loved the cheekiness with which Pokabunga’s website screamed out the dictum. The war cry may not be candid but the stealth and the aggression is inherent in the game and its players. The more I play Poker, the more its striking similarity to the odds of life amazes me.

You may have a very high Internal Locus of Control, yet you accede to the cards life has dealt to you. It is up to you to make the most of the cards dealt to you. Survival of the Fittest may be flawed you say. A Poker Player would chant Survival of the Smartest. Your best cards can be grounded to dust if you are outsmarted. Your worst cards can turn to a gold mine if you play your moves smart.

You know your odds are the Table cards start unrevealing themselves. Probabilities change with each open card. So does the player’s psyche. The seven sins gets activated as the players struggle and learn to deal with them. Freud’s Id and Super Ego have a constant tussle like War. Poker is simply a game of training your Ego and making it stronger by the day to deal with life’s challenges and the war that is survival.

Playing Poker is learning to Survive. Better.

Top 10 things to do in Dilli!

Dilwalon ki Dilli has a whole gamut of flavors to choose from. If you are adventurous, chic & stylish the list below is your key to Dilli's secrets!

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #10: Discover Interiors: Some of the finest Interior destinations in India, Delhi can be a art lovers paradise if you know where to head. head to the Mocha Arthouse in New Delhi, or the Breakfast at Tiffany’s inspired Café at Moon River, or simply just the new terminal at the New Delhi Airport. The insides make up for an unimpressive skyline in this green capital city.  

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #9: Visit an Art Exhibition: Check out the city guide in the Friday daily & head to the closest art gallery hosting the do of a local artist. You are sure to have an artsy experience.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #8: Go Pub Hopping: Start with Blues: Delhi’s favorite old school waterhole. The wealthiest to the college junta is here. Delhi’s place to be for the cool junta. Drink up at Beer Island: Beer served straight up from the brewer. Pure Bliss.

Blue Frog!: Let your pocket be ripped off for once. The music here is some of the best in India.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #7: Hauz Khas Village: Get transported to Goa. Delhi’s hippie hotspot. Walk around, shop or dine at any of the fabulous restaurants to suit everyone’s pocket here. It’s quite simply an out-of-Delhi experience! Paharganj comes a close second on Delhi’s hippie experience.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #6: Shop!: Start with Delhi-6 a.k.a. Chandni Chowk & its narrow gullies. (Don’t miss the Paranthe-wali-gali here for a scrumptious street lunch) Shop at Palika Bazaar: You wouldn’t realize there is a whole world right below your feet. Quite Literally. Move on to Khan Market. Empty your wallets here or just window shop.

Got a local for company? Sarojini market is a regular bet. Nothing too exciting here though.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #5: Dine at Parikrama: Delhi’s first and only revolving restaurant, you’d never die out of conversation topics here. Or sights to behold.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #4: Savor Delhi’s street food: From the kathi rolls at Khan Chacha to the street-side faluda icecream, there’s no dearth of options, vegan or meat, for that infamous Delhi Belly. Got a fancy for the exotic? Sample some Tibetan momos at Gurgaon. Even the Tibetans would be surprised!

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #3: Watch a local play: Delhi has the best indigenous theatre culture in the whole of India. You are missing out on something if you give this a skip.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #2: Visit India Gate at night: My most favourite ‘India’ spot. The Amar Jyothi can awaken the nationalist in any Indian.

Top 10 things to do in Delhi #1: Ride by the Delhi Metro: Understanding Delhi doesn’t get closer than this.

Cost cutting at the Congress

Recession blues have not left our political parties untouched. Latest in line to be contemplating cost-cutting schemes is the Congress. At a working committee meeting recently, the top brass of the Congress leaders set dishing out tips to cut costs. No first class air tickets, no lavish offices, no stupendous salaries, no free chai in the afternoon, blah blah blah… The CWC, congress working committee, insists that it is their way of expressing solidarity with the aam aadmi who is feeling the pinch of the hard times and crying where-is-all-the-money.

The members of the Congress recently pledged their approval to the ‘you suffer, we suffer’ initiative of the CWC and promised to

- keep their money locked in Fixed deposits schemes in Swiss banks and not indulge in any immediate withdrawals
- hold on to their lands and not engage in any immediate real estate transactions,
preserve the gold and diamond jewellery of their wives and daughters for the next season,
- reduce party spending on all internal affairs and let interest accumulate on the corpus
- Lead the lives of a pauper and propogate the selfless behaviour of the Congress workers who want to understand the plight of the aam aadmi by cost cutting and
- Not talk about how the saved money will be used for the benefit of the aam aadmi.

The Battle of the Gas

Whose name is Khan?

Its not everyday that our babus-in-white go out of their way to promote a forthcoming blockbuster bolly movie. Never before has anyone or anything succeeded in doing what My name is Khan has done. For the first time the netas are all singing the same song. Down with the Yanks! Lets go tit-for-tat! Khan-daan zindabad! All for a few little precious votes.

The recent detention of the KJo’s so-proclaimed global icon- SRK at the Newark airport in USA has suddenly given the baadshahs of our babudom large dope to binge upon. Forget the chamchas, even the top-rung’ers cannot stop themselves from crying sympathy for Khan. The behari spirit, with its spokesperson Lalluji, insists that we should take up the matter with the Yanks and demand an apology. Ambika Soni is busy announcing to the world that Anjelina Jolie and Megan Fox will be frisked and detained on their impending arrival to Soni’s country. Soni’s fervour is infectious and the babus cannot resist themselves from hailing her no-negotiation-only-action approach. Shashi Tharoor is busy flooding his twitter page with his opinions on the rights and the wrongs as always.

In the midst of all the political drama, Amar Singh ji is the only person to have caught the trick under the magician’s hat. SRK has received all the publicity and more that he needed for his forthcoming film ‘My name is Khan’. But, of course, as we all know, it was a just a perfectly timed ‘Mishap’.

PPP- President Pratibha Patil

Any little news about Pratibha Patil is exciting. And its got nothing to do with the fact that she is the first person of the female species to occupy the most inactive office of the country. It is simply because news about her is very difficult to find.

Pratibha Patil has always been known to be media shy. After all, before she became the first lady of the country, no one had even heard of her. Even after she became the first lady, things have not changed. Some would expect that she'd take some tips from her predecessor who had converted the highest dormant office of this country into a playground for school children and their principals. Well, as it turns out in the last few years of her Yes-there-is-a-person-occupying-the-president's-office 'rule', she doesn't seem to have picked up many tips from the doc scientist who left her the legacy. As a result, the only noteworthy news heard about her in recent times- A boy from Kerala sent her porn mail!

Had she followed the doc's strategy, it would have probably read- 'The president hosts another delegation of primary school children in the lawns of the Rashtrapati Bhavan' or 'The president cuts the ribbon at another annual day function'. Madame Patil, trust me, they sound more glorious.

However, I would end this hope-this-inspires-the-President note with a word of advice to the little boy- Dude, you are still in college. The President is married.

P.S. The author shares her birthday with the first lady of the nation. Sagi-sisters, Mrs. Patil :)

Disclaimer: This post is not authored by the Pakistan People's Party.

100 days of agony?

The baadshahs of our Babudom have been spoilt for too long. Its time they were disciplined a little. Or so think, some of the politicians who have proposed a bill for 100 days of mandatory Parliamentary attendance. I am excited. Its not often one gets to witness live demonstrations of apne-hi-pair-par-kulhadi-maarna. And our babus are masters at the art of saving their backsides.

Do our babus really have the flair for self discipline? I, for one, don’t think so.

How to answer a stupid question!

Queen Elizabeth: Why was nobody able to predict the recession?
LSE Economists: Your highness, It was a failure of our collective imagination.
ROTFLMAO!!!!

Jassi babu and a few peals of laughter

Jassi babu and a few peals of laughter
No, it isn't Jaspal Bhatti but our beloved ex-finance minister Jaswant Singh who decided to play comedian to our perpetually-somnolent central legislators this time. Jaswant babu triggered quite a few peals of laughter in the recent session of the Lok Sabha as he dished out some anti-dethroning tips to the government in power. His tip- Money, Money, Money, It's not funny.

According to him, the finance minister is faced by a tough job. He often has to endure sleepless nights in the foregoing weeks of the budget because everything is related to money. making reference to his one brief and one not-so-brief terms in the same office, he prophesied- Sooner, than later, the finance minister ends up abandoning this portfolio. Reminiscing in nostalgia, he remembered- during his days in that office, he had to transfer the reins because the government was kicked out. He cleverly added in the middle of this autobiographical repertoire- ' I am only cautioning'. This makes me wonder whether that was for the ears of Pranab Mukherjee or Sonia Gandhi. Whoever the intended recipient, he sure had the Babus-in-white entertained even as he thrust a direct attack at his residing-in-office counterpart on the budget saying- The tax break would not even gift me a bottle of whisky! Jassi Babu, I sympathize.

How dare you, you Yanks!

Dr. Abdul Kalam was recently frisked at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on a Newark-bound flight. FYI, Newark is not an indigenous spelling of New York, but a town in the latter. Anyway, the subject of the article is not a certain part of the huge North American country nor the U.S. flight which indulged in this allegedly 'preposterous' gimmick. If it was the airline's intention to grab a little attention though, it surely succeeded.

What IS preposterous about the whole episode,however, is the reaction of our beloved Ex-President. He has demanded an apology from the airline for treating him like a civilian passenger. He was after all the 'ex' de-facto supreme commander of the armed forces of the country. Our now jobless ex-president, tired of attending ribbon-cutting invitations at school annual functions and science laboratories, is now resorting to unworthy acts of grabbing attention in order to be back in the limelight once again. Our Parlimentarian babus, always happy to oblige, cannot stop singing 'Amen! So be it!'

Yet another Babu Basher!

This blog has been inactive for a while. Now that I am reveling in that beautiful phase of life which is the blogging universe's delight- read unemployment, this blog shall see the light of the day once again. And yes, I am a civilized citizen of this blogging universe and like every good civilized citizen I shall respect the rituals of the blogosphere. So, I commence to do the.back-from-the-dead Shree-Ganesh of this blog with the customary hows and whats and whys.

I used to work as a writer. Yes, I am one of those few neuron-damaged people who think they can make a living out of putting words in perfect grammatical sentences. Having dabbled in a fair bit of freelance writing for some magazines, I worked for a while as a web content developer. I was hired on the proposal that I would be given charge of an orphaned political blog. Instead, I was asked to write ‘well-researched’ articles on ‘Top ten ways to get bitten by a dog’ and ‘Top ten ways to be sad’. I was witnessing commercialization of writing in its crudest form and was being made a victim of the ‘show me the money’ game. Well, the plea of the directors couldn’t be ignored and I decided that charity- (read: not-for-profit writing) was the best way to keep alive the human in me.

So ‘ByMerlin' shall celebrate its return-to-life birthday on 24th July 2009. How does this blog promise to be different from the rest? Well, it doesn’t. Like the others in its realm, it, too, will indulge in self-righteous talk proclaiming the ludicrousness of others while offering no solutions of its own. It will often broach highly controversial subjects, delve into trivial inconsequential details and avoid sensitivity talks. It will call a man a man, a woman a woman and Karan Johar Karan Johar. It will accept only love mail with open hands and trash the rest. And yes, it will make the mistake of revealing that the author is a woman.

How dare you, you Yanks!

Dr. Abdul Kalam was recently frisked at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on a Newark-bound flight. FYI, Newark is not an indigenous spelling of New York, but a town in the latter. Anyway, the subject of the article is not a certain part of the huge North American country nor the U.S. flight which indulged in this allegedly 'preposterous' gimmick. If it was the airline's intention to grab a little attention though, it surely succeeded.

What IS preposterous about the whole episode,however, is the reaction of our beloved Ex-President. He has demanded an apology from the airline for treating him like a civilian passenger. He was after all the 'ex' de-facto supreme commander of the armed forces of the country. Our now jobless ex-president, tired of attending ribbon-cutting invitations at school annual functions and science laboratories, is now resorting to unworthy acts in order to be back in the limelight once again. Our Parlimentarian babus, always happy to oblige, cannot stop singing 'Amen! So be it!'

How far have we come?

In the summer of 2006, I had studied a lot of AIR manuals spanning the second half of the last century and carried out a review of the history of the broad direction of the legal system of this country through the reading of a number of publications which found their way into the markets and libraries at the turn of the new millenium.

Nothing can be more frustrating for an individual than the inefficiency of a redressal forum or system and the legal system of this country bestows just this helplessness on its subjects. The following contains one of the most comprehensive and insightful readings I had come across in the course of the two months of my brief tryst with the fundamentals of law in this country. The incredible feature of this reading, apart from its quality is the time of its composition. Drafted and published at a time very close to the formation of the constitution, it exhibits a rare clarity defining the purpose and the requisite fundamentals behind the execution of law. As one progresses through the script, one realises its ever growing relevance in modern day life in this country and makes one wonder just how far have we come in the last 60 odd years?

Excerpts from the speech delivered at the inaugural meeting of the Legal Study Circle of the Calcutta Small Causes COURT Club on the 10th of march, 1951 under the presidentship of Sir Arthur Trevor Harries, Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and in the presence of H. E. Dr. Kailash nath Katju, Governor of W. Bengal:

The March of Statutory Laws in IndiaThe law dominates the whole of life. Every activity is subject to legal regulation, from personal habits to the ways of earning one’s living. The humblest man cannot pass through life without coming into contact with the machinery of the law. Whether you are a businessman, a labourer, an agriculturist, a landlord or a tenant you are coming up against the law at every turn. The enormous strides in statutory laws today are not necessarily an indication in the stride of national development. India with her teeming millions most of whom are illiterate and disorganized, presents a problem which raises the fundamental issue how far legislation and statute can be made the foundation and basis of nation building.

The ideal is and the practice should be the less the laws the better for the country and its citizens. The reason for this is that if you make the laws too numerous and too complex touching men’s life at every conceivable point, there are bound to be in the very nature of things many breaches of such laws both conscious and unconscious and such breaches are apt to be too frequent.

Life is greater than law. Life will express itself through laws if possible, but without laws if compliance with them is made impossible. That is a truth very often ignored. Also numerous and frequent breaches of law which are difficult to comply with have the tendency to convert the state into a punitive institution. The ideal of a welfare state legislating for the good of its citizens in every sphere of life has to steer carefully enough to avoid the Scylla of public disrespect and the Charybdis of punitive tyranny.

Legislation like any other human act and perhaps more than any other requires thoughtful planning. The legislatures must have in view sufficiently clear in their minds the objective that they intend to reach. Each and every legislation that they put on the statute book must then be so directed as to be in aid of that main objective. Random legislation will always defeat its own purpose. Also, legislation is not like the clothes to be put on casually and taken off equally casually but is intended to be the very sinews and arteries of orderly life and existence. It is not a practical proposition for any country through means of legislation to achieve at the same time all and every conceivable reform-industrial reform, labour reform, social reform, political reform, religious reform, and moral reform. A nation cannot be reformed by laws. The reform must well from within and must be part of the life of people.

Laws today passed by the legislatures are frittered away in conflicting tendencies. The present spectacle is like that of a high powered motor car whose gear is on the neutral but whose accelerator is being pressed hard in every manner so that the engine is constantly running out but there is no movement. Legislation is not normally an instrument for reform but is only one for registering a certain stage of public opinion already reached. If the vacuum between public opinion and legislation is great then the laws and the people do not react on one another.

Democracy is said to be the government of the common man but it is not recognized that legislation is not the job of the amateur politician. Legislation has always been a very skilled and technical work and more so in the growing complexities of modern life. Constant amendments raise difficult and sometimes impossible problems of construction where justice is defeated and adjudication becomes a farce. The sine qua non of good sound legislation is good careful draftsmanship. The existing system and principle in drafting statutes require radical improvement. Statute drafting in India should be the care and job of individuals specially trained for the work.

Federal democracy under the written constitution like any other form of democracy depends for its very existence on the rule of law. The rule of law must be clear and well defined. A nation that does not know how to respect the rule of law and the judiciary as its final interpreter is a nation that is not fit for the democratic way of life.

- delivered by Mr. Justice P B Mukharji of the Calcutta High Court.

laakh take ki ek baat!

Quote of the day...
Padh likh kar kya karna hai?
ek din to marna hi hai yaar...
char din ki zindagi hai jee le
agle janam nursery se hi shuru karna hai phir ek baar!

- courtesy: my exam afflicted brother of 13 years.

The origin'al' chain

The temperature at my current station today touched 42degrees Celsius. At jodhpur, this year, my vacation has been a warm one, warm in terms of the progressing summer and also the intimacy shared with one half of my family in the 8 days that have gone by.

Jodhpur is the place where my grandparents (mom’s folks) reside and where my mom has spent few significant long years before she got married to Dad. This is not my first visit to the suncity but never before has the visit meant so much to me, perhaps because my years were too few earlier, or because my successive visits were made at very short intervals. After an interval of close to 3 years this time, I have come to know things that I was merely acquaintances with previously and also made friends with new places and experiences.

I have learnt to read the newspaper in hindi, tried my hand at using the datun (neem stalk used as an economical one piece substitute for both the toothbrush and toothpaste by rural folksmen and also health conscious city dwellers of predominantly the previous generation) albeit with failure, savoured delicious marwari delicacies prepared by mamiji, dined south Indian style with the food served on freshly plucked banana leaves in the middle of the desert, explaining to the diners the formalities of eating on the leaf and the the correlation between the direction of folding the leaf post dinner and the non verbal communication of having/not having enjoyed the meal, much to their amusement (Ref- the folding of the lower half of the banana leaf up indicates a thumbs up for the cook and vice versa), put on a few kilograms thanks to a daily dose of the original desi icecream, the rabri malai kulfi (a thick milk preparation served in a conical shape on a stick) which is inaccessible in Hyderabad, learnt to decipher a few words of marwari and utter a badly accented greeting in ‘mujro sa! Katthe jaoo so? Mhare ghar aao so ‘, (Hi there! Where are you off to? Do come home sometime- and the people here pass a warm smile even to the stranger on the road) and many more of these trivial likes.

The significance of this visit, however, lies in that stroll I took with granny in the neighbourhood park yesterday that acquainted me with my roots.With every step that granny took towards the higher generation while she recanted the story of one half of my family to me, I realized how little I knew about my origins and just how I had come to be. Not only did I know very little of the generations that exist only in our family's history now, but I also knew very little of the surviving generations viz., my parents and my grandparents. The lives and history of five generations now lie before me and I am now trying to identify which parts of me trace back to these roots. Chances are they are but few. Roots often germinate in a place seldom traceable, travel far and wide, crossing regions, states and countries, and the tree, as it grows, gives out seeds that again seek abode in far off places giving birth to a new being. Some of us travel with the roots and some of us with the seeds. I think I grew out of the seed.

For new sprouts like me, origins are thus tricky affairs. People say that I am half a marwari because my mom hails from the marwar region. Its like saying to my kids a few years hence, that you are half a telugu because your mother hails from Andhra pradesh. Amusing!

Right now, however, I am getting geared up to discover the other family tree that I am part of when I visit the other set of my grandfolks ( Dad's parents) during the next week. To more discoveries!