Randomness Of The Demented Superhero

I am a confused man. I don’t understand the worldly ways. Identity, success, money. What do they even mean? Can they be applied in the similar manner to everyone’s life? Or their perception differs from one person to another?

I understand and crave for genuine happiness. Sometimes identity fulfils this need, and sometimes the success and money fulfil it. But what confuses me is, whether they are a bootstrapped entity.

If I figure out the purpose of my life, and gain enough clarity, but I can’t quantify it in terms of money and success, does that mean I have failed in life? Does too much money blind me in my pursuit of identity? Frankly, I don’t know. To me, all these things stem out from happiness.

When I was a kid, everybody told me stories about Einstein. They told me that he was the most intelligent man ever born, and that he came up with something called Theory of Relativity. There was a point of time I was fascinated by Edison’s story. He was a self built man, and he knew commerce. My science books glorified him. The man wasn’t a genius himself, but he understood talent, acquired talent, and then monetized their products with his sheer power of exhibitionism.  Then I came across Nikola Tesla. A brilliant man. One of the most brilliant people I have ever read about. He has some contribution or the other ranging from current to x-rays to sonar. He did what he wanted to. But the man never made money, died penniless, and eccentric.

Who was more successful then?

We rave about Einstein, but did we ever understand him, when he so beautifully pointed out that, nothing can be defined, generalized. Because definitions, life is a relative thing. Different people perceive it differently. To some, success means money, fame, being ahead in the rat race. For others success is achieving personal goals, ambitions. Their race is against themselves, not others. Both have their perceptions. So, why narrow it down? Why not expand success’s horizon? Who are we to label good or bad. Again, I am a confused man. I just understand happiness.

Why can’t we learn to live in peace with each other? What gives us the power to judge someone, when we barely know them? Can’t atheists and theists learn to live in harmony and respect secularism? Would you like it if everyone was the same way? Ate, wore, shat the same way you did? Why are we called human if the sole aim in our life is to ape others.

Learn. Learn. Learn. Use the internet. It’s the bicycle for your mind. Expand your understanding.

Identity crisis is something that some of us are really comfortable with. I grew up in northeastern India. Nobody I talk to, know where Aizawl is. I am from Balasore. Nobody knows where that is either. I would say that Aizawl is not in Assam or Meghalaya, and Odissi isn’t the language spoken in Odisha.

Someday I would elaborate on identity crisis. It’s something many of us would have been plagued with in our lives. But sadly, today is not the day.

Pardon me for the randomness. Words have the ability to soothe your anxiety at times. These are my words speaking, I am just the medium. I just understand happiness.

The Curious Case Of Indian Superheroes And Their Underwears

There has been much hoopla about superheroes this year. With Batman: Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spiderman, Avengers, and Dred, we will experience some high-adrenalin graphics. Wait, how can I forget our own homies, our desi superheroes. The last desi  blue-eyed gay super boy Ra.One will always be remembered, *ahem* for the jokes everyone made on it. Sorry everyone (that rhymes!), I have been said that this page’s google rankings would increase if I mention ‘the movie that shouldn’t be named’ five times. . Okay, moving forward, other memorable recent-years superheroes in the Indian cinema scene have been, the gaon ka gawaar turned masked dude Krrish, Sherwani clad Drona (seriously dude, sherwani!), and yours truly, respected, Shree Shree Rajni Saar as Chintu.. oh! Sorry, Chiti in Robot.

All said and done, I could never fathom one thing, why does no Indian superhero wear his underwear outside his pants like the Angrezi superheroes? Showing off chaddis and janghias in public like this would be too much against our sanskaar. The poor guy’s mom would have given him an earful, and made him wear his underwear inside his pants. And what about masks? Okay, what Krrish wears ain’t a mask, it’s a piece of toilet paper wrapped on his face. Our super boys don’t like masks, they like their hair parting or Mohawk to be intact. Boss, it’s too hot in India, how would you feel if somebody made you wear a helmet all day and run around the city? Be kind guru. Forget that, here comes the facepalm moment for you firangi superheroes (except ironman. Respect bro), how many of you got a girlfriend haan? How many of you have got laid? Indian superheroes always land the female. We don’t know whether they get laid, but at least sing and dance together till the end, no.

<Ra.One>

All those people out there who detest our home boys, and criticize their logic. Boss, go wash your face in gutter water. You go and see Sunny Deol uprooting a hand pump  and scaring the entire Pakistani army no? You see a semi-naked Salman Khan beating up people for reasons beyond understanding. Then why not accept Shaktimaan having a pot belly and doing somersaults.

Okay, now that I have said Ra.One enough number of times and cribbed a lot. Here’s a collection of our unknown Indian superheroes, right from the Aalsi Batman archives. There you go.

The Indian Superman (1987)

Main tumhara khoon peejaunga.

Recognise this guy? He’s our very own Duryodhan, Puneet Issar playing ‘The Indian Superman’. This is a 1987 movie and has Dharmendra paaji playing Jor-El, along with Shakti Kapoor playing the other baddie. The funniest part is the flight being hijacked by a bunch of terrorists and the air hostess makes an announcement, “Please note, the flight has been hijacked. Thank you.”

Aao Chipkali man. Maaro mujhe!

Hunterwali (1935)

Hunter chala chala ke maarungi

Hunterwali is another epic superwoman-esque film with Australian Fearless Nadia as the protagonist. This is the story of a princess who leaves her fortunes to become Hunterwaali, “punisher of the evildoer and protector of the poor”. Oh! yes, for the ignorant souls, a hunter means whip in Hindi. In the climax, a dog rides a horse, beat that! yes, a dog rides a horse (rumors confirm). Needless to say, the sequel to this was named, ‘Hunterwali Ki Beti’.

Maa Ka Doodh Piya Hai To Saamne Aa!

Toofan (1989)

Toofan is the lesser known superhero movie of BigB after Ajooba. He is blessed by Bajrang Bali and wields a crossbow cum gun to fight evil. The movie has Amitabh Bachchan in a double role.

Hope you enjoyed reading. I plan to write a full-length post on “The Indian Superman”, Mr. X in Mumbai and the Tarzan series featuring Dara Singh. It’s epic-ness can’t be gauged in a single paragraph. And you thought, India didn’t have superheroes. On behalf of all ignorant souls, I beg pardon to the Baap of all superheroes.

Here’s few videos from the movie “Indian Superman” to keep you happy.

The Dynamics Of A North Indian Eating In A South Indian Mess

The Blah Blah

India is a very diverse country when it comes to Indian food habits, and it is no doubt that every iota of our Indianness finds a deep satisfaction in a great Thali. Just to clarify, Thali is an assortment of many dishes according to the State you belong, viz. Rajasthani,  Andhra, Bengali and so on. In this era of globalisation many restaurants have decided to replace the word Thali with ‘meals’, so you have the Rajasthani meals, Andhra meals, etc. I am not quite sure of the exact meaning implied by the word ‘meals’, but I assume that the restaurants generously entice their customers with the offer of multiple number of meals in a single time meal; this indigenous concept, I believe led to the discovery of the buffet system.

Anyways, lets snip out my verbosity and focus on the issue. During my stay in the South and my visits to the Northern states, I discovered that our country is divided into two directions, irrespective of the 28 states. The North and the South, the East and West are imaginary lands and lead to more complexity in our understanding of the Indian geography. Thus implied, if you belong to the upper half, thou shalt be a North Indian (with the ‘o’ pronounced as ‘aaa’) and if you belong to the lower half, thou shalt be a ‘Madrasi’ or a ‘South Indian’. My parents knowing my exceptional ability to attract unreasonable problems, were worried that I would be entangled in the love and hatred of this great geographical divide. Hence, I hereby declare myself as a son of the great state of Odisha, in the Eastern lands. A state where even the most savage warriors like ‘Ashoka the great’ gave up his arms and saluted the mighty warriors of Kalinga. So, as time progressed WE, the great lineage of an exceptional legacy decided to eat, sleep and become pot bellied, and just quote great phrases from the past glorifying our existence. But with all due respect to my dear ‘Northie’ and ‘Southie’ friends, I would love to take a dig at your food habits.

Its Time

At the stroke of 12.30 p.m. an entire population of hungry souls with expectation in their hearts enter our hostel mess. The Northies looking for the “red(uu laal waala)” looking curries and the Southies eying “puliyogare” or the rasam, and when the expectations are not met, one can hear the mess manager’s soul being cursed. Now going by mess standards, anything that is red, yellow and has any kind of pulses in it is North Indian and the rest dishes are South Indian. The plates, those are of the size of a public transport truck’s steering, are heaped at a corner. Your objective is to grab a plate and make a rush for the ‘roti’ line ,collect the curries and then debate whether the food is edible or not. My dear Northie friends throw their hands up in despair and say “Abey Yaar”, in the absence of the “red” curry and somebody comments on the presence of chopped onions and coriander in the “kheer”(a sweet dish, made of milk and rice), only to be rectified later that it is curd rice. Glasses hurt the environment of the mess and hence, a jug is kept to satisfy your thirst.

Now in a regular South Indian ‘meals’, at a ‘family restaurant’  you can find an enormous plate with a number of small bowls placed at its inner circumference. The rice is neatly made into a semi-sphere and placed at the middle; there are two more rice items, the curd rice in a bowl and a rice bath. Here comes the million dollar question, what is a Rice Bath? My initial interpretation was that the rice has gone for a bath, in my language bhath or bath means rice itself, it is like, two languages shoved into a colorful variety of rice. Yes, my ignorant friends, rice bath is a selection of multiple flavoured and coloured rice. But our mess decides that as students, we need to master the art of austerity and hence the different coloured curries, rice, rice baths and rasam mix with each other representing unity in diversity in a single giant sized plate. Now comes the tricky case of ‘rasam’, which is a mere case of optical illusion. A rasam bowl in a restaurant may look full, but don’t you be tricked by its appearance as the lower half of the bowl is just a big over boiled tomoto(tomato). Rasam is a dish which is consumed with anything possible, be it alcohol, a ‘meals’, as a soup. They say that Rajanikant discovered the versatile dish(rasam) and hence it has got these magical uses.

By the end of your meal at the mess, the poor stomach cries for help in the form of burps. The reason I suppose being the curry made of tree bark, leaves, finely ground stones and excrement. When you go towards the wash basin, time yourself for a 20 second wash, or else you will be drenched, by the furious gargling and spitting by the fellow by your side. The taps resemble dams, as when you open them, the water surges out at a speed which could wreck an entire ship. During the whole mess timings the mess manager remains grounded due to a possible nuclear attack by the students. As the whole population  walks back to their rooms, burping and speculating the possibility of a “red” curry for dinner, the mess manager works hard on inventing an even worse dish while reading an issue of Erotica.

Eat your Rice Bath there till I belt out yet another master piece. Hail Indian food!

The Great Indian Concept of Schooling

“My education was interrupted only by my schooling”.

I didn’t say that. Neither did you, when you were drunk. These words came out from the sloshed oesophagus of Sir Winston Churchill. You all know who he is, in case you don’t, flush your brains down the toilet. This quote makes me nostalgic, the man really made sense. I have always envied those from Indian schools who are highly opinionated, because building a logical opinion needs good amount of knowledge and experience.

Free Spirit Flushed Down the Toilet

Back in school I loved to read books related to the cultures and ritualistic traditions prevalent in India from my library. I hated Math, and I have never scored well in it except when I was promised a cycle if I scored a 90. The librarian informed my Math teacher about my ‘weird’ choice of books. I was summoned to the staff room and was subjected to sarcasm belted out from wagging tongues. My quest for a free spirit was made to drop its pants and was taken for a free ride.

Cut to the Present 

I am an engineer from an Indian school. I have whored ga-zillion books and laws and theorems to be one. That’s four years of learning boss, my ticket to be the part of the rat race. Well, after bagging a job in an awe-bloody-some firm I packed my bags, put on my I-am-awesome shades, and went home to be garlanded and be the envy of every aunty whose children hadn’t made it large. Clearly, I was Saif Ali Khan, I was Gautam Gambhir, I was the badass SRK.. I had made it large.

After bonding with some of my relatives who had also made it large or XL, I realized half of them didn’t know what they were doing, or even how their small decisions or what their every day’s effort materialized into. You know there are moments when realization kicks your awesomeness in its balls. Well that was the moment for me. I was an engineer without balls. They call it a quarter life crisis, the inability to decide what you want to do with your life, where it’s heading towards and why are you so screwed in your head. This feeling can be an overwhelming one. More overwhelming than when you got drunk and confessed that your girlfriend’s ex was a wise man. It depressed me, all I saw was people of all ages taking up jobs that they hate, and then not even realizing it why they hate it.

Being Swami Nityananda

This is the issue with developing countries, life is complex because material success is the label of awesomeness. Learning can go jerk off somewhere else. You are supposed to figure out everything by the time you are born. Your course of study, you career, your job, your life, everything. Boss, in that case, Swami Nityananda would have had told the nurse “give it to me baby” as soon as he was born. Or Dr.Batra would have done a hair treatment for Saurav Ganguly when he was born, no? Have you really sat down and thought what part of your schooling you have used in life? Seen it materialize or seen its end results? I got bored out of engineering, so I took up CAT classes. It was an escape to live a fascinating life that I knew jack shit about. How many people have you heard of, take a break, do some soul searching on what they want to do? If you take a break, people will think you’ve lost it. Taking a break isn’t acceptable in the “great Indian dream” action plan. Read Mirakle Courier’s founder, Dhruv Lakra’s story to know about it.

If you closely look at developing countries, the demand-supply rate is going up, but not the learning. The desire to constructively learn is lacking. Hang your boots, take the plunge, learn something that you’ve always been interested in. With Internet, it’s not a big deal. Don’t take up a course because you’re bored of your job, or you assume it’ll pay you better. Take it up when you know you are sure of it.

How will You be Sure of it

Read more, research more, join forums. It’ll give you a wider perspective on your endeavors. Take a break if you think you need it. You’ll not be left out in the race, once you realize what you’re racing towards. More importantly, it’ll give you a sense of being awesome. More than when you went out on your first date. Don’t be the bumblebee who flies, because it doesn’t know the laws of Physics. Be sure of why you can fly, what makes you fly, and then smirk and put on your I-am-awesome shades, show a middle finger to the laws and fly. There are many reputed institutes offering a gap year course that teach you the art of being yourself and figuring out your potential without commoditizing education.

It’s sad that our education system doesn’t introduce us into the larger picture. Work is where your actual education starts, and then you realize what salt you’re made of. Given a chance, I would unlearn a lot of things that I’ve learnt and make space for new things.

P.S. This is a very personal take on the subject and on the system prevalent in Indian schools. If you have a different opinion, congrats. Buy yourself an idly sambar with a special vada tomorrow. For those who connect to this, gather more facts about this.