The Blah Blahs and the Yada Yadas

If you’re in the habit of popping into random blogs, you may already be familiar with Mathew. He’s one of the most prolific bloggers this side of the hemisphere, and I’ve found him active on almost all the blogs I’ve liked. He’s kinda like a seal of approval for Indian bloggers. However, in a move that deftly proves that nobody is immune to sporadic mistakes, he’s given me an award.

 

 

Honest Scrap Award

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog’s content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”“When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!”

It’s interesting that an award on honesty should depict so much violence. But I think that’s an honest picture. In today’s world, if you want to be exemplary in honesty, you should be prepared to defend yourself from angry hammers. Maybe even hold one yourself…

Now let me tackle the tag… 10 things about me…. That would have been easy, except for the catch… I have to be honest. This rules out talking about my pulitzer, being friends with Aamir Khan, my academy award, discovering how to turn garbage into gold, or that I’m Spiderman’s alter ego. This makes it difficult, but here I go anyway…

Honest-to-goodness fact #1 - Ramble in the bronx

I tend to ramble. I have a problem sticking to one topic. If unrestrained, I hop from topic to topic like an inebriated rabbit on a shooting range. This is ironic because in real life, I don’t hop at all… You can say I’m pretty hopless. Perhaps with the right exercise and diet, I can someday hope to hop, but chances seem pretty moot. And you should never back moot chances, cos life is uncertain, and your success can depend on backing probabilities… and moot chances, by definition, don’t fare too well probabilistically, if ‘probabilistically’ is a word at all. If not, then I’m sure you at least got what I meant… and let’s be honest… that’s the core function of language anyway, which is… Hmm… I think I rambled.

Honest-to-goodness fact #2 - Mum’s the word

I’m generally not a talkative person. This would seem like a clear contradiction to my earlier point. Explanation is simple. My rambling tendancies are mostly evident from my writing, or among extremely close friends. In actual face-to-face conversations, I run the risk of being labeled mute. When in the company of really close friends, I do take an unfairly large share of the conversation… in fact, I was once actually paid to shut up. But that’s just an abberation. Overall, I’m still the mute spectator.

Honest-to-goodness fact #3 - Holy crap

Religion bugs me. I am not an atheist. I believe in God… because I want to believe. But I’d never do something simply because some spiritual leader or some holy book tells me to. I do believe I have been brought up to have a very strong moral compass. I’d trust that compass over religious sentiments any day. I don’t have a problem with other people having strong religious faith in any religion. But I get really irritated when they embark on extremism, coercion, and generally back stupid policies based on some vague interpretation of some obscure passage in an ancient book. I could honestly have said that I respect all religions, except that from whatever I’ve read about Scientology… it either tickles me, or disturbs me.

Honest-to-goodness fact #4 - Incrushable

I haven’t really had a crush. At least not to date. I’ve admired a lot of people…. people I’ve known, or people I’ve read about, but never had been infatuated with anyone. Whenever I say this, people think I’m lying, joking, or plain weird, so I suppose this is not a common trait. 

As an interesting side point, nobody has had a crush on me either. The one person who sorta had a half crush got over it in record time. She pleaded temporary insanity.

Honest-to-goodness fact #5 - Trust is blind

I am too trusting with people. This has often led to backstabs and hurt, but I stubbornly refuse to learn my lesson. This trait of mine has genetic roots. My dad is street smart, intelligent, and has a wealth of experience, but still remains one of the easiest preys for con men and backstabbers. He’s been duped by friends, conned by salesmen, cheated by businessmen, used by colleagues, betrayed by lawyers, and hoodwinked by relatives. In many cases, he saw it coming, and still took the bait. The closer the betrayer, the stronger the hurt… He knows it, but he still lines up with unwarranted optimism. And it looks like I’ll continue the proud tradition.

Honest-to-goodness fact #6 - Peter Pan complex

In terms of the amount of space I use up, I have grown far more than my folks can tolerate. But mentally, I actively try to revert to immaturity. I’ve read somewhere that “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional”, and this is a philosophy I fully endorse. I fight every stage of life that requires me to raise my maturity levels. Some people call that immature. And I say ‘Duh!’

Honest-to-goodness fact #7 - Memoirs of forgotten memory

I have a horrible memory. It took me two months to confidently learn my own phone number. Everytime someone asked for my number, I had to ask my brother or my colleague. They remember it so much better. Back in my 11th std, I had forgotten an exam date, and simply didn’t attend the final exam for a practical exam. Obstinate in my resolve not to learn from my mistakes, I did the same thing with my MAT exam… Paid, enrolled, looked up the subjects… and just forgot to show up for the exam. There are lots of examples to cite, but at this moment, they evade recall. Those are the breaks.

Honest-to-goodness fact #8 - Prose by any other name

I used to write poetry. I started when I was in the 3rd std, egged on by a very supportive teacher, Latha madam. I stopped before I started college. But by college, I was engaged in writing a different kind of prose. I was into writing songs. I was quite prolific at the time, but somehow, inexplicably, I stopped. I haven’t written anything, good, bad or mediocre, in three years or more. And that bugs me from time to time. Sometimes, I just think I will force myself to write something, even if it’s crappy as hell. But I can’t even manage that. It’s sad enough to write a song about, but I can’t even do that.

Honest-to-goodness fact #9 - Copy that?

I hate it when people use content without recognizing the original artists. Unfortunately, I see an awful lot of that in Bollywood. There are a lot of talented Indians here, and I’m sure we have enough talent pool to come out with creative stuff, but I still see poorly hashed copies of Hollywood movies, and blatantly plagiarized songs from Korea, Thailand, and other countries. I’d be ok with it if they only credit the original artists, but that’s not done. The latest point of frustration is alleged music director Pritam Chakraborthy. I take offense to calling the guy a music director at all. Anu Malik may be proud of a continued tradition of thievery, but I am not.

Honest-to-goodness fact #10 - Introversion

I am an introvert. This is a fairly clear fact, and yet, many people who I tell this to feel I’m just being modest. Even a few people who actually know me offline has trouble believing this, and that’s quite surprising. In any case, I am not as introverted as I used to be. But I doubt if I’ll ever part way with this trait completely. it’s here to stay.

And that’s ten! Done! Ta-daaaa! Now to pass on the tag. This phase is not too difficult. There are a LOT of great bloggers out there, and I just need to pick a few of them. The trick is picking and choosing. But then I have a few criteria to help me out on that.

1. They should be people who either don’t get irritated by tags, or are safely far away from me so that the chance of chasing me with a hatchet is remote.
2. There should be a decent chance that they haven’t already received this tag. This safely removes the likes of Silverine, who is always one of the first bloggers to be attacked by tags. Talk about being in tune - any time I bring ANYTHING online to her attention, she’s already heard of it from about 42 independant sources.