The Dream

This post is a tribute to Captain Vijayakanth and his movies showing the war on terror. Well, he is one man who has tried his best to make people aware of the terrorist activities of the Pakistani militants through his varied and theme based movies. However peaceful the times were, his constant motivation to emphasize the importance of war on terror in his movies has puzzled many experts because of the amount of flop movies he churned out eventually. Of course, after the connection to SIMI and Pakistan which everyone sees in all the bomb blasts in various cities of India, even U.S. acknowledges Pakistan as the breeding ground for various organizations openly. We all now understand that our Captain was much ahead of his times, and the govt. got his message too late. No wonder he has decided to join politics. Chk this out:

Anyway, coming to the main story, I wanna tell you about the dream I had last night. Don’t throw stones at me after reading this, but it was just too funny when all this happened. To be frank, when I was having the dream, I was laughing my ass off and when I woke up I couldn’t control my laughter either. Well, during the day time I had seen the news of bomb blasts in all the news channels and in one channel I saw our Captain giving a speech before a huge crowd about his electoral plans. Probably it was the mix of these two that gave rise to my dream. Just get drunk or high and read this to enjoy it even more. The dream:

I am watching Captain’s latest movie which, as it unfolds, shifts from the theater screen to my own living room. Captain is a big shot in the military intelligence and uses unconventional techniques in his daily duties. In his personal office, we see his assistant who works on the computer like how a Linux geek does. I am supposed to understand that this is Captain’s gadget guy, just like James Bond has one. Except for the fact that the gadget guy is supposed to be this dude who comes as a rowdy in many movies and has appeared even in many of Captain’s movies:

Ok, so he has 6 spy crows in his office and he takes attendance of all the crows everyday. The 6 crows are perched on two rods one behind another and they are in formation of 2 rows of three. The crows in fact look rapt in attention during the attendance. The attendance is so funny.

Gadget guy: Rakesh (the crows have names)

Crow 1: CAW!!

Gadget guy: Ramesh

Crow 2: CAW

And so on…

This was the part I was predominantly laughing about the whole time.

Of course, now coming to the plot; the movie moves so fast that the movie has come to its halfway mark where the plot takes a U-turn. The ultimate terrorist that our Captain has been searching for is revealed after the morning attendance of the crows. However, this time only Rakesh, Ramesh and 3 others are there. Captain finds out that his gadget guy is the Pakistani terrorist and he is simultaneously puzzled as to how that is logically possible. But our Gadget guy laughs in the usual villain like manner and tells our Captain that the 6^th crow was not absent during the attendance because it flew to Pakistan and took the bomb across the border to Chennai (apparently Chennai is on the border with Pakistan). And the bomb is none other than a big gas cylinder, which again confuses the Captain. (This was probably because gas cylinders are on a shortage that they couldn’t even find one to set a bomb with, so the bird had to fly to Pakistan). The bomb is in Captain’s house ready to blow up anytime. So what if there is a bomb in his house? Captain is in his office.

And of course, it is now revealed for the sake of logical consistency that our Captain’s office is inside his house (whatever happened to the military area). Captain has a pet monkey at home to detect such bombs. But the monkey is shown to be sleeping as the crow which set the time bomb gave the monkey sleeping pills to rest.

And the dream is over.

The Cascade Effect

This incident happened after I moved to our own house in Pallavaram (old house was at Korattur). To go to college, I started from home at 9 in the morning, fully prepared to embrace the consequences of taking the public transport at the peak of the rush hour. Anyways, since the train station was near my home, I took the train to guindy where I would get down to take a bus to collg.

Picture of Suburban Train in Chennai

At the morning rush hour, the govt. tried some innovative stuff. Since the long distance train traffic was quite less in the morning the train frequency was doubled. Now, today happened to be the first day of this experiment. However great the planning may be, the steps to counter the drawbacks are never ever taken into account by the Indian govt, until the point that the drawbacks themselves start to ruin the plan. With this incomplete planning, the train frequency was doubled. But the signal system worked only for alternate train. So if one train is inserted between every two trains, this would mean that when the first train leaves the station, the 2nd train arrives at the station and it would leave only when the signal goes green, originally intended for the 3rd. So the 3rd train would leave the station only when the signal is green, originally intended for the 5th train and so on... (remember the sequences and series we learnt in school?) .

However, I knew nothing of such a plan but I was merely skeptic. First, the train which arrived on station was fully loaded that no one got on the train, and a second train arrived the moment this train left the station. However, this 2nd train left only after 5 min. It was kinda indicative that this was an "inserted" train. Kinda getting bored with the train journey, I worked on the above mentioned theory and hoped that there were no other "inserted" trains ahead of my train. And lo! The train stops just before Meenambakkam station and what do we see? There are 2 trains ahead of my train and 2 trains behind my train waiting for the track to get cleared. A cascade effect that was too easy to predict. (f@%! the govt...)

When all the people abandoned my train as well as other trains behind/ahead me to take a bus/auto/taxi at the highway nearby, what a sight it was! I have never even seen massive crowd (may be woodstock video crowd beats this, not my collg rock concert crowd). It just looked like a massive cross border refugee movement. I really wished I had a nice mobile phone with a camera to have taken this pic.

So my point really is that if you like to present me with a birthday gift, please do so with an Apple iPhone.

Hospital Blues

I somehow feel proud gaining good experience in visiting a variety of doctors and hospitals as compared to the normal populace, but none of them on the grounds of illness. However, this whole situation arose for me in my institute hospital for all the wrong reasons and all the more convincing circumstances.

It was at the end of first year, with the final exams due in a couple of weeks and was looking forward to it since I had done the quizzes quite well. This however, wouldn’t be the case for a long time to come in the rest of my life in IIT. Anyways, I had got rashes all over my body and didn’t feel quite well, though I didn’t develop a fever or anything. So I went to my institute hospital wanting to check it. And what a drama in real life it was.

First, the doctor inspects the rashes on my body, checks my temperature etc. Then he asks a fellow doctor to come and asks her to inspect the rashes and confirms something. And they go on to have a minute of talk between them in a kinda low voice, which psyched me out completely since anyone in my position would have got the feeling that he’s got a rare intestine worm, found only in the deeps of Pacific Ocean. And then they break the news finally: I have got chicken pox/small pox, I don’t remember which one. And they show another guy from a different hostel who has got the same symptoms as me. They inform me about some kind of epidemic that is going to dawn on the whole student body, and that all the students who suffer from this are going to be admitted for week and a half. (Gulp!) This buildup of things was certainly the kind that people see only in X Files. And seeing such drama in real life was a bit too much for me, especially in my innocent fresher year.

They immediately command me to get admitted into the hospital. I walked out to the corridor slowly and then stopped. My legs were giving in… I couldn’t face the truth. And as I stood there in the middle of the corridor I saw three paths winding away from where I stood: One, which led back to the doctor’s room where I could go again and ask him whether he was really sure of what he told me; Second, which was the exit to the hospital which I could take and run back to my hostel and deny all that I had heard; The third and the darkest one which lead to the room where the patients were admitted which I dreaded taking.

I suddenly had the feeling that I was going to die, and I would see all my friends, studies, my precious IIT life snatched away right in front of my very own eyes. Another part of me told that I would be missing my exams and staying back for a year more.

What was going to happen?

Would I die?

Would there be the great epidemic to gulp everyone in a big sea of madness and misery?

Which path of the three was I supposed to take?

Part II

After all the options that I went through, my intelligence of course made me agree to take a bed in the hospital. And so I made some arrangements for my stay here. I had two more people staying in the dormitory that I was put in. One guy in 2^nd year had a fracture in the leg and the other was a final year dude who was ill. I stayed at the hospital for the next 4 days and how.

I was skeptical of getting bored like anything, but fortunately these guys had some good books to read. Lord of the Rings is one book really suited for such an occasion when you take a long break with nothing much to do. And another book which I completed was: Surely You Must be Joking Mr. Feynman. The hospital had a brilliant service for the in-patients. We could order the type of meals we wanted and they would buy it from the campus canteen “Nandini”, which was extremely good at that time. What a brilliant time pass it was. It’s very nice when someone decides to put a full stop on life for you and gives you a 1 week vacation to read the nicest of books and be at peace getting a 24 hour service at your disposal.

Though I was ill, it wasn’t fever or anything. My rashes slowly disappeared and I was just a bit weak. I really started doubting what the doctors had said was true. Then I remembered some great hospital incidents which had happened earlier, and understood that I was just too hasty in judging these stupid doctors.

Once, my friend Aziz drank petrol from a plastic bottle thinking it was Sherbat. Well, he rushed to the hospital just in case some internal combustion happened. And lo… what treatment do they give him? They make him lie on the bed and put an Oxygen Mask on him!!! Another time, another guy goes to the hospital because he had a fever. They checked his blood pressure and sent him back. One of my friends went to hospital because he ran out of cough syrup and he needed one. These people check him for cough & cold and give him 7 sets of medicines including 3 antibiotics, brufen and aspirin. Hospital was such a great risk. But as they say… high risk, high returns. I guess I just took one and got nice returns.

What an idiot I was, to think that even doctors in our campus were equally well qualified to serve us and make great judgments on epidemics and alien landings. Only a freshie would think that way out of sheer ignorance. Even the other 2 guys laughed at me for believing the doctors. They said that there were more facilities added in the hospital than before. There were a lot of testing instruments, new pharmacy etc which were much better than before. I was told that the hospital earlier had only 3 sets of medicines available, and I was asked to guess which ones.

I thought it was paracetamol, aspirin and maybe brufen. But it wasn’t.

Take a guess…

Wanna know?

Ans: Red, Blue and Yellow tablets (ROTFL)