Glad to know...

That I can still bring joy to the world, in my own little way...

Kipple, or Packing up Blues

- Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers of yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.
- I see.
- There's the First Law of Kipple, "Kipple drives out nonkipple." Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody there to fight the kipple.
- So it has taken over completely. Now I understand.
- Your place, here, this apartment you've picked - it's too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apartments. But -
- But what?
- We can't win.
- Why not?
- No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization. Except of course for the upward climb of Wilber Mercer.

J.R.Isidore explaining kipple to Pris
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

While moving out of where I've lived for two years, feeling inundated by junk, I realise the truth of this. As another website says,
Kipple seems to be a combination of entropy and capitalism. I don't think past civilizations had the resources to produce so much packaging to hold our stuff until we buy it or consume it.

I feel crippled by my kipple.

Mowgli R.I.P

Mowgli, aka Dishi (via Mogadishu), a black and white Lhasa Terrier, passed away this morning after an eventful ten years of life. Only those not intimate with my crazy, wonderful family, of which he was a full fledged member, would call him a dog.

I rushed to Noida this morning, where my family buried him under a tree in a infrequented park close to our house.. Much later in the day, after all the tears and laugther of rememberance, I remembered a story, told at the end of the 14th century by the famous Sufi, Sayyid Muhammad Gesudaraz. The version I read, and quote from, is in 'Before Timur Came: Provincialization of the Delhi Sultanate through the fourteenth century', by Simon Digby -

There were four men who were travellers, and the fifth of them was a dog. The dog expired on the bank of water. The men said: "This poor creature was a companion to us. Let us bury him here and leave a sign, so that when we come back we may remember that this is the place where our dog (is buried). Before they left they made a mound of earth had the apperance of a grave.

It happened that a caravan arrived (there), who had heard that the road was dangerous. They saw the form of a grave there and above the grave there was a tree. They thought that this was the grave of some holy man.... to that burial place they made a vow of a tenth of the goods of those in the caravan that, "if we travel safely we will bring a tithe of those in the caravan for the holy shaykh."

It befell that there was dissension among the brigands and the road was clear. The caravan passed safely and they returned and came to the place. They built a dome, a mosque, a hospice and a stopping place. This attained a reputation among the people. A city was then populated and there was a ruler...

My younger brother has already been twice since to what we have taken to calling the Mazaar e Mogu Shah...

The 10 Commandements of Quizzing

In the process of shifting out, in the middle of excavating the many tons of paper that I have not only managed to acquire, but have carted over five different abodes in the past eight years, I found a single piece of paper, which carried The Ten Commandments of Quizzing, written by 'Marcus' Pant (aka the 'man who isn't here'), and me, almost eight full years ago.

K has been insisting that I find them (he refers to this here), and well, they have been found.

I post them here with a certain fondness. In memory of the geeky, (uber geeky, if you will) eighteen nineteen year olds we used to be ; and how important the culture of quizzing was, and continues to be to our beings. In March/April this year, on a Satruday night when the man who isn't there usually was there for once, the four of us sat and asked each other questions, and got wildly excited when we got the answers, much to the amusement of the one (rather pretty) lady who was our solitary audience and hence, designated scorekeeper. 'You're such geeks' she said, as she passed out, drunk, after taking a photo of the four of us with three laptops and one zip drive, quizzing away on a Saturday night while drinking Scotch whiskey and Peach flavoured vodka. We didn't, of course, pay any attention. (Refer to Commandment no. 10)

The 10 Commandments of Quizzing (circa 1998-99)

1) Thou shalt never refuse free food.

2) If free food is not available to thee, thou shalt find sucker to pay for it.

3) Thou shalt read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (and try, as far as possible, not to implement any of that nonsense in thy 'life'.)

3a) Thous shall try, as far as possible, not to have a life in which anything can be implemented.

4) Thou shalt make obnoxious comparisons of 'The Outsider' and 'The Cathcer in the Rye' to near complete strangers in the U-Special.

5) If thou art getting thy ass fucked in the preliminaries, tho shalt 'Share and Care' with thy neighbours.

6) If thou art not getting thy ass fucked, thou shalt pretend no other team exists.

7) Thou shalt, whenever possible, commit adultery (Ditch thy Partner).

8) If thy knowest not the answer, thou shalt fudge.

9) Thou shalt not pass, even at the risk of looking like the fool thou already art.

10) Thou shalt never treat any quizzer with the prize money, unless the quizzer is female, pretty and patao-able.

(Notes to 10 - Most quizzers are Bong males, and this is their idea of competitive macho sports. It is very hard to find non-Bong men quizzers, auratein to door ki baat hain. Given the general run of quizzer aestehtic presentability, a pretty woman quizzer is not just a rare species, but an endangered one. And any intelligent, attractive woman would be smart enough never to go around with a geekozoid male quizzer - so what the 10th commandment actually meant/means is that You're doomed to a life of loneliness quiz-boy, enjoy your money.)

(Further notes to 10 - How heteronormative were we?)

Junk

delhi february 2006 090, originally uploaded by Anand VT.

I have this obsession for.
Things left to fall apart.

Does this picture tell you a story?
If so, tell it to me.

CityDjinns - Firoz Shah Kotla

firoz shah kotla april 2006 066, originally uploaded by Anand VT.

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