Even as I rode my bike inside my office yesterday afternoon, I noticed some goon-ish guys standing downstairs eyeing the over-head wires carefully. And our building maintenance man, Arivu was seen talking in an above-normal-decibel-levels voice with them.

Sensing some abnormal activity, I parked my Apache and walked over to the potti kadai for some tea while my senses were sharp focusing on the conversation going on. You see, I’m a mara-thamizhan. I love watching fights and love to stand among the crowd while watching a street fight going on. Anything resembling close to a commotion draws the us like magnets to form a ring around the activity. This is Tamizh kalacharam and panpaadu. But I’m a third generation mara-thamizhan and my suaveness doesn’t allow me to stand among the crowd and watch the proceedings along with lungi-clad beedi-hanging-from-mouth aam junta. So this third generation suave mara-thamizhan usually finds a nearby tea shop, orders tea and drink the  single tea till the commotion gets over while looking for something interesting to blog about or tweet about.

Anyway, coming back to the present, even as my tea came, I realized that the goon-ish looking guys were looking at our sign board and not the over-head wires as I had initially thought. They were from the Chennai Corporation. Lets call them CGs. And then there is this new rule that all sign boards should carry the name of the firm in Tamizh too.

Dear Kalaignar, we all know your love for our mother tongue. When I got  my tenth standard results, I was overjoyed to find out that I had secured state second rank in English. The next day’s papers carried the photos of students across the city who had secured state ranks. I didn’t know that students who had taken Tamizh as the second language were only deemed worthy of recognition. It didn’t instill in me the importance of Tamizh. It instilled in a 15 year old teenager, hatred towards the system. Anyway, Pink Floyd entered my life a bit after that incident. But that’s another story for another time. Plus I became a much more matured person in the next couple of years and knew that most of what we got was B.S. I began to have less expectations from the system.

And do you think Kalaignar sent his numerous kids and really numerous grand kids to Tamizh medium government schools? Huh?

Anyway, I didn’t care much about the tea I had just ordered as much as I stopped caring for what the system gave me. I walked over to the maintenance guy who was joined by our own office admin staff, Joy Mahesh.

Me: What’s up Joy?

Joy: They’re removing our sign board. It has no Tamizh in it.

I looked quizzically at the CGs.

CG: Illa ba! Board laam tamilla irukanom ba. Mayor sollitaru. Naanga corporation lendu varom.

Board, Mayor and Corporation. I wonder about the Tamizh equivalents of these words.

And all this politically motivated to coincide with World Tamil Conference.

I came back to my desk disturbed and tweeted about it. I then realized that lot of people across Chennai were facing similar CGs that day. Skiddyrow tweeted about CGs removing the board of Stereovision because the logo was not in Tamizh. Maybe Kalaignar has a strategy to talk international brands into converting their logos into ones bearing Tamizh script.

Maybe you guys could check out the hashtag #brandsintamil which has some really hilarious take on this.

I read in the morning papers about Mayor M. Subramanian briefing journalists about the drive. I wonder if our respectable Mayor knows the Tamizh equivalent of the word Mayor.

And then there is our honorable CM, Kalaignar who names his son Stalin. And then the next generation runs companies like Red Giant Pictures, Cloud 9 Pictures, Sun Pictures, Sun Network. (thanks to @cornerd for pointing out)

If you look at the wikipedia entry about Signage, it says

Signage is any kind of visual graphics created to display information to a particular audience. This is typically manifested in the form of wayfinding information in places such as streets or inside/outside of buildings.

And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that wayfinding is best done in a language that most people understand. The auto wallah on the road can read English. The tea shop guy can read English. But how many of us can read Tamizh? I can’t.

Atleast this is better than a certain so called cosmopolitan city starting with the letter B in a neighboring state who’s chief minister’s initials are are apt – B.S. (I read this joke somewhere on the internet. Don’t remember where). A cosmopolitan city they say and all bus routes on buses are in the native language.

And then what’s with renaming colonial sounding roads in Madras Chennai?

Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Devar Salai?

Dr.D.G.S.What’s His Name Salai?

Already there are the namesakes at the center who are hell bent on renaming all good sounding roads after this former Prime Minister who was assassinated? Any kid would say that Old Mahabalipuram Road sounds much cooler than Rajiv Gandhi Salai. And can someone give me a count on the number of Rajiv Gandhi Roads across India?

It’s not only about cool sounding. How many of you know that Eldams Road is now renamed Dr. Kamal Hassan Salai? I’m just getting used to Anna Salai btw. How many of you know that Nungambakkam High Road is now Uthamar Gandhi Salai. Not MG Road. Senthamizh vaazhga!

The funny thing is people who are die hard Tamizh fans are also not quite comfortable with all this hype about Senthamizh Syndrome.

Here’s @shankzz’s take on this. I have no clue what is written in the blog post. I can’t read Thamizh.  I presume it is supposed to be sarcastic as the comments show hints of the post being sarcastic. Plus I spotted mom reading the post and holding back a smile.

Let me wrap up this post with this clipping from a random Tamizh movie featuring Vaigai Puyal Vadivelu. Do wait till the last few minutes to watch the satire.

Senthamizh Vaazhga!

Update at 11.30 am, 22 June 2010

Also check out @aravindkumar’s take here and @krishashok’s take here

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Everything was a haze. His head was heavy and his eyesight was blurred.

Amar found himself seated on a chair, hands tied to his back.

He shook his head and checked again. His hands were firmly tied behind and he couldn’t even budge a finger. In a second, he was wide awake.

It was dark with just a lone bulb flickering at the ceiling. He could vaguely make out a figure at a distance. He strained his eyes for a better view. He was surprised to roughly make out that the figure was in a similar position as his, seated in a chair and arms probably tied behind.

Amar tried shouting out to the other person but he didn’t seem to respond. Amar suddenly felt very nervous. He started sweating inspite of the air being cool. He could sense the buzz of an air-conditioner.

As the sweat hit his body, he felt an eerie coolness hit him. And it dawned on him that he was naked. He shuddered.

And then he heard the voice. It sounded like a pre-recorded voice, female. Just like in the Hollywood movies.

“Good Morning, E42K0SI.”

“Huh?”

“Hope you had a good journey”

Amar blinked.

“You’ve fully come and we’ll soon start the procedures.”

Amar was blank.

“Subject is now fully conscious. We may start.”

Start what you fuck?

Then the lights came on and Amar was shocked to see that there was a huge mirror in front of him. The figure he vaguely made out in the distance was himself!

He turned around and to his horror found that the entire room had mirrored walls. He observed that the room was hexagonal in shape. So he had to look at his own self wherever he turned; naked and tied to a chair.

Amar tried not to look at his own reflection, but couldn’t help it. He was sickened out after a bit. He was still wondering if all this was a joke or a dream. He tried to remember how he had got there, but to his shock, couldn’t remember. He remembered that his name was Amar. Nothing else.

Nothing else.

He again heard the voice.

“Hello E42K0SI. Let me refresh your memory a bit. You were injected into the planet as E42K0SI. you were renamed Amar Kumar by your local hosts on the planet. And wait, local host is not to be confused with localhost.”

What in the name of Jesus fucking Christ is this?

“Why the fuck am I sitting here, you bitch?”

The voice paused.

“Cos this is the only chamber available at the moment! And you better not call me a bitch! Not going to make you any good!”

A pause.

“Wait. So this is not a recorded fucking voice! Who the hell is that talking to me?”

“It is a programmed voice alright. You humans call it artificial intelligence.”

Amar groaned.

“What in the name of hell is this?”

“As a matter of fact Amar; this is hell.”

A pause. A deadly one.

“Huh?”

“Yes Amar. This is what you humans call hell.”

Another deadly pause.

“Ok! I get it! This is a dream right?”

The pause continued.

“No wait! Not a dream! A nightmare!”

This time the pause did not continue. The voice interjected.

“Amar. This is neither a dream nor a nightmare. Its real.”

“Hmm… So you mean to say this is hell, right?”

“Well.. yea.”

“Oh wait! It means I’m….”

Deadlier pause.

“Yes Amar. You’re dead.”

Amar sat there numb. It was cold suddenly. He could feel the sweat falling down from his forehead inspite of it being cold. His skin felt colder. The chair he was sitting on also turned a tad colder and he could feel that through his naked bottom.

Amar sat there numb.

“So…

“So?”

“So.. How did I die? I mean.. I don’t seem to remember.”

“You were murdered.”

“What?”

“Yes, murdered. Stabbed with a knife and hit on the head. Didn’t you notice the huge gaping hole to your side?”

Amar stared down in horror at his hips and found a hole. He looked up slowly.

“You bled to death Amar. Slowly”

Amar shuddered.

“Wait.. wait.. wait.. You say I was murdered. Why am I not feeling sad?”

“Well, When you’re dead. No sad feelings, in lay man’s words.

“What?”

“Yes. You dont feel sad after you’re dead. You only feel fear.”

It was almost a whisper.

“Here, watch this, if you want to refresh your memory..”

Lights in the room dimmed and a movie started playing on the mirror in front of him.

He saw himself on screen then. It was weird looking at himself on screen. He was wearing a jean and a t shirt. He was riding a bike on a deserted road when a group of men stopped the bike and asked him to get down. he watched in horror as one hit him on the head with a log of wood and another man stabbed him with a knife. He saw himself fall down to the ground and slowly bleed to death.

It was horrifying.

Surprisingly he didn’t feel sad.

He was shocked. And scared.

He didn’t know why he was scared.

He was confused.

The lights came back and so did the voice.

“So, thats your story.”

“So.. why was I murdered?”

“I’m sorry Amar, but we’re not supposed to let out information to you people.”

“Hmm”

“Moreover, I dont know anything. The data is still getting downloaded.”

“Data? What data?”

“Data from your memory. We removed the data cells sometime back.”

“Huh?”

“In fact that is why you don’t feel any sadness now. While removing the data cells, we have to remove the part of your brain that generates the emotion of sadness.”

Amar blinked.

“So, who are you?”

“They call me V. Idon’t exactlyremember who named me V. But you humans have kept different names for me. Some call me Yan Wang. Some call me just Yama. Some call me Jesus Christ. Some call me Allah. Some call me.. Well.. Forget it.. I think you got it.

Amar blabbered.

“So you mean this is the judgement day?”

“I’m impressed Amar, by your knowledge!”

Amar was stung by the sarcasm.

“So do I get to see you?”

“Well, no one has seen me yet. No one can see me. Only one person has seen me. The one who programmed me.”

“The one who WHAT?”

“Oh yes. I bet that confused you! But sorry to disappoint you. I dont have 4 heads, not wings, nor flowing white hair, nor a beard. I’m a piece of code.”

“Huh?”

This conversation was interrupted by a strange sound that sounded like a plane taking off in a distance.

“Woah! Whats that?”

“Oh! You data just came in.”

“Wow! And?”

“My! My! You’ve not been very good in your life!”

“Huh?”

Fear gripped Amar as he again felt the chair go cold suddenly.

“You’ve been destructive in your lifetime!”

“I…”

“You have swatted tens of thousands of mosquitoes in your lifetime!

Amar’s jaws dropped.

“Wait! That is being destructive?”

“Oh yea!”

“I KILLED MOTHERFUCKING PARASITES CARRYING MOTHERFUCKING DISEASES DAMN IT!

“You may not really want to swear around here.”

“Wait.. lets get this right. you say I’ve been destructive?”

“Yes.”

“And you say Ive been destructive because I swatted and killed mosquitoes?”

“Yes.”

Amar rolled his eyeballs.

“Amar, let me tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“Each of you humans is a machine we produced in our factories.”

There we go again!

“And we built human beings on the basis of something called Artificial Intelligence. But because of AI, the development of the humans was never consistent. One became extremely intelligent like Leonardo Da Vinci and one became extremely dumb like George Bush. We couldn’t do anything. It was AI. We really don’t have control over it. But we had to continuously upgrade you humans. Our programmers toiled days and nights to come out with upgrades. And we delivered it to you humans through our code injectors. We built code injectors and you humans named them mosquitoes.”

Amar blinked.

“These mosquitoes carried the code and injected into the humans. Now these beautiful little drones required energy to fly. We developed an eco-friendly system where the source of energy for these drones was human blood. We did it to help you guys evolve! And you humans, thanks to AI develpoed a mindset of your own and started killing these expensive drones!”

Amar was still blinking.

“But these pests carried diseases like Malaria and all kinds of shit!”

“Amar, if you used your pendrive in hundreds of computers, your pendrive is sure to get infected with virus.”

Amar blabbered.

“Anyway, enough gyaan for you! Lets get down to business!”

“What? What?”

“Yea! Forgot? Today is judgement day!”

Amar suddenly felt colder and number.

“So, whats the punishment for swatting mosquitoes?”

“You’ll see!”

Amar looked at himself in the mirror. He was not sad. He was just scared. He suddenly realized that he was naked!

“Amar, I believe you were what you humans call a Hindu right?”

“Yes?”

“Have you read the Garuda Purana?”

“Um.. no?”

“Have you heard of it?”

Amar was slowly filled with extreme fear.

“Yes?”

“Well, just asking! Goodbye Amar!”

A mirrored door to his left suddenly opened and in walked a giant with four hands carrying a huge chain, an iron collar and something what looked like a mask. The giant went out and again entered the room carrying four huge iron balls.

The giant kept them down, went back and closed the door.

He came back to Amar and smacked his lips.

He was smiling.

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“I wish I had a facebook account.”

“Why?”

“Cos then I could poke you”

Madhav turned back and glared.

“Sorry for the bad joke, but why did you deactivate my hands?”

Madhav ignored and continued tapping away on his laptop.

“Hello?”

“YEA!”

“I guess you’re pissed off with me, but WHY deactivate my hands? I can’t even poke you now.

“And why exactly would you want to poke me?”

“Cos you fuckin removed my hands!”

Madhav turned back and glared.

“And where exactly did you learn that word?”

Silence.

“I call that artificial intelligence. Infact you call that artificial intelligence.”

“Hmmm…”

There was something about Mohan that Madhav liked. He was smart and adorable. But Mohan at times got on Madhav’s nerves.

Madhav had spent days and nights together building what would be his best companion for more than three years. The humanoid was not the first to be built in the world, but considering that artificial intelligence was a subject that was still under research and development, it was a big feat. There were only 41 other humanoid robots in the world, other than Mohan.

And Mohan was the talk of the town for nearly a month. Then the buzz died down. The media had more interesting news to cover and debate. The much publicized televised suicide of a Bollywood starlet took over and then there was the 24th edition of the Apple IPL.

“Alright! Come here!”

Mohan wheeled himself to Madhav’s desk and he connected Mohan to the USB slot of his workstation and the workstation detected the robot automatically.

Madhav moved his fingers on the screen and navigated through the menus and tapped his fingers on ‘activate upper limbs’.

Mohan’s hands got activated in a second and he was all smiles as Madhav removed the USB cable from the robot’s bottom.

Mohan poked Madhav in the ribs and wheeled out of the room.

Madhav smiled, shaked his head and got back to work.

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Cool Myspace Generators

So you’ve read the papers and are curious to know what Twitter is all about huh? Cool!

These are steps to get scores of followers in a week’s time. Have fun!

1) First of all, create a twitter account. Duh! you may think! But I want this point included as this guide is also for amit_123s. Twitter handle should garner attention. Try have the words ‘fake’ in it.?Guaranteed?results!

2) Next write a bio. Make sure the bio has something to do with classic rock, cricket, physics and A R Rahman. This will definitely give you a few followers.

Next start tweeting.

3) Now you might want to give the impression that you’re an IIT-IIM grad desi. You might be settled in Aminjikarai after an MBA from IIPM, but still, it matters a lot.

Tweet about IPL. be critical. Tweet about Lalit Modi and Shilpa Shetty. And be witty and controversial. Go through all the tweets with #IPL tags and try to edit them to show some originality.

4) Next tweet about Sam Anderson, Wiblur Sargunaraj, Captain Vijaykanth and T.Rajendar. These are regional topics, but guaranteed to get you followers and maybe a couple of RTs if you’re lucky. North Indian alternatives to Sam Anserson and Wilbur Sargunaraj include Rakhi Sawant and Chetan Bhagat. Also Bal Thakrey, Karan Johar and Bappi Lahiri.

5) Try to sent the impression that you’re an old school guy. Some ‘old school’ topics include Test Cricket, Classic Rock, Led Zeppelin, Mario Bros. and Ilayaraja. Led what? you may ask. Forget it, not important. You may be listening to Lady Gaga. Still tweet about Led Zeppelin.

6) Next is hashtags.
Try to include so called witty hashtags in your tweets like #pwnage #kthxbai and #epic. You may not understand the meanings behind these. Relax! Most people using these hashtags dont understand either.

7) Follow influential people and RT their tweets with the above hashtags.

Somebody may tweet saying he is stuck in the loo due to constipation. What you should do is…

#pwnage RT @aravindkumar Constipation! Stuck in loo for the past 2 hours?#FML

8 ) Bitch about Orkut and tweet about how Facebook is awesome. #Awesomeness #ftw and #win.

You might be a hardcore Orkuttiya and may not understand nuts?about?how facebook works. Relax. Half the people out there are like that wonly.

9) The Great Indian Gaandu Challenge

Now there are guys whom the twitterverse hates. Eg., Chetan Bhagat (yes, the same guy who writes about losers and their journey in getting laid) Rakhi Sawant, Angad Bedi, Sreeshant, Harbhajan Singh, Mandira Bedi, Karan Johar, SRK, Nithyananda, Rahul Mahajan, Ajit Agarkar etc.

10) You may be someone who breaks coconuts on your head, but remember while on twitter, you’re an?atheist.

11) And the last and most important is be politically incorrect.

master these 11 points and you’re guaranteed scores of followers on twitter! And do remember to be snobbish in following people back once you get mroe than 300 followers. DO NOT reply to everybody. It definitely gives a ‘you’re important’ feeling.

This is it for now.

Coming soon is How to blog for Dummies. Till then, happy tweeting!

And yea, Don’t forget to follow me on twitter!

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Everybody’s been pinging me on gtalk and mailing me asking me what happ. Not to mention the call from the journo from the national daily whose name is not worthy enough to be featured in this blog.

Here is the sequence of events that happened.

First I left a comment in Sudhish Kamath’s blog on the Apology post saying

And now I’m waiting for April 1st when you guys will shout at everyone, Gotcha! It’s April Fools Suckers!

The comments are moderated and this particular comment was never approved.

I pinged Sudhish Kamath on facebook and what followed was a brief chat. Now facebook diesn’t save your chats and I’m reproducing a rough chat form my memory. The words may not be exactly correct, but almost correct to most of my knowledge

Me: Hey! Did I just burst your bubble!

Sudhish: What kind of a fucked up moron would think this is funny?

Me: Well, the prank angle is quite plausible considering all the people concerned are known for pranks, you including.

Sudhish: You think someone would abuse one’s family in the name of humor?

Me: I would call it dark humor

You don’t have permission to chat with this person.

Sudhish had blocked me on fb.

Next I tweeted saying

@sudhish_kamath has blocked me on fb. Time for a new hashtag?

to which he replied something which I don’t remember as the tweet has been deleted now.

Anyway, if it is really an April Fools prank, which I still think it is, good. If it is not, well, not really good.

Moral of the story:

1) Facebook should include a new feature to save chats

2) The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42.

Update: Post no more password protected. Open to public from April 1st as promised.

Update: April Fool Suckers!

Update: I just remember Gapp, Jump, Rajesh and me calling up Sudhish Kamath at an unearthly hour around two years back and he swearing at us. Good times!

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This is a small announcement.

The response to my earlier short story Apocalyptic Night was so great that it is being made into a graphic novel.

Thanks to you guys for all those witty comments, brickbats, hate mails, parodies by this guy and what not!

Mihir Ranganathan is taking care of the illustrations part. We’re doing the storyboard now and hope to publish the book sometime real soon!

Will keep you guys updated!

Click on the image for the larger version.

You may be interested in these…

• Apocalyptic Night OST

The last Indiblogger meet in Chennai was around two years back and inspite of all the blogoholics meet and small blogger meets we had, there was always a need for a massive bloggers meet. And when I say massive, I mean massive. I dont have a clear number of the attendees of the Indiblogger Chennai meet, but I expect it to be around 200. And man, bloggers in Chennai come in all sizes and shapes.

If Mumbai blog camp was full of enthusiastic youngsters who want to change the society, the scene in Chennai is a bit different – there were a good number of bloggers in the grey hair/white hair/no hair category. And one such gentleman in one such category infact claimed that he came to the meet just to increase the average age of the attendees! But then, *respect!

Moreover, I found out a fact that I never knew all along – I was a humor blogger. Thats what people claimed atleast! o_0

Please read this once and then decide if I’m a humor blogger!

And then there was the big screen where they were showing tweets containing #indichn hashtags. There were some public flirting on twitter initially before people realized that the entire crowd was watching their tweets.

This tweet was followed by a barrage of death threats in DM with threats to stage dharna and block railway lines. Hence I had to issue this tweet

Tweet tweet

(Click on the images below to visit the respective twitter profile. And do not forget to follow! They’re awesome tweeps!)

And then the RT

And the most famous tweet during the first half of the meet…

And the the realization

And the most famous tweet in the second half of the meet

And the the Nithyananda tweets

And then yours truly…

And then those specimen who couldn’t come for the meet

Follow the above awesome Chennai tweeps.

And don’t forget to follow me on twitter!

And also chk out The Blog Song by Wilbur Sargunaraj! He is Thalaivan!

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• Chennai Blogger Meet

Click on the image to view the larger version of the webcomic.

This webcomic idea struck me during the first IPL3 match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers when I noticed that #KKR was trending on twitter, but the team was losing.

And then last night in the match against Chennai Super Kings, Kolkata Knight Riders were suddenly back in form!

Images of the beer mug and the bartender taken from Openclipart.

If you like my webcomic, follow me on twitter!

You may be interested in these…

• The Follow Funda
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• The Jail Whale

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