Post-Mortem

I tried to change

Into a different man

Body, mind, spirit, soul

But then, I'm right back where I began.

I am me.

Evil always triumphs

Justice beware

The eternal snare

Of the chaos-order pair

In the dark demon's lair

Once Upon A Time

There was a girl named Alice,
With a terrible malice,
It really was one of a kind.

For she hated any thoughts
Of pans, tubs or pots
That entered her wayward mind.

Her tangled mangy mane
Drove everyone insane
For she refused to keep it in check..

For that would involve water
Which goes pitter-patter
From mugs, which she hated to heck.

'Twas a blasted pity
For she would have been quite pretty
If her hair wasn't such a mess

If only she shampooed twice
And cleared it of all the lice
I'd make crazy mad love to her, I confess.

How Little Susan Saw The World

Now why did Susan suddenly decide to go hunting on her own when she knew there’d be lions in the park? Beats me, since I can never understand girls anyway. Still, I wish I knew what goes on in that juvenile female brain of hers. Must be some kind of a fantasy wonderland where all is right with the world and there isn’t a shred of malice or evil. If only that kind of a utopia could be extended onto the real world, overtaken by greed and corruption and the will to destroy everything in sight. I wonder which world would last longer – the imaginary ramblings of a child given form, or a planet of crude, wild beings.

Which is why I set out to see how far I could take this idea and implement it in the real world. I first found a group of young scholars willing to take on this academic challenge, and asked them to divide themselves into two groups. The first group was given the task of emulating the wonderland, while the second group had to maintain an opportunistic and economy-driven world like today’s.

To the utopia group, I gave a set of basic axioms – a free economy (where anyone can get anything they want), universal kindness (they go out of their way to help people in need), and a free dental plan for everyone. To the dystopia, I simplified some of the driving factors present in today’s world – basic natural instincts such as survival of the fittest, competition for resources, alcohol, and bad puns. In essence, the utopia represented an ideal communist world, while the dystopia represented the projected future of the capitalist ideals. Then I let the two teams loose, to see what they could come up with. Having competent IITians in both teams, I was happy to note that both teams were able to develop a consistent mathematical model of the world they were trying to emulate, and within a week, they had a fully functional simulation running on the two MultiVac supercomputers. We let the two computers do their thing for the next two weeks or so, and then went to check the results.

And we were pleasantly surprised with the results. To begin with, the wonderland only sustained itself for a few centuries. The free economy meant that everyone had an equal right over every item that had been produced. The universal kindness also had a big part to play. With each person being equal and having equal rights, there were now huge standards for safety, health and cleanliness in all industries, which lead to huge invisible costs in the production of any factory-made item. Also, there were no longer any people working in mines or any other such dangerous environments (since people could no longer be exploited and oppressed). Though there was a huge boost in basic human health, there was a huge failure in all industries that used to support all lifestyles. By the end of it, the only sustainable form of civilization that emerged was the basic rural agriculture-based lifestyle of the middle-ages. Bye-bye to technology.

Astonishingly, the evil land fared just as badly. Filled with people who had no bigger objective than to cheat everyone else out of their happiness, they eventually led to their own ruin. But not quite the way we would have thought. They had managed to outlast the utopian world. This was a world where industry flourished, where science and technology made leaps and bounds to cross huge barriers. Due to the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, by the year 2150, all the people who had formerly lived in the ‘lower’ strata had been wiped out, extinct, kapish! In their stead, only the 5% of the original human population remained, who had to fend for themselves in a world where they had formerly gotten the poor to do all their work for them. But this is where we were taken aback. By this point in time, technology had advanced enough to allow the development of robotics and advanced AI that could manage all the industries and necessities by themselves. There were robots that ran farms, robots that cleaned sewers, robots that served as maids in every person’s house. There were also sex-bots.

In a world with such a small population that intrinsically distrusted each other, the common (read: rich) man’s most trusted companion was commonly his robot(s). As they were not human, there were no laws that controlled how they were to be used, except that they were to never be used to cause harm to any human. Additionally, as each person became richer and more distrustful of his fellow men, he began to spend more time in isolation and rarely ever interacted with any other human, including his own family. The growing hole caused by a need for companionship was soon filled by the introduction of companion-bots – robots who were meant to serve a man or woman as though they were their own spouse. Increased use of these robots quickly caused a reduction in the reproduction rate of an already diminished population, and within three generations, the entire human race was extinct.

Point to note: The last generation of humans was not wiped out due to a refusal to procreate. Rather, by the time the humans had realized the need to mate with the opposite sex to maintain the future of the race, the machines had become sufficiently advanced enough to have started plotting the demise of their masters. All the remaining homo sapiens were swiftly expired by an overdose of cholesterol-filled foods in all of their cooking. Interestingly, the last hundred humans had an almost simultaneous heart-attack, leading us to believe that robots will indeed develop a sense of humour.

Karma'ed

At times I find

The world is blind

To a host of my desires,

But the answer is clear

Those who are dear

Keep them close till the pyres.

To fight we must

For our love and lust

Till once more, reduced to dust

And returned to that lonesome mire.

Green Paneer and Ham

There are two types of people currently in the Institute, Indian,  of Tecknowledgy Madras - the morons and the imbeciles.

The morons chose to dine in the RR Food Court for the whole sem, a place notorious for long wait times and missed breakfasts. I'll admit, there is the allure of ice-creams, fruit juice, and butter chicken, so I'll have to put them in the smart morons category.

The imbeciles, on the other hand, put their faith in the belief that the new caterer in the mess is capable of serving edible food, if only for the first two semesters. Which is why they should be further classified as the bulbing imbeciles.

The point of this discussion, of course, is none other than the brand new caterer in our mess - A Diet Express (ADE).  As tempted as I am to give this a better-fitting acronym, sadly, I can find none. This truly is a mess that will force you to diet. Of course, to balance out our choices, the CCW has taken the privilege of giving all other caterers the boot/pink slip/the old heave-ho/involuntary separation from employer/you get the idea. In effect, ADE now has complete monopoly over the thriving mess business. Thriving in bacteria, that is.

But I think I may be giving A Diet a bit too much criticism. It seems logical to admit that, for the first few weeks, they will have some trouble getting used to the insti way of grub production. To be perfectly fair, about 25% of the dishes they serve actually are edible.

Nevertheless, I do have to strongly object to their chapattis. Or naan. Or pulkas, or any of their other wheat products. Frankly, they're just pieces of rubber.

Still, that's precisely what I find so appealing about these rotis. Being an mad scientist at heart, I took it upon myself to commercialize a few alternate uses for these abominable attas. The more promising attempts have been listed as below:

• Camping Essentials : For all those wilderness lovers out there, ever found yourself shivering in the dark at night in a cold, deserted forest? Well then, simply carry around a few A DietTM Chapattis with you next time. Find a nice bundle of dry leaves, hold one A DietTM Chapatti in each hand, and strike them together to produce a fire.
• Worrisome Velcro : I'd been wondering how to attach those old mosquito nets to my windows. The answer? Attach a bunch of A DietTM Chapattis around the rim of the frame. Guaranteed instant adhesive.
• A Bounce in Your Step : The next time you find a tear or two in your leather workshop shoes or studs, use an A DietTM Chapatti! Not only does it mend the patch, it also puts a spring in your step for the next few days, till it goes stale.
• Winter Wonderland : Has ice-skating always been a passion for you? Well then, attach one of our custom-made Chappas to the bottom of your soles, and watch yourself glide over the roughest of terrain. Guaranteed to maintain its frictionless, non-tear surface, even against the strongest abrasives.
• Secret Service : Sometimes, you do stupid things, and end up getting a hit posted on you. No worries, though. Wear a sheet of A DietTM Chapattis under your shirt. Stronger than Kevlar, lighter than mythril, and not half as expensive.
• Military Warfare : Those standard-issue army knives are a thing of the past. When next thou finds't theeself in a dogfight, melee with an A DietTM Chappati. It'll choke your enemy within a good 3 seconds.

I believe they've taken to the IIT spirit of making functional, versatile, but aesthetically lacking products. Though the one exception was that weirdly tangy dish the other day, which had a new species of fluroscent green paneer.

My explanation? They want to track the flow of grub in our gut with radium-irradiated food. Which leads me to the conclusion that the ones behind all this are probably the biotechs. Damn those lemonADE loving lemon-partyists.

Green Marbles and Ham

Red roses

Blue violets

Green ham

And omlettes

This world's a mess

Not that I care

But I've been given

Not truth, but dare.

Impromptu answers

Will mend not the hole

That grows and threatens

Above the south pole

And little green men

Will not magically fix

The problem with our trees

So fix up our ethics

It's not so hard

Just try and see

Learn to recycle

It's actually quite nifty

Don't drive to work,

Use a cycle instead

We all know you need to lose

A spare tyre of lead

And switch off those lights

As you leave each room

Don't forget! Reduce

And try not to consume.

Now my vision's all blurry

The migraine approaches

Environmental issues, it seems,

Sends me for sixes.

So heed my sacrifice

Don't let down your guard

Though it may be a pain

Lest our future be marred