Breaking news...

...Fucking disturbing, that all news channels since yesterday could not find anything better to report than Mr. Bachchan's digestive system malfunctioning (to be precise, they reported it was intestinal inflammation). How fucking illuminating to get this news, there couldn't be a more severe national calamity, so much so that Mr. Prime minister found it important to convey his concerns to the entire family. Our obsession with the make-believe world is almost complete. Perhaps that explains why we have let our real world be as fucked as possible. 

  Not the media's fault perhaps. What do you do when you have to run 24 hour shows of "news". Just how much news can be cooked up in a day? That's where celebrity illnesses come into picture. Or some stupid inspector's senile dog being lost in the city (and of course, another breaking news when the same dog is found by the police, who obviously have no balls to catch the real dogs out there).

   Reporters need a job too. And what's more enriching a career than standing outside the hospital reporting which tablets are being fed to rich sexagenarians, or the visuals of people offering prayers to make sure that their earthly gods can survive stomach cramps...

   There are perhaps still enough people who believe that if these gods are cured, then maybe there is a chance for the salvation of a billion plus people in India. It's worse than the coverage of wardrobe malfunctions. Because there the fuck-crazy Indian population (how else did we reach a billion so fucking fast?) still has hopes of sneak peeks at coveted body parts. In this case, the only hope in the mind of some perverts would be a spycam fitted to the doctor's glasses, as he/she would attempt to correct the misbehaving intestines...

    We are still far behind on the road to rationalism (the recent example being some anti-Nano politicians). On a scale of one to ten, we are sub-zero. And until we stop these super-star-intestinal-fetishes, we will remain there. Though as always, I am still hoping that someday there would a breaking news that we have crossed to the other side of zero....

   

The house that Jack built...

If there's any news these days, it's that of market crashes, fears of recession, failing bailouts, excessive government intervention in the money markets, and similar stuff which is becoming the talk of every disgruntled town.

Never has Wallstreet been given such a bad name as before this, for triggering off such a widespread financial disaster. The 19.1% fall in Russian markets is an indication that was not a mere flu which had gripped the US economy but a cancer spreading to every limb of the global economic ecosystem. Because this time, there are no political reasons leading to investor concerns (note that there was a 9 odd percent fall in the Russian markets when Mr. Gorbachev was overthrown, but there were no major fundamental economic changes then). What we have now is a once in a fucking lifetime situation where the most basic elements of finance have been casually neglected.

Risk and return are always interlinked. All Jacks know that. And yet, when it came to building the grand financial house that everyone has been living in since the last IT-led recession, they all forgot the equations. Balance sheets are still balanced, but with artificial values. Hypo, Fortis, WaMu and AIG have shown us that even institutions which deal in individual consumer money paid no heed to any risk management ideologies, and conveniently rode the sugar-coated mortgage gravy train. High risk, very high initial gains, and then one day they found termites crawling all over the foundation-less house...

Multi-multi-billion dollar bailout packages are suddently proving to be too less to hold the contagion. Within one month, economic slowdown has assumed higher priority than inflationary concerns, and as is always the case, governments are now racing against each other to see who cuts interest rates the most. The only problem with this solution is that it is inherently cosmetic in nature. It's like providing an analgesic to someone who has just been shot in the knee. The pain might subside for some time, but the wound will only fester if the bullet is not removed in time.

Is there any other recourse we can take to ensure the house is brought back up again? For now, Jack doesn't seem to have any answers...

Bricks in the Wall (Street)...

Everyone's talking or writing about it. The jeremiahs are having a field day. Every fear suddenly appears justified. Every news looks like bad news. Words like "moral hazard", "too big to fail", "bail-out" are now becoming as common as that one word which started it all -- "subprime". 

And the US Treasury is certainly caught between the scylla and charybdis of tax-payers' money and the state of economy. If they don't help the biggies, then the after-effects will be disturbingly widespread. And if it does, then it's certainly taxpayers money going down the drain.

And what is hurting the US citizens currently is that their money is simply saving the asses of those rapacious financial chiefs who should actually be publicly lynched. They saw it coming. They all did. And yet, inspite of (or perhaps because of) their deep understanding of the markets, they kept quiet, all the while shouting out slogans such as "we will ride the storm, we have done it before". True, they had definitely survived tsunamis earlier, but this one was different. This one was the result of all dangerous explosives put together underneath a fuel tank. There were ego-boosting cries of "American dream" by Mr. Greenspan, resulting in 1% FRR and loans handed out of trucks and trailers. There were the regulators who just looked the other way when the shit was inching it's way up to the fan, there were rating agencies who were doling out AAAs faster than AAA batteries, there were real estate players who were making everyone believe that when it came to house prices, Mr. Newton was wrong, and then there was greed, the desire to make more and more money at clearly a huge cost to those who had no idea what trap they were getting into...

Even then, as they say, hope is a good thing, perhaps the best of things. 

And so everybody is hoping that the bottom is reached (but we know it hasn't). Everyone is hoping that the cancer doesn't spread any further. Everyone is hoping that the falling bricks on the wall street find their way back...

Dances with wolves...

They say you can throw a man out of a dance bar, but you can't throw the dance bar out of the man...

Perhaps the recent, extremely shameful incident at Lonavala is just a proof of that. A bunch of really old men (median age was 45+) had gathered to watch dancing girls who are of the same age as their respective, respectable daughters. It would still be considered ok if it were limited to normal girls, wearing normal clothes, dancing to normal songs and then everybody going back to their own respective, respectable homes. But this get-together of custom officers was conveniently converted into an event which was as raunchy as a bachelor party, which is perhaps an indication that these officers were perhaps facing the 20 year itch in their marriage.

Good husbands these were, you would say. And doting fathers too perhaps. And God-fearing, Rakhi-tying brothers as well, you might add. Fucking schizophrenics, is what I would label them
though.

What is more disturbing is not that these men committed this strange act. But the fact that thousands of such sick people, with multiple personality disorders, are running loose. The ones who are instituted in mental asylums, or undergoing neuro therapy, are just a minor fraction of those that actually need a mind-changing treatment. They are out there, your relatives and loved ones, the human avatars of your five-in-one electronic gadgets. The father, the brother, the rapist, the lier and the crook, all rolled into one neat, laundry-fresh package...

Perhaps it is time to realize that the apple of your eye, might be nothing more than a safe home for worms...

Distance...

We don't always measure time in units of seconds and hours. Sometimes we inadvertently collide the dimensions of space and time and calculate the elapsed period in terms of miles. I have been counting my separation from alcohol in perhaps the same terms these days.

We were friends (indeed, in need as well as in deed). Good friends. A relationship that was mostly "on the rocks". Always through "thick", never thinned by adulteration of any kind. But it's not that we were drifting apart. Perhaps we needed our own space, our own precious distance.

In terms of time though, it's close to a couple of months now. Certainly our maximum separation in the last thirteen odd years of a rather close acquaintance. Today it sits still inside it's bottle. Ageing itself. Waiting perhaps, for those secrets to start pouring out, at almost the same rate at which the drops flow.

There are withdrawal symptoms as well. Though I don't know what those symptoms are, but I am sure I can attribute a few stomach cramps to my abstention policy. But just like all such side-effects, these too shall subside as the distance between us grows further...

Frankly, I don't know if it's really over, but one thing's for sure --- the hangover still remains...