Schadenfreude

I can't believe that of all the things in the world, a completely pointless cricket match is making me post after so long. But this stupid, utterly inconsequential IPL final has made blissfully happy. It is the only match I've seen in this IPL and I am supremely kicked at the way things turned it.

 The thing is, basically, I hate the Chennai Super Kings. Really hate them, their whole "dynasty" swagger, their whistles, the sense of entitlement that the team seems to exude, and the sense of entitlement that the city definitely exudes. Above all, I am learning to hate the whistle podu-ing. podu it where the sun don't shine.

It's very embarrassing that this thing bothers me so much. But there it is. Why is this so? This is very complicated. Perhaps it's because when the IPL began, I used to live in that sporting capital of India, Hyderabad and got used to the home team dominating the tournament. Oh wait... So perhaps the real reason is that quite against my own conscious self, I started rooting for the Chargers. There you have it. I am like one of Konrad Lorenz's goslings. I hatched. I looked around. There was a completely useless team in front of me. BAM! Done.

 Then I moved to Madras 3 years back. And I love this place as much as I did Hyderabad, and I'm having a cetacean of a time here and all that. Except for this abomination of a team and its swagger and its sense of entitlement and...but I've covered that ground already. Worse than having lived in 2 cities (this one also is part of personal history) with hapless teams is to live in a city whose team (not your team) is doing well. This I have learned. (Ooh. Corollary. Would've HATED to live in New York.)

Anyway, as I wrap up this post, the Bollywood monkey brigade from KKR is doing cartwheels on the TV, so some of the euphoria is ebbing. But a good way to start the week. Unlike the week after the World Cup final. But that heartbreak is a story for a different time.

Dell-uding People?

I have bought 2 Dell laptops. One was in 2004, for a princely $2k types, in the US. Inspiron 8600. Lovely screen for writing code. Another was for the sibling, a couple of years later, also from the US.

Both turned out to be pretty delicate physically. Keys pop off, battery dies, power adapter stops working, something or the other gets fried. Dell is reputed for super-efficient customer service in India, I think the chief reason is that they need it. Of course, warranties are carefully written to precisely not cover the exact WTF that just happened to you.

In any case, we are in need of some machines at work and one of the things we were looking at is the Dell Vostro V130, supposed to be a lightweight travel friendly beast etc. Of course, glossy photographs and soothing marketing is listed on the website.

Who cares? The first-ish questions that come to anyone buying a computer are "How much RAM?" and "How much disk space?" Now the site says that this model is "From Rs. 37,290", but nary a mention of how much of the aforementioned juice one gets.

The kicker is that there's a "Tech Specs" tab, and perhaps it is reasonable to expect RAM and disk size to be available there. Nothing. Zilch.

So unless I've been doing something drastically wrong, epic fail by Dell. May this post be easily found on the internets before someone tries to buy one...

In-flight WTF

I was on a plane a couple of weeks back, from lovely, pleasant Madras to freezing, gray as the Tirpitz Amritsar. The in-flight magazine had one of those travelogue things, this one about a home stay type place somewhere in the Western Ghats in Kerala, on a cardamom/clove/other spice estate.

The family that owns and runs the place apparently used to live in Bombay and this was an ancestral estate of sorts that they were planning to get rid of. When they visited the homestead, they were enthralled by how beautiful and quiet and un-city like the whole setup was; so instead of selling the plantation, they sold their stuff in Bombay and moved lock, stock and barrel back to Kerala and went about the business of reviving the thing.

All well and good. The article had liberal doses of numbers in it. Some paper napkin arithmetic follows, bear with me.

Total acreage: 20 acres
Plant density: 400 / acre
Yield per plant per annum: 5 kg
Market price of said spice: Rs. 275 - Rs. 1700 per kg, depending on market conditions etc.
Revenue p.a. = Rs. 4 crore (at a sale price of Rs. 1000 per kg)

Then the gentleman goes on to reveal some of his costs. Apparently they have 6-7 full time workers, and hire another 10-15 during picking season. These people are paid Rs. 150 per day, apparently.

Total outlay on labour, generously speaking = 365 days * 20 workers * Rs. 150 ~= Rs. 11 lakh p.a.

Finally, in a somewhat rueful manner, this stunning comment:

"Everywhere from villas and townships, to the new airport that's coming up, construction pays way better for a far worse standard of living. None of my workers' children want to get into farming."

WTF.

You're making 4 crores a year, you spend 11 lakhs on labour, and this is your biggest crib?

I hope they replace the entire estate with a strip mall and (i) the workers get paid something approaching a fair wage and (ii) we get to work on the project.

Readers are invited to acquaint/re-acquaint themselves with this tale.

WTF, Hon. SC of India?

In which we may have invited judicial retribution...

Prelude:

In 2003/2004 Sushma Tiwari, a Brahmin from UP married Prabhu Nochil, an Ezhava from Kerala. They were in love. 7 months after they got married, to erase the insult to their caste and recover their honour etc. her brother Dilip and some accomplices murdered Prabhu, his father and 2 children in their Mumbai home, and left 2 others injured. A pregnant Sushma escaped because she was visiting a relative.

Cut to Now:

Today's Hindu carries a brief story. It says:

Although the fast track sessions court in Maharashtra, and later the Bombay High Court, awarded the death penalty to Sushma's brother Dilip Tiwari and his accomplices, the Supreme Court in December 2009 reduced the sentence to 25-year imprisonment.

And why did the Supreme Court reduce the sentence? Lo and behold...

The Supreme Court, explaining its decision to revoke the death sentence, said: "It is a common experience that when the younger sister commits something unusual and in this case it was an inter-caste, intercommunity marriage out of [a] secret love affair, then in society it is the elder brother who justifiably or otherwise is held responsible for not stopping such [an] affair."

It added: "If he became the victim of his wrong but genuine caste considerations, it would not justify the death sentence... The vicious grip of the caste, community, religion, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality."

clap clap clap clap.... WTF! WTF WTF WTF?!! Is there some jurisprudential nuance I'm missing here?

While capital punishment is demonstrably wrong, even if the SC had reduced some non-capital punishment in this case [added 2010-03-08 11:50 a.m. IST]for the reasons it lists[added ends], it would have been just a mega WTF.

I hope someone is doing him a favour and sending Ajmal Kasab this vital piece of information. Here is a sentence to get him started:

"If I became the victim of my wrong but genuine religious and patriotic considerations, it would not justify the death sentence... The vicious grip of religion and nationalism, though totally unjustified, is a stark reality." etc.

If only somehow the Delhi High Court of IPC Section 377 fame was promoted en masse into the upper echelons of the country's judiciary...

Can this blog post be construed as contempt of court? Nevertheless WTF ya.

Sampoorna Webpage Rewrite

Everyone knows WTF this is about, no?

A revisit to the group hug homepage reveals that the page in question has disappeared! Voila! Instead, we now have For the Family.

The theme for the Family track for this year's Global Conference is "Sampoorna – For the Whole Family".

In a reasonably clever move that prevents the raising of further blogical fingers, it says:

(All delegates to the conference, and any of their family members, are free to attend not only the sessions at Sampoorna, but any of the sessions making up the 6 thematic tracks, and the plenary sessions.)

Everyone can go everywhere, snail is on thorn and lark is deeply engrossed in an energetic rendition of Kumbaya.

There's still an undercurrent of mumbo jumbo, mind you.

The event explores through music and dance the impact of the five elements of the world, how it is being abused, and remedial measures that can be taken to stop the ecological disaster staring us in the face.

But we are going to strictly implement the advice Paul's mother Mary proffered.

The Mystic Trail has disappeared completely, instead you can play chess with Vishwanathan Anand (or Vandy, as he will be called on campus). All said and done a reasonably satisfactory conclusion, even if Shilpa Shetty is giving it a miss.

On campus investigations revealed the following.

1. The Mystic Trail was supposed to be more of a "gag" like thing all along, apparently. Of course, that wasn't entirely clear from the website. Anyway, good riddance. Hopefully the heartbroken josier is not lurking on Sardar Patel Road threatening to release his kili on unsuspecting visitors.

2. So, it turns out that the powers that be initially received lots of email and feedback about the WTF. This was given the same treatment that Dravid gives balls outside the off stump in Test matches. However (and here's the rub), the delicate stink from this whole affair had percolated through the blog world (thanks to A-list academic blogger types) and in mainstream media in a small way.

This caused a certain very very very important sponsor to apparently gently hint that changes in the programme would be "appreciated", and hey presto. Paisa bolta hai.

At the Choultry we're all extremely thrilled that the whole thing started off here. In the past, we've hinted at the duties of conscientious bloggers and so on, and apparently we were right. Anyway, that's that. Next, we are composing a rant on global poverty and we are sure there will be a similar speedy resolution to the same.

WTF Of The Century

We are are very busy but interrupting normal programming to bring you this news flash. This has got to get enough eyeballs before they change/remove the page. Just got to know about this via email.

--- Begin Rant ---

The good 'ol alma mater is hosting this year's love fest/group hug/what you will. So while all the boys are hanging out comparing each others' dicks and portfolios and dislocating their arms patting themselves and each other on the back, hey the "spouses" need not worry. It's all taken care of, you won't be bored and sidelined. See what the page says:

While the IITian chooses to inspire, innovate and transform, here is an exclusive track designed to keep Spouses and Families completely informed and entertained.

The theme for the spouses' track in this year's PANIIT is "Sampoorna" - programs meant for the complete woman, who is able to perfectly balance her personal, professional and public personality. With this in mind we have a galaxy of presenters and performers who are bound to enlighten the IIT spouses.

Here's a little bit of mind-boggling deductive reasoning:

1. All the spouses of IIT alums are women.
2. Some IIT alums are married women.
3. Ergo all married women alumnae are married to women.

Someone needs to tell Kenny, Choxbox and who knows how many more of them to wake up and smell the coffee. There's a duties-of-a-wife poster that someone (SB, BM, Veena?) posted a link to once and we can't find. This is taking that to a new level. 21st century version.

If all this wasn't so thrilling in of itself, there is more later in the page.

Mystic Trail
In the afternoon our Mystic Trail will take you through some of India's most well known practices such as Astrology, Palmistry, Gemology, Nadi and Kili Josiyam.

WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? WTF? factorial(WTF)^{factorial(WTF)}. This is a gigantic WTF, believe you me. In WTFland, it's called the WTGoogolplexF. And WTF doesn't HTML support the raising of WTF!s to powers of powers of powers of WTF!s?

Please excuse while we go off and burst some blood vessels.

Unfuckingbelievable.

And the sting in the tail.

Prepare yourselves for a close encounter with spirituality, fitness and food.

Shilpa Shetty
Start your day with an interactive session...

This is really the only session that seems worth attending at the whole conference at this point, but ah, read the fine print.

(awaiting confirmation)

Nonsense fellows.

--- EndRant ---

OK, back to the grind. Regular programming will resume after the saarangi vaadan is done with. Anon.