Small Victories of the Lone Mosquiteer

The lone Mosquiteer

If it is one of those days you think your life is meaningless, swatting mosquitoes is a wonderful way to reassure yourself of your place in the food chain. (Although, I would argue that mosquitoes ought to be above us in the food chain because they drink our blood and not the other way round)

It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that there are very few things in this world that give us the kind of satisfaction swatting a fat bloody mosquito gives. Now don’t cringe. Don’t say “Eww!” as if you've never done it. I know you killed mosquitoes and I know exactly how you felt after that. Yes, I am talking about that short adrenaline pumped euphoric high you get as you see the body of a dying mosquito moving it’s legs slowly one last time before drowning in a pool of your own blood. I know how much you enjoy that okay, so let’s be honest for a second here!

See, now that's a kill!

Now that we’re on the same page. Have you ever tried to trap and kill a flying mosquito using just your thumb and index finger? Have you ever managed to pull that off? I did it, just once. Wow, a fat bloody mosquito killed using just the thumb and the index finger in a snap! The feeling was one of pure awesomeness. I was on top of the world. For 30 seconds, I felt like a ninja!

I eagerly looked around to see if anyone was fortunate enough to witness the amazing display of phalangeal athleticism. Unfortunately, there were none. Well there was this one guy who found it gross but don’t believe him, he turned his head late. So all he saw was the blood on my fingers. He missed the real deal. If you walked into the last scene of a Quentin Tarantino movie without any context, you would find it gross too wouldn’t you? It is exactly like that.

Smell the Coffee and other things

Now if you’re sad and you live in a more privileged place where there are no mosquitoes. Don’t worry. All you have to do is drop something on the floor and pick it up with your toes without bending down. That should make you feel like a frickin’ gymnast! (spoiler alert: for 30 seconds only)

Easy isn’t it? Like the cliche goes, happiness is all around you. All you have to do is look at the roses, bask in the sunshine and “smell the coffee”. Speaking of Coffee, have you ever tried to transfer coffee from one coffee mug to another? It’s one of the hardest things to do! The coffee tends to drip along the outer surface and spill. Imagining transferring it without even spilling a drop. Those are the kind of #wins I am talking about!

Have you, in recent times, written a full paragraph on a piece of paper that is bigger than a sticky note? I mean with with your hands using a pen in legible handwriting? Just imagine the clarity of thought required to do that! Especially in these days where we press one backspace for every three characters we type in MS Word and still we need spell check! If you have managed to do that, you have another #winner my friend. 

Here are a few more tried and tested ways for small victories... feel free to add your own too

Take a piece of paper. Crumple it and sink a glorious three pointer into the corner waste basket #win

The most common one of them all

You’re late to the railway station and the train is also late #win

You’re late to the office and no one notices #win (or #fail depending on  how long you have been around)

You honk at a girl and she looks at you #win

You convinced a friend to buy dorky sunglasses by putting on a global warming argument #MediumSizedWin

The auto guy agrees to come by meter fare (not applicable for people living in Bombay)

The auto has a meter (for people in Chennai)

The number of birthday wishes you received is greater than the number of wishes you gave (note: Facebook wishes don’t count)

You get lower berth and no uncle requests you to exchange it for an upper berth because aunty can’t climb 

Guessed the right direction while driving in a strange place... just by looking at the north star

You manage to buy a tatkal train ticket online! (This is actually a #bigwin)

(edit: added from comments) "I once managed to score 52 runs in 2 overs in a 10 X 10 meters cricket ground playing with my 8 year old nephew and his friends in tiny shorts and vests. They sidelined Sachin and honored me by calling their favorite batsman #MyGreatestWin" -- Sourav Roy

(edit: Also Keerti had some to add)
Putting a thread through the eye of a needle

Taking your car/scooter from a cramped parking space (big winner feeling)

Sleeping through a Balakrishna movie (it would be so difficult with all the yelling and the shouting) = #SmallWin. Managing to stay awake through it is #BigWin

If someone is planning to commit suicide and they call you before doing so... share this with them. If they still end up killing themselves, you have only yourself to blame.

Lazy Evolution

Chapter 1: the Q and the A.

What is the most fundamental human characteristic? Fear, hunger, procreation, feelings, being social et cetera etc. These are all important characteristics, but most of these can also be observed in dolphins. What is the characteristic that makes us human? In my opinion, it is laziness. Yes, laziness is what differentiates us from animals. For most species, any attempt at laziness will result the animal dying of starvation or being hunted down by other animals that were not lazy. In a way, no other species can afford to be lazy. I think dogs make a good exception but in their defense, everyone from Plato to Pavlov rewarded them for laziness.

Chapter 2: Indulging in Indolence.

Laziness is not as bad as it sounds. It’s just the habit of resting before even getting tired. If you want to sound classy, don’t say you’re lazy; say that you are “indulging in indolence”. Progress for humanity is not achieved by people who toil for 14 hours a day but by lazy people who are continuously searching for easier ways to do things.

Procrastination is a close cousin of laziness. Trust me, it is not half as good as real laziness. The problem with procrastination is that makes you lazy for tomorrow. So my advice to you is “Do not procrastinate because NOW is the time to be lazy”. The only catch is that laziness begets boredom but don’t worry boredom is healthy and necessary.

Chapter 3:Lazy Evolution

The whole human race has a collective assumption that our species moves forward to find ever better and more enlightened ways to live. The assumption is that the current scientific world is better than the pre-scientific world that we read about in history.

In the past human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated or just survive. But now we have come to a stage where we need to be entertained. The greatest fear we have is not that of death or disease but of boredom, a fear of having nothing to do, a fear of not being amused enough. This is the intellectual reality of the 21st century (at least for most of the well to do societies). This is what we have evolved into… lazy people with an attention span of 25 seconds!

Is this the direction humanity should be moving?

P.S: This is what comes to mind when you finish a Michael Crichton novel and then follow it up by watching the movie, Waking Life

How I plan to change the world

I always believed running was the most boring activity to do as an exercise. I have been running almost daily for 2 weeks now and trust me it is not the most boring thing. You wondering what’s more boring? Playing tennis without a partner is more boring. You hit the ball against the wall, it bounces back, then you hit it again and again until you hit it wrong and it flies over the wall. Then you breathe profanities under your breath, go fetch the ball, repeat the process. I tried it one day and I felt like a dog trying to train itself. Imagine a dog that has a ball and a pack of biscuits. Instead of eating the biscuits and sleeping under a shade, the dog kicks the ball somewhere, fetches it back and then eats one biscuit and repeats the process. Only Vodafone pups are that stupid! So I decided I am better off running.

One good thing about running is that you get to listen to music while you do that but the downside is that you can’t sing along. Here’s an interesting thing I observed while I was running the other evening. I was listening to this iron maiden number and I could totally get the lyrics! I’ve listened to the song a lot of times before but I couldn’t make sense of the lyrics but when I was gasping and panting for breath, I could make sense of every syllable. The whole song seemed to be in slow motion; at a much slower tempo than it was when I am not running.

This prompted me to do some research on the way the human mind perceives time. My kind of research is rather unconventional. I think of a really simple theory that answers all the questions. Then I search the internet to find any results or literature that contradicts my theory. If they do, then I adopt that theory, else I am in for yet another Nobel.

OK back to my theory, I think the rate at which we perceive time is indirectly proportional to our metabolism rate. That is why I found the song easier to decipher. The whole human body functions at a greater pace and as a result the reaction times are lesser. Just imagine the implications of this; if we can somehow make a drug (with no serious side effects) that increases our metabolism, we can have as much as 40 hours a day. The social implications of this theory could be huge. Just imagine a world where people cannot use the “I-don’t-have-the-time-for-it” excuse anymore!

However, there is a little loophole in the whole process i.e. all the series of experiments being done are based on the assumption that I do not have any super natural powers and we cannot rule that out. Unfortunately I cannot find any test subjects (read friends at IIT willing to collaborate with me in my research), so the world will have to wait a little while before I permanently alter the course of history (Or maybe I am just watching too much big bang theory!)



A rapid sketch of "The Godfather". Took just around 10 minutes. Looks much better on paper.

Boredom

I miss being bored. Seriously I do miss being bored. I think boredom is healthy and necessary. Boredom is an emotional state experienced during periods of lack of activities or when individuals are uninterested in the activities surrounding them, a detachment from the external world like meditation. It is a time to explore the inner cores of the mind, a time to stop, reflect and rethink our lives. It is during those patches of boredom that we get insights into our life, like the epiphanies of a relationship or a new theory on how the universe was formed, it is a prelude to creativity.

My concern is that we are slowly losing the luxury of boredom because of the anti-boredom gadgets that are always in our pockets. In those precious moments of boredom that we get, we shut all doors to get any insights into life by seriously shuffling through songs in our ipods or playing pacman or tetris in our mobiles(I know people who do this), or refreshing the scrapbook of a social networking site or reading someone's blog. (Let's make just this blog an exception ;))Luckily I am still a student and I do get my healthy dose of boredom in the classes I attend and this happens to be the consequence of it.







P.S: the paper and the scanner didn't quite work as a team. You must have observed it by now.