A Soldier's Account of Battle

A POEM BY ME ON THE PLIGHT OF A SOLDIER(PROBABLY CONSCRIPTED) IN BATTLE. ENJOY!

A Soldier's Account of Battle

-Balaji S

From overhead, above all the chaos surrounding me,

With sorrow,destruction and carnage galore,

Comes a formidably loud roar.

Looking up, I see a magnificently armed MiG-29,

Leaving in her wake a smoke trail fine.

As I look at the ground, over yonder,

What I see gives me something to ponder;

It is the massive sillouette of a T-90 tank,

Its guns as lethal as any Basilisk's fang.

As it lumbers past me, all I hear is its battle-cry.

Standing there, I was lost in my thoughts,

Oblivious to the fact that my Commander had approached me.

I gave him a stiff salute when I divined that it was my attention he sought.

"Go, man the machine guns", the order came.

I trudged along the dirt ground, wondering if I was still sane.

"War", I thought, "Where is thine chivalry?",

"Why art thou pulling innocents into thine web?"

Until I get the answers, I can but wait for the Conflict to ebb,

Away, Away, Away...

Better than last time right?

bala

The Inheritance Cycle: A Comprehensive Study

The Inheritance Cycle, for those of you who do not know, is a set of 4 books, set in an ancient world called Alagaesia, written by the young literary genius, Christopher Paolini. The books, of which 3 are released, are called Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr. A bit of a tongue-twister, really, but once you have mastered the names, you can move on to the content in the books. It's about this young boy of about 16, who, suddenly, ends up finding a dragon egg in a forest near his farming village and then finds himself, in a flash, running away from home with a local story-teller on dragonback. His family is destroyed, with the exception of his cousin, and he is on the run. He then decides that he must avenge his family's death, and so he wants to seek their murderers out and, you know, do the normal stuff that a hero does to a pair of non-human villains vastly more powerful than him.

 

In the ensuing battle, the boy loses the storyteller, his companion on his mission, to the forces of the Afterlife. So he continues on his journey, pretty much like what an aircraft does when the pilots decide to take a nap with autopilot on in the middle of a journey, to a rebel organisation.

There he is caught in an ensuing political imbroglio over him. And with suddenness so typical of Paolini, an enemy army crashes in out of nowhere, complete with giant barbarian beasts, sorcerers and even a magical abomination. This thing then fights the boy and gives him a cut in the back, before being finished off.

That's the end of Eragon, so now on to Eldest.

Name sounds okay? Think the book's gonna be alright? That's where you're wrong, my little chickadee...the book is nothing short of Horrible!

In fact, it's so horrible that I'm just not going to tell you how horrible it was!

You see, it spares you the misfortune of reading it and it spares me the misfortune of typing it all out!!!

Goodbye people!

P.S.- I hope I can get something better for you net time...

bala

Larry King, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and my family

All right...to all you guys who don't know, my family is one of what many people would call geeks, nerds or the like, but one we are proud of, for to us, "Knowledge is power". And my uncle has so much of it that he works at a thermal power station...queer. We watch the news with ritualistic reverence, newspapers like His messages, one gets the idea, does one not?

On the one side, there is my grandfather. If you ask him the difference between an SC, an ST and an OBC, he'll probably spend the rest of the day, if not week, explaining it in legal language to you. If knowing stuff could get you land, he would have bought the Taj Mahal and have the money to relocate the Big Ben in front of it. But sadly, knowledge cant get you land or cash or all things nice, so he remains as any other of his age. He wants the habit to pass on, though, because the firs thing he does when I get back from school is to shove the newspaper, supplement and all, under my nose. He sits about 7 inches away from the TV screen, watching nothing but the news. In all probability, he may have been the force behind NDTV's decision to come up with the name 24/7.

And then there's my grandmother. Apart from getting a septuagenarian ear out for all the neighbourhood gossip(for my usage, of course) along with the aforementioned news channels in the aforementioned distance from the TV screen. All this apart, she also does what can be called a careful scrutiny of various Tamil magazines, for women and otherwise, devotional or otherwise, et cetra.

Almost last, and maybe the least(no offence, people, you're just the bottom of the sky or the top of the earth!), are these noble souls' sons and daughters-in-law. They are hard workers, but they nevertheless catch up on any news they can find. They keep their eyes peeled and their ears open, these people, looking for things such as corporate politics, management fissures and the likes. They can tell you the difference between nuclear fission and fusion, the know-how and the know-why, they can be philosophical about that last piece of chocolate, they can do a lot of things...


And now, last, but never, never the least, it is us, the third and the three point fifth generations of the family, the ones that are going to take India to the world(shamelessly copied from the Aditya Birla ad) and we are the ones that need to keep pace with our surroundings, as we are. We read the newspapers(Exception:Bala), take in carefully measured ammounts of gossip(Exception:Bala) and watch every available news brodcast(Exception:Bala), not to mention looking up everything we need on Wikipedia, Wiktionary and stuff like that(Exception:Bala).
We know, not all, but a good sized chunk of what we want to know.

bala

What I want to do with my life...

So, the perennial question...what am I going to do with my life once I get out of the so-called best days of my life, get out of school and look for something in the "big bad world"...
Well, I say that a good job is one where you get the satisfaction...and more importantly, the money, and a little bit of fun never hurt.
What i want to do is to ditch college altogether...to think higher than most of my family...some of whomthink that anybody other than an engineer, a doctor or a CA is jobless, and an MBA means getting on top of the world...I want to, as most of my public know, be a pilot. Not just that, I want to become a Vishnu Som.
Ever heard or watched that guy on NDTV? The man has a Commercial Pilot License, knows scuba diving and is a TV anchor/journalist.
The result? His job involves diving to see coral, driving Ferraris around Maranello(Italian countryside)and (check this out!)flying MiG-29s,-35s, JAS-39s and F/A-18s...
So he gets the satisfactionand the money and the fun!!
So one day, don't be surprised to see me on a TV channel flying a MiG or a Sukhoi or driving a Ferrari...it'll all be part of a job,won't it?( No,mom, I'm not asking you, you'll rattle off saying
that I must do my duties without expecting fruit...and so on...this is for my public to decide)
bala

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Campaign I

Well, folks, continuing from last post, I'm going to guide you through the amazing world of Warcraft III. The first campaign is called Exodus of the Horde. It's basically a prologue to what's coming, but good enough to keep you occupied for a day and a half.
You are Thrall, son of Durotar, an Orcish Warchief. A prophet comes to you mysteriously and tells you to lead your people across the seas to the ancient lands of Kalimdor. Now, Thrall, unlike rational beings like us, follows this guy blindly. He at once orders his people to the shore, gets some ships and sets off. Thus ends the prologue.

Much more next time,
Bala

TO SCHOOL AND BACK AGAINA SHORT, SWEET AND SLIGHTLY EXAGGERATED STORY-BALAJI.S

As I write this story, I must ask all of you readers out there to laugh out loud whenever you get the opportunity, for that is one of the most integral parts of our great Bangalore.

Last week was every student’s most dreaded nightmare: the Hindi exam, or at least that is what they call it when two hundred students are massacred in about two hours with nothing but a piece of paper. I use the BMTC bus system to commute to school, and today was no exception. As I stepped into a rickety old bus, the female conductor shot at me a look of pure loathe, the likes of which are used by jailors in movies while throwing food at the prisoners. “Ticket?”, she shrieked, nearly jabbing my eye with those murder weapons called ball-point pens. ”Pass”, I said, struggling valiantly to dodge her mightier-than-the-sword pen. She wanted to see my bus-pass, so she motioned with the aforementioned pen. Upon finding nothing reason enough to throw me out of the bus, she threw it back at me, again using my eyes for target practice…she evidently was supposed to be at the war-games in Pokharan, thought I. By the time I got out into the pleasant Bangalore drizzle, I had already suffered several scratches, the fruits of several ‘accidents’ with the conductor’s bag.

I had to get another bus to school, so I waited. To kill time, I kicked stones at a puddle. Soon, the puddle was full of stones. Time check:8.12 a.m. 18 minutes to the school bell.
More time flew. 8.19 a.m. 11 minutes to bell.8.22. “Providence favours the brave”. 8.24. ”The supernatural being will help”. 8.25. “Curse the BMTC!”. 8.25, 43 sec. The Messiah in the form of a shining blue-white wheeled chariot! “All is not yet lost, my dear Bala!”. The divine messenger almost hit me, but who was I to care? I stepped in to its roomy, dry comfort. The conductor was a man, and more importantly, he didn’t bother to even look at me.
We were moving at hypersonic speed, with agility that an SU-30MKI wouldn’t be able to match. We wove around traffic like a dogfighting aircraft. At breakneck speed, we were almost at my school gates. 8.29 a.m. and 19 sec. out of the bus, running into the school as if for my life. The eagle had landed. Hats off and collars up to this divine intervention.

The exam, as usual, was like what the Chinese troops did to the thousands of protesters at Tiananmen Square. At long last, we battle-hardened soldiers evacuated ourselves and the casualties from enemy territory.

Back to the bus stop. A bus. Going back home. At the intersection between Chord Rd and Magadi Rd. A violent jolt woke me from my musings on the past couple of hours. It was the bus moving through the rain-created slush near the Underpass That Wasn’t. This was no underpass, no magic box, it was always going to be a to-be-completed-in so-and-so date project. Traffic jam. No signal. Chaos. Ashen-faced cop trying his very best to control it all. No B-Tracs system for this guy-just old fashioned hand signals. Moving on. At the connecting stop. Waiting relentlessly. Still waiting. A figure clad in a raincoat approaches me like the villain in TV soaps. Turns out it is just my uncle, happening to be in this part of town. Good man, kindly offers me a ride home.

At this moment, bus number innumerable pulls into the stop. It’s a direct bus.

Debate rages in my head. Uncle or bus. Bus or uncle. A car with just me and him or a bus with forty other guys?

In the end, independence wins over. I say, ”No thanks, but you must visit sometime soon”. Why did I make that choice? I’ll leave that for you to guess, because I myself am not that sure. Another brutally tough question: who is the protagonist in my yarn? Well, I’d say it isn’t a ‘who’ but a ‘what’- the BMTC, Bangalore and, more importantly, its culture…
Bala

Nat Geo Junior Hunt-2

On Thursday, 15th May, 2008, I left for Mumbai on the early morning Spicejet flight. As soon as the aircraft landed, I headed for the cockpit of the aircraft, only to be greeted by a humungous human chain, starting from the cockpit. It seemed that I was not the only one interested in planes…

The aircraft was a Boeing 737-800, registered as VT-SPK. Finally, when I was at the cockpit, I met a cheerful guy on the left seat; whereas the First Officer seemed to be in his own world of thought…I asked the Captain a few questions, which he answered with patience and enthusiasm.

Once out of the terminal, I found that my flight timings being congestion-inclusive, I had landed an hour ahead of schedule. So I called up Mrigul, one of the guys responsible for me, and asked him where he was. He fixed up something with his boss, for me to get to their workplace. Once there, I viewed most of the episodes and was escorted to Mrigul’s house by his boss, Nitin. I left my bag (or rather, threw it) in a corner and took a small nap (essential, as I had got up at the ghastly hour of 5). Once I was roused from my slumber, I was served an amazing lunch by Mrigul’s cook. After I was done, Mrigul came to pick me up with Malvika, the writer. We went to the studio and I saw the script for the first time. It was a long one, and I was in for a tough evening.

We were all ready at the studio, with me having finally familiarised with the script and the backgrounds ready. But it was not to be done with so soon…poof!came a power failure…we were in for it…

About an hour and a half later, the auxiliary power unit was plugged in and we were ready to roll. I was made to stand in the centre of the background and the camera was focused. Then the lights came on, one by one. Ever wondered what it might feel like to be roasted by the Devil in Hades?? Maybe not, but if you have and want to get a taste, showbiz is for you…those lights, or at least, that’s what they’re called, are enough to run a thermal power plant!

But, as they say, God is everywhere…in my case, He came in the form of a table fan, a bottle of cold water and my handkerchief, with Nitin and Co acting as His messengers.

There was a huge green cloth draped over a frame, and it served as my background. The camera was placed on a tripod a few metres behind, and right over the camera was a teleprompter. As the text could not be read by me minus glasses from that distance, it had to be enlarged many times. A little mike was taped to my shirt and a long pole-mounted fluffy mike was held by a man so that it was right above me, but it wouldn’t be on camera. There were lights everywhere, the two aforementioned and three more at various other locations. Why there were so many lights is still a mystery to me…

Then the first line of anchoring began…by the time a fourth of the first episode was completed, I was sweating profusely, and Nitin had to break it off because of the sweat.

I felt drained after just two episodes, but fought on doggedly… after the third episode, by His doing, the lights went out. A break of at least an hour was to be enjoyed, but no, I pushed myself further to take advantage of the partial lighting…

Dinner was a quick affair, with some Vada-pav being the sole form of sustenance. After it, we worked tirelessly, and were rewarded handsomely enough when I finally said, ”Well, that’s all from me now, keep watching Nat Geo, and Think Again!”

I must admit, if this is the life of an anchor, it certainly wasn’t that bad!

Mrigul dropped me off at his place and went out, and I was left alone with a TV and a PS2…I played (and lost) FIFA ’06 continuously till 1:30, after which sleep divinely wrapped itself around me.

The next morning, I woke up for some reason at 6.30, and, finding Mrigul dead to the world, I decided to postpone his resurrection.

At 7.30, I shook him like Oliver Twist’s schoolmaster, after which he finally awakened...

After we were readied and dressed, he drove me around Mumbai with the intention of showing me the Gateway of India without me going to my flight a day late. It seemed like a tough duel, but we were making progress on the hopelessly clogged roads of the city, which even the natives seem to dread. We stopped for some brunch at McD’s, and finally reached our destination. I was disappointed, because I had expected a lot more out of the symbol of British rule in India, which was being renovated. While one half was covered in mesh, the other looked like a Stone Age relic. I could not spend more than five minutes here, both because I didn’t want to and because we hadn’t the time.

A couple of hours later, we said our goodbyes, and I entered the labyrinthine corridors of the airport. My flight was delayed by about 45 minutes, and when it arrived, I was glad to take my seat. This aircraft, a brand new Boeing 737-900, registered as VT-SPU, was a brand new one. An hour and a half later, I was in another cockpit, with a fresh set of questions for the pilots. My adventures with Nat Geo are now over, and with them, (as of now) those with the HAL airport…

Of Mother-tongues and Other tongues

As a perfectly normal 13-year-old guy (notwithstanding the high iq...), I feel more like a Bangalorean than a Tamil or a Kannadiga, an Indian rather than a Bharatvasi, so much so that my mom and my grandma thought I needed a refresher course in Tamil, provided by my aunt who taught me the language of jalebis in the first place. My mom, on another front, was pushing for my learning Kannada, "so that you can read the boards on the buses"...and this advice(or should I say decree?) came after 3 years of going by bus, coming by bus and chatting with various conductors... :)
But, due to my constant protests with Gujjar-like intensity, they agreed to put me through a test...(for Tamil only, as i had flatly refused to touch kannada...)
I was asked to read a page of that weekly that my grandparents gave the utmost reverence...
I knew it was going to be a tough task, one that needed a lot of determination and grit...I opened the book...I was given a page to read, and I began...
I concentrated on it like there was no tomorrow...halfway through, three-quarters done...and Bingo!
I had passed with flying colours! (don't ask my mom how it went, because she'll tell you that I was no good...are mothers always pessimists?)
No Tamil training for me!!
I was in heavenly bliss, so heavenly that i thought that the stars were God's daisy chain...

Well, see you next time!

Bala