About Today

 Being on pain meds feels great. I finally called my Mom today and told her about the Bronchitis. She was relieved that it is not TB. Had a relaxing day at work, sailed through the nine hours without unnecessary waiting. I took two walks today also, like last Sunday. One was a visit to the McDonalds, where I had small fries. Another was to the highway, where I got two pulpy oranges, replenished my ciggies, and got a Kulhad chai. I also got a chai from graveyard aunty, who is still on the lookout for Itnu the lost boy. 

Had dosa in the afternoon, and got some sabudana khichdi to take home. I like the transparent pearls, not the white ones. I also gathered up a whole bunch of news that I can do tomorrow. Akshit went home early, waiting for him to come back for the clockout to complete the nine hours. Have to get to work early tomorrow, because there is an event in the afternoon that I have to leave for by 1:00. Plan to grab a cab at 05:30 hours which means that I really have to go to sleep as soon as I go home to get adequate sleep. Need to leave in five minutes. Might be a bit late, even if I make it by 08:00 hours, I feel I can get done with my eight stories in four hours. We shall see! 

The Golden Teetar of Bundelkhand

It is a clear, moonless night, with many stars visible in the sky. Orion has just risen over the horizon, but has an extra star, and it is moving fast, too fast for anything bound to the Sun. It is a blob of heavy metals, ejected by a collision between neutron stars, containing, iridium, neodymium and tellurium in small quantities, but made up mostly of platinum and gold. As it enters the atmosphere, it lights up in a fiery trail. Down below, is a primordial darkness, a rugged, shadowed plateau of granite stretching endlessly under the starlight. Jagged hills rise as black silhouettes with sharp, eroded edges. Sparse patches of scrub and thorn forest look like velvet-black carpets, peppered by small clusters of twinkling village lights. Dessicated and unyielding, the Bundelkhand Craton is one of the oldest pieces of continental crust on Earth, a classic Archean shield terrain made up of rocky outcrops and low plateaus. 

Only a small grain of the fragment of a distant dead star reaches the surface. It smokes for a few minutes, then begins to cool down. In the morning, a curious, plump, ground-dwelling bird called a teetar begins foraging for food. It steps forward with short, deliberate strides on strong pinkish legs. Its body is rounded and compact, covered in camouflaging grey-brown feathers. The bird's small head is held alert, the dark eyes scanning constantly, and the short, stout bill parted as it listens for danger. It pauses near a patch, and kicks both feet backwards simultaneously in a rapid, shallow scrape, flicking away loose dirt and dry leaves to uncover hidden seeds or grains. The greedy little bird then darts its bill downwards, picking up a single golden grain with a deft sideways twist of the head. It tosses the grain slightly upward with a flick, catches it cleanly in the bill, and tilts its head back in one smooth motion. The grain disappears down the throat of the teetar. 

In the sun-baked fields, where tractors coughed like old uncles and the WhatsApp group for the village panchayat buzzed with concerns about delayed monsoons, there lives a bird hunter named Billu Lal. When he was a little baby, he had light eyes that resembled a cat, which is why his parents and grandparents started calling him Billu. Nobody really remembered the time of his birth, but based on the best guesses, the configuration of the stars in the heaven had been charted, and the astrologer had indicated that it was auspicious to pick a name that started with an A, so he was officially named Anup. But everyone called him Billu, and so will we. Billu was a wiry fellow in a faded kurta, carrying a bamboo trap and a sling made from his grandmother's old dupatta. Every dawn he wanders the bajra fields chasing teetars, that were notoriously fast, and are said to be capable of outrunning even a politician's promise. 

One morning, a long way from home, while sipping chai from a fancy steel tumbler balanced on his cycle handle, Billu spotted fresh tracks. These were not ordinary teetar tracks, they look like small impact craters. Each footprint had sunk in at least an inch into the black soil, cracking the earth. 'Arre wah' he muttered. He suspected that some mischievous person had casted the foot of a teetar in iron, and was making fake tracks, but did not know how shallow the tracks were. He followed the trail past the abandoned tube well, stepped gingerly past a neem tree that was known to house a legendary cobra called Buddha Kalu, so ancient that it had hairs, and into a field of the humble mustard, that was as yellow and pretty as a field of sunflowers. 

There, half-buried in the dirt like a living boulder, stood the teetar. What it had swallowed was as dense as the fury of a mother-in-law, heavier than the guilt of a murderer. The bird flapped its little wings uselessly. Billu crept forward, heart thumping louder, but when he tried to grab the bird... phut!... his arms snapped back. He heaved, he grunted, he even tied his gamcha around the bird's leg and pulled like a bullock in a tug-of-war. The teetar would not budge, but Billu went tumbling when the gamcha slipped. The teetar blinked its greedy, beady eyes, conceded a bored 'teee-tarr', and laid a golden egg right beside Billu with a soft clink. 

About a kilometre away, in his tree hole, Buddha Kalu reared up, hood flared, suspiciously examining his breakfast. This was not the usual frog or rat. He was hoping to hypnotise it into a mouse, but it was not cooperating. He coiled around it protectively, muttering in snake-tongue, 'so warm, but is it delicious?' It smelled of temple incense, and seemed to be humming faintly. It was a twin of the egg that was astonishing Billu right now. Buddha Kalu was unsure what to make of it, and finally decided that it was an adequate dinner. He opened his jaws wide, and swallowed the egg whole. All the white hairs on his chest and back began to glow in the dark, in a golden colour. Buddha Kalu had no way to know it.  

Billu realises that attempting to lift the bird is a useless endeavour. 'Arre even Hanumanji would need a crane for this task'. But the fresh golden egg at his feet, warm and fresh is appealing. He wraps it in his gamcha, tucks it under his arm like a cricket ball, and begins to cycle on his creaky BSA SLR bicycle. The road was long, about twenty kilometres of potholes and political posters. He began pedalling, pushing off with one foot. The old BSA creaked like an arthritic uncle as the slightly rusted chain clanked into motion. The golden egg, warm and secure in his gamcha, sat against his ribs like a secret too heavy to share. The first few kilometres were fairly easy, a mostly gentle downhill slope towards the highway. 

The road soon turned mean. Potholes began yawning, forcing Billu to frequently swerve, cursing softly. He had to stand on the pedals to hop over the worst of them. The dust rose in lazy plumes behind him, catching the orange from the setting Sun. Every few minutes, he glanced down at his precious bundle, half expecting it to start humming or glowing through the cloth. It did neither, it simply weighed a bit more than an egg that size had any right to. The bike was doing something odd and satisfying, that it had never done before. Whenever it went over a small pebble or rock, the stone would burst in a puff of sand, and become flat. Billu did not know what was happening, but it as satisfying as popping bubble wrap. 

The landscape flattened into an endless expanse of cracked earth and thorn scrub. It was the kind of emptiness that makes a man feel small. There was a distant village out on the horizon. A pack of dogs appeared from nowhere, shadowing him for a stretch, their eyes reflecting his cycle lamp in pairs of yellow coins. Billu rang the bell once, a sharp, theatrical trinnng-triiing, that made some of the dogs jump and they all peeled away, disappointed. Overhead, the sky had deepened into a velvet purple, and Orion was already rising above the horizon, this time with no extra star. The only sounds were the rhythmic squeak of the chain, the hiss of tires on loose gravel, the occasional pop of a rock getting pulverised, and a stray, lonely bark echoing across the plateau. Billu's thighs burned, sweat soaked the back of the kurta, and the golden egg stayed cool against his skin, as though it remembered its cold origins. 

At the base of a small inselberg, Billu stopped for a rest. He was tired, and he needed a break. He hid his cycle at the base of a trail, and climbed up the hill. At the top, he took out his small chillum, meant for solo operations, and filled it with herb. And then he took first fired a match to burn a clump of coconut hair, and then used the coconut hair to light the chillum, but only after intoning loudly, 'Har Har Mahadev!' Then he took a few deep drags and appreciated the landscape, under the sliver of a New Moon. Deep ravines and dry riverbeds cut across the undulating surface like inky scars. The eroded granite domes seemed like timeless sentinels. And then a movement caught his eye, forcing Billu to lower himself to the ground. And then he saw it, something magnificent and spotted emerging from the woods. It looked like a small horse, and it was unlike anything he had seen before. It was a hyena, evil and menacing, and it scared Billu. He was frozen for a few seconds as the Hyenea looked around, and then darted back into the vegetation. Billu, scared out of his wits, quickly ran down the hill, grabbed his bike, and began pedalling furiously down the road.

Kilometre after kilometre, the road began to punish him. An upslope arrived without warning, a long, shallow rise that felt like trudging through a sea of honey. At times Billu had to get down and push. A truck thundered past, impatiently blearing its horn, with the slipstream pushing him sideways. He muttered a long string of a nonsensical inventive gaali under his breath, specifically the wing of the insect that goes and dies in the machine used to make the ink for the labels on rat poison, then laughed at himself. By the time the slope eased, the night had settled in completely. The stars in the sky above reminded him of grains of rice. If only he could eat them all. Hunger and fatigue had decided to play tricks on him. He pedalled on, but for only a little while.

The upslopes were killing him, and his stomach began grumbling. Now Billu was a simple man with a simple philosophy. If you got hungry, you eat. There was only one thing on him that he could eat. Now many other people would have contemplated consuming such a rare, precious thing, but not Billu. The simple matter of hunger, in his opinion, took priority over any considerations of the uniqueness of the egg, and its spectacular metallic golden colour. So, Billu decided to make an omelette out of the golden teetar egg.  

Under a banyan tree, near the highway where trunks honked like impatient ladies, Billu built a small fire with dried cow dung and broken twigs. His tempering pan was big enough for the omelette from the egg of the small bird. He whisked it with a pinch of salt, green chilli, and some jeera. A rich, juicy fragrance rose. This was liquid gold being cooked. Billu ate the omelette in reverent silence, straight out of the pan. His eyes lit up in a golden sparkle. He shouldered his empty trap, and pedalled into the night, but not before looking back towards the distant mustard fields. Somewhere out there, was a teetar that laid golden eggs. 

 

The Story of Rexy

Rexy is a T. Rex from Jurassic Park, actually the one and only T. Rex from Jurassic Park. Rexy is a female, who was to be the main attraction in Isla Nublar. In the demo ride, they try to bait Rexy with a goat, but Rexy likes to hunt, not be fed. We see her appear first when things start going to shit. She dispatches impact tremors as her hair-raising herald. Then she chases Ellie, Malcolm and Muldoon in an epic car chase sequence. 

At the climax, Ellie, Grant and the kids are cornered by the three raptors who really are on the verge of building a spaceship and going to the Moon. This is when Rexy steps in, and literally becomes the hero of JP. 

Now Rexy does not show up in the two JP sequels, although both movies do feature T. rexes. The family of T. rexes in JP2 is from Isla Sorna. The lone adult male T. rex in JP3 is unrelated to the family from JP2. Rexy then appears in three Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, and Dominion. Rexy appears during the climax of Jurassic World. Battles and takes down the Indominus Rex, and pushes it into the jaws of the Mosasaurus. 

Then Rexy shows up right at the start of Fallen Kingdom. Here again, something similar happens. She attacks one of the mercs, they escape, but then the Mosasaurus gets him. Rexy is moving fast with strobe lighting, so had to play back at 50 per cent speed to capture this. 

Then in the climax, Rexy ends up killing and eating Eli Mills, the villain of the movie, then escapes into the wild. 

Rexy also shows up in Dominion, in the climax. This means that Biosyn tracked her down, caught her, and then moved her to BioSyn Valley in Italy. Here is Rexy in Dominion, recreating the iconic logo from JP, that kickstarted the whole franchise. 

Then there was this epic scene where the Therizinosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Rexy. Rexy and the Therizinosaurus tag team and take out the apex predator, Giganotosaurus. No Mosasaurus comes to the rescue this time. 

At the end of Dominion, Rexy is presumably the apex predator of Biosyn Valley. 

So Dead

It is early in the morning, the Sun is yet to rise, the sky is gradually growing increasingly brighter, the warm yellow LED in my kitchen is still glowing like a trapped sun or an ancient bonfire, casting long, deep shadows across my modest hall. The early pre-monsoon rain is pitter-pattering on the flimsy fibreglass covering held down by stray bricks over the skylight in my 'compartment apartment'. This is also known as a barsatiya, it is an extra, shoddily constructed floor, that are leaky. This is fun, because the water seeps through the walls, creating patches of fuzzy fungal growth. Then the actual locations of the roof leaks shifts throughout the monsoons, requiring moving the buckets over time. First the paint, and then the plastering continuously falls of the ceiling, creating an internal rain of debris. The beds and other things have to be shifted around as well, away from the leaks. I have a poor lamp that seems to somehow attract water, because the roof starts to leak wherever I place it... it has shrunk considerably.

I am actually enjoying the experience, understanding the difficulties. This is exactly why I came to Delhi! The buckets of water are great! Rainwater harvesting. Also I like buckets, they come in so many shapes, sizes and colours. Getting buckets without handles is a fatal mistake. I like the round flat tubs, these are good for catching leaks from a wider area. Then I use a big, deep ones for the fast leaking places. Need a bunch of small ones for the newly leaking places. In a barsatiya, you understand the use cases for the various types of buckets! I think the whole bucket parameter space exists because of barsatiyas only. 

I am typing all this after just smoking some herb out in the balcony. Got a bit wet, but not drenched. Also shivering a bit. I have recently been diagnosed with bronchitis. This great doctor has given me some kickass, strong meds, that is making me feel fit and fine. My condition was very bad just a couple of days ago. Now I am feeling alert, energetic and so alive! I am just super relaxed, super comfortable over an electric blanket, under a rajai, totally enjoying the buzz, along with the soundscape. The metronomic plops filling up the big bucket, and the hum of the electric pump, some birds waking up, and the distant chug of a train piercing through the city. I have an abundance of free time and freedom, and have no commitments. I am on sick leave, and this is the best I have felt ever lol, or at least since college. 

About two days ago I really was struggling a lot. I had not eating properly since Sunday, when I puked after eating a bit of that stale curd rice from Bheemeshwara. On Monday, I could not go to work, and went into some kind of fever-dream state, had chaas and curd rice from Dosa Coffee... no bells and whistles (in the curd rice world this means sun-dried fried chilis and pomegranate arils), no sweet curd... just plain, simple and good old curd rice. On Tuesday, I went to work unwisely, and I ate maybe five to six spoonfulls of mixed dal rice. I should have eaten just the dal I feel now. At work my shoulder and back were paining. I ignored it through the day, and came home. On the way back I picked up a charger for a colleague from Nehru Place, that is still there with me. 

Anyway... that night, I could not sleep or eat. The right side of my chest started paining too much. There was no position I could assume that allowed me to sleep. Somehow I got two partial cycles in. Was struggling a lot, tried the massager in two bursts, which gave me comfort. There was no way I was going to work tomorrow. The next day I fired up google maps and looked for a doctor. There was no clinic on one location. The next one, I went in there some weird woman asked me if I wanted a physiotherapist, I said no I wanted a doctor. She said there was no doctor at a community health centre, and I finally started winding through congested gullies towards this doc that allegedly exists, and stumbled across it by accident on a location not where it was indicated on Google Maps. 

I have experienced this with ATMs and known coffee shops also (Blue Tokai lol), the locations are not exactly where the place is on Google Maps. Case in point, if you are sick and hurting, Google Maps is of no use. 

Anyway, I finally found the doctor. I this point I can feel as if the right side of my lung has twisted up. Every time I take a deep breath, laugh, cough, or even move wrong, it pains like hell. There is some other drama ongoing there, a story worthy of a national award winning movie. The doctor is a Muslim, but no beard and topi. The only way I could tell was some Islamic collage with text overlaid that was framed at the apex position on his wall, over all the other certifications and posters. His patient is a woman who appears to be Hindu. Her husband is clearly a Muslim, with a kurta, beard, topi... all the signs. The doc and the husband are trying to convince the wife (who has a small baby in her arm, I just noticed), to break the fast, eat meals, and take her medicines. She negotiates, saying I will take the medicines but not break the roza fast. They both try to convince her in different ways, but she remains stubborn and steadfast about not breaking the fast. 

The doc interrupts the consultation to address me. But all my pains are gone looking at the unfolding drama. At this point, I have to act and wince and gesture and say I have sever chest and shoulder pain on my right side, difficulty in breathing. He asks me to take a seat, while he sorts out the woman. 

I am wondering if she is converted or just following her husband, like I cannot just assume. Even a traditional Hindu wife will not eat till her husband has eaten. The doctor tells her what to do, and hands over medications for both her and the babby. The husband understands that there is no point in arguing, he is both proud and amused. The woman tells the doctor what she will do. No one has really budged from their positions. Everyone walks away without compromising. This is sufficient material at least for an artsy short film shot in the style of Kiarostami.

Anyway, it is my turn. The doc makes me lift up my shirt, and my thermal undershirt prods around with the stethoscope, and asks me to go get an X-ray. There is this place called Noble Diagnostic Centre. It really lives up to its name. It feels like a posh place, everything is modern. There is this really cool Ganesha idol, who is wearing nice earrings, and has two long golden tusks. Most of the idols show one tusk half broken, typically close to the base. This one has a long tusk with just the tip broken, which is well historically accurate. Looking at this murti, one can imagine the tusk as being a fine tip used to write the Mahabharat, cut off in anger by Parshuram who wanted to meet Shiva, but stopped by Ganesha, who Shiva had asked to ensure he was not disturbed while sleeping. I feel bad for Ganesha, who gets into trouble every time his parents ask him to guard them. The really cool thing about this Ganesha is he is writing out on a book, an Om and a Swastika, and holding a battle axe in the other hand. Looking at the murti you feel like the Genesha has four hands, but it is only two. This is confusing for a second till you realise that Ganesha is using his trunk to hold up the book. It is a nice, unique, thoughtful and detailed murti. 

Anyway, these Noble Diagnostic Centre folks are attentive, kind professionals who know what they are doing. They provide the best service, top-class. They serve the lowest socio-economic class though. Their rates are super affordable, and the staff is committed to providing the necessary service, and understand that they are doing something beneficial to society. The clinic is itself located on the outskirts of what in Mumbai would be called a slum. It is a low-income area. They are truly Noble, and they are doing great work, countering all the bad juju of the shitty ISKON temple. They have everything, ultrasound, x-ray, blood tests... I should have checked all the boxes, but initially just did the x-ray. 

This required waiting for about an hour. I sat and waited. When my turn came I had to tie the hair on my head, press my chest against a plate, and position my arms behind my back, breathe in and hold. The guy took one look at the X-ray and asked me if I had TB before. He would go on to ask me two more times during the discussion. I said no each time. He said something was very off, and that he would not hand me the X-ray, and that I would have to wait for the full report, which would be available at 18:30 hours IST. This was still about 11:00 hours. I limped back home dejected, and spent a horrible few hours, with sporadic bursts of sleep out of pure exhaustion. Could not eat or drink anything. I kept drinking and throwing up water. 

Finally, went back to the clinic, got the X-rays, it was bronchitis, inflammation in right lung, infection of some kind, and some buildup of water. I had not clocked the fact that the left lung extends for longer than the right because of the stomach and the diaphragm, and had thought that literally a part of my right lung had collapsed or shrunk lol. Basically, had been too scared. Got it back to the doctor, who said TB had to be ruled out, so had to do ultrasound and blood test next. He recommended that I get these tests done at a govt TB hospital nearby. He gave me some anti-biotics and painkillers for immediate relief, along with some third tab.

This was the medicine I needed. Instant relief. Everything feels fine. Im at the top of my game. I don't need the rest of the treatment and tests I feel. But I have to go through all of this. Im just glad I can sit and sleep and function normally. Previously, just lying down on the bed and pulling on the blanket, felt like quite a task. To get up, I would be lifting my thigh, catching it with both of my arms, and then, lowering the leg, using my tailbone as a fulcrum to lift my body up. Now, I could lie down easily! I felt great! I played games, watched One Piece on Netflix, ordered curd rice from another nice place called Sambarpot, that gives the masala from masala dosa as an extra, which goes great with the curd rice. Could sleep and eat properly for the first time in three days. I was feeling despondent and like I was on the verge of a heart attack. If only the Noble guy had given me the X-ray earlier I felt, but now I know that I should have just gone back to the doc, explained that the report was coming in the evening, and to give me something for relief at the moment. 

The next day, that is yesterday, 19 March, I got up early in the morning and went to the Nehru Nagar TB Hospital, next to the Vinoba Puri Metro Station. A kind rickshaw driver dropped me there, because he knew I was suffering, even though I asked him to just leave me at the previous signal. The place looks like it is frozen in time in the 1920s or something. It looks like a colonial building, but was only started in 2014 lol. The registration was not working, a queue was building up, and the place just had bad juju. Despite all my education, wisdom and knowledge, I did not go there with a mask. Everyone else there had a mask. So I got the fuck out of there. 

I walked over to Noble. On the way, I got a bit confused in the Subway, that connects to the Vinoba Puri metro in the middle lol, and crossed an old abandoned building that I always wanted to explore but never saw from up close. Also this place had one of those Chandrayaan 3 street arts that showed off the might and glory of India's operations in out space with the pictorial reference of a Space Shuttle. This has mostly worn out now, which is a loss to no one. 

So the Noble people say they will do the ultrasound, and the tests are delivered 'hand-to-hand' which means then-and-there, but there is a wait time of about nine patients. I asked if I can go home and come back later, they said sure, give us your number, we will call you. I went back home, drank a big glass of mosambi juice, then ordered three hot cups of coffee, came back home and discovered that both my coffee cups gifted to be my my elder sister from Dilli Haath were cracked. I fished around in my box of event goodies and found an Asus ROG coffee mug with a retarded temperature sensor (it just takes a bit of extra time to reach the accurate temperature). Well, debut of the mug, all good, just one J down and an hour later, I get the call. 

Again, I take a cycle rickshaw, go to the clinic, wait for an hour, play some games, admire that beautiful Ganesha murti, and get my ultrasound done. When I say it pains, the doc jabs it in there right then. The whole procedure was smooth and AI assisted. The guy pointed out infection and some little water buildup in the lungs. He suggested a blood test as well. I get pricked, the blood is drawn, there is a vacuum before the blood starts building up. I then go home... take my second dose, sleep, game, rest through the day. In the evening, I go to the Raju Vaishnav Dhabha, treat myself with Medhu Vada, which is actually Uddin Vada in Karnataka, and here is called just Sambhar Vada, which I don't understand, how u can make a Vada out of Sambhar dude. Anyway, Raju Vaishnav Dhabha was playing devotional music in praise of Lord Ram, has a big banner saying Jai Shri Nath Ji, and is situated bang opposite the Iskon temple. I mean what a colossal fraud, that Prabhupada asshole chutiya said all Nobel Prize winners are donkeys. He himself looks like the bloated scrotum of a langur, and idk what cheap kicks he did before writing his version of the Gita, with hallucinatory commentary that has nothing to do with the source material. Anyone who wants to read a reconciliation of the various traditions made suitable for modern lives are better off reading Aurobindo's version, rather than the toilet paper that is Prabhupada's version. As a thread wearing Brahmin, I curse each and every ISKON binbhosadika adherent around the world, including the ones that ever lived, to be reborn enough times as an insect, for their exoskeletons to fill three bullock carts. No takebacksies. So that is at least three million bullock carts full of insect exoskeletons of fraudulent sanatanis delivered to Yama from my side. 

I hope the people who spend their lives jacking off to religion and nationality are in some way exposed to the exquisite beauty of neutron stars, the cores of dead stars so dense that mountains are 2 cm high, that can suddenly speed up and glitch, and forged all the gold that they love so much. 

(I took a two hour nap at this point lol). 

After the hearty meal, which is over at 18:40 hours IST, I catch another e-rickshaw to the T-point, and walk to Noble clinic to say hi to the studios Ganeshaji for the third time that day. I pick up by blood tests, my RBCs are enlarged lol. My liver is also slightly enlarged. This is not very extreme, but both are signs of consistent and sustained alcohol use lol. I really have to start drinking less than two times a month, even just the weekends is not good enough. Actually, I feel like it is time to ditch alcohol for good. This frees up a large portion of my rest of life budget, and I have had hard alcohol only once over the last year, mostly because of a lack of availability of original Bacardi White here, following the Delhi liquour scam, and the tourism board operating all the wineshops. 

Anyway... finally, I get all the reports come back to the doc, and now it is the time to get treated. I get a whole week-long course of antibiotic injections and tablets, that include a proton pump inhibitor, one for killing pain and fighting inflammation, a probiotic and an antibiotic. I imagine some kind of battle between pro and anti biotics... anyway, I take them all come back home. Order in Pizza and Fries.... feels good man, everything is sorted, I actually feel on the top of my game.

All is well. Life is good. Just Enjoying the ride. 

Going to catch some One Piece Bonus content now, the Podcasts are really good. Also, new albums by both Morcheeba and Nightmares on Wax are about to drop, so looking forward to those. Have two more days of holidays to relax, before I get to work on Sunday. 

Fever Dreams

I ate stale or spoiled curd rice from Bheemeshwara on Sunday, which made me puke, so I threw it off. This was followed by suffering for two days, with symptoms similar to food poisoning. I could not eat or even drink anything without puking... got fucked basically, but had some glorious, persistent vivid dreams. 

One was on how AI agents are going to make all knowledge workers obsolete. I was continuously dreaming over four-five sleep cycles of Agentic AI creating a physical temperature monitoring and regulation device, because I was constantly feeling too hot or too cold. This was the result of watching a podcast on the subject by David Kipping (Spotify link for those who hate the ads on YouTube). Another few cycles were on increasing competition between states in the space domain, and I imagined in vivid detail an MoU signed between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka on competing in space, and whoever launches more rockets getting more share of the Kaveri waters to support their activities! 

Scientists are starting to write on their own substacks

The Conversation is one of my favourite sites of all time, and invites scientists to explain their discoveries for themselves. The content can be syndicated for free by anyone. Such direct communication by scientists is great for reducing the growing mistrust that the general public has on the scientific community. Now, I am happy to see that many of my favorite scientists are getting on substack too. 

Janna Levin, the global expert on black holes, has a substack called Higher Dimensions. 

If you follow solar activity, then you should subscribe to the brand new Sunny Sci'd Up by Ryan French. I really like the name too. 

Ethan Siegel's Starts With a Bang is a fun way to keep up with the latest advancements in astrophysics. 

Corey S Powell's Invisible Universe does a lot of myth debunking and questioning. 

SEO is absolutely useless for a news site

If you are a news site doing SEO, they you are pretty much axing your own leg. Here is why:

If you are optimising your content for what people are searching for, then it means that you continuously deliver your news late, do not have anything original to say, have little or no editorial direction, add nothing of value, and are essentially hitching a ride on other people's work. 

Avi Loeb has some outrageous ideas, is one of the many scientists on substack, but what is great about his content is that whatever he bashes out makes global headlines. He does not need to do SEO, because when he writes, he creates the content that people look for. He actually specialises in black holes, cosmology and the early universe, and his ramblings on aliens are considered pseudoscience, that most serious scientists, including astrobiologists, do not engage with. Still, his content is SEO gold. If you are a news site, you should be writing your own gold. 

So, SEO means you are late and unoriginal. It is not a good approach to growing an audience. If you are catering to readers who want to read about increasing federalism in India's space sector on the same site as curd rice recipes, either the people who read about space or about curd rice are going to go away. (Not me, Im right in the chut of this venn diagram). It is dangerous, even suicidal for a news organisation to sacrifice quality and editorial oversight to favour high volume of SEO articles. 

Now, if your entire editorial policy is dependent on SEO, then you are basically publishing the same shit as everyone else, removing entirely the scope for discovery and providing unique content for your readers. There are some things that people just will not search for, such as the growing need for a second kitchen, at least a larder with automatic deliveries and inventory tracking, or the amazing story of science catching up and proving the mother right, who believed for decades that her unresponsive son with severe brain damage was still hanging in there, or the amazing efforts by a team of scientists who used microgliders to teach the endangered Northern Bald Ibis to migrate. In-print, the New Yorker aptly titled this story as 'Helicopter Parents'. Your publication will never write stories such as these if it relies on SEO, and you are wasting away the careers of all the journalists who work for you by depending on SEO. Searching for 'LPG' on Google and tabbing to News will not show you how the LPG cylinder shortage is causing crematoriums in Keralam to shut down. 

There are also concepts and ideas that are too complex for anyone to look up. Even if you look up Laplace’s principle of ‘the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness’, Google and other search engines are unlikely to surface current, relevant pieces wrangling with the subject such as 'Why Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?' by Corey S Powell, or my own exploration and explanation of the subject that I published a few months before that one. These concepts are too complex for anyone to search on Google. If you are serious about News, you cannot be serious about SEO. 

The algorithms that drive engagement on social media heavily favour clickbait, sensationalism, and low-quality content. You cannot allow dumbfucks in senior positions to drag the quality of journalism down some hell-hole, then keep digging. Most Indian news sites shy away from using the accurate terms and technical jargon, and do not even end up communicating what happened. The trans-lunar injection manoeuvre of Chandrayaan 3 and the trans-Lagrangian-point-1-injection manoeuvre of Aditya L1 were just covered as 'important' or 'crucial' manoeuvres, with the body text often omitting what the spacecraft even did. You are so focused on SEO, that you do not even convey the news! 

Now even the best experts in SEO, have little to no understanding of the value of editorial content. Entire websites are tuned towards in-bound links from Google searches, with the interfaces burying older stories with no way to access them from the home pages. This devalues years of work by journalists, with many platforms opting to purge previous stories when new SEO policies are formulated. Such news sites do not care about the talent, or the previous work put in. They are ruthless, careless and damaging to the industry. Any journalist who has worked for more than 10 years in India knows that a portion of their work... in fact years of work, has been destroyed. This is why you are better off working in print media. 

If a news desk starts with Google trends and specialised keyword tools instead of authentic sources and original reporting, you are basically killing the entire industry by crowding out real journalism with copy-pasted, paraphrased, and AI-generated crap. If your news organisation relies on SEO for traffic, then it is setting up the property for failure, and committing a crime against the company they work for. 

Remember, Google is not your friend, it has killed your entire industry, and is your biggest enemy! The AI generated overviews keeps people on Google. If you set up processes and systems to optimise SEO, Google will change the rules, and fuck you in the ass. You cannot win, even if you play by the rules, that keep changing, are arcane, and necessarily opaque to prevent exploitation. 

So if you are a news site and the management is more focused on SEO than editorial, then get the fuck out! In India, the news sites that prioritise editorial over SEO, and publish original, authentic stories without stuffing their site with crap are The Print, The Wire, Scroll, The Caravan, Newslaundry, News Minute, and The Ken. The tier-2 ones that still maintain some editorial while following the rules of SEO are The Hindu and Indian Express. 

My multiplayer gaming experiences

 I have been writing to pen all of this down for a long time, finally got some time today. In school and college, I played Ragnarok and A3, which was India's first MMORPG. The game is still running, but both were so grindy that I did not go much into it. My first real exposure to the world of MMORPGS was this game that released in August 2011, called Star Legends. The game originally started off as a console/PC title called The Blackstar Chronicles, but the team pivoted to mobile platforms following the release of the iPhone and the App Store. The developers, based in Texas, called SpaceTime Studios had earlier tested out the approach successfully with Pocket Legends, and then went on to develop Dark Legends, with more adult content and Arcane Legends as well. Then the development died out and the games are just hanging on. I made a community of many friends, joining guilds such as Cosmic Consciousness with EgoFury, and Neon Genesis, and Sparkling Pwnies, whose leader was Artstar, and Morphic, who was one of the first pwnies that I got exposed to. I am still in two of these clans and hop on from time to time. There was a brief resurgence among old players during the pandemic, but the games are all more or less dead now. One of the biggest pursuits all of us had was to get the legendary sets, but I lost track of one planned stage, and the items were available from loot boxes later... so they are not so rare or valuable or precious any more. 

This game exposed me to a crowd of people who jump from beta version to beta version, playing the latest games. Around 2014s Digit community organised play dates, where we tried out different games every week. This community is still active. Played Path of Exile for a while and League of Legends too, but this was only for a couple of years on this platform called Garena. After that I moved primarily to Steam. One of the games that we tried out in these play dates was Warframe, and that changed my life. 

I have over 9000 hours of gameplay on Warframe. On a couple of years, I spent more money on Warframe cosmetics than clothes in real life. This gave me access to a glorious community called Clan TriForce. We were all initially on TeamSpeak, but many moved to Discord. The game is being actively developed, but most people have disappeared. I am now the Clan Warlord, and hold the game together, including the very special reactor from the Beta version on the ground floor of our Dojo. 

After that I played a bit of MilSim with StarShip Troopers: Exterminate.... but that game died out rapidly too. Then the third big game in my life after Star Legends and Warframe has to be Wolvesville. This is a wolf simulation game that I have been playing for over five years, with activity peaking during the pandemic. I just could not stop playing ranked, spending most of the day on the game, and reaching the highest tiers. Now I just play sandbox and watch the game slowly deteriorate. The popularity has also fallen considerably since the pandemic. Here I met the Beta Wolfpack clan, with BetaMom, who is a kind and generous person. 

I met so many people along the way, had so much fun, now have forgotten many of them. Let me see... ViolentViolette, EgoFury, StarJedi, ArtStar, Morfic, Ghost... DrOrrock, BetaMom, Yuna, Tanner, MajesticUnicorn.... yeah I can only remember a fraction of my friends unfortunately. 

Feelsbadman.jpg. 

About Today

 Came in a bit late to work today. When I woke up in the morning, there was thunder and lightning. Experienced a mild version of sleep paralysis, the first with such weather. I imagined some kind of storm raging outside, which probably was, but my imagination made it more acute. Had also consumed nearly the entire second season of One Piece on Netflix, so I was imagining over the top weather. 

Having trouble eating anything. Sarvana Bhavan had no curd rice and the sad, sweet one from Bheemeshwara that just looks good on the surface, with no action on the inside, literally made me puke not just the curd rice but also the pulpy orange I had consumed before. While moving in closer to a tree, I got a gash across my forehead because of a dried coconut rachis hidden amongst the leaves. Unfortunately, it is not lightning shaped. I just dumped the sad curd rice and decided to fast for the rest of the day. 

I finished my work well ahead of my allocated time, so I had a lot of time to waste. I took at least three short naps, listened to a podcast, played a couple of games, took two walks just to get some tea... and still have about 40 minutes to kill. SMH, this policy of having to log in nine hours daily at office is killing me, and more importantly, wasting a lot of my time. I need a viable strategy to use this time in a productive way. 

Horrible Experience with Uber, Swiggy

 Just a day after posting about the strange habits of Uber Drivers, I was hit with a really bad experience. I first booked the ride at 11:40, but the guy cancelled after making me wait for 10 mins. Then another guy dropped someone off, and got stuck in traffic close to the pickup point. He only made it by 12:05. Then there was traffic at Kalindi Kunj, and when he saw a petrol pump, he wanted to fill up gas. The problem is that there are many tempting petrol pumps on the way to office, and these guys suddenly just go in saying five minutes, which is never less than twenty. I finally reached the office only at 13:05, normally the route takes only about half an hour. 

Then the Swiggy delivery people reach beneath the house and say "I am here". They do not have the balls to say come down and take the order lol. I am done fighting to them at this point, but at least be up front of what you want. Then that bitch had the audacity to tell me that I am telling him 'ulta seedha' baat. Motherfucker, you talk straight first and tell me what you want. If you do not want to deliver at home, then maybe do not work as a home delivery professional lol. 

Weird habits of Uber drivers

 Today my Uber driver was scrolling reels uncontrollably, as if he was addicted, for most of the trip. He was not using headphones, and had not put the phone on mute, so I was constantly exposed to a cacaphony of continuously changing audio. He had one phone for the GPS, and another phone presumably just to scroll reels. You do not need to be a scientist to figure that scrolling short videos negatively impacts attention and cognition.

My brain was rotting along with this dude. I also don't know why people do not use headphones in India, and constantly live in a environment saturated with noise pollution. Now another bad habit is chewing pan. Especially if you are in a closed car, with the ac on, and someone is chewing pan, the environment becomes a biohazard. I cannot breathe, and cannot open the car, and feel like puking. Fucking clueless people live like heathens and cannot understand how their shitty habits affects others. Chewing pan is a disgusting, unhygienic habit. 

Then there are the people who play music. I am so tired hearing both Punjabi and Bihari songs. Like fuck you that is not music, and it hurts by brains. If some cab driver plays Bollywood music, then I am actually relieved, even though I prefer no music at all. 

Then finally there are the cabbies who are on calls throughout the ride. I got tmi. 

Worst of all are the cab drivers who suddenly ask you where to go from. Idiot, you are driving, you have the map, you figure it out, don't ask me suddenly when you are unsure, I haven't gone to every single place I book a ride to fucktard. 

Uber really needs to give some basic training to its cabbies. What a bunch of dehati people lol. 

Random Meeting

 So... My aunt and uncle were flying back from Kathmandu, where their son-in-law's family stays, and took an earlier flight to Delhi, en route to Heathrow and back to USA. There, my aunt met the family of her pen-friend, whose father and my grandfather studied together at Shantiniketan. My aunt's pen-friend's husband turned out to be the architect of the office building I work in, making the upscale restaurant on one corner, and the canteen cafe in the other. 

Small World lol. 

So went and met them early in the morning, left at 05:50, and reached by 06:05 hours IST, scouted the area a bit, it was in a remote farmhouse type place, then did entry at the gate and reached at exactly the scheduled time, 06:30 hours IST. We left about an hour later after some hasty conversations, I dropped them off to T3, then took the orange line out to Dhaula Kuan, which is the only non-congested and non-remote location on the entire line, then took a cab back home. 

Slept for a couple of hours, then went to office. 

Quality of Curd Rice across Delhi

 The last few days passed in a bit of a haze. The bug and the medication together made me really woozy, like I was high all the time. I had curd rice from different places, and despite being a simple dish, everyone does it slightly differently and many get it wrong. The ideal curd rice is tempered, the fancy ones have slivers of carrots, the sad ones have no leaves and taste sweet. Somehow, the dumbfucks of Delhi believe that anything with curd in it is a sweet dish. The CSD Army Canteen in Gurugram gives excellent curd rice. Then Sarvana Bhavan is a safe bet, but they have stopped making curd rice recently. Then Cafe Amudham also makes good curd rice, and is located right next to Sarvana Bhavan at Janpath, though the latter has another one at Connought Place, which is close-by, walking distance. The one by Paakshala is tolerable, and so is the one from Juggernaut. In Noida, an okay place to get curd rice is the Legends of India by Savoy Suites. The ones by Dasaprakash, and the local sweet shops such as Sona Sweets and Nathu Sweets are all uniformly bad. Bheemeshwara has a good one with pomegranates, Reena Restaurant puts in the carrots, and Dakshiini Cafe puts in both pomegranate seeds and carrots. The Dosa Coffee one is just about tolerable, but the one to really avoid is Sagar Ratna. Another good place that gets it right is The Postman Kitchen in Noida. 

I finished off my quota of stories today. Holi is day after, so looking forward to the holiday.