Today was truly one of the most bizarre days in my life. NO. It was not because of anything that happened to me today in general. AND no nothing fantastic happened at work either. It is the same place where everybody comes to crib the entire day, myself included, and yet few have the guts to just say “: FUck it!!” and get out of there to truly follow Ayn rand’s principle (and essentially free economic theory, i.e. Doing what everybody loves best and then trading in items that they need later on)

Today I realized something I should have realized a long time ago. Indulge in shit in your life. yes ladies and gentlemen, you heard me right. Indulge in shit. I am currently 24 and when it comes to think ing about that stereotypical consult question (or any interview question) of “who are you”, it is very sad that i could probably end up finishing it in less than 50 words (its like a freaking 6th standard composition. Or atleast the 6 std i study in . I hear they teach basic gravitational theory in those classes now!!!). I have realized a little too late in life that it is of utmost importance that we be able to pass onto our successors something that a great man who recently passed away has been so successfully been able to do (may his soul rest in peace). That is legacy.

You may think I am a jackass. An arrogant chooth.But put yourself in your own shoes and think of a time when you would have a chance to talk about your life in the future (Hoping we can all achieve such a day. After all, we strive for some of those days; when the world sits up and takes notice of what we have to say). If at that point you cannot even hold a conversation for atleast a solid few hours, your life has been nothing but an utter waste.

I had always been a quintessential good boy from the days in school and was always told like in Brahmin household to only study well for a better future. Solid as that advice may have been, something that was failed to be mentioned was to heed the word “only study” with caution. I ended up doing only that. Studying for a major part of the time and if not for that swimming for the rest. There was some fun and frolic and it was fun when it lasted. But there was nothing of significant impact. When I say impact, I don’t mean something that has caused profound change in your milieu. I mean something that you are proud of in general, however small it may be. I have only academic achievements to be proud of in my current past, nothing else more. If I were read out a summary of what I have done my entire life, it would read like a pitch; over 20 years of resume which is all alright, but something I have only recently begun to realize is but a small part of who you are; what defines you. What defines you is that story you can make after say 40 years of life.Think of the great leaders in technology currently. The reason that Jobs is respected is because he is a stud. He is also respected because at the end of the day, if somebody was to make a feature film about his life or write a book about it, people will read it.That is also one of the reasons why the movie social network was such a big hit. It is the story that matters.

I was having this discussion with a friend of mine and his analogy was this: We currently work in the investment banking industry. Lets take three different examples as we talked about on one of those instiesque nights on weekends (or days for that matter) when such discussions generally bear fruit. Guy 1: is currently in the role of an analyst (anybody unaware of how the hierarchy works in IB, is analyst, associate, VP, director and MD). He is working his bloody ass , unsure of where he is or what he is doing, but because he believes that is the way to become an MD someday in the distant future (life ambition level). Guy two is also the same position and is in contention to become an associate in the near future. But he feels he has had enough of it. He thinks he will give it a shot for maybe a coupe years more and then figure out what to do. He too has the ambition to become an MD, bit for him the experience is much more essential than the role itself. the third guy is a fellow who started as an entrepreneur from the very beginning because he wanted to do what was different. he was not sure where it was going to take him, He just wanted to give it a shot. After 20 years down the line. The three have met by chance at a social gathering and have been asked to talk about themselves at length at a seminar. Guy gets up and says i am an MD of so and so bank right now (goal achieved. Presumably satisfied on the professional front). guy 2 quit after being a mid year VP and started his own venture after enough experience in a sector and later on, he sold that and started some other sector. But eventually he joined back as a senior director because he realized what he wanted to do and he to is currently an MD. He is able to discuss these events in a little more in detail at the length. The third has become thee head of a medium size enterprise now. he had thought he would have had a larger operation by now, but things did not pan out as he had hoped for. now personally, i think most of us on the track on guy 1.  We have a goal set in place, which I am not saying is a bad thing at all. But we are so hell-bent on keeping a target in sight and so unsure of ourselves, that we forget to look around ourselves for any opportunity that might present itself or enjoy the little things that make may have slipped past us which could have made us happy. What a life the guy must have had if all he has to say is that he is now an MD at some bug fuck bank. nobody nobody is stopping you from becoming an MD. But always look around. No blinders please!!! Guy two sound  very happy. Should be quite natural. he is a successful man and is successful at what he likes rather than forcing it on himself. The third guy you would presume would be a little bitter at not having been able to achieve the desired scale of ops. If he has been a true person per Ayn Rand’s standards, he would have given it his all and then should be happy about the outcome because sometimes it is difficult to control some aspects of life.

The only way we can be satisfied is put our best step forward. But that way to put that best step forward is not at the cost of the story. Not at the cost of the legacy that you have could have carved out for yourself. the one true thin I am proud to date in my life so far is not how well or unwell I have performed in my academics, but about how when I was in charge of a hostel which put its best foot forward and managed to almost pull off the unthinkable in sport. yes, no success, but the journey was important and hence your part in it was important. Do something which you like and do it because you want to do it and feel you contribute. The scale does not matter, the grandiosity does not matter, Peer opinion most definitely does not matter (this part is easier said than done of course) and mostly the end matters. Disappointment might come our way, but knowing we did something right will always be with you. Nobody can tale that away from you.

After saying all this and venting some thoughts, My mind is beginning to churn again and the adrenaline is starting to run out. Which means it is soon time to  say goodbye. But a word of advice for any teenager, hell any 10-year-old out there. Do anything that you want to try. See girls, grab a smoke, gulp a drink, drag in a joint and if you are daring enough, some psychedelic drugs as well (I do not mean freaking mad addictive heroin and cocaine and shit; feel like a hypocrite about the last part because I am have not tried and quite frankly do  not have the balls enough to ever do it. If I never try, i have no fucking right to comment about it. But statutory disclaimer anyway). Do no grow up to be someone who has not tried anything. I had a Kannada teacher in in High school whom I still respect immensely and he used to always say that trying something is the only way you can claim to have experienced anything. Even the great man steve jobs says that his sessions with LSD were life changing experiences in general (not because of the drug or the typical nature of its affect on you but because he tried it and only then could he comment  on it.

At the end of the day, what I am trying to say is be responsible and try everything and while doing it know your limit. extreme lack of trial or control will lead to situations where the one thing in the collection of experiences that we call life has no meaning not to others but to ourselves as well. thank if you have managed to make it thus far. i do expect anybody to read this and if they do to understand what i am trying to say. What i have said may even sound oblique and sometimes contradictory, but that is the only way I understand some things. Also, Quite frankly at this point I could have a conversation with someone about this: a discussion, but never a debate. debate means a conflict of opinions at atleast some points in the thought process;something which I really don’t care about in this case as this is my personal take and I could not give a rats ass about some random condescending remark.

yes, system reboot is fairly successful.

Goodbye and may charlize theron be with you.

This is the story of a man in a box

Of how he escaped near death from a flying fox

Ran for his life a few blocks only wearing socks

Then entered the Slimy Oyster for some whiskey on the rocks

But sadly, had so much that he had to detox

This is the tale of Arnequin

A brave warrior similar to Huckleberry Finn

Born and brought up in the noisy suburbs of Berlin

His weapon of choice… was the safety pin

People chided him for having a saddle point for a chin

But, over time he had grown a thick skin

And learnt that life was like a bowling pin

You get knocked over real soon if you did not learn to take humour on the chin

The day he was born, the flying spiders and the singing ducks went extinct

While his parents did not think that all this was interlinked

All Arnequin had to do was blink

That was when his observant cousin realized that Arnie was special

And he explained all this to Arnie’s parents 4 years later in a nutshell

They decided that little Arnie would be trained in the subtle arts

But all he wanted to do was stare at his private parts

He seemed genuinely surprised about something deep down in his two hearts

And always knew he could come only in fits and starts

He left home at the age of thirteen

All inspired by the X-Men character, the Wolverine

He thought he could rule the world with just his faithful lance

But he lost it all in a deadly dance

With the bald jester in a game of chance

The jester took pity on Arnequin

And gave him a safety pin

Little did he know that this was all Arnie needed to win

As Arnie slashed his way through hundreds of his next of kin

All he could think of was “Why does Glucon play the violin?”

So he continued on his journey of destruction

And along the way learnt the theory of mathematical induction

Even in lands far far away, he needed no introduction

His very name was enough for citizens to frantically engage in sexual reproduction

Sadly, with fame came great danger to his life

Attempts were made to kill him with a surgical knife

by various children, even his own wife

He somehow escaped all the attention and ran away

At least he thought so until he got hit by a gamma ray

He got a glimpse of the face which hit him just as he fell – it was like an action replay

Alas, greed had poisoned the jester, he decided that he had to finish the machine he had inadvertently created without further delay

Next thing he knew he was in a box

“Aargh!”, Arnie thought to himself as he realized that there was one person he could not outfox

He was stuck there for what seemed like a decade

His clothes all frayed

One fine day he realized “Aah! This is the day I get to finally use my grenade!”

But sadly realized that in the time he had taken to realize this, it had already decayed

He thought to himself “Was I just a charade?”

All the thoughts of self doubt he tried to dissuade

Sadly, in the madness that followed he ate all his clothes with the exception of his socks

And suddenly he knew how to get out of the stupid box

His earliest talent would be put to good use now

All he had to do was concentrate and spit like a randy cow

Almost immediately, he succeeded… and how!

If he had been caught in the act, people could have only gone “Wowww!!!”

As he nervously walked around, he realized he was in a big jungle, or was it?

He could hear all sorts of noises, from the roar of what seemed to be a giraffe to the hungry growls of deers eating off that last lion bit

Suddenly, from the trees flew a fox at his head

As they made eye contact, a lot of things were understood unsaid

Arnequin instinctively reached out for his safety pin only to realize that he was as naked as Satan in his usual red

And this is where the story ends.

Arnequin died that night in the forest at the hands of his flying predator

No he did not have his whiskey on the rocks or anything else for that matter

That was just me trying to be all nice to his memory

His remains were eaten by a giant alligator

And to this day, the jester still boasted to people that it was him who had slain Arnequin the mad hatter

]]> http://murukufryumskajurolls.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/arnequin-the-mad-hatter/feed/ 0 Bhadwa http://murukufryumskajurolls.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/poetry-in-the-head/ http://murukufryumskajurolls.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/poetry-in-the-head/#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:15:58 +0000 arun19m http://murukufryumskajurolls.wordpress.com/?p=499 ]]> Ok, so today I am going to attempt writing a poem. This being my first real attempt, I don’t expect anything earth shattering out of my head. And yes, it will be still on random stuff.  And it will still be as spontaneous as the previous posts. Hopefully. So yeah, go sit under your table and cut your nails. And um…. Tarantulas!!!

As I sit and wonder whether ants can be any better,

All I can think is about how I really want to write a letter

About what…? You may ask

Alas, I need to take the porcupine to task

The day I first met Shilton, the old lamp post

I felt the happiness of a blue eyed ghost

Dressed in blue, black and a tinge of green

The butler took great pleasure in eating his master’s spleen

So why am I sitting and writing this poem?

Tis because I know not a word which rhymes with poem

I still consider my best work to be Chicken Monkey Shoes

Though in all likelihood, everyone who read it took a sound snooze

Until however, I wrote Lament of a Lemon

Then I was stoned by people claiming I should go live in Yemen

Or was it Bremen?

I know not because I simply don’t care

And besides, I have the enthusiasm of a sloth bear

So why bother chewing on inconsiderate twigs

When all I can laugh about at the moment is wiggling pigs

At this point, I have to point out that the line above

I would rather it be a yeti, well sort of

But then again, the whole point of being random is lost

At this point the line between randomness and real world is crossed

So I get back to my original rant

With all the grace of a horny Kant

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

I don’t care. I just want the chicken leg

Darwin must have been immune to the rabbit

Because his constant bickering with Elmer Fudd became a habit

Don’t try and find meaning in this post

Except you, of course, you’re likely to be grossed

While I am in the mood for a bag of silver baked bells

My head is itching to go into the cave in which my mind dwells

I am fiercely protective of my guardian pineapple

Does the early bird get the worm even if the worm sits inside the apple?

One often wonders whether it’s the right thing to eat fried mamelukes

But I was stuck here until Fat Fuck told me what rhymed with it was honeydukes

He’s slightly a mad hat monkey man in a trunk

But at the same time, he cried a lot and convinced us he had no spunk

Sorry da Blackmark

I don’t know why you had to get into this piece of art

So now I feel like ending this

No you dumbass, I don’t want your Swiss miss

Nor a French Kiss.

On second thoughts, yeah that would do just fine. Now you wonder what’s amiss?

In another part of the world, far away from The Talisman’s tyranny, lived a carpenter. Angelo was his name. For him, life had just begun. Yes. He had come to the world only a year back. Where from? He did not know yet. He however had an annoying habit. He was addicted to an annoying tune which he had probably heard on his journey to this world. And every time he hummed the tune, plants and creatures in the vicinity would die. However, the birds thrived. As did fat people. Yes, the thick skinned seemed to break into a jolly dance routine whenever they heard Angelo hum the tune. Angelo was unlike other people from the planet. He crawled, for one. Blessed with snake like deftness in more ways than one, his lack of *insert nice synonym for legs here* was never a hurdle for him. He was also interested in learning more about dandelions. When they din’t die due to the ear sore his melody was. He was pleased to see that, in the year that had gone, there were a few varieties of dandelions which adapted to survive.

Narcotics. Pilote was knee deep in the quicksand when he thought to himself. Can I get any higher? And then with a jolt he realized that he was actually going lower!. He wasn’t able to feel his legs anymore. He freaked. Suddenly, the thought of having an ice cream crossed his head. He was hungry. He wanted pizza now. With cheese. He lunged towards the slowly sinking bicycle which he felt was his, in an attempt to go to the nearest pizza store. As he tried to maneouvre himself in position to ride the bicycle, he realized that it was a very muddy day and he needed a helmet. His pants were already soaked. He couldn’t even see them. HE COULDN’T SEE THEM! Once again, he was jolted out of his blissful state. He started thrashing around wildly and tried to grab on to the nearest branch for support. And then he saw. It wasn’t a branch. It was the tentacle of a huge octopus which was staring at him curiously from atop a tree. Sudo did not understand what the little creature in the sand wanted to do. It had tried to stop the creature from going head first into the sand, but it had been mumbling all the time about some swimming pool and how it wanted to hold its breath underwater. And all Sudo was successful was in tripping the creature. Now, the creature was reaching out for her tentacle and Sudo thought to herself whether she extend the greeting and save the creature or get him out and eat him anyway.

How do these three worlds intersect? Should they? Strangely enough they do. The two dimensional world was rising and Tamash, Angelo, and Pilote (assuming he escaped from Sudo) would have to join forces to defeat the forces of The One Who I am Scared Of Naming (Towison in short).

Must find inspiration……… Maybe the mad mormon might mercifully manage to mime a magician. But, Bertha wouldn’t bat an eyelid. She din’t have any so it was not too difficult. As difficult as the bored shark found cryptic crosswords. It can’t be long now before I find what I am looking for. Frustration got the better of Elmer Fudd, I hear. He apparently went back to being the victim in the McWolf and the Three Elmer’s story. Water beats fire. Fire beats grass. Grass beats water. Fire also owns steel. What about glass? Splintered glass? One day, a huge meteor made of lemon is going to hit the Earth. And we would all have screwed up our face so much in reaction to the taste that this would be the next step of evolution. Maybe his noodliness can save us. Him and his velvet appendages.

(Music plays in the background as we wait and listen to the supposed ramblings of Lucifer)

All of you now have superpowers. It’s up to me to find out what it is. You have the ability to create clocks. You, on the other hand can understand the intricacies of an apple. I shall call you Jobs. You, in the corner. You will henceforth be blessed with the power of handling hot tentacles with the grace of a bullfrog in heat. And you, fat man, will be known as Jibbernova. Your power? Find out for yourself. I like Football. Why else would I use it whenever I want to write about something which cannot be alluded to directly? The noises you hear crashing down are all in your head. Telling you that you’ve missed something huge. Earth-shattering. Worse than that lemon meteor which is going to hit us in the same time that a bazooka would take to travel through space on top of a charmed antelope.

(Music plays in the background while we all close our eyes and listen to the supposed ramblings of Lucifer)

Poof. Why would they want to humiliate someone thus? They might as well have called it “Hey! I missed you. Muaaah. Shit! I did not know our union would cause so much damage!!”. And how cliched is Divided We Stand. It’s as if they vented all their developmental anger on poor Meepo. And his brother Meepwn. Or sister. It’s almost satisfying to see that Djokovic’s and Nadal’s better halves aren’t random blonde bimbos. There’s some hope left for the world. Look at Ashley “I want to get back with my wife!!! Psstt… babe send me a naked pic of yourself. Naa.. Cheryl? I am not getting back with her” Cole. Sick. Sick.

(Lucifer dancing around wildly as he eats and walks on enchanted fire)

Sit up straight. The day the octagons came into town, people realized that the merman was here to stay. Wretched pixels bore the brunt of the toxic seeds brought in by the mermen. Or so the mermen thought. Until the pixels bought a regenerative software which turned the tables. The mermen were on fire. However, as we know, water owns fire. Disorder. Chaos. Breathe. Contradictions are a part of the ultimate legacy. Is this the end? No way. This is how it all begins. Until the day we evolve into lemon beings.

(Lucifer satisfied and buries himself in the snow)

1) The appearance of Seamus Finnigan. I really love the Irish character, his sense of humor and it was fun to see him in the movie. I don’t remember which was the last movie in which I saw him. Then again, I don’t remember too much from the previous movies, considering how I wanted to forget them as soon as I watched them

2) Luna Lovegood and her dress sense. Brilliant! Blue top and Purple pants! Brilliant I say! Then again, not saying much as I tend to go gaga over anything in purple (Some of my iGEM teammates would attest to that. Purple bitch was what I was affectionately called there).

3) 19. Nineteen. I don’t remember from the book, but was there any particular reason in choosing 19 years later as the time point to fast forward to? Maybe Roland was right. Once you observe close enough, you see it EVERYWHERE, even in the frigging LitSoc Manual. Ka.  But it sure gave me goosebumps when I saw the number on the giant screen

4) The roller coaster ride in Gringotts. With my well documented fear of heights, I was literally holding on to my seats hoping I wouldn’t fall off . Seriously. IMAX is too much. I was scared.

5) No I guess that’s it.

Today however, was different. My head was itching to make up for the lost days and started me off on one of my mind journeys, where I would just take up a scenario in my head about anything which I was thinking about, and then travel in time forward to see what the possible outcomes were. And some of them were plain disturbing. I couldn’t possibly go to sleep anymore. Not with these images in my head. Aaarggh!!

Why? Why am I losing control like this? I am definitely going to look at this tomorrow and probably have an amused look at the past me for writing this. Maybe the past me deserves it. Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t care. I just want to write and write forever. Or maybe I just want to eat the pieces of pineapple which sat on the morning sunflower. Do I? I can’t seem to think of anything I want to say, so I am just going to say whatever comes to my head. Whether or not you see it is irrevelant. What the hell? That should be irrelevant. Irrelevance. Ah, that’s a nice word. Pretty much sums up what’s going on around us. Weird junkies travel the course of time all just to realize that the sweet pea is missing and was already stolen by the court jester. Horny cockroaches. Lazy armadillos only want a share of the attention. And my screen is a towering sense of heightened noodles. Why is it that it’s so tough? It shouldn’t be. A fortnight is not enough for your dreams to come to fruition. Then again neither is a drunk genie. Maybe we should just learn when to let go? Or do we soldier on in the valiant hope of one day tunneling through to the sacred aortal land. In the pursuit of the Dark Tower, are we losing sight of everything else around us? Will the Red King even let us live? Is this all a bad dream from which fabulous ships come out all wrecked? Is this just another of my wild mind journeys? Too many questions and no answers to boot. Why did the dodo cross the road? It din’t. It died midway through. Friendship. A word so loosely used these days. Here is my good friend, the pumpkin, said the marshal. And boom. Shot it. What the hell does Dopamine do to you? It makes you go crazy. Yes, that’s scientifically proven. But what isn’t mentioned is that it can drive you insane. I am hungry now. I want to eat the last piece of brownie which you had last week for dessert. But, then you fell sick. And deep inside, I feel it.

The scenic view that my mind offers me at the moment is a spectacle to behold. It’s finally clearing itself now. It’s as if, its now working to make me type as fast as I can without actually making me think. Finally, I feel the flow in my hands. The blood which once used to roar through the veins of randomness finally seem to have rediscovered the lost routes of Arovia. I don’t know what this means, but hopefully, the jester will now return the crocodile skin to the junkies. And they can then set off on their next quest to mine precious little xylophones. I dont know if they will succeed. I am just happy. Happy? Maybe not. Then again, who is? The grass is always greener on the other side. Do we then refuse to touch the grass itself and stay on the mud? Even at the cost of staying dirty all our life? Just because you never know which is the greener grass. Green. Hmm.. Why does green have to be a word? It stands for envy, while also representing hope and is a positive reinforcement. Why this dual nature? Two face. I want to see one movie where the villain beats the baby face hero and ruthlessly takes over the world. Or atleast  a movie where the anti-hero doesnt sacrifice himself valiantly in the end for the real hero and in the process, reveal his usefulness and cue sighs of awwwww, from people. A movie, where the anti hero just doesnt care, but anyway triumphs. My leg’s dead. And the right side of my head is aching. But, I know that I am not even relatively close to feeling that final wave of sleep which just shuts everything down. But, I’ve written too much. Maybe, its more about the time, rather than the amount you work the thing. If your reading this line, that either means you went through the whole thing, or you just skipped to the end. Hopefully, its the latter. It doesn’t matter.

For those of you who have known Arun or will have the misfortune of meeting him sometime in the future, I will try to make this post a worthwhile read.

I have for a better part of 5 years always wondered how Arun Murali, lazy as he is, can work himself up into sudden bouts of extreme enthusiasm in the wing, especially when our beloved erstwhile wing mate ,Lifebuoy, was seen roaming around in his traditional attire with a smile that would have given Mona Lisa a serious run for her  money and a “Hey” that would put any pseudo cool dudes to shame. Also having had the pleasure of having been his room-mate in the past, he can sometimes be so sullen and secluded from the outside world that he can even scare you in the middle of night (essentially one night he woke up at around 1 when I was awake and started huffing saying that there was someone standing on the sill of our room’s window. Sounds lame here, but I was scared out of my wits, limited as they were) Reading this, he might argue that having RK as a next door neighbor, how could I raise the issue of his symptoms. But Rama has the singular  distinction of being random at all points in time and space (for the first three years in insti, post which only the time component became random. Catch my drift?? ). Though mental development seems to be at an all time low in my life, he sometimes dazzles me with hitherto unseen sparkles of brilliance. And just when you think that he maybe coming around to his senses, he defies it all by doing something so random that even Howard Hughes would have been ashamed.

Looks done! Since I seem to have diagnosed Arun’s symptoms fairly well, it will be interesting to see what he comes up.

@Arun : Hope you have Bipolar. Makes things easier
@RK : I know you are bipolar. And also, heads up, be wary of a similar piece on you. It is going to be legendary.
@Myself: Though I am nearly not as jobless as I would like to be, I will try to be as un-productive as possible in the future.

Since I have talked extensively about randomness, to end it, here is an excerpt from one of Bruce Lee Mani’s (Lead Guitarist-Thermal and a Quarter, a band I truly adore) interviews’ :

Any message to the readers of Infinity Music?

Ah! Shameless plug time!!! Buy Album III!!! It’s going to be great!!! Come to our gigs!!! Give us all your money!!! (We’ll give you stock options.) Support Indian Rock!!! Believe in little green men from mars!!! Vote!!! Don’t forget world peace!!! Express your distaste with too many exclamation marks!!!

Full respect to him.

Cheers,

Shreesh.

And so it was that in the summer of XY10, I had to make a choice. For the past 4 years, I had been training to be a professional footballer. Before that, I actually hated the game. However, it all changed when I enrolled in an academy a few 100 miles away from my home when I was 16. These days, 16 seems to be too old for a footballer to start practising his trade. Legends of the game like Messi had been poached by Barca when he was just 12. But I wasn’t unhappy. It was all part of a learning curve for me.

And in those four years at the academy, I learned a lot and soon was near the top of my group. While I wasn’t the fittest, I did have an eye for the pass and usually played in the hole behind the strikers. In four years, the group developed a good chemistry and had made our academy proud at various International amateur as well as semi pro tourneys and we slowly started getting into the radar of top clubs. So when it was time to leave the academy, we had to make a choice. A choice between going to the club you loved or to clubs which would give you the maximum opportunity to shine.  For me, I could either get into a club I loved: Liverpool FC, which had been going through a pretty rough patch for almost 20 years now, and were not known to encourage youngsters from the academy to make the grade; or I could go to any of 20 other clubs, who had no particular history of youngsters making the grade, with the exception of Arsenal FC, but then I din’t really have any particular emotional attachment towards any of them. All I knew was that I wouldn’t go to Everton or to the city of Manchester. It took me a while to make a choice, but ultimately I had to go where my heart wanted me to and it was with great pleasure that I signed a contract with Liverpool FC in the summer of XY10.

I knew it would be difficult to make it there. Made more so by the fact that with the exception of Steven Gerard* and Jamie Caragher*, who had come through the ranks years ago were the only Englishmen at the club. But I was prepared for the challenge. Or so I thought. As is normal for a relatively unproven player at that level, I was made to train with the reserves for the first few months. Keny Dalglish* (KD), popularly known as King Keny by the Kop (as the Liverpool faithful were called) was the manager and my first few interactions with him left me wondering why people thought he was such a legend. Atleast, I felt that he was definitely lacking on the man management front. He would meet me on occasion and most of the times, would end up forgetting who I was. While I trained with the reserve squad, KD decided that I could learn a lot from Steven Gerard and asked him to take me under his wing. It was an honour for me to be learning from one of my boyhood idols. Added to that the fact that we played in a very similar role and I was sure that I could develop a lot while under the tutelage of Stevie.

And I did. Stevie was a born leader and had time for everyone at the club. An inspiration for youngsters, his work ethic left everyone wondering how he managed it.  Anyone who had a problem could just talk to him and he would either redirect them to the right man or help them in any way possible.  Caragher on the other hand was the one who would bark out the orders. He was the one who would tear into you if you did anything wrong. While a dedicated defender who had served well for the club, his temper would often get the better of him and for a youngster coming up through the ranks, he could be scary and intimidating. But I loved it there right from the off. Even though I wasn’t really near the first team, I was convinced that it would only be a matter of time. The first few months at LFC made me feel that I had made the right choice in coming here.

Little did I realize what was in store for me over the coming months.

*names changed to protect real world identities

The Glander – what are they, where do they reside and what makes them so feared. All valid questions. Lets delve into each of them:

Who are they?

The glander, like I said, are the ardent followers of the all-powerful Gla. They are said to possess a special genetic mutation that allows them to bring to a standtsill their bowel movements and hence spread bio-hazardous material which on being released even in small amounts is more lethal than the worst chemical weapons you can think of. In fact, Bush is said to have launched armed forces in Iraq in search of these chemical weapons. Little did he know it was something alive and in the Indian subcontinent. This being said, this is not the flagship feature of the glander. It is the sound that really kills. Imagine the scene from Hitchcock’s classic “Birds”, but this only with ducks and you will stand transfixed at the sheer monstrosity.

Where do they reside?

This is somewhat of an enigma. Some say they have been spotted playing poker in Vegas and also in snowboarding in Siberia. Yet these two extremes in location contradict the source of the glander itself. The most credible information so far has been that they live somewhere in Baba Ramadev’s ashram, though these sightings are yet to be verified thoroughly. One can argue that it would not be hard to find the glander in the ashram due to its limited space. But once again, they would be under estimating the glander. You see, the glander are not visible to the naked eye. They typically “hide in plain sight”.

Why are they feared?

Oh yes, it’s not the chemical and sound weapons! It’s through the ever-present lethargy that they induce in you. YKI is said to have blessed these things with the power to stay asleep for days on end, thus providing the illusion that world is making progress and suddenly, they force the world into a state of disarray by making people inactive

Is there a way to stop the Gla? is there no end to this reign of terror and lethargy? Oh,but wait a minute! Did someone say that Gla had a love interest?? Sounds like a chink in the armor eh? Stay tuned where the plan to dethrone Gla shall be unfolded and introduce Gla’s nemisis, Jigglypuff.

So long folks!