Ba Ba Ba Ba Barbara-Ann

I recently had an interview (another firm that decided it didn’t want to hire at all as soon as they met me) where they asked me what I would like to be questioned about. My interviewer, a rather dashing man, helpfully added that, “It’s no fun if you have no clue about the topic,” just to boost my confidence, I suppose. The only answer I could think of at the time was pop culture. And I turn up my nose at quite a lot of that too. Considering the fact that they didn’t hire me anyway, I realise now that I should have overcome my inhibitions and said it: “Ask me anything about pop culture.” And if he dared to ask me about some horrible single that’s topping the charts I could’ve sneered at him and refused to work with someone with such an awful taste in music.

Pop culture is such a wonderfully unnecessary social construct that I can’t help wanting to waste all of my time on it. The connection between two people who listen to the same music or love the same TV show is instantaneous, maybe more so than two people who grew up in the same neighbourhood. The more obscure the reference, the stronger the kinship you feel with the person who was able to identify it.

Lately, however, it’s started bothering me that all my conversations are an awfully tangled mess of pop culture references. I can’t for the life of me remember the last time I went an entire day without alluding to anything that I came across through popular media. For someone who, as a rule, avoids social networking sites like the plague, this is a real bummer. This means that if I was cut off from the internet, television, reading material and my iPod for a few weeks, I would have absolutely nothing new to talk about. Oh, the horror!

But let’s think about the alternative. Let’s assume for a moment that I wasn’t quite so obsessed with music, movies and suchlike and that I had “real” conversations with people. Exactly how would these conversations go? Would I talk about my feelings? The meaning of life? Idle gossip? I’ll take pop culture any day. Don’t kid yourselves. We’re not Einstein reincarnations. It is time to accept the fact that there is no life beyond youtube.

Tiptoe

I came across an interesting read today. Being more comfortable with skin show rather than talking about sex is by no means a purely Indian problem. You’d think it would be more of a male problem if you trusted enough stereotypes. Apparently it isn’t.

This is probably the only issue I can think of where words can indeed be louder than actions. We get outrageous advice from our politicians. And movies, well, let’s just say our dialogue writers aren’t up to the task of writing out a regular conversation on the subject. We still prefer the flower analogy. Is that why parks are such creepy places? In fact, even our censors seem oddly squeamish on the matter although item numbers are considered perfectly normal.

God knows, our MPs sure could have used some sex education in school. 

13

If there’s one thing we all absolutely adore, it’s superstition; even if it isn’t our own creation. If a lot of people seem to believe it, then it must be true. The lack of logic just gives it some mystique. Everyone could use some mystique, right?

It is courtesy our charming ways and beliefs that many buildings don’t have a 13^th floor. They call it the 14^th floor instead. As if poor counting will negate bad luck. Apparently two wrongs do make a right. The number 13 being unlucky is an old Christian belief but it seems to have found resonance across cultures. My research informs me that there’s actually a word for it: triskaidekaphobia. 

It’s quite interesting to me that an arbitrary set of beliefs can affect outcomes. People believe 13 is unlucky and so very few of them are willing to buy a house or an office on the 13^th floor. This  causes prices and/or the probability of sale to fall, thereby ensuring that the number becomes unlucky for real estate developers merely because enough buyers believe it to be. So people choose to drop poor 13 from the number system altogether. Self-fulfilling prophecies don’t get any stranger than this.

I must consult a numerologist about the importance of lowest common multiples and highest common factors in arriving at decisions about how lucky a number is. Are multiples of 13 also unlucky? Would people be all right with living on the 26^th floor or is that twice as unlucky as 13? The problem with detecting self-fulfilling prophecies that are irrational is that you don’t gain any predictive power from such knowledge. 

Poise

I think part of the reason why I didn’t have a job for such a long time was that I was afraid of getting one. I'm still afraid of getting started. Right now, my record is clean. Empty. Not a spot. There’s a certain amount of liberty you can take with the way you see yourself when you’re unemployed. You get neatly boxed and labelled once you have a job. When I tried to explain my immense loss of identity from getting a job to a friend, he directed me to First World Pains. I’m offended.

Speaking of jobs, I know of a man who knows how to get exactly the one he wants. I do envy his self-assured, confident poise, his manly tears at his unsurprising victory and the eyes that twinkle under the neatly Botoxed forehead. Putin’s election has also generated some classy headlines, the likes of which may never be seen again. Congratulations, Mr. Putin. But I don’t believe you.

This time I'm on Facebook's side

I came across a news report about employers “requesting” prospective employees to provide their Facebook passwords so that they can “predict possible negative behaviours and attitudes.” You’d think after the 2008 recession that companies would be too busy covering their arses to insist that their employees be squeaky clean even in their personal communications. A big ask, you’d think, from a bunch of indicted frauds. Or a swindling of frauds. Isn't that a nice collective noun? 

How bad does the economy have to be for such demands to be acceptable? Are the legal departments getting that bored? Or is this a last ditch attempt by HR managers to find something to live for – other people’s friends?

I think it’s about time we all got a bit cocky too. Let’s ask an interviewer why he chose a life of such mind-numbing drudgery. Ask them about the fraud allegations their company faced the year before last and the funds being channelled to the firm through tax havens. Or better still, let’s ask them for their Facebook passwords and mock them for their sad single-digit friend lists.

We Are All Rock Stars

Mr. Keith Moon was known for blowing up drum kits, toilets and pretty much anything else that took his fancy. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill thing for us Indians – we set off explosives far more powerful than cherry bombs every Diwali. Even five-year-olds do it. So clearly, that can’t be what sets the Indian rock star apart. People will just jeer at him for not knowing when Diwali is.

Mr. David Bowie thought he was quite the star because he liked to play dress up. Children grudgingly do so for school plays and fancy dress competitions each year. Any rock star who tries to use this route to fame will get laughed off the stage. Mr. Bowie himself had to court this fate sometimes.

Let's consider Ms. Grace Slick's TUI habit: "Talking Under Influence." Would that work? In all honesty, our politicians often say things that make me wish they could use being drunk as an excuse. 

What of getting drunk and throwing things at people? Surely that should qualify as rock star-like behaviour? Nope, sorry. Half of India does that every year on Holi. Kids often do so with more precision than most adults.

On average, I believe that sober Indians drive worse than drunk drivers elsewhere. So this form of recklessness would not get a rock star noticed either. General violence and destruction are things at least some Indians indulge in on a daily basis, and unlike most rock stars, they don’t even pay for the damages. So far, so bad.

We have arrived at the last arrow in the rock star’s quiver: setting things on fire. Oh wait. We’ve got Lohri. And Dussehra. Indian festivals make the most badass western icons appear endearingly childish for taking such joy in doing what we do so regularly, not to mention a bit stupid for spending so much on it.

So what can an Indian rock star do? Oh I know! Wear an unfashionable cap and starve himself.

Getting in Tune

As much as I love writing, I’m extremely lazy about writing assignments. It’s difficult to feel inspired when someone tells you what to write and sets a deadline for it. The only thing I can do within a deadline is bullshit, and that I do with great reluctance.

Most good writing is whimsical, born of a sudden fit of inspiration, a great idea that struck you out of nowhere and had to be written immediately before it lost its charm and original form. A good idea is a lot like love. It doesn't happen on command. Most people spend their lives looking for it. Everyone's sure it's out there somewhere. Some people devote their lives to one idea while others have a series of idea flings. It is often unexpected. And you're surprised that it was staring you in the face right from the start. Now that's what I call an intellectual romantic comedy. 


Good writing is usually not born from trying to string together averages to make a mildly interesting write-up. Sadly, writing with a purpose can rarely be done at leisure. Nobody's going to wait for you to “get to know your stuff”, “feel inspired”, “get in the mood to write” and finally, “write whatever you feel like writing”. 

Sometimes I feel quite sure that if the world wasn’t in such a hurry to get wherever it is that it is going, we might produce much better work. Douglas Adams was probably working on a deadline when he said he didn't like writing so much as he liked having written.