Welcoming a New, Brave World of Ancient Practices, and Happy New Year.

Another crappy year is getting flushed down the tubes of history. To be honest, I barely noticed this flushing sound as I was busy with work despite the threat from AI. Nonetheless, some things did get through, and I had a general idea of what was going on around me. Year 2025, I think, has been a real coming out party for things that many people had kept suppressed due to weed-inspired, fancy, secular humanist ideas like human rights, equality, empathy, love, etc. People have finally woken up to the fact that these are all signs of weakness, and are now actively bringing back good, old-fashioned patriarchy, misogyny, racial and religious hatred, and bigotry. People flaunt these openly. Supreme leaders around the world derive their strength and build cults around these ideas. It works. There are some minor issues such as whose religion is superior, which culture is better, and whose imaginary being has more power. But hey, that is the whole point. You get to diss others, and it is fun.

    Youth are attracted to this, especially young men. One of the top political commentators in America now is a young guy called Nick Fuentes. His views are getting even more popular than Charlie Kirk, who, prior to his death, professed that the Civil Rights Act outlawing all kinds of discrimination was a mistake. Nick is having a field day with MAGA man Vivek Ramaswamy. Nick probably doesn’t know that Indians are accustomed to this idea of discrimination. We invented it, Nick. We are born with that DNA, brother.

    There is a movie star-turned MP in Kerala. He is a good example of this. Though not in the league of supreme leader Modizee in terms of histrionic skills, the man is a good actor. He is also always in character. It is as if he is emoting on a big stage all the time. Delivering lines with a flourish, fingers wagging, facial muscles twitching, pot belly wobbling, and the gold and other bling on his person glittering. It is quite an impressive sight.

    Except that, more often than not, he appears constipated. I often imagine this guy in the potty, sitting on the throne, face all contorted, neck veins stretched, eyes popping, and screaming at a stubborn, sticky piece of turd dangling from his posterior orifice, “Art thou coming forth, you piece of $##t?” I think if we work on the script a bit more, we would be able to make a good movie out of this.

    Suresh Obi-wan Kenobi starring in and as The Unfallen Turd. (In line with the current trend in propaganda movies, this could alternatively be named The Turd Files.)

    One man standing against progressive rascals; fighting to protect his traditions and also bring some back. The man apparently has fond memories of great traditions where lower caste people dug holes on the ground, put leaves in them, and had gruel from those holes. The fact is that lower caste people are also having wet dreams about the good old days when kings ruled over them. Their forefathers could play hide-and-seek in the bushes when people of a higher caste passed by. It was so much fun. Everybody knew where they stood in the pecking order. Oh, those were the glory days. We were Vishwa Guru then, and now, we’re in the process of claiming that Vishwa Guru title back.

    We, of course, realize that there are some smartass guys like Peter F. Drucker who say, "I have been saying for many years that we are using the word 'guru' only because 'charlatan' is too long to fit into a headline" or "people call me a guru because they can't spell charlatan".

    We don’t care, you Drucker. We will call ourselves Vishwa Charlatans. Look at the number of scam call centres we run. We will rewrite history. We will erase weaklings like Mohanlal…Mohandas, or whatever his name was, from our books, our MGNEREGA, and pretty soon from our currency notes. The older generation didn’t have WhatsApp University. So, they relied on and had to believe what they saw—a semi-nude guy and his cohorts walking around the land fighting the Brits. At the very least, he could have had his name printed on the border of that loincloth. A monogrammed langoti. Nothing; no fashion sense at all. If some andolan jeevi tries such a stunt today, we will send men to lynch him. The fact is, we had a better plan of bankrupting the Brits by getting them to pay pensions to all of us, which was an even more non-violent solution. Anyway, now we have the means and the WhatsApp uncles to educate the mother bleepers (as delivered by Samuel L. Jackson) of the possibilities.

    Speaking of mother bleepers, the supreme leader went emotional about some unknown people abusing him. That reminded me of an advice I got from a teacher (not a “guru”) when I was a teenager.

    One fine day, my dad, who is usually busy operating the government machinery, was at home and developed this sudden interest in his progeny’s studies. Especially Macaulay’s English. So, he called me, “Makkale (nothing to do with Macaulay. Makkale is a term used to address kids in some parts of Kerala), show me your English textbook”. I showed him my mint condition book and gave him a blank stare. He realized that his son was an idiot and decided to find me a tutor. So, me and my cousin were sent off to Prof. T, a very nice gentleman, who would usually be in a thorthu (a type of towel), with ash and sandalwood paste all over his body, busy completing his daily puja when we reach in the morning. I don’t remember the context, but one day he advised us that one should always abuse only the mom and not the dad (“തള്ളക്കേ വിളിക്കാവു, തന്തക്കു വിളിക്കരുത്” were his words). The reason, he said was that “only moms know who the dad is”. Mind you, this was much before DNA tests and all. My cousin guffawed. The three girls in the class—the fashionable twin sisters of Shaolin, as my cousin called them, and the demure (let’s call her) Sanyo-mol blushed. I smirked. Prof. T continued with his Macaulay’s English. Maybe he was alluding to a certain group where the husbands would slink away so that their womenfolk could have brief relationships with people from upper castes.

    Well, the year is winding down. Everyone around the world now agrees that rich people have the first claim to mountains, land, forests, and other resources. The rich shall inherit the earth was the original biblical saying. Some fake, woke liberals had rewritten that then. We are correcting all such mistakes. We will rewrite even the Bible, if needed. So, Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

    I hope to welcome in the new year with this nice song from Chris Rea, who passed away on December 22, 2025, that I used to listen to in a cassette player a long time ago. The Road to Hell.

P.S. From FB

The End of Exile

After three years of Covid-imposed exile, I finally made it to my momma-land GOC (God’s Own Country, or as in some interpretations, God’s Own Cakoos) in July for a short trip. More than the mind-numbing pre-trip bureaucratic procedures, what got my goat was the nail-biting wait for the RT-PCR test results.

You see, I had considered myself to be a cool cucumber throughout my life. Exams, exam results, job interviews, job, none of these things ever unnerved me much. I remember a Tamil friend from college days, who would visit my room on the eve of exams to relax. He will come in with his eyeballs popping out of their sockets, almost touching his soda glass specs, and veins on his forehead taut and about to burst. But then, he will see me dragging on a filter-less Panama cigarette and playing cards with another friend, an even cooler cucumber, and all his tensions vanish. Eyeballs pop right back in, bulging veins disappear, and the man is ready to take the exam next day.

That was me before I encountered RT-PCR test. The clinic was going to send the results to my e-mail the evening before the day we were flying. I was irritable all day long, barking at my kids, and generally being an a$$*ole. At around 6pm, the mails came. I don’t know if my eyeballs were touching my glasses, but it was one of those rare moments in my life I was totally tensed. Adding to that tension was the fact that all four of us had to clear this test. I clicked on the links one by one 陰性, 陰性, 陰性, 陰性…All negative! Collective relief all around.

The trip. Narita airport had the feel of a funeral parlour, but transit at bustling Singapore Changi was fun as usual. Thirontharam Hawai Adda looked and felt the same as I remembered it from 2019. The city streets also appeared to be more or less the same as before, and some places still had the bombed-out Fallujah feel with lots of rubble. Oh, it was good to be back. The first couple of days were spent meeting family and friends in the immediate neighbourhood and eating parotta, beef, appam, mutta curry, etc. Then it was time to attend to some unfinished business from three years ago involving government offices, banks, etc. Surprisingly, most of those worked out well. The government staff were mostly un-rude (if there is such a word) and reasonably helpful, which was unexpected, to be frank. I really wanted to get things done this time and was willing to pull some strings if needed, ditching my convictions. So, it was a pleasant surprise when everything went smoothly without me using my connections or greasing any palms.

The only weekend was spent in Kochi with my college mates. We drove to Kochi in a friend’s vehicle to avoid public transport and the risk of contracting some new pox. My friend, I believe, took his license from the KSRTC driving school. He drives his Innova car like the drivers of the killer express buses of the state transport service ‒ threateningly, recklessly, and with utter disregard to rules, road conditions, and passengers. The man looks like he is on a mission, though nobody knows what it is. 

Anyway, we reached Kochi safely and spent some quality time with friends and the brews brought from various parts of the world including the sake I took from Japan. One major disappointment, though, was the food: seafood to be exact. Kochi, the Queen of the Arabian Sea, is famed for seafood, but for some reason the place where we stayed served us something that felt like blubber dipped in batter and fried. I started cribbing about it, and seeing that, my influential local friends went out and found an exotic small shop selling matthi fry (sardines), prawns, idiyirachi (pounded dried beef), etc., which went a long way in assuaging my feelings and making me fall in love with Kochi again.

On the way back, my maniacal friend gave the wheels to me as he wanted to sleep. I was still in Japanese mode of driving, trying to stick to my lane wherever there was one, keeping distance with the vehicle in front, etc. This, obviously, was annoying to the local drivers, and probably even some pedestrians, who were wondering “ii ma#$an ethu konathinnada vandi odikkan padichathu?”, which could be loosely translated as “where the f*#k did this a$$*ole learn to drive?

Well, here I was, stopped at a red signal while heading out of Kochi, when a police vehicle came and stopped near me on my right. In most countries this would be against the law, because it was straightaway blocking the oncoming traffic by being in the opposite lane. Green light comes on and the police vehicle blares its siren and cuts across in front of me. I obediently drive myself into the ditch, which serves as the shoulder in most GOC roads, to let him pass. Behind him went a government car which had a board saying, “High Court Judge!”

Now, I know that we shouldn’t judge judges just because they break the law. He might have been rushing to deliver some late-night judgment of national importance. Maybe, it was related to that actor showing his butt on a nude photoshoot, which riled many people in the country. To be sure, that actor was cutting into the action of the Jain monk people, who probably have a monopoly on butt-show. The rule says that not every dumbo can show his or her butt. The judge hopefully will decide “independently” as to who can show their butt, upon giving due consideration to the ruling dispensation’s whims. Remember, judges are important people who can throw the book at you using words like infructuous, Suo motu and mutatis mutandis. So, I quietly drove out of the ditch to continue with my journey.

There are couple of things you learn early on in India. One is to not diss on gods, religions, or religious people. The retribution will be swift and harsh. If at all you want to say something, it should appear to the religious person as you’re dissing somebody else’s god. Religious people are OK with that. Another thing you learn is to keep quiet against the powers that be. The state can do whatever it pleases using all of the tools it has at its disposal including the army.

The Supreme Leader of the country, for example, is a man who boasts one of the biggest breast sizes in the world at 56 inches. This is probably second only to the 57 inches of Arnold Shivajinagar, popularly known in the West as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Interesting trivia ‒ Shivajinagar is also an actor like the Supreme Leader, though not as good. As a thespian, Shivajinagar is limited to action hero roles, whereas the Supreme Leader is famed for his ability to pull off any given role. Angry middle-aged man, tortured soul, grieving husband, mountain-dwelling ascetic, weatherman, military strategist, economist, mathematician, birdfeeder, you name it – he has done it, and done it with elan. To top it all, he is also a real-life crocodile Dundee-ji.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent to praise the Supreme Leader. I was discussing how you should not say anything against those who rule over us. This is true even for regional leaders in many states. Many of these leaders have special organs similar to the large breast of the Supreme Leader. Some have double or multiple organs. And they all have cult-like followers. For instance, the Supreme Leader only has to snap his fingers and the cult members will carve you up. Well, maybe not snap his fingers, because snapping might bring the cultists out of their trance. Could it be dog whistle? I don’t know. The opposition party representatives also have organs, but they mess up in putting the right organ in the right place and often end up, for example, with their heads in their posterior orifices. That is why people call them the dis‘organ’ized opposition.

Anyway, I fervently hope that our law-breaking judge was able to save the country and deliver a landmark infructuous decision as to who can show their posterior in public. My reverie, meanwhile, was broken by the maniac sleeping in the passenger seat, who was wide awake now and ready to drive. With him at the wheel, we had an uneventful journey back to Thirontharam with our hearts in our mouths, and the foul taste of an eminently forgettable dosa from a restaurant in Kottarakkara.

Despite the two food-related mishaps (blubber fry and dosa), on the whole it was a short and sweet trip to GOC with kappa, fish curry, idlis, dosas, vadas, bajis, appams, idiappams, puttu, patthiri and of course the national dish of parotta and beef fry. Moreover, thanks to the much-improved services at the village, taluk, and corporation offices, I was able to accomplish a lot on the personal front. Next time around, I hope to stay for a much longer period.

 

P.S. My maniacal friend is not exactly that bad. From a local perspective, he is a normal driver with the optimum amount of animal instinct necessary to survive on the roads there.

 

God is a Virus

Friends, I have important news for you. God has revealed itself to me, and surprise, surprise, it is a virus.

Keep those knives sheathed, folks. I’m not talking about your gods. I’m talking about my quest for a personal god. Like most people, I also started off with the regular, run-of-the-mill gods that a family or a school usually tries to forcefully implant in your brain. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was dumb, and my brain kept rejecting those implants. It was all very confusing for me. 

 Still, my spiritual pursuit continued through my childhood, which most of the time didn’t go down well with my mom and many other people. Then, I reached the age of reason around 12. This is the time when most guys reach the age of reason and start spending more time in the toilet, sometimes with magazines with colourful photographs and stuff. There, they let their imaginations run wild. A toilet is like a cave where you can sit and ponder. Many of mankind’s greatest ideas were born either in a cave or in a toilet. A cave/toilet allows a person to focus. All our ancient gurus used to go into caves (which also probably served as toilets in those days) for ideas, except of course, Mr. Buddha. In his case, it was because he wanted to do number “two” with everything, or was it that he wanted to be one with everything? I don’t know. As I mentioned earlier, it’s all quite confusing.

In the course of my spiritual journey, I also went through a whole gamut of god men, trying to make sense of this confusion; but that too turned out to be a dead end, as I crashed into words like corporeal manifestation and cosmic consciousness. From the afro hair dude to the sad kuru, whatever they said went over my head. Their teachings fell under the field of studies generally known in educational circles as Bovem Stercore-ology, which was beyond my brain's reach.

I remember a guru who said that the sound from a damru (drum) was the first corporeal manifestation. That is, the first physical thingy ever in this universe was the sound from a drum made of wood and animal skin, which, of course, are not physical thingies. Wait, isn’t wood a physical thingy? Where did the animal skin come from? I was stumped. I realized that I’m probably not the sharpest tool in the shed. I needed clear, simple explanations, and that’s when Nityananda kuru appeared on the scene with his unvarnished bovem stercore in a language that the common folks understood, unlike those sad kurus and sri-to-the-power-of-n kurus and their pretentious stuff. I almost made up my mind to fully accept this new kuru as my spiritual guide, and thought of doing some deep thinking in a cave prior to taking the plunge.

Well, not everyone has access to photogenic caves like Modiji. He has the wherewithal to marshal the entire political science government machinery to arrange for caves in Kedarnath. I don’t have that kind of connections, so I make do with the toilet. Modiji has cameramen and strategically placed mood lighting to showcase his berobed, bearded profile, while his x-ray eyes peer straight at the camera through closed eyelids. I, on the other hand, sit on the throne sans robes, my lungi on the floor, my newspaper, book, or smartphone in hand. I thought of asking my wife to take a picture of me in profound thought, but then good sense prevailed, as I knew her threshold for toilet humour was pretty low. I also thought of taking in a bird, a small one, not a peacock. Maybe, a bird of paradise. But Japanese toilets, though famous for being high-tech, are notoriously small. If my toilet were any smaller, I would be making squishing sounds going in and out. So, out went the bird of paradise photo shoot idea.

Anyway, I was sitting there in my make-believe cave, deep in thought, one day recently, when God spake to me, “I’m the virus”. I was sceptical at first, thinking I misheard a fart, but then it asked me again, clearly, to think of the primary criterion for being a god. The primary criterion for a god, we all know, is to “Kill indiscriminately”. A few women menstruated somewhere - send a flood; couple of guys kissed elsewhere - time for an earthquake; boys spending too much time in toilet – smite a town somewhere with a tornado. Evidently, this god is also killing indiscriminately, and that too on a global scale. Ukrainian holiness blames gay people for the coronavirus. The Viral God punishes the holiness. So, that makes you wonder what the holiness has up his robe. Anyhoo, I was getting pretty convinced about this god. It also said that it created the coronavirus in its image. Makes sense. Most humans, conceited as they are, imagine god resembles them in appearance. Well people, now is the time for you to accept the new fact, repent, and follow the true god, the Virus.

Further, it has told me that I’m the chosen prophet and I have to spread the word. I asked for some instructions, y’know, rules. Any religion worth its salt needs rules. As I said earlier, I like them simple. Too many commandments might put people off. George Carlin once simplified and summarized the ten commandments into two. So, I was hoping for something on that line, and I was not disappointed. There are essentially only three commandments in my religion now (which I regularly break).

1. Thou shalt not go into Closed spaces

2. Thou shalt not go into Crowded places

3. Thou shalt not be in Close-contact settings

Spread the good word. Make this viral.

All this may sound a bit too facetious for a religion, and I conveyed as much to the Lord. The Lord Virus has reassured me that the rest of the rules regarding sacrificing virgins (both boys and girls,) beheading apostates and infidels, lynching, etc., which are essential for a religion to gain acceptance in this modern world, will be delivered to me in due course and it has asked me to be prepared, preferably in a cave/toilet. So, till I get those remaining rules, follow the above three.

P.S. The greatest thing about this god is that you can actually see it. Unlike certain religions that prevent you from taking and showing pictures of gods (imagine the trillions lost in merchandising,) this god can be seen and photographed with gadgets in certain temples called labs. Certainly adds to the credibility.