Dirtscapes

• Krrish giving wedgies to errant road contractors at first, and then anally impaling them if they didn’t do their job. But even this wouldn’t really change things much. Ultimately, he’d have to build all the roads himself. (Material sourcing would be a big problem for him though…he’s a superhuman being, not super rich, right?)
  

• Krrish having to airlift ambulances to hospitals for the simple fact that they usually get stuck bleating like manic sheep right in the middle of traffic (Dedicated lanes did I hear you say? Right of way too? Tee hee hee.)
  

• Krrish having to eradicate mosquitoes, and clean up garbage. For the simple fact that in order to step up to first world status, we must first eradicate third world diseases. (Dengue fever sounds so… what’s the right word? Native?)
  

• Krissh somehow, **** knows how, stopping farmers from killing themselves in Vidarbha, in spite of munificent Central Government grants. (Not Mumbai-centric this, but it has really become an issue as mysterious as the beginning of the universe. Hence the superhero solution.)
  

• Krrish being on total standby every monsoon here in Mumbai, to help suck out all the wonderful clogged water, and yes a little spot of airlifting wouldn’t hurt either.
  

• Krrish somehow making cellular and fixed telephones work in times of disasters/emergencies by keeping them from collapsing due to ‘all users logging on at once’.
  

• Krrish somehow bending the basic laws of Physics to ensure that suburban rail commutes are not daily tests of your animal will to survive and exist.
  

• Krrish helping out BIG TIME with the slum rehabilitation schemes here, and finally figuring out how to come up with cheap housing guidelines. While he’s at it, he could improve rural conditions countrywide, so that fewer people are tempted to migrate to urban areas to live like animals. And actually feel that the life they lead here is better than their rural setups.

Was cleaning out my stuff the other day, and happened to come across my lately and largely forgotten audio cassette collection. Could not help marvel at how quickly these things have become obsolete. Personally, I haven't bought a cassette in more than 4 years now. The whole mp3 wave has almost killed off this little segment of the market. Heck, they survived the audio CD revolution, purely because of the price differential. Given a choice between a 525 buck audio CD (with an ‘Imported!!!’ label on it to boot), and a 45 buck tape, apun ka choice clear tha (as Vakil Mulay from Satya would put it).

But how do you essentially deal with something that is FREE?!

Tapes were something that had an aspirational value to them (at least in my perfectly middle class upbringing, they had). Like He-Man dolls (sorry... action figures, action figures) a tape would be obtained when you 'came first' in class, or on a special occasion/festival. That was something to look forward to, and the anticipation? Ayyo Raghavendra. The only thing that comes close is my current desperate craving for weekends, and the sheer narcotic kick that I get when I’m on my way home on Friday night. Yes, that’s how good it was.

Then there would be the trip to the music store. Now this would be an entire outing in itself - agonizing over what tape to buy on the way, and spending a nice amount of time in the shop, just generally and self importantly looking at the titles, wishing you could buy them ALL. Now albums by 'heavier' artistes like Slayer, Sepultura, Megadeth et al, would be virtually non-existent. I guess the music companies (MIL, Bremen Music, BMG et al) would press just 10 copies of these albums and the music stores would hide them like they were clues to a particularly nasty treasure hunt (no wonder I didn’t think the Da Vinci Code was “all that”). The music store guys would hardly ever have heard of them, and would greet you with their friendliest blank stares when asked where the Slayer/Megadeth albums were. So it was all up to you...digging through all the lowermost shelves, squatting down till you felt that the 'mungees' that you were getting in your feet were dancing at a rave party, and then finally hitting pay dirt. Only to be severely constrained by the lone 50 buck note in your pocket. Poverty striketh. And it striketh hard. And then, with a heavy heart, selecting one and wistfully placing the other gems back. Only, I would thoughtfully hide them behind Mory Kante and Jagjit Singh albums so that others couldn't swipe them away till my next visit. Have to admit though, this never really worked…

Given how you would have sweated to build up a little collection, lending tapes would be a real ordeal. You would want them back. That’s all. Not too much to ask right? But the loss of a tape would REALLY cause issues between the best of friends, directly proportional to the rarity of the title. Likewise, the heartburn that you would get when such a tape was gobbled up by your greedy defective player/walkman was comparable to watching our cricket team play. These mangled remains would then be salvaged by ingenious, aspiring-scientist moi by trying to splice them together with nail polish. It worked. Honest.

Album add-ons would really never be a redeeming feature, considering that there would never be any lyrics booklets, or album inlay artwork. What you would get instead, was a cheesy marketing feedback form, promising you a free cassette in a lucky draw. People used to actually buy lyrics books and a lot of them would kill for lyrics, and take photocopies of the booklets from lucky CD-owning friends. By the time international class album packaging was available here, it was a case of too little too late.

Contrast all this with mp3s. Which are so… what’s the right word? Sterile? They have no ‘organic’ feel, both in terms of sound fidelity as well as possession. They are just there in some sort of memory storage, and you really cannot attach any sentiment to them. They have no history, and would really not be something to reminisce about and cherish. You definitely cannot get an artiste’s autograph on an mp3 can you?

Pretty much functional and utilitarian? Yes. No rewinding, no fast forwarding, and no oxide-and-fungus-formation-with-age issues. You get to listen to stuff which you would never ever have got hold of in India, even on audio CDs. You can practically download an artiste's entire anthology in a matter of minutes, and be a ‘hard core fan’ in a week’s time, now that lyrics and complete biographies are freely available wherever you click.

But you can never own an mp3...

Ah well, things have changed. End of old fogey post.