List 1: Celebrity Crushes

Few people come into your life so briskly, that their briskness crush you badly to an extent that you find yourselves admiring them with enormous cache, even after knowing that you probably won’t ever meet them let alone date. This is what is so absolving about the celebrity crushes. Since you most likely won't have a chance to hook up with the object of your crush under any circumstances, these circumstances become completely insignificant. You don't have to worry about whether or not the celebrity is single (or if you're single) or if he or she likes blondes or brunettes or even if the celebrity is gay or straight. It's all total fantasy so those inconvenient bits of reality don't matter at all.

Betokening thus, here I present a list of my female celebrity crushes (in the order of level of crush-ness, i.e. in increasing order):

10. Elizabeth Banks (From The 40-year old virgin to Definitely May Be to Spider Man to the Uninvited, this blonde looks blistering hot!) 

9. Zooey Deschanel (An unusual liking for her, as some faces remind you of someone. She is nonetheless stunning and sensational! Watch out for her in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!)  

8. Elisha Cuthbert  (I could pay a huge amount to chunk to book a flat beside her's to make her the girl next door for me, any day!)

7. Ke$ha (This party image girl with her messy hair, smeared makeup, and garbage-chic apparels always has a way to appeal! My mobile snooze always has Ke$ha singing, 'Tik Tok' and waking me up everyday. For those, who think her to be a drunk Taylor Swift, Up Yours!)  

6. Alex Curran (If Gerrard allows, she is the only sensational tan I’d ever love to date owing to her hotness level!)

5. Gemma Atkinson (If hotness is what we are talking about, here is this English lingerie-model to look out for. Remember her as the ex-wag of C. Ronaldo!) 

 4. Kristen Stewart (Coming to life from the Twilight series, this vampire lover definitely has it to blow off the minds! Blown away, am I, undoubtedly!)

 3. Megan Fox (Dressed Up or Dressed down! Whatever way, she is stunning hot! Never mind considering her as a Sex symbol.)

 2. Cobie Smulders (Perfect figure, adorable smile, beautiful accent, amazing as Robin Scherbatsky in HIMYM. Do I need to say more?) 

1. Katy Perry (With daisy dukes and a bikini on top, the lady has killed me with her exquisite smile and enchanting eyes. Lucky bastard have you been, Russel Brands!)

 

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These have been my Top 10 biggest celebrity crushes till date. I honestly don’t know which big supermodel is going to crush me next, heavily in juggernaut style.  Whoever it may be, it perhaps has nothing to do with my real life. All I can say is certain aspects of people appeal you in some way or the other, but who does know the reality anyway?

P.S: The dream date for me any day ought to be with my dream girl, Katy Perry.

P.P.S: It hardly matters if my list doesn’t match with yours. Few things are meant to be different.

P.P.S: After a series of philosophical posts, I have been planning to write my first soccer post. Ensuing, it may be!

P4S: I had been planning to present a series of Lists of various things. This was one of the coming few.

P5S: As far as the pictures I have used, I agree to the fact that they lack pellucidity. Courtesy: Sluggish Jawahar Internet connection + Lazy arse of mine! 

Why, Aisha?

Finally after a long hiatus, I am back with Aisha, but why, Aisha? Why only, Aisha? After  nuking my buzz and twitter with posts reflecting my insatiable desire to watch Aisha so many times, I eventually ended up watching it  a month after its release, and trust me, I was not at all unsated! I don’t intend to write a review of the movie here, but I certainly intend to indite - Why, Aisha?

So a take on why, Aisha?  

1. If you simply love the name, Aisha.
2. If you have an appetite for humor and style quotient.
3. If you crave for uptown super rich chicks wearing tank-tops and short-skirts! 
4. If you have read 'Emma' by Jane Austen, watched the Hollywood adaptation, 'Clueless' but still want to cherish some desi-spin on the story.
5. If you want to witness a movie that goes without any heavy-duty ‘drame baazi’, and prompts you to ponder on the perils of misconstrued romance.
6. If you want to believe that howsoever bitchy, cattish and arrogant a girl may seem from the glossy cover, she definitely has a soft corner which is gooey and mawkish.
7. If you want to watch out for Sonam Kapoor as an actor in one of her very neat and substantial performances!
8. If you are planning for a date, this could just be the ideal date flick!

The plot is almost unchanged from the original classic work of Jane Austen, Emma. Aisha, however, is more treatment-oriented than story-driven, relying on dialogues, individual scenes and quirky characters to do the trick. To a large extent, it succeeds too. 

The pre-interval portion is breezy and Shefali`s (Aisha’s small town friend) innocence coupled with Aisha’s hoity-toity act keeps the proceedings interesting. The friendly sparring between Aisha and Arjun (Abhay Deol), and scenes involving Randhir(Cyrus Sahukar) and Pinky(Ira Dubey) enliven the film and at half-time you are upbeat and hopeful. Post-interval, though, the film’s pace dips and you soon realise that the makers succumbed to a more convenient route. However, everyone looks so watchable that the movie would hold you in command till the very end plus some brisky and bouncy songs amid the story will never let you down.

Devika Bhagat,the film’s screenplay writer, with the film’s director Rajshree Ojha, has kept the essence of Austen’s classic intact and focused more on the presentation. With producer Rhea (actor Anil Kapoor’s younger daughter), the troika of women has managed to serve a palatable chick flick, but one which is not without its share of shortcomings and cliches. 

The movie is certainly not that serious to bog you down, or not so frivolous to be dismissed, it just goes so very well to glue you till the end. So, why waiting? Go, get, Aisha!

My 'Gene' is selfish ?

It happens to be that phase of my life when this little thing called ‘mind’ has been constantly searching for reasons and answers to almost everything around! In the quest for these answers, I have continuously been fooled by many things – be it randomness, be it luck, be it the Nash Equilibrium, be it the Laws of attraction or be it simply, a gene!

I lately concluded reading 'The Selfish Gene', by Richard Dawkins, which in many ways cleared the junk out of my brain!  The skill of Dawkins, as a writer, is that he has managed to convey the role that genes have had in our (and all life's) evolution. We know that genes determine the color of our eyes, our bodily features, certain physical traits and our susceptibility to certain diseases. However, what Dawkins shows is rather more fundamental and remarkable than that!

As a man of extreme intellect and analytical mastery, his logic throughout the book is very clear, vivid and easy to follow. All of us know how natural selection (i.e survival of the fittest) has played a role in the way species have evolved. It has previously been accepted that natural selection happens at the individual level or according to many, at the Group Level. However completely diametric to this, Dawkins proposes that natural selection (and evolution) happens at the level of the gene, thereby flourishing the 'Gene-centered view of evolution' or 'gene selection theory', and consequently surpassing the 'Organism-centered view of evolution'.

Dawkins even term 'Organisms' as 'Vehicles' or 'Survival Machines' of the genes. From the gene's point of view, evolutionary success ultimately depends on leaving behind the maximum number of copies of itself in the population. Since close relatives of an organism share some identical genes, a gene can also increase its evolutionary success by promoting the reproduction and survival of these related or otherwise similar individuals. Hence "selfish actions" of the gene are the "unselfish actions" of the organisms.

The best part of the book for me was when Dawkins highlights how and why Nice guys always Finish First? His exemplary view on the 'Prisoner’s dilemma' combined with the Tit-for-tat strategy, and how being nice, forgiving, and not envious help in winning in gross situations where nasty strategies fail completely. Moreover, he even admits that 'Tit-for-tat Strategy' is still not the 'Evolutionary Stable Strategy(ESS)', which according to Dawkins is a strategy that does well against copies of itself. The rationale for this is as follows. A successful strategy is one that dominates the population. Therefore it will tend to encounter copies of itself. Therefore it won't stay successful unless it does well against copies of itself.

"The Selfish Gene" did change my way of thinking and acting, apart from answering many weird questions  which my mind was burdened with. I can now look out at a crowd of people and imagine all of the trillions of little genes going about in these lumbering robots searching for ways to survive and replicate themselves. If life is a game, then this book definitely gives us a better understanding of that game and even gives us some potential strategies to help us and our genes excel in that game.

Thinking ? ... is just a waste of time!

Recently I got hold of an isolated-lying newspaper  amid the wee hours of a lecture class. While glancing over the pages, an article suddenly caught my attention.  On further reading this wonderful piece of writing I almost got  transmogrified. The manner in which I interpreted that article could be completely diametric to what the author wanted to convey  as the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgement solely depends on circumstantial evidence and prior conclusion rather than on the basis of direct observation.

My way of thinking, imagining, opining, reckoning and believing   has been continuously undergoing a change owing to some outstanding theories, work and philosophies of Taleb,  Carnegie, Dawkins and Darwin.  Fusing  my illation of the above-mentioned article and some little random philosophies I know, I put forth the following viewpoint.

Each day zillion of thoughts strike our neural cells hoping to grow bigger and turgid. This eventually blocks the space which the brain could have used for some other real time practical purposes. Each of these tiny thoughts has the potential and capability to develop into a massive bubble, whose size is directly dependent on our attachment with that particular thought process. More the attachment, more gets the thought-size, more striver we become by following, arguing, rationalizing, imploring, hoping, wishing, suggesting and agonizing on everything our mind tells us. Every single of these umpteen thoughts can fill the brain with such huge amount of junk that it would become impossible to cleanse it later when one senesce. On the contrary, if lesser heed is paid to these enormous thought bubbles, they conk out in their generative stage sparing  tremendous  amount of time and space to concentrate on our environs and ourselves. Self-discovery is what we usually work out  this way.

Thinking takes our mind into the past or future where life seems full of commotions, emotions, drama, happenings but with no reality at all. For reality, one needs  to be in the present, think of present, and that is only possible if one gives no way to thought-processes which chokes the mind’s capacity to focus on present. Hence,

                              “Stop Thinking! Know thyself! Live the Present!”

Luck - by chance!

Firstly this post has nothing to do with the movie ”Luck” starring Shruti Haasan in one of her most aphrodisiac performance, though the movie was nothing more than a total clunker. Having merely read one-fourth of “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I do not find myself in any comfortable position to comment or write a post about it, as it would present me nothing more than a naïve subject. The following post might or might not be linked to the gist of the above mentioned book, but not a single sentence of it has been plagiarized from the book or from anywhere else. This post is about ‘luck’ as I construe it.

Luck for me is ‘random’, i.e it lacks any order or plan or occurrence. Luck can be on your side in the morning for a particular task and can evade you in the evening for any other equivalent task. You wake up on time for your morning class is by sheer luck. Supposedly the alarm clock fails or you are floating in your world of surreal dreams so peacefully that you do not hear it ringing, you will surely miss the class owing  your misfortune to luck (or I’d define it as ill-luck). You are walking through a lane with your friend who suddenly slips and falls on a banana peel. This marks your friend’s ill-luck and your good luck because it could have happened the other way around. Luck favored you this time! Similarly if your girlfriend ditches you for some other person means luck disfavored you and favored the 'other person'. You can be the richest person in your town but ill-luck can make you a hapless victim in a matter of seconds. You can be on the zenith today but ill-luck can bring you down in a flip of seconds. Luck can make you win thousands of bucks in a Casino, Gambling or a Blackjack, but the same luck can disfavor you anytime. If you are the most lucky guy in your college you could be walking hand-in-hand with the hottest chick in town, but if you are oh-not-so-lucky kind of a guy you would be doing nothing more than driveling! Luck, undoubtedly is omnipotent and omnipresent but it lacks the orderliness.

People underestimate luck and perceive it as Non-luck (i.e Skills). Skills do define ourselves, our traits and our attributes, but without luck it has value equal to ZERO! Skills + Luck = Success, where "Luck >> Skills", thereby narrating the grandness of Luck! With Skills but without Luck, you can somehow manage to be on the top at the cost of your precious life. However with luck but without skills, you can manage to be on the top but will never have the fear of dying because of that factor called ‘Luck’! Thus, Luck is indeed a potent toxin, but yes it doubtlessly happen by mere chance if you happen to be 'lucky' enough!

Me, Environs and the Nature

The recent bargain which fetched me a 500 rupees gain turned out to be the best deal I ever had. I bought a much needed Hawk bicycle in exchange for my old never-exploited Razorback! This has not only demolished my exponentially rising Rickshaw bill but has also started saving my Time (by making me punctual at all the classes and labs), which I have been utilizing for some work or the other.

The initial week at college went as expected. ‘Department of Chemical Engineering’ yet seems to perplex me in many regards (details later). Even though many things have certainly changed. Our class room has been shifted from CH-102 to CH-201. So has the Professors, excepting the one who blessed me with a B the last Semester in a 4 credit course. The only good thing which seems to have happened to me so far is the Institute Elective  ‘IHS03-Group Dynamics’  I have gotten.

Amidst all this newness, I have bought some good Novels which includes “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and “A biography of Benito Mussolini”, which will surely keep me busy for the next few weeks or so. I am also planning to get from somewhere “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins. I also planned to join Career Launcher, situated at a walking distance from the campus for attending CAT ’11 coaching classes. 


More than all this, I have been tweeting and blogging lately, rather than buzzing and updating my statuses on Facebook (details later).  I have started socializing less with the people, and on the contrary have started giving more importance to the tiny and little things of Nature happening around me, which is sometimes a weird buzz coming out of a bee or a cool breeze hushing past me. All such things have started giving me wonderful sane moments of glory and happiness, rather than the gibes and scoffs of humans. Only this way life seems marvelous to me! No, I am not on the path of becoming a recluse.

Two Doors Down, Third it is ..

The inception of Junior year was neither exciting nor commoving. The Registration bugger was turned Online from this year thereby reducing the workload from filling six colored cards to just two printouts thereby fooling us in regard to "Ragging affidavit-cum-Oath Commisioner dang"! However the nub of these printouts lied in the fact that details had to be filled Online to which the R-Server balked as usual. Somehow by hook or by crook this situation was bumped off, and there all Sophomores were legally set to enter into their Pre-Final year. *Glee*

This time my journey to R was accompanied by Ma, Pa and Sis. Consequently the trip, as expected, was full of advices, emotions, counseling. It all eventually turned into some thoughtful lessons on “How to keep your room clean?”, “How to maintain a balanced and healthy diet in R?” ,”How to excel abiding by the statement, ‘Early to bed and early to rise’?” , and a lot more. The room FT-18 was then blessed by their soulful ingress which soon followed by laying a wonderful calligraphic encryption on the room wall by my sis 'wishing me luck'. A walk through the Civil Lines and delicious lunch at Hotel Prakash with some little shopping followed next which concluded with hugs and kisses and then the Indigo racing away from Jawahar leaving me depondent all alone.