Play me backwards

accumulated posts buried in text doc:

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Africa Online

MIT-trained Ayisi Makatiani started Africa Online with two other Kenyans in Boston. Africa Online is Africa's largest ISP, which has operations in ten countries. Read the article in the Economist. I liked it.

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Heard: black horse and the cherry tree. good.

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covers can be better than originals; and anyone can do that favour for dylan.

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Remembered ahmedabad. cept, guj univ, manic peacocks and the hottest south men... delhi calling? met deepa from pu french on cs last week. we decided to hoof it to koshys to catch up a bit more. Since college, she's been to jnu, did her time in delhi, before returning to run the down to earth show in the city single-handedly. she's been cooling off since them. she talked about the dylan screening and she thought baez was beautiful and really made dyl what he was. we bitched about someone who didnt make the cut to nls, but paid her way to a masters seat in harv law. man. a session. good to catch up.

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About Ahmedabad. Heard about the upmarket Seva Cafe? It works :)

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guastavino_tile
Guastavino tile refers to the "Tile Arch System" patented in the US in 1885 by Spanish architect and builder Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908). It is a technique for constructing robust, self-supporting arches and architectural vaults using interlocking terracotta tiles and layers of mortar in a thin skin, with the tiles following the curve of the roof as oppossed to horizontal (corbelling), or perpendicular to the curve (roman).

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What is your name?
A few days after birth, a few facts have to be put down on a sheet. Along with the indisputable 'blood group: O-ve', I was described under religion: catholic. To make it less easy, it was also decided that I should belong to that dying tribe of Indian catholics who are actually given a catholic name (even though they're almost all actually pre-christian), and not a 'normal' name as well to blend in the crowd better. I don't know what's worse - to seek to cover up a historical fact or to stand out when you didn't choose to. One thing is clear: it's cowardly to change names, just to fit in. Should I be grateful that my first name is almost immediately followed up with the unfamiliar and unsettling syriac veetil name?

With a name like a supposedly unIndian one, it's like having your reputation precede you. Krischen! some exclaim, audibly or inaudibly, as soon as they hear such a name, after asking you to repeat it the fourth time. I used to try to explain 'no, you see, i'm communist; my parents maybe .. but...'. Then I realised how it came across. Like I was trying to convince them I was really pure Norwegian both sides. And denials really look pathetic. So instead, I deadpan, to the memory of Garfield, who sadly, is not culturally neutral, proving my wretched bias again.

But one thing that certainly happens when you're pegged a cath, is that you think twice about seeming pro-cath in anyway. That would be less forgivable than islamic fundamentalism. And that's more than a little tragic. So if I'd want to quote from the Canticle of the Sun, I'd precede it with something from the vedas (if I knew it) or shelve it altogether. Though I'd defer to the writings of basavanna or adi sank anyday, than the vedas, which like the temples, was for too long the precious jam of the preistlies. Yes - i'm coming to it sometime: Dalits and Liberation Theo.

Then there's the suggested exclusion or your unnaturally overexcited participation. It isn't always like this but on atleast 2 occasions, frends have passed around some piece of sacred art or iconogrpahy and sheepishly passed it over me. I usually have 2 options when that happens: yank it back or let it pass. Usually, i let it pass, unless it's one that's really different, and that hasn't happened yet. (note: We can do with more gods.) Or the office puja thing, if you participate, everyone's thinking 'chilled out ya!'; if you don't 'stuck. church prick'. I just wolf the prasadam for the hunger pangs, not the god pangs. However I'm not sure if that stands to reason, going by the following related incident:

Long ago, a bizguy I was working for, who was also an RSSian, actually went all over the top once and pulled me up for answers about the wafer they handed out in Church. Why, he asked, all vexed, did they prevent non-Cathlics, from taking it? Did I have any idea, he asked me, how hurt he felt when he was excluded as a boy? I shrugged. But If I was around at that time in his infancy, I would have told him the codeword to get the wafer inserted was: 'Amen'. And if on the side they asked you if you were Catholic say: 'Yes, father'. But Mr. Betraj, if you had said that, you would be agreeing to a number of things, even that: 'You can be anything you want, and everything at once.' Which, presuming against infinity, the irrational, tragically contradicts. Finally, anyone in their right materially-minded mind wouldn't want to trade the privelege of belonging to the priestly fatty layer of the majority, however fractured.

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Today morning I rubbed this lizard's belly from behind the curtain. And ever since, it has been hanging around my wall, demure and lovestruck. It's pretty. Looking up at his tail-end, i'm sending him my love.

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For all the noise made about nabokov, i think he's soulless. The boy who'd score 10/10 interminably. with a straight face and no regrets. Like a machine without a soul.

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Torture is ...
Having a rare copy of Bruce Lee's 'Game of Death' staring at you, but being unable to watch it because of some rec speed mismatch or other such crap.