The Eight Qualities of Cultured People - from Brain Pikcings

If you haven't come across BrainPickings.org, this is a good time for it. I was introduced to it by Jay, my partner. Every day, on Brain Pickings, I come across such interesting articles of creativity, books, philosophy, better ways to live our lives, etc.

Today, for example, I stumbled on an article: Anton Chekhov on the 8 Qualities of Cultured People. Most of the article resonates with me and my principles. However, the following points need further mention:

They respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind, gentle, polite, and ready to give in to others. They do not make a row because of a hammer or a lost piece of india-rubber; if they live with anyone they do not regard it as a favour and, going away, they do not say “nobody can live with you.” They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat and witticisms and the presence of strangers in their homes.

My myriad of idiosyncrasies, neuroses, and depression prevent me from being able to follow this advice.

If they have a talent they respect it. They sacrifice to it rest, women, wine, vanity…. They are proud of their talent…. Besides, they are fastidious.

This is very true for me. Even in my relationship, I sacrifice many things to my love for music and learning.

What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will…. Every hour is precious for it…. Come to us, smash the vodka bottle, lie down and read…. Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.

This, I'm able to do - not for reading, but for learning and working on my music. My friends, especially Jay, complains that I drive myself into too much stress with this. I disagree. This is how I do what I do best - try and reform myself and my skills.

My first online soft purchase

I have always been skeptical about online transactions. Today demanded one. I just couldn’t stand the fact that I had just 7% of my storage capacity left on my primary Google account. The options were simple. Delete your unimportant stuff. Open another account. Or buy more space.

I chose the last option. I integrated on my debit cards to my Google account. Not only did I spend 5$ for 25 GB of memory, I was able to buy apps on the Android store as well. It might not be a big thing for you tech nerds, but it’s a giant leap for me.

Joe arrives

I must have grown more mature, more cautious, and more realistic. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did yesterday. Joe arrived after a 24-h flight to the Mumbai airport. The flight was delayed and I hadn’t heard from him from Delhi.

Yet, I didn’t panic. My heart was not in my mouth. In fact, I kept a pretty calm head, probably distracted by the highlights of Sehwag’s fastest double century still being shown on television screens at the airport terminal that the flight was supposed to arrive at.

After an hour delay, I finally saw him going through the process of collecting his luggage and taking a loo break. He was obviously unaware that I could see him through the glass. He looked just like he looked on Skype. And finally when he walked out and saw me, I was greeted by a smile of honest satisfaction of having accomplished something improbable.

Yes, it was just over 10 weeks since we had met (September 26). It was crazy of us to meet so soon for so long (6 weeks). But going by the way the first supposedly-anxious moments went by, I think this will turn out to be an enjoyable experience.

Oh by the way, he’s by far the only interesting person that I have dated/seen/had a relationship with who’s almost as tall as me. That makes me happy in an desi way.

Kapil Sibal – are you nuts?

Read this and this to get an idea about what Mr. Sibal has been talking about. And then read the brilliant FakingNews.com article about the same issue here.

On one hand, Mr. Sibal is saying that he doesn’t want to impede freedom of speech and on the other, he believes that social media websites should screen user content and delete what is ‘offensive’, according to what the Government tells them.

Really, who’s to decide what’s offensive and what’s not? Such things are subjective and I think Sibal threating to censor postings of users itself is ‘offensive’ to the free-thinking public. So…

Don’t you think we are heading closer and closer to the situations in China and/or North Korea if this is implemented?

I want to end this with a gem of a tweet from Sidin Vadukut - @sidin: Kapil Sibal is an idiot. RT while this is still legal.

Pakistan, oh Pakistan

Most sane Indians don’t hate Pakistan. And vice versa. They like each other and the others’ nations. This is especially true in social media.

I have some Twitter friends from Pakistan who seem to be so different from the stereotypical image being portrayed on various platforms about Pakistan and it’s citizens. They, in turn, accept those from India.

I have always believed that if a group of Pakistanis and Indians were locked together in a room, they will come to terms with each other just like any other random samples of population would.

The Pakistani authorities, however, seem to be trying tarnish their own country’s image. For example, the recent news about a new telecom regulation banning ‘offensive’ words and phrases in SMS messages.

Although, I have read somewhere that the rule is not going to be implemented, the stereotypes will in be further strengthened.

Those who are sane, however, will still continue to ridicule such ‘crazy’ rules hampering freedom of speech/expression.

Romeo4ever

I hate to admit it, but this song is so true.

The Indian Express Article

Today, an article about gays and their use of the internet to 'come out' was published in the Indian Express. Yours Truly was featured in the article, that too with a photograph. Here's a link to the article.

The Digital Afterlife of the Queer
Richa Bhatia, Indian Express, Jan 26, 2011*

Coming out to family and friends is not always easy. A number of
dedicated websites have now developed to provide LGBTs with a support system

It was in his early twenties that Madurai-born Shridhar Sadasivan typed the keywords—connection, community, Queer Chennai on the Yahoo group MovenPick (a non-sexual support space for lesbian/ gay/ bi/ transgendered (LGBT) people in Chennai). What was he looking for? Confirmation that his sexuality would not be an impediment in the larger social context, something that MovenPick provided. As opposed to children from hipper, and less conservative outposts, Sadasivan, now in his early 30s “suffered with shame and guilt” all through his teen life. “I had no clue about homosexuality. I had no one to reach out to. I tried to kill myself. I found Internet and it helped me understand my sexuality, accept and be comfortable with who I am and then come out to my friends and family”, shares Sadasivan, who is now currently based in New Jersey, United States, where he works in the IT industry.

Past the closet days, Sadasivan is now making a splash with his profound stories that are published in the Tamil magazine Thinnai and Thendral. He is also a member of the executive team of Orinam.net, a bilingual LGBT resource website and is trying to create awareness in the mainstream about LGBT issues through his writings. “Indian kids normally discuss attraction, sexual feelings with friends. But kids with same-sex attraction can never discuss with their friends, so there is no support system other than the Internet as of now,” rues Sadasivan.

It is a common queer narrative. The rise of the Internet has kickstarted the emergence of a worldwide queer support system. “The personal coming out experience is certainly enhanced by the emergence of online communities. The website lends them anonymity, as people do not give out their real names. If you are anonymous, you can say whatever you want, people can’t judge you,” says MJ, Mumbai-based co-founder of the two-year-old portal gaysi.com, a first-of-its kind initiative in India, where the desi-gay community comes together and shares personal stories of their struggles and their coming out narratives. Over the past two years, the website is seeing traffic from all over the world,with about 500-600 hits a day of late. “Besides international dating sites, there is no online platform where desis can come over and connect. So we set it up pumping in money from our own pockets,” said MJ. Though still not a commercially viable project, she is wary of asking for donations. “The advertising revenue is next to nothing, so we are looking for other ways of marketing, including endorsements from corporates who are not hesitant to support our cause,” she says. 24-year-old Agnivo Niyogi sees larger implications for the LGBT presence on the web in the socio-media landscape. “Of late, the LGBT community is seen as a good market to invest. It can prove commercially viable through right marketing and niche products. We already have queer stores and queer e-zones,” said the Kolkata-based Niyogi, who is also a contributor to the one-year-old monthly magazine Gaylaxy, an online LGBT magazine. Though there are overseas niche websites such as TwoBrides.com, TwoGrooms.com — a one-stop-shop for gay weddings that offers products, information, wedding stories and ceremony topics — the scene in India is very nascent. “People are not willing to come up with such ideas. There is a lack of initiative,” rues Niyogi, who works as a content developer with New Age Knowledge Solutions.

There wasn’t any internet in Thiruvananthapuram, when Krishna Kumar Venkitachalam, now 31, came to grips with his sexuality. There was no one to talk to either. In his early days, Venkitachalam, logged on to Yahoo groups to “find friends online”. Since then, he has moved base to Mumbai, where Venkitachalam, who has a degree in Orthopedics, works in a KPO by the day and slides into the musician avatar as Kris Bass and gigs by night. Bass is also a popular blogger at www.engayinglife, a seven-year-old blog started in Mumbai. It was through the blog that Venkitachalam chose to come out in 2007. “My sister and her husband first read the blog in 2003 and came to know about my orientation, though I officially came out to my parents in 2008. My mother had known about it for sometime but chose to ignore it since she thought I was too young. She is very supportive, though my Dad is still shaky about it,” shares Venkitachalam. His blog, about “a queer, amateur songwriter and a bassist gives an insight into a person who is also gay”. These days, he is perpetually online, hanging out in chat rooms “not to seek sex but intelligent conversation”. “I am not a gay activist,” notes Venkitachalam. “I am just letting people know that I am pretty much a next door type guy, who also happens to be gay,” he said.

Of course, there are errors in the article. First of all, there WAS internet when I came to grips with my sexuality. That's how I got to know that there were millions of men like me. There were very few people to talk to, and I came out to my friends first. Then, this blog wasn't started in Mumbai. I started blogging when I was in Thiruvananthapuram.

I don't exactly know the time when my sister and my brother-in-law came to know about my orientation, but I guess it was around 2004/2005. I was always out on the blog and I have hardly used it as a means to come out. Of course, my friends, when they come across it at first, come to know about my orientation (because the header says that I'm queer).

I have always come out to people personally - either by telling them on their faces that "Dude, listen how can I get in bed with you?" or "Girl, do you have a father/uncle than I can have sex with?" - or by joking about it, just like I did in the first part of this sentence.

I had indirectly come out to my sister way back in 1999 when I had made a website for myself. At that point, my home page had a statement saying that "I'm definitely not a heterosexual." My sister had read it and I thought she had chosen to ignore it.

Then, I came out to my Mom and Dad in 2009. That was the first time they came to know about it. I don't think they have ignored it ever. But they do have problems in talking to me about it. I must admit that my Mom is getting much better at it now.

So, I became famous once more. Thanks Indian Express.

A social/familial misfit

This Sunday evening, during a break during my songwriting/recording sessions, I logged on to the personal messengers. I found my sister online and started chatting with her. She told me that our cousins were all there visiting her. She also told me that she was chatting from the laptop that she had bought for my mother. She was actually testing the internet connection.

She asked me if I could help her check the bandwidth by video-chatting. I was feeling relatively okay then and said okay. We got connected over poor quality 'broadband' at their end. I saw my cousins huddled together around the computer.

We couldn't really 'talk' to each other thanks to the connection. And there was a whole lot of noise coming from their end. Too many people - three cousins, my sister, my parents, and my wailing niece - and too many conversations going on at the same time. A nightmare for a noise-conscious, ADD-esque, social phobic person like me. I tried working some humor, but my tastes of humor were not quite up to the tastes of my family - innuendos don't work, and any humor that I used came through as heavy sharp-toothed sarcasm, which doesn't really work with my family, except for a few uncles.

So, it was a less than memorable experience and I had to finally make an excuse of having to 'make' my dinner to get out of it. This made me so acutely aware of how much of a social misfit I will be if I ever dared to visit my family as I know it.

The wonderful world of online relationships

It has become a ritual these days. Every evening, after work/rehearsals/gigs, after reaching home, I log on to the internet and to SilverDaddies.com, where I participate in chatting in a chat room - yes, it is so '90s and early 2000s to be in a chat room, I know. There, I meet my friends from all over the world, crack jokes, pull legs, and of course, get better in the act of seduction.

SilverDaddies.com and this chat room, where I had met Vinokur in 2007, has once again become the place to meet quality men. Every other day, I stumble on to men with whom I establish varying degrees of friendship. Some last just the length of a casual chat, some go on to other intsant messaging/chat platform, and some meander into furious e-mailing back and forth.

In the past 6 months or so, I have acquired at least 5 such friends, two of whom I have become very close to. One of them, a guy from San Rafael California, has become an integral part of my routine - he's the guy that I wrote about in my blog post about the Federal Government of the United States denying visa to his Indian boyfriend. I need to hear from him daily to know that he's alright and relatively positive about his future.

Another friend that I met there, a professor of French literature from Paris, is visiting Mumbai for Christmas and New Year's. We have already decided on meeting up for at least a couple of dates during the time he's here. I try to keep in touch with daily over Yahoo messenger. He is a poet and sends me across some poems that he has written. I comment on them and he replies to them etc.

And then there are Scots working in Yemen, Canadians retiring from public service, and yankees pretty much doing nothing ,-). I meet such a plethora of interesting, charming men. I like doing this to know more about people from other countries and cultures - it's almost like traveling without spending a rupee. Whatever it is, it is worth the effort!

Parties are not my kinda thing anymore

There was a time, a couple or years or so back, when I had a good time at parties -- especially gay parties. Of course, after coming to Mumbai, I was initiated to GB parties by a friend -- who himself is a surgeon, but is closeted. I had some acquaintances to talk to and things to talk about -- about my career as a surgeon, about my aspirations as a musician, about my wonderful relationship with Vinokur etc.

Things have changed much since then. In the last few parties or so, I have had the worst experiences of my life. I would stumble in, usually with a heartful of expectations, and find no one interesting. Soon, I'd be drinking down drinks while checking out stuff on the internet on my mobile. There might even be good cricket/football matches that I had left at home, the scores of which I would be checking furiously. No one would come talk to me -- of course, I wouldn't find anybody interesting to talk to too.

Occassionally, there would be a familiar face in the crowd, someone that I knew but wasn't close enough to hold a conversation with. I would usually go up to them and greet them and whine about the boring party. If there people who I knew better, I'd want to strike up a conversation with them, but they would need to cater to his other friends sooner than later. Finally, I'd be all alone with my mobile phone.

People have asked on occasions whom I was messaging. Of course, when I was in a relationship with Vinokur, I'd have been communicating with him in one way or the other. But now, I have no specific person to communicate with. So I'd be spending time on Twitter and FaceBook.

So what has changed? I have grown old, I have thrown away my surgical career, I've put on weight and grown hair all over, I have fallen out of my 'unbreakable' relationship with Vinokur, I am cagey with my mind full of insecurities, and my social phobia. But more importantly, is it a case of me changing as a person? From being a converted extrovert back to an introvert?

I don't know, but parties aren't my kinda thing anymore! Give me loneliness, give me internet, give me sport on television. I'm happy that way. Oh, I'm game for one-on-one dates still.

Are you a male or a female

I was about to go hit the sack, when I jittered on to this cool web application through this blog. It tells you the odds of being a male or a female based on your browser cache. Pretty cool, ain't it?

My results were kinda revealing.

Likelihood of Kris being FEMALE is 60%
Likelihood of Kris being MALE is 40%

Okay, okay. It shows that I am a fag!

You can check your probabilities out here. (This works tardily on IE. Better jump to Firefox/Opera)

Interesting blogs and more

I have been doing a lot of blog-hopping and I stumbled on to a few interesting posts I would like my readers to take a look at.

• Joel Derfner: This blog is what inspired me to start blogging in the first place as is evident here. His latest post is so ironically true.
  
• Aamir Khan: I like the way he writes and stuff. The design is also neat. But, can you believe that he wants us to log on to his website with username and password to post in a comment? Do you agree to this shoddy stand?
  
• Amitabh Bacchan: This latest post about one of his fans complaining (bitching really) about him and his team of 'stars' not fulfilling 'promises' is very interesting. And you can see how the Big B annoys even his fans by using uppercase for a couple of lines. Curiously enough, my comment criticising this has not been published on the page!
  
• Jabberwock: You should read this post about the reaction from the Indian public to Bindra's gold. Remember the TOI comments about the repeal for section 377. This is even worse!
  
• Miscellaneous blogs: Very interesting posts about straight relationships
  • Mirror Cracked - by Nikhil Kumar - Read post
    
  • Blessed Curse by Oxymoronic - Read post

Believe it or not folks, I have got a couple of offers from other sites/blogs to write there. I really don't have a friggin' clue as to why people would want me on SiliconIndia.com or Mutiny.in. Especially in the former as I may find CEOs of tech corportations like Intel reading my posts about why the Greek soccer team should be awarded gold in the Olympics just because of their sex appeal.

So, do all of the 8* readers approve of this significant step for the GayKind?

(*as assessed on the 14th of August. Miss Quested's extensive commenting gave her/him/it a status of 1.78 readers which was rounded up to 2 in the final standings.)