Wreck Tangle

Notes To Blessy

2011-09-16T14:36:00.002+05:30

This is not a review in its truest sense. It's a rant, and a jolly good one.

I had been hearing about ‘Pranayam,’ the sixth movie by Blessy, the so called successor and former disciple of Padmarajan for quite some time. It starred Mohanlal, Anupam Kher and Jayaprada. It was supposed to be a mature love story and was much talked about online.

Blessy’s first film, Kaazcha, had been excellent. It was a very impressive debut for someone who had worked with Padmarajan, and was carrying a heavy mantle. The stories of Blessy’s struggle to make the film could have been out of a movie themselves. It was also, finally, the film that led me to concede the talents of Mammootty to my nudging Mammootty-fan friends.

Much to my delight, he had followed this up with Mohanlal playing a middle aged man getting Alzheimer's in Thanmatra. A good, if melodramatic and sluggish film, that was supposed to have suffered from many cuts. This is what I thought of it, when it released.

He followed this up with Palunku and Calcutta News, both of which I haven’t watched. Maybe because they didn’t have Mohanlal in them, but I did catch Bhramaram, which I loved. It was not a great movie, and the storyline needed a flyover of props, but it was a very technically slick film. The camera work and editing in the mountain terrain scenes, and the crazy truck drive to the cliff were unlike I had ever seen in Malayalam movies before. I liked it, my Mom did not.

And then came Pranayam.

I looked forward to watching the movie when I visited Kerala for Onam, especially considering the same movie here would have cost me a thousand bucks, as opposed to INR 50 for a ticket and hot bajjis back home. I was curious about what Blessy could pull off with the star cast and the storyline that was being talked about. So I grabbed the first opportunity to watch it when I got back home, and settled in at Kairali theatre, Thrissur, to watch the movie.

Something about the film put me off right at the start. The spelling mistake in the Statutory Warning - ‘Were Helmet’ - jarred. I know this is anal, but it was an indicator of what fundamentally kills this film. The lack of attention to detail, a general tackiness, and an irritating pace and editing that never really let’s you settle into either the flashback or the current storyline.

I mean you hire a good actor like Anupam Kher, he should be an asset to your film, not a slightly malfunctioning robot that has its face right, but the audio circuit is shot. And honestly, he puts in a decent performance, despite the shoddy dubbing.

Then you have the gelf boy son. I have always maintained that Malayali actors are the worst dressed people that appear in public life. But surely, they are still not all gelled hair slicked back, pot belly in tight tee shirt, smoking 555, stressed out, sweating people anymore. In fact, most of the people I know in that age group, with that income level are normally dressed and smoke Marlboros. To top this off, the acting by Anoop Menon is not good enough to be in a film with such ambitions. The same goes for the actor who plays his wife and fills in the evil daughter-in-law slot.

Blessy does take a few subtle hints at other stuff, like the budding sexuality of Anupam Kher’s granddaughter, and then goes and ruins it by casting an extremely irritating boy opposite her. The same goes for the scenes with Mohanlal in the shower, supposedly naked, and Jayaprada giving him a bath. Or the rain scene, where Jayaprada takes her sari pallu and wraps it over Mohanlal’s head. I understand what Blessy is trying to bring out here, but honestly, there have to be other, less embarrassing ways to do this.

I haven’t read any reviews, but did anyone else think the CGI butterflies were a tad cheap and cyber-cafe produced? Like an ad for a local detergent. Also, Blessy goes to great lengths to reproduce an old railway station, and then promptly dresses up the young, footballing Anupam Kher of the 60s in the latest Manchester United jersey.

The tacky flashbacks are interspersed with slow, long, bleak scenes where Mohanlal could be auditioning for Morpheus, Anupam Kher had the robot problem again, and Jayaprada just cried. At least when Mohanlal is in the frame, there is some relief. He plays the character with aplomb, and would have been memorable, except for the stodgy dialogue, or the (oh god I can’t bear to say this) Leonard Cohen songs.

Yes there are Leonard Cohen songs in this movie, they play in the background, or are quoted by Mohanlal, and in one scene (which I actually loved) he sings “I’m Your Man” in a nightclub. But they fit as much in this movie, as the A-On Manchester United Jersey in a 60s lovescene. I guess it doesn’t help, that on the movie’s official website, Cohen is spelt with a ‘k’ and an ‘a.’ The site is as much a symbol of the flaws of this movie, as the movie itself.

To top off the Morpheus act, we are frequently sermonized about the vows of the husband and wife. Quotes from the Bible to this effect are repeated over and over again by gawky teens who play young AK and JP.

If you really are in the mood to watch a great film, that speaks about confronting romance late in life, rediscovering past relationships and football - go watch Looking For Eric.

Dear Blessy, you on the other hand, pull out your DVD collection and please watch this scene from Namukku Paarkaan Munthiri Thoppukal. Thank you.

The Greatest Game I Never Saw

2011-08-17T16:22:00.001+05:30

It is not easy, being a genuine football fan in India. While support of the sport has increased greatly, it is too early to still have any meaningful conversations with any of the supporters, with loyalties swapping like wives and people follow players, rather than teams. Fernando Torres and Carlos Tevez come to mind.

I support Manchester United and you might laugh, but trust me it’s not easy. All the serious football fans hate you for some reason or the other, and the rest of the herd just want to have inane conversations about how we should sell Berbatov and buy Sneijder. One of my most satisfying moments was when I swerved the support of my younger brother, an early Gerrard fan, towards Manchester when we were still growing up. Him, I can talk to.

One might think, at least there is good TV, for free! ESPNStar are excellent in their coverage of the Barclays Premier League of 6 teams. But if you happen to support Wolves, whom I have decided are my second team this season, then it’s not great. And of course, everyone misses the excellent John Dykes, and his witty handling of the panel and the presentation. Come back John, we miss you!

On the flip side, Champions League coverage is a different game altogether. While the game itself is telecast as seen across the world, the pre-game build up and analysis shows, and the panel of so called pundits are a farce. Joe Morrison is unpleasant and snide, making barbs about the rest of his co-hosts, who usually don’t react well. But who can blame him, if Carlton Palmer and John ‘Budgie’ Burridge flank you. I could have a rant about both of them for hours, but the least I can say is that they are a disgrace to football.

Here’s a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEADQDH_6Y

So in the middle of all the transfer rumours going wild pre-season and Sneijder’s continuing midfield ballet with Man Utd, news trickled in that India would be playing UAE in a world cup qualifier in Delhi. This was the return leg. In the previous game, India lost 2-0 to UAE, in a much-debated manner. Two red cards were dished out by the referee, who was under intense scrutiny during that period. But the overall sense was that India had done well, and the new, young team that the much-liked new coach, Armando Colaco had brought in, was showing promise.

Given the backdrop and the news coverage of the game, there was more than the usual interest in the game, and I was surprised to discover that on the day of the game, news reports were coming in that tickets were actually sold out. I had to do some quick checks to make sure I could get tickets at the venue, before I left home for the stadium, which was next to another historical sporting venue. It was more than an hour’s trip by train from where I lived.

I had only seen two live matches professional matches in my life. The first one was an India v PSV Eindhoven, in 1991, at Delhi. It was part of the Super Soccer event organized by the IFA. I was in the 5th standard, and my Dad, a die-hard cricket fan and player, surprised me by asking me to skip school to go watch this game. This was post Schillaci and Roger Milla in Italia 90, and I had a Donadoni poster on my wall. So I skipped school, and my Dad and I went to the game. I can’t remember much of it, and can’t seem to be able to find the scorecard online, but I think India lost 7-0. The second one was at Kochi, an FC Kochi v Mohun Bagan, a drab 0-0 draw that I slept through most of, thanks to a pre-Christmas hangover.

So this was an excellent opportunity to watch what could be a great game. I headed to the stadium early, so that I could get a ticket. The train was full of young kids, wearing BPL jerseys, though the Barcelona shirts outnumbered the rest of them put together. I asked a few who they supported and there was not a single Italian team in there. And only two Spanish teams, which shall go unnamed. The rest were all Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and, believe it or not, Man City fans. I even saw a kid with a Ballotelli shirt.

Walking up to a buzzing arena is always a great experience, and this one was no different. It was dusk and the floodlights were on. The sky was overcast and the place was crawling with people running around. Lot’s of cops, lots of cameras, lots of important looking people. I found the ticket counter and found out that the most expensive tickets, INR 300 (approx $6) were sold out. There were gallery tickets available, at INR 30 (approx $0.60). So I grabbed one of those, bought a bottle of water, and headed to the gate.

It was all downhill from there. With a clap of thunder and lightning, like a starting whistle, the skies opened up and one hell of a downpour kicked off. Everyone ran for cover, but it was no point. It only took a few seconds to get drenched, despite the fact that I had found cover under a police tower. The cop on the tower joined me as well, with his gun and everything.

There was no point hanging about as there was no sign of the rain stopping, so said goodbye to the cop, who sympathetically smiled, and ran for it. The queue was a mess; they had one cop for a whole gate, who was trying to control one hell of an angry and wet crowd, in the pouring rain. After spending about 30 miserable minutes listening to the announcements inside the stadium while waiting in queue, I finally reached the gate and the cop took one look at me and said I couldn’t go in. Apparently, it was because I was carrying a camera. Mobile phones with cameras were OK, just cameras were not. There was no place to leave stuff and the cop was not open to negotiation, so I had to leave.

It was quite a cold, wet and unbearably long train ride back home. And once I settled down in front of the TV to watch the end of the game, it turned out to have as much of a wash out as my evening. The ground, which has been in the news for being damaged by wedding parties held on it, was a scene out of The Damned United, with about 50% more water. The ball did not float, but that’s the about as much as can be said about the surface. India were still playing well though, and I could see why people thought there was promise in the team. The attacking down the wing was quick and effective, and the midfield was tough. Everyone seemed to want to be on the pitch. They managed to come from 2 goals down to equalize, and it was a fair result. After the game, Coach Colaco said he would stick around for longer and that he would also continue to focus on the youth players, and will give the senior players a chance to prove they deserved to be in the team at a camp to be held soon.

I look forward to being able to watch India play soon, it’s time we turned our attention inwards. In the meanwhile, Argentina is playing Venezuela at Kolkata on Sept 2nd, and word has it that Messi himself might grace the hallowed Bengal soil. I wouldn’t be surprised considering Oliver Kahn played his last game for Bayern here.

120,000 people turned up for that.

Messi might attract a little more attention.

Day 0

2011-08-15T17:03:00.000+05:30

After the rains, the vast expanse of mud in front of my fifth floor balcony was all that was left of a beautiful meadow that was there till a day ago. I used to love standing there, with a late Sunday morning cigarette and a cup of tea, watching people do the stupid shit they decide to do on holidays.

Fat people jogging, kids getting into trouble, two neighbouring dogs talking while the owners ignored each other. Security guards being a pain. As it is their right to do, apparently. All kids of unnecessary, righteous bullshit, that is supposed to be good for you.

And, as a backdrop to this madness, I had a wide, long green meadow, fringed in the distance, by mist covered trees. On rainy days, it was like waking up after a good night. An odd peacock would pierce the silence with its most irritating call. But that was OK.

Somewhere in the middle of the meadow, there was a hut, next to a little white temple with a red flag. The first time I saw it, I couldn’t believe it. It was like living in a cliché. As time went by, I started appreciating the whole set up a little more. I enjoyed watching a family live their life of hard work, creating life over and over again in their little patch of the meadow. Sunflowers, some dark, long leaved green thing, some cabbages.

At night, in the distance, you could see the lights and hear the sounds of Mandi village. The sounds were never too good – usually some 80s Bollywood Retro, on one of the many irritating radio channels where I lived. Or Akshay Kumar from the Khiladi era - that was a favourite.

It was like being God in Age of Empire.

Fittingly, there was a wall lined with barbed wire, between us in our high towers, and the serfs in their dirty little villages. We walked our dogs, they chased their hens.

It used to be a nice thing, a rainy day.

And then, we have today.

The world used to be a beautiful place. Pity it wont last.

Phoney Tales - A Story in Text Messages

2010-02-17T10:51:00.004+05:30

A few days ago, a little girl insisted that I tell her a story before she went to sleep. Nothing out of the ordinary with that, except that she and I happened to be in different parts of the world. I agreed to text her a bed time story, as long as I got an 'mmm' or an 'and then?' after every text message I sent.

This is that story, made up sms by sms. I've kept the original formatting - typos, lack of punctuation and all, and each para is a text message.

Once there was this girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Everything she looked at had more colour and more patterns than what anyone else could see.

She used to make tapestries and carpets and quilts like no one else could. But shed never sell them for money, just give them away.

So one day, the prime minister of the land came by her window and noticed the beautiful patterns she was making. Her curtains, her clothes were all unique and lovely.

So she asked the girl to come to the palace as she had a special job for her. The girl was excited but also scared, as the prime minister was known to be a tough taskmaster and cruel in her dealings.

On the appointed day, the girl went to the prime ministers palace. She was well received and given a room at the east end of the palace and told to wait for word. Later in the evening, the prime minister called her to her chambers and bade her to sit.

She told the girl that there was a grand fiesta coming soon, and she wanted her to design a wardrobe for the king. One unlike any she had ever made. She would be well rewarded for her work. Hearing this the girl was happy and promised to do her best.

The girl set to work as hard as she could. Putting material and designs
together in a frenzy. She cut and sewed and draped and frilled. She never let anyone near the room where she worked. Days passed and the fiesta grew nearer.

Finally the day arrived. The prime minister went upto her room in the east tower and asked to see the clothes. She refused. She said she had created a thing of great joy and it should only be seen first by the person it was meant for.

The prime minister, though sceptical, agreed. But the girl had one
condition. She knew the king was a powerful sorcerer and could grant almost any wish. She wanted a wish to be granted, and no other reward for her work.

On hearing this the prime minister was furious. How dare a mere serf like her demand such outrageous rewards. She would have her thrown to her death from that very tower.

But the girl refused to be cowed down. She stood firm and accepted the
death, but would not part with her perfect creation. You see only she knew the final knot that needed to be put in, to hold the ensemble together. Without it, all the work was useless.

The prime minister saw that she would not be moved from her demands and told her to wait while she checked with the king. Saying so she left.

She returned in the evening and instructed the girl to follow her with her creation. They walked through a maze of rooms, weaved through passages, wound around stairways, and climbed up trap doors. Until they were finally at the top of the north tower. The kings chambers.

The prime minister spoke a secret word into the keyhole and the doors swung open soundlessly. They walked into a gigantic room, filled with treasures of all kinds. At the end of the room, on a throne made of eagles wings sat the king.

The king was a small boy about 5 years old. But his eyes glowed purple, and his fair was white. He gestured to the prime minister to come forward and watched as the odd pair walked towards him, slowly, heads bent.

They stood before him wordlessly, while he gazed down at them from his
throne. He then spoke in a voice like windchimes-so young girl, you have a gift for me, and you expect a gift in return?

The girl spoke in a quivering voice. Yes your majesty. The king smiled and said her wish would be granted, only if he was happy with her gift.

The girl bowed low, and then with a flourish, pulled out of her bag an
ensemble the likes of which the world had never seen before and will never see again. The kings purple eyes glittered gold and his hair turned silver.

The eagle wings of his throne flapped and carried him down to where they stood. He asked the girl to complete the knot. The girl obeyed with quivering fingers and then offered the complete suit to her king. He snapped his fingers and the suit wrapped around him.

When the suit fell around him, and the cape unfurled, the king looked ten feet tall and ferocious and kind and handsome and brave. He watched his reflection in a pool of molten silver and a great peace came over him.

He turned to the girl and asked her to ask of him any wish, and if it was in his power it would be granted. The girl spoke her hearts desire and a darkness fell over the kings face. But a promise was a promise so he clapped his hands and a great light filled the hall and the girl's wish was granted.

In great joy the girl turned and ran from the hall. Never again would she be able to make the beautiful things she was known for. The land mourned that things of such beauty were lost to them forever. but she had finally got what she always wanted. She left the kingdom and was never heard from again.

You see, she was blind. She could never see what she was making. She just had a sense for it. Once she could see, she was happy, but she lost that sense forever.

अर्द्ध सत्य

2010-01-19T14:13:00.003+05:30

चक्रव्यूह में घुसने से पहले

कौन था मैं और कैसा था

यह मुझे याद ही न रहेगा

चक्रव्यूह में घुसने के बाद

मेरे और चक्रव्यूह के बीच

सिर्फ एक जानलेवा निकटता थी

इसका मुझे पता ही न चलेगा

चक्रव्यूह से निकलने के बाद

मैं मुक्त हो जाऊँ भले ही

फिर भी चक्रव्यूह की रचना में

फर्क ही न पड़ेगा

मरुँ या मारूँ

मारा जाऊँ या जान से मार दूं

इसका फैसला कभी न हो पायेगा

सोया हुआ आदमी जब

नीन्द से उठकर चलना शुरू करता है

तब सपनों का संसार उसे

दोबारा दिख ही न पायेगा

उस रोशनी में जो निमय की रोशनी है

सब कुछ समान होगा क्या?

एक पलड़े में नपुंसकता

एक पलड़े में पौरुष

और ठीक तराज़ू के कांटे पर

अर्द्ध सत्य.

Avial - Almost Famous

2009-05-07T16:31:00.006+05:30

Being a Malayali and sticking to your identity is not the easiest thing to do in our times. I have met far too many variances of the Mallu ‘type’ to actually state with any authority what the right type is.

There is the hardcore, brandy drinking, son of the soil type. He sneers at a world filled with pretentiousness, where the only sign of pretence might be a decent grasp of English, a leaning towards Hollywood films or women who are confident and self sufficient. He won’t like you if you are a Malayali who cannot discuss the UDF/LDF saga or the fact that you refuse to take a political stand or do not see every problem as a symbol of oppression. Every opportunity is taken to prove a point. A typical conversation about someone at work who is ‘too smart’ will usually end with “Avanu nyaan oru pani koduthu, enthe adutha kalli?” No one, but no one messes with him.

Then there is the crossover Mallu. He loves hip hop, wears the latest bling, probably has an expensive and intricate hairdo and is extremely embarrassed when his Mallu roots are identified. These types are found DJing pubs, being the popular guys at bars, usually with a very attractive crowd, filled with non-mallu people, to reassert their total abdication of their roots. They are mildly amusing, and usually young. They always bear the albatross of having a name that is so Malayali (Cijo, Thomaskutty, Krishnakumar) that they probably have an anglicized nickname.

And then there are the types who don’t really fit in anywhere. It is tempting to slot myself and some of my friends here, but then there will be a Mallu who will judge me on that, so I will leave the self-definition out. Basically, they are comfortable with their identity, and also with the fact that that very identity will probably have different effects at different points in time, in different places, with different people.

They are also guilty of falling into one of the above two (or any of the many other) categories of Mallus, depending on the situation. So they can treat fellow Malayalis with respect, caution or apathy – based on what is required. They are chameleons who can slide in and out of conversations without revealing their betrayal to Type 1 or their amused contempt for Type 2.

In a city, especially one like Bangalore, one comes across all these types very often. A few years back, the Mallu was seen as the typical immigrant, arriving in hordes, consuming the city’s resources and shrugging off snide remarks about the Mallu mafia. I think that argument has been more or less put to rest in Bangalore, through the sheer numbers that have made the city their home.

But despite that, I have always imagined a defensiveness in our manner, a furtiveness in our eyes, and an overt eagerness in our discussion of all things urban and Bangalore. I guess we all know that we have to work that much harder to be taken in by the people of this city, to be accepted as a citizen.

Now, to a city filled with Mallus of all types, comes Avial. This, I thought, would be an interesting spectacle. I was eager to go and watch them perform, not just because I love the music of Avial, but also to see what kind of a cross-section of my brethren the band would attract. In my discussions with friends before the show, we surmised that the place would be packed with Malayalis, in a kind of KKK demonstration of Malayali Power.

We went to the venue, sure we would get to hear some excellent music, and absolutely unsure of everything else. Le Rock was filled to capacity. “Only standing space,” the bouncer told us, which was fine. We squeezed in, got our beer, and waited for the show to begin.

I looked around and saw every single Mallu stereotype in there. There were the kids wearing Slayer and Lamb of God tees and screaming at the top of their lungs to (sigh) Creed and Marilyn Manson.

There were also guys straight from office, full sleeve shirts not tucked in, bags with laptops and the essential dog tag. They reminded me of the guys who always did well in college and took their final year projects seriously and probably could still explain the Carnot cycle (with graph) to anyone who cared. They looked out of place and never really got around to getting a single drink from the bar, but I was happy they were there. The music had made them move out of their comfort zone, and here they were, good job!

There were also many women, representing the female side of the spectrum. Many dressed in skimpy tops and well cultivated twangs, with piercings and tattoos, and many in Salwars and plaited hair, extremely freaked out by the crowd and hanging on to their mustached male escorts for life.

We downed the first of many beers of the evening and waited for the show to begin, and by the time the second round of pints were dwindling, Avial was ready to rock. There was a loud round of cheering, during which I caught many Malayalam words being shouted out.

Then there was the anticipatory hush, as everyone waited for the music to start. Tony, the lead singer, held the microphone, leaned forward, and said “Namaskaaram.”

That was it.

In that one moment, the Malayalis owned the pub. No more faking, no more protesting, no more complaining. They were there, there was a kick-ass rock band from Kerala on the stage, the lead singer had just addressed them in Malayalam and was about to start singing in it as well, and everything was just the way it was supposed to be.

All kinds of madness broke loose. The boys in the death metal tees, who till then sounded like they had escaped from a Fort Minor video, were waving their hands up in the air shouting “Adi poli aliyaaaa!” The old man with a white beard standing next to me screamed “Polikyadaaa!”

I could barely hear what my friends were saying to me. But I didn’t have to. These were guys with whom I have watched Roger Waters twice, Ozzy Osbourne, the Stones, Motherjane (another favourite) and many other Indian bands. Yet it was clear from the expressions on their faces – this was something else and it wasn’t just about the music.

I think it was more of a feeling of seeing change. As a Malayali, you are very used to the idea that back home, nothing is ever going to change. And then here was this band, excellent riffs, great tunes, good stage presence, rocking out like mad, in Malayalam! Something had happened.

It was also an opportunity where all the different types of Malayalis could let their defences down and be themselves. No need for fake bravado or fake accents, no need to hide with a hip crowd and hope no one picks out that one word you can never pronounce in a non-mallu manner. They were all there, they could all sing along, and what they wore and how they spoke and the jobs they did – none of it mattered.

There was also the enjoyment of watching the few bewildered non-Malayali faces in the crowd, trying to figure out just what the fuck was going on. We the Malayalis, had beaten them at their own game. Irrespective of what kind of Mallu we were, we had come, taken over the bar, rocked out in our language, and connected with the band, like many of them never had, and probably never would.

The band started with ‘Chekele’ and the crowd sang along. I don’t remember the exact order of the tracks. I think it was 'Aranda' next, followed by 'Arikuruka.' And for every track, the crowd sang along. That was another sign that most of the people there had not just come for the novelty. They had listened to this band, they had favourite songs, they had had discussions about the album, they were there as proper fans, and not just to make up the numbers.

After a few tracks, Tony leaned over the stage and asked “Enganey, Kollammo?” The crowd again did not let him down.

The band took a break, and we headed to the bar for a refill. One of my friends said that they had really a great business model with this idea. He said “I mean, wherever in the world you go, you will have an audience that will understand what you are singing, come long distances to watch you, connect with you, evangelize you and promote you. And you don’t even have to be a Big Band. There are Mallus everywhere, the audience is captive, the band just have to show up.”

This was true. Mallus were everywhere. This very scene could have played out in any city in India, and perhaps in many other cities around the world. This is not to say that the fact that they sing in Malayalam, excludes the rest of the world from their music – no. Their music is fantastic, and anyone anywhere should be able to enjoy it. It’s just that with the way the Mallus connect with the entire song, rather than just as a piece of music, gives them an edge over other traditional Indian Rock bands that sing in English.

I must confess I have heard of other bands that do an equally good job in their regional languages (The East India Company?) but haven’t had the opportunity to listen to any of them.

The mark of a great album is when you talk about it to your friends, and everyone has a different favourite song. My personal favourite is Karukara. Another friend loves Aadu Paambe, and yet another Ettam Pattu.

I have scoffed at people who have only heard Nada Nada and nothing else, and I have pushed them to discover the other songs on the album.

I have asked them to listen to Karukara with their eyes closed, and told them to imagine the rain that the music describes. I have explained the background of the audio samples from Doore Doore Oru Koodu Koottam (Jagathy Sreekumar telling kids to go to class) and Spadikam (Thilakan, the dreaded math teacher, insulting his own son in math class) used in the song Arikuruka.

Each of these songs, as well as the rest of the songs on the album, is exceptional in its own way. I am no rock critic, but I will say that I think this is the best produced rock album to come out of India.

When they began Karukara, Tony held up his hands and said "Respect, respect - Kavalam." I'm not sure how many of the people in the crowd understood what he meant. One of my friends who studied in a Malayalam medium school, held up his pint of beer to me, and said in a mix of happiness and awe – “Do you think Kavalam ever imagined his song being performed here, like this, by them?” No. Of course he hadn’t. Neither had we. But it was great, and it sounded right and that’s all that mattered.

(~~Here is the link to the original - last track on the page)~~

(Here is the link to the original - first and second track on the page)

They ended predictably with Nada Nada. At the end of the show, to the ususal chants of “We want more” Tony replied with a rhyming chant of “We don’t have.” Which was true. They had performed every single track on the album, and they had done extremely well. The lead guitar was exceptional as always, with Rex wielding his axe to perfection. There was a six string bass guitar played with elan by ~~Binoy~~ Binny, who seemed to be so at ease and cool and collected, that sometimes it looked like he wasn’t even in the same room. Everything just came together really well.

Naresh Kamath who had played bass on the CD was not present, and I do not know if he is still with the band. The same goes for Anandraj Benjamin Paul, who originally sang Nada Nada and others.

Once the show was over, someone announced that we could buy CDs and get them autographed by the band. We rushed at the opportunity. When we got all the way to where they were standing, we realized that there were no markers to sign the CDs with. So I ran down and out of the bar, and bought a couple of permanent markers, and ran back.

Rex was obviously tired, but he was all smiles and very soft-spoken. I got one CD signed for myself, and one for my Mom, who also loves their songs. When I told him that, he asked for her name, and actually wrote “Dear _____ Aunty, thanks for the support” on the CD! For all the exceptional guitar play he had just demonstrated, he was incredibly grounded and accommodating. ~~Bijoy~~ Binny had exactly the same expression when asked for an autograph, as he had when he was playing. He didn’t say a word. Just smiled and signed the CD and handed it back, and went back to packing his stuff up.

We shook their hands some more, and then decided to find Tony, who seemed to have disappeared. We asked the waiters, and said we needed autographs, and showed them the signed CDs. They pointed us to a back door that led to a staircase, which in turn took us to a small open space, like a private alley, next to the building in which the bar was. A couple of people were hanging around, talking and smoking and drinking beer. They looked like they were with the band.

At the end of the alley, Tony stood talking to Vasundhara Das and some two or three other dudes. One of them was even wearing a hat! We stood behind them for a few seconds, and then one of my friends, AK, asked Tony for an autograph. Without turning around, he waved us back and said, “Wait a second” and continued talking to Vasundhara Das.

Now we weren’t sure what to do. Here was the guy having what looked like a deep and involved conversation with Ms Das and her friends, about some band and their music. There was some talk of lyrics and production, and this and that. And we stood there, squirming slightly, unsure of whether to up and walk away, or wait a while to get the damn signature on the CD.

A few minutes later, the guy with the hat, pointed to us and mumbled something to Tony, which sounded to us like “They’re waiting, maybe you want to…”

He shook his head and said “Yeah that’s OK, let them wait.”

At this, my friends indicated that they’d like to leave. I shook my head and stayed put. I wanted to see how long they would go on and ignore us. We stood there like idiots for about 5 minutes more, when Ms Das again seemed to tell Tony that maybe he should sign the CDs. Again he refused.

That was it. We turned around and left.

On the road, just outside the bar, some of us lit cigarettes, others drank water. Somehow, the euphoria of fandom, and the excitement of having seen an excellent show were dying out.

Someone said “What the fuck man!”

Someone else said “We are not groupies, we are Band Aids!” and everyone laughed. Ms Penny Lane’s words eased the mood up.

“Or maybe be we should have said we are from Creem magazine.”

It’s amazing how a movie we all loved, seemed to provide the perfect words to what we all were feeling just then. We had just been told to go back to the ramp with the other girls.

I turned around and looked at everyone.

“Didn’t we just watch a good show?”

Everyone agreed that we had.

“And won’t we continue to support the band, despite what just happened?”

Everyone agreed we would.

“So what the fuck man. Tony is a Mallu and he is the lead singer. If he didn’t act like an asshole, I would have been astounded. It would have been an insult to Malludom. Of all the people we have to have the lead singer pull rock star on us. It’s kind of fitting, though I don’t know how to explain it better.”

Everyone agreed to that as well.

So we had watched a great show, we had got the autographed CDs from half the band, we had been part of a euphoric crowd – I guess one can’t ask for more from one evening.

It probably would turn into an industry of cool, but hey we could enjoy it while it lasted.

It was our first show as true fans, and I think we did pretty well.

A Sign of the Times

2009-02-16T18:53:00.003+05:30

A single line from a report in the TOI, 15th Feb, 2009, Bangalore Edition, becomes an indicator of what was going on the city.

A report on a film producer getting hurt while trying to confront shopkeepers selling pirated VCD/DVDs, contains the line -

"The Ulsoorgate police, who were on Valentine's Day duty there, arrived and there was a mild lathicharge to disperse the crowd."

Looks like the cops have another day to mark on their calendars after December 6th for special duty.

Here's the (otherwise unremarkable) article.

Afterthought: What's a mild lathicharge?

Pink it's my favorite crayon, yeah

2009-02-10T15:02:00.003+05:30

(OK. So I succumbed to the cliche and picked the corniest line out of that Aerosmith song, but nothing else came to mind when I thought Pink.)

Level 16 is from Hell

2009-01-28T19:40:00.002+05:30

Or why its called a CrackBerry.

One addict.

One needs attention (see the comments).

My High Score is 14750 by the way, and trust me, level 16 IS from hell.

Jokes I Make Up So I Can Laugh Alone - 47

2009-01-19T11:14:00.003+05:30

Marry you Anna?

LOL.

Slumdog Millionaire, among other things

2009-01-15T12:00:00.008+05:30

[There are some descriptions of scenes in this post, and possible spoilers.]

I am going to be nit picky here, very nit picky. And there are many reasons why I am going to be nit picky. All the hype that surrounded the film is not one of the reasons though.

Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy are one big reason.

Vikas Swarup is another big reason.

And I am generally a very nit picky kind of person, especially with films. That's a third reason.

Let's talk about the film first.

Slumdog Millionaire was barely OK. The only thing that caught my attention (sporadically) was the camerawork. Danny Boy (sorry I couldn't resist dropping the 'le') takes the usual, unremarkable path of trying to catch the contrasts, the explosion of colours, the scale of the chasm that seems to divide everything in India, and succeeds. There is nothing unexpected here, but the expected bit was well executed. I can bet Meera Nair is pretty pissed with him, because when she finally makes Shantaram, the Golden Globe people will just say - "Oh another Slumdog type film, I'll pass, I had that last year."

Think of the storyline as a clothesline. Its nice and taut and ready to be loaded. Then proceed to hang a different bit of your wardrobe, wet and dripping with soap suds, on the line, one by one. Don't leave out your undies, jeans, jackets, sweaters, socks, hankies, trousers or anything else. Watch what happens to the line. The same thing happens to the story.

I must digress here, before carrying on about the plot, to talk about Vikas Swarup. I know nothing about him, except what's on Wikipedia. I have not read Q n A, though Wiki tells me it's won many awards. Good for him. However, I happened to chance upon a copy of his second book - Six Suspects - on a recent trip to Kerala, where all I had was time. Intrigued by all the noise, I picked up the book and proceeded to read it for 2 hours straight, in the salubrious environment o a quiet rubber estate.

It was a total piece of crap. I mean I thought Chetan Bhagat was the worst thing ever that could happen to IWIE, but Mr Swarup, you got me there. The first thing that struck me about the book, was the desperation to make a quick buck and cash in on all the Slumdog fame, before people caught on to the fact that his writing was crap. The books is like a raft built by armless chimpanzees on a moonless night, with no tools whatsoever, except a giant stapler. One of the characters, called Larry Page, speaks only in what can be described as "Americanisms."

While reading the dialogue that this Larry Page mouths, I visualized Swarup calling up some call centre trainer, who his son referred to him and telling him "Haan bhai! thode yeh America walley jo commonly use karte hain na, day to day conversation mein, woh walley phrases zara batana. Kitab likh raha hoon uske bare mein, jaldi batao nahin toh publisher samajh jaayega ki mein fraud hoon."

Anyway, here is review of the book and here is another one. Quite simply - stay away!

I don't know if QnA was as bad as this, but I am definitely not going near it. More importantly, and this is conjecture on my part, if it is anything like Six Suspects, I can imagine how difficult it must have been to just make it coherent enough for a film.

The dialogue in the movie is atrocious. Stuff like "it is written," "it is destiny" is smattered all over the movie, which seems to indicate to me that ole Danny Boy (I honestly can't resist) was trying to make some philosophical point about India and its attitude and its culture and all that milieu crap.

The acting is pretty bad as well. The whole Irfan Khan (I refuse to spell it with multiple R's or F's or whatever they are) Saurabh Shukla pairing is embarrassingly bad, nothing is right about the scenes where they are together. And the painful dialogue makes it worse. Dev Patel walks around looking like he swallowed a marble and is in need of some Heimlich. The dude who plays Salim reminded me of a Michael Jackson mime gone wrong. Anil Kapoor and Freida Pinto, just about got it right, thank God for that.

The kids however, do an awesome job. Unselfconscious and with sparkling eyes, the part of the movie which they occupy, where everyone speaks in Hindi and Danny Boy is not trying to create an Asian Paints color catlogue, is very watchable. As always, the grown ups came along and ruined it all.

I also liked the bit where the kids grow up while they are rolling down a slope after falling off a train, it was like a tribute to all the Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun movies, where he grows up while running down the railway track. However, his choice of scenes for the AB montage that is used frequently in the movie also surprised me. I got the impression he was trying to emphasize the senselessness of Bollywood through that. Nothing wrong with that, except I wish he hadn't picked AB for it, especially the scene with the prosthetic leg. I am a sucker for Amitabh.

The music adds tempo to the movie, though I have no clue how it sounds in isolation. It's probably one of those typical Rahman sets, where the most unexpected track grows on you, after you randomly put the CD in after 8 months of buying it. I can't really say anything good or bad about it.

The plot holes are a plenty.

What was that whole call centre scene about? How did he find his brother's number from a UK telephone directory? Or better still, which gangster has his name and mobile number registered and answers the phone when some random number calls? What did the call centre have to do with the TV show?

Why didn't he know who was on the 1000 rupee note? In Agra he handles enough 1000 rupee notes to know them by touch.

How did he know the kid painted in blue was Rama? It could have been Krishna, Shiva or any of the other zillion Indian gods, painted forever in blue by Amar Chitra Katha.

What is the exact translation of Slumdog? How is it used in day to day language?

Salim dies and says "God is great" or "Life is beautiful" or some other inane shit. Why? What was Danny Boy trying to do? If he had made the whole movie in Hindi, a lot might have been better.

Danny Boy-le made Trainspotting. I have the poster in my room and the book. Hell, I discovered Irvine Welsh after that. He made The Beach, I have the book and the DVD, and the dream of going to Maya Bay. He made 28 days later, which was a fun zombie flick.

And then he made Slumdog.

It's while we were discussing this filmography and how he could have done something like this, was when a thought occurred to me. We, as Indians, may not react to the movie as westerners do. We live here, we've seen all this before. Anurag Kashyap and Ram Gopal Varma, even Rohan Sippy in Bluffmaster have shot Mumbai like never before, and there really is nothing new in Danny Boy's lens.

A lot of my friends have a problem with the poverty and the slums and the kind of environment shown in Slumdog, I don't. If one is making a story about a slum, one can't set it in Hiranandani Complex. And I don't really think Danny Boy was thinking like the Japanese tourist in Munna Bhai (Poor people, hungry people). He wanted to make a movie about a kid from a slum and he went and made it on location, good for him.

Obviously, I cannot imagine what it is that attracted such attention and praise to this film, because fundamentally it is a bad film. Whether it is a western sensibility, or their never having seen anything like this before, or the music, or the really stupid Jai Ho dance at the end, I have no clue.

But still, I would encourage you to download it and watch it, spending money on the DVD would be a mistake. It definitely leads to some interesting conversations, and you might end up analyzing why you like the films you do, and why they like the films they do.

Me? I'm just a The Big Lebowski fan.

Orkut Gems

2009-01-13T12:50:00.002+05:30

My favourite post from a list of Orkut Gems by The Not So Talkative Man.

passions: to move ahead

sports: chess

activities: dancing nd painting

books: arabian night

music: sad nd romantic

tv shows: kaun banega crorepati

movies: ddlj

cuisines: amit nd nidhi

Thanks Fly You Fools for pointing this out.

The Fall Guy

2009-01-07T21:24:00.004+05:30

At a seminar about “Emerging Jobs in Advertising in the New Economic Scenario” I met this guy who works for a leading agency. I asked him what he did and he said he was on the video production side of it, which was as vague as it gets. There was something intriguing about him - the way he moved, the way he held things - and I felt that I had to find out more about him, but he walked away with a cellphone to his ear.

I saw him again at the bar after the talks were over and went over for another chat. I grabbed the bar stool near his, as he poured his beer into his mug. As I watched him, I got this feeling that there was something vaguely familiar about what I was watching, like a déjà vu but milder.

I ordered a beer for myself and then turned around to face him.

“Hi again!”

“Hey, hi, cheers mate. To long boring seminars and free booze.”

We clinked glasses and then started talking about the industry in general, Cannes, creatives being stolen, who deserved what, and where exactly they deserved it and so on.

While we talked, I continued to watch him pour drinks for himself and someone else who walked over to the bar now and then. I watched him put peanuts in a bowl and pass them along to a friend, and every time he did something like this, the same faint déjà vu returned.

Finally, once we were through with the usual stories, I asked him again – “What exactly do you do for Z agency?”

“I don’t work for them exclusively” he said, “I’m a consultant, or to be specific, more of a specialist. Like Stallone in that movie?”

“So you blow up things?” I asked laughingly.

“Sometimes.”

I looked at him intently and he stared back with a half drunken smile.

“I’m the Fall Guy,” he said.

“A Fall Guy? You are a professional scapegoat? “

He laughed a loud silly laugh and I felt instantly stupid. “Of course, you mean you are a stuntman?”

He shook his head and turned around to grab another bottle of beer.

“I’m not a fall guy, I am THE fall guy.”

I stared at him, feeling mindnumbingly stupid.

“Watch me,” he said and proceeded to pour the beer into the mug, and the same feeling returned as I watched the amber fluid swirl in. He turned around and smirked a self satisfied smirk at me.

“Get it?”

I shook my head. He grunted and picked up a packet of peanuts and opened it.

Then he set three bowls on the bar counter, and paused.

I was watching with all the rapt attention of a 4 year old at his first magic show.

He then started to pour out the peanuts into the three bowls, with a running commentary -

“Salty Nuts ab teen flavour mein –

Salty

Extra salty

Aur - Salt dhamakaaaaa!”

He set the empty packet down.

All the while he had been looking at me. Never once did he look down at the bowls. And all three bowls had beautiful, perfectly formed little hillocks of nuts in them. If someone had counted them, I am pretty sure the number of nuts in each bowl = total nuts/3.

Then I got it!

“So you’re the guy who makes things fall so perfectly in ads?”

He smiled and did a little mock bow, and then downed his glass of beer.

No wonder there was this faint déjà vu when he was moving things around – I had seen the same perfect, almost divine movements so many times in so many ads.

Whether it was chocolate chips raining on cookies, or shampoo falling in a palm, from perfect lather to spraying fruit drinks, from detergent into a bucket to coins into piggy bank – he made them all fall and that too in complete harmony of motion, like a kinetic energy symphony.

I was overwhelmed to be in the presence of such greatness.

“Can I shake your hand?” I asked him timidly.

“Shake the left one pal, the right one I need for a textile ad tomorrow. Merino wool premium suiting – if the fall doesn’t match the fall, I’m going to be in trouble.”

I shook his left hand, downed my beer and rushed home to tell my family about my encounter with fame.

[DISCLAIMER (Which I thought I wouldn't have to make, but multiple emails force me to) - This is Fiction. I cannot point you in the right direction if you want a similar job, if such a job exists. Thanks.]

2008-12-17T12:32:00.001+05:30

They say you can see everyone from the World if you stand at Times Square long enough.

Well, you can see everyone from Kerala if you stand at Madiwala long enough.

Baby Talk - II

2008-12-11T20:18:00.002+05:30

In continuation to Baby Talk

If you walk into a train, an aeroplane or even an elevator containing babies, you have successfully walked into a disaster zone. I am pretty sure this is true for most people. I mean, I have seen the looks on the faces of the people who are consigned to having a seat next to, in front of, behind or in close proximity to babies and their parents. A resigned sigh meets a drooping of the shoulders meets a searching, helpless glance at the stewardess to help you meets a predatory look around for any other seat that might offer refuge.

If they are slightly more advanced along the chronology of babydom, then they are also bound to be pesky and armed with seemingly innocuous yet deadly toys, that they put to innovative uses. There are enough funny movies and TV shows that have used this premise to very good effect.

But they have always focussed on the fact that babies are noisy, unpredictable and messy. And their parents are either too tired to care or too enamoured with the whole thing to realize the trauma that they are helping spread. And they have an excuse no one can fight with anyway so what the heck.

But the point that has never been covered in these portrayals is the ease with which this potentially explosive situation can be diverted in your direction by the parents. And in almost all cases, the parents seem to have an instinct that leads them to pick a person from an entire crowd who is the worst at handling this stuff.

Consider this recent situation.

I enter a train, walk through the passage looking for my berth, and find, to my dismay, that not only is it occupied by a young lady with a baby, the remaining occupants are –

- Giggly and loud trainee nurses from Mavelikara – 2 no;s

- Domineering and loud old lady from Kottayam – 1 no;s

- Young, eager to please, earnest accountant from Cochin going to interview with IBM – 1 no;s

Shit.

I assessed the situation. Silence fell on compartment. It was like the soothsayer of doom had just filled their respective doorways with his fell shadow.

I indicated with my finger (like The Godfather picked fruit) that mine was the lower berth and I would like to place my bag, sit down and wait for the impending disaster. People shuffled around, space was created.

Before I could sit, the young (and pretty) mom stood up, smiled at me and started to begin a sentence.

“Yes, you can have the lower berth. No, it’s perfectly OK. No problem.”

My pre-emption was spot on. She seemed taken aback, then thanked me and went back to making baby dance on the foldable table between the windows. The rest of the occupants went back to watching this particular dance like it was Salma Hayek dancing to After Dark by Tito and the Tarantulas.

Phew. Now all I had to do was pull out my book, my music, my noise-cancellation (thank you, Mr. Sennheiser) headphones and try to do a Mystique and merge with the hospital blue of the seats.

The train sped on, the night sky flew by, the moon switched between the left window and the right, smells wafted in and out, my music filled my head, with thoughts of the biriyani in my bag and the ideas in my book flitting in and out.

Peace reigned.

Then precipitation reigned. And the rain came down.

Windows were banged shut, a sudden flurry of activity spurted and died like chills down the spine of the train.

Then my music player died on me. Now I was in trouble.

I renewed my focus on the book like my life depended on it, but it was no use. I could hear them now and they knew I could hear them. There was a stillness filled with anticipation, like the quiet of the flags fluttering before a war began.

Then the baby began to cry.

This was it, here it came.

Mommy tried to pacify baby but no tricks worked. The two girls, the lady and the man tried their tricks – no go. The onus was clearly on me now. I could feel the expectant eyes burning into the side of my neck. I resolutely refused to be pulled in.

Then Mommy says, in a voice loud enough for the engine driver to hear it “Baby, stop crying, or that serious uncle there, reading his book, will get angry at you and at Mommy.” And she sat back and baby and Mommy stared at me like I was about to eat them up.

I mean what the fuck?

Of course I had heard it. She had even pointed at me, I saw that out of the corner of my eye. Multiple strategies raced each other through my head. Ignore it. Turn and smile and get back to your book. Explain to baby that I would not get angry at all (Ha!). Stand up and do the dance to entertain baby.

Obviously all useless.

So I looked up at the baby and mom. The rest of them looked back at me expectantly.

“I’m going to eat my biriyani now.”

OK it might seem a little stupid now, and even I don’t know why I said that, but it seemed to work. Baby quieted down, possibly amazed at the knowledge that this thing there was actually alive and not a part of the train. Mommy gave me a weird little smile, the rain stopped and windows opened again.

I climbed up to the relative safety of my top berth, ate my biriyani, stared down at baby like a vulture now and then and went back to my book.

When I woke up the next morning they were all gone.

The Way You Make Me Feel

2008-12-02T17:52:00.002+05:30

I really did not want to write this.

Better people have done a better job of this. People who have lived in and loved Mumbai. People who heard the explosions from their homes. People who had friends stuck inside, and some who have lost loved ones. People who have been mocked too many times with words like resilient. Mumbaikars.

I have been to Mumbai all of three times. Every time I was there, I loved every bit of it. I drank at Leos and walked to Haj Ali and ate at Bade Miyan’s and all that. I stayed at the Trident and the Taj and felt like royalty. I took a hundred pictures of the Gateway of India. I made my cabbie drive up and down in front of (what he claimed was) Amitabh Bachchan’s house. I went to Bandstand and tried to think of all the movies that must have been shot there. I watched Roger Waters’ second show in India there, and it was mindblowing.

But all that hardly qualifies me to write anything about the only true city in India. I wish it had not happened, and I wish it never happens again. I hope there is some kind of awakening that this causes, and that ivory towers come crashing down to mix with the grime of the local trains.

The cynic in me says that nothing will happen, and this time, the eternal optimist hidden away somewhere in my head, despite all that goes on, seems to have been silenced.

So, as I said, I did not want to write about this.

However, Achuthananthan made me do it. He also made me feel sick to my guts about being a Malayali.

And then Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi pulled some shit. And RGV turns up in the unlikeliest of places, and then keeps turning up on TV screens, non-stop.

Every single politician seems to have discovered a self-destruct button. I hope this is a consistent trend. I hope it’s a biological weapon. Maybe there is a new brain bug that the terrorists dispersed, that feeds off sick, corrupt, callous political minds. I am glad they are being exposed. I am glad something has stabbed the portraits of the Dorian Grays around us.

But the actual expose was of the professional voyeurs themselves.

IBN started off with blood spots on their ticker.

Barkha Dutt mouthed “tell that bitch to shut up” at Nidhi Razdan and was caught on air.

Multiple variations of “how do you feel?” were tossed around.

I love that Italian chef for slapping away a microphone while he was leaving with his baby.

Headlines Today had a reaction from some Ambika Pillai, Celebrity Hairdresser on the Achuthananthan issue. I guess they couldn’t find any other Malayalis willing to expose themselves at such short notice.

India TV (my personal favourite) produced a rescued hostage that no one else had heard of. The interview was surreal –

Journo –“Acha bataiye, aap kahan the, kaise bache.”

Witness – “Dekhiye, hum to bach ke nikal gaye the, aur ghar jaa rahe the, phir humne socha, aap ke pass to kaafi saare sawal honge, unka jawab dekar ghar chale jaate hain.”

Later in the interview –

Journo – “Toh khaane ke liye aapne kya kiya.”

Witness – “Dekhiye, ab aise time par agar aap chicken tikka khaana chahenge to nahin milega na. Par 5 star hotel ke kamre me mini bar hota hai. Usme pine ka paani hota hai, khane ke liye chocolate vagera hotein hein. Toh usse kaam chala liya humne.”

A few questions later, the witness tells the journo – “Chalo ab bahut ho gaya. Ek break lete hain.”

The journo convinces him that they can take a break later, and as he winds up the interview, he asks the witness – “Aap ghar par kisi ko kuch kehna chahenge?”

Witness – “Nahin, unko kisi ko bhi Hindi nahin aati.”

Surreal, seat of the pants stuff. Really.

I am not going to rant against the terror attack. It’s a terror attack for god’s sake. People with guns and bombs killing other people in cold blood with no apparent motive.

What is my reaction to that?

You there with the camera and the microphone, one finger stuck in your ear, and fangs dripping with saliva, you want to know what my reaction to that is?

You want to know how I feel?

Perhaps, you want to know, if I will ever recover from this incident.

Or maybe, I should give you my expert analysis of the security situation in the country.

This is not a blog post. This is not a condolence message. This is not a Mumbai Meri Jaan outpouring.

This is my very personal FUCK YOU to all the Indian news channels.

Yeah.

Jokes I Make Up So I Can Laugh Alone - 37

2008-10-09T16:28:00.003+05:30

There is an ad on the radio in Bangalore for some children's food. The tag line is -

"Have you fed your child's brain today?"

And every time the radio asks me that, I ask back - "To who? No one will eat it."

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Blog Camp Kerala!

2008-08-05T12:23:00.001+05:30

http://www.blogcampkerala.com/

Tagged

2008-07-03T19:13:00.004+05:30

If any one other than love of my life Cyn had done this, I wouldn't have bothered to make the effort.

So here goes.

Part - 1: Explaining the tag (shamelessly copy pasted from her blog).

In five syllables, no more, no less, describe the worst movie you can think of. Bonus points if you have to show off your Google skills because you can’t remember the name of it and all you can come up with is that it features Roz Russell and Sandra Dee. Turns out it was some tripe called Rosie! Exclamation point the producers’ idea, not mine.“Auntie Mame leavings.”

In seven syllables, no more, no less, describe your worst date. Bonus points if it was sordid. Subtract points if it sounds too much like an overweight fifteen year old Goth girl.“He pushed my head down. I puked.”

In five syllables, no more, no less, describe the worst job you ever had.

Put it all together and you have a haiku of life’s low points.

Disclaimer: I can't count syllables very well, so let's not get anal about it.

Movie -

Bird, two men, one name (Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon)

Date (or social occasion) -

Fork flew, hit host, gravy nose (At a formal sit down dinner in an Army mess, I also managed to make the chicken piece I was trying to attack slide all the way across the table)

Job -

Made peon, odd jobs, unpaid.

So there. It's done. And for those of you who want to try it, here's a cool tool - http://www.wordscount.info/hw/syllable.jsp

That's how I got my bonus points for Googling.

Huh?

2008-06-25T15:50:00.002+05:30

Radio Ga Ga

2008-05-26T09:47:00.003+05:30

Radio sucks!

Especially in Delhi, where the attack of the killer clones seems to be the everlasting theme for all the music they play, along with the screechy, trashy, inane RJs babbling on about bullshit.

And then there is AIR FM Rainbow.

I imagine dusty studios, with people who have been working there all their lives. Somehow all the women who RJ on AIR draw up an image of Salma Sultan in my head. They speak softly, with perfect Hindi or English, and no gimmicks - announce the song, maybe add a tidbit about it, and get on with the music.

But sometimes even Rainbow outdoes itself.

This morning the sky over Badgaon looked like it was announcing judgment day. Brown sky, slowly turning into black, large drops of muddy rain splattering about, and the wind kicking swirls of dust into the already brown sky.

N and I got into the car for the skirmish to get to work, and as usual put the radio on.

Faith by George Michael is just ending. The RJ comes on air, says we can send feedback to westernmusicair@gmail.com, and signs off.

Someone comes on air to read us the news headlines.

The next song that plays does the magic for the day.

As we drive past mountains of mud created by the monsters DLF, a familiar riff strums out.

Its Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and the Wings.

The car ploughs on through manic Monday traffic.

Stuck inside these four walls
Sent inside forever
Never seeing no one nice again like you
Mama you, mama you

We drive past a shredded hoarding of the Bangalore Royal Challengers, pieces fluttering in the wind. There is a man pissing into the wind, wearing a helmet. There is a cycle rickshaw careening across the road and into oncoming traffic, because of the wind. Its passengers holding on for deal life.

If I ever get out of here
Thought of giving it all away
To a registered charity
All I need is a pint a day
If I ever get out of here
If we ever get out of here

A string of traffic cones play dominos, throwing the traffic into further disarray. As we pull into the parking lot, the rain crashed down and security guards ran for cover, deserting their posts and their fake bravado. No Parking signs relented, construction sites seemed to bend towards collapse and all the glass vibrated like the climax of Matrix Revolutions. The radio played on.

Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash
As we fell into the sun
And the first one said to the second one there
I hope you’re having fun

N and I knew we had a magic moment there. Our eyes scanned the sky as it disappeared over the concrete cavern of underground parking for some sign of sanity. But all we had was the radio.

Band on the run
Band on the run
And the jailer man and sailor sam
Were searching every one

Thank you for the music.

For Whom the Bells Toll

2008-03-26T16:38:00.002+05:30

Weddings and I have a chequered history. I expressed my feelings for the Kerala edition of this time battered institution some time back, in this post.

I have been proud of my ability to have wiggled out of many many invitations and even more relatives, trying to make me go to a wedding. I had my standard deviation and deflection tactics, and in extreme cases camouflage clothing with a week’s supply of essentials.

But sometimes, one must succumb, for the sake of friendship, for the sake of keeping some things intact, especially one’s sanity, which can be battered down by people who know that special trick of getting inside your head.

So I decided to go for this wedding. As luck would have it, the wedding was at 7 am on a Sunday morning. I never thought I’d even think 7 am and Sunday in the same sentence, let alone write it. Someone apparently forgot that 7 am on a Sunday, is preceded by the many hours of the night (and sometimes afternoon) of Saturday, and none of the activities during those preceding hours lend themselves favourably to an early morning awakening. Late afternoon is possible, if one is lucky, but 7 am was definitely out of question.

So anyway, I threw caution to the winds and did Saturday proud. The impending early morning filled me with a masochistic drive to try and be as unprepared to wake up even in the same time zone, let alone the next morning.

I will spare you the details of the revelry and rambunctiousness, and to cut a long story short, I found myself wide awake at 7 am the next day morning. It was nothing short of a miracle. While I was checking in the mirror to see if it was still me, some vague vestigial memory crawled out of my prefrontal cortex, staggered up and reminded me that various people at various times had told me the night before that I would never make it to the wedding.

Ha! to them. Ha!

I was up. Yes, I was late, but I was up and I would make it there – perhaps in time for tiffin.

I pumped myself full of Gatorade, ensured I had matching socks and ran out the door looking for an auto. After about 5 minutes of this strenuous activity, I decided that prudence lay in propping myself against a pole, breathing heavily, while hoping that a passing auto driver would have a sudden attack of ESP and stop right in front of me. Well, what do you know – that’s precisely what happened.

So I staggered aboard, mumbled the address to him and said in broken Kannada – fast. Then, proud of my accomplishments, I proceeded to sleep with my head hanging back into the little luggage rack that autos have behind the back seat.

I was jerked out of my reverie not by the Bangalore roads, but by the sounds of drums and naadaswarams. I took a moment to gather my bearings and then commanded the auto to stop. I had made it in good time. Actually, just the fact that I had made it was exceedingly satisfying. I gave the auto guy a ten rupee bonus, smiled and walked into the wedding hall.

The crowd was not as large as I had expected it to be. That was good. What was better that all the people who had predicted that I would never make it here, had themselves not made it in time. So much for the superiority of the morning people.

I swaggered around to the back of the hall, poured myself some juice and started calling everyone who was not yet there.

Yes, I was here already. No I was not kidding, nor was I playing recordings of marriage music in my house – why would I wake up so early to do that? Of course you are on your way (snigger), of course you’ll be here soon. See you here. Ha!

I stood there at the back of the hall, safe from anyone who might want to make polite conversation, and watched the proceedings while I waited for the rest of the gang to turn up.

The guy was already on stage, looking morosely at some point between the tip of his toe and the edge of the stage. The photographers were asking him to smile at the camera, but he seemed like he was in some other dimension. Perhaps he was up late last night too, I thought to myself.

In a while they brought the girl into the hall in one procession and I was thankful that things were moving along. The girl sat down and the gesticulation began. At that moment, something struck me as very wrong.

I walked up closer to the stage, to try and figure out what was bothering me.

One Pandhal – Check.

Many Glowing family members – Check.

One self important Uncle, taking notes of cash transactions – Check.

Two priests chanting mantras and talking on mobile phones at the same time – Check.

One queasy looking groom – Check.

One unfamiliar defiant looking bride – Check.

A bunch of…Unfamiliar bride?

Double take.

Yes. It had been confirmed. So that explained the strange looks from everyone around.

Weddings and I were not meant to co-exist. I was at the wrong one.

I made good my escape, but not before I helped myself to some idlis from the breakfast that was laid out. I deserved that much for my fortitude.

Can't-adda

2008-03-25T20:17:00.004+05:30

"If you are a tourist or an industrialist or a scientist and don't visit Karnataka you may be an educated Indian lacking knowledge of India. If you go to Karnataka without knowing Kannada you would be like Robin Crusoe shipwrecked on an Island - curious but ignorant, attentive listener in wilderness, and communicative but lovely.

Readwell's book "Learn Kannada in a Month" will dispel your ignorance and facilitate good company to listen to or speak to while in Karnataka. You will be transformed into a true tourist, intelligent industrialist and sensible scientist visiting Karnataka."

- From Readwell's Learn Kannada in a Month

But I shall not give up. Kannada gotthilla guru to auto drivers will change. Yes.

Braveheart

2008-02-26T17:01:00.002+05:30

To the bravest person I know.

I wish I could be as honest, courageous, principled and loving as you.

I wish the rest of the world could be that way too.

And for all the courage that was on show – I wish this hadn’t happened at all.

Death Toll

2008-02-03T14:08:00.000+05:30

When you live in Gurgaon, you try to infuse magic into the mundane to survive and stay sane. For me one such thing was driving to the airport. I have driving to the airport to pick up or drop someone down to a fine art. And I love driving down the spanking new highway, late as usual, heavy metal blasting to add a sense of drama to the whole thing. Every trip to the airport has a story associated with it – of the people picked up or dropped, about the traffic encountered, near hits and misses, the sheer trippiness of the runway lights at different times of the night, and many other sensory explosions.

The drive back though was a completely different thing. The satisfaction of having picked up someone with minimum wait time or dropping someone off in the nick of time, brought with it slow contemplation. You let people overtake you, you let the windows down all the way despite the blowing dust, wonder about why people pick the colours they do for the cars they buy (anyone seen a bright pink Zen Estilo?), and mull over other, similar existential topics.

I always take N along to the airport because he appreciates my driving skills and also makes for very interesting conversation on the way back. We discuss everything from why the Mahipalpur stretch can never be called necklace road to the disputed parentage and unhappy childhood of the bastard in the Honda Accord who nearly sent us crashing into the divider with his misjudged overtaking maneuver.

A few days ago, N and I were driving back from the airport after another successful drop off, talking about how quick the construction of the new highway had finished and that it was because it was the capital and all that. We thought it looked just like the road from San Francisco airport to the city, and so on. I explained to him how it would be easier to get to Andhra Bhavan for lunch from now on, even if we left home only at 245.

We watched families who had parked near the edge of the runway. Little kids standing on car roofs squealed with glee as their Daddies pointing out the unmistakably gigantic and loud airliner bearing down on their heads. Cops parked nearby to stop people from parking looked on disinterestedly. N and I renewed our determination to do the same one night, under more interesting circumstances.

We soon arrived at the newly constructed toll plaza. The traffic was light even for a weekend, maybe four of five cars in each lane. While watching the lights blink on and off, and mad drivers cut across lines to get ahead even with the light traffic, we discussed how the progress in infrastructure was wasted on people who would mess it all up for everyone out of sheer callousness. I had my exact change in hand, and was slowly rolling up as the car in front of me moved on, when I noticed flashing lights in my mirror.

It was an ambulance, apparently in an emergency. It was in the lane next to me, about 5 cars back. We watched to see what would happen, and to our delight, a guy with a walkie-talkie came running out of nowhere and diverted the queue so that the ambulance could go straight to the toll gate. The ambulance pulled up behind the car that was already at the toll gate.

And then things unravelled. The car ahead of the ambulance was apparently occupied by a VSIP (S = self). He refused to pay the toll and whipped out an id card that he flashed at the guy in the toll booth. An argument ensued. All this while, the ambulance is stuck behind his car – honking and setting off its lights and sirens in desperation. He gave it a glowering scowl once or twice, as if he couldn’t understand how his saving Rs.16 could be less important than a medical emergency.

Finally, the toll booth guy relented and let him through. We heaved a sigh of relief, all too soon. The toll booth guy, now pissed off, vented his wrath on the ambulance driver. He insisted that the guy pay the commercial toll, instead of no toll at all (which was what I assumed an ambulance would have to pay). This argument didn’t last too long, as the passenger in the front seat of the ambulance, threw a 100 Rupee note into the window, said he did not want the change and implored the guy to lift the barrier, which he grudgingly did.

The ambulance zoomed off towards the Gurgaon skyscape, sirens sending out an appeal for sanity in a mad, mad world.

N and I paid our 16 rupees and drove the rest of the way home in silence.

These Bloody North Indians

2008-01-08T11:39:00.000+05:30

My Punjabi colleague, sent me a file on email, asking for a translation.

He said "I think its in Telugu."

I am Malayali.

The doc he sent me, says on the top - Government of Karnataka- Department of Labour.

See chat transcript below -

R: I have send 1 document...i think it is in Telgu

can you a translation for me?

Me: i dont speak telugu

u shud check with A

(Checks File)

Me: man you north indians

never cease to amaze me

it clearly says

karnataka

on the file

which means its in kannada

and not telugu

gosh!!

no one here speaks kannada

R: Toh kya hua, hai to South Indian hi naa...

CCR in Delhi

2008-01-07T10:52:00.000+05:30

Oh Susie....Kyon?

Taare Zameen Par

2007-12-23T18:18:00.000+05:30

Stupidly, I decided to wait three days before writing this review, so that all the heartstrings that were tugged while watching it, were released and I could be more objective. During those three days, I ended up either talking incessantly about the movie, or listening to the songs non-stop - so much for useless objectivity.

My first thought when I heard Aamir Khan’s debut film was going to be about a dyslexic kid was that it was a safe bet. He was taking no chances with too risky a subject. That is still true. Perhaps the only drawback of the film is its predictability. But then, while its predictable from start to finish, it manages to strike the perfect balance between sermon and story.

I have a feeling that someone in the team is a big Pink Floyd fan. Some parts of the animation in the opening credits were reminiscent of The Wall. And the song ‘Bheja Kum’ is our very own Another Brick in the Wall – II, what with teachers sauntering down corridors, notebooks being picked up, read, and thrown onto desks and knuckles being rapped with canes. For what it’s worth, it’s a wonderful effort and appropriately edgy.

For an Aamir Khan film, the almost complete absence of Aamir Khan in the first half is a welcome change. The powerhouse performance of Darsheel Safary is all the more creditable as he carries almost the entire film on his capable shoulders. A far cry from the designer-clad, grown-up talking, incessantly irritating child actors we have been subjected to in the recent past, Darsheel is Calvinesque. The spaceman spiff take off, during the Math class couldn’t have been inspired by anything else. He convincingly takes you into his world and keeps you there, crying and laughing with him, till the end.

Aamir Khan has given perhaps his most restrained and intelligent performances to date. The dual task of acting and directing seems to have been light work for him.

The remaining cast of almost unknown actors also works perfectly. Tisca Chopra in particular made me message my Mom from the theatre when the song Ma was playing, saying I missed her.

The music grows on you steadily. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have shown that their true strength lies in the modern, rock riff based, slightly experimental music. The range is quite amazing, from the almost heavy metal ‘Bheja Kum’ to the polished Adnan Sami in ‘Mera Jahan’ to the very delicately sung ‘Kholo Kholo’ by Raman Mahadevan. Prasoon Joshi’s lyrics marry the music to the movie perfectly.

What I loved about the film, apart from the performances were the delicate touches.

- the incredible use of colour in every frame, creating magic with everyday life.

- the amazing art that is all over the film, my favourite – the red and yellow painting of a kid sucking on a chuski.

- the fact that Rajan Damodaran’s dad has a distinct South Indian accent to his Hindi (He speaks only one line.)

- the Hindi teacher saying "Uska drishtikon alag hai.." to his parents.

These are just a few of the many small, bright ideas that light up the screen, amazing you at the attention to detail that the filmmakers have.

Go watch it. Don’t be afraid to cry either – most of the movie hall is with you.

Meow

2007-12-20T20:49:00.000+05:30

I have a confession to make – I listen to ‘Meow – India’s First Just – For – Women Radio Station’ whenever I am driving. It’s the one thing that is funny enough to keep my mind off the killers parading the streets, armed with driving licenses.

Honestly, there is no entertainment like stupid people proving their fundamental lack of intelligence on a public forum. It’s even more fun when the inanities are lapped up by an equally idiotic audience, glee and giggled over, and addicted to drivel for life.

I was hooked when I heard the following exchange –

RJ – So today’s topic is “If you have it, should you flaunt it?”

And there was a whole string of people who called in to indignantly say “Of course you should flaunt it” and so on. (This is Delhi – what did one expect?)

In a while ‘it’ in ‘flaunt it’ was becoming quite obviously your body. After a few people had called in saying how they loved to show their assets off, the RJ started a monologue.

RJ – Jab mein young thi, toh mein bahut Flat thi.

At this point, the guy who was with me in the car said – “She said fat right?”

I replied that no she had very much said flat.

We were hooked. What better for two guys to listen to on the radio than a girl discussing her breasts?

She went on…

RJ – Baaki saarey mera mazaak udate thai. My flat chest destroyed my confidence. I withdrew into a shell. But then a few years later, my mom told me about (incomprehensible name) exercise. I also changed my diet and I worked on making sure that I developed properly. And then, I became nice and full. My confidence returned, and today I am an RJ talking to millions of people. Ok…next caller…

By this time, we nearly had tears in our eyes. I pulled over and we laughed it off.

What better message to send out on India’s only radio channel for women. Confidence/Success is directly proportional to breast size. How could you not know that you silly little girl?

They also have a show hosted by a guy called Between The Sheets. The show is called that, not the guy. People call him and confess they are cheating on their wives and so on. He gives super advice like – “Hey, a man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do.”

More, I say, we need more of this. Let’s get the ratings going. I am hooked for sure.

Meow.

And the Nobel Prize for Peace goes to...

2007-11-23T18:48:00.000+05:30

...the guy who wrote 'No Women, No Cry' in chalk, on a rock next to the road, just short of Tsomgo Lake at around 12,000 feet.

Panjasaara Pora (Cheeni Kum in Malayalam)

2007-10-22T19:28:00.000+05:30

People had been talking about it forever, but I refused to believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes. Every time we planned to go verify the rumours something would come up and the plan would get cancelled. Then finally one day, things just came together and we were on our way.

The leaflet that advertised it had a rudimentary map that was completely useless. But they had also given a phone number. We called the number and the guy who picked up was in a movie theatre and couldn’t hear us. Finally, after a lot of U-turns and cursing, we ended up at the building in which this place was supposed to be located.

It was nearing 10 pm and all the shops were either closed or closing. The whole place had an ominous silence ringing through it. And like most buildings here, it was built like a maze. We ended up going in circles for about 15 minutes and there was no one to ask. Finally, one of our shots in the dark, where we decided to keep turning left, paid off and there it was, as promised –

AMMU’S KERALA RESTAURANT

The effects on us were immediate. A hunger that we had not known before suddenly invaded our minds, blanking out everything else. We ran up to the entrance, afraid they would close in our faces. They almost did. But then they looked at our salivating faces, took pity and let us in.

Ammu’s is basically two small shops. One shop has 4 plastic tables, covered with a dirty plastic tablecloth, adorned on top by a steel jug. There was a picture of Jesus and a Malayala Manorama calendar hanging on the wall next to a faded Pepsi sticker. The other shop is the kitchen. Food is cooked there and brought around to the other side. We were completely at home.

The proprietor/manager/cashier/waiter came up to discuss the menu with us. We asked him what fish it was, if the porottas were fresh, if the avial was actually avial and many other things, but he could see in our faces that we were going to eat his kitchen out irrespective. He took our orders (which was basically four of everything) and then told us conspiratorially “There is beef, but it isn’t on the menu.” We looked at each other and then at him equally conspiratorially and ordered four of the curries and four of the fries. We had hit the mother lode.

The food arrived and all talking ceased. In between munching and slurping, I signaled another waiter, a north Indian, for more porottas. We heard him go into the kitchen next door and say loudly – “Chaar aur parathein unke liye.”

The cook replied with a mix of amusement and scorn – “Paraatha alla da mone - porottaa” and broke out into belly shaking laughter.

We all looked at each other with glee – that was our very own Cheeni Kum moment.

Now I’m hungry.

Huh?

2007-10-08T10:02:00.000+05:30

Update: I found this link, when trying to figure out if this was legit.

Survivor - Gurgaon

2007-10-05T20:16:00.000+05:30

Lifts –

Always press both up and down button irrespective of where you want to go.
Once the lift comes, take charging position and rush your enemies coming out of the lift.
Bonus points if you can grope a woman or knock over an old man while you are at it.
Once you are in, press the ‘Close door’ button obsessively and then laugh at the guy who was running to make it in.
Then jab continually at the button for your floor irrespective of which direction the lift is moving in. Throw in some nice gaalis all around to add to the experience.
Once the lift starts moving take out your phone, call your girlfriend and talk loudly about how great the sex was last night. The intermittent network in the lift should enable much more satisfying screaming.
Once you arrive at your floor, repeat step b in opposite direction.
You have arrived – congratulations.

Roads -

They are all out to kill you – so kill them first.
Refer – Some stuff from previous experience.
Driving at night, if the divider is moving – it’s a cow. It’s been put there to check your reflexes. We don’t need breathalyzers.
If there is a divider where there was none yesterday – it’s a cow.
If a divider is unusually large – it’s a cow.
If you see a cow, it’s not a divider. However it could be a bull. Beware – they there operate in groups.
If the guy in front of you is slowing down in the middle of the highway, do not overtake. He probably wants to open the door, put his head out (while his car is moving) and spit some paan. He’d rather you decapitate him while overtaking and take out his car door, than spatter same door with paan or his torso with blood.
Always honk at traffic signals and in jams. It won’t change anything, but it will add to all the fun everyone is having and may even get you killed if the attempt in point g failed.
Do not glare at people, swear at them, make rude gestures or attempt any other form of communication. This is North India – they all have guns.
The roads are like a river – they change course according to the weather and the whims of Delhi Metro. What is today a one-way, will tomorrow be a three lane race track.
Do not play death metal in the car, it makes the violence within express itself in weird manifestations.
Or then again, play death metal in the car. It will keep out Himesh and Daler from invading you from other cars.
Everyone here has heard the story of how to escape from the tiger chasing you on the bike in the forest. (You are on the bike not the tiger.) So if the person puts the right indicator he will turn left.
Get insurance.

Malls –

If you get there on a weekend after the traffic mentioned above, get parking, pay through your nose for it, go inside after negotiating the lift scenario (also mentioned above), you find that they are filled with the people who either elbowed you in the lift or forced you off the road.
You can opt to watch a movie for 150 bucks or more, but you must first be frisked by a guy who always, always seems to take longer than he should.
You can’t take your laptop with you. You can’t leave it at the counter. You can however throw it down from the fourth floor and hit the Himesh look-alike on his head with it, if you have good aim.

Life –

Some friends.
Some alcohol.
Some music.
Some books.
Some movies.
Some things stay the same. Thank god for that.

Wishlist

2007-10-03T18:10:00.000+05:30

choru
sambar
parippu
aviyal
kaalan
elishery
pulishery
olan
rasam
moru
manga curry
pachadi
puli inji
naaranga curry
kadu maanga
mulaku kondatam
kaiypakkya kondaatam
kaaya varathadu
pappadam
palada parthaman
kozhi porichathu
meen varathadu (mathi/ayila)
meen curry
chemmeen curry
kallumekkaaya
kakka
karimeen
neyi meen
mullan
aavoli
porotta
appam
idiappam
puttu
kadala
dosa
masala dosa
neyi roast
mutta dosa
thattu dosa
idly
vada
uppuma
mutta curry
kaada porichadu
ishtu
pattiri
madakku pattiri
tyre pattiri
konchu
pothu curry
pothu fry
pothu olathiyathu
pothu roast
pothu kastoori
biriyani

I Saw the Sign

2007-09-25T18:12:00.000+05:30

Inside a lift in an office building near Richmond Circle, Bangalore - a lift operator (LO), an office boy (OB) from one of the offices and I.

Elevator music - Kannada version of Lajjavathiye.

LO (in Tamil): The wedding went off grand. The food was also good. Biriyani.

OB (in Tamil-Kannada mix): Good, good.Who was the caterer?

I (in random musing): Even the lifts play better music here.

LO: Oh, you've seen the Kentucky Chicken place, near here, down the road? (Gestures the whole route with one hand, other hand on lift console.) From there. 45 Rupees a plate. With Ice Cream.

OB: Yeah yeah, I know the place. Oh there? Nice, nice.

I (amused musing): KFC and Biriyani? This LO was really telling some tales to the poor OB.

LO: Yeah, and everyone came. Even the MD.

OB: Good, good.

I got off at my floor and wandered off into some corporate corridor, smiling at the tall tales, thinking of Biriyani and not wanting to leave Bangalore that night.

A few hours later, as my cab pulled away from the office to the airport, through the misty windows and the pouring rain, I saw the sign. It was right there, where the LO's hands had told OB it would be. It said -

KENTACKY CHICKEN CENTRE

Hug and a Handshake

2007-09-21T21:27:00.000+05:30

I don’t know about you, but I manage to get in these situations all the time. So you know people. Maybe you know them well, maybe you don’t. They could be a colleague you see at work everyday and politely smile at, they could be someone you met at a party and really hit it off with, or just some similar random thing. Basically, someone who is familiar, you have spoken to often and (three things here) –

you haven’t seen them in some time.
are not part of what I would think of as the inner circle, you know people you’ve grown up with, or played football with or talked on the phone for hours in the middle of the night with – you get the picture.
and most importantly – is of the opposite sex. (In this case, a woman.)

When I see a person from the above mentioned category my mind goes into overdrive. Basically, this is what plays out –

Ok. There she is. Smile, smile, smile – good. Yes, she’s smiling back. Good. OK, she’s walking up to you, still smiling, all good.

6 feet – what’s it going to be?

4 feet – make up your mind. Make up your mind.

2 feet – chuck it, be safe and go with the handshake.

And I maintain the smile, which by now has become very strained, pull my hand out of my pocket, and slowly, tremulously extend it in their general direction. The conversation that follows, if you are lucky, is –

“Hi how are you long time its great to see you” in combination with a warm handshake.

However, if you are unlucky, you could deal with a –

“What yaaa full formal and all hand shaking come gimme a hug”

Now that’s a problem. You see, if I wanted to hug them, I’d have known it before I even saw them. I didn’t need to activate proximity sensors and a complex relationship evaluation algorithm to translate into an appropriate social gesture. I would have hugged them. But I didn’t. Why don’t they get it and just shake the bloody hand. I wash after I go to the loo, I swear I do.

And then the hug. Man, it’s pitiable. I freeze, then I kinda go “OK If that’s what you want” and submit to it and my back has trouble bending, my arms go limp, the timer in my head is counting. I don’t hold the other person because I don’t know how long is good, and how long is not. I hold too long and the next I know, the girl is going around telling people “Man, that guy, such a cheapo”

(Yes I know these words like cheapo and meanie as they seemed to punctuate every other sentence I hear at my workplace. I know it doesn’t say a lot for my workplace.)

On a deeper note, it makes me think – “Wow, maybe I completely underestimated the depth of the relation I share with this person. I mean, she was a huggee and I wanted to shake her. Am I clued in to the people around me and what I mean to them? Am I being an inconsiderate prick? Am I taking people who love me for granted?”

These and other questions last only as long as the next time I see two people that I know hate each other hugging like the world was breaking into two and only their actual physical embrace could keep the two parts together.

But the good thing is, you mostly only have to go through this with any person once. The first time is stored away in the hugs vs handshake database and the next time, you are ready - big smile, arms wide open and timing just right.

If you have ever been in this situation, you know what I mean.

To all those who have - come, let us sing –

this talk of freedom
And human rights
Means bullying and private wars and
chucking all the dust in your eyes
And unpleasant people
Pooper than dirt
Who are caught in the crossfire with nothing
to lose but their shirts

Stuck between a hug
And a handshake
Between a hug and a handshake

You'd better stop, put on a kind face
Between a hug and a handshake

(To the tune of a Rock and A Hard Place, of course you knew that.)

Thank you.

Thin Red Line

2007-09-10T11:26:00.000+05:30

The bridge fell and killed some 20 odd people. One casualty was visible from outside the rubble. It was a man, eyes closed, trapped in a smashed car, stuck under the rubble. To me he looked dead. I guess the news cameraman had the same impression. He fought through the crowd and got as close as possible and kept zooming in on the man’s face.

After a few minutes of this, there was enough footage for special effects. So the people back in the studio put a thin red circle around the man’s face. In case anyone had missed the spectacle before, now it was there – bolded, underlined, italicized in a thin red line.

Then this loops, again and again. While the newsreader continues to talk about ambulances stuck in traffic and not making it to hospitals. The police commissioner comes on air to say that ambulances have been called, but not the fire brigade. This was obvious. Around the macabre puppetry of the man in the thin red circle, there was a mass of ordinary people trying to pry his car loose from the rubble using a piece of the rubble itself.

Meanwhile, traffic seemed to flow unabated, crowds built up, chaos ensued and the thin red line continued to say – circle marks the spot.

We sat and wondered what had suddenly gone wrong for the city we loved. We wondered – had this been America - Would ambulances get stuck in traffic? Would fire trucks get there on time? Would there be cranes and helicopters and professionals trained to deal with the situation on the scene instantly? Perhaps.

But there was one thing we were sure was the same here as it was there. The loved ones of the man in the car probably saw him live (or dead) on TV, before anyone would have had the chance to talk to them.

God Bless Hyderabad. God save us all.

__________________________________________________________________

...I got elastic bands keepin my shoes on.
Got those swollen hand blues.
I Got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from.
I've got electric light.
And I got second sight.
Got amazing powers of observation.
And that is how I know
When I try to get through
On the telephone to you
There'll be nobody home...

- Nobody Home, Pink Floyd

M&M's

2007-08-29T19:21:00.000+05:30

A semipermeable membrane, also termed a selectively permeable membrane, a partially permeable membrane or a differentially permeable membrane, is a membrane which will allow certain molecules or ions to pass through it by diffusion and occasionally specialized "facilitated diffusion". The rate of passage depends on the pressure, concentration and temperature of the molecules or solutes on either side, as well as the permeability of the membrane to each solute. Depending on the membrane and the solute, permeability may depend on solute size, solubility, properties, or chemistry.

A semipermeable memory, also termed a selectively permeable memory, a partially permeable memory or a differentially permeable memory, is a memory which will allow certain moments or emotions to pass through it by diffusion and occasionally specialized "facilitated conversation". The rate of passage depends on the pressure, concentration and immediacy of the events or emotions on either side, as well as the permeability of the memory to each person. Depending on the memory and the persons, permeability may depend on time, sensitivity, intelligence, or chemistry.

Jokes I Make Up So I Can Laugh Alone - 13

2007-08-23T17:37:00.000+05:30

Condom - One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

A Reply

2007-08-20T14:39:00.000+05:30

A year ago, I wrote Two Words.

A year later, I post the reply. Happy Birthday B.

..................................................................................................................................

(as floyd plays)

i'm beyond the stage where i can comprehensively put things together..
coz its all slowly coming undone..

so all the random things i have to tell u start right about here:

(tight, comforting, knee-weakening, embracing hug) for:

innumerable lufthansa moments

mathematical equations that i understand and like hearing. ex: me=
uberpretty :) [blushes]

cocos and pebbles

evil indulgence

windy n windless terrace nights

dogma

akson's

car rides

microwave maggi

agreeing that the beatles wrote life

bike roamings

shaving ur head

smiling

guffawing laughter

trying

silence

floyd

listening to lectures

little italy

tt

intellectual intercourse (Alanis ;) )

breathing deep

twiddling your fingers

mo(a)nday filer tracks

hating sudoku

convincing

breakfast, lunch and dinner

always calling back

there are lots of things that might change, other things that will for
sure, and some things that won't ever. i have no idea which is which.
and it doesnt really matter.

but, (raises glass) to: slow monday breakfasts, meandering tuesdays,
endlessly cricketed weekdays, hugs and i-love-u's, galaxies and
universes, music and musing..

a rollercoaster ride that began with a movie watching choice sms :)

the lyrics wont stop ;)

god herself will speak for me here:

you were full and fully capable
you were self sufficient and needless
your house was fully decorated in that sense

you were taken with me to a point
a case of careful what you wish for
but what you knew was enough to begin

and so you called and courted fiercely
so you reached out, entirely fearless
and yet you knew of reservation and how it serves

and I salute you for your courage
and I applaud your perseverance
and I embrace you for your faith in the face of adversarial forces
that I represent

so you were in but not entirely
you were up for this but not totally
you knew how arms length-ing can maintain doubt

and so you fell and you're intact
so you dove in and you're still breathing
so you jumped and you're still flying if not shocked

and I support you in your trusting
and I commend you for your wisdom
and I'm amazed by your surrender in the face of threatening forces
that I represent

you found creative ways to distance
you hid away from much through humor
your choice of armor was your intellect

and so you felt and you're still here
and so you died and you're still standing
and so you softened and you're still safely in command

self protection was in times of true danger
your best defense to mistrust and be wary
surrendering a feat of unequalled measure
and I'm thrilled to let you in
overjoyed to be let in in kind

i guess i dont always the words do i? :) go figure :)

in your honour, instead, i meditate on things gone by and to come.

love u kanna,

and it always comes back full circle...
so..

........................................................................................................................................
Yes.

Sail on Silver Girl.

Who?

2007-08-08T18:52:00.000+05:30

The cursor blinks accusatory.

Constantly, at the same speed, like an unblinking eye, it blinks.

Logging into the ultra high-security domain I use everyday, this cursor faces me in its little white box on its little blue page and asks me the same question.

“Are you still Kraz Arkin?”

Everyday.

I look around me. The humming of the air conditioner and the frenzied tapping of keyboards are all I can hear. If I listen closer, I can hear hushed BlackBerry conspiracies, muted beeps of unwanted messages during meetings, the heated buzz of an overhead projector, slickly oiled wheels moving over smoothly brushed carpets, seldom used tongues moving over caffeine stained teeth, breathing.

Still the cursor awaits my response.

I need to take a moment here. I lean back in my chair and look down the rows of cubes of various colours. Everything has a glow. The walls and windows glow from the monitors, as do the faces peering at them – like a million junkies hooked to slot machines. Every button they press is a nickel, every return key expects return.

I shudder, and then turn back to my own palantir.

“Yes,” I think to myself, “So far, I’m still very much Kraz Arkin.”

Then comes the next step. Now that I am sure I am me and not perhaps who I think I am or who I could be or maybe even not me, I need to put in a password so that the cursor spares me from its evil eye.

I quickly do this and submit myself to its mercy.

The roulette wheel turns, the slot machines continue to blink and whirr, the palantirs sit there grimly, satisfied with the job the cursors have done.

Trouble Sleeping

2007-07-25T16:56:00.000+05:30

"No rational cause could be found for the explosion --- it was simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo?” – Douglas Adams in the Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul

I was thinking this and other random thoughts at Heathrow, waiting in line for the electronic check-in machine to get free, so that I could hopefully pick a seat near the emergency exit. I don’t know why but I have had a fascination for emergency exit seats on aeroplanes. It’s like a power you wield over your fellow sheep on the plane. The stewardess always asks me questions like – “are you comfortable speaking English” or “Do you think you would be able to be cool in an emergency” and other weird stuff. I nod to all of it an smile and go “yeah, yeah, I’m your man.” Its all quite funny really.

So I got my emergency exit seat after helping a nice old lady understand these “blasted machines everywhere.” After spending what seemed like unquantifiable amount of time wandering around in various duty free shops with mouth open and wallet empty, I trudged towards my gate to board. Invariably the gates were always at the other end of the world and in a different dimension.

Walking along the bleak corridors that smelt like…well…an airport, the DA quote kept running through my head and the hatred that he had for airports manifested itself quite strongly by the time I got on board. So no fake smile in response to stewardess’ fake smile, no guilt in ejecting pesky kid who wanted my seat and had comfortable plonked himself in it, and no paying attention to the in-flight safety demo.

Out comes the ipod, on go noise-cancellation headphones and then its just me, the music and the blue, blue sky.

There is an interesting concept that I heard the other day that the EQ settings on an ipod were actually tuned to your emotional state (EQ = emotional quotient?) and would play songs that you wanted to hear when in a particular mood. I scoffed at the idea when I heard it first and explained in all superiority that it was an equalizer setting, that’s all, no magic there.

Now, that particular day, I was not really in any definable emotional state. I mused over a question that I have mused over many times – “what exactly do I feel now?”

It was always an interesting study and never really delivered any answers at all. But aeroplanes are lonely places, especially when you have an 11 hour flight. I leaned my head against the little window and let the sun warm my face. I watched the city of clouds below. Atlantis – that’s where it probably is.

I let the music invade my head and continued to muse, eyes closed.

“…I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye….”

The music sank in only a few seconds later. Hmmm. EQ? I laughed to myself inside and replayed the conversation in my head. Maybe, just maybe. It was definitely not an ordinary day. The clouds and the sun and the warmth and the music were slowly creating a magic in my head.

I must have slept off for a while. I woke up because the sun was burning my cheek. It took a while to realize where I was. I shook the dream I couldn’t remember from my eyelids and stared around the plane. Everyone was asleep. It reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey. People in cryogenic storage, for a journey spanning mind-boggling time and space. I suddenly felt very cold. But pulling the little blanket out of its little cover and then wrapping it around (“with seat belts on the outside so that our crew do not disturb you while you sleep”) was too much effort.

I shivered a little and that felt better. My headphones had slipped off and as I readjusted them…

“…are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter…”

Yeah, the sky sure was a hazy shade of winter. In fact, everything was. This music was beginning to get spooky. I thought about S and G and how I had been reintroduced to it. The idea that I was living a musical conspiracy grew. Someone, somewhere had already written out my life in songs. Someone, somewhere was making these songs appear just when they should, like a perfect script with the perfect OST. This wasn’t just an adolescent-oh-my-god-that-song-makes-me-cry. This wasn’t just the ipod either. This was more.

It had been happening for sometime now. I could pick out one song for every important moment in the last year that seemed to pop out at me from various places – a TV channel I never watched and switched to by accident, a CD I found at the bottom of a drawer, an email someone sent me randomly, radio when I was falling asleep – it was everywhere.

The music was my master.

My musing continued. My music continued. The little aeroplane on the little TV in front of me showed me on a blurry map that I was somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

I slept again.

“…Tap on my window knock on my door
I want to make you feel beautiful…”

I was awake, I think, when it happened. I heard the tapping and looked outside. There she was – smiling and tapping away in glee. I smiled back lazily and nodded.

She tilted her head to one side and crinkled a finger at me. I nodded again, unfastened my seat belt and stood up.

Emergency doors are pretty simple to operate. All the instructions are right there. You push a button, pull a lever, press a handle and it pops out quite easily.

I stood in the open doorway and smiled.

And I said “What about "Breakfast at Tiffany's?”

She said, "I think I remember the film. And as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it."

And I said, "Well, that's the one thing we've got."

I stepped off and was warm again.

I See

2007-07-04T18:13:00.000+05:30

I heard a guy narrate this poem in the background of a promo for some programme on Channel NewsAsia. The combination of the visuals and the words was gripping. I looked it up a few days later, and this is what I found -

I Saw a Peacock, with a fiery tail,
I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail,
I saw a Cloud, with Ivy circled round,
I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground,
I saw a Pismire, swallow up a Whale,
I saw a raging Sea, brim full of Ale,
I saw a Venice Glass, Sixteen foot deep,
I saw a well, full of mens tears that weep,
I saw their eyes, all in a flame of fire,
I saw a House, as big as the Moon and higher,
I saw the Sun, even in the midst of night,
I saw the man, that saw this wondrous sight.

- Anonymous.

Apparently there is this to it.

Analickits

2007-06-28T18:01:00.000+05:30

I love Google Analytics.

I mean, I hate all kinds of graphs and charts and statistics. When they happen to be projected onto a screen and explained to nine people in post lunch stupor, they could almost qualify as biological warfare. Throw in a speaker who loves his own voice and sounds like a guy running his nails over a pane of glass, while squeaking chalk on a blackboard and making chiselly sounds with the legs of his chair, you either spontaneously combust or feel like this .

However, I digress. The fact is - I love Google Analytics. Here I can spend hours looking at graphs and pie charts that do nothing for me except remind me of pizza. But hey! It’s my blog. Look at all that cool stuff happening there!

There are little coloured dots here on this line, like ants spray painted on a wall by accident. I am sure those dots mean something is happening.

Then there are funnels and stuff, and I imagine a reader being put through the mental exercise of reading my stuff and feeling squeezed like a lemon at the end and NEVER wanting to come back. See, see - he started off at a 100% and by the time he was through, he was down to .042 and even bounced like a dry lemon.

But the stuff that is coolest is the searches that led people to my blog. I mean, here I was under the impression that - OK, I know these people (or most of them) who come and leave a random comment. I know they exist. I know they come and go as they please, shaking their heads at the sheer lack of material here every time they come.

But now Analytics tells me, there are 'The Others.' People who searched for random stuff on Google and ended up here, right where you are. Now, this was a momentous discovery. People were actually searching for me!! Then I examined the results a little more closely, and the momentous moment passed. In fact, the momentousness was wholly momentary. I could go so far as to say that, it was almost ephemeral. Or is it ethereal? Anyway, you get the idea. But soon I saw the funny side of it all. I mean, this is all about giving people something to do right? So, below, find the Top 5 searches that led people to my blog:

why do we tangle words when writing?
picture strange bus wreck
jokes to make drunks laugh
male female listen to test 2 stories
(and my personal favourite) photos of dharmendra holding baby 6 june 2007

If you happen to be here right now, because of one of these searches, I am sorry. But please, stay. I know all kinds of fun stuff, like, ummmm, How many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Do you? Huh?

Anyway, this is fun. And it makes post lunch sessions in office much more fun. In fact, I should be working now. After a coffee break. And then some snacks.

Backyard Visitor

2007-06-18T19:55:00.000+05:30

Singapore Sling – The Bus Test

2007-06-07T19:18:00.000+05:30

Part I

Ever since I was a kid I have been a little wary of bus conductors (though I loved buses). They always seemed to know something you didn’t, and look at you a certain way - impatient and all that. They would click their tongue if you didn’t have change or if you didn’t know the fare and generally make you feel very stupid. So I was always very diplomatic in my interactions with them (calling them ‘saar’ a few times in a sentence helps).

Anyway, in Singapore, the conductor is a little box with some device attached to it, into which you drop the money and it spits out a ticket. (Come to think of it, everything in Singapore seemed to be like that.) Now, if you do not have one of those transit bus passes in Singapore, you better have exact change when you get on a bus. I learnt this the hard way after losing a few cents here and there and doing rapid mental currency conversion in my head.

After quite a few bus rides I was pretty adept at finding out the fares and having exact change and all that, though it took a lot of planning starting from the train station about which coin to use when so that one has exact change when one needs it.

So after a trip to the zoo, one sweaty and sticky night, I stepped onto the bus confidently and sat in a seat no one seemed to want. Perhaps because it was facing backwards (which was always kind of weird). The bus started and people got on and off, but the seat next to mine stayed empty, even though the bus was almost full. I was staring out at the night scene oblivious to everyone else, except when the bus stopped, to see if I need to adjust to let someone sit next to me.

After a while a group of Indian guys got on. The poor guys had no change and no idea what to do. They asked me (in Hindi straight away, no fudging around with broken English) if I could help them, but I couldn’t, I was all out of planned change for the day. They managed somehow and got off after a few stops.

A while later, when my reverie with the nighttime world outside was broken, I turned my attention back to the people in the bus. For a while I didn’t notice anything strange. Then I got the prickly radar feeling behind my neck and looked up again and saw that everyone in the bus was staring at me. Every single person!! It was like a scene out of a horror movie. Some blank stares, some with odd smiles, some leering, but all without exception, staring at me.

I checked for the obvious things first –

fly open – no
sitting in ladies/reserved seat – no
drooled onto shirt front while sleeping – no
missed my stop (how would they know) - no
anything else I could think of – no

Hmmm. My mind was racing for possibilities and I couldn’t come up with any. I decided that as long as no one comes up to me and says or does something, I wouldn’t budge. I rested my head against the window pane and acted like I was in a mixed state between asleep and nonchalant.

After a while of doing this, and watching the crowd in the bus out of the corner of my eye, I detected a faint glow over my left shoulder. The glow was moving, flickering. I looked up into the window pane to catch a reflection of whatever it was, too conscious to actually turn around and look.

My reflection nearly laughed in my face out of relief and stupidity.

Over my left shoulder, on a little shelf, was a small TV on mute, playing some Chinese soap, which the people on the bus were watching avidly.

Part – II

I was still chuckling to myself when I reached AK’s hotel room and told him the whole story. He listened to it, laughed and then said – "so you failed the bus test."

It seems that if you are an Indian on a bus in Singapore then the people who would be willing to sit next to you would be in the following order –

Indian male
Indian female
Chinese male
Chinese female
White/other phirang male
White/other phirang female (possibly never)

I thought about this for a while, ran all the bus and train journeys through my head and brought up my co-passengers. It was true. I had almost always failed the bus test. I had even failed the bus test on trains.

But with that bus trip back from the zoo, when everyone was staring at me, that was the TV. I am pretty sure. Or maybe it was the BO from walking around in the zoo the whole day. Maybe.

I think.

The Vault

2007-04-22T17:30:00.000+05:30

There was a time when the only English music I knew was Michael Jackson and whatever used to come on this TV show called Top of the Pops (?) on DD. There, for the first time I heard INXS (Suicide Blonde), Queen and other stuff which I never knew existed. However, MJ continued to rule the roost since the TV didn’t really do much for the music in those days. I used to continue to watch the show in hopes that they would show a MJ song, and that eventually happened once when they played the song “Say, say, say” by Paul and MJ. If you asked “Who’s Paul?” then stop reading and go away.

Anyway, many musical frontiers have been passed since, including some I’m not proud of (Baba Sehgal and Backstreet Boys, anyone?) But it would suffice to say that I lived and I learned. Or at least I hope I did. In the middle of this musical discovery, there is still one mystery that refused to go away. This has to do with the greatest hits compilation of Def Leppard called Vault.

I was introduced to Vault late (first year college) by a close friend whose musical tastes I trusted. He gave me the tape and said “You’ll love it, but be careful with the tape. I’ve lost three already.”

I took the tape, listened religiously and loved it. Def Leppard is still some music I turn to when I just want some background music to life and am not really looking to listen. But, BUT, I lost the tape. It just vanished out of my desk drawer. That too, in a hostel where you were looked down upon as an elitist if you listened to English music. I looked for it everywhere, but didn’t find it.

With long face and heavy heart I told my friend I had lost his tape. He was philosophical about it. He said had expected that. He had lost three (now four) tapes of Vault, all under mysterious circumstances. One had melted in the car because of the heat. One had vanished. One tape broke when he played it for the first time. Now the last one he bought had disappeared without a trace from my desk.

“We’ll have to buy another, I guess” he mused. That we did.

Within a week, my kid brother recorded some random stuff over my tape. My friend's tape disappeared, but was later found at the small little music store near our college where we used to buy our tapes from. We used to hang there a lot, and once when I was behind the counter helping out, I opened a drawer and there was the tape, in really bad shape and no cover. The tape had been pulled out and chewed up by some really bad player. We asked the owner of the shop (who was our friend) how it happened to be there, and he said he didn’t know. He had his own tape missing for a few days.

This is just background information. Over the years now, once the tape world ended and the CD world began, I have bought two CDs of vault. One, foolishly, I left in the car among twenty others. It got scratched badly by the cover of the service manual and refused to play after that. The other, I was more paranoid about. I made a copy and played only that. The original was always kept in the CD rack, untouched and unplayed, like a taunt to fate.

But then, it had to happen. My copy I lent to someone, who never returned it, but I was getting used to it, and had the security of having a mint condition piece in my CD rack. One day, in the mood for some Def Lep, I took out the CD and noticed that a small, transparent, cavity had developed on the surface of the CD. It played, but I knew that it wouldn’t play for long. It now sits untouched in the rack, waiting for the day I will pull it out, throw my hands up in despair and go out to the store to buy a new CD.

I am not alone in this. I know at least four other people who have had the same jinx acting on this particular tape/CD.

Are you one of them? Come, Group Hug.

The Time of Our Lives

2007-04-20T12:46:00.000+05:30

Sitting in the plush, cool, colourful lobby of the newspaper office, watching busy, young and old people run around talking on their mobile phones, all I could hear was money, sex and lies.

Jokes I Make Up So I Can Laugh Alone - II

2007-04-17T20:28:00.000+05:30

Wanted For Airport Job

People who like to push old/sick people around.

Mine is Bigger

2007-04-12T12:32:00.000+05:30

I come from a small town in small little Kerala. Its called Thrissur, Trichur, Trishivaperoor and some other names depending on when you were born. As a result, somewhere inside my head I have always been a small town guy. Hence the intangible fear of visiting Bombay or walking around in LA.

But, I have a secret. Well its not a secret considering almost everyone in Kerala knows about it, but for the unfortunate, unenlightened who live in big cities in India or abroad and whose concept of scale is directly correlated to the size of the place they come from, my secret is often difficult to believe.

I speak not here of bejeweled temples or some NPWOII (Nobel Prize Winner of Indian Origin) whose chacha had a paan shop in the bus stand in my town. I speak not also of the world famous in Thrissur Sapphire Biriyani or the even more famous Mini Beef Burgers. Nor do I speak of the fact that my town is the so called ‘cultural capital of Kerala.’ I mean, you big city people give a damn about all that, right?

But ever so often, there are these conversations about celebrations. My friend in Australia tells of the fireworks display on the Harbour Bridge that is oh sooo beautiful. Others from Calcutta or New York city speak of the awesome display of firepower on New Years eve or some other festival.

To all of them, at all times that such conversations have occurred, I have with all the superiority I can muster, said “BAH!!”

I do this with the power of the conviction and madness of all the people in my hometown backing me.

We, my awed-by-little-whooshes-of-light-that-go-into-the-sky-and-whimper-out-in-colour friends, have the Thrissur Pooram.

During the day, this merely masquerades as another grand temple festival of Kerala. So we have the immense crowds, the drums and the caparisoned elephants (quite a few of them actually), but hey, everyone knows about this.

But at night the aura changes. People talk in whispers, dogs are tied up indoors under beds, huge pane glass windows of shops are taped up while shopkeepers hope and pray “Not again this year please god.”

We have a circular town centre called, oh so quaintly, The Round. The Round has at its centre a grand old temple with a huge maidan around it. This is where the world effectively comes to an end for about 6 hours in some early April/May morning.

By 10pm, there are people sleeping in the streets on newspapers and sheets. This is done to ensure that when the fun begins they have the vantage points. The more sane people generally leave home around 130 am and walk to The Round. No cars, no bikes, all roads are packed with people. You reach The Round in about 20 minutes and then try to squeeze into the crowd to reach the front.

In 5 minutes of doing this, you give up. The crowd becomes one single animal. You go where it goes, you stop when it stops. The distinction between bodies blurs. You find yourself wiping the sweat off someone else’s head when it was actually aimed at yours. Shirts come off, sometimes your feet leave the ground and still you float along in the sheer flow of flesh.

This is our rock concert.

All you are aware of is one single emotion of impending and eagerly awaited doom, like a fanatic clan waiting to commit mass suicide.

Then – the fun begins.

Some background on the fireworks display – it is supposed to be a friendly contest between two neighbouring temples. One temple starts off the mayhem on one side of The Round and does its best to make sure that no one gets out of there alive. After a few hours of complete annihilation, the other temple starts its campaign for world domination, and shows the now gagging, tottering and shock-blasted crowd what annihilation really is. Ok now that I’ve put it in context, back to the fun.

The first one goes off in a not so loud bang, setting off the chain reaction. Actually, there are two chain reactions. One is in the fireworks themselves and the other is in the crowd. Its like someone took adrenaline and sprayed the air with it. Hearts pound, ears surrender to their fate, cheeks flutter in shockwave after shockwave and the sky becomes white.

No exaggeration.

I have been watching this for many years now. My first memory is of when I was perhaps 8. I went to watch it with my father and we found a safe place out of the crowd, near the shutter of a closed shopping centre. Now my father is an artillery guy. Explosions are his day to day job. He had this advice for me. Put your fingers in your ear and keep your mouth as wide open as you can. This will protect your eardrums from getting fried. I did as told and stuck as close to him as I could.

By the end of the first round, I couldn’t hear a thing and I was absolutely sure we were all going to die a gruesome, loud and hot death. And then, it got louder and the explosion headed straight for the crowd.

I ran. It has been the only instant in my life when I ran for my life. But man, I RAN.

I ran into the shopping arcade, squeezed myself under the almost closed shutters and went and hid in a corner. Dad came after me, pulled me out and took me back to the carnage. I have never forgiven him for that, and I can’t thank him enough for it either. Of course there was no disaster, that’s the way it always is. Impending doom, planned to perfection.

Even now, 20 years later, by the end of the first round of fireworks, a small voice inside me goes “Oh god, everything has gone terribly wrong and we are all going to DIE.” I find myself creeping backwards slowly, and then realize that everyone in the crowd is also moving back slowly.

And then it stops. And the other fireworks display starts, the one with the rockets going up into nice colourful displays of a showering sparks. The usual Australia, Singapore, Big City types.

The whole of the next day, you cant hear too well and the world seems like a much more beautiful place.

Ok enough talking, why don’t you take a look at this video. A couple of things to keep in mind:

the video is from some distance and from the top of a building. So imagine yourself about a 100 feet lower and half a kilometer closer to the show
the first 4 minutes and 30 seconds are just padding, because it really isn’t that loud or bright. But sit through it, you will not be disappointed.
Also AK's (a fellow Thrissur boy) post on fireworks in Singapore.
a word of thanks to whoever it was that uploaded this on YouTube.
and also a word of thanks to Hriday for sending this my way. Yes, Thiruvambady Rocks :)

Now, who wants to come with me this year?

Maid in Gurgaon

2007-04-04T16:55:00.000+05:30

The process of finding someone willing to sweep the floor and wash the clothes of two bachelors is not easy. Firstly, the maids are far more aggressive and talkative than we would like. They bargain for money and bargain hard. Their task is way easier since we have no idea what the industry average CTC for maids is. So we divide any amount mentioned by two (since we split it) and then meekly nod our heads in agreement if they do not eat into our maggi budgets.

Now, when one gets a maid, one assumes things, in all innocence of bachelorhood. This is the routine you have in mind:

Maid rings bell, door is opened and closed.
One returns to sleep.
A while later, maid wakes you up and asks you to close the door behind her. You do that and go back to sleep.
A few hours later, you wake up to a bright, clean, shiny house. The dishes are happily sparkling on their racks. The floor gives off an antiseptic shimmer. The garbage can filled with maggi packets, tea bags, burnt matches, packets of discarded bread, bottles of rum, and other unidentifiable smelly things is empty and populated with a fresh, black plastic bag. The clothes – washed and clean – flutter merrily on the line, eager to get dry and be worn, so they can do it all over again. Nice.
You even mull over giving the key to the maid so you don’t have to wake up to open the door.

Reality, however, has separate plans. First, they will not take out the garbage. I still have not figured out the reason for this, but I guess it has to do with some social thing that I don’t get. That was fine. Looking back at it, it is demeaning to have someone handle your trash.

Then, they will not wash bathrooms. Hmmm… Why is that? They just will not. Live with it. This was going to be tough. I thought back to the hostel days, where we had trees growing out of the toilets, and decided this too could be overcome.

So finally, after some hopes were destroyed and others realigned, the contract is finalized. Timeframes for the arrival and departure are worked out and hands not shaken in agreement. Then the fun starts.

The first one to be appointed was Maya. She was short, smart, and bossy. The first day, during the negotiation stage, she said she wasn’t happy with her current company as the hours were long and the pay not great. The boss came home late and she had to hang around till then. Besides, she didn’t like dogs. My roomie and I exchanged glances at the comment about money and decided we would be better pay masters and have a retention plan (to be worked out later). She left the second day.

The second appointee was Prem. She was incapable of seeing objects directly in her line of vision. If there was a pile of shattered glass in the middle of the floor, she would carefully sweep around it, so that the beauty of chaos would not be disturbed. I think she thought it was installation art of some kind. After three days, she said she could only come at 10 am. The slight problem of us having to get to office at 9 am did not move her. An ultimatum was issued – by her to us – either go to office late, or lose my services. Well that was that. We couldn’t have that at all. So we started going to office by 11 am. And we paid her some money in advance. Goodbye money, good bye Prem. No love lost.

The third in line was Aarti. She is 15 married and always smiling. She smiled especially wide when she broke two expensive CFLs while sweeping. She has to be told in algorithms about her tasks for the day. Everyday. I kind of like that. It’s like she refuses to settle into any pattern. Or maybe she has short term memory loss. So now, its goodbye going to bed after maid arrives. I feel like a guy trying to program a robot with great GPP but no intelligence. And now I know her questions as well. So before she asks for the broom – I point. Before she asks for the clothes – I point. Before she asks if she should fold the carpet up – I nod.

The other day she came home, picked up the tools of her trade and just stood there, hand on hip. "Kya hua?" I asked.

"Bahut neend aa rahi hai," came the answer, "Kaam nahin ho raha."

I knew what that felt like. I stopped a yawn and told her "Haan mujhe bhi. Tum ghar jao."

She left, I closed the door and went back to sleep. My good deed for the day was done, before the day had even started.

And just when things were settling down, she came home on a Sunday morning. She was not supposed to come on weekends but she did. And she told me “Paise de do, mein gaon jaa rahi hoon.” I was too sleepy to react. So I gave her the money and asked when she would be back. “2 weeks” was the answer. This was too much to fight with. I nodded meekly and closed the door.

Then on Monday, she showed up again. I thought I was dreaming when I opened the door, but crash went the shoe rack and that confirmed her presence. Picking up the shoe rack and putting it back, I continued the nod and point routine so she could get on with her work.

Maybe she forgot she had to go. Hope floats.

Kyundi Accent?

2007-04-03T14:29:00.000+05:30

Disease forum for feel up. Pill is take and feel up.

Flushed from the WC

2007-03-26T18:34:00.000+05:30

So India got kicked out of the world cup. Ho hum, yawn. I am just waiting for some Bollywood producer to come out and announce a film based on everything that has happened so far. After all with murders, cloak and dagger investigations and mass hysteria surrounding it, not to mention the mega bucks, it has all that is required for a pot boiler. Think Dharmendra in Sholay “Iss kahani mein drama hai, emotion hai, tragedy hai…”

But really, the funniest thing on TV were the scrolling headlines showing sms from viewers who said they would pray for (quote) “Baarmuda jeetega, there are one billion people praying for them.” And one even said that Bangladesh should give us a walkover because we fought the war for them in 1971!! A friend in the US spent $200.00 on the satellite TV package and then sent me a tragic email. Well count me out of it. The fact of the matter is that a bunch of over hyped, under-performing, unfit, multi-millionaires went into battle against a cricket team. And they lost. Wake up and smell the contract ink India.

Harsha Bhogle wrote a cricket article long ago, during India’s last tour of South Africa about sporting spirit. He was in a bar with some fellow journalists and noticed a gang of youngsters come in to loud applause and free drinks. He thought they were some superstars he did not know about, and on inquiring, found that they were the local village rugby team which had won a district match that day. He went on to wonder if any domestic cricketer would ever walk in anywhere to that kind of support. Doubtful. If you want proof, turn to Neo Sports and count the number of people in the stadium on the fingers of one hand.

So the fact of the matter is – India is not a sporting nation. We are a Bollywood and religion nation. Things have to be larger than life for us to appreciate them. So when a guy, who has never seen any public support when he was a youngster, comes onto the international scene and is hit in the face with multi-million rupee contracts and ladies underwear, he becomes the public image, he lives the movie. And like all movies have an end, so did this one. Unfotunately, not one that a billion-1 people wanted.

Unless we as a country learn to deal with failure or to even begin to understand it, the script is going to be like a DIY Murder Mystery. On the other hand, some somebodies and many nobodies (like me) get to throw our two paisa worth in the face of a public that will eat the paper that the word Cricket is printed on. Good for us. Poor poor you.

But hey, look on the brighter side of things – I hear the kho kho team is doing well, and the kabaddi team lost to only three other countries. And Vijay Mallya and Ralf Schumacher are making noises about F1 in Delhi. Yaay!! More money, more corporate sponsoprship, more women – just what Indian sports needs.

Go watch 300, and think Bangladesh Vs India. I guess I don’t need to say who is who.

Yes, I succumbed to an online personality test

2007-03-26T17:20:00.001+05:30

What Beatles song personality are you? Take Two

The Walrus

I thought the Walrus was Paul... Lennon must be a dirty liar!

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Crappy Diem, Baby?

2007-03-26T11:35:00.000+05:30

to: god@wherever.com

cc: murphy@law.com

Subject: Crappy Diem

Dear God,

Things have been going well for a while. What's up?

Stop smirking and throw it at me.

Regards,

K.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

to: Murphy@law.com

Subject: Please ignore previous email

Respected Lord Murphy,

I apologize for the confusion. I unintentionally marked you on the previous email. Please do not take the contents of that email seriously. It was an inside joke between G and I.

Of course, you are still Lord of the Universe and the Multiverse.

I don't know why I marked you on that email, stupid thing to d...oh I get it.

Apologies once again.

Cheers,

K.

Coming to America

2007-03-09T12:33:00.000+05:30

"You're going to San Francisco. The flowers in your hair are optional."

-Mr. Wednesday to Shadow, American Gods by Neil Gaiman

So you thought you might like to

2007-02-07T18:09:00.000+05:30

Go to the show

Jokes I make up so I can laugh alone

2007-02-05T17:45:00.000+05:30

Falling in love is so hard on the neice.

Ha Ha Ha.

Why do men have nipples?

2007-01-30T01:40:00.000+05:30

Every book exhibition you go to has that extended section on books that will answer your every question. From the functions and energy potentials of navel lint to ‘The Girl’s Guide to Getting With It.” One such book that always used to jump out at me at these places was this book titled – “Why do men have nipples? (And another 10,000 questions answered).”

Now this was a title that stuck in your head. Never before seeing that book had I ever pondered upon this biological puzzle. Now that I had seen the book, well, things changed. It would strike me while shaving and leave me razor dangling and gape mouthed in thought, Hmmm, I would go, hmmm, now what do we have here? And of course there was no explanation to come up with through Deep Thought. It was biology for god’s sake, every thing you didn’t know instinctively, you learnt by heart from big fat text books. So I gave up on it; for a while.

And then one boring day, many many weeks later, you read about breast cancer in men and Paget’s Disease of the Nipple and things take an altogether more interesting turn. You look at the pictures on the internet and then in the mirror and…Hmmmm.

You look again. Internet. Mirror.

Hmmmm.

Then you begin the great search. There is no web page that is irrelevant, no article that doesn’t interest you. Search terms are refined, pages bookmarked, notes made and many meandering thoughts shot off in many unimaginable directions.

This is what you find. Not Much.

There is very little out there about Men’s breast cancer. Most of it is for women. And then they talk as if women are born with the genetic knowledge of what a ‘lump’ feels like. Unfortunately, I lack that gene.

So please, you sexist female cancer specialists, define a lump. Men, despite what you think, are not into examining their breasts very often. Breasts of the opposite sex, yes, our own, sorry. The very fact that some men have them (man-boobs for you FRIENDS fans) is enough to make many concerned mothers wring their hands about vanishing marriage proposals.

So now comes the pivotal question – is that a lump? Or is it (ha ha) muscle? There is no way you can know. So with all the hard knocks that life has thrown your way as an indicator, you decide – cancer it is. Paget’s Disease of the Nipple.

You read survival statistics, and Sidhu comes to mind. You give up in disgust.

Then, you mull over the future. This is tough to do as you have never done it before. And now that you are doing it, it seems kind of pointless and altogether too late. Yes, you decide, yes, you should have listened to your mother and bettered your lifestyle; too late for that now. You think of all the “I told you so’s” and your heart shrinks into the pulmonary cavity.

After a lot of mulling, you hit upon what you will do. You will travel the world, spreading awareness about male breast cancer. And you will do this in your own unique way – through humor.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, presenting the one and only male breast cancer comedian in the world… (Fanfare…you can just see yourself on the Jay Leno show now)

You take the stage, the audience hushes in anticipation and sympathy. This is the perfect crowd to have, they will laugh even at the bad jokes because they feel sorry for you.

You start your routine.

“Male breast cancer.”

Pause.

“Now there is the definition of irony.”

Pause. Applause and laughter.

Good, you have them eating out of your hand now.

“Well it sure is better than testicular cancer, now. I wouldn’t mind losing these two at all.”

More laughter, you’re hot tonight.

“Well that will save me the liposuction I was planning to have.”

By now, all you have to do is open your mouth and they will swallow it up. Go you star, GO!!

“So you know, I read this book – “Why do men have nipples and other questions” and well, what can I say, I found out now didn’t I?”

And then the doctor’s assistant comes out with your lab report into the waiting area, shakes you awake and says with a smile, “Nothing to worry, its just an extreme allergic reaction.”

She is shocked when you snatch the report out of her hand and storm away fuming.

What does she know? You just lost your career in showbiz.

The Wait Is Over

2007-01-21T12:59:00.000+05:30

Guru, Gandhi and Guns

2007-01-14T17:46:00.000+05:30

So much news about a stupid video on YouTube! Has the internet arrived in India or what? I watched it, found it stupid and amateurish and did not give it a second thought. My Indian-ness was not outraged, my honour was not sullied and my sensibilities were not offended, at least not by the content of the video. I just wished they had a better make-up artist. So why the hullabaloo? I guess because, the powers that be do not like the fact that I can laugh at myself, as an Indian, without feeling discriminated against or insulted for being who I am. Come on you news channels, get a sense of humor. What’s next, a campaign against Ludakrishna and MC Vikram for singing “Welcome to India where the cows eat hay, and we ride auto-rickshaws everyday…”? Anyways, on to our movie review now.

Guru:

It was physically exhausting to watch this movie. The first reaction after leaving the theatre was – I need a drink. Tedium, pure tedium.

Aishwarya Rai is probably the worst thing about this movie. It was tough to pick a worst thing actually, between the badly placed boring songs (most of them) jarring the narrative, Abhishek Bachchan with a completely confused character portrayal, a story that could have been so much but was nothing at all, the worst kiss I have seen on celluloid and an ending speech that was so bereft of any thought or intelligence that it was laughable. Really, I mean, what happened to Mani Ratnam?

Ok, let’s start with the good things. Mithun Chakraborty. And the Mallu IAS officer screaming to his wife and kids in Malayalam (but then maybe that was a personal thing). Ok can’t think of anything else.

The cinematography was good, but you expect at least that much from an MR film. The music was a mish-mash of stuff Rahman has done before, only worse. One maybe two songs stood out in the film, the rest were just irritants. Actually, to be fair to him, I think Mani Ratnam could well have killed the songs by using them so badly in the film.

Aishwarya Rai’s introduction scene is with the ‘Barso Re’ song and to me it looked like the lady hated the rain. I mean, she was trying hard to look like she enjoyed it but she so clearly didn’t. Then why, when it was so apparent, would a director do that to his lead female star? The fact that she clearly still cannot act, despite being around for so long, is sad. She should stick to what she does best – sell lipstick and plug for world peace.

Abhishek Bachchan was like a guy who came to the chemistry exam after studying maths all night. Initially he walks around with this beatific smile on his face every time he makes an “I will take over the world” statement, it looks like he was dropped on his head when he was a kid. Then sometimes, he plays Abhishek Bachchan – normal. Then sometimes he plays Abhishek Bachchan “oh I remembered my plan for this character” and goes back to doing something with his face. And then he plays Amitabh Bachchan in Agneepath. Despite all this, I liked him in the movie. There were occasional flashes of really good acting; I just wish it was more consistent throughout the movie.

Mithun Chakraborty has a good role and good dialogues and he makes the most of it. He plays it with a zest that was refreshing and made the movie bearable. Yes he hams a bit, but that was fun too.

And then we come to the worst kiss on Indian celluloid. I mean seriously, it was embarrassing to watch. I can’t say anything more about this without shuddering. Why Mr. MR, why? Could you not see it was so badly done? Have you not watched Kamal Hassan in action? Or even a Shahid-Kareena MMS? What was with that? Yikes!

And in the end, Baby AB gives the ‘Independence Day’ speech that falls flat on its face. Nothing he says makes sense. Mani Ratnam makes the commission looks like a bunch of idiots, which perhaps in real life they were. But that hardly justifies a scene where I really had to sit open mouthed in amazement at the lack of creativity of the dialogue. What were they thinking?

So anyway, the movie is boring till the first half and then it gets worse. The story simply refuses to stand up and be counted. There are too many references and tangents that simply do not add anything to the narrative. It’s confused between being some kind of a badly made documentary which doesn’t really say anything and a badly made movie that fails to keep me engaged.

Go watch Happy Feet instead; at least you’ll come out smiling.

Etiquette for Men

2007-01-08T23:21:00.000+05:30

What not to say when you meet an acquaintance in the men's loo:

1: Hows it going?

2: Wasssuupp?

3: How you doin'?

Never forget the basic rules of men's loos:

1: Always choose a station as far away from the others as possible. NEVER use a stand-up immediately next to someone, irrespective of how well you know them.

2: In case 1 cannot be achieved - use a stall.

3: No holding the door for someone going out or in, in fact, all third party holding is out of question.

4: Only check your hair and clothes out in the mirror if the loo is empty.

5: In case someone walks in while you are doing this, act like you have an itch on your face, a drop of paint in your hair or are having a heart seizure.

6: No discussing office politics - you never know who that is in the stall with jeans around ankles and dirty sneakers you see under the stall door.

7: Act pissed with the soap dispenser and tissue holder - they are your enemies.

8: Don't try and trick the sensor if you have company. All your ducking and dodging to fool it into flushing should be reserved for those solitary moments.

9: No eye contact.

10: No talking.

Talk to me

2007-01-01T18:06:00.000+05:30

Participants - Kraz and I.

WAKE UP!!!!! [shakes Kraz up]

Kraz:

i think i'm high [falls down and dies his natural death]

:) ok. onto next life,

didn't i tell u,

u have 4,

so...lets get going

Kraz:

just 4?

yeah

Kraz:

why 4?

I:

hey.. i dont make the rules.. [points to the left] it does, go ask it

Kraz:

[pulls out gun]

[checks chamber]

[cleans barrell]

[loads ammo]

[cocks hammer]

[aims]

BANG

:( , yeah..t hats one life of urs down, i hope u know that

oh..

did u miss the rules.

sorry..

here they are..

[hands over booklet]

see.. that line..?

yeah..

that one

Kraz:

wat language is this?

oh can't u read the sript...?

thats strange.

Kraz:

no its not

thats prob coz i am blind in my ears

u were supposed to have been given this skill yesterday at 6:47 pm

wait.. hang on..

lemme check..

Kraz:

but yeterday is not here yet

yeah.. it came and left day before..Kraz.. ur totally lost baby.. waht happened

Kraz:

oh i think i was sleeping then

yeah.. no actually.. u didn't sleep at all..

its been about 3 and half days

Kraz:

yeah, but i was sleeping at night

no u didnt.. the night never came..

everyone waited..

anxiously

and u went searching..

thought u found it.. and slept in it..

Kraz:

they were looking in the wrong place

but that wasn't night Kraz

Kraz:

it was behind the curtain

but u werent' even on teh stage..

and the curtain went over the moon..

the night never came..

Kraz:

u know how it is with this stage fear of mine

i got all wrapped up in the curtain

and then the night stained the red

and thats how it became black

but it didnt turn black Kraz..

that happened when u closed ur eyes

Kraz:

are u saying i am color blind?

i dont see waht u see Kraz.. but the news came to me that u saw the black..

Kraz:

thats the problem with the media these days

sound bites

it wasn't the media..

it was ur mouth..

Kraz:

but i had it locked up

with the ego

no that is waht u thought happened.. ur mouth decided otherwise

the ego was beaten

Kraz:

ok doctor

and it was about time as i heard

Kraz:

but please dont say i have to have those pills again

so.. i'll gve u some new ones.. u wont have side effects anymore

and they are a new colour too.. aren't u happy?

Kraz:

its the top effects that i am worried about

they go through the roof of my mouth

and the top of my head

my sides are just stitched

ok im all out

Kraz:

u mean someone stole the pills

or did u have them all?

Doctor??

all out.. light switched off.. hang on .. gimme a sec.. [leans over and takes the pills]

Kraz:

all out?

are u feeding me mosquite repellent?

no.. that was the song playing.. werne't u liseing.. yeah.. air supply..

it just started..

shush..

tehre it goes again..

Kraz:

but the air is poisoned

gimme some mescal

all out..

of love..

Kraz:

but in tennis

love means nothing

this is no court Kraz.. atleast not tennis.. teh verdict for everything else.. will come soon.. as long as a i get a more intelligent jury.. i refuse to be crushed by mere mortals

Kraz:

you know what?

Kraz:

its like being between a rock and a hard place

especially if ur a bug

but then

without bugs

big brother would never know

what you are doing to me

so now you be careful

OK.. STOP THE MADNESS

Kraz:

madness?

my head is spinning

Kraz:

ahh

take these pills doctor

they are not all out

..............

Kraz:

i hid them under the pill-ow

instead of eating them

and see there is a nice window in this room

and u can see the dead fish in the river from here

you are welcome to share it

as long as u take ur pills

....

.................

I'm sorry Kraz, i'm sooo sorry

Kraz:

its gonna be alright

the Dr. said to give u this

Kraz:

i know

[sniffles]

Kraz:

i have known all along

come come

[hugs]

sit down

AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Kraz.. think u missed it

Kraz:

now

repeat after me

the spell was broken 5 lines ago

Kraz:

so u believe in magic

now there is a question..

come lets walk by the river..

maybe u can show me the dead fish

Kraz:

taurus ate them all

Gurgaon

2006-12-25T15:45:00.000+05:30

From the Wikipedia article on Age of Empires:

"Wonders are enormous buildings representing the architectural achievements of the time. They require huge amounts of resources to build and are constructed very slowly (20 villagers working on one together is not uncommon). Wonders do not produce units or allow research. In scenarios played with Standard victory conditions, a player can win by constructing a wonder and keeping it from being destroyed for 2,000 years (15 minutes under standard game timing). Building a wonder also greatly increases a player's score, which is beneficial in "score" games."

(Age of Empires Screenshot)

From the song Big Yellow Taxi:

They paved paradise and put up a parkin' lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parkin' lot

They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parkin' lot

Hey farmer, farmer, put away your DDT
I don't care about spots on my apples,
Leave me the birds and the bees - please
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Hey now, they've paved paradise to put up a parking lot
Why not?

(Gurgaon)

This is where I live now.

Level - Beginner.

Powers - Paranoia.

Weakness - The colour green.

Game on.

Grammar

2006-12-04T14:14:00.001+05:30

If a pronoun is a noun that's lost its amateur status, what's a proverb?

...we are to India what France is to Europe."

2006-11-23T16:25:00.000+05:30

Thank you Ink for this.

2006-11-11T03:12:00.000+05:30

Where are the snowdens of yesteryear?

Picture yourself

2006-10-31T17:23:00.001+05:30

Picture yourself at home on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The curtains are drawn, and they let yellow, filtered sunlight in, making patterns on the floor. You think of refraction, physics, school, nothing...

The Beatles are singing... and you are singing along-

"...Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,
That grow so incredibly high.
Newspaper taxis with beer on the shore,
Waiting to take yo...."

And a voice breaks through.

"Beer on the shore? Did you just say "BEER" on the shore?"

You adopt as superior a pose as you can from the stupidly dazed sprawl on the bed and confirm that yes, indeed, that is precisely what you sang, considering that's how they wrote it.

Apparently, superiority is always in the hands of the people who know what they are talking about. So you are handed a lyrics book, and there, to your utter crumbling facade of smugness was the destroying line:

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore.

Appear. Not beer.

The only thing that travels faster than light or bad news is reverese smugness.

You sink back into the warm arms of your pillow. Mull over it. And attempt to pretend that you have fallen asleep mulling.

Yes, thank you for that information. Yes, I think I have a one track mind too.

But seriously, isn't beer on the shore better than appearing on the shore?

Children Of A Lesser God

2006-10-25T13:24:00.000+05:30

It has happened to me a lot - moments that make me feel like a lesser mortal. When the purpose of existence leaves philosophical realms and kicks me in tender places with the vehemence that is the least metaphysical. Moments when snails become a role model and armadillos – gods. You all know what I am talking about, I sense some understanding here.

In school there was calculus, but I never let it get to me through a combination of luck and practiced indifference. I passed, I beat the system, I never looked back.

There was also sports. I sucked at everything in the worst way possible. Legend still has the one moment in XIIth standard, when the school football team felt pity on me and took me on as a substitute in the dying moments of a game they were winning by a humongous margin (6 -0, I think) and put me in attack (centre-forward!!). The actual centre forward dodged the opposing goalie and passed the ball to me, standing like a hare in headlights in front of an open goal. I stopped the ball at my feet, somehow, stared at the goalie floundering in the muddy ground, and with a lightheaded view of eternal glory, kicked the ball with all my might at the goal. It went out across the corner flag. I will never forget the look on the goalie’s face, or my centre forward team mate for that matter. But what the hell, I never really cared about sport too much and this made for a good nostalgic drinking story that still comes up now and then.

Then there were the innumerable moments when benevolence of friends have been tested during my attempts to sing or those moments of losing to cousins who are 15 years younger than you at chess. I still don’t take up my kid brother on an arm wrestling contest or face my father’s gentle off spinners.

All this – lack of physical ability, confounded math, or laughably depressing musical ability I have managed to live with. After all, there is a point to which you really care about things and after that you live, you learn.

But there is still one thing that can still make me feel like maybe I missed out on evolution. All you naturalists and bio-historians out there – here I am – the missing link you have been looking for. These moments happen at the most innocuous of places – the dining table.

Food. My passion for food is indescribable. I would give away a million goals for the perfect biriyani. I would make a fool of myself publicly by singing if there was a sumptuous sadhya with palada payasam on offer. My kingdom for aloo-paratha dripping with ghee. My soul for fish-curry rice my grandma makes. My conscience for Mom’s bread pudding or caramel custard or gulab jamun or… you get the idea. In short, food is my thing.

And then, sitting at the breakfast table, having puttu-kadla, my never-even-boiled-water-in-his-life-father will sniffingly say “Maybe you should put a little more ground alfalfa and green meringue powder into this” or something like that. My mind freezes and I wait for my Mom’s reaction. She will taste another spoonful and say “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll fix it now.” And she picks up the dish and walks off to the kitchen. Dad gives me a nod that means a million things. I submit balefully and finish the now imperfect dish.

Or at a restaurant, with friends, people like me, young inexperienced, non-cooking people, and the following scene will unfold. We order our stuff and then one by one the instructions come out. Don’t put this in my that. Make that one with less those. Yeah and when you are pulling it out of the oven, put it on your head and say 10 hail Marys, and then toss it at the wall. Bring it to me only if it sticks. The waiter looks at me expectantly and all I can say is – uhh…umm…make it spicy and…uhh…fast, yes fast is good. So is spicy.

Even at the place I stay with friends, the max anyone does is make the odd cup of tea. But when the cook comes for the day, the entire rigmarole starts all over. “Kal biriyani mein adrak ka sallan kam tha. Kyon?” “Aaj paratha ke saath jo sabzi banalogey, toh usme boil karke, phir fry karke, phir banana.”

And I sit there wondering what went wrong. Why am I the way I am? I mean it’s not like I can’t taste, of course I can. But I would never know what’s wrong. Is the salt less? Is there too much pepper? I don’t know. I know there is something wrong, but can never put my finger on it.

Is there no hope for people like me? How can people like my Dad, who needs a map to find the kitchen in his own house, say such things with such élan? It can’t be because he has eaten more food than me. I can easily disprove that and besides, he was in the army, he eats anything that won’t bite him back. And what about people my age or younger – guys who have no clue where the salt is and whose only experience with any kind of cooking is in the chemistry lab. How do they do it?

It has to be a big conspiracy. Some evil maniac out there is out to get me. To him/her/it I have this to say – OK Fine! I am sorry for whatever I did to you. Now cut it out. Stop playing with these innocent people’s minds.

Hello, is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me...

PS: All ingredients/processes/etc mentioned here are of my own making. You other people, the ones who are oh-so-superior - please forgive me.

Hot Chennai Day

2006-10-03T18:16:00.000+05:30

The Perfect Date

2006-09-13T20:17:00.000+05:30

I was on time, for a change. That was a good start. I hated making people wait, especially her, but ended up getting late anyhow. I adjusted my belt, scuffed the shoes on the back of my pants, took a deep breath and walked in the gate to ring the bell. Despite all the times we had met, these visits to her place always made me nervous. It was frustrating at times to know that the nervousness was unreasonable, but it was also exciting.

I rang the bell and waited for the familiar footsteps to pad up to other side. I knew she never used the peephole, yet I always caught myself trying to catch the tell-tale darkening on the other side of the glass eye. A door opened somewhere inside and I heard curtains being drawn as she walked towards the door. I remembered that I had not switched off my phone and furtively reached for it. The last thing I wanted was to be caught searching my pockets when she opened the door with that beautiful smile. Even worse was for the phone to ring when I was with her. It had happened once, just once, and the magic had been destroyed. I managed to deal with the damn thing just as I heard the door click open and there she stood.

A few moments of smiling silence and a quick hug later, we were inside, sitting down at our usual places – she next to the window, in her favourite chair; I on the sofa, facing the window and her, with the bookshelf next to me. I loved the smell of those books. I loved the entire house actually. There was this whole silence to it that wasn’t just quiet, it was…serene. It was the first time that I realized that even houses and rooms could be serene. The word would never fit things like that before.

I got my coffee, she got her iced tea, and the conversation started. I have always believed that conversations are the lifeblood of any relationship. They could be magical, mundane, melancholic, merry, mysterious, mischievous – anything. But as long as you could talk the night away, you were onto something. And with her the conversations were always intensely engaging. I could have spent hours sitting there throwing my thousand views of the world at her and she would always show me a side to it that I had never thought about. I was in love with her words, her tone, her language, her voice. Everything else seemed to fade into insignificance when the two of us got started. Coffee, ice tea and ideas were infinitely refilled. Time became insignificant to me. She on the other hand would always throw a casual glance at the clock, as if to say “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Today was just like every other day. Magic was in the air. I was growing more and more animated with the way our thoughts were moving. I saw her glance once, twice, three times at the clock, but I didn’t stop. Finally, I paused my efflux of ideas to hear what she had to say.

She cleared her throat, took a sip of the iced tea and stared at me quietly for a while. A cat I had never seen before jumped onto her lap. I hate cats. She held my gaze for a while and then said, “That’s incredibly interesting K, and for once I have no other perspective to give you. Let’s take this up again in our next session. It was great talking to you. Same time, next week. Don’t be late. Katie will give you your reports on the way out. Go over them and let me know if you disagree with anything. Thanks, good evening.”

It was the perfect date, and it came every week, Thursday evenings, five to six. She was expensive, but then she was the best. Maybe she would make everything OK someday.

Maybe.

Chennai - Flotsam

2006-08-30T20:21:00.000+05:30

Chennai - Sparks Will Fly

2006-08-30T20:12:00.000+05:30

To the Plutonians

2006-08-25T20:41:00.000+05:30

Hello Dear Plutonians,

I would sincerely like to apologize for the ignorance and insensitivity of my planet-mates in 'demoting' your wonderful orb.

I fail to understand what possible use this could have, except to confuse millions of parents when they try to teach the solar system to their kids. I guess publishers and map makers and other associated people will rub their hands in glee. Astrologers will have some moolah to make once they figure out the initial workaround. And you, dear Plutonians, will be pissed off.

I know its a long way to Earth. But if you start now, you should be in time to catch our grandkids by surprise. Invade and plunder, I say!

And when the invasion comes, remember, I am on your side.

Up the revolution.

Sincerely,

Kraz Arkin
Disgruntled Earthling.

Two Words

2006-08-21T19:15:00.000+05:30

Thank you, for…

…the over 10 million words that you must have generated since I’ve known you.

…Alanis Morisette.

…BANDIFORKINSEN.

…Bawarchi.

…Breakfast at Tiffanys.

…breakfast at window seats.

…embraces in braces.

…Tuesdays.

…paranoid bike rides.

…Long lunches.

…MMTS rides.

…walks.

…your patented H-Therapy.

…Spanish.

…actually saying ‘sigh’.

…getting high on Breezer.

…spontaneously combusting.

…obstinately not giving up.

…trying to claw your way inside my head, and succeeding.

…saying this – “i think floyd will always remind me of u.. car rides, relished silence, deep thought, sly smiles and warmth”

…a zillion lyrics.

…laughing at T-shirts.

…lectures on feminism.

…telepathy.

…the smile.

…and a million other things that have been cherished, laughed over, thought about, reflected on, forgotten and remembered. So here’s something for you –

“The rain fell slow, down on all the roofs of uncertainty
I thought of you and the years and all the sadness fell away from me
And did you know...”

Lost souls may be found or discarded. Fishbowls may continue to be microcosms or smash into smithereens. Life, as we know it or don’t, somehow exasperatingly manages to keep up to its own pace.

But sometimes, trust becomes a dirty word. Promises become slashes to wrists. Words become poison.

But…poles apart can still be close together.

I’m sorry.

Happy Birthday.

Thank you…again.

Empty V Quiz

2006-08-09T20:26:00.000+05:30

Q: Anthony Kaun Hai?

1: Akbar aur Amar ka bhai
2. That old British dude who ate people instead of lamb
3. Don't know
4. Don't care

SMS your answer to 78257 and you could win a chance to visit a movie theatre, pay through your nose for cramped seats, inflate with joy when you see the red Ferrari, cry for the remaining 2 hours until the Ferrari reappears and exit with the intense desire to find the people involved with the making of the movie and presonally chop them up into little pieces.

So the movie recipe comes down to the following points:

1. One Red Ferrari
2. One woman willing to speak with an accent and run around in bikinis
3. A tonne of bad acting
4. Reams of horrid dialogue
5. Well mish-mashed stolen stories
6. Lyrics to nauseate - (mera chain-vain le liya, mere neend-veend ud gayi, mera pyaar-vyaar...you get the idea)
7. One Red Ferrari (yeah, again)
8. Intolerable cruelty
9. Lots of optimism
10. Infinite stupidity.

Put it all together (and shoot in a foreign country so you can be international looking) and if you remember your own name by the end of it, you are lucky.

Now if only I could get a wallpaper of that Ferrari.

Roadtrippin

2006-06-29T21:37:00.000+05:30

No.1 On The List of People Who DO Deserve a Fatwa

2006-06-26T19:17:00.000+05:30

Harsha Bhogle.

NH 17 - Revisited

2006-06-13T18:52:00.000+05:30

Waking up was never easy in Kothamangalam. The constant rain, the cool mountain winds, the nasty drinking session from the previous night, all combined to ensure that sleep, when it happened, was deep and almost sacred. One such perfect late afternoon, after an even better inebriated night (mornings ceasing to exist altogether from our second year onwards), we were awakened by what sounded like the EBT bus driver from the next room, puking his guts out. But something was wrong; he seemed to be puking in stereo, while playing the guitar.

We awoke one by one, wiping away the smears of curry and our own vomit from shirtfronts and proceeded to look for the source of the racket. It appeared, to our foggy minds and tired sprawled out bodies, that the sounds were emanating from our own music system.

My eyeballs felt like soft boiled eggs and any sudden movements were impossible, the gravity was too strong that afternoon. I prodded Shaheen to further wakefulness and pointed out the source of the noise to him, ending his confused enchantment with the ceiling. Shahid and Rijo went back to sleep with pillows over their heads.

Shaheen sat up and reached out to take a puff from the wake up cigarette that I had lit and took a few drags. We both stared at the smiling, gawky bastard sitting next to the music system, watching our reactions with glee.

“Isn’t it awesome?” the gawky bastard asked us.

Shaheen and I just stared at him, refusing to acknowledge firstly that he was real, and when we realized that he really was there, refusing to acknowledge that he was actually referring to the sounds coming from the speakers.

“He’s the man maan, the poet, the prophet.”

Shaheen got up, grunting, and drank an entire bottle of water, and stood there like a statue for a while. I made an effort to try and figure out what was happening. Some guy was screeching on our music system. It did not sound good. It was certainly not what I wanted to hear right then. It was not something I wanted to hear, ever. I stared at this bastard, Naqqash-ul-Haq, who sat there still grinning and waiting, for a while trying to make sense of it all.

Haq had been chucked out of his room by his roomie, the psycho ATA, for unclear reasons. He had asked to move in with us. We were nice guys, we had a big room, he had a music system, so we let him. That had been two days ago. The bastard did not drink, nor smoke and was a fucking genius. And that was not it. He had worse traits. He spoke with a funny accent and threw money away like dirt. And now he had woken us up after a night of revelry, to make us listen to this shite, and it was a bad, bad move.

I stared at Shaheen for a while. I could see the violence in his eyes. There was going to be trouble.

Shaheen dropped the bottle of water and walked up to the music system. He stopped the music and pulled out the tape. He then proceeded to pull out the tape to its end and coil it up on the floor, while Haq watched in some kind of wonder and shock. Shaheen then gathered up the coils of tape from the floor, walked to the window, and threw it all out, into the yard three floors below.

He returned to the bed and went back to sleep. I stared at Haq for a while.

“That was Highway 61 revisited maan!” he cried.

“Well you can’t play that crap in here, and not when we are sleeping for sure.”

I turned over and went back to sleep.

This was how I met Bob Dylan.

Sleeping on Buses or How to Experience Parallel Realities – Part 1

2006-06-01T20:52:00.000+05:30

There is something about the KSRTC buses that seems to transport one to a different reality. Of course, this might not hold true for all of us, especially since all of us have not traveled by KSRTC buses. This might also hold true for buses of other, lesser transport corporations, or even (shudder) private buses. Though I have had my share of parallel reality in them, I don’t know if this holds true for everyone who actually resides in these states.

Before we set upon this journey of exploration of parallel realities, we must understand the requirements to experience such a phenomenon.

Firstly, one must be sufficiently disconnected – from the universe, the environment, existence, gravity and closer home – from your co-occupants of the space-time-warp device, otherwise known as ‘The Bus’. If you can be sufficiently disconnected from yourself – perfect. There are various methods of obtaining this disconnect, including certain mood altering substances (which shall be the topic of a lecture in the future), but I stick to the old favourites – anger, hunger, afternoon heat, lack of sleep and (the most important) sheer lack of involvement with anything that might happen, or in other cases, not happen.

Secondly, the seat is of over-riding importance. Always choose a window seat, somewhere in the central portion of ‘The Bus’. (For reasons of brevity I shall no longer refer to the space-time-warp device as the space-time-warp device, but merely as ‘The Bus’, with or without quotes, as convenient). Students of science might remember the aufbau principle.

[Sidebar: If you are not a student of science, or never were a student of science, or did not like science much and thought it should never have been invented, or discovered (based on if you are a student of English), stop reading immediately. You do not have my sympathies. Science, as we all know, is important. Its importance cannot be over-emphasized, but I shall try. When I said ‘Science is important’, I really meant it. Completely, seriously, in dead earnest. It is more important than you imagine (you stupid commerce grad you). In fact, much like the continuum transfunctioner (“Zoltan”), Science is a powerful and mysterious…err…science, its power is only exceeded by its mystery. End Sidebar}]

The aufbau principle says that…well we already know what it says; after all we are all students of science here. Many people believe that the way people occupy bus seats is a direct replication of the aufbau principle. This might be because, as we all know (no, not you, you persistent commerce bastard), that matter is made up of atoms, and since humans are matter (no, they don’t matter – they are matter), and atoms have a mind of their own, they tend to control the minds of the humans whom they make up and hence…err…anyway, moving on…this theory was first put forward by Prof. Anthony Idontknowislastname, in 1994, in a small sleepy little town called Thrissur in Kerala. Prof. Idontknowhislastname since moved to Italy and proceeded to start a pickpocketing network, but his ideas have influenced the minds of many future shapers of scientific thought, including (if I may modestly add) mine and AK’s (if he remembers any of this stuff after that ghastly IIM education).

This is what the aufbau principle demonstrates, when applied to empty buses, waiting to be occupied by irritable Malaylees waiting in stinking KSRTC bus stands. The first person to enter the bus, after successfully mutilating his comptetition and ensuring that the poor chap who got in second would never be a father again, will head straight for the front of the bus, to the window seat right behind the driver. The next person (or electron) will occupy the next available energy level, which is the window seat right behind the first window seat, and so on, until all the window seats are taken. Then the next orbits begin to get filled, and hence the person at the first window seat gets a seat-mate, and then the person behind him gets one, and so on. If we attempt to calculate the atomic number (or mass) of the bus based on this, we would be fools, so you – arts grad (how the hell did you get in here??) – stop smirking and thanking god you did not take science. God, as we know, does not exist as there is no proof yet to his existence, and if you don’t stop smirking now, I swear to god, you will go to hell.

Now, this is the tricky part. On entering the bus, if you are still alive, do NOT (I repeat – NOT) proceed to the minimum energy level, in this case the first seat behind the driver. This, while satisfying your atomic instincts, will not prove to be helpful in a successful completion of the experimental experience. Fight the urge and sit in the middle row, the one just in front of where the tyre creates an uncomfortable leg space zone, and where both the windows are perfectly misaligned, so that irrespective of who closes which window, you will always have fresh air supply.

[Sidebar: if you happen to be trying to board the bus, from any station south of Ernakulam (especially Kayamkulam) forget it. Your best bet is to catch a taxi and go to any other bus station, north of Ernakulam, preferably Thrissur. The people occupying the regions south of Ernakulam are known to be deadly, ferocious and unbelievably devious and nasty in the matter of boarding buses. Many budding scientists have met with cruel fates like death, decapitation (which also causes death), and more horridly despair and depression (which are more or less the same, more more than less). So beware. End Sidebar.]

There are many techniques involved in selecting the perfect seat-mate on a bus. Yes, do not look at me with distrust, selecting people to experiment on in buses is not only possible, but easy. After I am done with you, you would have become an expert in this obscure art…sorry science. (I can see you smirking). To shortly go over some of them:

1) Act asleep and sprawl over as much of the seat as you can
2) Act drunk and sprawl over as much of the seat as you can
3) The orphan handkerchief (very effective)
4) Use your bags and a nasty scowl
5) Look as if you are about to vomit (that’s puke for you, arty)
6) Do not, under any circumstances, look pleasant, or worse, out of place. This encourages conversation and genealogy.
7) If it is raining keep the windows open. If you do not have a window seat, surrender.
8) Sneeze, cough and wipe your hands over as much of the surrounding space as possible.
9) Strip naked and do a headstand on the seat (for Kayamkulam and soutwards only)
10) Lick the seat and act deranged (works best in Trivandrum, shudder).

We shall cover these topics and other techniques in the upcoming classes. Please leave your fee receipts in the box next to your chair. If you do not have a fee receipt and are female, go the back room and take off your clothes. If you do not have a fee receipt and are male, go to the back room and take off your clothes. If you do have a fee receipt and are male/female – feel free to leave.

Thank you.

Plots

2006-05-29T19:28:00.000+05:30

The plot of land had been in their family for ages. While others had staked their claims to the surrounding plots, as time passed by, their plot stood there, waiting to be claimed. He never got fed up of telling his son the amount of bargaining and wheedling he had to do to get that prime piece of real estate allocated to them. There had been ministers and millionaires after that little plot, but finally he had managed to through sheer endurance and shrewdness.

He knew that the way land prices were going up as the city exploded, there was no guarantee of what would happen, but he was sure of one thing – his space in the world would be secure.

It was something that he never got over. His son, on the other hand was quite fed up of hearing the story every time his Father would have a drink. He would shake his head at the old man and tell him that it was just a piece of land, what was the big deal. And anyways, it made more sense to get something on the outskirts of the city, where prices and competition were still less. OK, so the glamour might not be the same as having prime real estate in the middle of the city, but was all this really worth it?

But the old man always waggled gnarled fingers at his son and said, “Someday you will thank me for this, mark my words. Someday you will understand the importance of it, and you will thank me, foolish brat. Everything is not about the money, emotions and pride have a place in life too, but you are too young to understand this now.”

The rain fell steadily with that silent roar that only rain has. The loose mud was mushy and sticky, and the clumps of green grass in the brown, looked forlorn, like they were awakened too early from deep sleep.

The white marble was the only white thing in the world that day. Everything else was black or grey. Even the raindrops falling off the umbrellas and the trickling down the collars of black suits, lost their silvery innocence and took on the morbid pallor of the ones they were drenching.

The old man watched as his son’s casket, polished black, was lowered into the precious plot of land he had spent so much effort on. Getting a spot in St. Patrick’s was never easy. He had managed it. His son had been too young to understand the importance then.

“He was still too young” the old man mused.

He wiped the mud away from his hands on his coat, after scooping handfuls of it over the black box, and trod on spilt roses as he walked away, alone.

His tears mixing with the rain, his hand prints on the coat, like accusatory fingers that his son pointed up at him.

2006-05-25T16:01:00.000+05:30

MyMDB

2006-05-19T17:00:00.000+05:30

To see a sample from my collection of movies, click on the DVD logo on the right of this page.

Ha!

My Precious

2006-05-08T20:26:00.000+05:30

It's ours, it is...

Shave my soul

2006-04-16T07:19:00.000+05:30

As I watched the barber's reflection putting the shroud around my reflection's neck and testing the edge of his blade, I had a very Godfather moment. The potential story whizzed across my mind and neurons started blinking like tracer fire on CNN's night vision. It would be a typical twist in the tale story.

Start by describing the blade - its glinting edge, the sound it makes as it slices the air, the slightly grimy handle. Move to the hand that holds it and the owner of said hand - slightly gnarled (why are hands always gnarled?), steady, nicotine stained, cold, calm, cruel.

Describe the scene - hot sun outside, struggling air-con inside, cricket match on mute on old Binatone TV, scattered newspapers and cheap magazines, empty but for victim and perpetrator.

Move on to victim - facing death, wondering what would happen to blood on white shroud, wondering if this shroud had been previously blood stained, if he would feel the blade slice his jugular etc.

Get to the action-suspense. Killer moves towards victim-to-be (VTB), places blade at neck, mumbles something inaudible at the dual reflections. The smell of his cheap cigarettes in VTB's face, the fear welling up, the tension reaching critical mass, the silence waiting to be filled with the scream, the smooth, decisive unwavering motion of the blade - go on for a while - this is the meaty part, where you hook your reader.

End with a quick one liner about how it was all just a shave and not a Yakuza murder. Make it funny if possible.

This time I did not succumb to the cliche factory in my head. This time I leave it to you.

If you are in the mood for a last line twist kind of story, go ahead, the recipe is up there.

Use your imagination - you know the routine.

2006-04-03T20:26:00.000+05:30

They realized there was something wrong with Lucy the moment she was born. She could never look at anyone straight and her eyes seemed to be focusing on completely different points at the same time. All the shiny little things they hung over her crib to get her to focus never seemed to work. She never learnt to walk properly and her balance was always off. Walking seemed to be an insanely difficult task for her.

As she grew older, she couldn’t identify colors, couldn’t look at any pictures or the TV without crying, couldn’t identify anything at all and yet she wasn’t blind. She could hear perfectly well and seemed to be intelligent and coherent when the lights were off, but the moment there was even a glimmer of brightness she would lose all sanity.

They took her to all the doctors they could find and every one of them said that there was something wrong with her vision, but it wasn’t anything they could figure out. Every single test imaginable was conducted, but no answers were ever found.

Finally one day, they met this old doctor on the train to Delhi, who listened to all their problems, examined the girls eyes in the dim light of the second class coach and told them what was wrong.

She was the girl with Kaleidoscope eyes.

2006-03-23T09:35:00.000+05:30

Sh...it happens.

Panelled (Thank You)

2006-03-21T09:35:00.000+05:30

A cartoon strip on office Post-Its - perhaps the best gift I have ever received. And of course it features (drumroll) - ME!!

Thank you 3M for making the Post-it so ubiquitous...and thank you Manju. The 'Maddness' wont be the same without you.

Note from the Artist, Ms. Manjusha Ninan: "I misspelt Maddness on purpose - to add to the madness."

Jehad

2006-03-15T11:42:00.000+05:30

He knew that if he left the house, there was no guarantee what would happen. The skirmishes had been going on since the early hours of the day. Screams occasionally rent the air and there was the staccato sound of cautious footsteps scurrying over the cobblestone streets. But more than the hunger, it was the cowardice that killed him inside.

He knew there was nothing in the house to eat, and the looks his old mother gave him while she sat at window were wildly ranging between fear, concern, desperation and anger. He decided that for once he would be a man. For once he wouldn’t hide and let the world decide to starve them. He put on his jacket, scrambled what coins he could find in the little glass jar on the crooked shelf and strode to the door. Then all his bravado left him. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer, looked back at his mother for a second and then stepped out gingerly into the afternoon sun.

Standing there on the street, ears perked up for the slightest movement, eyes scanning wildly over rooftops and corners, he sweated. The first step would be the toughest. “Get moving” he urged himself. It is tougher to hit a moving target. One has to account for the speed of the target and also the wind. If he was fast enough and lucky enough, he might just make it.

The houses lining the street stood in grave silence. They shared walls and histories, and bore the scars of past battles. The stood silently, grimly waiting with bated breath for the inevitable to happen. He stuck to the walls and crept along, trying to keep in whatever shadow was available, a man-mouse sniffing for cheese and looking for rat traps. Sweating bullets, he reached the crossroads. Now there was no cover. He would have to walk across the street, open, unprotected and a sitting duck for anyone on a rooftop.

He mumbled his prayer again and wiped the sweat from his eyes. His palms were grimy with the dirt from the walls. Then in a fit of anger and fear he stepped off the pavement and onto the road. His feet felt like lead and the air in his lungs like napalm. The sun beat down on his back and his head was spinning.

As he got to the little island in the middle of the road, he saw clearly what he had dreaded all along. Among the shadows of the antennae and chimneys and rooflines that the sun cast in front of him, another shadow arose and waited, for the right moment to strike.

He knew there was nothing he could do about it now. He knew he was the target and that these people did not miss. He could feel the keen eyes of the predator burning holes in his back. In one last fit of desperation he whirled around to face his nemesis.

Just as he lifted his eyes to the roof behind him, the silhouette there pivoted on one foot and threw. He watched as the projectile arced through the air and time seemed to stand still.

Then it was upon him and wetness enveloped him. He looked down and saw the red billowing out over his thin white shirt, spreading the colour of blood all over him.

“Damn!!” he thought, “why did this happen to me?”

He looked back up at his attacker who, emerging from the shadows, fisted the air and shouted out at him in all the righteousness of youth – Happy Holi!!

PS: Jehad - 'Holi' war - get it? I know it is clichéd but sorry, couldn’t resist. :)

Rumors

2006-03-09T21:54:00.000+05:30

He settled back into the massage chair with a sigh. It had been away for repairs and for someone like him who spent long hours at the office, it had become a necessity. More than the physical relief it provided, the time spent in the black leathered contraption was a way for him to recharge his mind.

He put his feet into the cushioned calve holders and his head sunk into the soft, soft leather-foam of the headrest. There was a different smell about the chair, perhaps from being in the repair shop. It smelt faintly of a zoo, or something animal, not the usual smell of leather-deo-sweat-cleaning liquid. He reached out for the headphones and plugged them in. He pressed the ‘START’ button and the machine jerked to life and began to work slowly on his shoulders.

He slowly descended into that semi-trance like state that it always induced and tried to think about the problem at hand. The problem was this new woman who had joined his team. She was arrogant and willful and seemed to have a problem with obeying orders. What’s more she was very close to the boss, and he refused to take his complaints seriously. And this was affecting him directly. If the project did not go off as planned it would be his ass on the line. There had to be someway to put her in her place.

“Psstt…you know…her test scores were fudged. She would never have made it in here, if it hadn’t been for some ‘external’ influences,” the voice whispered in his ear.

His eyes flew open and his body froze. The chair continued to try and massage the rigid torso, and as a result began to shake slowly.

He looked around. The break area was empty, most of the lights were out and he was sure there was no one else in the office. Had he imagined the voice? Was he finally losing his mind from all that stress? He sat up and looked around. There was definitely no one around. It was just him and…the chair.

That was when he noticed that the music had stopped. The chair had also stopped trying to relieve his muscles and sat there, as if itching to finish the job. He jumped off the chair. He hadn’t pressed stop, he hadn’t shut down the music. He walked around the chair, running his hands over the black leather. As he came around the back of the chair, he noticed that it wasn’t plugged in. He slowly began to fill up with fear. He could taste it layering his throat, feel it filling up his lungs and choke him, he could feel his pores screaming out in sweat and the back of his shirt suddenly became dripping wet.

He backed away from the chair and watched it. It sat there, glistening blackly, waiting and…breathing??? And then it started vibrating again, making a faint humming sound, as if urging him to return to its attentions. The sound was hypnotizing. He walked slowly towards the chair, in a trance, and submitted himself to its attentions. The earphones were plugged back in. Eyes closed he let the ghastly machine breathe its secrets into his head.

In a voice that came from deep beneath the deepest darkest abyss, an old, windy, warped voice the voice told him its secrets - secrets about people in the office, his friends, his boss, everyone. It even told him his own secrets, stories he thought no would ever find out, stories he even hid from himself, stories that brought back memories that seemed to have spent their deaths in the cold confines of morgue shelves.

Sometime later he awoke, groggy, sweaty and disoriented. Bhimsen Joshi was drawing out some ragas that he didn’t recognize. The chair had stopped vibrating and just sat there, reminding him of an anaconda about to regurgitate its rather large and unpleasant meal. He looked at his watch, the glowing dial of which told him that he had been there for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes? That couldn’t possibly be right. He jumped off the chair and ran to the bathroom, not looking back, and puked his guts out in one of the stalls. He washed his face and didn’t dare look at himself in the mirror, afraid of what he would see in his eyes.

“That’s the last time I spend any overtime here”, he thought to himself. He walked to his desk, packed his files and headed home.

Months passed. His climb up the corporate ladder had been surprisingly fast, unexpected and occupied most of the lunchtime conversations of people who had been stepped on in some way in those months. There were rumors all over the place about his ethics, his ambition, his sanity and even his sexuality. No one knew for sure how he had achieved everything that he had, but everyone was sure there was something very strange about it all. The only apparent change in him was that he had lost a lot of weight, wasn’t as talkative as he used to be and seemed to be sleepwalking most of the time.

The first thing he had done when he became senior VP was get the massage chair moved to his corner office. Appointment were rarely given, he never attended any meetings, never made any presentations and was hardly even seen by anyone other than his secretary. No one really knew what to make of it all, but they were sure that something bad was bound to happen to him soon, and they wouldn’t be at all sorry when that happened.

One Year Later:

The police broke down the door and stormed in. His office was in shambles. His secretary had called them when she heard him rampaging around the room, throwing things all over the place, breaking glasses and furniture. All the couches had been slashed open with a paper knife. The air conditioner was smoking. The computer monitor had been smashed in with a laptop and the mobile phone and pda had somehow melted into a single grotesque question mark shaped mess. The carpet had vomit all over it. All the portraits of former directors had their eyes and ears burnt out with cigarette butts. He had apparently shaved off all the hair on his body and it lay in a mossy pile, water and blood trickling from it onto the granite floor.

The only sign they found of him were his ears, cut off with the blunt paper knife, lying on either side of the massage chair, which was oozing blood and feces.

The next day the chair was carried away in an unmarked police van, the room was cleaned up and a week later his portrait was hung on the wall, in its rightful place, alongside the now-restored portraits of his predecessors.

A cube with a view

2006-03-06T18:54:00.000+05:30

Somedays...it's just enough to be.

Amar, Akbar...?

2006-02-24T16:49:00.000+05:30

Look what Roswitha found!!!

Afterwards...

2006-02-22T17:44:00.000+05:30

Afterwards, I light a cigarette and watch you fall asleep under the covers, your breathing bordering on snoring and your hair scattered over the pillows, face down in the soft down of the bed. I put the matchstick out and lean my head against wall, watching the thin fumes of smoke meander their way towards the vents. The single crack of sunlight coming in through the curtains illuminates them and the world seems to be in slow motion. The wisps of smoke emanating from the glowing tip of my cigarette get caught in the sunbeam and look like skeletal fingers reaching out for a neck to choke.

So how did this happen? It wasn’t supposed to. The last thing I wanted was a rekindling of hope. There would be no more Lazarus, no more phoenixes. Exhumation is an ugly, stinking, thankless job, and the world needs no more zombies – walking dead hopes are worse than walking dead people.

Now what? I know you will wake up eventually and that we will have to talk about this. The tragedies of this world – one must talk about things that are meaningless and self-defeating. There will be nothing new to say, there will be nothing important to add, there will be no new lives and no new deaths – there will possibly be sullen silences and the sounds of the castles in the sand and the castles in the air being swept away by their respective tidal waves.

How I wish I didn’t have to talk to you. How I wish you wouldn’t ask any questions. When I smooth the sheets in my obsessive way after I get up, will I be able to smooth out the creases that have just furrowed your brow and mine and our shared past and parallel futures? But you will wake up, and I will wince inwardly at all the questions you will ask me. I will lie well, I will fudge well, I will play the martyr, the clown, the madman and the saint in equal measure – and thus splitting my psyche in a myriad ways, I will force my body through the ordeal and eventually escape. At least I hope I will.

The smoke-fingers come your way, as they always do, and curl around your head, tickle your bare shoulders and enter you as only poison can. If those fingers were real – you would never wake up. You would never wake up and I would never have to answer any questions. No more creases in my immaculately made bed, and my neatly arranged head.

If I kill you now – who will know? All right, people will know, but who will know it was me that did it? Whom did I tell I was coming to meet you? No one. Whom did you tell you were going to meet me? I don’t know. What traces of myself have I left in this room? Do fingerprints stay on dead bodies, or on cigarette butts, or messages written on steamed up mirrors? What if I don’t do it properly and after I leave you awaken in a strange halfway world or worse take me with you? So many questions and no answers, as usual.

I lean forward to stub out the cigarette before my shaking fingers drop it on the eiderdown. The smoke-fingers whirl around in fury and envelope my face in their crackling palms, like a skeletal stranger holding my head up for me. The smoke gets in my eyes, my nose, my head, my thoughts become clouded and grey and mottled. I shake my head and wipe the bleary, black tears that pour down from my eyes…

“Honey…”

I whirl around, every nerve on end, and stare at her, breathing heavily. I need my glasses; the glare from the light will hide my thoughts from jumping out of my eyes and invading the room.

“Honey…why are you crying?”

I lie back, face down in the pillow and don’t say a word. I don’t trust my voice enough.

“It’s all right, don’t worry, we will sort it out. We always do, don’t we?”

Yeah, we sort it out, always.

There are answers if you bother to look for them in places sanity will not allow.