11:02 AM

My good friend, Biswas, the Bengali Fisherman

The days I was in middle school, in a remote part of Maharashtra, where a gigantic Cement Factory had grown up from dust and a colony of people from states all over India had settled down in a sleepy village; we had a regular visitor to our house.
Biswas was a poor fisherman, a resettled Bengali who brought his ware of fresh fish caught from the local water reservoir almost once every week.
And since a lot of locals didn't eat fish, we were one of his favorite clients. So this man of moderate means wearing just a dirty cloth across his waist was a welcome sight at our house.
Once watching me play chess with my brother, he politely asked if we could have a bout of chess. I nonchalantly agreed.
I must say that those days I was not a bad chess player myself and easily defeated my brothers, my teacher father, his brothers, and even my father's other teacher colleagues when they came visiting.
So Biswas, placed his basket of fresh fish by the side of the door and became totally immersed in a game of chess with me, forgetting for a while his fare and business.
To my surprise, Biswas was an excellent chess player. The first game he wiped the board clean like an expert would. We decided to go for another game, on my insistence, and this time too he took the award.
That season saw many games being played, and most of the time I turned out to be the loser.
One fine day we decided to visit the reservoir for a picnic. Seeing a couple of tents on the bank of the reservoir I enquired about Biswas from a stray fisherman. And pat, there he was smiling his friendly grin exposing pearly white teeth. He suggested a boat ride for us on his fishing dinghy. We earnestly agreed and we boated free to the middle of the lake and back.
Manners maketh a man and looks are only skin deep, I had to conclude.

3:16 PM

The Ones that did not make it to Wiki Leaks!


The recent Wiki Leaks was truly hilarious in some ways.
One that took the cake was that the Saudi King suggested released Guantanamo Bay detainees be implanted with electronic chips to keep track of them, like they do horses and falcons - sounds like something out of a Hollywood block buster!
The other cables seem to indicate that US diplomats are a genteel lot considering what potential secrets could have been passed on through those secure cables! Here are a few that could have made it to the list.
Cable from the Italian consulate in Delhi to HQ: Looks like India has better Italian leadership than Italy has.
Cable from the Chinese embassy to HQ: Looks like the Chinese are not going to have an erection.. er. election any time too soon..
Cable from US Secretary of State to US Consulate in Pakistan: We will let the Pakis continue to support the suicide bombers in India; that way they will be more busy bombing Mumbai and Delhi leaving us alone in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cable from Kenya to HQ: I strongly recommend that the President rename the White House to some other, for instance, Black House, because Kenyans and many Africans refer to the loo as their White House. It's truly disgusting.
Cable to HQ from the US embassy in Delhi: The Consulate has run out of toilet paper. Please expedite the process of sending the necessary item immediately before the Consul General is forced to use an adult diaper!
Urgent communique from the US president to British PM visiting South Asia: In India the agenda should be to blast the Pakis out of their wits and when in Pakistan give the Indians a good blastng. That's true diplomacy. As they say be a Roman in Rome!
Cable from a US diplomat on tour of Iran: Just found out that the Iranian president has a soft spot for Mickey Mouse movies and wears Mickey Mouse adorned underwear. Recommend that we put an embargo on these two items as well, if we already have not.
US Consul official on hotline from Saudi Arabia: URGENT: Our stock of Bloody Marys destroyed when US fighter jet carrying them over in a diplomatic pouch got shot while flying over Kuwait. Recommend express delivery of the same!

7:55 PM

Elegy on the death of a Cow

Once upon a time in the sleepy town of Malkapur a cow died by the roadside. Rumors soon spread all over town. There was one group that claimed that the holy Cow had been poisoned by the Muslim community to vent their disapproval of the Hindus. Another group claimed that it had been poisoned by a Hindu posing as a Muslim to create animosity between the two communities. There was a third group that claimed that the cow had been poisoned by a Hindu posing as a Muslim who had originally been a Muslim. None were ready to believe that a healthy cow could have died a natural death.
In the riots that followed five people were killed, two of them burnt alive in their houses.
The Central Reserve Police Force was deployed in town and a dawn to dusk curfew imposed. The authorities ordered an autopsy on the dead cow, bowing down to public pressure.
The kith and kin of the five who were killed were compensated handsomely by the government. The brethren of the dead cow of course got nothing except for the pride of place on the streets and highways where they strolled around chewing newspaper that told the horror stories of the Hindu - Muslim clashes with commentaries by eminent analysts.
The local veterinary hospital claimed that they did not have the facilities to perform as sophisticated a procedure as an autopsy on a dead cow. So the body of the cow was placed in a mortuary for months before it was sent to Delhi for further investigations.
The authorities realised that the autopsy by itself was not important. If the cow had been poisoned the Hindus would riot. And if it had not been poisoned the Muslims would riot for the injustice done to them earlier.
Finally after much deliberation the result of the autopsy was buried under sheets of red tape and the dead cow was soon forgotten by one and all as everyone waited expectantly for the India Pakistan cricket series to start.

12:33 PM

India's "soft" ware power - Reality or Hype?

Much has been made of India's so-called soft power, the loudest vocalist being our very own Shashi Tharoor. I can assure you this is not mere hype as far as my experience goes.
The Egyptian software programmer with whom I worked with in Kuwait (On Kuwait) surprised me one day when he asked me questions about Amitabh Bachchan. I don't know how this guy from a conservative Arab culture came to hear about the evergreen Bollywood hero, but his name seems to have reached far flung corners of the world. Another occasion of Bollywood power reared its head was while watching a popular German TV show on the German equivalent of MTV in Germany (On Germany). The hep female anchor (who I noticed wore a different hairdo at every one of her shows) mentioned "Hollywood-Bollywood" before a racy Bollywood number was shown. The rest of what she said was in German but the word "Bollywood" was loud and clear. I don't know whether Germans are aware of the thriving film industry in India, but it seems they do have some inkling of it ('Dil to Pagal Hai' must have received publicity in Germany when parts of it were shot there).
That rests the case of the hype about the Indian film industry, but India, Indians and the Indian culture are known for other things as well.
I remember the occasion when before I travelled to Germany, my German boss requested me to bring some Ayurvedic herbs. This was, he said for a friend of his who suffered from chronic pain, but it turned out it was at the behest of his German girlfriend of two years who was a pharmacist in town. Ayurveda must not be much popular away from its cradle in South India, but it is extremely popular in the land which gave the world the science of Homeopathy.
Another request was for Alphonso mangoes, the popular export quality mango strain from India; however I could not fulfil this request, the fact being that I could not procure these costly mangoes in Kerala at short notice, without the risk of being duped by some shrewd businessman who might pass off some commonplace mangoes as "Alphonso".
Another request was from the subordinate of my German boss who requested for a couple of pair of jeans, giving me his waist size as well. I could not understand the reason for this request when I believed the West was the cradle of the jeans culture. When I asked this guy the reason, he told me matter of fact that all the high quality clothes that came to Germany nowadays were imported from countries such as India and other Asian countries. This was proved for good measure once again when my brother in the US of A returned last month with T-shirts manufactured in India and Sri Lanka.
The cycle has turned full circle!

1:13 PM

A major lifestyle shift

Last smoked on 9/11/2010
Method: Nicotine gum


rainbowstar-1.png image by pancakequits


God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

*Reinhold Niebuhr*


QuitMeter Counter courtesy of www.quitmeter.com.

11:45 AM

Oh, the joys of being a multi-linguist!

I am sure most Indians who have gone through high school are well versed in at least three languages - English, a regional language and Hindi - the national language. In case of people residing outside their native state, one could add the mother tongue to this list as well. When I say well versed I mean speak, read and write in at least one and at least speak or read in the other two.
I have mentioned that I speak English, Hindi, Marathi and my mother tongue in Malayalam for good measure in this post. I am sure there are many such stories out there.
What are the not so obvious advantages of multi-linguism?
On the lighter side, I would say would be that I can watch a Bollywood masala movie and experience the typical euphoria that a good flick does without caring much for a true depiction of real life. However if I would like to watch a cold calculated, well researched and realistic movie that has a storyline worthy of a novel, I would go watch a Hollywood blockbuster. And I would undergo a totally different set of emotions for either one. It would be like a switch turning off on one set of perceptions and turning on another.
I am sure a monolingual person can never in his life experience that.
A more useful result would be one where a person would be wearing a different thinking hat each time he converses, reads or writes in a different language.
When one converses in English, he would tend to be formal, business like and professional - the language of the work culture. In a regional language one would switch to a more rustic ambience and try to share the bond of the local language. In Hindi one would be speaking the lingua franca that binds all of us together as the most understood language pan-nation. In one's mother tongue, like how this video parodies, he would be striking a bond that relates to nativity, a bond among Indians that binds better than any other. Not only this, when one speak in any of these languages, he would actually become part of that culture, transforming himself for that moment to a representative of that culture.
Any more ideas out there?

11:35 AM

Modern Day Highway Robbers

On the eve of Meter Jam day, here is my two penny contribution to make life a less corrupt experience.
I took an auto from the College campus that had just dropped a customer near the College back gate. As I travel very frequently by auto, I got into this auto and directed the driver to drive me to my destination. We travelled via the back gate, and he dropped me at a hotel very near the local police station.
It was then the drama started.
The normal fare from back gate is Rs.25 (which itself is a bit exorbitant – it should be minimum fare). This guy asked me for Rs. 30. I said I stick to my principles and would not pay anyone more or less than the standard. He refused to accept the Rs. 25 I gave him. He asked me to come to the police station. I refused to give him the Rs. 30, and neither did I think I had any business to be in a police station. So I told him, if you want to lodge a complaint, please go right ahead. A policeman was standing nearby. When I tried to gain his attention, he just pointed his fingers to the police station with a lack of interest.
Since I could not deal with this person anymore, I gave up and entered the hotel for supper. I saw him standing outside the hotel calling on his mobile, most probably other fellow drivers. Soon this driver entered the hotel, caught me by my ID tag and loudly read my name. When I protested, he let go and left.
When I came out of the hotel, this same driver was standing near the entrance surrounded by a few other auto drivers, his cronies. Auto drivers are sometimes like crows. When one is fallen, they all flock together.
These four guys started harassing me asking for the 30 rupees, first mildly saying, why quarrel for such a small amount, and then getting physical. Somehow I managed to escape the clutches of these goons, walked to the local auto stand and returned to college in another auto.
When I was in class for about two hours, I had a surprise. There was a policeman in the class! He said that an auto driver had lodged a complaint and he had come to investigate. How did he know where to find me? From my name the auto driver had given to this "Sherlock Holmes", and then the location from where I was picked up, made the rest easy for him. I was embarassed in front of my colleagues, my teacher and most of all our college principal. And those who didn’t know what was going on were wondering what a policeman was doing inside a College class. I told the policeman I would report to the local police station the next day morning as he requested.
Some of my friends volunteered to come with me to the police station the next day, wasting their precious time and money in the process. But I declined their offer of help, though noble. If they came, I thought it would be viewed as an altercation not between me and the driver but the College community and local auto drivers.
Luckily, my uncle lived in that locality and I went with him to the police station the next day.
We were presented before the station in charge and soon we were joined by the auto driver himself. It was a war of wits.
The auto driver argued that since he was expected to be paid the return fare, 30/- was reasonable. We raised the point that there was no designated auto stand at the College back gate. Where was he returning to? Back from the town or to the town?
The police conceded our point. We also raised the issue of this guy catching hold of me by the tag and also the harassment by his cronies.
The police asked me to pay him only Rs. 25 as that was what was expected in such a situation.
Who lost in the process? I lost my four hours of my productive time, but stood by my priciples, the policemen wasted time futilely. The autodriver? He wasted nothing in the process. He did not even lose his honor for in the first place he did not have any!
What was he trying to achieve? Prove that goondaism against an educated college student would hold inside a police station? Really beats logic.
I agree not all auto drivers are like the person I described, but they are the few who give a bad name to the lot.
Luckily I have an uncle in the locality. But I dare not think what would have befallen a hapless colleague from a far off place with no proper person for support.

9:29 AM

Of Arson and Violence

In the wastelands of Western Vidharbha, in a small hamlet, in the eastern shadows of Maharashtra's vast geography, you will be surprised to come across a hillock on which are perched a dozen, tall futuristic buildings. This is the private Science and Technology college that would not have existed had it not been for the fact that this was the village that gave the state of Maharashtra two Chief Ministers. In the midst of parched farmlands and dry wasteland sprung up a miracle in architecture, equipped with one of the best scientific equipment in the country, well skilled lecturers from every part of India, and creme de la creme alumni of the local government college of engineering.
It was no wonder that the reputation of this college spread far and wide. The college had prospective candidates from as far flung states from Bengal to Gujarat and from Kerala to Kashmir.
All went well for a long time, though the college inmates segregated themselves state-wise and then caste-wise, thereby preserving their sometimes aggressive culture instead of assimilating the local. There was always someone from this elite colleage who topped the ranks in science and technology.
A cult of Muslims had made their home in this god forsaken place many centuries ago. They were mostly small time businessmen and consequently higher up the social pyramid. They differed in physique and you could say they belonged to some different race. While the locals were dark skinned and stunted, these muslim migrants were tall and of a very fair color. It was as if there had been an exodus many many years back from some Himalayan region to this wasteland which they had now decided to call home.
The females of this muslim clan were fair skinned, tall and had aristocratic features with grey blue eyes much like Persian women, though they did wear the burkah, some of them the hijab and some even the purdah in the intolerable heat.
It was for one beautiful damsel, the daughter of a wealthy muslim businessman, that a Kashmiri student(lets call him Vikki, son of a DSP in Kashmir) of the college fell for. He promsised to marry the girl and take her off to his native Kashmir once his studies were over. He consulted this young beauty's parents and they readily agreed, considering the fact that they were both muslim and shared a common culture in the vague sense.
But it was the girl's brother who did not take it that easy. He took umbrage to the fact that Vikki and his new girlfriend had take a vacation to Kashmir, with the girl's father's permission of course.
Vikki was stabbed twice in the back by his love's brother when he was out in town one evening. News, or it could be rumour reached the college that Vikki was hanging betweeen life and death in the local hospital.
The Kashmiri conglomerate at the college took serious note of the matter and held an impromptu meeting. They were soon joined by Delhiites, Punjabis... and everyone soon forgot their cultural differences and were out on the road in the mid of night, baying for local blood, calling out "Revenge!", deciding that the event was an insult to the college inmates. There was rioting and arson. Several shops, the very shops whose services they availed of, the local video parlors, cigarette vending shops went up in flames. The Head of Department, computer Science lit a cigarette as he coolly watched tea stalls, ramshackle eating joints, laundry shops going up in flames in a matter of hours just in front of the college gates.
Police arrived in the wee hours of the morning with arson continuing to the early hours. The policemen were small in number; they were local police not trained to handle something of this magnitude.
The unequipped police were pushed back by bricks and stones thrown by the college inmates. Some of the more enterprising and shady of the Gorakhpuris were ready with country made guns(katta) they had smuggled in, and others had cycle chains; and hacksaw blades sharpened at the edges in the mechanical department's workshop to serve as knives.
The police force that arrived that afternoon, however, were not the ordinary policemen these rampaging students had faced earlier. These were the State Reserved Police Force(SRPF) specially trained in handling riots. When the rioting students welcomed the SRPF with stones and cycle chains, they fired at the crowd. Some Kashmiri youth, who had been in riot situations in their native Kashmir before, spread the rumor that the firing was just a ruse, the rubber bullets would not harm anybody.
But what the SRPF fired that day were real bullets, and two Kashmiri students were fatally shot.
Seeing their fallen comrades, the rampaging college students fled in all directions.
As usually what happens in such situations, it was the innocent bystanders who were caught in the cross-fire. The real perpetrators of the riot locked themselves in their hostel rooms and it was 210 mostly innocent students who were simply witness to the goings-on, who were led to the Central Prison that bloody day.
After one month in the central prison treated as ordinary criminals, sleeping next to proclaimed offencers and sharing their meals with murderers, these poor young men were released on bail from judicial custody. The political guardian of the district being a high profile hot-shot hushed up the whole matter afraid of a political undertone. Not a single national newspaper reported it, except a miniscule local newspaper that published a small column that everybody soon forgot about.

3:14 PM

Oh, Those Coloured Bits Of Paper!


Stamp collecting is dying a slow painful death, or for all I know, already dead, as the world made a total shift from snail mail to electronic email. I do agree that the convenience of email is a million times more than the older system but oh, my mind so wistfully wanders to the days of snail mail and the joys of stamp collecting when I see the occasional envelope with the inevitable stamps pasted on it, a rarity these days.
The only way to expand your stamp collection these days is to subscribe to your postal service's philatelic bureau or buy them straight from a shop which may not be stamps in the true sense really, just some postal service of some exotic country trying to make some money by printing bits of paper and placing a careful seal on it.
I remember the first shot in the arm to my stamp collection when my uncle who was a store supervisor at the Matsusthita Electric (now called Panasonic Corporation), himself an avid stamp collector in his heydays, handed me all the stamps from his collection of a thousand, of which he had more than one copy. The store he worked at was an intermediary ware house of electronic goods from Japan from where they were shipped to all corners of the world mostly in South, South East and South West Asia. Naturally they had a lot of snail mail, and it was from these that he extracted the colourful bits of paper that reflected so much a country's culture and heritage not to speak of it's history and natural resources.
The next big boost came when I requested one of my uncles in the Sultanate of Oman who was a teacher at the governmental ministry of education, to send me some Omani stamps if he had any. Much to my joy, he went one step further and requested the students in his class to contribute any stamps they could get hold on, for his nephew. The oil boom in full swing, the students who were from all parts in the middle east from Syria to Lebanon, and from Pakistan to Qatar, diligently collected stamps and handed them over to my uncle.
My uncle took the pain to stuff all these in an envelope once in three months and posted them to me; and I had the additional bonus of getting hold of some really grand Omani stamps on the outer envelopes too.
Mind you, stamp collecting is not just tearing stamps off the cover and putting them in an album. For starters, let me explain. You first soak the stamp attached to the piece of envelope to which it is still stuck, in lukewarm water for about five minutes. By the time the gum loosens itself and the stamp comes loose. You need to dry the stamp by pressing them between two water absorbing paper sheets and apply light pressure on them at the same time.(This prevents the stamps from shrivelling as they dry). At the same time you need to make sure that the stamps that you have just peeled do not get stuck to the paper you have placed on which to dry, by shifting them to another paper pad in a reasonable time period. Since I didn't have access to blotting paper this task was the most challenging. And the golden rule: wash your hands with soap before handling stamps, they do have a tendency to attract a lot of dust, especially when wet.
I hope you now appreciate the effort that goes into building a decent stamp collection!
I have a particular grouse againt stamps from the USA, the problem being that the US postal systems use very strong adhesive and this causes the stamp to tear when you try to separate from the envelope. And since mutilated stamps lower the total value of your collection, I mostly discarded them.
And one more tip - if you wanted your stamp collection to increase manifold in a reasonable time, God's own land, Kerala, the land of expatriates was the place to be. Here almost every household had at least one or two bread winners working in some alien land; Indians being attached to their homeland, they frequently communicated with their family by air mail.
I remember, as a child of ten, going to random houses, asking puzzled householders whether they had any letters from abroad, with those precious bits of coloured paper stuck on them, that I could add to my collection.
Some grandmothers/ grandparents who were sometimes the only residents of the palatial expatriate houses , became suspicious of my request and wondering whether stamps were actually worth real money, started refusing to part with stamps, envelope and all!
I still have my treasured stamp collection, a bit less in number, countlessly pilfered by enthusiastic kids who visit our house after glancing through my collection, but all the same, more or less intact.

2:46 PM

The Joy Of 'R' and 'R' without the agony of the third 'R'

As a young child, I had a lot of reading material available. I gorged on every written word, from the child's magical world of Enid Blyton (I pronounced her Gnid Blyton those days coz of the strange way she signed her name and also thought she was a man), to adult stuff such as "The Blitz" and "The Illustrated Weekly" (then edited by the venerable Khushwant Singh - now defunct). The Phantom and Mandrake comics in The Times of India were a daily treat. I even remember my father trying to explain the wit behind the "I don't know Son!" cartoon series that appeared in the Blitz but it didn't make much sense to me at that time.
Spurred on by these wonderful writings and the magical world they created, I too was induced to try my hand at writing. I wrote a notebook full of stuff about a hero who was much like Tarzan except that he had a wife called Viola (my father suggested me that name when I bugged him to name the heroine of my story - Viola is a tropical flower and my father being a Post Graduate in Botany what better name could he suggest?). For my youngest brother who was seven years younger than me, I created a fictional character called "Supremo" who had a lot of magical powers at his behest and was more powerful than Mandrake and Phantom put together.
Another interesting thing I remember doing was writing general knowlege tests for my younger brother and our unsuspecting friend, Shishir, who was our neighbour as well as classmate. After that, like a real life teacher I would correct the answer papers and assign grades, till one day both my "subjects" got fed up of it and that was that.
We read Enid Blyton, Dr. Dolittle, Freddie and Flossie and then graduated to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. I remember carrying a load of books as high as my head from the school library to my home during the summer vacations.
Once the school librarian decided that he would not issue books on summer holidays. But we snubbed him by approaching the school principal who gave us special permission to get books issued from the school library, holiday or not.
So enchanted was I with mysteries that once I begged my father to give me a mystery to solve. Non plussed he told me he had lost a bunch of keys, could I solve that mystery? Going by the book, I asked him to give me for some clues. When none came, I decided it was not much of a mystery after all.
Asterix and Tintin comics were such a glorious treat(as it is still now), that every time I re-read one, I found something I had missed in an earlier reading.
All this took place in my early primary school years.
As I passed on to higher classes, my interests shifted to encyclopedia, science books - especially the "Understanding Science" Series.
But I whipped up a masterpiece just before my final Secondary School Board Exams. I wrote a short story about two teenagers who solve the mystery of their kidnapped professor by alien forces. The story was printed in the childrens's section of a popular Central Indian magazine in serial form and I would have won instant fame, if just half the adults/ children who resided in our housing colony read magazines/ books.
In later years I was reduced to writing just an occasional letter to the editor of local newspapers. Now, after discovering blogging I find the a new found joy in penning all the mundane thoughts that come to my mind.

1:19 PM

Denial of Death and the Recurring Spiral


Ever wondered why obese people prefer to to eat unhealthy food inspite of being warned of the dangers by a myriad of scientific reports?
Why people buy still more cars and fuel guzzling vehicles even as climate change is now a scientific fact?
Why sugary fizz drinks sell like hot cakes when diabetes is now a common modern malady?
Why people(including me) sit glued to their computer screens addicted to social networking sites when we all know that our modern sedentary lifestyle is bringing us one step closer to death?
Why alcohol addicts don't care a bit to where their broken life is heading to?
Why we deny ourselves the little bit of exercise that is needed to keep us healthy other than the fact that we are too lazy or find it stressful?
Why the majority of smokers and tobacco consumers in India still stick to their habits inspite of the products now being adorned by law with images of diseased lungs, ulcerous mouths, snake and scorpion logos?
Ernest Becker proposed an interesting theory.
To quote from an article:

In 1973 the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker proposed that the fear of death drives us to protect ourselves with "vital lies' or 'the armour of character." We defend ourselves from the ultimate terror by engaging in immortality projects, which boost our self-esteem and grant us meaning that extends beyond death. More than 300 studies conducted in 15 countries appear to confirm Becker’s thesis. When people are confronted with images or words or questions that remind them of death they respond by shoring up their worldview, rejecting people and ideas that threaten it, and increasing their striving for self-esteem.
One of the most arresting findings is that immortality projects can bring death closer. In seeking to defend the symbolic, heroic self that we create to suppress thoughts of death, we might expose the physical self to greater danger. For example, researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel found that people who reported that driving boosted their self-esteem drove faster and took greater risks after they had been exposed to reminders of death.
...
A recent paper by the biologist Janis L. Dickinson, published in the Journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult to repress thoughts of death, and that people might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival.
There is already experimental evidence that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption.
...
If Dickinson is correct, is it fanciful to suppose that those who are closer to the end of their lives might react more strongly against reminders of death?
...
And could it be that the rapid growth of climate change denial over the last two years is actually a response to the hardening of scientific evidence? If so, how the hell do we confront it?

The whole article, though it deals in length with climate change denial, could in a way explain many of mankind's "deviant" behavior and can be read here:
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article42833.ece
I don't say this is a proven scientific theory but a plausible hypothesis worth giving a thought to.

1:47 AM

Hilarious story of an inter-state marriage by Chetan Bhagat

Well, here's another review of a Chetan Bhagat Book. Excuse me, but I never get tired of writing on him. This time it is "2 states", a possibly semi autobiographical part-fiction novel about an inter-state marriage - Punjabi vs Tamil.
The fact that the book is about the contrast between two states and not two religions is something that could well have avoided Chetan from being in the midst of a controvery and the probability of his book being banned -a la Taslima.
Chetan takes a hard dig at South Indians - in particular Tamil Brahmins, their traditions and their mentality, but I find it not a least bit offended, inspite of me being South Indianer. He balances this by making fun of Punjabis too - he has a Punjabi background.
You can of course take his opinions expressed through the book in good spirit, as he makes it known that he himself is married to a Tamil ex-classmate and expects his writings to be taken that way.
That Punjabi women come in two sizes - the overweight, obese elderly Pujabi women who tend to push wads of notes down their cleavage; and the young anaemic Punjabi girls who go for the zero size salwar kameez, is funny to read.
The strange rituals of Tamils, and South Indians in general is sometimes really weird, I agree, for I myself had the experience of being served water poured from a tumbler into a glass reserved for visitors, when I visited a Tamil Brahmin friend's house - to prevent the home from being desecrated by a non-Brahmin, probably a meat eating one too!
Chetan says South Indians have a love for rules, and feel safe when there rules to adhere too. I agree to that, but I also want to note that North Indians in general have a disdain for not only rules, but also the law and experience strange satisfaction in bending them, even breaking them.
That elderly south Indians tend to speak in monosyllables while addressing the not so old, and their great love for newspapers that they read from end to end, is a non-dispuatable fact. In fact Malayalees, be it the auto rickshaw driver or the filthy rich, go for the newspaper and do some heavy duty reading on local politics first thing in the morning.
And in fact I have several uncles, who when I go a visiting, say "sit", "come", "eat" - as if they were addressing an alsatian dog!
In all, a very wholesome book, that would satisfy a regular reader as well as an occasional one, thanks to the simple way in which he writes, and the fact that he writes not for a global audience, but an Indian one, who can relate well to what he writes, and have a good laugh at his black humor too - he claims he has sex with his wife for the sake of national integration! He brings out pretty well the contrast between South Indian vs North Indian culture and the mutual disdain these two groups have for each other.
Chetan is a man to watch out for, particulary after "5 point someone" was made into a box office hit, recently.

8:25 AM

On Cerelac(R)(TM)

I feel a slight tinge of embarassment as I write this.
The whole of last week I was plagued with an intestinal infection that kept me away from work and made life in general miserable for me. My diet was restricted to bland food; any experiments with the more spicy foods resulted in a bad case of diarrhoea.
I thought I had managed well when all of a sudden a state wide hartal(non-Keralites: this is general term for a full fledged strike when every damned business puts down shutters and life comes to a total standstill).
Normally I would have been at my company office on such a day and it would have been business as usual. The office environs allow for meals, morning, night or day, hartal or no hartal.
Unfortunately I was holed up in my bachelors quarters far away from office when this particular hartal played out.
I had arranged for cigarettes the previous night, betting that the good old Anand Hotel would be open next day even if there was a bandh as they normally do(under police protection of course).
But my luck ran out. The hartal had been called by the party in power in the state, and that meant it was severe than usual.
I got up morning to find that even Hotel Anand had not dared to open up.
Now, I had these courses of strong antibotics to take, three times a day for my stomach agonies. Normally I can go without food for an entire day without getting any more tired or fatigued.
But that day before I took those damned antibiotics I had to get something into my stomach: I knew that, otherwise there would be serious trouble.
I went out, did some investigating and found that not even a tea shop had opened. The only shops that were open were medical shops. It seems the strike organizers at least had some pity for the sick.
I browsed through the contents of one such medical shop searching for something edible. They had cornflakes. I thought I could give that a shot. But when I asked for condensed milk to go with it, they said they didn't have any in stock.
That was when I noticed Cerelac (R) (TM) for infants 12 to 24 months. The blurb said this was stage 3 baby food and included vegetable extracts- "to encourage the child to chew". I decided to go for it, especially when the label read that it already contained powdered milk.
So anyways, I was passing a lot of baby like poo for the past few days, so I thought some more of it would do no harm.
I bought one for a hefty price, wondering how could neo mothers spend so much on baby food. :-)
Took it to my room, mixed it with sterilized water till it was thick and gooey(no, I could not arrange for any lukewarm water as the instructions demanded).
And the only thing that came to my mind as I consumed it was whether any of those doting mothers who so dutifully fed this stuff to their kids had ever tried tasting it!
Jeez, what things life makes you go through!

12:40 PM

A Black Christmas For A Black

Long before I got into the high-tech business when I got to visit foreign countries and video-conferenced with White clientèle, I still had contacts with foreigners - yes, blacks, in Nagpur - who stayed in the same lodge where I had taken shelter during my college days.
I had one particular friend called Roy Nyale, a Kenyan, who I am afraid was not a very bright guy (hope he forgives me if he is reading this), but jovial, witty and fun-loving that made up for it. I often went over to his room and he gladly prepared a cup of black coffee spiked with lime juice and occasionally shared his meal of boiled potatoes and cabbage which was usually was all that he had for meals.
He also had a tendency to lose his cool once he had one too many, and one for the road, which I am afraid was quite often.
One experience I can't brush off from my mind happened several decades ago on Christmas eve.
Roy had a very muscular build not unlike Ben Johnson, the guy who doped his way to the Olympics gold medal around that time.
One night, after having visited the bar, Roy returned fully sodden and very uncool. He had an ongoing spite with a couple of Bihari students who shared the same lodgings, which was run by a Nagpur settled Rajasthani Rajput called Tomar. Roy went to this Bihari group's room and demanded the keys to the bike which belonged to one in this group. When they refused, not without reason considering that he was drunk beyond coherence, he started lambasting them in English. They locked themselves in and shouted obscenties at him in Hindi, which only enraged him further.
Roy got into a rage, grabbed hold of a window frame and with his immense strength pulled the frame right out of its hinges. The verbal harangue continued for another half an hour, till the venerable but loose tempered, short, but heavy weight Tomar arrived from his business. He tooks stock of the situation and when he saw that the bulky Roy had damaged his property (one window lacked a frame), he went into battle mode. He awoke his older brother, who ran the other half of the lodge, and their children who were just past their teens but who were brawny all the same.
Together they tied Roy to a electric post with leather belts and proceeded to lash out at him with belts and an iron rod, till poor Roy was crying out in pain and begging for mercy.
But I guess mercy is not in the dictionary of an angry Rajput and the group of young and old Tomars hit him again and again the more Roy cried out. The landlord Tomar threatened Roy that he would throw Roy into the compound well with his hands and legs tried.
I watched all this with horrow and believed that Tomar would very well carry out his threat and that Roy would end up in the well.
An hour of beating later, Roy was released and he unsteadily stumbled off and we all onlookers returned to our rooms discussing that night's happenings with animosity.
I had a Manipuri friend at that time and we toyed with the idea of reporting the incident to the police station, but later gave it up considering that the Tomars were not too all in the wrong.
Next day we went to have a look at Roy in his room and he proudly showed off the red welts that had sprung all over his back from the beatings. He nursed a black eye as well and limped a litte. Anyway we were glad that at least he was alive after that horrific beating.
Roy, however learnt nothing; he went back to his old ways and was involved in a brawl at at bar where we went together not many days later on New Year's eve. But I will leave that for another post if I dare recall what happened that black day.