Another day in the life of Narendra Shenoy

When a writer, even one who claims to be writing his autobiography, starts getting autobiographical, the wise person knows that he, the writer, is scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. And I, dear reader, am going to be doing that. Getting autobiographical, I mean. Narrating incidents from my personal life.

If you choose, shrewdly in my opinion, to light out of here to some more intelligent page (Shahid Kapoor's twitter feed, for instance), I will shed a tear but acknowledge that you have excellent choice. I am honest like that.

But if you, dear reader, displaying the spirit of recklessness and adventure that people who explore the Amazon basin, or watch episodes of Big Boss, showcase in large quantities, decide to stay on, there will be none more delighted than me.

Yes, you guessed right, if you guessed from the previous sentence, that I have been having a couple. It is a beautiful night. The moon is out. The silence is ethereal. The household has gone to sleep. And I have been through a harrowing evening out in Mumbai traffic.

We had gone to a random uncle's house. I have non-random uncles too, like everyone else, but to these non-random (or ordered, if you are into math) uncles, one does not go unless there is a specific reason such as a birth, marriage, illness, dinner invitation or something. Random uncles are uncles to whose houses one goes because one has not gone there for a long time.

The missus and the brats had gone there earlier in the evening. I landed up directly from work, using public transport. Some cud was chewed, banter exchanged, the telling of jokes stayed by the intermittent basilisk stare of the missus and the evening went well, even by the missus' exacting standards.

On the way back, I drove. And we got the full force of Bombay traffic. I'm not usually troubled by this. When I'm driving in Bombay, I just switch off my mind, as I would in, say, a lecture on management strategy or a movie starring Akshay Kumar and enjoy the mindlessness on view. But today it was extraordinarily bad.

I don't know if you've felt this way yourself, but sometimes I feel, when wending my way through the traffic, like a foetus emerging from a womb, with labor contractions pushing me in directions not chosen by me.

I expressed this thought.

"I've never heard anything so ridiculous, Naren! Foetus emerging from a womb, it seems!" said the missus "Keep the left lane. Watch out for the truck!"

"Annie," piped up elder son, "Gau says Sanjay Dutt's mother was an actress named Madhubala. Was she?"

"Yes, yes" I said absently while trying not to be the cause of a motorcyclist's death

"No, silly" said the missus "it was Nargis. Surely even YOU have seen Nargis' movies"

"Nargis?" Younger son was sceptical. "Are you sure, Amma?"

"Annie, quick riddle" said elder son "What's the singular of Madhubala?"

I did not answer, preoccupied as I was with avoiding an autorickshaw who, for reasons not clearly discernible, had decided to go in a vectorially perpendicular direction to the flow of the traffic

"Plural of Madhubala? Madhubalas?"

"No, no, singular of Madhubala. Ok, I'll tell you the answer. Madhubalum"

I wished I were an octopus. I could have continued driving and still clouted him one on the side of the head.

"Haha" said younger son, obviously seeing humour in that alleged joke "And you know what the singular of Nargis is?"

"Hahaha!" elder son seemed to know the answer. "Nargoose".

"Boys, " I spoke sharply "if you don't keep quiet, you will witness the spectacle of your dear father having a nervous breakdown. Please"

"Just joking, Annie!"

"Yes", added the missus, "you have just lost your sense of humor these days"

I would have responded with something suitably acerbic but right then an autorickshaw decided to slam his brakes for a passenger and I bumped into him.

He emerged from the auto in anger.

"Can't see or what? Eyes or potatoes?"

I was irritated. "You braked, you capital of England without the preposition"

"You should have seen, you inclined channel for conveying grain, water or coal to a lower level" said the auto driver

"Iconic clock tower of England plus the French word for warm, hot!" I exclaimed, unable to keep cool

"Let it go, let it go" advised other drivers. "Not much damage, no?"

Not much damage indeed! What about my self esteem!

But by then the traffic had started moving  and the auto guy disappeared.

"You are so careless, Naren! You never pay attention to the traffic" the missus rubbed salt into the wounds.

But it is all back to normal. I'm in my lair, with a decent whiskey. The other characters in this drama are snoring peacefully.

Though I'm feeling just a little bad about missing the opportunity of telling the auto guy the website address of Bose, Denmark.

Twitterendra

Ah! Dug this out from the "Drafts" folder. I've been struggling to find something to write about and this darned writer's block has been, like a good CPI-M high command, obstructing all attempts to achieve results.

This @daddysan writes so beautifully! Simple words but deep thought. This excellent post he wrote today about Twitter, how it has woven its threads into his life and how it has given him those moments where he just sort of sits back, sighs gently and feels Buddha-like happiness, got me thinking.




I'm not much of a thinker in the sense of coming up with radically original thought, but give me someone else's original thought and I can stretch, mangle, verbify and otherwise extend it as well as anyone else. The missus has often remarked to me that she has never met anyone who can use so many words to say so little, which I think is a compliment.  And Daddysan has invited me, indeed, practically begged me (I assume it must be me, though Daddysan has tactfully refrained from naming anyone) to share "What are your Twitter stories? How has Twitter added to your life?"




 Twitter and I go back a long way. Three or four years now and I've primarily used Twitter as a place to read good stuff . The occasional witticisms of course, but mostly the links to interesting articles and points of view that some people consistently manage to put out. Every once in a while there is an interesting discussion on things I'd start off knowing only tangentially about and end up knowing enough to call myself "well informed".


The one thing about Twitter that fascinates me is the number of truly brilliant people out there. I interact with a small subset of them but I know there are many more. Some are wordplay geniuses. Others are superbly balanced analysts of any issue floating around. There are tech wizards, subtle litterateurs, gifted chefs, and some just good fellas.


The missus doesn't like me spending much time on twitter. We have the occassional war of words when I miss what she has been saying, on account of giggling away at something @rameshsrivats has said, but for the most part she just says it louder and oftener, till I get it.

"That's it?" you must be saying to yourself "THAT is your twitter story?"

Myanmar news

A new kind of virus seems to have hit the Irrawaddy delta. Known as the Myanmar Fit, the viral infection exhibits virtually no symptoms of illness other than causing severe aggressiveness and rebelliousness among some individuals. The delta has a reasonably peaceful population of Mons and Bamars and the virus has not caused endemic unrest as earlier feared.

The Military Junta however is watching the situation carefully, and hoping it doesn't reach the interiors where the Shan tribe has a significant presence. Already facing rebellion, the military fears that the situation would spiral out of hand should the virus proliferate. As the spokesperson for the Junta said, the government hopes that the Fit doesn't hit the Shan

My views on the Lokpal bill and the UID project

Something tells me I really shouldn't be writing posts like this one - what is about to follow is my 'critique' of the Lokpal movement - because I am a moron, untutored in the niceties of governance and administration, but I'm quite jobless at the moment and it's either write this post or die of boredom. Plus, rightly or wrongly, I feel strongly about this.

I'll make my point in a slightly roundabout way, with an anecdote.

Many years ago, I had a customer, for whom I made press tools, who was a supplier of sheet metal components to an appliances manufacturer.

This manufacturer had product lines which included televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and air-conditioners.

My customer, a small one-man-show, used to supply components to both the washing machine plant and the air conditioner plant.

One day, he was raided by the Preventive Department of the  Central Excise Collectorate who accused him of mis-labeling air-conditioner parts as washing-machine parts.

He protested. He showed them purchase orders from the customer, showing part numbers, produced drawings corresponding to those part numbers which clearly mentioned the model of the washing machine the parts were going into, and even correspondence about them.

The Preventive Department - scary looking gents they were - menacingly told him to save his breath.

"This does not mean anything, these drawings and purchase orders" their superintendent told him. "It's probably fabricated in order to evade duty"

After an hour or two - I was there, for moral support - the officials, who were sitting at my customer's table while all of us were standing around, terrified, summoned him into the cabin.

I went along, because this chap was white as a sheet and I was worried he might collapse.

The superintendent grimly told us that the duty rate differential was 70 percent and going by the production figures, and assuming this had been going on since the factory started, he would raise a duty demand of ten lakh rupees, with a like amount as penalty, and interest thereon.

"Thirty, thirty five lakhs it could be. You'll have to pay half the demand and then fight the case" he said.

My customer went limp and even more white. I propped him up, wondering whether to ask the chaps for a seat. They showed no inclination.

Then the inspector, the superintendent's subordinate, put a friendly arm around my customer and took us both outside the room.

"Look, the sahib is not a bad person. I'll talk to him. We'll discuss and come to a reasonable understanding"

The cookie crumbled, for me at least, though my customer still looked like a dying duck.

We finally settled at a very reasonable payment of one lakh rupees, with a monthly honorarium of five thousand rupees, to prevent the preventive department from replaying this scene.

I remember my customer weeping bitterly after this episode. Huge racking sobs. "What wrong have I done?" and "Why me?" were the major themes of his anguish.

And the very next year, a chap named Manmohan Singh - I think it's the same guy who's PM now, though I wouldn't swear on it - as finance minister, rationalized duty rates for excise. Many things, including washing machine parts and airconditioner parts, ended up having same or nearly the same rates of duty.

He also made rules preventing random raids by preventive departments unless there was probable cause, backed up by some preliminary investigation and a sanction from a senior officer.

And my customer stopped paying his honorarium to the excise department.

This, in my humble opinion, is what needs to be done to curb corruption. Simplification of administrative procedure, transparency and accountability. The Lokpal bill is just going to put another layer of vultures on top of the existing ones. The existing ones feed on the corpse of the nation. The Lokpal will feed on what it can snatch from the existing vultures.

One of the things that could possibly have gone a long way towards curbing corruption, the UID Bill, has been quietly killed, unnoticed by the fierce watchdog  that is Team Anna.

The UID bill was clever. It merely sought to record biometric data of individuals. That was it. Just record the biometric data, tag the individual, and make the data available nationwide.

The great P Chidambaram, among others, realized that this data could someday attach itself to bank accounts, propery records, financial transactions and overseas travel.

Suddenly, there would be no place to hide when an investigation happened. At the press of a key, everything would come gushing out. Your accounts, your lockers, your lands, your flats, your shareholdings in companies, everything.

They were horrified. And they dug out a whole bunch of very technical reasons why the project had to be abandoned. (here's an article about those reasons http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-12-16/news/30525319_1_aadhaar-uid-scheme-data-protection )

The arguments are essentially that UID will violate privacy, that the project is not technically feasible, that it is not financially feasible and that it wasn't approved by the Parliament.

Violate privacy? Well, all they've recorded is my name and address along with my photograph, fingerprint and retina scan.

Technically unfeasible? It seems that in a large population like ours, there are likely to be people who have the same biometrics. Pshaw!

Financially unfeasible? Costs some 1500 cr, it seems. Chicken feed compared to the 6,00,000 crores or whatever we're cheerfully planning to  bust up over the food security bill, no? Or the 1,00,000 cr oil deficit.

No, the harder I think about it the more it seems likely that the powers that be have figured out that the UID is going to make their lives tough and have very neatly pushed it out of their way for several years atleast.

My apologies once again for inflicting all this half-baked reasoning on you, especially if you happen to disagree with it. One of those days when I'm feeling very morose.

The making of the Kolaveri song (The Kolaveri Gumbal version)

You must have heard the Kolaveri song. Here it is, if you haven't. It's in Tamil. I don't speak it, but it isn't hard to understand what the song is about. The song has gone viral. I liked it almost instantly.

If I were a music critic, I would have launched into a long explanation about how the freshness of the concept and honesty of the lyrics were juxtaposed with the simplicity of the sound track and so on but I'm not. Anyway, I think it is the butler-english-ness of the lyrics that got me. Totally loved it!

And, I found out on twitter, so did most of my friends.

"Great minds think alike", I told the missus.

"Hmm" said the missus, unconvinced.

She has a generally low opinion of whatever I like, initially atleast. While I concede that my choice in clothes is perhaps not the finest in the land (there was some funny business recently about a 'wine colored' jacket I had been sold by a slick salesman which, in the opinion of the missus, is a shade of crimson that even the great Govinda must have refused to wear, which is why, she says, it was on the market in the first place, but I digress) or that my culinary preferences tend to be skewed towards the un-classsy but I rather pride myself on musical ability.

I ignored her lack of enthusiasm in my usual dignified way and repaired towards the home of Mohan and Girija, where we, along with Ramaa, Mahesh and Rahul, were planning to have a dignified discussion about the nuances of melody in Indian music.

Except that we didn't.

As we reclined on the sofa with our wine (most of us) or fresh water (Ramaa), as the case might be, the topic of discussion was the kolaveri song linked to above. Rahul and Mohan had put together a Carnaticised version (this) of the thing, but the lack of time ("we had about 5 minutes to spare, da" Rahul explained) had prevented them from according to the project the dignity it merited. They were sad.

"The euro is melting. We can take that. Evil forces are threatening to steal Pakistan's nukes and use them against civilians. We can suffer that. But to leave the Carnaticisation of this great song unfinished! Posterity will not forgive us" Mohan articulated.

We agreed solemnly. Our little company of thinkers was enriched by the induction of a new member M, formerly of Madras but now of Mumbai.

"Something has to be done!" said Mahesh, and we all sank in thought. All of us, that is, except Rahul and M who realized that they used to live on the same street in Madras and knew virtually everyone else who lived there, except each other, and spent a few minutes marveling at what a small world it was.

But soon, they too were deep in contemplation.

Something had to be done.

Something.

That something turned out to be the Raga Shubha Pantuvarali which is pretty much like the Hindustani raga Todi. Mohan sang a small piece in it and, emboldened by the fact that I was the only one there who knew any hindustani music, I weighed in with some Miyan Ki Todi.

Rahul and Ramaa pitched in and soon, the skeleton of the melody was established. M, who too is a trained Carnatic musician, pointed out improvements. Rahul played the thing out on the violin. Mohan and Ramaa were busy arranging the talam. Mahesh was planning out the rap part of the song.

And I? I was busy agreeing with everybody. I'm a world class agreer, with decades of practice at agreeing with everyone and everything.

My old uncle had advised me, when I got married, that just as a good cricketer gets in line with the delivery and keeps a straight backlift the moment the ball leaves the bowler's hand, so should a married man agree the moment the argument leaves the wife's lips. It's a matter of technique. With his, the cricketer is able to keep his wicket intact. And with his, the husband his peace. And what am I rambling about here? Sorry. I'll get on with the story.

As I was saying, I agreed with everyone, providing them with the critical reassurance that artists need to create something special and soon, this masterpiece, was born. (My voice can be heard in the fourth 'kolaveri' of the first verse. The one which sounds like Bhimsen Joshi's)

When we replayed the thing, we knew we had created something special.

"Hmm" I said, contemplatively, and the rest of the company echoed "Hmm" in agreement.


"What is the procedure to apply for a Grammy?" asked Mahesh, echoing the thought in everyone's mind

I realised, with a twinge of nostalgia that in the old days, if Grammies were under Indian Government management, we would easily have won one by the simple expedient of locating a friend who knew the Director General of the Department of Grammies, getting him to create a separate category for "Kolaveri songs" and prevailing on him to award the grammy to us but in this day and age, things are not as simple.

But I'm preparing my speech, just in case.

A very p j

The setting rays of the sun caressed the Gulmohars outside our living room on their way into it, bouncing off the carnations in the vase, off the chinese candle stand, off the Laughing Buddha which, the missus never tired of reminding me, had once been mistaken for a likeness of me by my elderly aunt, and off the tall glass full of chilled beer that had manifested itself taking advantage of the missus' absence, she having gone to the spa for a beauty treatment.

The boys were supposed to study for their upcoming exams.

"Make sure they don't watch TV and all" the missus had instructed me before she left.

The lads, of course, switched on the thing the moment they heard her drive off.

"Boys, you are going to get me into serious trouble"

"Chill, Annie! She's got an appointment for a manicure, a pedicure and a hair wash. Two hours, pukka"

"No. no, last time she came back in 45 minutes"

"Chill, Annie. Anyway, she wasn't serious"

"What do you mean, not serious? Not serious about what?"

"Not serious about this "Don't let them watch TV" business. She has a different tone when she's serious. A bit like a 600 cc motorcycle"

"I don't think so. 600 cc motorcycle forsooth! Please switch it off and go into your room"

"Chill, Annie"

"For the last time" I told them, in an icy manner I reserve for sarcasm, "I will have you know that I am not equipped with a compressor and cooling coils. Chill, it seems!"

Wasted, of course. The boys were riveted onto the screen. Some species of cricket was going on. An old classic match. There was some Hindi commentary rolling along.

Very wordy, Hindi commentary, for some reason, atleast back then. They liked to describe every single thing that happened on the screen. "Now he's picked the ball. Now he's transferred it to his other hand. Now he is rubbing it on the back of his trouser." Dude!

Anyway, coming back to the res, the younger guy piped up

"Annie, what's Salaami Ballebaaz?"

"Er, opening batsmen I think. boys, would you consider switching the TV off ?"

"Annie, look at it this way. If Amma walks in now, she will see us watching the TV and yell at us. You know what that means, no?"

"What?"

"She won't notice you've poured yourself a beer"

Checkmate.

"Annie, why is that guy not hooking the bouncers?"

The boys were watching Sourav Ganguly and his legendary shyness towards fast, short pitched balls directed at the coconut.

"He's a bit afraid of short pitched balls, old Sourav is! But a splendid player of the fuller deliveries. His cover drives are the stuff of legend!"

"Haha! He'd be the right brand ambassador for Venky's!"

"Venky's?"

"He's an opening batsman, right?"

"Er, yes.."

"And a fraidy cat"

"I guess so, yes.."

"There you are. Chicken Salaami"

I groaned but before I could clout the lad a richly deserved one, the door opened and the missus entered. She got a call from the spa while she was on her way there, apparently, to the effect that the appointment was cancelled because of the non availability of the manicure guy.

There was what they call a pregnant pause.

"What's all this?"

We rightly recognized this to be a rhetorical question.

A little monologue was delivered on the subject of irresponsible children who have no sense of responsibility and on even more irresponsible fathers who have absolutely no idea what parenting is all about.

But the boys were right about one thing.

She never noticed the beer.

A musical evening

(The people in this post: 
Mohan Krishnamoorthy who blogs here and tweets here
Girija, his wife, who tweets here 
Ramaa Ramesh who blogs here, tweets here and soundclouds here
Mahesh Sethuraman who blogs here and tweets here
S. Rahul who tweets here )

"I'll be there!", Mohan texted me. "Can I get a friend along?"

"Oh of course!" I was delighted.

Ah. I see that look of puzzlement on your face. "Naren is a great chap but a complete disaster at narrating anything at all" you're saying to yourself.  "Give him a horse and he wastes no time appending the cart before it".

I can visualize you biting your lower lip and edging that cursor to the little 'x' button on the corner of your browser tab. But tarry a while, dear reader. I have a not incoherent tale to tell.

I had passes to a classical music concert and as usually happens, when I have 'n' passes for a classical music concert, 'n-1' of those passes were spare.

"Why do you bother getting so many of them?" the missus snapped, irate, when I whined about this to her

"I was hoping you'd come. And that we'd drag someone along"

"You know I can't. Gau has his exams day after and the moment I step out, he's going to watch TV"

She was right, as usual. The lad has to be trussed up and sat upon if he is to study at all. And this is a crucial year for him.

I also suspect the missus is not too keen on what she refers to as the "aa-aaa-aaa stuff" when talking to her friends, though she gamely tries to keep it from me. At several concerts to which I have taken her, the singing ones at least, she usually falls asleep in the first twenty minutes with her head gently placed on my shoulder. This makes a touchingly endearing picture but it's probably not the best encouragement for the performers. The kind of stuff that leads most of them to drink.

"What shall I do then?" I continued in the time honoured tradition of asking her for solutions to all my vexatious problems.

"Go alone, what's the trouble?"

"People will think I'm weird".

I'm not a sensitive social butterfly but I do know that people who wander alone to cinemas and concerts are looked down upon by the brightest because of the inevitable conclusion that they are so undesirable that they can't find anyone to come along with them even for third party entertainment.

"Between you and me, sweetness, I don't think that's a state secret"

"Thanks"

"Oh, don't worry, dear, you'll find someone"

I was pottering around on twitter around then and saw some excellent discussions featuring Mohan K and some others about classical music. I made bold to ask him if he'd like to come along.

And when he replied in the affirmative, only the fact that I was no longer sixteen and supple held me back from executing triple somersaults.

The concert was very nice. The singers sang beautifully. Acoustics was wonderful. And company was excellent. Mohan, his wife Girija and Mahesh Sethuraman, whom I knew for a goodish while, were all appreciative.

Mohan, in particular, turned out to be encyclopedic in his knowledge of Indian music. A trained Carnatic vocalist, he genuinely liked Hindustani as well and we ended up having a great deal of enjoyable chitchat on the whole subject. I shared what I knew of the hindustani tradition while he regaled me with trivia about Carnatic. And then, in response to something I was telling him about jod-ragas, those joint melodies so popular in hindustani,  he told me something amazing.

"You know about Sruti bheda and graha bheda, don't you?"

They  keep these things from me.

"No. What's that?"

He said something on the lines of "Graha-Bheda is the singing where the inter-note intervals are fixed and a different note is chosen as the tonic. The scale shifts but the melody uses the same notes as the earlier scale and thus generates a new raga in that new scale"

Regular readers of these chronicles will know that Naren, though sterling of character and a shoulder to rely upon in emotional upheavals, is not the strongest mind around. The old bean began to spin.

Mohan explained further but the sound of my brain cells popping one by one under the strain of processing that must have been audible.

'Alright, drop in to my house next week. I'll demonstrate what I mean by that" he said, kind as he was.

And I duly rolled up at the appointed hour. The traffic was extra dense and the auto drivers more skittish than usual but instead of the usual unflattering maternal adjective that I normally reserve for those of that tribe who cross my path, I was cheerful and positively Gandhian.

Mohan had invited Ramaa Ramesh, a fellow Wodehouse fan and, I didn't know this till then, a trained Carnatic vocalist, and S. Rahul, another young Carnatic vocalist with the most infectious smile and a terrific sense of humor. I was meeting Rahul for the first time. Mahesh Sethuraman was there too.

Girija rustled up some lovely samosas. This is a forbidden food in our house owing to certain problems with my trigylceride numbers, so I quickly seized the opportunity to gobble up a couple of them.

Mohan, who had heard me hum a few tunes in the car the day we went to the concert, asked me to sing something.

'Sing Durga" he said, referring to a raga we were discussing on twitter a few days ago.

I've never had much reticence in me since my childhood. Where other children had to be given toffees to sing a song, I was frequently given toffees to stop singing. So before the assemblage could change their mind, I let off one numbers Durga.

It was recieved politely, speaking highly of the audience's ability to take aural assault without flinching visibly.

And then Rahul, who had brought his sruti box along, on the request of Mohan (I was touched. This was so that I could relate to the Graha Bheda demonstration), sang to demonstrate this extremely demanding musical feat. It's difficult for me to put it into words, and it would be far too boring for you, but I was astounded. The base raga is sung first, and then, another note, say the nishad, is fixed as the shadja, with the shruti playing the original shadja. The notes of the base raga are now sung with the nishad as the shadja, generating a new raga in the new, nishad based scale. The singer then returns seamlessly to the base raga.

Right. Take that aspirin. You have earned it. But seek out Mohan, or someone equally competent and kind enough to take time out to explain it to you, and you will be similarly impressed.

Ramaa sang after much begging and requesting from all of us. I've known her for a long time and heard her on her soundcloud but her singing is several orders of magnitude more awesome in person.

Rahul continued with several illustrations of things in Carnatic music that I had never heard before. Little things about the rhythmic patterns and how the accompaniment works. Ramaa and he jammed beautifully, joined now and then by Mohan, who I realized sang superbly even though he wasn't a professional singer. And he knows some truly amazing people in the music industry. He told us many anecdotes that I will cherish for a lifetime.


Girija had rustled up some delicious food and unsupervised that I was, I vacuumed as much of it as I could contain. And our resilient little company was back again to discussion. Among other things, Mahesh and Rahul had delightful little jugalbandis of Goundamani's dialogues where one would start and the other would finish.

At around 2 am, the missus began to get worried. I had promised her that I would return  by 11.00 pm. She knows that 11pm is code for 1 am but by 2, she was convinced that I was either lying in a ditch somewhere or cooling my heels in the slammer.

I reassured her that I was leaving any moment now. At 3, I received a sternly worded text message promising dire consequences if I did not haul ass instantly. Recognizing this as serious, I reluctantly dragged myself home.

Her demeanour was ominously cold, but this morning, a large flying cockroach entered our room and sent her helpless and screaming, into my arms. Bravely employing a bathroom slipper, I slew the beast.

I am basking in glory at the moment of writing.

On Public Debates and Questions Asked Therein

I attended a jolly little debate recently on Environment V/s Development and while I generally give these things the miss, on the sensible grounds that I have little or nothing to contribute, I couldn't jog out of this one on account of the big cheese being an old college pal of mine.

I tooled up at the appointed hour and occupied, on the prompting of the big cheese, one of those seats with RESERVED written on them in large letters. It is immensely satisfying, the occupation of seats with RESERVED written on them, but of course YOU wouldn't know that  because YOU've never been asked to occupy seats with RESERVED written on them, now, have you? If you will pardon the expression, Ha Ha!

Anyway, the debate was well conducted. The speakers were really eminent people and spoke much that made sense. I'm of course one of those feeble minded blokes who tends to agree with virtually anything is said to him, as you probably know already, but even I could tell that strong arguments were being made strongly.

The debate paused after each side made their arguments and the general public was invited to ask questions. Now I don't really attend too many of these things as I said earlier but I felt more that ever that we must have the worst question askers in the world.

The first doofus from the general public stood up and was handed a wireless mike. There was a bit of "Hello Mike testing one two three" (which, whenever I get the opportunity, I change to "Mike's testes, one two three". This, in my opinion, is the second most satisfying thing about these do's, the first being of course, occupying seats with RESERVED written on them) after which the doofus hemmed and hawed and told us his name. Yeah. We were dying to know. Now go ahead and say your thing, you nematode. And then he told us a long piece about how distinguished he was and how he agreed with many things that were said today, and how he was unlike most other people who wouldn't know a thing about what was being said and.... he would have gone on had the moderator not butted in and asked him to get to the point. Where upon he asked his question which was something to the effect that India was a better place now that 50 years ago.

Yeah, said the moderator, so what's your question?

That only

What?

That.

Then it flashed upon the moderator that the chap had possibly been having a drop or two on the sly and mumbled "I think we can take that question as answered by the questioner himself. Who's next?"

That, for me, was the highlight of the evening.

On Raans

Last night we went to a little eatery called Persian Durbar, in Bandra West. There were four of us and the mission was to eat a preparation called Three in one Raan, which essentially is roasted leg of lamb.

We ate and ate. And ate. And couldn't finish it, there was that much. I loved the delicate smoked flavor and the no-nonsense presentation. After a post prandial phirni, I reclined on the settee and reminsced.

I've wanted to eat Raan for a long time but never managed to get the three other like minded people needed to finish one portion of it. Till yesterday that is.

I've eaten a similar thing before. In Spain, of all places. And curiously, as part of an airline meal.

We flew from Madrid to Barcelona and they served us a little Paella rice with a small piece of roasted leg of lamb.

It was delicately flavoured and quite unlike anything European. I wondered if it was the Moorish influence. Arabic, perhaps. Or Numidian.

The stewardess, upon being asked what it was called, delivered five thousand Spanish words on the subject, the gist of which, since I don't speak that lovely language beyond saying Gracias (which is pronounced Grathias for some reason), escaped me.

I went around Barcelona looking for something similar but never found it. Not surprising, I guess, since my enquiries comprised of the English words "Leg", "Lamb", "Roasted" and a lot of nimble mime movements. Several of the waiters to whom I presented this performance looked at me anxiously. The missus, who was accompanying me, kept imploring me in Konkani not to make an ass of myself. With sadness, I abandoned my quest.

And it would have stayed abandoned had it not been for the fact that on the flight back, we were served the same thing again! This time, I went around the city of Madrid in search but alas in vain. If that city roasted its lamb legs, they kept it from outsiders.

The missus observed that conventional wisdom had it that the Raan in Spain stayed mainly on the plane, but I felt I would have found it had I only known Spanish better.

My teachers day anecdote

Teachers day just came and went and like everything else these days, was celebrated on twitter. Some reminisced about the good teachers, others about the bad. I couldn't help remembering our old Drawing Master.

We had many good teachers who did a fairly decent job of educating the bunch of us. There were a few who were spectacularly bad of course, but they were largely ignored. Some were fairly funny. But Popat is one chap I will always remember.

Popat wasn't his name, of course. His name was  Sule or Patil or something - escaped my memory for the nonce - but we used to call him Popat for reasons long forgotten. Popat means 'parrot' in Marathi, but it also slang for the, er, pee director or baby maker as the lads are wont to describe it.

Popat used to teach us drawing and was actually a very good artist. He was also very committed, come to think of it.

Drawing class in the pre-Popat era involved drawing very formalized representations of 'scenery'. This used to consist of three mountains, one sun peeping out from between mountains 1 and 2, a river emanating from between mountains 2 and 3, a house consisiting of 1 door, 2 windows and a sloping roof. The real freedom came in the foreground where people could draw as many boys as girls as they liked, though most of us stuck to one each, carefully drawn to resemble alien beings.

Popat was an artist, however. He hated these three-mountain sceneries with a passion. He would ask us to draw anything we liked.

"Draw something you have seen. Draw your desk", he would tell us. "Or draw your pencil box."

But the bunch of us, brought up on years of three-mountains-one-sun-one-river, couldn't understand any of what Popat told us. We continued to draw three-mountains, to Popat's despair

"What is your favorite animal", he asked a boy, randomly. Prahalad his name was, I remember. Aka Palli.

"Donkey" said Palli, to the great amusement of the class. Back then, certain words were the pinnacle of humor. You only had to say "donkey" or "monkey" or even "mad" to send an entire audience into paroxysms of laughter. Palli had cracked one such immortal joke.

"Alright, then, draw a donkey" said Popat, unfazed.

Palli dug around in his bag looking for his English textbook because we had a story in it about a man and his son taking a donkey to the market, and it had several illustrations. Palli's plan, sound chap that he was, was to copy the animal from one of those illustrations.

"What are you doing?" asked Popat

"Sir, looking for a picture of a donkey, sir" said Palli who, while perhaps a tad low on deductive skills, had the sterling character and honesty of Abe Lincoln.

"No, no, no looking at picture bicture. Look at my face and draw a donkey" said Popat.

I laughed out loudly. Even back then, I had a particularly irritating laugh. On that day, it had the opprobrious quality of poking fun at a teacher. To make matters worse for me, I was the only boy in class who laughed. This was unusual because I was usually slow on the uptake (TFC - short for "tube with fucked up choke" - was an occasional nickname) but that afternoon I had chosen to be the Mister Quick

Popat froze.

Realising what he had just said, he pulled me out of the desk in an instant and whipped my butt with a cane that was standard issue to teachers back then.

This didn't bother me all that much because one, we were used to this kind of stuff and two, that being a day I hadn't done reams of homework, I had, in anticipation of an attack to the gluteal region, strategically inserted one of our wash-basin turkish towel napkins into my undies, which took the sting away. I was more worried about the note he wrote my parents, a note saying that I was a very bad boy, though he left out the real reason for this assessment.

I hesitantly gave the note to my father, a busy doctor who, though never given to flashes of temper, could get a little irritated if shown too much foolishness. Dad was having his breakfast.

"What's this?" he asked, with a frown?

"Our drawing sir is angry with me because I laughed at him"

'Why did you laugh at him?"

"He said 'Look at my face and draw a donkey'"

To my relief, his face broke into a smile.

"Hmm. Don't do this again"

He signed the note and that was that. Popat, luckily for me, got promoted as supervisor of the primary section or something, and went out of my academic life for ever. And we happily continued to draw the three-mountain scenes, steadily improving over the years.