Friday, February 8, 2008

Frozen in Mumbai

I'm a great believer in intuition and personal insight. My intuition and personal insight is that the temperature in Mumbai is -27 degrees. I know, I know, the thermometer says 9.6 Celsius but I think it is a great imperialist plot to lull the Indian public into a false sense of security. Even as we speak, CIA agents are shooting large beams of infra red radiation to melt the snow. According to my neighbor Mr. Shah, the world is tilting rapidly and very soon, the north pole will be where Srinagar is now and Mumbai will have the climate of Oslo. Mr. Shah knows everything. He knows when the market will go up, when it will go down, how much money the Finance Minister is eating, who will be the next Miss Universe, how many feet the sea levels will rise when the ice caps melt, when this will happen, which buildings in Versova, Mumbai will be submerged, how much the Nano will actually cost when it is launched, the share holding pattern of the Reliance group. Everything, except the fact that Wendy, their Pomeranian, is making out with a brown mongrel on the street outside. I don't want to tell him that, he'll probably have a heart attack. I don't want him to go just now. He's going to tell me his theory of how Jesus Christ and Buddha are the same person. It is based on the fact that Mary Magdalene, Christ's disciple was a prostitute and Amrapali of Magadha, the Buddha's disciple, was a prostitute too, and that Magdalene means from Magadha and hence Christ and Buddha are the same person, which means that Christ was buried in Kashmir.

As you will doubtless agree, this winter has frozen some brains too.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wendy that b***h! :) How exactly do dogs make out again?

Ken said...

A fine piece of urban demotic. You have drawn a wonderfully live sketch of your neighbour Shah with all his exaggerated certainties. Saul Bellow would have been proud to have written this piece

Narendra shenoy said...

@ps - A lot of sniffing is involved, which apparently is a great source of management wisdom too.
http://narendrashenoy.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-read-this-today-in-times-of-india.html

@ken - Thanks! I'm experimenting with flowing rant - style narration. The missus thought it was terrible, which usually means it's ok. Nice to hear from you. I enjoyed Adil Jussawala's article, beautifully written.

Anonymous said...

you really make us giggle and awed.

mba duds, punter's constipation, nutty pc, australain ape, bungling bill gates, silly vijay mallya - there's a shah in all of us? :)

Maddy said...

well - it does look like the Thakray's has not been too much of a problem for u folks..anyway talking of jesus HC and his own srinagar connections, you must hv heard of sheshappa iyer - the bard right?

Unknown said...

Mumbai? 9 degrees? Alright, then, maybe I should stop cribbing about the cold at my place. I'm now thankful that we haven't faced a snowstorm already.
And Mr. Shah reminds me of some character in a Sue Townsend book. Hahahaha, I can't believe such people actually exist. Pliss to be asking about the fingers of my left hand. Will the chillblains go away soon? Or am I doomed? Thengyuberymuch to Mr. Shah in advance.

Nanditha Prabhu said...

:)...enjoyed reading your spontaneous rant style...if at nine degrees brains start to freeze.. what would be your definition of my brain which is right now experiencing -20 degrees!

Narendra shenoy said...

@anonymous - Thanks!

@maddy - Sheshappa Iyer! I didn't know that Shakespeare was one of us. I wonder if there is "I say" in his plays, that would be a dead give-away. For instance, if Hamlet says, "To be or not to be, that is the question, I say", we will be able to aver with confidence that the playwright was one of us.

@nanditha - -20! Like all Bombay wallahs, I have never seen snow outside a refrigerator. How do you guys function? We were actually planning a skiing holiday in Uttaranchal. I chickened out and what luck I did, because there have been all kinds of avalanches there and reports of people being stranded.

Narendra shenoy said...

Drenched - I am very much enjoying your blog too, which I have just been reading....

Bhel Puri & Seekh Kabab said...

ROFL, "this winter has frozen some brains too." - thankfully, doesn't seem to have affected you. Very funny. :-)

Naveen Prabhu said...

"write as it comes" ... u sure are gifted ...loved it

Rithish said...

I muchly liking your ranting.. please to be ranting morely futurely.. (the office a/c, not the winter, has got to me).

Maddy said...

narendra - this sheshappa thing has been doing the rounds for many years, tambrahms have been vociferous about it, especially after somebody found out that the bards oft shown picture does not belong to the bard at all.

check these

http://www.anukriti.net/tt/how_does.asp

http://balakrishna-humansite.blogspot.com/2007/09/could-it-be-sheshappa-iyer.html

Narendra shenoy said...

naveen, rithish- Thanks. I'm glad you liked it.

Maddy, thanks for the links.

BPSK - Thanks.

I am gallivanting around in Africa at this time, currently in Kampala imposing on the hospitality of the Golf Course Hotel. Amazing country, just loving it. The only problem is they have really crawling net connections

Bikerdude said...

gaaaahaha :) first time here, and shall certainly be back for more! keep em coming!

Lavanya said...

Aargh, It was 4 degrees when I was in Nashik, terrible. :(

And lol, every neighborhood has a Shah. And they all have Poms.
Personally, Pomeranians are the most annoying breed I've ever come across.
And they don't die at all.

Narendra shenoy said...

Bikerdude - Thanks!

Coconut Chutney- True, true. Poms never seem to die.

Somebody Else said...

Hahah. Good Fun. Is Mr Shah's first name Satish by any chance? Hmmm I say!

Cheers! :)

Anonymous said...

I imploded with laughter!
May I blogroll you?

Anonymous said...

ok now my intensions are not to make u wonder wat kind of a creep i am....or why i am asking totally weird questions....but since u write so well, i was wondering wat u read (besides the newspaper, the wall street journal and the likes of that) ?
If u read anything remotely interesting, I would like to read that stuff too... :)
Yesss...i am totally lonely and un-loved ...just like u ...which explains why i have nobody to ask about which books they read except for people without faces on the internet :)

Deepak Gopalakrishnan said...

HAHAHAHAHAH! Jesus Christ, Buddha are #sameguy!