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.

The Problems with being an alleged humorist

I wrote this post, hit the publish button, read thru it, got existential doubts, deleted the thing, which by then had made it to the reader of @sandeip who told me, on twitter, that it wasn't all that bad, and that I had written worse. This persuaded me to republish it except that like the ass that I am, I didn't have a copy. This was provided by @sandeip, culled from his reader, and HE is the guy you have to blame for having the following inflicted upon you.

The missus calls me an alleged humorist, for a variety of reasons.

Her primary  one is that, in her opinion, I am never funny. Not intentionally, anyway. She rarely if ever finds any hilarity in my kind of humor. Especially the word-play kind.

"Hmm. So Dr. Spooner was suspicious of his wife's hair-dresser because he parted her hair."

"Er, yes"

"Meaning Dr. Spooner thought he had hearted her pair."

"Er, yes."

"Dr. Spooner being the one who said things like 'he went up the hill pantless and breathing' when he meant to say 'he went up the hill breathless and panting'?

I nodded.

"Droll."

'Droll' is missus speak for 'haakthoo', as you might have gathered.

Not that she's Bob Hope or anything herself. I caught her gossiping with one of her friends about another friend who had recently purchased a vineyard which she (the other friend) endlessly crowed about. As it happened, the vineyard seemed to  be having a run of bad luck with the crop.

"She had a unsatisfactory  yeild, I hear" said the friend.

"You must have heard it on the grape whine" said the missus and the two tittered along for a good ten minutes. I pointed out the sadness of that joke with a long, dejected stare at the two but they didn't seem to notice it.

The kids are equally bad. In addition to trying me out as a sounding board for all their silly jokes, they also tell me some of the grossest, most embarassing jokes ever told by 14 and 17 year olds to their greying father. It doesn't help that I am usually slow on the uptake.  

The silly ones are bad enough. Splattered across these blog posts are several prime examples but new ones keep coming all the time.

"Annie, why did the chicken jump from the back of one buffalo to the other?" 

This when I'm going through a lengthy mail from a customer reprimanding me for tardy delivery in fairly juicy language. But my kids are not easily shooed away.

"Ok, why?"

"To get on the other's hide."


Not to be outdone, the younger one piped up.

"Annie, why did the chicken go from one nagging woman to another?"

This seemed a bit unusual. I was intrigued.

"Why?"

"To get to the other chide."

"Guys, please. I'm trying to get some work done here."

"Annie, what is a panty raid?"

"What!"

"There it is. In your inbox. The subject of the mail from Victoria's Secret. Join us in a Panty Raid."

So it was. It's a long story, but has an entirely honourable explanation. But when you are caught flatfooted like that it can be awkward.

"Annie, why does Victoria's Secret send you mail?"

"Will you boys leave me alone?" I shouted in exasperation

"Annie", said the lad in a sad voice, "you know your problem? No sense of humour".

Short notes - The Missus on Coffee

Coffee is something the missus is extremely particular about. She's from Mysore, and in Mysore, coffee is drunk strong.

When I, wuss from Bombay, first had Mysore coffee, I had to close my eyes and hold my hands over them to prevent my eyeballs from popping out. Third parties advised that nothing of the sort would occur but it was a long time before I removed my hands off them.

The third parties were right. Nothing happened. But the main party, the party of the second part, hereinbefore and hereinafter referred to as 'the missus' was, with singular lack of tact, laughing her booty off.

What fascinates me and will eternally continue to do so is the way every Mysorean, when ordering coffee at a restaurant, tells the waiter "Solpa Strong Madiri" ("Make sure it's strong, dude") regardless of how strong the restaurant normally makes it.

Bombay restaurants, on the other hand, have no concept of strong. Indeed, they have little concept of 'coffee' for that matter.

I don't know if I've told you my favorite Udipi restaurant coffee anecdote. Forgive me if I have.

I went through a black coffee phase when I was convinced that if you wanted to show how classy you were, you had to have black coffee without sugar. This wasn't a problem at the Cafe Coffee Days and the Baristas but it mildly  boomeranged at Udipi Vihar Restaurant, Goregaon West where I once asked if I could have a black coffee.

"Can you give me black coffee?" I asked the chap.

"Yes yes".

Bombay is the bastion of capitalism and this is a fine example. The first response of a Bombay business is "Yes" to whatever the customer asks for. I have known shops to tell me they have whatever I asked for, its in the go-down and someone's getting it and actually the shop assistant would have run across the road to another shop and purchased the damn thing. Saying 'no' to a customer is unthinkable.

He came back a couple of minutes later, evidently sent with a flea in his ear, by the chef.

"How do you want it made?" he asked me.

"Just like you make your regular coffee, just don't add milk or sugar" I replied.

"Theek hai" and buzzed off inside only to return again and ask in a sheepish sort of way

"The cook wants to know if you want coffee powder in it"

The missus, who was with me, had a hearty laugh and later observed that no Mysore waiter would, even on the pain of injury, ask a thing like that.

"It's blasphemy, dear. "Do you want coffee in it", it seems. In the old days, people would be flayed for such things. Only in Bombay can this happen"

The missus actually had good reason to feel animosity towards Bombay coffee.

Here she is, on Bombay coffee and why it infuriates her:

"When we were married and the mandatory uncle-aunty visiting was happening, word had gotten around that I drank only kaapi. Naren and his entire clan are resolute tea-drinkers. And the worst kind of tea drinkers, I might add. You guessed right. Masala chai drinkers. Anyway, as I was saying, the clan would faithfully attempt to make coffee, but their technique was severely flawed. You know how we make coffee down south, don't you? A good half a cup of strong decoction, a spoon or two of sugar and a little milk, just enough to get the decoction to a buffalo-after-bath brown colour. 

Well, in Bombay, the procedure is to boil a quart of milk liberally sweetened with sugar and, I shudder to say this, cardamom. If Mysoreans were Japanese Samurai, which they arent, mercifully, they would have committed seppuku in droves upon being told about the practice of adding cardamom to coffee.

And the worst of it is, they don't add physically add coffee to the milk when they make coffee. I'm serious. The Bombay guys' idea of adding coffee to milk is to put some coffee powder on a saucer and use a mirror to direct its reflection into the milk. After a couple of minutes of this, the milk acquires sufficient coffee flavour for the Bombay guys. Five minutes, if they want to make it really strong."

Thank you Sheela. Your views are greatly appreciated.

The Anna Hazare situation

Ordinarily, political imbroglios (sorry, but I've always wanted to use that word since I was so high and read it in a Readers Digest Word Power column. I don't really know what it means but it sounds kind of right and you probably dont know it either so we should be alright there) don't upset the harmony of our little home. I refer of course to the Great Lokpal Bill Drama, currently being aired on all channels except, bless their hearts, FTV.

We rarely have political discussions at home. The missus is more a bollywood person. And the boys are into cars and an obnoxious series on TV called MTV Roadies, which, as far as i can see, comprises solely of people abusing other people. But this Anna Hazare business is in our face so much of the time, it is impossible to ignore it.

The missus and I have views on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The missus is strongly for the Lokpal Bill Anna Hazare Version which, as far as I can see, involves spotting the corrupt, asking a select committee if they agree that the spotted person is indeed corrupt and, if they say he (or she) is, horsewhip him (or her).

Here's a sample scenario:

Investigating Officer: "Chairman, sir, respected members of the Lokpal and my dear friends, I have here a senior officer of the government who is corrupt"

Lokpal Chairman: "You don't say! Are you sure?"

Investigating Officer: "I am. You can bet your non corrupt ass on it"

Lokpal Chairman:  "And has he made lots of money?"

Investigating Officer:  "Crores, I tell you, crores!"

Lokpal Chairman:  "Say, Investigating Officer, has he salted it away in Swiss Bank accounts, do you think?"

Investigating Officer:  "Once again, you can bet your non corrupt ass on it, because you won the last bet!"

The Bloke under Investigation:  "I say, here, please, listen to me, it's nothing like that. Just a bunch of fabricated lies.."

Lokpal Chairman:  "Silence! You are corrupt! You do NOT have the permission to speak or say anything in your defence.  So, Investigating Officer, what do you say we do with this low-life?"

And so on.

I've oversimplified it of course, but the entire thing will firmly be in the Haroon Al Rashid territory. You know the chap. The caliph who was wise and summarily executed the wicked. I may be thinking of a couple of other chaps of course, in which case, please forgive me, but what I meant was that there doesn't seem to be much by way of legal process. What if the said select committe, god forbid, isn't as wise as Haroon al Rashid at all times?

As it turned out, the missus was incensed this afternoon, possibly for a different reason.  Actually, I think the reason she was incensed might be the fact that I had, unbeknownst to her,  a couple of beers at lunch (we had a visitor at work, what to do) and then drove home. I am strictly not allowed to drive if I've had a drink.

"Answer the following question in one word only" she said to me

It did not augur well.

"Yes?"

"Did you have beer at lunch?"

How do women find these things out?

"Answer me. Yes or no?"

"Er, yes"

"Are you out of your mind?"

This one was easier.

"Er, no"

"You drove. You know what a big no-no that is"

"It was just one pint" I protested meekly.

"They've arrested Anna Hazare"

This was unusual.

"He was drunk driving?"

"No, you idiot. Don't you watch news or get any information on your silly twitter feed? The government has arrested him because he wants to fast unto death. That's attempt to commit suicide. Punishable offense"

"Wow. The stuff must have hit the fan. What are they going to do now? The protesters, I mean?"

"They're planning to have a protest march."

"Where?"

"All over the place. There's one planned here, near Inorbit Mall"

"Protest march! What next?"

"I know Annie" piped up the youngster "they will have a protest April"

"Go to your room, Gautham. You have geometry tomorrow!" bellowed the missus and turning to me, added "it's all your fault. You encourage them to crack these pjs and that's all they do all the time. It's driving me nuts"

Anyway, the country's still seems to be holding itself together, despite the best efforts of the chaps in the government whom the missus refers to as "what the Reverend Spooner would call shining wits".

I really wonder what is going to happen. Perhaps a whiskey would help me clarify my thoughts.....

In which we go to a fashion show

It's been a dull week in Bombay. We did go for a fashion show, a jewellery based thing, but it wasn't much fun. I felt about as at-home there as a nudist at an HJS convention.

I had tried my level best to wriggle out of it. "Jewellery shows are only for silly vain women" I told her, and then quickly added a "mostly, that is. Not you of course", when I realized what I had just said.

The missus was in an uncommonly good mood. Normally I would have got a real dagger-look for something like that but she just smiled indulgently.

"Silly vain women, it seems. That is so Coltrane! Typical of you. Anyway, wear your finest, my prince. Many pretty ladies will be watching you"

"Coltrane?"

"Saxist"

"Oh". Sometimes, carrying on conversations with her require nimbler minds than mine.


I put on the gentleman disguise and turned out rather dapper and spotless, by my standards, but the missus is a nit picker.

"You might consider zipping your fly. Remember Konrad Lorenz?"

{The said Lorenz, if you don't know the story (and a graphic one it is. If you're sqeamish, skippez s'il vous plait, as they say in French) was a biologist who studied birds. He used to feed a wild raven, for research purposes, with strips of meat which he would carry in his pocket. One day, after a biology department lunch with lots of beer, he decided to relieve himself against a wall in the garden. The raven saw this with eagle eyes (as Bobilli might have put it) and decided it was a strip of meat it wanted. The upshot of this was that Herr Konrad practiced celibacy for a long time}

"I forgot, re. You're looking stunning, by the way". A little oil never hurt anyone.

We trundled in at around 6 pm and I was pleasantly surprised to find a functioning bar dishing out the essentials.

"Don't even think about it" said the missus. "I haven't brought my drivers licence. You're going to have to drive back"

I sadly picked a fresh lime soda. "Haha" said the missus "you look like Socrates drinking the hemlock".

I ignored the barb and occupied my seat. The lights dimmed and the usual speeches were heard. A flowery one about the sponsors. An equally flowery one about the designer.

The spot lights came on and some extremely tall and thin women walked down the ramp to the accompaniment of music which sounded like two radio stations playing simultaneously, one being temple music and the other a trance track.

Their slendernesses marched up and down, pausing every now and then to pout at random people in the audience. Very nice of course, but with the sustained dramatic interest of a kabuki performance.

The missus of course enjoyed herself immensely.

The week that was

(Disclaimer - highly random post follows)

"Sigh", I sighed.

I find myself sighing a lot these days. Life, for some unfathomable reason, seems to have become so complicated. I am forever forgetting something or the other. Our watchman, who revels in being the harbinger of bad news, (had I been a medieval Mughal emperor he would long have been beheaded) had just called through to tell me I had a flat tyre. And I just realised I had given my spare tyre for fixing and forgotten to collect it.

"Sigh" I sighed again.

The missus, who was sitting on the sofa and reading her paper, chuckled.

"I am glad that you are able to derive mirth from my despondent demeanour" I said to her in my sourest voice, meaning it to sting.

"No, my sweet, I just remembered something the boys said"

"Why, what did they come up  with now?" I asked her. I realized too late that I didnt want to know

"The younger one calls you Sigh Baba."

"Sai Baba?"

"No, Sigh Baba. Because you keep sighing all the time. Haha! Isn't that droll?"

It was the saddest joke I had heard from a source specializing in sad jokes but I kept mum. I had just remembered I had a certain confession to make and I needed lots, LOTS of good humour at this moment. I would have sighed again but I resisted the urge.

 The problem was that I had answered our home phone on that fateful day. I normally don't, because the callers are usually random aunts who can speak for hours and ask uncomfortable personal questions when you least expect them to, and who want to speak to the missus anyway, but she was busy doing something in the kitchen and the phone kept ringing despite my best efforts to stare at it and make it stop.

"Pick up the phone, for gods sake!" she yelled from inside and I found myself talking to an uncle by marriage who told me a very complicated story about why he was in Bombay and embedded a "we're coming to your place on Friday" somewhere in it.

The missus normally debriefs me when I do something critical like answering the phone  but that day there was a temperature related chemical composition change in the carbohydrate structure of the rice she was cooking and it took me many stressful minutes to pacify her. Finally, we decided to tell the boys we were having Smoked Rice Burmese Style for dinner, which, and this is why I adore children and their unquestioning innocence, they accepted without a murmur.

The upshot of all this was, as you guessed, I forgot to tell her that her uncle and his entire family were coming for dinner on Friday, which in a jolly little coincidence happened to be tonight.

"We have a few guests coming over for dinner....I forgot to tell you"

"WHAT! When?" asked the missus

"Tonight"

"TONIGHT! And you're sighing instead of telling me! Are you out of your mind? What are we going to serve them? Oats?"

"I don't see why not, if that is what I have to eat" I didn't say that of course. I just sort of stared at my toes.

"Who?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Who is coming?"

I told her. She appeared visibly relieved, said uncle being one of her jollier ones and the moment passed.

I further improved my standing by helping out in the kitchen. The missus makes a nice pudding which involves emptying one tin of Milkmaid condensed milk into two glasses of milk. I did this crucial step without so much as pilfering a spoonful of the condensed milk,excepting a little bit, to ensure the Milkmaid hadn't gone bad - and stirred it so competently that the pudding turned out delicious.

"I've heard you write a humour blog" said the uncle. Tell us a joke"

"Yes, yes, tell a joke" said the aunt.

Well, the uncle is an avid golfer so I told them the one about the lady golfer who complained to the greens committee that there were too many bees on the course and she had just been stung by  one.

"Where were you stung, madam" asked the secretary of the greens committee

"Between the first and the second hole" answered the lady whereupn the secretary said "Ah! A difficult place to treat".

It fell flat. The uncle just sort of harrumphed and the aunt looked intently at the chair.

Well, that's that. My week that was. Hope y'all had a better.