Sunday morning. The missus has gone to the garden downstairs for a walk. I didn't go because I've got a cold. Nothing that a cetzin can't fix, but at 7 am the sneezes sound really loud. Loud enough to get me a reprieve.
Morning walks are very depressing for two reasons. One is the enthusiasm of virtually everyone there except you (in my case I secrely hope for a volcanic explosion or something) and the second is the fact that nearly everyone, despite evidently walking hard every day of their lives, is seriously fat.
So we have an exercise routine (walking in garden with great concentration so that you don't step into doggy do) which seems to have precious little in terms of desired effect (evidence - large number of seriously fat-assed people walking in garden). "Why bother?" is the question on my lips. Unasked, of course, because when the missus is around, one does not ask such questions
We saw Avatar on Friday, the missus, the kids and I. In 3d, too. Everyone agreed it was a superbly made film. The technology was simply awesome. The story was a brilliant metaphor about the senseless destruction of traditional habitats in the name of progress. A little heavy-handedly put across, perhaps, but then when you have important messages like this, you don't want to be too subtle.
I had a fundamental question myself. This pertains to the people inside the boxes, the guys who run the avatars with their mind control. What if they fart inside the box? But somethng told me it was not a good question to ask. Not philosophical enough. So I didn't ask it. Just listened to the missus and the boys discuss how awesome the movie was.
My older son gave the movie the ultimate compliment.
"Annie" he said, when I asked him if he had liked the movie, "It was awesome! The best movie I've ever seen!"
Then, reflecting on what he had said, added "It was better than 'Singh is King' ".
Now, when I press the "Publish" button and James Cameron reads it a few seconds later, a scream of joy will reverberate through the streets of Beverly Hills.
The younger son was equally agreed. "It was awesome!". He further expressed the hope that if they ever made it into a musical, they would have the good sense to call it "Avatar Sing"
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Delhi trip, and how I survived it -
Hi everybody. This is Sheela Shenoy reporting from 37000 feet above sea level. My husband, the light of my life, the beacon of my existence, the polestar of my universe, the one and only Naren is flopped on the seat next to mine, giving his well known impression of an intermittently functioning motorboat, to my amusement and to the chagrin of the stout chap across the aisle who looks like an unusually cantankerous solicitor or accountant. Naren's snoring seems to be disturbing his perusal of some species of business newspaper. Ah well, into each life some rain must fall.
We are on our way back from Delhi where we had been to attend the wedding of a very dear friend's niece. The groom too was known to us very well. It was an event we were rather looking forward too, and it didn't disappoint.
The bride was someone both of us have known since she was a child. She has- and has always had- one of the most dazzling smiles I've ever seen and is extremely smart without being nerdy.
Unlike my husband. He is, or can be on occasions, extremely geeky, without being in the least bit smart. This can be irritatingly impractical. He spent a half hour once at an airport explaining to a completely disinterested kid why the sum of the first n natural numbers is n into n plus one over two and all the while we were being paged for boarding, earning us dark stares from our co-passengers and the crew. And if the kid grows up into a dysfunctional adult with an irrational fear of bespectacled people, you know who's responsible.
Speaking about geekiness, I am reminded of our courtship days -we had the old fashioned arranged marriage- when I was extremely was anxious to know what kind of a dweeb I was marrying. My sister advised me to find out from conversations. Since I was in Mysore and Naren in Bombay, the only way this could happen was over the phone.
Those conversations did not go well, let me tell you. The first time we spoke over the phone, after the hellos and the how-are-your-parentses, he explained to me why the square root of two is an irrational number. My first post-engagement phone conv and I get this!
The second time he told me what he thought about the planned economy - not much, apparently and I should care! - and the call after that was a detailed outline of Michael Porter's theory of Competition. When I tell you I went into this marriage in a state of despair, I'm sure you know exactly how I feel.
If Naren were ever captured by an Amazonian tribe and prepared for roasting on a spit, his escape plan would be to engage the headman in conversation and prove to him that the square root of two could not be expressed as a ratio of two integers. His reasoning being that the headman, upon seeing the proof, would immediately fall to his knees and the entire tribe would worship him as the god who did things to numbers. Which is why it is dangerous to marry engineers. But I'll leave that for another post.
Coming back to the topic at hand, viz. Delhi, I must confess I had a superb time. The weather was nice and chilled, if a little smoggy. A lot like Mysore in the winter, which made me nostalgic. To combat the blues that usually accompany nostalgia, I decided to squeeze in a session of retail therapy in which I managed to find some lovely footwear and shawls.
Naren is always cribbing about my alleged footwear obsession but he is easily silenced with a look. This time too, it was no different. One basilisk stare and he was following me like a lamb. And just to show him that I'm not obsessed with footwear, I bought myself a shawl, a stole, two kurtis and two salwar suit materials. So there. But to his credit, he carried all the bags faithfully and without complaint. It might be that he loves me. Then again, it might be that I let him have beer with his lunch. The latter, I guess.
And now here's the pilot mumbling something over the speaker. Flying over Baroda, 35,000 feet and other unsupported observations. I've always thought a pilot's job stressful, flying a whacking great can through the air at 800 km per hour, wondering all the while if that little monkey of a ground engineer has tightened all the bolts.
Of course, supeerficially, pilots have a great time because there is virtually no way of verifying if any of what they say is actually true. Statements like "We are flying at 35,000 feet" are the safest because no one is carrying a measuring tape, and even if they are, definitely not that big. Some pilots get carried away and tell you that the temperature outside is -40 degrees knowing fully well that you can't open the window and check for yourself.
But all of this does not make up for the stress of being an airline pilot. Take landings, for instance. I can well imagine the scene in the cockpit when the plane lands. Especially the way the pilot applies the brakes when the plane touches down.
You know how it is. The plane touches down, bounces a couple of times and then -and here I'm relying on my skills of logical deduction- the pilot presses the brake pedal really hard, probably with both feet, his hands clutching the armrests of his seat, or the steering wheel, if a plane has one, his knuckles white with the strain, the co-pilot hunched over with his head between his knees,sobbing out a prayer, hoping against hope that the bloody thing will come to a halt. And when it finally does come to a halt, the pilot, with shivering hands, probably pulls out his tucked-in shirt, trying to cover the fact that he has peed in his pants. I'm not saying that is what happens, but I'm willing to bet this is almost exactly it, scene for scene. This is what is going to happen today as well. I hope they manage to make it stop.
Ah, they're announcing our landing. In Mumbai, this usually means an half hour of circling, but hopefully today we'll be luckier.
The Spice Jet stewardesses have the most amazing singsong way of reading out the flight announcements and the safety drill. I haven't heard anything quite like this, including the "eternal god" prayer my sons are forced to say everyday in school. I am especially impressed by the announcements in Hindi, which sound exactly like Queen Elizabth the Second would, if she were given a crash course in Hindi speaking. I wonder what prevents them from speaking like normal people.
Bye for now, folks. I think the pilot will be going into his brake routine anytime now. I could use the laughs
Cheers and bye for now
We are on our way back from Delhi where we had been to attend the wedding of a very dear friend's niece. The groom too was known to us very well. It was an event we were rather looking forward too, and it didn't disappoint.
The bride was someone both of us have known since she was a child. She has- and has always had- one of the most dazzling smiles I've ever seen and is extremely smart without being nerdy.
Unlike my husband. He is, or can be on occasions, extremely geeky, without being in the least bit smart. This can be irritatingly impractical. He spent a half hour once at an airport explaining to a completely disinterested kid why the sum of the first n natural numbers is n into n plus one over two and all the while we were being paged for boarding, earning us dark stares from our co-passengers and the crew. And if the kid grows up into a dysfunctional adult with an irrational fear of bespectacled people, you know who's responsible.
Speaking about geekiness, I am reminded of our courtship days -we had the old fashioned arranged marriage- when I was extremely was anxious to know what kind of a dweeb I was marrying. My sister advised me to find out from conversations. Since I was in Mysore and Naren in Bombay, the only way this could happen was over the phone.
Those conversations did not go well, let me tell you. The first time we spoke over the phone, after the hellos and the how-are-your-parentses, he explained to me why the square root of two is an irrational number. My first post-engagement phone conv and I get this!
The second time he told me what he thought about the planned economy - not much, apparently and I should care! - and the call after that was a detailed outline of Michael Porter's theory of Competition. When I tell you I went into this marriage in a state of despair, I'm sure you know exactly how I feel.
If Naren were ever captured by an Amazonian tribe and prepared for roasting on a spit, his escape plan would be to engage the headman in conversation and prove to him that the square root of two could not be expressed as a ratio of two integers. His reasoning being that the headman, upon seeing the proof, would immediately fall to his knees and the entire tribe would worship him as the god who did things to numbers. Which is why it is dangerous to marry engineers. But I'll leave that for another post.
Coming back to the topic at hand, viz. Delhi, I must confess I had a superb time. The weather was nice and chilled, if a little smoggy. A lot like Mysore in the winter, which made me nostalgic. To combat the blues that usually accompany nostalgia, I decided to squeeze in a session of retail therapy in which I managed to find some lovely footwear and shawls.
Naren is always cribbing about my alleged footwear obsession but he is easily silenced with a look. This time too, it was no different. One basilisk stare and he was following me like a lamb. And just to show him that I'm not obsessed with footwear, I bought myself a shawl, a stole, two kurtis and two salwar suit materials. So there. But to his credit, he carried all the bags faithfully and without complaint. It might be that he loves me. Then again, it might be that I let him have beer with his lunch. The latter, I guess.
And now here's the pilot mumbling something over the speaker. Flying over Baroda, 35,000 feet and other unsupported observations. I've always thought a pilot's job stressful, flying a whacking great can through the air at 800 km per hour, wondering all the while if that little monkey of a ground engineer has tightened all the bolts.
Of course, supeerficially, pilots have a great time because there is virtually no way of verifying if any of what they say is actually true. Statements like "We are flying at 35,000 feet" are the safest because no one is carrying a measuring tape, and even if they are, definitely not that big. Some pilots get carried away and tell you that the temperature outside is -40 degrees knowing fully well that you can't open the window and check for yourself.
But all of this does not make up for the stress of being an airline pilot. Take landings, for instance. I can well imagine the scene in the cockpit when the plane lands. Especially the way the pilot applies the brakes when the plane touches down.
You know how it is. The plane touches down, bounces a couple of times and then -and here I'm relying on my skills of logical deduction- the pilot presses the brake pedal really hard, probably with both feet, his hands clutching the armrests of his seat, or the steering wheel, if a plane has one, his knuckles white with the strain, the co-pilot hunched over with his head between his knees,sobbing out a prayer, hoping against hope that the bloody thing will come to a halt. And when it finally does come to a halt, the pilot, with shivering hands, probably pulls out his tucked-in shirt, trying to cover the fact that he has peed in his pants. I'm not saying that is what happens, but I'm willing to bet this is almost exactly it, scene for scene. This is what is going to happen today as well. I hope they manage to make it stop.
Ah, they're announcing our landing. In Mumbai, this usually means an half hour of circling, but hopefully today we'll be luckier.
The Spice Jet stewardesses have the most amazing singsong way of reading out the flight announcements and the safety drill. I haven't heard anything quite like this, including the "eternal god" prayer my sons are forced to say everyday in school. I am especially impressed by the announcements in Hindi, which sound exactly like Queen Elizabth the Second would, if she were given a crash course in Hindi speaking. I wonder what prevents them from speaking like normal people.
Bye for now, folks. I think the pilot will be going into his brake routine anytime now. I could use the laughs
Cheers and bye for now
Thursday, December 10, 2009
My first massage and other things
Haha! Got your attention with the title, didn't I? No, serious, I had a massage yesterday. The first time ever in my uninteresting little life, if you don't count the ones the barber gives you after your haircut, which is to a real massage what Fardeen Khan is to Lawrence Olivier, as I will demonstrate in this post.
Well, it happened this way.The missus was on her way to a spa for one of her beauty treatments which, I keep telling her, are completely superfluous for someone of her poise and elegance. Women are all alike, however. I'm sure Cleopatra did her eyebrows every week and Helen of Troy gave Paris hell over the state of her upper lip.
Anyway, I happened to be jobless at the given moment and she dragged me along for chauffeuring purposes. I dutifully obeyed, of course, chauffeuring being one of my two natural talents (the other being my aptitude for meticulous and exhaustive research on distillery and brewery products). I was also smug in the knowledge that I had tucked away in the recesses of the car my laptop, and a newly acquired USB modem which allowed me internet access from virtually everywhere.
This time, however, the missus, with sharp change in policy (she usually lets me shuffle off to a book shop or a coffee place and potter around) dragged me into the spa with her. I should have suspected the worst but like a doofus, I gambolled alongside, the picture of innocence, even when we reached an imposing desk and an even more imposing woman. Not for long, though. The missus' opening words made my blood freeze.
"Hi. What treatment would you suggest for his face?", asked the missus, pointing to Exhibit A, viz. my mug.
The amazon appeared to consider this question seriously, though I'm sure she would have said something like "In my opinion, a thick veil would be best" had she been a completely honest person like Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately, she was not.
"How about a rejuvenating herbal facial?" she asked
"Will it be good for the bags under his eyes?" asked the missus
"Oh, of course!" lied the amazon, and then proceeded to deliver a fake scientific sermon on the goodness of honey and cucumber, the free radicals therein, and god knows what else - oyster sauce and tiramisu entered into the equation at one point - that went into the facepack she was going to put on my dial.
My opinion was not sought, of course, and anyway, there was no point in arguing with someone who had biceps like that. "I would also recommend a rejuvenating herbal massage", she added. She evidently considered me to be something one would find in a morgue, so keen was she on having me rejuvenated.
And so I was handed over to a mild looking middle aged man, which i confess was a relief because for a wild moment, I thought the amazon would be doing the needful.
The masseur put me face down on what looked like an operating table and proceeded to rub some nice smelling oil on my back. He spent the next five minutes on trying to see if he could twist any of my limbs off, but luckily, he wasn't successful. After that, however, he decided on a policy of non-violence and gently rubbed my back in a most soothing fashion. Somewhere along the way, I must have fallen asleep, because I could feel someone shaking me by the shoulder and mumbling something about facials.
Thus ended my first massage. It is a superb feeling, very relaxing and soporific, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the time, the inclination and a thousand spare rupees he is not planning to spend on Apple products.
The facial, which followed, involved a great deal of fuss of which I could understand nothing, because the chap had firmly placed two large pieces of cucumber on my eyes. Soothing, perhaps, but definitely opaque. He was making funny faces at me for all I knew. I could deduce, from circumstantial evidence, that he was putting stuff on my face, rubbing it a bit, then wiping it off before trying it anew. After an hour of this, he proudly showed me a mirror, which very honestly told me that I still looked the same jerk I looked before he did the fancy moves.
Somehow, I felt relieved.
Well, it happened this way.The missus was on her way to a spa for one of her beauty treatments which, I keep telling her, are completely superfluous for someone of her poise and elegance. Women are all alike, however. I'm sure Cleopatra did her eyebrows every week and Helen of Troy gave Paris hell over the state of her upper lip.
Anyway, I happened to be jobless at the given moment and she dragged me along for chauffeuring purposes. I dutifully obeyed, of course, chauffeuring being one of my two natural talents (the other being my aptitude for meticulous and exhaustive research on distillery and brewery products). I was also smug in the knowledge that I had tucked away in the recesses of the car my laptop, and a newly acquired USB modem which allowed me internet access from virtually everywhere.
This time, however, the missus, with sharp change in policy (she usually lets me shuffle off to a book shop or a coffee place and potter around) dragged me into the spa with her. I should have suspected the worst but like a doofus, I gambolled alongside, the picture of innocence, even when we reached an imposing desk and an even more imposing woman. Not for long, though. The missus' opening words made my blood freeze.
"Hi. What treatment would you suggest for his face?", asked the missus, pointing to Exhibit A, viz. my mug.
The amazon appeared to consider this question seriously, though I'm sure she would have said something like "In my opinion, a thick veil would be best" had she been a completely honest person like Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately, she was not.
"How about a rejuvenating herbal facial?" she asked
"Will it be good for the bags under his eyes?" asked the missus
"Oh, of course!" lied the amazon, and then proceeded to deliver a fake scientific sermon on the goodness of honey and cucumber, the free radicals therein, and god knows what else - oyster sauce and tiramisu entered into the equation at one point - that went into the facepack she was going to put on my dial.
My opinion was not sought, of course, and anyway, there was no point in arguing with someone who had biceps like that. "I would also recommend a rejuvenating herbal massage", she added. She evidently considered me to be something one would find in a morgue, so keen was she on having me rejuvenated.
And so I was handed over to a mild looking middle aged man, which i confess was a relief because for a wild moment, I thought the amazon would be doing the needful.
The masseur put me face down on what looked like an operating table and proceeded to rub some nice smelling oil on my back. He spent the next five minutes on trying to see if he could twist any of my limbs off, but luckily, he wasn't successful. After that, however, he decided on a policy of non-violence and gently rubbed my back in a most soothing fashion. Somewhere along the way, I must have fallen asleep, because I could feel someone shaking me by the shoulder and mumbling something about facials.
Thus ended my first massage. It is a superb feeling, very relaxing and soporific, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the time, the inclination and a thousand spare rupees he is not planning to spend on Apple products.
The facial, which followed, involved a great deal of fuss of which I could understand nothing, because the chap had firmly placed two large pieces of cucumber on my eyes. Soothing, perhaps, but definitely opaque. He was making funny faces at me for all I knew. I could deduce, from circumstantial evidence, that he was putting stuff on my face, rubbing it a bit, then wiping it off before trying it anew. After an hour of this, he proudly showed me a mirror, which very honestly told me that I still looked the same jerk I looked before he did the fancy moves.
Somehow, I felt relieved.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The Royal Mysore Walks
I've had a strange fascination for Mysore. The missus is from there and in the seventeen (!) years that we have been married my fascination (for Mysore and the missus) has only grown.
"The mystique of a regal past" is what I tell people when they ask me what it is that fascinates me about Mysore.
"Nonsense", the missus will promptly add, if she's around. "He goes around the place eating like there's no tomorrow."
"But he's so knowledgeable about Mysore" my sister gallantly defended me.
"Hmpfh!" hmpfhed the missus. "Other than the food joints, what he knows about Mysore can be easily written in block letters on the back of a bus ticket. And", she added, with another hmpfh, "with space left for what he feels about its history".
Strong words! And words that stung. Any man of sensibility would be wounded if it were insinuated that he was a boor. And even though I'm not a man of sensibility, I was wounded. This had to be remedied! I had to show the missus that I could think of things other than food.
And in the process of showing the world, and the missus that I was a man with as much depth in my character as in my alimentary canal, I found myself bleary eyed at 6.30 am of a Thursday morning outside the Town Hall of Mysore. My head throbbed a bit from the GlenKinchie on ice - must have been the ice - that my charming brother in law Mahesh had lavished on me the previous evening.
But I'm getting all muddled up as usual, in my story telling. Old failing. If I had to write someone's biography I would probably start with the funeral.
So, it happened this way.
I had been in touch with Vinay, a young engineer and former software geek, over twitter. He seemed very knowledgeable about Mysore and a quick look at his bio revealed that he ran a company called The Royal Mysore Walks.n Walking tours, I surmised, for I am very quick on the uptake, and sought to verify my deduction when I landed up in Mysore.
Chatting over coffee, I liked him instantly. "Not much of a company, sir" he laughed "just a startup" but his enthusiasm was unmistakable.
It turned out that he'd take groups of people on walking tours of Mysore, during which he would present a view of Mysore's past through little bits of trivia, accounts of history and, as I found out, many interesting tales with buildings and monuments as props for those tales.
Sounded interesting. I had only the morning to spare since the rest of the day was tied up with uncle-and-aunty visiting stuff, but Vinay said the morning is usually best, because it's not too crowded and the weather is extremely pleasant.
With my customary insightful thinking, I spotted the flaw in the plan. "Wait!" I said, "It involves waking up at 6 am"
No one seemed to be listening however, and Mahesh hoiked me out of bed at the appointed hour and frog-marched me to the Town Hall, Mysore. We met VInay there, fresh as a daisy and soon, the bracing morning air and Vinay's cheery demeanour made me feel a lot better. We started off with a little story about the Diwans of Mysore, which was round one to Vinay because I had always thought the Diwans of Mysore were things you could lie down on. (They are not. They are rulers and no, not the kind you draw straight lines with)
As the walk unfolded, I got more and more into the thing and soon, I forgot I was supposed to have a hangover.
Vinay's presentation skills exceeded all expectations. I'm not going to go list out all the trivia here - you should take the walk yourself- but the walk was probably the most delightful two hours I have spent in a long time, including intimate tete-a-tetes with rare single malt whiskey.
Vinay's style was very interactive and he has a gentle sense of humor that makes the whole thing very enjoyable. He's a trivia buff - "Which is why I thought about this walk in the first place", he had told me - and he had quite a collection of anecdotes and amusing facts
For instance, in addition to being the hometown of one of the most beautiful, elegant, charming, witty and extremely slim women in the world such as you know who, it was the first in Asia to generate electricity. It was also one of the largest buyer of Rolls Royce cars and has one of the largest Maharajas, volumetrically speaking (though they say he's dieting)
Do go for this walk if you happen to be in Mysore. At Rs. 495/- head, I think it's a steal. I've been recommending it to everyone I meet. And Vinay is such a great guy to know!
Vinay's window to the world -www.royalmysorewalks.com
Phone 91-9632044188
"The mystique of a regal past" is what I tell people when they ask me what it is that fascinates me about Mysore.
"Nonsense", the missus will promptly add, if she's around. "He goes around the place eating like there's no tomorrow."
"But he's so knowledgeable about Mysore" my sister gallantly defended me.
"Hmpfh!" hmpfhed the missus. "Other than the food joints, what he knows about Mysore can be easily written in block letters on the back of a bus ticket. And", she added, with another hmpfh, "with space left for what he feels about its history".
Strong words! And words that stung. Any man of sensibility would be wounded if it were insinuated that he was a boor. And even though I'm not a man of sensibility, I was wounded. This had to be remedied! I had to show the missus that I could think of things other than food.
And in the process of showing the world, and the missus that I was a man with as much depth in my character as in my alimentary canal, I found myself bleary eyed at 6.30 am of a Thursday morning outside the Town Hall of Mysore. My head throbbed a bit from the GlenKinchie on ice - must have been the ice - that my charming brother in law Mahesh had lavished on me the previous evening.
But I'm getting all muddled up as usual, in my story telling. Old failing. If I had to write someone's biography I would probably start with the funeral.
So, it happened this way.
I had been in touch with Vinay, a young engineer and former software geek, over twitter. He seemed very knowledgeable about Mysore and a quick look at his bio revealed that he ran a company called The Royal Mysore Walks.n Walking tours, I surmised, for I am very quick on the uptake, and sought to verify my deduction when I landed up in Mysore.
Chatting over coffee, I liked him instantly. "Not much of a company, sir" he laughed "just a startup" but his enthusiasm was unmistakable.
It turned out that he'd take groups of people on walking tours of Mysore, during which he would present a view of Mysore's past through little bits of trivia, accounts of history and, as I found out, many interesting tales with buildings and monuments as props for those tales.
Sounded interesting. I had only the morning to spare since the rest of the day was tied up with uncle-and-aunty visiting stuff, but Vinay said the morning is usually best, because it's not too crowded and the weather is extremely pleasant.
With my customary insightful thinking, I spotted the flaw in the plan. "Wait!" I said, "It involves waking up at 6 am"
No one seemed to be listening however, and Mahesh hoiked me out of bed at the appointed hour and frog-marched me to the Town Hall, Mysore. We met VInay there, fresh as a daisy and soon, the bracing morning air and Vinay's cheery demeanour made me feel a lot better. We started off with a little story about the Diwans of Mysore, which was round one to Vinay because I had always thought the Diwans of Mysore were things you could lie down on. (They are not. They are rulers and no, not the kind you draw straight lines with)
As the walk unfolded, I got more and more into the thing and soon, I forgot I was supposed to have a hangover.
Vinay's presentation skills exceeded all expectations. I'm not going to go list out all the trivia here - you should take the walk yourself- but the walk was probably the most delightful two hours I have spent in a long time, including intimate tete-a-tetes with rare single malt whiskey.
Vinay's style was very interactive and he has a gentle sense of humor that makes the whole thing very enjoyable. He's a trivia buff - "Which is why I thought about this walk in the first place", he had told me - and he had quite a collection of anecdotes and amusing facts
Do go for this walk if you happen to be in Mysore. At Rs. 495/- head, I think it's a steal. I've been recommending it to everyone I meet. And Vinay is such a great guy to know!
Vinay's window to the world -www.royalmysorewalks.com
Phone 91-9632044188
Friday, November 27, 2009
Vote for me. Wait, don't!
Things are heating up. Voting for the indibloggies award - this blog has been nominated for the Most Humorous Indiblog award - has opened and I thought I must go out there and beg for votes. Offer free drinking water, perhaps, and raise the minimuim support price for sugarcane. And then, thinking it over, I realized that everyone will be saying the same thing. After all, how much water can you drink?
So I decided to adopt a novel strategy - the non-direct approach. I thought I would tell everybody not to vote for my blog, the logic being that the voter would think "my god, what a frank and honest candidate! Disarming. Let's vote for him!", resulting in a thumping victory and the right to be paraded around town on an elephant with a garland and a large vermilion mark on my forehead.
And then I remembered that this approach hadn't worked in my early years when, as a young lad full of hormones and hope, I joined the girlfriend stakes. All my competitors, dressed in bell-bottom trousers and Amitabh hair, wooed with all their might while I gently pretended not to be interested in anyone of them. My general strategy was to sit around on campus pretendintg to read Sartre and Bertrand Russell and this strategy basically got me approximately 0.0 enquiries per annum. And finally when I realized it had bombed, I couldn't very well go the bell-bottom trouser way because everyone would know what a fraud I was. Thus I was stuck mateless till the missus sashayed along and did her life's quota of kind deeds by the single act of marrying me.
Now my dilemma is this. Do I be direct and beg you to vote for me, promising free 500ml arrack and half fried chicken or do I get subtle and ask you to vote for someone else, hoping that you will follow all the logic above and vote for me?
So please, vote for me!.
No, wait! Don't
No, no, I mean vote for me
No, don't .......
So I decided to adopt a novel strategy - the non-direct approach. I thought I would tell everybody not to vote for my blog, the logic being that the voter would think "my god, what a frank and honest candidate! Disarming. Let's vote for him!", resulting in a thumping victory and the right to be paraded around town on an elephant with a garland and a large vermilion mark on my forehead.
And then I remembered that this approach hadn't worked in my early years when, as a young lad full of hormones and hope, I joined the girlfriend stakes. All my competitors, dressed in bell-bottom trousers and Amitabh hair, wooed with all their might while I gently pretended not to be interested in anyone of them. My general strategy was to sit around on campus pretendintg to read Sartre and Bertrand Russell and this strategy basically got me approximately 0.0 enquiries per annum. And finally when I realized it had bombed, I couldn't very well go the bell-bottom trouser way because everyone would know what a fraud I was. Thus I was stuck mateless till the missus sashayed along and did her life's quota of kind deeds by the single act of marrying me.
Now my dilemma is this. Do I be direct and beg you to vote for me, promising free 500ml arrack and half fried chicken or do I get subtle and ask you to vote for someone else, hoping that you will follow all the logic above and vote for me?
So please, vote for me!.
No, wait! Don't
No, no, I mean vote for me
No, don't .......
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
China - Part II
This is going to be a not-very-China-especially-considering-its-title post because like an ass I've let too much time elapse between the trip and my writing it and my famous Shenoy memory has more or less wriggled out of the "burden of remembrance", as I remember reading somewhere.
Why am I writing this post, then, one might ask in a fit of petulance. Well, that's because I said I would in 'China-Part I' making it a fait accompli, which is a phrase I've been using practically since childhood.
I remember reading it somewhere and for a substantial part of my life I believed that 'fait accompli' was French for 'if luck is on your side'. In my MBA student days, I would waste no opportunity to include it in one of my assignments, and my teachers were often browbeaten into submission by sentences like "the ROI of the project is likely to be 17.3%, fait accompli".
The concerned teacher, knowing that, like 'paradigm', 'vis-a-vis' and the General Theory of Relativity, only three humans know the meaning of 'fait accompli', would dish out an 'A', apprehensive that I might be at his throat otherwise.
It was many years later that I was suitably pulled up, by the missus of all people. "Naren!" she exclaimed "What on earth do you mean "India will win, fait accompli". I told her I used 'fait accompli' in the sense of "Inshah Allah", whereupon she laughed for five minutes, then despaired for another five because she had evidently married a complete moron, and then told me the bitter truth. Fait accompli does not mean "God-willing". Fait accompli means fait accompli.
I hope this clarifies the situation for you, fait accompli.
Moving on to China, we spent most of our time in a furniture mall, describing the humongousness of which is beyond the abilities of a Bombay-wallah brought up on 2BHK. I am reasonably certain that they conducted hang-gliding lessons in that mall on Sundays and national holidays. I don't speak much Chinese (their thank you is "she she yeah" to which, and here I think they pulled my leg, the reply is "Beyonce". So you go "she she yeah" and the Chinese person says "Beyonce". Honest). As I was saying, I wasn't able to enrol for the hang-gliding lessons, but I am reasonably sure they are conducted there.
The place sells every concievable kind of furniture. I didn't even know there were that many kinds. There is classical, neo-classical, colonial, modern, contemporary, futuristic and Zaphod Beeblebrox (for want of a better name. I think they call it 'designer').
The missus had a field day and began shopping on a point-and-shoot basis. Like all good human drama, I will leave my agony to the readers imagination and tell her only that after three days of lunchless shopathons, I felt like a lost traveler in the Gobi Desert seeing mirages of beds and mattresses only to find they were furniture shops.
Eventually, we got back to Guangzhou city (the aforementioned furniture place was another burg called Shunde, a couple of hours drive out of Guangzhou, where we had shifted base camp when the shopping was happening).
In Guangzhou we, surprise, surprise, shopped again. This time for the famous fake stuff.
To tell you the truth, I couldn't bring myself to believe that the stuff was really fake, so well is it crafted. I thought of the guys selling them as fine, altruistic gentlemen, upholding the true spirit of socialism, insistent on everyone, including obvious losers like me, wearing a priceless Rolex on his or her wrist.
The missus refused to let me even look at them. "I've been told they are hopeless" she told me, and added ominously "and I do not wear fakes", which I knew well because I had, in the early days of our marriage bought her a fake Omega watch which got me a big wet kiss and continued to yield much love and affection till some spoilsport friend of hers told her it was fake. I got it nice and proper at that time.
Coming back to the res we found that almost everything is Guangzhou is fake. Every manufactured thing, that is. But there is a lot of lovely food and tea available and we spent the rest of the day pottering about the place, eating quaint meals at quaint places, perhaps sometimes comprising of quaint animal species but we never got to find out because we mercifully spoke no Chinese beyond Beyonce.
I loved the people. The ordinary people. They are genuinely polite and have the innate humility that only a couple of generations of brutal totalitarian rule can bring. There is prosperity in China, true, but that is only for the few million early birds who lucked out in Deng's time and started something. The rest of the country is comprised of confirmed slaves for all time. A revolution waiting to happen, if you ask me. And I hope it does, in our life time at least. Those people deserve better.
Why am I writing this post, then, one might ask in a fit of petulance. Well, that's because I said I would in 'China-Part I' making it a fait accompli, which is a phrase I've been using practically since childhood.
I remember reading it somewhere and for a substantial part of my life I believed that 'fait accompli' was French for 'if luck is on your side'. In my MBA student days, I would waste no opportunity to include it in one of my assignments, and my teachers were often browbeaten into submission by sentences like "the ROI of the project is likely to be 17.3%, fait accompli".
The concerned teacher, knowing that, like 'paradigm', 'vis-a-vis' and the General Theory of Relativity, only three humans know the meaning of 'fait accompli', would dish out an 'A', apprehensive that I might be at his throat otherwise.
It was many years later that I was suitably pulled up, by the missus of all people. "Naren!" she exclaimed "What on earth do you mean "India will win, fait accompli". I told her I used 'fait accompli' in the sense of "Inshah Allah", whereupon she laughed for five minutes, then despaired for another five because she had evidently married a complete moron, and then told me the bitter truth. Fait accompli does not mean "God-willing". Fait accompli means fait accompli.
I hope this clarifies the situation for you, fait accompli.
Moving on to China, we spent most of our time in a furniture mall, describing the humongousness of which is beyond the abilities of a Bombay-wallah brought up on 2BHK. I am reasonably certain that they conducted hang-gliding lessons in that mall on Sundays and national holidays. I don't speak much Chinese (their thank you is "she she yeah" to which, and here I think they pulled my leg, the reply is "Beyonce". So you go "she she yeah" and the Chinese person says "Beyonce". Honest). As I was saying, I wasn't able to enrol for the hang-gliding lessons, but I am reasonably sure they are conducted there.
The place sells every concievable kind of furniture. I didn't even know there were that many kinds. There is classical, neo-classical, colonial, modern, contemporary, futuristic and Zaphod Beeblebrox (for want of a better name. I think they call it 'designer').
The missus had a field day and began shopping on a point-and-shoot basis. Like all good human drama, I will leave my agony to the readers imagination and tell her only that after three days of lunchless shopathons, I felt like a lost traveler in the Gobi Desert seeing mirages of beds and mattresses only to find they were furniture shops.
Eventually, we got back to Guangzhou city (the aforementioned furniture place was another burg called Shunde, a couple of hours drive out of Guangzhou, where we had shifted base camp when the shopping was happening).
In Guangzhou we, surprise, surprise, shopped again. This time for the famous fake stuff.
To tell you the truth, I couldn't bring myself to believe that the stuff was really fake, so well is it crafted. I thought of the guys selling them as fine, altruistic gentlemen, upholding the true spirit of socialism, insistent on everyone, including obvious losers like me, wearing a priceless Rolex on his or her wrist.
The missus refused to let me even look at them. "I've been told they are hopeless" she told me, and added ominously "and I do not wear fakes", which I knew well because I had, in the early days of our marriage bought her a fake Omega watch which got me a big wet kiss and continued to yield much love and affection till some spoilsport friend of hers told her it was fake. I got it nice and proper at that time.
Coming back to the res we found that almost everything is Guangzhou is fake. Every manufactured thing, that is. But there is a lot of lovely food and tea available and we spent the rest of the day pottering about the place, eating quaint meals at quaint places, perhaps sometimes comprising of quaint animal species but we never got to find out because we mercifully spoke no Chinese beyond Beyonce.
I loved the people. The ordinary people. They are genuinely polite and have the innate humility that only a couple of generations of brutal totalitarian rule can bring. There is prosperity in China, true, but that is only for the few million early birds who lucked out in Deng's time and started something. The rest of the country is comprised of confirmed slaves for all time. A revolution waiting to happen, if you ask me. And I hope it does, in our life time at least. Those people deserve better.
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Indiebloggies
You could've knocked me down with a feather when I saw this
I have been nominated for Best Humourous IndiBlog. I don't know how much of an honour that is in absolute terms but I am rubbing shoulders with
which are four blogs I follow with a microscope, and being on the same list as them is honour enough for me. Each one of them is a gem.
I don't know how the voting works but I'm going to vote for all of them, creating multiple ids if required (following in the illustrious footsteps of great leaders all over our country, especially UP and Bihar).
Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa (by Krish Ashok) is about the most intelligent blog around, in addition to being truly funny. His posts are like Rahman's music - they get better every time you read them.
Son of Bosey (Anand Ramachandran) is my personal favorite - the best satire I've read anywhere, not just online. It satirizes without ridiculing, which is such a difficult thing to do. And it is guaranteed to make you laugh till your sides ache.
Bengaluru Banter is particularly funny for me because its author, Biker dude, is a superb observer and mimic and imitates the Bangalore argot very well. I travel often to Bangalore and I hear all that Bangalore speak often enough to laugh really hard. He is also a sensitive writer. Some of his posts are literary gems. Sadly, he doesn't post very frequently.
Coconut Chutney is one of the wittiest young ladies on the net. She has just the right balance of wit and irreverence to make you laugh. She is really gifted with words.
It's a tough choice, but it has to be one of these four. Krish Ashok or Anand Ramachandran for my money, but it could easily be Bengalooru Banter or Coconut Chutney. There are other blogs on the list at Indibloggies but I haven't been really following them. Didn't look anywhere close to these four at first glance.
I realize I'm not exactly plugging my own blog but the fact is that merely sharing the stage with these guys has made my day. My posts are cute but I tend to (consciously, I confess) imitate Wodehouse which doesn't do much for originality. And my themes are pretty jaded too - the missus oppressing me, aided and abetted by the kids - and here, the reason is that my thinking machinery is very rudimentary and I am terrified it will pack up entirely if I make outrageous demands of it, such as originality.
So I hope you go ahead and vote wisely. Remember, if none of the candidates are handing out free booze, vote for the best one.
CHeers
I have been nominated for Best Humourous IndiBlog. I don't know how much of an honour that is in absolute terms but I am rubbing shoulders with
which are four blogs I follow with a microscope, and being on the same list as them is honour enough for me. Each one of them is a gem.
I don't know how the voting works but I'm going to vote for all of them, creating multiple ids if required (following in the illustrious footsteps of great leaders all over our country, especially UP and Bihar).
Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa (by Krish Ashok) is about the most intelligent blog around, in addition to being truly funny. His posts are like Rahman's music - they get better every time you read them.
Son of Bosey (Anand Ramachandran) is my personal favorite - the best satire I've read anywhere, not just online. It satirizes without ridiculing, which is such a difficult thing to do. And it is guaranteed to make you laugh till your sides ache.
Bengaluru Banter is particularly funny for me because its author, Biker dude, is a superb observer and mimic and imitates the Bangalore argot very well. I travel often to Bangalore and I hear all that Bangalore speak often enough to laugh really hard. He is also a sensitive writer. Some of his posts are literary gems. Sadly, he doesn't post very frequently.
Coconut Chutney is one of the wittiest young ladies on the net. She has just the right balance of wit and irreverence to make you laugh. She is really gifted with words.
It's a tough choice, but it has to be one of these four. Krish Ashok or Anand Ramachandran for my money, but it could easily be Bengalooru Banter or Coconut Chutney. There are other blogs on the list at Indibloggies but I haven't been really following them. Didn't look anywhere close to these four at first glance.
I realize I'm not exactly plugging my own blog but the fact is that merely sharing the stage with these guys has made my day. My posts are cute but I tend to (consciously, I confess) imitate Wodehouse which doesn't do much for originality. And my themes are pretty jaded too - the missus oppressing me, aided and abetted by the kids - and here, the reason is that my thinking machinery is very rudimentary and I am terrified it will pack up entirely if I make outrageous demands of it, such as originality.
So I hope you go ahead and vote wisely. Remember, if none of the candidates are handing out free booze, vote for the best one.
CHeers
Friday, November 6, 2009
China - Part I
This is a true and factual account of my China trip. Longish and rambling, as true and factual accounts usually are, but written with sensitivity and feeling. Right.
I don't know how the thing started. It might have been my patriotic impulse to sort out the Arunachal Pradesh imbroglio, which is the first time I've used this word in real life, so pardon me while do a little war dance. Or it might have been that I wanted to buy some furniture for our new house.
Anyway, I found myself face to face with Hu Jintao, the Supreme leader of the Council of Supreme Leaders of the Peoples and workers party or something, aka, The Man Who Kicks All Ass in China.
Hu wasn't much of a lad for conversation. A taciturn and grim bloke. And to me, he looked like someone with gas trouble. And he kept saying that everything was an integral part of China.
“Arunachal Pradesh?”
“Integral Part of China.”
“What about Tibet?”
“You gotta be kidding me” Hu's been spending too much time with American policy makers “Tibet is definitely an integral part of China”.
I tried to change my tack. Perhaps the soft power of Bollywood would soften him up. I once escaped a traffic ticket by asking the cop if he was related to Rajesh Khanna. He wasn't, but he was flattered that discerning cutters of lanes and jumpers of signals thought so.
“Are you related to Preity Jintao” I asked, just to break ice. He eh-eh-ed and consulted with advisors, all of whom presented the standard inscrutable Chinese appearance of mild puzzlement.
“She's a Bollywood actress,” I added, by way of clarification. “She might be from a collateral branch of your family”
“Ah, Bollywood! Integral part of China”
Now it was my turn to be puzzled. “Since when?”
“You made a movie called 'Chandni Chowk to China', did you not”. “No! No! No!” I screamed. “I did not make that movie!”
“Wake up, Naren”, I heard the missus saying, with a well aimed finger jabbing me in the ribs. “We'll be landing in Hong Kong now. And you look a complete mess.”
As far as the missus is concerned I am always looking a mess but this time even by my extremely considerate standards, I thought I resembled something dragged out of a trash can by a cat with very catholic tastes.
“Must have been all that work pressure from yesterday”, I told her, “I was really exhausted.”
“Nonsense. You had far too much wine. Come on now, fill up these immigration forms,” she said. And as usual, the filling out of all kinds of forms being in my job description since the day I was married, I plodded through the things and wondered for the zillionth time who in his right mind would read anything written in it. In fact, this is exactly what I think when I write something on my blog.
And in addition they had one of those disarmingly innocent health declaration forms which in effect says, when you take away the heretofores and whereases, “No boss, I am not having any bird or swine flu”
Bureaucrats all over the world are the same. We used to have a Premier Padmini back in the days when I was a dashing young lad, carefree and debonair, to which I had an air-conditioner fitted. My father used to call it the perfect metaphor for bureaucracy. It would generate lots of air. It would create plenty of activity like louvres swinging and lights glowing on. It would use up a lot of resources. The only thing it wouldn't do was cool the car. But I digress.
We shuffled into line before the immigration officer who gave me a long and unblinking stare which made be feel I was an international spy, and then, thinking it over, decided I didn't look smart enough to cause any real damage. He gave me my passport and glared a “beat it, creep” look at me. The missus of course never has these problems. They smile at her, she smiles back, plenty of thank yous and you're welcomes. There is no justice in this world, I tell you. If between the two of us there was one who could stage a coup d'etat and takeover a country, that would be the missus. I couldn't take over an unmanned lighthouse. Yet they treat her like she was Queen Victoria while I get the reception reserved for people suffering from halitosis.
That little ceremony over, we shuffled into a bus which would take us into China, to Guangzhou, and I witnessed for the first time an immigration check where the immigration officer doesn't bother to even look at you. All done in five minutes. I was extremely impressed with Chinese efficiency and their faith in Old Confucius' maxim that the country which executes illegal aliens doesn't have many.
Our hotel turned out to a very lavish place, considering what we were paying for it, with a bevy of extremely well coiffured Chinese ladies welcoming us. One of them, rather sportingly I thought, asked me how my knee was. I've been troubled by a touch of arthritis over the last few months and had blogged about it. Perhaps this charming lady had read it.
“ Oh, it's much better now, thank you very much, though it still hurts a bit if I climb stairs too fast”, I told her.
She looked helplessly from me to the missus, who promptly hissed “Silly! 'Ni Hao' is 'Welcome' in Chinese” and gave my bewildered interlocutor a conciliatory smile.
I soon learned that in China, English has the same staus that Hindi has in Chennai. Everyone agrees that it is an important language but no one gives a rat's ass about learning or speaking it. And who is to say they're not right. Chinese is a particularly dicey language, though. It has a lot to do with intonation, which means that you can say the same sentence in two different sing-songs and mean two completely different things. Like you might want to compliment the hostess on her nice house and end up telling her that there are astronauts urinating in her back yard. I had heard a story, probably apocryphal, about a bloke who wanted to know where the restrooms were and accidentally ended up marrying a Chinese girl.
I decided to stick to English.
A funny thing among most English speakers is that we believe people who don't understand English can magically understand it if we speak it in broken syllables with gesticulation. It doesn't work. I had a situation, right on day 1, where, typical of me, I had forgotten to charge my phone and it was on it's last legs, a bit like the flickering lamp next to the dying grandfather in Hindi movies. About to go out at any moment. So I asked my hosts with active sign language, brandishing my phone, for a charger.
“Charrrr gerrr” “Chaaaaar Gerrrr” I asked. At first they looked at me with a completely stoned silence, like they had just smoked this awesome weed and I was somebody's father who had just barged into the room.
Silence.
“Charrrr gerrr” “Chaaaaar Gerrrr” I asked again, this time with hand and leg gestures.
Something seemed to be stirring. Suddenly one of them exclaimed “Oh oh oh oh okay okay okay okay” in joyous comprehension and rushed out, beckoning me to follow. We went down two flights and landed up opposite a washing machine. I'm not making this up.
Stay tuned for part II folks.
I don't know how the thing started. It might have been my patriotic impulse to sort out the Arunachal Pradesh imbroglio, which is the first time I've used this word in real life, so pardon me while do a little war dance. Or it might have been that I wanted to buy some furniture for our new house.
Anyway, I found myself face to face with Hu Jintao, the Supreme leader of the Council of Supreme Leaders of the Peoples and workers party or something, aka, The Man Who Kicks All Ass in China.
Hu wasn't much of a lad for conversation. A taciturn and grim bloke. And to me, he looked like someone with gas trouble. And he kept saying that everything was an integral part of China.
“Arunachal Pradesh?”
“Integral Part of China.”
“What about Tibet?”
“You gotta be kidding me” Hu's been spending too much time with American policy makers “Tibet is definitely an integral part of China”.
I tried to change my tack. Perhaps the soft power of Bollywood would soften him up. I once escaped a traffic ticket by asking the cop if he was related to Rajesh Khanna. He wasn't, but he was flattered that discerning cutters of lanes and jumpers of signals thought so.
“Are you related to Preity Jintao” I asked, just to break ice. He eh-eh-ed and consulted with advisors, all of whom presented the standard inscrutable Chinese appearance of mild puzzlement.
“She's a Bollywood actress,” I added, by way of clarification. “She might be from a collateral branch of your family”
“Ah, Bollywood! Integral part of China”
Now it was my turn to be puzzled. “Since when?”
“You made a movie called 'Chandni Chowk to China', did you not”. “No! No! No!” I screamed. “I did not make that movie!”
“Wake up, Naren”, I heard the missus saying, with a well aimed finger jabbing me in the ribs. “We'll be landing in Hong Kong now. And you look a complete mess.”
As far as the missus is concerned I am always looking a mess but this time even by my extremely considerate standards, I thought I resembled something dragged out of a trash can by a cat with very catholic tastes.
“Must have been all that work pressure from yesterday”, I told her, “I was really exhausted.”
“Nonsense. You had far too much wine. Come on now, fill up these immigration forms,” she said. And as usual, the filling out of all kinds of forms being in my job description since the day I was married, I plodded through the things and wondered for the zillionth time who in his right mind would read anything written in it. In fact, this is exactly what I think when I write something on my blog.
And in addition they had one of those disarmingly innocent health declaration forms which in effect says, when you take away the heretofores and whereases, “No boss, I am not having any bird or swine flu”
Bureaucrats all over the world are the same. We used to have a Premier Padmini back in the days when I was a dashing young lad, carefree and debonair, to which I had an air-conditioner fitted. My father used to call it the perfect metaphor for bureaucracy. It would generate lots of air. It would create plenty of activity like louvres swinging and lights glowing on. It would use up a lot of resources. The only thing it wouldn't do was cool the car. But I digress.
We shuffled into line before the immigration officer who gave me a long and unblinking stare which made be feel I was an international spy, and then, thinking it over, decided I didn't look smart enough to cause any real damage. He gave me my passport and glared a “beat it, creep” look at me. The missus of course never has these problems. They smile at her, she smiles back, plenty of thank yous and you're welcomes. There is no justice in this world, I tell you. If between the two of us there was one who could stage a coup d'etat and takeover a country, that would be the missus. I couldn't take over an unmanned lighthouse. Yet they treat her like she was Queen Victoria while I get the reception reserved for people suffering from halitosis.
That little ceremony over, we shuffled into a bus which would take us into China, to Guangzhou, and I witnessed for the first time an immigration check where the immigration officer doesn't bother to even look at you. All done in five minutes. I was extremely impressed with Chinese efficiency and their faith in Old Confucius' maxim that the country which executes illegal aliens doesn't have many.
The Missus and I, celebrating my acceptance by the Immigration chaps
Our hotel turned out to a very lavish place, considering what we were paying for it, with a bevy of extremely well coiffured Chinese ladies welcoming us. One of them, rather sportingly I thought, asked me how my knee was. I've been troubled by a touch of arthritis over the last few months and had blogged about it. Perhaps this charming lady had read it.
“ Oh, it's much better now, thank you very much, though it still hurts a bit if I climb stairs too fast”, I told her.
She looked helplessly from me to the missus, who promptly hissed “Silly! 'Ni Hao' is 'Welcome' in Chinese” and gave my bewildered interlocutor a conciliatory smile.
I soon learned that in China, English has the same staus that Hindi has in Chennai. Everyone agrees that it is an important language but no one gives a rat's ass about learning or speaking it. And who is to say they're not right. Chinese is a particularly dicey language, though. It has a lot to do with intonation, which means that you can say the same sentence in two different sing-songs and mean two completely different things. Like you might want to compliment the hostess on her nice house and end up telling her that there are astronauts urinating in her back yard. I had heard a story, probably apocryphal, about a bloke who wanted to know where the restrooms were and accidentally ended up marrying a Chinese girl.
I decided to stick to English.
A funny thing among most English speakers is that we believe people who don't understand English can magically understand it if we speak it in broken syllables with gesticulation. It doesn't work. I had a situation, right on day 1, where, typical of me, I had forgotten to charge my phone and it was on it's last legs, a bit like the flickering lamp next to the dying grandfather in Hindi movies. About to go out at any moment. So I asked my hosts with active sign language, brandishing my phone, for a charger.
“Charrrr gerrr” “Chaaaaar Gerrrr” I asked. At first they looked at me with a completely stoned silence, like they had just smoked this awesome weed and I was somebody's father who had just barged into the room.
Silence.
“Charrrr gerrr” “Chaaaaar Gerrrr” I asked again, this time with hand and leg gestures.
Something seemed to be stirring. Suddenly one of them exclaimed “Oh oh oh oh okay okay okay okay” in joyous comprehension and rushed out, beckoning me to follow. We went down two flights and landed up opposite a washing machine. I'm not making this up.
Stay tuned for part II folks.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Diwali at chez Shenoy
Well, finally Diwali came and went. I spent it sleeping in bed. For a change, this was not because of a hangover. I had this really virulent attack of gastroenteritis, an ailment in which the alimentary canal makes many humorous sound effects and generally leaves the afflictee with the athletic ability of respected shri vajpayee. By the evening, I was walking around like a Tai' chi master.
My dad (who is a doctor) is away in america, but when I rang him up for help, he took all of fifteen seconds to diagnose it over the phone.
"Touch of gastro, nothing to worry about" he told me, and prescribed a medicine which worked like magic. Almost the next day, I was turning cartwheels and accepting invitations to parties.
The afternoon one went fairly ok. I had a couple of vodka and limes without dulling the intellect even a little bit. If I had been in that line of work, I would probably have discovered a fundamental particle or two.
The evening session was a little more drastic. We were invited to my sister's house and her husband uncorked some rather classy rum with a fancy name. I had no more than two drinks, to the best of my knowledge, but I managed to get plastered to a level I haven't been since I discovered that I had passed my engineering finals.
Few things, dear unmarried reader, bring out the demon in the old helpmeet more than the spectacle of a plastered husband. It is a no-no on the scale of forgetting to pick up the kids from school or getting her a bar-tool set for her birthday. The missus was very not-amused and I am very strictly on the dry side of the barometer till further notice.
So, happy Diwali everyone. I hope you have a great year, filled with joy and prosperity, love and friendship, warmth and understanding, and of course, some decent scotch.
My dad (who is a doctor) is away in america, but when I rang him up for help, he took all of fifteen seconds to diagnose it over the phone.
"Touch of gastro, nothing to worry about" he told me, and prescribed a medicine which worked like magic. Almost the next day, I was turning cartwheels and accepting invitations to parties.
The afternoon one went fairly ok. I had a couple of vodka and limes without dulling the intellect even a little bit. If I had been in that line of work, I would probably have discovered a fundamental particle or two.
The evening session was a little more drastic. We were invited to my sister's house and her husband uncorked some rather classy rum with a fancy name. I had no more than two drinks, to the best of my knowledge, but I managed to get plastered to a level I haven't been since I discovered that I had passed my engineering finals.
Few things, dear unmarried reader, bring out the demon in the old helpmeet more than the spectacle of a plastered husband. It is a no-no on the scale of forgetting to pick up the kids from school or getting her a bar-tool set for her birthday. The missus was very not-amused and I am very strictly on the dry side of the barometer till further notice.
So, happy Diwali everyone. I hope you have a great year, filled with joy and prosperity, love and friendship, warmth and understanding, and of course, some decent scotch.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Diwali and its part in my downfall -Part II
(Just in case you missed the earlier post, I was speaking about the dismissive manner in which the missus spoke of single malt whiskeys. And the assault on my valuable collection of books on philosophy)
As you can well imagine, no thinking man can stand slurs to malt whiskies. After racking my brains for a suitable repartee and finding none, I decided to maintain a dignified silence.
"OK," she said, by way of compromise, "I'll let you keep six of these books. They can go into the loft on top of the loo."
As a consequence of this radical rearrangement of philosophical thought in our home, our raddiwallah is now the proud possessor of 'Aristotle's Ethics', 'Plato's Republic', a jolly old book named 'The Great Political Theories' and 'Existential Thought - A Primer'.
I sat there numbed. I had never read any of those books, to tell you the truth, but it was nice to know they were around. I mean, if you wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night realising you had forgotten a great political theory or two, 'The Great Political Theories' will no longer be around to illuminate you. I mumbled words to this effect.
The missus moved in for the kill.
"Cheer up, Naren.Look at the bright side of this. You are eligible to stand for Parliament now."
"Huh? Hows that?" I asked, leading up to the sucker punch.
"You've just sold your Ethics to the rag-and-bone man!"
"Ha Ha. Very funny. You know, Aristotle was the greatest thinker of the ancient world"
"Aristotle was a moron who believed men had more teeth than women"
"They don't?"
"Shut up and identify five t-shirts that are going out."
And so the day continued. By evening, my cupboard resembled Old Mother Hubbard's.
"It is bare!" I exclaimed in dismay.
But she wasn't really listening. With a cheery "Bare is in, baby", and proceeding to hum "The Bare Necessities" from the Jungle Book, she went on to her own wardrobe, which I bitterly noted she did not de-populate. Women!
"How come your wardrobe doesn't get the treatment?" I wanted to ask her but she shooed me out of the room and continued the proceedings in camera.
The next day we spent all morning and half the afternoon shopping for gifts. Trays, candles, chocolates, that kind of thing.
Why this inconsequential act has to command so much pomp and circumstance is beyond me. It is not as if you gift someone a set of wine glasses and he or she says "Oh my god! Just what I needed! I resolve to love you twice as much as I used to!".
He or she just pries off the little "With Best Compliments From" label and puts one of his or her own to gift to someone else.(This has been proved true with respect to casseroles. There are only three casseroles in the world, all of which get repacked and re-gifted. Apparently this has been going on since 1902.)
We of course invest the simple act of buying presents with the care and attention of the Pentagon purchasing military hardware. Hmm. Perhaps that's not such a great simile. What I was striving to emphasize was that the six hours or so that we spent in the mall buying stuff that no one wanted could have been reduced to fifteen minutes if it had been left to me.
"I couldn't trust you to buy a flyswatter, Naren", the missus retorted, when I voiced my aforementioned views. "You got your best friend a pressure cooker last year"
"What's wrong with a pressure cooker?" The truth was that we were giving pressure cookers to the workers in my factory and I happened to have a few left over.
"Nothing, except that it is not a chic thing to give. Can you imagine say Shobha De giving Vijay Mallya a pressure cooker?". I had an answer to that. I am not Shobha De and he is by no means Vijay Mallya. But I kept the trap shut, which is the best response when the argument is drifting into uncharted territory.
(The Missus is howling for me to take her voting. Part III coming soon)
As you can well imagine, no thinking man can stand slurs to malt whiskies. After racking my brains for a suitable repartee and finding none, I decided to maintain a dignified silence.
"OK," she said, by way of compromise, "I'll let you keep six of these books. They can go into the loft on top of the loo."
As a consequence of this radical rearrangement of philosophical thought in our home, our raddiwallah is now the proud possessor of 'Aristotle's Ethics', 'Plato's Republic', a jolly old book named 'The Great Political Theories' and 'Existential Thought - A Primer'.
I sat there numbed. I had never read any of those books, to tell you the truth, but it was nice to know they were around. I mean, if you wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night realising you had forgotten a great political theory or two, 'The Great Political Theories' will no longer be around to illuminate you. I mumbled words to this effect.
The missus moved in for the kill.
"Cheer up, Naren.Look at the bright side of this. You are eligible to stand for Parliament now."
"Huh? Hows that?" I asked, leading up to the sucker punch.
"You've just sold your Ethics to the rag-and-bone man!"
"Ha Ha. Very funny. You know, Aristotle was the greatest thinker of the ancient world"
"Aristotle was a moron who believed men had more teeth than women"
"They don't?"
"Shut up and identify five t-shirts that are going out."
And so the day continued. By evening, my cupboard resembled Old Mother Hubbard's.
"It is bare!" I exclaimed in dismay.
But she wasn't really listening. With a cheery "Bare is in, baby", and proceeding to hum "The Bare Necessities" from the Jungle Book, she went on to her own wardrobe, which I bitterly noted she did not de-populate. Women!
"How come your wardrobe doesn't get the treatment?" I wanted to ask her but she shooed me out of the room and continued the proceedings in camera.
The next day we spent all morning and half the afternoon shopping for gifts. Trays, candles, chocolates, that kind of thing.
Why this inconsequential act has to command so much pomp and circumstance is beyond me. It is not as if you gift someone a set of wine glasses and he or she says "Oh my god! Just what I needed! I resolve to love you twice as much as I used to!".
He or she just pries off the little "With Best Compliments From" label and puts one of his or her own to gift to someone else.(This has been proved true with respect to casseroles. There are only three casseroles in the world, all of which get repacked and re-gifted. Apparently this has been going on since 1902.)
We of course invest the simple act of buying presents with the care and attention of the Pentagon purchasing military hardware. Hmm. Perhaps that's not such a great simile. What I was striving to emphasize was that the six hours or so that we spent in the mall buying stuff that no one wanted could have been reduced to fifteen minutes if it had been left to me.
"I couldn't trust you to buy a flyswatter, Naren", the missus retorted, when I voiced my aforementioned views. "You got your best friend a pressure cooker last year"
"What's wrong with a pressure cooker?" The truth was that we were giving pressure cookers to the workers in my factory and I happened to have a few left over.
"Nothing, except that it is not a chic thing to give. Can you imagine say Shobha De giving Vijay Mallya a pressure cooker?". I had an answer to that. I am not Shobha De and he is by no means Vijay Mallya. But I kept the trap shut, which is the best response when the argument is drifting into uncharted territory.
(The Missus is howling for me to take her voting. Part III coming soon)
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