On the speedy flight of time and other non-specific things

Good heavens! How time flies! It's been more than a month since I inflicted one of my posts on the unsuspecting public. Between you and me, that's a bit of luck for the aforementioned unsuspecting public, but into each life some rain must fall so here goes.

I think I'm going to be rambling. In fact, I think I'm rambling already, an old trick (one which the missus finds intensely irritating) I resort to when I don't have anything to say.

"Which is most of the time"

Thank you Sheela.

As I was saying, by dint of hard work and concentration, I've managed to curb the tendency to drift in thought, and drift aloud at that, but every now and then the old ghosts catch up.

For instance, the other day we drove down to Carter Road, Bandra. It's a fashionable part of Bombay now with the miniest skirts and most heavily mascaraed eyes in town but time was when it used to be desolate and slightly eerie at night. The missus and I were discussing this. And I remembered a curious thing from my youth. Cars parked on Carter Road, would mysteriously start swaying latish into the p.m. Mentioned this to the missus who gave me the look.

"They weren't swaying, silly. There must have been a couple inside buzz..zzz..buzz"

"What?" I couldn't quite make out what she was saying

"Buzz..buzz" she repeated, in a voice many decibels below my threshold.

My look of befuddlement seemed to rile her

"Oh, I give up" she said and stomped off angrily. I had to buy her a little string thing with a couple of pearls at the end to hang on her cellphone before she'd talk to me.

"Really, Naren," she said, even after this, "you purposely play the fool to irritate me."

I ask you.

So. Things Have Been Happening. We've been building a house, the missus and I, and I've been squarely getting it with both barrels over my alleged lack of aesthetic sense in all matters related to the beauty of the aforementioned house.

I could write reams about it but it would be so whiny you'd probably think it was literary and avoid my blog like the plague (not that it would be all that bad a decision on your part, objectively speaking, but one does not willfully chase one's audience away from one's blogs) so I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that the process took twice as long and cost twice as much primarily because it had to look nice. Things like what color granite to choose and whether the curtains should have American pleats.

"I'm quite non-aligned in these matters" I told the missus when asked the question "though I doubt they do Soviet pleats anymore", merely as levity, to lighten the mood but it seemed to anger her. She continued the discussion with the curtain maker, leaving me out of it entirely. I got her assesment later, and it was not good.

"Naren, keep these silly jokes to yourself if you don't want to be stamped on your instep".

"And I happen to be wearing heels" she added, ominously.


So I've mostly been in charge of the operational aspects of the enterprise. You know, giving address to tempo driver, getting labour to unload goods, that kind of thing.

And even there, I haven't been very effective. For instance, I appointed an extremely Hegelian or Kantian bloke as a fabricator for my window grills. A decent chap who would develop all kinds of existential doubts and give up his zest for life every two or three days. I sympathised with him of course but the missus demanded that I yell at him and make him deliver the grills in time for the puja.

"These people don't understand ANYTHING unless it is yelled at them" she told me. "Go and shout till his ceiling falls down"

But every time I cleared my throat and prepared to deliver a stentorian outburst calculated to make him tremble in his shoes, he'd come up with an account of an incurable illness being suffered by some member of his family. This would derail my act completely and I would shuffle off from what should have been a decisive and painful meeting with a little pat of sympathy on his shoulder and a little more money by way of advance.

I made the mistake of telling this the first time to the missus and she promptly ticked me off for being a doofus and a gullible buffoon.

"You're being taken for a ride" she said. I doubted it, though I had the good sense to keep quiet, but when the chap tooled around to the site later in the week, the missus reprimanded him sharply. Sure enough, the grills landed up the next morning. The missus has been smirking in a superior way ever since whenever the topic of effectiveness is brought up.

All in all, it has taken its toll of me. I'm a mere shadow of my former self, which itself was a shadow of its former self to begin with so you can imagine what a wreck I've become. I'm trying to rebuild myself with alcoholic beverages when the missus is not looking. It's taking time.

Just a chronicle of things happening to me at this time. Same old.

It feels strange to be writing a post after all this while. The Shenoy household has been going through several crises these last few months.

First it was the "You're always on the computer" crisis. The missus arrived at the conclusion that you, dear reader, were stealing her dear husband away with enticements of badinage. I pointed out the obvious flaw in her argument.

"Sweet, be reasonable" I told her. "Nothing would induce the dear reader" (still you) "to touch me with a barge pole, considering that he or she is a discerning person, leave alone steal me away".


"Shut up Naren". The missus belongs to the rare breed of people who can tell their spouses to shut up as part of the same argument in which they (the rare breed of people) are complaining that they (the spouses) are not talking enough to them (the rare breed of people).

The upshot of the whole thing was that I was not allowed to use the computer, except as a paperweight, in the time that I was at home.

I can take the rough with the smooth. We are philosophers, we Shenoys are. Putting on the brave front, soldiering on in the face of adversity.

I started using the computer in the loo.

This lasted about two days and we had another one of those painful interviews.

"Do you want a divorce?" asked the missus.

Considering that, with the possible exception of my mother and my maternal aunts, everyone agrees that I am a plugugly best not seen first thing in the morning, my chances of ensnaring another, even a tenth as charming as the missus are pretty close to zero, I replied in the negative.

"Very well then, my little teddy bear. Stay away from the internet"

And so it has been. I do snatch a few moments of internet in the time that she is not watching (as is the case now) but they are always moments of trepidation.

The second crisis is "The Boys Growing Up" crisis. My little boys, the apples of my eye, are now 16 and 14 respectively and have acquired much sass and attitude. They give BackChat. And even worse, they make Jokes.

The backchat itself is quite entertaining as long as I'm allowed to watch from the sidelines. It's the Jokes that puts me on the spot every now and then.

Apparently she caught one of the lads chuckling to himself and put him under the lights. He told her that the joke was something his brother had told him. Here is the joke in its entirety.

He: Let's have magical sex

She: It sounds wonderful. How do you mean

He: We have sex and you disappear in the morning

I have to admit that I laughed. What else was I supposed to do?

"You boys are all the same. Tasteless jokes. That is not a good thing for teenage boys to talk about. I want you to give them a dressing down"

And so I look forward listlessly to the prospect of ticking off the boys for the aforementioned transgression, knowing deep in my heart that they're laughing at me. And to make matters worse, they're not even afraid of me. They've never been.

You know why I like Airtel Customer Service? I'll tell you why. I can't yell at my customers. They'll stop giving me business. I can't yell at my suppliers. They'll stop giving me material. I can't yell at my employees. They'll just find someplace else to work. I can't yell at the missus. I don't know what will happen but I can't. And the boys? They just laugh when I try to yell at them. So I call up Airtel Customer Service whenever I have a problem with service and they listen to everything. They apologize for everything too.

"I'm getting very poor signal quality"

"We're extremely sorry sir. Let me look into it"

"I have IMPORTANT calls to make and your signal quality is VERY poor"

"We're extremely sorry sir. We'll look into it"

And so on, for the next five minutes or so. I keep letting off about signal quality and they keep apologizing. Extremely therapeutic.

There it is then. My deepest confession on da internetz yet. And between you and me, there are days when I complain about the signal quality when there is nothing wrong with it.

Isn't that depressing?

On me, my personality or the lack thereof and other weighty matters

Dear Reader

I hope you are upto reading a long, rambling, introspective and mostly pointless post because today, I have decided to look into my personality and write about it. And if you choose this moment to shuffle off to someone else's blog, I shall say to myself "Drat! Lost another reader. But sterling sense of judgment, I must say! He or she will definitely be Someone in the years to come, if he or she isn't already". But I digress. Coming back to the res, I told the missus of my intention.

'Don't be silly, Naren' was the missus' reaction.

'Silly? What's silly about this?'

'No offense, sweetheart, you are adorable and I love you, but you don't exactly have a personality'

And so it is. I've never had a personality as long as I can remember. I've always envied the strong, purposeful types, the people who could open an oyster at twenty paces with their gaze, to paraphrase PGWodehouse, the people who could get work done in government offices without shelling out a rupee, the people whose wives would be in a tizzy because they would be returning home any moment and needed a freshly brewed mug of coffee at the exact temperature, not too hot, not too cold, notwithstanding the fact that they, the wives, had just returned from work themselves, the kind.. oh, you get the idea.

And, as the missus seems to imply, people lacking personality shouldn't be writing autobiographies. They should be writing, I don't know, draft leave and license agreements or the vice-president's speech to a delegation of junior tourism development officials or whatever. Definitely not autobiographies.

How did I get this way, I often wonder. Was I born without a personality or was it snatched away from me? I've had one or two teachers fully capable of that, snatching away someones personality, I mean. My schooling wasn't so much schooling as a long series of various forms of corporal punishment. But no, it can't be that either because several of my classmates have evolved into personalities that would make the Hulk look like William Wordsworth.

No, the more I think of it the more it becomes apparent to me that I am one of those rare beings born without a mind of my own. For instance, whenever I hear an argument, I am instantly convinced of its correctness, till of course I hear the opposite side, whereupon I become instantly convinced of that argument's correctness. This makes me extremely likeable, at least temporarily, but tends to get me into an embarassing spot when both the opposite parties are present and debating.

Which is a frequent occurrence in the debates between missus and younger son. The elder son is a self-actualized soul (like myself) who usually avoids vulgar debate by the simple stratagem of agreeing with his mother.

The younger one usually argues the point, and with vigour. He lobbies with me for, say, keeping an airgun and pellets, 'for self-defence' he says. I agree. These are violent times we live in, he has just pointed out, and it is always a good idea to plug prospective robbers with a well aimed pellet.

Just as all this business is concluded, the lad is de-pelleted by the missus who adds, for good measure 'Do you have any sense, Naren? Those things are so dangerous! Don't you remember your cardiothoracic surgeon friend who told us about that pellet which lodged in that little girl's pericardium, and it was touch and go, saving her?'.

The missus remembers these things. All I can recollect is that the cardio whatever chap was sneakily eating french fries when HIS wife was not looking and surreptitiously spiking his virgin mojito with my vodka shots.

The upshot of all this is that I have to suffer the "you traitor" looks from the younger son for the rest of the afternoon.

I suppose you will now agree that people like me shouldn't be allowed to write their autobiographies. "What have I learned from this?" you must be asking yourself in exasperation, ruing the fifteen or so minutes you've spent reading this drivel. Well, you can console yourself with the fact that you now know that cardiowhatchamacallit chaps are as human as the rest of us, which you certainly wouldn't have known, if you hadn't read all of the above.

Cheers then, and have a good weekend

Book review - "How the Banana goes to Heaven"

Today I shall be writing a book review. It is my first book review ever. I don't think I am qualified to do it. Not because I haven't read all that many books (I haven't) or that I don't have all that many brains (I don't) but because I am too emotional about the subject matter of the said book. Right, you guessed it. It's a book about food.

A little about my own history here. I breezed through some 40 years of my life without thinking much about comestibles, other than when I was hungry. I ate when I felt like eating, as much as I wanted and pretty much anything on the table. And then, when I turned 40, I got hauled off for a lipid profile test, a blood test designed to put the fear of dying into irresponsible middleaged people. An obscene number was observed against the legend "tri-glycerides" in the report and I was immediately carted off to various doctors, cardiologists and other busybodies. They collectively told me - and worse, the missus - that if I didn't knock off the calories, I would probably be the cause of the LIC reporting lower profits because of having paid out my life insurance. They observed that this would not be an entirely bad thing, because in virtually everyone's opinion, the LIC has far too much money and a little de-moneyfying would be great for their character but they (the doctors, cardiologists and other busybodies) would rather it not be a sterling chap like me. And at this point I realize I've been rambling. Sorry. You still with me? Good.



It's funny how one values things only when they've been snatched away from one. Post the tri-glycerides episode, I was basically put on a ration of gruel and water and the only way I could get any kind of nutrition was to sneak off into the kitchen when the missus wasn't looking and cook something. So I learned not only to cook really fast but also to wash and clean the pots and pans equally fast, dry them out and put them back in their places before the missus noticed. And that, dear reader, is the sole qualification in my otherwise unqualified self for writing this review.

And now on to business. The book - I loved the title - "How the Banana goes to Heaven" - is written is a breezy, cheerful style. It is organized into chapters, each chapter dealing with one ingredient of vegetarian cooking.

For instance, there is one on ragi, aka millet, which is a terrific food for anyone interested in living a long life. There is one on ghee which says such good things about it (the missus has sentiments towards ghee which make Arab-Jew relations seem like teen romance in comparison) that I became emotional. I love ghee, you see, and the missus is as likely to give me any as the US would be to give the Taliban a consignment of enriched Uranium.

The author gives a delightful, trivia-filled background for the item in question, and a summary of nutrition information which covers what current scientific opinion about it is, and a recipe or two using the said ingredient.

What I liked about the book was the engaging style and the consistently cheerful tone throughout the book. Makes it highly readable. The author, Ratna Rajaiah, is a popular blogger and columnist for The New Indian Express. She writes very well indeed. After reading I am equipped with dozens, if not hundreds, of little facts about food that will save my life when accosted by random aunties at parties as I so often tend to be.

There aren't many recipes in the book, just one at the end of every chapter, but then, it's not a cookery book, it's a book about food. The recipes look pretty nice though, and are fairly unusual. Which makes it interesting enough for me. I haven't tried many out but the few that I did, I liked. One, a preparation called Roasted Rice Dumplings, turned out really good. These dumplings went very well with beer. Though, as the missus would observe, if she knew about this, what doesn't.

Highly recommended for people who like reading about food. Also, suitable for random reads, since the chapters are little independent compartments. You can basically open it to any page and take a stab at it. The book is well produced. Lovely photographs throughout. The printing is very good and overall I think it is a great buy for anyone even slightly interested in the marvelous subject of food

La vie chez Shenoy

The above title, translated from the Punjabi or French, I can never tell the difference, means Life at the Shenoy home. The letters can be re-arranged to form the words "Hey! Zen Chaos, Live!" which is an accurate description of how things usually are at our place.

The boys' vacations come to an end today. Back to the grind from tomorrow. The elder one is cool about it but the younger one has been complaining about the shortness of vacations. The root cause of his angst is that the X-box, which has been his constant companion through the holidays, is going back into lock and key under orders of the missus.

He filed what he thought was the equivalent of a writ in the high court.

"Annie, please tell mom that all kids in my school are allowed to play X-box on weekends"

"Tell her yourself!"

"She won't listen"

"What makes you think she listens to me?"

He mulled this over.

"Annie, are all women like this?"

"Every single one I know, son", I told him, with a voice tinged with sadness.

"Why, Annie?" he continued. "Why can't they be more..." he appeared to be searching for the mot juste "...why can't they be more .. understanding?

"Son" I told him, changing the subject slightly, and drawing from recent events "man to man, I can only say that women are nothing but trouble".

The missus took this exact moment to enter. A bit like those farcical plays one sees on TV.

"What was that?" she asked. I gulped and tried unsuccessfuly to say something. Younger son came to the rescue.

"Mom, Annie was saying that 'We men, we are nothing but trouble'. Weren't you, Annie?"

I gave him a silent look which said "Well played, my son!" The cricketing equivalent would have been the flawless flowing cover-drive for four.

The missus was pre-occupied, important questions of what to wear for a visit to an aunt's house weighing heavily on her mind. She shuffled off without giving me the customary earful she gives when she catches me telling the kids all that 'worldly advice' stuff.

I thanked the lad for his presence of mind.

"Oh, it was nothing, Annie. By the way, are you going to buy me the new FIFA football game on X-box or will you just slip me the cash?"

I stared at him.

"Hahaha. Relax, Annie. I was just pulling your leg." And ran away downstairs to play football.

Life.

The missus reports

It is not often that I take to putting my thoughts to paper, or blogs, to be precise, what with the speed with which life whooshes by for a suburban housewife but today I find myself strangely with a lot of time on my hands. And the golden opportunity of an open lap-top with the blog signed into. After I publish this, he dare not delete it.

The reason for having a lot of time on my hands is that the younger son is off to Udaipur with his grandparents. Suddenly, the house seems very silent. He is a noisy lad, my Gautham is, and a source of constant anxiety but he's also demonstrative of his affection and consideration, which makes one rather miss him. Vyaas, the elder one, is a quiet and mature boy, giving me little cause for worry. He studies on his own, watches TV only moderately (unlike Gautham who can watch TV for hours without a break) and generally obeys me unless there is strong cause to do otherwise. Needless to say, there never is.

The problem child here, of course, is the husband, who survives mostly because of a lacuna in the Indian legal system. It is a crime, apparently, for a wife to strike her husband upon the bean with a brick, regardless of provocation. Otherwise I would have done this ages ago and despite the said husband's skull being apparently fashioned out of solid wood, I would have, with this crude but effective technique, brought about some improvement. As things stand, I am reduced to using cold stares, knitted brows and pursed lips as an expression of ire, which is the matrimonial equivalent of using Madan Lal as your strike bowler with the new ball (I'm afraid I follow - or used to follow - cricket. I'm not very current these days but what cricket lacks in gripping entertainment it more than makes up by affording the struggling writer scope for simile).

 He isn't very difficult to get along with, except when he decides to give reign to his alleged sense of humour which I find quite weird at times. For instance, this diwali I had expected a trinket of some sort - gold, preferably- as an expression of his love and affection. He got  me a deodorant. I am not joking. A pink can with the legend "Pour Femme" emblazoned on it. I'm not a materialistic girl but MRP Rs.99/- is not really my thing. It showed in my expression, I'm sure of that, but that did not deter my champ. He was waiting for me to ask him what the hell this was.

I obliged. "What is this, would you mind telling me?" I asked him in the most sour voice I could manage.

He had prepared for this precise moment apparently.

"Dear, a deo, a female deo!" he sang, to the tune of "Doe, a deer, a female deer".

I counted to ten. The blood was still boiling. I counted another fifty. No change. I thought of jabbing him in the thigh with the potato peeler and had Big Boss 4 not started at that exact moment, with vociferations by the sweet Dolly Bindra at some hapless co-inhabitant of the dosshouse, violence would have erupted. As it was, he escaped with nary a scratch. He has promised to buy me bangle but we shall believe when we see.

Till then, adieu from

Sheela

Anguish

I'm feeling unusually sad today. The reason? Quite simply, the absolute pig's breakfast that our politicians and bureacrats have made of the Commonwealth Games. Foot overbridges are collapsing. Stadium ceilings are crashing down. Athletes quarters are shoddy  and uninhabitable. The list goes on.


"But sad? You? Surely not, Naren!", you ask me censoriously. "Haven't you lived here for the 45 years that you have existed? Doesn't it give you a kind of immunity to disclosure shock that people from other countries don't have. Like you go out with your ABCD cousin eating chaat and where he lies alternately writhing and pooping the next morning, you're tucking into vada pao?"

The answer to all your questions is a shamefaced "Yes". And yet, I AM feeling sad beyond expression. Why this should be so, can't say exactly. I think it's because the shame is now international.

Earlier, you see, we used do all this quietly before our adorably mute domestic audiences who would cheerfully shrug off 1200 crore fodder scams with a cheery "boys will be boys!" and would good naturedly vote in favour of giving them another go. But this time, it's Public. The World Knows! And the World is Laughing! Oh the shame! Even countries like Jersey and Guernsey are planning to pull out it seems. Jersey and Guernsey! Their entire population is less than my housing complex.

Of course India is not silent! No Sir! Everywhere, people are voicing their displeasure. Ranting against Kalmadi. Ridiculing Dixit. Demanding Manmohan Singh's resignation.

And completely missing the point. The reason all this has happened is not that these people are filled with greed and avarice. They are, but if it hadn't been them specifically, it would have been someone else. The point is that our glorious system of benevolent socialistic public service propriety or whatever it  is that this country functions under, holds no one accountable. This is endemic to all public institurions large and small. There is no punishment for crime. No one can be sacked for dereliction of duty, for example. And no one has ever served a prison term for abuse of office.

I have no idea why this should be so. Take the case of the toilet paper scam. You know the one. Where toilet paper was bought for Rs. 4000 a roll when it should have cost Rs. 100. The matter 'is still being probed', as far as I know.

Why in freakin hell this should take so much time is beyond me. Here is what you or I would have done.

Step 1. Find out if the toilet rolls have really been bought for Rs. 4000/- each. Clue - See the invoice. You should see a figure which says Rs. 4000/- per roll, or if not, divide the total invoice amount in rupees by the total number of rolls in numbers and see if the answer is Rs. 4000. It is? Good now go to

Step 2. Find out the fair market price for the rolls. Go to the supermarket. Buy a roll. When checking out, see the amount printed on the bill. Does it say Rs. 100? Good. Keep the receipt.

Step 3. Ask the guy who approved the invoice why his ass should not be put into jail.

How complicated can this be? Why should it take a frikkin committee, who, after a month of dedicated scrutiny are still unable to answer in one of two ways
A) Yes, the rolls were purchased for Rs.4000/- per  when they are freely available for Rs. 100/- per
B) No, the media is being dishonest. The rolls were bought for Rs. 100/- per and not for Rs. 4000/- per, and please put the said media person into prison

By the way, the news I heard what that the 'probe committe' is 'recommending' that 'Darbari be sacked'. Sacked? SACKED! This is not unlike asking General Dyer to write 100 times "I will not order firing on defenceless people again". The man should be given rigorous imprisonment unless he is able to prove he was acting on superiors' orders, in which case the superiors should be given rigourous imprisonment.

The moral, as far as I can see, is that unless someone is given real punishment, someone nuts are really nailed to the floor, nothing is ever going to change. And to my village idiot mind, it looks the right thing to do, doling out punishment I mean. Compromising the nations honour and all that.  But then, that's probably because I'm not a highly trained and skilled bureaucrat.

The Week That Was

One thing that never ceases to amaze me, as it must you, if you've been following this jolly little autobiography of mine, is how easily I manage to continue to exist despite so obviously being a total loser. I have no doubt there would be a decent market for tips on how to do this - "Be a total loser and continue to exist" is the title that comes to mind ("12 straight weeks on the NYTimes bestseller list") - but the thing is, I don't have a clue. It seems incredible that I should have so many super-tolerant people around me. My parents. My sisters. The missus. The boys. A whole lot of friends. And you, dear reader, who, sacrificing valuable opportunities of increasing your wealth by obscene amounts, are reading this page.

Good. Got that off my chest. And now to recount the last weeks happenings.

The stellar part of my life these days is the interaction with the boys while teaching them.

The elder one is the more silent and decorous of the two. I think he feels that his dad is a pumpkin brain, but in a gentlemanly manner that I think he inherits from me, he keeps that opinion to himself. Usually, anyway. And he politely laughs at my jokes such as they are.

I came up with one when I was teaching him complex numbers. "a+ib is a complex number" I told him. "And?" he replied politely, because he knew that already

"And b12+i is a b-complex number"

"Hahaha" he replied "I think I'll go through the section on Complex Planes on my own". So much for levity in the teaching process.

The younger one, on the other hand, is clearly in awe of me. The reason is that I teach him economics. This is a subject towards which, thanks to the absurdly dense textbook they have, he has developed a healthy hatred. And I don't blame him.

Entrusted with the task of writing a textbook for ninth-standard students learning about economics for the first time in their lives, the rhetorically gifted chaps in charge of writing the textbook have done the prose in a style heavy enough to be employed in auditors' reports of public limited companies. James Joyce would read like the Brothers Grimm in comparison.

"An economy is a rather loosely defined term for any broad classification of interrelated productive activities such as farming, manufacturing and supply of a variety of services that people are ready to buy from markets at a price", they tell the tots, expecting rousing cheers at the revelation.

The son was extremely grateful when I explained it in terms of farmer, blacksmith and goatherd.

"Wow Annie! You know everything!" was his reaction.

"He believes I am the cat's pajamas as far as economics is concerned." I told myself. Pleased as punch I was and I'm sure no one will grudge me that reaction.

But things have a way of turning, if you know what I mean. I had occasion, this week, to explain what capitalism, communism, socialism and other isms which constitute political theory, meant. The lad listened in rapt attention.

I was floating. Rarely do I hold anyone's attention like this. It feels good. I can understand why Deepak Chopra and similar chaps go about  saying things like 'realizing that our true self is one of pure potentiality and aligning with the power that manifests everything in the universe'. He knows he's talking rot, but the public is listening! Intoxicated by this, he continues and in no time is telling people that 'God's love is beyond death' and that 'one must do what one does because doing is what one must do when one does what one must'.

Which is why I waxed lyrical about communism, dragging in Animal farm, and generally "kicked ass" as my sons are fond of saying.

The missus confronted me later in the evening.

"What rot have you feeding Gautham?" she demanded.

"What did I do now?"

"He's going on about becoming a communist" she said, scowling.

"What!"

"Yes. He's been telling me that communism is the only way and that he's all for it"

I meekly tried to defend myself.

"I was telling him how bad communism was and how it has failed around the world"

"Well, your rhetoric is evidently half-baked, Mr Ayn Rand. You need to polish your spiel" And with that unkind barb, she walked away.

Well, to cut a long story short, I engaged the lad in conversation later in the evening. It transpired that he hates his tuition classes and my statement that communism believed in a classless society had won him over to that ideology.

I hit my forehead with my palm, in a gesture popularly known on twitter as 'facepalm' or, among the more subtle, as 'manoj kumar' or simply 'manoj'.


Which, come to think of it, is how I spend most weekends.

An Arctic Tale - Reposted

(When people run out of ideas, they usually join politics. Gone-casers like me go a step further. They re-post old blog entries.  Apologies and all that)



The blizzard was fierce. Old Tuskegaw the Inuit hunkered down with his huskies in the little ice shelter he had rustled up. The tundra could be lethal. He knew that, and was taking no chances.

The dogs whimpered. Even for them, this blizzard was too much. Tuskegaw could sense that. He was grateful to the spirits for guarding them thus far, and prayed they would continue to do so.

For he had a mission to accomplish. A sled full of Geometry books, just imported from China where printing was the cheapest, to be transported to his tribespeople, living on the North Pole. Knowledge! Liberation from generations of battle with unforgiving Nature!

Tuskegaw looked heavenward and thanked the spirits once again for the rare honour bestowed upon him. It was not everyday that one got the opportunity to cart Asian geometry to polar coordinates.

She's got platitude!

I'm usually a careful sort of bloke. You know, look both sides before crossing, don't volunteer for magician's tricks, give completely dishonest answers even on the most 'anonymous' surveys. So it is part of standard operating procedure to disappear when the arrival of random auntie visitors from the neighbourhood is announced. I've learned from harsh experience that to stay is to suffer for hours in a cosmix flux of recipes, platitudes, medical histories, astrological beliefs and a summary of the distasteful qualities of people not among those present.

Yesterday was a tragic slip-up. I was in the living room with my computer, sucking up the finest twitter wisdom (for example, @cgawker said "ESPN needs to hire more anchors without nostril hair", which has more pure truth in it than most religious texts) when an auntie landed up. By the time I realised something sinister was afoot, the bell had gone and the round had started.

I should actually skip all the pleasantries and cut to the chase because just listing down the pleasantries would run into a dozen blog pages. It goes something like this


"How's your dad?"

"My dad is fine"

"How's your mom?"


"My mom is fine"

"How's your brother?"


"My brother is fine"

And so on, going up to "your second cousin, the one who married the russian girl. How is he?".

I long for the day one of these aunties turns out to be a mathematician and says something like


"How is  a?"  for all a ϵ {R}  where  {R} is the set of all your living relatives.


That would be so cool! (to be continued)