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A Guinness Record

2012-02-01T22:00:00.000+05:30

Yesterday in suburban Mulund where the local residents had formed a neighbourhood watch to nab thieves, a few kids spread the news that they had seen a robber on top of a tree. Within no time, a crowd, including local cops, gathered at the spot craning their necks to catch a sight of and hopefully catch the robber.

Not surprising. What's surprising is the number of people who turned up - Over 5000. Looks like this city is not just over-populated, it is also under-employed.

And here's the killer - There was no robber in the tree.

Last week, a day before Republic Day, there was another crowd that gathered in one part of Maharashtra. No, not the hordes that thronged (word that means, 'a wronged thong'), malls to shop till their bags burst. Not the hordes that thronged railway stations and airports to enjoy the (self-created) extended weekend.

This crowd had a purpose: To create the new Guinness World Record for the maximum number of people singing a national anthem together. The event was conceptualised and executed by Lokmat, Maharashtra's leading Marathi newspaper. The numbers added up to over 50,000 and most of them were children. (Ten times more than those involved in the sport of robber-spotting; so there's hope I guess.) Here's the video.

Nice, I say.

But one question: Did you stand up while they sang?

Slient Night, Fiery Night.

2011-12-27T21:29:00.000+05:30

It was 1995. I was young. (Okay, okay, I was 27, but when you reach my age, 27 is young.) Roaming upcountry Maharashtra for a photography shoot, we found ourselves at Gaganbavda, a place near Kolhapur where the ghats peak before they curve gently down into Konkan. It was evening and there was a nip in the September air, the kind that makes you yearn for hot coffee and a soft blanket. We had to spend the night there, wake up at the crack of dawn and catch the light needed for a perfect photograph. The only hotel there had a long corridor with a row of rooms that held the promise of mosquitoes, bed bugs and bathrooms that smelled of body fluids secreted since 1947. We decided to check out the local PWD bungalow and got lucky.

So far so not fiery.

For dinner, there weren't two options. The only hotel in Gaganbavda had the only restaurant too. Looking at a lone lizard on the wall stalking a thousand insects in the dining hall, we decided to pack the local food - zunka-bhakar and some daal-rice and threw in some egg omelettes, just in case.

By ten, after having fortified ourselves with some whisky, we were ready for dinner. It was quiet outside. All of Gaganbavda's residents had pulled blankets over their heads and were doing what people do under blankets on a cold night. The only sound was the racket in the other part of the bungalow - College boys on a picnic. Decibel level of a pack of dogs chasing a cat notwithstanding, their noise was reassuring; we had all watched movies of what happens to city folks who check into deserted bungalows with rickety caretakers who are three hundred years old.

We unpacked dinner. And all noise faded away. The zunka, the daal and even the omelettes were a strange red in colour. The colour of dried blood. I, being accustomed to the cuisine of Kolhapur, was the only one who had been rendered speechless because my mouth had watered at the sight of so much chilli powder. The rest were simply stunned into silence. For them, chilli was an additive to be used occasionally in food and Kolhapur was a district in the sugar belt of Maharashtra. As I attacked my food with gusto (or maybe ‘gut’so is a better word), the rest looked on. Seeing that I had neither fainted nor were my eyes streaming, they put the morsels of red into their mouths.

To date when a child refuses to sleep in Gaganbavda, its mother tells the story of a September night when four dragons ran around the streets breathing fire from their nostrils and mouths.

Calling a skirt a skirt

2011-12-26T01:54:00.000+05:30

I came across this in a column by NK who is the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine (definition: more ads, less editorial; more pictures, less words; more glam, no slam).

‘We thrive on BS and blowing sunshine up each other’s skirts. (Replace “skirt’” with the English word for derrière and you will know what I want to say.)’

Huh?!

Okay lady, we understand you are the E-in-C of a fashion mag and hence your French is probably better than your English, and your finishing school (defined as a school where they lay mighty stress on dental hygiene while teaching you to cover your mouth when you laugh), upbringing mandates that you appear polite while being rude, but this is the 21st century - or did I get my calendar wrong?

Then again, I wonder if the E-in-C of a French fashion mag had to write the same thing would she use ‘arse’ and request us to replace it with ‘derrière’?

I also wonder if NK has kids and if she does, did she teach her children to say, “Mom, I am done with my merde so can you wipe my derrière, sil vous plait?” Yeah, the classes wipe while the unwashed masses wash.

Push the example further and you can safely assume that the only language spoken in the bedroom is French. “Oui! Oui!! Oui!!!” That is, when the lady can find her tongue.

And further in the same column, this:

‘If you are blunt to a fault, you often share the same tag as a dog of the female persuasion.’

A dog of the female persuasion?! Did the lady mean ‘bitch?’ Or did she mean a dog who has been persuaded to turn gay? And was she referring to the gay community with a word that starts with a ‘b’ and rhymes with ‘itch’?

Well, it does take all kinds to make the world come to a grinding halt.

But back to the column. The irony of the column is that it is about the virtues of being equally honest in your praise and criticism. Of not being afraid of being called a gay dog for speaking your mind.

The column appeared in last Sunday’s Indian Express supplement, The Eye. No, I cannot mention the writer’s name. You will have to excuse my French for that; it isn’t good enough to translate the name from Punjabi.

Crawlers - The Sequel

2011-11-16T22:29:00.001+05:30

Remember the joy of watching pirated movies on local cable?

If you don't, you are obviously underage, so go away! This is no place for a kid who is legally allowed to vote but can't order a beer.

Back to the joys of movies on local cable. The video quality was grainy, so grainy that Dev Anand in the 1980s looked like Dev Anand in the 60s, or 90s depending on the print.
Not all movies that came on cable were pirated though. But legal or not, the grainy nature of the video, as if the magnetic tape of the video cassette had been scrubbed with a wire brush, was a constant. The scratchy picture didn’t bother much, the thrill of watching the latest movie without buying a ticket in black was compensation enough.

What bothered us most was what happened at the bottom of the screen, especially since the standard screen those days was a generous 21-inch that fitted snugly into a wall cabinet containing trophies won at school competitions and various articles called ‘show pieces’ that had entered the house disguised as gifts at weddings or souvenirs bought on trips to exotic locations like Matheran.

The bottom of the screen, to use a bad pun, was the pits. It was filled with creepy, crawly words that advertised all the businesses in the neighbourhood – sari shops, jewellers, sari shops, tuition classes, sari shops, the occasional chemist shop and sari shops. With clarity that seemed amazing in comparison to the picture above, they ran merrily from one end of the screen to the other, jumping, dancing, pirouetting and doing cartwheels. They covered the legs of the hero as he walked into the frame, made the fallen villain invisible and supported the heaving bosom of an about-to-be-violated heroine. She got saved of course. Probably because a particularly colourful logo of a sari shop reminded the villain of the traumatic hours he had spent in one buying a sari for his wife.

Not that the commercial breaks in the telecast were any better. They were full of ads shot with a hand-held video camera bought as spare parts and put together by a plumber for brands of – refer list of crawlers above. We preferred them to the crawlers of course; the breaks were long enough for the entire family to visit the bathroom and stop to wash hands on the way back.

Cut to present day. Local cable is dying. Not dead, my friends who know these things tell me, 80% of India, the shining one, still watches its TV thanks to the local cablewallah. But TV is so my age. The today thing is youtube. It is what the vote-enabled, alcohol-disabled generation is watching. From movies to music videos to cricket to slapped politicians, if it is a video, it has to be on the net. The logic now is, ‘If it gets hits, it’s a hit.’

And therein lies the sequel to Crawlers. Log on to youtube today and click to check out a video. And there they are – the crawlers – disguised as pop-ups at the bottom of the screen. Usually, the video quality is not grainy; it is pixelated. Which is a ‘today’ word for scrubbed with a wire brush. Well, there is a little cross sign at the corner on the top right that gives you the choice to turn it into a pop-down. But heck, at the heart, it is the same thing – A Crawler.

Like someone said long before video was invented; the more the things change, the more the same they remain.

About me

2011-11-02T23:08:00.002+05:30

This article on the net is titled, 'A Surprise Delight'. I found it on the blog of a fellow writer, K.D. Norris, from Bennington, Vermont, USA.

It couldn't have been more aptly titled as I found out when I stumbled up on it.

Posting this link is a tad self-congratulatory, but heck, if you are here because you don't mind reading what I write, I presume you will not mind reading what someone has written about my writing.

Steve Jobs. On second thoughts.

2011-10-07T22:49:00.001+05:30

A child is born out of wedlock. (I have always wondered why is called that - wedlock.) The mother puts it up for adoption but the first couple rejects it because they want a girl. The second in queue adopts him, promising his mother they will give him a college education.

The boy grows up and is sent to college but he drops out soon. He starts his own company and designs a path-breaking personal computer.

A few years later, the CEO and board of his company make him resign as the company is not doing well.

The board re-hires him. He designs and launches successful product after product to the extent that for a brief while his company is the largest in terms of net worth.

In 2004, he is diagnosed of cancer and makes an incredible come back after surgery.

Seven years later he succumbs to cancer. The world mourns.

The next time you see a loser, please be considerate and give him or her a second chance. It might make the world of a difference. Or, even a difference to the world.

Anna Hazare & being a damp squib

2011-08-19T20:54:00.001+05:30

Let me begin with a honest confession (not to be confused with signed confessions given at police stations and retracted twenty years later when your case comes up for hearing).

I am a pessimist. That is, where an optimist sees a blue sky, I see a dry spell and receding ground water tables. The sky is half-full for me, always.

I am also aware, painfully so, that anything negative said or written about Anna Hazare today will have those who support his crusade (I am not sure if that’s the right word because the one crusade I remember from history was rather bigoted and violent), up in arms against those saying/writing it. I am just pinning my hope on the fact that Anna is hailed as the Modern Gandhi (actually Post-modern Gandhi because the Modern Gandhi position has been taken up by Munnabhai. Trivial aside: If Munna is Gandhi, does it make Circuit, Nehru?), and his supporters will stick to the path of non-violence and desist from breaking any bones.

So here goes, with a deep breath, prayer to non-violence and a salute to pessimism.

Lokpal – The very concept is a joke, pal.

I am not a lawyer nor am I a constitutional guru, but correct me if I am wrong, in theory in this country nobody is above law. (This of course presumes there is only one missionary position and the law can’t be f*d from below.) Of course, you can’t drag an elected representative to court but you can sack him or her first and then do the needful. But I could be wrong.

To go on a tangent to prove a point, take the wonderful skywalks built all around Mumbai. They are built for commuters who are forced to risk their lives in the chaos of traffic outside each railway station. But what’s the reason for chaos? No footpaths to walk on. Why? The hawkers have occupied it illegally. The roads are dangerous because the auto rickshaws are parked or cruising indiscriminately and private cars are double-parked illegally too. So what’s the solution? Skywalk. And not kicking encroachments out, or kicking the butts of auto and car drivers. The skywalk is like putting a cushioned toilet seat to cure loose motions – it relieves the sore cheeks but the motions continue.

We have a constitution, the Indian Penal Code, a judiciary, police, anti-corruption bureau, CBI (known in certain circles as Congress Bureau of Intimidation), various committees to probe (not solve), various crimes, economic offences wing, RAW (the name says it all), and god knows how many offshoots that are all supposed to prevent crime, corruption and obscene dances by adults and enforce law and order and pub closure times.

To me the Lokpal is a skywalk in disguise. Or a cushioned toilet seat, if you prefer that kind of humour. We want a Lokpal because none of the above works.

The current Anna Hazare movement is for a strong and powerful Lokpal. One whose purview (defined as the noise made by cat who likes the view), includes the Prime Minister of India. Let’s say we get that. Then what? Even a kid who is not old enough to wipe his own snot (butt if you prefer), knows the Prime Minister of India is a designation and not a role. A puppet whose strings are tied to the aprons of a dynasty (defined as nasty people who don’t die), which, even in the face of an all-powerful Lokpal will say, “Take the PM, kiss my snot; we will find another PM (short form of Puppet Minister).”

Then again, think some more and ask, “Who will appoint the Lokpal?” The same nasty bunch! It’s like having the world’s number one test cricket team with limping players.

Now, for a moment let’s suspend disbelief, and imagine that Anna Hazare’s movement succeeds in toppling the current government. The Loksabha is dissolved and we have general elections. Who forms the next government? The opposition? Do we have one? So we are back to square one – The Dynasty (Motto: Power is my right. Emergency is my heritage.).

I was there my friends, when we all marched to Gateway of India to light candles and protest 26/11. What a movement it was. What a moment it was. The educated youth was there. The rich SoBoites were there. Ministers got sacked. The city got its own commando force. The police got armoured vehicles and amphibian boats to patrol the roads and sea. Railway stations got metal detectors. Then, we got elections and the usual voter turnout and the same government.

Then, on 13/7/2011, we got three bomb blasts.

But what to do, I am a pessimist. A damp squib. Sorry Anna Hazare. I would have appreciated your fast had I not been eternally hungry. For a little grain of hope.

Woman versus Man

2011-08-03T14:03:00.000+05:30

Ah, that’s an old trick up there in the title - Grab the readers’, no, not what you are thinking old boy. Grab the readers’ attention with the promise of a little controversy and then let them down. Blame it on my advertising past where grabbing readers by the balls of their eyes is a highly prized skill and letting them down is standard practice.

The client thumps the table and declares, “Give us ads that get maximum eye balls!”

The agency thumps its chest and declares, “Yes sir!” and mutters to itself at the same time, ‘For that you need to have balls!’

So, if the title has had you rubbing your, no, not that again ol’ girl, rubbing your hands in anticipation of bio-theo-psycho-socio-logical insights into the great man-woman phenomenon, go away! Visit a library!

Now that we have gotten rid of cheap thrill-seeking and serious debate-seeking readers, time to get down to the business of this piece:

We are going to take women in social situations (you still here? Go away, there is no pun on ‘take’), and compare them with men.

As always, this piece is not original; it is based on a few observations and that’s it. I am sure similar observations have been made by teams of psycho/sociologists funded by universities with impressive seals and mottos in Latin that mean, ‘Making nonsense credible since 1582,’ and, depending on the source of funding, who publish papers that give scientific reasons why coffee is good or bad for you.

So here are some non-funded, non-original observations.

1. A woman walks into a room:

All men check her out, most of them surreptiously.

All women check her out openly.

Men don't notice what she is wearing. In fact the gifted ones try to imagine her without what she is wearing while the others try putting her face on certain pictures or videos they have seen on the net.

Women make a note of everything - from toe nail colour to hair colour - and try to figure out if they are original, fake or bought in a sale.

Getting no look in return, men go back to doing what they were doing.

Women decide that what she is wearing will look better on them and add a few things to their shopping list and also visit the parlour while they are at it.

1A. A man walks into a room:

Big deal. Shit happens. Or rather, nothing happens. Unless he has MONEY written all over his forehead. Or if there is a woman with him. Then we are back to situation one.

2. A woman gets up, says ‘bye’ to her group of women friends and leaves the room.

The women left behind do not continue their conversation. They wait until she is out of earshot. Then they start talking, about her.

“Did you notice? She has worn the same dress the last time we met!”

“She shouldn’t be wearing such dresses at all – makes her look fatter!”

“Hasn’t she been going to the gym for over two months now?”

“If I had a personal trainer like hers, I would go too!”

“Giggles.”

“I heard…”

“It’s true!”

“Really?!”

“What world do you live in?”

2A. A man gets up, says ‘bye’ to his group of men friends and leaves the room.

He has barely left the table when the men start talking.

“He doesn’t show it, but he lost quite bit on the market last week.”

“Dude, it’s the time to sell. Now! I made quite a packet yesterday.”

“What are you saying? Do you think I should too?”

“Damn! Watch the football guys – he just missed the goal by a whisker!”

Sorry, have to stop writing now. I have to channel my imagination elsewhere. A woman just walked into the room.

Welcome the new leader of the house

2011-06-21T15:01:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, in the morning, my ten-year old daughter was surprisingly engrossed in reading the front page of The Times of India. Surprising, because she normally reserves this kind of concentration for the front page of The Bombay Times. But before I could congratulate myself on her new found maturity and interest in current affairs, she got this look on her face that said Trouble. (When people say she has taken after her mother I only half-believe them. But when she gets this look I agree with them wholeheartedly.) Luckily, it was time for her to get to school so she couldn't translate the look into words.

Phew!

The sigh of relief lasted only until the evening. Once I was back from work the daughter sat me down:

“It’s time for a little chat,” she declared.

I sat down of course. As a much married man, I know it is futile to battle The Look.

“When we go visiting our relatives who gets the maximum attention?” she asked.
“You,” I replied.
“And your friends?” she continued.
“They positively shower you with attention, affection, kisses and gifts,” I replied. As a much married etc. I have realized the power of flattery and am not miserly in its use.
“Even perfect strangers, you'll admit, have gone gaga over me since I was so small,” she said holding her tiny palm a few inches above the floor.
“Yes indeed,” I admitted. I remembered with a pang the hugs and kisses she has received from attractive young ladies who were strangers and perfect at that. If only…
“I have been around for over ten years now and I have spent all that time being an integral part of the family. In fact, you can say that I am the face of the family. If you turn up at a family function without me, the first thing they enquire about is me, right?”
“Right,” I said, and this time I wasn't even flattering her.

(Yes, she did use the word, ‘integral’. She is a precocious young lady, my daughter. Not long ago I had told her exactly that: You are a precocius young lady. To which she had replied, “Is that what your generation calls a young girl who is cool?” I had slapped my forehead in response. She had commented that we should move out of the suburbs; there are too many mosquitoes here. Again, it had taken a lot to stop myself from slapping my forehead. And her.)

I wasn’t sure where this was going but I didn’t have a good feeling about it. (Read earlier references to The Look.) So I decided to conclude the conversation with some more flattery.

“Hey, you are the face of the family, the cool one and what's more, you are the future!” I said, sure that this would help me escape now. And she could go back to watching music videos unsuitable for her age. And mine.

“I am glad you brought the future up,” she said without blinking. “Now that you agree with all that and given that I have ten years' hands-on experience in the family, you should step down and make me the leader of the family.”

It took me a few minutes to respond and even then, all I could manage was, “Huh?”

In response she gave me sweet smile and said, “My eleventh birthday is a couple of months away. We could start the new arrangement from then!”

“Hey-hey-hey!” I exclaimed, “Whoa!” I was so taken aback that I was still incapable of coherent speech and all could manage was a string of exclamations. Finally I took a deep breath and let loose:

“Do you know what it takes to run a family? Do you think you can get up every morning, battle peak hour traffic, get to work, fight office politics, handle deadline pressures, all kinds of stress so you can earn some money and then make it last for a month? Do you think you can handle MOM? Do you have ANY IDEA what it takes?”

“Chill dad, there is no need to scream,” she replied without batting an eyelid, “you are doing a great job earning the bread, paying my cell phone bills, mom's credit card bills and handling the stress. Mom’s awesome at handling the home stuff. You guys keep up the good work. All I am saying is leave the leadership thing to me. After all, we need a young attractive face to show the world that we are cool family!”

“And why the,” I swallowed an expletive here, “Why do you think that it's necessary? And what makes you think you are qualified?”

“Wait here,” she said with quiet authority and walked away. She returned after a few moments (moments I spent doing breathing exercises), with the newspaper. “Here,” she said pointing at a news item on the front page, “Read this.”

I read:

“I think it is time that Rahul can become the prime minister,” (Digvijay) Singh was quoted… adding, “Rahul is now 40 and he has been working for the party for the last seven to eight years.”

I finished and without bothering to look at her triumphant face, walked away and burnt the newspaper. No, I didn't do that. Instead I went and looked at the calendar: I have one month and twenty nine days before I hand over the charge to my daughter on her birthday. After all, she is better qualified.

Fast tips to being a celebrity

2011-06-06T18:47:00.000+05:30

Anna Hazare, the name that launched millions FB updates and thousands of celebrity tweets (not to be confused with the similar sounding ‘twits’), and whose deceptive spelling had the Western media imagining a lady named Anna with the impossible second name Hazare, has launched more than the Jan Lokpal movement. His unprecedented and unexpected success in creating mass and upper class hysteria, had Baba (a word inspired by the sound a sheep makes in the classic nursery rhyme), Ramdev (ram meaning male sheep, which explains the prefix baba), in contortions.

Flashback.

Baba: Here I am, getting up every morning at four and twisting my body into impossible shapes to get the attention of the nation, teaching the world to breathe and using desperate measures like declaring homosexuality to be a disease to get my face (yes, somewhere he has a face in that mass of tangled hair) in the news, and there comes an old man from a village and pulls the yoga mat from under my posture! Why, I even tried hitching my slow wagon to his fast train, but no, he continued to hog the limelight. Ram, ram, ram! (Said to rhyme with damn, damn, damn.) He even had all kinds of people wearing Anna cap (formerly known as the Gandhi cap), with the slogan, “Mai Anna Hazare” and marching up and down streets with candles as if there was a power outage in the city. But finally, there is some relief. As the saying goes, ‘Bhagwan ke ghar mein der hain, andher nahin’ (loosely translated, ‘There is delay in god’s house, not darkness’. With every religion having a ritual of lighting lamps, candles etc. but obviously there is no darkness.) The process of formulating the Lokpal Bill is all tangled up like a novice yoga practitioner attempting one of my asanas– what do you expect with me adding my two bits to it? But it is not enough! Anna might come before Baba, alphabetically speaking, but as the other saying goes, ‘Der aaye, durust aaye’, (loose translation – Came late, came correct), my time has to come. I have to make it come.

Saying this Baba did rapid breathing movements that created the effect of him being hit in the belly by rapid Tyson punches. This removal of hot air from his body calmed Baba somewhat. He decided to pray and began chanting, “Baba black sheep have you any fool?” until he reached a state of meditation where just one word remained in his consciousness – Black. Exhausted, he scratched his left ear with his left toe and exclaimed, “Black! That’s it! Anna, this will make you feel sheepish!”

The next moment he called a press conference (defined as the conference you get when you press the right buttons), and announced:

“Unless and until the government forms a committee (with me in it), to get all the black money stashed abroad, I will fast unto death!” Of course, he didn’t specify whose death. And as the cameras flashed and TV reporters thrust their microphones into his beard, he said to himself, ‘Just wait Anna. The day is not far when everyone from Rahul Bose to Priyanka Chopra will sport a beard like me with a tattoo on their foreheads – Mai Baba Ramdev’.

Breaking news – In a midnight operation, Baba and his followers were evicted by the police from the Ramlila Grounds. Baba escaped by jumping into the women’s section – but naturally, he doesn’t suffer from that disease called homosexuality. A Page 3 reporter spoke to one of his followers after the incident:

Page 3 reporter: Does Baba have a squint?

Follower: No, he just has one eye on the cameras.

No beauty without cruelty

2011-06-03T13:04:00.003+05:30

In the Hollywood movie, Shallow Hal, Jack Black’s perception is altered and he begins seeing people for what they are inside and not for what they appear to be on the outside. As a result Jack sees a 300-pound woman as Gwyneth Paltrow and of course, falls in love with her. Towards the end of the movie, Jack’s perception is re-altered to normal and he sees the ‘real’ body of his lady love. Of course, he is put off and after the usual twists and turns in a Hollywood romantic comedy, returns to his senses and realizes the folly of judging people (and his lover), by their appearances. He reaches the conclusion that a she-elephant with a heart of gold is any day superior to a b* with a black heart.

What a load of bull.

I had watched the movie in bits and pieces on TV and decided to find out the name of the actress who played the 300-pounder. My search threw up (no puns intended), a number of web sites. But guess what – the weighty actress’s name didn’t show up in the cast. Here’s a link to the imdb web site; check it out for yourself. The sites list three names – Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jason Alexander. Period.

That made me wonder about the motivation behind the making of the movie. Maybe the directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly are fat and hence. But no. They aren’t. What about the writer, Sean Moynihan? Not him either. So what? Jack Black? He is plump, sure, but nowhere near the size of the Kung Fu Panda he lends his voice to.

So I sit back and imagine the discussion between the Studio Executives:

Studio Exec 1: It’s a thin plot.

SE 2: That’s a bad joke.

SE: Sorry, unintended. But who’d want to see Jack romance a mammoth?

SE 2: Now you are talking sense. But the beauty is, no one sees her, not even Jack, until the very end!

SE: Agreed, but listen up dude. I know it’s a romantic comedy and research has proven again and again that the average movie-goer is a moron – but with practically all industries and all media in the world spending billions of dollars promoting the toothpick figure as the ideal beauty, what chance do we have? I mean ask a man in the street if he is heard of Gandhi and he will say, ‘No’. But ask about Kate Moss… You know what I mean.

SE 2: All I know is you are talking like an intellectual and if the Board hears you, you will be fired. But wait. You said a relevant thing there.

SE: I did? What?

SE 2: Research. Let’s call in the research guy.

Researh Guy: Hmm. According to the last figures, 34% of the US population is obese. US has the highest obesity ratio in the world.

SE 2: That means, we have a captive audience of 34% Americans. Plus, if we cast a hot toothpick as the chick this guy sees with this altered perception, we have 100% men wanting to see the movie. We are doing this film.

But that’s my imagination so you can discount it. However what you cannot discount is the fact that our ideas of beauty are shaped by our environment and we are not born with them. Yeah, we don’t cry when we are born because we find the doctor or the mid-wife or the nurse ugly; we cry because the doctor slaps us on our bottom. I wish other professions had the luxury of slapping their sources of income; I know more than a few clients who could do with some butt-slapping.

Let's admit it. Every culture, every region and every society has its own definition of beauty. Like certain African tribes believed that the darker you were, the more beautiful you were. Which is also a prejudice of sorts because it implies that lighter complexions are not beautiful. Or in Burma, as it was called then, a tribe believed that longer a woman's neck the more attractive she was. Today, with the power of western money, corporations and media has led us to believe that beauty is thin, fair and young. Yeah, young too - ask the makers of Botox. Though I know men who find older women more attractive - they are usually described as kinky. I know women who find older men attractive too – they are described as bounty hunters.

So it is really this: Whether it is media, opinion leaders, the village elders or just some king with a kink (imagine the chaos if a Burmese tribal found his way to Africa and saw a giraffe!), it is always someone with power who decides what is good, what is bad, what is beautiful and what is not.

To bring this post to a quick conclusion (before I start a long rant on fairness and anti-ageing creams, weight loss clinics, gyms, silicone or a graphic description about the Burmese who saw a giraffe), here’s the problem with ‘Real’ beauty:

Every concept of beauty is inherently exclusive. When you define something as beautiful, you automatically condemn those who don't fit into the definition as ugly. And therein hides the tragedy.

Not cricket

2011-04-18T17:40:00.003+05:30

A couple of days ago, I went to Wankhede Stadium to watch the IPL 20-20 cricket match between Mumbai Indians and Kochi Tuskers. Thousands of words have already been written, and more will be written, about why Mumbai lost and Kochi won, so I am not going to add to that. Instead, I will write about things I saw but were not necessarily cricket.

We had to queue up, climb a flight of stairs to go up a bridge, cross the bridge, come down and enter the stadium. I had climbed the same bridge in 1987, when India met England in the World Cup semi-finals and had lost. 24 years later the cops and the organisers are doing a better job. However, when it comes to moving ahead in an orderly queue, ants are definitely more evolved.

Inside the atmosphere was chaotic. Mumbai Indians’ fans outnumbered the visiting teams by a large margin and it showed. There was a time when commentators said complimentary things about Mumbai’s cricket fans because they were knowledgeable about the game, were well-behaved and most important, applauded the opposition if it played a good shot or bowled a great ball. Not in this match. It was a partisan crowd. Hardly anyone applauded the opposition. Which is funny because no one is really from Mumbai. Except for the fishing community, who either doesn’t care about the IPL or can’t afford the price of a ticket. And yes of course, this is the IPL, a thing that most sections of the media choose to portray as some kind of war - between this captain and that, this owner and that, this celebrity or that, even this city and that. Team loyalty, in this case, has to be created and fuelled throughout, else who will buy the tickets or switch on the telly?

There was also a time when Mumbai was called the cradle of Indian cricket because it nurtured young cricketers who made it to the national team in large numbers. Today, it is still the cradle of Indian cricket because from the time a child is in the cradle Mumbai mums and dads start dreaming of making him the next Tendulkar and you see boys carrying cricket kit bags the size of a cradle in grounds around the city.

If all the shouting, waving, whistling and blowing your own vuvuzelas made you hungry, you could buy a vada-pav, samosa, roll, burger, sandwich, ice cream, soft drink and water at the venue. However, all choices were vegetarian. I wonder why. I wonder if the Mumbai Cricket Association recommends a vegetarian diet for sportspersons and fans alike and whether that was the reason why the Mumbai Indians’ attack lacked teeth.

Apart from a glitzy and large electronic scoreboard, there was also a traditional black and white one. It was being operated by an unseen pair of hands, manually. But no one paid attention to it – it still lived in the era of day cricket and was rather dimly lit.

We had tickets for seats in the Sachin Tendulkar Stand. Thousands of words have been written about the miniature bucket seats (in a city with a perennial water scarcity, the buckets are bound to be small – one argument goes), and the lack of leg room, so I will not add more. But I believe like all great architecture is inspired by local conditions, the architecture of the renovated stadium (and hence the seating), probably takes inspiration from Mumbai’s iconic space-crunched slums as made famous by a movie that was not about dogs but made Danny Boyle a millionaire.

There were two more stands named after Mumbai cricketers – Sunil Gavaskar and Vijay Merchant. From where we sat, I couldn’t see any more. I am certain that most young spectators were wondering who Mr. Merchant was and why he had a stand named after him. Well, such is the effect of time. However, despite having played his last one day match in this very stadium 24 years ago, the same one I had attended, no one would have been wondering who Sunil Gavaskar is. After retiring, he continues to enjoy a successful career as a cricket commentator and manages to stay in the news. 24 years from now people will still know him because his son has followed his footsteps in to the experts’ panel, and every time someone wants to know who he is, they will be told, “Oh, he is Sunil Gavaskar’s son.” Of course Merchant, Gavaskar and Tendulkar are all cricketing greats from Mumbai and they deserve their stands.

No prizes for guessing who gets the biggest name of them all. The politician of course. That’s who the Mumbai stadium is named after – Sheshrao Wankhede, a barrister, a minor politician and the President of Mumbai Cricket Association in 1974 when the stadium was built.
Maybe I am being too harsh. For all you know young Sheshrao might have led his school cricket team to triumphs unheard of!

When the match ended, we retraced our steps over the bridge and out. There was no pushing, shoving, shouting or trumpeting. There was no waiting for the presentation ceremony either. Everyone plodded, including a couple wearing rather strange headgear. On closer observation it turned out that the man was wearing a clown’s hat and carrying his wife’s hand bag. Maybe he had lost a bet. Or maybe it was some kind of superstition. Like one of the guys who works with me requested today, “Please don’t go to watch Mumbai play; every time you do that, we lose.”

Sorry Mumbai Indians for being responsible for your failure; won’t happen again.

The pizza, like the rose, by any other name...

2011-04-08T15:12:00.003+05:30

Recently I had lunch at a new restaurant called California Pizza Kitchen. It's a high end kind of place where a pizza costs around 350 rupees plus loads of tax. The décor is faux something; I am not an authority on architecture or interior design but the place could have been described as ‘contemporary (word meaning a con that doesn't last too long), Italian’. For those who have seen the Godfather Trilogy at an impressionable age, the term contemporary Italian might inspire images of Italian men in sharp cut suits carrying AK 47s instead of Tommy guns. But hold your imagination - the term ‘contemporary something’ is used by the builder-architect-interior design industry to describe something that looks modern and very vaguely resembles something but you can’t say what.

But back to California Pizza Kitchen. The food, pizza and pasta in our case, was good. The two desserts we ordered, Red Velvet Cake and Tiramisu, were big, beautiful and finger-lickingly yummy. But what flummoxed me was the name of the place - I can’t get it out of my head and I keep wondering about it.

For those who know their geography, California is the place where a whole bunch of Indians work in the IT (not income tax), industry in Silicon Valley* and live in areas like San José (where the ‘j’ is pronounced as an ‘h’), and Bay Area. In fact, there was a time in my childhood when bright kids (described as kids who attended expensive tuition classes), would spell out their career ambition as, “I live in the Bombay Area but when I grow up I want to drop the Bom”. Only kids (and parents) in the know would ‘get’ what they were saying while the rest would wonder who they wanted to drop the ‘Bom’ on.

*Sorry, this being a responsible blog, we will not give in to the temptation cracking one-liners about Silicon Valley and Pamela Anderson.

For those who know their literature, California features in the novel, ‘Grapes of Wrath’ by John Steinbeck (not to be confused with the piano by the same name). But there are only a handful people who would make this connection. But there is a vineyard full of people who will connect grapes to California. “Napa Valley and California wines,” they will say as they enrol for golf lessons as the next step to the next level in the corporate world, “I have a white from my last wine tour, hic, that goes well with tandoori chicken”.

But California and pizza? That’s not a connection. (Well, neither is California and kitchen a logical connection, but if people are eating in that state one presumes they have kitchens too.) Of course, like closer home, where there is always talk about connections between Bollywood and the underworld, there might be a connection between Hollywood (located in California), and the Mafia which is run by Sicilians who are reluctant Italians and an inspiration for, among other things, the Godfather books, movies and TV series. But those who know their Godfather will vouch for the fact that the Corleones never ate pizza. Not on screen, not in the book. I mean what kind respect would you have for Brando if you saw him struggling to separate a slice of pizza while battling chewing gum-like strings of cheese?

So why would anyone name an eatery California Pizza Kitchen? Here’s an implausible theory or two.

Once upon a time, I used to live in a far-flung western suburb of Mumbai. (Yeah, I wasn’t bright and didn’t make it to the Anderson Valley, sorry, to Silicon Pamela, damn, I mean Silicon Valley). Parked on the corner of the highway and my poor lane used to be a Chinese Fast Food Cart. (Further down was a dance bar called 'Madonna'. But that's another story and this is a responsible kind of blog.) The Chinese Cart was intriguingly named ‘American Chinese Fast Food’. I used to find it funny. But not anymore. The owner was probably ahead of his time. Or, he had a bright son who had migrated to the Silicon part of America and had funded his father’s Chinese Food Enterprise. Or maybe he, the owner and not the son, made a fortune on his American Chinese Cart and has now launched the hip (not to be confused with the body part of the same spelling), and happening Grade I eatery called California Pizza Kitchen. Luck to him I say. But not without a little worry that soon it might turn into a trend and we will have restaurants with names like ‘London Dim Sums’ and ‘Paris Biryani House’ started by someone who made a fortune with a road-side enterprise called ‘Shanghai Wada Pav’.

Death of a writer, kind of.

2011-04-06T18:52:00.000+05:30

‘I have neglected my writing,’ I say to myself, 'I am going to sit here for at least, no, for exactly twenty minutes. Apart from looking up occasionally at the sky for inspiration and at every girl who walks in, I am going to put my nose to the paper and write. And if need be, re-write. Maybe at the end of these twenty minutes, I would have written utter nonsense or my pen would have spent more time suspended over the paper instead of running on it, but I will get up happy in the knowledge that I have tried. It is this kind of discipline that made Somerset Maugham a great and prolific writer; he would sit in front of his typewriter for two hours at an appointed time every day. It didn’t matter whether he wrote or not. Of course I can’t spare two hours a day. Twenty minutes is all I can afford every other day what with Facebook, Twitter and checking my e-mail on the phone, exchanging and forwarding ideas, thoughts and videos over the internet – the days are so full with action that it is a miracle that I can find twenty whole minutes every alternate day for this. The internet is truly a democratic medium – it is fed and kept alive by common people like me and you; without us this wonderful thing will implode and wither away like an uncharged cell phone. Maugham had it easy. If he wrote a letter, he would get a reply several days, even weeks or months later and he could always blame the postal services if he didn’t feel like replying right away.

Anyway, this sitting in a café and working like Hemingway is totally awesome. Except that there are so many girls walking in every now and then. And the sky is barely visible through the gaps in the buildings, gaps that aren’t wide enough for inspiration to flow through. And it is sixteen minutes since I switched off the phone and I wonder how many text messages and e-mails I have missed or if the internet has imploded worldwide because without realizing everyone has decided to spend twenty minutes without checking it. And that girl three tables away has looked at me the third time and I believe in the old saying – third time lucky. It’s already eighteen and half minutes and honestly, what’s going to happen in the next ninety seconds that hasn’t so far? I have only one regret - The world just lost the next Maugham or Hemingway. Or maybe even Shakespeare.’

So who's your hero?

2011-03-04T20:30:00.001+05:30

A politician’s son got married to a politician’s daughter in Delhi. The whole affair cost Rs. 100 crore out of which 33 crore was spent on buying a 7-seater helicopter for the bridegroom. Needless to say, all the money was spent by the bride’s family.

But the biggest news of the event is the barber from the bride’s side who was paid Rs. 2.5 lakh as a tip. Because the groom deserved a fat wedding and a chopper. The barber just got lucky.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court set aside the appointment of the CVC of India as being illegal on the grounds that he had a case of corruption pending against him. The ruling party says it appointed him because he was a really nice guy and his bio-data didn’t mention the corruption case!!! By the way, CVC stands for Chief Vigilance Commissioner. The newspapers are celebrating the fact that since the appointment of the current Chief Justice cases like these are getting the attention they deserve from the Supreme Court after a lull of three years.

That’s because the earlier Chief Justice was a laidback guy and after his retirement his family is under investigation for having assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.

(As I write this the Prime Minister of India has accepted responsibility for the appointment of the CVC.
“I have already said I respect the judgement of the Supreme Court,” Singh told a televised press conference. “I accept my responsibility.”
So what next? Will he resign? Or will he be sacked? Are you kidding? His party has the majority. He will be allowed to stay on the same grounds as the appointment of the CVC – he is such a nice guy.)

Chew on this too: Out of the 543 members of Lok Sabha, 154 have criminal cases against them.

It is a common thing these days to see a BMW or Mercedes with a red light on top being chaperoned by a bunch of police vehicles. No one pays attention and wonders what the salary of a minister is in this country. Neither does anyone react when a politician puts a few hundred crore against his or her name while declaring assets and goes on to put his or her occupation as ‘farmer’.

Everything is in the open. Like Adarsh or 2G. The building is there for everyone to see. The 2G spectrum was auctioned, that is, the price it was sold for was public knowledge.

No one cares. Ever wonder why?

Is it our ‘chalta hain’ attitude? Let it be yaar. They are politicians and hence they are corrupt. Ditto for cops and bureaucrats.

Or is it?

The capital of this country is the capital of ‘jugad’ – if there is an illegal way of doing it, we will find it or create it and get work done. The means justify the ends. We like success. And everyone knows that you can’t be successful or powerful or wealthy without bending a rule or two, right?

Mumbai’s most famous paani-puriwallah is at Elco Market on Hill Road in Bandra. He started off humbly. He invented cold paani-puri and made a fortune. When I first heard of him, they said, “He is a road-side paani-puriwallah but owns a Mercedes.” It didn’t matter that his stalls were illegal. Or he inconvenienced thousands of pedestrians by encroaching on an entire stretch of pavement. What mattered was, ‘He has a Mercedes.’

Chief Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia of the Supreme Court started off humbly too. He started as a Class IV employee and has risen to the rank of Chief Justice of the highest court in the country. His father was a poor defence clerk.

But I have yet to meet anyone who speaks about him in the same manner as they speak about the paani-puriwallah. That’s probably because he doesn’t have a Mercedes.

And therein lies the problem.

The Annual Union Budget - An Analysis

2011-02-28T15:03:00.000+05:30

The Union Budget is being presented today.

Prices of some things will go up.

Price of some things will come down.

For example:

Cell phones will become cheaper.

Plastic will become more expensive.

But because plastic is needed to manufacture cell phones,
they will not become cheaper.

And so on.

Such is life.

Inspired rubbish

2011-02-25T15:51:00.000+05:30

There is a guy who sends an SMS to me every morning. He used to send one every Monday, but now thanks to being complimented by a rather attractive friend of ours (men will be boys even when they are men), he is much inspired and lets loose daily. Yesterday he was extra prolific and sent me two. (I wonder who complimented him yesterday.) Needless to say, these are not mere text messages, these are pearls of wisdom/essence of humanity/distillations of spirituality (no, the last one does not mean whisky or vodka but you are close, very close). They are designed to inspire me and others to: a. Lead a happy life. b. Be confident. c. Love humanity. d. Be humble. e. Make me call my mother. f. Etc. I wonder what drives people to do this? One reason could be the cellular phone service providers of course – these days you can choose a pre-paid plan where you get to send 500 text messages free every day. I think all of us should buy one of these ‘message packs’ and send 500 messages to Raja every day asking him to confess his 2G crimes. I am sure he will confess just to stop his phone from ringing. Or vibrating, if he is that kind of guy. If the message pack strategy fails, we must all subscribe to the offer from a service provider who is advertising that we can now make calls for zero paise per minute. (How can any service provider afford it? Simple – they bought 2G spectrum really, really cheap.) Armed with the power of free calls we should all call Raja at all times of day and night and ask him:

You: “Sir, yourself Raja, sir?

Raja: Yes.

You: Congratulations sir, we are offering you a black credit card with limit of 3000 crore and zero per cent interest.”

Sorry. We should call Raja and say, “Mr. Raja, tell us all.”

But I am being frivolous, which according to serious people is an ‘f’ word. So let us get serious. These inspiring ‘forwards’ (for me that is an ‘f’ word), are a bigger threat when sent through the thing that will run the whole world soon. Did you say iPad? Wrong answer, Apple will collapse when Jobs quits and Cook takes over. (Corny joke alert: What will the headlines say when Steve quits Apple? A: Steve without Jobs. Corny joke alert 2: What will they say when Apple collapses under Cook? A: How to Cook Apple.)

The f’wards (short form for forwards), are a bigger threat on the internet. If you have been on the internet for long it means your company is footing the bill. Sorry, if you have been on the internet for long you must have received links to inspirational stories, pictures, videos and PowerPoint presentations showing people who have overcome adversity, handicaps, illnesses and generally spread happiness, joy, peace, love, forgiveness, spirituality and AIDS, sorry, aid. These f’wards are usually titled, 'Amazing! True Story!' And end by telling you how lucky you are to have what you have so why are you complaining and to make the most of what you have. Dude, what do you think I am doing? I am taking what I have and raising a family and paying the mortgage and buying petrol for the car so I can keep up with the Joneses who are called Sharmas or Khannas or some such in India. Why, last month I didn’t stop buying onions either! Though I must admit that I have always used the office internet including for downloading disgusting videos like a full Himesh song. I was younger then and everybody was doing it, okay? But the question is, what kind of person sits and makes those inspirational PowerPoint presentations? And where do they get that music from? (Possible answer – they record it on their phones while stuck in a lift.) I mean, what inspires them? Do they get to office and google 'random nature/baby/dolphin pictures' followed by 'random quotes about all of the above' and feed the results to software that automatically marries the words and pictures? And do these guys quickly minimise the browser when the boss appears? “Working on the figures for your annual sales presentation sir- PowerPoint is such a blessing.” The internet is truly a strange animal and it seems to do strange things to people who have too much free time and free access.

And then, have you ever wondered who starts these chains of video f’wards? By the same logic, it would be guys with really, really fast internet connections in their offices. “Umm-hmm, everyone’s gone home and now I can claim a dinner voucher and cab fare home! And of course, log on to youtube and make the world a better place. There, I have typed in ‘videos to make the world a better place’ and hit ‘search’! Huh, what’s this? A TV commercial for zero paise per minute calls? Let me try, ‘How to overcome a handicap’. Wow! A ‘Pam Anderson promotes silicon to boost your confidence video!’ I will watch that for a bit; I guess the world can wait for a bit.”

If nothing else, we must appreciate the patience of this guy (or girl). The amount of videos they must be watching to zero in on one that is exactly right for everyone in their contact list must be enormous. Truly, the mind boggles at the mere thought.

Or is there a more sinister explanation? Like men and women collecting and sending f’wards round the clock like Santa’s (no, not the one in Sardarji jokes), elves in BPOs (short form for Bangalore Person’s Offices) set up by channels who have guys curing men and women with a jab of the forefinger on the forehead? Makes me wonder what these miracle men with the Gift of the Gab, sorry I meant, Gift of the Jab are doing on TV channels, jabbing the infirm in jamborees held in large stadia and studios booked by paying high rents. Shouldn’t they sit in hospital OPDs and cure the world’s health problems once and for all?

And so my bafflement at the ways of this world continues. But I must confess – maybe my friends’ messages and videos really work. After all, they did inspire this post.

Baffled

2011-02-21T19:08:00.000+05:30

As I confessed in my last post, I am having trouble keeping the ol' blog alive. The main reason is work and tonnes of it. Thanks to which, I can barely find enough time write a coherent post. 'Wait,' I say to myself, 'you were never coherent.' With that liberating thought, I go on and unleash these unconnected bits on you.

1. "Why don't we move to the drawing room," she suggested. That had me wondering, no, not what you are thinking. I wondered why it is called 'drawing room'. I have never seen anyone drawing in the room in question. Except kids of course. But they draw everywhere - I remember waking up one summer afternoon to find a house-tree-river-hills-sunrise-crow tattoo drawn on my bare back.

2. On a related note, why is a 'chest of drawers' called that? Well, drawers I can understand. Because we have to draw them out. But why a 'chest'? Why not a hip or waist of drawers?

Maybe the answer to 1 is in 2 - A drawing room is where you draw people in. Or out, if you are that kind of host.

3. Taking the same argument forward, why isn't a bedroom called 'lying room'? After all, it is a room where people lie. For example, "Oh god, I am coming".

4. The 2G spectrum was auctioned. That is, the price at which it was sold was public knowledge. Then why did it take so long for the scam to come to light? Don’t we have auditors? Or maybe the 3000 crore siphoned off by Raja is loose change for those in power and doesn't merit attention.

5. The wall constructed to guard the Siddhivinayak Temple against terrorists cost 11 crore rupees. I wonder why a wall should cost that much to build. I also wonder how many kilometres of fence we can put up on the Indo-Pak border in the same amount. Or how many new boots we can buy for our soldiers in Siachen. Or bullet-proof vests for the local cops.

6. Lastly, it is a week since Valentine's Day. I hope you have recovered – if from nothing else, from the overdose of the colour red. Red balloons, heart-shaped our otherwise, cards, shirts, dresses and even sneakers hung around in shop windows. I wonder why red is the colour of Valentine's day (and of love). I wonder why people don't get the connection – Red is also the colour of blood, of the AIDS ribbon and the flag they put up to warn you, 'Caution. Manhole Open.'

News. After the break.

2011-02-18T15:37:00.001+05:30

This is the longest I have been away from the good ol' blog since the time I started this gig. The reasons are the usual boring cliché ones - an overdose of work. There are other reasons too - each one is too insignificant to list here but the small bits add up and create road blocks.

There is too much happening in the world too. My favourite butt of jokes - the politicians and bureaucrats are in a race to outdo each other to gain top honours in areas of incompetence, corruption and utter indifference. Not just in our country, but elsewhere in the world too. Of late, I have heard this being said quite a few times, "If things continue this way, soon we will have a revolution like Egypt." I don't think so. We, the Indian middle class, are indifferent in our own way and are not exactly above reproach ourselves. That, and our new-found prosperity will ensure that we will not congregate in, hey, we don't even have a common square where we can meet to protest. On the other hand, mini-revolutions are happening all around us in the country. The Maoists are surfacing in newer and newer places around the country. They were called Naxalites once and I have heard stories about them from my uncle who studied in IIT Kharagpur in the sixties. When I was in college I had attended a concert of the Naxalite-Poet, Gadar, from Andhra Pradesh. The North-East has never been quiet. For anyone who is twenty years old in Kashmir peace is an unnatural phenomenon. One thing that probably stops us from breaking out into protests like in Egypt is probably the size of our country and the lack of a common language and shared culture. (This is my theory and as always, is based on nothing except my opinion.) The danger is that if the economic and social gaps between the haves and have-nots keep widening then these scattered mutinies will intensify and turn more areas of our country into replicas of Kashmir.

This is way too serious. This blog used to be a fun thing to read once. Maybe it is better to recover from whatever I am suffering from and then return to blogging!

But hello! Don't go away! I have news to share! It is about me. Last month, one of the photographs clicked by me was included in an online journal of Asian American Poetry published in the USA.

If you click here, it will lead to the page in the journal that features the photograph.

One of my short stories had won the top prize in a contest held by an independent book store in Vermont, USA. K.D. Norris, one of the winning writers in that contest is the editor of the arts and literature section in a local newspaper called Bennington Banner. He interviewed me on e-mail last week and yesterday's Bennington Banner carried the interview.

Click here to read the interview.

Now let me go and bury my nose where it belongs - in work. Until soon. Hopefully.

Five-star nonsense

2010-12-21T18:31:00.000+05:30

Last week I had to attend a work-related presentation at a five-star hotel. This particular hotel has a grand name and a cramped lobby with a ceiling that might make the average basketball player sue it for damage to the top of his head. The lobby has a rather strange seating arrangement – four chairs sit at four corners of a rug that has a soleful look about it. (Soleful is not to be confused with ‘soulful’ and it means ‘something that has been trampled on by many soles’. No, ‘The stampede was a soleful sight’ is not correct usage and is in fact rather cruel and only the electronic media is allowed it.) The four lonely chairs seemed to be the hotel’s way of telling you not very subtly, ‘Sit here you freeloader and move onto the coffee shop when the person you are meeting arrives’. Well, these are difficult times and the recession might have receded here in shining India but not in the developed world where most of these starred hotels have their headquarters (defined as a place where ‘business heads count and cling onto every quarter’).

I was early for the presentation. I am a punctual kind of chap; when there’s free food and booze involved I prefer to start early. But the client was late because the grand hotel is near Mumbai’s international airport – a place where people spend two hours or more to reach, fighting their way through bad roads and crazy traffic so that they can reach three hours early for an aeroplane journey that sometimes lasts for a couple of hours.

But back to the hotel - Sitting there on my solitary chair I had nothing else to do but to observe the events happening in that microcosm of the world (defined as ‘a cramped place where people of various nationalities are forced to spend time waiting for someone to buy them a coffee at the cost of an airline ticket’). I decided to begin my observation by looking outside. No, I didn’t get up from my chair, lonely or not, at my age sitting on one beats standing on the old legs any day. For a while I admired the ramrod-straight back of the durban (Hindi word for ‘man who opens doors and wears a turban. Do not confuse with the city in South Africa with the same spelling), and also the valets, who are strange kind of spirits that appear magically when you drive into a hotel lobby and disappear magically when you want to hand them the ticket to get your car back. But I tired of the game soon enough. I could have continued staring outside - there is nothing to beat ‘Count the number of white versus black cars’ game while sitting in a five-star lobby but I only play it when the lobby has comfortable sofas and there is no danger of falling off when you begin dozing. Once I had shifted my gaze inwards, realization dawned up on me – I wasn’t alone. There were many soles trampling the rug and resting their weary feet by taking refuge in the chairs. A lady of advanced and indeterminate age hailing from that large and rich place called the Middle East (which is really the Middle West if you are in India but entire cultures have crumbled in the face of the American onslaught and in comparison, geographical accuracy is a minor casualty). The lady had a couple of large plastic bags which is understandable if you are a tourist– Indian culture is not without its influences and the lady must have succumbed to the uniquely Indian habit of carrying stuff around in plastic bags. Riddle: Q. How do you recognise an Indian tourist abroad? A. By the plastic bag he/she is carrying. The stuff we carry in them when abroad ranges from water bottles, boxes with goodies from home, napkins, ketchup and other sachets picked up from flights, hotels and restaurants and clothes washed just before checking out from the hotel.

The Middle-Eastern lady reached deep into one of the bags and extricated a pair of sneakers from it. Obviously, she had been shopping. Or to Siddhivinayak Temple. She smiled at the sneakers and proceeded to try one. Her smile turned into a grin. Unable to bear so much happiness in one sole, I shifted my gaze to a bunch of Far Eastern gentlemen who debated loudly about – how am I supposed to know, they were talking in Far Eastern. And suddenly, out of nowhere, Santa Claus emerged wearing a silk sari and with two attendants in tow. She proceeded to the large Christmas tree strategically placed to hide a tear in the wallpaper and placed the gift boxes in her arms at its base. Her attendants followed suit. Her task done she turned around to face me and the light shone off her brass name tag and my apologies her name wasn’t Santa but the more Indian, Shanta. I wondered if I were to pick up a box would I find sneakers that fit me. But after a while I tired of this game too. The activity in the microcosm had became repetitive. The valets appeared and disappeared. Bell hops hopped. The front office girls parted their lips, showed their teeth and shut them, the chairs didn’t move a butt, sorry, a bit.

I decided to explore the men’s cloakroom (called rest room in four-star, bathroom in three-star, toilet in two-star, loo in one-star and raised little finger in no-star hotels). Now these five-star cloaks (that’s the fashionable abbreviation and not SMS lingo), are wonderful places and I have spent many a happy hour in them trying to figure out how to make the faucet work or where the flush lever is. No, there is never a plastic mug or a jet spray in these places so don’t even bother looking for one. I ambled gently towards the cloak, a smile of anticipation on my parched lips (unlike humbler places they don’t offer you free water here. In fact, most take it as a personal affront if you say no to bottled water and show faith in their in-house water purifier). I had visions of doing my business, washing my hands with fine perfumed liquid soap, splashing some water on my face, wiping both with three tiny napkins held out by a man wearing a uniform made from the same material as the napkins and after wiping, indulging in the act of dropping them into a wicker basket unmindful of the laundry bill. That, and having my shoes shined by an automatic shoe-shine machine free of charge. But I was in for a surprise. The grand hotel had outdone itself. There were TV screens inside. Mini ones, embedded in the wall above every alternate urinal and tuned into CNN! And they were showing the live telecast of the Nobel Prize Ceremony where ninety per cent of the screen time was spent on showing an empty chair where Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner from China was supposed to sit. (I am tempted to make a corny comment about my being pissed off about his absence but in the larger interest of Indo-Chinese relations, I will desist.)

I cursed myself for sitting outside for so long, wasting my time watching occupied chairs and trying to convince myself that like the great Somerset Maugham I was sitting in a hotel (he sat in the bar the lucky…), I was observing the world with a cynic’s eye. Damn! Never again shall I be tempted by solitary chair or cushy couch or Shanta Claus. This is where I will head to in the future – for entertainment and to take home a napkin as a memento. Who knows, they might soon have iPads in here and I will be able to read my blog - what better place, eh?!

One story, two books and an award.

2010-12-16T18:37:00.000+05:30

Every year since 2005, Penguin India publishes an anthology called ‘First Proof – The Penguin Book of New Writing’. The book comprises fiction, non-fiction and poetry by first-time writers, established writers writing in a new genre and translations from Indian languages. This year’s book was published in November 2010 and this is how the cover looks.

Northshire, a book store in Vermont, USA, is one of the few surviving independent book stores in the US and it held a contest earlier this year called ‘2010 Shires Press Short Story Contest’. The winners of the contest were declared a couple of months ago and a book containing the award-winning story and nine short-listed ones was released on December 8 in Vermont. This is how this book’s cover looks.

The two books have one story in common – ‘Aaba and Other Mysteries’ written by me.

Now for the award part. ‘Aaba’ is not only in the Shires book but it also won the top prize in the contest.

‘Aaba and Other Mysteries’ features in the fiction section of ‘First Proof’ and is a thinly disguised memoir; the story is set in the seventies and early eighties and told from a boy’s perspective as he grew up in the textile mill area of Mumbai.

Here's a short review of 'First Proof' from The Times of India:

‘First Proof’ was out in November but for reasons beyond the control of Penguin India, it is taking its time reaching book stores around the country. The last I checked it hadn’t reached Landmark, Crossword and Strand in Mumbai. A dear friend of mine stumbled upon two copies at the Crossword store at Bangalore airport and picked them up for me. I ordered mine on www.flipkart.com last Monday and they delivered them in 48 hours flat. If you want to buy a copy of the ‘First Proof’ I recommend www.flipkart.com – it also offers a discount of Rs.47 on the printed price. Click here if you would like to buy one.

I would love to send soft copies of the story to whoever cares but honestly I would rather not. Apart from my story ‘First Proof’ has many others and they are all exceptional in their own ways. ‘First Proof’ costs Rs. 250 (Rs. 203 on flipkart). That’s cheaper than the price of weekend ticket at most multiplexes. And unlike a movie it will last much longer than 2 hours and can be enjoyed by more than one person or many times over by the same person until the book falls apart. Or the person, whatever comes first.

Those in the USA can buy the book online from the Northshire site by clicking here - It costs a little more over there - $9.95. I don’t know if that’s a bargain, reasonable or expensive; I don’t know the price of a multiplex ticket in that country.

Happy reading.

Another (M)ad Piece

2010-12-02T22:00:00.003+05:30

I make a living by writing for advertising and design. This gives me valuable insights into the workings of these industries. Yes, they are industries and not exotic places where long-haired men wearing earrings hang out with short-haired women wearing navel-rings and both use phrases like, ‘out of the box’, ‘creative’, ‘disruptive’, ‘big idea’ and ‘pass me the joint b* because I paid for it’. Though I must admit I chose this profession because like most people I believed that these exotic places and characters really existed. I was sadly disappointed of course. However I have to confess that I do use the phrase, ‘out of the box’ when I am asked, “Where do you live?” and I answer, “Like all residents of Mumbai I live in a box and I look forward to holidays when I can live out of the box”. For some reason people find this funny and they compliment me on my sense of humour.

In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that most people in Mumbai get up in the morning and rush to work only to they can escape the narrow confines they call home and reach the wide open and brightly lit air-conditioned spaces of their offices. That is also the reason why the average Mumbaikar reports to work even on the day after a bomb blast, riots and on December 6, when all the followers of Dr. Ambedkar in the whole world descend on the city to observe his death anniversary.

Baby Ambedkar follower: Dad, where are we going?

Daddy Ambedkar follower: Mumbai.

BAF: Why daddy?

DAF: Because the travel, accommodation and food are free.

MomAF: Don’t teach the kid wrong things! Baby, we are going to observe our dear Dr. Ambedkar’s death anniversary.

BAF: If we all do that, will it bring him back, Ma?

DAF+MAF: Huh?

All that is set to change of course. No, not the hordes of mourning FAFs (Families of Ambedkar Followers), but the matchbox sizes of Mumbai apartments. Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t seen all those ads for residential buildings with apartments big enough to accommodate a dozen FAFs and each with an attached swimming pool since they all need to take a bath very badly.

But where did this piece start? Ah yes, advertising and design. To go back to the originally planned subject – insights into advertising and design – and the totally fictitious story behind the advertising campaign that has taken the whole country by cyclone. Yeah, the correct word would be ‘storm’ and not ‘cyclone’ but the first time I saw this particular ad campaign it was in the form of a cyclone cleaning up the home page of The Times of India online edition and settling down to form the shape of the new symbol of India’s largest cellular service provider.

(Needless to say, this is not the only ad or ad campaign I have an opinion on. I have one on every ad, just like Gavaskar has one on every ball that is bowled and every ball that is hit or not hit and every run that is taken or not taken and whether the bat was grounded and why the umpire didn’t refer to the third umpire and etc. Or even Sanjay Manjrekar for that matter who went to the same school as I did but I sat in the classroom and attended lectures and he went to the playground and played cricket and look where he is reached and if you have a kid send him to the ground because there is more money and fame in playing cricket, why even just talking about it – look at that MBA bloke called Harsha. Yes, life can be Harsha even if you have an MBA.)

The alert reader, defined as the one who keeps on reading my posts in the hope that someday there will be something worthwhile to read, must have realized which logo design and ad campaign I am referring to. So here’s a malicious (defined as ‘delicious food made by ma’), and fictitious (defined as ‘all other food not made by ma and hence not delicious’), look at what transpired behind the scenes or, my version of the Radia (defined as ‘random stuff that gets leaked to the media’), tapes:

Tape 1

Design Firm Rep: I have just got out of the client meeting!

Design Firm Boss: Good news or Bad?

DFR: Bad! They chose the lousy logo design we had created to help us sell the good one!

DFB: That’s good news you moron!

DFR: How?

DFB: Because they have bought a logo design and now we can collect the full and final payment and both of us can collect our bonus!

DFR: I have so much to learn from you, Boss.

Tape 2

Ad Firm Rep: We have got the business boss.

Ad Firm Boss: Great now let’s change everything.

AFR: Why? They are doing great. They are number one. They are growing. They are going places, like to Africa.

AFB: Because, if they changed their ad agency, they did it because they hated all the advertising they have done so far – advertising that had been created by the earlier agency! How else do we justify our creative fees or plan our bonus, dude?

AFR: I have so much to learn from you, Boss.

Tape 3

AFR: I have a terrific insight into our newly acquired brand! So let’s brain-cyclone.

Junior AFR: What’s the insight?

AFR: Yesterday the client was chatting about their new logo! I asked, ‘So what is it called?’ And guess what, they had no clue!

JAFR: So?

AFR: So dude, we’ve shot the expensive commercials in exotic locations, used celebrities left, right and centre, taken all online and offline media by cyclone… basically used up every trick in the book. So where do we get our next set of revenues and bonus from?

JAFR: Where?

AFR: From a contest – We have a logo. It doesn’t have a name. Give it a name and win big prizes. Splashed across all online and offline media of course.

JAFR: I have so much to learn from you, Boss.

Sorry, I have to stop this piece now; a high court official is at the door and I have to hand over the tapes to him. And there is work to be done of course – my boss just called to say I have to write my next ad campaign. He is a great guy, my boss, there is so much to learn from him.

My toilet seat-shaped heart beats for shit

2010-11-19T09:52:00.002+05:30

Today is World Toilet Day. No, I am not kidding. It is and I didn't know about it either. But when I picked up The Times of india this morning I saw an ad on the front page from a leading multinational for its brand of toilet cleaner. In the same ad, the brand claims it is, 'Proud to sponsor World Toilet Day'.

Just under that claim is a vaguely heart-shaped toilet seat - the symbol of World Toilet Organization.

There is crappy advertising and then there is more.

I am sure there will be more ads celebrating the day. On news channels probably. Ads by toilet makers that claim, 'Nobody takes shit better'. Or more.

Who knows there might even be an ad for a news channel itself - 'Nobody does shit better'. Or more.

But seriously, I wondered about this World Toilet Organization and searched for it on the internet. Not only does it exist, it also holds an annual summit. I imagine a large convention hall with commodes instead of chairs. (Do representatives from India, Turkey, Japan and some parts of Italy squat instead of sit? Yeah, we are not the only nation.)

The Organization also runs (no pun intended), the World Toilet College. I didn't see it on the site but I presume as you enter the college there is a coat of arms bearing the motto, 'Education is Shit'. A sentiment that will resound with many of my fellow Indians.

I am sure the WTO does a lot of good work. But since the objective of this blog is to be narrow-minded, prejudiced and generally insulting it is not listed here - in short, if this blog had a college its motto would have been, 'Give them shit'. Those interested in getting a complete download (no pun on load), on WTO and its activities (no, not the one you are thinking), can visit the site here.

Needless to say the WTO has its office in Singapore, a country whose coat of arms has a unicorn and a lion hugging a broom with the motto,
'We love clean. And we are not bullshitting'.

Anyway, whether you think the idea stinks or not, it is World Toilet Day. So let's not be spoilsports and celebrate shit.

Come on, join me to celebrate:

Raja and 2G

Adarsh and every Tom, Ashok and Harry responsible

New Delhi Airport's T3 terminal that consumes ten times more electricity than the older one and handles only twice the number of passengers. It also has parking for 42000 cars and no space provided for public buses to drop or pick up passengers.

Gurgaon - The city with stunning malls but no basic utilities - from drinking water to sewage or garbage disposal, public transport or even sidewalks.

(The last two are from a column by Sunita Narain in today's Times of India. Couldn't find the column in the online edition, so sorry, no link.)

Mumbai - Where 65% of sewage (polite word for shit), goes untreated into the sea.

Shows like 'Bigg Boss' and 'Rakhi ka Insaaf' that appeal to the part of our psyche that hasn't changed since the Romans cheered lions a couple of thousand years ago.

The Government that thinks censorship is the best way of regulation.

The cars and two-wheelers who I saw yesterday - parked on a flyover so the occupants could get out and take pictures and videos of a fire in an adjacent high-rise from a vantage point.

Oh, there is so much to celebrate. Maybe WTO should consider celebrating for a week instead of a day.

November 19. World Toilet Day. Is it a coincidence that it is also the birth anniversary of the only Indian politician who dissolved the Parliament and imposed emergency on us?

Whatever the reason, let's be good sports and celebrate! I'd say, go ahead, hug a toilet today. Or a politician. Whatever is handy.

The Big O. Now in India.

2010-11-10T19:01:00.002+05:30

At an undisclosed location in the United States of America

“The day after you landed in Mumbai ‘Times of India’ Mumbai dedicated its first eleven pages to you Mr. President. ‘The Economic Times’ had a special supplement – a pull-out.”

“I am the President of the United States of America. I hate that word – pull-out – don’t you know?”

“Sorry Mr. President, this India visit has me all excited about your future.”

“It is just media hype…”

“No, no Mr. President! It can’t be just hype – there was genuine excitement! Where else have you seen TV reporters go asthmatic and breathless while reporting your visit? And the students – they are the future – they were over the moon! From the humble man in the street to the Man in the Mohan – they were all gripped by the Big O Fever!”

“Is that what they are calling it? Are you sure there is no pun on the Big O?”

“The excitement is real Mr. President. And so is the danger back home – it is clear and present and it cannot be wished away – the Republicans are thrashing us, we are losing ground as if it was being swallowed by Mumbai builders… Why, your kids have already started picking up mementos from the White House!”

“That is bad.”

“That’s an understatement Mr. President. Things are so bad that they are talking of Bobby Jindal having a better chance than you in the next elections.”

“Huh? Just when I was beginning to figure out that being top man was about hope for my individual future and change in my lifestyle…”

“But all is not lost Mr. President.”

“What are my options?”

“Reverse outsourcing.”

“Huh again dude.”

“The warm reception you received in India, the media and public frenzy, your instant connect with future voters in the guise of children – everything points to a simple thing. India is ready for you – you have to contest the next election in India.”

“But where does outsourcing come in?”

“You will take away the biggest job from the Indians – what a coup?!”

“Hmm. But do you think it will work?”

“McDonald’s, Pepsi, Coke, Apple, Nike… they love America around here.”

“It’s an argument. But not strong enough.”

“Well, the voters here really like it when their top man is controlled by a woman.”

“You have a point here. And do not think that I have not noticed that you have stopped calling me Mr. President.”

“Sorry Mr. President. But I want to practise calling you Obamaji.”

“Makes sense. So let’s get on with it. Call my speech writers, my PR machinery, the works. Let’s go for it.”

“Sorry Obamaji, but you might need a different set of consultants here.”

“Like?”

“A numerologist, a guru, a forgery expert to give you a criminal record, a Swiss bank account and lastly a genealogist.”

“I got the rest, but a genealogist?”

“Well, we will have to chart your family tree so we have enough evidence to change your name to Obama Gandhi.”

“You mean Obamaji Gandhiji.”

“You got me there Obamaji.”

BPO aka Business Prison Outsourcing

2010-11-03T14:57:00.000+05:30

India is about to start its first ‘Jail IT BPO’ in Hyderabad, says this report in Indian Express. Obviously, congratulations are in order. We are taking hardened criminals, training them for an occupation and giving them a respectable way to earn a living. The company who came up with and is implementing this idea is basking in its own glorious act and giving out sound bytes about its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative and pointing out that while the standard daily wage for a prisoner is a measly Rs. 15, they will pay these poor guys a princely sum of Rs. 100 a day. The second prison the company has in its sights is the one that will soon house Raju, the man who built Satyam with his sweat and blood and then, sucked the blood of its shareholders to build his own fortune. Raju, according to a spokesperson of this wonderful company, is already a great inspiration to other inmates of this prison. And why not? After all, if you are in prison for stealing twenty four hundred rupees wouldn’t you find the guy who stole twenty four thousand crores an inspiration?

Looks like I am heading towards saying that I don’t think that this Jail BPO is a very good idea. Yes, I am. And here’s why.

India, yes, the shining and incredible one, the heir apparent for the throne of Superpower, has almost forty per cent of its population living below the poverty line. That is, earning less than Rs. 15 a day in villages and Rs. 22 a day in cities. That is to say, one-third of the bloody country is trying to feed itself, pay rent and buy clothes (things that are free for a jailed convict) in Rs. 15/22 a day. The fact that some wise guy thinks that a person who has been sent to jail as punishment for an act that harmed either an individual or the society or the nation in some way deserves a better daily wage than one-third of the country does not make sense to me at all.

Well, let me allow my imagination to run riot for a bit:

Flashback to a brainstorming session at the said company’s headquarters:

“What do we pay a trainee these days?”

“Rs. 15,000/month”

“Haven’t you heard of the global recession? How are we going to be competitive with that kind of wage bill?”

“I have no idea.”

“I have one – idea.”

“Let’s train convicted criminals in IT. They currently get 15 bucks a day. We will pay them 100. Imagine the savings.”

“And we can claim CSR credits!!!”

“And they do it all the time in America.”

“That seals it! Can I kiss you?”

“Sir… I have a wife.”

“So do I; I was being figurative.”

Anyway, why am I complaining? The deed is done and the training is underway. Soon, Raju’s new colleagues will not only receive inspiration but also receive instruction from him. Who knows, after coming out of jail armed with this valuable education they might go on to outdo their master. Of course, the stock exchange might come down like a pack of cards. Which might not be such a bad idea – at least we will find out how the other one-third leads their lives.

Today's news

2010-10-15T14:51:00.000+05:30

This morning something struck me. Things are always striking me in the morning because though I am up at 7AM I am rarely awake before 11 or so. But today was different; I wasn’t struck in the face or shin by a door frame or a piece of furniture but by the realization that advertising had replaced news. No, I am not referring to news on TV where reporters advertise asthma drugs and oxygen bars by constantly being out of breath.

By now the alert reader of this blog (defined as the one who is awake before 11 in the morning), has realized that I have a thing against breathless reporters. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the news channels either and recently I received an e-mail from one saying: ‘Our reporters do this to protest the effect of greenhouse emissions and depleting oxygen levels that threaten to end the world’.

This protest seems to be in the same category as those by PETA activists who take their clothes off at the drop of a leaf - That is to say I don't get the connection between what they are protesting and how they are protesting it.

Q. What does a PETA activist have in her wardrobe?
A. Salad dressing.

Now where was I? Ah, advertising replacing news. No, I am not referring to the daily colourful supplement full of BPs (short for Botox People, sorry, Beautiful People). That’s not advertising either, that’s public relations (defined as: people the public would like to have relations with).

The thing that struck me this morning was this: For the last few weeks, more than once the front page of the morning paper has been an advertisement. The advertisers are not the usual multinationals or Indian industry giants who have advertising budgets the size of Pamela Anderson. Instead they are builders whose names you hadn’t heard until a few years ago. I guess today these are the guys with deep pockets, so deep that if you reached deep enough you might even find a politician or two. One would also imagine that the real estate market in Mumbai is booming (no, not in the eighties sense when it was literally booming with guns going off in builders’ offices). And also that there are a lot of people in this city who have money equal to the annual government spend on primary education to buy a flat.

I don't think so.

Because if you dig deeper into these ads you will notice a quiet shift in the messages and tone of voice. Earlier the ads used to say stuff like, ‘Stay in the sky,’ leading to situations like:

“Was he unwell?”
“No, he went to buy a flat.”

“Then?”

“They told him the price and he went straight to the sky.”

Nowadays they have changed the tune and say things like: ‘Pay 10% now. And rest on possession.’ ‘Pay in instalments!’ ‘Special pre-booking price!’ ‘No premium for higher floors!’

Is there a trend here? Is the real estate market not as gung-ho as it seems? Have too many builders bought too much space for too much money and now can’t find buyers for villas in the sky, penthouses by the sea and duplexes in the heart of the city? (Heart of the city – no wonder this city seems mortally wounded.) Will this blog post be the first prophecy that saw the crash coming?

I really wish the prophecy comes true. For one, I would like the front page of my newspaper to carry news. (In case the guys who print it have forgotten there is a reason why it is called ‘Newspaper’ and not ‘Ad Paper’.) Second, I would like a little indication that this city can be home to everyone and that you don’t have to be billionaire, millionaire or Kalmadi to afford a flat here. And third, I am tired of text messages on my phone from companies selling flats in Noida and reminding me that I will never be able to afford a flat in what I call my home city.

The Indian Fame Meter. Or, find out if you are truly famous.

2010-10-08T20:22:00.002+05:30

“Is there any country in the world that is under foreign dominion?” Rahul (name changed to protect my safety), asked me. I had been introduced to him six minutes ago by his mother, “Rahul, this is Deven uncle. He writes”. With this curt introduction she had walked away to attend other guests and young Rahul had begun to interrogate me. Rahul is seven years old but I was not surprised by his question; he probably thought, ‘'This guy writes. He writes books. Books are filled with answers to questions...’
“Not that I know of,” I answered.
“Can you find out if there is?” Rahul was relentless.

“Now? How?” I countered.

“Why? You don't have internet on your phone?”

Rahul didn't look like the type who wrote a diary every night but had he been, today's entry would have read: Today was disappointing. I discovered writers don't know everything and don't make enough money - they can't even afford internet on the phone.

Rahul looked at me with a thoughtful expression. He decided to give me one more chance before giving up on me as a complete loser.

“So tell me,” he asked, “How does one become a minister in the government?”
“It is a long process. First you have to be twenty five years old. Then you have to contest an election... If you are a criminal but don't have a record (defined in this country as ‘arrested but never convicted’), your chances are better...”
“Damn!” Rahul cut me short and began chewing his lower lip. I got a little worried but decided to be ruthless and respond with questions of my own.
“Why do you ask?”

Rahul gave me a look that he probably used on flea-infested dogs, crippled earthworms and cell phones without cameras. For a moment I thought he was going to tell what I had suspected when his mother introduced us to each other.“So I stay out of her hair and you stay away from other, important guests.” But no. Luckily Rahul had a deeper reason for his questions.

“The answer to your question is on every street corner; it is such a pity you can't see it.”' He gave me that look again. “But first, let’s rewind to the time of my birth. When I was born my father said, ‘I have made so much money that I actually don’t mind paying tax. Not that I pay it but you know the sentiment. Hmm. So where was I? Money, I have lots. Now my son has to go further; he has to become famous.’ That’s why.”

“But Rahul,” I began to protest and was cut sharply. “My name is not Rahul.”

“I know but I need to protect my safety,” I replied sheepishly.

“Then it’s okay I guess,” he replied.

“But Rahul, there are so many other professions you can take up to become famous!” I continued, “You can become an actor, a musician, an astronaut, a scientist, a singer, a painter... Why you can even become a writer!”

This time he laughed outright and gave me a look reserved for cell phones without a camera and a radio.

“That’s why nobody knows you,” he told me bluntly, “and nobody ever will. Only the truly intelligent people like Gandhi, Nehru, Gandhi, Gandhi and Gandhi knew exactly how to become famous and chose the right profession – and now the man in the street knows their name.”

“But how can you say that Rohan?” (I suddenly realized that using the name Rahul was not a good idea. In fact it might endanger instead of protect my safety.)

“Because, you bloody landline (he didn’t say that but that’s how it sounded), they are the only guys who are important enough to have their names given to streets, lanes, roads, highways, expressways, bridges and now, sea-links.”

He had forgotten to mention chowks but I knew he was right and that is why I will never be truly famous. And neither will Bachchan, Bachchan, Bachchan and Bachchan.

Eighteen years old and still not mature

2010-09-30T11:51:00.000+05:30

In 1992:

The Bombay Stock Exchange crossed the Rs. 4,000 mark for the first time.

Rahul Gandhi was 22 years old.

Forget Google, there was no internet.

We got our first satellite TV channel, Zee TV.

There were no malls.

No plasma, LCD, LED, 3-D, not even flat-screen TVs.

Forget iPod, iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry, there were no cell phones.

Ranbir Kapoor was 9 years old.

Today roughly 31% of population of India is less than 14 years old. That is, more than 31% of Indians living today were not even born in 1992.

The world and the country have moved on in the eighteen years since Babri Masjid was demolished.

But a bunch of politicians, those old men and women sitting with their feet dangling over fresh-dug graves, refuse to move on and peer backwards while you and I want look forward to the future and keep pace with the world.

For them, for these deadly politicians, the demolition is still a ‘burning’ issue. And they have found able partners in the media, especially the so-called news channels for whom a mosquito crushed in a road accident is ‘Breaking News’.

As if the eighteen years taken by the judiciary for arriving at a decision wasn’t a cruel enough joke.

I wish the judgement reads like this:

This court orders all political leaders be collected and buried in the hole left behind by the demolition and plaques be planted around the perimeter saying, Toxic Landfill - Keep Away for Fear of Contamination.

Only that would be a fitting memorial.

So who are you?

2010-09-21T15:03:00.001+05:30

“I am not a muffin person,” she declares, not just to her friend but also to the world.

In the opposite corner of the room sits another woman. If you were to ask her she’d probably say:

“I am a sari person. I wear cotton saris made crisp by starch and pressed to achieve the consistency of shoe-box cardboard. It’s rough, this starched and pressed cotton-ness, but it is the price you pay for loving Art. Yes, even when I think of Art, I think of it with a capital ‘A’. I may not be an artist but I love Art and I need to wear this uniform, to do this daily penance, monk-in-hair-shirt-like, so I can belong to Art and hang out with Artists.”

Is that the secret behind the ‘muffin person’ declaration too?

There was a time, not too long ago, when we would simply declare, “I don’t like muffins”. Or, “I prefer the sea over the mountains”. Or, “I work better in the morning”. Or, some such preference that was a simple personal choice and not our whole personality.

(The old adage {word meaning ‘advertising that became the truth with age’}, ‘You are what you eat’ has now been replaced by, ‘You are what you don’t eat’. Look at Kareena for example. Of course, the first time I heard size zero I thought they were using it in the professional context, that is, acting ability = zero, but then clueless me soon figured {pun alert!} what it was. Today’s Mumbai Mirror has a picture caption that defines ‘muffin top’ as flesh spilling off the top of the jeans. Ugh. After reading that I too would like to declare, “I am not a Muffin Person, not anymore”.)

But looks like ‘muffin person’ declarations are here to stay and have become short cuts to announce:
‘I belong to a group of people, a clan, a tribe that is united and characterised by its refusal of muffins which in itself is an ‘SMS (Short Messed-up Service) Way’ of announcing your refusal to indulge in food that makes you fat, or some such cool thing that’s currently in vogue’. And in Elle and Femina too.

So here’s a quick guide to some important labels floating around town. In 5 minutes (10 if you don’t cheat and actually read this stuff), it will help you find out who you are (something that took our sages a lifetime or seven), seek out those who are like you and will ultimately lead to you joining a Facebook group of like-minded people - For example, ‘Unhappy to be Single. Desperate to Mingle.’

The Labels

1] Wine Person: Urban, urbane (the difference between the two is an ‘e’), sophisticated, rich, classy, new age, well-travelled globe trotter and faking all of the above.

2] Wine & Cheese Person: Same as 1. Except fatter, plus a free-loader.

3] Single Malt Person: Same as 1, except filthy rich and old. In fact so old that cannot read the label of the bottle he is drinking from even before having a drink. Also add snobbish, male, very high up in management, so high that shareholders pay for the single malt.

4] Morning Person: Someone who wakes up so early in the morning that he/she has to turn on the lights. Gets sadistic pleasure in:
i) Waking up rest of the household by being noisy in the bathroom.
ii) Getting the building watchman sacked by catching him sleeping as he/she goes out for a walk, jog or game of tennis/squash where he/she meets more Morning Persons.
iii) Reaching office before everyone and messing up everyone else’s appraisals.

Tell-tale sign: The one who can’t stay awake beyond 10PM or one drink, whichever comes first.

5] People’s Person: I love the irony or contradiction or tautology or whatever’s the correct figure of speech (pun alert!!). He/she is the one whose mouth is moving in a non-stop chatter and is seeking out people even while they make futile attempts to escape.

6] Apple Person: No, not to be confused with the Diet Person, this one believes in God. Thinks God’s name is Steve Jobs.

Of course, there are more - Chocolate Person, Milk Person, Floaters Person, Sneakers Person, Jeans & T-shirt Person, Golf Person, Feather & Fur Person, Leather & Whips Person... We can go on and on. With the insights provided by this guide here, I hope you will look outside and find out who you are inside. On the basis of that self-realization you will be able to go out and join thousands of people like you and experience happiness. After all, human beings are social animals which is the same as party animals except party animals drink more and are not Morning Persons.

“I am not a muffin person,” she replies to her friend’s suggestion with a hint of snobbery and a look that says, ‘You don’t know… and you call yourself my friend?’ The friend bites her lip and looks out at the rain lashing the café window, probably wondering if she were to order a muffin for herself, would the already strained jeans withstand another assault? Sorry, I meant, already strained friendship. Or will she be one friend short on Facebook by end of the day?

Grin & Bare It

2010-09-15T15:06:00.000+05:30

There is a saying in Marathi, ‘अती झालं आणि हसू आलं ’, which means, ‘When pain, suffering or plain bad luck go beyond a point, you begin to laugh’. I have a feeling the saying came into being in the ancient times when our elders observed guys who couldn’t take it any more and started laughing, or to be politically incorrect, went mad.

If that is indeed the origin of this saying then this blog admits to insanity. Because things have come to a pass where the bad news in this country has gone beyond the breaking point and there is not much we can do except take refuge in the ridiculous. So here goes.

1] 45,000 children vanish without a trace in this country every year. That is, 5 children per hour, that is, 1 child every 10 minutes that is, by the time you finish reading this piece, another child would have vanished.
And let’s not even talk about child labour because we will never know the true figures.

2] 78,000 women die every year in this country before, during or in the first few days after child birth. This is despite the government-run Integrated Mother & Child Development Care Programme since 1975.

And let’s not even talk about female foeticide or infanticide because, again, we will never know the true figures.

3] 1,300,000 tonnes of food grain went rotten in godowns (now you know why they are called go downs), in this country in the last ten years. That’s a figure given, no, not by the out-of-breath TV news reporters, but by government officials. That is, the Government of India has officially admitted that it wasted the food it was supposed to look after.

4] 30 crore people live below the poverty line in this country. That is, there are 30 crore people in this country who earn Rs. 10 or less every day. Of course, the grains had to go waste – close to one-third of the population never had and doesn’t have the money to buy it. This is despite the government-run National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which under the guise of guaranteeing employment encourages people to sit where there are and not move their butt to save their arse. Obviously the Government hasn’t heard of the saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves’. Or maybe it believes in the modern-day adaptation, ‘God helps those who offer to help others and pocket the help themselves’.

5] 65% of the sewage generated in the city of Mumbai is released untreated into the Arabian Sea. That is because 60 years after independence the city relies largely on drainage and sewage systems built in the British era. So what did we do in these 60 years? One answer could be in these figures: In 1947 when this country achieved independence its population was 35 crore or 350 million. Today it stands at a proud 1.13 billion. Seems like we were playing the game, ‘Let’s pretend we are rabbits’ and were too busy being reproductive instead of productive.

The first fact is despite the city of Mumbai bursting at the seams with a government body (word used to describe a person when he/she is dead. For example, John is dead. Where is the body?), for anything and everything you can imagine. For example, we have BMC, MMRDA, BEST, BRTS, MTNL, SRA, CR, WR, MHADA, ACB, ASS (okay, not this one), the Collector’s office, the Registrar’s office, the Municipal Commissioner’s office and being the state capital, the Government of Maharashtra, the Secretariat, the Mantralaya, the High Court, Civil Court, the Blah and the Blah Blah Blah. In short, we have a body responsible for every little thing that provides an opportunity to take a bribe. Sorry, a body for every little need of the city. Pity, like John, they are all dead.

The second fact is despite having had a state-funded programme for promoting family planning that dates back to just after I was born. Luckily.

Now there is a pattern here: Whenever the government tries to do something, the result is exactly the opposite of what is intended.

But detractors of this blog always complain of its unwarranted (word meaning I can't be arrested for writing this), pessimism, cynicism and sarcasm. To answer them, let’s have some good news:

In 2014, less than 4 years from now, the richest person in the world will be an Indian citizen living in India, says a forecast by Forbes Magazine. No, it will not be Rahul G. or Sharad P. or Jaya L. This person’s net worth will be 62 billion US dollars. (Pity really, because even if he gave all his money away to his fellow citizens, each one would hardly get half a dollar.)

In the same report Forbes has also listed a number of events that could happen over the next 10 years in the field of politics, energy, medicine, finance, society and technology.

But the one forecast I love dearly from this report is, I quote:

Another forecast in the field of finance and economics is of fraudster Bernard Madoff's death in his prison cell in 2011. The convicted Ponzi-scheme perpetrator is found hanging in his cell and "prison officials will not rule out foul play."

(If you were worried that Paul the Octopus had been consigned to barbeque flames, worry not, he lives in a corner office at the Forbes headquarters.)

Now all that makes me laugh out loud - A real full throated laugh that can be heard across the road and not a virtual LOL that can be FB’ed across continents but is heard by no one. But hello, who are you sirs? Why do you want me to put on that jacket? Oh, it is so quiet in here and the walls of this room are so nice and soft…

F Book, I say.

2010-09-07T16:11:00.000+05:30

There is a whole bunch of us here. Some we know professionally. Some personally. And a lot who occupy the vague space in between. Every once in a while one more joins us quietly. Not always though. Some don’t feel comfortable unless they have made their presence felt with an announcement.

Like: “It is rum & coke* weather.” (Coke is the registered trademark of a bunch of guys in South America and if you use it without paying them, you get your nose blown off.)

Not all those who make announcements are addicts of course. Some of them are very matter of fact and say stuff like: “It’s hot outside!”

Then there are some who quietly slink up to you and slide you a note that says, “Ha! Ha!! You have to watch this!!!” Why? Why do I have to watch this? What if I don’t? Oh, you are the illegitimate offspring of a coke trademark owner? Sure, will watch it. Or, “This is the funniest joke ever!” Funniest joke ever? Are you sure? Because the last I remember your sense of humour was suffering from a king-size tumour. But I am being harsh here. Or myself. Whichever is ruder.

Occasionally someone lands up who is deep, philosophical and brings a breath of death in with a curt: “God is dead.” Of course it was first said by Nietzsche (German name meaning, ‘One who gets psyched at night), but when you have such a depressing world view you don’t want to waste time giving credit. Of course the fact that Nietzsche is dead (like god), and has no connections in South America makes it easy to take credit and give none.

And don’t tell me you haven’t come across the one who comes in and despite the presence of hundreds of people thinks he is alone and speaks aloud to himself: “I can do this. I can change my destiny as if it were a diaper.” It is clear the guy has never changed a diaper in his life or he would know that changing destiny is sometimes as easy as changing your astrologer while diapers are a different smell game altogether. And yes, please use the disinfectant on your hands before you come in.
About those who can’t stop yapping, the less said the better. Their yaps can only be compared to a Pomeranian dog in heat who’s been sniffing that parcel from South America.

Then we have the strong silent ones who believe a picture is worth a thousand words and flood the place with the picture-equivalent of hundred thousand words a week – it is like watching a slideshow of their private lives.

Occasionally, to break the monotony (guy called Tony who believes in monogamy), a farmer lands up, worried about the health of his crops and wanting to borrow some fertiliser and willing to settle for that soiled diaper if you don’t have fertiliser.

Duck! For cover!! Here comes the mafia don, all guns blazing with an offer you cannot refuse: I am a farmer and I have a gun… Hey, how did you know I am from South America?

The perceptive reader (described as the one who has lasted up to this paragraph), has already realized that the topic of this blog post is Facebook. I have always wanted to write a candid (means, ‘I can so I did’), critique (French word for critic), of Facebook and the absurdities on its pages but desisted because I was still active on it. After all, I have a set of morals. I learned them in school through fear of punishment in the form of a wooden blackboard duster pretending it was a missile. Gosh, I still remember most of them. Like: Look before you leap. Practise what you preach. Always wear a condom. Okay, not the last one. I learned that in private tuition classes.

So there it is. I am off Facebook. And I have got the critique off my chest. (Yeah, a French one. Nice.) To conclude here’s a link to a video (thanks Prajakta for the link), that pokes (pun intended), fun at Facebook. You have to watch it. It is the funniest one ever. LOL.

Writer, blocked.

2010-09-02T16:00:00.000+05:30

We are sitting around the table and there are glasses on the tables with amber coloured liquid in them and I can’t name the name of the liquid or I will be arrested. No, I am not underage. Here, in this great country of ours, it is not enough to be twenty-five years* of age to be eligible for drinking. You also need to have what is called a Liquor Permit. This wonderful thing, the Permit, is a hangover (smart of you to get that pun!), of a rule from the heady (yes, one more!) days that followed our independence from British rule. The rule says you can apply for and acquire a Liquor Permit if the doctor says that you are a confirmed alcoholic! Yes, you got that right. The powers that be in this great country believe in fighting fire with fire and alcoholism with alcoholism. “Here, have one more buddy. That way you will be so drunk that you will be unable to find your car and kill yourself and a few bystanders trying to drive back home or, be so pissed out of your body that you will not have the strength to beat up your poor wife.”

But let’s return to the table. We are sitting there and I am a few glasses down and start complaining: “I have got the writer’s block. I am writing stuff but it’s not making sense.”

There is stunned silence around the table. I am happy that I have such a considerate audience that is so concerned about my writing prowess deserting me that they can’t find words to express their sadness.

This illusion lasts for about three minutes. Then one of them starts laughing so uncontrollably that the neighbouring table is first staring and then ordering, ‘I will have what he is having.’

I can’t take it and I explode: “Shut the bad-word up will you? What’s so bad-wording funny about it?”

The guy finally calms down and recovers his breath enough to say: “But what you write never makes sense anyway! Never!”

I want to throw my unnamed drink in his face, the way they do in movies, but instead I gulp it down along with my anger. After all, he is paying for this one and the four I have had before this.

Again like in the movies, the scene suddenly shifts to me sitting at my work station and writing a blog post instead of working. I write with the new-found confidence that god or muse or the genie in the corner of the room or whoever it is that sends me inspiration and makes me write has decided that I will write nothing but rubbish. So here goes. Today’s blog post. Or a short exercise in rubbish.

Sorry. Looks like I have really lost it. No, not ‘it’, but the ability to write even rubbish. I have no option to go and search for rubbish in places outside my head and report the absurdities I come across. This is what I come back with:

1] In a by-lane of Bandra West there is a traffic jam outside one particular building every morning. Yeah, there is a traffic jam in all of Bandra West but this one is special because it is so early in the morning. It is caused by people driving to visit the gym located in the building. Yeah, members drive right up to the entrance of the building where the gym’s free valet service picks up the car. The members then go up to the gym to walk on a treadmill or some such. Every time I visit the building and wait for the lift to visit an office on the top floor the lift arrives and spills out men and women with perfectly sculpted bodies, glowing with health and smelling like gym towels. I have a feeling that they haven’t heard of a concept called staircases and if the lifts break down one day, they will call the fire brigade or jump out of the window. Into the waiting arms of the valets.

2] There is a photograph in a newspaper of the newly inaugurated* pedestrian skywalk at Andheri. The photograph is taken at night and shows a whole bunch of people sleeping on the skywalk. One health-conscious dude has rigged a mosquito net** and sleeps peacefully in the knowledge that he is protected from malaria, dengue and etc. The newspaper carrying the photograph is highly critical of this misuse of a public utility but I think it is just being plain blind to the great Indian logic:

The skywalk is built for railway commuters and pedestrians. At night neither are out on the road or the skywalk. So using it for sleeping, gambling or occasionally smoking up some brown sugar is making use of this public utility to the fullest. It is this great Indian logic of not letting anything go waste, finding new uses for old things and exploiting every bit to its fullest potential that will make

India

a great and green superpower one day.

*Writer’s note: Newly inaugurated is not the same as newly built. In this great country of ours, things are built and ready but that doesn’t mean we can use them. First the concerned (it is just a phrase, not the truth), department has to figure out which political party will take the credit for building the structure. Once that is figured out, the department starts right at the top in Delhi to find an appropriate person for the inauguration. If that doesn’t work out, it starts lowering its standards and begins to settle for less and less (which by the way is the story of our expectations from our political leaders), until someone suitable agrees. This takes a lot of time. If there is a coalition government in power, the time doubles or triples or quadruples (a word meaning questionable democratic scruples).

**Since the opposition parties couldn’t claim credit for the skywalk sooner or later one of them will start distributing free mosquito nets for these sleepwalkers, sorry, sleepers on the skywalk and install a plaque on every skywalk saying, ‘Donated by XYZ’ with pictures of twelve party leaders dressed in nothing but mosquito nets.

3] Getting 90% marks in your tenth standard exam does not guarantee you a seat in the college of your preference, says a headline in today’s newspaper. The report explains that this year’s 90% is like last year’s 85%. Very soon the education minister will join the finance minister and begin talking about inflation while quietly signing a document allowing his daughter-in-law to set up a college on a plot reserved for a skywalk.

4] India is a secular (word meaning state-sponsored enterprise for becoming popular), nation. Its secularity is best visible in the humble calendar, yes, those printed things with dates that our parents used to put up on the wall. If you don’t have one, please visit a bank or a bank employee’s home. There, marked in clear bold red numbers, is the proof of our secularity - Bank holidays for festivals of each and every caste, creed, community and religion. For example, a couple of weeks ago all banks, stock exchanges and government offices in the country were shut on the occasion of the Parsi New Year. What bigger proof do you need than this: A nation of 1.2 billion shutting down to pay a tribute to a community that numbers 1,00,000 or so.

5] ‘If it is your birthday today: You have to handle financial commitments and transactions carefully. Failure to verify second hand information could complicate matters. You may need to put in more efforts on the romantic front, getting complacent or taking your partner for granted will create unnecessary tensions.’

This a straight lift from the horoscope section in today’s newspaper. What it means is:

‘If it is not your birthday today: Handle financial commitments and transactions carelessly; sign that blank cheque and leave it on a table in a café. Believe every piece of gossip you hear. Take your partner for granted without fear of any repercussions.’

There is a reason why the daily horoscope and comic strips share the same page in a newspaper.

I am sorry but I have to go now. The office receptionist just called to say that the courier has a packet for me. Ah! My Liquor Permit is finally here.

A virtual call for action!

2010-08-23T09:36:00.001+05:30

Have you noticed something new in advertisements these days? Sorry, I should have first asked whether you bother to read or watch ads. I do, purely out of habit because not very long ago I used to make a living from them. No, no, no. I wasn’t involved in buying old newspapers and selling them, I was in a profession lower than that. I was (and sometimes I still am), involved in the making of advertisements.Yeah, it is a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it, right? But please don’t tell my children about it. Which reminds me of that famous French autobiography, ‘Don’t tell my mother I am in advertising, she thinks I play the piano in a brothel’. That’s a loose (no pun intended), translation and unfortunately the book was never translated into English.

Else I would have been happily playing the piano in a brothel to the eternal pride of my children.

So what’s new in ads these days? Before we go there, let’s take the Time Machine and go to a brothel. Sorry, to the past and find out what old ads had in those days. Apart from curvy women holding packs of engine oil (or some such product),and promising enhanced performance (of car engines or some such product), most ads ended with what was termed a ‘Call for action’. (When I wrote my first ad my boss told me to put in a ‘Call for action’. Eager trainee that I was, I went back, smoked five cigarettes in one hour and returned with: ‘We challenge you to a duel with six-shooters. Venue of your choice.’ I was merely following the venerable tradition of the Wild West books I had read. Needless to say, from that point on my career steadily went South.) A ‘Call for action’, as I learned the hard way, was a line or a voice that urged the reader or the viewer to visit the store and buy the product being advertised.

Of course, I believed (and still do), that every element of an ad adds up to a call for action where the words and pictures come together to create an irresistible proposition and drive the reader to either buy or at least consider buying the product being advertised. But that's another story, one that has been written by writers better than me.

Some ads also urged the reader/viewer to call up on a certain phone number – these ads were released by companies who had more telephone operators than salespersons and since they couldn’t sack them because of trade union issues were forced to create work for them. As the intelligent reader knows this problem was sorted out with the arrival of ‘Call Centers’ and instead of we calling the companies, the companies started calling us...

But that was later. Most ads in those days were released by companies who wanted you to get your butt to the store so you could see their wonderful products and they could see your wonderful butt. Sorry, they could sell you a whole bunch of their products to you (which of course meant they took your butt without even seeing it).

Now if you were to return to the present and look at ads carefully you will realize that this is not true any more. No, your butt still gets taken when you go shopping but ‘Calls for action’ are mostly missing these days. Instead they have been replaced by a new kind of ‘Call’ which I have loosely (no pun even here either), termed as, ‘Call for interaction’. Let us quickly sit in that Space Transporter and go to the brothel. Damn! Go and eavesdrop on a meeting between an ad agency and an advertiser and find out why:

Ad Man: Here it is sir.

Advertiser: I have seen the brief. Show me the ad.

A M: LOL. Love your sense of humour sir! This is the ad.

Advertiser: I am not joking. I hope you are not joking either.

A M: No sir. This is the ad.

Advertiser: It can’t be. There are too many words in it. Only the brief is allowed to have so many words. (Turns to A M’s boss.) Can you please control your trainees?

Ad Woman: Sorry sir. He is new.

Advertiser: Don’t you tell new recruits that no one reads ads?

A M: With due respect sir, that’s why people buy newspapers: To read.

Advertiser: To read news.

A M: Sir with the advent of the internet, people are reading more. Blogs for instance.

Advertiser: Because blogs are written by funny men and hot women. (Turns to A M’s boss.)

A W: Sir can you dictate the changes please? I will write them down and get them done.

Advertiser: See young man, no one takes traditional media seriously any more. Internet is the thing! Digital is in! If you are not on the net, you are a dead fish. And nobody wants to read about your product or see its pictures in traditional media. That’s uncool. The new advertising mantra is: Spend millions on traditional media and drive them to the internet. The whole new purpose of traditional media is to drive traffic to our web site, to our Facebook page, to make them follow us on Twitter... Google Buzz! Digg! And what not!!!
So take this down: One glorious picture and no words except these, big and bold: Visit our web site! Follow us on Twitter!! Join us on Facebook!!!

A W: I got that.

Sorry. The Space Transporter has broken down and we will have to spend the rest of our lives eavesdropping on these meetings from the air-conditioning duct.

Look! A search engine!! We are saved!!! Blog, here we come.

That’s the new thing: Advertisers don’t seem interested in making you buy their products or even driving you to their stores. Instead they just want to look cyber-cool (new-age word for über cool) - have millions of followers on Twitter, get record-breaking ‘Likes’ on their FB page and generate server-crashing hits on their web site.

Strange. But like I said, I am out of advertising, mostly, and don’t quite care. So I am off now. I have a piano class to attend. I hope you follow my progress on Facebook and Twitter.

To end, a classic from the archives section titled, ‘Ads that shouldn’t have been done’:

Picture: Pair of stiletto-heeled shoes. Headline: Up to 50% off!

A Guest Post

2010-08-17T19:36:00.001+05:30

The reputation of this blog as a place to rant seems to be reaching alarming proportions. Not only have the readers come to expect routine outbursts directed against all and sundry (a laundry that dries your clothes in the sun), some of them have figured out the real reason why I rant here: It saves me good money I would otherwise spend on a shrink. One of them, no, not one of the shrinks, one of those who have figured it out is my good friend (a good friend is someone who lends you money without asking questions. Or who tells your wife that he was with you the night in question.), Krishnan Iyer. Recently Krishnan sent me an e-mail reminding that I used to copy from his composition book in school and subtly alluded to bare other secrets involving the English teacher and me. (Like the time I argued with her about F***. She insisted it was a verb, I, a noun. The argument ended when she asked me to stop being a ‘Dumb F***’.) The e-mail had an attachment, Krishnan’s own rant about cell phones - a topic close to his heart (he keeps his cell phone in his shirt pocket. Unlike most men who keep their cell phones in their trouser pockets and hence are close to, whatever.)

I had no option but to publish Krishnan’s rant. Who knows when I might need to borrow the money he saves on his shrink session. Or need his company (and testimony), on one of those questionable nights.

Krishnan’s Rant:

THE CALL OF THE CELL PHONE

The tag line of the movie, The Phone Booth (2002), is, “A ringing phone has to be answered!” Well, that was from another age - a phone booth –a physical device fixed to a location where you have to walk to it to use it!

In this modern age and world of jetsetters and cell phones, the question probably is, “What is it about the wheels of an airplane touching the ground that makes people immediately want to turn on their cellphones and start talking?” It is like an ejaculation waiting to happen or the results of the use of a laxative – same effect, no control!

For a moment let us try and be charitable to those poor, humble cell phone/communication addicts – it is a very important call to make, there is a crisis which has to be addressed, the airlines are unreasonable by not allowing use of the cell phones on flight … Well, here are some of the actual ‘first’ (first, as in when the wheels touch the tarmac), conversations which take place:

(a) “I have just landed” – The lawyer in me cannot accept the incorrect factual statement - it is the plane which has landed, not your measly arse! Also, why is it a wonder that you landed – you did take off, did you not? For all the airline accidents which happen, as a percentage of total flights, you have more chances of surviving an airline ride than crossing the road at CST Station.

(b) “Will reach home in half an hour” – you think that’s making your folks happy? Think again! They are probably cursing the airline for landing on time.

(c) “I have reached Delhi/Mumbai.” – well, you did buy a ticket to reach there … and you announce to the world that you have landed in that place. Why is it a wonder? Well, let us understand something; if a plane is scheduled to land at a particular destination and you have taken a plane to reach that destination, the chances are you will reach that destination. (Unless of course, you have a minister who wants to be dropped off half-way – somewhat like the trains passing through Bihar).

(d) “Is everything fine at the office?”/“Hopefully no crisis when I am away”. The guy/gal at the other end is probably thinking - Boss, whenever you are not in office everything is fine and no, there is no crisis – the crisis is actually the idiot who has just landed, ignored the warnings of the airline not to put his cell phone on and is asking this question to us.

(e) To the driver outside – “Aap bahar khade hain? Aa raha hoon”. Well, you are not a VVIP that the car will come on the tarmac – yes, you will have to walk out to the door. The driver is probably thinking – “Subah, subah message bhejke bulaye hai our pooch rahe bahar hu kya – yahi hota hai jab company ka phokat ka phone milta hai”

And many, many such more ….

The cell phone is meant to be a device to communicate. Communication – a process whereby information is imparted from the sender to the receiver by some medium and is meant to serve a purpose. However, the cell phone has turned communication into an art form of giving information which is of no use to anyone whatsoever – somewhat like the various TV channels vying for TRPs.

Well, there is so much more I want to tell – but the pilot has just announced that the fight is landing and my damn cell phone is put off and in the overhead locker – I need to open it right away – I know, I know that they say it is dangerous – but what do these airlines know about the pressures of my life – I need to check if my cat has eaten its food!

Note: Krishnan could have gone on to become a great writer. But due to a quirk of fate, his roll number in school was after mine and he invariably got accused of copying from my English composition book. To get back, he changed his second name and became a lawyer as well. Unfortunately for him I never made enough money to make it worth his while to sue me.

FREE*DOM

2010-08-15T13:16:00.000+05:30

It is Independence Day and the newspapers are filled with
advertisements.

That shouldn’t be a surprise because it is also a Sunday, a day when the mighty middle class (MMC) of India wakes up late and picks up the newspaper in the hope that there will be something in there that will wake it up with a jolt – like a ‘Buy one get two free offer’.

Today the MMC would have suffered multiple jolts. Here are my Top Eleven* Picks, why not ten you ask? Hang on until the end and you will be get the answer. Thanks for cheating and going to the end right away.

Talking of cheating (there he goes again, on a tangent, like a crazy ball banged with too much force), there is a law that says the Indian National Flag is sacred and its sanctity is not to be violated by using it in advertisements that are nothing but messages released for commercial gain. That is, the Government can use the flag in its ads because they are not released for commercial gain. In fact, they are released for commercial loss because no one believes in their messages and money spent on them is like money spent on the Commonwealth Games.

Damn. That’s a tangent within a tangent; this ball is crazy.

But the advertisers have learned the first law of tackling Indian laws. Where there is a law there is a loophole. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that the all the laws in India have been formulated by a committee in this fashion:

Committee Member 1: Here’s a loophole.

Rest of the Committee: Great. Now let’s build a law around it.

The ball regains its sanity and returns from the tangent. The savvy advertiser has known for a long time that the best way to exploit the loophole is to use the Indian National Flag without the Ashok Chakra. Yeah, just use a saffron-white-green flag or just the colours and voila! You have used the flag without breaching the flag code. It is like the pre-liberation era Hindi movies. Hero and heroine come close-closer-closest. Cut to two pigeons ‘beaking’. There, you have showed a kiss without getting the members of the censor board all aroused. Sorry, without getting them all pissed off about your movie not upholding the sanctity of Indian culture. This practise, of pigeons beaking, had to be discontinued in Hindi movies because of the arrival in India of a group called PETA (as explained in an earlier post, the letters stand for Pornography for Ethical Treatment of Animals). The movie producers and the censors agreed that showing a kiss on screen was a lesser evil than grown-up women showing up at every street corner wearing nothing but a pigeon feather.

The ball is truly bouncing all over the place today. Time to rein it in and get on with the Top Eleven:

1] Special Freedom Blast – Mix Hummus for Rs. 63.

Ah, it’s not only the ball’s that crazy today. It’s also the brains of advertising professionals. Please pause to appreciate the many-layered offer: A recipe from Lebanon with the word ‘Blast’ in its name and offered at a price that is the same as the number of years of Indian independence. Take a bow versatile advertiser.

2] Celebrate 63 years of freedom with XYZ. Take home an XYZ product for just Rs. 63*. 63 years of independence. 63 years of progress. 63 glorious years. To celebrate this 63 years of freedom all you need is Rs. 63*. Buy any one of the products mentioned below… and bring it home for just Rs. 63* and pay the balance in 10 equal monthly instalments…

Notice the subtle use of 63! And the sincere and heartfelt effort to make its products available to all Indians at a low price of Rs. 63! Like all great advertising this one has a great consumer insight too – Large swathes of this great country have people who earn Rs. 63 a day or even less. Socio-economic consideration in promotional offers is rare or non-existent… But what’s this? The offer is valid only in the top 5 cities?! Ah, that’s a minor thing of course. After all, every offer comes with a disclaimer, ‘Conditions apply’. Here it probably means, ‘Conditions apply. Ordinary human beings need not’.

3] A little step by our Government

A big leap in our lives

Best wishes on Independence Day

This one is from the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation. The ad has one picture of the urban poor and lots more of political leaders. This is a classic ad where the full meaning of the text can be understood only when you see it along with the pictures. So let’s put those two together: A big leap in our lives + Pictures of political leaders. And,

Best wishes on Independence Day + Picture of the urban poor.

Classic.

4] Maharashtra, the arch-performer, the torch bearer, the glory of India salutes the Tricolour - This one has been released by a department of the Government of Maharashtra. Hello, isn’t this a message to celebrate the nation? Then why are all the glorious nouns in the ad about the state releasing the ad? For the answer refer to the unwritten book, Golden Rules of Indian Politics, page 1: Blow your own trumpet. Follow this by beating your own drum.

5] Introducing the Cent Swadesh Term Deposit announces this one from a nationalised bank. I think this headline is lifted straight from an international advertising awards book and in the hurry to get it out everyone involved forgot to replace ‘cent’ with ‘paisa’.

6] Enjoy your freedom with Quick Heal Independence day offer says ABC, India’s No. 1 AntiVirus Software. Scathing! The only one to admit that India’s independence is riddled with virus like any other software and needs healing. Gandhi caps off to you.

7] Freedom to live a better, healthier, happier life. This Tagoresque line of poetry comes from a group that dabbles in foods, properties, financial, media, infrastructure and construction and energy. I am still trying to make the connection but maybe I need to attend a poetry appreciation class first…

8] It’s your Independence Day. Cheer the loudest today. Raise the flag. Cheer even louder. And celebrate your Independence Day like never before. Pick up a PQR phone and celebrate your freedom. I just wish this Japanese company would stop saying, ‘your Independence Day’ and ‘your Independence Day’ and ‘your freedom’ and tell it that after 63 years of independence we don’t have to depend on Japanese goods to celebrate. We now have the freedom of choice from Korean, American and European goods (all made in

China

of course).

9] We tripled our production capacity* because

India

’s progress cannot wait.

I just wonder why this cement company had to wait for 63 years to do that. Had they tripled their production capacity* (*conditions apply) in 1947, we would have progressed far beyond the USA by now. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!!

10] Azadi ke shubh avsar par, ab lelo sapno ka ghar.

Someone’s recycling Diwali, Dussehra or some other festival ad here. Or has confused Independence Day to be another festival – The date is red on the calendar and it’s a public holiday; has to be a festival, huh?

11] Do it the Indian way.

No, it is not an ad for what you are thinking you dirty bugger. It is an ad for a Japanese manufacturer of calculators and musical keyboards who has realized that if its profits have to go North in the new world order, things have to be done the Indian way.

*It is our Independence Day and I am not the kind to be left behind. This is my offer: Read Top Ten offers on this blog and get the eleventh absolutely FREE*

*Human? Don’t bother to apply.

For whom the bell rings

2010-08-08T19:51:00.001+05:30

Irony (that thing that doesn’t have anything with your clothes being pressed to perfection), doesn’t get better than this:

The finance minister of India is in a meeting to discuss rising prices with other leaders when he gets a call on his mobile phone – from a telemarketer offering him a home loan!

On hearing this, the telecom minister, Raja (and you only thought horses at hill stations had names like that. Or heroes in seventies’ movies.), swung into action. According to The Times of India report: ‘A wide range of products and services are nowadays offered through tele-marketing which result in inconvenience and disturbance to telecom consumers,’ Raja said in a note to his secretary.

I wonder what Raja Saab (that would be a villain’s name in a seventies’ movie), had in mind when he wrote that note. Did he mean that the products and services offered through tele-marketing should be targeted at people without phones so the telecom consumers are not inconvenienced and disturbed?

I love our ministers. Once you get over your anger, frustration and all such logical reactions, they are a great source of entertainment. Some of them, like the Buffalo Bill of Bihar, the Statue-tory leader of UP and the Grassroots Express of WB, don’t even have to do anything or open their mouths to entertain us. One look can have you rolling in the aisles.

But I wonder what made the tele-marketer call our finance minister? I presume it must have been the minister's clean image. (Disclaimer: A clean image in politics is only an image and any connection or resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.) The tele-marketer must have thought, “Hey this guy is clean and so needs a loan to buy a house. Let me help him find a place where he can retire peacefully. The tele-marketer was right about one thing: All politicians take loans. It’s just that they don’t return them. And he was wrong about one thing: Politicians never retire. Not even when they are dead – look at the new blue-eyed boy of the ruling party; he is still nursing on his great-grandfather’s legacy.

Could there be another explanation for the call? A more sinister one? (The word sinister means a minister who has sinned.) Could it be that someone with vested interests was offering a bribe to our honourable and clean finance minister? Do my bidding and I will give you a ‘loan’ to buy a home (in the Swiss Alps of course). Or could it have been a representative of the opposition party making an offer? Join our bandwagon and we will give you the ‘home’ portfolio? Unlikely, because anyone with little brains (for example a politician), knows that a man who has ‘finance’ can get ‘home’ anytime he wants.

I had to get to the bottom of this. Because when the bug hits you, you start sneezing. When it hits me, I start investigating. I called up my highly placed source in the telecom industry (the guy who climbs telephone poles), and he gave me an insight into tele-marketing which explains why the finance minister got a call on a number that is probably unlisted:

Tele-marketing depends on humans only to make the actual phone calls. Everything else is controlled by monkeys who throw banana peels at various numbers being randomly generated on a giant computer screen. Peel hits screen, a number gets dialled and voila, the finance minister gets a call with an offer he is forced to refuse because he can’t be seen accepting a home loan in the presence of important political leaders without compromising his clean image.

But let them be, these high and mighty ministers. What does an average man or woman do when he or she gets a tele-marketing call? Here are my Top 5 Proven Tips to shoo away tele-marketers:

1] If it is woman caller and you are a man:

You: Forget the loan honey, why don’t we talk of nicer things?

2] If it is a man caller and you are a man:

You: Don’t try to fool me, I know you are Raja. If you call on my daughter’s phone again, I will chop you up and feed you to the monkeys throwing peels at…

3] If it is a man caller and you are a woman:

You: Daddy! It is that man again who calls and says obscene things. Turn on the recording machine and call the police!

4] If it is a man/woman and you are a man:

You: Namaste! Nagpada Police Station…

5] If it is a man/woman and you are man:

You: Do you know who you have called you moron? I am the finance minister of

India

That usually works.

Thank you for reading this post. Leave your number if you would like our representative to call you about our excellent offers. Have a good day.

Common Wealth & Games They Play With It

2010-08-03T08:58:00.001+05:30

Yesterday’s ‘The Economic Times’ had a front page story that exposed the astronomical cost of hiring equipment for the Commonwealth Games about to be held in New Delhi. This responsible newspaper used words like ‘stealth’ and phrases like ‘This is getting dirtier than the Yamuna’ as well as double entendre (French word for doing two things at a time, usually involving a man and woman), such as ‘Item Numbers’. The story is a rant (I thought it was a disease only I suffered from, but it seems as if along with swine flu and mosquito malaria, Deven rant is spreading too. Will it turn into a full-blown epidemic? WHO knows.), against the exorbitant (a word that means, oh, go look up your own dictionary you lazy chum), rates that indicate rank corruption. Here’s a taster from the story:

Rs. 975,000/- for 45 days for a cross trainer that costs Rs. 880,000/-

Rs. 6,308/- for an umbrella

Rs. 42,202/- per 100-litre refrigerator

Rs. 8,308/- per chair

Rs. 4,308/- per tissue roll. Luckily they are not hiring but buying these.

Rs. 80 per unit of diesel-generated electricity. Market rate: Less than Rs. 8/-

I do not agree with The Economic Times story. I think it does not get the big picture. It does not understand the far-sightedness of Mr. Suresh K & Co. It does not understand how the government and the bureaucracy of this great country work. It does not understand how it is actually good for the country.

One look at the rumoured truth leaked out by a spider working in Mr. K’s office can set the record straight:

Mr. K sat on his chair in his office at the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). You could barely see him because of the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling – after all he had been sitting in this office and this chair since 1996 and had resisted all attempts to remove him and clean up the place. One by one the Association members trooped in silently. One of them almost stepped on a resident spider (our disgruntled source of course), and coughed gently. All of them held handkerchiefs to their noses – the stench of the system rotting was too overpowering for even the strongest of them. Mr. K laid out the bare facts in front of his cronies (a word of Sanskrit origin that means fellow workers who share monies adding up to crores).

Mr. K: Like all of you know, we are holding the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

(Murmurs of approval. One member looks up from his Facebook mobile and does a thumbs up sign to say he ‘Likes’ it.)

Mr K: We have lot of people coming and staying and playing and we have to give them equipment. We can buy the equipment…

(Loud roar of approval. Plus one thumbs up.)

Mr. K: …but we will not!

(Collective dropping of handkerchiefs and violent sneezing. Three thumbs down signs. Sound of spiders scampering.)

Mr. K: The problem with buying equipment is when the event is over you are stuck with it. You can’t leave it there because the stadium and all related facilities are built to last until the contractors get their cheques after TDS (Tax Deduction by Suresh). So there are warehousing costs and transportation to the warehouse costs…

(Puzzled silence. Tight close-up of a spider frozen in mid-weaving.)

Mr. K: Plus, after the event is over, we have to sell the equipment. But we can’t sell it to who we want to, can we? No sirs. We are accountable. To ensure a fair sale, we have to invite tenders. To invite tenders, we have to release advertisements. Do you know the cost of advertising space in newspapers? You don't? A decent-size ad roughly costs the same as buying a small-time politician. (Both are a waste of money but that's another story.) Then, you have to set up a committee to examine the bids, transport the equipment to the venue, hold the auctions, take back the unsold wares, invite fresh tenders…

Mr. K: So I say, let us do our great country a service instead: Let us hire the equipment! I have full faith that however astronomical the cost of hiring it, it will still be cheaper than buying it!!!

(Applause. Hitch-hiking kind of thumb action.)

But honestly, Mr. K does have a point there. The government is rather inept at selling things. Didn't you read in yesterday's paper about the iron ore mine in Chattisgarh that was sold for Rs. 100,000?

2058 - India's tryst with Football World Cup.

2010-07-30T15:05:00.000+05:30

Last month newspaper front pages, news channels lead stories and anchors, Facebook updates, tweets, youtube links, animated (does not mean cartoon), discussions in upmarket cafes and attendance in pubs - all of India went ballistic (there is no pun about football on that word. There is no pun of any kind on that word you sleazebag!), with the World Cup Football Finals. Every stall on Bandra Linking Road made a killing with football jerseys. Teenagers rolled in muddy maidans turned to slush by the rains and also managed to kick the ball occasionally. To cap it all, Television Viewership Data (decided by meters placed in real households of real people defined as people without an internet connection), convulsively proved that nobody was having sex during the World Cup. Sorry. Conclusively proved that more people were staying up and watching football than the people watching cricket.

Football fever had finally arrived in

India

As is the current fashion, the frenzy whipped (I think I said go away, you sleazebag), by the media resulted in every newspaper, Dick and news channel beginning to dream of world football dominion for India. Columns were written by ex-national team football players, marketing gurus and John Abraham or Bipasha Basu, depending on who got paid more. Breathless news reporters covered gully football matches and Rakhi Sawant on football (there is a connection. Or two). The media took the Jabulani ball apart to reveal its bladder (yeah, even footballs need to pee), tracked down the company that makes it to New Delhi and celebrated India’s contribution to the world cup of football. Facebook was flooded with updates like:

India

for the next world cup!

I look forward to cheering India in the world cup.

I saw two boys playing football in my lane. My heart overflowed with joy and hope and pride.

We can do it.

One day Jana Gana Mana will be played in World Cup Finals.

World cup here we come!

Football should be made compulsory in school. Marks should be added to tenth standard results.

It is three weeks since the World Cup Final and the frenzy has been un-whipped. (You still here? There are no links to WAG pictures here. Go away.)

The news of Diego Forlan, the man with the golden boot (remember him? No, no connection to the Bond movie), is arriving in

India

and it is not news any more.

Real and virtual media are back to reporting Dhoni’s wedding, Murali’s 800 and test century number 48 by ‘god’. Little boys are discovering that if they use a football to play cricket it is impossible to get out. Or are trying to convince the shopkeeper to take back the football because ‘I didn’t play with it even once’ and exchange it for a cricket ball.

There in lies the reason why India will not play in the World Cup Football finals in the foreseeable future. Be it rich USA or Europe or be it the poverty-ridden African nations and drug-torn Latin American countries, or rank outsiders Korea and Japan, it is only when little boys play a sport in every by-lane and every garbage dump can a country produce sporting talent. Money, infrastructure, sponsorships, schools, media frenzy all come later.

And what do you think they are playing in the lanes of Mathura and on garbage dumps in Dharavi?

But don’t take my cynical word for it. 48 years from now the Indian football team will participate in the World Cup Finals. That is because we have a government that is a keen observer of its electorate and its mood. It has noted the genuine interest developed in football by the entire nation and has appointed a committee to improve football infrastructure in India. This committee will travel to all world-class football grounds in the world. This committee will be sacked after three years for corruption and a new committee will start all over again. Ten years from now work will commence on building world-class football stadia in all the major cities in the country. After five upward budget revisions and 41 years later they will be completed just in time to bid for the 2058 World Cup Football Finals. The bid will be approved by the president of FIFA (who also will be a minister in the Indian government), and India will host the Finals.

As the host nation the India team will get to play first round matches.

Don’t believe me? Well, I have it from the world's highest authority in football - Paul.

A hair-raising evening

2010-07-23T13:33:00.000+05:30

This was supposed to be a post about the changing interiors of good old men’s hair cutting saloons in Mumbai. Yes, hair cutting saloons and not hair salons. About how the Formica counters, metal chairs that weighed a ton and mirrors facing each other to create infinite reflections have given way to wannabe swank expressed through square fake leather chairs and mobile plastic drawers that roll around on castors. This was supposed to be a nostalgic note about cheap men’s talcum powder tins sporting floral designs and white fluorescent tube lights giving way to free samples of multinational brands and tastefully concealed CFL lights. ‘OUCH! Have you cut me?!’ ‘Sorry sir, light is little dim and that is your sweat soaking your shirt...’

But one man changed all that.

Tall, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, long of hair and longer of mustache, sporting a centre parting, this man could have easily walked into a Tamil, Telugu or Kannada movie set wearing a shiny jacket and the crowd would have chased him for an autograph and made urgent calls to their giant cut-outs’ supplier or even to local temple builders.

Unfortunately he was in Mumbai and a barber. Yes, a barber. He had too much body and facial hair to be called a stylist. He stood between me and the newly redecorated hair cutting saloon that was now impersonating as a salon. I was not intimidated. It has been my boast that any barber can cut my hair since I know exactly how I want it. That has nothing to do with my knowledge of fashion, hair styling or a perverse interest in men’s glossy magazines. It is just my hair. I can ride from Mumbai to Goa on a bike without a helmet and if I were to reach there alive, my hair would be just the same as when I had left for my heavenly abode. Sorry, when I had left Mumbai. My hair doesn’t move. It has been compared to various animate (wild boar’s hide) to inanimate objects (bathroom floor brush) and yet nothing has come remotely close to describe its texture. This can't-be-ruffled hair style had been a cause of much envy among my friends when I was young. (Now they are jealous because I still have hair.) But to cut a long story short, all my life I have given barbers two simple instructions, ‘Trimming machine all around, but overall not very short’, and promptly passed away in the chair to the soothing hum of the hair trimmer.

But my man today was too much of an alpha male to take instructions. He used the trimmer only at the back and not on the sides. I opened my eyes to protest, saw him looking longingly at a pair of pointy scissors and promptly went back to sleep. I even had a vision of him throwing scissors and razors like the one and only Rajnikanth. I didn’t bother to open my eyes when he chopped off my side locks way higher than my preference. My slightly longish sidelocks are the only attempt I make at some kind of styling but I kept shut in face of a force beyond my control. But then, as the hair cut came to a close, I decided to use my adversary’s strength to my advantage. Yes, just like they do in kung fu. No, I didn’t invite him for a round of ju-jitsu, barber-style. I just looked at his enormous paws attached to forearms built like tree trunks and realized that in those hands lay the key to the perfect head massage.

To those who have always gone to a salon and hence don’t know what a head massage is, we have a question: ‘Are you a man?’ No, sorry. To those who don’t know what a head massage is, here’s the answer. First, it is not a head-only massage. The barber, (it’s not a spa so we can’t call him a masseur can we? Not at 50 bucks a head massage), the barber slaps your head, pinches your eyebrows and neck muscles, presses your shoulders and goes down all the way to your little finger, thumps you on the back and this is the true hallmark of a barbaric head massage – he straps a violently vibrating machine onto the back of his hand, rolls his hands all over you from head to back, and this is the signature thing – he puts his quivering little finger into your ear and holds it there until the vibrations buzz the very core of your brain.

Ah. I just love it.

I wasn’t wrong. The barber’s hands were tough and the thumps on back not only loosened all my muscles but also every bone in my upper body. He must have seen the appreciation in my eyes. Or fear. And in his enthusiasm got carried away and began to give me a face massage. It took me a while to find my voice. It is difficult to find it when you realize how an iron pan feels when someone is trying to dislodge tough grease from it using an industrial scrubber, but when I found it, I humbly requested him to stop. (I had some difficulty recognising my voice; it sounded like the voice of a man who has just mis-timed a leg split and hit the floor at high speed.) The disappointment on his face almost broke my heart. But I'd rather have a broken heart and not broken facial bones on any given day.

And when I returned home the wife remarked to the kids, “Looks like daddy got a face massage. See how white his face looks today!”

A genetic story

2010-07-21T16:23:00.000+05:30

I am a great believer in genetics and heredity. That way I can blame my forefathers for all my faults as well as take credit for the good things my children do.

This post, at least the part after the picture, has been written by my son and I am proud to take all credit for fathering his talent too.

Sometime last week my son was given this picture in school; I don’t know exactly when, his mother knows all these boring details, I just look at the big picture like genetics etc. The assignment, as the line below the picture states, was to write about the story in the picture.

Here’s what my little Shakespeare came up with:

There was a bird called Papu.

Everyday he used to be thirsty every time.

He once toppled down from the tree.

It was George’s pet.

He felt ill. He was in terrible pain.

George went to the hospital and he told his body was hot.

He was ill very badly. His body was increased a lot.

He was in the hospital for four days.

He had a head. A headache.

I just hope his teacher has patience in her genes. And a sense of humour.

Identity & Crisis

2010-07-17T16:39:00.000+05:30

Today’s Economic Times (yes, I read the money papers. No, not because I have money. It is just like people who will never be celebrities read page 3), has a news report on its front page about unexpected problems being faced by the UID project. For those who read page 3, UID stands for Unique Identification, the government’s ambitious project to give every Indian an identity card.

The UIDAI (AI = Authority of India) says the problem is ‘Missing Biometrics’. Biometrics as you would never guess is the science and technology of measuring and statistically analysing biological data. It explores mysterious biological phenomena like why women get headaches at night. Sorry. Was joking. Well, this is what it is (though I still prefer the first explanation): Biometric verification is any means by which a person can be uniquely identified by evaluating one or more distinguishing biological traits. Unique identifiers include fingerprints, hand geometry, earlobe geometry, retina and iris patterns, voice waves, DNA, and signatures.

To stop you from falling asleep let’s quickly move onto the problem: According to ET, ‘Scores of people the Aadhaar project (that’s the national language name for UID. I am sure there are other language names too. Most likely in languages from states whose regional parties support the government at the centre. No, not that centre.), will help the most, do not have the sharp, curving lines on their fingers… Millions of Indians working in agriculture, construction workers and other manual labourers have worn-out fingers due to a lifetime of hard labour, resulting in what is euphemistically referred to in technical literature as ‘low quality’ fingerprints. This is precisely the demographic (socio-economic strata of people), that UID aims to help – those that are outside government records and welfare schemes.’

There is a load of c*** in that paragraph. Let me point it out one by one:

1] Scores of people – One score = 20. And if it is only scores of people then it is not a big problem, is it? But it is a money paper. Their reporters are not supposed to be very good at language.

2] ‘those that are outside government records and welfare schemes’: our government has welfare schemes? Wow. Well let’s assume it has. But then, we all know that except for the politicians and bureaucrats, everybody is outside those welfare schemes.

3] But the first two are merely journalistic shortcomings. The biggest piece of s*** is something that I have a continuing rant against: our national disease of fixing the symptom and not the problem.

The millions of people who live on the fringes of society, who live under the poverty line and in conditions that erase the lines on their fingers and yet can’t erase the hunger in their bellies – these people don’t want an identity card. They want an identity.

I guess I should stop ranting against this syndrome now. It is all-pervasive and no one gives a damn either. And so we create infrastructure to hold international athletic meets instead of creating infrastructure to support sports. Or spend millions to build bridges over the sea to de-congest traffic instead of spending a fraction of that money to fix roads and make them drive-worthy. The current rage and darling of the media of course is the new rupee symbol. The rupee is almost one-sixtieth of the Euro, one-fiftieth of the US Dollar and almost half of the humble Thai Baht but, we are an emerging economic superpower, we are the next big thing so what the heck, let’s get ourselves a symbol.

That is what all this is about. It is a game called ‘Let’s play superpower-superpower’. It is not, ‘Let’s get ourselves a symbol’ but, ‘Let’s get ourselves a status symbol’. It is the same game that drives a poor farmer first to mortgage his land to have a big fat wedding for his daughter that befits his status and then, to commit suicide when he can’t pay the loan back.

But I am sure they will bypass the biometric problem by appointing a committee or two. Alternately, they will just say, ‘Go ahead! It is not a big problem. After all, the nation’s leading money paper says it is only scores of people and not millions’.

So we will march on regardless and spend the last paisa of the seven thousand crore rupees set aside for this project and ask for more because surely the population has grown since we started this scores of years ago, hasn’t it? And we will continue to ask for money until one glorious day, the last tribal in the remotest area in the country will have a Unique Identity Card. And when you ask him what that is, he will say, ‘I can’t read and write so they asked me to put my thumb impression on this card. Nice no?’

Post Script: As an aside, the irony is the UID project is headed by Nandan Nilekani, the man with an illustrious career as a leader in IT, an industry that has made its billions from a different form of manual labour. I wonder if the workers in that industry have also lost their fingerprints by handling the mouse for too long.

A cat and a movie

2010-07-14T23:51:00.006+05:30

One Monday night we found ourselves at a friend’s place. Uninvited of course. His wife was kind enough to open the door and he, to open the bar. We sat around, drinking and chatting and the night was following the usual pattern that would exhaust itself some time early in the morning. Until we were introduced to their cat.

It was a largish black cat and it had sat on a distant sofa, unmoving, and unseen by us. My friends had adopted it in Sri Lanka when it had been brought to them as a tiny kitten. It was a cat like any other. Except it had been born with two gaping holes where its eyes should have been. And it wouldn’t have lived for long had it not been for the seemingly random act of kindness on part of my friends.

Somewhere, not so randomly, the story of this cat is connected with a movie called ‘Blind Side’. It had come here in Mumbai, before the Oscars, had run to empty theatres for a week (we had caught a morning show that had four people including us; there was a couple but it didn’t count) and had gone away quietly.

For those who haven’t seen the movie, a white woman and rich housewife adopts a black boy from the ‘blind’ side of her town, treats her on par with her own kids, fights for him, gives him an education and turns him into a football player who goes on to become a legend.

It is a true story. And though it seems like the typical American Dream story, it is not. In fact, the blind cat and Blind Side are exactly the opposite of the Great American Dream Formula. That’s because, the Great American Dream is based on the power and determination and never-say-die attitude of the individual, of the common man/woman who overcomes every obstacle on his/her own and becomes successful. Whereas in real life and for most of the time all of us and especially the underprivileged among us need a hand that helps us, guides us and lends us its strength so that we can go on. In that sense the American Dream is aptly called ‘Dream’ – It is something that all of us like to see, to believe and it makes us feel good about ourselves when we come out of the movie hall with the salt taste of pop corn in our mouths.

Maybe that’s why Blind Side didn’t make ripples at the box office; it portrayed a truth that was probably too inconvenient to accept.

The stories of the blind cat and of Blind Side are also stories that depict that fine line between charity and humanity. Because charity usually is a one-time, top-down act while humanity is a trait where both the giver and the taker are on the same plane. Because a lot of time charity is about giving something while humanity is about giving up something. And not too many of us have the courage or the character to do the latter.

Blind cat stirred and jumped off the sofa and walked sure-footedly across the room. That’s when I realized that it was we who were blind.

My friend who took blind cat in is also a fine writer. He blogs at http://theopeniris.wordpress.com/

Have a ball, a football.

2010-07-07T18:35:00.003+05:30

The difference between the last world cup and this is social networking sites. When the last one happened, one or two from your pathetically small social circle asked you, “So what country are you supporting?” This time your aunt’s grocer’s son wants to know which country you are supporting and even has a point of view, usually vehement, on why you should be supporting some other.

(Don’t ask me why your aunt’s grocer’s son is following you on Twitter; he is, if I am not mistaken, your aunt’s grocer.)

Now the problem with the question, “Which country are you supporting?” is that you have to name a country. A simple and honest, “I don’t know,” is not only unacceptable it also sets off an avalanche of comments about your ignorance and suggestions about the country you should support. All your friends/followers start wondering why someone who has a mature, intelligent, well-informed and good looking follower like the grocer’s son can’t make up his or her mind.

So I did a little research into this phenomenon. I asked the corner florist, the neighbouring milkman and the building watchman. I wanted to ask the grocer’s son too but he was out following someone.

The first answer was obvious once it was given:

“

India

isn’t playing.”

But the spirit of investigation had truly got hold of me. I questioned the answer. (I do that often. Despite the habit having caused me enough trouble in school, especially in the form of wooden rulers coming down on knuckles.) And here’s what I got in form of an official response:

No comment.

Sorry. I was kidding. No money.

I dug even deeper. The answer:

All the money is in cricket you dumb Fff*.

(*Freak Football Fan)

I dug deepest. And when I looked up I saw members of BCCI (Board of Corrupt Cricket in India) looking down at me. I realized that I had dug so deep that the situation had turned grave. I returned home with flaming red knuckles.

The second answer was also obvious once it was given. The one given by the grocer while I waited for his son to return sums it up:

“See it is like this… I don’t know which country plays how in football. All the time the players play for club. One player play for this club today and that club tomorrow and every time he change club I take out calculator and change Euro into rupees and my blood pressure goes up. So how I know how this country play or that country play? And all the time clubs play match only at night, so how I will know, no?”

At this point he got distracted by something behind me. I turned around to look. It was the grocer’s son. He had a black eye and limped as if he had been fouled on the football field. The grocer yelled, “Arre! How many times to tell… stop this follow business or one day someone’s brother will kick your footballs in!”

I completely agree with the grocer. No, not about the ‘following’ business but about the reason why I have a problem supporting a team. The last time I saw a country play was in Euro Cup, two years ago. Now, I change sides every other day. I started off by saying I would like the cup to go to Latin America. But after watching Uruguay’s Suarez using his hand to stop a goal, I supported Holland in the semis. Tonight, I am supporting Spain. But if Spain loses to Germany, I will support Germany against Holland!

It’s my mind and I will change it as often as I change my FB status update.

To end here is some fresh news from

South Africa about

what happened after Argentina lost to Germany in the semis.

Maradona picks up the Jabulani and says, “This is the ball.” He points at the goal and says, “That is the goal.” He throws it in and shouts, “How difficult is that?!”

Messi replies quietly, “Now try doing it with your foot.”

Bharat Bandh – Politicians strike again.

2010-07-05T15:50:00.001+05:30

The call went out, secretly, and managed to achieve the impossible – It got the leaders of all opposition parties together, in one room, to discuss a development that had affected everyone’s life.

(Rumour has it that even the leader of the ruling party wanted to join in but couldn’t because the ruling party couldn’t arrive at a consensus on who their leader was – The queen, the prince-in-waiting or a retired bureaucrat.)

Here are accurate excerpts based on more rumours:

Opportunistic, sorry, Opposition Party Leader 1: Yesterday my son-in-law came asking for an increase in his pocket money!

OPL 2: So did mine! All six of them!

OPL 1: Because, he said, with the fuel price hike he is really finding it tough to use the Audi Q7 I gave him as a wedding present.

OPL 2: So did mine! All six of them!

OPL3: It is a shame! As leaders of the masses we have to be in touch with the last poor tribal in the most inaccessible area of the country and we need those SUVs to get there.

OPL 4: And because all the tribal areas are Naxalite areas, we need at least ten truckloads of commandos, four motorcycles, one ambulance and two fire engines (because I am a VVIP and am called upon to fight fires all the time), to protect us. And what do trucks, motorcycles, ambulances and fire engines run on?

OPL 2: So did mine! All six of them!

OPL 5: This, very clearly, is a plot by the ruling party. They know we are engaged in the progressive work of uplifting the masses from darkness to light. And if we have to be the shining sun that wakes them up from their centuries-old slumber of ignorance we have to have well-lit homes! And what do generators run on?

OPL 6: I second that sentiment on generators! The ruling party wants to sabotage our air-conditioning and lose our cool! But we will show them that we can turn on the heat too!

OPL 7: It is election year in my state. I have to hold rallies! And what do rallies run on? Trucks! What do loudspeakers run on? Generators! And how do I get to rallies? Helicopters! The ruling party has struck on the very fuel that wins us elections!!!

OPL 2: So did mine! All six of them!

OPL: 8: As you are all aware my party is the closest to the grass-roots, to the most oppressed, the poorest and the under-most of all underprivileged. And now I speak not in my voice, but with the collective voice of all those people. With the benefits of progress, technology, economic upturn and social networking denied to my constituents, with corruption siphoning off all benefits directed at them and with food inflation putting even the basic dry roti out of reach for them, how, I ask, how are they supposed to afford petrol to douse themselves and set themselves on fire to protest their plight?

It's back. But when did it go away?

2010-06-25T16:53:00.003+05:30

Here’s a rant: About the advertising campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle whose tag line and advertising idea is: Curves are back.

The old Beetle was never launched in

India

. So how can curves be 'back'? But I am asking this question because I am thinking like a layman (Dictionary note: layman: a man who is hoping to get laid), and not like the advertising man (Dictionary note: a man who has no hope of getting laid).

But why does the layman think differently than the ad man? No, apart from the dictionary differentiation?

Because the ad man knows more than the layman. He knows that the original Beetle became a cult car in the

USA

because of the amazing advertising created by Bill Bernbach. Advertising that broke the rules as much as the car itself did.

In those days cars were big and solid. American car buyers were supposed to love rectangular car roofs. Cars were symbols of status (and places where you used the back seat for more than seating). Car advertising reflected that. No, not that, but reflected bigness, solidness, status and rectangular roof-ness. Until VW Beetle and Bernbach came along and re-wrote the history.

Ad guys all over the world including

India

know this. They are brought up on it. They all want to do path-breaking advertising like Bernbach. Trivial stuff like the original Beetle was never launched in

India

doesn’t matter because well, the guys creating the advertising know the history and so does the client, so what the heck!

In fact so strong is the influence of the original Beetle advertising that at least one advertising agency named itself after a headline from that campaign. That it turned out to be a lemon is another story. There is also an unverified story about how an ad agency was sacked when a copy writer directly lifted one of the headlines, ‘Think small’, and used it for a condom ad.

The copy writer now works in

Japan

There is also another insignificant fact: From the humble Hyundai i 10 and Tata Indica to the Suzuki Swift and Hyundai i 20, plus the illusion of the Honda CRV’s window lines and the top end Mercedes-Benz CLK, all have shapes that are unmistakably ‘curvy’. But it’s insignificant. Surely, there are no curves that can compare with the original Beetle’s.

Given the cult status and the lasting influence of the original Beetle and its advertising, my rant against, ‘Curves are back’ becomes totally unjustified, almost moronic in fact.

So all I can say is, “Eat on lean and hungry model in the Beetle TV ad, get those curves now that they are back in fashion!”

Of course I haven't seen too many Beetles on the road or too many people standing around a parked Beetle in Mumbai the way I saw them in New York City when it was launched there in 1998, but that must be because I don't hang out on the right roads.

No! Wait! I know what this campaign is all about:

It has been done to appeal to Indian men, the men who are crazy about curves and love-handles. What a fricking insight! Even Bernbach would have been proud of it! In fact I know what the next TV ad will be like:
The same model, now with curves. She takes tee-shirt after tee-shirt from her wardrobe and rips them around the mid-riff.
Cut to: Curvy model walking down the street wearing ripped tee-shirt.
The tag line appears: Love handles are back.

Picture courtesy: www.volkswagen.co.in