One In A Billion

On abstraction

2009-12-27T23:56:00.005+08:00

Because Physics, you see, deals with forces, and matter, and motion. And for many kinds of system, the classical model of Physics provides us a clear, consistent picture and throws in reliable tools to predict future behaviour. The literature that defines the classical model is an imposing body of work, prepared by some of the greatest minds in history.

Yet, when we study complex interactions between exceedingly small particles, this model proves cumbersome. We find it difficult to cope with the sheer number of variables involved, with the errors in the measurement of each variable, and with the myriad parameters that remain entirely unaccounted for and yet interfere with the results that Physics predicts.

So, without entirely forsaking Physics, we try a new model to help us understand these interactions. This time we abstract a step higher. We consider collections of similar particles - substances - instead of their elementary constituents. We experiment, as the scientific method demands, and we develop this new model to explain the interaction between these substances. Soon enough, we find an entire discipline in front of us - this we call Chemistry.

When we apply Chemistry to intricate hydrocarbon molecules, however, we find it unequal to the task and decide that we must move to a newer model. We abstract a step higher and train ourselves to think in terms of organic structures, to which we give names in our new vocabulary, and whose behaviour we determine through observation, and soon enough we are in the realm of Biology.

Yet, when we try to analyse the neural system, notable for its heavily interconnected, highly convolved architecture, even Biology comes up short and we shift to the empirically-derived model of Psychology, abstracting away those fiddlesome neurons and dealing only with the consciousness that they engender.

But when a number of organisms interact, each consciousness distinct and yet influenced by others in unimaginably warped ways, Psychology too proves insufficient. We must now think in terms of the community and the choices it makes, and cease to consider the all-too-often irrational individual - we approach the social sciences, and the domain we call Economics.

Of course, it's still essentially about forces, and matter, and motion. We realize that it is only the inadequacy of our models that, along with the feebleness of our computation and our inability to account for every single variable, prevents us from deriving economic laws from the first principles of physics. And each model, a venerable Science in its own right, is but a rough draft, constructed only to place our observations within a context, to create repositories of if-this-then-that axioms that prove valuable in some situations, repositories that we call Knowledge.

But Physics is a Science too, and a model - perhaps, then, reality is not fundamentally about forces and matter and motion at all. Perhaps these, too, are merely abstractions. Perhaps a model, whatever its level of granularity, is but a caricature of a deeper reality, and this reality a caricature of another, and so on ad infinitum, the interminably-cocooned Truth safe from prying eyes.

Telemarketing

2009-11-16T20:50:00.004+08:00

Zero. He trudged back to his scooter, his office clothes a mess, his ears ringing from the insults that had been hurled at him like so many rotten tomatoes at a poor performer. It was pitch dark; the streetlights had stopped working a couple of months ago.

No hits today. Zero. He consoled himself: the insults weren't personal, were they? They weren't directed at him, only at his company, and at their marketing tactics perhaps. Only a few people had actually been rude, in any case. But the polite ones were worse: I'm sorry, I'm not interested. He knew that they, too, wanted to be rude, he just knew. Their courtesy was condescension, their sophistication mere sophistry. They mocked him, laughed at him; he heard their chuckles as they bragged to their associates and their families about how many telemarketers called them every day. He wanted people to be blunt, dismissive, offensive; he liked it when people shouted at him, abused him, because he could then claim vengeance by crossing their name out on the List. If they'd been especially nasty he would make the cross thick, grotesque, and disfigure the name beyond recognition, and efface their very identity, and sometimes press so hard on the pen that the paper would tear.

But the politest ones wouldn't say no at all: that meant he had to place their name back at the bottom of the List, and steel himself to suffer the same noncommittal, monosyllabic replies at some indeterminate point in the future. Yes, the politest ones were truly cruel - they kept that precious flicker of anticipation alive in his heart, and let it burn him from within, before extinguishing it with a 'sorry, not interested' a few months down the line.

It was difficult to leave with zero hits on his List – he had persevered well into the night. This Hope was a diabolical creature; it refused to die even when heart and nerve and sinew were long gone. Maybe, he'd been telling himself all day, maybe the next number would turn out lucky. People tend to be cheerful after dinner, he had reminded himself late in the evening. But some had started shouting at him for calling up so late, and he really didn’t want to disturb anyone's sleep or anything.

Almost as hopeless, and yet as hopeful, as asking someone if they love you.

Brown, wooden and angular

2009-10-30T18:36:00.004+08:00

One takes this opportunity to speak
Of somebody one met last week.
She's an air-hostess (named Mary Jain)
One met within an aeroplane.

With a trolley full of things to eat
At thirty seven thousand feet
She asked One a question most bizarre:
"Wedge or Non-Wedge, sir you are?"

Now Wedge was a good option, sure
One is brown, wooden and angular.
To confirm that this hunch was true
One plainly asked the in-flight crew
Who looked at One in the strangest way
When there spoke up, to save the day
A chap you haven't heard from in a while
(He was seated right across the aisle.)

This maestro raised his compound head
Quickly interviewed the One, and said,
"Okay - you're a standard-issue software cynic,
Name and surname so Brahminic,
I shall proclaim, if I so may:
You're a Wedge, sir, plain as day!"

But he had not the faintest clue
That One had no intention to
Heed his words; in actual fact,
One had predetermined that
Whatever this worm might say,
One would go the other way
And choose the other thing instead;
The opposite of what he said.

(See, one was wary of this guy,
This adolescent butterfly.
For One once followed his advice
And paid, let's say, a heavy price.)

"So, Wedge or Non-Wedge?" Mary sighed.
"Non-Wedge," One suavely replied.
(Our worm heard, and would've fought
But lost himself in abstract thought.)

After the plane had safely landed
And Mary, worm and One disbanded
One made a silent, heartfelt pledge
To always remain a staunch Non-Wedge.
One now has a Reason To Be,
A real Group Identity.

We Non-Wedges are awesome folks,
We tell each other Non-Wedge jokes.
You might find the odd Wedge who's mildly cool
But, overall, Non-Wedges rule!

Stream of consciousness

2009-04-24T16:11:00.002+08:00

He is standing, quite still. It's not a river, really, just a muddy trickle, a silted creek that's probably more sewage than alluvium. The bridge is just a few feet above the water. It shall submerge if the rains are good this year, and then we will have to cross by boat.

The air is buzzing with insects. No, wait, they aren't insects at all. They are words, each in a different colour, each with a matching pair of wings. The ins and the withs dart merrily about, maneuver expertly around the ponderous bulk of 'maneuver', bump into 'merrily' without noticeable damage, and continue along their way, heading towards the source of the water, perhaps unaware that it is many miles away. 'It' and 'is', meanwhile, race each other, thrilled by their own velocity. 'Maneuver' and the equally ungainly 'ponderous' move slowly but noisily, like articulate bumblebees. 'Ungainly', despite his name, is a most nimble fellow, and navigates slickly through the aerial crowd, the tail of the 'y' acting as rudder.

He must capture these words, and string them together, and make them behave, but they seem to delight in eluding him; they remain just out of reach, the bulkier ones maintaining their height, the quicker ones (notably 'it' and 'is') occasionally taunting him by flying within reach, then flitting away. But capture them he must, even if it takes a lifetime of patience, for that is his destiny.

Metamorphosis

2009-01-16T02:31:00.003+08:00

Despite much interaction with the Metropolis over the past decade or so, certain Facts about the city had escaped the One's keen eye. And these very Facts, gentle reader, were brought to one's notice on a curious winter evening, during one's annual pilgrimage to the Homeland.

In a minor miracle wrought by the lateness of the hour and the nefariousness of the times, the compartment was nearly empty. A young couple boarded at Mumbai Central with luggage in tow. Out-of-towners, their part-excited, part-bewildered expressions said, or would have said if their VIP suitcases hadn't said it first. Naturally they approached the One (who happened at that point to be leaning out of the door and making full Gujju use of the free breeze) for information, and perhaps for small talk or banter.

"Churchgate jayegi na?" asked the gentleman.

Easy question. One retracted self into train and replied, with some panache, "Bilkul jayegi, bhaiyaji. Samjho Churchgate aa hi gaya."

Following this succinct reassurance, one chose to enlighten bhaiyaji further.

"Yeh Fast Local hai. Fast Locals stop only at Fast Stations – Bandra, Dadar, Mumbai Central, Churchgate. So the next station is Churchgate," elucidated the One, your friendly neighbourhood mass-transit mastermind. "Next station, Churchgate", one then somewhat repetitively declared, for emphasis.

Four minutes later, the train came to an abrupt halt outside Grant Road Station.

"Woh signal ka problem hai, bhaiyaji", one observed, with an appropriately beseeching glance towards bhabhiji for support. "Apne ko, na, red signal diyela hai. Warna Churchgate aa gaya hota," one continued. Bhaiyaji seemed to buy neither one's wisdom nor one's Bambaiyya, for he was, in his own way, an astute individual.

Three minutes, and we were grinding to a stop outside Charni Road Station.

"Woh Saurashtra Express ko pehle jaaneko mangta na," hazarded the One, Walking Encyclopedia of the Western Railways. "Boley toh," one added for effect, at which point the train lurched into motion, with no Express, Saurashtra or otherwise, in sight.

South of Charni Road, the railway line follows the curve of Marine Drive in a most sensuous manner. ("And each individual track does slowly bend, like quills on the fretful porpentine," one murmured, much to bhaiyaji's consternation.)

Three minutes later we were standing, quite still, at Marine Lines.

Bhaiyaji, an admirable man on many counts, did not lose his patience and blow his top, if 'blow his top' is the correct expression. He instead chose to glare silently at the One. And one, having been subjected to such glares with regularity, took it all in one’s stride.

Such was the atmosphere in our little compartment for a few minutes, and then Churchgate actually did arrive. But, as anyone who has ever arrived at Churchgate in the last bogie of a 12-coach train will testify, said bogie stops so far from the roofed area that one could be forgiven for thinking that Churchgate had not arrived at all.

"Waise toh Churchgate almost aa gaya hai, bhaiyaji, lekin abhi train aur thodi aage jayegi. Let's get off when we're under the roof, suitcases bhi to hain," remarked the One in all thoughtfulness. Five minutes passed. The train began to travel, once again. Backwards.

A hasty disembarkation did then ensue, and VIP luggage was thrown down in true filmi style, and one was subjected to further cold glares, stares and suchlike perusals.

Thus, gentle reader, one bequeaths to you two Facts this frabjous day. Firstly: when a southbound train stops three minutes after leaving Marine Lines, you are at Churchgate and should alight without unduly worrying about where the roof begins. And secondly: the line (conceptual, not railway) separating Fast Locals and Slow Locals is not nearly as well-defined as we may think. The Fast Local, after screaming through the suburbs like a banshee on steroids, is tamed by Mumbai Central and becomes a Slow Local, after which it chugs along in the meekest possible manner, and stops at the smallest stations and at several signals besides. And sometimes, they say, it has to wait for the Saurashtra Express too.

A sample business-school application

2008-12-07T00:27:00.004+08:00

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am interested in joining your esteemed business school this year. I have perused your website and I am sure that I am a good candidate for the MBA program. I attach my application form herewith, and I address some potential concerns below.

I do not see the need to tell you my university grades, for they are but fragments of opinion; each mark but a human (and therefore necessarily flawed) estimate of my ability. Moreover, a transcript is a miserably one-sided conclusion: it lacks the opinion I personally hold regarding these estimates, which is, to say the least, uncharitable.

I am also apparently required to submit the results of certain competitive examinations. I have not bothered to sit for them; I have discovered that they are meaningless evaluations of verbal and mathematical skill, pedantic quantifications of the intrinsically unquantifiable. I refuse to suffer the indignity of being assessed in these matters by individuals that I neither know nor respect.

I do not have the time or the inclination to write those four 1000-word essays you seem to expect me to give you. It appears that you wish to know personal things about me, to understand the inner workings of my mind, to "know what makes me tick", as you so abhorrently put it. I do not, however, wish to tell you personal things about me, or to tutor you in the inner workings of my mind; I have better things to do, like watching my new Star Wars DVDs. They’re digitally remastered and all. Well, not the prequel movies, which were already kind of remastered because they came out so recently; but the sequels, by virtue of having come out so long ago, did need some touching up, like the scene at Mos Eisley where those aliens .. but we digress. You want to know what I intend to do after finishing your wretched little course? What insufferable audacity. You should be thanking your stars that I even considered your school, dammit.

And what be this fee you speak of, vermin? What diabolic spirit hath possessed your feeble brain that you quote amounts so random, and yet so astronomic? Let me get this straight. I'm the one who is expected to drag self halfway across the planet, study diligently, do those obnoxious assignments, stay up late - and I have to pay you for it? Greedy little weasel, aren't we? The way I see it, you should be the one paying me. For flying over, for staying in your godforsaken little town, for doing all those little Powerpoint presentations and cost-benefit analyses and whatever else it is you folks pretend to do.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration. I hope to hear from you at the soonest.

Oil, slick

2008-10-02T01:18:00.003+08:00

So in the course of what we shall loosely refer to as an education, the young One was told of huge ships constantly patrolling the maritime borders of the Motherland. This, the teacher opined, was the reason one was able to sleep soundly at night. While her apparent knowledge of one's private life was disturbing, what caused greater concern was this: one pictured a sturdy fleet of tankers spouting petrol into the ocean with the intent of demarcating the nation's territory.

To begin with, one felt this was a rather crude (so to speak) method of establishing jurisdiction: since the oil would all wash away, the ships would have to turn back at some point and re-petrol the same stretch of ocean. With the fact of re-petrolling even the teacher seemed to agree: we all reached consensus that this was a thankless sort of activity.

Of course, one surmised, soldiers petrolled the land borders, and petrol tends to stay longer on soil – this explained those dark lines between countries in the Concise World Atlas. It all Fell into Place, clear as fractional distillation. And those soldiers were clever, hardworking chaps – between states and districts, they painstakingly made dashed petrol-lines and sometimes dotted-dashed, dotted-dotted-dashed, and dotted-dashed-dotted ones.*

And thus were matters well understood. But the young One, never one to accept received wisdom without a probing analysis, realized that petrol was not the best medium for the purpose. For petrol was flammable, and it was expensive. Clearly, the order of the day was to consider Suitable Alternatives.

The most evident alternative, largely by virtue of it being under consumption during a reflective moment in class**, was Kala-Khatta Rasna. The more one thought about it, the more it made sense. This most exalted beverage would, to the untrained eye, be indistinguishable from gasoline. Rasna was not particularly flammable, as proven by numerous kitchen experiments and a ruined cigarette lighter. It was cheap, since a single packet would make untold gallons of Kala-Khatta, at least if you didn't mind it being a bit watery, and that should hardly be a concern when it was to be pumped right into the sea anyway. Add to that some clever spindoctoring about sweetening international relations, and that should be that. (One was also on the verge of coming up with an environmentally-conscious argument before one realized that Kala-Khatta Rasna was, in the long run, the more important resource.)

Perhaps it was the impending examinations***, or perhaps it was WWF Summerslam – one does not remember exactly what stunted the progress of this line of reasoning. But, like ol' Leonardo's helicopter, this was yet another groundbreaking idea that never made it to the limelight. It's too late now to tell people about it – they probably use lasers or something nowadays, and Google maps has international borders all figured out anyway. But every time one sees a navy ship on the History Channel, one does try to spot a hidden nozzle patriotically squirting a stream of crude into the high seas. Or maybe it was Rasna all along.

* Later in life one developed a theory about how it's all part of an international conspiracy involving Morse code.

** Consumption of Kala-Khatta Rasna, as an activity, was forbidden in class and carried the same sort of stigma as Talking. The motive could however be met by peering into the schoolbag with the ostensible purpose of retrieving a stray notebook, while surreptitiously consuming the beverage from the water-bottle within. You needed to have a water-bottle with a straw-like mechanism, the details of which one would like to dwell on, but perhaps we shall do that some other time.

*** One never actually studied for exams, but they were a great excuse to not do anything else.

O Caption! My Caption!

2008-06-17T21:02:00.003+08:00

Are you an obsessive reader, gentle Reader? Let us presume that you are. Don't you think your life would be much simpler if you weren't?

One is a compulsive reader. Always been so. If only this compulsion had been channeled wisely towards the classics, towards the Epics, towards the formidable Western Canon, one might have become a Learned Person. But right from the stripling stage one chose instead to target juice cartons and cereal boxes and FMCG-type items in general, consequently acquiring a profound (and purely theoretical) knowledge of Maggi preparation, a sibling-like familiarity with the child on the Parle-G packet, and considerable insight into the composition of Kissan's Mixed Fruit Jam.

What of it, you ask. These matters are trivial, but what one would essentially like to convey is that one has this habit. One has managed to get by, just about, and made it this far. But an unexpected matter has recently arisen, from a fairly innocuous quarter.

As the retentive reader would recollect, one often repairs to the local cinema hall to view the latest Bollywood offering. These being Phoren Lands, the films are annotated with subtitles for the benefit of those who do not speak Bollytongue. And there lies what has been referred to as the Rub. Because reading these captions, one finds, is severely detrimental to the film-viewing experience. Particularly for us connoisseurs, who should not be distracted for even a moment from cogitating over camera angles and dialogue delivery and suchlike.

So ignore the subtitles, one hears the gentle reader point out. But, as one has been trying to explain, one cannot. The written word has maintained an eerie grip, a Vaderean force-choke, on the One ever since one's Maggi days. One must, absolutely must read each subtitle. One must, absolutely must ruminate over perceived mistranslations and come up with superior alternatives, and one must, absolutely must explain one's entire line of reasoning to any unfortunate soul/s who might have accompanied the One to the silver-screen experience.

But let us not dwell on how these infernal subtitles have affected the already-deficient Social Life. Nor shall we focus on how they have reduced entire three-hour K. Johar candyfloss parades to exercises in interlingual jugglery. For matters of far greater consequence are in what is called the Offing. Yes. These subtitles might, in fact, precipitate the End of Bollywood As We Know It! *

To adequately grasp the mechanism by which these devious annotations operate, we must first acquaint ourselves with certain key concepts:

1) There are in most films a few Jokes. Let us illustrate by means of an example Joke:

Arrey bhai, kya body hai! Bachpan se hai ya baad mein banayi?
(Subtitle: "Hey brother, what a body! Have you had it since childhood or did you develop it later?")
- Partner, 2007

2) There are in this world two types of mortal. The Fast Reader Lexicus alacritus, alumnus of Rapidex English Comprehension and pride of his CAT coaching class, naturally looks somewhat askance at the Slow Reader Lexicus sluggiferus. Even L. sluggiferus, however, can generally finish reading the subtitle before the dialogue is actually delivered.

And now, let us examine in some detail what happens during a Joke Scene. Also, let us continue in Pointwise Form because we have taken rather a fancy to it:

1. (t-3 sec) Appearance of joke subtitle. Immediately, the population of the cinema hall is conceptually divided into the two aforementioned species of mortal.
2. (t-2 sec) L. alacritus finishes reading subtitle and commences laughter.
3. (t-1 sec) L. sluggiferus commences laughter, either by virtue of having read and comprehended subtitle, or because L. alacritus is laughing.
4. (t) Punchwords are delivered, but drowned out in general roar of laughter.

It is hence clear that audible punchwords are no longer a requirement for NRI cinema. The astute reader can doubtless extrapolate that with content of an emotional nature, a nearly identical sequence of events shall ensue, with laughter replaced by convulsive weeping of roughly the same auditory magnitude. Eventually, we may choose to eliminate the audio entirely and come to rely exclusively on subtitles.

And thus shall subtitles take over the world. One shall protest, of course, but ultimately one must, absolutely must give in and meekly read them.

* That is to say, The End of (Bollywood As We Know It). Not (The End of Bollywood) As We Know It, because we do not know the End of Bollywood yet.

Unfaithful

2008-03-09T11:04:00.002+08:00

Breaking up is always hard, especially when you've been together for years and years. When you've stuck together through thick and thin, ups and downs, highs and lows.

After much introspection, extensive correspondence with leading agony aunts and repeated viewings of Oprah, the decision was made. Enough was enough, and it was time to move on. One clearly needed a new barber.

The lowest of the lows, by all accounts, was the haircut that was administered on the sixteenth of November last year. It was then that the first seeds of doubt were sown in the ol' subconscious. These feelings tend to fester, dear Reader, and these seeds tend to germinate, until drastic measures are taken.

So, after some deliberation, one went to Another Barber (whom we shall refer to as AB) who runs his shop with his son (whom we shall call AB junior). Ten minutes later, it was complete. A trim of impressive quality.

So that, you may have thought, would be that. Except, of course, that it wasn't. Because the Ex-Barber's shop lies strategically en route to almost everything (i.e. office and pub). And so it was the very next morning that one found oneself walking by the Ex-Barbershop. And hence the Ex himself.

Now barbers, as the astute reader may have noticed, are sensitive folks. They're also observant, and they're as sharp as, well, razors. His eyes immediately darted toward the ol' cranium. It dawned on him, gently as a receding hairline, that there had been a Cut. Locks had been hewn, curls had evidently been sheared. And, the end result being rather uniform and admittedly rather dashing, it was clearly not his own work.

He looked at the One in wounded scrutiny, betrayal writ large upon his countenance. How, those eyes seemed to implore, could one have gone elsewhere? Did one not enjoy his earnest banter? Did one object to his ludicrous prices? Or, horror of horrors, had a Lady Barber come between us?

One did what one most often does in these situations. One chose to lie. One turned the ol' laptop-bag around, letting the artfully-positioned Air India tag loom as large as possible. One was what you might call 'outstation', one conveyed through a helpless look. I don't know what 'outstation' means, his eyes beseeched right back. It means one was visiting the Homeland, one ocularly elucidated. And Patel Hair Art charges about a twentienth of what you charge, one added disdainfully. He seemed satisfied at this, for Homeland visits are the One Exception to the Rule of Barber-Loyalty. And that was, in fact, that.

One can't keep lying forever, of course. Eventually he shall realize that he has been, how shall we say, Replaced. Never mind, dear Reader. He will cope.

And the agony aunt types have taught us much. It's like this : if one returns to the Ex-Barber, then one shall be his forever. And, if one never returns to him, then one was never his to begin with. Et cetera.

And one doesn't know how long one will stick with the ABs either. You see, there happens to be a rather fetching Lady Barber just down the road.

Glossologia

2007-12-01T17:25:00.000+08:00

So one was under much dismay,
A fairly longish-standing gripe.
A basic problem, you might say,
Of the linguistic type.

One turned it over in one's head,
One asked around, as should be done.
And certain people, when consulted,
Replied thusly to the One:

"The Supreme Polyglot, we suppose,
Is the person you require to seek.
His PhD he did compose
In perfect tense, in ancient Greek!

"He once rewrote with obvious glee
The Serbo-Croat vowel forms.
Then rolled his r's and, unknowingly,
Caused two minor thunderstorms."

Ah, 'twas a truly glorious day.
One set off at a lively trot
In Kalbadevi, South Bombay,
To find the Supreme Polyglot.

Instinct led one straight and true
To this old flat in disrepair.
(3 BHK, decent view,
One shall not say exactly where.)

(In hindsight, this flat did possess
A certain real-estate appeal.
A real Gujju, Heaven bless,
Would've surely clinched the deal.)

But one focused on the Quest at hand
And quite soon one became aware
Of a slightly balding, strange old man
Sitting on the floor right there.

What on earth could this portend?
Was this the man that one had sought?
Was the Quest now at its end?
Was this the Supreme Polyglot?

He sat amidst a sea of texts
Speed-reading them in twos and threes.
Chuckling softly to himself
In articulate Cantonese.

Words in many tongues he muttered
At one point he said "Chomsky Lives!"
Then voicelessly and gravely uttered
Alveolar fricatives.

It was just as one had thought!
The Quest was now come to an end!
It was the Supreme Polyglot!
(It took a while to comprehend.)

So one walked up to this old man
Who saw the One and moved away.
(That always happens.) One began
What one had come here to say:

"'Twas a decade ago, in a foreign land .."
One began, quite choked with feeling,
"That one decided, you understand,
That one found languages appealing!"

"Ten years of language-learning grind
And one finds one has now become
Unceremoniously confined
To dilettantic dabbledom!

"Many years it has been, sir,
With no real change in status quo.
One's still quite an amateur
Das ist was bothers me zo!

"A spot of German, bits of French,
A word or two of Dutch and Greek.
But in the final count, you see,
'Tis only English one can speak!

"And things have gone from bad to worse!
There was a time when once one spoke,
One could hold forth, and one could curse,
In the tongue of Gujju folk!

"And till some years back (much remorse),
One could converse through word of mouth
One could engage in intercourse
With noble Ghaatis to the south!"

(At this point he looked rather shocked.
One understood the reason why.
By 'intercourse' one meant but 'talk',
As one hastened to clarify.)

"But long ago was the fateful day
That one bid Desi tongues goodbye.
They've sort of just faded away
Since one became an NRI.

"So one has a problem, see,
Saviourize, one does insist!
You must help, O Supreme P.!
Help this poor try-linguist!"

He sneezed in Latin, coughed in Dutch,
He hummed an old Arabian song.
His accent had a Swedish touch
(His Swedish was extremely strong.)

A modest lunch he then began
With bread and butter, jam and cheese.
He took a bite in Catalan
And chewed in modern Portuguese.

"A tale of woe you tell, my son,
(Assuming what you say is true.)
But what exactly, so-called One,
Is it that you want me to do?"

"To work towards the common good!
One's wildest hopes you would surpass,
If you'd agree to teach, the One would
Sit a daily tuition class!

"Evening sessions, starting today,
To impart language-learning flair!
One shall be thy protege
O linguist extraordinaire!

"One shall learn, O great SP,
(At an astronomic rate)
To enounce multilingually,
To fluentially conversate!"

And, by God, he did agree:
"I shall condescend to assist.
You already do seem to be
A notable try-linguist."

"One's listed Things to Learn, among
Which Gujarati is first!" one cried,
"Must focus on the Mothertongue!"
To which he thusly replied:

"Fear not, my young misfit!
SP, whose help you now avail
Before this language bug had bit
Was once one Shaileshbhai Patel!"

And tears of pride and hope emerged
The world became a joyful blur.
That evening one was seen submerged
Neck-deep in Gujju literature.

Someday now one shall begin
Apprehending, as it were,
Medieval Mandarin
At the feet of SP Sir.

Domicile

2007-10-06T19:00:00.000+08:00

He is standing in a familiar lane. There is a building ahead, and a door on the ground-floor landing. A faded plaque displays a well-known name.

Through sheer force of habit, he presses the thumbworn doorbell. Faithful still, it rings out from within. He pauses to absorb the echoes of a sound that has become for him the very definition of a belltone, an acoustic model of how a good chime should sound.

But there is nobody inside, he remembers. There hasn't been for years. He takes out a rusted key and, after a brief struggle with the padlock, enters a musty living room.

Shrouds. A number of shrouds, grotesque and misshapen, cram the modest space. It is a while before he realises that they do not cover corpses, but furniture. The ancestral heritage underneath is a proud, antique mahogany, distinctly colonial in design, perhaps a century old. The sheets have tried valiantly to protect it from the dust, but the dust, after years of laying siege, is winning the slow-motion battle, smothering the wood in painstakingly uniform confection.

These are the same sheets that served as indoor tents many years ago. They were good tents. They could be military shelters, or Red-Indian tepees. Or imaginary havens of protection from an irate uncle. Or secret hoards for the precious chocolate visitors sometimes brought from abroad.

He moves forward in the dim light, picking his way through the eerie shapes to the big glass door that leads to the garden.

The garden is no more. It was filled in with concrete a decade ago, to create a sort of extended porch, after everyone realized that a lawn was too difficult to maintain. But if you stare long enough, and it's the right sort of day, then the concrete melts away and you can see the grass underneath, a resonant, freshly-watered shade of green, just like it used to be.

He makes his way back in, stepping briefly into the kitchen. Some of the old utensils are still around, steel tumblers and plates, the sort that used to be given as gifts and had an illegible name engraved near the bottom. But the glasses are empty. No Rasna or Rooh-Afza or Gold-Spot or Thums-Up for him. For once.

The bookshelves in the study look forlorn and somewhat smaller without their payload. Most of the books have been carted away by eager cousins, others nestle in neem and mothballs in an old trunk in the loft. He finds the spot where a floor tile had chipped, making a little cracked pattern. He'd always say that the crack was shaped like a seahorse, although he cannot honestly find anything seahorse-like about it now.

The ceiling fan looks down from above, incongruous in its perfect stillness. He does not remember it ever being still, even in the middle of winter - it would always be humming its way round, rattling away to itself, never tiring, never breaking down. And it is so close - he can touch its blades without too much trouble. It used to be a distant, divine windblower, reachable only by tall grown-ups. The whole house, actually, is a lot smaller now. It used to be a giant labyrinth of secret pathways, of great halls and corridors, of hideouts known only to a select few.

But it is already late. He makes his way back to the front door. After a few minutes of fumbling with the padlock and a spot of obsessive-compulsive checking to make sure it is secure, he heads back.

He might wear the vagabond tag as a badge of honour, might pride himself on his adaptability, might claim to be well acquainted with, and rather fond of, dozens of countries. But, in truth, there is a place that means just that little bit more to him than other places do. The place that he grew up in. The place he calls home.

Phase of

2007-08-23T01:37:00.001+08:00

One had never liked cabbage, until one day one realized that one liked it very much indeed. So much, in fact, that one insisted on having nothing but cabbage sabzi for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We call the stuff kobeech out West, and every day the maharaj would be instructed to cook generous amounts of fresh kobeech, with precisely the correct amounts of haldi and tadka and so forth, for one's noble consumption. One was only eight years old at the time, but this was fairly extreme even by the young One's standards.

Nevertheless, things continued in an altogether hunky-dory manner for a month or so. Until what we shall call the Fateful Day. For it was on this day that one discovered a Worm in one's cabbage bowl (there was, naturally, a special cabbage bowl). And, what is more, one nearly ate the worm before the discovery. The gentle reader might point out that the impending ingestion should have been of greater concern to our intrepid annelid than to the young One, but the young One did not somehow see it that way. The amygdala duly kicked in, the associative conditioning was complete before one could say 'Ivan Petrovich Pavlov' (presuming one could say 'Ivan Petrovich Pavlov'), and cabbage became, once again, a Disliked Food.

You see, gentle reader, when one sits down to Critically Assess one's Life So Far, the major point that tends to strike is that one has gone through Food Phases, intervals characterized by the single-minded pursuit and devourment of the Currently Beloved Food. The above was, of course, the entire life-cycle of the Kobeech Phase in what might be called a Nutshell.

Many phases followed. There was the Softy Ice-Cream phase, the Plain Paneer phase, the Marie Biscuit phase, the khakhra phase (they had to be spiced just right) and the particularly obsessive Cadbury’s Twirl phase.

And now, one finds oneself in the throes of a new Phase. It all began with a Japanese restaurant and a generous helping of sashimi. The traditional accompaniment for such foodstuffs, as you may be aware, goes by the name of wasabi. A pungent chutney made from the root of the eponymous plant, it tends to grab you by the respiratory system. And one now feels a strange affinity towards this condiment. One can taste wasabi just by thinking about it. Reminiscent of mustard, but with a cleaner, sharper twang. Mouthwatering. Magnetic.

One shall now proceed to look for some wasabi, for immediate consumption. And one will find it somewhere, even if one has to wade through piles of wormy kobeech.

Blogpost at OIAB

2007-07-16T00:41:00.000+08:00

Time elapses at a different rate in the land of Narnia. You could spend half a lifetime in Narnia and come back to find that you'd been gone only a few days, or minutes, or perhaps no time at all.*

Things are somewhat similar on the blogosphere. Time passes much slower at http://cachacamonopoly.blogspot.com compared to, say, http://www.desipundit.com. So, even if one posts weekly, the gentle reader might receive an update about once a fortnight, or once a month, or perhaps once a quarter. 'Tis tragic, of course. But 'tis relativity.

In any case, that is not the point of this post. No.

For it has been brought to one's attention that a Bollywood film entitled Shootout At Lokhandwala has been released in recent times. One finds this most interest-piqueing. Shootout At Lokhandwala. As opposed, presumably, to Mild Fracas At Flora Fountain.

We had discussed the fact that cellphone companies have major issues when it comes to naming their products. But their woes pale, yes, Pale to the Point of Transparency in comparison to the woes of our filmi folks. 'Tis an arithmetic matter, you see, for we have way more phillums than cellphone models. And producer-types need their phillums to stand out from the celluloid crowd, as opposed to mobile chaps who can simply change a couple of letters here or there.

Let us at this point delve into the history of our Industry, because said filmi folks have, over the years, hit upon several solutions to the nomenclature problem. After the Golden Age exhausted most of the zippy Urdu terms for love, faith, destiny and so forth, they began to string together multiple words, sometimes managing to form a sentence.

They then realised that the names of the more popular phillumsongs tended to roll off the collective tongue with something of a flourish, an epiphany that led, in the heady summer of '93, to the A. Khan starrer Hum Hain Raahi Pyaar Ke, named after the D. Anand song. Its success was presumably what led to a flurry of song-named flicks over the next decade or so - Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya (1998), Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai (2001), Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), amongst many others. Much fodder was provided for Bollywood-related quizzes and for Wikipedia's disambiguation pages.

And so the reader gains an appreciation of the background story, the milieu in which our Lokhandwala team was operating. Most potential film names had been taken, twice over. Most song names had been used for films, and for the title songs of said films, and for saas-bahu serials, and for the title songs of said saas-bahu serials, and for songdance-type reality shows, and for the theme jingles of said reality shows.

So they took the direct approach. They were going to show a Shootout, right? At Lokhandwala, right? Well, there you had it. Shootout At Lokhandwala. No frills. You knew exactly what you were going to get. A hearty Shootout, at no less a place than Lokhandwala. Paisa vasool.

Others have tried to be different, and come up with a) Tarzan: The Wonder Car and b) Fool N Final. Clearly, being straightforward has its advantages.

So one shall now take your leave, gentle reader, and proceed to work on one's groundbreaking script for next summer's blockbuster, Anti-War Protest Opposite Mother Dairy.

* To the trained mind, it is evident that the Narnian universe moves around at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Relatively speaking.

Our teaming masses

2007-04-01T14:01:00.000+08:00

So one had spent an entirely ludicrous sum of money and stayed awake all night and half the morning on multiple occasions to catch the Homeland's national team in televised action, in a contest as distinguished as the World Cup of Cricket. One had braved the neighbour's persistent complaints, intense office-hour sleepiness and repeated viewings of a deeply irritating S. Khan/P. Zinta car commercial that seemed to go “Ek haseen .. khwab hai humne .. dekha-dekha-dekha”. And then the Team had to go and knock themselves out.

And we have gone and turned into a billion blue blistering barnacles, anchoring ourselves to our recollections of that exhilarating Sharjah summer and that NatWest Trophy run-chase, clinging to the memory of that special evening at Lord's many years ago, while seething and screaming at the state of the team today. Despite the best dimaag-thandofying efforts of the folks at Videocon.

With the exception of One cricket fan. For the One does not seethe or blister. One does not mope longfacedly after a defeat. No. For one is nothing if not Solution-Oriented.

Ruminating or mulling over the situation can yield Insights, people. And, with characteristic perspicacity, one has reached the Crux of the Matter. Which is this : the Indian cricket team is underperforming because it suffers from a lack of reservations. No, it's not that they're uninhibited - most of them are fairly reticent sorts, especially when batting. We refer to Reservations. Where are the quotas, people? How can we uplift the Teeming Masses if we prevent them from Teaming?

Clearly, things must be done. The time has now come to formulate an Action Plan, with Bullet Points.

Five places must be reserved for SCs/STs/OBCs.
Two places must be reserved for civil servants and defence personnel, or their relatives.
Two for ex-servicemen.
Two places for the descendants of freedom fighters.
One place for NRIs.*

The mathematically astute reader might point out that this is already too many, for a cricket team comprises of but eleven souls. There then arise two options:

a) A senior official could consult with cricket's governing bodies and lobby for the number of players in a team to be increased to 200,000,000 so that all the children of the country are given the opportunity to shine.

b) We could take players who fit into multiple categories, hence reusing the same individual to pacify different groups. For instance, a person who hails from a backward caste, has what is called a defence background, and lives abroad would be a near-permanent fixture in the side. Cricket can always be taught.

What is important, people, is that the gross under-representation of certain groups in the team be rectified. We are a democracy, after all.

* Well, a little self-serving never hurt anyone.

The Word incarnate

2007-01-03T19:21:00.000+08:00

So there's this word that's quickly finding its way into the vocabularies of net-savvy sorts worldwide. Avatar. As in the Sanskrit for incarnation. Apparently it's a little cartoon that represents the user when he logs on to a chat client.

While the purpose of these avatars is quite unfathomable to the One, it may be noted that one considers instant messaging itself to represent the very nadir of technological progress, irrefutable proof that the global village is nothing but an extended gossip club. It is one's firm belief that the world will one day grind to a screeching halt because every single person is asking every other person what is up with them, and receiving the reply that nothing significant is actually up followed by a reciprocal inquiry into what is up with them.*

But that is not the point of this post. The point is that one has a Problem. Yes. One has never quite figured out how to pronounce these adopted words, particularly when one is abroad, which is most of the time. 'Tis a Major Issue. Do you stick to pronunciations so Sanskritized they'd make the VHP weep in collective joy (but risk not being understood by anyone except their local rep) or do you say 'ave-a-tar and submit meekly to linguistic neo-imperialism?

It was okay in the old days. We had 'jungle' and 'guru', which gave you only a little leeway pronunciation-wise. There are only so many ways you can say 'guru' - you can roll the 'r' a little this way or that, but it's difficult to do anything substantially word-altering. Then came 'mantra', where the English pronunciation begins to diverge from the Hindi/Sanskrit, and that was the start of one's woes. But 'avatar' takes the cake, for it is unlikely that the original pronunciation would even be understood in foreign lands, at least not in the middle of a sentence, and it is certain that the English pronunciation would be met with much scorn by Homelanders.

Tailor the pronunciations to the audience, many have told us. Firstly, this requires observation and analysis and hence involves *gasp* thinking. And secondly, what does one do when the audience is mixed? When you have a fifty-fifty split between People Who Speak At Least One Indian Language and People Who Don't? Dilemmas ensue, do they not?

And where will this end, pray? Given the rate at which they're assimilating our words, we might find accented Hindi passing off as reasonably good English at some point in the future. Tum samajhta haai hum kya bolta haai?

Fear not, though. We'll just wait for Kalki to come and clear things up.

* Actually one's just sour-graping because one has no friends except for the kind folks who make friendship on Orkut, but don't tell anyone.

Where credit is due

2006-11-15T02:15:00.000+08:00

One had a dream, people. This was back in the days when laptops were as large as briefcases and cellphones had monochrome displays. We speak of the time when the Rock ruled the WWF and Vikas Bhalla pretended to rule our music channels. When nobody knew Mallika Sherawat. Yes, there was such a time.

Anyhow, the point is that one had a dream. A Burning Ambition, no less.

Young folks, it is said, usually dream of such things as buying a house, buying a car, getting married and settling down. Not the One. No. One aspired only to enter the databases of major telemarketing companies as a potential customer.

At the end of a long day spent listening to the protests of assorted Unclejis, she would dial the next number in that neverending list. A nondescript sort of number, its perfection not immediately apparent to the untrained eye.

One would receive the call with a curt hello, delivered in one’s burnished baritone. "Sir, would you be interested in the new credit card we’re offering sir ..", she would stammer. Yes, one would have that effect on people.

One would gently tell her that she had precisely two minutes to make her sales pitch. We have very little time, you see, us high-tech sorts. She would breathlessly list the merits of the scheme, while one made rapid mental notes. When she’d finished, one would make a general remark thanking her for her efforts while managing to work in a stylish pun about, say, the current economic situation in eastern Mongolia. One might then ask for further details, compare this with competing offers, and construct cost-benefit analyses.

Subsequently, after thorough rumination and extensive correspondence, one might agree to the purchase and leave her quite speechless with gratitude. Yes.

One was all prepared, too. To the point of reading up on the current economic situation in eastern Mongolia. But privacy, it seems, is a much bigger issue out phoren than it is back home. And such is the tragedy of one’s life. Not one call from a dulcet-voiced telemarketer, not one single unexpected tinkle.

Nevertheless, one shall soon be the proud owner of a credit card from a Leading Financial Services Company. So what if one had to go and apply oneself. Look, it comes with free movie tickets.

On becoming a Socialite

2006-10-09T02:11:00.000+08:00

For years one wished to dare to dream,
To beat a different groove.
One wanted to surpass oneself
Yes, one wished to Improve!

One worked one's way through learned Books
For logistic support.
(By "Books", of course, one means those of
The Self-Improvement sort.)

To build spheres of influence
To chicken-soup the soul
One must devise, they all point out,
A monthly Major Goal.

To become highly effective
To meteorically rise
It becomes essential, also, to
Robustly socialize.

One pondered long, one pondered hard
One thought all day and night.
And this month's Major Goal was set:
Become a Socialite.

Soon it seemed we'd bitten off
Much more than we could chew.
For, since the start of October,
We were almost halfway through!

You understand that one now felt
An acute sense of woe.
In these things, one had realised,
One had some way to go.

One tells all one's finest jokes
And folks just stand and stare.
(Just between you and the One,
It's worse when girls are there.)

And so it seemed like spiteful life
Was extracting its toll.
Then last night, one dreamt one had fallen
Down a rabbit-hole.

One dreamt of this caterpillar
Avuncular, and stout.
He asked one what the matter was
The tale came pouring out.

One soon finished telling him
Now one could only plead -
Help us, please, one cried out,
O chain-smoking centipede!

He looked at one with grave concern
(As caterpillars could.)
He'd been nodding all the while
To show he understood.

His brow now furrowed to a frown
He bit his lip; it bled.
He looked the One both up and down,
"It'll take some work", he said.

He went and spoke to friends of his
(As one would later find)
And came back with some points that he thought
One should keep in mind.

He knew this was his big debut
He looked at what he'd wrote.
He popped a vitamin or two
And then cleared his throat.

"Think of witty things to say, boy,
(Hope you're taking notes.)
And take some time out every day
Practise your anecdotes.

"The way you speak might put folks off
(It shouldn't, but it may.)
You'd be well advised to learn to
Speak the Orkut way.

"You must say u when u mean you
And n when you mean and.
N a Yo! when u mean Hello there!
Sounds positively grand.

"And take some tips from Bollywood.
You could choose to cultivate
An AB Junior three-day stubble,
A Salman Khan-ish gait."

And saying thus, the caterpillar
Waved a last goodbye.
(He later grew up to become
A Social Butterfly.)

One woke up, as one contemplated
All he'd deigned to say.
By Jove, we'll heed his kind advice,
Beginning today.

How well this'll work, or how poorly,
We cannot claim to know.
(This is one's Goal for October;
We have three weeks to go.)

At least it helped one write the rhyme
Of which you just partook.
One might now write, if one finds time,
A Self-Improvement Book.

Aaj Bloggy ka janamdin hai

2006-09-26T02:39:00.000+08:00

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the blogosphere lies a small, yellow blog, which fancies that it is still read once in a while by the odd bloghopper. But there is one thing about this particular blog that makes it quite remarkable. This blog, you see, is exactly one year old.

Today, give or take a few time zones, is this blog's Happy Budday. Yes. The blog is all grown up, and one is so proud. We shall celebrate, naturally. We shall invite all the neighbourhood blogs over, we shall full-throatedly sing old film songs involving laddoos and well-fed bachchas, we shall play a few invigorating rounds of Simon Says, and we shall send all the li'l bloggywoggies home with bulk-discounted Return Gifts. Ah, joy.

***

This, of course, might be a fine time to look back, to ponder over what this journey has been like and where it has brought us. To take you from the moment a bright-eyed tech intern in faraway Europe clicked a Rediff link marked "Blogs", to the moment he decided to begin one himself, to the moment he discovered that people were actually reading what he wrote, to the moment he realized that he’d been writing it, off and on, for a whole year. And to ruminate on these experiences.

But we shall not do that. No.

Blogging about blogging, one fears, may smirch the experience. There are many things that one has observed, much that could be said vis-à-vis why one blogs, and why one writes the way one does, and why one hasn't been posting much lately, and what one thinks of one's writing, but that would likely serve no purpose beyond making one a tad selfconscious next time one posts. So let us lead the unexamined bloglife, and let us enjoy it.

That said, one would like to thank the kind folks who've linked up, and those who drop by and comment, and the nice people at DesiPundit for linking several times over the past year. 'Tis much appreciated.

Oh, and let's listen to Spiderman, Spiderman.

Still hopin'

2006-09-12T00:46:00.000+08:00

One recalls having discussed one’s feelings re. passwords a few months ago. It turns out that the opinions expressed in that post merely foreshadowed the deeper trouble that was to follow. We speak, of course, of the singular events that came to pass last-to-last* Friday.

‘Twas on Friday morning that one was informed that a certain password was due to expire (again). One duly undertook the password-updating process. This, you might be aware, involves typing in the Old Password and then the New Password, occasionally followed by a Reconfirm New Password that, Sysadmin informs us, must be identical to the New Password.

Now one’s last three passwords, if you can keep a secret, have been MeghnaNaidu123, MeghnaNaidu124 and MeghnaNaidu125**. Always quick to spot a trend, one entered MeghnaNaidu126 as the New Password (and as the Reconfirm New Password) this time around. And waited with what is sometimes called Bated Breath.

The Gentle (if Hypothetical) Reader should be informed that one has been through a lot in life. One has survived temporary cripplehood, forced relocation, and multiple viewings of Jaani Dushman – Ek Anokhi Kahani. But nothing could prepare the One for what came next. For the computer had the gall, the Gall, to output thusly:

“Invalid password. The old and new passwords must differ in at least three positions.”

Yes. The system had evidently been Upgraded, and this meant the end of the MeghnaNaidu series as we knew it. Sustained outrage was felt, and some pain too. But one was not going to let this go without a fight. No. One went straight to the Sysadmin, and proceeded to give him what is commonly called a Piece of One’s Mind. One pointed out that one had used only Meghna Naidu passwords ever since Kaliyon Ka Chaman was released, and that one was in no mood to change the pattern just because some dorky operating system said so. This produced nothing beyond a condescending smile (which undoubtedly hid a certain bewilderment, for the chap had no clue who Meghna Naidu was, but being a Sysadmin he couldn’t very well admit to not knowing something, could he?)

Friday afternoon, people, found the One distinctly forlorn. And with good reason, for Sysadmin had given one a supposedly random password that sounded like a cross between a Klingon expletive and a Forbidden Curse, and one knew that there was absolutely no chance one would remember it. So one finally gave in and, in flagrant violation of password protocol, wrote the word on a little scrap of paper that was then kept in a clever, undisclosed location.

So clever, in fact, that one never found it again.

* One has always wanted to say “last-to-last” on this blog.

** And if you can’t, they’ve been something else entirely.

Murder by numbers

2006-08-08T00:20:00.000+08:00

Today one has been subjected to a revelation of some import. You might call it an epiphany, even. Today one has learnt that The Magnitude Of A Cellphone’s Model Number Bears Little Or No Correlation To The Richness Of Its Features (or, to restate, that Larger Numbers In The Name Do Not Necessarily Mean That The Cellphone Is More Advanced).

One does not like things that are named numerically, for these names are usually strings of largely random digits that one has much trouble remembering. (There might be folks out there who memorize them as a sort of hobby, but for the One that holds about as much charm as being handcuffed to a dead zebra.*)

‘Twas much better in one’s day. As gadgets go we had, for example, the quaintly-named Game Boy. This was followed by the Game Boy Color, which was in turn followed by the Game Boy Advance. What these monikers might lack in linguistic flair, people, they more than make up for in semantic precision. You just knew that the Game Boy Advance was newer, pricier and generally better than the plain ol’ Game Boy. You just knew it.

But now, you don’t know anything. That 2370 might sound like a poor man’s version of the 8846, but for all you know it’s the hottest thing around. You smirk when a colleague speaks of his 1002, quite sure that the 9084 you secretly plan to buy is better by an order of magnitude, until the chap informs you that the 1002 can operate his washing machine and generally do everything short of writing his blogposts and will only be available next month.

But let us get all incisive-shincisive. Let us delve into the psychology of the chaps in the marketing department. What in the world were they thinking? One might not know much about marketing (not that there’s much to know in the first place) but one does understand that brand recall plays some sort of role. We know the routine – initial media hype, glitzy product launch (extra points for gyaan-spouting Bollywood starlet), repeated advertisement during saas-bahu soaps. All intended to enhance B.R. Okay. But. But. How, pray, does one recall a brand name that reads like a blooming Sudoku puzzle? And if you absolutely must take your brand names from the telephone directory, can you at least ensure that the numbers go in ascending order? You know, like, small to big?

The latest of the lot is apparently the N85 or some such. Let us not dwell on the fact that this sounds more like a nightly bus service than the state of the art in mobile communication. Rather, let us hope that the next offering isn’t called the F15.

* Do bear with the analogies – you might even find an original one here someday.

Ordeal on Avenue 6

2006-07-30T23:45:00.000+08:00

[Drama in Real Life]

The One, 24, stepped out of his cubicle late in the evening. The mild-mannered engineer had had to cope with many things that day, including an irate boss, a particularly intransigent semaphore, and the Collected Hits of Himesh Reshammiya. He happened to glance at his watch as he made his way to the fifth-floor lobby. It was 7:45.

He pressed the button and waited for the lift to arrive. The lift reached his floor shortly, and he got on board. Four, three, two, one, he counted on the large LED display. He emerged from the lift at the ground floor and looked around. It was now 7:46.

Looking up, he saw a sudden flash. It was a moment before he realised that it was merely a lightbulb. Bulbs were installed as standard on each floor of the building. They required two hundred and thirty volts of electricity and consumed sixty-one milliamperes of current to emit eighty watts of yellowish light. It was still 7:46.

He stepped out of the building, looking around with a strange, inexplicable discomfort. It was a warm evening in downtown Singapore, despite the unexpected afternoon shower that had left the roads dangerously slippery. He began to walk towards the bus stop, still feeling vaguely ill at ease.

With a start, he recalled that he had not consumed his dinner and realised that that was the reason for his discomfort. He would, he decided, have to make a detour to the foodstalls. But the foodstalls were on the other side of the road, some distance away.

On this particular road, called Avenue 6 by most Singaporeans, there is a zebra crossing for pedestrians. He began to cross the road at this zebra crossing. It was 7:52.

As he reached halfway across the tarmac, he suddenly felt his legs slipping out from under him. It was the slipperiness that he had noticed earlier, that which could have been ascribed to the afternoon squall. However, he quickly righted himself and continued on his way, managing to successfully cross the road. He reached the foodstalls in due course and ordered some food, sitting down at a table to eat it.

With a jolt, he heard his phone ring. He answered it immediately to find that it was his mother, who called him every evening. After some general chitchat, they finished the conversation and he returned to his food. Eventually, he finished his dinner and caught a bus that went from Avenue 6 to his apartment. He reached his stop in a few minutes and made his way home, pausing only to glance at his watch. It was, in fact, 8:03.

“One hell of an eventful evening that was. I’m just glad I made it back”, he says, relaxing on a couch in the comfort of his living room.

The One still puts himself through the same ordeal nearly every day. The bulbs in his office building were replaced recently with ostensibly superior energy-saving ones that emit a bluish light. And Avenue 6 still remains as slippery as ever, although the nimble are able to cross it sometimes.

Reports of bloggywoggy's demise are greatly exaggerated

2006-07-28T01:34:00.000+08:00

Behold, people, how eventful the Life has been over the last couple of months:

1) The Homeland has been visited. One takes these trips very seriously, and plans for them weeks in advance, and prepares lists of Things To Do and People To Visit. And one usually returns with suspiciously similar lists entitled Things That Must Be Done Next Time and People Who Suddenly Remembered Important Appointments And Hence Regretfully Found Themselves Unable To Meet The One This Time But Who Shall Surely Be Visited Next Time.

2) Back in Singapore, a tearful farewell has been bid to the Abode and a New Abode has been moved into. It’s true that the New Abode is rather cool, but one might reveal that nothing can quite take the place of the Old Abode in this hoary old heart.

But let us now look forward now, let us summarily carpe each diem. Tags need to be done. And one shall do them. Miscellaneous things need to be said. And one shall say them, by Jove. Yes.

Scrappy do

2006-06-05T00:46:00.000+08:00

Glad tidings we bring today. The Orkut network is growing, yes, it is expanding by Leaps and Bounds. One has exceeded all expectations by managing to assimilate as many as nine Distinct Individuals into said network in but a few weeks. But it was not easy, gentle reader, no. Much time was spent tinkering with the profile. Potential candidates for Friendship were shortlisted and shorter-listed. Many earnest make-frndshp messages were written. Sweat and tears were bahaofied in equal measure.

And a steep, steep learning curve was negotiated. The Orkut Scrap, one discovers, is an unusual form of communication that might appear superficially to resemble the blog comment. However, Orkut etiquette requires the scrappee to respond to a scrap in the scrapper’s scrapbook rather than his own* - this, you would note, stands in contrast to blog etiquette, which requires that the blogger reply right where the comment was made, i.e. in his own commentspace. The matter might be interpreted as an eloquent commentary on how interpersonal dynamics in a networking milieu differ from those in a predominantly creative environment, but one does not generally do eloquent commentary and one sees no reason to make an exception this once.

But ‘tis an empowering experience, this Orkut business. One is evidently connected, through the immediate network, to as many as 19,882,317 souls. Now, gentle reader, one has Contacts. One knows People, yes, People who themselves evidently know People. And having Contacts, you would realise, means that one is now in a position to Get Things Done, that too through Various Means. Yup. One merely has to go to a Relevant Person on this twenty-million-strong network and establish a rapport, perhaps by citing mutual acquaintances. “Hey, one knows Atul D, who knows Francis K, who knows Maniben P, who knows you! Ain’t that just chummy?”

Anyway, one shall now get back to writing pithy scraps in various scrapbooks. Mercy boku.

* It took the entire network several attempts to drill this into the head of the One, but it is well understood now.

Cream tea, please

2006-05-22T01:12:00.000+08:00

An over-Blytonized childhood, one recalls, had elevated Cream Tea to near-mythical status in one’s fledgeling mind. It was, clearly, a beverage that went well with thrilling holiday adventures and all’s-well-that-ends-well boarding-school feasts. Something that caused every self-respecting juvenile to squeal with uncontainable delight and generally proclaim that things were as jolly as they possibly could be. One gathered that it was also drunk by distinguished old gentlemen at idyllic country manors and by fashionable ladies at the Royal Ascot.

And thus, over the years, one had built up this mental image of a frothy, buttery version of our chai, perhaps with liberal lashings of crème fraiche and a cherry on top. An entirely rich and wholesome affair. It became one’s personal ambition, people, to taste a cup of this sinfully posh, delightfully British indulgence.

So you will appreciate that the happiness knew no bounds when it was learnt, at a certain point in the mid-nineties, that the Father had been posted to London. Practically the first thing the young One did upon touchdown was to walk into this café, a nice and typically English teahouse-type place, and proudly say what one had been dying to say for years and years.

“Cream tea, please.”

And then one took one’s place at a table, and waited with what is generally referred to as Bated Breath.

And presently, people, it arrived. A tray that held a) a pot of boiling water with a couple of sad, soggy Earl Grey teabags dangling within (okay, so teabags are supposed to be soggy, at least when they’re inside boiling water, but there’s just no excuse for being sad)*, b) an empty cup with accompanying saucer and c) a plate with a couple of scones on it. But where, in the name of Frederick Algernon Trotteville, was that frothing cuppa, that Legendary Beverage?

After much argument with the waiter (one could argue well for a twelve-year-old) it was ascertained that said Legendary Beverage constituted of precisely the items lying on one’s table.

And then, gentle reader, there was nothing much to be done. One took a bite out of the scone. And poured oneself some Earl Grey. And tried one’s best to enjoy one’s First Taste of Cream Tea. And ruminated on how some things sound so much better in books.

* One has made one’s feelings re. these matters amply clear previously.

Kin-dread spirit

2006-05-15T01:25:00.000+08:00

It has recently been revealed to various distant relatives that one plans to make a trip to the Homeland in the near future. And it is remarkable how hitherto-unknown persons are seen to be crawling out of the very bark of the family tree to tactfully demand various gadget-type items from Singapore, apparently unaware of the fact that their local electronics store could sell them the same things at practically the same price in this liberalized age. One’s attempts to point out the above fact are met with vague and entirely unfathomable replies to the effect that items from phoren are generally “of better quality”.

Amongst said kinfolk you would find the young Distant Cousin, a stripling of great pestilentiality, who evidently burns with the need for an imported PDA* at the age of eleven. The ownership of such a device, one gathers, would allow him to reach the coveted position of Coolest Kid in School, presumably qualifying him to use terminally-hep exclamations like “yo!” as part of everyday conversation. (This is in addition to the yaar, pronounced with the r silent, which he already uses about five times every sentence).

Further, it is most disconcerting to note that many of said kinfolk appear to consider one an authority on all gizmos electronic. This, as the diligent reader of this blog will know, is patently untrue. Yes, one has admitted to owning and even using the occasional gadget. But that was a long time ago, people. We’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since then, as the Russian translator said.

In any case, while it remains to be seen when exactly the trip can take place, it is practically certain that the prodigal son shall return to the fold with suitcase upon suitcase full of megapixel digicams, DVD players, ultrasleek mobile phones and the like, with perhaps a small rucksack for his own meagre possessions. Whatever will the customs people say.

*That’s Personal Digital Assistant, people, not Public Display of Affection. Even he wouldn't dare.

Update: A change of some magnitude has been made to the design of this blog. The gentle reader, upon clicking the link called "Comments", shall now actually see the comments (as opposed to the entire permalinked page). One stuns oneself sometimes.

Grilled, sir?

2006-05-07T19:53:00.000+08:00

It’s Thursday evening. The One walks into the local outlet of a sandwich chain. He is Majorly Hungry.

"Hello, sir. How can I help you, sir?"

[He is very pleased at being referred to as ‘sir’. Twice, too.] "Can I have one of those, please?" [points to large, healthy-looking sandwich]

"Certainly. What sort of bread would you like, sir?"

"Huh?" [note the poise, the skilful articulation]

"Would that be Honey Rolled Oat, Monterey Cheddar, Parmesan Oregano, or Hearty Italian sir?"

"Erm." [Valiantly attempts to give general impression of ruminating on the qualities of Hearty Italian vis-à-vis Monterey Cheddar, attempting to conceal the fact that his culinary knowledge begins and ends at the Gujarati Thali. Perhaps Monterey Cheddar tastes like overcooked khandvi.]

"Honey Rolled Oat bread for you, sir?"

"Yes. Honey Rolled Oat, please."

"Which sauce would you like, sir?"

"Huh?"

"Would that be the Red Wine Vinaigrette, Spicy Mexican Chipotle or Delicious Honey Mustard sir?"

"Erm. The wine thing." [If it’s alcoholic, it can’t be that bad.]

Maybe they should call people inside in batches of four, make you sit in a big black chair while you order, and give you a two-minute time limit. After you’re done ordering, maybe a voice-over could say, "And at the end of that round, O haggard geek-type person, you have scored no points at all. Thank you very much!" *polite applause*

Con air

2006-04-24T01:09:00.000+08:00

What is with the air-conditioning here? One has spent much of last week in a state of partial popsiculation owing to the fact that the A/C* at the office is set to temperatures that only an unusually hardy polar bear could appreciate. One observes that that the hotter the general climate of a place, the lower the temperature to which its A/Cs are set. It’s as if they want to compensate for the swelter outside by ensuring that a chap’s bloodstream is at least thinly glaciated when he leaves a building.

Now one steps into and out of several buildings during the course of a typical day**. And it has been noted that this freezing-one-minute-boiling-the-next business confuses the One’s otherwise faultless hypothalamus, invariably resulting in the Sniffles. Yes. The One, people, is currently wheezing like Thomas the Tank Engine at his phlegmiest. Some people have blamed a) one's immune system and b) one's dietary habits for this state of affairs, but their arguments hold no water because a) one has sat through a screening of Salman Khan’s Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega followed by a full-throated group rendition of Remo Fernandes’ O meri munni *** without any noticeable ill effects and b) one has none to speak of.

Anyway, the tragedy is that one has had to make Arrangements, at great personal expense, for a fine jacket to be sent all the way from home. (Not that jackets aren’t available here, it’s just that one gets disturbingly attached to old clothes.) To Singapore, where you know it’s a cold wave if you don’t find yourself dehydrated on your way down to the bus stop.

Such, as one never tires of pointing out, is life.

* It seems that the thing is called an aircon here, as opposed to an A/C. Yup. Ain’t that, like, a totally life-enriching nugget of info.

** It’s not something one sets out to do, in case you’re wondering. It just happens.

*** One recalls he quite outdid himself the very next line by going “Munni munni bay-beh”.

The book tag

2006-04-17T01:18:00.000+08:00

Yes. A full year after this tag was first seen in the blogworld, it has reached these humble backwaters. Many thanks to LAK. One warns the reader that this might turn out to be a rather rambly and self-centred post (yes, even by this blog’s standards). And one shall use the first person, just this once (hey, it’s books we’re talking about – that’s getting personal).

1. Total number of books I own

Here, in Singapore, I have very few indeed because I don’t buy books too often these days (I’m not counting techie books, of course). Refuse to be burdened with a surfeit of possessions and all that.

If we’re talking about the family home back in India the number is probably close to five hundred although, to be honest, many of those have not been bought by me or even explicitly for me; everyone in the family reads quite a bit. And I’ve read maybe half of them, which is apparently characteristic of a genuine book-lover.

If we count the books I used to have as a child and then passed on to cousins, and the books at the grandparents’ places that I have full access to and shall inherit (at least if sibling and cousins can quietly be eliminated), then we’re talking thousands.

2. Last book I bought

I picked up a copy of The Source by James Michener at a garage sale last year. Haven’t bought any books since then. Imagine.

3. Last book I read

Jeeves in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse. I think I’d read it before, but a bad memory is something one tends to take full advantage of.

4. Currently reading

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Yes, of course I’ve read it before. Come to think of it, I seem to be in the middle of a sort of rereading-old-favourites phase. I find that I can appreciate writing much better now that I’m trying to write a bit myself.* And I always have the niggling feeling that I haven’t read a book ‘properly’ enough, that I should come back to it when my sensibilities have evolved to the point where they can fully appreciate its worth.

I’d also started Tom Sharpe’s The Throwback and John Banville’s Book of Evidence, but had to return them due to various library-related issues that have been hinted at on this blog and will not be discussed now because that would make me extremely mad.

5. Five books that mean the most to me

Okay. In approximately the order that I read them.

1) Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham : Because whenever I attempt to recall my very earliest memories, I see a pair of curious catlike characters engaged in a semi-heated, perfectly rhymed exchange that goes:

“Do you like green eggs and ham?”
“I do not like them, Sam-I-am!”

I read somewhere recently that Seuss used only fifty different words in the book, nearly all of them monosyllabic, and that Sam-I-am consistently speaks in trochees while the other, unnamed protagonist speaks exclusively in iambs. Quite remarkable.

And, well, now you know where the penchant for whacky poetry comes from.

2) The three kiddie books E.B. White wrote – Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. Each is an absolute gem. I fancy I spent a large part of my childhood believing that animals in foreign countries really could talk.

3) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov : Asimov was probably the closest thing (you will, of course, forgive me for calling him a thing) I ever had to a teenage idol. I was always more of a robot-stories person – I remember having read a couple of Foundation books, but psychohistory never appealed to me as much as the robots did. The idea of imposing a hierarchy of laws on an automaton, and investigating how those laws would cause it to behave in unusual situations, thrilled me greatly.**

I read one of Asimov’s books again a few months ago, for old times’ sake. And, to my amazement, I was disappointed. The language did not flow, the characters weren’t fleshed out properly. The ideas were there, of course, the imagination was impressive; but the execution lacked flourish. I guess I’ve outgrown him. Strange, it feels.

4) 1089 and All That by David Acheson. A marvellous little book that made me look at mathematics with wonder, mitigating some of the damage inflicted by years of schooling.

5) Silas Marner by George Eliot. Rarely read outside literature classes at your local Arts college, perhaps, but I found it to be brilliantly written, and very moving, at many different levels. It offered me an intriguing look at the idea of ‘rootedness’ at a time when I’d just left home myself for the world beyond. Plus it was short.

I haven’t read that much, to be honest, especially after engineering happened. It was with much awe that I read the book-tag posts of some of the scorchingly erudite folks we find on the blogosphere. I nurse more than a tinge of regret for not having kept that childhood reading habit going, at least not with the same pick-up-book-first-thing-in-the-morning intensity. Ah well.

* Yes, that’s what I’m doing on this blog. Not to look so surprised.

** If anyone’s interested, one has found an IEEE paper on the technological implications of the Laws here. Do read it through, and kindly explain it to us afterwards.

Dreaming on ..

2006-04-10T00:23:00.000+08:00

One had almost but forgot,
And one is sure you would agree:
‘Tis time this little bloggy got
Its monthly dose of poetry.

Our Dee chose to tag the One
Which really, truly means a lot.
(Even if she chose to tag us
Almost as an afterthought.)

The Tag, in essence, does profess
That one should make a list (much glee!)
Of things a lady must possess
For us to feel “that chemistry”.

So one shall stand up straight and tall
A lengthy list one shall unfurl;
A list that we shall choose to call
“What One Might Look For In A Girl”:

A happy little thing she’d be,
Her constitution should contain
A statement that does plain decree
That stars are but God’s daisy chain.

Her intellect, it must be great
And of the mathematic kind;
She might, for instance, calculate
The sine of theta (in her mind).

And Locke and Kant and Hume and Mill
She must have dissected apart.
(For one has never read them still
And now one really needs to start.)

She shan’t be easily distraught
And tolerant she must be too
(For living with the One is not
A very easy thing to do.)

The moon itself she should eclipse;
And for her face to make the grade
It should launch but a thousand ships
(Despite that being a bit clichéd.)

Skin-deep beauty’s well and good
She should, of course, have much much more:
Yes, subcutaneous pulchritude should
Ooze out of her every pore.

The things that one might choose to write
She must with ardent interest read
(If she can praise one’s poetry
That would be wonderful indeed.)

If such a someone one does find
Then one shall go down on one knee
Pronounce the Last Great Pick-Up Line:
Ma’am, will you make friendship with me?

Your kind attentions please

2006-04-02T23:42:00.000+08:00

Today one has a Brief But Important Announcement to make. Yes.

One has added a friend to one’s Orkut network. This, people, brings the total to Two. One registers extreme joy and fervently hopes that the social life shall continue to blossom.

But no, that was not the B. B. I. Announcement. For that is this : one completely forgot about the Blog’s half-birthday, which whooshed by on the twenty-fifth of March. Much sadness is felt at this oversight, but let us not mope. Let us instead bring out the cachaça and dance in our most footloose manner to the tune of Spiderman, Spiderman, friendly neighbourhood Spiderman.

On a sunny afternoon

2006-03-26T20:40:00.000+08:00

He walks up to a stall and looks at the drinks on offer. Drinks of all sorts – green drinks, pink drinks, yellow drinks; milky drinks, watery drinks, pulpy drinks – look back languidly through those plastic vats. He can see himself, reflected in a different colour in each one.

He asks for teh tarik, a frothy condensed-milk version of his usual chai, and is asked to wait. He chooses a table and takes a stool, setting his rucksack down on the stool opposite. He unfolds a map of the city and tries to figure out where he has ended up. He often gets lost.

He hears voices nearby. A Chinese family – grandma and kids – have taken the next table. The table is meant for four, and since there are five of them, the grandmother chooses to stand while the little children establish themselves and clamour for food.

He takes his bag and places it on the floor, and asks the old woman to sit at his table. She is pleased. She thanks him, her wizened features crinkling into a delightful smile. He nods (he's not a very expressive sort, you understand) and returns to his map.

His tea arrives presently. “Teh tarik”, the woman smiles. He smiles back this time, and sips the happy liquid, and loses himself in thought. Tea always does that to him.

He feels a tug at his sleeve. The woman is saying something, and she is holding a small polythene bag. It contains bread-and-butter sandwiches. She points to her grandchildren, indicating that they have already helped themselves and that he should, too. He refuses, placing his palm on his tummy to indicate that he is full, and then wonders if it might be inappropriate by Chinese custom to decline an offer of food. He hopes that they make allowances for foreigners. But the woman does not seem offended, merely amused. He is relieved.

He presently finishes his teh tarik and leaves the foodcourt. He waves goodbye. She waves back.

“Aate jaate khoobsurat awara sadkon pe, kabhi kabhi, ittefaq se, kitne anjaan log mil jaate hain ..” Kishoreda tells him via the iPod. He agrees.

In which the One Solves a Problem

2006-03-18T14:07:00.000+08:00

Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day.

- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

It has come to one’s attention that one requires considerably more sleep than the average person. Ten-hour stretches, for the One, are practically de rigueur. The occasional eleven-hour marathon is savoured, and filed away in the memory for reminiscence purposes. Twelve is heaven.

The problem, actually, is not that one sleeps so much. The problem is when. The lateness of the hour that one goes to sleep, people, is surpassed only by the lateness of the hour that one wakes up.

But there was this brief period when one became an Early Riser, yes, a fugitive glimmer of Hope in the drowsy blur that this life has been. That was when one went to the Netherlands a while ago. For a week, everything was wonderful. One would wake up at hours of the extremely wee kind, gaze at the rising sun, think all sorts of profound sunrise-related thoughts, and then set off on a Brisk Morning Walk. And then one would return, positively wallowing in inspiration, bright-eyed, and raring, yes, raring to face the day. And, in the evening, one would be fast asleep by eight or nine. The folks back home began to believe that there was some hope yet for the One.

But they, in their usual optimism, had not bargained for the superbly adaptive nature of one’s body clock. A fortnight, and one was sleeping at Dutch hours that were, if anything, even unearthlier than the ol’ Singaporean ones.

Nevertheless, the experience helped one find a Solution. Yes. The Solution is to keep travelling westwards, moving on when the body clock adjusts. So from Singapore one flies to, say, Bombay where 3 am is only 12:30 am*, which is an entirely okay sort of time to crash. After a week or so (as the bedtime gradually approaches 3 am IST), one proceeds to Dubai, and a week after that to London, and then New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu. Then we cross the date line to find ourselves in Sydney, and then we’re back in Singapore. And then we start all over again, perhaps along different latitudes this time round. We lose days somewhere, of course **, but then we always did have too much time on our hands.

And if anybody is wondering how one plans perpetually to fund such Foggean travel one shall subject them to the Withering Look, for one does not like practical details getting in the way of Great Plans.

* One accepts, of course, that Indian Standard Time is the One True Time and that one is being rather pretentious hurrying along a couple of hours ahead.

** That’s one aspect of the time-difference thing that one cannot quite comprehend, but one is assured that it happens.

Bloofargo*

2006-03-11T12:17:00.000+08:00

You make your way to the university library after a harrying day at the office**. You find the book you want after a prolonged and difficult search. (Libraries these days have computerized catalogue searches, but that is exactly the point.) Then, and only then, do you realise that you’ve forgotten your library card. You return to the Abode*** at an unearthly hour and in some dismay, and crash without even checking on the Blog.

And you make your way to the library again the next evening, library card securely in wallet, and search for the book again, and try to check it out, only to find that your membership has expired. At any other time this discovery would be heartening, for it means that the university finally (finally) admits that you’ve completed your course, but at this particular moment it is rather unwelcome. You are told that books cannot be borrowed by an Ex-Member (the very lowest form of library-life, if the look on the matron’s face is anything to go by), and then you are given several important-looking forms that you shall have to fill out if you wish to climb the evolutionary ladder and become a Regular Member (as opposed to a Student Member, which you proudly were until the dawn of that fateful day). You return to the Abode at an unearthly hour and in some dismay, and steel yourself for the form-filling activities that are undoubtedly going to take up most of the weekend.

And then, out of sheer spite, you choose to blog about it.

* this title is, of course, incomprehensible to the reader. Said reader may take solace in the fact that it is equally incomprehensible to the One.

** the library and the office, naturally, are at opposite ends of the city. Country, even.

*** the Abode and the library, naturally, are also at opposite ends of the city.

Update:

And then the blog goes missing. Again. Bad, bad bloggy.

This has been a most trying week. One is not amused at all.

Learning to text

2006-03-02T23:18:00.000+08:00

Lend thy ears, for matters now
Of much importance we address.
Yes, this fine evening we’ll see how
One learned to send an SMS.

The day was dull, the skies were grey
And it was hot, to some degree.
One's walking down from point A (say)
To a place that we shall call point B.

There was a tea-place on the way
(On Ashram Road, one does recall)
And standing there, like every day,
Was Rameshbhai, who owned the stall.

As one waited for a cup
Of steaming hot masala chai,
One thought one might call Mom up
One thought of giving it a try.

(For one possessed in days of yore
A gadget one could call one’s own.
One carried and one did adore
One’s old and trusty mobile phone.)

One undertook this complex feat
Sweat pouring down this furrowed brow.
For (it must've been the heat)
One could not quite remember how.

How on earth was one to type
Numbers that made her cellphone ring?
(And thus began one’s general gripe
With every freaking gadget-thing.)

One was now in much dismay,
One had no further wish to live.
One’s expression, you might say
Was sufficiently expressive.

One was truly at a loss
A nervous breakdown had begun
But Rameshbhai, he walked across
And sat down right beside the One.

"You need to learn these things", he said
"Your skills we shall proceed to hone
But wait, before we go ahead,
How long have you, boy, had this phone?"

"Oh, maybe a year", one told him,
"Fourteen months, to be exact.
One called a friend once, on a whim.
(And yes, one does have friends, in fact.)"

"Learn to text, boy, helps a lot
It costs less than a call would, too."
(He was, as you might have thought,
A fine and businesslike Gujju.)

"Technology is vast, my boy,
But I shall be your trusty guide.
(Without intending to annoy - )
You can read, right?" he verified.

"Press this button, and you’ll see
A blank screen and a cursor too
That much I can guarantee;
But thereafter it’s up to you."

"Think of what you want to say
And write it out nice and concise.
Say what you wish to convey
And if you can’t, just write it twice."

He spoke (one thanked the Gods above)
On various relevant techniques.
Then he lent one his copy of
'SMSese in Seven Weeks'.

And tears of unbridled joy,
They freely flowed down from one’s eyes.
The Almighty, he doth deploy
A worthy angel in disguise.

"Ah, marvellous! Callooh! Callay!
‘Tis magical!" One cried out loud;
"One learnt something new today
The folks are gonna be so proud!"

That glorious evening did the trick.
One’s resumé now does profess,
"Well- travelled, and dynamic,
And conversant with SMS."

Parenthetically speaking

2006-02-26T11:54:00.000+08:00

One is an ardent advocate of increasing the ambit of bracket-usage. One illustrates the advantages offered by this age-old precedence-clarification device.

Remember the Mary Poppins joke that goes

Bert : I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith.
Uncle Albert : What’s the name of his other leg?

A brief examination of the joke reveals the ambiguity that is being exploited here. We do not know if Bert is referring to a man with a wooden leg or to a wooden leg named Smith. This could probably be expressed succinctly in an axiom of the “subordinate clauses may not be interrupted by nonessential appositives” kind, but one slept through grammar classes at school. And through most other classes too, but that is irrelevant here.

Folks would point out that changing “man with a wooden leg” to “wooden-legged man” avoids the confusion. And they would be subjected to a withering look from the One*, because that sort of thing just wouldn’t work if you were talking about a chap with, say, a polka-dot bandanna.

But observe what happens when we use the new, lunula-enhanced version of the language:

Bert : I know a (man with a wooden leg) named Smith.
Uncle Albert : Er .. okay.

See? Problem solved. And it’s extensible too ..

Bert : I know a (man who wears a polka-dot bandanna and a cool Emraan Hashmi-style bomber jacket) named Smith.
Uncle Albert : Umm .. okay.

One agrees this might be a little inconvenient during a conversation (I know a open bracket man with a wooden leg close bracket …) but the speaker could make air-brackets with his hands, much like the air-quotes that seem to be rather popular these days amongst the hep set. And look how scientific it is. No misunderstandings. Much time saved, much money saved.

It seems one has come up with a patently patentable idea and destroyed a perfectly good joke. It’s nice to be productive for a change.

* Which is almost as alarming as one’s normal expression, one assures you.

Hopin', sesame

2006-02-20T21:12:00.000+08:00

One was informed recently that the password one had been using to access a certain intranet was due to expire. In accordance with recently-implemented policy, the new password was required to

1) Be at least eight characters long.
2) Be different from the previous twelve passwords.
3) Contain at least three of the following : a) uppercase letters, b) lowercase letters, c) numbers, d) non-alphanumeric characters.

One wishes to protest. One finds these rules overly draconian, clearly intended to terrorize all but the most doughty of intellects. No telling how low these system administrator types can stoop – next they’ll be asking for palindromes, or original pangrams, or perfect villanelles. And one Draws the Line at being made to waste precious (and limited) brainpower on such matters, given that one’s passwords thus far have consisted of one’s name followed, to confound even the most devious of hackers, by the surname.

The fact that password-choosing is well on its way to becoming an exercise in creative writing would not bother one so much if it had not been for the need to remember passwords. Yes. One has realised that a password actually needs to be retained in the ol’ memory for extended periods of time, failing which many hassles ensue. Such insight has not, however, prevented such hassles from ensuing, and ensuing repeatedly, in the course of this brief but eventful existence.*

See, one usually keys in the username with a flourish .. and then, pfft (zppk? grrch?). Everything goes blank.

At this point one proceeds to follow a complicated but well-established procedure that involves delving deep into the nooks and crannies of this tangled mind, negotiating one’s way through a lifetime of cerebral (and not-so-cerebral) detritus in the hope of finding that elusive thingybob. This, despite the immense mental effort involved, does not usually give useful results, and one is left with no choice but to look for the system administrator. Who is invariably on holiday.

We need voice authentication. Iris recognition. DNA fingerprinting. Anything but passwords.

* One cannot, at this point, remember what one had for lunch yesterday (or even whether one had lunch yesterday) so asking one to remember a random string like MeghnaNaidu123 is, you would agree, a bit much. Especially when it needs to be changed to MeghnaNaidu124 in a couple of months.

Worse libre

2006-02-16T12:04:00.000+08:00

Thought of writing
A poem today.
A modern sort of poem, you know.
Free verse, they call it.
You write it
just like you would write prose
Except you can be
even less coherent.
Then you break your lines
Arbitrarily, like
so;
Add a few
important words
Let’s see .. dreams, yes, dreams
Teardrops and infinity, maybe
And, of course, love.
(Couldn’t leave that one out, could we.)
And you’re not to worry
About rhythm or
rhyme
Different is avant-garde, after all.
And then, especially if you’re Asian
You talk about home
If you mix up your languages, better still
More exotic, you see.
Critical acclaim is assured.

There. Hey,
this is easy.
Let’s try
Abstract art next.

On data, or the lack thereof

2006-02-09T11:27:00.000+08:00

Blogger, it seems, has been acting up lately. Comments have gone missing. Posts have gone missing. And, for a few hours a couple of days ago, one’s entire blog went missing.

“This document contains no data”, a little alert-box would cheerfully inform the millions (and millions) who undoubtedly tried to access this glorious webpage that morning (or afternoon, or evening, or whatever). One was, of course, amongst said multitudes. And one was Quite Dismayed, if truth be told. No data? No information, perhaps, but no data? A quarter of a million characters one has typed out, yes, a quarter of a million, over tens of thousands of lines, and it says no data?

Tragic it is, truly tragic. Reams and reams of pristine prose (and the occasional poem too, let us not forget) at the mercy of a fickle service provider. Ah, the sheer injustice of it all. That too after all the care one takes of this site. One checks on it every day, one tweaks the template regularly, one has even memorized the URL. One goes so far as to feel a paternal affection for it at times. And Blogger has the gall, the Gall, to chheenofy it from the One.

One seriously considered moving to one’s own domain, but that apparently requires a) money and b) technological knowledge, neither of which one can claim to possess in significant quantity.

Such is life.

Charming, tiptop, beautiful beautiful ..

2006-02-02T18:58:00.000+08:00

Some may remember how the rapid growth of satellite television in India in the early nineties resulted in the proliferation of numerous nondescript channels dedicated to repeatedly broadcasting, of all things, film trailers.

The general lack of things to do in those days meant that one let oneself be subjected, at that impressionable age, to a continuous medley of aforesaid trailers. Trailers which were, naturally, full of phillum-songs. The effects, not surprisingly, linger to this very day. When one encounters blogposts that recall old advertisement-jingles and reminiscences like this one by heh heh, a few carefully-suppressed memories barge their way out of the subconscious and beg for an audience.

So let us discuss one particularly compelling phillum-song memory today, if only to achieve a sort of catharsis. For, as the Planthrin Borgess said, disturbing memories should not be bottled up within – they must be confronted.*

‘Tis the heady summer of ‘95. The young One is spending a vacation at the grandparental home, which happens to be located near a drive-in theatre. ‘Tis eleven o’clock at night, and the young One, having watched enough WWF for the day, prepares to curl up with a few Mandrake comics. Suddenly, he hears faint but bloodcurdling wails emanating from the aforementioned theatre. He listens, scared but fascinated.

A man’s voice, declaiming with much vigour:

We want girl, beautiful beautiful,
Charming, tiptop, beautiful, beautiful ..

And then a shrill, doubtless feminine retort:

We want boy, handsome handsome,
Dashing He-Man, Superman, Phantom ..

The young One covers his ears. He plugs them with cotton wool. He shuts the window. He burrows into the pillow. But nothing seems to help. He can still hear it. He considers drowning out the sound by playing something louder, but people are sleeping. He is in a most woeful predicament. He can do nothing but wait for it to finish.

And every night, at a few minutes past eleven, the young One is subjected to the aforementioned lyrics. By the end of the week, these lines are indelibly etched into his tender psyche. The young One is scarred for life.

The years pass. The young One becomes a Big Boy. He leaves the comforts of the beloved Desh and journeys to strange lands, meeting new people, seeing new sights, thinking new thoughts. But wherever he may go, every once in a while, when he least expects it, the lines return to haunt him. “Charming, tiptop, beautiful beautiful .. Dashing He-Man, Superman, Phantom ..”

And that, gentle reader, is the end of that particular phillum-song memory. One hopes that catharsis has been achieved. If the song does not haunt one any more, if the nightmares do not recur, one shall be thankful. ‘Nuff said.

* One does not have the faintest idea who the Planthrin Borgess might be, but then neither do you.

Update :

It seems people do not believe that such a song has ever been sung in Bollywood. While one is suitably outraged at the implication that this blog takes liberties with the truth (perish the thought!), one shall now go about the delicate business of Clearing One’s Good Name.

The lines in the post are from a song entitled Saawan Ka Mahina, Shaadi Bina Mushkil Hai Jeena. Phillum Hulchul. One cannot find the song on the web, unfortunately, but the reader might recall another song from the same film (a marginally better one) that went Pehli Dafaa Is Dil Mein Bhi Hulchul Si Hone Lagi.

So there.

Update the second :

S. (May She Blog For Ever) has given us this link. The gentle reader shall click on it and play the song in question.

The Techie Decalogue

2006-01-27T15:55:00.000+08:00

It was with High Hopes and Noble Intentions that one chose to train oneself for the exalted profession of Engineering. One thought it would be mostly about warp drives and lightsabers and telling robots what to do (“A robot must not disturb the One during a game of Minesweeper or, through inaction, allow the One to be disturbed during said game”). It actually seems to involve mundane and extremely unglamorous things like debugging core dumps and writing system specifications, neither of which one has really got the hang of.

See, six years of concerted study have taught one remarkably little except for the fact that a penchant for computer games and science fiction cannot see a chap through. One finds oneself in the unenviable position of being a Techie Who Knows Nothing Of Things Technological (TWKNOTT).

Today one shall spare a thought for fellow TWKNOTTs. A few pointers (no pun intended) will, one hopes, go a long way towards making their lives easier. One delivers, O people, the Ten Commandments of TWKNOTT-dom:

1) When the in-house ubergeek (and there is always an in-house ubergeek – he’s the one who spends his weekends writing device drivers and was probably born hacking away at the Linux kernel) mutters something about how that newfangled filesystem doesn’t work too well with the Allegro library, thou shalt silently nod in agreement.

2) Thou shalt occasionally remark, in reply to aforementioned ubergeek, that thou hast heard rumours that the aforementioned filesystem doesn’t take too kindly to UPnP either. If feeling particularly enthusiastic (or if it is a Friday afternoon), thou shalt add that it is only possible to verify these matters by running simulations using the Parallel Virtual Machine. Over the Secure Shell. With private-key encryption.

3) Thou shalt liberally pepper conversations with the words “robustness” and “scalability”. They’re powerful concepts, those two, and may be used in connection with many different things, like hardware, software, organizational structure, and the secretary’s new lipstick.

4) Whenever a fellow techie describes what he is doing, thou shalt ask him what layer of the OSI model he works at. This question is almost universally applicable, and you’ll sound pretty clever asking it.

5) If someone utters an incomprehensible acronym-with-numeric-suffix, thou shalt retort with acronym-with-larger-numeric-suffix. For example, if talk turns to MPEG-2, thou shalt immediately speak of the more advanced MPEG-4. If someone then dares to move to MPEG-7, you may raise him all the way up to MPEG-21 (which is so advanced it hasn’t even been developed yet). Thereafter thou shalt start with H.263. And then thou mayst go pretty much as far as thy heart desires.

6) Thou shalt refer to “levels of abstraction” at least twice in every conversation (more if it’s an interview). This, again, is a powerful term, so you need not worry much about where you use it.

7) Whenever thou hast no clue how to solve a certain problem, thou shalt reveal to fellow workers (in a suitably low tone) that the problem is so difficult you’re thinking of using a neural network. This shall suitably impress everyone, and you can always tell them later that it didn’t work because the damn thing wasn’t intelligent enough.

8) Thou shalt regularly perpetrate extremely bad techie puns – these are actually well received by other techies. Thou mayst begin with something basic, something along the lines of

Q. How did the operating system know how to execute the shell script?
A. The interpreter mentioned it in parsing.

9) If having tea with desi techies, thou shalt give in to temptation and disseminate substandard Sholay jokes based upon the unsuspecting Samba suite.

10) Thou shalt account for the fact that the person you are talking to might be a TWKNOTT too. If such is indeed the case, the two of you may merrily undertake the task of preparing additional tips for fellow TWKNOTTs.

Second star to the right … and straight on till morning

2006-01-20T16:18:00.000+08:00

It is a balmy Singapore afternoon. One is walking around town, occasionally consulting a tattered old streetmap, occasionally slipping into a café or a bookstore, but mostly just wandering. At one point, as one peers at the map to decide whether it would be better to walk straight along Orchard Road or to go south for a riverside stroll, an elderly couple approach and ask where one wishes to go. One cannot refuse their help, for that would seem ungrateful. So one tells them that one wishes to be at the riverside, and listens patiently as they kindly proceed to give detailed directions.

Let us, at this point, cut to a busy Amsterdam street just over six months ago (we shall not use fancy dissolves or fade-out/fade-in effects. That’s just so Bollywood.) One is walking around town, occasionally consulting a tattered old streetmap, occasionally slipping into a café or a bookstore, but mostly just wandering. At one point, as one peers at the map to decide whether it would be better to walk straight along to the museums or to proceed to places-that-cannot-be-mentioned-on-PG-rated-blog (purely, one hastens to clarify, for .. er .. sightseeing), a rather intimidating biker-type dude approaches and asks where one wishes to go. One cannot refuse his help, for that would seem ungrateful. So one tells him that one wishes to be at the van Gogh museum*, and listens patiently as he kindly proceeds to give detailed directions.

And there lies the problem. You see, one does not need directions – for the whole point of having a map is that it allows one to find one’s own way around. One cannot understand why folks assume that the merest glance at it implies that one is lost. It’s come to the point where one has to hide in phone booths and behind bus-stop shelters and sometimes in McDonald’s restrooms to unfold the map and steal a quick look at it without being interrupted.

And so we come to the crux of the matter. One wishes to make a personal appeal on this blog. If you, gentle reader, ever see a geeky sort of chap (mid-twenties, dark hair, dark eyes, underweight) walking around your hometown, occasionally consulting a dog-eared streetmap and perpetually wearing a faintly bewildered expression, please do not offer to help him. He is doing just fine by himself. Merci much.

*In retrospect, one thinks it would’ve been possible to hitch a ride if one had wanted to go to the places-that-cannot-be-mentioned-on-PG-rated-blog.

Sounds like twentysomething spirit

2006-01-14T13:41:00.000+08:00

One has finally shaken off the Vogonic influences. Let us proceed with regular programming. One was pondering the implications of this post, in which the Urban Junkie discusses the dubiousness of onomatopoeic representation.

One has a problem with onomatopoeia. The fact remains that, if one focuses hard enough, one can make any sound sound like almost anything. (That sentence should be edited. But one shall not bother.) Like the trick with the picture of the candlestick and the two faces, it’s all in the mind.

One pretends that the rain goes pitter-patter, but one could equally pretend that it recites logarithmic tables to three decimal places. Brooks are known to gurgle and to babble, but it doesn’t take much to imagine that they’re gossiping or singing or vociferously debating the meaning of existence. (Incidentally, one is quite sure of having heard a pair of noisy airplane engines patiently narrate the complete text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And one swears that the 8:54 from Borivali to Churchgate goes “Thackeray-Thackeray”.)

Such quasi-synesthetic propensities could be ascribed, of course, to one’s general weirdness. But it seems that the problem is not unique to this individual. The Americans maintain that dogs go “bow-wow” while the English say that it’s actually a more dignified “woof-woof”. In China, they apparently prefer “wang-wang”. For onomatopoeia, it seems, is no more than an auditory Rorschach test. The subject, presented with a largely neutral stimulus, hears what he wishes to hear.

The fickleness of it all is proven by the observation that filmi hearts, having followed for decades their characteristic dhak-dhak and dhadak-dhadak patterns, now tend to go mmm.

Pilgrim's progress

2006-01-04T13:03:00.000+08:00

One debated, one demurred
How should it be revealed online?
In poetry, or prose perhaps
Or both of them, in intertwine?

One might’ve done a weepy post
So full of longing and despair
And written little paeans to
Each windmill, every tulip there.

One could’ve done a Hindi song
One could’ve gone the filmi way
Discussed musafir zindagis
(But then one does that everyday.)

One might’ve tried to go descriptive
Pepped things up with foreign lore
Quoted different Dutch poets,
Gone heavy on the metaphor.

One thought long and hard, one did
Then one decided to be brief
So one shall spare thee, gentle reader!
(Reader heaves sigh of relief.)

So one shall tell it like it is:
One ain’t where one was before.
One shall tell it straight and true:
One now resides in Singapore.

Water, water everywhere ..

2005-12-27T22:49:00.000+08:00

One can never quite get used to drinking water straight from the kitchen tap, even after years of living in phoren lands where it is the Done Thing. It just seems wrong somehow. Theoretically acceptable but disconcerting in practice, like Meghna Kothari’s snake-dance in Bride and Prejudice.

One appreciates fully that the liquid in those pipes is unlikely to harm an individual who has devoted a large part of his existence to consuming items of questionable edibility at roadside outlets of questionable legality back home. At the same time, one cannot help remembering with a certain nostalgia the ritual of filling the paani-bottles every other morning. An oddly comforting if tedious rite involving family and Filter.

Our Filter, you see, was more than a domestic appliance. He was an institution, an avuncular presence, a member of the family. Much of the credit for the good health of the denizens of the home was given to him, that grand old Guardian of the Waters, Nemesis of Unhygienic Micro-Organisms, Ruthless Exterminator of Potentially Parivaar-Threatening Vermin. Wary NRI cousins would proudly be told to drink their Rasna without fear, for the water in their glasses was surely purer than driven snow. Doctors would be ordered to rule out water-borne diseases before they made their diagnosis, for it was inconceivable that germs could escape the Filter’s watchful eye.

A few years ago the Filter was replaced with a modern water-purifier gizmo. One has always been suspicious of this new intruder. Inflicting “chemical treatment” upon the family jal-supply hardly seems appropriate, given that people are going to drink the stuff. And reverse-osmosis sounds like something either too evil or too explicit to be discussed on a PG-rated blog*. But who can argue with Science?

In any case, one’s fridge here is stocked with a row of old Coke bottles, each filled to the brim with pristine, cloth-filtered water. No telling what strange phoren impurities these pipes might harbour.

* One just decided that this blog shall be PG-rated. One does not think there are any children in the audience, but if you happen to be below thirteen one advises you to fetch your parents so the good folks can warn you how not to turn out.

Dear Sinter ..

2005-12-26T01:43:00.000+08:00

The blogosphere, it appears, is embracing the festive season with much warmth. Everyone's in on it, all the way from meghalomania to 2x3x7. So, on this fine twenty-fifth, one shall depart from custom to post something that can be described, at least by those of an accommodating nature, as relevant. Yes. One shall divulge, to anyone who cares to listen, how Christmas is celebrated in this part of the world.

Christmas in the Netherlands isn’t about gifts. It’s about spending a quiet time at home, with the family. With large, profusely-decorated Christmas trees, good food and soft music. It’s about togetherness and goodwill, not about crass commercialism.

But wait, says the gentle reader. What about Santa Claus? How are Dutch kids persuaded to behave themselves? How do they learn the nuances of letter-writing and the art of presenting themselves in the best possible light without sounding unduly boastful? And, pray, what happens to their old stockings?

These concerns, if felt, are largely unfounded. For Holland has its own gift-giving patriarch. His name is Sint Nikolaas, generally shortened to Sinterklaas. And he .. er .. wraps up the gift-giving on the fifth of December. One presumes that this gives the children enough time to vivisect their newly-acquired trinkets and finish their candy, so they can focus on putting their best foot forward when distant relatives* show up at Yuletide.

One caught a glimpse of Sinterklaas when he came to town a few weeks ago. He is large and corpulent, and he has a flowing white beard and a red robe. But there the similarity to Santa ends. For he does not go ‘ho-ho-ho’, he does not carry a sack of sweets, and he is generally more dignified of apparel and bearing than is good ol’ Santa. He is not associated with reindeer, sleighs, elves, or the North Pole. Rather, he is supposed to come down from Spain each year (in a steamboat, no less) with his helper, Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), who gives out yummy goodies to the nice children and none to the bad.

It is, of course, no coincidence that Sinterklaas and Santa Claus sound very similar. The myth of Sinterklaas travelled with the Dutch settlers of the seventeenth century to the New World, to the city that was then New Amsterdam and is now the Big Apple, where it merged with the legend of the jolly old gentleman who goes by the name of Father Christmas in Britain to this very day **, and was then subjected to a variety of influences ranging from the Ghost of Christmas Present (Did Dickens intend the pun? Did he?) to Coca-Cola to give us the Santa we know and love.

Wishing all of you a wonderful holiday season and a great year ahead.

* One has often wondered if the children here feel the many and varied emotions that we of the Desh feel when it comes to distant relatives. One shall inquire forthwith and inform the gentle reader in due course.

** Father Christmas is now accepted to be the same figure as Santa, but it seems his genesis lies in ancient Anglo-Saxon myths that can be traced back, ironically, to pre-Christian times.

Lapsus calamitatum

2005-12-16T07:58:00.000+08:00

The Padrino sat alone. He sipped his Amaretto di Saronno. Took a puff at his Cuban cigar. It was midnight, and he was at the Club. Right where he should be.

Vai così, he told himself. Good going.

She’d asked him if she could have their picture taken. Together, like, him and her in the same frame. Yeah. “Pretty please?” she’d said. In that cute voice, with that accent. Straight from the Queen’s mouth. An English rose, this gal. Perfect.

She’d asked him to wait while she went to fix her makeup. He sat right there, unblinking. Nonchalant. Debonair, even. A few minutes passed.

“Shall we?” A female voice piped up. Right in his ear.

She’d made him jump. Composure, he told himself. “Sì, of course,” he said. “Certamente.”

The waiter clicked the pictures. “Cheese!”. Formaggio. He hated formaggio.

They sat down again. She wanted to talk.

“You’ll keep these photos, won’t you?” Damn. Why’d she have to be so sentimental?

But this was important, this question. The sorta thing they warned you about back in Sicily. He needed to say somethin' grand. You know, somethin' profondo. Somethin' she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Somethin' she’d wanna jot down someplace.

But English wasn’t something he’d ever fancied too much. Not his thing. Not his thing at all. Never could manage pithy. Not in English.

Suddenly he remembered. The skinny Indian kid at the office. Yeah. He’d let the Padrino in on a secret – he’d said that it was possible to take an Italian word and use it in an English sentence to impress the bonnets off those Brit chicks. He’d even said .. let’s see, what had he said .. there are people in the English-speaking world who learn Italian for the express purpose of embellishing their conversations with the odd 'magnifico'. Or somethin’ like that.

The Padrino thought about it. He trusted the kid.

So he turned to the lady. He looked her in the eye. He took a deep breath.

Yes, we will print these pictures and we will keep them forever. As a legacy *he paused for effect* for our posteriors.

Till death do them part

2005-12-10T19:10:00.000+08:00

A matrimonial advertisement on the site of a leading webmail provider informs one that Maya, 25, is a surgeon and basketball player who believes in a relationship that’s based on trust. Another site reveals that Smitha, also 25, is an associate editor who bakes delicious cakes. However, after a careful study of their photographs, one swears upon all that is dear to oneself that these two are in fact *adopts low Hitchcockian tone* the same individual. She must be really eager to get on with the nuptials.

In other news, the following has been spotted on Wikipedia's main page :

Did you know .. that Socks the cat belonged to Bill Clinton while President of the United States?

And, being in a particularly sadistic frame of mind right now, one shall subject the unsuspecting reader to the *drum-roll, trumpets etc* PJ of the week:

Q : What did Sanjay Dutt say when he met Hector Hugh Munro?
A. O Saki Saki re … Saki Saki .

Cutting corners

2005-12-02T07:40:00.000+08:00

One is astounded to find that, outside the great Desh, almost nobody brews tea like it should be brewed. They instead dunk a dubious little tissue-paper bag supposedly full of tea-stuff into hot water and hope that something will happen. It does not. They might, in an effort to achieve a semblance of palatability, add milk and sugar to the concoction. After which, just to save face, they force themselves to drink it.

Now despite all that has been said and all that has remained unsaid about one’s culinary skills in general, it might be pointed out in all humility that one is something of an authority on the art of brewing tea*. For one’s recipe is taken from no less a figure than Rameshbhai, that fine specimen of chaiwalla-hood, he of the redoubtable larri-galla that lies snugly in that little lane off Ashram Road in the Hometown. He sells, for the princely sum of three rupees**, the most mouthwatering cuppa ever. Steaming hot, with just that right hint of ginger and cardamom. And it is never to be drunk from the cup. No, we frown at such jejune practices. For the liquid is to be poured into the saucer and slurped with suitable sound effects. If you happen to be perched sideways on your two-wheeler, the experience is complete.

Admittedly one is but a poor parody of Rameshbhai when it comes to preparing the potent infusion. But one is still a force to be reckoned with. One has actually fed one’s brew to several friends here (one hears the gasps of surprise that greet the implication that one has a social life, but lets them pass) and it has been uniformly and heartily appreciated. Really. Unfortunately the individuals who have tried it are not regular tea-drinkers, so one has no real adherents yet. But one is hopeful that someday one shall get hold of a diehard tea fan and convert him from teabag-user to tea-brewer. Finally one has a Mission.

* It appears that “tea” is one really global appellation – the words for tea in most languages are very similar because they’re all derived from a single Chinese word. (The word is pronounced somewhat differently in different parts of China, hence the difference between tea and chai.) Of course you always wanted to know that. Or maybe you already did.

** The equivalent five eurocents wouldn’t even persuade a chap here to let you sniff his tea. His teabag tea.

Gujjus unite!

2005-11-25T07:32:00.000+08:00

One is in a Bad Mood. In fact, one is in Intense Pain.

One is Dismayed, nay Crestfallen, to see that this veritable repository of phillum-related things has no information whatsoever on the ravishing Roma Manek. (For the uninitiated, Roma Manek is the (the) Madhuri Dixit of Gujarati cinema. Her eyes are said to be the colour of fresh undhiyu, and her nose is said to resemble a perfect little ganthiya. The very mention of her name is known to have persuaded NRI Gujjubhais to shut cornershop and head home.)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is part of a wider gripe regarding the under-representation of Gujaratis in cyberspace*. One’s Gujju chromosomes (all twenty-three of them) cry out – yes, they cry out in synchronized deoxyribonucleic protest. One refuses to believe that the sturdy Shahs of Surendranagar and the fine Patels of Patan have nothing to say about Matters. But the gentle reader does not hear them. No. The gentle reader is being drowned – aye, drowned – in a cacophony of voluble Bangla, in the staccato rhythms of rapidly-articulated Tamizh (note the zh .. one is very particular about such things, you know ..) and in the occasional outburst of Gultspeak. Come, O denizens of Saurashtra and Kathiawad, O natives of Kutch, O fellow Gujjus from all walks of life and all corners of the globe! It matters not whether you own a shop or a motel .. we are all one beeg phemily! Let us forge a blogospheric identity for ourselves! Let us impress upon people that we are a force to be reckoned with!

Er .. it makes good business sense, you know.

* which, in turn, is part of a wider gripe regarding the correct way to twirl a dandiya. But we shall let that pass for now.

'Tis the season of web-quizzes

2005-11-18T16:01:00.000+08:00

“Know thyself” – inscribed at the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi

One figured that one was lagging somewhat in the nosce-ipsum department. The past few hours have been spent in an attempt to rectify matters - and a truly heady voyage of self-discovery it has been.

One now stands enlightened on critical issues like which Final Fantasy character one happens to be (Tidus the Great, if anyone cares), which rejected crayon best matches one’s personality (a brown one), which original Skittles colour one is (green), whether one is a nerd, a geek or a dork (a geek, evidently, although the differences in meaning are too subtle for one’s limited grasp) and whether one conforms to this young Californian lady’s notion of a boyfriend (at the end of a particularly gruelling quizathon chock-full of difficult questions like “Would you describe yourself as hot?” she declared that one was “okay”. Disturbing.)

One has been told that one is 70% weird and, intriguingly, 45% normal. And a “little” scary. In one’s previous life, it seems, one was a mute and mentally unbalanced mathematician. One seems to get raw deals every time.

One has been reliably informed that one will spawn 71,710 descendants over the next thirty-two generations, which is rather spiffing, and also that this places one at the lower end of the genetic-fitness spectrum, which is not. It is helpfully mentioned that the reason for the poor score is that one is the pious type and will not sacrifice scruples in a misguided quest to scatter his genes far and wide. Hah. It’s quite easy to fool these quizzes, you know. Let’s see ... what was that Californian chick’s name again …

A single body

2005-11-11T07:48:00.000+08:00

“Low Fat!” screams a label, in garish three-dimensional fonts. “Zero Calories!” proclaims another. Some stick to Dutch. “Nul vet!” “Minder dan 10 Kalorie!”

One’s customary Friday-evening visit to the local supermarket is inevitably punctuated by such promulgations. It is well known and widely accepted that such things attract customers.

But one is what is referred to back in Gujjuland as a “single body”. This should be especially significant in light of recent sage/tyke schizophrenia, but it’s not about multiple identities at all. A single body is a skinny person. Really. It’s actually pronounced with a fetching Guj accent, if you please, “body” rhyming with “roadie”.

You might think, given the fact that one’s chief activities are eating and sleeping, that one’s appearance would show a certain embonpoint. But, alas, it is not so. One has been compared, by different people at different points in time, to a walking skeleton, a starving chimp, and a stick. And they, one suspects, were being nice.

But it is hardly surprising that one cannot put on weight here despite eating practically everything in sight. See, anything even remotely edible in these parts is quite utterly drained of lipidinous content, as if some overzealous squad of obesity police had single-mindedly attacked the supermarket shelves. Every last drop of triglyceride has been ruthlessly wrung out of the cottage cheese, all traces of fatty acid have been coldly emulsified from the frozen desserts. One spends entire afternoons searching for that elusive tub of full-fat yoghurt, for the one chocolate mousse that does not proudly claim to be an integral part of a dozen crash diets. Milk is available in plenty, but it is all of the skimmed variety; whole milk may be bought only at select stores conveniently positioned at the farthest corners of town.

If one remains emaciated for the rest of one’s life, it is all the fault of those callous profit-hungry FMCG companies. In pandering to the corpulent crowd, they are losing the trust of us reedy folks.

Dilettantics and deletion

2005-11-05T08:24:00.000+08:00

For the space of a few hours two evenings ago, one was the proud owner of a second blog.

This second blog was, rather unimaginatively, named Test. One had put up a single post – a piece titled “abcdefg” – whose contents, in a burst of creativity, went something like “abcdefg”. The only comment there had been left by oneself (which probably qualifies as the saddest thing in the history of the commentspace). Its chief purpose, of course, was to allow one to generally muck around with these HTML/CSS things.

Presently the mucking about was completed and the conclusion arrived at that one should, in the future, a) stay as far from markup languages as humanly possible and b) not even think aloud about style sheets. Then one deleted Test.

And since then, things haven’t quite been the same. An emptiness is felt.

Why, one asked oneself, did it matter so much? Such maudlin sentiment over a mere webpage? From one who takes such pride in his unflappability?

Perhaps it mattered because deleting a blog feels like burning a journal – it is an act of self-effacement. Grim and masochistic. Even if that blog had displayed nothing more than alphabetic tautology*. For any blog that one creates might be merely a corner of a foreign server, but it is a corner of a foreign server that is forever one’s own. Or, in the case of Test, could have been forever one’s own.

In any case, this blog underwent a few changes following the aforementioned experimentation. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a facelift .. maybe one ended up doing more harm than good. Clumsy as ever. But at least things can only improve hereafter.

* which is precisely what this blog continues to do, some might say.

Fifty-five word poem

2005-10-30T17:55:00.000+08:00

[ English, August has come up with the idea of 55-word poetry .. thought one might give it a try. ]

To-day was just like
days gone before
Can’t even remember
Anymore.
Events quotidian, chores mundane.
For Time, he marches on
Relentless
And to-morrow, and to-morrow again.

Blurred are the weeks,
fuzzy the year
Day and night merge and
Disappear.
Inchoate, and vaguely inane.
For Time, he just marches on
Unflinching
And to-morrow, and to-morrow again.

[With apologies to the Bard. And to the reader.]

---

Update: This started off as another attempt.

Moonlit evening, quiet meal,
“Tell me, tell me how you feel!”

He looked at his gin and tonic
“I care”, he said, quite laconic.

“Why must you, sir, be so trite
When passions you may now ignite?
I would expect Shelley, Keats
Or Wordsworth at the very least!
Oh, please do say something clever
And I shall be but yours forever!”

“For terseness, lady, I thought I’d strive
Words I had but fifty-five
Before you hijacked my little ditty
With incorrigible verbosity.”

Overheard

2005-10-28T05:46:00.000+08:00

Overheard in Ahmedabad on the 26th of January, 2001.

“The whole building fell down, ma?”
“Yes, beta.”
“Were there people inside, ma?”
“Yes, there were.”

A brief silence.

“People like us?”
“Yes, beta, people like us.”

Please go here for information on how to help the victims of the South Asia quake.

Through the looking glass

2005-10-23T22:17:00.000+08:00

One has, after much agonizing, decided to reveal one’s visage on this blog. It seemed like a pity to hide a jaw so finely chiselled, cheekbones so gloriously high, eyes so piercingly erudite, dimples so burstingly deep behind this hypertext curtain of blind, impersonal anonymity.

Behold.

Wotsay, huh? Stud or what?

This is a picture of oneself. God promise. Except it’s been transformed. Instead of the x- and y-coordinates representing vertical and horizontal distance, they represent the bearing and distance of a line from an arbitrarily-chosen origin. Loosely speaking, each point in the transformed image corresponds to a potential line in the original, each sinusoid in the transformed image corresponds to all the lines passing through a point, and places where many sinusoids intersect are distinct lines in the original. Or something like that.

This is the Hough transform applied to the problem of line-finding. The same transform finds application in the reconstruction of slices of the human body from X-ray projections. In case you’ve ever wondered (er .. if you haven’t, you may proceed to wonder now) how they see slices of your insides during a CT scan.

And a transformed image invariably looks pretty good too, in a snapshot-of-the-very-fabric-of-reality kind of way.

Yeah, anyway, so the bright spots represent lines in the original image. There are six of them here (yes, you count eight, but the left of the image is supposed to “wrap round” to the right) so apparently one has a hexagonal face. Funny, actually .. one always thought one was rather square. Maybe it’s the dimples.

*adjusts geek-glasses and shuffles off*

[Note: Transform implemented using image processing toolbox in MATLAB™. Thanks to The MathWorks for developing a useful tool.]

Kitty party

2005-10-20T06:45:00.000+08:00

The house looked like a battleground. The air was thick with tension. Clothes were scattered everywhere. The phone was ringing off the hook. Mummy was on extended leave. Was someone gravely ill? Was it bankruptcy? Nope. It was more serious than that. Way more serious. Little Sweety was taking part in the school talent show.

She was going to sing. Her dance classes had been suspended for the time being, as had the cookery lessons and the painting lessons and the English-speaking classes. Even the two-month crash course in personality development had been rescheduled, such was the gravity of the situation.

You see, the event held special significance for Mummy. She had stuck her rather formidable neck out at the last kitty party and predicted a huge win for Sweety. Over a substantial lunch it had been established that Sweety was a talent par excellence when it came to surs and taals, and that although she might not be in the habit of securing the first rank every year like Mrs Gupta’s daughter or know as many capitals as Mrs Shukla’s son, she was undoubtedly good enough to be the next Indian Idol. School talent contests were child’s play.

Sweety just had to win. Or else.

Back home, the child in question was rubbing her eyes for want of sleep, her questionable musical talent stretched to the limit. The last few weeks before the show were a blur of dresses-to-be-tried-out and songs-to-be-practised.

***

The big day finally arrived. The audience for the talent show chiefly consisted of a number of enthusiastic mummies who seemed to have booked the front rows, unfortunately for the chief guests, and resigned-looking papas filming the proceedings from the back. Sweety’s song went well – Mummy was quite satisfied. After the performances there was just enough time for refreshments before the winner was announced. Normally Mummy would have eaten enough to last her a couple of days (and filled her handbag with some more for the weekend) but she just couldn’t eat right now .. it was all too stressful.

Then it was time – for the Announcement. "And the winner is .."

Mummy stood stunned. This struck harder than Sweety hitting a high note. The winner was this Other Kid. This rather geeky-looking and entirely unimpressive boy. Not Sweety.

But Mummy recovered admirably. Shock turned to anger. She went forthwith to express her indignation to Papa, who happened to be fast asleep.

On the drive home, the family car held a funereal atmosphere. Sweety was crying. Finally Mummy spoke up. “I thought she was the best, by far. Anyway, at least she took part, na?” And all was well again. At least until next month’s kitty party.

Fifty-five word fiction

2005-10-16T09:11:00.000+08:00

[ A particularly long-lived branch of the fifty-five word meme has happened to find its way here. Many thanks to Babelfish for the honour. Here goes .. ]

She wrote something on a piece of paper and slipped it into his hand. He smiled. They were sitting on the last bench, as usual. Nobody saw.

***

He took the yellowing little note and tore it into bits. A single stubborn teardrop escaped those clenched eyelids. He had his own cubicle, luckily. Nobody saw.

Update : Another one.

He was walking down the street that evening, not far from home, when a car hit him. Hard. They rushed him to the nearest hospital, but it was too late.

He hadn’t told anyone about his anonymous blog. His readers thought he just didn’t feel like posting anymore.

Freedom rules

2005-10-14T08:23:00.000+08:00

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular"

~ Adlai Stevenson

One had never intended to discuss anything on this blog that could even loosely be described as relevant. But the circumstances are rather unusual.

If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t yet heard of the recent developments in the Indian blogworld, Amit Varma has comprehensive coverage and regular updates.

Much has been said on the subject and one fears one cannot add anything of value. Just a small point – this is not about substandard B-schools or about platitude-spouting management gurus. For mediocre organizations and inflated advertising are well-accepted facts of life, in India and everywhere else. So, regrettably, are management gurus. This, dear readers, is about freedom of thought and speech, about the right to have and voice an opinion.

It rankles when Gaurav has to resign from his job because he stood up for what he thought was right, because he had an opinion. When marginally-coherent pseudobloggers direct obscenities at Rashmi. When dadagiri (strong-arming) becomes a natural way for people to deal with things they don’t like.

And the Indian blogging community deserves kudos for showing such solidarity. One is proud to be part of it.

The philosopher and the juvenile

2005-10-08T02:09:00.000+08:00

At one’s oak and teakwood table
As one settles down to wonder
A blinding flash, and suddenly one
Does find oneself torn asunder.

One finds oneself torn asunder
Now do Two sit side by side
Two sit where one formerly sat
At the desk one occupied.

Little Boy, in shorts and T-shirt,
Clutching dog-eared Tinkle tight
Other One with golden aura
Rather an imposing sight.

Side by side they sit in silence
At one’s desk of oak and teak.
He’s somewhat scared of Other, but
The Little Boy ventures to speak.

“We started little bloggy-woggy
Several times we writing here
But it’s true, me not so good as
Better ones on blogosphere.”

Looking up from Plato’s works
He looks at Boy with kindly eye.
Taking off those half-moon glasses
Other One deigns to reply.

“Youngling, thou must but remember
Blake spake, I reiterate
Thou shalt not reason or compare
Thy business is but to create.”

“But me cannot help it, Sir,
Teeny-tiny straws me clutch.
Even little compliments still
Mattering so very much.”

“Dear child,” Other rejoined,
“Kipling said, and I repeat
Remain quite the stoic thou must
Both in triumph and defeat.

“Thou must, wee neophyte
Heed immortal Socrates.
Examine thy life, he averred
Have faith in his expertise.”

“Me no wanna think too much, Sir
Messes up me little brain.
Me want to go play outside now
Hide and seek and choo-choo train!”

“Life’s a struggle, O Little Boy,
“Choice, dilemma, forks and twists
No attachments, quoth the Gita
Self-interest, said Objectivists.”

“But me very attached, good Sir!
Me love Mummy-Daddy so
Me like many uncle-aunties
Even little girl next door.

“Me like Narnia, me like Blyton,
Me like my old Targets too
People telling, now me big boy
But me liking, what to do?”

“Thou art fully-grown, my child
Do not partake of puerile fare.
Thy reading habits, first of all
Need some inspection and repair.”

The two alter-egos merge
Blinding flash of light, and then
Emerging from the brightness, blinking
One finds oneself whole again.

Such debates unfold whenever
One thinks over things worthwhile
Dichotomous opinions of
Philosopher and juvenile.

Going Dutch

2005-10-01T15:34:00.000+08:00

[ Immediately following the illuminatory episode (see previous commentspace) one headed to the nearest supermarket to look for bread. Only after reaching the place did one remember what folks here call it. “Brood”. Yup. Connotations of utter grimness. Or baby birdies. One can’t go around eating stuff called brood on a daily basis, what? Categorically cannot.

In the meantime, one has been assiduously perusing Indian recipes online **continues to chant slow fire, slow fire **. There’s lots crammed into one’s li’l head right now. Just hoping one won’t forget how to make alu-curry. ]

“Een voor Batman Begins ”, one declaims. The lady at the ticket counter smiles and says a couple of things while she taps away at her keyboard. Small talk, one gathers from her tone. Overwhelmingly likely to be about the weather.

One gravely leans forward and nods. She continues, encouraged by one’s close attention. A pause .. evidently one is expected to say something. “Ja”, one remarks, brow suitably furrowed, an infinity of meteorological wisdom distilled into that single syllable.

Further soliloquy. A pause, again. But one is well prepared. “Natuurlijk”, one declares (rather suavely, one fancies).

But she looks alarmed. One switches to damage-control mode – vigorous shake of head, firmly repeated mutters of “Nee, nee .. natuurlijk niet”. She looks rather strangely at one for a moment, then continues her discourse unfazed.

She presently finishes tapping on her keyboard and makes a rather pointed remark. Numbers. Ah, one can do those. Zeven euro vijftig .. five hundred bucks for a darn movie .. remember Roopalee Talkies, only rupees twenty per phillum .. yeah, ma’am .. there you go. “Dank U wel”, one smiles. Now for the popcorn.

So one has learnt to conduct long and variegated conversations in Dutch without really being able to say anything much (that rhymes. Poetry next post.) But then listening was always a prized skill. Doing the same sort of thing in German, one understands, requires no substantial extension to one’s vocabulary. Joy. Now one just needs to brush up the ol’ French, and one’s a pan-European listening expert.

P.S.

Een voor Batman Begins = one for Batman Begins. Yup, one’s the sort of dude you see walking alone into a movie hall and feel kinda sorry for. Awww and whatnot.

P.P.S.

English films here are Dutch-subtitled, not dubbed. So one thankfully doesn’t have to bluff one’s way through them.

Of foreign lands and boiled potatoes

2005-09-26T07:34:00.000+08:00

Enough. This is the third day in a row that one has burnt the rice. It’s the same thing every evening .. one puts the rice to cook, begins reading/writing/watching TV, and is only jolted back to grim, paddy-ridden reality when that rice-burning-what-to-do smell reaches the living room. By the time one reaches the kitchen the smell has taken on the altogether more acrid notes of the rice-burnt-must-throw variety.

The trouble began when one, in a fit of wanderlust, chose to leave the foreign-but-not-so-distant land that one was inhabiting (inhabiting for reasons that are not worth going into at this point, primarily because they have never been too clear to oneself either) for a very-foreign-and-very-distant land where, horror of horrors, baahar-ka-khaana just wasn’t the sort of thing you did daily. When this fact dawned upon one – this was the day before one had to leave for said land – momma dearest was requested to impart some of her considerable culinary expertise to yours truly. Not surprisingly, one didn’t get very far along the learning curve before it was time to go.

Thence it came to be that one landed here bearing little more than the Precious Secret of Alu-Curry. And that particular preparation (accompanied by rice) has constituted one’s evening meal for precisely ten months now. And one still burns the rice and spends the rest of the evening filling up the ol’ belly with extra boiled potatoes and other random edibles.

Naissance

2005-09-25T21:07:00.000+08:00

" I must invent my own System, or be enslaved by another Man's.
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create. "
-- William Blake, Jerusalem