Ghee Tha, Ghee Hai, Ghee Rahega

There are things that one feels like writing about, and things that one does not feel like writing about. And there are things that simply need to be written. Let us examine one such scriptive necessity this balmy evening.

And, as always, let us get right to the point with a fell and generic swoop. One is given to understand that North Indian people disagree with the spellings of certain South Indian names. (Not I, you aver. Okay, not you, but what's a blogpost without sweeping statements?) These Northern individuals cringe when they read supposedly misspelt names such as Geetha and Ananth and, if linguistically-minded, launch into explanations of how ta is different from tha and such. Are they wrong? Not really. Are they right? Not exactly. 

Today one shall try, in one's own small way, to lay some of these issues to rest. But before that, let us embark upon a brief phonetics refresher. Let us focus, in particular, on a most marvellous category of utterances: the plosives. As the name suggests, plosives are quite literally little bursts of sound created by your vocal apparatus. The p-, b-, k-, d- and t- sounds are all plosives.

We consider first the retroflex plosives, pronounced by flicking the tongue off the palate. The voiced and voiceless ^[1] retroflex plosives are the Hindi ^[2] ड and ट respectively. These may be aspirated ^[3] to give us ढ and ठ.

We note also the dental plosives, articulated by placing the tongue on the teeth. The voiced and voiceless dental plosives are the Hindi द and त respectively. These may be aspirated to give us ध   and थ.

Tamil uses roughly the same sounds, but economises on characters: all of the dental plosives are represented by த் and all of the retroflex plosives by ட், with the exact pronunciation depending on the word (and possibly the accent). Effectively, t and d are not entirely distinct and aspiration is loosely enforced.

But there are also the alveolar plosives, which are articulated midway between the retroflex and dental varieties. Alveolar plosives do not strictly exist in Hindi or Tamil at all, but they are the English t and d. Many Indian speakers of English recognize this: when you say tip, your tongue is closer to your teeth than when you pronounce a rollicking Hindi word like 'tashan'. These alveolar plosives can also, in principle, be either aspirated or unaspirated – but in British English, there is usually an inevitable, if mild, 'default' aspiration. Tip almost becomes ठिप.^[4]

We return, now, to the central point: why are Gauthams almost certainly South Indian and Gautams likely North Indian? It's merely a question of transliterative mapping.  For some sounds the mapping is straightforward: the letter s was always the obvious choice for the स sound in Hindi and the ஸ் sound in Tamil. But transliterating the t- and d- plosives is more complicated, because English has only the letters t and d to work with ^[5] and because these letters do not correspond exactly to any Hindi or Tamil sound.

As a way around this, both Hindi and Tamil transliterators use the 'th' and 'dh' digraphs. Unfortunately, they use these digraphs in different ways.

Hindi transliteration uses 'th' and 'dh' to indicate aspiration. This seems natural to Hindi speakers, but these digraphs are not generally used for that purpose in English: the British th is often a non-plosive lisp, and dh is rare.^[6] For the t-sounds, the conventional ^[7] Hindi-English mapping is as follows: 

Tamil transliteration, by contrast, conventionally uses 'th' and 'dh' to indicate dentality. The accepted Tamil-English mapping for t-sounds is as follows:

                                

                                    

It is precisely this difference in mapping that leads to the confusion between our Northern and Southern friends. In particular, the dental t̪ is a 't' under Hindi convention but a 'th' under Tamil convention. Hence, Geetha and Ananth. And Gautham. A sound that is common to Hindi and Tamil can be transliterated differently into English under the different mappings of the two languages.

Which mapping is, phonetically, better? Neither, really. English doesn’t make the dental/retroflex distinction to begin with, and doesn't really make the aspirated/unaspirated distinction either, so ol' Wodehouse might have said something like ʈʰ when faced with either t or th ^[9]. Transcribing vernacular sounds using English letters is a subjective exercise because English has different (and often fewer) sounds.

So, dear reader, it doesn't matter whether she signs off as Geeta or Geetha; she almost certainly wants to be called gi: t̪ɑ:. And, unless the world graduates to writing everything directly in the International Phonetic Alphabet, that's something we'll have to make our peace with.

[1] 'Voiced' and 'voiceless' refer to whether the vocal cords vibrate or not. If you suspect your vocal cords vibrate for both ट  and ड , consider the halant-versions instead.
[2] The term 'Hindi' is generally used throughout this post, but the same matters apply to Sanskrit and most other North Indian languages.
[3] Funnily, 'aspiration' refers to inhalation in medicine but to exhalation in phonetics. Deal with it, people.
[4] Indian speakers of English tend to avoid this aspiration precisely because they distinguish rigidly between aspirated and un-aspirated plosives.
[5] Some have used capital letters to add another degree of freedom, using t for dental and T for retroflex plosives. While this isn’t a bad idea, it is unheard of in Bollywood. So it does not count.
[6] Indian English, inter alia, replaces the lisped 'th' of 'think' with the aspirated t̪ʰ / थ
[6] A case could be made for 'adhere', perhaps.
[7] And Bollywood-blessed
[8] Using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation
[9] And he would've made a fine joke about it, too.

Spectator

'Twas the heady autumn of '89, and the young One was sitting on a green, green lawn strewn with dry brown leaves alongside an older friend whom we shall call, for the sake of argument, Friend. If you had listened closely, you might have heard Friend asking about one's participation in the annual school sporting event, and one replying that one had, er, not really been selected for anything. One was not especially known for fleet-footedness or brute strength in those days (or for anything else, in fact).

"Ah, so you'll be among the audience", Friend had said.

A fairly innocuous remark, you aver. But, and this is a painful admission, the young One was unacquainted with this term. Audience*. Such a strange word. Perhaps, one thought, he had said oddians. Perhaps this was some sort of 80s coinage for the odd ones out. One pictured this bedraggled, rather pitiable, almost deviant bunch of kids who were largely un-athletic and generally unpopular and thus had not been chosen for any of the dozen or so events. ("What? Not even one event?") We oddians would sit in the stands, ostracized and forlorn, with only our water-bottles for company, and watch assorted Bobbys and Varuns propel their towering four-foot frames across the finish line to raucous cheers from the public. (And from Namrata. Damn.)

Weirdness was cool and all, but one was just not okay with being an oddian.

Mysterious illnesses were duly felt on the morning of Sports Day, illnesses which the astute Parents were quick to dismiss as imaginary. Heartfelt pleas to Remain Absent were met with stern refusals and assertions that one should, at all costs, Remain Present. There really was no way out. One boarded the school bus with what is commonly called a sinking feeling.

Of course, said feeling turned out to be entirely unwarranted. The 'oddians', it emerged, comprised basically everyone, including the teachers**. (And Namrata had Remained Absent, so it hardly mattered that Varun beat Bobby and set a new primary-school record.) The sports meet turned out to be an entirely agreeable affair, featuring much full-throated cheering, loud proclamations of the general superiority of Class 3B over all other Classes, and cotton candy.

In any case, being part of the oddians was something one had to get used to. See what followed. Movie theatres, lectures, concert halls, meetings, the blogosphere, life in general. One has always, in one way or another, been among the oddians.



* Or, more likely, one had come across it in writing but never imagined that it would be pronounced that way. That happened fairly often, since the young One read far more English than he heard. One presumes that such quirks are much less prevalent among modern juveniles, given the glut of phoren TV shows these days.

** Although most of the teachers, bless them, were indeed somewhat peculiar.

On abstraction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.