A tea tasting experience

I have no idea what is going to happen to my dream about getting the goddamned book published. But it was a funny experience (it felt nice, though ) to be introduced as an aspiring writer. Thanks to Charles Nathan of De-Rock Living, Coonoor, I was introduced to Mr. Noor Mohamed, Director of a large tea marketing company at Coimbatore. On the way back to Chennai, via Coimbatore, I had the pleasure of meeting Noor.

Well, there is a lot of complexity in the tea industry and the myriad varieties of tea along with the tea tasting art make this a fascinating world. Noor was kind enough to take me through the entire process of how the tea industry works. A memorable opportunity to do some tea tasting was the icing on the cake.

Here are some pictures of the different teas I got to taste along with a snap of Mr. Noor as well. He is an expert in this field with exactly 25 years of experience in that art. It was one of those rare days (I realized later) that I was quietly listening without giving my own gyan, soaking in the wealth of information that he shared. Watching him taste the teas and make comments on each one of them was like watching Saurav Ganguly play the off side drives or Tendulkar hit the trademark straight drives. All I witnessed was sheer skill, experience and complete control – a rare and very welcome sight, any day.

Now, on to the experience itself:

The liquor was neatly poured in bowls or cups and I was told that the brewing process involves about 5 minutes of boiling the tea leaves and that the residue is called Infusion. Based on the colours of the infusion, Noor could rattle off characteristics of the tea.

Parallel thought: There is a scene in Annamalai (a Rajni classic) where he talks about being able to determine one’s horoscope only on the basis of how that person breathes! Of course Rajnikanth can do anything across all facets of life (now imagine trademark Rajni laugh …. Hua hua ha haa haaa!!!!). But I tell you, with years of experience, Noor had attained that level too …. He could break down the tea’s jaathagam (kundali / horoscope) and narrate its history (how old the tea was), geography (area where the tea was from), chemistry (how smoky, aromatic, flaky was the tea) and other characteristics of the tea.

When I looked at the tasting cups, I was quietly wondering how I could drink so much of tea … was this a good idea at all? Then I saw 2 spoons, one for Noor and one for me. Somebody brought a huge spittoon and I was again hoping that it wouldn’t look disrespectful if I spat in front of my expert host. Within seconds, Noor set off, first warming up and making simple observations on the quality of the teas. Which one was ok, which one was bad etc.
Let me share the process now. Take a spoon, dip it in the tasting cup and bring it close to the lips. Suck the tea by making a huge slurping sound and swirl the tea in your mouth. It seemed he had the tea in his mouth and apart from the slurping he was actually able to smell it too. I tried to imitate his actions and got as far as making half the slurping sound from a decibel level angle. When I tried to inhale the smell with the tea inside me, I obviously made a fool of myself. By then I had forgotten to spit the tea out and had swallowed half the spoonful. Telling myself that I could do better if I focused better, I tried and was absolutely sure that this was a great tea. It tasted good and strong and all I wanted to do was to add some ginger and have a full cup. Noor informed me that it was not good but actually a bad tea because the infusion was dark. Also, it tasted smoky because they must have over fired it. I suddenly felt he was right. How could I have missed the pathetic taste of that muddy feeling in my mouth? Embarrassed at my lack of learning skills, and determined to do better with the next cup, I asked Noor for his observations before slurping and spitting. Then I was trying to map his observations to the sensations I felt. Grandmaster Noor realized that the temporary disciple was just trying too hard. Then, he spoke about how he was when he had started and encouragingly shared a statistic that it would take about 6-8 months to get some decent hold on the art of tea tasting. He said there are days when tea tasters at some companies taste about 500 or even 800 tea types. My jaws dropped because every now and then I kept swallowing tea liquor and most of them were strong in their flavour. I couldn’t imagine that professional tea tasting could get so taxing.
Then, Noor took a much smaller spoon and added milk to each of the cups with tea liquor. He said that colour after addition of milk was also a factor that shows the tea quality. Then Noor grew impatient, I think. He now slurped from one cup, spat it out, slurped another, and repeated the process 7 times. Then, he began to talk about each type of tea starting from the first cup. How could he relive the taste, I asked? “Hmm … Well, that’s what I do for a living, so I need to know, no?” was his seemingly obvious answer. Again I only nodded in agreement.

From what I could gather, this is a pretty difficult industry as prices are not going northwards at the rate with which costs are going up. Labourers and their children are slowly and steadily looking at different professions. Getting labour is not easy. And sadly, even the profession of tea tasting is not as popular. Not many young men are taking up this profession like they used to in the years gone by and of course, this could be due to the effects of the IT and ITes industry promise from a long term career option angle. One could say that many in the profession, especially in the labour category are turning over a new leaf. Unfortunately that new leaf has got nothing to do with tea leaf!

I thanked Noor profusely and also his colleague, Mr. Ayub. What a fantastic 1 hour it was, a peep into their world, completely different from what I do for a living. Of course, some of my friends at HUL might have got exposed to this but to me this was memorable. I sure look forward to another tea tasting experience at Darjeeling or some other place … at least one should know more about what one drinks every day. But should we really care? 2 days ago my answer would have been ‘Maybe, maybe not’ but today the answer is a definite Yes!!

All this was made possible thanks to the ever helpful Charles Nathan. I promise more on that trip and experience in a separate post. Here is a sincere thanks to Charles and Noor for a fantastic and fabulous experience of a lifetime!

Iyengars of the Incredibles kind: A short story

This is a slightly modified short story contest I participated in but didn’t win anything … posting anyway and so glad that with this, I have now hit a 100 posts on my blog!!

“A beautiful day and I was enjoying my stroll in the park with the breeze. I heard someone calling me and when I turned back ……” Complete in 500 words.

Here goes:

A beautiful day and I was enjoying my stroll in the park with the breeze. I heard someone calling me and when I turned back..
It was Aarthi, my soul mate with whom I had gone to school 2978 years ago. We had got separated at a Kumbh Mela 658 years ago.

We were both six year olds then and the evil rakshasha, Rakthasura, in the disguise of a sage, had given us laddus. Who would have imagined that we would have been the guinea pigs of a wicked asura experiment? The rakshashas had planted an embedded device in the laddu that dissolved in our blood stream and given us immortality.

My friend and I never realized this until we graduated from the University of Nalanda where we had met King Harsha and Hueng Tsang over chai and samosa. Unfortunately, we had to keep shifting from one place to another to avoid letting our secret out in the open. Today, the rakshashas have shifted to the Afghan mountains and are busy indulging in various terrorist activities. But they want to track us down and we keep escaping from them. The hide and seek game has cost us our togetherness. I am so happy that I once again found my friend, philosopher, guide and everything that she is, after such a long gap. Just to consider the last 15 years, I have acquired IT skills and have been moving from one geographical location to the other. From Syntel at Pittsburgh, I am now with HCL at Chennai, and I wonder what she had been up to all these years. Of course, being unique, we were destined to be simultaneously alone and together and had grown to become a superpower couple and yet remained powerless to the public eye. I am happy I have found my soul mate back, at last.

We went and sat on a bench, tears of joy, flowing uncontrollably from our eyes. She too had been running around, and searching for me. My name and looks have changed over the centuries from Raja Raja Chola to Parashuraman to Gandhi to Richards to Imran to what not. So many avatars: obviously, we couldn’t even google and find each other.

We kept talking about the battles, natural disasters, technological innovations and all the changes that we have witnessed over the years, places we had been flying to at nights, when nobody could see us, our respective invisible magic carpet journeys and it was evident that it needed many more years to catch up on all the lost time.

While we were lost in our own little world, we saw 2 asuras and hid ourselves, completely shaken up and threatened by their presence. They seemed young and we edged closer to overhear their discussion. They talked about the next cricket match and the amount of money Company D-Asura was transferring to bet on Sachin and Bravo. After all, even the asuras are tired of waiting for the hundredth century from the little master. And here we were, wondering what to do, when we saw the face of one of the asuras. He was the one who had planted a bomb at Bangalore stadium a few seasons ago before an IPL match. Aarthi and I flew and hurled the asuras towards the police van about eight kilometres away, that we could see with our superpower lenses. As always, we quietly disappeared and now hope to live happily ever after.

A few years later …
Aarthi handed Nikita to me while she went to put Rishita to sleep … Yes, we live here as the Iyengars, the modern day Incredibles!

Diwali Blast – from the past

A couple of somewhat different stories around Diwali and also a chance to blog after another round of hibernation:

Story I:

There was this uncle who hated kids all year round. He would shoo us all away like we were flies. But only on Diwali every year, he would be a transformed man. It appeared as if he was committed to enjoying Diwali irrespective of what happened around him. He would be the first one to wish all the confused kids Happy Diwali. He and I even had a secret contest and I use the term ‘secret’ here only because the rules of the game were never discussed in public. Coming to think about it, there was in fact only 1 rule that decided the winner. And all that the winner won as a trophy was the license to sport a condescending look and experience the thrill of the loser’s agony. It was divine pleasure whenever I won … and whenever I lost, it resulted in about 15 minutes of extreme anguish and regret that I hadn’t woken up earlier. By the way the contest was about who came first in the race to burst crackers after finishing the “Ganga snanam” or oil bath. Alarms would go off at 330 am and before the crack of dawn, it was considered auspicious to create a ruckus in the name of Diwali. I would get the feeling that I was the first or at the most second in the entire city of Calcutta to kick start the decibel revolution that comes as a package deal with Diwali celebrations. Of course, as a 4-5 year old, I remember thinking that the world was made up of Calcutta, Madras and some smaller cities like Bombay, Delhi, Dubai and America. So, it was a super hero feeling that I am talking about when I say that I was the first to burst a cracker in the Big Bad City of Calcutta. I was the One who would ‘AWAKEN’ the city …

Years have rolled by and circumstances have changed so much that I am wondering if I just wrote about myself … memories remain and wherever that Uncle is, I am hoping that he had a great Diwali!

Story II:

Enter Hostel life. The wild B-school days …

In the Mahabharata we have read about Yudhisthra losing everything, including his wife and brothers, thanks to Shakuni’s googlies and doosras. It was supposed to be an indication of how bad gambling can be. It could have such ugly side effects for even someone like Yudhishtra. He was generally considered an ideal first bencher: a very goody goody boy / man all through his life. I was also introduced to some stories of how Diwali witnesses gambling sessions and that in select parts of our country, there are instances where people have gone from one end of the financial status spectrum to the opposite end in a matter of minutes. Most outrageous stories are of course the ones where Mr. ABC gambled his ancestral home or family business etc. The influence of alcohol plays an important role in determining the proceedings, I hear. Such stories were so different from the Diwali experience of getting up only to burst crackers, don the annual quota of new clothes and of course eat …

One of the hostel Diwalis gave me an opportunity to learn and actually gamble on Diwali night. We do learn management fundaes well at B school, because I remember that the day after Diwali was when our exams were starting. So we had to pack several items into the night’s schedule: gambling, partying, cracker bursting, some institute level celebration at the famous IIML concrete lawns and of course studying for exams after all the day’s hard work. Maybe I was too tired to do everything and let go of the last work item because that still meant I completed 90-95% of my target tasks. But when did anybody ever care about such details?

So here is a great Happy Diwali to all my IIM L friends and especially those close ones who have forgotten that I still exist, those who are busy in their own worlds and those who are always part of my private world … hmm, now I sound like I got inspired by that ‘har friend zaroori hain yaar’ Airtel ad.

More stories some other time …. Paattu class Diwali evenings, Pittsburgh pot luck party, Bangalore get together with family and another diametrically opposite get together with friends the same evening …. And yes, the Trivandrum Diwali where I ended up seeing a Mallu movie that was actually a super mega tragedy about a fisherman’s family because other room mates had gone to their respective homes … I am looking forward to penning the Diwali special memories down soon. Until then, bye!

Random thoughts, for example, 13/7 = 1.857143…

It has been such a long time since my last post that I decided to scribble something now, without caring about the randomness of this post.
Instead of the usual writer’s block that most writers complain of, for me, it’s probably the reverse that holds true. I have writer’s block most of the time, and once in a while, manage writer’s unblock. The time interval between two phases of writer’s unblock follows no straightforward algorithm. With time and introspection, I am certain that a major contributor for this phenomenon is lethargy. So, hey, what is my blood group? Answer: It is A+ and L++. [Where L++ is double dose of Lethargy cells in the system] Between the last post and now, what has changed is the acceptance level of the existence of these L++ cells in my system. That realization makes me so much more at peace with myself than trying to fight the demons, trying to prove to myself and others that I am This when I am actually not, that I am not bothered by what others think of me and in reality, I am just a real lazy bum. Again, a random spiralling string of thoughts in my head, but moral of the story: Admit what and who you are and don’t try too hard to become somebody else.
In the name of buying peace with oneself, therefore, it makes so much sense to get lazier and stop trying to do what you really don’t want to do. In my opinion, that will release locked up tensions, liberate the world of unwanted negative energies and might even make our planet a better place to live. Using this same logic, therefore, I sincerely plead with people like our dear Prime Minister to please stop condemning attacks such as the 13/7 attack on Mumbai. Every time there is an attack, we get to hear a lot of condemning from our babus!
It seems like we start getting uncomfortable during the silence between two attacks and the sheer inevitability of hearing the next deafening explosion at an Indian city, mostly Mumbai, is ….. I have no word or sentence to describe this feeling.
By now, we have no doubt that Mumbaikars are resilient and we are used to their superlative inner strengths. It is not at all surprising that they can rebound from attacks and resume normal lives immediately after such attacks. Talking about or praising this attribute is becoming boring. Of course, there are some families that will get busy with funerals or if they are luckier, will be occupied with to and fro trips to hospitals and / or temples (or churches and mosques!)
The war on terror is binary and if we harbour any serious intentions to win, we cannot continue with the infrastructure that we currently have to combat this menace. To protect Mumbai, it was probably a welcome move to purchase high speed boats and man the coastline. But not using them because they will consume 100 litres of petrol per hour, and therefore, depending on fishermen’s boats, if the need arises, as Plan A, is at best a very cruel joke! By inference, we can therefore say that we don’t have funds or intent to allocate budgets for such categories. Interesting, therefore, that we justify our long term strategy of playing a significant role in making Afghanistan stand on its own legs! India has already spent a small sum of $1.5 billion and is all too eager to spend another $500 million towards this cause. Simple math will quantify the amount of petrol that this modest sum of money can buy.
Meanwhile, let us hope that at least, the next time, politicians like Digvijay and Rahul or BJP, NCP … stop making irresponsible statements …. Most importantly, stop using these opportunities to trade charges and get political mileage out of these events. On my part, I will trust my lethargy to control my urge to digress and post something equally meaningless on this topic.

An appeal for help (from Baskar, a friend)

Below is the sad current state of an acquaintance, Baskar and I am posting this mail from him on my blog hoping that some of the readers do help this friend in need:

“My mother fell from a moving bus on 8th Dec 2010. She suffered severe head injuries and was admitted to Apollo Specialty Hospitals, Teynampet, Chennai. Thankfully, the doctors have said that she will survive but to regain normalcy it might take 12-18 months time.

The expenses have crossed Rs. 5.5 lakhs till now and I expect her to be in the hospital for 7-10 days more. After bringing her home there is a need for constant nursing care as well as medicines for the rest of the time. I could manage the expenses through some of my friends, relatives and company insurance till now.

But I expect another Rs. 2 lakhs to be spent for her in Hospital and as post discharge expenses for which I am running short of funds. It would be great if you and some of your friends give me a helping hand in saving my mother. Thanks for your help in advance.

For your information, Please find below my account details.

Name: Baskar Chandran
Account number: 07951610020798
Bank: HDFC Bank
IFSC Code: HDFC0000795

–
Kind Regards
Baskar Chandran
C:+91-9789979792″

Please reach out to him for any clarifications and do see what you can do to help. Even small contributions can go a long way in making Baskar’s family happy.

The New age Family

Mr. Bhatt Sr. got up at 530 am and unlike the last few days, was relieved to experience the positive effect of Isabgol, the laxative. Like they show that lone guy in the loo playing something on his cell phone before they announce, “Why play Akele”, in the Ibibo ad, Bhatt, however, stuck to playing solo – his cell had become his best friend.
Although Mr. Bhatt and family were vacationing in Goa and were put up at a posh resort which boasted of a private beach, Mr. and Mrs. Bhatt as well their son, were busy Tweeting about how much fun they were having.

Point to Note:
The Bhatts are such a well knit family – they even follow each other on Twitter .…..

Drawing inspiration to give up Drawing

How I wish I could draw what I distinctly see in my mind? It is amazing to experience and be the only person to witness my complete lack of hand eye coordination. In an attempt to draw cartoons, my greater than obvious lack of talent in this area amuses me.

This Diwali, I had no choice but to indulge in some sweets from Sree Krishna Sweets and Adyar Ananda Bhawan (A2B, as they call themselves after a brand management exercise!)
I have always managed to stay away from South Indian sweets due to the excessive amounts of ghee in them. But this year, the story was different – I am now in Chennai and the experience of Diwali cannot be complete without eating traditional sweets and savouries, in true Dravidian style.

The sweets were tasty enough, but every bite reminded me of the loads of ghee that had gone into their creation. I imagined a huge dairy farm with thousands of cows working in shifts to ensure a steady flow of milk throughout the day. The whole supply chain: cows getting milked, milk processing to produce ghee, followed by logistics to load ghee in trucks to reach the likes of A2B was dancing in front of my eyes. I wanted to immediately draw a cartoon with a new concept:

Everybody’s blood group has now changed to G +ve, where G obviously stands for Ghee.

Picture a blood donation scene: a recipient and a donor (yeah it is that simple). Needles, tubes, blood – it is all so clearly visible to me in my head. To make things easier, I am even imagining Amar, Akbar, Anthony blood donation sequence in my head.
Going back to the original concept, there is a man lying on the bed. At the donor end, remove the man. Replace man with a big box of sweets from A2B or Sree Krishna.
Now replace the pouch (blood pouch) in between the man and sweet box with pure desi Ghee pouch!

I tried to draw this seemingly simple cartoon – tried to close my eyes and trace the drawing by looking at it in my head; tried to draw the individual elements like sweet box, ghee pouch, man in bed with the transfusion enabling tube, needle. The embarrassing results made me just give up after looking at what I could manage, in the name of a cartoon.

Moral: Some things are just not for you. When you suck so badly at something, it is better to gracefully exit than keep believing the popular statement – Never, never give up!
Another Asterix the Gaul inspired realization:
Cacophonix the Bard: Singing = Myself: Drawing

Lipstick lovers

How the times have changed!?

Back in 1994, when I had won a college election at IIT Kharagpur to become the General Secretary (Social and Cultural) of the IIT Gymkhana, it was a thrilling experience. Once in a while, I still remember those wonderful posters that were put up across the campus, wing mates and so many other hall mates distributing pamphlets on the D day reminding everybody to vote for yours truly, the whole hostel working on mobilizing resources for the end to end election process, soap boxes, hall pacts, funda diaries (where all kinds of fundaes on IIT Kharagpur had to be memorized), it was a long journey. The whole year brings backs a smile despite the highs and lows. One of the biggest responsibilities was to organize was the annual cultural fest, Spring Fest. That was the year of Transition. The institute decided to scrap the concept of matching grant. That meant spend could become equal to sponsorships, at the max. The Institute was not going to foot any bill, whatsoever!
We had to organize a Fashion show and that was most challenging.
The FP (Fashion Parade) team was awesome. But on the other hand, we witnessed the entire campus community react in their own different way. Some of the teaching community expressed their disapproval. Everybody had a view and many were very concerned about culture preservation, security arrangements, brand image and what not!!
The FP group was so self driven that the show had to be a spectacular hit with participation from really good colleges too. Our own group of IITians made us hold our heads high with pride! A great performance, it was!! We even got tips from one of our Gymkhana sports’ coach’s daughter.
Six years later, I was part of Manfest, the IIM Lucknow fest. This time, from the sheer perspective of enjoying every event with no organizational responsibilities
Bohemian creatures of the B-school world, we were!

I know 16 or even 10 years is a long time. But to read about the ‘Love Lips and Lipstick’ competition as part of IIT Roorkee’s Thomsoo 2010, is making me react in different and unsure ways! I wonder if this is the ‘cultural inflation’ adjusted form of 1994’s fashion show. Am I now supposed to ‘understand’ this creative concept of lipstick competition and accept it as an okay thing? So many participants and that too at an IIT: I am seriously confused!! Moral police officers are having a gala time expressing their shock at the downright vulgar competition that has been implemented shamelessly in public! They are convinced that our national pride has been unabashedly set on fire and the smoke of embarrassment is polluting the whole nation’s young minds.

If this is the new norm, wonder what college life and college fests will be like in the next 15 years.
But I still hope that institutions don’t take the hasty steps to ban these fests itself. The experiences of organizing a fest, participating in them are part of college life and should certainly not be missed. But again, Love Lips and Lipstick competition – is probably taking it one just more step closer to outrageousness. Or am I, an IITian from the class of 1996, just too vintage to comment??

A different Relativity Theory: Is Relative grading an intrinsic attribute?

Let me start by saying that the Theory of Relativity part has no real relevance to this post, but it is just there, hanging around with its buddy, the other sentence, a question on ‘RG being an intrinsic attribute’.

Absolute grading and Relative Grading – after endless discussions, multiple RG experiences (RG as verb is a term invented by B school junta and for the uninitiated, a typical RG character would be Chatur Ramalingam in 3 Idiots). Somehow, the concept of RG never felt fundamentally right!

If many test takers scored 96 and one star scored 97 out of 100 in say, Management Accounting, the grades could become B and A, respectively. The effective difference between grades would be 1 out of 10 in a 10 point CGPA system and not 1 out of 100 in an Absolute Grading scale. Hmm … so, its already sounding like RG was the handiwork of some disturbed soul. Or was it created by sets of like-minded souls coming together with the sole intention of causing chaos and spreading confusion? Of course, for someone like me, who could consistently score around 90 (hee hee, how I wish! ), the difference would be a painful 3 points from the topper! For folks who were not in the top rankings (note: top could mean different ranks to different people), the Laxman type batting in the recently concluded Test never happened. We had all settled in our respective ranks from 1 to 180 and didn’t hit any 73 not out in the final trimester or semester.

When did grades ever matter? After all, it was the handiwork of people like ViruS (Viru Sahasrabudhe) from 3 Idiots, right?

Going back to the India win at Mohali, there can be no doubt whatsoever that VVS Laxman is one of the greatest batsmen of all time!

At the end, riding on predominantly, a great team effort, India went on to win an epic battle, the entire nation celebrated and went to sleep. No, wait!! A part of the crowd got too tired of celebrating and from somewhere, a seed of doubt was sown in the minds of people.
Sachin had scored 98 and 38, Zaheer had snared 8 wickets, Ishant had given his best and in the process impressed even Ishant bashers like yours truly. His wickets, 30 plus runs, tremendous attitude and the fact that he had faced more balls than VVS put Ishant as the natural hero.
So now, the question that was being debated was:”Who is the true hero?” – Laxman, Ishant or Zaheer or Raina or Sachin …. shouldn’t Ishant be the MoM or Laxman? Why Zaheer?
Justifications began to rain and it rained hard, flooding the news channels and news sites. All of a sudden, the original context was forgotten. The whole and sole purpose of beating Australia was dissolved in the new context of who came first in the imaginary or man made race?

Why?

Do we intrinsically like ranks and need to know who finished first? Maybe yes! The ViruSes have won. While X can be better than Y in any test, why can’t X and Y be equal sometimes? Survival of the fittest even when all can survive?

Here was a Test which saw contributions from everybody. So, why would we go through some secret complex math fest to calculate the Man of the Match?

• Assign weights to wickets, fielding, batting, bowling, and maybe even add more bizarre math to include parameters like assigning weights by quantifying the level of pressure at different stages of the match.

• Go about assigning higher points to same performance during pressure. So Ishant and Laxman would have scored very well in this scenario.

• From one simple perspective, no doubt it’s not such an easy task to pick the Man of the Match. You need DIL (Duckworth, Iyengar and Lewis) method for that.

If we look back, all this could have been avoided had we said, “Why bother? Do absolute grading and give the whole team a big bottle of champagne to celebrate!”

But maybe we have relative grading DNAs in our system. And THAT could explain several things. All this talk of equality of any and all forms is nice to imagine but difficult to accept deep down … Huh?

Desi movie, CWG and Izzat protection choices

I obviously make no effort to conceal my love for mass entertainers: especially Hindi / Tamil movies that keep using tried and tested formulae since the origin of cinema. I also love to look at some serious issues through the eyes of a mass entertainment film‘s possible plot.

For example, let us take some tried and tested combinations of rich boy, poor girl or even a poor boy and rich girl marriage scene. While this marriage scene is getting shot let us sprinkle some dowry masala powder just when the ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’ part is about to happen.

The priest is all set to order the groom to tie the thaali or mangalsutra, but the groom’s dad, Dushtappa has other plans.
The bride’s middle class, honest, no-bribe taking, God and society fearing government servant father, Dharmappa and his log kya kahengey wife, Rajo ki Ma are asked to meet Dushtappa before the wedding can go on any further. Dushtappa rattles off his demands. For a moment, the girl’s father is hoping that the demand is only restricted to welcoming guests with Pan Parag paan masala, but no, the demand turns out to be an impractical request list: few crores of rupees along with assets including a penthouse in Manhattan with a houseboat in Alleppey and a non-negotiable chopper parked on top of Mukesh Ambani’s new house.
The world begins to spin; it’s almost as if some Divine force, most probably Dharti Ma had decided that it was the most opportune moment to prove the Geography lessons learnt in school by giving a demo. Dharmappa could see the earth rotating and revolving at the same time (Of course these would have to be edited well and the Graphics team from SillyKhan Media would work on it). The mom could see the spins too for a couple of seconds before fainting.
Dharmappa, the one with poor negotiating skills tries his best when he first places his turban and then throws himself at the villain’s feet. Has that had any effect on the demands in any movie ever? No, but that’s how these scenes are always meant to be! Throw in some generous dose of tears, show indifferent bad pop lighting a pipe with a Zippo lighter and demand the music director to go ballistic with such tragic music in the background that even Cacophonix the Bard would be proud. The scene is perfect. The entire crew is moved to tears.

More details on the scene:

Dushtappa gives victim a quick lecture and makes him see the future clearly. The dialogue is as follows:
a. What is important for you? (Note: dialogue edited from WTF is important to you?)
This wedding or calling it off? Daughter’s happiness or money?
Do you realise the side effects: Nobody will marry your daughter. The whole samaaj will spit on you.

b. And what is the whole naatak on the Money part: You can beg, borrow or steal.
Remember the characters who stole for their wife or child’s operation? Pran in Don, Sandman in Spiderman 3, and ABC in XYZ …. the list is endless.

Dharmappa begins to evaluate options available to him.
“Cut!” screams the director. “That’s enough shooting for the day”.

At night, the crew discuss about the scene.

The CWG is also similar, Kalmadi / the country is all set to organize an event that started with a budget which has no relation to actual money spent. But the choice to hold the event or not did exist.

Ghar ka izzat or desh ka izzat protection: is it really the only thing that is important? Can’t nations make mistakes? Sponsorships are not happening, just like Dharmappa’s relatives who refuse to help him. Kalmadi and Co. can of course eat into various funds and taxpayer’s money and ensure that the event does happen. Just like Simplefather who can rob banks or kidnap the neighbouring village’s rich bureaucrat’s child and get a few crores as ransom.

But SimpleFather has to clearly understand the context. Will his daughter live happily ever after with this groom?

The crew and the story writer unanimously recommend kicking Dushtappa and calling the wedding off … That is what will make the audience whistle and clap. That would satisfy men and women of all ages and backgrounds.

And I would agree.

What about CWG? We should have taken inspiration from Dharmappa and stopped this CWG. Period …

Note: This post was written long ago and although the context as of today may not be fully relevant from CWG perspective, I am going ahead and posting anyways.

Short stories – Part 1

The king Lion had started to lose his speed. He was getting old. The lioness who had signed an unwritten outsourcing contract to hunt for the king was getting old too. She had started to make erroneous judgments every now and then. Limb eye co-ordination mechanism had started to show signs of failure. The ‘lioness projectile’ would launch at an incorrect angle to the ground or at a wrong speed to cause two parallel undesirable outcomes:
a. the target food would escape to live another day and
b. the lioness would get hurt by falling on her face sometimes, crashing against a tree at other times. Once, due to the inevitable effect of gravity and other physics related equations, she even ended up falling flat on a lake and her teeth hit a sharp edged rock. As dentistry is not offered to the inhabitants of a jungle, the lioness became one tooth minus forever, further denting her pride and effectiveness.

The lion family had to quickly do something. Their children had run away some years ago to another jungle – so there was nobody to look after them. The lions decided to employ a group of buffaloes to hunt for them. The deal was that the lions wouldn’t attack the buffaloes or their friends and family members but the buffaloes had to use their horny nature to serve the lions. A group of buffaloes would encircle an animal identified by the lions. The lions would move around the buffaloes forming an outer concentric circle with the prey as the centre of the circle. This hunting method continued for several months and both the lions and buffaloes were happy with this arrangement. Initially, the buffaloes found the job of using their horns to kill other animals appalling, but slowly, their abhorrence gave way to indifference. Once in a while, now, the buffaloes even enjoy the sorry helpless state of their victims.

Lessons and observations:

- The lions had gotten old and could have been overpowered right at the beginning. The buffaloes made the wrong choice then.
- If you do something you don’t like, stop doing it. Else, you will compromise and end up fooling yourself that you are indeed doing something very meaningful. That’s called the naked truth or Buff Logic in this case.
- Several years later, the animals in the jungle began to live in a concentric circle format. Lions, buffaloes, deer, mice, snakes, frogs – sub-contracting became the order of the day.

ZOO – The Funda

Do you have it in you to do exactly what you want, when you want and how you want to do it?

Simple questions actually.

You can call it guts or the plural form of those round red things that bowlers like Shoaib Akthar and Dale Steyn would love to hurl at batsmen.

But the question is, do you have it in you or not?

Because if you do, you will do exactly what you want, when you want and how you want to do it.

And if you don’t, you will find some perfectly logical, rational, sensible, pragmatic reasons to do something else and beautifully justify the change in workflow as well.

It is a matter of choice really!

Either you accept and make the choice that would make a difference to your conscience or you don’t.

That’s ZOO: Zero Or One – The Funda, The Binary Truth!

Tathaastu!

I dont Hate Luv Storys

Note that this is a completely random fiction on first love. More a letter to my school friends with whom I had spent glorious years until 20 years ago … So, here it goes:

The lips had met. Met the flowing water that rushed out from the tap to fill her sweet mouth. She stood there, the ugly posture making her look like a crane, almost. Hands pressing the tap button, back bent forward, face slanted and it seemed that the cold water from the tap was only thrilled to shower her lips. In the backdrop of the hot humid day, the water began to taste sweeter and I kept drinking right next to her, my eye lids not even stopping to blink. I had discovered cloud nine right there, on a small piece of land in Sarat Bose Road. She began to wipe her red lips and walk away. My eyes followed her and the water flowed right into my nostrils, making me cry and cough badly: I felt half blind, half dead and immediately, it was over. The feeling of a free fall return to earth from stratospheric heights was rude. But what made the experience extremely embarrassing was that Ms. Indrani stood there and looked at me. She had been observing me for a while and I felt I had committed a crime. I felt that I had betrayed the trust that the whole of mankind had in me. I wasn’t supposed to admire, let alone rush, propose or even confess my feelings to the lady. With this feeling of guilt, began my love story. What I felt were definitely the seeds of the seeds of first love. But I had too many things to do in those days, there was arithmetic, Kabir ka Doha, Premchand’s story, history and geography classes along with science and language. Years later, I realized I never knew what happened to that feeling, for every time I fell in love again, the feeling was always different, never as pure as the one that just made me stand there and didn’t allow me to move. I would be transported to another world, a world that only I knew existed within the same school premises that we all were part of. The water taps and the round water tank – how I wish I could be there some time to quench my thrist and see if I could find that feeling once again: pure love. For now if I see a boy of the same age – in class 5, would I not kick him for being such a stupid loser and romantic in class 5?!!! And I too have gone from old to older. But the boy is somewhere running around and regretting that he didnt freeze those moments. There he is, running around and playing in the classroom during the tiffin break and I watch him. When did I lose most of my teeth, most of my hair, and most of my eye sight? I came to meet that kid and am so glad that he is till there. Part of him returns to me and I am happy enough to undertake the journey to heaven.
And take a rebirth,
But this afterlife, I know I wont keep quiet, I will win her.
But will you all be there to help? Please be ….

P.S: This post is dedicated to my friends from school, especially 2 couples, who actually took matters seriously and got / getting married to each other.

Hate at First Sight

A lot has been discussed about love at first sight. But if we look at the other end of the spectrum, there is hate at first sight too. There are a few examples I can share and I would surely love to hear and read more.

Story number 1:

Like with many things in life, there is a mad rush at the eleventh hour. This time, the challenge is to get rid of household items and leave the US. There are only 2 days It is at this point in time that you realize how small things that you have bought for the sake of buying have added up pain you while you shift homes or worse, move back to India.
With necessary PR work out of the way, several people began to call or come to take a look at the items up for sale – TV, chairs, sofa, kitchen items, toys – everything. One tall man walked in, wearing a Greenbay Packers jacket. Anything other than Steelers was not welcome but this wasn’t why hate set in. The jacket only added to the detestation. Here is how our conversation went on:
Man: So why are you selling everything?
Me: Going back to India.
Gorilla: Oh. That’s so sad.
I: Why sad?
Monkey: Going back to India (making a strange face) – now how can that not be sad?
That was it!!!
Me: Thanks, I don’t want to sell anything to you.

Mongoose realizes his presence is turning me red with anger. The bandicoot looks at some child proofing articles, electric plugs, I think.
The rat: “You shouldn’t worry so much about kids, otherwise, they will become scared of everything later”
Myself: “Can you please get out?”
Swine: “Oh, so I am making you angry?”
Mr. Iyengar: “Anybody who thinks going back to India is a sad thing is indeed irritating and I request you to leave please”.
$#%@^@& Mosquito: “Sure, ….” Stands there for 2-3 minutes and slowly trudges off.

If only he was not a 6’4″ cockroach, I would have thrown him out.

Hate at first sight of the highest order!

Story number 2 onwards – will post some other time.

Shrek Forever After – a review

I promised myself to post the review within 24 hours of watching Shrek – Forever After. The idea was brilliant – no, not the review writing idea, but the whole build up to Shrek 4. We successfully implemented the surprise planned for my daughter. She thought we were going out for a quick drive but Shrek was a surprise gift to end her summer vacation. Now let’s jump into the movie.

Reality 1: Seen through (Martian Man) Mr. Shrek’s eyes: What the hell am I doing? I am a useless ogre. A show piece, nobody is afraid of me, I don’t scare people anymore, I am like a domesticated circus lion married to the ring master with 3 naughty kids, with a donkey as a best friend who has 3 naughtier kids. Rewind …. Replay. That was midlife crisis. Sigh!
Reality 2: Seen through (Venusian Woman) Mrs. Fiona Shrek’s eyes: Shrek is the luckiest man on this planet. He has a wife who loves him so dearly, wonderful kids, friends who adore him and the only person who doesn’t understand that is Shrek!
Flash point event: Triplets’ birthday party. Irritants: Cake, Cake cutting, crowd, demand for Ogre roar. Effect: Shrek tired, angry and over the top. Subsequent effect: Fight with Fiona and a long lonely walk.

Villain boy magician Rumpelstiltskin (great character played very well) who is ever ready with a con deal gets Shrek drunk and gets him to sign on the dotted line. Shrek gives one day of his life to Rumpel. Conman steals the day Shrek was born and thus starts a parallel universe. Remember, it was Shrek who saved Fiona from the dragon? But Shrek doesn’t exist in the new scheme of things. So Fiona had saved herself in the other world. Shrek does meet Donkey, Fiona and Puss but they don’t know who he is. He is common to both worlds but they are different although they are the same, you see. A small digression: They made Puss so fat in this movie, he could have been nicknamed the new yesteryear James Bond girl, Pussy Galore.
Fiona is the leader of a group of ogres. Shrek is actually the smallest of them all. Witches of Rumpel are busy looking for Shrek. Ogre revolution is going on where they are fighting king Rumpel and his army of witches. Pied Piper walks in and makes everybody dance to his tunes – rats, witches and ogres.

The concepts are nothing new but the 3D effects and pace of the movie doesn’t bore you. I missed Imax 3D sorely here. I also noticed that although kids in the hall will keep questioning the story, but soon they will only see what’s happening and forget about the plot.

Time is running out fast and as per the exit clause, only True Love’s kiss can liberate Shrek. Happy ending, as expected, happens followed by a return to original universe, i.e. back to cake cutting party. Shrek now agrees with Venusian views. But hey, did I miss something?? In reality, yes! that’s the after taste – that something was indeed missing. ‘The End’ happened a bit too soon and how I wish some more action scenes were added, especially in the climax. It was like a T20 innings where wickets are conserved for the final assault, but the last 6-8 overs only see a few singles, some wickets tumble and the batting side ends up with a 120-130 odd score.
A certainly watch able but not a must watch movie!

Also, this was a movie meant to be for kids, right? But the plot!! How could I explain what was going on to my kid?

At the end of the movie, her verdict was – “We had so much fun, appa!”
Now, that’s what made the Shrek trip worth it for us.

Writer’s block and Sura

There is just nothing to write about. Really! Nothing seems to be happening in my world. It’s the same old traffic, Powerpoint slides and Word documents. Food, drive, sleep, coffee, drive, office … it’s all so boring.

I was a movie buff but after watching Sura, I am too scared to even venture near a movie theatre. Such was the traumatic experience! So, there is not even a movie review to type although I have been trying for about 3 weeks now. I realize that I have been severely hit by writer’s block. No creativity is left in my thought process: the so called creative juices have totally evaporated. Thoughts are frustratingly blank.

I consulted a few journalists and writer friends. To overcome writer’s block, I was told that I don’t have to think much. Just write what I experienced. That’s all. Was it so difficult to articulate in words what I had undergone? Why was it such a challenging exercise to push my lazy brain to generate some words out on the screen that you and I see here?

But I am glad. At least, I am ready with Step 1. I am certainly on my way to become a writer – otherwise, how could I have writer’s block in the first place? Yippee ….. Thanks Sura! If I had not wondered how to write the review of this movie, there was no way I could have hit upon this realization.

Vijay, Tamannah and Vadivelu act in this movie along with a full time villain who does a part time Union Minister’s job. Lots of innocent villagers live along the sandy sea shore. They worship Vijay and often refer to him as Sura the Tsunami, I think. Tamannah is a rich girl who decides to drown in the Bay of Bengal because her dog escapes into the wild wild western ghats. Our versatile genius of a hero is an ace swimmer. He saves her near Jaffna!! Songs, some fights, villain versus hero and throughout there is only one man who keeps winning. That man is the same man that we saw in movies before, sometimes Villu, Vettaikaaran, ATM but by far, this Vijay is at his worst. With due respects (and I really mean it ) the producer could have made a much cheaper movie with Vijay’s half baked clone – his cousin! The Tollywood hush hush psst psst circles call them Clonolial Cousins, did you know?
Coming back to the review: Flying saucers, UFOs, Gods and Goddesses, Tarantino’s gore, animation and gay marriage wisdom: these were some of the random thoughts that were missing from this movie – otherwise it was all there. Songs – tick, Vijay dances – tick, rape scene – probably there, don’t remember, Mom sentiment – triple tick, Phoenix (hero rising from ashes) – quadruple tick.

Vadivelu was quite funny and then there was ….. sorry, I am slipping into another bout of writer’s block …. Sura, err …. Yeah, the popcorn was nice and so was the Coke. Nice drink, actually, especially when served with lots of ice. After 2 and half hours, villain dies, and there is a happy ending, must have been like that only, what else could be the ending?

With Sun TV as producers, even before its release, Sura was declared a blockbuster. But for me, it is not even a writer’s block buster.
%$#@&$#@%!^! = Foul unprintable language dedicated to Sura.
Before, I sign out, let me share an outstanding punch dialogue. A loose translation of the Punch Dialogue:

“Before buying one Sura ticket, you must think not once but 100 times what you are about to do,
Because, if you watch Sura, you will not be able to think again, not at least for the next 3 hours”

The movie over-delivers on that punch dialogue – not for 3 but for the next 300 hours.

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IPL Mela – a full course meal

At the risk of being clichéd, I avoided posting anything on IPL topic. But here I am, penning down some of my thoughts and discussions on this badly bruised and beaten to pulp topic!

Geographically speaking, all cricket playing nations and wherever Indians are, i.e. everywhere, Modis Operandi threatens to transform the lives of many, especially its big boss, Lalit Modi. Anybody who shook a hand or leg with him in the last 25 years is suddenly under media’s omnipresent hand held scanners. From IPL to GPL (loosely translated, GPL = Kick on the soft posterior side!), it sure has been a sudden change in fortunes of gargantuan magnitude. The public is savouring a full course meal dished out from media chefs. First there was the Kochi cooing appetiser served deliciously by mixing Japanese delicacy Sushi and Indian egg dish, SunAnda (Anda or eggs, roasted under the Sun). SunAnda: What a useless PJ! Or should we say, Wow, What a Silly Point, just to introduce a cricketing flavour? Better still, make it (Youngistan ka) Wow! What a Silly Point!, in line with IPL style of branding and advertising.

We all know that Sonia sent a MMS (our PM, that is) and commanded Shashi to step down. Before we could conclude that not every story could possibly have a tweet ending, Shashi tweeted again and let the nation know the root cause of his (Yuvraj like) cheap dismissal. [Note ‘Yuvraj like’ is another cunning attempt to hone brand building skills like DLF Maximum]. They could not afford to see a minister get close to a woman whose name included the dreaded letters, NDA??!! Suna Pushkar, she is now, tweets Shashi from his swank Alleppey houseboat. He also announced that his name has been changed to Shashi ThaRoorbach, after consulting with the world famous nameologist from Iceland, Whjats-ihn-ja-jnam [pronounced with all the J’s silent], also commonly referred to as W15.
[Interestingly, the meaning of Roorbach is: a false and more or less damaging report circulated for political effect]
From Lalit Modi’s perspective, the event has yet again been a grand hit. IPL has achieved roughly 1219.87 % CAGR, one of the fastest growths ever seen in just 3 years [ok, I don’t know the true growth rate / CAGR figures and am lazy to google it. Moreover, my Chennai based BCCI contacts do not share data as they are busy negotiating with Mallya to offer bulk discount on KF beer for 2011, while Vijay Mallya gives a Thums Up (much to the happiness of Coca Cola officials), upon learning that roughly 150 thousand bottles of beer were consumed in IPL parties this year? With such numbers, Kat and DP tweeted that Senior Mallya is contemplating a move to name his beard as Kingfisher Beer-ed.

The full course meal is turning out to be an elaborate affair with the IPL cricket itself being only the side dish that one may chose to ignore. The media threatens to let the Shared Power sambhar or some underworld D-aal out the news bags. The common theme is that the rice of Lalit bhai is jaw dropping! Countless stories of favour curry are being distributed for sampling purposes and the survey results from news eaters will determine future courses.

The plot is getting thicker like Knorrs soup and the author of Mahabharata, Vyasa is tweeting from his grave. His position as the ultimate story teller is under threat and a Vyasa fan page is coming up soon in Facebook. Only the Mahabharata had a more intriguing and complex plot with an intricate web of interwoven stories and relationships between its high profile characters. The IPL surely has all the ingredients to compete with the Mahabharata, provided the stories keep getting cooked well by the media houses and reach the masses before their hunger gets filled by some other story like the Nithyananda sleaze etc. [Nithyana + NDA, again, see, how the opposition is relentlessly attacking Congress?!!] Anyway, majority of the public believe that given the profile of people involved in the IPL circus, they might not get the complete satisfaction of digesting the truth behind this annual exhibition. Pranab da is donning the role of a truth fairy and only time will give us at least a partial insight into the details of funding sources, match fixing allegations, betting rackets etc. Getting the names of the organizers of illegal activities would be like searching for the exact location of the rice fields and questioning the farmer who has harvested the rice and grown vegetables that are served on your everyday lunch plate.
Sample this: Mallya’s step daughter is Modi’s secretary. An example of taking the right step to sweat equity?
Let us enjoy while this euphoria lasts and watch Pune and Kochi bid along with the rest for the next round of the IPL. Until then, happy news eating, bon IPL appetit!

First of all, Indians

The need to race ahead and end up in the first position is far more among Indians than ladies and gentlemen from other nationalities.
This is not a racist statement but one that is the result of a social experiment made out of keen observation of several thousand Indians, over several years. The experiment has been carried out by silently surveying the activities of people from different socio-economic segments, in various locations, especially crowded areas and places where there is an acceptable need to stand in a queue. While this toil has been restricted to metro cities like Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, the experimenter has also utilised his idle time at airports in Europe and the US and got greater understanding on the behavioural pattern that he believes can be addressed as, ‘We are Indians, we are like this only – we are the First of All’.

The experimenter shall henceforth be referred to as E, while the many unsuspecting Indian males or females, who co-operated wonderfully well, without being aware of the experiment itself, will be affectionately referred to as subjects.

E has decided to present few examples he believes can throw light on the experiment and create social awareness amongst fellow countrymen so that they can either chose to laugh at themselves, laugh at E for utilising his time in such a useless manner or look into their own behaviour to see if there is at least a partial match, subsequently decide on a plan and present the next steps to their own brains and hearts.

Example 1:
At a particular traffic junction, called the Gemini flyover in Chennai, E stops, although the green light in front was showing its approval to allow E to go straight ahead. The reason: On the same signal, perpendicular to E, an ambulance was pleading. It was using its characteristic multimedia presentation (rainbow lights and a distinctly loud siren) to transport some needy person to the nearest hospital.
Results of E’s action: As E stopped his car, several cars and motorbikes behind honked and E could also hear some abusive language, including some new Tamil phrases that got added to E’s foul language database. The database, however, is out of scope for this experiment or post.
The ambulance gleefully began to race away. But, several cars and bikes seized this opportunity to jump the red light and follow the ambulance! Several refers to at least a dozen and that included a high end BMW car as well as a C class Mercedes. There was also a cyclist, who tried to demonstrate his extreme passion for adventure sports and high speeds by throwing his right hand on to the ambulance, so that he could go faster and beat the traffic. Unfortunately, the ambulance sped away and he began to curse himself for his error of judgement and apparent lack of hand eye coordination, a must have trait for any adventure lover. E was forced to keep advancing 3-4 inches, stop, repeat the advances and after 2 minutes or so, noticed on his rear view mirror that the traffic pattern behind was in utter chaos. The strange pattern of cars and bikes had the erstwhile mute spectator traffic cop do a quick root cause analysis and give a stern look at E for having stopped at the green light. E was relieved that another deputy cop was vigorously shaking his hands and ordering him to disappear from the scene of the jam.
Example 2:
E was travelling on a flight to Delhi, an activity that E is indulging in, every now and then, nowadays. E noticed that his co-passengers were always in a mad rush. Scenarios where mad rush was observed included boarding the bus that would transport them to the plane, getting down from the bus to the plane and squeezing through to push ahead in the narrow space between the seats. On one such occasion, E witnessed a slightly greater than 100 kilo male subject, squeeze past a 110 kilo lady with no regret whatsoever. The female subject expressed her displeasure only to hear a reply from the former that she was being inconsiderate and consuming too much time to take a right turn and deposit herself on to her specified seat. E also noticed that as soon as the flight landed, the passengers immediately got up, ready to rush to the exit door. Most folks at the window seats stood with their legs and head upright, but the remaining portion of their bodies were inclined at varying postures like 30 to even 75 degrees to avoid hitting their heads against the overhead cabins. It did not matter that they were themselves uncomfortable or causing greater discomfort to others. The subjects had to come first! Whenever E got an aisle seat, he was invariably pushed to the walking lane and all the subjects displayed this burning desire to reach the finishing line as soon as possible. Of course, the same behaviour was at display when the airline’s bus arrived to transport these subjects to the airport from the plane’s parking place. Of course, the drive to occupy a seat in the bus often resulted in another hectic round of rushing. Irrespective of where the subject was seated, as soon as the bus approached the final destination, usually, within 3-5 minutes, subjects did not disappoint E with their predictable response.
This surprised E because most of the subjects seemed well educated and most probably held good positions too.
Example 3:
E, in his experiments in the US, noticed some contradictory behaviour. The same subjects seemed to have lost this desire to run for the imaginary Olympic gold medal. Most subjects quietly stood in queues and that too with a gap of more than a foot in between. In flights, the same subjects even let the person ahead of them go first, after landing. They mostly always obeyed rules (including the unwritten ones assumed to be existing and making society better) and E kept getting confused as to why the subjects had this dual response to stimuli when the location variable was changed from India to Foreign Land.

After gazing alternatively at subjects and staring at the moon (for conducting experiments and to understand answers, respectively) E concluded that, “We are Indians, we are like this only – we are the First of All”.

Booking the flight

We were meeting after a very long time. It was strange to meet Akash after such a gap but meeting anybody with whom I could speak for a while was not such a bad idea at all. The Delhi airport was beginning to get on my nerves. Just yesterday the newspapers had so proudly boasted about the modern amenities, the grace and how it was at par or even better than some of the best airports across the world. I found the place ok but the lady at the mike was suffering from verbal diarrhoea. Ting … This flight is delayed and we are sorry for the inconvenience … Ting … please proceed for boarding at gate number 9 …. Ting …. Due to delay of incoming flight …. Rewind, replay, copy, paste …. How I wished I was at some place else then!
So, there I start off again. How I love to crib! I was talking about Akash, my old friend from school. I hadn’t particularly liked him back then because he had genetically acquired a white complexion and red lips from his rather stunningly beautiful Kashmiri mother. His colour made me give up the race to woo Radhika midway and for a long time, we hadn’t connected due to this basic complexity that had given rise to many a complex. I could calculate Math faster and even I ended up making silly errors in calculations, I could outpace him by a big margin. He was no match, when it came to my genetically acquired calculating capabilities: a trait that seemed to be part of the chromosomal patterns that my forefathers had stolen from the Gods. Yeah, I am a Tam Brahm and for a long time, I believed that my core competence was to try hard and calculate faster than a calculator, especially when it involved adding up two randomly chosen 2 digit numbers. Those were the days, and here I was now, waiting at Delhi airport and helplessly subjecting my ears to some harsh treatment by an unknown lady. What had all these people done to her? Why was her voice so croaky and irritating and if her voice was like that, why was she there? Wasn’t an announcer supposed to have a dulcet voice? Maybe she had some inexplicable relationship with some sadistic senior at the airport authority or whoever! Who cared? Ohh no ….. I did!! It was my ears that bore the brunt of this high decibel third degree torture.
So, obviously, I was really happy to recognize Akash. He had put on a lot of weight. It was obvious that there more disloyal hairs on his head than the loyal ones who had continued to stay on at their crowning residence. Strangely enough, he too seemed happy to see me. There was no hatred, just a genuine feeling of mild warmth and ultra mild happiness. After the pleasantries were exchanged, Akash asked me a few questions just to check if my progress in life was along the lines of what I had confessed many years ago to Radhika. The lady was consistent at leaking secrets out.
So, are you a musician? Did you buy your chopper? Did you write your book? The questions followed and we had a good laugh over the whole episode.
The lady’s voice every now and then made it difficult to talk and listen but this time, she announced that Akash’ flight was about to leave in 5 minutes. He left and I was once again left to typing this on my laptop and it all began to slowly sink in. I was not a musician and had even forgotten to strum the guitar long ago. I went on to study in the US and kept studying for a long time on a subject that had no musical connection. The only tune was that of my merciless professors who made me work hard and harder. As I started wondering, I was convinced that even now, I could beat Akash at Math! Chopper, golf … astrophysics … book … none of my childhood dreams were fulfilled. But I knew that I was not a loser. However, I made up my mind that this piece of scribbled notes that constitute this post would be the introduction to my book.
*******
What a start to my book! While I typed furiously and began dreaming about what royalty I would get from the publisher, I did something really stupid. I didn’t hear the lady’s announcements and yes, missed my flight! While what followed was not pleasant, I called this incident as “Booking the flight’. Only I and now, you know that this phrase has begun to have a new meaning in my dictionary.