Domain Maximus

Roman Singh Deshtone was born at 4pm on a bright sunday morning in a village three roadside dhabas away from Patiala. He was born into a well to do Punju family. The family was mostly into drug smuggling and organ trafficking, but since they hosted 14-day weddings on a weekly basis and served a lot of free paneer noone complained. Roman Singh had a normal childhood. He grew up eating a lot of Farex till he was two years old. With bits of tandoori chicken. He danced his first bhangra at 3, two months after learning to say his forst word: “balle”. His dad has a snap of the first time Roman pointed to the sky with both index fingers. Roman went to kindergarten, tractored the farm, and acted in two sardar jokes by the time he was 12.

While all this was happening in the burgeoning plains of Punjab, it was not quite gynaecological silence in the green backwaters of pristine Kerala. No one clearly remembers when Dimension Poovathurkaddavil was born. As soon as his mother had gone into labour, (and there was talk of a local bandh as she had sone so without union membership) Dimension’s family ran to Cochin to apply for his passport and Abu Dhabi visa. But the general consensus time was 3 pm. It was after Jose uncle’s phone call from Qatar and just before the neighbours fell into the well after getting drunk on hooch. Dimension was brought up on a wholesome diet of rice, fish fry, fish curry, roast fish, coconut milk, coconut gravy, coconut flakes and coconut halwa all cooked in cocnut oil. His father had named him after “My Dear Kittichathan”, India’s first 3D movie. Dimension was lucky he was an only child. His dad wanted to name his kids 1 Dimension, 2 Dimension and so on. His mom thought it was too long and wanted to call them Biju, Siju, Miju, Liju, Diju, Miju, Niju and so on. Dimension was a compromise.

Roman Singh was an inquisitive boy. He read a lot and by the time he was 18 he could recite all the collected works of Gurdass Mann by heart. But what changed his life forever was the encyclopedia he won in school on annual day. Roman had prepared relentlessly and his whole family helped him practise. His mother was in the kitchen for weeks. Finally on the second sunday of March, Roman Singh Deshtone raced past the field and won first place in the 34th Annual Tandoori Chicken eating competition. All proceeds went to the World Wildlife Fund. His prize was a fresh copy of the Encyclopedia Patiala. 424 pages of all the wisdom in the world incuding a special 300 page supplement on food. He was a little let down. He was hoping to win the Daler Mehndi audio tape. The book was mind boggling. But what really caught Roman Singh’s imagination was the chapter on Radio communication.

Dimension was a hardworking student. He did average in everything, but topped the school in “Illegal Emmigration” and “Practial Passport Forgery”. He loved travelling, and by 7th class he had visited every major international airport in South India. By 10th standard he had memorised the time table of every airline servicing the Gulf sector and cabin luggage allowance for each. He seemed to be heading the same way as his cousins Dinto and Tindo, both of whom were now successful tea shop magnates in Fujeirah. But then in 11th his father bought him a radio from the gulf. It was a wonderful gift. His dad told him how much he had to save to afford one. Dimension treasured his radio and showed it to all his friends. It was a “Philslip” original made in Liberia.

Soon these young minds were enraptured in the radio. They dreamt of circuits and boards, and stations, and sound and sexy radio presenters in pale pink lingerie. (Ed.: This point is highly debateable. We have not been able to establish this without doubt. In one of his letters Dimension talk of lungi-coloured Lingerie.) They bought all the radios they could with their pocket money. They broke them apart and tried to fix them up again. They went to all the libraries and read all the books they could. They were radio freaks.

However, inspite of the fact that Roman drove a speedy Yezdi and Dimension a swift Bajaj, life caught up with them. They were forced to earn a living. Roman started a firm specializing in costumes for Punjabi music video productions and Dimension started operating a bus service between Calicut airport and Guruvayoor. Both failed. Punjabi video producers rented a single bedsheet from Roman and cut it up to clothe the female lead and her 4235 extras. Soon Roman was broke and could barely afford 14 kulchas and 4 plates of sarson ka saag a day. Dimension was even less fortunate. First his staff and then his passengers went on strike. Then in the third week Calicut airport went on strike. He was forced to sell his bed and go around borrowing money for a visa and flight ticket to Sharjah.

Life seemed to go nowehere for our radio-obsessed young arabian horses. Inside them there was a small voice telling them they could do better. Roman’s inner voice even had a bhangra background soundtrack. Dimension knew he wanted to be more than just a tea shop owner in a desert oasis. His sights were higher. He wanted an attached restaurant and a petrol pump. That night they both slept the fitfull sleep of the troubled. They rolled and turned and gunted. At precisely 11:57 pm they both sat up like a bolt of lightening. And they both went to pee. They continued to roll and tumble till four in the morning. Then it happened. The brainwave. They both ran to their underground laboratories and started work on something that had come in their sleep. They worked tirelessly for months. But it would take the unison of minds of both great men to come up with the final product.

They had almost given up on their respective works. Both had reached a dead end. Roman was thinking of starting work on a biotech project that made paddy fields directly give biriyani. Dimension had finally applied for his Visa and was all set to fly. It was in the waiting lounge in Bombay Airport that they both met each other. They both walked up to the TV display, checked their flight timings and turned around. Their eyes met. It was like love at first sight, it was as if they were meant to be. As if they were weird characters in the same weird dbab post. Soon they were talking and within minutes they knew together they could work together (Ed.: The words “some booty” were removed after the word “work” due to gender sensitivity requirements.) and make the radio an unforgettable experience for its audience. They saw dreams of radio beaming out over networks and people smiling and being happy in their rooms. They did not dream the lingerie thing.

They knew with names like Roman and Dimension they would never be able to make it big in radio world. Today they are known as RJs Viper and Fatcat. They play the best music ever and do it with some punju-mallu panache.. so tune in to the Radio Event Extraordinaire “The Roman Dimension” tonight at 12:00 am on http://192.168.117.12:8000 and make it worthwhile having written such a long verbose launch note for it…

Phew,

Viper

FatCat

(People this was the launch post I wrote for a LAN station me and a friend of mine are launching on campus today. The post went up on one of our electronic NBs. Dont try the URL, its doesnt work outside the LAN…)

Hold on peoples. Had to go home for a wedding. So two posts on hold now. One on buying clothes for fat people and two, a nice little travelogue on my trip home. Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Cochin - Home - Mumbai - Ahmedabad in 24 hours.

So please go on doing whatever you all do at the office, and I will be back by 4 in the evening…

Woke up yesterday morning in a daze. Had a terrible backache, upset stomach and a sizzling brownie of a fever. Boka, my wonderful bong dorm mate came to the rescue. After a day of much paracetamol, fit full sleep and bread and jam, I was up today fresh as a fiddle, and all set to take the world of frantic daily blogging, ruthless commenting and business education head on.

I receive a lot of email everyday. So much so I never get enough time to write back to all three of them. So I prioritize and reply to all the women. (Sometimes this backfires though. I rather mushily mailed a nice bong thing called soumya, and it turned out that big bong men with hairy chests and gym memberships have names ending in A’s too.)

One mail wanted to know how long I take to write a post, and how I do it. Convalescing from a fever is rather unexciting. Theres little to write about except how you never noticed all those stains on the ceiling, and that lying on the same side for a long time wearing a lungi makes your skin look like that crepe taffetta whatever thing they use to package women’s clothes in. So I guess I will yet again shamelessly dip into reader emails for inspiration.

A post starts off in one of two ways: Something I see or read makes me think of something, which leads to something else… and as soon as it all accumulates into more than 800 words I drop everything and write a post. Or, its one in the morning, my brain is as empty as the Trophy rack in the Spanish Football Association office, and I panic…

When I do have an idea or a thought or something, then writing a post is pretty peaceful. Take a harmless sentence, stretch it, put in a couple of analogies, use a thesaurus, and voila!!! the hit counter zips away. For example:

I read: “Now dogs can do yoga too.”

After processing for blog: “I have a pet dog at home. A german shepherd. We call him Raju. We have this thing at home. Every dog we own we call Raju. Male or female. Now Raju has a problem. He is as brave and fierce as a Squirrel who is signatory to the Geneva Convention….”

And then I go on to somehow link it to yoga and finally yoga for dogs. This is not as tough as you would think…

“… Raju finally ran into the living room after running around the entire house 34 million times and hid under the sofa. We quickly removed the intruder that had scared Raju so and burried it in the kitchen storerooom. That was one small, plastic, peppermint-shitting chicken that my baby cousin will never play with again…”

You see the faint elements of a satire blog post coming through? Now I have so many possibilities. I give the chicken yellow and orange wings. And make green peppermints come out of the orifice at the bottom. With such a indigestible mix of colours, the puke jokes are but a line away.

“… seeing the dumb mutt gasping for its life under the sofa, you would think “Man that dog could do mean Pranayama session…” that reminds me, I once did a yoga thing a few years ago…”

See the seamless transition from topic to topic, and the audience is soft putty in your hands. Now that you have connected dogs to yoga you then find a nice appropriate little snap on the net… like this…

Now how can someone not come up with a funny caption for that one. But I must say hot little cutie isn’t she? Now if only I could get the owner out of the way…

Of course all this happens on a day when I have something to write about. Then I just have to end the entire piece with a witty reference to something I said in the beginning. All columnists who get published, and aspire to, do it. (Especially Dave Barry.) So I look through the first few paragraphs, find something and sign off in full flourish. Something like…

“Now I must go and reply to an email from a hot sounding punju babe called Reetinder Singh who had mailed in yesterday…”

When I am absolutely devoid of things to write about, like today, I just hold my breath and write down paragraph after paragraph of stuff, hoping it all sticks. And then I end it using a totally contrived premise…

“Dear guy who comented my last post, yes I do take criticism constructively, but my one-eyed bosom buddy from Madurai, who is an escaped death-row convict, and likes using machettes does not. He will trace your IP and find you. Please don’t scream when you see him. He does not like loud noises. He tried yoga to take care of it. Didnt happen… nice hearing from you though…”