Domain Maximus

February 4th – 10:30 AM

Four cities. Four airlines. Two days. One laptop. One blogger with a net enabled mobile phone trying his hand at on-the-move mobile blogging!

This is a first for me on Indigo Airlines. They do not have an inflight magazine. Things, otherwise, are not so bad at all. The flight is spanking new. (And so is the cabin crew!) The flight is on time.

I like.

I am safely seat-belted in. Nice and snug. Have gained weight since marriage. Dammit!

Jaipur here I come.

p.s. Wife says do not snack between meals.

11:00 AM

Reading Hesse’s Siddhartha. Very profound. Not lost though. Yet.

Bought bag of cashewnuts and a Diet Pepsi. Big bag of nuts proves to be mostly nitrogen or whatever other inert gas they use. Nuts are tasty but hardly last me three pages. Drown disappointment in Aspartame.

Burp.

12:00 PM

Looks like, wonder of wonders, I am going to land a full twenty minutes ahead of time! Go Indigo Go!

Man sitting next to me suddenly turns to me and asks me if I know who owns Indigo. (Mentally make note not to look so intelligent in public. But what to do…) I think it is the Wadias before I quickly correct myself. He owns Go of course.

Suddenly thinking of Preity Zinta.

They push around a cart and ask people to throw up all the garbage they would otherwise stuff into the unbearably elasticated pouch in front. Smart way to turn around plane quickly. But will they last in this severe loss-making civil aviation environment, my MBA mind wonders. Stewardess walks by. Are those real, my engineer mind wonders.

12:05 PM

Hello Jaipur!

Jaipur has one of those miniature 3BHK airports that dot the Indian map. Trichy, Coimbatore, Kozhikode… they are all the same. Ten steps from plane to airport. Ten steps from airport to large Bank of Baroda ball hanging outside. (Do they have them at all airports now?)

12:25 PM

My liaison at Jaipur is late. I stand looking around. Usual mix of small-town airport crowd. Disproportional number of firangs though.

Athithi Devo Bhava.

1:00 PM

In an Ambassador after ages. Ok, off to work now. Top secret. Hush hush. Talk to you during lunch.

1:25 PM

Pssst. Awesome roads. Oh yes and a two bedroom apartment rents out for 5000 bucks a month here.

I hate Mumbai. For now.

2:30 PM

The local economy revolves around tourism and day care centers. Nurseries are everywhere. Tiny Tots, Butterflies, Little Flowers, Pesky Pipsqueaks, Cute Champions, Miniature Marwaris. (I made two of them up.)

3:45 PM

I hear good things about Mrs. Scindia. Things are booming under her they say, in a manner of speaking.

I catch a glimpse of the new Rajasthan secretariat. It looks like Work In Progress. Looks pretty good from here. Though I think large domes are passe Mrs. Scindia.

4:15 PM

Nothing communicates Rajasthan like a nice Aloo Mutter Gobi (yes all three) swimming in a salty, gooey, pool of well-masala’d oil. Rip a piece of tandoori roti and leap on a baby potato bobbing by.

I order raitha to soothe belly that is beginning to throb in protest. Reminded of an old trekking trip to inner Maharashtra.

Host orders a Dal Makhani.

Groan.

6:00 PM

Assignment in Jaipur nears completion. At some point I am offered a platter of food to choose from. I politely pick up a potato chip. (Wife please note: ONE chip). Harangued into picking up a piece of moist orange mithai. On a cocktail toothpick. Rajasthani host calls it something, I hear ‘horse hooves’.

Yummy.

Trot.

7:30 PM

Back at the airport and mentally unwinding after a hard day’s work. My Kingfisher Fun Liner awaits. I have had little time to do any shopping or touristing. Must make up for it in the airport. Is that a local specialty sweetmeat shop I see in a corner of the lounge? Off I go!

Paneer Ghewar, Mawa Kachoris and some Khas Supari. The Gewar looks a little weird. The Mawa thingie looks absolutely death-giving. Supari jars jingle and rattle as I walk.

8:00 PM

Flight delayed. I don’t get it though. Why do they think that ‘… due to delay in arrival of incoming flight…’ serve as adequate justification. The Kingfisher people keep announcing the delay for a full twenty minutes.

Bah!

8:10 PM

Phone runs out of battery. Dejectedly shuffle over to a charging point on the wall conveniently placed in a narrow space behind some waiting benches.

Feeling grumpy.

8:50 PM

Finally boarded. Captain apologizes adequately. The ‘Flying Models’ as Mr. Mallya calls them look understandably uncomfortable in their tight skirts.

Kingfisher does not have an in-flight magazine either. That is not like the liquor baron at all. To scrimp on such minor niceties. But let us hope the catering is good today as it is always with Kingfisher.

9:00 PM

One humus & chickpea sandwich. One. Sandwich. WTF!

9:30 PM

Delhi! Good roads! Nice weather! The efficient Metro! Rampant Corruption! Unsafe for women after dark!

Home!

10:00 PM

Sarson da Saag! Rotis! Paneer Ghewar! (That Gewar is yet another item that tastes oh so much better than it looks. It tastes crumbly and ghee-y and comforting. It looks, on the other hand, like oversized welding residue.)

11:00 PM

Tried to get in-laws to appreciate Return of the King. They like the ‘lighting of beacons’ bit. But they think the entire green ghost army thing is a little fraud.

I do too.

12:00 PM

Zzz.

February 5th – 5:15 AM

The guard at the airport door warns me to always carry ID WITH PHOTO henceforth.

Delhi Airport is up and buzzing already. I quickly pocket my boarding pass, check in a package for the missus and walk over to grab a cup of coffee. I am weirdly awake for this time of the day.

Delhi Airport is familiar and un-surprising. Like Jet Airways.

6:15 AM

Up, up and away. I collapse into my seat and pull out the ever-dependable Jet In-flight magazine. The usual mix of large colourful photographs bordered with bare minimum text. But, as always, this too is a collector’s item. Aren’t all Jet mags?

I give up on Hesse and Siddhartha. It wasn’t them, it was me. The guy was beginning to get a little whiny. I need something as philosophical but something happier. More… gung-ho…

Pulled out that old Dave Barry I carry in my first-aid pouch. Aah!

6:17 AM

Whatay brilliant sunrise.

7:30 AM

Step off the stairs and onto the tarmac. Ahmedabad, my friend, it has been too long.

New terminal can be seen adjacent to the old one. Standard issue modern airport building, all straight corners and hideous aluminium cladding.

Ahmedabad disgorges luggage quickly. The joy!

7:32 AM

The Jet luggage emerges on the IC belt. And vice-versa. Some raised eyebrows. One miffed frequent flyer.

A bunch of quiet, sombre looking men in suits stand in a corner. Ties in their pockets. All of them look at their cell-phones and thumb away relentlessly. They look bored/pained/indifferent.

Maybe consultants.

7:45 AM

Quick look-see at the Institute before I run off on work. The city is getting an attitude. Development. Lots of malls and billboards. But still, essentially, a nice sleepy little place.

Notice billboard for a luxury building with its own Jain Temple built in.

8:30 AM

My morning is brilliant. Why you ask? Why this sudden shot of glee? Someone else’s misfortune of course. I could not take any snaps, my phone had no space left. But I saw a billboard that blew my mind away. They don’t have a website. But I was able to get their address on the net. Click here and understand the source of my mirth.

9:00 AM

Few things are as depressing in life as going to a place you have hajaar memories of but where no-one remembers you any longer. Campus was not exactly a Cheers pub.

My liaison in Ahmedabad will be late. I will roam around further.

9:45 AM

After a brief conversation with some old friends in the Administrative department I walk out to the new campus to have a look.

Too much bare concrete. Brutalist. But still impressive.

When you come to think about it how DO you apply for a job at that Yuranus place? ‘I was wondering if you have any openings here in Yur…’

10:15 AM

On the road.

11:00 AM

Disturbing (semantic?) trend I notice in Amdavad that was prevalent in Jaipur as well. People seem to think, and by people I mean owners of restaurants, cafes, banquets halls and such like, that the easiest way to indicate that you are a quality joint it by liberal use of the article ‘the’. For instance: ‘Crunchy Munchy – THE Restaurant’, or ‘Ghanesham – THE hangout’, and even, ‘Miniature Marwaris – THE Creche.’

Weddings all over the place! One wedding car passes by covered in a woven Gujarati-type shroud. Innovative che!

2:30 PM

Gordhan Thaal. THE gujju thaali place. No seriously.

An avalanche of aam ras, dahi vada, gulab jamuns, rotis, puris, aloo shak, kadhi, dal, papdi chaat, nimbu pani, chaas, moong dal sabji, besan something, pickles, chilis… Awww… aww… must… not… pass out… burp…

Outstanding customer service as well. If you are in Amdavad do drop in for a lunch. Great decor, silver crockery and cutlery. All at a hundred bucks a head.

Pin drop silence during lunch. Not one word. More aam ras? YES PLEASE.

Where DO they get mangoes from this time of the year!

3:30 PM

Have a flight to catch in two hours. My assignment in Ahmedabad looking shaky. Dammit.

Lots of CAT coaching places all over the place. Between nurseries in Jaipur and CAT coaching in Ahmedabad there is a burgeoning business.

Spotted a FIITJEE recruiting poster on campus. Those FIITJEE guys are looking at a 2000-crore topline by 2011. Good God!

4:00 PM

Success. Mission accomplished! Now rushing to the airport. No time to talk. All I can say is that another cricket blog is beginning to brew up.

4:15 PM

Rush to campus and pick up luggage. Finally a couple of people who identify their honorable alumnus. I feel nice.

Alas, cannot shop for bumper stickers, if they have any, at the gift shop.

5:15 PM

Just in the nick of time. Managed to get my fave seat as well. The row over the wing next to the emergency exit doors. Unmatched leg room. Where is the gift shop? I need to pick up something for the missus.

At the airport Le Meridien they sell water bottles at MRP.

5:30 PM

Cute babies are a sure crowd puller. And there is one right in front of me as I sit on a chair in the waiting area. A foreigner couple find much mirth in toddling with the cute little thing. And then he pukes all over them and their Lonely Planet and a nice suit jacket.

That conclusively proves that India leaves an indelible mark on all tourists. And an odour.

In my bag nestles a beautiful cell-phone pouch for the missus. Typical gujju work. Mirrors and embroidery and all. She will like it.

6:15 PM

Go Airlines. Clean, uncomplicated. Not bad at all. Corny name though. How do they motivate each other at company meetings? Go, GO, Go! ?

They stick a fragile sticker on my bag without asking. I nod in pleasure.

The legroom made me overlook the lack of magazines and the ‘No sir we do not carry any magazines or newspapers at all’ response to a fellow passenger.

6:20 PM

One of the crew members was clearly on her first few flights and was terribly nervous. But she did ok though.

And yes I promised to rip off the door and throw it away when the captain said ‘Evacuate Evacuate Evacuate’

6:30 PM

I just had a croissant filled with the potato stuffing you normally see in samosas or bad masala dosas. But tasted ok.

Who does the ridiculous drawings on those laminated flight safety flyer in the pouch? Why would people smile serenely as the oxygen levels dropped and the masks fell down? (Perhaps Siddhartha would have…)

(The Indigo flyer actually had a turbanned rajasthani looking man with handlebar moustaches on the flyer instead of the standard woman with shoulder length hair and knee length skirt and high heels. Nice touch!)

I try to read Barry but fall asleep like a baby. I drool just a little bit.

7:20 PM

Looking out of the window over Mumbai at night is awesome. As lights go on and off its like a throbbing organism. Plane rolls this way and then that as it lines up to land. Mumbai, correspondingly, dissappears and reappears in the window.

7:30 PM

Nice neat landing.

Passenger in adjacent seat gers phone call. He speaks very loudly. Soon everyone in the plane understands completely that he is from Rajkot, and he runs a trading company, and he is upset that his order will be delayed and that the guy on the other end was the type who gets a little too close with his own mom.

Luggage came jerking around on the belt in a few minutes and I was out in a flash.

8:00 PM

Cabbie jumped two red light and then got caught. And, having paid his due, he then almost smashed into a Santro side on. Abuse hurtled at him, and a little bit at me.

Crushing traffic on Wadala Bridge. Smoke and pollution everywhere.

It is good to be back!

p.s. Wife loved the pouch!

 Hello all. All good with all of you today? You Mumbaikars voted for your corporators? Very nice.

I’ve been piqued by a few stories in the media these last few days. One way or the other they have all grabbed my fancy. (Yes yes ‘grabbing my fancy’… ha ha… I know… it occurred to me too… ha ha…)

The first one was in the revered Hindu newspaper about Roger Federer’s thumping victory over Andy Roddick in the Australian Open. (I understand Federer, who is making up adequately for decades of much maligned Swiss neutrality, also subsequently went on to steamroll all over that Gonzalez fellow.) This story was remarkable not for its reportage but rather for its rather extravagant tone and voice.

At this point I must say that I am not a complete dud when it comes to tennis. Few in Abu Dhabi Indian School will forget that unforgettable (duh) match in 1993. It was a keenly contested match between Anthony D’Souza, that terrible server from 9-B, and this handsome, funny, erudite and popular South Indian kid from 9-A.

I was the ball boy.

There was a serve. There was a mis-hit return that imparted too much reverse spin on the ball. The ball bounced in front of an unsuspecting ballboy. He lunged forward. The ball bounced and rebounded backward. Ballboy’s torso followed the ball but his feet had given up hope months ago. There was a ‘tender just-pubert face smashing into a unrelenting asphalt surface’ situation.

I was that ballboy. Sigh. Wince.

But that is beside the point. I draw your attention to this story from the pages of the Hindu dated 26th January 2007. The story title is fiendishly seductive:

‘Roger Federer functions in a parallel universe, outplays Roddick’

Now, as mentioned before, I am not a tennis type of guy. I am too delicate for it. But I am sure that tennis has nothing to do with parallel universes, quantum mechanics, Einstein and that sort of thing. Perhaps it is a literary device, I console myself. The news story itself will surely not continue in this fashion. The hyperbole should be momentary no?

So I read on:

‘Trying to solve the Roger Federer puzzle on a tennis court is a bit like trying to master the String Theory in Quantum Physics. The closer you think you are to a solution, the farther you are from it. As a great scientist said, if you think you have understood string theory, you have not understood string theory.’

This guy was persistent with his physics wasn’t he? Or as a great satire blogger, both tall and handsome and a rage with the ladies, once said, ‘I struggle with a freelance writing career and you get paid to write that??!!!’ No matter. One must not take matters of the media too personally. I bit down on the welling pools of sarcasm and read on. A paragraph later:

‘Trying to get too close to the great man can be an experience ranging from anything between the mere unpleasant to the downright fatal.’

This made Roger Federer sound remarkably like an old hostel roommate of mine especially after a nice Mysore Masala Dosa breakfast in the mess on the weekends. I am sure you know people like that too. They are all over the place. Especially in elevators and packed conference rooms.

Onward ho and… bang into another parallel universe analogy:

‘The man functions in a parallel universe that is somehow visible to us against all laws of physics. Only, a twisted many-worlds interpretation can help us make some sense of the man’s genius and where it has left men’s tennis.’

WTF? The article was increasingly beginning to sound like something Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan would write when fortified with a little LSD.

So in many ways it was a relief when I came to this:

‘Stripped of his sense of self-worth, shaking his head in disbelief in a state of near-delirium, Roddick merely went through the motions like a stone-age warrior fighting a jet age soldier.

Sport is often unfair; but it has never been quite as unfair to quite as many as in the Roger Federer era. This is cruelty. But, then, without the cruelty where would the beauty be?

Not one but two paragraphs free of any reference to physics whatsoever. And to top that was an absolutely brilliant soldier-warrior analogy. (And by brilliant I mean in the context “Jaani Dushman was absolutely brilliant”.)

And indeed I ask you where WOULD cruelty be without beauty? Or, to give it an alternate perspective, beauty without cruelty? Or, one might further wonder, solidarity without elasticity? Or, coming to think of it, epistemology without viscosity?

And to close was this magnum opus:

‘I would call it the Perfect Match. But that is risky. For, this man has it in him to make perfection look that much more perfect the next time around!’

And I would call it the most OTT tennis story I have ever read. But of course I could not, as just a day or two later the same author came up with a take on the final match between Fed and Gonzalez. A gem from that similarly, if less extravagantly, esteemed piece:

‘But, modern sport’s most celebrated journey towards immortality will resume in the poetic environs of Parisian springtime — with chirpy little birds joining the chorus of adulation from chestnut trees in full bloom — later this year. Around that time, too, Rod Laver and Bjorn Borg (11 titles) will prepare to welcome His Royal Highness to their elite company.

Barring an asteroid Armageddon, by year’s end, only one man in the game’s pantheon — Pete Sampras, winner of 14 major titles — will be able to look over his shoulder, rather than in front of him, to spot the Swiss summiteer.’

‘Blooming Chestnut Trees! Barring Asteroid Armageddons! Spotted Swiss Summiteers!’ emoted Captain Haddock desperately trying to come up with lines for a latter day Tintin Reunion Movie which is seriously beginning to sound like a really bad idea.

And to close off a colourful media review this little bit from a BBC story on Shilpa Shetty:

‘The 31-year-old was first noticed in 1993 when she starred in a supporting actress role opposite super star Shah Rukh Khan in the hit film Baazigar (Player).

She then went on to play lead roles in films such as Main Khiladi Tu Anari (Me Player, You Buffoon) and Dhadkan (Heartbeat), most of which were moderate successes but never really runaway hits.’

Like most people I am a huge fan of the Beeb and all their websites and things. But seriously. Me Player, You Buffoon. Hehehehehe. I sense much bollywood mirth here. On to you greatbong!

Cheers all.

Sidin.

p.s. The wife says hi!