Domain Maximus

Ugh.

A day of terrible weather in Mumbai again.

Well not terrible as much as temperamental perhaps. The morning was cool and dark. Then a steady drizzle began, quickly turned into a downpour that sufficiently screwed up traffic everywhere and then, just when you thought offices were going to close and it was going to be a day for much sitcom viewing, the rain petered away and the blazing sun came out.

Dammit. Sweat. Sigh.

Anyways. Of late I have been trying to grapple with a certain social situation. An issue of nomenclature.

I know lots of friends who have nicknames. (It’s something most people from my business school go out into the world with by default. For instance I have been told that the Vindi in ‘Vindi Banga’ of the HLL fame is a product of the compulsory nicknaming convention we have out at Ahmedabad.)

In such an environment you just called people by their nicknames. For instance the missus is named after a character in Sholay (of Sippy). (FYI not Jai, Veeru, Thakur, Basanti or Gabbar.) Everyone I know calls her that even now. And so do I.

Fungus’ parents call him Fungus.

So a healthy proportion of the people I know are exclusively referred to by their nicknames.

Do keep in mind that not all these nicknames are cool and trendy. Some are downright scandalous. For instance a male junior of mine was christened ‘Dildo’. Few will forget the uproar that was caused during our annual arts festival when one of the ladies in Logistics send out an emergency summons message over the PA system for Dildo who was required at the registration desk immediately as “the girls from SP Jain have been looking for Dildo for sometime now and are in a hurry…”

My recent dilemma is because of such a genre of nicknames.

Now suppose a friend of yours, let’s call her Saudamini, introduces you to another friend of her’s. Someone you have never met before. For the sake of argument let us assume he is a medium sized retailer of cellphones somewhere in a market in Andheri and his real name is Kumaramangalam Irla.

(Been carrying that one around for months now. That’s a load off my jest!)

Over the course of the evening’s conversation you learn that Saudamini repeatedly addresses Kumaramangalam by a most scandalous/revolting nickname. Something that has roots in an incident both of them are well aware of but you have no clue about.

I am talking about a nickname like ‘Hernia’, ‘Eczema’ or maybe just plain ‘Shorty’ or ‘Ugly’. Or even ‘Khujli’ which people will tell you was my nick in Ahmedabad but they ARE ALL LYING!

Now my question is when during the course of your friendship with Kumar (which is so much better a nick) do you decide to commence calling him by his nickname? You can’t just start calling him Hernia or Eczema right-away can you? You’ve only just met them and don’t want to come across as too fresh or clingy. And besides it is only polite to ask him why he is addressed so.

But maybe I don’t want to know:

Sidin: “So they call you some nickname Kumaramanagalam…?”
Kumaramangalam: “Hernia…”
Sidin: “Oh and why is that…”
Kumaramnagalam: “Just a sec… see? And here too… Looks a little like Italy if you look at it from here…”
Sidin: “Interesting… Back in a sec…”

But even if the nickname is something like Shorty or Ugly you can’t just start calling them that right away can you? Coming from a stranger Kumaramangalam might think we are being judgmental right away even if he does look like an Uday Chopra walking on his knees when you come to think of it.

Kumaramangalam: “Hi, I am Kumaramangalam, but people call me Ugly!”
Sidin: “No shit!”

So when do you know if its the right time to address someone by their nickname? Do you just decide after a certain number of meetings to call them ‘Skunk’ or ‘Kakkoos’ or whatever? Or do you decide to not take the risk at all and keep calling them Kumaramangalam all the time including at their Birthday parties when the song always ends in widespread dissaray?

I don’t know. It is bothering me. What do you guys do?

Khujli.

p.s. Today’s extremely important advice for marital success: Never have an argument with the missus while you are wearing only thin cotton bermuda shorts made of remarkably breathable material, and she is using the Japanese-imported molten-lava spewing wedding- gift blow-dryer.

I can now rest in peace. I have got my comeuppance.

Last night I finally managed to wrap up an installation of Ubuntu on my laptop. Minor hiccups aside, things like hardware drivers missing and wireless networking issues, I now actually have two operating system coexisting in peace on this laptop: Windows XP and Ubuntu.

This may seem insignificant to you. But in my little world that is worthy of a Nobel. Now I can use Ubuntu as a light and free operating system to take care of all day to day tasks while Windows can take care of the complicated stuff like downloading Backdoor Trojans and spontaneous hard disk formatting.

This finally puts to rest a long, long war of attrition between Unix and your truly that stretches back almost ten years.

One evening, during my third year of engineering, I suddenly got into a fit of placement pangs. All my usual confidence disappeared. It suddenly occurred to me that I was not exactly what you would call prime recruitment material.

This was the time when software had just reversed the poor trends of 2000-2001 and IT companies were beginning to flock to our campuses again. Everyone with serious job hopes were rushing to their rooms after class and locking themselves away with the usual IT job preparation materials: Shakuntala Devi, Edward De Bono, Yashwant Kanetkar, old Infosys question papers and the like.

(I have been told that things are easier nowadays. Last year someone from NITT told me that some of the top IT names don’t even interview anymore. All you needed to do was just clear the written test. Sigh.)

But back in my time a job with Infy was no forgone conclusion. Of course you could safely assume squeezing in somewhere between Infy, Wipro and TCS. But if you didn’t then the going was pretty tough.

Till then I had assured myself that software was not my cup of tea and I would save myself (one is cocky at that age and with that level of blood alcohol on a daily basis) for one of the tech or core companies. Bajaj, Telco, Volvo – the real engineering types.

And then one weekend morning I lay in bed and decided to quickly overview my career plans for a few minutes. But not for too long as the bread pakoda ran out after 9:30 or so.

Now I knew couldn’t program to save my life. The Meta syllabus included a moderately difficult course on C and C++. I’d passed through with flying colours scoring one mark more than pass point. (The highlight of the course was watching the professor, a high strung nervous sort, struggle with an early morning class on Objected Oriented Programming, break into a sweat and then finally faint into the arms of a vigilant fellow in the front row. I bunked that class unfortunately.)

I’ve often wondered over the years hence why someone would want a C program that printed out a pyramid of prime numbers. What essential human endeavour struggles for want of good pyramid prime programs?

“Houston we have a problem!”
“We know. Perhaps a particular problem pertaining to the pyramid prime processor?”
“We like the alliteration Houston!”
“Merely making the mundane mirthful mister!”
“Ok cut it…”

I sucked at most forms of programming. And particularly the fancy shmancy prime number, sorting, pyramid type programs.

But then what certainty was there that I could make it into one of those engineering firms? They seldom came every year and, even when they did, they picked up one, maybe two people at a go. Was I being foolhardy I wondered, as I lay in bed with an eye on the clock.

Then later that evening I decided that I must hedge my risk. I had to ensure that I knew the bare minimum to make it into a software firm just in case my core engineering dreams fell flat.

So I asked Tuhin Chatterjee what I could do on a war footing. The threat loomed large that I would have to give GRE and then do an MS and PhD because I couldn’t get a job.

“Unix man. Unix is the way to go man. That and Networking. Just focus on those too.”

He shared his thoughts during one of our many walks to the gate for chai and cancer sticks.

For one whole month I sat hunched over a UNIX manual and a huge textbook on Networking.

Who was that networking by? Ah yes. Tennenbaum. Andrew Tennenbaum I think.

After a month I thought I was ready to try out some of my newly learnt computing skills at our computer center, the Octagon. I briskly walked into the Unix lab.

Two hours later I was back in my room pulling out an old Barron’s guide to the GRE from under the bed and already mouthing words like apothecary and apothegm fighting back the tears.

It was the worst thulping by an open source operating system I have ever received in my life.

Why were there backslashes everywhere? Why was vi editor such a cold-hearted bitch? Why do I have to press seven keys simultaneously to scroll down one page? Why? Why? Why weren’t things like the way its said in the manual:

finger – display information about local and remote users

When in reality it was more like this:

finger – put in eye in one smooth motion to get in the mood for vi editor

It was a futile struggle. Around me Unix maestros were clearly enjoying themselves enormously:

“Hey there is a problem with my port. Can someone just finger me right now!” was the sort of thing one Unix maestro would say to the other excitedly.

I went on to pick up a job with an engineering firm where engineers worked as they were meant to: grinding and cutting and welding and sweating it out and coming back home with grease stains. Once there I was asked to design a project costing software.

For close to a decade I never crossed my path with Unix ever again.

Till last night. After much recommendation from a friend I decided to give this Ubuntu thing a shot. I followed the manual by the letter. I slipped in the DVD, booted from the disc, played around with my partitions a little bit, set up a root user and finally waited with bated breath while the installation happened.

As of now everything except the sound card and the PPPOE connection for the internet at home seems to be working fine.

I could try to get them to work too. I checked the user forums and there was a wealth of information such as this response from an Ubuntu expert:

This is bug 2825 (http://https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?i d=2825) . The work around is to ~# ln -f /etc/pppd/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

To which someone with a sense of humour replied:

I can confirm this bug. I am using a tap0 bridge to emulate PPPoE on a Globespan chipset-based USB aDSL bridge and the latests stable eciadsl-usermode drivers (which, btw are not in Universe). It would be nice to have an updated pppd perhaps backported from Dapper.
I know that Debian’s choice of using kernel-mode PPPoE makes rp-pppoe unnecessary, but I wonder if it would be possible to update rp-pppoe to 3.7 for those that still in using it.

I laughed heartily and decided I was ok without the sound.

So for now, between me and Unix, its even.

(p.s. A big hola! to all the regular readers of this blog out at NIT Surat. Especially Raghav and Sanjeev. Much love goes out to you guys! Now send me money.)

Friday night I think it was.

I was motoring home in a suitably rickety Mumbai black and yellow. The audio was tuned to 94.3 I think. But I really wasn’t listening. Instead I was intently reading a New Yorker. The subscription was a gift from the missus. Something about housing in New York and how some 80-year old guy sold his ramshackle old home for 3 million dollars.

Something irrelevant but written well enough to grab attention. I had to hold up the magazine right up next to the window to read in streetlamp light.

Then at some point over Wadala bridge, a few minutes from home, the cabbie began switching stations and he flipped past a tune I was sure I had last heard a long long time ago. I asked to switch back.

Nazia Hassan was singing Boom Boom.

The cabbie didn’t seem to mind. So he left it on after a few seconds of waiting to see if I was interested.

I was glad. Boom is one of an array of songs that takes me way back to my childhood jaunts to Kerala from the gulf. And to my mother’s home in Irinjalakuda in particular.

(Irinjlakuda. Even mallus get tongue-twisted a bit on that one. But not as bad Cherpullasery or Njarakkal.)

It was always one of the the highlights of our annual vacations. Bouncing along the roads and up and down hills as we took a bus first from Pavaratty to Thrissur and then from Thrissur to Irinjalakuda.

The bus to Thrissur was not such a big deal. We did that shuttle several times each vacation anyways. Thrissur was the closest ‘city’ in those days and you had to go take the forty-five minute bus trip if you wanted Corn Flakes and Maltova and the like.

But the Thrissur to Irinjalakuda detour happened maybe once or twice in a vacation and we absolutely loved it. More out of anticipation than anything that actually happened or we saw amid trip. Same paddy fields. Clean little houses. Churches and photo studios. Little AKG Bhavans wherever the reds built an office by the main road.

At Irinjalakuda there was a big showcase built into the wall on the left end of the living room which had a whole bunch of mostly NRI mallu memorabilia.

Optic fibre lamps that rotated slolwy and changed colours. Weird ornamental cigarette lighters in shape of brandy bottles. Plastic camels that crapped Marlboro Lights when pulled up its tail. Little cups and saucers and platters with company logos in half arabic. Fake foliage of varying respectability. Wall calendars with pictures of ships my uncle sent every year.

And on one of the central shelves, occupying pride of place, was a huge (by todays’ standards) Sony radio and music player.

This was one of those those behemoths that had child-sized external speakers, Geiger counter like volume meters and a big round volume control in cloudy steel. Room for one tape in the front and a a row of push-down buttons that jutted out like flat little toes.

And just underneath this shelf there was a drawer stuffed to the gills with audio tapes.

Nazia Hassan, Santana, Bee Gees, Osibisa, Boney M, ABBA, Various Jacksons, Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, a dozen volumes of Best Disco by some forgotten label.

Funky stuff.

You can still find a lot of those tapes in that drawer. The plastic and paper inlays have yellowed and most of the tapes have been ravaged by fungus. But no one has the heart to throw them out.

There was also an adjacent tape stand. One of those revolving ’80′s plastic’ things in a cube shape with slots on each face for tapes. It was always kept a to one side in a shelf with a yellow dusting cloth over it.

That had Laawaris, Disco Dancer, Kabhie Kabhie, Cooolie, Zanjeer and so on. It also had several Kishore and Lata anthologies. I never completely took to the tape stand though. The covers there were so boring compared to the Disco balls and hot pants and shiny sequined costumes of the Funk Drawer.

All these exotic tapes found their way to this medium sized town in Kerala thanks to my daredevil maternal uncle. His list of achievements are pretty impressive. Ship radio operator.Movie extra. Trainee priest. Expat in Sharjah.

And committed audio tape exporter.

I can actually smell the room as I write this. A musty, warm, slightly moth-eaten smell mingled with the scent of Nycil powder. Lots of pastel colors everywhere. The floors were shiny hard black oxide that never cut and always bruised when you fell down.

As soon as we ran in through the front doors, that are incidentally still locked by interlocking bits of wood, we were fed and patted and hugged. Then the elders got on with their thing while we hit the Funk Drawer.

It was a Nazia Hassan special on the radio. We were stuck in traffic at the east end of Wadala bridge. I was no longer reading.

After Boom they played App Jaisa Koi. The RJ, overly excited as her Job Profile and HR manual demands, bubbled on about Ameen Sayani mentioning how App Jaise Koi ruled Binaca Geet Mala for 14 sight weeks.

The funk drawer had both tracks. And Nazia Hassan ruled.

But my absolute oldest music memory has to be those two tracks from Laawaris that got all of us kids leaping abut like idiots and making up words that broadly rhymed with the real ones:

Mere anginemey thoomara kakaamyey

Apni to jaise waise (or) Apni jo taise waise (or) Apni jo waise aise (or) some combination of the above.

We leapt around like idiots with the music on high till dad got pained and screamed at us. Or we fell over the coffee table and grandpa’s newspapers. Or till the domestic help agreed to take us to the top of the hill and then roll us down on his bicycle.

Or someone fed us something.

By the time I got out of the cab and went into the lift I was very pleased with myself

I haven’t been to Irinjalakuda for a long time now. Must go there next time I drop by.

Though now grandpa spends all his time listening to mallu evangelical music.

It’s not quite the same.

One of the more interesting benefits of working in the media business is the great joy of reading through in(s)ane press releases everyday. If you thought that what you saw on TV or read in your paper was ludicrous, then you have no idea how lucky you are.

For every morning our inboxes are flooded with press releases that range from the completely stupid to the astronomically nincompoopish.

But I am not going to harp all over that because I was in the receipt of a rather interesting notice in the email last evening which I must share with you. It was crafted by the wonderful people at IBN7 and was an e-flyer for one of their Independence day hoopla television programmes.

This is the image after much cutting and pasting and resizing:

Of course I don’t have a problem with the spirit of the idea. Independence Day is a great time that we should all celebrate and why should TV channels be any different. And if there is a profit motive then thats even better.

The main text of the mailer is as follows:

“On this occasion of Independence Day, IBN7 brings you an array of programmes showcasing India’s journey through glorious 60 years. Relive the moments that have made us strong, proud and humble.”

No issues with any of those things. I had just read though the mailer and was all set it to consign it to by Trash when I noticed the interesting graphic in the bottom right hand corner. Look closely.

Hay! Wait a goddamn minute there!

Haven’t I seen that somewhere before?

And so I had!

Now the Google Image Search went wrong for IBN7 in two ways.

First of all the IBN7 graphic is ripped off the US Marine Corps War Memorial located in Virginia. It is one of the few places where the Stars and Stipes is permitted to be flown 24 hours a day.

And that’s not all. The Memorial itself is based on an immensely famous photo taken on Mount Suribachi during the Battle for Iwo Jima during WW2. (Fantastic battle. Uncle Eastwood made two outstanding movies about it. Made money and won awards.)

And the icing on the cake is the missing chakra on the Indian flag.

Sure lets relive the moments that made us strong, proud and humble. By all means.

But ripping off someone else’s crowning war moment is a bit much.

No?

With all this frequent referencing to Pastrami here it is easy to think that I have only one friend in all of Mumbai, i.e. Pastrami. But this is not true at all.

I have at least one more: the great Chipolata BSc. LLB.

Chipolata is this wonderful and most lively woman who is party animal by night, top notch lawyer by day and, all too rarely, an inventive email composer as we will soon see.

So earlier tonight we were all chilling out at that Barista behind Lilavathi when Pastrami mentioned an email of Chipolata’s that had become quite the rage in the legal circles some months ago. It was, actually, a harmless invitation to watch a cricket match at her place. But, once Chipolata had wielded here adept lawyerly skills at it, it became this funny as hell masterpiece:

(Whatay warning: Whereas anyone with a prior exposure to legal documentation will enjoy hereunder email and others may not but then I don’t care and you can hiterto kiss my whereas.)

Dear All,

This email (the “Email“) is with reference to the upcoming match between India and Sri Lanka (the “Match“) as a part of the Cricket World Cup 2007 (the “Cup“) being held in the Caribbean.

Those marked on the Email (collectively referred to as the “Parties” and individually referred to as the “Party“) are considered the poor souls who are either (i) don’t really care about the game; and/or (ii) are too poor to go to the Caribbean for some sun and games; and/or (iii) are to lazy to make the effort for the same; and/or (iv) know that India is not going to win the Cup and therefore what’s the point!; and/or (v) have the money but are misers; and/or (vi) are buried under work (Yea right!); (vii) all other reasons not covered in the foregoing paragraph.

NOW THERFORE in consideration of the mutual covenants and agreements set forth herein and for other good and valuable consideration, the receipt and adequacy of which is hereby acknowledged by the Parties, this email witnesseth and the Parties to the Email agree as follows:

1. The Proposal

1.1 It is proposed that Parties meet to watch the Match and generally enjoy the company of each other at a time, date and venue set out herein below.

1.2 The Match is scheduled to start at 5:00 pm (1700 hours) Indian Standard Time (“IST“) on March 23, 2007. However, Parties agree that since the said date is a business day and all Parties are required to attend their respective offices, the Parties shall gather at a mutually agreed venue (the “Venue“) at a time confirmed by all Parties via return email to this email. The proposed time is 9:00 IST (2100 hrs) subject to confirmation from all Parties.

1.3 Majority of the Parties work in Town (for the purposes of this email Town shall mean the Western length of Mumbai (excluding Navi Mumbai) from Colaba to Parel) and therefore it is proposed that the Venue be in Town. However, if Parties mutually agree that Bandra West, then the Venue shall be shifted to Bandra West.

1.4 This entire Clause 1 is subject to confirmation of the Parties. All confirmations for Clause 1 shall be governed by the procedure set out in Clause 4 of this Email.

2. Bets

All bets, wagers of any kind must be placed before the Match begins, for avoidance of doubt it is clarified that 5:00 pm (1700 hrs) IST shall be taken as the beginning of the Match. It is further clarified that the all bets and wagers may be in the form of cash and/or kind. For the purposes of this Clause bets, wagers of any kind in “kind” shall have the meaning of wagers of goods and not of services.

3. Third Party

3.1 If any Party is desirous of inviting a Third Party, it may do so at its own accord and discretion (the “Inviting Party“).

3.2 The Inviting Party shall be solely responsible for informing the other Parties and the Originator (as defined hereinbelow).

3.3 The Inviting Party warrants that in the event such a Third Party arrives at the Venue and watches the Match with the other Parties, there shall be no blood shed.

3.4 The Inviting Party further warrants and represents that any Third Party so invited shall be bound by this email.

4. Notices

All Notices with respect to the Email shall be marked to all Parties via return email and the same shall be the preferred mode of communication. In the event, a Party is unable to communicate with the other Parties via email, he or she, as the case maybe, shall communicate by means of sms (smart messaging service) or phone calls (telecons). It is clarified that all phone calls shall be routed to the Party’s mobile phone and the use of office phones is strictly prohibited. In the case of an emergency, the use of public phones is allowed.

5. This Email

The Email constitutes and represents the entire email between the Parties on the subject matter hereof and supersedes and cancels all prior emails, agreements, arrangements or understandings, oral or written, between the Parties on the subject matter of the Email.

6. Governing Law

The Email shall be governed by common law principles of good faith, friendship, equity and all such things.

7. Dispute Resolution

If any and all disputes arising out of this mail, they shall be referred to the originator of the email (the “Originator“). The decision of the Originator shall be final and binding on all Parties.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF the Parties have executed this Email the day and year so appearing hereinabove.

Regards,

Chipolata

English Version: Tomorrow when everyone gets off lets meet for dinner, drinks, the match and company at a place agreed amongst all. (GAVAARS if you didn’t understand the above email and had to read this to understand it!)

Bravo! Bravo Chipolata!