Domain Maximus

(Note: Youtube video has now been obtained.)

Sunil Sethi and I recently chatted about Dork and a bunch of other things on NDTV’s Just Books show.

The outcomes of this were threefold:

1. I appeared on TV. This has made many people on both sides of the family very happy indeed. Kapoors and Vadukuts from Agra to Alleppey were overjoyed. The in-laws are finally beginning to reconcile with my career decisions.

2. I got to meet Sunil Sethi. And listen to him talk about growing up in Delhi as a lover of books. We recorded for maybe 12 minutes. And then stood around chatting for around a couple of hours.

3. I had no idea there was an Olive restaurant near the Qutub. Two thumbs up.

And this is the video.

Youtube:

NDTV: (full show including Aishwarya Rai and Karan Bajaj sequences)

I know I know. I laugh too much. Sigh.

A coworker said I looked “eerily unfamiliar” in the video. Do I?

P.S. Just noticed. It says “Author ‘Dork’”. Ugh.

I am asked very often why this blog’s URL is Whatay.com. And indeed, why I use the term so copiously. And, doubly indeed, how this term went from being inside joke to becoming part of local lingo at that business school I once went to. (Though I have no idea if people still use it.)

Today I wish to show you that scene from Padayappa, the Rajnikanth super hit, which first got a bunch of us southie folk saying “Whatay” all the time.

Only the first 14 seconds will play on first click, for your efficient viewing pleasure. But you can click play again and see the rest of the exciting 21st part of Youtube Padayappa.

P.s. Whatay can be used as verb, noun, adjective, preposition and gerund.
P.s.s Please note the tremendous head trauma scene at the 10 second mark. Enjoy audio accompaniment without fail.

If you are going to screw around with your blog template at all, then Sunday is the best time to do it. Weekend traffic is the worst!

So after many people told us that the old, warm orange Domain Maximus was boring and oh-so-Web1.0, we decided to clean up things a little and get a shiny new, busier template. The idea was to get something that would not only be easy to tweak and upload but also a design that would give a little more flexibility. Now we can not only highlight the latest post, but also pick a popular “featured” post, clearly list out the last five and also occasionally type out an Aside. Basically shorter posts in a para or two, mostly with links to something.

A lot of the randomness in the sidebar is gone. Navigation through categories is better and search has been improved. We are also trying to connect the blog to other columns and articles in a more meaningful way. (I am testing out a nice, visually pleasing embedding method.) It might all seem a little too comprehensive for a blog that is hardly ever updated. But the idea is to both clean it up and also use Whatay as a more useful tool in the months to come when a few newer projects will be announced. Wink nudge.

The blog has been on the back-burner ever since I started work on the book. But now that we have crossed that bridge, let’s hope things get busier here. With the new design done, pardon us while we go and work on a few new blogposts.

Published on 23 May 2009. Fun little thing to do. Especially speaking to a bunch of people including Srinivas Bhogle, Aakash Chopra and Greatbong.

Click top right to expand, read and so on.

P.S. Prepared before the semi-finals. So some stars might be conspicuously absent.

Frequent readers of this blog will be aware of how we are big fans of Dwarka sub-city here. Largely because we live there and no one else we know does. Or will. Sigh. For instance we were excited a few weeks ago when we discovered that Dwarka houses one of the more popular film related brotherhoods in the country: the Kumar Sanu fans’ club.

But earlier this week we discovered the reason behind that electric feeling one gets as soon as one steps out of a metro train and touches down upon the hallow soil of the sub-city. Doubting? See this picture:

Volt-ay Phase

Of the two pillars the left one tells you in which direction you can find some of the major stations on the blue line. By which I mean the major stations of Dwarka, Dwarka Mor, Dwarka Sectors 14, 13, 12 and so on. And to a lesser extent Rajiv Chowk. The right one helps you find:

Electr-city

So if you are in need of 25,000 volts for some emergency purpose you know how to get it. It is somewhere in Dwarka on the blue line. Mind the gap and stand behind the yellow line.

Meanwhile this is a book that was spotted at the in-laws’ place two weekends ago. They tell us it is a masterpiece:

Da Vinci Code

How can you possibly not read a book where some of the letters in the title have dots underneath them? All Sanskrit fiends feel free to leave comments-aha.

Continuing in that cultural and historic vein we were impressed by this well-preserved sculpture at the National Museum last weekend:

Lunch break

While such sandstone pieces are are quite commonplace, it is exceedingly rare to find one with a tiffin box in such pristine condition. Thankfully our curiosity was whetted by the information on the plaque you can see in the picture. Close-up below:

Knowledge is power cut

Two unfortunate incidents happened over the course of last weekend.

The entire weekend was spent with Pastrami, BhaktiBong and IntercontinentalMan over the course of a wedding reception, a movie marathon on Saturday and then finally a cocktails by the sea thingie in Juhu on Sunday of which I have very little memory.

Incident No. 1:

We run into an old friend and his paramour at the cocktail by the sea thing. We’ve run into them together once before, at an early stage in their relationship, when he was trying to charm her at the Costa Cafe in Juhu. That evening I did the honourable engineer thing by not walking up to him, interrupting their romance or crimping his mojo.

Instead I walked out, then around, then stood outside the window, her back to me, and made faces at him, mimed kissing and hugging motions and, finally, thrusting movements with my hips. It is, as I mentioned, an engineer thing.

Back by the sea this was the second time we were seeing them together. I make polite conversation with him and then she speaks to me for the first time ever:

She: “Wow Sidin. You’ve REALLY bloated up man!” Her eyebrows go up and she rolls her eyes.

I repeat: THESE ARE THE FIRST WORDS THIS WOMAN HAS EVER SPOKEN TO ME.

“You’ve REALLY bloated up man!”

There was a sizeable crowd when this transpired. Pastrami fought back laughter by downing a Kiwi Cajpiroska. BhaktiBong was already drunk and was at that time hitting on a slim, expensive looking table fan.

I briefly contemplated poking her in the eye with a cocktail sausage on stick. I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say. In fact I didn’t speak for several minutes. It took me several drinks and one Oye Lucky Lucky Oye on the dancefloor to get over it.

Homework: Imagine if I had said the exact same words to her. Now where approximately, in my body, would she have disposed of the table fan? Why are women like that? Why do they even bring up the word “bloated” in normal cocktail party conversations?

Incident No. 2:

We’re driving to the Imax in Wadala to watch The Day The Earth Stood Still. There’s Pastrami, IntercontinentalMan and IntercontinentalMissus in the car. IntercontinentalMan is a batch mate of course but his wife is not. So she has plenty of questions about campus and all of our lives there and we respond with plenty of anecdotes.

At some point she decides to ask all of us about our dorm names. (Dorm names are the nicknames they give all new joinees at IIMA each year. It is a crucial part of tradition and many people stick to their dorm names for years after they graduate. Like “Vindi” Banga, I am told. Some more details on a newspaper piece I once wrote.)

Remember that we’ve been hanging out with IntercontinentalMan and the missus for a while. We’ve had a couple of dinners and so we’re not strangers by any means.

So InterconinentalMissus goes around discussing various dorm names until she comes to me. I am squirming now because I don’t particularly like mine: “Khujli”. (Don’t. Ask. Ever.)

InterconinentalMissus: So Sidin… what is your real name?

Sidin:

IMrs.: Tell na… What is it? And why is “Sidin” your dorm name?

Sidin: It isn’t.

IMrs.: “Sidin” is your real name? Not a dorm name?

Sidin: No. “Sidin” is my real name.

IMrs.: Oh…

Pastrami: CHOKE LAUGHTER CHOKE CHOKE

Homework: Do you have a normal name like Ravi, Abhishek, Omanakuttan or Bhaskaran? Go kill yourself.

If inadequate manhood was not enough reason to make me potentially feel insecure, them SPAM sending fiends have taken this psychological attack on yours truly to newer, higher…er…heights. This snapshot is fresh from my Gmail spam folder:

Focus your eyes on email number 3 and 8.

Ugly and insubstantial is this man. Sigh.