Also they sell booze in Sri Lankan supermarkets. Just like that. No fatwas or anything. So.)

Sociology

There are good things and bad things about flying from Chennai to Colombo. The good thing is the fact that you land in a foreign country after just about an hour in the air. I find this endlessly fascinating. And a little bit fraudulent.

Perhaps the years of shuttling up and down on the Kochi-Abu Dhabi sector leads one to believe that all international flights should take at least 3 hours. In fact any serious flight, it is somehow ingrained into my head, should take at least three hours. Less than that is infra dig. More than that is glamorous.

Now I know what you are thinking. “But surely you will tell us why it is ingrained into your head like that? This is not Christopher Nolan picture for you to reveal things randomly for kicks. Maybe I should read this post in reverse…”

!ecneitaP !nam etunim eno tsuJ

Thanks.

See, the thing is there is, or at least used to be, this unspoken caste system amongst NRIs.

At the bottom of the pyramid were the guys who went to the Gulf: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and, the horror, Oman. (Within this there were the sub-castes: Abu Dhabi was superior to Sharjah but inferior to Dubai. Ajman, an emirate so small that I once tripped over it and fell into Umm Al Quwain, was inferior to everyone else.)

Life size picture of Ajman

Right on top though were the American, European and Austro-Zealander NRIs. They travelled in nine-hour flights, lived in cosmopolitan environments and their children developed accents. And when they brought back cheeses on holiday it was not in bottles and not made by Kraft.

When we brushed past these non-resident giants in the airports, we cowered in awe in our Thai clothing bought from KM Trading during sale.

(KM Trading official slogan: ‘A company with a state of mind.’ See here.)

And in between us, in this hierarchy, were the South-East Asian NRIs. They were mysterious and rare, these fellows. So rare that if Vasudevan lived in Singapore, back home they would call him Singapore Vasudevan. But Abu Dhabi Sunny was just Sunny. Boo.

Therefore the duration of the flight that brought you home, or took you away, was indicative of your NRI-intensity. Anything less than 3 hours meant a domestic migrant, who deserves only to travel by train, and anything greater than 4 or 5 meant endless sophistication.

Which is why to this day I find short international flights a little… thought-provoking.

So one moment you’re taking off from Chennai, the next moment you’re landing in Colombo. A completely different country. Visas are given on arrival, yes, but still a different country. Surely this is make-believe?

Entertainment

Yet the sucky thing about this is the fact that Jet Airways treats the Chennai-Colombo sector like a bona fide international route. They provide you with all kinds of in-flight entertainment options, most of which are pointless under the circumstances.

Let me illustrate. (hh:mm)

0:00 Flight has taken off and you have started movie: Saving Private Ryan. You look forward to a nice non-veg meal, and much disembowelment.

0:07 Pilot interrupts to wish you a safe and pleasant journey, as if there is any chance this can end vastly differently for both of you. In the panic you hit a wrong button and restart the movie. Advertisements roll again.

0:15 Just as that American fellow’s arm falls off, the cabin crew interrupts to tell you that even if the alert is switched off you should still leave the seat belts fastened so that in case of any turbulence you are able to comfortably develop hernias. This same announcement is made in many different languages. Hilarity ensues when Anglo-Indian stewardess from Tamil Nadu laboriously reads Hindi instructions off a sheet and mistakenly says “Yeh udaan shauchalay hai.”

0:17 As tension is building up on the beaches of Normandy, cabin crew interrupts programming to inform you that you are welcome to buy exciting things, such as plastic planes, plastic watches and premium Patek Philipose watches from the in-flight duty free.

0:18 Hello there, says the announcement, beverages such as beer, beer, other beer and one small bottle of red wine will now be served. By now you are beginning to lose patience. Every time the movie is stopped for an announcement it automatically rewinds two or three minutes. You have seen the same bastard being shot four times.

0:25 The only non-hot stewardess in the flight taps you on the shoulder to ask if you want the paneer or the chicken. You pause the movie, think about it briefly, and then ask for the chicken. She informs you that there is no chicken, but there is paneer. You say ok to paneer. She serves the guy next to you chicken.

0:34 Just when you are able to make sense of the bloodshed on your screen and the story begins to make sense, the guy in front of you leans back completely in his seat. The payasam falls into your lap as one congealed lump. You reach forward and stab the old man in his eyes with your fork. But only in your mind. Thankfully the restroom is nearby and it is free.

0:37 You are back in your seat. Moments after you put on your headphones, the pilot announces that the plane will now begin its descent into Colombo. Convinced there is no point in trying to see this movie anymore, you switch it off and settle into a terrible funk.

0:48 The plane still shows no sign of landing. Meanwhile the guy next to you is racing through Friends episodes. Inspired, you put on your headphones and restart the movies.

0:49 Immediately the shauchalay lands in Colombo.

Slightly bewildered by the whole experience, and more than a little grumpy, I walked into the altogether decent Colombo airport. I spotted security staff everywhere, but they all looked clean, happy and actually welcoming. “Ayubowan!” said a woman in uniform as I walked past her into a concourse of some kind, “Welcome!” She smiled broadly. My anger cooled.

Ayubowan

The narrow but tall-ceilinged concourse had dozens of huge Buddhist lanterns hanging from the top. There was some crowd in the airport but there was little rush or hustle or bustle. I didn’t feel completely at home, there were too many strange brands being advertised around me for that, but I didn’t feel completely alien either.

Lanterns. And Micromax.

I strolled about in panic for a bit before spotting the lines for immigration. And then I suddenly remembered. I might still not make it out of the airport.

There was this small matter of passport validity.

I was going to be in Sri Lanka for just a week. But my passport was only valid for another two weeks after that. At Chennai airport that morning, an officer at passport control gave me some grief. The girl, with braided hair, gold rimmed glasses and sex-less churidar, looked exactly like one of those ladies who graduate from Electrical Engineering without once speaking to anyone on campus. Except maybe God.

She said I could not go to Sri Lanka because my passport would expire soon. I told her that I was coming back in a week and I had tickets. She said that Sri Lanka would deport me on arrival. I told her I was prepared for the consequences. She said she had to discuss with her superior. My heart bungee jumped into my belly.

Nothing good comes of anyone in an Indian airport discussing anything with his or her superiors.

Customs inspector Shailaja. On weekends.

She first spoke to one guy, who told her to go speak to another guy, who told her to speak to someone in a room who sent her back. She then called up someone very, very high up in the Indian government, maybe Mukesh Ambani, who asked her what my profession was. “He is saying he is a journalist,” she said, looking at my press card.

Kindly note the sentence structure.

Immediately everything fell in place. She said it was ok. My passport was stamped and I raced through various check posts.

At Colombo passport control I prepared for a repeat. The man at the counter had a nice round face, signature Sri Lankan facial hairlessness, a ready smile, and was dressed in a smart white uniform. There was a picture of the President, Mahinda Rajapakse, on a wall behind him. And various tourism board advertisements around Rajapakse’s portrait.

“Hey! Your passport is getting over sir.”

“Indeed. But I am leaving in a week.”

“Ah good. Make sure you do. Or you’ll get stuck in Sri Lanka. “

Behind him there were pictures of waterfalls, jungle, beaches, seafood, and jolly men in skimpy lungi-like clothing.

“I will try my level best not to get stranded in your country,” I promised insincerely.

And that was it. What usually took at least an empowered group of ministers back home had happened in two minutes with much smiling thrown in for free.

I was very much liking Sri Lanka already.

The rest of our business tour party, including some young children, waited for our transports to arrive. Meanwhile I went to change a traveller’s cheque.

Again: smiling, cursory identity check, profuse politeness, endearing Sri Lankan accent and hassle-free efficiency. I was wearing my orange beach shirt with yellow flowers, and had just got a haircut, but there was more to the politeness and enthusiasm of the women at the exchange counter than just my animal magnetism.

These people were, perhaps, just generally nice people.

Galle Face Green

Our itinerary in Colombo included a conference the next morning and several days of meetings over the course of the subsequent week. With at best an evening or two of leisure thrown in. As we bussed to the Taj Samudra—sweet—most of the gang made plans for a shopping trip that very evening.

Personally I was keener on getting some sleep, and then going for a long walk on the Galle Face Green, a sea-facing patch of lawn right in front of the Taj Samudra hotel. During the “war”, as most Sri Lankans call the period of conflict with the LTTE, Galle Face Green had been roped off by security forces. This was to prevent crowds, and the temptation for LTTE suicide squads to have a blast.

Isso Vadai Central

But now it was open again, the crowds were back, and at night it made a great place to walk by as the choppy sea pounded into the sea wall.

There was food to buy too. A Sri Lankan colleague at Mint had recommended that I try some of it, especially the Isso Vadai, a prawn cracker with whole prawns stuck to a crunchy little pancake. Like Delhi chaat, vendors topped Isso Vadais with chopped onions and a squirt of special sauce.

After checking in, and a quick nap, I nipped down to the beach for a walk and some new-atmosphere-inhaling.

The sea that first night was tremendously violent. Within minutes my spectacles were so flecked with spray that I took them off, and tottered down the walking path. Galle Face Green has little illumination save for food cart lanterns and the occasional wash from streetlights. So every once in a while I’d almost walk into someone or sideswipe a food cart.

Prawnage

At one point I went and sat right next to a couple who were, how to put it delicately, making out like bunny rabbits hopped up on Musli Power. I apologized quietly, and quickly went away. No scene was created and sadly there was too little lighting for BlackBerry photos.

But then slowly I began to realize something; Sri Lanka hardly registers on the decibel scale. You could sit all day in the lobby of the Taj Samudra and the loudest conversations would be invariably from the Indian tour parties, or from inside the bar showing World Cup matches.

Even the college and school kids at Galle Face Green, excited like young people anywhere who were in the midst of necking couples, wouldn’t create a ruckus. Bad language, at least in the forms I could understand, couldn’t be heard anywhere.

This was a nation with no market for noise canceling headphones, I thought to myself while demolishing an Isso Vadai.

But the real culture shock would hit me as I proceeded to do two things over the subsequent week: stand in buffet lines, and go shopping for clothes in Odel, one of Colombo’s biggest department stores.

All that and more in Part 2 of A Straits Apart. Shortly. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in August.

p.s. Pictures of Ajman, Galle Face Green from Wikipedia. The wonderful picture of Isso Vadai from Skyscraper City here. Shailaja’s portrait thanks to Blaft. The rest of the pictures are all mine. Ahem.

Style has no language

I have no idea if this true for all men, but I think it is. Guys hate going to strange, new barber shops. When we find a barber shop we are comfortable with, we like to stick with it forever. A hair cutting ‘saloon’, as it is called in any place in the world where there is a local Malayali population, is one of those low-mental-overhead decisions that guys make. We don’t think about it, analyze it or agonize over it in any way whatsoever. Once we find a place that can cut hair, deliver a decent massage and has a reflected TV screen in the mirror in front of us at a convenient angle we are pleased. We drop mental anchor.

And this has nothing to do with the barbering process itself mind you. It’s not like I plan my haircuts or need to have it done in a particularly artistic way. I am pretty sure that if I had the right combination of long arms, flexible elbows and curved mirrors I’d probably just cut my hair myself. And do it in the exact same way I first got it done when my mom realized my dad was old enough to take me to the local saloon unsupervised.

So unlike the missus, who is fraught with the turmoil of choice every time a haircut comes up, I just walk out of the house, entirely in autopilot, settle into a chair and say “Medium short, short sideburns, keep it short in front”. And 99% of the time that is the entirety of my conversation with by barber. For the next half an hour or so I sit coma-like. Like a vegetable and my mind blanks out, leaping from thought to thought to thought in no particular order.

Even those conversations that men traditionally have in barber shops–politics, sports and such like–are entirely pointless and transient. If you ask us what we spoke about just 10 minutes after we step out of the air-conditioning we probably won’t remember a thing. Barber shop conversation, from the male perspective, is like a screensaver for the mind.

Which is why, when you consider all the factors, that men and women have completely different conversations when it comes to haircuts.

Woman One: I am going to get a haircut
Woman Two: Oh awesome! Where?
Woman One: [Refers to a new haircutting place. Normally named after the ladies who own the place, i.e. 'Anamika and Anandavalli' if classy, or, if more edgy in an MTV sort of way, named after entirely unrelated concepts. For instance 'Sepsis'. Or 'Opticuts Prime'.]
Woman Two: Oh wow Sepsis! Awesome. Ask for Vinod, He is the best.
Woman One: Fingers crossed. I’ve asked for him. But apparently they can’t be 100% sure.
Woman Two: Best of luck. What cut are you getting?
Woman One: I am thinking of getting a Deep U in the back with short bangs in front.
Woman Two: Wow! Trendy and all! [NO WAY you can pull that off. But whatever. Fool.]

Contrast with the following:

Husband: I am going to get a haircut
Missus: Buy milk when you come

Which is why I was sitting in the saloon in Dwarka the other day super-aware. This was the first time I was partaking of the outlet. Nerves jangled. Everything felt a little strange. There was yet another shady brand of locally produced talcum powder on the counter, the swivel chair felt particularly unsteady and the TV, alas, could only be seen in double reflection off mirrors on the back and then front walls of the shop.

India TV was on. And had a complete pre-eclipse astrology package going on.

Which brings us to the real topic of this blog post. Excuse that bit about men and barber shops. Think of that bit as an AA Gill-ish rant.

And that topic is: The curse of alphabetical order in our lives.

Let me explain.

Having cornered the paranormally paranoid segment of the Indian TV viewing market, India TV had one of their staff astrologers in the studio explaining how the solar eclipse could impact your personal life. And in order to deliver true TV 2.0 personalized service the astrologer was doing this in order of first letter of name. And agonizingly slowly.

Through the entire course of my haircut and head massage, he only managed to go from A to C. Which meant that by the time he reached S, the first letter of my first name ‘Stud’, it would be well past midnight. And since the missus and I had already decided to catch up on Law and Order Special Victims Unit DVDs when I returned, I would miss my eclipse prophecies entirely.

So during the walk home after the cut, paper bag full of KFC in hand, I began to wonder about alphabetical order. About how, almost from the moment we are born, the alphabeticality of our names begin to haunt us. And finally, like a crazy weekend with a Facebook-account using friend, the experience haunts us for years after. With a first name starting with S and a second starting with V, that meant a lot of waiting for things to happen. And opportunities missed to Andrews, Anils, Deepaks and so on.

Shirley was the first consequence of the alphabetical order of my name. I had to sit next to her on my first day in kindergarten and was quite traumatized by her pastimes of choice: playing with either a plastic toy camera, or nasal mucus… the latter not always her own. I was quite troubled at the time and would have left Kindergarten severely scarred if it wasn’t for Jibu Jose who always shared his lunchbox. (Sausages in ketchup. Always. Awesome.)

(Note: Shirley later went on to grow up and look almost exactly like dusky hot shot model Nina Manuel. Jibu sadly did not.

Booger babe

Of course at that tender, innocent age it seldom occurs to the child’s mind what’s going on. When you are in kindergarten anything is possible. There is no systemic bias and human prejudice. As long as you ran to Jibu’s seat immediately as the bell rang, you got sausage.

But reality began to seep in when, a year or so later, yours truly qualified for one of those poetry reciting competitions.

In the beginning being called on stage in order of first names seemed like a cool idea. Why be the first to go on stage and embarrass yourself when the audience is still alert? By the time Sidin Vadukut’s turn comes along, the audience has long since disintegrated into several little Dumb Charades and Chinese Whispers games. Unless you screw up in spectacular fashion–forgetting all lines, peeing in shorts before going on stage, break down into tears and so on–no one will even realize you came and went.

But then Andrew M happened. Andrew M, who I am sure I have Whatay-ed about before, was the Sachin Tendulkar of poetry recitation.

No wait. No. What am I saying.

Andrew was the Bobby Darling of poetry recitation. The moment he walked on to stage the audience felt silent, the judges perked up ready to imprint 10s in the mark sheets, and the English teachers picked up the biggest prize parcel of wrapped up books and began writing his name on it.

That’s because victory for Andrew M in any pursuit that required emotive speaking and a high pitched voice was just a matter of turning up. This boy made the BeeGees sounds like a sub-woofer. He could sing any word in the English language, ANY WORD, and people melted into little puddles. Andrew could stand in front of a mike and go “Gangreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeene” and the normally frozen Principal Sister Margarita would go open mouthed, roll up her eyeballs and collapse.

Which meant that Sidin Vadukut, who usually came four hours after Andrew M, could simply do nothing to out-recite the Falsetto Fiend. (Once we both chose to recite the exact same poem, something about a Snowman who’d eventually melt and die. Andrew ran around the stage like those Olympic ice dancers, arms flailing, tears welling up in his eyes. Later I stood in one place, LIKE A SNOWMAN YOU IDIOT FOOL JUDGES, and delivered my lines. Andrew won his eleventh copy of Wren and Martin later that evening.)

The months, years and competitions went by. But even as I could never reconcile with the Fiend, our class was declared old enough to use the student’s library. This was a super-huge deal of course. Our library had the complete Hardy Boys, Nancy Drews, Jughead Double Digest and a sizeable archive of Young Times and Junior News. (Local children’s newspaper supplements. Mostly posters of Milli Vanilli, Spot the Difference puzzles, recipes with yoghurt and banana, and Dennis the Menace and Shylock Fox comics.)

Alas once again I had to deal with the nomenclature nemesis.

Our school was (still is) run by nuns who imposed discipline and orderliness with a certain Burmese Junta elan. (Burmese Nunta? Ha!) If someone fainted during the morning assembly under the hot Middle Eastern sun they just left them there on the ground. Only to be trampled over later as we marched back to our classrooms to the beat of a mildly hypnotizing drum. (Ok I exaggerate. They sent a nurse to pick up the kids, who then took them to the medical room, drugged them and then sold them to this kidney racket out of Ras Al Khaimah.)

So in order to maintain quiet corridors, the nuns decided that classes would visit the library, once a week, in alphabetically ordered groups of five or six.

Woman on top

I NEVER EVER got a Hardy Boys issued from the library. As for Nandy Drew I think I only ever got that Secret of the Golden Pavilion book in the usual routine of things. The good books never lasted by the time it was the turn of the Ss, Ts and Vs.

Instead I had to make do with the terrible, imported from India or [shudder] donated by well-wisher books that sucked. My first ever library book was, for instance, ‘The Sign of The Snake Tattoo’. A terrible book with an anatomically impossible oil painting of a turbanned man on the cover. He looked to one side, with his slightly dislocated shoulder, floating independently from the rest of his body, thrust in the opposite direction. The upper arm had a, GASP, snake tattoo on it just in case the title wasn’t emphatic enough. I remember nothing about the book except for a chase scene in it through ‘the bazaar of Agra’.

Sidin, Shirley, Sunil, Sneha (wonder where she is), Vincent and company all had to make do with the detritus left by then or wait till the end of the academic year by when everyone had already read the good stuff.

Soon a black barter market developed in library books.

We identified suitably named Elsa, Delbert, Franklin types in the class who cared nothing at all for books. And bribed them to go earlier and bring us the good stuff. (Later in life we did MBAs and became management consultants. The suitably named inherited their father’s footwear chain and bought Maybachs.)

Of course I am not saying that the Dreaded Alphabet Curse (DAC) did not come with a few benefits. It was, in fact, helpful in several cases. For instance when the nuns decided that EVERYONE must try out for the sports day teams. They lined us up in DAC order and made us all do the long jump. (Andrew M landed on his face. Which was awesome. But then he began to cry in pain, like that Coldplay fellow, and the girls went wild. Which sucked.)

By the time I landed in the sand with the grace of a birthing giraffe, no one had any mocking laughter left.

Also later in high school when he had John B. the psycho maths teacher, being Sidin helped. He’d take the attendance register and go down the list one by one asking each fellow the homework problem. By the time he reached me I’d have done my homework in the interim. Or at least managed to give an answer that was no stupider than anyone else’s. (The idea in high school pressure situations, of course, is to never ever stand out. Always, always get punished collectively.)

John B.: What is Gauss-Jordan Elimination?
Santosh: Gauss-Jordan elimination is a process to scientifically eliminate, after proper calculation with requisite data and mathematical…
John B.: Next!
Sidin: Gauss-Jordan elimination is a method to mathematically resolve, after adequate processing with necessary numbers and quantitative…
John B.: NEXT!
Santosh and Sidin: Under the table high five!

Now you’d think that DAC would go away by the time you reach business school right?

He overcame

V for very. W for wrong.

I spent all of first term sitting in the last row, in an extreme corner of our amphitheater-like classroom. Way over professor radar, mostly making faces at other people across the classroom over professors’ heads.

It was awesome. While it lasted.

In second term they flipped the order and I found myself in the bottom of the class where I stayed for the rest of my ‘diploma equivalent to an MBA’.

In the years hence DAC has continued to haunt me occasionally. There is that embarrassing moment outside bars and clubs as the bouncer looks for my surname in the list of authorized invitees. (It doesn’t matter if your name is Zalim Zardozi Zabaglione. The bouncer will always begin with Aarti A. Aravindan and work his way down.)

During things like campus placement, interviewers are so exhausted by the time they come to Vadukut, that any above-mediocre joke is enough to grab their attention and get a second round call. By then their bodies are beginning to shut down having heard 400 people tell them that “my goal in life is to learn enough on the job and then set up my own company”. (This because the Professor in charge of Placements said at the seminar that a good strategy is to tell companies that “your goal in life is to learn enough on the job and then set up your own company. This will make you stand apart and look uniquely risk-taking!”. 400 people noted this line down verbatim diligently.)

In my case DAC has taught me patience while I wait, the ability to think on my feet as John B. worked his way down the name list, and a disturbing Harman Baweja-esque ease with performing in front of an audience that does not care. It also gave me something that all of us strive our entire lives to find: something entirely outside our control to blame all our failures on.

So all these thoughts were going through my mind as I walked home from the barber’s. And I thought I should share this with you guys. Because, who knows? Perhaps you are an Aditya or a Bernard who had your own set of troubles when you were in school. Do tell what it feels like to be first by default.

But then I’d forgotten to buy milk from the market and I had to go back again.

Note: Barber shop photo from Failblog.in

Defenceless prey

So we’re all trooping out of the in-law’s place in Ashok Vihar last weekend for a spot of shopping. We walk out of the door, past the stairwell and down the narrow drive way with low boundary walls on both sides.

Suddenly the mom-in-law freezes in her tracks. She cranes her neck over the chest-high boundary wall on the left. Like an alert documentary lioness, she has spotted something far way in the prairie grass of… er… Ashok Vihar BA Block. (Since the in-laws are staunch vegetarians let us assume that the prey is a wildebeest-shaped block of fresh paneer. Or kulfi.)

She turned around and asked us to be very quiet indeed. And then, following her lead, we all proceeded towards the car in a crouched posture. As soon as reached the car, we leapt into our seats nimble-fully and careened out of the colony at full speed, through the gates, swooped into the main road outside and then took a tyre-screeching u-turn before stopping at the Reliance Fresh on the other side.

Mom-in-law emoted the Punjabi equivalent of “Phew” and then explained how we’d just managed to avoid one of her more nosy neighbours, the retired VRS-accepted bank manager, uncle Zaphinder Singh Beeblotra (name changed).

Beeblotra, like Arnab Goswami, is renowned in Ashok Vihar for having an instant solution(s) for everybody’s problem and for tirelessly following up for months and years to ensure that his suggestions have been implemented. Failure to do so leads to quarrelsome discussions, incessant hounding, sting operations and, ultimately, prolonged feuds.

Which is why Bhatia from 4C refused to invite Pillai from 5B for Arunima’s wedding. Because Pillai put up a split AC unit, on Zaphinder’s tireless persuasion:

“Pillai saab…kya ajeeb batein kar rahe ho yaar! Window AC?? Chi. Huak thu! Aaj kal to zamana hi split AC ka hai ji. Chalo koi na. Aap busy lag rahe ho. Aap morning meditation continue karo. Main 11A hoke aata hoon. Sehgal sahab de Babloo di mummy de gift wali Scorpio da stereo kharaab ho gaya hai. O paagal Sehgal Kenwood lagva raha hai. Kenwood! Bewakoof na honwe taan!”

Pillai’s split unit then began dripping water down the outer wall and into Bhatia’s kitchen. Where it fell directly into steel pot placed under the Aquaguard. Which is how Arunima’s fiance’s entire family got dysentry when they came for girl-and-environment-inspection in February. (Bhatia rejected Beeblotra’s plan of making the ill drink the water of raw boiled papayas. But in exchange he had to let Idea Uncle choose the paan supplier for the wedding.)

So when the missus occasionally goes for walks around the colony she does so carefully. With an eye out for Beeblotra. There is no saying when he will leap out of a corner and plead with her to join swimming classes immediately. Because, just twenty-three years, ago the colony had gone on a bus trip to a beach somewhere and the Missus, who was extremely cute as a child I have been told to say, refused to approach the sea. For fear of being swept away. Beeblotra immediately made it his life’s mission to convince the missus to learn swimming. To this day.

In short I would faster attend an “Indian Students Tweetup” in Melbourne before teaching this man how to use Twitter.

As we trotted around the Reliance Fresh buying things, the mom-in-law recounted one of pop-in-law’s run ins with Beeblotra. (Apparently the incident was one of those family “in” jokes. You know the type. Where everyone is rolling on the floor howling just three words into the telling. Which puts immense pressure on you, the recently wedded-in, to laugh as much as everyone else. Which is a problem, as everyone else is from Jallandhar. And laugh like Royal Enfields.)

Scene: Pop-in-law generally hanging outside the house minding his own business. Whence Beeblotra pounces upon him from his secret hiding place behind the ironing-fellow’s push cart.

Pop-in-law: Woah teri!
B: Oh Kapoor saab! Kya haal jee!
PIL: Bas badhiya. Waiting for the workers to come!
B: Workers you say…
PIL: *ugh*
B: Carpentry work is it?
PIL: No no. Some masonry…
B: Oh ho! New room? New wall? False ceiling? Hamara Arvind Denver mein ghar ke andar jacuzzi banva raha hai you know?
PIL: Yes of course. No no. Bas we cleared the garden and some rubbish in the back of the house and soch rahe thhe ki what we will do with this extra space…
B: Oh Kapoor saab! Socho hee mat! Socho hee mat! Best suggestion deta hoon. Tussi majjan paal lao.
PIL: *Reply rhymed with “ittefaaq”*
B: Haan ji. Solid idea hai. Majjan paal lao. Space ka use bhi ho jayega aur sehat ke liye to badhiya hi badhiya! Kaash mere ghar mein aisi free space hoti… Main toh kukkad bhi paalta.

Reminded of the incident PIL, MIL and Missus unleashed waves upon waves of uncontrolled laughter standing in the Biscuits and Cereal aisle. On hearing customers make such a loud mirthful commotion a Reliance Fresh employee came running to find out what was happening. And would you believe it if I told you that the badge on his uniform t-shirt showed his name to be Phani Prasad!

What are the odds right? Impossible no? Correct. I made that bit up.

All this while I am standing and wondering what the joke was all about.

“Majjan paal lao”.

What DID that mean. My Punjabi is ok as long as it comes to Sukhbir lyrics. Otherwise it’s all a little gal ban gayee. So I began to process it in my mind. While I fake laughed away gripping on to a large pack of Bran Flakes for support.

1. Majjan paal lao = Majjan + paal lao
2. Majjan = mazaa? Mazaa = enjoyment / fun / amusement
3. Paal lao? Perhaps the same as the paal lo in “Bhangra paalo”? Reasonable assumption.
4. Paal lao = take it / pump it up / do it
5. Therefore majaa paal lao = have some fun! enjoy it! rock the place!

What the…

Beeblotra was basically telling them to use it as a party room? A den of some sort? Some enclosure to play Dumb Charades, Pictionary and other all round enthusiastic procurement of the phatte and subsequent chucking of the same?

What in god’s name was funny about that? Why are these loving, doting people laughing like maniacs? Why do I not get the clearly ground-breaking joke?

All these things went through my mind as I wiped fake tears of joy from my eyes, like everyone else, and proceeded shopping for something called “kharbooza”.

Later the missus clarified.

What thought leader Beeblotra really meant was to convert the space in the back into, and no urban residence should ever be without one, a buffalo shed. (Majjan = buffalo. Paal lao = domesticate.) His hare-brained theory being that the family which had recourse to its own source of fresh, free range diary products could save money and stay healthy.

A simple and spectacularly stupid plan.

Thankfully PIL installed a roomy bedroom in the space instead which I regularly use whenever I visit. Beeblotra does not know of course. I would be obliged if you don’t tell him.

However later, on further rumination, the incident also generated this Malayali thought process:

1. Majja = buffalo
2. While alive = milk, paneer, ghee, butter etc.
3. After dying purely natural death from heartbreak or tripping and falling = first class biryani (Buffalo is beef for real men.)

So really, when you look at it from my perspective…

London? Aye!

No use at all, is what.

The very first time I went to London was about three years ago. A team of three of us went all the way from Mumbai to London for a forty minute meeting that ended in twenty-five excluding tea break and LCD projector downtime. It was a Mashrafe Mortaza-level waste of time, other people’s money and effort.

But then those were heady times. This was 2006. Well before bankers everywhere realized that David X. Li’s Gaussian Copula model for the pricing of collateralized debt obligations was flawed. Many moons before banks collapsed, Iceland went bankrupt and banker Pastrami was forced to make severe cut-backs to his expenses: no more separate iPod Touches for each decade of Bollywood music, definitely no new Macbook for bathroom browsing and emergency discontinuation of the “Power Yoga” add-on to his Gold’s Gym membership.

(Pastrami was not available for comment for this post as he is in Hong Kong for, and I quote, “the weekend”.)

So off we went on our 6-month single-entry business visas, landed at Heathrow, sailed through customs before being whisked away to our hotel by one of the most meatiest human beings I have ever met. I don’t mean meaty in the sense of “fat” or “obese”. Oh no. I mean meaty in the sense of medium height, of almost cubical dimensions with enormous hands, neck and nose. Plenty of muscle to suggest a man with much physical labour in resume. But also enough meat to suggest a lack of enthusiasm for “Power Yoga”. When he settled into the driver’s car after tossing our luggage into the boot, we audibly heard his suit stretch into a new shape.

A somewhat meaty Georgian

The three of us then sat very quietly for the rest of the forty minute trip to our hotel in Central London. Every few minutes the driver would get a call from someone. They would then chatter away in animated, guttural Russian. Nothing of which we could decipher. Every once in a while he’d mention our hotel, or one of our names, and we’d all stiffen in our seats and look out of the window while surreptitiously texting loved ones ATM pins and safe combinations.

That was also the only time I’ve ever (been) driven out of or into Heathrow in a car. It’s much more convenient, and cheaper, to just take one of the underground tube trains from the station below the airport.

Which makes this a good time to briefly chat about the Briton’s obsession with maximizing cash flows. You maybe forgiven for thinking that the British have lost their ability to run global businesses like they once used to. (Indeed, we ask ourselves, what are they today except a nation subservient to the US, with excellent topless women in their newspapers, a bizarre talent for international cycling and a tendency to bestow people with Gordon Brown’s orc-like speech skills, high public office?)

Yet you can still sense a glimmer of that famed knack for business in the way they obsessively install cafes and gift shops in museums. And how, depending on how much money you have, you can take not one, but three different train options from Heathrow: regular tube (4 pounds something), the Heathrow Connect (7.40 pounds) and the Heathrow Express (16.50 pounds). In dosa terms that would be the Sada, Mysore Masala and Organic Free Trade Brown Rice Paneer Dry Fruit Special Masala respectively.

Note: If this in any way gives you the impression that you have an inkling of how the UK railways work I apologize. It does not. In fact nobody, as far as I know, knows how the rail system in the UK works. This is because of the complicated web of tracks, routes, companies, lessees and lessors, and what not, that work in collaboration. Examine this lucid paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for the Heathrow Connect service:

To access the airport spur without crossing the fast lines, trains in both directions use the flyover track originally built for Heathrow Express trains heading towards Paddington. This arrangement means Heathrow Connect trains to the airport use the flyover in the opposite direction to normal operation, and trains from Heathrow must cross both slow lines on the flat. If Crossrail goes ahead, the flyover will be rebuilt to overcome these limitations.

Just as James Joyce meant it to be.

Homework: Imagine the above text as a Hindi announcement on the Delhi Metro. Shudder. (Hindi scholars feel free to send a formal Indian Government Hindi version of the above para. Will publish thathtsamay).

But coming back on track (ha!), so in April 2006 the Georgian engined us (ho!) to our hotel stationed on (wah!) Bedford Avenue and watching London for the first time sent an electric (overdid it) sense of joy down my spine. It was all narrow two-lane roads, curling around little green squares with the crispest, coolest weather you can imagine. Sigh. And the plain, no-nonsense budget hotel, the team leader’s choice, was just a short walk away from Leicester Square and the British Museum. If you were in Mumbai this was like living in a 1BHK right inside Flora Fountain in terms of centrality.

Expecting to be budget-housed in a cheap, drug den in some far-flung suburb by the company I was quite pleased. Until I slipped my card into the electronic slot, swung open the door into my room, took two steps, and ran face first into the wall at the other end. Considering that I am one of those people who automatically become happy when they walk into a fresh hotel room this was quite a bummer.

Deluxe hotel room (life size image)

It was astonishingly, mind-bogglingly small. The room was exactly the length of the bed plus another two feet. And in the two feet gap they’d managed to fit in a miniature heat radiator and a weird tubular steel thing I later learnt was used to keep your luggage on. The room was also two bed-widths across and wedged into one corner was a writing table with matching chair. The table had two drawers, one with a hair-dryer and the other with a Bible in it.

The bathroom door was a sliding number that opened up into a space a little bigger than an airplane toilet.

In the first ten minutes, I poked myself in the eye twice and once tipped over the chair which toppled over the dust bin which collapsed the luggage holder which activated the trouser press which flopped out of the wall and hit me on my knee which made me bend over in pain when I hit my head against the door and fell over backwards dazed, and bounced off the chair into the bathroom where I got wedged between the bowl and the wash basin. It was like the infamous Honda advertisement. But with pain. All through the night, when claustrophobia and pain kept me awake, I reached, as always, for my one source of spiritual solace. I often reached across, opened the table drawer and, after a moment of silent solemnity, pulled out the hair dryer. A few minutes trying to inflate a pillow-cover always calms me.

I also noticed after a few hours of loitering around in the hotel and chatting with the staff that London was quite the melting pot of cultures. You already know our chauffeur was Georgian. The reception staff at the hotel comprised one British Born Confused Desi Sardarni eager to visit India and find her roots, and one Eastern European type who’s motto was “Service before self if it must come to that”. The concierge was a jovial Caribbean, the room service guy was very Arab and some of the house-keeping staff were Filipino. I think the great British contemporary poet Ronan Keating put it best when he once said:

Take a pinch of white man
Wrap him up in black skin
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty-bit of red indian boy..

Curly, black and kinky
Oriental sexy
If you lump it all together
Well, you’ve got a recipe for a get-along scene
Oh what a beautiful dream
If it could only come true
You know, you know…

How true! London is one such get-along scene. And despite their native cultural variety, somehow the city infuses all these people with a little bit of the stiff British upper lip. Which I will illustrate with a little incident that happened the morning of our doomed meeting. As is usual I was standing in front of the mirror in the mini-bathroom shaving, dressed only in my underclothes (focus on the story ladies) when there was a knock on the door. An Arab man said: “[inaudible] room service [inaudible] excuse me [inaudible]”

I replied: “NO! NO! NO! COME LATER!”

With stunning attention to detail he swiped his card, opened the door, slid in sideways and then stood perfectly still staring into the bathroom while I looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. After a few seconds he said he would come back later as “I looked busy” and left. Without even batting an eyelid. I ran after him to lock the door and then returned to my shaving but not before tripping over a telephone directory and comprehensively engaging a 14-inch TV with side of head.

All these thoughts came rushing back into my (healed) head three years later as I emerged with the missus out of Heathrow and into the waiting arms of Bill, my dearest brother-in-law. The punjabi in him had ensured that he came with bags of sandwiches and beverages for our pleasure. He pounced gallantly upon our trolley, picked up all the luggage himself and chaperoned us into a grim tunnel that led down to the Heathrow tube station. Within minutes we minded the gap and boarded a train (sada dosa). Shortly thereafter the missus and Bill launched into brother-sister re-bonding with cries of “Woah teri!”, “Shub-BHAASH puttar-uh” and, of course, “Oy hoy old boy”. Meanwhile, equally emotionally, I made my acquaintance with a Marks and Spencer smoked salmon sandwich and a banana yoghurt smoothie.

As you might imagine it was a very sentimental moment for all of us.

Holloway Road Station. You can see Arsenal's stadium from here

As soon as we walked in we spotted the tell-tale signs of accommodation of bachelors without frequently visiting female friends. Used socks lay about in three feet high mounds while the path to the kitchen was clearly demarcated, useful in case of smoke related emergencies, by a continuous line of semi-empty Papa John pizza boxes. In the living room what I initially thought was Bill’s roommate huddled under a blanket on the sofa, turned out to be just a bag of restaurant left-overs. Largely spaghetti, humus and and pita bread from early February now turned into a thriving child-sized colony of fungus. When I approached it to have a closer look it made a growling noise exactly like, you guessed it again, Gordon Brown.

We dropped our bags and the missus immediately embarked on a cleaning spree, with Bill helping, while I lay back and switched on the TV to watch the awesome Challenge channel. (More on Challenge and the dhol-playing sikhs with the red-shirts later.)

Normally such a night would be spent in all-night gossip and catching up and planning. But alas we had a train to catch at seven the next morning to Edinburgh, the city about which Gerald Butler, the hero of “This is Partha!” 300 movie fame once said:

I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals.

Butler is not a man known for his quotes.

Venti-size Starbucks cup

a) Wake up early enough to reach King’s Cross
b) Find our train
c) Find our co-travelers who had all the tickets
d) Avoid getting killed in the middle of the night by the mysterious fungal life-form in the living room

Therefore it gives me great pleasure to tell you that at around quarter past 7 the next morning the entire party had somehow managed to locate the right train, find the right seats, purchase several bags full of light travel snacks such as Egg Cheese BLT on Rye sandwiches and Venti-size hazelnut lattes from Starbucks, and settle into a comfortable trip to Edinburgh full of merry conversation and jovial over-eating.

Join us next time, perhaps in a day or two, when we discover the merry city of Edinburgh, the little piece of Bombay that sits right outside the castle there, the best sausage roll in the entire world and Irn Bru. Shudder.

Till then, as they say in Morocco when parting from dear friends, [inaudible]!

(A travelogue in many parts–I promise–written without any restraint at all. Truthful mostly.)

Trained by years of three-hour long summer vacation flights across the Arabian Sea, I am not one to dawdle with drinks and dinner inside an airplane cabin.

When you flew the dreaded Gulf Air connection between Abu Dhabi and Bombay your whole strategy was about speed and accuracy. Drink your first Johnnie Walker miniature too slowly and you were doomed. By the time the drinks trolley made its circuit and came back the only spirits left would be cans of lukewarm Heineken from within the bowels of the trolley and a couple of mini-bottles of white wine from great wine producing nations such as Turkey and Paraguay:

“This exquisite wine, also available in distinctive looking tetrapak boxes, is fruity with echoes of berry that give way to an after taste of burnt toast followed by full-bodied projectile throwing up.”

This was because two rows behind you sat bachelor boys Anto, Johnny and their friend Anto Johnny. All of them veteran Gulf Air flyers, who, over many years of annual leave trips, had perfected the art of hitting the drinks trolley harder and faster than a majestic Venkatesh Prasad cover drive crashing straight back into his stumps.

Miniature bottles of whisky, which Malayalis frown upon as a matter of principal, were thrown back by Anto and company two at a time in rapid-fire succession. Sometimes even before the stewardess has turned back with plastic glasses and peanuts. While the hapless crew-member shuttled between seat and trolley, a few bottles were stealthily slipped into pockets for the drive home from the airport. By the time Anto reached home in Chalakudy he was very, very happy and enveloped in a mixed mist of Johnnie Walker and Brut pour homme.

So you can imagine my chagrin when the cabin crew of my Delhi-Dubai Emirates flight not only kept all of us well nourished with many assorted beverages–”We only have Absolut vodka sir. Will that do?” “Alas! I will manage somehow. GLUG.”–but I was also among the first few people in Economy Class to be served dinner.

This may sound very grand and all, this being served before everyone else. However two things can make this very uncomfortable.

First of all you must realise that Economy Class travel is one of the great social levellers of the modern world. No matter what you are in the world outside–consultant, journalist, social media evangelist or investment wanker–if your boarding pass says Economy you have been grouped up with everyone else sitting around. So what you if you have a Blackberry and a tiny, almost pointless laptop? Since you clearly can’t afford Business or First shut the eff up and eat cold butter and drink warm beer like everyone else bro.

But this forced social homogenity also means that any preferential treatment by the cabin crew causes cabin-wide consternation.

“What did that boy just get? A coloring book! I want one immediately!”
“But darling you are 34!”
“So what stupid man. We are entitled to everything they are… Look someone’s getting an extra BLANKET now!”
“Oh please be mature woman and pilfer the cutlery like we planned.”

(I won’t tell you exactly who but one of my relatives is an expert at pilfering things from an airplane. When people visit for dinner parties she tells them that the cutlery, dining set, toilet paper, moisturizer and most of the sofa cushions were gifted to us by someone “high up in Cathay Pacific who get these things for free during Diwali.”)

So in all things Economy class passengers must be treated alike. Anything less could lead to revolt, uprising and eventually the guillotine. So when the stewardess placed dinner before me many a malicious eyebrow was raised. Apparently Emirates had actually taken the meal preference I had entered online seriously. And they brought me my seafood special before the regular meal trolley made its rounds.

Excellent customer service, but the craning necks and irate whispering was disconcerting. I waited for everyone else to be served before launching into an excellent prawn cocktail appetiser and salmon fillet main course. Most excellent.

Adding to my difficulties was the second factor: the pregnant German woman sitting across the aisle on my left. This big-boned frau was in that stage of pregnancy that medical professionals call “Feed or avoid”.

She polished off her meal tray in seconds, bread roll and all. And then, after shifting around in her seat for comfort, demolished her husband’s meal tray as well. Utterly unsatisfied she then turned around and glared. At my food. Incessantly. Not a prawn went from bowl to my mouth unobserved. My engagement with the fillet and her keen observation of the same was a remarkable case study in my hand-her eye coordination.

When she finally realized I had a different meal she summoned a stewardess demanding an explanation. Which was promptly offered in the form of a third defenceless meal tray. I quickly finished dinner while Mother Germany was distracted.

The missus, meanwhile, was having her own set of problems with another German who sat next to her. This gentleman was a standard issue Lonely Planet traveller perhaps en route to a connecting flight back home from Dubai. A nice short, stout fellow who spent the entire flight reading a German book.

Not that the missus did not try to quash his attempts to do this. First she dropped half lemon welcome drink in his lap. He laughed it off. And then, during the beverage service, most of a glass of orange juice fell over as well. He smiled and she apologised profusely. The glass of water she tipped over during dinner did not amuse him one bit. And then, in a stunning last act, the missus let go of the inflight entertainment system remote control which snapped back on its spring-loaded cord, whipped across the meal tray and leg-glanced the chocolate pudding over and onto his foot. He was enraged and looked this close to invading Poland as is the way of his people when pissed.

Needless to say she remained motionless for the rest of the trip while I sat back and enjoyed an in-flight entertainment system that, for once , was not programmed in Fortran.

And as I sit in the cabin watching grim, grey televised interpretations of Kurt Wallander novels with Kenneth Branagh playing the title role, let me tell you a little about the fortnight’s worth of travelling and sight-seeing that lay ahead.

The missus and I had cherished plans of a fortnight in South Africa for a couple of years. What with the brother-in-law having moved to Johannesburg a long time ago. Also Bill, as we shall henceforth call him, had this great Punjabi need to take me there all expenses paid and treat me like a king. Who am I to say no.

Alas just when it looked like the missus and I had managed to wheedle out some leave time together to pay him a visit the global economy crashed. Bill’s employers were not immune to the meltdown that hit the banks. And after weeks of turmoil and tension he was finally asked to suddenly move permanently to London. Off went Bill to a cozy two-bedroom two-bath place in Islington, just a few minutes walk from Arsenal football club’s Emirates Stadium and around the corner from Holloway Road tube station.

Weeks later when we found that Emirates was giving away Delhi-London-via-Dubai return tickets at around Rs23,000 per person after tax we did not hesitate. Tickets were booked and Bill was immediately asked to set aside a sizeable portion of his 2008 bonus. Bill, dear loving Bill, did even better. He booked tickets for a football match, a West End musical, and even arranged for a local SIM and mobile phone.

(Remind me later to tell you why and how you boys must marry into a Punjabi family only.)

Later after some group gmailing the two week long trip became much more exciting. Since we’d be landing just before the long Easter weekend the first item on our agenda would be a three-day road-trip across Scotland. Edinburgh and Inverness would be the highlights. And joining us, yay!, would be a jolly group of eight friends, all bankers in London. None of them, let me assure you, had anything at all to do with CDOs, CMOs and sub-prime mortgages. I don’t mix with those types anymore.

So where was I? Ah yes watching Kenneth Branagh as Wallander on the Emirates inflight entertainment thingie. Before the flight I had no idea that Henning Mankell’s Wallander books had been made into a TV series. If you are one of the few people I haven’t already forced to read Scandinavian crime fiction then I implore you to do so. Mankell is most good. But my favourites are the ten books of the Martin Beck series written by Sjowall and Wahloo. The husband-wife team produced delightful crime novels all set in the Sweden of the sixties. The books are all very grim with short days, long nights, grumpy people and overcast skies. Still they manage to be funny and utterly enthralling.

After one and a half episodes of Wallander I began to drop of to sleep and so switched the channel to audio tracks of Seinfeld stand-up. I had heard every single one before. Perfect background chatter, then, to fall asleep to.

The changeover in Dubai was smooth as butter. We deplaned, ran our shoes, belts and bags through an X-ray, did a quick circuit of a huge, shiny and impersonal Duty Free section before swiftly boarding the connecting flight to Heathrow.

A splinter of nostalgia shot through me as I picked up a copy of the Gulf News from a trolley outside the plane door. (NRIs nod in understanding please.)

And then in just a few minutes we were inside, the doors were pulled shut and I continued watching Wallander where I had left it off before.

Now I will spare you detailed narration of six hours of flight travel as I have to run right now. I just turned thirty years old a few moments ago and I am celebrating by cracking open a packet of Lindt dark chocolate to celebrate with the missus.

Do return in a day or to when we will continue on into Scotland and talk about the most complicated problem tourists face when they fly to the UK. Exactly… the Mensa puzzle device that operates the shower in hotel bathrooms.

Till then, as they say in the United Kingdom, ciao!

(By the way the people at GiveIndia do good work. Check them out. Click below. Go on.)

Paper work

Couple of things to point out:

1. Yes my name is still causing trouble. Sigh. I might change it to something else so that it looks better in book stores. Like “Dan Brown Vadukut”.

2. Will update on expected dates, title, excerpts and so on as soon as I get inputs and go-aheads from the Penguin people. Currently I am thinking of calling it “A short history of nearly every five point someone slumdog white tiger’s letters to Penthouse”.

3. A very big thank you to all you guys. This blog is quite the community story you know. So collective high-fives all around.

4. Set aside money right now to buy it when it eventually comes out.

Yay!

The rest of us, however, are already beginning to dust off our team jerseys from last year, ready to once again support our favourite franchises. Unless of course we have just moved from Mumbai to Delhi and recently found the missus, an ardent Daredevil fan, browsing this on the web:

Organized retailing in New Delhi

Now we are sooo into the Daredevils, it is not funny I tell you.

But what can one expect from the next season of the IPL? Will the Rajasthan Royals once again surprise everyone by emerging as underdogs and winning the tournament? (No. Because technically now that they have won it once already it shouldn’t be that surprising if they do it again no?) Or will the Chennai Super Kings finally listen to the pining of their ardent fans, rise to the challenge and get a team kit in a colour other than “Supernova Lemon Rice”? Or will the Deccan Chargers impose their cricketing superiority on… Ok wait, we can’t even type that with a straight face.

So we here at Domain Maximus spent the last many days and nights analysing every element of the second IPL from administration to team structures to even the current state of global cricket. We are pleased to say that we have drawn up a stunning, audacious list of detailed predictions for what is going to transpire over the course of IPL 2009. While every effort has been made to make up virtually every single point in the predictions, readers are encouraged to take these forecasts with utmost seriousness.

—***—

Remarkably detailed and individually dated predictions for IPL 2009:

April 3^rd 2009: During a press conference to unveil the second edition of the IPL, Chairman Lalit Modi is suddenly attacked by a masked assailant who, screaming the words “Saale illegal monopoly businessman! Mere joote da jawab nahin!“, hurls shoes at the cricket administrator before tearing out of the conference room and disappearing into the the crowds outside. Questions are raised about Modi’s popularity amongst the media and cricketing fraternity as the assailant was able to throw over 11 pairs of shoes at Modi before members of Rajasthan Cricket Association pounced upon the guards who had come to pounce upon the assailant. Kapil Dev expresses surprise and concern at the development when media ambush him at a Bata showroom a few hours later. Thankfully Modi is able to duck almost all of the shoes except the last four.

April 10^th 2009: Cricket fans all over India wake up in shock to see the Bangalore Royal Challengers on top of the Indian Premier League 2009 league tables. And then everyone laughs sheepishly when they realize that the tournament hasn’t started and the team names have been displayed in alphabetical order.

The inaugural match of the tournament is between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Chennai Super Kings. For a long time it looks like the Knight Riders have a solid chance of winning before the Super Kings finally arrive from the airport after a delayed flight and beat them by 73 runs.

April 12^th 2009: On the same day as a Rajasthan Royals vs. Mumbai Indians match, rebel cricket league honcho Kapil Dev shrewdly convenes a press conference to divert attention. At the conference he outlines ICL’s strategy to overtake and crush the IPL to the assembled press, namely, one Mr. Parthasarathi Kalasalingam from Anna Nagar Weekly. After Dev’s address Mr. Kalasilangam asks the following question: “Mr Kapil Dev, can you kindly direct me to the room where the vegetarian buffet is being served?”

Dev breaks down.

April 16^th 2009: TV viewers have a treat today as Aussie great and senior Chennai Super Kings player Matthew Hayden joins the commentary and analysis crew looking bootilicious in a tight sports t-shirt and low waisted denim jeans. Hilarity ensues when the star-struck Bollywood starlet, hired to add sex appeal to the crew, goofs her lines all night and keeps saying “sirf Sex Matt par! Deewana bana de.” with longing glances at Hayden.

April 17^th 2009: After the first week of fixtures the league is intriguingly placed with the Rajasthan Royals, Mumbai Indians, and Delhi Daredevils all sharing first place. Bringing up the rear is the Deccan Chargers who are yet to find their groove in the tournament. So far the tournament has surprised everyone with its success. Stadiums are full of people and the cricket has been of a consistently high quality.

To celebrate, BCCI president Sharad Pawar organizes a celebratory parade for Lalit Modi on top of an open-top BEST bus from Wankhede Stadium to Bandra in Mumbai. The turnout is abysmal and Modi reaches Bandra in thirty-five minutes flat. None of the players come along to join in except Andrew Flintoff and Yuvraj Singh. However both players turn back in minutes when organizers clarify that they did not mean “topless bus parade” in that sense.

April 23^rd 2009: With sponsorship money dwindling Vijay Mallya decides to step up promotional and brand building activities for the Royal Challengers. In an internationally televised exhibition match the Kingfisher Calendar girls take on the Royal Challengers in a Twenty20 match which the models win by 32 runs. Monikangana Dutta takes 5 for 17 in a spell Laxman Sivaramakrishnan describes thus: “Oh… yeah… oh yeah… baby… throw that ball.. throw that ball to daddy…”

April 24^th 2009: Vijay Mallya replaces the entire Royal Challengers with models from the Kingfisher Calendar. The cricketers are spun off into a B-team called Royal Challengers Red which will play without uniform, cricketing gear or any catering. However tickets to their matches costs only Rs20 each (taxes and fuel surchages extra. Conditions apply).

May 1^st 2009: In a controversial but innovative move Lalit Modi announces that all Third Umpire decisions will henceforth be decided by the public via real-time SMS polls. The system is first tried out during a Mumbai Indians vs Delhi Daredevils match. JP Duminy tries to take a quick single when a direct throw from Gautam Gambhir rattles the stumps. The umpires immediately signal for an SMS poll by using a brand new gesture: they hold up a mobile phone. After three minutes of hectic SMS polling, with millions of votes coming in from West Bengal and the North-eastern states, Debojit Saha is once again chosen as Indian Idol.

May 3^rd 2009: Something happened to the Kings XI Punjab today. But it did not involve Preity Zinta. So nobody cares.

May 5^th 2009: Shahrukh Khan announces to the media that due to an uproar from knight riders all over the world, the name of his team was being shortened to just Kolkata. This however has no impact on the performance of the team which loses its fourth straight match and slumps to the bottom of the table just above the Deccan Chargers and the Kings XI Punjab.

May 6^th 2009: Just when everyone thought they had seen all the crisis they could handle in IPL 2009, a new one erupts at the Wankhede Stadium. As the Mumbai Indians walk back to the pavilion after beating the Kings XI Punjab, Harbhajan Singh is caught on camera whispering something to Sreesanth’s ear and shaking his fist in the sensitive Malayali’s face. Sreesanth is soon in tears. Lalit Modi orders an immediate enquiry.

May 12^th 2009: A crisis is averted. In the course of the enquiry Harbhajan’s case is explained by Sachin Tendulkar who was standing right next to the pair as the incident happened. Sreesanth is represented by the CPI(M) Politburo. Tendulkar goes on to explain how the whole thing was a misunderstanding. He clarifies that Harbhajan was not abusing Sreesanth. Instead Sreeseanth misheard a word while Harbhajan Singh was, in fact, singing the old Punjabi classic: “Tutak Tutak Tutak Tootiya.”

The impartial arbitrator, Vinod Kambli, accepts Tendulkar’s explanation and dismisses the case. The CPI(M) immediately calls for a nationwide strike in West Bengal and Kerala.

May 16^th 2009: Driven to desperation Vijay Mallya sells the entire Royal Challengers operation via online bidding to Bollywood heart-throb Shakti Kapoor. Kapoor, in classic private equity style, dismantles the company into parts and sells everything except the cheerleaders part of the business.

May 19^th 2009: The season is building into a tremendous climax. The Rajasthan Royals, Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers have made it to the final four. Oh wait. Scratch that. I can hear my wife coming down the hall. When I said Deccan Chargers I mean Delhi Daredevils. These four teams have qualified for the finals.

And it looks like the Delhi Daredevils will win IPL 2009. I cannot reiterate this point enough.

May 23^rd 2009: After the semi-finals, champions Rajasthan Royals and challengers Delhi Daredevils stand firm. Both teams have lasted through a gruelling season of Twenty20 matches and fans are all set all over the country for the thrilling finale scheduled to take place in a few days time…

May 25^th 2009: … when disaster strikes. This morning a personal fax is received by media outlets all over the country from the desk of Lalit Modi. In this fax he says that for the last seven years there have been irregularities with the finances of the Indian Premier League and the league was no longer in a position to continue. The tournament would have to stop with immediate effect. He apologized to all the players and the viewers and said that things had gotten worse and worse and it was like “a lot of money just kept coming into my account and I just never knew when to stop and get off.”

When the news breaks, the Sensex immediately crashes 23%. However it bounces back sharply later in the day ending on a slight positive on the back of fresh FDI inflows, strong currency markets and good volumes in open interest.

May 26^th 2009: Madhur Bhandarkar announces his newest film project at a press meet in Mumbai. The movie will be called “Cricket”. One of the assembled press, Mr. Kalasalingam from Anna Nagar Weekly asks him: “What will be the theme of your movie this time Mr. Bhandarkar?”

Disclaimer: Everything in this blogpost is meant to be satirical. So don’t send me hate mail. I love IPL. Also Test cricket.

Teen Patti

Now that Diwali is over and the in-laws have returned to Delhi after gifting me a PSP (yee-haw!) I can narrate recent Diwali related developments in peace.

As most of you may know Diwali is that annual festival where Hindus celebrate the return of Lord Ram, millennia ago, to Ayodhya. The natives, Ramanand Sagar reminded us so vividly, stood around looking overjoyed and waving their hands in the air (like they just didn’t care) but not so much that their fake wigs and beards would fall off.

And to celebrate this momentous occasion in our cultural history we invited the missus’ parents over from Delhi.

Some of you may know that last year we had celebrated our debut Diwali in Dilli where yours truly was subject to several bouts of point blank ambush laddoo feedings and excessive kurta wearings. Also I had to light many fireworks, some several megatons in explosive strength, with quivering knees while the young Punjabi nephews, as is their way, calmly lit hot dog sized sparklers with one hand, juggled exploding strings of firecrackers with the other while their mother fed them katoris of dahi balles as evening snack.

Unfortunately due to a respiratory system that has been week from birth I was soon overwhelmed by sulphur fumes and had to retire to the living room where aunts (bua-jees) attempted to revive me with laddoos. Their voices said “Koi nahi beta, koi nahi…” but their eyes said “Hey bhagwan (wahe guru!)… please don’t let the neighbours see our lily-livered javayi. Oy hoy!”

Or something to that effect.

This year, therefore, I jumped at the chance to bring the in-laws down to aamchi Mumbai to give them a dose of that good old Mumbai hospitality to people from the north of India. Of course the in-laws are possibly the sweetest people in the world and there was much fun and games and shopping from Fabindia.

On the way back from Fabindia in the car I suggested ways of spending a relaxing evening at home: “Perhaps we could see a movie or some sitcom. Or one of the Planet Earth DVDs. Better yet we can watch people lighting fireworks from the safety of our living room windows WHILE watching sitcoms…”

The missus interjected: “Nope. We are all going to play teen patti!” Everyone else immediately sounded their approval with shouts of “Oy Hoy”. I feigned tremendous enthusiasm as well of course.

The thing is this. I don’t really get that teen patti game. And by extension I don’t get poker as well.

As long as a card game involves strategy, planning and no betting, as is the case with 13-card rummy, UNO and Top Trumps Monster Trucks, I am not so bad and seldom finish last. But as soon as a gambling component is involved I completely lose my composure. I simply cannot process that level of probability under those levels of pressure with those levels of speed. Combine that with the worst poker face in the galaxy and you have Sidin Sunny Vadukut: the Tilak Raj of Diwali night card playing.

As soon as we reached home, and while mom-in-law (a dear loving woman I might add who religiously reads every single blogpost I read before making fluffy aloo parathas that no hotel can replicate) cleared the living room floor, I confided my teenpattiophobia to the missus in the bedroom behind closed door. She assured me that she would keep an eye on me, and ensure that everyone involved me in a sporting manner. “After all it is just some good-natured Diwali fun. It’s not about winning or losing honey…”

An hour later, when I lost my fourteenth straight hand, the missus understood completely and threw my Guitar Hero 2 guitar at me.

Even accounting for my gambling ineptitude I was performing spectacularly badly. And not just because I suck at cards. The atmosphere was crackling a little too much you see.

So we sat down on the floor, doled out chips and began to play teen patti. Three minutes later the brother-in-law burst into song and punched the air with clenched fists… and this was just because he got to shuffle the cards. The in-laws and the missus–sane, normal and completely lovable people otherwise–suddenly turned into hyper-excited, adrenaline-overdosed, back-slapping, high-fiving, air-dhol playing card fiends. And the aakhri nail in the coffin was the that exquisite punjabi-hindi-card-lingo:

“Gole ka trail! Gole ka trail!” followed by “Sau ki salaami! Sau ki salaami!”

“Mere paas duggi ka pair…”

“Chaar ki chaal hai Sidin… CHAAR KI CHAAL!”

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD… Now first of all I don’t even know what a Gola is. There used to be a Gomathi Lakshmi in engineering college who we all lovingly referred to as “Gola” when she was around and as “The girl with the…”… okay that’s besides the point and she probably reads this blog.

So no, I had no idea what a studious Electrical Engineering babe had to do with my father-in-law’s killer hand that wiped the table clean and made the entire Kapoor khaandhaan explode like a can of Diet Seven-up that had been left in the freezer overnight*.

At first I tried to fit in inconspicuously by folding my cards every time before I had to bet at all. But after four or five times the missus caught on and screamed her head off telling me to be a sport using only her eyes in the way that wives can after three months or so of marriage.

So I tried to play along by making the minimum possible bets and waiting for someone to say “Chalo show karo sab log…”

Of course I would lose every time because one of the Kapoors had a “tiggi, duggi, ikka ka (ki?) sequence” or a “figgy ki trail ki chaal ka hukum”. Or some such thing. I always did exactly what my wife did and all was well. One round I won twenty-four rupees and a huge “sabaash bete!!!” but I cannot explain how.

Then after three hours or so everyone got fed up and my heart leapt for joy secretly when the wife suggested we play “Mufflis”. But then when I tried to clear the cards the missus lightly rapped me over the knuckles with the PS2 and told me that “Mufflis” was merely an alternate version of teen patti where the person with the worst cards won.

“Ab to javayi jeetega bhai!” said the father-in-law excitedly.

I got three aces in the first hand and was almost about to slit my throat with one when the missus stopped me and told me to use one of the discarded jokers instead.

A little after one in the morning, when enthusiasm had finally drained away from everyone, the in-laws decided to get up and then settle into the couches for a few hours of Diwali Dumb Charades. After a few cans of Red Bull I was feeling quite up for it actually. After all, Dumb-C was one of those events that yours truly excelled in at the inter-school and inter-college levels. And even when we all decided to do only Hindi movies I was still very upbeat.

Of course, I was randomly chosen to start. But my joy was short-lived. The mom-in-law whispered the movie name and my crest fell.

“Bedard Zamaana Kya Jaane” she said in my ear.

Oy hoy indeed.

*This actually happened later that night.

One of the nicest features of social networking site Facebook is the ability to check out hot babes who are friends with the women who work in your office intermingle with other professionals in the same industry and swap ideas on, in my case, writing and publishing and so on.

Another wonderful thing about Faceboook is how, with just a few clicks of your mouse, you can leave a private message for the missus but unfortunately, due to the three million potential places to click on the Facebook page, you screw things up and update your status to the following:

“Darling, I have cleaned the kitchen like you wanted me to. But I may have lost that box of mysore pak that was in the fridge and I was allowed to eat a small piece at a time. I have no idea where is it. Also I have a tummy upset.”

But my favourite feature in Facebook is the facility it extends to individuals like you and me to get to know ourselves better. For instance it is only after the advent of Facebook that I learnt that of all the characters in FRIENDS I am most similar to Chandler Bing:

You may have a hard and sarcastic exterior, but deep down you have lots of emotion and sympathy, and know how to make a relationship work. You are a loyal friend, and a fun guy who knows how to have a good time!

And then tragically it added: “You also have some Ross in you.”

Read together in rapid succession this was disturbing at so many single and double entendre levels.

Nonetheless Facebook has told me so many things about myself. And all through the clever use of such multiple choice questionnaires that somehow peer deep into my personality: I have recently come to learn, for instance, the following:

1. If I was one of the seven dwarves I would be Fatty
2. If I was a character in Sholay I would be the water tower
3. If I was a character from the Tolkien books I would be a nameless orc that died a quick death from blunt force trauma early on in a pointless ambience-creating battle
4. If I was a product marketed by Apple Inc. I would be a pair of replacement iPod headphones
5. And finally if I were a popular Indian management guru I would be… (sigh) … Arindam Chaudhuri

This insight has helped me immensely in my day-to-day life. Just yesterday, for instance, when the missus told me that all the guys in her office were fit, wore formal clothes to work and shaved everyday I told her: “But I am the number one in international exposure and I gave you a free laptop for your birthday dear!”

So last night I decided that I must make a questionnaire also so that, like me, readers like you can also gain great, deep understanding into your personalities. For the purpose of this personality-revealing questionnaire I have decided to use the context of the latest industry-farmer controversy in Singur in order to isolate personality types.

Please answer the following questionnaire as honestly as possible. Mark the first options that satisfies you. Do not spend too much time thinking over the answers. It will only corrupt the accuracy of this instrument. (Giggle giggle. Instrument! Giggle.)

A. Which of the following is your favourite colour?

1. Pure, intense red.
2. Anything but red. Red is the colour of corruption and incompetent governance that has strangled the people of this state for far too long. I HATE RED. In short, anything but red. I will kill anyone who picks red.
3. Minimal Moroccan Yellow, Sicilian Sky-blue, Thrifty Tahitian Tangerine and Midnight Black. Limited edition available in Vector Value Violet. (Author’s note: Option C has been asked to tone down the marketing spiel.)
4. 900 acres. Non-negotiable.

B. What immediately comes to your mind when I use the term “Parizaad Limesodawatersweetnosugarbottlewala”?

1. I do not know the answer to this question. My cadre will approach you for clarifications. (Author note: This is the right answer.)
2. This is a stupid question. We have burned your house down. We have saved our farmers.
3. Parizaad is one of the teeming masses of this country that worked for years and years without being able to purchase an affordable means of transportation for herself and her family. Now finally I will be able to…(Author’s note: OK ENOUGH WITH THE PR ALREADY!)
4. My secretary. Or maybe my cousin. It can be so difficult to tell for our people you know.

C. If three people can do a piece of work in fifteen days and seven people can do a piece of work in eleven days, then in how many days can 24 people do the same amount of work in 4 days?

1. Lunch break. Will open at 4:30 pm. Very briefly though.
2. You are going to employ only 24 people? TWENTY FOUR PEOPLE? What will the other starving masses of this country do? Bund has been declared with immediate effect all over the country by which I mean Kerala.
3. Forget how much work there actually is to do. Imagine a world where you can go to your work place in your own, low-cost, high-mileage, laughable-quality vehicle that is… FOR GODS SAKE NOW!…
4. Let me rephrase that question: If three people can do a piece of work in fifteen days and seven people can DO THEY HAVE 900 ACRES TO WORK ON?

D. John walked four kilometres towards the west, then six kilometres to the north, then three kilometres towards the east and then two kilometres again towards the west. How far is John from his starting point?

1. Ideologically John has strayed too far to the west. We see no point in supporting John any more. We have all withdrawn support. Except Somnath Chatterjee… bastard.
2. John is standing on fertile farmland that has been stolen from farmers. We give him a five second head start. 5…4…3…2…
3. With a kerb weight of just 600 kilos and a 623 cc engine, distance is never a problem for my… CHHUP!
4. John has not managed to go anywhere from his starting point. He is right where he was when he started. If I were John I would be giving up hope by now. And god only knows what John’s vendors must be thinking. This is all such a bloody waste of time. Oh no. That Gopal Gandhi is coming.

E. Just one last question before we reveal your hidden personality: The Trichy-Cochin Express starts from Trichy at 6:30 PM. The Aleppey-Bokaro Express starts from Aleppey at 7:25 PM. Both trains are approaching each other with a relative velocity of 200 kilometers per hour. Which train has a pantry car?

1. This is a high level decision that I leave to the supreme body Brinda Karat. Ha! Kidding. I mean Prakash Karat and Politburo.
2. Nonsense! When I was Railway Minister both trains were redirected to start from West Bengal. There is no need for car when there is train.
3. Speaking of parking and maneuvering, did I tell you how because of a steering radius of just three meters I am able to easily… SLAP!
4. Yediyurappa!

Score key:

Mostly 1′s: You are a wizened, old veteran of the communist establishment with many years of experience in administration. You are clean, relatively of corruption except for that one incident involving land allotment which, in the light of vast numbers of CPI(M) cadre available at your beck and call, we don’t think was anything more than a mistake in accounting. Or maybe a typo.

Mostly 2′s: You are an inspiring leader for many thousands of people trying to shirk off the yoke of Communism in West Bengal which stifled industrial development. Instead you promise a new future where the same people, now refreshingly yoke-less, will prosper thanks to umm…err…wait…one minute… Will prosper.

Mostly 3′s: You are the world’s cheapest car. (We mean that you cost the least. Not in the sense that you regift things you get in office diwali hampers.) However it looks like that you will make the Tata Group lose so much money that they will start transferring funds to your project from TCS. This will enrage TCS employees who will one day walk into your factory and lynch you en masse. Oscar Fernandes will then say something completely inappropriate.

Mostly 4′s: You are one of India’s most respected business leaders. You are always impeccably dressed, smart looking and clean-shaven. But you also remain unmarried. Are you thinking what we are thinking? What we are thinking is this: You may have some Ross in you.

Generic mallu man

People often make fun of malayalis especially by sending that ridiculous email forward about how we do no work because we spend all day tying and untying our lungis. In fact many of us upright, honourable sons of Kerala soil (Malayalam: sow-yell) intend to fight this stereotype by going on a nationwide hartal sometime soon after this tea break.

Therefore I was most happy to read a recent piece of news on the Indo Asian News Service that will finally put to rest the myth of the lazy malayali. This is the headline:

Youth held with 31 fake passports in Kerala

Do you even need to read the rest of the news piece to bask in the karmic glory of this man’s effort and commitment to duty? Yes? Ok:

Kozhikode: A youth was arrested with 31 fake passports at Kozhikode International Airport in Kerala on Sunday.

“Nissar was to leave by an Air Arabia flight to Sharjah. The search was conducted by the Air Customs Intelligence unit following a tip off. The seized items were found concealed in his luggage,” a customs official at the airport said.

Nissar will be handed over to the police for further investigation, the official said.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service

Nissar’s achievement is nothing short of being the Tata Nano of document fraud for it’s sheer invention. To put it in another way: NISSAR HAS ONE PASSPORT FOR EVERY FLAVOUR OF BASKIN ROBBINS ICE CREAM!

(My own sources indicate that the 31 passports included 11 Bijus, 7 Johnnys, 8 Babys, 4 Chackochans and one compulsary Blossom Babykutty. My sources refused to be named.)

And not content to just ship his clients to diverse foreign countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Nissar has also ensured that they get the opportunity to drive home to the labour camp right from the airport only stopping to buy full bottle VAT 69 on the way.

We are proud of Nissar Panalam and have decided to immediately bestow upon him the Kerala NRI Tilakam award brought to you by Atlas Jewellery.

Tomorrow will be holiday.

Pic. courtesy: Wikipedia A few hours after I posted this I got an email from Jogesh S, the photographer of the wonderful image above who said that I had given the wrong credits. So all thanks to Jogesh’s work and do check out this and several other fantastic photos from his collection here: http://flickr.com/photos/75621441@N00/495874906.