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(As seen in the Lounge edition of 16 April 2010. I had a much longer uncut version somewhere. Will post when I find it.)

It might seem presumptuous to judge a country by your experiences as you land for the first time at the airport. But sometimes, airports are splendid barometers of culture. Heathrow, for instance, immediately has you thinking: “What atrocious advertising! Surely, this is the kind of nation that would give rise to Monty Python…”

Zurich’s airport, on the other hand, is all straight lines, simple signage, orderly queues, meticulously timed shuttles, pressed uniforms and insurance advertisements. The message is simple: “Welcome to Switzerland. We have banks. We are very clean. And our very clean trains run on time.”

So sterile and generic is the airport that at one point it felt exactly like Dubai airport in the minimal pre-Burj 1990s. But only with Nordic white people instead of Malabari muscle.

But don’t let that fool you. Switzerland is rightly held in high esteem by tourists of all races, colours and packages. It is the sort of country where you could, if you had the stamina, photograph everything in sight. Even the policemen.

Having had our passports stamped by two splendid samples of the Zurich constabulary, my colleague and I ran to the railway station across the road. The two of us were on a hectic business trip that would have us visiting Basel and Geneva, with our base in Zurich.

Thanks to a shortage of rooms, a bus load of Singapore Airlines cabin crew, and an unrelenting Turkish man at the front desk, we suddenly had 4 hours to roam around the city before we would be allowed to check in.

Off we went on an inspection of one of Zurich’s premier museums, the Kunsthaus. Literally, “House of Art”. The word kunst, not to be used without some practice, is something of a hold-all German prefix for paintings, sculptures and such art forms. So you find kunsthauses and kunsthalles all over German-speaking Europe.

The one in Zurich is easy enough to find. There is a Kunsthaus stop on the tram network. Pop out of the tram and one sees a stately, if boring and bank-like, building. Inside, however, is the most delightful art museum, with a compact collection that spans centuries. From works by old masters, such as Van Dyke and Rubens, to the sculptures of Cy Twombly that belong to the “What the…” abstract genre.

It is a rich, busy and varied collection, with something for every kind of art lover. One floor alone of the museum had works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Giacometti, Rothko and Pollock crammed into a corner. There is nothing to not like about Zurich’s Kunsthaus, except for the very poor collection of fridge magnets in the gift shop.

After an hour and a half of walking around I suddenly noticed something very strange. “Hey RS,” I asked my colleague, “where is all the security? I don’t think there is anyone on this whole floor…”

“Oh the Swiss are very trusting,” RS said with the wisdom of someone who has travelled many times to Switzerland on work. “They expect you to follow the rules here.”

The rest of my trip I couldn’t get this out of my head. Trams had no ticket checkers. Entire 2,000 sq. ft shops had one aged Fräulein minding the counter. In department stores such as the popular Globus chain, you could wander through acres of merchandise without a security guard ever peeking from behind pillars.

This trust reached its peak at Sternen Grill (details follow), where they let you pick up crusty buns from an unsupervised box kept on the counter. They trust you to pick exactly as many as your bill allows. But they don’t check. You could spend all day walking past that box picking up buns and no one would notice.

By contrast, I am not allowed into the kitchen by myself at home.

RS and I spent that night in the hotel room debating this bewildering tendency.

Much is made in local promotional material of the fact that Zurich has overcome its staid reputation for being a banker’s den. And has now become something of a regional party town. But these are not luxuries meant for the per diem-ed. Instead we focused on experiencing Zurich through its eateries. After all, a man has to eat. Even the guys in accounts understand that.

A quick hop from the Bellevue tram station, Vorderer Sternen is a combination of restaurant, bar and food stall. The food stall, called Sternen Grill, serves up its signature bratwurst with a hard crusty bun (CHF6.50, or around Rs270), called Gold Burli, and a little cup of fiery mustard.

The first bite into that veal sausage, with its abundant meaty insides and crisp but not un-pliant casing, is a moment of epiphany. The bread, on and in the other hand, is crunchy on the outside but soft inside. The kind of loaf that hurts the corners of your mouth. But satisfies. The mustard was so good, and it is good everywhere in Switzerland, that I bought back a large tube of local Thomy mustard to Delhi.

The next time I had a free evening in Zurich I went hunting for the Zeughauskeller, an ancient armoury-turned-beer house and restaurant. Even if you don’t have a penchant for beer, meat and potatoes, the Zeughauskeller has great atmosphere, period architecture, and is a good place to spot the locals in their natural environment: with beer, meat and potatoes.

Nati the waitress handed me a menu in English and I ordered a Zurich speciality: Kalbsgeschnetzeltes nach Zürcher Art.

Yes, you order a portion by pointing at it in the menu.

In plain English that would be: sliced veal Zurich style (CHF33.50).

The sliced strips of veal are pan-fried and then doused in a creamy white wine sauce with mushrooms.

While I waited, I sipped on beer and looked around. There were noisy, bald, beer-drinking frat-men. Tourists from Japan. And a near-romantic local couple who were sharing a large table with some young college boys (table-sharing is quite usual in Switzerland. As I would soon learn at Hiltl).

On the walls around were large etchings of fearsome Swiss medieval badasses in armour. I didn’t linger on them much till I realized one prominent part of their armour. A huge, er, cod piece. They were the size of little buckets (enter bratwurst joke here).

Thankfully Nati soon came with my little bucketful of veal and massive roesti.

The food was very good. The service was superb. And the ambience was spectacular. Do not miss Zeughauskeller when you visit Zurich, and don’t forget to look at the sign at the door which prohibits smoking there because of the “live grenades” stored nearby (imagine if these guys weren’t neutral when it came to wars).

Now before you throw up your Iyer/Iyengar/Jain vegetarian hands and curse the veal, beer and potatoes… hold on. Let me introduce Hiltl, considered one of the best vegetarian restaurants not just in Zurich or Switzerland, but in all of Europe. Initially we ignored such claims, assuming Hiltl to be one of those tourist traps at best. And new-age organic, raw food type places at worst. But one night, RS, an uncompromising “One-spaghetti-carbonara-but-no-egg-no-fish-no-shrimp-no-meat-please” veggie, had enough of eating bun and mustard left over from my bratwursts.

Hiltl was a revelation. First, there is the concept of paying for your food by weight. After each trip to the buffet you weighed your plate, printed out a little receipt and kept it with you. At the end of the meal a trusting waiter totted up all the receipts.

Second was the food itself. An utterly respectable spread of hot and cold vegetarian food, with everything from a splendid cheese quiche to green peas samosas and paneer (cottage cheese) masala.

Third, we were squeezed into a huge oblong table along with at least four other groups. There was some initial awkwardness and elbow jousting. Till the quiche and paneer happened.

Then just as we got up to stagger back to the hotel, the waiter, till then a silent apparition, suddenly asked us if we were Indians. We nodded. “Hi. My name is Virat. I am from Rajasthan. You guys should come for Bollywood Night at Sugar Lounge on Thursday.”

Virat handed out invitation cards for the event. On one side it had pictures of a man in mammoth sunglasses, spiked hair, looking trendy and far into the distance.

“Who is this guy?”

“That’s me.”

“Who, DJ Happy? You are this DJ Happy?”

“Yes. I do DJ on the side to make money.”

Virat then told us about Hiltl, about how Morarji Desai once ate there—“There are photos in the office”—and how it was something of a meeting place for Indian tourists. He assured us that his Bollywood Night was a not-for-profit social initiative.

“No no. No money for that. It because there are very few Indians in Zurich. Mostly computer people. Come for one or two years. There is no community spirit. I am the president of the Indian community in Zurich. I am trying to get them to socialize.”

Virat then gave us a quick list of things to do and places to see in Zurich. Which we enthusiastically noted down. And then never referred to again.

You see, we had meetings.

My parting dietary engagement with Zurich was at the Sprüngli outlet in the departures duty-free. Sprüngli is a chain of bakeries and confectioners with outlets all over the country. They are world famous for their Luxemburgerli—mind-blowing-light-as-air macaroons, and fresh truffles.

How fresh? There was a lady from Sprüngli actually making truffles at the airport. She let me sample one in dark chocolate. And then one in milk chocolate.

“They are very good yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “They are the best.”

“Uhuh” I said as tears of joy welled up in my eyes.

I want truffle. I want bratwurst. I want visa extension. Now.

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I am back. Again.

Ahem. Hello there. Welcome back.

As you may be aware this blog was away for three months doing authorly things like launching, reading, interviewing, posing for pictures, reading good reviews, reading bad reviews, crying ourselves to sleep and so on. And amidst all the celebrity-ing, Pranab Mukherjee presented a Union Budget. The union budget is pretty much the highlight of the annual calendar for the business journalism business. (Whatay play on words.) Which means the Union Budget is one of those “do anything as long as you are doing something” periods in the office. And boy did we do things. Many, many things.

Of course today no one remembers anything Minister Mukherjee said or announced during the budget.

(When I say no one, I am NOT referring to professional and hobbyist economists. Those guys are still going at it with shouts of “Good golly there is fiscal widening happening here!” or perhaps “I am perturbed by the supply-side inflationary tendencies of the moneterary policy implications of this policy shift…”.

Economists. Oh yeah. Those guys are fun.)

But for the rest of us the Union Budget was the Rashomon to the Rail Budget’s Wrestlemania XII.

FYI: That’s the one in which Shawn Micheals beat Bret Hart in the first ever WWF Iron Man Match.

PFA budget. @shashitharoor Pls. RT.

Mukherjee needs to do something about the public recall of the budget. How can he get people to talk about his budget for years and years after he presents it? How can he get coverage on every channel from CNBC to Dwarka Entertainment Network?

Exactly. Get Shashi Tharoor to live tweet the budget. Preferebly a day in advance.

So now that all such matters are behind us and in the past, I can perhaps share some of the more memorable moments from the last many months of hawking Dork to all and sundry.

First of all there was the wonderful experience of seeing Dork at the Full Circle Bookstore during the Jaipur Literary Festival. Which is where we cracked open the first ever cardboard box full of copies fresh from the press. In complete, reseplendent, uber-literary lemon-rice-yellow glory. Aayush Soni and Samit Basu were amongst the first buyers to ever pay for the book and indirectly earn me Rs.15.92 per copy. (Yes. Name-dropping.)

Next morning:

Sidin: “Aayush Aayush Aayush, have you read it, have you read it, have you read it, did you like it, did you like it, did you like it…”
Aayush: “I started reading it. And then I fell asleep.”

My lips said “That’s ok, Jaipur can be pretty exhausting Aayush. Tell me when you finish.”

But my mind said “Sidin stealthily approach one of those Festival khullar chai-wallahs. Steal his huge bronze tea drum. Then batter Aayush to death with drum. Write literary book about experience and block calendar for Jaipur 2011 invitation. Working Title: A Humpty Drum Tea Murder.”

Thankfully the response I got from the venerable Samit Basu was drastically different.

Sidin: “Samit Samit Samit, have you read it, have you read it, have you read it, did you like it, did you like it, did you like it…”
Samit: “I started reading it. And then I fell asleep.”

As you can see, the initial market response for the book was less than stupendous.

But things went up from there. We were 13,000 copies down some three weeks ago. And Dork continues to sell.

That was not the only Dork-highlight involving the Mulleted Basu.

Oh yeah.

The Mumbai launch had Samit and Gul Panag launching Dork, and me trying to gurgle up complete, gibberish-free sentences while talking to Gul Panag. During the un-gift-wrapping of the book, Samit ceremoniously pulled on the pink ribbon, and then let the book fall to the floor. There was an audible gasp from the crowd… who saw the book fall and then collectively internalized the spectacular dress Gul was wearing.

But then things went well after that and the Mumbai launch, much like the Delhi launch with Jai Arjun Singh, comprised laughter, banter and reasonable sales. The flightless ones are pleased. And so am I.

Book launch season also means many interviews and some photo shoots.

I will be honest with you here. After a point, there is a tendency to lapse into auto-pilot during interviews. Mind you, it’s not that interviewers don’t try. It’s just after a point, it is well nigh impossible to be asked an un-asked question. So there is an element of going through the motions.

Except, that is, when the interview stands apart. For bizarre reasons.

Like the guy who was paranoid that I would eat something expensive at the restaurant we met in, and make him pay the bill. When I ordered the Chicken Kathi Roll and Diet Coke, the blood drained from his face:

Sidin: “…so no, I dont think of any of the characters have been directly inspired from…”
Dude: “Excuse me…”
Sidin: “Eh? Yes.”
Dude: “I would like to tell you that I am not carrying any money in my wallet.”
Sidin: “Ok… Umm… Ok… No problem…”

And then moments after I completed the food and asked for the bill with not a hint of hesitation:

Sidin: “…so many inspirations. Books, movies, TV shows. Especially a lot of British…”
Dude: “Thank you so much for your time. I will go now.”
Sidin: “…”
Dude: *poof*

I don’t need to tell you that only the worst possible pictures from photo shoots finally make it to print. Or that around a quarter of my interviewers made desperate attempts to get me to bitch about Chetan Bhagat.

Sea Harrier doing its thing.

But then now, when I am thoroughly over the emotional roller-coaster of launches and reviews and interviews, I sit back and wonder. About the questions I’ve never been asked yet. Including those about books. And me. And the Harrier Jump Jet capable of V/STOL.

(I might cover ground I’ve blogged about before. Or not. I don’t remember any more. Afteryouth.)

For instance when did I really begin to read? As in read even when it wasn’t mandated by the CBSE or ambitious “At least read the newspaper for ten minutes, instead of watching Different Strokes on TV no?!” parents.

It all began sometime around 1985. I remember the incident clearly, if not the date, because there was a fire. A tiny little fire, confined to one corner of one room of one apartment. But a fire nonetheless. One that needed fire fighting. How exciting for a six year old no?

The fire broke out in the mostly empty flat next door, occupied by a Malayali family a day or so away from abandoning Abu Dhabi and moving back to India. (In the 80s. Who left the Gulf in the 80s?? Maybe only them.) They’d already started emptying the flat, room by room, and shifting everything into a cargo container. All that remained was one room which had some old clothes, old toys, kitchen utensils and such things that had no functional utility, would be a waste to ship, but were of borderline sentimental value.

And books. A closet in a corner had a man-sized stack of books. Most of them were damaged with covers missing and broken bindings. Others were useless ones like out-of-syllabus textbooks, and orphan volumes of old encyclopedias.

The fire had already begun to leap at the stack of books when mom and I started a bucket chain relaying water to fight it. (The brain works in such weird ways. I recall orange and red buckets, and mom running out of our front door, around the stair well and into the neighbour’s house. In her petticoat/nightie.)

As reward for my valiant fire-fighting, and in order to save on shipping costs, I was allowed to keep a few books from the stack. Mom, ever proud and independent, allowed me to pick up only one. I took the cover-less, slightly browned single-volume encyclopedia with the big colourful pictures in it.

For many years after the book had a strong smell of char and smoke. And then it began to pick up smells from my own cupboard: old blankets, pencil shavings and fountain pen ink. Finally it made up its mind and decided to smell comfortingly of home.

Mohenjo-daro Mr. T.

At first I liked only the pictures in it. Then I began reading the captions. Statue from Mohenjo-Daro. Man building a roof. Spectrum of colours. Isaac Newton. How a nuclear reactor works: in three steps.

And then, slowly, I began to read the paragraphs.

Soon it got obsessive. I’d lie belly down on the floor and read it always. Mom, and to a lesser extent dad, were staunch believers in the fact that 100% school attendance, well eaten meals and plenty of sleep in the afternoon were essential for growing children. (And indeed much physical widening happened in the years hence.)

So I would secretly slip the book under the bed, and when everyone else fell asleep, I’d roll over to the edge, pull the book out and read it. Sometimes with one slyly open eye.

Thus it began. With non-fiction mostly.

We never had too much money for years, and I normally got my books as a post-examination reward:

More than 5 A+ grades = Hundred dirhams for books and Atari cartridge.
3 to 5 A+ grades = Atari cartridge.
Less than 3 A+ grades = Name removal from ration card, visa cancellation, legal separation from family and “go and become a coconut tree climber or something…”

I got a lot of A+ grades. The first time I won a 100 dhirhams Vadukut gift voucher, I spent it all on one of those “Monster Book Of How Things Work” type publications. (It was the book Dad liked best from my shortlist.)

This was a stupendous achievement in publishing. Spectacular pictures, copious data, tremendously fun narration. It was here that I first read about:

1. Ayer’s Rock
2. D-Day and Normandy landings and therefore,
3. The Second World War
4. The Harrier Jump Jet with vertical/short take-off and landing.

The book had a wonderful hand-painted map of the beaches at Normany with hundreds of little markers and flags. And then there were comparative illustrations of American and German soldiers. Every few sections there’d be an illustrated three or four-page graphic story or biography. Gordon of Khartoum. Florence Nightingale. Famous mountaineering tragedies. Pele. And so on.

D dei!

That book kick-started a life long passion for World War II. At least 25% of all the books I have bought have something to do with the war. (And history in general.) Indeed it wasn’t till years later, maybe when it came up in school, that I began wondering about the first world war. (Between you and me, I’m working on a ambitious-ish World War II book idea. Proposal due early 2012. Fingers crossed. And of course I need to do that PhD in history.)

Forays into fiction are owed to a pro-active school library, the inevitable Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew clubs and excellent children magazines published by local Abu Dhabi newspapers. And, perhaps most importantly, a trip to a discount supermarket once that ended in a big bag of cut price children’s versions of classics: Moby Dick, The Last Of The Mohicans, Man In The Iron Mask etc.

It must have taken at least 5 years for me to work through that shopping trip. To this day I find it harder to cope with fiction. A stack of begged/borrowed/bought New Yorker magazines in a cupboard here in Dwarka. And not one page of fiction even touched.

Salaried employment, author discount, review copies and online bookstores now ensure that I don’t need to get grades or top exams to get books. I can always buy them when I want to. Provided the missus lets me.

But of course you don’t care for all this do you? Of course not. Or someone would ask me all this in an interview.

Sigh.

Have a good weekend. I have weeks of columns and a couple of longer pieces to complete. And yes, book reading trips to Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune.

And we are merely 800 words in to Dork 2. Manuscript due June.

Take care. Give kids books. (GiveIndia can help with that. Click below.)

P.S. One of the Pastramis became a father in December. The mother is healthy. The child is very healthy and already shows a propensity for bond market trading.

Photo of Mumbai launch from Raven_b’s superb Flickr stream. I am most grateful. See more here.

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Earlier this week, the night before the solar eclipse thingie happened, I am sitting at the barber shop in Dwarka under the KFC outlet. And I am feeling particularly unsettled. It is my first visit to this place you see.

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

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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…

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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]!

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(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.)

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When we first met and got talking, it sounded just like another one of those coffee-shop mouth-off sessions with Pastrami. (No. Not that Pastrami. This is about the other one. Different business. Same complicated personality.)

Every couple of weeks Pastrami, the missus, a few other mutual friends and yours truly get together to, by and large, make fun of each other. Take each other’s trip. Now you might be forgiven for thinking that this sort of routine gets lame after a while. How much fun can you poke at the same people fortnight after fortnight right? Right?

Wrong.

Pastrami and I once spent an entire overnight train journey making fun of a particular female friend’s nose. Five, maybe six hours of purely nose-based humour.

It was quite a remarkable nose of course. Long, pointed and with a mid-stream course correction that made it hook downwards, and slightly to the left hawkishly before ending in a well-tapered, not at all chunky point. It was not a freakish nose. Some people could have pulled it off. Alas our friend was not one of those. And when extreme boredom struck Pastrami and me minutes after leaving Aurangabad station, we quickly converged on the nose for amusement:

“So does it echo a little bit when you sneeze?”

“Can you touch your tongue with the tip of your nose?”

And the classic:

“How can you possibly head-butt anything at all?”

Alas this particular evening Pastrami had other things to talk about. Which, if I had known about, I would have made up some random excuse, something marriage related perhaps, to avoid meeting him.

Let me explain.

As soon as we settled into one of the tables in the corner at the Costa(lot for) Coffee at Connaught Place, Pastrami squirmed a little uncomfortably in his chair, as men do in such circumstances. And then he said: “Sidin. I have fallen in love. I have asked her to marry me.”

I kept scrolling through Twitter updates on Blackberry hoping that the moment would pass and Pastrami would move on to something else. But he did not. He repeated: “Dude! I am in love. I have asked this girl to marry me! Dude. Listen!”

And so I had to.

Now in most cases when a close friend falls in love and decides to propose to someone, this is a cause of great joy for the entire friends circle. And naturally so. Aren’t we all glad to see a friend find that someone special to spend the rest of his or her life with in love and affection, till some form of gaming console or broadband connection do them apart?

Not exactly. In reality there are several base, negative and downright selfish reasons why we are glad to see a friend hook up with someone.

For instance married men love to see single male friends hook up because there are really only so many times you can laugh off other people’s bachelor exploits before slowly crying yourself to sleep on your side of the double bed. Single men also love to see other single men hook up because, thanks to the weird probabilities that govern male life, your friend is going to date some smoking-hot Anjana Sukhani look alike. A babe who is SO out of your league that she is in some completely other sport if you know what I mean. (Anjana will then fool around with you because you are harmless and call her “bhabhi” all the time, when your actual mental train of thought is more along the lines of “slutty nurse”.)

I am not one to hypothesize how women’s minds work. But when a girl decides to hook up with a guy, I believe her female friends’ mental flowchart is as follows:

1. Wow she is going out with someone!
2. The bastard better agree to marry her…
3. Because she would look so AWESOME on her wedding day (leading to the most important and critical next thought…)
4. AND THEN I CAN GET MEHNDI DONE!!! WOO HOO!!!

But in Pastrami’s case things are not so. When Pastrami tells me he is in love, my train of thought is along the lines of:

Oh. Shit.

This is because, for all the years I have known gentle, sensitive, prone-to-auto-accident Pastrami he always, without fail or exception, falls for the MOST CRAZY ASS WOMEN in the world.

I do not jest. These women are freaking night-mare inducing, restraining order generating insane. Stark raving. And that is saying something for that gender.

For instance there was the one that would always drop in, to say hi and possibly make out a little, by barging into his room without warning Kramer-like. Initially this was a cute quirk that temporarily suspended Pastrami’s “I will be naked when I am alone” habit. Later we discovered it was because she wanted to know if he was ever with any other women in person or on the phone.

Then there was the one that, in her spare time, wrote jolly comic verse about people who wanted to commit suicide.

And who can forget that crazy girl from Goa who’d break up one day, drop in for the night the next, then break up again. And then sex chat with him on Google Talk only to break up again and then make up again and then sex chat again all in the space of a brief afternoon. She left poor Pastrami a mess of mixed messages and hair-trigger emotions for weeks. I’d ask him if he wanted to do coffee and he’d ask, reflexively, if it was because he’d ”screwed up something again without knowing.”

And in each of these cases Pastrami wanted to marry them immediately and have children and a house in the hills. Alas it would be left to his friends to pick up the pieces and console poor Pastrami and nurse him back to sanity. Largely by making jokes about unrequited love around him till his sorrow was spent and he laughed along.

So when he sits in a cafe and breaks the news that he is in love yet again, ideal responses would be to talk him out of it, hit him over the head with that humongous cup at Costa and hope he develops retrograde amnesia, or stab yourself in the throat with that ridiculous cheese twisty thing they serve there and then die a slow death. Anything but the crazy woman you’d have to handle for him.

Alas I was just in the middle of Retweeting something on the Berry and, before I could pick up an ornamental polished marble ball from the potted plant, Pastrami blurted it all out.

The young lass was well-known to all of us having been a year junior to us in college. She was of sound mind and had a penchant for some emotional poetry. And a looker to boot. So prima facie there was nothing to suggest a mental imbalance other than the usual womanly foibles. (Stuff like “You just like Yoda because he talks funny.”)

And then Pastrami began to speak of how they’d been in touch for a long time over email and chat—the lass works abroad. And how after a recent visit by her to Delhi he’d decided that they were meant to be together forever:

P: “Sidin, she came all the way to Delhi just to meet me. For a few hours. From XXXXX!”
S: “No shit. Did she say that? Did she say she came JUST to see you?”
P: “Well not in as many words. But she has no other friends. No other family. Only me. ONLY ME! DON’T YOU SEE! IT IS FINALLY HAPPENING!”
S: “Are you’re sure she did absolutely nothing else at all in Delhi?”
P: “There was this friend’s wedding. But otherwise every minute of her day was Pastrami-time!”
S: “Oh shit.” (Reaches for cheese twisty.)

And if that wasn’t weird enough Pastrami then narrated, in great unnecessary detail, about all the conversations that they had and all the subsequent insights into her personality.

For instance he was going to propose to her in Paris (The city. Ha!). Because that’s the place she’d got on her “Which is your favourite city in the world?” quiz on Facebook. Also he had discovered that her favourite poem in the entire world was Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning. So he’d asked for her hand in go-out-ship by quoting the “Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be.” lines from that poem.

Pastrami also said that the few moments they’d spent together in her hotel room was heavy with sentiment and emotion. They had hugged at some point and according to Pastrami it felt “just right”. And even the woman said that she “loved the hug”.

So far things seemed normal. Apart from a penchant for poems that are over 190 lines long, our lass seemed largely harmless. And then, just when I thought he’d finally found a sane woman, Pastrami said:

“Just yesterday she called me at 4 in the morning and asked me to write a poem for her on the spot. It was magical Sidin. This despite the fact that she is yet to come to a decision whether she loves me.”

Completely unlike the CBI, I was stunned by this new evidence. What? She did not love him yet?  She was still making up her mind? Extempore poetry at 4 AM? WTF?

Apparently, Pastrami explained, our girl was still coming to terms with the fact that someone was in love with her. Apparently she did not know if she was ready to reciprocate. She was still not getting “goosebumps” when she thought about him. Also it seems she was sill trying to find out what the “concept of love” really meant to her.

Pastrami asked me if I got goosebumps when I thought about the missus. Because the missus was sitting with us at the time, I told him that in many parts of my body the skin was permanently goose-bumped, like a durian, from intense affection. I then asked Pastrami how HE knew that he was in love. He said that the magical moment had been when he had escorted her to Delhi airport.

They’d reached well in advance of her flight and he’d taken her to that shady south Indian restaurant near the terminal for a coffee. After snacking and chatting, presumably about weird poetry, they got up to leave. Both of them approached the cash counter and she’d insisted she’d pay. Suddenly her mind went blank calculating her bill, she fumbled for her wallet and, according to Pastrami, “she just looked so darned adorably silly fumbling with a simple bill.” Pastrami immediately swooped and picked up the tab.

She said that her brain was suited more for poetry than mathematics while Pastrami’s mind was so analytical and fast. Never to let a moment like this go waste, Pastrami uttered a line that has never been used between a man and a woman in a romantic setting before:

Multi-faceted

“Darling I just love to see you doing silly things. And fumbling with math. Frankly my dear, I think my left brain is in love with your right brain…”

She was left speechless. Also all of us and one passing-by Costa waiter.

It was clear that Pastrami was quite pleased with his monumental pick-up line. He sat back in his chair at Costa and smiled smugly. He asked me what I thought. I told him that it was a great line. And then made a joke about how Pastrami and Poetry Babe had at least one good brain between the both of them.

The rest of the night all of us just sat and mostly made fun of Pastrami’s brain. Or the left half in any case.

As for their love story it progresses gradually. The lass is still waiting for her moment of epiphany when she suddenly gets goosebumps and realizes her passionate love for good old Pastrami. Pastrami spends most of his nights, pen in hand, ready to create magnificent poetry for her at a moment’s notice. This is what he wrote that day at 4 in the morning:

To understand a love that is unrequited
Consider a candle that is, at one end, ignited.
If you respond that it’s the standard way it is conflagrated
Wait! I’m not done. Let me make it a little more complicated.
This one-side-lit candle, further, balances about a delicate axis
and, as one side wanes the other, relatively, waxes.
And this creates an imbalance which, as we know, Nature abhors.
But what is to be done when one party is indifferent while the other adores?

And the only thing keeping this world from going completely crazy
is that while A loves B, B loves C all the way through till Y loves Z.
Though the As, Bs, Cs, all the way through till the Ys will complain
that, with one-sided love, imbalance is, only, a minor pain.
And when A speaks of B
you can clearly see
that B’s mere presence
justifies A’s existence.
But when B speaks of A
suffice to say
from how A is derided
Love is, clearly, one-sided.

Unrequited love also, it seems, makes the skin thick.
Words from B that would, earlier, have cut to the quick
no longer seem to affect A in any way.
Also rendered ineffective is any passion A might display
What A and B fail to realize
is that as each candle diminishes in size
A and B, inexorably, draw near
and where A ends and B begins becomes unclear.
And while B is resisting and A is pining
even this dark cloud has a silver lining.

Let the Lovers and the Loved always recall
that ‘tis but one wick that connects us all.

Yes. Pastrami is really, really in love.

Crap.

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After the thumping success of the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League last year, many people in India have just one thought on their minds right now: Is there any way to up the 1000 bucks per couple we charged last year for unlimited warm beer, vulcanized chicken tikka, and service with a smile when customers leave? Because when I say people, I mean the guys who run that bar at Phoenix Mills in Worli, Mumbai.

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.

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Wednesday was one of the tougher days I’ve had at work. I was multi-tasking on several stories, never a good thing for a writer, and had several Google Docs windows open on my workstation. A farewell lunch for a colleague, who is in her notice period and leaving early December, at The Tasting Room at Raghuvanshi Mills didn’t help with my rapidly overbearing workload. After a well-proportioned Tuna sandwich I ran back to the office to polish off an editorial piece on business education. It was filed an hour late.

A short intro piece to a pictorial cover story scheduled for later this week followed. And I was barely half way through it when I got a call from my contact at a PR firm: “Your request has gone through. They will give you an hour-long slot from 6:00 to 7:00 PM. Dinner is out of the question.”

The CEO of a very important and large international company was in town and I had requested an hour-long dinner meeting with her. This was for our popular weekend profiles page. They had reverted on Monday with a 6 to 6:30 half-hour slot. I told them it was pointless to talk to her for half an hour. And then, two days later, the PR firm had managed to inveigle out an hour long slot. It would be in her suite at the Taj Palace hotel near the Gateway of India as she already had dinner plan that night.

Around five, just as I ditched the intro piece to run downstairs and catch a cab, the publicist called back to say that the interview had been postponed by another half an hour. My meeting would now be at 6:30 PM. I gasped in relief. Now I would reach early and have enough time to chill out at the Taj lobby, double check my audio recorder and take a leak before I met the CEO for our interview.

I found a cab almost immediately and ran over my interview questions in my head for a while. Then I pulled out my Diwali-gift PSP and played the penultimate stage of God of War (on Easy mode of course). As the cab pulled into the road by Regal Cinema I saved it just before the final boss battle, stuffed it back into my messenger bag and then pulled out my audio recorder.

There was a line of two business types in suit jackets ahead of me at the metal detector. When my turn came I handed a security guard my messenger bag and walked through the metal detector. The guard felt all over the bag and then handed it back. I, in a split second, ran through all the jokes me and the missus make about these insipid security checks they do all over Mumbai at malls, hotels and multiplexes. A quick feel, nary a glance and a wave through.

Walking into the Taj lobby is one of the most dependable ways to reduce my blood pressure. The AC kicks in first, then the piped music and finally the shiny, warm, clean, buzzy ambience. I look to see if there is a guy on the piano. I always do this. Its a habit that can’t be explained.

That night there wasn’t. The piano sat quiet.

The next thing I do, without fail, is marvel at the doors into the Zodiac Grill and wonder what lies behind. Who lies behind? What astronomically large bills are being presented and paid? And then, like always, I promise myself that once the book is out I’ll make a million bucks and take the missus there. (She doesn’t admit it but a meal at the Zodiac Grill is clearly one of her short-term life goals.)

I walked around for a bit, made one circuit of the arm-chairs and sofas and then settle into a corner of a two-seater still fiddling with the audio recorder in my hand.

Oh wait, some of you might remember the audio player. Remember that Benq mp3 player I bought so long ago from Abu Dhabi and which some of you readers dissed me for? That very same, now replaced by a mighty 80GB iPod, serves as an audio recorder. It records audio superbly, is tiny and can store up to six and a half hours of recording in serviceable wav format.

In the minutes before every interview I handle I tend to fiddle with the player to calm my nerves. I switch it on, check capacity, then battery, switch it off and then do it all over again. I can never get used to the process of suddenly turning up one evening and probing into the personal lives of CEOs. Most oblige but it can still be a little nerve wracking.

The lobby is not as busy as usual. As I wait, a suitably socialite looking woman speeds down the lobby followed by an older woman who reassures her that “It is okay to wear shorts here baby!”

I recognize no one except for a Mr. Wickmann. (My memory may not be precise on this.) I know his name because of the quaint and subtle way in which the Taj summons people waiting in the lobby. Someone walks around with a little whiteboard, with a name on it, stuck on top of a stick There are two small bells on the stick which jangle as it is carried about. Around 6:20 or so someone comes looking for a Wickmann. Wickmann is a tall, white-haired man with spectacles. The staff member escorts him away somewhere.

The publicist picks me up around 6:35 PM from the lobby and we walk down the corridor that connects the new Taj to the old one. To me that walk is the shiniest part of the Taj. The windows and floors and lights all combine to make it this shimmering tube of light. I noticed little of the walk, though, as the publicist made small talk about the global economy and recession and what our paper thought and so on. In fact the only thing I did notice was a show window. It was empty except for a bottle of Dom Perignon on a little stand in the corner. At the time I thought it was a very poor display for Dom Perignon.

We went up the lift to the sixth floor of the heritage building and then took a left, over a flight of stairs to the CEO’s suite in the corner. I was too strung up for the interview to notice the wooden barristers and ornamentation of the corridors of the old Taj.

Our interview started late but lasted for just over an hour. She spoke about her life in the industry, her weekend pastimes, the Indian market and how she once served in the Israeli army. Then it turns out that she has dual citizenzhip: Israeli-British. I quietly admire the cosmopolitanism of it all and then sip on a black coffee. She offers a few hotel chocolates and biscuits but I refuse.

We get up after I switch off the audio recorder and exchange business cards. We shake hands and then she tells me that she’s off to meet a few local business associates for dinner. We share some small-talk and then I finally leave after a short but interesting interview.

This time when I step out I look around and smile.

The old Taj is quite simply a stunning hotel. There is so much to look at everywhere. The walls, the carpets, railings and art are all pretty special. And I have plenty of memories strewn all over the Grand Staircase. There was that quiz that we came third in a few years ago thanks to a stunning last round on Tata history cracked by yours truly. And that evening, after a horrible training session that may have damaged my brain permanently, when I first thought perhaps I should really write for a living.

I am accompanied to the lift and then down to the lobby by the CEO’s personal assistant. We talk about how beautiful the hotel is, how awesome London is and how we must meet when I am in the city next time. We go separate ways at the bottom. She scurries away to organize something about dinner and I walk back through the connecting corridor back to the lobby.

I stand in the lobby for a second and think of what I should do next. I could go and buy some sandwiches from the Taj deli for later. They are very expensive but you do get good authentic cold cuts. Or maybe I could call the missus down to South Bombay for dinner.

But then she has been feeling guilty about missing the gym for so long and I decide against it. Dal roti at home it shall be. I walk around the lobby a bit. And give myself an eyeful of all the rich and famous. I also note to myself that the flower arrangement tonight looks very lame. Sometimes the Taj places absolutely fantastic arrangements. Not that night. After ten minutes of loafing around, and bidding farewell, I turned around and walk out through the glass doors. I stand on top of the steps, look out to the sea for a brief glimpse and then trot out to a taxi. The publicist then runs up and offers to share a cab and drop me at Prabhadevi.

We leave the premises at around 8:15 PM give or take a few minutes. Two hours later those bastards attacked. That night I see the Taj burn. The fire leaps from a room on the sixth floor possibly right next to the one in which I interviewed my CEO.

I will never, ever forget that sight.

My CEO was located unharmed the next morning. Perhaps many of the other people I walked past and nodded at politely were not.

When the Taj returns to business, as it must, no prizes for guessing who will be among the first to go back into that lobby. I must.

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2. Length is not necessarily a good thing
3. "Yes you may put your foot in your mouth now sir…..

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.

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