Domain Maximus

I was malingering on Twitter just now when fellow Cricket enthusiast and broadcaster @thecricketcouch pointed to this astoundingly entertaining piece of feedback on, what else machaan, Rediff.com. This choicest comment was posted by a reader in April 2005 in response to, I think, Prem Panicker’s online commentary during an India-Pakistan cricket match. Perhaps during this tour.

I am 50% sure this is a hoax comment. And 50% certain it is someone who has painstakingly translated their thoughts on the run from Tamil to English. I don’t care. It is so bloody funny.

Click to the page here. And search for the comment by Perumselva Pandiyan.

I reproduce it here in full. Enjoy.

***

Panicker saar: You are telling Pakistan is not having skin and India will bat out Pakistan skin and chase match for winning.

How India can chase Pakistan skin? Like that nonsense why you are telling public type of commentary? You are telling cricket commentary means you tell cricket commentary – why you are telling about skin and all? India also is not having skin because it is getting defeat in three times from Pakistan.

Also Tendulkar is Oozing, Balaji is Oozing and all India fellow is Oozing – bit Mohammed Kafi is not oozing because he is not brinjal eating fellow. But also I am putting open bet on you – you are having mustache means you take bet. I am telling starting for straight and putting bet: India will not win saar. If India win means I will wear komanam and run around your house and I will not keep mustache. If India is getting defeat means you except that Pakistan is super type of fellows and India name is in public toilet. Also please don’t keep mustache. Mustache is for male type of fellow. You are male type of fellow means you keep open bet.

Also Agarkar is useless only. Also Kumaran is best bowler for India why he is not getting chance? Also peoples are always telling that Aktha is putting 150 meter per second his balls, also Bert Lee is putting 150 meter per second in his balls. Kumara is bowling 200 meter per second in his balls. But Kumaran is not getting chance. Why you are not telling for Kumaran getting chance? Can you tell in open type of way? Are you seeing Kumaran’s balls in Ranji match and Test match in Australia? Even Steve Waugh [ Images ] is seeing Kumaran’s balls and getting afraid of his balls swinging and reverse cutting.

Kumaran is Tamilan and Dravidan man. He is not false Dravid like Dravid and he is also not false Tamilan like Balaji and all. Kumaran is clean Tamilian. Give Kumran chance also for showing reverse balls.

Yours Faithfully

Also Kumaran is original Tamilan with chest, mustache and all.

***

What better way to start a blogpost than with a disclaimer. Yes, it has been MONTHS since I posted anything. Yes, I should be ashamed of how I am neglecting this blog. And no it is not because all this book-writing and column-copy-pasting business is going to my head. No. Not at all. I am sorry you feel that way. But no. The stentorian silence here is because there is really only so many words I have inside me on a weekly basis. Professional commitments tend to use up most of them. And I don’t want to publish some rubbish for the heck of it. We are all about quality over quantity here at Whatay. Mostly.

And also where is the time after all the Twittering and cooking and posting photos of food?

But here I am. Here you are. *Platonic hugs for the men.* *Platonic pecks on the cheek for the ladies.*

We are all good again.

Also, no. This is not about the second Dork book. I have been very tardy with the promotion of that masterpiece. But then sales are not bad at all. And I am not complaining. So we shall do the shameless marketing later.

Today, instead, I would like to talk about some politics. Now as you may know India should be going to the polls to elect the next Lok Sabha latest by 2014. Some people, who have much greater granular knowledge of such things, tell me that depending on how the UP state elections turn out the UPA may be forced to seek a fresh mandate even before that. Which is very well. Anything, I say, to get rid of the putrid, paralysed, populist panjandrums currently running things into the ground.

But what bothers me is this: what next? What happens when the country goes to polls again? Who do you vote for? Who do I vote for? Why do I vote for them?

Ever since I’ve been old enough to vote in elections I’ve voted in a combined total of three panchayat, state and national polls. This is not for want of trying. But in most cases the legacy NRI status, the constant movement between cities every few years, and a variety of permutations and combinations of the name ‘Sidin Sunny Vadukut’ has left me with a trail of horrible documentation. As some of you may know my passport, school certificate, taxation records, bank account, PGDM diploma all have different versions of that name. Which is why, to make things simple and for international tax purposes, I write books as both Sidin Vadukut and Haruki Murakami.

Most recently, when it looked like I was finally going to get my name included in the Delhi electoral rolls, I moved to London. (Oddly enough, thanks to a ridiculously simple process and some colonial hangover, I am now registered to be a bonafide voter in the UK. And I have already voted in one referendum. Bizarre.)

Each time I have voted in India I have done so from my ancestral home in Kerala. Back home we are a family of medium-strength Congress supporters with the odd godless Marxist uncle who people crib about secretly. That is not to say that we don’t vote for independents or even Left candidates. We do. We have. Or that we vote along religious, caste or even wealth lines. Mostly, we don’t. In fact I always find it amusing to see how the family gets together post-election day and everyone tries to avoid talking about who they voted for. I think they do this sincerely and because while the elders try to pass some sort of family whip, not everyone listens.

I haven’t been back home in my village during election season in some time. But my memories are always of a healthy, rational atmosphere. There is a lot of the usual alcohol, cash and illegal megaphone usage. And rare bouts of brutal violence. But by and large the process is… sincere. Candidates are evaluated not only for their party affiliations but also for who they are and their track records. Representatives are accessible not just before elections, but after it as well. It is, to put it briefly, not the hackneyed, hopeless process that people tend to generalise elections as. Maybe it has changed now. But those are the feelings I am left with.

Growing up, sporadically, in this politically charged, fairly well-informed environment means that I like to think before voting.

And the more I think about the next Lok Sabha polls the more… I am left thinking.

On the one hand there is the UPA. I was one of those people who thought that the last mandate in 2009 meant that UPA2 could now shrug off coalition politics and get things done. I can still remember that evening in the newsroom when the numbers all came in. Overall, there was optimism. (Note: I conducted a blind-blind survey in the office that evening. Around 60% had voted for the BJP. Just in case you were wondering with your chormedia hat on.)  As you may be aware, things did not turn out well. So far it has been a terribly disappointing government that has not only robbed of us years of progress, but also of years of hope and optimism.

On the other hand there is the BJP. The party has produced moments of brilliance during Parliamentary debates. But I think there is much more to being a meaningful opposition. Personally, with my limited understanding of how these things work, I have found the opposition wanting. It has a crucial role to play in government. A role that cannot be reduced to a simple choice between ‘well-prepared speech’ and ‘walking out’. Time and time again the BJP, I thought, had a chance to step up and make its presence felt. In most cases I thought the opposition let politics rather than policy get the better of them. And in other cases they seemed outmanoeuvred with little effort.

And sorry, but there is a difference between ruling India and ruling Gujarat. I have had a chance to live in Ahmedabad for a couple of years. And the city and state is easily in my top 3 places to live in. Modi has done some remarkable things. But giving BJP the credit for Gujarat is akin to giving BCCI the credit for Tendulkar. I am not convinced of that argument at all. And I am not convinced of that man. (Please try to not spout hatred in the comments.)

Then there is the third front. That has seldom gone well for us.

I am still thinking of all these things. And right now the only reason I have to vote is if the LS candidate in my constituency is a worthy man/woman. From a national perspective I see little clarity.

But if I had to make a decision, I am going to do it on the basis of a wishlist. So here I am going to put out a list of things I’d like to see the next government do. Some of them may be impossible due to constitutional process. And some of them may seem irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. But it is my wishlist. And these are issues that I care about. I am pretty sure not one politician will read this blogpost. But at least the process of writing it down will help me as we get closer to the ballot box. It will help me take a call.

The Whatay Wishlist:

1. I’d like to see the next government write into law that the Prime Minister has to be a member of the Lok Sabha.

2. I’d like to see the Lok Sabha implement a Prime Minister’s Question system akin to the one in the House of Commons. The post of PM is not a ceremonial one but an executive one. The current prime minister has shown a revulsion for saying anything that is not delivered from a pulpit or behind closed doors. This has only compounded the feeling that nobody is in charge. I find this utterly ridiculous.

3. The next government must pledge to implement reform in the judiciary and police systems. It is not enough to parrot out year after year that millions of cases are pending in Indian courts or that “police reforms are very important”. It is incredulous to hear the law minister to say that “something must be done”. Too many discussions I have with people on issues ends with the lament: “but who wants to go to court??”. Again I fail to understand how, in a system that has crores of pending cases, nobody questions the system of vacations for courts. The last time I raised that someone reminded me that the American have vacations too. Fine, but they also have 104 judges per million people. We have 12.4. Much more such depressing data in this PRS data sheet (PDF).

4. The next government must take up the case of Indian NRIs all over the world. The average NRI is not the guy who sashays in on Pravasi Bharatiya Nautanki Divas and delivers a speech with one mouth and an MOU with the other. Thousands of them live in abject conditions, in countries that treat them like second-class citizens. While consulate services have improved from the horror it was when I grew up in the Gulf, they are still far from being adequate to handle the sheer numbers of people working abroad. For instance 12,000 Indian prisoners, according to one estimate, are held in UAE jails. Forget giving these people votes. Give them adequate consular support and welfare services. I could bring up consular services served up by other countries. But baby steps first.

Excerpt from UAE Embassy site:

The Library is housed in the premises of the Indian Embassy Abu Dhabi. It has a well stocked collection and comprises books on Indian History, Culture, Arts, Politics, and Literature. We are in the process of adding content to the library. It is currently not open to the public, however in near future it will be made available to the public.

5. I would like to see the government pledge to a certain benchmark target of work done, hours of business achieved and member attendance in the Lok Sabha. This is meaningless without the opposition signing up too. But one party doing it could force the others.

6. DO. SOMETHING. ABOUT. SCIENCE AND TECH! The growth in broadband in laughably slow. These recent dabblings in low-cost computing are well-intentioned at best, and perhaps a scam at worst. Vilasrao Deshmukh is the Minister for Science And Technology. Kapil Sibal is that for Communications and Information Technology.

We will carry on when you’re done laughing. Done? Ok.

So is it me, or is there a fundamental problem in the way these ministries are set up? There are some sub-optimalities I see. The Ministry of IT is sitting on a policy mess post-Raja. Solving the mess, increasing the breadth and depth of connectivity, and building a national broadband network are not technology issues as much as policy ones. Let one guy do that full-time. Why is the same chap worried about giving school kids tablet computers? Because he has too much free time?

Next, the Min of S&T’s key mandates includes things such as:

• Co-ordination of areas of Science & Technology in which a number of Institutions & Departments have interests and capabilities
• Support to basic and applied research in National Institutions

Then why in Mark Knopfler’s name is it de-linked from the department of higher education?

I can hazard an uneducated guess for the legacy behind this disconnect.

We keep moaning about the lack of science research and output and that our young people don’t care for careers in science. One simple chart should explain the problem. This is from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s website:

The website never really explains what this Zionist conspiracy chart is supposed to mean. But I suppose it means that the CSIR coordinates laboratories which are somehow connected with these departments. (Oh look, there is a Dept. of S&T AND a Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research. Puke.) But the pertinent thing to note is this: the department of higher education figures nowhere in this equation.

In other words the system that processes our young people has NOTHING to do with the system that needs scientists. You make your own inferences.

Someone needs to sit and see the writing on the wall: This is a steaming pile of Department of Suckage.

The next government must stop giving lip service to our problem with research. And do something about it. They can start by cleaning up this mammoth mess of stakeholders. Draw up sensible hierarchies. Marry the education and research processes. This might make a great way to mark the 100th session of the Indian Science Congress. For now we can only point at the website for the 99th Congress, and lament at the fact that one of the top links on the home page is for ‘Best Poster Awards’.

I would like the next government to commit a workable plan that is revolutionary not evolutionary.

7. I would like the next government to commit to improve the plight of our brethren in the north-east. That part of the country has to stop being a national afterthought. In many ways they are like wretched NRIs. Of course it not all a question of neglect as this interesting article (PDF) seems to show. But there is much that can be done in terms of connectivity, commerce and infrastructure. Don’t spout that bullshit about keeping infra poor to prevent Chinese invasion. The People’s Army will lay roads, construct bridges, inaugurate airports and conduct an Olympics in Gangtok before your under-secretary is done with his progress report.

8. I would like whoever is in-charge of the entire passport processing system and the Regional Passport Office network to be shot in public once in front of each RPO in the country. And then he should be thrown out for entering the office without having a token. After which he should be fed to ‘agents’. Surely this great country is capable of building a passport issuance and renewal system that does not involve obliteration of human dignity and towering incompetence.

The new government must overhaul this system as soon as possible. And while they are at it, they could perhaps overhaul the Foreigners Regional Registration Office network as well. That shit is insane yo. That is borderline hate crime. They don’t tell you because then you’ll call them racist.

9. Mobile banking is a fantastic idea. And will genuinely bring financial services to the under-banked. But so far the execution has been hampered by the RBI’s mortal fear that telcos will try to enter the banking sector through the ‘back door’. Now I can understand the RBI’s apprehensions. Indian telcos are as trustworthy as a Samsung employee standing outside an Apple design office. But this unspoken impasse will not solve the problem. If this means preparing a special kind of banking license to enable telcos and banks to better work together, then so be it. Solve the problem, unlock the potential to change lives. The next government must show a willingness to do this.

10. I want a Minister for Freedom of Speech and Expression. Or an ombudsman. Or whatever. Anybody who will stand up to this bizarre trend of threatening to ban ‘offensive’ things. I am afraid many, many people in this country will actually support this kind of ridiculous censorship. Given our propensity to defend the omnipotent, all-powerful and mythological with our mortal little lives, anti-offense will be a popular platform. I want a government who will not only defend our freedoms but also convince critics why this is crucial to our democracy.

11. Yes. We have a problem with our media. However I am not from the school that wants to regulate or shut down all of them. Or think that they need a morality infusion of some kind. The problem, I think, is a combination of immature producers, immature consumers and a market skewed heavily in favour of advertisers as opposed to subscribers. Things will begin to change, I believe, when a media outlet can make money selling high-quality, well-produced content to readers. Someone has to pay. If readers don’t, someone else will.

Recently I went to a business school to give a talk. Afterwards I had an informal chat with a couple of dozen students who had strong views on the media. Ok, I said, name two or three newspaper or magazines you think are top notch. Names like The Caravan and The Hindu came up. Very good, I said, now how many of you subscribe to them? If I recall correctly, the number was zero. Not one. They all subscribe to the same old rags they were most critical of. Good media does not run on goodwill. (But this is a post by itself. More later.)

The government should not be overly regulating media. But it can set an example by cleaning up Doordarshan and All India Radio. In some cases, like Lok Sabha Television, the intentions are great and the programming sounds good on paper but looks terrible on TV. There is no dearth of untold stories in India. Start with one world-class program. Blatantly copy something from the BBC. If it works, it works. It will make the private guys sit up and take notice. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We get the media we pay for.

And finally I would like the next government to buy me a Rolex Explorer II 2011 edition. Ahem.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. But these are some issues I write and read about every day, and feel very strongly about. I hope, against all hope, that one of the parties will have views on some of these issues.

Otherwise I am going to put my vote up on eBay and leverage some benefit from it.

By the way, I am sure you disagree with my list of critical issues and have a list of your own. Do write a blogpost or something and send me a link. It will be nice to know your thoughts.

For many years the missus and I had completely abandoned the idea of butter toast. Of course we always had a toaster and bread and butter at home. But somehow we stopped enjoying the simplest way possible to combine those three things. We would toast the bread, apply butter and make a sandwich of some kind with eggs or ham or–on the weekends when we had the entire morning free–eggs and ham.

But then for some unexplainable reason–middle class culinary hubris perhaps–we simple stopped slathering butter on toast and then demolishing it in that state. I am sitting here and thinking why this happened.

Nope. No idea. I just don’t know why. Maybe it was a flaky reason like over-dependance on cereal for breakfasts.

Ha ha. Sorry. I have a corn-y sense of humour.

And then one weekend three years ago someone invited us to Pune for a wedding jamboree at a place called the Corinthians.

Oh my god. The Corinthians. This is what their website has to say:

 

Who says that palaces and the royal life are a part of the past?

Surely not those whom we have had the pleasure of serving at The Corinthians, Pune.

Built to the lavish standards of a Morrocan fairy tale palace with elements of Egyptian influences, it offers you a grandiose setting for a variety of occasions.

Come tasteless people of India! We are eager to service your Plaster of Paris desires and ‘loose bermuda commando swimming trunks’ passions.

 

I made up that last line.

But to be fair to them while the resort does have all kinds of superfluous obelisks, sphinxes and Greco-Egyptian pillars all over the place, it was actually very well built. The rooms were nice and roomy. The swimming pool had water in it, and the grounds were quite huge. There were lawns and little benches everywhere and we spotted many young couples in a recent state of marriage staying there. As pharoah as I could make out, there was a lot of mummification happening.

The friend’s wedding jamboree was to take place over two days. On the first night a whole group of us decadent party animals–Pastrami, me, the women in our lives and other assorted buddies–sat up all night playing cards, antakshari and other wild party games popular in the North. (In the south we prefer Mastermind South India, Pictionary-Famous Western Classical Music Composers Edition, and the delightful-to-the-point-of-criminal game ‘Who said this in which book by Proust?’)

Hunger, like France, usually strikes Pastrami suddenly, intensely and without warning. That night too it hit Pastrami just as he was taking a breath between the line ‘Giri Giri Giri Giri Bijli Giri’ and the line ‘Oh Ispe Giri Uspe Giri Lo Girpadi’. He immediately called up room service and demanded a full run-down of all available delicacies. As it was well past midnight the only hot things available on the menu were buttered toast and masala tea.

Pastrami: “Do you have brown, whole-grain or multi-grain bread?”

Room Service fellow: “Ok. Thanks.” Click.

Half an hour later someone brought us a pot of tea and one of those small wicker baskets lined with foil and stacked with 8 slices of thick toasted sliced white bread generously buttered. I mean serious generosity. If the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation decided to butter toast–and they should–this is how they would butter it. The chef had kept going with the fat till the toasted bread could absorb no more and the remaining fat just stayed on the surface. Yellow, soft and shiny. Before this I had only ever seen butter stay yellow on bread on Amul butter billboards.

This simply never happened in real life.

And the toast. Oh the toast. The toast was of the perfect temperature and consistency. It was not so hot that you could hardly ruminate–as you must–between the imminent delight of biting and the animal violence of chewing. It was not so cold that the butter was beginning to coagulate into grease. And the texture. Toasted stiff, but not so much that at each bite the corners of your mouth hurt from the crumbs. Yet the centre was tender, without getting soggy under the pressure of all that cholesterol.

There was no doubt in our minds that this was excellent bread, fresh Amul butter and sincere toasting.

The eight slices disappeared faster than you could say: “Hey! Where is that Adarsh scam file I kept here…”

Over the course of that night we ordered four more baskets of toast.

It revived, in the missus and me, a passion for the brilliance of buttered bread that has seldom subsided since.

My earliest memories of butter toast are the slightly counter-culture version my mom used to make in Abu Dhabi when I was a schoolboy. She used to place two slices of Modern Bakery or Arirang bread, buttered on all sides with salted Lurpak, between the plates of one of those electric sandwich makers. No filling except the generosity of her heart. What has always amazed me is the versatility of that end product.

Eat it fresh and the bread is hot and delicate and crunchy. I particularly liked the crusty end-bits where the heat and clamping sometimes fried the bread. To this day I cannot handle the fiends who throw away the crusts of toasted bread. Philistines.

I even loved mom’s clamped butterwiches cold. Which is usually how I had it during the vacations when I woke up very late indeed. By then the bread would have become cold, and slightly soggy. But also the sweetness in the bread would shine through better at lower temprature. This late consumption also confuses the butter. What is this, the butter thinks to itself. It is warmer inside the mouth than outside? Confused, it slowly melts in your mouth, melding with the masticated bread into…

I have left the rest of that sentence intentionally blank.

Over the years since then bacon, ham, eggs, beans, waffles, muesli, puttu, kadala, prantha, enthusiastic mother-in-law, bedmi puri, appam and egg roast have stood between me and the simple pleasures of fatty bread. When you’re staying in hotels, for instance, tanking up on toast somehow seems a waste of all the other scrambled, fried, poached and griddled delicacies. Especially if a breakfast buffet is involved.

Can anything not made by Apple compare to the experience of waking up in the morning and walking up to large 4-foot wide vat of scrambled synthetic eggs armed with a ladle, a large warm plate and no adult supervision? My first few hundred breakfast buffets on business trips were a haze of eggs and meat and the odd guilty yoghurt.

But now, with the passage of age and the slight dilution in sex appeal, I have corrected my youthful ways. I now appreciate the simple pleasures of a bowl of cereal, some milk and some slices of thick, rustic bread toasted sensitively.

I then pick each slice up by the corners. The finger tips immediately process the vital characteristics: crunch, give, heat. Butter must be applied generously, quickly and systematically. Amateurs start in the centre and then work towards the edges. Fools. The centre is usually most warm. So the by the time you are done with the edges the centre is wet and soggy. Fools.

Also never waste time repeatedly moving from slice to butter container. This is usually seen in the case of guilty, gym-going hipsters who start with too little butter hoping somehow that this will be sufficient. Fools. This is why they are still slightly fat and mostly unhappy. You can always remove excess butter from a slice of warm toast. But a slice of toast will never wait for your hesitant, cautious buttering. There is also the chance that you may be offered cold butter, or butter in tiny fiddly containers. Demand warm butter in case of the former, and open the container fully in case of the latter. Don’t peel back the foil half-way and assume you can manoeuvre with your knife.

Scoop a generous helping of warm butter in one go, enough for the slice and then come. Then dab it strategically at one or two points towards one edge. Then work it across the whole slice in broad, confident strokes. Only in one direction please. Otherwise you will apply, remove, apply, remove, apply, remove like Pakistani life cricket ban. At the end take any excess butter and throw it away. Do not reuse. Especially don’t think you can move quickly and butter another slice with this. That is the kind of reckless, wasteful adventurism that led to Pune Warriors.

Butter and eat one slice at a time. Make each bite count. Crunch, think, chew. Ruminate upon the simple things in life. More than anything else, let this remind you of that old adage: Good things happen to those who weight.

Enjoy your toast.

Everything in this post is absolutely true.

This happened in the summer of 2004 when I was an intern in Mumbai, wrote blog posts, discovered DJ Suketu, and was still something of an up and coming star on the national junior body-building circuit.

Ok fine. Everything from this point onwards is absolutely true.

So in the summer of 2004 I was being subject to the most depressing summer internship in the history of summer internships. Yes. I was ‘subject’ to it. It was that bad.

My two-month long project was to go around Mumbai and Pune asking surgeons if they would consider using my employer’s latest model hernia mesh. I had to wait outside their usually grubby office for hours at a time. And then emotionally blackmail them into filling in a 40-part questionnaire about this superb, high-tech new hernia mesh.

Which begs the question: What in god’s name is a hernia mesh?

A hernia mesh is, I can reveal to your considerable delight, a piece of surgical gauze that is used to temporarily cover the aftermath of a hernia operation. My first week involved not only reading about various types of hernias and meshes, but also watching DVDs of operations, pre and post-op photos, and working with a surgery simulation machine at a training centre located on the back side of a hideous Mumbai local railway station.

Some of the stations on the Mumbai network have a back side that is nothing but an exit for the overpass. There is nothing else. No facade, no ticketing windows, nothing. Just metal sheets welded to each other, dust, heat and miserable people in a hurry. So imagine my joy. Whenever I wanted a break from my surgery training machine, I could look out of the window and see above mentioned visual delight.

After a month I had a terrible heat stroke and passed out in a taxi while coming back from an appointment. My project guide suggested I take a week off to recuperate, rehydrate and refrain from mailing him for mentorship. A week later he told me to basically abort the mission and spend the rest of the second month working on the final presentation.

One Friday afternoon, around lunch time I think, I took a taxi to make the short trip to a friend’s friend’s house somewhere near Babulnath. My health was somewhat better now. But it was not like I was back to daily early morning powerlifting again. That would take another few weeks.

I got out of the cab and paid the cabbie. Then I walked around one of those old building where all the stairs creak and rattle, the flats are huge and there is a general sense of decay when there really isn’t. The sort of place where business families and their dogs in Mumbai have been living for generations. I went up two or three flights of stairs, waked up to his front door, and then…

And then realised that I’d left my mobile phone in the taxi cab. I immediately ran back down with the moderate velocity of one who is hopeless but wants to give up after a fight.

There was no sign of the taxi. The embarrassment and anger and frustration hit me like a brutal inguinal hernia.

I went back upstairs. For the next few hours my friend and his friends all consoled me and told me that they would all pitch in for a second phone of some kind.

And then my friend got a call. Come immediately, said a gruff voice in Marathi, to a police headquarters of some kind. He told us to ask for a certain police officer when we reached there. It was regarding my phone.

Unfortunately I do not remember the exact details any more. I remember it was a Crime Branch office of some kind. It was a huge compound with many labyrinthine office and pakka PSU style name boards and peons and all that. Two friends came with me. All three of us were terrified of the place. Finally we found this Inspector’s office and asked his peon to let us in. He popped into the Inspector’s office, came out and then told us to wait. Then, just before letting us in, he warned us: “Be careful. Don’t anything unless he asks you. He is a dangerous party.”

We went inside. He was on the phone and asked us to sit on a row of benches against the wall opposite his table. One of my friends, a veteran Mumbaikar who used to know all the DJs and bouncers at Insomnia at the Taj, told me to keep quiet. He would communicate if required. Meanwhile the Inspector spoke on the phone with a slow, ominous drawl.

“The memory card is not working,” he told someone. “You are selling faulty memory cards to a police officer?” And then he hummed with satisfaction once or twice and then cut the phone.

By now tension hung in the room thick and cold like supermarket caramel custard. The three of us sat ramrod straight. Of course there was no need for this. He would just return my phone. It was not like there was anything incriminating on my phone. But not one of us had ever spent any time inside a Police facility ever before.

After a few moments of silence he asked whose phone it was. I told him it was mine. He asked me if I was Madrasi. I leapt from my chair, reached across his table and slapped him across the face, saying firmly: “BLOODY FOOL! WHAT DO YOU MEAN MADRASI? MALAYALI OK? DON”T STEREOTYPE!”

Ok not really. And thank god for that. I just nodded nervously.

He picked up the phone from inside a drawer and handed it to me. Be careful in future, he said. The taxi fellow was a friend of his. And so he returned the phone. I had been very lucky. Most things left in cabs are never found.

Also, he added, I should call my family in Kerala and tell them what happened. He had dialled ‘Home’ on my phone and left a message with my grandmother in bad english involving the words “Mumbai Police, Inspector, Problem”. And then he had dialled my last called numbers one after the other. Till he got my friend.

We ran out of the office and I made the necessary clarifications at home. We joked about this for a few months after. And then completely forgot about it.

Till suddenly, earlier this week, I suddenly spotted the fellow in the news again.

Dey murder: ACP says allegations against him absurd

14 Jun 2011, 1858 hrs IST, AGENCIES

After his abrupt transfer, a senior police officer, who could be questioned in the killing of investigative journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, today said he had nothing to do with the murder and that allegations against him were “absurd”.

Assistant Police Commissioner Anil Mahabole, in-charge of Azad Maidan division in south Mumbai who was shunted to Local Arms Control Room in suburban Naigaon yesterday (June 13), said he was being falsely implicated in the case.

“The allegations against me in the case (Dey’s killing) are absurd and wrong. I have nothing to do with the case. I hope the investigating officials would be able to detect the case early and catch the culprits soon to clear the air,” Assistant Police Commissioner Anil Mahabole told reporters at his residence in south Mumbai.

Creepy.

Small world.

When I was a kid I absolutely loathed going out shopping with my parents. Not that we embarked on protracted shopping trips too frequently. But when we did… shudder. Supermarkets bore me, textile shops siphon the life force out of me and, worst of all, my Dad’s proclivity for watch showrooms frustrated.

We’d be walking along some side road in Abu Dhabi hunting for ‘sale’ when suddenly Dad would disappear. We’d look around and see him mimicking walking, but not really moving at all, outside a Rivoli or Al Fardan or Al Futtaim gawking at an Omega or a Patek or a Kolber of some kind.

Over the years he did develop a small collection of watches with one or two expensive ones in them that he, I daresay, nurtured like children. After a while he infected a bunch of co-workers with the watch bug. And then every few months they’d all buy and sell watches to each other and feel quite posh.

I hated it.

But that kind of thing does leave residual tendencies.

And now I write about watches for the newspaper. And I bloody can’t get enough of the thing.

I can’t afford any of them. But, as you will see, just looking at them is a balm for the soul.

Hope you enjoy our second watch special (below) and the first in what will be a periodic series of MintWatch specials. This one is on the SIHH fair that happened in January. There should be at least two more this year.

Sometimes your parents make complete sense retrospectively.

Hmm.

***

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So far this blog has a notorious reputation for almost never publishing the Part 2 of a blog post that I originally intend to write in parts. (Except the Letters from London. I suppose. Which aren’t really serial-ish.)

But the other day someone left a comment on old write up I put up. It was about a delightful week-long trip I went on to Colombo. The commentee wanted to know when I would write A Strait Apart – Part 2.

Chances are never. I don’t think I remember enough of that trip anymore. Though I still have notes somewhere. On my old phone I think. So who knows.

But as providence would have it, someone who was on that trip with me suddenly sent me an email earlier today. The email had some picture attachments.

I’d borrowed Maria’s camera at the National Museum in Colombo after running out of space on my own.

But as with most of my trips, and almost all photos I take on such trips, I’d completely forgotten about them minutes after boarding the return flight to Chennai.

Maria, none too unforgetful herself, also never emailed them to me. Till today.

I’d like to post just one of them. The most interesting one.

The National Museum in Colombo is as good as any museum of such scale in India. When I visited, the place was over-run by local school groups. However because this is Sri Lanka, and even the kids here are given a glass of coconut arrack in the morning, things were still languid, humid and relaxed. In one room, near the entrance, there was a flat screen TV in one corner looping a DVD on Sri Lankan history. In the opposite corner a museum staffer sat at a wooden table and snored luxuriously. And no one seemed to be bothered by this. There was no embarrassment or sniggering.

Sri Lanka is that kind of country.

But there is plenty to look at in the Museum. Sri Lankan might be a small country that is only half as big as Tamil Nadu–and even then 40% of that is Arjuna Ranatunga. But they have great history, wonderful architecture and were mean engineers in their time.

So as I was floating from gallery to gallery I suddenly noticed, lined along one end of a connecting passage, a line of toilet-like things. All made of stone.

Some of them were easily recognizable as ‘excretion stations’. Others looked slightly more bizarre:

Ass-tentation. Tee hee.

I don’t know about you. But the above toilet looks a little bit like the PWD contractor was trying to make the most of an extra window and his lowest bid.

But in fact that toilet was found in a Buddhist monastery. I was told that toilets like this were found inside dwellings for monks that were otherwise devoid of any ornamentation. The only element of their living space that had any decorative stonework was this toilet you see here. Why was this so?

Apparently at the time non-Monks on the island were spending vast sums of money building palaces and castles and such like. Monks, as you know, abhor such ostentation. (Which is why that fellow sold his Ferrari remember?)

In order to ridicule the luxury of non-Monk homes, and drive home that such things were evil, only monastery toilets had decorative carvings. The monks hated luxury so much… they crapped on it.

On the way out I walked through the TV room again.

This time a bunch of children were watching the screen. Behind them one of the parents sat at the wooden table. And snored luxuriously.

But that’s ok. Sri Lanka is cool with that.