Domain Maximus

Two unfortunate incidents happened over the course of last weekend.

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

Incident No. 1:

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

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

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

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

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

“You’ve REALLY bloated up man!”

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

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

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

Incident No. 2:

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

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

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

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

InterconinentalMissus: So Sidin… what is your real name?

Sidin:

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

Sidin: It isn’t.

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

Sidin: No. “Sidin” is my real name.

IMrs.: Oh…

Pastrami: CHOKE LAUGHTER CHOKE CHOKE

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

Sorry if my typing reads hoarse. But I’ve been ill all of Sunday, took Monday off and came in today over-helmed by a sense of duty and obligation.

But I always have time for a little blog post.

So Saturday Pastrami, the missus and I spent a rather productive day consisting of bagels, foot massages and Dostana at that Cinemax in Bandra with the bargain Lazy boy seats. While we were biting into our bagels and sipping on our Doppio’s pastrami suddenly sat up and ran to the counter to ask for the day’s Bombay Times.

“You must read the horoscope in today’s BT man. They are howlarious!” Pastrami panted as he flipped the pages.

Now I was prepared for the worst you see. With all these job cuts and banks in trouble and financial turmoil we all try to laugh as much as we can when Pastrami cracks jokes. Even the weird, banker-type jokes where the punch line involves phrases like: “And then he said why don’t we just look at perpetuity after five years and finance the whole using convertible debt warranties! HA HA HA HA HA HA! Phew!” or “And then the prospective girl’s parents asked him what desk he worked on and he said structured debt and they all got up and ran away…even the broker…”

Which is just sad.

But lo and behold. Pastrami was actually right. The horoscopes were hilarious and mostly completely pointless. I have intrepidly managed to track it down:

Finolex Fortune

Gems include:

Leo: You may choose to get out into the world and to grasp all to learn, can become negative and selfish. The energy of the day will require you to be more outgoing. You are probably having the most influential aspect.

This was either written by a bad machine or dictated over the phone to someone who hates his job, sitting on Friday night writing the horoscope. Eitherways it is a masterpiece of… I don’t know really.

Please click on the image to read it in full.

Also, when time permits, read this fascinating article in October’s Smithsonian Magazine. Its free and available in full.

Maybe I should get my DNA checked as well. What if I was related to…shudder…Mark Knopfler?

Later crocodiles.

Foot where?

Transcript of conversation with anonymous public relations professional on newsroom phone a few days ago. Edited for readability.

(Phone rings)

Sidin: Hello… Sidin (It is a miserable habit of mine, that line. So many people respond by saying: “No.”)

Random PR professional: Hello Sidin! This is <mallu name> from <name of PR company>!

S: Hi. Tell me.

RPRP: I have been reading your work for a long time now. And I am impressed.

S: (Sensing a catch somewhere…) Oh thank you very much.

RPRP: Especially the wonderful work you’ve been doing in the area of Law firms and legal services…

S: (What the…) Oh I see. Which stories in particular?

RPRP: Oh the one… err.. you know the story… this particular one… I mean the one on…

S: (Aha! The plot thickens…) Oh you mean the one I wrote last weekend?

RPRP: EXACTLY! That one. It was so, so, so good…

S: On legal services no?

RPRP: Yes yes.

S: Ah but I have NEVER EVER written a single world in my entire career on legal services and law firms…

RPRP: Never?

S: Not once.

RPRP:

S:

RPRP: Maybe I have my information wrong.

S: Maybe you do.

CLICK!

Sniff. Cough. Wheeze.

Quite pleased with this longish cover story in last weekend’s Lounge. Too long to cut and paste the whole thing here. But here is a little amuse bouche of the story and a link to download the pdf of the two-page spread.

Have a terrible cold. So don’t expect anything cheery for a day or two. Or week. Sigh.

—

The telegram is dying

After a century and a half of binding the country together, the messenger of the masses is slowly becoming a remnant of the past

Shruti Chakraborty and Sidin Vadukut

On a recent weekday evening in south Mumbai, the Central Telegraph Office (CTO), a stone’s throw from the raucous Flora Fountain traffic circle, is abuzz with noise—not of customers but carpentry work. CTO, one of the district’s many heritage buildings with solid stone facades, humbly stands in the shadow of the considerably taller Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) office behind it. The MTNL office itself is overshadowed by the even taller and more imposing Videsh Sanchar Bhavan tower next door that houses VSNL offices. The three form a pecking order of telecom offices—from the swanky Tata-owned building at one end to the sad, sorry old CTO at the other.

Finding the telegraph counter in CTO means walking through an unmanned metal detector, past a dark, gloomy foyer, which is being converted into what looks like a modern bank with counters and glass partitions between them, and into a narrow corridor on the right.

There is not a single customer in sight. When asked for a telegram form, there is a moment of hesitation before one of the two employees behind the counter gets up and hands a piece of paper through the slot—it is a telegram application form that doesn’t look much younger than the CTO building itself.

“The telegram business has gone down a lot. Before, we used to send 1,000 a day. Nowadays, we get 100, sometimes 200,” explains a portly man behind the counter with a smile on his face. He counts the words on the filled-in form handed to him, checks on a laminated sheet of paper for the charges—Rs26 for overnight delivery of a 22-word telegram to Delhi—and then he hands back a counterfoil.

But when he checks the billing machine at the counter, he looks a little embarrassed. It was a few minutes past 5 in the evening, the end of a working day, and the Mumbai CTO had only sent 37 telegrams the whole day. Visibly upset, he quickly says: “We will send more today. We are open 24 hours for your service you know. Maybe some more people will come.”

In all likelihood, however, they won’t.

—

You could read the story online here. But I’d rather you download the PDF here. And no there aren’t any jokes in it. So for your daily dose of amusement you may want to revert to the dependable people at Newsmax.

Many of you think believe that us blogger/writer/journalists live lives of luxury and excess. What with the traveling, the informal work attire and the fluffy deliverables. “Maybe this week I will write a piece on the potato!” is what most of you think we are thinking about all the time with our feet propped up on our tables and pint bottles of Carlsberg in our hands. No meetings to attend, no spreadsheets to crunch and no reports to file.

But alas the truth must be told. Our lives are not all milk and honey. We do not live merry lives. And this current economic downturn is hitting us very hard indeed. To highlight this I present the photo of a note the maid left on our refrigerator door a few days ago. Merely the act of embedding it here is causing tears to well up in my eyes.

Look what the global melt-down has done to the Domain Maximus household:

Balanced diet. Not!

Merely a diet of pulao and nimbu pani is what fuels this blogger. Have mercy readers! I am accepting donations in the form of cash and Nintendo Wiis.

Okay now I need to go get another Carlsberg.

p.s. The other blog has a little graph you might like to check out. Especially if you have an MBA.