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.

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.

I know all this sounds terribly boring. But in reality it is spectacularly boring. But it must be done. Personally I am a believer in freestyle spelling. But many readers get very upset and send emails. Which I would like to avoid this time round. So more attention will be paid to grammar and niggling things like tense shifts. (D1 was full of horrendous tense shift things. Did you noticed it?)

D2 carries on a few months after D1 and takes place almost completely in London. This is not because I’ve been living here of late. It was always planned like that, with D3 happening back in India. But there is really very little London in it. (Unless lots of London will make you buy the book. In which case it is brimming with London.) But it was a pleasant coincidence to write of the same city you are typing in.

Our plan, ever since Penguin and I first discussed it in mid-2008, has been to tell Robin’s story in three books, with the ultimate aim being to make him CEO by Book 3. That plan is proceeding well. Otherwise significant changes have been made from my initial plan for the book. There was too much material in the CDs I found under the sink. So I had to cut and chop and shift things a bit. (Ahem.)

Anyway I won’t bore you with all those things right now. There is plenty of time for that. Also I need to leave some gossip for marketing no?

Instead let me share some data points that will, I hope, whet your appetite:

• D2D1 is currently 62770 words long. That will increase by another 2000 words by the time D2D3 is finished.
• That should translate to approximately 300 pages or so in print. But this is fully variable.
• Most of the book was written using Scrivener on a desktop and a laptop.
• A Dropbox account was used to sync the project between both machines.
• The whole things took around 5 months to write. But most of the writing happened in the last two weeks.
• Writing was usually done to background music by Earl Klugh, Fourplay, George Benson and this wonderful mix of Rainymood and The Fragrance of Dark Coffee. Anything with lyrics completely distracts me. So does anything that is too fast, too slow and too complicated. Smooth Jazz seems to be working of late.
• During the writing process I read the following: A history of the Popes, a biography of Paul Dirac, The Eye of the Red Tsar and, as I got closer to the deadline, Michael Palin’s Around The World in 80 Days. Reading humour books keep me cheerful. But I am paranoid about being too influenced by what I am reading. Palin’s travel non-fiction is most satisfying without leaking into Robin’s head. Now I am reading Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis.
• I write entirely in 14-point Georgia font. Have been doing so for 4 or 5 years now.
• In order to help me focus I removed a bunch of apps from my computers, and stayed off updating Twitter for two weeks. Whenever I wanted a break I played Stick Cricket on the iPhone.
• It will take at least 6 months from now till release date. Which means November-ish maybe? I hope so
• I am thinking of doing something online as a bonus track, if you will, for the book.
• The next project that is already beginning to ferment in the brain is a crime novel. (Yes, I know you are going to make Sreesanth-bowling jokes.) But no, seriously. A crime novel has been obsessing the mind for months. I have written just a little bit. Why not? You live only one life.
• Otherwise life carries on as usual. Mint, Cricinfo, Twitter and now a little Facebook.
• I intend to spend the next two weeks doing nothing but watch cricket, eat, cycle a little bit, read and blog/tweet/poke.

What else? Nothing much.

Enough about me. You tell me. What is up?

But I also miss reading.

So then I did the math. Unless something drastic happens to medical science or to my income levels, I simply will not live long enough or have enough free time to read all the books, magazines and Wikipedia entries I want to in life. It is physically impossible.

This is a depressing thought no?

But of course I do not want to depress. So please go read this bizarre New Yorker Shouts and Murmurs piece.

Alternately, my woefully neglected Instapaper RSS feed is here.

What else?

Oh yes. There are positive developments on the Cubiclenama front. But I cannot confirm it right now.

Bye.

P.S. Apologies if these little posts are clogging up your RSS feed. Things will be likewise for a while. Feel free to temporarily bury feed at sea.

It has lungis in it…

At first there was a lull in the conversation while malllusss mulled his words. On the face of it he could be asking why Malayalis wear lungis (sarongs). In which case there are entire books written on the topic. I don’t want to go into details but benefits include:

1. Easily adjustable for size of wearer. You can gain or lose weight or height without overhauling you wardrobe.

2. Fold can be raised or lowered depending on height of rain water, quantity of beer, volume of music.

3. Sustainability: after many years of satisfactory use a lungi can be converted into a blanket for babies, a durable kitchen towel, a restraining device for capitalists, or a shirt for Shah Rukh Khan.

4. Ventilation.

I could go on and on.

Part 2 of the France travelogue shortly. Maybe tonight.

But the book takes priority, as you will no doubt understand.

This came in the email day before yesterday. Harish, as you can see, has mega-tons more experience than I do. And also runs a big company. So you should probably listen to him.

***

Further advice to the MBA Class of 2011

Dear Mr. Vadukut, and MBA students navigating placement season -

Your “Cubiclenama” of last week, containing advice for the graduating MBA class passing through the madness of placement season, made for inspiring reading. There is a strong case for making it compulsory reading at all business schools. I must clarify that I am from a very ancient MBA Class of 1987, but some of your sage advice is relevant to all MBA students and alumni, however young or bald they may be. I have indeed begun balding, but am yet to finally conclude whether this is on account of a quarter century spent in corporate cubicles, or a sign of true wisdom that comes from reading various pieces of excellent advice such as yours.

I agree with all the advice you have proferred to the new MBA batch, except your recommendation that they should forget Pink Floyd. This is simply because it is never possible to forget Pink Floyd, despite the fact that we first heard many of their songs in the midst of alcohol fuelled stupor or even worse. Hence, you are asking for the impossible. In any case I must point out that it is quite appropriate to sing their signature number “We don’t need no education” when we finally leave the portals of business school, which is possibly the last educational portal most of us will ever pass through. Many of us will say a very loud Hallelujah to that.

Now, there is further sound advice I would like to share with the MBA class of 2011 as they step into placement season, which builds on what you have told them. To begin with, you must not merely answer questions from the august panel of interviewers. Many of us who are part of interview panels these days also like to be questioned, since we get questioned all the time in our offices anyway. A day without questions is like a dancefloor without music, or Elizabeth Taylor without a husband. So ask your interviewers a few simple questions, such as :

“Are you really happy at your job, Sir ? And what makes you so ecstatic at work, if I may ask ?”

“Do you have really beautiful women in your Organisation ? I mean, even rough approximations of Katrina or Angelina ? Do you encourage dates, Sir, either blind or visually vivid ones, with colleagues ? And a last question, Sir, given the high costs of dining out, do you fund these dates ?”

“What is the best and worst thing that has happened to habitual latecomers in your fine Organisation ?”

You can gradually progress to more complex and interesting questions, such as –

“Sir, can you tell me how you segment consumers in your industry ?” (rest assured, questions on consumer segmentation can never be answered correctly)

“Sir, how can smokers light up in your Company, without breaking the law ?” (from my years of experience, atleast one member of the interview panel will be a smoker, and hence likely to be an implicit breaker of the law. You will therefore never get a honest reply.)

“Sir, do you permit the wearing of bermudas in your office ?”

Now, this last question may appear unusual, but it is a very important investigation to make. Reliable dipstick research has shown that offices which permit Bermudas are generally happy-go-lucky places which you will enjoy forever. If they permit quick tots of Jamaican rum, a delightful liquid close enough in origin to Bermuda, they will be even better. But if an Organisation says No to a Bermuda or a Jamaica, be doubly cautious about accepting an offer from them, because you may end up in a stuffy office which has never ever heard of Dilbert or Vadukut. Sadly, such places exist.

You must also enquire from the interview panel whether the Company parties often, and if so where do they go to let their hair (or what is left of it, in some of our cases) down. If the initial response to this question is positive, go ahead and offer to organize a party that same evening in your dorm. Here is a valuable insight. Most interviewers crave to get back to their campus lives, and there is nothing like a rocking party to soften them up completely. You can play Pink Floyd, mix drinks liberally, and provide colourful bermudas to the interviewers as well. The Chairman of your Placement Committee should be kept away from these happy events, and use good masks all around since these days photographs and leaks appear liberally on the internet, even if Julian Assange is in some sort of custody.

Masks are good advice, actually. Use masks during the interview. Mask everything interesting or illegal you have done on campus. Mask your mathematics scores, if you can, or attribute the dismal performances to the flu you repeatedly suffered during exams. Falling ill is the most natural thing that can happen in business schools, and is sound preparation for your later life in an Organisation.

But let me cut to the only serious point I really want to make, which is the direct opposite of masks. Unmask your passion at the interview, and say what you really want from your career. Tell the interviewers what excites you, what you want to really do in your life. Speak spontaneously. Stand up and speak, if you wish. Loosen your tie, and roll up your sleeves, even if this is considered heresy. Nothing will show you in better light than speaking about what really moves you, and how. Show them that there is fire in your belly, and that it burns brightly. All good interview panels look for the spark within you, but you have to unmask it first.

Here’s hoping you land a job of your dreams !

Harish Bhat

(Harish Bhat is Chief Operating Officer – Watches, Titan Industries Limited. These are strictly personal views, and are quite likely to be disowned by both his Organisation and Alma Mater.)

Unfortunately the version you read in the paper was the bastard child of two versions of the piece: the first one I had written before the missus had a chance to quality control, and the final one after. But something got lost in email transmission. So not everything is in the right place. For instance there shouldn’t be two references to shaving. And there are some lines missing, which jar.

This is what the final version should have read like.

P.S. Now I know you’re thinking that this is a complete cop-out and I am merely doing this to update the blog without actually putting in any effort into writing an original post. You are thinking very correctly.

P.P.S. I might start an email newsletter.

P.P.P.S. I want to drop everything and write a crime novel.

***

Ladies and gentleman of the MBA class of 2011,

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, a good USB memory stick would be it. The long term benefits of a USB stick has been proved by the number of times people lose laptops, or are suddenly asked to submit resumes on a plane or at a conference. The rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering work experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy your last few days in business school. Chances are that you’ve already cynically dismissed the whole bloody place. But trust me, in 5 years you’ll attend an alumni reunion and realize that business school was perhaps the last place you were both truly intellectually challenged and emotionally excited. Both those things will happen again. But rarely together.

You are not as smart, or stupid, as you think.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to make investments based on research reports that will, one day, be written by that same clueless idiot sitting next to you in the canteen right now. The real troubles in your life will never be solved by a presentation or spreadsheet, and will always involve other people. And people are unpredictable sons of bitches.

Spend a little time everyday doing nothing.

Listen.

Don’t expect organizations to be as committed to you as you are to them. Organizations don’t work that way. If you do find one that is as committed, never leave.

Jog. (Or walk briskly, or cycle, or do yoga.)

Don’t judge yourself by how much money you make. Someone you know is always making more than you. (And no good comes from knowing who this is.)

Record all the feedback you ever get in your career. Especially the inaccurate, pointless, biased and vague bits that drove you nuts. This will help you when you eventually give feedback to somebody yourself.

Keep a copy of all your old resumes. When you are struck by bouts of existential crisis, flip through them in chronological order. Do the same with resignation letters.

Decide.

Not a lot of people are ‘meant’ to do something or the other. They just say that to sell bad books. Salman Rushdie might make an excellent, and content, supply chain management consultant. Who knows? You will find various amounts of meaning and satisfaction in various things. Choose your compromises wisely.

You’ll like the job a little better if you like the dress code.

Take chances when you’re young, single and don’t have loans to repay. You’ll take larger chances. Large chances are more fun than small ones.

Be nice to people for the heck of it.

Maybe you’ll retire when you’re 45, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll get an Awesome Alumnus Award, maybe you won’t, maybe you will marry your school sweetheart, maybe you won’t. Whatever happens, do not forget those probability lessons they taught you in school. Things tend to even out.

Dance. But keep it classy.

Avoid reading business books. However feel free to write them.

Travel light.

You will most certainly face difficult choices. In most cases it helps to think of what choice maximizes gain, instead of agonizing over what minimizes loss.

Invest in a good suit, pair of shoes and get a shave. Thanks to society’s shallowness, your return on investment will be considerable.

Calm down.

Let people give you advice. Develop the art of looking interested even if you are not. Pay attention to advice from people who have a stake in your happiness, and not a stake in your success.

Please stop listening to Pink Floyd.

But forget everything else. Quickly go buy that USB stick.

Best of luck.

***

If you have questions, thoughts, musings and such like leave a comment. Discussing things might further help a lot more people.

I write to you this morning regarding the latest Cricinfo column where I spoke about how the grossly inflated scores in contemporary cricket were sure to scare away youngsters. There was also some blending of cushions involved.

Many thanks to those who tweeted/wrote/outraged back to say that they liked the piece.

Therefore what you hear next will surely shock you.

The version you read on the Cricinfo website was a second iteration. One vastly different from the first one I sent to the folks at Cricinfo. My first column, which started identically to that column, was called “How to tell if a cricket match is fixed?”

Unfortunately I was told that the venerable cricket website has a strict no-match-fixing-not-even-if-it-is-a-joke policy in place. And since my column seemed to condone, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek, match fixing, they asked me to give it a full rewrite.

Now it give me great pleasure to say that in a world exclusive, this blog will publish the original version of that cricketing column. As you will see it starts identically, but goes to entirely different places.

I’d sat up till four in the morning writing it. And it seemed a pity to let it go waste. So, as they say in Germany, et voila!

—

How to tell if a match is fixed?

When even Ireland is scoring 300 runs, fans need to know when they’re seeing the real thing. This is how you can tell.

Many years ago, way back when I was a gawky but not unhandsome boy of 7 or 8, my younger brother and I used to spend our school summer vacations at my ancestral home in a tiny village in the southern Indian state of Kerala. (Kerala is also, incidentally, the home of S. Sreesanth, the cricketer popularly known as the Louis Vuitton of Indian pace bowling. This is because even though he is very expensive, he is very attractive and there is always very high demand for him. Especially in China.)

During these vacations I was normally watched over by my paternal uncle. My uncle, a kind and caring man, is of the persuasion that children should be involved in rigorous physical activity and should spend as little time as possible indoors. Doubly so in the case of me and my brother because our favourite indoor activities included gently electrocuting pets, liquidizing small items of furniture in the blender, and going to the toilet in the VCR.

Therefore he devised a unique variant of cricket that would keep us occupied for the entire day. My uncle would bowl comfortable medium pace at one of us while the other one fielded. The batsman could only be dismissed by being caught by the fielder. There were no stumps, no LBW, no run outs, no stumpings or any other means of getting out. And of course there was no limit on the number of overs bowled.

Which means you either scored a four or a six. And nothing else.

Often one batsman could bat for an entire day without being dismissed. But even then the best my brother or I could ever manage to hit in one day was something in the range of 250 runs.  In the 1980s and 1990s this was a stupendous total in cricket. (Which is also why I retired from all forms of cricket in 1994, while I was still on top.)

So you can imagine my consternation at the current state of ODI cricket. Match after match we are seeing teams score well in excess of 300 runs. Just yesterday Ireland easily overcame England’s score of 327 runs to record a massive upset. Largely due to a stunning century by Kevin O’Brien. (Incidentally, also from Kerala.)

What the heck is going in the game? More than a few fans have their eyebrows raised: Are these scores for real? Is there some monkey business going on? Are bookies involved? What are their contact details?

However this speculation can be most damaging for the game. Therefore in order to help the avid cricket fan distinguish fixed games from un-fixed fixtures we have a drawn up a ready reckoner. This is a list of incidents you should watch out for during a match. If any of these things happen, then there is a severe likelihood of hanky-panky. If not, the match is most likely authentic.

The match you are watching could be fixed if:

1. Dhoni wins the toss and elects to field first. When the commentator asks him who will open the bowling, Dhoni absentmindedly says: “Zaheer will open the bowling with two slow leg-cutters and then one over-stepping no-ball.”

2. After bowling three tight deliveries Sreesanth is halfway down the run-up for his fourth delivery when Billy Bowden signals a wide.

3. Kamran Akmal takes a sensational catch when he dives to his right, only for the ball to hit the tips of his gloves and loop high into the air. The ball then catapults earthwards, passes straight through the grill of his helmet and lodges itself in his mouth. During the ensuing celebrations several Pakistani players can be seen punching him in the stomach.

4. At the 2015 World Cup opening ceremony in Melbourne, ICC president Sharad Pawar ends his inaugural speech by officially declaring “West Indies as the new World Champions!”

5. At the 2015 World Cup the West Indies become World Champions.

6. Shane Watson is trapped in front of stumps by a Lasith Malinga scorcher. But the umpire refuses to give Watson out. The decision is referred to the third umpire. Who looks at the screen for five minutes and then thoughtfully says into the walkie-talkie: “Pass”.

7. New Zealand look well set to win a game when suddenly Brendon Mcculum is caught in the slips. Jesse Ryder is due next but discovers that someone had left a tube of super glue on his seat when he sat down. Ryder has to rip himself off his chair only to notice that shoelaces on both his shoes are knotted together. Just as he finally sorts things out and walks out to bat, Scott Styris trips him and Ryder falls down the stairs in a bloody heap. Determined to bat, Ryder staggers onto the pitch when the returning drinks trolley drives over him. Ryder then has to return to the pavilion because he is Timed Out.

8. The spinning ball hits the deck with venom and rears up to hit the batsman plumb in front of the stumps. Yuvraj Singh throws both hands in the air and appeals with a scream. Yuvraj Singh is the batsman.

Sincere fans will do well to look out for similar indications in matches. If nothing like this is forthcoming then you can rest assured that what you’re watching is the real thing.

Perhaps.

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P.S. Coming to think of it, I could pimp my columns and articles more here. It would give the illusion of frenetic activity on the blog. Maybe I will…

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.

Beirut Panorama. Image via Wikipedia

The most time I’ve ever spent in a single city in the last 22 years, before packing up and moving somewhere, is the four years I spent in engineering college in REC Trichy. Otherwise it has always been brief stints of two or three years before education or employment or pub-lust, has me moving once again to Ahmedabad or Delhi or London.

I am not complaining of course. I think I enjoy this relaxing frequent nomadic-ism that ensures you never get too bored of any one city. Or language. Or food. Or Milan subway.

However this kind of thing does lead to some behavioral quirks.

For instance you are almost always coming across furniture or wall decorations or shopping mall sculptures that you are itching to buy–because it could make your house look like Frasier’s–but can’t because you’ll surely be moving somewhere soon.

You are also constantly somewhat jealous of friends who’ve bought magnificent homes and splendiferous cars because they’ve decided they’re never moving.  This feeling usually bubbles over violently when you see the magnificent wooden bookshelves they’ve installed in their hallways or living rooms. (Also a lot of people in London leave their windows open in the evenings. With all the lights on inside. Just going to the nearest tube station is a tortuous parade of bookshelves and open-plan kitchens and plush sofas and ottomans and wall hangings and such like.)

Personally this also leaves me constantly thinking of myself as a tourist. Therefore I am one of those people who shamelessly strike up borderline-intimate conversations with taxi drivers and auto drivers and waiters. I don’t know if their views of a place are reflective of the average inhabitant’s, but I’ve always had the most amazing chats sitting in the back of battered old car stuck in a jam on Wadala bridge.

For instance the very first day I went to junior college in Thrissur–11th class for you hep folks–I struck up a chat with the dude who was driving my auto from the bus stand near Swapna theatre to my college. The college scene in Kerala at the time was intensely political. There were huge left wing and Congress movements and a laughably small, token right wing set-up. Even before my first day in college I was leaning towards signing up for the commies. Because at the time they seemed pro-poor, anti-religion and corruption-free.

Not to mention all the movies in which Mohanlal portrayed a crusading commie.

As we rattled on in our auto we passed a small procession of commies protesting something or the other. “Are you a leftie?” I asked my driver.

“I am a member of the trade union. But am I friends with all of them,” he said.

“The left is good for poor people…” I ventured, half as a statement, half as a question.

The driver thought for a while and then said something I’ve never forgotten. “They are the same boy. Both of them steal. But there is one difference. When the left win elections only the chief minister’s children go to study in England. When the Congress win elections, everybody can steal a little. Everybody’s children can at least go to an english medium school in Guruvayoor.”

Later I realised that the commies were hardly distinguishable from the Congress hordes at college. But the Congress type tried to convince you to vote for a student councillor with beef biryani. The commies preferred to serve you with fresh cycle chains.

Then there was the cabbie guy in Mumbai who picked me up, late one night, outside a club in Bandra. I don’t remember exactly which one. But I recall it was on top of an ICICI bank, and the dance floor had huge backlit manga cartoons on one wall.

That night there was a huge crowd looking for a ride, but somehow the cabbie gave me the once over and then told me get in. This “once-over” business in Mumbai is utterly revolting. And invasive. I believe I lost my virginity to a particularly slow, excruciating once-over on Marine Drive during my summer internship in 2004. Women have been known to miss their cycles after one.

After a general meandering chat about traffic and cabs and Bandra, I asked my cabbie why he gave me the once-over. He said he was making sure I was a ‘decent party’. I asked him if he was alluding to prostitution. No, he said, he was alluding to couples who made out in the back of a taxi. “I don’t have a problem with that. Children are modern these days. But how can I drive properly from here to Nariman Point if they are doing it in the back? Sometimes they make noise. It is very distracting. And then other taxi drivers make fun of you if they see. Why can’t these boys and girls just wait for 45 minutes?”

We laughed the rest of the way to Wadala. Where I discovered he had a dodgy meter.

And so on to the guy who drove my mini-cab two weekends ago. Mini-cabs are the cheaper, shabbier cousins of the famed London black cab. The London cab, like so much else in London, is fiendishly expensive and best enjoyed from a distance. Public transportation is the cheapest way to get around. But if the night ends too late, or the day starts too early, then a mini-cab booked by phone is useful.

So last fortnight I went with Mr. and Mrs. Pastrami to a splendid and quite fru-fru night club. Which we left shortly because frankly we’re getting too old for this shit. So we went back to Pastrami’s house–yes, with bookshelves and even a fireplace–and threw back a few drinks. The missus, if you’re wondering, wisely decided to sit at home, read a book, watch some comedy and do some baking.

Well past midnight, after the trains had stopped, I reluctantly called up a mini-cab. (The reluctance was due to mental arithmetic that multiplies mini cab charge by 80 to get approx. Indian rupee figure.)

They’d sent a spacious silver Mercedes-Benz that looked at least five or six years old but sparingly washed. The driver was a big, strong, lightly-bearded chap in a jacket and woolen cap. Who looked of vaguely mediterranean extraction.

After some silence we somehow started talking about something or the other. Maybe the weather. I don’t remember.

“So are you married sir?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You went to a club tonight?”

“For a little bit.”

“Alone?”

“Ha ha. Yes.”

“If I went to a club on my own my wife would cut my balls off.”

And then he told me he was from Lebanon. And a big Amitabh Bachan fan. In turn I impressed him with my rudimentary Arabic–hummus, shawarma, tabbouleh, Abu Dhabi, Tahrir. The conversation turned to the topic of unrest in the Middle East.

“Like your country my country is also very beautiful,” he said. “Good food, good nature, good women. No peace. No peace even for five minutes. You have no peace with Pakistan. We have no peace with Syria and Israel.”

I asked him when he’d left Beirut and come to London. At which point he began telling me his story.

When he was 13-years old Israel invaded Lebanon. At which point my driver, let’s call him Rafik, signed up for the Lebanese army. Five years later he fled to the United Kingdom seeking political asylum. The UK let him in but the asylum visa came with a ten year ban on going back to Lebanon. Rafik taught himself to become, of all things, a graphic designer for a magazine publishing company. He married, had children, and occasionally visited his sister who’d found asylum in the US. And then his company decided to shift base to Dubai Media City. Rafik followed but left and came back soon because he couldn’t handle the people, the place and the distance from his family. But by then the economy tanked. And media, as you know, imploded. So Rafik now drives a mini-cab to make ends meet. It is not a terrible living, he told me. Yet he pines to go back.

“I want to go back. I want to die and be buried in Lebanon. You know what I mean? It is my country. This is not home. These people don’t like you. They don’t understand you. Some of them hate you…”

We spoke for a while about racism and home and London.

And then I asked him what he did for the Lebanese army as a teenager. He thought for a while.

“I was a sniper.”

Whoa. I play as many sniping flash games as the next guy. The missus was a proficient sniper during Unreal Tournament LAN games in business school. But I’d never met a real life sniper.

“Did you… did you… kill a lot of people?”

“That is not a good question. We were at war. They invaded. I was a soldier.”

But he no longer hated the Israelis, he said. At least not as individuals. Rafik said that he often ferried Israelis in his cab and some of them were also soldiers. In fact, he said, they’d often swap war stories, shake hands and chat like old friends.

And now, he said, the Shias and Sunnis were killing each other.

“But… how terrible to be made to kill people when you were so young… how do you deal with that…”

Honestly I was expecting a filmy outpouring of emotion. Rafik didn’t say anything.

And then after a silence he rattled off a list of the guns he still had at home: Kalashnikovs, sniper rifles and hand guns. When he went to to the US, Rafik said, he still liked going to a shooting range.

“They are crazy there man. Before 9/11 you can buy a gun from anywhere. Any time. Go to a range. Shoot. It was crazy man…”

“But… what a horrible childhood to have…” I just couldn’t get over the fact that he was a sniper and shooting people at an age when I was merely water-boarding my dad to get a GameBoy

Again Rafik didn’t say anything.

Just before he dropped me at home he whipped out his iPhone and showed me an app.

“Unbelieveable app man. You just press on the picture of a gun and it makes shooting noises. And it is so accurate. You will not believe. It sounds exactly like a gun in real life. Kalashnikov… exactly the same…”

I paid him, added a generous tip and wished him good night and peace to both our countries. He called me brother. And then before starting his car he made a couple of shooting noises with his iPhone guns. And then my cab-driver cum graphic designer cum sniper drove off looking very pleased with himself.

Is there a moral to that story?

The only one I can think of is that I am perhaps much luckier than I sometimes realize.