Domain Maximus

Good morning. It is Monday again. How horrible. Let us hope we can all cope.

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.

—

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…

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.

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.

Krishna shortly after delivering his 4th consecutive State Of The Union address

Ever since India’s venerable Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna created world history by reading out a Portuguese speech at the United Nations, I have been inundated with emails from readers all over the world. And they all want to know only one thing: Why have we not heard about this titan of verbal sleight of tongue before? Why is so little written about this Colossus of composition, Rambo of rhetoric, or even this Dara Singh of discourse?

Unfortunately it is of great contemporary sorrow that so little has been said, written, or recorded on DVDs by Richard Attenborough, about the varied, surprising and often monumental aspects of SM Krishna’s many famous speeches. People are publishing books written with Sachin Tendulkar’s blood! But are they publishing anything about SM Krishna’s stellar history of public speaking with any of his fluids?

Não, não, mil vezes não!

This injustice must end now. I have spent the last weekend painstakingly putting together all the best speeches from SM Krishna’s career. This was not an easy task. There were so many speeches, given in so many places in so many different languages. Yet, in order to save time, and point you in the right direction, I have summarized the best five. I am hoping, through this exercise, to show the whole world that India’s foreign minster is not a man who is afraid of blunders, but he is a man who will walk right up to a blunder, look at it in the face and then express India’s extreme disapproval in the form of a strongly worded letter in triplicate with notarization and passport copy.

Now I present you an anthology of awesome. Enjoy, my fellow patriots!

Speech 1

Time and place: November 19, 1863; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Summary: At a crucial moment in the American Civil War, just after the Union armies defeated the confederates, Abraham Lincoln attended a function to dedicate a cemetery for soldiers who died at the battlefield. In the afternoon president Lincoln was scheduled to say a few closing words towards the end of the ceremony. Krishna, of course, was meant to sing a native Indian prayer song. However owing to an unforeseen technical problem due to delay in incoming flight Krishna got his schedule wrong. Just as Lincoln was about to speak, Krishna stood up and read with great passion and intensity from Lincoln’s notes. This speech has been recorded as one of the most prominent in American and world history.

Fun fact: The speech includes the immortal lines: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, based out of Bangalore”.

Language of delivery: Shorthand

Speech 2

Time and place: September 3, 1939; Buckingham Palace, London

Summary: This magnificent exhibition of rhetoric, emotion and humanity came at a time when Europe stood at the brink of one of the most horrible periods in human history. Subsequent to the Nazi invasions of Europe, the United Kingdom declared war on Hitler’s machine of terror and death. King George VI was then asked to speak to his people to give them strength, resolve and direction. Unfortunately the king, played by Colin Firth, had a tremendous stammer that rendered him incapable of prolonged public speech. Unable to bear the sight of the struggling king, SM Krishna grabbed the speech notes from the King’s hand, raced down the halls of Buckingham Palace, and locked himself inside the BBC studio. He then proceeded to deliver a speech that galvanized the British empire and hastened the Germans to their downfall once the Americans joined and brought nuclear weapons.

Fun fact: In the critically acclaimed recent period film that retells these historic events, Yamla Paagal Deewana, the role of SM Krishna was played by Govinda. This role was later cut due to size constraints.

Language of delivery: German

Speech 3

Time and place: August 28, 1963; Washington

Summary: This 17-minute long speech is a defining moment in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech ranks amongst greatest ever in modern history. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped up to the microphone and then began speaking. Unknown to the crowd, however, was the fact that the microphones had been wired erroneously that day. Backstage SM Krishna had been practising his own speech on civil rights and freedom. However  the audio visual contractor–Pradeep Light And Sound, NOIDA–hooked Krishna’s mic to the speakers by mistake. Tragically to this day Martin Luther King Jr still takes credit for that inspiring piece of rhetoric.

Fun fact: One of Krishna’s favourite lines from this speech is: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘If you come today, its too early. If you come tomorrow, its too late. Tick tick tick tick tick tick (repeat x 2).’”

Language of delivery: Klingon

Speech 4

Time and place: 10 November 1942; London

Summary: After having well prepared the British Empire for war against the Nazi hordes with his inspirational King’s Speech in 1939, SMK–or Smack Daddy as he is known in diplomatic circle–was also instrumental in crafting a great speech later in the war when the tide began to turn. While many people attribute this speech to Winston Churchill, who did actually give it, it was originally composed by Krishna during Churchill’s secret state visit to Bangalore in October 1942. After Churchill disembarked at Bangalore International Airport he was received by Krishna who offered to drive Churchill to his hotel in the city. Within minutes of leaving the airport their car was stuck in traffic for two hours. Churchill asked Krishna how long the jam would last for. Krishna made history with his subsequent reply: “Oh Winsty, this is not the end of the jam. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.Unless we take this route through Hosur in which case it could be the beginning of the middle part of the end. Or in any case the middle end of the start center.”

Fun fact: Churchill is currently somewhere near Electronic City.

Language of delivery: Braille

Speech 5

Time and place: 4 July 200?; Nevada

Summary:  Just thinking of this incident makes my eyes well up with tears. As you may recall aliens from an unknown planet had all but destroyed the world’s armed forces. And reduced many of our cities to rubble. Massive alien spaceships, played by Govinda, hovered over the earth, while advanced alien fighter craft sought and destroyed life. World governments had all but given up hope. No one knew what to do about these aliens except the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena who beat up taxi drivers. This did not work. Then they tried again in Worli. Again it did not work. Then they went to Mahesh Lunch Home and after that they went home. Finally it was left to a bedraggled group of international jet fighter pilots to launch a last-minute desperate attack. They would attack a mothership and then infect the onboard computer system– Finacle by Infosys–with a virus. As the representative of the world’s most powerful software developer industry SM Krishna was invited to give vote of thanks. This is when he said those inspirational words that will live as long as mankind will:

“Mankind — that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution — but from Tamil Nadu.”

Fun fact: Above mentioned speech was delivered on a tank with a megaphone in…

Language of delivery: Cobol

***

P.S. I am currently working on an online anthology of SMK’s written and spoken works. Please leave contact details below to be informed when the repository is live.

Well not so much Christmas miracles as much as heartwarming Christmas stories. Nothing miraculous happened in either case. (Except maybe the first. Where perhaps murder was avoided. But I am speculating.)

Story 1:

So this happened to a friend’s cousin. Or vice versa. But I am not making this up. It really happened. And it happened approximately an year or so ago.

This banker fellow has just moved to London from South Africa. Johannesburg to be precise. Now the locals call the city Jo-burg, but in tourist literature and travel agency brochures, Johannesburg is referred to as the murder capital of the world. (In the same, but much more ominous, way that Thrissur is referred to as the cultural capital of Kerala. Or Aurangabad is known by children all over Aurangabad as the optic fibre capital of India.)

So bad are things in Jo-burg that you can’t call yourself a true-blue local till you’ve been murdered in the city at least thrice.

Ha. Dark comedy.

But uniquely for this banker chap he manages to live in Jo-burg for several years without once ever have been mugged or stabbed or ambushed.

So imagine his surprise when just a few days after relocating to London, presumably to help his bank further bankrupt this country, he is ambushed by a mugger somewhere near Shoreditch. (Shoreditch might sound exactly like the sort of place where you go to get mugged. But in fact it is an up and coming bohemian organic free range district. All the muggings in London actually happens in the Goldman Sachs building.)

In order to avoid racial or cultural stereotypes I’d rather not mention that the mugger was a massive, black dude with a voice so deep that only adults would be allowed to swim in it.

I reproduce the conversation for your benefit:

Mugger: Hey man. Hey. Give me all your money.

Banker: What the…

Mugger: I want all your money. Now. Now.

Banker: But…

Mugger: I’ll kill you man.

Banker: Ok wait. I’ve just moved to London. I don’t have any money. And I just have cards. Take my phone if you want.

Mugger. Show me your phone…

Banker: Here…

Mugger. What the @#$% is that thing? That doesn’t look like a phone…

Banker: No no. It is. It is an iPhone…

Mugger: Don’t @#$% with me. It doesn’t have any buttons…

Banker: It doesn’t need any. You can just touch it to do stuff…

Mugger: Show me…

Bewildered by the turn of events, the banker gives the mugger a quick three-minute demo of the device.

Banker: And one more thing…

Mugger: GASP!

Banker: It also has a camera and GPS…

Mugger: Man! I’ve never seen such at thing. This is awesome man…

Banker: Take it… Please don’t hurt me.

Mugger. No man. I love this thing. We’re friends now. You’ve showed me this cool thing man. I can’t just take it from you. Let me pay you for it.

Banker: *WHAT THE…*

Mugger: Wait here. Let me go get some money. Don’t go anywhere.

Banker: Go anywhere it seems!!! Ha ha ha. Of course not. I am now here till further notice. Feel free to take your time.

Mugger jogs away to get cash.

As soon as the mugger is out of eye-shot, the Banker evaporates.

Moral of the story: Steve Jobs delivers us from all evil.

Story 2:

My brother-in-law is a very honourable man. Yes he is a banker, but he compensated nicely this year by gifting me a wonderful coffee machine. Which he stole from his office.

Wonderful chap.

So last February he is on a plane to India. To get married. On the aircraft he is seated next to a 10-year old Sikh boy. They get talking and B-I-L learns that the boy was born in Jallandhar but has spent all his life in the UK. And holds a British passport. So he speaks both fluent Punjabi and fluent Contemporary Desi-Brit English.

Regular English: Mind the gap

Contemporary Desi-Brit English: Mind the gap innit?

Shortly before landing in Delhi the cabin crew distribute those disembarkation forms. Which, as you are aware, is a vital element of our national security strategy. For instance if a terrorist is found to have entered the country via air, the airport security officials can immediately jump to action. They can thwart the terrorist by taking large bundles of used disembarkation forms and throwing it at him.

So the 10-year old boy asks B-I-L for his help in filling the form:

Boy: Can you check if I have filled in this form correctly innit?

B-I-L: One moment… Ok. You have a problem. You’ve filled in your British passport number. But here you’ve checked the box which says that you are an Indian citizen.

Boy: Yes. That is correct. Innit?

B-I-L: Ah. But that is not correct. Do you have an Indian passport?

Boy: No. I have a British one …

B-I-L: *waits*

Boy: …innit?

B-I-L: Phew. Ok, so no. In which case you must fill in that you are a British citizen.

Boy: So what if my passport is British? I feel Indian. I am Indian. I consider myself an Indian citizen innit.

B-I-L: But it doesn’t work that way. You may feel like it. But you have a British passport.

Dejected, the boy reaches for his ballpoint pen and pokes B-I-L in the eye with it.

B-I-L: HEY! Yes. Indian citizen. Yes. Go ahead.

Moral of the story: Passport is a state of mind.

Isn’t your heart warmed by these touching, warm stories? Mine surely is.

Seasons greetings old chaps. Hope your holidays are wonderful and 2011 is full of joys and delights and satisfactions and prosperity. Innit.

If you are a spouse, inferior half, life partner, dependent visa holder, civil partner, living-in (Shiva! Shiva!) type or similarly Facebook-relationship-status-ed, you are well aware of the many ways in which your partner is capable of communicating to you without audibly saying a single word.

Not even a full glance, just a tiny sliver of a glance. A glancelet, if you will. But it contains multitudes.

Oh yes he did. Image via Wikipedia

In fact if you are a resident of Mumbai you are already aware of one jolly good way of doing this. Of conveying messages across long distances without noise or electronics. Surely you’ve noticed that air-kiss-noise thing that, at least in my case, makes my skin crawl. (Also I can’t do it properly. It makes my face itchy.) I think I first noticed this air-kiss-messaging-service early on in my tenure in Mumbai. I was at Dadar station having a nimbu pani, waiting for my train. I had just paid the fellow in some large-ish denomination note when my train came.

Absentmindedly I ran towards the train. Which is when I heard this horrible, piercing, squeaky noise from behind me.

I turned around to look and you wouldn’t believe it. Exactly. Whining athletes from New Zealand! And Wales!

Oh ha ha. CWG comedy. For contemporary relevance. Just like that.

No. In fact it was the man minding the juice stand. I had forgotten to pick up my change.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Dadar Station. It is a busy establishment. Yet somehow I knew that the juice man was kiss-whistling exactly at me. The hideous noise drilled through the thronging masses, as if with turn-by-turn navigation, and drilled into my head. Somehow I knew he was calling me.

Only one head turned around. Mine.

I ran back, picked up my change, thanked the man profusely, before jogging back to my train. Just as it seemed that I was going to find nothing more than a tiny, perilous little foothold on the very edge of the doorway, a resilient, hardy Mumbai hand reached out of the crowd and–tears come to my eyes when I think of the city’s unbelievable warmth and sense of community–reached into my nostril and ejected me from the train.

Tip: To make a kiss-whistle pout vigorously with your lips. Make a tight almost-shut ‘O’ shape. And then suck air in through the tiny gap between your lips. If done correctly it should make a noise like old banians being ripped for kitchen use. And the kiss-whistler should be left feeling like one is about to commit a sex crime.

But the point I making is that there are numerous ways of communicating without words. For instance take the case of the missus. I will now list just a few of the numerous wordless transmissions she achieves using merely a combination of look, grimace, weighed pause and small kitchen utensil. Ha. No no I am kidding. No kitchen utensils on weekdays.

A brief, selected list:

1. The ‘I don’t care if blind Trappist monks made it by distilling their own sweat, and it costs hajaar. It is still beer. Terms of engagement shall be the same as Tuborg or Haywards 2000. Have two. Or less. Or whatever. You are a grown man. Have one.‘ look.

2. The ‘Jaunty beach shirts are so fun and jolly and really make fat people look cool. I completely this look for other fat people.‘ look.

3. The ‘This tremendous excitement you see on my face about this potential  Twenty20+MatrixTrilogy+KFC party being planned by these friends at our place next weekend is utterly fake. Be a man and back out now. Or at least get it moved to someone else’s place.‘ look.

4. The ‘No. Use your PS2 properly and exhaustively first. At least finish God Of War II at some sort of respectable difficulty level. Instead you may chat with the saleswoman for a bit.’ look.

And finally 5. The ‘What? She is thinner? Is that it? Should I straighten my hair too? STOP TALKING TO THE SALESWOMAN YOU OBJECTIFYING LETCH!‘ look.

There are a plethora of other looks of course, meant for use in every situation from family office parties, overlong blogger meets, to new BlackBerry launches, and even a series of distinct and impactful pregnant pauses meant for mobile phone use. (Can’t wait for 3G and video calls when we can go back to looking and pausing instead of just pausing.)

One of the cool things about this is that wives and girl friends think that nobody else in the room notices these looks. In my experience EVERYONE, including the expat using the wifi on the table next, notices the look. Subsequently everyone else there lets loose a flurry of rapid inter-personal silent despatches. Perhaps an illustration will help.

Let us assume there are three couples in a room. Let us call them A, B and F. For ease we assume all three are men-woman couples, and individuals shall be referred to as Husband-A, Wife-A, Husband-B and so on. Let us assume that Husband-A has made an observation that his wife does not approve of. Such as:

“I’d totally apply Zandu Balm on her if you know what I mean!!?”

The following subsequent exchanges are all unspoken:

Wife-A to Husband-A: What the… How cheap… I am disgusted. But I have to laugh now with everyone else… Chi chi chi.

Husband-B to Husband-F: Did you see that look? BURN!!!

Husband-F to Husband-B: I swear.

Wife -B to Wife-F: Thank god we’re not married to the type no?

Wife-F to Wife-B: I swear.

Wife-B to Husband-B: It is not that funny.

Wife-F to Husband-F: It is not that funny.

Husband-F to Wife-F: Sorry babe. Only because Husband-B laughed.

Husband-B to Wife-B: Sorry babe. But Husband-F laughed first.

Husband-A to himself: How quickly that moment has passed…

Husband-B and Husband-F to themselves: Zandu balm. Malaika. Mmm…

Uff. The politics I tell you.

And now, I have realized suddenly today, the missus has developed a brand new, high-impact, high-velocity look.

It happened like this. I was sitting this morning reading the papers and flipping through the news channels enjoying all the excitement around the Commonwealth Games and Talking Newspaper Advertisement developments. (Note to Volkswagen people: Next time your recording could start with the kiss-whistle. Super customer connect.)

Suddenly something most most jovial occurred to me.

“Darling!,” I said to Kaaliya, “what if there was a special Commonwealth Games campaign in the Times of India?”

“Have you brushed your teeth yet?” she responded shrewdly.

“So you open the paper and suddenly the AR Rahman theme begins to play out of the newspaper… and then as you are astonished by this development, a mosquito flies out of the paper, bites you and then you get Dengue. Ayyo classic no?”

A furrow appeared on her forehead. Her brows approached each other tentatively. One corner of her mouth smiled. The other frowned. And then she nodded. No. Don’t.

It was a new look. It was her shiny new: ’Oh god. You really, really want to tweet that wisecrack so badly right now don’t you? And then madly check for retweets no?’ look.

And she was right.

So I didn’t.

I wanted to inform all of you of this significant development in my marriage. These new looks don’t happen often. Therefore I wanted to save this development for posterity.

Or should I say pause-terity. Classic!

Ok. It appears I am not allowed to tweet that either.

Leader of free world

Twas all because of two twee tweets that the tree, bloody twat, broke in twain and wiped me out. I am sure of it.

An international conspiracy, no less.

As some of my tweeple maybe aware, the minutes and hours after Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, for really really truly deeply madly wanting world peace more than anyone else, yours truly madly deeply may have poked an inordinate amount of fun at this decision. The idea, of course, was not to make light of the venerable Obama at all. Take that thought and immediately perish it I say.

I am a total Obama fan boy. The US president is tall, fit, good-looking, immensely intelligent, a wonderful public speaker, a good writer and a terrible bowler of right arm leg-spinners. What does that mean? Exactly, he is the anti-Laxman Sivaramakrishnan.

But being the Bizarro-Siva alone does not qualify one to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Maybe a Hero Honda “Most Crucial Player Who Assisted In A Turning Point During A Powerplay (Day-Night Only) of The Tournament Award” with cash prize and free bike. But little more.

So I was quite tickled by the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the prize to the big O.

Off I fired a couple of tweets in mirth. Read the rest of this entry »