Domain Maximus

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

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

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

I reproduce it here in full. Enjoy.

***

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

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

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

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

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

Yours Faithfully

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

***

I’ve only ever been to the Jaipur Literary Festival once. That was two years ago when my first book was just about to be launched. By some odd twist of fate the first retail copies of Dork went on sale at the little bookshop that runs at JLF each year. There was no larger purpose in scheduling it thus. I did not have a reading or signing or anything of that sort planned at JLF.

But I’d pestered the Penguin people for weeks and I suppose cracking open a box at Jaipur seemed ceremonial enough. The guys who ran the shop, the same guys who run the Full Circle outlet at Khan Market in New Delhi, promptly took a stack of fresh Dork copies and dumped them on the lowest rack of a bookshelf, next to Shoba De and Sidney Sheldon.

As the day progressed the stack receded farther and farther into the dark nether regions of the bookshelf while, in more prominent positions, books by Geoff Dyer and William Dalrymple literally vaporised by the stackfulls. Still I was most thrilled. Every few hours I’d pop in and check on status. And the Dork stack would cough and wheeze and splutter and shorten itself one comforting copy at a time.

Very quickly, however, I was engrossed in the festival itself. Sure, I spent hours agonising over what those early buyers thought of my book. Things were not helped by Samit Basu’s motivating quip one morning that he had started reading the book, but had fallen asleep after a few pages. (A terrible cameo awaits him in book three.)

Jitters apart, I was truly enjoying the festival. In many different ways.

Now when I went to Jaipur I had no idea who the organisers or founders of the event were. I knew Dalrymple was involved in some capacity. I had no idea what their ulterior motives were, what their political or ideological agenda were and whether they cared about other Indian languages. (I say ‘other’ because it is ludicrous to think English isn’t an Indian language.)

I also did not know what their criteria for inviting authors were. Was I jealous of some of the invitees? Of course. Did I want to be invited one day? Of course. I still do. The appreciation of your peers is highly valued in any profession, not least in a creative and particularly criticism-prone one like writing.

Also at no point was I thinking to myself “What does this festival achieve for the nation as a whole?”

When I was at Jaipur the only things playing on my mind were: Which are the good sessions? Which authors should I be listening to? As a young author coming to grips with this vocation, who should I talk to, what advice should I be asking for and what lessons did these fabulous writers have for me?

And my experience was absolutely fascinating. And very fulfilling. Lawrence Wright’s bag of tricks and tips for reporters I will never forget as long as my messenger bag includes an audio recorder. The session on travel writing was both amusing and informative.

A remarkable session on terrorism and the Middle East involving Wright and Steve Coll exposed me to nuance on a subject that is often analysed with staggering, stifling polarity. That session led me to buy and read several books.

I also met a few people at Jaipur who have remained friends and twitter-buddies since.

All in all, I had the time of my life.

I say all this because this year JLF has been the cynosure of attention for many reasons, most of them negative. There was that Rushdie imbroglio that overshadowed everything else. Then there were the readings of the Satanic Verses, the assassins, the quotable quotes, the outrage and, most distressing for me personally, the reams of punditry condemning the festival as pointless, irrelevant or a schmoozefest.

Most of that is perhaps true. But my point is: so what man?

Tell me this: what can possibly make a literary festival vital? At what point in a society’s evolution does a literary festival assume a position of critical importance? Which nation in the world can standup and say: “Look, we’ve solved all our critical problems. All our vital shortcomings have been alleviated. Now we start with our frivolous shortcomings. And top on that list is a thumping huge literary festival.”

I don’t think even one. Even Norway, with all that HDI and GDP, has to deal with insane gunmen and Indian parenting quirks.

In fact, when you think about it, literature and literary festivals are perhaps important precisely because they are not vital. They distance–some would even say elevate–us from the brutal and mundane that frustrate us in our daily lives. Why do you come home after work and see a rerun of Friends? Because you identify with the moral rectitude of Matt Le Blanc and Courtney Cox? Because you are 100% certain that the producers of the show don’t have some ulterior political motive in their scripts?

Who knows? More importantly, who cares?

Then why demand of literary festivals, organisers, participants or even audiences the morality, clarity of purpose, sanctity of intentions and social relevance that we demand of hardly anybody or anything else. And especially so of a privately organised literary event where the public is allowed to visit freely.

Can you spend the whole week schmoozing at Jaipur? Of course. Can you spend the whole week stalking celebrities or sucking up to the clique-ish publishing industry? Certainly. Can you spend the week in the midst of a few wonderful authors and artists enjoying discussions, debates and perspectives? Yes you can, even if the quality of sessions can be very uneven and often helmed by bizarre moderators. But hey, it is free and you can vote with your feet. Bad JLF this year? Don’t go next year.

Disagree with the mandates of the festival? Want to focus more on translated fiction, Marathi poetry or Malayalam travel writing? By all means organise your own festival. JLF does not have an exclusive national license on literary festivals.

If anything we need plenty more festivals all over the country. As any Chetan Bhagat event in a small town shows, there are readers everywhere in this country. And they love meeting and talking to authors. There are more languages, topics and issues than can be handled by a dozen large Indian festivals. But chances are that any such festival will be tinged by controversy. We are not a country famed for our ability to get along with each other. Or for our restraint when it comes to putting public figure on pedestals.

You are welcome to try to organise a literary festival that will condemn any kind of schmoozing, celebrity worship, low brow conversation, political partisanship, NRI fixations or ideological leanings. Feel free. But literary festivals can seldom be less polarising than literature itself.

However a lot of the analysis I see right now is saddening. It is akin to saying let us burn down cinema theatres because too many people watch crap movies.

No screens. No crap movies. No movies at all. Victory for good cinema?

Hardly.

***

p.s. No. I am not trying to get an invitation. Why would you think like that?
p.p.s. I am getting old.

So our building here has a restricted access system that only lets delivery folk in if someone inside unlocks the door for them. There is this video phone access system to do this. As your favourite blogger cum author cum tweeter is usually the only guy in the building during the day, I end up letting in a lot of delivery, courier, flyer, post man type people all the time.

And occasionally they leave deliveries with me in case the recipient is at work or in a pub. In the evening the recipients come back, see a note in their mailbox, and then come over to pick things up. It is a nice arrangement. And it doesn’t bother me at all. It is nice to have the occasional human contact when you spend all day in front of a faceless machine. (Albeit the machine is a Mac.)

So earlier this morning a man came and dropped a Kenwood food processor. “Please give it to the people in 12,” he said. “Of course machaan,” I said. “Don’t make me stab you innit,” he said.

It was a hoot really.

And then a few minutes ago, five or maybe seven, there was a knock on the door. I sprinted, opened the door and reached for the food processor. (There is now a space in the hall, next to the door, for these deliveries.)

Outside the door was  a rather well-dressed, well made up, tall, slim British-ish woman in a comely lavender dress. There was no doubt at all that she was preparing to go for some kind of high society event. Comprehensive eye make-up was spotted. I am no expert, but I think it was a one-shoulder floor-length dress with a slanted empire waist. Classy indeed.

“There you go,” I said, handing over the food processor. I was using small words because I was holding my stomach in.

We both said thanks and then I turned around to close the door. When she asked me if I could help for a second.

“O… K…” I said struggling due to lack of oxygen.

I am not making the rest up.

She placed the food processor on the floor, lifted up her right arm and then said:

“Can you zip me up please. I think it is stuck.” She looked tremendously embarassed.

But my embarrassment made her embarrassment look like an amateur weekend embarrassment who practised being embarrassed only for occasional office embarrassment tournaments.

And so it was. A tiny zipper was stuck halfway between her waist and her under-arm, leaving a few inches of her dress open on the side. I sheepishly pulled up the zipper a couple of times. Nothing happened. And then I held the dress and she pulled the zipper. Nothing. Then I pulled down on the zipper in order to do the old “rezip with momentum” trick. Which is when I realised that the zipper went all the way down.

“Oh I am so sorry…” I said when I realised I’d just made her dress gape open even more.

“That is ok,” she said unconvincingly.

We kept at it for another ten minutes. Without any luck. The bloody thing would run smoothly till a point and then crunch to a stop.

Eventually we realized that our relationship was going nowhere.

“Maybe I should go find a woman to help me…” she said, opening a whole new can of mental worms.

“I am sorry I am so bad at this…” I said.

And then we parted on amicable terms. She picked up the food processor and left, clutching her dress shut between her arm and the side of her body.

I closed the door and collapsed into the hallway gasping for air.

Moral of the story: Journalism might look like a pointless, underpaid career. But good things happen to those wait.

Everything in this post is absolutely true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dey murder: ACP says allegations against him absurd

14 Jun 2011, 1858 hrs IST, AGENCIES

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

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

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

Creepy.

Small world.

Finally. After a delay of CWG proportions, I have just completed the first draft of Dork 2. It happened approximately 5 hours ago. For now I am calling it D2D1. The version you will see in ex-tree/Kindle/iPad/Xoom/modern-dance format will most probably be D2D3. Next the missus will scan the whole thing. Meanwhile I will clean out odds and ends like the author’s note, acknowledgements, and making character names and proper nouns consistent. The end result, D2D2, will then go to Penguin. Who will then send feedback. Which I will incorporate into D2D3. Which will go to press.

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?

Whilst I slog away on Dork 2–final manuscript due on the 13th–why not enjoy the latest Cricinfo column?

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.

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

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

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

I hated it.

But that kind of thing does leave residual tendencies.

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

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

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

Sometimes your parents make complete sense retrospectively.