Domain Maximus

Is there a thing that strikes more fear into the heart of a man than his missus telling him the following?

“Sweety, you decide fully what we are going to do this weekend…”

At this point–and many recently married/civil unioned/otherwise coupled young men don’t know this–you stand at the edge of a precipice. On the one hand you can step gingerly backwards and somehow salvage the weekend and peace of mind. On the other hand you can actually take this comment at face value (you fool), assume the weekend is yours to manipulate as you wish, book two tickets for Tron Legacy 3D and expect your bitter half to play along enthusiastically.

Ignorantly blissful of reality you wake up on Saturday morning with a spring in your step, and Olivia Wilde in your head in three dimensions. (Let us not forget how excellent she is in just two.)

And then suddenly the missus, while reading a book or meticulously vacuuming the bath tub, says: “I am dying to watch any movie this week except that nonsense Tron: Legacy…”

Things go rapidly downhill from that point. You try to convince her with nostalgia, logic and Youtube trailers. She weighs the evidence fully and then decides, cruelly, to ditch plans for a Full English breakfast at the local illegal-immigrant-run cafe and makes poha instead.

Oh wait.

You think I am saying all this on the basis of personal experience? Ah ha ha ha.

Understandable misunderstanding.

No this is what happens to Pastrami on some weekends.

*Cough cough*

Anyway. Imagine my horror when around 5 weeks ago the missus called me up from her office and told me that I had to immediately make travel plans for the long Royal Wedding-Easter weekend in the last week of April.

I don’t know if you noticed online or read in any of the papers, but recently the United Kingdom celebrated the wedding of Prince William, first son of Prince Charles. It was a huge deal.

The bride was a little too thin. Still, the catering was not bad. Good fried rice. Excellent Chicken 65. Payasam was too cold. But overall not bad for an upper middle class family with no income. (However Mercy-aunty told me that apparently they don’t have budget for a honeymoon.)

Thanks to the proximity of Easter on the 24th of April to the wedding on the 29th, almost everyone in the UK planned to take the intervening days off and convert the whole thing into a 10-day holiday. Which sounds like a great idea. The problem with this is that people who live in this part of the world plan the socks off their holidays. They are like the Montek Singh Ahluwahlias of vacationing but with greater accuracy. They book flights and hotels and tours and museum tickets months in advance. And they do it so comprehensively that any delay in booking impact liquidity severely.

One minute hipmunk.com is showing a London – Barcelona flight for just £140 return per person on ShadyJet. Unfortunately due to a long-entrenched distrust of Indian ecommerce websites, and previous experience of booking flight tickets on the right day but the wrong year, I hesitate.  I double check before clicking on the buy button.

Disaster! Sad screechy Carnatic violin music!

That two minute delay is two minutes too long. When I click on the buy button again ShadyJet is fully booked and the only tickets left for Barcelona are first class fares on Air France.

If I wanted to spend that much money to be subject to incompetence I would have bought the Pune Warriors.

So you can begin to imagine the thoughts running through my brain when the missus empowered me to plan and execute the entire 10-day holiday program.

Where to go? What to do? How much to spend?

So that evening, after she came back from work and had finished vacuuming the TV, I asked her for suggestions of destinations and an estimation of budget.

Me: “Why don’t we choose three places and then I can search for tickets and hotels and draw up comparisons…”

Missus: “Excellent. Which three places?”

Me: “I was hoping you would suggest something?”

Missus: “No no. You decide this munchkin…”

Me: “Oh ok. Then… off the top of my head spontaneously… I was thinking France with emphasis on Normandy, Germany with emphasis on Berlin, or Poland with emphasis on Auschwitz. A world war 2 theme… overall…”

Missus: “Very good. I also think that France, Holland and Spain are the best options.”

Me: “It is as if you stole the very words from my mouth my little Verbal Charles Sobhraj.”

Two hours later, after requisite budgetary discussions, we decided that a whirlwind tour of the Provencal region of France, starting with a short, skip and jump through Paris would be best. From Paris we would proceed, via train, to Avignon, Arles and then Aix-en-Provence before returning to Paris for the flight back to London.

Air France is not my favourite airline in the world, in much the same way that blunt force trauma is not my favourite feeling in the world. Yet the London-Paris-London tickets on AF were both well-priced and well-timed for our evenly paced but quite accurately timed trip. We would spend between two to three nights in each place, giving us just enough time to tick off the usual tourist haunts, and still have some time for lazy reading in French cafes overlooking French town squares.

Four days before we left for France, and thus the title of this post, I bought two sturdy backpacks for both of us. For her a 66-litre Mountain Life backpack in murky pink (favourite colour) with lumbar support, rain cover, external compartments on the top, bottom and sides, and adjustable shoulder straps. For me a 65-litre Mountain life backpack with orange trims (official Mint colour) but otherwise similar configuration as above.

The idea was to somehow carry 10 days worth of clothes and accessories in the two backpacks, and then carry reading material and laptop in a little day bag. We’d carry above mentioned day bag on board as cabin baggage in order to pilfer things from the plane such as trays, bowls, cutlery, toiletries and life jackets.

Comedy! I am kidding about the cutlery.

Over the next two weeks I hope, fingers crossed, to write you through those 10 wonderful days of traipsing around France, drinking beer, and eating cheese from plastic bags.

This fully illustrated story is full of history, romance, something called Panache, cold breakfasts, copious ethnic stereotyping, and Popes.

Hopefully you will enjoy these posts. Perhaps they may even inspire you to do a little travelling of your own. But, most of all, I hope they will convince you to never travel by Air France.

Till next time: Au ghevoir and take ze care yeah? Yeah ok ok.

Hmm.

***

Hi,

Now there is a new generation political party, which will help you if you-

• are not getting passport , driving license, LPG connection in time.
• are being harassed by officers for bribe..
• find roads damaged or your locality littered with garbage.

In fact, you can get help for anythhing related to government services and these services are absolutely free.

Post your complaints with Jago Party and they will act upon your complaint and get your problems solved! As of date, they have helped thousands of citizens get their grievances resolved. Read success stories.

Jago Party has been floated by non-political citizens with the common aim to remove crime, corruption and reservation from India!

Their main policies are:

• Reservation for none, job to all by free English education.
• Hang corrupt & rapists. Judgment in 3 months.
• 24 hours electricity & comfortable train journey by privatization.
• Each voter will get Rs. 800 per month, in lieu of subsidies.

Best regards,

Priya Gupta

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.)

Last Friday’s Cubiclenama piece has been well received. So much so that it has given the nation strength at a time when it is ravaged by rife corruption, nadirs of public virtue and plumbing displays of power-play batting.

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.

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.

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.