Domain Maximus

The latest issue of Time Out London is a a special “Cheap Issue“. It makes fun of women, makes lurid jokes and re-gifts copiously.

Ha. Comedy!

But no. It is a splendid issue and I find myself finding so many interesting, yet affordable, things to do on every page. Bravo I say. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. We’ve just completed paying the deposit on our rental flat here.

Let’s not talk about it. Or I’ll feel bad. And then convert to Indian Rupees. And feel 71 times as bad all over again.

So I was reading this issue of Time Out today when, on a whim, I decided to read the letters to the editor as well. (I know. Reckless.)

Which is when this gem of a letter, titled Police, camaraderie, action!, leapt out. I reproduce it here in full:

Anyone who thinks Londoners are not public spirited should have seen the scenes in Bayswater last week. A French school party’s luggage was stolen as they loaded their coach outside their hotel. Workmen across the street alerted the victims, who gave chase. A street cleaner and a traffic warden joined in, detained one thief and recovered most of the cases. Police on foot were alerted by staff at a florist’s and, while running to the scene, were given a lift by a passing cabby! The other thief was arrested. The teacher who stayed to give statements were driven to St. Pancras by the police to make his Eurostar on time. Well done, London!

Anon, by email

You can’t make this stuff. Unless you are Priyadarshan.

Crazy things happen in London.

Well done indeed.

Hello there from sunny/rainy/warm/cold/crisp/damp/expensive/expensiver London. Undoubtedly the greatest city in the world after Kochi and Trivandrum.

For the last three weeks or so I have been embroiled in the controlled chaos better known as ‘settling into London’. This involves steps such as

1. Finalizing on a neighbourhood to stay in.

2. Refinalizing a new neighborhood to stay in because previous neighbourhood is too expensive if your are not a banker, Russian mafia or, frequently, both.

3. Drawing up shortlist of one bedroom flats available on rent, from classifieds advertisements and online real estate websites.

4. Subsequently drawing up shortlist of real estate websites because most websites, the bastards, have homes listed that were put on the market sometime during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1847 1857 (computer error), and have long since been replaced by an Ikea outlet or some part of the Mittal household.

5. Visitings of shortlisted flats one after the other from morning to night along with a real estate agent who, unlike the ones in Mumbai, will honestly and apologetically say things like: “Sorry about this mess. But the current tenant is a student. So ignore the shoes in the freezer. That is the freezer. You can approach it through this trapdoor. Backwards.”

6. Making an offer for a palatial 17 square foot one bedroom with attached bath cum study.

7. Getting rejected.

8. Making counter-offer.

9. Getting accepted.

10. Yay.

11. Too soon. Got rejected.

12. Depression. Beer.

13. Another offer.

And so on and so forth. Till you decide to get a mobile phone connection. Now you would expect the United Kingdon, a perfectly respectable First World Country with Worsht World Deficit, to have a top notch, cutting-edge, smooth as silk, spectacularly advanced telecom system. Thankfully this they do due to a refreshing lack of A Raja in this country. But instead of torturing you with bad service, a la Voda-Edge is down-fone India, they torture you by creating the most rigorous credit checking system in the world. These are some necessary but not sufficient conditions you need to satisfy in order to get a favourable credit rating and, therefore, mobile phone in the UK:

a. You must have a bank account in the UK that has been in operation for at least 15 years. Preferably 30 years. But it is best if you own the bank. Sidin Barclays Vadukut might work if you have photo id.

b. In this bank account you must have a minimum balance of several million pounds. Minimum balance is calculated by taking the value of the lowest balance in your account, over a rolling four-week period, and square rooting this number.

c. Now you must have a valid debt instrument of some kind in your name that you have used with honour and dignity for at least 6 months. Credit cards, home loans and large numbers of US dollars are all valid as debt instruments. Also, and this is sweet Monty Python irony, a mobile phone contract which is paid regularly on time goes towards giving you a credit history that you can use to get a mobile phone contract. What Godel, Escher, Suck On This, Bach irony.

d. Finally you must have lived in the UK for atleast 2 years. This is true even if you have just moved to the UK last Tuesday.

When the guy at Orange ran my credentials through his credit checking computer, it thought for two minutes before calling the police and reporting a burglary.

So instead of a post-paid connection, what they call ‘pay monthly’ here, I had to take a pre-paid connection, or what they call ‘pay as you go out of business’ here. This is terrible tragedy. With pay monthly plans you can pay just 20 or 25 GBP per month and get 600 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts and 1 GB Blackberry usage. With pay as you go plans you need to pay 7 GBP every second. Flat. Even if you are not calling anybody at all.

Map shows boroughs of London. The figures indicates number of people in each borough with 'pay monthly' mobile phone contracts.

Which is why you see tourists, expats and recent movers to the UK often speaking in very loud volume in public spaces. They are not being uncouth. They are trying to save mobile phone charges by screaming at each other across short distances.

But once you get over these minor hassles, the UK is a really convenient place to live in. When landlords say ‘Furnished Apartment’ it is not like Mumbai where this means that you have most doors and one chair. No no. Not at all. Here this means you get a million varieties of crockery and kitchen tools and a flat screen tv and a boiler and even something called an extractor fan. I have no idea what this extractor fan is. But suddenly in the middle of the night, around 2 PM, it extracts something noisily.

All of this can sometimes be a little stressful. Which is why I am most grateful that in the UK a good beer is never more than two or three minutes away. You get booze everywhere here. Booze and coffee and sushi. Yes. Those three things. Everywhere. Tiny little shady supermarkets, run by guys who probably once were hedge fund brokers before buying pay as you go mobile phones, will have beer, hot beverages and plastic boxes of assembly-line sushi.

So what is there not to like? I will have to think about it.

Which I will do now over an artisanal ale or a small batch pilsener. And some California Maki Rolls.

Catch you later in the next Letter From London.

Tata.

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.

As some of you may know, thanks to that zonking huge cover in the right sidebar there, in January this year my debut novel was published by Penguin Books India. And–touch wood, kiss wood, dry hump wood–it has been doing respectably since then. A reprint has happened. Some good reviews have come. And overall we are reasonably pleased. Yes, there was the matter of the Booker shortlist.

But I am over that now.

However this is not to say that life has been all milk and honey and single malts and paal payasam. Not at all. Writing a book itself is fraught with insecurities and doubts and fear of failure. Like any pursuit, I am sure, that is vulnerable to public criticism.

Yet I naively assumed that once the writing process was over,  the book published, and the reviews dealt with, the emotional turmoil of it all would be over. I would be free of the book, and vice versa, and life would go on.

Ha ha ha. And I as I say this I am walking down a flight of stairs clapping my hands slowly in a sinister fashion.

Ha ha ha.

I was a fool.

Read the rest of this entry »

(I was in Sri Lanka, by which I mean Colombo, for a week recently. While not the first country that pops to my, or your, mind when one thinks of traveling abroad, I was adequately excited about the journey. A new a country is a new country is a new country is a journey that might lead to a blog post about it. That might lead to travel book contract. Who knows? Anything to get out of Dwarka no?

Also they sell booze in Sri Lankan supermarkets. Just like that. No fatwas or anything. So.)

Sociology

There are good things and bad things about flying from Chennai to Colombo. The good thing is the fact that you land in a foreign country after just about an hour in the air. I find this endlessly fascinating. And a little bit fraudulent.

Perhaps the years of shuttling up and down on the Kochi-Abu Dhabi sector leads one to believe that all international flights should take at least 3 hours. In fact any serious flight, it is somehow ingrained into my head, should take at least three hours. Less than that is infra dig. More than that is glamorous.

Now I know what you are thinking. “But surely you will tell us why it is ingrained into your head like that? This is not Christopher Nolan picture for you to reveal things randomly for kicks. Maybe I should read this post in reverse…”

!ecneitaP !nam etunim eno tsuJ

Thanks.

See, the thing is there is, or at least used to be, this unspoken caste system amongst NRIs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

(As seen in the Lounge edition of 16 April 2010. I had a much longer uncut version somewhere. Will post when I find it.)

It might seem presumptuous to judge a country by your experiences as you land for the first time at the airport. But sometimes, airports are splendid barometers of culture. Heathrow, for instance, immediately has you thinking: “What atrocious advertising! Surely, this is the kind of nation that would give rise to Monty Python…”

Zurich’s airport, on the other hand, is all straight lines, simple signage, orderly queues, meticulously timed shuttles, pressed uniforms and insurance advertisements. The message is simple: “Welcome to Switzerland. We have banks. We are very clean. And our very clean trains run on time.”

So sterile and generic is the airport that at one point it felt exactly like Dubai airport in the minimal pre-Burj 1990s. But only with Nordic white people instead of Malabari muscle.

But don’t let that fool you. Switzerland is rightly held in high esteem by tourists of all races, colours and packages. It is the sort of country where you could, if you had the stamina, photograph everything in sight. Even the policemen.

Having had our passports stamped by two splendid samples of the Zurich constabulary, my colleague and I ran to the railway station across the road. The two of us were on a hectic business trip that would have us visiting Basel and Geneva, with our base in Zurich. Read the rest of this entry »

I am back. Again.

Ahem. Hello there. Welcome back.

As you may be aware this blog was away for three months doing authorly things like launching, reading, interviewing, posing for pictures, reading good reviews, reading bad reviews, crying ourselves to sleep and so on. And amidst all the celebrity-ing, Pranab Mukherjee presented a Union Budget. The union budget is pretty much the highlight of the annual calendar for the business journalism business. (Whatay play on words.) Which means the Union Budget is one of those “do anything as long as you are doing something” periods in the office. And boy did we do things. Many, many things.

Of course today no one remembers anything Minister Mukherjee said or announced during the budget. Read the rest of this entry »