Domain Maximus

Prologue

It was four in the morning and the kid two seats ahead was beginning to throw up again. Every fifteen minutes he’d sudenly sit up straight and draw in his breath sharply. His mother, with the light-sleeping agility of a Ninja you read about in Lustbader novels, would leap into the aisle and extend a plastic bag into her son’s face in one fluid motion.

He would then heartily oblige. With gusto.

Adjacent the concerned father, deeply moved by his son’s agony, lay draped over the fully reclined  seat. He was snoring like one of those fumigating machines the BMC suddenly assaults your housing society with one night without warning. You know. Where you freak out when you come back from office thinking there’s been a fire and you’ve lost, gasp, the Playstation and the passport with the still valid UAE visa.

Nothing perturbed Puky Pukerson. He kept going.

A few minutes past three a.m. he may have violated the Law of Conservation of Mass. (Also known as the Lomonosovo-Lavoisier Law.) He had managed to puke a little over his complete body weight.

Yet… amazingly… there he was. Still alive. With Ninja Mama waiting to strike.

But if you thought that was the most disgusting thing about our hastily arranged bus journey from Mumbai to Goa you are mistaken. You are so mistaken.

Moments after the journey began the missus, yours truly and the other unsuspecting passengers were subject to a poorly produced DVD of that blockbuster movie, indeed epitome of film as an art form, Speed.

Not the Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock one. But the Aftab Shivdasani, Zayed Khan starrer (!) that set the box offices ringing with calls for refunds. And if that was not bad enough, after that movie, hours of fitful sleep and Captain Regurgitation, in the morning we were further subjected to a DVD of Dhamaal. (Famoursfor the song - Dhamaal.)

Now everyone wanted to throw up.

But wait one goddamn minute! Didn’t yours truly promise the missus a romantic trip to Jodhpur for a friend’s brother’s wedding? (Close enough to hog, distant enough to give small inexpensive gifts without guilt.) Followed by an overnight desert safari in Jaisalmer?

And here we were in a bus to Goa.

What gives?

Part 1: A Christmas in Waiting

Bandra Terminus, station code BDTS,  is so named not so much because trains stop there as much for the fact that your willingness to stay alive terminates as you step in. The 1:30 PM train to Jodhpur starts from platform number 2.

Or maybe 1. Or even 3. Who knows? The railways fellows surely don’t! And is there an overbridge across platforms? Of course not! That would make it convenient to catch trains and that goes completely against everything BDTS stands for.

So while you drag your bags, (one for the master, one for the dame and one for the woolens that weigh a freaking ton), through incessant porters, pollution, traffic and over puddles of stagnant water you have no idea where to go. Till, like a breath of fresh air, a porter told us that we’d have to go all the way back out of the parking, through the gate and across the tracks to platform number 2.

I was beginning to hate my double-lined, American-made, water-proof, mountaineering-intended Nautica jacket. Sure it had kept me virile through many a testy December in Ahmedabad and Delhi. But the freaking thing weighed many a ton.

The platform was almost empty when we reached there. We were an hour ahead of time. This was so that I could cozy up to the TTE when he turned up with the train and see if I could bump up our Waitlist 4 & 5 to at least an RAC.

The TTE, in his eagerness to help agitated passengers with WL and RAC tickets, came in plain clothes and slipped into the train without telling anyone. When I finally located the blackguard he was lavishly laid back on a berth eating only the aloo out of a dabba of aloo gobi. The philistine was saving the gobi for later. Or maybe he didn’t like gobi. Honestly I didn’t give a freaking f!@#.

I asked him for a berth. In a polite manner. He said he had no berths. Then, as I believe is the norm, I loosened my shoulders, threw my head to one side, popped a fist into a pocket (mine) and asked him in a more casual manner. Apparently, as Pastrami had prepared me, this indicates that I am prepared to pay a little gratuity for the help. He laughed at me and popped another piece of aloo in the mouth (his).

When the train started moving I ran out, and once again the both of us, missus and I, were alone on the platform with nowhere to go. Our dreams of a desert holiday and a five star marwari wedding in Jodhpur had gone to pieces. Also it was our first wedding anniversary in a couple of day’s time.

The wife was beginning to show the faint beginnings of a dissapointed funk on her face when I told her those reassuring words that never fail to perk up any unhappy missus:

“Don’t worry darling. It was entirely my fault that we missed the train and our holiday plans have got destroyed beyond repair and not at all because you said we don’t need to book Tatkal tickets as any idiot, by which you meant me, should know that Waitlist 4 and 5 always gets confirmed…”

She was immediately cheery again, briefly mentioned how she found my honesty refreshing, and we trundled back home and sat in the living room, bewildered at what to do with the four days of leave we had already locked in with our employers.

We made a few calls to hotels in Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani only for the owners to laugh at us loudly over the phone. The 25th of December was not proving to be a good day to book rooms in hotels for the end of year holidays.

Sidin: “But darling… after all what matters is being together and spending time with each other and enjoying precious moments…”

Missus: “Shut up and call makemytrip”

Sidin: ” …calling up Makemytrip of course.”

A few calls, frantic internet searching, tripadvisor review readings and helpful dibs into the Lonely Planet later we finally decided that the only place that remotely had the chance of a free room was Goa. Some shack or tent somewhere had to be free right? Half an hour later, a last minute cancellation meant that a log cabin waited for us at the Montego Bay Resort on Morjim Beach.

Morjim, a little googling revealed, was one of the more secluded beaches far from the maddening crowds. This meant that the beach would be cleaner, quieter and most importantly I could take my shirt off without irreparable damage to the self esteem.(I carry a little bit of fat on me. Sometimes you can’t make out I’m wearing a swimsuit.)

(Later in Goa, as luck would have it, every time the missus and I decided to hit the beach for a walk or a read in the evening twilight a dozen or so foreign mens, most of them working in the underwear modelling, special forces commando and international gymnastics industries, would parade in front of us with their tops off and their flat-abs and six-packs showing. I would immediately leap off my lounge chair, pick up an empty Kingfisher beer bottle and thulp them over the head till they passed out entirely in my imagination.)

Since flying was out of the question due to my freelance writer livelihood, and we had already had our fill of the railway system we decided to opt for the many pleasures of luxury ac Volvo buses. Redbus.in was a handy tool and we had soon booked return tickets on Raj National Express. The cram de la cram of bus operators.

After a minor fifteen minutes delay, we were off to Goa at 8:15 PM. Morjim, the beach, foreign food, a run in with a world famous author and the most delightful massacre of the English language awaited us.

And onwards we bus to Part 2. Which will appear, I promise you, shortly.

Yes yes yes. Your conscience demands you go to Giveindia and do your bit now! Right now goddammit!

My heart aches. I am fighting back the tears of indignation that well up. Cannot cry during Diwali, I tell myself, as I sob in time with the roaring of the AC in the office so that no one notices.

How could you people do this to me? How could you let me carry on this blog with two copies of the exact same blogroll on the sidebar of this page for two whole weeks without as mush as a peep.

All you people care about are the blog posts and the content and the wisecracks and all that. I am just  a piece of meat, with some words thrown all over it, for you guys.

I feel used. I have removed the extra blogroll. But our relationship is never going to be the same again.

ROAR! Sob!

In other news the missus managed to destroy the tryanny of under-connectivity perpetrated upon us by the vile people at Wilson Cable here in Wadala East. She is terribly proud of it and I think it only right that I tell you all about her moment of inspiration which now helps me, literally, to run around anywhere in the house and browse porn interesting material on applied sciences and contemporary sociology.

The Wadala East area is heavily under the control of a cable-internet cartel managed by the people at Wilson Cable. They may sound like a nice, warm and friendly outfit in the english countryside as depicted by Blyton or Herriot.

"Hey it’s the man from Wilson! Hello Tommy! Top of the morning to you laddie. Good show with that Set Top Box. DVD quality indeed!".

To which the real Wilson Cable people from Antop Hill would respond: "Oh why don’t you pop over with me to this khopcha and I could, perhaps, feast you on some of my special and copious  kharcha pani."

You take panga with these people at your own risk. They have their own TV channel and stuff. These are bad asses I tell you. Ms. D’Costa from upstairs refused to pair her bill last year on account of poor picture quality. Then one day she went to the airport to catch a flight and was never heard from since. (Some say she migrated to Canada. But we are not believing that story.)

And yet the missus prevailed. Woo hoo!

The thing is this. We have a 256 kbps connection laid to our home by the people from Wilson. Now they may be tough nuts but they are reliable people to do business with. The connection works well and more than once, minutes away from a column deadline, they have repaired a down line so I can mail off things.

Two years ago, when we first got the connection, you could plug in the ethernet line into any PC’s lan port and dial up. All you needed was a PPPOE connection. (Look it up. Basically it is a way to put a dial up connection on the end of a broadband connection so that there is some security and control.)

Then suddenly one day we received a call from the Wilson Cable office. There was a moment of discomfort in the home when we saw the caller id flashing. What did…. gulp… they want… with us? Gulp. Shudder.

"Ab ek hi MAC address chalega… Nahi… Sorry… Bas ek. Aapko kuch problem hai to aap ek kaam keejiye, Antop Hill Wilson office mein aayiye… Oh Ramu! Woh peeche waalah ‘discussion’ room khulwake rakhna…"

Apparently some genius had signed up for one of their unlimited internet connections and then, through a router, set up an illegal internet cafe. So they decided that henceforth they would have two types of accounts: cheap single user accounts for poeple like us, and more expensive multi-user accounts subject to location checking and vetting.

We did not complain and continued to use several laptops on our connection, all using MAC address spoofing but, of course, only lappie at a time. And we always paid Wilson Ke-bill on time. Heh! (Phew. That one’s been inside me for months.)

Then last week, the tech geek that I am, I decided to have a wifi enabled home. This way I could work online not only in the bedroom, but also absolutely anywhere in the living room. Imagine!

Two days later a shiny, cute Netgear wifi router was shipped in by Ebay and I eagerly unpacked it with dreams of complete domestic mobile computing in my eyes.

Eight hours later I went to bed with the sheer ecstasy of someone who had just wasted eight hours of his life and 2000 bucks (inclusive of VAT) of his hard earned money.

I had forgotten one simple fact. Stupid me. Even if I had spoofed MAC ids all over the place on both lappie and router, the network would still not allow more than one device to access it. Therefore even if I was hooked up to the internet, and the lappie was hooked up to the router I could do nothing with the network.

"Connection ek, aur computer do! Bahut na insaafi hai!" the network would say unnecessarily falling back on a tired Sholay cliche yet again.

Therefore I was adamantly left offline. Completely unable to get on the net and do anything.

Except, of course, obsessively update the software on the Netgear router.

But after four hours of this, the initial exuberance dims somewhat. "Goddammit you fool! NO NEW FIRMWARE VERSION! F&@# I quit!" was the sort of message the router was beginning to spew.

I gave up and went to bed. A sad, broken man.

Next morning I gave the wonderful people at Wilson a call to find out what was wrong.

"Aapne ghar pe ROUTER lagwa diya!" he said with undue emphasis on that exclamation mark. Apparently I had broken some unmentioned rule of the Cable Omerta. After a few moments of pregnant silence he said that this would not work and I would HAVE to take a multi-user account. At a little more than double the rent I pay now. "Main aapko ek aisa offer doonga jisko aap mana nahi kar sakte!" he said. I hung up immediately and ran for protection to the honourable Don Bosco chapel nearby.

Later at home I walked over to the router, packed it back into it’s box, then into the Ebay envelope and then placed it on the coffee table in the living room to forever remind me of my folly.

That evening, back home from work, the wife suddenly had a brainwave. The sort of idea that only comes to those truly gifted with IT. A eureka moment sans compare.

"Use the router as a node. Don’t let it dialup. Then connect to the wifi network with lappie and dialup as usual. Should work…"

I had tears in my eyes. I ran to her and fell to my knees as I tripped over the internet wire. But no matter. I got up and did exactly as she wanted me to: did the dishes and put out the washing to dry.

Then I worked on the router.

Would you believe it? It was working perfectly. Now we have internet anywhere at home. Everywhere at home.

Truly we are a tech advanced household.

If you want to see how it works you are welcome to drop in for a looksee. However we have hidden away the router behind the flush tank of the attached bathroom.

We don’t want them Wilson Cable people ever finding out. And don’t you be telling them a word. Silencio. Mucho secreto! Grazie.

Ciao.

After a long and unwelcome hiatus Pastrami suddenly burst back into my life yesterday. He had just returned from a trip to Jaipur recently. (Brother of Pastrami is getting married soon and Pastrami needs to keep popping up to Rajasthan once in a while to hang around the house looking delicate and sensitive with Blackberry in hand while the natives do all the hard work. “It is only what an elder brother should do…” Pastrami says.)But this recent trip had been very traumatic for him. He called to narrate a most unpleasant occurrence at his home, amidst his latest trip, that had him all shook up. I immediately suggested we pop over to the buffet dinner at the President and discuss it over smoked salmon. He agreed.

This thought came to me: Kaching!

Pastrami, for all the investment banking bluster and bravado, (”What do you mean you don’t have this Nike in my size? I will withdraw my Debt-convertible-to-Equity investment in your sorry ass retailing company right now mofo!”) is really a softy. Small things can shake him up badly and this story had his feathers ruffled much.

Sidin: “So what happened dawg?”

Pastrami: “So I am at home see. And they’re discussing the whole lunch buffet thingie…”

Sidin: “Day three?” (These extravagant North Indian weddings I tell you…)

Pastrami: “Day four. Daal bhatti churma and all that.”

Sidin: “Ah. Ok.”

Pastrami: “Now you know how it is with the kids back home and all their general questions about life and education and such like…”

Sidin: “Yes. You are supposed to be the resident genius yes?”

Pastrami: “Exactly!”

Context Update: Pastrami, the fabulously overpaid IIM A graduate, is without doubt the brains of the family. If anyone has any doubts with regards to any facet of life they immediately turn to the vast intellect of the Pastrami. This is particularly true of the little children who are encouraged to interact with Uncle Pastrami so that they too may grow up into outstanding pillars of society with a CA and MBA. In a lesser man this may have caused anxiety and pressure. But Pastrami takes this in his Bally-shod stride.

Until today apparently.

S: “So what happened?”

P: “This little fellow, one of my cousin sister’s children, runs up to me and demands to be spoken to. So I set aside my Blackberry and sat down for a chat with him…”

What followed was most mirthful:

Pesky Kid: “So Uncle Pastrami you know Harry Potter no?”

P: “Yes of course. I like Potter very much. Also the movies. Have you noticed how that Hermione Granger, of late, is turning into one… err… mature, educated individual?”

PK: “I like her also. But yesterday I saw on TV that JK Rowling has said that Aldus Dumbledor is actually gay…”

P: “Ahem… cough… cough… yes…”

PK: “What does gay mean?”

P: “What??!!”

PK: “Gay. Rowling said that Dumbledore is gay. I want to know what is gay. What is gay?”

By now our Pastrami is getting a little concerned. The word “gay” is not bandied about with such (hehe) gay abandon in the normal Rajasthani household. They frown upon such things and beyond a point can get all worked up till, when they can handle it no more, they go stand in a pool of stagnant water, blindfold themselves and try to dislodge trinkets from the feet of doves only by throwing sharp daggers…

Oops. Right location. Wrong story.

But back to the original story. Pastrami is heating up under the collar and the pesky kid is turning into a pain in his Rajasthan if you know what I mean.

PK: “WHAT IS GAY? WHAT IS GAY? WHAT IS GAY? WHAT IS GAY?”

P: “OK OK OK OK. I will tell you…”

PK: “Thanks uncle…”

Pastrami called the kid aside and began at the very top. A complete and explicit description of what love was, how a man and woman come together and how children, the fruits of a consummated marriage, were conceived and born.

PK: “That’s awesome uncle. So you are saying that right after marriage my father and mother decided they must have a child…”

P: “Yes…”

PK: “And then downloaded me from the internet…”

P: “Ahem… exactly…”

PK: “But mom told me that it was a very painful and long nine months before I was born…”

P: “Yes. Well… err… ahem… aha… see the internet was very slow in those days… you know how long it takes to download just one video file… That Paris Hilton thing for instance…”

PK: “What?”

P: “What?”

PK: “… anyways… so now tell me what is gay…”

P: “See gay is when a man likes another man… or when a woman likes another woman. And not just like but also love.”

PK: “Like mom and papa like you said?”

P: “Correct. So they hug and kiss and all…”

PK: “So wait… all those girls in Chak De India… they also hug and kiss after goals and everything no? Are they also all gay and loving each other in their hostel rooms and all?”

At this moment Pastrami paused to let that entire picture form in his mind and play itself out over several minutes. In great vivid detail. Especially Preeti Sabarwal. And that goalkeeper.

Pause for reader introspection.

PK: “Or all those boys in Rang De Basanti…”

And that image came crashing down in Pastrami’s mind.

P: “No no. That is just close friendship.”

PK: “Oh…” Puzzled…

P: “Gay people like each other a lot. They want to live with other people of the same sex. Boy with boy. And girl with girl. But this is not liked by everyone. They say it is a bad thing and not how people should be. Most people think that men should love only women and women should love only men.”

PK: “Oh! So THAT is why everyone is upset that Dumbledore is gay… Everyone thinks it is not… correct…”

So far so good. Besides the obvious discomfort Pastrami had actually managed to endure that trial in great form.

Sidin: “Not bad at all Pastrami. I think you handled it well. Sure you gave that kid a skewed view of sexuality, he will say something stupid in school, other kids will make fun of him, his childhood will be scarred. He may even become an outcast. No one will mix with him or be his friend. But then he is going to be a CA anyways…”

P: “Point…”

S: “So why are you so worked up dude…”

P: “Well remember last week you send me an SMS asking me if you could pick up a DVD from my library in Bandra?”

S: “Yes. Thanks a ton for that man…”

P: “Remember that you send me an SMS back after I said ok?”

S: “Yes…” I gently waved at the waiter for the bill. My spider sense began to tingle…

P: “Pesky kid picked up the Blackberry while I was away tasting the Tawa Mushroom…”

S: “Oh heck…”

The waiter placed the bill before me. I pushed it across the table.

P: “Why did you have to send me that man…”

S: “Well I meant ‘I Love You Pastrami’ in a platonic sense man. But you have my photo on the Blackberry don’t you? And photo caller id?”

P: “Hmm…”

Pesky kid, filled with emotion, picked up the berry and ran into the living room where assorted elders had communed to taste the rehearsal lunch.

“Uncle Pastrami is gay, Uncle Pastrami is gay, Uncle pastrami us gay, he loves a man, he loves man, he loves a man…”

We both got up and walked slowly towards the coffee shop door. I put my hand around Pastrami’s shoulder in a comforting fashion.

He mumbled under his breath: “Don’t do that man. Not now.”

I nodded as we both walked out with a respectable distance between us.