Domain Maximus » Unfunny

Wurst is best

sidin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:30:38 +0000

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.

Thanks to a shortage of rooms, a bus load of Singapore Airlines cabin crew, and an unrelenting Turkish man at the front desk, we suddenly had 4 hours to roam around the city before we would be allowed to check in.

Off we went on an inspection of one of Zurich’s premier museums, the Kunsthaus. Literally, “House of Art”. The word kunst, not to be used without some practice, is something of a hold-all German prefix for paintings, sculptures and such art forms. So you find kunsthauses and kunsthalles all over German-speaking Europe.

The one in Zurich is easy enough to find. There is a Kunsthaus stop on the tram network. Pop out of the tram and one sees a stately, if boring and bank-like, building. Inside, however, is the most delightful art museum, with a compact collection that spans centuries. From works by old masters, such as Van Dyke and Rubens, to the sculptures of Cy Twombly that belong to the “What the…” abstract genre.

It is a rich, busy and varied collection, with something for every kind of art lover. One floor alone of the museum had works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Giacometti, Rothko and Pollock crammed into a corner. There is nothing to not like about Zurich’s Kunsthaus, except for the very poor collection of fridge magnets in the gift shop.

After an hour and a half of walking around I suddenly noticed something very strange. “Hey RS,” I asked my colleague, “where is all the security? I don’t think there is anyone on this whole floor…”

“Oh the Swiss are very trusting,” RS said with the wisdom of someone who has travelled many times to Switzerland on work. “They expect you to follow the rules here.”

The rest of my trip I couldn’t get this out of my head. Trams had no ticket checkers. Entire 2,000 sq. ft shops had one aged Fräulein minding the counter. In department stores such as the popular Globus chain, you could wander through acres of merchandise without a security guard ever peeking from behind pillars.

This trust reached its peak at Sternen Grill (details follow), where they let you pick up crusty buns from an unsupervised box kept on the counter. They trust you to pick exactly as many as your bill allows. But they don’t check. You could spend all day walking past that box picking up buns and no one would notice.

By contrast, I am not allowed into the kitchen by myself at home.

RS and I spent that night in the hotel room debating this bewildering tendency.

Much is made in local promotional material of the fact that Zurich has overcome its staid reputation for being a banker’s den. And has now become something of a regional party town. But these are not luxuries meant for the per diem-ed. Instead we focused on experiencing Zurich through its eateries. After all, a man has to eat. Even the guys in accounts understand that.

A quick hop from the Bellevue tram station, Vorderer Sternen is a combination of restaurant, bar and food stall. The food stall, called Sternen Grill, serves up its signature bratwurst with a hard crusty bun (CHF6.50, or around Rs270), called Gold Burli, and a little cup of fiery mustard.

The first bite into that veal sausage, with its abundant meaty insides and crisp but not un-pliant casing, is a moment of epiphany. The bread, on and in the other hand, is crunchy on the outside but soft inside. The kind of loaf that hurts the corners of your mouth. But satisfies. The mustard was so good, and it is good everywhere in Switzerland, that I bought back a large tube of local Thomy mustard to Delhi.

The next time I had a free evening in Zurich I went hunting for the Zeughauskeller, an ancient armoury-turned-beer house and restaurant. Even if you don’t have a penchant for beer, meat and potatoes, the Zeughauskeller has great atmosphere, period architecture, and is a good place to spot the locals in their natural environment: with beer, meat and potatoes.

Nati the waitress handed me a menu in English and I ordered a Zurich speciality: Kalbsgeschnetzeltes nach Zürcher Art.

Yes, you order a portion by pointing at it in the menu.

In plain English that would be: sliced veal Zurich style (CHF33.50).

The sliced strips of veal are pan-fried and then doused in a creamy white wine sauce with mushrooms.

While I waited, I sipped on beer and looked around. There were noisy, bald, beer-drinking frat-men. Tourists from Japan. And a near-romantic local couple who were sharing a large table with some young college boys (table-sharing is quite usual in Switzerland. As I would soon learn at Hiltl).

On the walls around were large etchings of fearsome Swiss medieval badasses in armour. I didn’t linger on them much till I realized one prominent part of their armour. A huge, er, cod piece. They were the size of little buckets (enter bratwurst joke here).

Thankfully Nati soon came with my little bucketful of veal and massive roesti.

The food was very good. The service was superb. And the ambience was spectacular. Do not miss Zeughauskeller when you visit Zurich, and don’t forget to look at the sign at the door which prohibits smoking there because of the “live grenades” stored nearby (imagine if these guys weren’t neutral when it came to wars).

Now before you throw up your Iyer/Iyengar/Jain vegetarian hands and curse the veal, beer and potatoes… hold on. Let me introduce Hiltl, considered one of the best vegetarian restaurants not just in Zurich or Switzerland, but in all of Europe. Initially we ignored such claims, assuming Hiltl to be one of those tourist traps at best. And new-age organic, raw food type places at worst. But one night, RS, an uncompromising “One-spaghetti-carbonara-but-no-egg-no-fish-no-shrimp-no-meat-please” veggie, had enough of eating bun and mustard left over from my bratwursts.

Hiltl was a revelation. First, there is the concept of paying for your food by weight. After each trip to the buffet you weighed your plate, printed out a little receipt and kept it with you. At the end of the meal a trusting waiter totted up all the receipts.

Second was the food itself. An utterly respectable spread of hot and cold vegetarian food, with everything from a splendid cheese quiche to green peas samosas and paneer (cottage cheese) masala.

Third, we were squeezed into a huge oblong table along with at least four other groups. There was some initial awkwardness and elbow jousting. Till the quiche and paneer happened.

Then just as we got up to stagger back to the hotel, the waiter, till then a silent apparition, suddenly asked us if we were Indians. We nodded. “Hi. My name is Virat. I am from Rajasthan. You guys should come for Bollywood Night at Sugar Lounge on Thursday.”

Virat handed out invitation cards for the event. On one side it had pictures of a man in mammoth sunglasses, spiked hair, looking trendy and far into the distance.

“Who is this guy?”

“That’s me.”

“Who, DJ Happy? You are this DJ Happy?”

“Yes. I do DJ on the side to make money.”

Virat then told us about Hiltl, about how Morarji Desai once ate there—“There are photos in the office”—and how it was something of a meeting place for Indian tourists. He assured us that his Bollywood Night was a not-for-profit social initiative.

“No no. No money for that. It because there are very few Indians in Zurich. Mostly computer people. Come for one or two years. There is no community spirit. I am the president of the Indian community in Zurich. I am trying to get them to socialize.”

Virat then gave us a quick list of things to do and places to see in Zurich. Which we enthusiastically noted down. And then never referred to again.

You see, we had meetings.

My parting dietary engagement with Zurich was at the Sprüngli outlet in the departures duty-free. Sprüngli is a chain of bakeries and confectioners with outlets all over the country. They are world famous for their Luxemburgerli—mind-blowing-light-as-air macaroons, and fresh truffles.

How fresh? There was a lady from Sprüngli actually making truffles at the airport. She let me sample one in dark chocolate. And then one in milk chocolate.

“They are very good yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “They are the best.”

“Uhuh” I said as tears of joy welled up in my eyes.

I want truffle. I want bratwurst. I want visa extension. Now.

(P.S. Dork 2 is afoot. 2100 words down as of tonight. Very thrilled. Now need to bathe.)

Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall

sidin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:18:54 +0000

Cover of Wolf Hall: A Novel (Man Booker Prize)

Have I told you about my obsession with author podcasts? About how I diligently download as many author interviews as I can onto my iPod and then listen to them many times?

Personally I like to skip the parts where they talk about one, or several, of their books. Instead, I like to focus on the writing process they follow. Do they wake up at 4:30 AM and start typing? Do they carry moleskine notebooks around to jot down ideas? And how did/do they go about researching their books?

The latest addition to this collection is an iTunes “Meet The Author” interview with Hilary Mantel. I haven’t read the Booker prize winning Wolf Hall yet. The book is one of the many I abstained from while editing up Dork. (Fear of “inspiration”, insecurity etc. etc.)

You can listen to that episode, and archives of the “Meet the Author” podcast, here.

My favourite-st author interview show however is the BBC’s excellent World Book Club. Superb interviews with great authors. And extremely accessible. Plenty to listen to online and on the iPod, here.

The latest episode of WBC featured John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas:

Some of the other authors featured on WBC include Annie Proulx, Kiran Desai, Wole Soyinka etc. etc. Splendid archives.

Another superb place to evesdrop on the “writing process” is the wonderful “Writers’ Rooms” series at the Guardian. The last update, however, is dated last July. Pity.

Strangers on a train

sidin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:09:40 +0000

Yes, yes I have finally moved bag, baggage and missus to Delhi and have spent the better part of the last week sneezing in our flat in Dwarka. (Thinking of the mammoth savings in rent I make here compared to my place in Wadala is somewhat comforting.)

But before I launch into blogging-as-usual-from-Delhi I must drop a line about an interesting incident that happened on the Metro a few days ago.

So there I am with the in-laws and the missus on the blue line from Connaught Place to Dwarka. The train is crowd-less but there aren’t any seats free. Somewhere mid-way, after Rajouri Garden I think, the mom-in-law gets a seat. She is wedged in between a Japanese mum with a PSP-clicking child, and a couple of African guys.

One of the African guys get up, my dad-in-law ushers the missus towards the empty seat. But before she can sit the African guy mumbles something and and scrambles his way back to the seat. The dad-in-law is very miffed and begins to say something when we calm him down and tell him to let it go.

Someone mumbles something about “better not take pangas” with “these African types”.

There is much wrathful eyeballing happening all around till both men get up just before Nawadah. Both the missus and dad-in-law take their place. I still stand. One of the guys comes over and says: “I give the old man a seat but he give it to that young woman. Young woman can stand. I want him to sit because he is old. In our country we respect old people.”

He sounds half-offended when he speaks.

I tell him that we respect old people in our country too.

Soon, but of course, we begin talking about India and Nigeria, which is where they are from. “Some things about India we like. Some things we don’t,” they say honestly when I ask them about living here. Turns out both guys are professional footballers with the Ruia Royals, a football team in the local Delhi league. (Anyone who can throw light on this please do. I could’nt Google up anything.) Both of them live in Nawadah and they were just back from a match.

When their station came we shook hands, patted backs, traded smiles and then they were off.

“These African types” were actually very nice people indeed.

I felt very, very sheepish after the whole incident.

Regular nonsense postings will resume from this weekend. Have a fantastic 2009 everyone!

Ten minutes to say farewell

sidin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:38:23 +0000

Wednesday was one of the tougher days I’ve had at work. I was multi-tasking on several stories, never a good thing for a writer, and had several Google Docs windows open on my workstation. A farewell lunch for a colleague, who is in her notice period and leaving early December, at The Tasting Room at Raghuvanshi Mills didn’t help with my rapidly overbearing workload. After a well-proportioned Tuna sandwich I ran back to the office to polish off an editorial piece on business education. It was filed an hour late.

A short intro piece to a pictorial cover story scheduled for later this week followed. And I was barely half way through it when I got a call from my contact at a PR firm: “Your request has gone through. They will give you an hour-long slot from 6:00 to 7:00 PM. Dinner is out of the question.”

The CEO of a very important and large international company was in town and I had requested an hour-long dinner meeting with her. This was for our popular weekend profiles page. They had reverted on Monday with a 6 to 6:30 half-hour slot. I told them it was pointless to talk to her for half an hour. And then, two days later, the PR firm had managed to inveigle out an hour long slot. It would be in her suite at the Taj Palace hotel near the Gateway of India as she already had dinner plan that night.

Around five, just as I ditched the intro piece to run downstairs and catch a cab, the publicist called back to say that the interview had been postponed by another half an hour. My meeting would now be at 6:30 PM. I gasped in relief. Now I would reach early and have enough time to chill out at the Taj lobby, double check my audio recorder and take a leak before I met the CEO for our interview.

I found a cab almost immediately and ran over my interview questions in my head for a while. Then I pulled out my Diwali-gift PSP and played the penultimate stage of God of War (on Easy mode of course). As the cab pulled into the road by Regal Cinema I saved it just before the final boss battle, stuffed it back into my messenger bag and then pulled out my audio recorder.

There was a line of two business types in suit jackets ahead of me at the metal detector. When my turn came I handed a security guard my messenger bag and walked through the metal detector. The guard felt all over the bag and then handed it back. I, in a split second, ran through all the jokes me and the missus make about these insipid security checks they do all over Mumbai at malls, hotels and multiplexes. A quick feel, nary a glance and a wave through.

Walking into the Taj lobby is one of the most dependable ways to reduce my blood pressure. The AC kicks in first, then the piped music and finally the shiny, warm, clean, buzzy ambience. I look to see if there is a guy on the piano. I always do this. Its a habit that can’t be explained.

That night there wasn’t. The piano sat quiet.

The next thing I do, without fail, is marvel at the doors into the Zodiac Grill and wonder what lies behind. Who lies behind? What astronomically large bills are being presented and paid? And then, like always, I promise myself that once the book is out I’ll make a million bucks and take the missus there. (She doesn’t admit it but a meal at the Zodiac Grill is clearly one of her short-term life goals.)

I walked around for a bit, made one circuit of the arm-chairs and sofas and then settle into a corner of a two-seater still fiddling with the audio recorder in my hand.

Oh wait, some of you might remember the audio player. Remember that Benq mp3 player I bought so long ago from Abu Dhabi and which some of you readers dissed me for? That very same, now replaced by a mighty 80GB iPod, serves as an audio recorder. It records audio superbly, is tiny and can store up to six and a half hours of recording in serviceable wav format.

In the minutes before every interview I handle I tend to fiddle with the player to calm my nerves. I switch it on, check capacity, then battery, switch it off and then do it all over again. I can never get used to the process of suddenly turning up one evening and probing into the personal lives of CEOs. Most oblige but it can still be a little nerve wracking.

The lobby is not as busy as usual. As I wait, a suitably socialite looking woman speeds down the lobby followed by an older woman who reassures her that “It is okay to wear shorts here baby!”

I recognize no one except for a Mr. Wickmann. (My memory may not be precise on this.) I know his name because of the quaint and subtle way in which the Taj summons people waiting in the lobby. Someone walks around with a little whiteboard, with a name on it, stuck on top of a stick There are two small bells on the stick which jangle as it is carried about. Around 6:20 or so someone comes looking for a Wickmann. Wickmann is a tall, white-haired man with spectacles. The staff member escorts him away somewhere.

The publicist picks me up around 6:35 PM from the lobby and we walk down the corridor that connects the new Taj to the old one. To me that walk is the shiniest part of the Taj. The windows and floors and lights all combine to make it this shimmering tube of light. I noticed little of the walk, though, as the publicist made small talk about the global economy and recession and what our paper thought and so on. In fact the only thing I did notice was a show window. It was empty except for a bottle of Dom Perignon on a little stand in the corner. At the time I thought it was a very poor display for Dom Perignon.

We went up the lift to the sixth floor of the heritage building and then took a left, over a flight of stairs to the CEO’s suite in the corner. I was too strung up for the interview to notice the wooden barristers and ornamentation of the corridors of the old Taj.

Our interview started late but lasted for just over an hour. She spoke about her life in the industry, her weekend pastimes, the Indian market and how she once served in the Israeli army. Then it turns out that she has dual citizenzhip: Israeli-British. I quietly admire the cosmopolitanism of it all and then sip on a black coffee. She offers a few hotel chocolates and biscuits but I refuse.

We get up after I switch off the audio recorder and exchange business cards. We shake hands and then she tells me that she’s off to meet a few local business associates for dinner. We share some small-talk and then I finally leave after a short but interesting interview.

This time when I step out I look around and smile.

The old Taj is quite simply a stunning hotel. There is so much to look at everywhere. The walls, the carpets, railings and art are all pretty special. And I have plenty of memories strewn all over the Grand Staircase. There was that quiz that we came third in a few years ago thanks to a stunning last round on Tata history cracked by yours truly. And that evening, after a horrible training session that may have damaged my brain permanently, when I first thought perhaps I should really write for a living.

I am accompanied to the lift and then down to the lobby by the CEO’s personal assistant. We talk about how beautiful the hotel is, how awesome London is and how we must meet when I am in the city next time. We go separate ways at the bottom. She scurries away to organize something about dinner and I walk back through the connecting corridor back to the lobby.

I stand in the lobby for a second and think of what I should do next. I could go and buy some sandwiches from the Taj deli for later. They are very expensive but you do get good authentic cold cuts. Or maybe I could call the missus down to South Bombay for dinner.

But then she has been feeling guilty about missing the gym for so long and I decide against it. Dal roti at home it shall be. I walk around the lobby a bit. And give myself an eyeful of all the rich and famous. I also note to myself that the flower arrangement tonight looks very lame. Sometimes the Taj places absolutely fantastic arrangements. Not that night. After ten minutes of loafing around, and bidding farewell, I turned around and walk out through the glass doors. I stand on top of the steps, look out to the sea for a brief glimpse and then trot out to a taxi. The publicist then runs up and offers to share a cab and drop me at Prabhadevi.

We leave the premises at around 8:15 PM give or take a few minutes. Two hours later those bastards attacked. That night I see the Taj burn. The fire leaps from a room on the sixth floor possibly right next to the one in which I interviewed my CEO.

I will never, ever forget that sight.

My CEO was located unharmed the next morning. Perhaps many of the other people I walked past and nodded at politely were not.

When the Taj returns to business, as it must, no prizes for guessing who will be among the first to go back into that lobby. I must.

The telegram is dying. Achoo! And so am I.

sidin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:45:23 +0000

Sniff. Cough. Wheeze.

Quite pleased with this longish cover story in last weekend’s Lounge. Too long to cut and paste the whole thing here. But here is a little amuse bouche of the story and a link to download the pdf of the two-page spread.

Have a terrible cold. So don’t expect anything cheery for a day or two. Or week. Sigh.

—

The telegram is dying

After a century and a half of binding the country together, the messenger of the masses is slowly becoming a remnant of the past

Shruti Chakraborty and Sidin Vadukut

On a recent weekday evening in south Mumbai, the Central Telegraph Office (CTO), a stone’s throw from the raucous Flora Fountain traffic circle, is abuzz with noise—not of customers but carpentry work. CTO, one of the district’s many heritage buildings with solid stone facades, humbly stands in the shadow of the considerably taller Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) office behind it. The MTNL office itself is overshadowed by the even taller and more imposing Videsh Sanchar Bhavan tower next door that houses VSNL offices. The three form a pecking order of telecom offices—from the swanky Tata-owned building at one end to the sad, sorry old CTO at the other.

Finding the telegraph counter in CTO means walking through an unmanned metal detector, past a dark, gloomy foyer, which is being converted into what looks like a modern bank with counters and glass partitions between them, and into a narrow corridor on the right.

There is not a single customer in sight. When asked for a telegram form, there is a moment of hesitation before one of the two employees behind the counter gets up and hands a piece of paper through the slot—it is a telegram application form that doesn’t look much younger than the CTO building itself.

“The telegram business has gone down a lot. Before, we used to send 1,000 a day. Nowadays, we get 100, sometimes 200,” explains a portly man behind the counter with a smile on his face. He counts the words on the filled-in form handed to him, checks on a laminated sheet of paper for the charges—Rs26 for overnight delivery of a 22-word telegram to Delhi—and then he hands back a counterfoil.

But when he checks the billing machine at the counter, he looks a little embarrassed. It was a few minutes past 5 in the evening, the end of a working day, and the Mumbai CTO had only sent 37 telegrams the whole day. Visibly upset, he quickly says: “We will send more today. We are open 24 hours for your service you know. Maybe some more people will come.”

In all likelihood, however, they won’t.

—

You could read the story online here. But I’d rather you download the PDF here. And no there aren’t any jokes in it. So for your daily dose of amusement you may want to revert to the dependable people at Newsmax.

Brain Man

admin — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:47:34 +0000

Busy week with many thousands of things to do. But what to do… the need to keep reader amused overwhelms the self…

So let me share the fascinating works of Vilayanur S Ramachandran. (Yes Pastrami, the brain guy. From Chennai. Correct. The very same.)

I am halfway through his first book, the tremendous Phantoms In The Brain, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. But to save you some of the 540 bucks it costs at the Imax Crossword here is, ah my love for you all, VSR’s talk at TED in March 2007. The intro from the TED site:

In a wide-ranging talk, Vilayanur Ramachandran explores how brain damage can reveal the connection between the internal structures of the brain and the corresponding functions of the mind. He talks about phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear color or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and family have been replaced with imposters.

Wait wait. Don’t run away. Listen to the man. Listen and drool.

A few good MBAs wanted

sidin — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:03:36 +0000

Friends, romans and country fellows…

The author is working on a project for a national newsmagazine. This project involves collecting feedback from desis who have done MBAs in India and, especially, abroad. Photo will be published. Which will instantly grant the person many minutes of fame across MBA aspirants all across the country.

I do not have to remind you that approx. 50% of these aspirants are ladies (men) who are looking for meaningful relationships (hanky panky) with stud MBAs such as yourself.

But seriously, it will involve close to no hassle, a couple of emails back and forth and a reasonably large national audience. Very good if your working for a startup looking for some buzz out there. Or have a CV that needs urgent visibility before they foreclose your mortgage. Also you can choose your own photo to publish. (Photoshop away as many extra chins as you want.)

And yes this is not some IIM/Harvard/Wharton-only thing. I am looking for a good mix of profiles from all over the place.

Drop me an email on sidin[at]jammag[dot]com with “I M MBA” in the subject! I wait with bated breath.

Back to work.

Hope all is well with everyone…

sidin — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:25:00 +0000

I am ok. Hope all of you are too.

I feel terrible for the city.

Speak up now!!!

sidin — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 11:50:00 +0000

Dear All,

Tomorrow there will be a panel discussion organized by CNBC-TV18 on the reservation issue. The event, driven by a friend of the author’s, is to give the issue a good balanced hearing.

It is NOT an anti-Arjun Singh rant fest
It is NOT an anti-reservation rant fest
It IS an opporunity to hear what four professors from the IIMs who know their stuff have to say about the issue. They have numbers, facts and opinions.
It IS an opporunity to ask questions, debate and disagree
It IS an opportunity to vindicate your opinions or stand corrected

It IS happening tomorrow in Mumbai and there are very very limited seats available. We would like alumni from the top government institutions, not just the IIXs, especially those of the more senior batches to participate and share ther thoughts.

If you are genuinely interested to talk and discuss then drop Rajjat a quick line at 9833360158.

We apologise for the short notice but the adventure to get this organized would make a great thriller novel.

Signed,
The committee trying to get CNBC to hold a high-level panel discussion on reservations.

Farewell and thanks for all the rides…

sidin — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 12:44:00 +0000

It was one of those perfect weekday mornings. I fell asleep watching the TV, in a rather traumatic posture, and woke up with a terrible headache in my knees. At the driving school I was told the car had a puncture and would not be back till 8. Which meant I would have to miss class once again. I yawned in disappointment and walked across the road to drench my worries in Sambar and Rava Dosa.

Ram Mahal is a rather non-descript south indian eating place. It has the routine Formica topped tables, mumbling old man who looks like he has way too much left over coconut chutney, and simple, rapid service. There is always the radio playing and a couple of newspapers for the customers. Today the radio was playing that old south indian favorite, Don’t Phunk with my Heart y the Black-eyed Peas. I picked up the newspaper and sat at my usual spot in the corner where I don’t get to see through the hole in the wall into the kitchen. (Like the Backstreet Boys, I don’t care much for who my dosa is and where it is from.) When I came across the piece of news in the business section I was overwhelmed.

When I was a child one of the highlights of our annual trips to my village in Kerala was the thud-thud-wheeze of my uncle’s Bajaj Chetak. And now this newspaper was telling me that Bajaj rolled out the last Chetak two days ago and was moving on. Tragically I wasn’t ready to do that. That blue, sturdy and awesomely cute scooter just meant too much to me.

A Chetak was probably my uncle’s first big buy after he started working for his bank. It was the regulation blue Chetak and like a gazillion other people he too waited for it for months before getting it. My uncle is the quiet, pillar of the family types. When, and only when, something could not be communicated through gestures of fingers, eyebrows and head and combinations thereof, did he speak. But every one in a while, and too rare nowadays now that all the kids have grown, he will sit on the armchair on the portico and regale us with stories of days gone by. Often they starred his reliable little Chetak. It was like a member of the family and when it was brought home I daresay it received a welcome as grand as any new-born. The Chetak was religiously parked in the firehouse (where they roasted coconuts into copra) and received a thorough washing down on the weekends, even during the monsoons.

When the taxi from the airport ploughed through the muddy kaccha road and climbed up the steep driveway I often exploded out of the car to climb all over the scooter. To this day I can feel the stiff rubbery feel of the buttons and the flip switches on the handlebars. And almost certainly I would fall off the scooter in some obscene fashion thus spending the rest of my one month vacation with a swollen lip or a skinned knee. The scooter was a novelty for us “persians” as our grandma used to call us. (For some reason that whole generation called us NRIs “persians”.)

But more than memories of the scooter itself, there are so many sensations I remember. The smell of petrol when my uncle opened the tank between the seats, a pretty dexterous endeavor in itself. Or the thrill of wind in my face when he took us to church standing on the footboard in the front. In “persia” you never got the wind in your face. Pavlov would have been proud of us the way we salivated, every evening, when we heard the scooter shoot up the incline, loop around the courtyard and glide into the firehouse. For there was no doubt my uncle always carried a small packet of Lacto King, Eclairs or Five Star when he came from work. When I grew older and finally gave up trying to learn cricket or football, he would bring back copies of Sputnik magazine that would invariably be stained with some gravy from his lunchbox. After all there was only so much storage in a Chetak.

The Chetak set limits on the size of his lunch box, the amount of vegetables he could buy and how many people could go to Church with him on Sunday mornings. The house rules were simple: the best behaved kids got taken to the church on the scooter while the rest had to walk with grandma to church trying to explain that persia no longer existed. After Sunday mass there was a mad rush to reach the scooter as only then could you make it back in time to see Ramayan. (Which is pretty cool in a secular kind of way.) Being a non-athletic Sputnik reader kind of guy I often ended walking home and just catching the last scene, which thrilled my grandmother. She was not as secular as the rest of us and thought growing up in a Muslim country was corruption enough!

But the all time best memory ever was when on some special evenings my uncle took us all on high-speed rounds of the neighbourhood. All my grandfather’s brothers lived in adjacent compounds and my uncle twisted and swooped through the houses and in between the trees. We screamed in joy and waved at all the uncles and aunts and domestic helps who jumped aside to avoid being hit by us. The noise a Chetak made when you shifted up gears was thoroughly satisfying and more than a little macho. We took good care of him too and for many years every scratch was well-mended and only original spare parts were ever used. Not one drop of adulterated petrol either.

But then the ambassador car came along and the scooter slowly got less and less attention. Well-loved but not attended to at all, like old Bryan Adams tapes. My rather enterprising cousin, who till then merely disassembled and put back together his bicycle, now got his evil fingers on the Chetak. The scooter had to be massively over-engineered, for every time he pulled out a few parts, he could only put back half of them or so. But the scooter still managed to run like normal. But middle of the night if you needed to get some Lacto-calamine lotion the Chetak was ever faithful and would start in a jiffy, albeit sometimes after a comical “tip and straighten” routine.
Then one year when we came home my uncle said he had sold it. No one was using it anymore and he couldn’t bare to see it waste away. The lacto-calamine phase had passed as well. Now we all go to Church together and come back and we really don’t think there is a point in trying to drive an Ambassador at any great pace over gardens and between coconut palms. And I am sure most of our elder relatives and domestic help wont be able to jump out of the way of a careening Ambassador without atleast a couple of days of notice. Sometimes my uncle still talks about his Chetak and of maybe buying a new one.

But then those heartless people at Bajaj wont let us do that anymore. Sob.

Bye dear Chetak my friend. May thou pass into that auto yard in the sky having lived a full and well-loved life. Farewell and thanks for all the rides.