For the last several months Whatay.com has been suffering silently. Why? Because Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese has been the cynosure of my non-office creative pursuits. Dork, as I have begun to refer to it lovingly, is the book.

The book.Yes. High fives all round.

Dork was the thing I referred to sheepishly when people asked what I’d been doing with this writing business for the last four years. “Where is your book dude?” blog readers would ask. I’d squirm and hem and haw impatiently.

You see this publishing business is slow. Slow and nerve wracking. Slow and nerve wracking and soul-draining. But it is awesome when it happens.

And now that the book is at advanced stage of completion, I think it is time we had a long talk. Sit down. Espresso? Good.

So sometime in early 2006, I decided to shed my MBA ways and become a freelance writer. I immediately started work on a manuscript. I went about it in a very mongol-like fashion. No plans, no contracts, no ideas; just long, sleepless night of typing and retyping. I made up the plot as I went along.

Four months later, in May 2006, I had a complete manuscript. And then I realized, while re-reading it for the fourth or fifth time, that it didn’t have a single joke in it. I mean it had jokes in it. But it was largely like the hygiene humour bits in the first twenty minutes of slasher movies.

Ha Ha Ha Stab. Ha Ha Stab. Ha Stab. Stab Stab Stab Stab. Nude scene.

It was not a sad book. Or a tragedy. Just that it didn’t have any joy in it.

And really, here we are all about the joy no?

Thus I decided. This would not be my first book. Maybe second. Ideally fifth. But not first. I just didn’t see it being my debut novel. (Not that I had a single publisher returning calls at the time. Not like there were editors clamouring at the door. But still.)

The book was saved away somewhere on the web. (It still doesn’t have a name. But it has a wonderful character name that I am proud of.)

I moved on from the “book project” and deflected all questions about it deftly. No point in approaching it without a plan, I told myself. Perhaps I should sell an idea to a publishing house first. Have a chat with a few commissioning editors. Draw up a chapter outline. Make a list of characters. Do what proper authors said they did in all those “books podcasts“.

Flightless avian

Also I was quite exhausted after the first manuscript. And mildly pained that I had gone about it all wrongly.

Months passed. Maybe a year. Till a moment of epiphany happened. At the Marine Plaza Hotel, on Marine Drive, in Mumbai. More specifically, around one of the corner tables at Geoffrey’s pub.

Friends from London were down, and joining us was the great Total. Total is a dear friend and a brutal observational comic. You laugh first, understand later and break down in tears eventually.

“Dude what happened to your book da?” Total asked. I broke down in tears. I told him about the manuscript in cryogenic storage. “Machi, you should at least see if you can sell some of your blog posts as some form of anthology. And a few of your columns and all. People will buy da. Try try.” Total was incessant. So I went back home thinking: “Why not? Not everyone in the world read my blog. Some people might actually pick up a copy. Yes it was reusing free content. But wasn’t Scott Adams trying the same blog book stunt? So why not? Nothing to lose.”

Eventually I decided I’d pad the book up with 25% new content. So, in a worst case scenario, at least the few thousand blog readers would pick it up. There was wind in my sails again. The loins were girdled. I took a full print-out of the blog, every post, and the missus and I began to sit down and sort. And edit. And rewrite.

But unlike last time, this time I went with a plan. I had emailed a bunch of bloggers for publishing contacts while starting the first book. And this time decided to email all of these leads asking for advice. One of them, a prominent writer of and about books, was also now heading a new publishing house. And I knew someone who knew someone who knew her. I tugged at this network.

Prominent Writer cum publisher wrote back! “Of course we’d like to do a book with you. Your blog is good. What ideas do you have?”

Joy! Ecstacy! Celebration!

I told her about the anthology idea. She seemed excited. Not thrilled. But interested. A thick batch of edited posts and columns was shipped out. I waited. (Notice how I stopped following up with any other publisher. But then I was going through the “beggar not chooser” phase. So…)

She responded a few days later. “Like the work. Like the style. It is funny. But the format is problematic. The tone doesn’t work in an anthology format.” She suggested I try working on a fresh novel idea. A full length, new novel.  Maybe based on campus culture or MBA lifestyle. What about an MBA murder mystery? That was a new one no?

After my bitter experience with the first manuscript, I was quite miffed by all this. I was just beginning to think this anthology idea was good. And that I could have the finished product in a few months time. Thinking, conceptualizing and writing a fresh novel would take so long. BUT I WANT TO BE PUBLISHED RIGHT NOW! I WANT TO SEE MY NAME IN THE IMAX WADALA CROSSWORD RIGHT NOW! WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYBODY IN PUBLISHING!

I mailed back Prominent Writer promising to think about her advice. I would send her a list of plot possibilities and she could tell me which ones would work. Slightly demoralized and more than a little pained, I picked up the whole blog anthology print out and sat with the missus looking for ideas for a novel.

And we saw it instantly. An old blog post that just might survive being expanded into a full novel. (NO. NOT TRAVAILS. NO. Thanks.)

The tone of this blog post was odd. The voice quirky. The premise somewhat innovative. I mailed Prominent Writer an excited email. I think, I told her, that we could pull this off. And it wasn’t that experimental, because we had proof of concept: there was this very popular series of British humour novels somewhat along this line. And then I waited.

A few days later the email came. “Let’d do this! I like the idea! We’ll pay you ___ rupees for it plus royalties. When can you deliver?”

Brain exploded with joy. Finally I was going to graduate from writer to author. Sure it was a small, low profile imprint. Not a Penguin or a Harper or a Random House. But it was a start. Some people asked me to talk to the bigger brands as well, jostle for more money. At least see if anybody else was interested in talking about the idea. I decided not to. Still begging, not choosing. “Send me the contract!” I emailed back.

A bizarre series of events happened after that. Now when I look back it seems all providential. But at the time it drove me insane.

The first draft of the contract had my address wrong. I sent it back. The second draft of the contract had my name spelt wrong. Sent it back. And the third draft of the contract had my PAN number wrong. I was livid. “How can you guys edit my whole book, if you can’t make a 10-page contract correctly? This is MY NAME goddammit!”

At which point they just fell off the radar. Prominent Writer stopped replying to emails. Her subordinates at the publishing house stopped replying to emails. Phone calls went unanswered. And I had three copies of the contract with assorted typos in my cupboard. But by then I had started work on Dork. And was pushing through a few thousand words each week. It was coming along nicely. But the deathly silence from my publisher was killing me. Not a single rupee had changed hands yet and no contract was signed. Three months later, sometime in October 2008, I realized that perhaps the project had fallen through.

My book was jinxed. Sob.

Which is when the missus made a stunning entry. Stage right. Screaming motivationally. Loving toughly. “Go talk to the other publishers good man! Take your 30,000 word long semi-manuscript and peddle it. Peddle it like your life and my future interior designing consultancy depends on it. Go go!”

So I did. All November I cleaned up the 30,000-word Dork draft and collected contacts at Penguin, Harper, Random House and so on. In December 2008, just before taking a week off to relocate to Delhi, I sent out emails to all of them:

I have this book idea. It almost got contracted with Prominent Writer. Would you guys want to have a look? Please?

Two editors, including one at Penguin I found on LinkedIn, wrote back. Send us a copy. We’d like to have a look. I did. I was very, very excited. This was Penguin and *Other Big House*. What if this worked out?

I mailed out massive PDFs and then waited patiently over the Chirstmas and New Year holidays. Meanwhile we moved to Delhi. Missus was very hopeful and optimistic. I was less so.

On the 5th of January Penguin emailed back. They liked what they saw.  But what was going to happen next? How would I wrap up the story?

A flurry of emails went back and forth. A week later Penguin made an offer. I accepted. (I told you this no?) (Other Big House reverted later too. But by then I’d given my word, if not stamp paper, to Penguin.)

Three months, many sleepless nights and two re-writes later, I submitted a 70,000 word manuscript to Penguin on 30th March 2009. Just a week behind contracted schedule. There was a minor hiccup as my assigned editor quit the flightless avian. But a splendid new one came in and picked the project up very smoothly. The initial feedback was good, my editor liked the book. thought it would work well and called me over to the Penguin office in Panchsheel Park to discuss edits and corrections.

Screenshot of Dork One title page

In that meeting we lightly touched upon the idea of sequels. Did I see the incredible Robin Varghese sustaining more stories? Did his character have longevity? It seemed to everyone involved that the book had adequate sequel potential. In the last week of June I sent them a proposal for two sequels, to make up the Robin Varghese trilogy.

While Penguin debated the sequel ideas internally two things happened: further rewriting on the original manuscript, and I hired a literary agent to handle contracts and paperwork. (In a moment of splendid genius I lost the first cheque Penguin sent me for Book One. Not a good move. I told my agent I will do nothing but write and email. The rest, including moneys, was upto them. Mita agreed graciously.)

In October Penguin sent a proposal for Books 2 and 3. By then we also decided to call it the Dork Trilogy. Because, you know, Robin Varghese is a dork. Last month I signed 95% of the contract for the sequels. (Two pages had typos and I need to sign them separately.)

Meanwhile Dork One will go to press in another two to three weeks.

So what is Dork One about?

Dork is about offices, office culture, naive employees, one love life, two YouTube videos, thousands of ball bearings, some dogs… But most of all it is about Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese. And ball bearings. But wait. That is too cryptic. Let me make it a little easier for you to figure out. The following image shows the 200 non-regular worlds that appear most frequently in the manuscript. Bigger size, means greater frequency. See if you can figure out what the book is about:

Book-cloud

Now for some quick Dork facts in jaunty QnA format:

Q: Is it a campus novel?

A: No. Well there is one chapter of campus-ness. But otherwise no.

Q: Do I need to have an MBA to “get it”?

A: No. Not at all. I’ve checked. High school education is sufficient but not necessary.

Q: How many pages does it have?

A: Around 240 I think. In nice readable font. Some white spaces here and there.

Q: So this is definitely auto-biographical right?

A: 60% of what happens in Dork is based on things I’ve seen or heard about. The rest is made up. Crazy shit.

Q: When do we get to buy it?

A: Last week of January 2010. Delhi first. I think.

Q: How much will it cost?

A: Secret. But cheap enough to not buy it from a traffic signal. I hope. No, but quite cheap.

Q: How many ball bearings are in it?

A: Thousands. Maybe millions. I stopped counting at one point. They are critical to the plot.

Q: There is a plot?

A: Good question. Maybe.

Q: I’ve never read your blog. Are there lots of in-jokes?

A: Welcome. No. There aren’t any in-jokes you won’t get. But blog regulars will know when they are getting a hat-tip or two. Irrelevant to plot.

Q: And when does Dork Two and Dork Three come out?

A: Don’t know yet. But in gaps of 9-12 months I think. I’ve started work.

Q: I live abroad. I want to buy Dork. Will I be able to?

A: I think so. Penguin is doing something. Fingers crossed.

Q: You’ve already sold movie rights haven’t you?

A: Nope. Not yet. Interested?

Q: Office culture?! Means no sex or violence?

A: Little bits of both. But nothing to scare the kids away. Except the language. There is bad language.

Q:  I know a friend’s friend called Robin Varghese…

A: Not based on him.

Q: But he is a real dork…

A: Not based on him.

Q: But he also works in an office…

A: Stop it Robin.

Q: Wait. What does “Dork” really mean?

A: A quirky, naive, socially inept person. Not unintelligent. Just a little odd. Out of touch.

Q: So you’ve started giving interviews, releasing excerpts and all?

A: Soon. I had to start with a detailed note on Whatay.com first no? International media splurge is being planned. Perhaps FIFA 2010 World Cup sponsorship. Imagine.

Q: How do you pronounce Dufresne?

A: Doo-frayne

Q: Cover design?

A: Yet to be finalized. The general idea is to go minimalist.

Q: Nervous?

A: Shitting bricks man.

Q: Any message for your blog readers?

A: You guys made it happen. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

P.S. We have been nominated for three Indibloggie awards (3, 5, 16). Voting for this blog and the Twitter feed is a wonderful, human gesture. Please make it.

***

Related posts:

1. Since you guys asked…
2. A fresh new Whatay
3. I am not Amit Varma

Leader of free world

Twas all because of two twee tweets that the tree, bloody twat, broke in twain and wiped me out. I am sure of it.

An international conspiracy, no less.

As some of my tweeple maybe aware, the minutes and hours after Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, for really really truly deeply madly wanting world peace more than anyone else, yours truly madly deeply may have poked an inordinate amount of fun at this decision. The idea, of course, was not to make light of the venerable Obama at all. Take that thought and immediately perish it I say.

I am a total Obama fan boy. The US president is tall, fit, good-looking, immensely intelligent, a wonderful public speaker, a good writer and a terrible bowler of right arm leg-spinners. What does that mean? Exactly, he is the anti-Laxman Sivaramakrishnan.

But being the Bizarro-Siva alone does not qualify one to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Maybe a Hero Honda “Most Crucial Player Who Assisted In A Turning Point During A Powerplay (Day-Night Only) of The Tournament Award” with cash prize and free bike. But little more.

So I was quite tickled by the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the prize to the big O.

Off I fired a couple of tweets in mirth.

Number 1

Number 2

Of course it was meant with no malice whatsoever. It was all as if I am standing next to Obama and gently poke him in the ribs with my elbow and wise-cracking. Like friends you know.

Said tweets were retweeted merrily and one was even quoted by a magazine state-side.

I believe this was the incident which triggered retribution. I was no longer with him, I was now against him. I believe this media coverage was subsequently picked up by that US agency responsible for the capture, slow torture and eventual assassination of foreigners resident in other countries: i.e. Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I kid. I mean the CIA. The CIA then alerted the Delhi branch of Obama’s black ops team who then prepared a stake out in order to eliminate the threat posed by my Twitter feed. It was an audacious attempt. One meant to tell everybody never to mess with the leader of the free world.

I survived. Just.

CSI New Delhi

The attack transpired as I left the safety of my office last Thursday and walked out to the Costa Coffee at CP. The missus, Pastrami and Lover Boy were already waiting for me at the cafe in our usual spot in the right-handed corner of the ground-floor section. I confidently walked out looking all journalist-like with my man-bag and Blackberry. I stepped out of the office and took a right, putting me on a path that flanked the American Center immediately on one side. And Kasturba Gandhi Marg on the left side.

Till this point I had always regarded the American Center very highly indeed. They have a good library with many superb magazines and often host interesting lectures, talks and movie shows. And recently they also had this mural stuck on the facade which showcased Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther together. Nice.

But housing clandestine belligerents? Not so nice.

Not knowing any of this, I quickly strode, late for our meeting as ever, past the the police jeep that is always present outside the American Center. For a moment I slowed my steps as I prepared to update Twitter with this message: “The MTS mobile service launch has to be the lamest ever.”

(You’ve seen the billboards? Guys with spiked hair surrounded by low-budget photoshop thingies. Epic Network Fail.)

And then blank. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Oblivion. I suddenly feel like I am asleep but dreaming dreams without visuals. Just noises in the background. Very confusing. An Adoor Gopalakrishnan dream. All the sounds were mostly people talking, with the hint of a police siren now and then.

Next moment I am limbering onto a bed at the emergency ward at Ram Manohar Lohia hospital. My specs are missing, my shirt is all over the place, my mouth feels numb and my head feels as if it’s been through a washing machine on full speed spin as the machine tumbles over Niagara Falls during an earthquake.

Remember how you’ve made fun of those 80s and 90s Bollywood classics where the hero recovers from blunt trauma to his cranium? As his eyes open everybody looks blurred, like the Loch Ness monster…

Recovering hero: “Mein Kaun Hu? Mein Kahaan Hu?”
Hu Jintao: “Vijay bete aap aspatal mein Ho…”
Ho Chi Minh: “What?”
Hu: “Was not talking to you Dude…”
Kamaal Rashid Khan (KRK): “Yes...?”

Oh how much we all have made fun of that no?

Well stop doing that.

Because that’s exactly what I had to do too. Groggy, I asked the policemen standing next to me what had happened. Where was I? What day was it? What time was it?

And then he told me what had transpired: “Bhai saab ped gir gaya aapke upar.”

Even in that concussed state my mind thought to itself: “Ah. So in hindi tree is masculine!” And then shortly after: “Wait. A tree fell on me? LOL.”

Apparently I was walking by the American Center when suddenly, without warning, without natural motivation, a large portion of the tree outside the American Center entrance broke and fell right on top of my head. This was not some small branch of a huge tree. But a sizable chunk of the tree itself. One bit knocked me out as it struck me on top of my head, the other smashed and slithered down my back, and assorted bits bruised me all over.

Similar memory loss, identical body type

But that is all conjecture. I have no idea AT ALL what happened. Oddly enough my left ear and cheek, and my left big toe were hurting as well.

One of the cops confirmed that it had been only 30 minutes since I left office. Then I suddenly realized that I didn’t remember anything of the previous several hours. And when a cop tried to fill in a form I realized I didn’t remember my phone number or home address either. This was all getting very creepy indeed.

At which moment my phone rang and I remembered that I owned a phone. It was the missus.

The gang set out for the hospital immediately. Meanwhile a doctor came over and I told him that I did not remember anything. “Oh that’s alright. You have retrograde amnesia,” he said with a tad too much enthusiasm. And then gave me a tetanus shot on my Side B. Then the cops wanted me to call someone besides the missus. So I looked up my last dialled numbers and phoned my boss. The man can never lose composure in any circumstance and coolly asked me if I remembered lunch.

I did vaguely. It was at The Chinese. Thankfully this kick-started the memory retrieval process. (Now I clearly remember eating the Home-Style Stir Fried Fish.) Boss immediately dispatched a fact-finding mission from the office.

Now I’d like to regale you with hilarious details of my X-rays and CT scans in the emergency ward but unfortunately I don’t remember much. It’s all a fuzzy blur of grubby tile-walled rooms, brusque doctors and crowds. Later I was told that my brain would act like a little pen drive: all the things I picked up while amnesiac would fade away and be replaced by forgotten things that happened before the accident.

But thankfully due to a life full of high cholesterol diets and a head of hair of helmet like consistency I seem to have escaped with nothing more than a few bruises and a very badly strained neck. Much of the foliage merely bounced off my cellulite.

I do occasionally wear a neck collar when it gets particularly painful. (Brief digression. True blurb from box containing neck collar: “Collar offers comfortable immobilization!”) This takes the pressure off the neck muscles somewhat. And prevents me from suddenly swinging my head from side to side when I am in the office and one of my smoking hot female media colleagues walk by breaking news flashes across the newsroom demanding instant editorial attention.

Also I was pleased to note that people in Delhi are extremely polite when they see the convalescing with their neck support collars. Just this weekend I was crossing one of the inner roads in CP when I almost got run over by a bike. But the biker turned around, noticed my collar and politely–unbelievable this–smiled and referred to only one close female relative as he rode off. I was quite moved and clapped a little.

However while I have survived the ordeal with some bruises, a week’s worth of physiotherapy, and scratches on the backside of my BlackBerry, my hatred for the US Government is total. Clearly the US Government had arranged for the encounter outside the American Center and made it to look like an entirely freak accident. Many conspiracies theories have been spiraling around at home, but I am convinced it was a death ray from one of their spy satellites hovering over New Delhi that hit the tree and led to the assault. Triggered by operatives, “cultural attaches” no doubt, housed in the American Center.

Americans, your retaliation was a pathetic cowardly attempt at trying to silence my voice. I am not fazed. I will not step down. I will not stop. I shall overcome. I believe in miracles. I’m the Neal, I’m the man, rockstar, superstar. I contain multitudes.

You don’t scare me. However I am willing to settle this peacefully in exchange for a green card and a country farm house somewhere in New England. Or controlling stake in Chrysler. Or a Kindle 2.

***

p.s. For the record this blog never broke up, it took a 12 week vacation

p.p.s. Expect major book updates sometime next week. A little bit of exciting new paperwork needs to be completed. I want to blab. But it would be premature right now.

Related posts:

1. Nope they still don’t get it
2. Notice: Write well. Write little. Make money.
3. Recently noted around Delhi – Part 1

Earlier this week, the night before the solar eclipse thingie happened, I am sitting at the barber shop in Dwarka under the KFC outlet. And I am feeling particularly unsettled. It is my first visit to this place you see.

Style has no language

I have no idea if this true for all men, but I think it is. Guys hate going to strange, new barber shops. When we find a barber shop we are comfortable with, we like to stick with it forever. A hair cutting ’saloon’, as it is called in any place in the world where there is a local Malayali population, is one of those low-mental-overhead decisions that guys make. We don’t think about it, analyze it or agonize over it in any way whatsoever. Once we find a place that can cut hair, deliver a decent massage and has a reflected TV screen in the mirror in front of us at a convenient angle we are pleased. We drop mental anchor.

And this has nothing to do with the barbering process itself mind you. It’s not like I plan my haircuts or need to have it done in a particularly artistic way. I am pretty sure that if I had the right combination of long arms, flexible elbows and curved mirrors I’d probably just cut my hair myself. And do it in the exact same way I first got it done when my mom realized my dad was old enough to take me to the local saloon unsupervised.

So unlike the missus, who is fraught with the turmoil of choice every time a haircut comes up, I just walk out of the house, entirely in autopilot, settle into a chair and say “Medium short, short sideburns, keep it short in front”. And 99% of the time that is the entirety of my conversation with by barber. For the next half an hour or so I sit coma-like. Like a vegetable and my mind blanks out, leaping from thought to thought to thought in no particular order.

Even those conversations that men traditionally have in barber shops–politics, sports and such like–are entirely pointless and transient. If you ask us what we spoke about just 10 minutes after we step out of the air-conditioning we probably won’t remember a thing. Barber shop conversation, from the male perspective, is like a screensaver for the mind.

Which is why, when you consider all the factors, that men and women have completely different conversations when it comes to haircuts.

Woman One: I am going to get a haircut
Woman Two: Oh awesome! Where?
Woman One: [Refers to a new haircutting place. Normally named after the ladies who own the place, i.e. 'Anamika and Anandavalli' if classy, or, if more edgy in an MTV sort of way, named after entirely unrelated concepts. For instance 'Sepsis'. Or 'Opticuts Prime'.]
Woman Two: Oh wow Sepsis! Awesome. Ask for Vinod, He is the best.
Woman One: Fingers crossed. I’ve asked for him. But apparently they can’t be 100% sure.
Woman Two: Best of luck. What cut are you getting?
Woman One: I am thinking of getting a Deep U in the back with short bangs in front.
Woman Two: Wow! Trendy and all! [NO WAY you can pull that off. But whatever. Fool.]

Contrast with the following:

Husband: I am going to get a haircut
Missus: Buy milk when you come

Which is why I was sitting in the saloon in Dwarka the other day super-aware. This was the first time I was partaking of the outlet. Nerves jangled. Everything felt a little strange. There was yet another shady brand of locally produced talcum powder on the counter, the swivel chair felt particularly unsteady and the TV, alas, could only be seen in double reflection off mirrors on the back and then front walls of the shop.

India TV was on. And had a complete pre-eclipse astrology package going on.

Which brings us to the real topic of this blog post. Excuse that bit about men and barber shops. Think of that bit as an AA Gill-ish rant.

And that topic is: The curse of alphabetical order in our lives.

Let me explain.

Having cornered the paranormally paranoid segment of the Indian TV viewing market, India TV had one of their staff astrologers in the studio explaining how the solar eclipse could impact your personal life. And in order to deliver true TV 2.0 personalized service the astrologer was doing this in order of first letter of name. And agonizingly slowly.

Through the entire course of my haircut and head massage, he only managed to go from A to C. Which meant that by the time he reached S, the first letter of my first name ‘Stud’, it would be well past midnight. And since the missus and I had already decided to catch up on Law and Order Special Victims Unit DVDs when I returned, I would miss my eclipse prophecies entirely.

So during the walk home after the cut, paper bag full of KFC in hand, I began to wonder about alphabetical order. About how, almost from the moment we are born, the alphabeticality of our names begin to haunt us. And finally, like a crazy weekend with a Facebook-account using friend, the experience haunts us for years after. With a first name starting with S and a second starting with V, that meant a lot of waiting for things to happen. And opportunities missed to Andrews, Anils, Deepaks and so on.

Shirley was the first consequence of the alphabetical order of my name. I had to sit next to her on my first day in kindergarten and was quite traumatized by her pastimes of choice: playing with either a plastic toy camera, or nasal mucus… the latter not always her own. I was quite troubled at the time and would have left Kindergarten severely scarred if it wasn’t for Jibu Jose who always shared his lunchbox. (Sausages in ketchup. Always. Awesome.)

(Note: Shirley later went on to grow up and look almost exactly like dusky hot shot model Nina Manuel. Jibu sadly did not.

Booger babe

Of course at that tender, innocent age it seldom occurs to the child’s mind what’s going on. When you are in kindergarten anything is possible. There is no systemic bias and human prejudice. As long as you ran to Jibu’s seat immediately as the bell rang, you got sausage.

But reality began to seep in when, a year or so later, yours truly qualified for one of those poetry reciting competitions.

In the beginning being called on stage in order of first names seemed like a cool idea. Why be the first to go on stage and embarrass yourself when the audience is still alert? By the time Sidin Vadukut’s turn comes along, the audience has long since disintegrated into several little Dumb Charades and Chinese Whispers games. Unless you screw up in spectacular fashion–forgetting all lines, peeing in shorts before going on stage, break down into tears and so on–no one will even realize you came and went.

But then Andrew M happened. Andrew M, who I am sure I have Whatay-ed about before, was the Sachin Tendulkar of poetry recitation.

No wait. No. What am I saying.

Andrew was the Bobby Darling of poetry recitation. The moment he walked on to stage the audience felt silent, the judges perked up ready to imprint 10s in the mark sheets, and the English teachers picked up the biggest prize parcel of wrapped up books and began writing his name on it.

That’s because victory for Andrew M in any pursuit that required emotive speaking and a high pitched voice was just a matter of turning up. This boy made the BeeGees sounds like a sub-woofer. He could sing any word in the English language, ANY WORD, and people melted into little puddles. Andrew could stand in front of a mike and go “Gangreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeene” and the normally frozen Principal Sister Margarita would go open mouthed, roll up her eyeballs and collapse.

Which meant that Sidin Vadukut, who usually came four hours after Andrew M, could simply do nothing to out-recite the Falsetto Fiend. (Once we both chose to recite the exact same poem, something about a Snowman who’d eventually melt and die. Andrew ran around the stage like those Olympic ice dancers, arms flailing, tears welling up in his eyes. Later I stood in one place, LIKE A SNOWMAN YOU IDIOT FOOL JUDGES, and delivered my lines. Andrew won his eleventh copy of Wren and Martin later that evening.)

The months, years and competitions went by. But even as I could never reconcile with the Fiend, our class was declared old enough to use the student’s library. This was a super-huge deal of course. Our library had the complete Hardy Boys, Nancy Drews, Jughead Double Digest and a sizeable archive of Young Times and Junior News. (Local children’s newspaper supplements. Mostly posters of Milli Vanilli, Spot the Difference puzzles, recipes with yoghurt and banana, and Dennis the Menace and Shylock Fox comics.)

Alas once again I had to deal with the nomenclature nemesis.

Our school was (still is) run by nuns who imposed discipline and orderliness with a certain Burmese Junta elan. (Burmese Nunta? Ha!) If someone fainted during the morning assembly under the hot Middle Eastern sun they just left them there on the ground. Only to be trampled over later as we marched back to our classrooms to the beat of a mildly hypnotizing drum. (Ok I exaggerate. They sent a nurse to pick up the kids, who then took them to the medical room, drugged them and then sold them to this kidney racket out of Ras Al Khaimah.)

So in order to maintain quiet corridors, the nuns decided that classes would visit the library, once a week, in alphabetically ordered groups of five or six.

Woman on top

I NEVER EVER got a Hardy Boys issued from the library. As for Nandy Drew I think I only ever got that Secret of the Golden Pavilion book in the usual routine of things. The good books never lasted by the time it was the turn of the Ss, Ts and Vs.

Instead I had to make do with the terrible, imported from India or [shudder] donated by well-wisher books that sucked. My first ever library book was, for instance, ‘The Sign of The Snake Tattoo’. A terrible book with an anatomically impossible oil painting of a turbanned man on the cover. He looked to one side, with his slightly dislocated shoulder, floating independently from the rest of his body, thrust in the opposite direction. The upper arm had a, GASP, snake tattoo on it just in case the title wasn’t emphatic enough. I remember nothing about the book except for a chase scene in it through ‘the bazaar of Agra’.

Sidin, Shirley, Sunil, Sneha (wonder where she is), Vincent and company all had to make do with the detritus left by then or wait till the end of the academic year by when everyone had already read the good stuff.

Soon a black barter market developed in library books.

We identified suitably named Elsa, Delbert, Franklin types in the class who cared nothing at all for books. And bribed them to go earlier and bring us the good stuff. (Later in life we did MBAs and became management consultants. The suitably named inherited their father’s footwear chain and bought Maybachs.)

Of course I am not saying that the Dreaded Alphabet Curse (DAC) did not come with a few benefits. It was, in fact, helpful in several cases. For instance when the nuns decided that EVERYONE must try out for the sports day teams. They lined us up in DAC order and made us all do the long jump. (Andrew M landed on his face. Which was awesome. But then he began to cry in pain, like that Coldplay fellow, and the girls went wild. Which sucked.)

By the time I landed in the sand with the grace of a birthing giraffe, no one had any mocking laughter left.

Also later in high school when he had John B. the psycho maths teacher, being Sidin helped. He’d take the attendance register and go down the list one by one asking each fellow the homework problem. By the time he reached me I’d have done my homework in the interim. Or at least managed to give an answer that was no stupider than anyone else’s. (The idea in high school pressure situations, of course, is to never ever stand out. Always, always get punished collectively.)

John B.: What is Gauss-Jordan Elimination?
Santosh: Gauss-Jordan elimination is a process to scientifically eliminate, after proper calculation with requisite data and mathematical…
John B.: Next!
Sidin: Gauss-Jordan elimination is a method to mathematically resolve, after adequate processing with necessary numbers and quantitative…
John B.: NEXT!
Santosh and Sidin: Under the table high five!

Now you’d think that DAC would go away by the time you reach business school right?

He overcame

V for very. W for wrong.

I spent all of first term sitting in the last row, in an extreme corner of our amphitheater-like classroom. Way over professor radar, mostly making faces at other people across the classroom over professors’ heads.

It was awesome. While it lasted.

In second term they flipped the order and I found myself in the bottom of the class where I stayed for the rest of my ‘diploma equivalent to an MBA’.

In the years hence DAC has continued to haunt me occasionally. There is that embarrassing moment outside bars and clubs as the bouncer looks for my surname in the list of authorized invitees. (It doesn’t matter if your name is Zalim Zardozi Zabaglione. The bouncer will always begin with Aarti A. Aravindan and work his way down.)

During things like campus placement, interviewers are so exhausted by the time they come to Vadukut, that any above-mediocre joke is enough to grab their attention and get a second round call. By then their bodies are beginning to shut down having heard 400 people tell them that “my goal in life is to learn enough on the job and then set up my own company”. (This because the Professor in charge of Placements said at the seminar that a good strategy is to tell companies that “your goal in life is to learn enough on the job and then set up your own company. This will make you stand apart and look uniquely risk-taking!”. 400 people noted this line down verbatim diligently.)

In my case DAC has taught me patience while I wait, the ability to think on my feet as John B. worked his way down the name list, and a disturbing Harman Baweja-esque ease with performing in front of an audience that does not care. It also gave me something that all of us strive our entire lives to find: something entirely outside our control to blame all our failures on.

So all these thoughts were going through my mind as I walked home from the barber’s. And I thought I should share this with you guys. Because, who knows? Perhaps you are an Aditya or a Bernard who had your own set of troubles when you were in school. Do tell what it feels like to be first by default.

But then I’d forgotten to buy milk from the market and I had to go back again.

Note: Barber shop photo from Failblog.in

Related posts:

1. Mind over Alma Mater…
2. The birds and the bees who are all boys
3. License to … umm … drive…

Defenceless prey

So we’re all trooping out of the in-law’s place in Ashok Vihar last weekend for a spot of shopping. We walk out of the door, past the stairwell and down the narrow drive way with low boundary walls on both sides.

Suddenly the mom-in-law freezes in her tracks. She cranes her neck over the chest-high boundary wall on the left. Like an alert documentary lioness, she has spotted something far way in the prairie grass of… er… Ashok Vihar BA Block. (Since the in-laws are staunch vegetarians let us assume that the prey is a wildebeest-shaped block of fresh paneer. Or kulfi.)

She turned around and asked us to be very quiet indeed. And then, following her lead, we all proceeded towards the car in a crouched posture. As soon as reached the car, we leapt into our seats nimble-fully and careened out of the colony at full speed, through the gates, swooped into the main road outside and then took a tyre-screeching u-turn before stopping at the Reliance Fresh on the other side.

Mom-in-law emoted the Punjabi equivalent of “Phew” and then explained how we’d just managed to avoid one of her more nosy neighbours, the retired VRS-accepted bank manager, uncle Zaphinder Singh Beeblotra (name changed).

Beeblotra, like Arnab Goswami, is renowned in Ashok Vihar for having an instant solution(s) for everybody’s problem and for tirelessly following up for months and years to ensure that his suggestions have been implemented. Failure to do so leads to quarrelsome discussions, incessant hounding, sting operations and, ultimately, prolonged feuds.

Which is why Bhatia from 4C refused to invite Pillai from 5B for Arunima’s wedding. Because Pillai put up a split AC unit, on Zaphinder’s tireless persuasion:

“Pillai saab…kya ajeeb batein kar rahe ho yaar! Window AC?? Chi. Huak thu! Aaj kal to zamana hi split AC ka hai ji. Chalo koi na. Aap busy lag rahe ho. Aap morning meditation continue karo. Main 11A hoke aata hoon. Sehgal sahab de Babloo di mummy de gift wali Scorpio da stereo kharaab ho gaya hai. O paagal Sehgal Kenwood lagva raha hai. Kenwood! Bewakoof na honwe taan!”

Pillai’s split unit then began dripping water down the outer wall and into Bhatia’s kitchen. Where it fell directly into steel pot placed under the Aquaguard. Which is how Arunima’s fiance’s entire family got dysentry when they came for girl-and-environment-inspection in February. (Bhatia rejected Beeblotra’s plan of making the ill drink the water of raw boiled papayas. But in exchange he had to let Idea Uncle choose the paan supplier for the wedding.)

So when the missus occasionally goes for walks around the colony she does so carefully. With an eye out for Beeblotra. There is no saying when he will leap out of a corner and plead with her to join swimming classes immediately. Because, just twenty-three years, ago the colony had gone on a bus trip to a beach somewhere and the Missus, who was extremely cute as a child I have been told to say, refused to approach the sea. For fear of being swept away. Beeblotra immediately made it his life’s mission to convince the missus to learn swimming. To this day.

In short I would faster attend an “Indian Students Tweetup” in Melbourne before teaching this man how to use Twitter.

As we trotted around the Reliance Fresh buying things, the mom-in-law recounted one of pop-in-law’s run ins with Beeblotra. (Apparently the incident was one of those family “in” jokes. You know the type. Where everyone is rolling on the floor howling just three words into the telling. Which puts immense pressure on you, the recently wedded-in, to laugh as much as everyone else. Which is a problem, as everyone else is from Jallandhar. And laugh like Royal Enfields.)

Scene: Pop-in-law generally hanging outside the house minding his own business. Whence Beeblotra pounces upon him from his secret hiding place behind the ironing-fellow’s push cart.

Pop-in-law: Woah teri!
B: Oh Kapoor saab! Kya haal jee!
PIL: Bas badhiya. Waiting for the workers to come!
B: Workers you say…
PIL: *ugh*
B: Carpentry work is it?
PIL: No no. Some masonry…
B: Oh ho! New room? New wall? False ceiling? Hamara Arvind Denver mein ghar ke andar jacuzzi banva raha hai you know?
PIL: Yes of course. No no. Bas we cleared the garden and some rubbish in the back of the house and soch rahe thhe ki what we will do with this extra space…
B: Oh Kapoor saab! Socho hee mat! Socho hee mat! Best suggestion deta hoon. Tussi majjan paal lao.
PIL: *Reply rhymed with “ittefaaq”*
B: Haan ji. Solid idea hai. Majjan paal lao. Space ka use bhi ho jayega aur sehat ke liye to badhiya hi badhiya! Kaash mere ghar mein aisi free space hoti… Main toh kukkad bhi paalta.

Reminded of the incident PIL, MIL and Missus unleashed waves upon waves of uncontrolled laughter standing in the Biscuits and Cereal aisle. On hearing customers make such a loud mirthful commotion a Reliance Fresh employee came running to find out what was happening. And would you believe it if I told you that the badge on his uniform t-shirt showed his name to be Phani Prasad!

What are the odds right? Impossible no? Correct. I made that bit up.

All this while I am standing and wondering what the joke was all about.

“Majjan paal lao”.

What DID that mean. My Punjabi is ok as long as it comes to Sukhbir lyrics. Otherwise it’s all a little gal ban gayee. So I began to process it in my mind. While I fake laughed away gripping on to a large pack of Bran Flakes for support.

1. Majjan paal lao = Majjan + paal lao
2. Majjan = mazaa? Mazaa = enjoyment / fun / amusement
3. Paal lao? Perhaps the same as the paal lo in “Bhangra paalo”? Reasonable assumption.
4. Paal lao = take it / pump it up / do it
5. Therefore majaa paal lao = have some fun! enjoy it! rock the place!

What the…

Beeblotra was basically telling them to use it as a party room? A den of some sort? Some enclosure to play Dumb Charades, Pictionary and other all round enthusiastic procurement of the phatte and subsequent chucking of the same?

What in god’s name was funny about that? Why are these loving, doting people laughing like maniacs? Why do I not get the clearly ground-breaking joke?

All these things went through my mind as I wiped fake tears of joy from my eyes, like everyone else, and proceeded shopping for something called “kharbooza”.

Later the missus clarified.

What thought leader Beeblotra really meant was to convert the space in the back into, and no urban residence should ever be without one, a buffalo shed. (Majjan = buffalo. Paal lao = domesticate.) His hare-brained theory being that the family which had recourse to its own source of fresh, free range diary products could save money and stay healthy.

A simple and spectacularly stupid plan.

Thankfully PIL installed a roomy bedroom in the space instead which I regularly use whenever I visit. Beeblotra does not know of course. I would be obliged if you don’t tell him.

However later, on further rumination, the incident also generated this Malayali thought process:

1. Majja = buffalo
2. While alive = milk, paneer, ghee, butter etc.
3. After dying purely natural death from heartbreak or tripping and falling = first class biryani (Buffalo is beef for real men.)

So really, when you look at it from my perspective…

Related posts:

1. Whatay goes to the UK – II
2. Strangers on a train
3. Main entrance to IIM Ahmedabad

Clipping 1: First of all there was the column in Friday’s Mint about Google’s mysterious and ominous new algorithm to pick out employees who were most likely to quit. There was much to think about that:

Clipping 2: Then yesterday plans were revealed about the huge, awesome stand-up comedy venue coming up in Mumbai. The famed Comedy Store from London is coming! Whatay heart-breaking thing to hear just months after one resettles in Delhi. Damn. I foresee much low-cost flying from November.

Clipping 3: And finally, I was cleaning out the house yesterday morning when I came across this week old copy of the Hindustan Times lying behind the sink. Flipping through languidly I noticed a most bizarre Calvin and Hobbes strip. This time I truly did not “get” the C&H joke. The following is a clip from the e-paper.

Aai caramba!

p.s. As usual please maximize the Scribd thingies to read legibly.

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2. Pyrexia of Unknown Origin
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London? Aye!

No use at all, is what.

The very first time I went to London was about three years ago. A team of three of us went all the way from Mumbai to London for a forty minute meeting that ended in twenty-five excluding tea break and LCD projector downtime. It was a Mashrafe Mortaza-level waste of time, other people’s money and effort.

But then those were heady times. This was 2006. Well before bankers everywhere realized that David X. Li’s Gaussian Copula model for the pricing of collateralized debt obligations was flawed. Many moons before banks collapsed, Iceland went bankrupt and banker Pastrami was forced to make severe cut-backs to his expenses: no more separate iPod Touches for each decade of Bollywood music, definitely no new Macbook for bathroom browsing and emergency discontinuation of the “Power Yoga” add-on to his Gold’s Gym membership.

(Pastrami was not available for comment for this post as he is in Hong Kong for, and I quote, “the weekend”.)

So off we went on our 6-month single-entry business visas, landed at Heathrow, sailed through customs before being whisked away to our hotel by one of the most meatiest human beings I have ever met. I don’t mean meaty in the sense of “fat” or “obese”. Oh no. I mean meaty in the sense of medium height, of almost cubical dimensions with enormous hands, neck and nose. Plenty of muscle to suggest a man with much physical labour in resume. But also enough meat to suggest a lack of enthusiasm for “Power Yoga”. When he settled into the driver’s car after tossing our luggage into the boot, we audibly heard his suit stretch into a new shape.

A somewhat meaty Georgian

The three of us then sat very quietly for the rest of the forty minute trip to our hotel in Central London. Every few minutes the driver would get a call from someone. They would then chatter away in animated, guttural Russian. Nothing of which we could decipher. Every once in a while he’d mention our hotel, or one of our names, and we’d all stiffen in our seats and look out of the window while surreptitiously texting loved ones ATM pins and safe combinations.

That was also the only time I’ve ever (been) driven out of or into Heathrow in a car. It’s much more convenient, and cheaper, to just take one of the underground tube trains from the station below the airport.

Which makes this a good time to briefly chat about the Briton’s obsession with maximizing cash flows. You maybe forgiven for thinking that the British have lost their ability to run global businesses like they once used to. (Indeed, we ask ourselves, what are they today except a nation subservient to the US, with excellent topless women in their newspapers, a bizarre talent for international cycling and a tendency to bestow people with Gordon Brown’s orc-like speech skills, high public office?)

Yet you can still sense a glimmer of that famed knack for business in the way they obsessively install cafes and gift shops in museums. And how, depending on how much money you have, you can take not one, but three different train options from Heathrow: regular tube (4 pounds something), the Heathrow Connect (7.40 pounds) and the Heathrow Express (16.50 pounds). In dosa terms that would be the Sada, Mysore Masala and Organic Free Trade Brown Rice Paneer Dry Fruit Special Masala respectively.

Note: If this in any way gives you the impression that you have an inkling of how the UK railways work I apologize. It does not. In fact nobody, as far as I know, knows how the rail system in the UK works. This is because of the complicated web of tracks, routes, companies, lessees and lessors, and what not, that work in collaboration. Examine this lucid paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for the Heathrow Connect service:

To access the airport spur without crossing the fast lines, trains in both directions use the flyover track originally built for Heathrow Express trains heading towards Paddington. This arrangement means Heathrow Connect trains to the airport use the flyover in the opposite direction to normal operation, and trains from Heathrow must cross both slow lines on the flat. If Crossrail goes ahead, the flyover will be rebuilt to overcome these limitations.

Just as James Joyce meant it to be.

Homework: Imagine the above text as a Hindi announcement on the Delhi Metro. Shudder. (Hindi scholars feel free to send a formal Indian Government Hindi version of the above para. Will publish thathtsamay).

But coming back on track (ha!), so in April 2006 the Georgian engined us (ho!) to our hotel stationed on (wah!) Bedford Avenue and watching London for the first time sent an electric (overdid it) sense of joy down my spine. It was all narrow two-lane roads, curling around little green squares with the crispest, coolest weather you can imagine. Sigh. And the plain, no-nonsense budget hotel, the team leader’s choice, was just a short walk away from Leicester Square and the British Museum. If you were in Mumbai this was like living in a 1BHK right inside Flora Fountain in terms of centrality.

Expecting to be budget-housed in a cheap, drug den in some far-flung suburb by the company I was quite pleased. Until I slipped my card into the electronic slot, swung open the door into my room, took two steps, and ran face first into the wall at the other end. Considering that I am one of those people who automatically become happy when they walk into a fresh hotel room this was quite a bummer.

Deluxe hotel room (life size image)

It was astonishingly, mind-bogglingly small. The room was exactly the length of the bed plus another two feet. And in the two feet gap they’d managed to fit in a miniature heat radiator and a weird tubular steel thing I later learnt was used to keep your luggage on. The room was also two bed-widths across and wedged into one corner was a writing table with matching chair. The table had two drawers, one with a hair-dryer and the other with a Bible in it.

The bathroom door was a sliding number that opened up into a space a little bigger than an airplane toilet.

In the first ten minutes, I poked myself in the eye twice and once tipped over the chair which toppled over the dust bin which collapsed the luggage holder which activated the trouser press which flopped out of the wall and hit me on my knee which made me bend over in pain when I hit my head against the door and fell over backwards dazed, and bounced off the chair into the bathroom where I got wedged between the bowl and the wash basin. It was like the infamous Honda advertisement. But with pain. All through the night, when claustrophobia and pain kept me awake, I reached, as always, for my one source of spiritual solace. I often reached across, opened the table drawer and, after a moment of silent solemnity, pulled out the hair dryer. A few minutes trying to inflate a pillow-cover always calms me.

I also noticed after a few hours of loitering around in the hotel and chatting with the staff that London was quite the melting pot of cultures. You already know our chauffeur was Georgian. The reception staff at the hotel comprised one British Born Confused Desi Sardarni eager to visit India and find her roots, and one Eastern European type who’s motto was “Service before self if it must come to that”. The concierge was a jovial Caribbean, the room service guy was very Arab and some of the house-keeping staff were Filipino. I think the great British contemporary poet Ronan Keating put it best when he once said:

Take a pinch of white man
Wrap him up in black skin
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty-bit of red indian boy..

Curly, black and kinky
Oriental sexy
If you lump it all together
Well, you’ve got a recipe for a get-along scene
Oh what a beautiful dream
If it could only come true
You know, you know…

How true! London is one such get-along scene. And despite their native cultural variety, somehow the city infuses all these people with a little bit of the stiff British upper lip. Which I will illustrate with a little incident that happened the morning of our doomed meeting. As is usual I was standing in front of the mirror in the mini-bathroom shaving, dressed only in my underclothes (focus on the story ladies) when there was a knock on the door. An Arab man said: “[inaudible] room service [inaudible] excuse me [inaudible]”

I replied: “NO! NO! NO! COME LATER!”

With stunning attention to detail he swiped his card, opened the door, slid in sideways and then stood perfectly still staring into the bathroom while I looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. After a few seconds he said he would come back later as “I looked busy” and left. Without even batting an eyelid. I ran after him to lock the door and then returned to my shaving but not before tripping over a telephone directory and comprehensively engaging a 14-inch TV with side of head.

All these thoughts came rushing back into my (healed) head three years later as I emerged with the missus out of Heathrow and into the waiting arms of Bill, my dearest brother-in-law. The punjabi in him had ensured that he came with bags of sandwiches and beverages for our pleasure. He pounced gallantly upon our trolley, picked up all the luggage himself and chaperoned us into a grim tunnel that led down to the Heathrow tube station. Within minutes we minded the gap and boarded a train (sada dosa). Shortly thereafter the missus and Bill launched into brother-sister re-bonding with cries of “Woah teri!”, “Shub-BHAASH puttar-uh” and, of course, “Oy hoy old boy”. Meanwhile, equally emotionally, I made my acquaintance with a Marks and Spencer smoked salmon sandwich and a banana yoghurt smoothie.

As you might imagine it was a very sentimental moment for all of us.

Holloway Road Station. You can see Arsenal's stadium from here

As soon as we walked in we spotted the tell-tale signs of accommodation of bachelors without frequently visiting female friends. Used socks lay about in three feet high mounds while the path to the kitchen was clearly demarcated, useful in case of smoke related emergencies, by a continuous line of semi-empty Papa John pizza boxes. In the living room what I initially thought was Bill’s roommate huddled under a blanket on the sofa, turned out to be just a bag of restaurant left-overs. Largely spaghetti, humus and and pita bread from early February now turned into a thriving child-sized colony of fungus. When I approached it to have a closer look it made a growling noise exactly like, you guessed it again, Gordon Brown.

We dropped our bags and the missus immediately embarked on a cleaning spree, with Bill helping, while I lay back and switched on the TV to watch the awesome Challenge channel. (More on Challenge and the dhol-playing sikhs with the red-shirts later.)

Normally such a night would be spent in all-night gossip and catching up and planning. But alas we had a train to catch at seven the next morning to Edinburgh, the city about which Gerald Butler, the hero of “This is Partha!” 300 movie fame once said:

I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals.

Butler is not a man known for his quotes.

Venti-size Starbucks cup

a) Wake up early enough to reach King’s Cross
b) Find our train
c) Find our co-travelers who had all the tickets
d) Avoid getting killed in the middle of the night by the mysterious fungal life-form in the living room

Therefore it gives me great pleasure to tell you that at around quarter past 7 the next morning the entire party had somehow managed to locate the right train, find the right seats, purchase several bags full of light travel snacks such as Egg Cheese BLT on Rye sandwiches and Venti-size hazelnut lattes from Starbucks, and settle into a comfortable trip to Edinburgh full of merry conversation and jovial over-eating.

Join us next time, perhaps in a day or two, when we discover the merry city of Edinburgh, the little piece of Bombay that sits right outside the castle there, the best sausage roll in the entire world and Irn Bru. Shudder.

Till then, as they say in Morocco when parting from dear friends, [inaudible]!

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If you are going to screw around with your blog template at all, then Sunday is the best time to do it. Weekend traffic is the worst!

So after many people told us that the old, warm orange Domain Maximus was boring and oh-so-Web1.0, we decided to clean up things a little and get a shiny new, busier template. The idea was to get something that would not only be easy to tweak and upload but also a design that would give a little more flexibility. Now we can not only highlight the latest post, but also pick a popular “featured” post, clearly list out the last five and also occasionally type out an Aside. Basically shorter posts in a para or two, mostly with links to something.

A lot of the randomness in the sidebar is gone. Navigation through categories is better and search has been improved. We are also trying to connect the blog to other columns and articles in a more meaningful way. (I am testing out a nice, visually pleasing embedding method.) It might all seem a little too comprehensive for a blog that is hardly ever updated. But the idea is to both clean it up and also use Whatay as a more useful tool in the months to come when a few newer projects will be announced. Wink nudge.

The blog has been on the back-burner ever since I started work on the book. But now that we have crossed that bridge, let’s hope things get busier here. With the new design done, pardon us while we go and work on a few new blogposts.

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Published on 23 May 2009. Fun little thing to do. Especially speaking to a bunch of people including Srinivas Bhogle, Aakash Chopra and Greatbong.

Click top right to expand, read and so on.

P.S. Prepared before the semi-finals. So some stars might be conspicuously absent.

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First of all I solemnly declare that I really did like Watchmen. Decent story, nice snarky sense of humour all over the place and lots of things, like costumes and guns, for little boys to gush over. Also heroine in latex suit. And heroine out of latex suit.

But also I had the chance to laugh verily at that oft-overlooked barometer of the social zeitgeist. (No idea. Just sounds cool.) The customer service feedback book.

Once you’ve done many weekends of women’s clothing shopping with the missus, as I have, you learn to, discreetly of course, find other things to amuse you. And within the sterile enviornment of our malls and department stores this is no mean feat. So I end up hanging around reading the vision statements of retailing companies, memorizing the US-European-UK-Asia-Klingon size conversion charts for shoes and internalizing material on why the design irregularities in Fabindia merchandise celebrate the eccentricity of handmade production.

And sometimes I go to the LCD/Plasma TV department, where they have all the TVs wired to the same DVD player. If you stand facing the huge display wall and then the image on the TV’s suddenly flip to one side, like in an external shot of a passenger jet, you get this awesome dizzy feeling. Try it. Don’t throw up.

And then a couple of years ago, at a W store, I discovered the customer feedback book and stood at the cash counter reading it cover to cover. It was freaking awesome. Seriously, somebody should publish one of those.

Sure most of it is just the usual "SMS when there is sale" and "Customer service is good, but price is slightly high" variety. But every once in a while there will be this awesome gem of humour or human frailty that cracks me up.

Ever since then I always make it a point to flip through these feedback books whenever I can.

So imagine my glee when I discover one at PVR Saket. It was just lying there by the popcorn counter, unloved and covered in mysterious sticky patches. With hajaar time to go before the 11:10 PM show, the missus and I began to flip through the book. There weren’t many entries. Someone from the staff had ripped off a good one-third of the book from the front. But the dozen or so pages left had plenty to think about. I present a few choice, mildly amusing pickings in the form of blurry BlackBerry photos and associated transcripts:

No. 1:

Okay making fun of someone’s English is a little below the belt. But come on. If you can spell ‘ambience’ you should be able to spell ‘great’ too right?

Text: ‘Grat service, ambience is very good.’ Yup. Cheap shot.

No. 2:

Some customers can be very choosy indeed you know. For instance, a few insist that the staff maintain the highest standards of personal hygiene.

Text:  ‘clean, friendly staff’

No. 3:

Don’t you just hate those movies that simply refuse to get along with you? They just refuse to listen to reason.

Text: ‘Nice place, reasonable movies, seating needs to be more comfortable.’

No. 4:

The best customers are those who leave clear, actionable feedback right? Right? Then these are the worshtest ever.

Text: ‘Its a fun place to hangout with friends!!’ Followed by ‘same’ and ‘same’. Thanks a lot!

No. 5:

This one is without doubt my favourite.

Text: ‘It is a beautiful and romantic place for 3 guys.’

Don’t ask me. I just report it as it is.

(P.S. Big scale blog redesign is being contemplated. We might post less frequently than usual because of that. Heh heh. Ayyo.)

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(A travelogue in many parts–I promise–written without any restraint at all. Truthful mostly.)

Trained by years of three-hour long summer vacation flights across the Arabian Sea, I am not one to dawdle with drinks and dinner inside an airplane cabin.

When you flew the dreaded Gulf Air connection between Abu Dhabi and Bombay your whole strategy was about speed and accuracy. Drink your first Johnnie Walker miniature too slowly and you were doomed. By the time the drinks trolley made its circuit and came back the only spirits left would be cans of lukewarm Heineken from within the bowels of the trolley and a couple of mini-bottles of white wine from great wine producing nations such as Turkey and Paraguay:

“This exquisite wine, also available in distinctive looking tetrapak boxes, is fruity with echoes of berry that give way to an after taste of burnt toast followed by full-bodied projectile throwing up.”

This was because two rows behind you sat bachelor boys Anto, Johnny and their friend Anto Johnny. All of them veteran Gulf Air flyers, who, over many years of annual leave trips, had perfected the art of hitting the drinks trolley harder and faster than a majestic Venkatesh Prasad cover drive crashing straight back into his stumps.

Miniature bottles of whisky, which Malayalis frown upon as a matter of principal, were thrown back by Anto and company two at a time in rapid-fire succession. Sometimes even before the stewardess has turned back with plastic glasses and peanuts. While the hapless crew-member shuttled between seat and trolley, a few bottles were stealthily slipped into pockets for the drive home from the airport. By the time Anto reached home in Chalakudy he was very, very happy and enveloped in a mixed mist of Johnnie Walker and Brut pour homme.

So you can imagine my chagrin when the cabin crew of my Delhi-Dubai Emirates flight not only kept all of us well nourished with many assorted beverages–”We only have Absolut vodka sir. Will that do?” “Alas! I will manage somehow. GLUG.”–but I was also among the first few people in Economy Class to be served dinner.

This may sound very grand and all, this being served before everyone else. However two things can make this very uncomfortable.

First of all you must realise that Economy Class travel is one of the great social levellers of the modern world. No matter what you are in the world outside–consultant, journalist, social media evangelist or investment wanker–if your boarding pass says Economy you have been grouped up with everyone else sitting around. So what you if you have a Blackberry and a tiny, almost pointless laptop? Since you clearly can’t afford Business or First shut the eff up and eat cold butter and drink warm beer like everyone else bro.

But this forced social homogenity also means that any preferential treatment by the cabin crew causes cabin-wide consternation.

“What did that boy just get? A coloring book! I want one immediately!”
“But darling you are 34!”
“So what stupid man. We are entitled to everything they are… Look someone’s getting an extra BLANKET now!”
“Oh please be mature woman and pilfer the cutlery like we planned.”

(I won’t tell you exactly who but one of my relatives is an expert at pilfering things from an airplane. When people visit for dinner parties she tells them that the cutlery, dining set, toilet paper, moisturizer and most of the sofa cushions were gifted to us by someone “high up in Cathay Pacific who get these things for free during Diwali.”)

So in all things Economy class passengers must be treated alike. Anything less could lead to revolt, uprising and eventually the guillotine. So when the stewardess placed dinner before me many a malicious eyebrow was raised. Apparently Emirates had actually taken the meal preference I had entered online seriously. And they brought me my seafood special before the regular meal trolley made its rounds.

Excellent customer service, but the craning necks and irate whispering was disconcerting. I waited for everyone else to be served before launching into an excellent prawn cocktail appetiser and salmon fillet main course. Most excellent.

Adding to my difficulties was the second factor: the pregnant German woman sitting across the aisle on my left. This big-boned frau was in that stage of pregnancy that medical professionals call “Feed or avoid”.

She polished off her meal tray in seconds, bread roll and all. And then, after shifting around in her seat for comfort, demolished her husband’s meal tray as well. Utterly unsatisfied she then turned around and glared. At my food. Incessantly. Not a prawn went from bowl to my mouth unobserved. My engagement with the fillet and her keen observation of the same was a remarkable case study in my hand-her eye coordination.

When she finally realized I had a different meal she summoned a stewardess demanding an explanation. Which was promptly offered in the form of a third defenceless meal tray. I quickly finished dinner while Mother Germany was distracted.

The missus, meanwhile, was having her own set of problems with another German who sat next to her. This gentleman was a standard issue Lonely Planet traveller perhaps en route to a connecting flight back home from Dubai. A nice short, stout fellow who spent the entire flight reading a German book.

Not that the missus did not try to quash his attempts to do this. First she dropped half lemon welcome drink in his lap. He laughed it off. And then, during the beverage service, most of a glass of orange juice fell over as well. He smiled and she apologised profusely. The glass of water she tipped over during dinner did not amuse him one bit. And then, in a stunning last act, the missus let go of the inflight entertainment system remote control which snapped back on its spring-loaded cord, whipped across the meal tray and leg-glanced the chocolate pudding over and onto his foot. He was enraged and looked this close to invading Poland as is the way of his people when pissed.

Needless to say she remained motionless for the rest of the trip while I sat back and enjoyed an in-flight entertainment system that, for once , was not programmed in Fortran.

And as I sit in the cabin watching grim, grey televised interpretations of Kurt Wallander novels with Kenneth Branagh playing the title role, let me tell you a little about the fortnight’s worth of travelling and sight-seeing that lay ahead.

The missus and I had cherished plans of a fortnight in South Africa for a couple of years. What with the brother-in-law having moved to Johannesburg a long time ago. Also Bill, as we shall henceforth call him, had this great Punjabi need to take me there all expenses paid and treat me like a king. Who am I to say no.

Alas just when it looked like the missus and I had managed to wheedle out some leave time together to pay him a visit the global economy crashed. Bill’s employers were not immune to the meltdown that hit the banks. And after weeks of turmoil and tension he was finally asked to suddenly move permanently to London. Off went Bill to a cozy two-bedroom two-bath place in Islington, just a few minutes walk from Arsenal football club’s Emirates Stadium and around the corner from Holloway Road tube station.

Weeks later when we found that Emirates was giving away Delhi-London-via-Dubai return tickets at around Rs23,000 per person after tax we did not hesitate. Tickets were booked and Bill was immediately asked to set aside a sizeable portion of his 2008 bonus. Bill, dear loving Bill, did even better. He booked tickets for a football match, a West End musical, and even arranged for a local SIM and mobile phone.

(Remind me later to tell you why and how you boys must marry into a Punjabi family only.)

Later after some group gmailing the two week long trip became much more exciting. Since we’d be landing just before the long Easter weekend the first item on our agenda would be a three-day road-trip across Scotland. Edinburgh and Inverness would be the highlights. And joining us, yay!, would be a jolly group of eight friends, all bankers in London. None of them, let me assure you, had anything at all to do with CDOs, CMOs and sub-prime mortgages. I don’t mix with those types anymore.

So where was I? Ah yes watching Kenneth Branagh as Wallander on the Emirates inflight entertainment thingie. Before the flight I had no idea that Henning Mankell’s Wallander books had been made into a TV series. If you are one of the few people I haven’t already forced to read Scandinavian crime fiction then I implore you to do so. Mankell is most good. But my favourites are the ten books of the Martin Beck series written by Sjowall and Wahloo. The husband-wife team produced delightful crime novels all set in the Sweden of the sixties. The books are all very grim with short days, long nights, grumpy people and overcast skies. Still they manage to be funny and utterly enthralling.

After one and a half episodes of Wallander I began to drop of to sleep and so switched the channel to audio tracks of Seinfeld stand-up. I had heard every single one before. Perfect background chatter, then, to fall asleep to.

The changeover in Dubai was smooth as butter. We deplaned, ran our shoes, belts and bags through an X-ray, did a quick circuit of a huge, shiny and impersonal Duty Free section before swiftly boarding the connecting flight to Heathrow.

A splinter of nostalgia shot through me as I picked up a copy of the Gulf News from a trolley outside the plane door. (NRIs nod in understanding please.)

And then in just a few minutes we were inside, the doors were pulled shut and I continued watching Wallander where I had left it off before.

Now I will spare you detailed narration of six hours of flight travel as I have to run right now. I just turned thirty years old a few moments ago and I am celebrating by cracking open a packet of Lindt dark chocolate to celebrate with the missus.

Do return in a day or to when we will continue on into Scotland and talk about the most complicated problem tourists face when they fly to the UK. Exactly… the Mensa puzzle device that operates the shower in hotel bathrooms.

Till then, as they say in the United Kingdom, ciao!

(By the way the people at GiveIndia do good work. Check them out. Click below. Go on.)

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