Smaller than Life

Stunned

2011-01-03T03:18:00.001-08:00

It lingers

Like the urge to move

A lost limb.

Watching pool in Vegas

2009-12-16T20:27:00.000-08:00

Watching the Mosconi Cup 2009 in Vegas has been one of my most fulfilling experiences to date for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that there are few sports where you can watch the pros from such close quarters. The only other sport where I have invested such enthusiasm and energy is cricket and it's very tough to get to look at somebody like, say, Sachin Tendulkar up close. I watched the best battle it out for 4 days. Each person had a unique style: each held the cue differently, stroked differently and had different styles. That made me ask the question: if they can all be so good despite employing different (some unconventional) techniques, what are they all commonly doing right?

As I watched, I gathered some interesting metadata about them as opposed to wannabe geniuses at the pool halls.

Each person had a very deliberate routine. No matter what the pressure was, he followed it unforgivingly. He analysed the shot, saw the angles, got into his stance, stroked the same number of practice shots and stroked in the same manner every single time. Watching them do their work in 'pin drop' silence was like watching a suspense film in slow motion.

The one other fascinating point was they never tried to play a flashy stroke or try to play to the gallery. In every scenario, they played the simplest shot possible. They 'took what the table gave them' (to quote a pool phrase) and did not try to force the situation. They repeatedly played the easiest shot possible and it was almost boringly repetitive. It's almost like repeatedly playing expert defensive shots for singles as opposed to trying to clear the field for six. They just played the table and never the opponent or the situation. Great methods.

The most interesting aspect was when they made the odd mistake, they never lost their cool. The next time they got a chance, they just went through their routine like nothing had happened the shot before. Amazing resilience borne out of hours and hours spent trusting and perfecting their methods and playing under pressure all the time.

Watching them, you felt no envy that you couldn't play like that, because the tremendous amount of work that they had put into perfecting their methods stared at you right in the face. Just watching them play, I think I became a better pool player! Not really, but almost. :)

These were great lessons for me and I learnt more about methods and why some people reach the top than I could have ever learnt by working on those three days.

A calypso for the master

2007-03-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is going to the Carribbean for the World Cup. He wanted me to write a calypso so that he could put up a banner. I don't know if it even remotely resembles one, but, anyway, here goes:

Three slips and a gully;
Pacers seething under their sunscreen,
Find da out-of-shape cherry,
Smashed back over da sightscreen.

Spinners can weave their spin
Do their drift or bounce or turn
But they're bowling to da kingpin
He milk da gaps for runs.

Ya fielders can sit back, drink a rum
Or watch mastery over a pint o' beer,
Ma'an, bring out da pipes and drum,
His Majesty, Lord Tendulkar is here.

He is da master of leg breaks, they hushed,
And the zooter, the flipper -- he's Warney.
Lord Tendulkar danced down and smashed
And Warney look real corny!

Y'all sit back and drink a rum
Or swig a pint o' beer,
Ma'an, bring out da pipes and drum,
His Majesty, Lord Tendulkar is here.

"He's my target," coo McGrath
"I will out him," he boasted.
Mighty Lord Tendulkar's wrath
Had da pigeon roasted.

Y'all sit back and drink a rum
Or swig a pint o' beer,
Ma'an, bring out da pipes and drum,
His Majesty, Lord Tendulkar is here.

"Fell him with pace, I can."
"I'm da fastest," say Shoaib Akthar.
When da ball sail over third-man,
He look like B-grade actor.

Y'all sit back and drink a rum
Or swig a pint o' beer,
Ma'an, bring out da pipes and drum,
His Majesty, Lord Tendulkar is here.

"I find a chink in his armour,"
Proclaim foolish Andy Caddick.
He was send out of da deep-midwicket stand
To look for da ball and his... trick!

Y'all sit back and drink a rum
Or swig a pint o' beer,
Ma'an, bring out da pipes and drum,
His Majesty, Lord Tendulkar is here.

And then the silly Olonga
He bowl an irreverent bouncah
The next time Lord Tendulka'
Make him fall Oblonga!

Da Don, da King and da Prince
Will all sit back, drink a rum,
Or watch mastery over a pint o' beer,
Ma'an, bring out da pipes and drum,
His Majesty, Lord Tendulkar is here!

-- Lord Imitator

Spilt tea

2006-08-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

Spilt tea trickles down my room,
My walls and carpets soak in
The aroma of a tea that has been spilled.
The spill slowly trickles out
Into richly scented rivulets...
There is more milk in the house,
And invigorating crushed tea leaves;
Crystalline cubes of sugar that wait
To melt into more cups of steaming tea,
For guests that have left.

Willows and Whites

2006-02-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

Here on, I will be writing my views on Cricket here from time to time. If you, like the millions of Indians, follow cricket, welcome to the Cricket blog of an average cricketer!

Observations on Sachin Tendulkar

2005-11-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

Sachin, Nov, 26, 2005 (Pic courtesy: Indiatimes)

Sachin, Jan 7, 2003 (Pic courtesy: The Hindu)

Much has already been said and written about Sachin Tendulkar's return to international cricket: his onslaught in the first two innings and the subsequent quiet. The batsmanship of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar -- his compactness in technique, minimal and precise footwork, balance, the power he generates on his shots and, most of all, his understanding of his own game -- has evoked a lot of interest from cricket followers world over.

Like millions of Indians, I find myself fascinated by the man's game when he is on song. Of particular interest to me are the technical adjustments that he makes for every series: the transfer of the shuffle to the front or back foot, and minor adjustments in his grip. Of late, I have been particularly intrigued by the change in the way he grips the bat. That he grips the bat very low on the handle is a well known fact. But, starting World Cup 2003, I noticed that Sachin began to grip the bat with the face of the bat more closed than earlier. It is tough to explain a grip, but I will make an effort to do so. It seemed to me that, when he gripped the bat, the webbing of his top hand was more towards to the "back" of the bat handle ( i.e. if you draw a line extending the line formed by the intersection of the two wedges at the back of the bat) than earlier and not towards the outside edge (as is in the conventional grip), while the webbing of his bottom hand had shifted a little towards the 'back inside edge' (the edge between the back of the bat and the surface of the inside edge) of the bat. Simply put, with this sort of a grip, the bat face will seem more closed than normal when one takes stance.

If a beginner tries to copy the grip, he will probably find his coach telling him that, with that kind of a grip, he will be restricting his range of shots on the off-side. But Sachin, almost all through the World Cup, did not even look like failing or having difficulty playing the classical extra-cover drives. On the bouncy wickets of South Africa, he was his aggressive best. I decided to observe more closely to try to get an inkling of how he managed to successfully adapt with that kind of a grip.

On closer observation, I found that his wrist-cock was more pronounced than before. I will try to describe what the cocked position of the wrist is. If you take stance holding the bat with your top hand alone, and, keeping your forearm still, try to lift your bat up straight back to about thirty degrees upward, you will find that the wrist of your top hand is in a cocked position. The wrist cock, any bio-mechanics expert will tell you, is one of the most important power-generating mechanisms while batting (or, for that matter, in most racquet sports). It is almost as if you wind the bat upwards and expend all the wound-up energy while coming down hard on the ball during the swing. Coming back to Sachin, to the simplistic observer, it looked almost as if he was levering the bat up (like with 2 class one levers in series, a fulcrum at the elbow and another at the wrist) and coming down on the ball. It seemed to me that he had made this technical adjustment for the bouncier wickets of South Africa, so that when the ball bounced more, this kind of a lever mechanism, in fact, made it easier for him to keep the ball down when he played the cover drive or the extra-cover drive, or even the flick. Most important, he was able to pull off this adjustment and still play the cover drive with ease because he was still side-on while shifting balance to the front foot and hence did not disturb the rotary mechanics of his trunk while hitting the ball. Also, most Australian and South African batsmen -- batsmen reared on bouncy tracks -- have a pronounced (sometimes exaggerated) wrist cock, and so the pieces seemed to fit and I could not help marvelling at the man's cricketing acumen.

When he was plagued by tendonitis in his left elbow -- the 'tennis elbow', so to speak -- the one major difference in his game was that the wrist cock was visibly absent. As a result, it looked like he was using only his bottom hand to pick the bat, and when he played the cover drives, it was almost as if he was trying to guide the drives into the cover-point gap using his bottom hand. There seemed to be very little of the top-hand in play. It was almost like the fulcrum at elbow during the levering action was missing; similar to how you 'cheat' while doing the tricep curl at the gym, lying down, with the barbell, pulling your elbow out of the line. I find myself unable to recall seeing a single booming extra-cover drive during that period -- India's tour of Sri Lanka for a one-day tournament, and subsequently, Pakistan's tour of India. It was no surprise, really, that he chose to undergo surgery on the tendons of his left elbow.

The whole of India waited, with bated breath, for his return from surgery and every practice session of his made news. I managed to watch all his innings but the most recent two against South Africa -- starting from the Challenger Trophy -- since his return, and I noticed that there is more top-hand control in his shots now than there was pre-surgery. Why, in his return match against Sri Lanka, he played a well timed extra-cover drive and even came down the track to Maharoof and smashed him over extra-cover. But watching him smash the bowlers, though a very pleasurable experience, has, strangely been not as fulfilling to watch. For, it seems to me that the top-hand is still not taking complete control, and the wrist cock is still not quite in place, which is a sure sign that he is still recuperating from the surgery. When one cocks the wrist, the muscles of the outer forearm have to pull right back to the elbow while the tendons at the elbows stretch, and maybe his elbow is not quite ready to take the full stress yet. I found a couple of the photographs that have captured him all poised to play the ball. One cannot read too much into a couple of photographs but there are a couple of important leads in them. Specifically, notice the difference in the ways in which he has picked the bat. In the second photo (courtesy Indiatimes, Nov 26, 2005), he has picked the bat to play the shot and the wrist is not cocked (had it been cocked the bat will have been straighter and higher) and the left-elbow is a little out of the line. In contrast, look at the first photo (courtesy The Hindu, Jan 7, 2003) where you can see the left hand firm, with the wrist cocked. Essentially, after watching his comeback matches, I seemed to get the idea that he is still in the process of recovering and not back to his fittest yet. And, I am hoping that this is indeed the case, and that this is not going to be a permanent niggle for him.

The Indian public will probably do well to give a thought to the possibility that he might have played the first two matches the way he did purely on adrenaline, and that he might not have recovered one hundred percent yet. And the Indian media (especially the likes of Indiatimes et. al.) will certainly do better to refrain from writing mindless baloney to instigate public opinion. It is paramount now that he is given a little more time (maybe even a break from cricket) before the scrutiny and the assessments begin. For, people like him (and Brian Lara and a few others) are of a rare breed that can pull the masses to the grounds and need to be nursed carefully through to their twilight. I hope, as the whole of India does, that Sachin remains to play for a good three years more, for the cricketing world will experience as much delight seeing very few other batsmen in action.

"Fifty-Five"

2005-11-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

(With apologies to Madhura for not having found the time and inclination (at the same time) to fulfill her book tag. Writing about favourite books is an onerous task. I hope to do it someday.)

Why fifty-five? Why could he not write a fifty-six word paragraph? He looked at the passage long and hard, scratching his chin with the pen tip. If he changed the 'could he not' in the second sentence to 'couldn't he' he will have his fifty-five, he found. He checked again and smiled. And left it unchanged.

Poetry

2005-10-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

While discussing Sangam poetry and the likes, a friend reeled off a Thirukkural that was in his head. Then, I couldn't get it out of mine.

I look on her,
Her eyes are on the ground the while;
I look away,
She glances at me and timidly smiles.

A Morning...

2005-08-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

Raindrops. He peered out at the sephulcral clouds, which clung heavily to the falling skies, resting his stubbled chin on the window sill. The pen rested on his hand, limp on a sheet listlessly lit by the gloomy skies. He wanted to write a poem.

...A morning
When
Leaves
Glistened greener
Bathed in the brightness of morning sun.
When a buzz in the air.
Made my heart beat palpable,
Making me mildly nervous.
When birds sailed over like clouds
On a cloudless blue sky.
And the world appeared clearer
As if through a water splashed glass.
When I suddenly felt responsible,
Born to a higher calling;
Youthful...

It was raining.

"Trauma is beyond eloquence," he chuckled to himself weakly, closing the sheaves of unfinished poems, setting it aside a last time. He couldn't have been more eloquent in thought.

A Nameless Poem

2005-08-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

Memories
Have been opened out of their caskets,
And unfrozen.
But today,
Already, the leaves have begun to fall,
And tomorrow is Winter, I hear.
I know he will come on time
And freeze them again,
Fossilise them into crystalline ice structures
And put them away on mountain tops,
And the ice will be frozen again
After some of it has flown as tears.

Optical Illusions

2005-08-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

"It has been so long, kanna, that I am beginning to forget what you used to look like," my mother tells me when I call her up these days, "Why don't you email me some of your more recent photographs?" And she, like all of us, lives looking for warmth in frozen images from the past. Drawing comfort in reinforcing old impressions, created long ago. When reality has much blotted the images of the photographs: roads are narrower; buildings, higher; the air, blacker; and people, much different. But today needs to freeze into pictures, like yesterday did. And we click photographs. One by the huge auditorium, in front of the waterfalls, with exotic species of birds, and one with bright colours of Fall decadence, one with him, and another with her. "Can you click a picture of us, please? Thank you." For, all the fall hues dotting the kaleidoscope, captured into baroque frames, will wait and hope that the next fall is much alike. And we pose, hiding the wrinkles, the receding hairline, careful enough to smile the right amount, stopping the inevitable for a moment -- it should look good in posterity. Though people will have changed. Trees will have been cut. He will no longer smile at you that compassionate smile. She will have run out of love for you. And times will have changed. But it does not matter. What we need is an anti-reality check, when reality will stare at us like the afternoon sun, and we will be too blinded to peer anymore. So we stare at the photographs, once again. The colours in the parchment will not fade like before, wearied by our stares, for they are immaculately stored into email attachments. And the past is rosier, digitally enhanced.

So, in response, I assure my mother, "Okay Ma. I will send you some photographs I clicked during X's visit." And I take photographs every now and then. One by the lake, and one by the trees. And remember to pose well. Lest the smile not belie something else.

Anachronistic Flashes

2005-06-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

"It is customary to make three pradhakshinas or nine. I am stopping with three. You can go ahead and make nine if you want," she looked up at him and elaborated, before her lotus feet proceeded on the marble alleys of the Saraswathi temple to circumambulate the goddess deity a last time. The boy followed her. The truant wind could all but contend himself with the smell of the red earth and raindrops: he wafted the scent of the jasmines from the neat plait of her oiled hair across the alley. The spell had been cast. Her dark green duppatta, immaculately pinned over the left shoulder of her dark green chudidhar, fluttered gently in the gust as she looked out for a second at the pouring rain. Myriad droplets thrashed against her powdered face as more dots adorning the dotted vermillion and neat ash. And her countenance, for a second, belying her calm, appeared ruffled by the tiny droplets. Were the six more rounds of God worth the separation?

Short Story

2005-05-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here is one of my more recent efforts, in Sulekha Expressions. Your comments are welcome.

A Debut of Sorts

2005-04-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

Spare a moment to take a look at the Spring 2005 edition of Sandpaper, BITSAA's bi-annual.

And I'm sure you wouldn't mind sparing a couple more, to check here and here. :)

The Earthquake

2005-04-01T16:16:00.000-08:00

(Again, you can find this here too.)

(The earthquake in Indonesia, a few days ago, made me shudder. My thoughts fleeted to another earthquake, another place, that had made me shudder…)

My wingies later informed me that the tremors had lasted for precisely eleven seconds…

… The IPC, our computer lab, was bustling with activity. Fidgety boys harried their fat books and thick reams of tute papers. Intent girls wore a lugubrious look. Two or, in some cases, three people sat in front of a computer. Some were furiously typing away, while some others were discussing animatedly, pointing viciously at their computer screens. Intent girls look mournful, I said to myself; people do not like computer screens. People do not like Computer Programming-I onlines.

Suddenly, I could not help observing a greater hustle than there had been before. And then I saw my monitor trembling. A piece of poor-humoured narcissism led me to speculate if my code was really that powerful. The computer had already crashed twice before, unable to execute my messy code. I laughed within myself and looked up. Unmistakably, people were running out in a panic that was greater than any a CP-I online could induce. Before I could bring myself to terms with the impending catastrophe, five seconds of tremor must have passed. When I finally gathered my composure, I made a dash for the door in an attempt to squirm out before I found chunks of the ceiling on my head. But I stopped midway: I had forgotten to save my C code! Between risking a life and risking a file, I decided, the latter was a proposition with graver consequences. I scrambled back to the VI editor in my computer. Getting the escape sequence of ‘:wq’ correct on the quintessential IPC 486 comp, on which people seldom risked pressing characters other than ‘p’, ‘i’, ‘n’ and ‘e’, took me around ten more seconds. When I finally rushed out (with a freer mind), people were trickling back in. The tremors had ceased to shake my monitor, well before I could manage to squeeze out of the building. When the fellows trudged back in, the disappointment writ on their faces suggested that they had been deprived of some excitement in their lives. More importantly, the look of resignation suggested that they had not been deprived of their CP-I online exam tomorrow. People did not, indeed, like CP-I onlines.

I smirked when I sat down heavily in front of the computer, wiping out beads of perspiration from my brow. I found myself unable to discern if I had to thank the Gods for the fortuity, or my computer: the VI Editor screen flashed the prophetic status message, “Dileepan.c saved.”

Nevertheless, I thanked the Gods.

A Month of Bhawan's Night

2005-03-04T12:37:00.000-08:00

(I had intended this post for the BITSian blog. Needless to say, this post is about BITS. On second thoughts, I have decided to put it up here too.)

(The ruling hands of BITS, Pilani have said a firm 'no' to Bhawans’ Nights. But, does the newer bunch know what it feels like to celebrate a Bhawan’s night? I recount, without tempering for the sake of political correctness, the naive pride of then: how it felt to celebrate a Bhawan’s night -- the contagious Bhawan enthu and the vicious Bhawan spirit -- when the Bhawan was the first yearite’s home and there was little beyond.)

It was the time when Mal did not like walls. And, people left their slippers outside IPC when they wanted a newer pair. One had to hand over one’s ID card outside the audi, to watch a RAF movie. Voices were often heard, calling out, “317, phone call! Holding,” or “318, gate call,” from near the common room -- there were no mobile phones. It was the year when aeroplanes learnt to fly through buildings, but Team India had not learnt to huddle. It was the time when Bhawans celebrated Bhawan’s Nights. It was the year of Nihil Ultra 2K++.

“The Bhawan’s night,” cried our H-rep, spread-eagling to the ground, “will, this year, be a Bhawan’s week!” We freshers hailed him and, in keeping with the jollity of the occasion, lifted him up, and gave him another round of bumps. The talent that had been put on display, on that day of Freshers’ Welcome, apparently, had prompted him to make such an epoch-making proclamation. And there, began the talk of Gandhi’s Bhawan’s Night.

Came the second semester: junta ghotted for tests, played QT cricket, gussed classes, but discussed the Bhawan’s Night more than it discussed girls. As the propitious hour neared -- a month before the usual Bhawan’s Night week -- the pressures of preparations having to be soon embarked on were mounting. The seniors, in a common room meeting, announced that our proposal for a Bhawan’s night had been approved by them (few of us recollected such a proposal having been made, but cheered nevertheless), and decreed us to begin our preparations. "This is your Bhawan’s night,” they insightfully added, “And there will be no intervention from us seniors in the planning.” “But, you have our full support, always,” they vouched, reassuringly.

The first step incumbent on us was the task of electing a coordinator -- the coord, so to speak. The common room, where all the first-yearites had assembled for the purpose, remained silent for a minute. A fellow’s hand went up. “I want to be the coord.” His wingies cheered. “Go ra,” they shouted; they were Gults. Then, another hand went up. Both the candidates came forward, their entourages not far behind, and got into severe deliberations. The cheering slowly gave way to a chaotic babble. “He, for sure, has political ambitions,” one fellow hissed from behind, looking askance at the second candidate, “I am sure he is going to nominate himself for H-Rep next year.” After lengthy and hushed parleys, the second candidate came forward and declared himself the coord. The audience let out a confused cheer. “The decision was taken in the best interests of our bhawan,” he announced, putting things into perspective. “This will be the best Bhawan’s Night, ever!” he proclaimed. And he became our coord.

When we had to decide on a date for the event, the coord put his foot down -- we would perform after all the Bhawans had had their turns. The last would be the grandest, he vowed. This criterion was singularly instrumental in the choice of the auspicious date. “But what shall we call our Bhawan’s night?” a studious looking chap asked, overwhelmed by the prospect. In the next meeting, two guys came up with names, but junta felt they were too comprehendible to evoke awe. Then someone came up with Nihil Ultra 2001. The Coord rather liked it, probably because it was more Greek than Latin. Moreover, it could then be captioned, much like big-budget Bollywood flicks. Then, a CP-I (Computer Programming I) stud observed that 2k++ would sound more fundoo than 2001! Whatever the name, “Nihil Ultra 2k++, Nothing Beyond” soon became the apple of every Gandhiite’s eye.

Often, furtive emergency meetings were held in the common rooms, and the heftiest person stood at the doors to guard our secrets against spies from Krishna and Vyas. Raging issues were discussed: some were thwarted by firm opinions; many still raged. Shankar decided, rather prudently, that the best way to bid farewell to their seniors was not a Bhawan’s night. And so the people decided not to inconvenience it by dragging it into the discussions.

Soon summer was beginning to blaze his way through the desert. And, with a mere week separating us from the Bhawans’ Nights, things got hotter than ever. One night, while leaving the mess after the grub, we chanced to find quite a crowd outside the mess. Three fellows were crying, four were bawling their lungs out, and many others were unmistakably chagrined! “The posters!” the wailers wailed, punctuating their wails with less-than-pleasant details of the miscreants’ lineages. Apparently, some malefactors had torn down the posters that the Gandhiites had put up in the messes to advertise the occasion. The posters themselves had not been less talked about. Furious tirades had raged over them. Some creative souls had wanted to write a ‘for’ loop of C++ code to allegorise the countdown to the Bhawan’s night. Some, who heard the cathartic proposal, did not hesitate to show the world that they were miffed. But clearly, CP-I had played on the minds of more than a few, and to a greater extent than one would imagine. And the posters in the messes flashed exactly that: ten lines of C++ code! Coming back to the spat itself, the arraigned were some inmates of Krishna, Gandhi’s neighbour.

Krishna! The very mention of Krishna Bhawan evoked a sense of bonhomie in the Gandhiites. I mean, instantly the Gandhiites all fraternally bonded amongst themselves, and voiced, in no kind terms, that Krishna Bhawan would willingly create all the trouble in the world during the Bhawan’s night, if they could help it. The two Bhawans had already squared up against each other in the Basketball courts, although they did not play in the basketball matches. The biggest fingers had been raised accusingly at each other -- often, literally -- and vile unfounded rumours often coursed themselves into the veins of both inmates and, sometimes, boiled some blood.

The Krishnites denied that they had torn away any poster, but the poor fellow who claimed to have seen it pleaded them guilty. They made it clear that they did not think much of any of our posters, anyway. “Surf Ultra: Something beyond,” they chanted, when they saw a Gandhiite. And the Gandhiite mocked in retort, “Jai Krishna!” And that irked them no end. But, honestly, we never quite knew why they shouted, “Jai Krishna,” -- some scoffed that it made them resemble a certain band which helped build bridges to Lanka with stones, while most others were a little more circumspect in their criticism -- when they could have chosen to shout virtually anything! But the Krishna seniors said it often, and were proud that they said it often enough. And the juniors were proud because the seniors were proud to say it. Anyway, the issues of the poster seemed to only stretch themselves into posterity.

Meanwhile, budget limits imposed by the Wardens had been well exceeded. It was decided that we would build caves leading up to the quadrangle arena. Night-outs followed night-outs, and classes were totally gussed, to say nothing about tests. And so caves were built and makeshift stages appeared out of wing cots. We were to have a number of dances (one among which they called a shadow dance), and a mime whose singular motive, in keeping with the drift of things, was give back all the flak we had got. And, the boys had already invited the girls; there was a lot at stake!

When the gates opened to Nihil Ultra 2K++, the excitement among the fanatical supporters of all Bhawans was palpable. The Krishnites too arrived, rebelliously encoded in black shirts and black lungis, ashes and vermillion generously smeared on the foreheads, and flaunting a C++ primer out to the crowds -- an obvious insinuation at the posters. And then they all shouted, “Jai Krishna!” and, a strange peace descending upon their faces, settled down to watch the show.

The happenings off stage were as dramatic as those on stage themselves. The electricity played truant -- in a manner that only it is capable of -- and suddenly, in the middle of a dance, there was a power cut; the entire quadrangle was plunged in darkness! A huge roar went up and continued until one of the guys, nicknamed after the electrician Mangi Lal himself, ingeniously pulled out wires from the Bogs which were connected to the insti generator! In a desperate rearguard measure, the think-tank decided to advance the shadow-dance to the semi-darkness, and hope that the power was restored before the dance ended. C-Lawns would have, that day, heard the cheers and sighs of relief when the power did, in fact, get back in time.

One would have expected sanity to be restored to the proceedings. But the Gods had already charted out another course of action. One of the comperes, while introducing the next event -- the mime --, for no pressing reason, accosted the Krishnites with, “I am sure you Men in Black will have something to say about it!” The ‘Men in Black’, who had remained as well behaved as petted puppies till then, all jumped up at the mention, threw their C++ books into the air and charged forward with their war cry. And, needless to say, the quadrangle was thrown into anarchy. It took a great deal of exaggerated apologising to appease their tickled Krishnite spirit, before normality prevailed. And then, people watched in wonder. When the dancers danced in a sublime symphony, they were dancing their way into people's memories. The songs resonated in our ears long after they had gone. The show had captured everyone's imagination. It was clear that Nihil Ultra, despite its acrimonious interludes, was a success!

Tired inmates of Gandhi were woken up early next morning by a certain chap from Krishna. Apparently, in the mayhem that had occurred the previous night, his C++ book had been lost! He had a CP-I compre soon, he said, and requested us, rather politely, to return it if we found it by chance. People assured him they would, if they chanced upon it. Nihil Ultra was talked about by everyone for the next few days. Gandhiites and Krishnites gradually warmed up to each other. But I find myself unable to rule out hearing about a certain inmate of Krishna who had to write his C++ open-book compre without a book.

(DILEEPAN N
317 / 234 GN)

In Print!

2005-02-25T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am in print, and definitely glad!

Please spare a moment to take a look at my short story in Sulekha Expressions:
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=307563 .

And it will be great if you can leave a comment.

The article itself might not be one of my personal favourites; nor might the style of writing be one that I vehemently subscribe to, these days. But nevertheless, as I told you, I am certainly glad to be in print.

A Small, Anonymous Room

2005-01-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

... It is a small, near-anonymous room. There is little that is aesthetic or impressive about it. A few rays of morning light make a zillion dust particles pirouette in excitement. When the lady residing directly above us hangs red sarees on the clotheslines that are pegged on wooden frames outside her balcony, the red sarees curtain the windows of the room from the light, and tint the room with a red hue. And green sarees tint the room green. The tubelight glows white for most part of the day. Then the tangy green Asian Paints distemper on the walls strikes the eye a shade more piquant. The hutments behind Sagar Apartments, my home, tremble as a lady with a croaked high-pitched voice bawls out the latest gaana paatu on the new Tamil FM channel. The ventilation is adequate, but barely. It is my room.

My Paatti (grandmother) tells me that it is Kali Yugam. And that the world is getting deluged with the dissolute. She is aghast at the racket the radios in the huts are creating. She is even more aghast that music has been desecrated to this level of carnality. I tell her that the world has moved on. And that people are more open these days and less fettered by antediluvian and hackneyed customs. She sits on the cot by a corner of the room all day. I find it strange that it has been months since she saw the living room of our home. And years since she saw the compound of our building. She reads the newspapers everyday. And she talks about the world.

The huge piles of books and notebooks of the past five years, retained for few reasons other than sentimental, lend the room a musty smell. They lie, carefully preserved, and not so carefully stacked. Just as they were when I left for BITS, Pilani four years ago. They are my IIT tuition notebooks; a huge chunk of my learning. Thin films of dust have settled on them reflecting the elapsed time. There are also small oval marks of fingers that have disrupted the smoothness of the dust films. Marks that were probably left when I felt the surface to check for dust. There are five such at different places. One for every passing year? I do not know. I open my mathematics notebook (the one on the top) flip through random pages of Quadratic Equations, Combinatorics and Coordinate Geometry. I can still feel KSR’s words echoing in my mind. I shut the book and replace it on the pile. A couple more of disruptive ‘fingerprints’ have formed.

In a corner lie in a heap nearly a dozen cricket bats. Most of them are broken. A couple of size 6 bats and the rest, full size. They remind me that I, like any other schoolboy, once earnestly dreamed of playing for India. Besides them stands my Paatti's Godrej almirah on which are a few wooden and brass effigies of the Goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswathi.

My Paatti asks me for the newspaper. "If nobody else is reading it," she is cautious to add. I promise to pass it on to her once I am done with my work on the computer, for my chat conversations on the Yahoo Messenger have taken an interesting turn. I then realise that I haven’t myself read the newspaper yet; I tell her that I have to go out in an hour, and that I will just flip through the pages quickly and pass it on to her. I read the news with a bovine indifference and flip it towards her. After nearly an hour. It is four o’ clock and it is time for my tea. I call out to my mother and she announces from the kitchen that it will be ready in five minutes. And, in five minutes, her tea is as good as her word.

In some time some interesting television programme will begin and I will gravitate from the computer in my room to the TV in the living room. Or, the evening will be spent in the beach with my friends. It will not be until the night when I will get back to the computer in my room to chat, despite threatening protests from my father...

Away from home, the luxury I miss most is the cosiness in the confines of my room; the warmth of home. Most of my days during the vacations between semesters in BITS slipped into pleasurable monotony of the aforesaid pattern, and took my definition of a vacation. I never seemed to tire of it.

It is hard to believe that I will never find the room the same again. It is hard to believe that my grandmother will not be there to ask me for the newspaper, one more afternoon.

Accepting the Master's change

2005-01-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

I reproduce the following article from Cricinfo which puts, rather beautifully, the metamorphosis in Sachin Tendulkar's batsmanship into perspective:

Let's see Sachin with a new eye

Sambit Bal
December 16, 2004

"The entertainer has become an accumulator but Sachin Tendulkar still retains an aura about him"

In 1992, after Sachin Tendulkar had followed up his stunning first-innings hundred at Perth with an airy-fairy dismissal in the second, Allan Border, the hard-nosed captain of Australia and a grizzled veteran of 130 Tests, came to his defence with words to this effect: "He is only 18. I am 37 and even I lose my head once in a while."

It has never been easy to equate Tendulkar's cricket with his age. Such was his brilliance in 1992 that it was easy to forget that he was only 18 then. Now, when he is 31, we marvel at the achievements of a man so young, and speculate about the number of years he has still left, often overlooking his cricket age.

Tendulkar has now played more than 15 years of international cricket, that's a little more than Border's entire career. Sunil Gavaskar played for 16, and Viv Richards for 17. He has played his cricket in 14 countries and 95 grounds and scored more runs and more hundreds than anyone else in the history of the international game. Yet, we refuse him the allowance of ageing, of maturing, of slowing down. He has moved, as he must. But we are stuck with the idea of his carefree youth.

We continue to expect the fizz and abandon of someone of 19 from a 31-year-old man with a wife and two children. We refuse to acknowledge that the body can slow down, that the mind can become weary and mindful of pitfalls. Quite simply, we just can't bear the thought of our Sachin growing old. In our desperation to cling on to his past, we have made it difficult for ourselves to accept the reality of his present. Look at him, we sigh, our entertainer has become an accumulator.

Viv Richards, we never tire of pointing out, never changed his ways. His reflexes might have slowed down, but the rage never left him; he came out smouldering and either blazed away or perished. Yet we ignore the fact that his last three years fetched Richards only 978 runs from 19 Tests, at 36.22, with only one century. Richards was too proud a man to defend, but he was a lesser player for it during his last years.

It is for everyone to see that Tendulkar's game has changed. He is more than willing to admit it himself. If it hadn't, he says illuminatingly, it would have meant that oppositions haven't been using their brains. Bowlers have switched to play the waiting game with him, and he has responded in kind. He has been sensitive to the changes in his body too, and though he wouldn't pinpoint what exactly has changed, he would say this much: "The body will slow down, the question is how much time it takes and how you adjust to the change."

It is now up to the rest of the world, particularly his passionate fans in India, to accept those changes. Ten years, or even five years, ago, he looked to get his hundred with a flourish, these days he looks to do it with a nudge. Depending on how you look at it, it is either conservatism or conservationism. Earlier, Tendulkar was prone to throw his wicket away in his fifties and early hundreds. These days, once he gets his eye in, he is almost impossible to remove. His figures this year are revealing. He has seven single-digit scores in 14 innings, yet he has scored 879 runs and is poised to end the year with the highest annual average of his 15-year career - it currently stands at 97.66. He has been dismissed only once after scoring a fifty, and his smallest hundred this year has been 194 not out.

His batting this year is perhaps indicative of a high level of self-awareness and a graceful acceptance that bowlers all over the world might have found a chink or two. Tendulkar has the keenest of cricket minds, and more than ever before he is alive to the need to make the good days count, because they might not come as frequently as they did before.

Statistically, the previous year was his worst in Tests. He scored only 153 runs from five Tests at 17. He failed in five successive innings in Australia, before turning it around in the first Test of this year with an astounding double-hundred at Sydney, where he denied himself the option of scoring between mid-off and point. It wasn't as breathtaking as his earlier century at the SCG, a magnificent unbeaten 148 that Richie Benaud was moved to describe as the finest he had watched on Australian soil, but it was a triumph in conception and execution.

In his latest book, Peter Roebuck says that the new Tendulkar was launched in Sydney. He goes on to write: "No regrets should be held about Tendulkar acknowledging the passing of time and becoming a robust, rather than a dazzling, batsman. He must be allowed to grow. Watching him bat may not be as exciting, but it will be enormously satisfying. Those who love their cricket will be given the opportunity of watching a master at work."

To end it with a Roebuckism, nothing more needs to be said.

By the Countryside

2005-01-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

Chesterfield lies in the quiet countryside of St. Louis. St. Louis is on a stretch of the undulating plains of Missouri. My uncle’s house, which is on an elevation, overlooks a couple of villas in the shallow to afford a view of the picturesque countryside. The quaint houses, vast stretches of grass and a touch of mist in the morning is just the sort of thing that puffs your lungs with some fresh air and leaves you with cheery disposition. If only you had high tea and hot scones -- the Enid Blyton style -- in the afternoon, it would make you want to ask your mate, a la Jerome K Jerome, "The weather’s a jolly fellow today! It seems that he will remain generous all day long. Old bloke, care to pull yourself up the lakeside for a round of fishing?”

St. Louis has a much larger Indian population than Minnesota. One needn’t be in the Census Bureau to actually figure that out. Global Foods, the local grocery store, will pretty much tell you. You have an alley dedicated to Indian food, where you have everything from biriyani mixes to Coimbatore vethalai and pogaiyal!

A couple of days back, I visited an Indian temple here. This one, unlike the one in Minnesota, was no church! It had a well architected Gopuram (the temple tower crowning the sanctum) and a whole range of deities. I must tell you: for half an hour, I felt like I was in one of those towering temples opposite the Mylapore tank! The temple seemed to be very efficiently maintained and run by dedicated NRI trustees. "The priest here," I pondered, "seems to be taking his job very seriously, unlike the ones back in India." My uncle cut my thoughts short, saying that the fellow did not have all his papers in tact, and was trying to sneak in for himself a Green Card through some religious quota, by hook or by crook!

I accompanied my uncle and aunt to a kind Indian gentleman’s place for a get-together. There were a lot of Indians I got to meet. I realised that making polite conversation was not my cup of tea. Certainly not, if I had a glass of wine in my hand!

But it was the weather that primarily played on my mind. It was as pleasant as Bangalore was and as clean as Bangalore was polluted. Back in Minneapolis, in the warmth of -20 degrees, I was even tempted, forced rather, into chimerical ramblings of how it might have been if the U of M were at St Louis. University of Minnesota at St Louis! It might have done a little better than BITS, Pilani at Goa. Or, actually, it might have not.

In the Hour of Need

2004-12-28T18:29:00.000-08:00

The fisherman and the milkman that you will never again see during your morning jog by the beach, for they have lost their homes...

The toddler in the slums that will no longer let out heart rending bellows, for he realises that his mother will not show up to comfort him...

The urchin that will not get himself involved in roadside brawls any more, for he knows his partner will not show up tomorrow...

The nursing mother that will no more curse her unfed infant, for it has been washed away...

They need your help. A token amount from you might mean survival through the most difficult week for them. Contribute to the Tsunami Relief campaigns.

http://www.aidindia.org/CMS/

BITSAT is born!

2004-12-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

BITS, Pilani has done me proud. The announcement it has (finally) made has made me stop studying for my finals and put up a blog post! The press release, from the BITS, Pilani website:

BITS, Pilani announces a unique and pioneering method of Computer based Online test for admissions

December 15, 2004:

Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani is a highly reputed technological university in India. It is an All-India institute and all admissions are made purely on merit. From the year 2005, BITS Pilani will make its admissions to the integrated first degree programmes, both at Pilani campus and Goa campus, through an innovative and path-breaking ‘computer based online’ test.

BITS, Pilani is a deemed university since 1964 and it runs degree programmes at all levels in Engineering, Sciences, Management and Pharmacy. BITS has a modular and flexible educational structure which allows students to do two degrees simultaneously under its dual degree scheme. It has institutionalized linkages with several industries and all its programmes have a Practice School component through which students spend considerable time in industries doing projects, under the supervision of its faculty, before they graduate. BITS has produced many distinguished alumni who are occupying high positions all over the world. As an example, the latest issue of Time magazine has listed 25 most influential business persons of which two are Indians namely, Vivek Paul and Balaji Krishnamurthy, and both are BITS alumni.

At the first degree level, with 10+2 input, it runs degree programmes leading to degrees: B.E. (Hons.) in Engineering disciplines, Integrated M.Sc.(Hons.) and M.Sc.(Tech.) programmes in Sciences and Technology, Master of Management studies (M.M.S.), and B.Pharm.(Hons.) in Pharmacy. For all these programmes, for the past 30 years, the Institute was making admissions only through the marks obtained in 10+2 examinations standardized through a normalization procedure. It does not have any quota like state quota, management quota, NRI quota etc.

Since 2002, there was a demand by the Government of India to abandon this process of admission and join the government conducted entrance examination. The Institute suggested even in 2002 that a viable alternative would be a computer based online entrance examination giving flexibilities to the students in terms of choice of centers, date and time. As a matter of fact, even the National Education Policy 1986 suggested establishment of a National Testing Service. The expert committee and also the government felt that such a procedure will be useful and innovative. BITS made all the preparations and the groundwork.

On 4th October 2004, the Government issued a circular informing that Deemed universities can make their admissions through their own test which has given freedom to Institutes like BITS, Pilani to have some innovative method. BITS is happy to announce that from 2005 all admissions to the integrated first degree programmes of BITS, Pilani, both at Pilani campus and Goa campus, will be made through a computer based online test. These tests will be conducted during April-June at several centers in India.

Since the earlier method of BITS gave an opportunity to automatically have a large number of Board toppers joining the Institute, it will continue to give direct admission to first rank students from the different central/state boards.

While all admissions would be based on the scores obtained by the students in the computer based online test, the minimum qualification for admission would be a pass in 12th year examination with at least 80% aggregate marks in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics subjects with at least 60% in each of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics subjects.

The salient features of the computer based online test, which will be called as BITSAT-2005, are:

The candidate sits in front of a computer and the questions are presented on the monitor and the candidate submits his answers through the use of key board or mouse. The computer is connected to the server, which delivers the test, in real time through a reliable connectivity.
The online test will be conducted at several centers in India, during 10th April – 20th June 2005.
Candidate can choose the center, the date and time for the test, as per his/her convenience.
The score is made available to the candidate immediately after the test and thus is designed to be transparent.
The test will have Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, English Proficiency and Logical reasoning parts and is of 3 hours duration. All questions are of objective type (multiple choice questions) and based on NCERT syllabus.
The test is so designed that it doesn't require the candidate to have any special computer skill. Further, a sample test will be made available to the registered candidates after 1st February 2005 at the BITS Website on which he/she can practice as many times as desired.
The questions will be selected at random from a large question bank. Different candidates will get different question sets, but of same difficulty level and content.
Uses latest technologies for security and test delivery.

This innovative proposal requires large investment and the BITS management and its Chancellor, Dr K K Birla have approved the project and have agreed for the investment. It is hoped that this pioneering ‘first-of-its-kind’ effort will be appreciated by all the educationists, students and their parents and will go a long way in solving many of the long standing issues in the matter of admissions to universities.

A formal advertisement will be issued around 18th December 2004. The last date for applying for the test is 31st January 2005.

The BITS website http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/BITSAT/ will provide all the relevant information.

My Claim to Fame!

2004-12-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

I am happy to see Dinesh Karthik playing for India and doing well. It also feels a little strange; I distinctly remember seeing him start his cricket as a young boy -- he was a young boy, and I was too, though a couple of years older! As a sixth standard boy, he was learning to wield the willow at K. Chandrashekar Rao's (a former Andhra Ranji player) summer cricket camp, when I first saw him. I was also attending the camp, hoping to hone my skills during the summer. I remember that I noticed him not for his batting or his keeping, but because he was chucking while trying to bowl! He subsequently took to wicketkeeping. He batted decently then but I do not remember noticing anything special. In fact, he was the twelfth man for one of the matches that we played. It amuses me to think I must have been one of his first captains, for I captained that game!

Within the next couple of years, my serious connections with TNCA league and competitive cricket were severed. When I had returned from BITS at the end of my first semester, I had been to the St. Bedes ground to watch my brother play his State selection match. Dinesh Karthik was also playing the match, and he looked to be in a totally different league in that match. He hammered a quickfire century in that match. What struck me instantly was that he handled everyone with consummate aplomb. It looked like he was having a net session out in the middle. He exhibited amazing top-hand control and was controlling his half-flicked on-drives through between mid-on and mid-wicket beautifully with his top-hand. He did not hit a single ball in the air in that innings. I went up to him to tell him what I thought of that innings, and I was surprised that he recognised me after five years! I remember remarking to my brother that some of those shots reminded me of Gavaskar (not Rohan, of course). My brother told me that he was not as good as I had thought him to be. I did not totally disregard the statement, because I will not deny having seen better players playing for the state. Tamil Nadu has never faced a dearth of talent. There were really classy players in the Under-16 and Under-19 levels -- one Vikram Kumar, a compact left-hand bat and a classy wicket-keeper, comes to mind immediately -- and it has bothered me to date that few of these players have made it to the big league. The fact that Dinesh Karthik is the only one to have made the transformation stands testimony for his solid temperament and mental strength and equanimity.

When I watched him on TV strike those backfoot off-drives off the South African pacemen with panache in the Under-19 World Cup last year, I thought he played those shots like Tendulkar! I had a hunch that he would make it to the Indian team. But, frankly, I never expected it to happen so soon. I hope he does not get the stepmotherly treatment that has been impartially meted out to all the good Tamil Nadu players, of the likes of Hemang Badani, L Balaji and Sadagopan Ramesh.

I wish I had seen his reverse-sweep off Ontong and straight drive off Pollock, for which Cricinfo had only generous praise. Seeing a person who once played with me stand up to the South African bowlers with answers to the challenges posed by them would have made my day.

The Raconteur

2004-11-08T06:44:00.000-08:00

(Cab drivers here are an interesting lot. Following is a tale that a cab driver narrated to us while driving us back home from Walmart. I recount the incidents of that particularly chilly evening and the tale that emerged from his mouth verbatim et literatim -- word for word, letter for letter; exactly as he would have liked it to be told.)

"Come on in," exclaimed the cabbie outside Walmart, motioning us over, "and be rest assured of a ride worth every penny." "She has enough space for the three of you and three more." he assured us, ushering us into his yellow cab in a sprightly welcome. "You can dump all of that in the boot," he opined, pointing at our trolleys that were filled with groceries for the next two weeks, "Only, the integrity of the chips is bound to suffer a little; and the bread loaves may find themselves in the danger of a drastic makeover. But, I'm sure she has enough space for all of you and more."

We sank into the cushy seats of the yellow cab and slammed the doors shut. “I told you they'd all fit into her boot to the T, didn't I!” he mused contentedly, “And to a T did they fit. Well, merely a matter of knowing your square centimetres and square feet, you see.”

“Knowing your cubic centimetres you mean,” a rather high-sounding voice butted in.

It was the Lower Jaw. He was exactly the type you would expect to make such a bumptious remark. It is a widely believed rumour that once upon a time he was wont to barging in everywhere and obtrusively making stiff upper lip remarks. In fact the canard runs that everywhere he went, to every new acquaintance he made, he introduced himself as Stiff Upper Lip Jeeves. On a particularly pleasant day, he strode up to a bunch of nice gentlemen, and, in a debating frenzy, ejaculated, “White pigs are white, but so are all the black ones. Are you keen enough to challenge that?” It would have certainly made for a good debate, especially on a day as pleasant as that. But, as things turned out, it did not. ("Those thugs" he winced later, "lacked debating etiquette.") For it never occurred to him that the black gentlemen, whom he had cheekily challenged, would be chagrined by possible undertones of the statement. Passers-by unanimously maintain till date that, after thirty seconds of ensuing silence, all that they heard were three voices that shouted “Commo maen!” in a chorus. And later some muffled sounds like those that arise when cross cute damsels box their pillows. Three left fists, and people soon began to call him the Stiff Lower Jaw. (The more vengeful lot elaborately called him Stiff Lower Jaw Peeves.) I think people quite liked the name, for it spread like cheese on macaroni.

“Cubic centimetres, alright,” said the cabbie, brushing him aside (we grinned, rather enjoying the dismissive rejoinder; the Lower Jaw was peering through his spectacles like an owl), “I can see that I am missing my evening coffee. You kids are students at the U, I presume. Was once there myself, I mean, as a student. A PhD in Physics, and I realised that Relativity and the world were far from related. Pursued jobs for tuppence at a couple of labs; that was before I realised that this was where I was most comfortable -- in the safe anonymity that a yellow cab provides.”

“In fact, I relish the prospect of maintaining my anonymity” the cab driver continued, “while getting to know so many interesting characters that occupy the very seats that you are now occupying. In fact, the most interesting of them all disembarked five minutes back. He was awfully penitent. For reasons other than having boarded my cab, of course. For this was the second time in two weeks that he accepted the misfortune of riding with me. Last week, I was undertaking one of my usual evening trips with my lovely lady in bright yellow (he patted his cab) -- I call them incognito trips -- when I saw a couple of youngsters -- this lad was one of them -- outside a saloon particularly notorious for its strange concoctions of an alkaloidal nature. It did not take much for me to figure out that they were already on a dizzying level in their quest for vertiginous acclivities. I stopped beside them, for they were frantically waving for the cab. They flopped into the cab and began talking to each other in a boisterous excitement. Their acquisitive ambitions having got bigger under the influence of the alkaloids, they, in a spate of unfounded unchristian invectives, decreed me to proceed to another landmark even more notorious for its strange concoctions of the fairer half of mankind. I could not refuse the calling of duty; moreover they looked like they could do with help, whichever quarter it came from. So I drove them down to the place that all knew but a virtuous few visited. I was nearly there, when the two of them spotted a woman on the streets, outside the very building. The rascally blokes almost rolled over me in an attempt to stop me right there. They tumbled out of the cab and accosted the woman, who strangely seemed to recognise this lad (the lad who was penitent during his second ride with me). She grew volatile even as she saw him drunk and outside the building that all saw but few sojourned in. She seemed to, amidst howls and bawls, say something -- very unpleasant I presumed then -- about his father. Or it could have been the mother; I just could not hear. The very sight of her screaming her throat hoarse infuriated this bugger. He, with the help of his acquaintance, bundled her into the building, slamming the doors behind them. I wished them a good night and relapsed into my self-imposed anonymity. I mused then that any business of this kind should be conducted with a certain commitment to the monetary transactions involved, lest someone else suffer the same fate at the hands of an unknown woman in public as this young lad. For once, my reasoning and deductions were proved to be faulty. Apparently, (the chap confessed in his second outing in the cab) they had had a good night’s workout and had collapsed into a tired slumber in that very building. When this chap woke up next morning and found his sister beside his bed, not in her senses and not in the most decorous state either, he suffered a more severe hangover than he had ever bargained for in his life. He swore that he would never again touch bottles with alkaloid substances. And -- what did I say? Well, I marvelled, not for the first time, at the universality of the Newtonian axioms: indeed, everything that goes up has to come down.”

Later that day, the Lower Jaw banged the table and asserted that the tale was spurious as was the cabbie. He said that the cabbie was a vain prick who craved for audience for a piece of script plagiarised and memorised. In fact, he seemed to vaguely recollect himself having composed a short story along similar lines. We professed to him that we indeed saw a bright future for him. In the safe anonymity of another yellow cab.

Melancholetta!

2004-10-31T00:54:00.000-07:00

Did you think all I had for you on the halloween eve was a post to let you all know that I had made a century for myself? On the D-Day, we -- a group of Bloggers -- got together and decided we'd pull out a pumpkin out of our hats for you folks. What came out of the hat was better than a pumpkin! And today we gleefully present to you a cool new way to flaunt the poems that you read way back in sixth grade and thought were brilliant. What' s more, you get to rate them and review them. If you are still expecting more, you will be able to have your blog linked to from a public forum. We present to you our cool new idea that will revolutionise blogging. We present to you, Melancholetta!

Reads like the hyperboles you find, to your consternation, everyday on the Blogger Dashboard, doesn't it? (Couldn't prevent myself from taking a dig at that :) Apologies!) Well, if anything, it cannot be more inaccurate in its description of the actual subject matter! In BITS, a handful of us interested in poetry had a group by name Melancholetta running. It was a mailing list to which we often sent the poems that we had read and had liked. Sometimes, we also wrote in a couple of lines about the poem -- usually what we liked about it or what we like about the poet and his verses. The group drifted into disuse as members passed out of college. And all of us had almost forgotten the existence of the group when, a couple of days back, we received a very enthusiastic request from a gentleman who wanted to join the group. It was then that we decided that we would get down to relaunching Melancholetta, this time as a public blog, where everyone interested could become members and start posting poems they had a heart for (and commentaries/discussions too, if they wanted to).

The group is strictly non-elitist, for there are many cliques available on the World Wide Web with the intent of remaining elitist. We are ourselves no accomplished critics, in the first place. Anyway, if you liked a poem but thought commentary is not the thing for you, you could still send in just the poem. And there will be no moderators; each man for himself. The administrator's job will be to merely add members to the blog as and when requests filter in. Of course, I am secretly hoping we will receive some requests; a couple at least :)

So for a start, we have set up the blog at http://melancholetta.blogspot.com and have transferred our existing archives (around fifty poems and some discussions) to that blog. If you think you like the idea of sharing poetry and airing your views on anything related at all, and, more importantly, if you think you liked the archives and want to contribute, please don't hesitate to leave a comment on the blog or email me.

Any comments/feedback/suggestions will be mighty helpful. Whether Halloween will see the spirit of the Melancholites rise from the dead remains to be seen!

One for the Century

2004-10-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

As all people with literary pretensions, I too belong to the earthly lot of people who yearn to exhibit their latest works of art, ramblings, logs to all and sundry and feel a queer thrill at just having shown to the world what they can (or cannot) do! ...

Those lines -- the lines that raised the curtains and opened my blog to the world -- are now one year old (I realised yesterday). I suspect I shall not echo the same thoughts today. For, one year and ninety-nine posts later, I harbour no more literary pretensions; I would not, in any exaggerated imagination, call this a work of art; and I am reasonably content now after having shown to the world my stunted capabilities. That I have managed to eke out approximately two posts a week for one year should tell you the amount of joblessness I preoccupy myself with. I am certainly wiser these days!

Let me proceed to quickly make a few jots that I, during the past year of blogging, had mentally made:

I gather that this blog does receive some readership. I really appreciate it, and I do admit writing to the gallery on quite a few occasions. I should tell you that I was glad to receive quite some feedback via the Comments section, emails, Messenger alerts (!), and, at times, even through the telephone or the person from known people. Some were motivating and a handful few, not quite so motivating. Anyway, I am, for my own sake, glad to receive feedback.

Over time, based on some feedback, I have put in conscious effort to make my blog more readable. More specifically, I have tried to simplify structure and avoid bombast. Regarding this issue, before I point all my fingers at myself, I will also tell myself once that earlier, when this blog had few or no readers, it was merely a rostrum for my experiments with wordplay. Things are a little different now, with a few more people stopping by for a little longer. For me, now the whole purpose of this endeavour has taken a less flippant turn. You might find the more recent articles more readable (I hope!) than the earlier ones.

The past year, I found that were quite a few writers and books that periodically influenced my attempts at writing. While the samples I churned out in those periods are not egregious by themselves, I was not completely happy when I re-read them. In fact, I avoid re-reading my articles these days; they leave me discontented. Anyway, not digressing, those were periods when I was reading a lot. I do not read much these days. In fact, it has been some time since I touched a book. But, I find it easier to blog these days when I am not influenced by another's style or content. On the other hand, I find that I have developed two or three styles of my own -- styles for different moods and genres. I am finding it increasingly tough to break the stereotype that I have subconsciously set for myself. Anyway, I hope I continue to believe that style is but a floating characteristic; a function of space and time.

I find that quite a few people subscribe to my blog now and then. While this motivates me to write more, there is also the self-imposed pressure of having to fulfil myriad expectations that just might exist. So these days, I try and write only when I have something substantial; else I try not to write at all. I think I have been reasonably consistent with this policy that I have adopted.

I also find that more of my friends, and more people all over, have taken to blogging in recent times. So, these days, blogging (and reading other blogs) has been all the more enjoyable. A lot of my friends maintain blogs on a wide spectrum of issues -- political blogs, daily journals, technical blogs etc. I think my blog will continue to remain what it is -- trivial!

I think there is still some time left before I will be done with blogging for good. So till then, I shall hope that all of you continue to stop by for those three minutes of hyperbolic balderdash!

The Badminton Shoulder

2004-10-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

Things are not going too well. My Badminton Shoulder has hit me in its worst possible form. If I haven't told you already, I have been down with a Badminton Shoulder for the past few days. If you are still grappling with the newfangled condition let me warn you that afflictions of this genre are strangely contagious. When I had last looked up Cricinfo, Sachin Tendulkar was down with a tennis elbow after having played more cricket than was good for his body. And it generated an incredible amount of hype. I then decided that I too should be conditioning myself to some ailment of the sort. After all, going with the fashion is almost mandatory these days. Providence did not play spoilt sport this time. God generously acceded to my pleas; I was bestowed with a condition of the kind (I am still waiting for the ensuing fame). During a round of frenzied badminton I tried to smash one so hard that the birdie would drill a hole right through the opponent. Instead, it now looks like my shoulder ball has come out of its hole. Occurring just before my mid-terms, the fortuitousness is as timely as the Chepauk rains, and as rare too. But that does not make me toss and turn in my sleep anymore (not that I can really afford to, given the nature of the physical damage). I have begun to sleep blissfully these days, half comforted by the fact that at least I did not play golf and land up with a Badminton Shoulder.

The Hypocrite's Oath

2004-10-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

When gentle cool early-morning winds brush past your face and caress your hair, fluffing them upwards, they make you want to perform extraordinary deeds of valour during the day. When a fair breeze creased our shirts at 7 AM on a pleasant Saturday morning, we -- all of us -- felt impelled towards more epoch-making pursuits than oneiric. We had feeble idea of what those ennobling endeavours were, but we were sure we felt that fire burning within us. And we felt invigorated.

One fellow suggested that we go canoeing, to which another pleaded that the very sight of water reminded him of his Fluid Dynamics assignment. Another fellow cried that he was afraid of water in the lakes. He said the lakes reminded him of his aunt, placid and cool but always waiting to swallow you; he concluded that they made him 'hydrophobic'. His vehemence was, well, rabid. And canoeing was vetoed. One guy said that it was very obvious that the weather gods wanted us to get along to the adjoining park and play. Moreover, he asserted, it is high time we teach the yankees that football is to be played with the foot. We did not quite see how the divine ordainment was obvious but we relished the prospect of teaching the Americans a way of doing things. We proceeded to the park.

A group of Indians were playing cricket. We stopped to see them. It is in our culture to go and join in if cricket is played in the street, in a stadium, in the park, anywhere at all. That was exactly what one of the guys echoed. A couple of Americans passers-by stopped beside us to watch the game of cricket, their curiosities kindled by a game that seemed to resemble one of their own but did not quite. “I can’t see any bases!” one of them remarked. “Where are the bases?” he sought an explanation, indignant. The irreverence to cricket must have irritated the guys. For a piqued fellow in our group shot back, “Look behind your selves!” We decided cricket was not the game we would play here.

The fellow who had initially exhorted us to play cricket now said that he wouldn’t dream of playing cricket in a land of base people. We decided we had had enough, and if we had to play anything, it would have to be football (with the foot).

The next fifteen minutes we were into serious football which all of us played with a zealous commitment (apart from playing it with our feet). I passed the ball to the left flank, who dashed forward with a savage energy. He dribbled past a couple of people until he was almost face to face with the goalkeeper. He then tried to kick one so hard that the ball would drill a hole through the goalkeeper and crash into the goal. Instead he ended up kicking over the ball, his leg kicking thin air. He ended up getting on top of the ball and executing a balancing act, before nose-diving into the ground with a ‘thud’. The ball rolled out of the field of play slowly, nonchalantly.

Outward nonchalance often sheathes in its cloak of assurance imminent catastrophes. I went up to the fellow to clarify if he had been tutored anytime by the person who performed impressive pyrotechnics in the local circus. But something else caught my attention. I saw him wincing in acute pain, clutching his left ankle. It was only after an excited crowd had gathered around him that we managed to find out that he was seriously injured. His ankle had swollen to the size of brinjals -- I mean the ones you get in the US -- and he had to be carried away to the hospital. He couldn’t walk!

The four of us who had bundled him to the health clinic dropped him in a chair in the lounge and screamed, “Emergency!” (The lesser said about the baby in the perambulator nearby which began to shriek in excitement the better. Even lesser said about the mother who woke up with a fit, swore at us most unchristian expletives and collapsed back into her seat, even better.) The nurse at the nearest desk motioned us to come over.

We seated him and shouted in a chorus that the case was an emergency. In response, she handed out a sheet – a questionnaire – to him. He let out a sound that I thought I had heard more often from puppies when they suffered from tummy-aches. The first question read: “Rate your pain on a scale from one to ten.” He seemed to just lose it there; he was flabbergasted. He thundered, “What do you mean! On a scale of one to ten! What the hell is ten?” She elaborated slowly, unruffled, “Imagine the greatest pain you have ever felt.” “Hark,” he cut her short, “imagine I were to pinch you till two layers of your skin peel away. Do you imagine that?” The nurse shrieked in alarm. “How would you rate that, on a scale of one to ten?” “Maybe six!” she gasped, trying to regain her composure. “What! That would be SIX?” he thundered, “My foot!” (“Hmm. Actually looks like the ankle,” a wisecrack from behind reparteed.) “Well, then I shall rate my pain,” he vengefully declared. He snatched the paper from her, thought intensely for a moment like only engineers can think, and furiously scribbled down his rating. The nurse stole a glance at the answer and, in a fit of disgruntlement, almost tore up the paper. I am sure she felt the pinch; the paper read 8Pi/3!

The nurse refused to lend his pleas her ear until more questions from the questionnaire were read and all of them answered. The fellow wrote down his answers in a tired scrawl, allowing himself the luxury of the odd grumble. The nurse took the completed questionnaire, surveyed it briefly (for more quirky answers, I thought) and took a deep breath. All of us heaved sighs of relief. He was breathing heavily.

“You are all set now for an examination,” she assured him. “But wait! Before we proceed for an examination, I just need your name and names of two emergency contacts. Okay, first, what’s your name?”

“Subramanian Shivaramakrishnan,” he replied.

“Shoe-bra-what?” she stopped and stared at him suspiciously.

“It is Subramanian Shivaramakrishnan.” he reiterated, in pain.

“Could you please spell it out for me, slowly?” she began to plead, by now desperate.

“S-u-b-r-a-m-a-n-i-a-n S-h-i-v-a-r-a-m-a-k-r-i-s-h-n-a-n”

“S-u-b-r-a-m-a-n-i-a-n S-h-i-v-a-r-a-m-a-k-r-i-s-h-n-a-n. Is that right?” she counterchecked, biting her pen-cap. She read it once, choked on the pen cap and made a snatch at the glass of water on the table.

“Whew! That is some name! Now will you please give me the names of two of your friends as emergency contacts?”

The poor fellow, by now, did not have to be told that his fate would have been better at the hands of the wrestlers in the local wrestling arena, who had no necks.

“Anand Thiruchandhoor Venkatanarayanan,” he feebly mustered.

“I don’t need names of three of ‘em,” she interjected solicitously, “give me just two.”

“Oh! That is merely the full name of the first person,” a fellow from behind grinned, “Oh, it is spelled A-n-a-n… Couldn't you please take it down faster?”

She was staggering back onto her seat, apoplectic.

***

And I would rather not tell you that it was twenty more minutes before my friend’s leg was so much as given a look. When he came out of the examination room, with crutches, his feet plastered in a cast and left shoe hanging from the waist, he looked a crippled wreck.

The cast, crutches and all cost around a fortune. He thanked God he was insured, but momentarily found out that he would still have to shell out a sizeable fraction of that amount. And he had to have an X-Ray taken after a week.

The X-Ray suggested that his bones were intact. It also suggested his fortunes, especially with the dollar, were not particularly good. The injury was merely a swelling and needed no cast or crutches. No bones were broken and he made no bones about it. He still claims that the nurse did not exactly relish the thought of his pinches and hence made sure that he paid for his meanness. Literally. But we have not given our ears to the nurse's version. We must leave the matter open.

But, often, issues of the wallet get to the head. One of these days, you might just chance upon an unshaven ragamuffin standing by the pavement of Oak Street with a tattered cloth-bag, using a pair of crutches, his left leg in a cast and the left shoe hung around his waist, and using them to a good effect...

Vacuity, Quibbles and a Trail of Two Cities...

2004-09-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

I have been sitting in front of the computer for the past ten minutes without an inkling of what I am going to write. My plaints now are a little interesting and incongruous, for this very void has characterised my stay in the US so far. The past month has seen me cocooning into a vacuum. My mind has been insensate to any kind of non-stagnant emotion, drowsing in the Styx of languor and impassivity. Rotting.

When one has nothing else to talk about, it is manners to talk about the weather. I know my manners well enough. Minneapolis is a nice place to live, picturesque and quiet. The weather is as pleasant as Bangalore right now. The down-jackets (which will come down from the attic with the snow) will take some time coming! The people are as a rule polite while maintaining a distance and the television channels, self-propagandist and hypocritical. Football is played with the hand and the general thought is that baseball is the godfather of cricket. If Clinton were to be stung by a bee, research on the aftermaths of bee-stings will catapult to new levels. If there are thousands of pawned other nationals dying out as excesses of a purposeless war, people will imbue themselves in nationalist pride and make hortatory speeches and laud their forces on having annihilated the enemy. Lives -- lives of non-whites -- are meant to be wrenched out in exchange for a quarter at the laundry. But the white doctor will tell you that, without loss of generality, lives are precious. If hurricanes come about anonymously, the folks here consider it rude. They either ostracise it or christen it, depending upon the need of the hour. The last gentleman, who was finally baptised Frances, barged in unannounced and it sent waves of protest round the country. The next two were ostracised after they chose to ignore the US and finally all these people decided that they would be wary of every stranger lurking in the oceans, and promptly christened the next one Ivan. Wherever you go to shop, the staff will be overwhelmingly polite and trustful of you; only you will have ten cameras behind you always. Everything is automated and unmanned. For instance, you cannot find a soul in a gas-station (probably because all Americans choose to play gas-bags outside it). I guess, the way it is here, you can't find a soul in the graveyard as well!

My Visa status says I am a non-resident alien and I can assure you I am feeling no other way. America, with all its manufactured beauty, seems to surprise me no end. It is one big Lego Set. Very picturesque. And very plastic. And people are those that are moulded in it; inscrutable and informally extremely formal. And very plastic.

But I think, for the moment, I shall take solace from the number of people who are feeling a little down this fall and rally myself back to end this one well. (On a tangent, with the amount of people feeling down this fall, I am wondering whether this fall will be referred to as the 'Downfall' in the annals of history.) (Excuse the PJ - Ed.)

In short, Minneapolis is almost as good as Madras. Not quite as good. But comes very close.

A Song

2004-09-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Following is a sonnet by The Bard that I came across a few days back (I remember sending it to a couple of my friends as well). I find myself quite incapacitated to appreciate such mush these days. But, the cliched sentiment (which I will sanctimoniously dismiss as trite) notwithstanding, the rhetoric and word-play is pleasing. And, who knows, I may have actually fallen for it, another time, another day...

LXXXIV.

Who is it that says most? which can say more
Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?
In whose confine immured is the store
Which should example where your equal grew.
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
That to his subject lends not some small glory;
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story,
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired every where.
You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

A Matter of Perspectives

2004-09-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday saw some of my friends indulging in savouries and sweetmeats preparations. The reason for the sudden conviviality and celebrations was the fact that Krishna Jayanthi (The Birth Anniversary of the Lord Krishna) was being celebrated back in India on the day.

I told them that Lord Krishna is popular nationwide in the US as well. I told them that Krishna must be ubiquitous; in the air, in concrete walls, in wooden slabs. They thought, I was vainly trying to dissimulate a 'Prahaladha', and by playing on their thoughts, I was trying to pull a fast one on them. I tried my best to convince them; I cannot deal with froward mules.

As if to prove my point, I went out and bought shirts and pants in one of the many 75% discount sales specially put up for the day. They gaped. I had to drill into their thick heads that it was merely a matter of perspectives. We Indians celebrate the birth of Lord Krishna. Trying to do things differently is US’ wont. After Mother's day, Father's day and the many other days, it has decided to acknowledge Devaki, Krishna’s mother, for ushering into the world the Lord Himself and has called the day 'Labour Day'. Just matter of perspectives, you see.

Orienting with the Occidental

2004-09-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

Today saw the first formal orientation organised by the Industrial Engineering department. The Industrial Engineering fraternity is pretty small (in number, I mean) here; that is probably one reason quality research goes on and the department is able to support almost everyone financially. Breakfast and lunch were provided. It was all in good taste.

After a brief introduction, the Profesors delved into their research and the courses they would be handling in the forthcoming year. They also exhorted us Masters students to complete our Masters as soon as possible; in fact, they were of the view that a really good student should be able to complete his Masters in a year! The session was veritably informal, and quite not 'informal' as the US makes itself out to be. But even as the Professors spoke, one could quite see that they were ever on the defensive and statements like "When I said this-and-that about so-and-so topic, I did not quite mean this, but actually meant that..." were made at regular intervals to ensure that their statements did not rub other Professors the wrong way. Words break bones here in the US (more than they do anywhere in India); not to speak of hard-earned savings in the pocket.

The students too gradually warmed up to the occasion and posed their aspirations and apprehensions related to graduate studies and beyond. I got a flavour of the research that is happening in the University and was drawn into a couple of Professors' talks about their research. 'Research' here is on a pedestal onto which you cannot hope to have garnered so much a peek in BITS. It's all about research here. People publish papers as if they were editors of the evening daily! The dictum for obtaining results here: Research! If you cannot find 'em, search! I do not know I will feel sated, researching. But for now, I am happy to be here. The session gradually drifted to the end as people clustered into various parts of the room, chatted informally for a while and then slowly trickled away.

The whole session sure left me with a good taste in my mouth; the pizzas served at lunch were tasty. One never minds a feast after a siesta. And one never minds a siesta after a feast!

Avani Avittam in America

2004-08-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

I was jolted out of my bed this morning by my roomie who was arrayed in white ceremonial robes and whose forehead was smeared with ashes. "It is Avani Avittam (day of the thread-changing ceremony of Brahmins) today," he religiously intoned in my ear. I mumbled, still half asleep, that I had just changed my thread a couple of days back since my earlier thread had snapped while using it to scratch my back. But he wouldn't lend me a ear; he would brook no excuse. The thread had to be changed at the prescribed auspicious hour and that was it.

That was how all of us sat down at 11:30 AM, makeshift veshtis hurriedly draped over jeans and porcelain cups supplanting the traditional vessels. The ad hoc arrangement served fine until two chaps each took out a pamphlet -- one authored in Kannada and the other in Tamil. The next half hour was spent arguing over the authenticity and the relevance of each of them to the Iyer and Iyengar factions. I unreservedly expressed my satisfaction about the way the discussion proceeded. I knew to read neither languages.

We waded through many sesquipedalian tongue-twisting litanies and sprinkled half a litre of water to the carpets before one of them was indignant in his realisation of the fact that the chant was for a different occasion. None of us felt like tolerating his indignation. Several tirades past, we chose to amicably settle, for the moment, that the shloka was indeed for a different purpose: removing the sacred thread! One of them suddenly beamed a beam that speaks of a newly-reacquired wisdom. He said he felt sure that it was not such a Herculean ordeal after all. He had felt sure all along. And now he was able to remember the reason for his cocksureness. He then crooned a couplet and asserted that that was the only mantra that was to be repeated 108 times. Instantly he was bathed in water that flew out of the porcelain cups. Nobody, atheist or otherwise, likes to be instructed the Gayathri Mantra like he's forgotten it.

It was at this point that one of my friends proceeded to do what he thought was the least offensive to the Gods. He instantly slung the new poonal (the sacred thread) over his body, removed the old thread, flung it into the dustbin and walked out proclaiming that his thread-changing was complete. I followed suit.

A Redemption

2004-08-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

My Professor told me this morning that he is offering me a TAship. Essentially, to me it means that I can live without sneaking my hand into my father's wallet. I cannot tell you what a relief this news is, coming as late as it did. I was on the proverbial horns of dilemma over my choice between Texas A&M University and the University of Minnesota (before, eventually, the latter preponderated). As if to compound my agony, a mail that dropped into my inbox on the day before my departure to Minneapolis was from a Professor in TAMU who asked me to contact him if I was still interested in working under him. I wrote the following post then, venting out some steam, and then decided I will not post it. The vehemence in the post is interesting ;) . The post:

To the World

I received a mail last night from a TAMU professor who said he was just back from a vacation and asked me to get back to him if I was still interested in working under him! I replied, "Thanks, but no thanks! You are way too ahead of time. Had you mailed me five days later, I would have been in Minnesota, just yards away. I would have so readily dropped by your place and we could have had spaghetti for dinner." Up his!

Life tells me: You silly heap of a dummy! You had better not nurse pretenses of being a deep rational thinker and take purportedly-wise screwed up decisions. Your upper story has long been shifted to the backside of your basement and has ever since been empty. You leave the thinking to the others, shut up and restrict yourself to your queasy expressionist miseries and commiserations!

University of Minnesota, which I chose over TAMU at the eleventh hour after tearing all my hair out and boggling my mind, now welcomes me. To say nothing of my money.

My Mother's Son

2004-08-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

I rarely doubted myself on the matter. In fact, I never did. I am, as a rule, a self-effacing and modest person. (You can confirm that with everyone who wrote in my autograph book.) But on this particular matter, I have always been at my supreme confident best. Well, I had never stuck in my finger in this particular pie, so to speak. But the forces of nature often seemed to come and whisper in my ear while sleeping -- while I was sleeping, of course -- that I was the best, potentially. I just had to shed my languor and settle down to business. My olfactory and dextrous hands would take care of the rest. I seldom doubted myself on the matter that I could be a better cook than my mother. I often told my mother that she had no idea of what she was doing. She unfailingly took offense.

The other day, I tried my hand at cooking. Well, 'my hands were almost tried' would be a more apposite description. And almost hung. I took to cooking with a sense of zest and the bravura of a buccaneer who goes out into stormy seas. I set out to make rasam. One of my friends, an expert within the confines of our apartment, reeled away the list of ingredients that would make a good rasam. I decided that potato fry would be a better option for a neophyte. However talented one may be, it was still better to start slowly and handle things with aplomb later. The first potato that I dropped in the frying pan to fry -- I mean, for the potato to fry -- remained adamant on the issue of following Archimedes principle. I mean, I don't nurse any grouse against Archimedes; it is alright for the potato to displace an equal volume of oil. But to splash the oil right on me as if organising a mutiny against getting fried -- I still think of the potato as churlish and rude.

The dough for chappatis seemed to invite me for a message and a cook. I am never the one to decline an invitation. The first chappati made me think I would make a good cartographer. It was an exact replica of Australia! The second one was a little better; it came out elliptical. After replicating India, America and several other countries I was finally able to replicate the shape of the world that had them all! All the world was mine. And I was on cloud nine! My heart leapt up as I beheld. I decided to see that as well. The next chappati that came out was much in the shape of my heart -- large, light and ecstatic. I was overjoyed. Until the gluttonous dandy next to me waited diligently for it to be cooked, and broke the heart -- rending it into two -- and gobbled it in contentment. Heart-rending experiences. My nose was burnt -- I told you what I thought of the oil -- and my heart, rended. And I decided I could do with some sleep. And do a good job of it.

I seldom doubt myself; and that is, these days, when I think I can cook better than my mother.

Westward Bound

2004-08-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

These are the last words, in a long time, to be strung up from the confines of my room which has 'lived' me for the past seventeen years. Am off to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. Hope to be able to blog away some musings from Minneapolis.

The Jack ;)

Beyond the Best Four Years -- BITS, Pilani revisited

2004-08-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

Petrichor.

The first droplets of evening rain fell into the summer, mitigating the Pilani heat, settling the dust and griming it into the narrow jagged roads. Women pulled up the pallus of their sarees to wear hoods and ran for shelter, their jolly shouts of feigned helplessness punctuated with silent murmurs of prayer to the Rain God for their children. And larger droplets of August rain fell in the new semester. Providing respite from the scourge of the Pilani heat. Washing away the present into the past. Cleansing away some memories; leaving behind some. Ushering the newer lot in a cordial yet cooling welcome. Heralding a new season.

The rains fell.

The smell of the earth that saddled the infant droplets of rain suffused in me and transported me to the same place four years back, when I had arrived in BITS as a freshman, escorted by my parents. “Does life come in a full circle?” I pondered, “Or does one simply draw non-existent parallels to satiate oneself with pleasant auguries (the sedative tinge of pleasantness infused by retrospective thought)?” It had rained on the same date four years back. Yes. I was pretty sure of it. My parents had left for Chennai the next day, leaving me to embark on my BITSian life. And now, four years later, it was raining. Was this some kind of consummation of my tryst with BITS? Or, was it a mere coincidence? I did not know.

2004C6PS272.

The latest addition to my mailing list. The reason I was braving the heat and rains of Pilani, though I had graduated a year ago. The reason I withstood the four-day siege of my benumbed limbs in trains that smelt like Auswitch. My first School-Ju (school junior), whom I never got to see during my BITSian life. My brother. He was starting a new life, apparently, away from the comforts of home. My mother told me peremptorily and my father seconded, that it was my responsibility too to help him get settled without hitches. And hence I set my eyes on BITS, Pilani once more. And my heart.

Changes. I expectantly looked for changes.

The dilapidated looking Bhawans; the dusty C-Lawns where junta played cricket and more cricket; the Gym-G where weeding is always long due when it is not BOSM; the Audi where everything happened – from lectures to EDC plays to Music nights (in short, where BITS happened); the clock tower standing like Atlas, fighting off his breasts, rolling rain-clouds that often tried to cloak his towering self; the chowki outside the Audi who, apart from posing riddles to people sitting outside the Audi, was a bit of conundrum himself; the rediwallahs and their redis which offered sam-chaat, shikanji and more sam-chaat (to say nothing of the yarns about BITS that they spun); the Goddess Saraswati who played for years together the same note in her veena; the old-man who oscillated wildly while striking the gong in the Hanuman temple bhajans, repeatedly almost falling down and picking himself with the momentum of the sway; ANC; C’not; insti; I surveyed all of them through lenses tinted with nostalgia, evaluating a mental contrast with the greyscaled images of the flashback. These still remain the way I had left them. Unaffected by change.

The new Library is an imposing magnificent edifice. The walls are tastefully decorated with panels of oil-paintings, some of them depicting mythological scenes. Potted plants and some topiary work garnish the centre of the huge building. The books are also catalogued better, there being halls dedicated for every section. Aesthetically wondrous. It gives me the excuse to remark self-righteously: had this Library been during my time, I would have virtually moved into it; and my CG would have never plummeted the way it did!

BITS has been attacked by the major players in cellular service providing. OASIS has been bought by Airtel. And predictably, Hutch has also ventured into the desert. Every freshman has a mobile phone on him. SMSes fly every five minutes from parent to ward and from fresher to fresher. The wing is alerted if a senior is on the prowl. The seniors, being the experienced campaigners that they are, have learnt to use the mobile to their advantage too. When a senior meets a fresher, he asks only for his mobile number, and not his intro in the public. The mobile is then effectively used to summon the juniors when the coast is clear of wardens and authorities! Lifestyles have digressed from the time when we juniors trudged to C’not to make phone calls to home – the Bhawan phones were perpetually out of order – and were promptly ambushed by seniors.

Some things have changed.

I tagged along my brother for an unusual constitutional on the familiar roads that cut each other at right angles, much like those of Mohenjodaro and Harappa and other early civilizations whose salient features the third standard History book scrupulously detailed. Naagarji waved at me and told me that I had put on a little weight; I told him I missed his sam-chaats for the past six months. Munnaji said in his unique reticently solicitous manner, “Jaate waqt milke jaana.” I nodded, resolving to myself for those three seconds that, unlike the last time, I would see him and leave. The inimitable dosa-maker in ANC (who, I must say, dealt out truly inimitable elliptical dosas!) indulged in some rather expressive bonhomie after which he complained that he had not received last year’s BOSM t-shirt yet. I told him I will see to it that he gets it this time! After which I proceeded to tell him I graduated this June. He bit his tongue and instantly assured me that he knew it all the while and was merely engaging himself in friendly banter. The rickshawwallahs enquired concernedly whether I will be playing this BOSM as well; I told them I had passed out. They then exhorted me to come to BITS representing some Outsti team and participate in this year’s BOSM. I assured them I would try my best. They all – each one of them – avowed, like they do to every parent year after year, that they would take good care of my brother. “Aap fikr mat kijiye; hum iska achcha khayal rakhenge.” The glib words of customary assurance were heartening relief at the moment.

The first-yearites slunk away after stealing a surreptitious askance at my brother; they later came back to me and asked me to which discipline I had been admitted. I told them that my brother was admitted to Infosys! Upon which they proceeded to ask me if he was my own brother. I clarified that, in India, it is not yet custom to lease out brothers; it will take some more time for us Indians to embrace the custom. When your kid brother stands towering half a foot over you at six feet two, it is sometimes prudence for both of you to remain seated. I regretted not having taken one of those detestable ill-fitting ‘BITS, Pilani’ T-shirts of mine.

BITS, Pilani made me feel younger. May be by a year, merely. But younger, definitely. One last time, I gambolled along the road to Gym-G on which I paraded during BOSM; I saw sportsmen arrayed in the colours of their college who were all-importantly striding to the grounds, feeling summoned by the spirit of their college. And I plodded on the road from the insti to Budh where I trudged back, despondent, after screwing up my CDC tests; people were walking to the mess, animatedly discussing solutions and engrossed in the calculation of their marks and prospective grades. And I strolled on the road to C’not at night; girls were cycling in groups ringing their bells wildly and belling at boys who had ganged up blocking their road and were boisterously parading along. Saraswati still smiled at me the same smile she had four years back when I sat in the steps of the temple, staring into the gloaming. And I saw, once again, the hallowed Gandhi Bhawan, which stood witness to its grandest Bhawan’s night, Nihil Ultra 2k++, which, I had thought then, was the grandest celebration of human camaraderie – an overflowing goblet of adrenaline and human spirit; there they were dancing away to night fame and the lilting music was reverberating in every Gandhiite’s ear long after.

I wanted to leave.

The place had been etched to remain a part of me. I sojourned in my brother’s room the H-wing for one night; my brother’s roomie hadn’t arrived.

The night seemed to be echoing Thoppul’s baritone bellows of four years ago, from room number 316 – he was the ten-pointer, the stud of the wing. In 318, Bul and Chaps – new roomies – were breaking ice, parleying in English like a caring boy and bashful dame trying to court each other and trying, at the same time, not to drop the slightest hint of their intentions. Gomes was raucously signing his class notes, before a test, to the tune of the latest Bollywood hit song. His roomie, Sucha, was fuming under his breath. We were the Godfathers of the H-wing. I had felt glad to be in the wing that I was as a first-yearite; my wing.

But, why did I want to leave?

The stately buildings stood spartanly. The trees rustled kindly. The roads led on, ever straight. The place remained. Sans the people. Suddenly there was none to share my memories. I walked in reality, alone. And memories remained, well, memories. Restricted to metaphors. What is a king without a kingdom, a captain without a team, a garden without flowers, art without patrons? What is a place without people? I felt speared with the ignominy of having to play witness to the memories of a fraternity. Alone…

… “Guys, when is the registration?” the new first-yearites quavered in excitement.

I woke up, in my brother’s room.

“Tomorrow!”

A new morrow was ushering itself in.

Of Consciousness and Faith

2004-07-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

I am an agnostic. I wish to redundantly clarify that I am not an atheist. The past weekend I was fortunate to behold some quaint art and architecture, reminiscent of sketches in the Amar Chitra Kathas, when I had the misfortune of visiting the ISKCON temple in Bangalore.

Even as my slippers felt the sack -- I did not get obtusely extravagant; I just left my slippers in a sack, with my friends' -- I felt my tummy growl rebelliously. I mean, I am not in the habit of polishing off slippers for breakfast, literally or figuratively; my stomach simply did not feel right. It must have been the pizzas that I had gorged myself on in the morning, I reassured myself. We stepped into the temple.

People thronged in queues to see the various vignettes, effigies and other carvings of Krishna, the herdsman widely purported to be the eighth incarnation (avataar) of Vishnu (one of the Trinity) after Matsya (The Fish), Kurma (The Tortoise), Varaaha (The Wild Boar), Narasimha (The Man-Beast), Vaamana (The Short Brahmin), Parashurama (The Man with the Axe) and Rama. Yes, coming back to what I was saying, the crowds trickled into the sanctum to get a glimpse of the statue of Krishna, the herdsman with the flute. One could, if one wished, consecrate offerings to the Lord and have a special consecration ritual performed. For which one had to buy archana tickets. The tickets ranged from Rs. 10 to Rs. 50. If one bought a higher priced ticket, it appeared, one deserved a better and a more elaborate consecration ceremony!

Even as the crowds circumambulated the deity, bespectacled scholarly people stood by the path, by the tables, waiting to bring to the light of the masses and exhorting them to buy the various artefacts, simulacra and books that the ISKCON had brought out to perpetuate Krishna's glory worldwide. Fervent and affluent devotees bought effigies and photographs while the others sated their pious senses by staring at them in utmost reverence during the pradakshina (the circumambulation) and walked slowly, secretly hoping that they would be reciprocally noticed from up there for a proportionately long time.

A well run temple showcasing well the legends of Indian mythology, I thought. And then I let my mind abstractly wander unto the usual thoughts of one man exploiting another man’s faith in the supernatural. These thoughts ran through my mind inductively, as they often do at temples and other places run in the name of religion, taking almost a well-rehearsed course. But what I saw during my egress has not ceased to amaze me till this moment. The tortuous path led into a restaurant by name Prasadham (Prasadham, in Tamil, refers to the consecrated offerings, betokening God’s benedictions in his offering to the devotees, dealt out in token amounts to the devotees). The glutton that I am, my gaze was impelled by divine forces -- my bovine forces rather -- in the direction of pizzas and pastries. And consequently towards the labels and the price tags. The boards said: Prasadham: Pastry – Donation Rs. 20. I then gradually came to grips with the nuances. One would receive a pastry as the Lord’s prasadham if one doled out a donation of Rs. 20! A higher amount as a token donation would fetch one a commensurately higher token of benediction!

Beset with ideas that I was unable to stomach down an already wobbly tummy, I came out without having so much a nibble at the Prasadham, token of the Lord’s benediction! I felt apoplectic when I realised I had grown fully conscious -- conscious of Krishna, I mean.

NB: My apologies if, at places, the intended sarcasm (if evident at all!) stirs anyone’s sentiments. Please allow me to clarify once again that I am an agnostic and I am not an atheist. Also, with reference to the above case, I have nothing against a restaurant doing good business inside a place of religious worship. In fact, that would, if anything, indicate the tolerance of the religion and goodwill. What I cannot take is people playing upon the faiths of other people. If these stunts (say, calling the sweetmeats Prasadham and writing ‘Donation’ on the price tag. Ok, that is a little flimsy for an example. But I'm sure it has its more serious counterparts.) are merely excuses for innovative creative thinking, I will tender my apologies right at this point. But it occurs to me that, to the millions of poor and uneducated masses that visit in all earnestness to pay homage, the stunt sometime ceases to remain merely that, a stunt. And, I have many a time had the misfortune of observing that, in almost every such endeavour, there seem to be undercurrents of exploitation of faith by the commercial elements; on various levels, I should add. In fact, the Indian tourism ministry would do well to take better care of and showcase better the exquisite art and sculptures that our history has given us; there is nothing wrong in hoping to extricate some revenue. My only point is that, in the process, the sentiments of the theist should not be played with. Comments of readers are welcome.

Five Point Something

2004-07-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

The past few days, I had been engaging myself with Chetan Bhagat's Five Point Someone. The book, captioned What not to do at IIT with the accent on 'not', is about the life of three friends all of whom choose to try and debunk the system, and finally end up with measly five point something CGPAs.

Though the book is passable as a light and fast read, it came as a slight disappointment to me. The book, much touted (by the author himself in a couple of places) to be an IIT book, appears to be more about the life about three friends; IIT and its culture is relegated to the hazier background of the canvas. The author is probably entitled to his take on student life, or, more specifically, his life at IIT; but to hype it by calling it an IIT book or what not to do at IIT is, I find, a little ludicrous. There would have been more titular relevance had it been sub-titled 'What not to do at college'. Showing a cold shoulder to acads, vodka, pot and grass, wooing a Professor's daughter, sneaking away with exam papers... surely not everyone in the IITs or BITS adopts them as their quotidian principles or necessities (Okay. BITS is a different case altogether! And there are not enough Professors in a University either; anyway not those who have wooable daughters.). I'm sure the author would have ended up just as hapless had he taken to all of that in some Maadha Engineering college! One would do well to read the book bargaining for merely the the college lives of three students; to consider the IIT backdrop to be an incidental. That way, I guess, one will chew on it in a haler spirit.

The book is interspersed with patches of the typical IIT-ish well-engineered wit and is a smooth and pacy read. And, to give the devil it's due, it made me a shade reminiscent about college. But on the whole, I will not gulp down my shaving cream if the peeved IITian rates the book some five point something.

One Last Time

2004-07-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

When the cool invigorating winds of Bangalore struck me in the face this morning, I mused reminiscingly to myself that not much has changed. The cool salubrious morning, greetings of solicitous auto-drivers, rickety buses, Richmond circle -- the landmark which heralded my nearing of the office, the bus-stand where I philosophised sanctimoniously, raved, ranted and vented out my frustration and coughed out my clouded lungs and fogged heart to the Godmother and Elizabeth Taylor, Brigade road, MG Road, the Ulsoor Police Station, Cambridge Layout -- not much change at all, I mused. In the past one month. I mused and mused about this trifle and marvelled at how fleeting glimpses of immortality coalese into the tenebrous truth of the ephemeral.

The whole of today I have been wandering like a vagabond, excecrating at autos that sputter and smoke like the chimney, cursing the careening buses and maddening traffic, denouncing the meretricious pomposity of the place, fuming at the totally unprofessional and non-committal service in the shops, guffawing at the heavily made up pseudo-babes... enjoying myself once before leaving for the US. One last time...

Buses and Bus Journeys

2004-07-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

I could not conceal my delight and relief when, after six months of Bangalore, I heard the engines of Chennai’s MTC bus splutter and rev up in the Besant Nagar bus terminus.

Madras has one of the most thoroughly organised and efficient governmental public transport systems; after my experiences with public transport conveyances in a few other states like Bangalore, Delhi and Rajasthan, I will allow myself to say that. When I struggled with the public transport in Bangalore (the lack of it in quite a few areas), I realised what we had almost taken for granted in Madras. I realised that I had never nursed a serious misgiving towards the MTC service; of course, the occasional quibbles had always been there. In fact I had always liked the service.

Even as a seven year old boy, I had felt a vague attachment to the PTC buses. Why, the engine of the PTC bus, sounded pleasingly different from the other state buses; it had a rich and regal ring to it. (It was called PTC -- Pallavan Transport Corporation -- those days, named after one of the great dynasties of the legendary tripartite Tamil Nadu of the yore. The name has been changed to MTC -- Metropolitan Transport Corporation -- to remain in consonance with the sophistication in the way of life today; after all, everything in Chennai is professedly metropolitan these days.) Of all the buses that passed the RBI quarters, Besant Nagar, 47A and 21D were my personal favourites. The alphanumeric appellation of 47A sounded a combination worthy of a hero, and 21D, gargantuan. Had there been buses during Mahabharatha, I was pretty sure that 47A would have played Arjuna’s vehicle and 21D, Bheema’s flag-bearing conveyance. Always, my newest and favourite toy bus was always christened 47A. These buses, the very thought of them, transported me to another phantasmagoric world where I remained, fought great wars in buses, took villains to task and did great deeds. Until I was reprimanded and berated by my mother for not doing my homework.

The only other bus that ranks alongside in my sheet is the PTC is the school bus of my kindergarten days. When the final school bell rung, we tiny tots made a dash for the bus, satchels wildly swinging behind like slung pendulums. The bone of contention was the front seat, sitting upon which you would face the driver. A crowd gathered outside the door of the bus and clamoured for the door to open; we were too tiny to reach for the door handle. The conductor then appeared from inside the bus and thundered us into hushed silence. Much the same as rowdy mobs at political meetings; only, there the addressers clamour for seats! When the door opened, dots of tiny bipeds irrupted and made headlong dives for the front seat. Why would we want to scuffle so desperately for the front seats, even as the children that we were; the reader might be prompted to ask. The main allure was this: When, everyday, the bus came to the bridge across the Adayar River, the driver let the steering wheel go, stretched both his hands up skywards, peered through the windscreen with half-closed eyes and sung a throaty refrain. The incredible event was that the bus would cross the bridge exactly when the last line of the refrain was sung. And when the last line was sung, the hands were back on the wheel, eyes fully opened, and countenance sobered, we little spectators to the grand spectacle chuckled in furtive delight. The coincidence never failed on a single day to happen.

With the passage of time, the network of city buses has grown up along with me, as have the bus fares. During my two-month long summer internship program at Lucas TVS, my daily fortunes literally hinged on a couple of buses which sliced right through Madras from Besant Nagar to Padi. If I missed the 5:50 bus from the Besant Nagar terminus, I was sure to reach the place later than 7:15 AM, which was incidentally the stipulated time of arrival, and played the guilty recipient of cold stares and curses of a hundred other groggy-eyed employers, not to speak of the gurkha who wore his topee in the reverse. I day dream and am easy going during the day, but am more obdurate than the Dromedary camel when talks about dawn begin to drift in; I refuse to dream of losing a minute of my sleep at night. With some dogged perseverance, characteristic only of credit-card-offering callers from Citibank, I circumvented the problem. I caught this curious habit of resuming my sleep in the bus, no matter however cramped I was for space. Thus did I vehemently adhere to my early-morning principles of not giving one wink of my sleep to the day. Once, I was executing one of my routine morning siestas (forgive the oxymoron) when I was rudely woken up by a tipsy oldster who almost landed on my left foot when the bus braked and in the process almost spat on my boot all of the red paan he was chewing, early in the morning. After all the bleary-eyed care and intricacy I had employed at half past five in the morning to polish my shoes, I felt like expectorating some red blood on him. But, half shaken out of my sleep, all I managed was a weak muster in the vernacular, “Why, Sir, my foot, when you have all of the Indian roads to yourself?”

My experiences with the moffussil buses have been a little different though. But my experiences with paan haven’t. My friend and I were travelling from Pilani to Sadulpur in one of those crowded rickety state transport buses. We had managed to succeed in our dash for the seat next to the door -- the only seat that had been unoccupied -- and we were pretty ecstatic about it. At one of the stoppings, a lady and a wizened shrivelled old man got in. The lady stood in the crowded bus. The old man neared us and gesticulated to my friend, who was sitting nearer to the aisle, as if to move in a little. And my friend moved a little to find the old man encroaching on his right lap. His stunned reaction, at that point, tickled my ribs no end and I chuckled in kiddish delight. The journey did my spine little good. We were almost within three-quarter of a kilometer within Sadulpur. I recount that because even as I looked out of the window to check the milestone, I thought it must have been raining. When I saw blotches of red on my shirt, I concluded it wasn’t. Apparently, the old man had suffered from an uncontrollable urge to spit out his paan. And I had come into the trajectory! My friend chuckled, in sinisterly delight.

But I must tell you this: if I, in my first standard, had aspired to become anything in life, it was a bus conductor. There was something captivating in the manner that he disposed of tickets; my eyes were often attracted to the differently coloured bundles of tickets between his dextrous fingers and the unerring efficiency and ruthless speed with which he picked the correct tickets without as much a glance at the bundles. Why, Rajnikant, the Black Taj Mahal of Indian cinema, was a bus conductor. If one were a bus-conductor, one could, with aplomb, save one’s mother and younger sister from the machinations of any villain on the face of the earth.

In Bangalore, I saw quite a few lady conductors and felt very proud. I am waiting for the day when Chennai will also broaden its horizon to the good turn. Also, I remember writing -- ranting rather -- after being thrown out of a Bangalore bus after offering Rs. 100 in return for a three-rupee ticket! When I re-enacted it to the Chennai conductor, he reacted differently. I got, in return for a hundred, a ticket for four rupees, six one-rupee coins, ten two-rupee coins, five-rupee coins and notes – two apiece, and five ten rupee notes! I found the change -- I mean, in my fortunes -- too much to take.

Bangalore is a place, my friend quipped, where buses are driven like autos. For that matter, that is true of any vehicle, I added. It is quite common to see dangerously swerving and careening buses. I used to feel terrorised trying to cross the roads of the plateau with the ups and downs making it very difficult for one to judge the momentum of the vehicles.

Hence when I was back in Chennai, I could not conceal my delight and relief when I heard the engines of MTC buses whir and rev up. I was filled with memories.

Different different new new Words!

2004-07-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Oxford English Dictionary is including words of Indian origin in its latest edition. For the time being though, I think I will stick to English. :) The Hindu's write-up:

More Indian words in Oxford dictionary

NEW DELHI, JULY 4.

If you tell a stunningly beautiful girl that she has a `va-va-voom' figure, the chances are the damsel will give you a cold stare and mock at your sense of English.

But wait till July 7 when the newest edition of Concise Oxford English Dictionary is officially launched here. The lexicon includes this word which is actually a compliment to a beautiful girl.

`Va-va-voom' means the quality of being exciting, vigorous and sexually attractive and derives its genesis from the sound of a car engine being revved.

But what is likely to cockle many an Indian heart is that the Queen's English is now being profoundly influenced by Hindi words.

Award winning novels of the growing tribe of Indian and Diaspora writers, such as Salman Rushdie, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy have ensured that words of Indian origin become part of English.

Among the new Indian words that make an entry into the lexicon are `Bhagwan' (Indian God), `bhakti' (devotional worship directed to a supreme deity), `bhajan' (a devotional song), bhang (cannabis) and `adda' (informal conversation). — UNI

Does this ring a bell?

2004-06-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

I did not believe it at first. When I heard temple bells ringing while fiddling, along with my friend, with forks, spoons and pizzas at Pizza Hut, Brigade Road, I attributed the carillon to my constantly hallucinated mind. I had suffered, in the past, from delusions of girls, delusions of cricket, delusions of directing movies; why, till date the most curious delusions I had suffered from were, perpetrated by the public, delusions of ringtones and delusions of cells! But delusions of bells... never in my life. Hence when I thought I was hearing temple bells at Pizza Hut, I was appalled at the rate at which my delusions were getting increasingly chimerical. Hence, it was a matter of no small relief to me when my gaze instantly shot back and found that there was, indeed, a bell. It, in fact, resembled quaintly a temple bell, except that it was smaller, polished, was bereft of vermillion, and was not rung only by overly pious priests with half-tonsured heads. Menfolk and womenfolk rang the bell everytime they passed by it, and everytime the bell clanged sonorously, "Thank you!" shouted voices from inside the kitchens.

The waiter placed the two huge books -- they call it menu cards here -- before us and asked us with overt courteousness if we wanted any more to eat. Ravenous as our appetite was on that day, we ordered for a second pizza which we planned to share. The waiter put on a smug grin on his face and politely clarified, "Your pizza will reach you in fourteen minutes, sirs." I asked him incredulously, "Are we to go and ring the bell as if to symbolise our protest and clamour for justice if the pizza takes longer than fourteen minutes?" The waiter's smug look rapidly segued into one of constipated apoplexy.

Later, upon more discreet enquiries to a different waiter, I came to find out that if people were satisfied with the quality of food and service, they were encouraged to ring the bell and publicly display their appreciation. I had not, in the least, expected such a literal translation of Tennyson's " Ring out the old, Ring in the new" into deed. They were trying their best to ring in changes, based on customer feedback, and they were making no bones about it.

As far as I kept an intrigued watch, two youths tolled the bell to see the girls at the nearby table giggle at the din the clangour was creating, a tot struck it to see if he could jump up to that height and strike it as hard as the elders, a lady with a pram tugged at the bell in desperation because the infant seemed more attracted to the bell than her and would only be quietened if the bell made the racket, most people trickling out struck the bell because of a collective consciousness to the bell generated down the queue; the waiters from inside religiously intoned everytime "Thank you Sirs and Ma'ams" for the Sirs, Ma'ams, kids jumping up, and babies in perambulators. Through my watch, the bell must have been tolled dozens of times, but not once did it strike me that the bell was rung as an intense gesture of appreciation.

I ate the pizza with a constantly lingering feeling of being summoned by the forces of nature to a higher calling. The weekend pizza was enjoyable to the troubled tastebuds and clouded olfactories. I was satisfied with the food and the service that night. Pizzas with ketchup definitely taste good. But pizzas with bells don't. When I left the place, fearing that I might rudely jolt other half-terrorised poor souls nibbling at pizzas, I consciously kept away from the bell.

Of Visa Interviews

2004-06-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

When the situation comes upon people that will change their life within thirty seconds, it manages to bring out the worst in them. You eventually come to take cognisance of this universal truism – almost a tacit precept. I did, during my visits to the American consulate; my first visit, an attempt to secure a Visa and the second, as a companion and certified consultant (my success with the visa certified me, like only success does in these matters) to one of my friends who had an interview. Ultimately the above truth inexorably settles on you like the Pilani fog of January. So much so that there come days when you secretly hope and pray that such a situation befalls you sooner than later.

And the Visa interview befell me sooner than later. The whole process is interesting actually. A couple of hints for those the enjoyment is reserved for later: The Visa interviewer looks up and stares at you blankly when he is neither asking you questions nor listening to your answers; the moments of the actual interview are reserved for the computer. Don’t mistake the poor American’s etiquette for a squint. When your turn in the queue comes, the American will wave you, while peering into the computer, over to the counter with an exaggerated theatrical flourish, almost excitedly, almost like beckoning a friend over. That is the time for you to hold your nerve and think for the most logical answers. They do not screen in the consular officers’ computers made-for-the-Oscars anti-French or anti-Japanese movies that they want you to see; the fellow wants you in there for an interview.

My own interview was disappointing; it left me with nothing much to write about. Thirty seconds, a few cursory questions, equally cursory answers and it was over. "Your visa will be couriered within the next couple of days. Good Luck!" the visa officer boomed from the other side of the glass. Anyway, for us wannabe writers, our own experiences are seldom eventful and worth writing about. The others' experiences are those that often seem to fit into the writerly perspective. Anyway what better than wallowing others into the grime for banal pleasure and writing convenience. Hence, as usual, it is the other's experiences that I find more worthy of a description.

I was waiting for my turn in the queue when I struck conversation with one fellow in the adjacent queue. This person told me his University and, as a follow-up, matter-of-factly explained to me, with ample reasons, the reasons he had defected to another university at the eleventh hour. He was slated to attend Texas A&M University till two days before the visa interview, when suddenly the University of Massachusetts preponderated. He joked in a simulated sigh, toward the end when his turn for the interview came (even as the Visa officer motioned his hand in a brandish), that he had felt like an American each time he had enunciated an accented “Texas A&M University” to scores of people. On that parting note, he bustled up to the counter. He accosted the Visa officer with a sprightly “Good Morning”. He then began his first answer – rather stylishly, I thought, well counterfeited American accent and all – and said it in all exuberance and cheer. And then he gaped. The Visa interviewer looked at him quizzically, almost peremptorily, demanding an explanation for the mismatch between his admit letter from the University of Massachusetts and the rakishly uttered “Texas A&M University”! I must say he did rally well in the end though, articulating well the reasons for the slip of tongue: the sudden change of mind etc. Imagine his elation when the Visa officer finally told him, dead pan, “Your visa will be couriered to you in another couple of days.” He rushed out in ultimate euphoria thanking and wishing everyone on the way. And suddenly he stormed back in and to the Visa officer, who was now posing his first question to the next candidate, ejaculated a lusty well-rehearsed-but forgotten-in-the-heat-of-the-moment “Have a Nice Day, Sir!”, taking the unsuspecting officer completely by shock. It was the Visa interviewer’s turn to gape.

A thirty-eight page long PDF file which has christened itself the Visa Bible divulges that one of the ultimate secrets of getting a Visa lies in maintaining your cheer during the worst of times. But alas, this maverick friend of mine is of the opinion that Bibles, like classics, are those large volumes of tomes that must be enthusiastically spoken about without being read; he strode into his interview without so much as an askance at the Book. Iconoclasts, unlike vixens, seldom hunt in a pack. And he was the only iconoclast in his batch of interviewees. Hence he found it a little strange when he was afforded a generous smile by the first bevy of sanguine ladies that confronted him. But in his nervousness he just brushed the fortuity away into the deepest recesses of his mind. And he never thought about it again. Until a couple of minutes later when inside the consulate another three unknown roseate ladies sashayed past him to the Visa counter smiling at him unreservedly. All sorority was smiling at him and wishing him, and it gradually began to play on his mind and intrigue him. He couldn’t take it anymore when another portly girl walking towards the interview counter politely beamed at him en route. In all his college life, not even a single girl had returned his ogles with as much a glance. The sudden turnaround left him feeling extremely muddled, suspicious and weird about himself. So much so that when the portly dame gave him an unsuspecting smile, he promptly looked down, much agitated, to check if his fly was open!

And ah yes, I was outside the consulate the other day, waiting for my friend to return from his interview, when I saw this girl stampeding towards me, hair dishevelled, raucously shouting and vigorously waving the file in her hand. I sidestepped the juggernaut in time. She ran beyond me, without stopping, towards an elderly gentleman, her father apparently. I looked on, a little concerned; probably she had left a few important documents behind. It was upon further scrutiny did it dawn on me that she had actually cleared the Visa interview and was making no bones about her elation. I observed her make twenty-one calls in her father’s cell-phone; yes, twenty-one it was -- I was so distraught that I counted. I then vowed that seeing tense faces is a better pastime and did not so much as glance towards her side again. Except just once when my friend and I, on our walk back, saw her along with her father a little further down the road, hair dishevelled, shouting and vigorously waving the file in her hand in an animated explanation. She had, for the past half an hour, been searching for her I-20 that had, in all probability, fallen out of her file during her exaggerated celebration.

You cannot blame them. After all, when the situation comes upon people that will change their life within thirty seconds, it manages to bring out the worst in them. Ultimately this truth inexorably shines on you like the Pilani sun of May. So much so that there come days when you secretly hope and pray that you see your worst sooner than later. Why wouldn’t anyone, when it makes you a sensation amongst the rabble overnight. Free of cost.

An Unequal Music

2004-06-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

A few days back I happened to see the name of Mr. M.O Srinivasan in The Hindu’s obituary. His name brought back memories of my third standard ‘Music Periods’ in thatch-roofed classrooms of Vidya Mandir, Adyar in which he zestfully rendered to us Bhajan tunes that went like ‘Muthaana Muthukumara, Muruga Nee Odivaa’, ‘Danguravasaarirayya’ and some expatiations of Mohana Raagam – the songs I forget -- and cheerily urged us white-and-jungle-green uniformed tots to throatily rehearse the renderings leaving aside our inhibitions. We were asked by the school to buy a book of Bhajans, Dasanjali Bhajanavali, brought out by him and bring it along for the Music Periods, failing which we would be upbraided by our class teacher. I still remember that I found it, as a third standard schoolboy, quite incredible that despite being hard of hearing, he was able to be in line with the shruthi of each raaga; I took it for granted then that he, the teacher, had to be well in line and my mind, upon the verity of that matter, firmly refused to even skirt the realms of doubt. It never ceased to amaze me and I often questioned myself: how could he correct himself if he could not hear his own voice? I also recollect my third standard impishness of deliberately trying to sing Muthaana Muthukumara in the tune of another song and trying to investigate if he was able to pick me out, only to be promptly censured by my class teacher watching me from behind. Some people, despite having impeccably functional ears, are simply tone deaf. I suppose he would complete the perfect antithesis.

The music book meant little to me before and after the Music Periods. But I used to spend a lot of time staring at the ‘About the Author’ section in the back cover. The write-up went like this: “M.O Srinivasan, the dextrous former India wicketkeeper who made snaffling catches behind the stumps a habit, has now, through his music, been gloving children with the same ease.” The simile captured my third standard imagination for some strange reason and I am able to recollect it after fourteen years! The fact that he was an international cricketer enthralled my schoolboyish cricketing fancies. I was secretly cocksure that he could secure a definite entry into the Guinness Book of World Records if only he tried. I had never till then heard of any musician who had been good enough to be an international cricketer. I was certain that I would one day go and request him to try for it. I came to read later that he played once for India, and his undoubted skill as a wicketkeeper was made more endearing by his deafness (he appealed only after the slips had alerted him to the fact that the ball that nestled in his gloves had, en route, clipped the edge of the bat).

There are many people who touch your life without their knowledge by some complex surjection of societal or professional relationships or merely by the virtue of having been a part of your life at a time when you look up to a lot of different people. In my case, he was one.

The obituary write-up of The Hindu:

M.O. Srinivasan passes away

CHENNAI, JUNE 14.

M.O. Srinivasan, who represented Tamil Nadu in an unofficial Test against the Australian Services team in 1945-46, died on Monday. He was 86.

Regarded as a courageous wicketkeeper and right-hand batsman, Srinivasan figured in 20 first-class matches between 1941 and 1948, making 504 runs with an average of 20.16. Behind the stumps, he took 31 catches and made 21 stumpings.

Born on August 3, 1918, Srinivasan, a student of Hindu High School in Triplicane, was a prominent player on the city scene from 1941 to 1948. He figured in the Presidency Matches against the Europeans, and made his Ranji Trophy debut against Mysore at the Central College in 1941.

Srinivasan played for Rest of India and Indian XI against the Australian Services alongside Vijay Merchant, Lala Amarnath, Vijay Hazare and Rusi Modi. He also turned up for South Zone against the West Indies in 1948-49.

He played for Triplicane Cricket Club in the city league along with the late M. J. Gopalan and C. R. Rangachari, and also for Sounder Cricket Club.

Srinivasan is survived by his daughter and son, M.O. Parthasarathy who played for Tamil Nadu and Bihar in the Ranji Trophy and also represented the East Zone in Deodhar Trophy.

The Grand Slam

2004-06-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing can be tougher. When I have to quantise, catalogue and pen down in an autograph book everything that has lent me fulfilment and joy in a relationship or assess a person's assets and failings like I were an Income Tax auditor, I search for a glass of water, stammer, scratch my head with the pen, blurt irrelevant things about the poor fellow's crooked nose or flap ears and break into a nervous laugh. (It is customary for the parting lot in BITS to fill up one's contact details their friends' 'slam books' and also as a matter of courtesy, jot down a couple of lines about the good times spent and best wishes.) I can find the creases of worry appearing on my forehead; not because I cannot find anything nice to write about, but simply because my mind refuses to make any comments about the closeness of a relationship reading which will make me (leave alone the other) uncomfortable. Which is why I feel like the shrugged Atlas, so to speak, when some good friends hand me out their autograph books. When they warn you in a jocular reproof that they will not brook a below-par write-up from a good friend like me, they mean precisely, "Hey! You had better write only good gratulatory pleasantries. Else you had better beware, your autograph book shall reach me someday." So the write-up either ends up becoming strangulatingly emotional or it gets excessively panegyric. Ultimately, whenever I settle down to write a heartfelt and earnest write-up about a close friend, it ends up being far from the truth.

Hence, it meant to me more than any small measure of success when I did compliment myself after I wrote in the Godmother's autograph book in our final Shatabdi train back home, the train that would separate our tracks forever. I liked it because I thought while it was impersonal enough to save my emotions all embarrassment, I achieved the task of providing pointers to the memory lane. I decided I will put the impersonal passages on my blog simply because I like the piece and want to archive it here (without getting very personal). Ah! That sounds good enough a pretext; but why would I want to demean the Godmother's effort of typing my entire slambook entry out meticulously and mailing it to me! (So Godmother, if you read this, please don't take offense :) ) These are the impersonal excerpts of what I had to write about the great Godmother:

Hail Godmother!

A bucolic girl from Nanganallur: gangling, a little nerdy, a little nice – these were the opening lines that set up your entrée in my blog. I guess that wouldn’t change much today: Okay, probably, ‘A passionate and fervent Kali devotee’ would manage a squeeze in.

... The day you issued veritable prognostications of a philosopher, the day bedecked matronly women vied for a solitary microphone and you valiantly vied too, "Why are you on SMS", belled temple cows (!), when you sent me a solicitous ‘Where are you?’ SMS when I was enjoying my new-found comfort in the bushes, antennae and pin-cushions, NPK, the day when both of us found the declivity of ‘the branded coffee’ too vertiginous for comfort, your three words of wisdom, the 10 o’ clock morning pantry sessions that happened at eleven, your generous free Auto rides (not to speak of the KH), my TIP, Gmail, chats that later became Gmail chats, Table Talkers, the fish that felt like a fish out of water, planning the psenti-lachcha session, the 3 o’ clock train at 4:25(!)... (Oh! I am drawing very near)... the unintelligible scribble so far in your autograph book... It has been a tortuous ride to the present and now I am! But wouldn’t you like to muse as the granny grey about all these things one day? I’m mighty sure I would.

... Even as I set my pen upon your slam book, the silent voice within me quavered, my vision blurred with tears and everything that has followed has been a long jagged rickety illegible scrawl… How I would have loved to look at this scribble and ruminate thus. It’s actually the jerky Shatabdi train...

The Jack ;)

Last Words...

2004-06-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Jack,

I know these are your last words here. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it has been having you operating here. I daresay nobody, in my short life, has left me with a feeling of being so used. Contrary to the popular feeling, it is, in fact, quite refreshing and satiating to have been used so much. No more will blogs, wiki, Yahoo, Hotmail, Cricinfo windows thrive in as much proliferation. I will miss you...

Your First Love,

Dell

Workstation: 24
7th Floor
i2 Technologies

Crossroads

2004-06-06T05:09:00.000-07:00

The crossroads have come. The curtains are slowly drawing up on My Best Four Years. It's painfully slow. It has still not hit me that I will no more be a student of BITS, Pilani. A BITSian, I will forever be (I hope). But in the past few days, I've been plagued by the urgency to move on. To fresher air, to more vernal pastures.

The past six months have been eventful, turbulent and confusing. I do not know if I've emerged out of it a better individual. The lingering uncertainty hurts. Whatever be, it has been a whirlwind six months. Well, let me first try to arrest the whir of the reel and wind it back...

... New rendezvous, new milieux, enatic ramifications, strangers irrupting into my history, the Schizophrenic, vehemence, SOD, three salty pearls, tears of joy, blowing sands of separation, estrangement, prognostications of a philosopher, the genesis of an Adithi, the end of the incommunicado and the beginning of another, Vivacity, the pair of eyes, spreadeagling, airborne, Runic odes and Mrs Malaprops, a near soulmate, branded coffee, vertiginous declivities, chimaera, The Black Sheep, cardiac convalescence, abysses, trust, Siddhartha! The Haunting pair of eyes, Miss Poise, History flowing into the present, a long lost fraternity, Pearls of Wisdom, finally the exegesis, solace, the bumptious entree of Seven Years, the disappearance just as bumptious, quid-pro-quos, the bashful eyes, endearing absence, whither havst thou gone, return of the comeliness, if eyes could talk, the final rites, the juvenile edifice, the final motions, the search for a bracing, the grapple of an expectant Adieu...

The cognitive stream has been more tempestuous than ever. Plaguing self-doubts and primal obfuscations continue to plague and obfuscate. While the scars have made me wary, I am unable to asseverate to myself with conviction that I have become a stronger and better individual, mentally and emotionally. I still make the same mistakes, wring my heart with the same remorse. The same myopia, the same ingenuity, the same supererogatory elation, the same sting, the same bitterness. And a Life goes on so long as it is. But for now, the next diversion at the Crossroads has come...

The Letter of the Aegis

2004-06-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

Watched Maniratnam's Ayudha Ezhuthu -- the Tamil version of Yuva, rather the flick, of which Yuva is the Hindi version -- over the weekend. A thoroughly enjoyable movie. Made a few jots mentally during the movie:

Madhavan impresses one and all -- well, at least he impressed me -- with his portrayal of the recidivistic hireling-thug. What impressed me most was that he had studied the character extremely closely; it was evident from his portrayal -- the gait, the animalistic instinct, the makeover, the lingo. Even little things like salaaming the goonda way, and grabbing the phone disdainfully, brushing the receiver over the other shoulder in a quick jig, almost arrogantly, and holding the earpiece to the ear were executed with a careless flourish that comes with careful study.

Meera Jasmine plays perfect foil to Madhavan in the movie. A plaudit-earning performance. The brooding wife thrown in between the pangs of love and family, present and posterity was remarkably essayed. The screen chemistry managed to hold viewers riveted onto their seats. Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan were never quite the same forceful combination in the Hindi version.

Surya and Siddarth also impress, the former with his sheer screen persona and energetic action and the latter, simply because he fits the stereotype of the sophisticated upper middle class kid very well. In fact, Surya almost carries the film on his shoulders in the second half. The face-offs between him and Bharathiraja make for good viewing.

Bharathiraja communes with the audience with his eyes. A brilliant depiction of the corrupt minister. Encore!

Esha Deol sleepwalks (if she doesn't hinder the tempo) a bovine stroll through the movie. Trisha is passable as the modern day girl with a modern volitional temperament.

The screenplay was refreshing. Though throughout the movie, I was plagued by the feeling of already having watched a similar portrayal of a single incident from three different perspectives -- probably the earlier of Kurosawa flicks, probably Rashemon -- the narrative was well knit and well edited. Basically the incidences were well contrived.

If there is one thing without which the movie simply wouldn’t have been - it's A R Rahman's background score. The lilting fast-paced background scores simply set the tempo for the viewer. But, on a tangent, I couldn't help feeling that Maniratnam had once again succumbed to the commercial elements of cinema. As my good friend, The Rod Lord, would lick his lips and quip, the film is a 'Made for an Award' film, which is not necessarily a good thing always. Also, I felt that the unbridled optimism, in the face of a brilliant beginning and an absorbing screenplay, seemed a little ostentatious and could have been tempered. Looked like towards the end Maniratnam himself got a little carried away by the avalanche of built-up events that he had conjured up which set up for a grand finish.

But these were barely minor glitches in a brilliantly packaged cinematic expatiation.

The Hindi version was hardly a shadow of its Tamil counterpart. It was distinctly lacking in ethnic flavour.

The one reason for which I would most cherish the movie: P C Sreeram's camerawork. A visual delight. I have never seen good old Madras captured in so picturesque and grand a manner by a camera. Ever.

Recruiting Trouble!

2004-06-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

I committed myself to a catastrophic blunder last weekend:

It appeared -- why, it was almost evident -- that i2 had some vacancies to fill for which they were looking for B.Tech. freshers. I was instantly reminded of one of my schoolmates who had lamented to me about the difficulties of getting a job these days if one is not from the top universities. I had felt genuinely sorry for him. Thus, when this news reached me, in a fit of altruistic sympathy for my kindred schoolmates, I instantly wrote a mail to our school's yahoogroup debriefing them about the situation and instructing the interested people to forward soft-copies of their resumes to my email. I was amply rewarded for my gratuitous fraternising; my inbox was flooded the next day with all kinds of unsolicited resumes from all kinds of unknown sixteen syllabled names. I later deduced, circumventing some self-contrived encumbrances, that the asinine prick had forwarded the mail to all his college friends. Why he chose to all-importantly circulate this piece of information to all and sundry while he himself had to fend for a job amongst thousand others is something that I am still grappling with. But, to my acute consternation, I have also been left to grope with the very rationale behind presumptuously poking my nose in others' businesses and trying to do good!

These days, I open my mailbox to find twenty new resumes everyday, not to speak of the aspirants' brave hortatory essays that would have done Martin Luther King Jr. proud. I envy the HR resource person who plays Soltaire on her computer everyday. Deluged by the disastrous entailments of my action, these days I am a nervous wreck whenever I see the cathode ray tube staring me in the eye. My life will never be the same again.

At Coffee Day

2004-05-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

We are an impecunious lot. At least, I make it a point to reiterate the fact to myself every now and then, lest I end up exhausting my entire monthly stipend in a fortnight. (That I end hard up within a fortnight anyway is quite another thing.) Of course, I have these rare surges of extravagance; I go for the latest movies, Bollywood or Tamil, every alternate day; I enjoy the selfless profligacy of commuting to every place by an auto rickshaw; I welter in the goodness of my own noble philanthropy when I treat my friends to a dinner every week at Pizza Hut. Yes, coming back to the point, I like to think of myself as a frugal being. I love the effect it creates on me when I picture me and my ascetic life of endless self-abnegation.

Last Saturday was one in which I found myself in one such fit of prodigality. My friend and I asserted categorically to each other that hereafter we will not brook any more of this over-cautious attitude; we will not, this time, squander a salubriously sunny afternoon to our languor. We pulled ourselves out of our bed sheets and strode to Coffee Day in a sprightly saunter. Then, like all inveterate bustlers, we realised that the first fortnight was nearing its end; our wallets had thinned as much and as rapidly as Salman Khan's hair profile.

The waiter pampered us with the menu card after we entreated him twice and threatened him once. Both of us had already taken stock of the ammunition in the purse. I had, to be precise, Rs. 65.50, and he, Rs. 80. My friend took up the opening gambit, " One samosa please." (Samosa was the cheapest item on the list; fifteen rupees.) The waiter gave him a denigrating glance. My suspicions of him deeming us scavengers in a topiary garden did not seem very far-fetched even to my better senses for those three seconds. There was some silence. The waiter then gathered himself and replied with disgustingly counterfeited courteousness, "I'm afraid we do not have samosas, sir." He said that with an impeccably forged urbane politeness that often wills you to get up, stare at him a rusticated stare, bare your chest and challenge him to slap you if he had the guts. But my friend was more cheek than mouth. He ordered, with a glint in his eyes, a vegetable roll, which was the second in the ascending order of cost with a price tag of Rs. 25. The waiter let the disappointment show on his face for a second before he covered it up with his smug grin of politeness. I ordered for myself a sandwich and a cappuccino, and with it some salvageable dignity.

The orders were given and orders were taken and we let our attention meander on to a better scenery that surrounded us. The next table had two young women -- I must say pulchritudinous women -- and a swain whose overly greased hair stood on one end (I hear they call it Spikes these days). The women were nibbling the fudge like mice that nibbled at cheese while the boy was wistfully watching the action. Such delicate fussy helpless things these dames are; I must tell you it is quite a pleasure to watch these dainty creatures nibble prissy bites of chocolate fudge when you don't have to pay for them. I could fathom why the boy's hair stood on one end.

Half an hour must have passed when my stomach growled a threatening growl. I wontedly grew a little concerned about it. As a rule, I am reckless, but when it is a question of the stomach, I am an antithesis of myself. The waiter placed, rather disdainfully I may add, the plate that had four bits of bread on the table. In India, it is customary to propitiate the crows with small offerings before we guiltlessly glut everything down our throats; I thought the place also expected me to endorse the custom. I later found out that the four bits of bread were for me. The bits were charred; the waiter peremptorily assured me they were grilled. I asked him if he could get me some sauce. He replied that he had sauce and slithered away to a couple sitting at the table to my left with the urgency of a rattlesnake that had lost his rattle. The two were what we'd call at school, "Single Milkshake, double straw." Near the boy, on the table, was a book whose title, "Kleptomaniac", attracted the eye in bright red font; ostensibly, a by-product of a sudden maniacal urge that boys of his age often have to dissipate money. The girl asked him what it meant. The boy all-knowingly lectured, "It is a temporary loss of memory." My stomach urged me to go tell him that there was something permanently wrong with his memory. The waiter all-importantly rushed to them, apparently for orders. But they casually brushed him away. Hapless, without a choice, he stood rooted near my place in a moment of acute indecision. My stomach and the 'grilled' bread did not allow me to give up. I summoned him and posed the same question to which he posed the same answer. My stomach was now furious. I retorted, "I can see that you have quite some sauce, but can you bring me some of it?" I frankly cannot tell you if he understood the meaning of it in entirety, but he most definitely understood the tone. The sauce helped the bread a lot. And the cappuccino tasted like powdered limestone and Digene dissolved in water. My friend seemed very contented with his vegetable rolls. They were too small to cause him any discomfort.

It was the last day of the fortnight, I realised, when I left the place.

Sachin in the school books

2004-05-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

Sachin Tendulkar, the Doyen of world cricket who has an entire chapter on him in the record books, is apparently in the school books (for a change). The Cricinfo article:

Tendulkar on the syllabus
Wisden Cricinfo staff
May 26, 2004

When the current academic year commences, children in government-aided schools in and around Delhi will study a rather special subject - the life and times of Sachin Tendulkar. The new text books for those in the 10-12 age group include an interview with Tendulkar, where he talks about his own childhood and what it takes to be a special player.

Krishna Kumar, an education official, said that the move to include a first-person account of Tendulkar's life was part of an effort to make education "a more pleasurable experience". "Sachin is an icon in India and kids draw inspiration from him," he said. "So we thought that having a chapter on him will interest kids, and at the same time make them understand that dedication and determination make a successful person."

By all accounts, the kids think it's alright. "I read the interview the day I got the book, said Nikhil Sharma, who is only 10. "I learnt many things about his school days. I always wanted to know the things Sachin did as a kid, and the chapter is really interesting."

In the interview, Tendulkar, who was a cricketing prodigy long before he was out of short pants, describes himself as a mediocre boy and an average student. He also says that he was very naughty, always wanting to "escape to the playground".

The "mediocre boy" has already rewritten one-day cricket batting records, and is now just one behind Sunil Gavaskar's tally of 34 Test centuries. According to him, "strong determination, continuous practice, good understanding of the game, constant improvement of one's abilities and courage to strike the ball with conviction" are central to his success. Something tells you that this is one lesson that will hold the kids enthralled, as opposed to reading comics under the desk.

A Comedy of Error Corrections!

2004-05-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I had requested in a letter to the Academic Division of BITS, Pilani my academic transcripts. The transcripts, which they had apparently dispatched very promptly, was sent back to them undelivered, the person reported indignantly. I subsequently unravelled the conundrum. MS word Spell Checker had automatically capitalised the 'i' when I had typed 'i2 Technologies' in my address in the requisition letter. And the person who dispatched the transcripts beat the Spell Checker hollow. He, with some contrived ingenuity, corrected the I2 (read i2) in the MS Word-tampered address to the number 12. As a result, the postman had on his hand the wild goose chase of ferreting out amongst woods, nooks and creeks, the fictitious corporate building of Twelve Technologies. Postmen seldom like geese, not to speak of the wild ones. So he promptly threw a fit and sent it back to the sender, after having it stamped 'Undelivered'.

The person at BITS clarified with great relish that the package, which they had posted a fortnight ago, was still with them, safe.

Developments...

2004-05-21T02:40:00.000-07:00

Last evening was most fulfilling. I met one of my dear school friends - the inimitable Kus. The very thought of schooldays, school friends, our schoolboyish pursuits filled my lungs with a wind of contentedness; I felt instantly invigorated, all my ennui and languor dissipating at the very moment. I have chanced to meet quite a few of my schoolmates recently, and surprisingly I find that there is still a comfort level I am able to strike with my school friends, which I sometimes struggle to establish with my more recent acquaintances. The matter came upon my ears that another of my close friends has found himself a lady. The news was a gale that hit me right on the face. We, the Awesome Foursome, never expected him to fall in love first. In fact, we doubted if he will ever burn his fingers in the embers of love. But life is so and, as it happens, he is well and truly in love. And the other three of us are to ourselves, intact! The lady, I can assure you, is of the highest calibre. In my book, she will rank as one of the first ladies. In fact, apart from the surprise at the unforeseen development, there was little for me to be startled. If I could have imagined him falling for any woman, it would have to be her. They match each other like a reflection in the mirror; in intelligence, knowledge, calibre and awareness. Housed in the cosy thoughts of elysian schooldays, I felt at home last evening.

The Satisfaction of Blogging

2004-05-19T05:21:00.000-07:00

One of my friends, a regular reader of my blog, remarked in her mail to me: The satisfaction from reading an original piece of writing/poem is as much as that from writing an original working piece of code; sometimes much more.

Interesting thought! But having had to contend with the dichotomous pursuits of writing pages of codes and inditing pages of odes (!) in the past four months, I feel urged to add a small thought that emerged from the writer's perspective. When a code works it works. Period. You find the satisfaction of a job done successfully for the day. You are reasonably happy with yourself. And you think no more about it. But, as a writer, while writing (blogging) is satisfying as an activity in itself, it leaves you with just those teeny weeny butterflies in your stomach. You open your blogspot every day, biting your nails, hoping to find an increment in the Comments counter, hoping against hope that you have been able to connect with the reader...

On Goodness

2004-05-14T03:20:00.000-07:00

I personally cannot tolerate the mere insinuation of endorsing goodness, thought I swear by it upon my glass of Coke at cocktail gatherings. I am made to agree that goodness as a virtue was hailed rakish during the Victorian era. One cannot help it; every era is entitled to its excesses. These days there is nothing more unfashionable and moral than having to seek refuge under the facade of some flaccid moral rectitude. The singularly unattractive thing about all men is that they turn good at some point. Why, at times I find myself a pile of miserable rubble of frightful goodness.

Never make the mistake of liaising goodness with innateness. One has to put in ounces of effort to procure the finesse of unwholesome uprightness; goodness is not an inborn trait. It requires to be carefully cultivated and thoroughly acquired; it is an art. Nobody at first likes the asphyxiating cloak of goodness over him. Man is born free and nurses a fancy to remain that way. For a free man there can be nothing more disastrous than the exclusivity of an endearing encumbrance such as goodness. When one is dear, one ceases to be free. Goodness is like a wife. One takes recourse to it when one begins to find almost all of life’s revelries blasé and feels its time for some existential retrospection. A friend of mine philosophised: Goodness is like wine; the longer you are good, the better you become. Whatever he meant by that, I’m sure he must have been mentally repressed with the amount of virtue he saw. While I personally am not quite so sure about it, there is one unsettling trend that has bared its face conspicuously: People, like wine, become more good with age. The finality of the situation is depressing. So much so that the very thought of growing old petrifies me these days.

Really it is either senescence or resignation that drives one to goodness. When people begin to realise that they are capable of little else, they pretend to be good. I knew this bloke who presented quite a picture at the poetry competitions in college. Whenever he took part, he left no stones unturned to ensure he won. He was very thorough with his preparation for the grand event; he lucubrated with huge anthologies for five nights and days. But the buffoon was a sore loser. He could never plagiarise with an appropriate piece. Imagine the judge’s thundering fury when he found verbatim excerpts of The Charge of the Light Brigade. He felt genuinely outraged and flushed to the yellowness of a full fry. He resolved, in a huff, never to come back. He frankly thought it was an insolent travesty of World Peace, the topic. Our hero wore on his sulkiest face and stuck his tongue out pitiably like a drenched poodle. And all the girls who passed by commiserated, “You are such a good poet and such a good person! God repeatedly tests only the good people.” As if God were some foreman in a mechanical unit sequestering out all the rejects. He put on a dejected appearance and trotted behind them wishing he had a tail to wag. And the girls turned back now and then and surreptitiously gushed just loud enough to make themselves heard, “Cho chweet!” And he made it a point to volubly harp on the aphorism: Nice guys finish last. Believe me, there was not an iota of ‘niceness’ in the conniving quibbler. But at the end of the day his non-existent goodness percolated through the tender hearts of the girls.

These genteel ladies are supposed to be ever so shy and romantic. Though they vehemently endorse the stereotype most unconvincingly, they are nothing of the type. A friend of mine was tolerably sane and evil until he saw this damsel. Within the span of a day he somersaulted into a tumbling mass of ungracious virtue and bumptious chivalry. He followed the lady like a Pomeranian pet and put on his best behaviour possible. He flooded her with flowers and other unusably romantic gifts all betokening his steadfast Victorian romance for her. She rejected him because she found him far too sweet and nice and proposed marriage to a guy who looked an injudicious crossbreed of an owl and an Orangutan.

Thankfully the evil in me has never been supplanted by any of its antithetical cousins, despite the various impending threats and hazards. My acquaintance with the perfectly odious virtue has been restricted to that of an observer. Every now and then I see stark Goodness on the streets and end up spurting out irrelevant ejaculations like 'Ada Paavi' or more Pommy indecencies like ‘O Blimey’ or ‘Oopsee Daisies’, wallowing in vicarious self-pity for three seconds and walking on.

The Don

2004-05-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

It is high time I introduced to you all another person from my wing - The Don. Before you start frisking away in terror, let me clarify - short for Don Quixote! But I must affirm: he is not quixotic in the least. He makes the most sensible of decisions and clings on to them like a leech to a wall. Till the last second. When he abruptly turns a somersault and does the most inane things ever. With time and experience, it has become almost customary for us to be strictly contrarian in principle whenever we lend him our ears!

This is an excerpt from a mail I sent to our wing egroup last semester:

It is, I'm afraid, impossible for me not to write about The Don - the person who as, almost casually, stolen the spotlight in the wing. He has been enjoying quite a windfall this semester. Two of the highest paid jobs and a girl now to call his own – even the avaricious will only dream of the above two. But our man attempts to handle all this with composure. He sure attempts! An overdose of Tamil cinemas sure has had its repercussions on The Don. It is not very tough to imagine our guy as the uxorious householder, bringing home a packet of Thirunalveli halwa and well-strung jasmines every evening to elicit a blush out of the bashful bride's cheeks. It is also not very hard to imagine The Don having a traditional meal on well spread fresh banana leaves while the doting wife first serves and then helps herself to a few morsels on the same leaf. You must forgive the exaggerated caricature that I have ended up sketching, but The Don already appears to me as the archetypal householder of Tamil Cinemas. His romantic allusions are getting worse by the passing minute and so are the songs that he lets blare on his 60 W contraption. I have begun to disbelieve less and less that he is visualising a romantic scene in a mofussul lorry or in front of a remote Dhaba with the songs playing in the background. Ratanji of the Gandhi Redi seems to play better songs these days. In fact, these days the boys going to the mess stop by his room (which, unfortunately for them, is on the way) listen to the strange gurgle of sounds stifled by the poor quality of the tape (not to speak of the tape recorder), repeal in a mixture of dreaded horror and heartfelt sympathy and, as a token of their solidarity towards his mental well-being, drop in eight annas into his room! (The canard floats that he has begun to use this regular accrual of funds towards the payment of his Redi bills.) And then they all trickle out in a file, uttering, punctuated by shudders, under their breaths incantations of pious goodwill for him to get well soon.

When the Jive went for a dive…

2004-05-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

I wrote this mail to the group on Dexter's attempt at dancing!

Guys,

I have two passions in life; I do not know if I've told you at all. The second is women. Against all my nobler pretensions, I must admit that my heart bleeds whenever I see the pool of pretty dames drying up; when one more of my apparitions evanesces in the face of reality; when one more of my probable paramours pick out a grotesque, rusticated good-for-nothing. And of late the entire wing being abuzz with Dance Workshop (DW), with Moo and Dexter spinning those fantastic yarns about their exploits with their legs and their lasses, has done my spirits little good.

Dexter, in particular, has never given me an opportunity to feel unenvious these days. Whenever he talks about DW, it’s only the possibility of an X or a Y squabbling with each other for the second to tango. Talk to him for five minutes and he nauseates you with a big list of dainty damsels that are head-over-heels about him. The last thing I remember him bragging about was about he executed the best 'twist' of a DW session.

Even in my wildest dreams I wouldn't have expected Dexter to twist gracefully. But even I, not of a particularly altruistic disposition, did not expect this twist. We were in Sky discussing a funereal scene, in fact a funeral scene, of the EDC street play when someone suggested that it would look 'streetplayish' to get four people to lift the dead body. One of them drove home the point, "Yes. It will come out really well. Also, Dexter and I have little to do in the play." People seemed to contemplate the plausibility of the idea when a certain damsel screeched, "No! Not Dexter. Not after he dropped that skinny girl during the DW jive!" At which point I could do little as the director to restore the sanity; far from it I could hardly prevent myself from rolling over the grass, splitting my sides. Little did I expect this twist!

Dexter had, as usual, become the centre of distraction of the place! The more I think about this, the lesser I can help myself from laughing out in public. I'm instantly reminded about the advertisement in which the man, in a desperate attempt to hold his lady-love and pants ends up clinging on to the latter and watching the lady make a headlong dive from the table on to the floor! Every time I picture Dexter doing something similar I laugh out in public places and end up looking like an imbecile! In my defence, all I can say is try thinking about the same! Dexter vehemently objects saying that both their palms were sweaty! When I feel like furthering his misery with an inquiring frown, "Sweaty?!..." And, I believe K asked them both to pair up again the next day, only to hear his death-knell being sounded by the victim! And, the re-pair couldn't be done; the repair was done!

And, (forgive the sadistic inclinations) I must admit that nothing has ever pleased me more than writing about Dexter, his antics and his misfortunes. When he reacts you can see all of the EEE circuits short circuiting simultaneously! Regardless of my preoccupations and obligations, I will continue to pull his dancing leg with conviction passionately and shamelessly. For I have already told you; I have two passions in life. The second is women...

Yours,
Me

Murphy's Law

2004-05-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

I sermonised to the Godmother today rather grandiloquently: The pleasure of loving lies in waiting! Queerly, it struck me instantly that the pun characterises a double-edged irony which embeds the resistential behaviour of Fate towards love and staunch lovers. Well Pained Lovers, take solace from the fact that it seems to be a no-win situation! Looks like you have been led to the best choice; no Schylla, no Charybdis...

When You First Utter'd My Name

2004-04-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

I just chanced to find lying derelict a poem that I wrote as a schoolboy to woo the young inamorata of my schooldays - a girl with double plaits that had just joined my class that I thought I loved. I mention double plaits because it achieved the twain of capitalising on my South Indian predisposition and capturing my pseudo-Victorian maudlin imagination! The first time I saw her, I thought she was the phantom of delight that Wordsworth had felt; the lovely apparition that had been sent to be a moment's ornament. I wrote her this Ode to precipitate my echoing of the Victorian thoughts I bore for her and carried it, pencilled in a notebook of mine. I secretly hoped that the paper would fly out in the class someday and, by a divine intervention, fall into her slender hands and that she would pour forth an overflowing glass of requite to me (That later another piece of paper flew to another girl did me little good. I shall write about it later). Ah! Those mornings when emotions weren't crumpled by creases of pragmatism; when I woke up with a strange synergy veering though my nerves; when I thought there was a strange nip in the cool air and I was summoned by the forces of nature to a higher calling, some heroic endeavour; little did it matter that I did not remotely know what kind of a task it meant! I was a man on a mission, and that was enough to make me feel valorous enough to try and woo a maiden! Those were the days...

NB: Needless to say, the crush was attrited the moment I grew some brains! And, needless to say, the poem in itself is hilariously Victorian!

(This poem which I had so delicately treasured for my fair maiden, my teacher somehow managed to catch hold of! And what's more, to my consternation, she matter-of-factly added that it was a good poem because it was able to inspire these feelings vicariously in the reader (which I presume was her)! And she, without breathing a word, had it published in the Young World in my name under the title 'On Love'! Needless to say, the news was meat and drink to the cannibalistic intents of my classmates! I was torn apart the next day, a slight relief being that the object of my affections was absent.)

When You First Utter'd My Name

When you first utter'd my name,
My heart leapt up above the clouds,
Transcending boundaries attain'd of fame.
All for an utterance- a solitary word.

Ne'er a joy so deep was felt,
E'en when clambered I the Peaks of Fame,
Only your words on my mind dwelt,
When I heard in your voice my name.

Ne'er a tune so sweet was heard
E'en from Temples' Bells of Hope that ring,
By utterances you have my heart endeared,
Tears of Joy to my eyes you bring.

Oh! When has my heart beat so fast
In my dreary life of many a year!
Oh! But only seconds did it last
And I clasp'd it to my bosom dear!

Thus have I felt in all my time,
But how you feel is prime, after all,
My name may seem worthless, funny, a rime,
Or et al, to you, may mean nothing at all.

Of Chain Mails

2004-04-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

I have just been left tottering by a chain mail that had royally ensconced itself in my inbox:

You are most fortunate to be a recipient, a link in the world’s most coveted mail chain. This chain mail contains the benedictions of Lord Venkateshwara. Recipients of this mail who have furthered this humanitarian gesture have found themselves miraculously ascending the ladders of success. You can have success on a platter too. Just forward this mail to 25 people and you will strike gold. This is not an exaggeration. People have hit jackpots, won lotteries. If you forward it to 15 people within 10 minutes of receiving this mail, you will find that all your bad days will pass before nictitating an eyelid. But beware! If you neglect the mail, your life will be beset with catastrophes. You will be bitten by a scabbed temple mongrel and will have to stomach 16 injections. You will be reduced to cadging on the street and more terrible calamities will befall you.

Apostles of the Lord

Apostles of the Lord indeed! What’s worse: this mail was sent to my father, a devoutly pious soul, who was instantly petrified by the ominous threats of disaster and promptly dispatched it to a list of fifteen people (which included me), roping us all into the world’s most coveted chain!

Chain mails often have me fuming in exasperation. And what's more, they are from friends in an e-group that I am part of; from close relatives and well-wishers. Something that I cannot even brush aside. I daresay that the mails seem to cause quite a few of us (from what I gather) a fair amount of discomfiture. But of course, before anyone begins to take me amiss, let me clarify that our problems are those pertinent to our own idiosyncrasies on the web and our inability to cope with the impending danger.

For my part, I did not know what to do with the black-mail either; I was equally stupefied. But I was lucky; I had some friends whose contacts I had reserved specifically meting out such special treatment; punching bags, so to speak. I religiously forwarded this mail to the group. Though I realised they would be sufficiently irked, I did not expect the lashing that arrived through subsequent mails. I wonder if the temple mongrel part of the mail bit their conscience; the replies were rabid, to say the least!

I am reminded of a certain friend of mine who used to take these things very seriously; so seriously that he used to religiously make an effort to forward the generically varied chain mails only to the appropriate coteries. He actually enjoyed, more than the mails themselves, tracing out the labyrinthine paths that these mails traversed. Never did he grow to realise that he spent only a tenth of his time actually reading the contents of the mail; he spent eons just peeking into the various people whom the mail had traversed through. Needless to say, the only part of his mails that I read before dumping it in the trashcan is the subject which is highlighted in my inbox!

Chain-mails, though all proponents of good wishes (or bad), are categorically varied. The above mail is a classic example targeted at the middle-aged, pious or expectant lot. There are chain mails that prescribe success in love. Needless to say, those mails are the ones that elicit the most diligent responses! There are chain mails which exhort people to contribute for social causes; the average recipient sees them resolves to contribute, accidentally trashes them and never thinks of them again. There are chain mails for almost every cause. Why, I received a chain mail just before the World Cup finals between India and Australia which prayed for India’s victory. In a burst of patriotic fervour, I ended up forwarding the mail to fifty people! That was just before Australia horsewhipped India to end up at 359/2!

Actually, my own sufferings with these mails are characterised by, more than any vehement disinclination, my inability pick out names from my address book to pass on the mail. If I pass them on to girls, I, an already ineligible bachelor, can sit back rest assured that contacts with the few girls I know will be severed. So I refrain from sending these to girls. And of course, sending these to the boys would make me the butt of many a ridicule and rebuke. So I have to be very careful in picking out mawkish people (either in love or just out of love) like the bloke who sent it. And he, I must admit, is one of his kind (and a rarity), which makes it doubly difficult for me to handpick these people in my address list. So these days I have resorted to sending these mails back to the sender! If I am instructed to send the mail to ten people, I sometimes wonder how it would be to send it back ten times to the sender himself. It would be interesting to note his face all purple with rage when he sees ten more copies of his favourite mail sitting side-by-side snugly in his inbox.

I hope that I am merely echoing the throes of many others who languish in their inability to pick out people to send these mails. I am sure the blessed sender does not wish that ill luck befalls us hapless creatures as do the mails. I feel like pleading out to him that if he feels so beholden about these things or about his role as the custodian of all love interests, let him continue to send them; only I pray that he removes the part which threatens to throw us irrevocable curses if we fail to pass them on!

Today, chain mail is an ineluctable phenomenon. No spam filter can filter them out; they come from known contacts! Everyone wilts under them and grits his teeth but smiles politely and says ‘How do you do!’ when he sees the sender in a get-together. I am waiting for the day when a scandalised philosopher will plaintively cry out: Man, today, is born free but always held in chain mails!

The Song of a Hanging Frame

2004-04-26T03:23:00.000-07:00

A serene face
The hanging frame on the wall
A silence envelops,
Stilling the surroundings.
Even as my gaze capitulates
To its inscrutable magnetic charm
She is smiling
In the groves
And so am I!
That song of that day
In my heart unwinds
The birds chirp,
Calls of longing
A soft haunting strain
Of an ethereal connection.
Soft drums
The gurgle of the brook
The abandon in her childish innocence
The melody haunts
The husky voice mesmerises
Flashes of moments scintillate
Through the blur of a clouded past
Soft resonance of bells
A surreal unison
A celebration.

The tempo rises
Reverberations of a thousand voices
Chants pierce the misty air
And the bells ring
The rising cadence
Sounds of whiplashes,
Indelible welts on my scarred heart.
The tempo slowly bubbles forth
Spilling over
In an earth shattering cresendo
The climax
The drums boom
The glass on the table shakes
Her muffled cries for help
Rending my heart
As I rush forth helplessly
Wildly carilloning temple bells
The alarm
The voice quavers at the highest tremolo
Her flames rage
Devouring the home
And the past
Ravaging all but the hanging photograph.
When the earth trembles.
The shattering clap of thunder
Culminating the built-up crescendo
Into a moment's devastating silence
A finality.

Silence.
Soft patters of rain.
Quiet tears stream down
A soft melody resumes in the background
Fading away
Poignance.
The memory of a symphony is over
The song is no more.
Just
A serene face,
The hanging frame on the wall
An eternal silence envelops.

The Bard of all Bards!

2004-04-23T02:46:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Shakespeare was born today, though there are few facts that actually conclusively prove anything about him, even his existence:

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BORN:
April 23, 1564

According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.

Estranged

2004-04-21T05:15:00.000-07:00

Pained lovers, here's a thought for you:

All plaintive rumination is well with a romance that was wiped out by the cruel hand of Destiny; the grief is profound. But what becomes of an illusory one-sided romance that has little to glean; not even moments of requite? It merely wilts under the derision of others at a hallucinatory presumptuous odyssey for self-gratification. All along the pained lover is deluded with thoughts of a Victorian romance that never was and will never be, and when he egresses out of its labyrinthine trail, he is mockingly escorted by merely bitterness and a lingering pain. Pain not at the failure of a love, but of a neglect, the hollowness of chimerical propositions, a lack of direction and consummate attrition of self-esteem. Devdas was better off; he had at least a squashed romance to get drunk with!

The Haircut

2004-04-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

Even the Governor of your place does not affect your life so directly as the barber. The barber can radically affect your social prospects. He can redefine your unkempt coiffure to give you the dapper look; he can transmogrify the debonair into a barbarian; he can virtually play with your social life. And all within a matter of half an hour.

The past weekend I decided to experiment at a saloon just round the corner which was receiving rave reviews from my friends. I did not circumvent the change, as I normally would have, because the next day I was to meet some girls after a long time. I needed to be prim and proper. I was ushered in enthusiastically by a rather young fellow who, it seemed, was raring to show his adroitness with the scissors. When the long white apron draped me, I cursorily began to issue my customary instructions. "Medium." I started. Before I could run through with the rest of the customary instructions, he fished out a brochure of sorts. "Sir, which of these heart-ruffling hairstyles would you like to make your own?" And he proudly flashed before me a comprehensive literature of hairstyles, which seemed to have catalogued every possible hairstyle, from the mushroom cut to the David Beckham hairdo; from the luxurious locks falling over the nape to the bald pate. He inquisitioned with supreme nonchalance, "Would you like the Salman Khan crop or the Shahrukh Khan hairdo?" His peremptory intoning drove me into speculation for a moment. Salman Khan's crop is a cover-up for a hairstyle these days; I have some days to go before I need such a camouflaging coiffure. And Shahrukh's hair is too thick for mine; an imitation will only make me resemble the temple priest. So I firmly gave my orders, "Let it just be Medium. And be sure to cut uniformly on all sides." He seemed a tad disappointed but all the same got down to business with a flourish. Cosily ensconced before the mirror, I began to admire the reflection of the pate of a bald man who was sitting with his back to mine. His haircut should cost more, I callowly chuckled; the poor barber actually has to search for strands of hair to cut! Probably he should go to a 'Hair Growing Saloon', I guffawed within myself. My juvenile humour was cut short when a thick lock of hair fell right into my eyes. I brushed it away and refocussed my gaze onto myself and found instead somebody I thought to be a reincarnation of Laloo Prasad Yadav! Shocked! My face had been maliciously maimed, mutiliated by the barber. I now most certainly looked like the priest who has a small portion of his forehead tonsured! And the rest of the hair simply stuck outward like a pin-cushion! My heart sank with the thick locks of hair that tangoed to the ground celebrating their new-found freedom. I do not know if he bore me a grudge. But now I certainly will bear him one for the rest of my life! I had to ignominously remain seated wearing an oversized cap in the sweltering Madras heat in my first tryst with socialising.

I have heard of stories in which the barbers go particularly berserk with some types of hair. The wavy and the curly hair-forms suffer the most. The barber says, the hair looks good only when the curls and the waves are removed. And he snips off all the curls and waves with the ruthlessness of an executioner. And then the half-inch length of hair certainly looks better. Only, what becomes of the face is far too graphic to warrant a description. I know a friend with curly hair who removed his spectacles and sat down for a haircut. He closed his eyes right through the ordeal because he could not descry himself in the mirror sans his spectacles. And when he wore back his glasses, he stormed out of the barber-shop criminating the barber of doing him a nose-job and stretching out his ears so as to make them flap outwards!

Experience has taught me that these Scissor-armed butchers do not display any special predilection for celebrities either. And celebrities, being who they are, throw all kinds of queer reactions to the adversity. The last time the press saw Rajnikanth with a tonsured pate, he managed well explaining that he dozed away while at the mercy of the barber. And when Kamal Hassan's barber pruned everything, he covered up well claiming that it was to get into his forthcoming character for a film that was never released! When Akshaye Khanna's barber uncovered all his bald patches, the hairstyle was made to be youthful, and it became quite a craze too; not always do people get to fashionably flaunt their baldness!

Apart from that one meeting that I was almost bulldozed into attending, I cancelled all my other engagements for the rest of the week and remained a recluse in self-imposed incarceration within the walls of my room. I just couldn't come to terms with my reshaped head. I remember fuming to myself the chant which I intoned to ridicule the other bad haircuts:

I went to him for a hair-cut,
Instead he did a Square-Cut!

As Subtle as a Sledgehammer!

2004-04-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday had me playing a cricket match for i2 against Shaw Wallace. Their opening batsman was one Richard Rushton, a South African who sported the Castle Lager t-shirt. He hung on for most part of their innings like a true out-of-form South African. I tried to pick up some casual conversation with him during the drinks break. But all that I was able to elicit out of him were terse monosyllabic replies. I thought then that he was a typical supremacist South African white.

When my opening partner and I went into bat, we found that he was opening the bowling as well. He was a gentle medium-pace seam bowler. He dug in a short one to my opening partner, who prompted swatted him for a boundary through the vacant mid-wicket area. Let me tell you that my partner is an extremely unorthodox; he can get on your nerves with his complete lack of orthodoxy. Richard went up to him and intoned in disgust, "What the fuck was that?" with the emphasis on the enjoyable unparliamentary invective. My partner retorted something that made me guffaw out loudly; he snapped back, "That was a shot!" That reply, whatever it meant, gave me immense enjoyment; the South African was left to tear his hair! I, for my part, proceeded to needle him throughout the over in which he eventually went for 24 runs! The final ball of the over was a juicy half-volley which my pinch-hitting partner slammed straight back for a six. Rushton snatched his hat from the umpire and challenged my partner, "Let's see how you play my short ball! Let me see your backfoot play." to which my partner, a true Thakur, growled back, beaming like a proud lion, "Don’t worry, you won't get bowling!" Richard fumed his way to first slip.

The first ball of the second over was the icing on the cake. It was on the middle stump on a length, just angling in. I played an on-drive on the up, a check drive, left elbow high and all that; a shot that, I must admit, surprised even me. I turned back at Richard and gloated, "That is copybook cricket for you." For my gratuitous bragging, I was rewarded amply; I got out that very over! But we won the match easily and every new batsman was advised to get under the skin of Richard Rushton. After the match, Richard invited us for a round of beer, which we politely declined and instead simply sat round and, though among ourselves we were all a little irritated with this South African whom we thought to be a little too high-headed for his cricketing abilities, we flopped down into a haphazard circle for a light banter. A little friendly banter which simply put the entire of the match and my impressions of it in a different perspective. We asked a player from Shaw Wallace, "How is your company doing?" He candidly quipped, “The Company is looking to expand in India. Our past few ventures have been profitable. Our MD, Mr. Richard Rushton has been a dynamic leader!" And that was when all of us bit our tongues in an enviable togetherness!

6 runs to be added to Sachin's 194

2004-04-06T01:10:00.000-07:00

This was a mail that I received from a friend. Well, allow me to add that the date of the Report should lend the truth some credibility :) :

6 runs to be added to Sachin's 194

By Savita Choudhary

MULTAN, March 31, 2004

As strange as this may sound, ICC has decided to award Tendulkar 6 additional runs for his first innings knock of 194 not out. This comes after the Indian team appealed to the ICC match referee Ranjan Madagulle that a four and a couple of runs that were awarded as leg byes actually came off the bat of Sachin Tendulkar. The match referee after consultation with the two umpires Simon Taufel of Australia and David Shepard of England, and the Pakistani captain Inzamam Ul Haq, has decided to award Tendulkar with 6 runs.

The 6 runs came in one over when Tendulkar glanced Shabbir Ahmed in the 96th over of Indian innings for a four of the second ball. He followed it up with a couple of runs on the fifth ball.

Cellular Unplugged!

2004-04-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

He actually did it! I could not believe my eyes when I thought I saw him do it. This gentleman seemed one of a perfectly peaceable disposition. Until he walked past me. Well before crossing me, when we casually spotted each other, I thought his countenance wore a rather placid look. Then suddenly, even as we neared each other the blandly tranquil expression segued rapidly, rather a little too rapidly for my comfort I must add, into one of biting ferocity and even as we were about to cross each other, he yelled at me, "You are one of the most inefficient people I have seen on the earth! To hell with you!" I was completely stumped. Shocked. I did not know what to say! I completely endorse the fact, the truism, that I am one of the most inefficient idleness-mongers on the face of the earth. I don't need any telling! But yes, that is precisely the thing. I don't need anybody's telling! To know your rightful place is one thing; to be shown your place in the stable by somebody virtually unknown is quite another. It startled me to say the least! I was left staggering in shock and confused. Until my better senses prevailed.

I convinced myself to turn back and when I did I saw some wireless equipment of the cell phone plugged into his ears. Apparently he must have had a small microphone too. When I came to terms with the whole thing, amused as I was, I felt sanctified, absolved of the guilt of being the main cause for his angst! The incident also reminded me of the advertisement that used to be screened on TV where this elderly gentleman upon entering a restaurant mistakes a svelte woman talking on a miniscule cell phone for her invitation to him for dinner. And when the gentleman, unable to believe his luck, approaches her table to take his seat opposite her, she, having ended her romantic interlude on the cell phone, assumes him to be the waiter and, much to his embarrassment, ends up placing an order for a black coffee!

The incident, nerve-wracking as it was, left me wondering what we would be without the cell-phone. The cell phone has become all-important in today's world. Businessmen striving night and day to seal business deals; stock-brokers closely scrutinising trends at the Sensex; the teenager walking up and down impatiently in an agonising wait for his first date; the girl in the Airtel ad who wants to stay connected to the latest gossip; beggars awaiting the latest details about the day's collection from their Union; match-fixers; where would they all be without the cell phone? Where would you and I be without the cell-phone! Life without these precious little boxes would be as dull as a cycle-stand where the cycles never collapse, a la Sidhu!

I have seen people do strange things with the four inch by two inch contraption. The Short Messaging Service has revolutionised communication a little too much for comfort. The girls that saunter on the MG Road are furiously battling with the keys of the cell phone, while seldom looking up to see what lies ahead in their bovine stroll. The boys inside the cinema-hall are pensively typing out SMSes to their girlfriends who, having entered the hall, are forlorn, unable to locate their guys two rows before. But, as you would have come to expect by now, I have seldom had any luck with my SMSes. Invariably, when I SMS some matter of extreme urgency, Fate fastidiously ensures that the SMSes reach the concerned sender only after I meet him/her. The meeting may be after five minutes, two days, or a week! Or if I am extremely lucky, the SMS may not reach him/her at all sparing me the consternation of having to see the person receive the SMS when he/she is, in fact, talking to me!

SMSes have become so indispensable these days that even the Messenger services of Yahoo and MSN have pandered to peoples' predilection towards SMSes by enabling the option of receiving Instant Messages in the mobile as SMSes. And it has become customary for people to set their Messenger status to 'Im on SMS' when they are not online. Well, while this is an extremely useful option for emergency communications, what happened to the Godmother will always hold me wary. The Godmother had composed a new ringtone all by herself. The very fact she had been versatile enough to compose a ringtone (slightly cacophonous though it was) all by herself made her so proud that she set it as the ringtone that would alert her about a new SMS. And everytime the cell ranted the arrival of a new SMS, she gloated in her self-professed versatility. I am glad life taught her a lesson. When she was in an important meeting with her boss and team, her cellphone began to scream out the raucous melody unendingly. When she checked, abashed and horrified, there were scores of SMSes from the an otiose friend logged on to the Yahoo messenger that read "Why are you on SMS?"! Hard as she strove to delete all of them, the same message just continued to flow in! What a spectacular sight it was to see the Godmother rushing out of the meeting in absolute mortification, the cell-phone hung round the neck resonating a loud clangour like a bell collared to a temple cow! Should I even mention that the first thing that she did was to pulverise her brilliant composition out of the cellphone memory!

And not to speak of this rigmarole of Missed Calls. Missed Call is a term advocated by this group of parsimonious people who habitually deny themselves the liberty to use up their Cell-phone money and deny others the little peace of mind they are entitled to. And they have this sadistic affliction of thwarting the others' attempts to 'Missed Call' them. For my part whenever I have tried 'Missed Calling' people, I have consistently failed to cancel the call at the appropriate time, allowing the recipient to pick up his phone and ending up talking a good five minutes!

My grouses with the cell phone will continue to remain as long as the cell phones themselves remain. But they do not preclude my possessing a cell phone, for without it, I just cannot be! Whether we like it or not, the cell-phone has anchored itself firmly to our lifestyle, and despite the paradox, the mobile is indeed here to stay!

Vibrancy

2004-04-01T04:21:00.000-08:00

It is quite unfortunate. Indeed. Had only Shakespeare seen her, he would have mused, "Vibrancy, thy name is Woman!" It is indeed unfortunate that Shakespeare did not see her. Well, I am not getting romantic; I am quite incapable of romance. But the first words that emerged out of the the many rivulets of kaleidoscopic emotions that gushed to my mind (not to speak of my heart) when I first spoke to her were very precisely these. She has simply captured my imagination as a very cheery, bright and enterprising lady.

In fact, upon deeper retrospection, I have many a time relegated her to the status of a very normal woman; diligent, woman-like and conformist. And, at face value, every word of it is true. And you hold fort until you speak to her. In fact, had I been a maudlin romantic, I would have gushed, "Until you are swept off your feet by a voice that gargles like the brook; by a countenance that gushes like the river; by a demeanour that is as pleasing as a lotus; by time that stops like the stillness of the lake." But one thing I will have to admit: had I not given her this reverberating sobriquet, I would have simply called her as the Brook. When she gushes, you cannot help but be swept off your feet. I think she is worth most similes in the passage and probably this eulogy. Again, the Romantic would have mused in nostalgia, "She fleeted across my life for merely a month; and her feet have left some of the deepest impressions in the deserts of my mind." But I merely wish her well and hope she does not end up drifting into normalcy. I'm sure everytime she breezes past in the waves of peoples' reminiscence, the recidivist romantic will jump, unable to suppress an echo: "Oh! Vibrancy, thy name is woman!"

Plainly Plantains!

2004-03-29T04:04:00.000-08:00

Guys,

My chat with Dexter about women and our similarly dismal failures with them has left me more frustrated and depressed than ever. I hereby decide to make public my coinage; our wing, the Plainly Plantains' theme jingle:

One for all and All for One,
We are each plainly a plantain!

The more times I chant this out vociferously, I more I feel like some great martyr wounded in the battlefield, the strength of all his greatness holding him alive in his dying moments...

I have come to love the effect it is creating on me! Ergo, I proclaim and exhort you to shout along:

One for all and All for One,
We are each plainly a plantain!

Yours,
Me

It gives me great pleasure to proclaim to you all that, with the above mail to the group, I have unanimously elected myself as the honorary President of our newly formed club - Plainly Plantains. For those staggering under the newly coined name indicative of a not-so-newfangled ideology which unfailingly captures the imagination of every ineligible bachelor at least once during his bachelorhood, a direct transliteration into a injudicious Hindi-English blend would help! I shall refrain from further obfuscation and not withhold the suspense any longer; for those still grappling with the curious alliteration, it is an injudicious transliteration of 'Only the Kela', popular among the BITSian and some non-BITSian circles.

I must say that the 'Kela' has quite a history. It is something that transcends the ephemeral, extending as it does far into the cosmos, well beyond you or me. The Kela must have had its genesis along with the genesis of man. It existed before you or me and will continue to exist long after we are gone. It will exist as long as wannabe-debonairs like me do! To continually remind us hopefuls of our rich pedigree (the lack of it, of course)! Well, I am not quite sure how the coinage came to mean, rather indiscreetly, a comical snub; the pride-goes-after-a-fall kind of thing. Probably somebody, to his acute consternation, defied gravity for a brief while courtesy a banana peel, before the earth refound her affection for him by pulling him back to her by his collar! All the acrobatics courtesy the peel of a 'kela'. Well, I should think that more than the fall itself, the 'kela' must have implicitly referred to the chin that was worn high which entailed the carelessness and the mishap, not to forget the ridicule. This is the best possible reason that I can attribute to a kela being called so, late in the evening at 5:51 PM!

Well, why ever on earth a kela refers to whatever it does, I am proud to say that I have been one of Life's more favourite sons whenever He has had a plentitude of 'kelas' waiting to be distributed amongst mankind. More so when the kelas have involved women. Life has always had this curious affection for me; I just have to think about making some kind of an advance with a woman, and He appears before me, waiting eagerly with a replenished stock, a basketful of kelas. I have such a regular diet of kelas in the past; I am finding it extremely difficult these days to survive on staple food! Ah! How many women! How many kelas! I am a fish out of water these days; a kela without a peel! In fact, my yearning and unbridled affection for it has made me embark on my autobiography 'Plaintive Platitudes for Plainly a Plantain'! When my wingies also seemed to subscribe, rather vehemently I should add, to views and delusions very similar to mine, I had little hesitation in proclaiming the genesis of our elitist group, Plainly Plantains!

Make no mistake. There are no two ways about it. Plainly Plantains is strictly elitist. To gain admission into Plainly Plantains, scores of conditions have to be met. Firstly, one should have an AGPA of less than 5 from an accredited Ladies Club (again, for those groping with AGPA, it is merely a cumulative Attractiveness Grade Point Average). There is absolutely no compromise on that. Next, one should have a minimum of three references to recommend one's case. To qualify the statement further, the references should strictly be women who have dumped the candidate in the past. A further caveat: the women should have had an opportunity to contend with the candidate's grotesqueness for at least six months before eventually dumping him. The candidate should also pen down a Statement of Depress indicating his chronic depression and disenchantment with life. The more acute the depression is, the better are the chances of admission. Should I even say that Plainly Plantains will always have it's doors firmly shut for the fairer sex. It is exclusively for derelict males. Once the candidate has passed this acid test, he will formally be sworn in to the brotherhood of Plainly Plantains with all the pomp and splendour, with a toast that will celebrate the addition of a new comrade to the brotherhood:

One for all and All for One,
We are each plainly a plantain!

Memories of Siddhartha

2004-03-25T03:12:00.000-08:00

... He wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved, the splendid. And in days to come, when Siddhartha would become a god, when he would join the glorious, then Govinda wanted to follow him as his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow...

I had my back to the wall when I first met him. He had his back to the wall too. He grinned at me when I trudged out of my place, crestfallen, to join him beside the blackboard and stand in attention in punishmnent. With my back to the wall. "Hi, I am Siddhartha, the Great!" he cheerily extended out his hand. And thus we extended our hands to a friendship that was born out of a fourth-standard classroom adversity. "Face the wall and kneel down for the rest of the hour", my Maths teacher's voice boomed, resonating through the walls of the classroom, cutting short a newly formed two-membered cabal planning a coup in their rendezvous beside the blackboard. "You stand on this side of the board, and you on the other side." she thundered in the vernacular, "And if the two of you talk again after all the mischief you have done, I shall have you caned and excoriated." My head hung down in shock and ignominous humiliation. The rest of the class was staring at us. I turned and knelt down, facing the wall. And I did not dare look at him for another ten minutes while I quietly suffered in humiliation. It struck me that I had wanted to ask him where he lived, and whether he would come to my house this evening to play cricket on the streets. I had played well enough the previous evening to feel confident enough about an exhibition of my skills with my willow to a newfound friend. I looked at him. There he was kneeling down, arms folded behind the trunk. And grinning at me. He gesticulated me to come closer to him with a shrug of one shoulder. We inched towards each other even as our knees hurt, even as he intently gazed at me with a sense of purpose... "Shall we lick the blackboard clean? It looks very dirty with all the chalk dust. If we make it spotlessly black, Miss will be very happy with us. And then she will never scold us!"...

"What the hell is this?!", the Maths teacher screamed in shock, absolutely furious. "So this is what you both do when you are punished. Call your parents tomorrow, you rogues. The two of you will henceforth stand out of my class for the next one month." ...

... He loved Siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling...

The time, I notice, is 4:39 PM...

... "Hey, what is the time?"

"Siddhartha, will you believe it! It is 12:39! This is the fourth day in a row when you have asked me the time and I have told you the exact four digits!"

That was the day when two Sixth standard boys who met up for lunch pledged their solidarity to the number 39, and resolved with a lump in their throats that they would think of each other whenever their watches showed the four digits of time for sixty seconds of moments that had been hallowed in the sands of the Vidya Mandir auditorium. The allegiance to the numbers and each other was made in fields of childish fancy. A solemn pledge; a pledge that lay buried in those very sands two days later when the childish minds leapt on to other fields. Forgotten...

...My timepiece's alarm still reads 12:39 PM.

... "If you only," spoke Govinda, "wouldn't speak such terrible words, Siddhartha!" ... Govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke: "If you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of talk! Truly, your words stir up fear in my heart..."

"I have noticed these days that you grab every opportunity to belittle me with your jokes. If I may seek to find out the cause of this behaviour."

"Siddhartha, It is merely a retaliation of the condescension that you subject me to. I think it is merely my reaction to the insinuation that you subject me to. I feel genuinely hurt because you are so good at it that you manage to pull it off everytime. And I keep shrinking in my own estimate."

"Oh! So you feel that I really mean all that I say when I rile you? I think you need to be able to take sportively the jokes that are cracked at you."

"Siddhartha, it does not behoove you to say something like that. I know that you do do not wish me anything bad. And you know too that I have always wished you well. You also know that, many a time, I have been the first person to laugh at myself. But there is a threshold that one needs remain within. I think you have begun to cross the threshold beyond which I cannot take, hard as I may try. I only react when I am instigated to a point beyond which I cannot take."

"But I wonder why, of late, your insinuations have become too frequent and too piquant for comfort."

"Oh! You think so?! I also wonder why! Siddhartha, the answer to that lies in your question."

(After a pause)

"See, I really think the problem lies with you. I have thought long and hard about it. I even reckoned initially that there may have been mistakes on my part."

"To hell with you and your supremacist bigoted mind."

Thus ended one of the biggest spat that occurred in a grove in Yercaad, leaving a bitter taste in both our tongues; at least in my tongue. The tongue that felt bitten by the very canines so near. The bite stung more than usual. And three rivulets of blood trickled down the side of my tongue even as I spoke those last words. Yes, the bite stung more than ever because it was Siddhartha who cajoled me into making the trip. A trip that four of us friends had undertaken. As a celebration of twelve long years of camaraderie and genuine goodwill. The strange thing was, even though the feud had been very dramatic and intense (to me, at least), both of us knew all along that neither would bear each other any kind of resentment or ill-will. Only the actions needed retrospection, not the intentions. Anyway, the heated exchange had drawn too much out of me. My temples were splitting in pain after the nervous exertion. I got myself a mango drink and slunk under a tree tired, tense and unhappy. In the context of friendships, the spat is a very minor one. And it was. This was merely a brush of momentary rushes of bloods; merely words that were strung up in a heated argument. And this did not leave the scar on the left side of my chest that I you see today. The scars were created a few moments later. When I drearily staggered back to join the other three. When the words pierced the tympanum of my ears. When I realised that intents were piercing my ear and not words. When one of the two spectators to the onslaught of words said, "Siddhartha, forget it. We know his ego only too well. you can never change certain things." When the left side of my chest ripped open. When history streamed out of my heart as blood. When I ejected out of my heart the history of two conniving people with finesse in my life. When I deleted their annals chronicled in my life in such great detail. The scars were created.

In retrospect, I should not have made the trip at all. Or probably, it happened for good. I obtained an unequivocal measure of two of my friends. Siddhartha has remained as hallowed in my life as ever. Both of us know till date that there was no ill-will. The others have faded out; blurred into the obscurity of the background vision of a possibly myopic eye. And the scars remain. Fresh...

... when he heard these words and read the decision in the motionless face of his friend, unstoppable like the arrow shot from the bow. Soon and with the first glance, Govinda realized: Now it is beginning, now Siddhartha is taking his own way, now his fate is beginning to sprout, and with his, my own...

We met up on Saturday evening in the beach and spent an hour during which both of us spoke little. A silent Shraddhanjali to the fourteen years that lie buried in our backyards. Ghosts of which have remained to haunt me at night. And day. Though the thought itself is very Victorian and fulfilling, realism and objectivity would probably attribute the silence to something else. Lack of a common ground. It dawned on me then that we were slowly drifting apart. He is too perceptive an individual to not realise it. But he has maintained a dignified silence. It is his greatness. He seems to have measured out his life in immaculate coffee spoons, a la Prufrock. Ergo he knows this is an obligation slated out for him by his childhood. And he complies by allowing himself to languish in my mediocrity for sometime. Yes, coming back to what I was saying, we are drifting apart. It seems inexorably inevitable. A cul-de-sac, so to speak. And the finality with which the situation looms is frightening. It has left me shaken. And deeply perturbed. I was nothing but an abject parasite, thiriving on his knowledge and vision. If the host and the parasite are separated, what does the host lose but the parasite?! And the parasite moves on, gasping for stale air, to embark on a quest for a new host; he knows it is ultimately a pointless odyssey - the next sojourn is bound to end the same way...

(TO BE CONTD.)

NOTE: All the italicized passages are from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Lawyer at Large

2004-03-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

This was a mail that I received from my uncle yesterday that contains a link to a compilation of Pre-1947 Asian authors in which my Great-Grandfather's works are also catalogued:

Indo-Anglian Literature: Lala on the Net

Click on this hyperlink and check both under "Drama" and "Fiction
works by individual authors" .... look for Nagarajan, Krishnaswamy:
http://www.lib.washington.edu/Southasia/guides/pre1947.html
Please share with other members of our family.

I think growing up we knew we were living with a legend!

Love
(Signed)

This has made me as proud as a peacock in the rain. With due respects to all the people who have helped me become a better writer and thinker, I daresay that had I had the chance to interact with my Great-Grandfather, I am sure my literary interests would have been better moulded. I have chanced to read quite a few of his works - his short-stories and his autobiography. I can recollect having marvelled at his mastery of the language then; his erudition still sometimes has me in thralls. After reading almost all his works, I think I will do well to say that he was one of the very few who wrote the English language like the fastidious Britisher without attempting to sound British in his thoughts and retaining his innate Indianness. His writings, to me, exhibit that kind of poise and honesty.

This is an excerpt of a mail that I had written to one of my English Professors last summer:

Dear Sir,

I write to you with more gusto than usual for this holiday has been extremely eventful. Even as I returned home, I stumbled upon my cousin who was leaving the very night. The meeting proved to be serendipitous for I was able to wrest out of her my great-grandfather's autobiography. He was a lawyer at Pudukkottai, a district abutting Trichirapoly (which is in South India, famous as an industrial centre for BHEL). He was, I have chanced to hear from many a relative - distant and near, a lawyer with a facile tongue, and his popularity, the faithful vehemently adhere till today, was on comparable terms with the Maharajah of Pudukkottai. Right from my childhood, eulogistic tales of his have been thrust upon me and I am only hoping, against my better senses, that they have not swept me off my feet.

But, I was more attracted to his natural propensity and his felicity of the English language. One of the more fortunate few to have studied under British pedagogues, he appears to have taken after them quite naturally in thoughts and demeanours. The other day I went through his autobiography, written in three parts. It is an original manuscript - meticulously typewritten and off-white with time's imprints. Being one of a literary bent, I daresay, even the very smell of the old parchments and the scripts of the Olevetti typewriter (now obsolete, with the advent of the computer) have held me in thralls.

Though it is only evident that he has written this with the ambition of giving vent to his literary presumptions, to give him his due, he has also mentioned that he hopes that this book will serve to open all his descendants to their legacy. And I am glad that I read this manuscript and I shall consider myself beholden to getting the manuscript published.

2004-03-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

VVS Laxman should not be in the playing eleven of the Indian ODI cricket team for the following reasons:

1. Though he is a good timer of the ball, he is not innovative enough to consistently get past the circle in the offside. As a result, early on in his innings, he hits too many balls straight to the fielder, though he times them well. Even during his century knocks in Australia, one got the feeling that he was struggling to pick up the tempo of the innings towards the end.

2. In addition to his languid, non-innovative style, he is a bad runner between the wickets.

3. He does not allow Rahul Dravid, who has adapted well enough to ODIs to be reckoned as one of the greats of the current era, to come in early enough when the tempo is set by Sachin and Sehwag and get things going.

4. Inductively, he denies Yuvraj Singh and Mohammed Kaif time in the middle.

5. He denies Badani, a player better suited to the ODI format, a place in the eleven.

6. He is one of the poorer fielders of the Indian team. He is purportedly an excellent slip fielder, but he has dropped far too many catches in the past for me to agree with the opinion.

The Indians seem to be playing by reputation here. Let me clarify that I am not being arrantly dismissive about him; he is a class act in the Tests. The point is: the Indian team has too much batting talent and potential for its own liking. Just as Yuvraj Singh and Mohammed Kaif, despite oozing with talent and possessing a sound temperament, are not able to make it to the tests due to the lack of any vacancy in a solid batting line-up, someone will have to give way to the players better suited to the ODI format. In this case, it will have to be Laxman, unfortunately for him. I think the think tank should be progressive enough to take cognisance of this fact and select their best 'ODI' team disregarding past reputation and pressure from the public.

MG Road

2004-03-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

I just cannot do it. I cannot be in Bangalore and not write about MG Road, its arterial road. MG Road is the hub of Bangalore's ethos. MG Road embodies the spirit of Bangalore. MG Road is ubiquitous. Ask anyone what he did last Saturday evening, and he will succinctly tell you, "I had been to MG road". And you are not expected to inquire further on the matter-of-factly statement. It is a pre-empted truism, sententious in itself, and obviates the need for any kind of explanation. And the fellow will not brook any more prodding on the topic. I learnt it the hard way! I was myself guilty once of indiscreetly posing a second question, "What did you in MG Road?" To which he religiously repeated, a little annoyed, "I had just gone over to MG Road." Puzzled, I blurted out the ineluctable follow-up, "Doing what?" The fellow suspiciously leered at me as though I were some overly intrusive gossipmonger trying to malign his private life. I tried to put on display one of my most innocent expressions. After an uncomfortable pause lasting around ten seconds, "Well, shopping." Before I could react to the dismissively curt answer, he was off, out of earshot.

People familiar with Bangalore wouldn’t require any telling about MG Road and the inscrutable magnetic charm it holds for the youth and visitors: the conglomeration of teeming cultural multitudes, the toweringly imposing shopping malls, Gangarams and the roadside bookshops where you got all books for precisely seventy five rupees regardless of size and popularity, Cauvery, the antique shop, which endeared itself to the people more because of the antiquated frozen picture of people waiting outside in an eternal wait, Foodworld, which catered to the palates of the youth while also providing other provisions, and the quaintly ethnic and impressively exotic restaurants. It is only customary for every steadfast Bangalorean and non-Bangalorean in Bangalore to chart out elaborate weekend plans of shopping in MG Road. From buying trinkets for lampshades to Kancheevaram silk sarees for sweetly cajoling women of the family, one sought refuge under MG Road.

Hence, hard as I tried, I could not fathom why the fellow seemed really piqued by my earnest queries. If he was indeed shopping in MG Road, it cannot be too much a bad thing. Possibly the poor bloke might have gone hard up after a long shopping streak. His penury may have naturally entailed the irascibility. Or probably he was fleeced in some shop. Or had some distasteful experience which caused him the acute resentment. It took me a long time for me to figure out. It was experience that taught me never to pose that query to anyone. For MG Road is supposed to be an outing in itself. Well, one needs to have no purpose to visit MG Road. As I found out myself later, the otiose fellow had merely walked through the stretch of MG Road like many others of his kind. I found it out myself all right. After a rather bizarre experience. Ah, bizarre is the word. All – men folk and womenfolk alike – walked aimlessly across the two-kilometre stretch. Well, perhaps their dreamy desultory gaze was an indication not of aimlessness but of intense philosophical retrospection and a crucial appraisal of their life. But they all walked. A couple of times to and a couple of times fro. The men all flaunted attitude; they looked to ‘ooze machismo’, so to speak. And the women were all decked up, radiating fashion's most ostentatious blaze, ready to walk! And everyone walked past each other, exchanging bashful ogles! And at the end of it all walked back home, extremely fulfilled with their progress in this walk of life! You can return from MG Road with a bagful of queer observations, each one of them idiosyncratic to the place. For instance, you noticed that always the couples walking on the platform virtually clung on to each other. If they did not cling on to each other, the man took great care to gently clasp the girl's hand. Let me clarify here that I am not one who prods up issues related to an individual’s privacy. But when a conspicuous public display of mutual affection is thrust upon my faculties, I find myself unable to restrain a slight insinuation and I beg forgiveness for it. The reason for this intimacy in public though, I have never been able to fathom and I am reasonably sure that I may never be able to do so. Probably MG Road heightened their mutual affection. Or their insecurity. Or probably the straight MG road overawed them so much that they often got lost in the labyrinthine straightness! And they needed to clasp dearly to each other to reassure themselves that they were treading the right path.

And upon all their grand Satyagraha by foot, people seldom bought anything. It was criminal to buy anything. If you did, you were sure to be left with a hole in your purse and heart! The prices were as high as the number of people walking through the two-kilometre stretch! And so people entered shops, examined all their likes and dislikes, quietly walked out, deeply appreciative of the shop's display, walked for half a kilometre more and bought a replica of the object of their scrutiny, if available, from the shops on the pavement!

But it is simply the best way to enjoy a weekend here. Especially if you are a quibbling teetotaller like me! For such a person the length of MG Road provides all the highs of spirit. MG Road is a leveller on a plateau. MG Road is omniscient. The enlightenment has come upon me these days. I have been blessed with the vision of the fellow that I once queried when I was a naive duffer. These days I reply zealously and immediately, with a sense of contentment, to anybody who enquires about my weekend, "Oh! I had gone to MG Road to do some shopping!"

Unspoken Words...

2004-03-14T03:04:00.000-08:00

They remain unsaid. The carefully rehearsed words that may have changed the course of my life, had they been spoken in consummate consciousness and realisation. The words that had taken form from hasty hallucinatory prognostications of triumph; from the seeds of hope that had been gratuitously planted. Words that were floating below my palate and gliding slowly to the tip of my tongue, repeatedly sliding over one another, carefully rearranging themselves, bedizening themselves so as to be decorated with a fineness of form, waiting to brandish themselves to the world in all their grandeur, waiting to be spoken out...

The Professor from Texas A&M who had promised me financial support - promised, I daresay, is the wrong word for it was merely a figment of some presumptuous presuppositions - rather offered to consider me for financial support, has sent me a terse two-liner: "I cannot offer you financial support. Nor can I promise you anything when you reach TAMU." After I read the mail I peered out of the window, emotionally emaciated. The person outside inhaled his cigarette, and forced out the smoke spasmodically. The smoke permeated the rarefied atmosphere, meandered hand in hand, danced round in circles, Even as it struck one that the circles were going to string up garlands, the half strung garlands gently attenuated to mere thin strands, and the circles diffused and diffused until the intricately woven white drapery of circles became the blue tapestry of the background sky.

And all the ballerinas of words that were gently pirouetting in the tip of the tongue collapsed into the mouth that was half-opened in shock, were forced into the stomach by the gale of truth that gushed in, and finally were ground to nothingness. And all the words, so carefully rehearsed to be flaunted out to Vibrancy, Dexter and a lot many more, remain in the deepest recesses of the mind, in a comatose sleep. Believing that they will be summoned again for a reason. And they remain, refusing to die... Unspoken...

2004-03-14T02:33:00.000-08:00

I am pleasantly surprised to find that some people actually like my page. I only hope that my writings continue to interest the readers. Thank you, Georg, for your kind comments!

Good Music and Bad Music

2004-03-11T02:15:00.000-08:00

I am egregiously known for my taste. Or the lack of it! That is because I happen to like many things that most others of my age or vicinity do not. And I do not find myself particularly inclined towards art that is acclaimed and hyped by the media. And we argue endlessly about it. This disparity in tastes thrusts its ugly head in most when the tirade shifts to music, music being the most common ground for all.

I do not completely deny it. There are times when, in spite of my cognitive faculties suggesting otherwise, I subject my tympanum to a lot of hackneyed, sometimes cacophonous, beats and tunes. And I enjoy unreservedly the battering that my ear-drums get. At times, almost half my cognitive responses are tuned to the reactions of other living room TV watching friends to it (We are eight friends in a single flat of the apartment)! This is some kind of perverse sadism that I have allowed myself to cultivate since my childhood. Nothing pleases me more when the other fellow starts gnawing away half his pillow in absolute horror and mortification, and another fellow begins carefully emptying his lemonade in the living room to trip another and cause a din and hence vent out on me his chagrin. That is when I take recourse to the next step of modus operandi; I increase the volume by five units. It is then that people actually begin to go beserk. The pillow eater realises that the pillow has ceased to taste so relishingly sweet; he tears the pillow apart and begins to howl like one with a severe stomach ache. And the lemonade spiller has found that the spilling is not so effective after all; people have become extremely eagle-eyed these days. And there is not a hint of pandemonium. So he begins to get hysterical (That is an anatomic impossibility. But believe me, hysterical is the word!). He showers on the ground all the chips and clutches his chest and begins to expectorate wildly on the ground. And this time he partially succeeds in drawing attention. By this time, the racuous melody has reached its crescendo. The ensuing drama is hilarious. The remaining members pounce on him and start pumping his chest. The poor fellow, who was merely faking up a tantrum is genuinely assaulted now. He bellows out Hiawatha's warcry, scatters the manhandlers, and staggers back to the bedroom, clutching his chest in genuine pain. The surrounding rustics are puzzled, but have managed to figure out that serious danger has been averted thanks to their nimble minds and feet. And by then, the song has ended. The pillow eater is dejected; his lovely pillow is in shreds. The living room is a mess; a living hell! The best reaction was from a fellow who,even as he sensed the impending danger, rushed to the closet and began to bawl out his favourite tunes out loudly, so that you didnt know which was worse! That had been his own time-tested mode of retaliation. At the end of all this bacchanalia, I casually remark, "Why such a fuss about a stupid song! If I had known that the song would entail such a mess, I would have never put it in the first place!" I change the channel and quietly smuggle myself to the bedroom without looking at anyone in the eye.

Though I have this stray streak of sadism, I listen to bad music most of the time not because of the music itself but more because of the thoughts that the music carries along with it; a whiff of reminiscent air. For instance, the song that the TV speakers blared when I had set my sights on this seductive (though a little squat) girl was one of the worst pieces churned out of Bollywood's mills. But romance had lent it a dfferent tune, a different tint. The way the hero ogled at the heroine through the corner of the eye and her coy mock reprisal reminded me of my own Romeo stunts! By Jove! There was romance in my life! And what better way to celebrate it than a little background tune! And every time I heard the tune, it nauseated me with the romance that could have been the most romantic romance in the annals of history, but was never to be. And I became effusively maudlin and allowed the music to percolate into every pore of the body. And queasily whined in gratuitous nostalgia when the music was over. And indulged in some self-gratulatory exhortations for managing to maintain my equanimity and spirits in life despite the tragedies that have befallen me!

I am sure, I am not the only one. When the rustic next door switches on his tape recorder, the dog outside my house begins to howl and tears away to his house, turns it's back on the house entrance, raises its back leg, and urinates very carefully on the walls of the gate. And then throws a barking fit. The fellow enjoys his music oblivious of all the commotion and when the music is over, looks out shudderingly at the mad dog and decides that the only safe dogs are those that are dead!

There are scores of such people who have made the others rush to the closet with their music. To each his own. The next time anybody takes it upon himself to educate me on my bad taste, I am going to take it in the right stride and make an effort to cultivate a fineness in taste. I am going to buy a trumpet and start to play it all day long, till people become convinced that my taste is, after all, not so bad at all!

The Humorist

2004-03-10T01:58:00.000-08:00

Following is an email I received from a Professor of Texas A&M University in response to my request for an RAship and financial support:

Hello Jack of all Jacks:

Thanks for your interest in Industrial Distribution. I read your resume
and found it most interesting that you have written short stories
in English. The protocol that I follow in awarding assistants to
graduate students is to first have an oral face-face interview.
Presently, the assistantships that I have are filled, but a vacancy may
occur in the near future. When you arrive in College Station, please
contact me and we can arrange for an oral interview.

Regards,

(Signed)

The fellow is a humorist, plain and simple! I knew it the moment I read his mail. My views have radically changed since I chanced to read the mail. First, I have come to believe from his mail that the mere fact that I indite short stories in English interests Professors more than my academic record, creditable though it may be! More importantly, it is the fact that I, despite being an Indian student, write short stories in English; not in Zulu or Pali. How thrilling it is for me to realise my infinite capabilities in a language completely alien to me!

The mind-boggling retrospection has had serious affectations on my impression of myself. I have thought over it for a whole night and have decided to take the issue by the scruff of the neck. My Resume, from today, shall begin thus:

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
A Senior year Engineering Student who is an accomplished author of Short-
Stories in English (and not any tribal language like Zulu). Incidentally,
possessing a creditable academic record and hobbying in Manufacturing
Systems and CAD/CAM systems.

The remaining part of my resume will be a simple couple of lines!

ACADEMIC HONOURS/ ACHIEVEMENTS & RESEARCH WORK/PROJECTS
For more information on the genre, style and calibre of my writing, please
see: http://panvista.blogspot.com

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
1. B.E (Hons.) Mechanical at BITS, Pilani

Ah! What a wondrous feeling to be able to complete my Resume in a couple of lines! If only anyone had so much hinted the suggestion that this was possible, my friend Dexter would have commanded him to turn away and kicked him on the backside with his left boot. Resumes are supposed to be those things which everyone gets down to draft with the impression that he has few accomplishments worthy of mention, but ends up drafting out a dozen of sheets. By the time he has finished drafting his resume, he has grown so much in stature that he is a pioneer in his field. He had all along been asinine enough not to realise his strengths! Now he has so much to say about himself that it is virtually impossible to shrink his resume to 3 pages! And he wonders, probably these Professors do not want to feel challenged by the academic potential of the students. How can anybody ever complete his resume in 3 pages? Unless he has floundered his entire college life by straying on the streets like a vagabond. And he scratches his chin with his pen and his eyes wander on to the 'COMPUTER SKILLS' column:

COMPUTER SKILLS
1. MS-DOS
2. Windows 95
3. Windows 98
4. Windows NT
5. Windows XP
6. MS Word
7. MS Excel
8. Logo
9. BASIC

It sets alight a raging debate in his mind: is it absolutely essential for him to put MS-Word? After all, the Professor will have enough sense to figure out that the resume was typed out in Word. Oh! But there may be people who will have given it to a typist to get it typed! Obviously, Professors will be shrewd enough to take cognisance of his expertise in MS-Word in the light of these cases. And, he must look to edge out these people... And so MS-WORD stays to fight another day. And after a thorough appraisal and scores of similar such raging self-conflicts, he manages to reduce his resume from a staggering 13 pages to an impressive five-and-a-half pages. At the end of the Herculean effort, he is transformed into the extremely motivated individual that had set foot in this world to revolutionise modern research... Of course, it was sacrilege to even dream of completing your resume within three sides of paper, leave alone a solitary leaf; it meant that you had little to write about and was a sure reject candidate. But today, I have realised it is possible courtesy a Godly Professor. I humbly bow my head in obeisance to the great soul that has bestowed on me this divine afflatus.

But somehow, I still get the feeling that the gentleman is not entirely convinced. Though he seems to be taken in by my writing capabilities, he still seems to doubt my speaking abilities; he wants an oral tete-a-tete! Here, I cannot blame him. For the number of people who say Loory for Lorry and Noo-ledge for Knowledge must have appalled him. I should make it a point to include in my Resume the fact that I can also speak English and say precisely Lorry as Lorry and Sorry as Sorry!

But, all said and done, he belongs to a breed that everyone craves to belong to at some point or the other. He is a humorist, plain and simple!

A Call from the Wild

2004-03-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

This was a mail that I had written to the group last July about Dexter. It does not behoove me to introduce Dexter to you all thus. He can surely complete a grander entree for he belongs to a rarer breed of people - the academically brilliant lot. It is simply unfair. But so's life :)

Guys,

Dexter and Ms. Silhouette make quite a picture in front of Ram Bhawan – nobody needs to be told that. In fact, I can virtually count the occasions on my fingers when I have not chanced to find Dexter giving vent to his debonair ostentations with the object of his affections in front of the Ram Bhawan gate, ending up giving the Chowki a run for his wages.

They made a brilliant canvas for a caricaturist. Together.

This evening Dexter, Quixote, and I were doing some GRE exercises at Dexter’s when he received a seemingly innocuous telephone call. Initially, Quixote and I harboured no suspicions. But Dexter's first words into the receiver (and the response, more importantly) seemed to have left him stunned in a mixture of surprise and shock. And he jerked his idiosyncratic jerk. It startled me and for a moment I even dared to speculate, against my better senses, whether the receiver had given him an electric shock! His face slowly turned a bright crimson and finally purple. Yes, there was no doubt about it now; it was her on the line! Even as he was cooing into the receiver sweet nothings to his inamorata, he must have felt abashed all of a sudden; he rushed into one of the corners of the room hoping that the conversation would escape our earshot. The ostrich, when attacked by poachers, slides its head alone into the bushes while exposing the rest of it, cosy in the thought that it has escaped the hunters’ eyes and oblivious to the imminent. Dexter’s fate seemed to be much the same. There he was, twiddling his thumbs (literally!) and scratching intricate designs on the ground with his toes, much the same way the bashful brides of Tamil Cinemas do when they descry the gaily bedecked groom and entourage on squadrons of elephants (unable to tell apart from the groom!)! It was quite a sight, seeing him caught between the pangs of not being able to pour his heart out and having to contend with two inane jackasses having a ball at his discomfiture. It was after some ribbing, after the receiver had been duly placed back, that he finally capitulated and admitted the identity of the caller, and wistfully whined that such occasions were rare. I must admit that I did feel sorry for him then, for three full seconds.

Well, I wonder why the calls should be rare, given the recent proliferation of gate-calls last semester. Probably she feels obliged to call Berr too when she calls Dexter, for they are three of a much vaunted trio! I can quite understand her predicament. Dexter alone is enough to give one a splitting headache; she has to contend with two of the same feather. Well, so it is probably fathomable that she thinks twice before calling; she has to call twice! Dexter presented quite a picture today; over the moon because she had called and flabbergasted because there were two goons laughing and eating his head off. But one thing that I shall avow with conviction about Dexter conversing with Ms. Silhouette over the phone:

He makes a brilliant caricature. Alone!

Yours,
Me.

2004-03-09T01:15:00.000-08:00

This was a draft that I had saved, incomplete on March 2, 2004:

The past weekend saw my second homecoming since I have been in Bangalore. My indecision and improvident planning ensured that I shelled out quite a sum of money and travelled by Shatabdi. The travel itself couldnt have been more comfortable. The cushioned chair-car, snacks and food, the service and the little niggling guilt; my middle-class mind was quietly preponderating whether one really required this level of comfort to travel. No people thronging outside the window waiting to impregnate the asphixiating barricades of people whose heads alone are visible. No beggars, no children sweeping the floor and cadging for a rupee, no eunuchs; the travel was much different from my previous ones.

I was fortunate enough to meet up with Siddhartha. (Whenever I think of him, I see in my reflection Govinda of Herman Hesse's 'Siddhartha'). My post-justifying him is essential at this stage and I apologise for it; to introduce him will almost mean introducing myself to the readers and hence it will take up a whole new post. He was the support around which climbers of my childhood and youth luxuriously straggled... We met up on Saturday evening in the beach and spent an hour during which both of us spoke little. A silent shraddhanjali to the fourteen years that lie buried in our backyards. Ghosts of which have remained to haunt me at night. And day. Though the thought itself is very Victorian and fulfilling, realism and objectivity would probably attribute the silence to something else. Lack of a common ground. It dawned on me then that we were slowly drifting apart. He is too perceptive an individual to not realise it. But he has maintained a dignified silence. It is his greatness. He seems to have measured out his life in immaculate coffee spoons, a la Prufrock. Ergo he knows this is an obligation slated out for him by his childhood. And he complies by allowing himself to languish in my mediocrity for sometime. Yes, coming back to what I was saying, we are drifting apart. It seems inexorably inevitable. A cul-de-sac, so to speak. And the finality with which the situation looms is frightening. It has left me shaken. And deeply perturbed. I was nothing but an abject parasite, thiriving on his knowledge and vision. If the host and the parasite are separated, what does the host lose but the parasite?! And the parasite moves on, gasping for stale air, to embark on a quest for a new host; he knows it is ultimately a pointless odyssey - the next sojourn is bound to end the same way...

Colours

2004-03-08T00:31:00.000-08:00

Golden rays slant across a new dawn
Bathing ecstatic skies in glowing pink.
The misty air tinted with variegated hues.
Strong jets of colours,
Sprayed in celebration of a harmony,
Piercing, for those few frozen moments,
Facades of social constructs;
Dissolving egos of the whimsical;
The malice of the embittered.
And washing them away.
But for a few frozen moments…

Holi.
Splashes of colours on an unfurling canvas,
Dispelling sorrows of a buried yesterday
And agonising waits for an uncertain tomorrow.
Where the past is lost
In the haze of a misty reflection
And the future, merely inchoate
Forms of nascent blotches.
Colours.
Imbuing all in the pervasive present;
An abstraction of timeless joy
Evolving in the ephemeral.
When in them each finds
His own shade of meaning.

The Private shoots a jet of red and smiles;
The red of today is clean of anguishes
Of a comrade beyond the barbed wire.
Children gambol in raw shades of innocence,
The leaves of their virginal books
Untouched by moths of time.
The young man showers the redness of love
And the girl blushes a dripping crimson.
The pained lover shoots out a vernal green;
The envies of yesterday are long truncated.
Though he can touch people with colours today
The pariah touches hearts with but colourless water;
Three silent drops of prayer;
Water that cleanses coloured shirts;
Coloured shirts of coloured souls.

And the young widow huddled in a dark recess
Looks out and sighs a forlorn muse,
“Life is still colourful, isn’t it?”
And her soft pink lips purse into a wry smile
With the rainbow’s sarcasm at passing showers
And stop the eye’s colourless salty stream.
For the rich daub of red on her forehead
Turned that day to the grey of ashes
Left of the flaming pyre of her dissolute man.
And the world robbed her of all colours but two
And the white hood of her white saree,
Now veils her world of endless black.

Little Embers of Learning

2004-03-03T03:32:00.000-08:00

Math classes…
Ciphering of the uneducated milkman;
Technology’s meteorological predictions…
Trooping of weather-wise ants;
The valour of immortalised noble martyrs…
The hypocrisy of people pawning separatists;
True love of near and dear…
The malice of a betrayal;
Faith holding strong many a family boat…
Cold icebergs of mistrust;
Burgeoning buds of aspiration…
The rough pruning hands of The Gardener.

…And we move on
Learning
All that we pine for
And all that we don’t…
Didactic sermons of life
Thrusting upon us an affliction –
An unequivocal objectivism
To devouring the good
And the bad
Perpetrated by human avarice –
A malaise we yearn to live with.
When knowledge tags along
The hypocrisy; a subtle finesse
Making us ‘worldly wise’.
And we crusade forth.
Revelling in our triumphs;
Drunk with the power of knowledge...
For in its potent cloak,
We seldom realise
The apathy lying draped
Waiting to show its taciturn face...
Roughed up by inexorable truths,
The heart has ceased to throb
At the other’s trauma
And the pain in a recess lingers…
The pain from the sting of a bee
That killed herself to hurt you –
Marking the many little embers of learning
In burnt fields of childlike innocence

Look Ahead in Nostalgia!

2004-03-02T02:58:00.000-08:00

My neighbour in office has now shifted to another cubicle. And I am alone. Not that the shift has made me feel alone. It has made me think. Two individuals needn't particularly like each other to miss each other. Sometimes we miss people in life merely by virtue of the fact that once they were a part of our daily life. And now they aren't. And some maudlin human minds like mine tend to daub the whole reflection with a little nostalgia and romance. And then we run our palms slowly through the stubbles of our chin and muse forlornly! And then the canvas bloats a little, daring to straggle beyond realms of reality; a little colour is added, a little emotion, a little nostalgia. And for an instant we dream of the day when our closest friend, guide and pillar of support moves out of our lives. Erasing all traces of footsteps from our pastures of youthful friendship. Leaving us intensely thankful to the Lord that we were fortunate to be a part of his great life. We are choked and dazed. We portend his future fame, popularity and greatness with conviction. And tearfully wish him well for the good man he is. We let out a wry philosophical smile. And suddenly we are old men, anecdotists with long unfurling beards white as snow, fondly reminiscing the intruder who was once our soul to our grandchildren in the evenings of our lives. And they listen awed by the chronicles of our lives; important leaflets in the annals of their lineage. And by the time the tale reaches its denouement, the permanence of everything under the sun is so deeply dented and challenged that the children begin to think that all the others around them are to die any moment now! When the story ends with a sigh, and clicks from young throats.

It is now that the exponentially extrapolated reverie comes to a grinding halt. You realise: Your neighbour in office has shifted to another cubicle. Two cubicles farther from his current place!

This is not a test message!

2004-02-24T04:40:00.000-08:00

My inbox told me, a couple of minutes back, that I had a new message. I opened it in great anticipation to find a new e-group mail from one of our PS mates snugly seated in my inbox. The subject line said, 'Hi all!' It is not customary for people in our PS to send non-business introductory mails. So I sat up to welcome the change in culture with open arms. I opened the mail. It read, 'This is a test message'. The message, apart from disappointing my derelict soul, left me thoroughly befuddled. Firstly, the remark went completely unintelligible to my rather dull faculties. After a heavy lunch, my drowsy cerebrum simply couldn't figure out what the gentleman was trying to test: whether he was trying to test if his mail client worked; whether he was trying to test if the net worked; whether he was trying to test if his computer was connected to the network. Or, probably the poor fellow was trying to test whether his keyboard actually worked. Or whether his poor fingers could type. Well, I shouldn't arrantly go on lampooning a soul in the gravest of doubts. For all my ridicule, the tortured soul was probably trying to test on the altar of Truth whether he could indite a mail at all. How encouraging it would have been for his dented morale. A ray of hope for his tenebrous clime! I felt happy for him for the instant. But unrelentingly my lonely mind leafed out to me its parable of woe. It coldly put out all the embers of altruistic happiness. And I replied, "Test failed".

2004-02-24T02:32:00.000-08:00

There have been many charming and intelligent women that have crossed paths with me and have really captured my imagination. I shall write about them someday at greater leisure.

Something in Me...

2004-02-24T01:46:00.000-08:00

When the scent of jasmine suffused the air
And innocence straggled into the realms of naiveté;
When a strain as earnest as melodic resonated within;
When at once in her I thought I saw
Narrations of my mother’s childhood a second time,
Re-chiselling themselves out as realities of the present;
When I thought her lips bore my name for three seconds,
I strained to hear the flutter in my heart,
But I knew…
Something inside me was lost.

When I saw her cuddled by blossoms of youth;
And that the squadrons of admirers doubled with the day
And when I saw she laughed her twinkling laugh
With them, like with me in our momentous hours
I tried to smile like in a normal day,
But I knew…
Something inside me seethed.

When my heart refused that my mind believed;
When I saw the furtive glances exchanged;
When their silence spoke louder than words;
When their warmth permeated the chill;
When I felt I was the third of the three;
When my heart froze that cold night
And I thought I should never want to see her again;
When I saw her softly clutch his hand,
I knew…
Something inside me had died.

When the tumultuous rustle in my ears whispered
That she was soon to a mother be;
When I languished in pangs of desire
And wished that her child be mine;
I threw it all a dispassionate askance,
But I knew…
Something inside me yearned.

When before mist and fresh mounds of damp earth covered,
I last glimpsed her cherubic countenance just as fresh;
When I saw quiet prayers wreathed upon her grave
From countless wistful thralls of her vibrancy;
When she went beneath feet half a dozen;
When I lifted her daughter of as many years
And the jasmines she wore smelt the same
As a score and a half years ago;
I strained to shed that inadvertent tear,
But I knew…
It was me that had died.

Fall from (G)Race

2004-02-19T02:40:00.000-08:00

Wednesday witnessed i2's Annual Bash of 2004. Reams of annual report were read, the achievers were lauded and solemn pledges of betterment were made. The event culminated with songs, dances, spirit and hortatory goodwill speeches. Heavily bedecked matronly women sang passionately, sometimes vying with each other for the solitary microphone. And zealous overweight dancers put up on display all their enthusiasm for dance. Aspiring shayars grabbed the stage to regale the inebriated audience, which laughed readily as soon as it sensed a joke coming.

When i2's bus service dropped us in the place, we sat down and waited patiently for the speeches to begin. And, once the speeches began, we slunk out slowly and proceeded to the Karting track. It was after some tactful bargaining that the person in charge agreed to give us a complimentary ticket if we purchased five. We licked our lips, pleased with a reduction of Rs. 25 per head; something that we thought our bargaining skills and our skills alone had been able to entail. And we fondly mused about the deal for around five minutes, standing around in a group. Bugs went and sat on the wall. I suddenly realised that my legs were whining in languor. The rogues, they just had to see their neighbouring pair lift themselves off the ground. They threw a convulsive fit. And they wouldn't stand it anymore. And so I couldn't stand anymore! Anyway, parapet walls were meant to be sat upon. Young boys usually sat gleefully on them while they did not stand on them to pluck mangoes from the nearby trees and while they were not driven away with a birch by the old bespectacled watchman. And when the short-sighted old man shooed them away, they usually went and ascended the wall at the other end of the house and placed themselves regally there and mused over their victory with pride. And so I perched myself on the wall.

We continued to chat excitedly about our karting prospects and the finer nuances that one had to bear in mind to be a good karter. And I cracked a rotten PJ. My PJ cracking abilities, and that PJ in particular, must have captured my imagination greatly; so much that I leaned back and laughed a pompous resounding laugh. And suddenly my seat found only thin air where the wall was supposed to have been. I guess the PJ, whatever it was, captured my imagination so much that I had leant a bit too much! And before I knew, the wall seemed to be climbing on me! And then I realised that I was the one plummeting into the ground behind me. I was a frog falling on its back. It actually felt good to be falling; it gave you a proper perspective of height. And fright! People in roller coasters were deprived of this thrill. After all what is the use of falling if you know you will not eventually fall! This interesting reverie was cut short be a thud like sound I thought I heard (Yes, I was never completely sure). I realised, after a couple of seconds, that I had reached the ground, and was for a moment thankful that the ground had finally come. It felt good to have your feet back on the ground! I then realised that ground actually felt so good because squashed under me were the bushes growing by the wall and my shoulder bag! I was cosily resting in my newfound shanty when I saw faces popping from over the wall and eyes popping out from the faces in absolute mortification! And I was stuck to the ground like a frog lying on its back! The whole situation seemed so comical to me then that I began to smirk. (Bugs later said that he thought it was an attack paralytic smirk!) Then a sudden realisation drove panic up my spine. My mobile phone was inside my shoulder bag that was beneath me, crushed under my weight! A mobile phone is the most important thing in a person's life. Without one, you cannot hope to contact your list of prospective girlfriends, you cannot contact your house-broker, and you cannot even send a "Where are you" SMS to your friend who is a couple of rows behind in the cinema hall! Why, even cadgers have it these days for speedier begging and better coordinated ambushing of an unexpecting docile plausible customer! I started to panic for it. At which point, I still cannot figure out, I did not know what was happening. A pair of sinewy arms grabbed me from behind and shoved my out of my haunt, and a daft girl lifted my legs up and above everything! I was now almost upside down! For a moment I was almost sure that I was going to be landed with a series of 'bumps'. 'Bumps' have been something that have petrified me. They are only meant to be generously given. Never to be taken. At that point, I threw a tantrum, shook away my legs, and slowly made the effort to get rid of my inertia! I slowly got up. Once people made sure I was not hurt, they made sure I was a fool! There were disgusting, indecent guffaws all over the place. This is one reason why I always fake injuries and create a sympathy wave. For, when one is not sympathised with one is always made the butt of all ridicule. That is the rule of the mob. I regretted that I had not been such a good actor for that instant and had given away the shocking truth that I was not injured at all! And to save myself the embarrassment, I also reluctantly laughed! And then, I checked my mobile in extreme apprehension for possible damages. The Godmother had sent me an SMS: Where are you? And I replied, "Amidst a few kindly bushes"! If there is one thing that I savour about the whole thing, it is the sadistic pleasure I had felt because Providence had made sure that the Godmother was denied the fortune of witnessing the incident! Poetic justice!

That incident left the others with indecent guffaws and grins, and left me with a stiff neck and a sore head. I have been feeling sick in the head for the past two days (the pun is not intended. But cynics are those who spot puns where they are least intended.) And I slept for fourteen hours to forget the stiff neck and to stiffen vivid images of their grinning faces.

Godmotherly Music!

2004-02-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

I had thought Practice School would be an intellectually stimulating and elevating experience. In fact, I am feeling quite pig-headed about myself for having believed so. Practice School cannot elevate a cow! I can count on my fingers the effective number of hours I have worked in the past month and a half! And now, i2 is supposed to be having what they call the i2 Bash. And it seems to have quite captured the imagination of the Vedas Godmother. And she is quite excited about her pivotal role in the Bash. She claims that she is going to sing in it! She disappears for quite a major part of the day and attributes her disappearance to intense practice and choreography! And, in the time that she does not disappear, she makes us all disappear! She has only to pick up traces of sounds vaguely sounding like music within her earshot. First, her face contorts and her head convulses into a hysterical rhythm. When the momentum is gathered she begins to intone what she claims to be a deep appreciation of the piece - a classical pastiche. And my ears begin to twitch, usually an anticipation of an ensuing catastrophe. But it surely cannot be, I tell my ears. I make a reinforced attempt and wait intently to capture the beauty of the music that will follow. And out of the many contortions of her face emerge series of piercing sounds very alien to her voice - some kind of alternating shrill shrieks and baritone bellows. By the time the pattern fulminates into a throaty crescendo my ear-drums have resigned themselves to their fate. And then, a sense of accomplishment writ large on her face, she beams at me. The beaming look gradually segues into one of philosophical retrospection, and she ruminates, "Most of the members cannot sing at all. Ugh! Quite an unbearable din they create. Luckily, for them I am there." My ear-drums permit me to muster a weak smile. Well, I do admit I am not much of a music cognoscente. In fact, most of the songs appear irreparably similar to my tympanum. And, I thought that day it was my ignorance that was causing my indifference to it. And I tried to follow the pitch more closely and appreciate the musical expatiation. It is high time I stopped being sceptical towards music, I thought. I still do not know what came upon me then, for me to so brazenly challenge my sensibilities! The gratuitous perseverance stayed to haunt me for the whole of the night! Haunting sounds woke me up thrice and left me amidst my gasps for air! Even a full One litre Pepsi bottle of water did not alleviate the situation much. My life will never be the same again. These days I am a madman, haunted by all kinds of non-existent eerie noises and pulling out all the hair on my head one by one. At this stage, I must mention that I am generally of a tolerant and peaceable disposition. Until circumstance absolutely circumvents me and confronts me baring its ugliest face, causing me to lose all traces of sanity. And these days, my head has quite been splitting with all kinds of unintelligible sounds from all directions; all figments of my imagination I'm sure, though they seem louder to my bombarded ear-drum when the Godmother is around! These days I am frequently reminiscing of the days when my room abutted Ratanji's redi; when his 40 W contraption blared out Hindi songs of the 50s, deliberately speeded up for a 'kick'; when I tossed and turned in bed every morning and thought I was in a moffusul lorry! As people say, your past never fails to come back to haunt you!

2004-02-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

Jerome K Jerome wrote:

How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled!How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed--the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed--though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows! You hadn't pluck enough to go in, but you hung about the corner and gazed at the outside. Oh, if the house had only caught fire--it was insured, so it wouldn't have mattered--and you could have rushed in and saved her at the risk of your life, and have been terribly burned and injured! Anything to serve her. Even in little things that was so sweet. How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would go without a holiday to lay a humble offering at her shrine, and felt more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How precious to you was everything that she had hallowed by her touch--her little glove, the ribbon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in her hair and whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to look at now.

And oh, how beautiful she was, how wondrous beautiful! It was as some angel entering the room, and all else became plain and earthly. She was too sacred to be touched. It seemed almost presumption to gaze at her. You would as soon have thought of kissing her as of singing comic songs in a cathedral. It was desecration enough to kneel and timidly raise the gracious little hand to your lips. Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!

2004-02-12T05:39:00.000-08:00

I loved the last post for it's childish innocence and profound triviality. The cognitive abandon in me effervesced out. The five year old child in me surfaced.

Wet-er?

2004-02-12T05:35:00.000-08:00

Is water wet? Any object (tangible or intangible) which contains molecules of water (superficially or otherwise) is deemed wet. Well, that I guess is almost a truism. Well, extrapolating it a little further, a molecule of water is surrounded by molecules of water! Will that mean water is wet?! Something that causes wetness is wet itself? Something to ponder about over a glass of water!

2004-02-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

I am on the verge of getting enrolled in a course in Spanish in Instituto Hispaniola! Am I thrilled! Adios!

Strangers

2004-02-09T01:37:00.000-08:00

When strangers knock on the doors of life.
A few minutes.
And then the visitors leave,
No longer strangers.
They cascade into your life like the tumultuous brook.
And leave, ending a sojourn when it began.
When has the brook stopped for his creator!
And the brook flows
Sucking your heart into its whirlpool
And then spitting it onto the wayside rocks.
Wringing your heart of all emotion.
But leaving etched all its vibrancy and tumult
And a few seconds that last many eons.
Unfinished pastiches.
Truncated Elysiums.
Strangers loved and estranged.
And you leave them as they leave you.
Like moving scenes you witness
Out of the window of a speeding train;
Drifting flotsams of wrecked hearts,
And they remain in your mind; unevanescent brilliant flashes.
The moments all frozen into a crystalline time form,
The warmth of emotion betwixt them flowing
Through the unmeltable ice
Percolating into your heart.
Depositing three teary drops of pearls
In a corner of your eye.
…Making you cry.

2004-02-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

I reckon that fiction is potentially most dangerous when it is not easily distinguishable from fact. Let me warn all my readers (if any!) that approximately half of my posts are fictitiously contrived and well interspersed between the factual narrations and it would be a grave blunder to fall prey to the irresistible paparazzi-like temptation to deliberately misconstrue them for facts and to try to evaluate me and my thoughts based on them.

The Mother of Vedas

2004-02-05T20:35:00.000-08:00

I have a really good time here pulling the leg of my PS (Practice School) mate, a bucolic South Indian girl from Nanganallur - gangling, a little nerdy and a little nice. She comes to office everyday from quite some distance. When I enquired about why she did not choose an accommodation nearer to the office, she whined in a wistful dole that her Chitti (Aunt) mothers her, much like her counterpart in the much talked about Tamil Mega serial! When she plangently whimpered that she was upset because she was unfairly (apparently) christened Mami, I had to restrain my urge to gift her my new coined appellation - Nanganallur Mangamma - for I have not been slapped by a girl in the past! She backs away in a crimson blush and rebukes me mockingly when I take up the name of a certain discipline-mate, but both of us know that she enjoys the banter. I really enjoy myself at her expense. Just the other day, one of our other PS mates had a problem with his computer and needed badly to get his issue resolved when our girl blurted out, "I will raise the issue for you." I am sure she butted in with the best of intentions, but I did not need anything more than this one line to dissect her to shreds that day! But frankly my double entendre was not much of a hit, for she was actually daft enough not to realise it till I repeated the line for about five times! She repealed in shamed bashfulness when she actually got the entendre in the innocuous sounding remark. But she took it well and laughed along in the end. I am pretty sure she thinks of me as a perverse misogynist after reading my blog, and I have not done much to taint that image either! And I have ended up admonishing myself for it! For, despite all the ridicule, she is one of the nicest and friendlier girls that I have met. Unpretentious and unassuming (I will get one more of her rebukes when I say, a little naive as well) , of a jovial and endearing disposition, and extremely straightforward; a perfect South-Indian antithesis of my South-Indian woman. And, not the most common of occurrences, my sub-conscious has begun to wish her truly well - The Vedas Godmother!

An exoneration of myself!

2004-02-04T02:02:00.000-08:00

At this juncture, I would like to clarify that I am not some kind of a psychopathic sadist or a misogynist. My writings end up as extremely vehement for all kinds of odd reasons. Majorly, I write during my moments of cognitive frenzies. Before my volitiional abilities and ratiocination can take over. Sometimes I grow vehement because I myself get sucked into the whirlpool of words that is forming. Rather, you could say my vehemence grows on me and in turn makes me fiercer! A vicious cycle! At times, I choose a piquant remark merely for my sardonic piece to evince a smirk from the reader. Or merely, I yield to languish in my inability to fetter my munificence towards verbosity and end up sounding inaptly grandiose. There are times when I drop in a tart sounding expletive to simply pander to my whim to be resoundingly bombastic. Or sometimes a stingingly acerbic remark merely to create an effect!

As a result, most of my writings, instead of truthfully reflecting my thoughts, end up mirroring my flippancy and my tendancy to give in to these moments of mental abstraction. In fact, the posts are few after which I have not execrated myself for having posted them! I adjure all the readers (if any at all) to continue to read my blog, and to skim through all my comments merely at face value and not to value all my reactions against my face!

When all of us are Schizophrenics!

2004-02-03T01:28:00.000-08:00

The last line of 'The Misconductor' post caught my eye today. There is nothing pejorative in admitting to the hypocrisy every man lives. Let me unequivocally state that there is this pressure, societal if not anything more, on every individual to conform to set stereotypes. The society does not take much time to pull out the straggling black sheep. Nobody will need to be told that the bigotry in the society, should I say the bigotry of the society, is something that every human seeks to be fettered to. At a sub-conscious level. Sometimes at a conscious level. It is more of a pre-emptive bid for the security that, say, a sheep finds in a flock. It is not very tough to build proof to the fact that everyone lives a hypocrisy. To varying degrees, I would further qualify.

The reason for people truly living a hypocrisy may be attributed to the fact that most times we do not speak what we think. We begin to subconsciously think and believe after we have spoken. In fact, I have developed this theory that speech sometimes, in fact most of the time, begins to influence thoughts. It is in fact most natural for one to get caught in one's own eloquence and start exhibiting topical convictions that never existed before. Why, I have conceded earlier in my blog that the vehemence in my writings was starting to percolate within me. In fact, man's attempt to stay behind a politically correct facade is an attempt to harbour only parliamentary thoughts so that he truly begins to refrain from sexist thoughts or language. Extrapolating this thread of thought a little further, it is not difficult to see that that the so called 'confidence within', or the 'believe-in-yourself' gimmicks are efforts to pretentiously think repeatedly that you are the best when your cerebrum knows quite well that you may never be. But still the repeated thinking helps you actually believe for the split-second of your ordeal that you are truly the best and you end up transcending yourself. In fact, I think and believe that this may be a very effective way to baffle lie detectors. A lie detector only tracks your pulse and/or nerve impulses and by effectively deluding yourself to believe whatever you say, you would have quite fooled the lie detector!

Now you realise why True Lies are the best of them all!

2004-02-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

I am right now working on a poem titled 'Revenge'! I hope it comes out with all the vengeance!

2004-01-29T04:22:00.000-08:00

I thought I will post a very amusing incident that occurred last evening. But right now, without a photograph to affix on my bank account opening form, I am not amused. The anecdote will have to wait.

2004-01-28T05:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote my previous post because I came to know that yet another of my maudlin friends received this response from a girl whom he loved earnestly and, we all thought, was loved by as well! When yet another Don Juan became a Don Quixote!