Starting A Revolution - A day's Work

I just realized that my friend has gathered more than a thousand supporters for his cause within the day over his facebook page and what’s more, someone actually has put him in touch with a really influential person in the field that he is venturing out. Who knows, he might actually realize his dream before he has a chance to dream it. Welcome to the world of starting a revolution in a day’s work.

In an age where communication has become more a domain of the written than the spoken word, the age old picture of a leader over a microphone motivating his troops has all but remained as the profile picture of the movement you are gathering support for. Today it happens to be the a few strokes of the keyboard, a click of the mouse and viola! A chain reaction that is only limited by the number of people that you know and are answering your call at any waking hour which we know is anytime today, tomorrow or yesterday!

While this is great news for people with a fire in their belly and that insatiable urge to change the world while climbing Mt Kilimanjaro on a single liter of oxygen carrying an injured dog on one shoulder and realizing the cure to cancer on the way to the base camp, my ilk of the round belly and the portly countenance is greatly perturbed. These specimen of the human world whom I call brethren have now had the last excuse for not giving their posteriors the regular exercise much like the rest of the contacts on their facebook profiles taken from. This entire initiative of being able to reach thousands at the click of a button no longer lets us hide behind the excuse of a sore throat for not being able to really voice our opinion and take a stand for what we really believe in. Well I am assuming that carpal syndrome is really a lame excuse to replace the sore throat of course!

I would have liked nothing better than to be allowed to spend my days in peace knowing that the worries of the world were in better hands and voices with loudspeakers but damn this phenomenon of social networking, I have to look and act interested at the beck and call of all my those who I so happily (and absent mindedly in hind sight) accepted as my friends over a single request on orkut, facebook, etc. if I had had any way of knowing the amount of responsibility that I was inviting by the very act of opening an account on facebook, with God as my witness I assure you, my faithful reader, this god fearing soul would have cut off his typing fingers before they chose an available user name.

But the one thing that might be a silver lining in all this is the fact that the ubiquitous-ness of campaigns on the net seeking support has allowed the signee to actually hide behind one to explain inactivity regarding the other while it has given a psychological comfort to the petitioner who opens his account and takes heart in the ticking counter of signers to his efforts. In a true sense of the word, this happens to be a win-win relationship.

Which then brings me to the point of this entire rambling – people are now voicing their opinions more freely and frequently than ever before and expecting a lot of the audience to react to the same. However, just like moi, how many sign on only to be able to life their thumbs and acknowledge the next time they see the petitioner that they are behind them….BEHIND!! I wonder what the active rate of interest is really. Social networking may be a fantastic phenomenon, but what part of it is actually active and what part of it is just a response to a customary roll call?

Well whatever it may be, I am sure people will try even more to be more like my friend in the first paragraph than just rely on mere flesh mounds like me to take their endeavours to the next level and realize their passions. I am sure there will be someday, something moving enough for even the likes of me to sit up and take notice but until then, my dear facebook contact, count me standing in a queue behind you. My click confirms my presence and my friendship. Do not ask any further of me for I fear I may start a revolution of my own against this establishment of revolutions. Viva la revolucion!

Indian Idol

The past few days have seen a host of Indians having more than their fare share of stardom as they are quite ceremoniously crowned an Indian Idol on some channel or the other. So it was time I decided to define for myself what exactly an idol was. As far as my modest education would permit, I found myself coming back to the same conclusion that an idol was someone that I was supposed to emulate in some form or the other. With so many people waiting to be emulated, I feared that at the end of the day, I may not have progressed in any direction other than schizophrenia if I decided to accept all of them worthy of emulation. I was getting quite disturbed trying to figure out the criteria for catapulting someone to idol status when I had this idea – a true Indian Idol would be the one who could talk on a one on one with Prabhu Chawla and still smile at the end of the interview. Here are the ones who made the list

A B
Not the beginning of the English alphabet (though I bet if they waited till the time this person made his appearance, the paradigms would have been much different as I would beg to explain a little later). Of course they stand for Amitabh Bachhan (I have a good mind to add one more to the overflowing libel folder of Microsoft for not recognizing the big B’s name as part of the standard dictionary but that can wait). Any one whose body had been meeting the basal metabolism rates for the past few days as the great man’s intestines decided to play a trick on him will realize what I am talking about here. In this age which has been dubbed as one of the most selfish and self centered, it was only a testament to the tremendous influence of this person as the entire nation glued in to their TV screens to hear news of their favorite actor as the doctors tried their best to put those pesky jejunums and duodenums on track. I am generally quite a skeptical individual and I have this rather presumptuous gesture of dismissing all forms of hero worship with a Wodehouse-esque “Ha” but something made me sit up and take notice this time as he fought a bitter battle against those dastardly innards of his. Though I stopped quite a few feet short of setting up a shrine and praying for his well being, I will confess to have wished quite a few times for him to rise once again and wave his Subhash Nagre waive from his balcony for the millions of junta waiting to get a glimpse of their IDOL.
Actor par excellence, a man of few but worthy words, anchor extraordinaire, a picture of suavity and sobriety, a representative of the flamboyance of aristocracy as well as the familiarity of the masses – there will hardly be an Inditan who hasn’t spent hours glued to whatever form of screen devouring his Bairon-Bhairon-English-comedy, anti-gravity-villain-gut-crushing kicks, make-you-cry-alongside emotions. He has enthralled generations of this country with his mere presence. A person whose fan base is larger than the voter base of the country is someone who is truly an Indian Idol.
If an idol is all about setting an example in whatever he does, then this person truly personifies all that and more. Someone who can mean so much to a man on the road that he will leave his daily chores and pray to God so that he may rise above all troubles has to be one who is worthy of emulation. Actor of the Millennium in a poll by the BBC, he beat out heavy weights of the likes of Charlie Chaplin et al and it is once again a testament to his popularity that a country like ours where it is a foregone conclusion that online surveys are beyond the reach of the majority of the people got off its butt and put him on top (something that even the seductive gestures of the Miss India world failed to do). The other day, a group of us were sitting around the lunch table and discussing about this scientific community survey in some institute where Newton scored above Einstein as a scientist. The discussion was getting quite heated when someone quipped “Unfortunately it wasn’t India otherwise Amitabh would have won hands down”.

L M
If Amitabh Bachhan would have stood for A B, then the English alphabet would surely have done very well to put up L and M for Lata Mangeshkar or as the people more affectionately put it Lata Tai. Accolades have faded in their glory in trying to sing praises of this female whose mellifluous melodies have filled decades of India with joy, fulfillment, sorrow and hope. If there is any physical manifestation of the word haunt in this physical world, then it has to be the sound of her songs. The entire line of her being an institution in herself seems so clichéd that I cringed before typing it but such is the magnitude of her presence that couldn’t do without it. Entire generations have grown up and passed away swinging in the melodies that she has sung for them. It is a testament to her long standing achievements that my mother tells of her favorite Lata Mangeshkar records she won in a contest on Binaca Geet mala at the same time I plug into my MP3 player listening to Veer Zaara (the only good thing in the film. Couldn’t they just have released the album and spared us the pain of that India Pak slug fest?) It is not for nothing that she holds the world record for having sung the most number of songs in the most number of languages in the world. Coming from a history of 23 years which consists of many hard-to-forget memories of moments on the quiz stage trying to figure out which singer was it who would fetch me those 5 points, hers is the one voice that no quiz master other than probably Derek or a certain Princeton pass out cares to put in a quiz purely for the reasons that no person who cannot recognize her voice deserves to actually call himself as part of a sub species of the species named so very pathetically as HOMO sapien sapien. And those two would also have their reasons for doing so. While the former was most probably looking for avenues of distributing t shirts to the audience (because that of course is what a quiz is meant for isn’t it?), the latter was definitely looking for avenues of going down in history as the only person stupid enough to proclaim Lata Mangeshkar’s voice as Alka Yagnik with a throat infection in broad nightlight at some Technical College quizfest to bleary eyed numb minded quizzically bedazzled dudes who couldn’t care less if he said that the song was actually sung in Swahili and was meant as a tribute to Idi Amin.
Someone who can make the likes of Karan Thapar wait for a response in an interview before launching the next question has to be worthy of the title of Indian Idol. It is truly extraordinary for someone to have the audacity to refuse further awards and make it look humility. Jawahar Lal Nehru is reported to have cried at her rendition of “Ai mere Watan ke logon” and let me tell you that though I am no JL Nehru, the feelings on hearing that evergreen melody about the soldiers of India brings feelings and emotions of patriotism like few other. This diminutive looking lady stands tallest among the various whose voices have graced the playback scene in Indian music and it is not a surprise that she would always and forever figure in the list of Indian Idols.


S T
Some could argue that I was trying to pull off a marketing gimmick by this play on consecutive lettering thing but believe me, this is some sort of a weird coincidence. Continuing in the traditions of greatness defined in this passage, comes my last Indian idol – Sachin Tendulkar. 16 years ago, a 16 year old walked onto the field against Pakistan and the cricket field has never been the same again at least not for India. That young boy is today’s cricket superstar and demi God - Sachin. In a country crazy for this game, it is quite easy to make fans and it is even easier to lose them. But he has been the one person who has seen his following grow even when the chips have been down. There have been so many instances when cricketers once feted for their achievements have found themselves on the wrong side of the boundary rope and the crowd baying for their blood but Sachin has been one of the very few for whom the crowd has not only applauded wildly when the bats have been raised in the elation of a hundred but also prayed in the second innings when the first has yielded a naught. The only one close enough to actually have any passing shot at a century of centuries in the entire world, this short statured man has won the hearts of people of a country where love is scarce and hate sells dime a dozen in your nearest flea market. Sachin has truly been an Indian idol in the manner that he has carried himself both on and off the field. While his bat has done all the talking that needs to be done, his mouth has scarcely let off anything other than those boyish high pitched cries of elation. Unlike his batting, flamboyance has scarcely been a part of his personality and though loose shots have been few and far between from his bat, loose comments have never darkened his doorstep. Be it the worsest of situations, this is one guy who has always retained his dignity and come out unscathed and that is what makes him a true Indian Idol. If simplicity were to be the forte of someone, then that someone would have to be called Sachin Tendulkar. Even in today’s world of Channel 7 where you wonder if your next comment could become Shiv Sena’s electoral campaign 2 days from now and where dirty linen of the stars has been stolen from the laundry and displayed in public, this is one person who has given the country a reason to be proud that he is a son of this soil.

Meow

They say that the CAT is out of the bag. Which leads me to the inference in true deductive logic style as expressed in the Data Interpretation section that the bag is now the safest place to be in order to escape its wrath. It has overrun everything that I see and hear about. I open the newspaper and there on the front page are two bamboozled looking guys contemplating over a sheet of paper as if they were chalking out the latest strategy to storm Osama’s cave and capture him alive. Turning to page two or three or four… is no respite either as the darned institutes have overrun them as well with their 2 pennies worth on the subject. Wishes abound from all quarters to the candidates who have filled up the form for the paper and set this great ball in motion which has finally come to bear on this morning’s newspaper ruining my morning cup of coffee. So I decided to host my own take on the matter a la Saurabh Dey SimCAT. Rules for the examination are as follows:
There is no attempt absolutely towards sanity
The following represents the pent up emotions of a disgruntled individual. No channel dare subscribe to them either in part or in whole. If any of them do, help them god.
Any resemblance to any question paper anywhere means that you are watching Channel V and MTV too much and spending a fortune on SMSs trying to answer their questions in an attempt to win a three wheeler scooter for your beloved.
Every question however has at most one correct alternative (if at all).
Number of questions is as of yet nebulous. Depends entirely on my mood and occupation with other pre occupations. Lets see as we progress

And yes almost forgot – if any of you raised a hand at the end of the instructions to ask about negative marking, please stop right now. I fear reading the following will increase your shrink bills and I don’t want your pocket to blame my poor blog for this.

Q1. Select the correct alternative from the following
you gave CAT
you took CAT
you delivered CAT
I never said that every question was going to have 4 alternatives did I?

Q2. What is the phenomenon called CAT?
a religious congregation organized by the national integration front as a show of secular strength of the country
a well organized country wide traffic jam at pre determined locations
a fashion parade at least in cities like Delhi
why does your fickle mind always search for the fourth option? I am not in the business of delivering this part of the question again and again




Q3. Who benefits from CAT
coaching centers that are now finding their founders on hot chairs in talk shows across channels
24 hour news channels that have thankfully found something to cover their schedules now that Osama and his kin have decided to take a week long break
Newspapers that have something besides the glitterati to fill their pages with.
Once again your eyes are on this part of the question. Shoo!!

Q4. What are the aftereffects of giving CAT (attempt this question only if you have answered question numbered 1.)
intense drowsiness
a mind that cannot stop trying to find the remainder after dividing the 8 digit number with another 6 digit number correct to the fifth decimal place
hands that cannot stop filling up circles at the very touch of a pencil
eyes that are searching for the fourth alternative while filling up their father’s name.

That has more than taxed my already dim wits to the end of their tether and therefore I call it a day in terms of the paper. No doubt you would like to know the answers to the above and so they are presented purely for entertainment purposes below:

A1. As the answer seems to be unobvious at first perusal, lets adopt that famous approach that has stood so many in good stead through all the multiple choice papers till date – deductive reasoning.
Option 1 - states that you gave CAT. Now unless you think that CAT is a gift item that can be gift wrapped at the nearest curio shop, I cannot fathom you could give it. Another possibility for this to happen could be that the CAT is indeed of the Tom variety and that you gave it off for some reason or the other. Still no definitive outcome to the veracity of this question. So lets park our thoughts on that for the moment and move along to find a better one. In case nothing else fits, we know where to come back
Option 2 - states that you took CAT. Now in case the first option is correct, and we are agreed that the basic physical law of conservation of mass takes precedence over all other matters, this option has to be correct. Did not understand that last part? Well here’s the explanation – if someone gave CAT, then there has to be someone who took it!! Much like those questions about shaking hands at a party (as if all that anyone attending a party ever does is shake hands with every other person and then stands to contemplate how many hands did he shake so that he can go and earn a penny for every hand). But but but !!! there is the all important instruction that says that there can be at most one correct alternative and in that case both these options are ruled out.
Option 3 - states that you delivered CAT. Now according the evolutionary rules and laws, this option restricts itself to the female population of the living world and the male sea horses. Even among this restricted solution domain for the answer, further cognizance is required of the fact that only the feline females qualify and if there is any exception, then they belong inside an X-Women movie or a bio lab. Sorry not correct this one as well
Option 4 – If you are still in the business of looking for this part of the question, no comments.
A2. You might think that the answer to the problem lies right in front of you in developing an addendum to the problem in terms of developing the fifth option as none of the above and mark it but let me present my case first.
Option 1 – If you have seen the people waiting to enter the examination centre, then you know that I have hit the nail on the head. The guy in front of the third grill of the gate from the right just took out the photograph of his family deity when asked to produce his I card while the girl on the third seat from the front looked heaven ward instead of the question paper when the invigilator dispensed with her duties. And I will definitely swear by the observation that all religions were represented in equal measure by all those gathered at the location. It has also been debated that some guys were garnering unfair advantage by two timing gods as they prayed cross-religion just in case the primary pantheon had decided to go on a picnic at the opportune moment.
Option 2 – If you are one of the people who had to drive to the place of examination then you are going to tick this one without even looking anywhere else. The entire set up reeks of a well organized crime mafia. This is a well orchestrated plan by the petroleum companies that want your car to guzzle more fuel as you wait for the light to turn green and then give up on the last hope of reaching anywhere when everyone else decides that the traffic light was just a fancy idea that someone at the municipal council put forward so that his cousin running the traffic light manufacturing business could get some work. Anyway hold that pencil till you hear the other arguments as well.
Option 3 – Guys in chest hugging t shirts and the latest designer jeans and females dressed to make CAT the quintessential fashion get together on that fateful Sunday morning – tell me if you need anything else to make a fashion statement. The remaining honors are of course served by the snazzy wheels that ferry the divas to the performing arena (read exam center). If you were ugly dressed gate crasher at this high society do, tick this one.
Option 4 – Duh!!!

Going quite well with the answering procedure aren’t you????

A3 – Beneficiaries as if CAT were an exhibition cricket match. But let’s dispense with our duty of presenting the cases in favor of the options.
Option 1 – Suddenly the CEOs of the coaching centers are finding themselves as hot properties and talk shows are lapping them up by the hour. Change the channel and you find another founder principal of another tuition center extolling the virtues of the paper and the ingenuity of their profession in operating a mass assembly line of Management students. The thing that really gets my nerves at their extreme end is the tone with which these management gurus counsel the distraught students that use the helpline being run by the channels. The amount of voice modulation that one person out on show really made me think whether he would have made a better career option out of being a radio DJ or a politician’s lip sync-ing background aide.
Option 2 – If the above is true then along with the tuition center executives, then the talk show hosts hosting them are also finding themselves enjoying a particular enjoyable time under the spotlights. Suddenly they are having a rather nice experience playing agony aunts to the millions of agonized nephews and nieces all across the country and repeating everything that their esteemed guests are saying as if the people that are watching their show have minds that can only process information that has been relayed twice! But they are getting their sponsorship money aren’t they? And that makes them pretty good candidates for the position of the correct answer.
Option 3 – If options 1 and 2 have caught your imagination, then this option is bound to be correct through all forms of induction, mathematical or otherwise. No need for any further explanations, I hope.
Option 4 – (Duh!)^2

A4 – This one has a rider already inside the question so the applicability is of course to only those who have once in their lifetime come across the phenomena of CAT (the type that is not listed inside the Oxford English dictionary)
Option 1 – I confess to having lost my senses sometime between the 35th and 36th minute as the section on verbal drew to a close according to the time management routine that I had set up for myself and therefore, I at least am all for this option. Also contributing to this part of the answer are the fact that the people in charge of doling out the admission cards make sure that the exam centre is so far away from your home that you are already asleep by the time you reach that place. So yeah at least for me this is a correct option but as already evidenced, wait.
Option 2 – I cannot for the life of me understand why they insist on giving preference to non recurring non terminating unreal specimen of the number line. They could have tested the same mental faculties of the people by asking them to divide 4 by 5 but they insisted on adding a further 3 distinct non consecutive digits to the numerator and 5 of the same to the denominator and just so that there fun was not hampered in any manner, they decided to chuckle at the poor examinee when he read the question only to find out that all the digits except the 4 and 5 already mentioned had been kept secret from him. Imagine the chagrin, when someone confronts the question’s remaining part thus – “the product of the digits of the numerator is a number that is twice the square root of the number of cows that the Delhi Municipal Corporation has not dared to remove from the roads till date and that of the denominator is 2 more than the numerator when it was wrongly copied by someone who was looking at the paper upside down. Find the probability that the quotient happens to lie somewhere in the brain of the questioner” (now damned you are if you don’t know the number of cows that find the Delhi roads so amenable to their otherwise sensitive hooves)
Option 3 – At least one hangover that this examination leaves behind is the itching to fill up circles at every possible instant. I still remember the time when some days after attempting the paper all I could do was impatiently scan the papers for Os just so that I could fill them up and satisfy my mind that the day’s quota of questions had been attempted. Trouble began only when I needed to analyze the choices.
Option 4 – Ummmm… haven’t we had a discussion before on this??
That more or less concludes my commentary on this SimCAT. Somehow I have a feeling that the explanations were rather inconclusive and left the reader searching for my address in order to inflict some physical harm. Guess by now you have reached the feelings that I had as I reached for the paper this morning. What can I say other than “wish you the best of luck”.

Bawda Boys

Kolhapur’s answer to the Spice Girls of the world. The sign post outside this particular hair cutting saloon would in the strictest traditions of phonetic transpositions from Marathi to English beg you to consider the insides of the shack as “ B-A-V-D-A B-O-Y-I-J” – the best salon in the entire good god’s creation to get a haircut (strictly for men). That was the first sight that greeted me as I sojourned into the Maratha heartland on a quick recon mission to know more about the place that I would be calling home for at least the near future. Kolhapur comes across as quite the quaint little town that you would think of it to be. It comes replete with its set of “you-call-them-roads?” roads, obnoxious spelling neon signage, tremendously ritualistic Mahalakshmi temples, surprisingly board-able cheap hotels, shacks which pass themselves off as supermarkets (of course they still insist on spelling it as supar-markit) and last but not the least scores of shops selling those marquee Kolhapuri chappals. Nothing out of the ordinary at least to someone who has spent a good part of the entire of last year in the by-lanes that make up the rural map of the country but still there’s something in the air that makes this place stand out among all the places that I have been to yet.
The first reason for Kolhapur to be in the special mantle would of course have to be that for the first time in more than one and a half year, I have been stationed at a place long enough to unpack and lay my toiletries on the shelf. The company finally decided that enough was actually enough and it was time that the menace called me was fixed to spot so as to localize and try to minimize the disastrous consequences of my bare minimum presence. So I found myself taking up the post of a design engineer at the machine building unit of the company which they could have located anywhere in the world actually but then thought of the most non descript locale to make people rot and thus this unit was born. The town boasts of an airport which has the silliest reason for existence till date – a single flight! Yes that too an Air Deccan (aptly renamed Air Dhakkan by the enterprising souls of the place) which decides to land or not purely on the whims of the pilot or the stewardess or any other passenger! Lore has it that they actually have a raffle on board (you know Deccan. They are too “no-frills” to organize a lottery) to pick up the passenger who gets to decide whether they want to stop over at the place or not. Once you are over the initial shock of the airport, the national highway number 4 – part of the Golden Quadrilateral (the signpost tells you in decaying letters – much like Vajpayee’s knee) greets you and you realize that this has to be the birthplace for all traffic rules in the world. You know how they tell you that the scientific method to solve the problem begins by defining the problem first? Well then this highway happens to be the very definition of traffic chaos. They have a notional divide for the left and right side of the road but someone forgot to mention to the drivers here that this separation was not meant to make 2 roads out of one. I guess they took the entire ideal of buy one get one free a little too far.
The highway gives way to the town road and every bone in your body is tested for fatigue failure in a stretch of about 2 kms. Guess where the army got the entire idea of obstacle courses from? If you survive this shock and your heart is still somewhere within the rib cage, then “Welcome to the City of Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj”. Thankfully they only used the highway to hell as an entrance to the city and decided that the souls brave enough to have weathered the road deserved better treatment once inside the city limits. So they paved the roads. God bless the local authorities. As you enter the place, it’s like any other town that I have seen till date. Dhabas lining the road waiting for the truck drivers to have their breakfast greet you with their “in-your-face” banners, petrol pumps doing brisk business and of course long abandoned police posts. The scenery that greets you inside the confines of the town are reminiscent of any town that was forgotten when they decided to follow the Gregorian calendar and thrust upon its existence the fact that the rest of the world is now in the 21st century. Given a fruitful representation in the Gregorian council, I am sure the Chatrapatis of the place would have bargained for a derailment of the process of setting the clock of human progress ticking by a good couple of centuries. But here I am one of the most optimistic of the gods few good men and I always look at the bright side of things. So let’s forgive and forget and move on shall we?
Next on the list has to be dwelling for the initial few days and I am pleasantly surprised (an emotion that has all the more significance for me because of the amazing rarity with which it decides to manifest itself in my life) to find hotels that are not only cheap but eminently board-able. The rooms are airy and best of all, the hotel staff has not yet come to realize the ideal of all men being created equal the effect of which is that you are treated nothing less than a god or a semi/ demi version of above or in my case a pay per use customer (who in most cases takes prominence over the previous two). As remarked earlier in some post or the other the cellular revolution seems to have caught up well with the junta here too and they are well on their way to a revolution because of the same. I am sure that your eyebrows have done their arching exercise at the mention of Kolhapur and couture in the same sentence but let me elaborate. I am convinced by the very rate at which Kolhapuris are answering their mobile phones that they are well on their way to designing a dhoti with a pocket for the same and if that is not a fashion revolution of the highest order then I don’t know what is.
While I am still considering the ins and outs of Hicksville, I am surprised to note a Mercedes Benz zip by. I tap my head on one side and dismiss this as a hangover of Indonesia where they were plying as lowly taxis. A few steps more and I am distinctly made aware that a Prado wants me to scoot my heavy frame off the road so that it can cross over. No doubt mere hallucinations these. Another few steps and I dare not say those words for I am afraid that I might have to search for a Marathi shrink before anything else in this place. Is it a streak of light, is it a phantom menace? No it’s a goddamn DC redesigned Mercedes S Class in all its splendor jostling for space on the road with a cow who has decided that the particular piece of tar it is presently standing on contrasts with its complexion quite nicely and that this is where it shall attain nirvana. So hell to all the humans and redesigned Benz’s can go jump into the lake. The riddle gets solved next morning when I learn that the region happens to be extremely prosperous on account of the cash crop farming especially sugar cane and so it is that Prados and Benzs are quite the short change for these fellows and had the road authorities been kind enough to build ones that had a lifetime more than a 16 day insect, I am sure all the hullabaloo over Tendulkar’s Ferrari would have gone quite unnoticed.
Slowly the image that emerges from the dust of the roadside is not very rustic if I may put it that way. The string of pleasant surprises pleasantly enough continued through the rest of the sojourn as I discovered a Smokin’ Joe’s Pizza outlet and a Café Coffee Day inside the municipal limits of the city (and for someone who goes by the name of Saurabh Dey, the discovery is as epochal as Newton discovering gravity or Archimedes’ Eureka moment albeit with clothes). So it is that the last few days have been not at all bad even though I am in constant fear of losing the touch with Bengali (my mother tongue) what with all the ikdun and tikdun Marathi that I am constantly having to mouth for daily subsistence. Another thing causing a tremendous amount of concern is the red as oxygenated blood mixed with iron oxide for added effect Kolhapuri cuisine especially the dum biryanis that these fellowa dish out with such fanfare. For someone who is not accustomed to these parts, my insides have on their own learnt that red means danger. (take that you biologists – claiming that cell differentiation took away the power of rationalization from all somatic cells of the body other than the brain. Guess their insides never shook hands with Kolhapuri dum birayani.)
The coming days promise to unravel a lot more about the place and am looking forward to reveling in the friendly winter sun of the place. And of course there is the unending excitement of being an esteemed customer of Bawda Boys isn’t there?

They Burnt My Home

I come back daily from work to news of bomb blasts and terrorist attacks in the Kashmir valley and it all just melts into the background of the Channel V’s and the MTV’s. They are now as much part of the daily news as the weather update and my mind doesn’t even give it a second glance. Today there was something different as I reached back home from work. As I turned the TV to the news channel, the reporter was bailing that Delhi was burning. My city, my home, saddi Delhi was reeling under the terrible carnage of serial bomb blasts. To find out that one of the sites directly affected was hardly a kilometer from where my house is was the biggest shock in my life. I always was aware of the danger of the terrorists ripping apart the place but somehow, it never occurred to me that the placid and congenial surroundings where I grew up, spent my evenings playing on the roads, took those long evening walks with my mother talking about everything from the latest math test scores to the recent love affair rocking the cousins down the street would become the graveyard of today. Those tense moments as I dialed the number of my house were probably the longest of my life and the news that my family was safe was the biggest relief that I have felt in the recent past that I can recall.
As my mother laughed on the other end and allayed my fears, my nerves calmed down and my mind wandered to the rest of the people who have been affected by the horrendous act of barbarism. It set me thinking about how the son who has lost his mother to this horrendous crime would be feeling. And I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of the father who had to pull the lifeless body of his child out from the mangled debris which served as reminders to the dance of destruction that played itself out in the evening. Scenes of the brother who had lost a sibling, a husband who had lost his wife passed one after the other on the TV screen and as I watched the wailing people line the hospitals, my eyes were filled with tears for this travesty of today’s reality.
The festival of lights turned killer today. Diwali brought death and destruction in its wake. Hundreds of unsuspecting people stepped out to the markets to shop on the festive occasion. Little did they know that the Diwali dhamaka posters on the windows of the shops were grim soothsayers of the oncoming doom. And I ask you where is the sanity of all this? We call ourselves the social animals. We call ourselves civilized human beings. And we dismiss the notion of cannibalism as a grim reminder of a so called uncivilized past. I tell you we might have progressed leaps and bounds in terms of "Science and Technology" but at the end of the day we are no more civilized than the most cannibalistic of creatures that end up eating their own offspring. Mind you even the most unsocial of creatures suckle their young till the time they are ready to fend on their own. And here we are the most well behaved of the lot that God sent down to populate this Eden killing our own brothers, butchering our own children, raping and pillaging through all that we created with our own hands. I ask those who proudly lay claim to having undertaken this inhuman cruelty in the name of some or the other equally insane motivation – how do they sleep at night knowing that the cause that they so proudly claim to endorse just gave birth to another that proves how wrong their fight is? Someone is fighting for a piece of land, someone wants revenge for how his people have been treated, a third wants a certain nameplate at the entrance to his home and there are ones who are pure mercenaries ready to do some hoodlum’s bidding to fill their own coffers. And so continues this never ending dance of hatred and destruction. In this insane march towards God knows what, scores fall by the wayside who never even got the chance to understand what it was that they laid down their happiness for?
What was the crime of the small girl who lost her legs before life slowly ebbed out of her mangled body in the arms of her father? What injustice did the mother commit in trying to get her son the ice cream he so wanted? Was the mistake of the wife who went to the market to buy a gift for her husband so costly that she had to give her life for it? I dare those barbarians who are celebrating this tragedy in their lairs to justify their cause in the light of something I don’t even have the words to describe- my vocabulary just doesn’t have the expression to depict this… this tremendous loss.
I am not saying that the people who did this started out just like this. I would still like to believe that inherently man is a good being and that only circumstances cause him to commit indecency. There must have been a just cause for causing heartburn originally for these people to have turned such barbarians. But someone somewhere has to start forgiving and someone somewhere else has to start acknowledging that gross injustices have been committed in the past and start asking for forgiveness. Only then can this vicious circle of hate be pacified. Otherwise, there is no reason whatsoever that in this world where love blossoms on the internet and people communicate across language, religion and caste barriers as freely as if sitting side by side in a hotel lounge for distances to creep in. There is no validity to the existence of notions of genocide when campaigns for saving people in the throes of crippling diseases find donors and sponsors from across latitudes and longitudes. I am not willing to submit to the fact that the only way to end this reign of terror is to foster more violence. Violence begets violence, terror begets terror and one Bush begets another Osama. Are the feelings of hate and destruction so enmeshed that even the innocent eyes of an infant cannot melt them away? Or are the feelings of harmony and compassion so fickle that the slightest of snubs can reduce them to mere figments of speech on the Aastha and God channels? They say God is all forgiving. I ask him to start punishing. If Brahma wants to see his creation not disintegrate into squabbling rats, Kali has to take centre stage. Its high time for Kalki to comes riding and restore sanity. If there is any truth to Vishnu’s tenth avatar, let him come now. If there is any more delay, I fear there may not be anything left to defend.
Today people laugh at the Gandhian philosophy of non violence to the extent that its formal usage is now within inverted quote marks in a sentence. The word only finds mention in order to garner votes in the name of the father of the nation or in the nostalgic reminisces of someone’s great old grandfather who fought by the great man’s side and won us our independence. For all other purposes, the natural reaction to terrorism is another act of violence. And then all is justified in the singular mission statement which says "One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter". So at the end of the day, peace and harmony for man reduces to a zero sum problem where for one to gain, the other has to lose. When will this achieve its saddle point? When will people realize that enough is enough? When will one man’s terrorist acknowledge his victim as his own brother and lay down his arms in respect of humanity? Not till the time we are still divided over political boundaries of control. Not till the time we are concerned about increasing gross Domestic produce at the expense of another nation. Not till the time socialism, communism, capitalism, democracy, autocracy, monarchy, oligarchy and all such ideals of "civil societies" acknowledge the root of human existence as co-dependence. Only then will the zero sum game truly reach its optimal solution and the imbalance of the world start to orient itself towards a static state of social entropy. When the entire world stands as one and counts itself as successors of a single species will brotherhood become a reality. If it takes aliens from outer space to come raining laser beams to unite us then be it. At least then we can say that my brother was killed in defense of another. If it needs a cataclysm on the global scale to embed the notion of commonality among humans, then I invite the ten plagues of Egypt to over run the entire earth. At least then all temples, mosques and churches will rise in unison to pray to God and save humankind and not India or Pakistan or America. If for Lashkar-E-Toiba to fight alongside the Indian Army it requires atomic weapon toting Martians, I myself invite this calamity. At least tomorrow’s newspaper will not curse Kashmir for today’s loss.

Connecting People

I have spent the last one year wandering around in the heartlands of hitherto unheard of territories to this mind of mine. Thanks to my employer’s policy of setting up offices with a mission "To boldly go where no sheep has ever gone before", I have witnessed life at quarters I never thought possible while I was rotting away in the lap of luxury in my early years in the National Capital. But saying that living in these places has cut me off from civilization would be farthest from the truth. In fact in these past few days, thanks to the daily updates at 8:30 p.m on the Ma News Channel, I now know more about the curious human specimen that call themselves my relatives – bloody or non bloody.
My first three and a half months in the employment of the company were spent in the service of manufacturing soaps and detergents in a non-descript place called Silvassa. I was acquainted with this place earlier on in my life only because as a kid with too much enthu to go quizzing, I had spent hours learning the capitals of various states and union territories. Though various "anchals", "khands" and "garhs" have made sure that the entire attempt is a wasted endeavor in today’s context, it however gave me a brief idea that there was a place by this name existing on the western coast of India. Trepidation happens to be one of my most constant companions at all points in life and this was no exception. The only difference this time was that it was accompanied by jitters about a job, exasperation about life alone and since the entire posse of morbidity, turbidity and all things conveying a certain sense of "lost-at-sea" were thoroughly jobless, they decided to join in for good measure. So it was with quite a hapless feel to my existence that I entered this place and took up my position among the various plodding and packing machinery churning out washing bars by the millions. Even though the place was sleepy hollow in real life, thanks to the imperialistic ambitions of the Ambanis, Mittals and their tower erecting brethren, I was quite confident of getting the all important SIM card. What was a point for concern was the signal strength in the remote area. For a person who has experienced Banaras mobile connectivity in the initial days of the cellular revolution in the country, I was painfully aware of the twitch-and-you-lose-it signals. I still remember my consternation upon being told that the signal strength was weak because my mobile phone antenna was under the sunshade! But anyway, those were the days when the teen aged Delhi school goers were celebrating Valentine’s Days without the need for photographic documentations. No doubt much water has flown in the Ganges since and I am happy to report that by the time I left college in Banaras, even Nature’s urgent calls were no deterrents to the virtual love lives of my classmates. But initial reports suggested that Silvassa was evolving at a rate that was woefully behind the national average let alone the worldly datum. I mean when the place actually has a humanoid tribal species living life in the manner of the early man, you can hardly accuse me of being at my pessimistic best. Wonder of wonders then that I was only interrupted in connectivity owing to the battery run out rather than failure of the signal at the place. In fact what became irritating in the usual course of time was the monotonous drivel which went "Tamhe je number dial kari rahe chho, teno hal mein sampark thai shaket nathi. Thodi bad pachi phone karvabhinanti" or in other civilized words, "The _____ mobile you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try later". And of course there were times when I wished that the damn thing would just conk off like when I would have my hands full of grease from the confounded pump meant to deliver the foulest smelling liquid to the foulest looking tank to make the foulest felling slurry which would finally have some perfume added to make it into the not so foul dish wash bar but was obviously sleeping on the job and my boss of course wanted the latest update on the same. The phone gave me minimal reasons to complain and I was more than thankful for its unembellished performance even during the floods when the ceaseless rains caused the damn dam to break and caused mayhem all around. So it was that Silvassa was a true revelation that even though a part of our population might still be cooking food over firewood, they might just be downloading the recipe for the latest roast from the information highway. Wonders never cease you know!
Leaving Silvassa, I thought that I had left remoteness far behind when they dumped me in the Marathi hinterland at a place bereft of water and overrun with Sunshine called Khamgaon. It was only upon reaching the factory that I realized that it was possible to locate human habitation 20 miles behind the back of beyond. Seeing the desolation all around, thoughts of marooning with only a day’s supply of rum and a gun with a single bullet once again swarmed my mind. But thank goodness for India shining that even though the info screen on my phone showed that I was standing at a place that was 20 miles from where I actually was, the signal bothered least to locate my exact postal address in order to connect me to my near and dear ones and of course my Ma (no amount of nearness and dearness depicted in "near and dear ones" can describe her. Therefore, the separate mention.) Agreed that the backend of the mixer was a blackout area for my phone but I think that I can pardon the service for this. After all I am sure that neither Airtel nor Hutch anticipated Cockroaches to be potential customers ever. (That could however be a costly oversight. They are after all going to inherit the earth once India and Pakistan decide to shove the No First Use policy up the Siachen). When even Khamgaon failed to keep Ma from relaying the freshest scandal dogging my seventh cousin thrice removed in the city of Timbuctoo, I rested assured that as long as batteries stood their stead, Nokia would be justified in their corporate mission perennially.
Since then, I have toured the wilderness of Bhuj, stepped gingerly onto the soil of a place called Orai, trekked across the mountainous terrain in the Himachal, taken evening walks in the air of Surabaya, Indonesia, ambled across the aisles of the Singapore airport, trudged up to a non descript fort in the western ghats and crossed highways in Kolhapur but the familiar ring has never deserted me. It hasn’t taken me long to realize the importance of empowering people through connectivity. Nowadays, problems in factories get solved through single phone calls to engineering back offices cutting across time and geographical boundaries. Firing subordinates through a single e mail is as easy as apple pie. All my friend needs to keep his girlfriend happy is to keep her inbox inundated with lovey dovey SMSs and if ever he decides to spend his life with the female in question, I think he could be excused for counting Sunil Mittal as an important wedding invitee. When my rickshaw driver pulled out his cell phone and curtly told the person on the other end that he was driving and he would call back when he was free, I realized how indispensable a part of our lives this pint sized device was now. Thanks to Graham Bell’s clumsiness in the laboratory and people who have kept spilling this invention over the hurdles ever since, even though it has been about a year since I have seen my mother, her voice still takes me home every night. And one last message before I sign off to the indispensible cellular service providers - "May your network always follow us wherever we go so that we may keep expressing oursleves and forever stay connected" . Amen.

So I am Fat....

You say that it’s my fault that I am fat and I say that you are wrong. You say that I have not tried to keep myself in check and I challenge you to prove my intentions inappropriate. You say that I am what I am because of long years of neglect on my part and I say lets have a debate.
So let’s start with the first step towards a more socially acceptable figure also known as the "Optimum diet". Numerous people I have talked to have told me to watch what I eat with the promise that I would be better off. So I did. I took a rather hard look at the piece of cake before downing it. For added effect I gazed at the fries for a whole of five minutes and only ate it when the growl of the stomach reminded me of the disappearing lions of Gir. Just to double check that I wasn’t missing out on the watching part, I made sure I took an absolutely unflinching view of the entire process of the food being cooked right from the part when my nani diced the raw materials upto the point when they made the hissing entry into the frying pan. I did not take my eyes off the entire event till the time it was cooked and ready to devour. The result – I was heavier by two pounds after the lunch than before it. And you said I didn’t try.
But something tells me that you are far from satisfied at my efforts. So let’s try the next one shall we? That ever popular routine of "exercise". Let me assure you that I have left no opportunity to dispense this ritual daily. I exercise my will, my rights, my understanding; my whole goddamn existence is defined through exercise I tell you. Just to make sure that there was nothing that you could hold against me, I actually went to the extents of lifting this abnormally heavy frame of mine and trudging across to the nearest polling booth to do what else but exercise my right to vote. Though I knew that it was going to serve the same purpose of choosing between the one promising to murder me by increasing the petrol prices and another promising to starve me to death by making LPG costlier, I still did it. Come to think of it, I should have actually given a valid vote in favor of the second one. Probably would have "leaned" me towards the path of "well toned six packs". Drat, so you have one point. But that does not mean that I was found wanting in my efforts towards the holy grail of "fitness".
But I guess that is still not enough for you was it? You are still not willing to let me off the hook and agree to the fact that it is purely God’s will that my girth has assumed planetary gravitational significance. You still think that I should have done more to help my cause. So let me make it abundantly clear that I am sick and tired of trying. I have no inclination to win this debate. So what if Kofi Annan might find in me a valid reason for pinning the starvation of Ethiopia? So what if they embarked on that marketing gimmick of buy one Pizza get the second free so that people of my size could have a satisfying meal experience? So what if Levis and Lacoste do not target my segment because the manufacturing costs would never justify the production exercise? So what if you have to specially reserve a 2X2 grid space for me in your vision sphere when I come into the viewing window that defines your ophthalmic range? That’s all your problem isn’t it. As long as I am happy with how and what I am, nothing that you jibe or sneer at is going to cloud my sun. As long as there are sinful cuisines ready to delight my sensory perceptions, the fit and fine routine can take a hike. As long as I can justify my appearance as a well fed existence, I am abdominally opulent and you my friend are just plain chicken – to admit it.

Wanted.... Increasing Waistlines

Gone are the days when the well toned waistline was the envy of millions and my tribe with the bulging midriff was relegated to the backend of the social "exercise". Gone are the days when those six packs could garner all the glory and the only gainful employment for the pelvic bone was to help trousers do their job of saving our "you-know-what(s)". True that some ultra special specimen of our species of the superhero kind manufactured in the courtyards of the Marvel(s) and Kings syndicate(s) did give this long neglected body part some respect with that utility belt of theirs but then again you cant pin the hopes of survival of an entire species on a glorious few can you (look what happened to Superman’s planet!!)? Agreed also that the true blue boys of the law enforcement agencies also showed some respect to the waistline by stowing their firepower in heir hip hugging holsters but well then again I believe people like me were in the majority and the waist still wallowed in the depths of obscurity only to surface in times of ridicule when those usual run of the mill jokes about the commonality between chocolates and a man were discussed by utterly inebriated party hoppers or just plain engineering college undergrads soaking in the sun in their hostel lobbies.
It would be unfair to say that nobody had taken care of the waist line till recent times. The credit for bestowing some credibility to my dear friend goes to the ubiquitous traveler. The ones with the waist pouch entrusting all their passports, cameras, money, etc to that small bag clipped around their waist. But then again the waist only got the attention when the entire family enjoyed the LTC and how often was that? Once in two years or so? Not enough, absolutely pitiful I would say. And even in times of this sabbatical from oblivion, only the waist on the member of the family carrying the case was in prominence while the rest still were in the relegation zone.
It wasn’t long before a certain Japanese fellow realized the missing music in his morning jog and it was fate that he had a company and an entire posse of thoroughly unoccupied engineers at his beck and call to deliver his requirement for a better early morning running experience. Out came the walkman and our friend had a peek at stardom that was sure to come. But this invention proved to be a fickle friend itself, but all its future cousins in the forms of Discmans, etc kept our waist in good company.
The revolution began silently for our dear friend and though the rest of the world took notice of this new development in an entirely different light, the biggest beneficiary of course was laughing behind the curtains. The true turn around for our protagonist began with the advent of the mobile phones. Those trendy little communicating devices which occupied much more than just a share of our talk time. In time they have come to control almost every aspect of our lives from our phone numbers to our bank accounts and of course who can live by forgetting his wife’s birth anniversary? In the growing indispensability of the mobile phone, we unknowingly began the quest for a suitable place on this skeletal frame of ours to carry it. And the one who rose to the challenge was of course the waist. I am truly honored to note the tremendous entrepreneurial skill shown by this otherwise inactive part of the body to grab the opportunity by the horns and tame it. Very conveniently we started clipping our cellphones to our belts and freely trotting about everywhere.
With the cellphone, the waist had arrived but wasn’t truly in the limelight as yet. The next step was taken with the PDA! Now people were no longer content with opening that laptop of theirs and working away from office. True mobility was defined as working on the move literally and the PDA found its way onto the waist firmly beside the mobile phone. The waist was gaining in real estate importance with these two figureheads keeping good company to the traveler’s pouch when up came the mp3 player. Looking around for a place to rest, it too decided on the now upgraded and plush environs of the waist and shook hands with the phone, PDA and the traveler’s pouch.
Around this time, space started becoming increasingly scarce on the waist and it was then that my tribe with the girth of a little planet assumed some form of significance in being able to arrange all our important companions neatly around the abdominal circumference. So you see the electronic revolution gave the people with that extra pound of place the reason to smile that we have so long been looking for. So much is the attention on that waist space now that waist clips have become standard accessories to almost any new electronic invention. It is when we see the troubled executive hunting for his PDA in the depths of his jacket, that we withdraw ours in a flash from the left hip in a flash. And how’s that time when that flustered female keeps hunting in her handbag for that ring-your-head-off-with-embarassing-ringtone-set-by-kid cellphone while all that us well fed discerning users of technology need is a vibratory alarm to receive the call? It is now with the advent of technology that people have started realizing the importance of having a rather fuller waist to accommodate all those utilitarian requirements. Bon apetit! Your waist needs space.

Idle Mind... Interested Observer

As I sat down to a long wait for the plane ride at the newly furbished Mumbai Airport, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. The day had not particularly gone well for me and for some one who is conversant with my "days", he/she will realize that this must have been one of those when the higher being had answered yes to all prayers in his inbox (I have of course been listed under spam ever since birth) with the result that my boss got to kick my you know what from earth to the seventh moon of the planet doubledoom in the Galaxy Ultra-Despondency and back and my colleagues got to watch me trudge out of the office with a face longer than the Trans Siberian railway line. This was of course right after the head stewardess on the Singapore Airlines flight had made my miserable existence reach a newer low with the totally demeaning baggage weight problem. And so it was that as I made my way to check into the Jet Airways flight, I was acutely aware of a nagging thought that they might just have instructed the guard at the entrance itself to kick me out to save the time and embarrassment of them having to do it themselves. But nothing of that sort happened and when the lady at the other end of the counter actually waived me through without docking me for the tremendous amount of excess baggage (once again) that I was carrying, I sheepishly looked around half expecting Yamraj on his bull waiting to relieve this world of my burden now that my last wish had been fulfilled. After a thorough recon of the entire premises where I made absolutely sure of the fact that nothing untoward was actually in the offing, I settled down into the lounge and for the first time in a particularly long time observed the people around me.
Right across my seat was this young woman traveling with her father. What caught my eyes wasn’t the fact that she was probably the most beautiful girl I have ever come across but her interactions with her father. She doted on him as only a daughter could and "Uncleji" for his part could not have been more grateful for the fact that she was there by his side. They talked about a hundred different things ranging from her love life which she vehemently denied to his over growing abdominal opulence which he vehemently defended. Their make believe bickering between the constant reminders of soon to be forgotten medicine doses had me in a state of trance when suddenly walks in this newly wed couple all decked up in their marital brilliance. The two were inseparable and it was almost as if her hands had been somehow welded to his. Thank the lord for the guy’s bathroom break and the airport authority’s good judgment in building separate toilets for males and females or the people of the lounge would have actually thought of them as Siamese twins joined at the palm. This bathroom break also allowed my eyes to wander from them onto a group of Japanese ladies obviously touring the country. What made this senior citizen group interesting was of course the fact that they did not speak a single letter of English. So for the first time in many days I got to see what I might have looked like during my interactions in Indonesia. They went from pillar to post trying to figure out when there flight was taking off and every time they asked someone new, the inquisition invariably ended with all the people involved squealing in laughter at the utter helplessness of both – the ones in need of help and the ones wanting to. But what struck me was the fact that when you are with a group of people in the same predicament as yours, somehow the worst of situations are comic rather than tragic. All the Grandmas of course were successfully bundled off to hopefully their correct flight and the lounge returned to a ground state.
My roving eyes were once again searching for some fodder when they fell on this stumbling toddler who thought that every new pair of trousers was some different species worth exploring the girth of. So it was that this little guy barely reaching upto the knees of all those gathered there at the lounge kept on hugging leg after leg after leg with his bemused father keeping a close look from 2 steps behind until he came to the one leg that belonged to his mother and then he hugged no more. The little blob of flesh knew instantly without even looking up that this sari belonged to the one person that mattered most to him and that his search for the elusive specimen of humans was over. Lifted from the ground and lovingly admonished for his thoroughly despicable behavior, he craned his neck over his mother’s shoulder to make sure that his smiling father knew that he was back home. A blink later he was snoring soundly as his parents went around proudly displaying their little gift to the people whose legs had been hugged and wanted to know more about Mr Explorer there.
All this while there was this gentleman sitting next to me looking as if he had returned home to find his apartment robbed of everything except a broken wash basin which he would have to reimburse the landlord for. Hello brother I said!! This is the one person who would know what it was like to be me. I could probably have looked into us having been separated at birth in a mall (Kumbh is so clichéd) but his flight was announced just then and he scurried off at a speed that would have done India’s chances at some Olympics a world of good. Hope he finds some sort of peace in life. Will remember you my friend every time my lips curl up happily and will be more than happy to share it with you.
I still had an hour to go before my plane was scheduled and by this time the place was getting crowded with all sorts of people. There was this "socialite" female dressed to kill through eyesores and next to her was this power suit clad businessman ready to strike the next million dollar deal right then and there. Of course no airport is complete without the quintessential Gujju pariwar returning from some foren land with gifts for the entire Garba dancing community of theirs and we had our share of them as well. But of course everything is after all "saru chhe". Another constant fixture at the lounge has to be Bunty puttar with mummy te daddy – our boisterous cousins from the land of Beas and they were not found wanting in their share of antics on this day either. The usual posse of low hip jeans wearing girlfriends chatting on their fresh off the shelf mobile phones to their boyfriends and metro-sexual males making Shahrukh Khan look justifiable in the role of Asoka "D Grade" strutting across the hall was not left behind either.
So it was that I kept myself entertained till the time they actually announced my flight and then also this peculiar circus did not stop playing itself out. One last piece of entertainment was left yet as an aunty got hauled up for her handbag at the final door before boarding the bus to the plane. It would have been a no contest had either of the parties relented but the aunty wouldn’t let go of her purse because she was of the opinion that whatever they had observed now should have been checked in the security check while the authorities were obviously onto something like Tom onto Jerry. The entire episode culminated in a high intensity spilling of the contents of the hand bag and believe me the number of things that came out, Jack could have in that box and I wouldn’t have been surprised. The first off the bag were the lipsticks followed by some weird form of hairbrushes. Pretty soon cluttered on the table were compacts, 3 different handkerchiefs, papers of all kinds, passports of the entire family, specs to suite every occasion and I finally stopped counting when an entire array of Maybelline products made themselves at home on the table as if it were a showroom shelf. But it did keep me enthralled I must admit.
The flight to Pune was quite scarcely populated giving me ample time to reflect on all that I had seen at the lounge. Flashes of the girl with her father, the newlyweds, the toddler and his doting parents, the entire gang of Japanese tourists, the harrowed businessman and the entire cast and crew of all others who made that particular afternoon at the Chatrapati Shivaji Domestic Airport Terminal 1B so memorable just whizzed across my eyes. And it was then that I realized the power of faces and actions. Human faces in every shape and size, every emotion, every line and eyebrow telling you something, every lip curl denoting a different notion altogether, every twitch of the forehead saying an entire passage, every blink of the eye spilling the events of the entire day like a bestseller to the avid reader, every nod of the head telling the person next to you your feelings, every step presenting you in your unadulterated best. All it took was an afternoon of miserable idleness for me to make an acquaintance with at least twenty different people I have never met in my life and will most probably never even see again. Without saying a word, I was privy to the deepest, most intense secrets of a score of people and they waltzed into mine. All it took was an afternoon of total abandon in an airport lounge to realize the greatest show that is life. Play on….

A Letter... Amongst Other Thin(k)s

Date: 1st October 1, 2005
Place: A weirdly named building called Puncak marina on the island of Java more specifically in a place called Surabaya and very specifically on the 16th floor of this particular building and to be Google Map specific, the double bed in the master bedroom of the apartment numbered 5 by the Foul mouthing (read Bahasa speaking) management of this building presently occupied by Yours truly…
Time of start of catastrophe: noon, 15th June, 1982 (oops I forgot we were talking about this particular event and not the cause of all troubles of the world. Cancel that one out. Do send me cards if you will to celebrate your superiority over at least one specimen of the humanoid species on this particular date every year) anyway correct that last piece of information to read 6:30 a.m.

Dear God,
This is for your kind information that iPod and me have safely landed in India. I hope this letter finds you in the pink of health though I am sure that the news of me plaguing the country of Bapu on his 136th birth anniversary will not leave you in the best of spirits but for that travesty of fate kindly direct your wrath on the Singapore Airlines not me. I can see that you have already bombed Bali to express your displeasure against the fact that the confounded country was unable to snuff out my existence when it had the chance and please accept my condolences in this hour of grief for you. Better luck next time.
At the risk of inviting further wrath (like that has a chance of getting bet on) may I congratulate you on some pretty commendable minions that you sent across to make my journey back home a living hell but I guess your torture school will have to up the ante a little to extinguish this plague. The entire routine of getting me late in the morning by making me forget to set my alarm on the one day that mattered was an absolute stroke of genius I must admit. And may I take this opportunity to tender my apologies for starting the day with three unforgivable F***(s) but a man has to motivate himself after all. And while we are in the process of mutual admiration, you must admit that I outdid myself by turning in the apartment at the cost of just one broken glass within half an hour and within the security deposit. You must have really felt bad on seeing that superintendent have to let me go without laying a finger on me and accepting the apartment back but you did live to fight another hour didn’t you?
I must say that I was surprised to find that you didn’t go to the lengths of depriving me of a taxi at the opportune moment or at the least bring down the mother of all traffic jams to leave me stranded without even the linguistic capabilities to mouth communicative expletives to the people that mattered. Now that you look at it, I think you realize that was the biggest mistake wasn’t it? You could have had me right there. But hindsight is after all 20/20. No harm done. I must admit though that you did more than make up for your mistake there.
Ready though I was for your Halloween tricks on the airport, I did not appreciate that one about making me trudge the entire length of the place without any one game for dumb charades. That was a cheap shot but I guess we do have to be bigger men and look over this. I forgive you for that. I would really like to know though your thoughts at the time I discovered that your camouflaged entrance. I am sure it must have been disappointment to see me achieve that task without the need for Hercules but I guess I did provide enough entertainment later to help you get over the shock.
At this time I must acknowledge your brilliance. I mean that thing about you being the ultimate strategist does have some truth in it after all. I doubt if the worst Jaffars in history could have upped the following villainy. Stupendously fantastic I must admit. I mean who would have ever thought up of making me almost cry on account of the baggage that I was carrying. You are after all God aren’t you? You didn’t make me have excess baggage. No that wouldn’t have been your style. I mean where’s the supremacy in that? You, on the other hand presented me with an optimization problem. I must tell you though that I did not realize that you were spying on me sleeping in Mausi’s class. How else could you have known that Newton-Rhaphson iteration that she droned about and I only dreamt about would be the one thing that would save my life and I would of course not be armed with the correct tools for the occasion. Man I got to hand it to you. Let me just word the problem for the benefit of the uninitiated reader here
“Cabin bag plus check in luggage within the total weight limit. Check in baggage more than twice independent weight limit. Weights of shirts, pants, underpants, half used bars of soap inside cabin baggage unknown. Optimize the weight of the check in bag and the cabin bag so that the chief bitch of stewardesses would allow you to board the plane.”
I could have so made an excel sheet of the same problem but all I managed to make was a sight of myself. Sprawled on the floor of the check in counter with my bags spewing knickers and snackers all over the place, I could have cried if someone had just asked me to. That reminds me – thank you for not asking me to! An overly obese extremely dark unpolaroidworthy face has difficulty in justifying its presence in public as it is. Coupled with salty tear droplets and I am sure I would have nudged the Bali bomber from the top place in the news that day purely for disgust value.
Must have been a pretty sucky feeling to see your perfect plan go a begging and me walking into the lounge but well a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. No hard feelings I hope (I know that’s wishful thinking but no harm in applying to your better judgment is there?) Tell me something though, that spilling of the entire Pringle’s pack was planned or was that entirely on the spur of the moment? If I didn’t know you better I would say that you had planned this also but I guess this had you at your improvisational best written all across it. I guess seeing me do the mop up was a pretty satisfying experience but you would have definitely wanted to do much better.
What happened to you in Singapore? I mean an entire 4 hours and you didn’t conjure up any dark force to pick my guts from within the depths of my gastrointestinal cavity? Not even when I was having my burger at Burger King? You could have made me spill the Sprite at the least but no nothing. I must admit I was pretty scared at your inaction. Kind of like the lull before the storm. I will not lie about not enjoying your period of siesta but I did expect the computer to return my photo as an Interpol most wanted any time. Thanks for not ruining the Changi experience for me. It was amazing. You have a heart after all. Nice to know that.I guess you gave up on me kicking the bucket during this trip of mine inside Indonesia. Must admit I was pretty cagey all the way to bed that night in the guest house. Half expected the AC to blow in my face or the fan to crash on the bed at the least but I guess you have decided that I am too important a source of entertainment to be let go of so easily. So I hope that the show was to your liking. Pleased to be of service. And I know you wouldn’t hesitate to call on me but could you cancel me out of your schedule for tonight? Am meeting a long time friend and he does not know about our special Jester-Master relationship. Would hate to get him involved in it. After all he is not named Saurabh Dey is he?