I have never been tagged before.
Except when playing hide-and-seek, in which case I was always tagged. ‘Siddhu, you fat piece of shit, you’re it!’ was the phrase that was on everyone’s lips in those days of yore. (It probably had to do with my inability to run fast enough to beat the most overweight tub of lard in my apartment building. But then, that’s a different story altogether.)
But no one has ever tagged me (or called me, or SMSed me, or e-mailed me) ever since I turned thirteen (or even when I was younger, either).
But no more! The Paranoid Android has tagged me on a book meme.
Now, this frightens me. I realize that the world shall know at long last that Siddhu doesn’t read anything of substance – unless we count erotica as high-brow literature (which we do not, being the prudes we are).
But now that the world is in the know, there is no point belabouring, or repeating my point again and again, or returning back to where I started. Or using superfluous words which are not required, primarily because they’re unnecessarily repetitive…
So, to get to the issue at hand directly without beating around the bush…
Total Number of Books I own: I own exactly 852 books; though the number could rise appreciably if I take into account the comics I bound into volumes. A lot of the books have titles which go something like Siberia, 65 East of Greenwich - Oil and People, Evenings I have spent discussing the nature of the Hyperbolic Cosine with Virginia Woolf or The Brothers Karazamov and their father Ivan Mikhailovsky Nichalosovich Sharapov.
Don’t blame me for that – those aren’t mine. My father bought them, and has reportedly read them – something I have always found hard to believe; especially after I read the first three pages of some book written by a retarded blighter named Kafka, about how a man tries to turn himself into a cockroach (though why he wished to do so of his own volition is something that I still fail to understand).
Last book I bought: The last book I bought is a source of constant shame to me. Just the day before yesterday, I spent 240 rupees at a railway station purchasing a Jeffrey Archer.
I, who had sworn to forever steer clear of scum of the ilk of Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer, not to forget Danielle Steele, Erich Segal and Dan Brown!
From the time when I realized the enormity of the crime I had committed, I have been cursing myself without respite.
Last book I read: The Psychology of Imagination, by Jean Paul Sartre.
This is a highly acclaimed book, and I personally found it brilliant. The Daily Mirror found it gripping. Other papers found it bone-chilling, thrilling, and fascinating. It was what one would call a page-turner – one of those books that has one of those unexpected twists pop out at you right in the middle of page 190. Heck, till then, even I thought it was the butler that did it…oops, wrong book!
I’ll tell you more about the Sartre after I finish page number 15 – maybe by 2015. Maybe.
Books that mean a lot to me:
The Betsy, by Harold Robbins: The Betsy is a tale of one man’s passionate race against time to build the best racing car of all time, while simultaneously working strenuously towards perpetuating his bloodline.
Angelo Perino is the alpha male who likes to make sure. So, instead of having sex with one woman just once or with the same woman several times, he has sex with several women several times. He is the kind of man who could bring tears to the eyes of Chinese population planners as well as condom manufacturers – for entirely different reasons.
If you’re going to read it, I suggest not bothering going beyond page 73. The interesting bits which follow that are practically photocopies of the interesting bits before page 73.
The Idiot, Books I and II, by Fyodor Dostove…Dyosto…Dostowhisky…Dostoyevsky: The title of the book strikes a special chord in me, because it is the word by which I have been addressed for most of the 21 years I have spent on earth. Besides, one cannot but admire a man as brilliant as Dostoyevsky – for heaven’s sake, I’ve heard that he could spell his name out clear as a bell, even with a bottle of Russia’s finest sloshing about in his innards.
The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand: This book was an eye-opener to me. I realized it was possible for selfishness to take different forms. The thoughts and ideas bandied about in the book gave me food for thought for days. In the end I concluded that it was impossible for me to come to terms with such blatant glorification of selfishness.
But my mind was predominantly preoccupied by the question of how a friend of mine could say that she felt it was a ‘kinky’ love story.
Ulysses, by James Joyce: It was this book that acquainted me with one of the most radical ideas I’d ever heard of –the stream of consciousness. Adopting this approach would mean that I could tell you about the yellow shirt that BBC chap is wearing, not to mention the plight of the giant pandas in Singapore, as I tried to climb my way into Tibet with the Dalai Lama and Luke Skywalker who converted Darth Vader into Ammonium Hydroxide. I could tell you I hate Saddam Hussein when my hindi teacher is dull enough to be classified as an energy saving bulb.
And this would be considered art (by the idiots that matter, in any case). I would probably win some kind of award too.
Psmith in the city, by P.G. Wodehouse: People who frequent this blog should have guessed by now that I worship Sir Pelham. Unless of course George W’s among those who frequent this blog.
I spent hours thinking deep thoughts on which of his masterpieces I loved the most.
The whisper went round, “Siddhu is cogitating,…...”
Siddhu, the individual, ceased to exist, and there sprung into being Siddhu, the cog in the wheel of the legion of Wodehouse fans; Siddhu, the philosopher and book lover; Siddhu, the Worker.
I did not spare myself. I wrestled with the problem with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till then, had only known what work was like from hearsay.
Whose is that form standing on one leg in the morning, contemplating eagerly on Wodehouse’s creations? It is the form of Siddhu, the Worker. Whose is that haggard, drawn face which is bent over in thought long after the other toilers have sped blithely westwards to drink at Kandan Wines? It is the face of Siddhu, the Worker.
And then I knew! It had to be Psmith, P silent as in ptarmigan and pterodactyl. Wodehouse the wordsmith was in sublime form as he sculpted the character of Psmith. Psmith’s monologues have the crisp elegance of a Gavaskar late cut. And by the way, as the die-hard Wodehouse fans may have noticed, the previous paragraph is an adaptation of a classic Psmith monologue.
Book(s) I would love to burn:
Digital Signal Processing, by Sonovabitchakis Proakis and
Illmakeyourlifemiserableakis Manolakis: Because pronouncing the names of the authors is the easiest bit of the book.
Object Oriented Systems Development, by Ali Bahrami: To quote from the book,
As described in their seminal work in cataloguing program design concepts during the construction of multifarious programming constructs, Gama, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides [15] say that the design pattern identifies the key aspects of a common design structure, which contribute to the usefulness of the aforementioned design pattern in creating a reusable object-oriented design.
I rest my case.
Four people I’m going to tag
Jormund: Because he has read widely. Because he is not likely to spout as much nonsense as I did.
Karan : Because he actually read Ulysses. And Nietzsche. Because he claims he was Moses, Jesus, Mohamed and Sree Krishna at various points in time.
Mercury : Because she’s steadfastly refused to blog for the last one month. Because she likes Somerset Maugham and P.G. Wodehouse.
Sisto : Because he thinks Erich Segal is a rip-off, and that there should have been a couple of murders to spice the whole thing up a bit. Because he knows The Prince better than Machiavelli himself. Because he may write of where he gets those cheap pirated books he sells to the rest of us at high margins. ;)
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Sunday, June 19, 2005
This is an article I had written around three years back, when I was a mere second year, and was still a student of the college I have had so many (not-so-nice) things to say about. This article was published in rediff.com sometime in 2002.
I watched them shuffle past. They looked pathetic, fear writ large on their faces, trying to fix their gaze on the sheer nothingness of the wall as they hurried away.
The first years had arrived.
I stifled the sadistic laugh that emanated from deep within myself, and felt my thoughts run away from the realities of the present to that day one year ago when.....
I trod on the ground with utmost fear and trepidation, as if it was readying itself to partake of me as a wholesome breakfast. The building was big, all right- it was big enough to fill the Warrier soul (which unfortunately has none of the courage that is normally associated with the word) with the blackest fears.
Gone were the days of my twelfth standard when I could be self-assured of the fact that I was a member of the top class, and walk without fear.
Now, I had entered college, and I felt as queasy as the goat who realizes his neck would soon have the pleasure of exchanging unpleasant views with the butcher's knife.
I looked at myself in self-appraisal. I had gone out of the way to look cheap and ugly. I ticked off mentally the list of things my 'senior' had told me, in a tone of absolute sadistic satisfaction, to be wary of-
Old, worn out chappals (yes), ordinary pants (yes), ugly looking shirt untucked(yes), hairstyle twenty years out of date (absolutely!), shaved clean (yes), and finally the look of absolute innocence (hopefully yes).
I found a few other lambs fretting it out almost as obviously as I was. We were herded by a second year---under the watchful eye of a lecturer, lest he succumb to the temptation of ragging us---to a shamiana, where the principal was to welcome us.
The principal's speech was, no doubt, 'exhilarating and invigorating' but in keeping with the tradition I had followed religiously since my induction into kindergarten, I fell asleep after two minutes and thirty two seconds. I woke up from my reverie in a start only when I heard him announce that classes would begin the next day!
I gulped. Tomorrow, I thought, I would actually be entering the college as a student.
Next day, I trembled my way to the stop where the college bus would pick me up.
The 'senior' had already regaled me with terrible tales of how first-years got their tails brutally chopped off in the college bus in a variety of ingenious ways. I prayed fervently to God that all the seniors would have decided, on this day, to stay home and catch up on their reading or their paramours, as their tastes may lie.
But it was not to be, as I saw quite a few people with the relaxed air that is the trademark of a man who finds nothing new in the college or the ride to the college. I tried to sit next to the lecturer who had placed his eye on the shepherding second year the previous day.
But he sent me back to where I was sure the seniors were awaiting my arrival - tersely informing me that this seat was reserved for the staff.
I silently cursed the man for his insensitivity and felt a sudden chill run down my spine.
I tried to stand, looking as unobtrusive as possible, trying to melt into the background. But my fears were confirmed as the most ferocious looking of the seniors pointed to the seat next to him. I placed myself gingerly on the seat. He did not smile. I gulped. He asked me my name in a tone that seemed almost like a bark. I answered in a low undertone.
"Did you bite your tongue off?", he asked me, in the same rasping voice.
He began to appear more and more like that bloke Heydrich, who was famous for his macabre tastes when the head honcho of the Gestapo.
I repeated my name... "Siddhu..."
"Siddhu...that's all?", the same rasping, and cold voice.
I silently pitied all those British spies unfortunate enough to be caught whistling "Rule Brittania" while walking past the friendly neighborhood Hitler youth. I was sure they felt quite the same emotions course through their veins as they faced the equally friendly neighborhood SS executioner.
"Siddhu Warrier", I said.
He called me a few choice words (which I must remember to use when I catch myself my first junior!), which I decline to write to avoid offending the morality of the decent, law-abiding Indian.
It struck me like one of those Daisy cutter bombs struck dear old Mullah Mohammed Omar, that the informative senior of mine had informed me how we first-years, being the lowest forms of life on mother earth, had to refer to our seniors using the salutation 'Sir'. I also recollected the terrible consequences a violator of this golden precept would have to face.
"I'm sorry, sir...I mean, Siddhu Warrier, Sir"
"Good, which branch have you joined?", came the clipped, and curt tone.
"Sir, computer science and engineering, sir", I repeated, in a small, almost feminine voice about which, the senior, who was very blunt with words, remarked rather luridly. After that I wisely abandoned the frightened falsetto.
"Tell me the names of a girl."
"Zaheera", I said, promptly, the inspiration coming from the monarch of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah.
"I said names, not name, you &*^&^*$#. Tell me names of girls starting from A through Z"
The ordeal of thinking up names within a short interval was very strenuous, and I was glad that the bus journey came to a halt when the burly chap was making some joke about my intellect, which I failed to find funny in the least.
Hearing this wisecrack, the other chaps, rather needlessly, if I may say so, started guffawing.
The classes went on, with most teachers introducing themselves, and doing other things, none of which I am sure the reader will find even slightly interesting.
I got through the return trip unscathed, except for being instructed by another chap to learn 'The Real Slim Shady' by that master craftsman (sarcasm intended, please), Eminem the next day.
Cut to: the last day of my first year
As I walked home, watching the setting sun, I realized, in an introspective and reflective mood that I had just stopped being a dreg of collegiate society. My freshman days were yet another page in the story of my life.
Looking back at the last year, I realized that it had been a good one after all. The ragging helped me make friends, and had been nowhere near as bad as I had feared
What I had gained most over the last year, I felt, were quite a few friends...
As the sun set on my introspection, I hoped the present first years would find their first years as 'profitable' as I did... ( evil grin)
As for those who didn’t, please contact Siddhu Warrier....
I watched them shuffle past. They looked pathetic, fear writ large on their faces, trying to fix their gaze on the sheer nothingness of the wall as they hurried away.
The first years had arrived.
I stifled the sadistic laugh that emanated from deep within myself, and felt my thoughts run away from the realities of the present to that day one year ago when.....
I trod on the ground with utmost fear and trepidation, as if it was readying itself to partake of me as a wholesome breakfast. The building was big, all right- it was big enough to fill the Warrier soul (which unfortunately has none of the courage that is normally associated with the word) with the blackest fears.
Gone were the days of my twelfth standard when I could be self-assured of the fact that I was a member of the top class, and walk without fear.
Now, I had entered college, and I felt as queasy as the goat who realizes his neck would soon have the pleasure of exchanging unpleasant views with the butcher's knife.
I looked at myself in self-appraisal. I had gone out of the way to look cheap and ugly. I ticked off mentally the list of things my 'senior' had told me, in a tone of absolute sadistic satisfaction, to be wary of-
Old, worn out chappals (yes), ordinary pants (yes), ugly looking shirt untucked(yes), hairstyle twenty years out of date (absolutely!), shaved clean (yes), and finally the look of absolute innocence (hopefully yes).
I found a few other lambs fretting it out almost as obviously as I was. We were herded by a second year---under the watchful eye of a lecturer, lest he succumb to the temptation of ragging us---to a shamiana, where the principal was to welcome us.
The principal's speech was, no doubt, 'exhilarating and invigorating' but in keeping with the tradition I had followed religiously since my induction into kindergarten, I fell asleep after two minutes and thirty two seconds. I woke up from my reverie in a start only when I heard him announce that classes would begin the next day!
I gulped. Tomorrow, I thought, I would actually be entering the college as a student.
Next day, I trembled my way to the stop where the college bus would pick me up.
The 'senior' had already regaled me with terrible tales of how first-years got their tails brutally chopped off in the college bus in a variety of ingenious ways. I prayed fervently to God that all the seniors would have decided, on this day, to stay home and catch up on their reading or their paramours, as their tastes may lie.
But it was not to be, as I saw quite a few people with the relaxed air that is the trademark of a man who finds nothing new in the college or the ride to the college. I tried to sit next to the lecturer who had placed his eye on the shepherding second year the previous day.
But he sent me back to where I was sure the seniors were awaiting my arrival - tersely informing me that this seat was reserved for the staff.
I silently cursed the man for his insensitivity and felt a sudden chill run down my spine.
I tried to stand, looking as unobtrusive as possible, trying to melt into the background. But my fears were confirmed as the most ferocious looking of the seniors pointed to the seat next to him. I placed myself gingerly on the seat. He did not smile. I gulped. He asked me my name in a tone that seemed almost like a bark. I answered in a low undertone.
"Did you bite your tongue off?", he asked me, in the same rasping voice.
He began to appear more and more like that bloke Heydrich, who was famous for his macabre tastes when the head honcho of the Gestapo.
I repeated my name... "Siddhu..."
"Siddhu...that's all?", the same rasping, and cold voice.
I silently pitied all those British spies unfortunate enough to be caught whistling "Rule Brittania" while walking past the friendly neighborhood Hitler youth. I was sure they felt quite the same emotions course through their veins as they faced the equally friendly neighborhood SS executioner.
"Siddhu Warrier", I said.
He called me a few choice words (which I must remember to use when I catch myself my first junior!), which I decline to write to avoid offending the morality of the decent, law-abiding Indian.
It struck me like one of those Daisy cutter bombs struck dear old Mullah Mohammed Omar, that the informative senior of mine had informed me how we first-years, being the lowest forms of life on mother earth, had to refer to our seniors using the salutation 'Sir'. I also recollected the terrible consequences a violator of this golden precept would have to face.
"I'm sorry, sir...I mean, Siddhu Warrier, Sir"
"Good, which branch have you joined?", came the clipped, and curt tone.
"Sir, computer science and engineering, sir", I repeated, in a small, almost feminine voice about which, the senior, who was very blunt with words, remarked rather luridly. After that I wisely abandoned the frightened falsetto.
"Tell me the names of a girl."
"Zaheera", I said, promptly, the inspiration coming from the monarch of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah.
"I said names, not name, you &*^&^*$#. Tell me names of girls starting from A through Z"
The ordeal of thinking up names within a short interval was very strenuous, and I was glad that the bus journey came to a halt when the burly chap was making some joke about my intellect, which I failed to find funny in the least.
Hearing this wisecrack, the other chaps, rather needlessly, if I may say so, started guffawing.
The classes went on, with most teachers introducing themselves, and doing other things, none of which I am sure the reader will find even slightly interesting.
I got through the return trip unscathed, except for being instructed by another chap to learn 'The Real Slim Shady' by that master craftsman (sarcasm intended, please), Eminem the next day.
Cut to: the last day of my first year
As I walked home, watching the setting sun, I realized, in an introspective and reflective mood that I had just stopped being a dreg of collegiate society. My freshman days were yet another page in the story of my life.
Looking back at the last year, I realized that it had been a good one after all. The ragging helped me make friends, and had been nowhere near as bad as I had feared
What I had gained most over the last year, I felt, were quite a few friends...
As the sun set on my introspection, I hoped the present first years would find their first years as 'profitable' as I did... ( evil grin)
As for those who didn’t, please contact Siddhu Warrier....
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Symposium blues
It was almost a year ago that I was ‘elected’ the Secretary of the Association of Computer Engineers.
The secretary has several duties which include:
a. Make inane speeches nobody listens to at functions no one attends.
b. Bunk classes to make these inane speeches
c. Sign letters granting leave
d. Organize a symposium
Duties a, b and c pose no difficulty to one of my charm and poise. I managed, during the year spent as Secretrary, to add a certain degree of flourish to my signature.
It is duty d that I write of today.
Run-up to a Symposium
Now, organizing a symposium is something you wouldn’t particularly wish to do, but for the wonderful concept called On Duty (OD).
OD is God’s gift to the indolent creature, and allows one the opportunity to while away time playing NFS 7 in the labs, flirting in the canteen and partaking of alcoholic spirits at the neighbourhood wine shop – and to do all this while being marked present in class.
The secretary is the person who signs the OD letters. That’s awesome!
But the secretary is also the person who gets to have unpleasant conversations with the HoD when classes are half empty, the corridors are full of people who are either drunk or trying to neck (or both), and the terrible screech of burning rubber and exploding shotguns rent the air in the lab.
A typical conversation with the HoD went something like this -
HoD: Where is Ponnusamy? And do you know where Singaravelu is?
Me: Sir, that’s a restaurant in Egmore. And I gave my Singaravelu away to a junior last year.
Suddenly, being a perceptive man, I perceived that the HoD was referring to a man named Ponnusamy. Why the HoD expected me to know what any numbers of people named Ponnusamy or Singaravelu were doing was beyond me.
Me: (with an expression of surprise) Well, I’ll be damned if I know, Sir
HoD: Then, why on earth did you grant them Leave on Duty, and have them marked present all day?
Me: (incredulously) Did I?
The HoD handed me a paper bearing my signature.
I scanned through the list of fifty names, and found that Ponnusamy was busy soliciting sponsorships for the symposium, while Singaravelu was working on catering arrangements. I brightly appraised the HoD of the situation, and told him that they had not met the fate that Mary met with when she went across the sands of dee. They would, I told him reassuringly, bring the cattle home.
HoD: No, they have not brought the cattle home, you idiot! I’ll tell you where they are! Singaravelu is in my office, and he has partaken liberally of alcoholic spirits. And as for Ponnusamy, he’s been playing some stupid game in the lab, and is making enough noise to wake the dead!
Me: (blushing prettily) Oh..well… Sir
Funding a symposium
The college I studied in had what is termed in management theory as a flat management structure. In fact, if it were any flatter, it’d be punctured.
Therefore, every decision is taken by the chairman, his wife, or their children (the latter involving themselves when they’re not busy plotting how to copy in the university examinations). Therefore, to receive funds, it was my duty to go meet the chairman – an old man on the wrong side of eighty whose mind was as sharp as a razor...once upon a time.
After waiting the prescribed half-an-hour outside his mansion, a crushed-looking underling ushered us in.
We walked in, wondered whether the chairman required us to walk on four for a minute, and then tried to ask him for a grant to conduct the symposium.
Chairman: Are you Computer Science students?
Us: Yes, Sir
The chairman felt in a voluble mood. He stretched his hands, yawned loudly, instructed a flunky hovering around to massage his feet, and goggled at us.
Chairman: When I went to the Gelf, I saw two peacocks – they were a male husband peacock and the female wife peacock – in the mall. The husband peacock sang loudly, and the wife peacock turned to him and shouted at him for staring at the husband peacock. Tell me how the peacocks work.
I thought of saying something how an evil scientist had probably injected them with a serum, creating a breed of transvestite peacocks who could speak. Or more likely, he was drunk when he met the peacocks and the canaries.
But all I managed, in spite of these thoughts, were a few disjointed words on how evolutionary biology was something I hadn’t given a lot of thought to.
Chairman: They are makanical things, my boy. I will give you money, you make me a peacock like that.
He threw me a glance that seemed to challenge me to refuse his offer – rather like good ol’ Don Vito!
I muttered a few more words about how I would bring him the working models of the peacocks the day after, and then listened to him talk about how Infosys would set up an R&D center on our campus the next week.
Then, one of us, more adventurous than the rest, pushed the grant request paper onto his desk, and asked him to sign it. HE looked at us for a second, blinked, and signed with a smile playing on his visage. He was probably thinking of the talking peacocks which would be waiting at his doorstep in a few days.
The day of the symposium
The day of the symposium is traditionally the day the vice-principal roars. The vice-principal had a reputation of creating last minute hitches if there were none, or adding immeasurably to the hitches already present.
The year I was in charge, I managed to avoid trouble all along till it got to about 12 in the afternoon. It was then that the electricity went out in the auditorium, and there was pandemonium.
I was frantic. The last thing I wanted was a stampede on my hands (or over my head, for that matter). There was some informal event scheduled there – what it constituted I knew not, for I had delegated it to a junior. The chap who’d organized it was close to tears. He told me that the vice-principal, who was mildly displeased by the arm-wrestling competition, blew his top when they tried to hold a beauty pageant on stage. It was then that he literally pulled the plug.
The world reeled about me. Holding a beauty pageant during a technical symposium amounted to sacrilege! And holding a beauty pageant in front of the vice-principal? The less said the better.
I rushed in to meet the vice-principal, ready to crawl on all fours if it were necessary to get the electricity back on.
It was said that music soothes the wild beast. Photographing a savage beast, according to animal psychologists, also calms it down. This worked, as this photo cooled the wild animal in the picture enough to get him to switch the power back on in the auditorium. (faces obviously blurred ;) )
The symposium wound its way to an end, with our honorable vice-chairperson walking in twenty minutes late for the presentation ceremony, yawning as she gave away prizes and after a while, refusing to distribute any more because she had other commitments to take care of. (Read: the arthritis had become a little too painful.)
Like every horror story written by the Brothers Grimm, this too has a moral. The moral reads, very simply, ‘To organize a symposium is to experience terrible agonies in several parts of the anatomy, mainly the posterior’.
Moral #2 is ‘If ever in doubt as to what to do, watch porn’
(Moral #2 is not exactly pertinent to the story, but a good dictum to live your life by in any case)
The secretary has several duties which include:
a. Make inane speeches nobody listens to at functions no one attends.
b. Bunk classes to make these inane speeches
c. Sign letters granting leave
d. Organize a symposium
Duties a, b and c pose no difficulty to one of my charm and poise. I managed, during the year spent as Secretrary, to add a certain degree of flourish to my signature.
It is duty d that I write of today.
Run-up to a Symposium
Now, organizing a symposium is something you wouldn’t particularly wish to do, but for the wonderful concept called On Duty (OD).
OD is God’s gift to the indolent creature, and allows one the opportunity to while away time playing NFS 7 in the labs, flirting in the canteen and partaking of alcoholic spirits at the neighbourhood wine shop – and to do all this while being marked present in class.
The secretary is the person who signs the OD letters. That’s awesome!
But the secretary is also the person who gets to have unpleasant conversations with the HoD when classes are half empty, the corridors are full of people who are either drunk or trying to neck (or both), and the terrible screech of burning rubber and exploding shotguns rent the air in the lab.
A typical conversation with the HoD went something like this -
HoD: Where is Ponnusamy? And do you know where Singaravelu is?
Me: Sir, that’s a restaurant in Egmore. And I gave my Singaravelu away to a junior last year.
Suddenly, being a perceptive man, I perceived that the HoD was referring to a man named Ponnusamy. Why the HoD expected me to know what any numbers of people named Ponnusamy or Singaravelu were doing was beyond me.
Me: (with an expression of surprise) Well, I’ll be damned if I know, Sir
HoD: Then, why on earth did you grant them Leave on Duty, and have them marked present all day?
Me: (incredulously) Did I?
The HoD handed me a paper bearing my signature.
I scanned through the list of fifty names, and found that Ponnusamy was busy soliciting sponsorships for the symposium, while Singaravelu was working on catering arrangements. I brightly appraised the HoD of the situation, and told him that they had not met the fate that Mary met with when she went across the sands of dee. They would, I told him reassuringly, bring the cattle home.
HoD: No, they have not brought the cattle home, you idiot! I’ll tell you where they are! Singaravelu is in my office, and he has partaken liberally of alcoholic spirits. And as for Ponnusamy, he’s been playing some stupid game in the lab, and is making enough noise to wake the dead!
Me: (blushing prettily) Oh..well… Sir
Funding a symposium
The college I studied in had what is termed in management theory as a flat management structure. In fact, if it were any flatter, it’d be punctured.
Therefore, every decision is taken by the chairman, his wife, or their children (the latter involving themselves when they’re not busy plotting how to copy in the university examinations). Therefore, to receive funds, it was my duty to go meet the chairman – an old man on the wrong side of eighty whose mind was as sharp as a razor...once upon a time.
After waiting the prescribed half-an-hour outside his mansion, a crushed-looking underling ushered us in.
We walked in, wondered whether the chairman required us to walk on four for a minute, and then tried to ask him for a grant to conduct the symposium.
Chairman: Are you Computer Science students?
Us: Yes, Sir
The chairman felt in a voluble mood. He stretched his hands, yawned loudly, instructed a flunky hovering around to massage his feet, and goggled at us.
Chairman: When I went to the Gelf, I saw two peacocks – they were a male husband peacock and the female wife peacock – in the mall. The husband peacock sang loudly, and the wife peacock turned to him and shouted at him for staring at the husband peacock. Tell me how the peacocks work.
I thought of saying something how an evil scientist had probably injected them with a serum, creating a breed of transvestite peacocks who could speak. Or more likely, he was drunk when he met the peacocks and the canaries.
But all I managed, in spite of these thoughts, were a few disjointed words on how evolutionary biology was something I hadn’t given a lot of thought to.
Chairman: They are makanical things, my boy. I will give you money, you make me a peacock like that.
He threw me a glance that seemed to challenge me to refuse his offer – rather like good ol’ Don Vito!
I muttered a few more words about how I would bring him the working models of the peacocks the day after, and then listened to him talk about how Infosys would set up an R&D center on our campus the next week.
Then, one of us, more adventurous than the rest, pushed the grant request paper onto his desk, and asked him to sign it. HE looked at us for a second, blinked, and signed with a smile playing on his visage. He was probably thinking of the talking peacocks which would be waiting at his doorstep in a few days.
The day of the symposium
The day of the symposium is traditionally the day the vice-principal roars. The vice-principal had a reputation of creating last minute hitches if there were none, or adding immeasurably to the hitches already present.
The year I was in charge, I managed to avoid trouble all along till it got to about 12 in the afternoon. It was then that the electricity went out in the auditorium, and there was pandemonium.
I was frantic. The last thing I wanted was a stampede on my hands (or over my head, for that matter). There was some informal event scheduled there – what it constituted I knew not, for I had delegated it to a junior. The chap who’d organized it was close to tears. He told me that the vice-principal, who was mildly displeased by the arm-wrestling competition, blew his top when they tried to hold a beauty pageant on stage. It was then that he literally pulled the plug.
The world reeled about me. Holding a beauty pageant during a technical symposium amounted to sacrilege! And holding a beauty pageant in front of the vice-principal? The less said the better.
I rushed in to meet the vice-principal, ready to crawl on all fours if it were necessary to get the electricity back on.
It was said that music soothes the wild beast. Photographing a savage beast, according to animal psychologists, also calms it down. This worked, as this photo cooled the wild animal in the picture enough to get him to switch the power back on in the auditorium. (faces obviously blurred ;) )
The symposium wound its way to an end, with our honorable vice-chairperson walking in twenty minutes late for the presentation ceremony, yawning as she gave away prizes and after a while, refusing to distribute any more because she had other commitments to take care of. (Read: the arthritis had become a little too painful.)
Like every horror story written by the Brothers Grimm, this too has a moral. The moral reads, very simply, ‘To organize a symposium is to experience terrible agonies in several parts of the anatomy, mainly the posterior’.
Moral #2 is ‘If ever in doubt as to what to do, watch porn’
(Moral #2 is not exactly pertinent to the story, but a good dictum to live your life by in any case)
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
The Holy Grail of College Strikes
I speak today of a tried and tested boredom-combat technique which is used to its fullest by militant student unions around the country. It is much less prevalent in Chennai, as opposed to strike patterns observed in certain other states where a strike is more the rule than the exception.
We, on the other hand, being members of a highly disciplined student body, do not believe in going on strike more than once a year.
Its timing, precision and planning make it more an annual picnic where we spend a few hours sunning ourselves on the college lawns which, according to some, were designed explicitly for that purpose.
I shall, being a veteran of three strikes, provide interested students with pointers on how to go on a strike and how to stay prepared for any contingency.
Mandatory disclaimer:
1. The author is a certified lunatic and mental institutions around the world vie with each other to get him admitted to their respective asylums. Therefore, anyone taking anything that he ever says seriously runs the risk of being locked up in a padded cell for a considerable amount of time.
2. If any student is suspended, flogged, impaled or sent to labour camps in Siberia as a direct/indirect result of following these pointers, the author is in no way responsible
3. If the author is sued under POTA, sedition or some new law he hasn’t heard of yet, he would like to assert that it was all the ISI and Musharaff’s doing.(If not, it was the CIA)
Statutory warnings:
And you thought only cigarette packets carried statutory warnings! But as Siddhu’s first law on the war on the boredom [SID95, MIT] states –
Anything that is fun is dangerous and must carry statutory warnings. These include everything from watching WWE to attempting to do a Schumacher in Chennai traffic with a Maruti 800 made of Aluminium foil.
So, without further ado, I shall put forth these statutory warnings:
1. Please check how brutally or liberally your college would treat strikers. If you are an unfortunate student of these dotheboy halls where they impart engineering education these days, please don’t attempt anything of the sort. (Unless you want to sun yourself while kneeling down outside the Principal’s office for fifteen days, and bankrupt your parents as well). In such a case, restrict yourself to such acts of daredevilry – like daring to talk to a girl or wearing pants without cleats – which will result in relatively lenient punishments like being caned by the Chairman.
2. In more normal institutions, attempting to avoid participating in a strike could actually turn out to be much more dangerous than being the life and soul of it. For more information, contact your local college bully.
The Five commandments of a striker
With the statutory warnings done away with, I think it’s time to list the five commandments on how to go on strike and how not to get BORED when striking. (For the benefit of the curious, there are five because I couldn’t think of any more.)
1. Thou shalt not attempt to sneak out of class into labs when thy student leader hast called a strike-
This is a commandment, which makes sense, apart from being the right thing to do from a moral standpoint. The student leaders and their minions are, as a rule, not people to upset or annoy. That’s because they don’t retreat to a corner and cry foul when every student runs to the lab instead of the lawn. They haff methods, so to speak, of making you walk out. And those methods are not particularly pleasant and involve a certain amount of manhandling as well.
2. Thou shalt not adhere to a lecturer’s requests to sit in class during a strike, even if he offers thou the last five minutes of his class to strike to thy heart’s content
Nothing much to be said about this commandment, except that one of our lecturers actually made us the offer. Offshoot – the entire class which was vacillating till that moment decided to walk out en masse, leaving him alone holding a piece of chalk and the attendance book. (Rumour goes that he actually taught the empty classroom the instruction set of the 8086 and went on to take attendance, dutifully listing the names to the walls– ‘just in case the principal comes on his rounds, no?’)
3. Thou shalt identify in advance the possible days for a strike
College is the Al-Qaeda of the war on boredom. The only day when one will not be tortured by pangs of boredom is when there is a strike. Therefore, being a dutiful footsoldier of the war on boredom, you should always pay attention to the rumour mill. You can always get some information on the next strike so that you can actually ‘live a strike’.
4. Thou shalt cometh prepared for the strike, otherwise thou shalt suffer from boredom during the strike.
If you follow Commandment 3 like a dutiful practitioner should, you should have no problem preparing for the strike. Strikes, especially in normally disciplined colleges like mine, have all the hallmarks of a garden party. But without entertainment, even this can turn boring. Therefore, as a reveller, one must carry with oneself the following essentials:
a. Two packets of potato chips
b. One 2 litre bottle of 7 – up. The sceptics among you may scoff at my specifically mentioning 7-up, as the drink of choice. That’s ‘cause 7-up looks like water and so it is unlikely that unprepared revellers will attempt to join the party. Besides, I like Fido Dido…
c. One MP3 Player/Discman/Walkman with detachable head phones (in case somebody else wants to listen to the music as well)
d. A musical instrument (optional – applies to musicians only – and definitely not to those who think they are John Lennon reincarnated)
e. A pack of cards to play with when one debates the reasons behind the strike with one’s friends
f. If one is more adventurous than most, one can carry along with one a little bottle of the blushed hippocrene – something which goes very well with 7-Up! But, of course, under the influence of this stimulant, one may partake more actively in the strike than one may in other circumstances when one is less high.
5. If thou faileth to follow the aforementioned commandments, thou shalt be deemed to have sinned.
-General Siddhu Warrier
Commanding Officer, War on Boredom
We, on the other hand, being members of a highly disciplined student body, do not believe in going on strike more than once a year.
Its timing, precision and planning make it more an annual picnic where we spend a few hours sunning ourselves on the college lawns which, according to some, were designed explicitly for that purpose.
I shall, being a veteran of three strikes, provide interested students with pointers on how to go on a strike and how to stay prepared for any contingency.
Mandatory disclaimer:
1. The author is a certified lunatic and mental institutions around the world vie with each other to get him admitted to their respective asylums. Therefore, anyone taking anything that he ever says seriously runs the risk of being locked up in a padded cell for a considerable amount of time.
2. If any student is suspended, flogged, impaled or sent to labour camps in Siberia as a direct/indirect result of following these pointers, the author is in no way responsible
3. If the author is sued under POTA, sedition or some new law he hasn’t heard of yet, he would like to assert that it was all the ISI and Musharaff’s doing.(If not, it was the CIA)
Statutory warnings:
And you thought only cigarette packets carried statutory warnings! But as Siddhu’s first law on the war on the boredom [SID95, MIT] states –
Anything that is fun is dangerous and must carry statutory warnings. These include everything from watching WWE to attempting to do a Schumacher in Chennai traffic with a Maruti 800 made of Aluminium foil.
So, without further ado, I shall put forth these statutory warnings:
1. Please check how brutally or liberally your college would treat strikers. If you are an unfortunate student of these dotheboy halls where they impart engineering education these days, please don’t attempt anything of the sort. (Unless you want to sun yourself while kneeling down outside the Principal’s office for fifteen days, and bankrupt your parents as well). In such a case, restrict yourself to such acts of daredevilry – like daring to talk to a girl or wearing pants without cleats – which will result in relatively lenient punishments like being caned by the Chairman.
2. In more normal institutions, attempting to avoid participating in a strike could actually turn out to be much more dangerous than being the life and soul of it. For more information, contact your local college bully.
The Five commandments of a striker
With the statutory warnings done away with, I think it’s time to list the five commandments on how to go on strike and how not to get BORED when striking. (For the benefit of the curious, there are five because I couldn’t think of any more.)
1. Thou shalt not attempt to sneak out of class into labs when thy student leader hast called a strike-
This is a commandment, which makes sense, apart from being the right thing to do from a moral standpoint. The student leaders and their minions are, as a rule, not people to upset or annoy. That’s because they don’t retreat to a corner and cry foul when every student runs to the lab instead of the lawn. They haff methods, so to speak, of making you walk out. And those methods are not particularly pleasant and involve a certain amount of manhandling as well.
2. Thou shalt not adhere to a lecturer’s requests to sit in class during a strike, even if he offers thou the last five minutes of his class to strike to thy heart’s content
Nothing much to be said about this commandment, except that one of our lecturers actually made us the offer. Offshoot – the entire class which was vacillating till that moment decided to walk out en masse, leaving him alone holding a piece of chalk and the attendance book. (Rumour goes that he actually taught the empty classroom the instruction set of the 8086 and went on to take attendance, dutifully listing the names to the walls– ‘just in case the principal comes on his rounds, no?’)
3. Thou shalt identify in advance the possible days for a strike
College is the Al-Qaeda of the war on boredom. The only day when one will not be tortured by pangs of boredom is when there is a strike. Therefore, being a dutiful footsoldier of the war on boredom, you should always pay attention to the rumour mill. You can always get some information on the next strike so that you can actually ‘live a strike’.
4. Thou shalt cometh prepared for the strike, otherwise thou shalt suffer from boredom during the strike.
If you follow Commandment 3 like a dutiful practitioner should, you should have no problem preparing for the strike. Strikes, especially in normally disciplined colleges like mine, have all the hallmarks of a garden party. But without entertainment, even this can turn boring. Therefore, as a reveller, one must carry with oneself the following essentials:
a. Two packets of potato chips
b. One 2 litre bottle of 7 – up. The sceptics among you may scoff at my specifically mentioning 7-up, as the drink of choice. That’s ‘cause 7-up looks like water and so it is unlikely that unprepared revellers will attempt to join the party. Besides, I like Fido Dido…
c. One MP3 Player/Discman/Walkman with detachable head phones (in case somebody else wants to listen to the music as well)
d. A musical instrument (optional – applies to musicians only – and definitely not to those who think they are John Lennon reincarnated)
e. A pack of cards to play with when one debates the reasons behind the strike with one’s friends
f. If one is more adventurous than most, one can carry along with one a little bottle of the blushed hippocrene – something which goes very well with 7-Up! But, of course, under the influence of this stimulant, one may partake more actively in the strike than one may in other circumstances when one is less high.
5. If thou faileth to follow the aforementioned commandments, thou shalt be deemed to have sinned.
-General Siddhu Warrier
Commanding Officer, War on Boredom
Friday, June 03, 2005
Whose letter was it anyway? - Part II
The move to dismember me was met with firm approval from most ends of the class. Some characters - the kind who perform buckwing dances at Taliban executions - actively cheered Ramesh on. It was then that my guardian angel, in the form of a stripling from the sixth standard, walked into the class.
The stripling walked towards my assassin. In a meek voice did he speak –
‘Anna, excuse me, I’m really sorry for interrupting you. Could you please strangle him after a little while, please? Kranthi Madam wants to see Siddhu Anna there.’
The utterance of the feared Gandu’s name struck both of us hard. Though Ramesh would have preferred to continue to strangle me, he realized that Gandu would prefer a live Siddhu to a dead one placed on a block of ice.
As I struggled back up, I realized the portent of the stripling’s announcement. A visit to Gandu in these circumstances was likely to be a lot worse than a night spent inside Abu Gharib.
It was thus with a fair amount of trepidation that I knocked on the door to the Physics lab.
‘Hello, Ma’am… Did you call me?’, said I, trying hard to adopt a breezy manner and failing miserably.
‘Come in, you impertinent creature. What are you doing in school?’
That was a simple one, I thought. Smiling inwardly, I answered sincerely,
‘I’m studying, Ma’am.’
A look at the dreadful expression on her face convinced me that there couldn’t have been a more wrong answer to that question. She began to scream, as was her wont.
‘You useless creature!! You hippopotamus! You rhinoceros! (Gandu had an inexplicable habit of calling to the wild for help when in need of expletives) I can see how you’re studying! Studying, my elephant…er…foot!’
She waved the heart-infested notepaper at my nose, which I noticed Sweety had liberally drenched in perfume. I crinkled my nose in distaste as Gandu continued, her voice probably carrying to the furthest corners of India.
‘You are supposed to be studying!’, she repeated for the third time, ‘And what you’re doing is trying to help a girl and boy love each other! Are you a pimp? If so, go to a kodambakkam street corner! Who is the addle-brained girl who’s written this?’
Like most criminals when faced with a cop, I stayed stoically silent as she tried to worm the girl’s name out of me.
After a while, she gave up and instructed me to summon Ramesh to her torture chamber.
It was a sobbing, still homicidal Ramesh that followed my despondent self into the dungeon.
As I walked in, I could feel evil, pain and sorrow in the lab. The Vernier calipers and screw gauges seemed to be laughing at me. The potentiometer seemed to be rubbing its hands in sadistic glee.
It was no surprise therefore that Ramesh erupted, crying violently, even before Gandu could get her instruments of torture out.
‘Ma’am, I am a good boy, Ma’am. I am not doing this loving and all, Ma’am. I want to get into an engineering college, and then go to the USA to do my MS. It’s all that stupid Sweety’s fault.’
Gandu fixed upon me a glittering eye that would have put the ancient mariner to shame.
‘Go call that Sweetie, you useless komodo dragon!’
But Sweety had got wind of happenings in the physics lab, quite probably thanks to Gandu’s carrying voice, and had executed a swift exit from school – rather like that bloke in one of Shakespeare’s plays who ‘exits quickly, pursued by bear’.
Cut to: The Next Day
I was still nursing a twisted neck and a throbbing head when I was called to the Physics lab again.
Ramesh stood next to the potentiometer, dripping tears onto the spectrometer. Gandu looked a lot more somber, and was almost kindly to me.
‘I have bad news for you, you… creature!! Your Sweety’s father has complained to the KVS commissioner that you boys composed love letters ostensibly from her, in order to humiliate her!’
Another screeching halt to creation. Ten seconds when the world swum around me.
As I slowly returned to the land of the living, my head spun at the thought of Sweety’s treacherousness. My head spun even more at the thought of meeting the KVS commissioner. At the conclusion of it, I knew my career options would be limited to delivering pressed clothes in my neighbourhood and carrying sacks of rice in the neighbourhood rice mandi.
‘Not that you people are much better, but I think you ought to be saved from the righteous wrath of the KVS commissioner, who in case you didn’t know is a member of the Shiv Sena and takes a dim view of such immorality. And, yeah! He admires Talibanesque solutions to such issues between the sexes.’, Gandu concluded, a wicked smile playing on her lips.
‘The only solution’, she continued, ‘is to present the letter to the principal, and hope he can calm the commissioner down. Give me the rest of the pages of this letter. At least, that way we can try to prove that Sweety wrote it!’
I bet a part of her wanted to read it. Gandu was probably a fan of Mills and Boon.
Ramesh was startled out of his reverie. He began to bawl loudly.
Amidst the bawling, he spoke.
‘Ma’am, I tore the pieces up and scattered them in the corner of the park!’
Gandu got into action swiftly. She summoned a few minions from my class and directed us to the park to try reassemble the letter. The minions were only too happy to miss a few classes, and searched the bushes with a song on their lips.
Thankfully, Ramesh was unskilled at destroying evidence. We managed to recover most of the pieces, and piece together a reasonably coherent page or two, including a little piece where Sweety had painstakingly inscribed her name. Gandu ushered us in to the principal’s room.
The principal was a diminutive, bored-looking man, whose chief claim to fame was getting beaten up inside an elevator by a chap he’d expelled from school.
He scanned the letter with a bored air – almost as if it were a request to requisition 115 chairs for the annual day.
Then, he looked around the room, yawned loudly, stared fixatedly at the portrait of the principal who mismanaged things from 1876-1890, and finally rang the bell for his peon.
‘Go get that whats-her-name from the XII standard’, he said to the peon, and resumed his inspection of the smut on Dr. Vasu’s nose (Principal, 1945-1948).
Gandu rushed to clarify things further with the peon, and the peon rushed away.
Presently, a chagrined Sweety rushed in. She gave me a look of malevolence that filled me with a nameless dread.
‘Listen… you wrote the letter, no? It’s okay; infatuations are common among girls your age – you’ll probably realize later that this fellow here is ugly enough to scare the living hell out of most sane people.’, said our principal expansively, rather like an old uncle, pointing at me.
He was always mixing things up.
Sweety opened her mouth to speak. Whether she did so to strongly refute her having written the letter, or to explain to the principal that he had got the identity of the loved one all wrong – I shall never know. For the principal cut her off with a friendly smile and a few inanities.
He then said he considered the matter closed, and would tell the commissioner so.
It was a relieved self that walked home. The physics teacher had solemnly promised to take care of me during the lab exams, and I doubted whether she meant that she’d help me out by passing me a few readings on the sly.
At around seven, when I’d restarted my perusal of the Harold Robbins in full earnest, the phone rang again.
‘Hello’, I said, rather abrasively.
‘Hello yourself, you sniveling little bastard! You weasel! How could you even think I’d fall for you if you sabotaged my only true love? Anyway, I can’t imagine ever falling for you!’, screamed the voice at the other end rather uncharitably.
The voice continued at some length on how desperate I was, and how I’d suffer for this all my life. I realized the voice was Sweety’s, and found the proceedings quite entertaining. But then, she went on to say something that chilled my bone to the marrow.
‘I’ll poison your food someday. Just you wait!’, and she banged the phone down.
A girl who draws little hearts on notepaper is exactly the kind of girl who’s likely to walk around with a little bottle of arsenic in hand.
I spent the rest of the year without taking my eyes of my lunch box.
Cut to: 2005. A 21 year old nice young man walks along the street when he is accosted by a PYT.
PYT: Hey, aren’t you Siddhu?
Young Man: (Mutters a few modest inanities)
(A few minutes pass, and with the passage of the minutes, the young man’s expression changes almost imperceptibly)
PYT: Can I buy you lunch? My treat…
(Whoosh! And the PYT watches despondently as all that is left is a cloud of dust.)
And the fear doth thus live on…
The stripling walked towards my assassin. In a meek voice did he speak –
‘Anna, excuse me, I’m really sorry for interrupting you. Could you please strangle him after a little while, please? Kranthi Madam wants to see Siddhu Anna there.’
The utterance of the feared Gandu’s name struck both of us hard. Though Ramesh would have preferred to continue to strangle me, he realized that Gandu would prefer a live Siddhu to a dead one placed on a block of ice.
As I struggled back up, I realized the portent of the stripling’s announcement. A visit to Gandu in these circumstances was likely to be a lot worse than a night spent inside Abu Gharib.
It was thus with a fair amount of trepidation that I knocked on the door to the Physics lab.
‘Hello, Ma’am… Did you call me?’, said I, trying hard to adopt a breezy manner and failing miserably.
‘Come in, you impertinent creature. What are you doing in school?’
That was a simple one, I thought. Smiling inwardly, I answered sincerely,
‘I’m studying, Ma’am.’
A look at the dreadful expression on her face convinced me that there couldn’t have been a more wrong answer to that question. She began to scream, as was her wont.
‘You useless creature!! You hippopotamus! You rhinoceros! (Gandu had an inexplicable habit of calling to the wild for help when in need of expletives) I can see how you’re studying! Studying, my elephant…er…foot!’
She waved the heart-infested notepaper at my nose, which I noticed Sweety had liberally drenched in perfume. I crinkled my nose in distaste as Gandu continued, her voice probably carrying to the furthest corners of India.
‘You are supposed to be studying!’, she repeated for the third time, ‘And what you’re doing is trying to help a girl and boy love each other! Are you a pimp? If so, go to a kodambakkam street corner! Who is the addle-brained girl who’s written this?’
Like most criminals when faced with a cop, I stayed stoically silent as she tried to worm the girl’s name out of me.
After a while, she gave up and instructed me to summon Ramesh to her torture chamber.
It was a sobbing, still homicidal Ramesh that followed my despondent self into the dungeon.
As I walked in, I could feel evil, pain and sorrow in the lab. The Vernier calipers and screw gauges seemed to be laughing at me. The potentiometer seemed to be rubbing its hands in sadistic glee.
It was no surprise therefore that Ramesh erupted, crying violently, even before Gandu could get her instruments of torture out.
‘Ma’am, I am a good boy, Ma’am. I am not doing this loving and all, Ma’am. I want to get into an engineering college, and then go to the USA to do my MS. It’s all that stupid Sweety’s fault.’
Gandu fixed upon me a glittering eye that would have put the ancient mariner to shame.
‘Go call that Sweetie, you useless komodo dragon!’
But Sweety had got wind of happenings in the physics lab, quite probably thanks to Gandu’s carrying voice, and had executed a swift exit from school – rather like that bloke in one of Shakespeare’s plays who ‘exits quickly, pursued by bear’.
Cut to: The Next Day
I was still nursing a twisted neck and a throbbing head when I was called to the Physics lab again.
Ramesh stood next to the potentiometer, dripping tears onto the spectrometer. Gandu looked a lot more somber, and was almost kindly to me.
‘I have bad news for you, you… creature!! Your Sweety’s father has complained to the KVS commissioner that you boys composed love letters ostensibly from her, in order to humiliate her!’
Another screeching halt to creation. Ten seconds when the world swum around me.
As I slowly returned to the land of the living, my head spun at the thought of Sweety’s treacherousness. My head spun even more at the thought of meeting the KVS commissioner. At the conclusion of it, I knew my career options would be limited to delivering pressed clothes in my neighbourhood and carrying sacks of rice in the neighbourhood rice mandi.
‘Not that you people are much better, but I think you ought to be saved from the righteous wrath of the KVS commissioner, who in case you didn’t know is a member of the Shiv Sena and takes a dim view of such immorality. And, yeah! He admires Talibanesque solutions to such issues between the sexes.’, Gandu concluded, a wicked smile playing on her lips.
‘The only solution’, she continued, ‘is to present the letter to the principal, and hope he can calm the commissioner down. Give me the rest of the pages of this letter. At least, that way we can try to prove that Sweety wrote it!’
I bet a part of her wanted to read it. Gandu was probably a fan of Mills and Boon.
Ramesh was startled out of his reverie. He began to bawl loudly.
Amidst the bawling, he spoke.
‘Ma’am, I tore the pieces up and scattered them in the corner of the park!’
Gandu got into action swiftly. She summoned a few minions from my class and directed us to the park to try reassemble the letter. The minions were only too happy to miss a few classes, and searched the bushes with a song on their lips.
Thankfully, Ramesh was unskilled at destroying evidence. We managed to recover most of the pieces, and piece together a reasonably coherent page or two, including a little piece where Sweety had painstakingly inscribed her name. Gandu ushered us in to the principal’s room.
The principal was a diminutive, bored-looking man, whose chief claim to fame was getting beaten up inside an elevator by a chap he’d expelled from school.
He scanned the letter with a bored air – almost as if it were a request to requisition 115 chairs for the annual day.
Then, he looked around the room, yawned loudly, stared fixatedly at the portrait of the principal who mismanaged things from 1876-1890, and finally rang the bell for his peon.
‘Go get that whats-her-name from the XII standard’, he said to the peon, and resumed his inspection of the smut on Dr. Vasu’s nose (Principal, 1945-1948).
Gandu rushed to clarify things further with the peon, and the peon rushed away.
Presently, a chagrined Sweety rushed in. She gave me a look of malevolence that filled me with a nameless dread.
‘Listen… you wrote the letter, no? It’s okay; infatuations are common among girls your age – you’ll probably realize later that this fellow here is ugly enough to scare the living hell out of most sane people.’, said our principal expansively, rather like an old uncle, pointing at me.
He was always mixing things up.
Sweety opened her mouth to speak. Whether she did so to strongly refute her having written the letter, or to explain to the principal that he had got the identity of the loved one all wrong – I shall never know. For the principal cut her off with a friendly smile and a few inanities.
He then said he considered the matter closed, and would tell the commissioner so.
It was a relieved self that walked home. The physics teacher had solemnly promised to take care of me during the lab exams, and I doubted whether she meant that she’d help me out by passing me a few readings on the sly.
At around seven, when I’d restarted my perusal of the Harold Robbins in full earnest, the phone rang again.
‘Hello’, I said, rather abrasively.
‘Hello yourself, you sniveling little bastard! You weasel! How could you even think I’d fall for you if you sabotaged my only true love? Anyway, I can’t imagine ever falling for you!’, screamed the voice at the other end rather uncharitably.
The voice continued at some length on how desperate I was, and how I’d suffer for this all my life. I realized the voice was Sweety’s, and found the proceedings quite entertaining. But then, she went on to say something that chilled my bone to the marrow.
‘I’ll poison your food someday. Just you wait!’, and she banged the phone down.
A girl who draws little hearts on notepaper is exactly the kind of girl who’s likely to walk around with a little bottle of arsenic in hand.
I spent the rest of the year without taking my eyes of my lunch box.
Cut to: 2005. A 21 year old nice young man walks along the street when he is accosted by a PYT.
PYT: Hey, aren’t you Siddhu?
Young Man: (Mutters a few modest inanities)
(A few minutes pass, and with the passage of the minutes, the young man’s expression changes almost imperceptibly)
PYT: Can I buy you lunch? My treat…
(Whoosh! And the PYT watches despondently as all that is left is a cloud of dust.)
And the fear doth thus live on…
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Who's letter was it anyway? - Part I
It was on a beautiful evening – the kind of evening when one doesn’t need any alcohol to see things through rose tinted glasses – that it all began.
It was a happy, contented self that read the Harold Robbins, tucked neatly beneath the covers of my Physics textbook. I was just getting to the interesting part of the book, where the intrepid explorer discovers the hidden location of the G-spot when backpacking through the reddest areas of New York City.
And then, the phone rang. With a soft curse on my lips, I abandoned the hero in his quest for the elusive conference of nymphomaniacs (for the nonce, at least).
‘Hello’, I said abrasively.
All I could perceive was persistent sobs from the other end of the line.
I was not amused. My intrepid explorer awaited my return, in order to continue his journey through a hundred vaginas. And here I was, listening to some idiot sobbing on a phone.
After a few more sobs, the voice at the other end cleared. It was Ramesh, a classmate of mine.
‘She sent me a love letter da’, said he and resumed his sobbing.
I wished to know who it was, being the logical, rational kind of bloke that you hear so much about. But before I could, he continued,
‘My mother didn’t (sob) raise me this way, da. I’m not the love letter kind of guy.’, and begin to bawl loud enough to wake the dead.
I completely concurred with him on that. He was the kind of chap who was raised from a young age to enjoy his tyresaadam frigid and his women even more so. What I failed to understand was why any woman would send him a love letter, when there were gallant, charming, dashing and available men like me.
‘Who is she? Is she not what you’d called endowed with espièglerie?’, asked I.
‘Dai, at this age, da! Crucial 12th Standard da! It’s so filthy to do this loving and all. And it’s Sweety!’
At this moment, the world did not, in all likelihood, stop spinning. But as far as I was concerned, creation ceased to exist for the space of a minute. Sweety was the kind of girl who could elicit a whistle or two even if she walked past a trappist* monastery in upper Tibet. Hot, to be plain, just about summed it up.
‘Then why on earth are you crying? She should be crying for having sent the letter to you of all people’, said I, rather uncharitably.
He waxed eloquent on the immorality of pre-marital love (especially if the girl fell in love first) and how he wouldn’t look at a girl unless his mother told him to. He then told me to break the bad news to her, failing which my broken neck would float in the well near the vice-principal’s quarters.
Harold Robbin’s riveting tale of a young man’s felinological quest would have to wait.
The next day, I was blessed with the opportunity to read that ode to immortal love that Sweety had written. Sweety was blessed with plenty in many places, including plenty of thick bone in the base of the skull. This was amply in evidence from the effort she’d put into drawing little red hearts along the margins of the notepaper in which she’d written the letter, and the utter bilge she’d filled the notepaper with.
I erupted into laughter when I read a line where she’d listed her only crushes in life – a list which included such doyens as Rowan Atkinson and the bloke who played Tipu Sultan in the teleseries. He was, she asserted, the only real-life character that had caught her fancy.
She went on to request him to wear a purple arm band (enclosed within) ten inches from his wrist and walk down the stairs at 12:35 pm the next day to bring to her notice his ardour.
(I owe it to the reader to explain at this point that Ramesh had the physical proportions of a John Abraham, and the psychological growth of a Little Lord Faunterloy.)
Ramesh spent the whole day cowering beneath his desk. I toyed briefly with the idea of wearing the purple arm-band myself, but dismissed it as beyond the sphere of practical politics. I re-read the love letters, placed it carefully within my Physics notebook, and prepared myself to speak to Sweety – who had till then treated me as something of a cross between an iguana and a cockroach. At 12:40, I walked down the stairs.
‘Er hi Sweety…what’s up?’, I said, trying hard not to salivate. She looked particularly tantalizing that day.
Sweety bestowed upon me a bored look.
‘ What do you want, Siddhu? Why don’t you come back later? I’m busy now’
‘Its something important I have to tell you.’, said I rather desperately, a sheepish grin plastered on my face.
‘Oh… but you’re not important. So buzz off!’, said she, rather cruelly. Her giggly friend, who stood next to her as always, began to giggle at this.
But, as I have had opportunity to mention before, us Warriers are made of sterner stuff.
‘Its about Ramesh…’, I said, a confident smile on my face.
Her entire aspect changed. It was one thing to crush beneath her pretty heel a puny little rat whom she strongly suspected had a crush on her. But it was another matter altogether when the puny little rat turned out to be the loved one’s emissary.
I tried to tell her, as mildly as possible, that Ramesh wasn’t the ‘love-letter kind of guy’, and he was a few miles removed from being the ‘pub-kind of guy’ she lusted for.
She deliberated on this with her friend, philosopher and guide for awhile, whispering away as I watched.
Then, her friend took me apart and told me in a solemn voice that she understood that I had long nourished feelings for Sweety, and that I had this soulful look in my eyes when I looked at her.
And then she concluded rather hastily requesting me to keep my pimply nose to myself, at least until I’d added a few inches to my chest and lost a few around the waist. She’s way out of your league, buster, was the message.
And that was that…
I took the pages of the love-letter off my Physics notebook and returned them to Ramesh, refusing any further involvement in the sordid mess. I told him that I preferred floating lifeless in the well near the vice-principal’s quarters. Hell, I could probably give my vice-principal a scare that way!
I then walked toward the Physics lab to submit my Physics notebook, hoping she’d understand why I hadn’t submitted it two days ago with the rest of the class. She didn’t.
I was a shell of my former self as I dragged myself back to class. In class lay waiting an agitated Ramesh.
‘B****, you haven’t given me the first page of the letter. I want to tear it up too and scatter the pieces near the park.’, said he.
‘Oh, it’s in my physics notebook, don’t worry!’, said I, nonchalantly.
‘Where the f*** is your physics notebook’, he said rather agitatedly.
The world came to a grinding halt for the second time in two days.
‘Oh f***! I gave it to Gandu…’, I said slowly, alluding to the nom de guerre of my Physics teacher.
‘Holy shit!’, screamed Ramesh as he began to strangulate me. I could see the tears stream down his face as he strained to separate my head from my torso.
To be continued…
*Trappist ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr p st)n.
A member of the main branch of Cistercian monks, characterized by austerity and a vow of silence, established in 1664 at La Trappe Monastery in northwest France.
It was a happy, contented self that read the Harold Robbins, tucked neatly beneath the covers of my Physics textbook. I was just getting to the interesting part of the book, where the intrepid explorer discovers the hidden location of the G-spot when backpacking through the reddest areas of New York City.
And then, the phone rang. With a soft curse on my lips, I abandoned the hero in his quest for the elusive conference of nymphomaniacs (for the nonce, at least).
‘Hello’, I said abrasively.
All I could perceive was persistent sobs from the other end of the line.
I was not amused. My intrepid explorer awaited my return, in order to continue his journey through a hundred vaginas. And here I was, listening to some idiot sobbing on a phone.
After a few more sobs, the voice at the other end cleared. It was Ramesh, a classmate of mine.
‘She sent me a love letter da’, said he and resumed his sobbing.
I wished to know who it was, being the logical, rational kind of bloke that you hear so much about. But before I could, he continued,
‘My mother didn’t (sob) raise me this way, da. I’m not the love letter kind of guy.’, and begin to bawl loud enough to wake the dead.
I completely concurred with him on that. He was the kind of chap who was raised from a young age to enjoy his tyresaadam frigid and his women even more so. What I failed to understand was why any woman would send him a love letter, when there were gallant, charming, dashing and available men like me.
‘Who is she? Is she not what you’d called endowed with espièglerie?’, asked I.
‘Dai, at this age, da! Crucial 12th Standard da! It’s so filthy to do this loving and all. And it’s Sweety!’
At this moment, the world did not, in all likelihood, stop spinning. But as far as I was concerned, creation ceased to exist for the space of a minute. Sweety was the kind of girl who could elicit a whistle or two even if she walked past a trappist* monastery in upper Tibet. Hot, to be plain, just about summed it up.
‘Then why on earth are you crying? She should be crying for having sent the letter to you of all people’, said I, rather uncharitably.
He waxed eloquent on the immorality of pre-marital love (especially if the girl fell in love first) and how he wouldn’t look at a girl unless his mother told him to. He then told me to break the bad news to her, failing which my broken neck would float in the well near the vice-principal’s quarters.
Harold Robbin’s riveting tale of a young man’s felinological quest would have to wait.
The next day, I was blessed with the opportunity to read that ode to immortal love that Sweety had written. Sweety was blessed with plenty in many places, including plenty of thick bone in the base of the skull. This was amply in evidence from the effort she’d put into drawing little red hearts along the margins of the notepaper in which she’d written the letter, and the utter bilge she’d filled the notepaper with.
I erupted into laughter when I read a line where she’d listed her only crushes in life – a list which included such doyens as Rowan Atkinson and the bloke who played Tipu Sultan in the teleseries. He was, she asserted, the only real-life character that had caught her fancy.
She went on to request him to wear a purple arm band (enclosed within) ten inches from his wrist and walk down the stairs at 12:35 pm the next day to bring to her notice his ardour.
(I owe it to the reader to explain at this point that Ramesh had the physical proportions of a John Abraham, and the psychological growth of a Little Lord Faunterloy.)
Ramesh spent the whole day cowering beneath his desk. I toyed briefly with the idea of wearing the purple arm-band myself, but dismissed it as beyond the sphere of practical politics. I re-read the love letters, placed it carefully within my Physics notebook, and prepared myself to speak to Sweety – who had till then treated me as something of a cross between an iguana and a cockroach. At 12:40, I walked down the stairs.
‘Er hi Sweety…what’s up?’, I said, trying hard not to salivate. She looked particularly tantalizing that day.
Sweety bestowed upon me a bored look.
‘ What do you want, Siddhu? Why don’t you come back later? I’m busy now’
‘Its something important I have to tell you.’, said I rather desperately, a sheepish grin plastered on my face.
‘Oh… but you’re not important. So buzz off!’, said she, rather cruelly. Her giggly friend, who stood next to her as always, began to giggle at this.
But, as I have had opportunity to mention before, us Warriers are made of sterner stuff.
‘Its about Ramesh…’, I said, a confident smile on my face.
Her entire aspect changed. It was one thing to crush beneath her pretty heel a puny little rat whom she strongly suspected had a crush on her. But it was another matter altogether when the puny little rat turned out to be the loved one’s emissary.
I tried to tell her, as mildly as possible, that Ramesh wasn’t the ‘love-letter kind of guy’, and he was a few miles removed from being the ‘pub-kind of guy’ she lusted for.
She deliberated on this with her friend, philosopher and guide for awhile, whispering away as I watched.
Then, her friend took me apart and told me in a solemn voice that she understood that I had long nourished feelings for Sweety, and that I had this soulful look in my eyes when I looked at her.
And then she concluded rather hastily requesting me to keep my pimply nose to myself, at least until I’d added a few inches to my chest and lost a few around the waist. She’s way out of your league, buster, was the message.
And that was that…
I took the pages of the love-letter off my Physics notebook and returned them to Ramesh, refusing any further involvement in the sordid mess. I told him that I preferred floating lifeless in the well near the vice-principal’s quarters. Hell, I could probably give my vice-principal a scare that way!
I then walked toward the Physics lab to submit my Physics notebook, hoping she’d understand why I hadn’t submitted it two days ago with the rest of the class. She didn’t.
I was a shell of my former self as I dragged myself back to class. In class lay waiting an agitated Ramesh.
‘B****, you haven’t given me the first page of the letter. I want to tear it up too and scatter the pieces near the park.’, said he.
‘Oh, it’s in my physics notebook, don’t worry!’, said I, nonchalantly.
‘Where the f*** is your physics notebook’, he said rather agitatedly.
The world came to a grinding halt for the second time in two days.
‘Oh f***! I gave it to Gandu…’, I said slowly, alluding to the nom de guerre of my Physics teacher.
‘Holy shit!’, screamed Ramesh as he began to strangulate me. I could see the tears stream down his face as he strained to separate my head from my torso.
To be continued…
*Trappist ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr p st)n.
A member of the main branch of Cistercian monks, characterized by austerity and a vow of silence, established in 1664 at La Trappe Monastery in northwest France.
Friday, May 20, 2005
The Classroom Cartoonist - me, the next R.K. Laxman?
I will be out of station for the next ten days, and will be away from blogsville. :-(. But I will be driving along South India's expansive highways. :-D. Anyway, till then, adios. Hope this post reads good - I wrote this as well a while back. (Btw, I will try to sneak in a post or two from Trivandrum, where I shall be ;-))
Becoming a classroom cartoonist is one of the best ways, according to Carnegie Mellon University, to win friends and influence people. If you are a short, pimply bloke like me whom the girls never bother to say hi to, you can always woo them with your pictures of the Hindi teacher in a toga sipping on moonshine in a western saloon.
However, classroom cartoonists have several problems related to suppression of their artistic freedom. They face some of the same perils that Commie dissidents who attempt to tell the General Secretary that the people prefer bread to cake and Cuban cartoonists who depict Ol’ Fidel dancing the tango in his underwear.
It is however a highly worthy pastime as the following account of my own experiences as a classroom cartoonist clearly illustrates.
How ennui almost made me the next R.K.Laxman (1998)
(and the brutal story of the suppression of artistic freedom that followed)
This happened when I was an untried, untested young lad of 14. I was in my ninth standard and as penance for a misspent young life, I was sitting in the first bench, writing notes and actually listening to the teachers in class.
But even human endurance, even if toughened by the rigours of penance, has its limits. My endurance met its limits in the History class. I found myself utterly incapable of staying awake in the class.
But the History teacher was unfortunately blessed with the eyes of a hawk as well. She would notice every tear of boredom (and there were a lot of them) that streamed down my cheek and bless upon me that sardonic smile that was the precursor to expulsion from the classroom (and a subsequent, rather unpleasant meeting with the vice-principal).
Our teacher discussed Hammurabi’s code at a pace that would have appeared to be slow even to an acclaimed retard like George W Bush. It was therefore scientifically impossible to stay awake in her class and actually concentrate. I had even attempted to count the number of leaves on the tree outside my class.
I therefore developed a scintillating new technique of passing the time which I was sure would escape the notice of her eagle eye. I began to devote every moment to concentrating upon splitting her image into two. I could see two of her, two black boards, two lecterns and two of everything else including my nose. In spite of the fact that staring at four stout forearms wielding chalkpieces was worse than staring at just two, this occupation seemed to be safe yet fun.
But, when I was into my third day and attempting to discern whether one of her was actually smaller than the other, I realized that she (both of her) was looking at me rather intently whenever she turned away from the blackboard. At the end of the class, she asked me, with a highly concentrated version of her sardonic smile, to visit her in the staffroom.
The invite was definitely not for a cup of tea over which we would discuss world politics, I concluded (though I fervently it would be something along those lines). When I went into the staff room, I was filled with a nameless dread.
She asked me, rather sweetly, ‘Siddhu, do you have a squint?’
I had to reply, rather perplexed, that I didn’t. The last thing I expected her to ask me was this. I would have been less surprised if she had asked me whether I was harbouring Osama at my house.
[Sardonic smile switched on like a 60 watt bulb.]
‘Then why, pray tell, are you squinting in my class? You do that once more, no, I will take you to VP, ok?’
And then, she launched into a long-winded lecture about how she was the epitome of virtue when she was herself a student (rumoured to be sometime in the decade before the First War of Indian Independence).
The question of why I saw two of my nose had been worrying me all the while. The answer now struck me like a tight slap across the face.
That was the end of my career as an image splitter.
And that marked the beginning of my cartooning career – the boredom beating technique that this blog is all about.
I thought India was a free, democratic country. After all, had not Keshav walked free after consistently representing Narasimha Rao with a zipper for a mouth? With such illustrious predecessors behind me, I felt no qualms as I set about creating my own set of cartoon characters from a bunch of eccentrics I met everyday – my schoolteachers.
This, I was sure, was by far the safest and most entertaining technique of scoring one over ennui. Even hawk-eye, my old nemesis, would not be able to discern that I was drawing her in battle dress fighting Hamid Karzai in a ring. She would definitely, I reasoned, assume that I was copying her ugly drawings of the map of Upper Mongolia (circa 1560).
Once again, my master strategy succeeded initially. In fact, in order to maintain continuity in the strips I was illustrating, I dispensed of every notebook except one which became the only one I carried to school every day. Until that fateful day…
It happened to Napoleon at Waterloo. To Hitler at Stalingrad. To Alexander the Great in the Gangetic plains. And to yours truly in the History class.
Buouyed by the fact that not a single teacher had yet suspected me of adding their mug shots to my notebook, I grew bolder and bolder. I was so involved in crafting the AK-47 that Ahmed Shah Masood was to shoot Musharaff dead with that I did not notice the sniggers of the class. I did not notice the slight shadow that had formed over the notebook. I did not notice the dangerously sardonic smile until a familiar hand whisked the book from underneath my pen.
It was, as that intellectual giant of our times, Arnold, would have put it, Asta La Vista, as far as I was concerned.
What followed was just another reason for the reformation of the school education system in India. The suppression of my artistic freedom would have put even Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein to shame.
Instead of appreciating my artistic creativity at such a young age and having a hearty laugh over how I had portrayed the G.K teacher in a Superman suit (among others), the P.T sir hit me with the branch broken from a convenient tree, my history teacher did not let me inside her class for the rest of the year, my science teacher told me that she would fervently pray that I flunked my board exams and to top it all off, my parents took a rather unfair and uncharitable view of the whole incident.
However, thanks to this, I did not suffer from boredom at all, for a very long time…
Becoming a classroom cartoonist is one of the best ways, according to Carnegie Mellon University, to win friends and influence people. If you are a short, pimply bloke like me whom the girls never bother to say hi to, you can always woo them with your pictures of the Hindi teacher in a toga sipping on moonshine in a western saloon.
However, classroom cartoonists have several problems related to suppression of their artistic freedom. They face some of the same perils that Commie dissidents who attempt to tell the General Secretary that the people prefer bread to cake and Cuban cartoonists who depict Ol’ Fidel dancing the tango in his underwear.
It is however a highly worthy pastime as the following account of my own experiences as a classroom cartoonist clearly illustrates.
How ennui almost made me the next R.K.Laxman (1998)
(and the brutal story of the suppression of artistic freedom that followed)
This happened when I was an untried, untested young lad of 14. I was in my ninth standard and as penance for a misspent young life, I was sitting in the first bench, writing notes and actually listening to the teachers in class.
But even human endurance, even if toughened by the rigours of penance, has its limits. My endurance met its limits in the History class. I found myself utterly incapable of staying awake in the class.
But the History teacher was unfortunately blessed with the eyes of a hawk as well. She would notice every tear of boredom (and there were a lot of them) that streamed down my cheek and bless upon me that sardonic smile that was the precursor to expulsion from the classroom (and a subsequent, rather unpleasant meeting with the vice-principal).
Our teacher discussed Hammurabi’s code at a pace that would have appeared to be slow even to an acclaimed retard like George W Bush. It was therefore scientifically impossible to stay awake in her class and actually concentrate. I had even attempted to count the number of leaves on the tree outside my class.
I therefore developed a scintillating new technique of passing the time which I was sure would escape the notice of her eagle eye. I began to devote every moment to concentrating upon splitting her image into two. I could see two of her, two black boards, two lecterns and two of everything else including my nose. In spite of the fact that staring at four stout forearms wielding chalkpieces was worse than staring at just two, this occupation seemed to be safe yet fun.
But, when I was into my third day and attempting to discern whether one of her was actually smaller than the other, I realized that she (both of her) was looking at me rather intently whenever she turned away from the blackboard. At the end of the class, she asked me, with a highly concentrated version of her sardonic smile, to visit her in the staffroom.
The invite was definitely not for a cup of tea over which we would discuss world politics, I concluded (though I fervently it would be something along those lines). When I went into the staff room, I was filled with a nameless dread.
She asked me, rather sweetly, ‘Siddhu, do you have a squint?’
I had to reply, rather perplexed, that I didn’t. The last thing I expected her to ask me was this. I would have been less surprised if she had asked me whether I was harbouring Osama at my house.
[Sardonic smile switched on like a 60 watt bulb.]
‘Then why, pray tell, are you squinting in my class? You do that once more, no, I will take you to VP, ok?’
And then, she launched into a long-winded lecture about how she was the epitome of virtue when she was herself a student (rumoured to be sometime in the decade before the First War of Indian Independence).
The question of why I saw two of my nose had been worrying me all the while. The answer now struck me like a tight slap across the face.
That was the end of my career as an image splitter.
And that marked the beginning of my cartooning career – the boredom beating technique that this blog is all about.
I thought India was a free, democratic country. After all, had not Keshav walked free after consistently representing Narasimha Rao with a zipper for a mouth? With such illustrious predecessors behind me, I felt no qualms as I set about creating my own set of cartoon characters from a bunch of eccentrics I met everyday – my schoolteachers.
This, I was sure, was by far the safest and most entertaining technique of scoring one over ennui. Even hawk-eye, my old nemesis, would not be able to discern that I was drawing her in battle dress fighting Hamid Karzai in a ring. She would definitely, I reasoned, assume that I was copying her ugly drawings of the map of Upper Mongolia (circa 1560).
Once again, my master strategy succeeded initially. In fact, in order to maintain continuity in the strips I was illustrating, I dispensed of every notebook except one which became the only one I carried to school every day. Until that fateful day…
It happened to Napoleon at Waterloo. To Hitler at Stalingrad. To Alexander the Great in the Gangetic plains. And to yours truly in the History class.
Buouyed by the fact that not a single teacher had yet suspected me of adding their mug shots to my notebook, I grew bolder and bolder. I was so involved in crafting the AK-47 that Ahmed Shah Masood was to shoot Musharaff dead with that I did not notice the sniggers of the class. I did not notice the slight shadow that had formed over the notebook. I did not notice the dangerously sardonic smile until a familiar hand whisked the book from underneath my pen.
It was, as that intellectual giant of our times, Arnold, would have put it, Asta La Vista, as far as I was concerned.
What followed was just another reason for the reformation of the school education system in India. The suppression of my artistic freedom would have put even Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein to shame.
Instead of appreciating my artistic creativity at such a young age and having a hearty laugh over how I had portrayed the G.K teacher in a Superman suit (among others), the P.T sir hit me with the branch broken from a convenient tree, my history teacher did not let me inside her class for the rest of the year, my science teacher told me that she would fervently pray that I flunked my board exams and to top it all off, my parents took a rather unfair and uncharitable view of the whole incident.
However, thanks to this, I did not suffer from boredom at all, for a very long time…
Monday, May 16, 2005
The Horny Mallu and the Indecent Proposal - Part II
The sound of a female voice to Bharat was like sex to a nympho. He just couldn’t have enough of it. Every second hour, he’d message asking me if he could hear my sweet, mellifluous voice again.
The voyeur in me had a field day for the next week or so. Bharat had grown bolder with every passing day. Life, as far as Bharat was concerned, was exactly like the erotic stories he’d devoured from the age of ten. His conversations with Maya had begun to progress along the lines described below–
Bharat: (drooling all over the phone, while his spare hand probably attended to urgent business downstairs) Vot you wearing?
Maya: (who barely tolerated these questions) Oh, a Salwar
Bharat: Ohhhhh… salwaaarrr! (Yeah baby! Salwar is probably girl-speak for a G-string)
After six days, Maya turned to me,
‘I’m ****ing sick of this guy. How many more ****ing days am I going to ****ing tolerate this ****ing b******, you bi**h? I can’t ****ing talk to that ****ing retarded b****** every ****ing day!!! Next thing you know, god knows what he’ll want to ask!!’
Maya always believed in expressing herself with a refreshing candour that turned the surrounding air a deep shade of blue.
(Note: Going by the contents of the above conversation, I was left with little doubt as to what he’d want to know next. Your predictions are welcome on the comment board)
I echoed her sentiments as well. I was getting tired of replying to messages which read,
‘Wat are u doing?’
‘I have never seen cute nice girl like you.’
‘ur voice is so sweet I am loving u now.’
Ad nauseum
Ad infinitum…
We called Bharat up that evening.
Bharat: (amorously – didn’t I tell you he was one fast worker?) Oh hello, &^&^*. How r u my honey? I am feeling so nice to hearing to your voice.
Maya: Listen, Bharat, my boyfriend saw one of your messages. He’s a very possessive guy. He’s got so angry that he’s just gone out to uproot a coupla trees and punch the plaster off the wall.
Bharat: Vot??
Maya: Yeah, he finds punching the plaster off the wall always has a calming effect on him. He always does that before his boxing matches.
Bharat: Why?
The usually loquacious Bharat was, for once, less interested in what ‘I’ was wearing, and more in what people would be wearing to his funeral.
Maya_: He is like that only…aaaaaaoooww..no!
At this point, Maya let out a realistic squeal that almost scared me shitless. And then she pushed the phone into my hands.
I was then suffering from the same ailment of the thorax that had vexed me so at my MICA interview. But on this day, sounding like Don Vito Corleone was just what the doctor had ordered.
‘How on earth can you talk to my girl? Who the hell are you? I’ll bloody stake you out, kill you and dance on the remains with hob-nailed boots. ‘, I shouted menacingly.
‘I have hob-nailed boots at home, and the hobs have big nails on them.’, I added rather cleverly.
I carried on in this vein for a few minutes, after which I ran out of breath and expletives.
When I paused, I half-expected him to confront me and fight me for me.
(He thought I was the female me, and not the male me that I actually was. Get it? Probably not!)
But what he ultimately said was something that I could have never have expected.
‘Vot is yuver name?’
I was nonplussed. Bharat had outmarshalled me. I was about to say something when he piped in yet again, ‘I did not understand anyding.’
I decided to slip into the vernacular, and told him in a few choice words that he would be placing his life and limb in grave risk of dismemberment if he dared call my girl again, who in this case was me myself. Well, that’s a moot point.
It was a chastened stalker that hung up.
Epilogue:
A few days later, when I recounted this story to my mother, she expressed a desire to instruct Bharat on a few home truths…
In spite of my protestations, she placed the call.
Bharat, contrary to my expectations, picked the phone up.
After my mother apprised him of how he had been bamboozled by her 20 year old son and his friend and that every woman in the Reliance directory wasn’t a lissome 18 year old nymphomaniac, Bharat had but one thing to say,
‘Vot is the number of the girl I spoke to, then?’
My mother hung up.
Bharat had won… The stalker always wins, goddammit.
Next time, I do the stalking.
P.S: Dai anybody has any good figuru number? Dai, then I can connect superbly no?
The voyeur in me had a field day for the next week or so. Bharat had grown bolder with every passing day. Life, as far as Bharat was concerned, was exactly like the erotic stories he’d devoured from the age of ten. His conversations with Maya had begun to progress along the lines described below–
Bharat: (drooling all over the phone, while his spare hand probably attended to urgent business downstairs) Vot you wearing?
Maya: (who barely tolerated these questions) Oh, a Salwar
Bharat:
After six days, Maya turned to me,
‘I’m ****ing sick of this guy. How many more ****ing days am I going to ****ing tolerate this ****ing b******, you bi**h? I can’t ****ing talk to that ****ing retarded b****** every ****ing day!!! Next thing you know, god knows what he’ll want to ask!!’
Maya always believed in expressing herself with a refreshing candour that turned the surrounding air a deep shade of blue.
(Note: Going by the contents of the above conversation, I was left with little doubt as to what he’d want to know next. Your predictions are welcome on the comment board)
I echoed her sentiments as well. I was getting tired of replying to messages which read,
‘Wat are u doing?’
‘I have never seen cute nice girl like you.’
‘ur voice is so sweet I am loving u now.’
Ad nauseum
Ad infinitum…
We called Bharat up that evening.
Bharat: (amorously – didn’t I tell you he was one fast worker?) Oh hello, &^&^*. How r u my honey? I am feeling so nice to hearing to your voice.
Maya: Listen, Bharat, my boyfriend saw one of your messages. He’s a very possessive guy. He’s got so angry that he’s just gone out to uproot a coupla trees and punch the plaster off the wall.
Bharat: Vot??
Maya: Yeah, he finds punching the plaster off the wall always has a calming effect on him. He always does that before his boxing matches.
Bharat: Why?
The usually loquacious Bharat was, for once, less interested in what ‘I’ was wearing, and more in what people would be wearing to his funeral.
Maya_: He is like that only…aaaaaaoooww..no!
At this point, Maya let out a realistic squeal that almost scared me shitless. And then she pushed the phone into my hands.
I was then suffering from the same ailment of the thorax that had vexed me so at my MICA interview. But on this day, sounding like Don Vito Corleone was just what the doctor had ordered.
‘How on earth can you talk to my girl? Who the hell are you? I’ll bloody stake you out, kill you and dance on the remains with hob-nailed boots. ‘, I shouted menacingly.
‘I have hob-nailed boots at home, and the hobs have big nails on them.’, I added rather cleverly.
I carried on in this vein for a few minutes, after which I ran out of breath and expletives.
When I paused, I half-expected him to confront me and fight me for me.
(He thought I was the female me, and not the male me that I actually was. Get it? Probably not!)
But what he ultimately said was something that I could have never have expected.
‘Vot is yuver name?’
I was nonplussed. Bharat had outmarshalled me. I was about to say something when he piped in yet again, ‘I did not understand anyding.’
I decided to slip into the vernacular, and told him in a few choice words that he would be placing his life and limb in grave risk of dismemberment if he dared call my girl again, who in this case was me myself. Well, that’s a moot point.
It was a chastened stalker that hung up.
Epilogue:
A few days later, when I recounted this story to my mother, she expressed a desire to instruct Bharat on a few home truths…
In spite of my protestations, she placed the call.
Bharat, contrary to my expectations, picked the phone up.
After my mother apprised him of how he had been bamboozled by her 20 year old son and his friend and that every woman in the Reliance directory wasn’t a lissome 18 year old nymphomaniac, Bharat had but one thing to say,
‘Vot is the number of the girl I spoke to, then?’
My mother hung up.
Bharat had won… The stalker always wins, goddammit.
Next time, I do the stalking.
P.S: Dai anybody has any good figuru number? Dai, then I can connect superbly no?
The Horny Mallu and the indecent proposal – Part I
Since the 2nd of May, I’ve been examinationless, and blissfully so. Unfortunately, the bliss that had settled over me was unsettled somewhat because I was struck down by a severe case of writer’s block (yet again!). It was then that I stumbled upon http://ketaki666.blogspot.com/2005/04/stalk-statement.html. This reminded me of the yarn of
The Horny Mallu and the indecent proposal – Part I
It was as I was travelling to college on a rickety old bus that I received the first such message from some number I had never seen before.
‘Hello… can we be friendship?’
It was the work of a moment for me to figure out that this was some horny bloke, to whom a girl had last spoken to in 1990, who was the mastermind behind this message.
Resisting the temptation to request him to stop assassinating the English language, I ignored his message, hoping he’d go away like some of those bad dreams I’ve had, where my vice-principal chases me with an AK 47 in one hand and a Chemistry text book in the other.
But the stalker was more tenacious than my vice-principal. (who usually gave up the chase and lets me wake up after he’s taught me a couple of units in Engineering chemistry)
Message #2 popped up, a mere 5 minutes later.
‘Why no replying?’
This chap was not just persistent but mentally deficient as well, I concluded.
‘ Do I know you?’ , I typed tersely.
Since I had not the misfortune of being stalked ever before, I found it rather ridiculous that the same chap would send me two messages at once.
‘No, but we will know each other. I am Warrier too.’
He knew I was a Warrier?!! A sudden dread filled me. Could this blighter be homosexual, and looking to commit his sodomy for the day? Like a Boy Scout making life miserable for all and sundry trying to perform his good deed for the day? Like Shakti Kapoor out to cast his couch for the day?
It was then that it dawned upon me that this connection was in the name of my mother, &^&%^. And that the idiots at reliance thought that posting mobile numbers on R World was a altruistic gesture. Besides, the Reliance Directory contained nothing to indicate that &^&^&^ was the mother of a 21 year old. Mr. Stalker doubtless had a 21 year old chick in mind.
I was about to inform him of the sad truth when a terribly devilish idea; an idea of Machiavellian – nay, Sistoian ;-) - proportions struck me.
I typed in furiously like a man possessed.
‘Oh that is so nice. Hello’
The next message took a while coming. I began to wonder whether the friendly neighbourhood stalker had been taken aback by what was probably the first decent reply he received from a ‘woman’ in the space of the last 500 SMSes.
Then, ten minutes later, I received a message that removed all the fears I had of Mr. Wonderful’s sexual orientation. I also realized that he was not merely straight and desperate, but was also in a hurry.
‘O I m bharat frm kochi.u v sweet.i kno ur name is &^&%^.sweet name.i wnt 2 tlk u hear ur voice.pl tell wen I can cal den I wil cal please ’
I could well imagine him slobbering over the phone as he typed it in. But a work of art it was not.
Shakespeare, if he had seen the SMS, would have probably shaken his spear at it.
Don Juan would have told Casanova,
‘Romeo, this chap is not!’, and Casanova would have shaken his head wisely in agreement.
The wanting to hear my voice bit was something I had not expected. At least, not so soon. When I was about to counsel him on patience and on the wonders that a little foreplay could do, devilish idea #2 dawned upon me. It was almost as if the spirit of Machiavelli had taken possession of me.
‘Maya*, come here a minute, if you may…’, I hollered to a friend of mine when I reached college.
As she walked over, I told her about the amorous advances I’d been the recipient of. I informed her about how this bloke wished to hear sweet nothings from my ruby red lips.
My crisp baritone, though admirably potent when put to use on the female of the species, would not pass muster here.
‘And since I don’t anyone with a sweet voice, I guess you’ll have to do.’, said I.
Maya ignored the slur, primarily because I offered her quite a few doubloons from the Warrier chest. The fiscal strain on the coffers would be tremendous, but us Warriers can take the rough with the smooth.
I messaged the boor,
‘Hey, you can call me whenever you are free.’
I had hardly pressed the ‘Send’ Button when the phone began to ring. I handed it to Maya.
Maya: Hello, I’m &^&%^. Ohh..you must be Bharat. (ridiculous falsetto that would have aroused suspicions in anybody else.)
Bharat: Er…hello I am bharad. I simbly colled to make friendship.
Maya: Oh that is like choooo sweet of you. What do you do, Bharat? (sounding like a VJ from a music channel who bears a strong resemblance to a buffalo)
As the conversation progressed, it got more and more inane. Bharat’s heart-strings had been set a-flutter by the warmth with which Maya’s voice was so liberally suffused.
But a week later, I realized that letting Bharat speak to a female voice was a Himalayan Blunder, as Jyoti Basu is so fond of putting it.
To be continued
* The name of the girl who did the dirty work is changed to protect author’s life and limb. And I’m particularly safe because I don’t know no Maya. :-D
The Horny Mallu and the indecent proposal – Part I
It was as I was travelling to college on a rickety old bus that I received the first such message from some number I had never seen before.
‘Hello… can we be friendship?’
It was the work of a moment for me to figure out that this was some horny bloke, to whom a girl had last spoken to in 1990, who was the mastermind behind this message.
Resisting the temptation to request him to stop assassinating the English language, I ignored his message, hoping he’d go away like some of those bad dreams I’ve had, where my vice-principal chases me with an AK 47 in one hand and a Chemistry text book in the other.
But the stalker was more tenacious than my vice-principal. (who usually gave up the chase and lets me wake up after he’s taught me a couple of units in Engineering chemistry)
Message #2 popped up, a mere 5 minutes later.
‘Why no replying?’
This chap was not just persistent but mentally deficient as well, I concluded.
‘ Do I know you?’ , I typed tersely.
Since I had not the misfortune of being stalked ever before, I found it rather ridiculous that the same chap would send me two messages at once.
‘No, but we will know each other. I am Warrier too.’
He knew I was a Warrier?!! A sudden dread filled me. Could this blighter be homosexual, and looking to commit his sodomy for the day? Like a Boy Scout making life miserable for all and sundry trying to perform his good deed for the day? Like Shakti Kapoor out to cast his couch for the day?
It was then that it dawned upon me that this connection was in the name of my mother, &^&%^. And that the idiots at reliance thought that posting mobile numbers on R World was a altruistic gesture. Besides, the Reliance Directory contained nothing to indicate that &^&^&^ was the mother of a 21 year old. Mr. Stalker doubtless had a 21 year old chick in mind.
I was about to inform him of the sad truth when a terribly devilish idea; an idea of Machiavellian – nay, Sistoian ;-) - proportions struck me.
I typed in furiously like a man possessed.
‘Oh that is so nice. Hello’
The next message took a while coming. I began to wonder whether the friendly neighbourhood stalker had been taken aback by what was probably the first decent reply he received from a ‘woman’ in the space of the last 500 SMSes.
Then, ten minutes later, I received a message that removed all the fears I had of Mr. Wonderful’s sexual orientation. I also realized that he was not merely straight and desperate, but was also in a hurry.
‘O I m bharat frm kochi.u v sweet.i kno ur name is &^&%^.sweet name.i wnt 2 tlk u hear ur voice.pl tell wen I can cal den I wil cal please ’
I could well imagine him slobbering over the phone as he typed it in. But a work of art it was not.
Shakespeare, if he had seen the SMS, would have probably shaken his spear at it.
Don Juan would have told Casanova,
‘Romeo, this chap is not!’, and Casanova would have shaken his head wisely in agreement.
The wanting to hear my voice bit was something I had not expected. At least, not so soon. When I was about to counsel him on patience and on the wonders that a little foreplay could do, devilish idea #2 dawned upon me. It was almost as if the spirit of Machiavelli had taken possession of me.
‘Maya*, come here a minute, if you may…’, I hollered to a friend of mine when I reached college.
As she walked over, I told her about the amorous advances I’d been the recipient of. I informed her about how this bloke wished to hear sweet nothings from my ruby red lips.
My crisp baritone, though admirably potent when put to use on the female of the species, would not pass muster here.
‘And since I don’t anyone with a sweet voice, I guess you’ll have to do.’, said I.
Maya ignored the slur, primarily because I offered her quite a few doubloons from the Warrier chest. The fiscal strain on the coffers would be tremendous, but us Warriers can take the rough with the smooth.
I messaged the boor,
‘Hey, you can call me whenever you are free.’
I had hardly pressed the ‘Send’ Button when the phone began to ring. I handed it to Maya.
Maya: Hello, I’m &^&%^. Ohh..you must be Bharat. (ridiculous falsetto that would have aroused suspicions in anybody else.)
Bharat: Er…hello I am bharad. I simbly colled to make friendship.
Maya: Oh that is like choooo sweet of you. What do you do, Bharat? (sounding like a VJ from a music channel who bears a strong resemblance to a buffalo)
As the conversation progressed, it got more and more inane. Bharat’s heart-strings had been set a-flutter by the warmth with which Maya’s voice was so liberally suffused.
But a week later, I realized that letting Bharat speak to a female voice was a Himalayan Blunder, as Jyoti Basu is so fond of putting it.
To be continued
* The name of the girl who did the dirty work is changed to protect author’s life and limb. And I’m particularly safe because I don’t know no Maya. :-D
Friday, May 13, 2005
To quit or not to quit...
From childhood on, I’ve been something of a quitter.
It all started when at the age of five I decided I wanted to learn to swim. I saw myself swimming away to Olympic glory, circumnavigating the world with my bare hands and having as many pretty, adoring female fans as Ian Thorpe.
My poor, unsuspecting uncle took me all the way to a swimming pool and told me to go take a shower and put my trunks on. I looked at the water, and saw that it was uncomfortably deep, not to mention uncomfortably cold. The shower capped it – there was no way I was going to take a bath! So I decided to quit.
I told him sagely that there were lots of girls around, and the sight of my dashing self in trunks would probably cause a riot (as they scrambled over each other to get out of the pool).
And thus did I quit…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then, at the age of seven – the guiltiest secret of my life. Yes, I had been sent to carnatic music classes for a month. And my voice was just as bad then as it is today.
I decided to quit. But then, that wasn’t exactly my fault. My music teacher unceremoniously ejected me after tolerating a month of cacophony.
‘Maybe he has other talents, but a Yesudas he is not’, said my embarrassed music teacher to my mother, a day after she requested me not to darken her doorstep again.
And thus did I quit…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then when I was thirteen, I met the Sensei. The Sensei was looking for a big challenge. But big challenges are hard to come by after you’ve jumped through hoops of fire, painted the chief minister’s portrait with your blood and had people break huge blocks of stone on your chest.
He took one look at me – fat, languid and unbearably loquacious.
He turned to my mother and expressed to her his fond desire to teach me the ancient art of self-defence that the Japanese had used to great effect.
Ever since the time when Meee Schream Loudawa (85-50 BC) tried to kick a dino who’d strayed into his cave, missed the dino completely, landed on a rather sensitive part of the anatomy and screamed out a loud ‘Kyaaaiii’. (The dinosaur ran out of the cave with a ruptured eardrum, and thus was born the ancient art of Karate.)
It was a skeptical mother who told him to try and see if he could.
I could do fifty push-ups on my knuckles with a light laugh. Twisting my body into ridiculous contortions while mouthing Japanese obscenities bothered me a bit– especially when my paunch got in the way – but I could do it all right (the creaks and snaps notwithstanding).
But what really got my goat was the pernicious habit two of my friends developed of standing outside the gate of the house where I learnt karate and passing lewd comments about my robes, my katas and the general inflexibility of my body. I wanted to sock it to them there wise guys.
But the Sensei had told me that no proponent of Karate ever used his hands (which, in case you didn’t know, are lethal weapons) to hurt even the smallest mosquito. More importantly, both the smart alecs were considerably bigger and stronger than me. As they laughed, I’d noticed muscles like iron bands rippling underneath their shirts.
So I decided to quit instead. I told the Sensei that I’d read ‘My Experiments with Truth’ and had been convinced that ahimsa was the only way. I’d outmarshalled the two amateur commentators. Besides, those darned mosquitoes were really getting to me.
(stage resounds to a loud slap as I sadistically annihilate a family consisting of papa mosquito, mama mosquito and two baby mosquitoes)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cut to: 1999. A young, still plump and languid 15 year old about to walk into the big bad world of a science education in India smiles at you.
That ugly kid who’s grinning at you is me. It was in ’99 that I got the bright idea that I could make it into one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. All it required, reasoned I, was buying a huge sack of books and joining classes where balding old men on the threshold of losing their sanity taught you the fundamentals of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.
What I had failed to take into account was that one also needed the ability to sleep four hours a day and still remain fresh as the proverbial daisy, work a hundred problems out in an hour, and have an IQ of at least 100.
I, on the other hand, found it difficult to stay awake during the two hours of JEE coaching class unless I tried to count the number of hairs on the professor’s dome.
I could solve a hundred problems in an hour if they were of the ‘Rama has three apples and he gave Shyama two of them, being the kind of selfless retard you read about only in Mathematics books. So how many apples does Rama have now?’ kind. But problems in the JEE were a little more complex than this.
As for the third count, well, I’m no Forrest Gump – Forrest’s a lot smarter.
So, the logical step out was to quit. And quit I did. My father still has plenty to say on the loss of several thousand rupees he incurred, especially when he
espies pile upon pile of material – still pristine in their plastic packaging.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had turned an avid fan of the ‘Body Beautiful’ philosophy a couple of years ago. I spent hours at a gymnasium, sweating away in the 45 degree heat, trying my best to haul weights that weighed more than me. Ignoring aches, cramps and creaking joints, I religiously walked the hundred meters to the gym. I even ate healthy. I continued thus, until I looked a bit of a steroid junkie, especially around the arms. But then, because of changing priorities and a growing belief in the fact that having big biceps didn’t mean that people who viewed you as Little Lord Fauntleroy earlier would begin treating you with the respect due a Tarzan, I decided that gym wasn’t such a big deal after all. And I quit!
A month later, I welcomed my paunch back. And a few days ago, the beginnings of my erstwhile second chin began to peek out of the fat on a much rounder face.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But today, I have blogged for almost five months. I have persisted – even when I was receiving around two visitors a day and one of them was me, not to mention the time I had to take off several politically incorrect posts. I am surprised I continued. I had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind when I’d started that I’d quit by the middle of February. But I didn’t. And today, I’ve received 2000 hits!
Have I changed? Have I learnt from the old go-getter maxim which went ‘Losers never quit, and quitters never lose’? Have I got the aforementioned maxim wrong? Well, I don’t know…
But one thing I do know, if it weren’t for all y’all wonderful people. I’d like to right now thank my vacuum cleaner, television remote, dog, the mongoose who lives on the tree next door, the three sparrows who shit on my clothes every day…Waitaminit, this was the speech I’d prepared for when I win my Oscar*.
Anyway, the fact remains that I do owe the fact that I remain a blogger to you. So, thank you, and comment allez vous, mesdames et messieurs
* For those who came in late, I expect an Oscar any day now for my performance in front of my math lecturer when she caught me drawing caricatures of the vice principal dancing the waltz with Hamid Karzai.
It went something like this, (tears in eyes, loudly bawling when not speaking)
’Ma’am, Siddhu was a good boy, Ma’am. Peyi erriduthe (translated: A ghost possessed him). He will exorcise the ghost and get back to being the sweet chap I … I mean… he was, Ma’am.’
It all started when at the age of five I decided I wanted to learn to swim. I saw myself swimming away to Olympic glory, circumnavigating the world with my bare hands and having as many pretty, adoring female fans as Ian Thorpe.
My poor, unsuspecting uncle took me all the way to a swimming pool and told me to go take a shower and put my trunks on. I looked at the water, and saw that it was uncomfortably deep, not to mention uncomfortably cold. The shower capped it – there was no way I was going to take a bath! So I decided to quit.
I told him sagely that there were lots of girls around, and the sight of my dashing self in trunks would probably cause a riot (as they scrambled over each other to get out of the pool).
And thus did I quit…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then, at the age of seven – the guiltiest secret of my life. Yes, I had been sent to carnatic music classes for a month. And my voice was just as bad then as it is today.
I decided to quit. But then, that wasn’t exactly my fault. My music teacher unceremoniously ejected me after tolerating a month of cacophony.
‘Maybe he has other talents, but a Yesudas he is not’, said my embarrassed music teacher to my mother, a day after she requested me not to darken her doorstep again.
And thus did I quit…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then when I was thirteen, I met the Sensei. The Sensei was looking for a big challenge. But big challenges are hard to come by after you’ve jumped through hoops of fire, painted the chief minister’s portrait with your blood and had people break huge blocks of stone on your chest.
He took one look at me – fat, languid and unbearably loquacious.
He turned to my mother and expressed to her his fond desire to teach me the ancient art of self-defence that the Japanese had used to great effect.
Ever since the time when Meee Schream Loudawa (85-50 BC) tried to kick a dino who’d strayed into his cave, missed the dino completely, landed on a rather sensitive part of the anatomy and screamed out a loud ‘Kyaaaiii’. (The dinosaur ran out of the cave with a ruptured eardrum, and thus was born the ancient art of Karate.)
It was a skeptical mother who told him to try and see if he could.
I could do fifty push-ups on my knuckles with a light laugh. Twisting my body into ridiculous contortions while mouthing Japanese obscenities bothered me a bit– especially when my paunch got in the way – but I could do it all right (the creaks and snaps notwithstanding).
But what really got my goat was the pernicious habit two of my friends developed of standing outside the gate of the house where I learnt karate and passing lewd comments about my robes, my katas and the general inflexibility of my body. I wanted to sock it to them there wise guys.
But the Sensei had told me that no proponent of Karate ever used his hands (which, in case you didn’t know, are lethal weapons) to hurt even the smallest mosquito. More importantly, both the smart alecs were considerably bigger and stronger than me. As they laughed, I’d noticed muscles like iron bands rippling underneath their shirts.
So I decided to quit instead. I told the Sensei that I’d read ‘My Experiments with Truth’ and had been convinced that ahimsa was the only way. I’d outmarshalled the two amateur commentators. Besides, those darned mosquitoes were really getting to me.
(stage resounds to a loud slap as I sadistically annihilate a family consisting of papa mosquito, mama mosquito and two baby mosquitoes)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cut to: 1999. A young, still plump and languid 15 year old about to walk into the big bad world of a science education in India smiles at you.
That ugly kid who’s grinning at you is me. It was in ’99 that I got the bright idea that I could make it into one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. All it required, reasoned I, was buying a huge sack of books and joining classes where balding old men on the threshold of losing their sanity taught you the fundamentals of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.
What I had failed to take into account was that one also needed the ability to sleep four hours a day and still remain fresh as the proverbial daisy, work a hundred problems out in an hour, and have an IQ of at least 100.
I, on the other hand, found it difficult to stay awake during the two hours of JEE coaching class unless I tried to count the number of hairs on the professor’s dome.
I could solve a hundred problems in an hour if they were of the ‘Rama has three apples and he gave Shyama two of them, being the kind of selfless retard you read about only in Mathematics books. So how many apples does Rama have now?’ kind. But problems in the JEE were a little more complex than this.
As for the third count, well, I’m no Forrest Gump – Forrest’s a lot smarter.
So, the logical step out was to quit. And quit I did. My father still has plenty to say on the loss of several thousand rupees he incurred, especially when he
espies pile upon pile of material – still pristine in their plastic packaging.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had turned an avid fan of the ‘Body Beautiful’ philosophy a couple of years ago. I spent hours at a gymnasium, sweating away in the 45 degree heat, trying my best to haul weights that weighed more than me. Ignoring aches, cramps and creaking joints, I religiously walked the hundred meters to the gym. I even ate healthy. I continued thus, until I looked a bit of a steroid junkie, especially around the arms. But then, because of changing priorities and a growing belief in the fact that having big biceps didn’t mean that people who viewed you as Little Lord Fauntleroy earlier would begin treating you with the respect due a Tarzan, I decided that gym wasn’t such a big deal after all. And I quit!
A month later, I welcomed my paunch back. And a few days ago, the beginnings of my erstwhile second chin began to peek out of the fat on a much rounder face.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But today, I have blogged for almost five months. I have persisted – even when I was receiving around two visitors a day and one of them was me, not to mention the time I had to take off several politically incorrect posts. I am surprised I continued. I had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind when I’d started that I’d quit by the middle of February. But I didn’t. And today, I’ve received 2000 hits!
Have I changed? Have I learnt from the old go-getter maxim which went ‘Losers never quit, and quitters never lose’? Have I got the aforementioned maxim wrong? Well, I don’t know…
But one thing I do know, if it weren’t for all y’all wonderful people. I’d like to right now thank my vacuum cleaner, television remote, dog, the mongoose who lives on the tree next door, the three sparrows who shit on my clothes every day…Waitaminit, this was the speech I’d prepared for when I win my Oscar*.
Anyway, the fact remains that I do owe the fact that I remain a blogger to you. So, thank you, and comment allez vous, mesdames et messieurs
* For those who came in late, I expect an Oscar any day now for my performance in front of my math lecturer when she caught me drawing caricatures of the vice principal dancing the waltz with Hamid Karzai.
It went something like this, (tears in eyes, loudly bawling when not speaking)
’Ma’am, Siddhu was a good boy, Ma’am. Peyi erriduthe (translated: A ghost possessed him). He will exorcise the ghost and get back to being the sweet chap I … I mean… he was, Ma’am.’
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Gandhi and the Prank SMS Industry - Part II
At 12:30, our professor decided that we had learnt enough about the life cycle and mating season of the PNP transistor and left the classroom.
The chap arose from his seat, still fiddling continuously with his Reliance. As he walked towards the canteen, I regaled him with cheerful prattle about R World. Not because I found R World or its applications particularly interesting, but because that seemed the only topic that could presently hold his attention for more than a few seconds. And I desperately wanted to be around when _______ called him up. (I had noticed her looking terribly worked up and preparing herself for an explosive outburst)
Gandhi was lurking in the background as well, and still had that ugly smile affixed on his face. The more I saw the smile, the more I felt he looked like a vile medieval villain. But I, once again, did not devote much thought to Gandhi’s facial expressions. I was too busy thinking of new Reliance IndiaMobile features to keep ***** at his seat in the canteen.
12:45 – almost like clockwork, the cell rang. Sadly, _____ was in the classroom. She was probably too flustered to come down to the canteen. So we were not blessed with the opportunity to hear both ends of the conversation.
‘Hello...Good Afternoon...’, said the chap, in a cheerful tone, which was rather inappropriate considering what she had called for.
There was a pause for 30 seconds and the omnipresent cheeky grin on *****’s face went into hiding behind his lips for the first time in living memory.
‘Why, this is ***** here... Wha....?’
There was a much longer pause and we could distinct hear a shrill female voice screaming incessantly over the phone for around two minutes. Gandhi and I watched with barely concealed glee as the expression on the bloke’s face became graver and graver with every passing second.
‘Listen...what am I to do if you’re on drugs or some mo***&* blackmails you about it...’, shouted he. By then, he had begun to appear distinctly haggard and frustrated.
Gandhi was bent over double as he bit his jeans to muffle his laughter.
‘You’ve got psychological problems. You’re hallucinating...’
Gandhi moved a safe distance away and began to laugh like a particularly boorish hyena.
‘I DON’T HAVE YOUR NUMBER... I DIDN’t MESSAGE YOU AND I DON’T WANT TO!!! WILL YOU CUT THE F***ING LINE!!!?’
*****’s angry voice resonated across the canteen. Everybody fell silent. Eggs, beans and crumpets (to borrow a phrase from Wodehouse) all around the canteen turned their heads around to take a dekko at *****. ***** suddenly realized he was the cynosure of all eyes. All eyes except one, to be precise. Gandhi had placed his hand smack on top of somebody’s fried rice (much to the diner’s dismay and consternation) and continued to express amusement to a degree that was almost unholy.
Embarassed, he hung up rather tamely with a muted and rather unnecessary ‘Bye...’
I began to ask him wide-eyed questions as to the identity of the mystery caller. He started telling me about ____’s apparent mental imbalance. It was as he was propounding a (highly implausible) theory that ______ had a crush on him and how her crush had made her act irrationally that Gandhi turned up, looking rather a vulture out on a hunt for juicy caracasses.
‘Hi *****... , what da machcha, _____ called you up, ah?’
I was stunned. After comparing Gandhi to Machiavelli, the last thing I expected from him was to make a blunder which even the Beagle Boys wouldn’t.
***** looked up suddenly from his phone which he was fondling like a long-lost brother,
‘How the hell do you know?’
‘Hmmmm... Siddhu may not like me telling you this, but I think the joke went a little too far and since I feel it may cause irrepairable harm to your friendship with ________, I think it is best that I tell you...’
Gandhi had that wretched smile of his plastered all over his face. I should have known, I thought to myself, Machiavelli always liked to be the last man standing!!
I thought of the possible courses of action that lay open to me –
A) Attempt to smother Gandhi with blows until he confessed to having planned and executed it himself
B) To attempt to run to the bike stand and disappear from college for 10 days
I arrived upon Option (B) as the more workable among the two after taking one look at Gandhi - who did not resemble the Mahatma (either physically or in the purity of his mind).
But I could not exercise either option as ****** gripped my wrist firmly. Under such circumstances, people like Jack the Ripper and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have broken free. But even a cursory inspection of my physique would reveal that I was neither. So I stayed put.
Gandhi, that turncoat whose treachery would have done Benedict Arnold and Mir Jaffer proud, continued to reveal a fabric of terrible lies and slander all of which was unfortunately true.
I slumped into a chair –defeated, a shadow of my former self.
To cut a long story short, the events that followed were not pleasant in the least. ***** swore to use my cell for even more nefarious purposes, I was forced (after being arm twisted (yeah, literally) into compliance) to apologise to _____, ______ blasted me in turn and almost pushed her cell’s gargantuan antenna up my nostril, ______’s friend blasted me just for the pleasure of blasting me(and later cornered me and asked me if I had a crush on ____ (please, for heaven’s sake, not that!!, I thought) and whether this whole incident was calculated to portray a potential rival (!!?) in bad light) and Gandhi laughed his way to a free Coke, courtesy ******.
Sadly, my dear readers, like most incidents in my life, this ended in sorrow. Therefore, it ain’t too shocking that I end up writing tragic stories like these which would put any Greek epic to shame. Don’t blame me, dear readers, for not being a cheery soul. Don’t blame me, my countrymen, for not writing cheerful stories. Blame it all on the machinations of a cruel fate...
The chap arose from his seat, still fiddling continuously with his Reliance. As he walked towards the canteen, I regaled him with cheerful prattle about R World. Not because I found R World or its applications particularly interesting, but because that seemed the only topic that could presently hold his attention for more than a few seconds. And I desperately wanted to be around when _______ called him up. (I had noticed her looking terribly worked up and preparing herself for an explosive outburst)
Gandhi was lurking in the background as well, and still had that ugly smile affixed on his face. The more I saw the smile, the more I felt he looked like a vile medieval villain. But I, once again, did not devote much thought to Gandhi’s facial expressions. I was too busy thinking of new Reliance IndiaMobile features to keep ***** at his seat in the canteen.
12:45 – almost like clockwork, the cell rang. Sadly, _____ was in the classroom. She was probably too flustered to come down to the canteen. So we were not blessed with the opportunity to hear both ends of the conversation.
‘Hello...Good Afternoon...’, said the chap, in a cheerful tone, which was rather inappropriate considering what she had called for.
There was a pause for 30 seconds and the omnipresent cheeky grin on *****’s face went into hiding behind his lips for the first time in living memory.
‘Why, this is ***** here... Wha....?’
There was a much longer pause and we could distinct hear a shrill female voice screaming incessantly over the phone for around two minutes. Gandhi and I watched with barely concealed glee as the expression on the bloke’s face became graver and graver with every passing second.
‘Listen...what am I to do if you’re on drugs or some mo***&* blackmails you about it...’, shouted he. By then, he had begun to appear distinctly haggard and frustrated.
Gandhi was bent over double as he bit his jeans to muffle his laughter.
‘You’ve got psychological problems. You’re hallucinating...’
Gandhi moved a safe distance away and began to laugh like a particularly boorish hyena.
‘I DON’T HAVE YOUR NUMBER... I DIDN’t MESSAGE YOU AND I DON’T WANT TO!!! WILL YOU CUT THE F***ING LINE!!!?’
*****’s angry voice resonated across the canteen. Everybody fell silent. Eggs, beans and crumpets (to borrow a phrase from Wodehouse) all around the canteen turned their heads around to take a dekko at *****. ***** suddenly realized he was the cynosure of all eyes. All eyes except one, to be precise. Gandhi had placed his hand smack on top of somebody’s fried rice (much to the diner’s dismay and consternation) and continued to express amusement to a degree that was almost unholy.
Embarassed, he hung up rather tamely with a muted and rather unnecessary ‘Bye...’
I began to ask him wide-eyed questions as to the identity of the mystery caller. He started telling me about ____’s apparent mental imbalance. It was as he was propounding a (highly implausible) theory that ______ had a crush on him and how her crush had made her act irrationally that Gandhi turned up, looking rather a vulture out on a hunt for juicy caracasses.
‘Hi *****... , what da machcha, _____ called you up, ah?’
I was stunned. After comparing Gandhi to Machiavelli, the last thing I expected from him was to make a blunder which even the Beagle Boys wouldn’t.
***** looked up suddenly from his phone which he was fondling like a long-lost brother,
‘How the hell do you know?’
‘Hmmmm... Siddhu may not like me telling you this, but I think the joke went a little too far and since I feel it may cause irrepairable harm to your friendship with ________, I think it is best that I tell you...’
Gandhi had that wretched smile of his plastered all over his face. I should have known, I thought to myself, Machiavelli always liked to be the last man standing!!
I thought of the possible courses of action that lay open to me –
A) Attempt to smother Gandhi with blows until he confessed to having planned and executed it himself
B) To attempt to run to the bike stand and disappear from college for 10 days
I arrived upon Option (B) as the more workable among the two after taking one look at Gandhi - who did not resemble the Mahatma (either physically or in the purity of his mind).
But I could not exercise either option as ****** gripped my wrist firmly. Under such circumstances, people like Jack the Ripper and Arnold Schwarzenegger would have broken free. But even a cursory inspection of my physique would reveal that I was neither. So I stayed put.
Gandhi, that turncoat whose treachery would have done Benedict Arnold and Mir Jaffer proud, continued to reveal a fabric of terrible lies and slander all of which was unfortunately true.
I slumped into a chair –defeated, a shadow of my former self.
To cut a long story short, the events that followed were not pleasant in the least. ***** swore to use my cell for even more nefarious purposes, I was forced (after being arm twisted (yeah, literally) into compliance) to apologise to _____, ______ blasted me in turn and almost pushed her cell’s gargantuan antenna up my nostril, ______’s friend blasted me just for the pleasure of blasting me(and later cornered me and asked me if I had a crush on ____ (please, for heaven’s sake, not that!!, I thought) and whether this whole incident was calculated to portray a potential rival (!!?) in bad light) and Gandhi laughed his way to a free Coke, courtesy ******.
Sadly, my dear readers, like most incidents in my life, this ended in sorrow. Therefore, it ain’t too shocking that I end up writing tragic stories like these which would put any Greek epic to shame. Don’t blame me, dear readers, for not being a cheery soul. Don’t blame me, my countrymen, for not writing cheerful stories. Blame it all on the machinations of a cruel fate...
Monday, May 09, 2005
Gandhi and the Prank SMS Industry - Part I
Sending prank SMSes from others’ cells (and getting caught doing so) is the best way to do unto death whatever little social life you may presently have.
But then, what’s life without a little risk? And if you, like yours truly, will never win a congeniality contest, the only risks that you take by sending prank SMSes is that of being physically assaulted.
Note: The receiver HAS to be a she – detailed studies have proven that except under exceptional circumstances, guys never react as interestingly and entertainingly as females do, when bombarded with prank SMSes.
Prank SMSes can be on a variety of topics, from the morbid to the simply ridiculous. But for best results, try the following tried & tested prank SMS series– tested under stringent conditions at Dr. Siddhu’s ISO 666 certified laboratory at the National Institute of Technology and Science.
‘Help me, I need a fix – and HOW!!!’
It was during an exceptionally tortuous stretch of extreme boredom that this idea struck me.
I was thinking deep thoughts about the fly that I had found in my curry at the canteen yesterday when I noticed one of my classmates fiddling away furiously with his new Reliance IndiaMobile, while another stared at her ancient mobile, probably waiting for it to reveal to her the secrets of the universe. (The mobile was ancient enough to have been around during the creation of the universe)
My mind, indelibly perverted by a lifetime of sitting through boring lectures, raced at the possibilities of sending her interesting (to say the least) messages from his cell. And considering the fact that she was one of the most hyperactive and short tempered girls in class, an explosive reaction would almost definitely result.
I shared the idea with my neighbour – a bloke named Gandhi who wasn’t impeded by any of the scruples that his illustrious namesake was so unfortunately saddled with. He assured me it was a pippin.
I turned to the chap who was still immersed in the wonders of his new Reliance and requested him to show me the piece for a bit.
The bloke, whose name I decline to reveal for obvious reasons, hesitated. But after I’d praised the looks of the phone (though it looked ugly enough to be the property of the neighbourhood scavenger – and in fact, lots of scavengers did possess them) and compared it with the ancient phone which the aforementioned female was fiddling around with, he gave in. The all-important cell changed hands. Gandhi and I got to work almost immediately.
Hi ____, I knw u vry wll. I m ur clssmte. I knw u r on drugs. I cn say by lukin at ur face.
The message was received a few seconds later by ____, who was still thinking of how useful Babur had probably found her cell during the first battle of Panipat.
She saw the phone light up with the message. Her face lit up just like the phone’s screen, the only difference between the two being the absence of the green backlight on her face.
But after reading the message, her expression changed entirely to one of total shock. Gandhi and I suddenly began to suspect whether we had actually hit the nail on the head when we decided to talk about her drug addiction.
She began to type feverishly into her cell. We could almost hear the keys, aged veterans of a million SMSes, creak in agony and protest as she typed it in.
Who are you?
It was the Reliance’s turn to light up in all its glory.
I knw u knw who I am. I dnt wnna play arnd. All I need is a lil dope. I knw u knw whr to get it- pls meet me at ‘Coffee’ wt the stuff in evening 7 30.wil pay u thr.
She looked really flustered and began fingering her dupatta which she’d tightly wound around her neck by then. She got into a deep discussion with her neighbour who seemed to favour the ISI conspiracy angle from the look on her face. After frenetic consultations, she messaged me –
I dnt knw who u r or wht u r tlkin abt.
Gandhi’s face lit up with ill-concealed malice. He told me how we could facilitate an admirably violent twist in the kahaani.
Till that date, I had underestimated Gandhi’s flair for villainy. He came up with a masterstroke – an idea so clever that I concluded that if there ever was anyone who could write a sequel to Machiavelli’s The Prince, here stood he. It was truly exceptional that anybody who so resembled Magilla the Gorilla could possess such a wonderfully devious mind. But so it was.
All I could say was, ‘Gandhi, my boy… I’m proud of u…!’
He punched in -
Call me at 12:45 durin lunch brk.I wil tlk to u n tll u abt the cash 4 the dope. Stop playing dumb wit me or I wil tel ur parents u do drugs.
‘At 12:45, guess who’s gonna be carrying this mobile?’, said he, with a straight face.
I giggled.
‘Stop giggling,’ , said he, rather sternly and offered me the chance to type in ____’s number and press the send button - ostensibly to give me an opportunity to participate in this momentous event. I gleefully accepted the warm, generous offer.
There was, quite predictably, no reply to this message. All we could see was that she was frantically consulting her neighbour.
We handed the phone back to the chap who went back to fiddling with it. Gandhi and I got on with our favourite task of composing lewd couplets about our professor who was waxing eloquent about the vagaries of the varactor diode.
We waited for the golden moment. A couple of times, I noticed a flicker of a wicked smile play on Gandhi’s lips as he talked to me. I didn’t like the smile. But I dismissed the thought from my mind – I decided it would be unfair to blame Gandhi for not having a winsome smile.
‘It isn’t his fault that he’s got a mug like the lower class of mafia don’, I rationalized…
To be continued...
But then, what’s life without a little risk? And if you, like yours truly, will never win a congeniality contest, the only risks that you take by sending prank SMSes is that of being physically assaulted.
Note: The receiver HAS to be a she – detailed studies have proven that except under exceptional circumstances, guys never react as interestingly and entertainingly as females do, when bombarded with prank SMSes.
Prank SMSes can be on a variety of topics, from the morbid to the simply ridiculous. But for best results, try the following tried & tested prank SMS series– tested under stringent conditions at Dr. Siddhu’s ISO 666 certified laboratory at the National Institute of Technology and Science.
‘Help me, I need a fix – and HOW!!!’
It was during an exceptionally tortuous stretch of extreme boredom that this idea struck me.
I was thinking deep thoughts about the fly that I had found in my curry at the canteen yesterday when I noticed one of my classmates fiddling away furiously with his new Reliance IndiaMobile, while another stared at her ancient mobile, probably waiting for it to reveal to her the secrets of the universe. (The mobile was ancient enough to have been around during the creation of the universe)
My mind, indelibly perverted by a lifetime of sitting through boring lectures, raced at the possibilities of sending her interesting (to say the least) messages from his cell. And considering the fact that she was one of the most hyperactive and short tempered girls in class, an explosive reaction would almost definitely result.
I shared the idea with my neighbour – a bloke named Gandhi who wasn’t impeded by any of the scruples that his illustrious namesake was so unfortunately saddled with. He assured me it was a pippin.
I turned to the chap who was still immersed in the wonders of his new Reliance and requested him to show me the piece for a bit.
The bloke, whose name I decline to reveal for obvious reasons, hesitated. But after I’d praised the looks of the phone (though it looked ugly enough to be the property of the neighbourhood scavenger – and in fact, lots of scavengers did possess them) and compared it with the ancient phone which the aforementioned female was fiddling around with, he gave in. The all-important cell changed hands. Gandhi and I got to work almost immediately.
Hi ____, I knw u vry wll. I m ur clssmte. I knw u r on drugs. I cn say by lukin at ur face.
The message was received a few seconds later by ____, who was still thinking of how useful Babur had probably found her cell during the first battle of Panipat.
She saw the phone light up with the message. Her face lit up just like the phone’s screen, the only difference between the two being the absence of the green backlight on her face.
But after reading the message, her expression changed entirely to one of total shock. Gandhi and I suddenly began to suspect whether we had actually hit the nail on the head when we decided to talk about her drug addiction.
She began to type feverishly into her cell. We could almost hear the keys, aged veterans of a million SMSes, creak in agony and protest as she typed it in.
Who are you?
It was the Reliance’s turn to light up in all its glory.
I knw u knw who I am. I dnt wnna play arnd. All I need is a lil dope. I knw u knw whr to get it- pls meet me at ‘Coffee’ wt the stuff in evening 7 30.wil pay u thr.
She looked really flustered and began fingering her dupatta which she’d tightly wound around her neck by then. She got into a deep discussion with her neighbour who seemed to favour the ISI conspiracy angle from the look on her face. After frenetic consultations, she messaged me –
I dnt knw who u r or wht u r tlkin abt.
Gandhi’s face lit up with ill-concealed malice. He told me how we could facilitate an admirably violent twist in the kahaani.
Till that date, I had underestimated Gandhi’s flair for villainy. He came up with a masterstroke – an idea so clever that I concluded that if there ever was anyone who could write a sequel to Machiavelli’s The Prince, here stood he. It was truly exceptional that anybody who so resembled Magilla the Gorilla could possess such a wonderfully devious mind. But so it was.
All I could say was, ‘Gandhi, my boy… I’m proud of u…!’
He punched in -
Call me at 12:45 durin lunch brk.I wil tlk to u n tll u abt the cash 4 the dope. Stop playing dumb wit me or I wil tel ur parents u do drugs.
‘At 12:45, guess who’s gonna be carrying this mobile?’, said he, with a straight face.
I giggled.
‘Stop giggling,’ , said he, rather sternly and offered me the chance to type in ____’s number and press the send button - ostensibly to give me an opportunity to participate in this momentous event. I gleefully accepted the warm, generous offer.
There was, quite predictably, no reply to this message. All we could see was that she was frantically consulting her neighbour.
We handed the phone back to the chap who went back to fiddling with it. Gandhi and I got on with our favourite task of composing lewd couplets about our professor who was waxing eloquent about the vagaries of the varactor diode.
We waited for the golden moment. A couple of times, I noticed a flicker of a wicked smile play on Gandhi’s lips as he talked to me. I didn’t like the smile. But I dismissed the thought from my mind – I decided it would be unfair to blame Gandhi for not having a winsome smile.
‘It isn’t his fault that he’s got a mug like the lower class of mafia don’, I rationalized…
To be continued...
Friday, April 29, 2005
Nurture young love - the concluding part
I continue today on what I had begun a few days ago– assisting young love on its way (while at the same time taking generous leaps along the road to perdition myself). To recap, yesterday we had left a love struck swain who was game to follow his true love to the ends of the earth (provided somebody else paid the air fare) waiting with bated breath for the reply to a letter ghost written (deliberately badly) by yours truly...
There was silence for a week. I grew curiouser and curiouser with every passing day. It was a week later that &*^ approached me, looking tired, careworn and worried.
‘Eda...she’s not replied to me, da’
‘She probably was so moonstruck by your letter that she couldn’t possibly have walked all the way to the lab and composed her reply. Let me tell you something – that letter was so good that if you’d given that letter to the queen of Sheba she’d have accepted you into her harem of husbands with not a second thought!!’, I said, lying brazenly through my teeth.
He dismissed these illuminating thoughts with a careless wave of his hand.
'Don't talk bullshit, you bastard!', said he. He was one of those chaps whose frankness in speech bordered on the obscenely insulting, the blighter!
‘So what do you want me to do now? Write another letter?’, I asked, adopting that sarcastic manner which had failed to penetrate his hide in the least when I used it last.
Once again, it bounced off him like bullets bounce off Superman.
‘Actually, yeah’, he said shamelessly. He did not even attempt to look embarrassed at the thought of imposing on my time.
‘It ‘ll cost you if you want me to do it the second time. The first time, being a freeware demo, came for free. 99 rupees and 95 paise – I’ve brought my rates down...’, said I, attempting to sound like a technical czar talking about the NTFS kernel (assuming such a creature exists).
Talk of money changing hands (only when he was at the wrong end of the transaction) always had a peculiar effect on &*^. He began to rapidly rethink on a strategy that had seemed so imperative just a few minutes ago. After concluding his customary disparaging remarks - comparing my methods of embezzlement to Mr. Ambani’s (to my benefit) - he begged me to reconsider or at least ask her of the outcome of the outpourings of his heart.
I agreed – more out of curiosity and unrestrained boredom which had returned to haunt me once again than anything else. I was very uncomfortable with the whole idea. The thought of approaching a girl I had spoken to probably once in my life and asking her for her verdict on &*^’s undying love did not appear to me as fun. I walked towards her feeling a trepidation that was almost definitely shameful, considering the fact that she was a mere first year and I was a second year student.
‘Er...#######, &*^ asked me to ask you this...’
‘What...?’, she said, in her customary tone of voice, which lay somewhere in between a deferential whisper and the ramblings of a chap with laryngitis.
But us Warriers are made of stern stuff. I continued…
‘He wants to know if you received the letter and how you react to his proposition of undying love, y’know...’, I stuttered.
‘I don’t see any reason to have any opinion about it...’, she said, her voice rising well above her usual deferential whisper.
‘But why...?’, I asked. I began to realize that asking her out in the middle of Mount road while standing on my hands was a considerably less onerous task.
‘I know you wrote it – it was too ridiculous to have been thought of by &^*. In fact, too poetic to have been thought of by anybody who didn’t possess three copies of Roget’s. Besides, he’s yet to have discovered the joys of constructing an English sentence. Anyway, I never did like him and would be greatly pleased if he didn’t call me this weekend... Can I go now, sir? I still have three psalms left out of my day’s quota of 45!’
Her ‘sir’ was loaded with a sarcasm that bites (quite unlike the ‘sir’s we, as seniors, expect out of our juniors as a matter of course).
But I did not attempt to take her to task. I could see that the scales had fallen before her eyes. I slunk away into the darkness quietly, leaving her to her psalms.......
There was silence for a week. I grew curiouser and curiouser with every passing day. It was a week later that &*^ approached me, looking tired, careworn and worried.
‘Eda...she’s not replied to me, da’
‘She probably was so moonstruck by your letter that she couldn’t possibly have walked all the way to the lab and composed her reply. Let me tell you something – that letter was so good that if you’d given that letter to the queen of Sheba she’d have accepted you into her harem of husbands with not a second thought!!’, I said, lying brazenly through my teeth.
He dismissed these illuminating thoughts with a careless wave of his hand.
'Don't talk bullshit, you bastard!', said he. He was one of those chaps whose frankness in speech bordered on the obscenely insulting, the blighter!
‘So what do you want me to do now? Write another letter?’, I asked, adopting that sarcastic manner which had failed to penetrate his hide in the least when I used it last.
Once again, it bounced off him like bullets bounce off Superman.
‘Actually, yeah’, he said shamelessly. He did not even attempt to look embarrassed at the thought of imposing on my time.
‘It ‘ll cost you if you want me to do it the second time. The first time, being a freeware demo, came for free. 99 rupees and 95 paise – I’ve brought my rates down...’, said I, attempting to sound like a technical czar talking about the NTFS kernel (assuming such a creature exists).
Talk of money changing hands (only when he was at the wrong end of the transaction) always had a peculiar effect on &*^. He began to rapidly rethink on a strategy that had seemed so imperative just a few minutes ago. After concluding his customary disparaging remarks - comparing my methods of embezzlement to Mr. Ambani’s (to my benefit) - he begged me to reconsider or at least ask her of the outcome of the outpourings of his heart.
I agreed – more out of curiosity and unrestrained boredom which had returned to haunt me once again than anything else. I was very uncomfortable with the whole idea. The thought of approaching a girl I had spoken to probably once in my life and asking her for her verdict on &*^’s undying love did not appear to me as fun. I walked towards her feeling a trepidation that was almost definitely shameful, considering the fact that she was a mere first year and I was a second year student.
‘Er...#######, &*^ asked me to ask you this...’
‘What...?’, she said, in her customary tone of voice, which lay somewhere in between a deferential whisper and the ramblings of a chap with laryngitis.
But us Warriers are made of stern stuff. I continued…
‘He wants to know if you received the letter and how you react to his proposition of undying love, y’know...’, I stuttered.
‘I don’t see any reason to have any opinion about it...’, she said, her voice rising well above her usual deferential whisper.
‘But why...?’, I asked. I began to realize that asking her out in the middle of Mount road while standing on my hands was a considerably less onerous task.
‘I know you wrote it – it was too ridiculous to have been thought of by &^*. In fact, too poetic to have been thought of by anybody who didn’t possess three copies of Roget’s. Besides, he’s yet to have discovered the joys of constructing an English sentence. Anyway, I never did like him and would be greatly pleased if he didn’t call me this weekend... Can I go now, sir? I still have three psalms left out of my day’s quota of 45!’
Her ‘sir’ was loaded with a sarcasm that bites (quite unlike the ‘sir’s we, as seniors, expect out of our juniors as a matter of course).
But I did not attempt to take her to task. I could see that the scales had fallen before her eyes. I slunk away into the darkness quietly, leaving her to her psalms.......
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Beat Boredom - turn cupid and nurture young love
I'd written this post a couple of years ago, but thanks to exams, I don't have time to write anything new. So something's better than nothing, I guess.
If you have copious quantities of water in your brain (like most poets who've written reams on love and romance), go fall in love. If you're just bored, well.... just play cupid!
Playing cupid is a highly entertaining and highly risky endeavour as well. If one manages to succeed in the onerous task of bringing two young hearts together, one reaps the rewards which come in the form of being known to all your classmates as ‘mama’ (which means little more than ‘pimp’) If one fails, however, one runs the risk of being accused of messing everything up because of one’s own romantic interests.
But, nothing fun is not risky. Or to put it another way, taking risks is half the fun.
My first attempt at playing cupid came upon me by chance. A male friend of mine requested me to help him with a love letter he was composing to a junior who’d just joined our college.
The junior was a religious Malayalee fresh out of some oilfield in Saudi Arabia and hadn’t seen a male (discounting her father, of course) for the first seventeen years of her life, having spent all of it under a burkha. But her prolonged stay at a nunnery like this had done nothing to diminish her feminine charms, which were considerable. My friend fell for her like fifty cycles in a cycle stand. Not particularly surprising becuase he is one of those fellows who is capable of falling in love even with a rhino dressed in drag.
My friend, however, had a problem. He was far from confident of his ability to compose paeans in her honour using the Queen’s language – and the girl was rather marked in her inability to read even a single sentence in Malayalam.
At that particular point of time, I was terribly bored and even more terribly broke. So I proffered my services as a ghost writer to my friend just as he was lamenting his utter inability to express his love for her in words.
‘Hey, thanks da...you’re a true friend...’, said he.
‘But there’s a catch...’, I said
He spent the next five minutes telling me how I had earned his eternal and everlasting gratitude by my act of mercy and how he was ready to hit anybody in the college who had been foolhardy enough to trouble a person as sweet, loving, caring and personable as me.
I did not interrupt him. I enjoyed every moment of it.
‘I was thinking more in terms of monetary remuneration, y’know...’ I said, broaching the subject of money in a gentlemanly way.
After a couple of minutes of bargaining, I realized that this chap was incapable of thinking of sums greater than 10 rupees if left to his own devices. So I suggested the nice round figure of 100 rupees.
‘One hundred bucks!!? Are you jokin’???’, he screamed incredulously and launched into another long monologue of how people had forgotten the value of friendship and how St.Peter would send me to the gates of Hell for attempting to fleece money off a man in perpetual penury.
I was about to tell him that the deal was off. It was then, on the spur of the moment that one of my devilish ideas struck me.
‘Okay, da... I don’t want to do anything. I have seen the light following your remarks. I am a changed man! I will help my friend with his true love!’
Oh yes, I shall, you stingy bastard, I thought to myself. I resolved to consult two thesauruses, three dictionaries and the Barron’s word lists and write a love letter so abstruse that even I wouldn’t be able to make sense of it the second time around. I also resolved to make it cornier than three of Bollywood’s mushiest romances.
I sat up all night, composing the labour of ‘love’ in the spirit of malice. When I displayed the finished product, my friend had five words to say –
‘Perfect da, Its so romantic...’
He seemed to have made his judgement based on the number of syllables in each word more than anything else. You can decide how romantic it was by reading it for yourself.
dearest ######, heart of my hearts
How are you? I guess you are sleeping, dreaming sweet dreams, as i type this... nay, write this letter with my lifeblood… after i had that enchanting talk with u. Words fail me when I try to describe the upheavals that shook my inner being as I conversed with you. I never thought you would talk to me this long. Though I feel, in my heart of hearts, you fail to realize the seriousness with which my heart palpitates at the sight of you, at the sound of your oh-so-sweet voice, and the wonderfully romantic way that your name rolls over my tongue.
I wish $%#* stayed inside her room( she interferes too goddamn much)...no, wait a sec, i have this niggling doubt, this iota of fear within a portion of my fervid lovestruck mind...was it a ploy you employed to disconnect the phone? Please say it wasn't so...
Hope you had as good a time at Pizza hut as your little heart could ever have wished for. May I call u the same time next week? I can't take no for an answer, for such a devastating verdict from your sweet lips could mean utter desperation, sorrow, pain, anguish, and heart rending distress to this lovesick swain. So, I take the answer to be yes. Please please wait for my call. I await the wonderful minutes that I shall fruitfully expend listening to your sugary voice.
Please, ######,. do not by any chance of fate, reveal what transpired in the mellifluous conversations that I have had with you to anybody, not even to &^$(*, or any of my other batchmates.
######, ( I love writing your name), when u go to kerala, brightening up by your lustrous presence any train that you may take, please get me the things that I so abjectly desire to receive from your dainty little hands. Anyway, I forgot to ask you, when shall Madras be deprived of your beauteous presence? The days that you are not in our college will be extremely dark ones for me...
Love
the one who adores you to the ends of the earth and beyond,
your lovesick swain,
&*^
*Names hidden to protect privacy (and author’s life and limb)
To be contd...
WHAT FOLLOWS ON THIS BLOG –
- What path will young love take after the receipt of the letter? Find out tomorrow...
- And more techniques which still remain too secret to reveal
IMPORTANT NOTE: THE LETTER IS ABSOLUTELY REAL, AND HAS ACTUALLY BEEN USED, iN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING!!
***********************************************************************
If you have copious quantities of water in your brain (like most poets who've written reams on love and romance), go fall in love. If you're just bored, well.... just play cupid!
Playing cupid is a highly entertaining and highly risky endeavour as well. If one manages to succeed in the onerous task of bringing two young hearts together, one reaps the rewards which come in the form of being known to all your classmates as ‘mama’ (which means little more than ‘pimp’) If one fails, however, one runs the risk of being accused of messing everything up because of one’s own romantic interests.
But, nothing fun is not risky. Or to put it another way, taking risks is half the fun.
My first attempt at playing cupid came upon me by chance. A male friend of mine requested me to help him with a love letter he was composing to a junior who’d just joined our college.
The junior was a religious Malayalee fresh out of some oilfield in Saudi Arabia and hadn’t seen a male (discounting her father, of course) for the first seventeen years of her life, having spent all of it under a burkha. But her prolonged stay at a nunnery like this had done nothing to diminish her feminine charms, which were considerable. My friend fell for her like fifty cycles in a cycle stand. Not particularly surprising becuase he is one of those fellows who is capable of falling in love even with a rhino dressed in drag.
My friend, however, had a problem. He was far from confident of his ability to compose paeans in her honour using the Queen’s language – and the girl was rather marked in her inability to read even a single sentence in Malayalam.
At that particular point of time, I was terribly bored and even more terribly broke. So I proffered my services as a ghost writer to my friend just as he was lamenting his utter inability to express his love for her in words.
‘Hey, thanks da...you’re a true friend...’, said he.
‘But there’s a catch...’, I said
He spent the next five minutes telling me how I had earned his eternal and everlasting gratitude by my act of mercy and how he was ready to hit anybody in the college who had been foolhardy enough to trouble a person as sweet, loving, caring and personable as me.
I did not interrupt him. I enjoyed every moment of it.
‘I was thinking more in terms of monetary remuneration, y’know...’ I said, broaching the subject of money in a gentlemanly way.
After a couple of minutes of bargaining, I realized that this chap was incapable of thinking of sums greater than 10 rupees if left to his own devices. So I suggested the nice round figure of 100 rupees.
‘One hundred bucks!!? Are you jokin’???’, he screamed incredulously and launched into another long monologue of how people had forgotten the value of friendship and how St.Peter would send me to the gates of Hell for attempting to fleece money off a man in perpetual penury.
I was about to tell him that the deal was off. It was then, on the spur of the moment that one of my devilish ideas struck me.
‘Okay, da... I don’t want to do anything. I have seen the light following your remarks. I am a changed man! I will help my friend with his true love!’
Oh yes, I shall, you stingy bastard, I thought to myself. I resolved to consult two thesauruses, three dictionaries and the Barron’s word lists and write a love letter so abstruse that even I wouldn’t be able to make sense of it the second time around. I also resolved to make it cornier than three of Bollywood’s mushiest romances.
I sat up all night, composing the labour of ‘love’ in the spirit of malice. When I displayed the finished product, my friend had five words to say –
‘Perfect da, Its so romantic...’
He seemed to have made his judgement based on the number of syllables in each word more than anything else. You can decide how romantic it was by reading it for yourself.
dearest ######, heart of my hearts
How are you? I guess you are sleeping, dreaming sweet dreams, as i type this... nay, write this letter with my lifeblood… after i had that enchanting talk with u. Words fail me when I try to describe the upheavals that shook my inner being as I conversed with you. I never thought you would talk to me this long. Though I feel, in my heart of hearts, you fail to realize the seriousness with which my heart palpitates at the sight of you, at the sound of your oh-so-sweet voice, and the wonderfully romantic way that your name rolls over my tongue.
I wish $%#* stayed inside her room( she interferes too goddamn much)...no, wait a sec, i have this niggling doubt, this iota of fear within a portion of my fervid lovestruck mind...was it a ploy you employed to disconnect the phone? Please say it wasn't so...
Hope you had as good a time at Pizza hut as your little heart could ever have wished for. May I call u the same time next week? I can't take no for an answer, for such a devastating verdict from your sweet lips could mean utter desperation, sorrow, pain, anguish, and heart rending distress to this lovesick swain. So, I take the answer to be yes. Please please wait for my call. I await the wonderful minutes that I shall fruitfully expend listening to your sugary voice.
Please, ######,. do not by any chance of fate, reveal what transpired in the mellifluous conversations that I have had with you to anybody, not even to &^$(*, or any of my other batchmates.
######, ( I love writing your name), when u go to kerala, brightening up by your lustrous presence any train that you may take, please get me the things that I so abjectly desire to receive from your dainty little hands. Anyway, I forgot to ask you, when shall Madras be deprived of your beauteous presence? The days that you are not in our college will be extremely dark ones for me...
Love
the one who adores you to the ends of the earth and beyond,
your lovesick swain,
&*^
*Names hidden to protect privacy (and author’s life and limb)
To be contd...
WHAT FOLLOWS ON THIS BLOG –
- What path will young love take after the receipt of the letter? Find out tomorrow...
- And more techniques which still remain too secret to reveal
IMPORTANT NOTE: THE LETTER IS ABSOLUTELY REAL, AND HAS ACTUALLY BEEN USED, iN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING!!
***********************************************************************
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Good news resting on the horns of a dilemma
Over the last few days, life has treated me well. It was on March 28th that the first bit of good news trickled in. After a series of B-School disasters of the MICA kind, I was rather chafed as I sat contemplating a long, bleak future coding away at a nameless terminal in a nameless software company, surrounded by other nameless engineers.
It was then that I received an admit into the Singapore MIT Alliance, with the SMA Grad Scholarship to boot. The thought of 1500 Sgd a month and a paid trip to MIT led to my life turning into a veritable orgy of celebration.
And then, on April 16, rested in my junk mail folder the following letter.
Dear Siddhu Warrier,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for
participation to the European Master in Informatics (EuMI).
Furthermore, your name has been proposed to the European Commission
for an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. You will receive a grant of 21000 EUR per year.
Please confirm your interest in participating to EuMi. Thank you.
Best regards,
Marco Pistore
(Coordinator of EuMI)
And now, I know what it means to be on the horns of a dilemma. Any opinions, anyone? Most academics I know recommend this – the course being at University of Edinburgh and RWTH Aachen University in Germany. But then, the SMA deal seems sweet.
However, I must say the last few days have made up for my ridiculously pathetic performance in Class XII, and I just can’t stop jumping about in joy.
It was then that I received an admit into the Singapore MIT Alliance, with the SMA Grad Scholarship to boot. The thought of 1500 Sgd a month and a paid trip to MIT led to my life turning into a veritable orgy of celebration.
And then, on April 16, rested in my junk mail folder the following letter.
Dear Siddhu Warrier,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for
participation to the European Master in Informatics (EuMI).
Furthermore, your name has been proposed to the European Commission
for an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. You will receive a grant of 21000 EUR per year.
Please confirm your interest in participating to EuMi. Thank you.
Best regards,
Marco Pistore
(Coordinator of EuMI)
And now, I know what it means to be on the horns of a dilemma. Any opinions, anyone? Most academics I know recommend this – the course being at University of Edinburgh and RWTH Aachen University in Germany. But then, the SMA deal seems sweet.
However, I must say the last few days have made up for my ridiculously pathetic performance in Class XII, and I just can’t stop jumping about in joy.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Twinkle Twinkle Superstar
Though I had mentioned in my earlier post that I do not readily subject myself to two to three hours of visual and auditory torture, I seem to have been doing a lot of that for the last week or so. A case in point is today, when I watched not one movie but two – one after the other, sitting alone in a theatre.
For those of you who may be mystified by my inexplicable behaviour, let me hasten to explain – April 14 saw the release of three films, and I get paid for reviewing them. And there’s nothing I love to do more than collect papers with Mahatma Gandhi’s picture on their face. It was this thought that steeled me for three hours of watching the superstar, sitting alongside hordes of fanatical fans.
I’d watched the Malayalam original, Manichitrataazhu in 1993 as a nine year old – not once but several times. I fell in love with the movie, and was scared shitless by Shobhana’s national award winning performance. In fact, Shobhana signed me an autograph which said ‘Nagavalli’ after my mother told her how scared I’d become. So, as far as Chandramukhi was concerned, I expected something much worse. But P. Vasu surpassed my lowest expectations by making a frame-by-frame retake that was infinitely worse than the original.
In the original, Mohanlal, playing an erudite psychiatrist, walks in to the movie just before the intermission. But we can’t have that with superstar, can we? So we see our America educated psychiatrist knocking people around like they were feathers in the first scene – wearing the same white trainers he wore when he was an auto-driver in Baasha.
It was then that I saw the fanaticism that defines a true Rajni fan. Rajni mouthed an inanity after the fight was done - an inanity so inane that it would have made anyone with half a mind barf. But then, to my surprise, this young chap behind me screamed out a reverent ‘Thalaivaah’!
As to what they called ‘comedy’ in the movie, the less said the better. Vadivelu’s comedy belongs to pantomimes staged for the benefit of three year old retards. But, alas, his comedy is foisted upon an audience comprised of several adults. (The fact that they seem to love it casts a shadow over my own sanity, though!)
I mean, I love a good laugh as much as the next man (and the man next to him as well). But I find it difficult to laugh when, say, trucks splash mud on Vadivelu’s face. The only thing I find funny about the completely contrived situation is how Vadivelu looks so much better when his visage is covered by a layer of mud.
As the movie progresses, the story becomes more and more like Manichitrataazhu, except for a mindless stunt sequence where Rajni proves he can fly too. But the hitch is – this makes the movie worse. I shed tears of sorrow as Jyothika tried to roll her eyes and scare the world, Prabhu tried to cry and got the theatre rocking with laughter instead, and Rajni stuck a French beard on and screamed ‘Lakalakalakalaka…’ with his tongue out!
Talking of Jyotika, she has just enough acting talent to comfortably fit into a teaspoon. In addition, my classical dancing skills are just a little better than hers.
When she dances next to Vineeth, a trained classical dancer (and just about the only person in the whole movie who actually acts), she seems about as nimble as an obese Punjabi truck driver. But I’ll hand her this – she’s as adept at raising her eyebrows and looking stoned as the DPS girl is at mouthing funny dialogues as she chokes on whatever she was choking on.
In the theatre, the superstar fan club began to grow eerily silent with the passage of time.
After having started very enthusiastically with the devout call to their thalaivar, the blokes began to quiet down a bit. By the time the intermission was on, they began to make risqué remarks about the ads playing. By the time the movie neared its exciting denouement, the aforementioned luminaries decided it would be more fun to make fun of the hero’s English pronounciation – which they did, calling to hand resources of ingenuity I never expected them to possess.
It was a tired and drained self that walked out of Mayajaal to grab a bite to eat before Mumbai Xpress began to play. As I walked back in, I espied the exceedingly vocal blokes lounging by the entrance.
One of them looked at me in surprise and asked me, ‘Hey, weren’t you with us for Chandramukhi?’
‘Yeah!’, said I, trying hard to bring an expression of joy onto my face.
‘Have you come to watch it again?’, he asked me, his eyes almost popping out of his sockets.
‘Yes…SUUUPPEERRRSTAARR rocks!’
I shouted this out loud enough to cause a couple of seedy looking chaps to turn around and give me a gentle smile of approval.
He looked puzzled as he bade me his goodbye. I wondered why.
It was then that I realized I’d forgotten to don my green shirt, red cargos, pearly white sneakers and twenty buck sunglasses.
P.S: I forgot all about Nayanthara. She’s there as eye candy. Her role lacks substance, but she doesn’t, not by a long shot – hoo boy! =P~
For those of you who may be mystified by my inexplicable behaviour, let me hasten to explain – April 14 saw the release of three films, and I get paid for reviewing them. And there’s nothing I love to do more than collect papers with Mahatma Gandhi’s picture on their face. It was this thought that steeled me for three hours of watching the superstar, sitting alongside hordes of fanatical fans.
I’d watched the Malayalam original, Manichitrataazhu in 1993 as a nine year old – not once but several times. I fell in love with the movie, and was scared shitless by Shobhana’s national award winning performance. In fact, Shobhana signed me an autograph which said ‘Nagavalli’ after my mother told her how scared I’d become. So, as far as Chandramukhi was concerned, I expected something much worse. But P. Vasu surpassed my lowest expectations by making a frame-by-frame retake that was infinitely worse than the original.
In the original, Mohanlal, playing an erudite psychiatrist, walks in to the movie just before the intermission. But we can’t have that with superstar, can we? So we see our America educated psychiatrist knocking people around like they were feathers in the first scene – wearing the same white trainers he wore when he was an auto-driver in Baasha.
It was then that I saw the fanaticism that defines a true Rajni fan. Rajni mouthed an inanity after the fight was done - an inanity so inane that it would have made anyone with half a mind barf. But then, to my surprise, this young chap behind me screamed out a reverent ‘Thalaivaah’!
As to what they called ‘comedy’ in the movie, the less said the better. Vadivelu’s comedy belongs to pantomimes staged for the benefit of three year old retards. But, alas, his comedy is foisted upon an audience comprised of several adults. (The fact that they seem to love it casts a shadow over my own sanity, though!)
I mean, I love a good laugh as much as the next man (and the man next to him as well). But I find it difficult to laugh when, say, trucks splash mud on Vadivelu’s face. The only thing I find funny about the completely contrived situation is how Vadivelu looks so much better when his visage is covered by a layer of mud.
As the movie progresses, the story becomes more and more like Manichitrataazhu, except for a mindless stunt sequence where Rajni proves he can fly too. But the hitch is – this makes the movie worse. I shed tears of sorrow as Jyothika tried to roll her eyes and scare the world, Prabhu tried to cry and got the theatre rocking with laughter instead, and Rajni stuck a French beard on and screamed ‘Lakalakalakalaka…’ with his tongue out!
Talking of Jyotika, she has just enough acting talent to comfortably fit into a teaspoon. In addition, my classical dancing skills are just a little better than hers.
When she dances next to Vineeth, a trained classical dancer (and just about the only person in the whole movie who actually acts), she seems about as nimble as an obese Punjabi truck driver. But I’ll hand her this – she’s as adept at raising her eyebrows and looking stoned as the DPS girl is at mouthing funny dialogues as she chokes on whatever she was choking on.
In the theatre, the superstar fan club began to grow eerily silent with the passage of time.
After having started very enthusiastically with the devout call to their thalaivar, the blokes began to quiet down a bit. By the time the intermission was on, they began to make risqué remarks about the ads playing. By the time the movie neared its exciting denouement, the aforementioned luminaries decided it would be more fun to make fun of the hero’s English pronounciation – which they did, calling to hand resources of ingenuity I never expected them to possess.
It was a tired and drained self that walked out of Mayajaal to grab a bite to eat before Mumbai Xpress began to play. As I walked back in, I espied the exceedingly vocal blokes lounging by the entrance.
One of them looked at me in surprise and asked me, ‘Hey, weren’t you with us for Chandramukhi?’
‘Yeah!’, said I, trying hard to bring an expression of joy onto my face.
‘Have you come to watch it again?’, he asked me, his eyes almost popping out of his sockets.
‘Yes…SUUUPPEERRRSTAARR rocks!’
I shouted this out loud enough to cause a couple of seedy looking chaps to turn around and give me a gentle smile of approval.
He looked puzzled as he bade me his goodbye. I wondered why.
It was then that I realized I’d forgotten to don my green shirt, red cargos, pearly white sneakers and twenty buck sunglasses.
P.S: I forgot all about Nayanthara. She’s there as eye candy. Her role lacks substance, but she doesn’t, not by a long shot – hoo boy! =P~
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
The Motorcycle Diaries
I’m not the kind who readily subjects himself to two hours of visual and auditory torture in a dark room. In fact, given a choice, I’d avoid setting foot in the theater as much as I can. Devdas, which brought tears to the eyes of a few I know, brought tears to my eyes as well – only they were tears of boredom. Ocean’s Eleven – I fell asleep halfway through the first thirty minutes. I wished to crack James Bond’s skull with a blackjack (though my name isn’t Warrierovsky). But there are a few movies I’ve enjoyed watching greatly – movies that have left their indelible marks on my self.
One such movie is The Motorcycle Diaries. Though the movie was released in 2004, I never got down to seeing it till yesterday – blame it on my monumental laziness. Directed by Walter Sallers, this movie is nothing less than a masterpiece.
The New York Times (curse the dad-blasted, soul-less Yankees) had the gall and the immortal rind to describe the movie as the Best Road Movie Ever. ‘Road Movie?’, well these Yankees are just plain stupid! Considering the CIA thought Che was ‘fairly intellectual for a Latino’, it isn’t surprising at all.
The movie was a lot more than that. It showed the transformation of a young privileged upper middle class boy traveling – a boy who reminded me of myself and so many others I know – into a man the whole world knew and respected.
The trip starts off on a lark, with the proposed objective being to fuck in every country in Latin America (preferably every town). But as their old bike fails and they hit the road, one begins to witness glimmers of the transformation that lead to the death of Ernesto Guevara, and the emergence from his ashes of ‘Che’ Guevara.
As the movie wound to an end, I began to contemplate upon life, and the sheer meaninglessness of mine.
I realized that I was blind.
The poverty and the injustice perpetrated by the capitalists which affected young Ernesto such a lot are visible in much greater numbers in my country. But I am inured to it.
We may be called an economic miracle by Western trained economists who marvel at our rate of growth, but can we forget the millions we have displaced or rendered jobless in the name of development? But no, I’m too busy munching on my Cadbury’s to notice.
Western Multinationals like Pepsi, brought into the country to bring about jobs and employment, have polluted ground water supplies in Kerala. They have deprived entire villages of a drop to drink. Oh, excuse me, that Mirinda tastes oh-so-succulent.
This is one movie which, as the trailer says, will alter the way you look at the world. One movie you just shouldn’t miss taking a dekko at, though it’s completely in Spanish (with English sub-titles).
By the way, anyone have a copy of Che’s biography or better still, The Motorcycle Diaries, lying around somewhere?
"Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man" – Che Guevara, 1967.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)