Cattle and class

Not one to read up my news like a good Mumbaikar ought to on my daily commute towards the workplace, I missed out on the Great War being waged over a Mr. ST’s ‘cattle class’ tweets and the indignant horror from the all-encompassing guardian deities of that great , ‘Indian Culture’ or IC. What finally caught my attention were the two (not one, but two!) articles, one filed in at 0252hrs IST (!) and the other at 0836 hrs IST in today’s Economic Times. For the benefit of the other daily ignoramuses like me, Mr. ST had seemingly insulted the sentiments of the thousands of Indians who take pride in being able to eat their mini idlis in sambar piping hot some 10,000 ft. in the air by tweeting something about cattle class and holy cows and his solidarity with the same.

First came the howl about the ‘cattle class’ when some vigilant rakshak noticed the slur on our precious, precious holy cows and thus, led to the filing of the aforementioned reports. This brought back to me the entire hullabaloo over a certain Hindi movie and its title when the ‘Hairdressers’ Association of Mumbai’ had to be given premier passes to the movie as appeasement and a word had to be blacked out as it once again, was an insult to the thousands of Indians who take pride in being able to shear the mighty Indian Moustache daily (I am still trying to figure out the exact machinations involved in the slur cast and yet, failing miserably). Since clearly, it is supposed to be against the very ethos of the IC for a profession to get a mention (and there was me thinking all this while that the only thing an honourable bharitya naari should never mention was her husband’s name), should I not be staging a protest and asking for the time honoured method of blacking out the words ‘investment banker’ from the headlines of every newspaper worth its penny spewing out diatribes against those greedy I-bankers?

So going by antecedents set by those guardians of the great IC, I should ask for (big black blot) (big black blot) by Sarah Macdonald at my friendly neighbourhood (big black blot), sue every white skinned man who exclaims ‘Holy (big black blot)!’ as an alternative to taking a certain name in vain, vilify the (big black blot) if he is late with my dinner order and cuss at the (big black blot) if he refuses to ply his auto at my request. Sigh! All hail the great Indian Culture!

The assassination of good sense

Twitter often leads to strange journeys across the internet for me.  Still coming to terms on being able to actually ’say’ something to the likes of Lance Armstrong or closer home, Shashi Tharoor, I came across one Mr. Pritish Nandy the other day and vaguely recalling that name before from the media, I read through some bits of  ‘conversation’ that was going on.

And then I came across this – a post by Pritish Nandy on the (in)famous Savitha Bhabhi protesting the banning of the site by the I&B Ministry. As I read the article, I became more and more incredulous at the viewpoint of the author as presented.

As per Mr. Nandy’s viewpoint, Savith Bhabhi represents the emancipated, modern day Bhratiya nari ( and many other cliched things, ad nauseum) and is, in the author’s own words, “a symbol of freedom, of empowerment, of the sexuality our women can wield if they are allowed to escape the sham world we Indian men trap them in because of our own fears of sexual inadequacy masquerading as machismo“, even going on to assign the last one to one of the causes of rape.

Lashing out against internet censorship is one thing, but citing the popularity of the website and painting a pornographic comic strip in women-lib light is outright assassination of good sense. Specially so when it comes from a man who is acclaimed in intellectual circles for his poetry, for his brilliance, for his journalism and from someone who writes like this.

Now, I agree that Mr. Nandy, like anyone else who is free, brown and over 21 (which was a favorite saying of a favorite prof. from college), entitled to his right of opinion but what worries me is the standpoint coming from a person such as him. This leads me to ask myself some uncomfortable questions of whether this is outlook of the modern day ‘educated’ man and if it is, disturbs me a great deal as to how far we have gone back in evolution.

We are like this only

One afternoon at the office…

Me: Hey what is the password (using the American pronunciation)?

TSAU: Dude, it is not ‘paesword’, it is ‘paasword’. What do you think you are? Amercian?

Me: Erm… well I am not British either. So?

TSAU: … … …

SN: Why don’t all be good south indians and do ‘What is the paaasworddd?’

Shutterphilia and Photophobia

A picture is worth a thousand words they say. I firmly disagree. A thousand words never made me look like a particularly brown jigglypuff atleast. Everybody has their own pet peeve (carefully tended to with healthy food and the regulatory twice a day brushing of the coat even) and mine is being photographed.

Long long ago (some 10 years ago actually but what with me being the modest nari types who shall reveal her deepest darkest secrets, like her pet peeves for instance but not her age, we shall safely stick to ‘long long ago’), a mighty instrument was procured by the father, all the way from Calcutta. It arrived, enclosed in a yellow cardboard dabba with the familiar Kodak typeface on it.

After the usual healthy dose of squabbling, jostling and brief paragraphs on the technical capabilities of various members of the household were done with, batteries were inserted reverentially and behold! The age of digital photography had arrived at my house.

Being the ‘healthier’ sibling of the two, naturally I was the first to get my index finger on the (not so) tiny (in those days) round button and capture for posterity the household who all of a sudden found themselves the objects of unsurpassed interest (and not always willingly) in their various roles as they went about their lives.

Viciously frizzy waking-up hair that would make the afro-do blush? Kliiicihk Streams of mango juice drooling out of your mouth in all directions while you frantically try to prevent it from staining that white petticoat? Kliiichik Nodding off with your mouth open and saliva dribbling out? Kliiichik Kliichik Wherever they went, whatever they did, I, the faithful would follow, chronicling in sepia, black & white or colour.

Saving the best for last, I finally yielded the camera to the lesser mortals, posing elegantly and consciously. Visions of high cheek-boned, hollow cheeked, pouty lipped beautiful curly-lashed women swam in my head while I tried to ‘hold’ my poses. The pictures were duly clicked and the entire brood herded on the next weekend family gathering into the ‘computer room’.

One after the other, the objects under scrutiny were prodded, poked, smirked, jabbed and guffawed at until onto the screen came pictures of yours truly. But wait! Who was that sulking melon-face? That kid with the widely spaced eyes? What happened to the high cheekbones and hollow cheeks? Surely they could not have been that filled in by all those Dairy Milks? No way those barely there eyebrows were mine!

After various curses were let loose (out of earshot of adult appendages obviously) on the photographer and the camera and Kodak in general, I vowed never to be photographed again. Every time a lens was aimed at me, I would be best captured as a blur ducking behind sofas, chairs, trees, automobiles and if nothing else was available, hiding behind my hands.

Group photos would see friends acquiring weird projections at the sides (that would be erm, the me which could not be covered by slightly thinner friends, thank you) and passport shots being blamed on bad Photo-shopping skills of the incompetent nincompoop who dared to try to pass off as a professional photographer.

Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and Linkedin (your profile is 70% complete. Try uploading your picture) have all only complicated my life, unrelentingly demanding a picture, a likeness of me to be put up. Twitter even goes on to say that at least the photo would help people connect with me and identify me. So the next time you see a vaguely monolithic structure shaped oddly like a dome claiming to be a snapshot of me, remember that is NOT me. I am more like the high cheek-boned, hollow cheeked, pouty lipped beautiful curly-lashed kind springing a random photograph of a random domed-structure to help the lesser mortals connect with me.

Meanwhile in Bombay…

After battling the traffic, the almost legendary autowallas and the horrible horrible power-cuts, I had given up and decided to pitch my tent elsewhere. And the elsewhere happens to be Bombay. And a couple of months later, I really really, really like the city!

Generally, it is at around this point most Bengaluru patrons start drawing out their blades in defense and start the hunt for my blood but Bombay, anyday, with all of it’s thousand and one problems, is better than Bengaluru. The housing was a pain in the arse and I finally settled for Thane and a 2 hour commute time to work (and this is one way), the ‘locals’ are a commuter’s nightmare with one counting themselves to be truly blessed if they manage to get both one of their feet actually inside the train, you find traffic jams (!!!) at 0030 and I need not even talk about the monsoon, BUT, I come back home at 0145 and I live to tell the tale.

Hah! Take that, Bangalore!

I am not dead, yet

Just moved to Bombay!

Bangalore Shivers

Take a girl out of a sweaty, sand filled place with a couple of nice beaches thrown in and put her in a place where the biggest water body around happens to be called Ulsoor LAKE.

Now mix in a hundred even days dry as tinder, a fifty or so emptying the heavens and an odd eleven with temperatures of fifteen on an average.

The resultant is me shivering in my bathroom after dunking myself with water at sub zero temperature. It is a vicious cycle with a deep dark conspiracy thrown in. The thought process goes something like this, depending on the outside temperature…

Hmmmm, a nip in the wind… should I switch on the geyser? Hmmmm… yeah that should be about right…let me try anyway…(a mug of hitherto unknown, but very soon to be discovered cold water is on its way to my toes, which are about the only parts I can feel after the water flows down)…holy %^$@….the geyser is a good thing after all! (opens the hot water faucet)… ah! all that steam makes me feel that much better! Wait a minute now we would not want the water getting too hot ha ha I am not going to fall for that and scald myself let me see how hot…..aaaaaaaarrgh! !@#!^% &^%$%^!(*, bloody hell!

Lesson learnt: One can be scalded in one way too many, for example, by the water on its way into the bucket from the faucet which coincidentally might also result in a long long burn on your forearm.

If it only all ended there! But no, finally after one manages to collect enough water to take a bath, the first mug is warm enough not to scald you but cold enough to continue giving you goosebumps from the cold. Then the wiser-after-getting-burnt you decides to use all that calculus and begins to add hot water in delta amounts. And you wait, and you wait and you wait some more, while you freeze some more and the water, miraculously is nowhere close to that Utopian temperature. So you decide to defy all logic and add a heuristically appropriate amount of hot water now and get ready to soak in bliss when again, you cannot feel anything but your toes, this time for the rest of you is busy being burnt.

It is approximately around here that lesser mortals would just give it all up, drench yourself in freezing water and stumble out, grateful to have your skin still on.

As for me, I head to work and bully them into parceling me to warmer climes called Bombay

Long loops and noodle sticks

I generally love my hair and on most normal days it loves me back. So logically, Sunday must have been anything but normal. For one, it ended up in a lot of my hair lying on the floor without me attached at the right end.

It is not like I have a bad hair-cut history though. Hair cuts from age 4 (that is as far back as I can remember)to age 15 involved one-stool-with-white-sheet affairs. No fancy parlors with big shiny mirrors for me. No sir! Daddy used to lug me and sister to the local mustache trimmer and ask him to chop it all off as closely as possible (yes, you are absolutely right, there were lots of times when we were mistaken for a pair of particularly cute looking boys, specially given my mom’s penchant for dressing us in corduroys).

But all this stopped when I decided to boycott hair cuts all together at the ripe age of 16. So it grew on and on till age 20 when once again I decided to shear it. Off went my knee length hair, to the background of my mother’s tears and my glee and separated me from the oily plait for ever.

It was all bouncy curls, long loops, etc etc until last Sunday when I decided to see what noodle sticks would look like. After much youtubeing and googling for technique, there I was with a new pink Philips hair dryer in my right and a just-off-the-rack round brush in the left, newly acquired full length mirror in front and hope in my heart.

The first few seconds were fine. Round brush through wet hair, pink dryer on medium heat. Except, the brush decided it liked my hair a bit too much for my own good and curled up snug against my ear. One gentle tug, a couple more stronger ones and countless panicky pulls, twists and groans later, I recognized the inevitable – it was more tangled in my hair than a kitten gone berserk.

I hemmed an I hawed and finally had to lop it off with a pair of scissors. I finally did have my noodle sticks, except they where confined to a thankfully small portion behind my ear and horribly short compared to the rest of my hair. Horrible to the extend of almost 12 inches!

So if you now think I look like a wet puppy in profile it might be unwise to wonder what happened and possibly even fatal to ask me next becuase, pssssst… they are still looking for the last one who did exactly that.

I do! I do!

I enter.I walk.I pull.I sit.I stare.I read.I pretend.I think.I dream.I type.I stare some more.I call.I despair.I shake my head.I try not to.I fail.I weep.I talk.I walk.I eat.I call.I book.I smile and I am happy again!

A wee free read

Precocious kids bursting with all kinds of talents and waiting to become the next big promised thing has mostly always been a hallmark of fantasy and Pratchett is not to be left too far behind.

Enter Miss Tiffany Aching, ‘hag’ and ’spawn of Granny Aching’, all of 9 years old and her adventures with The Wee Free Men. Little Miss Aching, dairymaid par excellence, ‘jiggit grandchild’ is tickling trout by the river when she first meets the only little men who pull of being cute and blue at the same time (and are not Smurfs too!)

Then, her teeny brother is whisked away by the Queen of Fairies (remember Lords and Ladies?) and our tweeny heroine sets out to get him back home, armed with First Sight, Second Thoughts and a sturdy frying pan made of iron and aided by wee Scotsmen in kilts. The rest of the novel is classic Pratchett and his raucous take on Snow Queen, Narnia, Peter Pan and most things Celtic with even the odd Moby Dick thrown in.

Though the book doesn’t exactly leave you aching for more, it was an entertaining read in the usual Pratchett manner of being an exaggerated parody of real life “and it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done…”