Tag: Humour

The White Tiger Stops at Gray – Part 1

When Arvind Adiga’s ‘White Tiger’ won the Booker, I promptly read the book. White Tiger is about a driver who works for a rich Indian family,  and turns gruesome as he kills his US-returned employer for gain.

People have heard of the fact that I travel, and that I read when I travel. Well, this should have meant that I was slicing the encyclopedia and chewing the glossary as paan – information oozing out of very pore in short. On the contrary, I confess I have done little to improve my intellect with this spot of commute. I have dedicated myself to the lighter works of fiction that have worked to improve my imagination. Whether any of this imagination has been useful in any way constructively, I am yet to find out, but it has had a terrible effect upon my nerves.

Take the case of the Gray Tiger.

During my recent trip to India, we had hired a car for the day with a driver. The parents-in-law accompanied us too, and the car was generally full. This is when a character sketch of the driver is required information for the narrative to proceed. The driver was as talkative a bat as ever visited the driver-dom. The man had an opinion to offer on any topic and monopolized the conversation on any matter. I am pretty sure the man has never been inside a plane, but he could ramble on the comforts of his car over a plane for all of 12 minutes and 52 seconds. For a man to get this much air-time in our family is stupendous. We, as a family, are well-known for our loquacity.
We were deep in Tamil Nadu, and another point to note with this driver was the fact that he refused to talk in Tamil, or listen to Tamil songs. He talked fluently in English and seemed proud of having an audience. Being the kind of man who doesn’t waste an audience no matter how large, he also told us that, ‘I don’t ever listen to Tamil songs. If you want, I have old ghazals or this CD’.
I should mention here too, that on this particular day, my intestines were dancing the Wonka. I had steadily visited the toilets in every conceivable location, and was withering like a plucked flower in a vase without water by the minute. One can readily understand why I was not quite interested in knowing why the man did not like Tamil songs. If he did not like Tamil songs, that was his taste, I told myself. But the man insisted on using the cue to take the topic of conversation onto why he did not like Tamil. He told us he had travelled extensively in Gujarat, and also that he did not like the sugar element in Gujarati food. The mention of food was making me twist in agony again, and added to this was the question: why should one not like Tamil songs if one has travelled in Gujarat?

So, there we are, just watching the scenery flit by, and listening to this man ramble on in the background, when he starts to open up his life story.
“One can call it destiny or the dance of fate, but I had to quit the employ of the Sait family.” he said dramatically. He was plainly tempting us into just muttering a syllable of interest, upon which he would pounce like a bird of prey. Had I been Arvind Adiga without an upset stomach, I might have evinced interest, but as such the only things that held my interest were toilets with water in them. Looks like the family felt the same way too (not with regards to toilets, but the story). Usually we are all agog for a story, this time everybody looked resolutely at their footwear and wondered why I’d forgotten to pack the moisturizer (at least that is what I remember thinking before my stomach got affronted and drew attention back to itself). So the maestro was left high and dry and sullenly manned the car for sometime.

The guy was chatting with considerable interest with my daughter, who seemed quite oblivious to the silent stares I was boring into the back of her head, so naturally the mo.-in.law assumed he had children or at least liked them. The mother-in-law took it upon herself to steer the conv. towards more neutral topics and asked the fellow if he had family. The man came up with utter drivel as an answer to this question, something about matrimony being a jail term or unending agony or some such thing. I forgot what exactly it was, but I remember laughing out loud. It was all in very flowery language and clearly calculated to impress. Yes – I got it now.

It was a rather bad similie about marriage being like quick sand in the desert, when one is mirthlessly pulled in, as against quick sands in the forest where the agile can latch themselves onto hanging tree branches, and save themselves. Apparently, trees near quick sand patches do that. I did not know that, it was a revelation to me.

He then went for the “Oh, I am a single man – have been alone for the past few decades” effect. After which he sighed – a hollow sigh that seemed to emanate from his bowels.

If I hadn’t just seen him function as a car driver, I would have thought he was the star student at the Drama Academy.

I don’t know about you, but watching everybody else eat a “full meals” at a wonderful restaurant, while I drank black tea and lemon combined with this dose from the driver was making me uneasy. Why was this man saying he was alone and dancing with fate and tempting destiny by jumping into quicksand or whatever drivel he was going on about?

We reached our spot of interest as it were, and the husband and I decided to take a small stroll through an adjoining grove. You know, a spot of a romantic walk pondering deep philosophical questions. The jaundiced eye was keeping the lookout for quicksand holes too, so we could decipher for ourselves whether if one of us were to fall in, would the other haul us out. The quiet birdsong kept us company for all of a minute, and I addressed the dearest – “You know what?”

I can’t remember the last time I got a nastier jar in my life.
“Yes madam? Please tell me..”

What the…..hell – whose hand was I holding onto? The husband’s all right. Have I started hallucinating? Oh god – what now? My head did a 180 degree turn to find the ingratiating chap right behind us. It is a wonder he didn’t bump into us when I stopped. I mean – really!

Events turned out such that, I had to take the car back with the daughter in the evening alone for an hour and a half after dropping the husband and parents off, through a rural countryside. I don’t think I can find a person who cursed Arvind Adiga as wholely as I did for writing the book and myself for reading it. Unease had turned to plain nervous, and I am fooling the butterflies if I were to tell them they weren’t keeping me company that day.

I held onto the husband’s hand and asked him to call me every 15 minutes, and left gulping loudly.

— Stay Tuned for Part 2.

Mystery Spot

I have kept quiet for too long. KQED programs lured me, but I stood firm, and every time a bumper sticker from the cars mocked me, I held my ground. It isn’t for anything that we grew up singing

When temptation comes my way I shall not be moved
When temptation comes my way I shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
I shall not be moved.

Then one day you realize that sometimes temptation is a good thing. Giving in is fine. Like the time you say okay to that piece of milk chocolate. And so it is today.

For the lost-count-of-sightings time, I saw the Mystery Spot bumper sticker gleaming from a navy blue SUV ahead of me and decided to just blog about it.

If you live in California, this menace is pervasive. The blighters are yellow and should blend in with taxis, only they don’t. They stick them on cars. When the father was visiting, it was his dear wish to stick them on our car after we made the mistake of taking him along to mystery spot. In fact, he got 2 of them for surety. I tried subtle hints to dissuade him. At this point, it is prudent to inform you that subtle hints don’t work with the father when it comes to aesthetics. I tore some tissues in my throat and the issue was amicably resolved. The bumper stickers were spared my cars’ butt.

They found another home.

I only found out the next time I visited my home in India where they had taken up residence. They were stuck on the toilet door. So you get the picture. You stand up to go the bathroom, and you see a yellow sticker called ‘Mystery Spot’ gleaming at you from the bathroom door.

Now:
• Folks have wondered what is it people do in there for so long in the mornings. Always a mystery one would agree. Especially when someone else is waiting for the premises, this mystery is a thrilling one.
• Mysterious sounds emanate from the room (both when occupied and not)
• The mind works in its mysterious ways, and produces theories and hypotheses waiting to be unleashed on the world in the mystery spot.

I confronted the mother on why this eyesore was plastered on the bathroom door. She wrings her hand up in the air, muttering something about kitchens not being the mystery spot, and how she takes particular care with all the ingredients she uses, and moves away with a tragic look on her face.

The mystery was solved. I have had cause to comment on this blog, that the father, while gifted with a mind capable of mastering numbers and analyzing stock market indices is particularly challenged in the aesthetics department. I wish to point you to this link about the décor in the house to refresh your memory.

https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/the-colourful-house-by-the-daughter-of-the-colour-blind-father/

So, while he was looking for a place to stick the damn things that had survived 2 customs clearings unnecessarily, and travelled round the globe, he had come upon the kitchen door. He seemed to have cracked a joke or two about the mysteries of cooking. I must tell you that the mother is as gifted with cooking as the father is not with interior decoration, and she took this onslaught on her creative domain personally. Consequently, the mystery spot remains the bathrooms, and every time I throw my mind back to the mysteries of the room, the revelations surprise me.

Drat that genius that came up with free ‘Mystery Spot’ stickers.

Common Sense?

The news delivers again. A california woman is suing Google for being hit by a car while walking on the Interstate in Utah. According to her, she googled directions to walk someplace on her BlackBerry.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20006379-71.html

Now, when you google from a computer, it gives you the warning that some places maybe missing crosswalks or something like that. But apparently, the blackberry neglected to give her this crucial piece of information and she being an all trusting sort of species, just went on. Even the fact that she was led onto a freeway without any traffic signals and cars and trucks cruising along at 65 miles per hour seemed to have skipped her. She was concentrating on following the directions see?

It must have been like that with that poor old demented soul who ordered hot coffee, and then sued McDonalds for making the coffee hot. Now, all coffee cups are helpfully labelled: “Caution, contents may be hot.”

http://cleveland.injuryboard.com/automobile-accidents/the-mcdonalds-hot-coffee-case.aspx?googleid=281136

There can, on the other hand be more generic and dire warnings to help people

Don’t procrastinate

Do today what you can do tomorrow, and do now what you can do today. But go easy with the coffee, it’s okay to procrastinate that, because you want it to cool down before drinking.

Read this thing completely before making decisions, and then proceed to a 35 page declaration of washing off responsibility.

Look before you leap. Caution: leaping is dangerous to health, and may result in injuries. Also, leaping between objects should be done with care. I mean building to building – better left to Pixar animation, cushion to cushion few millimeters apart, can be done after reading 38 page clause declaring you are responsible for the actions of your own leaping.

Or one can just be reminded subtly to use one’s common sense.

P.A.League

I already had a tentative membership into the P.A League, but this week-end my membership was confirmed. Yoohoo! Can you all cheer with me?

The P.A.League confirms membership when the following conditions have been achieved
1) Look dashed silly (in public of course) There isn’t much point in being silly with only the walls as an audience.
2) Do things that sane men and women scowl upon in real life, but would perfectly enjoy on reel.
3) Have a bunch of folks point their fingers at you, and make little effort to hide their glee.

I must tell you achieving the third is the roughest. If you think having a couple of folks who barely know how to eat out of their own plates jeer at you is easy, I’d have to suggest some classes for you. I suspect it would be harder for a stiff upper lip kind of person I assure you.

I realise I have gone on just needling your interest in the P.A. League, and you brain is now aching to know what it is. Is it the Personal Assistants Club, or the Polymath Agrarian League?

I’ll feel cruel if I withhold any longer. So here goes. It is called the Prized Asses League. To feel like  a prized ass, you can either do things like this:

https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2006/01/24/a-new-genre-in-the-footwear-industry/

Or, take up the daunting task of engaging children at the Kitchen Khiladi fest. I cannot say the whole event was like this. I wasn’t feeling like a P.A member for 90% of the activities I indulged in with the children, but towards the very end, I was running out of options, and started a freeze dance program. In hindsight, that did not seem like such a good idea. For one, I went in with the assumption that all I had to do was stand in the sidelines and start and stop the music. This game is a sophisticated one where children are supposed to dance when the music is on and freeze when it stops. I obviously thought that they would dance and they would freeze. Turns out, I had to lead them. I am not sure how Goliath felt when he was swinging in with the Davids, but I felt close. At one point, I froze in a funny posture to induce some fun and giggling into the proceedings, and two of them pointed at me and started howling (with laughter thankfully, I can’t tell you how bad it would have been if the children cried on seeing me dance)

Every once in a while, letting my inhibitions go with children is refreshing. It teaches me the importance of having a sense of humor and taking life lightly. I am thinking that would immensely help these folks too.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100519/ap_on_hi_te/as_pakistan_facebook

Limbo between Roti Land, Poori Land and Parotta Land

I tend to agree with Vasundhara Chauhan. Who is Vasundhara Chauhan? Why would I agree with her? These are valid questions and deserve to be addressed. V.Chauhan penned this article in the Hindu where she deplores the flood of standard dal makhani, butter chicken, and naan wherever one looks for good indian food.

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/04/25/stories/2010042550280700.htm

Imagine my surprise therefore when I stepped into an Indian restaurant, and they asked me whether I wanted Naan or Chappati to go with dal makhani and mutter panneer. I went in for the Chappati – the old jaws need a break sometimes and soft chappatis would fit the bill nicely. The chappatis arrived, and if anything, they were worse for the jaws than a bunch of sugarcane chunks.

The chappatis did not stop me from taking a mental trip down the Cauvery river, however. Yes, the chappatis were a sturdy breed that is the hallmark of the South Indian Chappati Making Foundation. You see the folks of the S.I.C-M-Foundation have a process:

1) You first sit on the floor with a huge bowl of flour, and one leg outstretched from beneath the saree.
2) You tip a generous serving of oil in the flour.
3) You knead it to a rubbery consistency that is bordering on hard. Sort of like those mock cork balls.
4)  You take up approx 323 sq ft with spread out magazines, and flour and generally shoo the crows and children wanting to play with the flour away.
5) Then, you proceed to roll out triangular chappatis that have a tendency to shine with oil
6) Once this arduous process is done, you can proceed to the actual task of putting them on the tava. Oil should be used again and poor triangular blighters have to be flipped back and forth till you have a coloration that tells you not to expect something soft.

The SICMF does not like to see soft chapatis without oil. The chaps have to be mid way into being poories, stop short and decide in the last minute to become parottas, and stay in the limbo between Roti Land, Poori Land and Parotta Land.

The process takes a brisk 58 minutes for 15 chappatis, and is usually served with ‘Gurma’.

For the records, I was not scarred excessively with the chappati-poori-parotta treatment, since my mother broke her ties with SICMF early in her career, and we had fantastic, soft rotis instead of chappatis.

Daffodils and AT&T

Every once in a while, I am in the middle of an eloquent sentence, and just letting the poetic slide from my tongue.You know how it is.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

Silence. I realise there is no reciprocation. It’s as if the other person isn’t there. Okay, I agree that wasn’t me it was old Wordsworth with his silly daffodils, but it could have been me with the ripe troubles of life, like the vast canvas poem I once wrote.

Why? That can’t be right. I mean, that thing that I just said was pretty hot stuff, and the folks I am talking to aren’t that insensitive to my needs of dialogue. I reach for my handkerchief, to wipe away the tears, when I find my call failed.

Call Failed. Try again? The phone looks at me with a touch of innocence.

Well, I can try again, but you should know that hot stuff like daffodils don’t just roll off the same way again. What comes out is a dull, and slightly drooping daffodil, just wilting by the window in the sun. Just imagine what humanity would have lost if Wordsworth had tried calling in the poem to his fiancee to write down immediately before he forgets, and AT&T dropped the call? (One could argue of course that the vast canvas poem was worth being dropped, but that is entirely a matter of perception. )

I have an iphone that I love for all of its features except its signal quality. I thought it was just me till Jon Stewart endorsed my view on his daily show. I have to say that I totally love his jab at AT&T and Apple.
http://www.dailytech.com/Jon+Stewart+Goes+After+Steve+Jobs+Apple+ATT+and+Appholes/article18263.htm
Excerpt:
I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

Today, I was sitting and minding my own business when AT&T calls and badgers me about some random thing like plan changes or something, and AT&T drops their own call. HA! And HA! again.

Justice.

Warm milk

Any coffee lover seeing me order a coffee prefers to shrivel up and die a slow decaffeinated death. I find a size that isn’t even on the charts on the board, and order one smaller than that. As if this embarrassment were not enough, I would stress on the extra milk and 1/2 shot of coffee.

“There ISN’T even a half shot of coffee available!” the husband would say looking embarrassed, and shuffling his feet. Clearly, for a macho coffee lover, it is uncool to be seen in public with a coffee douche. In fact the general consensus on the male coffee lovers club seems to be that bad enough the spouse is a coffee-douche, but is shamelessly admitting it? It could be a blow to any male’s ego.

I now know how a peacock must feel. Going around strutting with all those colorful feathers and generally trumping up the importance of color in life. Even the far off rainbow seems impressed. Then, the female of the species comes along, in a stunning white, and still looks graceful as hell without any of the colors. That must have ticked off the peacock a good deal.

What I am getting at is…The male is proud of taste buds, yada yada yada, female blah-blah.

A few months ago, I decided to make matters worse and cut coffee. ‘I’ll go for Tea’ I announced high-handedly. It wasn’t like I was making a sacrifice. In fact it is documented fact that my brain reacts to tea like a camel spotting an oasis. The welcoming cup in the morning springs on the new day, and the whole day just goes on, basking in the warmth of the morning tea.
 
When the oracles of stress relief pounced on my ounce of tea in the morning, I decided to let go. “Caffeine is the worst!”, they proclaimed. Reading about caffeine one day, I decided to cut the miserable loner of a cup of tea in the morning and rough it out. I bunged in the Philosophical line “What is life without a few sacrifices?”, and had a warm glass of milk in the morning instead.

I might as well have popped a few sleeping pills. Not one of these folks told me the effects of warm milk on sleepy brain cells. The cells went into a kind of a stupor. I was snoring with my eyes open, and at one point might even have been drooling.

That wouldn’t do. I mean I still have to make a living and snoring droolers don’t make a living. I think I’ll stick to the cuppa tea in the morning and battle the effects of caffeine. Or I may switch to decaffeinated tea and see how that goes.

Mystery of the Missing Heel in the Universe

Recently, the brain has been quite busy wrapping itself around the book ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’ by Douglas Adams. When I say wrapping itself around, that is a loose word, since the bulk of my reading is conducted in sporadic bursts in the noisiest of places with thousands of people milling around, gently prodding me in the ribs to move on, while somebody looks apologetically as they squeeze their shoes on my feet.

“Sorrreeee!” they smile as they park the foot on mine.

“It’s okaaayyyy!” I respond with a smile struggling through the grimace of pain, and hang on with great resolve in the crowded public transit.

Douglas Adam’s SEP doctrine is interesting. SEP is Somebody Else’s Problem, and we being the self centered goons that we are, anything that is somebody else’s problem we safely ignore, so long as it does not provide one with fodder for thought or comment. We simply go on believing it does not exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else’s_Problem

However, today I can proclaim : Thine eyes have seen the glory of SEP. I was determined to see for myself, and when the mind is made up, it sees the SEP.

I was treated to a 180-pounder tender a shrill “Sorreee” as she pinned her pin-point apology on me in this morning. I was tottering along, after the onslaught, musing on masochistic footwear and how otherwise sunny people willingly jam their feet like sausages into the narrow confines of their footwear, when I was rewarded with a sight I would otherwise have missed.

There was a girl in front of me. She was walking as though no problem existed. Only a problem existed. Yes it did. I saw it. I spotted it. You see one of her shoes had heels like this

The other had heels like this.

Chipped. Broken. Gone. Yet, she artificially pumped her broken heel leg up so she could give the illusion of not having a broken heel. I know how hard it must be walking like that, given that I have solid years of practice to back me up in my claims. Credit: Those vast hours of our youth that we spent on noble pursuits (including walking like air-hostesses, which meant walking around on imaginary heels). I don’t know why in our girlish minds, air hostesses were credited with high heels always, but those were the days of the far away dreams of flight – the unattainable for the average middle class Indian. High heels being equally unattainable, the combination must have been the ultimate fodder for our imagination.

I had an inclination to tap the girl on her shoulder and helpfully tell her that her heel was broken. It would have been priceless to see the look on her face, like she did not know.  Start the ‘Mystery of the Missing Heel in the Universe’ series what?

Happy Women’s Day

Happy Women’s Day to all you wonderful women out there.

I have been getting lots of mails telling me people are proud of me because I cry when I am sad and laugh when something is funny. Also, my hugs are supposed to be fused with the magical healing touch. Bruises heal themselves. I wonder how I broke the cup the other day with all these abilities I possess. Maybe, I did not hug the shards of the broken cup hard enough.

Apparently, all this makes me a wonderful woman. I also eat when I am hungry – I suppose that makes me more human.

The mails I am receiving also tell me as a woman I don’t quite know my power or capacity – I agree. Once when I was around a decade old, my friend and I had a dosa eating competition to which my sister unwittingly offered to be the dosa maker. I did surprise myself, and lost by a small margin, but my dosa competitor was a year older than I was.  I don’t think the sister has learned to view the dosa tava with the same benevolence since. If I remember right, I groaned all evening clutching my stomach in a wonderful show of feminine bravery.

Which all brings me to the question, do Men have a day dedicated for them?

There is an International Men’s Day. It is celebrated on November 19th, and was started as recently as 1999 – almost a century after their Women counterparts started celebrating themselves.

Frivolous as the content of this post is, I do hope my female brethen are uplifted from the horrors of misogyny inflicted upon them by men and members of their own creed. I’d like to end this post on this note (Seneca)

Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem

As long as we are human, let us be humane

No Comic Task this

Well…well. It has been a while since I picked up a comic book. The guffawing over Tintin much to the chagrin of the mother who was trying to get a quiet afternoon rattling with the noisy Singer machine, while the rain pounded at the window and the wind whooshed menacingly, is tucked away in the recesses of a past.

Tintins were great. The Thompson and Thomson, Professor Calculus and of course the Captain (“BLISTERING BARNACLES” – I’ve forgotten his name, Harold ? Haddock! Yes!). The point is, I haven’t lost myself in the comic book world for a long time. A friend of mine lent me his book “Persepolis” and I must thank him for it.

The complexity of generations of bumbling in Iranian history, so well presented through the endearing voice of Marjane Satrapi had me lost in the book.

If one is looking to get a glimpse of Iranian culture, this isn’t the book. But to get a perspective of turmoil and how human beings find a way of adapting – this is a good book. Stark contrasting images, the humour and of course the appalling mystery of what humans perpertrate on one another in the name of ruling are etched into my memory.

The book had my eyes stinging in the final page (Caution: my tear ducts are very loosely controlled. I cried for Finding Nemo and Shrek!) But I loved Persepolis and am waiting to read her remaining works.