தமிழ்

அன்புள்ளோரே,
விரைவில் எதிர்பாருங்கள்
தமிழில்...
ஸ்ரீபீஸ்

Kiss Me! Kill Me!! - Part II

For further hilarity on kisses, read this news-piece.

And the phrase 'Kissing in Public places' reminds me of this risque yet delightful scene from the Tamil movie "Pancha Thanthiram". One of Kamal's many female friends lands up in his wedding in an inebriated condition and starts demanding a final kiss from him for old times sake! When our man reels in mock horror with a question - "Kiss you? In a public place?", she retorts with typical Crazy Mohan timing "Who says public place? Only on my lips!"

By the way, the number of hits on this blog has crossed the century mark sometime last week! I thank all those ten people who made it happen :-) The rest of hits are mine ;-))

Have a nice weekend!

Kiss Me! Kill Me!! - Part I

Recently K narrated a hilarious incident that happened at his workplace. Now don't worry about K. He is one hell of a crazy, versatile man - anything goes from auto-driving in Chennai (there the craziness is explained) to almost making it to IAS (more crazy!) playing key-board (to generate what he calls as music, that is!) to pound key-board (to resolve system issues, he claims :). Well you get the drift...

Ting Tong: This part of the blog was sponsored by K; Want to be crazy? Be like K. Want to be versatile? Be like K. Ting Tong

It was one humid day on the equator. All air-conditioners blasting away to glory trying hard to keep the residents of the office cool, barely succeeding. Imagine a typical multi-national financial institution building. Don't cringe. More to come. Let the mind wander to that great place called 'meeting room'. A few chairs, a very expensive wood-topped/panelled table - Seinfeldish question: Why do they spend so much on a meeting room table when the per-capita usage of the same is probably one-tenth of the individual's table, which is usually the drab, pastel coloured, regular issue? Not at all inspiring!!! But then I am digressing...

Here K meets his European colleague face to face for the first time. After exchanging pleasantries about World Cup Football (about which K knows nothing - he is a Sachin fan, you see!) etc. they indulge in some IM (sorry can't expand that one!) on the project problems at hand.
Half way into the meeting, the European - let us call him Mr E for short - gets a call on his mobile phone. As my son used to write in his primary school essays, he 'fished' out his Nokia from his pocket and started communicating with the party on the other side with great fervour/passion/animation etc. - all the emotions that we do not usually associate with Mr E and his country-men.

K was busy trying to block his mind from what Mr E was saying - but he need not have tried. The entire conversation was in one of the continental European gibberishes (is there such a word?). For a man who had grown on speaking Royapuram Tamil, pidgin Telugu, worse Hindi and Peter English, what does it matter? It could be German, Greek, Latin, French... Who cares?

Presently, after what seemed like an eternity, Mr E ended the conversation with a series of lip-smacks aka kisses :)(: on the Nokia.

K was aghast. He can't understand the gibberish. But he can definitely understand kisses. He grew in an atmosphere which revelled in kisses. We in Tamil Nadu almost-banned movies for having explicit kissing scenes (remember 'Mael Naatu Marumagal' anyone?); to this day, heroines give very few head-aches to the producers on the scanty costume front - a couple of kerchiefs are enough! - but kissing? NO WAY! You have to show the flowers and trees and bushes for that !!! But songs are OK... Remember this 2002 classic from "Dhool" - where the hero and the lady-love figure out which is better, an English kiss or a French kiss ? (frankly, what is the difference?)

As an aside, I can understand the heroines' plight; one of the yester-year heartthrobs said this when asked why she would not do kissing scenes with a particular hero: "But he reeks of masala from a mile! How can I then do a passionate scene with him, unless I start to imagine kissing a goat or a chicken?" She had guts!!

Coming back to K's plight. While K understood kisses, he could not grasp the context. His mind worked overtime and came to the great conclusion. He linked the entire 'kissing conclusion' to Mr E's culture. His thought processes ran something like...

"In Mr E's culture, you have to end conversations with a couple of kisses; I have to remember to do this whenever I am talking to any of his country men and...women of course! This evening, I have a conference call and I shall exhibit my new knowledge with gusto!"

With this 'Aha', he turned to face Mr E wearing a knowing smile. Mr E was a bit red in his face, partly because of the spicy food that he had for lunch (Courtesy: K) and mainly because he just had had a reasonably-romantic call with his girlfriend. He was probably contemplating what gift he can buy for his girlfriend when he saw K's smile and he had to blurt out..."Sorry for the interruption! It was my girlfriend. You know how it goes? ! K! Why do you look so relieved? What happened? Do you need some water?..."

Nowadays K runs out of any room when somebody receives a call on the mobile. Reportedly, he asks for his son's permission before he kisses him!

Unity in Diversity - 2005 version!

Late last year, I went on this nice pilgrimage tour covering Allahabad, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Gaya et al. The tour was a great lesson on management - more about it later.

Not just in Ayodhya, in all those cities one went to, I was able to discern that historically, people from both the religions - Hindus and Muslims have been living together in close quarters with a reasonable degree of harmony.

But then where did we lose the plot? I am neither a politician nor a historian nor a philosopher to know the answer to that.

But one important vignette keeps coming back to me even today. Unfortunately, you have to take my word for it as I could not take the photograph since you are not allowed to take any cameras anywhere near the complex.

Not sure whether things have changed since last October in Ayodhya. When you reach the Ram temple / Babri Masjid complex, you have got to walk for more than a kilometre to reach the actual excavation site.
And it is not a stroll in the park.

There are at least five places where you are searched for anything from a comb to blade to scissors to whatever you can think of. A co-tourist from our group made the mistake of bringing in his cash and some other valuables along with himself in one of those yellow cloth bags ('Manjal Pai'). The security had a field day. They told him to leave the entire stuff with the security and then collect the same at the time of departure. Mind you, this was after ploughing through the crowds for about fifteen minutes. He did not have the heart to go back, lest he would invite the Lord's wrath. So our man took the bold step of leaving it all at the security post in a box which was kept in the open. Poor man! He did get it all back after an hour of agony during which time he had to brave the hot sun, metal cages, crowds and the disappointment of the actual sanctum sanctorum - Lord Rama amidst all those ASI excavated mounds looking lost and worried and probably thinking, "What is all this hulla-bullo about?"

After all this, when we you come out, you will be hit by those commercial enterprises aka shops, which sell all and sundry - of course relating to Lord Rama!

One such shop was selling the posters of the various Hindu Gods' images. Colourful Rama, Playful Ganesh, Naughty Krishna, Meditating Shiva, Serving Sania...

Wait a second! Did I say, "Serving Sania"? Rewind!!! Yes, indeed... There it was! Right next to a beautiful Krishna poster, Sania Mirza in her tennis outfit [no slogans on her tee-shirt :-)] was serving to that imaginary opponent in a multi-colour poster.

Sania? 100m from the Ram Janma Bhoomi Complex!

Probably they started selling her posters after the comments on her dress code were made ;-)

Probably that is India for you! Unity in Diversity!!!
Aaargghhhh... How much more corny can I get?