Poor English b Ernest 0

I don't know whether my English is bad or something else...
Received this out-of-office message recently from somebody.

As Vadivelu loves to say

"கஷ்ஷ்ஷ்டம்!! முடியலே!!" (Very difficult!! Cannot Handle this!!)

My comments in red.

I am currently out of office and will be returned on Oct 11. (He is an open book that was borrowed from the library!) During this period, I will have no access to email. I will listen to voice mail twice per day. (His voice mail is just about popular as Gold 90 FM, perhaps) If you have something urgent, please contact my acting Peter xyz (who has acted in blockbusters such as "Drunken Prawns, Bollywood gyrations" etc) at 12345678 or my secretary Ms Wendy at 12345679 for arrangement (Don't even go there, now!).
Best regards,
Ernest

Twin Towers

No, this is not about WTC or the movie with the same name...

Met Anoop a couple of years back in Singapore and thereafter in Malaysia in July at an Umpiring course.
Did not realize that he had a very interesting twin background until one of the students asked him whether he is Anoop or the 'Jhudwa' Sudhir...

Read on to find out more about one man's -- oops, two men's extraordinary journey of life.

Dedicated to at least two other twins that I know of. Have fun, guys!

அவசரம்

இதை ஹைக்கூ என்று பிதற்றினால் அதற்கு இதுவரை யாம் குடித்த சிவப்பு ஒயினே காரணம் :-)

கோவிலுக்குப் போகணும்
வாஷ்பேசினில்
குங்குமச் சிதறல்...

Charity from Louis Vuitton

Recently, we have been bombarded on the media about how 'this charity' splurged money on its CEO and how a church 'accidently' paid more to the bishop etc.

More and more charities are getting under the lens now and there is a great clamour amongst the bean-counters to account for each and every cent of the public money - not only account for it - but also to check whether it is being spent prudently.

So, if you are a CEO and ensure that your charity runs well and gets in lots of donations, you still have to work for next-to-nothing or generously enough, you might be given vouchers for redeeming $2 chicken rice from some of the not-so-great Singapore hawker centres!

Well, the reason for this short (not so short, actually) blog is not to gripe about the charities and how they are run.

Paraphrasing Richard Nixon's comment on India being managed - "Thou shall not worry about managing the charities; you should be happy that they are being managed at all!"

Recently junior had to do his community service.

No, he did not litter;
neither did he spray paint on those new cars in the basement and
he does not know how to chew gum...

- you would think that to chew gum is the most natural thing to do...but then if you grow in Singapore, that is one thing that is not natural! As usual, I am digressing.

He was just doing the normal, mother-hood and apple-pie community service as mandated by his school. A very admirable mandate, I would say.

He had to go and stand in front of the MRT (tube, underground, subway, flying rail, public train - depending on which city you are residing now) and sell flags to the commuters for a few hours.
The flags are NOT your standard ones - these are small white circular stickers with the emblem of some organization or other printed on it. It could be Heart Foundation for the heartless or Involuntary Volunteer Centre or Kidney Association for alcoholics, or Green Cross for the long-suffering husbands or any one of those other legitimate associations/organizations. If you drop something inside the box, you get a sticker to wear on your shirt, so that the other ‘collectors’ know that you have been charitable already for the day :-)

Armed with

(a) shiny tin box sealed everywhere except for a small slot on the top for the coins and
(b) sheets of the 'flags'

the boys had to accost the commuters and ask for donations. As with any event they are encouraged to be competitive and whoever collects the most is obviously rewarded with large french fries at the end of the ordeal. You get the drift, I suppose.

On the day of reckoning junior was collecting donations for a Heart foundation which wanted to make cardiac surgery affordable for the needy. Very noble cause and much closer to the heart (no pun intended) of junior. You see, he was fresh from his sojourn to India where he saw his granddad go through a triple bye-pass.

Next time you are waiting for your girl-friend (or boy friend, to be politically correct) outside the MRT, do some people-watching. When they see our boys-with-the-boxes, their reactions are varied and interesting…

There are the mobile ones, who keep their ears glued to the latest Motorola Razr V3(there is the placement for this blog!) and their eyes glued to the distant horizon (can’t be further than the bald head of the person in front), but studiously avoiding the b-with-the-b.

There are the proud ones, who faithfully drop a coin at the first point of skirmish; take a sticker, one for each of the accompanying family member and stick it very close to the chest and walk with their head held high – ‘I have done my bit of charity for the day’…

The list does not end.

Junior apparently faced all these and a few others during his first half hour outside Queenstown MRT station. He was hitting them with hard facts such as

‘Sir, heart attacks are the second most common reason for deaths in Singapore. So please help the heart foundation.’ (or) ‘Madam, do you know that a heart bye-pass surgery costs more than $25,000 in Singapore? Please help the needy.’

Apparently, he was doing well and was very gung-ho about the
exercise and was looking forward to his French fries at the end of the day.

Then there was this lady threading through the crowds.

When she reached junior, he started his usual sales pitch: ‘Madam, heart surgeries cost more than $25000 in…’ She raised her hand indicating him to stop. Our man was resigning to yet another rejection and was about to catch another fish, when he noticed her opening her shoulder bag which had LV written all over it; and not only that, he also saw many ‘heart foundation’ stickers in the inside!!! It was as if she was collecting those stickers :-o) Obviously, she has been stopping at each box and donating something or other.

With a big smile on her face, she took out a $10 note and dropped it into the box. Now his jaw dropped! It was no secret that he got his French fries that evening.

Later that night, he drew some very interesting conclusions about the whole thing:

- it pays to throw some valid facts at people to get favourable responses
- it pays to be prepared
- it pays to be enthusiastic
- never say ‘it is over’ until the purse closes
- in spite of NKF and other noises, Singaporeans are still willing to part with their money
- French fries are the best incentives for an early teen!

Hairy Do

From a two-bit umpire: Here is my take on what M/s DH and BD did not do?

By the way, why are all the reports leaving the other player of the show, Billy? (I am following the crowd here by not giving Billy's mugshot for your perusal!)

Inzi is right. The whole situation is about the ball-tampering allegation.

This is what probably what transpired during those ill-fated moments prior-to, during and after the ball change...

As soon as HD sees that the ball has got a different characteristic than what it is supposed to have acquired over the ~55 over bashing, goes to dear Billy and tells him:
'Mate, there seems to be some problem with the quarter seam. I am not happy. It could be the greenies who did it. Did you see anything?'

PB (as in poor Billy): No maan. I ain't see nothin'. Did you any anythin'?

HD (as in Hairy Do): Ok mate. That means the greenies have done it. Let us change the ball and slap them with a fiver.

PB (as in poorer Billy): But you know maan...do we...

HD (as in Hairy-er Do): No mate. We shall slap them with a fiver and change the ball. I know the laws. Tow along, else might have to no-ball you

PB (wishing already he had declined this assignment quoting Dhoni-sixeritis): ... just mumbles along...

HD - whips out the yellow walkie-talkie calls up TJ (umpire water-boy) and asks him to rush to the field with the balls - i mean the red ones of varying wear and tear including a new ball, with which they play cricket.

KP and PC do oblige - with bemused smile though - and choose the one which can reverse the least... Oh those angels!

HD - Completes his daily quota of exercise, by tapping his left shoulder with very little flourish. (I almost thought that England - especially KP - was being penalized for having thumped the ball all over the concrete)

And the rest as they say, is history (sic)

What could have been done?

As soon as the problem was noticed, HD could have gone to Inzi and told him that he is not happy with the ball's condition and therefore, he is going to change the ball.

If he still wanted to be his officious self, HD could even have asked Inzi whether any of the Pakistan players had anything to do with that. Inzi would have bristled with indignation and might have tempted to call HD all sorts of names and would have restrained himself with great effort to not do that on the field... Having ascertained that his whipping boys did not do 'anything' to the ball, HD could have gone ahead to change the ball - one with a comparable wear and tear, which he was aware of - he had inspected it hardly 16 minutes ago when Cook had copped it.

Inzi could have howled till aloos grew roots about the change of the ball - but the umps were within their rights to do the same. But at least he was not called a cheat directly. Even if assuming that one of the players had tampered, this ball-change would have been a dampener (well almost rhymed it there!).

At least, Pakistan would not have had the ignominy of being called the 'cheats' and they could have added this incident to their long list of grouses against HD and gone on to win the match!

Well probably there was something wrong that HD ate during the lunch on that day and something worse that Inzi and Co. ate during tea!

Blame it on the inadequate culinary skills of the English :-)

For a reasonably middle-of-the-road Pom-in-Ozzie-land view, read Peter Roebuck's column on this fiasco.

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?

Rajiv Gandhi, Vehicles and I - Part 2

I do not know whether you have learnt to drive a car in India.

It is an experience in itself.

Firstly, you approach a driving school and ask them for lessons.

Indians are kings of packages. For everything there is a package. More about that some other time.

The driving school package consists of the following:

• Allowing you into the driving school premises
• Giving you approximately ten hours of on-road practice
• Test fees etc.
• Ensuring the relevant paper-work gets completed at the RTO (Regional Transport Office) and the test goes on smoothly
  

In the last point, both 'Ensuring' and 'smoothly' are euphemisms which every Indian understands; if no, then please watch the Tamil movie 'Indian' :-))

About five years ago, I was in India on a slightly longish vacation. Since driving cars was not one of my core skills, I had decided to acquire the same. Now, if I was really serious about it, I would have gone about learning to drive a car in Singapore itself - where it costs about $3000 and anything between 3-6 months to achieve the same. [I have heard of people hosting parties after they get a driving licence; I can understand that!]

Well, I was more interested in the shortcuts and decided to give it a go in Chennai at a fraction of the cost of doing it in Singapore.

Onward march!

Step 1: Approach the driving school. Tick.
Step 2: Learn to drive. Half-Tick.
(I was learning to drive on the ubiquitous Maruti 800; whenever there was a turn or change of fictitious-lane, I used the indicators, much to the chagrin of my instructor; he kept chastising me saying that it will confuse other drivers if I use the indicator signals instead of hand signals!!!! I was having self-doubts on whether it was a right decision to have chosen to learn driving in India. But then hind-sight is 20/20)
Step 3: Go for testing.

Here my second tryst with Rajiv Gandhi unfolded. If you know what happens on a testing day, jump to the section titled BLISS below ;-)




The testing scene goes something like this...

• You reach the RTO in the morning of the designated day with a few butterflies in the stomach.
• Then you wait until noon or sometimes till the evening.
• Your driving school agent will be waiting with a bundle of applications belonging to various 'students' who are to undergo the test that day.
• The testing inspector will condescend to test the students according to his whim and fancy.

There will be several such officers and when they appear at the testing site, there will be a group of agents running after them to impress upon them to get their students tested first. Well, the testing site is nothing but a secluded street or a discarded ground. Don't even think of any traffic signs at the test site. If the normal roads do not have any proper signs, why should the test sites have them???

Eventually, four students and the tester will get into a car - provided by the driving school where you 'learnt' from. Typically, each student will be asked to drive for about 50m on a straight road. If you are unlucky, you might have to do a right turn or a left turn - only hand signals, no indicators, please. At the end of this charade, the tester will get down and utter some loud banalities such as 'None of the students know how to drive' or 'What did you teach them? To drive a bullock-cart, perhaps?', to the agent.

Immediately, the agent will go on the defensive and will assume a very suppliant role and try to suffix each word with a 'Sir'.

After about an hour of such agony, the agent will vanish into the cavernous RTO building and will not return until it is late in the evening.



He will then beckon each student and get us to take photograps, sign documents and at the end of it all, hand you a small credit-card sized laminated photo ID called driving licence!

BLISS!!

Everything went well until the start of the testing.

As soon as the tester saw me, he pulled the agent aside and whispered something into his ears. I looked down at myself and was convinced that I did not show any signs of being a Non-Resident Indian. Regular tee-shirt, regular trousers, bathroom slippers - probably that was a mistake; other students had shoes on! But then that must be fine, I was thinking.

The agent after a reasonably long discussion with the tester, came back diffidently and asked me what the problem was with my left eye. That is it! Am I going to be rejected because of a stupid physical deformity which has no bearing on my seeing ability?

I told the agent that there was nothing wrong with my eye and I could see as well as others although with the help of very mildly powered glasses. I decided that it will be better to talk to the main guy himself and approached the tester and asked him what the problem was. For a tall and well-built man, he was acting mildly, almost as if he was afraid of me. He requested me kindly to go and get a certificate from a registered medical practitioner (that is a doctor from the Government hospital, you see) saying that my eyes are good.

Now this is a bombshell! This is not the established process at the RTO! There is something wrong here. I spoke to the agent and even offered a generous tip to ensure smoothness of transaction. His eyes gleamed a bit and he went into another conference with the tester. I could snatch a few words like 'IT', 'Singapore' etc. I was reasonably confident that things could be handled now.

Presently the agent returned and he was not a happy man. The tester insists on the certificate !!!&(@*&#(

I had no choice but to rush out and spend another half-a-day to get the required certificate, only to be told that I could be tested only the next day.
Bad karma? Perhaps.

Next day, the tester scrutinized my certificate thoroughly and again looked at my face and eyes for a long time, before agreeing to test me reluctantly. And like how he tested?!!
Instead of the 50m course, I was made to drive almost a kilometre with various gear changes, right and left turns, reverses - almost everything except the three-point turn (Thank God! That would have killed me.)

When we returned to our starting point, the agent was a completely lost man. He was twisting with anxiety and asked me to give the details. When I told him about what happened, he was absolutely incredulous. He kept repeating, 'He is not like that at all!'.

To cut a long story short, I got the driver's licence in the evening, one day late and with the additional knowledge that I well and truly passed the test!

Later in the evening, when I was buttonholing the agent about the fact that he has to pay me some money, now that I really (!) passed the test and that the entire operation was nothing but smooth, he shared a piece of news which he had evidently gleaned from the RTO grapevine:

Apparently, the testing inspector assigned to me was the same guy, who in 1990/91 had 'tested' and 'approved' the driving licence of Sivarasan - the One-Eyed Jack.
Advantages (?) of having one bad eye!!!  
Bad karma? Indeed.

In the investigations that ensued after Rajiv's death, he had to go through hell of an inquiry and just escaped a conviction!

I understood the guy's problem. As soon as he saw me, all the ghosts (no pun intended) of the past would have danced in front of his two good eyes. Hence his request for the certificate, additional testing [so that nobody can blame him for dereliction of duty later] etc. CYA at its best!

I am not sure whether the grape-vine was true or not. But I did go through the experience.

P.S. Incidentally, I have not driven any car for any distance, however small since that day. All the trouble for nothing!!!

Rajiv Gandhi, Vehicles and I - Part 1

Read this article this morning.

After 15 years of the dastardly act, the LTTE has accepted the responsibility for assassinating Mr Rajiv Gandhi. It has also issued a public apology for the same and hoped to improve the ties between India and the LTTE. This comes hot on the heels of the EU ban of LTTE and the increased Sri Lankan Government's military action (and a purported military understanding between Indian and Sri Lankan governments).

But then, this blog is not to discuss who is right and who is wrong in this sad episode of South Asian history. In fact, as my son would like to ask, "Who started it first?" A typical answer could be a Nayagan-like "Enakku Theriyaleye!" ("I don't know!")
This post is more to narrate you the first of two comical situations that I had to face which were related to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

It was August 1991. I was just out of college and had joined this great multi-national software firm in Bangalore to develop software handling 'debits and credits' while until a few months ago, I was busy counting 'bits and bytes, electrons and neutrons' in the applied electronics course.

Well, Bangalore as you all know was great in those days. Very cool - literally and figuratively. I hear that it is chaotic nowadays - but then I have not been there for almost six years! Such is life!!!

We were lodging in a company accommodation in Jal Vayu Vihar - JVV (for those of you who are not familiar with Bangalore, JVV is one of the first set of apartment blocks which used to look like castles with their harsh unpolished granite outer walls, but great interiors). The place was about 5 km from MG Road and the only way to commute was by your two-wheeler.

I had a faithful TVS Champ (a 50-cc moped), which I used to call as Snoopy.

Snoopy was registered in Tamil Nadu - my home state. In India, if you move to a different state you have to re-register that vehicle and get a different number etc. But then this can be a hastle and you do not want to meddle with bureaucracy in any country - specifically in India. So I was running around in Bangalore on Snoopy with a Tamil Nadu registration number. Of course, if you get caught by the traffic policeman, he would take the obligatory 20-rupee note and let you drive away. [I believe that the numbers have changed but the process is still the same :-]

Fast-forward to action date....

On a Sunday, I was returning back to JVV in the late afternoon, after a hefty meal in one of the MG Road restaurants [Santrupti perhaps?].

Just as I was nearing JVV hoping to catch a nice little nap, a 'mama' (a traffic policeman affectionately called so in Tamil) appeared from nowhere and signalled me to stop.

As a true Indian, who has this great fear psychosis on seeing anything that borders on authority, I stopped immediately, almost whipping out my purse to lose a twenty.

It is worth repeating what transpired then...

TP (Traffic Policeman): Enu idhu TN (tamil nadu) registration-a? (What is this? Tamil Nadu Registration vehicle?)
Me: Avudhu. (yes)TP: Licence Idhiya? (Do you have a licence?)
Me: Illa-ri. Maney nalli idhey (No sir. It is at home.)

Here I have to digress: Guys don't even think that I could speak so much Kannada in two months; mine was as pidgin as it could get; I was the guy who went to a fruit seller and asked 'Baley Hennu' instead of 'Baley Hannu'; Incidentally Hennu means girl/woman in Kannada and I don't even want to know what the fruit-seller understood - he did give me a crazy look ;-)
TP: RC book?
Me: Same as above.
TP: Enu kalasa? (what is your job?)
Me: Citicorp Software
TP: City Corporation-a?

By now, my right hand had already reached the back-pocket of the trousers to extract the purse and the panacea - twenty rupee note. But then our man turned out to be a Holmes. He threw a real googly.

TP: Chashma thagade bidu (remove your glasses)
Me: huh? (I could not understand what he was trying to say)
TP: Chashma... Chashma (signed me to remove my glasses)
Me: (removed my glasses)... still could not understand what he was trying to drive at...

Now the TP looked at my face and eyes with great interest for about ten to fifteen seconds and asked me to get down from my vehicle. I was still confused. Got down from the vehicle and pulled it to the side of the road.

I was trying my pidgin Kannada to ascertain what was running through his mind and he kept repeating: "Neevu Inspector meet maada beku..." (You have to meet the inspector)

Murkier and murkier.

You don't go about talking to traffic inspector for having an other-state registration, do you?

Then the officious looking traffic inspector (TI) materialized after about 15 minutes.
He walked up to me and repeated the same questions above in pidgin English... thank God for such small mercies!

After another round of facial inspection (I wish I had shaved that morning :)), he threw another googly at me:

TI: Is your mother tongue Tamil?
Me: Duh! Yes.
TI: Have you been to Sri Lanka before?
Me: Huh? Never.

It was when it struck me.
You see, I have a problem.

I was born with congenital ptosis condition; for the medically uninitiated it is called the droopy eyelid syndrome. Now added to that there was a bit of 'lazy eye' situation - all on the left eye. It was corrected via plastic surgery sometime in 1982 but what God giveth, you can only alter that much. So, a casual onlooker will still wonder what is wrong with my left eye.

Round about that time in history, there was this guy Sivarasan, who was the master-mind behind the heinous act of Rajiv assassination. He was killed in an encounter in a Bangalorean suburb sometime right after the assasination. The guy was supposed to have had only one eye - and hence his sobriquet One Eyed Jack.

These poor TI and TP were probably doing their job much too zealously; they must have thought that Sivarasan had actually escaped the encounter and now they have caught him again; promotions and rewards must have danced in front of their eyes when they saw me !

Immediately, I went on a big defence of telling the inspector of how I am an important computer (sic) professional with an important company - handing in my business card to him.

He looked at it once and then his manner mellowed down a bit; what is it with the business cards? They don't even have your photograph!!

I laid it thick by asking him to send his subordinate with me to JVV and check the documents. This brightened him a bit and he ordered the TP to go with me and check the documents. The TP climbed on to Snoopy reluctantly - he was seeing the promotion and awards slipping and probably he was going to be richer by the twenty at best!

After a few metres of travelling, the TI yelled at us and asked us to stop. He called us back and told the TP something in Kasturi Kannada which went way above my head. He then nodded at me and asked me to go; but only after sternly warning me not to travel without my documents thereafter!

The last leg of that journey to JVV was the shortest and fastest that I had ever done. Needless to say, the copies of documents were with me always ever since. I think that was the only time that I escaped the brush with the police, without any associated lightening of the purse :-)

Elementary My Dear, After all it is life!!

For sometime now, I have been wondering about the senior citizens and their insatiable drive to do things.
I would like to narrate at least three examples of 'Perisu' doing things which only made me envious of them.

There is Mr Subra - the youngest old-man of Singapore cricket. Here is a guy who has been involved in cricket since independence - Indian Independence that is - been playing, umpiring, scoring, administering, scolding, admonishing, praising, fighting, clowning with cricket for all these years. Of course, he is a retired teacher and that could be seen in all his correspondence... pedagogy at its best.
Until recently, for years together he had been running the Singapore Cricket Association's (SCA) website (http://www.cricket.org.sg) and ensured that it was up-to-date in all aspects. As if it was not enough, he was the administrative manager of the SCA before he decided to take it easy at the ripe-young age of 76!
Oh, by the way, the old ticker inside has not been behaving well for the past few years, but who cares?
But it does not stop there... Recently has taken to that crazy 9x9 game Su-Do-Ku (http://www.sudoku.com/). He probably became so good that he qualified for the nation-wide age-group finals crunching those numbers.

Then there is my friend's mom.
The lion-hearted lady in her late sixties, has taken to adding credits on her spiritual side of the life-ledger and for that she found the best way was to learn Sanskrit and recite the Vedas/Gita/other Hindu scriptures in the divine language; not just chanting - but to understand what she is chanting.

A small digression here: I have found the teachers of Hindu scriptures to be uniformly of one type nowadays. They insist on you to learn the chanting of the various works. If you chant properly, the aural vibrations will do good to you and your surroundings and your family and the world etc etc.. But having been brought up to question everything's logic, the immediate reaction is - what is the meaning of this sentence or word? How does this praise the Lord? What are the lessons that I can learn by understanding the meaning of the scriptures? The questions are countless. Answers not forthcoming. Not to much avail.
THOU SHALL LEARN TO RECITE FIRST; THOU SHALL NOT NOT ASK QUESTIONS.

Coming back to the story, what does she do?

She goes and learns Sanskrit.

With a great devotion (to the Almighty and to learn the language), she is said to have mastered the language now and is able to converse fluently with her friends and teachers - much to the chagrin of my friend who has to either speak to her in Tamil or in Hindi (yuck!) or in English (yuckier!!)

Of course, there is the small matter of her suffering from this eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa (Affecting night and peripheral vision; 'Maalai Kann' in Tamil) for many years now. And recently, the doctors have certified her as 'legally blind' meaning that she can get assistance due to her handicap - don't want to go there further. But you get the drift, I suppose.

Next is my father-in-law. (I know that I will get a lot of points at home for this particular section - no inner motives for putting this here!)
After retiring from civil service in India, he also took to the spiritual side and has been involved so heavily in the related activities that he is busier than he used to be when he was in service! Of course, old age brings its own share of ailments... but he told the doctor, "Don't worry, Doctor. I will be alright. I know how to get things under control!" While a majority of us are looking at the doctor for succor for anything and everything, here is this guy comforting the doc who was a bit blue after seeing his patient's (?) sugar readings.
Foolhardy? Perhaps. Positive Attitude? Definitely.

The list is definitely endless.

Senior citizens are perennially worried about a few things:

• Health [BP, sugar, heart, loss of memory, medicines - oh! they are the best... medicines have replaced food for break fast, lunch and dinner; my dad cleans up 25 a day and mum about 15!
• Money [when they need not !]
• TV serials and their characters [Sorgam and Nimmathi on Sun TV are the best!!!] I can understand your sympathy here :-))
  

For every such senior citizen out there, there is at least one, if not more, who decide that enough is enough!

Let me go and grab what I have missed all along. I have to live this life for myself!


Be it the missed temple, the odd concert, the trashy movie, long-lost friends, help-the-needy, the hidden book, the exciting Dhoni innings... they are there everywhere enjoying every bit of it!

I have a manager who has this great positive attitude about jobs - My dear! After all it is a job!

The true understanding of this axiom puts you in the unique position of running the job to the best of your ability and still enjoy it. The moment, the job becomes enjoyable, the entire battle is won!!! Mind you it is not half-the-battle, the ENTIRE BATTLE!

I have to say that the senior citizen sample above and all those millions who are not mentioned here possess that unique brand of positive attitude:

AFTER ALL IT IS LIFE!!!

Keep running guys! We are proud of you and will try to emulate you as best as we can when we reach that station!!!

42!

Many of the friends were a bit tricked by the '42 wishes' bit in the NY wishes below.

I had even put out a prize carrot for someone who could get the inner meaning of 42...

There were some very good responses albeit incorrect :-)

1. My waist size - they missed it by a mile!
2. My age - some even had the gall to suggest that I passed that number in early-90s :-()
3. A certain Tamil Actress' waist size - give me a break guys; how can you be so mean... that number has to be something like 82!!!
4. Since I had said that the number is linked to literature and that Shakespeare had written 37 plays in all... Abhishek came back and said:

Significance of 42 :: Does this have any relation with Shakespeare's contemporary John Fletcher author of comedy sequel "The Tamer Tamed" and supposed to have wrote about 42 plays in his life time.

Good Try Abhishek... (Even though I could not trace 42 plays after trolling through the web!)

But nobody got the link between 42 and one of the cult science fictions ever written....

Douglas Adams' The Hitch Hiker's Guide to Galaxy (fondly known as h2g2)

Try this single post in one of the related fora...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A756317

Happy New Year 2006

Hi there,
A posting exactly an year after!
Kind of a very busy year...
More about my Kashi trip in Oct/Nov 2005 later.
But before we go... here is a nice recipe for the end-of-year festivities
(for that matter, any festivity!!!)

• 4 tsp patience (all the party places are very crowded)
• Gallons of water for the day after... (No explanation needed :-)
• 42 best wishes to near and dear...
• Dash of love (If not now, then when?)
• Lots of smile (A smile activates less facial muscles & therefore less effort from our part)
• Add few manageable-issues for spice - as appropriate
  

Mix.

Wish you a very happy, healthy and peaceful New Year !

Life's Tsunamis

This is an excerpt from a letter that I wrote to Charu a few days back. It was about our recent trip to Sri Lanka and India prior to the Tsunamis. But life being an ocean, it unleashed its own version of tsunamis on us during the trip.

As some of you might know, Charu Nivedita is a fiery writer. Some of his writings have been branded as down-right anti-establismentarian, almost-pornographic etc.. Mind you, the operative word in the previous sentence is branded :-)

But that is not the point... He writes nicely. His writings want you as the reader to contribute to the overall fulfilling experience and hence I like him.

For more of Charu's writings, read him at www.charuonline.com and for a beautiful tamil Translation of this letter, please check this out --> www.charuonline.com/kp122.html

Here we go...

For a change, we had planned everything nicely to go to Sri Lanka in late November for a week. We managed to enjoy the place immensely as we had a very good Singapore-SriLankan friend who was with us through out the trip. She is from one of the southern-most parts of Sri Lanka - a place called Matara - which alone seems to have lost more than 1000 lives due to the tsunamis. Fortunately, she is safe, but her house - she slogged for nine years in Singapore as a part-time maid to get that done - has been damaged badly, I believe. A great pity!

Then we were in Thiruvananthapuram for a week - hob-nobbing with the relatives... I like Kerala very much. At least that capital city seems to be working reasonably.

A few interesting snippets that happened during that trip in TVM:
1. Auto drivers are honesty-personified. For a distance of about 5 km, the guy at 10 in the night, wanted only Rs 30 !!!! I had braced myself to hear Rs. 150!

2. Kerala's literacy rate and the literature-intent is legendary. But I was surprised/impressed to see a car driver (we had arranged for one to go to Coutrallam from there) reading a translated version of Sherlock Holmes (Engineerude Vieral!!) Of course, life is always throwing a curve-ball at you... I remembered your words about the Kerala 'real literacy' - the fact that ZD has been translated and known more in Malayalam than in 'Semmozhi' Thamizh and about the auto-rickshaw (or was it normal rickshaw) driver who spoke to you as if he knew your works by-heart!

3. The apathy that we (as in Paandis = derogatory slang that the Keralites use on Tamilians), show towards our own things is again crazy. On the way from Thiruvananthapuram to Coutrallam, the driver (same Sherlock Holmes man!) said that he rather likes a lesser-known Paalaruvi in Kerala than Coutrallam. I took it with a big load of salt and attributed it to regional parochialism. Mind you I have never been to Coutrallam. (this is tiring to type the full name again and again... I shall refer to it as C Falls hereafter). So I had a pretty high hopes of the place. I even asked him, why he felt so. Interestingly, he said that I would know once I go there.

He was true. With touts everywhere for everything starting from oil massages to toilets to changing places to food to what-not - it was almost a nightmare to reach the waterfalls... The maintenance of the waterfalls in itself is another story... But then I will be branded as a bad traveller if I do that. So I shall let it pass...

That is when I realized that the Holmes driver was not comparing the Natural beauty of C Falls, but rather the un-natural ugliness of human behaviour. Perceptive...

One interesting sidelight in C Falls was the attempts of men-folk to take photos of the water-falls... (I assume that you have been to C Falls. The main falls (as does others I believe) has a male section and a female section...with very strict demarcation.)

There were two policemen standing next to the water-falls, whose main job was to prevent people from taking photographs of the women-side. From time to time, they were letting out cautions such as "Antha pakkam camera thirumbichinna, unakku camera thiruppi kidaikkathu" etc.. It was hilarious. This is the land of Delhi Public School scandals and Trisha Bathroom scenes...and the one that gave Kamasutra to the world !!! Irony, mate!

We also touched Kanyakumari during that trip and went to some pristine beaches around that area. I am sure those areas are all under sea now...
The trip, as they say was, so far, so good.

When we landed in Chennai. I was planning to be there only for five days, to attend a wedding and to manage a meeting with you in between. The trip was short because of the fact that Bhargav had to go to Penang for a conference arranged by United Nations on environmental issues.

But the trip was marred by a very tragic death of my cousin - all of 28 years and just finishing his PhD in Chemistry and the only son to my aunt. It has been a great tragedy to that family as he was to be the sole bread-winner for the family. Reason: Sudden Heart Attack. Death in 5 minutes. Heart Attack for a 28 year old strapping young man? Un-imaginable.

That screwed the entire set of plans...

There were the usual questions that came to my mind, such as...

** Who am I? Why am I here? What happens after death? What will people say after my death?

I also saw different facets of people...

• There was this man, who was reading newspaper throughout the day, sitting 10 feet away from the body.
  
• There was this lady, who was worried about her husband, 'oh, he has not eaten for the whole morning' and sends him off to eat and come back...
  
• There were countless recountings by various people, how somebody-they-knew had died mysteriously
  
• There were a few, who were suspecting suicide when they saw blue-tinged finger-tips...little do they know that when a particular part of the body is deprived of oxygen for sometime, then it turns bluish...
  
• There was my aunt, who kept on asking 'Will you be able to answer my question? Why him?"
  
• I even found a man dozing off, in that hulla-bulloo..
  

Life goes on...

I remembered you reading books when Avantika's mother had passed away (except on the NDP day). I could even reconcile myself then, thinking that probably you have become indifferent to the whole thing because of your past experiences both with respect to Avantika and her parents and other Delhi experiences.

I have seen lots of death and destruction in the form of 9/11 and still feel that a non-compassionate act in the face of death is highly galling. The question might be: "What can I do?" The answer is not in "sitting and crying with the people" and definitely not in "reading news papers or dozing off or going out and eating"... The answer is to THINK about what can one do to better the situation. Very few people seemed to have done that. If you do that, then strangely enough, you stop crying.

In the midst of it all, my (another) cousin brother's wedding happened, but with much less fanfare from the heart .The marriage could have been stopped but it would have been a great blow to the bride's side as they had done all the preparations etc.. We also decided not to tell the bride's family about the sad demise as it would put them through the wringer... bad luck, bad omen etc. etc... Not all are rational in the family....

Funny, isn't it?

P.S#1. Now this is NOT funny... we had touched Sri Lanka, Kanyakumari, Chennai, Penang in the past one month or so... all of them have been affected by Tsunamis!!! Have decided to stay put for a while; seems to be taking bad luck all over the place...

How rational is it???

Blessed are those...

At the beginning of 2004, I had these wishes....

... lilting music
... always-fizzy beer
... sunny beaches
... snowy mountains
... winning stocks
... Wall street bonuses
... healthy heart for that extra love
... sturdy liver for that extra drink
... 20 degree Celcius all-year-round
... clear-requirement-users
... bug-free systems
... limitless budgets
... friends in need
... reciprocating women
... sensitive men
... compliant children
... a goof-proof Bush
... a "hopefully" enjoyable Star Wars part III
... an English win in any sports (Rugby doesn't count!)
... an Indian win in cricket (other sports don't count!)
... a US win in Gulf (Saddam doesn't count!)
and
... actionable resolutions !!!

And as in life there have been

Hits (England wins almost 9-in-a-row in cricket!)

Misses (Bush winning the elections!) &

Pipe-dreams (limitless budgets being one!)....

But for the coming year, there is only one wish:

A Speedy Rehabilitation Of The Millions Affected By The Tsunamis

Please do what you can to touch those lives that are hanging by a thread and only just...

Have a Blessed 2005!!

-o-

Welcome to the world of MBBS!

Hi there!
Welcome to the world of MBBS.
No, I am not a doctor or none of my immediate relations are in the profession of healing.
MBBS, as many things in life, is an acronym of the first names of the family.
Daughter, Son, Wife and Yours-truly, respectively.
We shall hear about them in more detail in future instalments...

As the title of this blog says, it is my attempt at general rambling about everything that I come across in life. I DO NOT want to type-cast this into one of those general i-hate-life-i-love-life kind of philosophical trips, because I am an optimist generally (as much as you are; yes, you are one, since you have taken the pains to come all the way upto this point :-))

Before I sign-off, heard on the MRT:

Girl1: Hey, did you see Ocean's Twelve, ma?
Girl2: No leh... Have seen only Ocean's Eleven...
Girl3 (to Girl2): Not bad man! You have seen Ocean's one-to-ten, eh?????
Girls 1 & 2 and all of us in the MRT: *&^$*#$)@#*$)#@*@#)@