Please Don't Call It VD!!!

I suppose it was my fault really. Who’d accompany me if I said I was going to watch either Les Miserables or Hamlet on Valentine’s Day?

Such adorable couples are lining the riverbanks and frisking about in Covent Garden, the young ladies are barely clad and Himalaya-heeled, the old ladies are wearing red dresses and holding hands with their balding sweethearts, everyone has bunches of flowers and the street musicians are playing away to glory. Some parents are out with their children, to remind me of Valentine’s Day back home. Don’t tell me this is not love. You must be sick at heart to think so.

I chose Hamlet. Here is a lovely Valentine’s Day song from Act Four, which my friend Ophelia sang beautifully:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day
All in the morning bedtime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do't if they come to't;
By cock, they are to blame.

Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promis'd me to wed.
So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.

Take heed, all ye young women. I know some readers who still sing songs very much like it. Remember, you are free to soar, so long as you fly Virgin Atlantic. Good Night.

Valentine's Day

Dear Heart,

The roads of London are lined
with Roses of the deepest red
In honour of a cherub blind
and general giddiness of head

In vain today I set out to seek
the flowers you want me to buy
But dearest, this is not the week
for yellow-hearted Narcissi

So let’s buy some roses after all
to deck up the dusty bookshelves
And this year, let us feign to fall
for someone other than ourselves


Happy Valentine’s Day to those who’re celebrating. Isn’t all the pinkness lovely?
Happy Tuesday to those who aren’t. I can’t understand what the fuss is about either.

Phooey

Yaar Pyar Rishteydaar Bukhar Sarkar Ishtehaar Rozgaar sab ke sab jehannum mein jao meri taraf se! Now I’m not talking to any of you!

O Yuva Yuva, O Yuva

Ghoomte phirte milte hain milte hain
Mil ke saath woh chaltey hain chaltey hain
Rahein ho chahein nayi nayi
Dosti hai puraani
Na Anjaana, Na Anjaani

Hai khudaa hafiz, shukriya meherbani
Pal do pal kya mile, mit gayi pareshani

Thanks to ex-bloodsucking employer, a friend is visiting the UK. Meeting him has cured my homesickness. Walked around Central London for over seven hours today. Abhi to main jawan hoon etc. Ok. Shutting up.

Scream of Conciousness

And suddenly I realized that the fairy tale was not my own, it was hers. How devious can they get?

And I knew not whether to keep living in the fairy tale, knowing all the while it was someone else’s, or to break away from it, however wonderful it might be. Or to live forever as the happy unmindful character in a happy story. Yes, we must believe in the existence of that third option, for the other two are too uncomfortable. Happiness must be available in vanilla, without the gooey chocolate chips and the bitter orange peel.

And then there’s Marks and Spencer, which has removed salt from all its food, since I’m going to be weeping into it at the thought of the money you handed over for the vegetable bake.

And “The New Feminism” does not go down any better with tube passengers than “A Clockwork Orange”. I should start buying Heat magazine, same as everyone else.

And I’m so not marrying wendigo. She neither earns nor cooks. Useless.

Update: Wendigo is not amused. I didn't mean she's COMPLETELY useless. She thinks. Matrimonial proposals from men six feet tall and over are solicited. Complete list of required qualifications available on request.

Yet Another Passage To India

“I’m going to Indee Yah with my boyfriend! We’re planning to go to Jay-Poor and Khair-Allah and Nude Ellie! I’m so excited!”
I smiled at my Chinese-and-British classmate AW as she gushed about her upcoming trip to me and a couple of others. The poor thing took more courses than any of us last term, and she totally deserved a break!
“So I’m really interested in Indian history and culture and I want to know more about it. Can you recommend a book that I could read on the plane?”
My mind ran from imagining the task of decoding Indian history and culture on an eight-hour journey, to a book that could encapsulate India even if not very well, to how shameful it was that I knew so little about books and about Indian history. I needn’t have gone through this arduous exercise. The question was not directed at me. It was directed at another British girl.
I wasn’t offended, for two reasons. The first being that my constant silence in class and among classmates might have led her to believe that I could not speak if I tried. The second, and more probable, being that she did not need to know an Indian’s India. She needed to know a tourist’s India, and I was as useful or useless for that purpose as anyone else.
The other girl recommended Naipaul, himself a tourist, and after several attempts, the name was taken down without spelling errors.
AW is back to school, tanned beautifully and raving about Indee Yah. She found me sleeping on the sofa today, and I asked her how she liked the place.
“Oh! It’s amazing! Jay-Poor is so beautiful! The food has so much Gee that my boyfriend was in the loo the whole time! Khair Allah is awesome! The beaches are so clean! I went swimming! The food was also much lighter!”
I told her that the food was no lighter in Kerala, and they were planning to nuke the world with Malabar Parathas any day now. It was probably that the food was cleaner, as the south is generally more conscious about hygiene (bias mine).
“Oh! But I read that the South was much poorer!”
I tried to calculate the per capita income of all Indian states, remembered I had no data, and switched the conversation to her data, or the book she had read about India.
“I got this fabulous book. Maharani. It’s about these four princesses and it’s so romantic! The princess has one maid just to do her eyes, one just for the left part of her sari, one just to paint her toenails…”
Now I was torn between imagining the “romance” of this roomful of women, and sighing at the fact that I had nobody to paint my toenails in this DIY country.
“I bought these three saris. They are so lovely! Turquoise and Purple and Black. They have all this gold detailing on them. I figured they were too thick to wear, not like saris at all, so I just bought the sari fabric, and figured I could do creative stuff like book covers, or just throw them around the house like drapes, you know….”
Ah, purple and turquoise Orientalism. How familiar you sound! I offered to help her put her sari on, and she was pleased. She then informed me that people stared at her, and I told her she must have been more uncovered than covered, because she does not look like a foreigner at all. She informed me that all the women in India were wearing Indian clothes, which means the country has changed completely since I left, and I must visit soon.
“And we saw all these men with rods through their cheeks hanging from wooden sticks in Khair Allah. It was some sort of festival. Hindoo Festival. Are you Hindoo?”
Made mental note to ask Joker Anna about Kerala festivals and if there are none such, then about drug abuse in Kerala.
“In Nude Ellie, the people were so hospitable! Both at the Sheraton and at the Oberoi.”
Ah! Nude Ellie. Will not leave me in peace ever. I suddenly remembered I had some important reading to do for tomorrow’s lecture.

Waking Dream

Spent over two hours waiting for Pyramus and Thisbie to begin. Dunno whether it’s Shakespeare’s personal fault or his Royal Company’s, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream did not quite draw me into itself, even though I was in the second row from the front, and the fairy smoke was in my eyes and nostrils as it floated outward from the stage.

But, Pyramus and Thisbie was worth it and more!!!!!


Favourite lines from the play:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
Act 1, Scene 1

Dyed Saffron

Finally managed to see Rang De Basanti. Too many conflicting reviews made sure I went with an open mind.

Ok. Have typed and deleted what I should say in this next sentence three times. And that represents what the movie has done to me. You think you can say something about it, but then you realize you cannot. Because the movie is full of things it says, but there is little that it does not undercut and problematize immediately after. Without melodrama and caricature, it shows you the mammoth problem India is faced with. And how it can hit us personally even though we think it cannot. It shows you one problem and one solution. The solution itself realizes how precarious and unworkable it is.

In the end, they youth is making inspired speeches into media microphones across the country. You are free to choose whether a revolution is beginning, or a flash in the pan is happening. It’s nice when nobody takes up more space than they absolutely need to. And it’s nice when everyone does his or her bit well. I can’t remember one character or one performance in particular, because the ensemble cast works so well.

To conclude, remember it is not a documentary, it is a film. Don’t ask for rational solutions. The question is not whether it gives Bollywood anything to be proud of, the question is whether it takes away some of the things that Bollywood is proud of (Karan Joharesque easy solutions, for instance). It does, and I’m glad about that.

And Aamir, if you decide to marry again (third time lucky et al), my email address is on my profile. No, forget it. You’re a jerk. Just keep acting.

Getting My Own Back

The serve Coca Cola and cookies at movie screenings and often the DVDs don’t even play because they are illegal copies. Who says nothing in life is free?

I was reading “A Clockwork Orange” on the tube to and from office today. A bright blue label on the cover said “Course Text”. With my scary black overcoat and gangster cap, the terrified people on the tube must have wondered exactly what kind of course I am doing.

Fifty days before I visit home. Not much, but fifty nights also. So one thousand fifty in all.

You Ask. Inkyji Answers.

Ok. Four and a half months or thereabouts. After having spent many, many anxious months (before coming to London) asking people stupid questions about the city, the school, and the cold, I am now in a position to dispense some advice of my own. The chosen topic here is food. Some queries have been cooked up and are served below:

Inkyji, do you believe in God?
Ok. So this is not your typical everyday food question. But yes, it is because of food that I believe in God. Not because he gave me today my daily bread. Because English food showed me “the light”.
Everything is bland and tastes the same. When you cannot distinguish between your pie and your (freshly washed) socks, then you usually look at the condiments section and decide to add a dash of mustard. When English mustard goes into your mouth, something tears painfully out through the top of your head, hovers for a moment before your teary eyes that can barely remain open, and then makes a painful re-entry into your body through your nostrils. Your ears tingle when this process is completed. The entity that temporarily dances outside your body is your Soul. I saw it through my tears. It was wearing a badge and all: “Inky’s Unsaved Soul”

Inkyji, should I take the “best before” date on food products seriously?
Now that’s a direct question, even though a stupid one. When a can of chemicals says “Poison. Do not consume.” do you drink it? When a washing machine says “Do not wash your baby sister in this” do you still shove her in? Then why are you suspecting that those nice people at the supermarket are cheating you of perfectly good food by making you throw it away? The first rule of British food is that it tastes like (freshly washed) socks. The second rule is that on the date of expiry, it implodes/auto-combusts/becomes an ecosystem/vanishes into the great void. Not a day sooner, not a day later. Sometimes, there’s a nectarine in your hand, and as you are preparing to bite into it, the clock strikes twelve and the nectarine instantly grows a three-inch layer of fungus. Cinderella had a pleasant food transformation story, but apart from Jesus Christ, nobody has had similar luck after that.

Inkyji, food is strangely priced in London. I cannot figure it out.
It is quite simple really. Remember how in India a vada pao cost three rupees and a fancy meal at an air conditioned restaurant cost two hundred times that much, at about 600 rupees? It is the same here. A student snack costs three pounds, and a feast costs four times as much, at 12 pounds. This is a general rule of international mathematics. It is also displayed in the number of calls you need to make to someone to get something done. Two hundred times in India is the same as four times in London.

Inkyji, what is the best way to eat cheap and healthy food during my stay here?
After thorough research into the subject, it has been found that Air Sahara offers the best healthy food package. For 250 pounds, you can fly to India on Friday evening, eat all of Saturday and most of Sunday, and fly back to London in time for your Monday lecture. If you are airsick and cannot travel often, there is always (freshly washed) sock soup.

If you have food queries, write in to Inkyji.

Queer Post

In a cough and cold haze where the furniture melts seamlessly into faces and coats, I attend seminars. Words are thrown at us and we are asked to say what they mean to us. As long as one word is hyphenated (ab-normal) or wears a quotation mark sehraa (departure from the “expected”), the teacher smiles and nods and says “good”. And then we dismantle the categories of sex and gender and sexuality, till we don’t know who is who and what is what anymore, and then suddenly nobody and everybody wants to appropriate this political position of dismantled identities.

There is an uncomfortable silence when we realize that nobody knows what feminism or queer theory is.

And then people start talking again, for silence and ignorance come in the way of acquiring degrees. And as women continue to be circumcised against their will in Africa, and girls commit suicide so that their parents do not have to arrange for their dowry in India, I wonder if I should see a doctor about the cold.

Ae Saala!

Dhuan chhanta khula gagan mera
Nayi dagar naya safar mera
Jo ban sakey tu humsafar mera
Nazar mila zara!
Rubaru roshni, rubaru roshni hai

- Main Rang De Basanti Dekhna Chahti Hoon

Badmash

Featuring a lesser known work of William Shakespeare titled “On Time (in ways more than one)”, this video shows a gentleman with the world’s most perfect eyebrows singing into a dildo and sneakily planting a microphone under a table so that his friend sitting in the car can prepare for his test for a medical transcription job.
I’ll understand if you never come back. Go ahead. Click the link. Happy Sunday.

Well-In-Time Day

How soon after a long and terrible battle can you ask your troops to march out and wage war again? Even in the most tyrannical of regimes, I am confident that atleast a fortnight’s break is acceptable, since it is not the enemy who has declared war, but the commanders themselves!

A few women still queue up outside the High Street Kensington H&M at nine thirty every morning, refusing to believe the Boxing Day sale is over before they could make their twenty third visit. Some stores are still threatening to kill you if you don’t drop in before this weekend, when the 90% off tag will drop, along with the item it is attached to, into the vast abyss where fashion hibernates till little girls become grandmas. (Note assumptions about exclusive feminine associations of fashion, compulsory heterosexuality and reproduction, and an assumption about the continuance of the same for many years in the preceding sentence.) Everyone still has three Selfridges bags that they haven’t had time to open and peep into and wonder why they bought whatever is in there. For God’s sake, the Starbucks red cups have still not vanished and the Harrods Sale is on for another 23.5 hours!

Why then are they already recruiting my purse for Valentine’s Day?????
Chocolate Christmas trees have become chocolate hearts, pink roses are everywhere, Velvet, satin, suede, cardboard and toilet paper packing adorns every shop window. Pret a Manger has shamelessly stopped donating 5p each time you buy soup, and has printed a huge pink heart on its takeaway bags, which bald old men carry around turned the other way round (Note disrespect for the elderly, assumption of the decline of their libido, and general callousness in the preceding statement) Toblerone has a rose stem printed along its body, posters are inviting men to gift a Brazilian Wax to their sweethearts (“Here my love, unbearable pain just for you!”) restaurants are offering bookings (they offered New Year Eve bookings starting early October, and were closed on Dec 31), and the godforsaken ATM machines, not to be left behind, are showing huge pink hearts on their screens when nobody’s using them (a closer look reveals that they are asking us to memorise their emergency numbers by “heart” so sweet, isn’t it?) Bye Bye 2005. Buy Buy 2006.

Ok. So there’s no escaping the madness. And being a Zone 1 junkie, am likely to run into it again and again. Not a penny am I spending on these thingummys (except take my diddle diddle darling Wendigo out for dinner). Drat! Valentine’s Day in London is no time to be alone! Maybe if I sleep on the night of the thirteenth in right earnest, I will wake up on the fifteenth. Sigh. SIGH.

Woh Jo Des Hai Mera...

“Should a person’s affiliations lie with one’s family, community, culture, religion or state?”
This question put forth for discussion by my classmates at a seminar leads me to believe that I might just pass this course. What kind of naïve idiot decides that one will owe allegiance to any of these institutions, and how many stupid bipeds who have only partially descended from apes even know which one of these debatably separate paradigms they are allied to at the moment? Such questions make my blood boil.

A very problematic thing I’m having to do ever since I came to London is to be an Indian. Now I’ve never identified with being an “Indian” even back home. I sleep through the Republic Day parade telecast when I’m in Delhi, but if I don’t wish all Indians on Republic Day in London, it’s wrong. I’m urged to participate in protest marches outside the Indian High Commission, but I don’t do that back home, even when I’m interested in the issue directly, because of my scepticism towards the efficacy of the protest march.

Others around me are quite enthusiastic about representing India in the classroom. They describe how things happen in India, and I look at them blankly, wondering if they are talking about the same country that I come from. If a Punjabi Delhiite woman who studied the same subject at the same university as me for as long has a directly opposite opinion about the Indian press, what does it say about India and about us? We’re obviously made of some stuff other than these external labels which are more or less identical, and we obviously inhabit different matrices that we refer to by a common name. Is she wrong in waving a tabloid about and saying the Indian press chooses to be much more serious? Am I wrong in thinking that it is only because we’re still struggling with problems that the Brits have solved, and there is enough spice in politics and potholes to keep people entertained in India?

One lecturer makes a remark about the efficacy of turbans in preventing head injuries among Sikhs who are exempt from wearing safety helmets, and the global classroom titters. This makes me want to stand up and yell, no matter how many Sardar jokes I might crack back home. But I do not stand up and yell, for I am not “Indian” enough to do it.

The shallow understanding of Asia, a fault (?) to which the faculty admits, is disturbing in an age where information in readily available (hat tip: wendigo, desivenus, eleven red buses, and that tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream) In the context, any depiction of India or China seems so fake and twisted that I squirm in my seat. It is all mispronounced, like our names, so awkward on their straightforward tongues. The cafeteria is celebrating India Week. There’s Indian cuisine everyday. To put everything I’ve said into one plate, they’re serving “Vegetable Biryani accompanied by Rice”. I’m having chips.

The Comedy of Errors

Saw The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Comedy of Errors today. Never seen a fouler misogynistic bawdy slapstick thing in my life. Loved it totally! Spent fifteen quid on the ticket, and got to sit in a forty five quid seat. I’ve decided to forgive my parents for bringing me into the world one year too soon, and denying me the young persons discount. I’ve used that extra year to qualify myself for a job that pays me more than enough to cover for the loss. Being extra optimistic because expecting PMS and essay evaluation soon, so playing for the contrast.

On either side of me at the play today sat two gentlemen aged well over 60. During the interval, they struck up a conversation, to which I was a silent and most amused party. The man on the left was disapproving of all the stage “business”, the ragtag extras who add effect and impose meaning upon Shakespeare’s text in a performance that does not otherwise seem overtly reinterpretative. He pleaded for Shakespeare being allowed to tell his powerful tale alone, without the monkey business. He was, as the gentleman on the right pointed out, a “Globe” man; one who likes the bare stage and sparse cast of the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare is less suffocated by the addition of spectacle to his tale. Of course layers of meaning get added in the performance, but no more than would have been done in his own time.

The man on the right then described the last interpretation of the Comedy of Errors he had seen. It was by a group that calls itself the Oily Cart, and if you visit the site, you’ll have a fair idea of what it must have been like. It sounded most interesting! Also, I felt like I was among peers, a feeling that no classroom has afforded me so far in this country. I smiled silently to myself, for being a 70 year old British man on the inside.

Peeped into the programme that the lady in front had paid three quid fifty for (one day’s food budget, not to be wasted on colorful paper). Apparently Southwark Playhouse is staging Macbeth! Going to that website directly after posting this!

Virgin Atlantic LHR-DEL-LHR

The journey home
Is never too long
When open arms are waiting there
The journey home
Is never too long
There's room to love and room to spare
I want to feel the way that I did then
I'll think my wishes through before I wish again

Not every road you come across
Is one you have to take
No, sometimes standing still can be
The best move you ever make

(OST Bombay Dreams)

Now one will smile, three will worry, and anonymous will say I whine too much. :-)

Help

This is one of those key moments of helplessness in life, like when you see your whole family being eaten by crocodiles and can’t do a thing to save them because you are in a spaceship headed for the purple planet (and more importantly this is a heavy dinner induced dream), or when your parents discover your blog and you’re in anther city…
Rang de Basanti is releasing in India tomorrow and am I stuck in stupid, beautiful, clean, loveable, Aamir Khan-less Britain.
Two pounds for the person who gets me the first review. (That’s your movie ticket covered, you lucky thing.)

More Trash

“Party leader Thorat requested the police to take suo motu action against Joshi as the victim has not yet lodged a complaint.”

What is suo motu? Taking fat people (no, you can’t say I’m being politically incorrect, I’m including myself in this category) to court?

Sis informs me it’s suo moto and suo moto means “of its own accord”. As if the police does anything of its own accord. Thorat hasn’t watched enough Hindi movies. They should dump the phrase suo moto. Unless Motorola wants to use it for a courtroom advert.

The Tube Presents...

…an updated Phantom of the Opera:

Notable quote:
“Mozart and Pavarotti broadcast through loudspeakers has resulted in a drastic reduction in anti-social behaviour by gangs of youths.
It is not that the music has a soothing effect - the gangs hate it and it has driven them away.”