Auto Rakshas Checklist

If you're in Bangalore, please memorize this checklist and evaluate the autorickshaw before you board it:

1. LICENSE: If it's not displayed, minus two points. If it's a tattered old photocopy, minus one point.
   
2. METER: Old meter, minus one point. Old unbranded meter, minus two points.
   
3. RELIGIOUS ICONOGRAPHY: Minus one point if God is easily accessible for doling out forgiveness for having fleeced passengers
   
4. PROACTIVITY: Minus one for having spotted you from afar and stopped. Remember, in the auto jungle, only the predator hunts.
   

If all the above problems are present, move on to checklist 2

1. AGE OF AUTO DRIVER: Minus two for being below 30
   
2. LOCATION: Minus two for having been found outside a place of worship. With due respect, God would need a superb lawyer to disprove his connection with the auto mafia.
   

It's not a foolproof system, of course, but so far it's rarely been proven wrong.

 

 

e-lections

Yet another sequel, this time from the netas instead of the abhinetas... hope this one betters the original!
(thanks Deepak for doing all the artwork!)

Stumped!

IPL is very closely connected to both my salary and my husband's, so don't blame me for being interested. I don't understand the game, I don't have a TV, and I have barely-there team loyalty, so it's mostly a number-fest out there as far as I'm concerned.

Here are some statistics I culled out (manually) for the last few matches. (Note that the washed-out matches were number 7 and 13!)

Toss Winners:

• 23 won the match, 17 lost the match
  
• 27 chose to bat first, 13 to field first
  
• Of those who fielded first, 8 won the match, 5 lost the match
  
• Of those who batted first, 15 won the match, 12 lost the match
  

Now this looks fairly straightforward, assuming those who make a decision after the toss have some sense and it really means something to be able to choose. But that second stat, it's very numerically skewed. Possible reasons:

1. The pitches are good for batting first. This is probably the actual reason.
   
2. Viewership is higher and more focused in the second innings of an exciting match, and sponsors urge the team to fill the field with their logos at that point. This is the theory that makes me fear I will go mad or write saas-bahu scripts in the near future.
   

   
   

Maike Se Aike Post

Mom: (something horrible about me, in the way only mothers can do it)

Inky: Did I come across the seven seas to hear this????

Mom: What seven seas does one cross between Bangalore and Delhi???

Inky: Why? Krishna Sagar, Shanthi Sagar, Sandhya Sagar, Upahar Sagar….

 

 

Pyar Tera Dilli Ki Garmi

The sound and the fragrance of the desert cooler reminds me of the hot hot afternoons when we used to come back from school all squished up and practically busted the poor doorbell in our hurry to get home to mommy, amazing lunch, mangoes, cool cooler air and an afternoon nap. Oh the insufferable five minutes when you had to leave the pump switched on for the grass to get wet before you switch on the fan! The crazy creative plumbing around the house to ensure you did not have to run about with a hose pipe to refill the coolers! The war with the permanently sick little sister over the room temperature! The icky colourful salt deposits that the electrician scraped out of the cooler at the beginning of the season! And the fragrance! The smell of mitti, paani, relief, shelter, childhood and love!

It's taking all I have to not go stand in front of the cooler right now and go "aaaaaaaaaa" and let the fan blades slice my jungle cry!

Making The First Move

Off to Delhi for a long-overdue holiday with the parents. Also off to vote, after a lot of thinking on the matter.

I don't think my drop-in-the-ocean vote will change anything. I don't think any of the candidates are any better than the others. I don't think I need that ink on my finger as some kind of social respectability symbol. I set the Aamir Khan "vote karo" ringbacktone on my phone just because HOW COOL IS IT TO HAVE AAMIR KHAN AS YOUR VIRTUAL PHONE-ANSWERING SECRETARY?

Despite all this skepticism, I am going to vote. Because I want to send a message out that educated, young(?), middle class people like me do care enough to vote. They will get to a polling booth (2000 kms away if needed) if you're worth it. So if you're someone who has it in you to fix the shit out there, please go and contest the elections. Don't say the dirty system will be rigged against you. I'll be there to vote for you. I cannot change the country, but I sure can put an end to this vicious circle.

If visionaries keep waiting for us voters, and we keep waiting for them, well you know what happens na? So if you're in a constituency where the elections are yet to happen, go get a blue finger!

Nothing, really

Haven't updated in days because I wanted to write about something that is close to my heart.

But I wonder who'd be interested in reading a post about my rib cage?

 

Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya He!

Addressed a question to everyone in hearing range:

"What is TB called in Hindi?"

Pat came the reply from a Bengali boy:

"Doordaarshan"

Another Beautiful Song Ruined…

…this time from the film Sikandar.

Mohit Chauhan's magical voice sings:

Gulon mein, rang bharey

Baadalon bahaar chaley

Chaley bhi aao ke

Gulshan ka karobaar chaley….

Rubbish

Absurd Hindi Song:

Humein tumse pyaar kitna

Yeh hum nahin jaantey

Magar ji nahin saktey, tumhaarey binaaaaaaa

 

In English:

How much I love you

I do not know

Crocodiles cannot live without you…

 

If you have to hit me, please throw only Bata chappals, without heels, size 7.

April 2

Happy Birthday Mommy!

Pangey!

(good for a hoarding right outside a liposuction and plastic surgery clinic)

Patli kamar…

Tirchhi nazar…

Baanki umar…

I know what you did last summer!

You-Rekha!

Have accidentally hit upon an amazing diet plan, which involves only one visit to a dentist! Just go and get a wisdom tooth pulled out!

Before:

1. See something tasty and fattening
   
2. Eat it
   
3. Become fatter
   

After:

1. See something tasty and fattening
   
2. Eat it
   
3. It will taste nice for a few seconds
   
4. A bit of it will lodge itself in the gap at the back of your mouth
   
5. Your tongue will get sprained trying to maneuver it out
   
6. You will spend ten minutes rinsing
   
7. You will spend five minutes brushing
   
8. At night, the tiny food bit will start hurting your gum
   
9. Bleary eyed, sleep deprived and half-day-pay-lossed from office, you'll visit the dentist the next morning
   
10. You will have to watch a Tamil movie on a mute TV screen in the dentist's waiting room for 45 minutes
    
11. The dentist will spray foul chemicals in your mouth
    
12. Your tastebuds will take two hours to recover from the spray
    
13. You will go back in time and NOT eat the tasty and fattening thing
    
14. You will not grow fatter (unless you have a metabolism like mine)
    

The bone apparently does not grow back for three months after tooth removal, so you can lose a LOT of weight. Repeat cycle for every wisdom tooth, and you never have to exercise again.

 

Zabardast(i) Song: Tummy Bug Takes Bengaluru

Pretty French girl

attached to beep beep machines

in the Emergency Room

at a fancy hospital.

 

MRI shows nothing

except a tummy infection.

She's in pain

and tears.

 

Came to India to get

a taste of

Indian culture.

Now getting

Blood culture,

Urine culture,

Stool culture.

Run! Quick!

Go before someone protects Indian culture!

Yeh Andar Ke Kaale Bandar Ki Baat Hai!

I think I stumbled upon some proof of the universe being designed by a genius today. Was looking at the online resevation chart for this evening's show of Dilli 6, and since the movie is not a hit, most of the theatre was empty. The only seats full were the most coveted ones, and their graphic representation is uncannily similar to innerwear. 

Most multiplexes have a mix of big and small halls, so...

This is conclusive proof that innerwear will pop up in the strangest of places without warning, which is what Poet-Prophet and my personal hero Gulzar probably meant when he wrote: 

Masterji ki aa gayi chitthi 

Chitthi mein se nikli billi 

Kaan mein jhumkaa, naak mein batti 

Haath mein jaise agarbatti 

Agar ho batti kachhua chaap 

Aag pe baitha paani taap 

Taap chadhe to kambal taan 

VIP underwear baniyaan... 

Baaki Dilli 6 had both me and my dude sniffling and wiping our eyes more than once. If only the plot had not been a 10-headed Ravana...

Life In A Metro

By God ki kasam sitting all your life there in Dilli 6 or 60 or wherever your birth and brought up happens to happen, you hardly come to know what nautanki all the Indian languages do with each other! It's like they all sat down together one drunken night and made a pact to marry off one of their harmless words to one of the naughty ones of the other language and watch the fun as their speakers get tossed about in the bhelpuri of modern India!

About a week into my new job in Bangalore, the boys got courageous enough to distract me from my work by pulling my hair. Am really impressed it took them that long, because before this, I have been everyone's kid sister from very early on, and hair and cheek pulling has been a cruel part of making new acquaintances. So there I am, working at my new job in a new city, when yank! my ponytail is attacked. I turn back and ask: "Yes, what do you want?"

"Nothing! Just chumma" says the little boy

I am certain I heard that wrong. "What?"

"Arrey chumma man!"

I want to pack and go home to mommy daddy immediately. Look at the innocence and nonchalance on this guy's face. He's like 7 years younger than me!

Ok. So chumma means JUST LIKE THAT FOR NO PARTICKLER REASON in Malayalam. And of course kiss in Hindi, another (horrific) word for it being bosa, of which the plural is bosay, which is how all the security guards in London hostels like to pronounce the Bengali surname Bose, which is so obviously another story that I dunno how I got into it.

Back to work then. Over the years, have grown used to the inordinate amounts of Malayalam that flies about the office, and wait patiently for my turn to speak before informing whoever is talking to me in that superfast language that I did not get any of what they just said. Makes me mad at times, but then these lovely souls make up for that by proclaiming every now and then: "We are mal. We are proud to be mal."

"Oh yes! That you are," I say. "Top quality mal" (for the uninititated, mal (say mull) in Hindi is, umm… poo)

Nehavish once told me the story of her flabbergasted and horrified Tamilian mom's first Delhi encounter with the hindi word "kundi" (latch in Hindi, bum in Tamizh… what did I tell you about the drunken languages?). You should get her to tell it to you, because I distinctly remember laughing till I fell on to the floor of the District Line tube from Blackfriars to East Ham (home of Sakthi store and Sarvana Bhawan) when she told it to me.

Today, one Hindi- and one Tamizh-speaking carpenter is (are? is.) working in my house. As I asked the Hindi speaking guy if I needed to use the kundi each time I close the cupboard, my foot was in my mouth one nanosecond after the words left it.

Aaaaargh! <foot caught in last remaining extraction stitch>

The Obligatory Dentist-Bashing Post

It would be completely out of crackter for me to not write about my visit to the dentist, and my first ever (tang-da-dang) dental surgery. I can't even pretend to hope it's the last, for God knows I have sinned and will pay.

After being scared and reassured by more or less the same number of people, I went into my wisdom tooth removal procedure pooping in my pants, because it really has nothing to do with other people, does it?

On behalf of mom-in-law, I asked the dentist how long he's been practicing, and 8 years of post-grad dentistry seemed just about passable (after all industry mein naye talent ko chance dena chahiye etc).

It did not take the 20 minutes the ex-boss's wife told me it would. It did not take the one hour the dentist had told me it would. It took two godforsaken hours, the anaesthesia ran out in the middle, there was a time when three heads and four hands were inside my mouth looking for a tooth that was completely hidden behind a bone (wisdom is nothing if not deep-set). Meanwhile, I drank a lot of blood and "irrigation", which is probably the original recipe for a Bloody Mary, coz I sure was drunk by the end of it all.

Now two days have passed and all that's left is a cut at the corner of my mouth from the steel clamp holding it open for two hours, loose threads hanging in my mouth from the dentist's shoddy needlework, and the superhuman air-tasting ability of my tongue thanks to Ciplox TZ. Any parents reading this must have fainted or started weeping by now, for which I am very sorry to them. But the part of my wisdom that was sensitive to readers' feelings is lying in five pieces in the dentist's dustbin!

Actually, I'm doing quite well and having a happy day after a long time. :D

Valentine Diwas

After months of nagging from our side, the landlord relented and sent the painters along to paint the house on Valentine's Day of all days. So the morning was spent in the healthy marital discord that acoompanies any self-respecting couple's accomplishment of domestic tasks. The rest of the day was spent sneezing and watching helplessly as the loving landlord's minions painted our humble abode a very very pale shade of pink (Like shy is coming for lily to see roses kissing in neighbourhood flowerbed. Yeggzackly. Pls wipe your throwup yourself.) 

The shooing off of painters was celebrated with rooftop Punju dinner on Church Street, and exchange of gifts (I replaced his deodorant which I had finished, and he got me gazillions of good bacteria that will prevent my antibiotics from killing me. We're leaving the dentist to do that on Monday.) 

Whatever else you say about our V-day, the Sri Ram Sene would approve of it I am sure!

Verdict: Wait For The D(e)VD

Are you too old, or too jaded when Dev D does not scandalize/impress/provoke/amaze you?

When we were kids, we had this stupid joke where we'd form a snake's head with our hand, twist our arm in a zigzag serpentine motion and ask the other person: "what is this?" and the other person would invariably say "a snake". Then we'd make the snake hand and dart it straight ahead zupp! and ask "and what is this?"… the pathetic answer was "a drunken snake!"

Why am I blabbering about this? Because after 4 days of 1500mg cocktail antibiotics, I am seeing the real world pretty much as Dev Bhaiyya on his chosen drugs, so all those psychedelic scenes and pretty much the whole movie seemed pretty much straightforward and simplistic to me.

No seriously, even the riddickulous Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi had its moment of glory with drunken Raj/Suri's little chat with the mannequin. Where was Dev D's moment of greatness?

*Spoiler Warning: Where did Paro's inner life disappear? How's Dev gonna stay out of prison beyond the happily ever after type credits? And random references to real Delhi events? Very tacky! Gimme Oye Lucky any day!

*End Spoiler Warning

P.S.: The husband wanted more footage for the dog. Probably an hour or so more. Which dog? Don't ask!

P.P.S.: It's not that the movie sent me home with nothing to think about. I'm very interested in a sociological observation of whether Abhay Deol can bring the unwaxed male torso back into Bollywood!