There's Something in the Air... Good Stuff though...

Flying can be a joyous thing if you are a Mallya or a retard or both. For the rest of us, it includes minor pains like inadequate leg space, plastic looking stewardesses, nauseating turbulence, ThinkPad inspired food trays and of course, heartbreaks. (Sigh! Those pilots...) Anyway, this post is dedicated to Air India - that aviatory antediluvian whose staff are so dedicated to their work that they age thrice as fast as their counterparts in other airlines. I had this early morning flight from Bombay to Bangalore. Or Mumbai to Bengalloorrooo. Now in Mumbai, there are two terminals. One is on the ground floor, has all your favorite airlines' check-in counters, lots of crowd and uniformed people looking all business-like. The second one is on the second floor of another building (far enough to make you want to kill yourself if you ever went to the wrong terminal), and the mightiest example of irony in the Vile Parle vicinity. Where else would you find a row of red uniformed, doll-like women sitting back to back to a row of middle-aged, watchdog-like men? The contrast is so stark it must seem like fantasyland to most men. That is if their sensory organs are still working unlike this chap who gave me an aisle seat when asked for a window one. I trudge onwards to the waiting area from where we are to take the shuttle, which arrives soon enough. Remember my destination was Bangalore? The driver evidently knew that and so we spent the next 25 minutes going around the airfield to the plane. They probably assumed (with good reason) that Bangaloreans have the patience to make a minimum travel of half an hour to anywhere and so we were treated to the sight of Turkish Airlines, Kuwaiti Airlines, the Airlines-that-no-one-uses-and-has-been-grounded-but-has some-funny-name-on-it and other such Middle Eastern wonders on our way before we reached. I remember thinking that if this had been an Adam Sandler movie, the driver would have been a tanned Rob Schneider with an exaggerated Indian accent saying ‘You can do it!!’ to someone about to puke. We then get onto this plane hidden in the midst of other big Boeing mamas only to be greeted by er... well... aunties? (That age group, and the automatic reference is aunty, maybe on a rare occasion, Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom) We are seated and some of us reminded to kindly put the seat upright for takeoff, much on the lines of my headmistress telling us to stand up for the school prayer assembly. I had got a window seat after using my charms on this guy and after staring for a brief minute at the new entertainment consoles in front of me, proceeded to drink the lemon juice the hostess offered. The console started playing the instructions video where a young air hostess (maybe borrowed from Kingfisher) showed the exit guiding lines with the same flourish of a hunchback Billy Bowden. The flight proceeded uneventfully and I was left with the choice of either inspecting my breakfast food for the required ingredients or use the video console to pass time. I chose to sleep. Not that I have anything against airline food or video consoles. Airline food can be good if you know when to order and when not to. In Air India, I have always had good experiences with the Taj Kitchens, only this time, what I was eating was unknown and strange looking to me. It looked like a solidified version of gruel, which didn’t bother me much. As for the video consoles, they are good things even if they are not playing movies, but just plain old flight information. I am the sort of person who likes to know where am going and how am going, if I have to take a parachute or a life jacket if I have to jump, and most importantly, to remember things like the S shaped mountain was right on the Tungabhadra and the hugely fat-assed guy visible from the plane was from south Hubli. I had chosen to sleep simply for the heck of it. So when the plane hit the tarmac, yours truly was awake, all ready to get off with that spring in the step and look forward to many more trysts with India's truly royal airline. (It is, all said and done)

I don't.

When you are a girl, an Indian, of a certain age and not yet committed, you become sort of an eyesore for the grown-ups in your family. They start badgering you about why you can’t possibly seem to like any guy, why you haven’t still matured (to be read as why aren’t u interested in housekeeping, why aren’t you coy, why can’t you be respectful towards men, etc.), and stuff like that, you get the idea... Dwelling too much on these questions can lead you to further thoughts like ‘Am I emotionally handicapped?’ and ‘Maybe I am destined to marry Johnny Depp after his next break up’ , obviously after bypassing, mostly with a very safe distance, the inevitable ‘Am I a lesbian?’ But these are minor blips on my radar, compared to what I have started to hate the most in this whole process... That of the foreign-settled guy. There simply are too many of them out there on the matrimonial lists. And yeah, also on Facebook, in my friends list. Maybe they were splendid blokes while they were still playing gully cricket and eating parottas off a road-side stall, but there is something in the foreign air that creeps up their nose while probably still over the Indian Ocean. And it makes them into these ‘dudes’ whose sole aim is to get on top of either the Empire State Building or Megan Fox (even the one at Madame Tussauds will do), reaching it via the honourable routes of doing an MS/MBA or getting a H1B through TCS/CTS/Wipro or their ilk. Among those who do their masters, only a few are the genuinely interested ones, much like the difference between getting a BE from IITM and from Mundakaneeswari Amman College of Technology. The rest get to troop around the country with fellow desis and then land a job whose salary can be multiplied by numbers over 50 to be displayed proudly next to their name. Maybe I am a nitpicking shrew, but I can’t help but be concerned with the language they speak and write. The Queen’s English has now become the Queer English with the subject and the predicate hanging themselves with the question mark. And now with our IT companies’ new conscription policies, life has never been easier for the wreckage to swim with the tide. So the easy way out for women like me who have to sift through the sheer numbers of men who now earn more than a lakh a month and want a ‘good, educated girl with traditional family values and likes me mostly’, is to get that whiff of foreign air from the next contingent of passengers at the international terminal. Maybe then I will want to marry Megan Fox.

Go Commando!

I know that ideally I should be writing about the CWC than the IPL, but we bloggers are like that. We choose masala papad over nachos, hawai chappal over crocs, vijaykanth over rajnikanth and shakila over shakira. Finally our mallu friends have got a team of their own, though currently the connection seems thread bare with only Sreesanth being it. And now sources tell me Sreesanth is actually an alien disguised as human being by our RAW to test foreign psychology in terms of response to extreme neurotic aggression. (Think about it, if he were a true mallu, he wouldn't be named Sreesanth, it wud probably be Shinni, Soji or some other thing that one normally uses for a pet cactus) So I came up with probable ways to bring in the mallu connection.

1) The first thought went to the name, but now the guys have outdone themselves.. Indi Commandos!! None of what I had come up with can hold a candle to it. You may say that there is no Kochi in it. But the mallu name speaks for itself. Lesson - you can take the Kochi out of a name, but you should never take a name out of Kochi.

2) The theme song. I came up with a few contenders for this. And considering how the theme songs of our Commonwealth and CWC went, ARR and SEL are probably good judges here. Presenting the contenders...

This one has everything, a catchy 'Silsila' on the lines of 'Waka waka'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QErkHESsKcI

Tweaked Waka Waka. Can change it to include footage of Mohanlal playing cricket

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbDUs4fBrmQ

My favorite, captures the essence perfectly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vekG-wq4Mw4&feature=related

3) The cheerleaders, though foreign imborted, are put on a regime of healthy coconuty diet and every day coconut oil hair massage. So there you have your Kerala type cheerleaders, women with long curly wet looking tresses. Somewhat like this.

4) The team sponsors are 'Qatar Pafkis'. Every match that they play in, only Qatar pafkis are to be sold and none else. Not even local peanuts.

5) And finally, allow the players to have their own trade union, whose name starts with 'All India...'

Of Rhetts and Rennets...

It’s a good thing I don’t write for a living. If I did, either I die of hunger, or you die from reading the massive quantities making up for the quality. It’s not that I am bad at writing. Just that I am more of a stand-up comedian with stage fright. I can talk junk on and on, one explaining the other and needing to be explained by yet another, but to have guts to do that in front of an audience each with a pair each of arms and legs is not so easy. But I think I d make a good stand-up comedian. I like going to pubs but won’t get drunk. I have a suit, I have a straight set of teeth that get polished now and then (actually they have to be scraped whenever ‘Gobi Manchurian’ is served in mess) for that dazzling smile, I know lots of fat lady jokes and, the master stroke, I will always have a fat lady in the room to use them on. Anyhow, of late, my attention has been grabbed by the many modern day Rhett Butlers among us who seem to have this I-don't-give-a-rat's-ass-or-mosquito-fart-or-anything-disgusting-animals-have-about-it attitude. At some level, it is cool, cos then you don’t have to apologize for taking someone’s stuff and breaking it. They in turn would have broken someone else’s and so on till it comes around and pinches you on your bottom. But(t) still, I am against it. The reasons? As follows:

1) I hate travelling with family guys on trains. They take virtues to higher levels; virtues like planning, punctuality, paranoia. It is good if you are getting down about three stations before they get down, else you might as well travel on Ekadasi day and go directly to heaven after you die, which might happen when you get the impulse to rip off your brain, cell by cell, once the uncle or the baby (it’s not the actual babies, they are cute and mostly silent, these are the ones who were called babies since the time Silk Smitha made her debut) starts talking of the snow in Buffalo or the miracles performed by Sri Sri Sriyo Sri Govindashtapathi Neelakanta Varaprasada Swami at 4 am in the morning with all the lights on. Buffalo? Sriyo Sri? Silk Smitha, you smile to yourself as you take a tranquilizer.

2) I have to put up with the loads of trash around the place. There are only so many egg shells and licked-up-coffee-tumblers people can pick. If you think the All India Malayalee Collector and Compactor Manufacturers' Association is gonna felicitate you for the business, am sorry, much as it sounds legit, the association is fake. Even if it were legit, the max you d get is a mundu and sandalwood garland.

3) It is the reason behind products like Qatar Pafkis (Imborted and Marketed by Falcon Global Impex, contains corn meal, palm olein and cheddar cheese free from animal rennet). Animal Rennet? Hmmm.. I guess it goes right up there with the rat's ass. Anyone who has tasted Qatar Pafkis will agree with me that Qatar Pafkis : Corn Puffs :: Snotty Handkerchief : Bindu Appalam. The only reason I might be willing to have the Pafkis in my party is in case somebody spills a drink and I don't have anything else to mop with.

Of course there are multiple other less sexy, mundane reasons like lack of sleep due to somebody nailing some bloody thing together at 3 am in the morning, scratching your nose till you become Rudolph cos the maid is trying to move the dirt off the floor up into the air, and of course, the glorious food that comes at 100 bucks a day. It’s a tough world I agree, but you smart guys try to be less cool, else I will have to send you to... obviously not Sri Sri Sriyo Sri... hmmm... maybe I 'll stuff your mouth with Pafkis, this time, though, with the rennet. Let's see how less rennet you care this time.

I, the Sun

When, in the dark night of Fate,

The world turns its face away,

I shall make them see yet,

My toil, my moon, holds 'em sway.

I ascend high, to let you live,

I bow down, to let you breathe,

I move on, ere I am blackened,

I live on, to help you see.

You see me not, not from Hate,

You see me not, from my Shine.

Forever, I 'll burn from within,

My destiny shall still be mine.

'Paranoimal' Activity

Two not-to-dos discovered for my blog :
1) Never start with the title
2) Don't think of apologizing for the posts which have started to have the frequency of CP in a Fin class.

Well, what is with paranoia? Why are we so scared of things unknown that we d rather not probe further but ignore them? Try calling up a number from which you got a text but dunno who it belongs to... A typical conv goes like this...

You (U) : Hello?

Other (O) : HELLOOW??? (He wasn't expecting ur call, doesn't know ur number, texted probably using number from telephone book and didn't know how to save - typically dads of people on the wrong end of youth like me)

U : (Aside) Huh.. Who is this guy? X or Y or Z's cousin's husband? From college or is he family? Now which language? Family means tamil else if friend, hindi or english.. Can shoot myself in the head rather than venture in hindi and write off my entire savings to an account in Chinchpoklee... English! Everyone knows english.. Tams know english better than tamil.
I got a msg from this number. Who is this? (forgot about the existence of the above mentioned dads who haven't stored the number)

O : HELLOOO!! YAARU???

U : (Aside) JACKPOT!!! Some bugger in the family!!
(Repeat again in tamil) I got a blah.. blah.. blah..

O : Hello? Yaaru? (Note the reduction from exclamation to a softer question)

U : (Aside) WTF!

O : (This time the spousey kicks into action.. You being a typical mba have forgotten the day ends at 10. The time is 11 pm) Cut the call! The @&$*#s have no other work... (It actually sounds worse when heard in native language. The other now panics at the spousey's words and remembering some bad b-grade hollywood movie, hangs up) keeeeeen keeeeeen keeeeeen keeeeeen keeeeeen...

U : Hello? 'Turn round and round on his head' him... (after all he is someone's dad possibly)

Now all of us have been on either ends of the above conversation. So why are we as a nation so paranoid of the people around us? My grandmom has a line for all salesmen irrespective of what they sell - "Nothing needed... Nobody's here... Everything's here" (sounds more like an invitation for robbery, doesn't it? why was she paranoid in the first place then?). We can't look at someone on the road and give them a smile lest the men think the woman who smiles is quite ready for many things or the women think the man who smiles is hitting on them. We can't even look at our professors eye to eye. Our behavior would be akin to an electron beam under the effect of a negative field. The reason is that we are paranoid that the prof would remember us when he corrects our test papers and what if he has a bad opinion of us? It is better to remain anonymous, isn't it? I can't bring myself to talk to some profs from my college, the reason being they have this tendency of bringing up certain topics which tend to wilt the skin off my back. But otherwise, some profs are real cool. Of course, then again, there are profs who are scared of certain students and become well behaved electrons. Paranoia also leads to such behavior as to pinning up your gold chain against your dress while traveling on a train (a cut chain will slip through anyway silly), locking up the door and then closing the latch which could be opened by a well educated first grade kid, slipping your footwear under another in a temple lest it gets stolen, etc. In all cases, it is true that such behavior lessens the probability of a mishap by say 0.01%, but how does it reduce your paranoia by 1oo%? It is like getting a Nobel Prize just because you said you would find something soon. (Oh wait! Didn't this happen for real?) Surprisingly, our paranoia seems to increase with the number of gods and babas and other holders of our faith. Strange but isn't that what makes humans so special?

Birthday Boogies

Ah.. its that time of the year again. The time when your family suddenly realizes they lost a year and start on their endeavor anew only to again lose steam 3 months down the line. Am talking of the strategies leading up to the merger that was once a bond, then a relationship, then became an institution, then an easy visa and soon will be a gimmick, aka marriage. In India, people are so excited about marriages. It doesn't matter whether you want it or not, but you ll get excited talking of it. It probably has got something to do with the all the flowers pairing up and touching each other every time the hero takes a break from his antics. (Thank god for Star Movies, it was one of the main reasons for the braking on the population growth) With some of my friends getting married, it was time for my folks to get cracking on it too. I can tell you that half the population, me included, doesn't know if they want to get married or not. Sometimes they meet the right person they like and they go ahead. But for the ones who have not or do not know if they have or not, life can be as confusing as trying to decipher the lyrics in an ARR song. So, here are the top 10 tried and tested (a lot!) excuses you can give to your parents for pushing the strategic planning and hence the operations research and capital budgeting (We are MBAs no?) to a wee little later date or at least make them inactive till you go home after some 8 months. Some are single dose and some are to be given with every conversation.

1) Wait till my placements… We will know the exact location and worth then…

2) I need to earn and stand on my own feet and pay for brother's education…

3) What happened to XYZ aunty's son's brother-in-law?

4) Find a person who is equal to me… No, not better, not worse, equal, EXACTLY EQUAL!

5) Yeah… On a diet… 3 months and you can start…

6) How can I leave you all and go live with someone else?

7) I think brother likes some girl. Go talk to him first…

8) AR Rahman is too good for Ilayaraja…

9) When I bend my head, I hear this knocking noise in my ear… Try to contact some ENT no?

10) I think I love my roommate…


PS - Look at this.. What did I tell you? http://ow.ly/O5O4