I spent the whole night sitting by the door, staring outside at the darkness punctuated by the occasional light from a passing town, or little, insignificant railway stations. I could almost hear thatha's voice saying, "ACku danda selavu..." When the train chugged past one of these stations, I put my head out and waved at the diminutive station master standing with his green light. He waved back. I wished I had a camera.

The experience of having the chill wind of the receding monsoon bite your face while you contemplate the vagaries of life, romantic as it sounds, is painful, and comparable to spending an evening with an insurance salesman. It reminds you of everything that could go wrong with your life. In all seriousness, there was little wrong with my life at that moment. But, I remembered small things that would sting later on - like the fact that I had left my geyser on and come away to Madras for a week. And then, there were the more serious things to worry about - like the fact that thatha might not actually be in a state to make his usual comments on the political economy of Madras, on how the British were benevolent and the best thing that could have ever happened to our nation, on how no two South Indian women can make the same rasam even if they follow the same recipe, on how all politicians are crooks (In Woody Allen's words, "Do you even know the kind of morals those people have? It's a notch above child molesters...") and on how society is today turning amoral.

I couldn't imagine him sick and confined to a bed. He was never the physically fit sort, but was never unfit. Every morning, he walked from his bedroom to his easy chair, the full extent of his movement on an average day, from where he sermonised, theorised, meditated and meted out justice to his subjects – the other inhabitants of his house. When he once refused to move to Bombay to stay with my parents, my father threatened to lift him with the easy chair and take him away. He was the sort who had grown used to retirement. He had his routine - his trips to the bank, his sporadic attending of concerts, his fortnightly visit of his siblings in Nanganallur. I knew that even he would be terribly disheartened if he couldn’t do all of this.

As dawn dawned, I braced myself for the bleak thatha. Not the thatha who told me every morning I spent at his house, with a little twinle in his eye, that Brahmins must get up before sunrise; but the thatha who would lie on his bed and stare blankly around at the scores of people helping him go through his mundane day.

***

A few minutes before sunrise, as usual, Paati woke up, brushed and went to the door to pick up milk and the newspaper. She cursorily glanced at the headline about women becoming the head of state, and started boiling milk for morning coffee. She checked if there was enough decoction (pronounced di.gaa.shun). He woke up, just afterwards, when he smelt the coffee, and saw the first rays of sunlight peeking through his windows.

“Oy, turn on the radio!” he hollered from his room. Sure enough, an unrecognisable voice was heard throughout the house singing Raga Ataana. Hardly anyone sings Ataana these days, he thought to himself. The voice wasn’t doing a bad job at all.

“Oy, I have to brush,” he hollered again. Paati came to the bed with his brush, and a bowl and a glass of water. When he was done, she said, “I’ll get you the coffee.” And the coffee came, along with the newspaper. And he sat up, with coffee in one hand, and the Hindu newspaper in the other, excitedly checking if his letter to the editor had been published. Once when someone told him that it was pointless to send letters to the editor because only retired Tamilians from Mylapore wrote to the editor, and only other retired Tamilians from Mylapore read these comments, he was outraged and never spoke to that person again.

“Oy, my letter about the bad road in front of our house has come in the Hindu!”

“I don’t know why you bother. You haven’t used that road in three months!”

Reading the Hindu every morning, sipping coffee and in an old veshti and torn banian was a way of life in Madras, and thatha was one of it’s firmest endorsers. Apparently, when he was in Canada for a few months on some work, and it was one of Canada’s coldest winters, he insisted on freezing in a veshti when at home. Later, he discovered that wearing tights underneath the veshti made the extreme weather slightly more bearable.

The radio in the background was now executing a complex Pallavi in Ataana. Thatha put the Hindu down, and hollered yet again, “Turn up the volume.” The music now filled the house, and Paati began to hum along. Thatha was keeping talam and nodding in appreciation every now and then.

“A-one,” he declared when it ended, using one of those typically Madras expressions. Paati made some sound signifying her approval.

***

When I haggled down the fare to thirty-five, I paid the auto driver and climbed the flight of stairs to the house. I was ready to face a forlorn thatha. The door was open, as always. When I entered the drawing room, I heard from the bedroom a voice saying, “…the gall to come to Madras and complain that nobody speaks Hindi. You come to a different state, you learn that language. We lived in Delhi for six years. Didn’t we speak Hindi? These North Indians…”

There he was on his bed, with a frown on his face showing his utter contempt for North Indians. It turned into the brightest of smiles when he saw me. Surrounded by the newspaper and a glass of coffee.

“Thatha!” I exclaimed in relief, “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Just immobile, that’s all. Frankly, I’m enjoying it. People do everything for you. You just sit around like a king and enjoy”

He wasn’t forlorn or sick. In his own words, he was just immobile. Who said nothing is constant but change?

Long Hair and Other Dirty Habits

In my nostalgia driven weeks after Law School, I suddenly remembered my unforgettable Labour Law viva. After ten trimesters of giving vivas, I was quite confident that I could defend anything that I had written successfully. But there was the catch - I hadn't written that project, Raguvaran had. On my instructions. But, he had written it. Half of it, at least.

Morning of my viva, I read 'my' paper and on the fifteenth page, I see footnote number 23 - "That book you gave me". Footnote number 24 - "Id." Footnote 29 - "Whatever Act they are talking about." Page 5, line 9 - "Industrial britney Disputes Act". Someone was playing my own joke on me. There was no way I could have ever hoped to have defended this. But I was cocky. Three years and a bit in Law School had taught me to defend anything. I once even had an explanation for why there was a footnote in my Contracts paper that said, "Cite random economics book here".

Prof. Nagaraj never read projects. I had nothing to worry about. I just had to know something about the topic, and bombard him with fundae. So, I read class notes on the topic, and confidently walked in.

Prof. Nagaraj: What is your topic?
Me: Judicial mechanisms under the ID Act.
N: What have you covered?
M: Sir, if you look at the Table of Contents... (first mistake)
N: Only the first chapter is relevant. After that you have just added whatever you want to fill the pages.
M: Sir, no. I have analysed Section 10 in the second chapter.
N: That is irrelevant.
M: Sir, um, I think it is relevant if you consider it from the perspective (now there was no way I could intelligently complete that sentence, and then it struck me) of comparing it with Alternate Dispute Resolution mechanisms. (There. He loves Alternate Dispute Resolutions.)
N: All of you are talking about Alternate Dispute Resolution even when it is irrelevant just because I taught you that course last year. And Section 10 has NOTHING to do with ADR.
(Head hung down in shame) What is the paper? If you had just taken one standard textbook and paraphrased it, you could have done a better job.
M: Sir, that's what I did! (Second mistake.)
N: Doing a bad project is wrong. Accepting that your project is bad is worse!
M: Sir, sorry. (Third mistake.)
N: What sorry? This word 'sorry' for everything everyone will going to use. No meaning it has anymore.
M: Sir, sorry... (Four)
N: I don't know what has happened to you. In third year, when I taught ADR, you were very active in class. You took part in all class discussion. Even simulation exercise you did. Now, you will going to come to class and will going to sleep. You have gotten into long hair and other dirty habits.
M: (I have this habit of laughing uncontrollably at all the wrong times, and when he said 'long hair and other dirty habits', I began my continuous giggle) No, sir.
N: What 'No, sir'? I know everything about everybody.
M: Sir, sorr... um, sir...

Then, he took my project and started writing something on the cover. My curious self had to find out what was written, and I leaned over the table. He then said, "You want to see? YOU WANT TO SEE?" And he showed me. In big, bold letters, with a red pen, across the cover of my paper, "BELOW AVERAGE". He said, "So that I don't forget."

And I was worried about Raguvaran's footnotes!

Tryst with Destiny

"...At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity."

We took it a little too seriously, didn't we?

He's Leaving Home

"Dude, lets go to Pakistan."
"Now? It's a little too late."
"Everybody's there. Last night at Pak."
"Sarkar's cutting tomorrow?"
Silence.
"Fuck. Yes. Sarkar's cutting tomorrow... Vipul also!"
"They're there right now. Let's go."

And so, Surd and I, on my bike rushed to Pak - to consume, one last time, the tea that kept me sane for three years. As I drove, helmetless, past policemen, I remembered the first time I went there, with Bailey, on the day before the CPC one mid-term (a night that would culminate in four of us standing in the middle of the Cauvery hostel quad screaming, "Takwani!!") and being fascinated by how a place this extraordinary in atmosphere could be tucked away in a quiet corner of Bangalore for this long.

For three years, four days a week on an average, Sarkar, Vipul, Spandan and myself with Singla, Senti, Amit, VP and other junior and senior visitors discussed life there over countless cups of chai and Classic Milds. And on that last night, when I reached Pak, I was overwhelmed by nostalgia. I somehow never thought that my non-smoking, vegetarian self could ever be so attached to a place that mainly serves young, dead animals and cigarettes to go with the chai! The days I didn't go there felt strangely empty. The days Sarkar and I didn't come back at 12.45 and sign in the gate three register as The Pope, or Simi Rose, or James Bond (with roll no 007), I usually sulked around the hostel like a little kid who had just lost a game of hide and seek.

Finally, the moment arrived. I had to leave Pak (officially called Gangondanahalli) for the last time in my life. I walked up to Ayub - the guy who makes the chai - and thanked him for the best chai in the world. Without warning, he hugged me and said, "Jab Bangalore aaoge, idhar zaroor aana!" That's the first time I realised that I was not only finishing law school, but also leaving Bangalore for some time at least.
***

"Ok. I have to cut now. If I stand here longer, I'm going to cry."
"Don't cut now."
"You don't understand. I can't stand here."
"Go."
"No. I'll stay."
"Just five minutes."
Then it happened. I had to cry once, and I did.
"Made me stay here for five minutes just so that you see me cry, didn't you?"
***

Bong and I sat on one of the metal cots in the hostel on the second floor. Tuts was blasting "New York Nagaram" from his room. Senti slept through it like a child. Jags and Surd nailed gin and Sprite. Mishra and Arun - each more drunk than the other - played a pointless game of badminton in the quad.

My last moments in the hostel were spent like this - on a cot on the second floor, high on gin, with various kinds of smoke whirling around me giving me the feeling that I had spent most of my time at a whiskey bar.
***

The room was almost spotlessly clean. The table had some assorted items left for whoever moved into the room next year (That would be Cheena). There was a pillow lying around, which was to be donated to CCL for the kids. After five hours of intense packing, I looked back at the empty room. Just last evening, it was home - everything from toothpaste to hair conditioner, cane chair, desktop, music system, book rack, survival fluids, bread and cheese, deodorant, Arun, Geek. When I left, it was empty. The new guy had to come in and start from scratch. Actually not. I left him my posters, shaving foam, and an extension cord - a good start.
***

Just before I left, we engaged in our only act of vandalism - behind the door, we wrote the last line of the judgment that law school passed on us - "There will be no orders as to costs."
***

New Perspectives in Male Gazing - A Psycho-Sociological Analysis of Behavioural and Dress Patterns in the Modern Indian Male Aged Under 30

Standing on the fourth floor of Garuda Mall and looking down, literally and figuratively, at other people also standing and looking down, into the central quadrangle, Arun (much thanks for the extensive inputs) and I engaged in a sociological study - of classifying people at Garuda Mall, and thereby males under the age of 30, into various categories. Read carefully, these categories help you form strong first opinions of people you see, not only at malls, but anywhere else, and will earn you the coveted title of a ‘snob’.

Category 1: The Ninjas

No, the photograph has nothing to do with these ‘ninjas’. A typical ninja wears a bandana, really tight, cheap jeans, check-out-my-six-pack tight t-shirt and rides a Yamaha RX100. A ninja also worships the actors in Dhoom 2 A typical ninja also speaks bad English, but speaks English nonetheless. A typical ninja usually has ‘bleached’ hair. I use the term ‘bleached’ as opposed to ‘coloured’ because it looks more like the hair has been bleached, with some form of acid, as opposed to coloured.

Category 2: The ‘kewl’s

i rite dis prt n sms lingo cos dats hw da kewls tlk… da kewls r of 2 typs… da call center typ n da punju typ..da 1st typ hv dis weird us typ accnt coz de hv 2 tlk on da phn wid ppl frm da us in dat accnt…da 2nd typ lyk 2 act lyk dere in a karan johar mvie..neder cn spll in eng vry well..2th hv dscvrd da plsrs of mobs[1]…2th drss lyk sak[2] in hum tum…mite hv colred, strgtnd[3] hair…de luv action mvies…”yaar, mi3 mein kya jump kiya, yaar”…nrmly wid kewl galfrnd…

Category 3: Engineering

Now, in a mall, when you see a bunch of guys (crucial: they are ONLY guys) hanging around with backpacks, walking aimlessly around the mall, usually hanging around the places where the one commodity that they lack in their engineering lives – the women[4] – hang around, you can be sure they’re all engineering students. The clothing they wear ranges from Man U/Arsenal jersey (bought by themselves), to checked shirts (bought by mommy). Sometimes, they have with them the engineering chick (relevant music and drum roll)! Now this is that one chick who is surrounded by seven men, all with backpacks, with each trying to outdo the other. In theory, only one of them is ‘behind’ her, to use the engineering lingo. Subconsciously, they all hope for a group study with the academically inclined, Chamarajpet, MES College, CET rank 400, PESIT free seat, Infosys-job chicka.

Category 4: Metal

Either from Engineering Colleges or Christ College. Black T-shirt with some random metal band on it. Blue, torn jeans with stuff written in blue ball point pen – usually angsty messages about killing people and initiating world peace. Random hair growth on face. Longish, unkempt hair on head. Present having consumed performance enhancers at rock shows. Many a time, part of metal band. Otherwise, best friend is guitarist in metal band. Can play four or five chords on a guitar[5]. Can growl like metal vocalists. Sometimes, hard of hearing due to all the heaviosity in music heard. Have strong opinions on serious issues such as death[6], legalising marijuana[7] and globalisation[8]. Usually, buy branded clothes and original, capitalist metal CDs.

Category 5: The Wannabes

The title is self-explanatory. They are the types who want to fit in. Usually, the saddest cases in all of the sociology, because their aspirations of fitting in are thwarted by the various groups that they try to fit into – they’re too unkewl to be the kewls, they’re to civilised to be ninja, their ears are too cultured to be metals, and they don’t do engineering. They are seen at malls, but are unwilling to spend anything. They are seen at rock concerts, but usually look too bombed. They are seen at Engineering college fests, but look on blankly when the “tech-events” happen. And they do have bikes[9], but cant bring themselves to zip on them even though they think Dhoom 51 was the coolest movie ever.

Category 6: The Hip

The last-but-one category in this sociological analysis considers itself to be the coolest, and the one that everyone should aspire to be in. What they don’t realise, however, is that people are happy being where they are – as ninjas, engineering or metal. And the hip, in their own snobbish world, derive their own pleasure, laughing at the ninjas, the engineering and the metal for what they are. So, everyone’s happy.

Category 7: Arun[10] and me

This category doesn’t have a label because as theorists[11] we firmly believe that labels are not important, although attaching labels to people can be a lot of fun. We don’t fit into any category, and because we don’t want to fit into any category, we’re not wannabe. We are above everything. We’re citizens of the world. Citizens of the Universe, in fact. Given the Big Bang theory, we are a part of this ever-expanding, label-neutral universe – as a wise man once said, “We’re atoms in the universe – A universe of atoms”. Although, we sometimes do ponder over whether the Multiverse theory is more attractive!

---

[1] Short for ‘mobile’.

[2] Saif Ali Khan

[3] Straightened.

[4] Note: The average sex ratio in Engineering colleges is around 1:13. One woman: Thirteen Guys!!

[5] Which is all that is required for random metal growling. Note: Here, I make a distinction between metal and ‘metall’ – the latter is the meaningless screaming that Bangalore ‘metall’ fans consider music. The former is metal understood in its usual sense.

[6] “Lets just kill all the people, ra. I think it’ll make the world easier to live in. It’s all solipsistic assonance.”

[7] “It does nothing to us. Really!”

[8] “Ra, we must fuckin oppose the fuckin globalisation. It fucks the fuckin economy.”

[9] Sometimes, Activas (Activae?) and Scootys (Scooties?).

[10] Of the “Mami man, I am in love!” fame…

[11] We came up with this classification!

The King of Comedy

“The two biggest myths about me are that I'm an intellectual, because I wear these glasses, and that I'm an artist because my films lose money.”

That quote, to me, encompasses Woody Allen’s wit, world view and his films. For me, he is the distinction between being ‘smart’ and being ‘intellectual’. Intellectual is being Ingmar Bergman. Smart is being Woody Allen. The main difference, for me, is not in the substance, but in the form. Both make you think – but while the smart can still be enjoyed at a lower level, the intellectual cannot be experienced without the thought. In more concrete terms, you can laugh at Woody Allen when he says, “To you, I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition,” without thinking too much about the larger implications of this line. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, on the other hand, could seem like a series of inexplicable images if you leave your mind behind. The difference, therefore, lies in whether the person putting the idea forward is being direct about it or is shy to admit that he has a ‘message’.

When the Film Club at Law School screened Annie Hall as a part of the satire series, I was asked if it was one at all. It seems, at the surface, like a romantic comedy that was more intelligent than the rest that fit into that category. But just like most of his films, this is a brilliantly constructed satire on love, relationships and everything ("I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs," he says at the end.) with his usual digs at Hollywood, the studios, the television shows and the meetings - a theme that he visits time and again in his movies. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, for instance, he tells his niece, "Show business is, is dog-eat-dog. It's worse than dog-eat-dog. It's dog-doesn't-return-other-dog's-phone-calls."

Two of his early films - Bananas and Love and Death - two movies that are not as nuanced or polished as Crimes and Misdemeanors or Everyone Says I Love You, but make you laugh just as much. Bananas is one brash, crass comedy in bad taste for the most part, but its general smartness keeps the movie going. It is not rated as highly as some of his other comedies for this reason, but does have genres of comedy that he seems to have grown out of - especially slapstick humour and silent comedy-esque sequences. The ridiculous plot involving Allen, a products tester from the US, becoming the leader of the tiny Republic of San Marcos in Latin America does not have the typical big set-up comedy sequences, but is filled with little throwaway lines, like his dig at the Vatican:

Nancy: Have you ever been to Denmark?

Fielding Mellish: I've been, yes... to the Vatican.

Nancy: The Vatican? The Vatican is in Rome.

Fielding Mellish: Well, they were doing so well in Rome that they opened one in Denmark.

Two sequences in the movie are amongst the funniest he has ever done - one when he tries buying the Orgasm magazine at a shop, and the other when he defends himself in Court. The sad thing about this movie is that unless one is a die-hard Woody Allen fan like myself, I find that nobody has even heard of it. It might not be even close to the best movie you'll ever watch, but it'll keep you laughing continuously for 85 minutes, without resorting to Borat-like toilet humour!

Another classic Woody Allen that is much-ignored by the world is Love and Death. This is probably because it comes just before his most famous movie, Annie Hall. Love and Death, for me, is equally good. It is his spoof, to use a crass term, on Russian Literature - especially the writing of Tolstoy and Dosteovsky. He takes another dig at Dostoevsky in Match Point in the scene where the guy has Crime and Punishment in one hand and a Guide to Crime and Punishment in the other hand. Love and Death is filled with references to Ingmar Berman's The Seventh Seal, especially in the last scene, when the credits roll, and Allen is following Death dancing behind him. There is also one joke about Persona, in the scene just before the end when Keaton and the other woman talk of wheat. In fact, the movie's most excellent joke is that scene where Allen is talking of various kinds of wheat and Keaton, standing next to him talks of the purpose of existence and love - just like in Russian literature.

Love and Death is Allen's transformation film, from farcical spoofs to very intelligent satires, and while the world will miss his physical humour that he executed so superbly in Bananas, Sleeper and Everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask, the world will also be glad that he evolved into the King of Comedy - the King of Smart, Intelligent Comedy.

Smartness that is shown in his unique narrative style - all those scenes in his movies where time and space just don't seem to matter - like the one in Annie Hall when he visits his old house, and sees the party going on there, the one in Everybody Says I Love You where he dances under the bridge with Goldie Hawn and the sequence in Match Point where the two ghosts come and talk to the pratagonist about him killing them.

Smartness that is also shown in his one-liners, his sudden comment of deep philospophical significance that he dismisses a second later with a joke, and his ability to tear ideas and people apart - like the comparison of a TV producer to Mussolini and then a donkey in Crimes and Misdemeanors or his use of his stereotypical son to poke fun at metal-heads and his movie directed blind becoming a great success in France in Hollywood Ending. He does make a lot of fun of France in life - he once said, "For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good."

The one thing, though that makes me laugh all the time, more than any one-liner, more than any scene in any movie, is the expression on his face and his reactions to people and things. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, when he is behind the camera listening to the subject of his documentary, the TV Producer, tell the audience how comedy is 'tragedy plus time', he makes this face of ridicule and disgust. Rishabh Gupta, watching the movie with me just the other day went, "Show me his face. Just once more. Please!"

***

Epilogue

The title of this post is borrowed from the title of Scorsese's movie starring Robert De Niro. Along with Woody Allen, Scorsese is my favourite director of all time. And along with Woody Allen again, and Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro is my favourite actor of all time.