A Sorry Interruption

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Auteur, madarchod!

When you are in bed all day, wrapped in a bedsheet in the sultriness of Madras, knocked out by a fever, wavering ever so subtly between sleep and waking until you don't know which is which, your brain starts functioning in a zone of its own. Time becomes fuzzy, even irrelevant. Fungible. Ah, yes. That's the word, fungible! I like that word, it's so cuddly, so flexible.

Your brain thinks thoughts, your brain reaches startling conclusions, and when you try retracing the steps you went through to reach there, you find the breadcrumbs eaten away by the demon-like birds in your head.

The little iPod embedded in my brain, constantly buzzing, always on shuffle, sings now in Anu Malik's voice, "She gives me fever, fever, fever." His distinctive inflection, his fake not-Bombay-not-America accent, his slight tunelessness at the end of each line, all ring clearly in my head. This hasn't happened in a while. I open my eyes, and find my neck drenched in fevered sweat, the fan groaning while it whirs unenthusiastically, and vague sounds of a Tamil serial from the adjacent room. I reach out to the bottle of water on the bedside table and drink a rather large gulp. When that water break morphs back into my febrile sleep, I hear that voice again. Anu Malik. That paragon of frivolousness. That antonym of mellifluousness. "She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh."

My closed palms feel warm, my feet feel cold. I shiver a little.

The song makes it way to the core of my existence, it consumes my soul, it kindles the flame within, and it unearths a curious memory that lies buried deep, deep within.

I am now in the summer of 2000. My friend and I have been packed off to Trichy to spend some time with his aunt. The mornings and evenings, we spend cycling in and around the little town. We unexpectedly run into some girls in a park. We make nervous conversation with them. The voices in this conversation seem to come from a well -- there is a slight reverberation about them. Like dream sequences in the movies. The girls ask us if we want to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's End of Days in a theatre nearby. I hold one of the girls' hands throughout the movie and kiss it just before the climax. She blushes.

The kiss wakes me up. I am back in the present, and I realise that my brain just added its own cinematic masala to a rather monotonous holiday. I smile. I doze off again.

Now we are in my friend's aunt's house in Trichy. It is a dreary, meandering, dull, drooping, dreadful, afternoon. We are channel-flipping between vague Bollywood music channels. And we discover this song. The anthem of my fever. "She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh." A pre-Big Brother, pre-UP-Bihar-lootne, pre-yoga-in-extreme-tights Shilpa Shetty, looking extremely desirable, canoodling a drugged-out Sanjay Dutt on an uncomfortably shaped sofa in a dingy set. And in the background, off-key women chorus singers going "Whose that girl with the lovely, lovely smile...", soon to be joined by Anu Malik trying to sound lovelorn and horny at once.

The movie, I finally recall, is Jung.

I am not in that drawing room anymore. I am now in Kalpana Theatre, Udupi, and the moth eaten seats bring a flood of memories. Of the the jail-like ticket queue, of Rs. 18 balcony seats, of drinking local cool drink Ba-Jal during the interval, of vague art deco construction, of actually kissing a girl in the the darkened halls while watching Mission Impossible 2 in Hindi.

"She gives me fev-uh, fev-uh, fev-uh," Anu Malik continues singing, now in surround sound. Shilpa curves and cavorts around Sanjay Dutt and the sofa. I am not sure which of the two is luckier. My friend's hands are not where they should be. Our verdict, "Shilpa Shetty has come out good, man!" She scorches our senses and blanks out the rest of the movie.

(I am now reminded of Sanjay Gupta's previous outing, Khauff, which I watch in the same theatre with the same friend. Until the movie starts, I think I have come for an English movie called Cough.)

As Jung hurtles towards its laborious climax, I hear a threatening baritone from my left. I turn around to see a dark, bulky, french-bearded figure bearing down on me, asking, "You must be a fan. You seem to have seen all my movies."
It dawns on me. The new entrant is Sanjay Gupta himself. I reply, in a voice that isn't my own, "Not all. I missed Aatish: Feel the Fire. Although I must admit, of all your movies, that one has the most thrilling title."
He smiles, "You lucky bastard. Imagine how many times I must have seen it during editing."
"That explains the mindnumbing Hameshaa. I knew it couldn't have come from a straight-thinking mind," I console him. "Your expertise always lay in remaking Hollywood movies, featuring silly, overloud comedy, steamy song sequences, desperate posturing, a bored Sanjay Dutt and faux grittiness."
"Thank you for reducing my life's work to a stereotype," he says.
"Oh, come on. I'm telling you that you're an auteur," I offer, "A French word, monsieur. That must make you feel posh."
He collapses into the seat next to me, and says, "You know. It's funny you use that word -- auteur. It's become famous in India these days." There is a gleam in his eyes, as he turns around to the projection room and shouts, "Projectionist! Start from the beginning!"
I look at Sanjay in horror, "Dude, I cannot go through this movie again."
"I merely want to refresh your memory, pal," Sanjay says. The 'pal' proves he watches too much cheap Hollywood for his own good.

The titles are now on the screen. Familiar names whizz past me. Jackie Shroff, Sanjay Dutt, Raveena Tandon, Anu Malik... And at one point, he stands up and screams again, "Projectionist, pause!"

I stare at the screen in shock at the name on it. Anurag Kashyap. Yes, that very same Anurag Kashyap -- the Hindi New Wave hero, the man they call the saviour of Indian cinema, the toast of the Cannes Directors' Fortnight -- is involved in writing an embarrassing rip-off of a middling Hollywood film called Desperate Measures.
Sanjay roars with laughter, "But Anurag is an honourable man!"

I am dismayed. I ask into the void of Kalpana Theatre, "Et tu, Anurag?"

A pair of dark-rimmed spectacles appears on the screen. Soon these are filled by large, keen, black eyes. A round, stocky face forms itself around the spectacles, and an uneven beard grows. In a barely masked North Indian accent, the face speaks, "I can explain myself!"
"Admit it, Anurag!" Sanjay hollers, "You did this once more. This movie called Paisa Vasool."
I ask, utterly disappointed, "Anurag, you wrote that cinematic excreta also?"
"No, no. Wait," Anurag tries.
But Sanjay interjects again, "Anurag is an honourable man! Hahahaha. You see, young fellow, where Gangs of Wasseypur comes from? It's not him going nudge-nudge-wink-wink at masala. He's just making what he knows how to make, and people are attributing nudges and winks. Auteur, saala madarchod!"

"Order, order," I shout, my legal instincts coming to the fore, "We must allow the accused to present his case."
"Milaard," Anurag starts, "Around 1999, there was this series on TV called Darr starring Kay Kay Menon and Irrfan Khan. Neither actor was well known then -- their career defining roles still more than half a decade away."

I remember it being a fairly gripping series about a dope-head serial killer (Irrfan) called, if my memory serves me right, "Desi Jallad" engaged in a battle of wits with a policeman (Kay Kay). I wonder where the accused is going with this.

"It was directed by my brother, Abhinav Kashyap, and the two of us co-wrote it. At some point during the series, my name stopped appearing in the credits, and the series turned a little less edgy and a little more melodramatic." He pauses, catches his breath, and asks, "You want to know the truth?"
"Yes," I say.
"You can't handle the truth," he says, his voice acquiring a stentorian quality.
"Dude, too many movie references. Stick to your story."
"Sorry, milaard," he says. "The truth is, I never wrote Darr. My brother wrote it, he directed it."
Sanjay laughs. I make notes in my notebook, and say, "Yes, Mr. Accused. Go on."
"You see, Satya was out by this time, and he only wanted me to lend my name to it. You know how far a name goes in show business. And I did this only for my brother. My own brother. My own blood. Same mother. Same father also. Mere bhai ke liye main itna bhi nahin kar sakta kya? We both came from Uttar Pradesh searching for jobs. We slept on benches, footpaths, beaches. We often ate Tiger biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner because you got nothing more wholesome for Rs. 3. Sometimes, we didn't even have enough money for that... Is what I did wrong? My hunger did this, milaard. My desperation did this."

Sanjay wipes a tear off his cheek.

I think for a while and pronounce judgment, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.' "

Anurag says, "Saale, milaard ke bacche, you think only you've read The Great Gatsby? Even Bachchan Amitabh has read it now."

I smile sheepishly. "Wait. You haven't explained Paisa Vasool. Your co-writer (and director) on Paisa Vasool was a man called Srinivas Bhashyam. He can't be your brother. Even if he his, he's definitely not same mother, same father."
"You must understand. Bhashyam's greatest achievements at that point were that he was Assistant Director on the hilarious Tamil classic Magalir Mattum and Second Unit Director of Mani Ratnam's blockbuster Bombay. He was making a Bollywood debut with Paisa Vasool. I was helping him out... After all, even an artist needs to eat some light Indian breads with lentil soup twice a day, no?"
"Srinivas Bhashyam sounds like he would prefer rice and mulligatawny soup."

I hear a distant voice. It is my grandmother's. Anurag, Sanjay, my friend, the theatre, all dissolve into my bedroom, now bathed in a dim yellow light from a distant bulb. My grandmother says, "Wake up, kanna. Eat some rasam saadam. It will do you good."
I say, "One minute, Paati. Coming."

I start my laptop, open Youtube, find the song, and listen to it.

An unreliable socio-political history of wedding reception food in Madras

Somewhere in the mid-1990s, brides, grooms, their families, wedding planners, caterers, philosophers and sundry wedding attendees, buoyed by liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation, exposed to alien cultures and rituals, realised that since the wedding reception -- yes, that very reception that looks like a school annual day prize-giving ceremony, with the groom in a suit that will cease to fit him in two months, and the bride in an ultra-bling ghaghra-choli that she will be embarrassed to wear in any other environment -- was not a religious ceremony anyway, it was alright to serve food that wasn't, um, auspicious and upholding traditional Indian values.

So, out went the avials and the morekozhambus, and in came the soups, chats, cheese dosas and syrup-y gulab jamuns. The sit-down leaf-served meal made way for the posh buffet served from behind canopied counters. Why the canopy in indoor venues, you ask? Aesthetics, my friend -- a wedding must either be pleasing to the eye or overwhelming to the senses. A canopy can do either, depending on the mental state of the attendee. The servers, originally in crisp off-white veshtis (they used to be white when they were first worn) changed to random black-and-white plain or checked shirt-trouser-and-aprons and wore tall chef hats. Yes, chef hats. Aesthetics, again.

The banana leaf disappeared, and was replaced by mega-sized melmac or plastic plates that were large enough to hold one chapati or two puris or both, with an overpowering-masala gravy concealing microscopic paneer particles, one bowl of instant-diabetes-inducing sweet rasamalai, one collapsed dosa with accompanying sambar bowl and two chutneys, ladlefuls of "variety rice", pulao, bisi bele bath and curd rice, chips, a pappadum, and a minuscule quantity of red pickle.

Vegetable and fruit carving became the latest rage amongst the mamis as miscellaneous barn animals, cartoon characters, gods and goddesses were all sculpted out of carrots, watermelons, pumpkins and pineapples and placed on a central table in the middle of the hall with spurious sliced vegetables - god knows when they were sliced - posing as salads.

But this model had its disadvantages. Firstly, as the number of guests increased, the cleanliness of recycled plates became questionable. Many guests took to rubbing their plates dry with the provided tissue. Secondly, while the youth with their limitless energy went back for refills and repeated helpings, the middle-aged and the geriatric often under-ate. Thirdly, many guests left the hall without eating -- a serpentine queue (Serpent is too tame a word. Some of the queues are positively anacondaic, threatening to eat up the wedded couple by the time the photographer allows it to slither along) to wish the couple was bad enough, another one for the buffet was too much to handle and guests preferred rushing to the nearest Saravana Bhavan for some tame plate meals.

Then, at a wedding, a few years ago, I noticed a new trend. I trekked up to the dining hall to find, curiously, a sit-down meal. My inner mama was highly pleased and I rubbed my hands in glee, waiting for some hot kozhambu. First, they placed a paper cup next to the leaf and poured some thick red liquid in it -- no payasam, friends, instead we got tomato soup! Soon, a guy followed with two little bowls in his hand -- one had bread crumbs, and the other, I kid you not, corn mixture! To my horror, a rubbery rumali roti was tossed on to my leaf next. This was accompanied by a lot of gravy with four suspended grains of channa. I ate this gingerly, hoping we would be back to regular programming in the next round.

Then came some sticky ajinomoto-overloaded hakka noodles and tomato ketchup (which didn't taste much different from the soup, mind you). I witnessed the cosmic sight of two hundred Tamilian brahmins eating hot noodles off a banana leaf with their fingers. The culinary world-tour didn't end there. Immediately after the noodles came some cheesy baked vegetable, and I swear I tasted some aamchur masala in it. A friend sitting next to me actually ate the au gratin with mango pickle.

Then, we were served sambar rice with chips and curd rice. I breathed calmly for a couple of minutes, before the waiter shocked me again with the dessert menu -- again, on the leaf, to be eaten with bare hands -- of chocolate mousse cake and mango souffle!

That night, I didn't sleep. I really hoped this concept dinner, whatever that concept was, was an aberration. A one-off. A product of an overactive imagination of an under-utilised mind. But I was proved wrong.

In the three years since that meal, I have consumed off the hallowed banana leaf, naans and kulchas with side dishes as outlandish as malai kofta, manchurian, penne arabbiata (the flavour was more Ambattur than Arabia), and localised versions of kachoris, malpuas, vegetable momos, pav bhaji, cutlets, dhoklas, french fries, and even a bar of chocolate.

This encapsulates the spirit of 21st century India -- an India that's global yet local, an India that borrows but makes it's own, an India that's as outward-looking as inward-looking, a democratic masala of a nation that is, in every way, a true original. (Or so I console myself.)

***
This piece should appear sometime now in an in-house publication of some sort. If you are in that house, you can read it again. If you aren't, you can come back here to read it.

The Battle of Ganpath Apartments

I have been battling rats for a few days, and various people have advised me variously.
***

 "The good old grandfather rat trap, nothing works like it."
(I live with my grandfather, so I have an actual grandfather rat trap.)

"Mortein Rat Kill."
(Clean and easy. Hmmm.)

"You know that thing.... That sticky sheet with Tom and Jerry cartoons on it?"
(Oh god. No. I don't want to scrape the rat off it afterwards.)

"In a rat trap, you must put a masala vadai."
(Why don't I open a branch of Karpagambal inside the trap for good measure?)

"This Mortein is very tame, da. There's this thing called Shakti Get Out. That can even kill you if you're not careful."
(Shakti Get Out. Oh man. This looks promising. Actually, it looks like a flattened ellurundai. Noxious only.)

"You think it's in a cupboard, you say? Hmmmm. Open the cupboard, find it and hit it repeatedly with a heated iron rod."
(That will make sure it's not cold-blooded anymore.)

"When you use Mortein Rat Kill, make sure you leave one exit open somewhere. Once I came back from some travels and had to scrape off a dead rat from my floor with a spoon."
(Dude, really. Did you have to tell me that?!)

"Rats breed very quickly. A kill in time saves fourteen."
(Oh fuck. I've delayed it for three days now!)


"Saar, I will give you the most important advice. You can put tengai and nei in the rat trap, you can put masala vadai... But the one that will work the best is NV. I had a bhai neighbour in my old house. He told me this. Find some NV neighbour, put the rat trap in the room in which the rat is, leave the NV in it, close all doors and give it ten minutes. That's all. You have your rat."
(NV in this house! Siva, siva. My thatha will catch me in a rat trap next.)

"Dip whatever you have left in the trap in coffee decoction. In our households, we get only Brahmin rats."
(Oh, that's why it was collecting all that string. To make itself a poonal.)

"I have the number of this pest control guy. It'll cost you a couple of grand. But he'll do a clean job."
(For a couple of grand, I'll do a clean job.)

"It's all about strategy, brother. Guerrilla warfare. You are the Mughal emperor. The rat is Shivaji. You have to understand how it strikes, where it strikes, when it strikes. Only then can you beat it. Don't underestimate your foe, like the Mughals did."
(My problem is that I overestimate it, really.)

"Can you claim the damage caused by the rat as a deduction under Chapter IV?"
(Hmmmm. Current repairs? Or Section 37? This is an interesting legal issue.)

"In these hard times, it is crucial that you are brave."
(Hum honge kaamyaab, I say to myself, repeatedly. Hum honge kaamyaab.)

"Your fan stopped working? Dude, this might be a flying mutant rat."
(Or a bat.)

"Once you catch the rat in the trap, don't kill it. Release it in the wild."
(Guindy Snake Park?)

"Killing a caught rat... Hmmmm. That's an art form."
(Yeah. We'll demonstrate it at the Modern Art Gallery.)

"Tie it to a rope, and beat it incessantly."
(The blood will spurt all over, its insides will be outside. That grisly mix of flesh, blood and bone. Tempting.)

"The most painless way to kill a rat once you've caught it is to pour boiling water on it. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak and its gone!"
(It's not really gone, is it? There's a boiled rat carcass right there for you to dispose.)

"Make sure you don't have to scrape it off the floor with a spoon."
(Don't remind me of that image repeatedly, da. Please.)

"The rat might go, but it's soul will live on. Community memory, brother. They will remember your house. They will seek revenge. They will fight to reclaim their land."
(Thank you for those words of encouragement.)

***
Really, thank you all for being so supportive. The Family was exterminated yesterday. Two adults and four kids in all. The house feels like my own again. Now to par-tay.

Ideas for a Carnatic Music Bar

I was at Zaras last night with some friends, sitting at the absolute edge of a table of nine people. I didn't hear a word of the conversation at the table. I was distracted by a little thought-breakthrough, an idea that took over my mind last evening, whose clouds will not leave for a while - not a full-blown cyclone, no, but a refreshing thunderstorm. But this post is not about that thought-breakthrough. I just worked it in to make myself sound posh. It is about another idea that intensified when I couldn't hear the conversation over the DJ-din last night.

Music at Zaras, and most other decent pub/bar/lounge-types in Madras, suffers from three issues. First, it's homogenous. It's the same kind of music everywhere. If you don't like that particular kind of music, you're stuck, you have no option (of course, there's Queens Bar in T.Nagar that plays SS Music, but those are exceptions). Second, it is usually too loud, yet not of danceable variety. So, you cannot talk, and you cannot dance. Which means you end up staring at each other with a rather silly expression on your face for most of the evening. Third, the music simply sucks. Last night, at Zaras, they were playing The Offspring. For Lord Kapaleeshwarar's sake, The Offspring! I count buying that cassette with Pretty Fly (For a white guy) in eighth standard amongst the most embarrassing moments of my life. Sheesh, Offspring!


So, I told my friend, a fellow Carnatic musician sitting next to me, "Dude, we should start a bar that plays Thodi raagam." He demonstrated an exaggerated Thodi, and I said, "Yes. Exactly."

Here are some preliminary thoughts:

1. Music: The music will be hardcore Carnatic - you are likely to hear Punnagavarali or Asaveri over  Kurai onrum illai. There will be no songs in Marathi. There will be no Meera Bhajans in badly pronounced Hin-dee. We will play English Note, don't worry.

Of course, lots of Thodi will figure.

The evening will typically begin with some KV Narayanaswamy, and over the course of the night, it will progress through Brindamma's wailing padams, Mali's broken spurts of beauty, and S. Balachander's overwhelming raagamalika taanams. And then, after the waiter asks you for the last order and makes the lights a little brighter, and you're in that phase when you get up and realise you're drunker than you thought you were, we wind-down with MD Ramanathan's baritone that seems to emanate from the centre of the earth. It will give you a sense of balance and purpose.

There will be regular occasions, like November Nadaswaram Nights (ideally live, open-air, late night), February Fusion Week (we have to attract youngsters also), Mridangam Mondays (featuring extended tani avartanams where you will get free drinks for putting correct taalam), Tambura Tuesdays (Where you drink to the drone that somehow signifies the omkara, that primordial sound that contains a  universe. Yes, yes. We have philosophical pretensions also.), Flute Fridays (cocktails will be served in a large flute the size of the table - you can put straws in each hole and drink), Violin Wednesdays (where if you tune a dummy violin correctly, you get extra sundal), and the occasional Seshagopalan Saturday or Sanjay Sunday. Cheesy things like playing music by musicians called Krishna or Krishnan or Krishnamurthy on Christmas will be encouraged. Occasionally, like the Music Academy, the bar will feature a Hindustani night (and the mama who comes there every week will identify every raga as Mishra-Maand) or a Ghazal night (which will be popular amongst those mamis who find Hariharan cute and his voice mellifluous, and amongst posh Sowcarpet residents and the Annanagar North Indians.)

For the sake of inclusiveness, themes like "Raga-based songs of Maestro Ilayaraaja" and "Golden Melodies of AR Rahman" will appear once a year.

The sound system will be uniformly bad, the recording quality worse.

2. Decor: The walls will be plastered with portraits of "doyens" of "yesteryears" who rendered "yeoman service" to Carnatic music, with appropriate flower garlands, incense sticks and a solitary, small, red zero-watt bulb. Drinks will be served in steel tumblers with davaras. Plates will look like kanjiras, spoons like morsings, straws like flutes (with fake holes, of course), pitchers like ghatams. Just so that the electronic tambura doesn't feel left out, one will be left on each table for no reason. You can irritate everyone at your table by constantly changing sruti. If they tell you off, tell them you're playing jazz.

3. Decorum: Decorum without rum is mere deco. Therefore, the worse you behave, the better the ambience is. You will be expected to let out an occasional "Mtch-mtch," or a "Tut-tut-tut-tut..." or a "Bhale" or a "Sabhaas". You are expected to noisily put taalam. You are expected to bring along a small raga book for ready reference.

If you wear shoes, you will be asked to remove them at the entrance (take that, Zaras!), if you wear a veshti, you will get extra ribbon pakoda, if your shirt is un-ironed and nondescript, you will get the title of Rasikar Vendhar along with some coconuts, bananas, a dilapidated orange, two suspect apples, a few betel leaves of no use to man or beast, two packets of pak, a shimmering ponnaadai that no human being can publicly wear, a citation and a purse of Rs. 101.

Men and women will be made to sit in separate enclosures (oh wait, they already do this at Bikes and Barrels).  Then we won't do this, we don't want to copy. Like Kamal Hassan, we will be different.

4. Food and Beverage: While all the regular items will make an appearance, there will be some raga-based cocktails. The Gandharam Gargle is a tribute to Thodi's ga - its taste will be ambiguous yet heavy, and it will taste differently when drunk from different parts of the glass. A vodka-and-red-bull-based cocktail is planned for Kadanakuthoohalam's jumpiness. Prussian Blue, based on Neelambari's lullaby will lull you into comforting slumber. Piping hot filter coffee with a dash of brandy will be available.

As a tribute to the local, Vorion 6000 beer will be given prime importance.

Keera vadai, samosa, ribbon pakoda etc. will form the side eats. Special sundal during navaratri. Pongal and chakkarapongal during pongal. Adirasam, murukku and mixture from Suswaad, T. Nagar, throughout the year.

5. Karaoke Night: Once a fortnight, there will be a Carnatic karaoke with live mridangam and violin. They will play the raga and song of your choice, which you will choose from an unmemorable yellow and pink printed file, to which you will be required to do elaborate neraval and swaram. Sometimes, there will be a Royal Challenger RTP Challenge where each table nominates one person, and the pallavi goes around the bar in sequence. Tables will be eliminated if they muff up their round. The eduppus and the ragams get tougher as each round progresses.


More ideas are welcome. This is a work-in-progress.
***

(I wish to acknowledge the occasional inebriated inputs from one Shri. Aditya Prakash (Los Angeles).)

Aap Kaa Surroor v. Rockstar

A comparative examination of the dialectic dinchak discourses and discombobulated lumpen demetia.
***

Fifteen years ago, if someone told me that there would soon be two movies about Indian rockstars singing in Hindi who are wildly popular in Europe, I would've said sarcastically, "Yeah. And Govinda and Navjot Sidhu will end up as Members of Parliament." At that point in time, the only non-English singers to achieve mass hysteria were Ricky Martin and Las Ketchup, and neither was a rockstar in the Himesh Reshammiya or Ranbir Kapoor mould.

The parallels between Rockstar and Aap ka Surroor - the Moviee - the Real Love storyyy are plain for everyone to see. An Indian rockstar, with humble roots and extreme angst caused by flimsy reasons, rises to the top of the Indian music firmament, and in a totally unexpected turn of events, has wild shows in Europe. He gets arrested. He romances some woman who cannot act. There's a spunky other woman whose love he cannot reciprocate. He sports a stubble. He pontificates in Urdu.


(Oh man, Himesh should think of a copyright suit!) 

A detailed point-by-point analysis is required.


Name
Himesh is just called HR. Human Resources. Human Rights. High Risk. Hrithik Roshan. Heart Rate. An html code that creates a horizontal line...
There's a gilt-edged glitz to it. A starry shiny feel. It's the sort of name that can inspire and conspire (and the name rhymes with TR, who rhymed many things with many things).

Ranbir is called Jordan. Jordan? Why would you want to share your name with a Hashemete Kingdom, a retired basketball champ and an erstwhile pornstar? And dude, you're from Pitampura. Face it.

AKS: 1. Rockstar: 0.

War Cry
A no-brainer.

"Jai mata di. Let's rock!" versus "Sadda Haq!" The former is traditional with modern outlook. The latter sounds like a burly Pakistani middle order batsman's genial brother.

AKS: 2. Rockstar: 0

Lead star costume and make-up
This is a toughie.

Himesh's wardrobe included the bizarre Hrithik Roshan inspired black see-through banian showing off his insides in gory detail, the Neo-from-the-Matrix-trenchcoat with an incongruous red baseball cap, and a red turtleneck sweater I'll never forget for as long as I live. But let's face it, the costume was monotonous. And you couldn't see his hair, which just eliminates so many possibilities.

Ranbir wore a Sgt. Peppers' jacket and a Subhash Chandra Bose topi for one concert. For merging these two influences, and showing that the rebel can be a patriot (or a fan of Balakrishna, who famously wore the topi in this mind-warping, soul-twisting, brain-hurting video) Rockstar deserves an award. Those harem pants, those strange things hanging from his neck (sources tell me they included one item from the dargah, one from the temple and a miniature samosa), the I'm-a-turban-I'm-not-a-turban... Rockstar had some incomparable gems. And the hairdo - when Nargis is in coma, Ranbir's hair simply transforms from shoulder-length to middle-of-back length, and he grows a Craig McMillan moustache. Magical realism only.

AKS: 2. Rockstar: 1.

Pained expression of lead star
Himesh was the definition of pained. Even when he woos Hansika with a song, he looks pained. When he is arrested, he looks like someone pinched his nipples with tweezers. And when he asserts his innocence with the legendary, "It's a mistaaaake!" the German prison establishment's hearts melt and they allow him to be rescued by some auto-rickshaws.

Ranbir's expression somehow didn't convey the requisite pain required to be a rockstar. When he played with those Sufi people, for large swathes of the song, he looked bored, not troubled. I guess there's only that much pain you can convey about missing Nargis Fakhri.

AKS: 3. Rockstar: 1.

Lady love
Nargis Fakhri made me wish Genelia played this role - she is that bad. Her mouth is always in the wrong position, her eyes look eternally glazed, and her body is stiffer than Sadagopan Ramesh's feet.

On the other hand, Hansika Motwani deserves every accolade for playing her role with rare elan and panache. She had to act like she was in love with Himesh Reshammiya and repeatedly refer to him as HR. She also gets additional points for holding a cello like it was Himesh Reshammiya, and holding Himesh Reshammiya like she should have been holding the cello.

AKS: 4. Rockstar: 1.

Supporting female characters
Ah. Mallika Sherawat, called "Ruby James", in love with Himesh Reshammiya (this gives men of all shapes and sizes hope). Plus, she's a lawyer and I have professional bias. Plus, she dances to Mehbooba o Mehbooba sung by Himesh in all his nasally overwhelming voice.

Aditi Rao Hydari's ultimate dollness on the other hand.

Hmmmm. Difficult. Hmmmm.
Ok. The sheer yumminess of Aditi Rao wins this. But it is a close call, very very close.

AKS: 4. Rockstar: 2.

Sufi-based song
Gun Faya is a great song, and I love the way the guitar blends into it. Somehow, that part of the movie reminded me of the story about The Beatles at Hamburg. But that's a subject of a different post. Gun Faya is superlative, and the only thing going against it is that in English those words sound like someone setting off some ammunition.

Listening to any of Himesh's songs is like going down the Carrollian rabbit hole. But have you heard Assalam Valekum in an indefinite loop on a still, quiet night, alone in a hostel room through booming speakers and felt a brown creeper growing from beneath your feet, crackling as it wraps itself around you, digging its knife-like thorns into your flesh until the pain becomes your friend and puts you to restful dreamless sleep?

AKS: 5. Rockstar: 2.

Climax
Rockstar's climax is poetic, with that execrably translated Rumi verse about someone meeting someone else in a field and the ambiguity surrounding her death - there's one perplexing shot of her in coma with her bosoms heaving. But she's waiting. On "the field". For him. Really, she should give him better directions. 


Aap Kaa Surroor, on the other hand, had a climax that even Kidnap couldn't compare to, where the villain's confession is surreptitiously recorded on a mobile phone and beamed live on a large screen. And what does the villain confess to doing? In Wikipedia's words, "Khurana reveals that he wore a face mask to appear like HR and committed the murder to frame him."

We have a winner.

AKS: 6. Rockstar: 2.

The Best Movie about Indian Rockstar in Europe Award goes to...

(As a consolation, we give (posthumously) Shammi Kapoor the Best Fake Shehnai Playing Award.)

Twenty-buck Meal

Apparently, there is a regulation in Tamil Nadu, which makes it mandatory for restaurant owners (from what I gather, the regulation applies to the Bhavans - Saravana Bhavan, Vasanta Bhavan, Balaji Bhavan and so on) to supply some "meals" for Rs. 20. (Just as an aside, the word "meals" is always plural. "Oru meals kudunga." "Have you taken your meals?" "Meals saapudlaama?" Even the menus in the restaurant offer only "Chennai Meals", "Banjabi Meals", "Chineese Meals". This is like caste names. "Saar, neenga Brahmins aa?" I'm tempted to say, "Ille saar. Naa oru Brahmin daan.") Today, instead of ordering "Limited Meals" (misleading name, the meals have enough food to cure famine in a small village), I order the twenty-buck meals. It felt a little cheap, initially, but when the food came, I was very satisfied.

The "Limited Meals" features a mound of rice that's as big as (and looks like) one hemisphere of a football on a plate. The plate also has various (replenishable) bowls of poriyal, kootu, karakozhambu, sambar, rasam, two sweets, buttermilk, curd and more-molaga. Oh, I forgot the appalam. When I finish eating this, I usually come back to office and collapse for a while. It is a highly satisfying meal, I agree, but sometimes it feels too satisfying. Priced at Rs. 55, it is an overwhelming avalanche of food. It makes you feel like one of those vaadyars who has to attend, conduct and eat food at weddings everyday.

The twenty-buck meal is perfect. The rice is about half the amount. There's only a sambar, rasam, kootu and buttermilk (and I suspect these bowls aren't bottomless). A mini-coffee at the end of it, and the world seemed like a good place to be. I know I'll feel hungry in some time (the Limited Meals makes me run away from food for the rest of the day), but there are yummy momos close by.

This is what I love the Tamil Nadu Government for. Things like the 10-buck movie tickets - if you didn't know, you can walk into any movie theatre in Tamil Nadu and ask for a 10-buck ticket. Yes, any theatre, even the Sathyams, the Inoxes and the PVRs of the world. Free mixies, grinders, laptops, TVs, 4 gms of gold (for marriageable women - I'm neither a woman, nor marriageable, but still), free cattle (I'm not kidding you)... What a great place to live!

In the end analysis, this twenty-buck meal is good for my waistline. People describe me today as "well-built", and I can sense that they're politely implying that I'm plump. I don't want them to graduate to saying "plump" when they mean "fat", or "fat" when they mean "gargantuan".

The Bard and I

I can state with great nationalistic jingoism (or jingoistic nationalism) that I have read more Kalidasa than Shakespeare. But that isn't a great achievement - in fact it is a matter of great literary shame (or shameful literacy) - for, in twenty-six years, I have read only two verses of Shakespeare. Both the verses were found in my fourth standard English textbook, and come from this poem called Under the Greenwood Tree. And even in that fourth standard textbook, there were poems I liked more than this one - like Silver by Walter De La Mare.

(Just revisited Silver. These two lines are so beautiful:

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep


Silver-feathered sleep... Sigh.)

Under the Greenwood Tree is a curious poem - I still don't understand it fully. I think I must blame my Shakespeare illiteracy on B. Madambudithaya, the man who compiled the Karnataka State syllabus textbooks for picking a poem that leaves me baffled all the time, even eighteen years after my first encounter with it:

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Right. Wonderful. Who is "who"? And who turn "his" merry note? When someone lies with me, do they lie and in speak the untruth? Why can't the Bard make himself clear?

And then he says,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Thankfully, my English teacher told me what 'hither' means, and saved me some agony. On an aside, has Shakespeare forgotten about wild animals in the forest? Or did the English forests have no such creatures? Only winter and rough weather? Really? That's easy. "He" will bring a couple of sweaters along.

Shakespeare then kills me with the next line,

Who doth ambition shun,

Argh. What a line. Drafted in the same convoluted vein as an income-tax legislation. Firstly, it takes my mind a couple of seconds to wrap itself around the meaning of "doth". Not to mention the thou, thee, hath. And then, I have to get down to figuring, "Who shuns ambition".

All this is too much for a fourth standard kid, especially one who can't see unapparent meaning.
***

My mother, who has a literary bent of mind, then made me mug some portion of Shakespeare's legendary All the world's a stage for some speech competition - you know, one of those competitions where various kids' parents write speeches for them, bully their kids into mugging them up and delivering them with a fake accent and irritating intonation, and the teachers judge which kid's parents write the best speeches? Yeah. So, my mother with a literary bent of mind wrote a few lines from that poem for that competition.

The poem gave me sleepless nights. If all the world's a stage, everyone's acting in the drama (which would mean that everyone's backstage waiting to make their entries and exits), who's watching? I began, for days, thinking of life as this flop play being performed to empty audiences. I began seeing dead people stare at me from backstage, envious of my continuing role. It scared me at every level - was I going to be a bit part that no one ever remembers? Or the fellow they point at, snigger and say, "Oh God, this guy's such a ham!" Many nights, I woke up, thinking, "Please, please. Can we do that scene again? I didn't get the chance to rehearse properly.

But then, again, there's no one watching, right?
***

At some point, I watched Shakespeare in Love, without understanding much. I pretended to understand, though, just like I pretend to understand national politics, because in my line of work, pretense and posturing is as crucial as actual knowledge. Around this time, I discovered some weird Shakespeare graphic novels in my school library, and they interested me greatly.

(Ok, fine, I'll admit it. They were Shakespeare stories in comic book form.)

They provided me with many afternoons of entertainment, and gave me enough background to remain relevant in conversations about Shakespeare. I watched Maqbool and Omkara with only these comics as my placeholders. (And oh, Langda Tyagi and Kesu Firangi did look like Iago and Cassius in the graphic novel!) Which is why I was able to say smart things like, "Oh, in Maqbool, the three witches are replaced by Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah as soothsaying policemen..."
***

My grandfather quotes Shakespeare often. Something about mercy, justice, rain and twice-blesseth. I don't think he remembers any other quote, but he makes it a point to point it out that he has read real literature while I haven't. I tell him that I tried, many times, and I tell him that I never understood. He tut-tuts and remarks that education standards in the country are falling.
***

This morning, as I turned my merry Kalyani throat to the sweet mixie's note, I realised why I was never able to comprehend Shakespeare. My inability arises from a mistake and an arrogance. The mistake is my presumption that Shakespeare wrote in English. And the arrogance is that I don't need any annotation to understand English. The reason I read Kalidasa with annotation is because I know that my Sanskrit isn't good enough to read simply from the original.

Once I accept that Shakespeare didn't write in English, I can easily convince myself that I should get an annotated version, with the meaning of the verse in plain English. Armed with this, I shall revisit the Bard with a vengeance. And who knows, soon I might be able to quote that verse about mercy, justice, twice-blesseth and rain.

Five Fundamental Rules of the Art of Bullshitting

1. Use words that people understand, but use them in a manner in which they don't understand: A popular misconception about bullshitting is that bullshitters use complicated words like latifundia and legerdemain. But the real legerdemain is using words people know.
The art is in favourably conditioning the spontaneous consciousness of the mind of the listener, tripping their alertness quotient, trapping their trapped senses. You get the drift.

2. Deliver with confidence: Always speak or write the bullshit like you know exactly what you're talking about. Even if you don't believe (or understand) your message, deliver it with passion. More than the content, the manner of delivery is what makes the difference. When Hitler delivered his cruel message, most Germans bought it, although they must be feeling quite stupid about the whole thing now.

3. Be vague: Speak in generalities, draw sweeping conclusions from small facts you know, buttress them with everyday examples that make no sense at all. And as stated in point 2, mask vagueness with confidence. For example, "Egypt shows us that ancient civilisations have the ability to bounce back, to fight tyranny and uphold democratic values. You see how resilient your grandparents are to modernity's corruption." Also, make vague references to vaguer things with a sense of familiarity. "It's like that Graham Greene novel set in Vietnam, and those passages in that book that tangentially touch on slavery and inverse power mechanisms..."

4. Bring the topic back to what you know: If you have to talk about Carnatic music, and you don't know much about it, compare it to a Test Match and speak about Test cricket and its artistry. If you have to talk about women's empowerment, speak of Madhuri Dixit's hips and how powerful they are even at this age.

5. Most importantly, make the listener feel too stupid to ask you what you mean: Deliver with a sense of obviousness. The counterparty must always think there's something very apparent that he or she is missing. Say, "You know how these things work." The listener is immediately shy to ask, "How?"

No Animals were Harmed in the Making of this Movie

When you're jobless on weekday afternoons, and you decide to channel-flip, you'll come across Telugu movies dubbed into Hindi with rather strange titles. Indra - The Tiger. Narasimha - the Powerful Man. Meri Jung - One Man Army.

The below-mentioned, Cheetah - the Leopard is in a league of its own.


The movie, needless to say, isn't some wildlife thriller like Jungle (or one of those 80s movies that features a dog, an elephant and a pigeon). Venkatesh is a singer, Venu, whose father wants him to be an IPS officer. By the end of the movie, he becomes both. Like a cheetah who is also a leopard.

Now that you've finished guffawing, I have a question - what is the difference between a cheetah and a leopard?

(Tougher than you think, no?)

Finding Shebait

This piece first appeared on mylaw.net.
***

In the wake of the Ayodhya judgment, I learnt a lot of law. The place of birth is a juristic person, apparently. Wait till the income-tax department, always looking for newer people, juristic or otherwise, hears of this. Two of the cases were dismissed on the grounds of limitation. That's rich. You're deciding whether some character called Babur built a mosque in 1528, and whether he destroyed a temple to do so, and you dismiss suits because they're filed beyond limitation.

Merits aside, the judgment threw up some interesting concepts - the "next friend" and the "shebait". Both terms sound shady.

I've heard that in Indian politics, the major political parties have their outwardly democratic structures - the President, the Vice-President, the Spokesperson and so on. But most politicians, apparently, also have an important figure around them, called their "best friend", who wields enormous power over their decisions - right from what he will have for lunch, what he will wear for a meeting, whom he will meet and what course the economy will take. A "next friend", I discovered, is someone like that. That treasure house of authoritative legal knowledge (I'm serious, ask the dudes in the big firms to swear that they've never relied on it to figure out what futures and options are), Wikipedia, defines it as "a person who represents in an action another person who is under disability or otherwise unable to maintain a suit on their own behalf as a result of their circumstances, who does not have a legal guardian". Our politicians are mostly in disability, they are usually a product of rather unfortunate circumstances, and their guardians tend to be illegal.

"Shebait" was harder to crack. Wikipedia has no entry on this word. A google search only reveals a lot of judgments from Indiankanoon.com, which suggests that beyond Indian temple law, the term does not have much use. A friend and I found the term highly useful. "I wish the High Court had more shebait." Or, "Dude, shebait, 7 o clock." "You're coming for this party?" "Depends on the shebait, macha."

And there were the jokes.
Q: How do you describe a Goan prostitute who specialises in temple administrators?
A: She baits shebaits on the sea shore.

My first hunch was that the term was Latin in origin. (I also had a feeling it might be French, given their shebaitic tendencies, but I rejected that thought immediately. Well, almost immediately.) I went through a large compendium of Latin maxims - a delightful old book that a family of rats had colonised. No luck there.

Then, I tried reading those old Indian judgments. They were of little help.

"It is true, it was a suit by some of the shebaits against the other shebaits, for the proper management of the debutter property but it cannot be said as contended on behalf of the appellant that two sets of shebaits were fighting with each other about the management of the properties...."
- Rangacharya v. Guru Revti AIR 1928 All 689

Sounds like quite a cat-fight. These judgments, though, threw up another curious word - "debutter". Who the hell is this guy? "I am putting on too much weight. I must debutter." The context suggested that "debutter" meant the Lord himself. But there was no assistance from Google on why this should be the case.

A friend at the bar, whose office has dealt with a fair number of debutters and shebaits over the years, told me that the term could be of Egyptian or Hebrew origin. He even pronounced the word as "shebayat". I spent a whole night on Hebrew and Egyptian dictionaries on the internet. I now had a collection of some choice swear words in two more languages, but no leads on the word "shebait". That night, I dreamt of shebaits and debutters locked in combat over a copy of the Bible.

In Court, the next day, I remembered - some kindred soul, whose family had no lawyers left, left me a thoroughly soporific book called "Essays on Classical and Modern Hindu Law." Flipping pages of this tattered tome, I came across a sole beacon of hope contained in a lengthy footnote, "... prefer the Bengali term 'shebayat' to describe these persons." Bengali!

One more fevered night of Googling ensued, at the end of which I found the entire story on a book on Sir John Woodroffe (the dude who wrote that book on evidence). "Shebait" came from "shebayat", although the origins of that word are still unclear. "Debutter", funnily enough, is a corruption of the word "devata".

"Dude, that shebait is quite the debutter!"

Tyagaraja, the Environmentalist

The anupallavi of Tyagaraja's popular Kharaharapriya kriti, chakkani rajamargamulundaga, always intrigued me. Consider, first, the words of the pallavi:

chakkani rajamargamulundaga
sandula duranela, o manasa

"When there are beautiful, wide roads suitable for kings, why do you squeeze through gullies?" Fine. Makes sense. If you ignore the traffic, of course.

Then, we come to the anupallavi:

chikkani palu migadayundaga,
chiyanu gangasagaramele?

"When you have sweet milk and cream (yum), why would you choose to drink the..." and this is where I kept getting stuck - "gangasagaram?" I know the Ganga is highly polluted, and I would choose sweet palu and migada (yum!) over it, but I found it unlikely that the pious Tyagaraja would denigrate the Holy Ganges in his songs. But then, I'm a lazy guy, I didn't bother to find out what this word meant. I convinced myself that that the saint was also an environmental activist and let things be. Each time I sang the anupallavi, I would picture the yucky Ganga, floating dead bodies, toxic effluents from corrupt factories, the stench, the green colour, and contrast it with sweet milk, flavoured with a little badam, perhaps, drunk hot from a steel tumbler, early morning, skimming the cream (yum!) off the top with one swift movement of the tongue.

Bliss.

This morning, while writing the notation to this song for someone, I checked T.K. Govinda Rao's book for the lyrics and meaning. And I found, "river of toddy - gangasagaram!" After ploughing through another Telugu book that has detailed commentary on all Tyagaraja kritis, I found that "gangasagaram" was the saint's sarcastic way of referring to toddy. The man had a wicked sense of humour!

I sang the anupallavi with rare vigour this morning. "Chikkani palu migada(yum!) yundaga, Chhiyanu gangasagaramele?"

Two Ways of Staying in Power

1. Gandhigiri

2. Azhagiri

Season Snippets - Mood Mridangam

A series of short posts on little things in and around kacheris this December Season.
***

A joke from the last season. My uncle walked out of the toilet in the Music Academy and said, "I just witnessed a great cosmic phenomenon - a long line of Brahmins, all piddling!"
***

"Hey. The counter for season tickets for Music Academy open tomorrow. Nine-thirty. I'm told there will be a big crowd. Be there by eight-thirty."

I was there. At eight-thirty-one and a few seconds. The first sight I see is of this elderly mami and mama opening their tiffin boxes and eating idlis coated with molaga podi. Chomp, chomp. In the lobby outside the mini-hall, there are these people drinking coffee from plastic cups and discussing some ticket issues loudly. Slurp, slurp. They've clearly been there for a while.

I enter the mini-hall, my initial self-righteousness about having turned up very early substantially eroded, and find a much larger crowd that I had imagined. All in hushed conversation with their neighbours on various issues. Chatter, chatter. A man, who realises I'm a newbie when it comes to season tickets directs me to a seat. He tells me, "Only 750 ticket available." I ask, "2000?". Not there. I try, "8000? 6000?" All over. Only 750. People sitting around me, all clearly newbies to this ticketing ritual, complain about the Academy's opaque ticketing system and favouritism. Grumble, grumble. After nearly an hour, a man announces, "Even the seven-fifty-rupee tickets are over. Those who do not have slips may kindly leave."

Peeved and hungry, I walk down to Woodlands and let my frustrations out on a blameless plate of upma-vada with hot filter coffee, while whining to my uncle on the phone about the tickets. Chomp, chomp, slurp, slurp, chatter, chatter, grumble, grumble.
***

Arun Prakash's greatest skill is in setting the mood for any piece with his mridangam - he seems to read what the main artiste is trying and recreates that effect perfectly. I can still remember a chilling Hiranmayeem that TM Krishna sang at Odakathoor Mutt in Bangalore accompanied by him. The mridangam and the voice attained unity that day - you would think they came from the same source.

Yesterday, when Ravikiran announced, "I shall now play a Thyagaraja kriti in Raga Neelambari, 'Nike Dayaraka' in Mishrachapu taalam," I could almost see Arun Prakash licking his lips. After a most soothing alapana from Ravikiran and Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi on the violin, they started the kriti. The percussion side remained silent for about three lines. Then, they began punctuating the kriti with single beats. Slowly, they built up to just three touches at three-two-two. This was interspersed with very interesting, but very minimal, very delicate rhythms. Neelambari's lilt was given just the right pedestal to thrive on.

After the Neelambari, when the audience was suitably blissful, a Garudadhwani came. Tatvamerugatarama. And the mridangam was right on the button, exuberant and joyous!
***

Madras

Learning Tamil

So, many years ago, my cousin and I bought Tamil alphabet books in Madras (I lived in Manipal and he lived in Bangalore then) and taught ourselves Tamil reading. We even wrote letters to each other in Tamil (in those prehistoric days of the blue Inland Letter) to practice. But we lost touch with the language after that.

Now, I practice using signboards, bus routes and movie posters. The word I learnt to identify most quickly and accurately in two weeks in Madras is 'Kalaignar'.

Conversations with Thatha

Conversation 1: About six months ago
Two fairly cute chicks walk up the stairs to the second floor. They say, "Good Morning, Mama!" to my Thatha as they climb up. I'm immediately curious.
"Thatha, who are these girls?"
"Oh. They're call girls."
Stunned silence.
Thatha explains, "All-night they sit and take phone calls..."

Conversation 2: Last week
I've just entered home at night after office. A letter has come to me with my credit card bill.
"There is a letter with your credit card bill in it."
"Oh, ok." I proceed to inspect the bill.
"What have you been eating on the trains?"
"Eh?"
Then I look at the bill and realise that all payments are due to "Indian Railways Catering"!

Amma's Question
To her old friend
"So, what does your son's friend do?"
For a couple of seconds, I wonder what it means. Then it strikes me. Friend!

Conversation with Guy at Canteen in the High Court
"Oru bottle thanni kudunga..." (Give 1 nos. bottled water...)
"Cooling la venumaa?" (You want it in cooling?)

Argument with Auto Guy
He: (Check this sentimental argument out) "Saar, we're not going to get rich by cheating you..."
Me: "Then why are you cheating me?" (Take that.)
He: (Damn. I didn't expect that response) "Saar, also... No auto... Traffic... mumble mumble..."

Bus Advice
When you see a bus saying T.Nagar on it, don't jump with joy and rush into it. Taking a bus is like getting into a relationship. If you're not sure of where exactly the bus goes, you could be taken for a ride. For instance, 5B, from Mylapore to T.Nagar goes through Adayar, past IIT, past everything, through Poland, Greenland, and then hits the road coming from Velachery and reaches T.Nagar. Don't take it unless you like to sight some Polar Bears for just Rs. 5 (or you want to go to Adayar or IIT or Velachery).

Conversation with Cousin who's just finished his Twelfth Standard
In stern voice, "So, this Engineering College you want to join... Is it strict? Do they forbid you from talking to girls and using cell phones?"
Taking the bait, "Yes. They are very strict in these matters..."

Conversation on Shaving
To me: "Saar, you must shave everyday and come to office. These two days stubble and all is not good..."
Me, pointing to colleague: "Look at this guy. Always a two-day stubble."
Colleague: "Dude, I shaved this morning. Even then it grows like this."
To Colleague: "You must shave in both directions. Look at my stubble. So smooth... Touch and see." Grabbing hand, "Touch and see."
Me: "Saar, just because the 377 judgment is out-aa?"

Oh, lastly:
Lowely, beautiful, smart, fair, well-educated, superwoman, Madras-but-now-in-You-Yes friend has a food blog. Go check out.

Joke of the Day - V

Q: What did the Carnatic Musician call his itchy daughter?
A: Keeravani.

Joke for the Day - IV

"Chakkani Rajamargamulundaga, Sandulo Duremi..."

Clearly, Sri Tyagaraja had never been in a Bangalore traffic jam.
***

PS: Translation of the Telugu in comments.

Love

It was love. He could feel it.
It was time to take a drastic step.

"Customer Care? Hi. I need to change my SMS plan..."

Joke for the Day - III

Q: In a temple rathotsava, when the chariot was taken around, the men were in front of the chariot while the women were behind it. Why?

A: The men were pulling.

(Har Har)
(Har Har Mahadev)
***

PS: Excuse the lack of longer posts. They will come today/tomorrow.

Joke for the Day - II

"This is my daughter, Nilambari."
"Such a pretty name!"
"Yeah. She has narcolepsy."