Rupee only is the God
I hear that the Cabinet is going to decide what the new symbol for the Rupee is going to be. Apparently, after a long and arduous contest involving, among other things, SMS voting and reality shows, the final choice is to be made from these 5:
But while these can hog the limelight for now, I am more interested in the ones that got rejected.
This was submitted by Iyers International (I-squared for short, “Minus One” for geeks) and was rejected by the TN ruling party for being casteist. When it was pointed out that the Hindi letter “Ra” was used, the party headquarters had a collective aneurysm trying to figure out which part of the symbol they were now opposed to
Not to be outdone by the Shaivites, the Iyengar Design Institute Of Typography submitted their stylized vision for the Rupee symbol. Being a politically shrewder lot, they pointed out that the choice of English will keep the Southern political parties happy and what’s even better, the “naamam” part even looks slightly like the rising sun. But it was rejected on the basis of a massive protest by the Association of Pencil Manufacturers (led by Natraj) who complained that the symbol looked too much like the nib of a pen and therefore was offensive to pencils.
The Association of Sarcastic Sitizens, in yet another display of pointless metaphorical adventurism, submitted their version which apparently symbolized the culture of corruption in India. The stroke rises boldly upwards only to be chopped into smaller and smaller pieces towards the end as it falls ignominiously to the ground. It typifies the average citizen’s (or sitizen) struggle with getting things done as money keeps leaking as bribes and commissions all the time, they said. Needless to say, it was rejected as a result of the judges falling asleep while reading the A.S.S’ 15,000 page explanation of the symbol (they had commissioned Umberto Eco to do the writing). The organizers further pointed out that any association willing to misspell “Citizen” just so they could have a more descriptive acronym must not be trusted.
The Union of Plastic Surgeons (UPS) felt that they could use this contest to subtly slip in an advertisement of their services. Their version distinguishes between real money and fake money.
The RSS suggested that since we use this man’s image on all our currency notes, it is only fair that he be the new Rupee symbol. It was rejected on the basis of being cynical and non-pseudo-secular. Critics of this version called it the “Kill Bill” since the submitters were implicated in the killing of the chap on the bill.
The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments folks suggested the use of the “Pillaiyaar Suzhi” (Auspicious Ganesh Squiggly) because, in keeping with the rich Hindu tradition of highly abstract thinking, Ganesh represented Knowledge and Knowledge was wealth and wealth was well..money. It was rejected for being insensitive to Ganesh’ younger brother, Karthikeyan (Muruga)
Mukesh Ambani sent in this symbol,pointing out that he has most of India’s money anyway. It was rejected for being too capitalistic.
The Tamil chauvinists sent in a curvy, stylized Tamil “Ru” symbol, commonly used to represent Rupee in TN, but it was rejected for looking like an offensive finger gesture
The Tale of Gregory, part 1
If you are wondering what this post has to do with some one named “Gregory”, it will be clarified at the every end (like an S Ve Sekar play)
I got married in a fusion Iyer-Nair wedding, but the fusion part is a bit misleading. An Iyer wedding is like saying:
“Jesus reflected on his situation and felt irrepressible sadness. His tear-ducts filled to a point where they could hold no longer and had to be released”
“Jesus wept”
I wrote in detail in about that a while back, so long story short, that my wife managed to wear a 6 yard saree instead of the traditional 9 yard Madisaru was, by itself a coup of unimaginable proportions. The only Nair element of the wedding was the traditional white “Neriyal” saree she wore during the Oonjal ceremony, and white is a colour that repels elderly Tambrams like sunlight repels zombies. Otherwise, the wedding was yet another homogenous sequence of homams, loud-mouthed priests and badly pronounced Sanskrit imploring the newly wedded couple to produce offspring exclusively of the male kind.
Once the wedding was over, there is usually this small matter of deciding where the couple would start their new life before families get down to the more serious business of nagging them to procreate (unlike the priests, there is no gender preference for babies specified here). Typically in middle class families where new flats cannot be purchased at whim, the couple usually moves into the boy’s parents’ home. In our case, the problem was that we were spoilt for choice. It was between a smallish old flat in Besant Nagar, close to my parents’ home OR the first floor of my wife’s parents’ home, which was a separate place by itself.
While we formed an internal committee of 2 to investigate this matter and come up with value-added suggestions on the course forward, we found an intermediate arrangement that seemed satisfactory to all stakeholders. We spent weekdays in Anna Nagar (my in-laws home) & weekends in Besant Nagar (my parents’ home). It did not take me long to realize that, at least on the Tambram side of things, this was not a comfortable state of affairs.
- to be unfaithful,
- kill a couple of kittens,
- beat one’s wife
- to demand dowry and lose it on horse races
than to spend more than a few nights under the roof of his wife’s parents’ home. The Tamil term to describe a chap who (even temporarily) takes residence in his father-in-law’s house is “Veettodu Mappillai”, which, if I may translate metaphorically, is someone who lacks several crucial internal organs (like spine, heart, blood at high temperature, reproductive system etc).
You see, everything about the Tambram wedding ceremony screams “Agreement between 2 parties for the transfer of female property from the Vendor, who will hereinafter be called the Girl’s father to the Purchaser, who shall hereinafter be called “The home of the Mother-in-Law”. There is even a mock “Grihapravesham” during the wedding when the daughter-in-law (more precisely, her right foot) makes an auspicious entry into a small room that, for symbolic purposes, is designated as the boy’s house, and more importantly, her future home. There is also a formal “Gotra change”, where the girl moves from her father’s cow-pen to mine. This posed a bit of a problem because when that annoyingly bigoted priest who officiated at my wedding asked my father-in-law what “Gotra” he was, his response was “Manusha (human being) Gotram”. As I said before, we dispensed with this particular ritual, so my wife continues to be a human being while I claim to follow some ancient chap called Sage Vadoola.
What made this situation even more piquant is that my wife comes from a matrilineal family and didn’t quite understand why this would be a problem. Even her name (Vijayalakshmi Smitha) keeps with the Nair tradition of daughters taking their mothers names as their surnames (sons take fathers’ names) and every time someone in my family would refer to her as “Mrs Ashok”, she would correct it to “V Smitha”. She had no intention of going through that silly charade of changing one’s name the marriage, and I had no intention of sharing my name with anyone else.
But we stuck to our shuttling routine, blissfully ignoring subtle hints from my side of the family that I was starting to resemble a slightly dark complexioned grazing animal with wool. I must admit that my parents accepted this with equanimity of the kind that’s rarely seen in middle-class Tambram families. There were no honour killings involved and somehow, they made peace with me living in Anna Nagar.
That brings me to another point. If you are an unmarried middle-class chap, take this from me – there’s nothing better in life than to be treated like nobility at your in-laws place. Your wife, on the other hand, will always be a second class citizen at your parents’ home, not because your parents are bad people, but because that is simply the social norm. She will be expected to help out in the kitchen and household chores even if she is a working woman. In my case, that wasn’t such a big problem. It’s the subtly forced culture shift that I found not too palatable. If I was living only at my parents’ house, my wife would have had to give up her daily need to consume something aquatic. She doesn’t mind helping out in the kitchen etc, but I definitely mind forcing her to turn into a vegetarian.
Mom: So, when are you planning to look for an apartment of your own? (Subtitles: When are you going to spare us the ignominy of being parents of a “Veettodu Mappillai”)Me: Ah yes. I am looking. Since this arrangement is comfortable, I am not in any raving hurry to find a new place. I mean, right now, we have no household responsibilities anywhere. Cooking, washing et al are taken care in both homes and I get lots of time to blog haha..Mom: Yes, but don’t you want a home of your own, something that you can invite your friends to (Subtitles: When are you going to spare us the ignominy of being parents of a “Veettodu Mappillai”)Me: Ah well, that’s not a big deal reallyMom: Sigh
Eventually, it was our carbon footprint that convinced us to find an apartment a little closer to our places of work, and that began our 18 month long search involving all manner of unsavoury real estate agents and other assorted brokers who finally led us to the place we eventually bought, after several shady dealings with banks over loans, EMIs and interest rates. But that’s for another post. Next week perhaps, after I move into “Gregory” (yes, that’s the name of my new home, named after the only man my wife is likely to leave me for)
A quick roundup
As many of you might have assumed, I have not been slacking off, lazing around and being generally unproductive. I’ve just been slacking off and lazing around while doing a fair bit of writing (and diagramming) as a result of the Indian Premier League. For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, this is a bit of a roundup.
When the IPL started, Sify commissioned me to do a bunch of “Jalsa and Jilpa visual guides” and I started with an unofficial introduction to the IPL as viewed through the bogus lens of cricket history as I saw it. (One of the advantages of claiming to be a humourist is saying that it’s a joke if someone points out a factual error. We have it easy really)
Then once the ads were in full swing (with some cricket thrown in between), this
After that, I took a dig at the IPL’s Web 2.0 push
Once the Modi-Tharoor saga took center-stage I had to explain the difference between the 2 gentlemen’s responses to the accusations made against them
And finally, when the IPL drama faded away, it was time to look at the life of an Indian scandal
And on an unrelated note, a few friends of Twitter had a doubt about the difference between Ammanga and Atthanga and one cannot have a Brampunk movement if people don’t understand something as basic as this. So, I made a “Tambram Guide to Terms for Relatives” that all of you can use the next time you attend a wedding or have a family gathering for Deepavali (Click on image for a larger version)
Let me know if any of you want the psd source for this, in case you wish to translate to other languages
Right ho then. I’ll be back soon with a new post.
S Meenakshi (1917-2010)
As I sit here, in yet another quintessentially Tambram function, observing several folks busying themselves with rituals, odd jobs and other paraphernalia, listening to brusque orders given by a couple of priests who are constantly interrupted by their mobile phones, with custom sloka ringtones, I almost entirely forget that the event is actually a funeral. Tambrams have a way of turning every festival, every celebration and even every death into a homogenous sequence of homams (havans), coconuts, kalasams (brass vessel), priests and arcane minutiae in no particular order. Somebody who isn’t steeped in this tradition can easily confuse a wedding with a funeral.
I am told that this particular event is called “Kirekkiyam” and that the 13th day after a person’s death is the day that they are finally sent off, with food, clothes and an assortment of fortifying mantras, to their next birth. There is nothing about this function, and every preceding one (the 9th and the 10th days) that brings people’s attention to the person who has passed away. There are no memorials, no remembrances and barring the obligatory entry in the The Hindu obituary column (curiously located on the sports page), no collective declaration of any sort that the person who has died will be missed.
I suppose that an ailing 93 year old’s death is, in a strangely rational way, not an occasion for too much grief. In fact, the person who just died used to tell me that the 2 week sequence of highly elaborate rituals that happen post-death serve the social function of diminishing grief as it keeps people busy while letting the oldest psychological medicine in the world, time, do its work.
This 93 year old was my paternal grandmother, Meenakshi. The gender insensitive customs of her era had forced her to declare herself a widow when she lost her husband by adding “Ammal” next to her name, but I am going to dispense with that for now.
I’ve generally stayed away from personal and autobiographical posts for a long while now, but I am going to make an exception for this lady because as a child growing up in a family where both parents went to work, I (and my brothers) are products entirely of her upbringing, and she is, in large part, responsible for this blog (at least, the few nice parts of it). In the interest of readability, I’ve split this post into several anecdotal paragraphs, each of which can be read in any order at any time.
Meenakshi Paati (or simply Paati as we knew her) was born in 1917 in Nagercoil, then part of the Travancore state in British-India and spent the best time of her life going to a convent school for a brief period till she was ready to be married off. Notice how we Indians say “I got my daughter married off”, with the “off” serving to indicate the transfer of property rights over a human being to the groom’s family. One day, when she as 13, she was asked to serve a not-so-young gentleman visitor some coffee, which she did and then asked her grandmother who the man was. She was told that the 31 year old widower that she had just served coffee to was going to be her husband. She protested but some “bug” in her horoscope meant that she had to get married to a widower.
She had her first child when she was 15 and by the age of 25, her family was complete with 5 children, the youngest being my father. Her precocious younger brother went on to do his PhD at Carnegie-Mellon (in the 1940s) and became a highly respected research scientist. She, on the other hand, ran a household with 20 children as she took into her fold several nephews and nieces who had lost their mothers early. Her husband was an aberration, a not-very-educated, atheist Iyer businessman (ever heard that combination before?) who ran a thriving petrol pump business in Tirunelveli before letting the depression arising from the questionable death of his eldest daughter at her in-laws place run his business to the ground, taking with it all land, savings and towards the end, Meenakshi’s jewellery as well. She finally left Gopalasamudram, where she had lived for over 50 years of her life, and moved in with my father at Madras in 1971.
What I find remarkable about her personality was what she was *not*, despite the rigid orthodoxy of her upbringing. No, she did not sit under a Peepul tree and have an epiphany but she lived her entire life with a sense of wonder at the world that never diminished despite the early loss of her father, the grind of married life, the cruel culling of her desire to study (she loved reading), the multiple tragedies of one mentally retarded son and the suspicious death of her favourite (and pregnant) daughter at her in-laws place and the financial woes of her late husband.
Her greatest strength was the ability to not be rigid about anything, not her beliefs, not tradition or for that matter, her opinions.
I am reminded of a few years ago, when we took her back to Gopalasamudram, her last ever visit to the village where she spent most of her life. We stopped at a distant relative’s house in the agraharam and since there was another 90 year old lady living there, we felt that these two might hit it off, speak about the old times et al. I was eavesdropping on their conversation and I heard the other lady say this (and I translate) – “Nowadays, not many people live in this agraharam”. I didn’t quite understand that. After all, almost all the houses seemed to be populated. My grandmother’s smiling response eventually clarified it for me. She said – “All these folks here are people too”. In case you did not quite understand that exchange, let me “translate”. The other lady had said – “Nowadays, too many non-brahmins live in the agraharam”. Apparently, they did not qualify to be “people” in her estimation. She assumed that a another 90 year old from her generation might share her bias. Her response, without the need to make the situation uncomfortable was – “Aren’t the folks living nowadays in this street people too?”. The other lady quickly changed the topic. She had this unique ability to package profundity without seeming pompously intelligent.
No sane parent would have entrusted their kids to her for the simple reason that she never stopped them from doing anything except the most dangerous things. She sat back and let us creatively (and often highly inappropriately) express ourselves, embarrass our parents, relatives and in general try everything there is to try and getting bored of it ourselves instead of being mollycoddled, pampered and closeted. We grew up without boundaries of propriety being defined for us ahead of time. When we did something improper, she would tell us that it was wrong, but never before we did it.
Uncharitable people might call her naive, but I prefer to call it a constant belief in the possibility of progress. Having seen a light bulb only when she as 60 or so, she did not, like most other people from her generation, close herself from science and technology and live in an artificial world of their own, frozen in time at the moment of their greatest comfort. She continued to wonder at how large objects lift themselves off the ground, how TV works and how operations could fix her cataract problems. About 7-8 years ago when I video chatted with her for the 1st time on Skype from the US, the 86 year old Meenakshi Paati’s immense curiosity and wonder were still there. When I came back to India, she wanted to understand how this internet thing works, and if 7 year olds could have a tenth of her enthusiasm to learn about the brave new world that’s always beyond the horizon of their current understanding, they’d all become astronauts and video game designers.
She once asked me what job I did and I attempted to explain – rather unsuccessfully.
When I got married, despite younger relatives pressurizing my wife to procreate quickly, she was the only one who told her to focus on her career and when she felt like it, have maybe, a kid or two. Having lived an entire life pinching pennies and being a second-class citizen as a result of her gender, her proudest moment was when one of her granddaughters went the IIT-IIM route and landed a job whose starting salary continued to amaze her till the very end of her life. Many women from her generation silently feel proud of their daughters’ achievements but somehow are still reluctant to change the marriage-resign-deliver-kids routine that women are consigned to. When she saw what her granddaughter achieved, she was quick to adapt her advice to girls. Her first question on meeting any young working woman would be the rather inappropriate – “How much salary are you earning?” and would then followed by “Continue working, and don’t be in a hurry to give up all of this for marriage and kids”. When successful career women advice young girls this way, it’s good for them, but it’s only when women like my grandmother, who’ve never experienced financial independence in their lives undergo this shift of mindset that serious change becomes possible.
I’d call her highly tolerant and broadminded, but those are vapid expressions that don’t capture the essence of a complex human being. The best I can do is say that she was alive to possibilities. In the back of her mind, despite what tradition demanded of her, she knew that all of these rituals and customs were obsolete bunkum, frozen in their own time, reluctant to be contemporarily relevant, but she was never brazen in her opposition to them. She played along and was a model, nine-yard-saree wearing woman who enjoyed MS Subbulakshmi while secretly admiring Michael Jackson because in her mind, she still believed that Jackson had overcome the barriers of slavery to be successful. Sometime in 2003 I had discovered a band named System of a Down. I decided to see if there were limits to her ability to find excitement in anything new that she discovered. Now, Chop Suey is unlike anything that a 88 year old Tambram woman is likely to have heard and in general, metal and rock tend to be categorized as industrial noise among elderly Tambrams. I put the headphones on her, and after about a minute or so, she said – “This must be very difficult to play no?”. No criticism. No dismissal as incoherent noise. Just a recognition that there must be something good in things she did not quite understand.
She was a voracious reader. As long as her eyes held out, she had a book in her hand. For someone who studied till class 7 before getting married, it’s incredible that she could read Tamil, Malayalam, English and Sanskrit and while she enjoyed RK Narayan and Sudha Murthy for their simplicity, she never shied away from trying to read heavier tomes in English. In keeping with her philosophy, she never gave up reading anything she did not grasp. She lived her life with the constant assumption that there will always be new and exciting things that she may never understand and, like her response to System of a Down, she refused to criticize things she did not fully appreciate.
Another unique way in which she was different from the rest of her generation was her private belief that “old was not gold”. She was more the “old is mold” sort of person. Her only problem with modern times was the cost of stuff. She preferred the trappings of modern life but wished that gold would cost the same Rs 13/8 grams that it did back when her grandfather made jewellery for her. Inflation is one of those concepts I was never able to convincingly explain to her (apart from the Software industry, of course), but perhaps that reveals my ignorance of economics more than her inability to understand it.
While she was ailing, I decided to shoot a few videos in an attempt to capture a bit of her wisdom for posterity, and this bit, I felt, was worth sharing. Despite her flexibility with rituals and custom, she was a deeply spiritual person and I asked her what exactly devotion meant. “Bhakti”, she said, comes in three varieties. The first one is about praying for material success. Money, land, career etc. It’s usually accompanied by rituals of various kinds, sacrifices in the past, homams and poojas in the present. The kind of devotion higher than that is to pray for one’s own mental strength and the fortitude required to lead a peaceful life. This happens when people read the Upanishads and realize that it’s all really about the inner self and things like that. The last, and the highest kind of devotion, she said, is to pray for the wellbeing of everything around you. And she ended by qualifying all of this with a “That’s the way our ancestors saw it. The rest of the world might see it differently, and they might be equally correct too”
I write this while being interrupted once in a while by a bunch of priests performing the 13th day rituals of her passing away. One of her hobbies, in the last decade or so, was reading the Obit column in The Hindu to see if anyone she knew from her generation had died, and even kept count. Eventually, she had outlived all of them, and in her memory, the rest of the family conducted an elaborate series of rituals she wouldn’t really have cared for.
She was a story teller par extraordinaire. Every lunch of mine from when I was a year old to a shameful 11 years old was accompanied by a side dish of enthralling tales from the epics, stories from Tamil magazines she read (Serialized tales in Ananda Vikatan) and even randomly made up tales featuring me and my brothers as heroes (Yes, we liked hearing those). I would also ask her to tell me tales from the Asura perspective, and she would, without telling me off for preferring the dark side 
Most Tambrams associate their grandfathers with Hindu crosswords, Wordsworth, Test match cricket and a passionate love for intellectual pursuits. Most grandmothers are remembered for their killer Sambar, special avials and delectable snacks. Meenakshi was never interested in cooking. She had managed a household of some 20 kids and her sense of proportion of salt and spices never really re-adjusted to a small nuclear family, but I will only remember her for the vastness of her knowledge (ah, the number of times she has politely corrected pompous maamas’ pronunciations on tradition and custom), and the boundless curiosity that lulled everyone into thinking that she was simply yet another behind-the-scenes denizen of the kitchen.
This blog is dedicated to her. No, not the Lonely Planet rants or the scathing criticism of Phir Mile Sur. That’s not her. She would have said – “Poor guys, Lonely Planet. They just don’t know about Chennai. Leave them be” and “Good effort by the new Phir Mile Sur producers but I don’t think it’s as good as the original” and left it at that. She would also offer angry commenters some filter coffee
ps: I had a bunch of other things to post, but they had to wait because I wanted to do this first
Web 2.0 at work, chapter 1:The Meeting
A while back, Sangeetha Kodithala (@skodithala ) told me that Slacker’s dilemma turned out to be a useful comic to introduce Web 2.0 to n00bs in companies. Now, why someone would want to do that is questionable, but what she did do is give me ammunition for a series of “visual guides” to Web 2.0, as is relevant to companies internally. So here’s the first one:
Feel free to use it liberally to misinform and confuse employees in your firm about the serendipitous architecture of viral participatory wisdom of crowds that is Web 2.0
Controversy is the new advertising
Sometime last week, I wrote a column for the New Indian Express that I felt deserved a bit more visual treatment. It also needed the “Ramesh Srivats” treatment.
All icons used here are from Icon Finder
A day in the life of an I.T. Bachelor, chapter 3: Break up
Here is part 1 and part 2. Barring the occasional edit, this is more or less untouched, although I have cut out an entire section from the end to keep the length manageable. This is the final part.
Chapter 3: Break up
The sugar syrup vending machine now had a security guard who was checking ID cards before letting us fill our cups.
The guard dutifully squinted at our ID cards and used advanced CSI like techniques in his brain to age-advance and match the faded 15 year old photo of my manager (with a full head of hair) with his current dopey-eyed bald look. Satsified, he opened a dusty cupboard with a small key and let us have our plastic cups. He also made us fill a “Cofee Register” with fields such as name, employee number, number of cups, date, time, signature and for some reason, “remarks” as well.
I put in “Did not eat breakfast, therefore fortifying myself with concentrated sucrose syrup” in the remarks column and the both of us started walking back to our work area.
“We have issues”, declared my manager, in a tone of voice that might have announced that the Spartans had attacked our city.
“Issues? What issues?”, I asked, in a tone of voice that suggested that I thought the word “issue” meant children
“We have an escalation”, he clarified, in a voice that might have announced that I had AIDS
“Who escalated what?”, I queried, in a tone that suggested that the only escalation I was aware of was the one to heaven while a lengthy guitar solo played in the background
“Onsite”, he said, in a voice ominous enough to suggest that the people he was referring to had the numbers 666 hidden in their scalp
“But we made the deliverables on time”, I exclaimed, sounding like an advertisement for a Swiss watch
“Onsite did not receive the email attachment”, he interjected, sounding like the “before use” part of an ad for Amrutanjan
“But we zipped it, rar-ed it and LHarc-ed it till we got it to under the 1 MB email attachment limit we have”, I said in the desperate voice of an Arab peasant telling the crusaders that he was just a human being
“But we failed to meet stakeholder expectations”, he said in a disappointed voice that suggested that we had missed a dinner appointment with Rajinikanth.
“But…”, I started, and ended, like a soggy 100-wala on Deepavali. We had reached the door to our work area. We made the necessary register entries and walked in.
“We need to have a meeting”, he declared in the voice of a euthanizing doctor just about to pull the plug on someone.
“I can handle this offline sir”, I said, desperate to avoid “the meeting”, which meant email invites and worse, reminding people on email, IM, SMS, phone and in person
“We need to fine tune our contingency plan and streamline our onsite-offshore communication”, he said, like an art critic complaining that the Mona Lisa needed a bit of work
“We did that last week”, I pleaded, like a prisoner whose parole applications had been declined repeatedly
“Looks like we still have gaps”, he pointed out, like Aamer Sohail to Venkatesh Prasad
I resigned to my fate and sulkily walked back to my desk, hit ctrl-alt-delete to log back in to my workstation. Windows wanted to update itself, and it gave me 2 options, Install now and Install a few seconds from now. I sighed, let it reboot and used the intervening aeon to do testicular surgery on my mouse. I used my nails to remove all of the gunk that had accumulated in the roller mechanism and looked at my monitor, only to find out that Windows had installed some new software and it would be mighty nice of me to let it reboot again. Suppressing a desire to throw my machine out its own namesake, I obliged and let it reboot again. I thought I’d charge my phone in the meanwhile, so I changed into cave diving gear and embarked on an expedition beneath my table to find the plug point. I hit my head and twisted my ankle while softly cursing at the school of IT office interior decorators that teaches its wards to make every plug point innaccessible. I eventually found it and realized that the points were so closely spaced that my bulky phone charger would not fit in along with the rest of the plugs already there.
I was now in that stage of that uniquely male frustration when brute force is considered a valid option for any and all problems. I squeezed in my phone’s charger plug through that geometrically unfeasible gap and when I was satisfied that electrons would have enough contact to flow, I extricated myself from under the desk and rubbed my hands of the dust that had now deposited itself on me.
I looked at my monitor, and to my horror, it was blank and that’s when I realized that my brute force insertion of the phone charger plug had disconnected my workstation power supply. I cursed, and got under my desk again to remove my charger, which was now tightly wedged between the other plugs. In utter rage, I yanked it hard, and briefly made contact with 220V/5A of electricity.
I convulsed, jerking my hand away from the plug, hitting it painfully against the underside of my desk. I lay down, in the darkness beneath my desk, with no desire to come out. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was in a sanctuary. I wanted to spend the rest of my day just lying there, under my desk, far away from escalations, meetings and deliverables. I was in a state of relaxation, meditative and calm.
That’s when the fire alarm rang and a friendly female voice announced that there was going to be a fire drill and that all employees were expected to stay calm, and follow the instructions of the Fire Warden for their floor. I ignored the voice, mentally banishing it to remote depths of my senses and went back to enjoying my dark under-table sanctuary. That was when I saw ,from underneath, the dirty black shoes of manager, and his mismatched pair of socks walking towards my desk.
“Where are you? You are the fire warden for this floor. Here, take this helmet, wear it and rally the troops”, he droned, in the voice of the chap who convinced Bahadur Shah Zafar to lead the 1857 mutiny
I laughed.
I got out, with vim and vigour and vowed to discharge my duties as a Fire Warden with glory. I took my bag, as I suddenly remembered that it had a packet of chips from last week’s “Employee of the Month” award ceremony. I was starving and I thought I might munch on chips while waiting outside for the drill to get over.
I wore my helmet, and like Leonidas, urged my fellow employees to leave the tyranny of the office and boldly conquer the outside. I was stopped at the main door by a security guard who told me that bags were not allowed during a fire drill.
“But I already have it, so shouldn’t we be making our exit ASAP?”
“No sir. You have to go back to your desk, leave your bag there, and then continue escaping the fire”
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
The end
Notes
A day in the life of an I.T. Bachelor, chapter 2: Check up
Here is part 1. As I was transcribing part 2, I realized that the ponderious dadabudality of Ashok from 7 years ago was getting rather tiresome. So I decided to brutally hack long sentences and banish every GRE word to 14 years of exile. Also made it a little more contemporary.
Chapter 2: Check up
After managing to retrieve my ID card using the neighbour’s broomstick through the front window, I boarded the office bus, a big hulking beast that had several shock absorbers, each of them optimally (or is it pessimally) placed to provide the least amount of absorbance where I was seated. The conductor (ok, the chap who was not driving) first made me fill about 3 generations family tree data on an attendance sheet and also demanded to see my bus pass with his scanning electron microscope.
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
Of course, I did not bring my bus pass because it was in the back-pocket of my one good black pant that was currently in the washing machine’s dryer. I had, after a few months, decided to wash that pant but had forgotten to take it out of the dryer. A week ago.
I asked him to make an exception. No, he said
Why, I asked. Rules, he said
I told him that unless I get to the office on time and feverishly type on my keyboard, the stock market would crash. I don’t care, he said
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
I asked him if the bus would wait a couple of minutes as I climbed up 4 flights of “stares” to retrieve my bus pass from back pocket of a crumpled black pant. In a washing machine dryer. No, he said
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
I asked him if he had a heart. Compassion. Understanding. Empathy. No, he answered.
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
I de-bussed and walked away, sulking, with my bag slung strategically to cover gaping hole in trouser and hailed an auto, which was going in the direction opposite to mine. With no regard to oncoming traffic, he dramatically turned the auto 180 degrees, exchanged a few pleasantries involving home-notification prior to departure with other motorists nonplussed by his sudden change in direction, swerved at the last moment to avoid hitting me, stopped, looked me up and down, and asked me where I wanted to go.
150 rupees, he said.
Clearly, my trick had not worked. Must have been the ID card I was wearing. Not in a mood to haggle, I got in, and 20 minutes, and some casual disregard for other vehicles on the road later, I was deposited at the entrance to my office. A security guard, who hailed from one of those states reduced to a single 4-sec tribal dance in the original Mile Sur, blew his whistle furiously, presumably wanting to indicate to us that we were breaking some rule. Only problem, he spoke no language I understood and I most certainly did not understand whistlespeak.
After some impromptu Dumb-C, I learned that the place where I was disembarking was earmarked, as per Rules, for folks disembarking from cars. I asked him if there were make/model restrictions as well. The sarcasm sailed over his head like a Sehwag swat over point.
He continued whistling more instructions, which I decoded as the precise lane that I must use to walk in to the premises.
Why, I mimed. Rules, he whistled.
But before I could step through, another guard waved a handheld scanner at my bag and from the frequency of the annoying beep it made, he deduced the contents of my bag. He asked me if I was carrying a camera. Photography inside premises is banned, he added.
I briefly thought about clarifying if the 5 megapixel photo and video capturing feature on my smartphone came under this category. But I decided not to. I wanted to get to my seat quickly and douse the flames of crisis by the cunning use of the Send-Email button. He waved me on.
I had forgotten to remove my bag and place it on the airport style scanner that was next to the doorframe. I tried pointing out that there was no security guard looking at the monitor, but to no avail.
Why, I asked? Rules, they said.
I obliged, collected my bag at the other end, and a senior looking guard asked me if I was carrying any CD ROMS, Floppy disks or iPods. I had a w4r3z DVD, a 500 GB external HDD and a Cowon S9, so I told him no. He waved me on, and I was about to head for the elevator when another guard ordered me to swipe my ID card on the attendance scanner.
I tried every possible direction, left to right, top to bottom, scratch-scratch, tap-tap, hit-hit, but the all important beep that the security guard was looking for just didn’t materialize. One of the slightly more enthusiastic chaps took matters into his own hand and used his own security personnel access card and signed me in. I pointed out that he had just signed himself out. That’s ok, he said, but everybody had to use the card reader before entering the elevator.
Why I asked? Rules, he said.
I was just about to join the crowd outside the elevator when the senior security chap pointed out that I hadn’t filled the register. I told him that I had just been swiped in electronically. He told me that I still had to make an entry in the registers. I asked him why the plural suddenly. He just remembered the personal items register, he responded. I asked him if it did not strike him as a little wasteful to make folks fill out register after register despite there being an electronic record of their entry. He said no, it did not strike him.
Why, I asked. Rules, he said
I then joined to the crowd waiting outside the elevator, almost all of them with headphones in their ears tuning out the oppressive silence of an IT company lobby. I carefully checked to see if any of them were using iPhones, because as per Rules, iPods were not allowed and Steve Jobs tells us that an iPhone is also an iPod. Thankfully no one. Most of this crowd was using Nokia N-series phones, and some of them were, in fact, waiting not just for the elevator but for the music app to load after they had clicked on it.
I waited, and when the elevator did arrive, it was packing about 5 more people than the weight limit allowed. Apparently, the folks from the 1st floor decided that they would rather take a down elevator and then go up instead of waiting for the better part of this century for an empty up-elevator to arrive. After about 15 minutes, I gave up and took the only form of exercise IT folks get – taking the stairs out of sheer frustration at waiting for elevators in these poorly designed SEZ buildings that always have about 4 elevators too less.
I huffed and puffed my way up to the 7th floor and was just about to swipe my ID card to enter the “specially secure” area my seat was in when the security guard for that floor stopped me. He told me that I was violating the dress code and that he had been instructed by HR to catch and bring all violators to their lair. I asked what section of the code I was flouting. I was wearing a formal, soul-deadeningly executive shirt and my roommate’s slightly damaged but impeccably formal Van Heusen trousers. He pointed at my collar and said that as per the new dress code, this kind of collar was not allowed. He added that my (roomie’s) pant also had one pocket too many and was of a cut that was against the Rules.
I pleaded with him to let this slide and let me get to my all too crucial email client, but he said no.
Why, I asked. Rules, he said.
He marched me to the HR bay, and after making me fill another register named “HR Entry Rejister”, shooed me in to an area filled entirely with well-dressed women, all of whom immediately seemed to know what my strategically slung bag was hiding. Some sniggered. I looked at my wrist, and finding no watch, fished my phone out of my pant’s front pocket. Some loose threads got stuck in the camera shutter mechanism on its way out and I heard the small snap of the shutter breaking.
The time was 10 am, and my project’s crisis was now beyond salvage, so I shifted gears into full combat mode. I walked over to the most senior looking HR lady and asked her what the point of such a ridiculously detailed dress code was. Her response included several words my brain had learned to tune out, like “corporate”, “brand image” and “standards”. I was not going to give up so soon, now that I had the rest of the day to blame my woes on HR. I told her that I was perfectly complying with last week’s dress code and that these new collar/cut addenda were unknown to me. We sent you an email, she interjected. Oh, but I have an automatic filter that moves emails from HR to the trash folder, I blurted out.
At this point, the climate in the room became distinctly chilly in a way that only a room filled entirely with women and one unpopular man can become chilly. Clearly, they did not like the fact that I deleted their emails, all of which were usually 2 MB colourful announcements that used inspirational MS Office clipart and featured striking typography in Comic Sans and Monotype Corsiva, and tended to fill up my 10 MB corporate mailbox allotment pretty quickly. I said nothing more, and waited for the guillotine to fall. The senior HR lady pointed to a workstation whose label (printed in Monotype Corsiva CAPS) read “FOR DRESSCODE VIOLATORS” and ordered me to fill out an online form that logged my crime for posterity.
I walked back to the door and tried getting out. Not so soon, said the security guard on the other side. He pointed at the “HR Exit rejister”.
Why, I pleaded. Rules, he said
I trudged towards my work area and tried to swipe myself in. No beep. The guard asked me if I had signed myself into the building at the lobby. I said no, another guard signed me in. He briefly paused to consider the implications of what I had just said. Was this a code red emergency, he wondered. But thankfully, he just fished out another register named “No Access register” and made me fill it in before he let me in.
I carefully avoided eye contact with several colleagues who would have faced the wrath of “onsite” thanks to the morning’s crisis and were now looking at me accusingly. I slunk into my seat and hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and after a few minutes, Windows Vista deigned to let me type in my login credentials. I hit enter, and twiddled my thumbs as I waited for 4 anti-virus software, 3 web-browsing filters and 2 other daemons designed to limit employee productivity to start up.
I was just about to open my email client when my manager walked over and asked me to join him for coffee.
We headed back towards the exit door, and after making entries in the “Secure area Exit register”, walked to the coffee area that had a sugar syrup self-service vending machine operated by a security guard.
To be continued…
A day in the life of an I.T. Bachelor, chapter 1: Wake up
I recently unearthed an old diary of mine that, to my surprise, contained a few short stories I had written a really long while ago. I found one that I thought will make a good digestive pill after the Mile Sur post, a post that, despite the 400+ comments, I am not a big fan of. I don’t really like scathing humour, and I usually end up with a bad after taste the moment I hit submit.
This is a short story that I have split into 3 parts, and here is part 1
Chapter 1: Wake up
I woke up coughing, and with a neck ache from my roommate’s pillow, which incidentally was a solid block of iron and frequently found its way to my bed as part of an un-negotiated exchange offer with my roomie who was probably sleeping on my soft pillow at this very moment. I was still coughing when I attempted to extinguish the fumes of a dying mosquito coil before my eyes started burning. My hands reflexively rubbed my blistering eyes, which was when I realized that I had forgotten to remove my contact lenses before I slept. With one lens taking temporary residence on the bridge of my rather stately nose, I staggered out of bed and hit my leg painfully against the edge of a small table that was most certainly not where civilized folk would put it, resting at that casually vicious position where groggy gents climbing out of bed would most certainly make skin-breaching contact.
With an alacrity unusual for the time of day, my brain, like the Holy Inquisition, worked feverishly to assign blame for the misplaced snack table but concluded its investigation rather quickly as newly woken up neurons deposed to the effect that it was I who had snacked on Haldiram’s Cornflakes mixture last night, normally equal parts crunchy goodness and cloggy cholesterolness, but thanks to my roommate’s general dislike for lids, was completely lacking in the former quality.
I enlisted a few more reluctant brain parts and put them to work on orienting myself towards the bathroom, and while still wincing in pain, pseudo-limped towards to the wash basin and went about that crucial task of picking out my toothbrush from the bunch that contained, among other brushes of various vintage, the one must-be-avoided old toothbrush that was now used to clean combs and occasionally apply hair dye.
I picked mine out, a dull yellow medium hard brush with frayed tips, looked around for the toothpaste, and with 50% vision thanks to one contact lens on a nose vacation, went straight for something that looked red and tubey, which of course was not willing to dispense paste on account of there not being any left in it. So in the rich Indian tradition of making something out of nothing, I uttered a guttural growl, mustered the required Newtons per square cm, and birthed a tiny bit of paste that, as soon as I directed the brush towards my molars, carefully skirting around a nagging cavity, turned out to be Old Spice shaving cream. I immediately rinsed my mouth only to find, to my horror, a blackish, foaming mix of water, saliva and cream staining the wash basin. So I had, after all, picked up the hair dye brush.
I turned the tap on full to purge my mouth of dentally inappropriate products just find the water turn slowly into a trickle and finally come to a stop. I mentally devised the most ingenious torture devices for the Electricity Board bureaucrats who, in their good wisdom (teeth, I am assuming, and probably nagging) decided to shed load between 7.30 am and 8.30 am. I continued insulting their lineage as I filled a mug with water from a nearby bucket to complete my ablutions. The water tasted slightly um..elasticky, and against all the advice from several parts of my brain, I looked inside the bucket a little more carefully, only to find my roommate’s undergarments, soaking at the bottom.
I re-calibrated my daily hygiene requirements in the face of this sudden lack of usable water, and examined my face in the mirror to find out if I could convince myself that I did not need a shave (and a wash) right now. Against some internal protest, I constructed this illusion that I was actually pretty fresh looking and walked out of the bathroom after settling my hair with a comb that turned out to have an illegal immigration problem involving my roommate’s lice infested hair strands.
I purposefully strode towards the refrigerator, hoping to find some non-alcoholic liquid that could purge those final bits of hair dye and shaving cream from my taste buds. I gulped down from a bottle that read “Lychee flavored mineral water” and spat it out immediately when I realized it was vinegar. With a mental vow to run for office, get elected and pass a law against reuse of old bottles without corresponding removal of old labels, I staggered back into my bedroom, opened my half of the closet and conducted an olfactory inspection of all my shirts to determine suitability for office wear. I settled on the dirty grey checks with the coffee stain, but I could tuck the stained part in so I wasn’t too worried. Unlike the rest of the shirts, the odour of sweat on this one was matched reasonably by the Baygon-spray like scent of Brut cologne. As long as I kept some distance from the ladies today, I should be able to get through, I thought, as I searched around for some matching pants, found none with working zippers and decided to get even on my sleeping roomie by borrowing one of his.
After leaving no stone unturned in a house where most stones were in a state of being turned most of the time, I found my belt which, it turns out, had not kept up with my late night snacking. Using the last hole on my belt required me to constrict my abdomen in ways that my diaphragm and lungs strongly disapproved of. I looked around for a screw driver and hammer, found none, and attempted to use a small pair of scissors to eke out one more hole. The scissors bent out of shape, but managed a workable hole that for now resembled a really small plate of leather kotthu parotta.
I then sprayed the only pair of socks I could find (crumpled inside a really old pair of shoes of mine) with more Brut and put on my shoes after issuing eviction notices to a pair of cockroaches that were being shown around the insides of my shoe by some sort of a roach real estate agent. I looked at my watch, realized that I was late for some unimportant, yet crucial meeting, and ran to the elevator which had a board that read “Out of service. Please use Stares”.
I glared at it for a few seconds, and ran down 4 flights of stairs and breathed a sigh of relief as I found my colleagues still waiting for the office bus. But I had forgotten my ID card, which in an IT company usually results in several years of hard labour in Siberia. It also struck me that I had left my keys inside my apartment and locked myself out, with a sleeping roommate who generally required something in the 8.5 range on on the Richter scale to wake up.
I also felt a bit of air circulation in areas inside my pants that were not normal and with a great amount of casual caution, I explored the nether regions of my trousers to find, instead of comforting stitch, a gaping hole.
To be continued…
ps: If you survived this point, you will have realized that I had a major fascination for endless sentences 7 years ago. Also, I might add, like Dan Brown, that each of the individual mishaps did occur, just not all in a single day.
Mile Sur Mera Tomorrow? Fail
I woke up today, did my morning ablutions (Freshen teeth, Refresh Twitter) and quickly realized from a cursory glance at my browser that India Inc. had rebooted, reprised, refreshed, renewed and re-engineered Mile Sur Mera Tumhara. As the unauthor of the unauthorized uncut undocumentary on version 1.0, I was more than looking forward to find out if this new one was a case of “Empire Strikes Back” or Windows Vista.
But it had to wait, because I had a quiz prelims to participate in and fail to qualify. Anantha and Aditya, having seen the video before they came to the quiz, seemed a little dazed and confused, as if they had fought the Battle of Evermore on the misty mountain hops. I asked them how the new version was. Anantha, for some reason, could only incomprehensibly utter a few words. Like “Salman Khan”. And for some reason “Cut banian” as well. It did not make any sense. “Mile Sur” and banians are not the fondest of bedmates. But I decided to wait and find out more once the ritual of not qualifying was done with.
I then had a heavy lunch featuring a main course of Oil with a modest side of Channa and Bhatura. With a stomach mildly peeved at the lunchtime assault, I settled down to watch MSMT 2.0. The title said “Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara”, and I had some misgivings at that point. Why did Anantha call it MSMT 2.0 then? Nothing with the 2.0 suffix can be any good for anybody. Web 2.0 is a good example.
But I set aside all these thoughts, cleared my mind, opened my consciousness, and just before hitting play, I thought I’ll shave, but it turns out, there was no need to
Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara is EPIC BLADE. Way more blader than Anand‘s Max-100. This 16 minute Bollygasm will put blade like a Kiwi farmer on a sheep during shearing season. It’s a showy, shallow, cringe-worthy, slow-tempo, un-coordinated and unwatchable piece of crystalline Crappium Craptide wrapped in crapé paper.
Am I being uncharitable? Am I being, as Vir Sanghvi calls us, “elite”? Perhaps. To be fair, this new version does have its good bits, but the overall execution is um..literally an execution by hanging of everything that India represents. It is Indiawood, not India, that is presented in this video. Actor after actor, hamming to the point where pigs might have gone extinct, lip sync their lines with all the originality of a Soni Playbox 360 from Richie Street.
PMSMT is a user interface without a backend database. A film actor, at least in India, is a cosmetic, steroid-pumped, six-packed, waxed, silicone enhanced front-end for a script-writer’s ideas, a cameraman’s vision, a music director’s genius, a writer’s tale, a playback singer’s voice and a fashion designer’s art. India is not its film actors. We really are the people behind the scenes, and yet all we get in these 16 minutes are all hat and absolutely no cattle. If this is National Integration, the limits must have been 0 and 0. The area under the curves of Shilpa, Deepika and Priyanka is not India, or its sur. Leaving aside sad mathematical puns on a sadder video, did any of you notice any real integration, I mean, like people actually meeting and “milaoing”? No, of course not. Aamir wants his exclusive moment with the kids. Salman wants the other six-packers to stay away from his show-and-tell. SRK wants us to believe that he built the damn Worli Sea Link all by himself. They cleared Elliots beach so that Vikram could make love all by himself, to the Schmidt memorial. Sivamani wants us to believe that music is just about him, the percussionist, and Shahid Kapoor thinks he’s Robert Plant, without the band. Has there ever been a greater concentration of selfish, image-conscious, petty egos on display in the history of our country?
But let’s look at the video in detail. It starts with A R Rahman.
ARR tracing for us, his path on the Oscars' red carpet scale model
Continuum fingerboard? Really? The last time I heard something that sounded like this instrument was in my electronics lab back in college. It was called an Oscilloscope. Or perhaps you realized how much of an unmitigated disaster this was going to be so you decided to hold back on the good stuff. I don’t blame you. But later in the video, we have folks like Shahid Kapoor going all Robert-Planty and Freddie-Mercury on us without having a shred of singing talent. You sir, can sing, and all they let you do is play an oscilloscope. Sigh.
Amitabh showing the Pakis that if he starts a new IPL team named 26 Eleveners, he will not take in any Pak players
Big B + Taj Mahal Hotel + 26/11 + Hip Hop = Bollyxploitation. Yeah, Ahan, one time, two time, two to da six to da one to da one, peace out yo
Ehsaan demonstrating the Ajay Devgan Guitar Pose
Ehsaan, you know, you could have played more than just that one Paki-pop song style chord, you know? Oh sorry, you weren’t plugged in. My bad. Never mind. And also, did the directors tell you that your piece was the big crescendo ending bit? Cos when I heard you guys, I thought the video was coming to an end.
This is where we start to see the first serious cracks appear in this already shaky edifice. The video is not synced with the audio, and anybody who was looking at the Sitar would be totally confused because Anoushka’s fingers would not be at the note that was currently playing. Am I being too nitpicky? No. In 1988, with a distinctly smaller budget, DD managed to produce something for the ages. In 2009, with Avatar technology, Bollywood can’t edit video to be in sync with audio.
As an old lady once asks cogently in this brilliant Petronas ad, what’s with all the chest thumping, Vikram? Do you have a cold, congestion or cough?
Dear Mahesh Babu. I know you are the only star in India to represent 3 major companies, Thums up, Univercell and Navaratna oil but seriously, what with the producers already having audio-video syncing problems, at least move your lips to the actual words that are being sung. I’m afraid, you have no future as a member of a boy band.
Shiv kumar sharma + overacting dude – Nice Stock footage of Kashmir while the both of you are seated in the vicinity of the Qutab minar. But wait. Is that Rohit Bal? Why is he buying spinach?
Pnjaabi folks – I’m very happy, very very happy that you chose to ignore Bhangra. Your decision is one of the highpoints of this presentation. And Gurdas Mann, love your voice.
Zakir hussan and co – Awesome as usual. Respect.
Bhupen Hazarika – Whoa? What happened to the sruthi?. Fine, I understand he is old, but Rahman, could you not have autotuned him?
Hmm. Let’s see. Camels and Solar energy. Very royal, very rajasthanically royal, I might add.What is this? Product placement?
Salman demonstrating what these kids are likely to do 20 years from now when they watch this video
While I had been watching in horror so far, it was only when Salman came on the scene that I went “What. The. Funny”. Dear Salman, those kids were hearing impaired, not blind. Wear some clothes man. This is not a product placement for Poombukar Banians.
Salman demonstrating the dangers of kids joining the IT industry and becoming zombies
Also, you need to return those jeans back to the store. There’s a hole in the bum area. Or were you giving us a hint? Now, if I was Jon Stewart, I’d call you over to Camera 2, but I’m not, so let me say, come on over to the next sentence. In your desire to show off your steroid-pumped, cut banian body along with some 20 kids, did you even stop to consider how cruel it is to make deaf kids mime about “Sur”? Could you have got 30 adult hearing impaired folks to smile and mime about a sense that they probably have never experienced in their lives? These are kids man. They are just excited to be around the Salman Khan. They don’t know that you shoot black buck for sport. They don’t understand the dark irony of smilingly miming about “Sur”. It’s like asking a blind man to write a 500 word essay describing the beauty of a Van Gogh painting. What? You were expecting us to go all “Awwww so cute, see Salman miming with deaf kids” were you? Well, I almost did, but now I think you will earn more karma shooting paraplegic deer with a submachine rifle from a jeep.
Ustad Rashid Khan – Thank you sir, for breaking the monotony from the Sindhu Bhairavi (a.k.a Amit Bhairavi )
Drums Maestro Drums Sivamani – Saar. Nalla Thanni adikkireenga
L Subramaniam family promotion segment – 2 violins. Equalizer setting on violin = 0
Deepika Padukone – “If I become president of the world, I’ll ban this particular pose from beauty pageants and send everyone with a plastic smile to concentration camps. I’ll also call myself Mother Teresa Mandela.”
And dear vocalist, what’s with the erotic, Silk smitha type rain song voice?
Amjad Ali Khan – Nice Sarod. Must be expensive no? Please be careful ok, especially on Air India
The Kerala checklist. Yesudas – tick. Elephend – tick. Kaikottikali – tick. Fishing nets – tick. Mamootty – tick. Rangoli – what? Fail. Pookkalam is what’s required.
Sigh. Juxtaposing Shiamak with Shobana is like adding aspartame to Chakka pradhaman. Fail. Epic Fail. If there was any justice in this world, Shiamak would join Shobana’s Dance school and be rejected for complete and utter lack of talent.
Dear Aamir Khan Sir. Apropos of your bit in PMSMT, while I must say kudos to the yeoman service rendered by your indefatigable spirit, I must strongly lodge a protest against you for asking young children to accompany you to Khandala, where you propose to arrange for a high level meeting between Mr Sur and Mr Sur.
Sonu Nigam, who most certainly does not look like me, I believe, must have been told by the director that he will be singing solo for several Bollywidiots with no singing talent, for the rest of the video. Our man, due to the extra hair growth around his ear, heard it as “singing soul”, proceeded to listen to several CDs of R Kelly before letting loose. Whoever thought this style of singing was appropriate for MSMT must be made to listen to R Kelly’s discography.
PS: I do not look anything like Sonu in this video, contrary to popular speculation and baseless rumours on Twitter and other “online portal”. My reputation has been seriously demeaned, defamed and threatens the ethical parameters under which I, a blogger, operate. I have no choice but to speak to my lawyer and file a lawsuit against Anantha. That is the only way we can come to a epicwin-epicwin situation.
Sonu douchebaggalogical singing + major front-of-mic overacting = facepalmmoment
Dear Shahid, Ima let you finish, but Sivaji in Mridanga Chakravarthy was the greatest ever overacting while playing a musical instrument. Ever.
Ranbir Kapoor – More R Kelly + Nightsuit
An finally. Shah Rukh, you *really* need to stop doing that wide-open-hands thing. Everybody else is doing it now, and damnit, if Amjad Khan was alive, he’d take those hands and spare us all.
And finally, after a Bollywood orgy, somebody goes – “Hey. We forgot the sportsmen, and after all these overactors, we’ve run out of budget to hire big guns like Tendulkar, Ganguly and co, so let’s go with sportsmen who’ll do it for free, yeah, like from all those obscure olympic sports where we occasionally win medals.
Thank you Bollywood, for telling us that Indian achievers are almost always celebrity children, and not people who are self made. Amitabh jr, Yesudas jr, Shivakumar jr, Shiv Kumar Sharma jr, Amjad Jrs, Rishi Kapoor jr and Padukone jr really encourage all of us towards the lofty desire of wanting to be adopted by celebrity parents. How else can you be successful eh?
And since the producers of this execrable mess have managed to take something that every Indian has good memories about and essentially unzipped their Bollywood designer jeans’ collective fly and let loose, they decided to include some inspiring Armed forces imagery at the end just so that they can be immune from criticism. Yeah. Wrap your sorry bodies with the flag and all will be forgiven eh?
No.
