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…
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.
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.
The internet is filled with memes, and some memes have this annoying habit of not going away, like the Hitler downfall meme for instance. Just when we all breathe a collective sigh of relief at its demise, some jerk wants to tell the world that Hitler was not amused at some trivial issue, and every social news site, Twitter update and blog post flogs this dead Nazi horse again.
But, making a Hitler video at least takes some effort, at least 30 minutes of editing a transcript/subtitle file, unlike a few other memes that are so ridiculously easy to do that the internet seems to never get over them. LOLCats are an example. Just when we think we’ve had enough, someone unleashes (in this case) some Arial on Feline, and we get
Ah well. One just cannot resist smiling at a Jabba reference, so ok, we keep heading over to Icanhascheezburger to get our daily LOLCat fix. But more so than enjoying memes, I always look for opportunities to localize them (I considered “desify” but for obvious reasons, the word “desi” will always be, till eternity, till kingdom come, associated with pornography thanks to him – Horny Indian Male).
I tried Lollucat, but quickly gave up because cats are not common pets in India at all. In fact, the only pets Indians know are plastic by nature and usually come bottle-shaped.
So my search continued for Indianizable internet memes. I came across the Archaic Rap meme. It’s an image-macro type meme where rap/pop song lyrics transcribed in archaic english are layered over Joseph Ducreux’ deliciously bizarre paintings from the 18th century. Since pictures speak 1K – 24 words and all that, this is what I’m talking about
Wondraful I thought. How about we take cheesy Bollywood lyrics and do something like this?
Nah. Just because we take a bowl, add a classical violinist, throw in a Ghatam player and season with a Bass guitarist and a drummer, we don’t necessarily get music. It’s sometimes called fusion, but it all seems a bit forced. French painter, archaic English and Bollywood songs seem a little too contrived.
My search continued, till my younger brother (no, not this one ) pointed out that the Rage meme was eminently localizable.
After all, aren’t we Indians generally the most pissed off people in the known universe? Aren’t we the noble, ancient and advanced civilization that, in its best, most well behaved mood, comments on rediff? And aren’t there enough things in India to go FFFFUUUUUUU about?
Yes.
But, I’ll leave contemporary Indian FFFFUUUUUUUs to all of you. I present here instead, the EPIC FFFFUUUUUUU (click on image to see larger version)
And the chap I believe deserves the most intense FFFFUUUUUUU
Contributions from readers
Bikerdude tells us of Mahabali’s rage
And Idlingintopgear feels Eklavya’s rage
Maxdavinci feels some rage at our Head of State
And Abhishek Upadhya switches from Arn00b only to find..
So folks, go for it. The template is here
Update: The video has been now been removed, and one hopes it will be back up with credits going to the original script writer
I saw this today
And then realized that our Lavanya Mohan had, in Nov 2008, deviously time-traveled to Jan 2010 and with immense patience, listened to and wrote down the dialogues in this video by Charukesh Sekar (co-written by Vichar Hari) and turned into a blogpost in the past and shamelessly attracted several adulatory comments thanks to the dialogue’s unquestionable wit.
Shame on you Lavanya.
Do you not know how hard it is to be creative in an era when creativity abounds like milk powder in Aavin milk? Did you not realize that even shady 1970s intrumental rock bands got caught for note-by-note plagiarism of Anand Milind’s classic “Akele hain” from QSQT? Or did you actually think that your readers would be so naive that they would fall for your time-traveling trick?
Wait. What?
You say they copied your blogpost word for word, syllable for syllable and slathered on top of it, some lame-ass overacting and released a slickly produced 8 minute video on youtube?
Yeah right. You expect us to believe that? Hardly sounds plausible. The only explanation that makes sense (and obeys all known laws of physics) is that you chanted some arcane Iyengar mantra and opened a time-portal to Jan 2010 early in the morning and quickly transcribed the dialogues and updated your blog, just before the 1st commenter, Shankar said “hehe goodness love this”
In addition to shameless time-traveling and ripping off Charukesh Sekar’s intellectual property, you have blasphemed his faith by retroactively changing all Iyer references to Iyengar references. Clearly, Charukesh‘ original future wish was for the title to hint at Aparna Sen’s “Mr & Mrs. Iyer”.
I must say that I have a very confused attitude towards plagiarism. I enjoy laughing at Anu Malik and Deva, both masters in the art of singing elaborate alaapanas to Alaipayudhe, but rarely go after folks who copy stuff from my blog and pass it off as their own. Once or twice, I did leave lighthearted comments about the strength of the Kumbakonam Degree Copy these plagiarists were drinking, but beyond that, I usually let it go, but if there’s one kind of plagiarism I cannot tolerate, it’s time traveling Iyengar girls copying from hardworking, amateur Iyer filmmaker boys in the future.
My first Dan Brown book was The Da Vinci Code, which when translated fully to English curiously becomes “The Of Vinci Code”. Of course, the incorrect juxtaposition of an article and a preposition wasn’t something that bothered me as I raced through what I thought was a throughly enjoyable story. The Da Vinci code was undeniably unputdownable, especially if one had little better to do.
But after Angels & Demons, Deception Point and Lost Symbol, I’ve come to realize that Dan Brown has a formula, a formula so precise and un-mysterious (unlike the plot elements in his books) that any one, with a little bit of time (and a broadband connection) on their hands, can write a Dan Brown novel.
We will now attempt a Dan Brown micro-novella using his formula.
What we need first is a simple story premise, something that can be expressed in a sentence or two. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will use this:
Robert Langdon has a crush on Lady Gaga but does not have the courage to friend her on Facebook. Will he eventually do it or will mysterious circumstances beyond his control thwart him? Will a global online conspiracy threaten the foundations of human society as we know it?
I know, I know. Not very Danbrownesque, you might interject, but bear with me. The true strength of his formula is that even this can be turned into a Dan Brown novel. What you need next is a grandiose moral/denouement. Da Vinci code told us the the kingdom of god was inside, not outside and that Mr. Of Nazareth changed diapers at some point in his life. Lost Symbol told us that the founding fathers hid the fundamental principles of democracy in the architecture of Washington DC, or something like that. The moral of our tale will be
The secret of the universe is to let go of shyness, and swim freely through the cosmic void, and most importantly, avoid Facebook and meet friends in real life.
Ok. Now we have the broad plot and a grandiosely lame moral. We’re doing well so far. Now, you might assume that we will move on to the story structure, but no. That is a triviality that can wait till later. The more important thing right now is the title of the novel and the cover art. That is what sells books at Walmart, not op-ed reviews in the New York Times. In our case, the choice is simple
Masonic Antisocial Network
It’s obvious really. After 5 books about the Illuminati and the Masons, it’s hard to find any more veiled references, so we can just cut straight to the chase. Of course, this is a Dan Brown story, so the title is not as simple as you think it is. Note the first letters of the words in the title. M.A.N. Man, which subtly hints at the moral of the tale - “You are the man. Be real. Get off Facebook”.
Now we get to the cover.
Just a couple of quick design observations. The A’s have their middle line removed, just like that, to give them an exotic touch. Also Note the 3 O’s lined up in a mystically straight line, with some smoke seeming to arise from the W. It will serve as a plot element and also provide many hours of puzzle solving entertainment to n00bs who believe Brown is the Cryptographic pwnz0r. It might also help spread a rumour on some sort of a viral promotion campaign website that there is a symbolic connection between the number of cells on that stained-glass image on the cover and the title of the next book, or something like that. Our brains are wired to detect patterns, even when there aren’t any, so feel free to be generous with utterly pointless symbolisms.
Right, we are done with the important bits now – the plot, the denouement and the title/cover, so we move on to the opening line. Very important in any Dan Brown book. Let’s review the opening lines of some of his earlier books:
- Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery – Da Vinci Code
- Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own – Angels & Demons
- Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him - Deception Point
See the formula? There is usually death involved, some heavy duty action, and a curriculum vitae of the person dying. So let’s try ours now
Canny Chief Finance Officer Rene Franc, B.A (Oxford), C.F.A (Correspondence) was lying face down on his keyboard, which he knew was his own. Death was on its way, like a pizza delivery man snaking through the streets of Geneva, but nothing could prepare him for a fate as bizarre as the one about to befall him.
- Death hit him, like the thunderous slap of Mark McGwire’s bat (Note: If the chap was really hit by a baseball bat, this image would be suitable, but the unsuitability of a metaphor is what determines its use in a Dan Brown sentence)
- He felt his life ebbing away, like a receding wave on the shores of a desolate beach (Waves usually come back, which is why this metaphor is perfect for a Dan Brown opening. Note that the desolateness of the beach adds no further value to the sentence, which is exactly why it must be there)
We then continue to describe Rene’s death with a few more clumsy metaphors and epithets practically transferred to Mars.
As he lay, catatonic, floating between life and death like a log in a Canadian stream, his enfeebled mind reflected on what had just happened. The evening’s party had been one of those boring affairs, the kind he had begun to despise. After the usual pleasantries, he had excused himself to update his Facebook status. He had felt a tingling sensation when he logged in, but he put that down to the champagne he had consumed in not modest quantities downstairs. He noticed that Emmanuelle had poked him, so he decided to return the favour and poke her back. This online social game of poking reminded him of his childhood when he had played tag with his friends. He refreshed his browser just to see if there were any new updates, and that’s when he felt the jolt. At first, it seemed like a mechanical drill boring through the back of his head, making its way through his cerebrum like engineers digging the Channel tunnel. He had never had migraine and had a fit, lithe and athletic body toned by a rigorous daily workout and he hadnt visited the doctor in a long while.
It was only when he tried getting up that he realized that something was seriously wrong. He couldn’t move! Panic rising at the base of his spine, his eyes opened wide as the drilling sensation in his brain unleashed unimaginable pain.
The last thing he saw before he passed out was the latest update on his Facebook news feed. Superpoked by Sugar Mountain.
Note the use of italics. Use italics for dramatic effect and at the end of every chapter or scene.
Now step back, relax and spend some time building the character profile of Robert Langdon. This time, curriculum vitae details must be blended with detailed product descriptions. Don’t forget the casually thrown-in references to desirable physical characteristics. Most people in his books are elegantly middle-aged and always physically stunning.
Renowned Symbologist Robert Langdon, B.A(History), M.Sc (Masonry and Illumination technology) rested his supple, athletic 50 year old well-toned posterior on the state-of-the-art Herman Miller Aeron chair as he logged on to Gmail on his 24 inch Apple iMac (with a 3 year AppleCare protection plan). His thoughts were on the girl he had seen on Youtube a few days back, performing a catchy tune called “Just Dance” which had struck him particularly because of the richness of symbolism inherent in the lyrics. Not many modern day pop songs make veiled references to the Illuminati, he had thought then
You got that? Educational qualifications, qualifiers for qualifications (‘renowned’) plus detailed gadget and gizmo references. And Italics. Now, let’s build the story. 3 simple rules – symbolism, symbolism and symbolism. If you have trouble thinking in symbols and connections, here’s a tip. Any two seemingly unrelated concepts can be connected with 5 minutes of research on Wikipedia. Like this.
He had been piqued and wanted to learn more about this Lady Gaga. With a name derived from Freddie Mercury’s “Radio Gaga”, the Masonic influence was obvious. Too obvious. Queen, the Lady monarch, not Freddie’s band, came from a family of Masons and Freddie himself was a rockstar and therefore “illuminating”. Marconi, the inventor of radio had also been a Mason. And he, Robert Langdon, was going gaga over the lissome girl whose throaty voice sang “Just Dance”. This rich tapestry of symbolism rang through his Harvard educated mind like carillon bells and he found himself harbouring a strange desire – to add Lady Gaga as a friend on Facebook.
By the way, feel free to consider anyone a Mason. Now we get to the meat of the story.
He logged on to Facebook, and was mildly surprised to find that his good friend and Mason, Rene Franc, had been friended by Lady Gaga, and he made a mental note to ask him to introduce him to her. Despite years of teaching, Langdon was still shy around women. His keen eye for detail also noticed something odd – Rene had been superpoked by someone named Sugar Mountain and that was the last entry in his activity feed. That was odd. Rene was addicted to Facebook, even more so than his account books.
Dan Brown humour, bi4tche5.
Now we break the news. Indulge in some nostalgia.
He tabbed-over to Google news, and his eyes stopped at something that made him go cold. “Rene Franc dies from massive brain aneurysm at his home”, screamed the headline. Rene was a good friend and had over the years, passed on several insider tips on buying shares and staying away from one Mr Madoff. They had gone on a teenage trip to Amsterdam, and even tripped out together there.
Dan Brown wordplay y’all.
Now dont forget clumsy similes. And throw in some more veiled hinting at symbolism.
He was struck with sadness, like an oncoming train. He stood up from his 24 inch Apple iMac and staggered towards the balcony and stared into the night sky. He saw the belt of Orion, its 3 stars in a line. He composed himself, and walked back to his desk when his iPhone 3GS rang to the ringtone of “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga. He was in no frame of mind to take calls, but something niggling in a corner of his mind made him take it.
Now introduce the chick angle. Angels & Demons had the physicist chick and Da Vinci Code had Miss Jesus, Jr, so this time, we have Emmanuelle, a name chosen deliberately for its ability to evoke imagery of vaguely Frenchy B-movie heroines. We also slip into dialogue mode.
“My name is Emmanuelle, and I need your help”, a dusky voice tinged with panic announced in a lilting french accent
Yep. In the Dan Brown world, people don’t announce, voices do.
“My friend Rene has died”.
“I know. I am sorry”, said Robert.
“I need your help, because I have proof that Rene was murdered!”.
Italics. Never forget them. Now that we have the basic framework in place, we can spare the readers a couple of hundred pages of bumbling prose and cut straight to the action.
Langdon, a claustrophobe, took the Queen Elizabeth to Southhampton and flew into Geneva by Ryanair. He was meeting with Tim Berners Lee, a well known Mason and suspected to be a member of the Illuminati as well. Emmanuelle had indicated that their journey must with start with him. Tim didn’t mince any words.
“The Masons built the foundations of the internet”, he declared.
“I knew that. It makes sense. Masonry, foundation, cement, plumbing…”, said Langdon.
“But Sugar Mountain is threatening to destroy it”
“What did you just say?”
“Sugar Mountain”
“Who is Sugar Mountain?”
“I dont know. Ive been trying to find out..”
“Perhaps, it’s a code of some sort”
“I’ve had my best cryptographer friends look at it, and they have no clue. It’s an enigma”
“Wait..what did you just say?”
“Enigma”
“The German Cypher machine?”
“Yes”
“And German for Sugar Mountain is approximately Zucker Berg. That’s it. Sugar Mountain is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook”
“It makes sense. The Masons built the internet, and Zuckerberg is threatening to destroy it using Facebook”
“And he is going around killing Masons with superpoke!”
The first decade of the new millennium has come to an end. As a reader, you are typically presented with a whole cornucopia of ‘Best/ Worst of the Decade’ features on every Tom’s newspaper, Dick’s magazine and Harry’s Pottery website. ‘Top 10’, ‘Five most important’, ‘20 greatest hits’. And so on. If the feature is not a list of some sort, it is probably a retrospective where people who believe that bullet points and pictures are for noobs (The Hindu, for e.g), write lengthy paragraphs that meander about the decade like a Dr Who, flitting between subjects, space and time.
While there are columns galore on the subject of the top technology trends of the decade, and the greatest inventions of the past year and so on, nobody has explored the top technology trends that have radically, yet subtly changed life in Tamil Nadu. Things that we now take for granted but never accorded the pomp and fanfare that they deserved when they were introduced.
The Multifunction Mantra box
A truly game changing device that bought religious erudition to the masses, this low-cost device provided, at the press of a button, the voice of Bombay Sisters chanting the Mrityunjaya mantra (and many more) in glorious low fidelity. This path breaking invention rendered obsolete the need to be initiated and introduced to the mantras that (if one is of that religious persuasion) govern one’s entire life. This is the Douglas Adams’ Electric Monk for the Religious. In financial trouble? No worries. Just hit the Lakshmi Sthothram button and outsource your prayer to a low cost device. FC Kohli, the man who pioneered the Indian IT industry would have been proud. A closely related invention is the Gayatri Mantra door bell. If one has trouble meeting the stringent requirements of having to chant this a minimum 108 times a day, this doorbell is a lifesaver.
While the Mantrapod is not available yet, you can always buy the “Hindu ipod” here
The Kosubat – The citizens of Madras have always had an uneasy co-existence with mosquitos. The previous decade was spent being cheated by those unscrupulous companies that peddled “mosquito mats” that we later realized were literally what they were called, mats for the mosquitos to sit on and have a spot of evening tea.
Our anti-mosquito weaponry was severely limited at the start of this decade, with Tortoise coils being the only effective option. The problem with the smoke that these infernal coils generated was of that they didn’t do a good job of distinguishing between their need to suffocate mosquitos and simultaneously allow human sleepers to breathe. Redemption arrived eventually in the form of a tennis-bat shaped plastic framed weapon of mass-quito destruction, a metaphorical Hammer of Thor that vanquished these pesky critters with a wave of the hand. The Kosubat also made us all the Pol Pots of the mosquito universe. We actually have fun indulging in their genocide on a daily basis, watching them fry like popcorn between the high voltage metal strings of this lifesaving device.
ps: The term “Kosubat” was coined by Lavanya Mohan
The Share Auto – For many decades, the good citizens of this city were held ransom by autorickshaws that were hell bent on making largish dents in one’s life savings in exchange for a ride from Panagal Park to Pondy Bazaar. But then came the Share Auto, a box shaped, unstable moving object that could cram more people in than a Neutron star could cram atoms, and for a mere Rs. 15, transport the cost conscious Chennaiite from Loyola College to Avadi.
The Handheld Yagna Smoke Blowing Fan – For millennia, priests used handmade fans to blow smoke from yagnas. These fans were an extension of the priest’s hands and were expert at directing smoke straight into my eyes as I went about finding locations in my home where I wouldn’t go blind and suffocate to death. But by the middle of this decade, tech savvy priests, apart from flaunting Nokia N-Series smartphones, were also blowing smoke using miniature, battery operated fans. While it might not seem like much, this humble introduction of technology into day to day religious ritual was an inflection point, the moment when technology entered the temple. Booking archanas online, LED kutthuvalakkus, automatic beat-generation and bell-ringing machines at temples followed quickly after. Perhaps in a couple of years, my family priest’s junior assistant will carry a Kindle, loaded with mantra pdfs. Perhaps Indian guilds in World of Warcraft will conduct Ashwamedha Yagnas before going on quests.
This emerging aesthetic is…. Tampunk. Tampunk devices, to quote Sottai
- might be powered by fumes from sacrificial fires. Therefore, Tampunkers have to carry compressed cowdung cakes and igniters to
generate necessary smoke. - are always heavy, always ugly, with fantastically mismatched colour schemes
- Leopard print Earmuffs (as Karthik Krishnaswamy suggests)
- Uranium Powered Kosubats (DC powered for now)
So what else do you think defines the Tampunk genre?
Note: A shorter version of this piece appeared in the New Indian Express today
There’s a scene from my all-time favourite TV show “The Wire” where one of the drug kingpin’s lieutenant grabs hold of a sheet of paper that one of his underlings seems to be writing on and asks incredulously – “Don’t tell me you are writing the minutes of a meeting to discuss criminal conspiracy!” and then proceeds to shred it to pieces. Well, the actual words used were a little more colourful, but you get the picture.
Ah, but the online world is distinctly unshreddable.
So if you are a slacker, a member of that noble breed of creative individuals who refuse to let the burden of something as trivial as work get in the way of focussed inactivity or alternative non-value-adding hobbies, you need to be aware of this
The most pervasive philosophical message that has hounded me all of last month has been this
Your flight has been delayed due to late arrival of incoming aircraft
Yes. I’ve been traveling more than my DVT affected blood vessels can take and eating more microwaved-to-oblivion aircraft meals than my digestive system can tolerate. But between all of the nastiness of the travel itself, I’ve enjoyed visiting these places. This post is about my trip to Hong Kong. I had this devious idea that I would insert a “Click here to read more” link but devilishly redirect y’all to the Indibloggies voting page where you can exercise your franchise in my favour, but I decided against it, so please vote for my ability to resist cheap political tricks.
Anyway, It was precisely 5 minutes before my Boeing 767 touched down in HKIA that I got the traditional Indo-Chinese itch. It is the insufferable and unavoidable itch that every Indian has when suddenly encountering a large number of Chinese people – to ask them if they eat snakes. My curiosity had to wait, like a poor online retailer in Google’s secondary index, till the next day to satisfy itself with a restaurant menu that I realized is potentially every naughty young boy’s dream way to make his young female relatives throw up. Two items particularly caught my eye, but my stomach, that spent over two decades eating Paruppu Usili, resisted my brain’s temptation to boldly eat what I’ve never eaten before
- Fried Snake Balls (the balls are made from dough in case you thought otherwise)
- Snake soup
I then asked my office colleague Oliver (yeah yeah, I’ve seen Russell Peters so I did ask him what his real Chinese name was. His response was a 2 second ad jingle whose sound I remember but not the words) what snake tastes like. He told me that it was the tastiest kind of meat in Hong Kong and was standard fare for kids who were under the weather. Chinese penicillin, if you will. I also noticed a suspicious lack of Gujratis at the Jade Garden restaurant, but I realized that when Mr Patel walks into this place and orders tea and snakes, he will be in for a bit of a literal surprise.
The other thing I noticed was this wonderful habit of placing several aquarium tanks outside of restaurants.
Ah, I thought, perhaps they wish to put the visiting guest at peace by getting them to gaze at Turtles, Crabs and assorted crustaceans. It was a bit like The Sims game, where one gets “happiness” points for staring at fish. Of course, when I saw the steamed turtle menu item (they had a picture, I can’t read Chinese) I realized that the Chinese variation of the popular maxim that goes “Eat food to live, not the other way around” must read “Confucius says Eat food that’s been living just a moment ago, and not stale stuff from the fishmonger”
After finishing my first real Chinese meal, and Sottai, no, they did not have Gobi manchurian and Hong Kong Noodles, I took a walk down the insanely crowded streets of Wan Chai and saw this
It’s simple really. Some creative entrepreneur might have seen the idiomatic expression “foot in the mouth” and imagined that these decadent westerners like to eat the leggy parts of livestock, so literally “foot in the mouth”, and what better foot than a really large foot in the mouth eh? So “Giant Foot Restaurant”.
I was also Shaquille O’Neal as far as Hong Kong was concerned. Never before has 5 feet 9 felt this tall. So, now that I’ve exhausted all my cheap desi shots at the Chinese, let’s get to the actual travelogue.
I was actually brimming with excitement over being able to use Mandarin for the first time with regular people and I had one of those FFFFUUUUUU moments when I first heard Cantonese being spoken. I felt like a student who had just learnt Vara Veena walking into a class where Ragam-Thanam-Pallavi was being taught. Oliver told me Cantonese has 9 tones to Mandarin’s 4. If Mandarin was Mohanam, Cantonese was Thodi. Thodi mushkil, I mean.
There’s also bit of British Raj hangover that HK suffers from. If China was about “Nee Hao”, HK is about “Nee Hao are you old chap?”. Everybody dresses impeccably in perfectly tailored business suits. Garment stores in HK have it rather easy. All they need to do is locate medium sized kids clothing in Texas and pass it off as XXXL in HK. In most places, the largest size available is the size I wear, a respectable M in most continents (In Texas OTOH, my clothing size will fit an armadillo on a diet).
If you are tourist spending a couple of days, the best advice I can give you is to buy the MTR tourist day pass, that will let you use the subway like a horny sailor who’s just returned after a year at sea to um..Amsterdam. You can get from any point in HK to another in about 30 minutes and it will save you a packet of money along the way.
My first destination was Victoria Peak, a place from where most martial arts movies opening scenes are shot, a sweeping panorama of the famous Hong Kong skyline (which usually then cuts to a Mercedez Benz opening to let out a white silk suited villian who shoots an innocent man in the face to set in motion a chain of events involving a whole lot of Kung Fu and funny English subtitles). A small note of warning to tourists. The Peak Tram that takes you up has two kinds of tickets. One that only takes you to the top and the other that gives you access to the terrace from where you can get a view of Hong Kong from the top. You had better cough up the extra 10 HKD for the terrace view because if you dont, the very same ticket costs double once you reach the top.
After that I crossed the bay to the Kowloon peninsula to see the 10,000 Buddhas monastery at Shi Tin, and I am not Shi Tin you, there are 12,800 statues of Buddha at that place, but they all look a bit Chinese and dont conform to our traditional mental image of the Buddha as a chap with closed eyes and evil designs on Singur.
I also noticed that despite globalization and the ruthless spread of western culture, we Asians have still not forgotten our ancient traditions, in this case, the noble art of graffiti
On the way back from the monastery, I stopped at Mongkok (which is not, as many of you might think, a french possessive reference to one’s virility) to do some shopping. It’ the HK equivalent of Ranganathan street. I attempted to put all my newly learnt Mandarin skillz to use and tried bargaining using numbers in Mandarin. One elderly woman at the market gave me a look that suggested that despite her age, she could defy the laws of gravity and land one deft kung fu blow to my mouth to stop me from massacring her (second) language, so I stopped right away. We then resorted to the traditional bargaining channels that vendors there use with tourists. The calculator. She typed 200 HKD. I hit the C button and typed 100. She put on a pained expression and suggested 150 as the absolute final price. I then unleashed my “walk away” move. She beckoned me back and at 120 HKD, I bought 7 Calvin Klein designer watches. Of course CK “designed” those watches but the nice folks back in Shenzhen simply found them too easy to copy and manufacture at a price point where one can buy a coca cola in the US.
Mongkok also has a jawdropping computer/electronics market if one is a gadget/gizmo lover. I saw a perfectly designed Macbook air ripoff running Windows 7 and also a “High” Phone, I kid you not.
But at the end of my trip, I realized that it wasn’t the skyline, or the food or the Chinese made Rolex ripoffs that will define Hong Kong for me. For my generation, it will always be this man.
I grew up bang in the middle of the Karate craze in India. Every Tom Yum, Kick and Cha Lee was teaching Karate in those days. I had friends in Vidya Mandir who referred to the Maths teacher as “Miss” and their Karate teacher as “Sensei”. Skinny, malnourished kids wearing Orange belts broke pre-broken blocks of wood and learnt to count in Japanese. For this crowd, Bruce Lee was god, and Hong Kong was Mount Kailash, from where he flexed muscles that I never knew existed and demonstrated basic geometry by showing us obtuse angles and reflex angles between his legs. My schoolmates often claimed to have secret knowledge of unknown sequels such as Return of the Entrance of the Second exit after the first right entry of the Dragon where they claimed that Bruce Lee unleashed new and secret karate styles like the Cobra style or Duck-billed Platypus style. Yeah, it was the good old days before Wikipedia and IMDB when kids could make shit up without being caught out.
So as a finale to my Hong Kong trip, as a tribute to Hong Kong martial arts movies*, I present to you, scenes from Sholay, subtitled by those good folks who wrote them for Bruce Lee movies
PS: Hong Kong movies were martial arts movies. Yash Chopra on the other hand makes marital arts movies
PS 1: My wife’s GTalk status message read “King Kong has gone to Hong Kong” for the duration of my trip
I realize that it’s been a while since my last blog post. As I sat around airports and hotel rooms over the last couple of weeks wondering when to publish my next post, this happened:
http://www.indibloggies.org/nominations-2008
I put two and two together and decided that it was funny in a darkly ironic way that politicians normally fail to deliver and then come looking for votes during election time. So it logically follows
Yes yes, you might point out that the poster is recycled from an earlier post. The hallmark of a good Indian politician is not only his ability to make one laugh till one cries, but the ability to reuse, recycle and republish posters, manifestos and ideologies, so there.
So people, vote for me. Let freedom ring like a doorbell that plays the Gayathri mantra. Yes we can, I say. This is change we can believe in. I think, therefore I aam aadmi. India is shining with the clicks of a million blog readers and the rofls of millions. Lal Krishna Advani might have failed, but Lolz Krish Ashok will not.
My manifesto
- I promise to post once every week
- I promise to respond to every comment, politely
- I promise to use a combination of Google Calendar, Basecamp, Post it notes, Phone alarms and plain ol’ memory to remember to keep my promises
- I promise to do item nr 3
- I will continue to tweet
- I will tweet my posts
- I will post my tweets
In addition, I declare that all blog reading citizens will be given posts in full colour. We will also undertake a full fledged agitation at the central level against the imposition of chatspeak as it is against our traditional Wren and Martin culture. Where there are masks, I will expose their temples. If they slap me on one cheek, I will crack jokes so that they say “what cheek!”.
It is our destiny, and destiny has a child. It’s called Beyond Say, and this blog will continue to look beyond and say the unobvious
Jai Hind
Update: I would like to announce some pre-poll alliances. Our Coalition of the Shilling, newly minted PUB (Progressive Union of Bloggers) includes
- Max Da Vinci – For best entertainment blog
- Bikerdude – For best personal blog
- Ramesh Srivats – For best new indiblog
- Rakesh Jhunjhunwala – Best personal indiblog
Please vote for them.
ps: The various city chapters of PUB are called Madras Union of Bloggers (MUB), Bengaluru Educated and Entertaining wRiters (BEER) and Hyderabad Online Pranksters (HOP), Delhi Online Progressive Entertainers (DOPE), Calcutta Association of Multifarious Pranksters Assembling Regularly on Internet (CAMPARI), Cochin Online Gang for Nefarious Activities & Conversations (COGNAC), Trichy Internet Professionals & Sly Yahoos(TIPSY) and finally the Ranipet Ultra-laughter Macchaans (RUM)
More alliances are being worked out as we speak.
UPDATE: The polls are open. Please vote here – http://multivote.sparklit.com/web_poll.spark/21900
