I saw this video.
Then I saw two crows (presumably the ones that dispossessed my neighbour’s Labrador of his biscuit) deep in conversation. I listened and transcribed their conversation for my readers
Surely, somebody, somewhere in the dark recesses of ISRO is speculating that the launch of Chandrayaan was astrologically inauspicious, and that the failure to account for the Katapayaadi Sankhya of Mars being malefic in Capricorn while calculating the launch time. Or perhaps it was Rahu kaalam when it went on its way.
Original Image credits: Johniponken
Did you know that regular urban crows in Madras, the ones with the grey neck have a caw that is distinctly atonal and harsh sounding compared to the larger jungle crows (Ravens, Andankaakka), which have a softer, tonally pleasing caw despite their unfortunate (and mythical, I might add) employment as Yama’s messengers. Perhaps it was by design. If ravens are harbingers of doom, it makes a certain morbid sense for them to have a more pleasing ‘harbinging’ voice so that they can say – “You are all about to die” but say it in a dulcet voice that softens the impact of the message.
I once tried taking my guitar tuner near a raven to measure his caw frequency, but the crow did not seem very comfortable with that situation. He let out one brief caw before flying away, and that registered at E flat momentarily on my tuner. Next time, I hope to try this experiment by leaving some rice and the tuner right next to it (and hope the crow does not get interested in Korg tuners). Of course, since I cannot see the readings on a tuner from a distance and the tuner does not record its readings, I will have to leave my cellphone (with its video camera running) near the tuner (and hope the crow does not get interested in touch screen mobile phones). Or I could try Puppy Manohar’s brilliant solution
That apart, jungle crows tend to be loners while these greynecks stick together, like birds of a feather and all that. Greynecks are also smart. They will collaborate to steal food from dumber animals. I have seen them cheat my neighbour’s hapless Labrador of his snack biscuits by co-ordinating a smooth distract-and-pilfer manoeuvre with one of the crows first making enough noise to convince the dog that it is worth his effort to leave his biscuits, lift his bulky labrador body and come chasing after the crow. The dog of course obliges and chases after the bird. The crow then says “caw-caw-caw-ca-ca-caw“, which translates to “How is it that you never seem to remember that I have wings?” and flies away to safety. The dog, with his characteristic labrador fat tail wagging furiously, tongue hanging out and panting, is now mentally cursing himself, not for forgetting that crows can elevate themselves, but for forgetting that Mr Crow probably has an accomplice who is, at this very moment, picking up his biscuits and saying “caw-caw ca-ca“, which translates to “So long, sucker”. He then goes back to his spot, dejected, and lies down with his jaw resting on the ground and puts on his trademark sad-eyed look that says “I could do with a few more biscuits”. I could walk up to him at that moment and read aloud Lonely planet’s review of Madras and he wouldn’t care, unless he smelled biscuits on me. Dogs can be remarkably sophisticated when it comes to the incredible simplicity of their lives.
Now, why am I telling you all of this? Because I promised to.
And also because, 300+ comments, regionalist hate, and an unchanged Lonely Planet entry later, I needed a therapeutic post. Because Lonely Planet does not matter. In my desire to rebut their craptastic overview, I had to assume that their review actually matters in some meaningful sense, because unless they mattered, my post wouldn’t matter and if my post didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have posted, and since I did, this ridiculous chain of illogic must come to an end somewhere. Let’s just say that it was just one of those xkcd-esque moments. Somebody was wrong on the internet, and I had to get involved.
If you want to read a real introduction to Madras, read maami’s, not Lonely Planet’s.
I decided instead to make some small updates to my Madras map
And I also give my neighbour’s labrador some Tiger biscuits. He approves.
Update before you read this: Lonely Planet seems to be in the process of editing their piece on Madras since this post. Some of inaccurate references are now gone, but the opening paragraph is still nasty and compared to Delhi, still a turn off. But all the same, thank you LP, for your quick response. I am hoping that the editorial team actually does some real research this time before finalizing the article.
Another Update: After a couple of days of random edits, looks like the article is back to its original craptasticity. No change in tone, still sounds like it was written by a poorly informed, close minded writer with a serious grudge against the city.
Dear Lonely Planet
I came across your entry for Chennai (Madras), and like a responsible citizen coming across a crumpled, empty packet of Lays chips on the street, I feel it is my responsibility to move it to the dustbin. But that would be rude of me, and Madras tradition demands that I invite you for a cup of filter coffee and a have a healthy discussion instead on the subject of urban cleanliness. As the person who originally pointed me to your article said, the problem with your piece is that it is about as far away from objective reality as Ramesh Powar is from Mutthiah Muralidharan’s world record. You romanticize the problems of other Indian cities while at the same time unzipping your fly and letting loose at Madras.
But wait a second. So I have a problem with one magazine’s portrayal of my city and I choose to rant about it online, eh? Too commonplace, and frankly, that’s not Madras’ style really. See, even in Tamil movies, when a hero is not given a chair to sit on, he does not immediately beat the shit out of everyone in the scene, but instead, fashions a seat for himself by the creative use of an angavastram. I mean, I could take each one of your claims, and comment on them rather critically. Like for example
Chennai has neither the cosmopolitan, prosperous air of Mumbai (Bombay)
So, the 24/7 crowds at Saravana Stores in T Nagar do not represent prosperity because it’s the prosperity of the lower middle class, while swanky malls that sell cups of sweet corn for Rs 40 and theater tickets that cost more than a bypass surgery represent prosperity elsewhere? To paraphrase Rajini, rich-getting-richer and poor-getting-poorer is not prosperity, but slightly-poor-getting-slightly-rich all around is. And then we have
the optimistic buzz of Bengaluru (Bangalore)
Um, with no disrespect to Bangalore, a city I have lived in and loved, the only buzz I hear is the rumble of a million cars stalled in back-to-back traffic, and the pessimistic buzz of travelers waiting to get inside the city from its new airport that is practically light years away
difficult to get around
O really? You mean, more difficult than Bangalore? The public transportation system in Madras is far more comprehensive than Bangalore or Hyderabad. And to top off your first paragraph, we have this gem
Even the movie stars are, as one Chennaiker put it, ‘not that hot’.
Once I read that, I felt like a Mylaporean complaining about the quality of Idli in Darjeeling, like Michael Schumacher complaining about the lack of acceleration in an Ambassador. For starters, who the haemoglobin leaking four letter profanity is a “Chennaikar”? An obscure opening batsman for the Mumbai Ranji team I did not know about? The only thing remotely resembling a “Chennaikar” is a Hyundai Santro. It’s Delhiite, Banglorean, Hyderabadi, Chennaiite (if you have to), Calcuttan (or simply Dada) and finally Mumbaikar. I mean, who wrote this piece? A random amit who did not like the chapathi at Saravana Bhavan? Or somebody whose company forcibly transferred him to Madras? And I’m not even going to get the part about thermodynamically challenged movie stars.
Deep breath. Ok. Sorry. I had to get that out of the way. I suppose it’s because I lived in Delhi and Bombay before I settled down in Madras, so getting confrontational about trivialities is a bad habit I’m trying hard to shake off. So now, let’s get down to the Madras way to dealing with this. Let’s assume we are at Mylai Karpagambal mess (which you do not mention in your article) eating Keerai Vadai (which you do not recommend in your article) sipping on filter coffee (which you mention….no..wait..you dont, bloody amit) and I make the following observations
- Hey, people who love the cities they live in love them very much. They will romanticize their every weakness (like you do for Mumbai and Delhi). So Delhi, while being filled with glittering gems and captivating ancient monuments, to quote your article, warrants no mention of its scary crime rate, while Mumbai has an “inebriating mix” of grinding poverty and swanky restaurants. How can grinding poverty be an ingredient in your inebriating cocktail?
- People who hate the cities they pass through, like amits who work in the IT industry, will always ignore everything that is good about a city (like the beaches, sea food, ancient temples and cultural heritage in Madras just for starters)
So I propose to you that you cannot be fair and balanced if you only romanticize or severely criticize. So since you present an amit view of Madras, how about a Bihari view of Mumbai? Your article says
Measure out: one part Hollywood; six parts traffic; a bunch of rich power-moguls; stir in half a dozen colonial relics (use big ones); pour in six heaped cups of poverty; add a smattering of swish bars and restaurants (don’t skimp on quality here for best results); equal parts of mayhem and order; as many ancient bazaars as you have lying around; a handful of Hinduism; a dash of Islam; fold in your mixture with equal parts India; throw it all in a blender on high (adding generous helpings of pollution to taste) and presto: Mumbai.
How about we Biharize or Jharkandize that paragraph like this?
Measure out: one part plagiarized Hollywood, six parts car driving assholes who would like nothing more than to run us over, a bunch of feudal power-moguls, stir in half a dozen hate mongering Maratha morons like Raj Thackeray, pour in six heaped cups of grinding poverty that comes to Mumbai in the vain hope of a better life, add a smattering of swish bars and restaurants that employ us as cleaners and exploits us all the time, a handful of saffronized Hinduism out to slaughter the poor muslims among us, a dash of radical Islam out to terrorize the innocent, fold in your uncomfortable mixture with equal parts a callous India that couldnt care less for the labourers from my state, throw it all in a blender, spit in chewed pan, and add generous helpings of smug feelings of superiority, and presto: Mumbai
By itself, it would be rather unfair right? How about this view of Delhi, as seen through the eyes of a Madrasi?
Delhi, that festering pit of immorality, that hellhole of rape, corruption and violence, is a city that glorifies showines and materialistic consumption. But that apart, a good idli will set you back by Rs 70, which is ridiculous really. It’s also a bit like the US, in the sense that Delhiites rarely know that there is this rather large place called “The Rest of India” that surrounds the city in all directions. For example, they call Bangloreans Madrasis, which sort of pisses them off. Also, every guy in the city is named amit for some reason
You get my drift? Your piece on Madras looks like it was written by someone who hates the city. So how about you get a real person from Madras to write your piece (just like the ones that wrote for the other cities) and do my city the justice it deserves.
Thank you
PS: If you introduce me to the person who wrote this, I will gladly treat him to keerai vadai at Mylapore and then over coffee, we can discuss some of the nicer aspects of Madras he so unfairly ignores.
PS 2: If you believe Madras does deserve a better travelogue, the feedback link is here
PS 3: Don’t forget to follow @the_amit
PS4: For a more reasoned rebuttal of the Lonely Planet piece, read this
PS5: And for a real guide to the city, no one does it better than maami
PS6: It also turns out that Sharanya wrote about this almost 10 months ago, and Ravages pointed out pretty much most of what I did (and more). So there.
PS7: More research here on Dilip’s blog
Preface
Update: The general feedback says that the original preface was a little dense, so I’ve moved it to the end, because denser/heavier things always sink to the bottom.
The following tale is set in an alternate Madras universe. It’s called “The Parallelogue”
The Parallelogue
The bus was 47A. Behind it was engraved
There was once a girl from Madras,
who was wheatish, demure and BA pass.
She ran into a bloke one day,
on bus number 47 A,
she reported him for eve teasing to the police brass- Anon
Right next to the limerick was crudely etched -
Nandhini loves Karthi
And next to that, in black paint -
P James Magic Show 9841072571
I woke up with a headache. Sleeping late always gave me a headache in the morning. My friend had kept me up all night explaining this stupid new game he had learnt from his Brit friends. After a couple of hours of listening to the rules of this game that shared its name with an annoying insect, I told him it wouldn’t catch on. Why, he asked. For starters, it’s too biased in favour of individual performers, I said. It’s a team game only in the sense of bowling and batting peacocks doing a mating dance while the fielding crows watch and occasionally run after the ball. Then we have all of this ridiculously expensive equipment and a playing surface that requires some badass gardening skills to put together. The middle class will hate it, I predicted. This game is tailor made for 2 kinds of kids – Bullies and rich spoiled brats. The rich ones will bring the equipment while the bullies will do all the batting and bowling, I conjectured. And all of this will mostly leave traumatic childhood memories in most children who happen to be fielding crows all their lives.
I drank my filter tea. It cleared my headache.
I dressed and took an auto to work. I am an English teacher. The auto driver drove at a constant speed of 40 km/hr and spoke to me about the finer aspects of post-modern Thirukkuralism. I kept an eye on the meter. He smiled and told me to relax. The meter will run as fast as you want it to, he said. What if I say – don’t run at all, I asked. Ah, he said. That is the point. The meter represents your state of mind, he said. He dropped me off at the school, and I thanked him for my daily dose of philosophy.
I said Hi to the other teachers. We were all in uniform. The kids wore what they pleased. I walked into my class. I said -
“When I was young, my college mates were memorizing word lists, learning things like “cogent”, which for reasons only known to aerial italian food, means “Logical and persuasive, as in making a cogent argument”, and learning not to misspell “supersede” and “colloquy”, I, on the other hand, was memorizing said word lists just so that I could solve cryptic crosswords faster and win the annual “What’s the Good Word” competition at BITS Pilani. It also helped me get better at Scrabble (Ah the joy of 7 letter word bonuses). So what’s the difference? My friends have forgotten what “dilatory” means, while I still know that it’s a personal diary written well after the fact. I also know that “cogent”, in fact, refers to your male roommate who studies or works at the same place you do. “Crepuscular” is an adjective that describes something that is well-toned, healthy and looks like a Dosa. “Maudlin” is an altered distribution of Torvalds’ OS, while “Petard (John-Luc)” is a grenade that is shaped like a smooth bald head and says “Make it so” before going off. And finally, “dulcimer” is a quality that describes the taste of food that has undergone low intensity heating for too long.”
The bell rang. It was lunch time.
We, the teachers, walked into a restaurant. The Pacchayappan High Class Non-Veg Restaurant. The Menu read -
Vegetable Jaipuri
young, innocent plant embryos and uteri transported long distances to be savagely slaughtered, callously cut, sinfully sliced, brutally boiled and finally, fiendishly fried in horrendously hot oil
Mutton Biriyani
Well fed and cared-for goats, lovingly tended to and allowed to freely roam, then humanely and quickly separated from the land of the living to nourish the eater with precious protein
Aloo Paratha
Baby grass cruelly hacked from mother plant, left alone to dry in the hot baking sun, then mercilessly ground to a fine powder, flooded with water, turned into a sticky dough devoid of shape and dignity, flattened with blunt cylindrical weapons, mixed with roots of a starchy tuber, separated from the rest of the plant which dies a horrible death, and fried on a hot griddle and served with calf-nourishment liquid cruelly squeezed out of a lactating cow and allowed to be ravaged by bacteria
Chicken Tikka
Freely roaming, lovingly cared-for fowl mercifully spared the pointlessness of a long life on a warming, polluted planet, bones carefully removed after death to make for a succulent snack that honours the bird’s rich textured life
It was Friday. The guys suggested a movie later in the evening. I agreed. We saw “Dandanaka Dubakoor”, a commercial entertainer that had item songs featuring sensitive, clean-shaven men doing the dishes at home. The Hero was Vijaya, and the general plot involved her and her cohorts solving global problems using diplomacy, conversation and extended shopping trips.
I came back home and switched on the TV. The news anchor was annoying beyond belief. She was wasting my time with a detailed analysis of why a certain politician should be sacked because he used “economy class” and “member of the flight crew” instead of the politically correct “Cattle Class” and “Air Item”. I hit the red button. It sent a small electric shock directly to Barkha Goswami, reminding her that what she was doing was irresponsible journalism.
That was when I remembered that I had to attend a colleague’s wedding. Damn, I thought. I walked over to my Ubuntu PC, and logged into their wedding website. I looked though my photo album and picked a reasonably flattering looking photo of myself and uploaded it to the site. Within 5 minutes, my image was photoshopped/video-edited into the reception video, where I posed uncomfortably still for the video camera. I hit the “Send the same old Tea set as a gift” button, and hit logout. “Please have dinner and go”, said a popup. I sighed. I clicked OK.
In 30 minutes, the wedding dinner was home-delivered. Chapathi, Paruppu usili, Paneer Butter masala, Sambar rice, 3 pieces of potato chips, followed by Gulab jamoon, Ras malai, vanilla icecream and Beeda. And a garish business card that read “Parasakthi Caterers”. Matches are made in heaven. Dinners are made in oven. Dont let Ivan or Avan cook the meal of your life. Trust us
In case you were wondering, the actual wedding took place on Twitter earlier in the day . chi_arjun and sow_bhanu now follow each other.
sow_bhanu used to follow me. She teaches Science at my school. She left me because my torrent upload/download ratio fell below 1
Such is life.
The end
Postface
Update: This was originally the preface, but most people found it too dense.
Writing Science fiction is hard, because any good sci-fi worth its crystalline Sodium Chloride has to satisfy the nerd audience, and that is very hard to do because that’s a demographic that has the time, energy and a sufficient lack of mental entropy to find the slightest of violations of the laws of physics the author might indulge in, even if these are laws that the writer made up himself. So if I wrote a story where the speed of light is 30 km/hour but kept the distance between the Sun and the Earth at 150 million km, nerds would tear me up (on online discussion boards, i.e.) because they would contend that life would never have evolved unless I adjusted several other factors suitably (like the half-lives of elements, for starters).
So the sci-fi fan’s foremost requirement is that the author obey the proverbial Shakespearean rule “To thine own self be true”, or to rephrase “If you are going to invent a completely implausible universe, stick to the stated details and boundaries of your own implausibility”. But, authors have a couple of tricks that they use, in fact sometimes too often. One of them is the notion of a “parallel universe”. So every time you read a story that involves a parallel universe (a.k.a alternate timeline, a.k.a circum-positioning of threaded jasmine flowers around auditory cavity), you know that the writer is simply being lazy. Parallel universes are convenient, too convenient in fact. The author simply gets to choose what changes in a parallel universe without explaining any of the dubious underlying mechanisms that cause them. With an alternate timeline, I don’t have to explain anything. I could write something like -
“The crow gobbled up the rice and dal kept on the window sill and let out a sonic, mind-altering caw that caused everyone in the house to fall down unconscious.”
and when the nerd says – “Explain that”, I say “Parallel universe. Altered evolutionary timeline”, and the nerd then experiences an aneurysm and goes back to playing World of Warcraft. In case you were still not sure where this was going, like a tourist trapped in a Madras auto with the meter running, this is a vague justification of sorts for the story you just read. Hopefully
One of the side effects of growing up in a media starved era (like the 1980s and early 90s) in India is the often strange fondness and attachment I tend to have for the often questionable content that used air on TV in those days, most of which has not exactly aged well. Byomkesh Bakshi is a good example. As much as I was riveted to the TV set when it used to air, any kid today will find it too full of logical holes and just not exciting enough. But if there is something that has aged well, it’s the ubiquitous filler of that era – Mile Sur Mera Tumhara. I’ve always wanted to see a “Making of” video, with bloopers and all, but I’m guessing DD never shot one, so here’s my take.
The room was smoky, as several men (and one token woman) wearing safari suits (the woman was wearing a saree FYI) sat, in reasonably rapt attention at the gentleman wearing the most expensive safari suit (Raymonds) who was clearly the boss because he was standing at the head of the table, while the others were seated on the sides and importantly, were letting their tea go cold. Nobody lets their official tea go cold, unless the Big Safari Suit Boss was saying something earth-shatteringly important.
“Right everybody. We’ve been commissioned to make a mega-jing-bang-extravaganzic national integration video by our bosses in South Block. Ideas?”
“How about a psychedelic collage of visuals set to music by Ravi Shankar?”
“Nope. The Beatles did that in the 60s”
“How about featuring top Indian athletes running across the country with a torch of unity, except that this time, we’ll add words to the music”
“Nah. That sounds like a sequel. I want something more original”
“Saar. I think we should get our honourable prime minister, the honourable home minister, his excellency the president, his holiness the Shankaracharya and other eminent personalities, and make them sit on a dais. After that, we must have Lata Mangeshkar sing a soulful prayer song. Then you must give an inaugural address, and then invite the dignitaries on stage to light a Kutthu-vilakku. Then the honourable prime minister will give a Keynote address. After that, we must have a felicitation, featuring bouquets and large gold-plated mementos. That will be followed by the Special Address by the Home minister, and then finally, a vote of thanks. Of course, we must get Sridevi to compere the show and intersperse the proceedings with inspirational quotes by Gandhi and Nehru. This entire event will be recorded and set to the background tune of our national anthem played at 60 beats per minute.”
There was silence. Not because most of the attendees were asleep by this point, but because they kept themselves forcibly awake when they realized that the Big Boss was paying close attention to this pathbreaking idea.
“Brilliant. Simply brilliant, but we have one problem. 6 minutes only. My esteemed colleague’s idea will need at least 1 hour to do justice to. So, any other ideas?”
—————————————————————-
The English teacher at the school where the Big Safari Suit Boss’ daughter studied, was teaching possessive pronouns, and she wrote on the board
This is my sound
She looked back at the class, just to check if any note-exchanging or other non-approved activities were taking place. She turned back to the board and wrote
This is your sound
She turned back, and decided that the students needed to exercise their grey cells just a little bit. She asked them
Now, what will happen when we put my sound and your sound together
Silence.
Think, class. Think. Suppose I have some money, and you have some money, and I say, let’s put it together and spend it together. Now how would we describe that collective sum of money?
More silence.
Anybody who answers this gets 5 extra marks in the quarterly exams
Utter Cacophony.
One at a time. One at a time. No, the answer is not “It will become a mutual fund”, or “It will be stolen by Harshad Mehta”. Yes, that is right. It will become “our money”, and therefore it follows, “our sound”. Now, practise this well at home children. I’ll see you tomorrow
The Big Safari Suit Boss usually sent his official car, with red lights and all, to pick his daughter up at school. The little girl kept saying “My sound. Your sound. Our sound” over and over again, thus imprinting it firmly in the driver’s memory, who then kept repeating it when he drove his boss, who then, suddenly, had a brilliant idea
———————————————————————
The team was back in the smoke filled room.
“Remind me to ask the peon to go a little easy on the agarbatties next time. I can’t even see your faces, for god’s sake”
“Anyway. We have our concept, my esteemed colleagues. “Mile sur mera tumhaara, tho sur bane hamaara”. Now, I need ideas for the video.”
“Saar. How about we feature children from all parts of India dressed in traditional dresses and make a Nationally Integrated Fancy Dress Competition Video set to this song?”
“No. I need something more sweeping, majestic, patriotic and immensely memorable”
———————————————————-
The director was pensive, sitting in his chair (that read “Director” at the back) and he had his thinking cap on. Well, it was actually a beret to help him cover his male-pattern baldness, but it was his lucky charm, and he had worn it for the last 2 decades. This was a challenging assignment though. 6 minutes is all he had, in which the diversity of India had to be highlighted. The cast had been assembled, and he had less than a week to shoot this. There was no time for retakes or for that matter, editing. He had one shot at this, and it was going to be difficult. He knew it.
“Mr Joshi, we need you to sing something in Bhairavi (a.k.a Sindhu Bhairavi in Carnatic), and since it’s Hindi, and it represents more people in India than any other language, I’ll give you 60 seconds”
“Next up, Mr Dal Lake boatman, how about a hilly sounding, folksy rendition of the Mile sur line while you paddle across the lake?
“Miss Azmi, I’m sorry, we need to spend a little more time on this aerial view of the Taj instead of focussing on your shampoo-ad hair”
“Ok next up, we need a Sindhi celebrity. Wait. what? You cant find anyone? What about all those big businessmen? Real estate tycoons? Damn, we have a deadline to meet. Can you find any singers? Actors? No? No one? Damn. Wait. What did you say? You have a short bespectacled, one-series wonder leg spinner who can bathroom sing? Ok. bring him on then. We’ll manage”
“What do you mean the Punjabis are insisting on a 30 second massive Bhangra collective dance? No. I’m sick of that. Let’s just put all of them on a tractor”
“Ok Urdu now. Let’s just seat all these people on a porch and let’s have that lady sing one of those longing evocative lines while appearing suitably north-indianly demure. What? How many men and how many women? Dude, this is North India you are talking about. 6 guys and 1 girl, that should do. It’s perfectly representative of the gender ratio in the north”
“Ok. That’s a wrap for today. We’ll do the South and East tomorrow”
——————————————————
“Yes, what the $%#& do you mean, Revathi? She is from Kerala, you dimwit.”
“And Mr Kamal, I would like you to look like Rodin’s thinker, with clothes on, and sitting on the beach, i.e”
“I hope you realize that just inviting me and not inviting Rajinikanth/Mohanlal/Mamootty/Raajkumar is a faux pas of colossal proportions. I’m just going to put on a bemused these-amits-dont-know-a-thing-about-the-south kind of expression. I hope you dont mind”
“Mr Balamurali, I perfectly understand that you are a genius, a prodigy and a musical savant, but we only have like 5 minutes so I am afraid I cannot allow you to sing a Ragam-Thaanam-Pallavi in Muralidhwani, a 4-note raga that you have specially invented for this occasion. It just wont fit in. How about we do stick to Sindhu Bhairavi, and like these nice Karnataka, Andhra and Kerala representatives, keep it to a single line, 10 seconds or less please. Shall we go ahead. Action”
“Isai than..namm..iruvarin..This is not looking good. This line gives me the feeling that he aint nowhere close to being done yet. Isai per…Oh damn. Shit. shit. shit. He’s going high now. 15 seconds up. Aagiser aarugal…Damn. Hey. Sriharikota, we have a problem, let’s cut out Bhojpuri, and reduce all of the North east to a 5 second dance…Nam…isai..(rapid ascent up steep mountain followed by bungee jump from peak, soaring downwards and then finally swinging back up)”
“Thank you Balamurali sir. And no. I know you are from Andhra Pradesh, but I’m afraid I cant let you sing the Telugu version of Mile sur as well”
“Ok. Lets have 20 seconds of dancey kinda thakadhimi stuff. At high speed. Pronto”
“Karnataka yes – Prakash, keep smiling at the camera, you strange man next to him, I don’t know who you are, but just keep staring at the lady on top, alright. Dont look at the camera.”
“Telugu folks, great. Listen. Since we gave your guy Balamurali a rather unplanned run, we’re gonna have to cut you short. I’m really sorry”
“Good afternoon, my fellow Keralites. we have a bit of situation. I’m afraid we cant quite do the Kathakali infused with Mohinattam in front of bejwelled elephants with the Chanda kottu background bit. Thanks to Balamurali, I’m afraid we can only accomodate the elephant and mahout. And just 1 line please. Sorry.”
Listen, Mr director, what Bangal sings today, India will sing tomorrow. We cannot sing Tomar Shoor in the rapid and unseemly tempo that everyone seems to be singing it in. We would like to slow it down to half speed, and also shoot the video in slow motion. Yes, we have several eminent Bengalis ready to walk out of the metro. Teek achey? Lets roll. Hello, Mr Orun Lal? Who let Orun Lal in? Nevermind”
Assamese – one line only please, and no, we cannot feature a Bodo version as well. And no rhinos, alright?”
“The rest of the North east – you’ve got 5 seconds. Joined-at-the-waist Tribal dance please..”
————————————————–
And so on.
Bloopers
The Kashmiri boatman topples over. The tractor develops engine trouble. The Taj aerial view accidentally captures the Sand mafia stealing cartloads of sand from the Yamuna banks. Hirwani is stung by a jellyfish as he walks on the beach. The elephant with the mahout decides to sit down and roll in the mud. All of the Bengalis walking out of the metro are smoking Charminar cigarettes. One of the kids in the white coloured dress is wearing a “Che Guevara” shirt while running in to form the tricolour.
Of all inglorious insults heaped on day to day objects as we go about our quotidian lives, and I say this specifically because I’ve always wanted to use the word “quotidian” in a meaningful and intelligent way just so I could claim that my efforts at mugging up GRE word lists for the purposes of winning Scrabble death matches at college did not go in vain, and as I find myself scampering to bring this rogue sentence back under house arrest for the purposes of achieving coherence, I realize that I’ve failed utterly and completely.
I could, like James Tiberius Kirk, resort to dramatically short sentences. Like this. But since I mention the man who has had more conjugal relations with, as Mr Jeppiyaar might put, female members of the opposite sexual gender, than anybody else in fiction, I realize that Kirk does alternatively conjure up images of soaring flight, which, if not a fair metaphor to use while describing my Kingfisher flight from Pune to Chennai, still provides me with a semblance of a whiff of a fraction of an excuse to finally get back to the subject at hand, the one about insults of an inglorious kind being heaped on day to day objects, and before I forget, on a quotidian basis
The object in question is actually a bottle of Pune’s finest Mango pickle, gifted by a colleague who was apparently unaware of check-in restrictions on a rather broad category of matter called “liquids”. As I type this while listening to the latest output of Kingfisher’s amply staffed “Regret Department”, supported admirably by aircraft that are both incoming and late, a department that, with astonishing facility and productivity, generates regrets like a General Motors factory churning out unreliable gas guzzlers, I look back forlornly at the Security Check counter, where I can still catch a glimpse of my Mango pickle which will spend the rest of its unfortunate life enriching the taste of Roti and Dal at the home of an airport security officer.
It looked at me with a guilty eye and seemed to say :
Why am I the one to suffer this insult? My friends, the three packets of Bhakarwadi that were giving me company in the Reliance Fresh plastic bag that you carried to the airport, are now at your side, unkidnapped by the illogic of the “no liquids” rule that defies common sense like the 300 Spartan soliders who troubled Xerxes and his army. Why? Am I a potential bomb? The worst damage I could do is convince people to eat an inordinately large quantity of myself and feel certain unpleasant digestive side-effects, and even those aren’t evident till the subsequent morning. And what an insult to my delightfully tangy taste and delectably unpredictable texture that I am included in this characterless and generic taxonomy called “Liquids”. Nitroglycerine dissolved in Filter Coffee is a liquid. TNT in melted chocolate is a liquid. But pickled mangoes in oil – to call me something as vapid as “liquid” is like characterizing Murali as right-arm-offbreak. He is right-arm-magic and I am divinity bathed in oil. Ah, you base villian, airport security. If one needs (yet another) proof of Darwinian evolution, it is you. You are anything but intelligently designed.
As I continued to listen to the pickle’s tragic (and silent, I must add) soliloquy, the cosmic monkeys scripting this particular series of events suddenly decided that this was to be a comedy (by Shakespearean definition, i.e, where happy endings, not the presence of jokes characterize comedy), and not a tragedy like Mangobeth or The Three Gentle Mangoes of Versova. A senior looking security officer arrived on the scene and enquired about the origins of the aforementioned pickle. The sheepish officers who were hoping to mate pickle and roti in holy matrimony and enjoy their conjugal bliss in the confines of their oral cavity later that night, pointed at me as the guilty party who trafficked in pickled mangoes. Their faces, just to continue to mutton metaphor a bit, looked like innocent lambs. The senior officer, clearly disturbed by the wholesale kidnapping of pickles by his staff, decided that enough was enough, called me over, and suggested that I ask Kingfisher to pack my bottle and check the luggage in. While I was not quite sure of the effect of airline luggage handlers playing the airport equivalent of buzkashi (note: sheep metaphor still in force) with my fragile bottle of divinity in oil, he reassured me that KF can be persuaded to beef up (note: taking a vacation from sheep metaphoring) the packaging just enough to get it to Chennai with molecular integrity reasonably intact.
And it did.
Aadi 28, 3672
The Studio
7.30 am. tHTV (The Hindu TV), Mount Road.
ENROM kept itself busy, as work was rather light. It spent its spare CPU cycles detecting and documenting all the in-jokes in movies like MMKR and Kaadhala Kaadhala, to see if there was any credence to Mohan’s Law, which stated that any repeated viewing of a Crazy Mohan scripted movie will reveal N new jokes where N is an integer > 0.
Back in 3674 AD, when Wolfram Omicron finally passed the GQHMT test, every one wanted one. The Hindu TV channel named its new computing beast, ENROM. Once it arrived, it became obvious that managers and senior editors were obsolete. All one had to do was ask ENROM to make editorial or broadcasting decisions, and more often than not, it did a pretty good job (and when it did not, at least it didn’t try to cover its rear cooling vents and blame others)
“So ENROM, Situation 1 – we have 8 people dead from a very cool sounding, new virus called H1B1. It is a neural degenerative disease that causes people to stand in long lines under the hot sun outside the US consulate, just to be humiliated by a consular officer who tosses a coin underneath his table to decide whether or not to allow a human being access to a part of the world bounded by artificial lines called national boundaries.
“8 dead, and 5000 potentially infected as we speak.
“And situation 2 – 1000s are dying daily from drug resistant TB. By the 37th century, TB is not just drug resistant, but diagnosis-resistant.
“And situation 3 – Oh well, the usual stuff. Farmers committing suicide because Air Monsoon Inc, the rainwater irrigation company declined to deliver water to farmers who were not creditworthy.
“Tell us which story to run with.”
“Hmm. Go with 1. You see, news has to be fresh, it’s after all the plural of “new”. Dying farmers and TB is not news. It’s old hat, practically bowler, in fact.
“Thanks ENROM, good choice”
“And oh, one last thing – title your story “Death by Queue”, and feature dark ominous music in the background. Gustav Holst’s Mars: Bringer of War might be appropriate..”
The Club
11:00 am. T-Nagar quadrant
It was the day of the week when the Triskaideclub met at a ramshackle building that formerly housed the Hindi Prachaar Sabha in T-Nagar quadrant.
The Club of 13 was a group of Tamil people who could count in Hindi only till the number 13 because that’s as far as Madhuri Dixit gets to in the opening lines of her legendary hit, Ek Do Teen. Technically, she does get to 25 by the second stanza, but nobody remembers those lines anyway. Founded by a disgruntled linguist whose theory of language elegance was poo-poohed by the establishment, the Triskaideclub was seeing a upswing in interest in the recent past. Perhaps the re-re-release of the Ek Do Teen Re-Remix album had something to do with it
Manik Basha, the linguist in question, had, in his prime, introduced a new and controversial language elegance scale based on the number of unique words one had to learn in order to count from 0 to 100. An excerpt from his cult whitepaper -
“In Mandarin, one has to learn 12 words to count from 0 to 100 – Just the words for 0 through 10 and 100. All numbers in between use an elegant X * Y + Z formula, where for e.g, 45 would be represented as 4 (times) 10 (plus) 5 – Tsu Shu Wu
In Hindi, on the other hand, one has to learn almost 70 unique words to count till 100. For instance, 35 is Painthees, and 55 is Pachpan.
While Mandarin and Japanese were at the top of his leaderboard, Hindi was at the bottom because of its ridiculous system for numbers, and that was a problem with the university that employed him – the Advanced Metaphysical Institute for Trumpeting Hindi (AMITH), who fired him as soon as his white paper hit the front page of reddit (“Hindi sucks. Here’s proof (SFW)”)
He went on to found the Club of 13 as a 37th century equivalent of the Anti-Hindi movements of the mid-20th century, with one crucial difference. Unlike the overly passionate and often illogical Dravidian ideologues who vehemently opposed the language back in the 1960s, members of the Club of 13 proudly displayed their utter disinterest in Hindi by refusing to learn Hindi numbers beyond 13. Thanks to Madhuri.
The Force
2.30 pm. Saidapet Hyperpolis
Back at the HQ of the Amit_123 Response and Interception Vanguard Unit (ARIVU), the alarms were beeping, and the boys were ready. What was it this time? A quality-of-chappathi complaint? A snide comment on the adipose excess in Tamil heroes? The squad typically beamed over to the scene of the crime and politely, but firmly explained to the guilty parties that ARIVU will not tolerate that sort of nonsense anymore.
But this time, something was different. The complaint read that the perp had claimed in public earshot that the Thirukkural was actually written by Rabindranath Tagore, but he chose to create a fictional character called Thiruvalluvar (with similar looks though) because of a concern for local cultural sensitivities.
This was different. This was an Omit_123 problem.
The Joke
6.45 pm. South Mada Hyperavenue Comedy Club
The stand-up comic sipped on his pansolaric coffeeblaster. If there was any nervousness, it was no where to be seen. This was a tough audience, they said. All of them social media empaths, with brains directly wired to the web, rss feeds of detailed show reviews emanating directly from the amygdala, opinions posted instantly on twitter with #(comicname)sux or #(comicname)rox tags. You crack this audience, you go viral, they told him.
It was almost time. He walked out on to the stage, to complete silence, just a smattering of tweets and facebook statuses emanating from the real hardcore blink reviewers, the ones who formed opinions at first sight. He took a deep breath and asked – “Did you guys know that geeky girls like mounting hard disks?”
…
There was a deep booming sound, as a large aquatic mammal held afloat by small birds wafted (well..as much as large aquatic mammals can..um..waft) into the room. The Fail Whale looked him straight in the eye..well..about as much as whales can look a human straight in the eye. You see, they have eyes on the sides, but it did not really matter. When a whale wants you to think that it is looking you straight in the eye, you think it. End of matter. One does not mess with whales, especially not the Fail Whale.
“Mr Sankaranarayanan, is this your first gig?”
“Um. Yes. Is this about my opening joke?”
“Hmm. Yes. Joke, you say. Ok. Let’s christen that a joke, just for the moment, but I have to ask you this. Do you know what happens when elephants sneeze?”
“Um. Other elephants say ‘Bless you’?”
“No. when Elephants sneeze, little birds get alliteratively F-ed. First they get flustered, then they flutter, then fret, and finally fumble”
“Ah. ok, and your point being..”
“When you crack great jokes…”
“Ah Dhang you”
“Or cosmically atrocious ones like the one you just did..”
“Er..”
“These social media empaths go wild, and generate the equivalent of a consignment of elephant snot, to be expelled from the end of a trunk. They tweet (or is it really trumpet?) like crazy, and bring Twitter (and me) down”
“Oh..”
“You see. Twitter is a little bird, not a reptile. It does not scale very well”
The Rap
10.00 pm. Thalappakattu Club, Santhome
The distinctly low-fi female voice was staccato, interspersed with pulse tones, but the smooth overlay of trance-inducing ambient synthesizers and syncopated trip-hop beats formed a unique counterpoint to the vocals. 10 DJs stood in a line, with mobile phone in one hand and operating DJ gear with the other. Some were dialing 121, others ICICI Bank’s customer care, and others BSNL, and so on. Their fingers were blurred as they pressed numbers of their keypad with practised ease and speed.
IVR Rap was the hottest new genre of music in town. The idea was to dial different Customer care/IVR systems and navigate rapidly to specific menus and parallelly slicing the options spoken into meaningful, often dark and ironic verse. And all of this had to be done live. Typically, it took at least 10 DJs, each one dialing different numbers, eliciting different menu options, and then editing the voice responses live, pausing, cutting, and overlaying that with synth and beats.
Press 1, Please press 1, Press 2, Please press 2
We value, value, we value, value, we value, your time
For new products, and outstanding amounts
Menu options have changed, welcome to the bill
The chorus went -
Any time, your estimated wait time is 5
press 9 to speak to a rep, good bye, good bye
I once met a vibrant young chap at an Open source conference who did not have very nice things to say about his college. So well..um..therefore, it was about time this was done, was it not?
ps 0: In case you don’t see the subtitles, check to see if the “Closed Captioning” option is on.
ps 1: The subtitles are easier to read in full-screen mode
Update 0: As mistaken_identity points out, it turns out this video is particularly relevant right now given that the “Single Window System into the Windowless Universe” Anna University Counselling sessions are on. Is there a user generated college ratings site? Shouldn’t there be one? Apart from factors that parents care about, I’m sure we could add “Rules-are-Rules-stubborn-idiocy-levels” as a critical factor as well.
Update 1: In the spirit of open source, I am making available the srt file (subtitles) I created while putting together this video. Those of you who are familiar with basic video editing can edit the srt file (it’s a simple text file), add your own subtitles and create your own Hitler video. In the interest of aggregation, do use the following tags: downfall, parody, hitler, desi
Note: In the interest of security, WordPress.com does not allow me to upload an srt file, but in the interest of sheer irony, they do allow MS Word documents, so I’ve renamed it with a .doc extension. So please rename it to .srt after you download it.
The original video, without subtitles, can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYF168YHWKw
I wake up everyday, lethargic and lacking in vim and verve. I grab my morning tea, but that shot of caffeine does not do enough to jolt me into my normally hyperactive self. Then I open Firefox and start typing “re” in the awesome bar. It gives me two choices – reddit and rediff. The decision making algorithm in my left hemisphere ponders at this critical juncture of my day to day existence. I could either
- reaffirm my rational faith in the pristine faithlessness of reddit, while also snickering at the occasional LOLcat and breezing through elaborate expressions of eloquent Microsoft-hate
- read commentary generated by the wisdom of the Indian crowd, the collective intelligence of co-creative India 2.0, the smart mob of the temple, mosque and cathedral located in the middle of the bazaar
I always pick rediff. Reddit can wait. The unread 4 million items on my Google reader can wait. The Sky-is-about-to-transfer-a-large-amount-0f-momentum-to-the-top-of-my-head crisis email from work can wait. Global warming can wait. The tsunami about to engulf Besant Nagar can wait. Time can wait. After all, what is the only thing that can set off microscopic alarm clocks that play “Cowboys from Hell” by Pantera to shock every cell in my body into high-energy wakefulness every day morning? This can.
Now, after reading that, my brain shakes off the last vestiges of its immense desire to grab a few more minutes of sleep and moves into “Give me some more of this” mode. It extends its metaphorical arm, exposing its veins for another hit of Cannabis Rediffcommentia. My eyes oblige and scroll down from the Multi-destination Country Hygeine plan described above to its first response in classic Rediff grey-and-green.
At this point, my brain, having had enough already, shifts gears into Indian-Political-Armchair-Theorizing mode. I note the user name “lenin” and theorize that this is a plot by atheist communists to sow seeds of discord between Hindus and Muslims. So I do what any self-respecting Indian would do. Join in the conversation and contribute my subtle improvements to this clean-up theory.
Now my day has well and truly begun. I close the rediff window. After all, too much a good thing is..well, not a good thing. But I cannot help but pity the rest of the world and their lack of alarm clocks that can send this kind of jolt of vim and rigour every day morning. Should there not be Rediff commentary for all news, no wait, f0r all of history, spanning across space, time and those other string-theory dimensions? Should there not be History, With Rediff Commentary, enhanced, multi-perspectized, hyper connected, yet visceral and in (and out from the back of) your face?
So what if Obama got elected in a historical election?
So what if Julius Caesar was stabbed to death?
Or if Michael Phelps failed a dope test?
Or perhaps, when Star Trek style transporting technology is invented
The Rediff comment is the true byline to history. Not Youtube, which is simply inane, or Slashdot, which is simply too informative, or Reddit, which is simply snarky. A rediff comment is a snarky expression of pseudo-informative inanity, and in that delectable cocktail I believe we have the first truly pan-dimensional Indian internet meme. It’s called – What would a rediff commentator say to this?
