Facebook Mahabharatha

2 days of high pressure work and day long meetings have finally come to an end. And that usually means “some free time”. And “some free time” usually translates to The Facebook Mahabharatha

ps 1: I didn’t pay too much attention to accurate chronology

ps 2: It was already getting long, so I left some events out

ps 3: For those not familiar with the Facebook Mini-feed, you need to read from the bottom.

Update: For the technically inclined, most of this was done with a generous use of javascript directly in the browser and very little photoshop. The script used is rather simple.

javascript:document.body.contentEditable=’true’; document.designMode=’on’; void 0

Type this in the browser address bar and hit enter.It will make the entire page editable. The possibilities then are endless, aren’t they? I found this here

And the subtly brilliant Baby Vaijayanti and Puppy Manohar suggest an FPS- style in-game chat version that sounds even cooler. For instance,

>Bh15hm4 has been pwned by Arrows

>4bh1m4nyu has left the server

Etc. I urge the baby and the junior canine scientist to take this up on a larger scale.

Welcome to the Kandy Shop (Ceylon Chronicles, part 2)

This is a continuation of Ceylon Chronicles, part 1.

The Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage.  

According to the locals, the most visited place in Sri Lanka is the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage near Kegalle on the way from Colombo to the Sacred UN Heritage City of Kandy. Not surprising because the first thing one gets to see at 9.15 sharp in the morning is several baby elephants being fed milk from XXL feeding bottles.

After several Petabytes of high resolution Digital SLR snaps are taken by assorted, khaki-shorts wearing white people, everybody is directed to the river side where we are treated to an extraordinary public display of around 40 elephants having a bath.

And once the elephants wash themselves clean, they proceed to the opposite bank of the river to roll in wet mud and dirty themselves for the next bath. For a change, I am not actually kidding.

As we turned back to leave, a large, informative poster told us that Elephas maximus maximus was not just a large member of a group of animals formerly known by a name that Captain Haddock used fairly frequently as a curse (Pachyderm) but also a living paper mill. Don’t believe me? See.

And oh, a few other highlights from the orphanage. A 65 year old blind tusker, and a 3-legged elephant (named Sama) that lost one limb to a landmine explosion. Looking at her is one of those “Why does Homo Sapiens fight wars?” moments. But she joins the rest of gang at the communal bath though, and seems to have completely adjusted to moving a 5 ton body on 3 legs.

The Spice Garden 

Our next stop was the Kingston Spice Garden, where we were treated to a quick course on Ayurveda and the use of spices such as pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla by somebody who apparently graduated from the MISPWOSO. To be fair to him though, I don’t think he noticed our brown skin. He was way too used to talking about ancient herbs, traditional remedies and secret plant extracts set to ambient sitar music to Americans and Europeans and selling small bottles of honey for $19 and a vial of vanilla essence for $10. For South Indians who buy Dasanakaanthi Chooranam at Rs 7 a packet from the local Kottakkal Aryavaidyashaala, $19 for a bottle of honey is not just expensive. It’s downright hilarious. My advice to desi travelers – give this a miss.

After this, and a short visit to a nearby tea plantation, we reached Kandy. And I was surprised that I could not find a local chocolate shop that featured a bandana wearing rap star named Warnakulasooriya Curtis Ushantha Paddabedige “50 SL paisa”  Jackson singing “Welcome to the Kandy shop”.

The Botanical Gardens in Kandy

In my opinion, the finest botanical gardens I have seen so far. The orchid room alone is worth a visit even if you don’t see anything else. And what’s even better – this is Kandy’s prime Louwws Matter location. If somebody ever wrote a Clandestine Lovers’ Guide to Kandy, it would only consist of 2 words – Botanical Gardens.

The Temple of the Tooth Relic

Legend has it that somebody pulled out a tooth from the Buddha’s funeral pyre and set in motion, a chain of events that involved several wars, mystery, intrigue and robotic, time-traveling monks called Dharminators who allegedly went back in time to convince the living Buddha to brush twice daily to ensure that his teeth would remain healthy for 2500 years after his death. Ok. That probably didn’t happen, but hey, popular culture of 2500 years ago becomes myth today, and who is to say that popular culture of today wont become myth many years hence?

We spent the last day of the trip in Colombo, mostly indulging in a celebration of the INR-SLR exchange rate imbalance, a celebration that involves reckless shopping sprees for Van Heusen, Arrow and Louis Philippe shirts (for the XY) and skirts and tops (for the XX) that are priced at approximately INR 300 each. The one thing I don’t like about Colombo – the uncomfortably high density of loaded assault weapon toting Army guys looking around nervously for potential terrorists. In an already increasingly dangerous world, the word “potential” gives us no solace. Technically speaking, isn’t everybody is a “potential” terrorist?

Trip photos here

Ceylon Chronicles, part 1

Since the Ramar Sethu was closed to foot traffic, we took a Jetlite flight to Kozhumbu. Now, let’s assume that I am a Galle based self-made Tamizh businessman returning with loads of Saravana Stores maal to sell to unsuspecting Sinhalese with lots of disposable income and the only languages I spoke were Tamizh, passable Sinhala and some Butler English (What you want. I give. Low price – style basic functional english). So I am now seated, seat-belt buckled and listening to the all-important, life-saving safety instructions being explained, dumb-charades style, by mannequin-like North Indian air hostesses. and what do I hear? Hindi. Safety instructions in India’s national language on a flight from Chennai to Colombo where the cumulative knowledge of Hindi in all the passengers will probably amount to “Accha Accha. Indi nagi malum”.

But since I am not a Galle-based, Saravana Stores maal hawking Tamizh businessman (I am a Chennai based, IT services hawking Tamizh softwareman), this wasn’t much of a problem, although I couldn’t help feel that well over half the airplane was muttering “Enna solli kondu irukkiraargal?” (What are they saying?) in sing-song colloquial Sri Lankan Tamizh, while I was busy learning how to allow small children to panic and die while focusing on putting oxygen masks on oneself in an emergency.

Neer Kozhumbu (is not diluted, watered down lentil-less sambar)

We landed at the rather impressive Sirimavo Bandaranaike International Airport and were picked up by our amiable guide for the next 5 days, Kumar, who first took us to the Browns Beach Hotel in Neer Kozhumbu. Why the Sinhalese would choose to call it Negombo, when such a cool-sounding Tamizh name exists, I will never know. Neer Kozhumbu is a small, sleepy fishing village about an hour north of Colombo. Have you wondered why “sleepy” the adjective always prefixes fishing villages? Fisherman don’t sleep much, do they? Don’t they get up at the crack of dawn and hit the boats? But we digress.

Day 1, according to the package, was a leisure day, which meant that we were on our own. But before heading out, we had the all important breakfast. Important for 2 reasons – nutritional (We were raving hungry) and economical (it’s part of the package and therefore gratis/free/osee/mufth). But we took it fairly light and just snacked on Milk rice, Sweet Potato, Chicken liver curry, Egg hoppers, dhaal curry, Kattu Sambol, mangoes, lovi, mangosteens, wood apples, sour plantains, big green bananas, bread toast, baked beans, omelettes, scrambled eggs, papaya juice and a spot of Broken Orange Pekoe Tea.

After that light repast, we looked around for Taxis. Since the taxi drivers near resort hotels follow the Inverse square law of Fare, which goes

Fare = G x S/ (distance parked from hotel) squared

Where,

G = Geographical Constant, that varies across cities and countries.
S = Skin Color Index, where 1 = African black and 10 = Anaemic, Dracula-victim white

In simple terms, the taxis parked close to resort hotels charge exorbitant fares, especially if one is white. And being a 5 on the Skin Color Index, the taxi offered to take us to Colombo city for a paltry sum of 40 dollars. We graciously declined, took a tuk-tuk (the local term for an autorickshaw) to the local bus terminus and got on a local bus to Colombo. And since it was air conditioned and was playing Sinhala film music (and sounded like it was poorly plagiarized from Bappi Lahiri music), we fell asleep, only to wake up when we reached Pettah, the central bus terminus in the city. We then proceeded to a juice shop, had wood apple nannari and asked the friendly Tamizh proprietress what was worth seeing in the city. She suggested the Colombo zoo.

The Colombo Zoo

We saw Macaw conferences. Big cats taking afternoon siestas. Gymnastic, anti-social chimpanzees throwing stones, fruit peel and dung on the public. Male lion putting groundnuts on lioness, who was completely disinterested. Dancing elephants named Devi and Kema. Screaming Sea eagles. And

Yes. Monitor Lizards. And where?

In the middle of the road!

It was when my wife was considering informing the zoo authorities that dangerous, large reptiles had escaped from their cages and were terrorizing the general public that I noticed that apart from me trying to take paparazzi-style snaps from every possible direction, nobody else was paying any particular attention to these things. I was then later told that monitors are fairly common in Sri Lanka. I have always wondered why they were called monitors though. While I think the explanation that they used to stand in front of the black board in classrooms of Lizard High and write down names of students who talk/misbehave before the teacher arrives, is such an elegant theory, Wikipedia kills all the mystique by informing us that they get the name “monitor” from the Latin word for their genus Varanus which refers to their occasional tendency to stand on hind-legs and thus appear to “monitor” their surroundings.

Lunch at Red Chilly (a.k.a the Stomach Wall Removal Therapy)

There’s nothing like sampling local cuisine at a small, unpretentious, crowded lunch place popular with the natives. And Red Chilly fit the bill perfectly. The menu for lunch read “Rice and Curry” and we ordered it right away. And when we did, the waiter’s facial expressions and body language underwent the following changes, and I translate for your benefit

• Are you sure?
• You don’t look Sri Lankan.
• Do you have insurance that protects the mucosa, submucosa, muscularis externa and the serosa of your stomach?
• Are you really sure?
• The chillies in Sri Lanka, which we use in abundant quantities while cooking are actually rather spicy, you know? Unlike Indian chillies that we can eat for dessert. After dipping them in Tabasco sauce.
• Are you really, really sure?

We went ahead. And drank 2 bottles of Sprite, several glasses of water, and a complimentary serving of Wattalappan to salvage what was remaining of our stomach wall linings.

More coming up in Part 2 of Ceylon Chronicles. A few photos available here. More later.

Serendipity

Lonely Planet tells me,

Kasippu – moonshine liquor, the tipple of choice for working-class alcoholics – is booze at its most basic: sugar, yeast and water fermented in steel drums. The drums are left to ferment in wetlands and other hidden places, and rumour has it that lizards, snakes and birds come to drink the sweet juice – then die and fall in, adding their own special flavour to the brew.

Now, who wouldn’t want to try that?

But to be able to that, one first has to visit Sri Lanka, and that’s exactly what me and the wife will be doing for the next 5 days. 2 days in Negombo, 2 in Kandy and 1 in Colombo.

Since, this man has proved beyond all doubt that Rama was not only a real historical character, but he was also 39 years old when he killed Ravana, I wonder if I should go around looking for the following:

• The garden where Sita was imprisoned, resisting the charming Ravana’s charms and instead, holding out for a humourless, cowardly husband, who not only doubted her fidelity but also dumped her (while she was pregnant) in the forest a few years later
• The trumpet used to blow loud music into Kumbhakarna’s ears and wake him up.

Other recommendations from readers are welcome.

There is unlikely to be any new posts for the next 5 days, so I dug up my old drawing pad and thought Ill introduce a new character on my blog, a man who is sick and tired of all the irreligiousness being spread around the city of Chennai. A man who has set out to put all those young, social-networking, richard-dawkinsy, inexperienced, question-all-tradition blogging types in their places/cubicles/cafe coffee days/baristas.

ps: I am a rather lazy, doodling type and generally don’t pay too much attention to proportions and detail. So plisxcuse. And since I don’t have a scanner, I took photographs.

(dark, foreboding music plays in the background and the room temperature falls by a few Kelvin.)

Darth Vaadhiar – Dark Lord of the Siddha. At the moment, his right shoulder is sort of out of shape, but I expect him to use the powerful dark side of the force to “urge” the artist to do a better job in the future.

He has a message for the youth.

And even on his deathbed, he has something to say,

I take leave. See y’all next week.

Orkut Profile Exchange Meets

A few months back, I saw a banner outside the Besant Nagar Fruit-of-Knowledge-Stealer Temple. It read “Besant Nagar Brahmin Association Annual Horoscope Exchange Meet“. For a short while I wondered if it was like philately, Jaadagately perhaps. But realizing that dot-matrix printouts of planetary positions cannot possibly be collector-items, the meet, therefore, must be for other purposes. A relative informed me that it was like a stock exchange for arranged marriages. I asked if they hold horoscopes above their head and shout themselves hoarse till a bell rings in the evening. After a thoughtful pause, I was told “No. It’s not quite like that”.

But arranged marriage is not just about elderly men exchanging horoscopes at meets conducted at temples and presided over by the BNBA. While men continue to wallow in an imaginary, disused swimming pool of male domination, the real action happens behind the scenes and is run by the oldest social network in India – The Maami Network. These resourceful ladies have been twittering from kitchen window to kitchen window before Twitter. They were scrapping and walling at weddings and other social functions well before Orkut and Facebook. Their RSS feeds of up-to-date family information interspersed with occasional tidbits of gossip, have fixed more marriages than any horoscope exchange meet ever has.

But things are changing a bit and their traditional information gathering, syndication and advanced algorithmic pattern matching and pair-finding role is under a bit of a threat. Pairs are increasingly finding each other without the need for traditional ponpaarthification (Guycheckoutifcation, for the Tamil challenged). But as always, Homo Sapiens Maamiens is a resilient species. While the men go around wearing Old Navy shorts and New Balance sneakers on Besant Nagar beach, sulking about the younger generation’s wanting to know each other before getting married, and how, in their times, they only saw the girl for the first time at the wedding, the women, in the meanwhile, have moved on.

A conversation between 2 maamis, a couple of years ago, might have sounded like this

M1: Hello maami. Howareyoufineaa?

M2: Edho maami. Going on. Yesterday Chitthi episode saw-aa?

M1: No maami. Was busy packing Maavadu for younger son. He is leaving for Berkeley today.

M2: Oh. Visa has come-aa? Anyway, serials can wait. So what do you think of M3′s daughter?

M1: Oh. She has cut her hair, you know.

M2: Oh. Haircut-aa? Today’s girls, too much ba. But they say it’s convenient, and I am ok with some of these new things. Nowadays they (girls) have so much freedom. One can’t give them freedom and then suddenly take it away, you know.

M1: Unlike us.

M2: Adhu seri vidungo (That and all, leave matter no). M4 was mentioning that M5 was looking out for her son. So I wanted to find out if M3′s daughter was suitable.

M1: Oho. She went to Anna Univ, Guindy, I heard.

M2: Oh. Adhukku lots of marks required no?

M1: Yes yes. Ponnu (Girl) romba (very) brainy.

M2: Good good. But payyan went to some shady engineering college outside the city. So what do you think maami? Ego problems varumo?

M1: Yes. Very possible. When I was at Sundari Silks the other day, I saw her, wearing jeans and T-shirt and hair totally viricchufied (left untied), with a group of girls. She looks like a bold one. And M6 told me that she saw this girl at the Konica photo studio near Landmark. The only reason people go to that studio is to take US visa photographs. So this girl must be having higher studies plans.

M2: Hmm. Appo sari varaadhu. Engyaavadhu divorce-givorce la poi nikkum. (This will not work out. It will go and stand at divorce and givorce). Ok. I will relay the information to M4.

And thus, M1 and M2 successfully prevent a mismatched wedding. But 2 years from now, I strongly suspect that the following conversation, presented below, is quite possible. I am already seeing signs of this here and there.

M1: What maami, no twitter updates for a while. Busy-aa?

M2: Illai maami, Was busy packing Maavadu for younger son. He is leaving for Berkeley today.

M1: By the way, M5′s Facebook mini-feed tells me that she is searching for an alliance for her son. What do you think of M3′s daughter?

M2: Let’s find out, shall we? (Opens Apple MacBook Pro, presented by her daughter working for McKinsey in Boston). What’s her name? M3′s daughter?

M1: I think “S$%#^#a” or something.

M2: (Does an Orkut search. 1000s of results). Which college did she go to? That will help us filter these results

M1: Anna University, Guindy.

M2: (adds “Anna” and “Guindy” to search field and filters results down to about 20 or so). Hmm. What is M3′s aatthukkaarar’s (House Man) name?

M1: Sivaramakrishnan, I think.

M2: (filters for “Sivaram”). There she is. (On S$%#^#a’s orkut profile page). Hmm. No photos. Good, sensible girl. It’s very unsafe for girls to put photos on Orkut, theriyuma (You know-aa) maami?

M1: Oh. Appidiya (like that-aa). Who are all those boys and what language is that?

M2: Oh. Testimonials. Must be her friends writing something nice about her. And all of this is Chatspeak, a powerful new language that has only 2 rules

1. Skip letters at random, and not just for purposes of brevity – Wat u lk 2 hv for brakfst

2. Use ellipses (…) as a substitute for all forms of punctuation- I…lk….2…lsten…2…rahmn…msik

M1: Oh. Hmm. Very interesting. What else can we learn about this girl from her Orkut profile?

M2: Lots maami. Just read through all the scraps. All the testimonials. Find out what communities she is a part of. See here. She is a member of “Surya Fans”. And “My Name starts with a S and ends with an A” community. And “Jane Austen”. And the “Feminism without Borders” community.

M1: Ooh. Feminism! And her hobbies?

M2: It says her passions are “Dance, Music and John Abraham”

M1: So what do you think maami?

M2: Maami. Ponnu konjam (slightly) independent, free spirited and talented. She will find somebody on her own. M5 Payyan konjam slightly sombu character thaan (Son is having slightly empty water-holding vessel character). Ill tweet M4 and let her know. She will ping M5.

Epilogue:

A few months later, as M3′s husband is about to attend the Nanganallur Brahmin Association’s Horoscope exchange meet, she hands him a printout of their son’s Orkut profile – “YEnna (My dear husband) While you are matching horoscopes, match this also no?”

Rs 500 = Volume Knob. Rs 100 = Mute Button.

I need to introduce all of you to The Tanglish Word of the Day

deal-la vudradhu (To leave in deal) - v.t, to ingloriously dump somebody, to cheat, to escape, to con, to defraud, to finagle, to shaft, to cozen, to ematthufy, to sterling-teak-treefy, to take money and not deliver the goods, to take Rs 100 and turn the speakers off in the Music Academy balcony during November Fest 2007.

And that (turning off speakers) is exactly what the organizers (The Hindu) did for the last 2 days at the November Fest. According to them, only the expensive socialite-style cotton-saree wearing, Chanel nr. 5 sporting, cropped-hair maamis with big bindis and kurta wearing, peter-vudufying maamas who can afford to spend Rs 500 a ticket are customers worth paying attention to. We repeatedly tried telling the organizers to do a bit of a sound check in the balcony because, um, up there, the concert sounded like, well, the music traveled through a filter that had a big red “Ultra Mute” button. But this was the sound engineer’s response – “Sir. I have instructed by the organizers to focus the speakers only on the lower floor, and because you were totally kanjapisnaari (miserly) enough to buy Rs 100 tickets, you deserve it, muahahaha”. He didn’t say that in so many words, but hey, I can read subtitles, you know. Enough said. Shame on you, The Hindu.

But. Wait. I looked at their logo.

And realized there was some fine print that I had missed. So I zoomed into the bottom right corner, and

I am ashamed. I take my accusation against The Hindu back.

That said, let me get to the actual music. Mrigya was at its usual amaklamatic awesome best – brilliant instrumentalists backed up by some great voices – the soaring Sufiyana of Ghulam Qader and the rich Hindustani classical of Sukriti Sen. The violinist, Sharat Chandra, was incredible as well, although I felt that the band tends to overuse him a bit. The lead guitarist was awesome as well, but since The Hindu ruled that Rs 100 ticket holders are not allowed to listen to him, we couldn’t actually hear anything from up there. But from the speed of his finger movements, I could say that he was pretty good.

The second band I saw was a Korean crossover ensemble called “The Forest“. Since the band members only spoke Korean, they had a translator on stage who would translate their Korean into Korean-with-the-occasional-English-word. But it was good fun. Their music was atmospheric, ambient, ethereal and other such adjectives. The Koto, an instrument that looked like the one by those blind assassins in the movie Kung-fu Hustle, sounded amazing, and so did the big bamboo flutes. There was also a 2-string high-tremolo Kottanguchi that, when played, transports the audience to the places featured in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Call me Saarukkaan, everyone in Kodambakkam does

And God said, let there be light, and there was disco.

In 1973, Max Ehrlich wrote a novel called The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

In 1975, J Lee Thompson reincarnated the book as a movie with the same title.

In 1975, a Trinidadian soca musican named Lord Shorty (Ras Shorty I to be precise) wrote a song called Om Shanti Om.

In 1980, Subhash Ghai reincarnated The Reincarnation of Peter Proud as a Bollywood potboiler titled Karz.

Lakshmikanth-Pyarelal saw the light, got inspired by disco, and did some heavy duty Ctrl-C Ctrl-V and reincarnated Shorty’s song in Karz

The movie Karz was, strangely enough, about reincarnation.

Farah Khan reincarnated the concept of Karz into a slick, tribute movie titled, oh well, here we go again, Om Shanti Om

This movie has a movie inside a movie, titled, there’s no way you could have guessed it – Om Shanti Om.

And that movie-inside a movie is also about reincarnation.

And it turns out, the wrapper movie (the outer “for()” loop) is also about reincarnation.

Oh boy. It looks like reincarnation has been done to death by Bollywood. To which Bollywood retorts – But it’s reincarnation. If we do it do death, it will come back again. Ha ha ha.

And I saw OSO today. Bollywood suddenly decided to make a tribute movie, and by Flying-Spaghetti-Monster, they splurged. They managed to squeeze every campy, cheesy, corny cliche into a 150 minute package that I have to admit, was fairly entertaining. Well, as a Chennaiite watching an Indippadam, entertaining is used to describe movies that don’t make my hands reach unconsciously for the fast-forward button. OSO was fun as long it kept taking potshots at all the tripe Bollywood has been serving us since the 1970s. But for some weird reason, the movie starts taking itself too seriously in the second half and ironically, serves up most of the corny cliches it parodied before the interval.

And that brings me to the issue of Bollywood humour. Two words that have always had a very uneasy relationship with each other. While it was a pleasant surprise to note that, for a change, this movie could laugh at itself, the whole Madrasi Raja-Rascal-Quick-Gun-Murugan episode quickly proved that when it comes to laughs, nothing works better in Bollywood than the Madrasi caricature. There are 2 kinds of humour in Hindi movies.

1. Physical humour - where the fat, the thin, the bald and the funnily-moustachioed get insulted, mocked and beaten.

2. Caricature humour - where shallow caricatures of people from a specific demographic are laughed at – the 12 pm sardarji, the cunning and miserly marwari, the village simpleton and ofcourse, Bollywood’s eternal favourite – the Madrasi who just can’t stop saying Ayyo Ayyo.

So in OSO, there is this sequence where Saarukkaan speaks Tamil, which for some reason seems to consist entirely of words that sound like “Rascal” and generally mocks masala Tamil movies from the 80s. The Bollywood concept of a Madrasi was defined by Mehmood in the 60s, who hails from a city 700 km to the north – Hyderabad. Ever since, it’s been an endless sequence of ayyos, pattai-vibhuthis, carnatic music background scores whenever a Madrasi arrives on the scene. Was I offended? Ofcourse not. It was gajabuja fun.

And how can a post about OSO go without mentioning Saarukkus six-pack abs? So here is the Jalsa&Jilpa guide to getting six pack abs like kaan-baai.

1. First you need six packs. Of Haywards 5000.

2. Drink. (Peanuts optional)

3. Then get a cosmetic surgeon to remove fat, pinch and stitch in one vertical line and 3 horizontal lines across the recently grown beer flab.

4. Wait for stitches to heal, wear low-waist jeans, remove shirt, slant body 30 degrees from the vertical and take a snap.

Final verdict: Go watch the first half of this movie. Then skip the second half and watch a Vivek/Vadivel comedy VCD instead. Come back just in time for the credits. They actually got every person on the OSO production crew to walk the red carpet, right down to the spot boys, while the credits roll. Nice touch.

The Clandestine Lovers’ Guide to Chennai

“Clandestine” applies to the lovers, not to the guide, in case you thought otherwise.

If you and your clandestine louw partner are the twin towers of romance, The city of Chennai is the metaphorical plane (or plain) that is likely to crash into the both of you. The city’s conservatism is mostly harmless, but when it comes to matters of amour, it almost forces lovers to say “So long and thanks for all the fish” and escape to the restaurant at the end of the universe. It’s almost as if most of the maamaas in Chennai are like Zaphod Beeblebrox, one head solving the Hindu newspaper crossword while the other is busy scanning beaches and parks for any public displays of affection with an extremely critical eye. In Chennai, the presence of unmarried girl and unmarried boy within a distance of 10 metres from each other is considered to be a public display of affection.

Of course I am exaggerating a bit. Quite a bit actually. But then that’s what this blog is about – Jilpa. In reality, the place has changed quite a lot over the years. I mean, 15 years ago, if you had 2 X chromosomes, you wouldn’t be allowed out of your house after 6 pm. Today, you probably will be, but the policeman patrolling Marina beach is likely to make polite enquiries about your Big4 status (Vekkam, Maanam, Soodu, Soranai) and generally haul you back home. Big difference.

The real irony is that the puritanical maamas and maamis of yore are slowly getting used to the fact that there exists this sane middle ground between the extremes of Satyabhama University boy-girl rules on the one hand and teenage pregnancies on the other. But with almost every engineering college doing practically everything short of neutering male students before admission, Chennai is entering this new weird era where young boys have no clue how to talk to a girl, let alone ask her out.

But if you are the rare breed that has gone beyond staring at your college girls’ profile photos on Orkut (because any real world contact is punishable by medieval torture and slow painful death), and actually want to go out with a girl and not get into trouble with Chennai’s Beeblebroxian-second-head, this guide is for you.

Update: After several comments on this post, I realized that there are broadly 3 levels of clandestinity (cough cough) that people look for. Level 1 – where boy and girl only indulge in conversation and require a small degree of privacy. Level 2 – where a small amount of safe physical intimacy is desired and Level 3 – where, um, hotel rooms are required. This post mostly deals with Level 2 requirements. Chenthil has a nice post on Level 1 here.

The Beaches

Where to go:
Central section of Marina Beach, opposite the Ice House. For some reason, this is the de-facto lovers zone, and you will find couples seated at strategically discreet distances from each other. The presence of several pairs generally discourages roving bands of shady guys who tend to consider the passing of lewd comments to be on par with . The only invasion of privacy one has to deal with is the Sundal-boy, who operates on the logic that if you want to put kadalai, you might as well buy some ammunition from him.

The Northern side of Besant Nagar beach – closer to the Orur Alcott fisherman’s village.

Where not to go:
Any other part of Marina Beach. Not a good idea.

The Southern side of Elliots beach – There is a police checkpost and the cops play mangaatha and lay bets based on the number of couples they break up on a daily basis. I am serious, but kidding.

Any other beach, especially on East Coast Road – Very dangerous. Quite a few kidnappings/molestations have happened there in the recent past.

See Chennai map here

What to do if caught by a cop:
1. Wear rings on the ring finger of the left hand before going to the beach. Claim to be recently married and act a little offended (just a little) at cop’s invasion of privacy, but commiserate with his overall crusade/struggle against the heinous crime of sitting next to each other on sand without wearing rings/thalis/toerings etc.
2. Additionally create a contact on your mobile phone (preferably girl’s) named “Appa” that actually connects to a close friend who can confirm your “married” status. Don’t use this unless absolutely necessary. Sometimes, just acting as if one is dialing that number and handing the phone to the cop is enough to convince him that you are not the typical thiruttu lover case.

The Parks.

Ever since Chennai maamas and maamis have started wearing NRI-children-gifted New Balance sneakers and become health freaks, most parks have become way too crowded for couples. But one safe haven remains – the Adyar Banyan Tree, in the Theosophical Society. That place has ridiculous timings – open only for about 2-3 hours a day, only in the afternoons, and is closed on Sunday. But the place is quiet, uncrowded, filled with tall, beautiful trees and offers any sensible couple an hour (at most) of solitude and togetherness. Advice to guys – go easy on the PDAs. The security guards there are mostly old, myopic men but don’t push your luck.

Giridhar additionally recommends the descriptively named UI Colony Anna Circular Walker’s park near Liberty Theatre, where evenings are particularly free of disapproving maamas and other moral policemen.

10yearslate adds that the Guindy Snake park is a nice place to hang out, as long as it’s not a school-picnic day when there is likely to be an army of kids enquiring “Akka akka, loving-aa”.

The Discs
Chennai discs are usually filled with large groups of single men who come to get drunk and look out for the occasional, rare (and bold) couple who happen to visit. As a guy, you might not notice anything, but your girl will feel extremely uncomfortable at all that open-mouthed attention. And one other thing – Chennai discs play only English dubchick and Hindi dance music. If you are the types that considers that to be “music”, then I am sorry. No cure has been found yet.

The Restaurants
Mocha, in Nungambakkam is one of the few coffee shops with reasonably dim lighting and secluded alcoves. I am not aware of any other non-5-star place with a similar ambience. The Shansi Kerala Tandoori Chinese Restaurant does have extremely dim lighting (to hide the unwashed and stained tablecloths) but is probably not a good place for couples because the waiters don’t tolerate any hangy-pangy while serving gobi menjoorian.

Giridhar recommends Ram’s Milky way complex on Usman road, T Nagar where the cozy basement chaat restaurant is a nice getaway, although he does warn against the very likely possibility of running into an assortment of aunts who could be shopping right next door.

But as Ramsu rightly points out, The Efficient Jalsa Hypothesis states that: No place is sustainably peaceful for thiruttu-kaadhal. So my recommendation to pairs – get together, start a chennailouwerswiki.com and create a constantly updated encyclopaedia of “safe spots” in this city.

Overall, Chennai is not an unmarried-couple-friendly place. But unlike some other cities in India, you are not likely to get killed. So be smart, and have fun.

Head Deepaavalis – a tale of promotions and bussvaanams

It is the day after Deepaavali. In North India, it’s called Diwaali because they have a taste for Sanskrit consonants. So they swallow the “Pa” and the word ends up sounding like the area between San Mateo and San Jose or perhaps, a tennis shot Boris Becker specialized in.

More specifically, it was my Thalai Deepaavali. For the uninitiated, the prefix does not refer to this guy. It refers to the celebration of a married couple’s first Deepavaali, where families and well-wishers gather to

• Hog sweets
• Hog savouries
• Help certain Tirunelveli based garment businessmen in the area of T-Nagar rise from abject poverty.
• and generally employ several verbal tricks to subtly and unsubtly suggest that the couple needs to, well, turn into couple + 1.

Every maami and maama on whose feet we fell, collected cash served on betel leaves, and allowed yellowed-rice grains to be deposited in our scalp, spared no chance to tell the both of us that the future of the propagation of the human race rested on our shoulders. And therefore, we must positively produce a Homo Sapiens Infantus asap. But they did so in several interesting ways. I referred to it briefly in an older post – here

The Promotion seekers

“Dei. Ennada? Eppoda enakku promotion?” (Hey. What man? When am I going to get a promotion?)

Here promotion generally refers to the following.

• Grandmother -> Great Grandmother
• Father -> Grandfather
• Mother -> Grandmother
• Uncle -> Grand Uncle
• Great Uncle -> Great Great Uncle

and so on.

The Accountants

“Dei. Oru number kammiyaa irukkey” (Hey. One number is less no?)

This is usually followed by a smirk/grin/wink to suggest that he is not referring to bank ledgers.

The Indirect Logicians

He: Dei. How old are you?

Me: 30.

He: (with expression bordering shock and the line-of-control in Kashmir) 30 ????

Me: Why? What happened?

He: By the time your first kid grows up and gets settled, you will be close to retirement.

Me: What if I adopt a 5 year old 3 years from now and get a head start?

He: Adoptionaa? That and all will not work.

Me: Ok. What about adogtion?

He: Adogtion?

Me: Adopting a pet.

He: Dei. Joke adikkariyaa?( Hey. Are you hitting a joke aa? )

The Closet Gynaecologists

The wife is usually subject to a different set of procreative pressures from the senior leddies in the family. And this is one of the most popular lines of attack.

“If you don’t have a kid right away at this age, you will have problems and complications later”

This is usually followed by some ominous case studies to drive home the nasty dangers of not adding one member to the human race by the next 9 months.

But we got past all of that without too much trouble. We then set out trying to finish all of the crackers. We separated out the girlie stuff (bussvaanams, sangu chakrams, sparklers, saattais etc) and the guy stuff (Hydro bombs, double-sound, rocket bombs and lakshmi vedis) and while it was fun aiming the rockets at neighbouring houses for a while, I soon got bored and we simply distributed all the remaining fireworks to a small boy who happened to pass by and the girl who delivers jasmine flowers home daily.

And that brings me to the Great Indian Population Leveller – Sweets and Savouries. Cumulatively, these deadly calorie filled taste-grenades do more to reduce our life expectancy than trivial things like air pollution. While Deepaavali sweets and savouries have increased in variety over the years, I made a list of what is considered to be traditional Deepaavali fare.

Laddoos – Made with Kadalai Maavu (Besan)

Mysore Pa - Not the ubiquitous Sri Krishna sweets variety, but the slightly hard, tooth-decay causing variety

Maalaadu – Powder balls designed to choke one’s mouth and spill all over the floor when being consumed. I am also informed that this one is more of Tirunelveli thing.

Thengozhal – Small, tubular, fried delicacy made with Rice and Urad flour.

Mullumurukku – Murukku originally designed as an oral equivalent of the ascetic bed-of-thorns.

Om Podi – Food item that starred in Ardh Satya. Also features in Bhel Puri.

Mixture – The classic recipe features Om Podi, Boondi, Puffed Rice (Aval), Chutney Dal, Groundnut, Cashew nut, fried Curry leaves, Asafotida and salt. Goes very well with filter coffee. But my personal favourite variation is the Cornflakes mixture from Sri Krishna Sweets.
And last but not the least, the legendary Marundhu – The digestif made out of 8 ingredients – Pepper, Rice/Kanda Thippili, Ajwain, Dried ginger (Sukku), Coriander, Chitthratthai and Adimadhuram ground to a paste and cooked with ghee (clarified butter) and jaggery. Eating this stuff is the digestive system’s equivalent of the Marathon runner grabbing glucose and water after every few miles.

Cracker of a Time

The festival of lights is coming, and there is no better time to turn our attention to Deepavali Crackers (called Fireworks elsewhere in the world). Ever since my youngest brother was advised by a left-wing, liberal, animal-loving, vegan, peace-loving, earth-loving (and other standard stereotypes) kindergarten teacher not to buy crackers during Deepavali because young children who ought to be going to school are forced to work under dangerous conditions in Sivakasi to make them, the interest in fireworks has generally waned over the years.

But now that all boxes from Sivakasi carry the “Made without Child Labour” label, everything is hunky-dory and the fireworks are slowly making their way back into the household.

Sivakasi is becoming increasingly marketing-savvy and this year, this packet arrived (for Rs. 350)

Wow. Home delivery. While I did, for just a moment, assume that this packet came from Saravana Stores Antique Jeweller, the multi-coloured flower-pot on the right settled the matter. So it was time to open the box and check out the goodies. But before I did so, I noticed this on the side. The good corporate citizens of Sivakasi had included an informative visual on the right ways to use Deepavali crackers.

But I was very disappointed that they chose to ignore the following life-saving instructions.

and they totally missed out the all-important

Anyway, I urge all of you to pass these instructions on to kids in your neighbourhood.

So, let’s get to the good stuff inside. While crackers were always fun, I have also enjoyed, over the years, the artwork on the boxes. From the hand-painted masterpieces of the 80s that gave way to the gaudy Photoshopped images of the 90s, Sivakasi has always been some sort of a zeitgeist of the times. For instance, let me show you some of the innovative box art-work this year.

1. 100 Wala

The AK-47 of Deepavali fireworks is the 100-wala, with its machine-gun like burst of sound. This Sara-vedi comes in several sizes. In Chennai, the formula is

N-Wala, where N has the following values

100 – Middle Class

500 – Upper Middle Class, with son/daughter as NRI

1000 – Small businessman who has had a good year

5000 – Local Saettu

10,000 – Local MLA

Wonder what the Nicole Kidman/Jack Black motif means though. Perhaps an oblique comparison to the “loudness” of rock music tempered with Nicole suggesting that all of us should obey the local government’s 6 am to 10 pm rule for bursting crackers? No idea.

2. Bijli (Loose)

Perhaps an oblique reference to that fact that Walt Disney uses child labour/sweat shops (in SE Asia) too?

3. Twinkling Stars

Perhaps a reference to the fact that Twikling stars (and sparklers and flower pots) are considered to be girlie crackers, and thus the Bipasha and cowboy-baby references. Back in the 80s, we used this rule – If it does not make a loud explosive sound or spray fire in dangerously random directions, it’s for girls.

4. Bollywood mein Chakkar

Preity and Bobby are having a chakkar. A special chakkar. Get it? Get it? He he.

5. For Boys only.

These things are nastily loud. And they can be used to break wooden post-boxes (I have done this successfully as a 10 year old). And I love the company name. It starts off so softly and sweetly – Bala Saroja and then suddenly takes on violent, Rammsteinesque tones - Pyrotechs.

The guy on the cover scared the camera so badly that it shook while taking the snap. Seriously.

6. Completely lame fireworks.

I never understood the point of these things. Till I was told that their smoke used to keep mosquitoes away. In the past, i.e. Modern mosquitoes have evolved to wear gas-masks.

Apart from all of these, there were the other usual suspects – Flower pots, Lakshmi vedis, Kuruvi vedis and Rockets.

Anyway, have a safe Deepavali. I mean, if you wish to launch rockets horizontally on the road, do check to see if there are any petroleum tankers coming down the road. If you wish to hold flower-pots in your hand and wave them around as they burn, use kevlar gloves. If you wish to break neighbours post-boxes, use 2 atom bombs tied together, but do not stand in the direction of the door. Wood shrapnel is likely to fly in your direction at dangerous velocities.