Help. I am a Hypowebiac

Dear Doctor,

Go get an X-Ray done

No no wait. First listen to me. I believe I am suffering from a new hitherto undiscovered syndrome.

Oh. Ok. Go get an MRI scan and a Feline Scan.

Can I at least describe my problem first?

Hmm. I’m not used to this sort of gross deviation from standard operating procedure. Ok. First promise me that that after you tell me your problem, you will go to Ssri Kaamalegshumi Scans in Pallavaram and get all your scans done. I don’t diagnose anything without them.

Ok. I promise. So here is my problem. I believe I’m suffering from Hypowebia

Eh?

It’s a troublesome mental condition that forces its victim too connect everything to the internet. At times it turns into a depression that comes from a constant state of regret that the availability of the internet earlier in human history could have changed the course of civilization. The disease consumes every bit my mental processing power (which is not exactly Core 2 Duo), as it uses several computation intensive algorithms to construct elaborate what-if fantasies involving crucial historical events and their hypothetical connection to the world wide web.

Go get all the scans done please.

No wait. Let me explain it to you. Have you head of Google Suggest?

Nopes.

Well, its a tool that presents search suggestions based on statistical analysis of others’ search patterns, such as the one shown below

Ah. I see. A Wisdom-of-Crowds view of America.

Oh yes. And very democratic. For instance,

So my mind is constantly thinking about how Google suggest could have had other interesting consequences. Perhaps religious people during Darwin’s time could have been persuaded to drop their foolish belief in

And perhaps Herr Adolf could have avoided disaster by trying this query

If the good Archduke had bothered to check Gavrilo Princip’s facebook profile on that fateful day, the world could have been spared World War 1

In fact it gets even worse. Some kid asked me what the Protestant Reformation was really about, and all I could think of was this:

Another kid asked me how the Mahabharatha was transmitted orally over the ages, and I said “The original guys subscribed to Vyasa’s podcast and recorded their own version of the podcast and reuploaded to iTunes. And so on. “

Another question was about how the original archaeological remains of Troy were found. And all I could say was that Schliemann conducted the excavation, but it was reported by diggers as being possibly inaccurate.

And what were my thoughts on Socrates’ speeches in the marketplace in Athens? “5 Insightful”

And why was Ulysses such a turning point in James Joyce’ literary career? That was when he moved from Blogspot to WordPress

And the sensitive question on the historical origin of the gender bias? The annoying American accented “You’ve got male”

I need help doc. I see the web everywhere.

Stop surfing for 2 weeks. And 1 tablet of The Hindu Daily morning for curing Insomnia. And don’t forget Ssri Kaamalegshumi Scans

The lack of any connection between Wok-fried Vegetable Goo and IPL T20 cricket

In Hyderabad, there is a legendary restaurant called Paradise and they serve what is arguably one of the best Biriyanis in this galactic sector. Now what does that have to do with the Indian Premier League T20 tournament? Actually, nothing. Also, in San Antonio, Texas, there is a Chinese restaurant named Golden Wok where you can choose vegetables of your choice from a bar and the chef will, in one quick burst of flame, burn your pickings into a homogeneous, gelatinous goo and with a beaming grin say “Have a nie day“, and serve it to you with a bowl of rice that does not quite smell of Madurai Malli. What does this have to do with T20 cricket? Actually, nothing either. But you see, the delicate taste of a Biriyani comes from slow cooking and a careful selection of spices, unlike Wok-fried Vegetable Goo from San Antonio, which tastes exactly like Wok-Fried Vegetable Goo from Denver, because as the saying goes, “Contempt (for patient cooking) breeds Familiarity (of taste)”. It is very hard to achieve subtlety of taste in Americanized Chinese fast food. And what does that have to do with T20?

Nothing, actually.

You see, I find it hard to write authoritative, hard-hitting, thought-provoking essays on the fine game of Cricket (like this) because of the minor matter of qualifications. The only reason I made it to cricket teams in the past was to make up numbers (Dei, we are 10 and we need a fieldsman at deep fine leg), and I am a slow-medium pace batsman and a right-handed bowler who could, for most part, manage to deliver the red cherry 22 yards without it needing to bounce twice.

So instead, I will write about the BUSINESS of cricket. Many years ago, it used to be the business of CRICKET, and Kerry Packer made it the BUSINESS of CRICKET, but with the IPL, cricket has simply lost its uppercase. Not that I don’t enjoy T20. I do like Wok-fried vegetable goo once in a while.

Back to the subject at hand, there are 3 stages in sports-capitalism

1. Exponentia, where a sudden surge in popularity of a particular sport makes hay for a lot of people
2. After a while, the big boys take over and pull no stops to squeeze money out of everywhere, such as from unearthly ticket prices, pay-per-view TV channels, advertising and merchandizing. Robber Baronia.
3. Once, all the cash cows have been milked, there is no choice but to sedate the cow and milk harder. We then have IPL T20. Adbominalia

The Laws of Adbominalia

• Ads start once the 6th ball of an over (even if it is a no-ball) has been delivered.
• Ads finish only when the bowler has started his run up for the first ball of the subsequent over
• Upwards of 50% of the screen is frequently taken over by animated ads. With sound. Louder than the commentators’ voices
• There are animated, hyponosis-inducing ads on the boundary signboards.
• Cricketers will soon resemble Formula One drivers in terms of being high-density real-estate for brand names

But then hey, what gives me solace is the fact that I can still take refuge in the ad-less world of cricket commentary. I can still relax in the familiar cliches of Ravi Shastri, the soul-deadening boredom of Arun Lal or the sweet Carribean twang of Ian Bishop. Right? Right?

No.

Robin Jackman cannot say “Success” any more. It has to be “Citi Moment of success“
Ranjit Fernando cannot say “Six” any more. It is “DLF Super Six“.

Holy Arranged Matrimony! it’s now brand names embedded into commentary. So what else is possible now?

He gave it the Parryware Kitchen sink
He is an Aachi Masala seasoned campaigner
India are AUE Motoring along now.
He has smashed that past LIC Extra Cover
Gilette Razor edged, and taken
That was a Sri Krishna sweetly timed shot.

But it does open up interesting possibilities. For one, I would like our commentators to start getting cheeky and say things like

Ganguly’s batting has been Citi sub-prime. Wink wink.
Rahul’s technique is completely bug free. Must be all the Pepsi. Wink wink.

Update: If you also are suppressing an irresistable desire to strangle a certain pug with a sock, please sign this now.

Person Michael Holding

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What’s in a spelling?

Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster,

I have a confession to make. Over the years, I have logged an untold number of person-hours LOL-ing, ROFL-ing, ROFLOL-ing, taking mobile cam shots and showing to friends and ROFL-ing together at unintentionally funny spellings in Indian restaurant menus. And since we are talking about food, I thought it might be appropriate to invoke thy holy noodly presence and share my thoughts with you.

I used to think that I was part of a small clique of above-average spellers who found vicious joy in laughing at spelling gaffes, but when I see whole blogs dedicated to them, newspaper sections (with photographs no less), I feel my mirth dissolving like sugar cubes into already over-sweet tea.

So I have made a list, and I would like all well-to-do, middle-class, urban, lucky-enough-to-have-gone-to-a-school, rich, college-educated, white-collar, blog-writing, net-surfing, mall-hopping, multiplex-ing, over-consuming, car-driving, polluting folks of India (like me) to ROFL, LOL, ROFLOL for one last time, and then, stop finding this so funny.

I realize that humour is either intentional, or the outcome of embarrassing pomposity exhibited by the high and mighty, and not a result of a struggling man who left his village to run a “Chaines” joint out of a ramshackle van struggling to communicate what he’s trying to sell in an illogical, unphonetic language he has never been taught in his life.

Thank you for your patient hearing, Oh Noodly one. I will do Abhishekam with Arabiatta sauce as penance for my shameless elitism over the years.

Online Indian Male 2.0

Startup Sundaramoorthy and Venture Venkatakrishnan meet up at Barista, Besant Nagar over some coffee. Actually make that Latte with carcinogenic artifical sweeteners. And they discuss some very disturbing Internet stats.

SS: Did you know that 60% of Facebook users are women?
VV: Yes. And over 55% of MySpace users as well?
SS: The Indian Blogosphere is also overwhelmingly dominated by women. A look at any comment thread in the Indian Web will convince you of that.
VV: Apart from rediff of course.
SS: Oh yes, that reminds me. Did you see the latest stats from the Gabtun of Web Analytics – Chinna Counter?
VV: No. Is he good?
SS: Oh yeah. He is the absolute authority on desi web stats. And this is what he had to say about Indian men on the web.

VV: Sad. What happened to those good old days of the All Male Web. Web 2.0 seems to be all about 2.0 chromosomes, of the X variety specifically.
SS: We must do something about it. We must restore a sense of balance to the Indian Web. We must buy up some land in the valley between Trisulam hill and St Thomas Mount and startup some Web companies that bring the machismo back to the web.
VV: What do you have in mind?
SS: Pigg.

VV: Pigg?
SS: Yes. Pigg.mc actually. An exclusively male social platform where men can share, discuss and vote up ideas on how to restore male hegemony on the Indian blogosphere.
VV: Awesome. What else?
SS: I used to be a Flickr user, but now there are too many women there. They and their enhanced visual sensitivities, passing judgement on my weak reds, insubstantial beiges, poor shadows and anaemic contrast. Bah. I have always wanted an all-male Photosharing app where real men can post photos without all this critical commentary from women, where we can also privately share images of item girls we secretly love.
VV: Yeah.
SS: So I propose

VV: I’m in. I’d angel fund mattr.com even in my sleep.
SS: Im not done yet. Have you ever had to change the channel when a particularly raunchy song featuring your favourite actress played on TV, just to maintain a personal image of being a morally upright citizen who deplores the objectification of women in Kollywood?
VV: Many a time.
SS: Of course, you could watch it on later on youtube in the private, but personally, I can’t stand all the rest of junk I have to wade through there. So I propose an exclusive social video site dedicated to songs we cannot watch with the family.

VV: Could you pass me the telescope please?
SS: What ever for?
VV: You have gone so far away that even my laser surgery enhanced 20/20 eyesight cannot spot you without some optical help.
SS: And we shouldn’t forget cricket. As the city with the largest cricket lovers to Indian national team cricketers ratio, I believe we need a space to meet up, socialize and rant about all these years of TN-bias in the BCCI. Where I can rip apart vetthuparties such as Arun Lal, Vikram Rathore and David Johnson, who got selected while Sridharan Sharath was always given a miss.

VV: Absolutely required.
SS: And finally, we need to do something about the village folk of our state. I envision a social platform, where rural machismo is on central display. I’m talking Kaavadi, extreme piercing, Jalli kattu and of course, walking on coals.
VV: And what are you going to call that one?
SS: My personal favourite is walking on coals, and even more importantly, I can’t seem to conjure up a suitable pun using the other ones, so I’m planning to call this one

Couldn’t I just ask you if you are Tambram?

The phrase “Notoriously hard” is not something that is usually associated with the city of Chennai. Most aspects of this city (except the weather) tend to attract adjectives of a genteel nature (like genteel for example).

For instance, Mumbai is a happening city, where events tend to fall from the sky like they were dropped from a B1 bomber while Chennai is more of an occurring city, where events float down from the sky, attached to parachutes. You know what I mean right? When one says happens, eyes bulge out of their sockets, blood pressure rises and adrenaline flows like the Brahmaputra in spate, while occurs is spoken in a tone that is the aural equivalent of idli from Murugan Idli store.

Taking another example, Bangalore’s metaphorical IT knife is bleeding edge while Chennai’s is more useful for the application of butter on bread.

But there is an aspect of Chennai that can accurately be described as notoriously hard.

It’s finding a house to rent.

One would think that should be straightforward, right? I mean, if you are willing to pay the rent demanded and are not wearing a T-shirt that says Weed will Weed will Rock You, it should really be easy, right?

No.

Us desis love taxonomies, and some elderly house-owning Tambram gentlemen are no different. I suppose every group has its own equivalent of this, but I am only going to write about what I am familiar with. We love slotting people into neat, nicely defined shelves of caste, sub-caste, district, taluk, veda-chapter, alma mater, language and soap-serial preferences. In fact, we have such highly evolved, multi-dimensional classification mechanisms for people that one suspects that Carolus Linnaeus possibly had an Indian connection.

But caste is a bad word in TN. So bad that we have to say *beep* instead. Let him who is without sin *beep* the first stone. Doctor, My arm is broken. Do I need a *beep*. Be a good citizen and *beep* your vote. And so on. So asking somebody what caste they belong to is a strict no no. In the past however, ones bramness was visible for everyone to see and hear. The names were unmistakeable (Venkatarama Iyer, Sabesa Iyer, Ramanuja Iyengar etc), the facial make up (Naamam/Vibhooti), and the lack of upper body garments usually revealed the advanced back-scratching mechanism called Poonal. But engineering college rules, office dress codes and Hollywood have conspired to make young people today look homogeneous, thus making it a complex chore to figure out if a prospective renter is tambram.

Let me give you a hypothetical example of a conversation (or is that an example of a hypothetical conversation?) between me, my wife and an elderly gentleman who was inspecting us for suitability while we were doing the same to his house. And assume that I had this device that could, at the press of a button, cause people to speak their thoughts, thus making public for the first time,  The Mental Algorithm for the Conversational Determination of Tambramness, OR as his thoughts put it rather bluntly – How to determine Tambramness without letting an interested party know that you are a biased bigot.

And needless to say, I was trying my best to obfuscate my origins just to test the strength of his algorithm.

Note: Normally unspoken thoughts are shown in italics

You see saar. My two sons are in the States, and I am in charge of taking care of the flats that they have built. Now, they are also planning to come back to India any time because my grand children are growing up in a culture that it too diverse for our liking. So it is my solemn duty to see to that their flats are kept in good condition. Let me be frank with you. I only want to rent the house to Tambrams.

So sir, what do you do? And what’s with the long hair? Wife also bob-cut. Hmm. Artist-o? Or worse, hippie artist-o?

Working for a large IT company sir.

Oh. Appaadi (Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster). Not an artist. Service sector. Then there is a good probability. Good good. Nowadays everybody is in IT no? And your father?

He has a business of his own.

Oh. Very good. Oh dammit. Businessman aa? Had he said retired manager in Indian Overseas Bank, I could have confirmed Tambramness, but now I have to dig more. And what about the french beard? Oru velai Muslimo? You see, our clan deity (kula deivam) is Vaitheeswaran Koil. What about yours?

I am an atheist.

Oh. Atheist a? Karmam karmam. Anyway, this is going nowhere. Let me at least find out if he is vegetarian, because my traditions only allow extreme cruelty to flora and not fauna. This is a very lucky house sir. All my children got educated here and went on to do their higher studies in the States. So it will be very lucky for you also. Only one small problem. Some non-vegetarians have moved into the flat nearby and every weekend they cook fish and I cannot stand the smell. Hmm. Let me watch for his reaction. Will he empathize with my dislike for all fried forms of aquatic life?

(No reaction) Oh. (I also secretly indicate to my wife that asking which fish they were cooking, Seer fish or Matthi, might not be appropriate at this point)

It is completely torn I say (Kizhinchidhu). Let’s try the beverage test. Before you see the house, what would you like to drink? Tea or Coffee?

Coffee please.

Good. Coffee sounds promising. Filter (good) or Nescafe (not good)?

Double Decaf Hazelnut Latte sprinkled with cinnamon?

The End.

ps: Here is a business idea for an entrepreneur. The Chennai Training Institute for Bram-Masquerading for House Renting Purposes. Royalties accepted in cash, kind, credit card and sodexho passes. Also, do read this post on “Brahmins-only” rental policies in Chennai by Maami.