Raj's Register of Righteous Rhetoric- 1

“None other than an Indian Test cricketer has the right to wear the India Test cap and the dignity of the India Test cap should be maintained at any cost “ :

- Sunil Gavaskar, hurt by the `abuse' of the India Test cap by a foreign member of the support staff during the last tour of Pakistan (Source : The Hindu)

"I can't see the problem, these players are turning out for their countries, it's an honour to represent your country. I would be willing to sweat 365 days in a year for India. Those who can't stand the heat should stay out."

- Sunil Gavaskar , shocked that players are complaining about the packed schedule while adding that the hard grind came with the honour of representing one's country (Source : Cricinfo)

The Soap-Seller of Pulianthope

The last of the Bata Thatha trilogy. The first two were posted here and here.

One of the Walkie-Talkies at the Marina Beach had drawn the attention of the group to an article in The Hindu about a new political party, Lok Paritran, started by a group of ex-IITians and which was planning to field six of its candidates in the T.N.Assembly elections. These political greenhorns, the article said, were so full of idealistic zeal that they had given up lucrative assignments to do their bit for the motherland.

Adidas Track-Pants looked quite skeptical and felt that such idealism was misplaced and unsustainable and it was hard to believe that educated young men and women would willingly abandon the comfortable space of the corporate world for the murky den of politics.

Polo T-Shirt agreed with the view and said that with MBAs being wooed with multi-million dollar pay offers, such a scenario appeared extremely unlikely.

Bata Thatha dismissed this cynicism sharply. “You underestimate the passion of young people. When they believe in a cause, they don’t let mere money come in the way. Take the case of my sister’s grandson, Chander….

‘Did he enter politics? “asked Nike Shorts

“Not exactly, but he quit his job with an MNC to take up a social cause, a move which also brought him into contact with a girl, who was to become his wife. Hear the story.

“My grand-nephew, Chander”, started Bata Thatha, while the other Walkie-Talkies looked nervously at their watches, “possessed, what President Kalam would have called, an ignited mind. A topper in school, he got into IIT, Madras quite effortlessly and followed it up with an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad. As was the fashion among the IITM/IIMA graduates of the ‘80s, he joined an FMCG company and started selling soaps and toothpaste. I understand that he distinguished himself in his job and was credited with many breakthrough, marketing ideas such as the packing of soap in capsule form and mixing of toothpaste with tobacco. Those innovations increased the mass appeal of the products and helped his company tap – what the management guru, Mr. C.K.Prahlad would describe as- the bottom-of-the-pyramid business opportunity.

Despite his 8-digit salary and stock options which would fetch him several crores if encashed, Chander felt a growing sense of disenchantment with his job. Such crass materialism that he saw all around him militated against his idealistic temperament. This slow simmer boiled over one day when he was watching the Tamil movie “Unnal Mudiyum Thambi (“You can do it, brother") - the Kamal Hassan starrer, if you remember- where the son, cast in an idealistic mould, rebels against his rich father, abandons his ancestral house for good, settles down in a remote village and works passionately for the upliftment of the people there.

Brimming with patriotic fervour and humming the tune ‘Sare Jahan Se Achcha’ with the same gusto as Iqbal did when he composed it, Chander came out of the theatre with the clear decision that he too must discard his corporate trappings and take up some meaningful social work that would lift his beloved country out of the morass it had sunk into. By the time he reached his office – yes, he had taken off for a matinee show on a working day- he had formulated a clear plan. The root cause of most of India’s problems, he reasoned, was the absence of any civic sense and basic cleanliness. With his background of marketing soaps and toothpaste, he would take up the noble cause of promoting personal hygiene in the countryside. He would settle down in a village and educate the rural folks on the need to brush their teeth every alternate day and to scrub their bodies with soap at least once a week.

Quitting his cushy job and exchanging his stock options for equivalent quantity of soaps and toothpaste, Chander set off for a village called Puliyanthope on the banks of the River Vaigai in South India. Depending on how you roll your tongue and pronounce the word, “Puli” in Tamil can mean “tiger” or “tamarind. Opinion is, therefore, divided among Tamil pundits if the name of the village celebrates the bravery of the original inhabitants hunting down ferocious tigers with their bare hands or it ridicules them for their cowardice in seeking sanctuary on top of the tamarind trees at the slightest sign of trouble. But this is not germane to this story or, for that matter, italiane or austriane.

So, Chander reached the village and soon found a house large enough to accommodate himself and his consignment of soap and toothpaste. The villagers were curious but being simple souls accepted his presence without any reservations.

The IITM-IIMA types are extremely systematic and the first thing that Chander did was to carry out a survey on the usage of soaps by the rural community. He would sit quietly on a haystack on the bank of the River Vaigai and just watch the bathers from a distance. He did this for a few weeks hoping to collect adequate data to arrive at the bathing pattern and the practices prevalent there.

On one of his morning outings at his observatory, as he was scratching himself vigorously ( hay can make you itchy!), his eyes suddenly espied, among the multitude of bathers, a girl of such blemishless complexion, flawless figure and such raw beauty that Chander knew instinctively that she was the one he was destined to marry. If you know your epics, you will recall that King Santanu had reacted in exactly the same intoxicated way when he saw Goddess Ganga.

This may sound quite incredulous and you may well comment that such impulsive behaviour may be par for the course for mythical characters of yester-eons, but did not fit in with the image of the contemporary IIT-IIMian being a logical, reasoning creature. But such are the inscrutable methods of Cupid, such can be the surreptitious manner in which Love gatecrashes into one’s heart and such is the strange chemistry that can bring together two people from completely dissimilar backgrounds that we have no option but to bow to Providence and accept its diktat on such matters unquestioningly.

In Indian villages, one doesn’t approach the girl directly, whatever maybe the intensity of one’s feelings. One makes enquiries through intermediaries and this is what Chander did. He learnt that the girl’s name was Thenmozhi, that she had lived in that village all her life and – to Chander’s immense relief - was not married. But, alas, there was a serious catch. From the day she was born, she had been betrothed- as was the local custom- to her own uncle, by name Murattu Subbandi Duraipandian ( Musudu, for short) and the marriage was to take place that summer.

The name Musudu, evidently,struck terror in the heart of the villagers, for he was the quintessential ruffian . In the manner of all Tamil villains, he wore his lungi folded up to his thighs, with a trunk-type, striped underwear protruding out. Inside this jutting jatti, he kept a blunt knife which he would pull out at the slightest provocation . He wore a full-sleeve shirt that was rolled up to his shoulders to expose his bulging biceps and terrifying triceps. He sported a moustache that was shaped like a handlebar and which was so thick and so menacing to behold, that able-bodied men and strong-willed women closed their doors and hid inside their houses, as he walked past. When he laughed, it sounded like the roar of hundred Bullet motorcycles being simultaneously kick-started by hundred fat, constipated police constables. He had informers everywhere and not even a mouse could move a cursor without his knowledge.

Musudu was known to be fiercely possessive of Thenmozhi and would not hesitate to tear down with his knife any person who was foolish enough to even talk to her. An unwary youngster had once come within 50 feet of her house and when Musudu came to know about this transgression, he had him tied to a donkey and paraded all over the town, head tonsured, face butchered and pride punctured. The heartbroken youngster ended up marrying the donkey.

So, you can well imagine the maelstrom of emotions in Chander’s mind as his MBA brain was evaluating the probabilistic weight of each of several possible outcomes. Love was pulling him in one direction with all its might, while Fear was cautioning him to get the hell out of the place before Musudu came to hear that he had been making enquiries about Thenmozhi. In this absorbing tussle, I am sorry to report, Fear soon got the better of Love and Chander decided to pack his things and leave the next day. As the historian Toynbee would have put it, Musudu was a challenge for which Chander did not have an appropriate response. ‘The Good Lord gaveth Thenmozhi and the Good Lord taketh Thenmozhi away ‘, was about all he could say, by way of philosophy.

As he was caught in this reverie, the door of his house opened and horror of horrors, it was none other than Musudu himself at the entrance. His informers had not wasted any time and there he was in his trademark lungi flying half-mast, striped underwear projecting outside, his moustache quivering menacingly and the knife held suggestively in his hand.

Chander closed his eyes and started praying- that being the most expedient and the only course of action that occurred to him under the circumstances. He waited for that sensation of blunt knife tearing through his insides, but what he heard was a loud noise that seemed to originate outside his body. He dared to open his eyes after a few minutes and found Musudu unconscious on the floor.

The villagers soon heard about this incident and naturally concluded that Chander had single-handedly managed to overcome and tame Musudu, their tormentor of many years. In the wake of Chanders heroic exploits, Thenmozhi’s parents were delighted to get their daughter married to him. In the two decades since then, Chander and Thenmozhi have assiduously sought to make Pulianthope the hygiene capital of India and to ensure that it had the highest per capita consumption of soap. ”

Quite pleased with the happy ending Bata Thatha sat down on the bench near Gandhi statue and ordered a glass of carrot and beetroot juice from the vendor nearby.

Nike Shorts who was not known to mince words, ticked off Bata Thatha sharply. “This is not one of your better stories, Bata Thatha. Quite a tame ending, if I may say so. For instance, how did Musudu suddenly and conveniently become unconscious? Are you telling us that it was an Act of God in response to Chander’s prayers?”

Bata Thatha gulped down his juice and replied, “Of course not. There is a perfectly good explanation which I thought was self-evident, but which I realize now I should have provided. I must be losing my touch.’

“Chander himself was caught by surprise when he saw Musudu on the floor. But, as you are aware, these IIT-IIM types can quickly size up situations, which might baffle lesser mortals for weeks. I had told you that Chander kept a sizable stock of his soaps in his house, When Musudu flung open the door of the house and walked in, he was assaulted by the overpowering fragrance and aroma that emanated from the soap stockpile. An aroma that was completely alien to Musudu who had never had a bath in his life and whose sensory receptors in the nose were more conditioned to the earthy and rustic smells which lay at the other end of the olfactory spectrum. Musudu was felled by Soap Smell. Thats what had happened."

The Walkie-Talkies silently mulled over this explanation.

"Good day, gentleman” greeted Bata Thatha as he walked away from the beach, forgetting to pay the vendor for the carrot and beetroot juice..

The Sudoku couple

This is the second story in the Bata Thatha series. The first one appeared here.

At 6 am, the Marina Beach was already teeming with practitioners of jogging, weight-lifting, cricket, beach volleyball, yoga and other sundry activities. Oblivious to all this, the Walkie-Talkies were engaged in a lively discussion on the marriage market and how it was becoming exceedingly difficult for eligible bachelors of Chennai to find a girl to marry. Polo T-Shirt lamented that parents of girls, these days, mercilessly discarded horoscopes of Chennai-resident males into the dust bin, and were on a single-point agenda of finding bridegrooms settled in the USA. “My sister", added Nike Shorts “has invested heavily in broadband, webcam and high-end computers to enable my niece to interact online and woo the US-based youngsters. She has a placard outside her house that says “Local suitors, kindly excuse, And, beware of dogs”

Bata Thatha coughed at this point, signaling his intention to speak. “Your point is valid and well taken. But, all is not lost, gentleman. I can vouch for the fact that a little bit of tact, a certain degree of recklessness and a stroke of good luck are all it takes for a local lad to get a girl to marry. Let me present the case of my wife’s cousin, Bharat.

My wife’s cousin Bharat (said Bata Thatha) did not distinguish himself academically, but was an exceptionally bright lad in many respects. He was known to complete the notoriously cryptic crossword of ‘The Hindu’ in 25 minutes on average and in 18 minutes flat on days he had had ladies-finger sambar with his curd rice. He was also a whiz kid at Quiz and could reel out the names of all the Central Asian countries (even spelling Kyrgyzstan correctly) and the capital cities of the north-eastern states of India, without googling even once.

At the time this story begins, he was not yet married as he – like all nerdy characters- was far too absorbed in his intellectual pursuits of deciphering cryptograms and unscrambling anagrams. Such of those girls he met, he found too stupid and dimwitted. He dismissed all of them with a contempt that the Mensa-types reserve for those with mere double-digit IQs.

But Cupid has the uncanny knack of directing its arrows on unsuspecting victims at unlikely places and in improbable situations. Bharat was hit by one such arrow as he was returning from Bangalore to Chennai by the Brindavan Express. As was his habit, he had picked up a book containing 100 Sudoku puzzles (hard ones) and had completed them by the time the train reached Bangarpet. Tossing the book aside, he noticed a girl, in the seat opposite, taking up an issue of the Deccan Herald and completing the Sudoku (medium) in less than 10 minutes. Impressed by this speed, Bharat introduced himself and struck a conversation with her on the nuances and the variants of the Sudoku. One thing led to another and by the time the train rolled past Jolarpet, the seed of love that had hitherto remained dormant in Bharat’s hardened heart, suddenly germinated and sprouted. Bharat realized that he was madly in love and suspected that Deepti- for that was her name- reciprocated the sentiment.

When they had got off the train at Chennai Central and had shaken off the persistent porters, Bharat, without wasting any further time, proposed to Deepti. Deepti blushed and said that she would certainly love to marry him, but, alas, her father would never agree. Like all fathers in Chennai, he was hell bent on getting his daughter married to a groom in the USA. A local lad was absolutely infra-dig and would flunk the ‘quality control’ test quite upstream in the process. Bharat had no chance whatsoever, she told him. He might as well forget her.

Seated alone at the Coffee Day at Alwarpet the next evening and sipping his cappuccino, Bharat cursed his luck. After all these years he had finally met his soul-mate but could not make further progress because her unpatriotic father viewed India-settled boys with utter contempt and had placed filters that would only let green-card holders through. If only this unreasonable father could be dragged to the Rashtrapati Bhavan and subjected to a 326-slide PowerPoint presentation by the President on the many wonders of India, it would serve him right, he muttered. Bharat looked around the café and noted sadly that, except his own, all the other tables were occupied by couples, some holding hands, some staring adoringly into each other’s eyes and some sharing coffee from the same glass. Hell, even the fifty-something man at the corner table seemed to be having fun with a woman half his age. Damn, thought Bharat.

But getting over the gloom and kicking off this negative train of thought, Bharat sent an SMS to Deepti that he had decided to meet her father the next day and take the bull by the horn, an expression he felt was quite appropriate for the occasion. Deepti sent a return SMS that if Bharat had pronounced suicidal tendencies and wanted to indulge in such daredevilry, she would not stop him, but he would be well-advised to heed some of the tips that she would list out in an email shortly.

The email only confirmed Bharat’s suspicion that ‘the father’ was a weirdo who ought to have been kept in a padded cell in the interest of the public at large. Apparently, he could not be met in the morning, as he would throw up temper tantrums if disturbed early in the day; he was not available in the evenings as his piety demanded that he be at the Kapaleeswarar temple without fail at that hour; he was unapproachable when he was hungry as his sugar level tended to drop sharply; he was uncontactable after a heavy meal as it would send him into a stupor. He hated dark colours or very light shades.He would not tolerate a loud voice as it smacked of arrogance nor too soft a tone, as it was an indicator of pusillanimity. Deepti concluded the mail, with warm, well-meant, “best-of-luck” greetings.

Reading the mail several times, the thought occurred to Bharat that the description of ‘the father’ tallied with that of Hiranyakashibu’s, and perhaps, he- Bharat- was destined to assume Narasimha avatar to subdue this demon. Applying the same principles as Lord Vishnu did, he went across to the office of ‘the father’ at exactly 11.30 am, reasoning that it was not early in the morning and certainly not evening. It was not too soon after breakfast or too far away from lunch. He chose his attire carefully – he was in beige pants and a sky-blue shirt. Despite these elaborate preparations he had butterflies in his stomach and his knees felt like jelly. Saint George would have felt the same way when he set out in search of the menacing Dragon.

Anyway, love spurred him on and he steeled himself for the task. He barged into the office and was led into the sanctum sanctorum of ‘the father”. In the sunlight that streamed in through the Venetian blinds, he saw the silhouette of the old man in the act of dictating a letter to his secretary. And, lo and behold, Bharat realized that this was the same duo- the fifty-something old man and his companion half-his-age- that he had caught in a compromising position at the corner table of the Coffee Day, the previous evening.

This revelation introduced a new dimension to the proceedings and a new spin on things, so to say. The problem acquired an entirely different complexion, Bharat thought. So, this is what the pious old man had been up to every evening - making out with his secretary - when his family had believed that he was meditating at the Kapaleeswarar Temple! The snake!

For a fleeting moment, Bharat’s conscience told him that he should not stoop to blackmail, but this inner voice was quickly laid to rest. He was convinced that the circumstances definitely warranted these strong arm tactics and he was damned if he was going to let the old man get away with it. He had no doubt that if Arjuna had expressed such reservations and faltered at the start of battle, Lord Krishna would have admonished him thus, “Fruit should be thy only concern; do not worry about the methods, Go for the jugular now”.

Beguiled and becalmed, the old man gave his consent and the wedding took place at the Kapaleeswarar Temple. For the first time in the history of Tamil weddings, a Sudoku puzzle was printed on each of the coconut-betel nut bags that the guests took home. Bharat and Deepti now run a coaching class for the Sudoku-challenged and I hear reports that business is brisk. They have been blessed with a pair of twins and have named them Sudo and Doku..

So, you will agree ( concluded Bata Thatha) that a little bit of tact, a certain degree of recklessness and a stroke of good luck are all it takes for a local lad to get a girl to marry him. Not all the girls want to migrate to America.

The Walkie-Talkies continued walking, mulling over the key points that had emerged from Bata Thatha’s story.

“I must join Bharat’s school to understand this Sudoku “said Adidas Track-Pants breaking the silence, “Haven’t been able to crack the thing at all till now”

O, where is the rainy moon?

I am spending the week-end at a sea-side resort. Stretched out on the hammock that the resort guys have thoughtfully provided. Watching the waves as they gently strike the shore, the cool breeze as it tenderly picks up the sand, the birds flying majestically, flapping their wings so gracefully.

Ha, the sea always brings out the poet in me. So, here goes………….. .




Oh, where is the rainy moon?
Where is the rainy wave?

Why does the cloud die?
Fall quietly like a small shark.
Wave calmly like a dead wave.
All seashells pull warm, big sailors.
Endurance, desolation and desolation

Small, rainy girls quietly love a rainy, rainy, ship.
Rough old pirates roughly love a misty, cold gull.
Die roughly like a misty captain.
Love is a small shore.
All sailors fight warm, clear ships.



Life, courage and faith.
Death, faith and endurance.
All breezes fight warm, big ships..
Rise roughly like a rough reef

Endurance, adventure and death.
Why does the breeze sail?
Shores sail like sunny captains.
All seas view warm, warm seashells.

Why does the seashell die ?
All reefs view rainy, clear clouds.

Seas grow like rainy clouds.
The misty shark calmly commands the tuna.
The cold mainland quietly commands the sea.
Where is the rainy moon?
Where is the rainy wave?



Where is the cold wind?
The sailor travels like a warm ship.
Why does the shore grow?
The lad endures like a small mainland.

Oh, where is the rainy moon?
Where is the rainy wave?


For those of you who are not as talented as I am and are not blessed with the gift of poetry, I recommend this poem generator

The many moods of the Prime Minister

A photographer from Plus Ultra visited Parliament when it was in session and managed to capture the Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh in a variety of moods and different facial expressions.

From left to right and top to bottom :

Ecstatic........ Crestfallen ...........Pensive ..........Suspicious

Withdrawn ..... Assertive .......... Submissive.... ..... Boisterous...... ....

Calculative...... Manipulative.... Euphoric........ Appreciative

The eternal bachelor

Among the many hundreds of people who frequent the Marina Beach for their morning walk, there is a particular group of walkers referred to by others simply as ‘the Walkie-Talkies’. As the name suggests, they are a pretty garrulous bunch and known for their ruthlessness in dissecting any subject under the sun and examining it with a critical eye. They can cover an awesome range of topics, from the waist size of the girl who just passed them by to more cerebral discussions on how Nostradamus had predicted two thousand years back that humankind would be knocked out of existence by mobile phones.

One morning, the Walkie-Talkies had settled down into their rhythm when a Nike-Shorts brought up the topic of TV serials and how most of the stories revolved around mothers-in-law and how they were being projected as much-feared, larger-than-life figures. To which observation, a Polo T-Shirt added that it was a well-established rule that the mother-in-law was the central and dominant character in Indian society and her writ ran large and unchallenged . An Adidas Track-Pants concurred and cited the example of his own household where his mother ran roughshod over his wife. Bata Thatha, who had been uncharacteristically quiet so far, interjected at this point, “Gentlemen, what you say is substantially true, but there are some exceptions. Let me tell you the story of my cousin’s son, Ashok”

“My nephew Ashok (said Bata Thatha) was a mama’s boy, if ever there was one. Right from the day he was born she kept him under her thumb and refused to let him out of her grip. He was brought up as a timid boy and not allowed to mingle or play with other children in his school or his neighbourhood. He was, understandably, an object of much ridicule.

But, as was the case with all male members of my family, he grew up to be a tall and handsome young man and attracted the attention of many young girls. Ashok may have been timid, but his hormones soon started to assert themselves and he concluded, quite rightly,that he needed to get married at the earliest. An arranged marriage was out of the question, as his mother would never put in a serious effort at match-making and would even sabotage any attempt by others. So, he had to find a girl himself and somehow convince his mother to accept her. He went about this task with vigour.

The first girl that Ashok brought home was Malini, who was wheat-complexioned, long-haired and strikingly pretty. After she was introduced to his mother, they sat down in the living room, where Ashok hoped that pleasantries would be exchanged and the mother won over. At this point, his mother whispered to him “Ashok, can I have a word with you alone?” He followed her, nervously, into the kitchen, where she told him clearly, “Ashok, that girl must simply go. I don’t approve of her hair. Far too long and unnaturally black. Must have been dyed.” Ashok, though disheartened, knew that it was futile to argue with his mother, as she was known to cling to her position for ever once she had made up her mind. So, he had to reluctantly lead Malini out of the house and let her go.

The next one to come home was Shalini, who was tall, slender and with short, brownish hair. She had hardly removed her slippers and walked into the house when his mother nudged Ashok on his ribs and said, “Ashok, can I have a word with you alone?” So, off to the kitchen they went, where Ashok was ticked off sharply, “Are you mad? Can’t you see that she is terribly underweight and malnourished? Even her hair is falling off. She must, most certainly, go.” So, sadly for Ashok again, Shalini went out of his life.

The third one was Dharini, small-made, bright-eyed and curly-haired. She lasted a little longer. In fact, they had got past the introduction, exchanged small talk at the living room and had now moved to the dining room for lunch. Just when Ashok was beginning to entertain some hopes, his mother uttered the dreaded words, “Ashok, can I have a word with you alone?” So, the kitchen it was once again, where Ashok was severely rebuked, “Ashok, that girl must go, pronto. She is so short that she doesn’t even reach the top of the dining table”. Ashok again reconciled himself to his fate and had to drag Dharini out of the house and into the street. He had, to use his mother’s words, let her go.

A broken-hearted Ashok met me (continued Bata Thatha) six months back and narrated his tale of woe. He told me that he was terrified of taking any girl home and mortally scared of the sentence, “Ashok, can I have a word with you alone?” that his mother would bring up ominously as a prelude to rejecting any girl on the slightest pretext.

Though Ashok is a spineless imbecile, I felt that I couldn’t let a relative down, especially one who was in such serious trouble. Blood, as they say, is thicker than water. So, I thought it over and came up with a typically brilliant suggestion, a sure remedy for his painful malady. “Ashok,” I told him, “the mistake you have made in each case is to allow your mother to find some reason, some trivial excuse or other, to reject the girl. What you must endeavour to do is find a girl who is an exact replica of your mother in every way and bring her home. Your mother will not be able to find any cause for rejecting her”

All male members on my father’s side of the family can think on their feet and Ashok, astounded by my idea, set out immediately, in single-minded pursuit of such a girl. And, he found her! Harini was her name.

Harini was exactly like his mother in every detail- shape of eyes, height, colour of hair, complexion, you name it. She dressed like his mother did, in a traditional sari. She talked just the way his mother did- in that measured, slow, manner. Even, most of the mannerisms- raising the eyebrows, scratching the nose, etc- were similar. When she got up and walked, her gait matched his mother’s step for step.

And it worked! Ashok’s mother was cornered and overpowered at last. She could not come out with a single flaw or a single reason for rejecting the girl. Not once during the evening did she ask Ashok, “Ashok, can I have a word with you alone?”

Bata Thatha paused at this point to tie his shoelaces. The others pounced on him. Nike- Shorts said, “Your story and the happy ending only corroborate our point that the mother-in-law was the most dominant character in our society”.

Bata Thatha finished tying his shoelaces and implored the other Walkie-Talkies to be patient, “Wait, the story is not yet over. Let me complete”.

It is true (resumed Bata Thatha), that Harini by bearing an amazing similarity to his mother in looks, mannerisms, gait, etc managed to get past the ordeal. Ashok’s mother, for the first time, did not raise any objections, as rejecting Harini would tantamount to a rejection of her own self. She had to give Harini her stamp of approval”

But, at this point, Ashok’s father who had never had a meaningful conversation with him at any point in his life, tapped Ashok on his shoulders and said, “ Ashok, can I have a word with you alone ? That girl, Harini, must go. She is too much like your mother.

The bacterial warfare

Unable to fathom how a bunch of second-rate English cricketers could crush the Indian team and inflict such a humiliating defeat at home, I caught up with former Indian test cricketer, Vijay Ghanekar (name changed to protect identity) to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Out of the 46 test matches that Vijay figured in, between 1974 and 1986, India won 28 – all of them on home soil. So Vijay has impressive credentials to speak on this subject and do an incisive analysis. What did they do right then? What are we missing now?

“Quite simply, all we did was to make sure that the visiting Englishmen drank plenty of water”. said Vijay sipping his beer that I was paying for.

“What do you mean, drink plenty of water?” I asked, scratching my head .

“Yes, as soon as any English team arrived at the Bombay airport and got past the Customs, we would line up to give them a traditional welcome and offer them a glass of water each, drawn from a well close by. Before they reached their hotels, the bacteria in the water would have the desired effect on their sensitive stomachs and they would head straight for the bathrooms. The “Delhi-belly’ would ensure that they were kept in safe custody in these bathrooms for the remainder of their tour, rather than at the nets. When they came on to bat occasionally, they would be in no condition to face our bowlers- even one as pot-bellied as Prasanna or as big-bottomed as Bedi. Some Englishmen wanted to shed their white flannels for brown pants”

Vijay recalled an incident. One of the English cricketers, Phil Edmunds, returning home after a two-month tour of India, uttered these memorable words “ You know what I am looking forward to, back in England? A dry fart”.

“I can’t forget”, Vijay continued, “ the sight of Richard Hadlee, the New Zealand fast bowler, in a Test match in 1976, starting his run-up and collapsing on the ground just before he reached the bowling crease. He had to be removed on a stretcher. The Indian batsmen in the middle exchanged high-fives, pleased that the team’s bacterial move was working. India went on to win the test match by a huge margin”

“So, what ended this winning streak?” I asked innocently

“ The advent of mineral water in the ‘90s triggered a sharp decline in our fortunes. Now, every visiting cricketer is offered bottled, ozonised, ultra-pure, mineral water and the famous Indian bacteria is simply not allowed to work its patriotic magic and do its bit for the country. What a shame”, he lamented.

“ In cricket, as in war, love and business one has to identify one’s competitive advantage get one’s strategy right, and deploy the right resources as early in the process as appropriate. Our strategy then was to dehydrate the Englishmen, using water-borne bacteria as soon as they set foot on Indian soil. Our real heroes were Vibrio cholerae, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella, and the diarrheogenic Escherichia coli. Ah, they don't make 'em like that any more....

The Pontiff.......

President Kalam is, no doubt, an erudite scholar, a scientist of distinction and a man of unquestionable integrity. But the President’s pronounced propensity to pontificate for prolonged periods can arouse as much anger as my annoying alliterations. He seems to be convinced that God brought him into this world, planted him purposefully in the Rashtrapati Bhavan and placed on his broad shoulders the onerous task of educating every single Indian who comes within his striking distance. He takes this role seriously and performs persistently. No person is spared his tedious lectures, no subject is outside his grasp and no occasion finds him at a loss for words. Unwary people are converted into unwilling pupils at the slightest provocation.

If he is tiring, the media can be quite exasperating. How many times have we been told that the “President stunned the visiting dignitary by making a PowerPoint presentation”, when all it takes to do that is to press a button with one’s forefinger – a task that is not beyond the capability of even an one-eyed, one-armed, bow-legged, imbecile. It is certainly not rocket science.

Yesterday, my attention was drawn to a news item, headlined, “President wears his scientist cap as plane hits air pocket”. I am not able to find it in the online edition, but I will give you the gist. It started by saying that when the President was returning from Mauritius and having a mid-air chat with the members of the media at 1.30 am, the plane suddenly became very bumpy and bouncy, causing some nervousness among the media persons. Pausing at this point and reflecting on the headlines, I thought to myself that the news item would go on to say that the President had launched into an explanation of the phenomenon of air pockets, how turbulence is created when bodies of air moving at different speeds meet at high altitudes, how the changes can cause the lift of the plane’s wings to vary quickly and unpredictably or some such funda.

Instead, the awestruck correspondent goes on to report that the President remained calm and unruffled in the face of such adversity and pacified the media thus, “ This is a normal geographical feature. When a plane hits a cloud, it will bounce”

The sycophantic correspondent ends the report unable to contain his admiration at the President’s repertoire of knowledge, his amazing understanding of the actions of all the physical forces in the Universe and the breathtaking insights he is able to provide on the most complex of subjects.

Whaaaaaaa?

Don't worry, be happy

The root cause of most of the problems that we face as adults is that, somewhere down the line, we jettison the cheery disposition and unfettered exuberance that characterize our teens. As teenagers, we would have laughed our guts out on seeing the Maths teacher trip over a banana skin and fracture his ribs. Served the old man right, we would have told ourselves. ‘Guy ought to be happy that he wasn’t knocked down by a truck’ we would have commented in a careless manner and carried on with whatever youthful activity we were engaged in at that moment.

At some pre-ordained moment soon after our teens, we metamorphose into morose morons. Sliding into adulthood, we lose our bearings and our sense of humour completely. When a colleague trips over his shoelace and rolls down a flight of stairs, rather than assessing the situation as one pregnant with comical possibilities we reach out to help that person to his feet, overpowered by a misguided sense of sympathy and concern. A 14-year old would have remarked that the fellow who rolled down from the third floor ought to be thankful that it wasn’t the sixth floor he started his roll from, so why the unnecessary fuss?

It is all a matter of perspective - as my daughter has been trying to impress upon me for years. Consider these conversational nuggets.

Daughter (when she is 5 years old): Can I take four of these chocolate éclairs?

Me: Four éclairs!

Daughter: Am I asking you for the whole box? Be thankful I want only four of those.

Five years later, same parent, same offspring:

Daughter: Can I invite thirty of my friends to my birthday party?

Me: Thirty friends!!

Daughter: I have forty classmates. I am being extremely considerate to you and inviting only thirty of them. You ought to be thankful, you know.

Five more years roll on:

Daughter: I need to go to the beauty parlour. To colour my hair

Me: And I am expected to sponsor the event. How much?

Daughter: Five hundred rupees.

Me: Five hundred for your burgundy hair!!!

Daughter: Listen; some of my friends spend two thousand rupees on hair smoothening and a massage. I am merely colouring my hair and it sets you back by a measly five hundred rupees. Be grateful, you stingy Scrooge.

You follow the pattern. Any situation, however grim, can be made to appear rosy, by invoking an image of an even graver situation, thereby placing the original problem in a new perspective and a favourable setting. You end up thanking your stars that you had averted a major calamity and that you had actually gotten away lightly. As in this letter written, from a boarding school, by a daughter to her mom and dad. Or those good-news, bad news jokes we keep reading.

Why not apply this technique in some typical situations? :

Doctor: I have the scan reports. You have brain tumour.

Patient: Brain tumour!!!

Doctor: It is far better than being diagnosed with meningomonosi calmnia, a rare disease that attacks the middle toe and can prevent you from wearing shoes. believe me. Be thankful, it is just your brain that has been affected.

Boss: We are downsizing. You are fired!

Employee: Fired!!!!

Boss: We had to gun down a few of your other colleagues. Believe me, you are a lucky devil!

Wife: You have been glued to that stupid computer for two hours now. Why don’t you stop your silly blogging and do some useful work for a change?

Me: There are some incurable addicts in the blogosphere who cannot get off the computer and who need to post some stuff or other for 22 hours every day. You are lucky to have as your life partner, an amazingly responsible and incredibly sensible person who strikes such a wonderful balance and exercises such remarkable restraint. Be happy, woman.

The Brahmastra

The historic Indo-US nuclear deal was signed after several rounds of hectic negotiations. While dozens of scientists, diplomats and bureaucrats participated in these talks, the public is not aware that the deal almost fell through, but was made possible by the single-handed effort of one man. A senior correspondent from Plus Ultra reports from behind the scenes and provides the hour-by-hour sequence of events that unfolded on March 2nd 2006.


8.00 am: Indian team consisting of Ronan Sen, India’s Ambassador to USA, Shyam Saran, Foreign Secretary and Mr.Narayanan, National Security Advisor admit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that no headway was made during the discussions that went on till early hours of the morning

9.00 am: US Secretary of State, Ms Condoleeza Rice, says that US will insist on safeguards

10.00 am: Indian scientists offer to wear pads, gloves and abdomen guards while testing nuclear bombs

11.00 am: US rejects these safety measures as “short of adequate”

12.00 Noon : PM calls up US President George W Bush and says that India will now have to play its last trump card that afternoon. President Bush is still clueless what this is all about. PM issues instructions to launch Operation Brahmastra

2.00 pm:. President Bush visits Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Warmly welcomed by President Abdul Kalam.

3.00 pm: President Kalam begins his powerpoint presentation on his “Grand Vision 2025”

4.00 pm: President Kalam on his 10th slide and beginning to explain vision to President Bush, in his thick Tamil accent

5.00 pm: President Kalam on his 25th slide and warming to the theme. President Bush seen getting restless.

( Photo : President Bush seen in state of growing restlessness as President Kalam is transiting to his 42nd Powerpoint slide)

6.00 pm: President Kalam on his 45th slide, about to elaborate on his theme. President Bush seen getting extremely fidgety

7.00 pm: President Kalam on his 62nd slide, dwelling on his idea of power-generation by a mini-grid of microturbines running on methane released by Indian cattle. President Bush seen in extreme state of agitation.

8.00 pm: President Kalam on his 87th slide, and nearing the half-way mark of his presentation.

8.12 pm: President Bush throws up his hands in despair, capitulates and begs to be let out

8.14 pm: Indian negotiatiors with pen in hand ask Bush to sign the nuclear deal, if he wants to be put out of his misery. President Kalam stands menacingly with finger on the PgDn button of his laptop.

8.15 pm : President Bush inks the deal. PM sticks to his end of bargain and prevails upon President Kalam to stop his presentation.

8.17 pm: President Bush rushes to the safety of his Air Force One aircraft and takes off.

Operation Brahmastra was a complete success.

Fly Indian

On reading media reports on the rebranding of ‘Indian Airlines’ as “Indian”, Plus Ultra caught up with the Civil Aviation Minister, Mr.Praful Patel, as he was just about to board a Jet Airways flight and sought more details. Excerpts from this exclusive interview :


Plus Ultra: Mr. Praful Patel, what was the inspiration behind the change of name to “Indian”? Is it meant to appeal to the sense of patriotism and therefore put some moral pressure on Indians to patronize the national carrier?

Praful Patel : Contrary to the general opinion that “Indian” is a shortened form of “Indian Airlines” or is meant to convey “something belonging to India”, the word Indian is actually derived from “ Incredibly dissatisfied avian”. Yes, that’s what it stands for and aims to achieve.

Plus Ultra: When the entire corporate world seeks to increase customer satisfaction, why is Indian harping on ‘dissatisfaction”?

Praful Patel: I need to give you some background. Some time back, we had appointed Mckinsey as our consultants to help us formulate our new business strategy. They brought with them a battery of suited, booted MBAs who studied the whole operations threadbare on their laptops and made the startling discovery that there was an inverse correlation between customer satisfaction and our own market share.

Above graph presented by Mckinsey clearly shows a downward trend in market share with drop in customer dissatisfaction.

From the graph, you will see that in 1986, when IA customer dissatisfaction was 100%, our market share was 100%. Today, the percentage of dissatisfied customers has dropped to 60% and our market share has slipped to 40%. So, the obvious thing to do is to target 100% dissatisfaction again, so that we get our 100% market share back.

Plus Ultra: Somehow, the idea of targeting customer dissatisfaction doesn’t sound right.

Praful Patel: Look, you have been brainwashed by the likes of Peter Drucker, Deming and Tom Peters into thinking that customer satisfaction is the sole mantra for success of an organization. But, Mckinsey presented an entire body of evidence to convince us that customer satisfaction is an elusive, unattainable goal as customers constantly revise their benchmarks. Take the punctuality of flights. Back in the 1970s, if a Monday morning 6 am flight took off before the evening of Friday the same week, it left the customer delighted, In the impatient 1980s, the Monday 6 am flight was expected to take off latest by Tuesday morning 6am. In the decadent 1990s, the 6 am flight had to take off by 7 am, to avoid customer satisfaction. In the restless first decade of the third millennium, flight delays are measured in minutes. By the next decade, a delay of a few seconds will invite the wrath of the greedy passenger. So, where’s the end?

Plus Ultra: Do all your employees feel that way?

Praful Patel: We asked Mckinsey to present them some gory stories. For instance, a train reached Tokyo station exactly 8 seconds after the scheduled time, The irate passengers pulled out the train driver and jumped on him samurai style and crushed him into pieces. So, we asked our employees, do they want to face a similar fate? No, they chorused, better to peg customer’s expectation down. We also showed them some medical reports of over-worked employees of competitor and this proved to be the clinching argument.

(Above) ECG of an IA employee responding to a customer complaint. Note the perfect P-Q-R-S rhythm reflecting his equanimity .

(Below) ECG of an harassed over-worked Jet Airways employee under constant stress in quest of customer satisfaction.

Plus Ultra: So, how do you go about ensuring dissatisfaction?

Praful Patel: Believe me, it is hard work. It requires teamwork and wholehearted cooperation of all the divisions, departments and employees. . Whether it is the ticketing person digging into her nose, or the check-in staff involved in a juicy gossip when a big queue is waiting, or the air-hostess maintaining a BMI > 50 and a waist size > 50”, or the handler of the luggage tossing the brown suitcase marked “fragile” on to the conveyor belt from a height of six feet – everyone must play his or her part to perfection. It just requires one bad employee – one weak link in the chain- to throw the spanner into the works. We had a case last week where two consecutive flights took off on time, which caused a slight drop in dissatisfaction levels. We suspended both the pilots for the misguided exuberance. You see, we need to quell this menace and crush the rebellion before it reaches dangerous levels.

Plus Ultra : What do dissatisfied passengers do ? How do they react?

Praful Patel : We have convenient exit options available for passengers who are about to blow their fuses

Photo above shows dissatisfied passengers exercising easy exit option. Note 'Indian' parachutes use national tricolour.

Plus Ultra: Do you have any back-up plans to be implemented, in case a passenger has managed to board the aircraft, without being suitably dissatisfied already?

Praful Patel: Sure, one can’t take any chances. We always have contingency plans. In January, a 7 am flight was taking off at 6 pm, when one of our alert flight attendants noticed that a passenger in seat no 17 A did not appear adequately dissatisfied. Discrete enquiries showed that he had not had anything to eat and was looking forward to the meal that was going to be served. We had to do some quick troubleshooting and bring matters under control

Photo above shows what hungry, salivating passenger was expecting to be served and was drooling for.

Photo below shows what he was actually served.


l

Plus Ultra: Would you like to share any other insights with our readers?

Praful Patel: Yes, we would be obliged if any of your readers brings to our attention any specific cases where they experienced satisfaction while flying Indian. We will act on this feedback immediately and correct the situation.

Plus Ultra: Thank you, Mr. Patel. Our best wishes on your journey of Total Customer Dissatisfaction.

Raj Singh

When we keep hearing the grim prognosis on the institution of marriage, why it is facing extinction and how the rate of separation of couples exceeds the rate of marriage of singles, it is gratifying to report that my marriage has stood the test of time. Thanks to some sagely advice I received on the day of our wedding.

Many decades back, , after we had exchanged our wedding vows (I agreeing to take her under my protection and she pledging total and passive subservience to me), my wife and I came down the steps and sought the blessings of a Sikh Guru.

“Take my advice, my boy”, he told me, “from now on, stop being the timid TamBram that you are and learn to be a toughie like some of us Sikhs are. You must assert yourself and insist that you take all the major decisions. Brook no interference whatsoever. And don’t waste your time on minor decisions. Leave that to your wife. If you stick to these simple rules, trust me, your marriage will be as smooth as butter on a baby’s bum”. Thus spoke the Sikh Guru, incidentally the maternal grandfather of Navjot Singh Sidhu and from whom the latter inherited his colourful language.

Photo, from author’s wedding album, shows Giani Banta Singh proceeding to the Dining Hall, for a well-earned lunch, after dispensing sagely advice to author and wife

So, all these years, my wife and I have treated these words as gospel, divided the responsibilities as major and minor and shared the burden as suggested by Guruji.

My wife takes decisions on petty and minor matters such as- which school my daughters must go to, which house we should buy or rent, where and what we eat, where we must invest our money or what we must spend it on, where we should holiday, the career paths that we should follow, and so on – all the small things in life.

But on real major issues such as – “Should US bomb Iran, should Britain abandon the pound sterling and change over to Euro, should India be elected a permanent member at the UN, what should the world do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% before 2050, should the RBI increase the prime lending rate by 0.5%, etc, should FDI be allowed in the retail sector - my views prevail clearly, emphatically and unequivocally.

(Okay, okay, this is an old Sardar joke and you have heard it before. But now you know how and where it originated)

So, in short, I have always enjoyed the position of a roaring lion whose authority to take decisions on major issues has been unchallenged, as this recent photo will illustrate.

Photo shows author (on the left and with the imposing mane) delivering his verdict to wife on a major issue, in no uncertain terms and with telling effect)

That’s why, when I got this sms from my wife last week, “Come home early. No fooling around in office today. Major decision needs to be taken at home”- I was a little puzzled.

Driving back home, I thought of various possibilities. What was the major thing that had come up? Had Kofi Annan (the elder brother of Tea Thambi) contacted my residence to take my views on whether the UN must intervene in the Danish cartoon crisis? With the Union Budget to be presented soon, did P.Chidambaram send a SOS message to get my opinion on whether he should introduce a service tax on blogging? Maybe the US Secretary of State wanted some tips from me on how to correct the anagrammatical error in the 'Indo-US unclear deal' and change it to 'Indo-US nuclear deal'. Or perhaps the BCCI Selection Committee was desperate to reach me, wanting some inscrutable yet ingenious logic to retain Ajit Agarkar in the team. My mind kept whirling….

When I reached home, it turned out to be a complete anti-climax. The “major issue” pertained to my daughter who is in her 10th standard and we had to decide which of the subjects- Bio-tech, Biology, Computer Science or Commerce- she had to pursue next year. Apparently, this decision was irreversible and could have far-reaching implications on my daughter’s future.

I was shocked. Had my wife dragged me away from office to discuss such a minor matter? I had been in the midst of some serious discussions on an HR initiative- “Should we measure the deliverables of the employees and then deliver the measurables or the other way round?” I left this midway and came rushing home on getting her sms, only to be presented with a trivial and inconsequential issue. Why was she abdicating her responsibility and rocking the foundation of our marriage, by inflicting such a minor issue on me?

Luckily, my daughter cut short the proceedings and informed us that she had already taken the decision. Following the principles of reductio ad absurdum, she had ruled out bio-tech (“the teacher is horrible”), biology (“the labs stink”) and computer science (““bah, programming and suchlike”). That left only Commerce, a subject she knew nothing about and therefore could not be eliminated. So, Commerce it would be, she informed us cheerfully.

Photo shows the author getting an affectionate hug from his daughter after helping her take the first major decision of her life.

Our marriage survived the test, but it was a close call. Phew!

Dinner Tag.

Sowmya has tagged me . I am supposed to invite 6 people for dinner and then pass the baton on to 3 more bloggers to play host.

The first decision I made was that all six guests would have to be girls. I am not going to fritter away this rare opportunity to be the sole male among seven diners. I am certainly not going to call Thennavan who, apart from being a bachelor, will simply sweep the girls off their feet with his ability to wax forth on subjects ranging from Thai Poosam to Java to Penguins to Vaikunta Ekadasi. Most certainly not Kiruba Shankar whose idea of a relaxed evening is to jog 40 km with his blistered heel and plastered toes. The sight of Kiruba heroically running to the dinner venue will send girls into raptures and draw the attention away from me. Yes, better to keep these competitors away. So, girls it will be.

Having feasted on her cream of potato soup, Aloo parathas, Urulaikizhangu Podimas and a dessert of sweet potatoes, washed down with cold coffee made in her dishwasher, it would be ungentlemanly on my part not to invite Sowmya . Besides, she being a Science afficionado, will regale the IGF2R-mutated guests with trivia and minutae such as the bacterial action involved in the digestion process, the radon gas that is absorbed in the bloodstream when you are exposed to radiation from a light bulb, the calories consumed by super bowels during the Super Bowl , the resultant strain on the bathrooms and how titanium dioxide can clean up the mess. Sowmya loves her veggies and I must make sure that she gets plenty of those. Incidentally, if a vegetarian is one who eats only vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat ? Which brings me to the second guest, Mother Teresa.

No, not the beatified missionary. I know she has reached her heavenly abode. My guest is Mother Teresa 2.0. You know that for the last 40 years, every aspirant to the Miss World title when asked the question, “ If you were to be re-born, who would you like to born as?” almost always answered, “As Mother Teresa”. So, there must be a Mother Teresa 2.0 re-born somewhere and whose personality is an aggregate of several Miss Worlds. She would be some woman.!

There is one girl who gave me my first big break in the blogosphere by linking one of my blog posts in Desipundit. Yes, Neha helped increase the readership of my blogs by 400% ( from 1 to 4) overnight. Her CV shows that she is involved in hundreds of activities, that she is a contributor to about two dozen blogsites, tsunami/quake help groups, that she has traveled extensively- at least from Hyderabad to Delhi to London. I naturally assumed that she must be of my aunt’s age. Then I find she is all of 23 years old. The kids these days!. At 23, I had just about learnt to brush my own teeth and tie my own shoelaces and here’s this precocious kid multi-tasking with effortless ease. Must get her to the dinner table and make her act her age by eating one of those ‘children’s thalis” that they serve at half the price.

Shruthi. This is the girl who made me lose a multi-crore deal by getting my mind engaged in one of her problems- how to keep her favourite driver and save 40 minutes of commuting time to work. She also wants to stay rooted in one place and travel back in time, with or without her favourite driver. She argues that it makes more sense for a person in Bangalore to travel to Mysore for a facial or to watch a movie and provides exhaustive comparisons of cost to support her point. So, I guess that the dinner venue will have to be the Lalit Mahal at Mysore.

Kool Girl, my ten year old daughter will be invited to share details of her new enterprise which boasts of the best profit model tempered with social responsibility. Not since Enron folded up has there been such an ingenious business idea. Quite simply, what she has done is to collect downpayment of Rs 10/- each from twenty friends promising to deliver a 20-page booklet containing some interesting articles downloaded from the web. The proceeds will go to a charitable organization carefully identified by her. She will print out one original and photostat the 20 copies at the nearby shop. Brilliant. She gets brownie points from God for charity, her friends get an informative booklet each for Rs 10/- , the Blue Cross gets a contribution of Rs 200/- from her and the Xerox shop gets Rs 200 worth of business. All the stakeholders are happy. Except me. I had to pay Rs 200/- for the photostat copies!

Finally, I think I will ask my wife ( yes, the homicidal bibliophile) to join. After all, someone's got to pay for the dinner

An epitache to my moustaph

The first ever indication that I was no longer in the full flush of my youth came to me in a rather subtle manner. A neighbour’s child addressed me as ‘Uncle”. Soon, the word spread insidiously, as these things tend to do, and a multitude of children began to “Uncle” me. The second and rude reminder that I had left my youth far behind came when I found, as Bob Hope did, that the “candles on my birthday cake cost me more than the cake itself”.

But, the final and defining moment of truth was when I spotted the first grey hair on my moustache. This irreversible greying process assumed epidemic proportions and now, unless the day is exceptionally sunny, I am hard pressed to spot a single black hair.

I have come to the painful conclusion that the grey moustache must go. I must put an end to its misery. Mercy killing is the only sensible option. Like Amol Palekar in Gol Maal or Rajnikanth in Thillu Mullu, I must ceremoniously bid goodbye to this accessory that has stayed with me for so long.

To those of you in the blogosphere wondering what the fuss is all about, I must explain the special bond that exists between a Tamil male and his moustache and place it in a historical perspective.

As early as the 2nd century AD, the celebrated Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar, extolled the virtue of a moustache in these immortal words:

Meesai Ulla Aanukku Mattume
Dosai Niraya Kidaikum

Translation: Blessed is the man sporting a moustache, for it is only he that will be lavished with Dosas. Implying, in case you didn’t follow the sub-text, that those males without the moustache were doomed to subsist on a diet of idlis for the rest of their lives.

Aside: The fact that Thiruvalluvar placed this couplet in the Kaamathu Paal section- the one dealing with aspects of romance and sex- shows that he viewed the moustache as a piece of erotica and integral to a healthy man-woman relationship.

In the 10th century AD, the clean-shaven Chola king, Raja Raja Chola was trying desperately to get himself a queen, but without much success. Now, many in my generation have been led to believe,thanks to an overdose of Sivaji Ganesan movies, that Raja Raja Chola was an imposing figure who towered over his subjects, in all his majesty. As a historian however, I must state the plain truth. The fact was that the average Tamilian in the 10th century was 4’6” tall and Raja Raja Chola was elected the king by virtue of being 4’7” tall. Tall enough to be king, but, alas, not tall enough to inspire awe in local women. He tried to draw attention by constructing huge temples with 300 feet high gopurams and eighty ton, monolithic stones, but these exploits were met with derisive laughter and pooh-poohed as mere gimmicks. The poetess Avvaiyar I, who lived in that era, sang:

Manna, Kovil katti enna payan?
Meesai illaa nee verum chinna payyan

Translation: Of what practical use, O foolish king, are your temples and towers? Without a moustache on your face, you are but a juvenile.

Happy ending to the story. Taking the hint from Avvai I, Raja Raja Chola grew a thick moustache and soon his harem swelled with women of assorted shapes and sizes. The king gave pots of gold to Avvai who went on to write English rhymes such as :

"Twinkle, Twinkle little star

Avvai wonder what you are"

In more recent times, cine-actors have helped keep this rich Tamil moustache tradition alive. A piece of local folklore will illustrate this point. The late actor MGR was known for his fur-cap fetish, sunglass fixation and his wristwatch obsession. He refused to be photographed without these. However, a paparazzo did manage to capture his photograph without any of these accessories on his person. But, even after relentless shadowing, he could never catch MGR without the pencil-line moustache, painstakingly drawn on his upper lip every morning by trusted lieutenants of his. Some of these pencils are displayed in the MGR Museum along with other memorabilia.

Th Salman Khans and Saif Ali Khans, who are looked upon as Greek Gods in the rest of the country hardly cause any flutter in these parts. Not surprisingly, they don’t get to act in Tamil movies. They may have rippling, bulging muscles that suggest that these guys are filled with testosterone up to their Adam’s apples, but their clean-shaven looks put paid to their macho aspirations and mercilessly consign them to the dustbins of Kollywood. ( Salman, Saif- don’t lose hope however. You can fancy your chances of making it big as heroines here. We like fair women without moustaches)

Thus, every self-respecting Tamil male, who values his honour, strongly feels that, without a moustache, he is practically walking around naked. But he is flexible. He is not finicky about the shape, style or texture. The moustache can be of the handlebar variety, the drooping Walrus form, the toothbrush bristle type or the pencil-line drawing. The broad principle is that some moustache is better than no moustache. And a cardinal rule is that it must be black, not grey.

So it is that I must resort to euthanasia and remove the terminally-ill, greyed appendage from my person. I will spare no expense, of course. Nothing less than a new Mach III razor and Gillette’s deluxe shaving foam will be put to use.

Adieu, my beloved ‘stache. Your absence will create a void hard to fill. Especially between the nose and the upper lip.

Gourmets and Gluttons

Away on a business trip and seated alone at the corner table of the swanky restaurant of the 5-star hotel, with the customary bowl of salad in front of me, I find that I am at a vantage point to observe the feeding habits of some typical representatives of the human species. There is a lavish buffet spread and there is much movement of people. hither and thither, as in Brownian motion of molecules. The place is teeming with epicures, gourmets, gourmands, gluttons and trenchermen engaged in the ritual of ensuring ‘beast-like satisfaction of their bellies”.

Over at the table near the entrance, a man has just gone off on a reconnoiter trip to check out the menu. This man is clearly a pro. Many a customer would start filling the plate with the first dish that he or she can lay the hands on, only to realize that that they had wasted valuable ‘belly space’ when more interesting items awaited them downstream. But not our entrance-table man. Having scanned the entire spectrum, he goes about the task of prioritizing and picking out those items which in his assessment would have cost the hotel more to prepare.

In the adjacent table, the waiter is asking the guest if he would prefer mineral water and the man says ‘yes’ readily. Clearly, this man must be charging this lunch to his corporate account. No sane man who is paying for the meal out of his personal income would choose to order mineral water at Rs 80/per bottle. The cost of the mineral water is disproportionate to the claimed hygiene value.

Two tables away, there is a young and boisterous lot, bent on getting its money’s worth. A woman of fairly large proportions ( “hey, round is a shape”) settles down into the chair with great difficulty, wishing that the hotel management had the foresight to provide long handle shoe horns, along with forks and knives, to tuck herself in. Or ( as Wodehouse described a character) as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say when. Her idea of a balanced diet is to carry back two equally filled, large plates, one in each hand. One of her table-mates is so engrossed in his meal that he doesn’t even pause to wish her “Bon Appetit”. Conversation at this table languishes, unless you want to count Don Martinese sounds like “chomp chomp”, “ burp burp”, etc as social banter.

In yet another table, the main course is over and the members of this pack are inspecting the debris and asking the waiter to clear the deck preparatory to the imminent launch of “Operation Dessert Storm”. As someone said, “ Inside each one of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but who can be silenced with a few pieces of chocolate cake”. Presently these dessert foxes return from their foray, plates overflowing with puddings, pastries, mousse and milk sweets. No ice creams yet. There will be an exclusive round for that.

What do I see in that table over there? The family has finally finished the meal and the members resemble beached whales in their posture and in their inability to move. Eat what you want, as Mark twain said, and let the food fight it out inside. The waiter is getting their check. What! The head of the family is paying for the meal in cash. In these enlightened times when credit cards and debit cards have liberated us from the tyranny of carrying wads of cash, who goes around with bundles of banknotes in his pockets? There can be only one explanation. This fellow is one of those corrupt Govt officials, loaded with ill-gotten cash. A meal at a 5-star hotel provides a good outlet for the booty. I wish I had my camera. Could have carried out a sting operation right here.

Kipling wrote about the jungle laws that decreed that all animals must hunt only when hungry and never to satisfy their greed. These laws obviously don’t apply to Man who is on top of the food chain, I reflect, as I leave the restaurant sipping my mineral water and asking for my bill to be debited to my company.

Operation Bushfire

Osama Bin Laden stroked his flowing beard in a contented manner and smiled that famous half-smile of his. He had good reasons to be satisfied. “Operation Bush-fire" had been carried out flawlessly. Both George W Bush, the President of the USA and his father, George Bush Sr, had been kidnapped early that week and brought to his cave on the Afghan- Pak border. They were now in his custody.

Taking George W Bush had been easy. Osama’s fourth wife and trusted lieutenant, Masao had nonchalantly and daringly walked into the White House disguised as Condoleeza Rice and asked the President if he would like to take a look at the newly-discovered tenth planet, Xena, that was clearly visible to the naked eye in bright sunlight. Believing that she wanted to show him something naked, the President had put on his sunglasses and walked into the lawn, when ‘Rice’ suggested that he should get into the plane parked there, so that they could have a closer view of the planet. The unsuspecting Bush obliged and, as was his habit when he got onto a plane, fell into a deep slumber. When he awoke, he realised he had been taken by Bin Laden..

The senior George Bush was a more formidable entity. He had just returned from his power-jogging and bungi-jumping and was getting ready for para-sailing in his Texan ranch, when four men in cow's clothing attracted his attention by displaying their udders. When he came over for a closer look at the bovine beauties, they managed to chloroform him and push him into a waiting plane which soon sped towards Kabul.

Now that his worst enemies had been overpowered, Osama was contented all right. He decided to unwind that evening and watch the cricket match that was being relayed live on his TV. Not many outside the Taliban know that Osama is a great lover of cricket and doesn’t miss a single match, especially the Indo-Pak encounters. Naturally, he was a die-hard supporter of Pakistan,

So, today he switched on the TV and remained engrossed thus for a few hours. Suddenly, his cronies noticed that something was wrong. Osama was clearly upset about something. His facial expression had turned into a frown and his eyes shone with fury. Here was the crucial fifth one-day match going on in Lahore. The series was tied 2-2 and the winner of this match would go home with the Cup. India had batted first and scored just 198 runs. Pakistan was cruising along at 128-2 with Inzamam in full flow, when a ball from Irfan Pathan took the inner-edge of the bat and hit Inzamam on the pads. There was a loud appeal and, horror of horrors, umpire Dickie Bird declared Inzi out lbw. Pakistan's batting collapsed from then on and they lost the match..

Osama was not one to take this injustice lightly. A bad umpiring decision had cost his team their rightful victory. He must teach the culprit a lesson.

Enraged and swearing revenge, Osama ordered his men to proceed pronto to Lahore and get back Dickie Bird, dead or alive,complete with sharp beak, white coat and panama hat.

"But, we need to keep an eye here on George W Bush and the old man, George Bush Sr.. What do we do with them?” asked Osama’s cronies.

"Just forget about them ‘ said Osama with contempt, “ Don’t you guys know by now that a Bird in hand is worth two Bushes?”