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?”

Piety personified

Sachin Tendulkar turned the ball down to square-leg for a single to complete his 35th Test hundred and surpass Sunil Gavaskar's record for the most number of Test centuries. Even before he completed the run he leapt up, punched the air in delight, kissed his bat and pointed it towards heaven to thank his father and shed some emotional tears….

Later, addressing the press, he said, “ What is important is that the team must win. I have never been after personal records”.

The hell he wasn’t. Then, why the wild punching in the air and the tears and the bat pointing upward?

Not to take anything away from the great man, but surely a guy who has scored 35 centuries will not be accused of blowing his own trumpet if he were to simply say, “ I did it. I am proud of myself”? The problem is that heroes like Tendulkar are expected to make pious proclamations. They feel compelled to state only what they think they ought to say, rather than what they really want to say. Result: Politically correct, motherhood statements smelling of apple pie and dripping with honey and false modesty.

Of course, politicians have made 'false modesty' such a fine art. If you ask L.K.Advani if he has aspirations of becoming the next Prime Minister of India, he will not say truthfully, “Do I want to be the PM? You bet. I have waited long enough”. He will instead tell you “that in his long political career he has never sought any higher posting, but he has never shirked any responsibility either and that he would view the assignment as yet another opportunity to serve the people”. Yawn. And it will get faithfully reported. Verbatim. And consumed.

The CEO of a company who says, “ We want to delight our customers. After all they are the ones who pay our salaries” is actually muttering internally that “ these slimy bloodsuckers who masquerade as our customers not only squeeze us on price, they also delay our payment and, on top of that, expect 24 x 7 service from us. The nerve! What they need is a sound kick on the backside”. Obviously, he can’t state this; he can’t even admit to his wife or his psychiatrist that he entertains such thoughts, but it’s there at the back of his mind. Constantly.

I just read a statement attributed to a Tamil actor by name Vijay. Reacting to a news item that some fans had erected an idol of the actor and had worshipped it by pouring 100 litres of milk over it, he pontificated, “ When so many Tamil mothers languish and struggle to find the money to buy a single glass of milk for their infants, it is not proper to waste so much money and milk on my idol .If you are really my fans, please don’t do it”. Touching. Makes one’s hair stand on its end. What he must have been actually thinking was “ I care a damn if you build an idol or pour tanker-loads of milk over it, so long as you morons muster up just enough sense to queue up at the theatres and patronize my shows”.

Some years back, Mad magazine used to carry a feature, “ When they say this, they actually mean this “ and give the subtext and behind-the-scenes- facts on some of the statements made by politicians, businessmen, etc. I don’t know if the magazine is still around and if it still carries this feature. But, it would be a good idea to start a desi edition. There won’t be any dearth of ‘statements’ to dissect and bring to view the real intent. The nation could do with a generous dose of humour.

Update : More pious statements coming into the studio.

Sachin, in an interview to India Today : "It is not correct to say that I spend more time shooting for my commercials than on the cricket ground. Life of a cricketer is short. Money is not that important. Runs are.

Amitabh Bachchan, to Prannoy Roy on being elected Indian of the Year by NDTV viewers : I am quite self-conscious . I feel very humble. I don't know what to say.....

Kapil dev, in Outlook magazine, on who his heroes are : Nelson Mandela; he spent 27 years in prison...

More piety , 24-01-06: Rahul Gandhi at the Congress plenary session at Hyderabad when party workers went down on their knees, prostrated before him and pleaded with him to join the CWC :, " No, I am not ready yet. I want to work hard and earn the position."

Also, by Rahul Gandhi at same session, " The national flag is my religion". Hear, hear.

The Indian cricket cycle

Headlines that appear in newspapers, as Indian cricket passes through four distinct phases of a never-ending cycle.

Phase 1 : ( after India has lost a couple of matches)

Indian Cricket at the crossroads. An introspection

Phase 2 : ( after India has lost two more matches)

What ails Indian cricket? An analysis

Phase 3 : ( after India has won a match at last)

Indian Cricket : Back on rail . A report

Phase 4 : ( after India miraculously wins second match in a row)

Indians never had it so good . A tribute.

Who am I ? Where am I ?

There I was at the lounge of the Mumbai airport, happily gorging on the beetroot cutlets and lazily sipping the fresh lime soda, when that short, bespectacled, bearded guy walked in and greeted me cheerfully. Sensing that I couldn’t place him at all and had no idea who he was, he gently reminded me that we had met at the CII seminar the previous week.

After he was gone, I reflected on this incident. How could I forget a person who I had met just a few days back. ? The only explanation was that I was in a fairly advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease and rapidly losing my memory.

Neuroscientists say that there are four distinct stages of senility. In the first stage, you forget a person’s name, though you may remember his face; in the second stage, you forget the person’s face as well as his name; in the third stage you forget to zip up your pants and in the fourth stage- you forget to zip down your pants when you need to.

I looked down. I had zipped up my pants. That meant I was somewhere between the second and third stages of senility and unless I acted fast would slip to the terminal stages pretty soon.

Important thing was not to panic. But to get hold of myself. I remembered the story of the ace race driver (alas, I had forgotten his name) who met with an accident and was completely paralysed from his jaw downward. Lying down on his bed, he was agonizing over the fact that he could never drive a car again, never play the guitar, never jog in the park, etc. Never ever again Then he told himself that he should look at the positive side and not sink into such abysmal depths of depression. He ought to look at the things that he could do, rather than things that he couldn’t. He started counting. He could lift his eyebrow, he could move one of his ears, he could wink with his right eye, he could curl his upper lip. Thus, he counted 47 small things that he could actually do, which made him feel a lot better.

So, I thought, let me see how many things that I could remember, rather than worry about things that I could not.

Could I remember the locations of the toilets in each of the schools that I had attended ? Yes, I could. Some of those places were quite creepy too.

Did I remember the names of my teachers who taught me from classes 1 to 5 ? Yes, I could reel out all the names. I wondered what had happened to Sheila Miss in the years since.

Could I recall how many runs G.R.Vishwanath scored in the fifth test match at Chepauk, against the West Indies in 1975? Yes. 97 not out. One of the best knocks ever.

Did I remember my wife’s birthday ? Of course I did. As the piece of wisdom goes, the best way to remember your wife’s birthday is by forgetting it once. I had failed to wish my wife on her birthday in 1993. I haven’t been allowed to forget the date after that. It is etched in my memory. Alzeimer's or no Alzeimer's.

What was the name of the customer I had met this morning ? God. My mind was a complete blank . Yes, now the pattern was painfully clear and the evidence irrefutable. I could remember everything that had transpired 15 years back, but my brain would not retain anything that had happened in the more recent past. Fat lot of good it did to me. I couldn’t subsist on childhood memory for the rest of my life.

A friend of mine had told me about his brother-in-law who had fallen on his head and lost consciousness when his scooter skidded. When he came round finally, he couldn’t remember a thing. But slowly his memory returned. He could recognize his mother after a month, his father after two months and his brother after a year. When he was shown the photographs of his grandparents who had been dead for more than 20 years, he had no difficulty in identifying them. But he simply could not recognize his wife who he had been living with for five years before the accident. The doctors had consoled the wife that memory could play such strange tricks and this behaviour did not mean that he did not care for her. The wife is patiently waiting and constantly meditating –as only a devoted Indian wife can- for the day when her husband would regain his full memory and show some sign of recognition so that she can then smash his skull and send him back to his amnesiac state. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, as they say.

But I digress. The explanation was that my brain , though able to recollect all that had happened in the distant past, forgot whatever had happened in the immediate past- like that morning, for instance. What to do ? I must think, think. The stupid sound system and the constant announcements at the airport lounge were disturbing my flow of thought. A last and final call was being issued to an irresponsible passenger asking him to present himself, pronto, at the boarding gate. Such guys must be hounded out and shot at sunrise, I cursed,. for being so inconsiderate to fellow passengers and for making such announcements necessary and causing such noise pollution. And the passenger’s name was vaguely familiar. Hell, it was my name. No wonder it was familiar. I had to drop the beetroot cutlets and rush to catch the plane……….

The Superweb

It had finally happened in the year 2034. Orwell had been off by 50 years.

All the PCs in this world- with the exception of P.Chidambaram – had been interconnected.. The geeks and the freaks had worked tirelessly to get this going wirelessly.

Whatever the human sense organs or the man-made instruments and sensors could observe, smell, hear or feel had been decoded, digitalized and disaggregated into little bits of data that could be transmitted at speeds of several million terabits per second.

All available data bases ( or data basii) known to mankind had been strung together in a seamless fashion, to create multidimensional access to knowledge in real time, irrespective of location, distance, language or sex.

In a final feat of convergence, cybertechnologists had collaborated with nanotechnologists and neuroscientists to achieve the ultimate breakthrough : the permeable interface between electrons and neurons, between man and machine. Human brains could now be hardwired and made to directly communicate with the web..

There was now just one, unified, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Superweb with access to all that has been known or will ever be known.

This was the moment that Humankind had been waiting for . The opportunity to find the answer to that one question that had been haunting humans since time immemorial, namely, “ Is there life after death ?”

Collectively - for all brains and storage devices had a common thought process now- the question was typed out on the virtual keyboard .

The answer came in a few seconds

“ Fatal error has occurred. Windows 2034 will now shutdown. All data will be lost”


(Adapted from a short story I remember reading many years ago)

The Agony Aunt Column

Following the success of the "Ask our doctor" column, Plus Ultra is pleased to re-publish an "Agony Aunt" column, which provides instant solutions to readers' problems of any nature.

Q : I am an 18-year old, bubbly, attractive young girl. I overheard my parents, yesterday, plotting to get me married to a bald, pot-bellied man who is twice my age. This man has inherited a vast fortune and my parents feel that I would be financially secure. I hate the very idea. I am desperate. Please advise. Yours, etc Harried half-his-age, Hyderabad

Dr. Plus Ultra : Dear Harassed Half-His-Age, pre-marriage counselling was what I specialized in, when I did my masters in Psychology and therefore can claim correct credentials to counsel. Though it is not clear, from your question, if your apprehensions about marrying this man pertain to his baldness, his pot-bellied-ness or the fact of his being twice your age, let me tackle all three. Baldness should actually lift your spirits as it is well-established that a receding hair line is due to increased hormonal activity and is reflective of the man’s virility. A whole body of research material is available to provide conclusive evidence that pot-bellied men make better fathers, more competent cooks and have a keener sense of humour. About his age, let me disabuse you of the notion that you will continue to be half his age for ever. When he is 100 years old, you will not be 50, as you seem to presume in your childish innocence ; you will be a doddering, toothless, octogenarian yourself. So, all your concerns are baseless. Don’t give it a second thought. Plunge right ahead and splurge his riches .

Q : My grandfather died last year, leaving behind a will which bequeathed 1/3 of his property to the first son born to his first wife, another 1/3 of his property to the second daughter born to his second wife and balance 1/3 to his third wife, who is issueless. I am the second son born to the third daughter of his second wife. Can I stake a claim at all to a share of the property ?
Yours,etc, Will-wrecker, Warangal

Dr. Plus Ultra : Dear Will –Wrecker of Warangal, fortunately for you, my wife’s uncle was the Chief Justice of the A.P High Court and I happen to be well-versed with the legal nuances of such cases. My advice to you would be to file an appeal before the Hon’ High Court, contesting the will and pleading for DNA tests to be carried out on each of the wives, sons and daughters. This may not get you any share of the property but, at least, it will ensure that the intended beneficiaries do not enjoy theirs for some time. As the saying goes, "It is not enough if we succeed. Others must fail."

Q : I am a 15-year old girl with a terrible malady. I have a huge pimple right on my nose and it is spoiling my otherwise blemishless looks. I have applied all kinds of skin lotions on the pimple, but nothing seems to work. Please help. Yours, Pimpled-princess, Pune

Dr. Plus Ultra : Dear Pimpled- Princesss : Peculiar Problem, but I have the Right Remedy. My grand-uncle was a practitioner of Ayurvedic therapy from the Kottakkal school and I have observed his methods closely. The thing about pimples is that , in a blemishless skin, they stand out and get noticed. What one needs to do is not attack the pimple directly, but concentrate on making the rest of the face blemishful, thereby making the pimple less conspicuous. Try this method. Mix two spoons of raw mango juice with lime pickle, add some green chillies and mustard and fry over a high flame for a few minutes. Apply the paste on all parts of the face except the pimple. Magically, you will find that nobody will notice or comment on the pimple any more. Simple.

Q : I am a 27-year old bachelor. I am a born loser. The girl I loved has married my cousin. My parents have disowned me . I have been fired from my job. To top it all, as I was trying to hang myself from the ceiling yesterday , the rope broke . What do I do ? Suicidal Subbu ,Sulurpet

Dr. Plus Ultra : Dear Suicidal Subbu, I am related on my father’s side to Yogi Deveshwar, on my mother’s side to Yogi Berra and therefore have inherited some yogic techniques. What you need to do is meditate and deceive your troubled mind into believing that everything is hunky dory. Lie flat on your back, close your eyes and try this gentle, thought-experiment guaranteed to give you much-needed peace of mind. .

Imagine you are in a scenic park, surrounded by trees.
You are standing near a pond
The sky above is blue.
The birds are chirping.
Lotus flowers spring majestically out of the pond.
All is calm. All is quiet.
The whole ambience is serene.
The water in the pond is crystal clear.
So clear that you can see the wrinkles on the face of the person,whose head you are holding under water……

There, aren’t you feeling rejuvenated already ?

New Year Eavesdropping....

I keep my ears on ‘high alert” when I go for a walk in the morning .so that I don’t miss out on the juicy gossip, profound philosophies and profane criticisms tossed around by groups of other walkers chatting with each other. I walk alone and with my brisk stride usually manage to outpace the talkie-walkers. As I go past these groups, I invariably snatch some interesting nuggets from their animated conversations. You could accuse me of eavesdropping, but I plead “not guilty” on the technical grounds that the property of sound waves and the Doppler effect make it impossible for me not to hear what’s being discussed. So, here then is a verbatim reproduction of what I heard today. Translated from Tamil, of course.

Man, in his mid-forties, with a scarf around his neck to protect himself from the harsh Chennai winter, discussing Zubin Mehta’s recent concert in Chennai before an invited audience (and peeved that he was not invited): “ I can’t understand why, of all people, Amartya Sen should be invited to this program. Can’t he attend the program in London, America or wherever he lives? Don’t tell me that he can’t afford it. He has got lakhs from the Nobel Prize. Must he come all the way to Chennai just because it is a free program and he got an invitation? I tell you, there must be a rule that invitations must be given only to local people. How else will we get to attend?

Scarfed man’s friend: In any case, what’s the big fuss? All Zubin Mehta does is wave his arms and flash a big stick, throughout the evening, when the orchestra is playing. I can swing my arms for you free of charge, at my house, if you bring a stick with you.

Slightly ahead, another man has latched on to a couple, but is now talking on the mobile phone to his wife: “ Yes, yes, the brinjals. Don’t cut them into smaller pieces. Take the full brinjals and put some masala stuffing in. Pack them in a separate box; don’t mix it with the rice. Use the Tupperware set “. Disconnects mobile phone.

Female half of couple: “What, sir, giving instructions for your packed lunch?”

Brinjal man: “Yes. Yes. I like these stuffed brinjals. What time do you people have lunch? I will have some stuffed brinjals sent over. My wife makes it really well. You will really like them”.

Male half of couple: “ No, no, don’t trouble your wife. She won’t let you come out on your walk again”

Brinjal man: “ Nonsense. Why should she object? I was the one who went to the market last evening and selected the brinjals”

Further ahead, a group of four middle-aged men are walking at a leisurely pace, almost blocking the road. The topic of their discussion is Amitabh’s recent visit to Tirupathi.

Middle-aged man 1: “Reliance has arranged a special plane, saar, to bring Amitabh to Tirupati. Amar Singh accompanied him and ensured he got an exclusive darshan. All the papers have carried some photographs of the visit, as if there is no other news worth reporting..”

Middle-aged man 2: “ These newspapers will even carry a report of Amitabh sneezing. Did you see, one of the papers had a big photo of him on the day of his surgery and showed a cutout view of his stomach and the intestines? I ask you, what cutout would they have published if he had been operated on for prostate or piles, instead of the intestines? Can’t they respect his privacy?. Disgusting.

Middle-aged man 3: Now, he has been elected ‘Indian of the year’ by urban India. At least he is an Indian. What I can’t accept is Sonia Gandhi being elected the Indian of the year, by rural India. 1 billion Indians around and they had to find an Italian to be the Indian of the year. Our people have gone completely mad, I tell you.

Middle-aged man 4: Forget Sonia and Amitabh, sir. Tell me what are you planning to do on New Year eve? Going to some hotel to celebrate?

Middle-aged man 2: “ No way, sir. Last year, my son-in-law took us all out to a 5-star hotel. I tell you, these hotels simply loot us. As soon as we sat down at the table, a waiter in a black suit and tie came over and asked us if we wanted mineral water and I nodded my head. They charged us Rs 60 for one bottle, sir. Can you believe it? Plus taxes. If they tried this trick with the chicken tikka or some such dish, we won’t know the real cost. But, mineral water? I could have picked up the bottle from the paan shop across the road for Rs 10.

Middle-aged man 1: Why, at Saravana Stores, you can get it for Rs 9/- a bottle.

Middle-aged man 2: When I go to a star hotel, the least I expect is to be served clean water free of cost. These blighters charge us ten times the normal rate for a basic item and push it down our throats. Never will I step into that place again. This New Year, I stay at home.

Finally, a couple in their sixties, their children obviously settled in the USA (evident from the man’s T-shirt and sneakers) are taking a stroll with their dog.

Wife: Sowmya says that they are not going anywhere this week. They have lots of things to do at home. She is going to varnish the house…………

Husband: I hope she knows that she can’t varnish the walls. Only the wooden doors and almirahs...

Wife: As if she won’t know that. You always have to say something critical.

Husband: Tell me, when has she done any work here? She wouldn’t even put the cap back on her pen….

Wife: In America, one automatically learns to do everything. You can’t depend on anybody else. She is managing quite well on her own. Ashwin is traveling most of the time…

Husband: I hope he doesn’t come back from tour and sees all the walls varnished…….

And so, yet another day unfolds…….

Dear Doctor.....

So many magazines publish a “Ask our doctor” page where they claim to provide answers to medical questions sent in by their readers. I am convinced that this is a complete rip-off and that all questions are fabricated by the writers & editors. I plan to introduce this feature on this blogsite too. Here are some samples

Q: Dear Doctor,

Ever since I reached adulthood, I have experienced daily bouts of throbbing and excruciating headache. I have had my eyes tested, my ears dewaxed, my dental cavities filled, skull x-rayed for sinusitis, spinal cords checked for spondylitis, nasal septum operated to correct deflection, blood pressure brought to optimal levels and brain scanned for tumours, but to no avail. The headache continues to haunt me. Help me doc. Yours, etc. Migrained & Miserable.

A : Dear M&M,

One of Sherlock Holmes’ favourite maxims of detection was that when you have eliminated all that is impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. In your case you have eliminated all possible causes for the headache – such as defective eyes, brain tumour, blood pressure, deflected septum, etc. The only explanation left is that, ever since you attained adulthood, you have continued to go around in undersized underwear that you used to wear as a child. This has been exerting pressure on the hipbone and, in sequence, on the vertebra and the cranium resulting in the headache. Try on an XL size jocks and the headache will vanish.


Q: Dear Doctor,

My concern is not so much about my illness as about the unscrupulous methods adopted by my doctor. I went to him complaining of mild indigestion and that my rumblings abdominal, as the limerick goes, are quite phenomenal. He made me undergo an endoscopy, ultrasound scan of the abdomen, a CT scan of the liver and colonoscopy, in that order. After this gamut of tests, my indigestion still continues and my doctor prescribed Gelusil tablets, charging me a stiff Rs 500/- as consultation fees. Do you think I should report this malpractice to the Medical Council? Yours, etc Constipated and Confused.

A: Dear C&C:

The Chinese had an excellent system before they too fell prey to Western methods. They would pay their doctor a fixed amount at the end of every month, provided they had experienced no illness even on a single day. If they had fallen sick even once that month, no money was paid to the doctor. So, the doctor was paid to keep the patient well and out of illness and not for correcting an illness. Believe me, it worked out cheaper for the patients and incentivised the doctors to ensure the good health of the patient, rather than taking advantage of the illness. So, re-negotiate the terms with your doctor and change the default setting. to “monthly payment when not ill” and see how this dramatically improves your health.


Q: Dear Doctor :

In the last 6 hours, I have felt severe muscular stiffness and rigidity; it started with my facial muscles and then spread slowly to the rest of the body. What do you think is wrong? Yours, etc Stiff and Still

A: Dear S&S

I don’t have sufficient data to arrive at a definite conclusion but, prima facie, your body seems to exhibit symptoms of something that we doctors refer to, in hushed tones, as rigor mortis. The policy of this website is to entertain questions only from live, bonafide readers and not from dead cadavers; so please refrain from corresponding with us any further.

Q: Dear Doctor:

I have been shuttling from one doctor to another, for the last 6 months, to find a cure for my asthma. As my lungs expand and contract, the sounds that emanate resemble the winds that blow determinedly through mountains and valleys. Each doctor puts me on a different line of treatment and ensures that I don’t get out of the medical circuit. I am turning out to be a doctor’s delight. Please help. Yours, etc, Wheezing and Whining

A: Dear W&W

George Bernard Shaw wrote a short story about the king of a country called Half-Mad. The king took ill and all the doctors of the kingdom attended on him and tried out different remedies to cure him. Nothing worked. Till a wise old man suggested that the king should go to a sea resort, “ Is it because you feel that the salt-laden air of the sea will have a therapeutic effect on him?’ the people ask him. “No”, the wise man replies, “ It will get him away from the doctors and cure him”.

I can offer no better advice than Shaw’s. Get away from the doctors.

The Aeolian Aliens

Scientists theorise on the phenomenon involving “Aeolian dust “ that is picked up in local storms in deserts and arid regions and carried by trade winds across continents. Aeolian dust has been blamed for a plethora of ill effects including human disease, says the National Geographic magazine.

A fact that has not been revealed to the general public ( to avoid causing a panic) but which I am sharing with the enlightened readers of the blogosphere is that the monsoons, both south-west and the north-east, have lifted huge quantity of fine dust containing the seeds of a mushroom variety called psilocybe cubensis from the African continent and Indonesia and deposited this Aeolian dust over the Indian sub-continent. Psilocybe mushrooms are known to produce hallucinations and can attack selectively and randomly. Theer is enough evidence now to conclude that the Aeolian dust is targeting married couples in India and causing the husband/wife to believe that he/she is actually married to someone else, even sometimes to a person of the same gender.

Ramakrishna Goud of AP filed a petition in the Madras High Court recently claiming that he was married to the actress Sridevi. He requested the Hon’ Court to drive some sense into her and ask her to return to his house. The Hon’ Court, if I understood correctly, politely asked Goud to decide who his wife was, as he had stated in earlier petitions filed in the same Court that he was married to Priyanka Gandhi and actress Jayaprada.

In another incident, Krishna, a mother of four children in Uttar Pradesh's Burhanpur district declared herself a wife of former Pakistani cricketer Wasim Akram. She claims to have accepted Akram as her husband since she saw his performance on television during an Indo-Pak cricket match in 1999. "I am yet to meet Wasim. Whether he accepts me or not, I will spend rest of my life as his wife," Krishna told newsmen on Saturday. Krishna claims that a 'godly figure' clad in white clothes had shown her Akram's face in her dreams telling her that it was that of her husband's. Meanwhile, her real husband, a retired Govt servant, is examining various options.

Also in UP, Inspector General of Police Debendra Kishore Panda, who hit the headlines after proclaiming himself as ''Doosri Radha'', today said he was not Radha but Rukmini. While Panda may appear undecided on whether he is Radha or Rukmini, there is complete clarity in his mind that he is the wife of Krishna ( not the Krishna of UP who claims to be Wasim Akram's wife, but Lord Krishna). Panda, attired in his now familiar yellow robe and scarf around his head, visited the Sri Jagannath temple and said ''I was very happy after having darshan of my swami (husband)''

I am worried. Has the whole country been mushroomed? Are all the married inhabitants showing signs of being brain-damaged? This threatens the very institution of marriage, not to mention the very fabric of society. I suspect that my own wife is affected. Every night, she insists on watching Amitabh Bachchan on “Kaun Banega Crorepathi?” and refuses to take her eyes off the TV screen. This is terrible beyond words. Has the dust-laden wind blown past our house already sweeping my wife off her feet ? Have the mushroom seeds got into her bloodstream and into her brain? Is she hallucinating that she is actually Amitabh’s wife? Doesn’t she understand that this cannot happen, as it will amount to bigamy? For, I married Amitabh in a quiet ceremony last year and am his legally wedded wife….............

The traumatised traveller

I am just boarding the aircraft. I will soon be comfortably ensconced in the aisle seat in the first row. Plenty of elbowroom. Enough space to stretch my long legs. Guaranteed sleep.

I reach my seat. What! Somebody is occupying it already. A mother with a one-year old baby in her hands. Would I mind letting her have my seat please and take hers that is located two rows behind? For the sake of the baby? I succumb to this emotional blackmail and move over to the third row. It’s the middle seat. I should have known better. I curse my ancestors for not doing enough penance in their time to ensure that their descendant does not encounter such bad luck.

I must put my bag in the loft above. I struggle with the handle for a few minutes before managing to get it open. I needn’t have taken all the trouble. There is no space for my bag. As usual, others have beaten me to it.

I push my way to seat 3E and park my bag under the seat in front of me. There goes my leg space. I hand over my jacket to the airhostess. There’s a pretty girl in seat 3D. Small mercy. Soon, seat 3F is also taken. By a big-made guy. He walks in with a swagger and a nonchalant bearing and that air of easy familiarity, which strongly suggest that he is a frequent traveller. Smartass.

Plane is about to take off. We are asked to fasten seat belts. I look around for mine. I locate them after considerable jostling and shuffling. But I can’t get the belt fastened. Doesn’t seem to work. I lift the lever and pull the strap hard. Nothing happens. Like Mr. Bean, I watch the smartass next to me. He manages to fasten the belt in a second. After much fumbling and several iterations, I get it right. I tell myself, a la Thomas Edison, that I had not failed a thousand times to fasten the belts. I had just discovered thousand ways how not to fasten a belt.

Safety instructions are on. ‘In case of fall in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop down as the gentle rain upon the earth beneath. Pull the mask over your face and breathe normally’. Fat chance. I know what will happen if cabin pressure falls. Before the oxygen masks drop down, I would have passed out.

We are airborne and have reached cruising altitude. The smartass is already in a reclining position. How the hell he did that, I wonder. I search for the button to push my seat behind. Missing. From the corner of my eye, James Bond style, I notice that the pretty girl is staring at me. Obviously, my charm has proved too irresistible and she is completely taken in by my good looks, I conclude. “Uncle, the knobs are to your left” I suddenly hear her say. Sure enough, the knobs are there. I push and turn all the knobs and one of them seems to make the seat recline. But, wait a minute. Did the pretty girl call me Uncle? I am furious. Does she think I am one of those octogenarians traveling on a Senior Citizen Plan? But I look at the brighter side. At least, she didn’t call me “grandpa”.

Ha, dinner is being served now. Seat belts and knobs and overhead lofts may leave me perplexed, but when it comes to eating, the smartass and the pretty girl can take my correspondence course. I can teach them a trick or two. What would I like to drink? Just water, I reply, remembering the travel tips that I had heard (Drink plenty of water!). Now, the tray is in front of me. What’s this? Strawberry jam. Yippee!! My favourite. I love it with the croissant. But how the hell do I take it out of the thimble-sized container? Why do they need to seal everything and make my life miserable? Where is the opening or the slit? Can’t figure out. I tear it down with my knife. Get strawberry jam all over my shirt pocket. I clean up the mess. Clumsy, sloppy idiot, my wife would have called me if she were around.


At last, dinner is consumed and the trays removed. Cabin lights are off. Smartass is wrapped in a blanket and has already reached the REM state of sleep. Let me catch up on the in-flight entertainment, I reckon. How do I get the TV screen up? I lift all the flaps and search. I pull up some contraption which looks suspiciously like a TV screen. But how do I switch it on? There must be some buttons somewhere. The scheming sadistic scoundrels must have hidden them carefully. After some desperate moments of searching, I find the buttons. I have no clue which one to press. So I press them all. “Did you call, sir?’ asks the airhostess materializing out of thin air. I realize that one of the many buttons must have summoned her. I mutter an awkward sorry and ask her if she could help me get started with the TV. She presses one of the buttons and it comes alive in a jiffy. So simple, yet it had me flummoxed all this while. Why am I so gadget-challenged?

I need to go to the toilet. Must be all that water I kept drinking, taking the travel tips as gospel. I have to decide whom I should wake up now. The smartass on my right or the pretty one on the left. I decide, chivalrously, to let the girl have her forty winks. The smartass mutters under his breath and lets me through. I walk up and down the aisle searching for the toilet. Where are the damn toilets? They can’t hide them like they did the TV buttons? Ah, here is one. How do I open the door? Do I pull it towards me or push it in? Neither, as I learn from another passenger with a full bladder in the queue behind me, the doors are collapsible and need to be slid and then pushed. I get inside. Where are the lights? Not to be found. I can’t wait anymore. I decide to do it in the dark. I bolt the door. The lights come on magically, thank you. I am a relieved man now. How do I operate the flush? Search, search, search. Here it is, at last. Need to wash my hands and face. Do I turn the tap to the left or the right? Neither, again. It needs to be pulled up. Where’s the soap? Must be this gooey substance over here. Why is the water not draining from the basin? The drain is closed, that’s why. How do I remove the plug? I have no idea. I hear the bladder-full passenger gently tap the door outside. In my nervous state, I try to do several things at the same time. Something works. Water is getting drained now. I walk out triumphant but exhausted.

I wake up the sleeping smartass again and he looks at me with hatred. If he had been Medusa, I would have been turned into stone by now. I settle down again in my seat.

I try to doze off. No luck. Flight attendant is handing over some forms to be filled. For immigration clearance on landing. Passport details have to be filled in. I reach for my passport. Not there. I fret and fume, sweat and swoon. I search my airbag. Complete absence of passports. I tell myself not to panic. Think. In Jules Verne’s “Around the world in 80 days “, what did Phileas Fogg do when Passport went missing in Tokyo? Or was it Hong Kong? No, that wasn’t Passport at all; that was his manservant Passepartout. Not much help there. I look underneath the seat, bending down acrobatically. No passport to be seen. Only life jacket there. Ha, I remember now. I kept it in my jacket. I press all the available buttons on the seat to summon the attendant again. Can I have my jacket back please? My passport is inside?

The captain announces that we will be landing soon. I haven’t slept at all. I curse the pilot and other airline staff. Why can’t they demystify the whole process of flying? I curse all the engineers of the world. Why do they need to make things so complicated? So many buttons, levers, plugs, seals. Some needed to be pulled. Some needed to be pressed. Some needed to be lifted . Some unscrewed. Some are under the seat. Some overhead. Each gadget presents a new challenge and constantly tests you. Provided, of course, you find them in the first place.

It is all very well for the captain. He doesn’t need to do anything. In fact, I have read that if you step into the cockpit of modern aircrafts, you will find a pilot, a computer and a dog. Nothing else. The job of the computer is to take care of the entire flying from engine-on to engine-off stage. The job of the dog is to keep watch over the pilot and ensure that he does not touch any of the buttons or the levers or the knobs or anything as foolish. The job of the pilot is to feed the dog. That’s it.

As I get out of the plane, I notice that the mother in the first row has had a restful sleep and is now fresh as a flower. It is quite evident now. She must have had the baby a year back, just to deny me the aisle seat in the first row tonight.

SMS a, b or c

Driving back from office one evening, I tuned in to the FM channel. The DJ was doing his best to spice up the proceedings with his constant chatter and breezy banter and moderating an animated debate on a life-threatening issue that had far-reaching implications on the future of humanity, to wit, “Which of these causes most annoyance when you are eating; a) the camouflaged cardamom in the biriyani or b) the pungent pepper in the Pongal or c) the concealed clove in the laddu?

Listeners were asked to ‘SMS” their responses by keying in a, b or c as they felt appropriate and as their conscience would permit. The topic was too intellectual for me and, moreover, my own pet peeve is the cruel chilly in the uppuma; so I tuned out. But, well-informed sources told me later that the jury had adjudged the cardamom in the biriyani as the chief culprit, it having registered the maximum percentage of votes (48%)

There is something about the ‘SMS” that makes normally reticent people reach out for their mobile phone buttons and type away before you can say, “fastest fingers first”. People, who shy away from talking on the phone or even using the email, find in the “SMS” the right mix of convenience and anonymity and take to it instantly. Long-lost friends of mine who have never bothered to drop a card for decades, have mysteriously emerged from the shadows to send me ‘SMS” greetings on the most insignificant of festivals. Such is the appeal of the SMS that TV viewers respond with alacrity to the most inane of questions. For instance, when Dravid was batting with 38 runs to his credit, a question popped up on screen.” Will he reach his half-century? Please SMS a) he will b) he will not and c) can’t say”. About 1% of the viewers actually responded with the answer “c”. Dilip D’souza in this post wonders why anyone would want to take the trouble of sending a SMS just to convey that he had no opinion on the subject.

Perhaps no other medium enables you to get such instant feedback. If you are a movie director and want to know which scene the audience liked best, all you need to do is to ask them to SMS a, b, c or d depending on whether they liked a) the part where the heroine (dressed in Tight Trousers to accentuate her Thunder Thighs) swings her hips hypnotically and sings seductively b) the climax where the vengeful villain spits saliva on the hapless hero and vomits vitriolic venom, harassingly c) the melodrama of the matriarch meeting her maker movingly or d) the suggestive symbolism of the woodpecker pecking wood just when the hero stares at the heroine longingly.

(Editor’s note: As an aside,our apologies for the author’s adamant attitude and his insistence on being an alliterative alligator. It has its roots in True Tamil Tradition. Look at names like Murasoli Maran, Kalaignar Karunanidhi, Kavignar Kannadasan, Mellisai Mannar MSV, Isaignani Ilayaraja, etc. A Tamil politician or an actor without an alliterative adjunct to his name is practically walking around naked)

Back to the subject. The best thing about these dipstick surveys done through SMS is that the responders need to confine themselves to the choices available and which are explicitly spelt out. The conductor of the survey can take advantage of this feature of finite choices. Say, you are the boss and want to announce a measly 5% increment in pay for the employees. All you need to do is ask them to send you a SMS each, keying in a, b or c if they felt the pay hike should be 2%, 3% or 5% respectively. Like zombies, the unwary juniors will SMS “c” and you can grandly and without any qualms announce that, in response to the unanimous employee opinion, the management is pleased to grant a 5% pay hike.

I intend to put this medium to good use at home – such as in arriving at a family consensus on important questions like “Where do we eat tonight?”. When my wife and two daughters are glued to their book, phone and PC respectively and refuse to pay attention to me, I will send them an SMS and ask for a SMS-in-return, expressing their choice of a) Sangeetha or b) Little Italy or c) Cascade. We will go that restaurant that manages to garner the maximum votes. If each of the options gets one vote and there is a tie, I will let the wife and daughters play rock-paper-scissors to decide the winner.

The Patna Olympics

(Dedicated to Lalu who has just fallen, shattering my dreams of India bagging some Olympic medals .Raj)


The Times of Bihar
Patna edition, May 15, 2016

The entire nation is, understandably, euphoric over the rich bounty of four gold medals that India has reaped at the recent Olympics. Thanks to some classified documents made available to The Times of Bihar, the gripping tale of how this unexpected success came about can now be narrated and the complete sequence of events that led to this success can be unfolded to the general public.

It all started in the year 2006, when the then President, Dr Abdul Kalam won the prestigious Samson Club award for sporting the “Longest Hair” amongst all Heads of Sovereign States. As was his habit, he immediately summoned the then Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, to the Rashtrapati Bhavan to make a Power Point presentation on his Vision 2020 and his pet dream that Indians should win more awards, particularly at the Olympics. When he was transiting to slide 24/328 and just warming to the theme, Manmohan threw up his hands in despair and agreed to constitute a task force under the able leadership of Lalu Prasad Yadav, to make the vision a reality.

Lalu who was tired of the bad press that he had been getting, quickly realized that this was his long-awaited opportunity to prove his detractors wrong and to provide clear evidence that he was not as stupid as he looked.

With his long years of political experience and finely-honed native instinct, Lalu quickly zeroed in on the critical dimensions that needed to be tackled, if India were to have any chance at the Olympic medals. First, home advantage had to be ensured and it was imperative that the Games should be held in India. Second, they needed to play to their own strengths, not that of their competitors. It was necessary to introduce such events that would give Indians a fair chance of success.

The first objective was achieved in a clinical manner. In April 2009, the International Olympic Committee met in their new headquarters in Shanghai, to finalise the venue for the 2016 Olympics. The shortlisted cities, Melbourne, Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur had just presented their respective merits in great detail, when a group of dhoti-clad, turban-headed, paan-chewing, bare-footed youngsters who betrayed traces of their Indian origin, stormed into the conference room. Brushing aside the Aussie, Dutch and Malaysian representatives, they gheraoed the IOC team and threatened to simultaneously expose their armpits and empty the contents of their mouths all over the place, if the IOC did not agree right there to award the Olympic Games to Patna in India. The fastidious Chairman of the IOC, a stickler for cleanliness, succumbed meekly to this combined threat of armpititis and paan-wash, capitulated without a fight and signed on the dotted line. Thus it was that the Olympic Games came to Patna.

The second objective - that of identifying India-favouring events - proved a bigger challenge even for the wily Lalu. It required the requisitioning of the services of people who possessed a broader knowledge of what constituted “quintessential Indian skills.”

It was well recognized that the Olympic motto of “Citius, Altius, Fortius” was too lop-sided in favour of Western or African athletes with their right mix of broad shoulders, strong biceps, well-developed femur muscles, huge hold-up capacity of the lungs, large diameter of the arteries which enabled rich blood supply, and conferred an unfair advantage on them. The Indians were anatomically-challenged in these respects and were not built for speed or height or length.

A highly literate eighth-standard-passed officer and trusted lieutenant of Lalu had in his possession a copy of the Guinness Book of Records purloined from a library. It occurred to him that he could spot the Indian references in the book and select those events where Indians had already made a mark. After getting the Guinness Book translated into Bihari, through the good offices of a tenth-standard-passed friend, he skipped the sections pertaining to space heroes, epic adventurers, circumnavigators, mountaineers, heroes of the deep, speed stars, stunt heroes, strongmen etc and proceeded to the section on “The Body”. Here he hit pay dirt and located the following entries:

1) Amar Bharti has kept his hand raised for 26 years as a gesture of devotion to the Hindu God Shiva.
2) Lotan Baba, an Indian sadhu rolled his body 4000 km, from Rattam to Jammu over eight months in 1994. He rolled an average of 10-12 km per day.
3) “Chutti” is the thickest three-dimensional make-up, unique to the South Indian Kathakali dance-theatre tradition. The make-up takes three hours to apply.
4) The longest fingernails are those of Shridhar Chillal of Pune, India. Measured to have a total length of 1.42 m.
5) Kalyan Ramji Sain of India began growing a moustache in 1976. In July 1998, it had a total span of 3.39 m.

This information was passed on to Lalu, who spat out his paan with a low guttural noise, conveying that he was pleased with the data. He ordered that these events be included in the Patna Olympics:

1) 5000m Floor-rolling
2) Nail-fencing, which required a duel using just the nails
3) Moustache-wrestling, the winner being the one who encircled the opponent with his moustache
4) Face make-up, requiring the demonstration of the thickest make-up in 3 hours.

The services of Amir Bharti of hand-raising fame would be utilized to hold the Olympic torch in his right hand, for the entire duration of the Olympics.

At long last, the day dawned. The Games was all set to commence. The mascot of the Games was Pandu, the paan-da. The official Olympic snack and drink were Ghutka paan and Matka tea respectively.

In his inaugural address, the President of India (who hailed from Kerala), comblimented the organizers and said he was simbly too habby to be part of the Olymbics. The Olympic torch was lit, handed over to Amar Bharti and the Games began.

The events went on expected lines and the Indians languished at the bottom of the pack, even behind the Paks, Bangs and Lanks. But, on the penultimate day, Lalu delivered.

In the floor-rolling event, Srinivas Venkata Parthasarathy of Andhra Pradesh won the race by a wide margin, putting his Tirupati experience to good use. The nail-fencing duel was won by Swami Gajamugananda of Haridwar in a nail-biting finish; the moustache-wrestling gold medal went to Buta Singh of Patiala, who literally had his opponent entwined and finally, in the face make-up contest, Sudhakar Nair of Trivandrum, painted his way to victory.

All the hard work, strategy and preparation had paid off and a Bharat Ratna award was conferred on Laloo. Encomiums were showered on him. One writer even waxed lyrical:

To Lalu, I dedicate this limerick
Saluting him for his Patna Olympic
Despite his disgusting paan
And his nauseating yawn
He silenced many a critic

If, for the first time, truth be told
It was quite a sight to behold
The nail-fencers and the floor-rollers
And the chuttis and the moustache-twirlers
Come home with the gold!

( This appeared as an article in Sulekha.com on Aug 5, 2005)

The birthday party

I just dropped my daughter off at a birthday party. Along the way, obeying my wife’s clear instructions, I picked up a ‘birthday present ‘ from the gift shop, had it wrapped in silver paper, and entrusted it to my daughter to hand over to the birthday girl. It was one of those cute little jewel boxes with musical chimes and cost me Rs, 250/ plus another Rs. 10/- for the special silver wrapper. The entire transaction was completed in 5 minutes.

Now, I am aware that a jewel box, however musical it is and however silvery the paper it is wrapped in, is an entirely useless thing for a ten-year-old to possess, but I suffered no pangs of guilt at having palmed off such a stupid gift on the unsuspecting kid. I have taken my kids to enough birthday parties to know that the recipient of the gift is not unduly concerned about what gift he or she receives. What matters is the ritual of getting a gift and the thrill of unwrapping it. To prove my theory, I intend to plant an empty box wrapped in silver paper as a birthday present, one of these days .I am certain that nobody will notice the difference. .

The parents of the birthday girl had invited 25 other kids to the party and would end up spending Rs. 5000/- on the pizzas, the birthday cake, the festoons and balloons and the return-gifts. If each of the invited kids brought a gift worth Rs. 200 (not everyone is as generous as I am), the total value of the gifts received would be Rs. 5000/-. So, as far as the parents are concerned, it would all square up, right? Wrong. The parents will be stuck with 25 different gifts of questionable or zero value – unless they can monetise the momentary thrill experienced by their kid while unwrapping the parcels – and would be down by Rs. 5000/-, being the expenditure on the cheesy pizzas, the balloons that were pumped with air only to be exploded the next second, and the colas that were consumed and burped away adding to the greenhouse effect.

Remember that each of these 26 kids gets invited to 25 birthday parties in a year and the parents of each of the kids need to spend Rs. 200/- on buying gifts for each of the parties. Simple back-of-the-envelope calculations will show that, to purchase birthday gifts in a year, the parents of all the 25 kids will spend a total of Rs. 1,25,000/-. Another Rs. 1,25,000/- will be spent on the pizzas, the colas and the balloons. A total of Rs. 2,50,000/- will thus be blown-up on “useless’ stuff.

Extrapolating this on a national scale, even if there are just one lakh and one kids in India involved in this birthday circuit, we are talking about an annual national turnover of Rs. 100 crores on jewel boxes with musical chimes (and similar items), junk food and gas-filled colas. This accounts for just one expenditure head- the birthday party. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other influences and marketing campaigns that exercise an irresistible pull on the kids and draw the parents into their fold. These must surely involve a few thousand crore rupees.

As adults, we are caught in myriad rituals that are scaled-up versions of the birthday binge. We produce goods and services which serve no real purpose except that of ego gratification and use the money so earned to buy an assortment of ‘useless” goods and services, in a self-perpetuating cycle involving tens of thousands of crores of rupees.

Mine may be an extremely cynical, even childish viewpoint and most sociologists and economists will passionately defend the above business model.

The sociologist will argue that rituals such as birthday parties, weddings, exchange of gifts during festivals serve the purpose of reinforcing the bond between people. The gesture is what matters; the ritual is secondary, but provides the platform for extending the gesture.

Economists will put forward the argument that consumerism is the quintessence of capitalism, that it will kick in a virtuous spiral of more production and more buying, that this churn in the economy alone can create the critical mass required to progress from the Gandhian framework of frugal living to a higher Maslovian plane, that the threshold or yardstick for defining basic needs will constantly change (today’s luxury = tomorrow’s basic need), that increased consumption leads to capacity build-up and more employment potential, that the ripple effect will result in more scientific and medical breakthroughs, increased life spans and superior quality of life, that a growth in GDP even if through production and consumption of useless goods and services is most desirable. So, the earlier we initiate the kids into the path of consumerism, the better it is for the national economy. Have more birthday parties and splurge on.

As a layman not conversant with such high-fundas and as one belonging to a generation that did not celebrate birthday parties- certainly not on the grand scale that we witness today- and was no worse for it, I am not too sure. What if we cut back on the consumption of useless goods? What if we scale down now? What if we told our kids that there would be no more birthday parties?

Game, sex and drama

When I switch on the TV and accidentally channel-surf my way into one of those soap operas or the mil-dil episodes that cast such a spell over the Indian viewers, I can’t help wondering why people go for such inane and insipid fare when an entire repertoire of action-packed, real-life based films with absorbing plots are available on the National Geographic Channel.

Take this typical story on NGC. For days, the cheetah and her cubs haven’t had anything to eat. After several failed attempts, she had successfully hunted down an antelope yesterday, chasing it at a speed of 100 km/hour – only to be robbed of the catch, within a few minutes, by a pack of hyenas. This morning, she sets out on her hunt, aware that her cubs would die if she returned without food today. It is a desperate kill-or-die situation. After a few hours, she manages to pin down a baby gazelle, separating it from its mother. The last shot shows the mother gazelle walking away dejectedly while the exhausted cheetah watches its hungry cubs devour the baby gazelle to the last bone. The voice-over fades off with the words “ One mother’s loss is another mother’s gain”. Can any scriptwriter come up with anything more packed with tender love, parental care, action and pathos?

Or take this poignant story centered on a small lake, which is the only source of water for miles. The deer, zebras, wildebeest, – all make a beeline for this lake to quench their thirst, with the hot African sun beating down on them relentlessly. The lake is home to several crocodiles that wait patiently to pounce on these mammals at the edge of the lake and pull them into the watery grave. The rains have failed this year, the streams are not re-charged and the lake is gradually drying up. Quite a few of the deer and the zebras that venture deeper into the lake, desperate for water, fall into the waiting jaws of the crocodiles. But, ironically, with the water level shrinking steadily, the crocodiles also perish, one by one. As the film draws to a close, we see a solitary crocodile crawling away from the barren lake towards the shade of a distant tree. It is a tribute to the powerful story-telling technique that, by this time, the viewer gets emotionally drawn to the crocodile and is eager to know if it managed to survive the crisis.

A film on the “King Cobra” shot in the Nilgiris can keep you engrossed for many hours. As the story builds up, the King Cobra is shown constructing its own nest (uncharacteristic of snakes) in a rather elaborate fashion, preparatory to laying its eggs. Then it stays guard over the eggs for days together, not relaxing its vigil even for a second. Just as you start to admire the motherly sacrifices of this reptile, it leaves the nest before the first egg hatches and the baby comes out – because it intuitively knows that if it stays around, its pre-disposition to eat other snakes will take precedence over its maternal instinct. What ethological drama!

But, if you are under the impression that snakes don’t have to fear other predators, watch the “The Eagle and the Snake”. These eagles live on an island in the South China Sea. Their only source of food is the striped snake that inhabits the waters. The striped snakes are excellent swimmers but, once in a few hours, need to come up to the surface of the sea for their oxygen intake. Now, the eagles which hover several hundred feet above the water need to know exactly when and which of the snakes will come up to draw some air, so as to swoop down at the precise moment, grab the six-foot long snake and fly back several miles to the island to feed its young. You would think that, in a vast sea, the statistical probability of a particular snake (which comes up to the surface only once in three hours), being snatched by an eagle is quite low. Yet, this drama unfolds everyday and the eagle has to get its catch of snakes to stay alive and the snake has to keep coming up to the surface to stay alive..

Are you looking for the sex motif? Take this story about the male warthog which has to demonstrate its loyalty and intentions by courting the female of the species determinedly for three full days, following it wherever it goes, before the latter relents and allows the ‘mating” to take place. Happy ending? Not yet. The male warthog has to continue to keep watch over the female for the next few days to ensure that she doesn’t fool around with other males and deprive him of the opportunity of multiplying his own genes. For sheer perseverance and amorous wooing, this cannot be matched or bettered in any man-made love-story.

Spare a thought for the photographer from National Geographic following the particular warthog for days together in the wild and capturing the whole sequence and drama. Or keeping tab on the King Cobra as it builds its nest, hatches its eggs and moves away just when its young ones come into the world? Or setting up his camera next to the lake for several weeks till the solitary crocodile moves away. Or waiting for that split second when the eagle will swoop down and grab the snake. Not in controlled conditions that prevail in a movie studio, but in hostile terrains such as a marshy swamp or a remote island.

That is why when I feel the need for moving melodrama, pulsating action and gripping story line, I turn to these animal films. They never disappoint me.

Don't dwell on the past, don't worry about the future

The sight of my ten-year old daughter comfortably settled on the sofa, a bowl of potato chips in one hand and the TV- remote-control device in the other and surfing her way through 30 channels in 15 minutes - was more than I could bear. It was time, I thought, that I should deliver a fatherly sermon on how lucky she was in having so many good things which, we of the earlier generation did not even dream of. Every parent in every generation has preached thus and I did not want to miss this opportunity.

So I stared her squarely in the eye and asked, "Do you realize, you techno-savvy brat, that you are thoroughly spoilt? Do you know that even when I was twice your age, I had just one channel to watch, that too black and white ?”

“ Just one channel to watch , the whole day?" she asked in amazement.

I had to correct her. “ Not the whole day. Doordarshan used to begin transmission only at 6.30 p.m and would wind up at 10.30 p.m. And they used to screen movies only on Saturdays”

“ What ! Just one channel and just for 4 hours. And just one movie a week. How did you manage to survive ? Surf the net?", she enquired, not unlike Marie Antionette wondering why the proletariat could not eat cake, if there was no bread.

“ There were no computers then, let alone the Internet.” I had to tick her off sharply.

“ Then just what did you do to spend your time ? Play games on your mobile phone ?”

“ There were no mobile phones then" I responded "and for good measure, no cordless phones. Not even phones with buttons. Phones those days came with a round dial. If you had to dial a number like 72345 you had to put your finger in the hole with the number 7 and turn the dial, wait for it to come back, then put your finger in the hole with the number 2 and so on. If the number was engaged you started all over again. “

“ And”, I continued, pre-empting the next question, “ there was only one type of car. The Ambassador. No Marutis, Hyundais or the Hondas. And no air-conditioning in the car. Not even music systems”

“ Appa, stop “ my daughter screamed out loud “ Don’t talk to me about the past. It makes me very sad. You people had nothing then. You had such a miserable life”.

At this point, I felt it prudent to inject a more cheerful note into the proceedings.

“ You know,” I told her, “25 years from now, you are going to have a similar conversation with your daughter. You are going to show her some of the photographs that we took last week and she is going to stare at them disbelievingly. She is going to find your dress bizarre and your hairstyle incredibly funny. She will ask you why you needed to wear this thingy called spectacles, as nobody in her generation would be using them. As a matter of fact, she would want to know why one needed to have photos printed on paper, as kids of that era will be living in a paperless world.”

I went on, “ She will stare in wonder if you described to her the TV set, the computer and the mobile phone that you have today. She will be shocked that people living in the past had to struggle with such primitive and bulky stuff. In her time, all these functions would be integrated in a single compact device attached to the wrist .

“ She will ask you why you had to go to school. She will want you to explain why you did not have the automated self-learning studios then. Were you so poor when you were a child that you could not afford these basic necessities ?”

“But, not everything that you have today will look bad to her. She will long for the fast cars that we have today. By the time she is old enough to drive, the world would have run out of oil and she would be going around in a slow, solar-powered vehicle….”

I would have continued in this vein for some more time, but at this point, my daughter interrupted me, “ Appa, stop. Don’t talk to me about the future. It is too scary”.

That was the end of the conversation.

“The past is dead. No point in dwelling on it. The future is unborn. No point in worrying about it. The present is a gift. Make the most of it”, I muttered to myself philosophically, mulling over the lesson that my daughter had just taught me.

Rx.. Care of the heart

Those of you who want to prevent a heart-attack or some of you who have already suffered a heart attack but want to prevent the next one, take heart. Your doctor can now prescribe the latest class of statins which, by lowering cholesterol levels, can cut down the risk of heart attack by 30%. The dosage will vary from person to person and will be determined by a simple formula. The doctor will examine your salary slip closely and fix the dosage in such a way that you spend 50% of your salary on the statins. That's the simple formula.

But statins are known to interfere with the functioning of the liver and can also cause muscular atrophy in 0.0005% of the patients. So your doctor, ever alert to business opportunities, will prescribe additional drugs to tone-up the liver, apart from inorganic supplements to make up for the weakening of the muscles. Some of these supplements can increase the toxicity of the blood and can affect the kidneys. So you would be forwarded to a nephrologist who will quickly assess how promising a candidate you are for a kidney transplant . He will also make a mental note to refer a patient with mild urinary infection to your cardiologist for a routine ECG, as a return favour. The entire medical fraternity subscribes to this quid pro quo arrangement.

Back to the heart. Statins also need to be supported by ACE inhibitors which help dilate the blood vessels and reduce blood pressure. Controlled experiments on rats have shown that those rats that were administered ACE inhibitors, lived a week longer than those that went without the drug. Considering that a rat lives for hardly 16 weeks on an average, a week’s extension is significant. What works on a rat must surely work on you ? You are just a scaled-up, biped version.

It is also good to take some anti-coagulants and blood-thinners like aspirin to keep the flow through the vesels as smooth as possible. Alas, aspirin is also known to cause intestinal bleeding and coupled with the fibrous diet prescribed by the thoughtful cardiologist, will induce acidity and flatulence. To tackle these symptoms, your doctor will ask you to take some antacids every day. Antacids can interfere with the absorption of some key nutrients into the system and your doctor will tell you when exactly to have them, before or after a meal. Usually, he will advise you to have them instead of the meal.

The statins, the aspirin and the ACE inhibitors together make a formidable combination and some research indicates that you have a good chance of reducing a 60%- blocked-artery to a 20% blocked one. Too bad that new evidence shows that in a 20%- blocked artery, the chances of the plaque breaking loose, clogging the vessel and causing a heart attack are much higher than in a 60%-blocked artery. Well, you can’t have everything.

About the diet. Don’t gorge yourself on fried food which contain polyunsaturated fat, bad for your heart. Eat plenty of green salads. A word of caution here. It has been observed that salads are quite often washed with contaminated water and can cause severe infection of the stomach. Not to worry. Your clueless gastroenterologist will prescribe some broad-spectrum antibiotics ostensibly to kill the bacteria. These antibiotics will be still protected by patent, and therefore your salary for that month will be used up for the noble cause of amortising a substantial chunk of the R&D expenses of the drug company. The good doctor will also recommend an ultrasound scan of the abdomen partly to rule out cysts and tumours, partly to look for other danger signals , but mainly to earn his 30% commission from the owner of the scan machine.

And get plenty of exercise. Your doctor will advise you that walking is the best way to keep fit.. The considerate doctor will not want you to blow up good money on fancy gym equipment. In fact he will want you to reserve your income, fixed deposit and other savings purely for medical expenses and not to sqaunder it on non-essential needs like food, clothes, petrol, etc.

A final piece of advice. Don’t fret and fume about the doctor’s fees and the expenses on the medicine and the visits to the diagnostic centres. Anxiety over such trivial things can induce high levels of stress and high blood-pressure and can lead to heart attacks.

Dark thoughts of a closet MCP

You should have seen the fuss that my wife made and the tantrums that she threw up when I woke her from a afternoon siesta yesterday and asked for a cup of coffee!

Why she should go ballistic over such a simple request, I could never fathom. It would have taken her hardly a couple of minutes to warm the milk in the gas stove, mix the instant coffee and sugar and serve it to me, along with some chocolate biscuits, as I was on my recliner chair reading a book. Nothing complicated about it. Minimum physical labour involved.

It is not as if she had to slog it out like my multi-tasking grandmother who had to wake up at 3 am everyday, have a cold dip in the Cauvery (cleverly dodging the lurking crocodiles), finish her pooja, run after the cows, pin them down, milk them herself, then grind the coffee seeds, roast them, prepare the decoction, and get the steaming coffee ready for my grandfather at 5 am sharp, before he commenced his morning ablutions. All this, while she continued to prolifically deliver several babies a year.

What make my eyes red, my ears steam and my blood boil are the double standards of women these days.. Last night, when I was engrossed in my favourite episode of “Friends”, wife actually asked me to go down to the shop nearby and get some bread for the kids. To pack lunch for them the next day, she explained. This complete insensitivity for a fellow human-being engaged in an intellectual exercise got my goat. Did she think that this was such a simple errand? The shop is a good 200 metres away – which meant I had to not only walk down to my basement, but had to open the car door with my bare hands, insert the ignition key in the right place, start the car, put it on first gear while applying the clutch, press the accelerator slowly while simultaneously releasing the clutch, play my favourite CD, navigate my way through the maddening traffic, find a parking slot……in other words 15 minutes of agonising, back-breaking, manual labour. Can’t the kids manage without bread for a day? Why can’t they eat cake ?.

Let me narrate one more incident to gain your sympathy. Once, I brought four of my colleagues home for dinner. I grant you that I should have called my wife and given her advance notice, which I omitted to do. Ok, I forgot. So, what? I am only human. To err is human, but to her it was a crime. The screaming and ranting that I had to put up with for a week! All for the merest trifle of mixing a few ingredients and cooking a meal for four, aided by the galaxy of fancy gadgets that is found in the kitchen. Hell, there’s even a device to peel the onions, without bringing a drop of tear to the eye. In contrast, my great-grandma - bless her soul- had to harvest the paddy from the fields, de-husk it, de-stone the rice, collect wooden twigs from the forest, crush the snakes and the scorpions with her bare feet, draw water from the well using counter-weights, pluck the vegetables from the fields, light the stove, cook the rice, remove the starch, feed the first helping to the crows and serve the meal piping-hot to my great-grandpa And she did this every day without a whimper of protest . All my great-grandpa had to do was let out a loud burp and other similar bodily noises after the hearty meal. I tell you, dear readers, that those were halcyon days when men were he-men and women had perfect role clarity.

Now, when I am busy blogging, wife asks me to change a fused bulb in the bathroom instead of wasting my time with my chat-mates. . What lop-sided priorities and what contempt for blogging! First, in these enlightened days, when liberated women commandeer space shuttles, fly solo aircrafts and head large MNCs, one would have thought wife would have by now acquired the elementary intelligence to change a light bulb. No such luck. I must do it, because she is not tall enough to reach the bulb holder. Must I do all the hard work in the house, merely because I am 6”1” tall? Second, does she think blogging is child’s play? Is she aware at all of the depth of knowledge, intensity of research and thoroughness of detail that characterise my blogs

Sigh ! What degeneration of values. We live in decadent times ! Let me go and change that blasted bulb now.

The last male domain....

I confess that I am dismayed by the proliferation of new institutions such as the unisex beauty parlours and family saloons. One, they threaten to drive to extinction that most Malgudian of characters- the local barber. Two, they strike at the very foundation of the last male bastion left. Till recently, the barber shop remained the only place – apart from the Gents Toilet- where ministers, politicians, sportsmen, farmers and businessmen alike were allowed entry,solely on the strength of their being men and to bask in the exclusivity of the surroundings, unspoilt by female presence.

Now I am no misogynist and am all for gender parity, equal space and all that. But there are times when men like to be left alone with the boys and women with the girls. The barber shop provided such a sanctuary to men, while women had their own parlours and spas ,where they were left contentedly alone . This arrangement worked very well for both sexes for centuries and there was absolutely no reason to disturb the status quo ante.

So, I view these new-fangled parlours with utter contempt and remain steadfast in my loyalty to Nataraj, the barber-round-the-corner. Once a month, with unfailing regularity, an inner voice tells me that I must proceed in the direction of the barber shop and I follow its diktat unquestioningly, in a hypnotic trance. There are many mysteries that science has not provided answers for. My monthly sleep-walk to the barber’s is one such puzzle.

Nataraj’s methods are simple but effective. Different strokes for different folks, is his motto. Not only in his cutting technique which has to suit the individual, but also in gauging the customer’s mood and temperament and adopting the appropriate conversational style. I have seen him play various roles – keen listener to a gregarious soul, eager story-teller to the more reclusive, shrewd commentator to the uninformed, astute advisor to ranting teenagers, sharp critic of wayward adolescents ,– moving from one role to the next , as in a rapid slide show, with effortless ease.

Isn’t he worried that these deluxe parlours and saloons started by the MNCS and other corporates would eat into his business ? Nataraj dismisses this suggestion with complete disdain.. “ These places employ smart-looking, over-paid youngsters with fancy titles like hair-stylists, hair-engineers and hair-doctors and think they can steam-roll us into extinction. It is not as simple as that. Customers look for much more than just a hair-cut, when they come here.”.

He continued, “You can send your driver to pick up groceries, to pay your water tax and to get your watch repaired. But do you realize that hair-cut is one of the few activities that you can’t delegate to your driver and you need to physically present yourself at the barber’s shop ? This creates a special and sacred bond between the barber and the barbee. Big industrialists who cannot be accessed at all in their lush offices become my captive listeners when they are seated in this chair. Many of them pour out intimate family secrets to me. Teenagers who can’t confide to their parents find in me a father-figure to let out minute details of their love life. Why, even the DIG of Police is my customer and has shared some vignettes of the interesting crimes that he has been investigating. Such is the clout we wield. Such is the status we enjoy”.

“ Take you, as an example, sir” he went on, “ I have seen you on your morning walk on Boat Club Road, in a pensive mood, probably worried what the day has in store for you, and giving the clear signal that you do not want to be disturbed from your reverie. Yet, here. in my shop, you are completely relaxed and are in a mood to open out and engage in pleasant conversation with me. This is what makes us special and irreplaceable. We are certainly not an endangered species yet. “

I hope these don’t turn out to be famous last words, I thought to myself as I watched Nataraj usher in his next customer making the latter feel that he was ascending a throne for his coronation.

May his tribe survive and flourish.