Tennis Trivia

Wimbledon tournament is underway in London. London is where the Queen lives, in her palace, built on the banks of the Buckingham Canal.

Unfortunately, Leander and Mahesh are not partnering each other this time. It is no secret that they are unable to get along. Leander accuses Mahesh of not picking up his share of the bill whenever they have a Dutch meal together. Yes, apparently Leander Paes, but Mahesh doesn’t.

Mahesh Bhupati got married two years back to a girl from Chennai, by name Shweta Jaishankar. After marriage, as per convention, she changed her name to Shweta Bhu-patni.

Another Indian taking part in the tournament is Sania Mirza. But, what’s the use? She can never be the winner of any event nor first in any race. She can only be the runner-up. That’s because she hails from Second-rabad.

Do you know what happened to all the players who retired from the game? I know what some of them are up to. John McEnroe manufactures tennis equipment. Even in his playing days, he used to have guts and make quite a racket. Jim has started his own Courier service. While our own Amritraj has become a video-jockey. VJ Amritraj, he calls himself.

And, remember Ramesh Krishnan and his painfully slow service. One of the serves that he sent down in the year 1987 is yet to cross the net and go over to the other side. But still people used to say, “Ramesh is not at all boring to watch. Bore is Becker.”

Some people are under the impression that Lillee had taken part in Wimbledon. This is not correct. He was Dennis Lillee, not Tennis Lillee.

Players of an earlier generation, such as Fred Perry and Lacoste are selling T-shirts. These branded T-shirts are very expensive, let me warn you. But, if you go to Janpath market in Delhi, you can pick up Lacoste-labelled T shirts for Rs 50/- each. Only difference is that these are low-cost shirts, not Lacoste. One Janpath wholesaler kept demanding a quota of 27% for these T-shirts in every showroom, till someone gently pointed out that quotas were applicable only for low-caste T-shirts, not for low-cost ones.

Wimbledon spectators love tradition. They cannot watch a match without their strawberries dipped in cream. What they don’t realize is that the word 'strawberry' is a misnomer. It is not a berry at all, because it has seeds outside, whereas true berries must have seeds inside. To complicate matters, tomato is not a vegetable, but a berry. What’s worse, ‘ladies finger’ is not a part of the female anatomy, but is a vegetable. Why can’t things simply be what they are supposed to be? Next, they will tell me that Grass Court is not a place where people smoke grass or that Love-all has nothing to do with romance or Greeks……..

The Kannagi statue

One of the first things that the present Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, Mr.Karunanidhi, did on assuming office was to visit the Museum where the ‘Kannagi’ statue lay, having been unceremoniously dumped by the previous Govt. The CM, the media reported, was so moved when he saw the statue that he actually shed copious tears. In a grand function later that week, with much garlanding and rhetoric, he made sure that the statue was re-installed at its original site.

The Chief Minister was a prominent flag bearer in the Dravidian movement that ridiculed religious practices, rituals and idol worship. How is the ceremony centered on a stone statue of Kannagi and with the attendant rituals of invoking the blessings of the Tamil Mother, garlanding and paying eloquent tributes to a mythical character, any different from what thousands of believers do in temples every day? Does the absence of a religious overtone make the ‘statue” worship more rational or acceptable?

When I ‘googled’ for some insights, I found an entire body of opinion on the subject of rituals. Anthropologists and sociologists say that the need for ritual is a basic human instinct - as real and as raw as our need for food or shelter and every bit as crucial for our survival. There lurks within each one of us a compelling urge to connect with the ‘infinite’, with the past and future and to seek a predictable cosmic order and continuity.

For many, religion and worship of God offer an outlet to this inner urge or spirituality. Religious rituals provide them the lifeline to the divine. Atheists and self-styled rationalists, who spurn such methods, however establish ‘surrogate’ systems of celebration and commemoration, which are – in character- as ritualistic as the religious processes. Symbolisms abound in both.

Whether it is the Communists holding their elaborate May Day rallies, Corporates having their Board meetings, the Olympics with its Opening and closing sessions celebrated with pomp and pageantry, Parliament observing its own protocol, football matches preceded by the hype and the hoopla or the Army with its parades and salutes, all these are rituals- by different names.

One sociologist quotes Confucius who observed that rituals are not to be performed for their own purpose, but to facilitate meaningfulness in human activity. We don’t shake hands for the purpose of having a ritual; we shake hands for the purpose of extending a message of mutuality. Similarly, a ritual becomes useless when the mechanics of the ritual occupy all our thought. We’re not supposed to focus so much on the location of our fingers in the handshake, or on the amount of pressure applied in the squeeze, that we cannot give and receive the main message of the handshake – the message of mutual recognition.

That’s the key point. Any ritual is fine as long as you don’t get lost in the mechanics and forget the larger purpose. Those who indulge in religious practices, cults and rituals would do well to remember this. While those like Mr. Karunandhi who ridicule the ‘believers’ should realize that they are no different in their observance of rituals and ceremonies and that they should stop throwing stones from glass houses

Update 09.07.06 :Ram Vishwanathan points out another instance of ‘double standards” on the part of the DMK/PMK. While the Health Minister, Mr Anbumani Ramdass, called for a cut in the salaries of the medicos of AIIMS who took part in the anti-reservation strike, his party has supported the strike at NLC, even threatening to bring down the Central Govt.

Football Fever

With the World Cup on, the country is in the grip of football mania. Every newspaper and every blogger wants to write about it. Let me jump on to the bandwagon.

I have been agonising over the absence of India in the World Cup. We seem to lack the basic temperament to play this game. Not that we haven’t attempted. Many an Indian has tried his hand at football. That’s the problem. Football rules don’t allow use of hands. We should try our legs instead.

Another problem is that Indians play so many different types of games and tend to get confused. While playing football, it is important to remember that the ball must be hit into the net, not over the net as in tennis. While approaching the goal-post, Indians try to maneuver the ball towards point and extra-cover. Such off-side shots are disallowed in football. Also, Indians have the habit of hitting the football outside the boundary line, believing that it will fetch them six runs, but football rules are slightly different. The most awkward moment for Indian football was when one Indian defender, thinking that he was playing kabaddi, tackled one of the opponent forwards, bringing him down and crushing him . Apparently the tackler was from Goa and a Goan constrictor at that.

But, all is not lost. W.Bengal is producing some great footballers. Mohan Bagan, for instance, has had some great players like Hiralal Mukherjee, Samar Banerjee, Sudeep Chatterjee, etc. These surnames Mukherjee, Banerjee, Chatterjee, I am told, are Anglicised versions of traditional Bengali names like Mukhopadhyaya, Bandopadhyaya and Chattopadhyaya. East Bengal had a goal keeper called Bhaskar Gangopadhyaya, who anglicized his name to Bhaskar Gan-goalie.

The reason why Bengal is able to come out with such great football talent is because the Bengali language converts all ‘va’ sounds to ‘ba’ sounds. “Vande Matram” becomes “Bande Matram”, “Viswa” becomes “Biswa” and “Ravindranath” becomes “Rabindranth”. Consequently, when the rest of the country is struggling to vend the wall like Veckham, Bengalis can effortlessly bend the ball like Beckham. The day is not far off when a team of Bengalis will play the World Cup and conquer all the other teams. The proud captain can then exclaim, “Beni, Bidi, Bici”.

Yes, these Bengalis can certainly do magic with the football. The most famous football magician from Mohan Bagan is known as P.C.Soccer. When the opposing team is inching menacingly towards the goal post, he can make the entire football stadium disappear, with his magical bond, sorry magical wand.

With that bit about the Wand Bagan, let me jump off the bandwagon now, by reciting these lines from Tagore’s Gitanjali, that beautifully captures the feelings of the Indian footballer and his futile quest of a goal…

“There are times when I languidly linger
and times when I awaken and hurry
in search of my goal;
but cruelly thou hidest thyself from before
me.”

The severe headache

(Relax. This is the last piece in the PJ series. Author)

I have had a nagging headache from morning. Sometimes, it gets quite painful and becomes a head-do, head-teen or even head-char.

Headaches can have many causes and doctors need to do a thorough analysis. In one case involving chronic headache, the doctor suspected brain tumour as the cause and removed the person’s brains. The headache persisted still. It turned out that the root cause of the headache was the tight underwear that the person was using. It was pressing the hip bone, which in turn was compressing the spinal column, resulting in increase in pressure on the skull and causing the headache. The patient was simply caught underwears. There was no need to remove the brains at all.

I see red when I hear about such callousness on the part of doctors. I react like those bulls in Spain. But, I read in Mad magazine that, contrary to popular belief, bulls are not at all affected by the red colour. Only cows are. Bulls get angry when shown red colour, because they hate being mistaken for cows.

Bull-fighting. When will such cruelty to animals stop? The other day, three men attacked and killed a lion. The three Rotarians have since been arrested for the murder of a member of a rival club. .

Lions are however quite safe in Tanzania, where they are kept in a protected area. Tan-zania, as you must have heard, was a country created trigonometrically by dividing Sine-zania by Cos-Zania.

Are you aware that many of the mathematicians are Jews? And that many of the fruits are juice?

Poor Arjuna in the Mahabharata. Was forbidden from eating apples, oranges or mangoes. “Do thy duty” Lord Krishna admonished him, “Fruit is not thy concern”.

Arjuna pleaded with him if he could, at least, have some vegetables such as brinjals and if Lord Krishna could go over to Bheema’s house to borrow some. This episode has since been immortalized in the classic song, “Krishna, Nee Baingane Borrow”

What great epics are the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Likewise, the Greeks had their own, the Iliad and the Odyssey. When Alexander the Great conquered Kalinga, he taught the locals the nuances of these epics. To this day, Odissi is popular in Orissa.

These classical dances, Odissi, Kuchipudi, etc can make your head swim and give you a headache. As I was telling you, before you interrupted me, I have had this nagging headache from morning…

How Landmark found a way to sell Megan McCafferty's books and make a killing

During a recent stopover at the “ Landmark “ bookshop, I found that the novels, "Sloppy Seconds" and "Second Helpings” authored by Megan McCafferty, were displayed prominently at the entrance , with this sign next to them :

“ The books that inspired Kaavya Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life”

Ha, these sales guys, I admired. Can find ‘opportunity’ in any situation,

But I wonder now if Kaavya and McCafferty were at cahoots with each other all along and if the whole outcry over the plagiarism was stage-managed by the agents, to gain some publicity for the latter’s novels and laugh all the way to the bank.......

The power of rural India

It was the summer of June 2012.

The population of rural India alone had crossed 1 billion.

But, there had been some good tidings too, in the last few days.

The Govt. had finally delivered on its promise of ‘power for all rural villages’. Another 100000 MW of power supply was available now, thanks to the mega-coal plants that had come up.

The Prime Minister’s Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme had been a grand success and thankfully there was nobody below the poverty line.

Inspired by C.K.Prahalad’s theory of ‘bottom-of-pyramid” opportunity, marketing companies had brought out affordable, low-cost goods. An air-conditioner was up for grabs for less than Rs 1000/- now.

So it came about, that in the village of Rayapatti reeling under a sweltering heat, Govinda switched on his brand new A/C and for the first time in his life experienced the comfort of a cool ambience and the joy of sweatless sleep.

In distant Raichur, the generator in the thermal plant responded to Govinda’s A/C demand, by stepping up its output by 750 watts with minimal effort, and, in the process, burning a little bit more coal and discharging a tiny bit more carbon-di-oxide.

Soon, Govinda’s neighbours in Rayapatti, in tens of houses, switched on their A/Cs, one at a time. Distant thermal plants responded to the load readily and spewed up some more minute amounts of CO2, warming the globe by a minuscule fraction of a degree. Sensitive, nanodegree-scale thermometers in observatories in Paris and Sydney picked up the infinitesimal change in temperature.

In the next few hours, in one village after another, in all parts of India, the A/Cs came on in rapid succession in every rural household.

The thermal plants now groaned, but revved up gamely to meet the huge demand. Coal was being lapped up hungrily, thousands of tons of CO2 pumped out into the atmosphere, and the globe being warmed steadily.

Finally, when Prasad, in the village of Bharatpur switched on his A/C – the 250 millionth A/C to come on that night in rural India – the global temperature reached the tipping point.

The polar caps started melting rapidly. So too did the Gangotri Glacier.

The journalistic scoop

V.Gangadhar, who pens a delightful column called, “ The Slice of Life” in the Sunday magazine of The Hindu, laments in his latest piece that Indian journalists touring the West Indies with the cricket team, missed a sensational scoop by failing to establish a link between the Antiguan game of warri and the South Indian game of ‘pallankuzhi’.

Actually, an alert blogger, Usha Vaidyanthan, had spotted the connection immediately and had come out with a lovely post on “pallankuzhi’- that had her readers in the grip of nostalgia for several days. Many wrote in to say that the game was identical to the one they had played when they were kids- it was called ‘chennamani or Hali Guli Mane’ in Kannada, “Sagar Gotya’ in Maharashtra, “ Congkak” in Malaysia, etc.

I guess that this just underscores the point that, by the time the mainstream media puts on its boots, bloggers are capable of carrying the news across the world and, what’s more, engaging in a lively conversation.

On smartness...

I was to take the 6.45 am flight to Delhi. Making generous allowance for the time it takes to reach the airport in the early hours and the time it usually takes to check in and go past security, I asked for a car to pick me up from my residence at 5.15 am. My office, adding a margin of safety, instructed the taxi agency to ensure that the car reached my house at 4.45 am sharp. The taxi agency, building some more cushion as a matter of abundant caution, advised their driver to report to me at 4.30 am without fail. The upshot of this was that the exuberant driver rang the doorbell (the one that plays out the entire nursery rhyme) at 4.00 am, on the dot, and woke up the entire family.

Anyway, the good boy that I am, I reached the check-in counter, groggy-eyed and brain-dead, at 5.45 am, a full hour before the scheduled departure of the flight. There were three other passengers before me in the queue and I waited patiently. Just as my turn came and I was about to furnish my ticket to the person at the counter, I felt this jostling and pushing and turned around to see a passenger jumping the queue, charging menacingly towards the counter and demanding that he be attended to first as he had to board the Bangalore flight which was about to take off any moment now.

Instead of handing him over to the police, the airlines chose to give him priority over others and he marched off triumphantly with the boarding card in his pocket and a wide grin on his face.

Not bad, I thought. He managed to sleep for an hour more than I did, though booked on a flight that was taking off 30 minutes before mine. When am I going to be smart enough to beat the system?

Conversation with daughter- 2

The results of the Board Exams were to be released the next day, and sensing the butterflies in my daughter’s stomach, I felt a ‘lighter touch’ from her father would help alleviate her misery. So, I made her sit next to me on the sofa and assuming as solemn a tone as is possible, narrated this story that I had read somewhere.

“One of the Sultans in the Middle East was blessed with a son. On this occasion, he summoned all the wise men of his land and commanded them to compile all the wisdom that could possibly be found in the Universe, so that his son, when he reached adulthood, could access all that was needed to be known. The wise men traveled far and wide, for ten years, and wrote down in 36 volumes, whatever they had seen or heard. When they presented this to the Sultan, he observed that this was too long and they should make it shorter. So, the wise men spent five more years compressing the data to fit into one volume. The impatient Sultan was still not satisfied. “Make it still shorter”, he barked. The wise men were closeted for another three years, before they managed to distill and condense the essence in a single sentence”

“And, what was that sentence?” asked my daughter.

“The sentence was ‘This too shall pass’” I said

“ And what does that mean?” she asked.

“ It means that everything in Life is of a transient nature and fleeting and will eventually get swept by the winds of change that keep blowing relentlessly. The hundred-year war came and went, the world wars passed, the British rule lasted two hundred years, but it too got over. Nothing is permanent and nothing is so important that you must keep worrying about it ” I replied, awestruck by my own profundity.

“So, what’s the story got to do with me ?” asked the daughter, completely unimpressed by the deep philosophy and universal wisdom encapsulated in that single sentence.

“You too shall pass. In your exams” I pointed out and waited for her applause and the girlish giggles.

The daughter got up quietly from the sofa and walked away from the room slowly, no doubt wondering, for the umpteenth time, that if the adult world was a place where nutty characters like her dad abound, whether it was worth growing up at all.

Father's Day thoughts.

Today’s edition of The Indian Express carries an article on “Father’s Day”, authored by someone called Deepak Gharial.

The article is titled,“ Present Perfect” and asks “ What do you give your dad on Father’s Day?” There is a photograph of a very Western-looking father and son, both dressed in formal, black suits. You know, the typical father-son duo that you find in any town or village in India.

Deepak Gharial writes :“ Your dad is one of the most important persons in your life. Now is the time to give him the recognition and thanks. Maybe, though, you find it hard to find the perfect gift for him. If you are strapped for ideas, here’s a list of things that might come in handy”.

Among the items Deepak Gharial lists are a classy timepiece ('to spell style and taste'), a bottle of Scotch whisky or a selection of fine wines from around the world, or a Golf kit (‘even if Dad has the basic kit, more specific clubs can be added to suit one’s abilities’). He ends by pointing out that ‘though you might spend a few hundreds or thousands on these gifts, it’s really the time that you spend with him that will make him feel like a million bucks!.

Some questions for Indian Express and Deepak Gharial :

1) Were you were not able to find even a single photograph of an Indian father – son or father-daughter to accompany this article?

2) Do you seriously believe that these elitist items like Scotch whisky and Golf sets make any sense to even 1% of the readership of Indian Express?

3) If you must plagiarise an article from an American newspaper, can’t you spend a few minutes to, at least, “Indianise” the content to some extent?

On a grimmer note, The Hindu carries an ad of Apollo Hospitals that tries to play the 'guilt' card. “Your father” it says, “has been a mentor, guide, teacher, role model… But while being all this he neglects his health. Shouldn’t you on this Father’s Day show your gratitude by helping him to take care of his heart?”

I am now quite confused, as I am not sure what I would prefer as a Father’s Day gift from my daughters. A Golf kit consisting of more specific clubs ( whatever that means) or a Gift Voucher from Apollo Hospital to do a 64-slice CT scan of my heart.

That's cricket.

Bill Bryson explains to his American readers what cricket is all about :

“Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to center field; and that there, after a minute’s pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt towards the pitcher’s mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of the man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if the batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stay there all day, and, as a rule does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this is going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.”

- From Bryson's book, " In a sunburned country"

On Japan, Aishwarya, Arabia and CPI-M

I am told by reliable sources that M.K.Stalin, Rahul Gandhi and Uddhav Thackeray are visiting Japan shortly. They have heard so much about the “Land of the Rising Son” and are keen on picking up some valuable tips.

But, first, they must learn, from the Japanese, the importance of paying obeisance to elders and treating others with utmost courtesy. It is such a solemn ritual there. For example, when the Japanese people address each other, they respectfully attach the suffix ‘san’ to the name, as in Suzuki-san, Tanaka-san, etc. Three of my friends from Chennai by names Va, Gane and Nate went to Japan on a business trip. They came back as Va-san, Gane-san and Nate-san.

The practitioners of martial arts such as judo, karate and wrestling may kill their opponents with blood-curdling, hair-raising cries, but never fail to observe the right protocol. A Sumo wrestler was killed in a fight last year. His victor made it a point to attend the funeral and bid a tearful goodbye to the vanquished opponent, waving his hands and crying, “Ta-ta Sumo”.

The reason why Aishwarya Rai is so respectful to seniors in the film industry is because her great grandfather hailed from Japan. Yes, he was a warrior there. His name was Samu Rai.

Don’t believe the rumour that Aishwarya has completely ditched her ex-boy-friends, Salman and Vivek. Even last month she attended the Khans film festival in France and stayed at the Hotel Oberoi there. But, why does she always dress in black when she is there? That’s because her current boy-friend, Sheikh Abhibachchan insists that she follows the tradition of the women in Saudi Arabia.

These Sheikhs! They like black-females and then they black-male the world with threats of cutting-off oil supplies. Oil is selling at 70$ a barrel. Black Gold, as it is called!

Not that real gold is getting cheaper. It is going to touch Rs 1000/- a gram. And, what’s worse, the gold that you buy is not pure. Even, in the gold shop, run by the Communist Party of India, a customer was cheated. He expected 24-carat gold, but learnt that the CPI-M had only 2-carats. Prakash Karat and Brinda Karat.

These Communists are so disorganized that the famous Gujarati playwright, Bernaudbhai Shah once commented, “We should have had communism already but for these communists.” Why aren’t they producing great leaders like Lenin and Stalin anymore?

But I have digressed. I was telling you that Stalin was due to visit the Land of the Rising Son…………

The Manifesto

Heard Ms. Jayanti Natarajan, Congress Party MP, put up a spirited defence of the Reservation Policy, in the ‘Big Fight” program of NDTV. In fact, she dismissed all objections with one argument which, if my memory serves me right, was :

“ I will not be brow-beaten by this urban audience. Reservation for OBCs was part of the Election manifesto of the Congress Party; the party was elected to power on that basis and has the mandate to make the changes; the issue was debated in Parliament and the Act passed. We are only doing what the people want and what they have elected us to do.”

Without getting into the merit or demerit of reservation, I tried to check out a few facts, just out of curiosity:

1) Is the issue cited as a key action area in the Congress Manifesto? The only reference I could find was:

“The Congress believes in affirmative action for all religious and linguistic minorities. The Congress has provided for reservations for Muslims in Kerala and Karnataka in government employment and education on the grounds that they are a socially and educationally backward class. The Congress is committed to adopting this policy for socially and educationally backward sections among Muslims and other religious minorities on a national scale. The Congress also pledges to extend reservations for the economically deprived persons belonging to communities that are at present not entitled to such reservations.”

So, the affirmative action promised is limited to religious and linguistic minorities. There is also a specific mention of economically deprived persons belonging to communities that are at present not entitled to such reservations. Isn’t this one of the suggestions made by the anti-reservationists too ?

2) Did the people elect the Congress Party to power ?

Statistics show that, in the 2004 Lok Sabha Elections a) 67% of the citizens were eligible to vote b) the voter turn-out was 54% and c) about 26.53% voted for the Congress. What this means is that 67% x 54% x 26.53% = a paltry 9.5% of the people of India voted for the Congress. If you look at the percentage voting for the NDA and UPA alliances, the former actually garnered more no. of votes. Congress came to power on the basis of the reluctant support given by the Left parties. With 9.5% of the people voting for them, on what basis do they claim that they reflect the will of the people ? Fine, electoral arithmetics works in a certain manner and they formed the Govt. But, will of the people ?

3) How many people in India read the manifesto, before voting ? Even if one reads the manifesto and then votes for the Congress, does it imply that he or she has endorsed all the points there ?


4) If Congress is so committed to implementation of all the promises made in the manifesto, how about taking up the hundreds of other issues on which action has been promised ? At least the one mentioned in the last para

“Within 100 days of receiving the mandate of the people of our country, the Congress will release a detailed action plan with milestones for governance based largely on the promises and commitments made in this manifesto. Every year on October 2nd, the Congress pledges to present to the people of India a Jan Dastavejh on the progress of implementation of the manifesto.”

5) Debates in Parliament ? Have you heard one or heard of one ?

The brain...

Dr. Oliver Sacks, author and neurologist, in his book, “The Man who mistook his wife for a hat” writes about ‘phantom limbs” – the sensation experienced by patients whose legs had been amputated, causing them to believe that the missing limb continued to be attached to the body. (Dr. V.S.Ramachandran has also done some extraordinary experiments on patients suffering from this delusion and has shared his findings in his book, “Phantoms in the Brain”.)

In a different chapter, Dr. Sacks describes the case of the patient waking up in his hospital bed to find a severed human left leg beside him. Thinking it was a New Year Eve joke played by the staff, he attempts to push it off the bed – and falls to the floor himself. It is, in fact, his own leg, but he is unable to recognize it as belonging to him. What’s more, he is convinced that his own left leg is missing.

What a practical prankster, the brain can be. In the first case, it convinces the person without a real leg that he indeed has one. In the second, it convinces the person with a perfectly good pair of legs that one of them is not really his. Out of the two persons, “who is better off?”, I morbidly reflect. The person who doesn’t have the real legs but, thanks to the phantom sensation, clings to the belief that they are still present. Or, the person who still has the real legs but will refuse to believe that they are his? Tough choice.

Next post : Would you rather be a claustrophobic person who would not step into a car as you feel trapped in a confined space or an agoraphobic person who cannot get out of the car because open and crowded spaces terrify you?

For your comfort...

As the plane reaches cruise mode and seat belt signs are switched off, pilots pompously announce from the cockpit, “ Ladies and Gentlemen, the temperature outside is minus 50 degrees centigrade, but for your comfort, we are maintaining cabin temperature of plus 24 degrees C.”

Trust these guys to take brownie points for something that they must provide as a minimum. Seriously, do they want us to feel obliged for not flying with the windows open and freezing to death?

Imagine your barber announcing before commencing the hair-cut,“ Gentleman, I hold in my hands a pair of scissors that can clip your ears off. But, for your comfort, I will limit the cutting to the hair”.

Music world

As Chennai-bashers keep saying, the city has only three seasons, ‘hot, hotter and hottest”. Unfortunately, this criticism is well-founded. The weather here can get oppressive. Why, meteorological records show that, on certain days, even the minimum temperature has been so high and actually exceeded the maximum temperature by a few degrees..

So, to cool down my nerves, I attended a concert last week by Bombay Jayashree at the Music Academy. What stage presence! What a lovely saree she was wearing ! What a mellifluous voice ! It is said that one when listens to soulful music, the brain produces more gamma waves that help in cooling down the body. The exact medical explanation is not clear, but the aesthetic appeal of the sari and the therapeutic effect of the gamma waves made the musical evening a truly ‘sari gamma’ experience.

Bombay Jayashree was accompanied on the violin by G.J.R. Krishnan , the son of the eminent Lalgudi Jayaraman, who has spent six decades in perfecting the violin. In this respect, he is completely different from Mohandas Gandhi, who, if you recall was a sworn non-violinist.

Carnatic Music and Hindustani Music are alike in all respects, except that the percussionist in Hindustani Music uses a desktop device called the tabla while his counterpart in Carnatic Music prefers the laptop version called the mridangam. Some experts have also told me that Hindustani singers use a different pitch, while Carnatic singers stick to the regular 22-yard one. Also, Carnatic musicians like to arm themselves with titles like “ Kalaimamani Sangeetha Kalanidhi” to impress the audience, while Hindustani musicians use shorter honorifics like Ustad and Pandit, depending on whether he is a Muslim or Hindu. Sandalwood smuggler Veerappan was an exponent of Hindustani Music. Sorry, sorry, he was a Bandit, not a Pandit. .

I remember a concert I attended in the ‘70s. Pandit Ravishankar with his sitar, accompanied by an Irish guitarist known as Ritchie Blackmore. The duo became so popular, that a movie was made, with them as heroes. It was called “Sitar Aur Guitar” and also featured Hema Malini as the heroine who was torn between her love for Indian classical music and western rock music and finally ditches both to marry Dharmendra. Incidentally this mix of Indian and western music was called“ Fusion’ music. This is not the same as some of these modern ensembles involving a cacophony of sounds. Which is not fusion music but ‘confusion’ music.

Film music is, of course, a completely different genre. Composers like Naushad, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, R.D.Burman dominated the scene in the ’70 s and ‘80s. Though, if he were alive today, R.D.Burman would be referred to as R.D.Myanmaran. More on film music in my next post. Stay tuned.

News round-up

Rahul Mahajan has been caught snorting cocaine. Misguided fool. Couldn’t he have got hold of something more pleasurable like heroin – such as Aishwarya Rai, Kajol, Rani Mukherjee?

What is wrong with the present lot of West Indian cricketers? Why are they so excitable and boisterous? Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I remember they were far more Sobers. Sobers, of course, was from Barbados, but this Brian Lara was born in Trinidad. Yes, his father was a Trinidadian and his mother a Trinimomian. Both heavy smokers as they lived in Tobago nearby. That explains.

Wimbledon will happen soon. Is Martina Navratilova going to play for the 40th year in a row? And what about her eight sisters, Ek-ratilova, Do-ratilova, Teen-ratilova……? Will Federer be judged the best player of all times and become Federest? Only Time can say, or perhaps Newsweek too.

Football mania has gripped Europe. All eyes are on Ronaldo and Ronaldino. I read a story that George Bush, when told about these two guys, asked in all innocence, “ How many millions make a Brazillion?” I don’t blame Bush. Americans tend to get confused over such trivial things. A guy from Florida once told me that he wouldn’t trust me as I was a Tamilian and his zoology teacher had told him that Tamilians keep changing their colours. Had to gently point out that perhaps his zoology teacher had referred to a chameleon and not a Tamilian. Though there are some resemblances, the two belong to entirely different species.

Sholay is being re-made. Should taste great with Alu-tikki. I vaguely remember the movie of the ‘70s. Gabbar Singh trains his pistol at one of his men, shoots, misses and says, “ Yeh bach gaya”. He takes aim at a second guy, misses again and says, “ Yeh bhi bach gaya”. He does the same thing the third time and says, “ A B C bach gaya”. And laughs his guts out. Memorable scene. Powerful acting.

News that Abdul Kalam will get into a supersonic aircraft today and cross the 1 Mach barrier is heartening to hear When he is traveling above the speed of sound, maybe, we living in the sub-Mach world, will not be able to hear him and be spared of his sermons on his Vision 2025.

Antagonise and unite

In Cho Ramaswamy’s popular, political satire, “Mohammed Bin Thuqlak”, Thuqlak as the Prime Minister of the country offers a simple solution to the dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka over Belgaum. “Hand over Belgaum to Tamilnadu” he orders, “Maharashtra and Karnataka won’t fight over this territory any more.”. Similarly, to solve the contentious issue of national language and the resistance in Tamilnadu to the use of Hindi, he would decree that Persian be declared the national language of India. If all people are equally handicapped, they will stop their quarrelling, he would justify .

The solution is not so absurd as it sounds. Indonesia has had such a language as its official language for decades now. In 1945, when Indonesia attained independence, ‘Bahasa Indonesian’ which was the ‘mother tongue’ of just 5% of its people, was chosen the official language, on the basis of its flexible structure and the fact that the coastal community which had trade relations with many other countries had adopted this language. So, a vast majority of the people were equally disadvantaged and had to learn this language from scratch. No wonder that Indonesia, with hundreds of languages and dialects, hasn’t seen the kind of bickering that we have.

So, can a policy of antagonizing the majority, actually promote unity?

Remember the story of the Enfield rifles that the British had introduced in India and how the sepoys were required to bite off the ends of the lubricating cartridges which contained pork and beef , how this managed to antagonize both the Hindus and the Muslims and resulted in the Sepoy Mutiny ? This was a rare instance of the two communities fighting on the same side. Ever since, the British realized the virtue of the ‘divide and rule’ policy and kept the two communities at loggerheads with each other.

So, if we need to ‘antagonise and unite” the Christians. Muslims and Hindus, here’s a formula. Publish a story which is a mix of Da Vinci’s Code and Satanic Verses and pepper it with caricatures of Goddess Saraswati, drawn by M.F.Hussain. This will incite all three communities and bring them together as never before.

Chronic problems require out-of-the-box solutions, I guess.

Update : I learn that the principle of equal disadvantage was also applied when a capital city had to be chosen for Australia in 1901. Sydney and Melbourne were strong contenders, but both compromised and agreed to the idea of a ‘neutral’ place as the capital, even if it was to be located in an inaccessible place.
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Here’s how Bill Bryson describes the trade-off, in his book, “ The Sunburned Country”

“…In 1891, the six separate colonies ( plus New Zealand, which nearly joined, but dropped out) met in Sydney to discuss federation and forming a ‘proper nation’ to be known as the Commonwealth of Australia. It took some years to iron out the differences, but on January 1, 1901, a new nation was declared.

Because Sydney and Melbourne were so closely matched in terms of preeminence, it was agreed in a spirit of compromise, to build a new capital, somewhere in the bush..

Years were consumed squabbling over where the capital should be sited before the selectors eventually settled on an obscure farming community on the edge of the Tidbinbilla Hills in New South Wales. It was called Canberra. Cold in the winter, blazing hot in summer, miles from anywhere, it was an unlikely choice of location for a national capital. About nine hundred square miles of surrounding territory, most of it pastoral and pretty nearly useless was ceded by New South Wales to form the Australian Capital Territory, a federal zone on the model of Washington DC.

Although Canberra is now the sixth largest metropolis in the nation and one of the most important planned communities on earth, it remains Australia’s greatest obscurity .As national capitals go, it is still not an easy place to get to. It lies 40 miles off the main road from Sydney to Melbourne, the Hume Highway, and is similarly spurned by the principal railway lines. Its main road in the south doesn’t go anywhere much and the city has no approach at all from the west..”

Encyclopedia ( that's Tamil for 'hold my bicycle)

I know that, in these internet-obsessed days, it is too much to expect you bloggers to read hard-bound volumes of old-style encyclopedias. So, as a public service, I had taken it upon myself to read 33000 pages and 44 million words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and proudly present some pearls of wisdom, carefully distilled from the collection.

• Know how to identify an Arabian horse from a non-Arabian one ? Count the vertebrae. Arabian horse has only 23; other horses have 24. (So, if you are in the market for horses, remember to send me a thank-you note.)
• What country do you think has the highest per capita alcohol consumption ? France, Ireland, Scotland ? Not, it’s Luxembourg. The Luxemboozards!
• The word’s largest bell was built in Moscow in 1733. It weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang. It was broken by fire before it was struck. Ask not who the bell rings for. The bell doesn’t ring at all.
• The name cappuccino comes from the Capuchin monks of Italy, whose robes were light brown, the same colour as coffee with steamed milk. If coffee had been discovered in India, we would have had saffron coloured coffee named the Sanyasino.
• The easiest divorce around : Pueblo Indian women leave their husband’s mocassins on the doorstep and –that’s it- they’re divorced. Simple. No lawyers, no fault, no socks, just shoes. Wife, please take hint.
• Dragon flies can eat food equivalent to their own weight in thirty minutes. Wonder what its cholesterol level is.
• Technically, the term ‘duck’ should be used only for female. The proper term for a male duck is ‘drake’. No wonder that Donald Duck has a gender identity disorder.
  The literal translation for the Greek word’ gymnasium” is “school for naked exercise”. Now, you know how to be appropriately dressed at the gym.
• Know why Greenland is called so, although it is almost entirely white ? Turns out that the country’s name was coined by an Erik the Red, who had been banished from Iceland in 982 AD for manslaughter. He called his new home Greenland to entice more people to move in there. Real estate agents have followed this practice ever since.
• Hollywood was founded by a man called Horace Wilcox a ‘prohibitionist’ who envisioned a community based on his sober religious principles. Huh ?
• “Jack and Jill’ is actually an extended allegory about taxes. The jack and jill were two forms of measurement in England. When Charles I scaled down the jack ( originally two ounces), so as to collect higher sales tax, the jill which was by definition twice the size of the jack, was automatically reduced, hence ‘came tumbling after’. Hell, we teach our kids commercial stuff in their kindergarten.
• Opossums have thirteen nipples. How unlucky for them.
• Napoleon sold the western half of the United States to Jefferson for less than 3 cents an acre. Should France rescind the contract now ?
  
  Well, to be honest, I couldn’t read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica myself, but I did the next best thing. I just finished a book, “The Know-It-All” by a A.J.Jacobs who has completed the awesome task of reading all 33000 pages of the encyclopaedia and has presented some tidbits and trivia in a very interesting and humorous manner.
  
  

Needed : Honest arrogance

As I have written before, every time Sachin Tendulkar utters a politically correct, pseudo-humble statement in that babyish voice of his (“ Records are not important to me. Only the team is”), it gets my goat. Come on, if you have scored 35 centuries and more than 10000 runs, you are entitled to (and expected to) gloat a bit.

But Tendulkar is not alone.

Neil Armstrong’s famous words as he became the first man to land on the moon,“ This is a small step for me, but a giant leap for mankind” stand out for their modesty. Here was someone, at the biggest moment of his life, completely marginalizing his individual role and thinking of humanity as a whole. How awesome! Except that his words simply don’t ring true.

I have often wondered how many speech writers at NASA must have sat together for endless hours gulping down countless cups of coffees and cokes, to fulfill the mandate of coming out with a memorable line for posterity. That line simply did not sound genuine and spontaneous.

Charles Conrad Jr, the leader of the next mission - Apollo 12 - that landed on the moon soon after, was refreshingly honest when he shouted "Whoopie! Man, that step may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me!”

Take Isaac Newton. An undoubted genius, but not without some human frailties. His spats, feuds and ego clashes with fellow scientists and contemporaries like Liebnitz ( who is credited with conceptualizing Calculus independently) were legendary. Yet he came out with a sugary statement, “If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” that smacked of false modesty.

Contrast this with Benjamin Franklin who had no such hang-ups when he claimed, “Even if I became the most humble man in the world, I would still be proud of my humility." Or Leonardo Da Vinci who used to say that it was better for people to be deaf than blind because a deaf man could at least see his paintings. Geniuses who knew their worth and made no bones about it.

The renowned architect, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in his memoirs “Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.” I like this sentiment.

The indefensible posture of Defence Minister

Most newspapers, yesterday, carried the photo of Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, inspecting a guard of honour after signing a MOU with his Chinese counterpart, General Cao Gangchuan.

What struck me first about the photo was the glaring difference in the postures and the general body language of the two Defence Ministers. While General Cao Gangchuan was in formal military dress, chin held up, shoulders pulled back and imposing, Pranab Mukherjee was hunched forward, tense, choking in his Jodhpuri jacket, struggling with his salute and making heavy weather of the task of touching his forehead with his three fingers.

In my first job in a sales organisation, I had to learn the rudiments of body language- to demonstrate passion, exude confidence, dress appropriately, stand erect – to make the right impression on the customer. Clever use of the body language, I was taught, helps to manipulate the attitude of the other person, but leaves the latter believing that the opinions were formed by his or her own good judgement and taste. This indoctrination has left me a strong believer in the importance of ‘body language’ as a communicating and controlling medium. So, when I saw the photo of the weak Pranab Mukherjee alongside the towering Gangchuan, my first reaction was, “ God ! Is this the person in charge of the country’s Defence?”

In this television age, politicians in western countries ( and in China too, I guess) undergo crash courses in non-verbal communication, how to transmit the right signals to the public and how to interpret and pick up cues from an opponent or a counterpart. It is recognized clearly that ‘body language’ is as important as verbal communication. George Bush and Tony Blair are regularly provided training and feedback on the movement of their hands, on their posture, on how to maintain eye contact, etc. They also try, quite consciously, to look energetic, confident and relaxed and to convey the general feeling that they are in control. When they fail to do so, the public and the media are quick to pick up the signals.

Unfortunately, when it comes to politicians in India, we associate old age, frailty, drooping posture, etc as reflective of wisdom and actually venerate these persons. They dodder and dither and falter and we accept this as par for the course. We elect senile, even demented men in their eighties and nineties, believing that older is better.

When these frail characters go abroad to negotiate on our behalf, we send out wrong signals. The message that we convey is “If the Defence Minister looks so timid and docile and barely manages a salute, then the country that he represents cannot be much of a force to reckon with.” Or, is this too critical a view?

The French channel

Sadly, I have lost the ability to watch or appreciate movies, whatever be the language. I have always found Hindi, Tamil or other Indian films far too melodramatic for my liking. While I have lapped up hundreds of Hollywood films in my younger days, I find it increasingly difficult to follow most accents now and need to invest that extra bit of concentration to lip-read and understand what’s going on.

One day last month, sitting in front of the TV and indulging in my favourite pastime of aimless channel surfing, I stumbled on to this French channel called the TV5 Monde, that was screening a French movie, with English sub-titles. I must say that I found it quite absorbing. I threw away my remote device and stayed glued to the channel till the titles came on. Since then, I have returned to this channel quite often. One of the films was set in the days of the Spanish Inquisition, another was a murder mystery, a third one about a music teacher who wanted his son to become a great pianist, yet another about the French Resistance during World War II – so quite a variety.

When I tried to analyse what aspect of these movies appealed to me most, I could not come up with a ready explanation. They were certainly not the typical ‘art movies’ – a genre of films that is far too intellectual for me and that I steer away from. There was nothing extraordinary about the stories, the actresses were not, necessarily, stunning beauties and the action was certainly not livelier. Slowly, it dawned on me that what I liked about them was the understated style and the subtlety in the techniques and in the acting.

I find most Indian movies too loud, in every sense of the world. The shots and the frames keep changing in a kaleidoscopic manner. Loud music with special sound effects come on at the slightest opportunity. The directors believe that the actors need to display their histrionic skills in the most extreme fashion- cram as much dialogue as possible, sob uncontrollably when sad, laugh hysterically when happy, seethe with indignation when angry ( with close-up shot of blood-red eyes, accompanied by thunder and lighting) – all calculated to manipulate the emotions of the viewer and jar his/her sensibilities. The whole experience is quite draining and you come out of the theatre as if you have traveled long distance in a car where the driver kept steering recklessly while accelerating and jamming the brakes in rapid succession and honking incessantly..

In contrast, these French movies involve minimal camera movement and infrequent zoom-in and zoom-out. The music is never too loud and comes on gently in the background. The actors are restrained in their emoting and don’t find it necessary to gesticulate wildly and thump their chests madly. In fact, the dialogue itself is kept to a minimum. This, aided by the fact that English sub-titles are used, makes sure that dimwits like me don’t remain clueless about what’s happening. An ordinary story manages to come alive and leaves an imprint.

Cause and effect

After some painstaking research and by closely observing hundreds of married couples for fairly long spells, I have discovered that, after ten years or so into the marriage, the partners start developing an uncanny resemblance to each other . Yes, the pattern is unmistakable. The resemblance is not so much in terms of looks, but more in the mannerisms- as in the raising of the eyebrows, the fluttering of the eyelids, the craning of the neck, the movement of the hands, the frown, the curling of the nose, the laughter, etc. If you take me to a room where there is an assortment of husbands and wives whom I have never met before, I will be able to ‘pair’ them up with a high degree of accuracy.

Doubt. Which was the cause and which was the effect ?. Did the resemblance set in as the partners were in constant company of each other, to a point where they started to sub-consciously mimic the other’s mannerisms ? Or did the partners get together in the first place, attracted by the similarity of behaviour, as in positive assortative mating ?

On a related point, do you know any successful person who doesn’t have a streak of arrogance in him or her? Unlikely. A famous actor or cricketer may sound all pious and humble and may even appear to ooze milk and honey from every pore, but scratch the surface and you will detect the conceit or the haughtiness.

Doubt : Which is the cause and which is the effect ? Does‘success’ happen first and produce the arrogance in that person or does the ‘arrogance already resident in that individual drive him and spur him on towards success ? Is the bloated ego a result of the success or a pre-requisite?

Stay tuned to this channel for more such deep insights and profound thoughts.

Balanced ethnic mix- at any cost

I had heard, of course, about Singapore’s ‘Ethnic Integration Policy’ which seeks to regulate and maintain a balanced ethnic mix of Chinese, Malays and Indians. But, while on a recent visit there, a friend of mine explained to me that the proportion of 75% Chinese, 15% Malay and 10% Indian was enforced strictly at the macro-level as well as in public housing estates across the country. So, if you are an Indian and want to sell your flat, you need to find another Indian to buy the flat so as to comply with the regulations and to not disturb the ethnic mix in the neighbourhood. The policy is applied uniformly and consistently across all ethnic groups.

As my flight took off from Singapore, I flipped through one of the local newspapers and, as is my morbid habit, turned to the obituary notices. There were about 20 insertions in all and I counted 15 Chinese names, 3 Malay names and 2 Tamil names.

Can this be true ? How Orwellian ! These guys are ruthless and efficient. They will go to any extent to maintain their ethnic mix!

Raj's Register of Righteous Rhetoric- 1

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

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

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

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

The Soap-Seller of Pulianthope

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

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

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

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

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

‘Did he enter politics? “asked Nike Shorts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Walkie-Talkies silently mulled over this explanation.

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

The Sudoku couple

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O, where is the rainy moon?

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

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




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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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


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

The many moods of the Prime Minister

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

From left to right and top to bottom :

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

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

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

The eternal bachelor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bacterial warfare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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