Whoever first said that the earth is flat must have been Austraaylian, maite!
The reason for this sudden revelation is: On the the 30th day of October, 2005, I woke up on a plane and peered out of the window. I saw a brown, dirty green-turning-to-brownish expanse of land below me, looking like a badly patterned gift wrapper wrapped real tight on a package. Strange bit of land, this. Well, this is the North-Western to Central portion of Australia. We'll get back to it later.
Right now, lets start from the beginning.
2350 hours 29th Oct, 2005: I slink off without telling almost anyone about the move. I see the immigration official looking at me, and I feel like running away. They won't let me through! They'll throw me into prison! Dark images of me being tortured in a damp cell fill my mind. But that does not happen. The guy is bored and probably pissed of at having to sit at 12:00am in the night, and he lets me through really quickly. The images in my mind pass, and the heart decides to stop drumming really loudly in the vicinity of my throat. It gets back to its normal location. I get on the flight, and my heart tries its best to jump out through my throat once again - this time its the air-hostesses. (No, they didnt scare the crap out of me. Good looking ladies in good looking uniforms really rock, man!)
0100 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I can't get enough of the movies on the KrisWorld screen that they have! Pretty ladies serving food & drink at regular intervals, a screen with a TV, Audio and Games, a comfortable seat - all these add up to a near-perfect couch potato making machine. And I'm a prime candidate, as everybody who knows me would know...
0400 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I'm hogging up the movies. 'Batman begins', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', some cartoons with pigeons in it... my brain is shouting 'SLEEP! SLEEP!' my heart is shouting 'WATCH! WATCH!' Me, being the ever diplomatic type, fall asleep watching the movies.
0530 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I sense a flash of bright light. My bleary eyes slowly open and I notice that the headphones are hurting my ears. That problem is taken care of quick. Outside the window I see small twinkling lights afloat somewhere in the darkness. Singapore has arrived! Cities look great from the air at night, and Singapore is a good example of that. I can see ships in the dock, and mirror ships in the water below. Then I see the city like a giant roadmap whose highways have been highlighted with small lights. Looks a lot like Mumbai, or maybe Mumbai looks a lot like Singapore (whatever...)
0545 hours 30th Oct, 2005: Travelling through time zones is like time travel. It is 5:45 am in Singapore, but the flight has taken only 3 and a half hours - its still around 3.30 in India. The airport is huge. It is beautiful. Most of all, it is a shopping mall... And no hassles at all. This is great! I'm loving it!
0900 hours 30th Oct, 2005: After 3 and half hours of waiting and seeing the same shops again and again, the "I'm loving it!" feeling has worn off, and the "worn down" feeling has set in. I'm not the shopping kind anyway. My flight is still 55 minutes off.
1000 hours 30th Oct, 2005: I'm in the air again! Now seeing Singapore (and LOTS of other islands) in the daylight! Well, it was a good place, but 2 hours staring at the same shops, the same duty free signs, the same wine bottles, the same cigarette packets (strictly through the display - no cigarettes for me please) is injurious to mental and emotional well-being.
1500 hours 30th Oct, 2005: Have been seeing the same 'badly patterned gift wrapper' effect since the last couple of hours. No new movies on this filght. Same old ones. To make it worse, Willy Wonka has started talking in some strange language now that sounds like a series of short sighs and sharp shrieks (Chinese, is it?)
1845 hours 30th Oct, 2005: Feeling woozy and light-headed after waking up from a forced slumber. When I look out of the window I see something like a light purplish cotton covering a huge part of the land. It looks like a giant fungus has grown over all over this part of Australia! I stare again and realize I was looking at clouds. (Phew! For a few minutes I thought 'War of the Worlds' had begun in real life!). I also realize why the most UFO sightings have been by pilots flying their planes.
2015 hours 30th Oct, 2005: With a sigh of relief I set foot on terra firma again. For the first time on land that is not Indian. I look around expecting to break into 'One small step for man, a giant leap for Chintan', but nothing that grandiose really occurs to me (until now, when I'm writing). Deja vu! I walk out to the customs and get another of the O-my-God-They-will-put-me-into-jail bouts. But they let me through too... another sigh of relief. Outside it still looks like India... till I see the taxis. And the BMWs, and the Audis, and the BIKES! WOOOOOW! CBRs, Ninjas all let loose on the roads! This must be heaven...
Monday, October 31, 2005
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Kahaani ghar ghar ki: Brahma vs. Savitri
Aaah... I can almost see the duo of Ramanand Sagar and Ekta Kapoor smacking their respective lips in anticipation. For there finally is a story worthy of the undivided attention of not one, but both of them. Ancient mythology meets Modern day kitsch, in this new script being played out in the (already overloaded?) courts of India.
The sequence of events (from reliable sources) -
- Brahma wants to perform a Yagna at some particular 'auspicious hour' [Hey, if the Gods don't decide their own timings then who does?]
- Anyway, he tells Savitri, who starts getting ready, and as Mr. Brahma keeps saying in his defence, never ends getting ready.
- Brahma gets peeved, goes out, gets married (Wow, THAT'S fast! Or THAT'S slow! Who's view-point are you watching from?)
- Now all this has been done in time for the Yagna, and the newly-weds are just settling down, when Savitri descends on the spot (didn't know even the Indian Gods were such melodrama lovers), finds her hubby dear's Yagna in the hands of another woman and breaks into the inevitable curse...
Result is that there is only one Brahma temple anywhere in the world and that is in Pushkar, Rajasthan. Any way, ye to hui baat sadiyon puraani... Cut to the present time. At a time when "all the magic in the world has ended and it is held hostage by men of reason" (Heh, borrowed from Stephen King) - Brahma is an idol at Pushkar (with his "Waah Brahma Saheb, Nayee biwi! Badhiya hai!" wife Gayatri) and Savitri is at peace at her own hilltop close by - Ratnagiri.
Enter the new actors - Pujaris of the temples Mahant Laharpuri (for Brahma) and Benugopal (for Savitri). Mahant Laharpuri files a case in court asking for part of the offerings in the Savitri temple, saying that (here's the laugh!) as the husband of Savitri he has right over his wife's belongings. Not to be outdone, Benugopal delivers an upper cut - since Brahma has abandoned Savitri, HE should be the one paying alimony! The court, playing a Dhritarashtra type role has said that there can be no exchange of alimony between idols... One wonders why the pujari duo were not fined heavily for wasting the Judiciary's time on such bombastic matters.
However, if the two of them do persist, the courts should pay them back with their own pill, and should throw them into the dungeons. Here's how -
- Since all Hindu deities are perpetually minors, they cannot be lawfully wedded. Both the priests should be incarcerated for abetting child marriages.
- Child marriages are one thing, but polygamous child marriages??! Put 'em behind bars!!!!!
- The grapevine has it that Indra played a big role in these crimes.
Name of the soap? How about "GGhar - Ekk Manndir"... Or maybe the next season of "Desperate Housewives"?
The sequence of events (from reliable sources) -
- Brahma wants to perform a Yagna at some particular 'auspicious hour' [Hey, if the Gods don't decide their own timings then who does?]
- Anyway, he tells Savitri, who starts getting ready, and as Mr. Brahma keeps saying in his defence, never ends getting ready.
- Brahma gets peeved, goes out, gets married (Wow, THAT'S fast! Or THAT'S slow! Who's view-point are you watching from?)
- Now all this has been done in time for the Yagna, and the newly-weds are just settling down, when Savitri descends on the spot (didn't know even the Indian Gods were such melodrama lovers), finds her hubby dear's Yagna in the hands of another woman and breaks into the inevitable curse...
Result is that there is only one Brahma temple anywhere in the world and that is in Pushkar, Rajasthan. Any way, ye to hui baat sadiyon puraani... Cut to the present time. At a time when "all the magic in the world has ended and it is held hostage by men of reason" (Heh, borrowed from Stephen King) - Brahma is an idol at Pushkar (with his "Waah Brahma Saheb, Nayee biwi! Badhiya hai!" wife Gayatri) and Savitri is at peace at her own hilltop close by - Ratnagiri.
Enter the new actors - Pujaris of the temples Mahant Laharpuri (for Brahma) and Benugopal (for Savitri). Mahant Laharpuri files a case in court asking for part of the offerings in the Savitri temple, saying that (here's the laugh!) as the husband of Savitri he has right over his wife's belongings. Not to be outdone, Benugopal delivers an upper cut - since Brahma has abandoned Savitri, HE should be the one paying alimony! The court, playing a Dhritarashtra type role has said that there can be no exchange of alimony between idols... One wonders why the pujari duo were not fined heavily for wasting the Judiciary's time on such bombastic matters.
However, if the two of them do persist, the courts should pay them back with their own pill, and should throw them into the dungeons. Here's how -
- Since all Hindu deities are perpetually minors, they cannot be lawfully wedded. Both the priests should be incarcerated for abetting child marriages.
- Child marriages are one thing, but polygamous child marriages??! Put 'em behind bars!!!!!
- The grapevine has it that Indra played a big role in these crimes.
Name of the soap? How about "GGhar - Ekk Manndir"... Or maybe the next season of "Desperate Housewives"?
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Indian Politics: The Boat Conundrum
Recently I got a forward that I had been getting recently quite some time back too (take your time with that line...). Here it is:
=============================================
GUESS THE ANSWER .... LET US SEE HOW SMART ARE YOU?
Soniya, Laaloo , Rabri , Jaya , Maya & Mamta were sailing in the same boat.
If the boat sinks who will survive? Guess?
=============================================
Now that people are so interested in finding out how intelligent I am, and I cant mail each one of them, I'm putting it here for all TD&Hs (and the female versions of the same) to see.
My answers:
#1. Me
#2. All will - none of them have enough gravity :P they'll all float...
#3. Don't think about trivial issues. The main issue is getting them all onto a boat and then sinking it (and them, if you consider the gravity factor).
#4. There is a good chance though, that if we were able to put them all on one boat, they would form a coalition and drown us first, then fight amongst themselves and drown the boat (don't know about them - there still is the unanswered question about the 'gravity factor'.)
#5. Did you notice that 83.34 % of that list are females? (According to today's newspaper, India's parliamentary composition has 8.3% femails, sorry, females. This implies that "%trouble caused = 10 x %females" Then plunge into heated debate... forget about original question... true parliamentary isshtyle...)
#6. The most common answer - OUR INDIA
Not difficult to think of some more... good time pass :D please add yours in the comments!
NOTE: No offence to any of the "TD&Hs (and the female versions of the same)" who have found honourable mention in the madness above.
=============================================
GUESS THE ANSWER .... LET US SEE HOW SMART ARE YOU?
Soniya, Laaloo , Rabri , Jaya , Maya & Mamta were sailing in the same boat.
If the boat sinks who will survive? Guess?
=============================================
Now that people are so interested in finding out how intelligent I am, and I cant mail each one of them, I'm putting it here for all TD&Hs (and the female versions of the same) to see.
My answers:
#1. Me
#2. All will - none of them have enough gravity :P they'll all float...
#3. Don't think about trivial issues. The main issue is getting them all onto a boat and then sinking it (and them, if you consider the gravity factor).
#4. There is a good chance though, that if we were able to put them all on one boat, they would form a coalition and drown us first, then fight amongst themselves and drown the boat (don't know about them - there still is the unanswered question about the 'gravity factor'.)
#5. Did you notice that 83.34 % of that list are females? (According to today's newspaper, India's parliamentary composition has 8.3% femails, sorry, females. This implies that "%trouble caused = 10 x %females" Then plunge into heated debate... forget about original question... true parliamentary isshtyle...)
#6. The most common answer - OUR INDIA
Not difficult to think of some more... good time pass :D please add yours in the comments!
NOTE: No offence to any of the "TD&Hs (and the female versions of the same)" who have found honourable mention in the madness above.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Nahi banna mujhe crorepati!
The world is moving on. Harry has grown from a kid with a lightning-shaped scar to an adolescent with story sounding more and more borrowed from the Bush & Party vs. Osama & Party. Mumbai and Pune are drowning in the rain...
Australia is again thrashing England at the Ashes. Salman has got in and out of yet another of his signature controversies. Mallika Sherawat is again nagging the nation with one of her "I am viagra for India" theories. Aby Baby is AGAIN offering the offer for any 'ordinary Hindustani' to become a crorepati by just answering his few simple questions.
"Lock kar diya jaaye?" says the fabled baritone... But no, right now its not the baritone ringing in my ears, but the mobile vibrating in my pocket.
Airtel seems to have taken upon itself the admittedly altruistic goal of waking every 'ordinary Hindustani' early in the morning, middle of the afternoon and late in the night with a flurry of SMSes announcing the next question to answer to get 5 minutes on Prime Time television at the 'Fastest Fingers First' round [That makes it the FFF round. 'FFF' converted from hex to decimal is '4095', which is exactly (4K - 1)... hmmm, there are better things to write about]. You know, the round where you get to wave at the camera looking like a mannequin of yourself, and then (gee, here comes the exciting part!) sit in the shadows desperately hoping that the person in the 'hot seat' gets an answer wrong.
AB (the one and only, Abhishek doesn't qualify yet; Atal is quite out of the reckoning, methinks) has also taken upon himself the task of inviting people on to the hot seat from well-lighted hoardings placed along major roads in major cities. That works pretty well, you know, his pictures luring people into KBC2 while he is out there endorsing the next unknown brand in town.
Meanwhile I hear my colleague muttering unmentionables at the next round of KBC SMSes on his mobile. Whatever happened to that PIL asking the cellphone operators to stop unsolicitated messaging? It made more noise than a Boeing at take-off, but someone forgot to land it...
Australia is again thrashing England at the Ashes. Salman has got in and out of yet another of his signature controversies. Mallika Sherawat is again nagging the nation with one of her "I am viagra for India" theories. Aby Baby is AGAIN offering the offer for any 'ordinary Hindustani' to become a crorepati by just answering his few simple questions.
"Lock kar diya jaaye?" says the fabled baritone... But no, right now its not the baritone ringing in my ears, but the mobile vibrating in my pocket.
Airtel seems to have taken upon itself the admittedly altruistic goal of waking every 'ordinary Hindustani' early in the morning, middle of the afternoon and late in the night with a flurry of SMSes announcing the next question to answer to get 5 minutes on Prime Time television at the 'Fastest Fingers First' round [That makes it the FFF round. 'FFF' converted from hex to decimal is '4095', which is exactly (4K - 1)... hmmm, there are better things to write about]. You know, the round where you get to wave at the camera looking like a mannequin of yourself, and then (gee, here comes the exciting part!) sit in the shadows desperately hoping that the person in the 'hot seat' gets an answer wrong.
AB (the one and only, Abhishek doesn't qualify yet; Atal is quite out of the reckoning, methinks) has also taken upon himself the task of inviting people on to the hot seat from well-lighted hoardings placed along major roads in major cities. That works pretty well, you know, his pictures luring people into KBC2 while he is out there endorsing the next unknown brand in town.
Meanwhile I hear my colleague muttering unmentionables at the next round of KBC SMSes on his mobile. Whatever happened to that PIL asking the cellphone operators to stop unsolicitated messaging? It made more noise than a Boeing at take-off, but someone forgot to land it...
Sunday, July 17, 2005
The saree conspiracy
The boy thought he would be fine. "What is in it?", he thought. "I can handle these things..." But he wasn't prepared for what lay beyond the door, in the hallway... His pupils dilated, the trusty 'ol feet quaked in their shoes, his muscles stiffened, he could hear his joints creaking as he approached... He prepared for the struggle ahead.
'The boy' is me, and this describes my first attempt at buying a saree... 'The hallway' belongs to 'Nalli silks' and - believe me - it looks like one huge railway station. Racks and racks of sarees, hallways full of fawning females, exasperated kids and frightened husbands.
Not that this is the only shop that is this intimidating. Many other saree shops around. Oh, I'm sorry, you said you are a jewellery freak? Check out VBJ - another HUGE building stocked up with whatever jewellery you can dream of. If looking at the stars on a clear winter night doesn't make you think of your insignificance in the scheme of God's plans, this sure will.
But nothing beats the excitement of having around 5 - 6 tonnes of steel hanging on your head. Yep. This experience can be had for free in one of the steel shops you would find in the market. I couldn't see the ceiling. I was looking at the bottoms of God knows how many buckets, drums, cooking vessels of every shape and size. The inside of the shop was very musical. Gives one a whole new perspective to 'listening to heavy metal'.
Yeah yeah, Chennai has temples. Chennai has beaches. Chennai has museums. Chennai has Pondicherry (close by). But I enjoyed my time in the markets, roaming around in the hustle and bustle of daily life, heckling the rickshaw-wallahs (these guys are my favourites). I discovered a new side to tourism in the dirt of Chennai's concrete jungle (Yeckk... what a cliche).
I did go to Mahabalipuram, but that wasn't half as interesting as this. No apologies for not elaborating on THAT experience, though, to give it its due, it wasn't all that bad.
'The boy' is me, and this describes my first attempt at buying a saree... 'The hallway' belongs to 'Nalli silks' and - believe me - it looks like one huge railway station. Racks and racks of sarees, hallways full of fawning females, exasperated kids and frightened husbands.
Not that this is the only shop that is this intimidating. Many other saree shops around. Oh, I'm sorry, you said you are a jewellery freak? Check out VBJ - another HUGE building stocked up with whatever jewellery you can dream of. If looking at the stars on a clear winter night doesn't make you think of your insignificance in the scheme of God's plans, this sure will.
But nothing beats the excitement of having around 5 - 6 tonnes of steel hanging on your head. Yep. This experience can be had for free in one of the steel shops you would find in the market. I couldn't see the ceiling. I was looking at the bottoms of God knows how many buckets, drums, cooking vessels of every shape and size. The inside of the shop was very musical. Gives one a whole new perspective to 'listening to heavy metal'.
Yeah yeah, Chennai has temples. Chennai has beaches. Chennai has museums. Chennai has Pondicherry (close by). But I enjoyed my time in the markets, roaming around in the hustle and bustle of daily life, heckling the rickshaw-wallahs (these guys are my favourites). I discovered a new side to tourism in the dirt of Chennai's concrete jungle (Yeckk... what a cliche).
I did go to Mahabalipuram, but that wasn't half as interesting as this. No apologies for not elaborating on THAT experience, though, to give it its due, it wasn't all that bad.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
LTTE: Left To Tamil Eelam (All alone!)
Two weeks in Chennai and I still haven't got a word out on this blog of mine. Great. So before I begin, let me advise any of the rare readers that might stumble by this page... "PUT IT ON PAPER AS SOON AS YOU THINK OF IT!!!" Sadly to say, the excitement fizzles out in time. Anyway, here goes...
First thing that struck me on reaching the Chennai station... "Does NO one understand anything other than Tamil here?" Found a rickshaw fellow who was taking a 100 bucks to drop me to my place, thought it was too high. Tried to bargain with him. This is what it went like:
Me: {location}
Rickshaw-waala: 100 {gibberish}
Me: mmm... 100 too high...
Rickshaw-waala: {blah blah}100aaa {something something}
Me: 80
Rickshaw-waala: 80 ille... {something about petrol and stuff}
Me: Naa {start walking}
Rickshaw-waala: Saar... 95 rupiz {still more of the lingo}
Me:Ok... {Too tired to bargain more or even speak in English} Chalo...
This was the first time I had ever bargained in a language I don't understand. This was NOT the first time I got fleeced by a rickshaw waala. Turned out I could have got to the Guesthouse in 50 bucks.
The Guest House caretaker is a Nepali. Thank God for small mercies...
First thing that struck me on reaching the Chennai station... "Does NO one understand anything other than Tamil here?" Found a rickshaw fellow who was taking a 100 bucks to drop me to my place, thought it was too high. Tried to bargain with him. This is what it went like:
Me: {location}
Rickshaw-waala: 100 {gibberish}
Me: mmm... 100 too high...
Rickshaw-waala: {blah blah}
Me: 80
Rickshaw-waala: 80 ille... {something about petrol and stuff}
Me: Naa {start walking}
Rickshaw-waala: Saar... 95 rupiz {still more of the lingo}
Me:
This was the first time I had ever bargained in a language I don't understand. This was NOT the first time I got fleeced by a rickshaw waala. Turned out I could have got to the Guesthouse in 50 bucks.
The Guest House caretaker is a Nepali. Thank God for small mercies...
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