Snorizial Mutterings

Tripping: Chapter 3

2011-12-31T11:49:00.000-08:00

This is part 3 of a series, scroll down for earlier parts

The incident inthe car was a sure sign of things to come. The rest of the trip was to be dominated by the myriad ways of Gopaljee. It was obvious he had been up to muchsince we’d last met him in Kota. At every juncture on that trip, he surprised us with insights into what was, probably, now his life.

Take forinstance the first night, when we went out to dinner at a place near ourresort. Most of us had been introduced to alcohol in the year or so that we’d been incollege but were still in the phase where we were eagerly gathering knowledgeand experience around it. Gopalji however, was already learned in the matter.Or, at least, he seemed more and more so with every proclamation he made thatnight.

“Brandy is theillegitimate, and older, sibling of all whiskeys” he told us while stillrelatively sober.

A few drinkslater, his views on marriage became public.

“Drink now guys,drink now like there’s no tomorrow. Once you get married, your wife will giveaway all your booze to the watchman.”

One of us wasnaïve enough to ask him, “Why the watchman?” I’m convinced it wasn’t me.

In an instant,Gopalji responded with a hiccup, “Who else do you think she’ll be cheating onyou with? The watchman, it’s obvious.”

After yetanother couple of rounds, Gopalji offered us his most precious gem of thenight.

“Dekho yaar,” hesaid with the air of one who knows much more than his audience. “Everyone knowsthat the only, and only, route to good sex passes through the brown glow of aJack Daniel’s before it ever reaches a woman”.

Then, in thestyle of a great Maharaja at the end of a beautiful literary piece, he pulledout his wallet with a flourish and pushed a fifty into the palm of the waiternearest to him.

His gesture mayor may not have explained why every waiter all the way till the exit saluted uson our way out. It may or may not have explained why, in a drunken gamblingsession that night, Gopalji kept borrowing money from Munnu. But it certainlyexplained why, the next morning, Gopalji’s wallet was lighter not by a fifty,but by a thousand and fifty.

I mentionedgambling, which is what we did most of the time owing to the absence of absolutelyanything else to do in Daman. I also mentioned alcohol, which is what Gopaljidid most of the time he gambled. That, and the sudden and untimely loss of a thousandon the first night, ensured that Gopalji fell into the most obvious of gamblingpitfalls - trying to recover one’s losses. The net result, at the end of sixdays, was another thousand sized hole in his wallet and an even larger one inhis ego.

Indeed, Gopaljihad only two real states on that trip. One was drunk, and when he was in thisstate he did much of what forms the meat of this story. The other was the statecommonly known as ‘just sobering up’. In this state he did just one thing, hecomplained. His complaint was such, “Arey fuck yaar,you bastards forced me to drink again! Now I have a splitting headache. Youguys are too much yaar. Ahh, I need a brandy to clear my head”.

Understandably, thisstate quickly gave way to the first one.

I doubt,however, that even Gopalji would try to explain away everything that happenedin Daman that year in the name of alcohol. For instance, the incident outside‘Dara da dhaba’ with the taxi driver.

The taxi driverI speak of is the same guy who had ferried us from the station to the hostel.Yes, the same guy, even after our little ride got him pushed out of a movingcar. So miserable was the state of Daman’s taxi industry that the guy jumped upin joy when we asked him to be our chauffeur for the remainder of the trip.

Anyway, oneevening outside Dara’s Dhaba, Gopalji stumbled out of the car, still reelingfrom his tea time quarter of Signature (the financial losses had caused JackDaniels and Co. to give way to far more mass market brands). He let the restof us enter the Dhaba as he waited by the car. Then stepping up to the driver’swindow, he gave the driver a wry little smile.

The driverresponded with a nervous smile of his own. The look on his face said, quitesimply, “The last timeyou had that look on your face, I remember falling out of a moving car. Whatwill it be this time?”

Gopalji thensnuck out a tiny bottle from his jacket and waved it at the driver. It was thequarter of Signature, with a sip or so still in it, clinging to the bottom.

“Here, this isfor you, take it” he said generously.

“No thank youSahab, I don’t drink, thank you.”

“Arey come onyaar, what are you talking about. Here, don’t be shy now, its all yours.”

“No no sir, Ireally don’t drink, thank you very much,” he said as firmly as a terrified taxidriver in Daman could.

Gopalji wouldhave nothing of it though. He took the bottle and thrust it into the cabbie’sshirt pocket. Gopalji had the same demeanour one has while bribing a governmentofficial, while the official acts as though he’s doing one a favour by acceptingit.

The driver, whofigured that it was just easier to accept the damn bottle, stayed quiet,looking foolish with a tiny bottle sticking out of his shirt.

After a terribly large meal at Dara's, Gopalji cornered the driver again.

“So… now that Ihave made sure you have a good party tonight," he said pointing to the bottle, "why don’t you do me a little favour?”

The driverstared at the two sips in the bottle and wondered what kind of party it wouldhave helped him have, even if he did drink.

Gopalji didn’twait for the driver to respond as he continued, “Nothing much really, I am sureyou get requests like this every day. No big deal at all.”

The driver stayedquiet, presumably out of fear.

“Basically, mysimple request is – Why don’t you arrange a girl for me tonight?” said Gopalji.

A girl, he said.A girl. The rest of us were just a little way down from the cab when one of usoverheard Gopalji asking the cabbie for a girl.

“Gopalji’sasking the cabbie for a girl”, said the eavesdropper.

“A girl? Like agirlfriend?” asked another.

Tch tch, suchlittle kids we were.

“No, you moron!A girl, like a girl for the night.”

Aghast, some ofus ran back to Gopalji.

The driver washolding the quarter out to Gopalji, obviously quite distraught, “No please sir,I don’t know any girls, please, just take your quarter back and let me drivehome to my wife and kids. Please.” Looking back, I remember the driver’s helpless expression as he said this and it’s safe to say that he sorely regretted having ever met us at all.

“No no, let itbe. It’s okay, you take the bottle. It’s fine if you can’t get me any girls”,said Gopalji, very obviously hurt by the driver’s thankless behaviour.

Having heardthis conversation on getting there, for a few moments our shock momentarilytransformed itself into nearly parental anger. We weren’t sure, however, whatwe should be more pissed off about, Gopalji seeking out hookers or himtrying to get our driver drunk while he was at it.

A girl, Gopaljihad said, likely just for the night too. Gopalji’s new life or whatever thatwas, obviously had more to it than we thought.

Also asinexplicable, was Gopalji’s little cameo at the Ghazal (plus dinner) function wecrashed the next night. Only kind of drunk, Gopalji walked up to the organiserof the Ghazal event and mumbled something in his ear. The organiser nodded andsmiled the false smile of an organiser, while pointing towards a table withboth arms. I’m not sure what Gopalji told the guy and am even hazier on whatthe guy’s response was. Next thing we knew, however, was that Gopala had jumpedup on stage and grabbed the mike. For the next five minutes, Gopalji treatedthat sombre gathering of drunk Ghazal lovers to ‘Jaana O Jaana’. Sure, the mindlessautomatons at Indian Idol may not have been able to appreciate the delectablerhythm of Gopalji’s first song, but the fat ghazal singer, put on hold thanksto Gopalji, clapped along till every lard of fat on him could feel Gopalji’spleasant vibrations. As for us, we initially froze in horror seeing Gopalji onstage. Soon, however, we realized the audience was high enough to have hummedalong to anything from Michael Jackson to a cat wailing. And Gopalji was a lotbetter than either, who cared what Indian Idol said.

After thesuccess of his performance, Gopalji drank with animated abandon that night. Atsome point, he came up to me and started to whisper, in a voice suddenly sober.

“Arey Sushant, youknow why I do all this? Do you?”

I didn’t, and heproceeded to tell me.

“Sushant, soonafter I’m out of college, pitaji willhave me married and I’ll have to take care of the gaddi as well. These are the only years I have to have a good time.U.P. is not Mumbai you know, it's not even Delhi. Life will be very different postmarriage.”

He slunk away before I could answer, and proceeded to be drunk again.

There are manyother little stories I could tell you from that trip, but the gist of each isin the same general direction. We were stumbling into adulthood, in a way progressivelymore cockeyed with every step. On this trip, one of us went looking for agirl, on sale. On subsequent trips, only more could happen. Little did we know then that these could be, in fact, the bestyears of our lives.

Many more trips happened after this one, and they continueto this day. Those are of course, different stories.

Tripping: Chapter 2

2011-09-24T05:41:00.000-07:00

This is part 2 of a series, scroll down to the next post for part 1

In the cab, I sat near the windowat the back, diagonally across from the driver. Three others got in the backseat with me - Satpal, Sarthak and Anvesh on top of both of them. Munnu andGopalji sat in the front with the driver. Gopalji hasn’t had an introductionyet. Well, Gopalji was Munnu’s cousin who we all knew from Kota. He’d shown upfor the trip at a virtually no notice and with the whisper of an invite, instark contrast to the minefield of difficulties that we had to skip around forall the others to be there. More importantly, he was a top notch entertainer,intentionally or otherwise. Bespectacled, sickly thin and with a hairstyle thathe fondly referred to as, “Arey, Salman Khan in Tere Naam yaar”, hehad us constantly worried. Worried that all that hair would cause his slenderframe to topple over from being too top heavy. His habit of breaking into afrivolous swaying routine as he sang Jaana O Jaana, a song he hadcomposed for Indian Idol 2, didn't do much to allay our fears either.Interestingly enough, the 'ji' in his name is not a suffix I’m attaching forrespect, it’s just part of his name. Yes, back home in Farrukhabad, people ofall ages called him Gopalji, including his parents.

Anyway, thecab being older than the invention of the gearbox, had one of those sticks inthe side of the steering wheel for changing speeds. Gopalji sat snuggled inbetween Munnu and the driver, in the place where a regular car would have had agear. With Munnu still weighing in the triple digits at the time and the driverbeing a regular roly – poly Patel, Gopalji’s svelte figure was a huge plus.

As the cabrattled along the highway, we began to see Daman for what it really was.Industrial sheds littered the landscape. The kind that looked like they wereunprofitable despite being illegal. All around the factories was a grassy swampinterspersed by industrial wasteland. The water body in the distance was theArabian Sea, if the driver was to be believed. It’s resemblance to a dumpingcreek was uncanny, however. At the edge of the water was a frothy, mud colouredstrip of land. The driver told us that the locals called it ‘the beach’.

For my part, Itried my best to act like Daman was, in fact, the paradise that I had expectedit to be.

“Guys look, apuddle with grass”, I pointed out excitedly at some point.

“Woah! Did yousee that palm tree?” at another.

From thefront, Gopalji asked the question I knew he’d been itching to ask since we’dleft Mumbai.

“YaarSushant, how come there are no girls on your trip?” he said.

“Girls?Seriously Gopalji, girls? Why would there be girls? This is an annual guys onlytrip, hasn’t anyone told you?” was my response.

He wasn’tsatisfied, “Par yaar Sushant, what kind of trip happens without somenice girls?”

SuddenlySarthak cut in with, “Gopalaa, it’s becoming quite clear to me why youshowed up all the way from Kanpur at half a day’s notice. Girls eh? Who do youthink we are, pimps of some sort?”

For some reason, that got everyone howlingwith laughter for the next couple of minutes.

While Gopaljimay not have known it, my argument around this being a guys only trip wasn’t asobvious as I made it out to be. Before our first trip, we had contemplatedhaving a trip which also had girls on it. Having spent some critical formativeyears in Kota, however, between us we knew a grand total of three women and oneother by association. Moreover, our confidence in them accompanying us on atrip, just like with almost anything else to do women, was unmentionably low.So in a moment of manly pride stemming from not wanting to face certainrejection, we decided to not invite any of the girls we knew. I remember how ithad happened.

“So are wecalling any girls?” Anvesh had asked cautiously.

“Girls….hmmm..”,was Satpal’s only reaction.

There was along pause before Munnu spoke up.

“Abeygirls will spoil the fun, it won’t be the same with them around,” he said,rescuing us all.

I blurted outmy relief, knowing fully well that if we did call them, it would havebeen Satpal and I who would have actually done the asking, and by that wouldalso have been the ones who would have faced the rejection personally.

“Yeah yeah,good point. Very true, very true, male bonding and all.” I had said.

“Exactly, I’vebeen wanting for this to be a guys – only thing all along”, was Satpal’s excusefor a cover – up.

And that was that.

Getting back to where we were in the cab, conversation washappening all around. Gopalji andSarthak were talking about all that had transpired with him since we’d lastmet. If I remember correctly, it was some very interesting stuff too, but moreon that later. Satpal and Anvesh were chatting up the driver and trying tofigure what we could see and do over the next few days. I oscillated betweenthe two conversations while holding on to the door, just in case it burst openfrom all the pressure against it. Munnu, however, was uncharacteristicallyquiet. His only contribution to the banter was a mild grunt every few minutes.Also, I think things on the front seat had gotten rather cramped because everynow and then Gopalji would pause in the middle of his story, look at Munnu andcomplain, “Munnu yaar, give me some space, I’m practically in thedriver’s lap.” But Munnu would do no such thing. Instead, he would nodlethargically and let out yet another low grunt.

With time, it became impossible to ignore that Munnu’s shareof the front seat was beginning to get disproportionately large. Based on whatGopalji reported from the front seat, Munnu was apparently gradually spreadinghis legs wider and wider apart. This was causing the feather-weight Gopalji tobe pushed up against the driver. All the while, Munnu’s grunts continued,slowly but surely getting louder and each lasting longer than the one beforeit.

“Munnu, what’s going on?” asked Satpal from the back seatwhen his grunts became loud enough to disrupt conversation.

Munnu didn’t reply, but grunted some more.

“Err... Munnu?” continued Satpal.

Seemingly oblivious to the question, Munnu spread his legs abit wider, pushing Gopalji virtually onto the driver.

“Munnu, what the.....what’s going on? Seriously...” I yelledout from the back.

Munnu finally decided to speak up, “Uhh, nothing nothing, hotahai sometimes..ughhh....when I go out of town …...ughhh....”

“Huh? But what exactly is happening?” we quizzed him.

“Nothing nothing...open the windows...” he mumbled.

By this time, Munnu had spread out some more and now Gopaljiwas very much where the driver should have been. The driver, of course, wasvirtually flattened against the door. He looked something like a wind sock, theedges of his limbs hooked onto the steering wheel and the pedals, but the restof him stretched out in the direction of the door.

Munnu arbitrarily started speaking again, “It’snothing.....just …..a ...uggghhh.... a physiological reaction …..nothing...justopen the windows yaar”

That cracked us up properly. For the next couple of minutes,the four of us in the backseat couldn’t stop laughing. I held on tightly to thedoor near me to stop myself from falling out from all that laughing. That’s howfunny it was.

“Munnu...”, said Sarthak, between chuckles, “Munnu!Hahahaha, ‘a physiological reaction’, hahaha”. He pausedto laugh some more, then continued, “man.....I never ever thought I would hearyou say big words like that man. This is hilarious, where’d you pick that up?”

I knew of course, and answered, also between laughs, “Thebastard’s been studying for the GRE, that’s where he’s picking up all thisfancy talk. Man, I miss the old doodhwala Kanpur fellow we used to hangwith earlier.”

Of course, Gopalji, who was facing the full force of Munnu’s physiogicalreaction, wasn’t the least bit amused. Now that Munnu had spread out evenfurther, Gopalji faced the very real danger of having his rib cage cave in. Hemoved the only part of his body that he still could, his neck, twisting itbackwards and nearly spitting in rage yelled out at us, “You fuckers..... youthink this is funny?”

Our chuckles only enraged him further. Munnu continued togrunt.

Later that day, we got to know more about Munnu’s issueand on all subsequent trips we made every attempt to account for it. Munnu’sproblem, which was yet to receive a name, was quite peculiar and more than just just a little embarrassing. To put it in as delicate a way as possible, one would say that a change in the weathercaused a disproportionate change in Munnu’s temperature profile. To put itperhaps a tad less gently, one would say that that a change of scene made Munnusomewhat testy. Abandoning any attempt at subtlety, one would simply saythat venturing out of town hit Munnu below the belt, hard. But if you stillhaven’t got it, then for your benefit - Munnu’s problem was that his ballsheated up dangerously every time he left the city.

Like I said, we only got to know this later that day. In thecab, we hadn’t realised that the reason Munnu was spreading his legs outwardswas to allow the heat from between his legs to dissipate somewhat. It alsohadn’t struck us till that point why Munnu insisted on keeping the windows opendespite the rain. The only thing we did notice was Munnu needing progressivelylarger amounts of space on the front seat. Poor Munnu, he was just trying tosave the lives of all the little kids who he someday intended to create.

Sitting in the back of the cab, I knew that with so muchpressure building up in the front seat, something had to give. I rememberthinking that perhaps the door would burst open, the car was arelic. If not, then Gopalji’s rib cage was likely to break. But instead, whatreally happened was once again the doing of Munnu. Having wrestled with theheat for all this while, Munnu had reached tipping point. While earlier it hadbeen a matter of safeguarding his future children, it was now a matter ofsaving his pants from catching fire. The concern now being far more immediate,drastic action was warranted. At least Munnu thought so. So, in a moment we allremember with the vividness of a Van Gogh, Munnu let loose. With a loud gruntand a powerful snap, he spread out his legs to their fullest extent. Thesituation in the front seat had been volatile even before, and the snap wasall that was needed to set it off like a firecracker.

Directly in the line of impact was Gopalji. When Munnu’s leghit Gopalji with that incredible power, the laws of Physics demanded thatGopalji accelerate in the direction of travel of the leg. However, that directionwas blockaded by the roly poly driver. Hence there was only so far Gopalji couldtravel in that direction. When he collided with the driver but still hadplenty momentum left in him, the laws of Physics had no choice but to instructhim to travel upwards, instead of outwards. So to summarise, Gopalji flew outwards in a blur, then hit the driverand bounced gently upwards. The driver, meanwhile, had been hit by the highspeed flying object that was Gopalji. He flew outwards towards the door.

Then the driver slammed against the door and was stopped deadby it . The car lost control for a bit before the driver found his bearing againand took a hold of it, bringing it back on track. He then yelled at Munnu in Gujaratiand asked him to behave himself. Yeah, that's what happened.

Actually, that's not what happened. That's what I wish hadhappened. But it didn't.

In reality, the driver did slam against the door. Unfortuantely, the door did not stop him dead in his tracks. The door, aftercenturies of good service to the car and it’s occupants, burst at the hingesand fell away onto the road. The driver, who was still in motion, had no choicebut to follow. Gopalji, who had been lifted upwards briefly, chose this exactmoment to fall back down and land in the spot where the driver had been amoment earlier, at the wheel. He grabbed the wheel with both hands and lookedback at us. His trademark ‘punchline expression’ was pasted on his face. Eyeswide, mouth visibly holding back laughter, as he got ready to deliver the gemthat he was sure would get everyone rolling on the floor, at which point hewould have to hold back no more and could join the others in the hilarity.

“Arre yaar,” he said, pausing for effect, “I havea driving license, but can’t drive for nuts.”

Then he continued, “Yaar Munnu, can you touch mychest and check please, I think I may have cracked a rib or something.”

With that, Gopalji burst out laughing and began, much to our horror, driving.

While I’ve described the events after Munnu’s snap indetail, it’s important to note that they happened in little more than a flash.In so short a time, in fact, that the four of us on the back seat could justabout gape in amazement at what was happening up ahead. We stared, with our jaws hanging out, speechless, as Gopalji cackled away at the wheel of the car.

As the car rattled alongand Gopalji’s laughter subsided, there was no sound in the car except the onecoming from Munnu. Having spread his legs out, he now sounded like a pressurecooker gently blowing off some steam. With his head turned up high and with asatisfied expression on his face, he was busy letting out an unending:

“Aaahhhhhhhh....”

To be continued.....

Tripping: Chapter 1

2011-09-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

This is Chapter 1 of a series, subsequent chapters will be published here soon.

The plan was simple, and cliched. The gang would meet every year and head for a trip. The gang, of course, was the bunch of stunted personalities who feature in most of my stories. I would have referred to us by our collective name except we had none. And it’s not as though we hadn’t tried either, we had. It’s just that even we had to admit that something like “The Musketeers” or “The Marauaders” would be pushing it, since there was so little we did in the way of musketeering and even lesser in the way of marauding. Having said that, our self respect would still not allow us to be called the “The Kota Hang - Outers Group 2004-2006”. So we remained nameless, torn forever between pride and practicality. But yes, that was the plan in a nutshell, that despite us having been strewn into different engineering colleges across the country, we would congregate at the end of every academic year and head for a trip together to any of India’s numerous worthy holiday destinations.

The plan had its roots in the success of our first escapade. Right after the end of our engineering entrance exams, Munnu, Satpal, Anvesh and I landed ourselves in Goa. It was our first trip together to Goa, actually our first together to anywhere but Kota. Over the next seven days, in that quintessential boys to men trip, we got introduced to most of what would be the fundamental focus of our lives over the next few years. Booze, gambling, women (or the desire for women, if you want to be excruciatingly accurate), we saw it all. But most importantly, for the awkward nineteen year olds that we were, we got our first taste of real freedom. That legendary trip ensured that we would to try to replicate it over the next many years, and so the plan took birth.

By the second year, however, I as the de - facto planner for these trips began to realise how painful it could be to get a few jobless sophomores in one place at the same time. The obstacles were endless and the variables infinite. Satpal, for instance, had a curious kind of problem. No matter what time of the year we planned out the trip, he always claimed it was very likely that his sister would be in Kanpur just then, and hence there was no way he could commit to a trip earlier than a couple of days before it actually happened. This may even have been fine, if it wasn’t for the fact his stinginess was the stuff of legend. (I’m not exaggerating, for instance, we all know that on all 'boys to men' trips, everyone hires bikes, or at least cars. We on the other hand, thanks to Satpal’s perpetual cost cutting, had to go everywhere in Goa State Transport buses. As you can imagine, our pissoff was unimaginable.) So whenever it was just a couple of days to the proposed trip and we hadn’t made any bookings thanks to Satpal’s sister issues, he would realise that the ticket and hotel prices had gotten ‘way too high’ and we wouldn't end up going at all.

Sarthak had other issues. While he was fundamentally eager to go on the trip, he was forever dragged down by his tendencies. His tendency to say 'no' was prime among these. Yes, Sarthak had a problem uncommon to most men, which was that his default response to virtually everything was ‘no’. Once he’d said 'no', of course, it would take forever to convince him that he wanted to do exactly what he was so profusely arguing against.

Munnu’s situation was graver. Somehow his university had decided to schedule its semesters and examinations entirely at odds with all other university calendars in the country, making it difficult to schedule anything at a convenient time for him. In fact, in the third version of the trip, Munnu actually came along with us in the few days of study leave between two exams.

Finally, Anvesh also tended to provide some resistance. Being a hardcore Gujju, he’d seen practically the whole world as part of large Patel Travels group tours and his perpetual complaint was that he’d already been to whatever place we were considering.

In short, everyone seemed to have some ridiculous problem with either time or place. Now I’m not telling you all this to justify why I chose Daman as the location for our second trip. I’m not, seriously, you have to believe me. I’m not even denying that I may have briefly thought that Daman was a virgin beach paradise, superior to Goa in natural beauty and inferior to it in night life, but only just. I’m not denying that I thought that. Come on, haven’t I admitted that a dozen times already? I may also have had no clue that Daman was just a haven for poor souls from Gujarat, who couldn’t drink publicly in their own state, to get sloshed. I may have not known that. Yes, despite all my detailed online research, I may still not have known that Daman was just an overly large and incredibly cheap bar. It is possible that I didn't know that. Although it’s been so long now that I barely remember. Look look, I’m just saying that when you’ve had so much trouble finding the right place and time, and an opportunity opens up which could work for everyone, you’ve got to grab it straight up. That’s all I’m saying, you’re with me on this one right?

So, we decided to go to Daman. For six days. The first group of people in all history to spend six entire days in Daman. But we didn’t know that.

We reached Vapi station early in the morning. The train ride was a long discourse about how Indian Railways had done great work in the Mumbai - Ahmedabad belt and how our journey would have taken so much longer just a few years earlier. All this courtesy Sarthak, who was a certified member of the little known and easily forgotten Indian Railways Fan Club. Satpal was the only one really enthused by any of this, and he cut in every now and then with a “Haan yaar, the tickets were also damn cheap”.

Outside the railway station, Munnu and Satpal took charge of how we would get to the hotel. Yes, Munnu, who made it a point to bargain everywhere, but especially at places with fixed prices, like prepaid taxi counters. And yes, Satpal who, as I mentioned earlier, let slip no opportunity to protect his family's vast, almost royal wealth. With the two of them leading the effort to achieve transportation, we should have expected what happened next.

Thirty minutes later, a dilapidated white ambassador appeared from somewhere. The kind of model that you'd only have seen in 40's movies. If it wasn't covered in mud and if it hadn't been falling apart at the ends, I'm sure some poor fool would have called it 'vintage'. With a total capacity of five, Satpal and Munnu had estimated that it would suffice for the six of us, plus the driver of course. Despite all this, I was relieved to see the cab. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was definitely going to be cramped. There was also a good chance we’d end up dead in one of those ‘Overloaded car loses control on NH - 7. Five dead, one critical, one missing’ type of stories. But all in all it beat the hell out of having to travel in a state transport bus. For one, it didn’t involve having to avoid pan spittle from the conductor’s mouth. It didn't involve having to listen to loud, live folk music that you would be compelled to pay for later. It didn't even involve having to push back the gag reflex aroused by a distinct scent of urine from somewhere under your seat. But most importantly, it sure as hell didn’t involve trying to keep enthusiastic eunuchs on the next seat from grabbing your privates.

And so we set off ..

To be continued...

Placement Saga

2010-12-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

The broadband connection in the house was screwed, as usual. Like most things from Reliance, it was available at a ridiculously low fixed rate per month. Also like most things from Reliance, it probably cost you more in blood pressure, hypertension and heart disease treatment in the medium to long term.

Anyway, after yelling out the usual few rounds of "Fuck Reliance! Fuck all your mass market products! Fuck!...", to no one in particular, I picked up the router and threw it around in disgust. Then, also as usual, I spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure out if the connection was cold because the Ambanis were swindling me or because I'd wrecked the router. Soon though, I realised that this time around I actually needed the internet for more than just checking my Facebook account. I needed it to apply to jobs as and when they opened up on the IIT Bombay placement website. To make matters worse, the placement cell had some sort of strange blitzkrieg policy going where they would open up an application for maybe five, six hours and then close it again. Nuts, if you ask me, but that's how it was. To put it simply, if you didn't, by some chance, log on to the placement website within that five six hour window, then your chances with a particular company could be lost completely. Once again, nuts right?

So I had to make sure I was updated at least every couple of hours. I couldn't count on friends either, no one could count on friends during placements. The competition was intense, cut throat and dirty (ok maybe that's completely untrue, but then most of friends already had jobs by this time and were so busy getting sloshed that they genuinely couldn't be counted on). Instead I decided I'd give my password to my Dad and he could check it regularly from the office or on his phone or through his secretary. Needless to say, my Dad (along with all of family, right up to my cousins thrice removed) was incredibly anxious that their boy (me), who'd been valiantly interviewing for jobs since day one of the placement season, get one at the earliest. My grandparents couldn't sleep, my Mom walked around the house looking visibly worried and my Dad kept saying "Arey theek hai yaar (Chill, it's no biggie)", for no apparent reason. As you can imagine, all this put great pressure on me to feel worried or at the very least, to act worried. So I tried my best to seem like part of the mourning. I relegated myself to the confines of my room where I was supposedly scouring the internet for opportunities and networking with contacts. Truth is, I did send out a few (unanswered) emails here and there, but for the most part I respectfully closed Facebook whenever my Mom popped in to make sure I was well fed and cheerful. In the evenings, I would step out to "discuss strategies with Sud". Somehow most of these discussions tended to meander from the course we had charted out in our parents' minds. In addition to (or instead of) talking 'strategy', we may have spent entire evenings laughing about how Sud had blown his chances even with Esha. This may even have happened with Sud getting progressively drunker and drunker till the point where even he thought this was hilarious and started pulling jokes on himself. But nothing was better than the fact that Esha would usually be around laughing along with everyone about how he blew it even with her.

Alright, getting back to that password I gave my Dad. I was asleep when he called me. Yes, asleep in the middle of the day – a privilege of the unemployed. I picked up the call in something of a daze.

"A new offer has opened up, BPCL", he said.

"BPCL? Isn't that a PSU?"

"Arey what's wrong with the public sector. Besides it's not the average sarkaari place, I know some guys there. You remember Hemant Sahi, your friend from Noida? His Dad worked there for many years before Reliance, remember? It's a great position too, management trainee, then regional manager in a couple of years..."

(Gentle snoring)

"Hello? Hello, are you there?"

"Yeah.....yeah yeah I'm awake, I'm completely awake, I was just thinking about what you said... yeah...."

"Ok, I was saying it's a great position, you'll be have six hundred guys working under you in a year's time. They're even paying 8.5"

(Gentle snoring)

"Hello? Hello?"

"......Yeah yeah, just thinking, just doing some thinking....."

"Yeah they're paying 8.5, I'll sign you up then..."

(More gentle snoring)

"Ok cool I'm signing you up"

.....

I forgot all about this conversation till a few days later when someone called me saying I'd been shortlisted for BPCL.

BPCL?

What?

No there must be some mistake, I never applied, never signed. I didn’t even see the…….Oh….

NO! No no, no no, there’s no way I could work there, no way. I’ll become a Babu if I work there, nope no chance. I can’t, just can’t. My career will be ruined, I have big plans, what the…!

One might ask how it really mattered if I was shortlisted. I could always choose not to show up for the interviews, right? Or I could show up and make a complete ass of myself and get rejected, right? Or even if I did land a job I could still apply elsewhere right?

Not really, no. The institute had all kinds of rules against that kind of thing, all of which were premised on two somewhat fair ideas. Firstly, ‘if you didn’t want to join then you shouldn’t have applied’ and secondly, ‘once you have a job, you can no longer apply for more jobs’.

So if I didn’t show up after being shortlisted, there was a chance I would get reported to the placement cell. If I turned up and made an obvious ass of myself, I could get reported to the placement cell. If I showed up and told them that there was no way I would join them, I could still get reported. So what if I got reported? Well, being IIT Bombay, they had some devised some particularly harsh penalties for the reported and I was sure they would take great pride in executing them too. Things like not being allowed for the next few companies in line, or being thrown out of the placement system for a month, or you know, something of the sort.

Yeah, I didn’t want to get reported.

So I had to do what anyone in my position would have had to: convince the company that they didn’t want me. Given the significantly large number of companies that had already rejected me, I figured this would be a fairly simple task, certainly a lot simpler than getting them to accept me.

And so I went to the interview only slightly worried, thinking I had my bases covered and that within a small period of time, I would return successful with a simple “We’ll keep your resume on record if we’re hiring again in the future”. I had prepared well to not get this job. I’d made sure I didn’t put on a suit, not even a tie. Presentability was usually a plus, we couldn’t have that. I made sure my black leather shoes weren’t really black, but a dusty shade of grey. My trousers a little ill-fitting, my shirt not very new and to add that final touch, I carried my resume in a sickly little file, as opposed to a nice folder.

Like I said before, subtlety was everything. It was prudent to come off as a doof, but dangerous to seem like a prick. The trouble with pricks is, they piss people off enough for those people to look deeper. And when they look deeper, of course, there’s always the risk that they’ll discover that the prickiness was just an act. Doofs on the other hand, have that remarkable property of boring the hell out of everyone. There comes a time in any interview with a doof when the interviewer does some serious thinking about what in the world he’s doing there. At this point, nine times out of ten, the interviewer will end the interview and his own suffering quickly and the doof will be out of contention. One the rare occasion, one time out of ten, the interviewer will end the suffering and just give the doof the job. I was playing on that, on the higher odds – nine times out of ten. Which is why no suit was good but no clothes was risky. Dusty grey shoes was a good idea but bright green slippers wasn’t.

Or so I thought.

Things changed quickly when I reached the venue. I looked around me when I got there, curious to see who the aspirants were and if there were any others who were faced with the same strange situation that I was. At first, it was difficult finding anyone I knew. I mean I recognized the faces around me, but couldn’t put names on too many of them. Faces I’d noticed in the peripheries of classrooms and the shadowy corners of laboratories in the previous four years. People who despite being in the same batch, same courses, same hostel even, were completely unknown to me. People who, in short, I’d never bothered to mingle with.

Anyway, after a little while I began to notice the same vein in many of the conversations around me and it began to give me my first shivers. All the guys there, or at least all those I could hear, didn’t want this job! They were all people who had applied blindly to whatever applications were opening up and by the time they realized what they’d gotten into, it was too late to back out (Once that five, six hour window was past, one couldn’t withdraw one’s application to a company either. For the third time, nuts right?).

Like I said, things changed quickly when I got there. I entered thinking I simply had to let any of the far more worthy candidates waltz through and take the job. Within ten minutes, however, I realized I was trying to lose to people who I had a definite edge over for a job that even they didn’t want. The tables had turned quite completely. In the dark corridors of the metallurgy department, I suddenly seemed like the most able, most qualified, most presentable candidate. For all my subtlety, I realized no one was wearing a suit or a tie. Most shirts too, looked older and dirtier than mine. Compared to the others’, even my shoes were examples of diligent polishing. I actually even spotted a couple of guys in green slippers. Hell, even my tardy CPI of 7.2 was among the highest of the lot.

I was doomed.

I knew right then that it would take something spectacular to get out of this one. It was one thing to fudge the group discussion or the interview but when most of the competition also intended to be mute, my guess was the resumes would become a strong deciding factor.

Hence I was doomed.

Drenched in cold sweat, heart pounding, I was a wreck. In the middle of all this, I wish I hadn’t heard this conversation happening a few feet away:

“You know what happened with Lovely Professional University last time right?”

“What?”

“They screwed my wing senior pretty bad.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Well he didn’t really want to join them, so when the Lovely Professional guys asked him at the end of his interview if he’d actually join…..”

“What’d he say?”

“Well he said “no”, of course, quite honestly.”

“Ok, and then…”

“Well they selected him anyway. Just to fuck with him, the spiteful bastards…he wouldn’t join them, so they killed his chances elsewhere as well….”

“Holy….”

“Yeah, screwed him over properly, they did. He lives in Bhatinda now, teaching numbskulls like us, only younger”

“Shit….Bhatinda….”

After hearing this “lovely” story, I quite gave up and resigned myself to the future. Visions of fat, bald, paunchy men who commanded six hundred others like themselves swam through my mind as I waited for the process to begin. Soon we all started moving towards a room where the BPCL people apparently were, about thirty of us in all. Without meaning to be, I was at the head of this group. We got there to find someone, a lady, standing with her back towards us. She was dressed differently from what I would have imagined. Open short grey hair, denim jeans, shorn at the ankles, a sweatshirt and waist pouch, the behind of which was visible; she looked nothing like an interviewer. She turned around when she sensed there were people behind her. She had big glass rimmed spectacles and through the lenses one could see that her eyes were completely out of focus. She stared around for a bit, seemingly unable to fix her eyes on anything. Then with one sweep, she yanked her head into a position pointing straight at me. Her eyes too, suddenly found focus and were now fixated directly at my forehead. She looked distinctly deranged, and dangerous in a way that only a deranged person can be.

Before we could react, she shrieked out in a high pitched yell, “You can’t come here like this, you can’t come here. You can’t come here……..if you come here, then you can’t go.”

Already on edge with the prospect of working for BPCL, her words rang out in that dark corridor like a deep evil portent. It was just that tiny catalyst that was needed to push all of us over the edge.

I’ve seen many scrambles and scuffles in my time but none like this one. Not a moment had passed since she’d uttered her ominous words than we were all already running. Running as fast as we could in that mass of thirty. One on top of the other, scrambling to get away, scuffling to get ahead, pushing, shoving but all the while moving away from her.

We ran for a long while, till we realized we’d probably been spooked by some crazy old lady who’d wandered into the metallurgy department. Or at least that’s what the others felt. To me, the appearance of a crazy old witchlike lady was a sign, a clear sign of the calamity to follow. Not just a sign, an omen. I walked back stoically to the metallurgy building, knowing fully what awaited me and that I could do nothing about it.

Soon the actual BPCL people showed up. They were only about three hours late, which was quite early by PSU standards, I’m sure. The lady who was giving the briefing droned on for almost an hour. I saw the stack of resumes she was carrying, and noticed mine right on top. Of course, sorted according to who they wanted most. But never mind, I’d already come to terms with. It probably made sense just to bow down gracefully.

After telling us about the five hundred different allowances that made up our Rs. 8.5 lakh annual compensation, she started talking about the various safety norms in the oil industry. At some point she told us about a guy who’d met his end at an oil field near Mumbai. Apparently, a great deal of oil managed to spill itself on top of this fellow and then caught fire. In his panic he jumped off the rig and into the water, hoping the water would douse the flames. But of course the oil continued to burn irrespective. Later the coroner reported that the cause of death was drowning and not burning.

For some reason the other candidates in the room thought this was hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing. The BPCL lady looked around a little stunned but continued as best she could. She went on to tell us about how all candidates should meet various fitness criteria etc etc.

“We only hire people above 5’5”, with no history of chronic ailments and if you wear glasses then your power should be 3 at max”

Hold on a second, what was that? Glasses with a power of no more than 3?

I paused for a bit, allowing her to move on to other mundane safety issues. Then I paused some more and wept a little. Then I remembered that this was a moment of glory and that it was my duty to make such moments momentous. I got up, gathered my things, and walked to the front of the room. I interrupted her between sentences and began to make it momentous.

“Err…excuse me…,” I cut in.

“Yes?”

“What did you say about the glasses again?”

“Umm, you shouldn’t be using anything higher than power 3 lenses”

“But I use a 3.25 ….and your form said nothing of the sort and..,” I protested.

“Yeah I know, we’re sorry. Actually the guy who…”

“No but you guys should have mentioned this earlier, I got my hopes up unnecessarily”, I said.

“I’m sorry, the oil industry’s safety norms are something we’re helpless against.”

“So there’s no chance then?” I asked with a completely straight face.

“Afraid not”, she said. She seemed genuinely sorry.

I considered rubbing it in a little further with a “Not even a desk job somewhere, something that doesn’t involve oil safety?” but then decided against it. Asking her that would mean being a prick. And like I said before, being a prick was dangerous, because then she may go to her superiors and ask them if I could, in fact, apply to a desk job somewhere. So I let it pass and walked out a man again.

At some point later, Sud called me to ask what had happened.

“You got out of that BPCL thing right?”

“Yeah man, no biggie.”

“Cool, how’d you land into that kind of trouble in the first place?”

“How else dude, fuckin Reliance…….just fuckin Reliance…”

Looking back, what’s funniest is that for a guy who had no job (and didn’t get one for another sixty days of placements), I was pretty desperate to not get this one. That winter I often imagined coming back to as a recruiter some day. Last Sunday I got that opportunity, just a year after my own placement season. I even interviewed some of the applicants and saw them go through the same trauma that I and so many others have been subject to over the years. Apply today, interview tomorrow. If you make it – drink like a fish, if not – apply again.

Sons of the Soil

2010-05-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

If you've read any of my earlier posts, you'll know that I debate often. Having said that, I can safely say that from a logical, legal, constitutional or even moral standpoint, the "Sons of the Soil" debate as it exists in Maharashtra is pretty one-sided, at best. But I also know that for the people involved on either side of such movements, the matter is not one that lies in the rationality of the mind, but in the passion of the heart.

Not really being affected by the movement myself, my views on it were rather academic for a long time. One late Friday evening however, I got a closer look at one of those more directly affected by it.

"Your meter's not working." I told him soon after we'd left. Gauging by his reaction, this wasn't the first time this had happened.

"Oh it's gone off again, tch tch. Never mind, I'll restart it, that should set it straight."

"No thanks, I'd rather not travel in a rick with a faulty meter. Drop me at the gate, I'll pay you minimum till there" was my response.

"Arey nahin nahin. I'll take you sir, I will, just pay me whatever you see fit. Whatever your marzi is" he replied, reluctant to let go of a long distance customer.

"No, you'll create a fuss about it when we get there, I'd much rather avoid that, just drop me at the gate please."

"Theek hai sahib, but you can pay me whatever you want, seriously. The thing is I'm going that way myself, so if you don't come with me, there'll be an empty rickshaw travelling that way sir, where's the sense in that" he said, hardselling his ride. His eagerness was understandable. Since his meter was off key, he was unlikely to find anyone to ride in his rickshaw . He didn't want to let go of the one possible customer.

"Ok, I'll pay you a hundred and ten" I told him, rationalising that it was difficult enough to find autos headed that far and that it was silly to let go of this one.

"Sir, bas ek sau das? (Just a hundred and ten?) It's really far sir, hundred and ten won't even make my fuel cost." he argued.

"What? I travel this route everyday and it rarely goes over hundred-hundred and five. I'm paying you on the higher side. Besides, didn't you just say any rate would be good with you? Screw it, this is exactly the kind of fuss I didn't want to get into, drop me at the gate."

"No no sir, no, I'll take you, don't worry about it. Whatever rate you say is fine."

There was a moment's silence before he started again.

"But don't you think hundred and ten is a bit low sir?"

"Drop me at the gate!" I replied, determined to end this.

"No no sir, it's ok, relax. Aap toh naraaz ho gaye (You're getting angry unnecessarily)" he said with a twinkle.

The ride was long and potentially boring. Thankfully, he started to make conversation. He was chatty too, as you might have gauged by now. He told me plenty about himself soon enough.

His name was Shiva. Not his real name, his real name was longer and much more tedious. He was called Shiva by his friends because of his devotion to Lord Shiva. Hailing from U.P., he was a proper bhaiyya and made no attempt to hide it. Said he couldn't even if he wanted to.

To quote him verbatim, "Bhaiyyon ko toh koi bhi pehchan sakta hai sir, ismein kya chhupaein (Anyone can recognise a bhaiyya sir, now what is the point in trying to hide it)"

Like so many other Bhaiyyas, he lived here without his family. His wife and younger brother were back in a village near Aligarh while he lived and earned for them here. Soon, however, I found out something I hadn't expected.

"Sir I want my brother and my wife to be educated. Which is why I'm here, so that they have enough money for their fees and sustenance. If my brother becomes padha likha, then he won't have to become a rickshaw-wala like me sir, and my wife can be a teacher......and then I can go back to farming in my village." That was his plan in a nutshell.

"Waise toh I'm also twelfth pass, but a twelfth pass in U.P. can't make enough money to educate his family sahib, you know that" he added as he deftly cut ahead of an SUV.

There was a little silence before he spoke again. "Saab, you're from itna badaa college, people who graduate from your college must be getting twenty thousand a month aaram sey right?"

I looked at the guy as he said this. I'd spoken to auto drivers before and I knew that those who owned their own rickshaws (the ones in white) made no more than Rs. 400 a day. Those who didn't (the ones wearing the brown uniforms, like Shiva) earned about half of that. And now this man who toiled about twelve hours a day for that kind of money was asking me a question. An uncomfortable question. He was asking me if people from my college started off by earning about twenty thousand a month for sitting in an air-conditioned office and crunching numbers. What could I say? I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. I couldn't. I couldn't tell him that virtually everyone earned a lot more. No one, in fact settled for that less. What could I say? The unfairness of life was staring at me through the rear-view mirror of that rickshaw, with a questioning smile upon its face, waiting for my answer.

So I lied. "Yes," I told him, "they get twenty thousand."

He seemed satisfied. "When my brother makes it here, he'll also be just like you sahib. They'll pay him twenty thousand sahib, twenty thousand!"

He fell silent again, lost in thought it seemed. Then he pulled out his cellphone and looked at me, "Sir, can you speak to my brother for a minute. It will be really nice if someone who has been to college can give him some advice. If you don't mind sir, he will really like it."

Rather awkward about speaking to his brother so arbitrarily, yet recognising that he really wanted me to, I had a two minute conversation with Shiva's younger brother. Somewhat relieved when it was over, I handed the phone back to him and assured him that his kid brother would do well.

The ride was over soon after and he did ultimately convince me to pay him a little more than a hundred and ten. Thinking about it all later that night, I couldn't help but think there was something remarkably noble about what the man was doing. Living so far away from home and family, saving up every penny so he could educate them and give them a better future. A less than educated man who knew the value of education, even for women. Working day and night in the heat, dust and smoke to support his people.

In a city that becomes more and more about oneself and the selfish quest for personal luxuries, Shiva is different and his goals more noble. This gentle bear of a man, with his pants falling a little short of his heels and his brown shirt a little tight across the tummy, he goes about his business like a silent old-fashioned hero, stoic and determined. He works hard, puts his family before himself and prays for a better tomorrow. Is there more that constitutes a real man?

Sadly, it is people like Shiva who are being beaten up on the streets everyday and threatened with worse if they don't leave the city. I don't know if Shiva is crowding the city or if he's stealing jobs, or even if he should be allowed to. I do know, however, that his presence bathes the city in a gentle, more benevolent light. And for the life of me, I can't think of a single soil that would not be proud to have him as her son.

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 4, The End Of The Beginning

2010-04-14T15:00:00.001-07:00

This is the final chapter in the series, scroll down to find earlier chapters

The morning crept up on us. Momentous mornings always seem to arrive before you expect them to.

Quarters.

Butterflies.

Adrenaline with a crazy gung-ho high.

Anticipation.

Nerves.

Three guys cheering for us, two of us in the team.

The next few hours went by in such a flurry that it in hindsight it seems unreasonable to think that so much happened in that span of time. The morning began when we all woke up to find Suddu completely dressed and ready to leave. When we told him that he was up and ready way too early for the debate, he informed us that he was going elsewhere.

Else where? This was the first time we’d broken, where the hell was he going? He wasn’t going to watch the debate? He wasn’t going to be there to cheer us on? Bastard! Too sleepy to say much, we bid him goodbye. While leaving he mumbled something to the effect of, “Oh comeon guys, I’m assuming you’ll win the quarters and I should be back in time for the semis comfortably, alright bye, see you at the semis.” Sure, he was assuming we would win the quarters. Like we won quarters everyday, like it was no big deal.

Later we got to know what prompted Sud to cook up such nonsense. He was going to meet a girl. Some girl he knew from his stint at LSE. Like I said earlier Sud’s experiences with the ladies have been terribly disappointing, to say the least. Which is why that morning when he realized that this girl wanted to meet him, he found himself in a deep moral dilemma. On the one hand he wanted to hang in there for his team, on the other hand was a woman. A woman. Suddu had been looking for a woman for many years now. So drastic had his desperation become that he saw a prospective partner in every female now, with little regard for quality, compatibility, age, anything at all. Suddu often exclaimed, with much self pity, “I’ve never even held a girl’s hand and I’m nearly twenty two!” Sud reflected on all this early that morning and it came rushing back to him in frightening detail. The choice was suddenly a simple one. He was going to meet the girl. Of course, he had to justify missing the debate, more to himself than anyone else. Suddu likes to do that, justify things to himself. So in his mind he envisioned Shobhit and me as Denny Krane and Alan Shore. The opposing team (ranked 1^st thus far), in his mind, became a couple of school kids who would be flattened easily by us and he would be back in time for the semi-final. All was good, life made sense and Sud skipped away happily.

A couple of hours later, the rest of us were at the debate as the motions were released. We met our opponents and after the mutual cancellations, we arrived at “Pornography is good for women on the whole” as our motion. Ironically we, the so-called desperate engineering guys, were opposition. Anyway, before you knew it, the twenty minutes of prep-time were over and we entered the tiny classroom.

They made their first speech and it was nothing like we expected it to be. Their case seemed to be modeled on the notion that pornography was protest against patriarchy and this protest made it a symbol of the liberation of women. The problem was, however, that they didn’t say so in so many words. They kept trying to sell the idea that porn was choice, porn was freedom, porn was occupation, porn meant equality. A little confused, I got up to make my speech. Controlled aggression, I told myself, controlled aggression.

I went sequentially, trying to take down every point made by them thus far. The response from the adjudicators seemed to be good. They were nodding at just the right times, noting down stuff at what I believed to be our stronger points, laughing along when I made a joke. Seven and a half minutes later, things seemed to be going well and I sat down again. The government responded next in their deputy’s speech. His seven minutes added, in my opinion, nothing to the debate at all. No new lines of attack, no new arguments, not even rebuttals of any value. With respect, it was a redundant speech. Smelling blood, Shobhit rose to give his speech. They were on the defensive. In most debates, this is the turning point, when one team has the distinct advantage and can go all out on the offensive. In the three member team format, I often give the whip’s speech and know exactly what it’s like to be in this position. Shobhit did exactly what he had to, he nailed in our points, cementing our edge. He had all the time in the world too, since there was nothing new from their end. The adjudicators were clearly on our side by the end of his speech. We were making the other team bleed now, dragging them by the neck. Cross questioning, which was our forte, hadn’t even begun and we were already in the driver’s seat. We could see them giving up too, their shoulders were sagging and their smiles had disappeared. Cross questioning went well too, we answered well and they were defensive all along. As far as I was concerned, their game was up. Anything they said in the closing could only be a perspective on what they had said during the debate, and we were confident all that was well covered.

There was a slight glitch just before our closing. Neither of us was prepared for it, each had assumed the other would be handling it. In truth we weren't used to delivering the closing so shortly after cross questioning since we had been government for most of the tournament, giving the second closing. Here we were opposition and the closing had just sort of crept up on us. Anyway, I made the closing and it went as well as it could have given the circumstances.

Then came the next glitch. The guy in the other team came up and delivered a fantastic closing. He introduced new matter disguising it subtly in the form of perspective and shifted focus from the meat of what the clash in the debate had been to certain seemingly irrelevant constructives mentioned in passing in their first speech. Most of all, he harped on how we hadn’t tackled the symbolism attached with pornography that they had spoken of. After his closing, I experienced my first chill. But we were still more than confident of victory and left the room to the adjudicators.

Outside, everyone who had witnessed the debate seemed to regard us clear winners. Pranay also expressed his confidence freely. We expected it be a quick and easy decision for the judges. Fifteen minutes later, none of the judges had left the room and we began to get just a little bit worried. Pranay’s views were now, “If they give it to the other team, it can only be because of that closing.” Thirty minutes in, things got pretty tense and we were all going through every bit of the debate in our heads to see where the difficulty in deciding who could have won may be arising. Finally after forty minutes, the judges were ready. As I walked into the room Pranay yelled out from behind us, “They can’t give it to you, the government made just the symbolism constructive and you didn’t answer it.” With that ominous message still in ringing in my ears, I entered the room behind Shobhit.

Suddenly the room was full of all kinds of weird things. Dogs, airline seats, headlights, brawling drunkards. Then just as soon, they disappeared and were replaced by five very quiet panelists. The head panelist, or chair, stood up and everyone went very quiet. He asked us to take our seats and we did. Not a sound was made as he cleared his throat.

“The decision is a 3-2 split” he said, and paused for effect. A long “ohhh” went around the room. Then he spoke again, slowly and deliberately, “The side receiving three votes is…..the government” That was that, we lost our first ever quarterfinal on a 3-2 split. One more vote and we would have made it, just one, but we didn't.

A section of the crowd broke out into cheer. Our opponents came over and shook hands, and our tournament ended there.

Meanwhile, in another part of town a young man was just about to meet a pretty brown eyed girl. She came from around the corner and walked towards the café where they were supposed to meet. He took one look at her and was floored. She was even more beautiful than when he had last seen her at LSE. As she walked towards him, he felt the same stirring that every young man has felt at least once. Oh the twinkle in her eye, the curls of her hair, oh the gentle delicacy of her gait. Heart pounding, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, he knew it was love. When she reached him, he blurted out, “You look….you look really great….”

“Really?” she replied with a smile that only worsened the fellow’s condition, “I do hope my boyfriend agrees with you, he’ll be joining us here soon….you don’t mind, do you?”

Flummoxed, he began to mumble incomprehensibly. “Boyfriend!...Boyfriend?....but I skipped my friends’ debate for this….I missed the debate!”

“Sorry?”

Suddenly he delved into his pocket and fished out his phone. He fumbled with it on the for a few seconds then put it to his ear, all the while mumbling under his breath. When someone picked up at the other end, he started off, “I’m coming for the semifinal, I’m just leaving guys….I’ll be there soon enough, don’t worry I’m rooting for you fellas….I’m coming. ” When he finally stopped talking, the person at the other end told him that we hadn’t made it past it the quarters. On hearing this he sat down slowly and held his head between his hands. For the next few minutes, he just kept shaking his head from side to side, completely ignoring the girl's concerned banter. After a while, he resigned himself to spending the afternoon with the girl of his dreams, and her boyfriend.

Ahh, poor Suddu, how could he have known. She had looked single enough on Facebook and we had seemed like such a strong team.

Teams from our college consecutively made it to the quarters of two more tournaments right after this one, losing each time on a 3-2 split. The jinx was finally broken at IIT Delhi when our team (Shobhit, Pranay and myself) went all the way to the finals and finished second. The team then went international to the Malaysia Debate Open and reached the semis, losing, once again, on a 3-2 split. The same team will compete at the Asians Debate this May. This will very likely be this team’s last tournament as Shobhit and I are set to graduate soon.

Suddu, meanwhile, has established himself as an adjudicator of repute, ranking very high at the Malaysia Debate Open and being chosen to judge debates up till the semi final. He is also adjudicating at the Asians in May. He still hasn’t held a girl’s hand.

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 3

2010-04-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

This is chapter 3 of a series, scroll down if you're looking for the earlier chapters.

Some of us, of course, take this freedom a little too seriously, as the story will show.

Back to the where we were. The six of us were walking along Rajpath after Shobhit and I made the break. Suddu was sulking. Suddenly we noticed a group of well dressed people, perhaps just out of a club, looking at us. Not looking, staring at us. In the way that one might stare at a dirty dog that’d sneaked into a presidential party. Quite obviously, we were a little taken aback by their unfriendly demeanor and more than just a little confused too. We looked at each other, befuddled. That’s when we realized that we were only five, not six. Pranay was missing. It didn’t take long to find him, however. The strangers’ stares alternated between us and a point behind their fancy car. We followed their stares and there he was, standing just behind the car with his back towards us. Legs spread out wide, hands disappearing to the front of his body, somewhere near the abdomen, a sound similar to a small mountain stream pervading the otherwise silent night.

For those who don’t know, Rajpath has lush lawns on either side separated from the road by foot high milky white pillars connected to one another by chain link. After Pranay’s little misadventure, one of those pillars is now a sickly brownish yellow instead.

Extremely embarrassed, we put on our best “Oh we didn’t know him, Oh we just happen to be wearing similar sweatshirts with the same college name on them, we’re just the five of us, we don’t believe in urinating on Rajpath” smiles and walked away quickly. Pranay meanwhile whistled the sweet whistle of relief and walked past the strangers nonchalantly smiling at them. When he caught up with us, we expressed our extreme disgust at his distasteful behavior. Shobhit told him off for his peeing in public and for the desecration of our sacred Rajpath. Suddu repeatedly said, “Yuck dude, yuck”. Salhotra shook his head in disappointment. Pranay, of course, couldn’t understand this at all and defended himself with arguments that are unwelcome even in a debate.

“Isn’t this a democracy? Don’t we have real freedom? We should be free to do what we want, it’s Rajpath! I say we should all pee on Rajpath to send a message to those trying to destroy our freedom. I’m going to call it ‘squirting against terror’ or…’piddling for protection’ …or….” he let out in a tirade against all those who thought public excretion was incorrect. I’m not sure what part of this was Pranay and how much the liquids in him were talking but in any case I felt the need to step in at this point. To try and convince him in a gentle, patient, logical and completely non judgmental manner about what he was doing. So I went up to him and said, “Pranay if you ever bring that thing out in public again, I’ll break it. Not kidding. No seriously, I’ll personally rip it off.” Ever logical, Pranay couldn’t deny the weight of my sound argument and looked convinced that peeing in public was not a good idea.

After spending the next couple of hours in the lawns outside the Rashtrapati Bhawan, it was time to head back. Thanks to his Facebook addiction, Shobhit was wont to click pictures all over the place in what he believed were realistic poses. As expected, on the way back, he kept instructing us to “stand here, look that way, put your arm around this one” etc for the benefit of his camera. In his attempt to recreate the evening in its entirety, at some point he asked Pranay to pose as though he were relieving himself.

Pranay had other ideas.

“It looks quite obviously fake unless I unzip.”

“So unzip then”

“Only if Suzie is willing to make an exception”, he said looking at me with a wicked smile.

“Yeah ok, but just for the camera”, was my reluctant answer.

At this point, Pranay turned his back towards us, blatantly unzipped and before anyone had the slightest idea what was going on, created a huge puddle right in the middle of the road. Then he turned his head behind, looked at us smiling and with a hint of madness writ on his face intoned, “Freedom”.

Life is funny. Sometimes what you think is a rabbit is actually a snake in disguise. Other times, who you thought was a civilized Khar boy turns out to be a public urinator. But life plays its finest card when the Khar boy thought you were clicking a picture but you were actually shooting a video. That’s right, we have a video of Pranay piddling on Rajpath. As you can imagine, this puts an enormous amount of power in our hands. So great is this power, in fact, that I have no idea what to do with it.

This perverse turn of events had a profound impact on Suddu. While he’d been sulking all evening, now he just couldn’t stop. He was literally bouncing up and down, yelling all the while. Imagine a chubby, ninety-something-kg, near bald guy rising and falling while intermittently screeching out, “Dude he peed on Rajpath, he peed on Rajpath. Dude dude dude, he peed on Rajpath…..he peed on Rajpath hahaha, he peed on Rajpath…….duuuude.”

Most folks would agree we’d already had a pretty crazy time that night but like other things on that trip, it wasn’t over just yet.

Tired, we decided to head back and get to sleep. Which is when we discovered that Delhi isn’t quite Mumbai when it comes to getting a ride back home at two in the morning. For the next forty minutes we tried stopping every rickshaw or cab that passed us by. Some of them didn’t want to go where we wanted them to. Others just wanted to go home. With time, our frustration grew and so did our madness. Beyond a point we start hollering out to virtually any vehicle in sight. We must have seemed pretty nuts, six guys yelling out to everything on the road. Some drivers even acknowledged our requests with a polite display of their middle finger. Still, intoxicated by our recent adventures and compelled by lack of another option, we kept calling out.

At some point a bulldozer appeared. The kind they use in construction, mechanized arms at both ends and a small glass cabin in between where the driver sat and controlled the whole thing. We thought it was funny to call out to it for a ride. You can understand our surprise, however, when the huge machine paused suddenly, took a U-Turn, then headed in our direction.

The driver couldn’t have been more than 25 years of age. He leaned out of his window and asked with a smile so fresh it seemed out of place with the 2 am setting, “Kahan jaogey bauji? (Where to sir?).”

“Kahin ley chalo yaar (Wherever you might want to take us)”

“Chalo aa jao (Hop on then)”

And that was that, we were riding on a bulldozer in the middle of the night on the streets of Delhi. Some of us sat on the huge wheel covers, others crowed in the cabin with the driver. It was interesting enough that this bulldozer was moving on a 5 lane high speed expressway but what made the experience particularly special was that we were driving in the direction opposite the traffic. Oh yes, we also had no idea where we were going. Ever so often, a car would come speeding from the opposite direction and honk loudly. The driver, unfazed, would then scare him off by raising the mechanized arm in front of the vehicle threateningly.

The driver, Aazam Khan, was as talkative as a schoolgirl. In the short while we were with him, we got to know he was from Gorakhpur and that he had a brother and an uncle in Mumbai, not far from where we lived. He was ambitious too, and would be off to the gulf soon, to pursue greener pastures. His one complaint with his current life, though, was the loneliness that came with driving a bulldozer around the city at night. That explained why he seemed so thrilled to be doing us a favour. Awesome fellow, Aazam Khan.

At some point we crossed India gate, where armed guards stood around with rifles pointed at anyone who happened to cross in front of them. Spotting this speeding bulldozer with six ruffians hanging at the sides, they raised their guns and took aim. For a moment everything froze. Even Aazam Khan’s ever-present smile seemed to fade. Then as we came closer they realized we could hardly be a terrorist threat and broke off into the raucous, uninhibited laughter that only law enforcers are allowed to have.

Anyway, we got back to the hostel after a ride that beat anything else I’d ever been on. It was quite a night but something else lay ahead of us. A quarterfinal was scheduled for the morning and for once we were in it. We went to sleep hopeful and elated but with little idea that an entirely new chapter in life was about to begin for all of us.

The Delhi story wasn't over just yet, not by far.

To be continued...

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 2

2010-04-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

This is Chapter 2 of the series, scroll down to the next post if you're looking for Chapter 1...

continued....

[The cab that took us to our accommodation had a weird set of headlights. More accurately, there were flashlights attached to the front where the headlights should have been, three on one side and two on the other]

The next two days saw us competing fiercely for the elusive break. We made constructives, refuted arguments, cross questioned aggressively, made closings, did everything in our power to win each of our debates. Each team had five debates before the break, one on one with another team. The top eight teams went through. If one achieved a score of four wins versus one loss (4-1) it was mathematically impossible to not qualify and we were targeting that at least. At a score of 3-2 however, qualifying would be difficult since a large number of teams typically tie at that score and then the ones with the highest speaking scores go through. Not more than one or two 3-2 teams can make it, mathematically.

The first day ended in mishap after we lost our second debate. That left us at 1-1, meaning we would have to win all three debates the next day to qualify. Towards evening, I began to notice a peculiar something about my teammate Shobhit. He seemed to be hanging around one particular adjudicator quite a lot. She adjudicated our first debate and I thought she was reasonably good. However, when she was reassigned to us for the second debate, I wanted to call in an objection because I thought we could do better. Shobhit however was vehemently in favour of having her judge us. I tried convincing him that in a close match she may not be the most rational adjudicator around and that she seemed to construe arguments to her own liking. He would hear nothing of it though and kept insisting that she was the “right person for us”. I dropped it then because clearly, his belief in her far overshadowed my skepticism of her talents.

[We witnessed a bar-fight that night, three guys teamed up and beat two others. It wasn’t fair, it was three on two]

All through the next day, Shobhit seemed to be spending an extraordinary amount of time with the adjudicator girl. I would sneak close by in the hope of catching juicy bits of what I was certain was a debate fling. However, each time I would hear nothing but detailed discussions of arguments, their rebuttals, case statements etc. To say that the rest of us were completely puzzled would be an understatement. I mean, this was Shobhit, and the last thing he spoke to random women about was debating. Sure, he hit on them regularly, flirted incessantly and tried to “pick them up”. I’m also sure he regarded doing well at debates as a way to further his cause with the ladies. But discuss cases with them? Not in living memory. This was a first, by far.

We won debate number three next morning but tragedy struck in the fourth round. A head-adjudicator took forty five minutes to come to the most abhorably abysmal decision in debating history. He ruled against us citing numerous points, all of which had never been mentioned in the debate. Badly stung, we complained about him later, only to find out that he had been admitted to the hospital almost immediately after speaking to us. At any rate, that left us at a pathetic 2-2 with little or no hope of qualifying. Beaten and demoralized, we entered our fifth debate to find Shobhit’s adjudicator woman waiting for us.

The next hour we spent angrily contesting the idea that pre-marital sex was bad for Indian women. In debating, as in any sport, the result of the previous round often influences one's performance in the next. Thanks to the fiasco in round four, we were inclined to be just a little vindictive in the fifth. Through the course of the debate, we did a lot more than present arguments. We mocked the opposition's claims, we ridiculed their points, we ridiculed them, we made a mockery of anything and everything they'd said. Shobhit spent some four minutes out of his seven joking about how foolish it was to claim that contraception may not work. I dedicated my entire closing to how the opposition's style of debating represented a crafty expertise in the art of digging one's own grave. To summarize, we managed to ruin their evening quite completely. Towards the end of the round, we knew we’d won, but we also knew that we were out of the competition. 3-2 wasn’t going to cut it, especially since one of our victories had been a split decision. So we accepted defeat, Shobhit took refuge in his cigarettes, Suddu began to sulk (his team was also at 3-2) and I began planning to lift the team’s spirits with a little spirit.

After a somewhat morose dinner, the breaking teams were announced. We couldn't get ourselves to seem very interested and clapped along politely as every team was announced from the first position downwards. Little did we know that as we looked on uninterestedly and waited for the formalities to end so we could get out of there, our lives were about to change forever.

At eighth position, the last of the breaking teams, the only team to get through with 3-2, all the way from Mumbai, was us. We broke, for the first time ever. We broke. To everyone else it was nothing, to us it was a historic moment. We broke. More than a year after the formation of our debating society, we broke. All the effort, the travelling, the night-long practice sessions, the unending research, the case making workshops, the daydreaming, it all suddenly seemed worth it. We broke!! We stood around in a stunned kind of silence, disbelieving. Shobhit said later that night, “It’s a funny feeling, getting what you’ve wanted for so long, it’s a funny feeling.” For my part, for once I was at a loss for words.

But we broke.

Of course, we still had no idea how it had happened. There was no way our speaker scores could have been high enough, and numerous teams must have tied at 3-2 for sure. We took a look at the tabs to see what had really happened.

Turned out our speaker scores were high, very high. So high that though we’d qualified at eighth position, our speaker scores were at position four. This was largely due to three of our debates. The simple minded may conclude that these were debates where we did well, and scored well. To the even slightly more conspiratorial mind, however, the presence of “Shobhit’s adjudicator girl” at each of these debates would seem like more than just a mere coincidence. At any rate, we were through!

[We had a hard time leaving the dinner venue because there were five dogs blocking the entrance, three black and two white. This was the signoff in the 3-2 messages, I assumed.]

After the initial jubilation, we headed out for what would soon be a memorable night on the streets of Delhi. After the guys had had enough to drink at some place called “Blues” in Connaught Place and were significantly loosened up (except Suddu who was only sulkier after the drinks, if anything. His team hadn’t gone through), we headed out to cover the trademark Delhi-trip-sites. Just like no trip to Germany is complete without a Münchener beer-garden, no debating trip to Delhi is complete without a celebratory walk amidst the high houses of Indian democracy at Rajpath. We do this every time, to breathe in the freedom that comes with being an Indian and to experience firsthand most of what we debate about. We go from the Rashtrapati Bhawan at one end to the India Gate at the other. It’s something else, walking in the shadow of the parliament, intoxicated by liberty and inebriated by alcohol.

Some of us, of course, take this freedom a little too seriously, as the story will show.

To be continued...

3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 1

2010-04-07T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is part 1 in a series of 4 parts. Scroll up for later parts....

In the north of our country, storytelling is not just a way of life but also one of its basic necessities. A man may have no qualification, no job, no woman, he may be penniless but he’s never really poor unless he’s out of stories, at least not up north. Anyone who’s been there will know what I’m talking about. Come sundown, the towns and cities retire from their bustle and scatter into little groups. In these groups they narrate tale after yarn after anecdote, the stories being rooted equally in fact, fable and hearsay. Around their fireplaces they gather, and listen wide-eyed. The lady of the house serves an unending stream of tikkas, kebabs and pakoras. The grandfathers tell tales from the partition, the grannies stories from the Mahabharata and the dads recount old Tendulkar lore from the nineties. The mommies do their bit with the story of how Mrs. Sharma next door hasn’t fed her family anything but khichdi ever since she had her second child.

One might wonder what business these people had doing any of this when they could be watching Ekta Kapoor’s gems on TV or surfing the internet mindlessly, just like the rest of the country did. One might ask what sense it made to spend every evening doing something so utterly unproductive and useless, especially in the midst of a recession.

Without offence to anyone, the questions are laughable at best. As anyone with even a slightest sense of the Indian north will tell you, this ritual is not optional and storytelling is not a choice for the people to make. Such a way of life is pre-ordained by the land and its rich history. The more logical will tell you that this is how things inevitably are when a region is so gloriously encumbered by hundreds of intermingling cultures sprouted from all parts of the last 5000 years. They will tell you that when there is a tale around every nukkad and a legend surrounding every mohalla, then no other way of life is preferred. Nay, not preferred, possible. No other way of life is even possible.

Many of you disbelieve me I’m sure. You think I exaggerate. So did many of my friends in college, especially the debating ones who thought they could argue against this evidence. Then the epic Delhi trip happened and they never doubted me again. This is a story from that land of stories.

3:2

We were a motley group of six, travelling to Delhi for the same reason we always did, to debate. Turns out most of the good parliamentary debates in the country happen in Delhi. Ever so often you would find us aboard a low cost airline or a train headed to Delhi to try our skills at some national debate. To be honest, we were minnows at these competitions, historically disadvantaged (no seniors had ever been good at this and therefore we had no-one to coach us) and educationally challenged (engineering doesn’t help much with debating, and we were often up against law schools). Yet we participated often, and practiced eagerly, in the hope that we would, one day, some day, far in the future, perhaps, maybe, hopefully, God willing, amount to something at a national debate. To complicate matters, the institute didn’t pay a penny for all this travelling, in fact they didn’t even approve of us skipping lectures and labs to attend these debates. If that wasn’t enough, our debating society wasn’t granted official recognition by the cultural council either. Damn, they didn’t even let me mention it on my resume.

But we still debated, risking attendance, cajoling professors into letting us miss that one lab, adjusting marks for that one quiz, passing us this one time. We still debated despite getting severely clubbed by the competition on each occasion. There was something noble about it, not giving up at something you really wanted to be good at, despite biting the dust so many times. And there was something innocent in the way Suddu, at the beginning of every trip, still believed that this would be the one where he would finally “get it with a girl”.

Anyway, this time around we were there for the Premchand Debate, Hindu College’s national debate. As always, we dreamt of breaking. For the uninitiated, “breaking” in debating terms refers to making it past the league stage of a tournament, into the quarterfinals. Few teams from our college had ever broken at any debate, and none at Premchand.

[The airplane taking us there was oddly asymmetrical. It had three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other.]

As soon as we landed in Delhi, we began to see representatives of the storytelling culture. These people are everywhere. They seem to be ordinary citizens performing ordinary tasks but in truth they are the appointed upholders of the tradition of storytelling. The ones dressed as taxi drivers tell unending tales of “fuel price hike” and “having to come back empty” and “how the poor man suffers”. The ones pretending to be bathroom attendants sing ballads of how the government forgot to pay them and how tips from good Samaritans were keeping them alive. Then there is always the one who is dressed as a software engineer fallen on hard times. He tells a good tale and is the chief of the storytellers. To listen to his story you have to pay with your baggage, though you’re usually unaware of this little detail till the narration is over and you look behind you where your bags used to be.

In Delhi, storytelling isn’t a mere pastime, it’s an industry.

To be continued....

Of Menstruating Men and Peeved Women

2010-04-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently landed himself into a remarkable and unexpected kind of soup. The results of this incident were so shocking, at least to my friend and I, that days 1 through 5 of the female cycle will never be the same to us again. Without any delay, here’s what happened:

It was about a quarter to seven in the morning. No, no one was fresh and bouncy, everyone had been up all night preparing for PAF (Performing Arts Festival), which is quite a major event around here and taken rather seriously too. Anyway, my friend, always cheerful, was doing his best to keep the spirits of the team high. His attempts were directed in the only direction he knew anything about, that of one-liners and situational guffaws. As is always the case, the opportunity to yank out a laugh presented itself soon enough.

A freshie (first year) had decided to become the centre of all attention. Not for very fun reasons either. This kid had a presentation at 12.30 the same afternoon. You know, the kind of presentation that you uninterestedly make in class to elucidate some irrelevant point to a bunch of other uninterested no-good freshmen. He was cribbing that he needed to go, that this presentation meant the world to him, that they couldn’t keep him here like this, that this whole PAF thing was a sham etc etc. Funny story, no one was asking him to stay either. To quote the director verbatim, he said, “Arey jaa na yaar, kaunsa bahut badaa role kar rahaa hai tu (Whatever, leave if you will, its not as though you’re playing any major character anyway).”

Of course, this only sparked the freshie’s anger even more and he began to make faces that can only be analogized with the mating behavior of a baboon. He danced around yelling his dissent. He called out names that in another institute would call for some serious ragging or at least a thorough washing of his mouth with soap. He threw his hands around in a funny little tantrum, much to everyone’s amusement. In short, he was behaving erratic. Perhaps even hormonal. In fact, if you thought about it in a funny way, you might even say that he was PMSing. Yes you might say that, but would you get away with it?

Back to my friend, who was noticing all this and waiting for the right moment to quip in. As this kid jumped off the stairs in the Open Air Theatre and was just about to leave, my friend found his chance. He called out, “Toto,” this was the silly name his character had in the play, “Tera period chal raha hai kya? (Toto, is it that time of the month?)” Just as expected, the crowd couldn’t stop laughing for the next minute or so. The solitary girl who was still around at this hour was having difficulty standing because of how much she was laughing. Toto, of course, walked off in a huff.

Anyway, when practice was supposed to resume again that evening, there was a very noticeable dearth of ladies. A grand total of zero had shown up. Somewhat irate, the director called up the ladies. The response at the other end was startling, to say the least.

Director: Hi, how come you guys aren’t at the practice yet?

Ladies: We’re not coming.

Director: Not coming, what? Why not?

Ladies: Why should we come, if you guys talk like this…

Director: Like what?

Ladies: Hrmph…you know what I’m talking about, we’re not coming.

As one can imagine, the director, with only a day left for the PAF, had little choice but to beg and plead with the ladies. The team spent another hour or so cajoling the ladies into showing up and assuring them that nothing of the sort would happen again, even though none of them had any idea what had happened. They came ultimately, they were always going to, I mean a lot was at stake for their hostel as well.

When they did ultimately decide to turn up, word trickled out slowly that their reluctance to practice may have had something to do with someone having said something disrespectful about women and their periods. A little shell-shocked, my friend began to investigate. He knew one of the ladies better than the others and asked her what had happened.

“Some bastard thought he could get away with being a Male Chauvinist Pig”, she said to him. When my friend gently indicated that he may have been the aforementioned pig and tried to explain himself, he was greeted with a tirade of the sort that one expects only from parents, teachers or bosses.

He tried telling her that the kid was behaving erratic, that the joke was directed at the kid and not the lady. That it is common to ascribe hormonal behavior as menstruating, that the joke was a joke because it was directed at a guy, that he meant no ill, that he had picked up that kind of joke from certain women itself, but all in vain. The lady was convinced he was sexist. She talked down to him and told him, “I can’t believe it’s you who I’ve been abusing all day, I had a higher opinion of you.” After some more chiding, she left him with the classic, “Periods hona koi gaali hai kya? (Is it a bad word (sin) to menstruate?) ” and walked away.

By this time, even my friend was quite convinced that he was, in fact, a sexist bastard. The discovery that the girl he had seen laughing so hard that morning had gone back to her hostel and spent the larger part of the day crying didn’t help his happiness levels much either. Confused and seeking redemption elsewhere, he narrated his tale another one of the ladies. She summarily dismissed his explanation with, “Don’t lie, you made the period joke because he wasn’t dancing with the others, didn’t you?”

Finally, one of the ladies told him the only thing that made sense to him that day, “Just don’t say anything about this periods-weriods at all yaar”. Exhausted and convinced of the force of that argument, he gave up and resumed practice.

I’m not sure what really happened to spark off such a reaction that day, but one thing’s for sure, my friend has deleted PMS/Period jokes from his repertoire for good. Quite a pity too, I rather enjoyed them while they lasted.

The Things I'll Do For A JoB

2009-05-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

It's summer. Not summer like the way it is in Mumbai, where its fashionable to bitch about how hot it is. No. I'm talking about a real summer here.

Summer like 45 degrees C and 4% humidity.

Summer in the way that water supply is limited to once in two days.

Summer in the way that people pray for the safe return of those who venture out during the day.

Summer in the way that you wish that God would throw a planet sized bucket of water on the Sun and douse its anger even if just for an instant.

This is Bhopal, and when most of Bhopal's population is vacationing somewhere saner, I've decided to head here. However, my trip here is not some miscalculated holiday. I'm here because, as a wise man once said, I need a job.

[
Why in Bhopal?

Here's why:

I often mock people who stay stuck in Mumbai all their lives. I laugh at them for being closed to the experiences that other places offer. I rubbish their claim that Mumbai is the best place in the country because most of them have never lived outside it (I have, btw). I breezily dismiss their contention that they manage to get a feel of other places simply by visiting them. I often preach to these folks that they need to stay in a place at least for a few months to really experience it.

So when I got a chance to practice what I so vehemently preach, I jumped at it. That's how I find myself in Bhopal. That's also how I realise that in 5 days outside it, I miss Mumbai just as much as any of these people .In fact, I can't wait to get back there.

]

My welcome to Bhopal was eventful. The pick up car developed a flat a few seconds after take off. The driver treated this like your average everyday event and went about fixing it on his own. It took half an hour to get started again. That's when the air conditioning hit the wall and I was treated to 17 kms of dust storms early in the morning.

The following day I went to work, which is about 30kms in the direction of even hotter. Our transport was, of course, not air conditioned. I got through the day with the usual first day ritual. You know, medical tests, laptop allocation, email setup etc etc.

On the way back there was a group of 3 gentlemen sitting in the back. In the paralysing heat, with dust blowing in every visible direction and with a 30 km journey just beginning, I felt like my end was near. These guys, however, looked like they couldn't care less. They were having a deeply philosophical conversation. One of them was quoting freely from the Ramayana, Gita, Mahabharata, whatever. He would quote, then pause to explain and then ask for doubts. The others were infinitely curious and they kept quizzing him on the rehasya of what he was quoting.

All this was in perfect Hindi, not a word of anything else. No Hinglish, no Urdu dilution.

At first I was pissed. I mean it's the hottest place on Earth, the least they could do was shut up. But then I started listening, and very soon I was captivated. I got lost in the what they spoke and how they said it. I guess there's something magical when a language is spoken the way it was meant to be. Something magical when people speak of things written millennia ago but with each thought still as fresh today as it was when it was first thought. When the accents of the people are so in harmony with the region that their conversation is intriguing even when the sun is furious and the land is on fire.

Thirty minutes later, I'd completely forgotten the heat and the dust. In fact, I would've stayed in that vehicle a lot longer had I not reached my stop. It was only my first day, and I'd already managed to get a taste of India. The kind of taste that Mumbai can never offer. Maybe this place wasn't going to be that bad after all.

My dad always tells me that "you don't get nothing worthwhile without a sacrifice, and if you do you won't like it". On Day 2 I was asked to make my first sacrifice. I was being issued my safety boots and respirator when suddenly a gentleman came up to me with a smile on his face. It was the kind of smile that clearly says, "I may be smiling, but this is going to be fun only for me".

He said, "Sir mujhe ek baat kehni hai......yeh jo ....matlab..... aap apnee daadi udwaa lo" (Sir, there's something I have to say......your beard has to go). Aghast I looked at him unbelievingly. My beard??!! Why in God's name??

He continued, "Sir woh jo respirator hai usmein suffocation ho sakta hai, french cut se bhi..." (The beard can cause suffocation in the respirator, even if it's a french beard).

"French!....French!!!!!", I thought. This was no French beard! It was my very own self styled little crop. How dare he call it French!

Collecting myself, I realised that singed as I was about what he called it, the fact that he wanted me to get rid of it was probably a bigger issue. I stuttered all over the place, "Par...par ...par aap logon kee toh sabki moonche hain!" (But all of you have mosutaches).

He replied without the slightest change in his smiley expression, "Haan Sir moonch chalti hai". (Sure, a moustache is permitted).

Then he went on to politely tell me that even being unkempt (except for the moustache, of course) was "red-line behaviour" and all that could befall me if I were to behave in a "red-line" manner. The smile never faded, by the way.

Now here's the thing about my beard. The last time I was seen without it was years back. I'd had it shaved as an experiment. The experiment had caused me to face much ridicule (pun intended), lose half my friends (they disowned me) and not be able to go out with my family (they didn't want to be seen with me in public). Back then I'd decided that the beard and I would never part again. As Suddu put it, "Dude, I think a naked upper lip is just not your thing".

But who would explain all this to this heartless gentleman. So casually he asked me to snip it off, like it was no big deal.

Sigh! I knew I had to do it. The next morning, my chin saw the light of day after years in waiting. I didn't get rid of the moustache though, I thought it was best to hold on to whatever I could.

That was the sacrifice. The first of many, I assume.

Ahh, such are the times and such is life, the things I'll do for a job!!

Who do I vote for?

2009-04-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Having become a registered voter, who to vote for suddenly becomes a real question. Not a question as in hey-lets-debate-who-to-vote-for, but as in who to vote for next week. Real in the way that you've spent all your life so far talking about democracy and freedom of choice and representative government and blah blah...... but well, here's the chance to actually give it a shot.

Then the realisation hits home that despite the infinite fundae I distribute to people on governance (for free, no-less), I have no idea who to vote for.

Yes. Who do I vote for?

What do I base my decision on? What's the crux-factor, so to speak?
Everything gained seems to be at the at the cost of something even more important.

I mean, they tell me the following are the questions I have to answer:

Should I vote for a good MP from my area (so work happens in my constituency) or should I try and influence the right government coming to power at the centre?
Do I regard path-breaking progress such as the nuclear deal more important than homeland security?
Do I want a progressive economy or a stable one?

etc etc....

More realistically, my options often read:

Should I opt for the regionalism of the MNS or the moral policing of the Shiv Sena?
Should I choose rampant minority appeasement or blatant saffronisation?
Should I choose riots in Gujarat or genocide in Orissa?
Should I choose a government that doesn't value good international relations or one that sits impotent in the face of 16 major terror strikes?
Do I opt for a government that has real economic thinkers within it but has allies who claim they will get rid of mechanised farming and computers?
Do I choose a government that's losing grip over Kashmir or one that fuels communal disharmony?

Needless to say, the responsibility attached to my vote has hit home.
As for who to vote for, I still don't know.

Any ideas (fast!)?

Are We Ready For Women's Equality?

2009-03-18T23:22:00.000-07:00

There is no dispute that women in India were given less than their due for most of the last millennium. There is no dispute that this inequality needed to be straightened out in Independent India. Again, there is no contention to the fact that the issue was social as much as legal.

In India, the status quo stayed simple for most of the last millennium: Women would be given virtually no regard in public life. At home they were given respect as masters of the home domain and the bearers of children.

Then came the British and ingrained ideas of "ladies-first" and chivalry into our social fabric.

Today, with women undoubtedly far ahead of where they stood in pre-Independence India, we arrive at two inevitable predicaments: 1. Equality vs. Chivalry 2. Discrimination vs. Reverse Discrimination.

On the first predicament:We're used to treating women with special respect and dignity. It's the gentlemanly thing to do. To let the ladies walk through first while you hold the door open for them, to wait while the ladies sit down first, to serve them first at dinner, to have a special queue for them at rail reservation counters etc etc. However when women are to be regarded as equal, all this is a confusing contradiction. Equality is essentially first-come-first-serve, not ladies-first. It entails an even platform for all the equal parties, in this case, men and women.

On the second predicament. We as a society are now well aware of the taboo that is discrimination against women. Not only that, we’re extremely wary of it. Woe betide anyone who says, does or feels anything that may be even remotely regarded as sexist. So great is our fear of being branded chauvinist that now we don't mind discriminating against men just so everyone is clear that we're on the politically correct side. A simple case of reverse discrimination.

Not convinced? This entry will now go on to explore a few scenarios where the above issues come starkly into view.

Consider now the issue of women's reservation. The overwhelming claim, from women everywhere is that they're equal and should be treated as much. That our laws and people should recognise the strength of the Indian woman and let her compete on an equal footing with her fellow male. Fair enough, but then on what grounds can we justify 33% reservation for women in educational institutes, jobs and government? Reservation by definition identifies a particular group as weaker/less developed and caters to help them out. It is, in its very concept, an unequal idea. Equality entails competing fairly with the rules of the game same for everyone. Reservation involves making things unequally easy for one group at the expense of another.

If we are to go ahead with reservation for women (which it seems we will), we brand them as unequal for all eternity. Not only that, other kinds of reservation have shown us that when we set reservation for women at 33% we will ensure that their participation in the reserved spheres will never go beyond 33% . That our idealistic figure of an equal 50-50 will never be achieved. Yet, statistics have it that a majority of women are in favour of reservation. Why? Is the demand for equality or special treatment?

Let’s now go on to infidelity laws in our country. As of now, a woman in India cannot be criminally charged with infidelity/adultery. Not even as an accomplice to the crime! In all cases of infidelity the woman is regarded as a victim and a victim only (Am I the only one who finds this outrageous?). So recently some good soul decided this was unequal and pushed for making the law more equal, such that even women who committed adultery could be subjected to criminal proceedings. What happened next? Women's rights groups all over the country were suddenly up in arms against the proposed change. Their contention was that this wouldn't solve the issue of infidelity and extra-marital affairs.
Firstly, I don't see how a law against infidelity will not serve to deter offenders. Secondly, even if it doesn't, how about we go through we go ahead with it because it's the fair and equal thing to do. Equality, isn't that why these women's rights groups exist in the first place anyway?

Let's come to the issue of equal employment opportunity now. At my college we recently had placements and internship selections. One of my friends applied to a global oil giant for an internship. A little background: The institute we study in has a 5% female population. The oil major who was selecting students apparently has a "very healthy male-female ratio". During the selections, my friend (an excellent debater) took charge of his group discussion session and gave it direction, meaning and coherence. The only other person who spoke during the entire GD session was another guy. At the end of it all, it turned out my friend didn't make it. Two ladies who were also part of the group however, made the cut. Like I said before, these ladies spoke nothing. Confused, my friend approached the interviewers. Which is when he was told about the "very healthy male-female ratio" and how it was essential to the company to maintain this to avoid coming off as "unequal".
Now let's analyse what really happened here, despite the blatant claim of equality made by this oil giant.
The college has 5% women and 95% men. Let's assume the applicants were in a similar ratio. Now the oil giant wants an "equal" number of men and women. So let's say for every hundred applicants they select 2. One male and one female. Since 95 of these hundred are guys, 1 guy gets selected out of 95. That makes his selection probability 1.05%. In the women's category however, 1 woman gets selected out of the 5. So the selection probability for a woman is 20%. This, apparently, is equality. It doesn't take much to see the very plain reverse discrimination here. Forgive the men for feeling just a little discriminated against.

Now let's analyse what is perhaps more important than any of the issues above. The matter of general attitudes towards women. Most of us are comfortable with the idea that men will take care of women. That they need taking care of. This manifests itself in daily life all the time. For example, it is customary for the guy to pay if a couple is out on a date. As another, we allow a separate queue for women at reservation counters.We have seating reserved for women on buses. All very gentlemanly, all very polite. Yet it is this very presumption of the "inherent weakness of women" that causes us so much grief. When society agrees that women must be taken care of by men, then it automatically implies that women will hardly be allowed to compete equally with them. That they may receive the love and affection a child gets, but never the mutual respect of an equal. In a much worse scenario, each time a woman is abused/molested/raped, it is a reflection of society's feeling that women are somehow less than men. Do we really want this to continue despite our urgent desire for equality?

When we talk of any equality, we have to accept that it cannot co-exist with special treatment. Moreover, what everyone needs to understand is that if we hope to achieve real equality, we have to oppose inequality at each instance, even when it favours us.

In summary, India has to make a choice. The choice between giving women a special place in society and letting them remain unequal or letting them become equal and removing many of the privileges that they currently enjoy. Essentially, we need to ask ourselves if we're really ready for real equality for women, and men.

Germania and the Germanians

2009-01-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

(This post is a little old. It lay unpublished in the drafts for a while)

In almost two months amongst the Germanians, in Germania, what strikes me as most remarkable is that I still don't know a single complete sentence in Deutsch. Evidently, it's not really a language you can pick up by listening to people.
Does that mean much to me?
Well, I've reached the stage where I'm so used to people saying things I don't remotely understand, that I find it hard to notice when someone is addressing me even in English. So I would say that it does.

What's far more interesting than the Germans' Deutsch however, is their English, or Dinglish as many call it.
I understand that all Germanfolk learn English in school. At a level such that about all of them, can communicate at least in rudimentary English (except the ones who will later go on to work at travel desks, it seems). Most do better.

However, given their relative unfamiliarity with the English of regular use, the scope for unintended puns and unforeseen innuendo is boundless. This entry is about just a few such jewels.

Funnily enough, the colloquial word for "Goodbye" has "Choos" as its German equivalent. To add to this, the local Schwabish dialect has "ley" as a frequently used suffix. So in short, it was common for people to tell me to "choos ley" while parting. (In the hope that my blog may someday have an international readership, "choos ley" = suck it, in Hindi). In time I began to derive a sick sort of pleasure by responding in kind.

Take the case of the young hulk I happened to meet at the gym. I noticed he was lifting weights equal to a small truck. However he was using a lot of ten and twenty pound weights instead of a few heavier ones. Being in need of some light weights, i dragged a couple of heavier ones to where he was and asked him if he'd switch four tens each for my two forties.
Before anything else, his eyes went wide and popped outwards slightly. I wasn't alarmed. I'd seen that look before. It was the look of someone who was thrown into the world of Deutsch -English translation without warning. Regaining his composure he told me (accompanied by numerous meaningless hand gestures), "No no!! No....I'm climaxing!". Needless to say, he had no clue why I spent the next couple of minutes rolling on the floor.

This other time I wanted to put me a chair on my balcony and rest my tired workingboy legs in the fresh air. The balcony being a shared one, I casually asked the girl next door of she'd mind me putting out some furniture. Thrusting her head and neck backwards inexpleciably, she told me in a flurry of words "Because not, because not!!". A little confused, I decided it was probably best to abandon the idea altogether. Five minutes later there was a hurried knocking on my balcony door and from outside I could hear her screaming in explanation, "I mean 'of course not', not 'because not', I mean 'of course not'".

Apparently the potential for such unknown gaffes is not limited to the average German speaking person. It extends even to those who are in-charge of writing notices or printing signboards. At the laboratory where I worked, there hung a seemingly nondescript board over us all. On it were these words of profound wisdom: "Drawers may unclasp if rack is tilted". Every morning when I walked in there it took a lot on my part to resist the urge to scribble a little "Amen to that!" underneath it.
In a similar incident at the mall, an area was marked as "ränd central". No comment there really.

All in all, if you're one for language tourism, then Germany's the place to be.

Suddu's Adventures in Lokhandwala Market

2008-09-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

When i was only about six months of age, my parents decided to go vegetarian. For a variety of reasons, health being primary among them. They decided, however, that I could eat anything I wanted and when I was old enough, I could make the veg/non-veg choice on my own.

The decision to quit all things non vegetarian was not an easy one for my Dad, by no means. You see, he grew up in a typical north Indian family, where "mutton-sundays"* and "kaleji-contests"** were as deeply woven into the local tradition as, say, marrying off one's sons for money or,say, losing one's entire life savings in a night of gambling.

[
*Mutton sundays: A North Indian tradition invovling gorging on huge quantitites of delicious home made mutton for Sunday lunch. It was usually followed by a long and snory slumber session next to the family mutt, who would be stoned for the same reason.

Due to the security risk that the tradition created by putting entire cities to sleep, Mutton-Sundays were outlawed by the governments of Madhya Pradesh, UP and Bihar in 1979. However many towns in these states still secretly maintain the tradition but reduce the security risk by increasing the number of vegetarian policemen on duty on Sundays

**Kaleji-Contests: Annual contests in many North Indian states. They typically involved local stalwarts competing with each other to see who could eat more "Kaleji" (liver) before passing out. The Indian Health Journal (1982) found these contests to be the cause of 73% of heart disease cases in the states of Punjab, UP, Haryana and MP combined.

]

To my Dad's credit, he never faltered in his resolution, not even once. To this day he is meat free since '87. But for years after he'd quit, he grieved over his irreversible loss.

In this torn state he did what any decent, God-fearing parent might. He lived his dream through me. That's right, I became his little race-horse. Or perhaps his race-pig.

Ever so often in my early years, he would take me out for an untimely meal and get me to sample some timeless declicacy that he happened to be feeling nostalgic about. He would sit with me as I ate it, savouring the aroma of his lost love. I was a good pig too. I sampled eagerly and ate well. Indeed, I even asked intelligent questions. He answered them right back, always.

When i look back, I can remember innumerable long chats with him at the local Chawla's-Chic-Inn or in the narrow south-ex lane that housed Qureshi's Kababs. The discussions were deep and solemn, and they always revolved around non-veg food. I would quiz, he would lecture. Things like, "How many different types of animals can be eaten Pop?", "Paa, have you ever tasted deer?" or "Does fish make you intelligent Papa?" formed the meat of our discussions.

It was on just one such occassion that I asked my Dad, "Whats the tastiest kind of meat you've ever had?"

His answer was prompt, without a second's hesitation. "Rabbit, of course," he declared, "just melts in your mouth."

"Wabbit!!!!", nine-year-old-me asked incredulously. "Where do you get wabbit???"

"Well, not at a restaurant or a pickup like you kids are used to. If you want something as delicious as rabbit, you have to go the jungles and get it yourself. It's a do-it-yourself kinda thing, just like anything else that's important in life."

What followed was a thirty minute discourse on a hunting trip my Dad's "Forest-ranger-uncle" had taken him on when he was eleven.

Apparently catching a rabbit wasn't such a big deal once you got to the depths of a jungle. All you had to do was park your truck with its headlights on and very soon a few rabbits, fascinated by the wonder that was the headlight, would come stare at them. What's more is that the headlights would throw them into a trance-like state and then it was the easiest thing to go and pick up one of them. Following this the rabbit was usually quickly converted to dinner. And if my Dad's taste-buds were to be trusted, a delicious one too.

Now, my Dad's a great guy. Honourable, honest, upright etc etc. But like any true Arora he's been guilty of stretching a story sometimes. I mean, any real Arora knows that the price of a good story is probably greater than a fib here or a lie there. The rabbit story may well have been one of these "slightly stretched" ones. Nine-year-old-me, of course, was oblivious to any of this and lapped up the story like a hungry cat.

Years passed by. I grew out of nine-year-old oblivion and started recognising my Dad's stories for what they were: interesting anecdotes often reworked in his head for effect. With time I began rigging stories of my own and gradually dismissed my Dad's stories as having no real truth in them. The rabbit story being one of them.

But I was wrong, and it took a Suddu to prove it to me.

Which, of course, brings us to the question of who Suddu is. Well, Suddu is a friend of mine in college.

And what is Suddu doing in this story?
A lot actually. Firstly, he looks like a rabbit (see picture for proof). Secondly, this is HIS story.

So we skip forward many years from the time I heard about how rabbits were supposed to be caught and we reach a point in Lokhandwala market where we find our Suddu driving his Mom and little brother home.

Like i said, Suddu looks like a rabbit, and as the story will prove, behaves like one too (It would not be even remotely inappropriate if you referred to him as Suddu McWabbit, Sudarshan "Bugs" Bhatija, Bunny, Carrot Boy etc etc etc) .

It was about 8 pm, a time when Lokhandwala market is at its busiest. Suddu was in the driver's seat and his brother in the passenger's. Suddu's Mom was in the back.

Suddenly out of nowhere, or so it seemed, Suddu's keen eye caught sight of two "really awesome headlights" (from here on the quotes indicate Suddu's exact words when he first told me the story).Indeed, just like my Daddy told me, Suddu (and his brother too) was completely enraptured by the sight of the lights. In the trance that he was, he completely forgot that he was driving (albeit at the 5km/h that Lokhandwala market allows at that time of the evening). His car kept sliding forward and as is often the case when drivers forget their car is moving, it hit the car ahead. In doing so, Suddu set off a chain of events that the residents of Lokhandwala now refer to as the "push".

Here's what happened.

Suddu's car hit a Qualis right ahead of him. The impact threw Suddu (and his brother) out of their trance. However it was too late to prevent the Qualis from jerking forward violently and hitting a Zen right ahead of it.

An auntie was driving the Zen.

Here's the thing about Lokhandwala aunties. They're atrocious drivers. I'm not being sexist, just honest. However, every once in a while there comes a time when they're involved in a car mishap where they're not at fault. At this point the aunties of Lokhandwala take on a whole new form. A violent, lethal and extremely self righteous form. A form that screams out revenge and sends a chill through anyone who ever dared question their ability to drive.

The auntie in the Zen was no different. The moment the Qualis hit her car, she instinctively clasped her head in her hands and said "Oh crap!! Not again". Then a moment later, she realised that she hadn't suddenly hit the brakes. In fact she hadn't even hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. Indeed, she hadn't even lost track of the road because she was staring at herself in the mirror. Then the auntie, in a moment of inspiration, realised what aunties in Lokhandwala rarely get to realise: that it wasn't her fault.

Seconds later, the auntie pumped her fists, unsheathed her claws and stepped outside, raring for battle. Meanwhile the Qualis' driver and Suddu had both broken into a cold sweat. The Qualis' driver because the Qualis was a taxi and he would have to face the music from his boss. Suddu because the origins of the "push" could be traced back to him.

The auntie ran, enraged, towards the driver of the Qualis. For the next six minutes, the auntie growled, shrieked, hissed and threatened to gouge the driver's eyes out.
The driver tried answering back in his defence.

He tried telling her that it wasn't his fault. He tried telling her that the car right behind him had bumped into him. He tried telling her that he was probably worse off, since his car had been damaged from both ends.
He didn't succeed in telling her anything. In front of the raw fury of the auntie, all that came out his mouth were little timid squeaks of nothingness.

Suddu was watching all this from the confines of his car and was feeling more and more frightened by the second. However Suddu is a debater and even in this moment of crisis he came up with a logical argument to defend himself. He mentally framed what he would say when she got started with him.

Also, all this mayhem had completely stopped traffic in Lokhandwala market and numerous cars were honking non-stop, asking Suddu to move ahead.

Meanwhile, after six excruciating minutes under fire, the driver of the Qualis managed to extricate himself from the auntie's clutches and he sped towards Suddu's car. Suddu by now had a line ready to blurt out as soon as he was challenged. So when the driver ran towards him, Suddu rolled down his window about a micrometre and declared with a fake, watery smile: "Its all cool because we all have insurance".

Suddu had somehow hoped that would have been the end of it, and rolled back his window. Except the driver of the Qualis spoke no english and had no clue what Suddu was smiling about.

Suddu had been to England very shortly before this incident. Like any desi-munda, he had been impressed by the standards of traffic discipline and respect for the rules of the road there. Seeing how this little scuffle was blocking the traffic entirely, his civic sense was aroused and he rolled down the window a micrometre again to tell the driver that it was perhaps best they took this argument to the side of the road. When he told me this story, he said, "Dude, at least in England people have the decency to go to the side of the road and fight. Seriously dude."

Realising that they were obviously choking the traffic, all three parties decided to park at the side of the road and then get back to fighting.

Suddu, just back from England, waited as the two cars in front of him moved. As the Qualis in front of him moved left, a new emotion arose in Suddu's bosom. An emotion far deeper than civic sense. One that ran in his very veins. In his ancestors veins too. The same feeling that ran through the blood of anyone who ever had any connection with that part of our land that lay in current day Pakistan. It was more than a feeling, to tell you the truth. It was a voice. Yes, it was a voice, and this is what it told Suddu: "All this decency, civic sense, responsibility etc etc is crap, and you know it. Remember, you're a Sindhi. So get the hell out of here while you have the chance."

I'm not kidding, he actually heard that voice, or he would never have done what he did next. He saw the empty space in front of him and sped off, leaving the other two parties gaping.

Of course, there was this one problem. The fact that "speeding off" in Lokhandwala market basically means revving the engine till you reach a speed of 10km/h and then have to stop abruptly.

So Suddu and family should have been less surprised than they were when the Qualis' driver caught up with them on foot. He started cursing and created a racket banging on the car's windows. The mood inside Suddu's car was already volatile and an enraged guy chasing them, swearing while he was at it, tipped it beyond the edge.

Suddu's little brother could hold it back no longer, and began wailing uncontrollably. Suddu's Mom, meanwhile, started to get hysterical, and can you blame her. Luckily Suddu instinctively locked the doors of the car, and continued trying to force his way through traffic.

After a while, Suddu did manage to get out of Lokhandwala market and a little while after that Suddu and family reached their apartment complex.

Suddu's brother got out of the car teary eyed. Through his tears he noticed that the car's front number plate was missing. Suddu, hoping that it was the tears that were blocking his brother's vision, stepped up to check the plate and realised, with a great deal of disappointment, that the plate was indeed gone.

Suddu looked up at the sky and sighed. What a world, he thought, and what luck. Of all the things he could have accidentally left before he sped away so cheekily, he had managed to leave the one thing that could easily be traced back to him, his number plate.

With another sigh Suddu realised he would have to go back. He realised he would probably have to face a very angry driver and an even thirstier wildcat (aka the Lokhandwala Auntie). He submitted himself to fate. Leaving his mom and brother at home, Suddu solemnly drove back to the scene of crime.

He parked some distance away and sneaked out of the car. Silently peeing his pants, he figured it was best to scout the area before returning directly to where the "push" had begun. He observed from afar that the Zen seemed to have left the area. That was good, definitely good. He also noticed that the Qualis was still there but the driver was nowhere to be seen. Suddu decided to observe from the other side, to see if the driver was inside the car. So he approached from the other side and realised that the driver wasn't in the car either. However, there was someone in the back seat. This hitherto unseen character was staring out of the window listlessly.

Suddu wondered if this person had caught a look at him during the "push". Probably not, thought Suddu. Suddu had been in his car all along and so had this person, making it virtually impossible for the two to have seen each other.
However, Suddu thought it was important to "establish this beyond any reasonable doubt" before making contact with the person.

So Suddu decided to "play it cool". He walked by the Qualis a couple of times, whistling loudly and tunelessly, so as to "seem unsuspicious".

When the person in the car showed no signs of recognition, he approached him cautiously. "Bad hit eh?", Suddu asked him.

"Yeah, some bastard rammed into us from behind" was the reply. Suddu flinched a little, but continued to "play it cool".

"Oh that's bad, that's bad", said Suddu, "You managed to catch a look at his plates?"

"No. The sunabitch drove off before we could do much. Wouldn't mind wringing his neck if I saw him though. I'm getting late for my flight and now the taxi driver has gone to get another vehicle, all 'cause of that bastard."

Suddu felt distinctly dizzy on hearing this, but still, he knew he couldn't show it. He tried a fake laugh, "Oh, Oh hoho, hoho....I don't think he'll be coming here again. Hoho, Oh hoho."

The man looked at Suddu, slightly worried if all was well with this talkative stranger.

At this point Suddu realised that if he stayed any longer, his cover would be blown. Besides, the driver of the Qualis wasn't going to be away forever. So Suddu politely said goodbye to the man in the car and thanked God that he had no clue of his car's number.

Of course, the plates were still missing. Suddu thought of investing a few minutes in their search, just in case the Qualis' driver found them on his return. He walked around the spot where his car would have been, trying to act casual while searching for his plates. No sooner had he started looking than a "typical Lokhandwala dude" came up to him.
"Duuuude!! Aren't you the guy who slammed his car into that Qualis up ahead?? Awesome dude, awesome. Look here I picked up your number plate as a souvenir. I guess you want them now don't you? Here you go...", and he held out Suddu's license plate.

Suddu, overcome by emotion, hugged the "typical Lokhandwala dude" and gave him the most rabbity smile in his repertoire.

That's how it happened.

That's how I realised how my father's stories were more than just entertaining exaggerations.

That's how I came to acknowledge the wisdom of experience.

That's how I learnt that if you'r headlights are awesome enough and you keep them on long enough, the rabbits will come, they always do.

All thanks to Suddu McRabbit.

Moments of our lives-The dethroning of Spiderman

2007-05-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

There are some incidents in life which remain forever etched, in minute and graphic detail, in one’s memory. The following is exactly one such memory, and I can only be thankful, that this etching is a happy one, because they’re not only something that each friend I have absolutely has to hear, they’re also something of a rarity. Most people who I want to tell this to have already heard it, but they’ll agree it deserves a text version. I’m reasonably sure this text won’t do it justice, not entirely anyway, but something tells me that it can’t hurt to try.

The memory is from when we found ourselves in the ‘thirteenth’ in that magical city they call Kota. Like any other evening I found myself at my desk poring over some obscure factorisation or figuring out some evil equation of trajectory. As was almost customary, I would take my breaks on the 2M1 terrace, my dwelling, hang out, gather point etcetera etcetera. The view was what made it special. It overlooked the Jhulelal temple on one side, the joggers’ park on another, the gay-lane on yet another and was situated at the crossroads of five illustrious lanes, each of which, in that sleepy village of a town, deserves a story of its own.

Now one would assume, that a thoroughly taxed mind, would take its rest when it was given to it. But no sir, it worked in quite the opposite way. It was in those moments of supposed rest on that fateful terrace that all of us had brainwaves that were quite remarkably, almost ingeniously idiotic.

So as I casually stared upon the world from the eye of that terrace, my mind drifted from the gay lane to the Shubhi store with its wealth of rubbish and slowly across the Mayukh residence, now bare of its lively residents of yesteryears. From there it almost automatically swam to the home of the Jhulelal and into the narrow lane-of-crime and slowly fixated itself, of all things, upon the ledge right under my terrace and the joggers’ park wall near it.

In his heyday as a moron, Karan Girdhani had been known to jump right off the terrace and onto the ledge, from where he would then leap onto the joggers’ park wall from where he would descend and effectively, completely eliminate the stairs in this flight to the ground floor.

This story is based in Karan Girdhani’s heyday as a moron.

That is not to say that he was any dumber than the rest of us, but that he was the only one who had, up until this point, attempted this foolishly dangerous stunt. Even he had to admit that he was lucky to have gotten away with his limbs intact. With these thoughts in mind I began to ponder upon the useless question of whether there was a less risky way of getting down off the terrace and into the lane below. Quite naturally, it never occurred to me that the strong stone staircase that was used to move from floor to floor fit this description perfectly.

Looking at the ledge, it seemed to me that one could climb off the terrace onto the ledge, then lower himself into a hanging position on the ledge and then gently release one’s grip on the ledge to find oneself in the lane below. A far more graceful solution than Karan’s and also infinitely less risky. Now considering I’m a bit of what in my parts would be referred to as a “phattu” and what in your parts may be referred to as a “pipsqueak” and which in yet other parts may be referred to as a “beseengh kee gai”, I wasn’t going to be the first to try out this brainchild of a wayward academic break.

As usual the gang gathered for dinner at our usual dinner haunt. I looked around the table, they were all there, all those who in this story form the “we”, except Saurav, who always ate at home and always without onions.

The lights at the mess were always dim to keep the insects out. In the long shadows of that dimly lit mess, the demented scientist of my academic breaks found his lab rats.

After dinner we passed the lane-of-crime over which the ledge hung and I casually suggested my low risk staircase evasion plan to the others. Bored and deprived souls that they were, almost immediately, Karan and Satpal (of Dabba Khel fame) wanted to have a go at it.

Saurav, who always ate at home and always without onions, also happened to be a resident of 2M1, in fact he lived next door from me.

Now Saurav, well he’s no ordinary guy and he often makes me wonder if man derives his sanity completely from onions. He’s a little, whatdoyoucallit, nuts. There was this one time when I told him some fantastic Sunny Deol style story complete with shotguns, broken jaws and a police chase. I also conveniently added our 75 yr old landlord as the hero of this fairy tale and Saurav, with his eyes nearly popping out of his head, lapped it up like a thirsty cat. In the excitement that followed this ridiculous narration, Saurav ran amok through the rooms of 2M1 and in a wave of adrenaline, nearly threw me off the, by now well known, terrace.

Days later when I summoned up the courage to tell him that the story wasn’t exactly completely true, or even slightly, it broke his heart and he didn’t speak to me for almost a week.

To his credit, he has a heart of gold and is now one of my closest pals.

So back to that fateful day, as Karan and Satpal made their way up to the terrace, Saurav got wind that something was up, something that he for one, was certainly not going to miss. So Saurav, always easily excited, completely abandoned his onion free meal and raced headlong to be the first to get off that ledge. I’ve been told that in U.P. and M.P., where life is pretty much first come first serve and which is where Satpal, Saurav and Karan hailed from, it’s quite valid to wrestle one another to be the first to get just about anywhere. So that’s exactly what Karan and Saurav engaged themselves in while Satpal attempted to descend in the low risk manner described earlier.

In an ungraceful and rather uncomfortable way, Satpal dropped off onto the ledge, managed somewhat to get into a vague hanging position before he fell, rather than released himself, into the lane below. The attempt was theoretically a success but it certainly made the stairs look like an attractive proposition. Satpal was bruised and embarrassed. He wanted another go at it. All this while we could hear Saurav yelling to break free. Satpal went up again to restrain Saurav (which was no mean feat) while Karan attempted the same challenge.

As Satpal went up yet again the yelling grew louder and we could hear the sure sounds of a scuffle with all the requisite expletives in place.

Up on the terrace, Saurav had just managed to break free and his mind started racing at the speed of a Sunny Deol flick. Racing from the stairs to the ledge, he devised a plan which characterises his school of thinking. He decided, moving at the velocity at which he was, he’d jump right off the terrace, then as he moved through the air he would turn around, raise his arms, lock onto the ledge with both hands as he fell past it and then comfortably release himself into the waiting lane-of-crime.

All in one fluid motion, in one moment of glory, to one rapturous, never ending applause.
Indeed, in Saurav’s mind, Spiderman had already been dethroned.

The following few moments form a large part of what remains etched in the memory of all those involved.

Saurav, following his plan, raced like the wind and reached the edge of the terrace. Like a gazelle, he leapt over the terrace railing, making it seem insignificant. In mid air he rotated with the flair of a magician performing a well practiced trick. Preparing himself to descend upon the world of mortals, he raised his arms in anticipation and prepared his hands to lock onto the ledge. And by Jove, he even managed to grab it but by with what is commonly called “just one hand” and in a moment where I’m sure he was thoroughly confused about this mishap, he landed squarely on his butt.

Now let me paint the scene for you. Anvesh, Munnu, Swami and I were on the ground floor while Satpal and Karan were on the terrace. Saurav of course, was in mid air. The group on the ground was reasonably oblivious to what was happening, considering how quickly it happened. In an instant, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash and something landed in the lane beside me. In a village with no flying objects (apart from Saurav), and at about 8.30 in the evening, birds and planes were hardly a possibility. Before we’d even turned to where Saurav landed, we knew what had happened.

The wall of the joggers’ park had sharp spiked railings, Saurav missed them by a hair’s width. In a land of motorcyclists who don’t believe in looking ahead while riding, he’d also been extremely lucky no one was riding in the lane-of-crime as he descended upon it. Of all the places one could have landed, he landed on his butt. And surprisingly enough, he was still in one piece.

When he looked up for the first time, the look on his face…ahh, I’d give anything to see it again, just once. I have never, and I mean never, seen a more profound amalgam of so many different emotions on one face, all at the same time. The bitch of it is that I probably never will again either. There was pain, I think that arose in the behind of his anatomy. There was confusion, which like I said charactersises his school of thought. There was humiliation, which is obvious. There was distress, partly from being on your ass in the middle of a narrow lane and partly from blindness, because his glasses were missing. I could see surprise and wondered if it was surprise at having missed the ledge or surprise at being alive. Also, most importantly and something I’d drink to, if I drank, there was the hint of a smile. That was the cue for the rest of us, and the next few minutes were lost in tedious, side splitting, blinding laughter.

Saurav’s only views on the issue, made public by him hours later, were, “yaar yeh josh kisi din jaan ley lega”.

As if that wasn’t enough for the evening, plenty more unfolded, but that’s a different story.

P.S. Now i'm absolutely sure i haven't done justice to the story, but considering the laughs i had just reliving the whole thing, i think it was worth the while.

random fiction

2007-05-07T19:12:00.000-07:00

Rummaging through the ancient files on my computer, i chanced upon this, something i wrote years back in school. Given the age of this computer, it would have been lost soon, so i decided to put it somewhere safer, as a memory.

It was one of those Sunday mornings, when the sun is out, the land is green and the mind of a young boy, at its freshest and most imaginative, pushes his body to go out and enjoy itself. It is on one such immortal Sunday morning that I found myself in a dilemma as to whether I should go for a swim with my friends or whether I should start working on the patch of loose soil in the eastern end of the garden, something I had been dying to do for months. As I pondered over this difficult question, there were a series of knocks on the front door. The knocks sounded like the hooves of a horse that is perhaps not feeling very well in the stomach. Judging by that, it was certainly my uncle Ravi. Large and rubicund, he stormed into the house like a dangerous, yet well-meaning, elephant. I must say my mother looked rather relieved when he finally seated himself on the sofa. She is always a little concerned about the crystals.

Uncle Ravi, it may be mentioned, is always upon some “venture”. The success of these ventures, unfortunately, is not as considerable as their number. But he keeps on trying, which is heartening. I was sure that we would soon get to know what his current venture was. Why, we might even receive the “high honour” of playing some role towards its fulfillment. Soon enough, we discovered that Uncle Ravi was “shipping” cash for a well-known bank from town to town. One must remember that this story is a few years old and at the time cash flow was still tedious and time consuming and Any-Time-Money machines were virtually unheard of. So, by “shipping” cash out to the bank’s widely dispersed costumers, he hoped to make cash transactions faster and popularize the bank. One might say that this was not a task to be performed by one man, but Uncle Ravi was not a man who thought much of such trivial arguments. As I soon came to know, Uncle Ravi was going on one such trip that day. It being a Sunday, he felt that by delivering money on a holiday, he would be able to show off a shining example of his bank’s efficient customer service.

“Look here sonny boy,” he said to me “there’s a lonely stretch on the road that I’m heading for, and I’m carrying a lot of money with me, fifty thousand to be exact. I wouldn’t mind having a strong young lad with me.”

I nearly blushed at his praise, but at the same time realised that Uncle Ravi, being as large as he was, couldn’t really have meant that. He was probably just looking for company, and I was more than willing to comply. Going on a long drive on a lonely country road certainly made swimming or gardening seem hollow.

Soon I found myself in a taxicab heading north along a beautiful stretch of golden yellow cornfields. Uncle Ravi once had a car, but his stint as a professional motor-racer had made short work of his automobile. That was why he now generally moved around in a taxicab.

The driver of our cab was a young man of about twenty-five. He seemed eager to make conversation. Uncle Ravi, who was sitting next to me in the back seat, casually pulled out his wallet to check his cash. Now there is something about Uncle Ravi that I must tell you. He rarely remembers to carry his money with him. It is not as though he were cheap, though that is the impression some people get. It is as though his fertile mind is to full of his ingenious ideas to be bothered with things so trivial as remembering to carry some money with him. I should have anticipated this and reminded him. But now it was too late. Uncle Ravi was looking at his empty wallet with look of pure amazement. He couldn’t imagine how he’d forgotten to bring some money along this time.

The young, jaunty driver sensed something was not right.

“Anything amiss, sir, ?” he asked in a friendly sort of way.

“Amiss? Certainly not, young man.” Said Uncle Ravi, quickly changing his expression. “It’s a pleasure to ride on these country roads, undisturbed by all the hustle-bustle, traffic and pollution of the city.”

“You’re dead right there, sir,” said the driver. “I worked at a tannery in the city for a year sir, and I was beginning to get quite rich sir, but was never happy, ‘cos there’s money in the city sir, but there ain’t no peace there. I moved to the country about a year back and now I’m a happy man.”

“You should be, with a nice little car like this. Its got the feel of the old times in it.” said Uncle Ravi.

“Yes sir, she’s a little old and bit rusty but she hums along just as well as those fancy new cars,” said the proud owner of the taxicab.

“Would you, by any chance, be willing to sell this little jalopy?” inquired Uncle Ravi.

“That depends on what you would be willing to part with sir,” came the prompt reply.

“Would fifty thousand be fine with you?” Uncle Ravi asked nonchalantly.

The driver tried hard to mask a look of extreme surprise but I could see he wasn’t finding that very easy. The previous Sunday he had found an old man who ha reluctantly agreed to pay him fifteen thousand because he wanted the engine as an antique for his automobile museum. The driver was ready to dispose of it as soon as he found an alternative employment. Now he was being offered thirty five thousand more for the same piece of junk. He couldn’t believe his luck.

“Fine, er…I…I mean,” he stuttered, “ yes ,I think that should be fine sir,” he said finally.

“Very well then, here’s the money,” said Uncle Ravi, handing him the bag full of the money that was to be delivered to the bank’s customer.

The driver took a peek inside the bag, saw enough to please him, and continued driving.

“She’s yours, sir,” he said loudly.
Uncle Ravi merely smiled.

I didn’t have any inkling as to what was happening, but knowing Uncle Ravi, it was certainly some ingenious scheme to get us out of paying the taxicab’s bill.

Sometime later in the afternoon, Uncle Ravi spoke again.

“Young man, the car’s been making a strange sound for the past half hour. I don’t think I want to buy it. I’d like my money back,” he said.

A look of dismay crossed the driver’s face.
“But sir, she’s a nice little thing, just like you said, she and you, they’re made for each other sir, she’s just fine,” he cried out in despair.

“All that was before I heard these strange noises. Now I think I’ve got a raw deal. I’ll take my money back, thank you very much,” was Uncle Ravi’s firm response.

“No, sir I don’t want to buy it. It’s yours. I don’t want to buy it. I’ve got nothing to do with it,” the driver said, almost triumphantly.

Uncle Ravi quickly brought out a tattered old book from his pocket. I could read the words “The Indian Penal Code” on the cover. What in the world was going on?

“Here it is, section twenty eight, clause two,” said Uncle Ravi. He then read out the words of the clause, “objects sold, if returned within twenty four hours of sale, in the same condition as when sold, must receive full and complete repayment from the person they have been bought from. (This clause does not include articles of an edible nature. For list of articles, see clause three).”

The driver, who could read, knew he was beaten and handed back the bag of money to Uncle Ravi.

We soon reached our destination. Uncle Ravi got out of the car and started to walk away without paying.

“My payment sir,” shouted the driver from behind him.

“Payment?” said Uncle Ravi, “surely, you don’t expect me to pay for a ride in my own car.”

“What are you talking about, sir?” asked the driver, who was unable to understand anything.

“Look here, my dear fellow,” Uncle Ravi began explaining, “when I was in that taxicab, I bought it, so it was mine. Now you can’t really expect me to pay you for that, can you? I was in my car.”
With that, Uncle Ravi walked away.

It was evening and Uncle Ravi had just come to the end of his story. Everyone was laughing.

“But we were right legally, weren’t we, uncle?” I asked.

“Son, that’s a very old copy of the Penal Code I had there. That law was abolished in 1966.”

“So shouldn’t you pay back the poor driver now?” I asked.

“I’ve already done that son, I like to keep a clean conscience,” he said somberly.

I joined in the laughter.

moments of our lives - the man and the game- dabba khel

2007-03-08T04:20:00.000-08:00

i hope u rem satpal frm kota.....
well he's now at iit kanpur and dabba khel is his
contribution to the world of competitive games.
the story goes that when the 1st year began at iitk,
satpal like all other freshmen was asked to
"introduce" himself to the seniors (this is the cheap
substitute for ragging tht seniors everywhere have
managhed to come up with ever since the governing
bodies of many colleges made ragging illegal).
As is customary, he was asked for the introduction in
a single language, and he droned on about being in the
"vidyut abhiyantriki vibhag (electrical engineering
department)" and his "chatra anukramank sankhya (roll
no.)".
after the basics, this is the conversation that
ensued:
senior: teri hobbies kya hain bey?
satpal:meri hobbies hain,..
senior : abey hindi mein bolne ko bola naa...
satpal:ohh...meri abhiruchiyan hain computer games
khelna, badminton khelna,..
senior (furious): (expletive1) tere ko samajh nahin
aati (expletive2) hindi mein bol (expletive3)!!
narration:all right now satpal is confused scared and
pretty much peein his pants, he has to say "computer
games" in hindi which he's quite sure he cant pull
off, but he must say something.
satpal: err.......umm.........meri abhiruchiyan hain
"dabba khel" khelna, badminton khelna..
seniors all together:(roar of laughter, and the first
smell of a really succesful evenin)
senior (his smile is eager and impatient, he knows
that this is exactly the kind of thing he n his pals
have bin w8in for all along ): accha! tu dabba khel
khelta hai, (points to switchboard)......woh dabba
dikh raha hai?
satpal: haan....
senior: jaa, jaake usko khel....
satpal:(walks upto the board, its kinda high, climbs
onto a chair, and begins to play "dabba khel". indeed,
soon the lights r coming on and off, the fans r
changng speed and everyone in the lounge is suddenly
interested in this new n remarkable game, people r all
over the place with laughter, they fall off their
chairs laughing, some r cheerin, others know they're
sides have split for good......... but satpal
determinedly continues.)
senior( still unable to stop laughin) : arey tu khelte
rehna, hum ghoom fir ke aatein hain.
satpal (watery smile on face): accha...
(many minutes later...the seniors return)
senior: toh..........kitne points hue?
(fresh round of laughter)

so, that was the "dabba khel" story, the story of how
one man, with a burnin desire and a will of steel can
change the world of competitive games forever.
meanwhile us mortals can only watch on in admiration
and hope that some day, the best of us will achieve
perhaps a miniscule percent of what great lives like
satpal can do.....
also we can and must be thankful that we not only know
this fine story, but also have had the good fortune of
meetin and indded knowin....... nay! befriending this
visionary and genius, satpal singh jain......hail to
him again.
cheers