Month: March 2005

Even Picasso experimented with it. He was a man, wasn`t he?

It doesn`t elevate me to the levels of Picasso, but it is true that I have also experimented with shaving. I started as early as last century…yes…in 1990 – when I was still a young lad of 15. I still cannot forget Gitanjali Iyer (of the Doordarshan fame), who used to be my fantasy girl. You know, back then we did not have all these music albums with curvaceously obnoxious babes on the TV screen. Neither did we have Fashion TV. I had to make do with three famous women – Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and Anuradha Paudwal (wonder, where she is now).

As I was saying, I started shaving early. For saving, I had to wait till I got married.

Perhaps, my father did not want me to grow up, for he asked me not to shave till I was at least 18 years old. But as is the wont with boys of 15-years, who are in love with three girls at the same time – Gitanjali Iyer, Renuka Shahane and that neighbor aunty of mine – I did not listen to my father. Don`t ask me what happened to that neighbor-aunty… I still hate her husband, for marrying her.

I had to smuggle my father`s shaving kit to the bathroom – and I can assure you it wasn`t the kind of bathroom you would go and shave …especially if it was your first time. The mirror was decorated with soap marks and bindis left stranded by my sisters – truly Picasso style. The floor was slippery. I had to hold on to the door handle, not because the floor was slippery but because there was no bolt inside (The Army Man father of mine had removed the bolts when we teenagers started spending more time in the washroom. Somebody should have taught him about hormones, but even we hadn`t read about it then.)

The bucket would always be full of clothes – somebody`s…my father`s…mother`s…sister`s…or mine. The mug`s handle was broken…because it was as old as my parent`s marriage. They had bought this plastic mug in Jamshedpur – the first place they would go to after marriage – and had carried it through Jallundhar, Kholapur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and then Madurai. Sometimes I wondered if it were an Ethiopian mug. Aren`t Ethiopian`s known for their stamina?

Guys will know that today there is something called a Gillette Mach 4. Girls, can ask their husbands or boy-friends. I had to mortgage my wife Rekha`s jewels to buy one Gillette Mach 4.

Back then, it was the simple…all you needed was a razor, a Topaz blade (if you were rich, you used an Ahoska blade) and some shaving cream (the rich used Godrej, the middle-class used the green soap that came in a red, circular case…and the poor simply did not shave).

Needless to say, I had a Topaz blade, a green soap in a red, circular case and a razor…when I stood there in my slippery bathroom staring at a young lad of 15 in the mirror. I wanted to shave, and nothing was going to stop me.

While I had decided to shave, I had also decided to keep it a secret. I knew if my father had come to know that I had broken his dictate, he would order: “Down…now give me thirty!” My father still thinks he is Denzel Washington frm the movie ‘Training Day’.

Anyways, I could not keep it a secret because when the Topaz blade first touched my virgin cheeks…I slipped and in the process gave myself a very deep cut. The Result: A loud shout, followed by my father pushing the bathroom door open (remember we did not have a bolt) and me standing there caught with a razor in hand…and blood flowing down my cheeks.

This antic of mine was different from the others. On rest of the occasions, my father caught me red handed but this time, he caught me red-faced.

I did not know this. And I bet you didn`t know either…unless you work with NASA or ISRO or Mossad.

We all CC our mails in our daily life. But do you know what CC stands for? Carbon Copy?

There, I got you! It is wrong. I came to know yesterday that CC stands for “Courtesy Copy.” So much for all those orders from my boss: ‘Send Rajesh the mail and CC me.” I guess, he should stop using the word “CC”.

This left me wondering what “BCC” stands for. Apparently, it does mean “Blind Courtesy Copy” because the protagonist is blind to the information that somebody else has also been CC-ed. Bingo! Am I not intelligent?

Before I could confirm that “BCC” stands for “Blind Courtesy Copy”…I thought it was an acronym for “Boyish Courtesy Copy” …because it is really kid-ish to send Mr X a copy of the mail, and not letting Mr Y know that you did so.

Hey…would you want to forward this Blog url to your friends? If yes, why don`t you CC me? Courtesy Copy, of course.

Though I have had my share of Holi celebrations, now it is but a faint remembrance. I am not allowed to celebrate the festival here in Tamil Nadu….they say I am a Dravidian. And it is supposed to be an Aryan spring festival.

On Holi day (which incidentally was also a holiday) all the Gujaratis (West), Bengalis (East) and the Northies who have set up base here let loose their clothes but all I did was watch.

Before you go ahead, you have to assume that I have never played Holi. You will also have to assume that I am a true-blue Tamilian, who has never been exposed to the metropolitan life in Chennai, where everybody celebrates everything and instead…I am some village bumpkin (which I actually am).

I know, you probably asking “Isn`t assumptions the mother of all fuck-ups?”
*I am not going to apologize for the usage of bad word here, because it is YOU asking.

I agree. Who ever said we did not f*&^ U* the way Holi is celebrated. Read on.

* * *

There are different legends for Holi. The most popular being the legend of King Hiranyakashyapu and his son Prahlad. According to the legend, Holi began as a celebration of the triumph of good over evil. Isn`t Diwali also celebration of the triumph of good over evil? Yes…but just because you want different reasons to celebrate your festivals, it doesn`t make sense to make the evil guys, the winners.

Other popular legend is the one involving Shree Krishna. He was quite a flirt. Sometimes even exceeding my comprehension…I never visited places where the women take bath. No, I promise. But this guy was quite nosy …and yet we celebrate his antics with his soul-mate in the form of Holi.

Perhaps, we should speak to the Archies` and see if we can start celebrating Valentine`s Day in the name of Lord Krishna. The ladies can start sending their boy-friends cards with pictures of Lord Krishna and Radha. The men (or boys?) could play the flute to entice their loved ones….and then take them out to ‘flop` movies.

Either ways, Holi celebrations came as a surprise to me. It was my first month in Old Delhi (I hang around behind the Red Fort…and no I am not a guide) and on Sunday I saw something really crazy.

As soon as I got out of my shack, I saw a crazy bunch rush past me…in the melee…some color fell on my shirt. I went inside and changed my shirt…for I could not go to office like that. I hadn`t walked ten meters when a small boy sprayed water on me. And that too colored water. Changed to another shirt – the last of the clean ones. This time, it was a balloon that flew in from God-knows-where…and splashed on my trousers. I did not worry and kept walking.

I saw a bunch of youngsters man-handling a teenaged girl. And they all looked like street urchins…those that hadn`t taken bath in years…just that these were colorful personalities. Very demonstrative, I thought.

The girl was wriggling..trying to get out of the ring six of these street urchins had formed. This was enough to wake up the superman in me…I can`t see a lady in distress. I rushed into the ring…and lifted the girl…and bought her out to safety. Next second, she slapped me. The boys pushed down on the hot, tar road. I thought they were drunk too….hence complex.

Leaving the girl to fend for herself I moved on. By now, my clothes were really dirty. Colorful would be more apt.

I think, I resembled somebody in the area…for everybody came up to me and started greeting me. I would greet them in return. A few of these friendly characters would suddenly turn violent and drench me in colors…red, pink, green, blue…you name it and these guys had it.

After a moment, I realized that these guys were following me. Wherever I went, these colored faces showed up… some were sloshed and could not walk. A few asked me to drink…they called it Bhang…I somehow resisted.

I was about to enter Chandini Chowk when four guys lifted me off the ground and dropped me into the mud pit. I could not breathe for a long time…and eventually..I was pulled out. When I opened my eyes…and removed the mud from my ears, I could hear shouts of Holi Hai! Holi Hai!

So, this is what they call holi….very aggressive for somebody like me, for whom holi meant spraying ink on the white-shirt clad backs of fellow-students…

I thought I will finish with a moralistic question:

Why is it called the festival of the spring? – Do we even remotely do anything related to nature on that day…except cut trees in advance, dry them… and burn them?

But that would not be in the spirit of Holi….so here is the question: When will Tamil Nadu start celebrating Holi the way it is done in Old Delhi?

Yesterday was World Tuberculosis Day. Good that people from different walks of life came together for a walk. No, none of these people were coughing (baring the smokers). Because, if you have TB you will feel very tired while walking. Especially, on the roads as polluted as ours.

Anyways, this made me thinking…the deadliest of diseases change with time. And what better chroniclers of time than our movies? I still remember seeing a black and white movie where a love-struck hero waits by the bedside of the heroine suffering from pneumonia. Sure enough the heroine dies because of pneumonia. Even people who get drenched in the rain were susceptible to pneumonia. Very deadly, indeed. Now you know why the early movies didn`t have song sequences in the rain.

Then came the chicken pox. It was not considered THAT deadly because a song sequence in the temple could cure the victim. But it sure did take its toll, especially when the storyline didn`t require the hero or the heroine.

Come the 60s: move over chicken pox. It was time for Tuberclosis, affectionately called TB. Before introducing the second hero, the first hero had to die of TB…or before the hero can marry his second love interest, his wife had to die of TB…of course she would die only after giving the girl`s hand to her husband.

With time and prosperity, came something called diabetes. But it had a very short reign because it didn’t kill that often. It decapitated….so whenever a family had to suffer…the lone bread-winner need to suffer from diabetes and in the process lose his legs. You wouldn’t have seen many such movies because some silly scientist conjured up a medicine called Insulin thus scattering the storywriters in search of other deadly diseases.

Come the 80s and the moviemakers would land up with what would be known as cancer – mother of all diseases. If you were rich you had Leukemia, and if you were poor you had lung cancer (probably because you worked in the mill). A few bold movies even showed women suffering from breast cancer. Of course, they did not show anything more.

Initially, the patients died without a fight…and when the treatment was available in United States of Ameria…all rich would end up in the US and get cured and come back.
The poor had to wait for their son to join the Don (almost always…Ajith) and come back with loads of money. A few silly mothers, embraced death because they thought the mafia’s money won`t be accepted in American hospitals (because they were not honestly earned).

What with all these advertisements by Cancer Hospitals that the disease can be cured if detected early… it now holds no fear among the people. At least, not in the movies. As a result the last couple of years has seen the emergence of mother of all F%$# U*s – AIDS. Remember Phir Milenge?

If I kept on deliberating on what happened in the past, I would not be a visionary (crudely put an astrologer). So…here is my prediction for the future…

Very soon the Indian movies will come up with a disease called Dikki-Vikki. Since computers are so much a part of the Indian life-style…I assume the story writers would want to capitalize on it. And they would walk up to some self-proclaimed computer-expert roaming around the studios and ask for some potential disease as a result of the regular usage of computers. Here is how the conversation will go –

Storywriter: Hi there…just wanted some details on computers. Are you an expert?
Computer expert: Yes. I am…shoot.
Storywriter: Is there any disease that a regular computer user can die of?
Computer expert: No, there is no such disease. But computers do have viruses.
Storywriter: Does that affect the computer user?
Computer expert: Of course, these viruses attack the whole system…and drastically affect the computer user.
Storywriter: Now you are talking. What do you call this?
Computer expert: We just call it a viral attack. Nothing else.
Story Writer: You mean, nobody has taken the time off to name the disease.
Computer expert: Disease? What are you talking…..

(By now the storywriter had left the scene and had already decided to name the disease Dikki-Vikki)

So guys…next time you watch a movie and some computer engineer dies of Dikki-Vikki …just remember you first heard of it, here.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
– Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

* * * * *
My life has always been full of animals. No, I am in no way referring to Rekha, my wife. I agree man is an animal (a few believe that even women are animals). But, I am in no way referring to my wife here.

Guess I should start with the first – a frog. Not exactly an animal, but a frog was the first non-human I interacted with. I think I was four years old and we used to live in Punjab, where it was fashionable to sleep out in the open, under the skies. Now, if you sleep in the open…you have had it from the terrorists…but back then…it was a lot safer. Except of course, for all those frogs that surround your cot.

One of my elder cousins had told me this story of a frog turning into a prince when a pretty girl kissed it. I tried kissing the frog, but only got a wart on my lower lip. Thanks to my mother who always tied my hair in a ponytail, for long I had thought I was a princess.

My next meeting was with the alley cat. This one was a lot smarter than the Tom Cat today`s youngsters watch on TV.

I have always liked eating the malai that forms on top of the boiled milk. Just that this cat in question also liked it. I think I was six years old then…and everyday became a question of survival. As soon as my mother left the kitchen, I had to rush into the kitchen to grab the malai, else the cat would do it. Either ways, I would get blamed. Our competition grew so fierce, that soon enough we were in the kitchen when my mother started boiling the milk. Eventually I won, because I learnt the art of faking pretty early. I grabbed the malai, spilt rest of the milk and shouted…Cat! Cat! My mom, chased the felon away…and the kitchen has been mine ever since. Marriage has changed nothing.

Next came the bear. If you are a regular reader of my Blog, you probably remember my father jumping into the bear-pit to give me a sedative…so that I don`t wake up the sleeping bears. To this day, I don`t understand why my father did not pick me up and walk out of the bear pit. Think I was just eight years old…and had fallen into the bear pit in Kholapur, Maharashtra.

As for horses, I remember meeting the first one when on a school excursion. My school Principal at the Kendriya Vidhyalaya, Ballygunge, Kolkata was a great gambler. At least that is what I think. He wanted to inculcate in us the good habit of gambling at an early age and took us to the Race Course, on a race day. Here we are not talking of the race days that Narain Karthikeyan – that`s called Formula One. We were all nine year olds and thankfully, we did not wage bets. We hadn`t taken enough money with us.

It was not until I was ten years old that we had a dog in the house. I mean the second dog. You are reading the first dog`s thoughts now. He was quite a bunny…never barked at visitors. I think it was sometime around the summer holidays, my parents had left me in-charge of the house and gone for a movie. More than me, they had faith in our Dog sarcastically named ‘Mr Obedient.` Around 5.30 p.m. I saw some visitors trying to feed our Dog…and Mr Obedient was not eating it at all. Instead, he kept on barking. This really angered me…and I picked up the biscuits…opened his mouth big and shoved them in.
It took the dog only five minutes to hit the floor. The next ten minutes saw the visitors inside my house packing up stuff. Later I would know they were thieves trying to drug our dog.

I was growing and with it my misadventures with animals came down. The last time I met an animal in this concrete jungle called Chennai was when I came across this Pig that had just climbed out of a manhole. It was jet black and dirty. Behind the first pig, came crawling its wife (at least that`s what they looked like – husband and wife). As soon as they came out of the manhole, the male pig started running after the female pig. In my desperate attempt to find out if I really liked pigs, I ran after the two.

Here are a few things I noticed about them –
1) They are ugly
2) They are dirty
3) They are messy & clumsy
4) They eat a lot
5) They run after the female pigs
6) After a heavy meal, they stagger
7) They never stay at home

On second thoughts…no on first thoughts itself…they remind me so much of myself.

I have a feeling that very soon it would not be cool to have a male child.

I don`t know you if you agree with me, but it is a fact that today 50% of the households start expecting a boy child as soon as somebody in the family gets pregnant. The rest are OK, if the child is born healthy.

If yours is an extended family, which includes cows, this rule wouldn`t apply. For you would want to have a she-cow, that could later be exploited for milk. I think this is the right time, to share a secret of mine. For long I had thought cows and oxen were two different species and I would be surprised whenever a cow gave birth to a he-calf. My reasoning was…if a cow gives milk..its children should also give milk.

Now, back to the humans. As I was saying…I have a feeling…the men are losing out in the battle of sexes.

Not so long back, if there were five chappaties, the son in the family got to eat four and the three daughters got to share one. The daughters had the freedom to fetch water from the well whenever they wanted to…wash the dishes outside of the hut whenever it was shady enough. So much so, they even got to sleep on the stony floor because it was cool and refreshing in summer. All this, when the son spent his whole day (and the night) idling on his cot.

Now, times have changed. Women have started doing everything that was once considered man`s domain. They wear trousers, they earn money, they go shopping, they decide…everything that WAS a man`s birthright …is today a woman`s job.

Not just in the outside world…even at home…she watches TV, reads the sports pages, warms the sofa and orders Pizza. The only thing that was a man`s responsibility (and his right) and is yet to be taken over by women is the ‘act of initiating sex`. But then, the success rate has been declining alarmingly.

Looks like very soon the women won`t need us. Even today, the only thing we men are being used for is to provide a fatherly figure for their sons and daughters.

Some fifty years back…wives were tortured if she gave birth to a baby girl. Today, thanks to all those TV advertisements by a few NGOs…all women know that the sex of a child is determined by the man. Armed with this information, they have hit back at us…and we are going to disintegrate.

Soon, I think there would be male infanticide. The village near my home town Madurai that put us on the International map – Usilampati – will be the trend-setter in male infanticide too.

All these early killing of the boys would lead to a very dependent male community. Parents of the male child will start saving early so that they have money to hand over as dowry. Some might be lucky and would get married. Some might get raped by the women – their only fault being, being handsome and dressed in Bermudas revealing their well-built calf muscles.

A few would grow up to be 35-40 year old bachelors. After which, in one bout of self-realization they would go and join the missionaries. As a result, there would be lots of male Nuns.

With so few men to choose from and so many women dominating the scene…male prostitution will begin. Men will dress up in suits or casuals and don nice perfumes and stand near post offices…and Railway stations…women will come in cars to pick up the man of their choice.

The next day these tired men will be dropped near bus-stands in the same cars.

Women will learn to spot the male-prostitute. There would be red-light areas when men would hang around …and talk dirty to attract the women. Women would letch at the men, thus lowering their self-esteem even further. One good thing of all this turn out would be…there would be no kids in red-light areas… because the men won`t be diagnosed with pregnancies. That means, no Oscars for movies made in India.

With all the employment opportunities taken, men will rush towards the vacuum created by women servants & baby-sitters who would have joined the mainstream. They will do the house-keeping while single-women went about their work.

The good thing is I am already trained for such a scenario…

Once upon a time, there lived a Blog called Mediaah! It provided vivid commentary on what the Media was up to. It carried news we would have otherwise missed because none of the newspapers, magazines and websites we read would carry them. In short, Mediaah! was slowly but steadily turning heads.

Unfortunately for Pradyuman Maheshwari and Shivani Maheshwari (the people behind Mediaah!…they got noticed. For people like us it is fine to get noticed…in fact we go around wanting to get noticed. But when you are standing up for something, getting noticed means trouble.

The Times of India Group got wind of Mediaah!, and swung into action immediately. It only helped that 19 of the posts on Mediaah! were about the media group. A sure-fire reason for the Goliath-like media group to send a legal notice to Mediaah! Their contention was the posts on the Blog were defamatory in nature. Surprising…that it came from a media group that used to consider freedom of expression as one of the corner stone of a democracy. Or have their priorities changed?

Surprising still, because the media gets to criticize and pass judgment on everything under the sun, and yet starts sending legal notices when somebody does the same to it.

It is only in Bible stories that Davids beat Goliaths. In the real world, it might happen…but has not happened yet. Mediaah! stopped publication on March 10 2005, and ever since many Bloggers have joined hands to seek justice.

I agree we can’t hit the road asking for Times to withdraw its legal notice. But we can let people – like you and me – know that the media group has sent a legal notice to a Blogger, for what he thought was his opinion…his expression.

You could get in touch with Pradyuman Maheshwari at pm@mediaah.com and express your solidarity.

Believe me, this movement is going to take on gigantic proportions. And the initiators could be the people behind a brilliant idea to create another Blog called Mediaha! (a take off on the original Mediaah!).

The initiators of Mediaha! know a thing or two of Brand placement. Their emphasis-line is “A blog set up to mourn the muzzling and demise of Mediaah!”

Here are the nineteen exhibits that the Times Group found offensive – One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen | Seventeen | Eighteen | Nineteen.

If you feel you have to be part of this movement, go and sign the Online Petition. To see how many have already signed the petition, Click Here.

And pray, I don’t get a legal notice 😉

*If you want you can spread the word by copy and pasting/or linking this content…I won’t send you a legal notice.