Stuck at the Y

E&Y E&Y and the Bay the Bay the Bay
the red red sedan
that she drove away
the french fries scattered on a plate

are images that won't walk out the door

get me more than Frost at this strange Y
get me a bench under a tree
tell me am I any richer today

or am I forever poor?

vestiges of my mind
neatly packed, to be taken away
are back in their appointed corners

never one less never one more

away didn't work yesterday,
a U-turn did
away works for her

as she goes away for sure.

Knock Yourself Out

Malthusian Disaster

In 1996 I read a long article about the Malthusian disaster, predicted by Robert Malthus, in which he said that by 2015 most third world countries will cease to function. They will be there, but there will be utter chaos reigning. As in, to take India for example, we can safely predict it will cease to function as a nation. The reasons he cited had nothing to do with stars colliding with each other or any blind astrological or religious faith. His reasons were sociological, economic, and political, and very valid ones at that. He mentioned the mass rise of the poor against the haves, he mentioned religious intolerance, various epidemics that spread faster than you can produce a cure for them, and of course floods and other natural calamities.

And then we had the earthquakes, followed by plague, the rising religious intolerance resulting in various state-sponsored terrorist activities (from the Babri masjid demolition by the kar sevaks to the Pakistan-funded attacks on India), the tragic tsunami, the epidemics that are coming, e.g. H1N1, which will affect 33 million Indians in two years, or dengue, the naxal uprising that seems uncontrollable, and the natural calamities that are ravaging Taiwan and South East Asia now.

According to his estimate, it would all settle down by around 2050. I kind of believed him. You all believe in certain things and that belief is inexplicable at times. The most rational of beings can be seen standing with their hands folded in front of symbols of strength, be it the idol of a goddess, or a monkey god, or the statue of some great leader who lived 5000 years ago. They quietly avoid any reference to their belief, which can be called irrational, beyond reason, or something sacred. Sacred means beyond the purview of reason. No questions asked. My belief in that article about Robert Malthus' theories is also sacrosanct. If The Holy Bible is true to you, that article, which appeared on the op-ed page of The Statesman way back in 1996, is true to me.
Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of that, but whatever I read that day sounded so true and possible, I didn't want to question it.

It is all coming true and am sure this is just the beginning of a lot of shit that is about to happen to us. It is only about how we prepare ourselves to face it. Some of us have kids so we have an added responsibility to ensure as much safety for them as we can. Some of us are single, so are covered. Whatever maybe the situation, we shouldn't lose hope. We shouldn't write articles about the Malthusian disaster and act as irresponsible bloggers. We shouldn't provoke people to read about him and his predictions, or about the H1N1 now. We shouldn't scare others by saying we bought the last three available masks from a nearby pharmacy. We shouldn't create panic by proclaiming to have witnessed the sale of tamiflu in the black market. I am not gonna do any of this despite knowing I can very well be one of the 33 million Indians who will be affected by the virus in the next two years.

I only hope you all are as responsible citizens as I am.

Being Nikhat Kazmi

By wielding merely a pen, one can write off a person's year-long effort with a snort.

An average Bollywood movie takes about 10 months to 1 year to complete, during which a huge amount of money changes hands, the dancers and spot boys wipe a lot of sweat and manage to earn their bread, the heroes make an ugly amount of money, the heroines make a little less, the producer keeps hoping he would get to sleep with the heroine or at least the lead dancer... the sound recordists, the studio guys, the editors, the cinematographers are kept so busy that they either grow their beards for lack of time or go sleepless for weeks. The psychiatrists make hay soon after as fresh people fill in the looney gap. The businesses of the drug peddlers, from the drug companies to our street-side vendor selling brown sugar or at least hash, can stay afloat. Not to mention that midnight pao bhaji bar or frankfurter seller. The film magazines, ad agencies, marketing consultants, web designers can be seen working overtime to meet this huge demand. Someone wants to market a film, someone wants to market a film with a scandal, someone wants just a scandal, someone wants a web site made.

Bollywood is on 24/7 and can beat any outsourcing unit hollow with its constant flow of business and services. Now when a person, let's say someone like Rajat Kapoor, who has always had a dream of making his script into a movie gets a chance to make one eventually, he/she spends an average of 12 months to get everything going. Can be more. Put yourself in that person's shoes: the dream, the script, the arranging funds, the actors, the tantrums, the heartbreaks, the scandals, the paparazzi, and finally the big day of release.

What happens next? You have the critic waiting outside to pounce on you. I don't know what the typical critic looks like, but I would put her as a hormonal, middle-aged spinster or a constipated, sex-starved wannabe of a man. Both of them are veterans. Digging into their pasts you will see that the woman was the assistant to a director but could never make it big and the man was so much of a failure that he could gather only vitriol so far. They are bitter, frowning, and have mastered sarcasm to such an extent that the pen spews acid and the keyboard is rickety with violent abuse.

The critic rips apart the film and if you are stoic about it, you can ignore it and move on. If you are Sajid Nadiadwala, you can laugh at them and keep producing the trashiest stuff. If you are a filmgoer, relying on the critic's appraisal of a movie, you end up reading books instead.

Why Nikhat Kazmi? This person (of whose gender I am unaware...will assume Nikhat, which means pure, is a woman) has made a harsh critic like me sit up and take notice of Hindi movies. She has, with constant practice, mastered the art of willing suspension of disbelief. When she enters a screening, she enters with a free mind, ready to enjoy, ready to be entertained... almost like, "hey, lemme see if you can please me tonight." And she has been generous with some movies, showering praise where it deserved and being critical where she needed to point out a flaw. She never went to a screening with any baggage like huh, this is no Fellini, this is no Ray, so lemme write it off. She is like the perfect kindergarten teacher happily encouraging Indian commercial cinema as it takes its first baby steps toward maturity. We get to see an unconvetional Vinay Pathak steal our hearts in Dasvidanya, Bheja Fry, or Straight. We also get feel-good romantic movies like Jab We Met from the stable of Imtiaz Ali. We do have Akki too, but then someone has to entertain the braindead as well.

She enjoyed Dev-D like any of us and was so kicked, she even gave it a 5-star. I mean, WHY NOT, Nikhat! We love you for being one of the first critics ever to hit the theater with a normal filmgoer's mind. A discerning one too. She knew that New York has a lot of basic flaws in the script and also lacks any locus standi per se, but she gave it a 4-star because she enjoyed it like we all did. New York has unrealistic characters that don't get any time to blossom under the pressure of glam. So we gloss over that bit and try to see if there's any message in the film. Someone asked why this movie had to be set abroad. Why not! Why not abroad? And the message, in fact the messages, can be sieved from the glam and held up to dry ... they will eventually seep in.

• One was that post 9/11 the US govt went into merciless ethnic profiling and held almost 1200 people for just being Muslims. This in turn created a new breed of terrorists.
• A second message, coming from the lips of powerful Irrfan Khan was that only Muslims can work toward repairing the image of the Muslims in the minds of the world.
• The third was, in the last scene, where young kids playing baseball have the son of a terrorist on their shoulders, celebrating their victory... and as Irrfan Khan puts it... it is possible only in the US of A.

Being Nikhat Kazmi is not easy. She caters to normal audiences like us. And we love her for that. She doesn't expect a Bollywood movie to be at par with Crash or The Departed. She does not have any intellectual hangovers. She does not draw unnecessary parallels but treats Bollywood as unique and evolving. Am sure she can choose to be the hormonal spinster and suddenly rip everything apart by comparing Barah Anna with Ray's Protidwondi (late 1960s classic also available as The Adversary) because both are primarily about survival. But she hasn't lost her marbles yet. When she writes for the readers of The Times of India, she writes for the Indian filmgoer who doesn't mind commercial cinema along with a late night dekko of Into the Wild. For the Indian who can listen to the brass band version of "Emotional Attyachar" and also "Kind of Blue" off vintage vinyl, one after the other, and enjoy both.

She has successfully stepped into the shoes of Shobha de and Santosh Desai, who probably first started the trend of calling a spade a spade and not denouncing it for not being a sceptre.

P.S. If Nikhat is a he, replace all the "she"s with "he"s...

Pics from: imageshack.us, dhingana.com, amazon.com, blogspot.com

Are we meeting tomorrow?

"Are we meeting tomorrow?"
"Where?"
"Anywhere you say, I can pick you up?"
"My pups? I have two now..."
"We take them along?"
"Hah, like you mean it...what if..."
"What if what... what if we..."
"We what?"
"You said 'what if'"
"And you assumed..."
"What did I assume? Would the pups mind if I kissed you?"
"That was past tense, you should ask, 'will the pups mind if I kiss you?'"
"Ahem... do I assume you will allow me to kiss you then?"
"I can't drink though, I gotta go to work in the evening."
"You didn't answer my question, do I get to?"
"How about coffee?"
"Coffee meaning what it actually means?"
"Do you have a one-track mind? I meant cappucino or latte or whatever"
"Do I?"
"Like coffee?"
"Have a one-track mind?"
"So when is it?"
"I thought you said tomorrow?"
"No, I seriously can't take the pups."
"Okay, when they grow up, or when you get them a nanny. I want to abduct you."
"And?"
"And take you somewhere far."

Michael calls it forbidden. I call it a dream. He calls it reality and puts on his doc martens, with a smirk on his face. Who gave the bearded philistine the confidence to shape his life with his own hands? Michael still calls it forbidden.

And then they met one day when her children were home. It rained as they drove on aimlessly toward the sea. The radio played Ghost Story by Sting. He thought of touching the tattoo on her thigh peeping out of her sarong and she didn't think about anything. The dogs, perhaps? Or about when he said he will abduct her? His breathing was heavy. A creaky door closed behind them that day that perhaps won't open again, definitely not to let them in, because they had chosen a path together. A path that went straight to the Western sky, where the sun was sinking.

Nailclippers

Why did we have to have cities, I wonder? Weren't we happy in our villages, herding sheep and cattle, collecting dry wood and having our nails clipped at the local barber's? I have seen a village belle come and clip the nails of my granny, who used to sit like a matriarch in her huge verandah with two German Shepherds guarding her. Earlier in the day I would take the dogs out for their morning crap session, and they would drag me all around the village, Maheshpur. Maheshpur is now in Jharkhand, about two hours from Dhanbad in the mining heartlands, but those days it was in Bihar.

Sundar da (although a Bihari, he spent 40 years at our place and turned Bengali) asked me if I would like to go with him to fetch milk. I would jump at the opportunity. There weren't any other kids to play with at my granny's place and I would get bored playing with the dogs, who didn't think much of me as a playmate. We would walk to the khataal, a place where the cattle were, humongous black buffaloes mostly. The milkman would give us a canful of frothy, creamy milk that we carried home. Back to the dogs. The dogs ate beef and rice every day and hated taking bath. But we would tie them to a post next to the well and give them a nice bath every Sunday. Sundar'da managed this alone as I watched from the steps.

My granny was big, black, and wore black spectacles. I was told stories of how she once caught a robber on a running train and handed him over to the police at the next station. She sat alone, watching the road, huge stick in her hand, with Betty and Darling on both sides, ready to lick the world to protect her. She was sad. Four of her five children were away. Her youngest son was the only one who lived with her. My mom and I would visit often because we lived about 100 kms away in a neighboring state. Often she would lift her thick glasses and wipe her eyes. I couldn't understand why as tears always made me uncomfortable, but I lay there, at her feet, playing with a toy, perhaps, and thinking why the others couldn't come to see her. They did come, once a year, and those were times when I had a lot of fun. Four boys and three girls, we made quite a bunch, but I guess we all got together only twice in our lives. Those are memories to die for.

The food was fresh, we had a kitchen garden where we grew some veggies, and Maya di managed the kitchen. I remember her perpetually making rotis. She had a room in the garden and she would read Gopal Bhar stories to me. She wasn't as friendly as Sundar da, who had a golden heart. He came as a young boy to our place and died much later, some say of cancer. I never saw him not smiling.

Today when I bit my nail too close to the skin and shrieked in pain, it all came back to me. The girl who would come to clip our nails, making life so easy. Someone to cook for you, someone to look after your dogs, open the gate for you and close all the doors after you have gone to sleep. These relations were symbiotic. Poor people whom our government did nothing for survived on employment created by the middle class. Fresh milk, vegetables from your own garden, trucks carrying coal, the postman coming at 1.00 in the afternoon with letters from Australia, Madhya Pradesh, or Durgapur.

No such luxury in a city. Here you are handed a nailclipper, which you are too lazy to use. You end up biting your nails to their right length and shape. And sometimes, it is too close for comfort.

Prior Knowledge of Death

I was trying to gauge how we react to the death of an unknown person who isn't even remotely related to us. And the difference in reaction between knowing the person is "going to die" and the reaction when you know "the person is dead."

Recently, a fellow blogger Titin posted on her FB profile some pics of an art exhibition held in Mumbai. The painter, 17 year old Shobhit, looked a little strange: unusually thin, head shaved, and with death in his eyes. The paintings were nice, his family was around him and everybody was happy and smiling. Titin informed me that Shobhit is terminally ill and has only a few days/weeks to live. I looked at his pics, the smiles on the faces around him, and also at his smile. And, despite not knowing him, I was affected by the knowledge that he may die any moment, any day. I kept thinking how he is or if he is alive at all. I asked Titin a week later and they said he is in pain and on morphine. I wondered if he had ever enjoyed some essential things in life. Does he have a Munnabhai next to him to make him enjoy his last few days? Would a kind woman make love to him to show him how life began? Does that woman necessarily have to be on hire? The next time I asked her, he had passed away. Everybody seemed to be relieved to see him not in pain anymore. Sometimes, we wish death came faster.

When you see his pics with the knowledge that he is already dead, it probably doesn't affect you much. But if you knew about it before he died, you would have tossed and turned in your sleep. When Dhananjay (the lift operator who raped and killed a girl in Kolkata) was hanged, and we were all waiting for it, I woke up on two nights thinking whether he is dead yet! Such is the power of impending death. Of anybody. To know that Saddam will be killed tomorrow will make you more uneasy than the news of his death greeting you the next day.

Here are some pics taken by a plane crash victim moments before he himself died. The plane was hit by another one and broke into two. This guy managed to click some last pics, in one of which you get to see a man flying off. Look at the anguish on their faces, not knowing what hit them, with not even split seconds to react. There's not even fear on some of the faces, just plain bewilderment. How soon did they die, I wonder? I hope they died before realizing that they are about to die. These two pics were so disturbing that I deleted the email which brought them. But there was also this morbid desire to see the pics again. I guess the only time I was so affected was when I saw Daniel Pearl's death on video. The most gruesome, although you can derive solace from the fact that his pain lasted not even a second. But he knew he was dying, right? How did he cope with that knowledge?

And suddenly one day my brother sent back these air crash pics to us confirming these are hoax pictures. There was a sense of relief, much like you are probably feeling right now.

One of my aunts who died of a painful throat cancer used to maintain a diary on her deathbed. She addressed all her letters to my dad, and sometimes I am curious to find out if she had mentioned death in those letters. How do you get ready for death? And if you meet death in the eye, how do you ready yourself? What do you think? Any last ditch attempt to jump out of a plane at 37,000 ft?

I feel it is much easier to cope with death that's already happened than with death that's about to. A friend of mine says "pass on" to imply there's still some world for the spirit to go to. I guess I need to start believing in a whiteness post death where my spirit can live without the bodily pleasures.
Until then, I will be shit scared of death.

Futre vous

What all can you buy with 350 euros? A lot, if you convert it into INR. It is almost 19 K, with which you can buy a lot, for example, groceries for eight months, etc. If I get hold of that money, I will definitely buy a sidecar for my motorcycle. However, the 55 Indian passengers of the Air France flight who faced racial discrimination on their flight back to India, are not too happy with that money.

Being Indians, I wonder how they felt bad at being racially discriminated against! I mean, hello? The Air France guys are not only white, they are French as well, culturally the most advanced race in the world, boasting of the best artists, best museums, and owners of the most rich language, French. They are even smart enough to pronounce difficult spellings in their indigenous way that nobody else can understand. They are the French. They have all the right to be obnoxious. Even Rowan Atkinson, in his stand up about welcoming people to Hell, categorizes the French as being naturally disposed to get entry into Hell just by virtue of being French.

We Indians were supposed to be farmers and bicycle repairmen. But suddenly we decide to make a trip abroad. Why do you expect the French will give you chairs to sit and loos to defecate in? No wonder they treated us Indians as Indians should be treated. We can't blame the French now, can we? We should gladly accept the 350 euros they have offered to each passenger and buy eight months' worth of groceries, feeling happy that we saved one-way fare.

But no. The Indians, very uncharacteristically, felt insulted. And they are going further, pressing charges at the international court. I mean, HELLO... the father of your nation, Mr MK Gandhi, was thrown out of a train in South Africa only a few decades ago. For being Indian. What gall, I say! To stand up against racial discrimination? What has happened to us? This problem of gross insubordination to the whites (and especially to the French) makes me wonder if we are in the midst of a metamorphosis. Are we turning human after all from being Indian?

To sign off, lemme put it in French: Futre Vous, France... may those 55 Indians shove the 350 euros up your culturally rich asses and give you constipation for 350 days.

White Chicken in a Thick Cashew Gravy

Around 7.00 in the night, have a glass of red wine.

There are quite a few things that I want to write about but right now it is difficult to remember all. In fact, after having had the chicken in cashew gravy, my mind has gotten even number. But that doesn’t stop me from writing about the chicken in cashew gravy.

Marinate a kg of chicken in 500 ml curd and ginger-garlic paste overnight. In two teaspoonfuls of olive oil, fry some finely chopped onions and cinnamon in a rice cooker until the onion turns brown. Pour the marinated chicken, add some sugar and salt, and close the lid. Let it cook for about 30 minutes. Keep checking the level of water because if you don’t add water, sometimes the gravy may get too dry. Add half a cup of water after every 15 minutes. After about 30 minutes, add the cashew paste (about 100 gms of cashew ground in milk to form a thick, white paste). Stir a little. Your white chicken in cashew paste is ready.

As Bengalis, we add a couple of potatoes in a kg of chicken. Just cut the potatoes in half and put them in with the chicken. They ensure your gravy is even thicker.

To serve with this, you need either gobindobhog rice, which is found only in West Bengal, CR Park (New Delhi), and most places in the US, or zeera samba rice, which is found in Bangalore. Both the varieties have small grains with a beautiful aroma that can waylay an otherwise determined hunger striker. Rumor has it that Karunanidhi recently had to break his half-day hunger strike after some supporter of Jayalalitha started cooking zeera rice in the vicinity.

Mix the two and eat more than your usual intake. Expect a little flatulence and a heavy feeling that starts with your eyelids. The dreams following such a meal are often rather primordial in nature. You may see yourself giving successful chase to some nubile nymphets. A closed deal like that in a dream can obviously result in a little bit of wetness, which is pardonable. But remember to start with a glass of red wine around 7.00 in the night.

Good night.

The Congress Has Won Again

Here's an article posted and later taken off the blog on May 12, 2009. The Congress has won at the center, but my leader, Krishna Byregowda, has lost by a margin of 37,000 votes.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Of Mostly Ugly Leaders: Who Will Lead India?
Difficult question given that a major part of the last 62 years has seen the Congress ruling India. From the welfare government setting up heavy industries and recruiting 500% more labor than necessary in the fifties, the Congress government has come a long way. We can see biracial faces as leaders in Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. They are well educated, can speak chaste English (and even other European languages am told), are from a family of leaders, and look nothing like the common Indians. When the beautiful daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru married Parsi Feroze, the political career of the Nehrus would have been in jeopardy if our Gandhiji didn't accept Feroze as his son and give him his name. What strikes me as funny is why the rather handsome children of Feroze and Indira chose to keep the name of Mr Gandhi, who was decidedly ugly and very misguided. So now, we have as our leaders the Gandhis, who should ideally be called the Khans.

Befitting surname for a goodlooking family. I would have loved that. India's royal family, the Khans. After Rajiv Khan (Gandhi) was killed by the LTTE terrorists, it seemed that the royal family won't rule the Congress any more. But we Indians had served the Mughal kings, British kings, and the Queen for a long time and we needed that to continue. So, the beleagured and corrupt Congress leaders (I especially remember Sitaram Kesri, possibly the only man uglier than Gandhi and even Dhanno, the woman who killed Rajiv Khan) went and fell at the feet of Rajiv Khan's widow, Sonia. They wanted a queen to lead our famous democrazy. The people of India were divided on this issue...Sonia is an Italian Catholic. How can we let her lead the leading party of India, was the question people were asking. As a twenty-year old then, I didn't have an opinion about this. All I could say was, why not her? She is better looking than the Sitaram Kesris of the world and is also the mother of my childhood crush Priyanka Khan.

The Jansangh was another party that was coming up. About its history, please ask Manini Chatterjee. She knows a lot about their past. Apart from the fact that Shyamaprasad Mukherji was their founder leader, I didn't know much. I also knew that Shyamaprasad Mukherji was allegedly murdered in Russia. People in West Bengal will tell you it was Jawaharlal Nehru who plotted this murder, but who has proof? It is also alleged that Nehru got our fighter leader Subhas Chandra Bose captured and locked up in Russia till his death much later. But who knows all this for sure? So, the Jansangh later became the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and gradually turned into a formidable opposition under the able leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

So, what did the Congress do about the basic things that a country needs? Let's talk about industry, infrastructure, education, population control, creating employment opportunities, telecommunications, energy (electricity, hydro, renewable, solar, nuclear, etc.). Or let's not. For 62 years, a lot has happened. A lot that could have happened, hasn't. Everybody has a cellphone in India now, so it can be safely predicted that the number of Indians with brain tumors will soon reach manic proportions. Some states have prospered, some haven't, but we cannot generalize and squarely blame the Congress party for all that has gone wrong. For example, in West Bengal and Kerala, the communists have ruled. If these states don't have any roads, jobs, hospitals, schools, etc. you cannot blame the Congress for it, can you? But they do, the communists. The Congress had set up heavy industries in every state. In West Bengal there were steel plants and mining machinery to name a couple. But the communists ensured that these industries close down. They have the hammer and the sickle in their emblem, but all they ask their followers is to lay down the hammer and the sickle and just pick up red flags instead. Don't work, is their slogan. Don't work, but fight for your rights. Ask for more wages, ask for leave, ask for better working conditions. In a state of beggars where getting work itself is like striking gold, can you choose your working hours? About a hundred years before that, when the Industrial Revolution happened in the UK, people thronged the cities, lived in squalor and filth and choking drains, died in epidemics, sacrificed everything for a developed nation to be born. It would have been a lot better here, had it not been for the communists. If we worked when we should have worked, this nation would have gone a few more rungs up the ladder toward being called developed. But, thankfully, they couldn't spread their cancer to any other state and were beaten hollow elsewhere. They could survive only in the hot and humid states of Kerala and West Bengal, where people are genetically and geographically inclined to laziness. No wonder these states welcomed the communists as the entrepreneurs fled and the government institutions suffered a slow death.

They don't feature anywhere in the greater scheme of things, so we will not waste another paragraph talking about this misguided lot (rot), some of whose clean-shaven brethren in Delhi can be seen jumping around like midgets in the Parliament. They have no agenda, no qualms, no ideologies, except for jumping around against the ruling party. Oh, there's also a third front in India, where these insignificant idiots have found sympathizers. Oh lord, may the commies and the Third Front come under the great feet of Kumbhkarn one day, is our only prayer. If they ever come to power, they will all die fighting each other over portfolios. Imagine if PK held the external affairs portfolio? He would single-handedly screw up our relations with every other nation in the world. Our only friends will be Huge Chavez and Infidel Castro. Nothing against them... in fact I like them for giving it to Jr Bush, but hello, can we survive today by befriending these countries? The communists (secular, atheist, etc.) also like radical muslims a lot and have let them build terror schools in the name of madrassas all over West Bengal and Kerala. Why do you think no Muslim bombs are going off in these states?

Shit, those were two paragraphs of venting out my frustration. No way, will come back to the Congress and the BJP now.The Congress is a behemoth with one part of the body unaware of another. This party has attracted casual crooks who don't steal too much and are moderately corrupt, but don't have any ideology to talk about. The sarkari babus ask for chai paani, the police ask for bribes, and the wheel moves. Some people complain, but life goes on under the Congress. The Royal Family of the Khans humor us by trying to appear Indian in kurta/pajama and sari when they make a public appearance and it is a safe kingdom to live in if you can cover your eyes and ears at times.

There is no visible anti-incumbency to talk about, the rich are rich and the poor are poor. There is no insubordination whatsoever. Your maid listens to you and works like a slave the entire day for a pittance without a complaint. And you smilingly give her child your son's old bicycle. The peace and happiness is almost like an English fairy tale. How to topple them? How to bring discontent in the minds of people? How to usurp the throne? In comes the BJP with a new agenda: Hindutva.

Yeah, so what did the BJP do to come to power in 1999? How did this so called right-wing party manage to topple the Congress government? Well, they brought with them the trump card of Hindutva. Not a bad one, that. It appealed to many as they painstakingly started with how Gandhi was the first communal leader of India and appeased the Muslims in the name of secularism. This emotional tickling of the average Hindu yielded results in the cow belt. It is called the cow belt not because most Hindi-speaking people think like cows, but because in the states of Bihar, UP, MP, Rajasthan, etc. people worship the cow as one of their gods. We do have staunch Hindus in Maharastra and Gujarat as well, but they aren't part of the cow belt because they don't speak Hindi. I must find out more about the association of the cow with our national language.

Meanwhile, the small time crooks of the Congress party were aiming for higher levels of corruption and some of them got caught. Even poor Rajiv Khan got embroiled in a controversy involving the Bofors anti-aircraft guns deal. Apparently there were many kickbacks and some people got rich (it is still a nebulous thing to me) and there was another Italian involved who either made money or gave money or slept with somebody. We would never know. This gave BJP another trump card. They left no stone unturned to malign the name of the Congress in people's minds and came up to be reckoned as a powerful opposition. To keep their Hindu votes alive they also went and demolished a historical monument protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. 1992 was the darkest year for us. (The Talibans later emulated us and destroyed the great Bamiyan Budhha statues in the mountains of Afghanistan.)

It so happens that one Mr Valmiki once wrote an epic called the Ramayana. It was a good versus evil story in which the mythological character Rama wins over Ravana.
So, this Valmiki bloke wrote his story and many hundreds of years later it grew into an epic. Because most folklore traveled by mouth, new subplots were added at various points of time until this story became like a legend and Rama became a god to the people living in the cow belt.

Now, if Rama is god, the story becomes god's story. The places mentioned in the story gain more religious than historical significance. Valmiki, poor guy, mentioned a place called Ayodhya as Rama's birthplace. The BJP did some research and figured that the mosque in Ayodhya built by Emperor Babar in the 16th century was built upon an erstwhile Ram Temple. And they hit a jackpot. Let's tell the people of India that Rama was born here.

You should have seen what happened when they hatched this plot. It sounds absurd, doesn't it? But millions of people from all over the cow belt went to Ayodhya and demolished the Babri mosque, which you might have otherwise visited as a historical monument. The BJP was seen as a capable party who can "do" something. And this incident made India an unsafe place after 1992. With the Congress at the center doing nothing to stop this barbaric act, the Muslims were estranged and threatened. The petty and big criminals among them, who were busy smuggling and extorting money, got furious and funded the first serial bomb blasts in Bombay... in 93.

The picture of India started changing since then. If you see the Hindi movies made back in the 70s, we had smugglers to fight against. That place was taken over by the terrorists in the 90s. The Muslims needed a voice and some of them found it in the form of terrorism. Sadly, they didn't target the perpetrators of the crime but targeted the common Indian, who had nothing to do with the demolition of the Babri mosque. The BJP surged to power in 1999 with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Prime Minister of India. If you look at it objectively, those weren't bad years for Indian business. The finance portfolio was held by Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh and they were not like Chidambaram of Congress. Chidambaram has always cut the wings of the common man by taxing him the maximum. BJP brought tax sops, made home loans cheaper, increased the forex reserves manifold and brought down the inflation. They started major infrastructure projects, one of which is the Golden Quadrilateral, connecting India by road. And what roads those were! All this made us wonder what was their need to come to power using the Hindutva bandwagon. They could have chanted the mantra of progress, prosperity, and industrialization instead. Foreign direct investment increased during their tenure and there were jobs created in India by multinational companies.

All was well save the Hindutva part. The right-wingers within BJP grew into Frankensteins and started going around as self proclaimed culture cops. If you think about it, these guys are even more misguided than the communists and are equally if not more dangerous. They captured liberal and forward thinking places like Goa and Bangalore and attacked the revellers there. And as part of their agenda to make these "western" places into regressive and backward places, they succeeded in spoiling BJP's game. In the name of Hinduism, which has always been the most tolerant of religions after Buddhism, they tried spreading fear and superstition in the minds of people. Sample this: our CM says on national television that one Mr Deve Gowda wants to kill him with black magic! There's more: funds allocated for the state government of Karnataka are publicly directed to Hindu temples! This is gradually getting worse than living in medieval Europe!

The other fallout of the Hindutva angle is the ire of the Muslim terrorists. They are constantly planting bombs under our asses almost in jest. You don't know when you will blow up. It is like a game of musical chairs. Who dies first?

So, whom did you choose? I chose a clean shaven Krishna Byregowda for Bangalore South. He has studied International relations in Washington, D.C., does not wear a white mark on his forehead proclaiming to be a Hindu, does not have a criminal record, and is just the kind of leader we should all go for: young, educated, clean, and with a purpose. He isn't as ugly as the others either. Let the wheel amble on, let there be corrupt officials (we can't change that because its human nature to be corrupt), let there be no roads, let there be no electricity...let life go on as it was in India all these years. Let's clutch our cellphones in the dark and for once not be afraid of being a woman, a Muslim, a Christian, or an atheist in India. Let's hope these young leaders (viz. Rahul Gandhi Khan, Omar Abdullah, Krishna Byregowda) take our country on another course and gradually change the way things work. I am eternally hopeful. I didn't have to live in any fear when I grew up under Congress rule. And that made me vote for the Congress again. Let's be back to being Indians.

P.S.: The Congress got a thumping majority. The country has voted out the regressive BJP and their Hindutva stand has bitten the dust. The earlier red bastion, West Bengal, has voted the Congress and its allies to power. Are the times changing? An African ruler of the world, Prabhakaran dead, the Talibans being hammered from both ends... is it all true?

aiween ee

1. Jayanagar, despite being branded as a Hindu Brahmin area (people from North Bangalore look down upon it because of its vegetarian influence), is where a huge Muslim population do their business. I get to interact with mostly the cloth merchants and tailors, and this pic was clicked from outside one dupatta shop in the basement, called Lu Lu Dupatta shop. They have all the colors on earth, and despite the area being rather dark with fumes from petrol gensets all around, I couldn't resist clicking this.





2. Later that day, again in Jayanagar, Aaron was waiting for Mr Victor Albert (his piano teacher) to come back from the Church. It was Easter, and we could understand his being late by about 30 minutes. Aaron, meanwhile, checked out the lingerie shop downstairs. When I was his age, a pic of a woman in her lingerie would be hard to come by, and most ads in the magazines and newspapers were sketches. Today, models are fighting to grab a plum role for a leading brand. "Daddy, your Jockey is available here," he announced pretty innocently (and loudly). Strangely, he was looking at women's innerwear!
3. Tawa toast, if made with a lot of patience on a thick tawa, tastes better than bread from an electric toaster. Not uniformly toasted, with some parts a little burnt and some parts nicely toasted, they go very well with marmalade and darjeeling tea early in the morning. Like they serve you in a forest rest house or maybe in some Army canteen... tawa toast, a lump of butter, and black tea.

A 2 mp phone camera gives you pixelated pics that look hazy when blown up. But there's some fun in being able to click at random. Much handier than your digital camera, which you don't carry always... I have also taken some pretty weird pics with this, stuff I dare not share... and am freaking out.

Of slippers and slipping away

Have you seen those jute Osho sandals? They are cool, eco friendly, and loved by all the white tourists who come to India. Not just the hippies, but also the normal tourist who wants to wear flipflops and "feel" India. I bought a pair in 2005, but this story is about 1992, when I had no idea where these beautiful jute sandals came from. In Banaras I had seen the white tourists wear these and a disturbing urge of flicking a pair from someone was rearing its ugly head inside my mind. Where do you have sandals lying unattended? Outside a temple, of course. And which temple do most of the tourists visit? Why, it is our very own Sankatmochan!

"Meghadoot da, have you heard Dil Gira Dafatan? It is from Dilli 6." Now, among my musically inclined friends, mentioning AR gets me brickbats. AR Rahman produces stereotypes, and makes music for the musically challenged masses of India. Remember Muqabla? Well, that's what he is capable of. Talk about music, they will insist. But I took a chance. I had to tell Meghadoot da about AR's music in Dilli 6. Although it is at times signature AR, it is beautiful and various. It has the smell of Dilli in it, it has Masakkali, it has fresh voices like Ash King's or Mohit Chauhan's... it definitely has the poetry of Prasoon Joshi (who IS this guy and how many women are running after him now?), and AR has poured out his best in this album. His soul is captured in this album.
"You know... there's something about the tempo of this song... the fast guitar in the background and the magically slow vocals by Ash King in the foreground... which creates a temporal confusion in your brain...that's akin to being stoned after quality pot... I feel stoned every time I listen to that track.

"I also listened to Lopamudra's Krishnakali right after that, but after a while, I switched to Dilli 6 again. Is it because I can't understand Tagore's music? Why doesn't it appeal to me?

And then he told me about how, if you are not a singer with a range like Lata or Asha, you can't do justice to all kinds of Tagore's songs. The different moods, the variation in the tempo according to the mood, the absolute melancholy in one song that aligns with your grief today and the fresh hope in the next, is what Tagore is all about. Unfortunately, the new generation of singers have not been able to grasp and render that same variety in their albums. There's a whole dimension missing, that of the depth. The emotional depth. If one fails to do that, one fails to grasp the attention of a potential listener like me.

"Remember Sankatmochan?" I remembered Sankatmochan. This old temple with an expansive courtyard hosts a classical music conference every year. It is nothing like your Dover Lane Music Conference in Calcutta. It has a charm that is known to have waylaid many lay persons and made music lovers out of them. It is free, and it has the best classical musicians performing every year.

Knowing I would find the nice Osho sandals there, I went with some other students one night to the Sankatmochan temple. It is about a kilometer from the university entrance and we went barefeet, determined to get nice sandals for ourselves from the piled up footwear outside the main hall. The mood of the place made me curious. There were families from villages who had come from long distances on their bullock carts and there were hundreds of European tourists among the thousands of Banarasis. They were waiting for the stalwarts to perform.

"Yes, I remember Sankatmochan. I distinctly remember Pt V.G. Jog and Mme Sisirkana perform, and I also remember how Pt Jasraj started late in the night and sang the raga bhairavi to usher in the morning. But did I tell you about this, Meghadoot da? I liked Sisirkana's violin recital a lot more than VG Jog's. She used a viola, five strings, and would sometimes play two strings in harmony with each other. That made her rendition a lot more soulful. I couldn't identify the raga, am a layman, but the soul of her music still reverberates within. It is gonna be there for a long time."

Meghadoot da doesn't know perhaps that I went to flick a pair of Osho sandals from a music conference. But he also doesn't know that I came back barefeet that year. And every year after that till 1995, a potential thief, waylaid.

Tasmanian Devil

When you are married to someone whom you've known from school, you happen to act like schoolkids at times even though you are on the wrong side of 40. You cuddle, hug, pick them up, or sometimes dive into the bed together. These are mostly asexual acts, and can also pass off as wrestling maneuvers if the WWF bosses are asked to judge: "There, there, he has pinned her to the bed and what is this? What is this? She has kicked him in his balls. OOOOH, that must've hurt!" Moral of the story is, buy a bed with strong legs.
So, these things keep happening. I have seen my neighbors do it. I have seen their Labrador, Buddy, trying to snuggle in between his sparring human parents. And here sneaks in the subject of my article today. What if you have a hyphen at home? A hyphen that questions this public display of affection? Yesterday, during one such crazy moment, Aaron came in between us, pushed me away, and called me a Tasmanian Devil. If you are used to watching Looney Tunes, you know what a Tasmanian Devil is. It is this horrible beast that all animals in the jungle are scared of. Save Bugs Bunny, of course. He somehow manages to trick this Devil into submission.
But, despite being a real dumbass, it is a scary looking monster no doubt.

(image from www.webweaver.nu/clipart/cartoon2.shtml)

Now this guy is really afraid of the Tasmanian Devil. Every time the animals announce that the Devil is approaching, you can see him cower, cringe, and try to hide behind a curtain. To him, it is the ultimate fear factor. And he called me a Tasmanian Devil.

I tried telling him that it is a politically incorrect term and that the Tasmanians, if they could speak English, would have had serious reservations about this animal being called a Tasmanian. But to no avail. He wanted me to stay away from his mom. That got me thinking: how much show of affection is okay in front of kids? I know of one really horny couple who used to make out in front of their little kid, resulting in the kid turning out to be a real psycho. They happened to be Bengalis too, much to our embarrassment. When a kid sees his parents in an embrace or loving each other, it feels insecure and left out. But that doesn't mean you don't kiss or wrestle, right?

I called up our psychoanalyst Meghadoot da. Although he has a postgraduate degree in Horticulture, he seems to be really good with my brain. He has counseled me many times and I sincerely rely on his advice. For example, the time when I wanted to get admitted to a hospital to get a girl's attention, he dissuaded me from it, saying it won't really help. He also helped me find a girl of my mental level, which is difficult in a university of such repute. So, this urgent call to Meghadoot da found him in the midst of a drinking binge. He had mixed vodka and rum, and was flying when I called.
"Shuvo...did I tell you about Asha?"
"Ah...Asha? But how do you know about her? She works with us here."
"Ah, i mean Asha Puthli."
"Who is she? I don't seem to remember."
"A jazz great. She was hot on the music scene in the 70s. Find her out on youtube."

And there ended our conversation with Meghadoot da perhaps going back to his imaginary duet with her. But my question wasn't answered. How much display of affection in front of kids? A peck and not a kiss? How long? What about the times when you want to push her down the stairs? What about her kicking my ass? Aren't we supposed to do all this?

And then i found my answer. "Do as the Tasmanian Devil does," a divine voice inside my mind seemed to tell me. I picked him up and threw him into the bed. He sank into the pillows and by the time he could recover, I had thrown her into the bed as well.

Cross Dressing Woes of a Bengali Gentleman

Of all the occasions when I wore a woman's clothes, the first time was very involuntary. In fact I had no say about it at all. My mom bought me a couple of white, embroidered pennies to wear at home. There weren't any diapers those days and paddling all around the house wearing pennies meant I could pee anywhere, any time. What was a thing of convenience for my mom turned out to be something people like to call a psychological aberration today. Not that I always cross dress, but the sudden act of running around the house in my wife's negligee scares the holy almighty out of my son, for sure. Maybe one reason why he doesn't trust the gods too much. (I wonder if the first skeptic had a cross dresser dad too.)

My friends from all the different stages of my life have had the good fortune of seeing me cross dress for some reason or the other. You may remember the time I inadvertently wore a pair of panties to my office, but that was, as I said, inadvertent and completely unintentional. Panties, by their sheer flimsy nature, are not technically fit for men. And I am not referring to that episode at all. The first time I came out wearing a pair of jeans and a tee, dressed as a girl with short hair, was when I was about 14. The seeds that my mom sowed way back in 1971 were bearing healthy fruit, you can say, because apart from my cohorts, most of our other classmates were fooled hollow. Many of them tried to follow us (three boys and a new girl!) on their bicycles that evening. The secret was never revealed and if any of them are writing their autobiographies today, you may read about their first crush being a girl in a blue tee and fiery red lipstick. If they remember, she had a slight hint of boobs too, probably the size of ping pong balls. Poor guys.

Experimenting sexually with boys was very in, and although most of them have grown mustaches and are helping their wives make babies by the dozen now, we were a collective gay community those days. Everybody had measured everybody in that clandestine group and we were ready for the women. Unfortunately, girls were hard to come by. So we went back to measuring each other.

As we grew up and started transforming from boys to men, we were repulsed by each other. The feminine curves were gone, we sprouted hair at unwanted places, and suddenly we discovered the joys of cricket. Yuck, was our collective sigh, but by then the external tuition classes had started and the girls were within easy access. By access I mean to talk to. That high, believe me, was much more than what an entire bottle of Jack Daniels can give me today. Atasi, our principal's daughter, was yet to walk into puberty, but she was the only one who spoke with all the boys. We used to sit all around a cot on little cane stools, and while our teacher would try to teach us physics, almost a dozen legs would reach out for Atasi's under the cot. The silent melee that this resulted in under the cot, with all of us maintaining straight faces above it, was no less than a battle of Panipat. I don't remember who managed to reach Atasi's leg, but I never did. The max I had gone was upto Subham's legs, who enjoyed an hour-long tickle without protesting, thus giving me the idea that Atasi liked me a lot and would probably make babies with me later. Unfortunately, I could not find Subham later to give him a fitting reply.

By the time we reached the university, most of us had been able to do what all American boys are rumored to have achieved on their prom nights. We were men now, but much to my amusement, that strange streak of cross dressing hadn't left me yet. One winter day in Varanasi, as we waited for the girls to come and cut the fruits for Saraswati Puja, it struck me again. Soumitro was taller and I made him my boyfriend as I came out wearing a huge red sweater, a longish bandana and jeans. By now, the ping pongs had given way to earthen bhaars meant for curds. He held me by the waist as we sauntered around in the garden, waiting for the girls to make an entry. I was very curious to know their reaction as I could feel many pairs of eyes trying to check out my bottom through the long, red sweater.

This was a huge success because all the girls who had their eyes set on Soumitro were pretty much bothered. In fact, when I made a normal entry later, some of them asked me who the girl was. It was a strange moment for me. None of the girls were interested in me. I was trying to attract their attention. As another woman! It was time for introspection. What was I upto? Am I growing up all right? Do I need to sit with Meghadoot da for a counseling session?

Many years later we had an ethnic-wear day for one of our office parties. I nonchalantly took out one of my wife's kurta-churidar sets, donned a banjara cap, wore a necklace and went rather boldly to the party, expecting I would attract some attention. Many years of being in the oblivion of trousers and shirts had brought out the rebel in me. I made an entry. Almost in slo-mo, I walked into the huge ballroom of Leela. The crowd had gathered somewhere else. People were discussing something in hushed tones. The entire atmosphere of the place was pregnant with the possibility of a sudden outburst of laughter. A little more into the crowd and I saw what they were all about to laugh at. At the center of the hall was one of our Bengali colleagues, in a traditional Bengali kurta with some khajuraho paintings on it. It would have been a prized exhibit in the wardrobe of any woman, but on that guy, it looked downright hideous. It was a red kurta with a golden statuette painted on it. It was something all Bengali men wear whenever they want to look handsome. And mine was just a plain blue one with shirt collars.

And I realized, I was never a cross dresser. Always a true-blue Bengali.

More on Film Awards

But I would like some British humor do the talking instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfD2JFfwxLY&feature=related

My favorite hero, Sir Rowan Atkinson, says it all like nobody else can.

Shameful Day

One would want to rever the Academy, but it turns out that they have been swayed by the shit being sold by Danny Boyle, maybe because someone told them that the F18 hornets have a market in this subcontinent. The Indians have to be kept happy. And if you select one of their hundreds of silly song-and-dance fantasies and give it a bunch of Oscars (art for the economy's sake), the brown bastards will come out of their slums and do a jig a la Jai Ho. Did you, did anyone...see the mindless Bollywood dancers strutting their shit on the revered stage? And Rahman winning an Oscar for THIS shit? At least Masakkali from Dilli 6 would have been a better choice. Jai Ho? Rahman had become stereotyped and had lost it long back, but this is one of his WORST compositions, as everyone sadly agrees. An Oscar for that?

I mean, whom are you trying to please here? You think by giving away some Oscars to India for a B-grade, over-the-top movie you can have a market here? Maybe you are right. Like Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons, despite being utterly mindless, bags all the Oscars, at the cost of art. And you had a nice market warming up to you in China.

Yes, so you will probably give some Brazilian movie all the possible Oscars soon, or maybe you already have, and yes, I grant you this: you have been able to conquer all the markets. But, unfortunately enough, you have let down a world full of serious moviegoers by your judgment. You have lost your right to be at the judge's seat.

Indian commercial cinema has a long way to go, so the lesser said about that the better. We have had stalwarts in parallel cinema, but because their films could not make enough money at the Indian Box Office, we wrote them off as psuedointellectuals. We hailed the Raj Kapoors instead. So, the moment you base your judgment on the amount of money a movie makes, you are talking about a business. Not about art. And Slumdog Millionaire comes nowhere near art in any form. Like Aamir Khan said today, it is a little over the top. Like Bachhan and Arindam Chaudhuri slammed it, it should be written off as just any other movie. It definitely doesn't have what the other Indian nomination got: Taare Zameen Par. Poor Aamir Khan. He is considerably fair, but probably not as much as a Caucasian. And Aamir, lemme tell you one thing: you are not any bit poorer for not having won it for your masterpiece. If this is what the Academy judges are capable of, you can at least look forward to some kudos from the Europeans, the true keepers of art.

The Academy Awards? Thanks, but no thanks.

A World Outraged

Just now I got some threat messages from right-wing Christian groups for having published my last blog. They objected to the word psalm, but I didn't get an opportunity to tell them that a psalm means a sacred song or a hymn and it has NO reference to the book of The Holy Bible whatsoever. So I will change it to a shloka. Does a shloka, by virtue of being a Sanskrit word, become a Hindu term? Can't there have been Christian shlokas in The Holy Bible?

And then some women pointed out that clicking a picture like that was very objectionable and that they will take me to court for having outraged their modesty publicly like this.

Mallika Sarabhai* called to say that the subject is fat and thus by putting up a picture of someone's fat ass I have outraged the aesthetic sensibilities of bloggers and online joggers. Mallika actually believes obese people hurt our aesthetic sensibilities. I silently agree with her, but then, for the fear of brickbats from expected and unexpected quarters, I publicly disagree with her. What utter nonsense, I say!

The Muslim waqf board has expressed its utter disgruntlement at this picture being clicked at a kabab joint run by Muslims. I fail to see the connection here, but then...

The Hindus were the most noisy of all. And this is the group that came up with a variety of conflicting viewpoints, much like their conflicting gods at loggerheads with each other. First, a group claimed that me being a Hindu, I should have elaborated on that hand in the picture. They feel it can belong to anybody from Durga (who has ten arms) to Kartik (who has four). Closer inspection of the picture, they further said, revealed that it was a male arm, and because Ganesha has fat arms, this arm definitely belongs to Kartik. They now want to perform kar seva at the Muslim kabab joint because they feel it was Kartik's original birthplace. Another group of Hindus (and their leader calls himself Mr Mutalik) asked me about the identity of the woman in question and are out looking for her for not having worn a sari to a public place. I pointed out to them that she isn't wearing a pink chaddi either, but that must have further outraged them.

The last threat was from Israel. They want to know why a falafal is being called a shwarma roll, why Muslims have not paid any royalty for having stolen their recipe of a falafal, and why there is no hummus used if it is a falafal after all. When I told them that these rolls indeed have hummus in them, they filed a lawsuit against the Muslim kabab center at the International Court of Justice for damages to their intellectual property rights.

The only congratulatory mails have come from some really fat, mid-Western Americans. I wonder why.

*Mallika Sarabhai, to serve your short memories, is a famous danseuse and twenty times better looking than Mallika Sherawat. It wasn't a typo.

and then He said: psalm 29.3, SGR

and then He said, do you want some of that? And we both turned to see where he was pointing.

Holding His Hand

Suddenly I woke up with a fear. What if he grows up? What if he starts cleaning himself after potty and doesn't scream DAAAADDDDDY, AM DONE? What if he doesn't place his hand in mine and say "keep holding until I go off to sleep"?

What if I lose him? Frantically looked for some pictures to put up here and reassure myself that he is still my lil son. He isn't grown too much yet. He still likes it when I holler out every evening "where's my lil darling" at his day care. He wants to ride his cycle with me next to him. Wants to go on motorcycle rides. I have very selfishly not included his mom in these pics (apart from in one) because it is usually a dad who loses his son and not the mom. I always went back to my mom with my stories while my dad and I were moved further apart. This is a selfish exercise to remind him later that it WAS ME, MY SON :-), who brought you up.

He moved to his room (adjacent to ours) a year back, before he turned six. It was on my insistence, actually. And then I started missing his little palm snuggling in mine. Went to his room and got him back to his bed (this too is adjacent to ours). I used to be very adamant about sending him to a good boarding, but now am not so sure. I know am in for a big shock when he finds his wheels. He already has, you know. He rides his cycle within the street right now unless I am on my motorcycle escorting him, but very soon he will turn that corner and vanish. Ride into his own life.

Till then, let me savor the memories. Let me try not to hold him back. But also not push him away when he still wants to snuggle into me.

A few years back when he used to go to this day care run by a vegetarian family, I almost felt that I have lost him. His taste buds changed and he started preferring curd rice and sambar instead of food. He would refuse beef and sometimes even chicken. Those were very depressing months for us but we managed to get him out of that vicious vegetarian grip. Now, things are much better and he eats normal food. He has even learned to eat chicken rolls and momos like Bengalis. I could almost thank god for that had I had any gods available at that moment.

I guess that also rules out the possibility of him going for a vegetarian Kannadiga girl. Now my eyes are set on my current mixed doubles partner in badminton. She is about seven and is a Mangalorean. Hits the shuttle like nobody's business and is very aggressive on the court. She also happens to be the prettiest thing I have seen in a long time. hehehehehehehe . . .

I guess the best way to keep him by my side is by finding him a girl besotted with Uncle Ari. Wot say?

Two fantastic diesels

Two fantastic diesel cars were launched recently, and I sincerely hope both of these do well. I couldn't say two beautiful diesel cars because while one of them is from the same design house that designs Maseratis, the other looks like an Australian hybrid cow. But they both seem set to be champions in their respective segments.

The first is the Fiat Linea. Designed at the Fiat Style House, it has European elegance written all over. In an age when the Japs are busy making their midsize cars look like spaceships, the Linea is simple and beautiful without too many nicks and edges like the new Honda City, which loses it in trying to emulate the beautiful Civic. While the Linea has two petrol variants, it is the diesel (1.3 liter multijet, tweaked to make 90 bhp and capable of 160 kmph) that will sell in the midsize segment, given the price sensitivity in that class.

From the back, the Linea will remind you of an Opel Vectra, and the front grille continuing down to the bumper is a powerful style statement as well. I am an elegant car, and not a wannabe. Here's a design that takes the Linea from the midsize and places it right in the executive segment, where the Civic, Accord, and Camry rule.

What's attractive about the Linea is its pricing. It is priced lesser than the ugly Korean Hyundai Verna and also a lot lesser than the Honda City or the Toyota Altis. Will it be able to wean away Honda and Toyota buyers? There's little chance of that happening, but people considering buying the Swift Dzire (which gets the ugliest car award along with Suzuki Versa, Toyota Qualis, and Toyota Innova), Tata Indigo, and Mahindra Renault Logan will definitely consider this as a viable option. It would have been nice to see Indians falling in love with the European character of a car instead of falling prey to boring Japanese reliability, but Indians are only second generation car buyers and you cannot expect a lot of class and maturity in their choice. They want practical cars, and Honda and Toyota give you stable, practical cars that don't give you any trouble. The fact that they don't give you any pleasure either can be overlooked in a market like this. I would like to keep aside Mitsubishi from this discussion because that's one company that has given us cars that you don't want to part with. You can soup up your Lancer, add a different engine, take it to a rally, and give it a wacky paint job after you have had it for ten years, whereas you will only upgrade from your Honda or Toyota.


Will Tata be able to do justice to the Fiat name? Unfortunately, no. The Tatas make the Safari owner and the call center Indica driver stand in the same queue when they come to get their cars serviced. It is doubtful that they will do any justice to the Linea either. It would have been a different case had Fiat had their MoU with Mahindra and Mahindra.

Coming to Mahindra, the Xylo is the other car that I want to write about. It baffles you at first. Is it as ugly as the Innova? Is it as butchy and mean looking as the Scorpio? It will be nice if you can reach the driver's seat before you can make up your mind either way. If you think it is ugly, you will miss what this car has to offer once you are inside. Plush seating, lots of legroom, unexpectedly sweet ergonomics for an Indian car, and a lighter and surprisingly fast engine. It also has the most spacious third row, and is ideal for the big, fat Indian family, like mine. I sometimes have to take 8 people in one vehicle for distances anywhere between 300 to 650 kms. And the knowledge that they are not trying to fit themselves in in the third row of my Bolero on those two jump seats meant for monkey-sized people is a huge relief. In my Bolero, I always feel awkward sitting in the driver's seat because I know two of them at the back must be cursing the roads and everything else in general.

Will the big Indian family now buy a Mahindra Xylo instead of an Innova or a Tavera? I hope they do. It makes sense because again this baby is priced at 7 lakhs on road, which is way cheaper than the Innova. The 2.5 liter engine of the Xylo produces 112 bhp, and despite the weight of the vehicle, it is very quick. I read that the cons are braking and the lack of anti-roll bars at the back, but I haven't driven one to confirm that yet.

What will it be for you, then? Practically thinking, a person like me should go for a Xylo, but the beauty of the Linea (and the affordability factor) is too tempting to resist.

Images from:

http://fiat-india.com/gallery.aspx?ModelId=5

http://mahindraxylo.co.in/view_gallery.html