Mozzarella

Ad-hoc

2007-06-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

A look at most of the ads on television and one really wonders how much time the ad-makers invested into making them. Most advertisements range from bad to worse to plain disastrous. There is of course the rare good ‘un that makes you sit up or maybe even laugh out loud, but in general ads nowadays are nothing remarkable, to say the least. And then of course there are a few which make you laugh out loud at how incredibly ridiculous they are and make you wonder how many pegs it took for the ad-maker to reach that zen-like state where trash looks like gold.

Worthy of mention is the ad for this deo / perfume that goes by the name of ‘Zatak Gold’. First of all, it takes real talent to even come up with this ‘catchy’ name (whose mention evokes memories of kids running around with toy guns and zapping each other). Rest assured that even your average smelly middle-aged Joe would think twice about the merits of body odour before buying a deo that goes by the name of (pause) Zatak. So with this background, the ad-makers must’ve really had their task cut out for them. The ad shows this guy dressed in a casual suit walking into a pyramid (ostensibly with the deo on him). Hmm – tacky, innovative. Can’t remember the last ad I saw with an Egyptian motif. Oh, wait – that must be because such ads have always sucked! Anyway, once inside the pyramid he walks deeper and deeper without a care in the world. Lo! The golden statues inside the pyramid have started coming to life! And as is the norm, they have to all be nubile twenty somethings with orgasmic sighs on their faces. They start strutting towards him in a walk that can only be described as a duck walk crossed with the ketchup dance (remember Aserje-whatever and the tomato ketchup company that tried to make a quick buck off it? But that’s another story). Back to the ad, our hero finally realizes that they are all closing in and quite inexplicably, he starts spinning rapidly. In a flash, he disappears leaving behind a pile of gold dust on the floor. The product name is announced. Oh, and did I mention the faux-Egyptian background music and a female voice singing, “Zata-aa-aa-k Gold! Zata-aa-aa-k Gold!”?

Ad-making is a funny business if you ask me. First of all, it’s ridden with cliches and yet nobody seems to care. Common cliches and stereotypes include:

1. The dirty kid who wears white, sprawls around in the mud and sees it fit to come back home caked with it and an oh-so-lovable smile. The beaming mother after an expression of mock-disapproval takes the white shirt and dumps it into a bucket. Surf Excel / Ariel / Henko Stain Champion / Tide hai na! This is if of course followed by this enlightening animation depicting the T-shirt fibres and how the ‘molecules’ of the detergent swirl about completely eradicating the dirt. I have indeed lost count of how many times this tripe has been shoved down our throats!

2. Another cliché becoming increasingly popular nowadays is the hyper-smart kid who is able to perform calculations faster than the billing machine at supermarkets etc all thanks to him consuming Horlicks / Bournvita / Kelloggs or whatever. Can you imagine the amount of pressure this puts on children! I can literally see mothers in their houses going, “See! You have to be like that boy they show on TV. Just look at how smart he is!” I personally feel like torturing those smart-alec kids till they finally confess on television that they don’t really give a damn about supermarket bills and all they really care about is getting back home on time to watch the latest episode of Beyblade or whatever. But hey, that’s just me.

3. The laboratory cliché was also something that emerged in the late nineties (I think). Usually ads for shampoo / toothpaste they depict this International Hair Institute (in France or USA) where scientists in lab coats are breaking their backs working on the next generation cutting-edge shampoo. Then of course, computer graphics of the hair are shown with the shampoo destroying all the dandruff and whatnot while miraculously increasing the hair strength by 3 times. It’s been proven in labs, dammit! You had better believe it.

I could list out several other cliches, but you get the idea. Cliché after cliché and yet nobody seems to care. In a world where 33-40% (hey, I can cook up numbers too) of all television is advertising, isn’t it strange that there exists no ad-critic (much like movie critics)? Well, maybe they do, but I haven’t really heard of anybody coming out with reviews of these ads.

But then again, I suppose (with a horrible feeling in my stomach) that most of these ads, actually work. Otherwise, they wouldn’t keep persisting with all these hackneyed reruns would they? Or maybe the people are buying the products, in spite of the ads rather than because of the ads? How does one go about finding how effective these ads really are?

On the positive side, advertisements do have their funny moments now and then. The legendary ‘one-black-coffee’ ad for the Sony-Ericsson mobile phone when it was first introduced in the latter half of the nineties is one of those which is still impinged upon most minds of my generation. And of course, almost any Fevicol ad till now has been a masterpiece. More recently, the Bingo Chips advertisements have trodden off the beaten path with their humourous, not-so-subtle spoofs of telemarketing, Tamil culture and so on. The sudden twist in the end when you realize that they are actually marketing chips is very satisfying. Sometimes the humour in ads is unintentional too. For instance, there was this ad for some savings / mutual funds where this chap acts as a responsible father teaching his little son the value of money. And funnily enough, the very next ad they showed after this had the same chap acting as this guy who gets seduced into bed by a female colleague, because she wanted to flick his watch. Talk about a reversal of roles.

Ads. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. You just can’t ignore ‘em. And at the end of the day, I guess that’s what every ad-maker wants.

The Sphere

2006-09-05T00:43:00.000-07:00

The sphere haunts my dreams. Yet again. Just like it did last night. And the night before. In fact, all the nights I have ever remembered. No frills, no unnecessary distractions to detract from the dream. Just the sphere. Shining, huge, suspended in water.

It’s our way of life. A constant intangible existence consisting of several dreams connected to each other. Each one seems extremely real and yet, has that absurd element which is supposed to distinguish dreams from reality. Or so they say anyway. A few brief flashes of cognizance in this seemingly everlasting slumber hardly make me qualified enough to comment on reality.

We are told that the world outside has people who are actually free to do what they choose. Real people. People who talk, sing, laugh, scream, cry, love, hate. People who fight wars and make love. People who travel from place to place and others who stay put. People with absolutely no purpose for existence and those whose clarity of purpose is almost close to ours. But free people nevertheless.

Ah, what a wonderful life it is for them! Not trapped in this cocoon of stagnation. Not infused with knowledge at this rapid rate. And definitely not told time and again about the sphere.

Of course, we are told about them only occasionally. Most of the time it’s the sphere which occupies our thoughts. It’s rather strange, actually. The physical image of the sphere is seared into our heads, but we really know almost nothing about it. Just that one day, we all have to wake up and head towards it. The fate of the world supposedly depends upon us.

I have used the word ‘we’ because I’m quite certain that there are more like me in this existence. But of course, one could not be sure.

It turned out that a couple of days later, I was sure.

There was a sudden electrifying surge of energy, which jolted me right out of sleep. The vision of the sphere which should have logically started to fade way since I was awake, only multiplied in intensity. Flashes of light punctuated the uneasy silence.

I was in a huge cavern which seemed to stretch right out into infinity. I looked down and saw that I was clothed from top to bottom in black. I looked about and saw nearly hundreds like me. All seemed hypnotized. Some were moving about, a little restless. But most were still. Just like I was.

Waiting, waiting, waiting… The sphere. The sphere. The sphere. That was all that mattered. This was it. The D-Day, they had called it. This was the day that was ingrained in my head ever since I was subconscious. The procedures and rules started popping into my head like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

It was all very simple really. Swim out through the tunnels. Enter the sea. Locate the sphere. Attack it.

My entire life’s purpose was clear. There were no regrets about freedom and all that anymore. It was all for this day. This was what we had been trained for, while suspended for what seemed like eternity in that amniotic fluid.

More surges. More flashes. A small section started a deep booming chant, which sounded silly at first. Then suddenly I started doing it myself and it didn’t seem so silly anymore. It was our war cry. The louder we did it, the clearer the image of sphere became.

The temperature slowly started increasing. The walls of the cavern we were in started to glow with a dull dark red sheen. The thrill of expectation rose up in all of us. The war cry became even louder. Attack the sphere, attack the sphere it seemed to suggest.

Suddenly, without warning, there was a mild shock wave which travelled through the entire cavern. The chant faltered for a moment before redoubling in volume. Another shock wave. This one stronger than the first. And another, even stronger. Pulses of the wave seemed to hit our very cores. The chant was almost like a frenzy now.

And then there it was. We all knew it about it before, but I don’t think any of could have fathomed its power. A torrent of warm water hit us with tremendous force and before I knew it was rocketing along at a blistering pace towards the tunnel entrance. And I was still chanting, louder than ever. It was like an explosion of clarity. Extraneous details like us hurtling through the water like torpedoes, didn’t seem to matter.

The sphere. That was all that mattered. Swim out through the tunnels. Enter the sea. Locate the sphere. Attack it.

As expected our speed increased manifold as soon as we entered the tunnel. The electric current was surging through us stronger than ever. It was around this time that I realised that we weren’t exactly in warm water. It seemed to be a conductive fluid of some sort. More importantly I realised that there were only three in front of me. I was fourth in line to attack the sphere.

The current seemed to level out at peak intensity here. It was so powerful that it almost tore me apart. But thrill, pain and excitement didn’t matter anymore. Purpose. That was all that mattered. The sphere! The sphere! THE SPHERE!

And then it just stopped.

And along with it came something which I should’ve expected all along. But I didn’t. A sudden deceleration, which seemed to push or rather hammer me back with almost as much force that had set these events into motion. We were out of the tunnels.

The shimmering fluid we were cocooned in seemed to fade away, replaced slowly by the salty tang of sea water. No more electricity. No more shock waves. No more chanting. Just the serenity of the underwater sea.

But the sphere, no, it didn’t leave my mind. It was still branded into my head the same intensity. Or was it? It seemed to be slipping away. Other thoughts were entering.

Here was the sea! Here was freedom! No more dreams! No more impulses! Swim away, you idiot! Swim away!

I looked around and indeed several more seemed to have the same thoughts as me. They were drifting away from the pack. I looked ahead and saw the person in front of me trying to do the same.

And then something weird happened. He swam to the left and was suddenly struck by a bout of paralysis. The lower part of his body writhed and tried to propel him away, but soon enough it seemed to freeze. At that instant, he looked at me, his eyes turning from glimmering orbs to lifeless hollows. He then froze completely and sank down, fading away into the abyss.

One more look around, and a shocking sight awaited me. Hundreds of others were suffering the same fate. However, there was still a sizeable number that ploughed on relentlessly.

It was then that I realised. There is no life without the cocoon for us. In the sea, we were ironically like fishes out of water. There was no defence. No protection, whatsoever. I became conscious of the sea water slowly trying to erode away the black suit I was wearing.

I looked around yet again and saw more of them trying to swim away. Wayward fools! How could they not realise it? There lies freedom underwater, but it’s ephemeral at best. Death was a certainty. The calm blue underwater environment was a cold blooded killer.

Was there glory in such a death? Was there really glory in freedom? What was more glorious? A death while trying to run away, or death faced like a man in the pursuit of the sphere?

Purpose is everything. Purpose is all, they used to say. We were all lethal weapons, born and bred for one purpose only. Any doubts I had in my mind melted away, replaced by the image of the sphere, sharper and clearer than ever. Attack the sphere. Attack it with all you have.

The pain started to seep in slowly. I knew I wouldn’t survive for long. I summoned all the power I had and kept swimming ahead. I was soon ahead of the rest of the pack. It was at this time that I noticed the white light that we were all swimming towards. It was getting brighter and brighter.

It was the sphere.

The thrill of anticipation arose again. It was finally here. The culmination of all the dreams and almost every thought I had ever had throughout my life. The others behind me seemed to speed up, but I wasn’t bothered at all. I knew I would strike the first blow.

Death would be instantaneous. Death would be painless. I braced my self and adjusted my headpiece, ready to ram into the sphere.

5 seconds more. 4 seconds. 3, 2, 1…

My head hit the sphere with all the force I could muster. It ruptured almost too easily and to my surprise I was inside it. I could hear a sudden whirring noise as the sphere seemed to surround itself with an impregnable shell as if to prevent any further damage. Everything seemed to have slowed down to almost a standstill. I could hear my comrades outside hitting the sphere in vain. I could even hear the cracking of their skulls before they fell away. Lifeless. A painless instantaneous death. But a glorious one nevertheless.

But what of me? Was I dead? Was this how it felt? There was a smaller inner sphere which was coming closer every moment. My waning momentum dragged me gently towards it. I touched it and it seemed to kiss me. A glowing radiance, spread all through me.

This wasn’t death. A tingling spark was suffusing through all my veins. My body reached a heightened state and then it was no more. I couldn’t feel it at all. All the information which was fed into my head seemed to be pouring out and swirling around in the inner sphere.

This wasn’t death. It was life. Life in all its glory. My body was gone and yet I felt more alive than ever before. I felt proud that out of thousands, maybe even millions, I was chosen to be the one to experience this.

It was beauty. It was pain. It was anger. It was happiness. Every emotion of the kaleidoscope of life seemed to flash through my thoughts.

And then there was peace.

Nine months later, somewhere in the world, a baby took its first breath.

Questions

2006-06-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

The mouse pointer moves to click on the desktop shortcut for Microsoft Word. I set the font to Century Schoolbook, size 14, centralize and bolden it for a heading. Nothing comes to my mind and I end up typing “Questions”. Go to the next line, ‘justify’ the alignment, reduce font size and start…

There is an old vague sense of familiarity as I sit before my computer and yet again stare hard at a Word document not knowing what to type, what to say… all I know is that I wanted to put up something. Why? No clue. What do I want to say? Can’t be sure.

It’s been nearly a year since I stopped blogging, though it never really felt like one. In that period, I haven’t written anything apart from lab reports, assignments and exams. And Orkut scraps and mail.

I remember the month when I didn’t touch my guitar as I had left it behind at my hostel. When I came back, I was a little uncomfortable with it, but proceeded to do the usual runs over the only 3 scales I knew. A warm-up, if you will. Soon enough it felt like I had never stopped playing at all.

I wonder if there is a similar warm-up exercise in this case. I wonder if I am not doing something akin to that right now.

Is it all over? Have I told the world all that I had to say or is there more in the future? Wasn’t I always blogging for the sake of it? And won’t I do it again? Worse still – am I putting up all this enigmatic mumbo-jumbo to sound interesting?

In a world of sharp opinions and ideas, is there really no space for someone who doesn’t have one? Sometimes, I wish I could just sit back, relax and simply say, “I don’t know...” More often, I wish I could find the words that could actually express what’s going on in my head.

Unanswered questions flying free
Without remorse, they lodge themselves in me
Uncooked pieces of cheese and words float in green jelly
Poet or lyricist I shall probably never be

In many ways, this is probably the most pointless post to have ever appeared on this blog (and probably the shortest). But in some ways, it strikes deeper down than any other. For me atleast.

Wrasslin'

2005-07-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

It was sometime in the latter half of 1999, that I saw my very first WWE (WWF then) match. The Undertaker vs Stone Cold Steve Austin. A ‘First Blood’ match which quite simply meant that the first person to bleed lost the match. I was rooting for the Undertaker, the 7-foot tall behemoth who seemed formidable indeed in front of the bald bearded Stone Cold. Moreover, here was the first time I was ever seeing the Undertaker on TV after years of calling out, “Height 7’2” clash!” from ‘trump’ cards.

After a long fight both in and out of the ring, the Undertaker lifted up Stone Cold by the neck and slammed him to the mat in an awesome move, which the commentators called a chokeslam. The Undertaker then exited the ring and rummaged around for a while before coming up with a video camera. By this time, Stone Cold had recovered and as the Undertaker turned around with the camera, he was bashed in the face with it. As Stone Cold flopped down, the Undertaker walked groggily and got hold of a chair. He then proceeded to bash Austin’s skull with it, only to realise that he had already lost because he was bleeding from the camera hit. A guy in a suit standing near the ring went pale with shock. A commentator wearing a hat, went nuts, screaming “Stone Cold! Stone Cold!” Stone Cold Steve Austin had won.

And so it started. Words like chokeslam, enziguiri, flying elbow, DDT, suplex, stunner and so on entered my vocabulary. Breaks between classes in school were filled with discussions of how Mankind gave the Rock the ‘socko’ and how Austin attacked Vince McMahon in a hospital. We tried chokeholds on each other and most debates were followed by the famous ‘suck it’ gesture, which even non-wrestling fans are aware of. Every edition of RAW was awaited with bated breath and every one of the Rock’s multitude of catchphrases was memorized to be used on several occasions. The harsh bleep used on TV to censor swear words became a swear word in itself as we all went around cursing each other with beeps.

I’m sure everyone here has seen a few WWF matches, mostly when they were young during the time when Bret Hart, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels and Diesel reigned. And at that young age, it all seems so real. For instance, many might have really believed that the Undertaker derived his power from that little urn and was ‘resurrected’ after being shut into a coffin by Yokozuna. Of course, as wisdom and better sense prevailed, some stopped watching it, though many still continued following the weekly tussles in the ‘squared circle’. I was a very different case though. I started watching it when I was in the 9^th standard and obviously knew that the fights couldn’t be real. And yet, it was so enticing that I had to watch it every week without fail.

Wrestling is very strange in some respects. For instance, amateur wrestling is an Olympic sport, which is very real and requires extremely sharp reflexes. It has strict rules and regulations and all the fighting is in the form of grapples and throws rather than body blows. Pro wrestling on the other hand, cannot even be called a sport. Sure, it has elements of sport like contestants, titles, winners and so on. At the same time, it’s like a movie, orchestrated from beginning to end and played out in front of millions of viewers every week. The combination of the suspense of the movies and the testosterone-fuelled visceral thrills of contact sports is what makes wrestling immensely popular all over the world. WWE owner Vince McMahon terms it as ‘sports entertainment’, which pretty much sums it all up.

Violence is a primal urge hidden inside every human being and wrestling is one way of satisfying it second hand. Now I am not saying that wrestling spawns violence. In fact, the Romans used to quench their urges by putting gladiators in life-or-death battles against each other or animals. Perhaps, we should be fortunate that we live in a more civilized era, where our ‘recreational violence’ is make-believe. But of course, there is more to pro wrestling than just physicality.

Each wrestler has a unique personality (known as a ‘gimmick’), entrance music and moves. Elaborate storylines are sketched out giving the viewers a chance to enjoy the fights at more than the physical level. In wrestling terminology, wrestlers are classified into ‘faces’ and ‘heels’. The faces being the ones, who enjoy crowd support and have the best catchphrases. The heels are of course, ‘the bad boys’ who badmouth the crowd on every possible occasion. It’s all in the way they are portrayed. A wrestler who was a heel for some time can become a face if projected properly and vice versa.

Vicious, violent matches such as ‘Hell in a Cell’ and ‘Buried Alive’ are set up for the culmination of feuds between wrestlers. Exhilarating athletic abilities are displayed in matches involving cages, ladders, tables and whatnot. And for the ‘red-blooded male’ there are always girls in skimpy outfits to provide all the eye candy necessary. With such a package, how many can resist pro wrestling?

So, the WWE occupied most of my TV time for about a year or so. In the winter of 2000, Star Sports stopped showing the WWF and started showing the rival WCW federation, which soon ended when Vince McMahon bought the WCW sealing the ‘Monday Night Wars’ forever. There was no wrestling on Indian television for more than a year. It was very disappointing and there was only one option left. The Internet. And in my weekly pursuits to stay updated with the action, I learnt quite a few things.

For starters, what they showed on TV was about 3 weeks behind of what actually happened in the US. There the people could watch the weekly events for free on TV, but had to pay specially for the monthly extravaganza called the ‘pay-per-view’. Wrestlers who were supposedly out of action because of being ‘run down by cars’ and the like were actually recuperating from real injuries. Backstage politics by veteran wrestlers often called the shots which decided who would hold the championships and when. The fighting in the ring was real in a way and wrestlers were supposed to be able to withstand quite some blows known as ‘bumps’. They actually underwent pretty rigorous training before stepping into the ring.

The ubiquitous chairs that were used to bash the opponent’s skull were specially made chairs that absorbed 95% of the impact. Wrestlers actually bled on stage (contrary to people who think that it is dilute tomato ketchup). But the bleeding was not due to knocks on the head by chairs or brass knuckles. Instead, the wrestler would go down and cover his face after suffering such a shot. While the camera was off him, he would surreptitiously make a cut in his forehead with a blade concealed in his wristband in an act known in wrestling jargon as ‘blading’.

These were not the only things I learnt of, course. I read up on a lot of wrestling history and inspite of not having watched wrestling from an early age, I had a sackload of information stored in my head (forgotten quite a bit now). From the first Wrestlemania (the holy grail of wrestling) to the way Vince McMahon cheated Bret Hart in what has come to be known as the Survivor Series ‘screwjob’, I read a helluva lot of stuff in those days.

Soon enough, the football World Cup 2002 arrived. And with it came this hitherto unknown channel called Ten Sports, which started showing the WWF (now the WWE) again. And this time I watched it again, from a more intellectual perspective (I flatter myself). Of course, I still loved nothing more than a bloody ‘Hell in a Cell’ match, but I started to see for myself how they were trying to hook the public into the action. Things had changed. My favourite, the Rock had become a breakaway movie star and stopped wrestling regularly. Stone Cold was practically retired with injuries. The Undertaker had adopted a lame ‘American badass’ gimmick and was squashing guys who were way more entertaining than him. Many of the big names from the ‘Attitude Era’ (1997-2000) were gone. With WCW gone and no real competition, Vince McMahon became complacent and the programmes became worse.

And of course, the silly stereotypes which the WWE nurtured were beginning to irritate me. Japanese wrestlers who are amongst the most talented wrestlers in the world were portrayed as dolts who couldn’t speak English and were basically fodder for the rest of the wrestlers. Canadian wrestlers were booed by the entire crowd after they very stupidly unfurled the Canadian flag and proclaimed that they were better than the USA. Englishmen were portrayed as uptight suit wearing royalists. This has been happening for years with people like Ludvig Borga, The Iron Sheikh, Yokozuna and so on. The crowds have been encouraged to boo at them just because they were foreigners and hence ‘evil’. If it was the Iraqis during the Gulf War period in 1991 it was the French in 2003 because of their refusal to participate in the war. If the WWE crowds are representative of America, then Americans are pretty chauvinistic indeed.

Any wrestler no matter how stale or useless suddenly becomes a star once he waves the ‘good ol’ red, white and blue’. The biggest example of this is obviously Hulk Hogan. For years, a generation of American kids looked up at him as a role model as he rose to fame with his famous message of ‘do your training, eat your vitamins and say your prayers’. And yet, nobody had an idea of the man behind the façade who injected himself with all sorts of illegal drugs and indulged in nasty backstage politics.

To cut a long story short, wrestling no longer did it for me and I stopped watching it. Sure there’ve been several classic matches which I’d watch again anyday, but I have no enthusiasm to see it regularly anymore. And as with any obsession that fades away, this one left a mark as well. Believe it or not, it was the entrance music of WWE wrestlers that actually got me to listen to music. I started with metal and then slowly branched out and away into several other genres. But that’s a topic for another post. Some other day, perhaps.

Pulp sells... but who's buying?

2005-06-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

Jake silently reloaded his Beretta while his experienced ears attuned even to the sound of a mouse scuttling across the floor, listened carefully, trying to gauge Brenner’s next movement. He heard a silent click. Brenner had reloaded as well. And his was a Luger with a larger magazine. Eight bullets to his six.

Which didn’t really matter, of course. All Jake needed was two shots. And so did Brenner. It was Geneva all over again.

Sound familiar? It could be something you’d read in the latest Archer or Ludlum. Tom Clancy, perhaps. The quintessential spy confrontation. Just one glance at these words can make me remember years of my life spent in reading stuff like this.

Yup, spy thrillers and their like. There was a time when I used to gobble up 3 books like this in a week. A time when Ludlum was my favourite author, Noel Holcroft my idol and the CIA my calling in life. Allright, maybe not as bad as that. But it was close. While most of this is not pulp per se, it is the prevailing view amongst several people that it is, so ‘pulp’ it shall be referred to as. There are a few people who’ve never passed through this phase in their lives and indeed some who are proud of this. And though I hardly read books like these nowadays, I don’t really regret having ‘wasted’ my time on them.

In those years, it was all about escapism. A yearning for a life more than an ordinary student who just went to school and did his homework. It is an impressionable age, the age of 13 or 14. A couple of years past puberty, when a boy realises that he is a man and wants to assert himself in some way. And of course, urban India offers few such opportunities and hence the boy has to turn to ‘pulp’ fiction to satiate these desires.

The phenomenon, of course, started in the West. The ‘pulp’ thriller offers a lot to the average Joe. This was and still remains the central reason for their popularity. Imagine the average American (though it’s not very likely that you or I have met one) with a boring job, bogged down with responsibilities concerning his wife and kids. He who drives downtown in a beaten down Mercedes. And while he’s stuck in the traffic, I’m sure there must be some point of time when he wishes he had a Maserati. And that’s where it starts. He wishes to get out of the drudgery of his white-collar job and live a life less ordinary. Guns, thrills, chases. He wants them all.

Notice how the ‘pulp’ thriller plays upon these emotions. The protagonist in many American novels is an ordinary guy with an ordinary job. This is of course, his ‘cover’. In reality, he’s usually one of the CIA’s (or equivalent agency’s) hotshot agents or alternatively someone on the run from it. And there is definitely a point when he leaves his job and family to assume his true identity. See how the transformation of the hero from an ordinary guy to super-spy parallels the fantasizing of the reader, be he an adult or a high-school boy.

Then the guns. Guns are described in such vivid detail in ‘pulp’ fiction, no-doubt serving as an effective lure for the reader. Technical descriptions about the magazine, muzzle velocity, piercing power and silencer action only serve to give a masterful illusion of power to the reader. Indeed, he is already visualizing himself reloading and shooting the gun, which surely is a welcome momentary diversion from operating something mundane like a lawn mower.

Further seduction of the reader results from phrases like ‘his trusty Walther PPK’, ‘his ever-dependable Beretta’ and so on. These give a sense of belonging, control and total mastery over the weapon. Ever noticed how James Bond always drives the same car and uses the same gun all the time? Though it is highly unlikely that a spy would even use one unless he absolutely has to. This feeling of power is even more pronounced in a schoolboy who’s often denied certain privileges by adults though he feels he is entitled to them.

The setting comes next of course, hand in hand with the plot. This usually concerns situations of international intrigue involving one or more intelligence agencies battling it out. In the 70s and 80s it was almost always the CIA and the KGB with the MI5 and Mossad making regular appearances. Of course, the novels that come out nowadays are more focussed on terrorism, in tune with the situation in the real world today, though many feel that the falling of the Iron Curtain has deprived several authors of their pet playground.

Note that the extremely meticulous research that goes in to the descriptions of these agencies is a mere smokescreen to mask how unrealistic the situations actually are. For instance, the work of a spy is almost always portrayed to be glamourous while in reality it involves more paperwork and long waits than the authors will have you believe.

The setting is usually in several exotic places, which yet again play upon the escapist nature of the reader. Geneva, Zurich and other Swiss locations are a favourite of several authors citing the relatively relaxed international laws there as a perfect reason for all sorts of monetary transactions taking place there. I can’t recall any spy thriller I’ve read, which didn’t involve a Swiss bank in some way or the other. Other popular locations include the bleak, snow-ridden landscape of Russia, the autobahns of Germany, the streets of Paris, military bases on islands, in forests etc. Very often, the quiet, charming English/French/German village or American town also makes an appearance. It is quite clear that, while it is the goal of most authors to make the reader relate to whatever they’ve written, ‘pulp’ authors aim for the exact opposite. And yet, ironically their greatest strength is that the readers do actually fantasize and try to relate themselves to it.

The character of the hero is of course that of a person who is generally on the high moral ground. In fact, most novels try to bring in an element of ‘realism’ by portraying the hero as a person who has to kill people sometimes in his line of work and feels a terrible sense of remorse as a result. This hooks in the reader in two ways. One, the sense of approval that results from the fact that the hero is ‘human after all and a victim of circumstance’. And the other at a very subconscious level, is the sense of power. An undercurrent that makes the reader feel that he holds the keys of life and death over people.

As is true with most movies and books, the hero lives his usual life in the beginning of the novel and as it progresses, faces several problems some of which might even be personal. The odds seem unsurmountable, but in the end, the hero triumphs over them. Which brings us to the antagonist. In general the antagonist is a powerful figure and often absent for large parts of the book, the author successfully playing upon the fear of the unseen here. Not fear, but more of a sort of apprehension. The antagonist is often an equal of the hero as far as physical and mental abililities go. He’s often a ruthless cold-blooded killer and it is through the subtle use of adjectives like these (describing immorality) that the author ensures that the reader doesn’t end up identifying himself with the antagonist.

There is of course another type of antagonist that is popular in many novels and this is that of the organization. An omnipotent, omniescent and yet unseen organization working behind the scenes to effect several international incidents like embezzlement, assassination and so on. This is very popular with authors like Ludlum. And indeed, a vast powerful organization against a single hero is a powerful reel for the reader, although some are more attracted by the one-on-one fight dynamic of the lone antagonist versus the lone protagonist.

And where would 'pulp' thrillers be without the women? Reality is clearly ignored here because the chances of a woman coming near a spy operation, much less get intimately involved with the spy are very small indeed. But if there is one universal common thread in all spy thrillers, it is – if there’s a major female character, she had better be as beautiful as possible. And descriptions of love scenes are usually, though not always, there. For the red-blooded male absolutely cannot resist anything like this. A couple of additional points worthy of mention here. One, that if a female is a double agent then she is almost never killed by the hero. She either commits suicide or is killed by some other woman. A typical example of the latter being in The Guns Of Navarone (the movie atleast, don’t remember if the book had it). Two – in spite of the woman generally being able to take care of herself, the hero always assumes a protective attitude towards her and his whole family (if it exists). This is something that resonates very clearly with the reader’s personal life. For at the end of the day, in spite his flights of fancy, the reader always feels a sense of responsibility towards his wife and kids and so does the hero, making the illusion all the more complete.

And of course, one of the most important things of all. The twist. Most book have a twist (sometimes predictable) in the plot. The author always banks his success upon the ‘unputdownability’ of the book. A book like this is almost always devoured in a maximum of three to four sittings. Any more and it’s failing its purpose. The slow release of crucial information causing curiousity and eagerness in the reader to flick those pages faster and faster is an art, which some ‘pulp’ authors have nearly perfected.

Of course, no ‘pulp’ thriller carries all of these characteristics. It would be called a manual of cliché if it did. But nevertheless, these are some of the common techniques used by authors to pull the reader into their web. It is notable that British and American authors differ in several ways. The British protagonists are usually young bachelors and are not tied down by family and other bonds. The American is however a more sensitive sort of fellow with several responsibilities on his shoulders. In American novels, the women are usually romantically involved with the hero and often play an important part in the plot. Whereas women are either a distraction (Ian Fleming) or not significantly present (McLean) in the works of British authors. I’m not sure if these differences are representative of the cultural differences between the British and the Americans.

So, if you have indeed waded through this long post, you’ll know why these novels were irresistible to me and to most teenagers in their high school days. And though I may have grown out of these novels it still doesn’t prevent me from reading the blurbs on the latest Ludlum or Forsyth at the AH Wheeler bookstalls. I still rank the Bourne Identity as one of my favourite books, because I have nothing but pleasant memories of it. The thirst to read ‘pulp’ is no longer there, but it’s impossible to forget the time when it was there. Deep in the recesses of my memory, there is a world inhabited by spies, guns, fast cars, beautiful women and international intrigue. A world where ‘pulp’ culture still lives on.

Tag... you're It (yet another questionnaire)

2005-06-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

As much fun as I had reading the stuff which JD put up, I was a little skeptical of answering this myself after being ‘tagged’ by him. But what the hell, I’ve got nothing better to do anyway. So here goes…

How do people refer to you?

Relatives and parents call me Ashish. Most of my friends call me Aziz thanks to this watchman misspelling Ashish in the callers’ registry and one of my friends stealing the registry for weekend reading. My official nickname is Engine (after I gulped petrol under very strange circumstances), though very few people call me that.

What are your screen names?

Screen names are restricted to Ashish on most occasions unless I’m feeling particularly bored, in which case I find Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett more interesting. And being the semi-regular Quake player that I am, I am known (with a sense of dread and foreboding I might add) in the fragging grounds as Creeping Death. I don’t think I should get into the LanMsn names here as they change twice everyday.

What are the physical things you like about yourself?

In general, I guess I’m happy that I’m not abnormal in any way. Reasonably tall, average weight, normal skin. I feel (unlike my parents) that my longish hair rather suits me.

What are the physical things you don't like about yourself?

I’m perfectly happy with most of myself, though I sometimes wish I had longer fingers and broader wrists.

How has your heritage influenced you?

My Tamil is pretty different from what they speak in Chennai, and somehow that makes me proud (don’t ask why). But apart from that nothing major, really. I believe in a kind of God (too complicated to explain) but for most practical purposes, I don’t bother about God, the universe and all that. I don’t really believe in religious rituals (and hardly observe any myself), but they instil a kind of discipline in a person, so I guess they’re allright as long as they don’t get in the way of more important activities.

What are the things that scare you?

Being on the top of a very tall building without a railing on the sides. Basically great heights, though only when I feel that there is a realistic chance of me dropping from them.

But apart from that, to quote Edmund Blackadder,”I laugh in the face of fear. I tweak the nose of panic and drop ice-cubes down the vest of terror.”

What are your everyday essentials?

Atleast an hour everyday, with music in my ears through headphones.

Mindless jamming on the guitar.

One episode of some comedy series.

The internet, of course.

Name three things you're wearing now.

Glasses, T-shirt and shorts. Why is this question here? Very pointless.

What are the things you want in a relationship?

Tough one. Since I have no experience whatsoever in this regard, I’ll restrict myself to saying that the ‘other’ must have a sense of humour that matches mine, stay cool most of the time and not worry about things that are not under her control.

Give me two truths and a lie, in no particular order.

I’ve been brutally honest throughout this post.

I’m extremely skilled at defending myself against someone who attacks me with a piece of fresh fruit.

I have a cunning plan to bring about world peace.

What are the 'things' in the opposite sex that appeal to you?

A nice voice, ‘non-grumpiness’ and good conversation skills appeal the most to me (apart from the usual umm… things which most men look for in women)

What are the three things you want to do badly now?

To listen to Extreme right now. A few clicks and this is done.

To eat Haldiram’s Bhujia (whose endless supply in my house is sadly at an end).

To get the Beatles Anthology DVD to work somehow.

What are the three career options you're considering?

I’d love to be a writer someday, but unfortunately (or fortunately), that may not be.

An engineer in a chemical plant, but only because I’m doing my Btech in Chemical Engineering. This option is not really motivated by interest.

My low CGPA has forced me to consider management as the most likely career path though I really don’t have a good idea of what it’ll involve.

What are the three places you'd like to go on vacation?

New York, London and Woodstock (if the festival returns sometime). I always feel better if I’m in a large city. The larger the better.

Name three kid names you like.

Can’t think of any. Anything apart from Baldrick should do fine.

What are the three things you'd like to do before you died?

Play something like Malmsteen’s “Arpeggios From Hell” on the guitar.

Write something that is published.

Torture Sooraj Barjatya in the same way he tortured me with “Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon”

What is your favourite quote?

“I’ll be darned… Cover me in flour and eggs and bake me for 40 minutes!”

Who else do you want to tag to make them take the quiz now?

Allright, I know I’ve been very boring, but quite frankly so are the questions. Let’s just say that since I’ve spent this much time on it, I might as well put it up. The people I’d want to tag are:

The “Eveready” Bhaand, who I suspect is always online.

Metabuh, who’s barbecuing himself in the Chennai heat by playing Quake.

The dead parrot who’s not blogged since 44 BC.

Doorman

2005-06-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a doorman for as long as I can remember.

Actually, Mr. Patel tells me that it’s been about 10 years since he hired me, but it seems like a really long time to me. When your entire day consists of opening a door to let patrons inside and outside a restaurant; your week then consists of 7 such days (mostly) and your year consists of 52 such weeks. 10 years and you’ve lived out a lifetime.

It’s all such a blur sometimes. Doors opening and closing. People walking in and out. The same set of people could’ve walked in and out everyday and I wouldn’t have known. You see, I don’t remember faces anymore. All I remember is what they eat – and only when I happen to look inside the restaurant out of boredom. For example I remember that the first customer yesterday, ordered chapathis and kurma.

I know I’m not normal. It’s not normal for a doorman to work throughout the day on both shifts, but it’s what I do. From 9 am to 11 pm everyday. And make no mistake; I do it of my own free will. Nor is it normal for a person to stick to a job like this for this long. I know that there might be greener pastures elsewhere, but I’ve simply not reached out.

Imagine that you lived under an apple tree and survived on those apples as they fell down, some 3 or 4 per day. The industrious man would’ve climbed the tree, plucked the apples, sold them, bought some seeds, grown more apple trees and continued until he had established an orchard. I’m not industrious.

I am content to live off 4 apples a day, because you see; with every new venture there is an element of the unknown. The unknown scares me. I am satisfied with the wages that my present job gives me. Of course, it gives me more than that. An identity and a haven, for instance. As long as I’m outside the Girnaar restaurant, I’m allright. I even live in a small room behind it. Any further down the Cross Cut road away from Girnaar, and I feel uneasy. The unknown scares me.

It’s a pretty boring job. To look at the patrons entering and welcome them in that phony cheerful voice that I’ve developed to such an extent that it’s almost mechanical. And yet cheerful, don’t ask me how. Most of them don’t even look at me, which is fair enough considering the fact that I’m not exactly talking to them. I open the door and a small blast of the cooled air from inside hits me as the patrons enter. There is usually a small hint of the aroma of tandoori rotis in that air. It makes me hungry sometimes. The door is closed and I’m standing pointlessly again, waiting for the next person to arrive.

Sometimes it does get a bit tiring sometimes when one stands for hours together in the sweltering afternoon heat. On these occasions, I sit on this little stool beside the door and often get a wink from Jaikishan. I don’t know why he does that. He’s a good waiter, and treats the patrons well. Of course, I can’t hear any of them inside. They’re like the fishes in the small aquarium inside the restaurant – opening and closing their mouths with apparently no sound coming out of them.

Jaikishan is the one who doubles for me, when I’m gobbling my lunch or dinner hurriedly. He’s been here for some 5 years according to him. We haven’t exchanged more than 10 words in that time. I suppose one might think of restaurant employees as people sharing a great rapport with each other, celebrating together on special occasions and so forth. It’s not so. Not here at least.

It used to, though. Once upon a time in the past, it used to be like that. But not now. This business has become a vicious race. Employees come in, worm their way into favour with the boss, earn a fat pile of cash and leave when they see better opportunities elsewhere. The whole city’s supposed to be like that. I wouldn’t know about the rest of the city, of course.

The day ends at 11:00 pm when I make my way around the restaurant into my sparsely furnished room. And every night, as I lie down on the bed and close my eyes, I remember that my parents passed away long ago and I was pretty hopeless at studies. I recall that I have an aunt living in Ghatkopar. But these aren’t exactly memories. In the sense that they seem to be something I know as information and not something I remember as experiences. It’s almost as if my mind is forcing me to learn who I was. What I am is of course, perfectly clear.

I’ve been a doorman for as long as I can remember.

Stuff that doesn't make sense to me

2005-06-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Here’s a compilation of stuff that doesn’t make sense to me. Yeah, read the fine print. To me. If any of you can explain these things to me, please do. I need not agree of course:

1. Why do people love to wallow in misery?

Picture this. You’ve been working all day (or been jobless, whatever) and at night after dinner you’d like to relax a little, right? By watching people cry?

Yup, Sun TV. Tune in at about 8 or 9 pm everyday to see the young and old alike weep like they’re swallows forced to stay in Siberia for the winter. It’s most likely that you’ll spot the ocular-rivulet-releasing self-sacrificing goody-two-shoes wife of some mustachioed ‘I-abuse-women-and-my-shirt-is-starched-white’ maniac. Kids who’ve been given the burning karandi treatment on their tender hands by the evil maid-servant are currently the ‘hot’ favourite. Of course, all this weeping and wailing allows glycerine companies to make a quick buck off these serials, something that assures me that my Chemical Engineering education may not be in vain after all. Glycerine has given the term ‘soap-opera’ a new meaning.

2. What about the people who’re really suffering in life?

Simple. They head to Oprah or Smriti Irani or any of the other celebrated agony aunts on television nowadays. Why though?

I find it hard to believe that people who’re at an all time low in their lives can have their problems solved on national television in front of millions of viewers. And in about an hour.

Woman: “My husband is not able to satisfy me in bed.”

Oprah: “There, there…”

A couple of enlightening graphs with a little admonishing speech from Oprah (“Men! You’ve really got to fill those 10 minutes up!”) and then:

Brainwashed woman: “Oprah, how can I ever thank you? You’ve changed my life.”

How the hell?

3. Daytime cookery shows

The traditional cookery shows involved a chef standing in a kitchen and showing us how to cook a dish or two. But nowadays, you’ve got a dummy beside the chef who generally nods his/her head and goes oh-I-see for everything the chef does.

Chef: “Now I add garam masala to the ice-cream batter…”

Dummy (with a serious knowledgeable look on his face): “Oh I see, I see…”

And at the end after sampling the ice-cream,

Dummy (looking like a bird that’s just swallowed a plate): “Umm, aah, marvellous… aap ki haath ki bani cheez to hamesha lajawaab hoti hai.”

Allright, so maybe most of the time the dishes are actually good. But why do we need a lackey in VJ attire to testify to this? Surely they’ll have to be paid nicely and this would increase production costs right? Does it really bring in those TRPs?

4. More soaps

More soaps, this time the saas-bahu sagas that seem to be everybody’s favourite. There are two distinct types, ones that don’t start with ‘K’ (and suck miserably as a result) and the ones that start with ‘K’ (suck even worse… and are always misspelt).

Trademarks include a super-hard-working-ever-helpful-perfect bahu who is usually the main character. But as the old Peruvian proverb goes: “Bahu must have evil strapless-blouse-wearing-bindi-toting co-bahu as enemy” And there are even awards for these categories called the Star Parivaar Awards or something. Of course, the characters never age even after 15-20 years have passed. People die suddenly allowing a couple of episodes devoted to mourning. And around 90% of them reappear after plastic-surgery. The most unbearable feature in my opinion are the thunderclaps, explosions and other godawful sound effects that ensue after ‘dramatic’ dialogues.

Youngster with gel-in-hair: “Nahi!” (12 tonnes of RDX destroy the neighbourhood)

Father (of around the same age as son): “Kya!” (gazillion tonnes of TNT destroy what’s left of the city followed by a slap that sails one foot wide of the son and repeats itself thrice to the embarassment of the stunt choreographers)

Needless to say that the cameraman is circus-trained and performs several acrobatics causing several flips and jooms.

5. And now for something completely different - the bicycle stand

Why the hell is there a yellow sign at the DAV Gopalapuram entrance saying ‘Parking for Gill Nagar students’? Gill Nagar to the best of my knowledge is miles away from the ‘hallowed portals’ of DAV Gopalapuram. And while we’re at it, where is the mythical and forbidden ‘Santosh Bar’ which the Princi mentioned? And how did we sit through those ridiculous GVC classes without bursting out in laughter? How did I spend 2 years there?!?!?

6. Kill Bill

Will someone tell me what Tarantino’s trying to convey apart from the fact that squished eyeballs, cut-off arms and rivers of blood are pretty funny (maybe that was the intention) to watch?

7. Sooraj Barjatya and Karan Johar are amongst Bollywood’s respected directors

Sooraj Barjatya once released a movie that made me amputate all my limbs and chew my hair. It was this ghastly piece of work called Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon. Why do they allow crap like this to be released? And why do people force their cousins to sit with them and watch it in a locked room? And I’m not even starting on Karan ‘Koffee-drinking-tosser’ Johar for fear of continuing this blog for another two pages. Suffice it to say that the Indian film industry, in my opinion, could gain more respect if he were to vaporize suddenly (hope springs eternal).

8. Death Metal and Nu-metal

How people can listen to this monstrosity called Death Metal is beyond me. How could somebody seriously listen to a band that calls itself Cannibal Corpse or Cattle Decapitation or Cannibal Holocaust? And has a singer that belches and grunts all the while as videos of people ‘devoured by vermin’ are shown?

On a completely related note, if you like singers yowling and jumping about to two chords and two notes on the bass, then nu-metal is for you. It’s quite pathetic. Dunno how people like it.

9. Front Page International News: Beyonce battling chocolate addiction

Other samples of such international news include Jennifer Aniston moving her house near Courtney Cox and Paris Hilton upto no good. The Times also likes featuring several other pointless articles. Case in point being an article that laments about what it would be like if Bogart didn’t have his cigarette in Casablanca, 0r if Sharon Stone didn’t have one in Basic Instinct, or if Clint ‘Dirty Harry’ Eastwood didn’t smoke. It’s time someone told them that the ban didn’t extend to movies made abroad. And why does the Ahmedabad Times supplement have to provide photographs of arbit people dancing at one of the myriad party plots of Ahmedabad on Page 3 everyday?

So there you have it. Nine conundrums. No clear explanations in sight.

The Elevator

2005-06-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

(Note: Short story. Fiction. Please read and comment)

“It was an April morning,

When they told us we should go,

As I turned to look at you, you smiled at me,

How could we say no?”

- Achilles Last Stand, Led Zeppelin

These were the words that were ringing in my head that day, for no particular reason. Hadn’t listened to Zep for quite some time now, so it was with a pleasant twang that I recalled the day when I heard ‘Heartbreaker’ for the first time and started imagining that I was playing the solo in the middle. And that with an acoustic guitar in my hands!

Plant stopped singing and I entered the elevator. Another boy of about my age entered behind me. I pressed the button for the 14^th floor and he nodded indicating that he was going there as well. A weird sort of foreboding enveloped me. Probably. Come to think of it, when we’re looking back at something in the past, we always tend to imagine all sorts of emotions that might’ve never been there at all. For instance, on the day that my IIT-JEE results came out, I would like to think that I was apprehensive of the outcome. That I was nervous and cried like a Chennai water resorvoir couldn’t when I found out that I wasn’t in. I don’t think any of that happened.

I felt the steady ascent of the elevator as an invisible force pushed me down. As I was staring pointlessly at the green interiors of the elevator, there was dull thud as the lift stopped and everything went black.

“Bloody hell! A power cut,” said I. “Oh no!” said the boy at almost the same time. A sound that was half a laugh and half a cough came out of me. I smiled at him, but he was busy hammering on the alarm button. Of course, in accordance to the great tradition of Lotus apartments it didn’t work.

“Damn nuisance, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes. This is the first time I’ve been caught in an elevator like this,” said I. “Hope power comes back soon. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon in this place.”

“Hm, neither would I. I’m Ravi. And you are…?”

“Prakash,” said I. “You’re new to this place, right?”

“Yeah, moved in last Thursday,” said Ravi.

“You’re studying in Chennai?”

“Oh yes. IIT. Mechanical Engineering. Going to the 2^nd year. And you?” he asked.

“I’m in MBEC. EEE. Same year as you,” said I, after a noticeable pause.

I have to mention something here. I could never speak immediately after someone said that he was in IIT. Yeah, I’m not in IIT, so what? Nor would you, if didn’t have a little luck. On the other hand, nearly all of my friends seemed to have luck. Maybe it wasn’t just that.

“Oh. I couldn’t clear the Mains. Did badly in Physics… missed the cutoff by some one mark,” I mentioned, rather unnecessarily.

This JEE talk fades out a little amongst us after we finish 1^st year, when we realise that there’s more to life than the JEE. But it does pop up sometimes and before you know it, you’re discussing the damn battery terminal polarities which could’ve swung either way in some question in the Physics exam.

“Hmm. It doesn’t really matter. IIT is not all that cracked up as it’s made out to be,” he said, with a small smile on his face. I couldn’t be sure in the dark of course, but something told me that there was a smile on his face. And irrationally enough, there was a faint glimmer of hatred towards him at that moment, which passed away in a millisecond.

“It’s bad though, isn’t it? That one question could change your whole life. Remember there was this question where you’ve got to mark the polarities on a battery and you marked them… Ahh, forget it. What am I…”

“Damn! You know what? I scraped through on that very question. Wrong answer there and I wouldn’t have made it,” said Ravi.

“Really? Lucky for you then,” said I before elapsing into a silence. He was silent as well. It isn’t a very comforting thought to stand beside someone whose future is very different from yours just because you chose the pineapple on the right he chose the nearly identical one on the left.

Nearly an hour passed with some small talk here and there. I found out that Ravi was a big fan of Deep Purple and Led Zep. Though this should’ve led on to some interesting conversations about what Zeppelin could’ve been if Bonham didn’t snuff it, it didn’t. And there was no sign of the power coming back, though statistically every passing moment increased the chances of that happening. Or maybe it didn’t. I was never any great shakes at maths anyway.

“This heat is really a killer isn’t it?” said I, breaking a long silence. Way to go, Prakash. Weather talk. The most effective way to start a conversation. Even ahead of, ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’

“Yes it is. Typical. You’ve used the most effective way to start a conversation. Even ahead of, ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’” said Ravi.

Something was wrong.

“Wait a sec…”

“I know what you’re thinking, Prakash. That something’s wrong?” said Ravi.

“You… you’re not…”

“Not what? Not real? I’m real, allright. Though reality is a pretty fickle concept isn’t it?”

“That’s my line!” I thought indignantly. “Tell me you just didn’t say that,” said I, sounding like the wrestler Booker T.

“You’re sounding like Booker T,” he said.

“What the fuck!” I lunged at him. Nobody could read my thoughts like a book. Unless…

Needless to say, I came up with empty air. He was behind me of course, though he was in front of me all the time.

“Wait this isn’t like one of those movies is it? Split personality? You’re fake!” I said, clutching my hair in desperation.

“You know I’m not, Prakash. You know I’m not…”

And I knew he wasn’t. Ravi was real. The elevator was real. The power-cut was real. And I was Jimmy freaking Page, playing the ‘Heartbreaker’ solo. It lasted for exactly 46 seconds.

“Hello, Jimmy,” he said.

“No, I’m not Page!” I screamed out.

“Ah, but you were. Just a moment ago,” he said.

I gulped some air and calmed myself as much as I could in the stale elevator. And simply asked, “Who are you?”

“You know it. Just look inside. Though the more pertinent question would be, ‘Who am I?’”

I knew the answer to my question of course. Ravi was me. More specifically Ravi was me when I didn’t screw up in that circuit question in the Physics JEE exam. He was simply what I would’ve been, had I marked negative on the right and positive on the left. Did I do the opposite? I’m not so sure now.

Ravi was not another personality, like an alter ego or something. He would disappear the moment I wanted him to. But did I? Did I want him to go away? After all I wanted to be in IIT right? So maybe I was in IIT. I was Jimmy Page for some time, wasn’t I?

“You are what you think you are, Prakash. That moment when you grab your acoustic guitar and listen to Heartbreaker, no matter how unbelievable it might seem you are Jimmy Page and you are playing it. From that moment when you marked negative on the right, you have been me…”

“Stop it! Stop it, you bastard! Quit saying that! You’re screwing up my mind,” I shouted, simultaneously slumping down to the elevator floor.

“Fine, then. You don’t seem to accept that you cleared the JEE. So be it. You’re of course, correct. You are a student of MBEC. You were never good enough, were you?”

“You’re lying! You wretched...”

The lights came on suddenly causing me to shield my eyes. The lift moved with a jolt. This sudden disorientation coupled with the heat caused me to faint for a moment. I recovered in a moment and saw that I was alone.

Ping! The lift had reached the 14^th floor. I walked out, almost expecting some silent spectre to follow me. Of course nothing did. I opened the door and entered my house. The first thing I did was to run to the mirror and look at my face. I still don’t know why I did that.

All I knew was that the elevator was a test. Would I accept what I had and look to the future? Or would I rue over what might have been and fantasize about it? I had left Ravi behind in the elevator. That I knew for sure. But who was to say there wouldn’t be a… say a Praveen in the future?

I opened the bedroom windows causing the sunlight to stream in and looking at the crazy people walking on the street below on this hot summer afternoon.

“Strangers passing in the street,

By chance two separate glances meet,

I am you and what I see is me.”

Only that I wasn’t Dave Gilmour. Or Jimmy Page. I was simply Prakash Chandran, 2^nd yr EEE student at MBEC.

Tourism Blues

2005-05-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

(Note: A couple of readers have remarked that this post contains a lot of exaggeration. Incredulous though it may seem at places, I assure you that the whole thing is true and only a couple of phrases at the most are exaggerated)

After getting back from a week in Malaysia and Singapore, I find 3 experiences burnt in my mind. Two of these are pleasant, but then those are better communicated to you through photographs… maybe later.

The third one is not pleasant at all, but it is just as indelible as the other two I’m afraid. The return trip to Ahmedabad from Kuala Lumpur shall be in my mind for all the wrong reasons. It evoked disgust then, though in retrospect it all seems rather funny.

The behaviour of certain Indian tourists abroad is, mildly put, rather objectionable. Examples of these include creating a huge ruckus in places like hotels and shopping malls, tolerable only to the most patient amongst us. Then of course, I shouldn’t forget the complimentary buffet breakfast served at the hotel where they find it extremely normal to cut across lines inconveniencing several others. Littering carpets with burnt bread (which they rather unwisely feed twice to the toaster in spite of clear printed warnings, not in Chinese but in English). I could go on about breakfast, dinner etc. but that would exercise the reader’s patience for several pages, so maybe it’s not such a good idea.

Tourists from Ahmedabad and Gujarat in general (excluding a few) prefer to come in groups of 10 at least. A nice experience, I’m sure, apart from the huge ‘crates’ of luggage that seem to tag along with them. The number of these ‘crates’ seems to inexplicably double itself on the return trip often dwarfing their owners (with 32” television sets and whatnot in the fray). Thanks to the stringent rules concerning hand baggage on aircrafts, the ‘crates’ are transported separately. They play a greater role later on.

So we have these groups of ten or more, with around 5 children in each boarding the aircraft sans luggage with much ado and fanfare. We are seated in the back and left to observe their colourful attempts to enjoy the Malaysian Airlines experience.

The plane takes off and there is a lot of celebration with clapping and cheering heralding this marvellous invention given to us by the Wright brothers. How wonderful that it actually took off! After some forcible restraint during the take-off through the use of some unfair devices like seat belts, the tourists (referred to as gumbal from now on) are soon free.

Children are as a rule, innocent. All that comes out of them is the occasional shout to alleviate boredom and a few runs across the aisles, which I’m sure provides some good exercise aboard the flights. It’s the behaviour of the adults (the male ones ie) that is really exceptional. It all starts (atleast from my vantage point) with the fasten seat belts sign going off and a man in his sixties to my left desperately pleading for beer from the airhostess. She soon comes down the aisle with glasses of beer for the parched throats of the gumbal. Most of the men grab a glass each. Quite understandable. With Gujarat being a dry state and all, such stuff is not available at home.

However, the man (let’s call him Dionysius for now) decides to grab two, much to the chagrin of the man right in front of me, who decides to grab another one to get even. And thus, the unspoken contest starts. Other men start to take beer refills as well. Crunchy snacks in the form of salted peanuts are provided. The man beside me wasn’t drinking, but he wants those peanuts badly. Too bad that the air-hostess doesn’t understand his requests for ‘singh-channa’. I convey the message to her only to see that she’s already gone - to quench the beer needs of the passengers ahead.

Dionysius and his pal ahead of me are now demanding beer cans and Malaysian Airlines comply. Carlsberg, Tiger, Guinness… the whole bar starts coming out. Dionysius is soon into his second can and he and his pal are giving low-fives to each other with slurred words like “Full chill beer ha! Life mei beer peevanu! Majamacho!” The guy ahead stops but Dionysius goes ahead and finishes 4 whole cans taking his beer tally to around 2 litres making him the winner, though another man on the right would probably be close judging from his declarations like, “Khaana, peena, shopping ha!” This guy soon drops off… not being able to withstand the soporific effects of alcohol. Dionysius however stands up and after some acrobatic fingering retrieves his bag from the overhead compartment and rather inexplicably starts distributing his son’s visiting cards to some junta up front. A glowing testimonial for Dio Jr. right there.

After firm refusals to Dio and his buddy, the airhostesses and hosts start distributing food. Dio’s buddy is still rambling incoherently about full chill beer, but the camel, er… Dio after 2 litres of beer attacks the food with gusto before falling asleep halfway. A word here about Malaysian Airlines. The staff deems it fit to attend to the beer-sippers, but conveniently forgets about the others. And end up serving my mother some weird concoction called a ‘vegan’ vegetarian meal. After protests from us and a few others, the staff seemed to remember we existed and supplied us with the proper food that was promised in the menu card. Dio and his cohorts are thankfully asleep. The rest of the flight passes without incident, though the service of Malaysian Airlines seriously leaves much to be desired.

The landing at Ahmedabad is accompanied by the gumbal’s felicitations... probably meant for the pilot. They seem extremely happy that the aircraft actually made it to the right place rather than Timbuktu. Now of course, it’s time for them to exercise their power in numbers.

These people, who calmly cut across lines in Singapore, are now intent on disproving Euclid, showing that there exist multiple straight lines between two points.

And all of the sudden the spyry grandpas and grandmoms who ran up and down the malls in Singapore are now in wheelchairs, no doubt a nice way to finish off their immigration formalities ahead of us. That is atleast acceptable, but to see this agent (travel agent) in a yellow tee (sounds like a bad spy novel doesn’t it?) jumping the queue using some underhanded tactics is thoroughly deplorable.

This behaviour at the immigration counter is very irritating, to say the least, after a four-and-half-hour journey. After some considerable effort the immigration formalities are over and now comes the daunting task of retrieving four small pieces of luggage hidden somewhere between those huge ‘crates’. The whole gumbal (including the babies in prams and the not-babies in trolleys) now has to cover the entire luggage belt to pick up their stuff. After getting in edgeways and wasting around 15 minutes, I’ve managed to pick up only two of our bags. Further searching for some 10 minutes yields the knowledge that the mob, er… gumbal has very kindly stashed the rest of our luggage somewhere out of the way lest it get crushed by their ‘crates’.

The worst task is the final one. A last screening of the baggage to check if we’re all smuggling explosives and drugs from Singapore into Ahmedabad. Euclid is literally rolling in his grave now. And the trolleys piled high with towers make things a thousand times worse. Not to mention the Yellow One buzzing about, cutting lines with the seasoned expertise of a professional. The sane amongst us now lose their temper and few strong-arm tactics are finally deployed (such as me subconsciously kicking a trolley away stranding it amongst a portion of the gumbal). And a few ‘pleasantries’ are exchanged before we we’re finally allowed to proceed home. The sign outside the airport says it all.

Welcome to Gujarat, indeed.

Sidewalk Anthropology

2005-03-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

(Here’s an old post I found buried in my Gmail inbox, after I’d sent it from Ahmedabad. It was written sometime around the 24^th of December, 2004, but thought I’d put it up anyway)

So after some rather wild flights of fantasy concerning rats and cheese and celebrities and whatnot, I’ve finally settled down to writing down what Jaydee calls a blb (blog-level-blog). It’s about one of my favourite hobbies, sidewalk anthropology.

I don’t normally get the chance to pursue this in the insular IITM campus and I must admit that there’s not much fun in looking at the same old classmates and hostelmates over and over again. The only kind of new people I get to see are at Dhabba Express where other pressing concerns like food overshadow my mind.

But outside the campus and back home in the typically urban environment of Ahmedabad I see a plethora of people from different walks of life. And of course while travelling by train. You might think that I am some highly extroverted guy who loves to meet new people and chat with them. Quite the opposite, really. I’ve always been more of an introvert or let’s glorify that by saying that I’ve been a 'dispassionate observer of the mass of humankind' (ya, right).

Let’s take the barbershop for instance. The rich variety of people whom you see there is just amazing. I was there recently to trim my lovely locks as they were getting too… Ahem… Let me stick to the point. There I saw this little kid sitting on the chair as the barber slowly snipped his hair away. This guy was pretty calm unlike some other kids who raise a hell of a ruckus when forced to cut their hair. And after the whole thing was over, this kid actually took the comb and patiently combed his hair in front of the mirror. At the other end of the spectrum was this guy, who was creating a lot of fuss, asking the barber a thousand questions and giving him an equal number of instructions… Umm, that was me.

There was of course, the usual segment of people poring intently through the latest filmstar gossip mags which I detest so much. Then there were these twins who were probably in their twenties and these poor chaps appeared retarded to me. They were wearing really outsized glasses and were accompanied presumably by their father who was explaining to the barber that they had diabetes or something. I couldn’t really see them anymore. There’s something about these mentally challenged people that affects me too much. Probably the fact that they would never really understand the world and vice versa…

But what attracted my attention for nearly the rest of my stay at the barber (and it was a long one with me quizzing the barber after every alternate clip of the scissors) was this guy right next to me.

Middle-aged chap with thinning hair. Seemed to be quite a jolly sort of fellow with him joking with the barbers and all. That entire demeanour evaporated with the call he received from his wife, presumably. And in around half a minute or so he started to heap abuses on her. And those of the worst kind – the kind of words which we joke around with in the hostels. To see someone really irate and using those words with every bit of malice behind them is shocking to say the least. I really pity the poor wife or whichever other woman (it was surely a woman) who was on the other end. For in my opinion, nobody deserves to hear such trash from a family member. And him doing it shamelessly in front of other people is appalling (not that it can be condoned in private). It would be very clichéd or pompous of me to declare that the situation was an eye-opener to women’s abuse etc etc. But, one thing I do know. It’s a really rotten thing to take advantage of the fairer sex in that way or any other way for that matter.

The guy soon left and something else that really made me gag with disgust and laugh at the same time, was the poor shop-owner forced to paste that false smile on his face while receiving the dough and obsequiously escorting him to the door. I really don’t know what to say. On one hand the guy’s doing it because he has to and his business depends upon it to some extent, but on the other hand, it’s really sick to pamper a rotter like that one.

Only a few days later I was traveling to Surat (I can hear you saying, “Not another train journey!”) and as is usual with me I reached the station earlier than necessary and was hence spending my time watching the people all around. The railway is station is one heck of a busy place. In contrast to this airport waiting rooms are disappointingly quiet. There were the usual people rushing around with their luggage, the idle coolies sitting and smoking and the ever thinning group of people browsing at the AH Wheeler stalls. After reading the blurb on the latest Crichton, I saw the train approaching. The coolies sprang into action and people rushed into the train (to get the best spot for their luggage, no doubt).

Soon enough, I was seated on the train and saw this guy with a really fancy mobile beside me. I’d never given those gizmos a second thought earlier, but now with the recent MMS scandal, I found myself staring at it a little more intently than usual, before quickly averting my gaze to my right to see this guy wearing sunglasses and having a porter hoist a massive suitcase (nearly four feet in length) up to the luggage rack. There was a pair of old gentlemen beside me and one of them gave a couple of suggestions to the guy as both he and the porter were bulbing (there’s no better word for it) completely with regard to the placement of the case. And this guy (the words ‘high and mighty Sir Charles de Buliiarde le Roux’ come to mind) didn’t listen to them at all, didn’t even acknowledge the old guy’s presence. The case was eventually fixed after a truckload of effort (mainly due to the porter being sensible). The guy sat down, immediately flipped open his cellphone and started yammering into it like the overzealous, flashy yuppie that he was. After a while an attendant came along with some chocolates and this guy beckoned him with the condescending “Ststst…stststsss”. There’s one thing that puts me off as well. Call the guy some ‘bhai saheb’ or ‘bhaiya’ or whatever, but for God’s sake stop hissing at him!

Well, we all tore into the grub as soon as it arrived (one thing that was probably common to all of us) though it was a measly samosa-cheesecrackers-sweet affair, not at all like the Shatabdi I remembered. And as a variety of yawns and moans punctuated the air, I found myself dropping off to sleep…

One thing came to mind. I have a friend who on his Orkut profile, under the section favourite movies, has written “Don’t you think everyday life is the best movie?”

I am tempted to agree. Though it might be a little dull at times and may lack the spectacular vision of say, a Spielberg, it at least doesn’t contain all that phony Karan Johar grandeur. And best of all - unlike most movies, it’s totally unpredictable.

The Pseudocracy and the Populetariat

2004-12-24T12:33:00.000-08:00

I was on the train back to Ahmedabad from Surat. It was running nearly an hour late, but for once I didn’t care about that or even my favourite hobby on trains (people-watching). For I was busy – immersed in this mesmerizing book called Future Shock (which unlike most other mesmerizing books is not fiction). And then this guy beside me tries to initiate a conversation.

“Itne der kitaab padke, ankhen thak nahi gayee?” (Haven’t you tired out your eyes after reading for so long). Ya, right. I had been reading only for a little over 2 hours.

“Nahi. Bahut achchee kitaab hai na.” (No. It’s a very good book, that’s why)

“Abhi thodi der use bandh karke, is collection of messages ko pado. Friendship ke bare me hai… Bahut achche hai” (Now close the book and read my collection of messages about friendship. They’re very nice)

I was somewhat pained, but being the nice guy I was (or the nice guy I try to be), I shut the book and took the cellphone he offered, at the same time trying to think of some way out of it. I couldn’t.

Hmm, first message. “A lover wipes away your tears when they fall. But a good friend never lets them fall in the first place.” Gulp! Really powerful stuff. A classic silverscreen award winning dialogue if there ever was one. I was nearly choking with emotion there.

After going through nearly 30 such messages, each one cheesier than the other, I handed back the cellphone not sure of what to say.

“Achcha collection hai na?” (A good collection, isn’t it?) Yeah, I’m about to go and hug all my lovely friends right now (since my ‘cell’ cannot send SMS).

“Haan. Lekin maine aise bahut pade hain. Email me aate hi rahte hain.” (Yes, but I’ve ready many like these. They appear all the time in my mail) I hoped that was a neutral enough answer – enough to make him stop, but not appear too brusque at the same time.

Thankfully, he stopped. He set me thinking however. How do people actually like this senti (no better word for it) crap? All this overly mushy stuff about friendship and love and all that? Though I was pretty sure that if I stood up and asked all those in the compartment, who believe in such fluff to raise their hands, most hands would fly up. Well they wouldn’t do it openly, but then again what’s e-mail and SMS for? To release the inner ‘romantic’ in ourselves…

If we look all around us, we see that this issue is more fundamental than any of us thought. Nearly any Hindi movie or serial banks on this sentimental eye-wash (no pun intended) to sell themselves. Directors and actors make big bucks banking on the audience to lap up their carefully crafted films – which are engineered to romanticize every aspect of everyday life. To show reality as running around trees, living in huge mansions, singing the national anthem in foreign lands and giving up one’s love for friendship (only to get it back from the ever loyal friend) etc. Maybe, I wasn’t a little clear in the last line, but I’m sure all of us have been exposed to that phony Karan Johar saga of life before. Not that he’s the only one.

These people have spawned what I call the ‘tissue-culture’ – clans of people who revel in such corny creations and believe in spending their hard-earned money (and loads of tissue paper to wipe their tears) on these goofy and ridiculous movies. I for one fail to see the point of these movies at all.

Sure. Been there. Done that. So what’s new?

For once, I decided to think differently – to try to see myself as one of the ‘tissue-culture’. Why not put myself in their shoes and try to see both sides of the argument?

So, maybe they enjoy these movies without putting any thought into them. Maybe, they really don’t care about reality (or are probably fed up with it?) and need these movies to make them forget it. Maybe they fantasize about such a life sometimes and can hence relate to it when it’s churned out on the widescreen. Come to think of it, they don’t really need a reason to like a movie, right? Or maybe, they see some rationale behind all these so called ‘populist’ movies. Probably, such senti messages, be they in movies or in SMS, actually help them get closer to their loved ones.

I realise that I have been a little narrow minded in my derision of all this. Maybe I dislike such movies but it’s not really my business or prerogative to go around telling people not to watch it etc. So Mr Patel (my fellow passenger was most probably one, seeing as there are 160,000 Patels in the Ahmedabad Telephone listing) seriously loves reading such messages and they make him feel wanted. Who was I to mock that?

Of course, there is another end of the spectrum as well – the very antithesis of the ‘populeteriat’, which I have dubbed the ‘pseudocracy’. This is another class of people, whom I have failed to understand as much as the earlier set. They read only the ‘pseudest’ (again, IITM lingo has certain words that have no clear English equivalent) books, watch only the movies of the ‘highest concept’ (read Kubrick and co.). They talk of only Kakfa, Nietzsche (hope I got the spelling right) and some other high-funda (IITM lingo rules!) writers whom I cannot really recall right now. They seem to dismiss anything even slightly populist. And it becomes an obssession sometimes. Even with people whose minds aren’t actually built that way – but those who have this interminable desire to worship the pseudocratic canon, to gain acceptance into such cliques probably. Once again, I may have gone a little overboard in my description, but I’m human after all.

So what am I? Pseudocractic or populeterian? Sure, I don’t like these crassly commercial movies like K3G, KNPH and all those other K’s (detest them in fact), but nor can I really get what’s so hot about Tarantino and Kubrick. I hate TV soaps, but can’t really get past a few pages of Rand. There are exceptions of course. I love Munnabhai MBBS (commercial, but a real laugh riot) and also The Catcher In The Rye (termed by many as ‘high-level’). So what am I? Forgive the excess fantasy imagery but I have to say this:

“The Pseudocracy stood high upon their vantage points on the gleaming ivory towers – watching and secretly scorning the seemingly inane Populateriat running about on the roads and enjoying themselves over their hollow and vacuous creations. Me – I was in the first storey. Tempted to run down and forget everything and yet, strangely drawn towards the Pseudocrats up on the top. I did neither…”

(Lack of coherent thought in this blog can be attributed to 5 hours of incessant sitting in a chair coach. Actually, that’s a very lame excuse. Forget it.)

The continuing story of Camembert Cheddar

2004-12-20T12:19:00.000-08:00

(Don’t read this post unless you’ve read the one before this)

And so, our swift reporter soon reached the swank locality of Caerphilly and positioned himself right behind the rear wall of Camembert’s sprawling mansion – Das Käsehaus. He took out his half-chewed graphic pen and PDA. After looking around for a while he saw a brick in the wall which was very different from the others, due to it’s light orange colour. A closer look revealed several of them, clustered together. McYuri (aka the Puffer) started scribbling:

“The star of the ‘highly acclaimed’ Mega Monster series, may be a ‘perfectionist’ on screen, but can be pretty sloppy off it. The rear wall of his mansion, littered with discoloured bricks is a standing example of this. Further investigation revealed that he had crashed into this wall in his Chevre after a night of especially wild drinking and hence the hasty repair job, before people got too curious. But couldn’t hide it from us, could you Cheddie ol’ boy?”

The Puffer was looking intently at the nearby poster. It was for the sequel to Big Bad Computer Generated Monsters 2 (BBCGM 2), titled ‘BBCGM 4: Did we forget something?’ The Puffer was trying to figure out why the poster was bothering him when he heard the grating sound of gates being opened.

The lean, muscled figure of Camembert Cheddar emerged from the august rear-gates of the Käsehaus. A small stray dog followed him, and was in turn followed closely by that Sultan of scandal, McYuri. The Puffer wrote:

“Camembert Cheddar is known for fighting horrendous monsters onscreen, but offscreen he’s a bit of a softie actually. Only this morning he was spotted playing along with an exotic Chinese dog of the Cheesehuahua species. In retrospect, it kind of fits his ‘dogged’ image, doesn’t it?”

“Walk along, Cheddie boy. I’m just getting warmed up,” whispered the Puffer.

Camembert walked along Farmstead Avenue for a mile or so until he reached a small rowhouse. He opened the gates and walked in nonchalantly. A blonde petite woman rushed out, let out a small scream and jumped right into his arms smothering his face with kisses. Camembert was only too eager to reciprocate.

The crown prince of gossip nearly dropped his PDA in his excitement and started puffing his cheeks in and out. Like a predator, he edged closer and closer slowly moving in for the kill. Camembert and the woman walked into the house and shut the door.

McYuri quickly unsheathed his secret weapon, the same one that had brought many a celebrity down to his/her knees, begging forgiveness – the super-slomo-high-fidelity-mega-zoom camera. And he had a really advanced one too. It could sneak around corners and was even rumoured to take photographs through concrete walls. The Puffer, however wanted a clear shot catching Camembert in the act. He looked at the back of his camera and chuckled quietly at the irony of the camera’s high fidelity feature, when it had been responsible for so many instances of infidelity, even when none existed.

Shocking news!!! (which you expected all along anyway)
Camembert Cheddar, the star of the greatest romantic epics of our era such as Faithfully Yours and Till Death Do Us Part, was surprisingly caught in an intimate embrace followed by an afternoon of marathon love-making with an unidentified woman. This was followed by a sauna, a shower, and some other unspeakable activities, which our highly moral newspaper cannot print (‘cos we’ve run out of paper and ideas).

The small messages in the brackets were McYuri’s personal comments, which would obviously be deleted in the main article. He needed a photograph now and that doyen of daredevil photography was considering the ways he could get into the house. He saw a weedy, dishevelled tramp shuffling along the road and stopped him.

“Hey! Hey you! D’you know who lives here?” asked McYuri.

“Go screw yourself, you stupid dork!” said the tramp, clearly not in a helpful mood as he trudged away down the road.

“Hmm, must be one of those out-of-work actors. Anyway, let’s see…” thought the Puffer. Of course! He appended a few lines to the earlier piece.

“They’ve been at it like rabbits for some two years now. Wonder what poor Brie Cheddar will think,” said a friend, under condition of anonymity. “Bertie is a good and faithful human being and he sincerely wants to be a good husband, but he regrets that it’s not possible any longer. He still says that he loves Brie from the very bottom of his heart, but the rest of his heart has already been pledged to someone else,” said a close family friend. He added that the unidentified woman happened to be the love interest of up and coming star, Stephen Dork.”

Now, the story looked complete – except for the photograph. McYuri scouted all around the house and slowly started to scale the wall. He was nearly at the top when his cellphone rang loudly startling him. He fell off the wall and landed violently on his posterior.

“You blasted sonova*****! I was about to take the Pulitzer winner when you toppled me!”

“Oh, really?” came the low growl of Celeberus from the other end.

“Uh, I mean… I was… er… That bloody um… tramp, that stupid fool! I was scolding him… stupid people really…”

“Stop your dilly-dallying, you nimcompoop! What are you doing in Caerphilly?” hollered Celeberus, causing the McYuri to hold the cellphone one-foot away from his ear. “Cheddar is shooting his latest movie at Alpine Gulch! And you, being the halfwit that you are! Trying to get insignificant awards like the Pulitzer! What are you photographing? Mould growing on cheese?”

“That’s impossible! Cheddar is right here! I’ve got a big scoop already. Cheddar in an extramarital affair! In broad daylight with this dishy looking broad!”

At that exact moment, the man whom the Puffer was following, walked out of the house. “Don’t forget your chef’s hat, darling,” said the woman.

“I’ve not. I have it right here with me, sweetie. Bye!” said the man. He waved his hand and ambled down the road. The Puffer slapped his hand to his forehead in frustration.

“Damn! Camembert and his chef look nearly identical! That is so cliché!” exclaimed the Puffer.

“Well, that’s what Hollywood is, ain’t it? You don’t sell movies or tabloids without being cliché,” said Celeberus in such a normal voice, that the Puffer nearly dropped his phone in surprise before checking the speaker volume.

“WELL, GET OVER TO ALPINE GULCH, YOU IMBECILE!” broadcasted Celeberus, reaching new heights of intensity. The Puffer jumped and clutched his ear violently, this time really dropping his cellphone.

After a few callisthenic exercises, he had recovered and was back to his usual self again. After thinking for about 30 seconds, he took out his PDA and started editing his entries.

“Camembert Cheddar is the star of maybe the greatest romantic epics of our era such as Faithfully Yours and Till Death Do Us Part. But his chef does not seem to subscribe to his master’s highly loyal ideals. Yours truly caught him today, engaged in a passionate…”

(Concluded)

Celebrity is as celebrity does

2004-12-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Being home at Ahmedabad during the holidays means a lot to me. I get to catch up on my reading, my sleep and most important of all – Home Grub (I cannot stress enough on this (I have nightmares of mess food sometimes (Hey, I used nested brackets (Hey, I used them again…)))… ∞). There’s one drawback though. Having to wake up in the morning and drink that wonderful piping hot coffee only to stare at what in my humble opinion is the most useless newspaper ever – The Times Of India.

Yeah, I meant that, all you ToI fans (who even go to the extent of buying the previous day’s ToI in Chennai). You’re welcome to disagree of course, but pray do read this post and the next one completely to get what I mean. The inadequate news coverage, the shabby outlook (Read the Hindu for a nice contrast), the excessive advertisements, a really bad crossie on weekdays… I could go on and on. Though I must admit that my viewpoint is somewhat prejudiced after reading the Hindu for some six years now. Before you can say Bhajpa, let me tell you that I am not a political person and have no comments whatsoever to make on any newspaper’s political leanings.

So after some really pointless asides, I finally get back why I dislike ToI so much apart from the reasons I mentioned earlier. Because it is almost like a tabloid due to its painful predilection towards gossip. And I’m sure you know what kind of gossip I’m talking about – the celebrity kind. At first, it used to amuse me. But now it just irritates the hell out of me. And ToI devotes at least two whole pages to it. Not to mention the various snippets that are scattered about in the paper, especially the ones classified innocuously as ‘International News’ (Britney Spears staying in some arbit hotel… Puhleeeese!)

This irritation culminated on the 17th of December 2004. And so on that day, Camembert Cheddar was born…

SAY CHEESE!

Deep in the unused tunnels of the old subway system under the Big Apple lies a chamber with a strange mural painted inside.

Untouched for aeons, until 1955 when an unfortunate photographer wanted to take a crapper at the subway station and accidentally stumbled upon it. The mural, was of the Norse God of mischief, Loki. Now the photographer, Mr. Woodin knew not what to make of such a sign – but in his infinite denseness saw this as message to spread havoc and chaos all over the earth. And thus, the International Paparazzi Organization (IPO) was started. (The name speaks a lot about his creativity)

Anyway, after that little history lesson (pretty much filler material actually), we get back to the 89th floor of the Vauxhalla building in Los Angeles, where Bosseidon, the present CEO of the IPO was MIA. And therefore in charge was his secretary, the snarling guardian of the CEO’s office, Celeberus. He presently looked up from beyond the terminal of Argus, the supercomputer which kept track of every celebrity listed in the database to see McYuri stroll inside languidly.

McYuri was part-Russian, part-Irish and one of the top celebrity gossip writers of the Fifth Estate as the IPO liked to call itself and its brethren (though some of the world’s self-respecting newspapers often referred to it as the Filth Estate). Much of this reputation was thanks to McYuri or Der Puffer, as he was also known, due to his significant corpulence, fishy activities and the extremely poisonous scoops he was responsible - for these usually reminded one of a bloated species of pisces residing in the Great Barrier Reef. However all his vitriol generally evaporated when confronted by Celeberus.

“What are you upto, you lazy maggot? Shouldn’t you be at work today, you procrastinating pufferfish!” shouted Celeberus.

“Er… I was going to but…”

“But what? You worm, I don’t want your pathetic excuses! Now let’s see… Aha, number 1 in demand… Today and for the last one year or so. Camembert Cheddar,” said Celeberus. “The guy’s a living enigma! We don’t have anything on him on our files here! Now locate him and get some dirt on him, pronto!”

“Y-yes, Sir! I’ll do that right away, Sir and please enjoy your coffee,” said McYuri bowing and exiting at the same time.

“Coffee! Of course!” exclaimed Celeberus. He picked up the intercom. “Three cups of coffee along with those Pedigree biscuits! And make it snappy, ya ineffectual bozo! Or I’ll have your job for this!”

(to be continued)

******************************************************************************

My first post (butterflies in my stomach and rats in my head)

2004-12-07T18:34:00.000-08:00

(Enter Pinky, a scrawny-looking subnormal white lab rat and Brain an exceptionally brilliant one, with an abnormally enlarged cranium. They are in a place with heaps of crates connected by elaborate strands of cobwebs, all illuminated by steadily shining bulbs. Faint whispers fill the air competing with the sudden grinding sounds emanating from stuck gears. The place has an aura of what IITians call ‘give-up’-ness)

BRAIN: (looking all around in wonder) Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?

PINKY: (inspecting the shallow recesses of a crate marked ‘Temporal memory’) Ummmm, I think so, Brain… but isn’t the title of this blog a little, well… cheesy?

BRAIN: Uh… well… maybe. Do not concern yourself with trivialities, my cerebrally-challenged friend. For today is a momentous day…

PINKY: (excitedly) Oh, I know, I know! Someone’s started a blaaaawwwg, someone’s started a blaaaawwwg…

BRAIN: (patiently) No, Pinky. (dramatically) Today, we have finally succeeded in infiltrating the human mind. Though there seems to be a lot of… trash in this one.

PINKY: (picking up a name-tag) It says here that the owner’s name is Aziz. Oooo, zingy…

BRAIN: (snatching the tag) That’s impossible! I have the name down as Ashish in my files. (observes the tag and also picks up another one which says ‘Engine’) Hmm, what do we have here? Multiple personality disorder? Schizophrenia? False identities? Mechanical personalization?

PINKY: Maybe he forgot his name.

BRAIN: Your flair for the obvious and the ridiculous never ceases to amaze me, Pinky. But do you realize what this means?

PINKY: Umm, we’ve walked into one of those buy-one-get-two-free deals which come on TV…

BRAIN: (voice rising as he holds up the name-tags) This, my friend, is our gateway to world domination!

PINKY: Name-tags? We left scores of them in the lab back there!

BRAIN: (ignoring Pinky) This man, clearly has at least two contrasting characters locked away in this place. Just think of what could happen, if we could set them against each other!

PINKY: (solemnly) There will be a Great War, the likes of which has never been seen before. The good shall triumph over evil and the world will once again (singing) be a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race…

BRAIN: (a little irritated) Keep up with that Michael Jackson drivel Pinky, and I shall perilously support you by the little appendage of your right hand from a really high window. (Pinky stops) Anyway, as I was saying… we could cause an internal conflict between Engine and Azizman and they would destroy each other along with the physical owner of this brain in the process.

PINKY: Oooo, nice plan, Brain. Narf!

BRAIN: Thank you, Pinky. And soon we shall perfect this process and ruin the important heads of state in this world. The catastrophic consequences would trigger a string of violence finishing off most, if not all, of the imbecilic human race…

PINKY: And the squeak shall inherit the earth! Bravo, Brain! (Pinky jumps around clapping his hands gleefully while Brain stares at him in disgust before resuming his observation of the surroundings)

BRAIN: (examining a set of pipelines) So what do we have here? Gas pipelines in the brain?

PINKY: (reading the notice board beside the pipes) It says here:

“Woe betide all thee who touch these pipes
For be they muggoo or give-up types
Know not the power of the cosmic explosion
That launches them into farting motion

Many a sem was ruined by it
As grades sunk into that bottomless pit
Hours and hours spent at the patisserie
When they should’ve been mugging Perry

Endless discussions of inane things
Of grub and Quake and past flings
Over glasses and glasses of sweet ice tea
(Oh, damn… give my ten bucks back, Vamsi)

So, naïve stranger, be gone from this place
Unless, of course, you’re another hopeless case
Would love to fart with you some time
Indulge yourself… This ain’t no crime”

Hey, Brain! Take a look at this…

BRAIN: This person has apparently elected to waste his time in er… what-do-you-call it… farting. No wonder the air around here is filled with murmurs of preposterous conspiracy theories.

PINKY: (pricking up his ears) You know? I can actually hear something now… Hey, did you know that Woodwards Gripe water is a decent substitute for the elixir of life? Zort!

BRAIN: (poring through a crate marked ‘Obsessions’) It seems that Azizman’s unhealthy fixation with Woodwards Gripe water seems to be catching on to you, Pinky.
(Pinky is about to perform his best imitation of the octogenarian grandmom, when Brain looks at him sternly) Let’s not go there, Pinky. I’m not sure I can stand a replay of that commercial again.

PINKY: Haha… Oops! Sorry Brain, kind of got carried away. (he stares at Brain noticing something new)

BRAIN: What happened?

PINKY: Brain, what’s with the new hairdo? How did you get actually grow some hair?

BRAIN: WHAT?!?!? NO! It’s not possible! (he rushes and looks at his reflection on a shiny untouched surface marked ‘PMT courses’) Oh, my God, I actually have weird hair like Engine’s…

PINKY: And I feel like playing multiplayer Quake even though I suck at it!

BRAIN: I desperately desire a packet of Classic Salted Lays at this present moment!

PINKY: Yeah, I want to crank up the music at full volume without giving a damn about my neighbours.

(Pinky and Brain look at each other incredulously)

BRAIN: (gasping with a great effort) Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?

PINKY: I think so, Brain. But don’t you think that the Mozzarella was a little sour?

BRAIN: (gritting his teeth) No, Pinky. We’ve been transplanted with this subject’s personality. We are him and he is us…

PINKY: …and who cares what lies ahead of us…

BRAIN: …and the past is but a four-lettered word…

PINKY: …let’s go to Gurunath and have some curd!

BRAIN: You know… This ‘philosophy’ of life has made me ponder over my grandiose plans and the sheer futility of them all…

PINKY: I know,
“What is this life if, full of care…

BRAIN: …we have no time to stand and stare?”

PINKY: Righto. Oh hang on, Brain. What are we going to do tomorrow night?

BRAIN: Oh, that. The same thing we do every night, Pinky. (voice rising) Play Age Of Empires II on LAN! 11...

They’re Pinky, Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain…