If you thought my posts were crappy, wait till you read this one:

My first day at the bathroom here. Deed done, I zipped up pants. And then, a sudden gush of water, and my pants got drenched. Sopping, dripping, heart wrenching wet. Yes, I did get the order of events right, Ms. Know-It-All.

Puzzled, I did what every guy does. My carefully tucked shirt came out, and I walked gingerly back. I realize I am smoking hot, but can’t these girls stop looking at my pants for some time?

A few more attempts and some more pant wetting before I realized: Stop tucking your shirt in, because the stupid thing will flush whenever the tank is full, doesn’t matter if a guy wearing his only pair of Calvin Klein chinos is in there finishing up.

We’d sit around the table eating lunch, or dinner, or smoking cigars or playing poker or doing whatever else a group of people in an alien country can do sitting around a table. We’d start off well enough – how the food sucks, why the affirmative action policy in Malaysia was all twisted, why work blowed and so on … A few minutes was all it took though, for conversation to veer back to our favorite topic: Toilets. ⇥ Continue reading

And so, I am back. With plans – big ones – a Bangkok travelogue, several book reviews, the usual (at least a ) post a day promise, more Ileana pictures on the other blog, a short story, three novels and many, many such things I know you could care less about.

And so I am back, and what’s the first thing I read? Plans for a Sepia Mutiny meetup in Los Angeles. A rare desi blog meet in this very country, and where is it held? As far away from Florida as humanly possible. Not a coincidence, I assure you: I know planned it that way.

In case you think I am overreacting, then how do you explain this: People wait for me to leave Chennai, and the very next week, they hold some sort of BlogCamp there. Clearly, it is part of a distrubing trend: Bloggers just don’t want to meet me. I know my intellect can be a little offputting to all you dumbasses, but still… You know what? Screw all you bloggers. (Poor Manoj excepted, of course. The jerk meets me everyday so that he can have something to laugh about with his new wife.) If you are a non blogger, the hot pictures are over on the other blog.

I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again now: My own blog meet, right down the street from my own home. At my favorite coffee shop, run by dear old Mandy and her husband, who were nice enough to give us exclusive access to the place for the whole evening…

Here are snippets from the meet…

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Bloggera: Smells coffee. Then tastes it. “Wow, this is great coffee. Ummm… just awesome. What would the world be without coffee?”

Falstaff: “A World Without Coffee. 1. It would be illuminating to consider what the word world means in this context. The world…

Bloggera: “Excuse me, but that was a purely rhetorical question. I don’t really want to know what the world would be without coffee.”

Falstaff: “Oh, I see. But can I finish off this speech though? I only have 37 more bullet items to go through. And then, about 18 footnotes.”

Bloggera: “Please, no. Let me drink my coffee.”

Megha: “This coffee is cho chweet. Gleat.”

Bloggercthruz: “What a thoughtful sentence.”

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Harpreet Kaur lives for Hindi cinema. She loves Amitabh Bachchan (in a platonic sort of way) and can’t imagine life without her daily dose of Lata. Harpreet is about a year into her Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Alaska. Her dad, back in Ludhiana and prone to hyperbole, never tires of telling people about how the Americans were bedazzled by his daughter’s intelligence and gave her “full aid” at the “best university in the world.” Harpreet did get financial aid, but she can’t get Computer Science for the life of her.

Srinivasa is the tall guy that sits with her in the Data Structures class. He hails from Nellore and has only a vague idea of how big Amitabh Bachchan is up north, but he gets Data Structures really well. He used to look down upon Harpreet because she sucked at Computer Science, but every time he did , he ended up staring at the prettiest pair of boobs in the world. And so, he fell in love with her.

Harpreet, on the other hand, liked the guy – especially on days he did her homework for her – but she wasn’t in love with him or anything. It didn’t help that he kept mixing up Lata and M.S.Subbulakhmi all the time. “I always have trouble differentiating between old women singing in alien tongues,” he told her when confronted. She wasn’t impressed at all by that answer…

Harpreet didn’t know it then, but change was in the air.

A few days later, Harpreet came down with a nasty flu that brought the meanest headache along. She took a Tylenol, and asked her roommate Aparna Shah if she could bring her a bowl of Campbell soup, but Aparna refused because the Campbell soup in the refrigerator was purchased from her share of the grocery fund.

Unable to counter her roomate’s sound logic, Harpreet went hungry that afternoon, and was delirious by the time Srinivasa came to visit her. He had stopped by to find out if she had really bunked classes to “be with her boyfriend,” like his friend Ravikiran had speculated.

Moved by her plight (and by the sight a pretty girl coiled vulnerably on a used Sealy Mattress), he made her some soup, and then sat by her bed and said comforting things to her until she fell asleep. He then watched the Tonight Show and spent the night on the couch in her apartment. He could’ve walked to his place, but it was his turn to cook today.

The next day, he woke up, used Aparna’s Listerine, made some coffee and drank it together with Harpreet. He experienced bliss, or something like it.

This pattern continued for a few days, and Harpreet no longer had the flu, though she was still not attending classes because she felt weak. Sri wasn’t going to classes either, “to provide her some company.” He was now a regular in Harpreet’s apartment, regular enough that his toothbrush was in her bathroom, and regular enough for Aparna Shah to demand that he pay 14% of the rent that month. Things were going very well indeed…

“What do you like? ” he asked her that afternoon, acting on advice from Ravikiran “to find out her likes and dislikes.”

“My favorite thing in the world is Amitabh Bachchan”

“My favorite thing would be my iPod. But I do like Amitabh Bachchan. He is a great actor.”

“Really? Thats so sweet. What’s your favorite movie of his? ”

“Err…I thought Shahenshah was great. So was Giraftar ”

“Shahenshah? Even I couldn’t stand that one. Tell me the truth now – how many Bachchan movies have you watched?”

“Only those two on the video coach bus from Madras to Bangalore. Nellore theaters only play Telugu and Tamil movies. But there was a lot of potential in his angry eyes.. I could see it very clearly.”

“Oh you poor thing. That’s such a sad story… I need to show you how much you are missing.”

So she said, and put in a copy of Black into their Apex DVD player. A few minutes into the movie, and Sri hits the pause button.

“So you say Amitabh Bachchan is a big star in Bollywood, right? ”

“Of course, he is a superstar. ”

“If that is so, how come the title card doesn’t say SuperStar Amitabh Bachchan. If I call him a Megastar, would that be ok?”

“Yes, he is a megastar, a superstar, a huge star. The biggest there is.”

“He can only be one star. Tell me which one. ”

“I don’t think I understand where this is going. ”

Sri takes her hand, and holds it against his chest.

“Baby, before you explain Amitabh Bachchan to me, let me explain the Southern movie industry to you. ”

“I am all ears. ”

And thus the lesson begins.

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Sonia Faleiro’s The Girl, a book I’d briefly mentioned in this post at Sepia Mutiny, is a melancholy novel set in Goa about two men and The Girl they both loved. The book begins with the young woman’s suicide – yet another tragedy in cursed Azul – and the two men are “achingly curious” to find out why. And when one of them stumbles upon her journal, they use it to reconstruct her life leading up to the suicide – the death of an unhappy woman whose last big hope had vanished.

Just a few pages into the novel, and it is obvious that it is as much about showcasing the writing as it is about the actual plot. The Girl is a carefully crafted book: every sentence is meticulously assembled from deliberately chosen words, each page is filled with precise paragraphs construced from meticulously assembled sentences.

There is plenty of wordplay, and large doses of descriptive detail. Nothing is too insignificant to be let off without a metaphor or two, ranging from the inventive to the cliched.

Thus we have the earth “encrusting the casket like pastry bubbling into hardness,” a bar and its location as mismatched as “vegetarianism and a Goan” and as “profoundly antipodean” as the “Rua’s many little old ladies and the one young lady who lived opposite Breto’s in a stone mansion, and many years later flung herself into the well in the corner of her garden.”

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Someone talking to me for the first time is usually struck by two things: How incredibly handsome I am, and how incredibly smart I am. If they can get over this, they’ll be struck by two more things: How much I love movies, and how much I love books.

Someone meeting Manoj for the first time is usually struck by two things: How much he loves movies, and how much he loves music. Ok, maybe they’ll also be struck by how smart he is. Whatever. That’s not the point.

So anyways, Manoj and I spend the better part of our days IMing each other. In normal English, capitalized first words and all. (The only allowance for IMspeak is the ubiquitous brb, which I thought was a misspelt female undergarment when someone first used it on me. Now I know, and love to use it coz it sounds so, um, kinky.)

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Picture Courtesy Wikipedia

Golden dragons sit atop the striking green fa�ade, flanked by golden arches on the left and (overpriced) gold topped taxis beneath. A unsightly blue roof stretches along the entire street, designed to keep out the elements and whatever little charm the facade has to offer. “Jalan Petaling,” the multilingual signboard suspended from the lowest tier says. Petaling Street.

Petaling Street, a narrow stretch of road in downtown Kuala Lumpur is the green dragon facaded, blue roofed home to a gigantic flea market selling bootleg merchandise. Fittingly, the market operates from dawn to midnight, drawing an enormous throng of bargain hunters looking for Rolexes and Patek Philippes; Guesses, Guccis, Givenchys and Louis Vittons; Star Wars and Flight Plan and Sims and Civilization and food.

A row of stores on each side of the street, and down the middle of the street a double row of stores with their backs to each other, splitting the narrow alley into two narrower alleys. Enter through the left, bargain your way up the street till the end, gawk at the vendors selling fried fish, and kabab rolls and ice kacang, and a Rolex or two; turn around and haggle back down the other way. Along the way, a sensual treat: the bright flouroscent lighting, the smell of sweaty bodies laden with faux Italian fashion goods mixed in with the the smell of barbecued fish, the sounds of hagglers haggling and touts touting.

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In which a forced break from blogging causes one to overcompensate by writing an overly long post.

I was sixteen. She must’ve been a few years older.

I was the kid that snottily buried his head in a book through the hourlong bus ride to school, except to look at the occasional poster. After her, I was the kid that was starting to fantasize about burying the head elsewhere. Dirty thoughts, I know, but not as dirty as you think. I didn’t know all that then.

In truth, she wasn’t all that pretty. Thin and wiry and bespectacled and fair and squeaky and rude and unsmiling. But she wore exceptionally short skirts that fell just below the knee. Can you imagine? And traveled the same route as me every single day for two years, standing but a few feet away from me. And most important of all, she went to Nrimala[1] College. What could be hotter?

Ever since a we’d heard that story about a bunch of girls at Rinmala who raped the milkman that went to deliver milk to their hostel, the hotness quotient of everyone that spent any time at all in the general vicinity of the campus had increased by several orders of magnitude in our eyes. Especially because Rex – who assured us all that he knew – informed us that the story was very true. He also threw in a few details of the incident – oh my! – that made me think that being a milkman wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living. Wake up, clean bullshit, milk cow, visit college, get raped. Bliss.

Could the girl on the bus be a rapist, I wondered. And then hastily assured myself that she couldn’t have been. Given the time of the incident, she was probably in this very bus when her classmates were doing the nasties to the poor milkman. Unless it was a predetermined crime, and she had stayed back that night. Quite possible, you know, with these young college going types.

Now, in case you think we believed every story we heard about IrNmala, you are so wrong. That story about the girl and a broken test tube for example: In spite of the obvious truth that in those days – most young girls possessed rather loose morals and were capable of most acts of debauchery a male brain could think of, this one was a little too farfetched to be true. Also, it coincided a little too well with our entry into the world of pipettes and burettes and – you guessed it – test tubes. So we only partly believed the story.

And then one day, the girl didn’t show up. After she kept up the habit of not showing up for a few more days, I knew I had lost her – either she had graduated or she had fled the law. It must’ve been the latter – how could someone graduate in December anyway?

She had vanished without a word, my scheming rapist shrew girlfriend. Thank God I hadn’t introduced her to my parents or bragged about her to Rex.

We’d been seeing each other for a good year and a half, and what did I get out it? A sorry glimpse of knee.

This won’t do.

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The last month has seen several truly remarkable things happen to this blog: We turned into a group blog with two real contributors, and several imaginary ones. Our fan following among pharmaceutical companies seems to have increased, and like all delirious new fans, they can’t seem to stop writing to us. (We might trash your letters, ladies, but your affection means a lot to us.)

We watched four horrid Tamil movies. While that in itself is not remarkable, what is remarkable is that we have refrained from reviewing any of them. Even this post is not a review per se. It is about celebrating the movies in question and rewarding them for the things they did.

And so, without further ado, Ladies, Pharmaceutical Industry Representatives and other Gentlemen, here we go.

The Freakist Bird Flu-ke Award:

Kamna Jethmalani, the lead girl in Idhaya Thirudan wants to send an anonymous email to her mom. She types up the email – whose contents are the proud recipients of another award – but she can’t figure out how to sign the email.

Unable to pick a random name, she picks up a pigeon hovering nearby and lays it gently on top of the keyboard. The pigeon walks back, then forth. Then forth again, and back once more. And then flies away, to leave the half dressed girl staring at the screen.

The pigeon had just keyed in T. Mahesh, which happens to be the name of.. you guessed it, the hero of the movie. What an incredibly clever way to move a story forward. Anyone out there who still thinks our moviemakers are unimaginative?

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I’ve been a spectator for a while now.

I watched silently, Krishna in tow, when a bunch of classmates decided to take a peek into the girls dressing room on a trip to Bangalore. And listened to their stories – much exaggerated, much embellished – afterwards, and wondered for a second if Krishna and I had missed out on something. Later, guilt.

I expressed a bit of disbelief and not much more when I heard that some of the guys that I studied with worked. Where working means getting off standing behind a girl in a crowded bus. Really getting off.

I’ve seen a lot. In buses and movie theaters, upscale malls and vegetable markets. From catcalls to breathing down the neck, from elbowing a fellow passenger to things a bit more than elbowing. Everytime, a silent “What the…” and I’ve moved on. Sometimes, not even that.

And for the last week, I’ve watched an incredible lineup of posts for the Blank Noise Blogathon, and stayed silent myself.

Until now, until this post. In the hope that something’ll come out of it all.

Tag: blog-a-thon 2006

When is the right time to write about Penang?

After is when.

After the initial fascination that magnifies the slightest of contrasts into exotic singularities has worn off. After overcoming the shock of being surrounded by people speaking my language, of having to watch what I say; of not looking too out of place in a large gathering of people not discussing immigration issues. After the joy of seeing an Indian restaurant at every street corner has been washed away by the watery sambar, after realizing that tea with condensed milk is not such a great idea.

Now is when. But what?

Surely not the architectural dichotomy of George Town, fostered by arcane rent control laws. Through which the massive, utterly characterless Komtar sits right next to the modern Prangin Mall, and seedy, unpainted establishments occupy most of downtown. Nothing we haven’t seen before, right? Even though blind massages aren’t exactly the norm in most places.

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