Car Talk

    Life  3 Responses »
May 062005
 

Cut to a few years back. Lavanya and I enter a car deal­er­ship, excited, dream­ing shiny new cars — after all, first cars are bought just once. A sales­man greets us at the door — a younger, taller Den­nis Farina .

“Hi, wel­come to our deal­er­ship. I am John. (or Jacob, or some such name).”

He then offers his hand to Lavanya.

“Hi John. I am Lavanya.”

” ‘cuse me?”

“Laa-van-yaa”

“Oh, ok.” Turns to me. And duly shakes my hand, almost squish­ing it. Winc­ing, I mouth, “Karthik.”

“Sorry?”

“Car — thick, like a car that is fat.”

A lit­tle pon­der­ing. “Ummm… Can I call you Bob?”

We left.

__________

Later, much later, we head back to our car one evening, and it wouldn’t start because we had left the lights on. We wait out­side the car try­ing to flag down some­one for a jump start. Cue the arrival of a knight in shin­ing armor. An Indian knight to boot. Shin­ing Armor being a gleam­ing, black BMW. Knight gets down, and asks us, “Can I help you guys?”

“Yeah, can you give us a jump­start? I have the cables right here.”

“Sure,” he says and opens the gleam­ing, new black hood. Inside, all the para­pher­na­lia seem to be hid­den under a plas­tic canopy, meant to reduce engine noise. A 50 grand car bet­ter have some­thing extra. He lifts the edge of the sheath, and peers under­neath. He then pro­ceeds to walk over to the other side of the car, and does another lift and peer.

“Hmm…”

After this pretty cryp­tic expla­na­tion, he mut­ters somet­ing about trunks, and goes on to open the trunk. There are a cou­ple of ten­nis rac­quets and a few balls in there. He moves the rac­quets away, and after a cou­ple of min­utes spent with his head inisde the trunk, he emerges with a quizzi­cal look.

“Umm…”

“Is there a prob­lem?” I ask.

“Well, um, not really. But I can’t seem to find the bat­tery in my car.”

“Oh!” With sup­pressed grins, we see the knight off, and start wait­ing for another one in armor less shiny.

 Posted by at 3:02 pm

Lost In Translation

    Life  8 Responses »
Apr 292005
 

Once upon a time, before iPods had been invented, there was not much a teenager tak­ing a bus to school for an hour every day could do to enter­tain himself.

Except to lis­ten. To the con­duc­tor scream­ing at col­lege stu­dents trav­el­ing on the “foot­board”; and boys that got into the girls sec­tion of the bus. Lis­ten­ing also to the pretty girl from Nir­mala Col­lege talk­ing to her friend, and to the old man sit­ting next to me yelling at pre­car­i­ously placed peo­ple hold­ing on to his seat, to take their under­arms out of the way. And smil­ing, as he turned to you and com­plained that no one takes show­ers any­more. Lis­ten­ing to what­ever song caught the driver’s fancy as he played the same tape over and over again.

Idhu Enna Mud­hal Irava, Ammadi Illa­maikku Pudhu Var­ava

(This is our first night together, Wow! we are new arrivals at the altar of love)

And to look. At the con­vent girls that pre­tended to not notice. And col­lege girls that really didn’t notice. And at the city through win­dows with red metal bars going across their length, and black accor­dion blinds on top held together with flimsy shoelaces that always looked like giv­ing away but never did.

Coim­bat­ore was an indus­trial town. Every­where along my route, there were cot­ton mills and foundries; but­ton fac­to­ries and pumpset man­u­fac­tur­ing houses. Sprawl­ing cam­puses, cor­doned off by com­pound walls with bro­ken glass pieces on top to pre­vent intrud­ers, and stern sound­ing warn­ings ask­ing peo­ple to “Stick No Bills”. Warn­ings notwith­stand­ing, the walls existed for posters — large, col­or­ful ban­ners glued to them with starch. Most of the posters adver­tised movies, although there was the odd one about the upcom­ing visit of a politi­cian or the impend­ing arrival of Jesus Christ. Every Fri­day morn­ing, the posters would change, and from the longevity of a poster or a bill­board you knew if a movie was a hit or a flop. With no Yahoo! to tell you which movie was play­ing where, the posters were often the only source of cin­ema information.

Every movie the­ater played four shows a day, and in the sub­urbs the morn­ing show was reserved for skin-flicks — mostly Malay­alam movies that promised more skin than they deliv­ered. The posters for these movies were designed by mar­ket­ing geniuses — mostly just the name of the movie and the pic­ture of a scant­ily clad girl — with a giant “A“covering the key parts. Com­ing to think of it, the girl in the poster could have been fully clothed: all that you could see through the A was her face. The A meant that the movie was for “Adults Only”, although a few kids in school uni­forms that looked sus­pi­ciously like mine would sneak in once in a while. To elim­i­nate any con­fu­sion, these posters also had a trans­lated ver­sion of the title in Tamil, usu­ally enclosed in paran­the­ses. Trans­lated it would seem, by the same team of mar­ket­ing geniuses.

Thus an inno­cent sound­ing name like Mazhu(ax in Malay­alam) became “A Father-In-Law’s lust” in Tamil. Next Fri­day, a new set of posters clar­i­fied: “A Father-In-Law’s jus­ti­fied lust”. That set my heart at rest.

The atro­cious End­less Love did brisk busi­ness for weeks, adver­tised as the “Secrets of love, sex and child­birth.” A movie called Ama­zon Women (I think) was promptly renamed to a more appro­pri­ate sound­ing ” Naked beau­ties in the King’s court.” (Raa­javin Kot­tayil Nir­vana Azhakigal).

Some­times the the­aters would play a home brewn soft porn clip in the mid­dle of a movie — in such cases, the orig­i­nal movie didn’t mat­ter much. “Digby , the biggest dog in the world” was a movie my dad had taken me to when I was young. Imag­ine my sur­prise then when they screened it at a the­ater next to my house a few years later, with posters that screamed (in paran­thethized Tamil) — “Sex Crazed Big Dog” (Adan­gatha Kaama Veri Piditha Ratchatha Naai). I hastily tried to rec­ol­lect the movie, and con­cluded that I must’ve been too young to under­stand the lust part of it when I had watched the movie with my dad.

Con­di­tioned thus, most peo­ple equated Eng­lish movies with skin flicks. Mid­way dur­ing The Abyss, a guy got up and screamed: “Show us some Skin”. A few min­utes later, he stomped out of the the­ater in anger. Later, when watch­ing Leg­ends of the Fall in Chen­nai, some­one leaned across and whis­pered in a con­spir­a­to­r­ial tone: “Does this movie have any scenes bro?” I could only offer him an under­stand­ing grin.

PS: Navin’s post about the Tamil title of a comic book, set off the train of thought lead­ing to this post. And yes, we’ve both out­grown our school uniforms.

 Posted by at 12:51 am

Juggling

    Life,    Lit  Comments Off
Apr 142005
 

When I am halfway through this, and about a hun­dred pages into this and a few chap­ters into this, why would I want to go back and read The Dia­mond Age again last weekend?

Because it is so cool. It is (Über, Meta and other punky adjec­tives that cool gets these days) cool.

By the way, Stephenson’s books will only get longer accord­ing to Wikipedia, which calls his style reflec­tive of Baroque Lit­er­a­ture. Scrump­tious. After the slightly dis­ap­point­ing (key­word: slight), Baroque Cycle, won­der what he is work­ing on next.

 Posted by at 1:26 am  Tagged with:

What’s in a name?

    Life,    Lit  13 Responses »
Apr 102005
 

Salem was the wrong town to be a bib­lio­phile. The sole source of books was a lend­ing library whose name I don’t remem­ber, at Shan­tam Com­plex about ten kilo­me­ters from my hos­tel. Or about a half hour on an Anna Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion bus, if you don’t count the walk from Four Roads. The library was manned by a cou­ple of women — one of them older and obvi­ously in charge. In addi­tion to main­tain­ing a data­base of books in her head, she was on first name terms with most writ­ers – “Have you read Sidney’s lat­est?” and “Robert’s new book is com­ing out next week.”

The younger girl’s job descrip­tion seemed lim­ited to buy­ing tea for the lady-in-charge, and repeat­edly draw­ing her already drawn dupatta over her­self when­ever engi­neers entered the library. Not that we cared.

It was here that San­jay intro­duced me to John Le Carre. From Shel­don and Lud­lum to Le Carre was a heady leap, a leap that would later lead to Rushdie and Proulx, Atwood and Arund­hati Roy, Stephen­son and Gib­son. On that day though, I’d just fin­ished read­ing Naïve and Sen­ti­men­tal Lover and wanted to get back to read­ing some­thing more, um, famil­iar. Late that evening, I entered the library and young girl promptly adjusted her dha­vani. I ignored her and spoke to the lady-in-charge, who was a lit­tle unhappy with me:

“This book is late.”

“Sorry, it is a lit­tle dense. Took me a while to read it.”

All this while I was scour­ing the Le Carre shelf for a book I wanted. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the book that brought him instant fame. Unable to find it, I asked her

“Do you have The Spy Who Came in From the Cold?”

“Who is the author?”

“John Le Carre.”

“Oh, John?”

“Yes, John. Do you have it?”

“I think we do, my boss just fin­ished read­ing it, and it will be avail­able tomorrow.”

“Will you remem­ber? Maybe I’ll ask a friend to pick it up for me tomorrow.”

She took a sheet of paper, and folded it into half. Then another fold, and then another. Then she care­fully licked along the folds. And equally care­fully, she tore the paper along the folds, fash­ion­ing a post-it note of sorts. She asked me for the title again, and I repeated it. And she scrib­bled some­thing in the note, and left it on her desk. “Now, I’ll remember.”

The next day, I looked fran­ti­cally for some­one that was going into town. I could only land a guy I barely knew, but I asked him any­way. “Can you go to the library in Shan­tam and pick up a book for me? Just go ask the lady in the library, men­tion my name, and she’ll give you the book.” After some hes­i­ta­tion, he agreed.

Later that night, I went to his room. “Did she give you the book?” I asked. “Yes,” he said hand­ing me the book and added, “But what is Garp?”

“Garp?”

“Yeah,” he said point­ing to the title. It was ‘The World Accord­ing to Garp’ by some guy called John Irv­ing. Some type of giant mix-up had occurred.

I had a whole week­end to burn, all my friends were out, and I hated the TV room. Now, no book. Dis­ap­pointed, I walked back to my room and con­tem­plated my options. There weren’t any, so after utter­ing a few choice exple­tives, I reluc­tantly decided to read the first few pages and then go back Mon­day and give her a piece of my mind.

Early the next morn­ing, I was done with the book, hav­ing read it in one sit­ting. It was the most sat­is­fy­ing book I had read. Sleepy but con­tent, I turned to the next page to read the author bio. Pasted to the page was the library call notice. Stuck to the notice with cel­lo­phane tape was the make shift post-it note. It said, in Tamil:

Karthik
John
Book with a long name

 Posted by at 2:37 pm  Tagged with:

Yum

    Life, Etc.  4 Responses »
Apr 092005
 

Yum is a cup of tea from the Nescafe auto­matic vend­ing machines in India. In Car­damom and Gin­ger fla­vors. Espe­cially the one inside a decrepit plaza on Cathe­dral road. Tired from fol­low­ing Lavanya around as she shopped for clothes, the yelakka tea that the young boy filled into a plas­tic cup, turn­ing the tap off with a styl­ish flour­ish was, well, yum.

Yum is Haa­gen Dazs Mango. Surely, a prod­uct from par­adise. Cold Stone Cream­ery, you pale in com­par­i­son. But don’t worry, not too pale.

Yum is the Sam­bar from Anna­purna in Coim­bat­ore. Match­less. Sorry Mom.

Yum is the Bhain­gan Bhartha that Lavanya makes. Incom­pa­ra­ble. Tran­scen­dent. And all this.

Yum is a Rahul Dravid on drive. Yum­mier was a wristy Azharud­din shot. But the match fix­ing left a bad taste in your mouth. Yum­mi­est is a Sachin Ten­dulkar straight drive. And he knows it — watch­ing him hold a pose after is a delight.

Yum is Mysore Pak by Mom. Krishna sweets can try all they want. Yum is also how she pro­nounces the let­ter M. I used to pro­nounce it Yum too, till Mrs. D’Souza told me oth­er­wise in sec­ond grade. It was my mom’s money that sent me to that school so that I could be snooty and cor­rect her.

 Posted by at 11:18 pm

Of Romance and Sharing

    Life, Etc.  2 Responses »
Apr 082005
 

Dairy Milk turned hun­dred this year. Appar­ently,

Through­out his­tory choco­late has been asso­ci­ated with romance and sharing.

Hmm.

Before Playsta­tions and iPods, choco­lates were rewards. When I inter­viewed for my first grade – recit­ing Ding Dong Bell, (stop­ping at Tommy Stout) iden­ti­fy­ing col­ors count­ing pens and try­ing hard not to cry at the sight of the rude man who wore a gown – I got to choose a reward, and picked a Five Star and a Dairy Milk with no fruits or nuts, and even con­vinced my poor dad that I could eat them all by myself. I liked the Five Star bet­ter, maybe because I was a boy. Or just because unlike Dairy Milk it wasn’t par­ti­tioned into square blocks that some­how made it accept­able for peo­ple to ask for a piece or three. Screw that! So much for sharing.

Later in life, choco­lates were roman­tic over­tures. Espe­cially Five Star, because all the ads had pretty girls and boys get­ting together over one. Love let­ters with­out choco­late didn’t mean much. The ones with choco­late didn’t mean much either, but they def­i­nitely tasted bet­ter. I gave Lavanya a bar of white choco­late from Lindt, once and got informed that it tasted like Hor­licks. So much for romance.

 Posted by at 11:01 pm

Engineering Conversations

    Life  Comments Off
Mar 272005
 

Being mar­ried to a fel­low elec­tri­cal engi­neer has its advan­tages. Tell me, how many cou­ples you know could’ve had a con­ver­sa­tion like this?

“Why do you care now? You didn’t seem to in the afternoon.”

“Umm.. well…”

“Your con­cern goes up and down like a sine wave. I hate that!”

“Oh, come on! What do you want me to be?”

“Con­stant. Like the Fourier Trans­form of an impulse.”

Anamika, there is at least one soul that under­stands you when you say “I want to col­lapse my wave func­tion into you.” Sorry, but Lavanya thinks that’s inane.

 Posted by at 11:18 am

Fond Farewells and Wishing Angels

    Life  1 Response »
Mar 252005
 

Ten more days. Next Mon­day, dad and mom are leav­ing for India. After nearly a year, mak­ing tea twice a day (with gin­ger and car­damom); fret­ting end­lessly over how much we work; wor­ry­ing con­stantly about why I sleep so late and con­vert­ing each dol­lar spent into rupees, they’ll be gone. Farewells are hard. Farewells are hard, but this is the hard­est of them all. Because my dad is sev­enty and mom is not much younger than that, and when peo­ple are that old…

Lavanya tells me there are angels in the sky that say ‘Tha-Dhas-Thu’ at ran­dom inter­vals. If you say some­thing out loud , and it hap­pens to coin­cide with a thadasthu, it will come true. So, she says, think good thoughts. I will. Maybe the angels will hear me now when I say I want our par­ents to come back here and spend a long time with us, make me more teas, call me lazy and play monop­oly with us as we wait for hur­ri­canes to pass. And that they get to play with their grandkids.

 Posted by at 5:00 pm

On (bad) Language

    Life  3 Responses »
Mar 232005
 

Every kid that went to an “Eng­lish Medium con­vent” school in India will have at least one to tell. Most of them are apoc­ryphal. Some are clas­sics that every­one wants to claim as their own. Y’all must’ve heard at least one. If not, you will after you’re done reading:

The bad Eng­lish incident.

The tales all involve a teacher with a less than per­fect com­mand of Eng­lish, forced to talk to stu­dents in Eng­lish. Why? Because it is an Eng­lish medium school, dummy.

Like the teacher that warned his mis­chie­vous class about the impend­ing arrival of the prin­ci­pal thus. “Be care­ful, the prin­ci­pal is rotat­ing the school”. Or the guy that asked some­one on a par­tic­u­larly sul­try after­noon to “go open the win­dow, and let the atmos­phere come in.”

When I was in col­lege, a favorite story that did the rounds was that of a pro­fes­sor who went to a movie with his wife. He ran into a stu­dent at the cin­ema. So the next day, he tells the bemused stu­dent, “I saw you with my wife at the the­ater.” Lavanya’s teacher was known to tell every­one that “their edu­ca­tion was sur­ren­dered under the inside of his shoes.”

What I am going to nar­rate really hap­pened. I heard it with my own two ears. And to make sure I heard it, the guy repeated it at least thirty times a year for ten years. We had strict hair-length require­ments, and Mon­day when we gath­ered together for the school assem­bly was when we were checked.

Mr. L in par­tic­u­lar enjoyed this chore. He would stand in front of a stu­dent, run his fin­gers through his hair, let it linger for some time and pull it out. And then, he’d advise him: “You should cut your hair cut.” He would then pull back, look at all of us in the line, and loudly bark, “Look your own eye”. Yes, that’s exactly what he said, and no, I don’t think any of us knew what it meant. We all kept mum though because he had a long cane, and when he beat us with it he would keep ask­ing us to “Take up front”. I think that meant he wanted us to stop cov­er­ing our asses with our hands, which by the way is bad career advise.

Link: The bad Eng­lish league. Or this.

 Posted by at 1:16 pm

And you thought you knew how to make rice?

    Life, Etc.  Comments Off
Mar 232005
 

This was one dish I was smug enough to think I had mas­tered. Put rice in elec­tric cooker, add a cup of water, glance at tv, add another cup, glance some more, smile sheep­ishly when you miss count, turn cooker on and wait till it gets to “keep warm.” Until I read this: Shiok — Chef’s Notes: How to make per­fect steamed rice

 Posted by at 12:09 pm
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