The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A little long, but thats the title of Mark Haddon’s delightful debut novel that I am going write about ! It may sound like a cliché, but it IS difficult to believe that this is his first novel !!

The story is exactly what the title says it is about. Christopher, our 15 year old hero, wakes up one morning to find that his neighbour’s poodle has been murdered with a pitch-fork. He is unjustly arrested for the murder and then released the next day. He proceeds to investigate the murder, in the style of Sherlock Holmes, who is one of his favourite characters.

Doesn’t that sound even more childish than Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series or even Secret Seven ? Well the difference here is that Christopher is autistic. Remember Dustin Hoffman in ‘Rainman’ or our very own Kamalhasan in ‘Sippikkul Muthu’ (’Swati Muthyam’ in telugu and ‘Ishwar’ in Hindi)? He cannot bear to be touched and cannot understand complex emotions. He takes everything at face value and The whole novel is in the form of first person narrative of Christopher, who, on the suggestion of a social worker at his school, decides to write a book about his investigation.

The language is very simple, the plot is not. Christopher manages to solve the puzzle, without understanding the enormity of the secrets, he has brought out of the closet. The truth does not come out of the blue, but the reader unravels it along with Christopher, although we can understand better the nuances and internal workings of people’s minds.

Christopher can understand numbers better than people. His narration is interspersed with puzzles and mathematical problems, giving us an idea of how his mind works. He declares in the beginning that ‘he will not joke in the book, because he does not understand them’, but still manages to make us laugh.

The biggest plus of this novel is that at no point does it ever get overtly sentimental or mushy. Christopher’s disability is not treated like one. It is just used to give a different perspective to otherwise ordinary proceedings in life.

‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ has an important place in modern day classics. It is an awesome novel that you would never want to end !!

Where is my collar-bone?

‘Don’t hold your breath for too long. Breathe normally’ says my brother, at my futile efforts to make my collar bone show. He knows me and can see through me.

Sometimes it is good to look back and sometimes it is terrible. I was looking through some old photographs when a skinny, terribly thin girl with a layer of skin wrapped over her skeleton looked back at me from the photographs. I have been seeing these photographs from the time they were taken and so happen to know that this is my photograph !

When and where exactly did those bones go, I often wonder !! There was a time when I was in college, when I used to hate the fact that my collar-bones were protruding making my thinness even more pronounced. And now I am wondering where in God’s name, it has vanished.

Signs of prosperity are showing up in both my bank-balance and my waist size! Every year I seem to grow a little more, horizontally. It is really unfair - when you want to grow tall, it never happens, but you don’t want to grow broad, and no matter what you do, you end up growing uncontrollably. It is also unfair that when everyone else who travels returns thinner than before, I always seem to add more to my bulk !

People prescribed a lot of things to me - Diets, Water therapy, Working out, none of which seemed to work. I tried turning Vegan for some time and gave up milk products. What I had instead was Soymilk and mock-dairy stuff, which, sadly for me, seemed to worsen my situation. On the other hand, when my friend and I shared an apartment on a short-term visit to the US, we binged on potato chips and all sorts of fried stuff, and both of us returned thinner than before. That of course, did not mean that I could have fried stuff back home !

I tried working out, taekwon do (korean karate), tai chi, yoga. You name it and I tried it out. Made me turn more like a Sumo wrestler than like Angelina Jolie - Bulk and muscles rather than just muscle.

For some time, I blamed the steroids that I took for some respiratory conditions as reasons for putting on weight, although, I secretly acknowledged that when I was actually taking the medicines, I was still thin.

Then I blamed my work -software professionals have to work long hours and have irregular food habits and sleeping habits etc. But this is not true either. I have never worked hard enough or ever sacrificed my meals for work.

Then I got a new excuse. I blamed it on going onsite. I later found a photograph, taken after my first onsite visit and found that, that was a lie too!

I always had a date in mind when I would join the gym and turn from Tuntun (popular Hindi Actress) to maybe Simran (before her marriage !!). I always had great excuses to postpone the great day to a later date.

Now I am in what you can term as denial. I am upset and depressed with life (or so I tell my people !) because I have to travel and I refuse to take up any exercise, since I am anyway going away.

I have now learnt a great way to escape comments on my being overweight. I initiate the topic and looking very sad, insist on how awful I look. This obviously invites a lot of sympathetic comments from the listeners who go on to say how I look slightly plump, but am definitely not fat. This trick, I have noticed, works everytime, especially with relatives ! My relatives are experts in making you feel good, if you are in a pitiable condition and making you feel terrible, if you are in an enviable position!

Meanwhile, as a temporary measure, I have learnt to suck in my breath everytime I walk past someone! Once in a while, I try to find my collarbone, by holding in my breath and straining myself in front of the mirror, but the stress is too much !

Who am I?

Have you ever bothered to stop and turn your thoughts to yourself?

Why do you do what you do?

Why do you behave the way you do?

Take for example, some mannerism of yourself. Say, you start every sentence with ‘Actually’ (many people do !). Were you always like this? Right from the time you started speaking? When did this habit start?

When I think some things about myself (which I do often), especially when I have nothing much to do (like right now ), I realize that I have changed slightly compared to last month ! Along the way, I seem to pick up mannerisms of others I interact with.

In school, I would laugh (secretly, of course) at some girls in my class, who would speak in Hinglish - ‘What happened na, he said ki he will come, lekin woh bhool gaya. I mean, I was soooooooooooooo angry’ - you catch my drift?

There were some others who would translate from tamil/hindi directly to English - ‘You tell and come your mother’ types or ‘You told that no.’ (no substituting for ‘illai’ or ‘na’).

Many more, who would speak in normal sentences, with the tone making it a question. ‘You are coming?’ (meaning ‘Are you coming?’) types.

During one of my sober periods (not that I was drunk otherwise !), I decided to simply watch how I spoke and realized that in the process of imitating or teasing such people, I had ended up using the exact phrases in my daily conversations. For a long time, till I went to college, I would speak in Hinglish most of the time. ‘Chal, lets go. Otherwise, she will tell ki we were only late !’ types.

I teased girls who would use their hands a lot while talking (many times to show off their nail polish and their perfectly manicured fingers) and who would always have a stray strand of hair on their face and what am I doing now? I seem to be using my hands too while I talk. Maybe not as much as some, but I definitely do !!

It is not just things that we make fun of or tease in others, it is a lot of other things, that we do not even realize we have been noticing in others. Even today, a lot of people tell me that my friend of 15 years and I talk exactly in the same fashion, although we are like chalk and cheese ! We are completely different by nature, yet seem to have picked up something of the other over the course of time. A lot of people we meet say that we even sound similar !

My parents have probably changed too, probably because they have picked up things from me.

I would not term this as inspiration, since I do not think any of these things happen consciously. But at some level, we seem to leave something of us and take something of the other during every interaction with other people.

I read a long while ago, that after living together for many decades, husbands and wives even slowly start resembling each other! Some photographs from the past and present were presented as evidence !!

That brings up the question of who I really am. Without getting into any philosophy, I seem to be a microcosm of the world around me, a little bit of everyone I have met in life, a living record of who I have interacted with over a period of time, with the real ME (is there any such person), so masked with layers of others, that I really doubt I exist !!

What sign?

Are you one of those people whose day is incomplete without checking the daily predictions page?

Are you one of those people whose first thought (or maybe 2nd or 3rd) on meeting a new person is to find out his/her ‘Sun’ sign?

Are you one of those people who thinks that Linda Goodman is God’s biggest gift to earth?

Are you one of those, who can start and carry on a conversation with a stranger purely on the subject of sun-signs etc?

If you are any of the above, I envy you my dear friend. I have tried to develop an interest, but have never been able to do so!

What is a sun-sign? As per my guru (Wikipedia), it is the position of the sun on a person’s birthday. This sun-sign or zodiac sign supposedly is the magic key to one’s character. It tells you all about the person, both the obvious ones and the not so obvious ones.

For a long time, I was embarrassed when somebody asks for my zodiac sign, since I had no clue what that meant ! Then finally, an autograph book that came as a free gift had the pages with months and dates along with the associated zodiac signs, opened my eyes to grand new world of zodiac symbols. I was pleased. I could now tell anyone who asked me for my sun-sign. ‘Libra’ - no doubts, no squirming, no bewildered expressions, no ‘I dont actually remember’ etc !

Then fate intervened and I went to Hyderabad to visit some of my cousins. These cousins were considered the child prodigies (not children anymore of course !) in my family. What they spoke about, was always the ‘in-thing’. I would often end up with a bad inferiority complex after hearing them talk for 10 min. They knew everything ! They could discuss in length about anything and everything for hours together and all I could do was to put on my intelligent-but-quiet look and pretend that I found the subject boring !Every year, during the summer holidays, my cousins’ interest would be different. I would have worked hard the whole year to make myself interesting and learning about what interested them the previous year, but they always managed to stay ahead of me!

This particular year, the interest had moved on to Zodiac signs. My cousin was looking at me differently. She had, in the past few months, mastered the book on sun-signs by Linda Goodman and viewed everybody as her test subjects. In her eyes, I probably looked like a guinea pig too !

‘What is your sun-sign?’ she asked.

‘Libra’, I said proudly.

‘Oh, diplomatic, peace-makers. Very balanced in life’ - she said.

Well, that sounded nothing like me ! But the judgment had been passed. I had no option, other than to be diplomatic. I had reduced from a cousin to a mere statistic.

One more victory to Linda Goodman, according to my cousin. Every action I did, every word I said, was made to fit into dear Linda’s mould of me. All the time, I spent there after that, all I heard was how Libras are, how Virgos are etc.

It was considered fashionable to ‘discuss’ about sun-signs in every social occasion. My other cousins, rose to the challenge and managed to learn just enough to understand what the knowledgeable ones have to say on the subject.

Me? I never went anywhere near it. I found and still find the idea of generalizing traits based on birthdays ridiculous! To me, such books are based on statistics. They probably make interesting reads, but applying the reverse methodology, i.e., forcing traits on people based on statistics seems not so good an idea to me !

In school, one of my friends once asked me (when I was glaring angrily at her !), whether I was a Scorpio and I simply said I was only human !!

To me sun-signs/moon-signs/earth signs etc are just for fun. The daily predictions page is my idea of a not too bad joke. I read it and forget it the next minute. Sun-signs are good to strike up conversations with strangers (assuming they are not like me!!)

If someone can actually prove that sun-signs and character analysis are related and that predictions on a person’s future are possible, I have some practical applications in mind:

a. Learn the sun-sign of the girl/boy who you find attractive. Go ahead and propose only if the sun-signs are compatible.

b. Check the sun-sign of money-borrowers to ensure they return the money as promised.

c. Win horse races, by placing your bet on the most compatible (!!??!!) horse (Do horses have sun-signs too?)

d. Select compatible and winning team members for the Indian cricket team. Match dates should be decided based on weekly, daily predictions for the captain’s sun sign.

The possibilities are endless !!

Shopping Adventures !

Originally posted on my intranet site !

I love clothes and shopping for them. To me, spending an hour in the clothes shop is almost therapeutic ! Those who love spending, will understand what I mean. There is no treatment better than shopping for clothes (for some it is shoes, books, CDs etc) when you are feeling down. The best part about shopping to me, is the bargaining part. And since this is possible only in India, I love shopping in India the most !

So you can imagine my distaste towards ‘upscale’ boutiques. What is it about these places, that makes anyone go to them. I visited one with my sister yesterday since she wanted to buy something unique.

Here are some things I found weird about the place (and other similar places):

a. Dim lighting - You can hardly see the colour of the fabric. Forget the fact that most of them are better seen in this light than in broad daylight ! I could hardly see my sister in the boutique, so you know what I mean !

b. Couple of foreigners (read ‘White skinned’) people move around in a dreamy state trying out various similar looking clothes !

c. Shehnai or some such sad sounding instrument plays in the background. This supposedly represents our ‘heritage’ to foreign customers.

d. Most customers simply seem to float in and out of the shop, more with the intention of being seen in the place, than actually buying something. Apart from my sister, I did not see anyone else near the billing counter !!

e. When I don’t press my clothes or comb my hair, I am called shabby, but looks like that is a requirement to visit such shops. Most women I saw there, had serious hair issues, and wore well-worn shabby clothes. The difference was that they probably stepped out of a luxury car and the hair and clothes are considered hip !

f. People shopping spoke only in whispers. As though it was a crime to speak out aloud. I prefer having a friendly chat with the shopkeeper in the hopes of melting his heart to get a better price. Poor me, even my whisper sounds like thunder and customers were seen raising their dainty trimmed eye-brows and pouting their painted lips on seeing a ‘country brute’ in their midst!

g. Clothes there were supposedly exclusive. I don’t see how stocking 4 kurtas (of different sizes), 4 skirts, 4 pyjamas, 3 men’s shirts and a couple of curtains and doormats in the same print qualifies as exclusive. I remember my mother telling me how, when she was a child, her father would get bales of rough cotton material during each festival, the bales transforming to skirts, blouses, half-sarees, shirts etc for the numerous relatives at her home.

h. I have always had a secret suspicion that most of the exclusive kurtas at such stores are usually made from old dupattas. Dupattas, as most women will tell you, are rarely washed and retain the new look for a longer period. Once a dress is discarded, the dupatta, however bright and good, has to be necessarily discarded too. I think most of the ’boutiques’ buy such dupattas and make kurtas out of them.

i. Crushed (read crumpled) looks and pastel shades (read dull and worn out) seem to be the in-thing in most hip stores. Add to it a name (which most poor customers think is the name of a designer) and there you go - a Rs. 100 worth dress is transformed to a Rs. 1999 worth designer wear. If you dont believe me, visit life style. I tried to check out the place for some salwars and found that the same stuff I got in my neighbourhood store, was available for 10 times the price, simply because it said ‘Ritu Berry’ or ‘Rocky S’.

I am thinking of embroidering ‘Rathi’ on all my clothes or if that is too obvious, atleast ‘Priya Chandra’ or some such thing !

j. The person at the billing counter, is usually a local. The one at the store I visited yesterday was speaking in perfect tamil with someone else (not a customer), but when we went near the counter, she switched to (incorrect) english! She was rude and seemed surprised that we could afford clothes there (You guessed it, I had braided my hair, wore tailored clothes and wore a bindi too !! I definitely did not look like one of her ‘customers’)

k. Customers usually do not seem to be surprised at the prices. I, the country bumpkin, have the habit of looking at the price tag first (middle-class mentality) and people around me were in all probabilities, looking at me like I had just escaped from of the zoo. Add to this, the sad part that it is considered bad manners to bargain !

The strain of shopping at such places is a bit too much for me. I am happy with my non-exclusive clothes at shops where the shopkeepers are as unsophisticated as me and expect me to bargain rather than pretend to be shocked. Hip, I may never be, but then those who have not shopped here, have no idea of the pleasure of buying a product for atleast a rupee less than what the tag says !!

Not completely Chick-Lit !

Originally published in my intranet site.

I have never read Mills and Boon. I have heard that it is a staple for most girls, especially teen-agers, and that is probably the reason why I have never tried reading any. I have heard of some books branded as Chick Literature and some movies as Chick flicks. But I have found couple of them actually quite good and funny.

Two series that I would highly recommend are Helen Fielding’s ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ and the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. Incidentally, both authors are British ! Just goes to show that when it comes to humour, no one can beat the Brits !!

The common thing between the heroines of both novels - Bridget Jones in the former and Becky Bloomwood in the latter, is that both of them are not perfect individuals. They have as many flaws as anybody else and are damsels in distress due to their own mistakes !!

Bridget Jones is a single woman in London, a little over the ‘marriageable age’, envying the so-called smugly married friends ! One of her favourite entries in her diary is about her ever increasing weight ! She smokes, drinks and generally does nothing worthwhile. Her entries in her diary are unintentionally (for her) hilarious!

A decent movie by the same name was made with Renee Zellwager, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. The book is obviously way better, thanks to Helen Fielding’s witty writing.

Sophie Kinsella’s ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ centers around Becky Bloomwood, a financial journalist who is , you guessed it, a Shopaholic! The novel itself is written in first person, with the chapters interspersed with letters from the banks to Becky warning her about her exceeding the overdraft etc. You will end up laughing out aloud in a lot of places in the book. Becky knows nothing about financial journalism. Every attempt and resolution of Becky to stay away from shopping ends up in a disaster. As is to be expected, there is a rich ‘Darcy’ like character - Luke Brandon. Although you know what will happen in the end, it is still good clean fun.

I read the sequel to the book - Shopaholic Abroad (or Shopaholic takes on Manhattan) and found that funny too, but a little repetitive. I don’t think I will read the other sequels, not in the immediate future at least. But I guess I will be ready for them after a year or so.

Good reads for a weekend. There is nothing serious about the books, just fluffy, feel-good stuff, a lot of fun and a little bit of old-fashioned romance.

Love is in the air !

Originally published in my intranet site.

I have no personal experience, but over the years, watching people around me fall in and out of love, some ending in marriage, some simply moving on, the concept of love (as in romance) has never failed to interest me. Some called it divine, some call it a play of hormones, some call it the essence of life. But one thing is for sure, those involved are lost in a different world and those outside find it amusing and funny.

With no offense meant to those in love, here are some ‘norms’ that we outsiders find in the insiders !! Other ‘outsiders’, feel free to add to the list !

a. People on the way to love generally do not use the name of the ’special other’ in their conversations with friends. Sentences usually start with ‘She says’, ‘He thinks’ etc (as if he/she is the only man/woman in the world !) First signal for the friends !!

b. Hand is permanently bent with the mobile literally stuck to the ears. Most of the time on the phone is spent in silences.

c. Non-vegetarians eyeing a vegetarian ‘other’, suddenly talk about turning into vegetarians. People who create a ruckus at home if a day goes by without meat, will be heard making comments like ‘I eat meat very rarely. I don’t like it that much’ etc.

Similarly, if the ‘other’ speaks a different language, the person (who had flunked the exam on his/her mother-tongue, at school), would ‘cutely’ learn words in the ‘other’s’ language and demonstrate it !

d. Guys who have never bothered with books of any kind (except maybe Sportstar etc), suddenly start writing poetry ! Now that emails and internet have become available to most people, these ‘poems’ are usually circulated to a bigger crowd of friends, that includes the ‘other’. The poem typically uses words like ‘Angel’, ‘Flowers’, ‘Soul’, ‘Heart’, ‘Breeze’, ‘Eyes’ etc.

e. Ideas conveyed in the poetry will usually involve how the person was alone all his life, till the ‘other’ came into his life like Breeze, spring etc. Other ideas commonly expressed talk about the scent of the ‘other’s’ hair, gentle nature, sweet voice etc. Comparisons will usually be made to a lot of funny things. (Imagine a person with features exactly like that !!)

f. Guys who would previously laugh at anything and everything, would be reduced to tears on watching sentimental mushy movies and on hearing romantic songs.

g. For the women, voices generally become shriller (choooooooooooo chweeeeeeeeeeet type) when the ‘other’ is around.

h. The gentler side of their nature comes to the front. Women tend to act extremely delicate (’I am soooooooo scared of cockroaches !!’)

i. Guys crack lousy jokes and girls laugh very hard, begging them to stop in such a tone that says ‘Some more’ !!

j.Furtive glances, that move faster than light are often made towards the ‘other’. This again is a specialty with women. Guys are poor at such throwing such glances!

k. An offhand remark about the kind of clothing the ‘other person’ likes, will result in the person wearing it the very next day.

l. In the initial stages, when people around them gossip about them, usually great indignation on their cheap thoughts about their ‘pure friendship’ will be displayed.

m. Chivalry of men is at its peak. Men itch for a chance to rescue their damsels from distress, and silently hope an opportunity presents itself.

n. Friends are usually ignored completely. They are needed only to comfort the person when the ‘other’ is angry with him/her over something. The minute they make up, friends are out of the game again !!

The pleasure of cooking !

Originally published in my intranet site.

Who does not love food? Next to books and classical music, I have found that cooking is a great pastime. It is extremely relaxing. It is therapeutic (and I don’t mean my food tastes like medicine !!). It is a lot of fun ! Many times it is like reading a suspense novel ! You never know what is going to end up on that pan !!

It is a wonderful science, that, interestingly, can also be called an art ! It is a wonder, how, different looking, tasting and smelling ingredients come together to create something completely different and wonderful. Trying out new recipes is nothing short of an adventure!

Being a strict vegetarian, wherever I go, my vessels go with me ! And where most of my friends/ colleagues, return losing oodles of weight, from on-site, I always end up putting on more weight ! Now, this is not because I am a better cook than my mom. It is only that when you are by yourself and you cook your food and you are the only one privileged enough to eat it, you end up appreciating yourself on your talent and eating more of it as a mark of your approval!!

Cooking is like meditation, since you need to pay attention to what you are doing and you cannot afford to lose your concentration. It is like A.R.Rahman’s music ! You can keep adding small embellishments to make it taste and smell better !! And the great part about cooking is, the food never tastes the same every time ! Each time, it is a different experience !!

But the best part about cooking is when you see the look of satisfaction and appreciation on the face of the person eating it !! Even if the person does not express it in words, the satisfaction that comes from seeing a hungry person fed, makes all the effort spent in cooking worth its while !!

So what are you waiting for? Go into the kitchen and start practising this divine art ! If you cannot, atleast remember to appreciate the person who cooks for you - be it your wife or your mother or your cook ! After all, that is the only thing you can give in return to their effort !!

Time Travel and a Love Story

Originally published in my intranet site.

What would you get if you mixed the idea of science fiction with a regular love story? Well, depending on who is writing it, you may get a shoddily written mushy love story, or a poignant and brilliantly written novel like Audrey Niffenegger’s ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’.

The premise is interesting. Henry De Tumble, a librarian, suffers from a rare disorder called Chrono Displacement disorder. He travels through time, at random times without warning. So according to him, the first time he saw his wife was when he was 28 and she was 20; but according to Clare, his wife, she first met with him when he was 40 and she was 6 !!

Sounds interesting? In spite of dealing with the concept of frequent time travel, the story is more believable than other time-travel novel and is very engaging, although there is no time travel to prehistoric times or to Kings’ courts !! At its core, it is a simple love story. The difference between this one and the others is that here the twist comes in the form of Henry’s disorder.

Romance is not my cup of tea. I hate mushy romantic novels. There are very few romantic novels that I have liked and this one definitely figures in that list. It is difficult to believe that this was the author’s debut novel !

Get hold of the novel if you can. You will never regret it !!

Ladies, please pardon me !

Originally published in my intranet site.

Ladies, pardon me for revealing secrets of our race ! Gentlemen, trust me, for what I am telling you is true!

What is it between women and the rest room? Did you know the following facts about women and the restrooms?

a. To most women, going to the rest room, is the same as going for a picnic. They rarely go alone ! Most women go in pairs to the rest room, even if only one plans to use it !!

Once I saw one girl enter the rest room, while a friend of hers was waiting outside. Now a 3rd friend who had just come out, was planning to return to her seat, but the 2nd friend asked her to stay back, so that she would not be alone !!

b. The area near the wash-basins, outside the individual rest rooms, serves another purpose. It functions as a women’s conference room too. On many mornings, I have been greeted by a group of 3-4 ladies sitting on the counter, standing, combing their hair etc and discussing about life, the universe and everything !! I wonder what they find so attractive about this area.

c. To some women, the rest room is a place to use the phone. Again, this is usually near the washbasin. Some women use the rest room exclusively to make or receive personal calls !

d. To a few others, it is a dressing room. What goes in is definitely not what comes out ! Enter the pauper and exit the princess. I guess our company’s work timings have a lot to do with this point, since most of the women do not have sufficient time to dress up at home !!

e. To some, it is a place where you meet old friends. You never know who you will see next! Maybe an old schoolmate, or college-mate !!

Women are extremely talented and have a great ability to find multiple uses of every object and space. The above is just a small example of their resourcefulness !!

Note: This post is not intended to offend women. Being one myself, I just find some of our idiosyncrasies really funny and amusing !!

Am I a Jerk?

Originally published in my intranet site.

Am I old ? Of course not !!

Am I depressed ? No !!

Do I take pleasure in others’ sorrow ? Nooooooo !!

Am I friendly ?? I think so !!

Am I a complete jerk ?? I don’t think so !

Well, these are some questions that I have been asking myself everyday. I am not against laughter. In fact, I subscribe to the theory that laughter is the best medicine !! It is the decibel level that I have an issue with, especially in confined spaces !

Here I am, breaking my head, tearing out the little remaining hair, caught in a never-ending conference call, with my ear, threatening to dislodge itself from its base, and do I get to finish the call in peace and find solutions to the never ending problems ??

No !! Why? Because, some others in the room have found something to laugh about !! One voice, in particular grates on my nerves. A high-pitched, shrill and nasal laughter, that comes out in bursts! How the laughing group always knows, when I am most vulnerable, escapes me !

Now here I am, idle, having lot of free time at my disposal, in a state of mind, where I am ready to smile benevolently at anything and everything in a pleasant state of dreaminess. And do they laugh now ? No they don’t. I can bet that even if you tell them the world’s best joke, they will simply glare at you like you were a fool and look away.

But the minute I get down to business and start working on something, they are reborn !! They find everything around them worthy of laughter !! Tell them your name and they will laugh !!

As I am typing this out, the whole setup brings about a sense of Déjà vu ! This is so familiar ! When did it happen? Has it really happened in the past?

Now I remember, yes it did happen !! In my first job, we were a bunch of graduates fresh out of college, and we would find everything funny. We would stand in groups in the workplace and our laughter would disturb everything around us! Some managers who were in the same room, would yell at us, to keep it down ! And we would think - ‘To hell with that Old Jerk !!’

Now I know ! Perhaps I am old and I am a jerk !! :((

Roots

Originally posted on my intranet site !

How would it feel to have no knowledge of your ancestry? How would it feel to be uprooted from where you live, forcefully, and to be shipped like cattle to a different continent? How would it feel to be forced to forgo your land, your religion, your culture, in short, your life, only to be beaten up and treated as a slave? We probably would never know. We live in, what is called a ‘Cultured Society’ now.

During one of my customer visits, I had the opportunity of befriending a coloured gentleman, who was telling me how lucky we Indians were. He said - ‘You Indians are lucky ! You know who your parents are, who their parents are, where they were from etc. Look at us, my ancestors were probably from some country in Africa and one of them must have worked in a plantation in the South (of US). We have no roots ! We do not know our roots !’.
I had read some books about the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery etc and could understand his thoughts. It gave me a new perspective and a new sense of appreciation of what we are etc.

Supposing one such person (like my friend), could trace back his roots - how wonderful that would be !! How interesting that sounds !

Alex Haley did just that and the result was a book called ‘Roots’ !! Alex Haley managed to trace back his ancestry to up to 7 generations to a village in Gambia in Africa, and that by itself is a great feat !! Haley obviously encountered a lot of gaps in the history, which he has filled up with his imagination.

The book starts with the life of Kunta Kinte, a young native of a village in Gambia. The initial chapters are devoted to the description of Kunta’s simple life in the village, the innocence of his youth, the culture in which he is brought up etc. Life is well, till Kunta is abducted, chained and sent aboard a ship to America. The book then traces Kunta’s life in America, and the lives of the next 6 generations.

Like a lot of popular books, this one too was supposedly mired in controversies. Irrespective of what the critics say, one has to admit that it is a very well-written book and makes for excellent reading.

If you have read ‘Gone with the Wind’ by Margaret Mitchell, you may have noticed that the author was trying to convey that black slavery was not as bad as it is projected to be and that blacks were like children and wanted to be protected by whites. Well, reading this book, you will realize the atrocity of slavery and how inhuman the act of uprooting a person from his homeland is !

My dear librarian recommends some good books once in a while, if I pester him well enough and long enough to suggest something other than murder mysteries and novels on war and espionage. So my special thanks to him for recommending this book. I read this more than 2 years back, but still think it is one of the best books that I have ever read.

The Great Indian Divide !

Originally published in my intranet site.

Two incidents first - both occurred during my onsite visits:

a. I recently went to the US for a project and met a person, who was working as a contractor for Wipro. One day, we started talking and were just sharing details about each other. This person (I will call him X) asked me about my family, where I grew up etc and started talking about himself. X was supposedly from a souther state but had been born and brought up in Bombay. According to him, he thought people from the south are narrow minded etc, but since he grew up in Bombay, he was very broad-minded and open etc. He continued to talk in this vein for some more time.

I usually, don’t like to get into arguments over opinions and simply listened.

The funny part was, after a few weeks in the project, he used to comment on other team members. The comments, usually abusive, would always refer to the person’s state !! ‘He is a Bengali na, that is why he is behaving like this ! He is from Andhra, and all people from Andhra are like this.’ No state seemed good enough for him. People from every state seemed to have some flaw or the other in their nature. When I commented on it, he said, ‘Yes I am biased and I am a racist. I am not a hypocrite and thats why I comment on such things openly !!’

b. This incident happened over 5 years ago and it was during my first on site visit. I had been in the US for hardly a week at that time and had no friends there. I was the first and only person from India in the client place and I met up with a guy-A from India there, through some of my relatives in India. A called me up one day, and told me that his friend’s mother had come from India and that all of them were going for a dinner in an Indian restaurant and generously offered to take me also along.

This friend (lets call him Y), too, had grown up in Bombay, although he was originally from Punjab. It was the first time I was meeting Y and his mother. After the usual round of introductions, Y’s mother asked me where I was from and I replied - ‘Chennai’. Immediately she said - ‘Chennai is such a horrible place. We have heard that it is full of frauds. My son worked there for a few months and absolutely hated the place’ and so on !!

Now, I was younger then and hot-blooded too. I immediately started defending my city and told her that each person’s experience was different and that I had been conned by a Taxi driver in Mumbai a few months back etc. Then I slowly diverted them from this topic and moved on to neutral topics.

Y and I used to talk once in a while. Y had a room mate from Bangalore and Y used to taunt him all the time. That was the time, a movie called ‘The sum of all fears’ released in the US. The movie was about an imaginary situation, where an atomic bomb is dropped over Baltimore and the whole city is destroyed. Y was scared out of his wits, since he was worried that a similar thing would happen in Mumbai too. He used to tell me that he used to argue with his room-mate that people in the south have nothing to worry, since if India is under attack, Mumbai is the first place that will be hit, since it is the commercial center of India.

Now my whole point of writing this rather lengthy blog is this: Every day we talk about religious divides and caste divides, but never about this regional divide. At what point are we taught to treat people from other states with distrust? First there is the North-South divide and then within the South, the divide between different states and within states, between cities and so on.

At least when you are away from India, shouldn’t we be thinking as Indians, rather than fight over which state is better and which is not? During my last visit, I had a female colleague whose first question to a new joinee from India, would be - ‘Are you a south Indian?’ She would start every statement with ‘You south Indians’ !! She would ask weird questions like ‘How can you South Indians have rice for lunch? Rice makes me sleepy’ and so on. Initially I used to get irritated, later I started making fun of her about the same point.

It is the job of Indian politicians to create a divide amongst the Indian population over the name of religion, caste, language etc and understandably, the uneducated will fall for it. But what about us, the so-called literate and well-traveled etc, whose outlook is supposedly broader than the others.

As you can see from my examples, the mentality is not restricted to people from a certain region, but seems to exist in the minds of every person. The mentality manifests itself in different aspects of life, including ridiculing the tastes in movies, art etc of people from a certain region (criticisms on south and bollywood movies by different sections of people for example).

It hurts me to read comments of readers on websites and to see the amount of hatred we have towards each other. No wonder then, that time and again, external forces threaten our existence. Diversity is not our weakness, disrespect and ridicule for anything different from what we believe in and like is our weakness. We are now living in a time, where we work with people from different cultures across the world. Then why this tolerance for cultures within the country?

As children, we do not care about the colour, religion or caste of the other child. Only as we grow up, these poisonous seeds are sown inside us. When will we wake up to this reality?

Writer Sujatha

Originally posted in my intranet site

It was a sad evening for me yesterday, when I learnt that Writer Sujatha passed away. One of my all-time favourite writers in Tamil after Kalki and Devan, Sujatha was one of the few writers who respected the intelligence of his readers. He was the first tamil writer to successfully introduce us to the world of science fiction in tamil. He popularized the Haiku form of poetry and wrote articles on science in tamil magazines.

A writer with a great sense of humour, he created some really memorable characters like Ganesh, Vasanth, the robot dog Jeno and so on. He did not restrict himself to any genre of writing and his works range from science fiction to history, from vaishnavite literature to paperback mysteries. Whatever the genre, his writing sparkled with humour and intelligence. He was one of the few writers who could make science seem interesting yet simple.

One of my earliest memories of reading Sujatha’s works, was the semi-autobiographical ‘Srirangathau Devathaigal’ and it was an amazing book. I recently read ‘En Iniya Iyandira’. One of my favourite science fiction novel by Sujatha is ‘Sorga Theevu’. Even in works of fiction, he treated his read as intelligent people and left a lot of things to imagination. He never hesitated to present any subject to the readers fearing that they would not understand the subject. He seemed to treat them as equals.

I will miss Sujatha and his works. I feel like I have lost a friend who I have not seen or spoken to. His works will remain with us for years to come.

Everybody is a customer !

Originally posted in my intranet site.

What seemed like a dreadful thing in the beginning has turned out to be a blessing. I started my career in a technical call center where I had to provide technical assistance to customers over the phone. I felt terrible and I hated it in the beginning. I was forced to do something that I hated - talk to strangers, and that too people, who seemed like complete morons. I was not a talking person. I was not a patient person either. But I had to be both

I now know that what I am today has a lot to do with many things I learnt then. As a part of our induction, we attended a program on customer-centricity and excellence in customer care. It turned out to be much more interesting than what I had expected. Many things discussed there have stayed with me. But this blog is not about all those things. It is about one point that has stayed with me and will remain so for a long time to come. And that is, to treat every person around you like a customer, including your friends and your family.

Tough to accept and practice at first. But once you stay on a job, where you are yelled at by random people for something that you were definitely not responsible for, you slowly start realizing the importance of this lesson.

Think about it, how many of us wear the same face at home, amidst friends and at work? I know a lot of people who are considered fun-loving, entertaining, easy-going and what not, at work (or by their friends). But the same people are short-tempered, silent, impatient, serious (as though that makes them more mature !!) at home ! How many of you take the time to answer a question from your mother/wife? How many times can she actually hear you respond?

Treat your family like you would treat a customer. Each one of us is in his/her best form when we interact with our customers. We are polite, we don’t get offended easily, we smile often, we say ‘Thank you’ and ‘Sorry’ and ‘Please’ etc. If we can do that with people who are complete strangers and with whom our relationship is purely business, why not with people who mean much more to us and who will do anything for us? Shouldn’t our best face be used with our family too?

Dilbert's Principle !

Originally published in my intranet site.

Many of you must have read Scott Adams’ popular comic strip about office humour. I recently came upon one of his books called Dilbert’s principle.

Hilarious stuff. If you like Dilbert, you will love this book. There were a lot of places where people around me thought I was crazy or something. I kept laughing aloud forgetting where I was. Often I would read it at work, when I was having my breakfast or lunch without anyone for company.

Try and get hold of this one. You will never look at your colleagues or your managers the same way again !!

Why dont we read?

Originally published in my intranet blog:

A very disturbing trend these days is the steep decline of the book-reading habit. I rarely find people who are interested in reading books for the mere pleasure of it. Any action these days is always with a purpose. I hear of people reading books on personality development, project management, technical books, journals and so on, but when I say I read fiction, I see a sudden change in expression. It seems to say, ‘I thought you were a serious.. and intelligent (!!!??!!) person !!’. I am probably dismissed immediately in people’s minds as a childish person or what men love to call - a typical Indian woman !!

When I read a great piece of literature or just a wonderful suspense, the urge to share the pleasure is almost overwhelming. Yet it is very difficult to find people who are willing to share my enthusiasm. This is all the more worse when I am onsite, where I dont get to pick people around me :).

I once tried to start an initiative for my team members who were at that time in the free pool. As a fun way to improve their spoken English, I suggested some sort of a reading club, with all of us reading an English short story and discussing that as a group !! The kind of reception I got, you would have thought I had suggested a Murder club or some such thing. I then realized how naive I had been and that I could not force people to read anything - even a 2 page story !!

What do you think should be done to increase the interests of people in reading books?

81 minutes of pulse pounding action !!

Originally published in my intranet site.

Ever watched a movie, that makes you sit up? A movie, that the minute it ends, makes you want to go and DO something? A movie that has your adrenaline pumping like you have just had 10 cups of very dark coffee ?? There are a few movies that have made me feel that way - ‘Gilli’ in Tamil (originally made in Telugu as Okkadu), Chak De India come to mind.

‘Run Lola Run’ - a German movie by Tom Tykwer is all that I described above and more. It is 81 minutes of pure, unadulterated fun ! It has pulse pounding action, a great soundtrack and is visually stunning too. This is one of the movies that no movie-buff should ever miss.

The story is simple - Manni and Lola are lovers. Manni is a drug dealer and has just finished a deal worth 100,000 Deutsche Marks. On his way to meeting with the gangster boss, he loses the money to a vagrant. He now needs to come up with the money in 20 minutes and calls Lola asking for her help. And Lola agrees to try. Now begins Lola’s race against time ! Will she get the money and get to Manni in time? Will they live happily ever after?

Just when we think we have figured out the movie, we come in for a surprise. The whole incident repeats about 3 times, with the result changing every time.

Watch out for the sequence that shows how the futures of the people Lola meets on the way change every time. It is shown in short clips and the result is very funny. There is a wonderful undercurrent of humour throughout the movie.

As I mentioned before, visually the movie is stunning. Brilliant colours are used throughout the movie and animation is used intelligently to show scenes where Lola runs down the stairs to arrange for the money.

I have noticed and appreciated the soundtracks of very few movies, at the time of watching and this movie is one of the few. A fantastic soundtrack, that adds another dimension to the movie.

Any movie is best watched in the language in which it is made. Every language has a rhythm and music to it and dubbed versions are seldom able to recreate that magic. ‘Life is Beautiful’ seems much more lyrical and musical when watched in Italian. Similarly, this movie is best viewed in the German version with the subtitles.

An all-time favourite of mine !

Onsite Woes

Originally published in my intranet site.

A great person once said ‘The only way to go onsite, is by not wanting to go onsite !’ . Ok Ok, it was not a great person, just the friend of a great person-the great person obviously being me !! How true ! How very true !!

I remember a time when all I wanted was to go to the US, earn lots of money and come back only after I turned 40. That was a time when all my relatives were pestering me to get married ! I remember praying to the goddess of the Mangadu temple that I would come to the temple on Tuesdays for 6 weeks for it to work. Six weeks passed, but I was still in Chennai. Goes to show that it is always a better idea to pay the bribe after you get what you want ! Even Gods cheat !

Then about a year passed and I guess it was time for me to finally go onsite, because I had decided by then that I would not leave Chennai at any cost ! One fine morning, my manager told me there was an interview with the customer, in the technology that I worked on. It was/is a niche technology and my previous company had a few people well-versed in the technology. Our entire division had been sold to this bigger company and no one there had ever heard of this technology. But when a client asked for it, they realized that there were 3 people who were potential candidates. I knew the other 2 and knew I would beat them hands down in the interview. My only possible competitor, my best friend, was stuck in another project at that moment and could not participate in the interview !

Anyway, the interview started and 15 min later, I was in and I was asked to travel in 2 weeks. The customer had told me that the requirement was for about a year and I started counting my remaining days in the US starting from day 1.

The client location was Rhode Island, a state so tiny, that it is not even visible in the US map and the general location is often pointed with an arrow-mark on the map. I was the only Indian in the client place. It took me almost 6 months to get accustomed to the place and the culture. I managed to retain my accent and never bowed down to the pressure of ‘fitting in’ by changing my accent or my pronunciation (’paazhying’, ‘wazhezh’, ‘cool’ anyone??).

I have made many more visits since then, none of them lasting more than 3 months. But that was the last time I actually made friends, since that was the only time I met Indians outside of the workplace.

Every trip seems to be a replica of the previous trips, except the name of the city and state and the name of the customer ! Most impressions of India and Indians are funny, thanks to CNN and hollywood movies mentioning ‘India’ !

Here are some samples.

a. Questions on Bindi - I answer them every time. Women have asked me these questions everywhere - in a queue near the billing counter at Walmart, inside a mall, in the office, everywhere !

Is that a religious symbol or is it simply cosmetic? Is there a difference between a red one and a black one? Do only married women wear it ? (A Cuban cab-driver once told me - ‘Oh I know what it means. It is the spiritual eye !!’)

b. Do we speak Indian in India? How come Indians speak to each other in English instead of Indian?

c. A cab driver once asked me - ‘I saw on TV that India is full of orphans and beggars. Is that true?’

I replied that there were as many orphans and beggars in India as there were in the US !!

d. On telling my manager that I was a vegetarian when we went out for team lunch, he said - ‘Rathi (that is Raaatti for them !!), you can have this one. This is calamari. It is only squid !!’

e. On asking for vegetarian food (no meat, no fish, no chicken and no eggs !!) in a restaurant, the waitress asked me if it was ok if they used chicken oil or should they use vegetable oil !

f. On marriages - ‘Oh I heard you guys have to marry people of your parents’ choice. That must be terrible !!’. I have tried to explained the idea of families, respect towards elders etc., and how things are slowly changing etc, but that has not helped much.

g. One person asked me whether there were a lot of snakes and magicians in India (bloody Indiana Jones !!). I told him it was a common misconception and hadn’t he heard about Indian BPOs etc. I was already tired of hearing these questions often and told him that after watching Hollywood movies, many Indians thought that people in the US were immoral, which of course is not true. I guess that shut him up !

And now after having stayed in India for more than 6 months continuously I am getting ready to pack my bags again. Some more months of self-cooking, living alone and watching movies by myself, answering the same questions about India, and laughing at jokes that are not funny at all, simply because I am having lunch with the BDM and the customer, talking about things that are really boring (for me !!) - India’s improving economy, what we do back in India, explain polytheism, Hindu philosophy, arranged marriages, climate in India, vegetarianism etc.

After living like a queen in India, I need to go back to the land of plenty and live like a pauper - sleep on a comforter on the hardwood floor and wake up with a sore back, search for things on sale every-time I go to the store, tag along with colleagues or take the cab to work for some months, buy and drive a 2nd or 3rd hand car, wake up and go to bed with offshore calls, spend weekends going to ‘Indian temples’ and washing clothes), share family joys virtually over the webcam, celebrate festivals by going to the office!

Many of my colleagues are bent upon going onsite, although not all of them are considered capable. I am supposed to feel flattered by this, because I am one of the chosen ones.

I don’t WANT to be the chosen one. I am happy in India, its traffic, population, eccentricities notwithstanding. I was planning to spend the summer in gorging down mangoes of different varieties. I have clothes lined up in my wardrobe, that I was planning to strut around in. I have gifts planned for birthdays and anniversaries of my family and friends. I have movies that I was planning to watch with my family. I have to learn music. I have my pretty niece with whom I want to spend hours in cuddling and petting. I have temples to visit in India, states in India that I have not yet seen.

But then if wishes were horses then beggars would ride ! Like it or not, I need to start packing, raise a travel request, hunt for apartments, open another bank account, find the public library, meet with the customer, try and make temporary friends and get on with life !!

The Art of Looking Intelligent

Originally published in my intranet site.

Have you ever got the feeling, just by looking at some people, that they are very intelligent? Have you met people in front of whom, you think many times before talking, always wondering if you are being smart enough. What makes them tick?

Right from childhood, I have been called intelligent and treated like an adult, without any effort on my part to appear that way. At one point I was sick of hearing sentences like - ‘You are smart, you should take responsibility of others! ‘Or ‘You are mature, so we expect more from you’. Having been weighed down by expectations and false notions of others, I sometimes think I have never been a child. It’s not true of course, but in one of the moments, when I feel like talking like a world-wise person, I think up of sentences like the previous one

Remember, this post is not about ‘Being intelligent’; it is more about ‘Looking intelligent’. I am one of the (un)fortunate ones who have often been misunderstood as one of the brainy ones. The pressure of maintainng the misconception often becomes too much, but I have managed to do so most of the times in my life.

Having analyzed and often mocking at others for a long time, I realized it was time for some introspection. Many of the pointers suggested are based on my experience with myself and some with others :D.

a. Having a long nose helps. It has helped in my case at least. People have long associated long noses, with intelligence. The longer, the better (not like Pinocchio’s of course!!). Think about it, all the so called intellectuals have historically had long noses - Gandhi, Sherlock Holmes, Mozart, Shakespeare etc.

For mine, I have only my parents to thank. People look at me, the 1st thing they notice is my nose and they probably think ‘With a nose like that, there is no way this girl is a fool!!’

b. Wear spectacles - Thin, gold framed or rimless adds to the intelligent look. And if the spectacles is always precariously perched at the tip of your nose, it is all the better!

I remember one of my project managers, who was only a couple of years older than me, used to wear thin rimless glasses. I casually asked him once what his ‘power’ was and he blushed and said that he wore them for effect while meeting with the customers.

I have another friend, who refuses to undergo laser surgery, simply because he thinks glasses make him look like a geek.

c. DO NOT press your clothes - I love this piece. I have found that pressing my clothes is one of the most loathsome tasks in the world. I crib every time I have to press mine, since it is not considered professional to wear crumpled clothes to work. But in all places, wearing crumpled clothes definitely looks geeky. I prefer wearing my clothes crumpled wherever possible

d. Silence is golden - Staying quiet most of the time, makes you a mystery to others. We all know that what we do not know much about, we tend to respect a lot. This is my favourite trick. I have managed to make people think I am a genius, simply by saying nothing or saying very little most of the time. When you choose to say very little, make sure nobody understands what you actually mean. This often creates an impression that you have made a profound observation and leaves no room for questions.

A person I met in a social gathering fell for my tricks and asked me if I would be interested in visiting his physics lab. I agreed and accompanied him there. The poor guy was trying to impress me and since he had incorrectly judged me as the intelligent types, proceeded to explain his research etc. I pretended to understand and one word that I caught from what was gibberish to me was NMR. That term triggered some old memories from school and I asked him innocently, if it was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. He was so impressed with my knowledge that he continued gushing about NMR and how he uses it in his research. (This person is a close friend now and every time I bring up this incident, feels like hiding himself away from the world!!)

e. Wear the right expression - Silence does not work, if you wear a stupid grin on your face. Try and look serious. Once in a while, give an understanding smile. Eyes play an important role.

One of my friends has the habit of making a weird expression every time some beautiful girl walks into the room or talks to him. I once noticed it and asked him if he was about to sneeze and he replied angrily that he was working at looking ‘cool’ and ‘geeky’.

Well, so there you go! Practice the intelligent look in front of the mirror everyday.

f. Nod at the right places - Nodding is important to the art of listening. Nodding makes the speaker think you are listening. The right frequency for nodding is a tricky business and like all arts, comes with practice. Some of us are born with it and some aren’t.

In school and college, I always sat in the front 1-2 benches and mastered the art of sleeping with my eyes wide open. What also helped was that I was an expert in the art of nodding. I would look intelligently at the teacher/lecturer and keep agreeing with her wherever required. I have rarely been asked to stand up and answer any question.

A lot of friends in my class, have contracted a serious inferiority complex seeing me in class - ‘If she can understand what the lecturer is saying, why cant I? What is wrong with me?’ One day they couldn’t take it anymore and after class, asked me if I understood what the lecturer was saying. When I said I didn’t, they said ‘But you were nodding all the time’ and I replied ‘So what?’

g. Keep a lot of books around you - Books have historically been associated with intellectuals. It is a good idea to have a few of them scattered in your home. Authors like Ayn Rand, Umberto Eco etc manage to write books that nobody understands. And the less understandable a book is, the more your intelligence quotient is considered to be.

The friend that I mentioned about was good at this part (I ACTUALLY read books!). He would have a lot of books stacked at home. I found ‘The Complete Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’ at his home and read the whole book in 2 days. I later told him it was a great book and did he like it. He said he had never read it, but asked me what it is about. Thinking I was aiding in the creation of another book-lover I described about the novel. Now his orkut profile says ‘Favourite books - The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy’ and the fact remains that he has not read a word of it!

Another day, he called me and asked if I had heard of a book called ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. I knew this guy well and asked him whether he had lied to any girl that he had read the book. I was bang on target! This guy literally begged me for a synopsis of the book and I am sure has told some wide-eyed girl how he loved Ayn Rand!!

Bottom-line is: Books rock! If you can’t read, know the names of authors and read the synopses of the books in wikipedia and nod intelligently when someone mentions the book in a public gathering.

h. Keep your eyes and ears wide open: Any information is good information. It always helps to listen to others talk incessantly about a topic that you have no clue about. That way, in the next gathering, you can throw some intelligent phrases to other non-suspecting listeners. I have found that this works very well for me. I do not mind listening to others talk, because like I said, I am good at sleeping with my eyes open. Once in a while, my brain wakes up and listens to some insightful sentences and tucks it away for future use and in the next gathering, I am giving benevolent smiles and amazing insights in a seemingly matter-of-fact tone.

I will miss you !

Originally published in my intranet site.

Being confined to my home for the past 2-3 days due to ill-health, gave me some precious time with my sweet little niece. She is 6 months old and it is a pleasure to simply watch her do nothing !

There is a saying in tamil (or so I hear !) that babies and the sea are 2 things that you can never grow tired of watching. How very true !!

Life is very simple for her. Her only tasks are getting fed, sleeping and playing in between the previous two tasks. Her emotions seem to be very simple too. When she is hungry or sleepy or is not comfortable due to any other reason, she cries and when we make faces or rock her gently or mouth absurd sounding words of endearment, she laughs. Complexities like greed or jealousy or anger have not yet crept in.

She is amused by every single thing and displays her curiosity about an object by putting it into her mouth immediately. She never seems to doubt the capacity of her mouth and makes a go at trying to bite at anything irrespective of the object’s size. To her, my mom’s nose is no different from my dad’s slipper. My palm and a speck of dirt on the floor seem to appear the same size to her simple mind.

To her, the whole world probably seems like a big bag of toys, made to amuse her ! Put an object in front of her to draw her interest and she immediately tries to crawl towards it, but always manages to swim away from it and this does not seem to bother her. To her, there is no pressure in achieving targets. Everything is fun. If she does not get the object, she turns her attention towards something within her reach.

She seems to need no reason to be happy. She lets out yells of pleasure all of a sudden and shouts at the top of her voice simply to hear herself ! Simple things like calling out her name makes her scream with laughter.

She eats to satisfy her hunger, not to please her taste-buds alone ! She can still not speak in words but it appears as though words are not even necessary for her. She speaks with her eyes and we understand her completely. Her complete vocabulary consists of sounds like ‘tha tha’, ‘goooaa’ and many more words for which no alphabets exist.

I suddenly realize that my headaches have not been haunting me for some time now. Worries about my work or on-site visit simply dissolve into thin air, the minute I enter the house. All I want to do is watch her play or even sleep. Calm descends over me immediately. Minor domestic squabbles seem like bad dreams. No one at home is able to stay angry for long, since the minute one sees her, everything else is forgotten.

I am now working on filling myself up with her and her actions. I leave in 2 weeks and I am not going to see her for another year ! She will be cute for sure, after a year too, but would have started her journey towards a not-too-innocent adulthood. This time with her is precious and I wish I were equipped with photographic/videographic memory that I can use to record every minute with her and replay it over and over again when I am all alone in the land of plenty!!

Filmi Fundas

(Originally posted in my intranet blog !)

Friends,

Next time you watch a movie, here are points to remember. These points will help you identify the characters in the movie. These are also useful, if you wish to make a movie some day.

1. The poor are always good - kind, generous, loving etc etc. They also have a lot of self-esteem and dont care for money. To them honour is more important than money ! The same qualities are applicable for the uneducated too.

2. The rich are usually bad, have a lot of bad qualities. Money means everything to them. Family values mean nothing.

3. Rich women always wear designer sarees (bollywood) or silk sarees with broad zaris (other woods !!) and always always wear heavy jewelery. They also wear a huge bun (slightly good women) even when they are sleeping, or have cropped hair (bad women !)

4. Rich men wear shining silk robes to bed. Both men and women, wear gold framed spectacles with chains hanging from them all the time, if they are rich.

5. Heroines, who work and are self-sufficient are usually arrogant. The good girls simply dream about the heroes, sing a couple of songs and either marry him and help him in getting married to his lady love and end up dying in the process. The hero’s main aim in the movie is to tame the ‘arrogant’ heroine so that she learns the simple pleasure of cooking and packing lunches for her husband !

6. Colleges (and sometimes schools) are places where the hero, his sidekicks, the heroine and her friends roam around, participate in singing and dancing competitions, fall in love, make fun of professors etc.

7. If there is a classroom scene, it should usually have a goofy professor teaching the class Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.This is when our aging hero and heroine steal glances at each other.

Sometimes, high level stuff like addition, subtraction, atomic numbers etc are discussed.

8. The hero, attending college usually look like a lecturer in his late 30s. The sidekicks look like college principals.

9. If it is a bollywood movie, and a south indian character can be introduced to bring out some laughs. The character is usually badly made up with a half-shaven head and starts every sentence with ‘Aiyayoo kyaa ji’.

10. Comedians have to be loud. The less funny the joke is, the louder the comedian is.

11. Heroines are usually rich and heroes are usually poor. But the heroine gets to wear lesser clothes. The hero usually wears some designer stuff, rides a great bike, but borrows from his friends for his exam fees.

12. Villains are bad; I mean, real bad. There is no single redeeming quality in them. They usually have limited vocabulary and tend to repeat the same phrase throughout the movie.

13. Child actors if any, are very cute looking, until they start talking. They usually end up mouthing dialogues, which would have earned them tight slaps in reality, but usually sets the listener in the movie thinking !

14. Heroines are usually skimpily dressed when they attend college. Their costumes are worse in dream sequences. No matter what the climate is, clothes are always sparse. But the minute they decide to tie the knot, its only sarees and salwars and huge bindis for them.

15. Dream sequences are mostly by heroines. The ratio of dream sequences by heroines to those by heroes, is directly proportional to the age and inversely proportional to the looks of the hero.

16. Happy families in movies (usually poor or middle class, never rich) usually laugh for nothing at all. So you have a whole bunch of loonies who laugh over something utterly ridiculous.

17. All characters, no matter whether they are related to the main story or not, need to converge in the same place during the climax sequence. This is to ensure that all of them can pose for the family photograph in the end.

Note : The above list is not comprehensive and may increase with inputs from others !!