The New Age God !!

There is an interesting theory, that a person revered by everyone today, is tomorrow’s God. Lords Rama, Krishna, Jesus - all of them were probably considered regular people in their times, but centuries later are worshipped as Gods today.

Who would be the modern age God in that respect? I cannot think of any ruler or leader perfect enough to be worshipped. But I can think of an ‘all-powerful’ force, something that cannot be seen (except in movies), but only experienced; something we cannot live without, something that has become as important as the air we breathe - you catch the drift (I can go on and on about ’something that..’ etc., but am too bored to do that !!).

Before you think I have gone completely nuts or that I have become a very spiritual person, let me clarify what brought about this sudden enlightenment. Heard of Hurricane Ike ? (These weird people name hurricanes too !!). Well, it (he/she) decided to pay my little town a visit on the way to the ocean. It was a short visit and lasted a day. But it showed me the true path. I am now a convert, for I have realized God !!

Sorry, I am talking in circles again (isnt that what I always do ??). On Sunday, thanks to the hurricane and the damages it caused, the whole town lost power supply and thats when I realized that ‘Electricity’ is ‘God’, nothing less !! I was happily watching a movie (what else !) and about 3:30 pm, the TV screen went blank, the laptop switched to battery mode and I was done for !!

I called up my colleague to check if I was ‘the chosen one’, or were there fellow sufferers around. Well, looks like there were only 2000 other houses in the state suffering like me !! I am from Chennai and I know what power cuts mean. I mean, we kids (when we were kids I mean), were made of sterner stuff, than to panic over silly power-cuts. I remember getting extremely irritated when the media and the people made a big fuss about a power cut that lasted a couple of days in NYC, a few years back.

No power supply - big deal !! Of course I have my books to give me company - till about 7:45 pm. Of all days, I had chosen that day, to cook my lunch/dinner a little late. So nothing to eat and no way to cook, because the stove is electric. I had some leftovers from God knows when. (I should start labeling them, like they label specimens in labs). No internet and hence no telephone (since it is a VOIP phone)!! I had a prepaid mobile (incoming is charged too !!), for which I did not know the telephone number myself and had never shared it with anyone else.

I had no clue what had hit us, since I did not have cable connection either. What seemed to me a heavy wind from the apartment, was apparently the Hurricane and it had left 3 people dead in Southwest Ohio !! Where I lived though, the only signs were the strong winds, which made some of the trees fall and supposedly sent some roofs flying (as I came to learn the next morning !).

Even for an early sleeper like me, retiring to the bed by 8 pm, was too much to bear. Having nothing to do, sleeping seemed to be the only option, to ‘occupy’ myself ! The next day, I went to work and found that the office was closed due to lack of power supply. People in the IT teams were provided some emergency supply though, which I promptly misused to look up the internet about the hurricane and the power outage and to chat with my parents to let them know that there was trouble, but I was not in trouble !!

I learnt to live on cornflakes and milk (not yet spoilt !!) and bread and something with it. Horrible horrible horrible and cold food. No lights in the bathroom (Was that the shampoo or the body wash, that I just used? .. I hope this is the toothpaste and not the ointment, it sure does smell like toothpaste !!..If this is the bathtub, this must be the pot. etc..), and yes, in most houses in this country, you need lights to move around, even if it is broad daylight outside !!

No work, is usually fun, but not without God (power) with us !! I managed to read a complete book, utilizing all the daylight available (sadly, had just 2 pages to finish, when I simply could not see anything and had to force myself away from the book and .. what else, ‘retire’ to bed!!).

Power supply is back now and as is the American custom, the office walls are resounding with people’s power outage stories. For many, it is a story they can repeat to their grand-children (in 2008, there was a hurricane, but thats not what this story is about, it is about the POWER OUTAGE we had then !!). Many people moved to motels or hotels in the Columbus area. Some with kids, drove to the homes of friends/relatives to live their till the ‘crisis’ passed. Some people spread rumours they had heard on rising gas prices and food prices and urged their friends to stock up asap. Thousands of stores across the city stopped functioning.

Now I know what all this fuss is about. The more developed a country, the less independent they are. Power outage still causes panic here. Life runs on electricity. Every single thing a person does, needs electricity in this country (and in a few others). We have lived for days together in Chennai, without power supply. It seemed like a nuisance, especially when at nights, our friendly neighbourhood mosquitoes conducted weddings in our house and feasted on our blood ! It was irritating when we could not use the ceiling fan (and later the AC), but we survived. Not so, here !

Man is becoming a slave of something he created. What were once luxuries and conveniences have now become necessities. We are not addicted by them, we are controlled by them. So I go back to what I started off saying : In today’s age, I would think Electricity is God, the all-powerful Almighty !!

Wooster and Laurie (or How I fell in and out of love in 2 sec)

I dread watching movie/televised versions of my favourite books. More often than not, my fears are justified. Books seem to give a lot more room to let my imagination run free. The face of the characters are always very vague in my thoughts and yet I kind of know how they look and behave. There are very few exceptions though - Godfather would probably come to mind for most of us !

My love affair with PG Wodehouse started in college. I had heard about his books from my cousins, but could never find any in the local library. I finally found a tattered version with one of my friends, who had inherited it from some relative and had not even touched it and the rest as the cliche goes, is history. That was also the time I got introduced to the amazing world of British modern literature (PGW can be still be termed modern a thousand years from now !). I was lost in the amazing and funny world of Jeeves, Bertie, Blandings Castle, Empress - the prize winning sow, Baxter, Aunt Dahlia, Aunt Agatha and so on. I knew that if I, who lived in a country far from the author’s and in a world that in no way resembled that described in his books, could fall hopelessly in love, there were very high chances that he had similar fanatics in his own country ! Yet, I hoped and wished that no one would attempt and botch up the novel and leave memories of some horrible actor completely destroying my favourite characters.

Well, a month or 2 back, I heard about 2 British comedians called Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. They were very popular in Britain for their comedy sketches called ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ and also for the televised series ‘Bertie and Wooster’. I watched 3 seasons of ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ and was completely bowled over by their comic geniuses. Humour is a very difficult thing and this seemed to come very naturally to these guys. (Those of you with access to internet at home with a decent speed, check out a short sketch from ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ - search for Fry and Laurie psychiatrists. It is a hilarious sketch !!)

I also read about them and found that they had created another BBC series based on the popular characters by PG Wodehouse - Bertie Wooster and his beloved butler Jeeves. I got the DVDs from the library yesterday and have just watched one episode, but trust me, this one is good. Hugh Laurie is everything you would have imagined Wooster to be - Rich, spoilt, often ridiculous and he never once goes overboard with his expressions. Stephen Fry is the quintessential English Butler - with a clipped accent, controlled emotions (as Bertie says, when Jeeves gets really disturbed, he raises an eyebrow !!), vaguely amused at his master’s idiosyncrasies and quietly scheming to always gets his requests granted by poor Bertie.

I have been wanting to write about Hugh Laurie for quite some time now and finally got down to merely mentioning him in this post ! I sometimes think that the British have a great sense of humour for one reason - they always knew that one day or the other, their title of being the biggest empire in the world would change. People have sharp memories and might want to hit back. But these guys make themselves so endearing with their literature, that we simply tend to smile indulgently at them and let them go !!

Last week, I also picked up a novel by Hugh Laurie (his debut novel) called ‘The Gun Seller’. His friend Stephen Fry has already written more than 4 books now (and I have picked up one of them too !!) The first evening after getting the book, I could not wait and started reading it immediately. I have great respect for both these people and especially for Laurie. He is now a popular TV star in the US and stars in a very highly rated series called ‘House M.D’. Apparently he sent his video-tape for audition for the series since he was busy and the director was so impressed with him, that he told everyone around Laurie was the kind of ‘American’ actor that he was looking for (not knowing at that time that he was British!!). Watch him in ‘House’ and you would be astonished at how he has changed his looks, mannerisms, accent and has ‘become’ House M.D !!

The book turned (is turning) out to be better than I thought. It is a kind of PG Wodehouse meets James Bond. Extremely funny !! Amusingly sarcastic !! (I found a cab eventually and told the driver in fluent English that I wanted Wenceslas Square. This request, I now know, is phonetically identical to the Czech phrase for ‘I am an air-brained tourist, please take everything I have’.)

Humour pops in at unexpected places (It was snowing outside. Of course, it always snows outside !)

Towards the end of the novel, a small interview of the author is also inserted. Apparently the movie rights for the book have been sold and the movie is under production. In which case, I really wish Laurie would participate in the movie-making process, lest they botch up the movie and the book !

P.S - An hour into the book, I realized a chemical reaction inside me. I realized that I was slowly falling in love with Hugh Laurie. But I later fell out of love (in about 2 secs and hence the title !!). Reasons for in and out listed below:

In:

• Very intelligent
• Makes me laugh (not easy at all!!)
• Loves PGW like I do
• Nice eyes.

Out :

• British (we are supposed to hate them)
• Different viewpoints about the cow (I think of them as God and he probably imagines 2 slices of bread around it!)
• Only a few years younger than my mother
• And yes.. married with 2 kids !!

Thanks to the above reasons, I have decided to maintain a strictly platonic relationship with Hugh (I am sure it will hurt him too !! But then, thats life !!)
So, those of you who thought I was totally cold-hearted, please think again. I have a heart, that I tend to lose often to people only to regain in a next few secs !!

How's married life?

‘So how’s life after marriage?’

‘Nothing very different, I just happen to be living with another person instead of my parents’

Now thats where I wish things would stop. I really wish people don’t take my question seriously and describe every single detail about marital bliss. Not that I am a child at heart ! Remember - I watch ‘International Cinema’. Nothing anybody says (or types) can get more graphic than that!

It is only that I am not a M&B sort of person. I am not the kind of person that would go ‘Ooh’ ‘Aah’ over anybody’s love story. I don’t mind on-screen romances (mostly !). In fact, I can keep a straight face even when people romance in real life, right in front of me, for a maximum period of 3 minutes. I can pretend to be studying my nails very deeply- the cuticles, the blood flow, the broken nail - there are a thousand things that can be read in a nail.

But what when this sort of thing pops up when I am chatting with someone, I know very slightly, or am on the phone with a recently married friend, who I am not very close to, that's when I am doomed !! Why do people take questions on life after marriage very seriously and insist on talking about the cute spouse at the first chance? Do they realize that they are making me squirm in my seat?

Friend : ‘My husband calls me baby!!’

Me : ‘Oh.. ok’. (OMG !!)

Friend : ‘You know what I call him?’

Me (to myself) : ‘Do I really care?’

(To her) : What?

Her : ‘I call him ’sweet puppy’. Isn’t that cute?’

Me : That's cute ! (right answer , but sadly makes her want to go on !!)

Her : He is like a baby (Whattttttttttt !!). He refuses to let me oil his hair (I have to get out of this conversation !!).

I have walked out of mushy movies in the past. But what is reserved for me in this life, will be mine and there is no way of escaping ! I have to necessarily listen to more and more of this corny stuff especially on the phone. On chat, I simply refuse to type out a response and lie that I am busy. But the other one is hardly listening (or reading what I type !) and gushes on and on.

Things were worse in the past. People around me who were romantically involved always made me think I had drunk some potion that made me completely invisible and would be throwing glances at each other and talk cute stuff and expect me to find it amusing. Funny, except those involved everyone else seem to notice these things.

You know, movies lie. Only in movies, the heroine has a friend who is a complete doofus and would help in passing letters, accompany the heroine everywhere and vanish when the hero was near etc and probably give up her life in the end to help the lovers. In real life, all of are heroines of our stories. Everyone except us is, as they call it, a character artist !!

Now I know what to do. Let courtesy go to hell, let them think I am rude, impolite, whatever. I am fine with on-screen romances alone (at least I have a fast forward button for corny scenes). I simply cannot be made a reluctant participant in these romantic stories and listen to utter adolescent nonsense about sweet and child-like lovers or spouses. Let me live in peace .. please !!