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 !!