Happy Walletines' Day

So another Valentines' Day has come and gone. And the attendant hysteria is finally beginning to die down just a little.

I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. I don't understand Valentines' Day.

Saint Valentine, after whom the Day is named, is apparently the patron saint of affianced couples. He is also, my sources inform me, the patron saint of bee keepers, epileptics and travellers. (So if you're an apiarist in love, are bitten by wanderlust and are prone to the occasional fit, you've hit the jackpot.)

Saint Valentine may as well also be the patron saint of overpriced flowers, candy, cloyingly mushy love songs, the colours red and pink and marketing/advertisement agencies.

Love has never been so commoditized, dragged down from its deservedly ethereal heights and crammed into the greedy mould of mass commercialization. An emotion that is something relatively simple and (potentially, should you choose to make it so) uncomplicated is repackaged to morph into a confusing mix of expectation, guilt, tension, disappointment and anxiety culminating in a big fat credit card bill.

I don't see why there has to be ONE day to make the person you love feel special. I don't see why there has to be ONE day to tell them how much they mean to you. I don't see why there has to be ONE day to convey your emotions. From my experience, an unexpected rose on any random day is a greater sign that someone loves you than a rose (or several) right on cue on Valentines' Day. Predictability and a sense of expectation will be the death of spontaneous expression of love.

Anybody and everybody jumps onto the Valentines' Day bandwagon nowadays. Here are a few examples.

- Florists have a field day as the price of roses shoots up 500%. And giving one's Valentine day-old flowers is simply considered too tacky and cheap for words. (Try explaining the 50% cost arbitrage advantage to a miffed girlfriend.)

- One has apparently not celebrated Valentines' Day in its true spirit if one has not been to the most eye-poppingly expensive restaurant in town. For a steep price (special Valentine offer, of course), one gets to experience fantastic ambience, soft romantic music and often tasteless food.

- Or, one of the many plush multiplexes in town where if one buys couple tickets, one will get popcorn free! Romantic as it may be, I'd much rather watch the movie I paid up to 300 frickin' bucks per head for, and not be distracted by my girlfriend nibbling on my ear.

- We consumers are reassured that this is the ideal occasion on which to buy your loved one lingerie. (Yeah right. Given the traffic snarls to and from that expensive restaurant so diligently recommended by all known media, I doubt one would have the time or energy for much action.)

- Jewellery, of course, is the perfect gift for the occasion, ads plead. (What occasion? Me loving my girlfriend/wife is an occasion?!) Other perfect occasions in the future will include Diwali, New Year, Akshaya Tritiya, Holi, Pongal, Eid, Christmas, Krishna Jayanti, the various regional New Years, Independence Day...

- "Love is a matter of taste," urges a consumer electronics company in an ad (that they doubtless consider clever) in today's paper as it positions a microwave oven as the best present for one's beloved. (Oh screw the swanky restaurant, honey. Let's just stay home and try out our new microwave!)

- "If you cant say those three words today, say two," is the sage recommendation from another. The two words? "iPod Nano." An informative little callout on the ad tells us to buy the iPod in pink, as that is the colour of love. (If anyone were to get me a pink iPod, I'd kill them. And use their blood to colour my iPod a sporty red.)

- Do you know how to show your loved one how much you really love them? "Gift your Valentine something special... Buy them a car! Now available at a special 10% discount, repayable through low EMIs over the next 7 years." (But which time one would have got a new car, and probably a new girlfriend/wife as well.)

- Everybody with the equipment and time to churn out a music CD comes out with a 'Love Collection' or something of the sort, featuring exactly the same songs in every single CD, with perhaps a change in the sequence or the addition of remixed tracks being the only difference.

- "Love at first ride!" screams a wildly original ad from a bike manufacturer.

- How about this, from a popular beauty parlour chain: "This Valentines' Day, gift your loved one a special slimming package." Right, nothing quite like telling her how much you love her and sending across a subtle message at the same time.

- "This Valentine, charm a million hearts with your new look... avail of special discounts on our non surgical treatment for baldness!" Quite a turn-on, I'm sure.

And there are many many more. Everyone's out to make a quick buck on this most profitable of days. And you can't blame them, they're just doing what makes good business sense. It's all of us, the society at large, that has been brainwashed into feeling the need to 'celebrate' it. In my view, it's nothing more than an excuse to get off work early. (No manager can deny you time with your beloved on Valentines' Day. She/he probably has to rush home herself to deal with a spouse brimming with fancy notions and high expectations of an evening's expensive affirmation of love.)

Bal Thackeray, the head of the political party the Shiv Sena has long crusaded against Valentines' Day being celebrated in India, deeming it a western influence that spreads immorality amongst the youth. He considers it an attack upon Indian values and culture. (The land with the second largest population in the world does not understand love and/or lust, apparently.) In a front page editorial in the party newsletter, he wrote, "What is this Valentine Day? In what way it is related to Indian culture? It is a rotten imported culture thriving on the neo-rich with easy money to squander."

Now I have a deep, long-standing loathing for him and his party, given their highly divisive politics and hate mongering. But you have to admit, in the context of the statement above, he kind of has a point.

Valentines' Day is no longer about love. It's all about the money, honey.

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"

Location: Strand Book Fair, Mumbai

Time In: 1230 hrs

Time Out: 1330 hrs

The spoils, all in mint condition:
Classics:
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
Of Human Bondage, by William Somerset Maugham

Intellectual stimulation:
The Koran (translated to English)
The Dialogues of Plato

Pulp fiction for long flights:
A Puzzle For Fools, by Patrick Quentin
The Last of Philip Banter, by John Franklin Bardin

Miscellaneous:
Magic, by Isaac Asimov
The History of White People in America, by Martin Mull and Allen Rucker
The Litle Pun Book, from Peter Pauper Press

Expense: Rs. 834. What a steal.


Note: The quote in the title is attributed to Henry Ward Beecher.

Road Rage

Warning: This is a long post. A very long post. I started typing it out and didn't seem to be able to stop. If you are reading this at work, as I strongly suspect you are, this could seriously impact your productivity. As it has mine.

Driving in Gurgaon can be an incredibly frustrating experience. The sheer lawlessness, chaos and the perpetual sense of death and destruction makes for a very emotionally draining experience. There are two ways one could look at it.
1. Positive view: It gives you a renewed appreciation of how good it is to be alive. It makes you feel like a man again (engaging in all those testosterone-driven duels). And when you begin to celebrate reaching home safely each night, you know you've learnt to value life's small victories.
2. Negative view: It's a pain in the ass. It's life threatening and rage-inducing. The world appears to be full of maniacs and idiots with no concern for either their own lives or that of others.
As can be expected from a naturally cynical and angry guy like me, this post deals exclusively with the latter. So here's a guide to some of the phenomena you are likely to encounter on the roads of Gurgaon.


COWS
All over the bloody place. And they aren't just the normal kind of cows one finds all over the country. These are very large cows and bulls. Huge bulls with massive humps and dangerously long and sharp horns. Much like the ones depicted on Harappan seals





It's clear they have been terrorizing travellers in these parts for years but nothing whatsoever has been done about them. They lie around on the roads, protected by the irrational Indian belief in their touch-them-on-pain-of-your-life holiness. They stand in front of your car in the middle of the roads, gazing at you unflinchingly, daring you to use force against them. And, occasionally, their luck runs out and they die on the roads, their deep dark blood seeping across the asphalt as we shake our heads sagely and continue driving.


RASH DRIVERS
If there's one thing the Haryana police have learnt, it's that there is no point putting up speed limits on any roads. Simply because the limit is merely a number. Most drivers see it not as a restriction but as a challenge. Not just a 'Can you reach this speed?' challenge but a 'Can you reach twice this speed?' challenge. And, almost invariably, the drivers win. With the result that you have huge masses of people roaring down the roads of Gurgaon with scant control over their movements and scant respect for those of others.

The motorcyclists are worse; young blood pumping ill-advisedly in their hyperactive veins, they zoom in and out of traffic, executing death defying stunts, sharp swerves and risky cross-signal tactics. Thankfully, there aren't very many of them - Gurgaon seems to be extremely unsafe for anyone not protected by something with an airbag or, at the very least, a seat belt.

All these rash drivers (two, three and four wheelers) will cut across lanes, insist on overtaking you on the wrong side, believe it is their god given right to not have to stop at traffic signals, cut wildly into traffic travelling at 100 kmph, drive on the wrong side of the road, ram into the occasional cow and, in general, make life a living hell for everyone else on the roads.

They count among their brethren truck drivers, tanker drivers, motorcyclists, tractor drivers, half the car-owning population of the city and even the occasional daring bullock cart driver. But the king, the absolute baap of them all is...


CAB-MAN
Not to be confused with Spiderman, Superman, Batman and the like, even though he does perform death defying stunts. He would be a crime fighter, except that he's almost always on the wrong side of the law. And no, he's not an anti-hero, he's pure evil villain.

I refer to those who drive cabs, particularly those employed by BPO companies to ferry their hapless employees. These are all private operators (Gurgaon has little or no reliable and safe public transport) and are, I think, paid on the basis of how quickly they get from point A to point B. Which results in them zooming in and out of traffic, muscling in on the flow of traffic in any and every direction and generally making one hell of a nuisance of themselves. Apart from, of course, being a serious safety hazard on the roads. Not a week goes by without news of someone being mowed down by one of these cabs (or mooed down, if attacked by one of the aforementioned bulls).

They are not averse to giving you a little nudge from the back if they feel you're travelling too slowly. Or, what's worse, socialise from the side by bringing their cabs within a couple of nanometres of one's doors. This is, as you can expect, an extremely frightening and heartwrenching thing for someone with a relatively new car that he would like to see survive for as long as possible without scratches. But where there are mad cab drivers, there are scratches galore. The Viking raiders of old left smoking ruins after every plunder. The villainous robbers in Home Alone left the water running after every robbery. Gurgaon's cabmen leave a wide range of scratches after every interaction.

And nobody seems to be able to do anything to stop them.


LANE? WHAT'S THAT?
Have you, dear reader, driven on city roads? If you have, you might have noticed little white lines on the roads, usually dividing them into roughly equal fractions. These fractions of the road, referred to as lanes, are meant to facilitate orderly flow of traffic in neat lines. Queues, if you will.

Gurgaon, apparently, finds lane driving an alien concept. No one EVER EVER follows them. Which is extremely frustrating for someone who was brought up (in driving terms) in an environment which taught him to respect lane flow.

The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA, which sounds surprisingly like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman - and some believe is just as blind)... where was I? Oh yes. HUDA, in all earnestness, paints lines all over the roads, only to have them completely and utterly ignored by practically every single member of the driving populace.

Two lanes of traffic are often converted into three, with the ones in the middle not seeming the least bit remorseful about breaking driving etiquette (is it a law?). They merely nudge, cajole and threaten (ever had a tall bearded Jat brandish a heavy stick at you?) their way into any open space to create a lane of their own. The road I take to office morphs from 3 lanes to 5 (sometimes 6!) during rush hour. The National Highway to Delhi miraculously transforms from 8 to 14 lanes, all choc-a-bloc with irate drivers and peaceful cows.

What's more, they often do not stay in their lanes (imaginary or official). Everyone glides, slides and pirouettes across lanes, in and out of traffic with absolutely ZERO regard for the situation of traffic in the lanes they are cutting into. As one who has often been cut off by such insane lane-switchers, I have learnt to control my anger ("I'll kill you, b#$%&@*d!") and become more philosophical about it. ("The way you're driving, you're going to die sooner or later. B#$%&@*d.")

Lanes are a thing of the past, a needless imposition of order and discipline in an environment where order and discipline can get one abused, scratched, beaten up or killed.


SUICIDAL PEDESTRIANS
I do not know which city/state reports the largest number of suicides (for non-agricultural reasons) and/or accidental deaths each year, but I would be very surprised if Gurgaon is not near the top of the list. The local people seem to be blessed with an innate propensity to take risks, some of which take the form of walking in the middle of a busy road or sprinting across a eight-lane highway, even as rash drivers (especially cabmen) bear down upon them with unflinching bloodlust.

Trust me, driving here is not an exercise for the faint-hearted, given the nature of these pedestrians. They jump onto the roads when you least expect them (you are, of course barrelling down a 80kmph highway at 120 kmph). They play peekaboo with you from behind telephone poles and/or cows, a now-you-see-them-now-you-don't cat-and-mouse game that usually goes "accelerate, turn up the volume, accelerate, press the pedal all the way down, glance up at the man doing a jig in the middle of the road, slam down hard on the brakes, skid on the road, screech to a halt". It wouldn't be out of place in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

What irks me is not so much the fact that they cross the road at all - they can't help it, even chickens have been known to do it - but that they
a. Seem to have no idea that walking at 0.2 kmph across a busy highway puts them at significant risk of dying a gory death; there is NO move on their path to hurry across, even with crazy drivers zooming down on them.
b. Seem to wait for a car to come on the horizon before stepping onto the road, almost flaunting the fact that they, being human, have greater right to be on the road than the machine thundering on it day and night; said machine must necessarily stop before the frail 90 year old, grinning in the middle of the road. It's a power game, I tell you.

The safest thing to do is to never drive on the innermost or outermost lanes. Stick to the middle. Or if there isn't a middle, create one (as described earlier). At least you'll have a little more time to react to your opponent/victim.


RICKSHAW DRIVERS
It's hard to crib about these guys. Unfair, almost. After all, they do have to make a living. But if there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my ability to rant about anything and everything without conscience.

Rickshaw drivers (RDs, in the interests of time, energy and my not getting Carpel Tunnel Syndrome) are a law unto themselves. They know they're onto a good thing. In the absence of credible public transport, they are the average person's best mode of transport. When the average person's car is at the mechanic's, of course - the average rickshaw-using person, as defined by Gurgaon standards, owns a car. Two, sometimes.

RDs think nothing of driving in exactly the opposite direction to the rest of traffic flow. Perhaps they feel the same sense of power pedestrians do. Perhaps they feel they're giving their customers their money's worth by taking them from Point A to Point B with death-defying thrills thrown in. The same applies to when they randomly cut across four lanes of traffic (officially two) just to get to a nearby U-turn or chat with a fellow RD on the other side of the road. Also, in what infuriates me more than anything else, they ALWAYS occupy the fastest lane. Which is fine in Gurgaon where no one gives a damn which side you overtake on, but it still affects what's left of my road sense.

The best way to avoid hitting a rickshaw is to stick to the National Highways. Or else ride in a rickshaw oneself.


UNANNOUNCED SPEEDBREAKERS
It's ironic that for a city that moves so insanely fast, there are speedbreakers all over the place, seemingly laid out at random. There are several stretches where one would encounter four or five of them within a kilometre. Which is all for the best, I guess - I'm sure they help save lives - but what gets my goat is that many of these are a. horribly formed, making a single hump a bloody roller coaster ride, and b. not marked or coloured in any way. Which means that I often get jolted horribly and have my insides shaken up irrecoverably, with absolutely no warning whatsoever. And this results in me being reduced to a nervous wreck whenever I'm driving in any remotely residential area...


BEAM ME UP...
What the HELL is wrong with everyone? WHYOWHYOWHY do people have to travel with headlights at full beam all the time? I have enough things to give me a headache without the random guy ehind me shining full force into my car and my rear view mirror. Does he not realise it is blindingly painful? How would he like it if I was to flash a bright light straight into his pupils, huh?

I can fully understand the use of high beam on the dark highways, but NOT within the city where you have enough glitz and neon to light one's way. Do you really need 500m worth of visibility when there's a car 2m in front of you? Huh? Huh? I spend a significant portion of my night-time driving making flashing symbols at the guys behind me, a desperate plea for him to dip his bloody lights.

Unfortunately, it hardly works. And what I hate most about idiots who drive on full beam all the time are those who drive on full beam all the time with...


HALOGEN LAMPS
This paragraph is addressed directly to the user of halogen lamps, not you, most dear and respected reader.

What the fish is wrong with you? Is the normal headlight that insufficient that you must get yourself this insanely bright, piercing, obscenely white light? If you were in a coastal city, you'd be mistaken for a bloody lighthouse. What madness possessed you to feel that the standard lights are not enough, especially when the car in front of you is never more than 10m ahead (and that's on a good night!)? Do you see the pure white light as some symbol of your purity, or a literal reflection of your mental brightness? Do you think people will be impressed and mentally say, "Damn, I wish I was him!". No, idiot, no. People will be pissed and say "Damn, I wish I could kill him!"

So there you go, ladies and gentlemen. Everything on the roads that irritates me. I've left out a few of the minor irritants - undercar lighting, slow tractors and somewhat incompetent policemen come to mind - but these are the biggies. Do keep a watch out for them. Steer clear of them, and you'll live longer.

Kho na jaaye yeh Taare Zameen Par

If you were to watch only one movie this holiday season, I suggest you make it Taare Zameen Par that released today.




(SPOILER ALERT!)

It's a movie about a dyslexic boy who can't seem to do anything right academically and prefers fish and paints to books and sports. It's about how he is misunderstood by all around him (including his parents), and how one special teacher helps him and others around him realise, appreciate and celebrate his inner worth. The beauty of the movie lies in the fact that the movie is less about the dyslexia itself and more about the boy, the relationships he shares with people around him and his feelings... the final 'moral', as it were, being that everyone is different in their own special and unique way; in trying to conform to the world's perception of success, structured thinking, reward/punishment and appropriate behaviour, one loses sight of this uniqueness. And thus, we stand to unknowingly lose these taare zameen par, literally these stars on Earth.

This is easily one of the best movies to have come out of much maligned (and rightly so!) Bollywood this year.

I am not going to review this movie. I do not have the skills to present a compelling review of the movie from a filmmaking standpoint. Nor am I a cinebuff in any sense of the word, to be able to draw academic comparisons between TZP and other great works of the past. I write as a normal member of the audience. And, sitting with a hundred other people in that darkened hall, I lived the life of the troubled protagonist Ishaan through the magnificent narrative of Amole Gupta and the creative lens of the constantly surprising Aamir Khan.

The movie has several things going for it. First things first - the star of the show. No, not Aamir Khan but Darsheel Safary, the young boy who carries the entire movie completely on his frail shoulders. His expressions, his body language, his voice... all draw the viewer into his little make believe world where the letters of the alphabet dance and Captain Bindaas solves math problems in unique ways. Throw in a brilliant supporting cast - particularly Tisca Chopra as the mother and Aamir Khan as, of course, the teacher - and you have an ensemble cast that hits the perfect notes in practically each and every scene.

All this backed by a beautiful story and a strong script, that treads the fine line between sensitivity and mawkish sentimentality to perfection. It involves you in the life and problems of the protagonist, while not drowning one in an overdose of preachiness and melodrama (please tone it down just a little, Mr Sanjay Leela 'Black' Bhansali). The school scenes were imaginatively written and wonderfully shot, evoking deep empathy with Ishaan but also providing a solid sense of nostalgia for one's own school days.

The direction was good - I know nothing of the finer technical aspects to be able to make any sensible comment on them - but full credit is due to Aamir, for ensuring that his star presence does not in any way come remotely close to overshadowing the primary character. And do NOT miss out on the montage of videos played during the closing credits; they're an extremely beautiful collection - moving, cute, touching, disturbing, hopeful...

And last but definitely not the least, the music. Mindblowing. Just the right touches and soft flourishes in the right places to make each song meld beautifully into the story, enabling the filmmakers to stick to Bollywood convention of songs every ten minutes yet use unconventional melodies (Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy) and simple lyrics (Good show, Prasoon Joshi!) to perfectly capture the characters' state of mind. I would strongly recommend the infectious 'Bum Bum Bole' (much better on the screen than on audio), the beautiful, lilting title song and the starkly simple yet meltingly moving 'Maa', which evocatively expresses the boy's loneliness and longing when separated from his mother.

This is one movie you must not miss.

This is one movie that I did not come out of cribbing that I hadn't got value for the insanely expensive movie ticket.

This is one movie that I would love to see succeed commercially, if only to prove the point that modern India stills values and appreciates fine filmmaking, and is willing to pay for it and not consign it to the deathly spiral of film festivals and special screenings. It would really anger me if this movie were to crash and burn (as several trade analysts predicted before its release, given its storyline) even as a leave-your-brain-at-home-to-watch-a-marketing-genius-with-six-packs Om Shanti Om rakes in over a hundred crores.

This is now the best Bollywood movie I've seen all year, beating out the astonishingly well made sports movie Chak De! India and the poetically shot, controversial commercial dud (and India's entry to the Oscars!) Eklavya.

So do yourself a favour this holiday season, folks. Watch Taare Zameen Par. If it makes you think about children differently for even a few minutes, it will have achieved its purpose. It will have had the impact and response it aimed for and deserves.

Advice of the Year

It's that time of the year when anybody and everybody with access to any medium creates 'Best of 2007' lists. Newspapers, Websites and TV Channels knock themselves silly trying to come up with innovative 'Best Of's.

Best Movie/Song of the Year.
Best Advertisement of the Year.
Best News Story of the Year.
Best Photograph of the Year.
Best Blog Post of the Year.
Best Fashion Faux-Pas of the Year.
Best Cricketer Unceremoniously Dumped by the BCCI of the Year.
Best Cosmetic Surgery of the Year.
Best Rich Fame-obsessed Degenerate Hollywood Star of the Year.
Best Traffic Control Mechanism of the Year (this should go to Gurgaon's cows)
Best Mobile Phone That's Actually a Phone and Not a Bloody Life-Controlling Supercomputer of the Year.
Best 'Best of' category of the year.

I normally do not give a flying fish about these things... but wait up, bandwagon. I'm clambering on.

So why 'Advice of the Year'? I don't really know. I've never given advice on this blog before. For one very good reason - giving advice typically requires some level of wisdom about the topic one is advising the world about. And wisdom is something, as several people have pointed out to me throughout my life, that I am in very short supply of. I'm still in short supply of wisdom, but the difference now is that I've ceased to give a damn about it.

So here's my pearl:

When send an SMS using your mobile phone's predictive text/dictionary, check the message before you press send.

As always, there's a story behind this.

Flashback...

Actually, wait a minute.

Flashforward...

Before I get into the story, let me make my stand on predictive text/dictionary (which I shall henceforth refer to as PTD to avoid wearing out my fingers) very clear.

I'm a HUGE fan of Nokia's T9 PTD. I find it extremely convenient when typing an SMS, and believe it helps save me a LOT of energy that would otherwise go into hammering out messages on the tiny keys on the phone. This energy can then be directed towards critical tasks like flipping a channel on TV, opening a bag of chips, or scratching the itchy parts of one's body. The PTD rocks... but recent events have caused me to learn a very important lesson the hard way.

Aha! Piqued your interest, haven't I? "Recent events"... Hmmm... the suspense builds... The promise of a twist in the tale! This is like one of those passages at the end of a chapter in a novel that goes

She looked at him longingly as he opened the door and stepped out.
"Do you really have to go?"
He smiled.
"You know I have to, darling. But I'll be back in two hours. I promise."
"Love you."
"Love you too."
She shut the door softly, already going over the lovely evening she had planned for him.
Little did she know she would never see him again.
(Cue to brooding percussion score)


I'm sorry, I tend to digress. More on the recent events and the story in a bit.

Like I said, I'm a huge fan of this feature. I have, however, often come across people who are avowed haters of this function, and much prefer to spell out the words themselves.

Being a man of science, I decided to conduct a comprehensive and conclusive study to evaluate the benefits of predictive text. Here's the highly scientific and rigorous procedure I followed:
1. Approach five people at random and ask them to give me their five to ten most commonly SMSed words
2. Count and compare the number of key presses required with and without T9
3. That's about it

And here, ladies and gentlemen are the results. The format followed below is word (key presses with T9, key presses without T9)

Respondent 1:
post (4, 9)
stupidity (9, 19)
urinal (6, 14)
inhospitable (12, 27)
chocolate (9, 21)
movies (7, 16)

Respondent 2:
Kaka (8, 6)
Mia (5, 5)
television (10, 26)
man (3, 4)
she's (5, 18)
smoking (7, 16)
hot (4, 6)

Respondent 3:
adaptor (7, 11)
strategy (8, 16)
market (6, 10)
paper (5, 8)
place (5, 10)
sunlight (8, 18)
there (5, 10)

Respondent 4:
meet (4, 6)
call (4, 10)
please (6, 13)
me (3, 3)
ok (2, 5)
girl (4, 10)

Respondent 5:
no (3, 5)
are (3, 6)
you (3, 8)
f***ing (11, 16)
nuts? (8, 13)
get (3, 4)
lost (4, 11)
freak (5, 11)

Net result: On average, with-PTD words are 50.13% as long as without-PTD words.

There you go. QED. I rest my case, and all that jazz.

We have now established that PTD rocks, Nokia's T9 in particular. As a result of my fervent belief in the usefulness and infallibility of this feature, I have of late become just a leeetle lax in terms of assuming it will always throw up the word that I intend to use in my SMS.

Back to the story now.

Flashback...

A few days ago. After a long hard day at work, I came home tired and looking forward to a few hours of destressing. I kicked off my smelly socks and settled down in front of the TV. I flipped channels... Survivor China - bleah. Discussions about the Gujarat elections - yawn. Reruns of the World Female Naked Mud Wrestling Championships - not again. And then I happened upon Pink Panther, the movie.

The movie itself is no great shakes, but I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Steve Martin (even post Pink Panther). And so I settled down to two hours of simple entertainment that wouldn't be too taxing for my severely constrained mental faculties.

In the midst of the movie, a friend SMSed me: "Hey, what's up? What are you doing?"

I sent her a reply saying I was watching Pink Panther. I got a reply before I could say "Inspector Clouseau" (Not that I was trying to, of course.) "You're what? Freak!"

Naturally, I was taken aback. People insult me all the time, and to be fair I usually give them ample reason to do so. But this sort of completely unprovoked attack took even a man of steel like myself by surprise.

To make my stand clear, I decided to send my earlier message again. "I'm watching Pink -"

And that's when I realised that T9's default for P-A-N-T-H-E-R is P-A-N-T-I-E-S.

One lives and learns.

If you've always thought my blog's just bull...

...you're right!


The pic above was, of course, taken in New York. This is the famous Charging Bull near Wall Street. The sheer size, weight and massiveness of the sculpture was stunning. The level of anatomical detail was pretty impressive as well, including the surprisingly large... erm... you know. I'd put up a picture, but that wouldn't be appropriate given the fact that there are several impressionable young kids who read my blog.

On another track, a lot of you have been telling me through mails, dbabs and this blog that it's high time I get back to blogging... I'm really really sorry it's been such a while since my last post. I've been pretty busy of late, but life is so varied and one's daily experiences so unique (and, often, frustrating!) that there is always a potential blogpost round the corner... so do bear with me for a bit, I'll try to be as regular as possible in the months to come. That said, thank you SO much... it really feels nice to know there are people who enjoy my random flights of thought and look forward to reading more of it :)

(Btw, I owe the photograph to Divya, who waited VERY patiently till all the other tourists cleared off so we could take this shot!)

Ever wish you were a giraffe? I do.

If there's one great life-lesson I would pass on to future generations, it would be this:

When travelling, always pack an extra pair of socks in your hand baggage.
Let me put this pearl of wisdom in context.

Three days ago, I was in New York. I had a flight to catch in the afternoon, and had decided to spend the morning and early afternoon walking around the city, doing some shopping and meeting friends. What made the plan all the more acceptable was the weather. Mild rain and light winds came together to make it very pleasant and extremely romantic weather for a walk about New York. Sure, there were puddles every now and then, but splashing about in puddles is precisely what the child in every one of us loves.

I was having such a good afternoon that I lost track of time, and only just made it to the airport in time to check in. I sent my bag through, picked up my boarding pass and ambled off towards the boarding gate. I pulled out my laptop (yes, I was working!) and sat down, when a sudden loud squelch and a strong pungent smell assailed my senses.

I looked left. Nothing.
I looked right. Nothing.
I looked up. Nothing.
I looked down. Ah.

A morning romp through the puddled streets of New York in the rain might bring glorious joy to the mind and spirit, but wreaks havoc on one's footwear. My shoes and socks were wet through, and increasingly smelly. I eased my feet out of my shoes to allow them a little air, and nearly gagged. An old man three seats away went into a paroxysm of coughing, and a woman two rows behind me said in a voice that could be heard across the Atlantic, "What in God's name is that smell?!"

Said woman did not, however, have the time to launch a detailed investigation into the phenomenon as boarding was announced. I sighed, shoved my wet-sock-covered wet foot into my wet shoes and squelched my way through the queue onto the aerobridge into the plane and squeezed into my seat. Relieved at having a relative stretch of peace, quiet and sock-drying ahead of me, I proceeded to take off my shoes. I let out a satisfied sigh. I even went so far as to wiggle my toes in comfort.

One thing I really miss about London is the British sense of subtlety and politeness. Tell them an earthquake has wiped out Dover and they'll respond with a "By Jove, you don't say! How frightful!" Inform them that they have just won a million pound lottery and they'll react with a "Oh, jolly good show!" Block them on an escalator in the Underground, and they'd cough under their breath and say, "If you don't mind awfully, young man, could you please shift to your left just a bit so I could pass? Thank you so much, awfully kind of you. Good day." Order an English breakfast in a pub and the waitress'll serve you your plate with a warm smile and an "Enjoy your meal, love!"

My impression of Americans is, however, just the opposite. Not that it's wrong to be like that. It's just very in-your-face. Look at Donald Trump. Look at Las Vegas. Look at the Big Mac.

Anyway, so there I was wiggling my toes in comfort. Approximately 1.4 seconds later, I felt someone poking me in the shoulder. I turned around to face a very big, very red American woman. "Yes?" I asked. "Put on your shoes, boy, you're stinking up the whole damn plane!" she roared.

Perfectly true, but I'm sure there are better ways of putting it. Hard to argue with her logic though. I sighed (yup, I have quite a lot of practice in that line) squished my wet shoes back on, and settled in for what I was sure was going to be a very podiatrically uncomfortable 8 hour long flight. To add to my misery, one of the inflight movies was 300, which featured Spartans happy and content in their open-toed sandals.

I arrived at Amsterdam, and headed straight for the most remote seating area I could find. I ripped off my shoes and my socks, and threw up into the conveniently placed bin near my seat.

Someone walked up and noticed the empty seats stretched on either side of me. He sat down three seats away from me. He sniffed. He cast an evil looked in my direction. He sniffed again. He got up and left.

This happened to me seven more times over the next hour, even though I had chosen a seat as far away from the rest as humanity as possible (insofar as one can be far away from humanity at a major international airport).

As the area started filling up, and the sniffs became more pronounced and laden with menacing intent, I let decency take over from comfort, and put my shoes back on. They were reasonably dry, and considerably less smelly, so that made the 8 hour flight back to Delhi relatively more tolerable.

The End.

Moral of the story (Just to drive home the point): Keep a supply of fresh socks handy at all times. Or be a giraffe so your nose is far far away from your feet.


Smelly socks, smelly socks your smell is preceding you
Smelly socks, smelly socks it's not your fault...
It's because of me that you're drenched wet
You're causing discomfort to others, I'll bet
You stink like a dead animal that decomposes
Yeah you're no friend to those with noses.
Smelly socks, smelly socks your smell is preceding you
Smelly socks, smelly socks it's not your fault!

Empirical observations from New York...

...on the basis of about 15 hours of walking around midtown and downtown Manhattan.

At a reasonably brisk pace of walking, one sees
a. A Dunkin Donuts every 14 minutes
b. A McDonalds every 10 minutes
c. A Starbucks every 5 minutes
d. A Japanese tourist clicking photos of everything that moves (and most things that don't) every 2 minutes.

Other observations/musings:
a. Nothing seems to have changed since I was here 10 years ago. Except for the fact that every second person has an Apple product in his pocket, on his palm, or in his ear.
b. Manhattan is a very very easy place to be a tourist and/or explorer on foot. The fact that lower midtown and northwards is laid out in simple rectangular grids makes it idiot-proof, and hence ideal for me.
c. Italian food in New York is probably second only to Italian food in Italy. And it's one hell of a close contest.
d. Times Square is simply waaaaay too loud and bright. The screens light up the damn place like it's daytime. Nice if you like that kind of burning-the-eyeballs intensity but it's not my cup of tea. I'm sure with this kind of energy consumption, Times Square alone must be a major contributor to global warming. Any thoughts, Mr Gore? On the other hand, I must admit the sheer vitality of the place is simply mindblowing. And very very seductive.
e. London is waaaaay more expensive than New York. In practically every single sphere of activity.
f. The London Underground, however, is super seductively sexy compared to the NY Subway. It may be smaller and connect fewer places, but it's cleaner and more idiot-proof (again, critical to me). This is a clear distinction between the two, and the New York authorities should Mind the Gap (snigger, snigger).
g. Americans are waaaaay (I realise I'm using 'waaaay' waaaay too many times, but it's now waaaay beyond my control.) too fond of starchy, sweet and fatty food. In my two weeks here, I've put on what feels like atleast 5 kgs. And that's just on my arms.
h. Blueberry Cake Donuts rock. Big time. And I will brook no argument whatsoever on this point. (This might seem to tie in with point g above but anyone who dares suggest such a thing will have to deal with a fist that has grown 150% in 14 days.)

More later. Ciao.

I apologize for the infrequent posts and replies to comments of late. I've been busy (working, unbelievable though it may seem!)

Update to my previous post: Schiphol!

In my previous post, I had mentioned the flies painted on the urinals at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.

Well, I was at Schiphol earlier today and decided to check it out first hand. (Two for best aim, actually, but let's not go into that.) So here's a first-person photo:




So there I was, peacefully minding my own business taking this photo... when I heard a cough behind me.

I turned around, and there stood a Dutch policeman, looking at me rather quizzically.

"Sir, what are you doing?" he asked.

My brain whirred into action and I replied with the entirely truthful, "I was taking a picture of the urinal."

He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at him.

It struck me that "I was taking a picture of the urinal" is not the most convincing or elaborate of answers to give Amsterdam's finest.

I decided to elucidate. "You see, I've heard a lot about how Schiphol's urinals are unique because they have flies painted on them. Quite interesting, actually, so I thought I'd take a photo just as a memory."

He looked at me. I looked at him.

And then he broke into a smile. "Ah, that's nice!" he said. "There is a lot more to Amsterdam though!"

I smiled sheepishly, zipped up (the camera case, I mean) and headed out into the bright, inviting sounds and sights of Schiphol Airport.

You're within the boundaries of Alabama!

Ladies, gentlemen, and that guy who lives across the corridor from me and stares at me as I leave for work every morning. This post has two parts to it. The first is... well, a post. Yet another piece of my random ramblings about something that popped into my head. The second part features The first ever Lord of the Things Contest. Here we go!

WARNING: This post deals with the same topic that this one dealt with - micturition. If you're mentally going, "Ewwwwww, yucky!" or are in general not comfortable with the topic, I would suggest not reading any further. Reading this post further, I mean; don't drop reading altogether. Feel free to read a novel or a newspaper, if you want. (Make believe worlds and
death/destruction/illogical politics are just so much better, aren't they?) And please do come back to my blog sometime in the not-too-distant future. If you were to boycott my blog altogether, I'd lose 20% of my readership. 25% if I don't count myself.

I'm sorry, I tend to get carried away.

REVISED WARNING: This post deals with urination. In some detail. If this pisses you off, tata bye bye have a nice day.

Men all over the world are faced with a perplexing problem - how exactly does one use a urinal? I've managed it fairly well for several years now, but what precisely is the technique? Where, in a urinal, does one aim? Into the back wall or into the base? And how, by GOD, does one avoid splashing? (Especially onto 65-35 polywool mix formal pants where the droplets just stay on top and don't soak through yet refuse to be wiped away, leaving a faint yet unsettling smell... a friend's experience, of course, not mine. Definitely not mine.)

These are critical issues, ones that we men worry about day after day. Social ettiquette restricts us from sharing our anguish, so we cover our crippling anxiety and insecurity by loudly cracking crude jokes about farting and the human anatomy.

<- SIDELINE: Bilingual Adult Joke ->
Courtesy Dbabble. If I find out who posted it, I'll let you know.
NB: If you don't know German, ask someone to translate. Or try this.
A lady is walking down a dark street in Berlin. Suddenly, a man jumps out of an alleyway, wearing nothing but a long trench coat. He whips it open in a single fluid moment.

"Eww! That's gross!" says the lady. And the man smiles broadly and replies, "Thanks!"
<- End of Sideline ->

Back to my rant about urinals.

Anybody who has spent a fair amount of time in front of one or more urinals will appreciate some fundamental facts about their design. The designers seem to have had the right idea - the walls of the urinal are curved in a manner that any liquid hitting it should experience streamlined/laminar flow, thereby gracefully flowing down the wall and into the drain. Logical? Yes. Except that it doesn't work! Time and again, at over 50 cities in more than 15 countries all over the world, my friend has been experienced the splashback effect.

What makes the situation worse is the cumulative effect of several users being splashed. User 1 does his job, gets splashed, and thereby leaves a little memory of his visit on the ground in front of the urinal. Unhygienic and selfish chap that he his, he doesn't wipe it up or assumes others will either
a. Appreciate and enjoy this spontaneous, brotherly sharing of body fluids
b. Mistake it for a part of the floor pattern

User 2, naturally, can't be expected to clean up after User 1 (unless it's his job to do so - but let's leave such complications out of the story). User 2, now has to take aim from further back. As one can imagine, this does not help the situation. User 3 and User 4 follow suit. While some like yours truly are comfortable with and can handle the distance, not all are as gifted, leading to one heck of a mess. All of which could have been avoided if only the urinal didn't splash so to begin with.

If you're looking for alternatives, check out this patented Anti-Splashback design. I'm sure it's very scientific and all that, but the thought of peeing into something that looks remarkably like a human ear gives me the shivers. And if it were to give me the shivers during the act itself, well... so much for the objective of an anti-splash session.

One design that I would like to see more of is a Saxophone-like one. Just look at the structure... isn't it perfect?





Peeing down rather than straight (or up), and having it conveyed further away from you is sure to minimize the splash. Plus it's less icky to consider peeing into a musical instrument than into someone's ear. (Unless you're the kind of person who likes indulging in that sort of thing. Again, let's leave such complications out of consideration.)

The chaps who designed the urinals at Schipol airport in Amsterdam came up with a cool way of attacking the problem - make the pee-er pee properly! Each urinal has a fly drawn on it. Yes, a fly. And no, I'm not going to crack a joke about the appropriateness of this in the current context. I'm guessing any guy coming up there would see the fly and think, "Harrrumph! Let's see if I can get the b@#$@%!" and proceed to aim straight at that spot. I know I probably would. It's a guy thing. Why restrict oneself to just urinating when one can urinate and make a sport of it? Anyways, I'm guessing that achieves two things
a. You're shooting at the best point, from an engineering/fluid mechanics point of view, in the curvature (locus, focus... there's some technical term that's relevant here) to get minimum splash.
b. You're concentrating on ensuring a steady stream, minimizing the human tendency to be wayward and somewhat directionless when not having much to think about.

It's high time the world woke up to the problems half it's population faces thanks to either lousy design of urinals or inadequate training/awareness of how to use them. And it's high time we stopped focusing on making peeing more pleasureable and concentrated on making it more efficient.

My limited research on the topic (Google gives 2,040,000 search results for 'How to use a urinal', including this very useful beginners' guide) doesn't seem to provide any definitive answers in the context of splashing... I'd welcome your inputs on this critical issue. (I would have called it a burning issue, but then we all know that can be treated with medication.)

The first Lord of the Things Contest

It gives me great pleasure to announce The first ever Lord of the Things Contest. If you've actually suffered through the entire post above, you truly deserve to participate in this contest.

Question: What's the funda behind the title of the post?

Post your answers as comments. The first person with the correct answer wins!

I haven't decided what the prize will be, but depending on your age, gender and sexual orientation, you could be the proud recipient of a Genuine AC/Kaka branded passionate kiss or enthusiastic high five. At the very least, I'll feature your blog's link prominently on my blog (yeah right, like that's going to increase your traffic!)

(Disclaimer: Prizes could vary considerably from how cool and/or desirable you imagine them to be.)

Hap-pee?