Embarrassment

... of riches.

Returned to Bloglines after some months. TWO THOUSAND odd posts from the blogs I (used to) read.

Which is not ALL that much, considering I've been away for at least a year.
Obviously I'm not the only blogger who had a fling with Twitter.
Or just gave up, now that blogs are so noughties.

But still - 2000?!

Then I saw the button. "Mark all as read".
There are some things one can learn from Twitter!

Outclassed!

(My first foray into "guest-blogging". Here.)

Four little levers all in a row. One to stop, one to park, maybe one to go? I suppressed a faintly hysterical yelp and concentrated. OK, if we pull on THIS one …The lower part of the seat back suddenly thrust itself into my sacral region with a malevolent hiss. Rattled, I pulled at all the other levers in turn. With the result that when the stewardess came round with the cold towels, her plastic smile dissolved into a giggle at the sight of me. Sprawled in one corner of the seat in a most undignified manner, legs kicking in the air as the evil foot-rest moved up independent of the leg rest and the “recline” lever plotted my downfall.

I don’t think I’m particularly tech-challenged. Not a geek, no, but certainly not one of the lost-tribes-of-the-Amazon-forest types. Then why should I be so helpless in the grasp of a SEAT, darn it? Only it’s not just the seat. EVERYthing seems to conspire against me. You know how business class offers you “the widest variety of entertainment in the sky”? Riiigghhht. Now, where do the headphones go? I spent nearly 10 minutes on a flight to Dubai trying to conceal my utter perplexity, all but whistling nonchalantly while I felt around the armrests, bent over to peer at the middle upright, ran my fingers over the padded sides, looking for That. Damn. Socket. All to no avail. In the process I plugged my headphones into an ashtray. Or a fuelling port. Or the autopilot, even. I must have looked like Mr. Bean. Eventually the lady next to me heaved a deep sigh, gently removed my hand from the vicinity of her Dior-sheathed knee and pointed out the socket nestled under the armrest. Evil, I tell you. Whatever happened to standardization?

It’s all about upgrades, of course. I’m just not mentally equipped to fly business class. Last time, between Chennai and Delhi, the damn engineering even managed to ruin my “chiefest, sole delight”. Well, not sole, really. Salmon steak. In a lovely herb reduction. It was just about the best meal one could have hoped for, considering how grotty in-flight food usually is. I was smart. I did NOT try to open all the little packs of condiments, because I KNOW the vinaigrette is implanted with an evil computer chip that will make it splash all over my trousers. Or worse, on my neighbour’s trousers. I didn’t even try to figure out all the superfluous cutlery that cascaded out of the folded napkin. (THREE identical spoons for ONE meal? What is this, the St. James’ Court?!) Then I had to go and ruin it by deciding to watch some TV while I ate at my leisure.
You know how the nifty little TV screen folds out of the armrest? Yes, but why is it equipped to swivel in 27 different planes? Try working it round to face you when there’s already a large napkin-draped tray occupying the same space. In 3 minutes I managed about 29 different positions for the TV screen, none of them facing me. Rather like a Rubik’s cube. Then I gave in to destiny. And my temper. The stewardess ran out of her little curtained alcove at the sound that ensued.

Trying ineffectually to bend over the dinner tray to pick up (a) one soup bowl, empty (b) 236 pieces of fruit salad, all sticky (c) enough cutlery to fit out another French Revolution while at the same time avoiding (d) the baleful look of a neighbor with a sticky chocolate brownie in his lap and (e) a TV screen that seemed to be doubled over in laughter, I accepted that I do not BELONG in business class. Next time, no Rosa Parks song for me. Come on over to the back of the ‘Bus, I’ll be waiting right there. Given that I’m the large or economy size, it’s economy class for me from now on.

The wisdom of the married man

It’s very difficult for a woman to stay mad when someone’s scratching her back just right, there, no just a little to the right no not so much yes THERE aaaaahhhhh …

Persistence pays

Science advances. It has been determined that a physicist’s beard takes about 58.8 days to grow an inch. Assuming the physicist shaved at 7 a.m. on 1^st May, it would be 12 minutes past 2 in the morning on 20^th June before each hair in his beard was an inch long. Okay, maybe 11 minutes past 2. Such a long wait. Physicists have it tough (Tough? Enter stage left, the Gillette Mach III ..).

If this is true, we can also posit that a civil servant’s beard grows faster than a physicist’s. Now to collect the data.

I can foresee some fun with the tests, oh dear yes.

The writing on the ...

If you can read this site without laughing out loud, give me a shout and I'll send you a year's supply of laxatives, you obviously need them.

Heads-up - I got the links off blogs I check, but what with clicking off Bloglines and getting some lunch and taking 294 phone calls and checking on the despatch centre, I have NO idea which blogs they're off.

So if you posted them first or think you did, yo da man. Or, as the case may be, woman.

Overheard in Delhi

Green Apple went down well, up on the terrace garden with four of us sprawled in wicker chairs inside a ring of green leafy things, but the Twist came later. The Punj way of life is known for a certain boisterousness, joie de vivre, changiya si, but I don’t think GK-II was quite ready for three off-key voices. In chorus. Loud chorus. VERY loud chorus. At a quarter to one on a week-night. Singing the “Blacksmith’s song” (you know the one? Long claimed as an IIT-K original, but “surprisingly” found in one of the books of Rugby Songs? “There was a woman with … ” Yes, THAT one.) With a sobbing urgency as they speeded up on “Round and round went the great wooden wheel”, pathos even, the note of true emotion that lifts performance to the level of art. Accompanied by foot-stomping and a cougar howl at the very end.

The Host was conspicuous by his lack of participation. He sat there with his head in one hand, morosely clicking at his Blackberry. Upon questioning, he said he was looking for the number of his realtor, since he expected to be evicted within the week. He was promised help in finding digs in Mahipalpur, but did not vocalize any appreciation of the offer.

We discussed a case study in innovative negotiation. Early ’80s, a well-known drugstore on Rashbehari Avenue opposite Triangular Park. Along came the Pujas and the local Mr. Fix-It rolled around for his chNada. Nix, nyet, nada, says the drug-store owner. Sad, says Fix-It, and vanishes. The owner pulls down the shutters on his store and trundles home to sleep the sleep of the just. Cometh the dawn. The store owner finds the locks on his shutters in a state of some ordure. Not to put too fine a point on it, they’d been crapped upon. After the obligatory fuming, the discussion of the finer points of the perpetrator’s genealogy and the sad lack of intellect among his lady loves, the store owner got around to rigging up a hose and cleaning the locks and opening the store some hours after the usual opening time. Only to be greeted by the same odoriferous situation the next day. And the next. Round about the fourth day, the penny dropped in more ways than one. A message was sent to Mr. Fix-It, a meeting arranged, crackling paper exchanged hands and the store owner basked in the new-found role of Local Philanthropist. Needless to say, the Phantom Shitter did not strike again.

Cut to Cape Town, South Africa, 2003. A*, one-time resident of Rashbehari Avenue, is now COO of __ Steel. His company is facing a singular problem. The exit from their stackyard at the docks is regularly locked by the containers of his rival steel company. Nothing blatantly illegal, just inconsiderate enough to hamper the movement of A’s consignments. The matter came up at a meeting of the board. After the formal discussion, melodious popping noises were heard and levels of froth were observed, At this stage of the proceedings, A’s memory threw up the Curious Case of the Crapper. He mentioned it, offhand, as a fitting response to the Inconsiderate Containers. Not possible in this country and on this scale, of course, just saying. That kind of mention.

The Chairman put down his beer. Slapped him on the shoulder. Effused. Mentioned innovation. Mentioned genius. Wherefore it came to pass that the honest toilers of __ Steel, yea, e’en a full hundred of them, were summoned by the COO to the dockside stackyard. One hundred of them feasted full well on all manner of good things, till they could eat no more. Several of them were Bantu and Shangaan and Shona, scions of races led by Shaka Zulu and M’zilikaze . Were they to be worsted by a bunch of gantry operators and fork-lift drivers? In the depths of the night did they sally forth to battle, a battle of strategy and stealth. And shit. One hundred large well-fed men can produce an awful lot of solid waste.

The container jam was not repeated.

And oh ...

Did I mention that I loved “Luck by Chance”? No? Well let me tell you I loved “Luck by Chance”. Like just about every other person On The Blogs.

(Is there a distinct Blogger Sensibility? Is it a Mutant Gene? Perhaps one day the Alien Power that Rules The Universe from its Haunt in A Far Galaxy will trip a ginormous switch, and the Blogger Hordes will Emerge From Their Lairs, eyes glazed with fixity of purpose, laptops fraught with menace, perhaps even uniformed in pink chaddis. And some of them will be singing Joan Baez – you know the one I mean? Come from the shadows? – and of course there will be ONE who thinks she’s SUPER at Don’t cry for me Argentina and she’s sulking because she can’t get to sing it with all the grand gestures. Only it will not be a Dangerous Movement, because like all Blogger Movements, it will be peaceful and law-abiding and maybe even Libertarian, so after they have Saved the World in Five Easy Steps, all the bloggers will go home and tap out long earnest posts about the Importance of Participation.

And the next day they will find that all this Never Really Happened, because the Main-Stream Media will have Ignored It Completely.)

LbC isn’t the only recent movie I liked. Delhi 6 is pretty good too. In fact, I loved it. All but the last 20 minutes or so, which was … well, crappy. Sad. So few Hindi films can wrap it up nicely (LbC being an exception – nice wrap-up, no incredible happy ending that throws the film off-kilter). A review here doesn’t make much sense because both Baradwaj R and Pratim DG have reviewed it (and after ages, BR has a review I agree with! Jai ho!). Like they both said, the music and the screenplay and dialogues are superb, Abhishek Bacchan does a (surprisingly) good job, Sonam Kapoor sheds her blues, but a couple of points they missed. A “dream sequence” in a Hindi film that really has the almost-there, almost-rational quality of a dream. Great graphics, too, with Times Square in comic-book colour. And the other sequence I loved was the parkour interlude across the rooftops of Chandni Chowk. Fun came. But (spoiler alert here) they really should have killed off Roshan (Abhishek’s character). Would have driven home the “Message” much more forcefully.

In other film news, I was on a 1960s desert trip. Andalusian. Sergio Leone and the Dollar series. Some interesting sidelights. That the man who possibly made the most money from the first – A Fistful of Dollars (the ‘A’ isn’t there in the opening titles) – was one A. Kurosawa. Because Fistful is obviously based on Yojimbo, and he sued the pants off Sergio Leone. Which might seem like justice well served, except that Yojimbo itself was based on Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest without any acknowledgement. Reminded me of the time when Vishwa Bharati sued Rajesh Roshan for lifting the tune of ChhNoo kar mere man ko (Yaarana) from Tomaar holo shuru (music and lyrics, R. Tagore). They were chuffing along all self-righteous and indignant, guardians of Bangali kaalchaar, until one Burman, R.D., pointed out that Mr. Tagore himself had appropriated the tune from a Scottish folk song. Exit Kaalchaar Brigade, stage left, as if pursued by a bear.

Reading up on the Dollar series also threw up an interesting trivium about Roger Ebert. Back in 1966, when he reviewed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on its release, he only gave it 3 stars because he was young and pretentious. Later, when he had become rogerebert.com, he saw it again and gave it 4 stars. Quentin Tarantino, bless his determinedly unpretentious low-culture soul, said in 2002 that it was the greatest film ever made. I can’t entirely agree, but Yay all the same.

So then I went looking for More Sergio Stuff and found a little gem (thank you, Dhaka). Not so little either, it runs for close to 4 hours. But just think, Sergio Leone directing Robert de Niro in a gang epic. With Elizabeth McGovern looking lovely. And an appearance by a young(er) Joe Pesci, who has always been a personal favourite (if he could only have pulled in Jean Reno as well - what a waste of a casting coup with both of them in Home Alone). The usual lavish visual delight one associates with Leone. Dry-eyed hard-nosed depiction of the way morals are a dispensable luxury when one is poor. De Niro must have felt a bit of déjà vu, there are parallels to Godfather-II (so far the only sequel that equalled the original by winning the Oscar for Best Motion Picture) in the way it traces the back story of the hoods from childhood. I love it. And I’m rationing myself to half an hour at a time. In fact, time to get back to it now.

Once upon a time in America (1984). If you haven’t seen it already, go get it. now.

Say na something JAP Uncle

My morning coffee-break and Bloglines. And I find this on Belle de Jour -
(BdJ’s’ blog is not link-friendly, so here’s the passage that caught my attention)

“in the category of Man to me - no, it's not simply about having the appropriate equipment. A Man does the right thing and has the right attitude and buys you a beer after a shite day and does not expect a fucking medal for emptying the rubbish. Sure they cry, but never for attention. They were my history teacher at school and my housemate at uni. They are not perfect and make no apologies for that. They are the ones played in films by Clive Owen and Shah Rukh Khan"


Belle de Jour watches SRK films? That proves something. I’ll get back to you when I figure out what. Meanwhile, does she know Hindi? If not, who does the sub-titles?

Bleah

One week of absolutely mindless work doing stuff that I am not the least interested in but have to do anyway because it pays the bills. One week of getting Ideas that fade out before I can open another window (other than one spreadsheet, two bloody awful memoranda of agreement and one weekly report that reads like it was written in that ­dhaba near Karnal). One week of wishing I were somewhere else. And someone else.

So here I stand, head in hand. Or rather, here I sit, full of … you get the picture.

So I went and watched Rock On!! (complete with the exclamation marks) and was seriously underwhelmed. Only Arnab, blast his keen little eyes, has gone and reviewed it already and I agree with him. So no post on that film. At least not now. In any case, I was seriously disturbed and considered counselling because for a fleeting moment I found Koel Purie hot. Which is rather like lusting for T Rex. Or Mayavati. Whatever.

And I was supposed to Do Some Research over the weekend - on Chinese food in Calcutta – and now the Small Determined Person who commissioned it is nagging me on e-mail. Merely driving home the sad fact that I cannot even write on things I like. AND reminding me of my Douglas Adamsian attitude to deadlines. (This one was on the 7^th)

And I had a day trip to Delhi yesterday and loved it. What’s with the traffic over there? Next time, I’ll take my sneakers and WALK everywhere. It could be faster. Seriously. From the corner of Malcha Marg till the Taj, we crawled along behind this woman in a TIGHT pink shirt and WHITE pants that looked ghastly because she was too fat to fit into them. She was on foot. In stilettos. My capital city, zipping towards the Commonwealth Games.

Then I beat my own record by falling asleep in the terminal. With short breaks for boarding, disembarking, reaching home and faling into bed face first.

I wish I were still there.

PLUS Blogger is acting cute. Gerfkkk.

On the up-side, I found this blog and I yem lurrving eet.