The problem with the marriage of sex and sports

Blame the Cowboys for introducing sexing up what was till then a wholesome activity. That triggered a slide toward the present state of affairs were sports are inextricably tied up to sex. You have very few pure sports situations. Every telecast of an NFL, or NBA (and I suppose now NHL) game has one or more shots of cheerleaders doing their thing. Every sports show on radio has to talk about celebrities and models. Even ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column has segments like "Cheerleader of the week" etc. Don't even get me started on Sports Blogs which have to have shots of beautiful women in revealing clothing every few posts.

Now I am not complaining about this as such. I know the reasons why sex and sports go together, they appeal to the primal part of the male brain, blah blah blah. And I definitely am not averse to looking at beautiful women.

It's just a problem when I'm at work and I go to a sports blog to read up on the latest firing of an NFL coach and there's a picture of Marisa Miller in a bikini right next to the article. And I have to keep looking over my shoulder for someone who might walk by my desk and think I'm ogling the bikini model. To adapt a Homer Simpson quote, I don't mind being accused of leering when I am leering, or am about to leer or have just finished leering, but I don't like being accused of leering when I'm just interesting in knowing the latest talk about where Mike Shanahan might end up.

I wonder if it's harder to explain my way out of it in India or in the US. Atleast in the US, they understand the concept of reading a sports blog and the concept of how these sites use half-naked ladies to promote their sites. But then again, they're a lot more serious about sexual harassment and comfortable work environment over there. So far, thank God, I haven't had to explain any of this to someone walking by my desk. And I hope I don't have to.

"It's funny because it's racist"

When Ricky Gervais did a bit on SNL where he claimed that while the US version of "The Office" was copied from his original UK version, his version was copied from an unknown Japanese version. We then go on to see a very caricatured version of The Office with excessive bowing and shy giggling. He wraps up this short by saying, "It's funny because it's racist!"

It's true, the clip is very racist, and very funny and in fact you're laughing out loud at the notion that SNL would get that racist to generate a few laughs. But the Gervais comment at the end is supposed to tell us that SNL was in on the joke from the beginning and therefore it is excusable. I just think the writers came up with a very racist sketch and then applied lipstick on that by the Gervais comment.

Anyway, that's just an excuse to borrow his line for the title of this entry. Check out this article about this new movie called "From Chandni Chowk to China" starring two of India's sexiest stars Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone. Huge release. But yeah, read this.How to make someone look Chinese? Wow! I'm just praying that one of the big stars pulls off a "slant eyed" caricature, just so I can watch the fallout from that political disaster.

The South Indian Mess

Did you know the word "Mess" as it applies to a place where you eat, has its roots in the military? Fascinating!

During a conversation with a friend who lived in Pune, I mentioned that I was craving proper S. Indian food, especially the Tamil-style food where you get heaps of rice and buckets of sambar. Telugu people eat their curries, dals and sambars with rice, Tamilians on the other hand (atleast the ones I've met) first mix sambar into rice and then eat their curries and dals with this rice. It's like sambar rice replaces plain rice as a base. And I loved eating like this when I was in IIT. It was delicious but more importantly it was fast. I ate my meals during lunch time in less than 10 mins, leaving about 20-30 mins for a quick nap before the afternoon classes.

So my friend gave me directions to this S. Indian mess hall. I followed his directions (Hospital, Temple, Mess Hall) all the way up to the Temple but as I stopped my scooter and looked around, I couldn't find the mess hall, and frankly I felt it would be silly to ask them for "a South Indian mess hall" both because it would be too generic and because it might piss off some people.

At this point, while I was driving up and down looking up at the buildings, I heard a group of guys speaking Tamil! I figured these guys would definitely know what I was looking for but again, I didn't feel like asking them. So instead I reasoned that since it was lunch hour, these guys might be headed to the same location I was, so I just followed them! And my hunch was right. Soon I saw a sign that read "South Indian Mess".

The food was exactly as I had imagined it. I would have preferred a different curry but that's just nitpicking. Ultimately I was licking the sambar off my fingers before going to wash them, and that should tell you how happy I was to be eating there. It might become a regular thing for me, let's see.

Meanwhile, I also got the 4-1-1 on a Tyagaraja Tribute coming up in Jan. Good Sunday.

A scary dream

I dreamed that Priyanka Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi's daughter, became the PM of the country. I was at her inauguration where she had Jayalalitha on one side as her lawyer and best friend and Mayawati on her other side as her personal bodyguard. Everyone was celebrating her victory except me. I was sitting in a corner of the big dinner table and sulking and finally when I couldn't stand it anymore I threw away my dinner thali bringing everything to sudden silence. Everyone is staring at me and Laloo Prasad Yadav asks me, in English, "Kalyan, what is the matter with you? Why are you insulting our sister during a joyous time like this?" And I reply, "Joyous? For whom? This our great nation, built with the blood sweat and tears of our fathers. And I have to see its greatness lowered and see our heritage degraded by this half-Italian mongrel?"

Immediately I hear the patter of feet at Priyanka quickly shuffles down the dinner table and suddenly lops my head off with a sword. She slowly turns to the rest of the country, picks up my head, and says in Hindi "Just so you understand how serious I am, I will say this in Hindi. As your leader, I encourage all of you to question, in a respectful way, any decisions I make. And I swear this to you right now, no topic will ever be off-limits. Except the one that was just under discussion. The penalty that you pay for mentioning my Italian ancestry in a negative fashion will be that I will collect your freakin' head. Now ... is anything else ANY OF YOU WANTS TO SAY? ... I didn't think so."

Get out of here you single person!

Ouch that hurt. I am sitting here in the food court of the mall where I try to show up at every weekend with my laptop or a book. Normally I get a Subway sandwich but since I had a late lunch today, I didn't get anything else. Suddenly this gentleman walks up to me, leans in and asks me, "Sir did you order anything?" I reply, "No." He then says, "Then I will have to ask you to sit properly (This one is my fault, I was sitting with my feet up on another chair.) Also, could you go sit in the other part of the mall? People are coming to my food court here and want to use the tables for their families."

Man, I knew being single sucked but this is just terrible. I don't think a couple, or a big family for that matter, would have been asked to move if they weren't eating. As the single guy here, I am the designated destitute?

I told him that if that was the case I'd get something to eat from one of the stalls here. He was immediately contrite, "It's not like that sir, you can sit in those tables over there." "No no" I told him, "I don't want to move from here, and if I need to get something to eat in order to sit here, then I'll do so."

Well I purchased a Coke can for Rs. 25 that I have no intention of drinking since it's past 9pm. I think I'll just leave it there and show it to him the next time he comes my way.

I guess this only became an issue this week because Ghajini (Hindi) is out this weekend and the multiplex is totally packed with crowds. But hey, I came here first and if these couples and "families" want to sit at these table, they should have shown up first. Isn't it that simple?

That's one area in which India really sucks. You don't get half the respect when you're single as you get when you get married, like you're not really a person till you have a woman on your arm. I say woman since it's the males who are shown such utter disrespect. A single female is treated as an oddity but I don't think she's get disrespected the way single guys do. The funny thing is, I thought my gigantic laptop and my UT t-shirt that I'm wearing would have been an indication that I am not a hobo. Maybe I should be carrying my IIT degree around my neck? Wear a ton of cologne? What can a brother do to get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T?

Cricket with the colleagues

In two weeks our office is playing a cricket match with the Mumbai Offshore office. So this weekend we decided to see if any of us still remembered how to play. The plan was to meet up at the office building at 7:30am and then travel to the grounds from there.

Now keep in mind that I love my weekend sleep-ins and that we're smack in the middle of winter, when I tell you that I hated waking up on Saturday morning. And then you add my preference for punctuality to the fact that I didn't see another colleague till 8am and you can imagine how pissed off I was. Turns out, it's assumed that no one will show up at 7:30am, and people started waking up at their leisure. And I had to end up driving from one point to another before I finally saw some people. The first ground we tried was occupied, so we bounced to another ground and we finally started playing at 9am.

Other than one player, no one had really played in a long time. So we all had trouble doing basic things like throwing and catching! We ended up playing two games and the second was much better. The ground was next to a slum. Some of the fielders were refusing to field in a certain part of the ground and when I asked why, their response was simply, "Landmines". And when i saw what they were referring to, I was disgusted. When I was sent to field in that area, I had to be very careful where I stepped, and soon I told them I wasn't going to go there anymore :)

Of course now I'm sore as hell with a sprained ankle but it feels good.

A Christmas wishlist

One thing I forgot to mention in the entry about Shilparamam, the handicrafts village, is my favorite part of the trip there. While walking around the place, I noticed the songs/music they were playing over the PA system. They had some chanting going on for a while which was very nice. A while later I noticed we were listening to a sitar, and it was very good. I was only paying attention periodically but soon that's all I could hear. Now I'd rate my knowledge of Indian classical music at probably 20%. So I was quite thrilled when I felt like I knew what raga I was hearing - I guessed it was Raag Desh but I had to know for sure. So I asked the security people there and they guided me to the tent that was playing all the music. When I went there and asked for the CDs they'd been playing all day long they showed me among others, Anoushka Shankar's "Live at Carnegie Hall". And I was right, it was Raag Desh she had been playing!

So of course now I have become obsessed with adding this CD to my collection, if nothing else, to mark my triumph in identifying the raga. Unfortunately after searching in two cities I still haven't been able to get my hands on it. Apparently the CD has been out for a while, so none of the stores have it.

On the other hand, I was able to get two other items on my shopping list. A jump rope (called skipping rope in India), that I decided to get after a conversation with a friend who got one recently as well. The other item was a 8GB micro SD card for my new MP3 player. This effectively doubles the capacity of my player to 16 GB. I saw one in Hyderabad but the guy was selling it for Rs. 2700, which I felt was a bit high, especially since what I really wanted was a 16 GB card. But yesterday I found one in Pune for Rs. 1550. I am sure if I wait for a few weeks, it'll drop to below Rs. 1000 but since I am in a hurry to get all my MP3 collection on my new player, I didn't want to wait.

(You should see my computer now, it has six USB slots and there are times when I have five of them running - mouse, external HD, to recharge MP3 player, to transfer files from phone and one for my internet card! My landlord was surprised at how little furniture I have in the apt but how much tech stuff I have.)

Taking my scooter to get serviced

H(I was going to say "Sasha" instead of "my scooter" in the title but I realized that might sound rather inappropriate!)

Bajaj offers a few free servicing coupons when you buy a vehicle. Since I delayed the first servicing of my scooter, I decided to wait a bit longer for the second servicing as well. I was going to do this before my trip to Hyderabad but since work got hectic, I had to wait till now. I was worried that I'd delayed it too much since I thought the second servicing was due at 1300 kms, but turned out it was due at 2000 kms, and incidentally I hit 2000 as I was leaving work.

Anyway, I went to the dealer I bought the scooter from, but as I was parking my scooter in the parking lot, I was told by the security guy that they were closed. I asked, "You mean closed for the day?" "No" he said, "closed for good." Well that sucked. The big reason I went for a Bajaj scooter was because the dealership was close by and I figured I could bug them for any repairs atleast during the first year, which is how long I intend to keep it anyway. But they apparently relocated about 6 kms away from my apt, and in the process negated one of the biggest reasons I had for picking this scooter. This threw me into a funk since it meant that my rationale in picking my scooter was wrong, and so I began to question if I should have gone with this one in the first place. (So sorry Sasha!)

Anyway, I asked the security guy where the closest Bajaj dealership would be, and among those that he suggested, I picked the one that I assumed would be close to my apt. But I couldn't find it as I kept driving in the direction he pointed. Eventually I decided that even if it was far, I'd go with the Bajaj dealership where I purchased my helmet. This one is about 3-4 kms from my apt and on a really dusty and frankly scary highway.

The guy recognized me since when he sold me he helmet, he tried to give me the helmet lock for free, but I'd taken the 10% off, and then later came to buy the helmet lock anyway! I think he was surprised I came so far for a Bajaj service centre, and I explained that I couldn't find the other one that was supposed to be closer to my apt.

He said he can have it back for me in two days and I said that was fine. Suddenly I realized that that would mean I would be getting it back on Christmas day. I asked him if they were open on that day, he said they were. It was weird even discussing the possibility that something would be open on Christmas day!

As I was filling out the form he asked me what my license plate number was. I started telling him, " One Seven Five Four, Ee Zee ..." He stared at me like I was crazy. "Gee?" he asked me. Now I stared at him, "No Zee." And then it hit me. "Oh I'm sorry, I mean to say Zed". He understood and I continued. I miss saying "Zed".

"Who's Zed?"
"Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead."

(Post script: As it turned out, I got my scooter a whole day early and it's in a noticeably better shape.)

It's picture time again.

In case you didn't know, you can click on the image to see a bigger version. For some of these pictures, they won't make sense till you see the larger version.



It always amuses me how indifferent Indians are toward Hitler. He's not a scary or a hated figure here. The consensus opinion (including educated folk and commoners) is that he was a very strict figure and fought a war. If anything Hitler brings up Chaplin's portrayal of Hitler to mind and that just becomes a joke. So with that in mind, I didn't quite know what to make of these!

And in case it wasn't clear who you were looking at, on the flip side we have the name.

When I saw this, I was driving my scooter, and I was so startled that I almost hit someone in my hurry to come back and look at it again. This is people standing in a line to get into a bus!!! This is right out of Shankar's vision of the future under Arjun's leadership.

Of course, the tricky part was taking this picture without looking like a jackass. So I pretended to be talking on my phone through an earpiece while taking these pictures.

This is the sign on a medical store that apparently won't sell medicines to Elton John or Ellen Degeneres.

This is from the handicrafts village. This diorama represents a bunch of tribals making statues. Notice the person at the right edge of the frame, that's not a real person!

These were actors from the "street theater" that were walking around and doing small scenes. All the actors are male, and it's weird how the scenes they were enacting resembled nothing I'd ever read about in any of the mythologies! See how many "gods" and mythological figures you can spot.



Two videos to end.

A drum dance.

A clip of the street theatre

The handicrafts village

The one regret I had from my trip to Hyderabad this weekend was not going to the handicrafts village early enough. For a variety of reasons we didn't home till noon-ish and that ended up affecting how long we got to spend there.

The place is called Shilparamam and it's right next to the HiTec City complex in Madhapur. (Insert observation about technology co-existing with culture and history, India is a curious mix of extremes etc) From what I saw, I thought the place was just about a bunch of stalls selling clothes, crafts, toys etc and at the end of the day I thought we did a decent job of covering the whole place. Only when I went home and talked to my dad did I realize that we barely saw half of what we could.

But what we saw quite wonderful. The stuff these stalls were selling was fun to browse, and they were even selling them at a discounted rate. Other than the stalls, we even got to watch a faux village. This village was modeled to demonstrate what a tribal village looked like. They had figures enacting daily activities like fetching water, worshiping a cow, making shoes etc. These figures thankfully were just short of falling into the uncanny valley.

At one stage we walked by this really tall figure of a man sitting on a giant chair. Only as we crossed the figure did we realize that this was a real person. My dad later told me the story behind this person. Apparently this guy is really poor and the govt. offered to pay him to stand in this area and let people take pictures with him. It's a very sad story and the guy looked morose standing over there. I didn't realize it when I saw him. And what's sadder is that I don't think he's allowed to take tips.

A bunch of mehendi applying girls were sitting in an area and my mom sat down to get some mehendi done. The mehendi artist was a muslim girl from Hyderabad. Now there is a stereotype of how Hyderabadi Muslim girls speak Telugu, and this girl totally fit that description. It was hilarious to watch someone speak Telugu in way that I'd only seen in movies!

At the end of the day, I was the proud owner of one of those printed cotton shirts with "Om" and other hindu mantras written all over them. Very tacky and very cool at the same time.

Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na: A pleasant surprise

After accumulating about a 100 movies through the local vendors, I finally watched one from the beginning till the end. JTYJN was surprisingly good. Usually what I hope for in Bollywood movies is the surprise element. If there is something either in the script or performance that surprises me, I consider that an achievement for a Bollywood movie. (And goes without saying that since I usually find neither, I continue to despise Bollywood movies.) With that in mind, you'll understand when I start by mentioning a short but riveting performance by Paresh Rawal, who I think is too good of an actor for the bland Bollywood scripts. He plays a truly menacing and evil villain. I haven't seen him play an evil character in forever and it's a nice shock to realize how good he is.

What I liked about the rest of the movie are the small touches that are sprinkled throughout the movie. Like the character of the heroine's brother who openly loathes the hero, but not out of some random immaturity. Or how not all the main girls pair up with all the guys. Or the subplot about the hero's Rajput family history and the mother's attempts to cover it up. Which brings me to the casting. I loved seeing all these good actors in the movie. The familiar and comforting faces of Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah, Jayant Kriplani and Kitu Gidwani, who made their marks on TV and theater and can take over a scene by themselves. It's a shame we don't see more of them in movies. I was startled when I realized that shaggy dude was Jayant Kriplani, and man, Kitu Gidwani still looks amazing.

A quirky thing I liked in the movie is Meghna's denial of the real animosity between her parents. "Denial" is a word which I don't think has an equivalent in Indian languages. So for an Indian movie to touch on that concept was unique. Did you know that the "Pappu" in "Pappu can't dance" is a reference to Salman Khan? With that in mind, it's surprising to see the brothers of this terrorist-loving killer appear in this movie at all.

However, before I throw up from all the Bollywood love, I'd like to state for the record that the concept of best friends who are oblivious to their love and try to find someone else for each other was first done in a Malayali movie, later remade into Telugu. So sorry Bollywood, you still suck.

All is war in fair

(I apologize for the weak title. The subject, as you will learn
shortly, lends itself to many puns. I just can't think of the best one
yet.)

After years of carving a niche for itself, "Fair and Lovely" found
itself in a Political Correctness controversy in India. The criticism
touched on body-image consciousness and associating negatives with
skin color etc. I was startled. As someone who was was born into a
culture where a fairer skin color was automatically associated with
being pretty, it never even occurred to me to question that. And of
course the "shut your mouth" argument to counter these protesters was
"If White people can get tans to make themselves more appealing, why
can't Indians try to become fairer? What's good for one direction (of
changing skin color) is good for the other."

Anyway, all this is atleast a few years old. Now I'm in India and
watching TV and guess what I notice. Instead of fewer ads for
"fairness" creams, there are more. There a lot more products that now
advertise the glory of fairer skin. "Fairness And now they're even
advertising creams for men! It's wonderful. It just goes to show that
you can protest about Political Correctness all you want, but people
won't stop buying something just because you think it's offensive. The
free market will decide what people want and what they don't want. And
apparently what they want in India is fairer skin.

Eliminating costs

I was privy to a conversation involving hiring a large hall. The
conversation was in Telugu but I'll translate into English, atleast
the way I heard it.

"... so are the A/C costs much higher for this hall since it's bigger
than the other hall?"
"No sir, actually A/C doesn't factor much into the electricity bill.
Your eliminating costs will run much higher."

(At this point I assumed this perhaps meant pushing the hot air out of
the room being more expensive than cooling the air being sent it. That
didn't make any sense. I also hoped this didn't mean rubbing out some
people. The conversation continued ...)

"Really? The elimination costs are that high?"
"Yes sir, the wiring alone costs half the the total. And then when you
factor in all those bulbs. Why, just yesterday we had to buy some 20
bulbs to eliminate the rear part of the hall".

A bulb went off in my head and I felt better when I realized they were
talking about ILLUMINATING the hall.

Rapid acting government workers

You know, not all government workers are slow. There is a group of people I've seen in action who were so quick to act, I thought i was in an action movie!

The side of the street that you park your two-wheeler on in Pune (maybe in the rest of India as well, I don't know) alternates each day. The areas marked for parking have signs labeled  "P1" or "P2". On odd-numbered days, you can only park on the side of the road marked P1 and P2 is for the even-numbered days. I hear this is because they didn't want to just fix one side for parking since the store owners were complaining that their side of the road was getting blocked by the parked vehicles every day.

However, and I don't condone this type of behaviour, not everyone follows these signs. For that matter, not everyone parks in the designated areas. In earlier version of India, this was quite normal. But the municipality workers have become quite strict about enforcing these rules and they immediately grab a vehicle that's parked on the wrong side and take it away in a truck. Especially in the posh localities, like where I work. (I had something similar happen to me when I first came to Pune.) Again, I support this type of enforcement since (I think) it leads to better conditions on the road for everyone.

The action movie-type sequence happened near work a few weeks ago. As I driving down the road I saw a truck come to a screeching halt near a bunch of parked scooters. Two things happened simultaneously. A bunch of guys jumped out of the truck and started running for the scooters, and a guy standing across the street ran toward the same group of scooters. For a second there I thought someone was going to get murdered from all this commotion. Turned out the solitary guy was the owner of one of the scooters and wanted to get to it before the municipal workers could tow it. What I didn't till then was that these guys all came equipped with digital cameras to take pictures of the license plates of the wrongly parked scooters!! The guy was trying to block the workers and they were pushing him aside to get to the license plates! It was like watching the paparazzi trying to take pictures of a celebrity.

As much as I liked the enthusiasm of these workers in trying to administer justic, it just felt like these guys were just acting out their sadistic tendencies by rushing to take those pictures. Also, I couldn't shake the feeling they were just doing this to hold the guy hostage and get some bribe out of him to delete the photos.

Keeping up with the TV shows

In addition to the syndicated shows on Star World I am keeping up with the current seasons of TV shows like The Office, 30 Rock on Hulu.com.

Thing is, Hulu is blocked in India. I can't watch these shows at home, even if I wanted to. I say "even if I wanted to" because the network speed at home is pretty low and I'd get really frustrated waiting for the shows to load.

However since our company access the internet through a Houston proxy, this doesn't apply to us. So on certain weekdays I just stay back after the regular hours and watch the shows at work. Simple. The only problem is that the more I wait, the worse the traffic gets and I have wait out the rush hour. So my system might evolve into one where I pick one day, get pizza delivered to work and just watch various shows all night long! Soon I'll have to add How I Met Your Mother, 24, Lost and Heroes, although I hear Heroes isn't that good this season.

Spectacles, .............., wallet and watch: Wait, where's my wallet?

I lost my wallet last weekend. It was my mistake. I went out to eat breakfast in my pajamas and since my pockets couldn't hold my wallet, I put it in the pocket of the scooter when I was driving home. I forgot to take it out when I went to my room, and since I was quite sick, I didn't even notice it. I didn't even have lunch, I just went to bed and woke up around 4pm. After freshening up I got dressed to go for a walk when during my "getting ready ritual" of checking my pockets, I realized I didn't have my wallet. (My version of the checking mnemonic is "Keys, Cash, Kerchief and Chronometer")  I ran down to check the scooter but it wasn't there.

This is a big problem because it had all my cash, and quite a few of my US credit cards. First thing I did was to look up the phone numbers of the credit card companies and start calling them to cancel the cards. Whoever took my cards, including my Indian debit card, didn't even try to use them, there were no charges reported on them. I was running out of money on my SIM card, so I called my brother to help me out with the cancellations. Soon that was done. Now it was around 6pm and I started worrying about dinner. Again, "luckily" since I was sick, I wasn't very hungry.

The next morning I went to the bank and asked how I could withdraw cash. The process was as simple as writing a check to myself and that solved the cash problem. That evening I purchased a "Versace" wallet (fake!) and started the healing process. The replacement for my Indian debit card arrived in the mail a few days later and soon things were down to "normal".

The big saving factors that day was the fact that I had enough petrol in my scooter and enough money on my SIM card to make phone calls. I was told to always leave some cash behind, in the apt and I have to start doing that too.

This was the first time I felt let down by the city of Pune. Yes it could happen anywhere, but for some reason I assumed that whoever took the wallet from my scooter would give it to the building manager or something. Lesson learned.

Names

(I apologize for the short entries but I am truly inspired)

As I was driving home last night, the thought just randomly popped
into my head - Karta, Karma and Kriya would be awesome names for a set
of girl triplets.

And then I went home and on Seinfeld, George was proposing "Seven" and
"Soda" as names for kids. What a coincidence! Also I'm fulfilling my
destiny of being called George one day.

I'm calling dibs on the Austin Powers reference

Regarding the guy who threw a shoe at Dubya in Iraq, I wonder if Bush
said right after, "That really hurt! I'm gonna have a lump there, you
idiot! Who throws a shoe? Honestly! You fight like a woman!"

LLOYD!!!! (Censorship and syndication)

Sunday afternoons I get to watch Entourage on TV here. If you're
wondering how Ari Gold manages to convey his charm without all the
cussing, you're right to wonder. But then again, I was surprised by
how many non-cussing lines Ari has!

Most TV shows and movies here are shown with subtitles. The TVs don't
have closed captioning since most of the programs are in non-English
languages and most of the viewers watch regional language programs
anyway. So since people apparently have a hard time following
American/British accents fast enough to watch movies, the subtitles
become a must. And along with the usual censoring of cuss words in the
audio, we also get the subtitles censored. What is interesting though
is that the subtitles are censored different from the audio. So we get
to hear words in the audio but they get "bleeped" out in the
subtitles. So when Mrs. Gold tells Ari, "Tell me I am sexy Ari" I read
"Tell me I am Ari" on the screen. Another word that gets dropped is
"Gay". "Gay" is apparently a "bad" word. I don't even know where to
begin with that.

Of course, the icing on the cake is that the word "douchebag" gets
included both in the audio and in the subtitles. Apparently whoever
did the censoring didn't know what it meant. But then again, I'm
reminded of a scene from "The Signs" where the girl who works in a
pharmacy asks Mel Gibson's character if "douchebag" is a swear word
and he responds by saying it depends on the context. I think he would
agree that this context qualifies as swearing. Another odd fact is
that drug usage doesn't get censored.

Also, with all this censoring of words and scenes, we get these
30-minute ad-free episodes shrunk down to fit a 30-minute episode WITH
ads. That itself isn't bad because the networks that shows these
syndicated US shows don't show as many ads as the channels in the US.
So with a show like Friends, I am actually seeing scenes from the
earlier seasons that probably ended up on the cutting room floor of
the rebroadcasting station. On average, I think you miss about 3 jokes
per episode when you watch Friends on WB as opposed to Star World
here.

The incident at Sagar Veg. Restaurant

This is one of my 2-3 regular destinations for dinner. It's a tiny
restaurant, more like a "mess". They even has a wholesale rate for
dinner orders - if you buy 30 dinners in advance, you get them at 15%
off, and you can use the dinners whenever you want. The place is run
by a friendly but meek Telugu guy called Seenu, but that's not the
reason I frequent the place. They have a good Punjabi menu that goes
with their usual dinner plate, "Chinese" and South Indian dishes. It's
cheaper than the Punjabi restaurant right next door and the dishes
taste really good. They even brought back their Pav Bhaji menu as of
last night.

Last night I reached my neighborhood much earlier than I have in the
past few days, so I wanted to just pick up something and eat at home
while watching TV. So I got a pulav and while waiting for them to get
my food ready, I picked up the Telugu newspaper and started reading
it.

The big story in the paper was about these two Engg. college girls who
had acid thrown on their faces by a guy who felt he was rejected by
one of them. Since this is a family blog I won't talk about what I'd
like to do to that guy. But yeah, I was very upset and started
thinking about how some of these criminal acts get carried out with
impunity and how the guy could imagine he could get away with it. I
didn't even finish reading the story when I became aware that the
unusually loud background chatter at the restaurant was actually a
full blown argument. I looked up from the paper and there was a
sizable group standing up and arguing about something in
Hindi/Marathi. Considering that the restaurant is smaller than my
living room was in Houston, it was pretty crowded. I couldn't quite
tell what was going on but it looked like Seenu had to pay these guys
some money and there were atleast two thugs who were arguing about who
owed how much to whom. There were a couple of guys shouting, a couple
of elderly statesmen type people trying to calm everyone down, and
then the usual 5-10 onlookers who can be counted on to show up
whenever voices are raised.

There was cussing and shouting and threatening directed in various
directions and I had to try hard not to make eye contact with anyone
because they didn't seem like the type you want to make eye contact
with. Slowly the crowd moved out of the restaurant and my food
arrived. But I couldn't pay Seenu since he standing out. I tried to
ask the head waiter if I could just pay him instead and he just asked
me to pay him later. Then he went into the kitchen and closed his
door! I didn't think I was in any immediate danger, and for that
matter, I have a feeling this was a "routine" collection of
"protection money" or something, rather than a loan that Seenu didn't
repay, which I would imagine would be a much more serious issue. But I
couldn't wait to get out all the same. I was dying to ask the waiter
what exactly the matter was but I had to keep reminding myself not to
get involved into this thing. I just hope when I go to eat there
tonight the restaurant and owner are both back to normal.

Tamil Movie and Marital revelations

On Saturday I went to watch a Tamil movie with some colleagues. It was a nice opportunity to bond with another group of folks at work, and also to establish some of my Tamil cred. Even though I'd mentioned to a few people that I speak Tamil, going to the movie showed that I was kidding.

The movie, "Vaaranam Aayiram", was an OK movie. The biggest strength was the acting by Surya, who's really establishing himself as a top actor.

That evening I learned that atleast one of my colleagues had a marriage to a cousin. (I thought another colleague had the same thing happen to him, but now I'm not so sure anymore.) I knew marrying a first cousin happened, but I didn't know it still happened these days, especially not among IIT/IISc educated people. I bet some of my non-South Indian friends are barfing right now.

Thai restaurant in Pune

After seriously craving some Thai food, I managed to find one in Koregaon Park yesterday, courtesy of some new people in met in the city. Koregaon Park is a really cool part of Pune. Very rich and flush with interesting restaurants, and from what I hear, lounges and bars. I got to see a lot of White people and "posh" Indians. I couldn't tell if they were NRIs, kids of NRIs who were visiting India or just wannabes. (Speaking of which, I actually got to see some "gangsta"-style Indian kids at the mall, complete with pants hanging below their bottoms and spiked hair etc. Wow!)

I suppose I was craving food exactly like Thai Kitchen in Austin but I was a little disappointed. Especially by the Thai Iced Tea. It has a hint of lemon in it, which I did not care for at all. We also got veggie dumplings (not great) and I got a Burmese noodle dish which was actually quite interesting. I would go there again, but with lowered expectations. Apparently there's a Native American-themed lounge in that area as well. Should be fun to see the Indian interpretation of the American Indians.

Their menu was very interesting in its design. The restaurant isn't just a Thai restaurant, they serve food from all of South-East Asia. So the left side of the menu reads like a travel guide, and actually more like a travel diary, with pictures, details of local shopping etc, and the right side is the actual menu. Reminded me of a menu I saw in a restaurant in Hyderabad a long time ago which was printed in the style of those ancient Indian texts and I loved it so much I asked the waiter to give me one of the menus to take home. He looked at me like I was weird but he gave it to me anyway. I guess I've gotten too old to pull off behavior like that anymore or I'd have asked for a copy of this menu as well.

I think I'm close to receiving visitors in Pune, now that I know a few restaurants to show as well as the touristy spots I've been to.

This is why I stay away from people with my name

I've always had a policy that people shouldn't be friends with, or go anywhere near, people who share the same name as them. I met a few "Kalyan"s in my life but I've always drifted away from them. Now there is a SriKalyan at work. You'd think that's enough of a difference, but turns out people call him Kalyan as well. And I love the guy. The first week I was here, he took me around showing me apartments etc, very sweet of him. So I have no beef with him (For that matter I didn't have a problem with the other "Kalyan"s either.)

Right after my first week at work, he went on a long trip abroad and I thought we wouldn't have a problem about our names clashing. But DB, our common friend at work, has confused me with him on the office chat sometimes and it's annoying. And now the guy in charge of keeping people's emergency contact information up to date came to my desk asking me to give my information, but pointing to SriKalyan's name on the sheet. Aaarg. It has begun.

And now SriKalyan's coming back to work soon. And I anticipate plenty more confusion.

(I've noticed God has a weird sense of humour in that that he tries to put me in situations that I hate, so I have to get over them. "Hate Pakistanis? Well, you'll have a Pakistani colleague in Houston. Hate the Bollywood culture? Well, I'll put you in a non-South Indian city so you'll be forced to listen to Hindi songs on the FM radio everyday." And now, it's people with my name!)

Beauty plus any other skill is a constant, even in Bollywood

In IIT we used to have a not-very-original saying "Beauty plus brains is a constant". I'll admit it's quite sexist and very un-PC, but there is a lot of truth behind that saying. Women who are good looking rarely have to work hard. (I can write a big piece on why that is so, but I don't think anyone will disagree with my observation.)
Another field where that saying comes into play is acting. Especially in India. We have our A-list "actresses" - Kareena, Katrina, Priyanka, Aishwarya. And then we have our serious actresses - Nandita Das, Tabu, Konkana Sen Sharma, Chitrangada Singh. No one will accuse the A-listers of being serious actresses, nor the serious actresses of being very good looking. Sure we have people who swear by the looks of Nandita Das and Tabu but come on, if people thought they were that good looking, we'd be seeing more posters of them. And when people say Priyanka Chopra did a good job of acting in a movie, they mean that she didn't trip and fall or forget her lines. Atleast, in the final edit of the movie.
One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is the Sen Sisters - Riya and Raima. Riya Sen is a stunningly beautiful woman, but I wouldn't trust her to remember a single line of dialogue without two prompters. Her sister, Raima, on the other hand is a homely lass who appears in a lot of arthouse fare and is generally considered a good actress. And I know from an interview that Riya always used to get attention when the two sisters went out together. So she had to know that she didn't have to work hard to get attention or success in life.
It's pretty obvious that the only reason any of the A-listers or Riya Sen are in movies is because of their looks and not because of their acting abilities. No one ever took any auditions of their performances before picking them for a role. But people in the other group have to be good at acting, otherwise no one would let them in front of a camera. (Again, I want to go off on tirade about the hollow Bollywood machine and its meaningless existance, but I'll hold off on that uplifting piece till later.)

Some cool Pune pics

It takes a very secure man

Last week I went shopping to buy a chudidaar for Preethi. I asked my colleague DB to help me with the selection and also because she would know a few good stores to shop at. The whole process was very quick, I made my selection after just one store. At this store, a young boy of about 14 or 15 was showing us the dresses. He was very eager to make the sale. For example, after realizing that the chudidaar wasn't for DB, he tried to get her to buy one for herself as well.
Anyway, midway through the selection process I was trying decide about one of the dresses and I asked the boy to hold it up so I could see it better. Instead of just holding it away from himself like any normal homophobic person (like me) would, he held it up against his own torso to model it! This was either a strong display by the guy of his security in his sexuality, or maybe give his young age, the absence of it. Either way, I was taken aback by that gesture and could barely look at the dress. But I couldn't stop smiling about that all evening long.

Thoughts on the Mumbai blasts

I didn't want to write about this because I didn't think I would have anything to add. The incidents didn't take place in Pune after all. But after a little prompting, I thought I should atleast note what happened here.

• To give you a glimpse into life here - my parents didn't call me up as soon as they heard that the blasts occurred. It's either because they've become so common, or because of Pune's distance from Mumbai. They were fractionally more concerned when the Raj Thackeray arrest and the subsequent riots happened. Same goes for office safety meetings. We didn't have one. But we did when the Raj Thackeray incident happened.
  
• But most importantly, death and destruction doesn't shock Indians as much as it does the West. The Tsunami shocked all of us when we were in the US, but within an year or so, the word "Tsunami" was being used as a punchline or for fun reasons in song lyrics. I don't think the Mumbai blasts will be used in the same way, but you get the picture.
• The biggest sentiment at work the morning after the attacks was "Oh crap! We'll have to hear more nonsense about the so-called Mumbai spirit. Enough already!" Not fear, or anger but a loathing of the anticipated nuisance.
• I knew it wasn't 9/11 because people at work were working, instead of just sitting in shock or staring at the TV/Internet feeds. Not to imply that no one was watching the news but work didn't come to a standstill.
  
• The big news item a lot of people were watching was the call by one of the terrorists to one of the Indian channels. Again, they were amused by the fact that we had a "call-in" from a terrorist, rather than any negative feelings like anger or sadness.
  
• Personally my first concern was for my manager who was to leave Pune (for good) the very next day and go to New Mexico. (We found out a few days ago that he made it back fine.)
• Politicians are falling down like dominoes. First Shivraj Patil, the extremely incompetent Home Minister who only survived so far because of the blessing of some Italian chick. Then the deputy CM of Maharashtra for saying that "these things happen in big cities". Then the CM of Maharashtra, although I don't know why that one had to go down.
• There's a Muslim guy at work. He's part of a group of about 10 people that go to lunch together every day. He's a good worker, he was a team leader and recently he was even made manager. On the day of the attacks though, at lunch, the tension was palpable. No one was speaking to him and even he was very subdued. Things are better now.

Lola TV

Channel V has a program called Lola TV. Lola Kutty this
stereotypically Malayali-looking girl who interviews celebrities. At
first I thought it was Shenaz Treasurywala under that make up and was
quite impressed that she mastered the nuances of the Malayali accent
and small expressions. But turns out that it is a new face (to me)
called Anuradha Menon. Anuradha apparently is from Kerala but settled
in Chennai.

At first, when I thought it was Shehnaz, I thought it was quite a
"racist" portrayal but I was won over by the genuineness of the
portrayal. She wasn't mocking Malayalis as much as she was pretending
to be one of them - unlike the mehmood portrayals from the 80's where
every Tamilian was supposed to go - "Ayyo kyaa jeeee?" Of course,
knowing that it's a Malayali girl made even that black mark disappear.

It's a fun program, although, even I find it hard to understand her
accent sometimes. And I wonder how the Bollywood celebrities manage to
keep up with her!

A peculiar ... preference

We had a networking event organized at work today. A certain bigshot from upper management came and talked about career growth etc. It was a very motivational talk. The guy was White.
But what caught my eye was his wife. She was Asian (I think Thai). That's not the first White manager in the company I saw with an Asian wife. One of the White managers who works in the Pune office has an Asian wife too. And when I asked around, turned out there were a lot more. Now these don't seem like the type of modern couples that come from liberal colleges, where race is not an issue when you're seeking out your life partner. If that were the case then I'd see more Black wives, or Hispanic wives. But these are predominatly Asian women. It almost seems like you need to be married to an Asian woman to advance in this company!

Atidhi devo bhava

One of my monthly payments, like rent and elec bill, is the "society charges". These are for maintenance work like painting the walls etc I suppose. The payments are made to a representative who lives in the complex itself, a certain Mr. Mehta. Mr. Mehta is an Marathi gentleman, who lives with this wife and two young kids, a daughter and a son.

Last month when I went to pay the charges, he wasn't home, but the rest of his family was. So I mentioned I was there to pay the charges and I could come back later. His wife was used to taking payments and giving out receipts, so she said she could do that for me. As this conversation was going on, I was standing at the door, I didn't step in yet. So she offered me a seat in the living room, where her kids were doing their homeworks. As she was preparing the receipt books, she asked me if I wanted coffee or tea or something. I politely refused. Then she asked if I wanted water. I refused again. Right then, her boy (who had to be about 5) jumped out of his seat and ran inside. I paid no attention to it. As she made small talk while writing up the receipt, the kid walked back into the living room with a glass of water! I was amazed at that kid's gesture. Regardless of whether he heard me right or not, for him to perform him host duties. And he's 5!

The next time I went to their home, Mr. Mehta himself was there and again, he did all the host duties in spite of the fact that basically I was there for a business transaction and not a social visit. It was nice.

A knock on my door in the night

Last night as I was talking to my dad on the phone, I heard a knock on my door. I asked dad to hang on and opened the door. There was a guy there pointing at the door of my flat across from mine and asking me if I knew if they were away. (That's always a weird thing that happens in India - people look at a locked door and ask if the residents are home. Who do they think lives in these houses, Houdini?)

So I told the guy I had no idea. He then started asking me if the people who used to live in my flat moved away. (Another ambiguous phrasing of a question!) I told him they had. At that point he started getting personal - how long have I lived here, how much rent do I pay, how many live in the flat and how much deposit I paid. Somewhere in there I got suspicious and asked him who he was. Instead of responding, he asked me his question again. At this point I told him he needs to ask my house owner all these questions and closed my door.

Today morning I thought I'd warn my neighbours of this guy who claimed to know them. When I finished telling them what happened, my neighbour tells me, "Yeah, that's our house owner". I was stunned! What the hell, why wouldn't he just say that when I asked him who he was instead of being super creepy and asking all sorts of details. What a weird guy!

Institutional racism in India

Most of you know this but it keeps striking me as odd how there is a different pricing system for foreigners at most (if not all) national monuments. Entry for Indians - Rs. 5, for foreigners - Rs. 100. What's worse is, this comes down to racism. Because no one is checking for passports or anything. By rule, an American of Indian origin should be charged Rs. 100, but instead it's the White-, Black- and perhaps Asian-looking folks that are charged the Rs. 100.

And it's not even commented upon. I've seen atleast one incident where a foreigners walked upto a monuments and seeing the price tag, walked away. Now granted, a real tourist would pay because that's why he's there. But local non-Indians and semi-local ones, like for eg, the ones who work at my company, wouldn't bother entering these places because of this discrimination.

And that's the thing. It's not because the price tag is higher. But because they're using a double standard. Normally I'm take a lot of perverse pleasure in double standards, but this is just ridiculous.

Paid my first internet bill

I got a huge bill. But it's not usage related, I had just forgotten
about a lot of "hidden" costs like tax and installation fees. The bill
arrived 20 days after the due date!! I would have raised a stench
about it at the office but I am not charged any late fees, so it's not
a big deal.

Sweet sweet irony - when you can't use the internet to pay the
internet bill. You can pay your landline and cellphone bills for BSNL
online, but not the internet bill because the website hasn't been set
up.

Playing Resident Evil on the road

There's a stretch of road, about a kilometer long on the way to my apt
from work. This particular stretch has big rectangular patches of
unfinished road at random. When you drive on the road, you try to
avoid these patches by swerving around them. They're not so bad that
you'll damage the scooter or hurt yourself if you drive through one of
them, but they're a nuisance nevertheless. You don't want to get
carried away and swing too much because there are other vehicles on
the road. So you end up memorizing, or trying to memorize the
locations of all the patches so you can anticipate and avoid them.
It's like playing a video game.

You know that scene in the movie "Resident Evil" where the guys are
trapped in a passageway and the lasers cut across the room and the
guys have to jump around to avoid getting chopped up? This stretch of
the road reminds me of that. And if you've seen the movie you know it
doesn't end well for the guys. It's the same here as well. After all
these patches of unfinished road, there's a big band of unfinished
road that stretches across the width of the road. And you can't avoid
it, so you end up going through it.

Game over.

I'm pretty sure I entered a red light district

(These are the first non-violent thoughts I've had since the attacks
in Mumbai. I don't think I want to share the violent thoughts yet.)

Friday evening I decided to go shopping at the Lakshmi road area but
that plan quickly disappeared due to too many choices. So I decided to
make the most of it and picked up about Rs. 10 worth of boiled and
salted peanuts and just walk around in the neighborhood. The area is a
lot of fun with plenty of random stores specializing things you
wouldn't think they'd have stores for. Like wooden horses, I saw about
three different stores selling those.

I parked my scooter at a big intersection and explored all the four
quadrants around that. I didn't even realize I was (probably) in a red
light area for a while. It wasn't the whole neighborhood but in one
area I saw a big group of women just standing around, standing very
close to each other. I assumed they were waiting for a bus but it
didn't seem like a bus stop, and the street was too narrow to actually
allow a bus in. Then I thought they were waiting for milk or some
other groceries. Again, they were a little too dressed up for that.
Then I noticed there were no men near them. Considering atleast of
them were dressed up like housewives, I thought they'd be accompanied
by their husbands. But then I kept walking and saw another group of
women standing around. And then another.

When it hit me I tensed up so bad my neck started hurting. I avoided
making eye contact with anyone and just walked out of there as fast as
I could. You always think you'll act cool when put in awkward
positions, but I did not want anyone to walk up to me and ask me if I
wanted a good time. I think I'd have a heart attack!

The only reason I am not sure I saw what I think I saw is that I
didn't see any negotiation take place. There were a few guys walking
on the street, and a few sitting in restaurants etc in that area. But
not a single one of them was talking to any of the women. Also, from
movies etc, I expected atleast a few women to be brazen and solicit
customers. These women just stood there. Maybe it was because they
didn't want any complaints about them harassing people. Or maybe they
were just really waiting for milk.

Somehow I doubt it.

View from a temple

Everyday as I go to work, I see this giant sign that says "Om Namah
Shivayah" (written in devanagri of course). I had wondered why it was
there but finally, about 10 days ago I checked it out. Turns out it's
the Tarakeshwara Temple. It sits on a small hill right next to the
busy Yerawada Bridge. I parked my scooter at the base and climbed up
the rather steep steps to the top, all the time wondering how people
managed to do any maintainance on that hill, seeing as it's so
inaccessible. I found out once I got to the top that there's a road
that leads right to the top of the hill :) Oh well, good exercise.
The view from the temple is just amazing. You get a great view of the
river and a bunch of buildings on either side. I decided this would be
a great place to shoot from early in the morning. I wanted to scout
the way to the hill first since I didn't want to be searching for it
and miss the sunrise. And that's how I got to meet another wonderful
Punekar.
Basically I got lost in some alleys and I stopped to get directions.
This guy was sitting on his scooter, talking to someone in a store.
When I asked him for directions he was dismayed that I was so very
lost. Then, instead of just giving me directions, he started up his
scooter and asked me to follow him. He only left after pointing out
how I could get the main road. Maybe he was going to leave anyway, but
he didn't have to do that.
(And yet I hear from these people who claim Punekars are rude and
annoying. Wrong!)

I never got around to visiting the temple during the daytime yet.
Partly laziness, but also the morning mist/fog these winter days is
too think to get good photographs of the sunrise. It provides for a
different type of look but I wanted a clear sunrise. Maybe I'll try it
anyway. But summer is when it should be fun to shoot.

India's Eva Green

Google "Kangana Ranaut" if you don't know who that is. And help me
figure out why she reminds me of Eva so much. I think it's the
extremely exotic look each of them has. Eva with her smoky eyes and
Kangana with her curly hair. And both are preternaturally pale.
Regardless, I think they're both very interesting creatures. Kangana
is probably the only Bollywood celebrity I'd like to meet at this
point. Maybe Gul Panag. The rest seem beyond vacuous.

Even the so called serious male actors who keep cheapening themselves
with the commercial cinema. Only exception is Nandita Das who seems
like she'd rather jump into a volcano than do a typical Bollywood
movie. Sadly the movies that does act in aren't inherently that good.
Otherwise I'd add her to my list.

The million dollar arm - update

Turns out the Million Dollar Arm kids didn't disappear into obscurity
like I'd imagined they would. They ended up signing with the
Pittsburgh Pirates.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/11/24/pirates.indians.ap/index.html?cnn=yes

A few notes -

a) When I saw the headline, "Pirates sign two..." I immediately
assumed the story was something to do with the Somali pirates.

b) The URL for the story as you can see says "Pirates.Indians". Now in
case you don't know, there's a team called the Cleveland Indians. So
one could be tempted to think the story was about a trade between the
Pirates and the Indians.

c) Can't wait for these kids to be traded one day to Cleveland so we
can have the Indian Indians. Dots meet feathers. The Universe with
explode.

Scrubs censoring in India

Just found out Scrubs is on TV here. And guess what I found gets
censored? You know when Dr. Cox refers to Turk as "Gandhi". Yeah,
that's out! I just laughed out loud when I noticed that.

Decadence

The lassi from heaven. Or is it hell?

Last week as we went out to get some supplies for the lab at work, we stopped by this dinky-looking restaurant very close to work. The place looks like it serves only milk products - plain milk, lassi, ice cream etc. Apparently this place is quite famous and the guys wanted me to try this item called "Lassi, Double Malai". Malai (మీగడ) is basically cream. The stuff you get when you churn unhomogenized milk; the stuff that when you melt in a pan you get ghee.) Except this is fresh, thick, greasy cream. The stuff I can imagine Lord Krishna craving for as a kid. As fatty as you can imagine. They add two spoonfuls of this (funnily enough, the menu doesn't have a "Lassi, Single Malai") stuff to the already sweet, thick lassi. This is the equivalent of one of those enormous burgers you get at BK or McD's - it looks like it could give you a heart attack just by looking at it.

On the other hand, it's sooo good. So decadent. Even if you got a heartattack from having this stuff, you'll die with a smile on your face. They serve it to you in simple steel glass with a spoon in it. It can't be more than a 100ml of liquid in there. You dig into the malai and lick the spoon clean. Sometimes by the time you finish the malai, there's hardly any lassi left. That's how much the ratio of malai to lassi is.

If you want to be jealous of one item of food I'm eating here, this has to be it.

Veggie rule in India!!!

Well, I always knew that we get veggie food in abundance in India. But even though I read about the veggie labeling in India, it was nice to walk into a grocery store and not have to wonder if a certain product had meat/meat products in it. Ironically, my go-to restaurant for lunch is a place that serves meat along with the veggie food and cooks them all in the same vessels, hence negating the advantages of eating in India. I suppose my justification for going there is that I go there to eat the eggs which provide a little protein boost.

The toughest sports quiz ever!

On the Tamil DD network, I see this dial-in sports quiz program once
in a while. It's gotta be the toughest sports ever made. The questions
on the show are all over the board, cover cricket, soccer, Olympics,
racing etc. When I say soccer I mean leagues from various countries,
players etc. Maybe it's because I was never into soccer but I wonder
how many Indian are aware of what the guy is asking.

This is a typical quiz -
http://sportsquizzard.blogspot.com/2008/02/dd-podhigai-bsnl-sports-quiz-16022008.html

It's just amazing that this guy is so on top of his game (no pun
intended). And embarrassing that sports is one thing I think I'm good
at, but I realize that it's restricted to American sports.

The anchor has a very funny style. He borders on arrogance but really
is just impatient. He takes calls from the viewers and when they're
wrong, he waves them off with a wave of his hand. He acknowledges the
hard questions and is genuinely amazed when someone answers them. All
with a squint and a smile. I mean, you never see his eyes! Good show.
I'll watch more of it, if only to improve my knowledge of world
sports.

More hippie talk

The White girl who was sitting with the desi guy ended up already
having a boyfriend. And the desi seemed to be hitting on her inspite
of that. She was Italian actually. He kept asking her to teach him
Italian.

A desi family sat down next to them. Their little girl got a cake and
her mom explained to all of us that she loves cutting the cake and
have people sing "Happy Birthday" to her everytime she cuts a cake. So
we all sang and clapped!

A skinny guy in a hat walked over to me and inquired about my laptop.
He introduced himself as, "I'm *****, I'm catholic. I'm from the
Philippines, the only catholic country in Asia." And then went on to
rant about Muslims (more Muslim bashing!) and how they want to rule
all, and they can, because they have oil! He asked if I worked in Pune
and then when I said I did, he recommended I go to Australia or
Europe. "Not US though, because you'll have to give Barack some time
to set the country right."

So this is where the weirdos are hiding - Austin in Pune

I'm sitting at this place called "German Bakery" in Pune right now.
I'm logged wdith my laptop and my USB card. I just uploaded this
picture from my phone using the bluetooth connection on my laptop. I'm
feeling really geeky right now.

I'm also feeling terribly nostalgic for Austin. This place is full of
hippies. I don't see any ashtrays or hookahs otherwise I'd assume
they're all stoned from their body language. About half of them were
non-desi (the population turned more brown in the next hour as I
stayed here). We had White, Asian folks mingling with browns. (There's
a Buddhist store right next door.) The bakery itself sells a variety
of food and drinks. There are pastries of course, omelets, salads.
Fruit juices, a bunch of exotic coffees. I just had a couple of White
chicks walk in looking very Austiny. One of them sat at the table next
to me and kissed the brown guy with the long hair on both his cheeks.
Very chaste, so definitely NOT his girfriend. And started talking some
philosophy immediately, I kept hearing the word "love" like, "This is
what love is, you love everyone. Universal love". There was a White
guy who was talking in perfect Hindi. I could go on, but you get the
idea.

And to think, I found this place by accident. It's Friday evening and
I decided I was going to find a Coffee Day and park myself there till
I felt hungry and then went in search of the closest Subway. Instead I
walked into this place by accident.

I'm so thrilled right now.

"Terminal" theme on Gmail

I'm sure you've noticed Gmail has added new themes to their site.
Check out the "Terminal" theme they've got. My eyes almost popped out
of their sockets when I tried it. It's a throwback to the dumb
terminal days and it brought back memories of sitting in the Aerospace
department computer room in IIT (around 1997) and checking my email on
those things. The good old days of Pine and Lynx. Super!!!

Tar heels - the IIT flashback

After dinner yesterday I saw a bunch of road laying equipment on the
road near my apt. I was super thrilled that they were improving the
roads here. As I was driving by the tar mixer I felt a sudden burst of
small pain on my ankle and I had to veer off the road. Turns out the
tar was being sprayed on the road and a stray spray went in my
direction. My left leg took the most of it. My right leg got a little
on the heel. Tar on the heels.

At first I was mostly annoyed that Sasha got sprayed on and that I
would have to scrub my skin to get the tar off. But when I went home
and started the scrubbing I realized that the skin was coming off
under the tar. Not much but enough that a few minutes later it HURT
LIKE HELL. It was only a small strip, about a few mm wide and about 10
such drops, but it hurt.

The last time I got burnt that bad was in IIT when a careless
classmate in the smithy workshop took a piece of metal out of the
flame and grazed my skin with it. And that just reinforced this whole
feeling I've been having about the Pune stay being an IIT flashback.
Almost everything I'm doing here feels like I've done it back when I
went to IIT first. Bizarre.

The first couple of the Telugu industry

Last time I was in Hyderabad, I saw a poster for the movie "Kotha
Bangaru Lokam" that was just a picture of Jayasudha and Prakash Raj
sitting next to each other. Made me wonder when these two had become
the first couple of the Telugu industry. I am not counting but this is
alteast their third venture as the parents of the protagonist, the
other movies being Amma Nanna Oka Tamil Ammayi and Bommarillu. I'm not
complaining as such, just wondering when this transition happened.

The mystery of the missing guest

We were expecting a very important guest from the US at work today.
There had been plans in place for ages now, presentations were
readied, labs were shined up. And out of the blue, about 30 mins
before we were to meet him, we get an email informing us that the
entire program has been scrapped. This was a big blow since apart from
impressing him, we actually needed to impress on him some of the needs
of our team here.

Soon I heard from someone in the office what had happened. The guy
arrived at the Mumbai airport and waited for two hours. No one was
there to receive him and he got pissed off and went back to NJ. I was
shocked that someone would behave in such an immature fashion. But
soon after that we heard the real reason. Apparently there was some
problem with his visa and he couldn't be let into India. He'll be
returning next week with all the proper documents.

The thing with the first story I heard made me wonder how these rumors
get started. I know the person in the story chain about two steps
above me and for that person to have either made up the story or
passed on an unsubstantiated rumor is just stupid. But I guess it
takes all types.

On the other hand, I felt good on hearing that someone got sent back
from India for improper documentation. I've heard plenty of stories
like this about people going to the US and being stranded for lack of
documentation and now we get to impose our will on other nationals.
Very cool.

A day long seminar: Phrases which annoy me

Today has a sort of holiday feel to it. Not because I wasn't working, nothing new about that. Today I took the day off to attend a seminar on an important software that we use. It was basically a sales pitch and so it was free, even had a free lunch. The people did a good job of presenting the new package.

The best line of the day was probably right at the beginning. The keynote speaker began his address with these words - "I thank you all coming here so early in the morning." It was 10am when he said that!!! It was kinda fun to see how fast you could guess what part of India each speaker was from based on their accents. We could easily spot the Tamilian and the "Hindi speaker".

Other than that, these guys kept saying things that I hadn't realized till then how stupid they sound. One such phrase is "... and without much further ado ..." before introducing EVERY speaker. Now I can barely accept "... without taking up much more time ..." because it's a self-deprecatory way of giving respect to the speaker. But the "ado" line has become the staple form of introducing people and the lack of originality bugs me more than anything else. And I wonder if these people even know what "ado" means. Another small thing the speakers kept saying as they began talking was "Am I audible?" or "I hope I am audible." Why not just say "Can you hear me?"

Atleast they had a free lunch, which even though it began at 2pm was worth it. Let me just mention the desserts - Jalebi, Butterscotch icecream, rabri and a kheer of some sort. Did I go for second servings of the dessert, you ask? What do you think?

Pictures of the hike

The triangle. Sasha, the temple at the base of the hill and two guys who I was pretty sure would try to steal Sasha but ended up being just some more nice Punekars.


The beautiful hills

Me!

The dancing pair.

More dancing.

More dancing.

These were this oddly patterned rocks all over the hills. Crystalline formations. I wish I had a geologist or a chemist with me.

Another odd rock formation.

More cool rock stuff

Funny story behind this picture. I was trying to climb down the hill and was caught in an awkward position where I couldn't find any way down. I couldn't move my legs and was scouting a path when I saw this beautiful sight I just had to shoot. But I was afraid of moving and causing a minor landslide. So without moving out of my crab pose, I unslung my camera, shot the picture, all with one hand.

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My first hike in Pune: The snake

Ever since I saw those beautiful hills on my flight into Pune I've been wanting to hike on those hills. Sunday I finally managed it. I was woken up early by a bad stomachache and wondered if I'd still make it. But the good thing was that it helped me get an early start. Managed to leave by 7am.

The places is about 10 kms east of where I live; I found it by just looking at the contour map of my area on Google maps and seeing where a hilly region appears. I'm pretty proud of myself for my ingenuity in finding this place, and later, my ability to find the place from memory. Just took off on Sasha and drove and sure enough, the hills popped up right in front of me. The drive was beautiful, the city just waking up, the roads slightly misty, the roadside dhabas just opening up for business.

I managed to get close to the hill on Sasha and started climbing. I had my sweatshirt on since it was chilly. It was a nice climb and I enjoyed the view (photos coming up). I reached the first peak and was walking along the path when I saw a giant snake cross my path, about 5 meters ahead. I froze! This was the first time a snake was so close to me in terms of accesibility. I saw a few in parks in the US and in IIT in India but there wasn't a real chance of the snake coming close to me. This time I was utterly vulnerable. After about 3 mins of just standing there, I decided that if the snake was going to come back, I'll just fall back on my reliable back up - scream like a girl and run. But for now, I just kept going.

I'm glad I did since it was a beautiful hike. The hill was very interesting, had some interesting rock formations and some green formations on rocks that looked like copper oxide. (If anyone buys that hill after reading my blog, I want a share of the profits.) I got to watch a ballet between two birds which seemed to be dancing with each other.

Getting off the hill was a little trickier though. I fell about three times, which is three times more than what happened in my years of hiking. The pebbles were loose and the ground was very slippery. Finally I just decided to show the hill a lot of respect and took my time getting down by scrambling down on all fours. That took care of the falling.

An inch deep

Saturday evening I took my laptop and went out in search of a good wireless signal. I couldn't find it, but I did find a roadside DVD seller and managed to kill some time. I got home around 10pm, opened my door and stepped into an inch of water!

I knew I had left the water tap open so I could fill the water tank in my apt, but in the past any overflow just stayed in the bathroom. So my first thought was that my neighbors had decided to dump a lot of water in my apt to punish me for leaving the water on. Later I realized that the bucket I'd left in the bathroom to collect the overflow had ended up blocking the drain and caused the water to leak into the apartment. As I surveyed the damage I realized I had a fully flooded bedroom with more than an inch of water, a kitchen that had mainly served as a passage for the water and a living room that had one half of it covered in an inch of water.

My initial thought was that I would have to take a cloth and soak up the water and empty it into a bucket till I soaked up all the water but I realized that my second mop, which is a squeegee, could be used to push the water. I sent all the water from my living room either into the balcony or into the stairs (and ended up cleaning them too!). The water from the bedroom and the kitchen went into the bathroom. It took me about an hour to clear all the water and the fans dried out the moisture. The one downside of this was that as the excess water evaporated, the room temperature dropped a little overnight and ended up making the room go from cold to really cold.

When I saw the flood, I was almost in tears as I feared the worst for my clothes and electronics but as silver linings go, I couldn't have asked for a better day for this to happen to me. I had just mopped the floor in the morning and has removed all critical items from the floor. So no extension cords or wires on the floor. In fact, since I was trying out a new mop (incidentally my third mop since the first two didn't work to my satisfaction) I had added a lot of detergent to the water and as a result my floor had been sticky. I was wondering if I would have to do a second round of mopping but with this water overflow, the excess soap got washed off. Of course, the fact that I live in a fully tiled apartment, on the lowest floor meant that I didn't need to worry about water damage. It really could have been much worse.

A small conversation

DB came by my desk and chat and her phone rang. It was her daughter and I could only hear DB's side of the conversation -

"Hi Chinnu, how are you?"
"Have you finished your homework?"
"Chinnu I don't understand, what does it mean?"
"No ma, what does वाट लग गई mean?"

I just about fell down laughing.

In case you don't know, "vaat lag gayi" means something like "I got screwed" or "I am in trouble". Except it sounds much funnier in this mumbayi slang fashion. And especially when I pictured little AB talking to her Telugu-speaking mom in slang, it was just too much.

More roads and electricity

The road from my apt to work is improving at a phenomenal rate. When I moved in, about 30% of the way was unpaved road and pretty much after crossing a certain point, it was hell to drive back to my apt. Now the roads are being worked on so fast, I can barely remember what it looked like just a few days ago. Now I think about 95% of my route is paved, the only patches being the connection from my neighborhood to the highway and the path outside work. Even the tiny roads that lead to my apt that were peppered with potholes are miraculously flat now. My estimate for the time it'll take for a super clean road from my apt to work to be ready will be way off, in the good way.

Power cuts are back. They had reached a peak before Diwali, the explanation being that they need to do this in order to ensure the Diwali days were free of power cuts. And they kept their word. The two weeks of Diwali (!) were heaven - hot water to shower in the mornings, news on TV etc. Now the power cuts are back. My neighbourhood has it back, 6am to 9am in the mornings, which means it's back the IIT system where we used to skip showers in the mornings (because it was too cold and we didn't have time to heat the water) and have them in the evenings. However I'm still thankful for my current system of laptop and data card for internet. There's the occasional frustrating day where the network speed is just horrible, but by and large it's nice to be able to browse the internet even when no one around me has power. So I can still do my morning ritual of checking my email and the news in the morning before I go to work.

The power cuts apparently last from 6am to 9am and noon to 4pm. The latter cut doesn't affect me much since I'm at work, but today I had to come home at 3pm all the way from work and I seriously considered just staying home and watching the rest of the England-India cricket match but there was no power! I just took what I needed and hauled butt to work.

Delayed Solace for America!

I got my vehicle back from the shop and after pondering the decision for a while, I decided to go watch Quantum of Solace. That's right America, read this and weep - it was released here a whole week before it'll come out in the US. No prominent sites have even reviewed the movie. And you get to read all about it here. Just kidding. No spoilers.

A weird faux pas

While I was with my dad this past weekend, we were watching TV and they were doing a program on a particular holy man. I commented out loud that I didn't care very much for this particular person. For a while no one said anything and I didn't even realize something was wrong. A good five seconds later I hear my dad ask me, "Are you talking about _____?" And I said, "Yes.". He replied, "He is my guruji. Why don't you like him?"

I was totally shocked. This almost never happens in our home since we are all mostly aware of each others' sore spots, and even more so because have so few of them. Almost everyone is fair game to make fun of, including my dad's favorite actor, and all our relatives regardless of which side they come from. Apparently at some point my dad had decided to follow this particular holy man and even though it wasn't hardcore to the point where he got angry it made me suddenly uncomfortable. I managed to do an awkward change of topic. Of course now I can't stop laughing at myself when I think back to that evening.

Cheeni Kum

Preethi had mentioned this movie to me as a good movie to watch and even without watching I predicted it would be lousy and hence not worthy of my attention. It wasn't lousy, I'll give it that.
The movie gripped me with its narrative. It was well paced at first. Didn't fall into any of the cliches I was expecting. The dialogue was crisp for the most part, economical is another word I'd use for the dialogue. Tabu was bewitching. She's a very beautiful woman and it bothers me when she does these overly artsy roles. I suppose it's better than the running around trees that she used to do earlier in her career, but still, this was a perfect role for her.
Sadly the movie couldn't avoid the biggest trap, the third act. Even as I was watching the beginning of the movie, I felt that if this movie managed to navigate the tricky third act, it would be an amazingly entertaining movie. But it didn't and it isn't. The Paresh Rawal character seems woefully underdeveloped in relation to the others and the whole part about him starving himself was silly. It stretched out the movie and didn't add anything to it other than lip service to tackling the age difference issue.
Another aspect I had a problem with is calling the kid "Sexy". That's not just an adjective they use to describe her, it's basically her nickname in the movie. Now the former would have been creepy but the latter is just ridiculous. Especially when there are heavy dialogues that talk about her. It's laughable to think that someone can talk your emotions and feelings about a kid called Sexy with a straight face. Yeah, I get it. Everyone is so cool that they can joke about a relationship between a 64-year-old man and a 8-year-old girl. So cool that he calls her Sexy, and she pretends to be jealous about his girlfriend and he confides in her. But come on, isn't that exactly why we laughed at Joey Tribbiani when he confides in a Dakota Fanning character and then her bear? Enough with the overly mature kids already. And enough with the faux flirting between them and the adults. It's been done to death and I really hope no one does that in real life and thinks it's cute. Although, I will admit, the scrawny, little, child actress who acted in the movie did a good job and is really cute.
Overall it was a movie worth watching. Just don't tell anyone I said so.

The couple on the bus

Before I write about Cheeni Kum, a quick word about the couple that was on the sleeper bus. Like I described, the bus had a layout like that of an Indian train. So there ended up being four people sleeping in a small enclosed area. So if there were to be a couple in there, like we did, it's hard to miss any parts of the conversation that take place. It's not so much what they were talking about that was interesting as the whole manner of the conversation. This seemed to be a young couple, neither of them seemed over 30, and I'd bet that guy wasn't older than 27 and the girl over 25. With such a young couple, it was very incongruous to hear her side of the conversation peppered with మీరు and ఏమండీ - basically referring to her husband in the respectful plural form.
I figured that most marriages are love marriages these days and, even otherwise, that people held liberal views like the partners in a marriage are equal. So it was refreshing to see this rather old-fashioned couple and for that matter this shy Telugu girl who asked her husband to do everything for her, like grab her a snack. Their berths were both on the same side of the cabin, one upper and one lower, and they asked me to switch berths with them so they they could both sleep on the same level (and presumably talk). I refused since I liked my lower berth. The fourth guy in the cabin gladly agreed and the couple disappeared into the upper half of the cabin for the rest of the night.

Completing the trifecta - India wins!

The trifecta is my personal one. UT beat Baylor on Sat. Colts beat the Steelers on Sun. And now on Monday, India beat Australia in the fourth test match, winning the series 2-0 and hence reclaim the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. A good sports weekend.

Beating Australia is always nice. Getting back the trophy was even better. After all the acrimony of last season, it was nice to get a relatively less controversial win. Gambhir's suspension, trading accusations of playing too defensively were about as bad as it got. Kumble and Ganguly leave the team after great careers. I'll miss Ganguly more, probably because he's such a colorful figure. As for Kumble, I'll always remember that match saving knock in Bangalore almost a decade ago when he partnered up with Srinath and won the game for India. Good players both of them. But I'm eager to see the new faces and see how they perform. I would have liked Ganguly for the England series that's coming up but I guess it'll be a farewell series for Dravid, if he gets picked up in the first place.

Dhoni continues his magical touch by winning both the test matches he's captained. He's the Barack Obama of Indian cricket now. Not enough experience but firing up everyone's imagination. And now he's at the helm of a young and hungry team. Fascinating days ahead.

The sleeper bus

There's a new beast on the road, it's the sleeper bus. I tried it out for my journey back from Hyderabad and it was fantastic.
But first, let me bring up the APSRTC bus. Now I don't just want to pile on the State-run bus just because the fashionable thing to do is beat up on all things government run. On my trip to Hyderabad, it was the second time I got on an APSRTC bus, and unless I'm strapped for cash, it would be the last. The bus picks you up a bit far away from the ticketing office. The last time, the bus company provided transport by means of an auto. This time the guy just pointed in the direction. I was pissed, but also I was concerned since I was pretty sick and I knew I couldn't walk all that way. I asked him to provide an auto and he said, "The auto will charge Rs. 10, just pay him." That did it mostly. And the bus journey itself was quite uncomfortable with all the rattling, clearly a sign of the bus being old. The walls of the bus were creaking too, which caused me to have nightmares where the top of the bus collapsed and as I lay there dying, being a structural engineer, I was explaining the mechanics of the bus failure with my last breaths. The final nail in the coffin was the movie they showed on the bus - Raja Hindustani. You're finished APSRTC, bye bye.
The journey back was much better. Last time I had a burst tire and got to work at 2pm. This time I made it with time to spare. The bus is laid out like a train compartment with two levels of berths. You can't really sit in them, only sleep. But if your journey is an overnight one, like mine was, this is perfect. You get a pillow and a blanket, and a bedsheet on the berth. You get your own TV screen like on an airplane and as far as I could tell, they were playing movies for a long time, on two different channels! I watched "Cheeni Kum" (more on that later). With your personal headset, you don't get a lot of interference from others. Of course, the rest was similar - they stopped for dinner, they gave out a water bottle to each person. After the dinner stop (I didn't eat) I got under my blanket and passed out till Pune!
The ticket price is a little high, but if you're an infrequent traveller and want to travel comfortably, this is the way to go. Much cheaper than a flight and much more clearn and hygenic than a train. Aah, I'm falling asleep just thinking of the bus again!!

Dad's magic

While in the hospital with dad, we were watching TV and the ad for Five Star Fruit and Nut comes on. I've always loved Five Star and I had been planning to try out this new avatar of the candy bar for a while. So when I saw this ad I announced, "That looks cool, I want to try this."
Dad responded in his usual style of showing off, "I can have this bar brought over to our place."
I said, "That's OK dad, I can just pick it up on our way back home."
"No", he insisted, "I won't call anyone, it'll just come to our house. Magic!"

Now I was really intrigued. Dad always used to do this when we were younger, where he'd promise the sky, and usually delivered. But what was always wonderful was when he did something magical. As an adult, I can reason out how he managed those, but the kid in me will always be tickled by these things.

Eventually he just gave in and said that he'd already purchased the bars knowing I might want to try them out when I visited. And after we went home, the first thing he did after we woke up the next day was go to the fridge and bring me the candy bar.

The bar itself wasn't great - Five Star is still a superb item and I love fruits and nuts, but the two just don't go together. But it was nice to see that dad still had his magical touch with him.

Pune shocks me again

The lemon juice near my place. Every evening as I get home I try to get either coconut water or a glass of lemon juice. The juice vendors - lemon, sugarcane etc - try to up their profit margin by adding ice to the juice one way or another. Either crushed ice to fill up the glass, or ice being left to melt in the juice receptacle which dilutes the juice. This is an acceptable level of theft which I don't normally make a big deal about. But last night the juice tasted really watery. I got pissed off and start yelling at the vendor. Even before I could finish my rant, the guy simply says, "Shall I make a fresh glass for you?" That I was not expecting. I felt bad immediately and tried to wave him off but he just took the glass out of my hand and poured the juice out and squeezed me a fresh glass. Like I mentioned before, this is hardly the first time a vendor behaved in an honest manner when he could easily have been a bastard about the whole thing. I hate to say this, but I don't think the situation would have been that smooth in Hyderabad. Pune, my biggest compliment to you yet, your citizens are better humans than Hyderabadis.

I'll even go one step further. I keep hearing comments on how Pune autos are atrocious and tend to fleece you. Well, I would take the worst auto driver in Pune and rather pay him to run his auto over me than pay a Chennai auto driver to transport me. I think of some terrorists whose lives I'd save before I saved the life of a Chennai auto driver. So, yes, no matter how bad people might think auto drivers in Pune are, they're all saints compared to their counterparts in Chennai.