Hindi-on-Hindi hatred

With the recent additions we now have two employees in the office who are from Bihar. They speak English and Hindi in the stereotypical Bihari accent. For English this means that all the "sh" sounds become "s" and the sentence syntax follows Hindi grammar rather than English grammar. "What value you are getting?" "What time the bus is coming?" "Why you are doing this?" etc. Make no mistake, it's hilarious as hell and way too easy to mock.

What I find interesting is that these Biharis (atleast one of them) gets mocked mercilessly by the other North Indians here. They mock his accent and mannerisms endlessly. I was partially turned off because frankly I kinda respect this guy. But more importantly I was surprised at the "Hindi-on-Hindi" hatred. Isn't this guy "one of your own"? Obviously not. You see, in the South, I know there's a lot of inter-mocking between people who speak the various languages. I can report first hand about the way the Telugus mock the broken Telugu that is spoken by the immigrants into the state. Similarly I'm sure the Tamilians mock the "gults" and so on. It's just the way of life. So that's why it's surprising to see these people who speak the same language mocking each other.

For what it's worth, there is a huge economic component to this. Bihar being a poor state, Biharis who come to the Punjab/Haryana/Chandigarh regions come there for jobs. So the more affluent Punjabis look down upon the Biharis in general. Most of the staff that works in the kitchens etc in our office is from Bihar. But even with these new employees joining in engineering positions, the old stereotypes and attitudes are prevailing. Personally even though I have an extremely negative opinion of Bihar and its residents, I find it very hard to mock the individuals because they aren't the stereotypes that I'm come to associate with that state. For that matter, even the Punjabis (Sikhs) whom we used to tease when younger aren't mock-able because I work with them and get to know them. Sigh, I hate growing up.

Why are they allowing child porn on satellite TV?

Imagine the sexy Beyonce singing "My body is too bootylicious" or the incomparable Marilyn Monroe standing on subway vent while her skirt billowed around her. Just perfect, right? Now imagine a girl of four years doing either of those, complete with the dress and everything? Disgusting! So why do local stations think it's OK?

It's become very trendy to have talent shows for kids. They sell. The kids are extremely talented and very cute. It blows my mind sometimes to watch them perform, either sing or dance. One Hindi channel even has a kid perform a solo comedy sketch and she's very funny in it. And then one day I saw something that made me wish I could unsee it. A little girl, not more than four years of age, wearing something that would make even Mallika Sherawat blush, dancing to a vulgar "item song" - రాత్రైనా నాకు OK, పగలైన నాక్ OK. The lyrics of the song (translated) are - "Nighttime is fine by me, I'm OK with daytime too"; I'll leave you to imagine what the singer is claiming to be OK with. The next time I turned on the program, she was dancing to అబ్బనీ తీయ్యని దెబ్బా.

I do believe that there is a certain level to cuteness to be found in young children behaving like adults. But I also believe that there's a certain line that you shouldn't cross and this program crossed it. The sad thing is, the little girl won't realize how screwed up her life is going to get till it actually does. All she sees is the crowd going wild and the judges heaping abundant praise on her. She doesn't understand the lyrics of the song or why her dress is completely inappropriate. I just hope she loses early enough so she can put this behind her. God save her.

What a difference a manager makes

We have a new manager. This marks a sad day in the history of this blog since I can no longer use the word "manager" in the same sentence as "idiot", "incompetent", "joker" etc. The new guy is at about 80% of what I'd like in an ideal manager. He knows his stuff when it comes to the tools we use. He has experience in the field and he is utterly no nonsense. I'm enjoying working with him and am loving picking his brains on various work-related topics. What I've discovered, and this is hardly new, is that for a job to be fun, both the manager and the employee should be at the same level of seriousness and willingness to work. In this case I think that is 100% true. On the flip side, he's a little weak in the fundamentals and is a little too stubborn in some situations. Today I wasted two hours trying to convince him that he is wrong and that we should solve the problem my way. Ultimately I gave up and just waited for him to leave, did the problem my way and finished the assignment. In the olden days I could easily convince my boss that I was right (if I was right). But now if the new manager also disagree with me, since my boss respects him quite a bit, I have to fight a lot to make my point. I can't complain too much since the guy before him had no idea what the hell was going on anyway and ... well, you know enough about how that guy was, I don't need to bring it up again.

On a related note, it's obscene how excited I get about work these days. The last days in particular I've been practically giddy at the thought of doing the work and discussing the ins and outs of the problem with my boss and my manager. Of course that just means I'll get promoted since "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence".

Mahanandi: Part 2

The temple is in the middle of a forest. Dad said that it had hardly changed since his last visit there. There is a spring that supplies water to a well inside the temple where people take a dip before going into the temple. I was reluctant to get inside at first because the water didn't seem too clean. But I changed my mind after a while, only this time, I couldn't find our driver, who had the car keys, so I could get my change of clothes. The dip in the well just wasn't for me this time.

When we reached the temple, I saw a sign that said that between 10am and 11am, the entry into the temple is free. Awesome, I thought, it was 10:30am, so our timing was perfect. However the gatekeeper there was suggesting to everyone that came there that they should probably buy the entance tickets because if they took time swimming around in the well, they would miss the free darshan times. The paid darshan was Rs. 3. OK, not bad. As I went to buy the tickets, the guy at the counter asked if I wanted the regular darshan or the special darshan. What's the difference, I asked. Well, he replied, in the special darshan you actually get to touch the idol inside. Hmm, I don't particularly care but I thought my dad would like it. So I got these tickets instead, for Rs. 20. When I went back to my dad with the tickets, he said that we should get tickets for the "abhisekham" (ceremonial showering of the idol) as well. Turned out the price for darshan with abhiseskham was Rs. 125. So I went back to the counter and convinced the guy to take back the Rs. 20 tickets and give me tickets for the abhisekam instead. He grumbled about taking tickets back but agreed in the end. Then he asked me if I wanted regular abhisekham or special abhisekham. What's that, I asked. Well in special abhisekham you get a "kanduva" (an over cloth) and two laddus. For Rs. 250 each. OK fine, give me those instead. Also, apparently you could only use each abhisekham ticket for two people, so I had to purchase a second ticket. With those tickets in hand I asked him if he would give me the materials for the abhisekham. That's a separate purchase, he said. Rs. 80. So basically, for a darshan that would have been FREE, we ended up spending Rs. 580. And we weren't close to being done.

The abhisekham was well worth it. They got us sitting next to the idol and made us perform the abhisekham with our own hands. My parents were really thrilled. BTW, the extra Rs. 250 we paid for the special abhisekham was totally worth it because it turned out that you were not supposed to wear anything above your waist (only for men) as you performed the abhisekham, and there was no way in hell I was going to sit there shirtless for any amount of time without something to cover myself. As we were finishing, the pujari asked for "dakshina", dad paid him Rs. 30. From that point onward, the way to exit the temple was a big maze. They had interconnected all the mini-shrines inside so that you would have to pass all of them as you left the temple. And at each station the pujaris were offering their own services for performing archanas at moderates prices, which they were still NOT supposed to do. Some were offering lamps to be lit at 9 for Rs. 20. SOme were selling rudraksha beads at Rs. 5 each. It was a bit ugly to watch but atleast it was better than that temple in Jammu. (Dear Jammu temple, your position in the top 2 WORST temples in the world is secure.)

We got to eat lunch at the same place we had breakfast a few hours earlier. It was a really nice hotel/restaurant with very nice service. Our waiter treated us like we were from the groom's side at a wedding! Even as we gave our orders together, he insisted on serving us only after we finished each course so that the items wouldn't get cold! Very nice of him. As I am typing this we're still about 100 kms from Hyderabad and I'm hoping the rest of the journey will be uneventful.

Mahanandi: Part 1

I'm typing this on my dad's "EE PC" (sorry bro) , a really tiny laptop, while sitting in a car, on our way back from Mahanandi, a place in the middle of the great state of Andhra Pradesh. I have two backlogged blog entries that I was hoping to finish typing up before this but I just had to write up about this trip.

Apparently my dad visited this place before his marriage and he'd been trying to take my mom on this trip for the last 30 years or so of their marriage. It never worked out for some reason or the other. I had made a flying visit to Hyd to take care of some stuff, and I was here only for Fri, Sat and Sun. I took care of my stuff on Fri and I asked my parents what they would like to do during the weekend. Among a host of other suggestions, my mom threw out the Mahanandi plan. I liked it immediately. It was going to take a 5-6hr drive each way but seeing as my dad wanted to revisit this place so much, I jumped on it.

We woke up at 3am and started getting ready for the trip. Dad got one of the drivers from his company and we took off by 4:30am. I was really looking forward to driving on the newly opened PV Narasimha Rao expressway in the city. It was fun, I can see how young people in the city would love to drive on this road at night. The entire road is basically a flyover, and it is not flat, so you feel like you're floating down a river of lights as you cruise on this 11kms long highway. I am not sure of the utility, I don't think it saves more than 15 minutes for the passengers on their way to the airport, and if that's the case, I don't think it's worth it. We passed out almost immediately after leaving the city but woke up around sunrise. It was a really beautiful drive. The weirdest part for me was seeing herds of camels walking on the highway. What were camels doing in this part of the country! The highway itself was very nice and well maintained. The roads were clean and smooth, a far cry from the time our family took to Tirupathi many years ago.

Of course, the biggest problem with a trip this long is the availability (or lack) of bathroom facilities. At one point we spent 30 mins just looking for a neat restaurant with a bathroom. But even accounting for that and three other stops for coffee and food, we reached our destination about 6 hours after we started.

Time for another pictorial

This was at a mall slightly outside the city. Double level parking. I was very surprised to see this here. This is essentially long term parking because the upper car can't be removed till the lower car is removed. Either that or the owner gave the car keys to the attendant, and that's clearly impossible :)








This is a "stepney" in Chandigarh (you can see the Haryana license plate) covered with a stepney cover of a Telugu movie. And not just any Telugu movie, a movie dubbed from Tamil. How awesome is this country!



One driver on a motorcyle pulling along his friend on another motorcycle whose vehicle wasn't working. In addition to being shocked at the extremely unsafe practice, I admired the physical strength of both drivers to be able to maintain their balance and hold on to either handlebar for any amount of time.

The old man on the flight

"So what do you think of this Koda guy?"

That's how it began. I was on my flight from Delhi to Hyderabad for a quick visit. I was sitting next to this elderly Telugu couple. After I spoke to them in Telugu a few mins earlier, the man realized I was Telugu and decided to engage me in conversation. Koda is a thief of a CM about whom I'll probably write about later in this blog. For now, I told him how I felt about corrupt politicians and he suggested nothing short of actually killing all corrupt politicians. We went on to discuss AP politics. He wasn't a fan of any particular party but we both agreed that our former CM YSR was a brilliant strategist. That the entire Congress party is reading the situation in the country very well and playing their cards well - not caving in to the Telangana movement, not caving in to the "YSR's son for CM" faction etc.

At that point I was surprised by how many assumptions he made about me and how was OK with voicing them. He talked about how neat Dubai is even if it is run by a **** (a derogatory term for a Muslim). Then he went on to ask me about my caste, he asked me if I belonged to a particular caste! Just like that! I didn't hide it, and he went on to talk about how great that particular caste is and that they are the only ones who are capable of sustaining the culture of the state and the Hindus in general (he's from a different caste but has a great deal of respect for my caste, and that was a little weird to be given any respect solely based on caste). What was mildly surprising was that he guessed my caste based on my diction. I was brought up almost entirely in Hyderabad and I always thought I had a very "city" accent, but evidently not. He asked me about my age, if I was married, how much money my company makes and so on. I got the feeling that if I was single he would have fixed me up with a relative of his. His own daughters were a few years older than me and I really think that bummed him out that I couldn't marrry either of them. Hmm, mildly flattering.

The guy himself was very interesting. He seemed to be about 65 years old. He is a businessman, and never studied beyond 6th grade. He felt bad about it and later in life he donated Rs. 2 crores (an amount of money that I will probably never end up owning, let alone donating!) to a college, which now bears his name. He talked about the importance of education and how once the country improves itself in education, it'll improve a lot. He is a very strict vegetarian and his wife is even stricter and can't even eat food when there's meat nearby. The two were returning from a trip to Nepal, apparently the place sucked! (Good to know since I was planning a trip there myself at some point.) He and his wife went on to tell me about a particular devotional channel and some program by a religious head.

When the flight landed I left without saying goodbye. He did make me a little uncomfortable but ultimately I was just in a hurry to get home. I did think of calling him because he gave me his card but even that I skipped on. He did make the flight very interesting though.

Starstruck

On my flight from Chandigarh to Hyd (via Delhi), I saw a girl get on who looked vaguely familiar. Almost instantly I figured out that this was an actress, and definitely a lesser-known one. From that point on, this is sort of how my thoughts went - "Hmm, she looks familiar. You know what, she must be one of those N. Indian actresses who act in Telugu movies in small roles or item numbers. What is her name?" About 30 minutes pass. I couldn't recollect either her first name or her last name. So I decided that since she's traveling from Chandigarh, her last name must be "Kaur". So I wondered, "Hmm, Kaur. OK, what Kaur? Think, think, think." And finally I decided to try the brute force method and ran down the letter of the alphabet. "A something Kaur? B something Kaur?" When I finally came to N, her name popped up in my head "Navneet Kaur". She's done some item numbers and maybe even a small movie somewhere. Sadly I arrived at her name after boarding my Hyd flight, or I would have tried to talk to her. Or so I told myself.

As if to test my theory, on my return journey, in Hyderabad, a beautiful woman boarded the flight. This one I recognized. Anuskha Shetty. (She looks even more beautiful in real life than in her movies.) Before the shock wore off, I realized her seat was right across the aisle from me. Oh geez, thank you very much God for calling me out on my "I'd talk to an actress if I remembered her name" bluff. So for the remaining two hours I tried to think of some smart way to talk to her. Since she was across the aisle from me, I didn't want to have a lengthy conversation but I did want to wish her a Happy Birthday (her birthday was a couple of days ago) and tell her I liked her in "Arundhathi". But there wasn't a good time at all. She went to sleep almost immediately, and when she wasn't sleeping, she was reading a book on Yoga (She used to be a yoga instructor before becoming an actress). Even at the Delhi airport I saw her a few times and she even walked right in front of me but I totally chickened out. There's always a next time to try out my "be cool with a celebrity" behavior.

BTW, it wasn't totally random that I saw two actresses during my Hyd trip. There was a fundraiser in Hyderabad to generate money for the victims of the recent floods and almost every single big actor/actress in Telugu was in town. So I was bound to run into some or the other actor. Also, the reason I knew it was Anushka's birthday two days ago was because they announced it at the fundraiser.

Big egos in little Chandigarh

It's been a busy couple of days at work for me. The boss gave us a project and appointed me the leader on the project. All the work would flow through me, so I have been assigning work and training the newer engineers etc. After they worked on the basics, I took over and started the more detailed stuff. At that point the others didn't have much work and they were idling.

On this particular day, after a long day of work where I barely glanced away from my computer, I called up my boss who wasn't in town, and explained to him the status of the project. While I was talking to him, I had a game of FreeCell open and was idly clicking away at the cards. At this point I noticed a guy standing behind two members of my team. He had been looking at their computer screens for a while and then he was talking to them. I didn't pay much attention because I was on the phone. When I was done, he came over to my station and pointing at my screen, said, "What are you doing?" More than a little peeved, I replied, "I was talking to my boss." He replied, "No, you are playing cards". At this point I was no longer inclined to be polite, "Who are you?" "I am ******" replied Mr. Jackass Smallunit. The name sounded a little familiar. He was some sort of big shot, but I didn't know his exact title. So I swallowed my pride a little and continued, "Well, I finished my day's work and I was talking to my boss and yeah I was idly clicking through a game." He persisted, "No, you are playing cards. This guy's talking to his friend on the phone, and this other guy is shopping for mobile phones. It's bad enough that you're playing cards, because of that these two are goofing off as well." "OK," I interrupted him, "It's not fair to anyone to blame their behavior on me." "Hmm," the Jackass nodded much like his namesake, "Give me your names on a piece of paper and give it to me", and walked off.

Oh boy, were the tempers in the group high at that point! None more than mine. How dare he question us on our work practices based on his tiny window of observation! I calmed down my team members, assured them that nothing would happen and gave him the list he asked for. Then I called up my boss and explained what happened. He simply said, "I'll take care of it". That was enough for me. Except, none of us could stop thinking about it and it kept bothering us for a while. One guy even said that he wouldn't have minded if he got fired on the spot, but for the Jackass to stand there and talk to us in that fashion was just very unprofessional. As of now, no one knows the end result of that incident but it's probably somewhere in the middle - no one's getting fired or even harshly reprimanded, but on the flip side, we won't be getting our apology either.

The wordless transaction

A few days ago I went shopping for a cable for my mp3 player. While walking around the strip mall, I got to pull off something that had been stewing in my devious mind for a while - the wordless transaction.

Let me set the scene. It was around 7:15pm on Saturday of a SaSuMo weekend. The strip mall was lightly populated with customers. I was thirsty and saw a small restaurant. This was one of those joints that is big enough to merit a place in a strip mall like this but still dinky enough that its doors were open and it had no air-conditioning. These places usually have a glass-door refrigerator with cool drinks in them. I walked into the place, went to the fridge, pulled out a drink,  walked up to the counter and placed it there. Then I pulled out a Rs. 50 note from my pocket and handed it to the cashier. He simply gave me Rs. 30 back. Not a word was exchanged. None of the - "Hello sir" "How may I help you?" "Will that be all sir?" that you're bound to get in, say, an American store.

I loved the whole process and I want to see how many more times I can do this while I'm here. Meanwhile, if any of you have ever had a wordless or, even better, a gestureless transaction, I'd love to hear of it.

Soup and "Singhara"

It's a three day weekend that got off to a horrible start thanks to three crazy girls and I don't mean "crazy" in any positive sense. Anyway, apparently my body decided to join the fun and I had myself a nice upset stomach by Sunday. So I decided to keep off the solid foods and just have soup instead.

The problem is that my #1 option for my regular meals around here had decided to switch to a "winter menu" and is therefore offering lots of hot soup for public consumption. And their idea of "lots of soup" is diluting their regular soup with water! Disgusting! The last time I went there I even offered to pay more for the good soup but they just denied that they were even diluting the soup in the first place. So now I was forced to try the #2 and #3 restaurants here. I walked into the first one and prepared myself for the weird look I knew I would get when I ordered just soup. The soup itself was horrible. It tasted too synthetic and I desperately had to resort to adding the ubiquitous ketchup to make it tolerable. After getting that into my stomach, I walked over to the other restaurant hoping they'd have a better soup. Unfortunately while this soup tasted a little less of chemicals, they had added some other junk to the soup and it wasn't any easier to swallow. This really sucks because now I have no options here for getting good tomato soup in this area.

This being a Sunday, I went to the weekly fruit bazaar nearby to see if they had any good fruit. (The last three weeks I bought fruit I flat out forgot to eat the fruits and they just rotted away.) My eyes fell on this one stall. This stall was selling what looked like small animals hearts. I had seen these once before and then I was so unsure of what these were that I didn't even ask the vendor what these were for fear of having it be something that would make me throw up. This time I decided to be a little braver. The guy told me they were called "Singhara" and quoted a price of Rs. 30 a kilo. That wasn't so bad, but I still had no idea what these were. He then told me a little more about these. Apparently they grow in water, and you can eat them after skinning them and eating what was inside or just eating them raw. He even gave me a sample to try. At this point another lady walked up and asked what the price was, he said Rs. 20 a kilo and sold them for Rs. 15. My eyes popped out of my head!! I'm all for the guy making a buck but here he was flat out trying to rob me. After the lady left I told the guy I refused to pay any more than she did and he reluctantly agreed. I bought Rs. 10 worth of the stuff and went home.

At home, after some googling I found that these were nothing other than Water Chestnuts. So that's a cool new discovery. Apparently these guys still stay crunchy after being boiled and I hope to try that out sometime soon.