2S
Techie. Writer. Photographer.
Archive for January, 2008
January 30, 2008 at 12:38 am · Filed under personal
10:20 AM on the PNQ Airport clock - and I’m mumbling the choicest of profanity for two reasons. To start with, my flight’s delayed by two hours and I really need to get in to work soon. So I’m a tad - in fact, more than a tad - snappy. To make things worse, there is no Wi-Fi at this excuse for an airport. The Pune Airport ought to be called by it’s official name, the Lohegaon Airbase, because that’s precisely what it is. Jerking my head left, I can look at where the airport begins. To the right, I see where it ends. That’s how huge this airport is. Apologies, I meant airbase, of course.
I’m now on the third seat from the left or right (depending on where you’re looking from) in the second row. This offers the perfect view with very few pillars or obstructions as I look at the people around me. Which means, the women, of course.
- - -
10:25 AM - Been glancing at this random firang female - late thirties, by the way - who’s taken the Osho idea so seriously that she’s actually worn a maroon cloak that is probably just barely acceptable for travel in an aircraft. Either that, or she packed all the laundry in and forgot to leave one for the journey. Not that I’m complaining, but after a week at Koregaon Park, I’ve seen enough Harry-Potter-comes-to-Pune-like characters to last me a lifetime.
Especially at night, in the dark, they looked like Death-eaters who had a change of uniform and lost the hood. And not just one or two - but an army - and while they didn’t flash wands or scream Avada Kedavra, I’ve gone the extra mile to make sure I don’t bump into them.
Behind her walks a guy wearing a red jacket, and he’s walking towards me. The jacket has ‘Established 1983′ on it, and has got a huge black strip on either sleeve. It’s got a red zip and a black hood. Proline, Winter 2006. That irritating feeling when you see someone else wearing a piece of clothing you own as well is now scratching at my mind.
- - -
10:35 AM - A total bomb, as brown and inviting as chocolate, just passed by, with what could possibly be the ugliest, scrawniest of freaks next to her. They don’t have the same nose, so he’s obviously not related. Shucks. If only I were uglier, I might have landed this gorgeous chick someday. But hey, what’s this? The thing I love about such women is that they’re blessed with the looks to attract guys, and more importantly, me. Indeed, this Brown Bomb (did I just violate a Corner House copyright?) has a lovely frame, and is quite well endowed. What I hate about such women, though, is that they still find the need to flaunt it.
And if she wore those jeans any lower, they’d pass as denim stockings. I kid you not. She’s the kind of girl that can take the low-waist idea to trenchlike levels. Simply put, if she worked at Levi’s, they’d come out with a high-knee version this summer.
- - -
10:50 AM - I’ve been noticing this guy for the last ten minutes now, and no I’ve not turned gay. Not just yet. But I can’t help looking at this this guy so closely, because he’s standing right in front of me, screaming his ass off on the phone about some business deal involving ceramics. While on the subject, a certain Tiwari guy seems to have screwed up a deal or two, and Mr. Loudspeaker-in-front-of-me-with-his-dick-in-my-face is yelling so loud that I wonder if Tiwari even needs a phone.
To my left is an Airtel kiosk for charging mobiles, and a Chinese-looking guy is struggling to get his cellphone charged. His spouse, to his right, is in absolute surprise wondering how to get the darned charger to work, having rolled her e-ticket, one end of the roll firmly settled in her mouth. Mercifully, Loudspeaker has stopped yelling and I can get back to looking at women as opposed to what I was.
- - -
11:21 AM - Now an attractive voice on the PA system announces that it’s time for me to get checked out at the security check. It was a rather interesting security check, to be honest. According to the CISF Jawan who felt me up, my i-Pod is a detonator. He said that jokingly, of course, but insisted I screen it with my hand-baggage. When I returned, he re-did the check, and found my keychain which has my RSA SecureID on it. It’s a random number that keeps ticking and - gulp - looks exactly like what a detonator would in a really poorly done Hollywood movie. So there was this very army-like raise of the eyebrow.
‘Yeh kya hai?’
‘Sir, RSA token’
‘Kya?’
‘Yeh Laptop mein jaata hai, jab ghar se kaam kar na hai’.
I’m now seated at the corner seat of the fifth row and observing this rather attractive just-out-of-college girl who hasn’t tied her shoe-lace, by the way. And her jeans are actually helping the Airport’s sweepers with half their job. And I’ve just stopped looking.
- - -
11:42 AM - Merci my Divine Lord. Finally, my kind of girl, even if she’s with her mother. Not the thinnest yet quite attractive, she’s 5′6, wears a white Kurta and black-worn-out jeans nicely folded up, with the light-gray folds showing outside, making them look like three-fourths. Ordinary slippers but extraordinary feet and luckily her nails aren’t drenched in colour like a mid-summer’s Yash Raj flick that stars and ends with the word Jhoom.
But what really hit me about this white-top is the short hair. I’m a sucker for women with short hair, and in all certainty, this would rank right up there, making the deep-blue-clad Indi-Go ground-hostess next to her look less attractive, simply because Ms. Blue isn’t as simple. In the distance, there’s this Kingfisher one (it’s quite obvious because the skirt is worn with such obvious intent of having the male population look at it). And while I have this thing for reds, I’m not looking there either.
So, back to the bobcut, because I have little time as I board in eight minutes.
Her accessories are simple - a little denim bag, a media player now plugged in, and a murder mystery for company - Agatha Christie. She probably is Maharastrian because her mother (and it is the mother or mausi - the same nose) is yapping her goodbyes in Marathi as if they were off to Bangkok and not Bangalore. Bobcut, meanwhile, is uninterested in the conversation that’s now revealed the presence of pickle in the hand baggage.
So I’ve been hoping that the bobcut passes a glance at me and notices me noticing her, while I type frantically. But it’s not going to happen, because I’m not Brad Pitt, and Agatha Christie is such a fine writer. The Kingfisher girl has wandered away too, so I’m just waiting for the boarding call now, looking aimlessly.
- - -
11:52 AM - There’s this firang guy who has his laptop out, has crossed his arms and is now scratching the elbows, very monkeylike, if I may. Which reminds me, whatever happened to the Harbhajan hearing? Either ways, here’s the last girl I’ll describe for you, for this one is a proper Puneite who would give most Bombay girls a complex. To say that she’s forward would be to suggest that Ponting can bat. With absolutely no subtlety whatsoever, the lipstick certainly having been entirely used up for this morning alone, in she walks with a black skirt that hugs her rear so firmly that I’m worried it might get stuck. And while I don’t mind black - ever - it certainly seems like there’s a certain amount of adhesive involved. The top is - mercifully - not too deep, and fluffy, which nicely counterbalances what’s below. Her ear-rings are huge - you can shoot ping-pong balls through them - and her hair is as straight as a Tendulkar straight-drive off a Zimbabwean bowler whose surname is longer than the Amazon. She walks like she’s either been done - or will be done - and that’s a total turn-off. The kaajal is also overdone: it’s like a third-grade item-girl who found herself in a nightclub outside Sanpada station in Navi Mumbai, and suddenly decided to travel to Mumbai.
Don’t get me wrong - I just love the unsophisticated, and just hate it when they try to cross over to the other side - but this one fits the bill of slut-seeking behavior.
- - -
11:57 AM - Okay, here comes the call. Goodbye, Pune, and goodbye my bored reader, and allow me to extend my gratitude for staying with my randomness at the airport. How random can I get? No, really?
January 27, 2008 at 9:02 pm · Filed under cricket, tributes
When the cricketing world heard of Adam Gilchrist’s retirement, they went from a state of shock to nothing short of mourning. Many might have even wept. I’m not surprised why - if I was there at the Adelaide Oval, watching the wicketkeeper batsman walking back to the rooms, head held high - the Baggy Green perched firmly in pride on it - knowing fully that I won’t see him wearing it again, a tear of respect would’ve left me too.
Respect. It’s a word a real die-hard traditional fan of cricket would preserve for few. Forget Dhoni, forget Boucher. The world has never - and will never - see an opening batsman, a hard-hitter and a wicketkeeper of such fine quality, both skills coming together to such perfection.
But this isn’t about Gilchrist the batsman. It isn’t even about the ‘keeper. Much has been said and written about his freaky ability to juggle both responsibilities, of ’setting a benchmark’ and whatnot.
It’s about Gilchrist, the magnificent sportsman, whose greatness was only underlined by the humility of his achievements in an otherwise arrogant Australian side. For me, the very fact that Gilchrist walks when he edges, or only appeals for ones he genuinely thinks is out, is a mark of a fine man. A cricketer who has his feet so firmly grounded in the ethics of the game, and if it weren’t for the likes of Gilly and Dravid, one would refuse to associate anything gentlemanly with the game of cricket.
And that’s what needs to be underscored. Australia might look into their reserves and maybe even pick a class wicketkeeper who could match Gilchrist’s record. Maybe they’ll find him to be a better batsman than Gilchrist - no one knows. But it’s perfectly safe to say that, there are very few gems in the game who are so loved even by the opposition.
For that, my friends Down Under, let me tell you that Gilchrist is simply irreplaceable.
January 20, 2008 at 2:20 am · Filed under personal, tributes
Shall we have the facts out of the way, as I’m dying to let you know? I’m an Indian. I love Bangalore. I love rock. Fanatical - I repeat - fanatical about a certain Paki band. The ‘times played’ count on my iTunes for Duur is a number you won’t come across in Math until Grade Eight. Now, Bangalore is the Mecca of rock in India. And Strings were performing.
Brimming with anticipation of an evening with a band whose guitarist I idol-worship. If excitement were fluid, I was first drenched and drowned until Friday evening arrived. Excusing myself early from office to ensure I be there at time, I weaved my way through Bangalore’s unsympathetically heavy weekend traffic and was at the spot about an hour ahead of time. Had the tickets - and the complimentary Colgates - with me, waiting for a friend and two Mutineers to show up at Palace Grounds. They did, although one of them lost her way in traffic and ended up paying a nice little visit to the King in the Palace itself, before promptly making a U-turn and heading for Palace Grounds. But they showed up on time, and after being checked out frisked by a Terrier security guard who mercifully looked far from homosexual, I entered the grounds.
Cyanides, I guess, were playing then. I lost the name in the crowd that were getting restless, and they finally booed the band out of the stage because - and I must agree with them - everyone were here for one reason.
Plunging the stage into darkness, the bloke on the keyboards came up and did a quick sound-check. Keeping him company was the percussionist, a lead guitarist and a bass guitarist. Yet no signs of the Paki duo we all waited for. But a few hundred sound-checks later, they walked in. The vocalist, clothed in a no-nonsense khaki jacket, and the brilliant guitarist wearing a tight khaki t-shirt. Surprisingly, they began with their Shootout at Lokhandwala hit, Aakhri Alvida.
That woke the crowd up, it did.
Faisal took a few minutes for a chat as Bilal fiddled around with his new special red-and-white guitar. Talked about how he loved Bangalore, the Habba, that the crowd were awesome and the usual stuff an artist says at every venue. Before - and we weren’t hearing things - a certain lead played in the background. Anjane had arrived.
That was it. That got the feet moving, the arms in the air and the mouth yelling. Like a Pied Piper, Bilal got the crowd screaming huey, begaaney kyon! almost at will, as Faisal generously pointed the mike at the hundreds of people who had succumbed to their sound. When they were done, the crowd went ‘once more’ before Faisal silenced them.
‘This is a very special song’, he claimed. The lead began, and I lost what he said in the screaming crowd, catching just one word, ‘Spiderman’. Oui, na jaanay kyon it was.
And like only Faisal Kapadia can, when he went dil bhuja gaya, ghar jal gaya, na jaanay kyon, na jaanay kyon, we were with him. Perhaps relating to the song itself, perhaps lost in thought or rock, but we were lost somewhere. A rock cover for their finest song, and if truth be told, nothing short of exceptional.
What now, then? Three of their best songs and we wanted more. Took us a while to figure it out, but next up was probably a song that changed their entire careers. Into it’s sixteenth year, yet oh-so-memorable, Sar Kiyae was playing, and it got Faisal all nostalgic, as he went back to the 90s and talked about the gap of eight years. Enough talk, however, and only one word escaped the audience, before he finally put us out of our misery and struck the right note. With Bilal’s fingers holding F# firmly, and the drums picking up the beat, Faisal walked up to the front mike.
The crowd waited, and he gave us Duur. Enough said.
Zinda! screamed the crowd. Faisal replied, ‘we have a few technical problems, we can’t play that song’. Of course, he was screwing with us. When the interlude began, and yeh hai meri kahani was underway, the crowd were lost again, for the second time that evening. As Faisal set it up Anwar Maqsood’s magically penned monologue, Bilal took it forward with that awesome solo piece.
What followed next, though, was quite interesting. A tribute to Bollywood’s yesteryears, as Strings played - and mixed - rock versions of what are probably their favourites. Starting with meri umar ke naujaawanon, and as they broke into om shanti om, it was all so clear - classics are classics. Koi kahe, kehta rahe followed, mixed with main tera tu meri jaane saara hindustaan, at which Faisal asked us to sing the chorus with pakistan in it. We - of course - obliged, why, we’d even go main tera tu meri jaane saara australia if he wanted.
As the vocals paused and the rhythm continued, Faisal dropped a quick emotional line about how he likes this friendship between countries, even videotaping the crowd’s Pakistanised version for their personal record, before breaking into yeh dosti and the insturmental from Don. And then, three more tributes, beginning with aa dekhe zara, milgaya, hum ko saathi milgaya and finally ending it with yeh jawaani. At the end of the extended tribute, ten-odd minutes of rock where Bollywood was celebrated, we were both tired and overwhelmed in love for music. Unsurprisingly.
Next followed a rock lullaby, and expect Strings to carry it off - Soja, before they finally wrapped up their show - and nearly the show itself - with Dhaani. With Adeel on the lead guitar, Shaakir on the bass, Haider on the keyboards and Yasir on the drums, they gave us an evening I’ll find it hard to forget.
The MC hopped on stage, a Carmelite surely. It’s only at Mt. Carmel’s in Bangalore that they teach you to pronounce the word “more” like the way an American would pronounce the word “mow”. So, when she went, “Bangalore, do you want mow?”, ours was an affirmative response that very nicely asked her to get off stage and have the music back.
Parikrama followed soon after, and after a few zillion sound checks (again), their lead vocalist mercifully went ‘to hell with the technicalities, let’s rock’, before giving us their original compositions. In walked Saif, and as women went ‘ooh’ and guys went ‘wtf’, a rather off-colour Saif picked up his guitar and settled himself next to the lead-vocalist. And as a red T-shirt hugged his short frame with the word ‘Hendrix’ on it, Saif and Parikrama - as they claimed - ‘kicked some ass’.
But after the Strings hangover, their performance eventually turned out to be uninteresting, pepped up by the appearance of Robin Uthappa and Sreesanth who were at the concert for I-don’t-really-know-what but were - and this must be a crime - gifted a guitar each. A Fender, for Haysoos’ sake. Second time I’ve seen Saif gift a guitar and it wasn’t me. Criminal.
Either ways, the cops arrived and the lead vocalist was eventually forced to gesture at Saif to put an end to the show. Which they did, and as Ms. Carmelite read out the sponsor’s name, I walked out of Palace Grounds with an aftertaste of Dhaani, the Zinda lead still ringing in my ears.
Awesome, simply awesome, and I can’t wait for Strings to be back. Faisal and Bilal, guys, here’s a request from your biggest fan: for the sake of Bangalore, yeh aakhri alvida na ho.
January 15, 2008 at 3:56 am · Filed under bangalore, terrorism
I’d like to share an incident that happened with me this morning, at about 9.00 AM in Bangalore. To give you a bit of history, I was on the way back to Bangalore, a fourteen-hour bus journey from a little town called Manchakal in Dakshin Karnataka, via Belmannu, Mangalore, Hassan, Kunigal and Nelamangala. To give you a few facts, I was starved, surviving on a lone Mangalore bottle of Thumsup that I picked up in a hurry - not Akshay Kumarlike, but hurry it was - and I had seat number 22W booked for me. ‘W’ stands for Window, and 22 stands for the last-but one seat in a bus that drove through some of the worst roads known to mankind. Needless to say, my body went flying on many occasions - suspended in mid-air for a bit - before it landed back on the seat, almost every time the bus driver gave up on slowing down before potholes. Every time it landed safely, I’d gasp an ‘oh’, say three ‘Hail-Mary’s, and then go back to listening Eminem curse America on the iPod.
So, here I am, back in smokey, chilly Bangalore. Dressed to counter Mangalore’s sizzling heat, so the teeth are chattering in frosty fright. I’m all cranky, I haven’t slept well and my back has been through the mill. I hop out of the bus at Yeshwantpur (The driver told me that he’ll “stop” at Yeshwantpur, but he ended up slowing down just enough for me to jump out of the bus whilst in motion, almost as if I were auditioning for a junior 007’s role in the next Bond flick). I arrive - on my feet, mercifully - and I look around for a rickshaw. Along he comes, greets me with thirty-one teeth and beckons me into his metallic three-wheeled excuse for a ride.
The distance is hardly eight kilometers, and surely it wouldn’t cost more than fifty rupees. Matching the absurdity of rents in Bangalore, dude in rickshaw whispers - and I managed to catch it in spite of my plight - a figure. 100 rupees. What was he driving, a rickshaw or a Concorde? Lucky for him, this year, I don’t curse, although he pushed his luck.
I walked out of the rick, still cranky, half-sleepy. Mumbled some random Kannada words which repeatedly questioned the existence of meters. At the mention of the word ‘meter’ - which, for a rickshaw driver equates to profane verbiage in rickshawtongue - he flinched, did a double-take, and then resorted to negotiation.
‘One and a half, sir’.
‘No.’ I was yawning, because of sleep, but it seemed to him that I was bored from his talk already. Good.
‘Twenty rupees extra sir’.
‘No.’ Threw in another yawn. In his face, and this time I didn’t bother stifling it either. Let Satan enter and exit as He wills.
‘Sir, fuel prices have increased’.
And then I let it all out. Fury that Yeshwantpur might have rarely seen from a normal citizen. Not-so-politely, I did remind him - and a crowd of about twenty rickshawdrivers who easily outnumbered me - that they went on a strike few days ago. That there are better ways of demanding better fares. That I don’t subscribe to their half-baked stupid ideology, that they should’ve protested when fuel rates went up, that they have always managed to survive with the high fuel rates, and that if they want to extract more money from passengers then the strike was meaningless. Because they’re getting overpaid anyway - by demanding such fares. And saying that, I walked away in a hurry. Where to - I didn’t know.
Until another rickshaw guy came running along, asking me where I wanted to be dropped. ‘Chinnappa Gardens’, I replied loudly, in absolute pride, as if it were the Palace and I was King Wodeyar myself. He nodded his head and walked away, beckoning towards his ride.
‘Not a single rupee more!’ I shouted, and he kept nodding. True to his word, the guy dropped me at my doorstep, and I paid him the fare to the exact rupee. I got out, he drove off. Transaction complete and that’s how it ought to be.
I used to have pity at times, but when I see a majority of them drowned in their booze, ruining their families, they don’t deserve it. So, these days, I give some stick back. And I hope the rest of the city does that too.
It’s about time they behave. And it’s no coincidence that I’ve filed this post under ‘terrorism’.
January 8, 2008 at 10:50 pm · Filed under debates
In the midst of this madness, spare a thought for the primates themselves who not just have their very social and biological identity ridiculed on national television, but also threatened by an Australian or two.
But questioning one’s legitimacy - something that flew out of the ever-wobbly tongue of a certain Hog - is apparently all fine.
With all due respect, the Idiotic Cricket Council - for that’s what it is - is making a fool of itself. For sure.
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