musings over one shtrong kaapi

Food, for me, was Tamil Brahmin cuisine for a very long time. In my family, the people who claimed that they were not very rigorous about their food preferences only meant that they even ate Bisibelebaat or Palakkad cuisine sometimes. In this milieu, I felt like a radical extremist since I enjoyed 'north Indian' food and was even willing to go without rice for a couple of meals. If you are younger than 30, I must tell you that this was a huge step for a Tam in the seventies. Of course I have written about this before.

And then I boarded a Pan Am flight in 1986 for my first ever trip abroad lasting two and a half months. Just the American accent was enough to intimidate me those days; it was worse because on this flight, for the leg till Frankfurt, the flight attendants were mostly European. They hardly smiled, spoke English like German and looked like they would throw you out of the window if they didn't like you. And it was pretty clear they didn't like anyone on this flight full of noisy, unruly Indians. Seated next to me was a couple from Gujarat . They seemed like seasoned travelers. At meal time they were served an Indian meal while everything on my plate looked unfamiliar except large leaves of cabbage (actually lettuce). I couldn't believe that this passed off as lunch in any language. I timidly requested the flight attendant for the same meal as the Gujarati couple.
'Sorry ma'm, it's all we 've got.'
My travel agent had missed to mention my meal preference!

I did not realize that this was just the beginning of the horror story until I had to suffer meal after meal of burger (with the meat removed), French fries and coleslaw on the days we traveled. I had a choice of staying in the apartment and having rice with baked beans or yoghurt or stay hungry and travel. We traveled and took pictures before every monument and tourist attraction until finally I was happy to come back home to proper meals. No wonder I only have hazy memories of that trip and don't recognize the monuments I am standing in front of.

Twenty years later I traveled again to this country and this time it was all very different. I was prepared to try exotic food ( as long as it had no meat) and they served me Pulao and Rajma for dinner and idli and upma for breakfast on a Lufthansa flight. In Seattle I stayed with my cousin who made sure that there was Sambar and curried vegetable at every meal. When we went out we ate at Udupi restaurants serving Puri/bhaji and Masala Dosa!
Thanks to the IT revolution and Y2k problem in no small measure I suppose! India had arrived - it was now a real country with real people and real food and not just some land of sadhus and snakes, where people had OM for breakfast and meditated! Airlines cared for the Indian traveler and his meal preferences. You didn't have to suffer Air India just for their food. You could buy and make Indian food right here -it was available and affordable.

But still there was one thing that I missed - Tea. Starbucks had one type of sweet tea and in the tearooms we were presented with a menu of several choices of herbal, green and black teas. While they had great snob value and assured ego-satisfaction, all I craved for was a nice Masala Chai. I was even willing to try Coffee with little luck. Yes, in the land of Starbucks we missed COFFEE - South Indian coffee. Starbucks gave us choices like we never had before and they were willing to make it all just the way we wanted. Only we didn't want any of it because they were either too strong or too watery, or too frothy or too hot. In every case it was too much - even the smallest cup ( whose idea was it to call a small cup 'tall'?) was a lot and we always ended up wasting more than half. Something was missing and it did not feel like the coffee back home even when we picked up coffee powder from the Indian shop. May be the chicory content.

How do the South Indians manage without their daily dose of South Indian Filter coffee, I wondered. My cousin did not care for coffee or tea but I am sure that is not the case with the other million or two out there. You can take a Tamilian or a Kannadiga to Starbucks but you cannot make him drink the coffee for sure? Or had they resigned to their fate, admitted defeat and prepared their palates to an acquired taste for one or other of the Starbucks coffee? Or were they getting their coffee supplies from India regularly? It was a mystery till the time I boarded the flight back to Bangalore and I made mental note to pack a few boxes of Lipton tea if I traveled to this country again.

Last month I was packing again to come to this country when my son asked me to get a coffee filter. He said he was tired of Starbucks coffee and wanted ‘our coffee’ in the mornings. So I asked him if he wanted some coffee powder too. He said “No. My friend Soundari has experimented with the coffee available here and discovered that a combination of Ethiopian Sidamo and Sumatra coffee (1:1)from Starbucks ground to a fine blend ("Turkish" grind for electric filter) tastes exactly like the coffee you get in Chennai.’
JUGAD, wow! I should have known – the true Indian spirit! I should have guessed!
And to answer your question, yes she is right. I even wrote this post while sipping on a strong cup of the blend that tastes just like the 'one shtrong filter kaapi' at my local SLV restaurant. Thank you Soundari.
So what is your favorite blend to get your coffee just the way your mom makes it?

Street smart

As we approached the signal to cross over to the side of the Chicago Art Institute we saw this man who was saying to no one in particular:
Buy a copy of Streetwise magazine and by spending just 2 dollars you can help the homeless of Chicago.
I wasn't surprised that no one paid any attention to him as they kept their eyes focused on the signal.
Then he said
There is a tradition here at this signal. You either buy a copy of the magazine or you have to skip to the other side with me. Follow me.
The signal changed and the man kept skipping ahead of us and we all walked.
As we reached the other side he turned to us and said with a glint in his eyes:
Now that is cheating.

I loved his spirit. He was obviously homeless or at the risk of becoming homeless or he would not be vending the magazine. But he could smile from where he was and make others smile. Even if you did not buy the magazine, you would remember him for the zest with which he peddled the magazine.

The magazine he sells doesn't talk much about the likes of him although it is advertised to cover news of the 'city from the streets'. This issue was obviously a father's day special and carried articles about
'The meaning of dad' 'successful women on making up for missing dads' and "real men cook'. But if you bought a copy for $ 2.00this nice man would get $ 1.25 which is more than what an article about the likes of him can give him.
We asked him if he has ever wondered why the magazine did not talk about the homeless and their problems and he said:
'Sorry brother. No one is interested in our stories.'
Isn't that true? We only want to hear about the successful and the rich and decadent in every intimate detail.

On our way out of the art institute he was again escorting us back to the other side asking us : '
'Have you bought your copy of streetwise yet?'
So I said:
"I will, if you let me take a picture of you"
He posed willingly and then he said
"come here ma'm I will show you some thing. You see this road that goes all the way down. That is route 66. It goes all the way from here to california and has been here even before all your other interstate routes.
Ah yes, Route 66!

Well if you ever plan to motor west,
Just take my way , that's the highway that's the best.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.

Well it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two-thousand miles all the way.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.

Well it goes through St. Louie down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty.
You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona,
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino.

Won't you get hip to this timely tip
And think you'll take that California trip.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.

I don't plan to take that trip on route 66 but I got my kicks at its beginning thanks to Will, the street vendor.

A zero's take on numbers

Numbers scare me. I think I belong with the Pirahã, a hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazon natives who live in brazil. There are just three words to denote numbers in the language of the Pirahã - one, two and many. Again ONE doesn’t refer just to a single unit of anything. It could mean small or few. And they get by , even commercially transacting with people outside their tribe and they don’t seem to suffer terribly for lack of words for numbers. It also helps that their life is very simple – they don’t even have myths or folk tales or art and have no collective memory going back beyond 2 generations.

In the world of small children there are few numbers. I know of a lot of 2 year olds who think ten is a humongous number. Once they have begun to count up to 10, they begin to think 10 is the end of the number world. I had a cousin whose son used the word ten interchangeably with vast, huge, great or enormous. When he wanted to refer to something really really BIG he would say ‘It is BIG, 10 BIG’.And he would say that when he is TEN big he would become a policeman. Of course according to him his father’s age was 10.

This is not just the case with children. Apparently in ancient Hebrew 40 was used to refer to ‘many’. For instance if they said that someone lived up to 40, it doesn’t refer to the exact number 40 but that he lived for many years. Apparently their religious book has a lot of references to the number 40 in the sense of ‘many’.
It is likely that the word for thousand was used in a similar manner in Hindu Myths. Otherwise how could we explain statements such as this :
After a thousand years of pleasure, in which he ruled virtuously, Yayati was sated with lust
At the end of a thousand years of penance to please Brahma, Rāvana cut off his own head and threw it as an oblation into the fire.
King Dasaratha had sixty thousand wives or Rama ruled for many thousand years.
(Sixty thousand wives? if we hazarded a guess about the population levels in his time this might mean that he was married to every woman in his kingdom.)

I am not a great fan of numbers and get nervous when they go beyond 3 digits. While I would be too happy to live in a world where the largest number is 2 or 10 or 40 or 1000, I can tolerate numbers up to say 100 million. This is something I can relate to. But beyond that? I think we should stick to ‘Many’.
For example
A googol is a a large number equal to a 1 with 100 zeros following it. Now of what use is a googol to me? I cannot visualize it at all. According to this page a googol represents nothing that is available in the universe.

There is really nothing left to count.
We have spanned the universe from its smallest parts to its entirety.

There is nothing that represents a googol in all of Universe!
The large number that can make some sense is
SEPTENVIGINTILLION which 10 to the power of 63 (10 followed by 63 zeros!) is the volume of the Universe in cubic inches.
But it is still useless for me – it is just ‘Many’.
The largest number that I can relate to , as I said before, is 100 million which I think is 10 crores. Someone once showed me the currency notes stacked in the currency chest of our bank and said that there was 10 crores of notes there. And I have seen a vast piece of land which was said to be valued at 10 crores. So I have a fair idea of what 10 crores looks like.
So if someone were to tell me that 10 raised to the power of 78 or QUINVINGTILLION represents the total number of atoms in the universe I would just hear it as “MANY”. I would not even miss it if one atom lost its way and we had just quinvingtillion minus one atoms. I am rather careless with large numbers that way. septenvingtillion, quinvingtillion - I am happy to put them all in one box labelled ‘MANY’.

I think there would be less dissatisfaction in the world if we didn’t worry too much about numbers. For instance a guy with 10 crore would not feel poorer compared to another who has 20 or 50 crores. 10 crore is a huge sum in itself and imagine being unhappy with that! Going by my method they would all be owners of MUCH money and hence equal.
The other day Shekar Suman ( of movers and shakers fame) made a valid point when he said that the difference between the fastest guy in the world and himself is just 5 secs.The world’s fastest man can cover 100 m in 9.69 secs and Shekar can do it in about 14.5 secs. Even I can do it in about 30 seconds I think. What is 21 seconds in our life – just a few winks! Why obsess over such small numbers! Is a person with 99.5% marks less intelligent than another who scored 99.6%. Sounds absurd but that is how we rate people these days.
I personally think there would be a lot more happiness if we did not get too anal about numbers. Imagine arithmetic problems . If the solution to a problem is 13.46389, we should be able to give an answer of 13 or 14 or many and still get full marks. Imagine how happy that would make students like me!
Don't laugh or call me silly, I can give you examples of some great minds who share similar thoughts:

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. ~Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

See!

I know a lot of you there are numerically inclined and are even passionate about numbers. Dont get me wrong. I respect numbers too although i'd like to admire them from a safe distance. Despite being numerically challenged, I have a fair idea of the importance of large numbers or small fractions in scientific research and calculations, design and development, economics and astronomy and all sciences.
All I am saying is let us be a little relaxed about numbers in our day to day dealings and may be we could all be a little less dissatisfied with our lives or even be happy.


P.S: I won’t be around till the end of the month. Meantime look after yourselves and don’t do anything I might.
Much love and Many wishes!!

Remembering the half -saree

Half-saree was still the official dress for most teenagers in Madras in the early 70s. (Pic courtesy:Kenny Wordsmith.)
Girls from liberal families wore western clothing. Salwar-kameezes were still not very popular. Mass produced salwar sets hadn’t begun flooding the market and local tailors lacked the skill to stitch them. Plump heroines in Tamil films sported tight versions of this 'north Indian' dress in duet songs which emphasized their fake breasts and fat thighs so much that they were definitely not a favorite with middle-class parents. I am pretty positive that I could have persuaded my conservative parents to let me wear a loose kurta over jeans rather than one of those salwar suits.

When I was growing up, middle class parents had just one rule by which they decided what their girls could wear. Anything that did not show off their shape in a flattering light was acceptable. I am reminded of my friend Anuradha who was an irrepressible rebel. When we were about 14, she wanted to wear tee shirts over her trousers which set off a volcano in her house. After losing the fight she told us “My mother thinks it is my fault I have breasts”. We laughed but soon I began to notice a similar subtext in the statements that my grandmother or mother made about how a woman is supposed to carry herself or walk. ‘Don’t push your chest outside. walk modestly’. When we were in class 7 and 8, the class teacher would have a talk with some of the girls and a few days later they would come wearing half-sarees. This went on till we reached class 9 when half-saree was compulsory for everyone. We experienced freedom only on the games field where we were allowed to wear divided skirts and a loose shirt. Otherwise we hid the contours of our frame behind 3 metres of cloth which covered us over the long skirt and long blouse.

When I was about 18 an older friend asked me if I had ever seen myself in the mirror without clothes and I was shocked that she could talk like that. Of course I had not. And I was not sure I could even do it because there was a kind of shame and fear associated with one’s body . It was safer behind those layers of clothing. But in college there were many times that I wished I could wear western clothing and ‘belong’ to the hep crowd. Many of us wished we were flatter so we could venture beyond the half-sari and wear smart western clothing. Like Anuradha said it seemed that it was our fault that we had breasts.

Looking back I can laugh at these memories. There was a time when I would have cringed to use the word ‘breast’ in public and here I am writing about it in a public blog. Our perception of our body and exposure norms have changed a lot in these 3 decades. Today people have no hesitation about flaunting their cleavages or wearing tight clothing to show off their shape and size. Breast implants and enhancement procedures have become as common as laser treatment for excess hair. I laugh thinking of the time when we would have been happy to delay the growth of mammaries just to be free from the restrictions that society around us imposed on us.
The dhavani or half-saree symbolized our suppression or lack of pride in our forms.
I didn't realize that there would come a time when I'd actually be grateful for the concept of a half-saree.

On friday, there was a documentary on national geographic channel on body modifications in different cultures and times . They showed the neck rings used by the Kayan tribe of Tibeto_burmese origin now living in Thailand.
and the footbinding custom that was prevalent in China for a long time.
While the former is largely voluntary and footbinding is not prevalent anymore, I was shocked to learn hear about a practice called breast-ironing practised in western Africa.
Breast ironing is exactly what it says - the flattening of a young girls’ breasts with a hot and heavy wooden rod or stone to push the breast muscles back in order to delay their development. YOu can see in the picture some of the tools used in the process and they are usually heated before applying on the breast
But why this brutality? Mothers subject their daughters to this barbarity in order to delay breast growth in their daughters in order to prevent rape and early marriage. Even when they feel their pain, they think it is for their own good in the long run.

"Before this breast band, my mother used the grinding stone—heated in the fire—to massage my chest. Every night my mother examines my chest (and) massages me, sometimes with the pestle," Matia adds. "Although I cry hard because of the pain, she tells me: 'Endure, my daughter; you are young and there is no point in having breasts at your age'."
Josaine Matia, 11 years old
Yaounde, Cameroon

This is precisely what I saw in the visual in the documentary and the victim didn’t even look like she was 11.
Read on more here:
www.unfpa.org/16days/documents/pl_breakironing_factsheet.doc

The study also gives the following facts:

Some 24 per cent of girls in Cameroon, about one girl in four, undergo breast ironing.
Breast ironing occurs extensively in the 10 provinces throughout Cameroon.sample survey published in January 2006 of 5000 girls and women aged between 10 and 82 in Cameroon, estimates that 4 million women had suffered the process.
Today, 3.8 million teenagers are threatened with the practice.
Up to 53 per cent of women and girls interviewed in the coastal Littoral province in the southeast, where the country's main port, Douala, is situated, admit to having had their breasts 'ironed'.
More than half (58 per cent) of cases breast ironing were undertaken by mothers. Other relatives also participate

.

The documentary was traumatic. It brought back memories of my own childhood and the difficulty in coming to terms with the changes in one’s own body made more difficult by the society’s ideas about a woman’s body at that time - that the more attractive it is, the more vulnerable it made its owner to predatory males. Men could not be trusted to obey rules so it was the woman’s responsibility not to attract their attention.
The ideas themselves were not very different from those of the Cameroon mothers. And I am grateful that in my culture they came up with the half-saree as the solution even though a wooden pestle was readily available in my ancestor’s backyard too.


Here's a video on the subject:
http://current.com/items/88852332_breast-ironing.htm
(Thanks Praveen.)

Life is beautiful (not)

This morning, when I started out for my walk, my world looked pretty normal. Not perfect which is normal. But when I returned half an hour later I could not recognize my road as it was packed with vehicles of all kinds honking away impatiently . It seemed as though some kind of Traffic Tsunami had moved Bannerghatta Road to our doorstep crushing the 3 lanes in-between. And then I realized that this was indeed the final scene of a drama that has been unfolding on our road for about a month. Only we didn’t see it coming nor did we get any memo despite the fact that ours is a private residential layout.

Act 1 A month ago
Without any warning hordes of people descended on our layout armed with heavy iron implements. In another age and time this could have easily been mistaken for an invasion by a hostile tribe. They even behaved like invaders just digging away all over without any regard for how people were supposed to get out of their houses or how their vehicles were supposed to get out.. My neighbour who was out of town had been cut off from the road for the next 14 days as they dug up before his garage and went away without closing it. Fortunately, as they were about to dig a moat before my house I went looking for the guy in charge and asked him what the hell they thought they were doing. He said that they were widening the road and also added that they would be pulling out the plants outside my house. He sounded like I had done something illegal by planting them there. Anyway, I requested them to try and keep the trees and do whatever they wanted with the rest. So they dug up , left a lot of granite rubble all over the street, heaped the detritus outside our houses and disappeared.
Mission accomplished – in theory we had a road of the stipulated breadth. File closed. I am sure the contractor got his payment and went home happy. Apparently it wasn’t part of the mission to ensure that the extended part of the roads needed to be fit for use.

Act 2. A week ago
Few more trucks. Few more men who unloaded huge cement/concrete blocks from these trucks which were eventually placed on the side of the road to demarcate the footpath from the road.
Here a short note about footpaths would not be out of place. They don’t actually have anything to do with your foot or a pathway. The name denotes their historic purpose. In most parts of Bengaluru, we do not believe that people on foot have any right to use roads. If they stupidly insist on it, they may do so at their own peril.
See picture: Do you actually think anyone could actually use this path? or it was even intended to be used?
Act 3. Yesterday. 4:30 p.m
A digger/excavator type vehicle arrived before our neighbour’s house and two policemen followed on a motorcycle. I watched the policemen exchange some conversation with the neighbour who seemed confused. As he went inside banging the door shut, two men got some crowbars from the excavator and began to dig up a patch outside his house.
This seemed straight out of a murder mystery. I wondered what the police were looking for – stolen stuff? a body? some evidence for sure? A small crowd of on-lookers began to gather and the police were waving them away. I pretended not to look but kept my attention focused on the goings-on. After about 20 minutes of digging they called the policemen to take a look. As I eagerly waited for some offending piece of evidence to emerge, they brought a road sign that denoted NO ENTRY and placed it in the pit and shoveled the mud back in to hold it in place.

Even this did not prepare me for what was to come this morning. From this morning it seems that about a hundredth of Bengaluru vehicles have been passing right outside my house. There is no one to tell them where to turn and how to go or that honking is not going to help. Whoever had the bright idea to divert traffic through our layout did not seem to have thought of the fact that beyond our road, these vehicles would have to use a series of roads barely about 15 ft in breadth before they can reach the next main road. So there is mayhem caused by the bottleneck at both ends making the traffic halt every 5 minutes. As traffic is flowing in both directions, there is not adequate clearance for the huge buses to turn in and out of our road. Smaller vehicles are spilling into the bylanes of our colony , crowding them but still unable to get out. This has been going on from 7:15 this morning and as I write this at 11 a.m, from my terrace I can count 9 buses, 32 scooters and 42 cars on my road. And most of them are honking away as an outlet to their anger and frustration.
And not a single traffic policeman is in sight.
Even our dogs freaked out. That is poor kaiser, my neighbour,there in the picture

After living in this country for 51 years, I must be stupid or naive to even think these thoughts. But I will ask them anyway:

why don’t authorities think it is necessary to give any advance information to the general public
(even through a newspaper ad ) especially when it is something that rips your normal life apart
-like diverting thousands of vehicles through a residential layout?
- or digging up the road right in front of your house?
- or tarring the road all through the night disturbing your sleep?
Not so much as a ‘you- have-no- choice –but- be warned’ memo?
(And don't try to be smart and ask me what I could have done if they had informed me. May be I'd have sound-proofed my house? packed bags and moved to the Himalayas? or bought enough sleeping pills?At least I would have been mentally prepared!)

Why is it that people who come to lay the roads or water pipes and dig up your roads act as though it is a huge favor being done to you? Why are honest tax payer treated like they are on relief supplies in a refugee camp? Do they know we actually “pay’ for these ‘services’ many times even ‘before’ they are provided?

How come these road-diggers get paid even when they leave the place like an archeological ruin after they are supposed to have ‘completed’ their work?

Why is it that my BSNL landline hasn’t been working for 6 days and every time I call to check status I am informed by an irritatingly cheerful voice that my complaint has been registered already and my docket no is .... And yet no one has come to repair the line? Has BSNL gone out of business and did the postman forget to deliver me the memo?

Why is there a Postal department when I don’t seem to receive half the mails that are sent to me?

Why do we pay our taxes and where do our taxes go?
Why do we elect a government and what does the government do?
Oh ya I forgot, we are supposed to SHUT UP and vote!

That, in short, is what is happening in my (rocking) life this Wednesday morning. So when this half-full-glass –types annoying- optimist friend called me now, I had to rant and let off steam.
And she said ‘ come on, count your blessings!’
‘Like what?’ I asked
‘You are A.L.I.V.E! Isn’t that a blessing?’
Y.e.a.h... I.am a.l.i.v.e. And that is a blessing ? Like how?

this is my friend, let's call her X

“Myself Rajinder, yourself?”
“I am Mr.Paramasivan. you are...?”
Once at a seminar someone introduced himself as
'I am ****, eminent economist'!

In India we have so many ways of introducing ourselves to a stranger unlike the West where the cliched 'Hi, I am Phil' meets 'Hi, I am Jack' over a firm or limp handshake. Even this one can elicit interesting responses here.
Once at a party given by an officer in the army a couple were seated at the same table and while the husbands were busy fetching their drinks I extended my hand and said 'Hello, I am Usha' and waited hoping she’d give her name. She shook my hand and said 'glad to meet you.' Not one to give up too easily I persisted 'Sorry I didn’t get your name' and she replied 'Mrs.Ramaswamy'. SIGH....

There is a reason why 'My name is Bond, James Bond' style won’t work in some parts of India. Let us try a desi version of this style:
I am Sai
Venkata Sai
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai
Rajashekara Srinivasulu Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai
.......
You see?
And hence, “My good name is Ajay. Your good name?”

While I can manage routine introductions rather comfortably as long as they involve just the name- marital status – how many kids routine but if it is one of those occasions when I am compelled to make an impression or say something ‘interesting’ about myself I get all wound up. Remember I am the person who, at my son’s wedding, told a guest from the bride’s side ‘I am the son’s mother’?! That is what happens to me when I am under pressure to charm people with my introduction.
This was an ordeal when I was learning French. As part of the orale exercises, when you introduced yourself, you were expected not just to give your name, age, profession etc but were supposed to add some ‘interesting’ information about yourself. First of all, I cannot think of anything ‘interesting’ about myself. And even if I did, how am I to be sure that others will find the information ‘interesting’? For example would it be interesting information if I told them that I solved the code word puzzle this morning in 4 mins 33 secs? or if I told them that I exceeded my career best and ate 8 idlis for breakfast?
I don’t know. I’d assume that the details of our lives are pretty uninteresting to strangers others unless you lead a spectacular (or scandalous) life the details of which you are willing to share with others. How do you make your mundane life sound interesting to a bunch of strangers?
I am 51 and I have a blog which 100 people read! ( Pause for effect...)
Yawn. Ok. whatever. What IS a blog?

And it is even worse when I find myself in the position of having to introduce someone else. Given the tricks my memory plays with me, on a lucky day I can remember either the face or the name of most of the people I know. And so you can imagine my plight when I am expected to introduce people.
It happens usually like this. At a wedding this friend from my past gushes over to my side with a ‘heyyyyyy’ and nails me to the place with a swift volley of questions on covering me, my health, my family’s health and wealth, details regarding my dog and so forth. She could be a colleague from a past job, a customer in one of the bank branches where I worked, a neighbor – I have no clue. The face is familiar and she seems to know a lot about me and I wear my fakest smile and answer all her questions while searching my memory for some helpful hint. And this is when another friend joins us. I know she is chitra as I am regularly in touch with her and after some mutual exchange of pleasantries and banter I turn hoping friend1(stranger) would have left but she is standing there with an indulgent smile expecting to ‘mingle’. I rise to the occasion bravely and say “hi, meet my friend Chitra” and I keep talking about Chitra hoping to avoid having to get to the black hole that is the second part of the introduction. Sometimes the Chitra on the scene takes the hint and asks the stranger the question that begs to be asked about her name and who the hell she is. But my friends being MY friends they usually ask me pointedly: ‘you still haven’t told me anything about your friend’.
and that is one of the rare occasions on which a feigned heart attack seems a good idea to divert the attention of all concerned.

One advantage in having a lifetime of experience with such goof-ups is that I can spot it on a person’s face when they are trying to place me while having a normal conversation with me. Sometimes I enjoy it and prolong their agony without divulging any details but most of the time I am generous and ask them :’you have NO clue who I am right?” and then I tell them. Although they protest I can see I am right from their grateful smile. A few days ago this happened at a wedding and after I gave out the details the man smartly said: ‘of course I remember you. As if I won ‘t. I was simply pulling your legs.”
Smart strategy, must try it next time!

A problem screaming to be addressed

April 29 was observed as international noise awareness day but in this country the problem seemed to have got drowned in the deafening noise of vehicles and people.
Proposals for a honk-free day were met with appropriate snickers and skepticism. A friend told me that everyday he only checks the horn in his vehicle to make sure it works - everything else is not an issue if the horn works. I think he was only half-joking and I think he is not alone in this. Noise levels in our cities are reaching annoying levels and what is even more scary is that no one seems to mind. We seem to have adapted to this even at the expense of our health.
Read on here in my post at Blogbharti
If the link doesn't work use this URL:
http://www.blogbharti.com/kuffir/environment/all-this-hustle-and-bustle/

Thank you Praveen for the image. :)