Dandiyas & Pizzas

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Happy DP!

This year we didn't stir out of home during Puja, unlike the past two years, to visit the far-off Bengali Puja Pandals here. 

Sonoo got too busy transitioning his charge to his colleagues before he leaves his old organization. He is leaving for new pastures (in Hyderabad itself) on Oct 27.

Last night all of us went downstairs to our Community Space to witness what the majority North Indians here called 'Dandia and Garba'....of Modiland rather than dhaks and aarti.

It was fun to watch well-fed ladies in their unaccustomed saris gyrating round and round to beats and trying to hit each others' sticks for reasons best known to them. 

And eat exotic stuff like pasta and pizza (from specially erected stalls) instead of loochis and alu'r dum and mochar chop.

Ishani enjoyed the most as usual. Sonoo got busy talking to his friends and Sailaja to hers. 

And I as usual sat alone gathering wool for all of 2 hours. 

These days I am sleeping like a log and re-posting when I am not. 

...Posted by Ishani

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Footloose - Repeat Telecast

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Imelda Marcos, wife of President Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines, was often in the celebrity columns of our youth. Known as the Steel Butterfly, she declined to buy the Empire State Building saying that at 750 million dollars it was overrated and not worth it. She did buy the Crown Building, the Woolworth Building and the Harold Center though (they must have been ok at about 300 million dollars).

But she is famous most for her signature collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes...wow! 

didi!!!

As I said earlier, none of us boys and girls at our Village School in the 1950s ever had any footwear.

Not that all of us were as poor as church mice. We had our Reddy landlords at either end of the high street, and between them they owned the bulk of the Village farms, very fertile. They didn't farm them with the sweat of their brows though. They had a couple of chauffeur-driven Fords and Chevrolets in their stables alright.

But their kids were footloose like us...born free, living free and forever free like Joy Adamson's lion cubs.

The concept of students shackling their tender feet was just not there. Our teachers did wear ancient chappals to the School Assembly as part of my HM Fathers' dress code, but were happy to leave them in their common room.

My father bought his chappals from the gray market of Nellore; and they were forever keeping him busy with his hobby of nailing. He had this 'nails-box' of which he was proud, and that deal-wood thing had his signature collection of 'chappal-nails', two hammers (the parent one for nailing his walls and the baby for nailing his chappals) and tweezers to pluck the bent nails. I have a suspicion he used to straighten them with another tool in his kit.

There were no cobblers in our street.

My mother, like any other middle class brahmin housewife, didn't stir out of our home much till all her seven kids grew up and she lost her youth thereby. Then on she wished to visit temples and ashrams and I guess she inherited the 'ex-chappals' of her college-going daughters. She is now 92 and her wealthy daughters gift her Imelda-style footwear, but she is happy with her didi-style rubber ones.

In fact the arrival in the Indian market of Hawai Slippers in the 1960s revolutionized our foot-habits. They were dead cheap (like our cell phones) and even village belles took to them like their cell-phones now. They were not regarded as 'bathroom' wear...who needs footwear to the bathrooms anyway?

When in the 1980s KGPian students started wearing their Hawai Slippers to their Exam Halls, there was an uproar and a dress code was invented by the authorities. And us invigilators were supposed to inspect their feet (instead of their roving eyes) and warn the miscreants.

This shows how fashions change...what was high class in the 60s became taboo in the 80s...sigh!

All I have against the ever-convenient Hawai Slippers of our University Years was that their straps tended to ease out of their holes while we were running desperately to catch the city bus to the Exam Hall. And the only thing you are supposed to do is remove and push them into your book-bag if you are lazy enough to carry one for a last minute 'preparation'. And, once seated in the bus, you try and push the dangling strap back into its hole and be careful. Ladies had the advantage that they carry safety pins with them in their money purses and so can use them to 'fasten' their temperamental slippers.

Like in any culture, you can't cultivate this footwear habit if you are not born to it (Ishani has a collection of half a dozen shoes with Son et Lumiere effects).

So, I am so happy and comfortable nowadays in Hyderabad. After exhausting all options, from Chinese, Batas, and other fancy brands, I have settled down to what are called Diabetic Chappals...not that either me or them have sugar complaint. Just that they are soft on the skin, wear out uniformly, and their straps don't come out of their holes.

Sweet and Sugary. They do cost a bit and at times I feel like Imelda pampering her feet, but what is a son for, if he doesn't care to pamper his Papa's Holy Feet?
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Spit Spittle Spittoon - Repeat Telecast

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That sounds a nice conjugation like: Little Less Least

When we were kids in our seaside Village, there was this new neighbor of ours who used to frequently rush out of his room, clear his noisy throat, spit on the ground, and rush back like Mr Hyde.

Myself and didi were curious because his spittle was red in color.

And we used to go forth and investigate. And were caught in the act and got a thumping whack on our tender backs. 

Turned out he was in the last stages of PT and was soon shifted to a sanatorium (as the gag went...).

I think the urge to spit is supremely compelling and brooks no dealy unlike other evacuations.

Well, like everywhere else, we boys used to have several competitions involving parabolic trajectories for their height, horizontal range, time of travel and accurate target practice.

And spitting competitions were regular features, with prizes.

And then this new kid on the block arrived and charmed us all with his art and craft of blowing bubbles out of his saliva on his tongue and releasing them in air. I prayed to him, learned it the hard way, practiced it till I became perfect, and was caught square in the act while exhibiting it to my younger sisters, and walloped before it became addictive.

And I read in PGW's Performing Flea that there was a spitting expert among his chums while they were imprisoned for a year and more by Hitler's Gestapo.

Apparently this chap became a hero since any such recondite gift comes very useful to beguile time in a jail.

And when I reached KGP and visited the BNR Hospital, there was this spittoon by the blood-red wall with the legend:

"Spit here"

It almost seemed like a Commandment asking me to walk up and obey Dr Kohli's spitting injunction...I never chewed paan.

That reminds me of the Readers Digest joke where a kid sees a gentleman with a camera, and a button on his lapel with the inscription:

"Press"

And the kid asks her mom:

"Mom, what happens if I press him?"

Enough of this childishness...we now come to serious business:


Excerpts from today's dumbfounding DC article titled:

"Saliva, a better sample than blood"

"Spit is considered dirty and insulting, but Indian scientists have rediscovered a 2000-year-old secret about this wonderful fluid.

Spit or saliva is more than a chemical secretion in the mouth; it is a reflection of one's health, both mental and physical, they say.

...Researchers elsewhere have discovered that saliva is capable of informing whether or not a woman is pregnant...spit on a special strip and it will inform you if you are pregnant."

The upshot of this discovery is truly mind-boggling.

I will confine myself to only one joke doing the rounds in my time at the Faculty Hostel at KGP:

First you need to know that some communities in India are matriarchal...meaning wife dominates.

Banta Singh who fell in love and married one such girl was once suffering from an unknown fever, went to the Hospital, and was ordered to give his urine sample for examination.

Which he did.

Unfortunately the new trainee nurse dropped Banta's test tube, broke it, spilled its contents, got scared, and quickly filled another tube with her own, and passed it on to the Lab Assistant as Banta's.

The next day Banta went and collected his report which said:

"Pregnancy confirmed"

And he ran back to his wife and bemoaned:

"I TOLD you not to dominate me in every conjugal act, didn't I?...Look now what happened!"


...Posted by Ishani

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Queues - Repeat Telecast

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On queues I am a world-class authority, certainly...

Before I write anything on any subject nowadays, this 'world-class' thing gnaws, tugs and pulls at my conscience...can I prove to the world that I am entitled to talk about it?

I don't know now, but during my middle ages at IIT KGP it was universally acknowledged that IIT Kanpur was world-class, particularly their Physics Department.

As a proof of this I can cite that only IIT Kanpur (apart from MIT) had the 'last laugh' column in their Reco Forms asking the Recommender to commend himself or herself (in as many words as possible) proving his or her competence to recommend someone else. Ideally that meant I had to submit a Reco for myself from my HoD, he from the Diro KGP, he from the Diro Kanpur, and he from the most world-famous Physicist in his Physics Dept, thus sort of closing the loop.

Anyway, in Queuing Theory I have a cute and cuddly 20 page Paper in a world-class Journal called International Journal of Production Research (UK)

That Paper bristles with exact analytical solutions of a horribly nested nonlinear inhomogeneous double integral equation which is neither of the Fredholm nor of the Volterra type.

Well, Queuing Theory is one thing and its Practice quite another.

No amount of Theory helped me beat queues anywhere in India.

Let me cite today's example:

I wanted to send a lovable packet of Ishani booklets to UK.

I took the cute packet to the nearest Post Office and found that there were 2 counters side by side manned by two handsome but no-nonsense middle aged ladies.

One of the counters had a queue length of about 20 souls interspersed with ladies and gents (Hyderabad POs are un-chivalrous...they have no separate queues for ladies).

The other counter had none in front of it...the dame manning it was reading the newspaper.

So, I ran to her, tried to insert my packet in the cubbyhole in front of her, almost damaged the packet, and then dropped it over the counter.

The annoyed lady looked daggers at me, read the address and asked: "Speed Post or Registered?".

At random I said: Speed Post.

She then weighed it and wrote (to my immense delight) that the packet weighed 495 grams...I beat the system by 5 grams. She then tore off a cute-looking Speed Post Sticker and stuck it to the packet.

I asked her how much should I pay?

She scowled and replied: "How do I know...she knows it".

I then looked at she, switched on my charming toothless smile; and she abruptly ordered: "Join the line!".

I was by then the 41st queuee...there was Hyderabad bundh for the last two days...

I then joined the fag end of the comatose line. After half an hour, when my turn came, the dame looked at the packet, fiddled with her mouse, up and down and right and left, and after 2 good minutes, asked the earlier dame beside her to hand her the price-printout since her system didn't seem to be working.

The original one coolly handed the printout, damn her, to the recent dame who looked it up and looked it down and said: Rs 1020.

I almost fainted and murmured weakly that it ought be just around Rs 200.

She scowled at me and said: "You said Speed Post!"

I demurred and asked her to forget about the speed thing. She then looked at the printout again and confirmed that for ordinary Air Mail it is indeed Rs 210.

I heaved a sigh of immense relief and opened my wallet.

She brushed me aside and asked me to go back to she, whose pleasant and profitable duty it is to sell stamps for money (she gets a commission I guess).

I then got back to the earlier counter and joined the tail of her queue which by now has about 13 hapless folks....

You get the picture right!

And I, a world-class author in Queuing Theory...

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Hairfare - Repeat Telecast

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Anything to do with hair fascinates me...because of mankind's attachment to it...maybe because he is taunted as the Naked Ape.

See e.g.

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/11/hairlooms.html

There is yet another routine episode in today's DC:

"Teacher suspended for shaving student"

The details are routine too. Teacher asks the student to cut his long hair short and he refused. And the Teacher became barberous in public and the rest follows as night follows dusk.

Both seem to be giving exaggerated importance to hair and its length.

Well, there are Guinness Book Records of all sorts for hair.

First of all, long hair is a nuisance because it is a handicap in close encounters of all kinds like Rugby.

There is a closeup photo in DC of the latest Royal Wedding in London: Princess Zara Phillips (a former equestrian eventing world champion) kissing England Rugby player Mike Tindall after their wedding.

Tindall is as hairless as a Balajee Devotee at Tirumala after his ceremonial tonsure.

In our youth there was a famous Hollywood Actor Yul Brynner (Ten Commandments) whose signature style was his tonsured head. It became a craze and several of his fans sported a hairless style; while any bald person would give half his wealth if only he gets his hair back (like Groucho Marx said when he was surrounded by a dozen of his half-naked female fans on his pre-viagra 80th Birthday: "I can give a million dollars for just one erection").

Draupadi is said to have the most beautiful tresses of all. And she was a devotee of Krishna whose two legal wives Rukmini and Satyabhama were envious of her lovely hair. And, as day follows dawn, they taunted Krishna that he was partial to Draupdi on account of her hair.

It is said that Krishna then asked them to go and comb her long tresses. When they did it, they found to their bewilderment that each hair of each of her tresses was singing Krishna's name...some special sound effects there.

And it was rather unwise of Dusshasan to drag Draupadi by her terrific hair into the Court. And she then vows that she would do her hair only after her husband Bhim douses it with the arterial blood of that goon...some hair-raising and blood-curdling vow that...why couldn't he drag her by her hand politely...

And there is this Sage Durvasa who was so cut up with Ambarish that he plucks a single hair from his tresses, transforms it into a demon, and commands it to chase Ambarish.

Just one strand of hair!

And I learned in my Physics Class that, of all hairs, horsehair is the roughest and toughest. Apparently in the olden days before the terrific advances in Materials Science horsehair was used in violin bows...it can catch the metal string and pull it in what is known as the 'stick-slip' mechanism of friction.

Also, the routine treatment for warts during our childhood was to tie them with a horsehair and keep pulling it tighter and tighter every day till the wart eventually falls off...never to recur.

Fur is after all hair, no?

I didn't believe when someone claimed that shawls made of Pashmina wool can be slipped through a finger ring all the way.

Till I actually saw the visual in that nostalgic Doordarshan Program called Surabhi of the 1980s: 

http://www.indiasurabhi.com/surabhi.html

hosted by Sidhardh Kak and Renuka Shahane (she was in the news recently).

Any talk of good old Doordarshan brings up Bhaskar Ghose...you scratch any good thing of life and you will find a Bengali lurking...


...Posted by Ishani

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Flies & Others - Repeat Telecast

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Hyderabad is a historical city with many crumbling palaces, stinking lakes, teeming masjids, tottering museums, towering sky-homes and a cosmopolitan culture.

It has a colorful character of its own...like say Calcutta.

It has a salubrious climate, being dry and at a height away from the seacoast.

If I were younger by half a century, I would have taken innumerable bus-rides and enjoyed its attractions.

As it is, I stay lolling in bed most of the day.

But I enjoy the whole gamut of the city vicariously by a wonderful vehicle called Deccan Chronicle.

This daily has an ineffable character of its own.

In 2004 it was but an unreadable rag limited to the hoi polloi of the city.

But then M J Akbar, the Great, took over as its Editor-in-Chief and transformed it within a couple of years into a widely read daily with numerous editions in many towns of AP as well as Chennai, Bangalore and so on.

I love it and spend the most part of the day browsing it. I also take ToI, but it is a filler.

DC has many features that grip me.

Its print is clear and easy on the eye. It has several stunning color photos on each page. Also several on its header-banners on each page. It has wonderful cartoons by Subhani and Sudhir Telang. It has an Editor's Page and an Op-Ed page with several pleasing articles from the stalwarts of not only Indian Journalism but from syndicated columnists from NY Times, London Times, Guardian, Spectator, Herald Tribune and many others.

But its forte for me is that, like me, it is totally erratic in its English. This was an inspiration for my booklet: Limericks & Light Verses and several blogs.

But the best part is that it comes up with piquant tidbits that excite my fancy.

RKN wrote that he used to read newspapers for their tidbits which not only pleased him but gave him several ideas for his blogs.

Today, for instance, this 'news' item took me by storm and led me to nostalgia:


London, June 28:

...People who have consumed a pint or two of beer are 15% more likely to be bitten by a mosquito, according to a new research.

Researchers believe the pests are attracted to odour and breath changes caused by alcohol. They added that mosquitoes could have learnt to associate the beer odour with an increased lack of defensiveness against bites from boozy drinkers...


I leave it to the imaginative readers to explore for their own pleasure the various ramifications of this invaluable piece of research which are mind-boggling.

In my boyhood in my seaside village I don't recall having met with any mosquito. Maybe I was so tired after a whole day of outdoor play that I didn't just feel their bites. But for sure there were no mosquito nets, not to talk of repellents. Perhaps, the sandy soil absorbed all water and these bloodsuckers couldn't breed profusely.

The first mosquitoes that bled me were the giant king-sized animals in KGP. The Faculty Hostel where I lived for seven years was prone to all-night power cuts whenever there was a Nor' Wester. I didn't have the cash to buy a mosquito net under which all Bengalis lived most of their nights. And I was claustrophobic to boot.

So, I used to heave myself on to the iron bench on the lawn and spend the whole night sky-watching and smoking.


Flies are the first cousins of mosquitoes. But unlike these vampires, flies are a hell of a nuisance.

When I was staying in my MD uncle's place for two years, I developed a hostile aversion to them. His wealthy patients used to gift him gunny bags of delicious mangoes. That was it...the whole house became a swarm of flies. Since then I run away from any mango I see and never buy them for myself.

The problem with flies is that they land on your nose, ears, and such other tender body parts and tickle you. And they are so smart and fly away before you can land them.

But they are diurnal creatures and don't disturb you in the night, as opposed to mosquitoes. Between the two, they trouble you the whole day.



Then there were bedbugs. These are real vampires...mosquitoes are just kids.

My University town of Vizagh was overflowing with them. One could see armies of bedbugs crawling up the walls in the daytime; and they fall down on beds in the night.

They are insidious...they wait till you are sound asleep...and they inject a very tiny but effective dose of anesthetic and lull you before they start sucking your warm blood. You realize the harm done to you much after these buddies left your body...you start itching all over..and can't go to sleep again.

I have taken readings and found that they swell ten times their volume after they are done with you...in the daytime they look like ants...and at dawn they look like beetles.

Tik-20 eradicated them.


Then there were leeches.

Most of you might not have seen them.

They reside in ponds and rivers.

And when you jump in and take that refreshing bath and come out, you will notice that there is a tiny worm that attached itself to your leg. You try to shuffle it off first by shaking your leg, then by dancing, then by literally holding it and trying to tear it away...no way.

You run home and by then the leech would have swollen by a factor of ten and still going.

There is only one way to get it off you...add a pinch of lime (choon); and it will drop down and crawl away.



If you thought that this blog is merely about the flykind, you are mistaken.

It is an allegory...


Webster:

allegory

: the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence 


...Posted by Ishani


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Income Tax - Repeat Telecast

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Nothing quite competes with the relief of submitting Tax Returns (that I did just now).

Edwin used to ask me to go easy on mailing him during the fortnight before he was due to file his Tax Returns (most unwillingly).

Like there are about one percent perverts in any random sample of men, so too in nations...I am told the Scandinavians feel proud to pay their taxes...a chilling revelation.

Not so the Americans I am sure...everyone over there looks reluctant just like us; and the two great Political Parties thrive on their different outlook as to who should be taxed more, why and why not...Yankees have their hearts in the right place...their pockets.



I never heard of Income Tax till I joined IIT KGP. Neither my father nor my two literary uncles ever fretted over them...

As I said earlier, I joined my job at KGP in 1965 with a whopping gross salary of Rs 465 (the cost of a packet of nappies for Ishani now).

And on my first payday, I had to join a crowd of about hundred walking to the Account Section in the Old Building wading through thigh-high grass, stand in a queue, and get paid in hard cash...altogether a sweet experience.

And the high continued till the next March when I was sent away empty-handed...my pay was not released since I didn't file the IT Returns...I asked what are they?

I was then guided to the IT Clerk, who scowled at me and seeing my crestfallen face, he asked my Name and Roll Number, pushed the IT Form in front of me, and started dictating all the entries offhand (with a reprimand or two for trying to backchat)...he was the first genius I met at KGP...he knew all about me...the only question he asked was if I was a bachelor to which I proudly replied 'yes' and asked if it mattered...he said, of course...I would have got immense tax relief if I had a couple of dependent parents staying with me, a wife and kids...he calculated and told me that if only I had six kids I didn't have to pay any tax at all, citing offhand three or four Sections of the Tax Code... a hefty tome.

This truly was a double whammy...1. No wife and 2. Double tax.

After seeing that hefty tome which was twice the size of both volumes of Morse and Feshbach combined, I decided that the exercise was beyond me and fell on his benign feet every year.

Things changed within a decade. During the Emergency of 1975, Sanjayjee rather peremptorily withdrew all concessions for kids as a disincentive...rather too harshly as the victims reported...Bengal as usual escaped the trauma...at least I knew of none in our Bachelor Hostel who was dragged and sanitized...at least they didn't report it to me...perhaps the incentive for undergoing the surgery was the pittance of Rs 100 and a glass of milk...later on the incentive became more aggressive...one full increment as 'special pay'.

I didn't succumb...one has one's notions of privacy if not principles...

But by then my Guardian Angel IT Clerk had retired and I got tired of catching the duplicate's grumpy feet which didn't seem so attractive.

So, I took up the Code Book and 'studied' it...and found that it was no tougher than cracking Wyckoff's Crystal Structures...a compendium of which only one pertinent page is required to be mastered depending on which crystal you seek the structure of.

By then DB joined me in my Office; and was mystified, stupefied, petrified and electrified all at once when he watched me fill up my IT Returns all by myself...he used to go to the only IT Lawyer on Campus and fall on his costly feet.

DB never handled Wyckoff...being an out and out theory man...

So, between me and he I was declared the IT Genius and he just copied my IT Returns...we had the same lousy pay and no extra income.

Once, I was away from KGP when the IT Forms reached our Office and DB thought rather uppishly why not he do it himself with a li'l bit of effort and a couple of fags.

When I returned, his face was ashen and he declared that for donkey's years we had been paying only about half the due taxes and we would duly go to the Midnapore Jail and lodged in the same double-dungeon.

I knew what was the matter with his calculations...one learns by prior experience.

So, I asked him if he deducted the Standard Deduction allowed to us from our Gross Income.

He said: "Standard what?"

To this day I recall his chagrin with pleasure since it reminded me (lightheartedly) of Jerome's crack:

"When George is hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world."


...Posted by Ishani

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