Summer Cynic

Summer is upon us and this is the time I start rambling aimlessly, more than I do normally. I attribute this to an attack of summer depression that befalls  me with unflinching regularity ,without fail, every year. I am more miserable and abundantly cranky when the heat is turned on. I have read all the self help books which says that you should simply carry the weather with you, and thus , by that logic, I ought to  be feeling snug and warm as if it was the winter. But I realize that summer simply does not work for me ; I grumble and groan and moan ,and somehow drag myself wearily through the hot summer months. I can manage the cold winters much better- I can always wear more clothes !  But summers are different, there is always a limit to the clothing one can shed, beyond a point ! In the midst of all the grime and sultriness, the grey cells ( and aging one at that !) simply fail to register the sparkle of life.

It is in this bleak state of mind that I start looking around for spots of excitement which can lift the spirits up and extort the mind to sing tra-la-la. Only to draw a blank ,mostly.

As a starter, I  contemplated spicing up my blogs with some cartoons. But then I realized that a certain powerful lady and her cohorts might proclaim “Cholbe Na” and I might find myself entertaining jailbirds, a task fraught with the risk of being rather unpleasant ! Definitely not an activity that might be classified as exciting, by any means ,especially when there is a realization that my own EQ, or “Entertainment” Quotient, is not at an all time high now .

I then turned towards the idiot box then for some much needed excitement. The loony anchors and their loonier panelists continue to thump the tables at all sort of grave issues, but somehow, they failed to excite the sleeping dud within me.IPL posed a peculiarly uncomfortable situation in that I simply could not figure out, even halfway down the tournament, whom to support ! And I was quite aghast at the dress code imposed by the moral brigade on the cheerleaders of some of the teams, and they ceased to provide any further sources of entertainment. After all,how on earth do you watch dancers dancing in the hot humid sultry summer of Kolkata wearing about 5kg of Jewellery each ? And then  to top it all, they then went about adjudging that it is simply an affront to our pristine and vulnerable society to see an  award winning movie on prime time TV as we are simply incapable of handling sex and erotica without governmental supervision.

I turned towards the newspapers for some possible excitement. All I can see are the daily relentless doses of rapes, road rages, murders, abduction by Maoists, abduction by classmates, honour killings , etc,etc. Reforms are on hold as the government is constantly busy repairing the legs of its “Kursi”, routinely  cut off with impunity by its rag tag, motley group of “supporters” who have no idea what a mess they are making of this country. Or maybe they have, but who cares, anyway ! With investments dwindling, and its coffers empty, the “sarkar” is  now trying to bring excitement in its policies by modifying  tax laws with retrospective ambit so that the “evil” investor is further spooked away from the country and we all can live happily ever after !

I realize-nothing has changed. Nothing is new !

Why is it that the summer brings out the cynic in me ?

Cross Connection

It was a call like countless other phone calls that you receive in a day. “One more telemarketer”, I thought wearily.

The voice on the other hand was clipped, polished and indeed very polite. “Not the regular telemarketer type” , I said to myself.

“Sir, I am calling from the Jaguar Land Rover showroom in Gurgaon” she identified herself.  “I hope this is a convenient time to talk, Mr. Chowdhury ?”

Normally, I deal with pesky telemarketers in two different methods. One approach I adopt most frequently is to go silent-yes completely silent! A complete state of being incommunicado ! It is only after a while that the person realizes that perhaps this is no longer sounding anything like a duplex communication. The usual pattern is that the telemarketer disconnects the call, thinking that perhaps the line is bad, and dials in again, only to find that indeed it has become a one way communication ! To make matters interesting, I sometimes substitute the silence with chuckles and snortles. This method works like a charm, mostly.

The other approach which also works is to listen in to the whole proposition from the other end and then to reply with questions like “can you please let me know what is the cricket score”, or “is it going to rain tomorrow ?” This method, while it works most of the time, sometimes is fraught with the real risk that the telemarketer actually provides me the cricket score too , while trying to sell me the policy which I vehemently refuse to buy. It does put me off guard, but thankfully , such instances are not that common.

So, coming back to the call from the Car Showroom, I was just about to slip into one of the two modes mentioned above, when it struck me that I never ever got a call from a Jaguar showroom, ever !Curiosity got the better of me and I answered, “ Yes, this is Chowdhury speaking”!

“Sir, Thank you ! Actually I had called up to fix an appointment for you to come and visit our showroom. We would like to show you the entire range of Jaguar and Land Rover Cars to you .Could you please let me know when you could come by so that I can arrange a salesman to explain our offerings to you ? “

By now, I had already slipped into the silent mode referred above, but this time not at my own insistence ! It took a while to realize that the lady was asking me again, very politely, when I could make the visit.

“Er, ahem, gee ! Right away… hell no ! Wait.. what ho , what ho ! Ten thousand Thundering Typhoons. I mean , you are actually asking me to come and visit your showroom “, I managed to blurt out, eventually .

“ Yes Sir, indeed I am “, the reply was ever so polite, the tone perfectly polished .

“But why ?”

“Well, of course, so that we can help you to decide on the car you wanted to buy . Our sales manager will explain everything right down to the smallest detail. We will help to make your choice very easy “.

I was gulping air like a fish out of water by now.”But why” , I repeat the question and then do a slight course correction.” I mean why me ? “ I manage with a final air of, well, almost despair !

“Why do you want me to come and see Jaguars in your showroom “ I emphasized the “me” in the question prominently now.

"Well , we understand that you want to buy a Jaguar, and we wanted to make the experience extremely smooth for you".

I had by then finished my feats of jumping twice from my seat and having  turned around three times around the chair, I managed to find some ounce of strength in my tone,and whimpered, “but no, I don’t. I mean of course I would love to buy a Jaguar. Absolutely positive about that . Not an iota of doubt there, mind you. But you see, I cannot afford  a Jaguar. So, I am sure there is a mistake- I am not the person you want to speak to. I said ,triumphantly, by now, having made my point.

I then continued ” You see, I am sure you have your database of rich Chowdhury’s wrong there. There is a mix up, I assure you.”

“Sir, I am positive that you are the correct person I am speaking to”. But by now, I could sense that the polite voice was slightly shaken. Why don't you still come around this weekend, just to have a look , in any case ?

With that, the phone was politely disconnected. I meanwhile continued to stare at my own set, for a long, long time !

Micro Moisture Serum !

Once upon a time when the world was simpler, buying a product was a simple event, almost bordering on the boring. If you  wanted to buy a soap, you looked in the stores for different brands and they all said that they were soaps. Or if you wanted to buy a pair of blades, you did not have to bother if they were Teflon coated or if they had an “active edge”. One assumed that the blade was just that- a blade.

With passage of time, science and its various wonderful inventions and discoveries made its way to the products you buy, and suddenly you had to put on your thinking hat more often while buying , say, a toothpaste, or a shaving cream, or a pair of shoes, which suddenly started giving you options of going in for one with a “transition bridge” or otherwise.

 And then clever marketeers took over, and before you could say “what Ho!”, you are now suddenly faced with products which claimed to contain the most esoteric and desirable components one can wish for.

I was confronted with the complexity of making a simple trip to the neighborhood hyper market the other day, when I decided to look at the products on the shelves beyond the customary brand name or the manufacturer.

“Contains Micro Moisture Serum”-declared the bottle of Shampoo as it stared at me, urging me to try this, perhaps the latest panacea for my fast receding hairline. The text sounded technical enough to awaken the techie in me, and I decided to ignore the nagging question of “just what the hell is a micro moisture serum “ ? With a flourish, I picked up the shampoo and ceremoniously placed it in my shopping basket.

Feeling rather smug with my attainment of the micro moisture serum, I went on to the section selling toothpastes. I found one with “Denta X”. Another claimed it contained “Fluro Y”. And then there was “Active crystal W”, “Whitex Z”  and “Titanium T” .Now this is no longer that simple- I realized. I closed my eyes in silent meditation, and images of white haired, bespectacled and bearded  scientists started dancing around  ! I also saw professor calculus with his invention- he was the one who had seemingly invented Active Crystal W.I decided to settle for that one- the one with “Active Crystal W”.It promised that the revolutionary new crystals would effectively give me a new pair of bright shiny teeth. My eyes sparked at the prospect of Active Crystal W getting about its business of solving mankind’s problems with yellow teeth .

The washing powder then presented some of the most esoteric inventions hitherto unknown to mankind. There was "Stain busters", "grime busters", "Active Whitening Agents", "Passive Coloring Agents", "Xylo- X", "Formula White" and "Zeta Zones" as some of the marvelous inventions tucked away in the boxes and packets of washing powders. I was now extremely happy that the fruits of scientific research is indeed a pick away, and gratefully acknowledged the swirling images of beared professors in their explosive labs concocting up the goodies so that we mortals can live a life cleaner, whiter and  better !

I left the store wondering what the wonderful professor Calculus would come up with, next !

Bang for the Buck !

Things  seems to be plodding on uneventfully  for a long time, and I find  this disturbing . Uncle Sibal seems to be hibernating  somewhere and  blogger still seems to work. So he hasn’t banned it yet. Uncle Mani I suppose continues to froth in his mouth but is somehow unseen for a while and correspondingly un appreciated. Uncle Kalmadi oscillates between being an Alzheimer’s patient and being the head of the Indian Olympics association .And all other aunts and uncles seem to be busy going around their business of being aunts and uncles. Thus, in this rather placid and thereby grim scenario, the only  uncle who can now be looked forward to provide some entertainment in the near future is “Unkel Pronob” .

“Unkel Pronob” will be the man of the season very soon, as he goes about presenting the budget . Not being a student of economics myself, I will refrain from passing technically apt comments about the exercise and it’s outcome. But don’t you worry about not getting enough intellectual insights on this exercise, for there will be enough junta on the television , banging their hands on the table , bringing forth all the intricate feature of the budget. And while they bang their hands on the tables, we, the “mango people”( err.. the aam Janta ! ) , will be busy banging our heads against the wall.

Banging our heads in utter despair, again and again, to see our hard earned money going down the drain that passes as roads and infrastructure in this country. In despair against a rotten medical system where new born babies are rubbed with acid, (unless of course you earn well enough to afford a private medical system, where you get rubbed differently). In despair against a system where you are systematically conned, duped, abused ,swindled and ill treated, all with your own money !!

Notwithstanding the above mentioned acts of banging, do lookout for the annual ritual of “Unkel Pronob” declaring how he plans to tax us more. And then watch out for hilarious acts of defense and offence by the intellectuals on TV, moderated by  shrill ,hysterical and clueless anchors, all banging their hands on  the table with thingies flying around; well, almost !  And by the time the jamboree ends, most of us “mango people” would have got enough bang for our bucks !

And while all this banging goes around, it might be worthwhile to see the banging which our famed cricketers have received, off late. Have a heart for the poor sods ! You subject them to an abject torture of playing in a bouncy wicket  against some marauding speedsters. Then you ask them to play 50 over games and then, can you believe it, a 5 day, two innings test match ! In this age of instant nirvana, instant fame and instant money ? And then you expect the “boys” to win those matches ? Insane, I tell you !

A question of answers

A great part of a man’s life is spent trying to master the delicate art of answering women’s questions with a straight face so as not to invoke her wrath, laughter, derision,scorn or tears.

The "questions" can be as varied as cloud patterns on alternate days, so nobody has yet got around to writing a “wikihow” on the said topic. Many a gallant attempts have been made, I am told, to try to organize and classify the questions into recognizable formats for which stock answers could be made available. However, such attempts have merely multiplied manifold the nature , timbre, pitch and variety of the queries which might be asked of a man, in “questionable” times !

Take for instance, “ how does my haircut look “ ? An innocent query of the aforesaid variety begs a multitude of responses, depending on who you  are responding to, what time of the day( or night) the said query is posed, the surrounding environment, and countless other factors.

The toughest element of the aforesaid question, in my opinion, would be  to decipher if the said hair has been cut at all. I have been privy to an instance where the hair dresser ( you don’t call them barbers, by the way), was visited by my wife, desirous of a haircut, or at least, such was the stated intent. It took about 30 minutes to determine and agree between them the desired end look. The exercise was conducted with numerous references to some sort of “hair style Menu” , which looked quite  like an encyclopedia to me, sitting as I was ,far away ,at a respectable distance. After what seemed like ages of planning, the hair dresser and his customer seemed to converge on to a common point of view.

The hair dresser then decided to proceed to the execution phase of the said project. He gathered an impressive arsenal of tools – scissors and combs were the only ones I could recognize. They were all tucked away at numerous pockets of his rather impressive apron. And then the action started.

I had now warmed up to the idea that now  serious action was to unfold , and was all ears and eyes. But even before my eyes could adjust their focal lengths , the hairdresser seemed to indulge in an elaborate ritual after which a few, yes, just a few, strands of hair, were cut, following which the instruments were put away ceremoniously ! I seriously thought that this must be a precursor to more action packed wielding of the instruments I alluded to earlier. However, it so turned out that the deed  was indeed over !

I mean, all he did was to trim a wee little bit- I gathered even I could have done that ! My thoughts swirled about trying to understand the nuances of his profession where 3 minutes of actual cutting was preceded by 30 minutes of planning and negotiations. Amidst that swirling cloud of abstract theories  came the question “ How does my haircut look ?” .

“What haircut ?” I blurted out ?” I mean was that really  a haircut ?” Could you not have trusted me to do that myself ?

I soon realized that one should never respond to a lady’s question with a counter question. And never ,ever, with more than  one !

Scissors and Monkey Caps

Life continues to trot along at  merry pace and it has been a while that I have blogged about anything worthwhile. Actually that is the problem- to establish what is really “worthwhile “.In the quest for a big bang, worthwhile story, the small details of life has somehow slipped by.

One reason for abandoning the blogging ship for a while has been the terrifying prospect of being hauled up by uncle Sibal for any impropriety I might dare to create( even inadvertently) , which would hurt the sensibilities of us sensitive folks and in particular the delicate feelings of a certain family who is very important for this country. I am mighty scared of uncle Sibal and his fearsome scissors, and have no intentions of taking on his might and “aadesh” ! Thus I, lay low for a while to escape his wrath !

Meanwhile , life  seems to be working like a well oiled machinery all these months, going about its  business of , well, being life !

The traffic in Gurgaon is still the same. They have made quite a few of the roads one way, which has now dramatically added to the excitement of driving. You now have the added thrill of watching out for folks who still drive the wrong way in these so called one way streets, but now with lights on at high beam, blinkers on and with  horns blaring. Perchance you dare  not give way to these mighty mortals, your vocabulary is generously increased with the latest and most colorful words of admonishment. I suspect most of these folks are in a tearing hurry to reach Anna Hazare’s campaign to fight corruption, and once I realize the nobility of the cause, I meekly step away and give them the right of way !

Winters are giving way to spring and one is now often caught in the mind numbing dilemma of whether to put on your cap or not , and if you are a Bengali, whether to put on your monkey cap or not. The monkey cap as a fashion accessory and winter necessity is kept alive primarily by the denizens of the aforesaid state. You simply cannot miss them- they being prolific travelers and tourists- complete with monkey cap and a muffler ,no matter where they go !

They have started a new FM station here which plays English music and for a change it feels nice now to have a choice .Most other stations feed you a steady dose of Powwa "charaoafied" Cheekni Chameli, heavy breathing Ooo laa laa and the most philosophical Kolaveri Di. Make no mistakes, I simply love these gems, it is only that too much of a good thing is sometimes not so good !

It is a Donkey's World !

After almost a year old hiatus from blogging I decided to check if any words could still be produced which could at the least be qualified to be of the creative variety ! The good ole' writer's block came up as a convenient prop, the lack of worthy and heavy topics to write about probably strengthened the belief that indeed there is really no worthy issue to drone about ! Or so I thought. Till donkeys struck like a bolt from the blue !

Overnight, “donkey” has become a stylish ,almost cool, word to express derision or ridicule. Of course, I here have no reference to the animal in question,for whom I do possess sufficient levels of admiration,much more probably than I do for many a creature of my own species. I am referring here in particular to the term “donkey” as used as a term of derision ,ridicule or criticism. And all thanks to a bloke who has got “ass” spelled both forwards and backwards in his name – now go figure that out yourself !

I am not sitting on any judgment here on whether our famous cricketers deserve this reclassification of their biological status-I leave that to the cricket pundits and the nationalists to sort that issue out. I wish to stay comfortably neutral on the said topic. I am sure the fire and the passion are intense on either side, and as always, I always wish for the stronger side to win .

But I do marvel at the universal unification of the diverse world of cricket and animal welfare. I don't see a day far off when Maneka Gandhi will become the chairwoman of the BCCI, as the “players” of both the kingdoms are seemingly coming together faster than you could say “what ho “! You had one player reclassified as a monkey some while back, and before the esteemed animal ( the two legged one or the four legged one-your take!) could fathom the significance of this nomenclature, you had now others being classified as donkeys ! And the classification being rendered by none other than someone who is probably completely confused about his own status in the animal kingdom in any case; the closest connection , as I mentioned above already, is the honorable presence of the word “ass” spelt both ways in his name !!

Thankfully “donkeygate” did not clash for the attention of my shallow attention span as the Anna event, as I do have a problem of digesting weighty issues if thrust on me concurrently ! I attribute that to my lack of intake of green leafy vegetables when I was in my formative years due to which the mental faculties still remain generally incapable of multiple processing .Thankfully,as the events were sequential in their unfolding, I had ample time to masticate in my own mental pace at the movement spearheaded by Anna. While I do offer all my support and admiration for the gritty gentleman, I also can't help wonder if we are all under the impression that corruption is all external to ourselves, that we are all victims of it but none of us are participants ! Don't we all like to drive the wrong way in a one way traffic,even to Anna's rally, and if the cop does manage to catch us, don't we try to wriggle out , somehow, even at a “cost” ? Maybe it is a small thing-but – are we talking here about “chalta hain” corruption and “ big bucks” corruption ? Who draws the line, and where ?

Methinks I should come back to the donkey episode-this piece is showing ominous signs of getting serious !