The humble gate is normally associated with hope, memory, and if you wish, more spiritually with the Pearly’s, the final frontier you so badly wish opened up to you ultimately, but never will. The plurality of the same also brings to mind the world’s richest family and their claim to affluence thanks to the lesser cousin the Windows.
Well, the humility of the gate turned villainous in the early 70’s, thanks to a politically motivated burglary that took place in the Watergate Complex / Hotel in Washington DC that eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon. Nixon’s long gone but not before leaving behind the legacy of the gate and turning in his grave ever so often. Each time a scandal pops up in any part of the world it immediately gets suffixed with what I call the Nixon legacy, the GATE. A legacy not even our friends Raju and Raja (sounds more like an audit firm) could earn with all their efforts in siphoning off more zeroes than one could imagine.
In the recent past India has been a diligent contributor to the list of gates. The list of internationally acclaimed gates you will find here. The list is long enough to run 2 rounds of a pub quiz on gates.
India’s recent contributions to the list have been Foddergate, Spectrumgate or Rajagate, Porngate which could have been rechristened the Applegate since they were using their I pads for the same, and more recently the Coalgate. With all the visibility the homonym ‘Colgate’ is getting it will not be long before Uniliver starts lobbying for a Closeupgate. In fact, the first time I came across ‘Coalgate’, I really thought it was scam related to toothpastes until I read further and realised it is more about black than white.
Let’s not forget to mention some of the earliest contributors who helped India in our effort to conquer the gates. Shilpagate, any one found crying in a reality show since were honoured with the title of Shilpagate. The monkeygate of the famed Sydney cricket test down under, any swearing / sledging in cricket these days are benchmarked against the monkeygate. The protagonist of the monkeygate was fortunate to be part of the Slapgate too.
Wish we could soon have a major water scam in India which could finally reunite the gate with its original prefix and return it to its past glory the Watergate. India could proudly wrest the initiative from the US and let Nixon sleep in peace ever after.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Great Indian Partition
Not the one you were thinking of…There’s enough been said and written about it over the last 65 years!!!
The partition I’m going to talk about is the hair partitioning every Indian boy is subjected to from the time he reaches a combable age or when his hair reaches a combable length. For me it was not any different, the routine after an oily head bath would be as follows. Either your dad or mom depending on who is free to carry out this ceremonial execution of determining the line of partition which indirectly reflects your line of destiny too. Actually destiny is also referred to as ‘Thala vara’ in Malayalam loosely translated as ‘line on your head’ while in Tamil it is more generally known as ‘Thalailezhithu’ loosely translated as ‘script on your head’. Guess the Tamilian interpretation of your destiny is more detailed & dramatic while the Malayalee interpretation is purely linear.
A vice like grip holds your lower jaw which leaves the mark of a thumb and 2 fingers on either side of your chin. The next step is to comb all your hair down and the max it will reach is the mid point of your forehead any further you are headed to a barber. Now comes the interesting part, a sharp toothed comb is run right through your scalp proportioning the entire scalp to a 1/3: 2/3 partition. The 1/3 portion is on your left while 2 /3 is on your right. But remember somebody else is facing you and making the decision on this partition. Left for them is right for you and vice versa. They wanted you to be more left brained and hence proportioned 2/3rds to their left while you ended up being more right brained since you had only 1/3rd to your left. Every Indian parent’s aspiration of their children cracking an IIT or at least a private engineering college seat stems from this. Little do they realise that there was an orientation flaw that made children write stupid blogs such as this instead of cracking Fourier, Laplace and Advanced calculus!!!
Well, now coming to the reason why I ended up writing this. I was recently watching a music show on television featuring Shankar Mahadevan who was looking far younger than his age, thanks to his hairstylist who had made all his hair or rather whatever was there to be vertically oriented with help of some wonderful gel I believe!!! This formed a nice façade around the bald spot he sported. My daughter mentioned he looked really cool and when I pointed out to her that his surface area of the scalp was more than mine she refused to believe me. Thankfully an overhead camera shot helped me prove it.
I, for one, still religiously follow the partitioning policy when it comes to combing my hair and I can look very boring. However one morning I actually woke up with very unruly hair and my daughter said I looked cool…and when I rushed to the nearest mirror the ‘hair do’ or rather ‘hair undone’ was pretty close to all the gelled hair styles sported by the gen-next.
I need to really redraw my line of destiny and try and ‘gel’ with the gen-next at least in my hair do.
The partition I’m going to talk about is the hair partitioning every Indian boy is subjected to from the time he reaches a combable age or when his hair reaches a combable length. For me it was not any different, the routine after an oily head bath would be as follows. Either your dad or mom depending on who is free to carry out this ceremonial execution of determining the line of partition which indirectly reflects your line of destiny too. Actually destiny is also referred to as ‘Thala vara’ in Malayalam loosely translated as ‘line on your head’ while in Tamil it is more generally known as ‘Thalailezhithu’ loosely translated as ‘script on your head’. Guess the Tamilian interpretation of your destiny is more detailed & dramatic while the Malayalee interpretation is purely linear.
A vice like grip holds your lower jaw which leaves the mark of a thumb and 2 fingers on either side of your chin. The next step is to comb all your hair down and the max it will reach is the mid point of your forehead any further you are headed to a barber. Now comes the interesting part, a sharp toothed comb is run right through your scalp proportioning the entire scalp to a 1/3: 2/3 partition. The 1/3 portion is on your left while 2 /3 is on your right. But remember somebody else is facing you and making the decision on this partition. Left for them is right for you and vice versa. They wanted you to be more left brained and hence proportioned 2/3rds to their left while you ended up being more right brained since you had only 1/3rd to your left. Every Indian parent’s aspiration of their children cracking an IIT or at least a private engineering college seat stems from this. Little do they realise that there was an orientation flaw that made children write stupid blogs such as this instead of cracking Fourier, Laplace and Advanced calculus!!!
Well, now coming to the reason why I ended up writing this. I was recently watching a music show on television featuring Shankar Mahadevan who was looking far younger than his age, thanks to his hairstylist who had made all his hair or rather whatever was there to be vertically oriented with help of some wonderful gel I believe!!! This formed a nice façade around the bald spot he sported. My daughter mentioned he looked really cool and when I pointed out to her that his surface area of the scalp was more than mine she refused to believe me. Thankfully an overhead camera shot helped me prove it.
I, for one, still religiously follow the partitioning policy when it comes to combing my hair and I can look very boring. However one morning I actually woke up with very unruly hair and my daughter said I looked cool…and when I rushed to the nearest mirror the ‘hair do’ or rather ‘hair undone’ was pretty close to all the gelled hair styles sported by the gen-next.
I need to really redraw my line of destiny and try and ‘gel’ with the gen-next at least in my hair do.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Forties here I come!!!
We are a month into 2012, a year of significance in my life cycle…Entering the forties, call it the naughty forties, or the roaring forties…For me it’s just the dreaded forties which I will confront in a couple of weeks time. The irony is that I just realised my younger daughter has learned to count until 40 a few days back!!! The joy on her face on telling me of a new number she learnt called 40 was the moment that inspired me to pen these thoughts on a generation that hears forty for the first time vis-à-vis a generation who dread the number. Incidentally she turns 4 when I turn 40 within a gap of 3 days!!!. The similarity lies in the fact that neither she nor I know what lies beyond 40.
The signs have not been good. The great Indian batting line up who are all my contemporaries as far as the era goes have started to crumble, the company that helped capture my face and made my parents create a book called an album has filed for bankruptcy (Kodak). Today the face and the book are juxtaposed digitally turning on the likes and dislikes of millions across the globe.
To begin with the fall of the great Indian batting line up. Dravid, Sachin & Laxman in the order are going to reach their respective 40’s in a year or less. Being sportsmen their physical wear & tear is far higher than mine. But they were cricketers who looked good & played better in their whites more than in the coloured clothing probably because they were fortunate to see a black & white picture tube before they saw a coloured one. We all belong to the generation that went through the Black & White experience an experience that conditioned us to clearly know the good from the bad, helped us draw our line with a white chalk on a black board to know our limits. The cricketers knew how to patiently play out overs and leave the ones outside the off (limits) alone. They knew what ‘off’ limits where. The philosophical iteration is that they knew to be grounded (or knew how to play along the ground) was far better than going over the top.
The impending last rites being performed on Kodak coinciding with me reaching the forties has left an emotional scar. The marketing gurus across the world might use it as a case study in the years to come to explain it as a corporate failure to adapt to the world around them to explain their death knell. But for me, Kodak has been very close to me. Kodak helped capture me in the nude when I was around a year old and my parents didn’t have the option of photoshoping my face or my bum to look fairer!!! They had only one go at it and Kodak never failed them. The number 36 meant a lot to my generation handling a camera, dirty minds stay off the number. It simply meant the maximum number of negatives being developed into positives. Kodak probably was the only company that taught us early in life that negatives can be converted to positives!!!! Philosophically this has a lot of relevance to many of the discourses dished out by the pseudo gurus around us these days.
Thank you the legendary Indian line up for teaching me to be patient & grounded, and thank you Kodak for giving me the hope that negatives can be converted to positives. Both have entertained us and left footprints in our memory. Thankfully, these are not digital footprints that can be traced back, morphed or photoshoped…Wishing all my contemporaries a 15th anniversary of your 25th B’day…
The signs have not been good. The great Indian batting line up who are all my contemporaries as far as the era goes have started to crumble, the company that helped capture my face and made my parents create a book called an album has filed for bankruptcy (Kodak). Today the face and the book are juxtaposed digitally turning on the likes and dislikes of millions across the globe.
To begin with the fall of the great Indian batting line up. Dravid, Sachin & Laxman in the order are going to reach their respective 40’s in a year or less. Being sportsmen their physical wear & tear is far higher than mine. But they were cricketers who looked good & played better in their whites more than in the coloured clothing probably because they were fortunate to see a black & white picture tube before they saw a coloured one. We all belong to the generation that went through the Black & White experience an experience that conditioned us to clearly know the good from the bad, helped us draw our line with a white chalk on a black board to know our limits. The cricketers knew how to patiently play out overs and leave the ones outside the off (limits) alone. They knew what ‘off’ limits where. The philosophical iteration is that they knew to be grounded (or knew how to play along the ground) was far better than going over the top.
The impending last rites being performed on Kodak coinciding with me reaching the forties has left an emotional scar. The marketing gurus across the world might use it as a case study in the years to come to explain it as a corporate failure to adapt to the world around them to explain their death knell. But for me, Kodak has been very close to me. Kodak helped capture me in the nude when I was around a year old and my parents didn’t have the option of photoshoping my face or my bum to look fairer!!! They had only one go at it and Kodak never failed them. The number 36 meant a lot to my generation handling a camera, dirty minds stay off the number. It simply meant the maximum number of negatives being developed into positives. Kodak probably was the only company that taught us early in life that negatives can be converted to positives!!!! Philosophically this has a lot of relevance to many of the discourses dished out by the pseudo gurus around us these days.
Thank you the legendary Indian line up for teaching me to be patient & grounded, and thank you Kodak for giving me the hope that negatives can be converted to positives. Both have entertained us and left footprints in our memory. Thankfully, these are not digital footprints that can be traced back, morphed or photoshoped…Wishing all my contemporaries a 15th anniversary of your 25th B’day…
Friday, June 10, 2011
When Valsa learnt Salsa!!!
The changing face of nuptials in Malayalee households in the recent times amazes me. Starting from the Pennukannal (Literally translated as ‘girl seeing’ even if you have been seeing the Girl long before this event.) to the Wedding reception has seen a major transformation over the years. The prosperous back in Kerala, by leading a life of absolute prudence in the Middle East, Gulf Malayalees get their sons and daughters married off in a show of pomp, splendour & one upmanship not to be undone by their compatriots north of the vindyas in patronising the big fat Indian ooops Malayalee or rather Nasrani wedding…
What follows will be a Nasrani’s account of a big fat Nasrani Wedding…a story line for Priyadarshan to try a remake in the lines of Monsoon wedding.
So when the pennukannal ceremony between 2 gulf malayalee families takes place more than the Kannal (Seeing part) there is a serious discussion on the ‘offer on hand’ between the elders or the so called karnavars (elders). And the discussions that take place between the future bride and the groom is in the lines of ‘do you know so and so’ from my church at the Indian school morning shift which was generally a girl’s shift. If the prospective groom replies in the positive then he is a flirt cos he knows a girl from the morning (girls) shift which is a rarity…If the girl is from the gulf and the guy from India then the first question the girl asks the boy is have you heard of KFC and Mc Donald’s the only 2 places where she has frequented. Its high time KFC and McDonalds consider Thiruvalla and Changanachery in their next business plan.
The run up to the wedding is all about going ahead with the procurement of distorted forms of aurum all set to adorn every possible curve on the bride’s body. So before the husband & wife become one in body and soul there is a major heavy (noble) metal influence on the bride’s body. The next is the silk worms finding their ways to the Mandarakodi (the wedding sari)…The number of silkworms is proportional to the number of years the bride’s father has spent in the Middle East eating kubbooos. Definitely a pale green wedding if you imagine all the shady green gold mining and silkworm cultivation going into the end products. There has been a conservative outlook on the wedding attire these days though a little too literally. There’s more cloth trailing the bridal wear with very little in the front. An interesting evidence of this you will find in this link vouched by none other than a person from the highest echelons of the ecumenical forum. Since it is in Malayalam, I wish to explain that it’s just a commentary on the new age wedding attires that can cause discomfort to even the men of God when they solemnise the wedding.
Capturing the occasion for a lifetime comes with a price…Out goes the traditional photographer whose forefathers spent hours in the dark room, the only place and time when the negatives develop to be positives in image and real life. These days you have the options from the descendents of the dark room developers to have fancy manipulated albums in digital formats (Digitally stretching the smile or extending the arm for the hug) and even with a couple shots of the bride and the groom, the photographers from Gods own country end up creating images of love and cosiness. Atleast these shots are on record to cherish, because the life of such scenes of cozying up with each other don’t go beyond a couple of hours of nuptial union. People hire elephants, horses and other exotic creatures to be part of their make- believe-hours captured digitally. Thank god the dinosaurs are extinct. All for a price… a price that is determined by the number of pages of the album at the rate of 1 K Indian rupees per page. A 40 page album which is the minimum number one can order costs 40 K INR.
The drive to the church for the bride and the groom is all enveloped in suspense…While the bride’s father flaunts his Dirham / Riyal / Dinar converted Indian rupees in the form of an hired Mercedes Benz, the groom if from India and not a NRI tries to do his best by pulling up at the church portico in a hammara Indian manufactured Maruthi Suzuki or max a rented Honda City…The bride goes one up on day one and there’s no stopping her…Cos the legend of the Mercedes Benz starts there and will haunt the groom to his grave…
So what about your title you may ask… Who in the world is Valsa??? The grooms these days are looking for malayalee girls who know salsa…Gone are the days when the girls were asked to sing a couple of ragas, these days they expect the bride to know salsa… In short the grooms these days are looking for the Valsas who know a thing or two about Salsa.
That’s exactly the moment when the homely Valsa from a nondescript village from Central Travancore learnt Salsa!!!
What follows will be a Nasrani’s account of a big fat Nasrani Wedding…a story line for Priyadarshan to try a remake in the lines of Monsoon wedding.
So when the pennukannal ceremony between 2 gulf malayalee families takes place more than the Kannal (Seeing part) there is a serious discussion on the ‘offer on hand’ between the elders or the so called karnavars (elders). And the discussions that take place between the future bride and the groom is in the lines of ‘do you know so and so’ from my church at the Indian school morning shift which was generally a girl’s shift. If the prospective groom replies in the positive then he is a flirt cos he knows a girl from the morning (girls) shift which is a rarity…If the girl is from the gulf and the guy from India then the first question the girl asks the boy is have you heard of KFC and Mc Donald’s the only 2 places where she has frequented. Its high time KFC and McDonalds consider Thiruvalla and Changanachery in their next business plan.
The run up to the wedding is all about going ahead with the procurement of distorted forms of aurum all set to adorn every possible curve on the bride’s body. So before the husband & wife become one in body and soul there is a major heavy (noble) metal influence on the bride’s body. The next is the silk worms finding their ways to the Mandarakodi (the wedding sari)…The number of silkworms is proportional to the number of years the bride’s father has spent in the Middle East eating kubbooos. Definitely a pale green wedding if you imagine all the shady green gold mining and silkworm cultivation going into the end products. There has been a conservative outlook on the wedding attire these days though a little too literally. There’s more cloth trailing the bridal wear with very little in the front. An interesting evidence of this you will find in this link vouched by none other than a person from the highest echelons of the ecumenical forum. Since it is in Malayalam, I wish to explain that it’s just a commentary on the new age wedding attires that can cause discomfort to even the men of God when they solemnise the wedding.
Capturing the occasion for a lifetime comes with a price…Out goes the traditional photographer whose forefathers spent hours in the dark room, the only place and time when the negatives develop to be positives in image and real life. These days you have the options from the descendents of the dark room developers to have fancy manipulated albums in digital formats (Digitally stretching the smile or extending the arm for the hug) and even with a couple shots of the bride and the groom, the photographers from Gods own country end up creating images of love and cosiness. Atleast these shots are on record to cherish, because the life of such scenes of cozying up with each other don’t go beyond a couple of hours of nuptial union. People hire elephants, horses and other exotic creatures to be part of their make- believe-hours captured digitally. Thank god the dinosaurs are extinct. All for a price… a price that is determined by the number of pages of the album at the rate of 1 K Indian rupees per page. A 40 page album which is the minimum number one can order costs 40 K INR.
The drive to the church for the bride and the groom is all enveloped in suspense…While the bride’s father flaunts his Dirham / Riyal / Dinar converted Indian rupees in the form of an hired Mercedes Benz, the groom if from India and not a NRI tries to do his best by pulling up at the church portico in a hammara Indian manufactured Maruthi Suzuki or max a rented Honda City…The bride goes one up on day one and there’s no stopping her…Cos the legend of the Mercedes Benz starts there and will haunt the groom to his grave…
So what about your title you may ask… Who in the world is Valsa??? The grooms these days are looking for malayalee girls who know salsa…Gone are the days when the girls were asked to sing a couple of ragas, these days they expect the bride to know salsa… In short the grooms these days are looking for the Valsas who know a thing or two about Salsa.
That’s exactly the moment when the homely Valsa from a nondescript village from Central Travancore learnt Salsa!!!
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