A conversation on coffee art on canvas with a close relative of mine inspired me to pen my love for the brew. The discussion was actually about the shades of brown coffee could take and how concentrated it should be. I thought to myself there couldn’t be a better time to write about coffee than, when the mother of all coffee shops (as in shops serving coffee, not to be confused with their Dutch cousins) recent entry promising to serve India with a coffee passion of 40 years. A 40 year old company bringing the coffee experience to a country which has known, brewed and tasted coffee since the 1700’s!!!
Any show of love for the brew by a Syrian Christian from Central Travancore was always looked upon with disdain amongst my tribe. A Malayalee was invariably associated with tea in Madras, the place were I had my early bearing. Thanks to the numerous tea shops run by the Nair immigrants (or as the legend goes), every street corner teashop was known by the generic Nairkada irrespective of the role a Nair played in it. Hence, a malayalee drank only tea was an unwritten edict in Madras.
Having been brought up in and around Triplicane and later on in Besant Nagar I was fortunate to be living close to Tambram community in Madras. This was instrumental in me being baptised a coffee drinker which still continues to be the preferred non alcoholic beverage. However, what I was initiated to was the filter kappi served in a davara and tumbler and during my younger days I always thought that coffee should only be served with the open end facing downwards. Growing in Triplicane the aroma that wafted through the air during a walk past a Leo Coffee outlet, the legendary coffee bean and powder retailer brings about an olfactory hallucination in me even after decades. Not sure how many of you remember this piece of trivia, the BG score for the Leo ad is what catapulted Oscar award winning musician A R Rahman to fame. Today Leo Coffee has diversified into pepper, cardamom, mineral water and even bananas religiously following the Ansoff’s matrix.
In my opinion Starbucks should have launched their India campaign from Mysore as a symbolic gesture and as a tribute to Baba Budan who managed to carry seven coffee beans out of the Yemeni Port of Mocha all the way to Mysore, and you thought all along, that Mocha was a suave name for a coffee shop and coffee was the invention of the Tambram community of South India.
The filter itself is a device that could shame the top 10 coffee maker manufacturers of today with respect to the quality of the end product. The decoction or the filtrate that trickled to the lower levels of the filter by gravity along with 2 spoons of milk kept your spirits high until dawn the next day. Probably that’s why a spoon was never named a coffee spoon. You always added couple of spoons of milk to filter coffee and not the other way around. The quality of the decoction was also a function of the mix of the quality and quantity of the pea berry and chicory that made the coffee powder. In fact the legend goes that the older matrons of the Tambram community could actually smell the brew and detect the precise ratio of pea berry, its type, and chicory akin to smelling your way to differentiate a Glenfliddich Single Malt 18 year from a 12 Year old.
The Baristas, the Mochas, and the Starbucks have all sprung up as social hangouts where one can meet over a coffee but never for a coffee. In all these outlets the taste and the aroma are secondary it neither leaves your buds wanting more nor does it kindle your olfactory.
Lastly, I cannot thank my mom enough for making this experience of tasting filter coffee each time I travel to Madras, I can be sure a cup of filter coffee awaits me at 4 am which is normally the time I land in Madras which incidentally is the most appropriate time of the day to taste your first brew with the strains of suprabatham from the neighbour’s finding its way to your ears.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Gangnam Style – The Korean Kolaveri!
There’s a vested interest in the choice of this blog topic. Gangnam Style has been viewed around 550 million times, while, ‘Why this kolaveri’ has been viewed around a 62 million times. So I have strategically titled my blog so that my counter ticks with the left over morsels. If you are one of those who googled for either of these songs and landed on my blog I’m sorry and grateful to you at the same time. I don’t want to disappoint you both, here’s the link to both the songs on youtube.
Gangnam Style
Why this Kolaver di!
I first came across Gangnam style, thanks to one of the audio rounds in a School Quiz show hosted by Derek O’ Brien. Couldn’t answer it and hence came back home and googled and was deeply depressed that this song was heard 383 million times before I did. In fact during the good old days of quizzing, the audio rounds were all about identifying the voices of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru (passages with & without ‘at the stroke of midnight hour…’), Winston Churchill or a piece from Pink Floyd and trivia on identifying musical instruments were confined to a Jalatharangam or Mandolin.
In fact I could sympathise with an average South Korean, since he must have felt remorse and pride almost simultaneously the way Korean language gained worldwide fame, just as Tamil did over an international audience a couple of months back. The irony was the common link of fragmented pieces of English strewn all over in both the songs.
When Chris Gayle and co danced to the tunes Gangnam Style after mauling the Aussies, instead of a Calypso I realised the world of music was skewed. There was a time when a calypso was composed in praise of Gavaskar in the early 70’s,and it was rated the highest honour and almost 4 decades later the West Indians who themselves are traditionally rich in music were celebrating their resurgence to a Korean song.
The sad part is that trash is being recognised as music these days and gets an unwarranted mileage thanks to curious passers by on the net. The quantifying parameter for song popularity is the number of hits it gets on youtube from where it gets catapulted into ‘fame’. Youtube is unfortunately a visual medium where the auditory credentials are overshadowed by visual impact. This is definitely not a platform to evaluate or rank a song.
But some how the mechanics remain the same , Illayaraja a legendary South Indian musician recently mentioned he was surprised at the fact that all the songs of his first movie ‘Annakilli’ almost 4 decades back were hits in spite of him being a novice and without the aid of propaganda mechanisms of today. People identified themselves with the songs that wafted through the air waves is what he said; remember these were All India Radio days with a population of 1 radio per street. The opinions or the hits on the song travelled ear to ear. The speed at which it was relayed was proportional to the distance between the household that had a radio and the one that didn’t.
People identify themselves with / patronise a ‘Gangnam style’ or a ‘Why this kolaveri di’ for different reasons. It’s not out of the love for music but more out of sheer curiosity and wanting to join the ‘been there, done(heard) that, before the 599 million did’ bandwagon. Such songs sure do get more than a million pairs of feet tapping, unfortunately that’s where they stay, never quiet reach your heart, let alone stay there.
Gangnam Style
Why this Kolaver di!
I first came across Gangnam style, thanks to one of the audio rounds in a School Quiz show hosted by Derek O’ Brien. Couldn’t answer it and hence came back home and googled and was deeply depressed that this song was heard 383 million times before I did. In fact during the good old days of quizzing, the audio rounds were all about identifying the voices of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru (passages with & without ‘at the stroke of midnight hour…’), Winston Churchill or a piece from Pink Floyd and trivia on identifying musical instruments were confined to a Jalatharangam or Mandolin.
In fact I could sympathise with an average South Korean, since he must have felt remorse and pride almost simultaneously the way Korean language gained worldwide fame, just as Tamil did over an international audience a couple of months back. The irony was the common link of fragmented pieces of English strewn all over in both the songs.
When Chris Gayle and co danced to the tunes Gangnam Style after mauling the Aussies, instead of a Calypso I realised the world of music was skewed. There was a time when a calypso was composed in praise of Gavaskar in the early 70’s,and it was rated the highest honour and almost 4 decades later the West Indians who themselves are traditionally rich in music were celebrating their resurgence to a Korean song.
The sad part is that trash is being recognised as music these days and gets an unwarranted mileage thanks to curious passers by on the net. The quantifying parameter for song popularity is the number of hits it gets on youtube from where it gets catapulted into ‘fame’. Youtube is unfortunately a visual medium where the auditory credentials are overshadowed by visual impact. This is definitely not a platform to evaluate or rank a song.
But some how the mechanics remain the same , Illayaraja a legendary South Indian musician recently mentioned he was surprised at the fact that all the songs of his first movie ‘Annakilli’ almost 4 decades back were hits in spite of him being a novice and without the aid of propaganda mechanisms of today. People identified themselves with the songs that wafted through the air waves is what he said; remember these were All India Radio days with a population of 1 radio per street. The opinions or the hits on the song travelled ear to ear. The speed at which it was relayed was proportional to the distance between the household that had a radio and the one that didn’t.
People identify themselves with / patronise a ‘Gangnam style’ or a ‘Why this kolaveri di’ for different reasons. It’s not out of the love for music but more out of sheer curiosity and wanting to join the ‘been there, done(heard) that, before the 599 million did’ bandwagon. Such songs sure do get more than a million pairs of feet tapping, unfortunately that’s where they stay, never quiet reach your heart, let alone stay there.
Friday, September 28, 2012
‘Jean’itically modified
Denims are one of the greatest inventions after the wheel by mankind. Attire with a soul, attire that lived your life for you and with you. It was probably the only attire that always carried a social message and promoted a green living much before the world realised. Save water and say no to detergents was the most important message that a pair of jeans not only preached but also practised. One of the biggest value additions a jean brought among many others was promoting creativity.
Graffiti on a pair of jeans was used to express one’s emotions, moods, likes, dislikes etc, in fact your love for someone though originating from the heart could be expressed in a less but honourable location like the thigh, all you needed was a blue Reynolds pen & a pair of reasonably faded and moderately clean jeans. Remember these were pre tattoo parlour and facebook days. You could ‘like’ Gun’s n Roses or you could even spread a social message like ‘Say no to LSD’. The eyeball share it got would compare to the ‘hits’ or ‘pay per clicks’ being proclaimed by the Social Media Marketing pundits of today.
In the past you could walk into a shop look for the waist size alone, the length was also not an issue since a couple of folds to highlight the light coloured side was an accepted norm. Moreover this also gave you a feeling the jeans could really grow on you or even with you. You would need a maximum of 5 to 10 decisive minutes in the privacy of the 4’ X 4’ fitting room. Here you could create a bonding with your partner for a couple of years or more to come and enter into a solemn agreement something akin to the nuptial ceremonies. So basically the buying decision on a pair of jeans was more an emotional event.
The sad part is that the humble Jean has undergone a major makeover over the years; today I walk into a showroom and look for a pair of jeans. To get a jean that is faded to your liking is a challenge these days, that apart, to get a size & fit is an even bigger one. Today knowing your waist size is just not enough, you need to know if you are or you want to sport a low rise slim fit, medium rise slim fit, low waist, slim, skinny and if you are a woman you have an added option of super skinny. Super skinny!!!! You need to be anorexically nervosal to fit into one of those… These were probably a result of erstwhile B school graduates doing a segmentation assignment on steroids. The options were many more, Chino fit, boot cut, arc leg, fit with Swarovski elements (the buttons were Swarovski studded). Sad that you need a Swarovski to enhance your studness when all you needed was a blue jean that could be dirtied over time and allowed to fade naturally over the years. Now they were even offering you an instantly dirtied and a pre faded jean.
The dirty look and the faded shade of the denim took years of hard work and dedicated seasoning, spilt coffee or Old Monk patches were sorted out by a localised wash so that the stains were removed but the memory associated with the event was retained. Today I pick up a Jean and it comes with an instruction booklet advising me on Bio-Wash – ‘Bio washing is a laundering process to which a catalyst substance is added to create a chemical change in the fabric resulting in a very soft finish, smoother appearing surface reduced shrinkage and pilling’. Sounds more like a part of a synopsis from a thesis on advanced Chemistry.
I used to simply wet my jeans (knee below, the depth depended on the amount of rainfall) during monsoons in Madras and dry them during the summer. This was the only laundering advice I followed and this was the most natural way of getting the right shade of faded blue.
Going back to the size and fit, I have forgotten to mention the most interesting of fits was called the Dropped Crotch, as a cricketing buff I read it as Dropped Catch in the first instance. I wondered how much a Dropped crotch and Low Waist Slim Fit would cover of me and made me lament the death of the good old pair of jeans that would fit me right, look good and smell of my memories for eternity.
Graffiti on a pair of jeans was used to express one’s emotions, moods, likes, dislikes etc, in fact your love for someone though originating from the heart could be expressed in a less but honourable location like the thigh, all you needed was a blue Reynolds pen & a pair of reasonably faded and moderately clean jeans. Remember these were pre tattoo parlour and facebook days. You could ‘like’ Gun’s n Roses or you could even spread a social message like ‘Say no to LSD’. The eyeball share it got would compare to the ‘hits’ or ‘pay per clicks’ being proclaimed by the Social Media Marketing pundits of today.
In the past you could walk into a shop look for the waist size alone, the length was also not an issue since a couple of folds to highlight the light coloured side was an accepted norm. Moreover this also gave you a feeling the jeans could really grow on you or even with you. You would need a maximum of 5 to 10 decisive minutes in the privacy of the 4’ X 4’ fitting room. Here you could create a bonding with your partner for a couple of years or more to come and enter into a solemn agreement something akin to the nuptial ceremonies. So basically the buying decision on a pair of jeans was more an emotional event.
The sad part is that the humble Jean has undergone a major makeover over the years; today I walk into a showroom and look for a pair of jeans. To get a jean that is faded to your liking is a challenge these days, that apart, to get a size & fit is an even bigger one. Today knowing your waist size is just not enough, you need to know if you are or you want to sport a low rise slim fit, medium rise slim fit, low waist, slim, skinny and if you are a woman you have an added option of super skinny. Super skinny!!!! You need to be anorexically nervosal to fit into one of those… These were probably a result of erstwhile B school graduates doing a segmentation assignment on steroids. The options were many more, Chino fit, boot cut, arc leg, fit with Swarovski elements (the buttons were Swarovski studded). Sad that you need a Swarovski to enhance your studness when all you needed was a blue jean that could be dirtied over time and allowed to fade naturally over the years. Now they were even offering you an instantly dirtied and a pre faded jean.
The dirty look and the faded shade of the denim took years of hard work and dedicated seasoning, spilt coffee or Old Monk patches were sorted out by a localised wash so that the stains were removed but the memory associated with the event was retained. Today I pick up a Jean and it comes with an instruction booklet advising me on Bio-Wash – ‘Bio washing is a laundering process to which a catalyst substance is added to create a chemical change in the fabric resulting in a very soft finish, smoother appearing surface reduced shrinkage and pilling’. Sounds more like a part of a synopsis from a thesis on advanced Chemistry.
I used to simply wet my jeans (knee below, the depth depended on the amount of rainfall) during monsoons in Madras and dry them during the summer. This was the only laundering advice I followed and this was the most natural way of getting the right shade of faded blue.
Going back to the size and fit, I have forgotten to mention the most interesting of fits was called the Dropped Crotch, as a cricketing buff I read it as Dropped Catch in the first instance. I wondered how much a Dropped crotch and Low Waist Slim Fit would cover of me and made me lament the death of the good old pair of jeans that would fit me right, look good and smell of my memories for eternity.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Siri O siri !
I'm neither tech savvy nor am I a gadget freak but after years of not yielding to temptation, I bit into the apple in the garden of gadgets and for once Eve had nothing to do with it. Basically bought it for the I too factor. So when the iOS 6 was launched I joined the bandwagon of self proclaimed apple quacks in comparing and commenting on the new software even though I had absolutely no clue on its predecessors.
People talked about the Siri every where I went. So before I could pass my expert opinion on it, I started to test it myself. But the only problem was that I was suffering from a severe bout of Pharyngitis which made me sound funny, even to me, but what the heck I was meeting Siri for the first time and thought I’ll impress her with my hoarse, deep and heavily masculine voice. I was instructed that I could say something as simple as Polar Bears and siri would return loads of info on Polar Bears and I went ahead and said the same. It returned Lopez. Guess it recognised the later part of Polar and the first part of Bear in my pharyngitis infected voice. Any day, statistics on Lopez is far more interesting than those on Polar Bears and even more, if it returns images of Lopez's campaign against furs. But my worry was Siri wasn’t working.
I tried something simpler…Recipe for Biriyani I called out.
Cleared my throat and said Recipe for B I R I Y A N I.
Siri: Can I get the recipe for Beady-eyed-me!!! How about a web search
Me once again trying to be clearer
Siri : Can I get the recipe for BNE !!! How about a web search
Realised I was missing the point, after all Siri understands American English and then once again said B I R I Y A N I with an accent of one of the call centre boys back home and tried to execute it like, I had a hot half baked potato stuck to my upper jaw.
Siri : Viviani!!! How about a web search!!!
I realised that both Siri and me were getting there. Fabio Viviani was a well known chef and in fact had a recipe for an Italian Wedding Soup. I settled for that recipe instead.
This does make me wonder if apple should really start contemplating a version for Indian English as a tribute to one of our very own code crackers and name it Suri for the Indian tongue.
Now Siri from a different context, Siri also means to laugh in Tamil and with minor phonetic variations means the same in most other South Indian languages. During my recent visit to India, noticed Dental centres were out numbering normal clinics and the kind of services being offered was interesting. Smile enhancement & smile design were a few of the exotic services being offered. Guess they had de-linked happiness from smile. The only treatment I needed to enhance my smile would be the dentist taking over my EMI’s for a couple of months. Grew up reading laughter was the best medicine but we live in days when medicines are prescribed for laughter. We will soon see dentists prescribing portable nitrous oxide filled cylinders (If you were reminded of Osho it was not intentional) which could be controlled via your I-gadgets and you could simply tell siri to bring a siri to your face. If this has brought one to yours, then my experiments with siri has paid off.
People talked about the Siri every where I went. So before I could pass my expert opinion on it, I started to test it myself. But the only problem was that I was suffering from a severe bout of Pharyngitis which made me sound funny, even to me, but what the heck I was meeting Siri for the first time and thought I’ll impress her with my hoarse, deep and heavily masculine voice. I was instructed that I could say something as simple as Polar Bears and siri would return loads of info on Polar Bears and I went ahead and said the same. It returned Lopez. Guess it recognised the later part of Polar and the first part of Bear in my pharyngitis infected voice. Any day, statistics on Lopez is far more interesting than those on Polar Bears and even more, if it returns images of Lopez's campaign against furs. But my worry was Siri wasn’t working.
I tried something simpler…Recipe for Biriyani I called out.
Cleared my throat and said Recipe for B I R I Y A N I.
Siri: Can I get the recipe for Beady-eyed-me!!! How about a web search
Me once again trying to be clearer
Siri : Can I get the recipe for BNE !!! How about a web search
Realised I was missing the point, after all Siri understands American English and then once again said B I R I Y A N I with an accent of one of the call centre boys back home and tried to execute it like, I had a hot half baked potato stuck to my upper jaw.
Siri : Viviani!!! How about a web search!!!
I realised that both Siri and me were getting there. Fabio Viviani was a well known chef and in fact had a recipe for an Italian Wedding Soup. I settled for that recipe instead.
This does make me wonder if apple should really start contemplating a version for Indian English as a tribute to one of our very own code crackers and name it Suri for the Indian tongue.
Now Siri from a different context, Siri also means to laugh in Tamil and with minor phonetic variations means the same in most other South Indian languages. During my recent visit to India, noticed Dental centres were out numbering normal clinics and the kind of services being offered was interesting. Smile enhancement & smile design were a few of the exotic services being offered. Guess they had de-linked happiness from smile. The only treatment I needed to enhance my smile would be the dentist taking over my EMI’s for a couple of months. Grew up reading laughter was the best medicine but we live in days when medicines are prescribed for laughter. We will soon see dentists prescribing portable nitrous oxide filled cylinders (If you were reminded of Osho it was not intentional) which could be controlled via your I-gadgets and you could simply tell siri to bring a siri to your face. If this has brought one to yours, then my experiments with siri has paid off.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Rainbow!!! Rainbow!!! Go away! The Painters are at play!
Never realised painting your house can be a nightmare…actually not painting but choosing the colours to paint them with. The decision making can be even more difficult when you need to convince / satisfy the colour needs of 3 women (my wife and 2 daughters).
Wife woke up one fine Friday morning(incidentally Friday is the Sunday in our part of the world)telling me she has had enough of our boring walls, though, in my opinion, It was made interesting by our daughter’s attempts at learning literature, elementary mathematics and modern art on them. I seemed to be quiet pleased watching the advances my daughter was making since I could see the writing on the wall already. Painting a house is something that you don’t want to hear on the 4th Friday of the month especially when the month has 31 days…
I nodded (meekly)and told them I will have a coat of the same colour (half white) done the next day. What followed was a discourse + argument + constructive discussion on topics ranging from Primary, secondary, complimentary colours, vibrancy, inner tranquillity, Vaastu, Fengshui…for the next 4 Hours or so which made me order a working lunch too. (Add it to the hidden costs of the painting).
We had a painter ooops! Sorry, a colour consultant pass by who dropped us a catalogue consisting of 160 shades!!!! He told us to ping him once we chose the colours and he could get it done in a day for a fortune. The first row on the catalogue read something like this, Cheese Cake, Banana Smoothie, Mango Juice, Orange Tart, Papaya, Ripe Apricot, Strawberry Jam, Cotton Candy, Cream caramel, Chocolate mousse, chocolate…wow, I said to myself, most of these were already there on my wall in various designs and shades… We were in fact thinking of giving a coat to exactly hide all the above stuff that my daughters creatively managed to adorn our walls with during breakfast, lunch and dinner. What intrigued me was both the Chocolate mousse and chocolate looked dark brown, when I drew up the courage to mention this, I was scorned at by the 3 women, one of them as young as 4 asking me if I was actually colour blind, to not see, the subtle difference between lightish dark brown and dark brown!!!
The names of the colour shades made interesting reading. I have listed a few that impressed me. To be read in the following order, the catalogue description, a mortal’s effort at colour identification, comment.
Blonde Ambition: /Yellow/ well not sure if I’m ambitious enough or am I yet to meet an ambitious blonde!!!
Lerkespore: / Creamish Light Yellow (thank God for ‘ish’, makes your description sound closer). I didn’t even know what it meant,the first thing that came to mind was WTF, googled it and found out that it was a flower. No part of it was close to the shade, not sure of the colour of the pollens though.
Mystic River: / Green / Never seen a mystic river, have seen dried up rivers but they are light brown.
Plum lips / Brownish Pink / Badly bruised lips.
Blush Cheeks / Kinda Pink / Looked more like slapped cheeks!!!
Ballet slippers / Light Grey / A slightly dirty Bata Hawai chappals
There are many more…, Angel Dust, Silent fall, Cheeky Menace, Sensitive spirit, Serene Soul, but the winner was the next one
Bank Account / Greyish Blue / I’ve known or seen them all these years in different shades of RED!!!
Mad with all this, I asked for a cup of tea and Voila …there was a shade called Morrocan tea (Orange) and that was it for one of the walls and quickly zeroed in on a Fairouza Blue (Blue) for the opposite wall since that was the only one that could balance the vibrancy of the orange with the inherent pigmental serenity of blue. (Whatever that means). The kids settled for a Gemini Twin (Purple).
At the end of the day my wallet turned RED and I was battered black and blue & made me realise that there was life and colour beyond the rainbow. I grew up watching the VIBGYOR on the other side of the window but I knew the time had come for me to throw them out of it too!
Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red would soon vanish from our colourful vocabulary.
I wasn’t kidding with all those shady names…Click on this
link to find all the names of shades listed above.
Wife woke up one fine Friday morning(incidentally Friday is the Sunday in our part of the world)telling me she has had enough of our boring walls, though, in my opinion, It was made interesting by our daughter’s attempts at learning literature, elementary mathematics and modern art on them. I seemed to be quiet pleased watching the advances my daughter was making since I could see the writing on the wall already. Painting a house is something that you don’t want to hear on the 4th Friday of the month especially when the month has 31 days…
I nodded (meekly)and told them I will have a coat of the same colour (half white) done the next day. What followed was a discourse + argument + constructive discussion on topics ranging from Primary, secondary, complimentary colours, vibrancy, inner tranquillity, Vaastu, Fengshui…for the next 4 Hours or so which made me order a working lunch too. (Add it to the hidden costs of the painting).
We had a painter ooops! Sorry, a colour consultant pass by who dropped us a catalogue consisting of 160 shades!!!! He told us to ping him once we chose the colours and he could get it done in a day for a fortune. The first row on the catalogue read something like this, Cheese Cake, Banana Smoothie, Mango Juice, Orange Tart, Papaya, Ripe Apricot, Strawberry Jam, Cotton Candy, Cream caramel, Chocolate mousse, chocolate…wow, I said to myself, most of these were already there on my wall in various designs and shades… We were in fact thinking of giving a coat to exactly hide all the above stuff that my daughters creatively managed to adorn our walls with during breakfast, lunch and dinner. What intrigued me was both the Chocolate mousse and chocolate looked dark brown, when I drew up the courage to mention this, I was scorned at by the 3 women, one of them as young as 4 asking me if I was actually colour blind, to not see, the subtle difference between lightish dark brown and dark brown!!!
The names of the colour shades made interesting reading. I have listed a few that impressed me. To be read in the following order, the catalogue description, a mortal’s effort at colour identification, comment.
Blonde Ambition: /Yellow/ well not sure if I’m ambitious enough or am I yet to meet an ambitious blonde!!!
Lerkespore: / Creamish Light Yellow (thank God for ‘ish’, makes your description sound closer). I didn’t even know what it meant,the first thing that came to mind was WTF, googled it and found out that it was a flower. No part of it was close to the shade, not sure of the colour of the pollens though.
Mystic River: / Green / Never seen a mystic river, have seen dried up rivers but they are light brown.
Plum lips / Brownish Pink / Badly bruised lips.
Blush Cheeks / Kinda Pink / Looked more like slapped cheeks!!!
Ballet slippers / Light Grey / A slightly dirty Bata Hawai chappals
There are many more…, Angel Dust, Silent fall, Cheeky Menace, Sensitive spirit, Serene Soul, but the winner was the next one
Bank Account / Greyish Blue / I’ve known or seen them all these years in different shades of RED!!!
Mad with all this, I asked for a cup of tea and Voila …there was a shade called Morrocan tea (Orange) and that was it for one of the walls and quickly zeroed in on a Fairouza Blue (Blue) for the opposite wall since that was the only one that could balance the vibrancy of the orange with the inherent pigmental serenity of blue. (Whatever that means). The kids settled for a Gemini Twin (Purple).
At the end of the day my wallet turned RED and I was battered black and blue & made me realise that there was life and colour beyond the rainbow. I grew up watching the VIBGYOR on the other side of the window but I knew the time had come for me to throw them out of it too!
Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red would soon vanish from our colourful vocabulary.
I wasn’t kidding with all those shady names…Click on this
link to find all the names of shades listed above.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Boltology!!!
This 2 min promotional video of Usain Bolt - The Movie was the inspiration to what follows.
Almost everything in life revolves around the start and finish lines with time & distance parameters playing a key role. I’m sure one can relate this to fields as diverse as Management, Professional Career, Marital life or something as simple as planning your monthly expenses.
Usain Bolt breaks down the 100 M into different phases, the first 30 M, 50M, 60 M, the last 10 to 15 M and then the last 3.5 strides. I certainly believe that we can break down almost everything we do into similar phases.
If we consider life itself as a 100 M sprint and assume 60 as an age to retire the30 M zone is around the age of 18 when reaction time matters, this is where most of us find ourselves in the dry phase struggling to find rhythm, direction and stability. Those with better reaction times would definitely have a head start but as we know all is not lost yet. It’s at this stage we keep telling ourselves to keep our heads down, and keep driving and pushing every sinew and sets the tone for life ahead. The only good thing is that we have time on our side for the first 30 M which however needs to be made up for later. The per meter timing of Bolt’s first 30 M was certainly not 0.0958 (9.58/100) seconds but far higher. Bolt philosophy here is contrary to what one is taught in B schools that head starts and first mover advantage has a great impact on the final outcome of a project. Ironically, Bolt equates the legendary Hare & Tortoise story to a 100 M sprint run in less than 10 Secs and further more acknowledges the fact that he is not the quickest off the block.
After the dry phase he has his head straight, shoulders down, knees up and gains top speed and at the 50 M mark he looks left and right. At 30 we have reached the phase where we are all set to have a quick look around and move ahead and embark on our bid to leave the pack around us behind. He goes on to say that at the 60 M mark he becomes a beast …in fact at 36 we become beasts too in our professional lives and those animal instincts has an adverse influence on our personal lives but winning in life includes balancing your personal life as well. Bolt knows by the time he has run 70 M or so if he will go on to win…At 42 we should be in a position to tell if we go on to make it in life or not. The next 20 M translates into the period of 42 – 54 in our life span where we try and dominate our respective spheres and reach the highest echelons. The last 10 M is a time when Bolt knows… nobody, no matter who they are, can catch up with him because all he needs is just 3.5 strides to cover the last 10 M. We should have also paced our life in a similar manner that the last years of our working life should be as easy as doing 3.5 strides knowing fully well you have left the competition far behind.
As soon as Bolt reaches the finish line he knows the glory is nigh and what he does thereafter is purely for his pleasure. Let’s hope that, we can not only pace our lives in the way Bolt paces his 100M but also have enough time to let our hair down as we run the race of life…
I have made efforts to use the analogy of the 100M sprint to our working life span but should not be interpreted in its literal sense. Equating 100M to the human age of 60 poses a lot of scaling challenges. Life till 60 is not about sprinting and reaching the finish line but about pacing the speed, moving faster and slowing down as and when required.
Managing a project, leading a happy married life, or even managing your domestic finances over a 30 day period when often you find there's more month left at the end of your money.... can all be correlated to how a 100M sprint is run by Bolt.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Nephew Nightmare!!!
They are nice brats; it’s just that you are sapped of all your confidence after meeting them and they continue giving you sleepless nights. One guy barely 12 is the one who made my life miserable. As I cranked my laptop to check some official mails during my recent vacation, I was pounded by questions like, why is your laptop so slow to boot up. What processor do you have on it? Do you want me to rev it up a little? Why do you have a XP theme when you have Windows 7? All these came in a barrage of less than 60 Secs. I simply tell him that I don’t have answers to any of his questions.
The elder one passes by and the lil fellow proudly briefs him on how ignorant I am, the elder one takes one look at my phone and now it’s his turn to add salt to the wound. He flips through my phone and in a fraction of time to what his younger brother took, starts pounding me with..Uppapa (uncle) do you know what Joikuspot is? I give him one of those sick, Mr Bean looks!!! The only solace is that he is old enough to figure out I have no clue and goes on to explain that it’s an app where your phone can be used as a wi-fi server / router onto which other devices can hook on. I simply nod timidly in agreement. He continues do you ‘atleast’ know what Shazam does? By this time, I’m desperately looking for my brother who happens to be their father to rescue me. He goes on to explain that when you hear a song you don’t know, it helps you identify it and tag it. An app I thought I always wanted but never knew I was carrying it all along.
I call both the guys aside in an effort to salvage some pride, explain to them that I was never electronically inclined and I’m proud to call myself a hard core mechanical engineer and that I’m more a man of real machines and so on and so forth. Little did I know that I was digging my own grave. The younger guy again all of 12, who gave me a crash course on laptops, gives me a vicious smile this time and asks if I knew what the max torque of a Lamborghini Diablo was and goes on to explain the features of a Yamaha R6, thinking that a retard like me might at least know about a 2 wheeler. Torque was the only word that made sense to me, the machine man. I don’t remember the next five questions on cars and bikes that came my way. All I knew was that I needed a stiff drink to continue listening to, not answering the stuff these guys were throwing at me. They made me feel primitive, prehistoric and mentally challenged all at the same time.
Seeing that my face saving efforts have crash landed I pick the younger guy and tell him that he needs to really know outdoor sports and not be a gaming / internet buff. He gave those you-had-it-mate look and asked me what sport I played as a kid. I proudly told him what every other Indian kid would… Cricket. He started his rapid fire once again…do you know how to bowl the carom ball, top spin, doosra, flipper, china man et al and went on to hand me a bat and asked me to face him while he started demonstrating each of those. All I could tell him was, what R. Ashwin recently said, there are only 2 balls a spinner bowls, one that comes into the batsman and the other that leaves him.
After all this, can you believe it, I still had the cheek to tell him that the only sport that Indian kids knew was cricket…All I can remember is a larger ball whizzing past my nose. He gave me one of those looks which I was familiar by now and said he was just practising a ‘slam dunk’....Slam what??? was my expression but I just told myself to move on in life and though I hadn’t heard it right, the message was loud and clear….at that point I was a ‘lame duck’.
Love the challenge (if I can call it that) the boys throw up each time I meet them…This time I’m seriously thinking of doing my homework before meeting them. I’ve just learnt what SV on Lambhorgini SV stands for…Just praying that Lamborghini doesn’t launch a new model before I meet them next!!! Love you guys!!!
The elder one passes by and the lil fellow proudly briefs him on how ignorant I am, the elder one takes one look at my phone and now it’s his turn to add salt to the wound. He flips through my phone and in a fraction of time to what his younger brother took, starts pounding me with..Uppapa (uncle) do you know what Joikuspot is? I give him one of those sick, Mr Bean looks!!! The only solace is that he is old enough to figure out I have no clue and goes on to explain that it’s an app where your phone can be used as a wi-fi server / router onto which other devices can hook on. I simply nod timidly in agreement. He continues do you ‘atleast’ know what Shazam does? By this time, I’m desperately looking for my brother who happens to be their father to rescue me. He goes on to explain that when you hear a song you don’t know, it helps you identify it and tag it. An app I thought I always wanted but never knew I was carrying it all along.
I call both the guys aside in an effort to salvage some pride, explain to them that I was never electronically inclined and I’m proud to call myself a hard core mechanical engineer and that I’m more a man of real machines and so on and so forth. Little did I know that I was digging my own grave. The younger guy again all of 12, who gave me a crash course on laptops, gives me a vicious smile this time and asks if I knew what the max torque of a Lamborghini Diablo was and goes on to explain the features of a Yamaha R6, thinking that a retard like me might at least know about a 2 wheeler. Torque was the only word that made sense to me, the machine man. I don’t remember the next five questions on cars and bikes that came my way. All I knew was that I needed a stiff drink to continue listening to, not answering the stuff these guys were throwing at me. They made me feel primitive, prehistoric and mentally challenged all at the same time.
Seeing that my face saving efforts have crash landed I pick the younger guy and tell him that he needs to really know outdoor sports and not be a gaming / internet buff. He gave those you-had-it-mate look and asked me what sport I played as a kid. I proudly told him what every other Indian kid would… Cricket. He started his rapid fire once again…do you know how to bowl the carom ball, top spin, doosra, flipper, china man et al and went on to hand me a bat and asked me to face him while he started demonstrating each of those. All I could tell him was, what R. Ashwin recently said, there are only 2 balls a spinner bowls, one that comes into the batsman and the other that leaves him.
After all this, can you believe it, I still had the cheek to tell him that the only sport that Indian kids knew was cricket…All I can remember is a larger ball whizzing past my nose. He gave me one of those looks which I was familiar by now and said he was just practising a ‘slam dunk’....Slam what??? was my expression but I just told myself to move on in life and though I hadn’t heard it right, the message was loud and clear….at that point I was a ‘lame duck’.
Love the challenge (if I can call it that) the boys throw up each time I meet them…This time I’m seriously thinking of doing my homework before meeting them. I’ve just learnt what SV on Lambhorgini SV stands for…Just praying that Lamborghini doesn’t launch a new model before I meet them next!!! Love you guys!!!
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The gate that opens doors!!!
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.
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 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…
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