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.
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