‘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.

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.

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.

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.