The Great Indian Marriage

It is official. My sister is taking the plunge, nay dive, into holy matrimony, in the wee hours of the morning, on the 24th of November, 2008. Gosh. In one felled swoop, she has done me a huge favor. She has fulfilled my parents dream of arranging a marriage and hopefully, relieved me of some of my supposedly future responsibilities, vis a vis, my marriage. On this happy note, I thought I would shed some light on a traditional Indian Marriage.

It is a tamasha. Anglophiles, navigate here. A pure, unadulterated tamasha, except for the folks who are actually organizing it. Being smart and equipped with a plethora of gray cells, mon ami, I'm flying in a week before the wedding, giving her a good kick on that auspicious day, and flying back a few days later. My parents disapprove of such frivolity and in a few hours, once I send them this link, I expect emails and phone calls, gently chiding me with respect to my infantile behavior. Pray, let me state my case.

In an Indian wedding, the bride's parents are entrusted with the most important task, that the groom's party, have a rollicking time. My parents have taken this to heart and decided to hold the marriage in Shillong, a picturesque place. Throw in a trip to Cherrapunji, and a few local caves, it does make a good vacation to boot!

It is however, not renown as the place one goes to for hosting conventions and the like. Hence, the scarcity of hotel rooms available at any given time. My father, being resourceful, has taken it upon himself to grab as many rooms as possible, by hook or by crook. The latter, brings me to a segue.

My father is a cop. A good one at that. What is debatable is whether the police contingent in Shillong is better at knocking on doors to solve a crime, or asking the owner of the said door, for a tally of avaiable rooms. The crime rate however, has dropped quite significantly over the last couple of weeks.

I thus propose my pet theory of the week, that every cop in the Greater Shillong area, be made to hold their children's wedding in Shillong. Within weeks, the average malcreant would realise that crime doth not pay, not with the plethora of weddings taking place, and hopefully, lend a helping hand to the proceedings.

On another note, I am aggrieved. Ideas of mine have been shot down. Unfairly, methinks. For instance, the cops have a parade ground. I have suggested that we make use of that lovely green field and hoist tents up to host our guests. Reveille would be provided by the police band, which can also double up and perform at the wedding. The only item off limits would be the "Beating Retreat". This idea was shot down.

Hmph. Deep down though, I'm looking forward to it! :)

Simpu Singh All in one

I've always been a big fan of Channel [V] and their advertising gimmicks, from Quick Gun Murugun, to Lola Kuttu and now this!

Long live Simpu Singh!

Songs to grow up with

I view my stay at the hostels of VJTI as my passage into adulthood. There were many memorable experiences, one of them that sticks out, is my initiation to music. Good music to be precise.

I think we were blessed to grow up listening to Pink Floyd, Metallica, Black Sabbath (I have to thank Shreeram for introducing me to Ozzy). I look at today's music scene and I think today's generation will still grow up listening to Floyd, rather than Britney.

Waking up on an early Saturday morning and heading down to Sharad's room, who had this awesome music player, was one of the highlights of the weekend. I dub the music player unforgettable because of the innumerable matchsticks and coaxing it needed to make it play a tape. Sharad had an impeccable naming convention when it came to his tapes. I presume his dream was to be a poet, hence his tapes were named "Cranky", "Shanky", "Hanky" and "Wanky". Wanky, was his favorite, lets not go delve into the why.

There would be a group of guys just lying about silently, listening to music. An hour later, the party would unwind, to make the daily pilgrimage to the canteen, for scrambled eggs and bread. Many an afternoon, after a sumptous lunch, we'd head back to listen to the same songs, lying about on bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering when the plaster would crack and fall down. That, is another blog post altogether.

Last evening, at a pub, they played "The Freshman"



and the flashback was so intoxicating, for a moment I was transported to my friend's room. This morning, I spent an hour on YouTube, tracking down our most played songs..

'74-'75 - The Connells



"Time of your life" - Greenday


"Losing my religion" - REM


"Unforgiven" - Metallica


"Nothing else matters" - Metallica


"Wish you were here" - Pink Floyd


"Alive" - Pearl Jam


"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" Black Sabbath


I hope you enjoy listening to them.

Euro-English

A rather old joke I found when trolling through my email. Best read aloud loud! If swotted up, a great hit at a party! :)

*******************
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of the 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replased with the 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double leters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl will be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'. During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to oza kombinations of letas.

After ziz fifz yer ve vil have a rali sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu anderstand ech oza. Ze drem of an united urop vil finali kum tru!

My conversation with tech support, Bangalore

I hate to belittle my fellow countrymen, but enough is enough. Outsourcing does have its positive points, but when companies back home in India feel any person who is on facebook, is capable of support, I get jittery, nay make that irritated.

Note, the following conversation is high on the geek scale, feel free to dismiss it and move on.

My desktop computer at home, wasn't able to ping a particular server that I'd setup at home. The computer in question, was named "herenya". I called up my ISP's help desk, and suddenly I heard a weird American accentish Tamilian on the phone. Take it away.

Dude: Hello Sir, you had raised request because you could not ping your machine?
Me: Yes. Is it fixed? The DNS entry?

Dude: One sec sir... Oh sir, we have solved the problem. Please do this.
Me: Shoot.

Dude: Go to Start, Run..
Me: Hold on, this isn't a windoze box, this is a linux machine. In any case, I still can't ping it.

nslookup herenya is showing 172.21.131.98,

but, the DHCP server has allocated it 172.21.131.74.

Dude: Yes sir, please try this. it will work
Me: Ok, let me get to a windows box... right.

Dude: Go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
Me: Ok.

Dude: Now open it using notepad and please add following entry

172.21.131.74 herenya

Me: (numbed to the core) this is your solution?

Dude: Yes sir, I can ping herenya from my machine. Now you put it in your windows machine, you can ping it too. problem solved.

Me : You think this solution is scalable? So everyone who wants to reach my machine, herenya, has to first edit the /etc/hosts file?

Tamil: (smugly) er yes sir.
me : GO AWAY. AND DO NOT CLOSE THE REQUEST TILL YOU SOLVE THE BLOODY PROBLEM.

Dude: Ok sir, I will call you in five mins.

I never heard back from him again. A couple of days later, I assume they fixed their local DNS cache corruption and I was back to normal.

Sigh

Oriental traffic rules and my Dad's Scooter

The Occidental world prides itself on its orderly traffic behavior. Rules exist and work, lane driving is a habit and a toot on a horn is often met with a frown (except in NYC and Washington DC, where the term "a taxi-second" was invented.

I was aware of the Hindus following a karmic path when it came to driving, but to my pleasant surprise, our neighbours to the North-East, have a similar inclination. Read this, for a peek into their mysterious ways and this, on how they navigate a left turn.

In India, when I was growing up, the pride and joy of a middle class family was the ubiquitous Bajaj scooter. My father started out with one too. Those were the days when the choices, when it came to personal transportation, were plentiful . An Ambassador car, an Italian Fiat, or a Bajaj scooter. Trying to make ends meet, my father's trusty scooter was our family's caravan.

Like any Hindu ritual, starting up the scooter and heading out for an ice-cream in the evening, followed a strict set of rules. My father would first "gear up". This meant wearing a jacket, donning a helmet and a pair of gloves and finally, his pride and joy, an expensive pair of sun glasses. Three mandatory scooter leanings and after a couple of well timed kicks on the starter, the scooter would roar to life. This is where things got complicated.

My spot, when I was a little kid, was one between my dad and the handlebars. It was an excellent spot because I felt like I was in control over my family's destiny. Alas, after a few struggles on this fine point with my dear father, I was banished to the worst spot, between the two seats (front and back), atop the bloody petrol cap. What a fall from grace.

My mother used to take her rightful place, on the back seat, sitting side aways. Married women wearing saris had little choice in this matter. My sister, the youngest, was then hauled up like a bag of groceries and made to sit on my mother's lap. Note, I was still atop the blasted petrol cap. Off we went, winging our way through Delhi's roads with nary an accident at a stately speed of 25 miles an hour.

In terms familiar to generals, I was on "difficult ground". My hands were occupied hanging on to dear life, namely, the front seat or my dad's broad back. This allowed my sister, whose hands were free, to place many a well timed blow to my head, shoulders and arms. And people have the gumption to ask me why I was mean to her and fought when we were kids. Pshaw. Those blows hurt!

The scooter though, showed its versatility during traffic snarls. Sneering at the cabbie on the left and at the rickshaw wallah on the right as we navigated our way to the front of the traffic signal was, as one credit card company puts it, priceless! We were also taught about practicing the "I'm sorry grin", with arms wide open, when the scooter gently brushed against the expensive car in front.

My occidental friends often wonder where we Indians get our easy going attitude? While driving, I tell them sagely, while driving. Apart from Delhi, where the weather makes us lose our temper, have you ever heard of a south indian on a scooter cutting off another scooter because of road rage? Impossible.

I still hold a grudge against my parents for being made to sit atop the cap. To add insult to injury, one of my chores was to clean the bloody scooter! Child Services, oh how I missed thee when I was a kid. Many years and pleas later, we finally upgraded to a Maruti 800, every middle class Indian's dream to upward mobility. I looked at it and cursed. My mathematical brain had figured out that there was a lot more surface area to clean henceforth!

Crime in Charlotte..

Charlotte has a crime problem. Amongst cities with a population of 500,000 or more, it has managed to break into the top ten. Impressive eh? Statistics however, do not reveal actual situations faced by folks, during their day to day life. I thought I'd pen a few anecdotes here, albeit in a lighter vein.

My friend Jai, recounted this story to me at lunch today. His residential area, is quite enthusiastic when it comes to deploying the latest technology to fight crime. News bulletins and crime statistics are propagated via emails, landlines are linked via a common exchange and the residents are a 911 trigger happy lot. However, one homeowner decided to go one step further.

One fine afternoon, the local robber decided to try the "Moving Van" ploy. Armed suitably with a van, and after a properly conducted reconnaissance mission, he zeroed in on a house he thought was empty for some time. Promptly parking in front of the house, he then proceeded to calmly remove furniture and other expensive items from the house. The neighbours didn't find this suspicious at all.

The owner of the house being robbed then strolled around the corner, breathing strenously after a long jog. Seeing a moving van parked close to his house, he got a little curious and quickened his pace to that of a half-marathoner. On seeing his furniture being piled up inside the van however, he decided to take matters into his own hands, shouted a rather vigorous "Hey there!" and promptly picked up his pace to what you would normally see on a 100 meter dash.

The robber, on seeing the owner, started running towards the van. The two of them were heading in a north, north-west direction with the owner gaining on the robber. This spurred the owner and a few "Stop thief!" 's were belted out. On hearing this indignity, the robber reached his van, grabbed his gun and started charging towards the owner. On remembering that discretion was the better part of valor, the owner started running in the opposite direction, thus changing the direction of the race to a more southerly course. The robber grinned, and drove away.

Moving along. Charlotte has a pretty effective public transportation system. A lot of folks use it to come to work; one such person was a colleague of mine(who shall remain unnamed). At around 6pm on a Friday, he was heading back home for a well deserved restful weekend. His friend accompanying him, they got down at South Charlotte, the nearest bus stop close to his place, and that's when the fun started. A guy grabbed hold of my friend's backpack and made a dash for it. My colleague and his friend, decided to give chase, the driver of the bus proceeded to call 911.

The traditional Indian is not a born athlete. The robber looked over his shoulder, was astonished to find two pot-bellied, mustachioed south indians hollering away and cursing freely in telegu. This is where it gets interesting. The robber shouted out "I have a gun!", hoping that would scare them away. To no avail. Either they didn't hear the robber, or didn't believe him, or having seen too many movies where the hero manages to successfully dodge bullets, they continued their chase. Being of a magnanimous nature, the robber then proceeded to trip and fall over a tuft of grass. Unfortunately, my colleague and his friend managed to trip over the same tuft of grass. Thinking enough was enough, the robber then proceeded to recede far into the distance. Alas, by the time they brushed themselves off, it was too late.

And that, ends this crime bulletin.