moving, moving...gone

My last post here; the chronicles have shifted to wordpress, which is why I've not bothered to change the rather bizarre colour combo on this template :)

So à bientôt and see you at

http://pronounciate.wordpress.com

Rocky part deux

And no I don't mean that terrible series of movies starring you know who! The ones that for some bizarre reason have reached a cult status. This about our local Rocky - the Rocky of the gym.

Since my usual swim was not an option in this Delhi winter, I signed up for the gym. And with great difficultly I've been dragging my ass out of bed everyday at 5.30 to cycle down to the gym. But Rocky (the second) makes it all worthwhile.

My third day at the gym, this guy who sort of helps out (especially the pathetic women who obviously don't know what a treadmill looks like) came upto me and started demo'ing how to use the dumb bells. Then he goes (in Hindi of course! and with my terrible Madrasi hindi replies) :

Rocky: You working or studying?

Self: I'm a journo. Work in a magazine.

Rocky: Ah! So you could write about me?

Self: (grinning at the thought of my 'green' mag writing about this guy. Green gymming perhaps?) Uhhh what could I write about you?

Rocky: You don't know who I am. (sounds a little put out but gamely continues) He pulls off his baseball cap and shakes out this shoulder-length hair.

See this hair? I've pulled ten cars in one go with this hair.

Self: (trying not to laugh) Ah!! Sorry, we are a 'green' mag so not quite our interest area.

Rocky: Oh. Never mind. But I am now practising to pull an aircraft.

And thats when I picked up the dumb bells and assiduously flexed my wimpy biceps.

P.S. For info on Rocky I go to earlier post: http://pronounciate.blogspot.com/2007/10/rocky-love-fest-and-actual-punjabis.html

Another addition to my signboard collection. This one courtesy the Tuticorin municipality.

Idiot love

Last month, I was whizzing through forests in Nilgiris in a taxi. I was heading to Masinagudi to discuss elephant corridors. But lets not get side tracked here. The ride was punctuated by informative boards put up by the forest department. Do not feed wildlife. Do not get out of your vehicle.

I don't know about the first, but certainly saw people not obeying the second. But the most entertaining part of the taxi ride was in the car with me - the sole CD the driver had. Filled with Tamil movie songs no doubt from movies that got canned. My favourite starts off with a woman yelling:

I love this idiot. YES I LOVE THIS LOVABLE IDIOT!

what's your G?

This post will be super short cos I just wanted to give the url of another blog where I co-authored a post.... check it out...

http://ithinkigetthepoint.blogspot.com/2009/09/gujambals.html

The count climbeth...

My naked guy count has gone up by one. Damn! What is it with this city and its naked men? This one was lying on the road divider at Ambedkar Nagar junction enjoying the sunday morning sun.

Is there anything more to say?

I think not.

The TA path to oral, anal and phallic...

It all happened at a talk on FTAs (free trade agreements). I was invited to the building next to my office to hear a Costa Rican talk on how they fought a FTA with the US which would have been anti-farmer, anti-this and anti-that and would help the big bad wolf devour Costa Rica's market. But before the Costa Rican got started, mine host held forth -

"Hi! Its so nice to see young faces here. And some of you may not know but P and I go way back. We are both from TA families. We've known each other some 35 years. Those days there was no A/C in trains or mobile phones but we had the energy...."

You know the drivel that such folks spout. Then she went on, "In fact P's family are also into TA. Her husband is a wonderful person. Some day you should get her to talk about their love story. Anyway their children have been married in the TA tradition. Oh, perhaps some of you don't know what TA is. I should explain. Ah, S do you remember when we went...?"

And that was the end any TA talk. After the Costa Rican finished on FTAs, mine host invited this really old, frail man - a priest to talk. "I want to take a good look around," He literally did so, slowly turning in a circle and staring at all of us. "And I see all this young bright faces. I would like to ask to think about what you heard today. Are you going home after this and watching the TV or are you going to work for something worthwhile, dedicate yourself to the service of society and forget about making money and having a comfortable life. Close your eyes for a minute and think deeply about this,".

At which point everyone obediently closed their eyes except me and this Columbian woman who were trying hard not to snigger. The old fart was so full of it! So patronising. Grrr. As if we are all shallow creature flitting aimlessly from one transient pleasure to another. And even if we were, that's our life and our problem. Stop being holier than thou.

I haven't forgotten about TA.

According to Wiki, TA stands for Transactional Analysis. I quote, "....is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy. Integrative because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive approaches. It was developed by Canadian-born US psychiatrist Eric Berne during the late 1950s". And, "TA is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and personal change. It offers a theory for child development, where it ties in very neatly with the Freudian developmental stages -oral, anal, phallic,".

Very deep and socially uplifting, I'm sure.

Reaching zombie-dom...

My brain, or whatever passed for one, has been sucked out. My head is now a vacuum, a nothingness. Ah, what bliss! Zombie-dom has been achieved courtesy the B. Obviously. I should make a zombie movie out of this. Instead of ancient curses and mutated animals, the B would take on the non-zombies - single-handed. A la Rajni.

Except the B's weapon would be verbosity.

La famille B...

It's bad enough we have THE B to deal with, now we have inferior clones as well. Junior sits next to S and drives her crazy everyday. She's going to have a breakdown soon. What does he do that's so irritating, you may ask. Well, he breaks into song every now and again, especially popular Hindi numbers. Or shows off his Punjabi roots and then dabbles in the little Bengali he knows. The worst though is when he comes and waves his hands in front of your face and asks random questions, and sagely advises all to 'chill dude cos nothing is worth it'. Thanks, O Maharishi! That's the unasked for advice I need just after the B has been harassing me and spouting gyan at me.

Then there is the female junior b. Again encouraged by B, she asks inane questions and insists that if she as a layperson doesn't get our story then its a stupid story and we must drop all our work and answer all questions she has right away. And of course she tells us fascinating biological theory such as viruses evolved, reached the pinnacle and found it not so good, and so un-evolved themselves (see my earlier post on this amazing theory that Darwin and Wallace would have killed to come up with).

La famille B: B, et b et b.

The flock flocketh...

I should invest in an global positioning satellite system. And tag everyone remotely associated with my office. Everyday I get asked questions - "Where is A? Is she coming to office today? Where is P? Where are the bosses? Are they coming to office? Where is...."

I cannot for the life of me fathom why I should know the answers to these endless queries. I tried telling folks politely that I don't have a GPS tracking device attached to my colleagues and bosses, neither can I read their minds, nor do they keep me informed of their whereabouts on a minute by minute basis.

But still people flock towards me. Even when the office is choc-a-block with people, these souls will unerring head towards me. And when I wear headphones to drown the incessant chatter, they will still come and ask me all these questions which I can't hear. So I'm forced to remove said headphones and go "What?". And of course, thick and fast come the standard queries that make me grind my teeth and bare them in a facsimile of a smile.

What to do? I put up a sign on the noticeboard next to me, "I am not my brother's keeper. I do not know where people are."

And still they flock-eth away. I need to move to the outer Mongolia...but I'm sure they will still find me.

We are second only...

My mother was taking a break from work in Pudukottai and decided to visit the local museum. Its apparently badly curated, filled with a lot of random junk from stuffed animals to Mughal miniature paintings (probably fake ones). The stuffed animals will thrilling rare creatures like mynahs and crows. And of course the labels accompanying the animals was full of information - CROWS, MYNAHS.

Same went for the armoury - random cannons (marked CANNONS), and spears. The highlight was the guy in charge proudly told mother mine that the museum was second only to the one in Egmore, Chennai. Second in what? Second only madam. Egmore is first.

Make what you will of that! And then there was the brilliant Mughal miniature of some female and a musical instrument aptly titled, "Mughal miniature showing musical instrument with lady".

The world is my brother...

I had just climbed a mountain in Himachal with a couple of friends and friend's friends. After a tiring hike up and down the mountain, we were recovering over cups of hot tea and maggi, when the talk veered to tiger conservation. And one of the friend's friends, a guy named P was talking about his office - a wildlife NGO in Delhi. I remembered my aunt mentioning some cousin who worked in the same place. She had in fact told me to get in touch with said cousin. Not that I had, obviously. So I asked P if he knew this chap, A. And P does a double take and says, thats me! I'm A.

Rather confused, I said but you're P! It turns out he is A P Z! So I asked him if his mom was called, L and he had aunts, R and J and an grandmother called R... It was P's turn to be confused. Finally it turns out we are third cousins! What are the odds? Looks like I'm related to half the world. Wherever I go I bump into family. As a friend insists, this could only happen to me!!!

B(f)ereted out?

If I'm out of a job this month, it will be because the B has discovered my secret... this blog. The blog that has several posts about the B. And what made me think he knows about the blog? In the meeting today, he asked someone to 'pronounciate'. What are the odds that it was an innocent comment?

If its innocent, then I should object to copyright infringement. I feel rather possessive of the word, having stolen it from a dumb American.

Brevity...

Brief, concise, terse, curt, pithy....
These are words alien to my office. Our meetings are at least three hours long, our conversations are more like speeches - especially when the B is involved. The motto is, never use one word when you can say it in 20. The pinnacle of such piffling, waffling, beating about the bush, extraneous conversation is the lady of nasal talk. She who presides over the second floor. The nasal bong. Every time she opens her mouth to waffle on, the urge to whack her over the head is overwhelming. First there is that irritating, juvenile, trying to be cutesy 16 year-old nasal accent. And then there is the endless spouting of bull. "You know, I saw that and I wondered whether it was right. But we were pressed for time and I wasn't sure so I didn't bother. (Humming sounds). And I think it is a bit of arrogance on our part. We, XXXX, are so sure of ourselves sometimes we just don't think we can do wrong.....,". And it continues in that vein endlessly.

I was trying to waffle too and be un-curt, un-concise, un-brief, un-terse, un-pithy. But I am afraid my attempt pales in comparison to the masters of the art. I am that unhappy soul who is neither terse nor waffly. What to do? We are like that only.

Chilli country girl...

Its midnight and the city is asleep. Well, almost asleep. There are at least 4 people who are awake, crowded into a cosy room, enjoying the last of a series of hallucinogenic plant material. In the middle lies a plate filled with sausages and a dab of pickle - Indian style pickle not those insipid vinegary American pickles. (And this was pickle from the North East. That says it all, doesn't it?)

Everyone respectfully waves the sausage in the vicinity of the pickle and eats. All except one- there is always that one person who has do things differently. And this young person digs into the pickle with gusto, unheeding of the warnings that it is one helluva spicy pickle. Her retort - I am from the land of pickles. I was born in Guntur, home of the largest chilli market in India. We have chilli in our veins....You get the picture.

That was the last piece of conversation from her for half an hour - she was too busy gulping cold beer and water.

Revolutionalising evolution...

I am deeply ashamed. I cannot call myself a student of science any longer. How could I be so unaware? So lost? So caught up in the mundane details of living that I failed to learn that viruses are capable of ratiocination? Reliable sources tell me that viruses have reached the pinnacle of evolution and decided that they had enough of this Darwinian concept (presumably they reached the pinnacle and saw that it was not so good). Therefore, they took the next step of de-evolving. Hmmm.

I am eternally amazed at the fount of knowledge that abides within my workplace.

With love from Almora...

Here are more entries to the signboard database.

Tamil-o-meter...

Furthering the Tamil cause - whatever that may be- babies that are given Tamil names will get a gold ring. But they have to be born in government hospitals.

Wonder who will decide the Tamilness of their names? Next thing is to budget money to draw up a list of 'Tamil' names and then some idiot can get their 15 minutes of fame by objecting to the non inclusion or inclusion of some name. We could even make Tamil named babies a special status group like SC/ST. And all of us Tambrams with Sanskritised names should consider heading to the gazette office and changing our names. Maybe they can give us silver rings for at least having 'Indian' names.

I dub thee...

The cse leddies have a new name, an alias - it is decreed that they shall henceforth be called

Our Ladies of the Phone

You know, like Our Lady of Velankanni or for a more international example - Our Lady of Guadeloupe.

And so they shall be known while they continue their illuminating conversations:

Hello? Hello? HELLO! Poonam talking here. POONAM. HELLO? Can you hear me? HELLO. Who is this? POONAM talking here.

And so on....

Pure Tamil...

Our gracious minister for local administration (talk about inventing a position), M.K. Stalin recently called on all Tamils to name their children in pure Tamil. Right. This from a person who is got such a pure Tamil name!

Anyway what on earth is a pure Tamil name? Would Christian names be pure Tamil? How far back in history do we go for pure names? Since a lot of Tambrams have sanskritised names, I guess we aren't pure enough for Stalin.

more signboards...

In Fatehpur Sikri, ASI's board kindly informs you:



More lovely offerings in our Agra hotel:



Back in Delhi, this is the Tibetan market near ISBT:



And again in Delhi, on one of those small water tankers.

Raj Kumar WATAR SAPLAYRS

And as soon as you enter Jahapanah forest in Delhi, MCD exhorts you to "Say No To Plstic Bags"

I wish someone would invent a camera that can be attached to a bike helmet. I miss out on all these brilliant photo-ops when driving.

Signboard watchers rejoice...

Some people bird watch, others watch sign boards. Agra, I found, was signboard watcher paradise. Here is a sample. Unfortunately, photos are available for just a couple of them.

Saw this from a bus. We were passing a cantonment-ish area - all neat and clean in grids. There was this lovely little sign board on a building: WET Canteen

Need I say more?

And this was on offer in our hotel menu card. A gem lost to the universe!



And another that we saw from the bus. I don't think Gates would like this one.



The last two are not actually from Agra but nevertheless. This one was on the way to Agra, somewhere in Haryana. A rather fancy looking dhaba welcoming you to Dabchick Hodal.

And this in Delhi on the back of a Maruti omni: School Cap

Name the CM contest...

Went to Agra this weekend - FINALLY! And as I walked into the Agra fort the security guy checks my ticket and asks in a rather suspicious manner, " where are you from?" After gaping at him for a bit and wondering why that mattered, I said Delhi. And he goes, "So who is the chief minister of Delhi?"

Ooooh! such a tough question. One that no terrorist would know the answer to. Not sure the security guy knew the answer either. He nodded when I said SD and let me through. I should have told him that my boss breakfasts with her and lunches with the PM, so there.


Before my encounter with the security forces

The cse leddies...

"I was advising him to do....but if he doesn't listen, what can I do". This is the kind of fascinating one sided conversation I am forced to listen to in office. These leddies sit in the middle of our floor (we have a horrible open plan floor so sound carrieeeeeeeeeeeees) and murmur endlessly into the phone giving solace to the numerous sundered hearts of their acquaintance. This goes on for on average 4-5 hours a day! Some days I have to keep me iPod playing on max volume to drown out that persistent murmur.

To add to our problems, the leddies occupy the seat next to the only phone from which long distance phone calls can be made. So we have to displace them and they hover while we make our phone calls......

Isn't it bad enough we have to suffer the B?