Author: praveen

Stupid Olympics

So the olympics came to a close. I am happy that India won a silver medal, though I was sure we would have been in the top 10 medal winners, only if the olympics adjudicators were not so biased. They should have given consideration that anju had a pollution problem, malleswari had a back problem, our delhi sports center where all the olympic people were preparing didnt have proper water supply etc. There is a whole host of things which they just ignored, and guess what happened, we got only 1 silver medal. Not that we need any medal from the olympics, as we can make as many we want in Ulhasnagar.

I thought the whole olympics thing was something which was not needed. There were several events which never made sense to me anyway. Lets start with floor gymnastics. You have got a rectangular area, where a young lady/gent does some exercises, hop-on hop-off and stands and bows. Now I wonder what on earth was that, and even before I can figure it out, the judges come out with something like 9.7, 9.8, 9.6 and so on. Wow! you say. I wonder you havent seen dombivli train platform in bombay at around 8.00 am in the morning. The acrobatics that one does to get into a local train will beat all these cutie figures jumping up and down on the mat at olympics.

Another event that beats me is marathon. I had some sympathy for Paula Radcliffe when she couldnt complete the marathon, but I laughed my backside off, when she couldnt even complete 10,000 meter race. My wife told me it was not good to laugh at others, particularly at such situations. So I sincerely made a serious face, which lasted for around 1 second. Coming back to the event of marathon, the whole thing seemed pointless. The history of marathon was even more funny. Its said that a soldier ran all the way from a battlefield back to athens, just to tell the message that they had won. The sad and stupid part is he collapsed and died just after delivering the message. Now, look it from an Indian perspective. Would we do that, no way. We have more intelligent ways of communicating the same message – women power.

What a shrewd Indian would have done is to go to the nearest village and tell the lady a secret, that the Greek had won, and ask her to keep it as secret. Trust the gossip-power, the message would have reached athens faster than an email goes over the internet, or even the time photon takes to circumnavigate the earth. This stupid guy who lost his life by running a marathon and didnt even had a clue about this technique. And since then have something called marathon to commemorate that running. Hey, why run marathon, when you can phone in this day and age to inform whats happening. Totally pointless I say.

I could go on and on like this for several events. It would require lot of time for me to write my angst that “iddli-theeta” (iddli eating competition), and such similar traditional competitions are not at all even shortlisted to become olympics event. In short, I didnt like the olympics that happened, and finally just to clarify, this entry is not a result of my bitterness that India did only manage 1 medal at olympics or that our neighbor China stood second place in the medals tally. Darn.

said the elder hampster

Why do I have to run in the wheel from 9 – 5.30, asked the young hamster. The elder hamster looked at him sagely, and told “you need to work so that you earn your food and pay your bills.” “But, I dont want to work” cried the young hampster, “I want to figure out what I want to do and do my stuff, maybe sleep more. Whats the point in living like this?”.

“shut-up, and keep running” scolded the elder hampster.

The man watching the hampsters in the cage, grinned devilishly.

getting even with spam

I have received a lot of emails from someone in some war-torn region of africa. They needed my help to take out the riches from the bank. As usual, my delete button was put into quick action, but some people decided not to use the delete button and reply to them. Read about it here.

I have been troubled recently after the death of a dear friend of mine, Minnie Mowse. She was a very, very dear friend indeed, and her death affected me greatly and started to make me question my faith. I have decided to leave the church and join a travelling circus.

I have already made two very good friends, and tomorrow I will be starting my circus training with them…

:-)) Minnie mowse indeed.

The £100 falafel

The falafel indeed did taste heavenly, so what if the total cost was £100 (Rs.8000/-) for two falafels. It all happened due to one promise that I had made in haste. This was the same mistake that king Dasaratha made to his wife Kaikeyi some 6000 Years ago. From child-hood I have been listening to that story. The thug turned saint Valmiki, who was well versed with the world at large had warned the whole of male population. The same warning was repeated again by tulsidas in hindi, kambar in tamil, tunjathezuththachchan in malyalam, yugo sako in Japanese, C. Rajagopalachari in english and my father to us in sign language. Never.. never promise anything to your wife.

For those ignorant people among you, I will narrate the incident from the epic Ramayana. Dasaratha was helping the devas(gods) in war against the mighty asuras(demons), when one of the spokes of his chariot wheel came off. Losing one of his chariot wheels would have caused a major rout, though I am not sure for which side. Kaikeyi who had accompanied Dasaratha in that war, happened to be in the chariot, immediately used her two fingers as spoke and held the wheel to the chariot, enabling dasaratha to continue the war and win it eventually. As a show of gratitude, dasaratha promises kaikeyi that she can ask 2 things from Dasaratha anytime and he would oblige. This incident leads us to a valuable insight. Insight no.1 Behind every successful man is a woman.

Indeed kaikeyi later in the story ask for prince Rama to be banished from the country for 14 years, and his brother/her son Bharatha will be crowned the next king of Ayodhya. King Dasaratha becomes confused as to whether to be happy or sad. Banishing prince ram from the kingdom brought sorrow to his mind, whereas on the other hand he was really happy with these two requirements and thanks god that kaikeyi didnt put all five fingers in the wheel spoke during the war, lest she would have asked for more such things. This is the main twist in the epic Ramayana, triggering off a lot of incidents. This leads us to another valuable insight, Insight no.2 Behind every successful epic is a woman.

Poor Dasaratha could not refuse the promise as tulsidas explains…

Raghukul ki yehi reet hai aayee
praan jaaye par vachan na jaayee
(the tradition of people born in Raghu-kul* is, promises will remain and are to be kept, even if ones life is to be sacrificed)

Now the bollywood people are really religious, but a bit illiterate. They knew that such couplets can be adapted to daily life and industry and read the same as

bollywood ki yehi reet hai aayee
Praan jaaye par Bachchan na jaayee.
(the tradition of film makers in bollywood is, Amitabh Bachchan will remain, even if Praan retires)

Coming back to from diversion, I forgot this lesson from the epic and accidentally promised my wife sometime around last february that I will take her to her favourite Opera – Carmen – before the opera season ends. Just as in the epic ramayana, I too forgot about the grandiose promise I made. It was last friday that I received a mail from my wife. It contained a few lines only, reminding me that the last screening of carmen was on saturday and it was my promise to take her. I saw the mail and understood what dasaratha must have gone through. But unlike him, I replied highlighting the cost of the tickets, brought to her notice the poor people india who couldnt manage “do wakt ka roti”, and see everything in proper context. What followed that reply was a spectacular show of pyrotechnics. Scared and in panic, I scoured the net to find tickets for the performance, and managed to grab two tickets for the screening.

Saturday evening found us in Coliseum theatre in Central london, where the performance of Carmen had just begun. I didnt know what caused it, but within 5 minutes I was feeling sleepy and had to put up a fight with myself to keep awake. The opera was not making any sense to me. All the audience were also quiet and seem to enjoy the opera or maybe they were also like me struggling to keep awake. A few minutes later discovered that, maybe I should know the story to enjoy it. Thankfully the play was in 4 acts and during the first interval I bought the official book for the opera, and a lemon sorbet ice cream for my better half, which gave me another insight. Insight No.3 Women who love Lemon cake (which my wife loves) might hate Lemon sorbet (which I had to eat eventually).

The book was around 50 pages, out of which 48 pages contained advertisements and unwanted write-ups. the remaining two pages had the story of carmen, which too the author decided was within 500 – 600 words. The story didnt make any great impact on me and before I could discuss it, the second act started and the whole theatre fell quiet. The last interval saw us enjoying the taste of vanilla ice-cream and discussions about how pointless the whole carmen story was, when again the lights went dim and the whole theatre fell quiet. The acts that followed also failed to impress me, maybe I thought, I was genetically programmed not to enjoy opera. But a glance at my wife proved that wrong. She was on the same boat as me. The only difference was that from a ferocious tigress, who showcased an array of stupefying pyrotechnics, she had transformed into a cute little harmless fluffy cat.

Out from the theatre we were famished, not only mentally but physically as well. Only one thing could bring up back up to full spirits. A great maoz falafel with roasted aubergines and humous. mmmm… humousss…. So what the total cost of those falafel, rather day was coming upto £100. The falafel sure did taste heavenly. mmmmm……

* Raghukul – The lineage of the ancient warrior Raghu. Prince Rama, along with Raghu is part of long lineage of kings who belong to surya-vamsa… race of the sun god. Kalidas has written raghuvamsam, detailing the lineage of kings born under that race including the great king Raghu, though its noted that he in turn skipped some kings from the list, who were originally mentioned in valmiki’s Ramayana.

ps: read the other version here

Padakkushu paramasaadhu

Maybe my favourite animal should be the polar bear. Though being a human, its uncanny the way my hibernation tendencies are related to the polar bear. Its true that my favourite hobby is sleeping, occasional day-dreaming, eating and sleeping, though not necessarily in that order, but I rarely find like-minded people to form a club of my own for such a hobby. Even though I am supposed to be living in a free and fair society, neither my parents nor my saha-dharmini allow me to pursue my hobby. Far from being like minded, even my friends are extra active and prod me on to some activity or the other. “You need to keep your mind active”, they said in unison with my wife. “you have a wide interest in several topics, and have internet access at home, why dont you take something seriously?” they asked, “say you could research a subject and write a small article on the topic”. I could for a moment see that it was indeed a brilliant idea. I could do that.

So without delay I decided that I should take up one topic, research on that and write something about it. It will infuse fresh bout of activity in my mind. But I have to write about something different, not the regular stuff, which most of the people know and discuss anyway. I left the task to my mind, which normally works in the background and has to habit of picking up things from the subconscious. Indeed a few hours later it picked up a topic. This topic came from the Shrek 2 movie. Indeed it was a topic not much people research, where I can find more information and also write up something about it. The inspiration came from the scene where shrek drinks the potion and waits for something to happen. When all the audience in the theatre also are expecting something to happen, it happens… Shrek farts. It was decided, the topic that I should research about is farting!

Now Mahabharatha is acclaimed to be a great epic from india, about which its said that “whatever is in the world is in here, whatever is not in here is not in the world”. The first time I heard it, I knew that was a lie. I was dead sure that it didnt have any reference to farting. I havent come across one reference in mahabharatha which enlightens me about this process. I am one of the lucky few who didnt grow up thinking that this process was something to be abhorred or to be looked down upon. The family I was born into didnt consider it a disgusting thing, indeed we all could laugh at several anecdotes related to fart.

My grandmother once said that,

padakkushu paramasaadhu, avashakkushu aale kollum.
(big loud fart is a simpleton, the silent fart is a killer one.)

I could indeed vouch for that ancient wisdom. The silent one where you cannot even identify the culprit is more torturous than the one that comes with a warning. It would be really interesting to find out more about this process. How this was looked upon or looked down in several cultures, what were the prescribed solutions if a particular culture found it abhorring etc. The research offered me a lot of possibilities. I could find out the medical reasons for possible causes, compile a list of jokes related to farting from around the world and a long list of similar possibilities.

Whom else to discuss the research topic than my saha-dharmini, who at the very mention of the topic produced a facial expression which no number of muscles in my face could produce. That expression was not un-familiar as I remember seeing that expression when I pull the window-pane of the car down, and smile at her sheepishly, while driving. But this time along with that expression was a blazing look which contained more meaning than the whole of Shakespearian tragedies. That was it, my project research was called off.