ODE TO AUTOS n AUTO-PILOTS de CHENNAI

Frustated with autos in chennai........

Lil muzzy beetle shaped thing,
Chennai’s unavoidable zing thing.

Drawn in their palms, Chennai map
Specialty - whirring thro’ inter-vehicular gap,

Auto fares go up - upscale locality,
More if a firangee – wat a pity!!

Decked with FM radios n thalaivar fotos,
Flyin’ low n scurrying, their mottos.

Share autos are PTC bus’ nemeses,
Making sure ppl reach in time, office premises.

Never fight with an auto driver,
Ye might get a punch in da liver,

Many a time aboard, I find a new route,
Thanks to them - Short cuts, their forte

Snakes might find stiff competition in these,
Cuttin’ n curvin’ with utmost ease.

For them, traffic lights cease to exist,
Woh leave behind, trail of sooty exhaust.

If at all rains grace Tamilnadu’s Capital,
Be ready to be relieved of yer capital.

Once, auto-shankar committed murders at midnight,
Nowadays, they rob us in broad daylight.

Neva seen da auto-fare meter run,
Bargaining is no passenger’s fun.

Every auto has a quarter brandy bottle -
Filled with petrol for its insatiable throttle.

Became famous ‘coz of Rajinikanth – superstar,
Inspite of all – Itz Chennai’s ineffaceable star.

2 minutes to midnight.......... maggiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

To the hallowed portals of mansion of gods (men’s hostel, cmc), entered a motley crue on 9/11(we can never celebrate our class anniversary in USA) to start a career in allopathy.

That heralded a wave of ritualistic behavior in my seniors who embarked on an ego slaying mode, which made us feel like vermin. It went on for three days with much fanfare and whatever.

One new task we were assigned to, as we were dissecting formalin soaked cadavers, taking graphs with frog legs and mugging amino acids’ configuration. The task to serve, sticking to our cmc motto (Not to be ministered unto, but to minister), our seniors.

To serve the aromatic maggi (noodles) with the stock, just enough to let the noodles to slither against each other.

We would reach the seniors’ rooms around the midnight time (afta buyin the maggi packets at our stores) and start off with cleaning yesterday’s grit stuck on the hot plate and search the rumble in the fellas room for the saucepan.

My first day in cooking maggi was a catastrophe, me followed the instructions on the darned packet but sort of over cooked it and it become cream of maggi soup with very few noodles retaining its morphology- some sorta chyme. One bad thing is if there is any goof up, we ought to eat it. Me had that privilege few times, but pulled my classmate for help- my ever omnivorous friend anoop – maggi in any form goes into his thoppai(tummy).

Some seniors were bored and we ought dole a entertaining piece to accompany their slurpings of our cookin masterpieces. Me knew few GNR numbers and easiest to sing was, the knock, knock on heaven’s door and my cacophony was accompanied with guitars and drums, played vocally by fartogenic friend of mine. Few tamil numbers were dished out too and one telugu song sung by my east godavari resident evil pal – one nagarjuna song and least we could do is to shout the chorus - jagada jagada jaa..

One senior wanted maggi to be floating like weeds on the steaming murky waters. We knew seniors rather by their tongues. One very enterprising fella in my class, one day got some shelled peas, diced carrots n beans from our mess and he had the privelge of gulping down maggi with tender lovin gazes from our seniors.

In the summer hols at my home, wanting to impress my mom of my culinary skills, offered to cook maggi for all of them and alas – the history repeated itself – because the gas stove cooked the maggi must faster than the hotplate and it needed just 30 seconds and this time the maggi got carbonized too. Grrrrrrrrrr. Happily, some dosa flour in the fridge nullified my gastric juices that day.

Hope atleast when I cook for my wife – I will perfect maggi and get a peck or two. The Gift of the Mag(g)i. ;)))

Hockeystick guitars n Headbangers' ball ;))

A long, long time ago…
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.

Before entering the portals of college, I listened to all that was mushy n romantic music, rap, tanda-nakraa (crap) and pop music. My introduction to all that was anti-tympanic was in my college as the newfound freedom allowed to experiment with the cacophonous music. Suddenly out of blue, all those boy bands sounded like eunuchs crying out to me about their unrequited love – Back street eunuchs, Eunuch zone, Boys 2 Eunuchs etc.,

Anoop, my best pal was known as DEF as he was a fervent fan of Def Leppard and thro’ him, I started to gobble up the acid rocky fruits of Pink Floyd (PF). Pink Floyd had released “Division Bell” that time and I used to spend some tranquil moments with that distant echoing guitars n tugging thematic vocals. Division Bell totally changed my outlook to music and dave’s pain enduring vocals started to echo inside and I was pouting those lyrics day in day out, much to the chagrin of moi classmates. Then I fed my quality music starved ossicles, all the other albums of Pink Floyd. I got so smitten by PF that I put “pf” in my e-mail id too. :D

Only selected few listened to Pink Floyd in my batch and to popularize their music, we used to hold Pink Floyd parties. Making posters for those parties were fun and we just copied all the album covers into a collage form. However, the activities in the party will make anyone laugh. We used to just play the Pink Floyd selected songs with only a night lamp on and sip pepsi/coke or alcohol for some – that’s it. Might sound so humdrum but it was nice becoz this kinda music is for relaxation and as the music soaked us, we got a floaty feel of total detachment from the worldly anguish and literally swimming in a surreal world – Comfortably Numb.

Hostel block parties were fun and it was undiluted bullshitting session afta the vigorous outflinging and inswinging of extremities- so called dance and its usually asynchronous with the redefining deafness-inducing cacophony. My classmate Boopalan was in the hockey team, and being the junior chap in the team, he had a huge bag of hockey sticks in his room. When ever we played some hard rock/metal stuff and we have this habit of playing lead guitar pieces with an imaginary guitar. By chance, I glanced upon this treasure bag of hockey stick guitars (HS guitars) in its glorious unplugged forms and there started the guitar strumming with some head bangings’, literally challenging the anchored strength of the head ka hair roots. For the lead pieces of Dire straits and Pink Floyd, we used to lean on walls or sit on stools and play with our HS guitars but for some groups like Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Deep Purple – we would justice to their form of music by lying on the floor or jumping or running along the corridor with our HS guitars and do the needful.

Due to increasing boredom, the no. of parties were on the increase and to satiate our musical thirst, we planned to get some local made musical system with huge speakers for our maverick parties. Sarathy mansions of Vellore is well known for electronic goods. In one of the bigger shops, a sales boy volunteered to show us some awesome Akai music systems and on close inspection, to our horror it was not Akai but Takai. As we rummaged thro’ the wares in the shop, we found one more funny named company – Taiwa (offshoot of Aiwa). At that moment I thought, Wat it would sound like if they faked Sony – “Tony”… Was sounding more like a dog than a music system. :P

House parties were more fun due to the inclusion of the XX chromosomes.. In our college, during the house parties the gals in their best attire or bare would be just be tapping their feet or wriggle like a slithering caterpillar shedding its coat. All of a sudden these gals will align themselves into a single file and do a chug-chug like a train across the dance floor. Funny creatures we had in our college.

My batch was known for its party spoiling tactics. Pink floyd songs used to be real dance party spoilers. My classmate Liao ( indianised chink) used to be the disc jockey and we used to slip in CDs’ of Pink Floyd, Metallica and van halen. Suddenly this fella will put one of those CDs’ ka song and a motley crew will jump onto the dance floor and all the gals will go off leaving the space for our seizure activity. It would be like Red Sea Splitting Part II. Anyways who can dance for learning to fly (Pink Floyd), Enter sandman n Unforgiven (Metallica) and Jump (Van Halen), except us.

In my final year of UG, I was in B-super (the place for final yrs – third floor) and had musically inclined neighbors. One side, Yap kannan (true to his name he yaps a lot) - half Malaysian and half Tamil Brahmin and on the other side Navnit from Bihar. Yap listens to classical music of western n Carnatic genre. Navnit is pure n pure hindi music. Yap used to get cassettes from me once in a while as I was experimenting with Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Wagner et al. He got once, a Yanni cassette – Live from acropolis and that literally lead me to one necropolis. He used to get up at 5 am and start singing his keerthanaas and then put on Yanni cassette at one sooper volume. On the other side our dear Navnit (call him king – short form for king Kong – literally a jungle out there on his skin – so much hair) will play good ol’ euphonious Hindi songs.

I being a late nite bed hitter this lytic mix of music would make me see red and would upset my mood for the day. I decided to take sweet musical revenge. I got one Pantera cassette as a gift from Anoop for my birthday. So before they would put on the music, I will put on this music and Pantera music is just a leaf out of discovery channel – growls n growls. It will sound like as if they left the microphone in some jungle and recorded the whole thing and if some bass guitar riffs thrown in – Pantera music is complete. It would really test their delicate eardrums as I would leave the music on n go off to Anoop’s room and doze off. Afta some days we reached a truce that Kannan will sing his keerthanaas in the terrace and he’d return my worn out Yanni cassette. Navnit and I will stick to some timing in the mornings, in playing our kinda music. Peace once more prevailed in the B-super block and our eardrums resonated in perfect harmonic motions from then on.

Heavy metal music was patronized by very few in our hostel. On bad days afta coming back to room, it’s the assuaging heavy metal music which would make worries evaporate in a flash – few neck nods and few lines of karaoke would do wonders to the mood. Synchronizing head bangs with the riffs or playing HS guitars for the lead pieces in various frozen poses is très difficult and is to be tried, to be understood and is an art by itself. I tried growing long hair but being a doc I was mightily discouraged and got to survive with few sprouts.

As years flew by, the craze for heavy metal music reached a plateau phase and during internship I had no time to listen to music at all. Nowadays only in some moments I listen to heavy metal music and that too, selected songs. Its better to listen to time tested “Greatest Hits” of one group or other when time or access to music is at stake.

Then, the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If, by chance, I'd see you in the tavern,
We'd smile at one another and we'd say

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we'd choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way

Shadi aur mei.......... Kabhi nahi :P

Comic-al way of life - Yeh mera zindagi :D

"I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice and my sons and their sons shall follow me!" --- “The Oath of the Skull”- The phantom(the ghost who walks).

This, no primer for yet another adventure of the Phantom, just a walk down the memory lane, where the characters like walker, accompanied me thro’ the thick and thin of my life.

Bookworm (not worm tail), me was termed when I was in school – but wat I read was actually, kutti kutti stuff that made me all set for bigger things in life (jus jokin). In my second standard, started with a magazine called TINKLE, which I read in shakti anna’s house (rich kid next house).

Tinkle was the door to my fantasy world and character like Shikari shambu with his quirky mooch and unseen eyes, hunting down wild life by sheer lady luck’s grace was my childhood hero, later replaced my detective moochwala of another magazine Target. Lived those years mimicking shikari shambu and running after kaakaas (crows) with my imaginary gun kucchi (stick) and wanted to sport a mooch like that fella, when I grow up and prayed that I won’t be a dumpkoff like suppandi (moronic character in tinkle).

After third standard, dad got transferred to singaraa (charming) Chennai and me the small town boy with all dreams, was totally left awed, looking at the hustle bustle of Chennai. No place neither to scamper and hide, when mom comes to force feed me bitter gourd (pavakkaai) nor to do the shambu’s antics.

I wrote the entrance test and still remember the synonym for servant, for which I wrote – one who helps amma – sort of half Tamil and half English and still managed to get a seat. Small mercies – phew. But my amma was quite amused and was rattling about it to all her relatives. Still can’t figure out why?

First came across an Indrajal comic in my school. My bench mate, anand had this book and we were reading this under the bench and fighting evil along with phantom during a moral science class (do we still have moral classes in school). That act’s karma showed in the report card – me a topper, came a cropper in moral test.

Somehow cajoled my dad and sweet-talked my mom into getting me comics and lived in a world of indrajal comics afta that. From phantom to mandrake, the magician & from extra galaxial Flash Gordon to very Indian bahadur - I went on a trip, good winning over evil, and lived almost in a parallel world - becoz my pals all the time were trotting with bat and a rubber cork ball and me used to play cricket only in weekends. Even in class we used to play BOOKCRICKET - wat fun it used to be.

Bahadur is hamara desh ka phantom, sans mask and purple hazy attire. Very Indian dushum dushumm and always-in kurta and pyjamaas (mera bharat mahaan).

Phantom whistling past the trees and crashing mandibles off the villains and leaving a permanent indurated patch around his ring marks– was my favorite of indrajal and wanted a ring with a skull – but that wish was vehemently shot down by my dad.

Flash Gordon and his bikini clad women were no interest to me. But wanted venomous Ming to have a gruesome end.

When going in school bus, used to dream about doing mandrake’s magic on my teachers, turning their bamboo sticks into something yummy like a cone or a panji mootaai (puffed sweet). Xanadu – the mansion, which evoked awe and admiration, all the time springing up booby traps for trespassers was my dream house and wanted to name my house, if at all I built one.

With all these characters I finished my primary school with ample support from chandamama and Target. Saving da best for last – asterix, tintin and calvin for another - me da scoots.

Couldn’t have imagined a life sans comics. : ))

"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy!" Calvin exclaims in the last panel. "Let's go exploring!"(last comic strip of calvin and hobbes by bill.w).

My experiments with lingua Français

Till 8th standard, I was spluttering and gasping in my mother tongue Tamil, mugging the poetry and vomiting it, in exams. In between all this, was getting tutored (tortured) by mom, who is a tough one when it concerns Tamil and paavakaai(bitter gourd).

All that couplets and pentalets gave me nightmares – dreaming of valuvar and avaiyaar paati holding me to ransom and letting me go only, if I told their tongue twisting poetry in a thiyagaraja baagwathar style. The Tamil madame kept on catching me, since I was good at other subjects and Tamil being my waterloo, she berated me at least twice in front of the whole class.

I wracked my brains, fueled by idlis and spicy groundnut chutney and decided that I got to choose either Hindi or French. I was anyway learning Hindi from a tutorial under Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha. Some fella told me that to do IAS, I got to know Hindi, as I might be posted in BIMARU states and the politicians will only speak in Hindi.

To escape all this, I told my dad on the sly, about the greatness of French and the need for the people around the world to learn French and the increasing opportunities for Indian engineers in France (wanted to be a engineer badly), but didn’t tell him that French needed no mugging and pretty easy too.

I reveled in French for four yrs, with added gusto and frolic. It was fun to read with all that cartoons. Read about a family - father and his daughter Sophie and his son in law- had them for 2 yrs. The grammar somewhat got me befuddled as usual – passé resonte and passé compose – left me decomposed. But as usual, mugging did wonders but this one was of small scale compared to Tamil grammar. I impressed my relatives by pouting some French words mixed with bhojpuri accent and they looked at me with awe.

Joined medical college, foreign languages were not the norm of the day. Ragging saw me all doughy and bluey and every darned senior knew that I wallowed in French in my higher secondary school.

We used to have condolence meetings, whenever any creatures passed away in our hostel’s vicinity. One catfish died, which had resided in our men’s hostel pond for the past 4 months and the lowly brethren – we - were summoned to hold one of that sort. All the folks who knew any language proficiently were beckoned and the seniors held the fish in one of our turkey towels and started the meeting with one senior giving a message in much easy language – da angrezi.

I was called to give a dynamic twist to all these benevolent proceedings with my lingua Français. I used a simple technique to solve the urgency of the hour. Used all nouns of French with an oi or re or ou and gave a twist with a nasal twang like the keralite and that saved my day and skin too.

There used to be lot of medical terms in French and I had fun asking people to pronounce rendezvous, peau d’orange and café au lait etc., for which ppl used to pronounce like rendessvoose etc and me used to go on chuckly spree. Remember folks something called karma – it caught up with me in form of a phirengee.

So far so good I thought, but came a Swedish gal who threw spanner into my works. She was a exchange student from Upsala university, Sweden and she had grades in French and I tried wishing her by saying bonjour mademoiselle - which was truncated at the earliest lisp of mine and also gave her few fits of laughter and her first entertainment in Indian soil too. : (((

And to add some salt to the insult, was my friend who told me not to speak in French, as she was not impressed anyway with my pranks and French not gonna do any wonders to change that fixed notion of hers. Had a déjà vu feeling.

Presently whispering French words occasionally with some caution only – all for my redeemer from Tamil and my past time for all these twelve years.

Even now, if I come across French words in some literary works – remember the joies de vivre I had avec lingua Français. :)))