At Coffee Day

We are an impecunious lot. At least, I make it a point to reiterate the fact to myself every now and then, lest I end up exhausting my entire monthly stipend in a fortnight. (That I end hard up within a fortnight anyway is quite another thing.) Of course, I have these rare surges of extravagance; I go for the latest movies, Bollywood or Tamil, every alternate day; I enjoy the selfless profligacy of commuting to every place by an auto rickshaw; I welter in the goodness of my own noble philanthropy when I treat my friends to a dinner every week at Pizza Hut. Yes, coming back to the point, I like to think of myself as a frugal being. I love the effect it creates on me when I picture me and my ascetic life of endless self-abnegation.

Last Saturday was one in which I found myself in one such fit of prodigality. My friend and I asserted categorically to each other that hereafter we will not brook any more of this over-cautious attitude; we will not, this time, squander a salubriously sunny afternoon to our languor. We pulled ourselves out of our bed sheets and strode to Coffee Day in a sprightly saunter. Then, like all inveterate bustlers, we realised that the first fortnight was nearing its end; our wallets had thinned as much and as rapidly as Salman Khan's hair profile.

The waiter pampered us with the menu card after we entreated him twice and threatened him once. Both of us had already taken stock of the ammunition in the purse. I had, to be precise, Rs. 65.50, and he, Rs. 80. My friend took up the opening gambit, " One samosa please." (Samosa was the cheapest item on the list; fifteen rupees.) The waiter gave him a denigrating glance. My suspicions of him deeming us scavengers in a topiary garden did not seem very far-fetched even to my better senses for those three seconds. There was some silence. The waiter then gathered himself and replied with disgustingly counterfeited courteousness, "I'm afraid we do not have samosas, sir." He said that with an impeccably forged urbane politeness that often wills you to get up, stare at him a rusticated stare, bare your chest and challenge him to slap you if he had the guts. But my friend was more cheek than mouth. He ordered, with a glint in his eyes, a vegetable roll, which was the second in the ascending order of cost with a price tag of Rs. 25. The waiter let the disappointment show on his face for a second before he covered it up with his smug grin of politeness. I ordered for myself a sandwich and a cappuccino, and with it some salvageable dignity.

The orders were given and orders were taken and we let our attention meander on to a better scenery that surrounded us. The next table had two young women -- I must say pulchritudinous women -- and a swain whose overly greased hair stood on one end (I hear they call it Spikes these days). The women were nibbling the fudge like mice that nibbled at cheese while the boy was wistfully watching the action. Such delicate fussy helpless things these dames are; I must tell you it is quite a pleasure to watch these dainty creatures nibble prissy bites of chocolate fudge when you don't have to pay for them. I could fathom why the boy's hair stood on one end.

Half an hour must have passed when my stomach growled a threatening growl. I wontedly grew a little concerned about it. As a rule, I am reckless, but when it is a question of the stomach, I am an antithesis of myself. The waiter placed, rather disdainfully I may add, the plate that had four bits of bread on the table. In India, it is customary to propitiate the crows with small offerings before we guiltlessly glut everything down our throats; I thought the place also expected me to endorse the custom. I later found out that the four bits of bread were for me. The bits were charred; the waiter peremptorily assured me they were grilled. I asked him if he could get me some sauce. He replied that he had sauce and slithered away to a couple sitting at the table to my left with the urgency of a rattlesnake that had lost his rattle. The two were what we'd call at school, "Single Milkshake, double straw." Near the boy, on the table, was a book whose title, "Kleptomaniac", attracted the eye in bright red font; ostensibly, a by-product of a sudden maniacal urge that boys of his age often have to dissipate money. The girl asked him what it meant. The boy all-knowingly lectured, "It is a temporary loss of memory." My stomach urged me to go tell him that there was something permanently wrong with his memory. The waiter all-importantly rushed to them, apparently for orders. But they casually brushed him away. Hapless, without a choice, he stood rooted near my place in a moment of acute indecision. My stomach and the 'grilled' bread did not allow me to give up. I summoned him and posed the same question to which he posed the same answer. My stomach was now furious. I retorted, "I can see that you have quite some sauce, but can you bring me some of it?" I frankly cannot tell you if he understood the meaning of it in entirety, but he most definitely understood the tone. The sauce helped the bread a lot. And the cappuccino tasted like powdered limestone and Digene dissolved in water. My friend seemed very contented with his vegetable rolls. They were too small to cause him any discomfort.

It was the last day of the fortnight, I realised, when I left the place.

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:34:00 am

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Sachin in the school books

Sachin Tendulkar, the Doyen of world cricket who has an entire chapter on him in the record books, is apparently in the school books (for a change). The Cricinfo article:

Tendulkar on the syllabus
Wisden Cricinfo staff
May 26, 2004

When the current academic year commences, children in government-aided schools in and around Delhi will study a rather special subject - the life and times of Sachin Tendulkar. The new text books for those in the 10-12 age group include an interview with Tendulkar, where he talks about his own childhood and what it takes to be a special player.

Krishna Kumar, an education official, said that the move to include a first-person account of Tendulkar's life was part of an effort to make education "a more pleasurable experience". "Sachin is an icon in India and kids draw inspiration from him," he said. "So we thought that having a chapter on him will interest kids, and at the same time make them understand that dedication and determination make a successful person."

By all accounts, the kids think it's alright. "I read the interview the day I got the book, said Nikhil Sharma, who is only 10. "I learnt many things about his school days. I always wanted to know the things Sachin did as a kid, and the chapter is really interesting."

In the interview, Tendulkar, who was a cricketing prodigy long before he was out of short pants, describes himself as a mediocre boy and an average student. He also says that he was very naughty, always wanting to "escape to the playground".

The "mediocre boy" has already rewritten one-day cricket batting records, and is now just one behind Sunil Gavaskar's tally of 34 Test centuries. According to him, "strong determination, continuous practice, good understanding of the game, constant improvement of one's abilities and courage to strike the ball with conviction" are central to his success. Something tells you that this is one lesson that will hold the kids enthralled, as opposed to reading comics under the desk.

- posted by Dileepan @ 11:33:00 pm

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A Comedy of Error Corrections!

A few days ago I had requested in a letter to the Academic Division of BITS, Pilani my academic transcripts. The transcripts, which they had apparently dispatched very promptly, was sent back to them undelivered, the person reported indignantly. I subsequently unravelled the conundrum. MS word Spell Checker had automatically capitalised the 'i' when I had typed 'i2 Technologies' in my address in the requisition letter. And the person who dispatched the transcripts beat the Spell Checker hollow. He, with some contrived ingenuity, corrected the I2 (read i2) in the MS Word-tampered address to the number 12. As a result, the postman had on his hand the wild goose chase of ferreting out amongst woods, nooks and creeks, the fictitious corporate building of Twelve Technologies. Postmen seldom like geese, not to speak of the wild ones. So he promptly threw a fit and sent it back to the sender, after having it stamped 'Undelivered'.

The person at BITS clarified with great relish that the package, which they had posted a fortnight ago, was still with them, safe.

- posted by Dileepan @ 10:44:00 pm

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Developments...

Last evening was most fulfilling. I met one of my dear school friends - the inimitable Kus. The very thought of schooldays, school friends, our schoolboyish pursuits filled my lungs with a wind of contentedness; I felt instantly invigorated, all my ennui and languor dissipating at the very moment. I have chanced to meet quite a few of my schoolmates recently, and surprisingly I find that there is still a comfort level I am able to strike with my school friends, which I sometimes struggle to establish with my more recent acquaintances. The matter came upon my ears that another of my close friends has found himself a lady. The news was a gale that hit me right on the face. We, the Awesome Foursome, never expected him to fall in love first. In fact, we doubted if he will ever burn his fingers in the embers of love. But life is so and, as it happens, he is well and truly in love. And the other three of us are to ourselves, intact! The lady, I can assure you, is of the highest calibre. In my book, she will rank as one of the first ladies. In fact, apart from the surprise at the unforeseen development, there was little for me to be startled. If I could have imagined him falling for any woman, it would have to be her. They match each other like a reflection in the mirror; in intelligence, knowledge, calibre and awareness. Housed in the cosy thoughts of elysian schooldays, I felt at home last evening.

- posted by Dileepan @ 2:40:00 am

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The Satisfaction of Blogging

One of my friends, a regular reader of my blog, remarked in her mail to me: The satisfaction from reading an original piece of writing/poem is as much as that from writing an original working piece of code; sometimes much more.

Interesting thought! But having had to contend with the dichotomous pursuits of writing pages of codes and inditing pages of odes (!) in the past four months, I feel urged to add a small thought that emerged from the writer's perspective. When a code works it works. Period. You find the satisfaction of a job done successfully for the day. You are reasonably happy with yourself. And you think no more about it. But, as a writer, while writing (blogging) is satisfying as an activity in itself, it leaves you with just those teeny weeny butterflies in your stomach. You open your blogspot every day, biting your nails, hoping to find an increment in the Comments counter, hoping against hope that you have been able to connect with the reader...

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:21:00 am

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On Goodness

I personally cannot tolerate the mere insinuation of endorsing goodness, thought I swear by it upon my glass of Coke at cocktail gatherings. I am made to agree that goodness as a virtue was hailed rakish during the Victorian era. One cannot help it; every era is entitled to its excesses. These days there is nothing more unfashionable and moral than having to seek refuge under the facade of some flaccid moral rectitude. The singularly unattractive thing about all men is that they turn good at some point. Why, at times I find myself a pile of miserable rubble of frightful goodness.

Never make the mistake of liaising goodness with innateness. One has to put in ounces of effort to procure the finesse of unwholesome uprightness; goodness is not an inborn trait. It requires to be carefully cultivated and thoroughly acquired; it is an art. Nobody at first likes the asphyxiating cloak of goodness over him. Man is born free and nurses a fancy to remain that way. For a free man there can be nothing more disastrous than the exclusivity of an endearing encumbrance such as goodness. When one is dear, one ceases to be free. Goodness is like a wife. One takes recourse to it when one begins to find almost all of life’s revelries blasé and feels its time for some existential retrospection. A friend of mine philosophised: Goodness is like wine; the longer you are good, the better you become. Whatever he meant by that, I’m sure he must have been mentally repressed with the amount of virtue he saw. While I personally am not quite so sure about it, there is one unsettling trend that has bared its face conspicuously: People, like wine, become more good with age. The finality of the situation is depressing. So much so that the very thought of growing old petrifies me these days.

Really it is either senescence or resignation that drives one to goodness. When people begin to realise that they are capable of little else, they pretend to be good. I knew this bloke who presented quite a picture at the poetry competitions in college. Whenever he took part, he left no stones unturned to ensure he won. He was very thorough with his preparation for the grand event; he lucubrated with huge anthologies for five nights and days. But the buffoon was a sore loser. He could never plagiarise with an appropriate piece. Imagine the judge’s thundering fury when he found verbatim excerpts of The Charge of the Light Brigade. He felt genuinely outraged and flushed to the yellowness of a full fry. He resolved, in a huff, never to come back. He frankly thought it was an insolent travesty of World Peace, the topic. Our hero wore on his sulkiest face and stuck his tongue out pitiably like a drenched poodle. And all the girls who passed by commiserated, “You are such a good poet and such a good person! God repeatedly tests only the good people.” As if God were some foreman in a mechanical unit sequestering out all the rejects. He put on a dejected appearance and trotted behind them wishing he had a tail to wag. And the girls turned back now and then and surreptitiously gushed just loud enough to make themselves heard, “Cho chweet!” And he made it a point to volubly harp on the aphorism: Nice guys finish last. Believe me, there was not an iota of ‘niceness’ in the conniving quibbler. But at the end of the day his non-existent goodness percolated through the tender hearts of the girls.

These genteel ladies are supposed to be ever so shy and romantic. Though they vehemently endorse the stereotype most unconvincingly, they are nothing of the type. A friend of mine was tolerably sane and evil until he saw this damsel. Within the span of a day he somersaulted into a tumbling mass of ungracious virtue and bumptious chivalry. He followed the lady like a Pomeranian pet and put on his best behaviour possible. He flooded her with flowers and other unusably romantic gifts all betokening his steadfast Victorian romance for her. She rejected him because she found him far too sweet and nice and proposed marriage to a guy who looked an injudicious crossbreed of an owl and an Orangutan.

Thankfully the evil in me has never been supplanted by any of its antithetical cousins, despite the various impending threats and hazards. My acquaintance with the perfectly odious virtue has been restricted to that of an observer. Every now and then I see stark Goodness on the streets and end up spurting out irrelevant ejaculations like 'Ada Paavi' or more Pommy indecencies like ‘O Blimey’ or ‘Oopsee Daisies’, wallowing in vicarious self-pity for three seconds and walking on.

- posted by Dileepan @ 3:20:00 am

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The Don

It is high time I introduced to you all another person from my wing - The Don. Before you start frisking away in terror, let me clarify - short for Don Quixote! But I must affirm: he is not quixotic in the least. He makes the most sensible of decisions and clings on to them like a leech to a wall. Till the last second. When he abruptly turns a somersault and does the most inane things ever. With time and experience, it has become almost customary for us to be strictly contrarian in principle whenever we lend him our ears!

This is an excerpt from a mail I sent to our wing egroup last semester:

It is, I'm afraid, impossible for me not to write about The Don - the person who as, almost casually, stolen the spotlight in the wing. He has been enjoying quite a windfall this semester. Two of the highest paid jobs and a girl now to call his own – even the avaricious will only dream of the above two. But our man attempts to handle all this with composure. He sure attempts! An overdose of Tamil cinemas sure has had its repercussions on The Don. It is not very tough to imagine our guy as the uxorious householder, bringing home a packet of Thirunalveli halwa and well-strung jasmines every evening to elicit a blush out of the bashful bride's cheeks. It is also not very hard to imagine The Don having a traditional meal on well spread fresh banana leaves while the doting wife first serves and then helps herself to a few morsels on the same leaf. You must forgive the exaggerated caricature that I have ended up sketching, but The Don already appears to me as the archetypal householder of Tamil Cinemas. His romantic allusions are getting worse by the passing minute and so are the songs that he lets blare on his 60 W contraption. I have begun to disbelieve less and less that he is visualising a romantic scene in a mofussul lorry or in front of a remote Dhaba with the songs playing in the background. Ratanji of the Gandhi Redi seems to play better songs these days. In fact, these days the boys going to the mess stop by his room (which, unfortunately for them, is on the way) listen to the strange gurgle of sounds stifled by the poor quality of the tape (not to speak of the tape recorder), repeal in a mixture of dreaded horror and heartfelt sympathy and, as a token of their solidarity towards his mental well-being, drop in eight annas into his room! (The canard floats that he has begun to use this regular accrual of funds towards the payment of his Redi bills.) And then they all trickle out in a file, uttering, punctuated by shudders, under their breaths incantations of pious goodwill for him to get well soon.

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:00:00 am

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When the Jive went for a dive…

I wrote this mail to the group on Dexter's attempt at dancing!

Guys,

I have two passions in life; I do not know if I've told you at all. The second is women. Against all my nobler pretensions, I must admit that my heart bleeds whenever I see the pool of pretty dames drying up; when one more of my apparitions evanesces in the face of reality; when one more of my probable paramours pick out a grotesque, rusticated good-for-nothing. And of late the entire wing being abuzz with Dance Workshop (DW), with Moo and Dexter spinning those fantastic yarns about their exploits with their legs and their lasses, has done my spirits little good.

Dexter, in particular, has never given me an opportunity to feel unenvious these days. Whenever he talks about DW, it’s only the possibility of an X or a Y squabbling with each other for the second to tango. Talk to him for five minutes and he nauseates you with a big list of dainty damsels that are head-over-heels about him. The last thing I remember him bragging about was about he executed the best 'twist' of a DW session.

Even in my wildest dreams I wouldn't have expected Dexter to twist gracefully. But even I, not of a particularly altruistic disposition, did not expect this twist. We were in Sky discussing a funereal scene, in fact a funeral scene, of the EDC street play when someone suggested that it would look 'streetplayish' to get four people to lift the dead body. One of them drove home the point, "Yes. It will come out really well. Also, Dexter and I have little to do in the play." People seemed to contemplate the plausibility of the idea when a certain damsel screeched, "No! Not Dexter. Not after he dropped that skinny girl during the DW jive!" At which point I could do little as the director to restore the sanity; far from it I could hardly prevent myself from rolling over the grass, splitting my sides. Little did I expect this twist!

Dexter had, as usual, become the centre of distraction of the place! The more I think about this, the lesser I can help myself from laughing out in public. I'm instantly reminded about the advertisement in which the man, in a desperate attempt to hold his lady-love and pants ends up clinging on to the latter and watching the lady make a headlong dive from the table on to the floor! Every time I picture Dexter doing something similar I laugh out in public places and end up looking like an imbecile! In my defence, all I can say is try thinking about the same! Dexter vehemently objects saying that both their palms were sweaty! When I feel like furthering his misery with an inquiring frown, "Sweaty?!..." And, I believe K asked them both to pair up again the next day, only to hear his death-knell being sounded by the victim! And, the re-pair couldn't be done; the repair was done!

And, (forgive the sadistic inclinations) I must admit that nothing has ever pleased me more than writing about Dexter, his antics and his misfortunes. When he reacts you can see all of the EEE circuits short circuiting simultaneously! Regardless of my preoccupations and obligations, I will continue to pull his dancing leg with conviction passionately and shamelessly. For I have already told you; I have two passions in life. The second is women...

Yours,
Me

- posted by Dileepan @ 10:24:00 am

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Murphy's Law

I sermonised to the Godmother today rather grandiloquently: The pleasure of loving lies in waiting! Queerly, it struck me instantly that the pun characterises a double-edged irony which embeds the resistential behaviour of Fate towards love and staunch lovers. Well Pained Lovers, take solace from the fact that it seems to be a no-win situation! Looks like you have been led to the best choice; no Schylla, no Charybdis...

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:36:00 am

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