India-aaagh

No more aaagh

2010-09-12T10:59:00.001+05:30

This blog is now closed.

Bangalore's Metro problem

2010-07-25T15:04:00.002+05:30

Please would a civil engineer reassure me that the pillar above was supposed to be positioned like that? To my eyes, it looks as though it should have been situated a few feet to the right; a bit like the two in the foreground below.

It's preposterous to even consider that some pillars have been positioned incorrectly isn't it? After all, there are plenty of examples of this type of construction throughout the city. I took these photos on the mess that is CMH Road but you can also see similar out-of-kilter pillars at the Brigade Road junction with MG Road, and also at Trinity Circle. I also snapped these two workman precariously balanced on a scaffolding tower that they were in the process of constructing; winching up heavy iron frames on a rope, piece by piece. Health and Safety at Work Executive, eat your hearts out.

EDIT: But see Shilpa's comment below.

Easy-Peasy

2010-07-15T20:59:00.010+05:30

Now that I'm carless again, it's back to public transport. I phoned EasyCabs on Monday evening and booked cabs to and from the office for the rest of the week: a 7am pick-up and a 5.30pm drop back home. On Tuesday morning at five to seven, I received a text message from EasyCabs:

"Dear Customer, We are sorry to inform that your Booking is not confirmed due to non availability of cab in your area. We regret the inconvenience."

The cab turned up in the evening, but over the last three days, EasyCabs have let me down on three occasions; that's a fifty per cent failure rate. When the driver called me this morning to ask for directions, I cancelled the cab. You see, over the last few days I've discovered a transportation solution which is far more efficient than EasyCabs. I call it, Easy-Peasy.

Nagaraj is my auto driver in the morning, so he's EasyNag - he even comes up to my apartment and knocks on the door. Habib brings me home from Whitefield, and so he's EasyHab. I pay both of them what I would have paid EasyCabs. I know it's well over the going rate but as far as I'm concerned I want the convenience of knowing that they'll be there to pick me up and drop me. For the last two mornings EasyNag has brought his buddy along for the ride, and we zoom through the backroads and chicane across the Marathahalli junction. Habib is a little more cautious but we probably still reach our destination faster than a car would do.

And as I was zipping along back home this evening, I reflected how strange it is how things come full circle. When I first moved to India seven years ago, I stayed in Hennur for about the first month and then had to schlepp across the city to Domlur and back. Now, with just over a fortnight left in India, I'm back where I started; a foreigner in a rick, beetling through Bangalore.

The best of it is that even paying over the odds for EasyNag and Easy Hab, I'm still forking out less than half of what I was paying in EMIs to Reliance Capital every month.

Go, go el Pulpo!

2010-07-12T06:16:00.008+05:30

Congratulations to Spain on Winning the World Cup and also to Paul the psychic Octopus who predicted their win and a good many other results beside. Being an England supporter, and therefore always in need of a bit of light relief when it comes to following the National side, Paul has provided just that.

If I were Fabio Capello (England Donkey Squad coach) I'd be straight in there with a transfer bid to snap Paul up. After all, seeing as the creature is such an expert on football it's almost inconceivable to think that it has never kicked a ball. In any event, looking at how our useless lot of no-hopers performed, Paul has got to be worth a punt. Strap four pairs of boots onto its tentacles and you could do away with the England midfield in one fell swoop.

Playing God

2010-07-08T11:58:00.006+05:30

Don't ask how, but I stumbled across this ad on Sulekha:

"Now it is possible to get desired child-birth. Male child is caused by ‘Y’ chromosome. My medicine activate the ‘Y’ chromosome and then male child become possible. There is no side effect of this medicine and success rate is more than 99% . This is the combined effect of Homeopathic and Ayurvedic medicines. The treatment starts three months before the pregnancy and remain continue three months after the pregnancy. Most important thing is that this treatment is guaranteed and total cost is refundable if anyone do not get desired result. Total cost of the treatment is Rs. 10,000/- only. Contact – Dr. Anil Kumar Roy."

One assumes that Dr Roy - or Dr Anil as he's probably known - was studying medicine to the exclusion of English grammar. That's OK, my south Indian languages are absolutely lousy as well. I do wonder though, how he can guarantee the treatment. Mind you, there are enough gullible people, and enough people desperate for a son to probably guarantee Dr Unethical Quack a good regular income. After all, if he treats ten couples and fifty per cent end up with girls, he's still made 50,000 rupees. Not a bad little earner.

Held to ransom

2010-07-06T02:48:00.005+05:30

It was thoughtful of the BJP to declare a bandh on Monday and give large swathes of the Indian population a long weekend. Except, of course, that there is absolutely no consideration given when bandhs are called. The Hindi word "bandh", as I discovered only recently, means "closed" and that pretty much describes India yesterday. As it happened, we had two guests with us who needed to catch a flight to Guwahati. Their flight was originally scheduled for 10am but because of the strike, they left for the airport in a taxi at midnight on Sunday and then had a long night at the airport when they could have been sleeping at home instead. In actual fact they had an even longer wait than they should have had because their original flight was cancelled and they had to catch another one at 1pm.

I've never really understood the thought process behind a bandh. It's not like a British strike where a union tries to force the government's hand by massively inconveniencing the country for days on end. Rather, I always think of a bandh in much the same way as I think of a baby throwing its toys out of the pram or a toddler stamping its foot. It's a flash-in-the-pan protest; a twelve-hour postponement of normal life whilst everything shuts down and Party thugs go out on the street prepared to deal with strike-breakers.

As is usual with this type of thing, I took the advice of my team at the office and then declared yesterday an unofficial holiday. People were uncertain - and worried - about how they would get to work, and I thought it was better to be safe than sorry and just make up those lost hours during the remainder of the week.

But despite the fact that I had a pretty good day at home yesterday with my family (and my laptop), I really resent the fact that a political party places me under virtual house arrest for 12 hours. Being the bloody-minded individual that I can be at times, I was tempted to go out for a drive and see the situation for myself, but as I also have a duty to be a responsible husband and father - not to mention that I also need to sell my vehicle and could do without broken windows and dents in the bodywork - I stayed at home. A lot of people seemed to do the same, including our local shopkeepers.

Unfortunately we live in a BJP-controlled state, and yesterday's tantrum was as much about the party flexing its muscle as it was about rising fuel costs. Whilst the people who should be looking after their citizens were no-doubt congratulating themselves on a dirty day's work well done, there were plenty of small, hand-to-mouth traders who lost a day's pay. As I say, I could even understand the bandh if it were going to have an effect, but it doesn't. The only effect it would have on me would be to make me avoid voting for the BJP at the next election.

Bandhs though, cut across party lines and in all fairness, there hasn't been a national bandh for some years. It was probably about time we had one and a protest at pump prices would seem to be as good a reason as any. In any event, such matters are increasingly irrelevant for me personally. My time left in India is narrowing from months to weeks, and pretty soon that will telescope to days. I'll be back in cold Europe where people have plenty of first-hand experience of sustained and effective striking, particularly if their names happen to be Jean-Louis or Claudette.

Borewell Bore well.

2010-07-02T11:36:00.004+05:30

The beauty of the English language is that it's ambiguous. "Bore well" would probably be interpreted by many people as an instruction or order; an entreaty to bore - that is, drill - well. The item to be bored could be anything I suppose: a wall, the ground, a well. Which means that if you wanted to ask somebody to bore a hole in the ground and make a good job of it, it would be more accurate to say, "bore ground well" whilst if you wanted them to make a hole for water, you'd be obliged to say, "bore well well" (and probably add a "please" at the front or the end, if you'd been well brought up).

That sense of making a good job of drilling a borewell is what I hope to convey in this post's title. But I also want to convey the tediousness and the boredom of the whole drilling exercise, particularly as the drilling company which visited our apartment complex to drill for water on Wednesday, also bored through the main electricity cable and left us without power for 36 hours.

We'd been advised that the main gates of Sriram Stepford would be closed because Fred Karno's Army were coming in to drill for water. No sooner were the drillers here than POP! off went all the power and we were left with emergency lights only. No fans, no internet, and several kgs of frozen meat de-frosting in the fridge.

Nobody has admitted that it was the drillers who went through a cable and blew the main transformer, but when I walked past this morning, there were a lot of sheepish faces and not much drilling activity. That's a good thing because the power was restored last evening, and the last thing we want is for them to start drilling for gold again only to go through an electric cable hastily repaired with sellotape.

Anyway, no harm done, and it made rather a pleasant change to have chicken stew with my cornflakes this morning. You see, with all that meat defrosting, we had to hurry up and cook it, and now we have to eat it just as quickly.

Mensch against boys

2010-06-28T10:00:00.004+05:30

It is both disingenuous and churlish of the England team coach and his monkeys to blame officials for England's defeat at the hands - or feet - of Germany last night. The truth of the matter is that England were well and truly beaten - thrashed even - by a German side which made their passes count, and in doing so, ran rings around England.

It's difficult to know where to start. I watched the match in a bar surrounded by mostly Indian men, the vast majority of whom seemed to be supporting Germany. I got talking to a couple of them and they both said that it was the football they were cheering and not the team; adding quickly - as if to show some English allegiance - that they had both spent time in Basildon and Brentwood. They were probably just being polite. Either way, The Sports Bar in Indiranagar was not a happy place to be if you were an England supporter. Yes, we should have had a second goal but really that was academic. Yesterday's 'crossbar of God' would only have been an issue if the score had remained at 2.1. It didn't. As a friend of mine in England wrote last week after England had struggled in their qualifying group, "Same old story every 2/4 years. When will we learn not to get our hopes up?"

What irks most is that the English team consistently fails - in pretty much any sport you can name. In 1996, Baddiel and Skinner sang about "30 years of hurt", a reference to England's one-time success in the 1966 World Cup. Well in 1996 we lost on penalties to the Germans in the Euro semi-finals and now thirty years of hurt has become 44 years of hurt - and counting.

If I had my way, the England team would be paid on the basis of their performance. After last night's debacle, they'd struggle to club together enough to buy a small pizza - a thin crust pizza, without extra cheese. Jokers.

The sky is falling

2010-06-24T15:58:00.005+05:30

It's funny sometimes, how life imitates art. My youngest son, Tauran, is all of 14 months old and knows the Chicken-Licken story off by heart. So does does his dad, because his dad reads the book to him over and over again. In fact, we're now on our second Chicken-Licken book because the first one wore out. It's the truth.

As I read the story I also add in a few actions of my own. The book begins, "One day, a nut fell on Chicken-Licken. Ouch! said Chicken-Licken, the sky is falling, I must go and tell the king." When I get to the "ouch" bit, I pause, give a little wince of pain, and rub my head. And because young children are like little sponges and soak everything up, Tauran remembers the ouch bit and also rubs his head and says "Oof!"

I didn't see the children yesterday evening because I came home and then went out almost immediately to watch England paste the Slovenians. It was a little bit gusty and just as I was nearing the exit gate of our apartment, crash, bang, clump, a coconut blew out of the tree and landed at my feet. Two steps to the left and I'd have been rushing off to find the nearest king.

The Friday Horror

2010-06-14T04:19:00.008+05:30

There was a time, living at home, that my brother, sister and I used to go out drinking on a Friday night. We'd all exit the house at different times, meet up with our friends in town, and then generally make our own individual ways home. Occasionally the three of us would meet up too, but generally we kept ourselves to ourselves.

As well as a drinking night, Friday was also Hammer House of Horror night, Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing (or both) either fighting monsters, or representing them. I was never, and am still not, a great fan of horror movies. It never took much to get me cringing behind the sofa and so I was normally the first one to make my excuses and hit the sack. Mark would generally be just behind me but Emma could sit the whole film out and, if there happened to be a vampire in the garden that night, invite him in for a game of cards as well. Nothing ever bothered her.

Mark and Emma would be interested to learn that the Friday Horror endures in India. Returning from the pub last Friday (old habits die hard), I had a choice of three horrors. The Discovery Channel was showing I Shouldn't Be Alive, Nat Geo had My Shocking Story, and even Animal Planet had a programme about a man who'd had his leg bitten off by a shark whilst swimming. I'm not sure what that last programme was called but it was probably something along the lines of: A Great White Ate My Leg.

Voyeuristic TV is in, and My Shocking Story is, I think, particularly unpleasant. It's the modern day equivalent of P T Barnum's museum of freaks where you can gawp at people with really horrible skin diseases, or tumours, or parasitic twins. I Shouldn't Be Alive should really be re-titled, I Don't Deserve To Be Alive Because I Behaved Like a Bloody Idiot and Set Off Into the Arctic Wastes Wearing Just a T-Shirt. Admittedly though, that's not a particularly catchy title. As for the shark programme, Ouch! would probably suffice.

All in all though, pretty disturbing viewing for a Friday night, and just as well that I generally come home if not three, then at least two sheets to the wind and ready for bed rather than others' misfortunes. Even Emma would retire early if she were here.

Go tell it to the birds

2010-06-11T08:44:00.005+05:30

We're coming to the end of World Environment Week and I've done my bit. I planted an ashoka tree sapling at our office on Tuesday and it was still alive when I looked yesterday. Fourteen of us were invited to plant trees and so we all trooped down and applauded each other as we wiped the dirt from our hands.

The following day, parts of Bangalore were hit by a mighty storm which blew down trees and pylons, and smashed the glass door in our break-out coffee area. Opposite the office, a huge tree was blown over; not snapped in two but literally uprooted and left sprawling across the road, completely blocking one lane. Nevertheless, some public-spirited soul still felt the need to advise motorists that it was a hazard, and left helpful chunks of brick around it. By yesterday, the tree had been sawed into pieces and today most of it has gone, fuel for the daily wage labourers for whom Wednesday's storm was probably a blessing rather than a curse.

@*#&!%$ Surveys!

2010-06-08T15:54:00.002+05:30

I've received an on-line survey from the hotel I stayed at in the UK. This particular question needs no further comment from me and I reproduce it just as it appeared:

What did you like during your stay at the Arora International Gatwick ~ Crawley?
Please, be factual and don't use offensive language.

Alternative Emirates

2010-06-07T16:00:00.011+05:30

I brought home a couple of menus from my Emirates flights at the weekend. You know Emirates, the award-winning suitcase tossers. Well their menu copywriters certainly deserve an award or two as well.

For lunch we had the choice of "marinated shrimp and noodle salad served with a lemon wedge" followed by either, "tender pieces of chicken cooked in a coconut and chilli sauce, served with basmati rice and sauteed spinach leaves with pine nuts" or "fillet of cod served with a classic Bearnaise sauce, accompanied with chunky mashed potatoes, broccoli and rustic carrots."

We used to occasionally have chunky mashed potatoes when we were kids. "Mum!" we'd yell from the table, "my mashed potato is all lumpy."

But who on earth dreamed up "rustic carrots"? I have to say that I rather like the ring to those carrots but what does it actually mean? Does it mean that they were picked by a country yokel with a straw sticking out of his mouth? Or were they simply delivered to the plate unwashed and still covered in grit from the fields? To me, they didn't look any more rustic than the next carrot but then I'd hardly call myself a carrot-connoisseur. And what about the poor old broccoli which gets no adjective at all; just plain old "broccoli"? Couldn't they have at least described it as "Arcadian broccoli" or "tender broccoli florettes"?

I tried to memorise the descriptions for when the trolley-dollies came round. "Ah yes, hello waitress. Yes, for luncheon I'd like the fillet of cod served with a classic Bearnaise sauce, accompanied with chunky mashed potatoes, broccoli and rustic carrots please." Instead I just said, "I'll have the fish please."

For afters - sorry, I mean, 'dessert' - we had lemon and cream torte, a "lemon fruit filling topped with buttery biscuit crumb and encased in a creamy vanilla mousse." It's my earnest wish that one day, the proof-reader falls sick and the menu goes out as "creamy vanilla mouse". That aside, afters was good and we rounded off with plain old tea or coffee and chocolates.

So that was the lunch menu and, as we were flying out of Gatwick to Dubai, you might have expected that the menu would have had more of a western flavour to it. The Indian leg of the journey - the "Dinner" portion - was far more eastern in outlook but just as florid with the prose. We had murg biryani "... marinated chicken cooked to perfection...", kadala curry "tempered green beans" or grilled chicken (for the firangs probably) with "herb potatoes".

You can see why the airline, or any catering establishment for that matter, would try and sell up its fare and make it seem as attractive as possible. And yet it's exactly that type of attitude which results in nouvelle cuisine: a few morsels of strategically placed food choreographed on a fine bone china plate, drizzled with olive oil by an uncouth chef, and served up with a massive bill.

Come the revolution, when Nixon Air (motto: "You'll eat what you're given and damn well be grateful") flies direct from Bangalore to Essex, bans overweight passengers (unless they pay for two seats), people with irritating laughs, people who snort, people with body odour, people with unruly children, and people with rampant dandruff, the menus will look like this:

Lunch: prawn cocktail, followed by steak 'n' kidney pie and mash (vegetarians just get the mash), with spotted dick for afters.
Dinner: pineapple and cheese cube on a cocktail stick, followed by chicken 'n' mushroom pie and mash (vegetarians can pick out the chicken), with Angel Delight for afters.

Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch from the bar.

Air hostesses from Trans Air.

Not so Easy Cabs

2010-06-04T10:56:00.004+05:30

I tried to book an Easy Cab to the airport the other day. I went to their website, filled in all the details, and then got an e-mail and a text message saying that a representative would contact me. That call never came. I tried calling Easy Cabs in the afternoon but the line was engaged and I gave up.

In the end, I booked a car through the company I usually use, and then amused myself on the way to the airport by trying to prevent the driver from falling asleep at the wheel.

"Don't fall asleep!" I shouted, as the car slowed dramatically and his head and eyelids drooped.
"No, sahib, no sahib" He replied, turning around to me and turning on the light at the same time so that I could see that his eyes were open.

But he nearly did fall asleep and for the rest of the journey I watched him struggling to stay awake, engaging him in small talk such as, "what time did you start work this morning?" and "how many central reservations have you careered into?"

So I guess you pays your money and takes your choice. Book with Easy Cabs and the car for the airport will never come. Book with Trinity Cabs and your driver might take you to meet your maker instead.

Another golden opportunity goes west

2010-05-29T21:29:00.006+05:30

I missed out on some impromptu comedy last night. I stopped at Foodworld in Indiranagar to buy some chewing gum. I thought twice about it before going into the supermarket because chewing gum was all I wanted and I could see people with fat baskets waiting at the checkouts. Undaunted, I picked up a pack of gum and then joined a queue with my five rupees at the ready.
As always happens, in whichever queue at whatever location, and in any country that I queue at, there was a problem up ahead. If you ever see me in a queue, don't stand behind me. I am to queues what the albatross was to the Ancient Mariner.

The woman at the head of the queue had presented a five hundred rupee note to the cashier and he didn't have any change. Change is a big problem in India. Nobody ever seems to have change. Part of the problem, admittedly, might lie with foreigners like me who collect the country's coinage and then file it away in dusty albums. But last night it wasn't coins that the cashier wanted, it was hundred rupee notes. The woman didn't have anything smaller than a five hundred, and the cashier didn't have anything either. He stood around looking like a lemon, went to the door, looked out; came back, scratched his head, went back to the door again.

I looked into my wallet and saw that I had five one hundred rupee notes and so, being the good Samaritan, I told the cashier that I had the notes and I'd do him a swap. All smiles. The woman got her change, the man behind her (and in front of me) conducted a seamless transaction for a couple of hundred rupees with a credit card, and then it was my turn.

And what I should have done then was present the cashier with my newly acquired five hundred rupee note in exchange for my five rupee pack of chewing gum. But I wimped out. The cashier wouldn't have got the joke and I'd have stood the risk of being drawn into some long discussion about change.

The best I can do then - which admittedly, is a little weak - is use the missed opportunity to notch up another blog post for India-aaagh. Image courtesy of the BBC.

Re-published in The Bangalore Mirror on 25th June 2010.

A slight hitch

2010-05-24T22:20:00.006+05:30

How many times have I thought to myself in India, "they do things differently here"?

I've done a lot of hitch-hiking in my time. I've hitched through most of the English home counties, up as far as the midlands, from Loughborough to Paris and back, and even from Essex to Yugoslavia, zig-zagging with my future brother-in-law through as many countries as we could manage. In my hitch-hiking days the rules were simple:

1. Stand purposefully and smile, even if you have just been drenched again by yet another truck speeding through a muddy puddle.
2. Hold your thumb out so that it's parallel with the road. You're asking for a lift, not giving a thumbs-up.
3. When a vehicle does stop, run for it like the blazes before the driver has second thoughts and heads off.
4. Say thank you at the end of the ride.

I don't know how India's hitch-hikers react to 3. and 4. but as "thank-you" rarely seems to be part of the vocabulary in this part of the world, I can't imagine that that rule applies. Running for anything in India also seems to be anathema to most. Blame it on the sun.

I can only speak as I find and I must say that I've never seen a more casual bunch of hitch-hikers in all my life. In fact, the term "hitch-hiking" is probably a little grandiose and over-exaggerated here. The lift-scroungers that I've seen just hang around at the roadside and don't so much as raise a smile, let alone a thumb. Young boys, yes, they might actually try and flag you down, but the casual labourers and the blue-collar workers who seem to make up India's lift-scrounging population, just loll around waiting to get picked up. And it seems to work. I'm ashamed to say that I've never picked up a road-loller in India but that's because I have all the old angsts now that my mother used to fill me with when she was trying to steer me away from hitch-hiking in Europe (and which, to be fair, I'll also remember to use when it comes to dissuading my own children). If I pick them up, will they ever get out of the car? Will I even understand where they want to go? Will they take my baby seats with them? Will they demand money with menaces (or even money with wheedling, which can be a whole lot worse?) Will there be a severed head and a bloodied axe in the bag that they forget to take with them when they alight at something-ahalli?

And so I don't stop and actually I don't feel guilty either because I know that sooner or later a scooter will pick them up, or a tempo, or an axe-murder in a Tata Indica. Besides which, I like my baby seats.

Icelandic hitch-hiking nightmare from Iceland Viking.

William Morris, eat your heart out!

2010-05-17T20:48:00.005+05:30

I am pleased to report that Bangalore's Arts and Crafts' Movement is thriving. I give you Exhibit A (above). From left to right we have: a floral basket, a pasta caterpillar, an ice cream cone, and a sponge cake (made with a real sponge). The farmyard scene backdrop is a pencil-work / origami combination. Pretty good, I think you'll agree, especially considering that they were all done by my daughter who is four years old.

Struck by our child prodigy's prodigious artistic talent, we pay 100 rupees a day for her to attend an art and crafts' class, and each afternoon she brings back something else to fill up our bookcase shelves. Except of course, that there's no way she could turn out such clever pieces of art. Don't think that I'm not a fan. I am. Niharika does have a talent - no doubt inherited from her grandfather, Hannibal Lecter - but there's no way that she would come even close to producing any of the stuff that she's come back from her classes with.

No, the sad fact of the matter is that I pay 100 rupees a day so that Niharika's teacher can spend her evenings making pasta caterpillars and cardboard ice creams. While her husband is watching TV, Niharika's teacher has her glue pot and pencils out and is sitting at the dining room table creating. (And I wouldn't mind betting too, that while she is creating, her tongue sticks out from the corner of her mouth. Creative people do that).

But credit where credit's due. The creations are good. The sponge cake was such a masterpiece in fact that, according to Niharika, her little friend's grandfather tried to take a bite out of the cake that found its way back to his house. They're good, but if I saw them at a crafts' fair there's no way I'd pay 100 rupees a time. In fact if it wasn't for the sadistic streak in me which quite likes the idea of a grown woman struggling through the night with poster paints, pasta, and a good imagination - and then passing of her artwork as my daughter's - I'd have probably cancelled the classes a while back. As it is, I've agreed to let her continue for as long as we still have display space. We're currently one bookcase down, and counting.

L for Orange

2010-05-14T10:12:00.007+05:30

I have been trying to hook up with a good local (or "laaacaal" as they say round here), chartered accountant (and so if anybody can recommend one, please drop me a line). I left a message with Sulekha and bang! straight away, two calls from laaacaal book-cooking-wallahs. And then the inevitable routine: the swapping (sorry, "swaaaping") of e-mail ids and phone numbers.

I was telling the second caller my e-mail address and going through that address letter by letter. Depending on my mood I go for the NATO phonetic alphabet - A for Alpha, B for Bravo etc - or the Indian cities' alphabet - A for Ahmadabad, B for Baroda etc (which is fine unless you have an X in your surname). If the call is going really badly, I have been know to throw in some real screamers: A for Autism, B for Bi-focal...

But this morning I was speaking slowly and precisely and sensibly to the chartered accountant on the other end of the line, and he was repeating what I was saying: N for November (N for November) I for Indigo (I for Indigo) X for X-Ray (X for X-Ray) O for Orange (L for Orange).

L for Orange?

I couldn't help myself. It's like that reaction you get when a doctor taps your knee with a small hammer, and you jerk your foot up and kick him in the groin.

"L for orange? Tell me," I said, "What letter does the word 'orange' begin with?"
"Pardon me, sir?"

I didn't pursue it. It was far too early in our relationship. I could have gone one of two ways: O for Orang-utan or O for Orissa.

"O for Orissa", I said.

The Pipies

2010-05-12T12:46:00.004+05:30

Heard of the Pipies? It's my proposed new awards' ceremony; an annual event which will honour the most awful piped music broadcast in the last twelve months. I have two nominations so far:

1. Michael Jackson - Leave Me Alone

Ironic really because that's exactly what I think whenever I visit Spar and this music is playing. Actually, it doesn't really fall into the Pipie category because this is the real deal, the Michael Jackson original played endlessly as you wheel your trolley around the aisles and then wait for hours at the check-out. In fact the song is repeated so often that there have been times that I wished he was still alive. It was never this bad (no pun intended) when he was.

2. Where Do I Begin? (Love Story)

Phone through for a conference call on our office phone system and if you are unlucky enough to be the first person on-line, you get this classic (but dreadful) song played on South American pan pipes by an out-of-work Andean llama herder. The music is so awful that it's preferable to join a conference call five minutes late rather than put up with Miguel Ignacias on his pipes. Having recently resigned from my company however, this is not something that I will have to endure for much longer. Thankfully.

The land of milk and honey

2010-05-08T12:24:00.006+05:30

I'm reading, for the third time, Old Soldier Sahib, by Frank Richards. Frank joined the British Army in 1901 and Old Soldier Sahib focuses on his time with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in India and Burma. Here, he talks about the cost of every day provisions in India.

The Battalion had its own dairy, bakery and Regimental Bazaar. This Bazaar contained the shops and dwellings of the natives who had attached themselves to the Battalion. The dairy provided the butter and milk that was used by the Battalion; the bakery, bread; and in the Regimental Bazaar everything was sold from contraceptives to bicycles. natives came around the camp before breakfast and before tea, carrying trays with small pats of butter on them and also cans of milk. They shouted, "Mucking Wallah, Dood Wallah" which were the Hindoostani names for butter and milk. A pat of butter, which weighed about an ounce cost one anna. A pice worth of milk was sufficient for the tea. The butter was excellent, but it was very dear considering how cheap other articles of food were.

Under a large tree which was called "the Ration Stand" natives arrived every morning selling fresh meat, bacon, eggs, pork-sausages and vegetables. Everything was dirt cheap: best beef-steak one anna a pound, mutton-chops six pice a pound, best country bacon three annas and two pice a pound, pork sausages three annas a pound, eggs were three or four for an anna. I now understood what the old soldier in the [coal] pit at Blaina [in Wales] had meant when he told me that India was the land of milk and honey. If a man felt like having a chicken for his dinner he never paid more than four annas for it. But there were times when a man, owing to bad luck at Crown and Anchor [a gambling game played extensively throughout the British Army], or stoppage of pay, did not have the money to buy even a pice-worth of milk and had to subsist on his rations.

The only difference between rations in India and rations at home was that here a soldier was allowed one pound of meat a day instead of three-quarters of a pound.We also did not pay threepence a day messing, so there was no mess book for a corporal to shark and our pay was one rupee a day. From our meat rations a small steak was cut for each man's breakfast. These steaks were called khaki patches, and a man's jaws would ache for hours after he had masticated one of them. There was not much fat on any of the cattle that were killed on the Plains, but the cattle issued to the troops did not have enough of fat on their kidneys, it was commonly said,to fry the liver of a mosquito.

It was only during the winter that bacon was sold on the Plains, and one old man, who was called the Bacon-wallah, was always an early arrival under the large tree. He had three natives with him who carried his stuff and worked under his supervision; they seemed to be in mortal dread of him, as were all the other natives who stood at the Ration Stand. He was a shrivelled up old chap about five feet six in height and when I first met him I could not tell whether he was a white man, a half-caste or a native. But it turned out he was white. He smoked a native pipe called a hookah or hubble-bubble: it held an ounce of tobacco and he would sit on his haunches like a native while he was smoking it. It was common to see half a dozen natives in a circle, smoking and gossiping; they sat on their haunches with one hubble-bubble between them, from which each man took a few whiffs before passing it on to the next man. They smoked all kinds of stuff, including charcoal and live coke, but the old Bacon-wallah smoked our tobacco, which was very cheap. At this time there were no duties on tobacco and cigarettes, and best plug-tobacco cost only one rupee a pound.

At the time Richards was writing, the conversion rate was fifteen rupees to the English pound. There were sixteen annas in a rupee and four paisa in an anna. Three pies equalled one paisa. Hope I've got that right.

Pictured, General Sir Samuel James Brown VC who was born in Barrackpore in 1824, and who had his left arm hacked off in India in 1858. It was this incident which led to the General inventing the Sam Browne belt (worn above) which could accommodate both a pistol and a sword; an accoutrement which would become a standard part of an officer's uniform for many years.

So adieu, Yar'Adua...

2010-05-06T11:47:00.005+05:30

... and good luck to Goodluck.

Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua has died after a long illness. He was 58 years old, the picture of him above bearing testimony to his long illness, or his nine children, or both. He is to be succeeded by Goodluck Johnson whose parents, ruing the day they were saddled with a very ordinary British surname, decided to compensate by giving their son a very strange name indeed.

Meghalaya does a good turn in strange names as well and I still regret losing my scribbled notes, compiled one afternoon when Shilpi and her friend reeled off some of the more bizarre names they'd come across. Toiletseat was one; Prostitute, another. Then there was Mister (who when he grew up became Mr Mister) and of course the odd Stalin and Hitler. There were other beauties as well, and seeing Goodluck Johnson swinging into power makes me think I should sit Shilpi and her friend down again for another naming session - and this time hang onto my notes.

A Preeti good deal

2010-05-02T19:29:00.006+05:30

Need a quick re-touch? Then I definitely recommend Preeti Lab and Studio on K H Road. Whilst I was waiting there for my wife to have her portrait taken, I snapped this “before and after” picture which was pinned to the wall. Not only has the model here been given a colour make-over, she’s also come out of the exercise with a new sari, heavy gold necklace and drop earrings.

In fact, blow me, five minutes after she had entered the photographic booth, my wife re-emerged and, lo and behold, she’d turned into Barbara Mori! As for me, no more flabby Mr White Guy but Hrithik Roshan instead; all muscles, abs and brooding sensuality.

Here’s one of the missus and me which our maid snapped when I returned home from the supermarket the other day. Like I say, I definitely recommend Preeti Labs...

IPL dreaming

2010-04-27T07:50:00.003+05:30

I reckon that this year's IPL series has offered fantastic entertainment. For the cricket-lover there was everything: smashed boundaries, killer bowling and terrific fielding (as well as some real duff fielding). For those less interested in the sport of cricket there was a good sprinkling of Bollywood glamour. I avidly watched the games from India and the UK and spotted - at different times - Preity Zinta, SRK, Deepika Padukone, Shilpa Shetty, Katrina Kaif and - I think - Amrita Rao. There were certainly others. Preity Zinta was particularly in evidence, the dimpled one loyally leaping up and down when the King's XI Punjab hit an occasional boundary on their way to bottom place.

And if sport and Bollywood weren't your cup of tea there was also the obligatory scandal: a ministerial resignation and the IPL's king-pin suspended whilst investigations begin their tedious progress and gobble up acres of newsprint in the process.

For me, a Bangalore Royal Challengers supporter to the core, I suppose the tournament ended reasonably. RCB played both brilliantly and appallingly badly. They lacked the consistency of a really good team and can probably consider themselves fortunate that they made it into the semis. They were never going to be good enough to win the IPL and the Mumbai Indians put paid to their aspirations in impressive style.

That presented Bangalore with another meeting with the Deccan Chargers, my least favourite team in the IPL due to a) their uncanny ability to defeat RCB and b) their garrulous captain and wicket keeper, Adam Gilchrist. RCB's trouncing of Gilchrist's boys in the third place play-off, and their securing of a Champion's League place in the process was a real sweetener, and it just got better when Chennai Super King's - my second favourite team - wiped the smile off Tendulkar's face in the final.

So all in all, after goodness how many weeks of IPL, I was a fairly happy bunny and think - not for the first time - that 20/20 cricket has breathed new life into the game. I wish that 20/20 had been dreamed up when I was a young man. If it had been I might have had cheerleaders in front of me and balls dropping next to me in the stands instead of - on one memorable occasion at least - shivering at Trent Bridge, a box of sandwiches on my lap, occasionally applauding as England hit a boundary in a tedious fourth day performance against another god-forsaken test side. Long live IPL.

World Liver Day

2010-04-22T07:56:00.005+05:30

I received this text message a couple of days ago:

"Is your liver happy? BGS Global Hospitals, liver transplant leaders bring World Liver Day special offer - 19 to 25th April. Call..."

I asked my liver if it was happy and I got a very grouchy reply that I should ask it again after it had soaked up a few more beers. That was pretty much what I'd expected it to say. Nevertheless, I find the thought of people flocking to BGS for a special offer liver transplant quite amusing. What is the hospital offering, I wonder? Buy one get one free? Or maybe they're throwing in a kidney or two as well. At the very least, I would expect that the hospital canteen has been doing a roaring trade in liver and bacon for these past few days.

Cartoon courtesy of my talented father, Roy Nixon.

What a wonderful place is Xizang

2010-04-06T14:40:00.007+05:30

Completely overshadowing the announcement of the General Election date (May 6th) comes worrying news from Mattel. The rules of Scrabble are to be changed. For the first time, proper names are to be allowed and words can also be spelled backwards or placed in positions on the board that are unconnected to other words. This presumably mean that players can now go straight for the triple-word scores or zero in on the triple-letter squares with their Js and their Xs and their Qs.

Erudite of Tunbridge Wells is understandably "annoyed" (one+one+one+one+four+one+two, triple letter score on the y,: twelve; double word score: thirty-eight) whilst Keith Churcher, chairman of the Reading Scrabble Club, is "apoplectic" (one+two+etc etc). "Players like myself have spent decades memorising words in the dictionary" he said. "To be trumped by someone with knowledge of the current top ten pop chart is not a welcome prospect. They're dumbing down a classic."

Two comments here. First of all, Keith, get a life. Memorising words in a dictionary is a worrying habit. Second, don't panic. Changing the rules of Scrabble isn't, I would have thought, going to see a rush of youngsters throwing away their X-boxes so that they can get a triple word score with "Bjork". It's not going to happen.

I've grown up in a Scrabble household and despite a recent run of poor form, the Bangalore Bravehearts, currently on tour from India, often give the Chelmsford Codgers a damn good hiding. I remember too, when we were younger, leaving our parents alone playing Scrabble and returning much later to see that dad had rigged the board, casually leaving it where he knew we would see it, the mildly rude words intact: "farting", "bum" and such-like, as if he and my mother had thrown the rule-book out of the window and played "naughty Scrabble" whilst we were out.

The new rule changes won't affect us, and I see that in any event, Mattel is allowing players to stick to the traditional version if they wish. As far as I'm concerned, I'm inclined to think that the whole thing is simply a well-timed election spoiler. That being said however, Mattel's decision to allow words to be spelled backwards is nothing short of a gnikcuf liberty.