the fish that flapped

My Family and Other Animals

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:25:00 +0000

Personal reminiscences on the social nature of food

(This was an assignment for my Reason and Senses course)

I come from a Bengali family and among the happy eccentricities of this community is the love, the total, unquestioned and unabashed pleasure, in the discussion, planning, logistics, scheduling, critiquing, after effects, before effects, description and finally the actual eating, of food. I have sat through meals where the heated debate at the lunch table was the competing advantages of various menu schemes for the soon-to-be-had dinner followed by the equally important breakfast the morning after with a side symposia on the days of old; when the cooking was better, the mustard grew of a more robust stock and the fish swam more diligently to fit the Bengali palette. I have heard my dad hold a seminar on the gondhoraj lebu in a manner not entirely dissimilar to a man in communion with God — gondho = smell, raj = king, lebu = lemon.

It is therefore no surprise that my first notions of what it means to be a family, the basic social unit of a society, was battered, fried and seasoned, in my grandma’s kitchen. It was there, on lunch-time sundays, amidst the banter of aunts cutting vegetables, kneading flour and over seeing the scaling of fish, in the seduction of that special meat curry that my grandma made just for me, that I learnt, what it means to belong to a place, time and a people. The cutting of fish and vegetables, in particular, strikes me now as particularly important in this milieu that memory recreates. Women sitting at the traditional botti# sharing concerns, troubles, dreams, joys, nostalgia, all to the rhythm of the hands at the blade. Thinking back, the sometimes glimpsed, inexplicable tears at the botti now makes sense — it was over spinach and fish entrails that the small, delicate, human narratives played — relationships formed, stratagems deployed and new understandings forged.

However to watch us in our full glory is to watch us in numbers. The gourmand in us reaches an operatic crescendo when the family reunites — uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, their wives, their husbands, nieces and nephews — all united in their love of food, adda* and Digene ( even with all the practice the human digestive system is not designed for the onslaught that often results and it is on these occasions that the Bengali mind grapples with one of life’s great imponderables - acidity or as is often colloquially articulated, gas).

The fish market is warned before hand, perilous expeditions are undertaken and the kitchen sees a kind of industry that could turn around Bengal’s dwindling fortunes. And somehow, amid all this, we catch up on each other’s lives, loves and laments. Its also on these occasions that family legends are born — like the brother who ate 20 egg devils back in ‘94 or the time when the great luchi challenge of ‘82 saw the consumption of over 100 luchis**. The Chinese have kung fu, we, seemingly, have luchi kung fu.

And since we don’t eat all the time (there is place only for three meals all said and done) we drink industrial quantities of tea^ and since anyone knows that evening tea can’t be had alone, by itself, as if there is no justice in the world, it shall be accompanied by shingara (samosa but with a different filling) and other assortments that would make any self respecting, health conscious, yoga instructor die of a broken heart.

Sometimes we get to share our obsession over food with the larger community. There are of course the weddings — where if you are from the boy’s family, it is your solemn duty, to try to embarrass the girls family by eating so much as to make them run out of food (the greatest catastrophe). Heavyweights in the family are called upon and fasts undertaken ( this usually means a light lunch) to be in top gear at dinner time. And if you are from the girls family, the basic idea is to make the buggers eat so much that they’ll have to be rolled out after the meal. The morning after (at the breakfast table) conversation will usually revolve around the exploits of the previous night, where on cue the older generation will pip in with how much more robust their appetite was back in the day when Jyoti Basu was still a young boy. And in case the food was not up to standard, then concerns over what this means about the moral and cultural conditioning of the concerned family. (I have also on occasion been witness to a diatribe on the commercialisation of the present wedding catering industry in Calcutta and the resulting fall in cultural values of the Bengali because Chinese food, as opposed to the full traditional fare, was served at the wedding. This is usually a cause for great passion among the probashi bangali - the one who no longer lives in Bengal)

But no discussion on the Bengali passion for food is nearly as complete without touching upon the great big eating orgy we like to call pujo. Pujo (or Dussera) is really where the action is at. The crowds at these great big occasions are largely divided into two sections — the elderly taking in Kaalchaar @, and the other endless mass of humanity, thronging the food stalls. It is here, often over ghugni (choley with a Bengali twist) and mutton chop and fish cutlet that old friends meet and new ones are made. Particularly interesting to observe are the younger lot. A frank appraisal over tomato chatney (chutney) during the traditional, afternoon communal meal (called bhog) will then give way to a complex courtship ritual over the next three days, where both parties have to surreptitiously and with a little help from friends, avoid the extended spy network of watchful mothers and well meaning elders, to meet, converse and give love a chance. Food often comes to the rescue with a ready excuse, the anonymity of crowds and the obvious distraction of the mughlai porota.

Footnotes

# botti — a wooden platform, an arms length long, ending in a sharp metal that rises up a half feet, straight up. One leg in a horizontal ‘V’ anchoring it across the wooden base, while the other, bent at the knee and vertical, while the hands, stretched in front, working at the blade

* Adda - marathon conversations that could go from Marx to Mamata Banerjee with a passionate detour on Saurav Ganguly

** Luchi - Like, but not quite, puri

^ Tea — the tea leaves even under the pain of torture and imminent death, shall not be boiled along with the water. It shall be added only after the water comes to a boil and milk added for colouring — prospective marriages have broken up over this

@ Kaalchaar — Rabindranath Tagore is made to roll in his grave once every year by a hundred thousand well meaning Bengalis spread across the globe - the women usually take the lead followed not far behind by babai and tiklu and kuttu from the local youth league

A Dog's Life

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 19:20:00 +0000

Something I wrote for Tehelka for the issue dated 18 september 2010

Why we ventured on such a thing despite the accumulating evidence that our own parents had met with complete and utter failure, was not altogether clear to us at the time. But if life teaches you anything, it is that the shortest path to wisdom is to stick your finger in odd places labelled ‘don’t’.

Entering U’s room one afternoon circa august 2002, I found him and S delicately examining a fur ball at odd angles with a curiosity that would have made Galileo proud. I joined the quest not entirely sure what we were looking for in a palm sized, brown puppy when it was explained to me that they had found it outside the hostel gates snuggled in the bushes and because the mother hadn’t shown for the whole hour that they had scouted the litter, S and U decided that the most vulnerable-looking of them needed a home - survival of the unfittest being the civilisational parallel to the natural world. Since obviously the puppy needed a name, the present search was to determine whether it was a boy or a girl. Several people stopped in to offer their opinions and after much debate lasting most of the afternoon, it was decided that the fur-ball was a boy and we christened him Doogie.

The first order of business was to feed doogie. It was decided that all babies are the same don’t you know and so we should treat it just like one did a human baby. This involved dropping Doogie repeatedly into an ashtray full of milk. It didn’t work. Then it was suggested that given Doogie’s propensity to vacuum anything within sucking distance and given U’s prominent nipples (cause for much pontificating in his early college days), U should take one for the team and offer his services and look, its going to be difficult for us too since we would have to smear those with milk in between sucks. Worried that U was showing only mild horror at this suggestion, the ever resourceful S engineered an ink dropper into a feeder and the problem had been solved.

Doogie soon learnt to feed himself and to see him attack the milk-ashtray with such savagery filled us with pride little realising that this was a survival response to the 6 droppers of milk we were giving him at feeding time. Life then subsequently fell into a pattern and U and S’s rooms which were next to eachother, soon became the olefactory centres in the hostel. U and his room continually smelt of milk for years while S’s room, one thinks with some prodding from U, was identified by Doogie as the potty zone. This was fitting since in all our experimentation with personal hygeine in those days, S was the true pioneer (multi-coloured fungi that talked back when prodded). Rumour has it that his room is still being fumigated.

Doogie’s upbringing met with several bumps in the early days, many of them literal. According to one estimate, Doogie got cozy with Newton’s laws at least 442 times from varying heights depending on who was paternally flinging him in the air, sitting, standing or lying down. Doogie, a quick learner, would frantically work his legs whenever any one approached his belly with baby noises.

But in one thing we did not fail as parents - we gave Doogie culture.
We taught him how not to play the guitar, showed him how not to woo women and taught him how to roll a joint. Informed him on Gilmore, Knopfler and Tarantino and showed him Pune from behind a rucksack atop a scooter. It would later prove that Doogie in fact was a girl but as U would say, “Ah! that’s ok. We’ve raised her as a boy”. She turned out alright in the end although her left eye still twitches when occasioned with photographs of U bare chested.

Hurry

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:16:00 +0000

Groovin, lets cut out of the scene, go groovin
Groovin, lets cut out of the scene, go groovin

we're cutting our hands at the kebab shop
in the streets of fear
Forgetting all our best Tae-kwon-do moves
on a barrel of beer

So long liberty
Let's forget you didn't show

Yalla, Yalla, Yalla, Yal-lah
Jumbalaya on the bayou

- Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros

Delhi Diary zero - What Horatio Hadn't

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:35:00 +0000

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Act 1, Scene 5, Hamlet

In my blog so far, I have steered clear of mentioning certain particulars about my life and person. Things like, who I am, what I am, what I do and what I hope to be doing. The thinking behind this has been pretty sound. For one, such a narrative suffers the disability of a profusion of I's , like the one a sentence back, and assumes 1) that you are interested in this sort of thing and 2) that people not informed of these particulars, that is, people other than friends and family, actually read this blog. And 3) that i know of such things as what I am doing and what I am about to do. A precarious assumption at the best of times. And besides, questions of that nature, to the discerning reader, one hopes, are answered in the choice and treatment of the posts.

( If that preamble made you nervous, don't be. It does not precede an autobiography. I am nice. )

Allow me then today, since I have been so mindful of your sensibilities, to be a bit 'self-referential'; a few words about me in the nature of background information at the start of this new sub-series titled "Delhi Diary".

I recently (9 days back) moved to Delhi. This move, considered by many in the know, as not altogether wholesome from the spiritual vantage point, followed, in retrospect, a self-discovering journey lasting approximately 7 years. I know. These things take time.

You see, for all that time, I had been pursuing a long held dream of becoming a physicist. Cocking a snook at Will and going where Horatio's philosophy hadn't. Peeping into the dread and dream of the universe and all that jazz. But at the end of that time ( a couple of months back) I had an insight into the dread and dream of my own. I realised the precariousness of childhood dreams and how they may often lead one into paths that the mind treads but the spirit doesn't. In short, I discovered that a life in research, despite my self effacing genius, the promise of a nobel prize and the the slightly more distant promise of highly inappropriate libidinous alliances with my future grad students, was not for me. My talents, as they are, would have to be channelled into a future slightly more modest. And hence its come to be that I am now gunning for the pulitzer, writing this post from a cafe in Delhi, having secured a job, as a reporter in a national daily, and where prevailing market forces have decreed that I be charged 200 bucks (cover charge) for the privilege of using the wi-fi on the premises. And the coffee isn't even all that good.

The point ? The bottom-line moral in these times of spiritual-quick-fix gurus and monks selling their SUVs ? Well none. I don't claim to move your cheese. Just two thoughts though.

One) Self delusional behaviour is more rampant than you think. Its perhaps a good idea to pit-stop and question the mirror without fear and regret.

Two) I'll be writing more often.

footnote : The only other thing of relevance that you should know about me is that I think Unix rocks and the view outside windows is splendid.

With great power comes great responsibility...

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:54:00 +0000

I have never been in a street fight.

I did punch a kid once when i was 8 years old. He surprised the both of us by losing a tooth and i spent the rest of the day thinking "..with great power comes great responsibility"(we were both in denial of the fact that it was a milk tooth hanging on to his gums for all it was worth. not much as it turned out)
And then 7 years later, i used the power again when i punched another kid (except He kinda spoilt it by complementing me on it.)

So yeah. I am lacking street cred. This ofcourse is not lamentable if unless you live in prison and share a cell with a man named "Spike". and I am not necessarily complaining. But I recently moved to Delhi and the thought occurs now with a distressing persistence, what would i do if things got primal ?

The movies are ofcourse a ready source of dangerous mis-information, as i remember finding out once the hard way(1). And ofcourse if you are in the habit of watching rajnikanth disposing the riff-raff of this world, well....i'm not Rajnikanth(2). no one is. not even Neo.

So, what does one do ?
(ofcourse if you are in america, the current national debate seems to center around having a good old western shootout with semi-automatic weapons ; more guns = greater peace being the logical coup They've acheived.)

I say martial arts. only answer. With enough training one should be able to make bruce-lee like noises and go crazy on the bastards like an extremely angry cat on heat. The shock value alone could be immense.

(watch this space)

(1) Its a long story but to put it in a nutshell, it involved climbing down a pipe. well, i was 18 and in college. and thats a time when you might find yourself in situations calling for alternative modes of exit. So i was in one such and i found out that a look of bravado coupled with a clamping action of the legs is Not actually, in point of fact, the right way of going about it. It is however, the fastest.

(2) Rajnikanth is an indian superhero who Can, unless he's already, Done. A man who scares away even metaphors.

We are like this only

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:33:00 +0000

Thoughts on being a Hyderabadi

Any place, society or culture can often be chracterized by the implicit set of assumptions that its people carry, the breaking of which causes much perplexity, confusion and general existential angst. In hyd, its the following

Traffic rules are not rules, just general suggestions that apply to other people, none of whom actually live in hyd. Its widely considered in many circles to be indicative of the governments sense of humour. Hyd just happens to be the city that understood the punchline.

If asked for directions, it is bad karma (alongside eating little children) to refuse help, the fact that you have not the faintest idea being only a minor technical distraction. Just point in the general direction of where you think the place ought to be and wish the traveller good luck.

Time is actually an infinite quantity and its tendency to move forward most irritating. We show great disdain for other people's concept of temporal space and consequently follow a diffrent standard all together. for example - 5 mins. 5 mins has a most quirky habit of inflating in hyd. It could mean anything from half an hour to a couple of days to maybe next year. What is however assured is that it will be anything except, well, 5 mins.

Street Theater. In any altercation/disagreement carried out on a road, it is the duty of those present/passing by/within hearing distance to crowd at close distance and gape at the concerned parties with frank interest. This is done ostensibly with the view of observing, at close quarters, the human condition and how it may bring into conflict two strangers they didn't know existed until that very moment. It is conceivable that they may have more pressing matters to attend to but so strong is this sense of civic duty that the legs stay and the eyes goggle.

Don't Panic

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:49:00 +0000

The world is no longer safe. History students may argue that it never was and they would have a point. So lets say, the world is being no-longer-safe as callously as it has never been before. We now know (the history students tell us)that the danger signals started some time ago. a long time ago, in fact. long before MTV showed us how to be cool. before Madonna. before even, Robert Plant's generational crash course on sex. They've been around us a long time; multiplying and growing. Obese d with our indifference and their own fatuous monstrosity. and now they are everywhere. Silent, treacherous and with the power to cling to your better sensibilities like that half chewed bubble gum still stuck to your shoe. They move among us; claiming old friends, robbing future ones and generally increasing our tiredness with our own species. In parties, in universities and on most frequencies, always unsuspected, they assault and leave you with that strange aftertaste of burnt toothpaste that only they can.

Republicans. What to do when you see one.
- a step by step guide on practical safety

Don't panic. They can smell fear. its a turn on.
Grab a copy of the communist manifesto (any red book will do.) and hold it at arms length in front of your chest and shout "the proletariat will rise". This will confuse It, in all probability because it does not know what proletariat means. To be sure, shout "Commie-ism".
This will enrage it and cause fangs to appear accompanied by some frothing. Walk towards it shouting liberal cuss words, enunciating them clearly. you may choose from - "Social Security","Sexual Freedom","Public Health-care","Noam Chomsky","World Peace","Charles Darwin" and "Kyoto Protocol".
By now it should be mad with pain, confusion and anger. Its jumping up and down, thumping its chest vigorously and calling for a pre-emptive strike. Curb the tremendous urge to drop kick it, this may only serve to prove its point. Instead, you may throw it a banana.
Its blinding rage, fear and loathing of/at contrary view points supported by evidence, logic, fact and history will make it morphologically alternate between bill-o-riley, ann coulter and fox news. Overcome the nausea and steady yourself. When it talks of a liberal bias in the media, smack it hard and wipe the oil off your hands.
It will now change strategy and appear as an advertisement for corporate culture full of happy shiny people with good teeth and better complexion. A product placement for happiness. Put on 'rage against the machine' and confess your never-dying love for "Napster".
It should now be a heaving mass of misery, desperately holding on to its NRA membership card and a few public issues of GE in a frantic bid to survive, even as it fades away.
If all of the above fails, then just say "free market is crap". The stench of greed however, may remain for a few hours after.

* *Republicans here refers to, in the main, Neo-cons and those who know what they are doing.

Chennai - please aadjust

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:05:00 +0000

Having moved to chennai recently I found myself in the, now familiar situation, of looking for student lodgings. Something that would fit the budget and the psychology in so far as the former constraint would allow. Below is described the fruition of these efforts; the salient features.

I stay as a paying guest in a very humble home at a very modest part of town, 3 kms from MATSCIENCE alongside the IIT back wall. The home belongs to the father of one Mr Nageswara Rao, of whom, more later. This area was an erstwhile slum which in the years since has grown concrete walls and discovered sanitation(hidden underground pipes, septic tanks,plastic flush tanks that go woosh and generally a little more intimacy about the morning rituals). The gate opens into a front yard/sitting area, shielded by an asbestos sloping roof, to the right of which, opposing the compound wall is what we shall call loo#1 and loo#2. more about loo#2 later. Moving along, on entering through the door you will find yourself in a corridor which opens into 3 doors. Through the central door you will see a room furnished with two beds, a cupborad and an elderly, dilapidated couple who will stare you down until you make apologetic bubbling noises. The left door opens into the kitchen and the right into 1 and a half rooms, containing three hospital beds. while you are taking all this in, you will also notice a smell. a sweet smell. but the kind of sweet smell which always made you suspicious as a kid. a sweet medicinal smell. if you move towards the kitchen, the smell will change in shape to include that of sambar or alternately a thick dal, which apart from being genuinely very tasty has the distinction of ending up on my plate every single day, unaccompanied as it were, by any of its more illustrious cousins from the plant family. Its dal and bhath in this house. thats our motto. thats our creed.
My hospital bed is in the room furthest from the kitchen and the corridor and therefore the smell. I will soon be sharing it with one Mr Nirmal, who is soon to be joining me, anyday now, in the hospital bed opposite, or so Mr Rao assures me.
The elderly couple in the central room are the people who brought Mr Rao into this world, "into a world of Uttter poverty", in the words of Mr Rao. From those modest, humble beginnings, including a 36 hour period without food in the govt hostel("free accomodation"), Mr Rao caught his destiny by its loins, twisted it for good measure and guided it into the present; a present that sees him as a CSIR employee, father to an MTech doing son, and the sole purveyor and undisputed king of a 'paying guest' empire of 51 souls (including mine). Coverting his parents place to include 3 more paying guests is the latest in his strategy for world domination, as he said to me himself " My dream is to have one complex where all kinds of full business interactions will be taking place. So that next time you come to chennai, i can provide for you and your wife. and also i want send car to airport to receive."
Mr Rao's mother is the defacto matron of the house. Mr Rao's father, after retiring from work as a gardner, now has a 25% efficient heart and is mostly bedridden, and gets up, on average, once everyday to go to loo#2. He has severe food restrictions including consuming not more than one litre of liquid in any form per day. Most of this liquid finds its way into a transparent medical pouch attached to his bladder/ groin by means of a tube. When he walks, he has to carry that pouch along with him and manages to do it with a dignity that i suspect would escape most. So, that leaves Mr Rao's mother, a woman with a most severe, angry set of eyes, as my sole point of contact in the house. Our conversations, which are essentially logistical in nature, are conducted in Telugu (which is great since its not tamil but as i soon found out only marginally so). This being somewhat of a hurdle, my basic strategy during these exchanges is to essentially get a few words right and using them as a sort of basic reference point, try and strike the approximate tone of voice, and all of this while waggling my head, kinda like trying to hyponitize her while speaking. After that its basically luck and good fortune. Its working so far.
In truth, its a decent place. Its walking distance from the institute, i get breakfast and dinner and its 3,500/- which i suppose is cheap given that there is also a washing machine and a maid who'll do the laundry. And Mr RAo put in a false ceiling everywhere so i don't think the asbestos will be a problem. The loo, loo#1 is clean though it has a faint smell of the sewer. the smell must have an external source since the loo and the bathing area is actually kept clean. The toilets actually double up also as a bath. Loo#2 in addition to having a western toilet and a bathing area , actually has a urinal! I was most intrigued by this on my first day. I have however, a grim determination to never set foot in there again after that first day. I treat it like a black hole event horizon, a most distressing singularity in space; stay away at all costs.anyway, I kinda like Mr Nageswara Rao and his sincerety. He's busy today completing all the fittings, appointments etc which will make the place fully operational before the two others arrive tommorow. I think he likes me but i suspect it may be because i am from the "elite class"(his words) and this oppurtunity to hobnob with the elite of the land is not to be missed. I haven't told him yet that Ma acted in 'Anand', but i think i'll save it for his birthday.

I forgot to mention the cow. facing the house and a few paces to the right is a cow shed.You wouldn't believe the amount of cowdung that one cow can produce. its a fucking massacre. Anyway, she sort of acknowledges me as i walk past her bum to the institute every morning. Its really just a subtle nod of greeting, but who knows, could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Since the writing of this post, the writer has discovered the existence of not one, but several other, cows. At current estimates, the cows number 7 with the population having gained a bit of variety with 3 buffalos and a chicken. all of whom contribute enthusiastically to the sound and smell of the place.

The Fish That Flapped - a poem

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:53:00 +0000

The fish that flapped
And strove it hard
To the see the ocean
A different view

And up it went
Down a different road
And saw far more
Than the normal route

To forests, mountains and evergreen hills
Past rivers, streams and even daffodils
Onwards he went,
To other things :
A two legged monkey
With, post-modernist feelings

But of this fool, let us not speak
His history points to a future-bleak
Of shameful greed and plundering past
To climate change and holocaust

The fish that flapped, then
Is a far better subject
One who’s deed
Teaches us a far better project
To question, to strive
To live a life less ordinary
To do things that others consider
Not at all necessary

For if that doomed monkey is to be saved,
Then progress has soon to be made
Progress that comes
On the shoulders of fish
Who flap and say,
This is not as good as it gets.

Horror Story

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:59:00 +0000

just when you thought it was safe….

So picture this. It’s the World Cup. You are keyed up. You start having those recurring dreams about ricky ponting crying and rahul dravid holding aloft the trophy alongside a bare-chested, shirt waving ganguly (not all dreams are quality controlled); perhaps the single most anticipated moment in your life apart from the other one where they give you a PhD. The moment that you are hoping will justify all the years spent being treated as a nameless emotional punching bag. It’s a big deal.

Over the past several weeks now, you have diligently poured over every newspaper article, digested every expert opinion, expertly avoided navjot singh sidhu, kris srikanth kapil dev. Zeroed in on every newsbyte, interview and cogitated deeply and intelligently about the new mysterious West Indian pitches. Worried over selection, form, Irfan Pathan and what exactly goes inside Sehwag’s head these days, when he sees a red ball hurled at him. You haven’t found too many answers but what you certainly have got is a wide variety of expert opinion from just about everyone who’s held a bat or wandered close to a cricket ground since 1974.

So by the time the world cup is here you are so charged up, your enthusiasm reaching such a fever pitch that you settle down to watch the 3 hour pre match program knowing full well that it will be hosted by charu sharma and mandira bedi, that wonderful duo who gave us such classics as the 2003 world cup and the 2006 champions trophy ; our very own laurel and hardy, whose witless humour and enthusiastic incompetence made you want to crawl under the bed and die quickly without a fuss.

This is what you see.

You see a beach. There are people in it. They are dancing. The blue green water, the accompanying calypso and the dancing people ; ah, right, West Indies. But wait a minute….. who is that coming out of the water? No!! it can’t be. Its Bedi. She’s wearing a cleavage special and an expression suggesting (gulp) …..sex.
This is not good you think. This might actually put you off women for a while.
But wait. Its not over.
Its charu sharma! No cleavage. so far so good. But whats he doing ? He’s sort of digging with one feet, in between spasms of ….hip movement, while gently moving to the right of your screen. OMG

It ends with a top shot of charu surrounded by west Indian beauties to his either side.

The scene shifts to the studio. Charu is talking to someone behind him, off camera. It’s a few more seconds before he realizes the camera is on and a few hundred million are watching him being affably incompetent. But you barely notice this. You are busy trying to find any sensation in your feet, your left eye is twitching and your mouth’s hanging wide open. Scarred for life.

As you sit there still unbelieving of what you’ve just seen, there is mandira bedi on the screen, interrupting a golf playing Desmond Haynes to ask him a very important question. Who is he rooting for. The fact that he’s had a 16-year career playing for the West Indies and is considered something of a legend there does not seem to provide her with any clues as to his response. He says West Indies. To this, she bobs up and down, giggles, tilts her head and asks “ No, but really, deep down inside, heart of hearts, who do you want to see win the world cup.” And then it strikes you. the terrible truth.
She wants him to say India.

The horror. The horror.

The First Mistake

noreply@blogger.com (didactylos) — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:41:00 +0000

So this is the story so far…..

There was a Bang. Some people call it Big, but then that describes as much as say ‘a lot’ describes the number of sand particles on a beach. So lets just instead say that it was quite ,….well, Big. A mother of a Bang. The kind of Bang that big supernovas tell little supernovas so that they behave as good children and go staright to bed after supper. It was Big. It was the primordial Bang.

According to theory, things occurred quite fast after this. In fact, most of the interesting bits were over in the first few seconds, time was born, matter formed lumps that later became galaxies and the universe generally acquired a sense of purpose.

Some time later, a bunch of rocks got together and decided to circle a Sun. (Just to set the record straight, there were eight of ‘em. The ninth was just over-indulgence. ) This proved rather fortuitous for the third rock from the Sun, because it got just enough sunshine for interesting things to start happening on its surface. Complex molecules started to bind with other complex molecules to form a chain of complex molecules which got ever longer. At some point they got too long and broke. Now there were two of ‘em. Forming long chains of complex molecules being the kind of things certain molecules like to do, these two, lets call them self-replicators, in turn started to repeat the process of the one before to form longer chains until they themselves snapped and now there were four. Persistence was a quality placed at a premium in these early times so they proceeded to do this until they filled the seas and oceans with their ilk and the precursors to life were born. In time things got hectic. Suddenly there wasn’t as much elbow room anymore and most of the available molecules, we’ll call it food, was all gone anyway, life, for lack of a better word, seemed tough.
These molecules, persistent as they were, were nevertheless shoddy at what they did. They made mistakes. The right molecule got attached in the wrong place and sometimes the wrong molecule in the right. And sometimes, some of these mistakes were beneficial. Sometimes they gave them elbow-room so to speak. So these flourished and spread themselves while the less fortunate ones found themselves without a seat at this great grand buffet of life.

And so the first faltering steps were taken.

In time the molecules got sophisticated. Some grew fins and some sharp teeth. Some grew roots, while others preferred to be drifters like the plankton. Some preferred power and strength, while others guile and camouflage. Some grew big and some small. The big ones ate the small ones and the small ones ate the smaller still, thus conceptualizing the basic premise of the modern corporate structure. Some of a more non-confrontational nature ate the plankton. And some smaller ones still, not being particularly choosey, set up shop inside the guts and intestines of others. And so thru this process of fortuitous mistakes and serendipity, lets call it evolution, life flourished, growing in its variety and
Number until the oceans were a teeming, heaving collection of nature’s bounty.

In the meantime, the third rock from the sun, we’ll call it Earth, was itself changing. The little creatures of the ocean, thru a long series of cause and effect and in their millions, had slowly transformed earth’s surface, actually, to be precise, the few kilometers of space above the earth’s surface into something it hadn’t been. There were clouds now which gave rain and winds which gave a chill and a rather important little thing called oxygen. This caused several things to happen. For one, a little fish somewhere, alarmed at the spiraling ocean real estate prices and more importantly tired of being constantly ridiculed by his family for having long fins, flapped them a little harder and found himself looking at the surface of the ocean …… from above. Elsewhere, a tortoise like being reached a little more to get to a plankton that had washed ashore achieving two things: one) walking the surface, which when she came to think of it was a rather interesting place to be and two, showing that wonderful quality of dogged perseverance which would see it beating hares in 200 meter relays for the rest of eternity.

Life found its feet and spread its wings.

In a million years or so, the air and the land were abuzz with the sounds and smells of birds and beasts going about their business which was essentially a two point agenda. Getting fed and getting laid. There were birds and beasts of a great many kinds all locked into a circle of life, death and defecation that sustained the conditions that would enable future generations of creatures to do the same. So, in a typical case, an antelope ambled down to the local waterhole to hang with the guys and hit on that rather fetching deer from across the plains who was visiting her uncle. He wanted to do his Charlie chaplin impression but couldn’t decide between that and a good old bar fight with a carefully selected weaker opponent. No. Charlie chaplin thought he, while gently chewing on a plant which in turn was contemplating the advantages of a settled existence. The antelope having rethought his strategy was overcome with a wave of exhilarating bravado and resolved to get his woman even if it killed him which was unfortunate because the next moment that’s exactly what happened.
The big cat looked up lazily from his feasting and thought that it was time for its siesta. His plans were slightly waylaid by an upset tummy which in turn caused a lot of diarrhea. Some of it seeped through the soil and found its way to a growing seed which broke through the ground the next morning to become a leading intellectual and philosopher of his times, particularly known for his magnum opus – the rooted life.
This kinda thing happened a lot on earth and was considered a good thing in a general romantic sort of way, the feelings of the antelope not withstanding. We shall call this an ecology.

Things proceeded in this vain for several hundred millennia. Animals came and went. Some had better luck with the opposite sex and some not so. The ones that did, spread their complex molecular chains, genes, for lack of a better word, while others still, understandably so, gave up on the whole idea of sex and stuck to cell division. Whole species became extinct and whole new ones took their place. Evolution quietly went about its business of genetic pruning and life flourished. There isn’t much to report from this era except perhaps to mention as an aside the emergence and subsequent decline of a reptilian life form that was to be the subject of a blockbuster movie apart from revitalizing the toy industry, several million years hence.

Then, on a fateful day …. A monkey climbed down from a tree. This in itself was not very significant and would have been confined to the footnotes of history had it not been for what the monkey did next. It walked. On two feet.
Why it did this, we do not know. Its possible that it perhaps wanted a lifestyle change or was perhaps just plain ‘monkeying’ around, but this one act, done in much the spirit of its long finned predecessor, was to have far reaching repercussions for the future of earth and its many inhabitants. For this monkey was the proto-human. The precursor to man. The first mistake.