Quick Story #1-part 1

It's always the food that gets to you first. Not the constant shaking or the crazy passengers or the faintly persistent smell of disinfectant mixed with urine he smelled for every journey in the past 15 years.  Which was an ironic combination of things, he mused to himself. Like earmuffs and heavy metal, or Arnab Goswami and “moderator”. These weren’t stellar examples of ironic combinations of course, but you couldn’t expect creative spontaneity from a ticket conductor on the Indian railways.

Ravi Singh Buti, or as his friends called him, Ravi Singh Buti, was just another jaded employee of the government of India. It seemed like he had slept all through his life. As a student, he remembered being woken up to laughter in the class many times, as teachers kept asking the people next to him to “shake that Buti”. He was always the butt of all jokes. I’ve run out of ass jokes to crack. Ok NOW I’ve run out of puns, so let’s get on with the story.

Ravi was going on a harmless, and by now quite a routine, trip. The train was going from Karnataka to Jammu and Kashmir. More specifically, from Bangalore to Srinagar. From the city with lots of bars, to one where there were lots behind bars.  It would take almost two days to make the journey, and Ravi wanted to catch up on his reading. He was at that point devotedly reading a self-help book by Dale Carnegie titled “How to not let self-help books rule your life”.

What Ravi didn’t know was the fact that he was dangerously close to going completely insane. Anything at that point could have triggered off a chain reaction which would cause him to be crazier than a tipsy Sonia Gandhi on ladies night. The last time that happened the country was given Rahul Gandhi. In this version of events, that chain reaction started much later, after a series of events much more important to the narrative.

It was that time in the journey when he was supposed to go check the tickets of the passengers on the train. This was probably the most active part of the job, the part he found both tiring and tedious. He had probably met all kinds of people over the years. Young, old, angry, calm and constipated or a combination of those, among others. He found that he always had a choice to make regarding how he dealt with people. Either with patience and calm or with irritability and anger, a decision made mostly based on his mood. After getting about halfway through his compartment, he found he had a rather strange decision to make, for he could not decide how to approach the next passenger. More specifically, he could not choose a head among the two to talk to. He never had seen a person with two heads before and that’s when his day started getting really strange. 

Internet for the elderly

             I'm pretty sure you've been in a situation where you've had to explain the workings of the magic web to kindly old people. Or at least to old people. That’s the problem with being from our generation. As we came of age, so did the internet; and people who got left behind the times have made desperate attempts at playing catch up, using “young people” to catapult them into the promised land of the http. From Grandparents who thought standing in front of a webcam could cause radiation poisoning to uncles sent you the same email thrice… just to be sure, I’ve seen it all and have finally decided to rant about it, since ranting seems to be the evergreen flavor on the web and complaining about rising petrol prices is too mainstream.

             After giving it very little thought, I have come up with the definitive way to split the e-literate from the illiterate (in a manner of speaking) using some cultural icons from the days past. Welcome to the  Babi-Baba-Beiber theory.

That graph should do the trick. Now, for those not familiar with those people, here’s a heads up.

  That’s Parveen BABI. The first hindi film heroine to wear a bikini on-screen. She was like the Sunny Leone of the times gone by. That was the poster hanging on your Dads door. No jokes. He’ll probably do a double take and look guilty if you show him this photo, stare hard and say “I know”.

90s Rapper, BABA Sehgal. Need I say more? Oh, I do? He did those odd bits of nonsensical-rapid- English-rappy  bits in hindi songs. Also wrote some horrible  music on his own. Definitely worth a listen. At gunpoint.

Wait… that’s not Beib… oh right, troll. So not funny.

The last time I was home, I heard the one sentence that I had been dreading. Quite like how all that coke you drank earlier suddenly needs to find it’s way out while you get to the climax of that new movie you’re watching at the theater. Anyway, my mother comes over brandishing her new phone in my face and demanded to know how to make Facebook and “what zap” work on it. I tried to explain to her that it couldn’t, because she didn’t have a GPRS pack. Then I spent ten minutes defending Sony, explaining why they had nothing to do with her phone not having a GPRS pack. Then, I recharged her phone, enabled GPRS and showed her how Facebook works, by that time she had already lost interest, and cursed me and my kind for coming up with these useless gimmicks.

       Grandparents have a more fanciful take on technology, they consider all of it magical. How do you send photos on a mail? Pixies and fairy dust, obviously.  But as long as they can watch Guru Dutt songs on a loop on youtube, who cares? I keep thinking about how different life would be if the internet was as ubiquitous in pre-independence India, as it is now. There probably would have been an autotuned version of Jana Gana Mana soon after the original. And there’d be an Independence-Tips page on Facebook. And Gandhi would have had a twitter account and if people asked why he was bent on fasting till death? #YOLO.

And as luck would have it, I just got a message from my mom saying she wanted to talk to some relatives in the US. Would she like an ISD  recharge? No, of course not. That’s just stupidity. She might as well talk to them for free using Spyke. What?

Some have it good

                It was hard to believe that the answer was so obvious, that it had been staring us in the face all this while, and we never once thought about it. The answer to crime against women is chowmein. Or rather, abstaining from it. If you still don't get it, you're obviously not matching the intellectual standards of our Khap panchayats, they've finally figured out the relation between rape and ramen.

                It's amazing, the things that the peoples representatives say and often get away with. Obviously, Bush and bushisms are worth a mention, only the President of the United States can get away with being "misunderestimated". A bit closer to home, however, our leaders haven't disappointed, from "painted" women who take part in protests to the Mumbai blasts being blamed on migrants. They have literally said it all. 
            
                Think about it, a job that doesn't require you to necessarily be at office, and when you are at the office you get to throw the stationary/furniture of your choice at the people you don't like! And then after a long day of throwing chairs and sore arms, you get to back home with EVERYONE except you being stuck in traffic jams. Need to take a break from all that tiresome procrastination? Say that you are outraged with the behavior of your opposition, and stage a walk out, and go home while causing the aforementioned traffic jam.
         
               Now that you know what you're missing by not being one of the guiding lights of our nation, I guess we can move on to what we need to achieve to be in their hallowed company. As far as education is concerned, nothing really. A lot of the sitting members of state and national assemblies have just their basic degrees, if that. What you need is the ability to talk a lot while simultaneously saying very little. If you have a loud and deep voice, even better and of course, a sure aim and some throwing power always gets you by those torrid parliamentary sessions.
             
                  SO, a fat paycheck(not necessarily from your employers), all the comforts you could need courtesy of the government, traffic-free travel, flexible work hours and the freedom to say whatever you like whenever you want. Sounds like the dream, no? Wonder what parents were thinking about while trying to push kids into being engineers and doctors. The cushy job is obviously the one being a 'servant' to the public. Oh, the irony.
           

Train of thought

                               

As I was struggling with the IRCTC website trying to book my tickets (unsuccessfully) I realized how the railway is such an iconic symbol, close to the hearts of so many Indians.

                Traveling seemed like such an adventure growing up. It still does, of course, although it doesn’t seem as grand now as it once did. From the maddening inefficiency of the railway staff to the charming stories of the porters and caterers, trains always inspire memories in a way nothing else can. It could’ve been a glimpse out of your window to see some breathtaking scenery, or the breath-stopping stench of something you’d rather not know about.

                The memory strongest in my mind was the sound of an approaching train. As a child it always inspired a sense of doom, maybe it was the result of watching too many Penelope Pittstop episodes, back when cartoon network wasn’t absolute crap. Growing up hasn’t changed me much in that respect, my fears weren’t completely baseless. The less than perfect safety record of the train has made everyone a little wary, I think.

                Obviously none of that is going to stop anyone from boarding the next train they have to take, a point proved by the people of Mumbai who showed that they could take just about anything in their stride. A fact that was, in equal parts, worrying and awe-inspiring.

                You’ve not had a complete Indian childhood till you’ve had your “train experience”. A bustling, crowded station. A site of so much ordered chaos that it boggles your mind. Haggling for luggage space with other people in your compartment, opening the coach door and sitting on the edge watching the landscape pass by. I know it doesn’t sound like a dream, but it’s one of those things that you HAVE to do.  Just like foot-boarding on a bus, or bribing a policeman or riding a cycle without touching the handlebars.

                If you haven’t gone on a train yet, shame on you. Book a ticket and get on and hope it doesn’t derail. And watch out for approaching trains, they’re scary.

Baby steps

                                          Ustad Sheikh Spear

“Kaun hota uney?” asked a friend of mine while we were sitting in a big circle during our post English class lunch break. All I could recall of the given sheikh was a particularly daring sense of fashion [baggy breeches are so 1500s] and a pointy chin beard that I aspired to grow one day, and probably tweak with two fingers while expounding on my theories about life, the universe, and everything. Coming back to the discussion at hand however, we had just finished reading a short story summarizing the Merchant Of Venice, and we were still trying to live down the fact that a man could have actually have to pay through his nose, or rather, pay with his nose for money borrowed over the trivial matter of a girl. Seemed rather fantastic to me then, but since I now knew too much for my own good, I decided to get to the bottom of this Sheikh character and pass condescending remarks over his fanciful stories with a little more knowledge about him. This led me to talk to my sister, a voracious reader of Perry Mason books (at that point of time) and she gave me her text book, opened to a scene from Julius Caesar. The first thing I noticed was that the English was outrageous. Spellings that would have made my English teacher howl in pain and righteous indignation. It was alright though, considering this poor Arab man never had Mrs. Francis (aforementioned English teacher) with knowledge just as ample as her waistline. The second thing I noticed that he wasn’t actually an Arab, his name was William, which frankly, would be a horrible name for an Arab. More guidance from my sister showed me that perhaps good William wasn’t dyslexic after all.

That started a wonderful foray into the world of literature that started with Tinkle Comics, and have tried to reach the high pedestal of Ayn Rand and her golden ilk. The by-product of reading is the ability to be more expressive, be it verbal or written. You can always find verbal release by having stimulating conversations or rap battles (I kid, dawg!). But writing is so much tougher than speaking! Things that you might have missed. Points that you might not have fully explained. Connections that might not have been apparent in the way you put your words forward. A wonderful platform for addressing that very problem, would be a blog Or writing elaborate rants on websites. Since I’m not frustrated enough to do the latter, this, my first post, is an attempt to do the former.