cat's cradle

Cuppatee.

2010-08-12T19:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, they have raped my comments section, haven't they?

Darling poppadoms

you have been well my lovelies?

Five more syllables.

Boo

2009-12-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

I wish I could say I am back. I really would like that.
I have much to tell.

Slapstick

2009-04-10T08:12:00.001-07:00

The spunk is gone. Monkey barely remains.
So much has happened.
I was actually in a Kasaravalli-dilemma-struck-character reverie (no background music, out of focus camera, and Rushmore-still -- for about 6 minutes. We'll allow for a crow to croak, and for there to be dark clouds; working that whole Kalidasa Maaghe meghe vayam gatah pun) just thinking about the mindnumbing things that have transpired over the last two years, which by the way is the whole point of this post. (I was random blog-surfing, turns out that blog was celebrating birthday, hurriedly checked monkey, and it had been two weeks since it had been two)

Turns out, I am HIV negative after all.
Turns out, Neurology is my field of interest.
Turns out, I am going to be studying under guy whose profile picture has pink orchids.
Turns out, somebody else is paying for it, so it's okay.
Turns out, I have loved.
Turns out, I have lost. Too.

I remember that during the heydays of this blog, I would suddenly, as if in an epiphany, come up with a line that I thought was incredible, and would chuckle all the way back home at my extreme cleverness, inviting persecuting glances in 180 second traffic signals, and would type out an entire post 3000 word long just so I could put that line in somewhere nonchalantly. So purgatory it felt. It was never great writing, not even good, more often than not, but the fact that so many were reading, and wondering who I was gave me a whole Clark Kent - Peter Parker smugness. It could be that the number was two, but hey, someone actually spared a second.

But,
that was then.

Since then,
I have been through interesting quote marathons (You won't come back to India, I will, You won't come back to India, I will, You won't come back to India, I will, You won't come back to India, I will, Okay, let's begin, so you are a medical intern?, Ahaa, So tell me about subliminal economy, Huyn)
I have cringed enough to cause my hair singe.
I am showing signs of future raging alcoholic.
I have met an openly gay man.
And did not catch myself blurting, Ayyo you are gay?
I have braved family gatherings of 300+ strength, and emerged sane.
Although with cherishable sobriquets. National Treasure being my favorite.
"So, wedding near Thames aa?"
"No no, Buckingham-u, alve?"

"And for Kashi Yaatre, Pittsburgh-u! Ho Ho Ho"
"Orient is turning occident-u, and this is no accident-u, Ho Ho Ho"
(No, not Santa Claus)

And I have let slip the opportunity to document all these awe-inspiring events. In popular parlance, they refer to it as Losing It.

I have.
Not quite, but we are picking nits. While we are at it, I am zitfree!
Here's bye bye to adolescence. And hello, Old Spice.

(I should really post more often.)

(It's blogbirthday, so go right ahead and wish it many years of being scribbled in.)

So yeah.

2008-11-06T07:52:00.001-08:00

So I just won the Rhodes Scholarship.
Yay me!

The Unbearableness of Being.

2008-08-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

Like someone said, we are the children of nothing.
There's no great war that defined our resilience, when we could all break out in choruses of Vande Mataram with Hemant Kumar's music.
No great depression that tested our perseverance, when we could end up writing films and having Henry Fonda clench his jaw and say what were apparently words.
No freedom struggle, when we could sing Ekla cholo re while going to the bathroom and feel we are part of something larger.
No counter culture movement, when we could pretend we loved Joan Baez and Jefferson Airplane, and spout invective while high on God alone knows what.
No Emergency, (unless you count my 15 day stint tainted with blood and gore), when we could shuffle around in Kurtas and feel important, all the while thinking what the fuck has JP Morgan to do with any of this jail business.

Agreed we have the internet and free porn and sites to download free music from, but what good is it when I am stuck in the hospital 25 hours a day?
Agreed we have reality shows we could cry hoarse about and be known as the voice of India, if you know what I mean (of course you do); but Derek O'Brien is doing that already anyway.
Agreed we have Global Warming and Al Gore and electric cars and Leo DiCaprio, but that is like 12,ooo miles away.
Agreed we have the Beijing Olympics and the prospect of a Tienanmen square, but what chances that Jeff Widener pops up there and I get to be The Unknown Rebel? I am sure Dermatology wouldn't give me permission to so much as go to Byatarayanapura, let alone go to Beijing and face a bunch of tanks.
Agreed we have cloning, but have you heard a name beyond Dolly? Agreed we have the Spirit and the Opportunity too, but we would get to Mars sooner than we would get Deve Gowda dead, which is never.

So really, nothing defines us, unless you want to call us The Undefined and sound like a Clint Eastwood film, which is never a good thing. Do these bomb blasts define us? No, they don't. They just define Breaking News, in a weird literal way.

I represent nothing. I represent nobody. We are all a motley crowd defined by nothing new. Do not even get me started on the iPhone.
As an intern in a big medical college hospital, I am a bottom dweller. There is nobody beyond me on this side. And there was a time I used to say the exact same words, and feel exactly the opposite. I take orders from people who are aberrations in the concept of evolution, from people who are human mutations of the bird species that went extinct in Mauritius.
I listen and nod when they say they write fan mail to Chetan Bhagat.
I nod along when they listen to "We got a little world of our own" in the Emergency Room and say Rock is so awesome.
I laugh my head off when we are trying to resuscitate a patient three heartbeats away from death and the radio in the ER screams "Kolle nannanne..." (Kill me).
I sometimes get confused about the meal I am having. Supper, lunch, dinner, breakfast, snack... all different words for the same thing - Carbohydrates. Much like us interns. Roger, Rohan, Romeela, Rusvan, fair, tall, dark, blonde, white, Kannadiga, Slovakian, Herzegovinian, Kongaati, all boundaries get blurred. It's always a nameless, faceless, pair of legs that locomotes, and carries with it a pair of hands that can write, and a pair of vocal cords that says "Yes, ma'am" to the call of "Intern, go bang head against wall."
I have come to hate people, because people always have something to say, and it invariably involves central lab, biochemistry lab, microbiology lab, biopsy reports.
I am traipsing a path dangerously close to both insanity and indifference. It's tragic that I don't stick to one side.

There is so much I can tell you all about how disgusting and how exhilarating being in a hospital could be. The transition between the two does not take longer than two seconds at times. But that's for another post another time. Or for another book, which, going by my atrophied brain status would be called something as imaginative as The Devil Wears A Stethoscope or something.
For now, I gotta run. There is some PG throwing super convulsions because I did not get some report (that nobody gives a shit about anyway).
Oh yes, I am stealing somebody's internet right here in college. Suck on it, medico bitches.

The travails, the travesty, and other such trash.
Ah, internship.

P.S.: The initial bit had nothing to do with anything. I just love Tyler Durden.

P.P.S.: Thanks for all the mail. I am, erm, good. How are you?

In which we tell many things mostly random.

2008-05-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

While telling you all that I am severely blogged out, I realize I am also churning out posts at a regularity that could match Amitabh Bachchan's Friday outings.
Geez, the man should take a break or something. Or stare into a crystal ball or something. Wherein all will be white owing to his vision being clouded.
By cataracts.
Owing to him being ancient.
That the man should continue to act despite that Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom eye-vomit costume speaks of bravery that is well worthy of the Godrey Philip Award, but he must realize we, the poor audience, aren't quite in the same league.

So why am I, evidently minus the baritone, myasthenia gravis, 6-foot frame and the eye-vomitness of it all, forcing myself upon you unsuspecting people who had thought that the life of an online monkey was no more than a year?
It is in view of finding myself in situations that are far too absurdly idiotic for them to go without being considered thus by a hundred other people as well. Yes, I do need approval from random strangers that there is action in my life and that you are in awe of it. But then again, that is in direct contradiction to the well-accepted adage which when very succinctly put reads, Blogs happen when nothing else does.
Well, who said I was perfect?

What I am though, is a flower.

I am completely aware of the uber-mensch implications of the above line, thank you very much. But yes, that very line was told to an audience of awestruck individuals in the confines of the department of Emergency Medicine by a man we will henceforth refer to as Pig.
Now, why Pig? Why Flower? And why o why, Emergency?
There lies a story.

(Ooh. Look at me simulate curiosity)

So.
So, I am in the village, right? Of Puttamma, of Growth Hormone, of Ragi mudde, the general rusticity, the specific scabies, yada yada? Now, what I am expected to at the end of my tenure there as an intern is to present a project, a Field Study to be specific, profiling a certain health issue hitherto not looked into, in the area I am working in.
So, what did I choose? Psychiatry. (Keep those wisecracks to yourself. No, really.)
So, what did I choose in specific? Psychiatry in Ob-G. (Now, let's see some).
Having thus come to a grand association of streams, the Monkey went to speak to Pig; Pig being porky (the wit, it burns) and a Professor in Community Health.
Pig looked piggishly and said, "Oink. Funtaabulous da, thambi. Oink."
"Gee. Thank you, sir"
"Okay da, now go to NIMHANS."
"Huyn?"
"Yes da, for your project. Go talk to hotshot epidemiologist there, and become hotshot yourself."
"Gee. Thank you, sir"
"Now run to mental hospital. Take someone along."
"Huyn?"
"Go man. Oink."

The project which was to be fancifully titled Evaluating the Efficacy of a Screening Tool in Identifying Risk Factors for Development of Psychiatric Illnesses in Antenatal and Postnatal Women in a Rural Area in South India or Some Such Shit That Seemed Longer, was spoken about with uninhibited gusto. The enthusiasm on the face of one of the interns involved was enough to give the sun the jitters and that on the other one enough to make a firefly feel like King for two decades. You figure who was who. Let's make it harder for you. The first intern wasn't me.

After this heart-piercingly interesting one hour, we decided we would make this visit to NIMHANS even more Damn-God-This-Is-Orgasmic interesting by visiting the most sun-filled and ever entertaining portals of the... Tuberculosis Sanatorium!

And just when I thought that the day had me so filled to the teeth with orgasms that if I opened my mouth I would only moan, I came up with a-nother grand idea to make this Day Out In Vegas a total Stripper Filled Sell-Out. Dean Martin, eat. your. slutty. heart. out.

I say to myself,
Hey, it's a bright sunshiny day.
Let's get stung by tons and tons of bees!
And look like Tun Tun threw up on me!
Ooh!

And that was exactly what I did.

Something buzzed in my left ear.
I vigorously tried to shake it off.
It wouldn't go.
I said Shit.
It still wouldn't.
I said Fuck.
It still wouldn't.
I said What the fucking hell.
It still wouldn't.
And then I finally thought I would say Oh My God, Help.
Which was when a bunch of them went into my mouth. Big Black Bees. At about that time, I panicked. Like my house was on fire. Only worse. Like I was on fire.
Which was right about the time I started running and jumping and shaking and screaming and yelling and hopping and howling and HOWLING. Meanwhile the dear friend that accompanied me said, "Shirt nikaalo, shirt nikaalo". Now, I am chased by a hundred bees. I could do with something covering me, right? Wrong. For, I took off my shirt. One of the side-effects of bee-stings is dementia. Or something. So, I took off my shirt. And the bees thought, Hee-haw more surface area. And took generous bites. Which hurt like mother-of-fuck.
Which was when I continued, in all my semi-naked splendor, with bees actively engaging in thinking of me as a pincushion, to run and jump and shake and scream and yell and hop and howl and HOWL.
There were about sixty people around me. A few just looked.
One of them laughed. The others guffawed.
It was just another day at NIMHANS.
Half naked guy running berserk, jumping flimsy barbwire compounds, and screaming Fuck-O-FUCK-O-FUUUUUCK, save me from this hell.
*Yawn*

One kindly gent then flung a bed-sheet across to me owing to him getting terrible gag reflexes just watching my Somalian refugee phenotype. It was electric orange and had many Mickey Mouses on it. They all had broad smiles on, like Mickey Mouse generally does and I don't. Under the happy gazes of the sadistic electric orange Mickey Mouses, I finally got some alone time. And I examined self.
Not. a. pretty. sight.
I then looked for the places the bees got me.
NOT. A. PRETTY. SIGHT.

The bees then buzzed off (Ooh). My friend, her of the great "Shirt nikaalo" suggestion (do you perchance have the hots for me?) scampered all over NIMHANS and got my keybunch, my mobile phone, my backpack, my shirt, my dignity. Wait, that hasn't returned yet.
The Casualty Ward in NIMHANS (which is surprisingly frill-free, no actually bloody damn basic), had terribly slow doctors, but one good nurse. She gave me a maha-painful Avil injection and said, Go oaf du yuver hawzpidul aa, deyy vil teyg gare (I know, they are everywhere and all that).

I was towed off to our hospital where I made the evening more exciting by swelling up grotesquely, getting rashes all over and throwing up blood. I also gave the Emergency Medicine staff a little bit hell by vehemently denying them any access to my veins. They got frustrated and poked me anyway. I contorted my face rather grotesquely.
Many friends came. They all laughed.
Many more friends came. They all laughed some more.
All the while I was swelling up and looking red and healthy, which was also when Amma turned up and said most excitedly, "Kempakke, gunDakke aagidaane" (He is red and fat, I like him perennially bee-stung).
The rash and the swelling would just not come down. So I stayed in the hospital where I wore the hospital uniform that would have made veteran Kannada actor late Vasudeva Rao look sexy in contrast. I also didn't bathe for three entire days which was like the best thing ever. Which means nurses coming in batches and giggling Bees, bees wasn't.

So were the following lines:
1. What were you doing among the birds and the bees?
2. What's the latest buzz?
3. Are you making a beeline for work tomorrow?
4. I'd make more jokes, but it would really sting.
5. But, bee positive.
6. Earlier you were just a monkey, now you can lay claim to an ape-iary.
7. Beauty and the bees.
8. Honey.
9. Thambi, you are a flower. (I had 40 odd hypodermic bee stings on me, sisters were poking pretty much every one of my veins, but that hurt.)

Anyway. Among other things -
- I turned a year older
- SULKED SULKED SULKED
- There was supraaais party in the village at midnight
- HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY
- Then they all gave many many birthaday bumps
- SORE ASS SORE ASS SORE ASS
- Conducted many (okay 6) deliveries
- GROTESQUE GROTESQUE GROTESQUE
- One of them delivered right on the hospital corridor
- SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
- One of the kids didn't cry at all, and our neonatal resuscitation kit in the village is from the 1920's, meaning it doesn't exist.
- SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
- Then I realized these kids were brand new fresh 2008 maal, and I from about the 1920's
- SULKED SULKED SULKED
- Shit I am old
- SULK SULK SULK.
- Bloody young kids with no PG Entrance Exams, no internship, no age issues and ooh-look-I-am-so-cute-I-poo-in-my-chaddies-and-suck-my-thumb.
- JEALOUS JEALOUS JEALOUS
- Shit I am old, like AK Hangal old.
- DEPRESSION DEPRESSION DEPRESSION

To relieve this stinging depression, let's end with the Spunky Monkey guide to bee-ting the bees. (Aren't I just on fire) -

A. Don't go to NIMHANS.
B. Don't walk down the road even if you want to drink Goli Soda.
C. Don't ever say The Bee Movie sucked. Or that Jerry Seinfeld isn't really Ha-Ha funny.
D. Don't listen to your friends when they ask you to strip.
E. Especially when you are running from the bees.
F. Don't run from the bees.
G. Jump into a lake.
H. No, really.
I. Lie flat on the ground and close your ears.
J. Don't say Fuck and Shit and Fucking Shit.
K. Motherly characters around frown on you, and nurses throw looks of extreme disgust.
L. They won't throw clothes at you even if they were returning from the laundry with 100 fresh bedsheets.
M. If nothing works, HOWL.
N. Like HOWL.

That's it, really. I'm off to the village tomorrow, and it's rather late. Besides, you would by now have realized that the post has "yawn" written all over it, and "thought" pretty much nowhere.
Take care, and bee good.

And now, buzz off.

(D'oh!)

====================================================================
P.S.: How many are still reading this place? Let's find out...

Injessun kodi saar, baadi eet aaguythe - Part 1.

2008-04-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

There was this ajji. Old, like very. With veins that popped out like cable wires, but ones so flimsy that to get an IV line through them is like solving Fermat's Last Theorem. Only worse. The theorem does not have troubles of double puncture and weird huge haematomas. Or may be us fresh interns just suck ass.

So we were all like sitting and generally being Ooh Aah about Ragi mudde and stuff. Then this ajji, quirky as hell and much loved for it, walks in, and we could hear her from like a mile or something. Cos she came with Acute Severe Asthma. And, she was chanting her constant refrain of the past 15 years - Yammo naan sattoyteeni, Yappo naan sattoyteeni. (Madam, I'll die off; Mister, I'll die off)

So, we were like Illa ajji, Illa ajji. (No dude, no dude)
And then she got worse and worse, and even as we were following the protocol, and even as I was checking her blood pressure, and even as we were talking about referral, she went silent. Like dead silent.
CPR didn't work. We saw some movement, but later realized that it was her kaddipudi (tobacco) sack obliging gravity. She had had it with life okay.
And then we were all like Shoot, Ajji illa, ajji illa. (Granny no more, granny no more)

So, we were like bummed out for a bit, and I was all like Shit, the fuck with this medicine bulljack, I will go become a hermit and attain enlightenment saying Aum.

And later that evening, this guy, nine years old with Growth Hormone deficiency walks into the clinic for his daily Growth Hormone shots. The size of a tittle mouse, and about as tall as your kneecap, he started dancing to Onde ondu saari, kanmunde baare (Superhit Kannada track from Sandalwood, with Golden Star Ganesh), facial esspreshuns and all.
And he was like Neevu maadi saar, neevu maadi saar (You also do, you also do) And then I was like No dude, full bummed out I am. And then he was like Neevu maadi saar, neevu maadi saar. And then I was like No dude, full bummed out I am.
And then I thought a mosquito bit me in my shin, and then realized it was this guy biting me in all exasperation.
And then I was also all Dayumn, Onde ondu saari, kanmunde baare. And then the kid got so happy that he jumped 3 cm in total joy.

And then I was all like, Shit, the fuck with this medicine bulljack, I will go become Bollywood side-dancer and attain enlightenment singing,
Ooooom Shanti Oooom, shanti shanti Ooooom.

The Cat Who Sleeps Through Hiatuses

2008-04-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

"Eyy, how's that radio thing of yours coming along?"
"Oh that. Let's just say that in the hierarchy of *insert radio station name here*, I am pretty much the Pluto."
"Baby! You got outed?"
"What? No!"
"Then?"
"Then, I am the asteroid that won't be named until 3400 AD."
"Why 3400?"
"'Cos that's when the Martians will first mate on that asteroid and then destroy it, 'cos it was all too hard? I don't know?"
"I wonder what Martian sperm looks like."
"Oh those Martians. They will reproduce by Sporing."
"Ah, interesting. But what of infidelity then? Paternity issues? Family structure? Those light blue eyes that popped out of nowhere?"
"Mars, will be a free society."
"Meaning open sex?"
"Yes, sex will be had, of course. But the spore-sperm - it will arise from the pineal gland and float upward and fertilize random Martian female engaged in sitting."
"Oh, the seed from the seat of the soul. Shiva's third eye. Shiva, whose symbol is a phallus. The lingam. A little too obvious, but then it's you."
"Huyn?"
"But why the female only? On Mars, why can't the male bear children?"
"Oh some things can't be changed."
"But there is the gender pattern intact; male, female, sex, sperm la dee da."
"Who said Mars would be boring? I didn't."
"So, random spore comes and hits random woman, and there would be baby Martian?"
"Exactly. And it travels real fast. Shoot, and you are pregnant"
"But you would have to be constantly naked for that to happen?"
"Oh yeah, a crucial thing. Mars will be a nudist society."
"Wait. Did the Martians evolve from Britney Spears and the Malayalees?"
"That, is a palpable possibility."
"But, if it's a nudist society, would pornography be an industry on Mars?"
"Touche. And shit! I don't understand why so much money is being spent on those Martian expeditions then."
"Say what is the point to space exploration anyway? I mean, you don't go looking for an identical sand grain on Kovalam beach anyway, no?"
"It's a deep-seated philosophical question, involving the human psyche's need for reassurance that they are not alone, so that it does not mind-bedwet."
"Baby, are you okay?"
"I ate the canteen Idlis"
"Baby!"
"I know. Times, they are a changing."
"No sweetie, you still suck at science fiction."
"But you collect stool and urine of random strangers."
"And you sweetheart, live in a village."
"Ow."

====================================================================

"Amma, this rice is RED"
"Haan!"
"And this is plain rice I speak of. You do sense some problem, no?"
"Oh, like that-a?"
"Like that-ay."
"Some Mantra-akshate rice got mixed ya"
"Huyn!"
"I am not eating. Throw maadi"
"Yow! Friday it is. I am not throwing Lakshmi-symbolic rice and all. And it is prasaada. Press it to eyes, say Krishnaarpanamastu and eat off. Red, white, what difference?"
"Mo! What you are doing kidding-a?"
"Shett it I say. What you want me to make? Those pidja-type thingsa?"
"Maa, this is vermillion. It will give me Minamata Disease, and cause my death, you know? Mi-Na-Ma-Ta!"
"Ree, I told you. He is talking about Meenu and Maata (Fish and Blackmagic). We've lost him, haven't we?"
"You have to over-react, no?"
"Really, all our tredishuns and cushtoms and culchur and habbas and haridinas and shaastra and maDi and mylige and aal that. We are The Last Of The Brahmins."
"Okay ma, I will eat. Just don't start the Brahminism Gaan With The Wind speech."
"You little chipmunk with muLL-handi (porcupine) hair, how much you speak! That too, now you are living in a village. You will not even get this red rice there!"
"Ow"

====================================================================

Yes, I live in a village.
Even beans smell like chicken and pork.
And everybody eats chicken and pork.
I don't eat chicken and pork.
The company I am forced into, it sucks.
Then again, any company extracted from the college populace would suck anyway.
But the village gives ample opportunity for "writing". It's all stored in the head. But the need to type it out to people has died. I do not know why.
For now, I have nothing left to say. Besides maybe,
Ow.

Who knew I'd last this long, and who knew there'd be a post this soon.

2008-03-11T00:35:00.000-07:00

But there is a reason. It has been one year since I have been perpetuating and unleashing unheard amounts of mediocrity upon you all. Cat's Cradle, Spunky Monkey, venivididormi turn one today. (How cool is it that they all share their birthday huh!)
So yay!

The blog has been like a support system in its own way. Every time somebody jeered at me, or said something rude, I'd say to myself, "Say all you want, I will go back to my place where there are people that actually like me". You all. Thanks for making me feel happy about myself. I know all this sounds like a beauty pageant winner speech, but this will probably the most I will achieve anyway. Especially since that book deal hasn't come my way yet. Dang, what must one do to get one. Get a life, and have lots of sex, and write about it, you say. But should it be that hard?

Anyway.
The blog has given me very good friends and most of them don't think I am obnoxious. So, that's lovely. The blog has made me respect writers a hundred times more (Chetan Bhagat is not one). It has made me realize that I write crap, and that there is so much to learn from so much brilliant, understated, clear, concise and beautiful writing there is in the blogworld. So until we get there, we will call this exercise typing.

AND, haven't you been reading the blog? This is a notification post; the latest one remains this. Go read.

So blog, today you can walk a few steps independently, transfer a toy to the examiner and say 2-3 words with meaning. You are one!
Thanks for everything.

Do Medicoids Dream For Salaries To Leap And Pizzas To Be Cheap? Yes they do, yes they do.

2008-03-06T08:45:00.000-08:00

So, anyway. I cower in my seat and hope for the baritone behind the wickerwork curtain to convince me all is not lost, yet.
Yes, I confess.

I do not get poetry.
When I read blogs that are full of apparently fantastic verse, I merely nod and say "Ahaa ahaa, that is some deep writing, that is. Who knew it even had meaning?!"
I do not get it of course. I do not understand all the fuss about Neruda, or Ghalib, or Walt Whitman, or Wilt Whatman, or WhateverTheFuckElse, merely because well, I do not, I cannot.

Especially when they,
in specific,
exotic Tamizh species like
Kanniyakumari Kalabhimanjari Kattabomman insist
on writing
like this
With obvious dis
regard for rhyme and more
so for reason and most of
all meter! Do you under
stand this?

I do not, I can tell you. No stand, certainly no understand. But that does not mean I do not admire people who can come up with verse like that. How cool must you be to put together disjointed words and make people believe you are all super literary. It must be the FabIndia clothes you wear.

I give you - I do not attend book release functions and ask insightful questions about the implied profundity in lines like,

The opossum.
It wept, but its
penis did not,
The tail however
did not either.

No.

I do not wear thick glasses, and smile beatifically at wistful turns of phrases printed diagonally in sombre-colored hardbound editions of The Poetry Of Azerbaijan, Palau, Vanuatu And Whatzitsname.

And I almost certainly do not "hang out" in coffee places, Koshy's leading the pack, because I don't know, there's too much South Bangalore in me, or there's way too much Cantonment in them, or may be,
A. I do not have enough kurtas
B. I do not read Kafka/Yamanaka/Kawabata/Gabagaba or hold books by them in public places and wish I be seen because,
C. I did not go to Christ College/St. Joseph's.
D. God, the coffee there sucks.

So yeah. One way to shut me up, or insult me without having me know is to hurl abuse in verse at me. I will smile like the village idiot, like Virus Cama, and you will have your two minutes of fame. But that's hardly the point.

While we are at it, let's also discuss why being a Medical Student/Doctor is such a bitch. As opposed to being say, a Software Engineer. Or, a Corporate Lawyer. Or better still, a Head Hunter (the name, damnit, the name.)

[Aside: This will be a long post. And those who do not like long posts, or me, or long posts written by me may leave right away. But this is what I want to write, this is my political purpose. The same political purpose that Orwell talks about in his magnificent, magnificent, magnificent essay about Why He Wrote. I found the essay, thanks to her.
In retrospect, it seems like an epiphany. He talks about everything I would ever have wanted to say about why I wrote myself, but could never bring myself to, owing to largely non-existent writing skills.
(I still write anyway, but that's because I have an inexplicable God Complex that urges me To Create. Inanity is what is mostly created, but then I call myself Demigod - that's what Shah Rukh Khan is anyway.)
Before you proceed to read this tirade, please go read it, and just may be, it influences the way you look at your own writing.]

Now for the express political purpose of abusing bandwidth. I have of course already discussed why I chose to be a doctor and the slightly unhealthy situations involving halitosis and Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome that ensue because of it, but here I will tell you how the society discriminates against us and snuffs any retaliation from our side by calling us Gods and quoting random lines from the Vishnu Sahasranama to quantify as much. The doctor crowd is of course pleased as hell and forgives all iniquities on the society's part (including alcoholic mobs going on rampages).
But I, am already God, and hence do not take this downright lying lying down.

1. In the beginning, there was CET.

There are far fewer seats for the medical course than there are for engineering. I choose the latter stream in specific, as these two are the only career choices for Brahmin Boys In South India. No, make that Any Human In South India. Hence, the tirade will be mostly concentrated in comparing and contrasting the two streams (comparing and contrasting being a grand favorite with question paper setters in the medical course).
Now, right after class ten, some of us got bouts of idealism. Mostly because one certain Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty operated upon a 12 hour old baby's peanut sized heart, and it lived, and the press went crazy, and your mum did too. And you did too. So you went ahead and chose PCMB (Biology) and realized that you cannot rely completely on a medical seat, and hence had to read Math with the same fervour, in the hope that you would at least land in some Gowda/Reddy/Shetty engineering college.
So, while wondering about the point that lay in differentiating only to integrate, you also wondered ceaselessly about Angiosperms and Gymnosperms and where exactly their penises were. All said and done, it also meant you had to study that much more, and attend tuition for another subject thus also threatening bankruptcy at home, as a result of which you had to make do with two not-so-square meals.
And you still went ahead with all this.
And four and a half years hence you have an epiphany whose background music is the Tata Indica jingle. Dumb da da di dumb dumb.

2. Then there was college, but not before some serious injury to your crotch.

Ragging, as a rule, is more severe in medical colleges. Since you deal with the anatomy of cadavers, it is only fair that yours be dealt with by somebody - is the seniors' theory. Fair you might say. But that rule somewhat does not extend to all other arenas. After all,
- you are not washing your patients' bikes
- or running far and wide to get cigarettes to your patients
- or writing your patients' painfully overdue practical records
- or SMS-ing answers to your patients while they are giving exams.
- And you are certainly not chased by rabid dogs when you went asking for money house to house because your patients wanted to organize a college fest.
No.

Slightly out of logic, wouldn't you say? But then, this is medicine. Logic is killed in its very inception. Sorta like how the iPill works.

3. Then there were urine, feces, irate pregnant woman, irate pregnant woman's irater relatives, touchy kid who wouldn't stop crying, touchy kid's mother who wouldn't stop yelling, and you in the midst of it all.

After the pretty much all-explanatory heading, I still feel the need to add, which should tell you that much worse has been had.
Did I tell you of the old man that had a hydrocele (Water In Balls) who was an exam case and who would just not strip?
Or of the man in the OPD who insisted on euphemisms like "I'm losing a lot of my genes"? If you thought he was sleeping around too much and forgetting his jeans the morning after, you aren't too wrong. Only in this case, the man was sleeping with himself, and whenever he felt bored, he saw the need to "lose more genes" and now it had become a matter of routine to lose genes around 12 times a day.
If you thought all this was funny, wait till you present these cases in front of your professors. They'll pretty much strip you, and you don't even have a hydrocele damnit.

4. Amidst all this, there are also minor distractions involving hairloss, traumatic nailbites, concussions owing to banging of heads, dehydration due to much crying, et cetera.

And they are mostly centered around exams. It is a rather curious coincidence. Also extremely funny, because the medical exams are designed to be student friendly after all. I mean, see -
- There is no choice in exams as opposed to Engineering exams.
- The passing mark is 50 as opposed to 35.
- There are no breaks whatsoever between exams.
- Which generates a lot of prayers for the Prime Minister/Chief Minister's death during these exams.
- If you fail even one paper - theory/practicals - in the first year, you are picked off the batch and ostracized and be made a separate batch which is fancifully, not to mention sensitively, called The Odd Batch or The Irregular Batch.
- The first class cut off is 65% as opposed to 60%, and the cut off for distinction is 75% as opposed to 70%
- The number of pages for compulsory reading during final year is around a mere 7500 pages.
- Do you want more than these to consider this, one swell setup?

Really, I have long failed to understand why my friends whine so much about the inhuman quality of these exams, or about why so many of them have nervous breakdowns.
Clearly, giving exams in MBBS is quite a joy.

5. And did we talk about the money involved? Did we did we?

We did not. It costs a LOT. Let's not get into the specifics for I wish to not be depressed for more things than I am already depressed about. I will however say that the money that has been spent is a tad more than the GDP of Burundi, or one of those Micronesian Islands. As a result of which I have had to look for early alternative employment to prevent choking myself using those darned fee receipts. As if that were not enough, the post graduate courses are costly enough for you to voluntarily up the dose on your Appa's anti-hypertensives.
Let's not even go to USMLE. Unless you want me to come and lynch you, or rob you as may well be the case.

6. It is time we documented the breezy working conditions.

It is true that those boxlike glass-steel buildings do get hurt at times.
Like when? Like when Rajkumar dies. There was one, and he died, case closed.
But us, is another matter. Rajkumar may be only one, but pregnant women there are many. And sometimes they die. Just like that. One moment they are all "AAAAAAAAAA", the next they are not. Just like that. In some cases, they fall off the table; but let's just say they can die. Despite medical help.
The mob goes on a rampage and destroys most things in sight.

48-hour shifts, cranky consultants, crankier patients, crankiest relatives, collecting reports from across the campus, generally feeling like the scum on the seabed - breezy.
And you computer types, that central air conditioning can be a bitch at times, no? God, 23 degrees instead of 24.5 the other day must have killed you.

7. And damn, at the end of it all, they don't even send us to the US.

These IT types. See, I have lots of cousins who are in this typist business they fancifully call IT (Or that's what their mothers say to matrimonial agencies).
They must type real fast - they earn too much and wring their wrists one too many times. Whatever the reason for that one may be, I know one thing for certain.
They only shop retail. And must have only cornflakes for breakfast. And must also possess a black large Samsonite suitcase. Which must have a handle to pull it with. Specially in airports. Which have aircrafts parked heading to different places. Specially the United States.
And when they consume cornflakes for a meal, pack Chutney Pudi and Puliyogare Gojju in the black Samsonite suitcase, and pull it in the airport, and say at the check-in "Frisco" instead of San Francisco, is when the entourage of 20 that has paid 50 rupees each to enter the airport is fully convinced that he has grown to be a Complete Man.
"All those days when I used to wake him up in the morning at 5:00 for those KSR tuitions, and those times when he used to take those godawfully crowded buses to Vijaya High School... it all comes to a culmination here. Bhagavanta, nijvagloo eega kaNN biTTyappa neenu (God, you opened your rather lazy eye now)", goes the mother who has to be dressed in a red Kanjeevaram saree and who would have instructed every one of the members in the entourage to not dress in black, "no, not even underwear". A final smearing of vermilion from the Dodd Ganesha Temple near BMS College of Engineering (where you studied Electronics/Computer Science), you are ready to take on the world.
At that one moment, you can take on even Chuck Norris.
And win.

This never happens to us.
Should we choose to go to the US, the entourage comprises of three people including yourself. And the father will be chanting -
That house we all live in? It's in the bank. Just saying.
That house we all live in? It's in the bank. Just saying.
That house we all live in? It's in the bank. Just saying.

I can go on, but I am tired, as are you.

I know that most of you computer guys will be frustrated bald old cubicle animals with a 6-month pregnant paunch and a bad digestion problem soon enough, but at least you will be rich frustrated bald old cubicle animals with a 6-month pregnant paunch and a bad digestion problem.

I know that our standing in the society is far higher than yours will ever be (suck on it, chumps), but our first 800s will come by the time you have your first Bentleys.

I know that we can do the eyebrow-raising and the I-Save-Lives-What-Do-You-Chump saying, but really, we wish we could just save enough money to pay our mess bills.

I know that money isn't everything, but I also know that Jangamesh Bileekattematha aka John Blake can pay for his own pizza. Every night.

And into this situation have I landed myself. Call it informed ignorance or conscious cataclysm or such other alliterative allegories, but this be the fate I chose for myself.
So, while you shake your head in disbelief at the length of this post, the ranting therein and want to scream out a loud "Monkeyyy", remember now that you have to prefix it with a Dr.
Yes, discerning ladies and gentlemen, I am now Dr. Spunky Monkey.

The world did not see this coming.

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P.S.: I barely managed to scrape through. The university is getting an earful.

P.P.S.: To not forget the intent of this post, us doctors (ah, will you hear me be smug) have a fucked up deal. Respect-shispect, I 21, gimme the moneys.

P.P.P.S.: My anonymity is a farce. Apparently some three new people know who I am. So long as they aren't from college.

P.P.P.P.S: I do this P.S. thing a lot, don't I? Sucks.

P.P.P.P.P.S: What are you waiting for? Go drop a comment.

Rasik Balmaa and other stories.

2008-02-08T20:25:00.000-08:00

Hello, Hindustan ka Dehradun? Hello?
Hello, main Rangoon se bol rahaa hoon,
Main apni biwi Renuka Devi se baat karna chaahta hoon.

Mere piya gaye Rangoon
Kiya hai wahaa se telephoon!
Tumhaari yaad sataati hai
Jiya mein aag lagaati hai...

...is the first song I registered in my head as a Hindi film song. Yes, even before Ek, Do, Teen. The song is from a film called Patanga made back in 1949, and had caught my attention as a 3 year old because the song made delightful rhymes with words like Telephoon and June, Rangoon and Patloon.

Aji lungi baandh ke karen guzaara, hum bhool gaye patloon
tumhaari yaad sataati hai, jiya main aag lagaati hai

While I got none of the pant-forgetting love that the two shared across the border over a telephone, what I did get was that this was a song I liked very much. As also this other song that came to my notice during about 1989-90, called,

Afsaana likh rahee hoon, dil-e-beqaraar ka
Aankhon mein rang bhar ke tere intezaar ka

Years later when I tell the yuppie-crowd-with-the-Iron Maiden-shirts that surround me, that this song was actually sung by Tun Tun, or Uma Devi as she was known then, the spectrum of responses beats even the ones 2001: A Space Odyssey got on its release.
Some are awed; because the 70's to them is old, and 40's was the time Adam and Eve lived and they weren't aware that music existed then.
Some are nonplussed; they look at me and say nothing, but sport a look that screams "There is such a thing called life; we have one."
Most are just amused, and do nothing to hide it. "You listen to Porcupine Tree. And you are talking of a song by a fat comedienne from the 40's. Dude, what time are you from?"

I don't know what time I am from, but I certainly know what time these songs take me to.

They take me to a time we went to sleep listening to Chayageet and Aapki Farmaaish on Vividh Bharti, and wondering where or what this Jhumri Talaiyya was exactly and how poor it must actually be that its people had to write in incessantly to a radio station to play their favorite song. (And wondering who exactly named their children Bunty, Chintu and Pinky and if they managed to live through school without at least one attempt at slashing wrists, their own or someone else's.)

It takes me back to the time when we would wake up bleary eyed to grudgingly get ready for school, refusing - with all the defiance a 4 year old could muster - to drink milk, promising to not dirty the uniform by slinging mud at other kids, and listening most intently to a voice on Bhoole Bisre Geet, even as Amma was expostulating her own brand of catechumen ("Tumbaa thaley haraTe maaDbeDa, puTTa - Don't be too cocky, sweetheart" - how well she knows me that woman) while carefully parting the always stubborn (Brahmin-boy oiling notwithstanding) mop of hair.
Now I realize that the song I heard back then was,

Rasik balmaa...
Haaye, dil kyun lagaaya tose, dil kyun lagaaya?
Jaise rog lagaaya.

I remember asking Amma, "Amma, who is singing in that box?"
"That," she said, "is Lata Mangeshkar."
"Manga-na?" (Monkey-aa?)
"Adu neenu, eeg horaDu late aaythu" (That is you, chipmunk. Now leave, it's getting late.)

To a mind that was limited by vocabulary and oblivious to the adequacy of metaphors, the voice was cotton-candy good. It felt like coming down a big slide, or going upswing in a giant swing. In other words, it stayed.
Exhilaration as a word would take a lot more years to become part of my lexicon, but I can safely say now that, that was what I felt on a lazy weekday morning, with the ghoda-gaadi with its langda-chaacha fussing impatiently. (Did anyone else go to school in a ghoda-gaadi? I think not. Wait, my brother did too.)
That was probably where my tryst with old Hindi film music began. And like the voice that has defined it over 65 years, that too has stayed.

We are a family full of crazy film music fanatics. And temple fanatics. And Kannadiga pride fanatics. So much so, we were conditioned to do a full saashTaanga namaskaara if there came on television a picture of the Shringeri Sharada Peetham, or the Kukke Subrahmanya Temple, or the Raghavendra Swami MaTha in Mantraalayam.
Also, we were expected to stand up and show respect every time a picture of Sir M. Vishveshwaraiah turned up on TV, pinocchio nose-Mysore peTa and all. To Amma, he was everything she ever wanted her sons to be.
The ultimate Kannadiga symbol of pride, she would beam. (This despite him being a Telugu Brahmin - Amma's least favorite kind, and him having married four times, a most ghastly act in most Ammas' eyes). But nothing could or can shake her belief off the fact that Sir MV was the greatest Kannadiga ever. And the brother and I gladly obliged her by standing up for a moment every time the great man with the big nose was shown on TV.

To my 5-year old analytical self, this standing up and showing respect act extended to anybody I considered great. Like, great.
And so, Amma still tells all who care to listen, that her little son was so taken in with Lata's singing that he stood an entire half hour when a concert of hers was airing on TV. I, of course, choose to not believe her. I could never have been that stupid, being my line of argument. Which of course doesn't hold out for long, for mothers have amazing memories when it comes to letting the world know of the tales of half-their-chromosomes' stupidity.
"Aane mEle koorslilla antha Agra-ne egr hOgO haag kirchidde neenu, gotthaa?"
(Do you want me to start on the tale of you threatening to uproot Agra with that shrill cry of yours, just because you couldn't sit on a frikkin elephant?)
"Or the time you almost agreed to go as Gommateshwara for the fancy dress competition?"
"Huyn?"
"You have been stupid appa, Monkey boy. Just you say yes to whatever I say. Doing fancy MBBS from fancy college does not take away the fact that you were the kid that almost peed in his chuddies watching the Zee Horror Show."

Okay, may be she is right. And why not, I say.
Lata, despite whatever people might say about her deteriorating vocals ("She sings like she is getting a tonsillectomy done without anesthesia") remains the only one I have ever considered being close to perfect. Listen to any of her songs between 1947 and 1969, and the one thing that strikes you most is how effortlessly beautiful the singing is. It's like pouring hot wax into an intricate mold. It sets just right.
Be it her songs for such excellent music directors as Salil Choudhury, Madan Mohan, SD Burman or Sajjad Hussain, or mediocre ones like Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji or RD Burman (HOW overrated is this one! Pah.)
Be it her excellent abhangas in Marathi or her path breaking Adhunik Sangeet in Bengali or her pitch perfect Meera Bhajans in Rajasthani, the woman has crafted each song with a felicity may be even she is not aware of.

Which is why, it is a little disconcerting when the 20-something crowd of today shows an Andekhi anjaani si or a Hum toh bhai jaise hain as an example of the "legendary Lata prowess" and wonders what the fuss is all about. "And the Bharat Ratna? For that one?"
Their apprehension, unfortunately enough, is not misplaced. If we, the self-confessed Lata fans continue to listen to her, it is more for an emotional reason than vocal, so to speak. It is in reverence to the woman who once possessed the best set of vocal cords that God ever created. For, we will never forget that it was Lata who gave us Mohe bhool gaye saawariya, or O sajnaa barkha bahaar aayee, or Kuchh dil ne kahaa, or Ae dilruba nazrein milaa or thousands others like these.

Through Lata began my understanding of Hindi film music.
The dholak beat became synonymous with Laxmi-Pyare,
convoluted but delightfully 'breezy' tunes swung the baton to Salil Choudhury,
easy-on-the-ears meant Chitalkar,
too-many-violins-too-high-a-pitch meant Shankar Jaikishan,
and so on.

The greatest accomplishment of Hindi film music as I have come to realize, is a position it and only it can lay claim to - that of furnishing a song to every human emotion known. The second greatest, as I now understand, is its innate egalitarianism.
For every Eena Meena Deeka, there's a Haal-e-Dil yun unhein sunaaya gaya. For every Jinga-lala-hoo, jinga-lala-hoo, hurr hurr, there is a song that makes most of words I have never understood, like AngDaayiaan, karvaTein, kashmakash (Is it some kinda dish, this Angdaayi, that every one is khaa-ing angdaayi?). It appeals as much to the masala-chai-sipping-Dostoevsky-discussing crowd as it does to the auto-driver-who-swears-by-Himess. I have yet to come across a kind of music that has enthusiasts belonging to a spectrum as wide and as varied.
(I agree "Hindi film music" in itself isn't a genre, but we talk broad categories here and it certainly qualifies to be one.)

It is imperative here that I tell you all that this is no isolated statement. I am very catholic when it comes to music (No maa, for the last time, that does not mean I am Christian and No, my name won't be Fernandees or Jaan or Jaarj).

MSS appeals to me as much as much Opeth does. I do believe In The Court Of The Crimson King is the greatest ever progressive rock album, and that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the best ever album, of any genre. I enjoy Iron Maiden as much as the next guy (not if the next guy is my brother, then no). I could hang posters of Ustad Amir Khan on my walls, and would pay to watch Susheela Raman perform.

But,

if I were to ever consider a form of music to be after my own heart,
if I were to ever think of the one aural experience that has come to define my musical sensibilities,
it would have to be being lulled into sleep as a young child with the little black Philips transistor crackling a fine crackle, and singing,

Dheere se aaja ree akhiyan mein
Nindiya aaja ree aaja, dheere se aaja
Chupke se nainan ki bagiyan mein
Nindiya aaja ree aaja, dheere se aaja...

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P.S.: This post is a direct fallout of my getting a job at a radio station that specializes in old Hindi film music and has some fun people to work with. So yay me!

P.P.S.: I realize the post has been most unMonkey-like and very self indulgent. So, you guys can fill the comments section by telling me a, your earliest memory of any music and b, your favorite Hindi film song (preferably pre-90's)

P.P.P.S.: I also realize how lame this is, but hey, cut slack maadi.

P.P.P.P.S.: And all you Pineapple Thief-ridden kewl asses, do listen to some of these "boring-no-electrical-guitar-and-GOD-no-distortion" songs. They will not give you an abscess in your butt. I promise. And even if they do, come to me, I will drain them. May be that will get you off your high horse.

Fuming Crap and Tattoos on Buttcracks.

2008-01-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

You know mornings? The beginnings of days?
They are dreadful.

You know what's even more dreadful?
Having to wake up; (even if it's only because the local temple poojari thinks Ganesha would oversleep if He did not listen to MS Subbulakshmi generating 130 decibels on a tape player that has survived Hiroshima.)

You know what's most dreadful?
Having to wake up in (to) a city that is increasingly reminding the Monkey of the birthplace of subspecies Oye Yaar Vot-Ijeet.

As if outsourcing its collective moron batch month after month in early morning budget airline flights was not enough, Dilli seems hellbent on establishing a more concrete relationship with Bangalore by outsourcing its much irritating weather as well.
Us Bangaloreans do not understand the concept of season, unless it is spoken of in the context of When did Phoebe get pregnant with her brother's triplets? (Season 4). See, we live in a thermostat, untouched by the Anemoi.
We would bring out the sweaters during the winter only to make the world think we too can feel the cold that one is expected to during the winter, and that we are not lepers with all our nerves eaten away.
We would do the cotton shirt-watermelon juice routine during summers, because May is supposedly an extremely hot month of the year. The truth of course was that the temperature would remain a brilliant 24 degrees Celsius throughout, occasionally hitting a mighty 30, which would have the early morning Grandpas conference near Arya Bhawan, Jayanagar reverberate with the tut-tuts of walking sticks, and conversations hinting at catastrophes.
"Mr. Krishnaswami, 30 degrees, can you believe it? The city has gone to the dogs"
"Absolutely Mr. Rao, the dogs you say? I would say hot dogs. Ha Ha Ha."
(See, they are also part of the Laughter Club whose sole purpose is to scare the mongrels away. And me.)

But now, is another matter.
Summers are hot, and winters are cold. And we so hate sticking to protocol. Especially one that is over-enthusiastically endorsed by the city of Oye-Yaar-Vot-Ijeets. The realization of the extreme cold happened when Appa refused to wake up even as the clock struck 8:45, and Amma asked Brother S to eat from the office canteen for five consecutive days. I, however, had my epiphany in the John. I should probably call it Jaan, or better still Janaardhan. For, we are huge fans of the Indian toilets. The weshtrun type, you pliss keep to yourself. It's unhygienic, uncomfortable and most of all unsatisfactory. The experience, for lack of better words, is.. unwholesome. AND, it is anatomically incompatible.
While the Indian version, despite being a tad difficult for those with redwood girths, makes the experience wholesome. (It's the pressure, I tell you.)
So, you know when I realized it was cold? I had studied the previous night about something regarding observation of crap and how many things can be understood by the exercise. So, I thought, I have crap. I will also observe.
And guess what I saw?

Fuming crap, damnit!

Like freshly baked buns. Fine fumes emanated. And I thought I was dying or I had the Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome or that I was dying or something. Then I asked a few representatives to observe their own crap, only the early morning specimens. And they reported similar results too. So, if I am answering exam questions, or better still, when I am writing my own book of clinical medicine (these days, everybody can), you sure know what I am going to include in the chapter Winter Season And Associated Afflictions. The patient may complain of fuming feces, especially during early mornings. It is no cause for alarm, and it does not mean that the patient has Gerstmann-Struassler-Scheinker syndrome.

So while we are at it, let's also talk about Amma's visit to a baby shower or Seemantha (NOT to be confused with Sobhana, which is First Night, okay?)
She comes back, all exhausted. Turns to me and goes,

"You like girls?"
"Huyn?"
"..with taatoos?"
"Oh."
"Like, what is the point of these things?"
"Erm"
"It's not like these taatoos are saying Om, Shree, Attilakkamma Devi. It's some halli (lizard) with fire in its mouth!"
"Dragon?"
"Whatever, I am dragging nothing. It's true ma, Spunky Monkey"
"Ahaa"
"So what is the point of these things, these taatoos?"
"Some people believe it is an expression of their personality, and integral to their being, and that it speaks a certain something about themselves, that they never could put in words"
"But why on buttcracks?"
"Oh that is for fashion purposes, Amma"
"At a Seemantha?!"
"It's kinda permanent Amma. You can't choose to take it a discotheque and not take it to a baby shower"
"It's permanent?!"
"Ha, for the most part"
"Rama rama, what will people think of her when she is 60, and goes to the Ragigudda Temple for the Hanuma Jayanti celebrations with a halli breathing fire on her buttcrack?
"A hip grandma?"
(While we were beaming about Amma not getting my terrible puns, she started yet again)
"These names. What sort of a name is Ni-ki-ta?"
"A good one?"
"Muchh baai (Shett up). Sounds like some China-Japan name"
"Russia ma? Remember there was the Russian guy?"
"China-Japan-Burma-Russia all same. What difference?"
"Yeah. Nobody can speak Kannada anyway"
"See, I am not telling that they should have long long names from Lalitha Sahasranama like Rajathaachalashringaagramadhyasthaa. That would be silly. But what is wrong with Himaachalavamshapaavani or Sree Varamahalakshmi, you tell me."
"You have a point amma, you know you are always right"
"Okay, what do you want?"
"Remember that guy Avinash, that B.Com type fellow who had colored his hair blond? I asked you that day for something no? To pierce my left eyebrow? And you said Yes, remember?"
"Whaaaaat?"
"Haan, ma"
"Eyy, just you read that book full of grotesque pictures and do well in exams. Hubb chuchskotaante, sundaraanga. (Wants to get a piercing done, this chipmunk. I shall do nothing but cock a snook)"
"Say what you want, I am SO getting it"
"Pah, I have had it with you kids of this generation. Do whatever you want. Naraka only awaits you. Chitragupta is writing it all down, I will have you know. Taatoos, piercing, Ni-ki-ta, your brother's electric guitar, what not! AND we have that firangi wedding come this weekend. Sonykudi, changa-manga, oh-god. There's too much happening. I think I will go sleep. Rama, Raghavendra, kaapaaDappa. (Rama, Raghavendra, save us all)"

Later that night, we got a call from our Big Maava. His wife was admitted in the hospital with some back problems. This, only about a month after a new daughter-in-law came to their house. Since then, one decrepit grandmother has kicked the bucket, the Maava's son has had a near fatal accident, and now this. Last I heard, they were on a manic search for that astrologer who fixed the muhurta for the wedding and said, "Raayare, idu Raja Lagna" (Mister Maava, this muhurat is fit for the Kings").

Testing times these for our family.
And it doesn't help that the Monkey gives his final year's final exams a week hence.
Like Amma would say, "Rama, Raghavendra, kaapaaDappa."

The obligatory New Year post where I choose to rant, yet again.

2007-12-31T23:57:00.000-08:00

I do not know what it is, but words such as the "Festive season", "Festive cheer", "Bonanza", "Dhamaka", "Ho! Ho! Ho!", "The Christmas spirit" and the like give me a bad skin reaction. Like, I have to itch and scratch myself all over, like I have Henoch-Schonlein purpura (or something as dreadful sounding), like I have to throw things at you, ranging from truck-driver profanities to my now old mobile phone. I mean, what do you do when random people from your past you wish had forgotten you, write in inanities like "Merry Christmas! May Mother Mary and Her Immaculately Conceived child always be with you"; inanities I say, because the said person thinks Christmas is "kewl"; inanities I say, because said person conveniently chose to be oblivious to Gowri-Ganesha, Deepawali, Yugaadi; inanities I say, because said person's last name is Bhyre Gowda with family based in Honagondanahalli.
Also, will people ever stop saying, "What plans for new year's?" Since when did sitting in front of television all night watching Bollywood Star Magical Nite begin to be lame and not sound like a plan? These fancy pubs with "hip-hop music, yo maan" may eat shit.
This "Holiday Season" depresses me, I tell you. Contrived camaraderie it breeds.

Among other things, I recently saw two really ugly, really black crows making out. Just when I thought I had seen it all, the next day I chanced upon two lizards making out. Gah, what is this conspiracy to spite me, it makes me wonder. That too, by making out.

So you see, much has changed over this past year.
My idea of AARGH! has shifted from Michael Jackson to lizards making out.
I actually know what the fuck Tetralogy of Fallot is all about.
My chin has acquired a shapely scar.
My parents think buying a dog would have been a better investment.
Et cetera.

But you see, much isn't going to change over this next year. Which is what makes every Happy New Year such an abused oxymoron. I was hideous last new year, and going by the looks of it, much isn't going to change over this weekend. Here's why there is going to be nothing new about this next year. (Don't even get me started on "happy")

*Loved ones will continue to make wrong choices.

Seriously, Amma, nine Kannada serials a day is NOT healthy. Not even if one of them happens to have Anant Nag. And certainly not when one serial has a character that has had amnesia THREE times. And for the last time, you can't call someone pregnant by checking their tongue or feeling their pulse, and dear lord, Brain Transplants are NOT the answer to every loose end. They are not the answer to anything.

*Hutch will continue to be a bitch.

And insist on sending me messages of this nature. Sung to tune -

Ooh! Aah! Let the music play,
Express what you want to say,
Make your loved one happy and gay,
Dial 123815, dedicate a song to make someone's day,
What say?

Where do I even start about this one? What are they on, these people at Hutch? Not even Maarimuttu Special Country Toddy. That will knock you flat, but not make your IQ -10.

*That Thing Pink will continue to be That Thing Pink.

That Thing Karan Johar, that one. It will continue to make statements like "Film Fraternity", "In the film fraternity, I am the the Devil that wears Prada occasionally", "Pink is the new black. Film fraternity", "Film fraternity, King Khan is the greatest darling, in the film fraternity", "Film fraternity". We get it, That Thing Pink. No fraternity accepted you; no, not even one called Gamma Alpha Upsilon. (Let's not even get to the sororities.) And now, you have forced yourself into a fraternity, and CANNOT hide your glee. We Get It.
That Thing Pink will also continue to set new levels of atrocity by making another film, with That Other Thing Pink that has the mental faculty to carry off about one and a half emotions.

*The Times of India will continue to be my mother's favored grease paper.

Hugh Grant arrested for hitting lensman with a can of baked beans makes it to the year's roundup. Shakira raises temperature in Mumbai, Yuvraj-Deepika-Dhoni love affair gives television enough grist for days on end, Salman Rushdie splits with Padma Lakshmi and hooks up with Star Wars' Carrie Fisher, are some of the other things that altered the course of our lives over the past year.
Are these guys for real or what? Then of course, Bangalore Times will continue to catch us off guard every so often with its witty captions, not to mention Rohit Barker's opinion about everything from armpit hair to the Human Genome Project; from the best ways to comb your dog's hair to the implications of the latest G8 summit on third world countries.

*Chetan Bhagat will continue to write and (the horror, the horror) be read.

He will finish writing his third book, which will be about Who Gives A Fuck, and will term these three books as The Urban Indian Trilogy. Kewl dewds with streaked hair, and kewl chicks with embroidered jeans will buy original copies from Landmark, take over a week to plow through it, and later partake in intellectual conversation over their NSeries phones with other kewl peeps urging them to -
"2 reed it....itz v kewl. chtn bhgt ma favvvv ryter... :) :) :)!!!!!"
"u reed 22222222 (read, tooooooo) much buks ya...!!!
"ya ya, i m a bookie lolzzz!!!..."
"i herd sydney shelda also iz v gud ryter??????..."
"ya ya, hez ma favvv forin ryter....but ind onleee chtn bhgt. ma favvv, sply hiz l8est!!!!!!"
"ohhh vot itz abt????? :) :)"
"u no, abt peeps n all, itz v v kewl. chtn bhgt ma favvvv ryter... :) :) :)!!!!!"
"k..... :) :) :) !!!!!"
":) :) :) !!!"

They will also of course gang up and go watch the films based on his literary masterpieces, but would be visibly perturbed.
"i dint lyk movie ya..... 1 nyt @ cal centr was suchhhhh a nys buk..... films nevah do justis 2 buks :( :( :( :( !!!!!!!"
"k.... :( :( :( :( itz ok ya"
":) :) :) :)"
(Don't ask me why, but smileys have to come even here)

GAH is an appropriate term.

*Deve Gowda will continue to be a bastard.

Can you frikkin believe our misfortune? What we would give to have this lump of lard outsourced to Pakistan and have it blown up to smithereens. Poor Benazir, she was kinda cute even. And was Ivy League and Oxford educated. Lump of Lard on the other hand, went to some godforsaken lightning struck tabela on the outskirts of Holenarsipura.
As if putting us Kannadigas to inconceivable shame during his time as Prime Minister was not enough (the man actually fell asleep and rested his head on the shoulder of the Chief Justice of India, and drooled. Now, if it was on that wretched D Raja of the CPI-M, I'd give full marks to LoL, but this is the CJI, darnit), he goes ahead and behaves like an orangutan in heat on Crack. Can you believe the kind of foreign investment the state has lost ever since the bastard decided to act up and show that he was in fact menopausal? The last I heard, it was upwards of 50,000 crore rupees.
I hope, I fervently hope some Botulinum toxin makes its way into his Ragi Muddes somehow.

*Indian News Media will continue to be Ekta Kapoor's playground.

Karan Thapar. I do not like him. What is the need to clench his teeth for everything? And to talk in that argh-grates-my-nerves-in-ways-I-did-not-think-possible accent?
"Are you sure Mr. Amar Singh that your cat pooped this morning?"
"Yes, you can ask Adaraneeya Amitabh Bhai and Poojya Jaya Bhabhi that"
"Are you sure Mr. Amar Singh that your cat pooped this morning, and not last night?"
"Erm, erm"
(Yes, I put him in the spot! Look at my journalistic skills. Let me rub my hands in glee and clench my teeth a lot more. Karan Johar, are you watching? I do ham well, don't I? Come on, let's make out, you and I. Karan and Karan, namesakes on the run)
"So, it is true. There is conflicting evidence. You've been proven guilty in flagrante delicto. Come on, hand over your passport and leave the country."
"No no, my dog pooped last night, my cat pooped this morning. I am sure of this. You can ask Adaraneeya Anil Bhai and Poojya Teena Bhabhi this"
"Oh come come, Mr. Singh. You can't get away on a mere technicality; cat-dog, potayto-potaato"

Sagarika Ghose will make me want to pluck my ears out and drill holes into my cochleas. That woman CANNOT talk. Vidya Shankar Aiyar and his minions across news channels with their contrived dramatics will continue to irritate me. Sreenivasan Jain with his absence seizures will continue to be eluded by doctors than can prescribe him Valproate. Vikram Chandra will incoherently continue with The Big Fight and ruin what was once my favorite hour of the week.

Strangely enough, the only faces I can still handle are Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and Shireen Bhan.
Barkha, despite her over the top antics and her I-have-to-stop-you-we-HAVE-to-go-into-a-break ways is the only one that can still put a talk show together as effectively. Hers were the best reports from Pakistan, and I saw all the other reports too, given how I have chosen to be the Official Mourner of Ms. Bhutto. (What, she keeps me away from books anyway).
Rajdeep, of course was the reason why I considered Journalism after Plus Two. The man is so genuinely passionate about politics that he doesn't mind spitting into the cameras when he is "caught in the moment".

And Star News? Let's not go there, before I start spitting into the monitor.

*Spunky Monkey will continue to be Spunky Monkey.

And all the people in his head will continue to stare in disbelief when they can actually hear him enunciate "Pelvic Inflammatory Disease is a disease where there is inflammation of the pelvis. It is an inflammatory disease involving the pelvis and there may be a lot of inflammation. Mainly of the pelvis."
Oh dang.

There you are. Eight things that will defy change even in 2008.
All these old things will continue into the next year too, wretch all our happiness, make us want to tear hair and do a Howard Beale ("I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"), and make me write long rant posts such as this one.

All this notwithstanding, for people who still think reaching a new January is enough reason to feel all woohoo!, Happy New Year.
And for those of us waiting for the Revolution and not knowing what/when the fuck that is going to be, here's to another twelve months of being pissed off about everything around us.

And I can already here firecrackers around me.
Oh boy.

A Rhapsody Not So Bohemian

2007-12-18T16:12:00.000-08:00

So, I am done with college.
Exams remain; they, of course, come with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.
But I am done with college-college.

No more "Amma, wake me up at 11:00 tomorrow, I have to go mark attendance in Pediatrics OPD, else I'm doing multiple re-postings", no sire, no more of that.
No more "Look chumps, I am not presenting another testicular swelling, I have had it with the balls; now give me breast".
No more "Erm, ma'am, I was in the OPD showing my one year old cousin, down with Chronic Wasting Disease to the Pediatrician, and had to miss the tutorial; could you please mark me present?" to the office lady, knowing with a fair amount of certainty that my cousin is neither a wapiti nor a moose, and that the kid is not called Spunky Monkey With A TV Remote In Hand.
No more "Alright, to save yourself some face, spell 'muscle' for me" by a senior consultant exasperated by the Monkey's ineptitude, despite which Monkey attempted attitude by venturing an M-U-S-S-E-L.
No more "Fuck, what WAS that paper? We had Medicine only no?"
(Okay, may be there is scope for that last one yet. Dreadfully enough. )
But, no more of the others.

And guess what? Despite my better senses hollering "What is UP with you man?", the one dominant voice in my head insists that I will miss it all.
And quite a lot.

Why, it seems like yesterday when I first came face to face with the rest of my class and wondered, "Jeez, am I going to be stuck with this cross-section of village idiots from across the country for four and a half years! This was NOT what I had thought of when I wrote the prize winning essay What I Want To Be When I Grow Up And Why, back in 6th standard. Oh hell, what of my plans to sip cognac with Genetics Professor In Tweed Jacket in his study with the Mahogany table, discussing why exactly Watson and Crick were chumps". Which was just when the student body President welcomed us with "Doctors are like candles", which was also when I thought there was hope to the place yet. Surreal similes always get me interested.

September 15, 2003. That's when it all began.

Is this the real life
Is this just fantasy?

I was in a beige T-shirt, and was among the shortest people there. Faced with a population that represented a mind-boggling array of demography, I think I shut up. More so because the room gave off an aura of expectation and apprehension so dense, that in my head it plays out even today as a climactic scene of a Hitchcock film. This, given the trouble we had undergone to finally walk the "hallowed portals"(my non-existent ass) of the "premier institution"(my non-existent ass reprisal).
In a strange set of circumstances, there was a sense of culmination to a process that hadn't even begun; there was a sense of alienation even before we could call the place our own; there were one too many complex issues to deal with and far too little gray matter to comprehend the gravity of it all, most importantly the import of the countenances of our thoroughly disgruntled but enigmatic hosts, the college seniors.
To half of us, Genesis was just a band, and a rosary was what a child with Rickets had; we'd call you mad if you said somebody walked on water and Immaculate Conception, to us, was merely a well thought out idea. (All this would change, of course.)
Dickens would be proud of the fin de siecle spectacle: it was the best of times and the worst of times.
[People who do not know me personally, please ignore the above paragraph. Mere verbiage it is; whereas the few people here who do know me personally (unfortunately; where went my anonymity clout), those were bad times no? Perfect dhobi-ghat kuttas we had become.]

Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality

First year was wonderful. The wide eyed surprised look at most things medical college persisted for a good 6 months or more. (Wow, white coats. Too muuuch). We knew we had chosen a different way of life, when on the very second day of college, we were taken into a big, bright sunny room. So? So, it smelled real strong. So? So, it smelled SO strong and bad that I knew that's what would kill me. So? So, there were dead bodies.

Thunderbolt and lightning - very very frightening

The Anatomy Dissection Hall. The first thing they make us do is a circum-ambulation (you know like a pradakshina/phera) around the dead bodies. I get that, you know like, the dead teaching us and how we should forever be grateful and all that. But it kinda creeps you out when you realize that there is a cadaver with an erection!
Which is when, it happens yet again.

Thunderbolt and lightning - very very frightening

We were all assigned cadavers. Ten people to learn off one cadaver. A scrawny Professor sitting in the center of the hall yelled, "Waat aar you wayting faar I say, cumaan expose the Pectoralis Major".
Groups of ten around their respective cadavers, at least three feet away from the table. Every pair of eyes scanned the nine other pairs, hoping for that one pair which looked ready to hack into another human being.
One of us ventured, "How about we read through the manual once?", knowing fully well that that should kill an hour at least. "Ah, but of course", the rest chorused. We took turns reading and thus began our preliminary understanding of each other. Oh, so this is what coconut oil and banana chips sound like. Hiss S'ss are lisssped. Ah, yankee twang, eh!

"Wopen Cunninghaam Manual, expose Pectoralis I say, waat you are wayting faar? Yuvar gryaandmother won't come to help okay? Dissect dissect".

Mama, life had just began
But now I've gone and thrown it all away.

But it wasn't hard. Perhaps the most fun we have had throughout college. Bonding over a corpse wouldn't be much fun, you'd think. Wrong you are. Friendships were formed, piques discovered, likes and dislikes unraveled, love blossomed, DC teams formed, DC teams fought over Deep Impact and Armageddon, copycat associations sprung up, all under the watchful eyes (err, make that presence. We had gouged the eyes out) of the man who was so sweet he didn't mind even being hacked into.

But, back home on the first day of dissection, amma made me stop at the door.

"HeNa muTTidya?"
(Did you touch dead body?)

"Huyn!"
(What!)

"HeNa muTTidya, ilva?"
(You touched dead body, or not?)

"Of course Ma, I have to"

"Saaku tuss-puss English-u. Aa college-ge haakbaardittu ree. NODtiri, enneraD vaarakke Davidd-o, Josupph-o, Fernandes-o aag barthaane, udda koodl biTTkonDu, raaku-paaku andkonDu. Naav naav paDkonDbandiddu. Aa Kalaasipalya college-g hOgakk enaagitto? Bekalla shoki. Neenu, Enoo muTTkobEDa, straight bathroom-g hOgu. Taley-g snaana maaDi devrig mooru namaskaara haaku. NAMM DEVRIGE!"
(Oh, enough with your flashy English display. Ree, I told you we should NOT have put him in that college. Just you see, in two weeks, he'll be David or Joseph or Fernandes with hippy hair and a penchant for Rock-Pock music. What to do, our share of fruit from past lives. Why could he not go to that Kalaasipalyam college, like good Brahmin boys do? No no, he wants razzmatazz, of course. YOU, touch nothing, go straight to the bathroom. Take head-bath, and do namaskaara to God. OUR GOD!)

"Maa, you know I missed the Kalaasipalyam college by a whisker (okay, may be a little more than that; a twine thread, let's say). And I am very tired right now. Can we skip my cleansing issues?"

"Matte English-u! HaaLaag hOgu, aadre snaana maaD haaLaag hOgu"
(Oh that wretched English yet again! You go rot where you want, but rot after bathing)

She grew considerably calmer over the months that ensued, however. Dead bodies got to be routine with her, as they did with me. She grew communally tolerant too, I am assuming. Given how she would, without flinching, ask me, "What did you chop today, David?"
Like that wistful saying goes, "Dina saayorge aLoru yaaru?" (Who will cry for the daily-dying?)

The chopping itself was SO much fun. When we spliced the heart open, in my true Bollywood persuasion, I rattled off some twenty five Dil type songs. Wrenching the brain out was some tough carpentry. Discovering that the cadaver had no Sciatic Nerve was fun, only to rediscover it (Waat I say, thickest nerve of the baady you cut aaf, und say there ees no Scaiatic?).
Physiology and Biochemistry were a blur save an enterprising young chap egging thirty hesitant students (with yellow conical flasks in hand and rooted to their spots in the lab) to "Go discharge the sample. After all, Urine Is Like The Fountain Of Life".
Gee whiz, what is with similes and this place anyway?
(Yes, we tested our own urine samples, and mine had no sugar/ketones/bile salts/protein. Yay me!)

Second and Third years passed soon after without my consciously registering the change in the numbers on the calendar. Fests all over South India, major victories in some, "Fuck you, bastard" on stage many times over, on realizing I had potato sacks for teammates; one blind, and the other, well, a big potato sack. Academically, only two things stand out.

A. Watching post-mortems:
Do Not Attempt It. Perhaps the most macabre thing ever. I mean, they RIP guts out. Even metaphorically that sounds dreadful. And I watched eleven! of them, oblivious then to the power of proxy. Eleven painful sessions of punishing a dead individual. Farrokh Bulsara, if he had seen one, would go -

I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.

Here's the thing, I have told this to a couple dear friends, and you my readers are going to know of it too: If I die, do not let them do a post-mortem on me. Even if my death was caused by angry communal cricketers, or I looked a dangerous shade of distemper green when I died.
Okay?

B. The ENT viva-voce:
I do not remember much of it, except I think it went something like -

Bismillah, we will not let you go.
Let Me Go!
We will not let you go.
Let Me Go!
We will not let you go.
Let Me Go!

Final year, in all its ugliness was reached.

And I was none the wiser. But, with an unsettling certainty that it has all come to an end. The Farewell Dinner is pretty much the last nail on the coffin.

Medicine, unlike other courses, does not have a specific Last Day Together. Internship scatters us across the breadth of the hospital, and one never gets to meet friends or "hang out" as much as before, what with grueling 36 hour shifts and having to moonlight as everything from wardboy to aide to scum of the pond to things beneath the scum of the pond. Which is probably why there is already a sense of finality to everybody's tone. Our last film together no?, one would say. Ooh, the last birthday treat, another goes. (We are not dying, I say.) But, it is inescapable.
Four and a half years of being together, and then the prospect of not being together does a little more than twist your sobriety, I assume.
Some people are already talking engagement and marriage! Suddenly, you realize the gravity of being 21+. This is what they mean by adulthood, it dawns upon you. Having to stand at a crossroads and deciding by yourself and for yourself, which road it is that you want to take.
Only, this isn't to get the tastiest Golgappa for the cheapest money.

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine.

Talk invariably also turns to 25th year reunion and who would be doing what, and where, and when? (10:00 AM on September 15, 2028, the yearbook insists)

A would be a Pediatrician, lending Mr. Pinkwhistle and Mallory Towers to eager kids, and impressing upon them the force that is Dhoom 2 and Hrithik Roshan's pelvis.

B and C would be married, with B still trying a weary hand at the electric guitar and telling his kid why exactly Iron Maiden is the greatest thing that happened to mankind.

D would open a hospital called Exclusively Exotic Diagnoses and deal only with Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker, Kocher-Debre-Semelaigne, Lawrence-Moon-Biedl and such other diseases, and be content provider for House, Season 28.

E would be in the North-East, dealing with hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes; all in himself.

F would be completely bald. And precious else. (Perhaps out; who knows?)

G would be either frikkin fantastic (being the editor of the International Journal of Oncology) or running a clinic 20 x 10.

H would get married, fly to the Gulf, make children, and go into hysterical fits over unclean cutlery.

...and I?

I am easy come, easy go.

Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see.
Nothing really matters,
Nothing really matters to me.

Any way the wind blows...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S.: Queen who? Bohemian Rhapsody what?

P.P.S.: People who know who I am, could you please please not tell other people about who I am? I will give you 5 stars. In gold color pen, no less.

P.P.P.S.: It's been more than a month since I posted, I know. Exams were happening. Anyone missed me? Humor me, no? You did not? Dang.

My Bangalore. My memories.

2007-11-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

Vomit. And bucketfuls of it.
Strangely enough, the earliest memory of the city I love so dearly is inexplicably entwined with retrograde bowel movements and a tired sphincter.
I have not lived all my life in Bangalore; it's been more of an acquired taste. Until 1998, I lived in a small town not too far from Bangalore. But we trekked to old 'Lore very religiously every week, for the city was home to 3000 of our relatives and it was routine that somebody got engaged/married/(and hence) knocked up/gave birth/died/bought really orange carrot that we HAD to see/killed a baby cockroach and needed us for moral support. So, we invariably huffed and puffed our way into what was then an idyllic sleepy town, in red KSRTC buses which invariably also had a myriad of vomit streaks (which were invariably yellow in color, thus establishing itself as Kannadiga vomitus, you know red-yellow-Sirigannadam-Gelge) and reeked of a smell I couldn't quite describe earlier, but have now come to place as a cross between the smell of the room of a hosteler friend (who I believe is hydrallergic what with his steadfast refusal to get self/his clothes anywhere near water) and the Alcohol Dependent patients' room in the Psychiatry ward. Suffice to say it didn't quite work up an appetite. Or successfully destroyed one when you watched a particularly sulky child (invariably dressed in blue chaddies) showed his mummy, right on her lap, that he did eat the good vegetables. Vicious cycle it used to set up, this vomiting.
Especially during the season of the Flat Beans.

Now that's a fancy name for what is otherwise a Kannadiga obsession called Avarekaai. During this season housewives across Karnataka, an otherwise staid state, go into a MAD frenzy.
"Next door Lalitamma has already bought three kilos of avarekaai and has sent Bujji and Babu (it was a predominantly Telugu town) avarekaai uppitt and avarekaai chakli for lunch. Ree, I also want. I WANT. I want thirty kilos of the Good Stuff. I want to make huLi, saaru, payasa, uppittu, roTTi, dosa, idli, chakli, palya, kosambari, pasta, lasagna, pizza, rice, water...everything. If you don't bring tomorrow me-e-eans...", wives would threaten their husbands. It was an ego issue, see.

So, amma got into Bean Crazy mode too, and cooked a meal that redeemed the existence of species Vicia faba. But then, so had every mother aboard the bus we had taken to complete our weekly rite of passage, which is the whole point of bringing up the avarekaai anyway. So, you know, the legumes have a way of metamorphosing themselves into gases of near lethal nature once down the alimentary tract. And that's what did happen to all boys in blue chaddies in that red bus, I assume. (Not me, certainly not. Really, no. Oh god, enough with the third degree). The bus and its Boys in Blue Chaddies (BBC's) worked up a thorough sweat, what with all the combustion, and the olfactory byproduct of it all came and hit my all too unsuspecting nose in a manic flourish thus also tagging itself to my earliest memory of Bangalore.
That of me vomiting many bucketfuls of all things Avarekaai on the platform under the very questioning eyes of the Bangalore populace. (Jeez, can't a kid take a puke without you getting all judgmental?)
I think I passed out soon after due to all the dehydration, or may be amma in a fit of estrogen rush said, "The poor thing, ate too much avarekaai and couldn't handle. He likes it so much means, I must make more". (Yeah, that must be it.)

To avoid the whiff of the netherworld was perhaps why I would always insist on sitting by the window, face thrown to the wind (and sometimes vomit of the Boys in Blue Chaddies sitting in seats in front of mine), hair all aflutter and eyes fixed on a distant hill that would give me the whole to-be-Vivekananda type aura. Only, they would soon shift focus and fall on things that embarrassed amma so much that she still has nightmares about it.
Now what would they be?
As a child I had an eye for details, apparently. Medical education has successfully blinded it, paradoxically enough. Now this eye for detail, and a very loud mouth coupled with an insatiable thirst to read out loud, any and every banner on the street, used to put my parents under sufficient discomfort; enough for them to contemplate slipping a sedative in my Frooti just as we entered the city.
"Liburrty shooos, Gaardunn saareees, Windsurrr Maanurr" etc they handled with practised aplomb, beaming, as a mother of a vomit-faced BBC showered admiring glances on their Little Prodigy, barely five. But I would soon drain the color on their face when I insisted, in masterful enunciation, on expounding the attractions of a certain-

"Mullikk Disss-penn-saaree - Fawr. Awl. Seks. Prawblums"
"Appaaa, seks andre Enu?"
(Appaaa, wot is seks?)

At which point the mother of the BBC would giggle uncontrollably, all passengers would look at us in anticipation of The Answer, appa would start saying the Mantra Pushpam under his breath, amma disowning her Little Prodigy would look 180 degrees away and fix gaze on the vomit-faced BBC, and the vomit-faced BBC would continue to look, well, vomit-faced. (Yeah, some things never change)

"Appaaaa, seks andre ENU?"
("Something you would not have had even when you are 21", he should have said, but my father is a nice man)
"Heyy, all nODu, Alankar Plaza! Joker nOD alli! Aamel hogaNa? Good boy."
(Hey, look there, Alankar Plaza! Look at the Clown there! Let's go there later? Good boy.")

My father has long since perfected the art of anticlimax. Our eager audience would vouch for it too, and then would let out the disgruntled clucks.

Having successfully dodged the Dispensary bomb, the parents would regain their composure and try and wake Brother S (I make him sound Jesuit) who, being the Wise One, found solace in bus journey siestas, as we neared the KSRTC bus stop. But the composure wouldn't last until long, for they always forgot that just around the corner was Sangam theater!
Now, Sangam (which is currently a mall. Thoo) was this cinema that was famous among pimple-faced people for being The Place for "A-Certificate Inglees Phillums". And it used to, like all cinemas do, have large posters. Only they showed women bearing cleavages that bared, and men and women engaged in various erotic postures, which for some reason invoked inexplicable peals of laughter in me. I thought they were funny! Amid all the laughter, I would of course proceed to read the name of the film.
"Kisss thaa misss", which would have made Udayakumari Miss so proud she would have jumped and planted a wet one on me cheek. No, she was no pedophile. Cheh. She'd just be proud of the sing-song intonation (Kisss thaa misss - crescendo, de-crescendo) that Nursery teachers strive for.

"Sek-see Lipsss. Appa, seks-u, sek-see andre mix-u, mixie tharana?"
("Sek-see Lipsss. Appa, are seks and sek-see like mix and mixie?")

"Ayyo, muchcho baai praarabdha. Dharma sankata. Haakree ondu avan baay mElE, naalaayak tandu", Amma would tell Appa expressing sheer disgust.
("Oh, shut your face you sin-of-my-past-life. What moral dilemmas you put us through! Give this useless thing one tight rap on the mouth, ree")

Not all my memories of Bangalore are restricted to embarrassed parents and projectile vomiting. There have been some memories stored in easily accessible recesses of my brain which reek nauseatingly of charmed childhood.
Like, while once traveling in the bus, one village woman (paan-stained splendour, unwashed hair, unwashed anything et al) turned to me and said "Yarecutt maaDskabaarden swami?" (Why don't you get a haircut, dude?). About which Brother S makes fun till date.
Like, discovering that mongooses are arch-enemies of the snakes. We should know, our grandmother's house was in an area called Nagarabhavi (Snakes' Well) and mongooses were actually quite common.
Like, peeing on the terrace rain-water drain holes and coming down to look for puddles and to establish that those pipes were indeed patent.
Like, riding the cousin-brother's swanky new bicycle; giving him "chance" to ride all the uphills and taking "chance" to zip down all the dizzy downhills.
Like, playing Name-Place-Animal-Thing with assortment of cousins and convincing them that Kookaburra was a cricket bat and hence a thing, not an animal.
Like, convincing them that "Shagun, yeh shagoooon, mera jeevan ka yeh shagoon" was in fact a song while playing Antakshari. (And pulling the same on bigger stages many years later)
Like, eating Masala Dosa with SO many cousins in Upaahara Darshini in Gandhi Bazaar on Sunday mornings, or better still in Vidyaarthi Bhawan!
Like, going to the Indian Institute of Science's Chemistry Department with a PhD cousin and being freaked out by the liquid Nitrogen.
Like, going to Lal Bagh and saying, "That's all?"
Like, going to MG Road and wondering if this was what "America looked like!"
Like, going to Ranganatha Theatre for Baby's Day Out and feeling happy for a week because they gave us a free book, a pencil AND a pencilbox.
Like, when in Jayanagar, gorging on fancifully titled Dosas in Dosa Camp and topping it off with a Cold Badam Milk in Arya Bhawan.
Like, watching Hum Aapke Hain Kaun in Santosh theater and falling in love with Madhuri Dixit.
Like, watching it again and falling in love with her all over again.
Like, wailing like an uprooted Mandrake at the thought of having to go back home, to small town, to no Upaahara Darshini, to no mongooses, to no Sangam theater.

(Time out: Have to stifle a cry)
(Okay, back)

Bangalore, which is what it will always be to me - UR Anantamurthy may go eat excrement, has changed with me and has watched me change.
It has acquired taller buildings and North Indian oye-yaar-vot-ijeet dumbfucks and moon-sized potholes; and I have acquired longer hair and zit and cynicism.
It has lost its sleepy idyllic charm and its MG Road Boulevard; and I, have lost weight and, er, nothing else besides. (DAMN)
But the equation between the two of us shall remain the same, and unquestionably so. That of it tolerating me, and me it, potholes and oye-yaar notwithstanding.

I thought I would end with a pragmatic quote by the likes of a Proust or a Dickens highlighting the tale of my city. But they all cold-shoulder me currently. However this one doesn't.
Who?
(gulp. ahem)
Bryan Adams.

Here I am, this is me.
There's nowhere else on Earth I'd rather be.

Ah, poetry. Applause, applause.

My dear Bangalore, you may get your Metro (Mattro, for the vot-ijeet crowd) and the Dilli maals and malls; and try and alienate yourself from me.
But always remember, that wherever I may go or choose to live, if there's one place I will always call home, it is you.
Bangalore, Beloved town of Boiled Beans, you will always be special.
(Malik Dispensary included.)

Why I chose to be a doctor; and why I contemplate suicide/homicide/genocide at times.

2007-10-27T02:12:00.000-07:00

Misfortunes apparently never come single. I always thought, what a corny line. Turns out, true it is.
My Laal chhadi broke down in the middle of the road on my way to college. Caused me very public embarrassment with one Luna fellow yelling, "En swaami, 1950's model-a?". Luna! Imagine degree of embarrassment. I said FUUUUUCK really loud which made one Iyengaar type auntie close the ears of her child, and scowl at me.
My really cool Pepe Jeans and Levi's bags are torn, and one of them spilled books on spit-strewn street. (Spit is no decoration; no, not even when it is red and green. No.)
My shirt today was a mild shade of pink, and had all manner of people, of all known persuasion leering at me for no reason. (No reason?)
On my way back, on foot, on really worn out Nike-s, I laid eyes on a really black crow digging its really black beak into a really dead black rat which had large and ugly incisor teeth.
And now, I have really ugly Uppittu/Upma for lunch because Amma has gone to some Devara Samaaradhane. Cousin getting married. Yeah, that's what we need. More marriages, more pregnancies, more hell for us who hate OB-G. (Stop getting married. And stop making children. If at all you have to, do it the Kunti way. Besides, whoever said you have to make children if you get married. Stupid grandmothers, and their obsession with grandchildren having sex. Sheesh.)

So, aside from establishing me as irreverent, insolent, condescending, brandwhore-ing, racist (even about animals), Upma-hating, OBG-DESPISING, grandmother-idiosyncrasy un-understanding, it also establishes that I am a wee bit pissed off.

[Vodafone continues to be a bitch. What's in a name? Those bastards insist on calling me, like every half hour. I am in half a mind to call their (non-existent) Customer Care and finally break their bubble. I don't have big breasts, I don't wear pink mini-skirts and I most certainly am not going to handcuff you and sing Tu, tu hain wahee in a phone-booth. Stop Calling Me.]

The whole point of the post is lost. Hutch rubs me that way. As also Dr.L, The Bastard.
So, why I chose to be a doctor.

First up, Dr. Spunky Monkey sounds way cool. My actual name sounds way-hay cooler. The nurses would all go "Dr. S, Dr. S, the Prime Minister's vitals are crashing. You are the only one who can save him". Then, I would be all House MD-like, and go, "Nurse Clare, push adrenaline (and like they do on those medico soaps) stat". Then she would be like "No Dr. S, he crashes, even as my tight white dress unbuttons all by itself". Then I'd be like, "It's time we used the robotic arm we procured for $6m to conduct a super surgery through a hole 3 microns wide". Nurse Clare, in Silk Smitha mode would go, "Doctorr Ess, yuu naaati". I'd go "Huyn?". She'd go, "Oh, it's something we nurses like saying; it could mean anything, it's like you saying Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome to anybody who came with so much as a common cold"

And so on and so forth would the Doctor-Nurse repartee go; emphasis being on the way Dr. S is enunciated.
(If you haven't read my Disco Shanti-Silk Smitha post, it's time you did. One of my personal favorites, that one.)
(I am so shameless, no?)

Secondly, I immediately become the center of attraction in any family function. Most notably, our fabulous weddings. It's also the same time when amma-appa's faces look like they could light the whole wedding hall, and no Happydent required, thank you.
We enter the hall. The Nadaswaram is invariably playing "Raghumvamsha Sudha". And then, disssstant relative, who wears the same raw silk Jubba for every wedding identifies us from a really long distance and goes,
"Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho (crescendo and de-crescendo), barbek barbeku, kaLe banthu choultry-g eega"
(Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, come come, now comes brightness to this godawfully stuffy wedding hall)
"Ayyo, neevoLLe chennaythu", amma would beam while appa would grin an appa-grin.
(Ayyo, stop talking out of your arse, and get off our butts, is what I would say in my head)
"Enantaare, engineer-u, doctor-u?"
(What say the Engineer and Doctor?)
"Shut up, for one, and use a mouthwash, for another", I'd say. In my head, of course.
"Waat is thees, daaktar himself lookking like payshunt", he'd grin.
And there I was, thinking my unshaven, unkempt look would be called nonchalance-meets- grunge. Bah.
I'd make some polite joke to the effect that the books are really heavy, or generate random surrealism about medicine being the elixir of phantasmagoria and scoot to sip some of that excellent filter kaapi that only these bhatta-s can brew.
While our man halitotic would go on to appa-amma about, "Neev biDi, obba injiniyurru, obba daaktru, laatri hoDdri, doDDong yaavaag maduve, namm kaDe oLLe huDgi idey, dipplamo compheetralli. Wurd gotthu, eemale aalso"
(Oh you leave. One son Engineer, one Doctor, lottery only. When are you getting the first son married, we have a girl from our side, diploma in computers!! She knows Word, and e-mails also!!!)
"Sadhyakkilla, he is only 22 ree!"
(Not right now, he is merely 22 dude)

While this conversation gets repeated with about 250 other relatives, I show my teeth too often and generally behave like a bum walking in a pot induced haze. And feel immensely cool when relatives acknowledge me for being an astute clinician.
"P anna's son, Dr. S, still studying, but said EXACTLY what the doctor told us", one really nice uncle would go.
The aunties would all do a chorus "Bhesh, bhesh, bhale, bhale!"
(I prescribed Crocin, I think. But that's really besides the point)
One of the aunties would then go, "He was always a bright child. Vanajaa, remember the time he sang Mahaganapatim when he was 8? It still rings in my ears as though it was yessturday!"
(For all I know, I would probably have called the raga Naati, in place of Naata)
"Yes, yes, that one. Remember that Shilpa Shetty song, what was it called, Chhuraake dil meraa that he used to sing soo well?"
(Oh-oh, this is not going too well. Butt in, NOW)
"So, auntie how is your son? How's that Dengue of his coming along?"
"Aww, such a modest child, and so caring also! He is doing very good ma, Spunky Monkey. JUST like you told he would be"
(I had said, give lots of fluids and stuff, wait for one week or so, it might probably go)

It is this kind of adulation for no reason, that gives me the kicks. And makes me forget momentarily about my monumental disasters in exams back in college. That, and wrinkled old grandmums coming up to me, holding my hands with theirs, dotted as they are with liver spots of the many years they have spread joy and wisdom, and saying, "Your grandma, how unlucky she was; she would have been so happy to see you become the first doctor of the family", shedding a quiet tear and blessing me with all the goodwill their small bodies can muster. And I check their pulse in return!

Thirdly, they all give me money when I fall at their feet. Which is really fun. I bend over, I am paid. (Shut up, you pervert.) Strangely enough, they even consider my opinion. Nodding along vehemently to whatever I say, and making me feel like I am in the United Nations fighting for India's bid for a permanent seat in the Security Council. And they end up saying, "From one of the best medical colleges in the country after all". Which is true, according to India Today/Outlook/The Week, but SO not, according to me.

Fourthly, do you have any idea how easily doctors can admonish people? They can yell at patients if they are being total pains in the backsides. How I LOVE the prospect of yelling! And generally being the nose-in-the-air guy with the most acerbic tongue a la Dr. Parry Cox in Scrubs. Ahh, the joys of it.

Fifthly, when I was in eighth standard, brother S fell sick and had to be admitted in this hospital. I went visiting, like younger brothers do. There was this uncle of mine who drilled into my head over a week or so, this line. "This college is cool; if you have to do medicine, you HAVE to do it here". The tape played forever in my head. Besides, this place had really yo! doctors that spoke really good English (that's SUCH a huge plus for me), and had deer inside the campus! Now, that's gotta do something to a heart infested with Enid Blyton. Then I decided I'd study here and know all about the deer psychology. I haven't progressed much beyond knowing that they don't like grass. Especially when I hold it out for them to eat.
(Sheesh, did I give away way too much about myself? Cut the deer bit people. No deer, okay?)

Sixthly, did you know medical professionals need the highest IQ of any job? Yes, we are at the very top of the hierarchy. And I just wanted the world to know about it. Hence this whole elaborate exercise involving dead body cutting, digging through shit for parasites, measuring toilet dimensions, putting up with really, REALLY, REALLY nagging classmates and carrying around books that could well help Bappi Lahiri, the Big Momma, to get back to shape.
(Okay, you had the last laugh. Snap out of it already)

Then of course, to gross people out. And make certain people give up choice items on the menu. Just say, "That post-mortem we saw today, man, that was pretty gory even for a post-mortem. Totally smashed the skull no? New assistant I think, the brain matter splashed on all of us. One piece went to A's open mouth. Tasted like wet sponge, he said. Then of course was that really shoddy rectum job. Couldn't he pull the guts out properly. Parts of the intestines were dangling like chicken necks, the colon was full of crap still".
And the ice cream is yours.
(It's another matter however that on the first day at the dissection table, the macho-est beefchunks said they had to go to the toilet and did not return for hours.)

So much for why I chose to be a Doctor.

About the contemplations I talk of, suffice to say you don't have to call me in the dead of the night to confirm from me that you should not take medicines past their expiry date. What are you, Miss South Carolina? It's called Expiry for some reason no? Ex- gone, Expire- GONE, ex-pyre - Harischandra Ghat type GONE. Don't take it, and don't ask me again. Pah, I must have burst an aneurysm or two.
And auntie, it is true, I do study Gynecology. Yes, it is about women and their, er, problems. But please don't discuss your menstrual history with me. Please. Please?

The Way We Are

2007-10-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Our family, like regular readers of this space know all too well, is fairly complicated.
Yes, dear readers, in this latest Monkey Scroll, I return to My Family.
With it I mean, like you are all rightly guessing, my extended family, about the population of Burkina Faso, my beloved country. (Now, there's a country I'd like to take over in a coup; so I could be registered forever in the annals of history of Burkina Faso as the first man in the country to type Burkina Faso on a computer, as also to be the first man to use a toothbrush)

Digression, dammit.
Just you imagine my exam papers; once I rambled on about a disease that "stings like a scorpion, drinks like a fish (WTF), eats like a wolf, burrows like a rodent and kills like a leopard", to be disturbed only by the dirty stare of the invigilator, and thus also realize I was writing about something as uncool as Pancreatitis, meh. No offence to one of my favorite bloggers, Adorable Pancreas, of course. Besides, that line is no offshoot of my magic realism infested mind (harr, harr), but one paraphrased from a Surgery textbook that insists on referring to them as "Wisdom Lines". Ah, succinct.
Digression, dammit.

Gulzar returns to Taj Westend for inspiration; David Dhawan to jokes shared by truckdrivers on the Ambala-Amritsar highway.
I, return to my family.

We are a family full of quirks. Living in one like this has its many moments. Just like today; an uncle who abhors conversions so much that he said, "Look how these Kiristan types are infiltrating. The new 2 rupee coin has a cross on it!".
But all that is part of Being Brahmin, but of course.
Today, we explore quirks and the like of our bona-fide KanBrahm family.

1. We love Dr. Rajkumar; to life, to death, and beyond.

Now this one is quite the quirk; just like amma points out every so often. We may be a Brahmin-centric family, but we are so culturally tolerant we should all get honorary Sangeet Natak Akademi awards. The argument here being, Vishnuvardhan, the Smartha-Hoysala Karnataka boy deserves all our praise, but no. We loathe the man and his hundred dogs. To us, the Eediga boy, despite his hippopotamus wife and dyslexic children (with one of them creepily resembling a chimpanzee) is The God.
Appa has watched close to everyone of his films (206), and Amma can sing entire lyrics of his songs, and we groove to "Eef yuu cum todayy". If anybody wants to take potshots at that song, I shall personally ensure your castration. Aseptic, of course.
What a sad period it was for us when he was abducted by that Jungle Boy with the porcine whiskers. Amma, I am sure, did extra ashtottarams everyday for his speedy release. And look how much God listens to her, he was out after 108 days!
Then of course, was the day we lost him, that great man whom we love despite his "Lovw mee aar hayt mee". Amma shrieked a big shriek, and I thought she saw big lizards copulating (for you know, that is double reason to. LIZARDS and SEX! The horror, the horror). But no, it was that Rajkumar had died.
If anybody wants to argue against his greatness, or that NTR, MGR, MRF whoever was superior to him, please visit us. We will keep you occupied.

2. We stay away from Telugu people, thank you.

It's not about their surnames, no. We have made our peace with Korraguntla, Errakundi, ityaadi. It's their Balakrishna-inspired wardrobe that makes us hyper-emetic. Only Govinda can pull off orange and distemper green. No one else, not even your Mahaputrudu Chiranjeevi, or Powerstar Pawan Kalyan.
Amma also opines that the Telugu sub-caste among Brahmins spell bad news. Discord they bring, apparently. So, Telugu biddas and babus, we discard.
Also, stop giving us Gongura chutney, even if you think that's the best thing to happen to food since rice. We Hate It. It takes like dogshit. (A sock in the face for every not-so-smart Alec who goes, "Have you tasted dogshit?" That will be some Gult, I imagine)
While we are at it, a note to Hyderabad. (It's NOT HyDeraBaD please. It gives me the creeps)
Stop Imitating Bangalore.
Besides, it's just humiliating to the women of the household, if a stray plumber declares an open threat, saying "Rape chestaanu".
They were just asking for tap repairs. Jesus.

3. We stay away from Tamilians, thank you.

We are okay if you are among those that follow the Sringeri Sharada Peetham, or if you can get us VIP entry into the Srirangam temple, but others, no.
Strangely enough, it's your wardrobe again. Kongaati.
And your obsession with filmstars. And your obsession with all things Tamil. And your obsession with keeping all display hoardings in Tamil. And your obsession with speaking only Tamil even when you realize I Am Not Getting It. So basically, you are an obsessive lot.
Just what is up with that sepulchral dung-a-taka-dung-a-taka music of yours? Sheesh.
Kaaveri, Lord Ram, His bridge, His monkeys, Sarah Jessica Parker's high heels. You have an issue with everything.

4. We stay away from Malayalees, thank you.

If it was wardrobe in the other two cases, it's the lack of it this time.
It's really a simple question, voiced by many women of our family: Why don't the women wear their pallu-s ever? It baffles them, it does. (This is of course based on the Malayalee women that appear on Kannada films.)
Also, can somebody please tell these Malayalees that we DON'T put coconut on Pani Puri? And that we are tired of the "there-is-a-Mal-everywhere" motif in their incredibly unfunny jokes? Yes, we get that there is a Mal tea shop on the Moon and in a nebula 25000 light years away. We Get It.
What is WITH the non-Hindu not being allowed entry into your super temples, eh? Beats me that one.
(But I love my Malayalee readers and their blogs. Tys, AP, Sreejith etc. My best friend is a Malayalee. So there)

5. We love Kannadigas.

So, yeah.

6. We don't cut cakes on birthdays.

This is something terribly special to only our family. A quirk, let's say. With a poignant tale behind it. So, don't laugh all you twits.
We don't believe in blowing candles, because that's just pointless.
The Cake then. Brother S had a big budday party with a huge cake and all. Our grandpa died only a few days later. I had this budday party in Delhi with a huge cake and all. Our grandma dies only a few days later. Another cousin had a few days before his birthday with plans to (there you go) cut a cake and all, but my paternal grandma passed away even before that could happen.
So yes. No Cutting Cake. We cut chai, though.

7. Maggi. What's that?

This one never fails to amuse my friends. I don't eat Maggi or Top Ramen or any of those things. The reason being, they look like snakes. No, you didn't just read a random surrealism. That, my dear readers, is true. Appa-Amma did some pooja-paath at a snake-shrine a zillion moons ago which forbids them from eating anything that's slender and (what else), snake-like. (This was the same pooja that Sachin Tendulkar recently did at the same venue. We had no paparazzi then, WTF.)
So, as it goes, we don't eat Maggi, Top Ramen, vermicelli and (ah, what coincidence) snake gourd.

8. B.A., B.Sc., B.Com. People do these?

I remember a cousin from up north visiting home, and saying he was doing B.A.
"WHAT?" was what we said, I remember. To his credit, the boy was doing a Mathematics honors B.A.
While in twelfth, I seriously considered studying Law. Which was also when mom decided I was capable of murder too.
"Law! Why? You want to wear black coats all your life?! White is so much more calm!" was what EVERYONE said. Wonder what they would have said if I said I wanted to do B.A. in English Literature.
I would probably be writing this one from a seedy internet cafe.
Or not.

9. Foreign returned = USA returned.

You go hike with the polar bears up in the North Pole, or do tap dance with the the penguins down South, we don't care. Unless you make that holy visit to the United Stated of America and take teertha-prasada at the Statue of Liberty, you do not qualify to be declared "Foreign Returned". Crossing the Arabian Sea is akin to crossing Madiwala Lake.
The Gulf Does Not Count.

So there. Nine snippets from Namma Family for the Nava Raatri.
Happy Festivals.

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P.S.: We aren't as maniacally Kannadiga as you may be thinking. Appa watches news in English! And Amma thinks Homer Simpson is funny.

P.P.S.: This is fiction in parts. Talk about magic realism.

P.P.S.: Talking about magic realism, I am two books short of an All-Rushdie collection. Yay me!

Gheun Tag.

2007-10-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

So, Tag it is.
After having ignored many many mails imploring me to spill out 18 wondrous factoids about myself, my illustrious life and career, I can't choose to ignore anymore. (Okay, they were forwards. Bite me.)
Also because I can't think of writing anything else. I sit before this black humming contraption and feel blanker than ever. At 21, I am drained. Stupid friends (and the film Proof) had convinced me that the decrescendo wouldn't start until 23. Oh, they'll get a piece of my mind. And extra sharp will be its edges.
Besides, nothing interesting is happening in my sad-ass life. That is of course excluding the fact that suction-evacuation (a method of abortion), according to our Obstetrics textbook, is an OUTDOOR (!) procedure (where are the proofreaders, where where?) and that pregnant women can dye their hair with impunity, without endangering the baby; a piece of information that made Rani jump in the manner of a pixie. Rani being a friend who is graying and balding. Sad times for her, these.

About the title; see, I like to believe I can pull off puns. And you need do nothing to convince me against it. (Living in my bubble is fun.).
I was thinking Tag-ore. But then, that would be just insulting the man, who in all kindness, has agreed to share his birthday with Spunky Monkey. (Yes, that is true. Wish me come May)
Then Tag-bug, Tag-bug, in an attempt to showcase my dhin-chak Bollywood side. If you are still wondering how that fits in, I was going for the "Tug-bug, Tug-bug" in Lakdee ki kaathi. Oh-kay, moving on.
Then sTag. To assert my single status, and thus attract the odd pretty fish with the red fin in the internet. But then, that would be ack desperate, and let's face it; I have a blog! That in itself, a friend agrees, is among the stages of clinical desperation.
It was then that Gheun Tag happened. What a concise phrase that one is! And how nice were those Channel [V] fillers with the Gheun Tak! You remember? Also, because it brings to fore my cross-lingual punning abilities. (I reiterate, living in my bubble IS fun)

Let's get ready to rumbaaaaallllllll.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.

(What aptness in the questioning I say. Brings out your innermost secrets this Tag. Freud would have been proud of this venture.)

So, there was no one at home. I was bathing. Soap and all. Don't ask how else. Then, the bell went 'ding-dong', my favorite sound. Then, my brain started to race. Why? I was alone, and if I took any longer to open the door, they'd suspect I would be up to no good, what with the internet and the www and the unmentionable things therein.
Ayyo, ayyo, ayyo. (It is not a cliche/myth perpetuated by Mehmood and clan that the only exclamation South Indians know is "Ayyo! Ayyo! Ayyo!" It's actually quite true. Take it from me)
So, I run; wet, soapy, harried, holier-than-thou, and it was then that amma's extra-hard scrubbing of the floor, and sodium hydroxide took their combined prey. My chin. I cruised on the wet floor like a terrestrial fish and jammed against the edge of a wall. And bled. Like fucks. Which was also the time I decided against the Gladrags Manhunt thing.

If you thought the story was over, you also thought Bappi Lahiri was a man. So, no, not over yet.

One day I was walking along the hospital corridor for my Obstetrics (there, again) tutorial where a sad woman would be telling us the sad story of her sad life, read, the lecturer would be telling us the mechanism of labour in a breech presentation. (You don't want to know more, trust me). So, I was walking in front of the Ophthalmology department, (that was for you all to catch the irony bit), and fell.
Again.
And hurt myself.
Again.
On the same spot. My chin.
Again.
And bled like fucks.
Again.
My handkerchief looked like a, er, nevermind. It looked very spotted, let's say.

Had to get stitches. 4! On my face, damn it. To hide which, I have currently grown a goatee which by the way, has gotten so bristly I am considering harvesting them for a toothbrush company.
People suggested that I get a skin graft done, you know, skin off my butt on my face. I let that pass. I knew things would first begin with "Buttface!", then "Butt(ugly)face", and then wannabe Seinfelds going "Did you hear about the guy that had butt-cheeks and a butt-chin?". Gah.
And let's face it, I am no Hrithik Roshan.

So there, that was the long and tedious and tediously long story of the scar on my chin.
(I wish I was Hrithik Roshan, though)

2. What does your phone look like?

It looks like everything I don't look like. It's fat and dark and slow and nearly indestructible.
But then, it's getting what I will not - action. Its wallpaper currently is two millipedes fornicating. No, I am not into that kind of weirdness. But action is action. And it must be respected. It is a Nokia 6600, the marvel of mobile phone resilience. It Won't Break.

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?

Currently, cobwebs. On the ceiling too, I see. And a spider doing a dangle-tango.
Also, a poster of Jimi Hendrix doing a weird pout thing. I know a grand total of six of his songs. But he hangs on the wall for purposes of coolness. There are also red stickers that read VIP Frenchie. And I can't believe I just said it. Assortment of posters, mosquito death spots, random pencil graffiti adorn my walls.
(and a small newspaper cut-out of Norah Jones.)

4. What is your current desktop picture?

It is a comic strip by Shannon Wheeler, called Too Much Coffee Man. I am sure you have heard of it. If not, you heard it now anyway.

So, yeah. Go read them. Funny funny funny they be.

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?

Look, I come from a country of donkey marriages and toad marriages. And where the biggest celebrities endorse tree marriages. Why not gay marriages then? At least by definition, they would be happy. And it is humans. That, is my first criterion for any marriage.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?

World Supremacy. Yeah.
Alternately, the Vice Chancellor's home number, so I could call his wife up and make up stories of infidelity and thus give him hell for the rest of his life. I hate my university. They are a bunch of undersexed assholes.

7. What time were you born?

I don't know if Amma is making this up to attribute every small detail of my life to a pre-designed proforma. But allegedly, I was born at 3:30 in the night. Which is why, she also vehemently insists, that I go to bed at around that time every night. She says she felt like going to the bathroom or something at about that time, and I suggested that I come out instead.
All said and done, I blame her pregnancy induced bladder issues for my poor attendance in Pediatrics, Orthopedics and Obstetrics-Gynecology.

8. Are your parents still together?

I mean, are you kidding me? To tolerate a monster child like me they need each other, very much. So, yes they are. And are, judging from the hush-hush tones I hear, conspiring to write a letter to their favorite astrologer on TV asking him when I would cut my hair (which is like Paul McCartney's during The Beatles' hippiest days) and shave that face fungus which, they say, makes me look like a Shivajinagar salesman selling them second-hand carpets.
Poor people; bad choice they made in thinking brother S would like somebody to play with. I near eat that holy child almost everyday.

9. Who was the last person that made you cry?

Sanjaya Malakar, and Ryan Seacrest every time he called him Sanzhaaya. Oh, what deadly lachrymose combination that was.
Also Michael Jackson. The man doesn't deserve all this. Come on, he can't even sniff a cry (that nose wouldn't let him), let alone the dilemma he has to face every time he has to fill in an application asking for gender, race, sexuality, nationality and planet.
And how can I forget Mr.L, whom regular readers of this blog might remember as the lascivious lecherous surgeon. The Bastard. No, he did not hit on me. But he might as well have; bloody near failed me, that midget with no balls.

10. What is your favorite perfume/cologne?

Huh? I don't know, but I think this one my cousin bought for me from the US would have to be my favorite.
It's called New York Nights, with a tagline that says Get Sexy. The fragrance ("mellow, smoldering, a bit macho") apparently lasts as long as I do, and it is "no wonder that women can't resist it". He chose wisely, my cousin. He recognized my dire need to socialize, from 8000 miles away.

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?

(Why opposite sex?)
Anyhoo, straight. I like hair that way too.
Eyes, as long as they aren't red, I am fine. Talking of eye color, that guy Hugh Laurie, House MD, has unusually blue eyes. They are bluer than blue. They are like, BLUUUE.

12. What are you listening to?

An aircraft creating unsavory noise in the clouds, and pretty much all over Bangalore. Okay, now that moved away. So I listen to King Crimson, and their superlative 21st Century Schizoid Man.
But, lined right next is my current favorite, Disco 82!

Main ek Disco (ta ta taa)
Tu ek Disco (ta ta taa)
Main ek Disco, Tu ek Disco,
Duniya hain Disco!

13. Do you get scared of the dark?

Not particularly. But when it's dark, and the lizards are all aroused, and give each other those mating calls, is when I wish I was killed by that vicious mad dog that had chased me many years ago. Actually, the thing I most want right now, is for the entire lizard population in the world to die, and heap up on Dr.L, The Bastard.

14. Do you like Painkillers?

I like that song by Judas Priest. Songs like those obliterate the need to appreciatively nod, or let out that ironic smile, in response to the lyrics.
But yes, I strongly recommend it to others. Specially, my patients-to-be. Trust me, they'll need them.

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?

Yes.
(See, I just shut up)
(See!)

16. If I could eat anything right now, what would it be?

Golgappa. The tastiest thing humankind ever invented.

17. Who was the last person that made you mad?

That thing pink, what is it called, Karan Johar. That one. And something called the Koffee Awards. Oh dear Lord of the Seven Hills. That is just about violating every one of my fundamental rights, and stretching the freedom of expression to intolerably strong shearing forces. What WAS that all about? If not for The Goddess Malaika Arora, my TV screen was in grave danger of developing a hole 29 inches wide.

18. Who was the last person that made you smile?

May be Amma. For what, I don't quite remember.
Or yeah, I smiled (like I always do) while listening to Lata in Manmohana bade jhoothe, when she takes those godawfully intricate taans in the end. That woman, to me, is all that is great music about. She turned 78 two days ago. Many many happy returns of the day to her, on behalf of everybody who cares for flawless notes.

(Why did it get all solemn in the end?)
(To relieve the solemnity, a PJ for you. Woh kya hain jo dil mein hain, mann mein hain, par dhadkan mein nahin?
.
.
.
Aamir Khan. HA HA HA)

I could mail you a powerpoint presentation called PJ World (what a fun world that must be to live in) if you, like me, happen to enjoy and laugh uproariously at such works of genius.

This tag, thus comes to an end.
For those that did not survive it, what's the point, you aren't reading this anyway.
For those that did, I hope you are okay. And you can write in regarding anything. We have only discussed some 16942 things in the entire post.

And I want everybody who has read this to go tag-bug, tag-bug.
I WILL keep a check on you.

On being Kannadiga, Brahmin, Smartha; and why our family is truly going global.

2007-09-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

So, we are on the fast track to be a True Global Family.
Yes, yes; our proud Brahmin cousin has gathered some from somewhere and has somehow managed one Amreekan chick to go wee! with him. Chick is NRI type, but hey, Amreeki prajaa at any cost.
(You, and you, shove that smirk up where no sun does shine indeed. She'll get to go to Pravasi Bharateeya Divas and take part in discussions about the magically charming experience that is being the diaspora, all the while sipping masala chai and munching garma garam pakode. Can you, CAN you, huh, HUH?)

While I anticipated the need for multiple defibrillators to go beep-beep all over the town accompanied by unequivocal screams of "Ayyo ayyo, dharmabhrashTha", I was certainly not ready for what followed.
Practised nonchalance, that's what did.
The slew of Maavas, Attes, Chikkappas, Chikkammas, Bhaavas, Attiges, Maidunas, Naadinis, Doddammas, Doddappas, Shadkas, Orgittis, (assortment of relatives, for my non-Kannadiga readers) and alphabetagammas cold shouldered the expectant piece of information. It even turned a shade green, when an atte, doing her morning tulsi-katte rounds with MSS for background music, stopped for the cameras and impatiently said, "Oh is that all, my sister in law's grand niece got married to an American. Actual one you know; white skin, golden hair, blue eyes, with names like The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel."

It also came to pass at some family functions about how our big Doddappa's response to the news was to look up about 10 degrees, between Keshavaaya svaaha and Madhavaaya svaaha.
What a perfectly undesired anticlimax.

How did we get to be thus?
Us, the true pioneers of "Aaj se sochlo ke tere maa-baap mar gaye"-type disowning; us, the true followers of the tenet that goes, "Don't let your children get married to anybody non-Kannadiga, non-Brahmin, and non-SMARTHA".
(Who said it? Well, I am assuming someone great. But then, I digress.)
So, let's start from how it all was, and let's end at where it has, and more importantly why.

There was a time when hurried whispers would flow with the vigor of electricity through a marriage hall when, "Radha atte, did you know Subbanna chikkappa's wife's nephew is married to a Madhwa Brahmin (whisper gasp) and they are Yajurvedis (whisper ayyo) and they speak Telugu at home (whisper scream)". And thus it would circulate, from Kanjeevaram to Kanjeevaram, from Mysore silk to Mysore silk, so by the end of the day, even if nobody knew the names of the bride and groom involved in that elaborate excuse for a lunch, everybody would know of the renegade that was Subbanna chikkappa's wife's nephew.

Then of course were the legendary horoscope mismatches.

Of the girl belonging to Rakshasa gana, and our boy being of Manava gana, and how she would eat him up; of the unfortunate girl of Ashlesha nakshatram who had to be betrothed to a family without a mother-in-law, and they found none for her; or of the couple who had the perfect horoscopes (28 points. Score!) but had to not be married because there was a possibility of their child suffering a fall seven years hence. Some Shani or Kuja influence or something. Tsk tsk.

So, there it was. Perfectly normal situation, with the Ontikoppal almanac deciding which side we would go to bed to, and at what time we would sip the morning coffee; with MS Subbulakshmi reverberating every morning on the RED National Panasonic stereo, egging Rama on to get up and kick Maareecha-Subaahu's collective butt.
But, that was the calm before the storm.
The storm came to the tune of tring-tring.

"Hello?", amma said.
"Hello, S chikkamma", said cousin from the other end.
"So, how come you remembered this fat aunt; what an unexpected surprise (sic). You never call for no reason, so go on tell me whatitees?"
"Err, I am going to get married. That's what mummy wanted to tell you last time she had called, but she couldn't get around to saying it, because you started discussing the new serial on E-TV, and then the recipes for chakli, koDbaLe, and then the design patterns on your new sarees; and also because she couldn't bring herself to tell you anything"
"Oh shut up, but this is so exciting! So, is the girl fair, well-read, Kannadiga, Smartha-Brahmin, of agreeable Gothra-Nakshatra-Gana, with a software-engineer brother in the Silicon Valley?"
"Erm, no"
"Then, in the UK?"
"Erm, no. The girl is fair and well-read already, but when I fell in love with her, I forgot to ask her nakshatra and gothra"
"Oh God, go on"
"She is not Kannadiga, she is Bihari"
"Huh!"
"She is not Brahmin"
"HUH!"
"Her G-N-G, I don't care about, as also her brother. I couldn't care less if he was from Silicon Valley or Diagon Alley"
"Oh good lord of Tirupati, what is happening! And her brother is diagonal? What do you mean? Not straight?"
"Jesus, he's not gay"
"What is gay?"
"Nevermind."
"May be this is what a heart attack feels like."

(The next family function, needless to say, was filled with conversations about the apostasy. "Bhojpuri? What is that, something like Pani Puri?", "No ma, they are some kind of sarees no?", "Eyy, isn't that Manipuri?", "Then what is Bhojpuri?")

And thus crumbled the cookie. The first "close" cousin to have gone "astray". There have been of course pioneers before and after him, for what is the Mile sur mera tumhara-isation of our pure-bred Kannadiga Brahmin family.
There was the bride from the "lower caste".
There was the distant cousin who got married to a British woman.
There was, of course, the Madhwa Brahmin girl (Amma said, "Now THIS is sacrilege")
Much before, there was the very distant relative who got married to an Australian, had multiple children (to satisfy Australia's craving for human population), and even named one of his children a hybrid name - Joseph Narasimhaiah!

So, thus thawed this obsession with the caste, sub-caste and the sub-sub-caste. Although it does rear its ugly head on the rare occasion, for the most part, our family has ceased to be the epicenter of religio-seismological activity. Which is why the Punjabis, the Biharis, the British, the Australians all exist under the all too albatross-ian wings that is our family.
We are looking for some west Indian representation though, no not the cornrows and banjo variety, but the Marathi-Gujarati kind. Dhokla and Puranpoli would be nice additions to our multi-cuisine accustomed palate. Sarson da saag, we are hoping would be nice.
As for my own brother, he is free to take the plunge with anybody, I guess. Caste no bar. Harijan, Girijan, Mahajan. Anybody.

That leaves me.
Since I am SO into shock-and-awe, this kind of tepid reaction is SO not done. I am looking for announcements that can still make them go "Ayyo, ayyo, ayyo."

May be I should tell them I am gay.
But then, they wouldn't know what that is, and on being told what it is, they wouldn't believe it and say, "such things happen only in America", and if I insisted even then, a havan, of course. Nothing stands the wrath of the fire god, no, not even homosexuality.
So, that won't go down too well.

Or, may be I should show them a picture of Venus Williams or better still, Cher (pink-orange wig in place), and say I am actually attracted to her.

Or may be, you guys could come up with things I could tell them.
Hmm.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S.: In case of some cousins who might read this (although the possibility is remote), I love you all. You make life worth living. World peace be with you.

P.P.S.: Despite what I might tell you, my family completely over-reacted, with one even citing old Kannada film dialogues for effect. How I wish they behaved like I wanted them to. I am just too liberal ya, whattodo.

P.P.P.S.: THIS IS A FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNT. Shh.

A Short Story About Love

2007-09-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

PumpkinPie, SweetyBootyCutiePoo to his mother, he was just Fatboy in school. Golu, HumpDump, Door No.88, on different days, among different friends.
School is school; and fat boys are fat boys. They get the taunts, the nicknames, the occasional being-pushed-into-mud, the not so occasional "Miss, Golu farted", nothing out of the ordinary.

When his classmates found that he had no intentions of rising to any gibes about his fourth chin, or the way a fold of his knickers seemed to be buried within his buttocks constantly, they simply left him alone, contenting themselves with the poem most schoolchildren knew, about fat Mr. and Mrs.88.

And this, suited him excellently.

It had been six months since he had moved schools. The last one showed him the boot citing 'Incompatibility with school rules' and in a post script the Transfer Certificate added, 'Adjustment problems; uncontrolled rage'. All because he jammed a classmate's head between the wall and the bench, when the poor boy asked for place to sit next to him.

"What sort of a school is this? Four children to a bench! And you call yourselves an International School! Which country, Rwanda?", his mother had fumed at the Principal.
"Madam, you don't understand, the other children are afraid of him", the Principal tried his most diplomatic tone.
"Afraid? Let them be. Let them cower under their seats, and turn out just like you. Look at you wuss, sweating all over like a pig before slaughter. Here, take this napkin. And do go shopping today. Who knows, you may even grab a pair", she had screamed, her face looking redder than her Banaras sari, leaving the Principal's face grayer than his jacket.

For all her bravado, the ashen faced Principal sought his revenge with that spleen filled Transfer Certificate. The conduct and attitude column seemed like, she cried, "an excerpt from Jack the Ripper's diary, and this is just a well-fed 9-year old for Christ's sake!". But then, giving up was never her thing.

The revenge however paid off. She found no school that was ready to take on her rather big, not to mention rambunctious bundle of joy.
School after school, no after no.
Three months, about twenty schools.
The peering, ever-scrutinizing gazes of the school heads, and their eventual refusal to take him in made her haughtier initially, disconcerted her five schools later, slightly unnerved her a few more schools later, and by the twentieth she was convinced there hid Satan under that Farex baby exterior.

Then started the third degree.
The beating. The morebeating.
The yelling. The toomuchyelling.
The giving little food. The giving toolittlefood. The giving no food AtAll.
The last worked. Like a charm.

So, four months and twenty three reluctant schools later, the arrogant mass of lard had been shaped into being a being of silence, of passivity, of MindingOne'sOwnBusiness; with a much drilled into credo of "Chuppee". The great story that would be recounted many a time by local mothers as The Chupping of the Thupper.

And this suited him excellently, making him realize the joys of non-alignment, of being the audience.
Reduced, and muted; ostracized and ignored.
Unashamed, accustomed to a solitude of a new kind, he began to enjoy his near-invisibility. From his position at the edge of the school and the school's life, he wrote postcards to himself, taking vicarious pleasure in the activities of those around him; quietly celebrating the rise or fall of this or that playground emperor, or the examination debacles of a particularly unappetizing classmate, or in one case, peering through evidently inefficient Venetian blinds to discover the sweaty tandem functioning of the ayah and the gamekeeper - ah, the myriad delights of the spectator; ah, the proximity a pair of opera-glasses could bring; ah, the webs of stories weaved in whispers.

But he remained silent through it all.
Amused, but quietly.
But then, how long can one keep that thing which is innately theirs suppressed? For instance, could this author ever refrain from using long clauses, and thus longer sentences?
Could the bully ever be content with solitude? Could the threat of being not fed Krunchy Krackers hold out for that long? If not bash up people, as he was wont to, was he not tempted to even attempt human contact?
This is against all acceptable 9 year old boy behaviour. The author didn't intend him to be thus. There needs to be some action taken. I can't possibly make my protagonist feel above regular human emotions. Reformed bullies have emotions too. Haven't we seen that in enough and more Hindi films?
So...

(The author, that is I, likes drastic changes, because they are well, so drastic, and because sometimes they are needed when met with a cul de sac.
So, here is one such drastic change.)

He is bored. Yes.
He, our hero, our fatboy erstwhile-bully-now-silent-to-the-point-of-being-silly, has gotten bored of his opera-glass ways, and longs, much like the Charulata he never knew, for the comfort of human beings, for the simple joys of playing tic-tac-toe that the other kids seemed to like so much.

He is bored, he is bored, he is very very bored, and pleads with the author to deliver him from a life so young, but so scarred, in succession by a bully history, a bullier mom, and now a fully dull solitude.

(The author considers, reconsiders, and comes up with what can be the only satisfactory remedy)

DEUS EX MACHINA.

Enter girl. Girls, the cause and solution to all men's problems.

Enter girl. Saturday. Hero still bored. No uniform day. Thrown his opera-glasses. Pink pinafore skirt. Sulks at the edge of the compound. Purple little purse. Catches sight of pink-purple blurb. Who is that? Twiddles thumbs. OH! That boy! OH! This girl! He seems sad. Why is she here? Wonder why he is the quiet sort, and always with those binoculars. God, the girl is always yakking, and always adjusting her hair. What's his name, I've forgotten. What's her name, I don't remember. Must be Fatty, ha ha. Must be Pinky, HA HA. May be he has seen where my hairband is. Oh god, here she comes.

"Hi", she said chirpily, extending a warm hand, wiping the hair out of her face, what with the hairband missing.
"Hello", he tried swallowing the tennis ball that seemed jammed in his throat, wiping the fat sweaty palm on his khaki knickers.

Solitude, shmolitude.
He had found his first crush.

(The protagonist is glad that the author endorses time-tested cliches. As for the author, he just likes happy endings.)

Jana Gana Mana.

2007-08-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

If the media hyperbole over India entering her 61st year of independence has resulted in anything besides people denouncing the Emergency all over again, it has been to make me realize how much I love the National Anthem. Many people have written about the anthem, written beautifully needless to say, and I thought it would be hubris to add to the set of distinguished posts.
But, despite myself, I am.
I listen to the re-released album Jana Gana Mana and stand so stunned at the various unbelievably beautiful interpretations of the simple melody, that I brought myself to write about them. (This, when I had decided that this space would be for flippant discussion over things that don't really matter to any of us.)

Drawing artistes from across the country and her various forms of music, the album is, as was intended, an amalgamation of all things musically patriotic, or patriotically musical. Every Lata Mangeshkar is represented by a DK Pattammal; every Bhimsen Joshi, by a Balamuralikrishna.
Each showing to us, using the same swaras, the same taala, the same words and the same bhaava, all that is diverse about their chosen streams of music, yet proving to us all too conclusively that Jana Gana Mana is the great unifier. Note how each of them interprets even the smallest of murkis differently, sounding so different from each other, and still sounding so alike.

I get gooseflesh when I listen to that great doyen, part of the female trinity of Carnatic Classical music, DK Pattammal singing the ode to Dispenser of India's Destiny; or when Lata, that picture of greatness, negotiates the high note of Jaya he, when she was a ripe 70.

The tune itself is very simple; based on Bilaawal/Shankaraabharanam (wherever your affiliation lies), raagas that have been used so often in popular film songs. Yet, with this song, it evokes something so dormant in most of us.
I am not a very patriotic person, if jingoism is what is construed to be patriotism these days. I do not end a speech/performance on stage with a Jai Hind, or stick a plastic tricolour to my bike on Independence Day, or insist on standing up while the national anthem plays. I do not.
But this song, much cliched as it sounds, makes me very proud. And very happy. It makes me want to go back to school and sing it out loud with hundreds of other kids, each one holding a pitch ranging from A to Z and then some.

While being in school, singing the National Anthem, 'wasting' 52! seconds seemed like a ritual as dreary and ill-gotten as getting the school diary signed, or wearing polished shoes, or attending Moral Science classes. It had been over six years that I had last sung the National Anthem before the TV invasion of the anthem happened, and since then I must have sung/listened/hummed it enough to make up for all the lost years. May be it is the innate pride over how far we have come since 1947; since the day when a Line killed millions, fractured an entire geography, and threatened to put the subcontinent back to the days of uncertainty, despite the 'independence'. And look where we are today! If this isn't a giant leap for mankind, little else is. Agreed the country still has the corruption, the dowry, the redtape, and the works. But, if we have achieved as much as we have in as little as 60 years despite all these impediments, imagine what the Indian spirit, alive in every one of the billion, could achieve in the next 60.
We, as the citizens of the country, are in that sense, the true Dispensers of India's Destiny; and I am inclined to believe that Tagore thought of this very thing while he penned the anthem.

As Independent India turns a glorious 61, glorious visions of the future hold me in thrall. And I stand an excited spectator in my little corner and watch the spectacular symphony as it unfolds, note by note, movement by movement, over the whole of the country.

This got too pedantic, I know. So, I stop.
You, all of you, go listen to Jana Gana Mana, or better still, sing it out loud.
(It doesn't have to be Independence Day to, you know.)

Did we all grow up too soon?

2007-08-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

It was not the first time that my wonder on wheels had thrown a fit. So much for nomenclature, that wondrous contraption on two rickety wheels is hardly a 'Sport'.
For the third time in as many months, my Hardly Davidson (control that smirk you, my friends thought that was funny. Okay, used to. Three years ago) was having a flat tyre, bad brakes, and was generally being a bitch. And so, I was making a Tughlaqesque journey, with much panting, to the mechanic's.

As I sat there waiting for Salim/Javed/Naved to be the desi Fulliautomatix and leave oily fingerprints over beloved Lalchhadi, I had all the time to indulge myself in an activity I like doing best. Watching people. Watching people do stupid things. Okay, judge me all, watching people do stupid things, and then laughing about it. I did quite a bit of it, the watching I mean, considering that the mechanic and his minions have their ways of making you want to fall at their greaseful feet to get your sulking bitch to move again. Disgraceful. Which was fine. For, there came to focus the first Oh-dear-lord sight of the day.

[I urge all my fine readers of refined sensibilities to cast an eye on the hoi polloi, (populating streets of Bangalore that aren't called Brigade Road/MG Road/Church Street), and to keep it cast thus for a while, for they present to you sights of unimaginable wonder, at least to the middle-class, Brahmin, prude self that is mine.]

Here in this dingy by-lane of a dingier locality, turning more incredible by the minute to my incredulous self, I sat watching in wonder, (with my jaw sweeping the grease off the floor might I add), a young impressionable boy and a younger impressionable girl walking together arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, very much in love and evidently making no efforts to hide it, what with the loud squeals of laughter that seemed to work by a metronome of once every 6 seconds.
Now, despite being a self-declared prude, I am strangely tolerant to public displays of affection; mostly because of the sheepish looks on the faces of the people involved, and what-the-hell, the first few days of being in love are something else.
The aforementioned incident of les inseparables, would in perspective, seem entirely much ado about zilch, except that the Agapornis taking flight here were no more than twelve, and in their white and blue school uniforms; tie-belt in place. What's more, our little Romeo here, with facial hair sparser than penguins on a Bangalore street, was marking his trail with frail, yet perfectly formed smoke-rings!
Hello? This is Bangalore? was what my dominant parietal lobe trying to articulate, but got waylaid into doing the -
Dekh tere sansaar ki haalat kya ho gayi bhagwaan,
Kitna badal gaya insaan
- routine.

Which was just as well, for I felt a hand tap on my shoulder and a girl's voice ask, "What problem?".
Now this was our mechanic's minion, Khaled (close enough), Chhotu for obvious reasons. Barely 4 feet above ground, he got to working on Laalchhadi, like the little virtuoso, that all these mechanic shop children somehow always are. He told me that he was seven, and that he earned for his entire family; being the second eldest in a family of six children, the responsibility of feeding many mouths rested on him too.

I was taken slightly aback, I admit. Within a span of ten minutes, I had seen two situations as different from each other as South India is from the North, yet strangely held by a common thread. I couldn't help but wonder, that whatever may be the reason, we as a generation, as children of the new century, grew up too soon.

Theorizing like Socrates (ah, the pseudo me), I rode back home on the Khaled-ized Laalchhadi, to a surprise as pleasant as any. My brother, merely Four Seasons wiser than me, was placed in a software company (where else?), and would be a taxpayer at tender 21. And it seemed like only yesterday that he cried like a baby without a rattle, when he got less marks in Physics in Class XII. The whole growing up too soon brainwave only got stronger. If thousands of years hence, a Hawking sort (without the Lou Gehrig, of course, 'cos medicine would have conquered everything by then) wrote "A Not So Brief History Of Time", we'd be chronicled in the palimpsests of time as the generation that paved the way to growing up too soon.
Whatever may be the circumstances that led to it,
whatever may be the socio-technological reasons for it,
and whatever good or bad came of it,
we all did grow up too soon, don't y'all think?

My Bollywood-esque reverie was broken by a rather shrill scowl. My kid-cousin, barely a year old, was throwing a fit at his mother for having given him the dummy telephone to play with, when the gadget of his choice was, but obviously, the new and gleaming mobile phone!

Beaming like the Buddha, I thought to myself, 'Well, he is well on his way.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
written about two years ago; needless to say, needs to be hemmed and hawed all over.

Harry Potter 7 Sucks (Succinct, eh?)

2007-07-26T12:38:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?
No. Try Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows. (the depth in the plot is astonishingly hollow)

If you think this is bad writing (which it most undoubtedly is), i suggest you read the seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, also called,
Crappy Crapper and the Craply Crap-lows.
Farty Farter and the Farty Fartows, or
Harry Potter and the oh-my-god-this-book-sucks-so-much-it-should-either-replace-Linda Lovelace-or-be-the-face-of-Whisper.

You get the hint. Subtlety has never been my thing.
(Referring to excrement is, one would think)
(But, that's for another day)

Now, this book.
The most awaited book in all of known human history. And rightly so. Not for a moment do i grudge JK Rowling the fame she has achieved, or the anticipation which was associated with her last creation in the series.
The place she told us about, the people she introduced us to, the impossible magical things/actions she brought forth to us seemed close to our hearts, seemed terribly enjoyable, and most importantly seemed believable. So much so, if somebody told me Hogwarts exists in some far corner of Northern England, i would believe him, and lament my not getting an envelope addressed to me in green ink, delivered by a tawny owl. I would.

In all my fairly extensive reading of fiction in English, it is rare that I have really, really liked characters enough to claim that I have figured that character out. Franny from Franny and Zooey was one such.
The only other such character was Professor Dumbledore; the character exuded so much aura, so much positivity, so much sureness. It is my firm belief that Dumbledore was the best character JK created.
His character being reduced to a shadow of his actual self, and casting doubts on his impeccably infallible moral fibre is the stuff literary hara-kiri is made of. This one, being one of the many reasons why I think this book was not written by JK, and was in fact ghostwritten by Madonna.

(Aside : skip if you don't have the time.
My love for the series, like most things, has an intimate personal angle. I was 11 when Harry was 11, 12 when he was 12, and so on. People have variously described me as scrawny, very thin for my age; and my hair as jet black, ALWAYS unkempt and long; also, that I have an almost pathological urge to pick fights with stupid teachers. As any Harry Potter fan worth his uppu will tell you, these very adjectives have been used in relation with our boy Harry.
So yes, I assumed that I was Harry Potter. Oh come on, don't laugh. I am sure you had weirder delusions.
Aside to an aside : I sulked for a week when this stupid little Caucasian boy called Daniel Radcliffe was chosen to play Harry. But then consoled myself, blaming it on racially discriminating, culturally intolerant Britain.)

So now, hark all,

Reasons why I think The Book was ghostwritten by Madonna -

1. The book lacks imagination.

JK did not have a specific style to speak of, but what she did have was the ability to draw her reader into a world that seemed as impossible as it was believable. And all that, because a great part of her cerebral cortex was devoted to storytelling abilities. The mere fact that she has an age-independent fan following of millions is testimony to her incredible imagination that has surprised and stunned us book after book. This element of surprise, making us read with jaws hitting the floor is conspicuous by its very lamentable absence in this edition.

2. Everything CANNOT be a chance escape.

The Wedding, Escape from the Ministry of Magic, Escape from Gringott's, Escape from The Malfoy Manor.
Agreed Murphy rules over only us Muggles, and that Harry lives in a magical world, but come on, cut us some slack. Probability was a possibility JK never considered while writing the book. The probability here being Harry and his cronies going wrong, especially when the odds of that happening were astronomically high.
Also, by chance, there happens to be a secret passage from the Room of Requirements to Hog's Head, which by chance is also where Aberforth Dumbledore works, who by chance has bought the Dual Mirror from Mundungus Fletcher, who by chance would have flicked it from Harry.
Oh. My. God.

3. Blimey, what's with the Polyjuice Potion eh?

The whole concept of this Polyjuice Potion in the second and fourth books seemed neat, alright. Very skillfully used. The flipside to this book is of course that it is used with so much impunity that one wonders if water is the new Polyjuice Potion.
A classic example of imagination doing an Atacama, or Madonna calling the shots.

4. Expelliarmus sucks. So does Stupefy.

What Avada Kedavra is to The Dark Lord, Expelliarmus is to The Boy Who Lived. You have GOT to be kidding me, specially so when he has already done this Expelliarmus thingy in the fourth book, and if Voldy is the sly thing that we have believed him to be, he must have learnt his lessons.
Like an equally disgruntled friend put it, "To claim that a spell as elemenatary as Expelliarmus to be the signature spell of the boy who was destined to bring about the Dark Lord's fall, is asking too much of our imagination's credulity". And i could not agree more.

5. Characters no. Caricatures yes.

Dumbledore wore the cursed ring because "it was a mistake; i was being a fool". Huh?
Dumbledore collaborated with Grimmelwald because "I was young and foolish". HUH?
If establishing ole Albus as human was what she was angling for, she made a mistake, this Rowling. Especially when it is indelibly etched on our minds that Dumbledore was the one reassuring character, the one element of clarity, the one pair of deft hands that unravels thread by thread, every questionable consequence.
The very woman who created Dumbledore for me, also undid him for me.
I am very, very disappointed.

Snape. Severus Snape.
Why did Dumbledore believe in Snape as much as he did? Not explained.
And to assert that Snape's unwavering, never-ending love for Lily was the sole reason he risked his life to protect Harry, especially when half of Harry's chromosomes were a contribution of James, a figure he hated more than is physically possible, seems too much of a stretch to be deemed plausible.
And of course, as JK is wont to, he dies a maha lame death as well.

Ron Weasley. Always a caricature; never liked the character. This time, was deplorably depicted.

Sybil Trelawney. A character I rather liked. Her weirdness, her quirks, all of it. More so, because Emma Thompson added a little something to her character. And this woman Trelawney, who has devoted all her life to Divination, throws her treasured crystal balls in the end at the Death Eaters. How much more abysmally could one destroy characters, like literally?

The Dark Lord aka Tom Marvolo Riddle aka Voldemort.
He could well be called The Snivelling Mouse.
Just where was the terror he invoked, the kind that had me peeing in my pants, when he came to life at the end of the fourth book? Just where?

6. Dude, where's my explanation?

Sirius Black goes Behind the Veil, and is pronounced dead. (Nobody died a less eventful death) Luna Lovegood says, she can speak to her mother from beyond the veil. Where and when did that happen between Harry and Sirius?

In the King's Cross chapter, what is the wriggling creature seen under the chair? Is it the phoenix, or Voldemort, or a poisoned mouse dying?

Aberforth, our man at Hog's Head. Just HOW did he get into Hogsmeade, especially when Death Eaters have made it their backyard? Did they let him go scotfree, because he gave them some goats for otherworldly pleasures?

Explain the Death Stick. When Ole Dumbly dies, his wand is not snapped, contrary to wizarding tradition. But when Voldy breaks his tomb open, there is a wand, which is mistaken to be the Death Stick. Whose wand was it? How do the events on the tower correlate with everything else that happens later on?
I have my theories, as do all of you. But which is the right one?
(This is Harry Potter, and NOT 2001: A Space Odyssey)

What about the Giant troops that Hagrid goes to recruit?
Where is the French contingent with Madame Maxime?
What the fuck is Grawp doing in the book, anyway?
Where were the Trolls and other beastly creatures that The Order was afraid Voldemort would recruit?
Answer answer answer?

7. Who stole your Chekhov's gun?

"could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind’s going, personally!
Lots of love, Lily"

“Just in case they’re --- busy --- and you get the chance ---“
“Kill the snake?”
“Kill the snake,” Harry repeated.
“All right, Harry. You’re okay, are you?”
“I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.”

This woman is great at foregrounding, she is. But fair ladies and dear gentlemen, read the above extracts, and hit your heads against the nearest wall, in exasperation.

The first passage was the torn part of the letter Lily had written. While the first part was shown to us, we expected deadly secrets in the other part, which we guessed was the reason why it was stolen in the first place. But turns out, no. Snivelly Snape flicks it because it had his Lily's autograph. Aargh.
Wipe your greasy parting with that love parchment, chump.

The second passage, a rather innocuous piece of conversation. Instructing a hitherto dudhead dufus to get rid of a deadly snake, which happens to be Voldemort's pet, and oh, which also happens to be one of the Horcruxes. And guess what, he does!
(Madonna, definitely.)

8. Mumbo-jumbo.

Things of convenience.
Room of Requirements.
Elf magic (which works in mysterious ways beyond human comprehension) moonlighting as deus ex machina.
AND,
About Harry being able to see what Voldemort is up to. This little window to The Dark Lord's creepy mind seems like the silliest explanation she has come up with to give Harry a sense of what to do next. Did Voldemort not use this window to his favour, when he tricked Harry into the Ministry of Magic?
Did JK forget her own creation of the whole Occlumency concept? Or that Voldemort was a master Legilimens?

Ron spoke Parseltongue by trial and error to open the Chamber of Secrets, as he had heard the intonations when Harry spoke the tongue. And as one would expect, it worked!

(I wonder. Just why didn't Petrificus totalus work when i tried it on a nag of a classmate then? After all, i have read all about it since the past seven years)

(The woman was definitely on wild mushrooms, grown with liberal usage of lead and mercury)

9. The Amar-Akbar-Anthony finish. Taaliyan, taaliyan, taaliyan.

Madonna got together with Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, David Dhawan and Johnny Lever (for good measure) to write the climax. So, they came up with a Bollywoodesque twist to the plot.

Everybody comes out to fight.
There are comic interludes as fights are happening. There, the David Dhawan touch, unmistakeable.
You know, situations where during the climax, a comedian makes a fool of a thug, while sprightly background music happens. (Think Andaz Apna Apna, or Hum Hain Raahi Pyaar Ke)
Yess, like that.
Wah, wah, kwak-thoo.

The power of the Maa. (There, our man Manmohan.)
Molly Weasley can't take it anymore. Instead of Accio-ing woks and saucepans, she Accio-s magic she hasn't used since her first puerperium and knocks off Bellatrix Lestrange (that dreaded Death Eater who breathes Avada Kedavra), like she was no more than a gnome that came in the way of her gummyboots, while on a leisurely arthritic walk in her backyard.

*and now all hold breath for the top reason why this book sucks ass*

10. THE UNTHINKABLE.

What WAS that epilogue all about?
Joanne Kathleen Rowling, just WHAT were you thinking?

Harry Potter, the boy wizard, is 36 and a father of three? With the children being called James, Lily, and oh-my-god Albus Severus? (At this point, i could not hold it. Projectile vomiting. Damn, my monitor still shows stains)
(I cannot stop thinking of Harry as a middle aged man, with graying temples, a potbelly, foul English mouth and a bad gas problem.)

ANATHEMA.
Why did you do it, woman richer than the queen?
Why did you ruin Harry Potter for me thus?
Where was the magic?
Where were you?

Was it the money? Was it Madonna? Was it the mushrooms? Was it the movies? (Because, your writing seemed like you were writing a screenplay, never a story)

I am deeply disappointed. Why, it shows.
I am affected enough to write a 2000 word article while i am in a busy posting (Medicine).
After endless discussions with friends that think very similarly, I still cannot come up with an explanation for your undoing of Harry Potter.

To undo the undoing, you had better come up with an eighth book, with the characters not beyond 18 years of age, and with a preface whose header reads, "Blimey, i screwed up".

Until such a time, we live in hope, and pretend, despite all the media hyperbole, that the seventh book wasn't released at all.
Ah, the hope.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
For D, who hated the book too, but never shied away from discussing it for hours on end despite all the masochism involved,
and Rani Rosie, who probably hated it the most, and is currently (fervently) performing cleansing rituals to remove any last traces of the abomination that was the book, from her rather Stupefy-ed brain.
Love you guys.

Fragile

2007-07-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

Have you ever known the feeling when you want to do something for somebody so bad that it hurts, but you just cannot?
Have you ever felt so inadequate that it makes you want to cry in helplessness?
Have you ever been in a place when people around you feel hopeless, but you cannot come up with anything to console them?

I have.
Since the past couple of weeks.

I am posted in pediatrics these days. And at times, i am depressed.
Why? Because,
Nothing in medical education prepares us to tell vulnerable parents that their child, the one sleeping on the bed rather blissfully, might not make it until long.
Nothing in all the extensive training braces us enough to stand the grief of a mother (who works 14 hours a day as a coolie, for a less than hand-to-mouth existence) who is told that her child will not survive unless she went through a surgery that costs 6 lakhs of rupees, a sum of money she cannot even imagine there being.
And nothing, absolutely nothing can make us strong enough to answer the question parents dread we would answer in the negative : "Is there any hope, at all?"

One understands that by choosing medicine we have chosen a path that requires us to be a lot stronger than most people our age. But it remains that we are just 21 year olds, trying to pass exams, going through lives as complicated/mundane/hormone-driven as any 21 year olds', and that we do not have any answers.
We might have cut open a dead body, but that's just where our bravery ends.
We might look dapper in white coats with expensive stethoscopes, but that's just where our being doctors ends.

A few days ago, i spoke to a woman whose son had been admitted in the hospital. The son was a cherubic 3 year old with cerebral palsy, the fault perhaps of a local daai, who took too long to deliver the baby, or whoever else's. But one thing is certain, the child had cerebral palsy. A fairly common condition in the wards, and sometimes very crippling.
This particular child had a global developmental delay, meaning all aspects of his development were either retarded or absent. A truth the mother has grown accustomed to be oblivious to. She says the child looks at her, turns his head toward sounds she makes, and smiles from ear to ear when spoken to.
The reason this story is throat-gulp inducing is because all of it is impossible.
The child has cortical blindness, his brains cannot read the images brought by his eyes.
The child cannot hear any sound, let alone those the mother makes. He merely turns his head hither and thither, acknowledging a world only he lives in, a world not inhabited by even this woman who has given her all for this baby, her only one, for the past three years.

What do you tell her when she asks you, "He is alright, isn't he?"
Do you tell her that the apple of her eye does not have the eyes to see you, or the mind to recognize you, ever? Do you tell her this and hope to have the courage to console her?
You don't.
We don't, either.
We say, "Please talk to senior doctors, we are just students", and whisk away from the place to find a strong pillar to punch our clenched fists against. Not because we are incapable of helping the child medically, but because we are incapable of even saying words that would comfort her, albeit momentarily.

Worse is a visit to the neonatal ICU, where little babies weighing as little as 900 grams, looking no larger than the palm of your hand, struggle it out with their small lungs, failing hearts and tightly clenched fists, praying in their own languages, 'please god, please, i promise i will be a good boy'.
With a hundred tubes sticking out all over their bodies, synchronized beep-beeps are all they have for company with the beeps more often than not, counting down their final breaths and heartbeats.

And you merely tap at the glass cabin that is their home,
and feel helpless.

This is a phase every medical student goes through, i guess. This is the stuff hospital dramas on TV are made of, since forever. Only, this is the only thing they get close to showing the truth about.

Over time, we get refractory to this whole phenomenon, i am told. It amuses, or perhaps angers some of my non-medical friends when i sometimes talk of death and illness in a matter-of-fact manner. It angers me, in retrospect, when i think of myself having become thus, where illness is a case to be taken, and death, a figure on the register. But this is the only way i know of being. The system has not prepared me, or any of my friends to deal with situations like these.
Death, to us is cessation of cardiopulmonary activity and non-reactive pupils, as opposed to it being a bereavement and loss of livelihood to an entire family.

If depersonalizing oneself is what it takes to make it as a successful doctor, then may be i will not be one. For, i still feel sad for a woman of 40, whose only chance of being a mother counts its last few minutes on an ICU bed.
I am not saying others do not feel sorry for her. They do, in all likelihood. But won't talk about it, because talking about it makes people think they are vulnerable. And "sissy". And that's anathema, but of course.

This post might seem a little too dramatic and serious, especially as it comes right after a feature on bombshells and thunderthighs. But telling this was essential, to me.
Until such a time as medical science progresses to a state where every patient is cured, we can only do one thing. Hope, and pray. (To a god whose existence, in the wake of all this, seems more than debatable.)

But then, that is all we an do.
Pray for the little children, and their families.
As i am sure you will all.

Heyy naati...

2007-06-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

One of the more important aspects of psychological development, they tell us, is Associative Learning. (No, this is no nerd talk; read on, premature ejaculator). One of the better known forms of this Associative Learning is Classical Conditioning/Pavlovian Conditioning. You all know about the famous dog that drooled all over the place every time that man with a doormat for a beard decided to get the bell to go 'Tink!'

(Yes, that one.)

We, much like the dog, react by association. Much like the dog, or more perhaps, is the case of a friend who looks like she consumed an overdose of Organophosphorus poison every time *Johnny Depp* is mentioned. So much so, i expect a newspaper mentioning him, to be sodden wet in her hands. (Even if it carried his obituary.)
The same goes with most guys i know when mention is of Salma Hayek and Most People Her Kind. Keira Knightley somehow gets involved in all this too, but one must remember a good face can attract. Occassionally.

So, you get the drift. Association.

I grew up associating things as well, like most normal human beings.
(Only, my mother thinks i was some kind of a whizkid, hardly normal. Aww. Reminds one of that proverb in Kannada that goes 'HettOrge heggaNa muddu, kaTTkonDOrge kODangi muddu', roughly meaning parents love their children even if they turned out to be gutter scrounging ugly black fat rats. Awww.)
Mom's flaring nostrils meant, 'man, am i getting flayed today.'
An aunt meant, duck for cover.
A neighbor meant, get your handkerchief out/be prepared to hold breath for all the time he is around.
Among other such associations,

Silk Smitha meant, sex.
Disco Shanti meant, SEX.
THAT, is the point of today's post.

Silk Smitha and Disco Shanti and their Pavlovian Influences on my Understanding of Sex.

Now, for those of you with refined tastes and Mozart for lullabies, an introduction to these curiously named entities is, ahem, sine qua non.
They were my association to, er, 'leave the room'.
Why?,
because parents grudge their children a view of the greener, meaner side.
These two women, these two healthy buxom women, these two healthy buxom lustrous-eyed women, apparently, induced 'wrong thoughts' in our innocent-as-a-fawn minds. Bah.

Anyway, just WHO are these two women? Well.
These two women happen to be the ULTIMATE item girls. Divas in their own right. (Mallika Sherawat, go jump in a dry well, or get some more silicone.) They managed to titillate all of South India for more than two decades, with movies running solely because of their 5-minute show of cleavage and hyper-kinetic pelvic thrusts. And they did it with so much aplomb. Hideous wigs, godawful Amrapali costumes, Srirampur graveyard dance-steps notwithstanding. Every time they entered the frame, the atmosphere turned electric. Palpable sexual tension. No knife sharp enough. Sample a few.

Situation 1 :
A bleeding hero would be tied up in the cool looking multicolored dungeon of the pipe-smoking villain, with the hero's mother and his love interest generally thrashing about. Why? Because they could never get their figures to look half as oooh as our lady Silk Smitha's, who would have emerged from god knows where, in a blond wig and a red sequin nano-skirt, with her 3-inch long RED fingernails tracing the hero's amply ketchup stained pectorals. And, always grooving to a song whose beat went more often than not, ding-chakk-digi-digi-chakk.
And the lyrics, something like, 'Silku, silku, silku, mysooru silku silku...'.

Situation 2 :
Another less climactic situation would include Vajramuni or some such son of Satan trying to score with our lady Disco, also known as The Original Thunder Thighs. She wasn't much of a talker though. Most she was required to say was, 'hehehehe, youu youu naati baay, heheheheh'. And make those righteous noises, from within bitten lips, that went, 'haaaaan...haaaaan'.

Situation 3 :
Disco/Silk in a saree, flowers in head, child in arms, crying her sexy lungs out. And telling a patriarch type character that the father of the child was 'none other than your son', the hero. Just when you thought the world had wronged our lady, she'd appear before a vile-looking man and say in that husky voice, 'Baass, work over'. The man would then utter an all encompassing Muahhahahaha. The camera would then pan to the fiery eyes of a taxidermic cheetah, that being the chosen item of interior decoration of the 80's villain. (Have you ever wondered why? I have.)
And then for the coup de grace, by the time the camera could pan back to Disco, she would have cast her saree off like it gave her a bad skin reaction, and greet us in a characteristic two piece!

Other such situations convinced me almost hypnopedically that these women meant sex. (These two, by the way, were invariably called Rosee, Daali, or just Baybeee)
Every time i was asked to leave the room, or the channel was changed, my rather diseased brain would weave scenarios involving the two. The background music to it was always the 'haaaan, naati' which would repeat in untiring cycles.
I would think that Disco Shanti would cook also in leather hot pants and whip people before serving them. And that every one of her sentences would end with her biting her lower lip to the point that it bled. You know, like, 'The keyboard *hussky voice* i type on, is... black', and then bite her lips.
(Yeah, i was a rather prurient, gutterboy type in my childhood.)

These association type characters always leave indelible marks on one's psyche. Which was probably why i was rather sad when Silk Smitha died some years ago. Committed suicide, that one. Sad sad. One only hopes she is doing the 'heyy naati' routine to all those Indra type lascivious characters up there.

As for Disco, i hear she got married (to a Telugu villain, no less) and settled for a life that does not quite involve leather chaddis and whips (it perhaps does, who knows?)

And those of you who have not quite known the magic of these two, i suggest you stop by some regional channels sometimes. (It wouldn't give an abscess in your angrezi-fied kewl butts.)

They truly don't make 'em like these two anymore.
Yo Silk! Yo Disco!

Clown

2007-06-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

He instinctively wrinkled around the corners of his eyes;
sunny orange of the curtains too bright, for his eyes, and him.

Nights, with their camouflaging neon lights, comforted him.
Days, with their consuming clarity, caricatured him.

He reluctantly tore himself apart from the remnants of night,
and looked hesitantly towards the remains of the day.

Portmanteau film.

2007-06-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

I am swimming fast.
The waters are murky. An intense green, barely showing the long, distorted shadows cast by the long palm tress that line the waterway on either side.
The fabric of water is crisscrossed by many tangled, tortuous water-plants.
I peel them apart; yet never forgetting to swim.
Swim fast.
An odd lotus, a lone lotus, a surprising white against a depressing green.
In bloom.
In full sway.
In total contrast. The lotus makes a fleeting appearance in the far corner of my busy left eye.
The emotion on my face is indiscernible.
I am sweating, perhaps.
I am out of breath, perhaps.
But,
i swim.

----------------------------

I walk in gliding movements. Like i am stuck to the wooden foot of a horse in a merry-go-round. Only, i am not going round. I glide.
The world around me is empty; and monochrome. With a tinge of the sun.
And dingy. (Unobtrusively so.)
I see no faces, i hear no sound.
I don't see myself, i don't hear myself.
I see what my feet see. Low and gliding.
Cobbled stone, well-worn pavement rocks, urban refuse.
Warm, water-soaked air in spurts; breaths of weary street dogs? I don't know.
But i know i am not stopping moving. And gliding.

Until,
a jerk.
A strong tug; at a sensitive solar plexus.

(And,
an unenthusiastically staid, weary, rhythmically squeaking fan.)

----------------------------

These are the only two recurrent dreams i get. I am sure they have definite psychoanalytical interpretations.
I don't know.
I wouldn't want to know.
I like the dreams too much.

'Scuse me, while i snuff a cry...

2007-05-28T07:54:00.001-07:00

Dear all, do not blame me for coming up with another dreary post about academic pursuits. You must realize that when one is a medical student hoping to pass exams, precious else happens besides turning one dreary page after another, all filled with graphic pictures of grotesquely diseased breasts and penises, and then some. (So much for action.)
It is quite the paradox that the very organs that can turn one on could also,when slightly out of order, possess powers to let one lose appetite for days.

Be that as it may, the raison d'etre for my abusing bandwidth and your stopping by this time, is to let you in on an impending task which is so impossible i have chosen to call it The Impossible Task or TIT, for short.
(Yes, i agree i have a very corny sense of humour. And yes, i have read How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild And Got A Life).
The TIT i speak of here could also be referred to as The Impending Doom, or TID. So, in the likeness of Daag - The Fire, Baaz - A Bird In Danger, this disaster shall be called,
The Impossible Task - The Impending Doom,
or TIT - TID. Tittid for convenience.

Whatitees, this Tittid?
My internal - sigh - assessment - sigh - exam.
About the unfairness of medical exams, the evaluation, the unfairness, the ugly unfairness, and did i mention the godawful unfairness, i shall write about some other time.
But today, let us dissect my Tittid.

(As i write, it rains outside real horrorshow; like the clouds have determined to wipe out the human race. Loud and dramatic. Ah, how well they complement my mood)

I have five subjects this time. Let us now anatomize Tittid in heartbreaking, cerebrum-spinning
detail. (okay okay, it won't be too long, don't worry. Or, may be it will.)

*drum rolls, horns, confetti et cetera et cetera*
(You may choose to ignore the details, and jump directly to the synopsis of the story)

{1. General Medicine - Portions
Recommended reading - Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine - 1600 pages
Compulsory reading - Davidson's Principles and Practice of Internal Medicine - 739 pages.
Sidey-book-shunned-by-professors-WORSHIPPED-by-students - Medicine by George Matthew - 476 pages.

2. General Surgery - Portions
Recommended and Compulsory reading - Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery, or The Book That Almost Gave My Mother A Slipped Disk.
(Apparently, it's a Big Deal. I realize most things in medicine work on face value. Ask me, it's a hardly Love-able book that hardly ever Bail-s you out of tough situations (such as Tittid). And Short Practice my arse. It runs 1522 pages, with an index that runs a book length itself,
at 70 pages.)
The portion is a cool Cover to Cover, id est, 1522 pages.
Sidey-book-HATED-by-professors - Manipal Manual of Surgery - 825 pages.

3. Paediatrics - Portions
Recommended reading - Nelson's Pediatrics - let us not even go there, but, for a ballpark figure, let's say 1200 pages?
Compulsory, sidey etc. - OP Ghai - 468 pages.

4. Gynaecology - Portions.
Recommended, compulsory, essential all rolled into one - Shaw's - 508 pages.

5. Orthopaedics - Portions
Like most paradoxes turn out, the chaps that deal with the hardest of things (thoo, gutterbrains all) have the softest of hearts.
Recommended, compulsory etc - Maheshwari's Essential Ortho - 26 (yay!) pages.}

So there.
Quick recap.
Recommended reading - 4,956 pages. Oh-ho-kay
Compulsory reading - 3,263 pages. Hmmm, but oh-ho-kay.
Sidey book reading - 2,103 pages. DANG. Et tu, sidey?

This is purest rant, i agree.
Does not warrant your time.
Does nothing to uplift you creatively. Or otherwise.
But, people-in-cushy-software-jobs, spare a thought for poor me. Me, with the exponentially sinking cheeks and shrinking waistline. Spare a thought. Do. I am coming off all clingy and needy, you think i don't realise that? But, how in the name of Hippo-fucking-crates am i to read 2,103 pages of mindnumbingly complex name-dropping in, let's see, EIGHT days?

You ask me to listen to Himesh Reshammiya for 20 hours non-stop. I will. Most that will result in, is brain damage. No problems, decent bargain.
But this?

I need sympathy. Not one of you can empathize, i agree.

While you are at it, pat yourselves on thine collective backs, for having made the right choice when it mattered most. To stay away from anything remotely close to a medical college.

Sigh. Unedited, at-one-go rants are all i am capable of writing. Blogs that discuss writing and ideas and 55-word stories give me a complex SO massive, *insert biggest simile you can think of here, and funniest*. But writing about those blogs where genuinely good writing abounds is
for another day. Also, about those that are famous for no particular reason. And of course, where pseudo- is the dictum.
All, my friend, in good time.
Now i have to get back to knowing what exactly constitutes a 'pain in the ass'.

For an aside - my multilingual, multi-genre playlist currently plays,

'Duniya mein hum aaye hain toh jeena hee paDega,
jeevan hain agar zehar toh peena hee paDega'.
(Lata Mangeshkar & chorus, Mother India, 1957)

Ah, old hindi film songs! How well they compliment my mood.

So, some surgeons are lecherous

2007-05-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

There are all kinds of surgeons. (You know, that bunch of slightly over-educated barbers.)
General surgeons, pediatric surgeons, plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons et cetera et cetera.
Most are good.
Some are just plain awesome.
Some are well, lecherous.

I know one such. Let's call him L; L for lecherous, L for lascivious, L for loser and L for first letter of his name. He happens to be a professor; or so he professes. His small stature is in absolute inverse relation to his Legendary Libido. I think he has a lardaceous, ladoo-munching low-life for a wife. But then, that's just my conjecture.

Now, our man Casanova was to take a tutorial class for us.
This is a class where we take a case which might come for the exam, present it to a consultant and strain cochleas to absorb every whisper that emanates from their halitotic oral cavities. You know, we are kinda desperate; and they kinda stink.
This week, like i mentioned already, L was to come and shower surgical nuggets all over us. His tutorials have characteristics completely their own. At least, unlike any i have encountered thus far.
He -
* makes the girls come closer, to each other, and to him.
* forgets the guys, for all practical purposes. (No, i ain't complaining.)
* insists that the girls tuck their identity cards to their white coat sleeves; and insists on peering down them, just to know their names.
* sometimes pulls them from their coats, and none too subtly while doing so.
* is a syphilitic bastard.

What was the case that we were presenting, one might ask.
You know hernia, dear readers?
You know hernia, you do. It is something that pops out of one's groin (generally).
You know hydrocele, dear readers?
You probably do not. It means fluid in one's testes.
Our patient this time, had both. Aww.

L walks in like a Little Mouse, all prepared to do L talk. ('reys the leyg, reys the heyd, do the teyst', 'Chaurasia is a flute singer' etc)
Patient strips waist down for thirteen pairs of eyes to fix on his things.
L starts.
Girls closer, boys forgotten..the routine.
We do not know what kind of sick behaviour it is, but he always asks the girls to examine the testes and the hernia. The test, by the way, involves some serious grabbing at things. He prods on extremely hesitant, rosary-counting types to make the 'swelling' more tense. This is not some ploy to teach the students better, but the man is so into cheap thrills you want to call him Rakhi Sawant.
Another test involves using one's index finger to do some poking around in certain delicate areas. And his idea of questioning us is to turn to a girl and ask, 'Why not the middle finger?'
There is another silly exercise where we need to localize the hernia using three fingers in a specific manner. In such a scenario, what is the need to take a girl's hand and hold individual fingers, all in the garb to teach us, while he could use his own fingers, that non-amputated bitch.
Cheap shot. (And the man is not getting enough action)

While all this lewd behaviour does slightly irritate me, what really takes my goat is this. During exams, the mere presence of slightly hypertrophied mammary tissue on a humanoid bearing XX ensures spectacular success (according to one running legend, he makes people bend to retrieve paper from the ground). While the unfortunate other half with the weak Y suffers untold indignation for not knowing enough Bailey, Love, Das.

What is this undue advantage to the fairer sex eh? To say, no girl in my batch is even fair.
Totally unfair.

As for Mr.L, balls to him.
(Or, maybe not)

Sap

2007-05-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

There is a gnawing desire to tell you all that goes on in the many folds of my small brain,

of the grey and black static that is interrupted by images of color, woven with words and memories,
of the impulses that present as alpha and beta to the more mundane,
of ideas that remain muted, but never erased,
of the visuals i paint in a myriad of colors, but could never put in words,
of the void and brimfulness that my thoughts seem to be constantly vacillating between,
of the voices that doubt and whispers that encourage,
of why the first falling flower of autumn has me all depressed and happy,
of chaos and no-chaos, determined simply by the presence and absence of people,
of my anger and frustration, and inability to counter either,
of words that lend themselves into sentences, but never make it to the tongue, held and strangulated in shy vocal cords,

of...

(now, if only your phone was not always engaged)

First Night Of Rain

2007-04-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

The touch-me-nots played
shy all night, lest rogue raindrops
made them blush again.

Lucid Interval

2007-04-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

Oh fuck this blogging shite. The social networking. The pseudo-writing.
Screw the story of the metamorphosis of the Malabar MoL.
Fuck everything that has kept me distracted like a child in a classroom full of pixies.
T.E.L.E.V.I.S.I.O.N
Films.
Books.
Bought by the roadside; at seconds sale shops.
Read off the computer.
Film Society.
T.E.L.E.V.I.S.I.O.N.
Computer.
Inter-fucking-net; data-fucking-one.
Fests. Innumerable fests.
Caution be thrown to the wind, language be best rotten.
Fuck everything.
(T.E.L.E.V.I.S.I.O.N.)

My results are out. I got fucked. Like, literally.
69 and all. Only a lot less enjoyable. (Apparently)
They do not portray me in the best light.
They have brought a sob track along.
So, it is an unqualified AVM tragedy.
The rains lash like they were the product of the combined angers of Tlaloc-Chaac-Kon and other such funny sounding gods. The government quarters' windows respect the anger and loosen their hinges to perform symphony for perfect Bollywood setting of a thunder-and-lightning-very-very-frightening situation.
(Who said life was never without background music?)
(Wait, that was me)

But,
like it always happens,
tragedy in succession.

FM Radio. And an interview with Whizkid Senior. Distributing munificently to all those who cared to buy, The Virtues of Hard Work and The Joy Of Winning University Gold Medals. (And also, a practical lesson in How Not To Talk.)
So,
As It Happens (TM), my mother was one of the listeners. As was *sheepish* I. The W.S. reeled out his academic achievements (he had precious else) about the ranks, and the medals, and all those.
And the rest as i now know, is the stuff 60's Kannada cinema would be proud of.

Now, you see i cannot, cannot mug. Not even if i were on a sinking ship, and you know, the availability of a safety jacket or a lifeboat depended upon rattling off stuff.
Medicine, my chosen profession(!), is all about it. Well, mostly about it.
And my chosen explanation for calamitous results is the one cited above, in italics and bold italics, merely to reinforce the grade of incapability. And for effect. Sue me.
But,
It's one thing to say you are not interested in certain things you forced yourself into because 'the Devil pulled it' and that it was a moment of glorious loss of insight.
It's another to acknowledge to yourself and people who care for you that you are completely, pathologically incapable of it. Especially when they think otherwise.
Despite your lack of interest, when you begin to detect the faintest whiff of incapability is when the truth actually sinks in.
It's when you see the world around you falling apart, looking none too good.
It's when you know, all your best was in the past.
It's when you know, it's an Eternal Sunshine moment.
It *might* not come back to you.

To tell you the truth, i am actually a little bummed out.
Morbid i sound. Morbid i have gotten.
You know, they say there is a period in the mind state of psychiatric patients when they are actually normal and think clear. These states are called Lucid Intervals. May be, just may be, i am in one such. I have been mad enough all this while. May be this is my lucid interval. And i am thinking clear and prioritizing well.
May be all i want to be is a nerd.
Yes.
I want to be a nerd.

P.S.: I know i will regret writing this. I just know it.
P.P.S.: I might not write for long. Here's one more thing i suck at.

Of Storywriters and Storymakers

2007-04-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

So Vonnegut died.
The man who gave this blog its name without so much as batting an eyelid, stitched his shut for good. But then, like he told us, all things living and otherwise, are only coincidental.

I, and here i speak for all the Tralfamadorians (I push for this to be the name of Our Clan, in all solemn spirit), only hope he is in a better place. And exchanging notes with Mark Twain.

On a completely radically different note, i wanted to tell you all (look how insanely optimistic i have gotten) about this classmate of mine that has a royal crush.
Which keeps dying. (So it goes)
And keeps springing back to life,
thus influencing her moods rather visibly.

The story of The Malabar (almost) Princess and her (coco)nutso-ness about The Man Who Would Be King, follows in a few days.
So, wait.
With breath that is bated.
(Oh come on, cut me some slack)

But, not to digress from the reason for abusing bandwidth.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., R.I.P.

The dark holds no terror

2007-04-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

Sudden dimming of lights.
And then, darkness.

The initial catcalls, and the amma's.
Then, the shush-es. The din of shush-es.
And then, the silence.

Light flickering.
In hesitant spurts.
On a white screen; with a traversing black line.
Light flickering.
Exposing the diaphanous wings of the triwinged contraptions.

Islands of light.
Lighting up eerie faces.
White. Blue. Yellow. faint.
Showing curls, and bitten lips, and furrowed foreheads.
And chunky jewellery.

The high pitched crackle; like mustard in hot oil.
Arthritic, oil-denied furniture.
The creaks, the squeaks. Oh, the creaks and the squeaks.
And a lizard calling for a mate; or looking to join the party.

The rancid odour. Typical.
The stubbed cigarette butts.
The smell of grime, of the wanting to relax.

Loud, introductory sound.
Collective breath-holding.
Collective excitement.
Beginning of,
an adventure in,
suspension of disbelief.

Ah,
how i love the cinemas.

Parks and LSD

2007-04-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

Now people, do not blame me for using footage yet again. This one, I had to use. You'll know why.

One of the tests of endurance that unfortunate medical students (the implication here being that ALL medical students are unfortunate; and not a mere percentage of the medical students being unfortunate) have to undergo is a subject called,

*eggs, the rotten kind, tomatoes, the mold infested kind, farts, the post-Sankranti scybalous kind, bottled scent, the Vrishabhaavati canal kind and curses, ranging in variety from the incestuous to the paraphiliac to the kind favored by irate truckdrivers*

PREVENTIVE AND SOCIAL MEDICINE.

This festering piece of godawful nonsense, also called Community Medicine, comes in an unattractive, garish-blue, unimaginably boring tome-that-leads-to-your-tomb called,

*(all those said above) and a deep, well gathered kwak-thoo*

PARK'S TEXTBOOK OF P.S.M a.k.a. THE HOLY (whatever book suits your religious inclination) OF COMM. MED.

Now this book is no walk in the, er, Park. It is studded, you know, like studddedd with lines that can make the hair at the back of your neck spring up in gravity-defying trich-s and get your ribs all worked up.
But, those are for another post. If at all.

For now, let us concentrate on how Park and Park, in a fit of affection towards the much harassed med studs (oooh, coolness) decided to pass on some nefarious information.

On LSD -
"LSD, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, was synthesised in 1938 by Hoffmann in the Sandoz Labs in Switzerland. Its psychic properties were noticed much later in 1943, when he accidentally sniffed a few micrograms of it(poor thing, thought it was whitener perhaps).

* LSD is a potent psychotogenic agent.
* LSD alters the normal structuring of perception. The individual perceives the world in a different manner.
* There is intensification of colour perception and auditory acuity; body image distortions, visual illusions, fantasies, pseudohallucinations are common.
* Colours are heard and music becomes palpable.
* Subjective time is deranged so that seconds seem to be minutes and minutes pass as slowly as hours.
* Physical dependence does not develop with LSD; hence there is no addiction liability.
* No characteristic abstinence syndrome is manifest upon abrupt discontinuation of chronic use of the drug."

So.
Go ahead; tell me you are not tempted.

All this in a textbook. Seems nothing short of an advertisement brochure. These Park guys lived in Jabalpur. Something tells me, students there have more fun than we do here.

Cary Clack who?

2007-04-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

Exactly.
He is pretty much nobody. But he grabs attention. (and No, i am Not talking about the Mr. World extravaganza and all that. Shutaap)

Apparently, the chap is with the San Antonio Express-News.
So?
Nothing.
Then what?

He said the following -
"Having to explain it means you probably shouldn't have said it"

Enough for me to stand up and clap hard.

The Lost Supper

2007-03-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

(This is what i thought i would write on Yugaadi day; but sleep and unwillingness took over)

We are a typical middle-class Kannadiga family. You know, the
we-love-Rajkumar-no-matter-what-Kaaveri-is-ours-Tams-may-go-take-a-walk and yes, Narayana Murthy-for-President
kind.

One of the family traditions i am rather proud of is the annual sit-down lunch, on festivals such as this one. A tradition that is, like most, dying. Very unfortunate. Indeed.
You know, the sort of lunch where amma cooks a multi-course meal, with her hair still wet and tied haphazardly; a lone yellow sevantige flower popping out, seeking attention from somewhere under the black mess. A lunch cooked while tapes of very old Kannada devotional songs blared on, waking us kids up, and adding a flavour of their own to the simmering paayasa, hayagreeva, hoLige saaru.

The sort of lunch where appa sits to eat, still in his Kanjeevaram mogaTa, the one he got in his wedding, the one with red and green borders. The sort of lunch where he would always playfully chide amma for getting confused with the order of serving kosambaris and palyas; something the over-worked woman never managed to master.

The sort of lunch we sat to partake of, smelling of happy shikakai (with violent red eyes) and the welcome smell of freshly opened new clothes, with the noisy anticipation of the treat in store. The sort of lunch where we would all squat on those small, square, intricate mats laid on the floor, eating off of the very large steel plates that were drawn out only on special days.

The sort of lunch, which was as a rule, followed by the most satisfying slumber, post which we would all sit and watch television together.

The memories rush in as cruel reminders as to why childhood was infinitely better than this pseudo-adulthood. Especially, when on a day like today, the brother grabs a bite on the couch; and i throw things down the gullet as i move around the house trying to locate my helmet and mobile phone.

It is almost cruel how a family affair i am rather proud of, is a vestige of the past. So much so, it is hypocritical to refer to it in the present.
I somehow now understand what amma means when she says,
'Children should never grow up.'

Call me William

2007-03-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

William's Syndrome is a genetic disease caused by a change in a gene on chromosome 11, in which affected children are very low in general intelligence, but have a vivid, rich and loquacious addiction to using language. They chatter on, using long words, long sentences and elaborate syntax. They have a heightened ability to learn language but at expense of sense. They are severely mentally retarded.
Their existence seems to undermine the notion that reason is a form of silent language.

(Found on random reading of Genome by Matt Ridley)

None of this is made up, i swear. (almost) Scout's honor.
The syndrome thingy explains SO many things, it gives me a headrush.

Mindstate

2007-03-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Chaos reigns supreme,
Squeeze trigger, end, finish it?
Shoot, i have no gun.

A beginning

2007-03-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

A big Ho! ,

to the rest of the blogworld.

This is the beginning of what seems like an adventure i will come to like.
I have not blogged before.
Never wished to.
Why? Is a question i failed to answer myself.
Why now? Is another question i have avoided asking myself.

Things upset me, things overwhelm me.
Sometimes, the same thing.

Like i always say,
Confusion will be my epitaph.
(Okay, i borrowed that one from King Crimson; but it is SO me)

As i put fingers to keyboard, i am filled with a sense of anxiety.
As i put fingers to keyboard henceforth, i only hope, that anxiety melts to lend itself to honest words; that need not die in fingertips, or quivering lips.