Crank's Corner

Auto Draft

K Balakumar — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

About

K Balakumar — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:33:44 +0000

I am: A writer. Humour. Travel. Films. Music Sports. Books. This blog is primarily a journal of the column that I write for the newspaper I am employed at in Chennai. What you read here is all about humour since I say so. The column’s main audience are Chennaiites, and ergo much of the references and metaphors and similes are taken from Indian and Tamil Nadu context. Some in-jokes, therefore, may miss some of the international readers. But if the jokes miss Indian or Tamil readers too, I am not to blame. If I say there was a demand for an online version of my column, you will think that I am joking. So I’ll merely jump to the next paragraph. The column’s size may be ‘long’ for typical blog posts, but readers here should remember that I am a print journalist, and all scribes operate under the credo ‘all white space need to be covered, and to hell with the readers’ time’. If newspapers ever really went about their business by listening in to what the readers wanted and read, well there wouldn’t be any editorial written at all. Papers would end up carrying nude photos of young actresses. If you think there was some humour in the previous sentence, then you can be happy that you came to the right site. If you have landed here, guided by a search engine for your query ‘nude photos of young actresses’, well sorry to disappoint you. But if you find a site for that, please mail me at: mail@kbalakumar.com or balakumarkb@gmail.com

What’s the headline for this?

K Balakumar — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:52:50 +0000

There are any number of embarrassing situations that you let yourself into, but none is more acute than the one when you yap endless with a person at a party or a social gathering, and then wonder, after he leaves, as to who he is and what his name is. In most cases, it will be your father-in-law.

Failing to remember your spouse’s dad is nothing to be ashamed of, actually it is something that should be actively recommended to all, but the fact of the matter is you memory puts you in a spot many times, especially as you grow older when the need to recollect a lot of things is higher. This is to say: Your memory fails you when you need the most. There is a corollary to this: Your memory unfailingly remembers things that you can do without. What more, it pops them out, like a vehemently unwanted visitor, at the most inopportune of moments.

You will be in the ATM with an urgent need for cash as you have an autorickshaw running and waiting, and you are on the way to the railway station to catch a train. And precisely at that sweaty point, your mind will decide that it’s time to go blank. Somehow, the key number that will unlock your account and let the money drip through will fail to show up on your mind screen.

You might have used the ATM hundreds of time, but that is hardly any consolation. In those tension-suffused seconds the mind will scan the memory files whether the Identification Number is 2360 or 3650. And voila, at that precise and crucial point, it will strike your splendid memory that 236 indeed is the figure that is Sunil Gavaskar’s highest score in Test match cricket. And immediately it will also strike you that Sir Garfield Sobers had made 365, which for long was the highest individual test score. And for a few more happy minutes, your mind will belch out strange sequence of numbers that you will doubtless associate with many batsmen who retired many summers ago. The ATM card, the waiting autorick-shaw and the train to catch will cease to exist in the universe that you will be at that moment. By the time you come back to reality, it wouldn’t matter, as the unthinking machine would have swallowed the card and the train to catch would have started to chug.It’s not this alone.

You cannot quote a few lines without ungainly faltering from, say, Bharathiar, whom you learned by-heart for years together. But for reasons that could be explained only as cosmic conspiracy, even every inflection of the Vadi En Kappa Kizhange song resonates in your mind even today, and the last time you heard that rascally number was when you were in college, some two decades back. Likewise, ‘Where’s The Party Tonight’ tune will unspool in your mind several years later from now when you should actually be quoting verbatim lines from this column.

Your mind may also take pride in remembering useless trivia like Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipu kakapikim-aungahoron ukupokaiwenuakit atahu in New Zealand has the longest name for a place, and Los Angeles’s full name is ‘El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula’ and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, L.A. But on occasions, especially when you are being wheeled into the operation theatre, you can’t recall your blood group.

But why? Don’t ask me. I am worse. Many times over I go to a restaurant and come back happy after a hearty meal when the whole family is waiting for the sumptuous takeaway that I originally set out for. In such circumstances, the exchanges at home can be very illuminating for those with a patient ear to my house door or the drawing room wall. Wife: Where is it?

Me: Where is what? Wife: The thing you had gone out to buy. Me: What did I go out to buy? Wife: The thing I told you to? Me: What did you tell me?

Wife (with irritation, a default setting in her): What is the point in telling you again when you are anyway not going to remember it at all?

Me (smiling sheepishly, the default setting in me): Well, if you are not at all going to tell me what I anyway did not remember then how in heavens will I remember it at all when I am supposed to remember it all over again some time later.

I know you can’t make head or tail out of the previous sentence. Neither can my wife. Eventually she will be tied down by the oodles of verbal noodles that I tend to spin that she would forget that it was precisely for the noodles that she had sent me for.

But it is repeatedly failing memory that has kept many in business. Politicians for one cannot survive if every one of us recalls every word that they have uttered from time to time.

Films too have been great beneficiaries of this great vanishing trick of the mind. Ghajini, the Hindi version, has no business to run in Tamilnadu as it is a sincere remake of superhit Tamil movie of the same name. So this immediately begs the question: Who is more afflicted by memory loss, the hero in the film or the viewers who cannot recall what they had seen before?

But I am not actually complaining about memory loss. Weren’t for it, you would have spotted that a bulk of this week’s column has been regurgitated word-to-word from one written a couple of years back.

For typical reasons the headline of that piece eludes me now. Does any one of you remember that?

Love is like that only

K Balakumar — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 04:57:27 +0000

What with the recession and the squeeze in economy nobody had any feeling that the Valentine’s Day was round the corner till the indefatigable idlers of Ram Sena announced themselves on the scene. They have promised to create nuisance to match that of the lovers on V-day.

The Ram Sena has threatened that it would forcibly marry off couples found dating in public. In one word, this is brilliant. The best anti-advertisement to love indeed is marriage. For, marriage brings in its wake father-in-law and mother-in-law.

I rest my case.But if this somehow doesn’t deter lovers, then Ram Sena men are better off by raking up the stories of legendary lovers who have been the stuff of several insufferable books and plodding movies for many years now.

Lovers, without putting too fine a point on it, qualify to be the world’s stupidest persons simply on the basis of the gifts they exchange. These gifts are generally priced exorbitantly knowing full well that when in love the brain stops functioning. Exhibit A: Teddy Bear dolls. I can’t even begin to figure out what is cuddly about these dolls for college girls and young women. A young man in love cannot get anywhere without investing sufficiently in such dolls and knickknacks. Exhibit B: Coffee shops and body sprays.

James Cameroon showcased the nuttiness in a invidiously smart way in Titanic. When a mighty vessel is sinking, the most natural thing in the world to do is to grab a lifeboat and try to get the heck out of the place. But the characters that Dicaprio and Kate Winslet played were busying themselves in love. The captain of the ship, it could be argued, had rammed the vessel intentionally into the iceberg just to escape from the two love-struck rollicking themselves like raccoons.

Since we have time on our hands, let us get elaborate here and try and dissect some of the famous lovers in history.

Shajahan

One look at Taj Mahal and its marbled extravagance, you cannot help wonder whether Shajahan was mourning the loss of Mumtaz or actually celebrating her demise.

No wonder Shajahan’s son, Aurangazeb, thought his dad to be terminally senile and confined him to a dungeon, which may or may not have been built with marble. History is silent on this. The unrestrained opulence of the building confirms, more than anything else, that there was no recession then and the building rules were pretty lax. If the equivalent of the CMDA had been there in those times, it is debatable whether the Taj could have gone past the foundation stage. The lack of plumbing in it would have gone against it. There would have been no point arguing with the building officials that it was meant for a dead woman. ‘An splendid erection for a dead woman?’ the officials would have had fits laughing. And you cannot blame them.

For all those who clamber on to the romantic bandwagon, saying that the Taj stands as a shining symbol of rosy love, it is pertinent to point out that Mumtaz was Shajahan’s third wife who died while delivering their 14th child. If Mumtaz had lived now, the odds on her bobbitting him, and walking out on him after showing the middle finger is pretty high. But going by his mental state, Shajahan would probably have built the Taj for his 15th wife! Shajahan, in a poetic justice, was reborn as a trashy Vijay movie.

Devdas

It is inconceivable as to why Anbumani Ramadoss has not chosen to enforce a ban retrospectively on this Bong who was the Vijay Mallya of his days by being the King of Good Times. All Devdas did in life was drink and fornicate. If this doesn’t upset Anbumani, then he should not be Anbumani?

Devdas’s story in a nutshell is: He fell in love with a girl, but as she was married off to someone else, he hit the bottle and spent all his time with a courtesan, which is a word that historians are partial to when describing a hooker. If you believe there is soft love and sensitive romance in this, then you are also likely to believe in multi-level marketing schemes. Devdas, if you come down to it, has been made into many movies because it allows a drinking man to sing and dance with a sex worker, who can be pretend to be a sincere lover. How very cute!

Romeo

This is the story of a man who commits suicide after thinking her lover to have been murdered. The woman, who is thought to have been killed, wakes up and upon finding her man to have committed suicide, quickly follows suit. There is romance here somewhere, but I can’t put a finger on it.

Right from the start, it is clear that Romeo is some kind of, well how do I put it, a nut. When he climbs to the balcony of Juliet, he tells her, ‘With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls. For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.’

English does not seem to have been his favourite subject in school. With such lines, he kept generations of students away from Shakespeare. Perhaps, it is his English that eventually drove Juliet to suicide.I would like to tell you more about Majnus and Ambikapathys. But I am hard-pressed for time as I have to go out and buy that Teddy for my woman for the V-day.I see a problem for the Ram Sena hordes: How will they marry me to the woman to whom I am already married?

Moral of the story: Lovers alone are not stupid.

(This is a column that I had written a few weeks back).

All things manner porn

K Balakumar — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:20:37 +0000

Hmm, umm…I don’t know how to begin this. It is that kind of a subject. Actually, I am not at all sure whether I should be writing about this. Nor I am certain whether you can read this. But responsibility and reasonability have never been my virtues, and so here I go.

Last week, a friend espied that his teen-age son had visited a couple of porn sites on the web. And soon he was off like the opposition in Parliament --- full of raging fury, but actually amounting to nothing. As a father there was every reason for him to feel agitated and he naturally felt the need to rebuke his ward. He certainly was not holding anything back. In a show that would have made Thirisoolam Sivaji seem restrained and subtle, the friend went over the top. The young boy was puzzled as to why his father was working himself to a lather over everyday porn stuff. ‘It is not worse than the English movie that we watched together the other day,’ the boy told his infuriated dad.

And, if truth be told, I was also aghast. Not with what the young man had done, but because of the fact that porn and other associated fun objects of youthhood are now available more easily than ever.

In our days, porn books seemed part of a strange CAS (Conditional Access System). In those times of quota raj, everything in life was rationed. Sadly, porn apparently came at the last of essential goods list. And we -- young and impressionable minds all ready and raring to go ---- had to make do with old copies of dog-eared Debonair. It was no mere magazine. It was the touchstone of adulthood. A boy may have started sprouting a moustache, his voice might have started to sound like Usha Uthup with a bad throat and his testosterone levels may have shamed a Tour de France cyclist, but he would not be deemed to have grown up if he had not ogled through the pages of Debonair. If you have read (actually read is not the operative word, seen or viewed would be more like it) Debonair then you are ready to become a man. In other words, it was the kindergarten literature of adulthood. (As an aside, I always found the ‘erotic crossword’ on Debonair a bit too rich. It was disturbingly kinky. It seemed like an AC-fitted room in Ooty or Kodaikanal. Who would want to work out the positions on the grid when the operative horizontal or vertical formations were something else?).

Occasionally, well-thumbed issues of Penthouse and Playboy would come our way. But in these grave matters of serious adulthood, most of us followed the Gandhian rule of sticking with swadeshi things.

Actually, I never saw boys go out and buy the magazine, but it was available in the wink-and-nudge circuit if you knew whom to tap. And the one who usually lends the stuff will naturally come along as it was his way of ensuring that nobody zilched a couple of all-important pages. Like a Japanese tea party, Debonair-reading sessions involved a convoluted ritual. All the friends would gather in one place (usually in the house of whose parents were out of town) and with windows and other apertures shut, the issues of the said magazine would be passed around in stealthy silence. Occasional giggles and arching of eyebrows, which could be an expression of surprise or amazement, would punctuate the closed-door meeting. But that was it. It would all be over, and soon it would be back to the streets for cricket or some good-natured banter and sly laughter on what was espied.

The other day a friend a confessed that he had watched porn with his wife. To me it was sacrilege. The sanctity of porn had been compromised beyond repair. It is not shopping at Spencer’s Plaza to be done along with the partner. Certain things need to be kept under wraps always. It is not prudishness or coyness. But secretiveness is the essence of those things. It is what adds to the flavour. Or to be precise, it is the flavour.

Looking back, more than what we saw in Debonair, the essence of the moment, the agreeable slyness of it all, was what added a special allure to it. The forbidden nature was the quintessence. It was furtive, hence pleasurable.

That is the problem these days. Everything is available on a tap. From photos to real thing, all can be had without much problem. And that is what makes me suspect that today’s generation doesn’t enjoy porn as much as the generation that did before.

Your honour, I am in your corner

K Balakumar — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:17:23 +0000

It must be greatly tempting to take out all over collective anger on the advocates of this land. But this is not the time to come down heavily on them, especially knowing that violence is not beyond them in the mood they are.

Actually, we should try and understand what makes the advocates to behave the way they have.

I think I have figured out what their problems are, the chief of which must surely be the attire that they are forced to wear in courts.

It is a dress that has been palpably decided and designed by men who have the dress sense of blind owls. How on earth can people wear those flowing robes and still expect others to treat them seriously!

Back when you about to emerge out of college, you would have had a graduation ceremony. Remember the kind of hopeless laughter that you all fell into while wearing that graduation robe on that all-important day? Despite the solemnity of the occasion you guys just couldn’t control the unabashed sniggers and snorts at the robe that gave you the elegance of a flat-footed donkey. The graduation ceremony robe is a major reason for the falling pass percentage in college education.

To give you a perspective, it is not a dissimilar robe that most advocates have to wear on a daily basis.

The ignominy of having to sport the what are window drapes in different garb, so to say, surely must have forced Mahatma Gandhi to give up lawyer’s practice and go almost half-naked. When you get down to it, you will realise that it was not a bad style decision at all.

Let’s get down to the specifics and try and describe a typical lawyer’s gown. If you are stylistically inclined, it is highly recommended that you skip the next few lines so as to not go into terminal seizures: Just imagine a long and irregular black curtain. Fold in whatever pattern that catches your fancy and hem them together at the top so as to give it feeling that it is all stitched up together as one unit. Make large holes for sleeves and leave it all flowing down to the floor so that it obviates the need for Neel Metal Fanalca men to turn up in your vicinity for the next few days.

Voila, you have designed a purdah minus its convenience and concealment.

These days some lawyers are given to showing up in a simple coat. But still they have to wear that white collar, which is another signature style statement thought up in wherever they have not heard about style. The advocate’s collar is unique in that it is no collar. A whimsically cut white cloth that gives off an illusion of it being a misplaced venetian blind is what it is. It is by what that capital punishment convicts are hung to death.

Lawyers wear this to court daily and while judges have to put a serious look without breaking into even a wry smile. I tell you, it is tough out there in the courts. Actually, after describing their dress in detail, I don’t begrudge the vacations that the courts go into. After all they need to flush out all the residual and pent up laughter of the preceding months.

In the olden days, the judges too had something to sport. It was called a peruke. It was a long flowing wig in a tasteless grey colour not unlike the ones worn by villains on screen whenever they were to be portrayed as extremely wicked. It is for having the mental strength to come out in public in such a hideous wig that the judges, in compensation, were began to be addressed as ‘Your lordship’ or ‘your honour’.

As a combination, the gown and the wig ensured litigation was kept at a minimal level and warded off overzealous litigants.

Perhaps you may wonder why the legal profession sets so much store by such a dress code that is neither dress nor a code. Perhaps such sartorial tendencies are mandated in the IPC. Or possibly, without wearing such outfits one cannot summon the requisite gumption to speak the language that the court is ‘seized of’.

The last two words in inverted comma are a typical example of the lawyer’s lingo, which I present as Exhibit No: 2, for their general uneasiness and irritable behaviour. If your name is, say, Ramesh, and if you have problem with a person named, say, Suresh, and if you choose to go to the court with the problem, for some reason that is still a mystery to humanity, you will be referred to in the affidavit as the ‘party of the first part’ while Suresh will answer to the convenient appellation of ‘party of the second part’.

In the film Guna, and in the song, Kanmani Anbodu..., Kamal will exhort his lover (who is asked to pen an imaginary letter to herself) to intersperse the writing with words of affection. ‘Neduvulla, Mane, Thene Ponmane athellam pottukanum’.

Lawyers’ are mandated to maintain a strict adherence to Kamal’s Guna logic. In that they have to speck their lines with obscure Latin or foreign phrases that dictionaries themselves don’t feature anymore.

‘The party of the first part is constrained to point out that, ipso facto, is something that is not binding, pari passu, and causing willful damages, nolens volens, that are the sine qua non which is a mea culpa as it is a fait accompli’. I accept that the previous clutch of sentences makes no sense whatsoever. But neither does any lawyer’s brief. It is because of these expressions that many chose the science stream and eventually became scientists to develop the cell phone and invent sms-style terminologies that are at the other end of language assassination.

Habeas Corpus. Writ of Mandamus. Amicus Curiae. These are other words that the courts are extremely fond of. Probably they stand for some X-rated in-joke that the courts like to hear reductio ad absurdum.

Little wonder that courts have built a backlog of cases that date back to the time when Gandhi was not even practising in the Bar.

The court also perhaps does not have any great impression of the lawyers, and that is why they are asked to produce seeming impositions of whatever they submit to the court. Every application must be in triplicate or even more and every challan has to be in exponential numbers so that at least 100 square kilometres of Amazon forest is cleared to keep up with the paper needs of the courts.

So, the point is, if I were you I wouldn’t make fun of advocates.

Don’t make a copy in triplicates of this column and forward to your friends, who shall henceforth be called party of the eighth part, as it is quod erat demonstrandum of defamation.

Same time, same place, next week

K Balakumar — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:32:35 +0000

____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ Remind me to fill the above blank lines with a suitable humorous introduction to this piece on Reality Shows, which, as you can tell, are the rage on the television channels, which, as I can tell, you are not watching now. To keep things simple and straight, I will structure this piece on a question and answer format. Actually, this will allow me to legitimately leave blank portions between questions and answers, so that I don’t have to think up anything funny for those spaces. This is roughly the method they adopt for reality shows: Work out tacky plans to cover up the obvious inability to be creative. 1) What are reality shows? These are extremely honest, slice-of-life programmes, where you know beforehand itself that the producers of the show strictly have no capacity for original thinking and are totally dependent on the participants. When things turn desperate, producers are also known to just set up the cameras and line up a few individuals in the hope that they will do something, even if it amounts to just breathing and leading life as a biological entity. This is broadly the idea on which the most popular reality show of the world, ‘The Big Boss’ is based on. I think Shilpa Shetty collected hell a lot of crores of rupees for winning the show a couple of years ago. Her talent, we all know, lies in her ability to swirl on herself a few metres of plain yarn, not unlike the one that Gandhi famously spun on his chakra, and tiptoe around as if it is a sari. She is naturally celebrated as a style icon in these parts. 2) What is the main difference between a mega-serial and a reality show? Mega serials are also known as soap operas. Reality shows are, in comparison, unique, in that they don’t have a strict synonym. You cannot call a reality show anything else. A reality show is a reality show. 3) Explain talent-based reality shows As the name indicates, participants in such shows are put through various dazzling tests in a bid to showcase their innate talents, which can be defined as their ability to smile, laugh or cry unselfconsciously as the situation demands. They may also have a gift for singing or dancing or miming, but they are purely unconnected to the events, which are all about wearing the emotions on the sleeve for the whole world to see. Without a natural flair for dramatic emotions one cannot survive in reality shows. I am talking about the viewers here. 4) Can you explain further? Yes I can. But before that we will take a small commercial break and I’ll catch you on the other side of it. These lines have to be consistently uttered in anything even remotely connected with reality shows. 5) Now explain Well, the talent required for reality shows is similar to what they look for in beauty pageant contestants: A capacity to take the two palms to cover the face while flashing the most exuberantly stupid smile and a wide-eye while they announce one's name over the tannoy. A reality show participant, by the same reckoning, must possess the skill to look suitably doleful (with tears streaking down the cheeks as if the bank that he or she had invested all the life-savings in had just gone bust) when about to be eliminated or jump with joy, not dissimilar to the indescribable madness shown when somebody is told that he has become a father, when promoted to the next round. 6) So, are there eliminations and promotions in a show? They are just illusions. Eliminations are notional things, and those who are deemed to be exited from the show eventually come back by the easy expedience called ‘Wildcard round’. Anyone, even if he or she is not a citizen of this world, is given a chance in this round. 7) Elaborate Wildcards are the thingies that the programme producers hand themselves to stretch the show for a few hundred weeks more. Participants are given the freedom to think that they have been called back to the show in recognition of their talent, while the viewers are at liberty to believe that. The truth, however, is wildcards will continued to be given till they invent something else to stretch the programme. 8 Give details of the judging process In a normal reality show, which may be about dancing or singing, a three-bench panel of judges will first be in place. The judges are the ones who wear sponsored clothes that are either ill-fitting or too loud. Their primary job is to keep warning that there are going to be eliminations, but eventually announce that there will be none that week ---- every week. This is also usually the cue for the participants to break out into a hoop that would be considered normal only in the event of Bill Gate's agreeing to will his entire wealth to them. Apart from the three judges, there is room for another celebratory judge whose purpose is to keep smiling annoyingly and give comments that have little relevance to the programme (asked to revuew singing, they will talk on hairstyle). Apart from this, the producers, if they wish, can bring in the EC, the Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice to add weightage to the show. Since no reality show actually ends, the EC and others will eventually make it. 9) If there are so many judges in such shows, who does the actual singing for films? Now you know why Ilayaraja, Deva, A R Rahman have turned singers. With their voices there was no way that they could have been put before the mikes for singing. But what to do, all the singers known to this world are interminably tied with reality shows which promise to end by the start of the next millennia. 10) What is the role of the hosts for reality shows? Their job description is simple: To announce the name of the programme every 45 seconds, lest anybody forgets it. The hosts also have to be extremely creative on the spot. Suppose if a singer named Suresh tells the audience that he is Suresh and going to sing the ‘XYZ’ song, the programme host has to be quick on the uptake and face the camera and translate that into the same language and holler spontaneously at the mike: 'Suresh is going to sing XYZ song.' Hosts are indispensable to such programmes as they help to eat a lot of time and ensure that the overall intelligence levels don’t go beyond the level of newborn pups. 11) What to do the winners of the show get? They are given the right to show up and perform in every other show that the channel beams on special occasions like Deepavali or Pongal, festivals that were thoughtfully created for the televisions to take over. 12) Why are reality shows a success? I asked you to remind me about filling the blank space at the start. You didn’t. Reality shows precisely work on this principle: You are forgetful of what promise the show started with. 13) What happens if we still insist on filling the above blank? Oops! The space is running out. There is time only to say ‘goodbye’ and don’t forget to turn up next week, same place and same time.

Breaking news: Read related story

K Balakumar — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:47:51 +0000

There are many individuals out there, who, otherwise being sensible, live in the sincere belief that journalism involves a lot of creativity and imagination. And the biggest professional challenge for any journalist is when he runs into the aforementioned types. At such moments, it will be impossible for the journo to disabuse his or her interlocutors of their notions, and keep them down and quiet. How can a journalist tell people that journalism is akin to the tail in an animal: You can’t think of the animal without it, yet hardly has any practical purpose, if you get to think about it. So, rather than redefine that journalism is not about creativity, journalists have got down to redefine creativity, which is to say the previous sentence as: journalism wags on the dog of society. (Reader warning: Don’t attempt such dangerous sentences at home without the supervision of a journalist who has trained himself on mixing metaphors and smothering similes). There are many areas of journalism that are now being redefined beyond recognition. A sincere newspaper correspondent’s job does not stop with breaking exclusive information to the public. His or her job also entails ‘interpreting’ information in a manner that will confirm why journalism lags so much behind when it comes to career choices for youth. If a press release lands on the news desk saying, for instance, ‘Tatas to enter ship building industry’, a veteran scribe, who knows that such reports would not be read by the sub-editors, whose job is to punctuate the copy and check for proof errors, will try to ‘sex up’ the report. The senior correspondent, who has been in the field for over two decades, will know how to ‘tap his sources’ in the industry, and go beyond the obvious of ‘Tatas to enter ship building’, which is what his counterparts in other papers will write about. Having spent long years in the trade, the hardened journo figures out that the company personnel, human beings as they are, can be reached on the phone and their numbers can be found on the press release. This kind of understanding and professionalism comes only to those journalists who are true to their craft. So after making several calls and fixing up an appointment at a convenient bar to discuss the news details further, the senior pro will eventually come up with a report that will at once make everyone sit up and take notice: Tatas not to take wings, says no to entering aviation sector’. (Related story: Kingfisher’s Vijay Mallya says cheers). The one good thing about this particular related story, ‘Vijay Mallya says cheers’, can be handily used for any news report and it won’t look out of place. Man mows down mother-in-law (related story: Vijay Mallya says cheers). Karunanidhi shifts Republic Day to Dec 31 (Related story: Vijay Mallya says cheers). See, I told you, no! Then there are press conferences. It is here a seasoned journo, thinking on his nifty feet, makes a smart move that will confirm why he is deemed seasoned. After enduring the endless drone of the man who addresses the press conference, the journo, upon the end of the formal meeting, quickly gets into position and corners the main speaker for a private chat. The speaker may have nothing more or anything new to add to what he said at the press conference. Yet, the journo, by virtue of striking a personal conversation with the man in question, gets to file a news story that the trade will call as ‘breaking news’ or ‘exclusive’, something that will play a part in fixing his position in the office hierarchy, which is the sole touchstone to decide who gets to go on the next freebie foreign trip, sponsored by companies that for some reason believe that taking scribes abroad will get it good publicity. Anyway, a typical news story runs likes this: Sun rises in the east: Met Office News Bureau The weathermen today said that the sun will rise in the east, and urged the public to look in that direction when doing their morning surya namaskarams. Talking to reporters, XYWZ urged the people blah, blah, blah. Such news reports are thoughtfully tucked in a quaint corner of the paper to ensure that no human gaze falls on it. On the other hand, a typical ‘exclusive’ new story will scream for attention with a lot of extra emphasis to ram home the idea. Explosive details about earth emerge BPO industry over the moon ‘The Sun has no time for the West’ In a finding that will make those living in the East of the world, especially Indians, rejoice, the weather bureau today categorically asserted that the sun does not rise in the west. It is a development which makes it clear that after the economic recession darkness is about to set in the west (related story on the impact on the IT sector on page 7). Highly placed sources (on condition of anonymity) in the weather bureau, in an exclusive chat with this correspondent, also confirmed that east is the direction that is opposite the west.It may be recalled that this newspaper was the first to break the news, after a sting operation using a highly sophisticated Compass, that south and north are two directions (see box item on page 12) along with east and west. In a related development, the city’s night life went into top gear as the party animals got down to celebrate what is now deemed to the epochal event for the cultural cognoscenti (Also read, ‘what actresses do after sundown, and Vijay Mallya says cheers’). Now, you may all wonder why journalists should resort to such redefinition of creativity. Well there are suckers out there reading things that come with the tag ‘Breaking News’. But anyway going by what has been appearing in the media, people may be forced to drown their sorrows in pints of lager, and Vijay Mallya may indeed be saying cheers as his business zooms (See related story: Breaking news).

Economy unplugged

K Balakumar — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:34:39 +0000

Wherever you go, and no matter whom you are talking to, the conversation will eventually come to a point where one of you, apart from saying Villu is an insufferable movie, will point out how things are getting from bad to worse as the economy is in a very bad shape. You might have gone to a doctor to deal with persistent hemorrhoids. And the medical man, looking grave and sniffy, will say: ‘It looks serious and needs immediate attention’, and you will pathetically ask him, does it require a scan or an endoscopy. ‘No, I am talking of the economy,’ he will say and inevitably send you for a full round of scan and other tests, so that at least his personal economy is in the pink of health. You would like to think that doctors are wily and calculative. But I wouldn’t want to commit myself as much in print, as libel laws are sharp enough. And in these days of economic downturn, it will be doubly so as lawyers, this again you will say, are equally wily. The point is, despite advocates and doctors knowing ways to keeping themselves well greased, economy is stuttering and stumbling around. It is indeed in a bad shape, like an askew trapezium or some such figure that you fail to remember from your geometry class. But we can’t let economy to die like the dodo or slowly become extinct like the Siberian tiger. And the day (Saturday) has now come to take the bull by its horn, the dog by its tail, the camel by its hump, the lizard by its tongue, the giraffe by its neck, the bison by its bulk, the emu by its non-existent wing, and figure out what the heck of an animal this economy is. We have to do this so that tomorrow (Sunday) our children get to live in peace and prosperity, which is to say have enough money to pay the advocates and doctors. The need of the hour (12 p.m.) is, therefore, a precise primer on economy that dejargonises the theories and demystifies the numbers by asking the right questions and lays bare all that that hide behind the inscrutable prose, which has made economy what it is today (needless to say, Saturday). What is economy? Well, it is a class in flight travel. It is named so because of the fact that the passenger has virtually no arm or leg space and is hemmed in from all sides. In short, there is economy in his movements. Further, the stewardesses and airhostesses deal with all those travelling in this class rather ‘economically’. Economy is also defined as the study of a subject that has been chosen because every other major has been taken up by others who had the nous to score better marks. Who is considered the father of modern economy and why? According to the first ever census published, Adam and Eve were the first to apply for ration card as they could come up with proof for the address of their cave. Cane and Abel were their sons as registered in the records, but they had an illegitimate one which they didn’t name because of austerity measures as represented by lack of interesting names. Later Greek historians, who found details of this hidden kid, named it Eko-nomi (Greek meaning ‘no name’), S/O Adam (Smith). Eventually this became ‘Economics’, a symbol of anything that is uncared for, but blamed for anything and everything that goes wrong. What is inflation? Before you understand what inflation is, you must know what are Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI). CPI and WPI are a set of crusty acronyms that have been thoughtfully introduced by economists in a bid to keep off any unwitting enthusiast from even accidentally taking an interest in the subject. Inflation, in numerical terms, is a random percentage calculated out of CPI and WPI which are even more random having no connection to real life. What is stagflation? This is a term to describe the fact that the economists have slowed down because of regularly using the word inflation in their reports. Stagflation is also an alternate term to establish that economists have not slept off while composing their reports. What is a sub-prime crisis? When a person takes some money from a bank it is called a loan in every part of the world. But the Americans, in a strange and irresponsible profligacy, called it a mortgage. As you can see ‘mortgage’ is mighty big than ‘loan’. Banks did not have the financial wherewithal to handle such a huge fiscal change and challenge. Hence all financial institutions choked under the weight of huge ‘mortgages’ and went under prime properties, leading to, well, a sub-prime crisis. What are Repo rates, CRR, SLP? These are handy monickers and acronyms thought up as an affirmative action to provide for reservation to numericals in English language. But when the going gets tough, tough bankers get tough with Repo, CLR and SLPs. What is the main function of RBI? It is a pivotal institution that employs serious people whose job is to look serious when sitting around a conference table as the press photographers whirr away. These serious blokes’ other main work is to tell the country that the economy is in good shape and is looking to grow at 7% as and when the economy is actually on a tailspin in a dark abyss. After this they can go back to collect their pay checks, which is 250% of the nation’s GDP, which is another acronym that they are happy to use. What are chief qualifications of a Finance Minister? From Madhu Dandhavate to V P Singh to Manmohan Singh to P Chidambaram, the smart among you would have noticed, the common thing is their ability to wear spectacles. Finance Ministers have to be by qualification glass-wearers so that they can spot any impending financial tsunami. Yashwant Sinha did not sport one, and that is why he falsely spotted India to be Shining. Now that we have covered all the bases, it is time to go ahead set right the economy, which is infuse more cash and credibility in the system and also give the country a new Finance Minister. For the record, I am bespectacled.

Around the world in eighty lies

K Balakumar — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:44:18 +0000

We are in that time of the year when every conversation at parties and elsewhere, too, will eventually get down to the question: ‘Where are you going for this vacation?’ And don’t be a fool by replying that you have planned to visit your grandma in the village. Firstly, there are no more villages left. Secondly, your grandma passed away some 15 years ago. Ha, ha, I was just joking. Anyway, if you are to be taken seriously by your friends and acquaintances then you have to certainly take a vacation trip to some fancy place. But these are not good times for the economy, by this I mean, our personal economy. There is hardly any money to travel to our offices, so expensive vacation holidays are out of the question, unless of course you happen to be the reigning don of the underworld. In which case you will forever be vacationing in exotic locations and hence would not be reading this. So what is the way out for non-dons like you? Well, all is lost. You need not take a vacation trip, but you can certainly create an impression as if you had. And you can still induce the sense of stomach-burning envy in your neighbour, which, you will agree, is the true, and sole, purpose of any expensive and luxurious activity. The first thing to do when you want make a strong case that you had been out of the country is to have typical airline tags sticking out your suitcases. But this should not be difficult to establish, as Indians, by a general consensus, never tear off the airline labels, no matter that their last flight travel dates back to Rajiv Gandhi administration. Indians, if they have happened to travelled by air and have a suitcase or bag with the airline sticker, will prefer to take that even if they are just out shopping for vegetables. So the suitcase evidence, by default, takes care of itself. Then comes the place that you are supposed to have travelled to. Then again, no sweat. There are well-established patterns and you just follow the rules. America Attire: When you are deemed to have returned from a trip to America, you have to show up in ill-fitting shorts and a pair of Reebok or Nike even if the occasion is your own wedding or funeral. This strict dress code can be breached only when you are taking bath. Language: Just remember all the misspellings from your school days. Also recollect all the gauche usages (ain’t, gotten) for which you were asked to write impositions running into several pages in your class. Get them all together and use it in your conversation. American lingo is all that and many others that grammar books shun. References: When you are shopping in Big Bazaar or Spencers, you have to inevitably thread into your conversation the name of Walmart. The general feeling that one gets from those returning from America is, America is located inside Walmart. If you are eating in a local restaurant, you must be smart enough to invoke the name McDonalds. Europe England: This is a place, which claims to have given civilisation to the rest of the world, still has cast-iron monarchy in place. The hallmark of British royalty is a succession of Queens and princess who, if they were slightly dark in complexion, will have a striking resemblance to actress Gandhimathi. Even in the event of a unexpected quirk that saw a passable beauty like Diana becoming a princess, normal service was quickly restored by Prince Charles, who, sticking to the admirable ‘ugly only’ tradition of the royalty, eventually opted for Camella Parker Bowles, whose looks can be replicated if Kumari Muthu were to asked to don women’s dress. If you are to establish that you have just come back from England you have to talk of the British monarchy and the beauty of Thames. But nobody will be interested in listening. So there! Paris It is a hoary city and it has many interesting historical events surrounding it. But don’t even talk about it. Paris is not so much a city that has to be explained in words as it has to be shown in picture. The best to show Paris is to show a picture of the Eiffel Tower. You may be hiding in a nuclear resistant bunker in the depths of the earth, but if it were somewhere in the vicinity of Paris, then Eiffel Tower should be seen in the background. This is an internationally laid rule. Eiffel Tower is a beautiful monument that stands a tall testimony to the universal fact that despite evolution and advancement in all fields, it still doesn’t take much to fool people. Eiffel Tower, if you want to contract terminal vertigo, is a good place to visit. Otherwise, you can just download a photoshop-equivalent software and incorporate an Eiffel tower picture in a photo of yours. Voila, you have returned from Paris. East Europe The good thing about east Europe is people here are by and large ignorant about most parts of it. This is due to the fact the places there have spellings that are not technically possible. Take for instance, a country like Hungary. Szekesfehervar. Hodezovasarhel. Nyergesujfalu. These are names of some of the important towns in that country. Budapest was apparently chosen as the capital of Hungary solely on the basis that it was only city whose name was possible for a human to pronounce. Then there was Czechoslovakia. Any country that had ‘Z’ following ‘C’ in its spelling always had difficulty in remaining as one entity. So my general advice is, don’t talk too much about East Europe. You don’t have physical faculty to even utter those names, leave alone making a case that you had been there. Okay fellows, times is running out and I have a friend waiting for me in a restaurant. Tonight I am going to order for cockroach soup, which needless to say will confirm that I have just come home from a trip to -----take your pick ---Japan/China/South Korea.

How to kill time and stop aging

K Balakumar — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:18:48 +0000

There comes a time in a man’s life when he looks into the mirror and realises that there is no point in blaming it (mirror) anymore. There comes a phase in a man’s life when the neighbourhood kids call out ‘uncle’, and he looks around to find nobody else in the vicinity. There comes a period in a man’s life when all the hairs on his head are very active: Either falling off or greying. There comes a stage in a man’s life when he finds his parents a problem and his own children a bigger one. There comes a point in a man’s life when he is neither fresh to feel young or too tired to be confined to the bed. He is then deemed to be in the crisis called mid-life, generally classified between the ages 40 and 55. The point about age is that nobody really understands the nuances involved. There is the physical age and the mental age. It is all very complex. Since the matter is already confusing, here is a quick test to confound you further, just to ascertain to which you belong. The purpose of the whole exercise is to kill the time, which you know causes ageing. (Reader alert: The questions are set from a man’s point of view, which is understandable considering the fact that I have been one all this life time. Having said that, for a man to talk about women’s age from outside is like trying to figure out the exact height of Mount Everest using a scale that you find in a geometry box. Theoretically it is not impossible, but absolutely futile). 1) When you go to a restaurant you generally order? A) Your retort to the question is: Do ambulances make a stopover at hotels? Anyway, you eat anything that doesn’t require the use of teeth. In other words, air (mostly through oxygen mask) or any liquid that is not coloured. B) You look at the menu for things that may not affect your BP or sugar levels. But it is a futile search, as there is no food in the world that is both healthy and tasty. In desperation, you eat anything that catches your fancy, and are forced to visit the doctor shortly. Doctors in general tell you to eat that things that you are less likely to. Otherwise, they will go out of business. C) Your parents do the ordering. D) 2) When a new song is played on the telly, your immediate reaction is A) You try to reach for the blighted hearing-aid, but by then three songs have already finished running. B) You immediately rant about how the lyrics are incomprehensible. But you would also at once contradict yourself by saying that the standards of the lyrics have come down drastically these days. You also speak in a vehement tone about how such songs and ‘vulgar’ dance movements are spoiling the society. You make a strong mental note to catch the song again when nobody else is at home. You in general are agreeable, and even look for, such ‘vulgar’ songs when alone. C) Your parents ask you to change the channel at once. D) 3) Your idea of a good movie is A)You don’t know as mostly you are bat-blind to see anything beyond touching distance. B) The movies in which when the lead couple made love they showed two roses in an impossible entanglement. In other words, the kind of movies that was seen as indecent by your dad. You don’t think today’s movies are good as because you fear today’s youths (your sons and daughters) like them. C) Anything in which the characters are drawn and made to speak in a strange accent that cannot possibly be of any human’s. D) 4) At a traffic signal a boy and a girl (most likely college students), on a motorbike, are attached to each other like Siamese twins. Your reaction A) From the ambulance, in the supine posture you are in, the only thing hazily visible to you is the dirty upholstery. B) After cross-checking whether it is your daughter or son, and feeling relieved that it is not the case, you immediately berate loudly how public decency is dead in the society now. You also talk of how girls and boys were in your time. You will conveniently forget the things that you, as a youth, did on the sly, especially when the parents were away on an urgent trip or on the night when you managed to sneak out of the house under the pretext of group-study. C) You are attracted only to the Mickey Mouse sticker on the mudguard. D) 5) Good dressing, according to you, is A) In which the bandage doesn’t come off upon washing. B) Anything but what your wards wear. You find them scandalous, You yourself dress in clothes that are either too tight or too loose. But you think yourself to be neatly dressed, and it somehow has escaped you that the colony youths have nick-named you Egyptian mummy/circus tent because your tendency to wear tight/loose dresses. C) Things that come embroidered with animal motifs. D) 6) Your style icon is A) The dapper and helpful ward boy. B) You generally think that today’s youths are idolising the most wrong kind of heroes and heroines. Of course, you conveniently forget that yours was the generation that applauded when T Rajendhar first made his entry on the screen as a hero. You don’t think Vishal or any other hulk to be an action hero, especially since you were part of the generation that conjured up the idea of Jai Shankar being South India’s James Bond. The action sequences of your time involved: The hero throwing a fist at the villain’s face who had to grimace suitably to background sound of ‘dishoooom’. Jai Shankar’s stuff was rivetting because MGR was the alternative. C) Barbie. GI Joe D) Results: If your answers are uniformly ‘A’, the truth is somebody else is reading it for you while you are lying in the bed. Your age, well forget it. Suffice to say, you take pride in the fact that you had seen Gandhi in flesh and blood —— the two things that are failing you now every second, If your answers are ‘C’, then again it doesn’t matter as your parents are reading it for you. If your answers are D, then it means you are not reading it, and, at any rate, none of the questions matter to you (hence your choices are blank). It also means you are in the flush of your youth and age is on your side. It also means that you are busy attending parties or off to ECR with your girlfriend. In short, this questionnaire is not for you. But save this, it will come handy to you in a couple of years time. Those who have ticked ‘B’ for all the answers, well you are the ones who take life seriously as because your are the middle-aged. Your gullibility is reflected in the fact that you went through this questionnaire in all sincerity. Sorry uncle, the rest of us are already off to the beach party.

Re: Your email has won $1 million loan

K Balakumar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:44:50 +0000

The other day I received a typical email from a person, who for reasons best known to him, did not mention his real name. The email ID merely mentioned his identity as ‘knightrider2007’. This immediately set me thinking in ingenious ways that is possible only if you are workless like me. Was the person’s real name so bad enough for him to choose something which sounded not so much a human monicker as much an appellation of something that is at home in Vijay Mallaya’s stable? Even then why 2007? Did he finish 2007th in a race in which there were 10 contestants? But what happens if his real name were indeed ‘knightrider2007’? In that case, what would be his parents’ name? More importantly, what happens if it were a woman behind that impregnable anonym, ‘knightrider2007’? Well, in that case, the ‘him’ and ‘he’ in the previous sentences should read ‘her’ and ‘she’. Heck, he or she, ‘knightrider2007’, and a couple of others who keep emailing me almost on an hourly basis, could well be the reason for the global finances being in such a huge mess today. Let me explain: Basically what ‘knightrider2007’ had written to me about was that he or she was very keen to offer me over a million of dollars for no apparent reason other than that I happen to be me. I can imagine you sniggering that this is a regular spam that everyone with an email address gets every minute. In fact, these spam messages may well be the reason for the high internet traffic, which is roughly broken down as 25 per cent porn, aimless surfing on things and youtube snippets on T Rajendher, 25 per cent on searching that eventually lead you nowhere and 40 per cent on email forwards that are thought up by workless staff of heaven knows what company for the rest of the humanity that is busy acting that it is at work, and spam mails about financial bonanza offer. The remaining 10 per cent of the traffic is of those trying to figure out the various percentages that comprise the internet traffic. Patently, ‘knight-rider2007’ and several others (mostly with African sounding names from Uganda to Burundi to Burkina Faso to other places that are too obscure even for a geography class) who have been painstakingly filling up our inboxes for years together, have modelled themselves on modern-day banks and insurance companies that work on the sterling prudential principle that everybody in this world is a bloody sucker for free offers. And the first lesson that they teach at the B-schools in financial management is that all loans, through concerted effort, can one day end up as freebies. The second lesson that is tutored in is that the person in charge of disbursing loans and the person in charge of ensuring their repayment are two different persons. Banks operate this way because it can employ two people for one simple work. Further, this also seamlessly ensures that the banks, at the end of the year, emerge with huge NPAs. In case you are wondering what NPAs are, well, they are handy acronyms that determine what should the government do in terms of fiscal management. If the NPAs are about at a middling level, say about a few hundreds of crores (in Indian context) the government issues statements that there was nothing to worry about the health of the said bank and waits till the NPAs reach a level when they get to be called ‘huge’. Once the NPAs reach this level, the government gets cracking —— pay close attention here as this is the vital aspect of modern market economics ——— and issues statements that there is nothing alarming to unduly worry about the fiscal health of the said bank. The word ‘fiscal’ is used to convey the idea that the government indeed knows that the matter under discussion is economics. Eventually, when there are no more loans to offer, the literal buck having literally stopped, and every person who has taken a loan is not ready to repay it, the government, with practiced alacrity, jumps into the fray and says something significant: ‘We are monitoring the situation closely’. The word ‘monitor’ is employed as because it looks more sincere and serious than when it is said: ‘We are watching the situation closely’. Meanwhile, those individuals who have taken a loan, realising that none is willing to repay, rally into a group to increase their bargaining power. This is naturally the cue for them to announce a loan waiver scheme, which is based on the sound economic principle, that the country’s official Mint is big enough to take up extra work of printing more money. Elsewhere, the professional managers of the bank, who generally holiday in esoteric locations in distant lands come back from their vacations and get ready to take up their professional duty of bestowing loans on people who have no earthly chance of repaying them. This is roughly what capitalism, socialism and communism eventually are. And my guess is that the enigmatic knightrider2007, who is offering me loads of cash for nothing, is actually a bored banker on holiday in an African country. He is apparently at it just to ensure that he doesn’t lose touch with the work that is awaiting him upon resuming his official duty. So my advice to you all those who receive financial bonanzas on emails is: Accept them today. Or else, you will pestered with calls for availing loans tomorrow.

Atoms and other matter that created Namitha

K Balakumar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:47:40 +0000

Every one of you must have heard about the LHC scientific experiment. In case, if you have not then you must be hiding under the ground somewhere, say, back of the beyond as the forlorn border between France and Switzerland. Wait. It is precisely there where the LHC experiment is happening right now as some of the best scientific minds in the world are working on the dramatic idea of seeing colliding sub-atomic particles suck several billion dollars with apparent ease. This ‘path-breaking’ experiment has already brought about a change in the world, namely getting to see indecipherable science reports on page one of newspapers which otherwise feature them in corners and pages where there is no possibility of human gaze. The LHC experiment has established with clinical finality, which is possible only in scientific endeavours, that newspaper articles on nuclear things are not radioactive. Naturally, this week’s subject is science. Whenever there is a debate between rational science and irrational religion, I am always on the side of the former. It is not as if I am a non-believer. But religion has merely provided us festivals, it is science that has delivered us TV, a remote control and many channels to watch on festival days. Science also gave us Einstein, who proved beyond doubt that it is possible for people to take you seriously even when you seem to have not used the comb even once in your lifetime. Ha, Ha, no doubt I am kidding. It is Einstein, and his much talked of relativity theory, that confirmed to the world that E=mc2. If not for Einstein, many of us would have been under the mistaken notion of E being something that came after D in the alphabet. E=mc2 may be a small formula, but it lucidly explains whatever it seeks to, and has helped to densely fill several physic textbooks from the higher secondary level to engineering college and in the process cure several students from being afflicted with terminal insomnia. Had there been no E=mc2 and sundry other similar heterosexual intercourse of numerals and alphabet, what is there for our physics tutors to teach? How could they possibly stretch engineering courses beyond two weeks? But with E=mc2, it is not only possible for engineering courses to be extended for four years, but also charge a hefty fee for them (E=mc2 is actually the handy formula to arrive at the course fee with E standing for engineering and m and c signifying the many currencies in exponential form). But scientists are not just about science. They are so handy that you can figure them in history books too. An Edison can be accommodated where they teach you that Henry VII was the brother of Edward III who was actually the stepson of Louis Philippe XL (44 cm). But can you ever put Shahjahan in a science primer, except perhaps as an example to prove Newton’s laws of thermodynamics and the Taj Mahal are two different things or establish the fact that if you are making Mughalai chicken the right temperature setting in the oven should be in Celsius and not Fahrenheit? Scientists have also helped in geography and meteorology and provided us wonderfully fuzzy pictures taken from satellites sent at enormous cost to show whether it is raining in your place or not. Were it not for these pictures, you might have to do the dangerous thing of putting your arm out of the window and check whether it becomes moist or not. Whatever your views may be on science, you cannot but agree to the fact that the world started to develop only after scientists —— identified by their abnormality —— got down to figuring out that other people are fools. This naturally led to the industrial revolution and the creation of marketing departments, stock markets and after sales service. For instance, scientists told the world there is something called sodium and should be represented by the symbol ‘Na’. Nobody confronted the scientists and asked the most elementary question, which is, why not Wk. After all, if ‘n’ and ‘a’ don’t figure in sodium, neither does w or k. But we are not only stuck with ‘Na’ for sodium but also have to endure the anomaly of ‘K’ representing potassium and ‘Sn’ standing for Tin. If Crank’s Corner had been part of the Periodic Table, it is fair to think that it would be represented by Qz, the two letters that have nothing whatsoever to do with it. This kind of deduction is what the experts call scientific reasoning. By the way, I know most of you are wondering what the heck is this Periodic Table. Well, it is an elementary table that you encounter in every chemistry period. Hence the name. Anyway, were it not for the scientists none of us would ever know that everything in this world is made up of atoms. Not one or two atoms. But billions, billions and billions of them teeming around in impossible profusion even on the head of an infinitesimal pin. Imagine how many atoms it would take to create, say, a Namitha. But atoms apparently fall under highly classified matter. Beyond the scientific community, nobody, I mean nobody, has ever encountered them anywhere. Ask a scientist to show an atom, he will immediately helpfully tell you that they are visible only through a high-precision microscope, the likes of which are available only at labs, a place, needless to say, under the control of scientists. But don’t for a moment start thinking that the scientific community made up all this matter (Reader alert: If you espied some nifty puns on the word ‘matter’ in the previous paragraph, it doesn’t prove a thing. But if you have not spotted it, it means that apart from not knowing science, you hardly have any grasp on English. And that makes two of us. Does that make us isotopes or what?). History, geography, Crank’s Corner, you name it, everything is full of science. Now that is good news. At least now, scientists should get down to finding a cure for common cold and explaining why when you age hair on your head falls and begins to grow in the ears. And whether they are through with finding water in Mars, they can devote some time to get some water in Vadapalani, which is where I live.

Price of democracy: Read on

K Balakumar — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 09:42:00 +0000

One of the charges that is constantly laid against this column is that it doesn’t tackle any serious subject. It’s all fluff and frippery. You know, it’s all on music, technological gadgets, movies and other silly stuff that don’t call for intellectual rigour, one longtime reader wrote to us recently. In deference to him and many others like him who have been wanting this coulmn to take on what they classify as weighty matters, this week’s column is devoted to the various gears and shafts that make democracy up and running in this country. Democracy has some pitfalls especially because it gives room to use the lines ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. So, as we get down to explain democracy in this country, we give you the assurance that we will not use anywhere in this column the line ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. By using the said lines two times already, we are only proving that democracy is always what it is not. The whole attempt here is to be lucid and not get too technical, by which we mean that the entire thing will be devoid of facts but high on fiction that is the true hallmark of any democracy. (The usage of ‘we’ in place of ‘I’ is to establish that this is democracy, and in the event of defamation both of 'us' are in it). The Constitution This is the Bhagwad Gita of the country, except the fact that you can’t say so because the country is secular, which is otherwise defined as the state of being in confusion over religions. The country’s founding fathers decided to remain equidistance (exactly seventy metres) from all religions because their knowledge of basic arithmetic was poor and hence couldn’t come to terms with unequal distances. Secularism means, if Amar, Akbar and Anthony went with a problem to the government, the government would not see Amar as Hindu, Akbar as Muslim and Anthony as Christian. The government, in fact, would not even see them as individuals due to the fact Amar, Akbar and Anthony are not the names of persons, but the title of a popular Hindi movie of the 80s. The founding fathers, needless to say, were great ones for entertainment. The Constitution contains roughly several hundreds of Articles, Amendments and Sections, and exactly one sentence that a normal human mind can understand. In terms of language, the Constitution has been written in a manner that the person to crack what is meant in there will be terminally bald and spectacled. The Constitution is a carefully laid out manual to keep the nuts and bolts of government well-oiled and constantly working, in the context when ‘working’ means to pay salaries every month to several hundreds of thousands of workers and officials, who then go on to strike for more pay as the right to strike is guaranteed by the Constitution. It is not just this. The right to spit paan juices in the open and park the vehicle anywhere on the road, all flow from the empowerment that flow from the Constitution. It is also a fact that the Constitution unequivocally guarantees its reader the sovereign right to fall asleep within two pages. Elections This is the evolved tool in democracy by which the multitudes of masses of the land assert themselves, which is by enjoying a full-day’s holiday in front of the TV on the voting day. This is called the dance of democracy, no doubt alluding to the fact the TV programmes are full of dances and songs. Elections are held every five years to the Lok Sabha, to the State Legislature, to the Municipal Corporation, to the Town Council, to the Village Panchayats, to the public toilet. So if a citizen voted in all these elections, the indelible ink on the forefinger would by now have grown to the size of malignant tumour. Those elected to Parliament, State Legislatures and other institutions are called people’s representatives based on the proven scientific principle that some illusions are impossible to alter. Elections are the true test of democracy. We in India pass them in many-splendoured flying colours. Lok Sabha Otherwise described as the seat of democracy, this is where the elected representatives from all corners of the country, dropping all the work in their constituencies, gather from time to time and discuss the various issues confronting the nation and its people, chief of which is indubitably higher allowances and pay perks for the elected representatives. Once the MPs agree to allot higher sums for themselves, they, in the true spirit of democracy that allows dissent to flourish, create chaos and pandemonium wholly with the noble intention that the media will have something to report on. If the MPs were to orderly discuss Jawahar Rozgar Yojna and agricultural inputs for sugarcane farming, then reading media reports on them would tantamount to reading the Constitution itself with its enshrined guarantee for sleep. The affairs of the Lok Sabha in session are run by the Speaker, who is chosen for his sagacity and impartiality to plead helplessness in the face of repeated interruptions and walkouts. Every party has a Whip, whose chief virtue is that it is the most unlikely name for a party post. Rajya Sabha If Lok Sabha reflects people’s aspirations and yearnings, Rajya Sabha symbolises the true ambitions of the ruling class: To have an exclusive club for fun and recreation. The Rajya Sabha is an eclectic institution created to ensure that those who even if they can’t get elected even to their apartment residents associations, can still make it to Parliament as the country’s Prime Minister. Rajya Sabha has an important constitutional role to play, which is to give some work for the Vice-President, who otherwise can spend his entire tenure without even bothering to shave and change his clothes, as nobody will have noticed. Parliament Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha together make for Parliament and run the affairs of the country, described as events that have no earthly connection to everyday human living. But the hardy members of Parliament do not let this minor quibble to come in the way of performing their constitutional duties of using the government-funded, siren-fitted white SUVs to wherever they are going, including toilet. Parliament, in general, comprises benign and forgiving individuals who are not unduly bothered that even those who had made bold to attack them with guns and bombs are still scot-free. As you can see, democracy has its pitfalls, like having to read this article as Constitution has obligated the Freedom of Expression. Well, all things, considered this is a small price to enjoy democracy. For everything else, well, there is Mastercard.

Secrets about Namitha exposed

K Balakumar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:32:37 +0000

You could be a student/nonstop-talk ing RJ/party-attending millionaire/retired employee/busy homemaker/bored techie/singer/Chief Minister/Rajnikanth/Rahman/doctor at a mental asylum. You could be anybody. But you are different from several lakhs of others. When the rest of those lakhs are fully immersed in hectic shopping or ready to ring in the Deepavali spirit, you have chosen to read this. What does this show? That you are a committed reader of this column? Or perhaps the programmes on the TV are so unbearable that any trash in comparison is acceptable? Well, I know the real reason for you straying into this piece. I will come a to that later. But if you had not come along, it could have been a lot easier for me. Let me explain: When it is a long weekend, with a huge festival thrown in, our regular schedule goes for a toss. On a holiday, time just seems to expand to fill the laziness that we are so consumed by. While on a working day, we only have to act busy.Take for example, my own daily routine. I get up around the time that if you were a doctor wouldn’t approve. After the morning ablutions, I sit down to decipher the morning crossword, which, I have figured out, is a lot easier than making sense out of news reports, considering the way many journalists like me write their stories with adjectives-filled sentences that usually end five kms away from their start. After this, I earnestly get ready for office, which involves the difficult task of standing before the mirror at different angles in the fervent belief that at least in one pose something passable may emerge. I am still trying. Once in the office, we (reader alert: note the not so subtle shift from ‘I’ to ‘we’ as what is to follow is very incriminating with details of professional ecrets, and so I don’t be the fall guy) are all professionals to a T —— that is, we all wait professionally for the arrival of the tea man, who, needless to say, is the most important person in the office hierarchy. Once this vital part is gone through, the hard grind begins, which is to look terribly busy and involved when in actuality we are forwarding a picture of Lord Ganesha or any other godly image that had been sent by a colleague in the same office with the warning that if we failed to circulate it to twenty other persons in the next two hours eternal doom will visit us immediately. So naturally, we pick out twenty names, if not more, from the address list, and this obviously involves the one who had forwarded the mail to us in the first place. In the next few hours, the entire office is neck deep in the tough job of pushing back and forth the same picture of Lord Ganesha. One quick glance at the forwards, with all the names that they had been circulated to, will confirm that there are lakhs and lakhs out there doing this vital economic activity of sustaining the internet industry with non-stop traffic. The toughest part of this schedule is to look convincing enough for the boss to believe that you are at some office work. This is a tricky task, as some anxious novices have blown their cover with their overacting and overzealousness —— which is to unwittingly forward the Lord Ganesha image to the boss too. Writers and those who are generally claimed to be in some creative business are allowed to stare at the walls or out of the windows, as this is the preferred professional pose. You can sum this up to mean: Writers watch a lot of weather and lizards on the wall. Then there is the time spent before the TVs, which the administrations have thoughtfully provided with the brainwave that workers productivity will increase when they watch cricket live. Quite simply, if anyone can convince me of the compelling need for a TV in office space (okay, other than in media houses), then I am ready to be his slave for the rest of my life. The afternoon sessions pose a different kind of challenge for all of us as it calls for a lot of creativity in thinking up various excuses and ruses in a bid to leave early. This is a daunting and desperate proposition as it may involve convincing others that a friend had met with an accident (the seriousness of which depends on your seriousness to be out of the office) or a cousin, who never existed in the first place, is getting engaged. The whole idea of this exercise is to ensure that your absence will be kindly excused. But then again, extreme care has to be taken that you don’t end up going to a movie or a restaurant to which your boss has also come. It is to avoid the possibility of not running into the boss at a social occasion that many workers generally forward pictures of Gods in the mornings. This is roughly a day in the life of all harried and frazzled professionals who shore up the nation’s industry and its economy. No doubt, the economy is in the doldrums.Anyway back to holiday, when you don’t have to feign anything, you can put your feet up and watch TV all day and then crib the next day at office that the TV culture is spoiling the entire society. This is a sacred rite of passage on a long weekend that culminates in a festival. But you have chosen to break this sacred code by deciding to read this column. I know it because Namitha figures in the headline. A lot of people, who presumably must have read this column only because it was an email forward sent during office hours, have wondered why Namitha gets to regularly figure in my columns. Some have even made bold to ask whether Namitha finds a place in my bedroom, of course only in the form of a poster-picture on the wall. Well, my bedroom wall is taken up by the photo of Namitha’s rival in my life —— my wife, that is. Namitha, to tell you a professional secret, is used in this column just to bring in the eyeballs. Just like she was used in the remade Billa, which is what all those who are not reading this are actually watching (or will watch) on the TV. Whenever Namitha is in the headline, people have actually read this column. For proof: Look in the mirror. But having lured you into this column with Namitha’s name in the headline, I have nothing to offer this week, except to greet the two persons without whom this column becomes a monumental irrelevance. So here it goes: Happy Deepavali to you and Namitha. (This is a reprint of the column I had written just before Deepavali)

Science is history

K Balakumar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:54:38 +0000

If you are a young father, you will doubtless be skewered by your kid with questions the answers for which you haven’t the faintest idea of. ‘Why is the sky blue’ is particularly a prime question that fathers stumble unfailingly upon. In the history of human civilisation, there is not even one instance of a father ever answering this query to the reasonable satisfaction of the kid that posed it. ‘How does a plane fly’ is another toughie of the genre that dads usually answer intelligently by buying the child an unasked ice cream. Fathers can’t handle such posers mainly because when they were kids their respective fathers could provide them with only a vague, middling response that was no response at all, something similar to the nation’s Home Minister’s reaction after every blast. The point is the Home Minister scares us. Okay, you understand that this is a weak joke before I begin to say that science scares us all. But why has science frightened us? Because it involves making sense out of sentences such as this: ‘A theoretical distribution of the number of successes in a finite set of independent trials with a constant probability of success.’ The quoted line is a verbatim dictionary explanation of Bernoulli’s distribution, apparently a terrific scientific idea that lies beyond the ken of normal human comprehension. With such theories and explanations, it was inevitable that the people even chose to go to a T Rajendhar film. The point is science is impenetrable thanks to scientists who use language as their first line of defence. But the time (10.30 p.m.) has come to challenge science and scientists as this week we seek to understand and explain in every-day ideas and words mechanical things that occupy our lives today (Saturday). The idea is to demystify science and unbare its soul, and in the process if truth and logic are a big casualty, then so be it.. That is a small price to pay as we set out to swim to the depths of knowledge, reach the frontiers of understanding, climb to the pinnacle of perception, touch the glory of human endeavour in our unwavering quest to complete this column. Cell phone This handy and convenient gizmo is not so much a utility as much a lifeline to the entirety of the world’s population, which is now divided into two sets of people — tele-marketers and those who hate tele-marketers. In combination, the two groups have ensured that the families of Bharthi Mittal and others like him will remain unimaginably rich for centuries to come. These days mobile ph-ones come stacked with features that boggle mind and method. The other day there was an ad for a phone that allows you to store 18,000 songs. If on an average a song runs for 4 minutes, those who have access to calculators can deduce that it works out 50 days of non-stop hearing. After that all hearing has to stop as the eardrum will be perforated beyond salvage. This handy feature has been conjured up to help people commit suicide. Technology If you read science journals they will confuse you with words like but the technology behind cell phones is not complicated. It is a simple mechanism and works on the fundamental scientific theory that anything that is dropped from heights will stop working. If you want to keep your mobile working, you must not drop it from your terrace. But those who wanted to escape the tele-marketers are known to have thrown the instrument from Himalayan heights. Such people have been rewarded for their extreme tenacity by the tele-marketers who call them on their land-line phones that work on the scientific principle that a person needs such a phone to get bills, which are the biggest tool to establish that you exist where you are supposed to be existing. White goods Washing machine, microwave oven, vacuum cleaner, dish washer. These are called white goods because all the other colours have been taken by other goods. These appliances have been thought up by ingenious human minds (that didn’t have access to mobiles or internet) that since other human beings are always immersed in www, cell phones (answering tele-marketers) and reading Crank’s Corner, something has got to do the house work. The creation of these appliances has naturally resulted in the breakthrough on another frontier, namely fitness equipment. Fitness equipment have been created by thoughtful individuals who realise that you must have forgotten things like walking and running, something that you learnt when you were a toddler. Technology This is predicated on the simple logic that anything with an outer packing and makes a noise and throws up heat is bound to be accepted as utility by the public who are already too busy or tired (after surfing the internet or answering mobiles) to do anything else other than press the buttons on the TV remote. Internet The marvel that modern science is has led to the creation of the world wide web which seamlessly enables you to listen in real-time to audio clips, forward emails that involve Sardarji jokes in circulation since 1857 Sepoy Mutiny or photos of Ajith’s daughter to distant people who will forward it so many others including you, without in any way arousing the suspicion of the bosses who will think that some office work is happening. Of course, most bosses are doing the same thing without arousing the suspicion of their subordinates. The internet with its unsurpassed ability to make life convenient has also made possible that which has been impossible so far in history: Watching porn at office At home, children use it for things that they usually do when their parents are away. In short, it is a handy tool for cheating, and hence has been accorded industry status. Technology Then again, it works on the unfussy principle that was obtained using the Google. Google, for the uninitiated, is the company that helps the world to remain uninitiated. So, when you type ‘technology and internet’, it would spit out close to 20 lakh reference sites out of which 1999999 will be of no use and the remaining one will be inaccessible due to server failure. This is the magic of internet, flooding you with boundless bags of information with which you can convince the world that you know many things without actually knowing anything. Crank’s Corner uses this proven technology.

Chronicle of the times

K Balakumar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:00:38 +0000

Surely, journalism has changed. You don’t have to be an MP who had been bribed with crores and crores of rupees the previous day for your mug to be published in colour on news pages of publications. Newspapers these days have become broad-minded and accommodative enough to publish photos in dozens and dozens of men and women who presumably must have many talents, but the only one apparent being their sterling ability to cheerfully pose for the camera without being embarrassed of the fact that the dress they are wearing is actually meant for a kid whose age is still measured in months. These panache-possessed men and women have brought colour and fizz to the staid and dreary world of newspapers that otherwise have to make do with charisma-challenged people like scientists who may have invented a cure for diabetes or activists who bore you to death talking that global warming will mean the death of all us. You don’t need scientists or activists telling you, that too first thing in the morning, you are going to die. The need of the hour actually is conscientious persons who are committed to enjoying cheer and good spirits so that the rest of the world can actually feel what global warming really is, thanks to the stomach burns that they induce in readers who must naturally wonder why only some people get to live it up. The life and times of these beau monde (this word is included in compliance with the strict journalistic rule that reports on socialites and parties have to contain at least one foreign, preferably French, term) need a detailed telling without being tied down by such niceties as honesty and truth that may have no place in the party culture. Hence this primer, which gives the low down on the high life in a city along with the insider info of how the media report them. It contains all the questions that you never wanted to ask as you were afraid that you will not be invited to the next happening do. What is Page 3 journalism? It is serious journalism that covers those tireless souls who brave many things in the world all through the night so that they give the readers next morning a good reason to skip one full page of photos, which otherwise may have to be filled with news articles they might have to be read. What is a party? It is a convivial event where individuals gather for drink and food with the fond hope that they will be photographed by publications which otherwise might have to think up serious news articles to cover the entirety of a full page. Who gets invited to parties (apart from news photographers)? Nobody has ever read any report saying that a Krishnamoorthy or a Sivaramakrishnan or a Muthulakshmi or a Khaleeja Begum attended a glitzy party. So the thumb rule to be invited is to have a suitable name, which can be any of the following: Pooja, Barry, Shilpa, Sonam, Rakesh. and any other name that may involve ‘Q’ or ‘Z’ in their spelling. All manner of people who can be compressed into convenient acronyms like DJs, RJs are also de rigueurs (another French term that socialites are partial to). But CJs are not invited apparently because they wear too much of clothes and robes. Why are DJs, RJs so important for a party? As everyone will be busy drinking or posing for photographs, somebody needs to play the music at levels that could actually be heard even if you are in a spacecraft traversing near a different planet. Why is the music played so loud? It could be because of the fact that the RJs and DJs are miffed at the fact that they are not allowed to man the booze counter, which is where the action is. How to converse at parties? If you have the ability to open and close your mouth you can manage at a party as at the volume of the music played you would need a megaphone to hear your own self. So if you are saying that Bipasha Basu is beautiful your interlocutor will probably hear that as T Rajendhar is a man of few words. And at any rate, the only meaningful conversation at a party is done with the bar-tender, who generally understands sign language. Is there a dress code for parties? Yes, it has to have at least one metre of to yarn that can be made into something at least as comfortable as a bandaid. What kind of booze has to be served at parties? Till the first two rounds, it has to be the best of the best. After that it doesn’t matter whether it is Amber whiskey or Aadi Koozh. On what basis do newspapers choose party pictures to publish? It is based on the specific journalistic and scientific principle called random picking, which is the touchstone of any good sub-editor. What do people do when they are not invited to parties? One of them will write a one-sided, opinionated piece on parties while others will read him.

Don’t read this at a traffic junction

K Balakumar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:03:08 +0000

It is in the process of thinking up a suitably humorous ‘intro’ paragraph for this piece — the kind of opening words that you can remember and guffaw uncontrollably even while, say, having dinner with your boss, who, however, might misconstrue that to be a response to his unzipped fly and hence hold on to your promotion —— two things struck my mind: One, I am incapable of coming up with such sterling humour. Two, people are, at any rate, hardly in a mood to enjoy such humour. And it is all because of the traffic chaos on the city roads. If you don’t believe me, try telling a joke on any busy road at peak hour. I am certain that nobody will laugh in response. Instead, you will be honked out from the street with vengeance. The situation on Chennai’s roads is such that a session of the Lok Sabha, even when it is having a trust vote and the MPs are throwing up money like deranged ATMs, would seem in comparison orderly like a monastery of Zen monks. It wasn’t like this before. I remember the days when traffic was quiet and organised, and I could even read books in my vehicle on way to the office. Today that is not possible. And this is because my driver has quit and I have to come on my own. The problem, as you can see it, is simple: I have to find a new driver. No, the point is every thing that can get bad has gone worse on the roads. Take for instance the autorickshaws. Not long ago our grouse was that the autos didn’t have any lane-discipline and generally moved about as if they were powered by engines working on the Brownian theory of random movement, which should state that the speed of any auto is determined by the fate of the person that it runs into. But suddenly we have to grapple with share-autos that doubtless work on the Brownian theory of even more random movement, which exactly is no theory but just a random happening beyond the continuum of physics and traffic laws. It is not uncommon to see a share-auto carrying in a single trip two busloads of people with the driver himself travelling on the footboard. The driver’s physical control of the vehicle is hardly any different from even if he were just remote-controlling it. Theoretically, share-autos have three or four wheels. In practice, they don’t require any as share-auto drivers rev up such speeds that make wheels and tyres irrelevant to the equation. Share-autos, however, seem normal when you compare them with vestibule-buses, which seem to have been built by someone who wanted to make anaconda look in comparison like a tapeworm. The MTC perhaps employs vestibule-buses in its fleet as part of its fuel-saving programme. Actually, vestibule-buses may require no petrol or diesel to take you from one locality to another. Let me explain: Vestibule-buses —— pay close attention here as I may be letting you into a State secret —— are built in such a manner that if their front is in, say, Nungambakkam, the rear is in Porur. So any prospective traveller between these locations has to just hop into the bus and make it to his chosen spot. The vehicle itself need not move though an illusion may be created as if it is. It may not exactly surprise me if you tell me that there is just one vestibule-bus in the entire MTC fleet and it is what is seen all over the city simultaneously. The various IT companies and engineering colleges may do well with a few of the never-ending vestibule-buses. Okay, the city’s residents will do well if the IT companies and engineering colleges acquired a few vestibule-buses. For, there may be streets in the city without the mandatory pillayar kovil. But I bet there’s isn’t even one which does not have an IT company or engineering college bus, like the waiting ark of the mythological Noah, parked in random carelessness. But here the Ark is the one causing the flood, if you get my drift. Why are these vehicles parked on public roads causing so much inconvenience to you and me? Simple. You and I don’t belong to the IT industry, which works on the canonical principle that the rest of the world is only virtual. It is fair to assume that if engineering colleges and IT companies go bust it will be the bus-manufacturing firms that would be the worst hit —— even more than the education and computer sectors. Think it other way, KPN Travels has the best infrastructure to get into the IT sector. I am not ready to crib about the vehicles that ply the employees of call centres, except perhaps say that drivers here are under the instruction that if by any chance they slow down their vehicles the Indo-US nuclear deal may not happen. In which case, outsourcing from the US will also stop, eventually putting them all involved the business (including the drivers) on the streets, which is anyway full of IT company buses. Just as I am about to finish this piece with a suitably humorous ‘ending’ — the kind of words that you can remember and guffaw uncontrollably even while, say, travelling in a vestibule-bus or share-auto —— two things strike my mind: One, I am incapable of coming up with such sterling humour. Two, people are, at any rate, hardly in a mood to enjoy such humour. And it is all because of the traffic chaos on the city roads, thanks to the vestibule-autos. Or is it share-buses?

Please be on hold, your readership is important to me

K Balakumar — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:42:43 +0000

After boring your shirts off the last two weeks with agonising details of my having shifted to a new residence and my difficulty in getting new services and connections, this week I had resolved to take a new subject and of course bore you down with even more agonising details of that. But all through the week I was not available to myself: I was waiting on hold for customer service as I had been told that my call was important to them. I had no reason to disbelieve them as the pre-recorded message sounded not only sweet but also sincere. And, in any case, machines don’t lie! Evidently, too, my problems are so important to them that they don’t want to solve them in a hurry. If they did, I would naturally stop calling them. This would naturally deprive them of the chances to keep convincing me of how important I am to them. The week’s experiences also brought home to me the major difference between the slothful public enterprises and the highly efficient private sector. With the former you get to speak to inefficient or disinterested officials who may or may not come to your rescue. But with private companies, things are vastly different: They apparently harbour the noble intention of preparing their clientele for Olympic boxing. The moment you dial in, most customer service cells welcome you with a request to punch a button so that you can continue with the call. Don’t ask why the call cannot be continued without punching any button. It is such questions that preclude this nation from producing Olympic gold medallists in boxing. Once you have punched the entry button, there will be a request to punch in more buttons. And then more buttons. And then more buttons. By the time you are through with it all, on an average you would have thrown in more punches than a heavyweight boxer does in his entire career. And ergo, ready for the Olympics. It is not without reason that modern telephones have extra buttons carrying enigmatic symbols like ‘#’ ‘*’. These have been created with the explicit purpose of taking in all your finger pokes. Companies in the private sector did not flourish in the olden days simply because the phones then had no facility to punch. And not surprising too is the fact that there were no Olympic champions from India then. Private sector companies also seem to possess a strong commitment to enhance your musical sensibilities. Between times telling you how important is your call to them and how busy their executives are, they let you hear so much music which is almost the equal to the combined total output at the Chennai Music season. After this, if you don’t become a Subbudu or some such like him, you must either be stone-deaf or having the phone earpiece wrongly at the mouth. In which case, you are requested to immediately move your ear to where your mouth is. This has to be done since you cannot move your mouth to where your ear is —— obviously, it’s tough making a choice between the left and right ear sockets. After the boxing and music sessions most callers are hardly in a state to remember their own phone numbers leave alone the reason for which they had called in the first place. This is how smartly most private Incs solve their problems. But you cannot be overly critical of companies even if you are not able to reach the customer service officers. The truth is that most of their office telephone lines are busy with the calls that their tele-marketing guys are trying to make to people like you. It is no surprise that no tele-marketeer has ever managed to sell anything worthwhile. It is equally no surprise that no one has successfully ever reached the customer service desk. The curious among you may be wondering as to for what purpose did I call the customer service and had been put on hold for roughly the time it takes for the Left parties and the UPA to meet and decide that they will meet again and decide. Well, I had called a private telecom company whose name I will not air or tell, lest I am accused of mixing personal issues with professional commitments. The point is I had asked for shifting of the telephone connection from my previous address to the new one. Being a phone from a private company, naturally it took me the time that the butterfly takes to become a butterfly from a humble egg to reach the official who handles such cases of phone shifts. Even more naturally, the shift hasn’t happened so far —— the time elapsed, it is pertinent to point out, is good enough for the said butterfly to have become a grandfather, or grandmother in case it happened to the female of the species. The issue is that though my old telephone hasn’t been officially cancelled, the same number has now been allotted to someone else. My worry is whether this person will end up getting all the wrong calls that would otherwise have come to me if had the phone line through. And what would the tele marketeers do? Will they call him and ask for me? In which case, will he also call up the customer service and fail to reach them? And does he also get to hear only A R Rahman on the loop? With so much to ponder, I have to put you on hold. But don’t go anywhere else. Yes, your readership is important to me...

Your house doesn't belong to you

K Balakumar — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:50:31 +0000

There are moments when you cannot but help marvel at the strange but beautiful magnificence of life. One such moment is certainly when you get up in the middle of the night to fetch a bottle of cold water or take a leak, and switch on the lamp. For, it will be the occasion when the ultimate truth of your life will be revealed to you: You are just a co-liver in the house and the place well and truly belongs to the cockroaches. Make no mistake about it, your entire life is set amidst colonies of cockroaches. The historical truth is cockroaches are what inspired the British to set out and usurp other places. In an eternal tribute to that Brits have chosen to consistently cook their food in a manner that cockroaches alone can find it tasty. Reader Alert: In case, if you haven’t seen any cockroach in your house, it is advisable that you immediately vacate it. For, it means that the Vaasthu expert had possibly removed from your house the toilets and the kitchen, the two locations that by universal UN-sanctioned law have been irrevocably ceded to cockroaches to flourish in millions and millions. On an average every household is filled with roughly the number of cockroaches that it is quite conceivable that they have their own government, television networks and Barkha Dutt. Don’t ask me the difference between real-life Barkha and the one in the cockroach kingdom. I am not sure whether there is one. Your place, in general, is teeming with cockroaches that amount to being the lifetime material for the Animal Planet crew. Though the kitchen and toilets are the favourite hangouts of cockroaches, they pretty much fill your entire universe in a manner that you cannot possibly have imagined. Just stop reading this and go and check the inner lining of the freezer: You can find a cockroach apartment complex coming up there. While you are at it, also look into the cassette slot of the audio deck, which is being developed as a comfy playpen for cockroach juniors. The cavernous, dark innards of your shoe are where the raunchy elements of cockroach society in their stylish best meet for secluded, naughty revelry. Reader Alert: Don’t pass the last information to those newspapers that have special pages for party coverage, which is all about featuring named figures in bizarre outfits and ridiculous gestures posing around unnamed drinks. Cockroaches could be more soulful than anything that party pages have seen so far. You may wonder what is the role of cockroaches in what the humans proudly call the food chain. Well, their job is to scurry over all the chain of food that humans lay out on the table. Come to think of it, cockroaches are the ones that help to maintain the delicate balance of the earth, which would otherwise be disturbed dramatically if the humans were to bulge in size by eating all the salads and curries that are now being thrown out because an army of cockroaches marched over it. How do cockroaches completely take over your place when in reality it seemed as though you moved in when it was squeaky-clean? Where do these blighted household pests arrive from to startle you out of your wits in the dead of the night when you woke for that cool swig of water? Reader Alert: Another Reader Alert ahead at the end of the next two paragraphs. There are no easy answers to the above question as I am unable to think up anything suitably funny. But scientists agree that the slimy roaches are generally hand-in-glove with extra terrestrial beings. As a proof, the scientific community point (by holding its forefinger in the general direction of where cockroaches live, which is everywhere) to the fact that cockroaches thrive in zillions inside any glove left free for even a few seconds. If this does not prove that cockroaches are hand in glove then what does, the scientific community asks not unreasonably. It is pertinent to point out here that there has been no great research done on cockroaches due to the elementary fact that the microscopes, test tubes and other implements that are used for scientific enquiry in all labs are completely lined by cockroach excreta and eggs. Reader Alert: A Reader Alert has been shoved in here just because there was an announcement two paragraphs ago. It is one of the biggest theories of modern science that cockroaches are the only creatures that are expected to survive even a nuclear holocaust. This is based on the irrefutable evidence that any nuke-powered attack will take out every man, who seem to be ordained to carry out the job of mangling the cockroaches to a squelchy, gooey pulp, while all women are programmed to act dramatically scared even if the nearest cockroach is a kilometre away. The job of women, whenever they spot a cockroach (which is every night), is to squeal at their top of the voice as if there has been a nuclear attack, and then scuttle emergently into the bedroom to rattle the man of the house. He, if he had any sense, should not ask ‘what’s the matter’. But usually he does as his thinking faculty is far less than a cockroach’s due to continued watching of cricket and songs and dances of Rakhi Sawant. So the woman of the house in a voice, dripping with fear and anxiety that can be construed reasonable only if armed bandits are lying in wait, will tell him that a cockroach is loitering in the kitchen. The woman won’t let the man sleep unless the pesky insect is squashed to a pulpy heap of unmentionable slime. Women generally behave as if cockroaches are about to kidnap them with carnal motives Reader alert: Reader alerts are like cockroaches. You see them at every turn, and there is no escaping them. Sorry guys, I have let you go, not because my wife has spotted a cockroach in the kitchen. It is your wife who is screaming from your kitchen, and can’t you hear her cries? But be known, you are facing a losing battle ---- both with the wife and, of course, the cockroach. Don't think pesticides will work. Try using them here. You cannot displace them from here. So what makes you feel that you can remove them from your life? Reader alert: email the writer at balakumarkb@gmail.com (This is a reprint of my weekly column in our publication)

From now on, I is you

K Balakumar — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 05:00:34 +0000

What is common to Vaiko, Vijaya T Rajendhar, T R Baalu, Thol Thirmuvalavan? Correct: They are all men. And long after they were born men (okay, they were born boys), when they sat down to figure out what prevented them from being highly successful, it kind of intelligently occurred to them that the culprit was their names. How on earth could somebody with the appellation V Gopalsamy ever become a firebrand leader? So out went V Gopalsamy and in came Vaiko. Now, the name change indeed worked miracles. After he became Vaiko, he was arrested under the POTA and the entire nation discussed the issue with bated breath. Even Parliament debated the matter at great length with members heroically putting off their strong urge to commit their usual pandemonium and walkout. It is impossible to think that they would have shown the same patience and perseverance were the person in question been a mere V Gopalsamy. Same is the case with Baalu. Would he have been entrusted the job of botching up the Sethusamudram project had he remained a nondescript Balu, without the benefit of that all-important ‘a' that otherwise gives his name girth and ground. So the wise man that he is went and quickly embraced the 'a'. Lo and behold, the canal of success opened for Baalu. Ditto with Vijaya T Rajendhar and Thol Thirumavalavan and hundreds of others who boldly and bravely have changed their names to change their destiny, while the cowardly rest of us are either writing or reading about them. The point is namology, or numerology or by whatever name they call it, it works. If you are still sceptical, I can always tell Vijaya T Rajendhar to come and explain to you in person. I know you will now have no doubts. Namology is not some blind science based on some assumed beliefs. It is well grounded on believable assumptions, like when you are not doing well, especially losing heavily in business, it is your name that is the root-cause of all your problems and not the fact that your employees are unskilful and your partners have been cheating more than Sobhraj ever did in his life. But what are the things one has to look for before getting down to change one's name? First of all, only those with names can think of changing it. So that immediately disqualifies all those who are yet to be born. All those dead, who despite having names, cannot even start to think about refurbishing it, because well, I dont know. Statistics show that no dead person has ever applied for a name change. Probably dead people have lost their ration cards or some other document that are so vital for applying for a name change. Once you decide to change your name, you must immediately get in touch with a good namologist whose name is well known in the field. Changing name on your own without the supervision and services of a trained professional namologist is extremely dangerous. You may wonder why no namologist has ever changed her or his name. I also wondered about it and felt sleepy. So I stopped wondering any further. But since all namologists print a lot of letter-heads, visiting-cards and sundry other papers and paraphernalia that they need to establish that they are indeed namologists, I presume it is not practical to expect them to change their names. Once you go to a namologist, he or she will take a hard look at your name, initials and other alphabets alongside. They will give it a thorough professional check-up. Some evolved namologists are not averse to suggesting an MRI or CT scan for your name. Once this preliminary part is over, the business end of the deal comes in, which is how much he is going to fleece you. Oops sorry, the previous sentence should read as...which is what part of your name has to be changed. If your problems are simple and tractable, you can escape, as did Baalu, with a mere addition of a few vowels or some minor tinkering with consonants. A few unlucky have been told to add an enigmatic 'Q' or 'Z' even though those letters can be incorporated only if your spelling skills are lesser than that of an illiterate. Extreme cases are called upon to change their initials. In such times, you must possibly contemplate taking a time machine to go back in eras and try and change the name of your father so that you can eventually end up with a different initial. Or if you are desperate, while going back in time, you can even think about the prospect of changing the dad himself. I don't know what Thirumavalavan did. He was once R Thirumalavan. Now he is Thol Thirumavalavan. If you are a young woman of marriageable age and have been advised a name change, then you can take the same time machine and travel ahead to change the name of your prospective husband. But if for some strange reason you are unable to find a time machine, the thing to do is to cheat: Which is to shove a totally unexpected name just before your initial. This is how T Rajendhar ended up as the hugely successful Vijaya T Rajendhar. It is not just enough to change the spelling of your name. True namology enjoins you to alter the way you pronounce it. If your name is, say, Rajesh, you have to write it as Suresh and pronounce it as Ramesh. Such practices are handy and efficient when you are on the run from loan agents or signing cheques when you don't have enough cash in bank.So that clinches it folks. Namology works. I didn't say that. You said so. PS: A namologist told me to change 'I' to 'You' to make this column a success.

This one is about Deepika, Shriya, Trisha

K Balakumar — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:48:04 +0000

Eclairs, people of a certain age would surely remember to be a sweet candy of delectable flavour and feel. What is now available in the market under the same name bears no comparison to the almost divine taste of the original, which, it should be said, came wrapped in a hideous orange and moody brown outer wrapper and tawdry golden inner. The original eclairs was almost unanimously liked by all across all age groups. Kids naturally slobbered over it. And oldies were made to forget their diabetes for that short moment of ambrosian delight in their mouth. And then? Well, the MBA-types who decide things at big companies stepped in, and pulled off this popular candy from the production line. Why? Madness would be the obvious reason to anyone even with the thinking ability of a cabbage. But I don’t want to be a recipient of the considerable wrath of the MBA-types by committing myself so in print. So I would venture only as much as to suggest that those who decided to call back the original eclairs would have given a superiority complex to a humble cabbage, which many of you would realise doesn’t have any apparent brain. But big corporates, backed by their intense research and understanding of the market, always do this. I don’t know what they actually research on and whom do they take their inputs from. But you can always trust them to do things that are as logical as trying to enrol Osama bin Laden to Amnesty International. Take the case of the industry that I am in: Newspaper and journalism. Right from the day I stepped in, the one plaint that has been constant is: ‘The reading habit is dying and the youth don’t read at all.’ Initially, freshly into the profession, I thought this to be a direct fall-out of my getting in. But this chant was insistent even on days when I was on leave. And slowly it dawned on me that this talk of falling readership has been around right from the day the first newspaper hit the stands. And every time this idea of falling readership becomes even more insistent, the industry has only one solution: ‘Target the youth’. And we have been trying to do this, even though there is no plausible proof to suggest that this stellar strategy has ever worked. Is there a moral in this story? There is, and that is there are many in the newspaper industry who can make even the cabbage seem to be possessing the IQ of Einstein. So, the same newspapers, which scream shrilly that the youngsters of the day don’t read anything other than that comes printed on menu cards or shopping mall price lists, forever tailor their writing to suit their (youth’s) reading tastes, whatever they are. Ergo, you have reports that are by the day getting shorter than Shreya’s skirts or Parliament’s serious working hours. All sentences will begin and end with the same fullstop. And all news reports will have to carry photos, including those about power shutdowns at the dead of night. The day is not far off when the biggest news story in a paper would make a verse from Thirukural seem verbose in comparison. It is not just the reports that are being sheared. Even the paper size matches the attention span of young readers. Soon we will have newspapers in the dimensions of a normal envelope, and the special supplements the size of a postal stamp. And what of the content to attract the sterling colts? Everyone in the news industry, in his or her infinite wisdom, has now come to the conclusion that today’s youth set is sold out on technological gizmos, movies, celebrities, hot spots, bikes, cars, apparels and the idea of looking good. This is all to the youthhood, the newspapers believe. So naturally we are full of the stuff that the youngsters reportedly crave. But are the youngsters going to read? No way, seeing the stuff that is printed, they get more reasons to spend their time on technological toys or go to the movies wearing expensive clothes. The direct upshot of trying to appeal to the youth is that older and trusted readers either stop reading us or begin to develop fetishes of the young crowd. So the next time you see a grizzly oldie wearing an ill-fitting Bermuda shorts, Nike sneakers and trying to send an MMS on his N-series Nokia then you can be sure that newspapers’ last bastion of readership has fallen, frantically at that. But is there a surefire way to attract young and old readers alike? There is. And that is to put the names of nubile young actresses in the heading. Thanks gentlemen.

How about Ambedkar Jayanthi on Apr 1?

K Balakumar — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:29:17 +0000

The DMK government ‘officially’ shifted the Tamil New Year’s day that generally falls in April to January on the Pongal Day, possibly on the grounds that it shouldn’t matter to the general public as April or January their New Year celebrations, or for that matter any other festivities, are all about plonking themselves in front of the TV from morning till evening and gather extraordinary amount of fat for themselves lazily gobbling up the sweets and oily eats that are a must for any occasion deemed special in these parts. Governments have changed currencies and in some cases just elbowed out actual money, by moving to the handy system of full-fledged usage of credit cards and even more full-fledged defaulting. This has lead to the wonderful situation where the buyer has no money to buy and the seller has nothing left to sell. The rich have no riches. The poor have nothing to be poor of. Governments have also changed country’s capitals ----- this is of course easy, as the first letter of the country’s name is usually in capital. Anybody with an access to keyboard can change the capital. Governments have changed the official First Ladies. There are also occasions when a States, in true federal spirit, has had a couple of official first ladies. Such an arrangement is allowed on the larger humanitarian ground that it allows the government to spend more money on providing expensive ‘Z’ grade security to more people. This is the real beauty of democracy. But no change is truly in this extraordinary league of transplanting the New Year. This official transferring of New Year celebration is, in general, can only be described as a masterstroke based on the unimpeachable evidence that only master who had suffered a (brain) stroke can conjure up this extraordinary fantasy. The thing to note here is that the Tamilnadu government had, with the shrewdness that comes to only to those who don’t have to go through the stuffy formality called thinking, has surgically shifted only the Tamil New Year’s day celebration to January. The New Year will continue to dawn on in April, as doubtless it will in a couple of days. The two New Year day concept is doubly rewarding, especially if you have TV channels that rake in money on such occasions of celebrations. Like the IPL cricket, the two New Year theory is made for TV audience, if you know what I mean. Of course, it is not clear whether the Tamilnadu government is contemplating switching the month of April to January. But since it is caught up in this infectious momentum of change and novelty, it should as well. There are many practical benefits to be had with the repositioning of April to January. This will ensure that a full, thirty-days (unless otherwise the government is mulling a change in the number of days in the months too) is removed from the calendar and conveniently hidden behind the smokescreen of time. With thirty days gone, just imagine the splendid possibilities it will throw up: Companies will have one month less to pay salaries. In the current economic crisis, when they may perhaps be praying that the entire year comprises just a single month, the compression of April into January may not be enough. But no one can never really satisfy the corporates. If they pay any serious heed to them, the government will end up having just one day in the entire calendar ---- and that will be the budget day, and that too for just announcing more tax sops to the corporates. By dissolving April into January, the government can certainly make a tremendous role in safeguarding the world and its precarious environment, which has been affected by greenhouse effect, global warming and other such phenomena, about which lay people have little or no clue. Anyway, we have been officially told that summers are said to be more hot, and winters more cold. April is all about sweltering heat. January is cozy cool. When you mix these two what may eventually emerge may defy description, but it will be good enough to keep the environmentalists puzzled, and hence silent. I can’t think of a greater good to environment than confused and quiet green activists. In this context it is equally pertinent to point out that the world will be much more agreeable and cool place to live in if there is more environment and less environmentalists. When the government decides to conjoin April and January, the question that will naturally emerge is: What month should follow next, February or May? This will be a ticklish matter, and the government has to necessarily also discuss whether February and May should be merged. And then, it will be March and June. And so on. This is an issue that is pregnant with the attractive opportunity for the government to do what it always does in any case: Appoint a committee. Just imagine the scope and space that a committee of this nature can occupy. It is for such chances to waste money and time that governments are actually formed and run. If you have not started to read from only this paragraph, you will surely agree that the government is indeed forward-thinking and ahead of the times in its decision to move the Tamil New Year’s Day celebrations to January from April, which month may possibly be removed from the calendar when the government gets its next round of brainwave. If I were you, come 14 April, I’ll observe it only as Ambedkar Jayanthi. For, to the government that has already changed the enormity called New Year, shifting of a man’s birthday should be mere a bagatelle. So next year, it might even move Ambedkar’s Jayanthi to, say, April 1 (assuming the month is allowed to exist till then)? It would serve the man right for giving us a Constitution and enshrining it with very many freedoms for us to act, and needless to say, write irresponsibly. (This is a version of my weekly column for my publication)

A story set in Madurai

K Balakumar — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:43:48 +0000

Think of some random but successful Tamil movies in recent times. You better list out films like Kadhal, Subramaniapuram, Paruthiveeran, Sanda Kozhi, Thimuru, as they form the basis for my theory, which is these movies had one thing in common. We aren’t talking about the non-Tamil speaking heroine (if this is the criterion then all Tamil movies will fit the bill). We are talking about Madurai, the quintessential backdrop to these movies. The situation in Kollywood has come to a level wherein even if you are making a movie about aliens in outer space, there has to be at least a dream sequence set in the rustic and rural swamps of Madurai and its surroundings, which is essentially dust and dreariness that stretch interminably till the distant horizon. But if you are wondering why Madurai, and not, say, Mannargudi, well here it goes: Even if the movie were to be shot on a shoe-string budget at the AVM, it is easy to capture Madurai, which is by showing a towering temple gopuram in the backdrop. It is Meenakshi Ammman temple, you fool. The inviolable rules of filmmaking are: If it is Paris, the Eiffel tower must be visible even if you are hiding in a toilet set in a bunker. If he is a urban, rich businessman, he has to say that he has a board meeting to attend or must be seen talking to a serious-looking guy in formals, who needless to say, cannot be anyone else other than the auditor, apparently carrying files relating to the estates and companies. And so if it is Madurai, the temple tower will stand as the super structure behind even a humble thatched roofed hutment. If this can be managed then the film is deemed to have a rural realism that no sincere writing can manage to conjure up. Mannargudi, by contrast, cannot be recreated on AVM third floor. And then there is the thing about life. Madurai people are even more easy to capture on screen. In the case of men folk, they are the ones who move around in veshtis or lungis hitched high up around the waist or even above as if it were just a belt or cummerbund, thereby giving a full view of the undies that is usually striped-shorts which end somewhere around the ankles. In general, the men are shown to carry the aruval as an intrinsic accessory to their daily lives just as a city-bred executive moves around with a Cross pen and a Blackberry. The men here are accepted as full-hearted and upfront even when they are butchering people in random profusion. The women are loud-mouthed vixen who wear their saris in a manner that is basically a variation of pillow cover that comes handy with a tail. The Madurai woman will painstakingly pine for the hero, whose redeeming quality in general is his brilliant ability to use cuss words even if he were dandling a new-born baby in his arms. Talking of language, it may seem tricky as Madurai slang is thought to be unique and flavoursome. But it can be realistically captured by the smart expedience of letting the character speak with the Meenakshi Amman temple shown in the background. This establishes, with an irrefutable logic, that as the scene happens in Madurai, the lingo cannot be anything else. If the character is shown to be talking inside a cotton mill, then you can deduce the language to be Coimbatore slang. Another important aspect to Madurai is that you can go back and forth in time. Suppose a filmmaker wants to set his story in Madurai of the 70s or the 60s, all he has to do is to dress the hero and heroine in clothes that even clowns won’t touch these days, and remove the details of today from the scene (that is not show the calendar and the ubiquitous cars and bikes). Voila, you have Madurai of the 60s in pristine detail (now you know why Subramaniapuram was set in the Madurai of the 80s). Actually, a filmmaker can even make bold to set the movie in Madurai of 2050, provided he can fore-think up the attires and accessories. He needn’t worry about Madurai much, at least at the sociological level that our movies operate, and the temple tower would still suffice. As a person who hails from Madurai and as someone who has spent a better part of his life there, I am increasingly asked what it is like in reality. Well, it is an unpretentious town that boasts of a few lakhs of unpretentious men and women and a totem temple tower that could be seen from anywhere. Madurai may be situated at a convenient 500kms away from Chennai — an easy overnight journey in train. In reality, except one train, all the trains from here reach Madurai at an unearthly hour, which is acceptable only if the avowed idea is to help the auto-drivers there to charge double fare. Air travel to Madurai is worse. The aerodrome there is located so far away from the main town that you will experience jet lag and different time zone difference merely shuttling between. Perhaps it is these travel worries that compel our filmmakers to get up Madurai on the AVM floors. I don’t blame them, actually. For Madurai is less a place, more a state of mind, which is a combination of contradictions ---- tall, hard, dark, colourful, enigmatic, expressive, kind, threatening, religious, spooky. In other words, a temple tower. (An old column written for my publication)

This may be about algae or Namitha

K Balakumar — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:56:11 +0000

Algae. I can bet my loan amount that you have come across this word before. I can also bet my unpaid loan amount that you cannot explain now what it is. Neither can I. So that is why I looked into the dictionary when my daughter wanted to prepare a 'project' on it.A 'project' work, you will know if you have a young school-going son or daughter, is the work that teachers give for the already tired parents to feel even more exhausted while the children get around to enjoy Pogo or Cartoon Network lounging on the settee. The 'project work' has as much connection with education as T Rajendhar has with subtle acting. In fact, I suspect teachers don't even bother to look up the projects when they are submitted. They ask them to be submitted only because they can then give the topic for the next assignment, which can be about a humble insect (whose name should be both unpronounceable and unspellable) or about the mighty details about the generation of computers before they were invented or on the living conditions in outer Mongolia or waterways in Eastern Timbuktu. One school of thought has it that topics for projects are chosen on their incomprehensibility and improbability. Adherents to another school of thought have it that it depends on what mood a teacher is in. If the master were in a particularly scornful frame of mind, the project work would be on the sociological context of those who lived during the Harappan culture. A teacher on a humorous and easy occasion will make you to prepare a chart on Chinese martial arts. Teachers, I strongly feel, invented the idea of 'project' by way of nuanced but strong revenge on parents. But if you ever had to mind a few of the brats together, you will also agree that no vengeful action is strong enough. Anyway, back to algae. The dictionary helpfully explained them to be 'primitive chlorophyll-containing mainly aquatic eukaryotic organisms lacking true stems and roots and leaves'. This is the problem with dictionaries: You reach for them when you don't know the meaning of a word, and they in turn will throw back at you several words which you can never ever hope to comprehend. Now to go with algae, I had to find the meaning of 'primitive' and 'eukaryotic' and also figure out what this 'lacking true stem' meant and what contains chlorophyll. First I set out hopefully for eukaryotic. The dictionary again was unambiguous: 'Having cells with 'good' or membrane-bound nuclei'. This was proving to be like those unending links of MLM chain leading to nowhere actually. Figuring out that there was no way on this earth that the dictionary was going to help me find the meanings, I tried the ultimate vehicle for confusion: Google. The moment I typed algae, it threw up 13,400,000 references (in .08 seconds). If I had to go through each one of those web pages, the 'project' could logically be ready when my daughter sets out to receive her college degree. So for convenience sake, I clicked on the first available link page. And this is what it said. 'Algae are photosynthetic organisms that occur in most habitats. Algae vary from small and single-celled to complex multicellular species, such as the Giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. Algae have conventionally been regarded as simple plants within the study of botany. All are Eukaryota, though Chromophyta have Bacterial characteristics and some authorities consider them all to be Protists, however this view is now considered to be outdated.' I am more than sure that you skipped a few lines from the above quote. I certainly did. I just cut and pasted it here, and for all I care the last few lines may be talking of Namitha rather than algae. With computers all knowledge is just 'ctrl a + ctrl c + ctrl v'. But nobody notices as everyone merely ctrl a+ctrl c+ctrl v ideas. Actually this gives me an idea: Why don't I affix the photo of Namitha for the project work on algae? The teacher wouldn't notice it. The daughter wouldn't read it. The only problem is that if somebody ever googles for Namitha, he may get a link to algae, which considering the way she acts is not such a bad thing. (Yet another of my column written for my publication some months ago)

A school of thought

K Balakumar — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:24:40 +0000

Whenever there is a stressful and ticklish situation to be dealt with, I always put myself in my father’s shoes (size 9) and imagine how he would have gone about it. For, my father had an interesting and tactical approach, in that whenever there was a problem or issue confronting him, his strategy was simple: He chose not to tackle it. By this simple methodology he was able to smartly solve very many problems, including the most stressful one of bringing up children, which in his case was my brother and I. This was also the comfortable working pattern of most parents till one cataclysmic moment in history when all of them took a wrong turn and decided to actively involve themselves in rearing their offspring, especially in matters relating to their school and college education. Considering the situation the world is in today, this must rank as the single biggest blunder of mankind after the invention of 24-hour news channels and employing the likes of Barkha Dutt in them. I strongly suspect that parents of that era astutely adapted their working style from the functioning of the government. Remember how the Punjab problem was solved? Terrorists were demanding a separate Khalistan, and to drive home their idea they were killing people by the dozens almost on an hourly basis. But the government of the day was stubbornly steadfast and equal to the occasion as it went about its essential business of doing not much of anything. It is also quite possible that the government was so carefully unconcerned that it might not have even known that Punjab was festering. Eventually it came to a situation where the impassioned terrorists were simply bored with their chore that they decided to do something else which at least had a chance of eliciting response from others. It is a plan that might as well work in Kashmir if only the authorities don’t botch it up by their overzealousness of trying to reason out with the ultras or holding peace-talks with them. If the government is faced with the question, ‘what about Kashmir issue?’ its response has to be, ‘yes, what about Kashmir? And while we are at it, where is Kashmir?’ This simple expedience will ensure that the troublemakers will shift to a place where the authorities at least know which part is where. Getting back to bringing up children, the situation today is such that school and college education fear parents more than it possibly can the students actually undergoing them. But it wasn’t the case back then, when parents’ lifelong commitment for the education of their progeny started and ended with enrolling them in some kindergarten school. After that it was the bounden duty of the children to ensure for themselves quality education. If they didn’t, too bad. If they did, not bad. But either way, parents didn’t notice. For, it is quite conceivable that some of the parents hardly ever noticed that they had children in the first place. That alone can possibly explain why some of them ended up having brood whose number qualified for a special delimitation exercise and earmarking of a separate electoral constituency for them. Parents chose the school for their child to be enrolled in after extensive and rigorous research done by way of walking down the nearby street and looking for a building with the signboard ‘school’. This was such a taxing exercise that parents were sapped of all their energy for the next 12 to 15 years and hence couldn’t make any more meaningful participation in their children’s education. Parents and teachers meetings happened regularly whenever the duo ran into each other in the nearby market. During those moments, both the parent and teacher struck to utmost decency and etiquette by not discussing about the life and things concerning a third person who was not around ----- namely, the child/student concerned. Whenever a child didn’t go to school for a few days at a stretch, parents will niftily pick out that the child is either unwell or the school is closed for summer vacation, in which case the examinations must have been over and it is time for holidays. Talking of holidays, parents also brought a even more wonderful laissez faire plan when dealing with summer vacation plans for their children: Since holidays were anyway fun for children, why dilute that by taking them to distant lands under the guise of vacation trips, was their essential approach. This worked wonders in limiting travel-related accidents to a minimum. This also kept at bay the emergence of new airline companies, thereby there were fewer complaints on flight delays and in-flight food, which like today, was insufferable then too. Since every one was busy having fun and being happy doing practically nothing, history books said, peace reigned. And then, summer camps came into being. As history books would not say this, we will say: History of humankind has been altered forever. Then there were colleges. College education, parents then understood, was very important in moulding a person’s life. It was not something that could not be treated casually. This meant parents had to remain even more hands-off than they did with school education. So parents had even lesser clue in which college and in which stream their wards were in. But diligent parents kept track off what their son or daughter was studying by noticing what they were carrying to college: If it was a steth and a hideous coat, it must be for medical. A T-Square and khaki uniform meant that an engineer or bus conductor was in the making. A single notebook and a casual demeanour was all it took for education in the science and literature groups. The one great advantage of being in science and literature streams was that the students did not have to pay any attention to what was being taught as the subjects hardly had any relevance to real living. Fortunately for them they could all be accommodated in an organisation that continues to have no connection with reality and human condition: Government. Governments have remained doing what they have been doing all along, which is pretty much nothing. So why did the parents change from pro-active nothingness to no purpose activeness? I blame the summer camps. (My weekly column for the publication)

Internet is about punching in emoticons and !!!!

K Balakumar — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:52:48 +0000

The best thing about all technological developments at the consumer level is that it is constantly evolving, which is to simply say that all the products available in the market right now are all tremendously outdated and we are fools to invest our money and intelligence on them. The irrefutable rule of the market is: If a product is available then it has to be obsolete.

Take for instance something called Pager, which was introduced to us as cutting edge technology, a sterling breakthrough in communication that was to deliver to us 21st century in 20th century itself. So we morons all went out and shelled wads and wads of rupees acquiring that little thingie which we were all sure would stand us in good stead for the rest of our lives. And now, don’t even try to remind us what happened after that. All of us who bought them are now trying to create a picture that we never owned them in the first place. The little thing is now probably tucked in some forlorn corner in our closet, sharing space with those Discmans, Polaroid cameras and VCRs, all that were once shining symbols of our sharp intelligence and refined taste but today reduced to being simple scars of our stupidity. We shudder the thought that we once owned them with unlimited pride. Technology, as we agreed, keeps proving what we essentially are: Fools of the highest order.

But don’t lose heart and stop reading the column further (This does not apply to all those not reading this piece. They have to lose heart). The smart thing is to be ahead of the technological curve. For this, we have to figure out what this damn ‘technological curve’ is. It is quite simply one of the usages that tired journalists resort to whenever they want to show off some verbal hi-jinks. The same sentence will read all right even without the term ‘technological curve’: ‘The smart thing is to be ahead.’ See, I told you nah?

But now we have to tackle this ‘verbal hi-jinks’ and understand what the hell it tries to mean. Remember the first principles: Remove the words that don’t make any meaning. So the sentence will make perfect sense even when it is read: It is quite simply one of the usages that tired journalists resort to whenever they want to show off.

This is also the roughly the same idea that make up much of modern technology: All that is difficult and impossible to figure out is not worth figuring out in the first place.

Let’s take internet for example. Internet, as we all know, is that branch of technology that has become such a rage across the world as because it allows for the usage of symbols and keys that we wouldn’t otherwise have known why they were featured on the keyboard.

Till internet came about nobody in the world would have felt the need to use ‘@’. Nobody knew what it was and how it was pronounced. And then internet came and gave a new life to ‘@’. Now, if you take out ‘@’ from the keyboard the entire internet industry will come crashing down. This is the power of technology!

Ditto with other hideous hieroglyphics (don’t worry, the last two words don’t make much sense and just ignore them) like #, ^ and * . Now, not only we use #, ^ and * with authoritative gusto, but whenever we feel that our vocabulary needs enhancement we delve into the rich panoply of emoticons that come handily attached with any application for writing.

Emoticons, if you don’t know, are the leering faces not dissimilar to the ones painted garishly on pumpkins that the superstitious use to ward off the evil eye in these parts. Somebody seems to have photocopied those pumpkin faces and put out on the internet. Naturally such things become an instant hit on the Web.

If you are happy and for some reason want to announce to your friends that you are happy, you should not just tell that you are happy. On the internet, the written rule to write such sentences is: hey guys, I am feeling happy () !!!! (Internet people, needless to say, use lots of exclamation marks. Shakespeare in his entire career perhaps used 33 exclamation marks in today. Today that it is roughly the supply to compile a single paragraph on an email).

And your friends will know exactly how to decipher your message: They will disregard all the words, and from the emoticon, which infuses the sentence with all the meaning and grammar, will comprehend that you are indeed happy. But if you had written: hey guys, ‘I am feeling happy () !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,’ your friends will understand that you are actually unhappy. As you can say, it is a strict no-no to say anything directly on the internet.

Let me amplify with another example: If you say ‘Barkha Dutt is a moron’ and attach an emoticon to it, like this: ‘Barkha Dutt is a moron ()’, all the world will understand that Barkha Dutt is a moron but you are just saying that in jest without any malice. By this way you escape being slapped with a defamation suit, which is a distinct possibility if you had just said ‘Barkah Dutt is a moron’ without the pithy presence of the wide and senseless smile that this () mug stands for.

'http://' was another of internet’s fixation not long ago. What those '://' stood for is anybody’s guess. Probably they were the semiotic substitute for an emoticon. You never know. Anyway, now nobody knows where it has gone. Probably it has taken an VRS or something similar.

If you are still wondering whether we will get to the point of this article, which is to understand technology, well, we will: In the new upgraded version of Crank’s Corner, which shall be named Crank’s Corner Plus.

If you had understood technology by now, which is all about introducing the same product in seemingly new versions, what you will find next week is an announcement for Crank's Corner Supreme Plus.

So see you next week () !!!!@#!!!!!!!!!!! (Lol). (This is the column I wrote for my publication this week).

For 100% sugar-free, fat-free reading

K Balakumar — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:50:12 +0000

As a newspaper man, who is believed to be at the cutting edge of news flow (this is the trade euphemism for watching a lot of TV and browsing the internet), the reports that intrigue me are the ones relating to some serious scientific conclusions apparently based on every-day phenomena. Usually, these findings are sourced to some obscure lab in, say, remote Germany (Thermostatic, Rheumatic and Electroplating Centre of Study and Sleep, Nordeg Gmbh,) or a nondescript varsity with a long-winding name in interior America (The Montana Division for Excellence in Automated Organic Science and Applied Brakes). The findings can be invariably classified into two categories: 1.Idiotic 2.Stupid. ‘Prevalence of TB linked to yawning before sleeping’. ‘Pornography watching leads to retinal damage’. ‘Fun gene at the core of party culture’ It is a moot point as to whether there are any sustained readership (excepting, of course, aimless columnists) to such reports. Perhaps, some scientist can do a research on this and come out with a story that would typically read ‘Scientific reports provide a cure for insomnia’. Anyway, I don’t know why we newspapers continue to publish them in all seriousness. The one possible reason could be that if we, journalists, are to fill the pages on our own, it would be worse. Recently, while waiting at a barber’s shop, I chanced to read a report that said that obese persons are, in general, happier than their lean counterparts. But it does not tally with what we encounter daily. There is a mad desperation for people to look thin that just stops short of actually disappearing. Being slim is such a status symbol that people are willing to part with their right hands to get that mean look. The rules of life is simple: If you look emaciated as if you are auditioning for the part of the Somalian refugee then you are deemed stylish and beautiful. Take someone like Shilpa Shetty. In days of yore, the Shetty gal could have passed for a skeleton model in the biology class. She in fact has an uncannily striking resemblance to the rope that magicians use in the Great Indian rope trick. Yet, today she epitomises what stands for chic elegance. Kareena Kapoor is another dame who is into this slim-is-style set. It is only a matter of time before Kareena vaporizes and enters gaseous state without any tangible physical property. But who decided that thin is healthy and beautiful? Not me, because when we were growing up the fad was to grow round and believe that was healthy. Those were the days of bell-bottoms, about which plenty has been written in these columns. Yes, we needed plenty of flesh to fill those cavernous pants. Patently, the word ‘obesity’ had not been invented then, and anyone with a sumo wrestler’s girth and a cheek chubbier than today’s thighs was a picture of pink health. Any person, with a body structure of a reedy actress, would have been urgently wheeled into the ICU for emergency treatment. To put things in perspective, Sivaji Ganesan, who wore his pants well near the chest (if the fly was open, you could conduct a bypass surgery), was the totem of handsomeness. And Savithri, who looked like Michelin Man in drag, was seen to be oozing glamour and glitz. Well, those were the days! It was mandatory then to pack in as much fat as possible into one’s daily diet. This was managed by the simple strategy of adding milk solution to every liquid quaffed or providing an oil and ghee base to any solid ingested. So this meant drinking coffee ----- recipe: 99.999 parts of milk to .001 parts of decoction. The morning breakfast comprised idlis, watered in thick oil, and eaten with podis liberally smeared with ghee. If it were dosai, it better be the buttered variety. Poori, pongal...you name it everything was swimming in litres and gallons of oil and butter We consumed every morning roughly the life-time calorie intake of today’s youth. Today’s Gen would even dread to think about those delicacies for fear of putting on weight But we couldn’t care less, we were chasing the ultimate in good health: Literally, a rounded personality. And suddenly the bubble burst, and fat was literally on fire. Looking like a newly-spindled yarn became hip. Talking of hip, it itself had to be no thicker than yesteryear wrists. Why this change? Who brought about it? It must have been the researchers and lab scientists who had been bored to death just gathering fat and putting out occasional report that attracted the attention of none. Then, out of the blue, they put out this: ‘Obese persons don’t have the marriage gene’. This finding was based on the ineluctable scientific understanding that to get married one has to be single, while being obese amounted to being double. So thin is indeed in the thick of it, and everyone has chosen to chase the chimera of lissomeness. It has now come to the stage where people have begun to look at the calorie count even if they are just buying, say, lottery tickets. The natural flip side is anything and everything is peddled off as being fat-free or cholesterol-clear. The other day, I came across in a departmental store shelf fat-less coconut oil. By my understanding, both coconut and oil, are basically products that abound in fat and cholesterol. Unless they are selling water in the name of coconut oil, there was no way it was going to be fat-free. But there were people queueing up to buy that. The moral of the story is pretty simple: People are suckers for fads. So for all those fitness-fanatics and calorie-counters, here it goes: This column is made of organically-grown English, fat-free vowels and sugar-free consonants. No artificial colouring or preservative have been used. If you are still not convinced, you can check with the Illinois Institute of Vacuum Research and Void Studies, whose recent studies have unequivocally showed that ‘Crank’s Corner reading linked to reduction of fat in the brain’. (A column written long time ago for my publication)

Mother tongues and other tongues

K Balakumar — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:45:43 +0000

There are two ways by which a person can be deemed to have become old. 1) Physical ailments, by which one means diseases and afflictions that require consultation with experts well versed in the nuanced art of referring patients to every test that medical science has known since the caveman time. 2) Cribbing about the language that is in currency. The second-named qualification is the unmistakable touchstone of elderliness. Just walk up to any person and casually bring up the subject of modern-day language. This will immediately prove you are not only old but also dorky enough to broach an obscure topic to total strangers at public places. But if the person you approached lapses into an impassioned lecture about how language standards are plummeting, then you can be sure you are not only talking to an old person but can be equally certain you cannot get in two sentences edgewise for the next two hours. For, age makes people forget that the language has something called a full stop. Anyway, in general, old people seem to be less worried about their own sons and daughters, and more concerned about the state of English. You may think this to be a stupid attitude, but if you have a son or daughter you will eventually come to the conclusion that getting worked up over language is more worthwhile and a far better practical proposition. The quality of language in vogue in a society is inversely proportional to the age of its elders. This is what Einstein sought to explain (E = mc2, where E unquestionably stands for English and mc2 means that the language situation is bad enough to include numerals atop letters and cannot be got right in a simple word processing application) before he was laid low by a terminal case of bad hair day and hence he postulated other theories, which have ensured succession of students generation stayed away not only from language classes but also from physics lectures. The point is, for a country that is said to have around over two thousand languages and dialects, India seems to be unduly worried about the health of English. Have you wondered why? Did this thought ever cross your mind? I am sure it would not have, because you have better things to do in life. But deep down entrenched in every Indian’s mind is the desire to speak English in a manner that can only be termed stupid, because even the Brits no longer converse like that. So the issue is how to master English? The best way is to start early, when I say early I mean early that is earlier than your birth. Before your birth, you start the process of learning English by acquiring a dad and mom who preferably are Brits. If in case this is not possible as you are unable to travel to Britain before your birth due to passport and visa issues, you are better off by being born into a regular Tamil family, which, all records confirm, speaks more English than that is technically possibly for the Brits and Americans put together. The other important aspect of learning English is its grammar, which, as you can see, confuses everyone as to whether it has to be spelled grammar or does it involve an ‘e’ somewhere. Most people don’t get anywhere near grammar simply because they are not sure of its spelling in the first place. But don’t let the fear of grammar come in your way of sounding stupid speaking an alien language that does not belong here. Shakespeare did not need grammar to pen his works. So what makes you to think that you have to use it? Just consider the following: ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.’ These are the immortal lines from Shakespeare would doubtless underscore his adroitness in not at all bringing grammar into play anywhere near his sentences. Shakespeare also does not seem to be unduly bothered by the fact that the words he employed did not belong to any language at all. This is the hallmark of any true genius. But the problem is if you were to speak or write like this, you will be branded a fumbling fool. So before embarking on this particular language trip take a detour to the local Registrar’s Office and get your name changed by a deed poll to Shakespeare. Another impediment to language development is vocabulary. The best experts in the field suggest that knowledge to a large set of words makes it perfectly possible to make a simple sentence to sound as if it were written by Shakespeare and Einstein in conjunction. It is plain discombobulation. I could have said ‘it is plain confusion’, but since I had a fleeting acquaintance with the word ‘discombobulation’ I am compelled to discombobulate you rather than just confuse you. One of the longest words in English language is said to be floccinoccininihilipilification, a word that can never be spelled correctly or used in a proper sentence. So if this is the fate of the most famous word in the language just imagine what it would be for lesser companions of floccinoccininihilipilification? Another case in point is Ravi Shastri. He proves on a daily basis you need no language or vocabulary but still can earn in lakhs and lakhs. He owns a language that comprises just five sentences ‘it sped like a tracer bullet’, ‘when he hits, they stay hit’, ‘it’s all getting down to the wire’, ‘he has taken him to the cleaners’, ‘they have to take early wickets (or score early runs) to remain in the game’. If you take out grammar and vocabulary, what’s left of the language? Well, punctuation, largely defined as random symbols that are put to use just avoid the monotony to seeing never-ending stream of words. Comma is a good example. You see them in every sentence, but how do you use them, especially when speaking? The rule of any language is: what is true for speaking is equally for speaking. Since you can’t incorporate punctuations in your tongue, they have to go unrepresented in writing too, which is why this sentence will not end with a period, which then again, is what the Americans, for reasons best known to them, call a full stop which is represented in symbol as .

Take a vacation to work

K Balakumar — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:35:17 +0000

I am just back from vacation, which obviously means I have put in more effort and expended more energy than I would ever in my daily grind. And after several holiday outings over the last few years, the one conclusion that I am forced to come is: Office work is something you need to recover between the rigours of vacation and other assorted trips of imagined fun. Vacations can turn out to be the pleasant experience they are deemed to be provided you decide to holiday in your own home after dispatching your family members to some distant place. This is a strategy that is increasingly finding favour among experienced holidayers who have seen it all and done it all. Family members, by this I mean children, are to vacations what elections are to democracy --- you may think they are the quintessence, but if you put your mind into them you will figure out that more harm than good has come out of them. Children seem to have been created by God to ensure that you don’t fall in love with holiday jaunts. In the universe, there are two types of children: 1) Those who don’t like to do what their parents want them to 2) Those who positively detest what their parents want them to. And thanks to children, parents now appreciate the value of staying in office for long hours. This is the typical diary of what happens on holiday trips to say a hill station, say Ooty Day of Departure: Handle comes off the suitcase. Probably due to the weight of the unpeeled airline tags you retain to showoff that you are a frequent flier. Make urgent and ungainly repairs to the handle. Cab arrives late. Driver in a permanent state of surly moroseness. Space for the bags is inadequate (First axiom of travel: Luggage space is never adequate). Child throws a tantrum over something. Forget the emergency medical kit at home. Fret over whether you closed the main door of the house properly. 1^st Day of Vacation: Need a painkiller to subside the splitting headache due to the jerky journey. But no emergency medicine at hand. (Second axiom of travel: The first and the foremost thing you need on a vacation trip is the one you forgot to bring along). Hotel room rent is exorbitant. Apparently they charge for the weather outside too. Child throws a tantrum over something. Driver acts funny and mutters many incomprehensible words. You wax eloquent over the mist engulfing even the hotel room. Missus disabuses you of your imagination and points to the billowing mosquito repellant that had caused all the smoky halo. Head to the nearest tourist spot. Find roughly one lakh fellow holidayers seeking the same view and experience. Take the first snap in the camera. Its battery runs out. (Third axiom of travel: You need roughly 50,000 batteries to last a single vacation trip). Child is unhappy over something and throws a tantrum. You buy the child a yoyo to keep it in good humour. (Fourth axiom of travel: You may be at Niagara or on the foothills of Himalayas or in the ineteriors of Amazon forests with breathtaking beauty all around. But your children would develop an unquenchable urge to own a hideous balloon or soapy bubble-producing plastic contraption. And there will be a seller for that nearby). The yoyo comes unstuck after exactly sixteen-and-a-half seconds of active life. Come back to hotel. Watch TV in the room. Criticise all the programmes to be trashy. Go to sleep with the promise to wake up early and catch in all the fun of the place. 2^nd Day of Vacation: Wake up late. Feel groggy. Order coffee on room service. Feel bad even more. (Fifth axiom of travel: Holiday-spot hotels employ the worst coffee-brewers in the entire world). Child wakes up throwing a tantrum. Driver throws a tantrum after enduring a cold night in the vehicle. Join the crores of revellers at the botanical garden. There are as many visitors as there are as many blades of grass. Every one thinks that he or she is having fun while others are just going through the routine. Every one takes photograph of everything and everyone. There is a battery crisis in the world. Child wants to eat the dubious-looking baked corn and groundnut. This was the child that refused to touch the milk and cereals at the breakfast table. Reason? It said the tablecloth was stained. Child throws the corn and peanut after one bite. Cue for tantrum. You buy it a plastic helicopter. Phoot: Sound of the broken toy. Buy yourself a monkey cap. Look positively stupid. Child forgets the Rayban coolers you gave her to pose for a photograph. Search frantically for it. Miss the next leg of the scheduled programme. @#§Fy##%%: Your state of mind. (Sixth axiom of travel: You will lose at least one of your favourite and costly possessions on every holiday trip). Come back to hotel. Watch TV. Criticise. Promise yourself to enjoy the next day in a better manner. Child throws a tantrum just in case. 3^rd Day of Vacation: Wake up late. Find out your missus had ordered coffee as she was nursing a headache. After the coffee, you also have a headache and you make a nice pair. No hot water on tap. (Seventh axiom of travel: Hot water will play truant at least on one day when you are in a hill station. Corollary: The AC will conk off if you are in a seaside resort). You want to skip breakfast. Child wants to eat the breakfast it flatly refused to the previous day. Driver looks waspish. Go to rose garden. Roses there are named on the indubitable botanical principle that common people know nothing about botany and anything can pass muster with them. ‘Schwap’ is one of the rose varieties. Make what you can out of that. Slipper gives way. Or your pant gets torn. Or something similar happens so that you never get to enjoy the promised fun. Child throws a tantrum perhaps for nothing better to do. Get fleeced by all the local vendors. (Eighth axiom of travel: All the most cheating and shady traders are headquartered in the holiday spot you are vacationing). Eat at a trashy hotel that charges a premium for trashiness. You understand that the wise men were right when they said: Travel broadens the wallet. Cash runs out. The ATMs nearby are out of service. They inevitably are. They have a whacky sense of humour. Or perhaps, they are all throwing a tantrum, as tantrums are known to be the most infectious things on earth. Child is bored throwing tantrums. It is sulking. Driver is fuming. Return to hotel. Room service takes roughly 20,000 hours to deliver the humble curd rice you ordered. You puke after dinner. Missus has run out of patience and perseverance. Sleep is the sole need of hour. Child is all buoyant and wants to play with you. (Ninth axiom of travel: Nothing works according to plan. Especially if you are the one doing the planning). 4^th Day of Vacation: Coffee-tantrums-batteries-more tantrums-fleecing-poor food-crowds-headache-exchange of words with driver over fare-broken handle of suitcase. It all passes in a blur. Nothing really matters. You are ready to kiss the doormat in relief on your arrival back home. After several days: You start thinking of vacation to some other place. (10^th axiom of travel: You are never wiser for the experience). (My weekly column)

What you read is not what you read

K Balakumar — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:49:40 +0000

Just imagine what would have happened if there had not been this economic crisis. Possibly newspapers would have had to come out with blank pages as there seems to be nothing else on them except reports of doom and gloom. But this is not the time for levity as the problem on hand is pretty serious. Especially for me as I have to think of an imaginative and interesting ‘intro’ so that I can ease you into the subject matter of this column this week, which is: Investing in house and real estate sector. Every crisis, the experts say, is an opportunity for growth. This is true especially of the experts as they are desperately doling out advice and making money for themselves. Never mind the fact that these very same experts had predicted the Sensex to touch the 25,000-points mark. Anyway, the scenario, they point out, is good to invest in a house or land as the prices are falling. Just a year ago, a new house in a place like Chennai was available, say, for a price roughly amounting to the fiscal deficit of a small African nation. Now the value of the same property is said to have come down by 50%, based on the simple and extremely logical formula ----- the fiscal deficit of the said African nation has doubled in the same time. The other question that follows is: How does one check whether one has enough funds to park in a property? Don’t even bother to check; the experts are unanimous in one thing: No matter how much money one has, it is never going to be adequate for a property transaction. Useful tip: There are only two kinds of properties available in the market. 1. Affordable. 2.Not affordable. By definition, affordable properties are the ones set in undesirable neighbourhoods that one would not want to buy. Non-affordable ones are the opposite: Something which one would want to buy but never can. Only Bill Gates, and possibly Sultan of Brunei, gets to live in the house he desires. Ergo: Loans. Loans are conveniently tailored handy instruments of finance that let you borrow in bulk from banks and repay in easy instalments. This is what the banks say. But don’t believe the bankers; nice chaps that they are, they are always joking. Banks will give you money only if they are convinced about your, what they term as, repaying capacity. In pure theoretical term this means banks will lend you money only if had lots and lots of money. In practical terms, it means that since you had approached the bank as you had little money, repaying capacity is something that is to be sincerely arrived at by fudging the papers and documents with the aid of the helpful bank representative and his bosses. Useful tip: Never approach a bank for a loan unless you have 1,70,000 copies (this is a rough estimate and it varies from banks to banks. With some banks it is 1,80,000) of your passport-size photographs with signature scrawled across in such a manner that none of your facial features are ever possibly evident. Most of the loan amount is taken up for the photo printing charges. Industry trivia: Hindustan Photo Films in Udhagamandalam is on the verge of closure as all its stock has been utilized to meet the needs of the loanees. Useful tip II: Also, get ready all kinds of certificates and papers that you have accumulated since your birth. This may include death certificates too. Banks need something to fill their coffers with, as apparently all the cash that they have are used to pay the salaries of their staff. SLR, the statutory liquidity ratio that banks are required to maintain at all time, is deduced from the figure that banks need to pay salaries to their staff for lifetime. Once you arrive at the amount that the banks are ready to provide, you sit and discuss with the ever-helpful loan officer the rate of interest for the loan. The monthly repayment amount is fixed based on either floating or fixed rates. As a common person you will be tempted to ask which of the two is the better option. Both the plans have pluses, especially for the bank to suck more money from you. The rates are fixed so as to ensure that your liability remains the same whichever month you check into your loan account status. Floating rate is a variable component decided by market forces, otherwise known as banker’s fancy. If the apex bank chief gets on the right side of the bed, he may be inclined to cut the rates. But you are doomed and your personal finances go for a toss if he has a fight with his spouse on the way to office. The fixed rate of interest, is advised for those customers who don’t want to live on the vagary as decided by the mercy of apex bank chief’s spouse. Banks collect their monthly dues either through an ECS transaction or post-dated cheques. The latter involves signing that will decidedly leave you with a terminal tennis elbow. The one advantage of having a housing loan is that your income tax burden will definitely come down. What you save by not paying the Finance Minister as income tax, you pay the Finance Minister in the form of high rates on your loan. This is essential model on which market economics works. The smarter among you by now would have realised that this week’s column is nearing its end, but there is still no sign of the previously promised ideas on investing in real estate and housing properties. Useful tip: Never believe what the blurb or the brochure says. This is true for any industry. Real estate, banking and Crank’s Corner. For more tips, write in to: balakumarkb@gmail.com, with a trillion copies of your photos, each duly signed along with your kindergarten mark-list. This will stand you in good stead when you go for a loan. (A reprise of a column written for my publication some time back)

Constitutional confusions

K Balakumar — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:57:21 +0000

In the coming days, as a new government is set to be in place, you are bound to be swamped by words and descriptions that are sure to leave you confused as you have so far followed only the IPL with any amount of seriousness. So when you turn up for the election verdict you will be as clueless as the anchors, who think they are explaining things to you detail. So rather than let them take over, here we offer a careful primer on all things political and constitutional, which we hope will be equally befuddling. When you feel thoroughly confused and confounded after watching all the election discussions on the telly, remember you got the first flavour of it here. The Constitution: It is a multi-page tome that apparently is the user-manual of the country and is believed to contain all its warranty certificates. But there is no way to tell, as there is perhaps none in this world who has read such a book in toto and still retains his or her sanity. However, there are many who manage to give off the impression that they have pored over the entire text of the book. The Constitution of India itself mandates that you stay at least 10 kms away from these ‘experts’, who have become experts by virtue of wearing thick glasses and talking in sentences in which the minimum distance between two successive full stops is 2 kms or 4 kms (whichever is more). These experts will come out of the woodwork in time to confuse the public further during election verdicts. The founding fathers have thoughtfully prepared the Constitution to be bulky so that it can double up as a handy pillow when feeling sleepy, an eventuality that is inevitable to any of its readers by the second word of the third paragraph on the first page. The Constitution also contains all the inviolable laws and sacrosanct rules that cannot be changed or tampered with in any manner except by inviolable laws and sacrosanct rules sanctioned by the Constitution itself. The Constitution, it should be said, is full of such definitions and explanations. The founding fathers had a legitimate reason for framing the Constitution in the manner they did: They knew for sure that nobody would want to read the Constitution. If the founding fathers had actually wanted people to read the book they would have put a nubile girl’s catchy photo on the cover, a strategy that ensured James Hadley Chase books became cult classics for teenagers across generations. The first right that the Constitution has enshrined in its hallowed pages is the inalienable freedom to use uppercase while writing ‘Constitution’ even in the middle of a sentence. The second guarantee, as can be guessed, could be about freedom of expression to allow for, say, ‘Article 19’ to be written as ‘Art 19’ so as to cover up the lacunae of no artistic merit anywhere in the book. President: He or she is the person who occupies a royal, rambling building, which has been built and maintained using several crores of rupees to underscore the most vital aspect of democracy, which is public money can be wasted in any number of ways as long as people can be kept bored by the television channels. The Constitution with so many clauses and edicts that have been thoughtfully numbered in detail sets the basis for the President to perform the onerous duty of solving Sudoku puzzles. For, it beats the hell out of our imagination to figure out as to how the President can manage to spend the entirety of the six-year tenure without the Sudoku puzzles. The other important Constitutional duty the President is obliged to perform is to bravely travel alone in stretch limousines large enough to be a constituency in itself. The President is also solemnly bound to attend the most boring of functions that are apparently thought up just to remind the rest of the nation that it (nation) has a President too. Vice-President: This post comes in two flavours: Vice President and Vice-President. The country’s luckiest person gets to occupy this post. And occupation of seat is the prime and only duty of the Vice-President. Apparently, the post of Vice-President was thought up back in the times when the economy was booming. But since then it has been floundering, and the Vice-President has stayed ‘benched’ till now. It is not to be churlishly thought that the Vice-President serves no actual human purpose. The Vice-President keeps the linguist and other drifters of society busy by making them wonder whether Vice-President or Vice President is the right way to describe his unmistakable role in the hierarchy of the government. The flipside of this post is to remain serious without yawning even once right through the Rajya Sabha session. As they say, no pain, no gain. Hung Parliament: It is a term that comes into play whenever no single party gets the mandate to spoil on its own the affairs of the nation. On such occasions, the largest party takes the help of likeminded parties, which usually is every other party in the fray. Hung Parliament, it should be said, is only an euphemism and Parliament has no power to help hang (to dry) even a wet cloth leave alone a hardened terrorist like Afzal Guru. Some constitutional experts labour to point out the fallacy in some quarters to equate the post of Vice President (or Vice-President) with the status of Afzal Guru as both seem to be esteemed guests of government. Constitutional experts, adjusting their heavy glass frames (they are deemed experts just because they wear thick spectacles), say something that beats the heck out of our comprehension. But suffice to say, the situation must be grave so we take back any reference linking Afzal Guru to posts of sinecural value. The days of hung parliament are certainly numbered as all parties work themselves into the majority that forms the government. Alliances: The dictionary shows ‘bonds’ as a possible synonym for alliances. Since bonds are about money, alliances are only about money, except the fact we wouldn’t say that in print and incur the wrath of politicians. Both the UPA and the NDA have the word ‘alliance’ in their nomenclature. And since ‘alliance’ is common to both, the parties that comprise the alliance can also be common to both. Psephologists: The version of the word processor that I use knows no psephologist as it underlines in dark red and throws up the alternative ‘psychologist’. This clearly suggests that psephologists are still to get elected into even layman dictionaries. And these are the high priests who sit on judgement over election patterns and trends of an entire nation. Psephologists are those people who pass off for being intelligent and important just because their job is described by a word that is difficult to spell and pronounce. Democracy: Nothing to do with people, but is helpful for politicians and TV anchors to use in their talks. You can't find actual people using it. The redeeming feature of democracy is: Anything goes. And that includes this article.

Sticking to tradition and Preity

K Balakumar — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:25:50 +0000

To begin by saying the IPL has truly revolutionised cricket is very easy. For, every other newspaper article on the IPL has begun by saying just that. Even scorecards say this and then only begin to list out the number of runs scored and wickets taken, probably by the sponsors as sixers and wickets come attached with their name tags. Anyway, cricket is indeed revolutionised if you manage to expand the idea of cricket revolution to include some increase in Ravi Shastri’s vocabulary. Now there is decidedly more ammunition to his verbal arsenal, and it involves dramatic adjectives like ‘DLF’, ‘Citi’. As the IPL’s sponsors’ list gets bigger, Ravi Shastri’s language is only going to become bigger. And cricket can be deemed to be moving in the right direction when Shastri is stopped from unleashing his ‘went like a tracer bullet’ stuff. The IPL is also the fitting answer to all those carping critics who never fail to shout that there is too much of cricket, which makes us to think that there may be more critics shouting that there is more cricket than there is actually more cricket. If you have any problem in comprehending the previous sentence, you have every right to move on to the next paragraph. With the IPL it is less about cricket and more about everything else that is not about cricket and that includes Ajith Agarkar. Just consider this: You see a batsman hitting a monstrous six and they immediately show you the visual of Shilpa Shetty jumping up and down in her seat animatedly in a simulation of emotion that is otherwise possible for others only when their backsides are literally on fire. And when they show a close-up of the Shetty girl, only those not watching the telecast will let their thoughts still lingered on cricket. Anyway, if they had wanted your mind to remain focussed on the game they would not have trained the cameras on Shilpa in the first place, instead they would have let you ogle at, say, John Buchanan, fingering his laptop with passion. The thing about Shilpa is that her knowledge and understanding of the game can be easily filled on the back of 25p postal stamp with some room to spare. You don’t have to believe me. Just ask Shilpa what’s the score, she will break out into teasing titters as if you had just recounted to her a spectacular comic line from Woody Allen’s new movie. I don’t blame Shilpa. All actresses do this all the time. They will giggle and grin even when they are crying. It is fair to surmise that in Bollywood, they don’t let you face the camera unless you have smiled yourself silly in every conceivable occasion including funerals and famines. Another of Bollywood’s fetish undoubtedly is hugging, a practice that I strongly suspect to be the reason for Kings XI Punjab exit much before the semi-finals of the tournament this year. Whoever had the brainwave to let Preity Zinta play the important role of supporting the team from the sidelines surely will not have any worries about getting through the IIM entrance exams. For simply, he or she does not possess the intelligence to even pass the kindergarten class. There are any number of ways of enthusing a cricket team, like clapping, whistling, shouting encouragements or even jumping up and down with backside on fire like Shilpa. But for some reasons that are difficult to explain in rational terms Preity Zinta resorted to a plan that involved happily hugging all the players in the dugout whenever the team’s batsmen hit a sixer or four. Now if there is a chance of Preity hugging you, will you stay in the middle playing or begin to queue up in front of her? I fully understand why Punjab batsmen were in a hurry to get out. Somebody like Sreesanth even went to the extent of being injured for most of the part of the tournament and staying inside the dugout just to boost the morale of the team by taking on the responsibility of helping Preity Zinta by being the recipient of her embrace. See, the last few paragraphs have been entirely about Preity, Shilpa and Bollywood. And that is the beauty of the IPL. And Lalit Modi, the man who has single-handedly taken on the onerous task of changing the face of cricket from being a mere game that people were passionate about to a mass commercial product which everyone flees away from, promises more innovations in the coming IPL seasons. When Modi speaks you better listen to it carefully, especially because his accent is generally difficult to pick. Talking of innovations, the strategy breaks, which have been introduced this year, could certainly be tweaked. Already the sponsors, for whose benefit the whole extravaganza has been got up, are complaining that it is not working. There is actually room for Modi to go the whole hog and hold the cricket in the 10-minute strategy break, while leaving the rest of match time to be filled with TV commercials. This can be a double whammy. One, it can satisfy the sponsors, and two, it can also keep the real cricket enthusiasts happy as they will have less of Ravi Shastri and Rameez Raja in the commentary box. The 10-minute game can be a four over per side, with the batting team being assumed to play from the 16th over with the score reading 120 for two or some number that is deemed par. Of course, this rule will not apply to the Kolkata Knight Riders, who in a 16-over match can be counted to be all out by the 12th. Modi can also lure sponsors for dropped catches (‘that is a Sathyam moment of failure’) and dubious run out claims (‘It is an Enron moment of shame’). Quite simply, the possibilities are endless and everyone has already started to wait for the next season of the IPL. But Modi should know cricket is a game of inviolable traditions. In other words, Preity and Shilpa should stay. At the maximum, he can add Katerina. (This is my column for the publication this week)

Moving to my own domain

K Balakumar — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:17:20 +0000

This blog has moved to its own domain. Please visit kbalakumar.com and bookmark it. You can subscribe to full RSS feeds from here. The new site is a work in progress in terms of widgets additions. But otherwise the stuff you read is all there up and ready. This wordpress site will no longer be updated, except in case I have a change of heart. Please continue to drop in regularly at the new address as you did here. Thanks - K Balakumar.

Of Kofi Annan & Azhagiri annan

K Balakumar — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:29:44 +0000

Those who stayed all day with the television news networks before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was sworn in as the Prime Minister must have felt satisfied that they weren't alone in being clueless as to what was happening between the DMK and the Congress. There were a multitude of highly-paid correspondents and star anchors whose job was to keep track of such things, who came across as being no more than a kid on its first day at kindergarten. In the madness they were caught up in, they would have replied 'sulphuric acid' even if you had just asked them their name. Such was the confusion they wreaked that among the three of us ---- my friend, his dog and me ---- who watched the telecast, the dog alone could have felt any wiser. In case, you missed the telecasts, here is a reprise of that. (Reader alert: Some of what is to follow may not be factual and may not even make sense. But trust us, on the television out there, it was much worse). Times Now: It has been a historical day for Indian democracy, because for the fist time in India in the history of democracy, as democracy makes history in India, with India, democracy and history for the time that is first, sorry to interrupt, but we have an important 'breaking news' coming in. Manmohan Singh, the country's Prime Minister, has just woken up and brushed his teeth. This marks a major change from the past, as he was said to do nothing without consulting his allies during his previous stint. Let us go to our correspondent, reporting live from outside the Prime Minister's residence inside which he is brushing his teeth. Arnab Ghoswami: What is the sense you are getting right now? Correspondent: Indeed it has been a dramatic morning, Arnab. As I am speaking to you, Manmohan Singh is brushing his teeth with a firmness that will surprise many of his party's allies, who can no longer brush him aside. Arnab, the message is loud and clear: The Prime Minister knows when to smile, and when to bite, when to chew and when to rinse his mouth. But credit for this should go to Sonia, the UPA chairperson. She has been the pillar of strength behind Manmohan, letting him have his way when brushing the teeth. She has stood by him all through because Rahul Gandhi has stood by her as because he is stood by Priyanka Gandhi, who seems to have taken to her grandmother, Indira Gandhi, in standing firm. Arnab: Remember, Times Now is the first channel to break the news about Prime Minister and his teeth. I can now hear some rustling inside the PM's house and I think he is combing his hair. Our sources also confirm that he wears a turban. (Scroll) Breaking News: PM in a rush to brush. Sonia sticks by him. IBN Live: The DMK camp seems to be extremely unhappy with the way things have been developing over the last 24 hours with the Congress refusing its demand for more Cabinet berths. The DMK's main grouse stems from the fact that its president's family itself is big enough to be earmarked as a reserved constituency. The formula that the DMK is offering simple, a Cabinet post for every son and nephew, a MoS for every daughter and grandniece and some lollipops for other MPs who do not belong to the family. Rajdeep Sardesai: Even as we are speaking to you, on a day of tumultuous developments, sources are telling CNN IBN that the DMK will up the ante, bite the bullet, throw the spanner (in the works), turn the tables, spin the wheels, soap the shirt, kick the bucket, shut the door on the Congress for being unreasonable. Rajdeep: (To the correspondent who is standing behind what seems to be a large building, but actually small considering the size of Karunanidhi's family). What are your sources telling you now at the moment when the DMK is spinning the wheel, turning the tide and hitting the turf running? Reporter: Rajdeep, the mood here is one of high tension as the DMK is mighty upset with the Congress for being unreasonable and adamant and refusing to provide Cabinet Ministership for all those who make up Karunanidhi's kitchen cabinet. The Congress, it seems, is veering around to the formula that it will be impossible to provide berths to all of Karunanidhi's kin and kitchen as the Lok Sabha is puny in comparison with just 532 members. Rajdeep: That's big story we are breaking now: Karuanidhi's family is big, bigger than anything big. (Scroll) Breaking News: T R Baalu out of Karuanidhi's family, PM stands firm against his inclusion in Karunanidhi family's ration card. NDTV: It has been time of constant flux as one event is leading to another and another, each of which goes on to prove that Rahul Gandhi is the true star of this campaign in which the Congress has proved that Rahul Ganhdi is its true star. Prannoy Roy: Barkha, You mean to say, Rahul has stamped his authority and completely enveloped it with his charisma? Barkha: Not only that, Prannoy. The Congress cadres are demanding a postal stamp in his honour. Rahul has impressed everyone with his easy-going demeanour and pleasing ways that Kasab and Afzal Guru deserve to be pardoned and let off. After all, Rahul's charm has completely won them over. (She gets all emotional as her eyes start to well and nose begins to flare and nation begins to fell jittery). (Scroll) Breaking News: Rahul wins over Prabhakaran. Army confirms Prabhakaran is dead. Times Now: We have been told by our sources that the Prime Minister has just finished washing the face. We can also categorically confirm that the face belongs to him as it looks exactly like his image on the mirror. (Scroll) Breaking News: Times Now is always Breaking News. IBN: We have just heard that the DMK has put forth a demand to the Congress to make Azhagiri the secretary general of the UN. 'If Kofi Annan can head the UN, why not Azhagiri annan?,' asked a top leader in the DMK. The Congress camp is worried that this might give its other ally Trinamool's Mamta to rope in Moon Moon Sen into her part fold and demand UN Secretaryship to her on similar grounds. 'If Ban Moon can head the UN, why not Moon Moon Sen,' will be her argument. Dayanidhi Maran is not available for comments as he is trying to be present in all the pictures snapped by all the cameras in New Delhi now. Breaking News: Dayanidhi Maran is a wall-paper/screensaver. NDTV: Barkha: (dramatically raises her hand up and down, as words come out in torrent, like the bullets out of the guns of terrorists, who not long ago had taken siege of Mumbai and let it off only after they realised that Barkha had taken siege of the country with her high-decibel histrionics): It has been Rahul's show all the way. Barkha: Rahul has charged the Deccans, challenged the Royals in both Bangalore and Rajasthan, showed that he is Indian to Mumbai, proved that he is a daredevil in Delhi, a super king in Chennai, and is willing take on any King's eleven in Punjab. (Scroll) Breaking News: Rahul wins IPL.Lalit Modi takes a strategy break. Many of us in the print media are mighty worried at the state of affairs: You can't blame us --- Our sole source for news these days is the TV news. (This my column for the publication this week).

Give the headline here

K Balakumar — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:23:05 +0000

When someone asks your name, I am sure, you have no problem saying what it is. But all the simple self-assuredness and poise, I am equally sure, will quickly vanish when you are filling up the ‘name’ column in one of the many applications that you, as a modern-day individual, encounter in your day-to-day life. I don’t blame you for the fiasco. It is actually the fault of the application forms with all those hideous blank squares on them. And these boxed demons confront you whenever you seek to apply for whatever. Only a sociopath, with a deep-seated instinct to violently take it out on fellow human beings, could have designed the application forms in their present-day format. When these application forms, as we know them now, came around we were told that the boxes were put up to enable machines to read them. First of all, it was plain bad manners to let an unthinking machine read a form that had been painstakingly filled out by a human. Secondly, with all those grotesque grids around, even the most persevering of machines would have straightaway opted for VRS. I bet you would have struggled to read the headline in this article (all the individual letters are supposed to be in a box, which I couldn't replicate on the blog page). You are a sixth-sense possessing human. So just imagine the plight of an uncomplaining machine! But tell me, when humankind has grown smart enough to put people in atmosphere for weeks together in machines that don’t have a loo or has found contraptions that dispense money without smirking like the bank accountants, can’t it think up a machine that can ‘read’ from an application that does not sport those horrid and squiggly squares? When confronted with wads and wads of blank boxes, a normal human mind loses all its ability for cogent thinking. And that is why many of us end up attempting to write our residence address in the square that is under the heading ‘sex’, and in the process look in the eyes of the world as a rabid pervert. And these blighted boxes also compel us to peddle untruths. In the passport forms, no less mind you, we are explicitly told to tailor the information we furnish to fit in the given grids. If this is not an open order to lie, I don’t know what is. For instance, if I am living in the seventyseventh street, and there are not enough boxes to accommodate all those syllables that constitute seventyseven, I have no option but to substitute seventyseven with, say, a compact and conveniently rounded sixty or forty that can doubtless snugly settle in the squares. Then there is the issue of names. No application form simply asks for your name. It usually demands to know your ‘given name’. This plants the first seed of doubt in your mind as to what is the difference between a name and a ‘given name’. Is it as different as dosai is from rava dosai? If so then the difference is enormous. Then comes the ‘surname’ conundrum. Now, no matter which dictionary you read or which expert you consult, there can never be consensus on what constitutes this surname. A classmate of mine actually believed this to be a misspelling of ‘sirname’, and actually wrote his English sir’s name whenever he had the occasion to fill out a form. Most forms sternly warn you: ‘name only’. At those moments your chief worry would be ‘what do I with the initial’. So most of you end up expanding the initial and filling them in the box given for surname. Or worse, you put your normal name in the surname slot and expand the initial (which is normally your dad’s name) to go into the ‘given name’ grid. At least, that is what I did, and so I now have a bank account, an email address, a house loan and unpaid subscription demand for a news magazine all in the name of my father! The confusion of the application is further compounded by the way the names are given or taken, or whatever they do to call a person. You can have a single letter initial or at best two letter initial if you want to include your native town to be followed by a name which will doubtless be a combination of all the gods in the Hindu pantheon. But I am forever puzzled by all those who have multiple initials. For instance, how on earth can a person sport a name like V V S K U P Vijayakrishnamoorthy-sambhasivam. And what do those V V S K U P stand for? Do they all stand for his parents in different towns? Sounds like a one huge promiscuous family. And the name itself is big enough to cover a family of four. Then there are those who have an inexplicable fetish for putting unpronounceable town names behind their equally unpronounceable names. Abhiroop Pottlamadi or Akshamala Kottankuchi or Nileena Kandhuvatti are good examples from Kerala. In Andhra, they are prone to use all the letters of alphabet to include all the ancestors since the earth came into being. G H A B C D X Y Z Ramapalli Gadothgaja is the smallest name that I have come across. North Indians are a people in a hurry and hence have no time to include the initials upfront. That is why you have names like Sudip K L Chopra or Pramila X Y Gupta. If initials are not initially, can they be called initials? With such complications, no application in India is ever filled with any conviction. That reminds me, I have to fill the boxes for a headline for this piece. Wanna help? What goes first, surname or given name? (This is a column written for the publication several months ago)

Lessons on lessons

K Balakumar — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:55:30 +0000

Come June, the one question school-finishing students fret over is, what college to choose. Usually it is a highly tricky decision, as many colleges do not seem to have quality canteens. Imagine going for three or four years to an institution that doesn't have the facilities to serve quality kitchadi. Ha! Ha! as ever I am kidding. No college student ever likes kitchadi actually. The point is college education is demanding, especially on the question what stream to choose: Science or Arts. Guys usually solve this tricky point of debate by opting for the course their girl friends go to. But there may be many guys out there without girl friends. Usually such fellows are also without any idea about what they are studying. It is to their benefit that the following is written. I am qualified to teach them as I also don't have a clue as to what I am writing. Science: (Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology and other subjects that bore people to distraction) Mathematics, as the name makes it abundantly clear, is all about, well, we don't know. Because as far as we are concerned 'mathematics' doesn't even remotely come close to meaning anything. From time immemorial it has been a popular subject among students for being a strong reason in developing in them a deep aversion for formal learning. Weren't it for maths, many students may have stayed within the confines of college education and wasted their life. But thanks to maths there is a strong reason for them to choose their own way and become hugely successful. For young students, it is always a toss up between their parents and the maths teacher as to whom they hate the most. Usually, the maths teacher wins, mainly due to integral and differential calculus, a part of mathematics that I believe was invented by the teaching community to take it out on the students. Maths involves learning stuff like Sin2q and Cos2q , which are handy things to prove not all things in life have to have a reason and relevance. In the maths class students will spend considerable time understanding why sin2q + Cos2q = 1. This is taught to help inculcate in students the scientific temperament of asking 'so what'. Formulas like sin2q + Cos2q = 1 also help the students develop a vibrant sense of humour by making them to think up crass jokes on maths masters for teaching them (students) stuff like sin2q + Cos2q = 1. Those who major in maths usually make it big in jobs that involve logic, reasoning and precision, such as teaching sin2q + Cos2q = 1 to people who will find no need for them in all their lives. Physics and Chemistry are kind of inseparable twins and share many things in common, including the same teacher in many educational institutions. Since chemistry and physics are just a door apart, schools and colleges generally usher in the scientific revolution of allowing the physics teacher to double up for a few days as the chemistry master should the latter go on a long leave. There are any number of inventions from the field of physics and chemistry. But the pride of place in this long roster must go to practicals, invented for doling out marks in easy subsidies to the students. Physics and chemistry also involve lab classes, which are the main reason for increasing attendance at morning shows in nearby cinema halls. Physics and chemistry deal with occupation of space and matter, and no wonder that who major in these subjects make it big as clerks and officers in the government, where the main job is to occupy physical space and put their hard-learned science to good use, like wondering whether the tea they drank was boiled at temperature measured on Fahrenheit or Celsius scale. High-ranking officials think on the Kelvin scale. Botany and Zoology share an uncanny relationship for being subjects wherein everyday things and beings are given names and symbols that defy human comprehension. For instance, to the zoologists elephant, belonging to the family of Gomphotheriidae, is a five-toed pachyderm that can also be called a proboscidean. Botanists aren't far behind. For them, onions are bulbs that can be called Allium cepa. Of course there is a strong scientific reason for botanists and zoologists to think up such queer names for everyday things: They have far too much of free time on their hands. To put in pure scientific terms: They have nothing else to do. Arts: (Literature, History, Journalism and other subjects that people are no longer interested in) Literature is important to the evolution of human beings and emergence of civil society and offers an agreeable counterpoint to the belief that all life has to be precise and logical. Literature actually involves saying imagined things like the previous paragraph. Literature is nothing but packing a lie with incomprehensible things: Lie + 'teratur' = Literature. When the lies and falsehoods reach a new high, poetry flows. Literature also proves that science and scientists alone don't bore the heck out of this world. For every Leibnitz and Pascal there is an equal and opposite Shakespeare and James Joyce driving a legion of students into the cafeteria and cinema hall. Those majoring in literature have good scope in jobs that involve creativity and imagination, like psephology, economics and statistics. History has been thoughtfully included in the curriculum with the larger idea of proving that arithmetic and numbers are all bunkum. History at the core involves memorizing that the 100 Year war was fought for 116 years. Louis XI did not follow to the throne Louis X. The importance of history cannot be overstated in our education system as it allows students to fill in reams and reams of paper with neither the examiner having a clue as to what is written nor the student having a notion as to what he is penning about. This is the beauty of history and that is why many top politicians think they are good at it. That is why it was possible for Jawaharlal Nehru to pen a huge tome on it when it actuality he was supposed to be running the affairs of this country. Journalism involves, in parts, thinking up all the balderdash that you read above. It beats our imagination that anyone would still be interested in journalism.

Print Friendly

Contact

K Balakumar — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:44:15 +0000

After reading what you find here, even the most sociable of persons wouldn't want to talk to me. Yet, for some strange reason, most likely to send brickbats, if you want to get in touch with me, well, you can reach me at: mail@kbalakumar.com Or else at: 9840245109 (this is a Chennai number. Add appropriate codes if calling from elsewhere).

Underwriters, written under is not nice

K Balakumar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:28:01 +0000

Is it just me or are there others too who feel that there is a sudden glut of insurance related ads on TV? Every time I switch on the telly there is someone trying to peddle a 'policy,' trying to cash in on my fears or misplaced emotions for my child. So what does it prove? I watch a lot of TV. No, insurance companies are cash-rich to spend on crazy ads, since there is no chance of them wasting their money on insurance policies. Sachin Tendulkar mocks at someone wanting to open a bookshop. What is the connection with insurance here? Beats me. Perhaps it should have been in the cricket match that followed it. Somewhere else, the idea of insurance is sought to be driven home with an old chap trying to get off a train on his own, refusing a hand proffered in help. Again, I didn't get the logic, which I presume should be inherent in it. Elsewhere, a husband and wife talk in ersatz serious tones about the need to cut down on household expenses as he had superannuated from work. After a succession of confusing exchanges, he shows her tickets for Singapore. Cue: Happy faces and laughs. Thanks to insurance. So this immediately begs the question, what does 'superannuated' mean. Well, it is a word that is used as a show-off when there is a perfectly acceptable and, more importantly, easily understandable description 'retired' to mean the same. But superannuation is something that the insurance industry seems partial to. So that in itself tells a lot about the industry than I possible could come up in the remaining length of this piece. But I promise you that I will think up something on the way to justify my idea, which, as you would have guessed by now, is something that I am not still not very sure about. But how can anyone be sure about insurance? How does it work? Rather, does it work at all? How is the premium on insurance calculated? The last question is easy to answer. Think of an amount that you believe that you are worthy of and hence insuring against. If it is 'x' rupees, you have to divide it by the number of people you know in life and add all their ages together and subtract by the marks you scored in biology even though you studied in commerce stream. Now the thing to do is to name the value you have got as 'y', since it is what those who teach algebra (by the way, isn't algebra an insidious way to impose English through mathematics?) keep telling. Now you have to multiply 'x' and 'y' and immediately get a matching headache and go to sleep. When you wake up, think of a fresh four digit number, this will be the amount you have to pay. Don't try to tell me that there is no logic in what I have written, as if there is some logic in the way premiums are actually cooked up. I had four different insurance marketing personnel approach me recently. Three of them were from the same company, and each one quoted a different premium for the same policy. How? Well, my guess is each one had a different kind of headache that morning. Why would anyone want to insure himself? I can understand some logic in trying to safeguard, on an assumed prospective basis, your valuables like car or jewels or Rambha's thighs or Pamella Anderson's ...well I leave it your imagination though she herself hasn't left anything to imagination . But why put a notional amount against yourself, and presume that it is your value on the day you croak? Sooner or later, you are certain to meet your maker. But why pay up to a company in between? If you think that it will salvage something for your family in the event of you kicking the bucket untimely, then think again. The process of encashing an insurance policy has almost forced many living persons to wish that they were dead, and made dead persons feel that they were alive to kill the insurance company in question. Insurance companies are generally strict and stringent and don't part with the money unless the dead person himself or herself comes and tells that he or she is indeed dead. Also, don't for a minute think that investments on insurances can fetch you tax cuts. What you think as what you saved from being washed away by the tax man is what you eventually cough up as premium, which, as it emerges, is actually another way of paying the insurance company's tax. You may still turn around and ask, if insurance is such a stupid thing would there be so many companies entering the field? Well, my gut feeling is that these insurance companies have all been started only to escape from other insurance companies, and perhaps give more chance to make money for Sachin Tendulkar, who, in case if it has not occurred to you at all, is one person who doesn't need any insurance policy at all. (This is an old column of mine)

Print Friendly

What drives the ambassadors?

K Balakumar — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:58:12 +0000

The world is forever on the boil what with violent skirmishes and battles between countries or groups. It would be much worse were it not for diplomats and ambassadors, the hardy men and women, whose delicate and onerous job it is to deftly negotiate between the warring groups and arrive at a suitable headline and news for serious newspapers to publish the next day so that the battle itself can go on unhindered. Take the Norwegians for example who manfully brokered a deal between the Sinhalese and the Tamilians in Sri Lanka notwithstanding the simple fact that they can’t understand even a single word of either Tamil or Sinhalese. The bloody turmoil in Sri Lanka witnessed a short burst of ceasefire as both the sides felt extremely distracted and took time off to wonder why the hell Norway was trying to involve itself in the mess. The only reason why Norwegians willingly applied themselves to this thankless work could be that life in Norway was as tranquil as a seer’s mind, which shorn of diplomacy means, way too boring. Norway, last heard, has set out on a peace mission between Honduras and Burkina Faso, despite the fact that the two countries (Honduras and Burkina Faso) exist in two different continents, don’t share a boundary and have actually not heard of the other. But Norway, being a torchbearer in such matters of global importance, has not allowed minor matters of reality to impede its unflagging quest to champion the cause of giving room to dense prose that nobody bothers to read and hence quickly jump to the next paragraph in the hope that it at least contains sentences that can be comprehended by lay persons. But how much do you know about the vital universe of diplomacy and foreign affairs? Not that you want to. But here is a handy primer on the world of diplomacy and international relations prepared with the sincere thought that it is extremely stupid and in bad taste, and that it goes against the Geneva Convention or some such international fancy rule and offends a lot of diplomats so that they can haul me up before some heavy-duty forum that is located in Switzerland or any other chic destination. This is the only way I can possibly visit those trendy places. What’s the main role of a diplomat? A diplomat’s life is one ridden with protocol and rules that involve giving life to many useless French words like attaché, consul, envoy, emissary, chef-de-mission. Describe a typical day in a diplomat’s life? Wake up. But have to skip breakfast, as it is already time for lunch. Attend a ceremonial lunch with a variety of people who are known for their sterling quality to ceaselessly talk and prolong over their meal till it is actually time for the next meal of the day to arrive. But even after such a hectic and packed morning, a diplomat can hardly have the leeway to relax his overworked tummy. He or she has to be ready for the evening party, which is all about sipping variety of beverages and talking their way to expand their (foreign) affairs and scotch rumours. Diplomats, by training, scotch even truths. They are experts in scotching, especially well-brewed ones. What is the chief requisite of a career diplomat? He or she has to possess the ability to wake up in the morning without any apparent hangover after a night of never-ending party, which a diplomat has to subject himself or herself day in and day out for the cause of world peace and order. It is as a true tribute to the ways of diplomats that the whiskey industry has thoughtfully dedicated a classy Scotch in their name. How does a diplomat help a government? For example, there is a problem of racial attacks on Indian students in Australia now. Naturally India is concerned. Logically, it should simply mean the Indian Prime Minister lifting the telephone and calling up his Australian counterpart to get cross his message. But that will amount to diplomatic gaffe and a breach of protocol. And it is also not known whether there is an international call facility in the PM’s phone. So the Australian ambassador is summoned by the Indian government and delivered a message. This he will immediately take it to his country, from where he will carry the response to India. By this way both Indian and Australia not only cut costs on expensive international calls but also can re-route the money gainfully to uplift diplomats who don’t know where their next Scotch and Caviar is going to come from. Explain the Middle East peace process In school you would have encountered this typical arithmetic problem that made you to give up on mathematics itself: ‘5 people work for 5 hours a day for fifty days to complete task. How much will it take for 50 people working for 20 hours a day to complete the same task?’ The question is a no-brainer as the five people have already completed the work, why should 50 people be employed to do the same job? The 50 people obviously would gather around and talk endlessly, enjoy themselves and eventually claim that they have finished the work. This is roughly the philosophy behind the Middle East peace process, or for that matter, any other diplomatic initiative. If all those countless number of people and all those efforts that went into travelling and talking on the Middle East peace process had been channeled elsewhere a parallel universe, without the modern blights of terrorists, global warming and Barkha Dutt, could have been created by now. Has the Middle Peace process helped anyone? Yes. It sure has. It has been an inspiration for the telecom companies for their pre-paid cell phone schemes: Guaranteed lifetime talk time. What is the role of the UN in ensuring world order and ushering in lasting peace across continents and countries? That’s a very good question asked with an insightful understanding of the world and its affairs. The question requires special mention and acclaim. What’s the art of diplomacy? Providing answers that don’t even begin to match the question. Why did India dispatch two top officials to Sri Lanka immediately after Prabhakaran’s death? So you think you are smart? Well then answer this: Which came first egg or chicken? It beats you, right? So get the heck out of here and let us in peace so that we can resolve the conflict between El Salvador and Cayman Islands. Diplomats have already trudged to to the resort town of Monaco to discuss in detail the whole issue.

Print Friendly

Warning: Plenty of warnings inside

K Balakumar — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:58:10 +0000

Mercifully, weekly columns like the one in your hand are not like electronic consumer durables. Or else, every week you will have to encounter something like this along with the column: 'Dear Reader, Thank you for placing your confidence in Crank's Corner. You have chosen the best-written best-laidout column. As a reader of Crank's Corner you can now enjoy several unique minutes of being a laughing stock. As a privileged reader, you also get the benefit of savouring the humour of several top-class humorists whom Crank's Corner has tied up with for exclusive rights of plagiarism. WARNING: The general warranty for jokes does not cover those reading the column after watching a TV serial. WARNING: This column should not be read while being administered anaesthesia on an operation table'. If you read such disclaimers, would you ever care to read the actual column? You wouldn't. I know. But why don't the companies that sell complicated contraptions understand this? Handling complex instruments is difficult enough, but understanding the manuals and then understanding the machines is beyond the ken of normal human intelligence. Along with newspaper editorials and law journals, manual books constitute a big part of human writing that no one ever cares to read. Just consider this gem from a camera manual, presumably describing a shutter switch: 'Set this ON when using the electronic shutter. When it is pressed to SEL side, the shutter speed and mode displays change in the ranges preset on the setting menu. If the setting of this switch is changed when the menu display mode has been set to '2' or '3', the new settings will appear for about 3 seconds at the shutter display position on the viewfinder.screen (Example: 1/250, 1/61.7)'. These are actually sentences that can make even a diehard photo enthusiast throw his camera into the Cooum and join the PMK. My feeling is P C Sriram set up his camera after reading a similar manual and has been able to shoot only darkness ever since. It is a fair guess to say that manuals are written by out-of-work lawyers. By general consensus, only editorial writers and lawyers write sentences which are allergic to fullstops. But why lawyers maybe preferred to pen product manuals is that they have the unique talent to include numericals, italicised expressions and bulging brackets even amidst perfectly normal prose. It is fair to assume that the Constitution and the CrPc have in them more numbers than actual words. And even these words are set in such a manner that they resort to cranky behaviour in any given sentence. In the hands of a trained lawyer normal, every-day verbs get extraordinary meaning that no linguist could ever have imagined. For instance, when a person gets a bail in a case, you and I will say that the person has got bail. But no advocate would commit such a cardinal mistake. In lawyerspeak, when someone gets bail, he or she is actually enlarged on bail. And the bailed person is said to be 'out on bail', sounding as if he has taken his beloved bail for a walk on the Marina. Anyway, such a strategy straightaway ensures that nobody ever messes with the law. When you come down to it, it is no coincidence that the place where you consume alcohol and the place where lawyers meet share the same word. Coming back to the manuals, the actual machines, most of which are digital, throw up even more indecipherable messages, again alluding to the fact that technology and normal language can never have a peaceful co-existence. My mobile has a feature under the head 'Synchronisation'. Obviously trying to make sense out of the manual for that was of no use. So I tried to figure it out myself, and every time I press the button, it shows out the enigmatic line: 'Contact service provider for Sync settings'. There is also another option called Push to Talk. I think most mobiles have this function (?). But believe me, I am still to come across anyone who has ever used this. What's more, no one knows what it is all about. There are such myriad features in myriad appliances that we use daily. Most of them, I think, have been put up with the explicit idea that no one will ever use them. For example, my DVD has a feature that will allow me to set it ready to record a programme six months later. Who in his normal sense would need this facility? But the technicians have had the brainwave to fit this into my DVD. What next? Perhaps a car that will automatically start itself for a trip on every 31 February morning? DISCLAIMER: All jokes here are intended to make you laugh. If you don't, the columnist, as per contractual obligations as cited in annexure 7 vide BCA (iii), cannot be held responsible. (This is a reprise of one of my old columns)

Print Friendly

Time to break the news

K Balakumar — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:19:08 +0000

The future for the newspaper industry is bleak for two reasons: One, it employs me. Two, Most news are unappetising. Who will want to read anything about summit meeting in places like Yekaterinburg, which is where many heads of states, including India’s, recently met? Scheduling meetings in places like Yekaterinburg serves only one purpose: It allows some readers to realise that there exists a place called Yekaterinburg in Russia, which, for all those interested, continue to exist. When confronted with news of such kind, whose sole virtue is that it can occupy considerable chunk of space on the news columns while exuding the idea that it contains matters of serious importance, people naturally skip over to the entertainment section, which mercifully carry gorgeous pictures of beautiful men and women to ogle at. But even here, the novelty wears off pretty fast. Tell me, what is left in, say, Shilpa Shetty that has not already been seen? The point is: news has become so predictable that newspapers these days are ready for tomorrow’s edition the day before yesterday. The only way newspapers can become attractive to readers is that it has to find more reasons to feature more attractive photos of Deepika Padukone and Namitha. No, wait. Newspapers can become passable if only it can find a way to really break the news like: What’s composite dialogue? Manmohan stumps Zardari By Our Correspondent Who Writes Long Sentences Throwing the international community into a huge crisis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today frontally confronted Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari with the issue that has locked the two border-sharing nations in combat conflict for years together. ‘What does the composite dialogue process mean? Why is it just never a dialogue,’ Manmohan Singh asked a bemused Zardari, who obviously wasn’t prepared for such a query, as the strict rule for international summits between the two countries so far has been to just pose for furiously clicking cameras and issue statements that the two countries will meet again at (just fill in a randomly generated famous international resort place here) to continue the dialogue process. Zardari, who generally gives of the impression that he had learnt his English from Wasim Akram, who it must be said had never encountered English in his Urdu classes, was caught off guard by this tactical move from Manmohan Singh. However, highly placed sources talking exclusively to this newspaper, said Zardari and his team immediately went into a huddle in their rooms and decide on the location of the next meeting place. The question that Manmohan raised, in fact, has also left the international community and the diplomats in a major quandary as nobody has a clue as to what composite dialogue process actually means. ‘We have been saying it because it was the unwritten rule to say so. But now Manmohan has queered the pitch,’ said a top diplomat dryly on the sidelines of DEFACTO summit, which is being held just to add to the useless acronyms like SAARC, NAM that are already crowding the international calendar. The diplomat, whose sole purpose is to attend such meetings and collect frequent flyer miles on international airlines, however said that India and Pakistan had arrived at a consensus to resolve and continue their composite dialogue process to find the solution to the vexatious issue of figuring out what the heck is this composite dialogue process. The United Nations’ chief, whose name can be easily googled and found out, has also summoned his top aides to the nearest holiday resort and issued an important statement in the hope of finding at least a single individual who reads such statements. Meanwhile, sources in the newspaper industry reveal that the UN chief’s statement was as usual found to be (even without reading) way too boring and absolutely incomprehensible. And in a rare show of unanimity, the newspaper industry has chosen to replace the UN chief’s statement with the latest photo of Katerina Kaif in spandex involved in physical composite dialogue process with John Abraham. Last heard the UN chief was googling for the photo. Inflation moves sideways By Our Uneconomical Reporter After giving the tedious economists an excuse to slip into further tedium by slipping back and moving into the negative zone, the inflation this week stumped everyone by edging sideways. ‘This is phenomenal. And it points to the fact that the global economy is turning,’ said Professor V G Popepandavar of the Institute of Boring Statistics and Useless Numbers, the apex body in the industry that has no other sensible work and hence keeps track of things like inflation. Attributing the sensational phenomenon to the Brownian Random Movement, Popepandavar also provided important statistical details, which is sure to put you into a spell of sleep, and hence we refrain from publishing that and instead we publish here the picture of Preity Zinta with all her vital statistics in clear detail. The bizarre inflationary movement has had the economists scratching their French beards as it is a strict rule for economists to grow a French beard and then scratch it pensively whenever they have to give off the impression that they are in deep thought. But sources in the grey market confirm that the economists were scratching their beards to figure out where more photos of Preiry Zinta’s figure could be found. Dhoni does a Kamal: First ask hockey teams to start winning By Our Playboy Correspondent Turning the tables on all those who were asking why the Indian cricket team was no longer successful, a combative Mahendra Singh Dhoni today retorted to the media: ‘Ask them to win first, then we will win’. The Tamils in the media contingent immediately understood that Dhoni was sounding like Kamal Haasan in Nayagan (modhalla avangalla nirutha sollu). The ‘them’ in Dhoni’s reference may have been the Indian hockey and football teams. The problem, of course, was that there were five ‘official’ Indian hockey teams that are playing in different parts of the world. One of them had been apparently selected by the IHF, another by the IOC (it’s not clear whether it’s Indian Olympic Commission or the Indian Oil Corporation), the other three seem to have gone on their own as nobody had noticed them. Needless to say all the five teams are losing heavily and nobody seems to care. The Indian Football Association meanwhile was looking for players to fill its five-players-a-side team. In a related development, actress Lakshmi Rai said she was not dating the Indian hockey team captain, as he was not Dhoni. For proof she also showed a photograph of hers in which there was no one playing hockey. Actress Shreya meanwhile rubbished reports suggesting that she was seeing the Indian football team, saying that it was news to her that India had a football team and it also had someone to captain. (This is my column for the publication this week)

The heat is on the rains

K Balakumar — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:06:48 +0000

India is now looking for a dark cloud in every silver lining as the fear of a failed monsoon looms large on the horizon. Panic has already set in over a nation that doesn’t require much to push it into such a state as people are sweating copiously in a cumulus conflation of fear and anxiety. Every conversation or interaction today has to somehow involve a reference to the seemingly failing monsoon. Patient: Doctor, I have a constant ache in my stomach and I feel constipated. Doctor: Don’t worry, even the rains are struggling to come out these days. Anyway, to be safe, we will have an MRI scan of your kidney and all those working in the meteorological department. If need be, we will do a chemotherapy on the weather bulletin. Patient calls for an ambulance to get him out of the hospital so that he can survive the emergency. The point is everyone is overcome by tension and tumult due to the fact monsoon has gone missing in action. News channels and newspapers are already edgy and are desperately scanning anything that falls from above as to whether it was sent down by a rain-bearing cloud. Alas, for them only bird droppings have come their way. To their credit, it is with such stuff they have been breaking news. The situation is bound to get worse if the monsoon continues to be mon‘late’, as it were. If the thing persists for long there will be a rain of intriguing events, some of which are: The Indian Meteorological Department says monsoon will be near normal. Not even a passing shower is witnessed for the next twenty days. Sonia Gandhi, as the chairperson of UPA, writes to the Government to announce a relief package for the benefit of farmers. Karunanidhi writes a poem extolling the beauty and charm of rains by criticising Brahmins and other Aryan forces. Vairamuthu writes a poem praising Karunanidhi’s poem. Karunanidhi thanks Vairamuthu in verse form by lashing out at Brahmins. Karnataka Legislative Assembly passes an unanimous resolution banning the showing of meteorological reports of Karnataka in Tamilnadu. Supporters of Dravida Kazhagam are arrested in the border town of Dharmapuri for trying to burn effigies of Mysore Bonda and Mysorepa. IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi announces a Ten-10 cricket tournament involving 640 teams in a round-robin league format to help raise funds for monsoons. M S Dhoni, who is leading Jharkhand Jets A created a ruffle in the press conference by lining up all the doctors in India to prove that he was not injured. The Central government comes out with a comprehensive relief package for farmers. The package, among other things, promises credit cards (named Kissan Kash) and free supply of Axe deodorant for the needy agriculturists. ‘The body spray will help them remain fresh even when they are not able to work in the farm. The Kissan Kash will help them to tide over the crisis of credit while shopping in the malls that have come up all over the agricultural lands,’ said Sharad Pawar in his capacity as a well-known agriculturist, before heading to Brussels for the meeting of the BCCI. The Indian Meteorological Department says monsoon will be near normal. Twenty people are killed in Rajasthan as they had been living without water for the last twenty years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh applauds Sonia Gandhi, who is the patron saint of the UPA government, for being the brain behind the comprehensive ‘Farm Finance’ package. Karunanidhi sends a letter tied on a pigeon’s leg to the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Post Master General to ensure proper rainfall to all the Tamils living world over. As rain Gods play truant the Central government mulls banning the shoot of Manirathnam movies so that the water needs of two continents could be salvaged. A government spokesperson said that songs in Mani’s movies are shot only in the backdrop of rains. On an average 560980 lakh gallon, roughly the capacity of Pacific Ocean, is required for one-day’s shoot. Manirathnam and monsoon were both unavailable for comment. BJP leaders blame each other for the failure of monsoon, especially in the Hindi heartland. The Hindu writes a seven lakh-worded editorial saying that monsoon’s non-appearance is a clear rejection of divisive Hindutva politics. The Indian Meteorological Department says monsoon will be near normal. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh will evaporate from the map in the face of extreme wave conditions when temperature touches 180 degree Fahrenheit. Residents of a small village in Uttar Pradesh try to marry off an ant to elephant based on a local belief that such a wedding can lead to rains. ‘If the elephant and ant can have conjugal relationship it will surely bring us copious rainfall,’ said the village sarpanch who solemnised the wedding in the presence of roughly 20,000 TV cameras. Kannadiga activists, led by Vattal Nagaraj, went on the rampage damaging all the breeze flowing towards Tamilnadu from Karnataka. Karnataka legislators meanwhile said that their State would not give air to Tamilnadu. Actor Sathyaraj hits out at actor Rajnikanth for having born in Karnataka. ‘If he is to be considered a true Tamil he must cancel his birth in Bangalore and try to get rebirth here in Tamilnadu,’ Sathyaraj, who is a hardcore rationalist, said, before heading for a duet with a young heroine from Mangalore. In a related development, a team from Tamil filmdom led by Bharathiraja, led a protest march to Ooty against Karnataka. Rajnikanth meanwhile issued two statements: The first, blasting Karnataka and urging the Tamils to wage a war against Karnataka. The second statement was a clarification that he didn’t issue the first one. Lalit Modi, addressing a crowded press conference in Cheerapunjee, said Five-5 league, involving 5600 teams in home and away matches over 650 days, would be organised to help raise money for all those suffering from drought of cricket and rain. The ICC chief, meanwhile, in a press release said finding 650 days in a year for the tournament would be difficult. In another related development, actors Ganja Karuppu and Muthukalai, the only two actors without any franchise ownership of cricket teams, bought the Villivakkam (II Street) Vultures and Manapakkam (5th Cross Road) Monkeys respectively. Manmohan Singh government announces free passport and visa scheme for agriculturists so that they can do farming in foreign countries. The BJP accuses Pakistan-based terrorists of hijacking India-bound rain-bearing clouds. Karunanidhi turns up unannounced at Anna Arivalayam in the dead of night and says that he will not drink even a single drop of water for the next 30 seconds. This, he said, was to pressure Centre to send rainfall to all the Tamils, including those who are all dead. Only Dayanidhi Maran’s face was visible all through Karunanidhi’s press conference. In the backdrop of heightening drought conditions Kapil Sibal announced that government was planning to scrap all colleges, schools and the entire education system as they were causing trauma to all concerned. The Indian Meteorological Department says monsoon will be near normal, even as the department’s office was reduced to ashes in the fire triggered by heat wave sweeping the entire country. It is learnt that the IMD had predicted rains for India as it had mistaken the map of Amazon forests for that of India’s. Monsoon appears and but Manirathnam was still to be spotted. (This is a copy of my weekly column for the publication)

Print Friendly

Abolish education & parents

K Balakumar — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:52:01 +0000

The one way by which any grown up adult begins to feel smug and superior is by complaining about the education scenario. Just approach any elder on the street and demand his or her opinion on the present-day schools and colleges, he or she will naturally break out into an impassioned rhetoric on the education sector, which has thrown up loony individuals who walk up to total strangers and demand their views on schools and colleges. But any field of activity that had Arjun Singh as the Minister must consider itself fortunate that it has managed to survive at all. Arjun Singh's biggest achievement as an HRD Minister, especially in the last few days of his office, must surely have been the fact that he managed to recall his own name without the help of any aide. He was a Minister whose chosen mode of transport was an emergency ambulance with an entourage that comprised doctors and nurses from every branch that modern medical field has known. And with a civilizational sagacity and wisdom of several thousand years, the nation handed over the task of manning the country’s education and charting the course for the youths to such a man. Without putting too fine a point on it, Arjun Singh, in his current state when the most arduous task that he can perform in a day is to lift a handful of food to his mouth, is primed for the post of Governor, a job in which the incumbents are known to work out their calories through heavy yawning. The new man at the HRD Ministry, Kapil Sibal, looks promising, in that his companions are not from the medical profession, and also doesn’t require a fork lift-like contraption to lift him into his seat. Kapil Sibal, as you can see from his remaining grey hairs, is old and cannot be expected to have a good opinion on the education sector. He has spoken openly against board exams on the grounds they are traumatic to the students. But Sibal has touched just the tip of the iceberg; there is a huge glacier of agony that students everywhere want to see the end of. And we begin with: Projects History, as it does on all things, is not clear as to how this modern-day blight came into being. At schools, it must have been thought up by a hard-pressed teacher as an extreme measure of revenge on parents for letting their children loose on them. Spend a hour or two with a gaggle of young children, you will actually be forced to resort to things that are far more cruel. Teachers, with an unconcern and laxness that comes only with experience, ensure that project works have no earthly connection with every-day living. ‘Advanced internet usage among Amazon tribes that have not learned to speak or write’ is understandably an extremely attractive topic for possible project work. At colleges, like most things, it has evolved as a tradition, to amplify universe’s ultimate truth: All life is a pointless exercise. At the school level, when they say ‘students educational project’, they obviously mean it for the parents. For, there is not even a single instance of any project work having been attempted by the student concerned. Students just announce it in the house that such and such project has been requisitioned by the school. They generally bring up the matter to the parents on the night of a Sunday, when most shops are closed, and the deadline is for the Monday morning. Children revel in such extreme brinkmanship, which on a bad day can lead to heart attacks to parent. Perhaps that may be the idea. If Kapil Sibal can ensure the abolition of educational project works, he would have done a signal service in the removal of hideous neighbourhood ‘fancy stories’, which alone stand to benefit from these project works. Teachers can still take it out on the parents through the, albeit less cruel, method of gas chambers. Schools and Colleges From the days of gurukulams, where students interned with the family of the mentor to eventually emerge as complete unfeeling sages with no faith in human relationship and humanity itself, to schools and colleges, which give a strong reason for mushrooming multiplexes and malls, education has changed beyond recognition. In fact, it has transformed so much that nobody knows what it is. For the management of colleges and schools, a major part of education involves the onerous social obligation of collecting fees and thinking up newer ways to extract from parents more money, which otherwise may be unwisely spent on needless pursuits like emergency medical treatment or setting up business establishments. For teachers and professors, education is all about the valuable service of carefully passing on the torture that they endured as students. But for the tireless efforts of teachers and lecturers, morning shows in local cinema halls will not get to see even a single patron. For students, it is a wonderful and exciting journey in their evolution, when they begin to understand and acquire new and specialized skills that will stand them in good stead in wasting their parents’ hard-earned money. Schools and colleges also are the places where the students learn the art of writing crass lines as graffiti, a prowess that helps to survive in the modern technological world where they litter many forums on the internet with gross anonymous comments. For parents, schools and colleges, in combination, help their life-long dream to see their children to eventually reach a stage when they can boldly and bravely face the gaze of the world despite the fact that they are sporting the most hideous of dresses, which is what students are called to wear on their graduation day. Were it not for the graduation-day robes, college dropout rates would be far lesser in this country. But all things concerned, despite the merits (as mentioned above), colleges and schools deserve to be abolished, if only for the fact there wouldn't be scope for any more Arjun Singhs to screw things up further for the nation. And by abolishing schools and colleges, Kapil Sibal would be abolishing education itself, which is the root cause of modern evils, the chief of which should be this column. Parents Students, be it in school or college, can be trusted to be unanimous on one view, as to who cause them the maximum trauma: parents. There is no bigger source of trouble for them than their parents. Kapil Sibal, if he has the goodness of the future generation in his heart, must abolish parents. And I can already see my daughter nodding in approval. (This is the weekly column for my publication)

Upset stomach & digesting Sachin

K Balakumar — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:29:31 +0000

Every profession has something unique or special about it. If you are a software professional you get to spend much of your office time on sophisticated office equipment honing your skills on such life-saving tools like twitter, facebook, and at the end of the day, you can believe yourself to be techno smart. You can also think all those who have no time for such modern applications, as because they have an honest and useful work to do, to be socially incompetent. If you are a doctor you need not keep up appointments, especially since the patients wouldn’t complain lest you refer them to more tests, including the nuclear test. You can also pretty much take your patients inside a dark room, make them lie down on a bed and ask them to remove their dress. And it can all be for professional reasons, of course. If you happen to be a lawyer, well, I want to say something funny and provocative here, but I know how powerful the defamation laws of the land are. So will instead peddle the euphemism lawyers are all honourable people. And if you are a journalist, you will be called up to make, day in and day out, such inspired pronouncements. This, in normal human parlance, may be called lying, but we in journalism are prone to see this as a creative process. Let me explain: Think of a typical Sachin Tendulkar press conference. But before we delve further, a few things need to be clarified about Tendulkar. Reporters and correspondents dread a Tendulkar press conference more than opposition bowlers fear him in a cricket arena. He may conceivably the greatest batsmen in the world for quite some time now. But Tendulkar at a press conference deals strictly in banalities and boring comments, which if the reporters were to write a dutiful report of, will have the entire nation falling facedown on their breakfast cereals in sleepy boredom. Tendulkar says, ‘they have a pretty good attack and we can’t afford to be complacent’, of every bowling attack he faces, even if he were talking of his son Arjun’s kindergarten school team. This kind of androgynous observations cannot be good enough for the news media that is otherwise dealing with people like Subramanyam Swami and Rakhi Sawant, who are prone to call a spade an inter-continental ballistic missile. The point is reporters have to chip in with Tendulkar. So when Tendulkar parrots ‘they have a pretty good attack and we can’t afford to be complacent’ of, say, Bangladesh, the press correspondents professionally translate it as: ‘Tendulkar thinks Bangladesh’s attack is better than that of the Australian team’, and try and give a weather-worn cliché some respect it may not deserve. Twisting of facts, as you can see, is the chief virtue of journalism. And then we have A R Rahman, who speaks so slowly and ponderously that the time gap between two of his words is s also the time taken by other music directors to compose songs for full-length movies. All Rahman news events are just about ‘ella pughazum iraivannuke’ and a few other incomprehensible observations. And scribes naturally give their own re-recording to Rahman’s words. When Rahman intones that he has listened to Michael Jackson, the next day papers report it as Rahman’s soul inspired by MJ and the duo were set to do a joint album. The trick here is Rahman, and for that matter MJ, will not take pains to deny the report. If you are wondering where, we, journalists get this skill to play around with facts, well the answer is simple: We make a lot of leave applications. Let me again explain: Among the many easily identifiable attributes of newspaper journalism is the fact that it is the field in which official holidays are roughly equivalent, give or take a day or two, to the number of birthdays you have in a year. So newspaper hands are forever thinking up (barely) believable ruses to seek leave. There is always a pattern to this. Chronic at Clinic Commode: If he is calling in the office in the morning at a time when he should be at his system and working on his news report, then it means only one thing: He is down with ‘loose motion’, an affliction he seems to willingly contract the moment he starts feeling disinclined to attend office. Many times, for the sake of whipping up the right realism, he will say that he is hardly in a position to even get out of the lavatory, and the phone call itself is being made from inside the latrine. There are many practical advantages in claiming to be laid low by dysentery. One, it is common. Two, no one will ask for tell-tale evidences, something that has to be produced if the claim is for a sprained ankle or slit throat. Merely acting weak (facial expressions would do) is generally seen good enough to drive home the idea that one had spent a better part of one’s time over the commode. This is naturally popular with many journos whenever they are calling in to say they are sick. Family Fanatic: The one great advantage of the family system that India is justly famous for is that it gives enough chances to seek leave in the office. Embedded in each relationship is the possibility for myriad leave. Uncle son’s wedding. Aunt’s daughter’s ear-piercing ceremony. Third brother-in-law’s second sister-in-law’s housewarming function. Co-brother’s father’s demise. Cousin’s betrothal and such bagatelles are used to avail easy half-a-day permission. And then there are also friends, who can be conjured up in a trice to throw up reasons and occasions to seek permission for absence from office. With so much to practice on a daily basis, Indian media scene is naturally floating on inspired lies masquerading as news. PS: I filed this report from home today because I was down with, you guessed it right, upset stomach courtesy the food at grandma’s 80th birthday function. Tomorrow remind me to feign weakness at office. (This is my column for the week)

Unfair to those not fair

K Balakumar — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:45:52 +0000

Among the present crop of Union Ministers, only Shashi Tharoor has the natural talent and easy expertise that appeal to serious and erudite newspaper editors and compel them to give him screaming headlines in bold typeface. What could that talent be? Well, good looks. A Raja, the redoubtable Union Minister for Corruption and Scandals, should be the one who merits all the attraction. Raja has his fingers in every pie and paise. But Raja also has the personality of barren wooden closet. So Raja, despite reports that he has steadfastly amassed a fortune good enough to richly deserve the honour of the government appointing for him a personal Finance Minister, hardly gets a look in. In contrast, it is conceivable that not many people know, and this certainly includes all the journalists, as to in which Ministry Shashi Tharoor is operating. For the record, Tharoor is the Minister of (Note to news desk: Please google and find Tharoor’s designation and fill it here). Still you will see news reports on Shashi Tharoor as to how he is the only Minister who has an active Twitter account. The beauty here is that a majority of Indian population, again I mean to include journalists, have only a passing knowledge of what Twitter is. (Twitter, for the record, is an extremely convenient communication and social media tool, which puts to use the limitless possibility of internet, which is to look extremely busy even when nothing of practical use is accomplished). Yet, before any one can understand what Tharoor is really up to, and what Twitter actually represents, another report comes along saying that the Union Ministry is worried that Tharoor’s Tweets are a security risk to the nation. Well, as I was saying, Tharoor gets to hog news space simply because he has a mug that is seen to be attractive and presentable. And, Indian journalism operates on the inviolable principle that if a face can be deemed beautiful, then the rest of the person to which the face belongs must be extremely skillful and smart. This reasoning, of course, forms the foundation of the pillar of modern publication industry: Page 3 journalism, a public-spirited cause for which newspapers have assiduously dedicated themselves by regularly featuring brave men and women in laughable dresses but redeemed by the fact that they can pose unembarrassed with their liquor glasses and matching stupidity. Open any party column in any newspaper and scan for even an ounce of practical news or sensible information, you will not find any. To put it in precise terms, there will not be even a single thing that can be classified to come under journalism. That such a trend is the rage tells you all about how a sense of assumed beautifulness can override everything else including common sense. At this point, I am compelled to bring in Michael Jackson, a man who died chasing the dream of beauty, despite the fact that with every surgery he became less human, but more plastic that he may have had to requisition the services of a chemical engineer than a medical doctor for treating physical ailments. His was a case of all is war in love for fair, if you get my drift. Why do you think he was desperate to look fair and white? Simple. The fire accident that stubbed out his hair also scratched out his brains. No, Wacko Jacko knew that by being white and fair, and for this he would not have minded even implanting or embedding white marble chips on his face and running a polishing machine over them, he had a good chance of not only appearing scary but also stupid, qualities that are always a huge attraction for journalists to regularly feature in newspapers. Exhibit A: Rakhi Sawant. Jackson actually did not seem to try enough. For instance, he could have had his face simply painted with Nerolac white emulsion, a technique that sure would have served him better than the interminable plastic surgeries he had, which could be construed a success only if the intention of the doctors was to prepare his face to be a live specimen for cartoonists’ caricature. Jackson, it can be revealed any time soon, died of his nose crashing down unable to bear the weight of his make-up and blocking whatever passage that allows normal humans to inhale and exhale. Jackson, if he really wanted to look white and come across as an anaemic mannequin, certainly needed for himself a personal Fair & Lovely company, something which only Raja can presumably afford. MJ eventually ended up with a visage that conceivably put the fear in the minds of Martians from invading and taking over the entirety of Earth. Martian I: Okay, let’s head towards Earth. They all seem so harmless. We have nothing to be afraid of. Martian II: No, wait. Have a look at this. This looks dangerous and dire And needless to say, the Martian was pointing his fingers at, yes you guessed it right, the photo of T Rajendher. It was a still from Veerasamy, a movie that probably forced the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts to give two Oscars to India this year. They gave the Oscars thankful that Veerasamy was not in the running. See that is the power of a face. Rajiv Gandhi, even when the Bofors kitty was being squirreled away, could face the nation and claim total innocence, and the nation believed him because he was fair-skinned. It was as if the nation was reasoning: ‘He is white, how can he have black money?’. Well, the fixation for whiteness perhaps erodes brain cells. So if you can help it, grow a fair face. If not, well, at least take recourse to a clown’s mask. At least that’s what I have done. (This is my column for the week)

Music to the eyes

K Balakumar — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:53:12 +0000

What separates the average ‘bathroom singer’ and the ones who get to perform at places which are not bathrooms, though a couple of sabhas I visited this season could do with a few? Or put it another way (so that I can get to add a few more lines saying the same thing all over again), what does a performing Carnatic musician has that the rest of us don’t? The answer to this unequivocally is: More dresses and gold ornaments to flaunt. After being to several kutcheris this season, I have come to the inevitable conclusion —— you can quote me on this —— the most important talent to be construed a top-notch musician, more important perhaps than shruthi and laya alignment, has to be the dress and make-up alignment. And there ought to be a straight connection between silk and sangeetham. Otherwise there is no other logical explanation to the way most musicians physically present themselves at the concerts. Some women vocalists in fact have so much silk on their sari that an entire generation of silkworms must have been wiped out to weave them. Latter day environmentalists or anthropologists or whoever does research on such things, when they sit down to research on who made the silkworms totally endangered, will doubtless put Carnatic musicians on the top of their list. As far as the musicians’ jewellery goes, let us put it this way, some of them are in danger of becoming walking bullion markets. Half of India’s annual sale of gold is gobbled up by Carnatic musicians, and the remaining half is presumably shared between film stunt personnel and Bappi Lahiri. And the make-up of most women musicians should cost slightly more than what it did Kamal Haasan for his Dasavatharam, in which he hideously hid himself behind ten different roles. If you think I am making exaggerated and sweeping generalisations, then can you recall at least one woman singer who has ever come to a concert in anything other than shimmering silk, shinier gold and a face that has more layers of talc and cream than there are layers around the earth . I bet you can’t. But don’t for a moment think that glitter and glisten are suffice to make you a highly paid musician. Expressions and miming are also key to being accepted as a big performer. Let me elaborate: Have you ever been to a Carnatic vocal concert? If yes, then read on. If you have not, then stop reading this and go to a concert forthwith. Okay, now that you are back, let me pose this to you: Did you not grimace at the facial expressions of the singer? If you didn’t, then either your eye-sight is bad enough for you to be eligible for vison-challenged people quota or you did not venture anywhere beyond the canteen, which is, by the way, not a bad idea considering the fact that most sabhas these days take care to serve better adais than attanas, so to speak. As I was saying, most vocalists contort their faces with a writhing tightness that is otherwise possible only if you are being wheeled into the delivery room with labour pains. While touching higher octaves, vocalists bend their neck and face at such an agonisingly acute and high angle that they either look like one trying to unhinge the cranial set-up from the rest of the body or someone struggling to cope up in an area where someone else had broken wind pretty badly. And while negotiating a swara or neraval pattern, singer generally close their eyes tightly not dissimilarly to the reaction of an irritated patient when the doctor pushes a sharp needle into the veins. The vehement slapping of the thigh, though admittedly for the tala pattern, would doubtless fetch a double nelson at a wrestling bout. A Carnatic music performance, if you understand, is a class pantomime act. And to be a Carnatic vocalist you need to have not just supple vocal chords but suppler muscles too. It is not to be attempted if you are not a double-jointed contortionist, especially from above the waist. The only beings who can come anywhere near matching this are the rasikas who take the music and themselves very seriously. When the singer touches the higher octaves which is frequently, these fans can be seen to throw their arms up with alacrity as if someone had put a gun at their waist. And when the singer tackles soft and mellifluous passages, these rasikas let go some friendly ‘tchoo, tchoo’ seemingly calling a recalcitrant doggie for a biscuit. When the singer rains copious swaras, these rasikas generally shake their heads, which attempted anywhere else would entail urgent treatment for epilepsy. All in all, it is good fun. Good enough at least for me to manage one week of Crank’s Corner. And next week? Well, I’ll face the music then! (This is an old column I wrote for the publication several years ago).

Home is where the heart attack is

K Balakumar — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:10:15 +0000

In the beginning, quietude and tranquility reigned in the world. And then one fateful day, one caveman perhaps thought: ‘Hey, wouldn’t be nice if we build our own houses? And since then, the world has not seen peace. When the world is eventually destroyed and when mankind totes up the reason for the total ruination, the evidences will clearly point to two things: Twitter and Facebook. Oops sorry, I was about to say builders and litigation. But no amount of problems and pitfalls is going to hold you back from your ambition of having a roof that you can call all yours, because deep down you are, despite your unmistakable education and innate wisdom, a dreamer, which is the polite way of saying that you are a fool. Before you plunge headlong, you need to understand what you are getting into. To help you in this exercise, I have prepared a small reckoner that you can easily refer to whenever you are desperate. And I can assure you, in this process of owning a house, desperation will be your sole companion. Independent house or flat? This is a good question to start off, as there are no other questions that readily come to my mind. Actually there is not much to choose between the two, except the fact that an independent house offers you the all-important choice and flexibility to face problems from very many sources, while in the case of pre-designed apartments, the trouble is inescapably from only one quarter: Builder. If you have a dream house in your mind, the person to approach is a builder. His job, as it can be implied, is to build dreams. All builders, by a strict code of conduct, fall into one category: Unreliable. Roman Ruins are a good example of how usually builders hand over the projects to the previously committed buyers. Let’s put it this way, if God had outsourced the creation of this world to a builder, it is most likely sub-standard snow would have been used to fill up Himalayas that by the twentieth sunrise all snow would have melted away, and the Niagara would be leaking into places with which it has no earthly connections. Budget Before you set off to buy a house, it is important that you think about your budget, as thinking is the only thing that you will be doing for much of your time. Budgets, on the other hand, will be unthinkable. Whatever is your earning power and howmuchsoever is your bank balance, the one cardinal rule in life is: You will always find yourself short of funds when it comes to building a house for yourself. Realistically speaking, the money you have will be good enough to build just the living room of whatever house you are intending to come up with. For the rest, even more realistically speaking, you have to rob a bank. Now that we are on the subject of banks and robbery, it is a good time to bring in the topic of loans. Housing loans It is only natural that any normal human is driven to the depths of despair when trying to build a house for himself. And only in the face of extreme rashness can any rational being accept to the conditions laid down for getting a house loan. Cloning your signature 36,0000 times is possibly one of the conditions for obtaining such a loan. You also need to give an undertaking, written in your own blood in triplicate, that no seven persons looking like you exist in this world. Put it this way, the moon is still underdeveloped as apparently God’s loan application with the bank is still undecided, most probably for want of identity proof or Form 16, which, in case you need telling, carries all the details of the money that a government squeezes out from an individual for his grave fault of earning them legally. Location Housing projects are universally located in just two places: One, where you desire. Two, where you don’t desire. When you are talking of locations, it is important to remember this handy thumb rule: All housing properties that are totally unaffordable to you will be located in areas that you like the most. All locations that don’t impress you at all will inevitably house properties that will match your budget. So when you decide to buy a house, you have to also decide what will you forgo: Location or budget. In housing matters, you cannot have both. This is a constitutionally laid law. The only property that is located in a buzzing hub and still doesn’t punch a hole in the owner’s pocket is the Rashtrapathi Bhavan, which, as you may be aware, gets to be occupied by the winner of the biggest lottery in the country otherwise known as President election. Registration In these complicated and confusing times, formal registration of a property in a legally acceptable format is very important, especially since it provides work to lawyers and registrars who otherwise can be unemployable. One look at the wordings used for registering a property will confirm why these people are unemployable. A registration document, if the thought were aimed at simplicity and easy comprehensibility, would just read that so-and-so is the owner of the place situated at so-and-so address. But any property document roughly runs into the length of a James Joyce novel, but only more complicated in its prose. The idea was possibly to create a backlog of millions and millions of cases in the courts, where learned judges have to break their heads so as to just figure out in which continent the said property is located. Registration of property has to be done only on State-approved bond paper, which provide the indubitable stamp of confirmation that the governments are run by a bunch of morons bereft of substance as well as style. After manfully surmounting all these, when you eventually come to the stage of living in your own house, in all probability your plug sockets will leak water and the pipes will dispensing current. Electrician or plumber, whom should you call? Don’t worry, either of them will not turn up until you seek them out for the millionth time. Why do you think, Mount Vesuvius is still erupting? They are still waiting for the caster!

Ready for the box, idiot?

K Balakumar — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:48:32 +0000

If you are in the habit of reading even small news items, which are published based on the highest journalistic standard of being able to fit in the newsprint space available rather than be of any redeeming information value, you would have known that the government is set to give permission to 150 more television channels to go on air, and 450 applications for new channels are pending with it. 450 + 150, added to the existing 140 odd channels, make it well around 900 channels. Or is it 1000? What does this mean? Well, it means that I don’t know even simple mathematics. No, the point is there are so many satellites up there in the sky that the sun and the moon may soon be obscured out of view from the earth. However, with so many channels aggressively vying for viewership, humankind may even get to the point of forgetting that there is an atmosphere outside. But you bet, soon there will not be even one person in the country who would have watched any one programme on any one channel in full. That is the beauty of remote controls. They sure seem to send some invisible rays that make people to believe that the channel that they are not watching will actually have something interesting. Why do we need so many more channels? Will there be viewers for all of them? Is it not a fact that the thriving evening party culture has come about in every city only because people have become mortally terrified to return to their homes where they inevitably have to watch TV programmes that involve serials running since previous birth and breaking-news events such as the sun rising in the east ? Rather than waste your time trying to answer these questions, you must ponder over the query as to what are required to start a TV channel. For, who knows a time may come when transponders and satellites to host TV channels are offered with every packet of, say, coffee powder that is purchased. Such tempting offers obviously cannot be declined as most of us cannot start the day without the strong dose of coffee. Here goes some critical and insightful knowledge on channels that you will never need Music channels Music channels, as the very name suggests, are all about talking. Such channels hire talented hosts and hostess who have the uncanny knack of carrying on conversations with random people in sentences that don’t contain even a molecule of intelligence. For instance, if a person calls in and introduces himself as, say, Mahesh, the typical response of the person helming the show must be ‘sollunga Mahesh, unga Peyar enna’? This question must immediately be followed by, even when the caller has rung in to say that there is a tsunami approaching the city, ‘aprum, life eppadi poikittu irukku’. This is a tactical approach and helps to create an infectious ambience of all-pervasive stupidity that the viewer ends up sending romantic text messages meant for his or her spouse to the channel. It never even once occurs to music channel-watchers that they can straightaway text message the person, who at any event will be sitting nearby. Music-channel watchers send sms on screen with heart-tugging messages including ‘I love my husband: Malini’ and ‘Rajesh loves Raji: Rajesh’. Such viewers usually ask for songs that music directors have taken special efforts the inherent mediocrity. Inside information: Music channel files are full of such egregious songs in which it is difficult to say which is worse, the lyrics or the music or the performance. But, usually, in this competition, the channel wins. News Channels This is a highly competitive field involving experts and doyens who after years and years of covering important and earth-shattering events have managed to master the art of the person seemingly speaking with his bottom on fire. Reporters, even if they are conveying details about the colour of the Prime Minister’s turban, have to summon the seriousness and breathlessness of the person being wheeled into the ICU. Primarily, there are two set of people involved here ----- the studio hosts and the reporter on the spot. Studio hosts are chosen for their canny ability to wear burgundy or scarlet ties without looking even a tad embarrassed. Reporters can be identified by their skill to answer in words that have no connection with the questions asked. The other chief virtue of reporters and hosts is to shamelessly fawn in front of celebrity guests. On days when reporters also show the courage to sport ties of such surpassing hideousness they are immediately herded into studios to hold forth on issues in such elaboration that the viewers immediately take medication to contract terminal amnesia. The most recent example being the nuclear deal with the US. The issue has been so throughly and exhaustively analysed that there is not even a single individual, and this includes the scientists concerned too, who understand what the kerfuffle is all about. Business news channels are different from general news channels in that you have scrolls of random numbers slithering across the screen with snakish indifference. In general, the numbers could be decimal points of pi=3.147653954893093863553. The numbers are scrolled across based on the irrefutable market information which says that those involved in the business of shares have far better and more accurate access to stock prices (as they are the ones involved in it). Inside Information: The person with the heaviest work is the guy in charge of getting the scroll ‘breaking news’ run. He is not even given his weekly off and has been working non-stop since the Narasimha Rao era. Sports channels Sports channels are those channels that allow you to enjoy non-stop, adrenaline-inducing action of ads and other commercials while tactfully and philosophically conveying the larger social message that all sporting activity is basically irrelevant to the seriousness of everyday life. In the case if you are still thirsting to see some sporting action, you are better off looking up to DD Sports which is still showing the 1958 Summer Olympics live unmindful of the fact there was no summer Olympics that year. Inside Information: Ravi Shastri continues to work for Ten Sports by the simple expedient of being employed with another channel. Ten Sports has reciprocated the courtesy and helped other channels to be in business, by roping in Arun Lal. General channels This is the most competitive of all sections and only those who, even if they are MBA graduates from the IIMs, manage to retain the intelligence of pre-KG days can get to work in this segment. Inside information: Author of Crank’s Corner, with his known aversion to intelligence, will do well here.

Time to turn the clock back

K Balakumar — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:01:27 +0000

It can be said with certainty that mankind lapsed into terminal decline at the precise second when watches and clocks stopped being tools of simple utility, but began to be deemed as symbols of style that hardly anybody else other than the owner/wearer cared to notice. A normal human being, if he or she is in control of his or her usual senses, would be required to know the time, say, for just 5 or 6 times, in a day. By definition, a person, if she or he has plenty of things to focus his or her attention on, will be the one with the least necessity for the services of a watch. The natural corollary to this is: If an individual has to keep glancing at the watch or clock for more times, it means only one thing: He or she has way too much of free time, and is exactly the sort of person to whom it doesn’t matter whether it’s daybreak or dusk as they are merely passing time by watching the passage of time, if you get my drift. But make no mistake, such persons can be unfailingly counted upon to act busy even when the only worthwhile work for them in the day is their periodical visits to the loo, which no doubt will be necessitated by the fact that during extended periods of inactivity human beings tend to drink more quantities of water or beer. ‘When overcome by boredom, check the time,’ is a credo that human beings have been swearing by for time immemorial. Cricket umpires do this all the time. But they have a pressing need: Cricket, especially Test cricket, has the same throbbing pulsation of the ketchup emerging out of a neck-constricted container. And naturally umpires, as the custodians of the game, are mandated to infuse dynamism into the field of play, if not to keep the interests of the audiences alive, then at least to prevent themselves from falling on the stumps asleep. Umpires ensure this by ordering, on the dot of every hour, drinks, the consuming of which usually is the sole thrilling high point in a day’s play of a Test match. At any given moment, as can be proved by the unerring scientific formula of convenient guessing, a typical household boasts of roughly 60 clocks, out of which 59 are in a state of terminal non-function, and the only earthy use of them being in the fact they provide a cosy nook for the ceaseless cockroaches or the aimless spider to set up convenient base. Time waits for none, except zealous creatures from the insect kingdom. Humankind is actually sitting on a ticking time bomb in the form of non-ticking clocks, and if they don’t wake up to the dangers surrounding them, soon they would be inevitably crammed out of their own households by the rapidly multiplying numbers of ‘unworking’ timepieces. A clock, as is evident, is more difficult to maintain than a Rolls Royce. But a household comes to become a warehouse for clocks simply because they are the default choices for gifting on any occasion. ‘When in doubt, gift a clock,’ is another inviolable dictum of the earthly beings ever since the gift culture became a rampant pandemic. These days not a week passes without an individual finding himself in a situation formal and solemn enough to offer a gift. And also, in general, a person gives a present much on the lines he or she receives. The simple formula to understand the gift equation is: If a household has 60 clocks at any given time, then at the same given time the members of the same household would have passed off 60 clocks as a present to different people on different occasions. It is based on this principle that Einstein may have cracked the idea that time is a relative concept. At least clocks, with several walls to hang on, have a reason in the profusion of their numbers. But watches? A human being, unless he or she happens to be the clone of Ravana, can technically wear only two watches ---- one each for the two arms. But that would obviously be a case of one two many, if you get my drift. But the beauty of modern world is that people are unsparingly spoilt for choice when it comes to things for which there is actually little need. Watches, mobiles, shoes are in multitudes, but women to men ratio is coming down. Times, as I am saying, is alarming. Watches as a style statement or a tool to establish one’s social superiority makes as much sense as having a puncture shop exclusively for road-rollers. I can’t imagine a woman that I may run into at a party developing carnal desires for me aroused by the Rolex on my wrist. In fact, it is a moot point whether the Rolex on the wrist would be visible to anyone else other than the wearer. It is because of this technical difficulty of positioning that most Rolex-wearers tend to be shameless showboats. They desperately thread into the conversation the fact that they are sporting designer watches, the price of which is determined by the unpronounceability of their French/Swiss names. ‘I was doing nothing except the fact that I was wearing this Rolex watch,’ is one of the favourite lines of those part of the expensive watch-wearers club. When not verbally straining to point out the detail that they are having on their person a Rolex or a Breitling or a Cartier, these indefatigable men and women would actually get down to pointedly drawing your attention to their wrists. So if their shoelaces are undone, they will not bend down and tie them as practicality would demand: They will lift their arms, and possibly frantically wave all around not unlike a politician at his constituency, and then slowly kneel down and attend to their shoe, all the while drawing whatever attention possible to their wrists. Parties and social dos naturally involve a lot of dancing, which is nothing but a ruse to lift the arms and announce to the world the brand of watch on the wearer’s hand. Rolex and such watches, as can be seen, are only for those stylish and respectable people who would not let embarrassment come in the way of projecting themselves silly and stupid. With all this copiousness of watches and clocks, you would expect human kind to be punctilious in keeping time. This piece was actually conceived for last week. But all these days i was busy doing pretty much nothing. Of course, I was wearing my Aviator Series watch.

Question the questions for right answers

K Balakumar — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:15:44 +0000

Have you people read the book ‘Freakonomics’, written by two economists Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner? It helps if you have not. For, I intend to explore in detailed depth over the next two small paragraphs the compact contents of the book which I have figured out by the dint of timeless hours that I spent looking at its cover and the puffy blurb. From what I can gather, the authors, using complex financial data that are generally compiled by researchers who specialise in statistics that have no real connection with common people, prove with conviction that economics, no matter how racily it is written, will bore you off your pants off. This is the power of economics ever since the first economist put pen to paper. This rationale explains why the world economy is in a moribund state now. As ever, I am just kidding. Freakonomics is indeed a best-seller and tries to unravel the complex economic realities and compulsions that lie under our every action. The theories are good enough to explain many things in life, except perhaps about why we watch T Rajendhar’s movies and why he continues to figure in this column. The book has become a cult hit of sorts because it throws up some intriguing questions and tries to answer them. The first salvo itself is explosive: ‘What do schoolteachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common?’ If you think that this is an easy query as both a Sumo wrestling bout and an academic class by any teacher becomes a bore after two minutes, then you are wrong. The two brilliant economists using complex charts and their own expertise in understanding statistics over the course of 32-odd pages of dense prose and denser numbers, clinch the real connection: Both teachers and Sumo wrestlers cheat. Whoa! We didn’t know this all along! As it goes, the book asks many such questions. One such is: ‘Do parents really matter?’ Another gem is: ‘How can your name affect how well you do in life?’ Let me clarify, the subject here is economics and not nameology. Anyway, the authors make it clear that to understand the real truth that lies beneath layers of assumptions and misplaced conventional wisdom, one has to ask the right questions. The learned economists that Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner are sure seem to have asked the right questions before they set out to write this seminal work: What per cent of the royalty do we get to share? Oops, there I go again. The point is such works of great economic understanding don’t get to be written in India is because we have lost the art of questioning. I base my theory on the incontrovertible evidences that my tribe ---- journalists ------ in general and numerous other people in the media have been providing for several decades now. As Exhibit A I produce any random news story that involves a top actor in the movie of a popular director. So, say if Vikram is acting under Manirathnam, journalists like me, use our hard-earned experience to pose the most challenging of queries, which is: ‘How does it feel to act under a professional like Manirathnam?’ It is a poser that we scribes, after asking it zillion times, have figured out is a toughie. So we continue to ask every Tom, Dick and whatishisname and elicit an answer that no one could have imagined. So Vikram will say ------ reader alert: stay ready for a surprise here ---- ‘It is a great honour to be part of Manirathnam’s project’. And it goes on with anybody working with, say, Kamal Haasan. How does it feel to be part of a Kamal Haasan venture, who, (journalists will helpfully add in parenthesis) has been involved in the task of taking Tamil cinema to world cinema, as if Tamil cinema is something of a dog to be taken for a walk till Hollywood. And we media personnel, naturally and rightfully, think that we are smarter than the rest of the society. TV journos, in comparison to their print brethren, are very innovative, provided you are ready to stretch ‘innovative’ to mean ‘stupid’ . Their opening gambit is, no matter whether it happens to be Abhinav Bindra’s Olympic gold medal or yet another massacre through a bomb blast,---- what is the mood out there? This question is okay only if the intention is to clear the throat. But talk to any TV journalist he or she will act as if they are the next best thing on earth after Albert Einstein. Then there is the faux chattiness and cultivated glib of the songs show hosts, who, I think, have been programmed for life to pose this stunner: ‘Aprum, life eppdi poi kittu Irukku’. Even if you were to take a TV and radio DJs to a cemetery, the first thing he or she will deem fit to ask around is this. Mind you, they get paid in lakhs for precisely this and are naturally a huge hit at happening parties, where they perform the intellectually stimulating activity of posing for photos with the most expressive thing in the frame being the wall behind. But I think the time has now come to ask the right questions and come up with the Indian equivalent of Freakonomics. The only question is who will come up with the right and seminal questions like, what do karate teachers and non-vegetarian eateries have in common (they both give you the chops . You figure that out for yourself, while I busy myself with the tough task of designing the cover of thebook, which needless to say, is titled Crankonomics — a racy guide in economics to sleeping.

Speaker Bipasha, umpire Mallika

K Balakumar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:24:56 +0000

It’s time we discussed the phenomenon of Rakhi Sawant despite the fact this column doesn’t feature any photographs, and Rakhi has become the celebrity that she is now because of the simple fact that any news story about her gives a compelling excuse for publications to splatter her photo in lurid colours. The last piece of paper about her without any attached photo is perhaps her birth certificate! There is also a great practical journalistic convenience in featuring Rakhi Sawant in news columns. It doesn’t matter even if the written copy says that Rakhi is from the Missionary of Charities, as the readers are inevitably bound to devout all the powers in their central nervous system on the accompanying photograph. If Rakhi were the Finance Minister of the country, and even if the budget papers said that the Fiscal Deficit is at 123%, the stock market will still zoom, as the nation will be focussed on what Rakhi is revealing and not what the budget revealed. One day, long after all the snaps of Rakhi are finished being feasted upon, and when the first ever word on her is actually read, it may turn out that the curvaceous lady had actually set out to become a nun. It is not without reason that TV reality shows plump for those like Shilpa Shetty, Rakhi Sawant rather than individuals like, say Yeddyurappa or Pranab Mukherjee. Shilpa, Rakhi obviously have an arresting personality, as arresting personality in TV industryspeak means someone who has an attractive cleavage and is not afraid to flaunt it. To put things in easy perspective, just imagine a show titled, say, Arcot Veerasamy ka Swayamvar. Will you watch it? You can be sure that it will make television history by being the first ever show in the world to have TRP ratings in the negative, in that people will be queueing up to get outside. There is a huge message in the saga of Rakhi and the huge success of her TV reality show, Rakhi ka Swayamvar. It underlined the basic premise of the TV industry, which is ——— pay close attention here — that no matter who the person is and no matter to which culture he or she belongs, there is always a part of him or her that can still be fooled easily. In this decidedly man’s world, the trick is to find beautiful women to pass off every outlandish plan or outrageous idea as cutting-edge innovation and improvisation. This is the sole truth of this otherwise baffling universe of ours. So if Rakhi becomes passe, then there is always Mallika Sherawat or Bipasha Basu. The challenge is to find proper use for them. I for one actually see plenty of possibilities in many hitherto unused avenues. Cricket, for instance, can have huge space for Mallika Sherawat. Remember this is the country that stays up all night just to follow Mandira Bedi during cricket discussions in which her only meaningful and realistic contribution could be that with her understanding of the game she makes Charu Sharma seem less stupid than he is. If Mandira with her noodle-straps can achieve this, imagine what all can someone like Mallika, who generally wears even less, can pull off if only we have the easy creativity to appoint her as an on-field umpire in an international match. There may be some practical difficulties with somebody like Yuvraj or Harbhajan Singh wanting to bat on even during the opposition’s innings, but these issues pale when you take the innumerable positives into account. With Mallika as the umpire, the game can continue even if it were pouring. Actually, it should as otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to have Mallika in the middle. Mallika’s presence will also be a great incentive to hit more sixers. The umpire’s signal to indicate a six is, by the way, to lift both the arms high and wide. All this may sound a touch puerile, but cricket in general deals with the BCCI, whose mandarins have a collective IQ that is still far lesser than Bradman’s batting average. Cricket, if you get down to it, is in such a desperate situation that when a batsman slams a monstrous boundary —— mind you, this is technically a highpoint in the game —— the TV cameras are compelled to focus on the scantily-clad cheerleaders. So Mallika as an umpire on the field is not as silly as it might otherwise seem. And, at any rate, if Mallika cannot bring in the crowds, then cricket is more boring than we imagined it to be. If Mallika can help salvage the sports channels, so too can Bipasha Basu or Deepika Padukone. They can be counted upon to whip up more magic into working of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. I can’t imagine people staying away from following Parliamentary proceedings if Bipasha Basu is in the Speaker’s chair. Don’t try to ask me how Bipasha can become the Speaker when she is not even a Constitutionally elected member of the House. Well, burn the Constitution, if we need to. The simple point is the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV channels need more of Bipasha and less of Constitution to survive in the market. Why do you think Fashion TV is still in the business? With Bipasha at the Chair, there will be surely less of absenteeism and walkouts. Even the perennially morose-looking CPI’s Raja will actually want to sport a smile. So amend the Constitution and usher in Bipasha as the Speaker. This may seem shamelessly sexist in idea, but in my defence all I can say is that without Bipasha in the Chair I can’t imagine Mulayam or Lalu being orderly, and Parliament passing the Women’s Reservation Bill.

61 or 62 or 26, make up your mind

K Balakumar — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:14:36 +0000

The biggest question that the nation should have pondered over during this Independence Day was, well,whether this was the 61st or the 62nd Independence Day. There was less consensus on this matter than that it is possible on the Nuclear Deal over which there are more opinions than the total number of people in this country. This is the problem with a country of numbers like India; the numbers also become problematic, thereby adding to the number of problems. I know such silly long-winding fatuous sentences are the last thing in the world you would want to grapple with, especially considering the fact that the long weekend is about to end and you have to get back to work or college. The point is there are many issues that hold us back from moving forward among the comity of nations. Ask yourself why is it that there has been only one Abhinav Bindra in this country. Perhaps, his parents opted for family planning or something. No, this is not the time for levity. The time now is for this column to get to the crux. And that is, the 62 problems (don’t ask me why 62) that we, as a nation, have to resolve so that for the next Independence Day we may have different issues to ponder over. So here goes my 62: 1. We have to settle straightaway whether the next Independence Day is the 62nd or 63rd. Convene Parliament or summon the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court or discuss it at Visu’s Arattai Arangam. Get it resolved. Else, the consequences will be heavy: I may have to repeat this article next year. 2. Cancel all national holidays for important festivals and functions. This has to be done on a war-footing to stop the TV channels from killing us with their programmes that have been structured carefully to contain not even a molecule of creativity. Okay, Solomon Pap-aiya and others will be out of work. But that is a small price to pay for a national cause. 3. On the subject of TV, the voice-over which shouts, India Tholaikatchigalil Mudhal Muraiyaga, has to be quickly identified and sedated and sent to a place where human beings don’t live. This again is a national service. 4. The software that allows TV news channels to ceaselessly scroll ‘Breaking News’ has to be confiscated forthwith. God give us back the Doordarshan’s 9 ‘o’ clock monotones, even though they were essentially radio news in which you also got to see the news reader. 5. Get Sonia Gandhi to improve her accent. Hers is a very cruel way to kill a sweet language. If you speak Italian the way she speaks Hindi, you will be smothered to death with pizza dough. 6. On the subject of language, get the Court to pass a decree banning Sukhvinder Singh and Udit Narayan from even attempting to hum a Tamil song. 7. Order Ravi Shastri to acquire a new thesaurus to help find alternatives to ‘it went like a trace of bullet’ and ‘it doesn’t matter how they come as long as they come’. 8. Get a promise from Rajnikanth that he will no longer speak at public functions. And Sathyaraj has to be gagged even if that means suturing his. 9. Place a classified ad seeking applicants for a Home Minister. It doesn’t matter even if Al-Qaeda recruits apply. For, they cannot possibly be worse than Shivraj Patil. 10. Tamil cinema actors and artistes have to be strictly ordered to describe their new movies without ever resorting to ‘it’s a different subject or concept’. Failing which, they have to be asked to watch Test Matches involving Bangladesh. 11. Reality dance shows should invite capital punishment to all concerned —— participants, judges, viewers, TV channels, TV manufacturers and even the man who invented TV (I know he is dead. But he should be killed again, if it comes to that). 12. Arundhathi Roy, if she pens essays that run beyond three A-4 sheets, should be made to write imposition for 300 pages the names of George Bush and Condoleezza Rice without showing any change in her BP reading. 13. All those forwarding smses saying ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’ or ‘Feel Proud to be an Indian’ every time, say, after India beats Kenya in cricket or Tendulkar scores fours off successive balls will invite punishment under National Security Act. 14. Lalu Prasad Yadav should be accorded all the respect and reverence that are due to a regional clown. 15. Award Bharath Rathna to T Rajendher if he vows to make films never again. 16. Award one more Bharath Rathna to T Rajendher if agrees to shave his beard and asks Simbu to shut up. 17. The nation should be explained as to why lawyers and judges should continue to wear gowns and capes that make them look like badly dressed transvestites. And doctors must prove that they are not surrogate engineers and stop prescribing complicated CT scans and MRIs even to the person dropping in to provide telephone connection. 18. Put a moratorium on the usage of Thirukural in the budget speech of P Chidambaram. Otherwise, this blessed nation will start thinking Thrivallur to be the Reserve Bank Governor. 19. Any hero claiming that he has got a six-pack abs should be debarred from filmdom and compulsorily be enrolled in the Army as Lance Naik. 20. Rahul Gandhi is no Prime Minister material. Those who think that he is one must immediately be told to surrender their driving licence. Getting them to drive vehicles is a palpable crime against society. 21. Newspapers must stop publishing photos of men and women purportedly taken at parties. Failing which, the newspapers must appoint Vijay Mallay as their Editor. 22. The country must understand that Olympics will never attract youngsters (and motivate them to win medals) as long as Doordarshan telecasts the events here. DD commentary must carry statutory warning for its potential to cause multiple sclerosis or any other disease that possibly has no cure. 23. Appoint translator to translate into Tamil whenever Kamal speaks in Tamil. This should be done as a social service. 24. Stop P Vasu from watching any more Malayalam movies. 25. The nation should pardon Namitha’s dress sense. 26. Tare Zameen Par is only a film. Not a medical treatise on dyslexia. Having said that dyslexics, who see numbers and letters interchanged, need patience and sympathetic handling. A quick test for you: If you see the accompanying number to be 26, and not as 62 (which will signal the end of the list that I had started with), I am sorry to say, you may be a dyslexic. Don’t read any further. The letters will start jumping around. See you next year, and the test for you then will be to identify, what else, 63. Or will it be 64? (This is the column I wrote around last year's Independence Day)

History and other stories

K Balakumar — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:16:21 +0000

If I ask you, ‘what were you doing on the morning of July 15, 2009?’ you will hopelessly shake your head and facetiously point out the obvious stupidity in the question. But history teachers never let such things as foolishness to bother them. They keep popping questions like what was Gandhi up to on August 8,1942. Naturally, most of us reply, I quote, ‘huh’. But you cannot ignore history, knowing fully well that it is a boring subject, and if you don’t know it, you will be forced to learn from even more boring persons, namely historians. You cannot also brook any delay in studying history, because with every passing minute you accumulate more history to learn. So without wasting anymore time, let’s plunge into the history of the invaders of India, the whole point being that only during Independence Day Celebrations that this nation wakes up to realise that it has a history. Aryans According to classical textbooks, Aryans are ‘members of the prehistoric people who spoke Proto-Indo European’. This definition is self-explanatory, as it abundantly makes it clear that nobody is clear as to who these Aryans were. Anyway, there is a consensus among historians who wear thick glasses, that Aryans were the hordes that ‘occupied’ India during the prehistoric time when India had not even geographically taken shape. Historians, with primed logic, point out that the Aryan invasion was very cruel and unfair especially considering the fact that indigenous Indians were not ready, as they were not born as Indian itself was not born then. Allow me to dwell further on this historical watershed: Aryans, after arriving here and creating India, gave birth only to Aryans and not any indigenous group. This is patently unjust, and all those who would otherwise have been born as indigenous people naturally feel that this ancient wrong needs to be constantly undone. Out of this reasonableness emerged the government’s Reservation Policy, which today has ensured a calibrated social equity in which every community or tribe rightfully and equally feels that the other is getting more. Contributions The mode of communication of Aryans was Sanskrit, a language that is very helpful to modern students, who have to generally learn languages and are also forced to remember them long after they are through with schools and colleges. But with Sanskrit it is different and very practical: They need not remember it at all, as it has no earthly use other than coming handy for them to pass the examinations with high marks. The Aryan occupation also forms an important chapter in the timeless annals of this land because it underlines the most fundamental truth of history, which is there need not be any fundamental truth in history. Mughals Several millennia after the Aryans’ intrusion, galloped in through the Khyber Pass the Mughals, the doughty warriors from Persia. It was another turning point in the nation’s never-ending narrative. The marauding Mughals delivered such a body blow that it would take the country several centuries to recover and eventually set up the Border Security Force. But India seems to have learnt the lessons of the past very well, as it is now utterly impossible to invade the country on horsebacks even with mighty swords and pointed axes. The Mughals, as you would imagine, were inclined towards peace. But realising the historical need to provide some chapters for future school children to study, the Mughals went ahead and fought the first Battle of Panipet. But this battle business was apparently addictive. And by the time they were through and finished, the Mughals had participated in countless battles and wars running into countless pages on history tomes. But for the Mughals and their killings, our students would be ignorant and lazy with very little to learn. Contributions The Mughal badshahs were not a decadent talent as is sought to be portrayed by those who have read history. They created mighty monuments, some of which stand even today making the onlookers marvel as to why they were built in the first place. Quitab Minar is a good example of this. The Mughal emperor who conceived it did not busy himself with simple questions like what practical purpose can a dark iron pillar on a nowhere land serve. He went ahead and got it up, and naturally it attracts hundreds and hundred of visitors every day. Another important aspect of Mughal architecture and building style was that none of their palaces and mahals is intact today, but most of their tombs and cemeteries are in fine fettle. Evidently Mughals loved living it up when dead. The Mughal emperors, even when letting loose a blood bath, had the sensitivity and panache to usher in new styles in culture and music. Ghazals, for instance, transcending the vagaries of time and traditions, survives beautifully even today because it is the only musical form in which drunkard’s words and slur can be passed off as singing. Britishers Today we have a full-fledged governmental machinery and a sturdy bureaucratic apparatus, and whenever there is a crisis confronting the nation, we know whom to turn to and point accusing fingers at. But remember it’s all a legacy of the industrious Britishers, who not only painstakingly set up the brick and mortar of modern India, but also had the basic courtesy to involve the locals by blaming whenever something went wrong. The Brits came to India as a small ragtag group of traders and merchants, but by the time they backed out they left a rich treasure, especially for a succession of Indian moviemakers to caricature the Colonial men and women who spoke Hindi in the most funny accent possible. Britishers, by the dint of their efficiency and innate intelligence, also murdered by many of the native names and terms. It is a compliment that we Indians are trying to pay them back by an even more innovative use of English in which grammar and rules have little space. Contributions The Britishers, who introduced modern civilisation like football hooliganism to the rest of the world, also showed that the capital of any country was chosen based on fanciful whims. They chose to rule from Shimla for some time, as it was the only place in India where wearing coats and sweaters would not look stupid. By the time Indians took over, they moved to New Delhi as because it is where most dhabas are located. The Brits’ history in India was eventually short-lived as modern history in the form of editorial space crunch caught up with them, and the nation had to be granted freedom and I have to wish you happy Independence Day. (This is my weekly column for the publication)

To share the stocks or stock the shares?

K Balakumar — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:58:10 +0000

Why is it most of us can’t figure out whether Sensex is the index of share prices on the Bombay Stock Exchange or it is about the private life of Sushmitha Sen, even while a few are making bales and bales of money by playing in the stock markets? The answer is simple: Stock market is a cramped place, and only a handful can actually play there. But seriously, wouldn’t you want to be part of what is being called the stock market boom? Don’t you dream of counting crisp wads of rupee notes that have accrued to your bank account? If ‘yes’ read on. If ‘no’, please wake up. The moment you decide to take a jump into the stock market, the most elementary thing to do is to ensure that you land safely. This is the advice a fireman would give you. But as you would realise I don’t work for the fire department, so I would merely tell you to understand the various investment options that are possible on a bourse? Immediately this begs the question: What is a bourse? Well, it is a simple word that journalists use, almost in a reflex action, whenever they feel compelled to use a synonym for stock market. Other than that, most writers don’t have a clue as to what a bourse actually means. For all we care it could be a place where the Parisians made love. So we will let that pass. As we are on the subject of investment options, you have to make up your mind on whether you want to park your money in shares or spread yourself on bonds and debentures. Most experts, primarily me actually, would advise you to stay away from debentures for the simple reason nobody has really understood what they stand for. The official definition of a debenture, I am not making this up, is: ‘The ability of a customer to obtain goods or services before payment, based on the trust that payment will be made in the future. Like other types of bonds, debentures are documented in an indenture.’ Unable to crack this, most stock markets have stopped trading in debentures. That leaves us with having to contend with shares and mutual funds alone. Firstly, we will take up mutual funds. This is a very popular instrument of investment that has helped many portfolio managers to come up in life very fast. This works on the sterling principle that when you give some money to the banker or portfolio manager to be put on stocks, he does so fully at your own risk while he gets to pocket the commission and the profits (if any). In the process, he also gets to figure out the difficult dynamics of the stock market with your money. This is an invaluable lesson that will stand him in good stead when he launches his own mutual fund. That is why they keep announcing in the advertisements that mutual funds are risk-free. ‘For whom’ is the question you need to ask. When you plan to put your money on shares straight away, the basic thing to do is to evaluate the company you have set your eyes on. How does one understand the intrinsic value of a company? Some misguided mentors will tell you to take into account the P/E multiple of the company. Actually, ‘P/E stands for Price/Earning multiple, Here the price is the current market price of the share and the Earning is the EPS of the company. A P/E multiple of the stock shows the times that the market is willing to pay for the present earnings of the company.’ If you can decipher the meaning hidden somewhere in the above dense lines, then you would be actually heading the Bombay Stock Exchange. So the P/E ratio actually doesn’t work with common people like you and me. So, to judge a company you must know how to read its annual report and balance sheet. I know you are already asking the question: How does one read a company’s annual report? From front to back, if written in English, and back to front if in Urudu. This is the fundamental principle behind cracking the corporate reports. With balance sheets, there is no confusion over English or Urudu as you deal mostly with numbers. But with numbers you have to be careful, and in general stay away from companies wherein the entry for the directors’ salaries are marked in line with the ‘losses’ column. This is all to the basic stock market fundas. Now all you have to do is to rustle up several bags of rupees and go to the nearest stock market (you can identify them from the name board outside) and begin investing. When you end with a lakh, do feel free to call me. But don’t tell me that you started with a crore!

Everything you didn't want to know about economics

K Balakumar — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:49:08 +0000

The fact that you are reading this on a weekend day (in case you happen to read this on any other day, it is advisable that you stop at once and take a time machine, go back to the weekend for which this is written so that the sentence rings true. Those who don't have access to time machine make use of an Ambassador --- it takes you back by several millennia) means two things: TV programmes are boring beyond imagination. And the economy is in very bad shape. When I say economy, I mean not just the country's but also yours. If it had been any better you would have surely gone out to party or have some sort of fun, rather than read something that attempts pathetic jokes. But if you had gone to a party, you would have still encountered the same thing: No, not this article. But the talk of economy being in a bad shape. Yes, this week's class is about finance & economics. Sit upright. Don't doze. It is only because you slipped into sleep mode whenever economics was discussed that it is now in such a sad plight. Nobody, this includes the economists as well, has bothered to understand economy. This is certainly not the case with other subjects. Take for instance humour writing. Anyone with an access to a computer has been attempting humour, and this has lead to laughable situations, which, you will appreciate, is the essential idea of humour. It is possible to believe that economists and financial experts too are taking a stab at humour, and that is why economy itself has become such a joke. The point is we all should try and figure out what economy is and what is wrong with it now, so that I get over with the work of finishing this column. But to understand economics, I need to understand you. Unless I know you I can't infer how much you will grasp economics. I have painstakingly prepared a series of questions and answers in the most unscientific manner that is humanly possible so that they reflect the quintessence of economics. Take a crack at this objective-type questions whose sole objective is that it will take a lot of space and will help me to complete this piece pretty fast. The thing about economy is that there is no 'one' correct answer to any question. Rather, the kind of answer that you give will describe the person that you are. 1) Who is considered the father of modern economy? A) Adam Smith B) Madam Shit (an anagram of the above) C) Marilyn Monroe is the mother D) None of the below 2) What is stagflation? A) A period of slow economic growth and high unemployment (stagnation) while prices rise (inflation) B) Flag Station (needless to say, an anagram of the above) C) Increase in the number of stag parties D) Who cares 3) How is inflation calculated? A) It is measured as the percentage rate of change of a price index B) By reading the newspaper that carry the report on inflation C) Check out the price of booze and smoke D) Add or subtract a few decimal points from the previous week's figure 4) What is income tax? A) A personal tax levied on one's annual income B) An anagram of ax, con item C) The amount that one pays to the auditor so that he tells the way to avoid paying the same to the government D) Does it matter? 5) What is Laissez-faire? A) The belief that an economy functions best when there is no interference by government B) Size fails ear or Size ails fear (needless to say, an anagram) C) A new cocktail that includes Lassi D) Which language is this? 6) What are Hedge Funds? A) There is no simple definition of a hedge fund (few of them actually hedge). But they all aim to maximise their absolute returns rather than relative ones; B) Fudge Shed (if you have not spotted the anagram, go to an eye doctor) C) A micro-mini skirt (it hedges the fund, hence the term) D) None of anything 7) What is mortgage? A) A conditional conveyance of property as security for the repayment of a loan B) If you are smart think of a suitable anagram here C) The right age to attend booze parties D) Mort what? 8 What is Misery Index? A) The sum of a country’s inflation and unemployment rates. B) I, Sexy Minder C) The hangover that one feels the day after D) None of everything 9) What is demand curve? A) A graph showing the relationship between the price of a good and the amount of demand for it at different prices. B) Deem curd van (whatever that means) C) The price of a beautiful girl (curve in demand: QED) D) None whatsoever If your answers are 'A', the fact of the matter is that you are in the IT industry with free access to unlimited Google. That is how you managed to find all the right answers. If your answers are 'B' you are certainly a regular reader of Crank's Corner with nothing much to do, except play aimlessly and uselessly with letters (letters is an anagram for settler). If your answers are C, you are a party animal in a permanent hangover. Go back to your booze. If your answers are D, it is most likely that you didn't read the question. And for that matter, you will not be reading even this. In which case, you are not bothered about anything. That is, you have the making of an economist. For all I know, you may be already one. Perhaps, you may be the Finance Minister himself? But since you are not reading this, you will not answer.

All ignorance is good knowledge

K Balakumar — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:44:00 +0000

There are very many things in this world to think about and involve oneself creatively, but here I am wondering how ‘Satyam’ could be punned around to fit into acatchy headline (you bet, an inevitable word play around ‘lie’ or ‘truth’ will be involved). Well, this is the lot of an everyday newspaper man: Surrounded by a never-ending stream of information, all he or she does is the most silly thing possible —— create senseless and tired cliches and puns that actually amuses none as no one reads anything these days (Okay, you are an exception). This logic will help you understand as to why when the terrorists were holding hundreds of people at gun-point, television journos were blabbering furiously at the camera without any comprehension. One day, we have to decide once and for all, which is worse —— the terrorists with the guns or the ones with the mike, No, this is not yet another tirade against Barkha Dutt (by the way, she seems to have emerged as the female version of T Rajendhar as far as this column is concerned). Anyway, the point I think I am trying to make is knowledge and information are hardly any guarantee for common sense approach and success in life. That is why a film star, whose only talent in the world could be that he could smoke cigarettes in ways that are not possible if you are sane, is deemed a success and lavished with adoration and idolation, while a scientist, who perhaps invents a cure for a life-threatening disease, is given up by the society as being an oddball. I know this is an extreme case. But there are other every-day examples too. Like this below. Read carefully, it could be about you. Or me. Situation: The car suddenly splutters to a stop on the road. And whenever an automobile conks out, which is regular considering the road conditions in India, almost by rule the man of the species steps out and, standing at an askew angle, peers in the general direction of the tyres and the underside of the car. This he will do even if only the car’s top had caught fire. This is has been his response even from the caveman’s time, when, if you are aware of history of governments, cars had not been invented as the RTO offices to issue the licence and number plates were not in place. Anyway, after some vague moments, the man will lift the hood of the vehicle and pore over its unemotional innards. He will look at it intently, half expecting it to almost speak and point to where the problem is. The man, even though his understanding of automobiles can be compressed on the back of a stamp (‘put key, drive vehicle’), will gingerly fiddle with the various knobs and tubes protruding in strange profusion. This he, in all seriousness, will believe will rev the engine up to life again. So, he will go back to the seat to start the engine again. But the car would obviously not budge. Instead, if it had a mind, would think what sort of a goober is he to expect it to run by merely looking at and touching it. Till now the script is common to both the person who thinks he is knowledgeable person and the practical one. And then the plot pans out differently. Knowledgeable person: He will go to the boot of the car to fetch out spanners and jacks lying around in helpless profusion. Carefully picking up a spanner and a tweaker, the knowledgeable person, by the virtue of having read a few books on automobiles and watching similar shows on TV, will think that he could set it right and begin tinkering and tampering with the various screws and orifices that seem to make a car run. The car doesn’t read books or watch TV and hence would remain unimpressed. After some time, ranging from minutes to hours, the only possible outcome will be his shirt being lined with clammy black grunge at strange spots. It is then will it dawn on KP that the car could be set right only by a mechanic, a person who is a specialist in wearing clothes that look to be stitched exclusively with grease and other oily guck. But there is no guarantee that the mechanic will actually set the car right. But he is the only hope. When the mechanic indeed arrives (this may take from a few hours to some millennium depending upon one’s luck), he will look at the vehicle and, some times not even opening the bonnet, say, the fuel pump gasket is gone. ‘It has to be changed, sir’. He will say this even if you just ask him for directions to a particular address. Mechanics are programmed from birth to talk on these lines. The knowledgeable person will, of course, not be convinced. He would try to suggest to the mechanic that the problem could be something else like the transmission gauge malfunctioning. The mechanic will hardly listen to him. Instead, his mind would be calculating how much to charge, a random price that is arrived at after sincerely weighing into consideration the problem at hand, which is liquor and chicken briyani for the evening.The KP will continue to haggle with the mechanic over the charges. But eventually, he will end up paying a thousand rupees more than the market rate. Well, knowledge comes at a price. Mechanics know this.The practical person: After unsuccessfully wrenching around, he will call the mechanic and leave the rest to God. This is a smart strategy which will ensure, if not a running car, then at least a clean, grime-less shirt. Ignorance is, as they say, well I don’t know, because I am ignorant.

I won't repeat: The time to work is now

K Balakumar — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:14:13 +0000

‘One of the important things in life is...’ For some reason that cannot be explained in logical terms most humour columns tend to begin in such a vein. On such matters, humour writers usually operate on the patented pattern of Tamil moviemakers, especially of the masala variety that actors like Rajnikanth or Vijay generally figure in. The creative strategy that the filmmakers use for their movies to be totally different from their previous offerings is to keep saying that their movie is ‘totally different’. Usually this works. Otherwise Rajni or Vijay cannot be at the level they are in now even though it is difficult to tell their one film from their other without the benefit of the posters. But don’t even mildly suggest to a humour writer that he is repeating himself. For, in return you have to be prepared for an impassioned session of intense blabbering in which he will pain himself and you by repeating roughly 833 times that he has never repeated himself. It’s generally after a session with humour writers that most people arrive at the conclusion that even a Rajnikanth movie is agreeable. But why do humour writers repeat themselves? For want of any other substantive idea, I think I’ll blame time management of writers. Due to some strange cosmic phenomenon and laws of physics, all humour writers are destined to be lazy with a very low boredom threshold. Humorists' creative juices, for all practical purposes, trickle in slow-motion drops. This is my daily routine (Yawn) . Or at least the routine on most days when I have to show up at office. (Previous night) Set the alarm to 5. 30 a.m. 5.30 a.m.: Curse the man who invented the alarm clock. 5.35 a.m.: Struggle for the 'snooze' button. Repeat the process every five minutes for the next half-an-hour. In the event, wake up everyone in the household. 6.30 a.m.: Straggle out of bed, mentally thinking up convincing reasons to cheat self on missing the morning workout. Make a mental note not to eat heavily on the day, virtually believing that consuming one helping less in one session can compensate for giving up on a hour of running and training. We humour writers are always like this. 6.35 a.m.: Look morose and cough feebly to suggest some physical illness lest wife passes on some household work to complete. 6.40 a.m.: Plunge intently into newspapers. 6.41 a.m: Threatened by big words and feel bored. Stop reading. 6.42 a.m.: Attempt Sudoku. 6.43 a.m.: Give up after not being able fill even a single gird. 6.44 a.m.: Think of solving the crossword. Drop the idea as it involves the heavy work of turning the pages. 6.45 a.m.: Sit aimlessly for minutes together not knowing what is happening. Connoisseurs of English language have a term for this: 'dozing off'. 7.45 a.m.: Realise that much work needs to be done for the day. Get shivers down the spine, and in the intense pressure catch sleep for a further 15 minutes. 8.30 a.m.: Drop daughter at school. Read on the notice board an announcement to remit Rs.500 for the science project. Realise that the Rs.750 for the computer project, which was announced the day before, is also still not paid. 9. 00 a.m.: Receive call from daughter's school that Rs.1000 needs to be paid for stitching the 'Guides' attire. 9.01 a.m.: Involve busily in office work: Wait for the coffee to arrive. 9.30 a.m: Finish forwarding all the email forwards sent in by helpful colleagues. 9.35 a.m: Involve in important editorial discussions with colleagues over whether Kareena Kapoor can get any thinner. 10. 00 a.m: Think of the week's column, for which the deadline is well past. Yawn for a full minute. Feel very satisfied with the work. 10.02 a.m: Write the first line of the column: 'One of the important things in life is...' 10.03 a.m: Relax for a full twenty-five minutes after the sheer exertion of the creative effort. 10. 30 a.m.: Plunge into more hectic office work; Wait for the second coffee. 11.00 a.m.: Tell the Editor that the coulmn for the week is almost complete, strategically hiding the fact that it is complete save for the small matter that it has not even been attempted. 11. 30 a.m.: Things really begin to hot up in the office. There is no more time to waste. Lunch hour is just two hours away. . 12.00 noon: Rework the opening line from 'One of the important things in life is...' to 'In life, the most important thing is...' 12.01p.m.: Exhaustion. Cue for more coffee. 12.30 p.m.: Realise that it is nearly three hours since a word with the spouse was had. Call her up and get blasted for forgetting that the day before was her birthday. 12.31 p.m.: Discuss intellectually with colleagues the merits of Deepika Padukone's mini-skirt. 1.00 p.m.: There is no escaping now. Some work has to be done now. Get ready for the lunch hour. 1.30 p.m.: Receive a phone call from daughter's school teacher during which she implicitly suggested that her (daughter's) drawing skills are even worse than my talent for humor. Of course, by paying Rs.1000 per month the drawing skills could be improved. 2.15 p.m.: Return from lunch, take one more stab at the coulm for the week. This time it is: 'The thing is, life is an important one, but...'. Feel statisfied that more words are flowing in. 3.00 p.m.: Coffee man wakes up the entire man with his helpful arrival. 3.15 p.m.: Become surprisingly creative. Think of a totally original idea to seek permission to leave from office early: An uncle is admitted to hospital with heart-attack. 3.45 p.m.: Pick up daughter from games class. Get a bill for Rs.600 to be paid every month for tennis coaching. The games teacher was magnanimous enough to agree to the terms that even if the daughter is not able to attend the coaching, just sending across the money would be enough. 4.30 p.m.: Daughter is reluctant to go to music class. Advice her on the importance of being committed to work and never being lazy. 5.30 p.m.: Wake up after a quick nap. 6.00 p.m.: Try to watch TV. After one and half hours, watching one minute of each channel, come to the conlcusion that TV is useless. 7.30 p.m.: Think of the column. Work on the opening line again. Signs of incipient headache. Adjourn for dinner. 8.00 p.m.: Overeat at dinner. Mentally promise self to work-out in the morning. 8.30 p.m.: Have a tiff with spouse as she is sure that I will forget her birthday next year too. 9.00 p.m.: Daughter shows the information slip for school annual Day. Reach for the cheque book. 9.30 p.m. The column awaits. The first line looks like an orphan. But it has been a tough day both at home and office. Work was tiresome. 10.00 a.m. Hit the sack. Set the alarm for 5 a.m. The next day: For a change, try to work on the column from back. The last line could be: 'One of the important things in life is...'

Flying in the face of logic

K Balakumar — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:58:25 +0000

Last week I was out of the country. As an international traveller the most important piece of information that I would like to share from my experiences with you is that when you travel abroad you will always do well to remember your name. This is easier said than done, as you will figure out when you begin filling up the mandatory immigration form. The form will ask for your given name as well as the surname. But if you, like other normal human beings, have just one official name you will be stumped to understand whether the name that you have with you is your surname or given name. At this point, it is relevant to clarify what is a given name and what is a surname. The given name, as the dictionary defines it, is the name that usually precedes the surname. To illustrate with my personal example, as per records I am ‘Kuppuswamy Balakumar’. As per definition, only ‘Balakumar’ has anything preceding it. So by official definition my given name is Kuppuswamy, which, as it happens, is the name of my father. If my name is actually my dad’s, then what is the actual name that my dad is supposed to have given me? See this is how complicated international travel is. It will eventually come to a point when you will realise that you really have no name that you can call yours. The only family that has perhaps cracked this conundrum is George W Bush’s as the father and son go around with Roman numerals as surnames. It will be mighty helpful in these sensitive times. Immigration Officer (looking at the papers): Ok, You’re George Bush Bush: Actually, I am G B II Immigration Officer (getting suspicious with the numerals in the name): Looks like a new strain of virus. Ok, you’re quarantined. Talking of virus, these days, in the airport screening for the now dreaded H1N1 is very stringent and is done in the most scientific manner possible, in that each and every individual passenger has to fill a well thought out questionnaire, which asks conceivably the most advanced medical question: ‘Do you suffer from influenza’ (My suggestion to you is to answer ‘yes’ to the question so that it helps you to avoid the dreaded customs and immigration check). I can’t think of a more mature and foolproof testing than this. The only possibly more advanced method of tackling the swine flu pandemic could be to pointedly ask the dreaded H1N1 virus to surrender itself at the immigration counter. This has not been resorted to probably due to the fact that the virus may not have all the relevant travel documents with it. Air travel to other countries also involves writing out forms and paper-work the equivalent of a PhD thesis. There are very many details about you that the authorities would want to ascertain. The chief among this happens to be: The name of city where your passport was issued. This apparently is a vital piece of information for the immigration and customs officials to figure out whether you are a terrorist or a smuggler or just a journo out on a junket. The officials also seem unduly keen to take a look at the x-ray images of your jocks and vests. So it is advisable for you to not keep an erect shoe or chappal under your jocks in the suitcase as when the officials scan your baggage it might ludicrously kinky. If you are travelling abroad it is also mandatory to remain young and look as you did some 10-15 years ago when you perhaps acquired the passport. The security officials expect, not unreasonably, you to not age and retain the looks of your youthhood so that it matches with the photo on your passport. Rajnikanth, for example, does not travel abroad personally because he now looks like the grandfather of his own self. Rajni, however, lets his computer graphics image participate in shootings abroad. All told, it seems to do a better job than he has ever in his career. Kamal Haasan, on the other hand, has a bigger problem, as he himself will be hard-pressed to remember what his real looks were or are. Another important thing to contend with on trans-country travels is currency. What monetary unit to convert your home currency into is a conundrum that has stumped almost all travellers since the days of Vasco da Gama. It is a fair guess to say that Columbus strayed into America since he had only dollars and there was no way of converting them into Indian rupees as Western Union was still to be discovered. Foreign exchange market may seem to be the weirdest thing going on the earth if you take out T Rajendhar’s movies from the equation. But have no fears, forex markets essentially operate on the simplest of rules: You are a fool. Because when you buy a different currency you have to give a higher value. But when the forex operators buy the same currency from you they give you a lesser price. As an Indian, you will also wonder whether it is good to convert your rupee to dollar or to the currency of the country you are travelling to. My advice on this matter is quite plain: It doesn’t matter, as either way you will find yourself short. Indian rupee is delicately managed in such a way that it isn’t allowed to rise against any of the global currencies. So when you come from a jaunt abroad the only thing affordable to you is a few packs of humble chocolate. So friends and colleagues, don’t blame me. It’s all the fault of the RBI.

Breakfast and bathing water

K Balakumar — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:06:32 +0000

Sequels are wonderful and practical tools that come handy when you cannot think up anything original. This is the rule set in motion by the film industry, now patented by J K Rowling, whose Harry Potter series is essentially about the magic of conjuring up the same seven books under different titles. This interpretative explanation is needed for this piece as it takes off from the last week’s column, which dealt with the travails of the Indian traveller abroad. What you read may sound similar, but believe me it is original, as at least I have thought up a new heading, which is more than what you can save for the makers of Billa who actually remade an old movie with the same script and the same story without even thinking up a new title. The makers of Ninaithale Inikkum have taken this concept to another level in that they have copied a story from one language and stolen the title from another and released a film in the hope that people will appreciate their creativity for delivering a new product. But back to the Indian traveller and his toils in, er, toilets.

Potty is not petty

The problem for an Indian visitor to a foreign shore usually starts in the mornings itself. The Indian potty training is vastly different from that of the westerners in that the former needs roughly the entirety of the water that Karnataka is supposed to discharge into Tamilnadu for his or her morning ablutions, while the latter can come out of the loo without even so much of a droplet of water actually splashing on their skin. The Western concept of high hygiene has carefully evolved from the commonsense clamour for cutting down on the expenditure of precious water in bathrooms. The use of tissue papers obviously precludes the need for water in washrooms. This smart strategy has in one simple swoop transformed what is essentially personal issue (wastage of water in bathroom by individuals) into a global crisis of climate change and deforestation, which is what use of tissue paper actually entails as plenty of rain-forest trees need to be destroyed for manufacturing paper. This has also further helped the Westerners to conduct costly seminars where suit-clad, spectacles-sporting trendy men and women get ample chances to ceremoniously advise third world countries on the need for practising hygiene and eco-friendly living. Apart from the complexities and confusions of the commode, Indians have also got to contend with bathtubs, which have been thought up as a leisurely and luxurious way to wallow in one’s own grime and muck, as the user has to lie back buoyantly in the water that he has just soaped himself in. The thing about bathtubs is that its essential working set-up is such that the water is always either too hot or too cold, but never just right. Desperate Indians mostly end up using the bathtub as a shower stall by going through their bathing routine in the standing position even though the contrivance is meant for use in a sleeping posture. Bathtubs are, however, a highly recommended method to bathe if the whole idea is to waste all the water saved by refraining from cleaning one’s bottom.

Broken at breakfast

With the bathroom experiences usually less than satisfactory, an Indian traveller is in a surly mood as he heads to the breakfast hall, whereupon he is confronted by more challenges thrown up by the food as well as the implements used to eat them. The Western method again sets much store on the all-important hygiene, as it frowns upon the use of your own fingers, which are usually dirty even though they have conceivably not entered any one else’s mouth, and instead places its faith on an army of forks, knives and spoons which can be trusted to be clean despite the fact that they may have practically tangoed, just a few minutes ago, with the teeth and tongue of that man with terminal gum disease. Use of forks and knives generally call for dexterity and nicety with hands that are mostly beyond the pale of Indians, who usually manage to make the Danish pastry that they are trying to eat to surface on the plate of the Westerner sitting in the next table. Whole Hog Indians are also very fussy and complicated in their selection of food for breakfast. On the other hand, foreigners are simple and straightforward in their method. While Indians worry over the choice to make among breads, pastries, jams, butter, cheese, bacon, omelette, scrambled egg, porridge, fruits, juices, coffee, foreigners take the easy way out by consuming all of them. This naturally stands them in good stead in the physically demanding exercise of attending seminars and meetings, which is what they seem to be immersed in all seriousness all day. ‘Is it vegetarian?’ is a question that is known to reverberate in most dining halls that has an Indian in them. But sadly for him, even though the answer is yes, he is never truly convinced and is naturally forced to peck at his food with ill-concealed distrust. While vegetarianism is a growing fad in the western world, it has missed many parts of Southeast Asia, where people seem so taken up by seafood that even if they were to drink water they would prefer it to be one swimming with fish or other marine creatures. Indians find the Western food very bland, as they are wont to seeing their everyday food floating on oil in quantities that are generally handled only by refineries in other countries. The typical Western way of eating, especially vegetables, entails a process of cooking that does not involve actual cooking, while the Chinese method can be defined as tastefully imparting a foul smell of deep-sea slime into every item on the dining table. In the event, an Indian, because of culinary proclivities, ends up gorging on yogurt and desserts to helpfully supplement his cholesterol intake back home. But it is just not at the breakfast table or the bathroom that the Indian is all ease when travelling abroad. He is equally ill-convenienced at many chic social occasions that involve people greeting each other by rubbing cheeks but kissing the air. But I’ll leave those details to another occasion, for another, what else, a sequel to a sequel.