The Wordsmith

It’s been so long since I have written anything silly and inconsequential that I fear I may have lost the ability to be stupid, which if you ask me, is tragic. I think every human is defined by the amount of stupidity he/she possesses. Personally I think that a person who can get in touch with their stupid side even after the age of 18 is a person worthy of respect. Anyway I digress.
So I have been doing so much of serious writing that I thought it was time to stop and write about pure truths of life like why does the boss, who is a rather good looking man, not think of trimming hair coming out of his ears. I mean seriously, it’s rather hard to concentrate on what he is saying when you are grossed out by hair in his ears. I mean yeah sure being all hairy is a sign that you are masculine but hair sprouting from your ears is probably a sign that you are not only masculine but also simian.

He is a rather good man – the boss. Somehow all through my career (2.5 years) I have had excellent bosses who have given me a long leash and understood that I function best when left to my own devices. I hate people breathing down my neck telling me what to do when I am quite sure of exactly what I am doing. The boss understands and even listens and nods intelligently when I present rather impossible ideas and gives me leads I can follow up on. He knows I hate staying late in office so always clears my copies very promptly and praises me when I do a good job. I might be earning peanuts now (actually less. Like P says we probably earn less than an NREGS worker in the country) but I like the job, the boss and the working hours.

Talking about P, the other day we were having a serious discussion about our prospects of marriage were. While P maintained that I was hot property because I had done my engineering and was a “techie” as she kindly calls me (If you ask me I think it’s a racist term. Techie. Like calling someone blackie. eww) I thought men would easily be turned on by the fact that she had literature, political science and psychology as her majors. I mean seriously, question to all you guys out there. Would you rather marry a girl who went, “Myself Wordsmith, software developer at CTS/TCS/Infosys. I done my engineering. I can remove viruses from your computer” or someone who says, “Hi. I am P. I am a developmental journalist working with XYZ magazine. My majors include psychology, political science and literature and I think capitalism with the face of socialism is the way for the world to go.” The latter you all would agree is such a turn on that if I were a boy I would instantly marry P. P of course thinks that being a techie has its perks. Like getting paid an obscene amount as salary, having weekends off (I am not even sure what the terms means anymore. I get a measly one day off) and having techie friends, who work in Amazon, who have unlimited access to kindle and e books.

This brings us to J who is such a darling that knowing yourself you wonder if you deserve friends like these. J who works with Amazon (Yaaaas. Awesomely cool friends I possess) works for the kindle team and has generously loaned me his kindle to read books. Now if you know me, for me owning a kindle is my ultimate fantasy. I do not want cars, houses, jewels and private islands. I just want a kindle with unlimited access to Amazon’s e store to read whatever books I want to, whenever I want to. This is pretty much what I am doing right now and I cannot thank J enough. He of course being the loquacious and lucid guy he is always replies with a “Grmm.harrumph.hmmm.” when I gush about how exceedingly grateful I am that he has bestowed a kindle upon me. He is so much like a horse that way. So I have happily been spending sleepless nights reading for at least 4 hours every night to be able to finish as many books as I can

And this, ladeeej and gentlemens brings us to Steig Larsson. *Pause for effect* (If any of you went “Erm. Steig who?”, last heard, mortien is still an effective way to kill yourself.) Steig Larsson defies adjectives. He is probably the awesomest writer and story teller ever and never before have I felt sad about the death of an author. I have been hooked to the Millenium trilogy. The only books he wrote before he died an untimely death in 2004. If you love reading books and haven’t read the Millenium trilogy yet, PLEASE pick up a copy when you go to the bookstore next or mail me at wordsmith.writes@gmail.com and I shall send you pdfs of the book (Yaaaas. Highly scrupulous I yam!). I finished reading all three yesterday and I can’t believe there are no more books Larsson has written. It is such a loss to the world of crime thrillers that I can’t even bring myself to talk about it. After a long time I stayed up three nights in a row to finish all three books. Larsson may your soul rest in peace forever.

Soul reminds me that I have been doing a bit of soul searching. I have never been a very deep or philosophical person. I am rather shallow that way. But every human being has times in life when you start asking questions like, “What is the purpose of life”, “Is what I am doing something I really want to do”, “Is there some job in the world which would give me 100% job satisfaction?” and the likes. These moments are usually preceded by philosophical songs like Blowin’ in the wind, Mehfuz, dying in the sun, I believe in you, and the likes.
Songs have this effect of changing my thoughts. While I am equally capable of listening to “Mai tujhko chura laya hoon tere ghar se..tere baap ke darr se” and wondering about how funny Ponting’s face looks when he is about to lose, at the same time I can also listen to “I don’t believe in super stars, organic food or foreign cars. I don’t believe that heaven waits for only those who congregate.” and go into deep thought about the above questions. And I have realized that………..wait for it…..it’s gonna be……legen….dary (too much HIMYM yeah!)….. that what I am doing right now is also not what I REALLY want to do. I mean sure I am happy, sure I am good at what I do and have some kind of job satisfaction but I still think there is something else out there which I really ought to be doing. Something which probably makes a little more difference to the society than what I am doing right now. Maybe I am being too idealistic (have been blamed of this often) maybe I am the kind of person who needs constant change, maybe I just need to stick around longer than just quit things half way. But like I was telling G the other day what I really want to do right now is go to Nepal or sub Saharan Africa and live there, do some quality journalism, climb some mountains (in Nepal and not SSA), write a book and come back.

I think G and I get along well because we are constantly trying to outdo each other at being stupid and trying to gross the other person out. I am leading right now, by sending THAT video which made G almost throw up his lunch on his keyboard and swear to murder the people in the video. G and I have long discussions about things like, “how would a person who has cold and phlegm and snot coming out of his nose kiss a girl” or “is it better to have accidentally brushed your teeth with shaving cream or moov” or “why French women are much nicer and prettier that Indian women” (Women of India, this was an argument. I defended our brethren! :P). G being in France on an exchange programme is learning the language from a very petite and delicate looking girl and though doesn’t admit it has fallen head over heels with her. How else would you interpret these statements?

“Her eyes are blue man. So pretty and sea blue. Sighhhhhh”

“When she speaks English in that French accent of hers, she is the cutest thing ever man. Sighhhhhhh”

“She looks good in any clothes she wears man. Sighhhh”

“I have nothing to do today so I shall go and teach her some English”

If these, ladies and gentlemen are not signs of a man in love, pray tell me what it is then? :- G being G of course stoutly denies all these claims while continuing to lavish praises on her. The poor love sick puppy. :P :P

Ok. That’s enough stupidity for today. I hope to make this a habit. The writing I mean not the stupidity. That’s inherent. So long then!

So I have joined salsa classes....For people who don't know me the dots were to let people who know me finish laughing and wipe their tears so they can read the rest of the post.
Yes. Given that I have the grace of a hippopotamus wallowing in water, dance would be the last thing people would have expected me to learn. After cooking and singing of course. And java. and coding. and learning to wear a saree. and... ohh i digress

I don't want to say I cannot dance. If Vijaykanth can think he can dance, Sam Anderson can think he can dance (AND act) I can dance yes. And you will agree too, if you are willing to look beyond little technicalities like grace, form, synchronisation, style and rhythm of course.
So it was my first class (and a free class. so yayyy!) and there I stood looking at all the pretty women dancing, their bodies curving at the right places, their hands and legs in perfect synch with the music, a lot of feminine grace and charm and giggling petitely at the boys at just the right place and time.

"Hah, I can do this" I thought. Yes, I can be hopelessly optimistic that way.

Now there is a huuuuge difference looking at someone dance and actually dancing. Its like any other activity. Swimming, Cooking etc. It looks ridiculously easy till you actually start doing it. When you see the girls doing salsa the first reaction is to snort, at the ease with which they move.

Left leg in the front, tap your right leg and the bring your left leg back. That seemed easy and in les than 10 seconds I had done the step three times.

And I would have been an expert salsa dancer, only I am slightly dyslexic. So I cant really differentiate between left and right. No really. I cant. I am the worst pillion rider to have. While I will be saying "turn left" I will be frantically shaking my right hand and vice versa. For the longest time I would imitate my eating action/writing action to actually find out which one was my right hand (I kid you not). And then my cousin, who suffers from the same disease, taught me the perfect way to differentiate between left and right. "Make an L with your forefinger and thumb on each hand. The one which actually makes a straight L is your left hand," she told me triumphantly. And since then thats how I have been finding out which is left and right. Would have worked great in salsa too, if only my partner werent holding my hands.

So this is the conversation between Random Clueless Guy (RCG) who was cursed in his previous life to dance with me and me.

Me: Will you leave my hand already? I cant find out which one is my left leg and which one is right if you keep holding my hand.

RCG: instructor told me to hold your hand

Me: I know. But how do I find out which one is left/right then?

RCG: instructor told me to hold your hand

Me: could you not hold my hand till I get my leg moves right, you retarded hulk of a Brontosaurus.

RCG (almost whimpering): instructor told me to hold your hand

I swear, even if i get married tomorrow there will not be a man who would hold my hand with as much fervor as that guy did. In the words of the wise P G Wodehouse "If I had had to choose between him and a cockroach as a companion for a walking-tour (salsa), the cockroach would have had it by a short head"
So anyway with RCG unwilling to let go off my hand it took me quite a while to figure out the moves. Hardly had I sighed in relief thinking that was all there is to salsa that the instructor materialised and said "Ermm. dont stamp. Just tap your feet and there is no need to run. Just dance the way you would walk" said the not so cute instructor.

I am not sure how many of you have read Asterix (the comics) and know Obelix, who was dropped into the magical potion as a baby and hence has immense strength. Rumor has it that as a child I was dropped into a bucket full of glucose and have had never ending energy, enthusiasm and speed ever since. There is no activity which I can actually do slowly. While most people walk, I run. While they eat, I gobble. While they talk, I shoot. While they dance, I imitate an induction motor.
For the life of me I cannot be slow in anything I do. I finish everything in jet speed and grace, style, delicacy have been my nemesises since my inception. I say inception coz even before I was born I wanted to come out fast and was a premature baby. (yeah yeah. This would be the time to crack those stupid 3rd jokes about premature babies).

So coming back to salsa. Now the main thing about salsa for the girls is the right and left turn. If you think of them as just turns you would be very sadly mistaken and would be in for a rude shock. They involve a lot more than just turning. What with your hand being twisted out of shape by your partner, your legs stamping on each other and the fact that you have to pack in a twirl and a twist along with a stylish movement of the hands in the end, the turning part is probably the most cumbersome in salsa. A stress buster here would be to 'accidentally' stamp on your partner's feet rather forcefully and gasp and say sorry. rather interesting watching his face go from red to purple to green to normal within 20 seconds in his attempt to stop a scream. Ah yes. We live dangerously. :P (Most times it was not even an accident for me. I swear on Mamta Kulkarni.)

So after 3 classes of twisting and turning and stamping and screaming I was told very politely by my instructor that I should practise the steps I had been taught and enter only after I had mastered them, which is a euphemistic way of saying that I cannot enter ever. Sighhh.

But i refuse to give up and have been going left tap tap, right tap tap, left tap tap, turn, twirl everyday much to the consternation of the people around me. Even you would be irritated if someone kept asking you, "Which is left. No No. Not your left. My left. but thats your right. so it would ideally be my left eh?" :P

P.S: If you don't understand this and its relevance to my life..... you are a dork. yes, I am very polite. Thank you very much. Now I will go paint some beautiful lines.

I remember when I was in class 7, in a remote town in the west of Gujarat - yeah my father's job was such that we would go to the remotest corners of the country where my father being a mechanical engineer would build whatever it was that mechanical engineers built and when there was the sign of even a leeetle bit of development my dad would be transfered to the next undeveloped place. My childhood hence was spent studying in a lot of loser schools which had no teachers and mostly no
students - we had this HUGE and beautiful school with lovely classrooms, lots of playground area,
excellent infrastructural facilities, lovely swimming pool and the works but no teachers, because
everyone refused to come and work in such a godforsaken place. So I remember my dad commenting, "Your school is like a beautiful woman....... with no hair". Which was absolutely true coz in spite of the fantastic facilities and all that jazz, we had no teachers. Raavan, I would say is pretty much like that. Breathtaking locales, excellent cinematography BUT no story whatsoever, no logic whatsoever. I was so shocked the whole time I was watching the movie that I could just watch open mouthed and most people thought I was over awed by the movie.

Some random thoughts from the movie.

1. Suhasini's dialogues are EPIC blade! Madam I can barely understand poetic tamil but even i thought your dialogues were terrible. Especially the ones where Beera and Ragini are in front of this huge idol of some God. What the hell were you thinking? "Anyway Mani has taken care of finding a picture perfect sexy location for the scene. So while people Wow at the scenery let me fit in some shitty dialogues"?
The dialogues are so run off the mill and fail to touch a chord except probably the chord which makes u squirm in your seat. JUVENILE dialogues!

2. Some, a teeny weeny bit of credit could have been given to the audience. We are Indians. We KNOW our Ramayan. We KNOW Hanuman was a monkey and that he found Sita. We KNOW Jatayu was the first person to give news of where Sita is and was injured by Raavanan. We KNOW Raavanan had 2 brothers, one full of brains (Vibhishan) and the other full of brawans (Kumbhakarna). We KNOW Raavan had 10 heads.
I do not have a problem with people adapting from epics. Hell, Dalapathi is one of my favoritestest movies ever. The extremely subtle references to Mahabharatha made Dalapathi so beautiful. Which is why I found Mani's in your face reference to Ramayana in Raavan very jarring. And the scene where the policeman pulls Beera's sister's nose and asks "Shall I cut it?". Not.At.All.Suggestive.Of.Any.Epic. Eeeeeks.
And like a friend of mine commented, maybe Priyamani demands that there be a gang rape scene in the movie she stars in or she refuses to act.

3. Ok. So they base the entire movie on the premise that police is searching for Ragini who has been
kidnapped by Beera and taken into the heart of the forest where no one can find her because Beera keeps moving from one place to another etc. And in the end Ragini gets down from the train in the middle of nowhere with deep valley on both sides of the train track and 20 seconds later she is front of Beera. I can understand that they could not have shown her trekking through the jungles up the mountains, across the rivers to find Beera but her face, her pearly white dress show absolutely no signs of having lumbered through deep dense forests to find Beera. She looks like she is fresh out of a bath and going to a temple. :-\

4. And whats with the IRRITATING camera work, Mr.Mani. I do NOT want to see Abhishek Bacchan's left bicep's nerve or Aishwarya Rai's cornea. Neither do I want to know how close can u come to Aishwarya Rai's boobs without actually touching them physically. I am equally uninterested in the brand of sunglasses worn by Prithiviraj and in Ragini's heaving bosoms. I would have liked to see entire humans, walking, talking etc but all I could see was snatches of flesh here and there.

5. And my complete sympathies with Vikram. I am sure he loathed Suhasini's dialogues so much that he decided to improvise and say extremely profound stuff like, "chaka chaka chak chuka bak. dandanakka. danakanaka" instead of mouthing the insipid dialogues. I really cant think of any other reason why such gibberish would be present in the movie.

6. I think the EPIC WTF moment of the movie for me was when Dev tells Ragini, "Are you willing to take a lie detector test?". Eeeeeeeeks. We get it. Ramayan. yes. Agni Pariksha. Yes Yes. WE GET IT. ok? You didnt have to go out of your way to adapt Ramayan to modern times and in SUCH a lousy fashion Mr.Mani.
I had GREAT expectations of you. I am one of the many people who can watch your movies again and again and again and not get tired. But I think that is 3 agains more than what I would employ for Raavan. I have some advice for you - actually one

a. Stop teaming up with your wife. Please! :-

7. A lot of my friends are going, "tch. you just don't know how to appreciate art man. What stunning locales, what breathtaking cinematogrpahy. and the climax. Ooooh! What a place to shoot it". Ermmm. I could get ALL this and MORE just by sitting at home and watching National Geographic or Discovery Channels and plus I get the added benefit of not having to look at Aishwarya Rai's disgusting face. I also do not GET a lot of other things which people are talking about. I see what is there on the screen. I do not try to guess stuff like, "what could Ragini and Dev's relationship before her abduction be". "Whats going to happen after the end of the movie" (I think it was a feat that I survived the movie so I am not going to torture myself further by thinking what could have happened after it). Hell! I GET Mani's movies. I always have. But Raavan. I am glad I did not GET it or maybe my "getting" the movie was lost in Mani repeatedly nudging me saying, "Get it? huh? huh? Ramayan. Get it?"
Enough of "getting" there and I would not surprised if you don't get me! :P

8. In the words of my dad, the wisest man I know and who NEVER watches movies but watched Raavan AND Raavanan by mistake, "Mani Ratnam made Raavanan after he underwent a lobotomy". You can NOT argue with logic like that.

With the family having a veritable baby boom in the year 2000 suddenly the house is filled with a lot of 10 year old children, boys in particular who have arrived from different parts of the world to finally get inducted into brahmin hood by having the upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony). While I believe in things like upanayanams and brahmin hood and sacred thread as much as I believe that India will one day win the FIFA world cup the elderly folks in the house think that unless a thread is worn around a young boy's neck and unless lots of money is spent on feeding already well fed priests the boy will be impure and will be *GASP* considered a non-brahmin. Oh the horror!

Anyway I digress. The one good thing of having inane functions which have about as much significance as Aishwarya rai does in Hollywood is that it helps the family gather and meet and a chance for me to meet cousins after a really long time. It is fun to have cousins over, especially when you are meeting them after a long time and MORE especially (can u say more especially?) when they come to the same house in which you grew up and spent a major part of your childhood summer vacations in. Showing them the secret passageways to the house so they can quiety sneak outside the house and go play after 6 in the evening, the place where paati hides the murukku and home made chocolates and how you can reach it by precariously balancing a stool on a top of a chair. I also taught them how to play a lot of cool games like dark room, earth-water-air etc.

Dark room is a game where you make a fairly big room pitch dark and play hide and seek inside the room. not blind man buff mind you.it used to be one of my favorite games when I was a kid coz at the end of the game there would be at least 5 scraped knees, 1 broken teeth, 2 crying children, a few clumps of hair in each child's hand and some fantastic memories. Similarly it is my modest boast that earth-water-air was a game which i devised when i was a kid. basically there would be one person who would get to shout earth, air or water and the rest would have to move within 5 seconds to earth (the floor), water (any elevated surface like a bed or a chair) or air (suspend themselves in mid air). This usually resulted in the breakage of a lot of rather flimsy furniture and generally put us in the bad books of the adults. Actually till date I don't remember being in the good books of any of the adults in my family. The last time I got even remotely close was when I went to the shop and bought milk for paati, only to be cheated by the shopkeeper who sold 2 days old milk and which resulted in a lot of adults competing with each other to occupy the bathroom the next day.

Though my process of imparting this knowledge to the next generation was frowned upon by the adults, personally i feel that what is childhood if u havent endured a few spankings, broken some furniture and been in disgrace 70% of the times. Though I find it rather disconcerting that kids nowadays do not want to be naughty. This is about as shocking a discovery for me as finding out George Clooney is gay. To say that I would be shocked would be such a gross understatement.So my cousins consider playing on the PSP, watching cartoon network and surfing the internet more fun and interesting than *GASP* my sister and me. Agreed that the sibling is not very interesting but ME??? I am the fun-nest person I know (and nobody else knows! :P). So i got quite a shock when my cousins in their american accent went "You are B-O-R-I-N-G man."

Though it broke my heart when they said that, I had to accept the fact that I had no clue how to operate a PSP (and had no interest in learning), i couldnt recognize a single cartoon that they watched on TV. I don't even remember when i stopped reading Nancy Drews and Sweet Valley High (Shan't mention archies and enid blyton. I still read them voraciously). I am O-L-D. At my age my mother had two kids, my grandmother had 3 and my great grandmother had 4. I am constantly reminded of this fact by my mom when I say I don't want to get married. According to her, women lose their reproductive capacities by 27 and become menopausal after that. My grandmother thinks I have child bearing hips and should get married and have children. The child bearing hips part by the way isnt a compliment. It means you are so round around your waist that it is almost possible that you could be carrying a child.

Man, I ramble a lot. Coming back to what this entire post was all about..Hmmm. So what was the entire post all about? Ah yes. The cousins are here, the relatives are here, loads of family functions are here and the pressure to be married is here again and has reared it ugly head. When you are as old as I am the references to the M word stop being subtle. No longer am I asked "So what plans now" but unknown people directly ask me, "So when is the wedding?" or "When will I get my next kalyana saapadu" (A rather greedy person this. If i married every time my relatives wanted to be fed I would have had to be severely polygamous). One elderly relative even came to me said "See that boy over there? You like him? You can marry him". Oh thank you magnanimous aged relative. You sure are kind. :-\. Of course there is the odd "progressive" relative who comes and says, "Punjabi, Muslim, Malayali, Bengali a mattum kalyanam pannikadhe. Brahmanan a paathuko. Iyengar kuda parvailla". I have learnt the art of evading such questions by acting so busy at family functions that what relatives see, is not me but a blur of green, blue or whatever it is that I am wearing. Faster movements will ensure that the relative does not even recognize your gender and will concentrate on attacking the grape juice in hand.

With that wise piece of advice I shall now leave you and attend to trivial things like work, boss and the likes.