Adding Spice - Father’s Day Special

“When I was a boy of seventeen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in there years.” – Mark Twain

Like all children, the fondest memory of my dad in my childhood is of him shaving. Dad shaving was truly a scene of wonder for us – me and my sister. I used to watch in awe as he lathered the shaving cream in his face – an instant transformation into Santa Claus. And how I used to shriek in delight when he obliged by lathering up me too. Then amazement turned to wonder and concern as he took the blade and we watched open-mouthed as in quick, clean sweeps his stubble and the lather vanished. After his turn was over, he removed the blade and ‘shaved’ me too. Boy! Wasn't I so proud to shave like my dad. But the most enduring memory of this daily ritual was the lingering fragrance of the Old Spice aftershave. That was what truly announced the arrival of the new day – “OK new day, we have shaved – here we come!”

Again, like most children, the smell and bottle of Old Spice represented Dad for us. 

But once I entered college and shaving age, after the initial attempts I gave up shaving and took to trimming. I felt having unkempt stubble gave me better looks than being clean-shaven. It did wonders for my rebel look. And again, like most children, I grew distant from my Dad – the representative of the old bourgeoisie tyrant trying to oppress the voice of freedom and the hope of the new generation (me obviously).

Years passed. I entered my new job far away from home - one that required during training days to get up and shave first thing in the morning. We grumbled initially but gradually it became a habit. Whenever I went to the store or supermarket to buy aftershave I used to see the bottle of Old Spice – the same old bottle after all these years – and I would feel pangs of guilt. Of not having been a dutiful son. Of disobeying and rebelling against my dad. So I religiously avoided Old Spice. Firstly all my friends went for the next generation brands – Park Avenue, Axe – the ones whose ads showed chicks running after you.  So did I. Secondly I didn't think myself as good as my dad – not in shaving, not in anything. So I felt I was not worthy of using it – yet. When I saw it in the stands I felt like it belonged to my dad and so I avoided it. 

I finally came home after a long gap to my parents. I had used up my aftershave and so for a couple of days I just went without it. One dad my dad noticed and said – you can use mine if you want. It was a moment of pride for me. My dad was recognizing me as a grown up individual. The prodigal son had truly returned. I went to his bathroom and looked for the familiar Old Spice bottle. But instead, to my utter amazement, I found the Axe ‘Dark Temptation’ aftershave there! I was stunned into silence for a moment. And then I couldn't help smiling at this anti-climatic moment.

I came out with the bottle and asked Dad – Since when did you stop using Old Spice and turn to…uh the new brands? He smiled too as if he had been expecting this question and said – Since I knew you were returning. Besides I’d like some change and isn't this what you youngsters use now. I figured I’ll have to keep up-to-date with you, eh? And he went back to reading the newspaper. 

Happy Father’s Day dad. Everyone thinks their dad is the best. But only mine truly is. :)

My quotes for the year past - 2012

Given below are some of the quotes I gave in Facebook this year. Re-publishing here solely for the fulfillment of humanity and posterity...gravely, solemnly. 

* When I told my boss last week that the world was going to end on 21st December, he immediately convened a meeting and asked all of us - to complete our pending files immediately!
           All that hard work gone to waste. The world still lives; so do we. :-( (Only my boss has a smug smile on his face today!)
 (Dec 21) 


* In any place, other than Kerala, a 30-year old socialist is a very improbable thing.
(Dec 17)

* Alcohol has its uses: it burns well in rockets. While some drunks think they act like rockets, few have been observed to reach an altitude of more than the floor.
           (Oh and this is by Ron Hubbard... I'd never say anything like this ;-))
(Dec 15)

* I don't want a job... I want a journey!
(Dec 14)

* Now I know who Left Wing Extremists are - they are the crazy drivers in Mumbai who ride, drive and overtake only through the extreme left side! And also they shout extreme abuses while doing so!
            And the colour red electrifies them - especially the red in traffic signals. When they see red they actually increase speed and jump them. Its like the signal for battle - 'chalo chalo!'
(Sep 28)

* I want to be born again
I want to be 'Don' again...
(Sep 9)

* ഓരോ ദിവസത്തെയും ജോലി കഴിഞ്ഞു self-appraisal ചെയ്യണം എന്നാണ് മേലാളന്മാരുടെ പുതിയ ഉത്തരവ്. അതുകൊണ്ട് ഇപ്പോള്‍ ദിവസവും ജോലി കഴിഞ്ഞു തിരിച്ചു വീട്ടിലെത്തുമ്പോള്‍ ഞാന്‍ സ്വന്തമായി തോളില്‍ തട്ടി പറയും "സബാഷ് ഡോണ്‍... സബാഷ് !!" ;-)
(July 20)

* ഹിന്ദി വിക്കീപ്പീഡിയ വായിച്ചപ്പോള്‍ കേരളത്തെപ്പറ്റി ഇങ്ങനെ എഴുതിയിരിക്കുന്നു - കേരളം ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ഒരു 'പ്രാന്താ'ണത്രെ ( केरल भारत का एक प्रान्त है ) !! സത്യമെന്നല്ലാതെ എന്തു പറയാന്‍! ;-)
(Jun 23)

* I have gone back to watching Doordarshan for the news. When first the private channel news had come, it was exciting with the discussions and debates. Now it is only views and half baked stories instead of news. Good old doordarshan. DD News even has got a golden globe instead of the old blue one. Cool!
(June 2)

* The biggest problem about proposing to a girl is ... what if she says 'yes'??
(April 16)   

Brevity is definitely wit

These days no one has time to read big news articles. However journalists/editors have the tendency of reducing news to tiny bits that actually end up having undesired results.

For example, last day there was this news in the front page of a national daily:

"Attack on Airtel office:Two suicide bombers attacked the offices of Airtel and MTN in Kano, Nigeria, on Saturday. Only the duo was killed."

The last line actually made me laugh. What a bungling pair of terrorists! Now I am certain the paper's intent was not to evoke laughter on such a serious incident. But that was the end result.

Long back when the newspapers were still in its infancy, news used to come in bits and pieces because there weren't so many pages for filling in the details. I wonder if it produced the same comic effect back then. Here's an example of a funny last line from a 1921 UK newspaper:

"Divorce details may shock women jurors: Six women made legal history today when they were sworn in as the first female jurors ever to sit on a Divorce Court jury. The only tricky moment came when some abominable and beastly letters and pictures had to be shown to the jury. It was feared that they would terrify an unmarried woman, so the jury decided that only the men should see them. The women agreed not to look."

I mean the whole news is funny when you read it in this age ("beastly and abominable" letters?? hehehe) but the last line is especially funny.

P.S. - Brevity does have its uses, I admit. Did you know that the title Adolf Hitler first gave for his famous autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), was "Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". I wonder whether the book would have been a best-seller with such a long title!

A Story Forgotten

One day, in a village where everyone forgot everything, a young man was walking through a lane whose name he had forgotten, to a place he had forgotten. He had forgotten how to reach there. In his hand he held a piece of paper. He had forgotten what was written in the piece of paper. It was to be delivered to someone, but to whom he had forgotten. He couldn't remember whether he had written it himself or was it delivered to him. The young man was being followed by two people who had forgotten why they were following him. Upon realizing he was being followed, he turned a corner and entered a park. He saw three people sitting in the grass - a young woman with an old couple. Seeing her he threw the piece of paper behind her and walked ahead. But when he took a few steps he forgot he had thrown it away. Since he had already forgotten where he was going or why, he stood there perplexed trying to think why he was there. The two men who were following him forgot they were following him and walked right past him. He also did not identify them since he had forgotten them. The young woman, who had forgotten why she was sitting in the park, had seen him throw the piece of paper. She picked it up and she read it. She immediately got up and walked towards him. By then she had forgotten the old couple. She forgot what was written in the paper. She forgot what she came to say to him. She looked at him and he looked at her and they forgot everything else for the rest of their lives. 

Chennai Blues

“Frog in the rain…”

A rude screeching sound awakes me from my reverie while I’m lying down in my room. “What the hell is that?” I ask my roommate who seems to be the originator of that noise.

“It’s only a song” he says in an injured tone.

“What song is that?”I ask incredulously.

“Uh…I think it is a famous song. Haven’t you heard it?”

I shake my head, while eying him wearily.

The rain already has me in somber moods. Coupled with his singing I could go crazy. When the rains started in Chennai I thought it would be a relief from the sweltering heat. It was, but it also brought torrential floods, muddy and slime-filled roads and overflowing sewers.

“I have never heard it before” I say. “Is it by any band? From a movie? What’s the correct tune?” I ask.

“I can’t remember whose song it is. The tune is correct though” he argues and again starts “Frog in the rain…”

“Stop!” I command.

The rains here have left us all affected in strange ways. We have become more despondent. Now we can’t go out anywhere. To eat something from the only Malayali hotel near our lodging means trudging through knee-deep dirty water. It was quite a shock from the magical scenario back in Kerala, where every rain simply invites you to drench yourself.

“What are the rest of the lines?” I ask. My roommate’s expression indicates his brain is overworking but he can’t seem to remember.

The only thing common thing between the rains here and back home is that once the rain starts the cable goes and that means no TV, the only other source of entertainment I had in my room. So here I am stuck with my roommate, staring at the ceiling with nothing to do.

“What is the song about? Do you at least remember that?” I ask exasperatedly.

“Well” he says after some considerable thought “it is about a frog in the rain.”

I sigh.

A moment of silence. My friend clears his throat. I know he is about to go for it again. Well, what the hell. I have no choice. What else to do. This time I too join in:

“Frooooog in the rain….”

.

Deadly Business

Sometime ago at the death of a neighbor, we guys were huddled in a corner of his house when we saw someone distributing visiting cards among the people who had gathered there.

“What’s that?” someone asked. “Must be the catering guys” another replied for it is usual for relatives to appoint catering guys to arrange snacks and tea for visitors.

So we called him near and asked for the card. The name of the group was “Sivasakthi…” something. But it turned out they were not catering guys. They were the ready-made chitha (funeral pyre) people. If you were dead you only had to call them and they would reach your house within three hours with all the necessary equipments, i.e. wood, coconut shells and husks, ghee, - in short, all the stuff that you needed to burn properly. They were also experts in rituals, the man explained. That was good to know. In case you had any doubts on which road to take somewhere in your afterlife journey, they could probably fill in all the details. Book which paradise hotel you want and that sort.

“The leader of our group has burned over 3000 people” the assistant burner said with pride. It only worsened our despair. It felt like he was inviting us to die so we could experience their superior services.

“We have no other branches” he announced before moving away to distribute the cards to the other will-die-one-day-anyway people.

Can’t blame him. After all death is everyone’s business.

This last day I met another guy at the airport. A dead body was arriving on a plane and he was there to collect it. I saw him sign for the body and accompany it to the ambulance and drive away. Must be a close relative I thought. Then two days later I saw the same guy at the airport and again he was accompanying a dead body. Jeez! All his relatives abroad must be dying in quick succession, I thought. So I went over and talked to him. Turned out he wasn’t a relative at all. He was running an agency that specialized in helping retrieve the bodies of people who had died abroad to their relatives back home – for a price of course. The relatives just had to sign a contract and hand over the money and he would take care of everything.

“There are other agencies in this business also” he informed me. “But we have a specialty that they don’t”, he said to me beaming. I couldn’t wait to hear what it was.

“We offer free door delivery!” he said with a flourish.

Now wasn’t that an attractive offer. Free door-delivery?? Like grocery or a fridge or laundry. My parents bought a washing machine last week. They had free door delivery. This was just like that.

Who said death was all despair and gloom. It’s a bloody good business. And you can always count on people to die. People may stop buying clothes, or grocery, or electronic goods. But they just can’t stop dying. And so the business shall flourish too.

I took his visiting card too. If I die at least I get a free trip home!

Beg to differ

A lot of my friends are very compassionate.

They give to alms to every other beggar they see on the street. Here, in Chennai, the subways are besieged by beggars of all age groups and my friends insist on giving alms to at least someone each day.

Call me a miser but I don’t give alms. And I request everyone to stop giving alms and thereby stop promoting the begging rackets.

Listen carefully: that old cripple you know who drags himself from compartment to compartment tugging at your feet for a few paise? He always has a stash of ganja with him, for that is what he uses the money for. He even peddles to other beggars to earn extra. You can see him by the bathroom door smoking his hash.

Please don’t soothe your conscience by helping him.

Why are you so guilty? Come on, admit it. You are not helping him to save humanity and out of your love and compassion for the universal downtrodden. You just hope he paves your path to heaven. Or perhaps you are doing a penance, eh?

Social equality will not come from begging.

Beggar rackets are one of the biggest underground mafias operating in this country. They steal and maim children to create more sympathy. If you promote them you only encourage them to kidnap more children. Think prostitution, criminalization and illegal human trafficking.

During festivals in temples, mosques and churches the hordes of beggars you see are driven there by handlers and their ‘loot’ goes not to the hungry starved children but to the middlemen behind them. Buy them food. Give them clothes. Don’t give them money.

Didn’t you watch 'Slumdog Millionaire'? The operation of these rackets are portrayed somewhat truthfully (not forgetting the other controversies surrounding the movie and its commercial exploitation of the very same slum children).

Say no to beggars. The moment you say no to a beggar, there is a chance someone ceases being a beggar. The moment you give a rupee, a hundred more beggars are born.

So stop riding your high horse of morality. All you philanthropists killed Soumya. Don’t forget that.

.