'Indian' Bahu, Brazilian Beefcake and Bollywood Jhatkas...

Living on a university campus with 'friendly strangers' can sometimes be a harrowing experience. But on the whole, it's crazy fun....And at other times, like I found out, it  can be an eye-opener...


A two-hour conversation with my Angolan flat mate and I felt like the Brand Ambassador of Bollywood who got to bask in the adoration of an enthusiastic convert, without having to put any effort to give her the spiel on jhatka...

I had no clue that in the living rooms of tiny apartments in Luanda, Angola, the favourite past time was watching Brazilian prime-time soaps.... ( Portuguese is the language spoken in both Brazil and Angola..so the love for these Latin American Soaps in distant Angola..)And not just watching them, but agonising over them and even praying for the story line to change to suit their favourite characters is the chief past time for the young and the old...And Bollywood songs provide the spice to liven up their lives...

Guess how I found out...

Here I was in my flip-flops walking down rickety English stairs like a rampaging elephant, in search of food for my grumbling tummy when I heard lusty singing from the kitchen....By now, I know who that can be...but today, the tune seemed vaguely familiar....So I sneaked up into our kitchen cum dining cum everything a.k.a common room and there she was...moving her JLo hips ( I think JLo would have a complex if she saw her!) in what can only be called a jhatka that would have Mallika Sherawat go green with envy....And when I moved closer there she was, at the stove, her back to me, her hips grinding, and Kajra Re playing...

With my mouth in a big O, I stood watching her feeling 'I don't care if I don't talk high about Bollywood numbers and am humming tunes from ColdPlay more often than not, but how dare you know about film songs from MY country without MY knowledge or more importantly, MY initiating you into it...'


And I guess sensing my presence, Lady L( haven't told her about this post, so I shall preserve her anonymity, just in case) did a royal 180 degree turn and stood with her hand comfortably resting on her jutting hip....And seeing my mouth still frozen in the big O, she wiggled her eyebrows wondering what had stung me...


So there I was pointing to her Youtube screen, where there was an unfamiliar scene on...and Kajra Re still playing on, asking her, 'How do you know this shit?'


And that's when the saga unfolded....


Angolans are crazy about Brazilian soaps, which are basically about love, lust, cheating, ditching and the step son's dilemma if his father's mistress' illegitimate child becomes his sister or if she is fair game...Now the Brazilians are intrigued by Indian exotica and especially our Kamasutra-esque dance postures that leaves very little for imagination, if the idea is to give a blatant 'come-on'...And I don't need to tell you about the wonders of a wet saree....well, I have just been informed that now, the Brazilians and the Angolans and every part of the world where there is Portuguese diaspora, are fans of pelvic thrusts and chest heaves in wet sarees.

Ok, did I digress? I guess no....I had to give you background masala, didn't I? 

Lady L sings Kajra Re in a Portuguesed fashion...it's wonderful to hear how for them, our poetry is a non-sensical grouping of os and aaas and uuuus....and by the time they break down the syllables as they hear it, a bloody post mortem has transpired on the shayari in the songs...Anyways, I shouldn't be petty about that...


But my curiosity was whetted...I had to know the storyline....And in no time, there I was, rolling on the carpet by the dining table, holding my stomach, half worried that I'd gag on my own laughter...


This is a miniaturised but descriptive story line...The son of wealthy Brazilian family stumbles upon the daughter of an Indian merchant ( read bania...and mind you, I'm being deliberately casteist..you shall soon understand why)....the girl is a mind-blowing Indian beauty, who reduces men to whimpering testerosterone pools with just a wiggle of her eyebrows and the sway of her hips behind her long flowing jet black hair...He falls in love, they have a lavish Rajasthani wedding at the castle of her father where elephants walk in straight lines and servants scamper about with their heads bowed low and turbans that seem to be bigger than their heads while everyone dances to Doli Taaro Dhol Baaje while smearing everyone else with colours like in Holi....

But the crunch comes when they can't consumate their marriage....For the father's astrologer has prohibited this, as the sun could cross into the lunar orbit ( or some such nonsense), as per the girl's stars spelling doom for their relationship...So the Brazilian groom knows it, his bride is kept in the dark...And now with the husband refusing the desperate advances of his nubile wife, she is now in a seething mass of frustrated desires....her saree drapes go lower, her blouses literally refusing to hold her assets in place, but her young Brazilian holds fast....Till the night that she dances to the Tawaif song that Rani Mukherjee croons for Aamir Khan in 'Mangal Pandey'...


Lady L knew the songs and I played Bollywood trivia by trying to guess the songs from the tunes...Should I say I failed miserably....And we ended up googling the songs....till realisation dawned like little light bulbs around my dumb head...


And as our Indian girl breached the Laxman rekha, wooing her man and having her wicked way with him, secrets start tumbling out of her royal closet.....She is pregnant by a Dalit ( now you know the casteist angle...imagine the Angolan trying to tell me about the merchant-Dalit caste problems!!!) and just as they were to elope, her father reveals her lover is a Dalit and the girl drops him like a hot potato...Right in time for a love-struck Brazilian to stumble along and the father decides to bundle her off to the Brazilian household...( What a global thinking merchant dad, isnt he?)


And this is just the main storyline...the Brazilian's father is in the throes of a major affair in Rio, his brother has an identity crisis...his sister is battling cancer...those are the side-stories I won't even go into right now....

Lady L suddenly perks up and asks me, So what does Eey Bagwen mean? And I say 'Whaaattt?'....and she patiently repeats, Eey bagwen...that's what that Indian girl keeps saying always....The coin drops and I say....Ooooooohhh, hey bhagwaan...that's like saying Oh, Lord!!


And then comes the next face...What about Arrrriiii Babaaji....Now how do I translate that?


By this time Lady L's soup is bubbling away, so is my stomach....But then, this conversation was priceless....


Who would have thought tying a nylon saree and shaking bountiful hips was the latest craze in far away Africa or that a  bored housewife in Rio knew about how a merchant's daughter cannot marry a Dalit in India or that in far away Brighthelm, an African girl cooks while Kajra Re and Tumhaari Adaon pe main waari waari was playing....


Bollywood Jhatke ki Jai.....Atiuttam Aanand....That's my new mantra!!!!

Another Chapter Turned...

Another birthday goes by....

These days there's hardly the feverish anticipation..It comes at its own sweet time, quite late in March, but early in the year just as you are beginning to get the feel of the new year... and then vanishes before you can soak in the day...

It's like every year you shovel some amount of mud out of a pit...Some years you work harder - abuse your soul and body more - and then during some other years, you try to repair the damage, the wear and tear left behind by merciless living...And when you feel really tired and weary, you can lie down in the pit you dug...Dark thought? Hmmm...somehow the image is comforting...

You learn to conserve your youth, use it wisely. Maybe the years have made me wiser.....

Now I know all that buildup towards the D-day is all that will remain....The rest as they say is a nasty anticlimax...

Over the years, the gifts you get dwindle to a trickle - most people look at you and wonder how you can be childish enough to smile like a kindergarten kid when extended the rare gift...they don't know that the excitement is an often well-wrapped junk in shiny paper...How do I say it's not the junk, its the shiny paper that still appeals...I spend more time unwrapping a gift than in using/appreciating the gift itself...So when an unwrapped one comes my way, the first thought is how thoughtless....is that bitchy? Well, so be it...my pleasure in unwrapping gifts got shortchanged, didn't it? 


For long, I went around on my uppity little horse proclaiming to the world and its dog and anyone who happened to be in the vicinity that Age is a number...I will always proudly reveal my age and age gracefully. Well then, I ask my hypocritical self, why do you not have your date of birth on your facebook or anywhere where the little lines appearing on your forehead are not visible at all? Why do you smile that well-practised mysterious smile when people ask you your age? Vanity ensures the capture of the last bastion of honesty...

This is to announce that from henceforth, the new age attained shall be denoted by a single candle only...And if there are more than I can count of my fingers, they better be artfully arranged...

But this has been a day long cherished....One where the first thought on waking up was not having to hurry to get ready for office...But then again, the time difference ensured that I celebrated for a sum total of 29.5 hours - the birthday that began in India time ended as per my UK watch...And as I adjusted my new watch - my shiny new gift to myself - I also mentally wound back my age, now I also chant, age is what the mind tells you....

My father used to say that, he hates being called old, now I know why...Like father, like daughter...


Perhaps winding back time is also a way of giving myself more time...after all, if I were to make my life an objective type examination with multiple choices, many questions would still be unanswered...But then, that's because many more questions that are never generic enough to be put down in the exam have been successfully covered....


Do I sound like a shrivelled old prune? Heck no...I have some jolly good years left to do some lusty living....But then, when your favourite cricketstars start looking like those snotty wannabes who filled up Standard 6 when you were in high school, then you know, it's time to retire the tiny skirts and pink t-shirts..


Thank God for Indian film heroes, especially the South Indian testerosterone displays...most of the big names have been around the film world, longer than you have been on the face of the earth....So there you have some sense of continuity...


This has to be the most random post I have in my blog....But every year, just about this time, I end up doing some spring-cleaning....disused parts of the thinking brain tends to rust...now can't let that happen, can we? the only part that is allowed to rust and RIP is the one which does simple maths...as years go by, my counting skills have atrophied...its plain atrocious now...Counting change out is a mortal embarrassment for me...I tried blaming it on the advancing years, only to be put to shame by my agile sixty-something dad....


Dad appears again in this post...What's with the thought of age and dad? Perhaps someday I'll figure that out...

How I was treated on my birthday, that hopefully will be the next post....waiting for some photographs to pep that piece up....But I already have a working title..."A TART FOR A TART"...something said very fondly by a dear friend, as he went about creating an apple tart for my birthday, knowing as he does my total disinterest in things sweet....


Till then, I shall peer into the mirror in my room and try to fish out any grey hair I might have sprouted...Twenty two year olds shouldnt have to deal with greying hair -  that's the new age my mind has arbitrarily thrown up...


( illustrations: Marilyn Monroe from Flickr and the Lady in the Mirror by Rubens)

'Oh These Indians, I Tell You!'

Yesterday, I spent the whole day in London - at the Indian High Commission to be precise...

The Job: Getting a notarised copy of a Power of Attorney Document.

The Intent:  Dilution of autonomy over my financial affairs so that my parents can make my life more easier than what they have already made by also taking over my financial mess and straightening it for me in my absence...

Getting a two minute job done just took an entire day...and thats thanks to a very sluggish bureaucratic procedure and a massive congregation of Indians - making the India House's Consular Affairs office look like a Kumbh mela pandhal.

By the time my train arrived at London Victoria and I tunnelled my way through to Covent Garden by the tube, the clock had struck 10.30...And then, there I was, in Central London, a little lost child with my heavy backpack ( my backpack even when not packed is heavy and does a credible job of making me look like I have the burden of the world on my shoulders)- trying to figure out where exactly I was standing (in general) and the way to India House(in particular)...Google Maps had given me precise directions, including the minutes that it should take me from the station - when I was still not where I should be at the said time, I decided to ask for directions...After all, if I could read a map, I'd have some sense of direction to where my life was headed!!!

That's where I stumbled on 

Revelation 1: It does not matter how long you have lived in London, ask anyone on the street who looks self-assured and you can see the rapid change in him into a confused, blubbering soul - who first attempts to make the GPS on his mobile phone work to help him locate himself, then fishes out his London map from the leather attache and when all fails, looks at you blankly and says, Well..this is Aldwych..the India House must be somewhere nearby....

Well, thanks buster, I thought to myself, as I scrambled like the White Rabbit of Alice in Wonderland, worried about making it to the High Commission in time to get my dirty deed notarised...

Revelation 2: Just because you are in London, don't expect the Indian embassy to look regal and royal, like how you tend to glamorise India when not there...The location is 'very tony' like the Brits call it, and it's bang behind the stately and palatial Australia House- where you can see a lot of comfortble sofas and cozy cushions through the tall glass windows - the India House is all stone too, with different enclosures for 'Private Visitors', a 'Main Entrane' and the entry to the 'Cattle Shed' as I will henceforth call the Office for Consular Affairs, PIO and other similar abbreviations...but that's where the difference between the Western World and Third World kicks in...

Revelation 3: A cattle shed is what a cattle shed does...The lines for a token to enter the hallowed cattledom was five men deep and nearly a kilometre long, just that it was organised to look like a wriggly serpent...Near one of the outer windows, by which the queue snaked, you notice copious amounts of plastic waste - supermarket bags, discarded foil wraps of potato chips, sandwich bags- and even tabloids...truly Indian, isnt it - especially when there was a pristine looking trash can, barely used just about 50 steps away....


Revelation 4: No two Indians can stand next to each other without one thinking that the other is trying to get a better deal out of a rotten situation - so there is fierce distrust of anyone's motive to chat the other up..


Revelation 5: Never trust an Indian to follow the rules of the queue, not try to coax someone two rounds ahead of him to pick up a token for him too...and brazenly cut across all the stupid cattle assembled there and make a beeline for the token counter as if his Dad set India House up...


Revelation 6: 4 and 5 are self-explanatory, 6 is where the Gujjus decide to make snide comments about the Punju couple standing ahead of them and the Sardars deciding to share some jokes across two rounds to someone they just nodded a greeting too...In effect, utter pandemonium in about 10 languages and already small camps emerging within a group waiting for a small piece of chit that tells them they are the 85th person to want similar service on the same day..


Revelation 7: The UK-born Indian will treat the entire experience of standing in a queue waiting for his turn to be a fate worse than being sentenced to life term in Guantanamo Bay and will proceed to make a nuisance of himself by talking in his 'Oh-so-unbearable Northern (read York and beyond) Twat' accent to his buddy- who's making him 'jealous' by bragging about his second beer by noon...

Revelation 8: The woman at the token counter couldn't care two hoots if you missed the 12 oclock deadline by 1/10th of a second, she will still look at you sourly as if you were the fishbone the cat dropped on her priced carpet...and fling a badly torn and printed token at you and expect you to whimper with gratitude


Revelation 9: At no point of time, will anyone tell you what is expected to be done. It's a Blind Man's Bluff...You can wait in the queue for 3 hours before you get to the end where you speak to some low minion of the Ministry who thinks he's the Ambassador's Private Secretary...by the way he also takes particular sadistic thrill in rubbing your nose in something you overlooked...and double pleasure in making you run two blocks to get one photocopied document..


Revelation 10: No place in India or abroad, with Indians in the vicinity can be a disciplined, smoothly functioning place....There will be loud shouts, fierce arguments and rude shove and jolts as people move towards their token call...If you are polite, you are considered 'retarded'.

Final Revelation 11: The India House was exactly two building away from where the London Dork sent me on a wild goose chase for the only mistake I committed - ask him for directions!!!!


Needless to say, my experience at the Indian High Commission was less than Sterling!! And I so empathised with the British woman in the line behind me who had 'ambitions to help her company do business in India'. She didn't know that it would require three visits to the High Commission, and all she prayed as she waited to collect her signed documents, after spending a whole day to get it signed was that she didn't ever have to return...

The magical Indian experience, tasted abroad is just as sweet!!!

Inquilab Zindabad! For What? Do We Care!

This post, I admit is very late, it has lost what we journalists call the immediacy of  it, but it has been niggling me for a couple of days now...So it needs to be exorcised.

Most Universities in the UK are going through massive funding cuts. So with the UK government deciding that the benevolence flowing from the exchequer into the coffers of Universities can be substantially reduced, the University in turn has deciding to go intelligent and cut 'lard' out of the system...So out goes courses that don't bring in the moolah, Departments are being downsized drastically and Pay Cuts and Pink Slips are in the 'Most Searched' list on University Internet.

My University - The University of Sussex seems to have a quite active Union..I remember a friendly warning as I was heading for foreign shores - to pack up my activism along with my unsuitable Indian clothes and leave it back in my cupboard in Kochi - for the Universities of Britain are the erstwhile bastions of Left activism and few wanted to see me return as a Card Carrying Member with what is now seen as a Utopian Conviction to rid the scorn off the Capitalist Bosses!!

I have taken the advice pretty literally, I have rarely joined protest marches, I just relish being a fly on the wall listening to how Socialist zeal manifests itself in the halls of a University.. So now, let me introduce the characters of this post


Prof. Michael Farthing: The Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex - portrayed more viciously than the Dark Knight

The Sussex Six: The fierce warriors fighting for the 'voiceless students and staff'

The rest of the roles - 'character artists' as we call them in India - performed by the police in riot gear, Uni security guards, as well as other staff on the University...
 
In a nutshell, push comes to a shove, activism goes into an overdrive, and six 'masked' intruders 'attempt to break into' the University Vice Chancellor's office, as stated by the press release that followed shortly, literally 'terrorising' the University Staff and holding the office under siege. Now the VC flexes his muscles, suspends six out of a group of about 100 who had been part of the demonstration protesting outside, but also calls in the police, who appear in riot gear and proceed to wield the stick on the students...

Interesting progression so far? The Indian junta reading this would think...so what's new, isn't that how all demonstrations end up in India - we would have had three damaged buses, some classrooms rendered completely useless by damaged desks and benches, graffitti ruining lovely stone walls....and all in the name of righteous ire...

But in one thing, the group mentality is the same. Wonder how many actually understood the issue that they were campaigning for? Couple of girls who came to my university residence to mobilise support for the campaign, could only talk about the 'brutality' shown by the University in having their students arrested in such a 'ghastly fashion' - not caring for their futures, suspending them - the repeated phrase was 'And we say we are living in a democracy!'. That's the phrase that seemed to have stuck in everyone's mind...For anyone that I asked about the demonstration and picketing repeated the same line to me..I wondered if activism was fashionably bohemian for many or whether it was the cause that was the mobiliser...Like a couple of students told me - 'Nice to see pretty undergraduates out campaigning for support. Normally it's just the weird looking hippies who sit with banners and posters at the Library Square'

But I did sign up...I believed in the cause, I hate the thought of professors being made redundant so that young new recruits who will draw considerably less salaries can replace them, I hate the thought of a UK University downsizing their English Literature Department because the 'international cash cows' are more interested in Media Studies..

And on D-day that was last Thursday, I walked up all enthusisatic of shouting a couple of slogans, being part of a student surge to protest against 'atrocities' perpetrated by the University led by the Dark Knight- like the Suspension of Sussex Six ( which had by then been temporarily lifted and altogether revoked later)and the Cuts proposed....What I saw where about 20 people at two entrances to the University, some boards and banners and hardly any buzz in the air...There was a Facebook page seeking active participation, of the roughly 2500 people I saw on the invite list, roughly about 50 had agreed to participate, while over 1200 had promptly refused - That's at the time that I had logged on to check the Event Listing. And I remember thinking, maybe we should get some Asian imports to teach them how to assemble a buzzing picket and an active demonstration...There is more democratic permissiveness as far as individual rights go in the West, but then years of taking things for granted had atrophied the activism too...Or so I theorise..

The caveat is: I'm now thinking like an academic, looking to organise a truly effective picket/demonstration...In India, I have been on the other side, viciously spewing venom against this kind of activism, hating the disruption in the name of flimsiest reasons like 'Oh, did the Professor have to look me so hard in the eye when he was giving me my report? Maybe that's because he's a Social elite' The Banners would have read 
'Tanashahi Nahin Chalegi ( This Autocracy Won't Work', 'Professor Maafi Mange' ( Professor Apologise)  

The comparisons are perhaps muddling my head and my rational thinking...I know not which side I stand...I see reason on both sides...I don't want the porters and the other helpers to have to take a cut and departments being scrapped completely...But can't a more logical solution be drafted if the University Board went back to the drafting tables? 


But one thing is for sure 'The Inquilab Zindabad' in an Indian atmosphere is more electric than any of the Western equivalents I have seen here...Capitalistic traditions have perhaps eroded ideological zeal a bit too much in the West perhaps...

But I still think Britain could be the last bastion for red-stained University leanings in the West...After all, Communist revolutions were exported to many countries in the Third World from these hallowed halls of education about fifty years ago...


As I write this, I hear about other protests across UK Universities...Aberdeen students abandoning the Occupation of the halls they had done...Murmurs of Support for Sussex protest is being heard from Universities across UK - the Union website is filled with information about this.. Cambridge University papers full of admiration for the Sussex Six and the ire at the police brutality against the students..There's mobilisation of opinion for sure, but I wonder if in Britain, this level of participation mounts any pressure on the powers that be to consider their demands favourably...Hmmmm....

  ( Photographs taken from the Uni Paper The Badger and assorted Strike Blogs of UK Universities)

So Who Said What's In A Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

 Hmmm...Does this new post require a poetic beginning..No it really doesn't..But that's the first thing that struck me as I sat to write it..And I remember in school beginning an essay quoting Shakespeare was supposed to show your command over literature..So there.....


Ok, now I must give you a little background...To sustain the excesses of a debauched student life, I try to fit in some extra work to 'pile on the pounds'. Didn't I hear a snigger there? Don't go cheeky on me, I mean the Sterling Pound...the holy Brit currency that keeps me checking the foreign exchange rate in shrewd calculation to ensure my rupee pounds a little longer! So that brings me to the part-time job that I have managed to find...

Romanticise my work place a little, will you and imagine this wonderfully chic place that transports me to a Supergirl-ian world from my Plain Jane student avatar...Hmmm...my life is just so exciting, isn't it?

Ok, now that you have made me feel good by imagining such a wonderful alter-life for me here, let me tell you, my workplace consists of an abandoned computer that hardly ever boots without two kicks and shoves, a work table that has 6 pens, a paper rack and nothing else and a really really old and grimy window, that can time and again be coaxed open, so that I can say hi to the occasional seagull that takes pity on me and flies by my dirty window...

Now that does not mean that amidst what is often mechanical, quite literally ctrlc + ctrlV work, I don't find my guilty pleasures. Amidst reams and reams of lists with names of people from all parts of the world that I juggle, I look for those which make me laugh, sometimes wince, very often groan with empathy for the burden of having to live a lifetime bearing your parent's sudden whim or fleeting fancy...

So these days as I write personalised mailers - Hi Godgift, Hello Queen Elizabeth, Hey Darlington - I observe a minute's silence in shared empathy. How many before would have laughed a tiny wicked laugh( like I confess I did, before the nobility in my soul told me not to snigger at a person for their parents' fault)when they wrote the very same words? I wonder, I wonder...

Then again, what right do I have to snigger at these names when the land I happily claim as my own has been singlehandedly responsible for some of the weirdest names to be inducted into the Dictionary of Indian Names? I'm from the land of Blissmols and Beautys( Warning: It's not a spelling mistake...How else do you refer to two girls named Beauty?) and Happymons and also the assorted Gandhis, Nehrus, Stalins and Boses who keep the flag of the politically active Malayali flying across the world...

I went to a Convent College, where ragging was merciless...And drawing blood from new 'arrivals' began with asking them to introduce themselves...And there would be enough grist for the ragging mill....Out would pop 'Pretty Thomas' and 'Jane Beauty's - almost whispering their names out lest the seniors hear it clearly...I particularly remember one poor soul who admitted to the latter name, only for a Cruella De Ville senior to sneer at her about whether she had chosen the name herself...And with an audible wince, the poor girl had very candidly wondered if she would inflict the torture on herself...Point to be noted, my lord!!

A friend and I have an ongoing exchange of emails over just strange names that we have encountered...This mail chain has been going strong for over a year, I think..Every new mail assures a chuckle for a good day...This post is my mega-bumper contribution to our growing list..

I still haven't understood what moments of insanity trigger a parent's decision to permanently scar their children's life by imposing their eccentricities on them. And I salute the children for respecting their parent's wishes and not changing their names despite constant provocation to do otherwise.. I also know a certain Ms.Hole who has a name that begins with an A..(And in England, most of your correspondence is addressed as the initial of your given name followed by your surname)I wonder if she winces as much as I do on her behalf at the thought of receiving no less than five letters in a week addressed in that fashion...

Now if Shakespeare were alive and if he were to croon, What's in a Name, I'd ask him to please re-consider!!!

(P.S : I mean no offence to anyone...Those who have names that resemble any of the ones stated above are requested not to send out hit-squads to avenge this post.)