Meaningless!

This story is inspired by the mindless craze for Salsa and Ballroom dancing here in UW among the desi boys. The conversations are real, because they have happened, sometimes many times over, mainly after consuming couple of pitchers of Spotted Cow.  Infact these conversations have been repeated so many times that we have nothing much to add if it comes up. The story is imagination. Rajesh’s dialogue was inspired by this blog post by Arvind Iyer.

We were driving back to Stony Brook after a wonderful Diwali at my brother’s house, everyone except the driver, still reminiscing about the delightful Diwali spread that Manni managed to cook. Slowly, the conversation drifted to the cool dude that my brother keeps talking about, the dude who took Salsa classes and got himself the American babe. I was tired of their story, but for the other “makkal”, it was awe-inspiring. Having retold the story while chewing Paan after Diwali lunch, the “makkal” hope levels had like multiplied thousand times. If he could do it, we do stand a chance. iPhones were out and university listings for Salsa classes and Ballroom dancing, and plans were being hatched to write the most romantic of romantic stories.

Rajesh, navigating the interstates, instructing me on exits and speed-limits, turned back, and in the most philosophical of tones, stated the obvious. Everyone knew it, the iPhones and the planning was just the idea of some fun. But still, he rattled on, “So this is our plan? Our lives are so pathetic, that we plan laboriously about how we bump into a girl, but we are so incompetent at doing it that we don’t even plan for the eventuality that one of our coincidence trip actually works out”. The laughing stopped for a moment. Truth does that sometimes. And then, sitting right behind me, GK, let rip one of his stories.

Now, we have nothing against GK’s stories. Some are fabulous, some are rotten. He thinks some stories have a deeper meaning, but most of us at the end of it go “Ok, so what next”, and some he thinks are too funny, and he gets ready to let out a huge roar of laughter, and most of us don’t even understand it. We let him go on with is stories, as sometimes, it is the fodder with which we get to attack him back.

So GK continued, this reminds me of my cousin, Don’t you remember him, the guy who won $1000 at Roulette in Vegas. Anyway, this was long before he came to the US. He was just like most of us here, born and raised up in Madras, lived there all his life, took the long College bus ride to college, sat through boring lecture and tolerated the prison rules of college, yada, yada, yada. But, then, instead of getting a job at TIDEL park or even Electronic City, he managed to get one in Bandra-Kurla Complex in Bombay. That put all of his family members in a quandry. Bangalore is OK, but Bombay, he does not even know Hindi. Somehow, the pathetic job scene, you know, the dot-com burst and all, forced my dear cousin to go to Bombay.

Fortunately, there was one other Iyer paiyyan who had landed the same job, and those two together decided that they will take an apartment in Vashi. Now, Vashi is in New Bombay, and to get to BKC, arey, the Bandra Kurla Complex, one has to take the Harbour line train from Vashi to Kurla and then a bus to the workplace. You all know, how train services are in Bombay. So anyway, my cousin decides to go to Bombay, and peri-amma, in a fit of anxeity, hooks onto the Maami network, and finds the phone number of someone who knows someone who is related in someway to her. She gives my cousin the contact’s phone number and tells him that some relative who knows someone has told Sowmya in Mumbai about my cousin’s arrival, and that he should call her and not hesitate to take any help. My cousin diligently copies the number into his contact book and starts preparing for the journey.

Much like most of us, he also had the plans for a coincidental bumping into with his dream lady. His plan was to take a book to read wherever he went, and look for a girl reading the same book or the same author. Not that he liked reading. He would skim through some chapters and through some history of the author and just take the book along with him. And, he frequented the roadside book-kadai’s frequently, gathering data about popular books, so that he could be seen with one of those. You know, increase the probability.

So, anyway, he reaches Bombay, settles into his apartment, and on the first Monday to work, carefully selects a Sidney Sheldon novel, carelessly selects a shirt and pant that hardly match, and leaves to Vashi station. He acted immersed in the book, acted that he had been in Bombay all his life, acted that getting into a train with 1000 other people were second nature to him. But, he slowly, unwittingly walked and stood beside the location where the ladies coach of the 12-car train would arrive. He stole nervous glances from his, supposedly voracious reading, kept his eye hooked to a single word on the page, ears tuned to the lady announcing the trains, hand slipped into his pocket, holding the wallet tight. Amidst all this activity of looking cool, hiding fear, a girl tapped on his back. He looked back, saw her face, looked down at her hands, and saw the same Sidney Sheldon in her hand, let out a wry smile, managed to utter Same book and continued to stare at his shoes. The girl simply said, you are standing in the wrong place. This is where the ladies compartment will come. My cousin was totally embarrassed now, and continuing to stare at his shoes, slowly walked away to where the concentration of men seemed higher. Soon the train came, and he was off to his first day at work.

Slowly, his life fell into a pattern, and he would reach Vashi everyday, hoping to get a glimpse of his Book-mate. All the time, the Romantic story generator inside his head was spinning yarns and yarns of story. In a crowded city, everyone is not Madhavan to calculate probabilities.

By now, it had been a month since my cousin had shifted to Mumbai. His dream story had gotten complicated, and as he said to his Iyer paiyyan roomie, it was just a matter of another accidental meeting at the Vashi station. Amidst the excitement of Bombay, he had forgotten to call Sowmya, and as the news spread in the Maami network, all the someones were angry that the boy did not have the courtesy to even call her. To prove her point to my periamma, the someone Maami who was the source of the contact, instructed Sowmya to go meet my cousin. Sowmya reluctantly agreed.

One humid evening, as my cousin and the nice Iyer paiyyan were lamenting the lack of proper Tamil food in Vashi and debating over the yucky Madras Mess where they atleast serve some Sambhar or the cheap North Indian eatery down the road where they had to eat greasy paratha and paneer, the bell rang. My cousin, opened the door,  and was pleasantly startled, to see the Sidney Sheldon girl and some dude waiting at their door. Tongue-tied, he barely managed to ask about them, when Sowmya replied that she was so-and-so’s daughter who knew someone who knew someone who knew your mother. He invited her in. Somewhere, deep inside his head, a smaller version of himself, did a nice jig, and my cousin thanked God for life’s wonderful coincidences, and assumed that such a meeting was a sign, like how Madhuri had thought about it in DTPH. The excitement was short-lived, as Sowmya, introduced the dude waiting with her as her husband. What followed was standard small talk, false promises of keeping in touch, a sugary milky tea, that the Iyer paiyyan made, and the silent noise of shattering of million dreams.

Thus, GK finished the story, that took up 15 exits. As usual, we went “What? Nice story, but what was the point?”

Rajesh quipped, “Exactly, what I was saying”.

Thankfully, we arrived in a few minutes, returned the rental and were off to our bedrooms, to sleep and dream.

Yellowstone National Park

Below is an e-mail I sent to friends and family describing the Yellowstone trip. I am not equipped to write about all the beauty I saw. So read the mail and the painfully inadequate descriptions that I have tried to give, but take a look at  the pictures of the place. Those, I believe, are pretty good.

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Hi all

It has taken some time, but finally I have managed to upload the photos from my recent Yellowstone trip. Trust me, selecting and uploading the photos was a hard and time consuming job, as I had to sift through more than 5GB and more than 2000 photos, to make an album which will not bore you to death.  And believe me, 5GB was nothing. If we had clicked for every ah!, wow!, beautiful, mindblowing, breathtaking, amazing, Oh my God! that we uttered during the three days of the trip, the number of photos would have been closer to TB’s. I am uploading the photos as a series of albums, roughly breaking the trip into the different locations that we visited. Oh! and excuse the inordinately high Single poses of me and my friends. Remember that we are bachelors and we need enough Bharat Matrimony pictures

1. Firehole River: This album contains some extra pictures taken before we left for the trip in a Montana motel and some random highways we drove on to reach the park. The photos are fabulous though. This being the first day, we were not aware that breathtaking beauty is going to follow us on all the three days. Firehole river was our first impressions of Yellowstone and we clicked away to glory. Just a few minutes later, we realized that if Point A was really beautiful, just drive a half a mile away from Point A and you will land up in a much more beautiful place.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/FireholeRiver#

2. Grand Teton Sunrise: The first evening was at a place called Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The plan was to wake up early next morning and catch the sunrise at the Grand Teton Mountain range, a part of the Rocky mountains. While driving to Jackson Hole, we drove through the road which we would visit the next day to see the sunrise.  The snow-capped mountains rose along the side of the road, and the aptly named Snake river snaked along the mountains. The mountains were on the west, and the next morning , what we were hoping to glimpse was the sun rising from the east and the snow on the mountains reflecting the sunlight, to give the mountains a sparkling look. Although, it was cloudy the next day, the view we got was amazing.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/GrandTetonSunrise#

3. Wrong way into Wyoming: Our plan was to drive into Yellowstone, but in the hardly inhabited area, our 3G signals were not working, and we took on the wrong path into lower Wyoming through the Mountains. But in my opinion, it was one of the best detours that we took. The roads were through the high mountains, and it had snowed pretty heavily the previous night. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the pine trees and the lonely road, made for awesome photography as we drove along unknowing that we were on the wrong road until we came into the plains. The snow sat on the pine trees, and white and green jostled for space. The snow lied on the ground, and white and brown fought for real estate. The snow capped mountains in the far had given away to the snow. The sun tried to melt the snow, the snow resisted it, and light was diffused everywhere by the clouds, by the trees and the snow glistened. Man was unwelcome on that road that morning.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/WrongWayIntoWyoming#

4. Jackson and Lewis Lake: On the previous day itself, we had oohed and ah’ed at the beauty of Jackson Lake. A serene lake, surrounded by the Rockies. After tracing our way out of the Wyoming Plains, we stopped at the lake and clicked away.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/JacksonLakeAndLewisLake#

5. Old Faithful Area: An important lesson while in Yellowstone is that pack lunch and take it with you. Hunger changed our plans and we got to the Old Faithful Geyser, the most famous of all the geysers in the Yellowstone area. And we drove into the most thermally active part of the park. Old Faithful was faithful to us, and spurted out hot water feet’s high.That was a site to watch. But even more beautiful was the landscape that the thermally active area had created. The hills were in the distant background, as always, covered with white and green, and closer to the geysers, the thin crust and the heat from below created spectacular colours. Microbial life was active along the corners of the geysers and they added mystic blues and greens to the landscape. The heat wilted away the  leaves of many a tree, and the geysers were spurting hot water here and there. The steam rose into the horizon. All this added up to a mystic, eerie landscape, almost as though you were suddenly in Jupiter.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/OldFaithfulArea#

6. Mystic Falls Hike: After spending a long time in the eerie landscape of the upper geyser area, we hiked onto the Mystic Falls area. It was a 2.7 mile, tiring hike, but full of wow’s and ah’s!. The first view that astounded us as we trekked up the hill was the panoramic  view of the geyser basin. It was a sight unmatched, as we saw the expanse of the national park, and the numerous geysers there. And as we came  down the hill, we saw the waterfall and the Firehole river that made the falls, and we became one with nature. God’s greatness in making things so beautiful took over us, and for moments on the down-hill trek, we were more than just us, as the discussions moved into the philosophical realm. If God is in the nature, he rests at Yellowstone.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/MysticFalls#

7. Midway Geyser Basin: On Friday, we started early morning to see the Midway Geyser basin. It has the grand prismatic geyser, one of the largest geysers in the world. If the previous day was eerie, the morning in Midway geyser was eerier. The dawn and the sun had colored the sky red and violet. The geysers were spurting lots of hot water, and the cold morning temperature created more steam than the warmer afternoon of the previous day. And all the colors from opal blue, to algae green, to sulphur yellow to muddy gray adorned the landscape.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/MidwayAndWestThumbGeyser#

8. Yellowstone Lake: The lake was supposed to be formed in the crater created by a explosive volcano. One look at the present day lake, and it would be hard to even think that it was the site of an violent volcano. It was all calmness and all serenity. Unlike so many other lakes that I have seen over the past two years, this was left alone. No kayaking, no yachting, fishing. No human activity anywhere. It was just the water reflecting the sun and the hills. All quiet and all beautiful.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/LakeYellowstone#

9. Mud Volcano and Geyser: We had seen a lot of geysers by then to be surprised or overwhelmed by one more. This was also the site of an volcano.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/MudVolcanoGeyser#

10. The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone: The grandest view was kept for the last. Midway through a beautiful, clear and balmy Friday afternoon, we reached the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone river, after years of weathering, crafted a deep canyon by eating away the soft volcanic rock. The canyon was surrounded by the yellow sulphur rich harder rocks. Blue water flowing in-between hard, rough, yellow rocks gave the place its name. The view was grand. The water-falls majestic and the canyon contained something that even the best photographers could not capture. I saw a lot of photos on google before leaving for Montana, but the view was something beyond that photos that I had seen, something beyond the view that I had imagined I will see.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/GrandCanyonOfYellowstone#

11. Wildlife: The trip would not have been complete with glimpses of wildlife. We were lucky to run into lots of elks and bisons. We captured a famous Yellowstone Bison-jam, in which a herd of bisons attempt to cross the road, and eager tourists stop the cars and jam the road, trying to capture the animal in their cameras. We were very tired and sad by late evening, as we were driving to Tower-Roosevelt area because we could not spot a grizzly bear, or for people interested in Cartoon Network, a Yogi (of Yogi Bear fame). Late in the evening, an enterprising young black bear saved us, and we ran along with it for a few snaps. The bear was unperturbed by the human interest and nonchalantly crossed the road, as a more than 20 tourists clicked away.

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/WildlifeInYellowstone#

(and these are some pictures of the drive to Tower. It had a beautiful waterfall and a hike that would have taken us to the mouth of the falls, but we were tired, the day was almost over and our car’s rear tire was misbehaving).

http://picasaweb.google.com/narasimhan.kaushik/TowerRoosevelt#

Hope you have fun watching them.

Cheers!
Kaushik

The Grapes of Wrath

I finished the book a couple of days ago, and as I contemplate even writing about this book, I am overwhelmed.

It is by no means an easy book to read, and even though, it will be one which could be re-read, the power with which the story is told, the imagery the story created and the impact it has had on me, will keep the story fresh in my mind for a long time.

As with any great book, there are layers in which I enjoyed the book. The writing was splendid. I have already raved about the brilliant writing of Steinbeck in the novella “Of mice and men”. The grapes of wrath was nothing different. Each page was a gem, every word had its place in the picture, every sentence made the vision clearer, until, about 100 pages into the book, you were every Tom Joad and Ma and Casey and Ruthie. You were everyone in the story. You were in America in 1930, driving a truck to the promised land of California, having left behind everything that you cared about, and you felt every pain that the Joad family had to endure.  The detailing, the word-play, the structuring of the novel, the actual accents in the conversation, the quick references to back stories, the out of the context conversations, everything played its part in making the novel real. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had some ideas about the depression time, from movies or other books, and reading this novel, somehow made me think that the people who wrote the other novels or the people who made the movies got their idea about the depression from this book.

Thrown in-between the travails of the Joad family fleeing west, were shorter stories about the general conditions in America around that time. The story of the dust storms that affected the crops, the conversation of Tom Joad with a truck driver, the story of a US Route 66 gas station man, of a diner on the highway, of immigrant worker camps in California, of their protests, of their hunger, the story of the big bad farmer associations and so on. They were tiny 6-7 page diversions from the main story, but it reinforced the main plot. It gave the reader a perspective of the main plot. It jolted you into a deeper understanding that the story is not about the extraordinary and unusual miseries piled on a single family for story telling purposes, but short stories that said to you, that the main plot is just a sampler of what is happening. Dig deep, and probably you can find the story of a family suffering more miseries.

Repetition was another writing tactic that Steinbeck used to great effect to drive home the point. The capitalistic farmers manipulating demand and supply, the poor people craving for meat and food etc were repeated time and again, subtly, without loss of continuity, without feeling that it was being repeated, to bring the reader closer to the truth, to unfog his eyes so that he could see it.

The main plot was of the Joad family fleeing west. All that they had in Oklahoma was  their farm, and owing to bad crops, the dust storm and the industrialization of the farming land, they were left with a few belongings and a truck. Tom Joad, on parole from prison for murder, meets his family as they are planning to move to California, and leaves with them. The story follows them for over 9 months, as they move towards California, find and lose work there, find temporary happiness in a nice camp, get pushed out by hunger, try to stay together, suffer death, cope with family members leaving them, and finally become homeless destitute, beggars.  Through much of the time, they remain hopeful, in truly miserable conditions, the light symbolic of hope keeps flickering, and finally when it blows out, but not without a final flicker, the last act of the book, which only the masterful writing and the brilliant storytelling of Steinbeck could have pulled off.  Ma and Tom Joad are the back-bone of the family. Somehow they maintain their sanity through all the despair, while the other men in the family, slowly but surely lose hope of ever being happy again.

The deepest layer in the book, was surely the political message that was ingrained in the book. With great skill, Steinbeck brings out the pathos, emotions and travails of the really poor, so much so that, after reading the book, I felt a different feeling regarding the under-privileged, a feeling that something has to be done if there could exist such differences in the world among human beings, much away from my general feeling of I am too small a pawn to do anything about anything. Finally, it was a commentary about mindless Capitalism, about how food was destroyed in front of poor hungry people to keep the prices high, about how advanced technology displaced people and the companies advancing technology cared just for their purses, of how hunger was exploited so that people could just be paid enough to have just a little food.

Socialism does not seem bad, as was depicted in the community camps that was mentioned in the book. The community camp was totally managed by the poor immigrants, and without any government intrusion, and truly by collective responsibility, they made it a home amongst many other unruly camps.  Casey and Tom Joad, too bring up, the ideals of a strong people, of getting together and protesting as a group, of asking and getting their demands met, of wanting a proper share of the profit for the work that they do. Their talks all point towards Socialism, towards a more pro-poor, pro-human, against suffering policies than the pure “just make profit” policies.

In a country, and in a world that is mostly tending to mindless capitalism, the depression and accurate portrayals of the travails of the poor, such as this book, is very much necessary to develop Capitalism with a face, policies that help the poor, and to some extent redistribute wealth. More importantly, IMO, the need for policies that redistribute Skills, as acquiring skills has also got a lot to do with money. Skills so that everyone can contribute when Technology, Nature or any other circumstance forces changes in how business is done. In the context of India, I feel, Education is the best skill that can be acquired, a skill that cultivates the habit of thinking, the urge to learn new stuff and the tools to learn it quickly and effectively when the need arises. As I see and understand it, Education in India is still not equally distributed. This can be a separate post, and I will write a little more about it when I am confident about writing about it.
The grapes of wrath is a must read. For those who are not used to reading heavy stuff, this book can be quite steep, but the end result is worth the effort.

This and That

• What has to be done to get out of an extended Researcher’s block? It was last in August that I put my mind to some meaningful work. That meaningful work (OK, meaningful according to me), was not liked my the adviser, and I was left defending the merits of the idea that I had. In vain. What I did, however, opened up a few questions, the answer to which I feel is already there in the meaningful work that I presented, and mostly which are negative. The adviser thinks otherwise, and I was to work on the otherwise. Sadly, I attacked it with much less conviction, and slowly got bored with it and all the false positives. Later, an industry partner suggested a new problem, and I was asked to toy around with it, which I am doing, but more than 3 weeks of toying around and reading papers have not given me much confidence or direction or idea on the new problem. Lack of implementable ideas has led to a huge loss of enthusiasm and motivation, and I dread every meeting date with the adviser. Tomorrow is one.

• The countdown is now at 75 days, and I am super excited to go to India. But this leaves me feeling homesick ever so often.  Add that to lack of motivation, and you will get a sad, moody and irritated me, who has been sitting at home for some days, even in midweek, doing nothing but brooding. Such days are wake up, feel sad and sorry and pissed off at getting no ideas during the sleep, decide to sleep in, sleep all day, browse internet in the evening and sleep again. There have been days in which I have skipped food too.

• I was sleeping soundly. Amma calls me and wakes me up. I wave a hand at her and say let me sleep for a little while more. The heat has made me sweat, and the sweat has made my shirt stick to the bed. I turn over on the bed, and the date strikes me. 12th January. Oh no! Only one more week in India. Why do the holidays have to pass so quickly. I decide to get up, have the filter coffee and breathe in every moment of the remaining holidays. I wake up, and realize that it was just a dream. It is still October, but the apartment people have turned on the heating unnecessarily. The sweat made it more real. I try to sleep a little more, mainly anticipating that the me being at home, enjoying dream will show again. Instead, the show is a pathetic re-run of how unproductive I have been all week, and a reminder that on the other side of the week, there is the meeting. I wake up, watch NFL, eat left-overs (which was very good leftover, of the elaborate dosa, sambhar and pongal cooking that I had done the previous day), watch more NFL, gulp a strong cup of filter coffee (the perfect formula for which I decided was the one I just used), eat a lot of maggi, watch the SNF between Colts and Titans, in the middle of which I decide I was too filthy, take a shower, camp in front of the TV and doze off as the match peters towards a boring one-sided end. Suddenly, I realized that I have lived one of the Sundays in Mumbai. And, I get into a mixed mood of nostalgic happiness and sadness.

• Spoke with Sashi today for a long time. He has dived into the marriage thingy. Shriram is to get married by December. That leaves me leading me in the bachelor brigade.

• Leaving for the Yellowstone trip tomorrow. It is really cold there. I am looking forward to the place. The photos from there remind me of Alien planet imaginations that I used to have.  I was looking forward to driving there, but with me, the only time I can be sure of driving happily is when I get my own car. Anshu and Suku would not let me in Oregon, California had too many cars and drivers, I was scared of driving in Chicago downtown, and now, I don’t get a chance in Montana. I am going to buy a car soon.

• Okay, got to clean up the kitchen and pack, and practice my defense at tomorrow’s meeting.

Whip it

1 cup Overbearing mother making her daughter live her dreams

1 cup Rebellious teen who wants to find out her dreams

1 large portion of underdog sports team coming from behind

A few chunks of girl fights

2 tablespoons of best friend lost and found

1  teaspoon of teenage romance

and a pinch of Loving, understanding father

Whip it! together for a wonderful, fun time pass masala movie

A Thousand Splendid Suns

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We have all discussed Indian authors selling their stories to western audience demands. We have talked about Arundathi Ray and Arvind Adiga packaging India’s poverty, the sufferings of the poor into a story to win Literary prizes. I have participated in many of these debates, and I have found it hard to take a stance for these books, especially God of Small Things. Even, The White Tiger started out to be “Oh, look we are so poor, look at the disgusting conditions we live in” etc, but turned out to be a good story and a well written one at that too.

But now, I have found a book that I can show around and tell, this is how you sell your poverty and pity in a book. Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. It is a thousand times worse than the worst Hindi Family drama movie/mega-serial that you have seen (Ya, Okay, this may be exaggeration, but that’s how much I am pissed that this book got good reviews, what were the reviewers thinking)

If you have read his first book, The Kite Runner, then many among you will agree that Hosseini can write well. But all through this book, he has told a mediocre story poorly.  There are some punch lines in the book, lines that were meant to touch your raw emotion kind of lines, and it was as though, Hosseini had concocted the story, just so that he could stuff those lines in there somewhere (Let me make a character called Mariam, and put her through 300 pages of trouble, so that I can write this super emotional line which will get my readers thinking).

The book does not start badly. It opens with a young illegitimate girl, waiting for her father. Pretty quickly, like how hindi movies fast-forward after the prologue about the Angry young man’s father being killed by the villain in front of the kid angry young man’s eyes through a song that backs up for dual purpose scenes of showing a hard working unlucky kid growing up with a sad widowed mother and the credits in the movie, the story shifts through embarrassment, death, rejection and marriage for the illegitimate girl, Mariam. The editor said to Hosseini, you have 50 pages for this story, stuff as much misery as you can.

As suddenly as the story moved from Herat to Kabul, we are stuck with the fact that Mariam cannot bear a child, her grumpy old husband is angry because he cannot have a son, and that, since Mariam is the main character so far, we should feel sorry for her, the character Mariam is forgotten for 100 pages, and we are introduced to Laila.

Everything about Laila is circumstantial. Everything. She had to have brothers killed in war, so that her mother would not love her (longing for her brothers instead), and had to have a liberal dad and a non-existent friend, so that the non-existent friend could be blown up in a bomb to teach Laila the sadness of her mother, her liberal dad to show her the life she could have had, if not for the war, and the mother who would not love her, so that they all could not escape from Afganisthan. Oh! and she had a one legged lover boy too, and the teenage love and the love making scenes are the worst that I have read in a long time.

Ya, so the war kills everyone except Laila, Mariam and her husband, and then Mariam’s husband marries Laila and the two ladies come together to form a thick friendship that helps them survive the bad times. A mediocre plot at best, but the writing after he gets the two main ladies together was appalling. They fight for no reason in the beginning, and for no reason, they are best friends for ever. And, if you thought the misery does had lightened, you were wrong there too.

And to make it even more bollywoodish, Yash Chopra types unbelievable, more unbelievable than the side stories invented to bring the dead alive in hindi mega-serials, was when teenage lover boy resurfaces. I tortured myself for a few more places, and stopped at the most logical place I could finish this most stupid story at. Hosseini rambles on for 40 more pages, but I am sure that it is not worth it.

Some time back, I had written this raving good review for The Kite Runner, and now I am beginning to think if all the praise was mis-placed, that somehow I misunderstood the book to be so great, but after this experience, I have no mind of re-reading that one.

But, I remember predicting that he would be a one-book-wonder anyway. My reply to a comment on the earlier post

FC: thanks. anyway, you can read this book. i kinda think tht this author will be a one-book-wonder. have a feeling he used all his imagination on this one story.

All the passionate support

There is magic in following any kind of sport. And there is the passion of supporting your favorite player. Nail biting times, when he is struggling, pleas to God that he scores the century, or wins the tournament, have higher priority than your exams. The exhilaration when he looks up at the sun after hitting the four, and redeeming himself. You are there. You feel that joy. And when the comeback bid fails, the fifth set is lost by tired shots, it hurts you. When he takes pain shots, and fights through players 10 years younger to him, and reaches the finals, it inspires you.

There is a magic in maniacal support for your favorite player. There is hard work, of following him everywhere, keeping track of the scores and percentages, of the statistics, of defending him, of debating who is greater, of fetching obscure statistics about a forgotten match played in Nairobi to buttress your claims.

Couple of weeks ago, as FedEx was stopped in his tracks by Del-Potro, as Dravid fought back his way into the ODI side, and Sachin “GOD” Tendulkar reminded the world about the art of cover-drives, I thought about writing this post about all the passionate stars that I have followed. Somethings led to other, and I am writing it two weeks later, more out of boredom, of trying to postpone doing the Game Theory homework, and less out of the passion, that I found flowing through me again for the stars that I love two weeks ago.

The earliest sport memory that I have, is not exactly a memory, in the sense that I distinctly remember seeing it. It is more of a feeling of having seen the Football WC final of 1990, between Argentina and Germany. Amma, piqued my interest by teaching me the basics of the game, and Calcutta never made me forget it. Football, however has never captured my attention for long spans, and I end up watching it every 2 years, once for the Euro cup and once for the World cup. Argentina has been my favorite team for a long time, and if they are kicked out, I support Germany, probably because these are the first two teams that I learned about. And even though, I am a casual football viewer, Argentina facts were on my fingertips, I swore by Maradona and Cannigia, and indulged in numerous debates with Brazil crazy bongs.

Our genes are designed to like and love cricket. And those who don’t are special mutations. I just remember (rather, I feel I remember) the India-Pakistan match. India scored 216 in the match and the Pakistanis failed to chase it. The match remains special, as I watched parts of it in Kutush’s house, and felt the passion and tension of all the grown-ups watching it, seeped in to me. Appa, later in the year taught me how to read the score-card and interpret it, went through the nuances of overs-maidens-runs-wickets, c A b B, fow and extras, and I was hooked to Cricket. I still am. The day begins by reading the headlines on Cricinfo. The third thing I do after waking up (and if I am in India, the day begins by flipping to the last page of the newspaper and reading every bit of cricket related news)

In the mid-90’s, Sachin was India’s only saving grace, and it was hard not to become a die-hard fan of Sachin. It became a habit, to stop watching the match (because nothing remained to be watched) after Sachin got out. It used to be, get out and play, or start the HW kind of thing. Sachin is out. Amma would be happy that I will not stay awake till late in the night. And the habit still resides, even during the time when Sachin is not in a great form, and even when, India is a much stronger team to win despite Sachin’s non-performance. It takes a while to mourn Sachin’s dismissal, and to rue upon another lost opportunity to watch him bat. I know, for sure, that it will be hard to fight tears on the day the God decides to retire.

But my first real passionate support for a cricketing great was for Rahul Dravid. Much before he made his debut, I read about him from some “expert-column”, which back then, really had some meaningful analysis, which enhanced your knowledge about the game. The boy from Karnataka was doing great in Ranji trophy, had a technically strong game, and was supposed to succeed in the swing and seam bowling conditions for England. Dravid and Ganguly both made their debuts in 1996, in a new look Indian team, which featured 6 debuts in a single test. Ganguly stole the limelight. I was in Calcutta then, I was in Behala, and my house was stones throw away from the ground where Dada learned the game, and a short walk away from Dada’s huge mansion ( I have played with the man himself once). Imagine, as a 14 year old, sticking to your conviction then that, although Dada scored all those centuries, Dravid, who was unlucky to be out for 95 in his first innings was the better player.

It was hostile conditions to be supporting Dravid, but for 13 years now, I have been a staunch Dravid supporter, quickly jumping to his defense in any debate, quietly collecting memories of his brilliant innings. As I have learned more about him, I am more in awe of him, and consider him to be a role-model for me. Humbleness, hard work, conviction in your beliefs and leading  by hard work are some of the Dravid-learnings that I will not forget for quite a long time. Here is hoping that he has a great couple of years in ODIs and ends up scoring 9 more centuries to pass Gavaskar on the century scorer list for India. He deserves it.

Among other cricketers that I have grown up liking and supporting are Wasim Akram (I was a young budding left armed fast bowler).  The first time I saw him and remember him was when he troubled India in Toronto. And despite being a Pakistani, who tormented Indians, his skills have left me mesmerized for a long time. Bowling was my favorite for a long time, and I loved to bowl, which left a lot of my friends amused and happy, because I never fought to get the bat. Walsh and Warne were favorites. I remember Warne entertaining the crowd in Eden Gardens, and his brilliant bowling, which was overshadowed by the God himself in that tour. Gilchrist captured attention with the brilliant debut 2nd innings century, under pressure in Hobart, and I have always enjoyed watch him bat. And there are some greats that I just don’t like. Jayasuriya and Murali come to mind, so does Steve Waugh (Mark Waugh was a favorite, his cover drives and slip catching were just jaw dropping Wows!) and Ricky Ponting. No particular reason for not liking them, but such it goes.

My generation of Cricket stars, players I grew up idolizing, following and relating too are retiring now, and the new crop of players are just player for me. Apart from Dhoni to some extent, not many of them are kindling the kind of passion for stars that I had in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Cricket watching now is just a different experience because of it. I am watching less and less of the games, relying more on Cricinfo, don’t remember any statistics (when at one time, I could rattle the century list, wicket taker list, could recall exact bowling performances from any match etc etc), and the relationship with the game has completely changed.

As much as I am scared about T-20 stealing awesome Test match experiences, I am thankful for the IPL to bring all these players back to the ground, even if it is just for 20 overs. It makes me feel like a teenager again, to watch Warney bowl to Sachin!

*Here, I had planned another trip down memory lanes for more cricket related memories, but Tennis is important too. More cricket can wait for a different post*

Thoughts about Doordarshan will make any 90’s generation nostalgic about their programming. DD showed the grand-slams, and Amma had picked up the habit of watching it from Delhi-Thatha (ya, Amma’s appa/amma are Delhi thatha/patti and Appa’s appa/amma are Madras Thatha/Patti). I would stick around while she would watch the tennis, and explain the sets, games and deuces to me. The game grew on me slowly, and is always in the mix of the sports that I watch regularly.  As with Football, the earliest players that I saw were the ones who endeared me. Stefan Edberg, Sergi Bruguera, Micheal Chang, Jim Courier are some of the players I have feverently supported over time.

But the player who has captured my attention and who is still my favorite player (even ahead of FedEx) has been Andre Agassi. I remember (the weird kind of remember), Agassi, long haired, rebel and prodigy, sweeping the ‘92 Wimbledon. Since then, it has been a bumpy ride for me, surrounded by Pistol Pete fans, and having had to bear their ridicules when Agassi was going through the worst slump of his life. I have spent watching game after game, willing anyone to go past Pete, just so that all the Pete fans feel the pain that the Agassi fans were feeling. It did not happen, but Agassi scripted the most fairy-taleish comebacks in history, and late 90’s and early 00’s have been the best time for Agassi fans. I still miss him on the courts, and wish that someone take a movie about his life, which can be such an inspiration. My early post on the man says it all. My favorite-est tennis player ever!. Ah! Agassi reminds me of Steffi. I stopped caring about who won the ladies grand-slam after Steffi retired, and more so in the Williams power years (if I absolutely hate someone, it has to be Serena)…and now, with all the russian players with similar sounding names and even more similar playing styles, Women’s tennis needs a prodigy, and badly.

In 2001, Sampras was shooting for a record in London. In the 4th round, he faced the magician. Years of hating Sampras had me, by default supporting the 19 year old, long haired, ponytailed Swiss-man. They produced an amazing match, which makes for quite good viewing, and by the time Sampras was finally defeated in the 5th set, by the wizard FedEx, I had decided that I will be Federer’s fan for life. Now, no matter what statistics say or don’t say, no matter what Rafa fans claim, there has not been a better player  in the courts than FedEX. Period. FedEx is one love-affair that is still continuing, and even if, as critics and fans view that FedEx is going down, it is going to be a passionate, nail baiting support for the man, till he hangs up his racket.

And here is the match up between the legends.

Yes, I raised my hands in celebration at the end of the video!

Winter is coming

Burdened with self doubt and weakened by cowardice;

Lost on the interstate, speeding at 80 mph;

Looking at the exits going by, but scared to leave.

A Mars mission headed to the Moon,

Future visions obscured by the truth

A Touchdown pass, intercepted;

Stop. Rewind. Play

Stop. Rewind. Play

Stop. Rewind. Play…

Searching for hope, yet hoping for a miracle;

Summer’s gone, the Winter is coming

This is what you think if you are awake till 5 am every-night

Sandwiched between, Sepia tinted memories and rosy dreams;

Today stretches on infinitley. Never-ending.

Door county, Chicago, U2, Yellowstone, Bay area, Portland, Singapore and Indonesia;

Feels like a materialistic memory maker, with no other purpose but to make memories photos.

Why? Why? Why?

A love affair with Gutters!

Aside:

Before I write the post that the title refers to, I want to write this!

Consider, the night before

1. A talk that I have to give
2. Meeting my adviser
3. Telling a huge lie to someone

All these three events, have one thing is common. I practice the talk a million times as I struggle to sleep the night before, I go through my “parts” of the meeting, in which I tell about the research that I have been doing and the results that I have to my adviser, and I sure like hell, go through the lie that I have to tell the next day.

Now you know, what scenario 1 and 2 have in common with scenario 3!

End Aside

Coimbatore-1988?

It was the late eighties (‘88, I think,  need to confirm it with Amma), and we had gone to Coimbatore for Ramu Mama’s wedding. Sometime during the trip, the ladies were conducting the Sumangali Prathanai (which is explained in detail here). Men and boys were requested to stay outside while the ladies did the actual puja and ate the food inside. So, I was left with a lot of other small kids, which included my cousin Badri outside the house, and under the supervision of some random mama/chitappa. In my recollection, it was some 25-27 year old chap, related to us. The superviser mama, in order to keep us engaged, made paper boats for us, and we took turns to set them to drift in the nulla next to the house and watch it sail for some time. The most exciting part was not watching the paper boat sail in the nulla, but was the act of putting it in the nulla. All the kids awaited their turn, but my cousin was a little restless, and wanted to jump lines and take my turn to set the boat sailing in the nulla. I resisted the move, but he was (and is) stronger than me, and tried to push me to a side and steal the paper boat from me. The push, unfortunately was misdirected, and I, along with the boat fell into the gutter.  The flurry of activities that followed has been a typical conversation fodder in many conversations when someone in the family gets nostalgic and goes, “Remember when Kaushik fell into the gutter”.

I was quickly taken out, and all the dettol available in Coimbatore was poured into a hot bucket of water, and I was cleansed, right in the middle of the road. Meanwhile, Badri was taken in, and given a flogging my Raghu Mama. I do not remember any of this, but a vivid descriptions by so many people, has helped me imagine such a situation, women in 9-yard saris crowding around a small kid being bathed in really hot water in the middle of the street, while another young boy, was being beaten and scolded, pretty loudly too, inside the house.

Would have been a good day for the passer-by’s on the street too!

Calcutta, 1991-93

59/5 Bakthiar Shah Road, is the first house that I remember living in (helps that there is a ton of photos of this house). Getting down at Mannar Khabar (a sweet shop that was missed all the years we were in Shaker Bazar in Calcutta), you walk into a narrow lane for a long time (a very long time for kids). I even remember seeing a python coiled on this particular stretch of road sometime. At the end of the lane, there was a gate, and a garden (which keeps becoming a wild unkept garden with tall grass in recollections of the lane), and a house deep inside the garden, from which I think we might have had a friend, but the house was one we hardly visited. You take a left at the end of the lane, walk just a little, and turn right and there was Bakthiarshah road. A residential lane, quite far away from any of the main roads in the area. Out house was the last one on the left in the lane (which also had a backyard). The second house on the left belonged to the judge in the Calcutta High court, the one next to us, belonged to an ex-major of the Indian Army, and the house right opposite ours, had the dominant South Indian population in the lane. The street ended with yet another gate, beyond which was a pretty closed community built amid lots of trees, where my childhood bully cum friend Kutush (he has also *-ed in this post). In the house above his, Puja, my sister’s best friend lived and not very far Kannan, another close buddy of my sister’s lived. Next to Kannan’s house was the old lady, who locked her house and gave the lock a tug to see if it comes out, and from who, I seem to have gotten the habit too!

Our house had a small gate to enter it, and a big varendah at the end of which was the main door. Right next to the house, flowed the gutter, which was pretty narrow by gutter standards, and pretty shallow too. A short kid could jump up, let a peek of his head show above the wall and spit right into the gutter. Sometime in ‘91, cousins Bharath and Lakshmi with peripa and perima came to Calcutta from Zambia to visit us. We were super excited about their arrival, and begged Appa to take us along to the airport to receive them (also, the fact that they were flying in, from abroad,  was a bragging point in school). But the flight was scheduled to come late in the night, and Appa refused to take us along.

The next day, upon waking up, I found Bharath sitting on the varendah wall, with his hand spread wide, and slowly swaying from side to side. He told me he was flying, and asked me (and I was 6 then, he was 12 or 13) to join him. Amma and the elders were talking inside, dangerously unaware that my sister and I were outside. Lakshmi joined Bharath up on the wall too, and Vidya was too little to get up. I was not and I got on the wall, and as soon as I spread my hand, I lost all balance and fell, unfortunately, on the wrong side of the wall, and straight into the gutter.  The gutter was not very deep nor very wide, and it meant that I hurt the bridge of my nose and the top of my forehead. I was fished out of the gutter, all bathed in the black dirty waters of the gutter and the my thick red blood. Neighbors got involved, a taxi was called, and I was rushed to the doctor near the Mother Diary milk vending machines. After an emergency procedure, I ended up with three stitches in-between my eyes and three on my forehead ( the emergency procedure has been later repeated many times as a testimonial to the doctor, who could sew up a kid bathed in stinky gutter water and blood, in such a crucial place without affecting the eye, and also as a reminder of the bravery of the kid to withstand that pain without much tears). The sign on my nose still remains as a proof that this did happen (and so is the photo below).

After being stitched and cleaned with dettol, and after picking up a fever because of all the tension and all the pain, Amma decided to stay home with me, while the others went with Appa on the Calcutta tour. The tour, being the part of my cousin’s visit that I was most excited about. I relentlessly cried to come with them, and finally went. On the last part of the tour, in Banu Mami’s 13th floor apartment, the photo below was taken.

Also included is the photo of the varendah wall, the scene of crime.

Couple of years later, late afternoon, Kutush and I were bicycle racing on the street, confident in the knowledge that all our street-street dogs were sleeping peacefully somewhere. I had a small BSA-Champ cycle, while Kutush, having grown tall and strong real quick, had a much bigger cycle. These handicaps, not withstanding, I agreed to race Kutush. The race was going well for me, I was pedalling real quick, I was bent low on my seat, squirming to see ahead in the distance, accelerating, and was not much ahead of Kutush. But I had forgotten, one tiny little detail, in all my zest to finish first. There was a speed-breaker in the middle of the street. My bike took-off from the speed-breaker. I lost all control of the bike, because it was not on the ground. The speed that I generated, helped me fly a small distance ahead, and I crash landed right into (you guessed it), the gutter. Minor injuries were suffered, which included a bruise above my eye, and a swelling which left my left eye temporarily shut.

And I remember the next day, my Moral Education final exam. Amma took me to school and for some reason convinced the teachers to let me write the exam separately in a room, and being all alone, I peeked into my class notebook to look at a answer, ironically in a moral education exam.

Bangalore,2003-4
This time, I did not fall into the gutter.

Sometime in the 4th semester, I got a real nice gift, a hand woven woolen keychain. I intended to keep it for a long time, but my old love of the gutter claimed the gift. It was the day of our Math’s Internals, and halfway through the exam, I just had to answer to natures call. Not trusting the department rest-rooms, I handed in a half completed answer paper, and ran to Chamundi, our hostel, and rushed to the rest-rooms. In all the hurry, I dropped my keys, with the keychain into the toilet, and saw the flush take it down. Later, I informed the hostel people that I had lost my keys and in an act that I don’t comprehend now, also informed them that they can, if they want to, find it in the gutters. Promptly a person was asked to go into all the shit, and fish for my keys. He found them, claimed to have cleaned them and handed them to me. As much as I wanted to keep the nice colourful keychain, which the gutters had changed into a uniform ugly black, I threw it away.

Now, this is one love affair that I would love to get broken up with!!