Longvage Rage

Everybody acts like angry-angry these days. Everytime I open the shoshal medias minns, some hajaar ‘rage’ links I am the finding. The Kongas will rage minns everyone is monkey-see-monkey-doing, with all the stick-figure comics itsimms. Even small child in nursery school is drawing better. That too such stuppid-stuppid jokes – if the Brahmin is doing the koffings also one comic will come off for that. Wateveritis pa. Who is this Krish Ashok fello, I say? He is the Krish Srikkanth’s brether or the cousins or what?

If peepals are lazy to draw comics minns, they are writing blogs with byaaaaad Ingleesh like this one and this one. Madofellows. That also just chumma, they wantedly write bad longvage. All these rich-rich chilrans with costly-costly laptops and studied in caarment schools will sit and think and use the google and the yahoo and the bing to write in butler ingleesh. I am thinking, this will become off meme in twellaars time and all these fellows who want to study in the forin will write a proper-inglish-to-butler-inglish translator so that they will become off famous and can jamba-hachkofy on their resyooms.

Ok, once minns funny, twice minns funny, but thrice, frice, fice? Madofellows. Again-again same wordings, again-again not finding new butler words because you never speaking in the butler inglish since 2nd standar, your caarment-school Dingo Inglish-miss is slapping you if you are murdering her Queen’s longvage, and even your PT Master in your caarment school is speaking Inglish like Britisher because when small, his fother was watchman in Britisher’s bangla. And so you are trying to do the direct translation from the mother tongue longvage to ingleesh. But that is not the butleringleesh at all. No, Not, Never.

I am asking to this peepal, why your mummy-daddy send you to caarment? For your learning the good-english and speaking in tass-puss accent only no? From when you are child, your Basavappa unckal and Jagadamba aunty will come minns your mummy will say ‘beta, talk in English and show to uncle-aunty’ and then feeling proudly when they are giving you the fivestars and dairy milk no? When you are settle in forin minns, what you will show off your chilrans to your frands? “Oh my Chintu, he speaks so awesomely in Butler-English ya”, like that you will say-va? I know, I know all about you – you will say also like that, and you will record it also and put it on Youtube also, the dog’s tail is always curved.

This is a funny world, no? So many chilrans who are studying in the Vernacular-medium schools in Controlment-area will try to speak like all tass-puss, even when their frands are teasing them saying “Ey this Vijetha ya, she is sooo tass-puss, something and all long-long words she uses ya”, and they will go also to Prakruthi Banwasi’s Spoken English Coaching. But for you peepal, it is jokey to speak like this, it is a break from speaking all tass-puss in real life, and doing even more tass-puss when you have anyone who is looking forin. My frand also one fellow he used to do like this for some cute girl he is thinking she is Chainis girl, but then she is Mizo and is loffing. My one more frand, she is having the skin-problem so she is looking like the Britisher, and is beautier than Miss India only, she is always daily coming and telling, “Ei Priya, this fellow in bus ya, trying to talk in American-bhaashe to me”. If you see one Gowramma-type girl minns you will go talk to her in butler english-va?

In Mahanadi fillam, after the Sriranga Ranganatha song that scene is there no, where that girl is speaking one English essay and Kamalagaasan’s frand is videoing it,  if Kamalagaasan had Internet and Youtube, he would put his daater’s inglish-speaking video there. But you with Youtube and internet will put off your chilran’s butler-Inglish video there.

I am also in forin only. I am also speaking the good Inglish, even in 4th standar, my teacher is saying “See the Priya talking the Inglish, all you should learn like her only”. My mummy-daddy will feel Aiyo what we have done, if they read this post, but they feel Aiyo what we have done for most things I do anyway. But when I am in the deep talkings with my sister and cousins and all, we are all the talking like this only. It is not jokey for us, it is mamool only, it is our comfortzone. But all you caarment type peepals, for you all this is joke, this is museum piece, this is like the zoo-visiting. Even in your sleep you are speaking in tass-puss accent, like that jana you are. You have none of the rights to make fun of our bhaashe, our culture. What, you are going to the African-American man and making the grape soda jokings uh?

PS 1: I just hope this doesn’t spawn more butler-english posts. I’m sure it won’t, but just indulge me in my grand delusions of being able to affect public opinion, will ya?

PS 2: Here’s to the post with the most number of squiggly red underlines ever.

PS 3: I hereby dedicate this post to the PT Master at my school, Jagannath Sir, whose voice has been dictating this post in my head. And also to all PT Masters, including the one in my sister’s school who said “Once minns ok, twice minns ok, but thrice, frice, fice?”. They are the true guardians of Butler English.

PS 4: Prakruthi Banwasi, in case you get to read this, jnaapka idiya, sir? And, for the uninitiated, Prakruthi Banwasi conducts awesome spoken English classes in Bangalore.

PS 5: You ain’t butlering englishing unless and until you’ve been through this guide.

My Experiments with Food and Fasting

Folks who know me from childhood will assert I was not an easy child to feed. My mother and her mother struggled hard to keep me well-nutritioned. In fact, my mother has so much practice that I’m pretty confident if she was on the UPA’s side, by now Anna Hazare would have quit crying about Lokpal or another one of his imaginary pals and go to sleep well-fed.

All that exposure to wholesome food is hard to get over. I’ve always eaten well save second year at NITK… It’s impossible to get unused to filling your craw every few hours with something or the other. Which is why my desk drawer always, always has some assortment of junk food and my fridge is well-stocked. Touchwood. I can’t for the heck of me fast.The system is always being fed at regular intervals. It doesn’t stock up on adipose because there’s no need to; the next source of energy will not be long in coming.

But a couple of weeks back, I’d just gotten done with a killer course and wanted to let myself off a few days, where I could just sleep and eat and watch movies and all that. I did end up watching a lot of chickflicks. Which is why I didn’t sleep much more than usual. But eat….. ahh…. that’s a story.

Living by yourself (or with a roommate whose culinary requirements are way different from yours) means nothing moves unless you move it. And your larder will not be stocked unless you stock it. And food will not magically appear until you make it. But given that I had resigned myself to a vegetative state, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about all the dosas, uthappams, sandwiches, burritos, palyas and other things I usually am enthusiastic about, and that increased how lazy I was to even eat. I think I had only about 33% of what I had everyday. So while I wasn’t technically fasting, for my body, which rings its alarm bells rather loudly at regular intervals, it was a reasonable approximation.

The point is, there was no lasting damage to me or my appetite or anything. I did feel weak after I got bored of the movies, but it wasn’t anything one square meal couldn’t fix. I’m sure if I was outside for a greater part of the day, I would have groaned in hunger and taken refuge in pizza, but given that all I was doing was wasting time on the Internet, watching movies and talking to friends, my calorie intake pretty much sufficed.

So I find it hard to figure out why the government caved in so early to Anna Hazare’s blackmail. I mean, this guy has made a career out of threatening to go hungry. He’s used to days without food. What’s more, he was in the damn Army, and I’m pretty sure their constitutions are sturdier than mine, and they’ll be used to standing in the sun without food for hours on end. So…. his threat doesn’t really strike me as a threat. More so since people of less sturdier constitutions go hungry not by their own will but because they don’t have the resources to procure food, and still continue to survive. Agreed, Anna Hazare is thrice my age, but I’m the desk job person who has to actually try to gain weight and goes to the rec center just so that I don’t forget what it is to run, and he is the one who has built a model village with his own hands.

The trick to starving well is to not remind yourself or your body that you need food. You need to keep yourself distracted, but not too active. You shouldn’t indulge in tasks that require much physical exertion or mental flexing. So solving differential equations is out, as is taking a long walk in the sun. Even more so, you shouldn’t indulge in this for more than maybe a few minutes at a time. Ideally, you would have to breathe correctly from your stomach to keep the circulation to your brain up so that you don’t get a headache from the lack of food, and to not tire your eyes, it would be helpful to go into a vegetative – oops – meditative state.

Now what exactly do these fasters do that violate these things? They sit in a public place, that’s it. They might make speeches, but that just keeps them distracted and not thinking about the food. They pretty much suspend their day-to-day activities. And they aren’t even exposed to the hot sun; their followers make sure of that. People, the sun is the biggest enemy to lack of food. The hotter your head gets, the hungrier you get. If you are not facing the sun, half your troubles are avoided while fasting. And I suppose no one watching the show would even be eating. I dare Anna Hazare to carry on his fast-unt0-death in a crowded restaurant, where the smell of well-cooked food assails his nostrils. Or to do his day-to-day work while not eating a morsel… that makes sense.

When we think of hunger strike, we think of the said person requiring the number of calories we require on a day when we’re going about doing our work. It doesn’t strike us that someone who is just sitting around in a comfortable environment requires far lesser number of calories and hence the not eating doesn’t affect them as much as we think it does.

On a related note, I suppose everyone assumes Gandhi had his simple diet which did not consist of milk or sweets or anything ostentatious. ‘He lived on fruits’ sounds so austere. I used to assume that too, until I came across some magazine where a former assistant of Gandhi’s was talking about his last day. The description of the morning meal baffled me. True, it consisted only of fruits, but heck, how much? Five oranges, three large tomatoes, several apples and a bunch of bananas to finish off, along with some juice as well. And possibly goat’s milk to tide over that technicality of his not having cow’s milk, but I’m not sure that was included. I sometimes have a single banana with milk for breakfast when I’m late for class, and I know several people who go without breakfast.

Till age 14, I could not imagine myself ever observing Ekadashi fasts – no grains in diet, but it turned out, the no grains is a technicality to be tided over – you can as easily have delicacies made of sabudana, as I learnt from a pro-at-ekadashi-fasts sort of person. Apart from the litres of milk and the kilograms of fruits, of course.

So heck, the next time someone says “He’s on a diet of onlyyyy fruits and still is so active!”, I’m going to sock them one. Even though it’ll be a rather weak punch because I only eat cereals, vegetables, lentils and junk…. beat this… my sister and I quit junk food for a while and snacked only on fruits, and it turned out we felt less lethargic, more active and more alert, even without coffee or Red Bull. Or maybe especially without.

The point I make after 1200 words here is, hunger strike is not a big deal until you’re at it for a week or something, if you are not indulging in any activity during it. All that it serves is to publicize your cause.

But even that is pretty suspect…. Irom Sharmila has been hungerstriking and has been force-fed for 10 years now, and the media is pretty tired and is pretty much ignoring her and her cause. And hunger strikes don’t always work…. which is why they are not so common. And read this piece by Manu Joseph, it’s pretty harsh on Anna Hazare, but it points out that he does the hunger thing mainly because he seeks publicity for his causes. I mean, if not the publicity surrounding him, why else will the country bother about yet another person dying of hunger?

Where were you when India won the World Cup?

I woke up from a seeming stupor at 7:45 am, and the last thing I remembered was closing my eyes during the 9th over of the SL innings for ‘two minutes’. Webcric’s feed was intermittent and I ended up following the match on cricinfo, and somehow wasn’t ‘in the worldcup final mood’, and thought I’d just go running. But then when I’d changed, I thought I’d just check the score before I left…. it was the 40th over by then, and things were looking pretty exciting, and the feed came back on.

I’m still here in my running clothes, hungry as ever because I haven’t yet had breakfast, feeling glad for not missing such a nailbiting few overs.

AND OUR WIN.

I am the sort of person who starts tensing up when I see the number of runs to win greater than or equal to the number of balls to hit it off. And the batsmen weren’t doing much to improve that. I prayed for a four and a six to just ease my tension. And then two magical overs. 11 runs off each of them.

And then we needed four runs to win. Dhoni finished it off with an old-style six. And history was made.

I’d all but quit watching cricket after the final of 2003… I just lost interest. The hype around the last two matches have brought it back on. Now I think I’ll restart OD-ing on cricket. Yes, Mr. Aakar Patel I’m a fickle Indian fan, and I didn’t just ‘clap clap clap’ when India won.

I missed the sound of firecrackers and wild screams and cheering while watching the match and am quite pissed that this had to happen when I’m not in India.

Was sort of glad, though, for the folks I follow on Twitter. You folks made my World Cup, even though I whined to high heavens about my timeline getting messed up every single time there was a match on.

Like Mohan said, “When averaged over the world population, this must be among the most euphoric moments in mankind’s history”.

And, just because I want to… WE WON WE WON WE WON WOOOHOOOO!!! WEEEEE ARE THE CHAAAAAMPIONS.

And Sachin finally got to kiss the World Cup. The world can end now in 2012 and India will go down happy.

 

Given the historicity of this moment, how did you bring it in? Who were you watching the match with? Were you watching the match? Did you hold your pee for five overs straight? What were you munching? Were you wearing some Bleed Blue merchandise? Did you have Facebook open? Were you livetweeting your every emotion? Tell me in the comments. I want to preserve this moment forever.