Mind Dry Dot In – Coming soon to a stage near you.

Yes, I'm a fangirl too. How can I not be?

Arjun Sharma and Harish Kumar one day found that they could do more productive things with their time than reply to my boring posts. Which is sort of sad since their comments were really nice, funny and to the point.

They went on to make Youtube videos that are really nice, funny, and to the point.

I didn’t know that they did that until when I was killing time between NITK and my first job, and over a period of a week, had friends from Dusseldorf, San Diego, Los Angeles, Austin and College Park send me a link to some Youtube video, which was supposed to be howlarious. I ignored the links (I wasn’t on a very fast connection, and so I could hear them speak like they were Vajpayee… pauses and more pauses between two syllables), until one day I was bored out of my mind.

I ended up watching the video three more times, once because my mother who heard me laughing madly wanted to see what I was laughing about, and then my father, and then my sister. Their fan base seemed to be exponentially increasing. Nice, no?

And then there were these series of videos that demonstrated that they were awesome at parodies. With the in-house Advani-ji and URA and Tiger Prabhakar and CSP… not to forget SPB, Siddhartha Basu, and other towering personalities, they soon made me sit up and take notice. And at around the same time, I realized that these were the folks who used to comment here. More enthu, stemming from the ‘Hey, I know this celebrity… he lives near my house’ factor.

So this bunch of folks are staging yet another of their plays soon. I’ll be missing it, much like I missed their first performance… However as a loyal fangirl, I’ve watched the version 1.0 of this play, Nara-Simha Yudhdham, and I must say I rather liked it. This one promises to be even more funny, insightful and satirical.

Trademark Mindry.In, I’d say. Which stands for first-standard jokes from that irritating uncle at Shamlu-akka’s wedding, in an often satirical, or sophisticated context. Add to that mix Monty Python influences, and Blackadder references, and Fry-and-Laurie style straightMan-funnyMan settings, and there you go. But that’s not where their entire charm comes from…. it’s also that they say what they have to say in Kannada. For long, the only sort of Kannada humour I had been exposed to was Doddanna, Jaggesh, and probably Narasimha Raju and Dwarkish. And maybe innumerable jokes from teachers in my PU College (I went to a CBSE Gult-owned school, and you didn’t often speak Kannada there), but seedless kadlekai jokes weren’t very popular outside. (Nor are my creations I pass off as PJs, but we’ll let that pass for now). So it was quite refreshing to come across some haasya in the language I heard the second-most, that resembled humour in the language I heard the most.

This might sound chauvinistic or whatever, but I can’t imagine really really funny jokes in Hindi, mainly because my idea of humour in Hindi is limited to Bollywood, and for me the best Tamil humour is from Crazy Mohan. And that’s just because that’s the sort of humour I identify with… the sort that someone who follows the memes I follow, the news stories I’m interested in, the customs I practice, the situations I’m normally in, would identify with. Fry And Laurie and Python and Not The Nine O’ Clock News and a few others were my staple in English for precisely these reasons, as were Crazy Mohan’s movies in Tamil… and now, Mindry.in in Kannada. It is humour from folks who grew up in Bangalore, just like me, who spend Sunday evenings watching that talent show hosted by SP Balasubramanyam, who are amazed at the double usage of Sri in Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who use expressions like Whatafine, who watch all the funny stuff I watch, who teteer on the same side of the political center, who reminisce about the ’90s…

And who are like those pakkadmane hudugas (Guys next door, for the Canarically challenged) who are too modest to speak about themselves, no matter how awesome they are…. and hence here I am writing this plug for them. Come one, come all, do watch this play. There’s something in it for everyone… be it that lame PJ you used to crack up on at age seven, only now, it’s on stage and it’s in such an awesome context, or a sly Blackadder reference, or a homage to Floyd. Bring your Ajji, Ajja, Putta, Putti, Jimmy, Julie… and your Pakkadmane douv also – it’s family-friendly humour they are into, and these likeable lads are the sorts you can take home to your mother.

How I Got My Visa, and other stories.

I’ve always wanted to write an anthology of short stories for children, which would then have a title like the one above. But my talespinning talents let me down… so I’m reduced to blogging about some or the other sort-of-mundane incident in my life.

Like my trip to Chennai to get my visa. No, it’s not about how to get visas. If you like, F1 seems rather easy to get apparently these days, you don’t need to attend coaching classes for that. This post is a lot of other digressions put together.

The Judgement

My neighbor is part of this organization which conducts personality development classes, summer classes and other fun activities for schoolgoing children. And their latest activity was an interschool contest of some nature. Mostly Lit events, it later turned out. “Are you free on Sunday?”, she asked me. I said I was. And got invited to judge an elocution contest.

I felt rather unqualified to judge something like this, I felt, thinking of all the times when my legs turned to jelly in front of large audiences at school… but, oh, well, it’s an experience. And I certainly don’t have stage fear now.

Anyway, I arrived at the venue on time, and was ushered into a room full of software engineers and aspiring software engineers who had a day off on a Sunday, and who were neighbors of members of that organization, and who were as clueless about judging elocution as I was.

We were sent off to different stages at different parts of the venue. I went to the terrace where there were about thirty kids aged between nine and twelve. Harking back to the times when I’ve troubled many a new teacher, I felt queasy and ill at ease. And was put back at ease because, well, THE KIDS BEGAN TO CLAP!. And then the emcee introduced me. The kids began to come forward one by one and speak. And how confident each one was! They might have factual inaccuracies in their carefully-prepared speeches, but no lack of confidence! Not one ran back unable to speak, not one forgot her lines.

And then we were asked to judge highschool kids. And the levels of confidence just did not match up. So many gave up in the middle, so many forgot their lines, so many were shaking with nervousness.

Weird.

And judging was a good experience too… we had sheets with parameters given for which we were supposed to grade the kids on a scale of ten. It took a couple of speeches to get used to that. For some, you could give them a 8/10 for expression within a few seconds, whereas for others you wouldn’t be sure till the very last second of their speech. Some were rehearsed, a few were so spontaneous, you were wide-eyed with wonder. But most of all, you had to concentrate. It might be the same point reiterated a million times, but you had to listen with a fresh mind and mark the contestant just like he was the first one.

I was quite shocked at the demonization of computers and technology they were all indulging in…. and said so in my feedback. While interacting with them, it turns out that they all had perfectly normal, realistic views of computer games and things, but well, at that age, you are still coming to terms with black and white and striking the middle ground is something that’s going to take you a couple of more years atleast to get started with. So any side you argue, you end up taking extreme stances. Why, people much, much older than them have trouble with not seeing things in only black and white…. nevertheless, the kids were wonderful, smart, brainy folks. Witty and nice conversation. And how well-informed they are for their age!

Illness

I fall ill regularly at two-week intervals, of late. And each time, I harangued my doctor for whether I had contracted swine flu. Not a totally random fear; one of my colleagues who works on the same floor as I do was down with it a few weeks back. And there have been other cases in my workplace. Mainly folks who travelled back from South Korea. The most recent bout of my illness was this Monday. But I couldn’t let that stop me from going off to Chennai.

Political Trippin’

Travelling by the Brindavan Express, one of my co-passengers was the DMK MP from Vellore, Mr. Abdul Rahman. Three-four hours of listening to letters being dictated in formal Tamil, to Salman Khurshid, to Shashi Tharoor. Regarding facilities for Haj pilgrims, and implementation of the Ranganath Mishra report (which, by the way, includes reservations for minorities). Not just letters, but he made and received a dozen phonecalls on the same topic. His eloquence amazed me. But then, if you’re in that line of work, and have been successful enough to be an MP, I guess you’ll have to have such a level of eloquence for the experience you’d've got. And how much of minority affairs! He didn’t talk of anything else. And I don’t think he even talks of anything else elsewhere also. *Sigh*.

Consulling

Once upon a time, I came across this thing on the Net that said “One Tambrahm – Priest at Varadarajaperumal temple / Two Tambrahms – Maths tuition / Three Tambrahms – Queue outside US consulate at 4 am / Four Tambrahms – Thyagarajar Music festival in the Bay Area. I used to think it was one of those stupid stereotypes. But NO.

If we had a separate Tambrahms-only US consulate, it would still be financially viable. (Just like if we had a Hajj/Gulf-only Passport Office in Bangalore) There I was, forty-five minutes early for my visa appointment, and the area outside the consulate was teeming with people standing in queue for their appointment much later in the day. And most of them Tambrahms, either students like me, or H1B aspirants, or folks going to visit their kids there…. some of the Ammas came in full madisar and all, and I think I even saw a hint of a manja pai.

The interview hall has two television screens, both showing Times Now. It feels like as if that is done juuust to show all of us US-aspirants that US is an awesome destination, India is a really sad country to live in, just look at the news… parental abuse, ineffective PM, violence, bomb blasts, intrusions on our borders…. and don’t bother going to Australia, you’ll be maimed for life, just look at the videos on that screen there.

My interview lasted forty seconds, and my interviewer was a cheery plus-sized woman who was both intimidating and friendly at the same time. The questions she asked me were totally alien to me; I’d never heard of the likes of them, but thankfully she asked those with a twinkle in her eye, and grinned at my shocked expressions. Total timepass.

Chennaiyil Oru Mazhai-Kaalam

We reached Chennai to a steady drizzle. Good, for we wouldn’t have to face the oppressive heat the city is famed for. Bad, for I was still down with viral fever. It isn’t a steady downpour that brings down trees and renders traffic immobile. It’s more of intermittent heavy downpours.

Managed to somehow get lost walking between the homes of Aunt1 and Aunt2, a distance of not more than 500m. And also managed to get stuck in the rain while being lost. Plus, my mobile also began to act funny, and I wasn’t able to make and receive calls for a grand total of ten minutes.

And the infamous autorickshaws of Chennai! The distance between the US Consulate and the Hotel I stayed in was what would probably be Rs. 20 in Bangalore. But in Chennai, you pay Rs. 50. It’s considered a standard rate…. everyone else who’d done that distance said it’d cost you that much. Plus, I was with Appa, who pays up without a whimper, and not with Amma, of the dragging-auto-drivers-to-police-stations fame, and who has mastered the art of Autorickshaw-fu. I couldn’t even try out my budding autorickshaw-fu skills, as if it was Amma, she would have backed me up, but Appa on the other hand, doesn’t bargain.

It amazes me that the people of Chennai are so resigned to this dacoity by the band of auto drivers… my aunts, uncles and cousins who’ve lived there for quite a proportion of their lives pay up without bargaining that much. And here in Bangalore I yell at autodrivers who go by the meter, my allegation being that their meter is faulty. My uncle says it’s because they are so used to being looted that they feel weird when they are not being robbed. My mother on the other hand, seems to scare the autodrivers silly, and manages to get trips at Bangalore prices.

The reason I was forty-five minutes early for my appointment – someone advised us that since the Consulate was close to Karunanidhi’s houses, if he or his wives decided to go out, there would be massive traffic delays. The auto driver showed us the residence of Mu.Ka’s second wife like a taxi driver in Mumbai would show you Vidya Balan’s or Urmila’s house. It’s amazing how much of information about Mu.Ka they have at their fingertips – his wives’ names, ages, his children’s names, their political futures, the political fate of Amma as scripted by Mu.Ka, no pun intended…. whoa!

My Tamil Is Not Tamil

“Her Tamil is so weird no?”, said one cousin of mine to his brother. “Yeah, she speaks like Ma”, he replied.
“That’s how Tamil should be spoken”, my Bangalore-born-and-bred aunt retorted.
“Yeah, when you folks come to Bangalore, we all feel you speak like Vadivel”, I added.

So apparently, Bangalore Iyers speak a highly Brahminized Tamil, the likes of which are very rarely, if at all, heard in Chennai. I always thought it was the other way ’round… this Akka in my neighborhood who was fresh from Chennai called us home for Golu, and told us, “Theertham eduththukongo”, for which my cousin and I cupped our hands to receive holy water…. while she gave us regular water in steel tumblers (which we proceeded to drink without touching our lips to the tumbler).

If I want to survive in Chennai, I should apparently understand

• That it is Seekram vaanga and not Surukka vaango
• That it is Dress eduthuka and not Sokka eduththuko
• That SollaraeL, PaNNaraeL should be replaced with Sollareenga, PaNNareenga
• That there don’t exist words like Geli and Galata in regular usage. And if at all they are used, they are pronounced KeLi and Kalatta.

And while we’re on the topic, Tambrahm love songs I found on twitter:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Just 3 strands in my pooNal,
Make it 6, will you?

And…

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Just 6 yards in my saree,
Make it 9, will you?

Tailpiece

A few months/years back, Churumuri had posted the One <member of community> / Two <member of community> thing and asked why there were no Kannadigas on the list. So here’s my tuppence… do add yours in the comments section:

One Kannadiga – Udupi Hotel in Singapore/Seoul/San Francisco
Two Kannadigas – Father-son political party
Three Kannadigas – Campus placements at Infy, scheduled to go to the US soon.
Four Kannadigas – Entire Kannada-speaking population of Koramangala and Indiranagar.

What say?

Update: Ahh, the tailpiece got churumuri’d. Nice!

A-argh.

Bangalore is Silicon Valley, eh?

As well as being the Capital of Karnataka?

If that is the case, why the hell isn’t there an IMDB entry for Upendra? Bloody hell, even some Miscellaneous Crew Member from Dilwale of the same name gets a mention. Why not our Uppi?

It gets worse.

There is no Wiki entry for our Pathbreaking movie A. What’s worse, no IMDB Entry either. Well, there is an entry for A, but it’s some sad Japanese flick.

All that Ka.Ra.Ve does is write ‘Kannada is in our blood’ etc all over Gandhinagar. Why can’t they do the basic needful for Kannada on the Net? Is there no Uppi fan who knows Wiki and IMDB can be edited?

What a sadness.

[I'm no fan of Upendra, not watched more than a couple of his movies, and I found A too... weird. But hell, IMDB entry atleast!]

Update: Here it is, the Wiki page for A. Add content, do.

How I Spent My Morning

No, this one’s not about what I had for breakfast.

Morning-morning, I get verbally abused by some arbit BMTC driver-conductor duo for the cardinal sin of not having change, and for the even worse sin of being involved with software, and it was only aggravated by me verbally abusing them back in Kannada and talking rules.

Soon, the driver was yapping away on his cellphone while driving, and was prompty hauled up by some BMTC inspector, got sworn at, got a dose about rules, got a lecture about road sense and the accident rate of BMTC. And the best part was, his cellphone got seized.  

Maybe I should start believing in telepathy – the whole while, I kept thinking “You deserve it, <add abuse of choice>! Take eet! Take eet! (in true NITK style and connotations)”, and they really Took It.

The bus number was 13…

***************

Ahh, my BMTC experiences give me so much fodder to blog about… how tragic it’s only for two more weeks if all goes well. </sarcasm>

Still, one good thing came out of the whole deal: My previous post got Bangalore Mirror’d Thanks, Balu!