Leave The Gun, Take the Meen Moily

June 22, 2007

Some arbit googling led to this wonderful page: a history of organized crime in the Indo-Canadian community.

Please note, that Indo-Canadian is somewhat misleading. It is very much Sardar-Canadian. And not just any Sardars but only Jatts. Even in Kaneda the Jatts have refused to let the Paapes join in the fun.

I read on Sepia Mutiny once that Vancouver is the only city outside India where the local organized crime syndicate is run by Indians. While the thought of the Sardar mafia running Vancouver is interesting in and of itself, what is far more interesting is the dog that didn’t bark: why is Vancouver the only city, and why are Jatts the only immigrant community to set up a mafia? One has to ask – what the hell are the Mallus doing?

Consider the facts. True, Sardars dominate migration to Canada. But the Mallus are even further ahead when it comes to migration to the Gulf. Why is there no Mallu mafia in Abu Dhabi? Why does a Google search for Malayali organized crime throw up no worthwhile results? Are all the Mallus law-abiding? Or is the truth more sinister: nobody dares to talk about the Mallu mafia.

I quite like the idea of a Mallu mafia. The Don would of course be one of those grave, portly Mallus, all moustache and gold bangles and black suit and sunglasses. He would be flanked by his enforcers, who would be muscular and lungi-clad and would go to Kerala to dance in paddy fields while surrounded by Mallu maidens on their breaks from beating up laundry owners. It is really quite pleasing to imagine.

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The Criminal Underclass of the Avian World

June 19, 2007

Aishwarya has discovered the video for March of the Sinister Ducks, and asks if these ducks are left-wing.

She doesn’t know the half of it. Left-wingers at least pretend to be all about the compassion. When Naxals kill people, they do it in the name of class war. But ducks are openly criminal and vile.

Check out this flickr thread, about rapist ducks:

 today i witnessed a very disturbing incident at a duck pond in duke gardens. a group of male mallards, roughly about 9-11 of them were stocking/pestering this female duck. they surrounded her and began stacking themselves on top of her. she was completely underneath the water. she was drowning. they were pecking at her head. the first thing that came to my head was gang rape. they were very violent with her. her head was bleeding. this went on for over a half hour. they were just taking their turns, it looked like 2 at a time.

Gangrape is not the only crime these webfooted villains indulge in. They commit interspecies extortion also:

bread is to ducks like “crack” is to people. I’ve seen them go absolutely wild and attack kids at ponds for bread.

And interspecies gang wars:

Not only do they attack the children, they also attack each other in their fight for bread. If all that wasn’t bad enough, you reminded me of something else. Feeding wild ducks encourages them to live on the same ponds as swans, which ordinarily they would not do. This causes the swans to defend their territory, which they achieve in the breeding season by drowning ducklings.

I’m going to end this post here, before I succumb to the temptation of making a ‘foul/ fowl’ pun.

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Expense Account Arbitrage

June 1, 2007

I am off to Singapore for the next two weeks on *cough*a shareholder sponsored junket *cough cough* training.

During the course of training I will be staying at two five star hotels. It’s hard to pick the best thing about this sort of luxurious accommodation. There are two very strong contenders.

The first is the free breakfast. The idea of a breakfast buffet where I eat as much as I can before its time to head off to the seminar rooms is beguilingly attractive. When it’s being expensed to my cost code rather than to my salary account, it’s nirvanic. But it’s still not a clear winner.

Because there is the other, equally strong contender: free laundry.

Yes, free laundry. I am currently dumping all my clothes into my suitcase so that they can be washed and ironed by professional launderers (who, I just realised, will be Chinese, thus making this an even better deal). After six months of having my clothes washed by a maid who believes that the best way to deal with clothes is tough love, and who leaves the ironing to me, I will finally have an opportunity to have all my clothes stainfree, fluffy, sweet smelling, and crisply ironed. The mind reels in delight.

Right then. Time to get back to packing.

PS: Ritwik, you will have to wait a little longer for the Sohrabuddin and Idiotarians post. If I write a long post while in Singapore, it will imply a failure on my part to spend my free times out partying with an international contingent and Mr. Walker.

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Posted by Aadisht

Aastha

May 27, 2007

Conversation with Pushy this weekend led to the two following significant discoveries:

  1. It would probably suck to be married to a girl called Aastha. It would remind you too much of the religious channel. Every time you decided to puts with her, you would have mental images of Baba Ramdev preaching restraint and abstinence. Death wonly.
  2. The wife of an HLL Area Sales Manager who wants to put an extramarital affair is in a very good position. The ASM will be off touring his territory Monday to Friday, which will give the wife free rein to boink whomever else she wants. Pushy pointed out that the ASM is also able to have extramarital affairs, but the wife still has an edge. The ASM can only have multiple affairs. The wife can choose to have multiple affairs or a single affair, a luxury unavailable to the ASM who will be in Kakinada on Monday night, Yanam on Tuesday night, Vizag on Wednesday, and so on.

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Blogging is Intellectual Masturbation

May 13, 2007

So what else do you do when there’s nobody around to fuck with your mind?

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She’s Like So Whatever

May 5, 2007

I swear, this is the most awesome line in the history of manufactured pop music ever. I first heard the song on Radio Indigo at the gym a week ago, but didn’t pay attention to anything except the chorus.

But this week, I heard the song again on my car stereo. And there the line was in it’s full glory:

She’s like so whatever

I was awestruck. I wasn’t even sure I had heard it correctly. But, no, it came up a verse later and there it was in it’s full glory:

She’s like so whatever

After a line like that – where 75% of the words have no actual meaning- even

Hell yeah, I’m the motherfucking princess

fails to startle.

But what really took the cake was when Rohit Barker announced at the end of the song that the song was by Avril Lavigne. Cut to dialogue between two inner voices.

Inner Voice 1: You expect meaningful lyrics from someone who wrote stuff like ‘He was a sk8er boi, she said see ya later boi‘?

Inner Voice 2: That is different. That is a form of genre writing about a minority group and it can use the jargon and pidgin which that group uses. Skaters are a self-selecting group and have created their own subculture. You are perfectly entitled to create your own dialect if you have done something to earn it like cracking JEE and getting into IITM, or jumping over cars or whatever it is that skaters do. Teenage slang is not the same because all you have to do to be a teenager is be born at the right time. Besides, wasn’t this woman supposed to personify rebellion against teenage vacuousness as exemplified by Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson?

Inner Voice 2 was apparently not alone in its thinking. Head over to the video’s YouTube page, and you’ll discover a whole lot of incensed comments about how Avril Lavigne has sold out and betrayed emo or punk (or whatever people thought she was).

This is basically the story of the safari suit being played out in the present day. A brand or product originally has a niche following. The owners then reposition it to the mass market, and end up pissing off the original niche market, who promptly stop buying it. For the safari suit, the original niche was elite IAS officers, who switched to western formalwear once the safari lost its cachet and was being worn by everyone from Gujju traders to auto drivers. For Avril Lavigne, the original niche market of teen punks (or should that be punk teens) is dropping her like a hot potato now that she is being pushed to the teenyboppers (to give you an idea of how bad the situation is, in Crossword the album is being sold with a Garnier hair highlighting kit).

But on the upside, I now have a new killer retort. From now on, if I disagree with something I will just say ‘That’s like so whatever.’

(Safari Suit fundaes courtesy The Flower of TamBrahm Womanhood)

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Attention Dear Readers

April 21, 2007

Please note that I am giving up Punjabi self-loathing. I am taking up Punjabi victimhood instead.

The reasons for this will become clear over the next three or four months (since that is how long it takes me to write a series of posts).

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Social Skills

April 21, 2007

Social skills are not about being polite. They’re about knowing when to be polite and when to be rude.

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Who Needs Morphy Richards?

April 15, 2007

Right. The past few weeks I’ve been preoccupied with how to spend my upcoming end-of-year bonus. I’ve already bought a bed and computer table, so my bedroom looks much less like a shantytown than it used to. Once a bookshelf comes in, furnishing will be mostly complete. Joy, no?

But that still leaves the kitchen undone. And with summer about to hit, I would like to be able to make milkshakes, juices, and cold coffee. Clearly, a mixie is called for.

Again, this calls for careful discrimination and planning. Should I purchase a cheap Sumeet or Jalpaan mixie, or should I go in for the pseuder Phillips or Morphy Brown models? This is not merely an economic decision. The Sumeet models look like something aunts would use, while the Morphy Brown Icon Dlx Mixer Grinder (click on through, it’s pretty) makes me gape open mouthed and indulge in Tim-The Toolman-Taylor like grunts of ‘More Power!’

Considering I’m a grossly overpaid MBA, money is hardly a problem. So the Icon Dlx ought to be a shoe-in. Except for the minor problem that my mum drew my attention to: no matter how brutal it is, it won’t juice citrus fruits. That needs a separate juicer. Like this one. Tragedy!

The tragedy is not that I can’t afford the extra kilorupee, but that my kitchen countertop just doesn’t have the space for two machines. I could squeeze it in, but then I wouldn’t be able to squeeze a microwave in a couple of months down the line. Woreshter and woreshter.

So I was in a quandary. Until I saw this rear windshield sticker in my office’s parking lot:

Jesus Will Meet All Your Needs

Woohoo! This is the answer! Damn Morphy Richards- what I need is Jesus in the kitchen. Milkshakes- check. Cold coffee- check. Orange Juice- check, baby, check. And if he meets all my needs, he’ll do the dishes and make dinner as well. No need to keep the maids on payroll anymore. Such awesomeness.

Clearly, we all need to let Jesus into our kitchens.

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The World is a Weird Place

April 14, 2007

Three links.

First, via Pharyngula, I discover the worst fantasy story in the world. As the transcriptor writes:

No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations — I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were a match for the text.

I can vouch for that. Here’s just one sample:

A gaunt skull faced priest standing at the far side of the altar clutched desperately at his throat, coughing furiously in an attempt to catch his breath. Lurching helplessly to and fro, the acolyte pitched headlong against the gleaming base of a massive jade idol. Writhing agonizedly against the hideous image, foam flecking his chalk white lips, the priest struggled helplessly – – – the victim of an epileptic siezure.

Startled by the barbarians stunning appearance, the chronic fit of their fellow, and the fear that Grignr might be the avantgarde of a conquering force dedicated to the cause of destroying their degenerated cult, the saman momentarily lost their composure. Giving vent to heedless pandemonium, the priests fell easy prey to Grignr’s sweeping arc of crimsoned death and maiming distruction.

Stunning, no?

Next, via DealBreaker, I find what is rumoured to be the HSBC Company Song (mp3, 2.77 MB). Lyrics:

 Let’s live it!
H! S! B! C! Live it!

We have the HSBC vision
putting what we’ve learned into action

With focus and commitment
for our customers through passion
Let’s stay number one
With a vision we will run
With a strategy and energy
Together we will be
HSBC you and me 

I’m sorry, I can’t go on further. But I’m overjoyed. Go HSBC! What is an extra billion and a half dollars in bad debt provisioning compared to the might of your company song?

Last up, the Simon World blogpost on Nail Houses. Some developer tried to acquire houses, but one guy refused to sell. Check out the picture, you’ll understand.

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Posted by Aadisht

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