Bombay to Bangkok

January 20, 2008

I saw the 2130 show at Rex on Friday night because I didn’t want to endure the traffic on the way home. It turned out to be well worth it.

The hero of the movie is a cook who is on the run from a gangsta-rapper mafioso. He gives him the slip by impersonating a urologist in a medical relief camp in Thailand. He then falls in love with a Prostitute with a Heart of Gold who tells him to keep his morality off her body. Such joy. Oh, and the sidekick is a sardar called Rash.

While I am delighted that the fabulosity of urologist-based humour is being recognised by mainstream storytellers, I am also miffed at losing the first-mover advantage. A month ago, Kodhi and me had decided that it was essential to have a urologist as a recurring character in our sitcom when we got down to making it. Now we’ve been pipped to the post by Nagesh Kukunoor.

The really worrying bit is that fundaes cascade in Indian entertainment. One guy uses a funda, and two months later it pops up in five different movies and TV serials. The most painful example has to be when J-First started calling The Consultant Formerly Known As Gandyman Jignesh. For a year nothing happened. Then Jigneshes started popping up everywhere. There was a Jignesh in Guru. There was a Jignesh in Honeymoon Travels. And while Jignesh did get established as the archetypal Gujew name, J-First lost its exclusive ownership of the Jignesh concept. I fear a similar thing may happen to urologist jokes.

That aside, the movie is to be commended for faithfully sticking to the standard romantic comedy framework. The lead pair makes out after being imperiled, they fight at the eighty-percent point of the movie, and they make up at the climax. The only minor deviation is that the moment of truth and not the make up happens at an airport terminal, but that is okay.

What is saddening is that the movie failed to make use of all possible Thai stereotypes. It brought in massage parlour workers, Buddhist monks, laughing Buddha statues, tuk tuks, and fried locusts, but mysteriously left out ladyboys. Tragic. It came so close to perfection.

The best part of the movie, though, came after actually watching it. An IMDb search for Lena Christensen eventually led to the Wiki page for SARS Wars. Now this is a movie that I have to watch:

Thailand’s leading health official, Public Health Minister Ratsuda, declares Thailand free of the SARS virus and that Thailand’s superior technology and medical research will prevent the disease from occurring in the kingdom.

However, far away in Africa, there has been an outbreak of a mutant Type 4 strain of the SARS virus, which causes sufferers to turn into bloodthirsty zombies when they die. A hornet carrying the virus from Africa is hit by an airliner and lands in Thailand. It flies into the open window of a farang driving a Volvo and stings the man on the back of his neck. The man becomes patient zero in the outbreak of SARS 4. He returns to his apartment building and infects others in his building. Among the zombified creatures is a giant Burmese python named Albert.

Meanwhile, Catholic schoolgirl Liu is kidnapped by a gang led by a transvestite named Yai, who dressed as a sexy woman in a bikini and used a furry as a distraction. Liu’s father, an influential businessman, does not wish to involve the police, so he turns to his old friend Master Thep. Thep, injured from his last outing, assigns his stop student swordsman, Khun Krabii, to rescue Liu.

I love foreign cinema.


The Underpants of Power

January 15, 2008

Bangalore Central now has Spider-man, Noddy, and Pokemon underwear for sale. Tragically, only in children’s sizes.

This is most discriminatory. Why do only kids get to have superhero underwear? I want superhero underwear too. Though I’d prefer Saint of Killers or Bigby Wolf on my underpants. Commentors, please refrain from making jokes about Apollo and Midnighter.

(Incidentally, the Underpants of Power was a concept used in a strip comic which got discontinued within almost a year. I’ve forgotten the name. The main character was a little girl who lived with her widower father. Her best friend was a nerd and there was another spoilt-princess character. Does anybody remember what this was called?)


Word Power Made Easy

December 17, 2007

Junta like Jabberwock and Hurree Babu have cornered the market on reviewing good books. It’s futile to compete on their terms. No, I shall instead target an untapped niche – one I have already established some expertise in, what with abusing Ravi Subramanian and Chetan Bhagat – and review bad books. And the particular bad book we shall focus on today is that thing called LOVE (yes, that is how the capital letters are used in the title) by Tuhin Sinha.

There isn’t any one thing wrong with ttlC. It’s more of a museum of all the different forms of bad writing. Almost every rule of good writing is violated, but rarely to excess. The one rule which is violated to excess is: Thou Shalt Not Use Big Words, Unless Thou Art PG Wodehouse and Canst Pull It Off.

One Night @ The Call Center was like a steaming pile of manure. If God Was a Banker was like an 80s movie, but with lecherous and evil bankers instead of lecherous and evil generic industrialists. Tarbela Damned, Pakistan Tamed was like a collection of Indian National Interest blogposts converted to fiction by throwing in sex, paan and Irish whiskey. that thing called LOVE, however, is like the Barron’s GRE Word List with stupid people. The back-cover blurb itself says it all:

Mayank thus lives in disillusionment, aspiring, with diminishing hope, to fall in love with Utopian earnestness and with his ‘perfect woman’. … That Mayank’s relationship with Revathi unfolds during the course of one Mumbai monsoon, the first that an anticipating Mayank, experiences of the city, only makes this Utopia an even more surreal experience. Will Mayank’s romance ever strike a balance between Chimera and Actuality?

but there are equally unmitigated bits in the book itself:

There was universal talk that marriages were not holding. India was passing through a phase of massive changes in all spheres and there was no way it could have possibly remained immune to western societal influences. The urban Indian populace had begun to show the same symptoms of dysfunction that was once the domain of the prurient west.

and

Mayank … almost instantly thought that there could be either love or longing in a married woman’s life. If there were both, it reeked of a fluid situation in one’s marriage.

and

The Ganapati festivities, being innately imbued in the culture of the city; the residents, irrespective of the different regions of their origin, celebrated the festival with rare, infectious bonhomie.

And this just scratches the surface. The only other thing that manages to come close to the obsession with vocabulary is the obsession with brand placement. So characters never have coffee, they have Costa Rica Tarrazu at Mocha. They go out for dinner at Pop Tates1 and Tendulkars, and make sure that the ‘funkier of their apparels belong to accepted, up market brands like Provogue and Tuscan Verve’. On average, there’s one brand name dropped every chapter.

Also, all the characters are idiots. They do things like buy Pomeranians because they feel lonely2. There are onlookers who do nothing but watch people pray for an hour. And all the characters have a touching faith in some form of astrology or the other.

But even after this, it’s impossible to hate the book. Even when Tuhin Sinha abuses Punjews and Goregaon types for not speaking correct Hindi3. Or when he keeps quoting ghazals4. Hate is aroused only by the condescending attitude Chetan Bhagat takes towards his readers in One Night @ The Call Center. Tuhin Sinha takes the whole thing so seriously, that at worst you’ll end up mocking the book, doubled over in helpless laughter (which is what the girlfriend and me did when we read it, much to the consternation of the Barista staff).

If you don’t want to make the effort of actually buying the book, Tuhin Sinha’s website provides equally excellent opportunities for unintended humour, especially the About the Author and Author Speak sections. Still, I recommend buying the book, because, let’s face it, no other book will give you as many big words for only a hundred rupees.

1: To be fair, the Chicken Africano at Pop Tate’s are hajaar strong.
2: And this isn’t even a Gujew character.
3: Because we all know that only UP-Hindi is authentic. Pah!
4: The ghazal is the most despicable form of literature known to man. Along with the destruction of North Indian temples and the introduction of the purdah system, the introduction of the ghazal is one of the major wounds inflicted upon Indian culture by Moslem invasions.


Heh

October 30, 2007

My iPod playlist is on shuffle. Wake Me Up When September Ends just came on after Jaage Hain.


I Hope This Becomes a Trend

October 30, 2007

She calls herself Street Hero, says she is a former prostitute, knows martial arts and takes to the city’s underbelly to protect women who work the streets. Her uniform includes a black eye mask, a black bustier and black knee-high boots.  

Then there is Red Justice, a substitute teacher from Queens, who wears red boxer briefs over jeans, a red cape and a sock with eyeholes to mask his identity. He trolls the subways encouraging young people to give their seats to those who need them more.

These were just a couple of the 13 or so do-gooders who gathered near Times Square Sunday for what was billed as the first meeting of Superheroes Anonymous.

There were locals and out-of-towners. Most were in uniform and all said they were serious about helping make their communities cleaner, safer and kinder places.

“We’re not these crazy people,” said one man, Geist, who traveled from Minnesota. “We just have an unorthodox approach to doing good.”

(NYT story syndicated on Indian Express)

This is awesome. The disappointing thing here is that these are very Robin-ish or Huntress-ish superheroes, with no superpowers, but you’ve got to make a start somewhere. Hopefully, we will see technology enabled superheroes of the Batman/ Iron Man variety soon. I am pessimistic about real superpowered superheroes coming up any time soon, but one can always hope.

Meanwhile, where are Bangalore’s superheroes? We could do with a masked man who fills in potholes and destroys speedbreakers.


Mint on FM

October 29, 2007

Today’s Mint is carrying a report on the future of FM radio as a business, and how differentiation is finally happening under the pressure of competition. Do read it, and also my old post on where the opportunities for differentiation lie.


I Want to be a Young Man in Spats

October 25, 2007

Skimpy claims that monsoonal rains follow the Gregorian solar calendar, while post-monsoonal autumn showers follow the Hindu lunar calendar. Thus, there is always rainfall at the time of Dasara, whenever that might be, while the monsoons always show up in June. Every three years, when the leap month is added to bring the lunar year back into sync with the solar year, this manifests itself as a longer and dryer summer.

The reason I bring this up is that due to the Dasara rains, my trousers have been spattered with mud even before I reached office. As is usual after 10 millimetres of rainfall, Magrath Road is now a dirt track, and the traffic passing over it has left my lower right trouser leg looking like a Jackson Pollock painting – if Jackson Pollock would have used brown.

For a banker of repute, having such indignities visited upon his trousers is intolerable. One cannot convince customers of the virtues of zero-cost options unless one’s trousers are spotless, starched, and straight. The cry goes out: what to do, what to do?

Fortunately, we do not need to come up with new solutions that will impose heavy research and testing costs. The answer lies in our past, and we can reach back and grab it. Ladies and gentlemen: spats.

As the Master wrote:

Spatterdashes was, I believe, their full name, and they were made of white cloth and buttoned round the ankles, partly no doubt to protect the socks from getting dashed with spatter but principally because they lent a sort of gay diablerie to the wearer’s appearance. (link

Remarkable, no? My trousers are protected from spatter, my appearance borrows a gay diablerie, and best of all, I promote Edwardian values:

This is pointed out to me every time a new book of mine dealing with the Drones Club of Jeeves and Bertie is published in England. “Edwardian!” the critics hiss at me. (It is not easy to hiss the word Edwardian, containing as it does no sibilant, but they manage it.)

I will now rant about the importance of Edwardian values. 

Read the rest of this entry »


Before 7

October 24, 2007

Gak! Radio Indigo plays devotional songs before 7 am! Eldritch horror! So much for the biggest international hits.

What makes it worse is that these are all Ram bhajans. I look upon this with  disapproval. India is a Saivite country. Why is Indigo trying to spread Vaishnavism? I demand that the scope of any anti-conversion ordinance that comes up in the future be expanded to a ban on Ram bhajans.

Also, putting gym in the morning rocks. 9.5 Kmph for twenty two and a half minutes on the treadmill, followed by ninety crunches, and a hot water shower, and then directly to office with breakfast in between. Are.


The Perils of Rupee Appreciation and Metro Construction

October 13, 2007

The rupee hit a new high against the dollar today. The interbank rate was 39.3188 INR/USD when I quoted rates to customers in the morning, and it had gone up by 3 paisa more when I checked the livemint.com news feeds just after lunch.

While the rupee was hitting new highs, the shit was hitting the fan. When importers see news of new highs, they demand to know why their rate is still so high (it remains the interbank rate plus the default margin, but that’s another story). When exporters are quoted the INR rate for their realization payments, they demand to know why the rate is so absurdly low (their rate is also the interbank rate minus the same margin they’ve had for the past year). Meanwhile, exporters who you were trying to convince about the virtues of forwards and options six months ago suddenly panic, land up at office, and demand that their forwards limit be set up by the end of the week. The end result is that both exporters and importers are unhappy about the price of dollars, and react by shooting the messenger who brings them the price. Guess who the messenger is?

Faced with such a situation, the naïve fresh MBA reacts by trying to reassure customers that their margin remains at the wonderfully low levels it has always been, and that the interbank rate is really out of his control. This is a mistake. Customers then demand that their FX margin be reduced, more so if they are Gujew customers. Unfortunately, after ICICI has made a mockery of net interest margins, banks are determined to squeeze every possible rupee out of their FX margins. FX is a new focus area for cross-sell, and 10 paisa is the lowest margin a customer can expect. Confronted with this brutal truth, customers react by shooting the messenger who presents it to them. Guess who the messenger is?

Meanwhile…


I feel it is important to point out that The Rembrandts were wankers. “It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear,” indeed. Hah!If you arrive at Trinity Circle at 9:50 a.m., you realize to your horror that the turn from Airport Road to MG Road has been barricaded off. You are then forced to drive ahead instead of turning left, going past the Park, and turning left into Ulsoor Road instead. You then spend the next twenty five minutes stuck on Ulsoor Road (which, incidentally, can’t possibly be more than two kilometers long from Trinity Circle to Dickenson Road). The red light on Dickenson Road, meanwhile, has caused traffic to back up along the length of these entire two (or less) kilometers, and moving on Ulsoor Road is done by shifting between neutral and first gear. Second gear is a distant dream. Meanwhile, you are seriously reconsidering your celebrity crush on RJ Malavika after she plays Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake in succession, and then follows up by talking about how excited she is about the Spice Girls reunion. You also mentally abuse your flatmate for refusing to take an apartment in St. John’s Road for the purpose of saving seven thousand rupees of brokerage (this, incidentally, is the same flatmate who feasts at the Oberoi buffet and buys imported breakfast cereal at 300 rupees for 220 grams), and wonder if that apartment is still available, and what the rent on it would be now if it was.

When the light finally clears, you gain all of thirty seconds of movement at faster than ten Kmph before you end up stuck behind a Government of India Ambassador which has chosen that very minute at stall. After ferociously blowing your horn for forty seconds, the Ambassador finally moves. Unfortunately, Rocinante is a Palio, and has a large turning radius. Few things are comparable to a Palio’s turning radius, though the radius of J. Lo’s backside comes close. It takes another fifteen seconds before you have space to overtake. Once you have overtaken, and are back in the outside lane, you have to hit the brakes again to avoid mowing down a motorcycle rider who has at that very second decided to climb onto the footpath, and found that he can’t do it at all. By the time you hit Dickenson Road, the light has changed again, and you’re stuck for another seven minutes, during which time RJ Malavika plays Robbie Williams (but, in the first stroke of luck you’ve had since reaching Trinity Circle, also Fallout Boy). You then face another jam at the turn onto Residency Road, caused by autos trying to make a U-turn through the gaps between police barricades, and BMTC buses trying to change lanes.

You park at 1045, and walk into office at 1100, a little over an hour after you reached Trinity Circle, which is a five minute walk from office.

So…


I am closer than ever to becoming a smoker or a regular drinker. Yes, these are merely forms of escapism, but I want to escape the crap I’m going through. Gujews bitching about the weakening dollar, ten minute traffic halts, small scale industrialists becoming frantic about their forwards limits- what have I done to deserve this, I ask.

However, I don’t believe in spending money on bad habits. So if I take up smoking, it’ll be beedis, and if I take up drinking, it’ll be country liquor. This will hasten my death, but right now I am in agreement with Legodeath: death will be sweet release.


Desperate Housewives

October 2, 2007

“Everybody has a little dirty laundry.”

Isn’t this a redundancy? If it wasn’t dirty, it wouldn’t be laundry.