Chez Moi

Ever tried selling one of the stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata to a child today? Especially one raised on a PG or U certificate rating anywhere else but in India? Hair-raising, I tell you. For one, the stories are all way too gory for their bland tastes. Tell them so-on-so chopped the other bloke’s finger or head off and watch young eyes turn into saucers. The whys and whats and loud gasps would take days to stem, leave alone the increased Nightmare Alert.

If your child is not raised on an Indian filmi diet, then the damage is manifold. Stunted far-fetched imagination, refusal to accept outlandish suggestions and the uncanny ability to put their finger on the one point of niggling abnormality are all just a few of the side-effects.

Take Krishna, for example. The whole baby Krishna- Bhoothana story was declared no-no the minute breastfeeding as a concept was introduced. Being an only child, P has led a much sheltered upbringing and the concept of a baby feeding off a lady’s er, chest, brought forth series of shrieks from my young lad. The Kalinga nardhan story also suffered a similar fate, when the gravitational forces (damn the school’s Science week) and the inability of the parents to keep an eye on their child (Krishna, that is) were brought into question.

I actually managed to sneak in a story of Chathrapathi Sivaji during yet another problematic mealtime, in an effort to make him eat his pasta from the corners of the bowl. This did work for a while and then disaster, in the form of Rajini’s super-dooper hit film hit and now the Chathrapathi got mixed up with ‘Vaaji, Vaaji’ and we were back to Square -1.

I am nothing if not persistent. So tried a different tack and told him the story of Ekalavya over breakfast cereal this morning. Buoyed by the fact that I wasn’t met with rapid fire questions that blew holes into the story, I bravely plodded on. Till I came to the part where Drona asks for Ekalavya’s thumb as guru dakshina.

That was when my luck ran out.

“He asked for the boy’s thumb? Why? That is so gross! Did the boy die?”

“Er, no. It was just his thumb.”

“Why did the teacher want it anyway?”

“With the thumb gone, Ekalavya cannot use a bow and arrow anymore and Arjuna would be the champion shooter, that’s why.”

“Eh? So what if he can’t use a bow and arrow or his right hand? He can use his left hand! Or he can use a gun! Pow pow pow! Easy, see?”

Sigh.

My gran and her kind did not know how lucky they were with us, I tell you. Seriously.

I tried… I resisted but I give up! I have to pay homage to Krish Ashok and I shall!

I came across his blog, entertainingly titled ‘Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa’ awhile back, whilst searching for, of all the things, Chennai 600028 mp3s! (Okay, for the illiterates out there, the title of his blog is a loose translation of the hit number from the Tamil movie entitled Chennai 600028.) I moved swiftly on, when the said jalsas and jilpas weren’t the ones I was looking for. Then, I tripped over this blog again and decided to delve deeper.

That was yesterday.

I still haven’t finished splitting my sides. The dude has a real quirky way of talking about stuff and the fact that he’s from my own neck of the woods means I can actually understand what he’s going on about - most times, that is! Where else will I come across pearls such as ‘nor am I fully cognizant of social mores and anto-social yogurts’, ‘How does one make a quintessentially Italian dish Russian? By Putin in to it, a glass of vodka?‘, ‘Jabba di Hutti (Finest Pnjaabi cuisine on the planet Tatooine)’ and the incomparably ’snooty’ Les Sappadeaux. He killed me!

So, as you can imagine, browsing his blog was more enjoyable than wading through Interactive Design : beyond human-computer interaction. (No offence to Jenny P, et al)

From a louwr’s guide to Chennai to Navrathri to desified Chinese cuisine to Delhi survival guides for Madrasis to the funniest review of the Order of the Phoenix, the bloke even has a funny map of Chennai and when I came across the area labelled ‘Weekendboozapuram’, I fell apart. Krish Ashok - you so totally rock, dude!

Whilst on the subject of funny Tam stuff, the following vid is unmissable. I found it thanks to Sayesha’s entertaining blog. Please do not sue me if you split your sides and are unable to put them back together. There! I’ve warned you!

Thank you Sayeesha and Buffalax!

I know I am a li’l late but what with North Indians celebrating it for most of last week, Tamils on Thursday and Telugus on Friday and us lot on Saturday as that is the day we get off, I decided to ‘celebrate’ it on my blog on an entirely new day. Loopy or what?

Anyways, I hope everyone had a lovely festival. Was it as good as your childhood ones? (no, course not!) Did you make merry? Did you eat / drink too much? Go on, dish the dirt. What is your best diwali memory? share, pls.

[Guest post by Ranju]

For the kick-starter, Rowing is a sport which is highly catching up in the city of Madras, thanks to Madras Boat Club. A membership here costs 50k for a year where in you will have put in 300 hours of rowing. As an annual event, the MBC conducts a Corporate Regatta which is aimed to bring in more people into this sport. In this regard, my friend’s mom, Neela, who has a production house of her own called Madras Houz, decided that it would be great for us to participate. I have done some music – related work such as jingles, sound edits/recording for the company and hence qualify as a part time employee there. Apart from Neela, there are 2 other women working in the company, Uma and Sharmishta (my friend, Neela’s daughter). So the four of us decided that it would be fun and fitness combined for us if we signed up for this year’s Regatta. So that’s exactly what we did. Little did we realize how serious we were becoming about this event. Every morning, 5 hours past midnight saw us standing in Boat Club waiting for boats to be pulled out! Initially, it was quite hard, considering a) I NEED my sleep! b) The inviting(?) smell of the “koovam”. But as the sport got exciting, it didn’t matter. I got over my sleep issue and I just got used to the smell (Honestly, it isn’t that bad, considering they take special care of the course where we row!).

We practiced for 2 long months, almost everyday! The one hour in the morning with extensive coaching by the Club coaches did us real good. We got better by the week and we realized how strong we were becoming and how a sport changes the way you look at your day/week/life. We rowed as 4 on a boat and also took part as two entries (MH A & MH B) in the pairs contest, with two each on one boat.

As race day got closer, we started practicing in the evenings after work as well. Only then did we realize how excited we were about winning the race. Even though the buzz around the club was that 4 of us were going to be a tough team, we still wanted to make sure that we live upto that. There were many teams from all over the city, with 7 women’s only teams, from companies like Sify, Element K, Lion Bridge, JWT, O&M and of course, Madras Houz.

The heats began 3 days before the final race. A race is 750 meters and only two teams can race at a time. Each team had 2 entries for the pairs and we did too! So we got cracking down to the first race. This was easily the scariest part for me as Sharmishta and I were a team and we were to take on corporate oarspersons (not rowers ;)) who have had experience for about 5-6 years, in our FIRST EVER race!! Quite tense, we sat on the boat and till the second we heard the “Are you ready on the inside? Are you ready on the outside? Are you ready? ROW!” we didn’t realize the amount of energy in us! No more thinking after that and we took her home to the finish in style and won our first race!!! YAYY!

After that, there were 3 more races that we had to clear to reach the finals and we did so quite well! And guess who we met at the finals?? MH B! So us Madras Houz girls won both the first AND second place in our first ever Regatta! Result! Element K won the over all championship as they had a guys team as well. But we were more than delighted with our loot! Huge trophies are always a high! If only we were given a free membership to go with it Even the press paid us a visit on the day of the finals.

A little background on Regatta: this event has been held for the past 80 years and has been successful in churning out few on India’s best oarspersons. The excitement, the festive air, the spirit, the fights, the shrug offs, the pre and post dinners, the beer, which sure excites all the men and everything else that comes along with the package, it sure is a delight to be part of the entire extravaganza.

At the end of the day, all that effort did pay off and I loved the entire experience. Sometimes, even today, I almost stumble out of my sleep at 5 AM in the morning to look for my sneakers to hit the club, and before I realize I still have the Regatta – Hangover, I head back to sleep

“Are you, Desigirl?”

“Um, yes..”

“Oooh, I thought as much. I read your blog frequently!” *camera flash*

“Oh look, it is that blogger, Desigirl. I read your blog..” *more camera flash*

“So do I…” *you get the pic*

“… me too!”

(Really? How come my blog stats don’t reflect this massive fanbase?)

Anyways, this isn’t my major fantasy come to life. It was what happened to me this Saturday. Ok, ok, so I exaggerated a bit (give me a break, I am a blogger after all!) but it was heady when someone actually came up to me and asked me if I was the blogger who masquerades under a strange name. Well, as it was a group I had found thanks to couple of fellow bloggers, I shouldn’t be too surprised but can you blame me for my surprise / shock ? After all, I am not one of those A-list bloggers we keep hearing about. Heck, I can list my five readers in a flash.

And now, it seems like I have a multitude reading my blog.

So I query again, what the hell are you doing Blog Stats? Why aren’t they registering? Is this a conspiracy you hatched with AdSense?

S and I generally steer clear of desi groups and get-togethers. Regular readers of my blog (yes, you five) know my feelings regarding such do’s. But when I learnt that about a 100+ of them were going to gather under one roof, I was more than a bit intrigued. When further enquiries suggested most of them might even be from the same neck of the woods as me, it was the work of a moment to send a ‘yeah, count me in’ e-mail to the mahanubhavs who were organising the shindig.

Further e-mails detailing party events mixed tamarind in my tummy. Parties with themes of ‘Voluntary participation is mandatory’ scare the jeebies out of me. After a major part of my teen years spent making an ass of myself on stage, I have a healthy aversion to giving a repeat performance in front of random folk. ‘Don’t worry, it is a group thing’ was NOT the words that put balm on my soul. Still, I was desperate to give an airing to one of my newly acquired saris, if only to justify its presence.

So, off to H Hempstead we went. The adulation started off almost straightaway.

“Are you so-and-so?” queried the lady at the front desk.

“Can we have little P on the stage please?” shouted another over the PA system.

Boy have we arrived or what?!

Apart from random niggles like an unpalatable lunch (par for the course where HSB, London is concerned!) and a failure to win the Snacks competition (match fixing, sez I!), much fun was had by all. Though we hardly had time to do any major networking, S and I managed to make friends with a lovely family, meet the better half of a long-lost mate from the hometown and in S’s case, corner the only other golt bloke in the whole gathering. Not a bad result, I say.

Maybe the next time the party bandwagon can roll into our corner of Essex. Maybe THEN my kesari will win!