On Renouncing Random Revelry

I do not go to random parties any more. You know, the kind where you sort of know one person and this sort-of-known person invites you along to a party being hosted by a person sort of known to him/her at a location mostly unknown to everyone.

It used to be fun meeting new people. Although lots of the new people I have met recently have been, for the most part, uninteresting. True fact. Everyone seems to be so caught up in working on their outer trappings – what we look like, what we have, our next Facebook profile picture, what we are perceived as, climbing the professional and social ladder and so on. We seem to have forgotten just keeping it simple and keeping it real.

The upside of random parties is that it gives you anecdotes to narrate at other random parties or just a funny tale to narrate to the inner circle of buddies.

I am reminded of this party KO and I found ourselves at some time ago. As we walked in, we realized we were amongst the few Indians there. Everyone else was French. There was plenty of alcohol and not much food. This mad-hatter, we sort of knew, unwrapped what looked like a large mound of road kill and dumped it on the barbecue. He may have run over a cow on his way and robbed it of its entire rump. Or that could have been his missing roommate. Who knows? It just looked (and smelled) really dodgy. Nobody touched it. He ate most of it himself. The potted out French people spent hours examining and cooing over a dragonfly. I got into a contest of “who has the oldest friend?” with a couple of fetuses and won. The socially awkward host had a monosyllabic name that I cannot recall. The mad-hatter made the French people dance to traditional Indian folk tunes. The best part about that party was leaving it.

My first Spanish teacher’s Christmas party was another disaster. Bin, BC and I had high expectations, thinking this would be a really fun party with lots of new and interesting people. We drove around in circles looking for a “Basset Road” as my teacher had instructed. People gave us the strangest looks as we asked for directions to said Basset Road. When we finally reached, we learned why. It was “Basith Road”. There were just six or seven people at the party. Our fun gay Spanish classmate slipped out quickly and we were soon bored. There was a German Yoga teacher who bowed deeply each time she whispered. She only whispered. At some point in this group coma session, her cocky 19-year-old son trotted over to us and said, “You know, OUR parties are not like this.” I wanted to poke him in the head. My Spanish teacher insisted on collecting all our disposable plates before washing and scrubbing them. All the while she bellowed at her husband, “Jaaveed! Why you bought plastic plate? I hate eet! I HATE EET!” All of Basset Road must know that now.

At another party, hosted on the occasion of Diwali, the gates were flung wide open for anyone. Literally anyone walked in, off the street, for free food and booze. The terrace area was packed with energetic dancing people. Bin was doing the “looking-for-my-cockatoo” dance with random strangers. I found Krazy Frog welcoming people at the gate with hugs and handshakes –inviting people he didn’t know to a party he wasn’t hosting. In fact, he didn’t even know who the host was.  Nobody did. The stuffed shirt we’d met an hour earlier got into a fight with a drunken stranger. There was a scuffle. Suddenly, everybody wanted to beat everybody up. In the midst of that row, the host’s father was beseeching people to eat biryani. We left. There was more action there than we could handle.

So yes, I think I am done with the random parties (for the most part). Random parties may make for amusing anecdotes, but time spent with my closer friends makes for lovely memories. That’s a deal clincher right there.

Missing the Woods for the Trees

The blood relative I call my mother has begun taking driving lessons. After years of driving everybody around the bend and notorious backseat driving, she has now ventured behind the wheel. I watch the proceedings with a certain amount of skepticism tinged with amusement.

For years, my mother claimed she was fully capable of driving. This after learning at the most popular driving school in the hills I call home. 

This school boasts of an ancient Wilys jeep with just a single gear. There is no ignition. They teach you to start it by rubbing two wires together. There is no horn. The British probably stole it along with the Kohinoor. Instead, students must stick their heads out and yell. There are no wipers. One must stick the old neck out and drive during a downpour. They list a raincoat as compulsory safety gear in the school’s manual. The instructor has no dual control. In fact, he has no control. He chooses to nap while the jeep careens all around town and over the hillside. 

So you can imagine that a real driving school car with a real instructor and real driving came as something of a surprise to my mother. She’s learnt that cars can have as many gears as she has fingers on a single hand. Keep the car on the road, not the kerb. “Ooops, sorry!” doesn’t quite cut it when you nudge an old woman off the kerb. Don your seatbelt and not a raincoat when you step into the car. 

Not too shabby for twenty days of lessons, eh?

And before people begin chastising me for mocking a blood relative, let me tell you – I have high regard for my mother’s decision to get behind the wheel when others her age are getting on wheelchairs. Of even more significance is the fact that my maternal side of the family would not qualify, by any stretch of the imagination, for excellence in driving awards. 

While the younger lot have driven their cars into hedges and unwittingly parked their luxury sedans atop coffee bushes, my maternal grandfather earned the dubious title of “The Flying Thatha (grandfather)”.

His cars ran out of clutch plates faster than his house ran out of milk. He didn’t think it necessary to keep an eye on the road. Being slightly hard of hearing, he’d twist his head all the way around to listen to his passengers in the backseat while zooming up the winding roads. He’d lean out his window and wave – with both arms – at the innumerous people he knew walking along the road. 

However, his moment of fame came when his brakes failed and he flew off the side of the hill, crash-landing on trees in the valley a 100 feet below. While the car was a total write-off, he emerged quite unscathed with just one regret: “I lost my gum boot.”

What else would you expect from anyone who survived a near-fatal crash?

To All The Travellers I’ve Loathed Before

(And shall loathe ever more)


Dear Indian Traveller,

I am going to just come right out and say it. You have exhausted my patience. I am tired of cringing in embarrassment at your obnoxious behaviour while on holiday, on domestic and foreign soil. Allow me to elaborate on a few of your more popular misdemeanours.

My shoulder is not a headrest. Or if you insist on making use of my shoulder to rest your oily mop, at least do me the kindness of not hogging the arm rest. How about a little give and take? I do not take kindly to being your beast of burden, especially on a flight that is longer than, oh, three minutes. On the same note, I will not accommodate the filthy shoes, diapers and face wipes of your mewling and puking infant. I do not appreciate your spawn kids wiping their grubby hands on my jeans or sticking boogers under the seat. How about some respect for personal space?

My lap is not your feeding trough. You may not need to ask for that extra serving of scrambled egg if you didn’t splatter a generous helping of your breakfast on my lap. Please refrain from blowing your nose into the white cold towel handed to you. The seat pocket in front of you is certainly not a place to stuff your soiled snot-laden towel.

I’m all for interesting conversation with a co-passenger. Make that mutually interesting conversation. Hitting on me is interesting only to you. So are topics such as the precarious condition of your digestive system, your erratic bowel movements, your bunions, your daughter’s chastity until marriage, your thousand pilgrimages with your Sharmy Aunty and so on. And forgive me for not sharing every detail of my life with you, a stranger. That does not make me a cold person. It makes you a nosy person.

Why must you leap up and stand at the ready as soon as the plane touches down? It makes it worse when you’re in the middle seat. I have no burning desire to be staring at your mostly repulsive derriere until passengers can actually disembark. And why must you plonk your hand baggage on my head while you wait?

Moving on from airplane etiquette now.

I understand that the concept of queuing up and politely waiting one's turn is largely alien to our culture. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t hurt to learn it now, you know. It is not okay to asphyxiate a solo traveler trying to find information at a kiosk. It is not okay to pull his chair out from under him. And it certainly isn’t all right to give each other high fives after having successfully ousted him from the kiosk.

This might come as something of a surprise to you. But nobody really wants to know who you are and where you’re going. Must you compete with the decibel levels of a public announcement system?

Scowling at and being rude to a confused salesgirl is not going to help matters. Especially when you are the moron who walks into a swimwear shop that is covered with bikinis and asks for “long trouser”.

Finally, you and I just happen to be from the same country of origin. That does not necessarily mean we have a whole lot in common, we should be travel buddies or that we must even pretend to like each other. When you go down in a blaze of unglory, try not to take me down with you. That’s all.

Best,
Blah.

Where there's a wheel, there's a weak heart

Too much has been said about bad drivers. I wish more were said about bad passengers or navigators.

Now if you are someone who has had to drive around a new city or an unfamiliar part of town with an absolute waste of human flesh sitting in the passenger seat trying to give you directions, you’ll get my drift.

Take my mother, for instance. As I approach a busy intersection, I ask her (well in advance) “So do I turn right or left here?” She answers with “meep” or some other sort of sub-human noise until I find myself having to stop in the middle of the busy intersection, blinking in absolute confusion, as she swivels the old head around 360 degrees and then says, “Stop…. I think you have to go back”. By this time, of course, the traffic cop is clicking my picture, annoyed male drivers are yelling unkind things about my gender and a fruit seller is having a minor meltdown trying to convince me that the thing I need most in this dire situation is a pineapple.

Then there are the finger pointers. “Take a left here” they say while the alien hand confidently points right. Or there’s a confident gesture saying “straight ahead”, which wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t at a sodden T-junction.

Now, let’s not jump to conclusions and figure that only directionally challenged women make bad navigators. My friend G2 could prove you wrong in a jiffy. Before setting off on our recent road trip to the coast, we picked him up from a part of town only he was familiar with.

- “Which way now, G2?”
- “Just go straight ahead.”
- “But it’s a one way!”
- “(Gasp) Where did all these one-way signs come from? They weren’t there last night!”
- “Now where do I go? This says ‘no entry, roadwork ahead.”
- “THOOO! Just go through this. Idiots simply put signs up for nothing.”

Two minutes later, we found ourselves in the middle of what was once a road with mounds of mud and open storm water drains all around us. There was nowhere to go but back.

Once we finally made it to the highway with G2 still holding onto his place in the navigator seat, I instructed him to warn Cheddar, who was driving, about any upcoming speed breakers. “Of course”, he said matter of factly before jamming his peak cap down firmly on his head and donning his aviator sunglasses. I kept quiet for a reasonable amount of time after we unceremoniously hit our heads on the roof when Cheddar failed to see a few speed breakers. When I was certain my cranium was about to split open after a third bump, I voiced my protest. “G2! You are a useless navigator. You cannot sleep! Warn Cheddar about the speed bumps!”

“Ok.” G2 turned to Cheddar, “Hey, just look out for those dark patches on the road. Those are bumps. Try not to hit them.” And with that, he was asleep, awaking only to ogle packets of buttermilk being hawked on the road and to argue with Smitten that the mini-truck with carrots was, in fact, carrying papayas.

That brings me to the sleepers. On a road trip, I insist that everyone stays awake throughout. It helps keep the person driving alert, while the constant conversation can break the monotony of a seemingly never-ending highway. Easier said than done. Case in point: KO, who thinks nobody will notice she’s asleep even if her only contribution to an ongoing conversation is “Zzzzzzz.”

The sleepers, however, are a tad better than the shriekers. The aforementioned mother is a prominent member of this group. While I carefully make my way through a crowded goods-laden street, my heart leaps into my mouth as I hear a piercing scream from the backseat.

- “Oooooooh, wheeeeeee wheeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

I slam on the brakes, clutching my chest where my heart used to be, fearing that I might have run over that little lost puppy that was in the middle of the road.

- “What?! What?! What happened? OH, GAD! DID I KILL IT?!”
- “Blue potterrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! It’s soooooo pretty!!!”, she trills back in response.

I’m throwing in my keys, I tell you. I am not driving anyone anywhere. I am being driven up the wall.

Introductory Ignominies

I’m sorry, but did I miss the memo on how people ought to introduce themselves now? Since when did “North Indian” and “South Indian” attain an ethnic label all their own? Are official Indian government forms now demanding you declare yourself thus?

“Me? I’m just a North Indian guy”, someone once introduced himself to me. What? That tells me absolutely nothing about you, apart from the fact that you are possibly of less than average intelligence for introducing yourself like that. Or you credit me with little or no geographic sense. Either way, you are far from becoming my favourite person. I feel almost apologetic that my geographic knowledge is as sound as it is. Dangle a tempting enough reward and I can name every state and union territory. Yes, I am geeky like that. It’s still a hell of a lot better than being plain ignorant or just mindlessly accepting absolutely pointless labels.

An even bigger sin is introducing yourself while adding “I am from North” or “I am from South”. Forget the fact that you probably lost your definite articles about the same time you lost your marbles, but you leave me hanging onto the edge of my seat. North of where? South of where? The equator? North Hampshire? South America? One of the Koreas? Pray, tell, where is it that such a dazzling nincompoop as yourself sprang from?

And if “North Indian” and “South Indian” are indeed accepted labels now, why aren’t people going around saying they are “East Indian” and “West Indian”? What is this - the Doordarshan weather update of the 80’s which conveniently left out the entire North East and the cloud-covered Andamans? I mean, if this is the way it’s going to be done now, we might as well go the whole hog.

Truth be told, I am sick and tired of hearing the aforementioned labels and this growing regionalism around me. For the love of God, just name your home state. If someone hasn’t heard of Bihar or Andhra or Uttaranchal or Kerala or some Pradesh or Nadu, they probably aren’t worth conversing with anyway. Unless you enjoy particularly scintillating conversation with half-wits. In which case, you might as well introduce yourself as an imbecile. Imbeciles, in my experience, are not limited to any specific geographic regions. Most unfortunate. Ideally, they ought to be confined to strait jackets.

Bah!