The Hen In My Backyard..

So there’s this saying, that home cooked chicken (Ghar ki murgi) tastes no better than ordinary lentils (daal barabar)! Wonder if Daniel Weber would agree. Or Amey Gosavi..

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I had just received a mail, extolling my blog posts, and generally going ga-ga over what a `wow’ writer I was! Admittedly, the adjectives used to describe my turn of phrase were way over the top, and much more than the blog deserved.

It’s not to say I wasn’t pleased as punch. Of course I was blown away, and asked the wife and kids why they didn’t offer similar praise. Their reactions varied from a derisive snort (no guessing who) to a coquettish `Aww’ (Sowmya) to his signature shrug of the shoulders (Sid). Puja said she’d read the mail and revert.

Translated into plain English, that only meant that while the posts were no doubt good, they were, for them, in the end, no more than home cooked chicken – ghar ki murgi!

Can’t blame the poor sods. Remember Mrs Graham Bell? Her reaction to Alexander announcing that he had just invented telephony was an exasperated “Put away those toys dear, and come to bed!”

You think Edison was feted as the `Wizard of Menlo Park’ at home? Perish the thought! He was curtly told to switch off the incandescent lamp that he had just invented, and `come to bed!’

Mrs Einstein, on seeing the magic formula E=mc², merely wondered how any man could earn a living through the haphazard scrambling of just three letters of the alphabet! ‘Whatever, dear, just come to bed!”

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, arguably the greatest vocalist of his generation, had just composed a new raga, and offered to hum it for his son. “Dude, maybe some other time?” said Joshi Junior, not taking his eyes off his iPad.

So I was actually in exalted company.

Of course, like all wise sayings, this one also originates from the kitchen, and the culinary skills of the `hen’ in question.

Is there a man with soul so dead

Who, to his wife has never said

When Mrs X cooks, only then I be fed…

So here I was, at this friend’s place, slobbering over the prime ribs Mrs X (name changed to protect her well being) had conjured up. Along with the creamiest mashed potatoes, a few stray greens, and a barbeque sauce that was to die for!

The `Oohs’ and the `Aahs’, the wows and the whistles as I licked my fingers, swooning in delight, were sounds one normally associates with low grade porn movies! I kid you not, I was in epigastric heaven!

My wife kicked me under the table. I ignored her. Mr X (name changed to protect my well being) glared at me across the table. I ignored him. It was me, and the ribs, one on one. We had established a connect, and would brook no intrusion!

Mr X, to whom the whole meal was no more than `home cooked chicken’ (or in this case, pork) couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Snorting, in between generous helpings of the mashed potatoes, he roundly chided me for going overboard.

I continued to lick my fingers. Nary a trace of the barbeque sauce was spared. When they were as clean as to have made my mother proud, only then did I deign to look up.

“You were saying?” I said.

Then of course there are the vegans, or even some die hard Punjabis who love their `mah-di-dal’ - slow cooked overnight over a charcoal angheeti, then smothered in cream and butter – as the ultimate companion to the ubiquitous tandoori roti, with slivers of onion and mooli that pass for salad (`slaaad’ lyaayin, yaar!) in the dhabhas that dot Sher Shah Suri’s Grand Trunk Road.

Yes, the chicken versus daal debate is real. So the Parsis, geniuses that they are, simply merge the two, and come up with `Chicken dhansaak’! Makes us all feel rather silly, doesn’t it?

An aside here. We were attending Amrita’s wedding reception at JW Marriott, and happened to share a table with the delectable Sai Tamhankar (of `Hunterr’ fame). Seated next to her was a dark, dishevelled, uncouth looking guy with a straggly beard. Dismissing him as no competition whatsoever, I chatted up Sai, turning up my charm to overdrive, when she waved her pretty hand expansively “Meet my husband,” she says pointing to the guy in question.   

Turns out he was Amey Gosavi, a rich money-bags from the Marathi film industry. If looks could kill, I’d have decimated, decapacitated and de-boned the guy in five seconds flat. Talk of life being unfair! Talk of home cooked chicken! Talk of `ghar ki murgis’!

Which brings me back to the question I started with. Does the `ghar ki murgi’ always taste like daal? Would Daniel Weber agree?

Daniel who, you ask? The hen in his backyard, the murgi in his ghar happens to bear the name Sunny Leone!

I mean seriously, where’s a rope and a ceiling fan when you really need one??

Horn NOT Ok, Please!!

After the ban on beef and the insistence on screening of Marathi movies, the Maharashtra Govt has now banned the ubiquitous `Horn OK Please’ that stares at you from behind most trucks!

Reason? It makes people honk all the more! Seriously! What will they ban next? `Buri nazar wale, tera muh kala!’ because it’s racist??

Of course, we honk like our lives depend on it. We are truly the `horniest’ nation on earth, going by the incessant cacophony on our roads.

An aside here. Durex, that maker of luxury condoms, in a recent survey, has ranked India the 8^th most `sexually satisfied’ nation on earth! How the f@£$ did they arrive at that dubious conclusion? By totaling the sales of their products plus pills plus spermicidal creams?? Am I missing something here??

There, now I’ve gone way off topic! Horny so-and-so! Come back, you ill begotten son of a what-not…

No `Horn OK Please’ now? Seriously?? After the decades it took me to figure out what this pithy slogan really meant (Want to overtake me? Horn loudly as you do so, ok? - Please!).

Good men have made hobbies, even careers out of recording, if not actually authoring the verses one sees behind trucks, busses and rickshaws.

If any of you have seen the hilarious, rib tickling, rip roaring Pakistani stage drama `Bakra Qishton Pe', you will remember Professor Nizami’s sher-o-shayairi competition  with his neighbour Mirza.

Mirza asks him "Tum ne kitne deewan padhay hain?"

The professor replies "Sher-o-shaiyari jaan ne ke liye deewan padhna zaroori nahin hai - truck padho, rickshaw padho, bus padho!"

Of course, Delhi is the most culturally bereft city in the country. Sad, considering that the likes of Meer, Ghalib and Zouk once habited its courts. The hordes of Punjabi jats that descended on it after partition completely crushed its fragile culture beyond recognition.

So once where you reveled in a

Zameen-e-chaman gul khilati hai kya kya

Badalta hai rang aasmaan kaise kaise,

behind a truck, today all you get to see in Delhi is a `Sonu te Pinky di gaddi'.

Where indeed have the mighty fallen..

Yet, here are some gems that I’ve managed to pick up in my travels – mostly along Sher Shah Suri’s Grand Trunk Road..

`Ameeron ki zindagi, fruit aur cake pe,

Driver ki zindagi clutch aur brake pe!’

Anyone familiar with Delhi’s traffic and obnoxious drivers will easily identify with

Kaun kehta hai ke maut aayegi aur main mar jaoonga,

Main toh Dilli ka driver hun, cut maar ke nikal jaaonga!

And here are some from Pakistan..

Yeh jeena bhi ko jeena hai? 

Jhelum ke aage Dina hai!

(Dina is a village about 20 Km ahead of Jhelum)

Itna dubla ho gaya hun sanam tumhari judaai se

Ke khatmal bhi kheench le jaate hain mujhe chaarpai se

Kis kadar khush nazar aate hain mere shehar ke log

Aaj akhbaar na padhaa ho kisi ne jaise.

Ya Ilahi kya ghazab hai, khat ka aana bandh hai

Ya mohabat kam hui hai, ya dak khana bandh hai

Ya Ilahi, tujhe maloom hai, nahi dekh sakta apni biwi ka bewa hona

Wo jo mar sakti hai mere liye, mujhe manzoor us ki khatir randwa hona

Aadmi aadmi ko dans raha hai

Saamne saamp baitha hans raha hai

Kismat azma chuka hun, kismat azma raha hun

Kisi bewafa ki khatir rickshaw chala raha hun

Na jawan hotay na dil lgatay,

Na karte muhabbat, na rikshaw chlatay

Sawaari pichhay Kareena Katrina,

Driver aggay Paseena Paseena

Or the simple but oh so effective `Aag lawaan teri majbooriyaan nu!!'

Professor Nizami was absolutely spot on. For true shayari, you don’t need to pore over the deewans of the greats. Just read buses, trucks and rickshaws!

Irrespective of what Mr Phadnavis decrees, Horn will always be OK, Please!!

A Faustian Bargain??

I love my iPhone 5S, I love my iPad2 (both 64 GB), and I love my Mac Book Pro. Thanks to Puja, we are an Apple family. From the 4S to the 6, we cover all models of the iPhone.

I also have a Kindle e-reader, and the Kindle App on all my devices. I read my book on the Kindle, enjoying Pune’s evening breeze on my terrace. When it gets too dark, I simply switch to the iPad, which remembers exactly where I left off on the Kindle. Sitting in the ECHS Waiting Room, I switch to the iPhone, and of course he too knows exactly which page I’m on!

I pay my bills, check my bank accounts, transfer funds from here to there, chat with my friends, electronically check in, update my fb status, tweet to all my 165 followers - all in this wonderful digital maze. It is choc-a-bloc with its wow moments.

Travelling from Poona to Bombay on the Expressway, I realised it was the last day to pay my Credit Card bill. No sweat. I whipped out my iPhone, and in a matter of 45 seconds flat, the HDFC Bank was thanking me for my prompt payment. Via an sms, naturally!

Using Face Time, Puja was laboriously hand walked through the intricate steps of the sabudana khichdi that she was attempting to whip up - in San Francisco! Why anyone in SF would want to eat sabudana khichdi is the subject for a separate post!!

So logically, God should be in Heaven, and all should be well with the Earth, right? Not if the likes of Edward Snowden are to be believed.

The digital processes that make life such a breeze also mean that we now live in an Orwellian world, that `Big Brother’ is watching every move, reading every mail/sms, scrutinising every tweet that we make!

Every digital platform that we use can be tracked. Every document, every mail, every sms, every conversation can be seen, heard, listened to, and spot lighted.

So has technology actually freed us, or bound us in chains? We hear of phone hacking scandals in UK, Snoop Gates, Wiki leaks, and the NSA even hacking into Angela Mercel’s phone!

The world’s most famous whistle blower, Edward Snowden, blew the whistle on NSA’s `snooping’. (Do watch `Citizenfour’, the  Cinema Verite style documentary on Snowden, it is compelling). Along with Julian Assange, Snowden must count as the biggest heroes/traitors of the digital era – depending on which side of the prism you look at them from.

9/11 obviously turned the entire security paradigm on its head. Ethical questions began to take the back burner to the more important security concerns.

So are we really better off in the digital age? Anyone who has stood in the serpentine queues to pay BSNL or MSEB bills would obviously scream in the affirmative.

Progress is inexorable, it is relentless, it will brook no hurdles. You cannot wish it away. An Arnab Goswami may make you yearn for the good old Doordarshan days, but let’s face it - his obnoxious, high decibel, in your face persona is here to stay.  

And security issues should, of course, trump all other concerns. Removing your shoes at London’s Heathrow airport can be irksome, but if you’re confident your socks don’t have gaping holes in them, you bear it with a grin.

Personally, I think the Americans are taking this `privacy’ angle way too far. The only eyes I’d want to keep squarely away from my phone would be those of my spouse! Otherwise, how does it matter if the Government of India, or even USA’s National Security Agency knows the details of my Credit Card bills, or who I message in the darkness of the night?

An aside here. A friend had just bought a smart phone, and being rather technologically challenged, asked me to set it up for him. To pull the wool over the prying eyes of his extremely inquisitive spouse, his Contact List was full of codes, ie James for Jyotsna, and so on. Great, until he received a WhatsApp message from `James’. To his utter horror, there was the delectable Jyotsna, smiling oh so provocatively at him through her Display Picture!! He promptly switched back to his primitive Nokia! 

To Jennifer Lawrence and her ilk whose nude pics were hacked from iCloud and spread all over the internet, my simple rejoinder – why would you do something so silly in the first place?

So it’s progress on the one hand, and loss of privacy on the other. With the need for Security looming over both. It is a Faustian bargain as some would have us believe?

Hardly. Keep your house in order, keep your nose clean. The Government can watch, no problem. Big Brother can scrutinise as much as he likes to.

Of course, your spouse is a different matter altogether!!

Pakistan - A Sporting Nation No More...

Umar Akmal is not the best wicket keeper in his country. Hell, he is not even the best wicket keeper in his family! Why in God’s name would Pakistan, therefore, choose him to keep stumps in a crucial World Cup tie against India?

Nasir Jamshed averages an incredible 102 as an opener against India. Why, in God’s name, would Pakistan sideline him and opt for the ageing warhorse Yunus to open the batting??

Asif and Amir already stood banned for spot fixing in 2010 (surprise, surprise, Salman Butt now confesses to the crime!), Ajmal has been banned for bowling like a baseball pitcher, Hafeez and Junaid were out due to injury.

So Pakistan was already on the backfoot. Then they go and shoot themselves in the foot through selection blunders! Had they lost the match even before the first ball had been bowled?

Yet, when India seemed to lose their way in the last few overs, I shuddered.

“We’re thirty runs short,” I told Sid, “they’ll make it!”

“Not a chance!” he dismissed.

“The pitch is flat” I warned.

“It’s two paced” he said.

“Our bowling is weak” I shook my head.

“Their batting is even weaker!” he countered.  

His confidence in their penchant to self-destruct was unshakeable!

As things turned out, he was spot on. Pakistan committed hara-kiri as only they can. From a comfortable 90/1, they went to 100/2, then slipped to 104/5! Sohail, Shahzad, Maqsood and Akmal left in the space of a few overs.

The firecrackers in Karachi, as the Star Sports ad suggested, would have to wait another day.

In the sixties and the seventies, Pakistan was the cynosure of all eyes in the subcontinent. Their GDP was way higher than India, PIA was among the best Airlines in the world, and they justifiably preened themselves as our rich and glamorous neighbours.

The old PIA ad

The liberals in Pakistan today wax lyrical about those `good ol’ days’. They post old black and white ads of PIA on Twitter, showing smartly dressed stewardesses, frolicking hand in hand with the male cabin crew, and no eyebrows were raised. Glory days indeed!

On the sports field too they were way ahead. Of the top five squash players in the world, as many as four were Pakistani! Their hockey and cricket teams were world beaters as well.

On the ‘79 tour to Pakistan, Bedi’s India was roundly thrashed by Mushtaq’s Pakistan. Zaheer Abbas, with his silken artistry, had single handedly drafted the obituary of India’s famed spin quartet.

And they were gorgeous, boy were they gorgeous! From Fazal Mahmood to Imran to Majid to Sarfaraz, they were all Greek Gods!

Then Muhstaq went and ruined the moment by declaring “Muslims all over the world will be thrilled by our win!” I was astounded. Didn’t that jackass know that there were more Muslims in India than in Pakistan??

I think that one sentence summed up everything that went wrong with Pakistani sport. And in a sense, Pakistani sport became a just metaphor for the Pakistani nation. That’s when things really started going south.

PIA became `Please Inform Allah’. (To be fair Air India, at `Already Informed’, is no better!)

Today, while India is the fastest growing economy in the world, Pakistan is still struggling to come to terms with its `Muslim’ identity.

And Mushtaq, sadly,  wasn’t the only one. Years after his asinine comment, Shoaib Malik, who I cringe to refer to as India’s `son in law’ (Sania Mirza, seriously, what were you thinking?) remarked before a match that Pakistan was bound to win because Allah was on their side! The fact that they then went on to lose that match was probably because of the three Muslims in the Indian side!

There was a time when Pakistan’s sportsmen came from Aitichison College Lahore, or Oxford. Today they are picked off the streets of Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Sialkot. They come from humble backgrounds, lack basic education, have no access to the lucrative IPL, and so fall easy prey to temptation or worse, radicalisation.

Eight of the players in the current World Cup squad are fined 300$ each for breaking the curfew. News just coming in speaks of Afridi, Ahmed Shahzad and Umar Akmal `misbehaving’ with the fielding coach, and the chief coach Waqar appears to have his hands full.

 

Yousuf Youhana (Joseph John) becomes Mohd Yusuf, grows a beard, swaps his `cross’ sign for a `dua’ in the hope that he will get to captain the side. Inzamam makes namaaz compulsory for the players, in the middle of the Lords ground, mind you! No wonder they slowly drift into the tableeghi fold.

In Sri Lanka, Ahmed Shahzad guarantees a place in Heaven for Dilshan if only he converts/reverts to Islam.

Surely Heaven can wait. Shouldn’t he try and win the World Cup first?

Today, no country tours Pakistan, and they’re forced to host their `home series’ in the UAE!

In a country ravaged by terror and internecine warfare, power cuts and dharnas, eleven men in `water melon’ green, playing cricket ten thousand kilometers away, offer the only hope for any cheer. Sadly, those men aren’t playing ball!

PS – Both Sid and I used to be fervent Pakistan supporters, but the behaviour of the Pakistani hockey team at the Champions Trophy dented that considerably.

  

Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie!

Cat chases mouse. Mouse outsmarts cat. Mouse slips away. Always and EVERY time! Cat never ever catches mouse.

Substitute Elmer Fudd for Cat. Replace mouse with rabbit. And lo and behold, the story line is the same.

How long can you stretch this theme? Apparently, forever! Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny have been among the most successful cartoon franchises for longer than I care to remember.

My brother, all of 67 years, still watches them, still guffaws in glee! Me, I stopped watching cartoons even before I grew facial hair! Ok, they’re now called Animated Films, and, along with my brother, Pixar and Disney are also laughing – all the way to the bank!

Ok, so what makes a good cartoon?

The first requirement of a cartoon, the sin qua non of course, is that it evoke mirth. It be funny. Even if you don’t actually guffaw or ROFLOL, it simply MUST raise an odd chuckle, or at the very least, bring a smile to your lips. Right?

The next requirement is that it be subtle. It should poke fun with the delicate touch of a rapier, rather than a sledgehammer. No place for slapstick or tomfoolery. None at all!

Also, it should be in good taste. Lavatory humour should stay in the lavatory.

Lastly, it should not be offensive. Of course this is totally subjective, in that one man’s food is another man’s poison etc, what is offensive to me may be side splittingly funny to you. But suffice it to say that all grey areas must be avoided. There’s plenty to poke fun at without stepping on anyone’s toes!

Viewed in the light of the above, do Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons pass the test? An emphatic NO, the more emphatic the better! They are downright vulgar, in pathetically poor taste, extremely offensive and evoke only disgust – with nary a trace of humour anywhere!

I could point out the link where one can view them, but believe me, they’re disgusting and SO not worth the effort! 

Believe me, I have seen graffiti on the toilet walls at Fergusson College that was more artistic, had better taste and was way more hilarious! My favourite being the one-liner some genius had scribbled  `Yahaan jo bhi aaya, gaya haath mal ke’.

Michael Angelo's David

Of course there have been geniuses who have caused offence. Michael Angelo’s nude David, or his fresco The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chappel raised a lot of hackles, and even brought the nature of his own sexuality into question.

Nearer home, Hussain’s depiction of Hindu Goddesses in the nude caused the sort of reaction that exiled him to Dubai.

But these are works of genius. I am tempted to include Rushdie’s `Satanic Verses’ in that category, but good friend Samina will wring my neck and hang me out to dry!

Charlie Hebdo’s nonsensical `satire’, on the other hand, never rises above gutter level. Along with the abominable YouTube movie `The Innocence of Muslims’ it ranks as the most asinine piece of garbage ever churned out in the name of free speech.

But would I kill the cartoonists for their rank bad taste? No matter how offensive I find them? Most certainly not! At best, I’d dump the magazine in the trash can where it belongs.

Free speech is a myth, and all the brouhaha surrounding it is pure bunkum! No freedom can ever be absolute. Will free speech allow a man to yell `Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, and cause a stampede? With freedom comes responsibility.

So the groundswell of outrage and protest world wide, the million strong rally at Paris, that had over 40 heads of state in attendance, was basically a protest to allow people to print the vilest of garbage without fear of life and limb!

Or is it a protest against any form of radicalisation, a cry for reform within organised religion, particularly Islam? That I can agree with, but not at the cost of basic decency and good taste.

The latest cover

As if to remove any lingering doubt from any of our minds, the very next issue of the magazine again had a terrible caricature of the prophet Mohammed on its cover!

So no, as the title of this piece says, I am NOT Charlie!

It was Voltaire who said `I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it!’

He probably hadn’t seen Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons!

Frankly, My Dear..

I don’t do New Year Resolutions. I don’t do Resolutions, period. I made an exception on 8^th August 2011, the day I officially turned senile, the day I `sathiaoed’.

I had spent six decades, `giving a damn’ to people/things I shouldn’t have bothered about, while overlooking people/things that I should have. It was time for some course correction.

I wrote my first post `Resolutions at 60’ on `Mitti Pao!’. Basically, the now senile Harish Puri resolved to:-

·      Stop believing that the world revolved around his magnificent aura

·      Accept that life didn’t have an Undo key

·      Junk all unequal relationships

·      Make his days count

Now, three years later, I realise that I had not verbalised the most important of them all – to stop giving a damn. The world is full of idiots, and most people are not worth the trouble.

The problem is we spend our lives `giving a damn’ about far too many issues, and then feel outraged, angry or cheated when things don’t go the way we want them to.

Reserve your `damns’ only for things that really matter. Family. Friends. Purpose. The New York Cheesecake. The occasional heated argument or two.

But that’s easier said than done. Life has far too many trivialities and unimportant dramas that suck us in, and steamroll us into becoming inveterate `damn givers’. And boy, are we screwed!

So-and-so said such-and-such about you. Really? Aisa bola?? Salay ki toh main.. Your BP sky rockets, you picture dark and forbidding scenarios involving Mr so-and-so, and if he has really pissed you off, his mother and his sisters as well..

We live and die by the side notes and the distractions and the vicissitudes of life that simply don’t matter. We must learn to shrug. Learn to say `I don’t give a damn!’ Or a rat’s ass, Or a f@$k. Take your pick.

By no means am I saying `Be indifferent’. Indifference is bad. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Just know who are the people you really care about, and who care about you.

The rest? Just stop bothering about whose toes you’re stepping on, or who you’re pissing off, as long as you’re convinced you’re right.

If you find yourself consistently `giving a damn’ about the trivial shit that life is so full of – a silly pique at one of your posts, how quickly the battery dies out on your new iPhone, how Homeland-4 ended in a damp squib, chances are there’s not much in your life worth a real damn anyway.

And that’s your real problem. Not her pique, not your iPhone, and certainly not Homeland-4! (An aside here. Are all ISI agents as hot as Nimrat Kaur??)

When you’re young, you have the energy and the gusto to really give a damn about any and everything. Did that hottie at the other end of the room return your `look’? Why has that PYT replied to your ardent sms with just a smilie? Is she into you or not??

With age come weariness, if not wisdom. You care less and less. Ok, even a smlilie is a response after all.

And once you’re past 60, you probably won’t even look at the phone. It’s probably an equally weary spouse reminding you to pick up the Toilet Rolls from the Canteen.

Sigh..

Lovers, friends or family, I have been `unfriended’ by all at some time or another - people I care about, mind you - for the silliest of reasons. Back in the day, I would have apologised abjectly, if not actually grovelled. No longer. Now, I shrug it off. I don’t give a damn. The loss, I say, is theirs! And it is!

Unequal relationships have been truly junked. Love me, and I’ll love you back. Intensely. Anything else, and I’ll be Rhett Butler to your Scarlet O’Hara. Remember moviedom’s greatest comeback line ever – Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!