Yo Momma !!

There are very few television series that ever get made on youth sub-culture, and most of them come from west (largely the US). Americans are good at highlighting some of them, which in case of India unfortunately remains unexplored. VH1 new series “Yo momma” is all about trash talking competition on the streets of US. It is different from our regular desi jibes, which are centered on some abusive words.

Guys from neighborhood (somewhat like Mohalla committees in our case) come together to challenge each other in bad mouthing competition. Contestants are young street-smart junta, both male and female. White men still struggles to match his off-white cousin, they don’t have this creative venom spitting ability, which is clearly dominated by ghetto junta.

Competitors throw a few lines on each other but, the best part of the show is reserved for trash talking on the show title – yo momma, where each competitor hurl really nasty comment on other beginning with “yo momma”. These are very delightfully creative, ugly and disgusting one-liners that go beyond our regular maa-behan ka ashirwad or the arguments that you hear on roads. The most decent ones that I can recall were “ yo momma so cheap…made in china written on her a**” and “ yo momma is like public toilet….free and disgusting”. You can gauge the level of trash talk as some are ‘beeped’ by VH1 itself, if it were to pass Indian censor board probably whole 20mins would have been beeped up. Thankfully the series is not much talked about program on the tube; else there is little hope that a program with youth bad mouthing in the name of “MAA” would have been aired at all.

Conspiracy Theory: Pakistan’s Takeover by Taliban & Alqaeda

The aftermath of Mumbai terror attack has already begun; it has succeeded in widening the rift between India and Pakistan. Indian government is already talking of increasing the number of troops (which won’t stop terror attacks anyway) to put pressure on Pakistan. The janta like us, which is already fed up of government’s inaction, wants hot-pursuit of terrorist as payback. This is more or less likely to create war like situation. The fight to finish is all what Junta wants, but is this what ISI & its bed fellows Taliban-Alqeada wants too? What’s the larger conspiracy?

Taliban & Alqaeda want to open two fronts for Pakistani army by just fighting on only one of them. Taliban & Alqaeda are already engaged in low intensity war with Pakistan over control on tribal lands in western Pakistan, they also have intention to bring whole of Pakistan under shariah rule. Their main objective is escalation of hostilities or even war between India and Pakistan. With escalation, Pakistan would match up India’s military build-up in its eastern border; Taliban as it has been hoping to gain control of large chunk of western Pakistan would intensify its fight with Pakistani forces. If Taliban & Alqaeda’s dream of indo-pak conflict comes true, then it would give them unprecedented chance of overthrowing civilian & military establishment of Pakistan.

For Indians it is sticky situation whether to set their guns blazing or think of protecting Pakistan from turning into state of anarchy. I never thought that in my life we would have to think of protecting the “state of Pakistan”. If we escalate the situation probably Pakistan would crumble in a few weeks time (Pakistan is already on IMF loan to avoid bankruptcy), which would please our Janta. But, it will also bring Jihad and alqaeda to our doorsteps atleast five years earlier than anticipated (CIA has estimated that Pakistan would be a failed state by 2015).

Taliban & Alqaeda wants to divert US attention by targeting its citizens in third countries so as to keep them engaged, though this alqaeda strategy mostly likely is not going to work, but any American imitative of bombing terrorist hideouts is less likely to benefit India, as most of them are in Pak-Occupied-Kashmir. Probably random assaults on terrorist camp would work but we will have to look at our old gyan “saap bhi mar jaaye aur lathi bhi na tute”(in this case jihadis being saap and Pakistani government being lathi). Otherwise India would have to be prepared to fight Taliban & Alqaeda, which will have “ready-to-die” foot soldiers from Afghanistan and Pakistan under it.

That 90s Fad !

First promo of SRK’s new movie is out and it features SRK crooning love song in some chandni-chowk type locality. Watching the song I realised that SRK is in complete getup of gone by era of 1990s. In fact everything in the song reminded me of 90s.

SRK’s formal shirt & trouser with sports shoes is totally reminiscent of my teenage fashion in early 1990s, when formal trousers and sports shoes were rage. Rappers had brought this fashion and every party had guys in this attire and white sports shoes doing break dance. Whenever I look back at those old photos, I always remember where did I get this thought of putting sports shoes with formal dress?

Anyways those days are gone, so are the days of youth driving bajaj chetak. 90s were also the last days for scooter riding youth. Ever since motorcycles got associated with machismo, scooters got dumped. Scooters became synonymous with “uncleji” type personalities. SRK riding scooter probably would be perceived as one such character by younger generation. Another thing now perceived with old people is “Mustache”, which SRK sports in the movie.

Facial hair lost its charm and died slow death in 90s, when it started disappearing from young faces. I remember by the time I was in college in late 90s, hardly anyone carried the family tradition of mustaches over smooth look. SRK’s mustache deprives him of smooth look but he does try to compensate it with his cuteness, whether he would succeed or not is yet to be seen but he has indeed succeeded in taking people back to 90s.

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The Syndrome

It was late in the evening and I was surfing through the television, Seinfeld was on a channel. Despite watching the series numerous times, I again hooked up. Seinfeld is kind of spiritual…ageless body timeless mind, nothing changes over period of time. Seinfeld was facing “you gotta watch the baby” problem. He was bugged with friends inviting him to watch new born baby. That episode reminded me something similar, the numerous syndromes that I observed in young people and my friends, in particular.

Just few years back, some of my friend suffered from “when are you getting married?” syndrome when they got married. One of my friends got severely affected by this syndrome. His obvious question on every call used to be “when are you getting married?” After a few friends got married, I realised that it was odd-man out feeling that made him constantly ask the question for assurance that he was not alone. Anyways, my friend’s question to all of us was answered after some years.

By the time I was married, he already had headstart….. to another syndrome-”when are you having baby?” he had worked out all timelines (no, I don’t mean time to make call to us), the human clock, biological clock and most importantly family clock. Earlier he wasn’t persistent with anyone. But, now he feels the need for all of us to join his club simultaneously. Now, we hear all the clocks and amazingly I also had to hear the dialogues that even my parents haven’t said to me. The trouble with this syndrome is that the only time it gets cured when you join their ranks and in some severe cases people become of them and also act like the ‘syndrome’ guy.

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Saving Private Batakh !!!

The naming biz or say re-christening thing really excites me, off course its non-profitable biz. In last four years (of my professional life) I have seen happiness, despair, hatred, anger and affection all boiling down to one thing- naming the culprit. It’s the naming part that we all love and being named is the most dreadful thing to happen, though sometimes it doesn’t. Mostly, it irritates the person who is called upon with such name.

I know most of you would be thinking…what the heck so much for a name, who cares about it. But, I must tell you, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. We are very careful and meticulous about naming a person. We like to see how it resembles on our friends, colleagues, bosses, nemesis and the ‘character’ in the office (who is nature’s invention but our discovery).

Also, this damn naming thing goes through evolution, on quite similar lines of your professional life. I didn’t realize that how much of it I had already seen until sometime back. Personally, I don’t like naming people after animals; kutte suar and sandh all sound like Chinese new years and their main course dish; and anyways it’s pretty tough to match animals. But last year was kind of exception, I would say.

On usual day, just another brickbat between my colleagues turned into mother of all naming convention/invention (only, according to me) and then came the word “Batakh”. Suddenly they were hurling it on each other; I didn’t know the reason and I also failed to see why!!! Its pretty tough imagining person as batakh, though we have English alter ego of batakh –duck, but I’m not sure if it has the same characteristics as I can fit lameduck on face of our PM but same doesn’t go with “bakakh”. May be because “batakh” is desi and it doesn’t have those English traits. Also, I found it hard to fit batakh on lotsa people (probably my sample size was wrong) and probably I needed to do more clinical testing to find its active ingredient. But, before I could possibly do that one of my colleague left us (I mean organisation!!) and then I was left desolated.

For past three months “batakh” has almost ceased to exist. I didn’t hear anybody hurling it upon other and no character was added to its much needed persona. “Batakh” has become endangered specie and I don’t want it to die due to lack of people’s participation. So you…guys go out and find who can be worthy of being “batakh” in and around you, add character to it and also to the people…make it memorable…. make ‘batakh’ of your day!!(I don’t know what it really means).

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you……………Batakh!!!

Ulta Run at 10K

Running 10k was quite a different experience in Bangalore. I don’t know if it was fault of my company or the sponsor of the run, I got a bag full of chilli powder, pasta and not to mention the most useful item-soap. Probably they thought precipitation and scorching sun will make me use it. I never got it why anyone would like 1kg on his back to run 10k. So, I ran but carried only my little i-pod to minimize the load on my body, I didn’t wanted to look like those wannabes who can’t run without music but probably I looked more like them. Just after completing a kilometer most of the people realised two things, one, that 10 km was big distance and second, the usual Bangalore problem-planning and execution. A lot of people cribbed why it didn’t start a few hours early. Anyways, their anger was cooled down by hurling mineral water bottles on runners. But, so many plastic bottles dismayed all those environmentalists who were running for it. 2km down the run, people started kicking those plastic bottles, though initially I didn’t mind it but when it started hitting me then it really bugged me. What bugged me more was that with every kick on those plastic bottles the whole ‘clean Bangalore’ thing got booted big time.

After 3kms some people realised that they had phones with them, so people got busy with their phones. I overheard one fella, in his slowmo walk, lecturing someone how important this day was for him and how much he was doing for it, I really could see it. Some people started clicking their memorable photos of the event, missed having not brought my phone, but not much longer ‘coz media was there motivate everyone. Whenever and wherever cameras appeared people started running and showing how motivated they were!! A lady even ran in other direction following cameraman, people were busy asking which tv channel was covering them; some even called up their family that they were LIVE on a channel. After realising how entertaining run was, a few kms through the run I also realised how it brought people together. While running, we asked each other how many kms had passed by, then suddenly other two persons realised that they were from Microsoft and Yahoo. I saw rivalry fading into friendship; they even started discussing their work. I never realised the potential of networking in such places. I didn’t know how many from our HR team were running, but came to know that head hunting sure has immense potential in these runs. I even tried finding someone from same industry but unfortunately there were none in the sight, I could only sulk.

My best part of run came when we entered Cubbon Park; there was a group of cheerleaders cheering the runners. But runners noticed them only when their ‘HUHAA HUHAA’ was reciprocated by barking dogs!! Laughter came out inadvertently. Well I took that moment to thank all the dogs; afterall this city has gone to dogs. Just a week earlier I had to take their permission for running in early morning or even late night. I walked 3kms to be identify by dogs of my area on first day, else I would have ran that 10k on last Monday itself. I thanked them for their grateful gesture.

Anniversary Special !

A week back, a year had passed by and I almost didn’t notice it. Though, I remembered it and everyone did remind it was my first marriage anniversary. Good thing that a year of married life passes away and you don’t feel it, probably don’t have marriage blues in the beginning. The week coincided with three of my friends getting ready marriage and they all asked me how I felt like and what my experience was.

Though I could hardly recollect (see the impact, man) but I tried for them. I realized that by the time you get married, you are so molded in your personality that its hard to adjust. It is even more difficult to adjust to traits of other persona or even make other adjust to your personality. And that too for everyday, I think it is quite a mission impossible task. If your habits match then it is good as it is duplication of activities (as said in our biz lingo). But if your habits are different then it is mostly fun, sometimes its weird and sometimes its fight. When it is fight, it is really tough. Because, when you are newly married then it is really difficult to fight, I mean REALLY difficult ‘coz you are really not sure if you should argue!! If you can then you don’t know how long and how far you can take it. If you do indulge in fight with a friend then you can go and make up with your friends after a week but that time you don’t have in marriage because by that time damage is already done. To undo that damage you have to damage something else- your money. That why for whole year I have been trying to preempt such situation; me and my wife have been practicing and hurling those filmi punches (and we never forget to add that background), so if we are angry we make it look really REAL. I must tell you that I still don’t experience in facing assault of all kinds of kitchenware, so can’t tell you how you can defend. In all, you may forget anything but you remember what time of night you have to reach your home. And, yeah what’s case of hair loss, I still can’t make a right guess, if its Bangalore water or marriage taking toll of my precious hairs. Sure, would like to believe its water.

Mysoaru Infy

I remember how my friend looked down towards company like Infosys, “now even infy is calling for interview. Probably it was IITans arrogance towards desi ITservice company or may be they all think that they also can create Infy like company. Whatever may be the love and hate case for our desi IT companies but I realized how much Infy is valued by the people (especially by the parents of employees) when I stood in the line to enter its Mysore campus.

The scene at the campus gate is almost what you see on railway tracks. The only difference there was that the first class ac, second class and general passengers all stood in one line (this is quite an achievement for a company if it can bring people from different classes to do new kind of slavery). And, you can look from the parents’ face- their kids had made it. Well, the jaws fell when everyone entered the campus and shutterbug almost automatically started clicking. One can see the amazement on the faces; probably no one had expected this inside India or people just thought they were in some foreign country (as it was clean and gardens were not identical to public parks) with a English speaking personal tour guide who happened to be your family member and also infy’s new breed of mouth publicity campaigner. I was very much impressed with infy’s campus and why shouldn’t I!, after all if you combine office space with residential college plus malls + theater, resort + sports complex and not to mention gardens, probably it’s the one of its kind in India.

And you can see the impact on junta that Littered all over Mysore was bothered about pushing cans into dustbin. For parents, 3star hostel facility definitely signaled that their kids have arrived. Every parent was more than happy to be in foreign like locale so what if they didn’t go to any foreign country but were sure their kids will definitely do it afterall its considered a part of package. For those staying in campus it’s different, it’s the anticipation of joining the new age assembly line (which most of experienced persons in this field hate it). This always reminds me of Pink Floyd video of kids in mask moving seamlessly in a system. I hope infy’s learning center comes out with some solution to this modern day slavery in quest for everything 24/7 as everyone’s life has become busy despite all this automation as its men who become critical in all these automated operations thus becoming more miserable with more hi-tech. As for Mysore I liked it more as a sleepy town than anything else but I know it won’t remain that way afterall companies with graveyard shift have already started erecting offices and they aren’t sparing graveyards either.