A haunted night

I love Bangalore – the coffee, the silks, the food and most importantly the weather. I lived all my life in northern India, where the weather is as extreme as the people (read Punjabis). Winters would mean draping layers and layers of woollens, to brave the fog that starts at 4 in the evening and stays till next day morning. Summers would mean sweat trickling in litres, scooter riding girls wearing bandannas and gloves to avoid the tan, and frowns on every non- AC car driver stuck in traffic swearing in Punjabi. So coming to Bangalore was a nice change. Even in January, I did not have to dress up as if my office was inside a Kelvinator refrigerator and I could sleep in a light blanket with just a fan on for the whole year.

So one of these cool nights, I was lying on my mattress on floor (we did not have any beds in that house and the only furniture was …umm I can’t really recall if there was anything except for kitchen utensils), flipping through the pages of a book. I shared the 3 bedroom house with two other girls from work, and so we had one full room each to ourselves to lay our mattresses on. One of those two had a Philips stereo, that I used to borrow when she was not using it. This night, she had gone out of town, and I brought her stereo into my room, kept in on the floor and plugged it to play Radiocity. There was an orange colored paper lampshade in my room, that used to hang from the wall, close to my bed which gave the room an eerie light when all other lights were shut. The window of my room was one of those from ancient times, with iron bars about 4 inches apart, exactly like the jail ki salaakhein that Dharam paaji used to pull apart with his hands, only horizontally put in my windows. I let the window panes open for the cool breeze, while I read in the orange light with radio playing old movie songs, my door bolted from inside and my other housemate sleeping peacefully in her room. After a couple of hours, I dozed off with the open book in my hands and every thing else in the same state. At some unearthly hour I opened my eyes, to stop the no-signal-krrrrrrrrr coming from radio, keep the book aside and switch off the light. And then I saw something.

I froze. I could not even scream. I thought I was still dreaming. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. Twice. It was still there, right next to my pillow, where I had put my head a few minutes back. I touched my arms to see any signs of damage. Thankfully, none. I kept standing there for sometime, before I gathered the courage to tiptoe out of the room to call for help. A shiver ran down my spine. One step, two, three and I ran out of the door and latched it from outside.

‘Shwetaaaaaa, wake up !! there is a vulture in my room !!!!’

‘What the hell? ‘ in a sleepy tone, ‘there can’t be a vulture for god’s sake, go sleep’

‘Okay I did not want to wake you up like this, but I am scared to go inside now’.

‘Go lock the door from outside and sleep in the living room, I have to reach office early tomorrow for a meeting’ she dozed off. ‘If at all there is something, it would be an owl at the max, and not a vulture’, she mumbled in her sleep.

That is what it was. A huge owl. Sitting next to my pillow with eyes the size of saucers staring at me. I had never seen either a vulture or an owl so closely in my real life. Besides, it was so huge and scary that the thought of it being a harmless owl never occurred to me in my sleepy state. This one was straight out of Harry Potter. But, what was it doing in my room, of all places? Did the creepy orange light attract him? And how the hell did it ever manage to enter my room with all doors closed? How could it  slink through the narrow iron bars of the windows? Was my room haunted? Will I get money from somewhere tomorrow, as owl is Goddess Lakhsmi’s pet and a mythological harbinger of prosperity?

I tried to sleep in the living room with all these thoughts, when the darn Hedwig or whatever his owly parents had named him, suddenly decided that it was time for him to leave my abode. And to both our surprise, the moron seemed to have forgotten its way out now. So with the door closed, (which was also closed when it came in, duh !), it kept on fluttering in the entire room. I could hear the bombastic sounds when it flew and banged against a wall, then back on the fan, the door and the exact window, where it could have possibly entered from. I could not catch any sleep with all that background music and waited for the morning rays which would bring in my messiah in the form of my Malyali baai (maid) to rescue me from this torment.

Now, I could not explain the entire thing in sign language to the baai, so I took her straight to the room so she could have a look and understand the next steps. The night was already over, and I knew that the daft creature could not do much now, besides I had my heroic baai with me now. We opened the door slowly, stuck our heads inside and moved our eyeballs in all sides to look for the bird. And there it was. Sitting subdued on top of the cement shelf just above my closet.

‘Hah! so now you are all mortified and quiet haan, just because you are blind and can’t find your way back? Where was all this timidity last night when you scared the bejesus out of me?’ Baai could not understand a word of this pompousness that I uttered and neither, of course, could the bird.  She tapped her broom on the bird a few times and finally drew it out of the same window.

Baai and I high-fived. And the same day, a colleague of mine returned the money she had borrowed from me ages back, that I had totally forgotten about. All because of the mighty owl perhaps ?

Amazing Beijing – 2

This one took a long time coming – blame it on laziness if you will. But I could not miss this one, as the last post was called Amazing Bejing -1, so there had to be at least a  part 2 of the story.

Beijing’s wide roads, immaculate infrastructure, efficient public transportation and conscientious cleanliness impressed me a lot. But what struck me most was the importance given to innovation and technology advancements even in the most basic things to help make lives convenient.  For instance at the  Beijing airport, while waiting in the lounge to board my flight home, I noticed the following.

220V power sockets in the floor man ! Non-Indians please excuse my exclamation, but I hail from a country where power is a highly rated luxury item. Yeah, I know we have these in all airports now, but mostly you have to cross the distance of an English channel to reach one, only to see Bhatia Uncle already charging his cell phone on it and 4 others waiting in the queue. At this airport there were so many of these easily accessible, that you hardly would get a chance to fight for your turn, even if Mrs. Bhatia Uncle has plugged in her hair dryer for the last 2 hours to get that party look for Pinky Galgotra’s nephew’s engagement . Oh ji free ki bijli hi to hai, maine socha time bhi pass ho jayega. No wonder these airports are so quiet and boring.

Just after I had clicked this one, I almost shrieked at finding another marvel here. A wi-fi service area ! (Okay, before you think I belong to  stone age, let me tell you that I was excited to see that  there were not just a couple of dedicated areas for accessing free internet while standing, but the entire area outside every boarding  gate was wi-fi enabled) How cool is that. I remember waiting at the Hamburg airport boarding gate 2 years back for my connecting flight to US. And leave aside internet, I was unable to find even free drinking water there. All I could do to spend my time there was put my handbag under my neck and lie down on 2 consecutive seats, because of which I had to face dirty stares of the German security guards as if I were a Jew and it was 1941.

Talking about free drinking water, the Chinese beat us to that as well. (Why is that not surprising?) If you see the pictures below, the left one is of a water vending machine, where you can choose to get warm, hot or cold water. And the one on right shows a stack of paper pieces and an instruction chart on how to make a glass by folding that paper. Let’s not get into whether plastic is better or paper, I was happy that I did not have to open my jaws like a shark to drink water from a water fountain, holding my bag in one hand and keeping the button pressed with my knee all the time. I was happy with the sophisticated glass.

Some more coolness was experienced at the airport. This was a feedback machine (Okay, I tend to call everything a machine, as I don’t know what they call it, sue me if you want) at the immigration officer’s desk. So like if I found that the guy was not handsome enough, I could press the sad smiley etc. Which would then count as a feedback for his work, and be reported to higher authorities. Bad smileys too many for you Chun King, you no good, we hire Jackie Chan, you go home. And I am sure, all the feedback is taken seriously and actions are enforced well there.

They say that you should never judge a book by its cover. But they also say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I say that an airport tells a lot about a city or a country. What do you say ?

Amazing Beijing – 1

I visited Beijing recently and totally loved the city. Now I am not going to write the touristy stuff that I did, I want to share some bizarre experiences. So thanks to pigs, we have another flu now. And this time China did not start it . Relate it to the slowdown in Chinese exports otherwise if you will, this time the dragon city is fearing importing the flu from other parts of the world. And hence there are at least a dozen checks about your temperature and other such flu symptoms the moment your plane lands in their home ground. After which they ask you to fill some health declaration forms. If they find a sudden abnormality say by a degree in someone’s temperature, there enters a full cavalcade of health inspectors dressed up in white scuba diving type suits and helmets to interrogate and examine that fateful feverish passenger and everyone else who came with him or sat next to him in the flight. If he is unlucky to have been travelling with a huge group, the way typical Japanese tourists do (as they love taking happy group vacation photos where everyone has his two fingers up making a V sign), the whole lot is put in quarantine for a few weeks. For someone like us who is on a vacation to their country only for 3 days, the mere thought of spending the entire time and more in a non-democratic Chinese government hospital is terrifying to say the least. Now we were hale and hearty, but not to give those guys any ideas, I even had to squeeze my husband’s nose tightly a few times lest he should sneeze and get caught. So there was one supposed flu carrier spotted in our flight as well. And the health crew would not let any passenger leave the aircraft unless each one of them had checked him to be sure. That meant we were stranded in the flight after landing for over an hour with stomachs grumbling with hunger unsatiated by Cathay Pacific’s baby food. So during this time, with nothing better to do, a lady next to me took out her camera to click the ’spectacle’ of those inspectors taking the poor guy’s pulse. And in no time dozens of cameras were up like paparazzi clicking Angelina Jolie on the red carpet.

Weird lady

If you notice there are at least 3 people trying to click the scene. I found it quite weird and unfair to the guy getting examined, so I clicked her instead, which appeared less weird, and started reading the  do’s and don’ts , terms and conditions etc on the forms given to us, which are otherwise always ignored. And I realized what I had been missing for all these years. There is such fun stuff written on these boring forms. Specifically the Chinese one had some 5 points written on the back on the immigration form:

1. Aliens entering China should not carry any explosives

2. Aliens entering China should specify all the details truthfully

3. Aliens should take their UFOs back to Mars once their tour of the Great Wall is done

Aliens so on and so forth. Okay you know I made the 3rd one up, but that looks like the most fitting sentence here, doesn’t it? Now who in the entire cosmos mentions foreigners as ALIENS ? For all that we snub China about not being able to speak English properly, they are either venting out their frustration by paying a ‘tribute’ like this to the English language, or they are taking the meanings of English words too literally.

A similar display of literature I found on this young man’s t-shirt that not only does not make any sense at all, like most full-of-text t-shirts, but it also had some unknown words.

A t-shirt speaks a thousand words

If you can notice in the picture, the t-shirt says : Swile. Don’t let this get you. Down Life Youth. Forever friendship. I don’t think the maker, the wearer or the onlooker can ever make out what this is all about. I am not trying to make fun of anyone’s language skills. But if you have to have something written on a shirt, why not have it in your own language that can make sense and impress the people who can understand? T-shirts, at least in this part of the world, have always had the funniest of things written on them. The guy in the picture, if it makes you feel any good, let me admit that I once saw myself wearing a cheap Bangkok t-shirt to sleep that I had never cared to read earlier. It said ‘NYC US made. 1955 US marine. Tenderness. Agressive. Picasso.’ I am still struggling to figure out the relation between these words that the t-shirt designer would had thought of.

Talking about bizarre texts, I also saw these 2 very cool coffee shops. One, for some reason, was called ‘Excuse’ coffee shop – see picture below .

What's in a name ?

On seeing that, I had an urge to meet the owner of the shop to understand the point behind this amazing christening. But I decided to ‘excuse’ myself the effort and owing to my brand consciousness, rather have coffee at some place that looked familiar. So I settled for Leymo coffee, see picture below.

Brand ke liye kuch bhi karega

I will be back with more on how I was totally impressed with the city. Do let me know if you are a collector of those profound text t-shirts.

A grand experience

This one is from almost 1.5 years back. I had visited LasVegas in January 2008 for an official (yeah !) trip. As this was my 2nd trip to the sin city in a span of less than a year ( the first trip being personal), I was not much interested in the usual casinos and hotels on the ’strip’. Also, during my first time, I had tried to devour the whole place, thinking I might not be able to come back soon. So there was not much left to see this time around, though I did my revision trip and played a bit of guide to my colleagues by visiting the Venetian, Caeser’sPalace, MGM Grand, Paris, New York New York and all the other attractive hotels. Venetian remains my best till day, in which like all other replica hotels, they have tried to make a dummy Venice with Gondolas and water and stuff alike. Paris hotel , for example, has a fake eiffeltower which you can climb up, New York New York has all the famous streets like Broadway street et al, Ceaser’s has Roman style interiors, MGM has a real lion, Circus has acrobats and juggling shows and Bellagio has beautiful musical fountains. This time I also stayed a bit off the strip – in Rio hotel – which had some great shows playing there. And as the Vegas guys have put slot machines or poker tables even in a toilet, I could not avoid losing some money to them. The smart alecks have made a casino at the entrance of every hotel you visit, and to see the realattractions of that hotel, or to reach your room, you have to cross a very long way of those unavoidable dazzling money sucking machines. No wonder they say ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ – specially your money . I highly recommend watching Robert Dinero’s Casino before you visit this city, to know some tricks of the trade.

Andso, to try out something different on my secondtrip, I did 2 things. One, I visited the grandluxury outlet area – where original brands like Coach, Armani, Gucci and the likes are sold at discounted prices. Andtwo, I booked a trip to the Grand Canyon. To save on several hours of commute time, I booked an airplane ride from Vegas to the Canyons, which also provided me with some breathtaking aerial views. Now this was not a normal flight, the airplane was just slightly bigger  than an Indian autorickshaw, and much louder than that. I was crouching right next to the cockpit on a small seat. Luckily it did have seat belts. I had to start at around 6 in the morning of cold January, as the tour guys had to pick everyone on the way. Even at the that hour, the poker tables were full of people and hookers were all decked up in a city that absolutely never sleeps. Rushing to reach the pick up point in time, I exchanged more dollars, and for some reason decided not to carry my gloves I had specially bought for this trip from Singapore.

It was sunny, but very teeth-rattling-chilly and not exactly the time when you get a lot of visitors – so it worked well for me. The plane landed at some deserted place,andby that time my hands very highly cold, and I had started cursing myself for not carrying gloves. From there, we all were taken in a bus to the Sky Walk in the Grand Canyons. Now I had just heard about this and was thinking how big a deal that could be. Turned out, very. The sky walk is actually a glass walkway that protrudes about 20 meters from the edge of a canyon. So when you walk on it, all you see below is an abysmal pit in the mountains ! A picture from wikipedia:

 When I stepped on it, I was unable to move even a few steps. Even though you know the glass is thick and there are so many people walking on it, it still scares the shit out of you. With butterflies in my stomach, I took about 2 steps, holding the railings and halted again. It is fine until you look down through the glass, which you can’t help doing. One of the care takers asked me to lie down on my stomach, and look below. Once I did that, my fear got subsided and I felt like I was sky diving. I didn’t feel like getting away from that wonderful scene. The moment I got up, I was jittery again and it took some few rounds on that walkway to feel better and I was literally running on it then.

After the amazing skywalking I was taken to a place high in the canyons where they showed us some tribal dancing and served a lunch of kidney beans, rice, veggies and boiled corn with sugary drinks. I had my full and immersed myself in the grandeur of naturl beauty around me. I could not take my eyes away for a split second. And I could not stop thinking that how much ever we humans try to conquer the world and the elements of cosmos, we will always be tiny in front of  Mother Nature’s grandness.

And involved in my reveries, I headed back to my hotel with my fellow tiny humans in our tiny artificial world.

 

Because inglis is a bherry phunny language

Okay before I start this one, I need to admit that the post is inspired (and not copied, not just yet) from a dear friend’s blog who writes about the common errors people make in our English language.

For people like me and her (or should it be she and me, her and me, she and I or her and I ?),English is not a native language, but a business language, and the language of facebook, orkut, blogs and books we read etc.  So many times it happens that we think in the language our mother taught us, and then translate it in our mind to English. At least, it happens at the initial stages when you are learning a new language, Chinese in my case. Like I have to greet Mr. Ching  Lee – my landlord. So I need to tell him the Chinese equivalent of  Hello, how are you, will it rain today ? Aah, now what was it I crammed yesterday from the ‘No sweat chinese’  book I bought? And there!  I pop out the oriental words like a parrot. Now it is a different matter that I could not understand what he said in return and that kinda totally beats the point of these easy to learn language phrases books. I mean what if Mr. Ching swore back at me ? All I could do was give a sheepish smile and pretend that I was getting a call on my phone.

So it happens that while doing all this mother-tongue-to-foreign-language interpretation in head, we tend to apply all rules of book and get a bit creative on the way. Consider this from the Indian stable -  I preponed the meeting for today. What did you say you just do to the meeting? Well, I you know, wanted it early, so I did the opposite of postpone. Dude, forget about messing with my schedule, you did something that does not even exist as a word in the dictionary.

Or consider the typical desi way of using every verb in the -ing mode . “My friend is having comprehensive knowledge and expertise in financial accounting and controlling”. Or something like “I am loving you so much, it hurts”. Well then, when you are done with the process of having and loving and doing and giving – ping me, I might have to do some talking with you. And I would not want to be doing any friendship with you.

Now this last one totally cracks me up – when people refer to someone as “your good self “. Consider this conversation – Myself, Andhkaara Kumar Bareilly. I am coming from the land of darkness. Will your good self be kind enough to tell me your name?  Yes, my good self will tell you my name, albeit not kindly as my good self will be kicking your rear shortly.

And for some reason, when I did a spell check on wordpress for this blog, all the -ing words had red marks. My good self was wondering why that was happening now

Too many movies, too less words

1 sentence movie reviews on some Hindi flicks I caught up in last few days:

1) 8*10 tasveer : A wasted Nagesh Kukunnor, a wooden Akshay Kumar, an unfunny Javed Jaffery and a useless Ayesha Takia – all in a cliched murder-for-money, failing to thrill thriller.

2) Gulaal : Anurag Kashyap at his directorial best, unique music that could only come out from Kashyap’s stable, interesting casting and characterisation and some great acting – all in a movie that jolts you up.

3) Heaven on Earth : Yet again an unconvincing Deepa Mehta, very authentic characters and locales, good work by Preity Zinta and all others – all in a movie that makes you ask after the abrupt end “Okay, so ?”

4) Barah aana : An unjustified title, very easy to relate daily Indian situations, Vijay Raaz with the perfect accent and the great Naseeruddin Shah but with very few words (why ???) - all in a movie which starts to look promising but fails later.

5) Maharathi : The real four maharathis of Bollywood – a convincing Naseeruddin Shah, a slick Paresh Rawal, a good Boman Irani, a he-deserved-a-better-role Om Puri, a few thrilling and ‘what next’ moments but a script that is not arresting and a weak end – all in a so-so movie.

My catches

Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 is on the favorites list for millions of us. And not just the book, the expression has also been my ever favorite one. Just one catchy word, and a number to describe such a complex situation. Amazing. So I tried to coin some of my Catch 22s as an ode to the great book, the greater author and the greatest expression.

For the unaware ones, this is how a catch 22 is defined : “A catch 22 is a situation in which an action has consequences which make it impossible to pursue that action”. Consider a logical formulation of this from the book:

1. If a person is excused from flying, that must be because they are both insane , and request an evaluation

2. If a person is insane , they should not realise that they are, and would have no reason to request an evaluation

3. Since an insane person would not request an evaluation, it follows that all persons must either not be insane, or not request an evaluation

4. Since all persons must either not be insane, or not request an evaluation, it follows that no person can be both insane and request an evaluation

5. Since a person may be excused from flying only if they are both insane and request an evaluation, but no person can be both insane and request an evaluation, it follows that no person can be excused from flying

And here are some from my collection and creation:

1. Modesty is one of my countless qualities

2. I often talk about how reticent I am

3. Never heard anyone say I have a hearing problem

4. For the last two hours I have been telling you that I am coming in 5 minutes, but you won’t listen

5. (In a loud, blood curdling scream) Listen this for the 100^th time, I NEVER get irritated “YOU ROTTEN SOCKS SMELLING DUMB WITTED DOUCHE BAG!!”

6. Whatever you do, you have to stay restless at your place only

7. If you are not successful in your skydiving attempt, do come for dinner in the evening.

8. Okay, I am never going to agree to your calling me stubborn.

Let me know if you can think of more, would love to make a list of 22. And, please don’t judge me by all that I have written in first person

Ding-dong from Hong Kong

Oh I miss you.

You are the only one I can’t stop thinking about since the day I landed in Hong Kong. While I am figuring out what is different between Singapore and Hong Kong and trying to establish a winner between the two, I am interrupted by your thoughts. When I walk around the narrow alleys of this new city bustling with life in every nook and cranny, I wonder what would’ve happened to you. When  I am having weekly rendezvous with realtors trying to find a house amongst the cockpit-sized HK apartments, I wonder whether someone took care of you or not. I see people around me everywhere – people coming from work and people going to work, people carrying original Louis Vuittons and people carrying fakes, people struggling for space to stand in the trains and people waiting at restaurants to be seated, people wearing boots and people carrying umbrellas, people standing at the (yellow) zebra crossing and people breaking pedestrian rules, people shopping at Gucci and people buying dimsums at a thela right next to that Gucci store – all this time I wonder whatever happened of you.

I have a daily ‘discovery routine’  in this new place where I am trying to search absolutely everything -  job, house, cheapest way to call home, a pizza hut, an indian restaurant, way to the closest subway joint, beauty salon. And while doing that, I also –  fail at learning the local language, convert the currency to compare prices, look for people I know and want to know, find what movies are playing, cook packaged foods, look for tiny stuff like nail cutter in the not-yet-unpacked suit cases, have a eureka moment at finally finding it after 2 days and pat my back for doing such a great job at packing stuff.

And that is when I miss you the most – You, my special unopened red wine bottle gifted to me by my Swiss ex-super-boss. I left you in the upper most cupboard in kitchen. All the time while packing I was thinking about where I would keep you in my luggage, but just like that I happened to leave you behind- uncorked and untasted.

No, I am certainly not the one who would feel bad at a petty thing like that. If I come to think of it, that wine bottle is the only thing that got left unattended and makes me miss Singapore. Which also implies, that Hong Kong is super fun. I am yet to settle in here in all practical sense and yet to form an opinion, but whoever I speak to can’t stop raving about the place. The place is an experience, it has a weather, it has a life and it has the best ever shopping ! Yes, the taxi fares are high and apartments, just like their rentals touch the sky, the 6-inch sub and a movie ticket cost more than in Singapore, but everything else is quite reasonable. The Big Mac index – the Big Starbucks index in my case – tells me that a latte and muffin cost lesser here than in Singapore and so do mobile phones, gym memberships, cable connections, electricity and lunches (of course when they are not free, as is with any lunch I am told). Getting anywhere is easy – trams, ferries, buses, trains, MTRs and taxis – make all the 3 islands of Hong Kong absolutely accessible. Like it is very common that your daily commute to office is a ride under the South China Sea, through the underwater tunnel.

Yes, there is a bit of a language barrier, but that has been manageable so far. But for my strong belief in ‘When in Rome’, here is a little cantonese – ‘Ngoh haih yan douh yahn’ . Don’t ask me the correct pronounciation as there are 7 different tones for words here, and I am yet to learn one properly. Though it means - ’I am Indian’. Ok, corny, but I like the way they say ‘yan douh yan’ for Indian.

Thats all for now. Baai Baai (no points for guessing what this means).

The masala formula

This could very well be my last post from Singapore.

As I am in the middle of relocation, packing and last minute “Oh god what do we do”s now, I take breaks  to watch some movies that I had missed last year, having finished this year ones. So I recently saw this Hindi flick – Roadside Romeo – made on the hollywood formula of having big celebrity actors doing the voice overs for the animals. It is a typical one from the Yash Raj stable with the boring aaaaaa that comes in the beginning (no offence Ms Mangeshkar) and a ghisi-piti story about hero, heroine and villain interspersed with some where-is-the-fast-forward-button songs and fight scenes. The only difference being that this one is animated with a barber dog hero and a bar dancer bitch heroine. The animation is not bad and movie is  funny mainly because of Javed Jaffery giving voice for the Don (read Dog) Charlie Anna. And it came to me as no surprise that it was made by Jugal Hansraj – the cute bastard child of Naseeruddin Shah in ‘Masoom’. The cute child actually forgot to grow up and made this movie now, which if enacted by Kareena and Saif in reality would have been a Tashan no. 2.  Apart from the fighting over bone aspect, everything else was light years away from being doggy-like and suffocatingly close to being the Bollywood running-around-trees like. And look at a movie like the Hollywood’s animated ‘Bee movie’ – it actually shows the amount of research into bees that the makers would have done to present that. As finally even the audience has gotten tired of watching the formula movies, this one is a new solution. Too imaginatively challenged to think of a new script ? No problem. Take any old story and animate it.

Talking about the typicality of Hindi movies, an intersting incident happened with me recently. So while I was in Bali, whoever I spoke to – from the boat man, to hotel boy, to travel agent, to driver, to shop keeer – had the same conversation starter. He would first ask me-  ‘where are you from’. I would say – Singapore. Oh but you don’t look like a Singaporean. Yes, we are Indians, but now in Singapore. Oh, so do you know Shah Rukh Khan ? No, but I see you watch Hindi movies. Yes, some where women have their one hand on waist, one on head and sing “Nahin Nahin”.

I just smiled and was reminded of the times I used to go lunching out with my Singaporean colleagues. By default, the two burning questions on the table always used to be - Arranged marriages in India and Shah Rukh Khan. They had all seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and one brave lady had even dared to sit through the 4 hours of Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and was complaining about the length of this movie. Poor thing, I thought , for even I had managed to avoid this one despite the pervading effect of Mr. Khan on us Hindustanis. (I once wrote a related blog on how I did that http://toasttomylife.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html)

Apart from all the other segregations in India like religions, castes, size of your belly, accents, extent of money spent on weddings; there is another one with very solid dividing lines, which is –  either you like Shahrukh Khan movies, or you don’t but someone in your friends/family circle does. In either case you end up watching his movies – hence the pervading effect and the stereotyping of Hindi movies with tears and songs for 4 hours. I tried hard to tell my colleagues that there are other actors also, you know like Aamir – who’s movies have gianed a lot of critical acclaim and he actually ácts’  in the movie. But all in vain. Nobody had even heard about him. I wanted to tell them that the enitre year people keep starring (and not acting) in movies and then Aamir comes and slaps all of them right across their faces and says – “ Look, this is what is called as acting, my dear arm stretching, red pullover wearing, pelvic-thrusting, crocodile-tear-crying, larger-than-life-roles-assuming cinema brethren ”.

We often crib about people stereotyping India – first the snake charmer story, then the case of being Bangalored, and recently a crtique against Slumdog millionaire – that it portrayed only a poor picture of India and we advocate that ”India is not only that”. Can we please add Bollywood movies to this list ?  Hindi cinema is really coming of age now and if nothing is done about this image casting, we will always feel helpless explaining our movies to non Indians. Like I felt, and had to switch over to the other topic of arranged marriages only to find myself in a bigger soup when they asked me questions like “So you have matrimony websites, and there are marriage agents like we have in real estate ? “

“Phew”. I thought.

Beautiful Bali : part 2

(Continued from the previous post)

The third day we decided to start our day earlier to hire a full day taxi. This time we got even smarter and hired only the taxi and driver, and decided to pay for petrol from our side – this option, coupled with our PhDs in haggling (being true Indians) cost us even lesser. We headed towards north of Bali – to the volcanic Mt. Batur observation point called Kintamani. On our way there were short stops at a Batik village (not a village at all, just a few ladies demonstrating batik painting and a store of Batik clothes to fleece the Europeans), Seluk – the gold and silver jewellery store with an amazing collection, Rice plantation on mountains – where kids come running to you to sell artifacts and ask for 1 dollar, or 1 euro – whatever you have , Monkey forest – a place to see antics of hundreds of harmless monkeys and Ubud – the art market selling beautiful handicrafts with which you can redo your entire house. Crossing all this we reached the Kintamani spot – to view the volcanic mountain and the view was stunningly beautiful as it had been raining and mist had covered some of the scene. There is a great buffet lunch that is served at the Kintamani restaurant that you can have on the terrace while feasting your eyes with the stupendous view. On our way back we stopped at a coffee plantation spot, where they grow the traditional Bali coffee and serve you different flavours. (They actually grow it somewhere else, but had made this spot to attract tourists – smart alecks) and also at another temple where it was pouring so heavily that the entrepreneurial Bali women started renting umbrellas for 5000 rupiahs each. We booked our rafting tour for the next day when we got back – you need to book these at least one day in advance and exchanged more money after haggling currency rate with the agent and got a better price than the American Express counter at the airport.

We went rafting to the Telaga Wajah river on the penultimate day of our trip. It was a 2 hour hilly ride from Kuta, passing the Seminayak village and looking at the lush green Bali countryside. The river was as pretty as a picture and we covered a stretch of 16 km in our raft, sharing with 3 others. The river had some roller coaster like jumps where we all screamed our guts out. We had a local guy with us, guiding through the way and he had some funny code words. For example if he said “Boom boom” – it meant that there was a rock that we are about to collide with and we should stop oaring. Suddenly we all were talking in his language – “Hey watch out, there is a big boom boom at your back” ! All tanned and tired after the bumpy and exciting ride, we were served a great lunch amidst the paddy fields of egg friend rice, egg noodles, egg mix vegetables and another veggie dish with eggs, followed by a serving of fruit. It was evening by the time we reached out hotel and we headed to the Discovery Shopping center – A huge mall with some great value for money shopping – clothes, shoes and other stuff that could keep us busy for a few hours. We wrapped up the day with a hearty Indian meal at one Queens of India restaurant near the mall, complimented the chef and headed back in a tonga of a horse named Abil.

The last day we did not want to spend in another long car ride to more touristy places, so we decided instead to take our own sweet time to check out from hotel, have lunch, stroll along the Kuta beach which was only a little less dirty than the Juhu beach of Mumbai as it was quite commercial (but that can’t be said about all the other beaches in Bali – they are pretty), visit the shopping mall again, play games at the arcade, get stuck in a traffic jam and then walk to hotel, take a taxi to the airport, get furious on being asked to pay 300,000 rupiahs as some frigging departure tax, run to the airport ATM to withdraw that money seeing only 4 sing dollars and 62000 rupiahs left in our pockets, get the immigration cleared, visit all shops at the airport to buy some souvenir with those 62000 rupiahs, not find anything and end up buying a Fanta can & peanuts and finally board the plane.

It was an awesome trip.