Here I am again alternatively battling insanity and boredom as the exams draw close when life drops funny stories into my lap.
If any of you see a very mild mannered old lady in a train en route to chennai tonight or the return sometime next weekend, wearing your standard issue sari, bifocals, diamond earrings and grooving like there's no tomorrow to Semmangudi on a beat up Panasonic discman - That's my grandmom. Be nice and you might get invited for lunch and that's something you shouldn't pass up. It'll be vegetarian but worth every morsel.
Why the current obsession with the progenitors' progenitors? Just been spending time with them and realizing that apart from good food they make great company.
As long as one doesn't tell them that lunch involved some dead animal.
And beer.
Some theater company in Bangalore decided to stage Chicago the musical and inside informants have it that the costumes and choreography were lifted straight from the movie. Or are we calling it inspired these days? So this company in a whirlwind marketing drive put up a billboard the size of Liechtenstein proclaiming their venture with a panty-hose clad nymphet (cigarette holder included) in the middle of City Market.
Why?
Anyway the play's off. The reasons currently making the rounds in apocrypha are that they didn't get the rights (but it was only inspired... Same script, you idiot) or that the cops in Bangalore being what they are shut it down under the pretext that it was improper for our audiences.
And then it came to pass that the audience were again brought to the limelight when some public forum on one of the news channels (Aside : The ambiguity of time place and person reminds me of page three where people are partying in "one of the city's hip clubs with an open terrace and a greek flavour". Sheesh. But can't name the names can we?) decided to discuss KANK. With respect to marriage in contemporary society and if the movie advocated adultery, blah blah.
We were debating that in the 12th. Anyway about time I thought. Except that the panel consisted of 2 marriage counsellors, Shobha De (twice married, has to deal with your kids and my kids are fighting with our kids), the owner of Shaadi.com (yuppie NRI, unmarried is sitting on all his money and advocating marriage simply because it makes him more money) and here's the clincher Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. For being the director and actor in the movie that 'dared to explore adultery'. There were movies down south (like really down south) that were exploring porn before either of them were born but that's another story.
The discussion we shan't go into except to say that K of the Koffee fame claimed that he was unmarried because he was too cynical to take that step after all the horror stories he's heard and seen. The grapevine thinks he's not married because of the guy sitting next to him.
So the debate is still on whether marriage is a relevant institution or not...
That brings us to another story involving the caste system. It's bad enough that it exists and now is a pawn in the great game of vote-bank politics, the funny things are the sub-castes that I came to know of recently. Details are too convoluted to put down and I don't feel like transliterating and translating terms of the aaru velu niyogilu ilk. But the fun bits are the intra caste anti-subcaste jokes that have been making the rounds for a few centuries now. Why this is seminal? Happened to see the monthly vernacular publication affiliated to one of the 4 mutts that are held sacred (page 3 ambiguity again... sorry) and the appendix is what was brought to my notice.
In a nice spreadsheet excel-esque format are the following columns -
Serial Number, the importance of which will be outlined
Name
SubCaste, note the readership of this magazine has to be pretty exclusive for them to have this column up
Gotram (trust them to do something like this)
Nakshatram
Date of Birth
HEIGHT (in inches)
Educational Qualification
Place of Residence/employment
Place of Origin
So there's lists of boys and girls with all the details filled in and a disclaimer that serial numbers n1 - n2 have been erased with time, considering they can't keep the same names on for months. (no that's not why the numbers are important.)
Here's the rub, in this age of communication, ready made stuff, shaadi.com and a reliance on the easy way out, a self-addressed envelope with a request for the horoscope of serial no 'n' would get you that horoscope via mail. Of course residents of Chennai (where else) would have to go and get the desired information in person on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.
There comes a time in every man's life when they wished they were born to a lower phylum. Today's mine.
If any of you see a very mild mannered old lady in a train en route to chennai tonight or the return sometime next weekend, wearing your standard issue sari, bifocals, diamond earrings and grooving like there's no tomorrow to Semmangudi on a beat up Panasonic discman - That's my grandmom. Be nice and you might get invited for lunch and that's something you shouldn't pass up. It'll be vegetarian but worth every morsel.
Why the current obsession with the progenitors' progenitors? Just been spending time with them and realizing that apart from good food they make great company.
As long as one doesn't tell them that lunch involved some dead animal.
And beer.
Some theater company in Bangalore decided to stage Chicago the musical and inside informants have it that the costumes and choreography were lifted straight from the movie. Or are we calling it inspired these days? So this company in a whirlwind marketing drive put up a billboard the size of Liechtenstein proclaiming their venture with a panty-hose clad nymphet (cigarette holder included) in the middle of City Market.
Why?
Anyway the play's off. The reasons currently making the rounds in apocrypha are that they didn't get the rights (but it was only inspired... Same script, you idiot) or that the cops in Bangalore being what they are shut it down under the pretext that it was improper for our audiences.
And then it came to pass that the audience were again brought to the limelight when some public forum on one of the news channels (Aside : The ambiguity of time place and person reminds me of page three where people are partying in "one of the city's hip clubs with an open terrace and a greek flavour". Sheesh. But can't name the names can we?) decided to discuss KANK. With respect to marriage in contemporary society and if the movie advocated adultery, blah blah.
We were debating that in the 12th. Anyway about time I thought. Except that the panel consisted of 2 marriage counsellors, Shobha De (twice married, has to deal with your kids and my kids are fighting with our kids), the owner of Shaadi.com (yuppie NRI, unmarried is sitting on all his money and advocating marriage simply because it makes him more money) and here's the clincher Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. For being the director and actor in the movie that 'dared to explore adultery'. There were movies down south (like really down south) that were exploring porn before either of them were born but that's another story.
The discussion we shan't go into except to say that K of the Koffee fame claimed that he was unmarried because he was too cynical to take that step after all the horror stories he's heard and seen. The grapevine thinks he's not married because of the guy sitting next to him.
So the debate is still on whether marriage is a relevant institution or not...
That brings us to another story involving the caste system. It's bad enough that it exists and now is a pawn in the great game of vote-bank politics, the funny things are the sub-castes that I came to know of recently. Details are too convoluted to put down and I don't feel like transliterating and translating terms of the aaru velu niyogilu ilk. But the fun bits are the intra caste anti-subcaste jokes that have been making the rounds for a few centuries now. Why this is seminal? Happened to see the monthly vernacular publication affiliated to one of the 4 mutts that are held sacred (page 3 ambiguity again... sorry) and the appendix is what was brought to my notice.
In a nice spreadsheet excel-esque format are the following columns -
Serial Number, the importance of which will be outlined
Name
SubCaste, note the readership of this magazine has to be pretty exclusive for them to have this column up
Gotram (trust them to do something like this)
Nakshatram
Date of Birth
HEIGHT (in inches)
Educational Qualification
Place of Residence/employment
Place of Origin
So there's lists of boys and girls with all the details filled in and a disclaimer that serial numbers n1 - n2 have been erased with time, considering they can't keep the same names on for months. (no that's not why the numbers are important.)
Here's the rub, in this age of communication, ready made stuff, shaadi.com and a reliance on the easy way out, a self-addressed envelope with a request for the horoscope of serial no 'n' would get you that horoscope via mail. Of course residents of Chennai (where else) would have to go and get the desired information in person on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.
There comes a time in every man's life when they wished they were born to a lower phylum. Today's mine.
