How not to deal with idiots
In parts of northeast India, parents let their little babies have a few drops of rice beer so that the latter fall asleep and don’t trouble them during their working hours on farms. This method is obviously age old and doesn’t pass scientific scrutiny. But then, it’s followed to this day because of its efficacy. When you don’t have a support system at home to play with your young ones, you are bound to stick to proven methods to handle a sticky situation. These babies will grow up eventually and if situations don’t vary, then they will be letting some drops of rice beer into their babies’ mouths too. Whenever I tell this story to ‘modern’ parents in my circle, they are aghast at the damage presumably caused by ancient ‘parenting’ techniques. These city-dwelling parents conveniently forget that they hand smartphones and iPads to their little ones — overlooking the long-term attention span issues caused — to keep them occupied all day long.
Is it just me or does everybody feel that the quality of lyrics has consistently dropped in Hindi cinema? Particularly amongst the more popular songs. When you listen to old songs from the 1950s, the ’60s and, to some extent in the ’70s, you would be amazed by the depth in simplicity. That’s a rare success. Be it Shailendra or Majrooh or Ludhianvi or Gulzarsaab, almost every song written by them felt like it was built with utmost attention to detail. Not a word here, not a meter there. And what makes this plethora of songs unique is they were understood by the illiterate janta back then. Consider the fact that a lot of cinema-loving folks back then — which included my father — couldn’t even complete 10th standard. Yet, they understood the essence of a song and have stayed in love all these years. Compared to that era, it’d be hard to find anybody who would be able to explain why there is so much dard in that disco or why baby doll is golden when the world is carved of copper.
You know for sure that you are leading a purposeful life when you wake up in the morning with a strange excitement. The kind of thrill that Hitler had before invading Poland. OK. Bad analogy. But you get my drift. I am a stickler for to-do lists. Since I rely heavily on notes (both professional as well as personal), I’ve made it a habit to create an agenda for the next day before going to sleep. This way, I know what all work is pending when I wake up at 6-ish. Not that I always hit the bull’s eye with my list but it provides me with some direction. Of course, getting everything done before the following sunset is nothing less than a miracle. Despite everything, the excitement you had during your school days — when you couldn’t sleep because it was picnic the next day — can’t possibly be replicated in your adulthood.
If you follow chess, you must be aware of AlphaZero and Stockfish. These are technically the epitome of supercomputers achieving godly status. They do mental calculations at a rate humans can’t comprehend and it’s quite impossible to beat them either. Which is why it’s cute how the chess connoisseurs refer to such brainy machines as ‘engines’. We know that the world is fast changing but the fact that we lost a world where chess was restricted to humans is beyond tragic. In all fairness, supercomputers are better off helping us with calculations that keep our roads safe and weather monitored. They have no business reminding us that they can checkmate us — all 8 billion of us — together. The only saving grace that I could think of is after Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in that ill-tempered match, it was packed off to work for United Airlines as a data cruncher. Similarly, after winning at Jeopardy, Watson went back to work in healthcare. Poetic justice.
There have been some firsts for me in Mangalore, like tasting squid and not getting a headache in the sun, but my most cherished moment so far is driving a car from a restaurant to our apartment building past 11 pm over the weekend. 9 km, to be precise. I’ve never done anything like this before. Although I have a learner’s license, I haven’t driven a car since February this year. So, I was clearly out of practice and that made the whole journey so damn exciting. It’s true what my friend once told me: you never forget the A-B-C (accelerator-brake-clutch) of driving. Fortunately, my brother-in-law showed more confidence in me than I did in myself. Which reminds me of what I read about the ‘10 Commandments for Drivers’ issued by the Vatican in 2007. Apparently, the fifth car-mandment read: “Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.” Agreed fully. Especially after my illegal car-nama.
There is nothing to not like about Turkish cinema. In Iranian movies, people are depicted as overly nice whereas in Turkish films, they are ridiculously genuine. You feel them throughout. Ertuğrul (2014) doesn’t fall in this category though thanks to the period nature of drama. Otherwise, you’ll grow attached to the everyday personalities in Turkish productions. Ethos (2020) is the latest addition to this experience as it features the invisible cultural clash between urbaners and villagers. What is admirable about the narrative is each character is sharply nuanced. We rarely witness such balance. Usually in Indian productions, we already know which side the filmmakers are lopsided. What also struck me while watching this 8-episode drama was the streets are shamelessly clean in Istanbul. Maybe that explains why over 45 million tourists visited Turkey last years whereas 10 million visited my country.
When a language fails to produce the required vocabulary to encapsulate an emotion, is it the language’s loss or the speaker’s? I was thinking about this paradox because there are so many languages out there which don’t have the equivalent of ‘vegetarian’. For them, the concept of plant-based dependency in nutrition is extremely foreign. Yes, even the remotest of African tribes understand that elephants, giraffes and zebras don’t consume meat and rely on grass for food but their mother tongues failed to see a good enough reason to adopt this tendency for themselves. As a result, the V-word remained elusive. That said, times are indeed changing. Some of the most influential people in the world have embraced vegetarianism for different reasons — environmental concerns playing a significant role— over the recent past. Going forward, with the planet refusing to accommodate our animal-based diets, we might witness an era where ‘vegetarian’ might become the word for ‘vegetarian’ in different languages.
There are various sorts of idiots around you but the ones ruling at the top are those who argue with you on the following lines:
- They have a problem with you when you refer to God as she. For some thick reason, god has to be a bearded old man who enjoys spying on the most useless creatures from above.
- They have a problem with you when you invoke gods instead of sticking to a singular (whose gender remains debatable) God. As if anybody with four ounce of brain can conclusively prove either case.
- God and/or gods are for real and not for solace. You know what’s real? Your misplaced loneliness in a universe that is so overcrowded and doesn’t really need you to comprehend what is way above us anyway.
Yet, sometimes, I feel like holding their hands and looking them in their eyes and telling them that God (whether it is a he or a she or a they) doesn’t exist for a very simple reason: our world is a freaking mess. And that’s a loud and clear indication that it’s run by gods who can’t get along. Had there been a God, the world would have been a far more functional entity with nothing but sunbeam shooting out of our ass and happiness trickling from our pores. But, sadly, that’s not how it is. Just accept it and move the fuck on.
During the early side of this decade, when I was working as an entertainment journalist for mid-day, I took care of the Hollywood section. For close to three years, I was solely responsible for everything Hollywood from that newspaper. Which meant I watched a lot of movies and I read a lot more about Hollywood personalities. Back then, a rumour used to do the rounds that George Clooney gathered 14 of his closest friends — I am 34 and I don’t even have half of that number— and gifted them $1 million in cash each. He would refuse to comment on this rumour and none of his friends would leak a word either. After so many years, last month, Clooney finally admitted in an interview that he did do the deed of giving away money to his dearest folks. His logic was, he wasn’t getting married or settling down or having kids, so what’s the point of being that rich? It’s a different story that a year later, he married Amal and is a doting father of twins, whom he taught Italian while raising them in Italy, the land of his forefathers. Back to friends, back to roots, back to basics.That’s how you age gracefully, I presume.
A couple who completed 25 years of marriage decides to celebrate the milestone by ‘marrying’ again. Think of it as a desi version of renewing vows. The Brahmin priest is chanting mantras and the guests are waiting for the ritual to end so that they can move towards their preferred destination: the table where heavenly food will be served on plantain leaves. However, the elderly priest is in no hurry to finish. In the middle of one chant, he invokes the teen-aged kids of the couple and remarks, “Look carefully. This is how your parents got married.”
My wife and I visit the local market once every 2-3 days and we buy fish from our favourite vendor. Not because he has the best produce but because he is the most entertaining. Malik is a bearded fellow from the Beary community (one of the traditional fishing communities in Kudla) and drops one-liners in Tulu with so much ease that you wonder whether he makes notes in secret. Yesterday, he told us that he has a college degree (B.Com) but he doesn’t remember where he kept it. As soon as he graduated, he decided to join his father (whose father was a fisherman too) in this line of business. According to him, unlike his friends with ‘proper’ jobs, he can never go out of work because there are more than enough fish in the sea.
