Spring

Spring is in the air. The air is crisp, the sun is brilliant and the wind has a chill to it. Reminds me of my Lusaka. Reminds me of my childhood and things that will never ever be the same.

Lamb Chettinad

My wife and me didn’t go to work on Tuesday as we had some important work to attend to. After we had finished whatever we had to, we decided to go to an Indian restaurant for lunch. I wanted to go to a place, which we hadn’t been to and that’s tough considering we have been to most of them in central jersey. As we were driving around on oak tree road, we came across this restaurant called M. Ambience was awesome and hence I wanted to check it out. It was 11:45 in the morning and these guys weren’t open as of yet. They let us in though because they were opening at 12. So the guy turns up with the menu and it looked pretty exotic. I decided to have the salted fresh limejuice which had some cool name on the menu and my wife decided to have something which I don’t remember but tasted great. Anyway, we order an appetizer and then got to the entrée finally. I decided on the lamb chettinad and my wife being a vegetarian decided to have dosa. That’s when the waiter opened his mouth and warned us that the dosa was just dosa. You wouldn’t be getting anything else with it. No chutney and no sambhar. So, I asked the guy as to how she would be eating the dosa and he said that I could order for sambhar and so I asked him where the sambhar was. He pointed me onto another exotic long name, which basically meant plain sambhar at the end of the day. Check this out, dosa was 5$ and sambhar was 10$. Fucking joke right? So my wife says no need sambhar and I say fuck it. Get the sambhar. Then the waiter turns to me and asks me what I want with the chettinad. Till that point I was under the safe assumption that the chettinad came with some form of rice just like most other normal restaurants. Apparently, rice was not at all involved with the dish. I had to order for white rice. The lamb Chettinad was 16$ and the white rice was 10$. Which fucking place does this to you? The food was so so and we are never going back there cos it is a rip off and they know it too.
Now if I put the name of the restaurant, anyone reading this blog would never go there. This is exactly how restaurants lose business and credibility. By acting cute and trying to do different shit and charging for basic shit which is free in other places. This is oak tree road for Christ’s sake and you are catering to middle class Indian crowds and you cannot try and be different with us guys. We exactly know the maximum bang possible for the minimum buck spent.

Bless you, R

Before I got married, I used to hang out at this bar all the time. I would go there to eat, to drink and to talk. The bartender was/is a very good friend of mine. Those were some awesome days. There were days I would hang out at the bar drinking dunkin donuts coffee with my friend S who is the bartender and talk about basically crap. I met R there. R looked like a typical character out of the Sopranos. He was in the mid 40s and he was Italian. He would violently hug me and kiss me on my cheek every time he saw me. He was nice but certainly had a dark side to him. When I met him the first time about 3 years ago he had just gotten some facial surgery done. Apparently, one day when he was walking out on his driveway he slipped and fell face down. His cheekbones were shattered after his fall and he had reconstruction surgery. As a result of this long ongoing process and rehab, he became depressed and was put on anti depressants. With time his face began to heal. I met him a number of times at the bar and also realized that he had a problem with his alcohol. His depression was making him an alcoholic. After a few drinks, he would be very pleasant and we would talk for hours about politics, religion and race. He was a born catholic but held the church in contempt for a lot of reasons. So S, R and me would talk for hours and then go home. Over the course of time, I stopped going there as often as I used to. Eight months ago while I was there, our man turned up and was pretty down. He had just been diagnosed with colon cancer. Here was a man who was in the mid 40s. His wife had left him a few years ago, his business partner had duped him and he had no family. I tried to psychoanalyze him and at that time I inferred that he was a good man who was fucked by the ways of the world. He trusted too much, felt let down, became bitter and depressed.
S the bartender told me yesterday- S by the way has never drank in his life. S told R that he had a choice. Fight the cancer by leading a healthy life and by not drinking and smoking. R tried but kept coming back to the bar, was drunk out of his brains, was taking painkillers and supposedly snorting other illicit substances to ward away the pain. R went through chemo and basically the insurance company decided to stop paying for the chemo as they felt that the damage was too much. The last time I met R was 3 months ago and he was sitting on the barstool, having food and sipping some wine. He had lost 30 pounds through his chemo and he was going down but he was continuing to abuse his body, as he knew his time was running out.
Yesterday, I was at the bar after 2 months and they told me that R was found dead on his couch 2 weeks ago. No friends, no family. He was alone and probably suffered till the last minute.
Bless his unfortunate soul. He will be remembered by me though for his sincere hug and kiss every time he saw me. And you know what? This is exactly how I thought his life would end.

The Zambezi Times

Aamir Khan gave an interview on tehelka and talked about irresponsible journalism and sensationalizing of all and sundry. Good read. Hopefully, knucklehead reporters and their bosses read it and feel some kind of remorse and stop the madness.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main17.asp?filename=hub040106Mainstream_CS.asp&id=1

Stop the madness cos I want you to stop the madness and give us stuff that are worthwhile. Stop insulting us with your shit and give us thoughtful articulate pieces.

I have a plan. I want someone to give me a lot of money and run a news channel from scratch. I will have a lot of fun doing it. I will pay curious gawker to be my journalist. He will cover political shit and give his own angle. Something unique. I will address issues that have a philosophical touch to it. Actually, I will interview celebrities and all. Curious Gawker will be in Iraq getting shot at and getting the truth to us while I am with all the celebrities.
I will use Amit Varma for sports as he sounds like a man of integrity.
I think I am mad.

dodo

Lots of things have happened. The pirates are out of the NCAA, England drew the series (In my eyes they won- dravid’s honeymoon as skipper is over) and the nets are on a 6 game roll.
Other than that the weather is getting warmer and my car is dying a slow death. The shocks are noticeably rattling and I might have to change them. The check engine light is gone though. That saves me 400 bucks. I have a feeling that the converter was never ever gone.
I got a wireless transmitter for my IPOD. Not bad but could be certainly better. Has some static at times.
Kudos to guys who have the passion to blog on a regular basis. I lose interest, get some and then lose it again. I am an avid reader of blogs though. My friend curious gawker seems to be losing interest in writing too for some reason. He is a lazy idiot. Maybe that’s why he isn’t writing.
I read India uncut on a regular basis. Amit sounds like a very pleasant and nice guy. There is so much of talent out there. People are fantastic writers. It is a pleasure to read some of these guys.
Ok I am out. I have nothing of consequence to say and I am wasting space. People, leave Tendulkar alone.

Rules 101

If any impressionable 14 or 15 year olds read this blog, it will help. (I doubt any kids from that age group blog or read blogs).

Don’t smoke because everyone does it.
School is fucking important.
Stay focussed.
Always think twice.
Women are not toys.
There is guilt.
There is karma- you will always reap what you sow.
Keep smiling
Sex can wait.
You don’t go to the right school, you will have to work 10 times fucking harder after you are done.
Family is most important.
Don’t think with your dick.
Don’t go to jail.
I know you are young, but at least have an idea as to what you want to do with your life.
Remember that you are special in your way and you don’t need to copy anyone.
Be sincere and good things will happen.
Your group of friends will decide where you will end up going to school.
Read books and improve your vocabulary.
Learn an instrument.
Be scared of drugs.
Your parents are sometimes right.
If you are tall, play basketball.
Smile a lot.
Have a good core.
Be happy for everyone around you.
Have faith in something.
It’s ok to masturbate.
Have respect for people who are older to you.
Have compassion for the less fortunate.
Collect stamps of different countries. It will give you an idea of how many different worlds exist.
Enjoy every fucking minute with your family because you will never ever get it back.
Thank your mother for everything she does for you.
Always protect your sister or brother. (Remember that you and your sibling are an extension of your mother).
Don’t ever harass a girl.

Nectar

The only way to make this stay worthwhile is to spread joy, happiness and compassion. We are mere mass occupying space. Who knows what we were meant to do and why we were created. We created this world and it is not necessarily true that we are here to do what we are doing.
Enjoy your youth while you can, as when old age comes by, it won’t be anything to write home about. Can you run like a maniac, swim like a fish, have sex like a nymphomaniac and not suffer a heart attack? If you can do it all and derive pleasure out of it and if your body still stays yes to more, go for it. Enjoy it. Create your space and don’t harm anybody.

Expressions of Impressions

Lots of people use this

Go Girl!
You Rock!

What the fuck? Very irritating. What about

Aha!

What the fuck again? There are a lot of expressions like these and they piss me off to end. Lot of people in India seem to be using it on a regular basis. Another one is calling a Tamil person “tam”. Bloody irritating again.
Lower back is hurting again. I am trying to move around more often. They should have gyms at your work place and it should be mandatory to work out for an hour as a part of the workday. We would all live longer and be much more productive.

Whats in the news?

With a calm mind, open samachar.com. Look at all the headlines. Absolute bull shit. Each one of them sensationalized for no reason. Then, open those sensationalized headlines to read the articles. Nothing. All you find is crap. I wish someone would walk up to all these guys and tell them not to insult us with their nonsense. You have idiots, complete nincompoops who believe that they are journalists.
Then compare that with cricinfo. Absolute brilliance. Good language and good matter. Someone shoot the editor or whoever the fuck is responsible for putting stuff on samachar.com.
Maybe I should become a no nonsense journalist. Maybe I should try and get myself a masters in journalism and then run all over the world trying to provide some legit and pertinent information. Even though Cricinfo is just a sports web site, it is still a good web site with stuff written the right way with class acts like Sambit Lal, Dileep Premachandran, Amit Verma et al l.

david

I want to write about growing up in a small town. I want to write about the cultural shock that I experienced when I went back to India. I want to write about the fact that I was constantly harassed by bullies when I first went back to India. I was 5 feet 2, podgy and scared. I was in the 8th grade. I did not know the ways of life. I wasn’t street smart. I did not know how to speak Kannada. I was one of the few who spoke English fluently in high school. I went to a middle class borderline lower middle high school. Those were the only ones around then in Tumkur. I was harassed in school, on the way to school and during lunchtime. I was short, scared and lonely. I was ridiculed and called a monkey in Kannada because I was brought up in Africa. They called me Nigeria Kothi (Nigerian Monkey). Till a few years ago, if anyone called me a kothi, I would fucking flip. The first year was horrible. I had to make friends, learn to speak Kannada fluently and also to read and write Kannada. I learnt to read and write in 6 months. If I didn’t, they would fail me. We used to play a game called lagori. You would put 7 stones on each other and try to knock them off with a ball from a certain distance. You had 2 teams playing this and it was the other teams job to tag you before you put the stones back by belting the crap out of you with the ball. These guys used to gang up on me and belt me cos I was fat and couldn’t run as fast. This was all in the 8th grade. I had this fucking guy David-a rowdy who used to harass me all the time. He would turn up in school and catch me during lunch break and used to take away anything from me that he liked. He took my shades and my belt away from me. This was in the 9th grade.
I learnt the language. I used to talk to girls all the time cos I never believed there was a difference between us. I had wannabe gangsters threaten me and tell me not to talk to girls. I once had a couple of guys come over to my house, ask me to get out and grabbed me by my balls. They wanted to prove a point and tell me that I should not talk to girls.
For three years I assimilated the change in culture, got stronger both physically and mentally and learnt to absorb things with a pinch of salt. I made some very very good friends who remain to this very day good friends and we did our own innocent shit like playing cricket and cycling around like maniacs. Human beings when faced with volatile situations end up becoming very political with their choices. As I look back, I ended up making friends with rich, powerful people. I did so because I didn’t come from such a background and hence I was being abused by the scum of society.
Between the 10th and 11th grade, I turned from fatso who was 5 feet 2 to 6 feet 1 and an abundance of strength. With my friends and my physical stature I started getting back one by one. It was not planned revenge in any way. I went back to David’s house, scared the shit out of him and got my belt and glasses back (he still had them). I threw them away. People stopped calling me the Nigerian Kothi and yes I had a temper. The last 2 years in Tumkur, I was a rebel with a few causes. Most of the time, I was pissed off with nothing and have always had an aversion towards bullies. Maybe that’s why I cannot stand eve teasers. I hate them with all the passion under the sun. Maybe I can relate to a woman and how helpless she feels.

All Losers

The Nets are losing, the Seton hall pirates look like they are not going to make it into the big dance and the Indian cricket team is playing mediocre. It would be a perfect day when all the teams win.
I have a Muslim friend, he is 41 and he loves cold play. I have a Lebanese Christian friend and he loves cold play.
I haven’t written in a few days. Don’t know what to say. Insides seem to be empty and in a daze. Can’t make up shit can I? People writing furiously all over the world about eve teasing. I have done a lot of things in my life. That’s one thing I haven’t. I know that for a fact. I used to feel ashamed hanging out with guys like that. Growing up in a small place like Tumkur during my formative years, it was a rather daunting task not to hang out with guys who didn’t tease women. The eve teasing used to get me all tensed up, as I had no clue that these things existed. Before that I did all my middle school in Nigeria. On the contrary, a few girls beat me up in my class for no fucking reason.
Tumkur was an eye opener. A new town with a lot of horny men. Horny is ok. Desperate and horny is a scary combination. I made it a point to hang out with guys who did not indulge in such practices and if they did, they were either admonished or totally avoided. It’s all about values. You end up hanging out with guys who believe in the same values even at a young age. As I left Tumkur and moved to Bangalore, I had many many experiences. A bigger place, on the cusp of globalization at that time. Things were bad there. I studied in a less than classy college with a lot of kids who didn’t respect women or just were overcome with lust most of the time hence clouding their judgement and behavior. I can safely say that most of this kind of behavior arose from the fact that they did not interact with women on a regular basis. Women didn’t talk to men and men didn’t talk to men in this college. It was considered taboo to be close to men. I believe that segregation in India increases the problem ten-fold. It is imperative that men and women learn to interact with each other. This creates a conducive atmosphere for friendship and trust and all that shit.
I remember this instance. I had a friend called S and she was from the Middle East but her parents had sent her to India to study just like me. Anyway, we were good friends. It was the college day and this was the time when all the strange men came out of their skins and behaved like animals. Apparently, my friend S who was wearing a sari and looking very pretty was standing in a crowd when someone pinched her arse. She reacted by promptly crying. I walked by and saw her crying and went berserk and hit the wrong guy. Before I knew, I had the wrong guy’s friends and the guy who teased the girl and his friends baying from my blood. A few teachers who were there formed a human chain around me and saved me. I wish it were like the movies where you could beat all 20 people at one time. It didn’t happen that day though.