take the long way home

with apologies to supertramp...we like to believe that we generally have the placid outlook of a monk but 4 days at home after 18 months is NOT enough!! and when the 4 days are granted 3 hours before departure the matter turns grey enough to be a human rights issue!

be that as it may we were home last week and gladdened some hearts [we hope]. the parentage of course took the whole whizz-by in their stride - in fact they even asked us if we wanted to get a bride while we were around - while 3-decade old friends refused to believe till we landed up in front of them. the siblings were busy but managed to make the come over for a wee and for that we are grateful.

home food, warmth of home, the times of india with the first cup of the day. simple pleasures. worth more than many treasures. for once we did not look forward to returning to the sands.

the grandmother of all grandmothers!

today we celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of my nanima [maternal grandmom]. to me she was always "batiben". and she could make maggie thatcher look rusted!

i was perhaps more fortunate than her other grandchildren in that i grew up round the corner from her massive house [where my mother and aunts grew up]. so a daily round to check on her and on her kitchen was the norm. her kitchen was of especial importance to a growing lad like me as she would always have something or the other sizzling. her fondness for sprinkling liberal handfuls of red chillies in her food was something that literally and figuratively afire! mondays were important for thats when she made "sabudana vada". she sure knew how to speak to a guy's heart! my nana was sure a lucky guy!

i sadly did not know my dadi [paternal grandmom] too well as she passed on when i was just 10. so batiben was to me the epitome of all things "grandmother" - the love, affection, care, occasional raised voice [she could be heard down the street] and general being around for all the sundry dilemmas that a lad could have. some of my fondest memories are of sitting on her swing and chatting away with her. this was a lady who had a string of stories to tell [i have a photo of her somewhere on a beach in france way back in the 50s- perhaps thats how the french bug hit me?]. she was not given much to drama and emotion - stoicism was built into her. but when i went to france she came home and wept. and i could have just cancelled the whole thing and gone over to her place to check out the kitchen.

ah i could go on and on. but the best memories are always savoured in privacy. she passed away in typical style: no fuss, brave till the end. and i will always regret that i was not with her in her last moments.

batiben, you live on in our hearts. thank you for all the grace and wisdom and fun! thank you also for your progeny - my mother and my aunts [fine women all]. and today is monday so i hope that that sabudana wadas are sizzling up there :) happy birthday!

uncorking champagne: art or science??

came across this slightly dated but still relevant article from the telegraph:

with the festive season going on people have lots of reasons to pop that bottle of bubbly and now scientists at Coventry University have developed a mathematical formula which enables people to uncork the bottle without wasting even a single drop of champagne.

The formula, which has been named "Smith's Law" after its founder, Dr. Steve Smith, is P = T / 4.5 + 1, where P stands for pressure and T indicates the temperature.

It is based on the well-known fact that the pressure in a typical bottle of champagne at room temperature is equivalent to the pressure of a double - decker bus tyre.

As per the formula to stop the cork from flying off, the temperature of the liquid should be between 5C and 7C, which means that the pressure will be 2 to 2.5 atmospheres, a third lower than when the bottle is at room temperature.

The researcher says that keeping the temperature right is the most important thing as if you get the temperature right, the pressure will be right and you will be able to enjoy the champagne at its best.

we get confused by so many numbers. for us the hold and twist method of uncorking has always worked - not for us the "pop" which sounds quite vulgaire. we prefer the soft, gentle sigh of the music being released and the golden drops staying in the bottle rather than being sprayed all over the folks gathered for a fluteworth of the liquid!

a tale of two cities

two crimes against women - one in india and one in pakistan - are poised to be  a tipping point in the way women are treated in these countries. both malala in pakistan and the unnamed one in india [we have some rather quaint rape laws that prevent naming of rape victims] have engaged public opinion like no other incident involving women. malala is likely to be nominated for the nobel peace prize. the unnamed one has got her peace, having lost her battle for life.

both cases have reinforced the inherent "unmanliness" of man - malala's case because one cannot imagine a frail, 15-year old being a threat to large, bearded, machine-gun wielding gentlemen [who probably smell], and the unnamed one because how "manly" can 6 men be against a puny 21-year old girl?

two cities, mingora in the swat valley and new delhi, could just turn out to be the fulcrums of women's fight for justice, emancipation from "manly behaviour" and access to simple and basic freedoms: the freedom to learn, the freedom to be happy, the freedom to live.

Dragons and Snakes

ah weel and one more of them years comes to an end. and another one starts. all part of the great chakra as buddha or one of his contemporaries put it...

do we feel like contemplating highs and lows of the year past? do we feel like previewing the upsides of the year to come? or do we just feel like letting it go and letting it come. without a titter.

be that as it may, we bid adieu to the dragon and welcome the snake, and hope and pray that the year will be a fun one for all. we will enter our 7th year in dobuy and hopefully that augurs well for both dobuy and us!

we look forward to wine classes, a whiff of la belle france, a langourous vac at home and a slightly V-er shape than the one we currently have!

and as you uncork the red, spare a thought for those unfortunate enough to subside on water, milk and similar. or rum and coke. santé!

rape: repressed libido or heightened testoterone?

we find the act of rape rather unfathomable. copulation at best is supposed to be blissful, wonderful, rejuvenating etc etc etc [we have not indulged in it so far but have read up extensively]. at worst it  is a mechanical act resembling pistons moving in rhythm. several psychological aberrations are attributed to lack of or excess of the act. of course for wannabe monks like ourself such aberrations are not applicable.

but given that is a natural urge and a requirement for the continued wellbeing of the human race, we would have expected it to be as natural as, well, breathing. but alas that is not so. in our native land the act of copulation is considered to be terribly unclean and impious. funny coming from a country of over a billion but there you go. the topic is taboo, it cannot be verbalised, drawn, picturised, caricatured, written about or otherwise brought up to the public eye. for we are indian!

hence the average indian man is an extremely repressed individual with little or no recourse to physiological relief. he starts to resemble a bubbling volcano and break out in spots or pimples due to the excess glandular heat generated. while the hideous practise of marrying off the boy at 21 helps mitigate this matter to some extent the vast majority of the men in the country have to practise manually or raid the cattle shed if available. this also is due to the fact that there just arent enough girls to marry off to all the men around. which in turn can be attributed to female infanticide in some areas, deffered motherhood in others, etc etc. which in turn can be attributed to socio-economic dysfunctionalities, engendered by skewed development rations.

the point we are trying to make is that rape is not a single solution problem, like mathematics or nuclear physics. it is an outcome of a complex set of factors that lead to one cataclysmic moment when lust overtakes prudence or manners. we submit that is is not enough to change laws and make rape punishable by death, etc. those are post-facto reactions. we do not have solutions at hand of course, but we can start by demystifying sex and treating it as just another bodily function. and stop hidebound morons from making a song and dance about the insolence of using "radha" in a "provocative dance". or morones, since this particular incident was by a lady. who has a child. no doubt generated through a tube, given her attitudes towards the act!

however, changing the great indian attitude is another matter. perhaps a book can be hacked out of it. we can only pray that one great indian attitude - that of respecting women - comes back to the fore.

herbie's l'il cousin!

all right folks, here she is - herbie's l'il cousin! cute as a button, zips along like a scalded cat and is a bit hard to control on the curves :) we hope to get some wee lass to drive around, especially those with kittenish tendencies!
tell us what you think of her!
herbie is missed of course, but then the differential doesnt always run true with the gear!

we are going global

heck! we have just learnt that we have several readers. 25 nos in all! comprising of:

Ukraine	15
United States	7
India	3

we have absolutely no idea how we appeal to folks along the dneiper but who are we to crib about readership! all we can say is welcome! and we hope you continue to enjoy what we put forth!

we are also amused that we have readers in the US. thought they only read gun manuals...

we are encouraged by these findings to give more of our best so stand by!

'car'ried away

we arent known for being one of those emotional "SNAG" [sensitive new age guy] types. truth be told we tend to model our outlook on life along the lines popularised by monsieur bond or jeeves - maintain the impassivity of a sphinx.

however a recent development has left us rather heartbroken [not to put it too mildly]. we had to put herbie1 out to pasture for reasons of cold economics - the cost benefit analysis had gone haywire and we were obliged to fork out increasing amounts out of  the treasury to maintain her in the style to which she was accustomed. so one grey saturday evening last week we went online and she was given away to another man in under 60 seconds [we kid you not]. the man came, he saw and he went with her that same evening, leaving us to trudge back home alone in the chilly evensong.

3 years, 100,000 kms, a few dents and loads of happy memories, including herbie meeting herbie [see above] made our first car a treasure and a pleasure to own and ride.

two days ago we saw herbie parked by the roadside and we fought down a lump or two. she had always been sheltered in a garage and to see her in the open like this was wrenching.

herbie shall always be around - just the shape and make will change. and herbie1 will be the benchmark.

and a new baxi has arrived!

since our writings are partly to celebrate life we are quite thrilled to announce the landing of the latest baxi lass - the wee myla. ok so she's my nephew's gal but we dont bother with such segmentation! take a look:

 

this wee gal comes with a strong heritage - the female of the baxi species is quite a specimen. full of beans, chutzpah and a very no-nonsense outlook on life. they tend to light up whichever homes they go to, and we are privileged to be part of the lineage too! [mebbe thats why we prefer bachelorhood - difficult to find women who would match this lineage!]

so we wish myla a jolly, rocking life [her parents are quite cool] and we shall no doubt be seeing her soon, wind and weather permitting.

from the royal to the individual

i have always posted on this blog in the 1st person plural mainly i guess as a means of 'walling' my identity for some yet-to-be-defined reason. some might attribute this to a contrived sense of brown-sahibism for which i make no apologies. but heck let me see what transpires. i can always switch back to us.

121212

we always look for propitious dates for new beginnings. as an india born and bred mammal we live[d] surrounded by the weighty preponderance of the DATE. said noun used in the temporal context not in the edible or amatory context.

re-starting our blog is not a new beginning. however we cannot deny the fact of lassitude when it came to writing here. but the chance of posterising this post on a date which occurs only once in a millennium was too attractive to drop. hence, having writ, we write again.

a lot of people did "special things" today - marriage, births, feasts, so on. for us this is special.

now the serious stuff: should we use this moment for intense introspection / explicit externalisations? we are not really equipped for such soulitary pursuits [being an air sign we flit here and there]. but the time has come for some streamlining. time to take charge of our direction.

stand by for more.

the middle finger was popularised in the middle ages...

like revenge, procrastination is best served cold...

we tend to NOT believe in the "do it now" principle popularised by bush snr, malcolm gladwell et al. while unkind people label such habits as "sloth" we prefer the word "caution". "look before you leap" may not work for the athletically inclined but it works for us.

however of late we tend to be turning this principle on its head. for no particular reason. we are rather perplexed at this turn of events. is it to do with age? is it to do with seeing the light? or is just boredom with the status quo [a hallmark of a good gemini, which we are]?

be that as it may, we will henceforth procrastinate later.

turning the page or closing the book...?

depends on where one is in the narrative, n'est-ce pas...?

we are not amused

the queen celebrates her birthday this month and we are not invited! what price our fealty and inherent WOG-gishness??

almost 6 months and no one has missed us :)

we are glad to know that even on the net we are anonymous - 6 months off and no one blinked! perhaps we wil create a new phenomenon - anti-social media!


we have realised that writing in any form - blog, article, book, mangum opus - depends heavily on the writer's mood, context, career & marriage prospects, state of car and other sundry considerations. so we plead all of the stated reasons for being off - after all, we cannot expect our readers [both of them] to carry our burden too!


but then, even the most blocked writer gets unblocked, and having been unblocked, proceeds to give of his plenty, or verse.


rather prose-aic, but c'est la vie!

tera bharat ma[ha]an

we dont usually take too kindly to people questioning our fealty to our country. after all our first career option was to die for the country [or at least make others die for theirs in defence of our land - cant allow such liberties after all].


recent exposure to the land of Gs has made us wonder if the ol' spirit continues. 3 ministers / CMs in the dock, 1 PM looks about to dock somewhere and two of the 3 ladies who make indian politics so entertaining look like they wont dock anywhere at all! [the 3rd one resembles a sphinx so we will reserve comment].


we also seem to be seriously considering a murderer and a doddering right-winger as potential PM material if god forbid we turn to the right in the next elections [btw, since the chinese cannot pronounce the alphabet 'L' and usually replace it with 'R', we are not surprised they dont have democracy...]


and bombay looks like she has been forgotten in the garbage dump. we are convinced its time to make bombay a stand-alone entity with its own governance. follow the dobuy principle and allow in people with specific skills for specific periods. crack down on nastiness and people spitting on the roads. and make people from bombay the leaders of the city, not from god-forsaken village or provincial town somewhere in the wilds of the state to which she is sadly attached.


any comments...?

a 'mom'entous occasion!

we are fortunate to have a mother [several million dont]. and last week we were fortunate to be able to celebrate a significant moment in her life - her 75th birthday! coming just a day after the guv'nor's 81st, we did feel a strange euphoria that our parentage, while of a fairly advanced vintage, can manage to rock!

our mother has been a mother since she was 20 years old, so a good 55 years of her life have been spent in motherhood. making her an expert at this very confounding art! we are the youngest child and according to our siblings have been a pest between the ages of 1 month and 480 months, after which faints spots of wisdom began dawning on us. however we can assert with all the authority of our 480 months that she is a mère sans pareil! she has put up with a less than ideal son [flunking undergraduate studies, choosing career options that still don’t make sense, remaining a bachelor even after 516 months and so on and so on] without any hint of disappointment or angst [guess all mothers are good actors as well!]. she was also responsible for us coming up with the invaluable concept [flicked from a tv serial] that ‘mother is the necessity of invention’! many a time has this saved our miserable hide from punitive measures!

we have been away from home and hearth for nearly 6 years. the weekly 15-minute call and the annual 30-day hey-mom-whats-for-breakfast-lunch-dinner-inbetweens barely helps to bridge the gap.  on the other hand we feel that her stoicism and faith in her karma [inherited from her mother, who is another story by herself] make her cope with this as well, and we continue to be away with this false hope.

happy birthday mom, and for a present we can only offer you a better future!


p.s.: this is also a requiem for another mother in faraway london who is doing rather poorly but can take heart in the fact that her daughter and son-in-law are doing everything they can to bring her round. hang in there both!

heres a blog of a thousand words...