The Case of the Argumentative Indian

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, dated 10th January, 2010)

Perhaps it happens at the time of birth – when a cluck of crooning relatives crowd us, saying “oh my God! How adorable! S/he looks exactly like you!!!” We stare back, wrinkled, pink, beady-eyed, bald or stringy-haired, as determined to contradict their expression of admiration as they themselves are to humiliate a woman who has just spent about a day pretty much pushing a watermelon out of a straw.

It is in our genes – we are addicted to pointless arguments, and we are compulsive exhibitors of convincing insincerity. These two qualities meet perfectly under one bracket – the human conviction that dead air cannot be good for anyone’s health.

There’s something about the concept of companionable silence that we as a species cannot grasp except in scripted audiovisual media, where camera angles and piano notes scream out the subtext. Leave two acquaintances in a room with no celluloid around, and one of them is bound to turn to the other and say something like:

“This feminism concept is very strange to people of our generation, ma. I’ll tell you this – howmuchever a girl studies or earns, she will not be truly happy until she has a home to look after.”

“Don’t you think the BJP would have done a better job of handling the Maoist menace than the Congress?”

“The minimum age difference between the boy and the girl must be ten years for a good marriage. What do you think?”

You could point out that Madonna and Guy Ritchie got divorced, or that girls are happiest when their mothers are looking after their homes or that if any party had handled any menace well, it would not be there today, and gratify your interlocutor and yourself. But on occasion, a combination of misanthropy and lethargy motivate the marginally less human of us to resist the cravings of our fellow-fauna, and a sadistic impulse forces us to agree with them.

“You know why child marriages were there in the olden days?” says Family Friend Uncle, “because all sorts of longings take place during adolescence. If you stifle them and have a late marriage, your body and mind get affected.”

“Yes, Uncle, all my divorced friends got married when they were adults.”

Family Friend Uncle looks startled, nods and makes another valiant attempt.

“Sometimes, beyond a certain age, you might not even be able to procreate.”

“And if you don’t have children by a certain age, it increases the risk of some types of cancer for women, no, Uncle?”

Family Friend Uncle sighs, nods and switches subjects. “Nowadays, people are running after money. You have a well-paying job and you are proud of being a workaholic. What is all the money for?”

“To keep your family happy, fulfil your own needs. But then we never find the time for it. True.”

Family Friend Uncle sighs and gives you up as a poor cause.

The second genetic defect we carry is rather harder to work on, though. We’ve all told each of our friends on her wedding day that she’s the most beautiful bride we’ve ever seen, and have never been able to stop at “oh, my God!” and allow for awed silence when presented with the day-old products of these unions – fine, ‘ugly babies’ is less convoluted, I know.

For my part, I try to stick to the truth and leave it open to interpretation. For example, every resignation letter I have written contains a promise that my attachment to the company will remain unchanged, and having worked in ten organisations, I know I have kept my word.

A Kink in the Amour

(Published in I-Witness, The New Indian Express, on January 3rd, 2010)

Scene 1:

“Well, you gotta work all the muscles in your body, honey,” drawls the sexpert, to Oprah, flashing a miniature dumbbell – the most memorable of several other contraptions in her secret drawer which was on display for Oprah’s hundreds of millions of viewers. When Oprah states the obvious and gets a laugh out of the studio audience, the sexpert says, “aww, I had a bit of a tough time explaining these to officials at the Chicago airport.” “Yeah…I’m sure they were in a real big hurry to let you go,” says Oprah, “no…I mean that!” An impressionable eleven-year-old gawking at the television can think of another country that’d be in a real big hurry to let her go…and can never look at dumbbells again without remembering the incident.


Scene 2:
Seven years later, an eighteen-year-old and her friends are at a shop famous for stolen goods and pirated DVDs, hidden away in Chennai’s most popular shopping area. Our buddy behind the counter piles a stock of the former as a shield, before showing us the latter (it was a time of turbulence and suspicion, the police were sending out their best men on raids). He quickly shoves away the pornographic movies he unearths, embarrassed by the presence of three women. The mountain of thongs that were his shield, however, is exempted as a possible cause of bashfulness. A few minutes in, a middle-aged woman peeps hesitantly into the store and mumbles, “uh…ladies panties…” The storekeeper points at the pile of fluffy, copper blue, strategically orificed, stringy things on the counter, garnished with DVDs titled “Lord of the G-Strings”, “Buffy the Vampire-Layer” and “Gangbangs of New York.” The woman stares at the pile, back at him, at us, at the pile and is gone with a shriek.

This is why Indian men take such long showers and Indian women don’t get manicures too often. This is why “my phone is on vibrator mode” still makes us giggle, and everyone in the adolescence-menopause range lives in terror of being caught round-handed by a parent/spouse/child. This is why the few tree-lined streets in Indian metros have cars parked under them all evening, and the many haystacks in Indian villages have bullock-carts wobbling inside them. ‘Sex toys’ are banned in thought, word and deed, and so we have little choice but to use ourselves, household implements and each other as substitutes.

Let’s say we broke our shackles metaphorically so we could do so literally – let’s say we had Roleplay Pride Parades, armed with handcuffs, uniforms (this would have the added advantage of representing those sections of the society that can’t speak for themselves – the police, domestic help, the religious celibate etc.), rabbits (‘Sex and the City’ has been on TV since 1997, you’ve got to get that!) and flashlights (oh, well, they DO pronounce it that way in most parts of the country, you know) and got the men in robes, capes and wigs (dude, I meant judges!) to give kinkiness a nod…

Now that the only things on earth that live up to the ancient Vedic principle of doing favours expecting nothing in return have found legal acceptance, we would have to look for ways to circumvent society.

“Saar!” an airport official would make a smart salute, having discovered a pair of handcuffs in a traveller’s cabin baggage.

“Waat is this, madoon?” the same official would bark, pulling out a curiously-coloured thing from a woman’s purse.

“Uh…my…uh…son’s battery-operated balloon. It…inflates, NEVER deflates, and uh…can change shape to a feather…sigh...” or “Can’t you see? My daughter’s toy rabbit! Should I check it in?” should get you out of that one.

Then there’s the helpful-mommy-in-law crisis.

“I cleaned my son’s drawer. You young people are so useless!” she would say fondly, “I found a torch without a bulb, so I threw it away!” And there goes your husband’s bonus (India’s import duty hasn’t changed yet) which did do everything and spared you the trouble.

And then come the helpful neighbours who want to know why a nurse’s uniform, a Batman costume and a Princess Leia bikini are on your clothesline.

“Freelancing,” might not quite be convincing enough.

A Spock of Trouble

(Published as 'A Friends Episode and a Spock Haircut' in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, on 26th December, 2009)

“Hey, we’re all in the same place for once – let’s talk!”

“Uh…I’d rather watch forty-two minutes of sarcastic remarks, sorry.”

Speaker 1 was my brother and Speaker 2, me. Every time I’m home for a vacation, my family starts feeling guilty about watching too much TV, and decides to take it all out on me – by compulsively spending quality time ‘talking’. But the problem with everyone in a family being in a different field is that all of us strike each other as boring. The only thing we really have in common is what we watch on TV.

My grandmother and my dad trade opinions on ‘Kolangal’, my mother and one of my brothers argue over whom Dr. Gregory House should be dating, while my other brother and I fight over my preference for ‘Seinfeld’ over ‘Friends’.

At some point, we figured watching our respective sitcoms on the TV (or computer – oh, come on, it’s not illegal if you buy the official DVDs!) makes a lot more sense than ranting about them during quality time. And while there’s a sanctimonious group that calls it ‘the idiot box’ and refuses to watch it when they can walk in the park instead, I believe the television is instrumental in creating a collective conscious.

For example, it’s much easier to explain to my mother why everyone who has an affair is not scheming and villainous.

“Ma, you like Dr. Wilson, but he has affairs.”

“Okay, he has affairs, but he’s a good friend to House, and yes, he lies to his wives, but he’s nice to everyone el…oh.”

And “Ma, stop acting like Bree!” is a much more effective way of getting her off my back about picking my clothes off the floor than “I’ll do it later.”

My brothers convince my grandmother that every girl they bring home isn’t a potential bride with, “Patti, we’re like Thols and Abi, okay?”

And it’s not all in the family either. At one point, people who’re in and out of dysfunctional relationships wanted to know why the ones in long-term and apparently functional relationships don’t get married – but now, oh, they suppose it’s a Ross-and-Rachel kinda thing.

Sitcoms make for better conversation than the weather, real estate, Barack Obama’s Nobel and the state of the economy. They beat family gossip, and hold up a distended mirror to society – better-looking people with the same problems and completely impractical ways of getting over them, making a lot more money for their time than you do.

I’ve known sitcoms to have saved relationships. A friend of mine was dealing with the old-boyfriend-crawling-back-while-current-boyfriend-is-being-a-jerk syndrome, and a re-run of the ‘Friends’ episode where Monica has to choose between Richard and Chandler happened to be on TV when the current boyfriend came visiting. Apparently, it gave him perspective.

So, sitcoms emasculate our men, dramatise our lives, Americanise our language and the more obscure ones allow us to plagiarise their lines. Of course, there’s the downside. My landlord’s son started speaking gibberish when his parents decided to fill his life with ‘Colors’. And I believe there are people with diagnosed psychological disorders who only speak the Klingon language. Well, to be honest, I did get rather worried when one of my brothers started making the Vulcan salute and got Spock’s haircut.

But under the assumption that you’re not really as thick as clotted cream, that's been left out by some clot, and now the clots are so clotted, you couldn't unclot them with an electric de-clotter, sitcoms have had a positive impact on your life – while they haven’t completely allowed you to overcome your failure to communicate, they’ve largely removed the necessity of trying to.

Movie Review: Avatar

It's not often you land up in the corner seat of the second row for an 11.30 am show on a weekday at a cineplex where you've once been an employee. 'Avatar' is being touted by amateur critics as 'The Matrix of the 2000s' and by acknowleged critics as 'in the league of The Lord of the Rings, with better visual effects'.

The brilliance of JRR Tolkien and the magic of his Middle Earth are such that one cannot write fantasy without being accused of ripping something off the worlds he created. So, of course, there's a Goddess Guardian Spirit, of course there are tall trees, of course there are ugly machines/warriors/Marines fighting long-legged, noble, naked ones and of course there's a twist in the end, and Five Armies come together but are almost screwed over until flying beings intervene.

But what 'The Lord of the Rings' could do with two dimensions, 'Avatar' couldn't do with three...and that is pull people into that world. Pandora didn't have the advantage Lothlorien did, but one wonders, does a three-houe (or nine-hour) movie require a thousand-page masterpiece to draw its script from?

It's sad that the importance of dialogue in cinema has declined to the degree that Batt Daffleck or whatever the duo is called, can boast of an Oscar. Look up the top hundred movie lines and it's likely the latest one you'll find is the speech by Morpheus that no one understood (until they read Sartre, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and thought they all sounded kinda familiar).

What happened to the craft of weaving words into a story? What happened to the impact of a moment of speech or silence? Why does music have to convey an epiphany every time? Foreign-sounding chants have been exhausted in film OSTs to the extent that an aficionado would be hard put to distinguish between any two. They can't induce poignancy any more than "it's not you, it's me" can be construed as a phrase of comfort.

And for some reason, hackneyed phrases that are a callback to the world we live in are thrown in for comic relief - in 'Hellboy 2', it was two mutants getting drunk and "oh, boy"-ing over a sad song, in 'Avatar', it was a Paraplegic-Ex-Marine-Turned-Avatar going, "I was kinda hoping you'd say that".

The 3D makes for a good watch, and the mountains and trees of New Zealand have been used well, but this one fails to capitalise on the scope the third dimension offers. When you watch a film in 3D, you want to be IN it, and you want people and creatures attacking you, while you empathise with whatever character you are at the moment. There ARE a couple of times when that happens in 'Avatar', but there are times when the camera chooses to focus on the fear-filled eyes of the hero or tear-stained cheeks of the heroine, rather than the causes of those.

As for the visual effects, yes, quite obviously, they were great, but we've seen great before.



Watch if: You like looking at big trees, strange creatures, modern-civilisation-destroying-nature's-gifts stories, or nearly-naked Zoe Saldana, or you are wowed by visual effects of any kind.

Do Not Watch if: You want something new.

Relativity and the Ramayana

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian EXpress, on 12th December, 2009)

“Chabhi to... kho gayi. Teen char mahiney ke pehle.”

The fact that the platform official couldn’t meet my eyes was due entirely to his squint. I was shivering on a bench at Ayodhya, at 10:30 p.m., and being told the key to the waiting room had been lost months ago. The monkeys that were huddling together were looking at me in pity. And I glared at their furry bodies, wishing I weren’t so conscientious about my appointments at the salon.

My teeth chattering, I asked how many hours the train was late by.

The platform official beamed and said, “siraf teen-char gante.”

“WHAT!”

“Hanh, hanh,” he nodded, smiling, “you’re lucky today. Usually, it comes in the morning.”

I vaguely recalled having read something about Rama taking the entire population of Ayodhya along to Vaikuntha. I empathised at that moment with the people, who must have thought they were trotting along to a community bath at the Sarayu, only to be given the “ooh, good news! You’re all going to drown and come to Heaven!” line. Death by water, death from cold…not much to choose from there.

“The station master’s room is open if you want,” Mr. Can’t-Meet-Your-Eyes said, usefully, when the noise my teeth were making began to rival the cymbals a group of singing devotees was clashing at regular intervals.

“Yeh to pehle bataanaa chaahiye tha, na!” I snapped, and he stared after me as I hurried along to the door marked ‘STATION MASTER’, wondering whether I had actually uttered a grammatically correct Hindi sentence. I was dimly aware that I had left my parents on the platform, but figured that since their intention had been to lose themselves in the footsteps of God, I might as well leave them to it.

Our trip to Ayodhya had been timed quite to perfection. It was the day the Liberhan Commission Report was to be tabled, and the day after all hell had broken loose in Parliament after a media leak. Thanks to which, the entourage of guides chorusing “hum yahaan ke Brahmin hain. Pandhra rupai leythe hain” and promising to show us round, hadn’t been the most painful part of the journey. No, they lost ground to the security checks.

It is my personal belief that the people who conduct security checks are carefully selected from among India’s most sexually frustrated citizens – and on an occasion like this, they do their job so thoroughly that you can’t, in good conscience, wear white at your fantasy wedding. While being groped, poked and prodded with a ferocity that would put ‘eve-teasers’ to shame, I noticed that the security staff seemed to trust their hands far more than that strange black equipment that beeps three times on an average. They simply didn’t have any bomb detectors – on the day the report was being tabled! Of course, one could argue that bomb detectors aren’t particularly useful in spotting axes and hammers.

I flung open the door of the Station Master’s room, to be greeted by a blaze of saffron. Fifteen men stared, while the Saffron Man who had been given pride of place – the station master’s chair – gave me a disapproving look and then went on, “so Dhashrath died alone, just like Shravan’s parents. What do we learn from this? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Having satisfactorily linked Newton to the Ramayana, Saffron Man sat back on his chair and closed his eyes – the fifteen others followed suit. A few seconds on, a synchronised snoring session began, that would only be interrupted by the arrival of the train, four hours later.

As I yanked at the door of my compartment, wondering whether my children would abandon me at a pilgrimage centre someday, I realised it was locked from inside, and the Ticket Collector was snoring too.

What's Dew To You Will Always Find You

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, on 28th November, 2009)

This is a universal axiom, almost as sacred as Homer Simpson’s “Always make fun of those different from you” – there is nothing more depressing than waking up before the sun. Throughout my life, it has been a policy to wake up ten minutes before I’m required to be at work. I have mastered the technique of multi-tasking well enough to look perfectly presentable in that much time.

But a series of indescribable events led to my having to wake up at four in the morning on a regular basis for nearly a year. And there is nothing singularly more annoying at these times than that despicable category of homosapien known as ‘The Early Riser’.

My first encounter with this category was a former friend from college. The one time she stayed over at my place, she flung open the windows of my heavily-curtained room at seven in the morning, to let in the natural smoke-filled air and the early morning sounds of the mechanics at the shed next door banging away at components of cars.

“What…,” I said groggily, vaguely aware of a beam of hellish light penetrating my subconscious. That was the last word I was to ever utter to her.

The second specimen I met lived in my dorm at university. Another roommate and I made a habit of sitting in the heated kitchen with cups of tea until four in the morning to get through the cold London winters. Just as we were sinking into the conviction that Robert Browning was right when he said “God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World”, and getting ready for bed, a scourge would seep into the kitchen.

It was the aura of another roommate, who found it prudent to wake up in the middle of the night and cycle about twenty miles to the Thames to go rowing every other day. He would whistle his way to the kitchen, beam at us and say, “good morning, everybody!” I would shudder, and my soul roommate would grunt. Wordlessly, we would direct an ugly look at the Scourge and stagger to our rooms, as he opened the windows to breathe in the smoggy mist and revel in the acidic dew.

And then there’s my landlady. On the few days I don’t have to wake up at four in the morning, she does. Just as I put away my book, pat my pillow, fluff up my duvet and switch on the heater, she waddles to the bathroom and starts filling up water. As the sound of running water hitting plastic assaults my ears, the idea of a cold water bath in winter sends a convulsive shiver up my spine. And then she begins to call out to her husband that their daughter-in-law must be the laziest creature God ever took the pains to create – she wakes up at the Devil’s Hour of 6:00 a.m.

I spend hours in bed thinking up suitable punishments for these people. I have stopped praying for a reprieve – I believe, and I’m sure every sane human being would agree with me, that God has done His best to make mornings cruel. I sometimes wish one of those cars populated by whoo-girls and whoo-boys that blast past playing hip-hop music would stop near the Early Riser, spill out their occupants and have them spill out the contents of their night’s gastronomic excesses over the Early Riser. I wish the birds whose chirps the Early Riser wakes up so eagerly to hear would be so moved as to bless the latter.

But for my part, I’ve convinced my landlady that waking up before sunrise speeds up osteoporosis. My last few weeks have been water-on-plastic-bucket-free.

The Clique of the Frowny Baba

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, on 14th November, 2009)

“So why aren’t you doing the yoga-meditation course?” has apparently been the most-used sentence over the past few weeks in most corporate offices where I have sources.

The one industry that has benefited from the effects of recession is what one future legend (on whose proposed life and work I will shortly elaborate) calls the ‘pop philosophy jingbang’. As layoffs continue across the board, and the corporate world firmly persists in the belief that the recession is not over despite the stocks looking greener on the other side of the globe, the survivors of these layoffs are beginning to show symptoms of hypertension, disillusionment and premature aging.

And rather than hike up the salaries of these bedraggled survivors, corporates are spending huge amounts of money on new age gurus who are hired to impart the art of leaving gracefully, hyperventilating smoothly and dealing with being forced to assume embarrassing positions. While those who’ve not cut sorry figures yet aspire to sinewy ones, having foregone meaty paycheques, some of us who aren’t interested in aspirating techniques have been chalking up our own recession plans.

I happened to mention to a group of my friends in the media that I intend to become a disburser-of-secrets-to-a-peaceful-life when I have enough grey hairs on my head to pull that off. It turned out every one of them nursed this PoA. While we were making wisecracks about The Art, The Secret and The Hackneyed Phrase (“When you want something, the entire universe conspires yadda-yadda-yadda”), the Future Legend coined the phrase ‘pop philosophy jingbang’.

“Oh my God, he is perfect Baba material!” I said, to which The Mastermind of Our Clique said “yes, yes, he can just sit and frown. Now, all we need is a good name for him and for us.” After a few moments of deep contemplation, The Mastermind pronounced, “Frowny Baba” and then came up with the tagline, “Just have a brownie, baba.”

Our group, which goes by The Brownie Clique, has decided to conduct special courses on The Art of Leaving, and will cater exclusively to disillusioned-or-sacked corporate workers. (Our recently-laid-off former marketing-consultant-friends have told us that an exclusive mass audience is integral to the success of any venture.) The course will comprise three crucial components:

· Inhaling (smoke): the Frowny Baba will teach inductees into the course how to maximise the effects of a single cigarette (whose prices haven’t reduced despite a large percentage of consumers having been relieved of their corporate responsibilities).

· Forgetting (oneself): the Frowny Baba will send out teams of inductees to search out the cheapest and most effective brands of alcohol available. Inside information has indicated these liqueurs are known by the names of the gangs that brew them in little known jungles. Some of these brands are also known to expedite one’s passage into one’s next birth and a new life.

· Yo! Gah! : the Frowny Baba will induct signees into The Brownie Clique’s mantra. The “Yo!” and the “Gah!” are the two most used expressions when one is watching television. The first of these is usually used when someone gets in the way, while the second is most often used at the beginning of an ad break. Both are known to be very effective in relieving stress.

But our followers must keep in mind that consumption of water interferes with the destruction of the liver that is the aim of our Forgetting (oneself) component and therefore will be prohibited. And to state the obvious, all food except brownies is contraband in the Clique’s soon-to-be-established sprawling premises. For the moment, we are using our Facebook farms.

(With special thanks to The Mastermind, who will go by the name of Abhinav Sahay until his impending success, and Frowny Baba, who will stay anonymous by decree of our branding team.)

"Where Do You See Yourself Five Years From Now?"

It's the one question I've always wanted to hate. But it's hard for me to hate things, because I usually find the things I want to hate so hilariously stupid, they end up being funny. Yeah, from my last ex-man...umm, I'm not sure the macho gender fits because it was so effeminate it once confessed "sometimes I feel like the chick in this relationship" to which I couldn't stop myself from saying "yeah? What's that like?"... to colleagues who've got on my wrong side to women who flirt with the object of my affection to Harry Potter, my hatred turns into amusement somewhere along the way.

I've been at enough job interviews and scholarship interviews and university entrance interviews to be asked that one question that is the holy grail of all HR theorists, hundreds of times.

I've come up with a series of innovative and impressive answers to where I saw myself five years from now, for a couple of decades now. (Yes, of course there were these people who would pinch my obese cheeks and ask if I wanted to be an engineer like Daddy or a doctor like Mummy or a lawyer like Patti.)

Every single time, I've been wrong. Hell, how do I know where I see myself five years from now when I'm not sure what's around the corner a month from now? When I was trying to deal with a radio show host whom no one else in the station would work with, did I think I would end up about seven thousand kilometres away from her tantrums and receiving an award for my documentary a few months later? When I decided to humour this effeminate dude right before I left for Delhi, did I think it would write me the most ridiculous poem I've had the misfortune to read? When I finally dumped the effeminate dude in the middle of its temper tantrum about four months after I began to wonder what it was doing in my life, did I think I would meet someone who would make it impossible for me (me who has always preferred long-distance relationships) to leave a city that didn't have a beach?

I've not known when the most painful, most hilarious and most wonderful parts of my life were round the corner or about to slip into my past.

But there's always been an urge in me to leave something of me in this world before I moved on. Most people see that as the motive force to have children, but as a wise man once said, progeny are not so much the assertion of one's will to live on as the insistence of life on asserting itself. I myself was never keen on having children until about a year ago. The somethings of me I always wanted to leave behind then, are the brainchildren I dream of - the ones I keep cocooned in my head, nurse into birth and spill out on paper. I long to dress them up in thick sheets of printed paper and hard-bound covers with blurbs and praise all over them.

My fear of death has less to do with the manner in which I will die and my emotions at the moment of death than the work I will leave undone. The idea of a photograph in an obituary column in place of the tributes in edit pages and mournful news bulletins, would be the realisation of this fear of death.

In the race to do something that will make me ready to die at any moment without feeling that fear, I feel another fear creeping up on me. Do I have the confidence, at this moment, now, to go the distance? Can I create that perfect brainchild that will speak for me long after I am gone? That brainchild in whom people who know me will see me, and people who don't will imagine me?

The answer came to me last night, while I was talking about it to someone I fondly think of as Superman. Perhaps it is these moments of doubt that are the birth pangs of that brainchild. Perhaps it is only after the scum of the earth have seeped into your life that you recognise the best things in the world when they happen to you. Perhaps it is only after your confidence has been shaken that you find the energy to prove yourself. Long before Barack Obama made it a cliche, some of us knew "Yes, we can" every day of our lives. Some of us took it for granted that "Yes, we would." Some of us grew up knowing we could never be mediocre. Perhaps it is only when we feel the pull of mediocrity that we can resist with our true strength.

Isn't that what happened to Kal-El?

A Convenient Truth

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, dated 31st October, 2009)

There are some of us left, in this world that could end by 2012, who wish it would survive long enough for people to learn to nurture their neuroses rather than pour out their deep, dark confessions in an inexhaustible flow.

We don’t have roommates because we can’t bear to listen to them crib about boyfriends and parents. We start blogs in an effort to reduce human-to-human verbal contact. Our status on gtalk is nearly always ‘Invisible’. We were among the last to buy mobile phones and convert most of our incoming calls to messages that read, “Sorry I missed your call. Was in the shower. At a friend’s party now, text me if it’s important?”

Oh, we never go to parties, and Havana, Dublin and Q-BA are geographical names to us.

But to the world, we also have a titular moniker – “the good listeners.”

We never talk, and so we’re always called out to coffee breaks during office hours, so our colleagues can whine uninterrupted about their husbands, children, jobs, pimples, eyebrows, hair fall, receding hairlines, unrequited love etc..

Our best displays of uninterestedness have quite the opposite effect.

Display of uninterest: “I’m sorry, what?”
Response: “Yes, can you believe that! You heard right, he actually said that!”

Display of uninterest: (Makes poor attempt at hiding elaborate yawn and mumbles “sorry”)
Response: “I’ve been having hiccups all morning too. That means someone is thinking of you! Whom do you think it could be? In my case, it’s…”

Display of uninterest: (Begins detailed study of contours on the back of own palm.)
Response: “Oh, you do that too? You know, they say you can always tell a woman’s age by studying the back of her palm. And in our industry, it’s so important to look young. You know, but once, someone thought…”

And it spills over to the phone. Where most normal human beings’ unnatural silence would prompt enquiries as to the strength of the signal, disturbance on the line, soundness of one’s hearing etc. etc., the reticence of the “good listeners” is simply a foil to the outpourings of the interlocutor’s soul.

What’s even more annoying than the mega-serial-like histrionics of an interlocutor’s personal life is a ball-by-ball update of the subtle changes in the environs of the interlocutor.

There are these Compulsive Interlocutors who watch their phones like mousetraps. You send them a text apologising for not being available, and the next thing you hear is a ring.

“Hiiiiii! You’ve been ignoring me!” says the Compulsive Interlocutor.

“With good reason,” you reply, only half-ironically.

“Oh, I have so much to tell you. Yesterday…oh, Anjana has bought a new mobile phone. Anjana! Anjana!!! Come here…it’s kind of like mine, but you know, I think it’s a different colour…oh my God, they’re bringing new chairs into the office…show me your mobile…yeah, it’s kind of like mine, but it’s a different colour…let’s compare the…”

“Hey, why don’t you compare your panels and call me back later?”

“No, no, hang on a sec, I’ll get my hands free on…I’m talking to Nandini, and she’s getting irritated because I’m carrying on a parallel conversation…why do you think they’re bringing new chairs?...Yeah, the panel is different…”

But the magnitude of the problem struck me only recently, when a hitherto not-too-solicitous colleague texted me an enquiry as to whether I’d reached my vacation spot safely, and the statuses of my personal health and the health of my family.

My reply was followed by “Miss u a lot. Bad day @ ofc.”

It was at that moment that I took a stand for all Good Listeners across the world and texted back, “Don’t worry about office. Unhealthy to think about it when you’re away.”

The reply was a historical triumph: “Ya, u rt. Swtch off ur fone and relax.”

It's Time to Take That Call!

(Published in The Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, dated the 17th of October, 2009)

“Oh tumi he! Kiman dinor murot kotha patisu tumar logot. Kene asa? Ghorot bhal ne?”

The speaker was one of those almost unbelievably genial, typical nice guys everyone wishes the best for. The spoken-to was clearly a close friend, judging by the look of delight on his face. After pushing my linguistic sensitivities to their full potential, I deduced he had exclaimed that it had been ages since he had heard from the speaker, and was keen to be assured of the well-being of the kith and kin of the same.

“Ki???” his face took on a shocked, traumatised look that nearly stopped me from shoving pasta into my mouth, “Bupai moi eengrazi buji nepao… Tumar bikrir jojona tu bhal…Bhal lagil tumar logot kotha pati…Ebar axomiya xiki ley bhal dore kotha patim diya.”

And then the smile was back. It was the first time I had ever seen him look triumphant and – could it be?? – evil. “These insurance companies, man!” he said, by way of explanation, “I speak to them in Assamese these days, man. I told them I don’t know English, but their scheme is wonderful, and it was really nice talking, and maybe we can talk more once they learn Assamese.”

Telemarketers…sigh…well, e-mails replaced letters, mobiles replaced landlines, palmtops replaced those ancient computers that groaned into life and they replaced door-to-door salespeople. The door-to-door salespeople would, at least, give up at some point of the day thanks to the angry afternoon sun and irate siesta-takers. But the breed of telemarketers, sitting in their air-conditioned offices, manage to sound bright and happy irrespective of what time of day or night it is.

Inspired by Mr. Nice-Genial-Guy, I have recently taken to speaking in Tamil when I get calls that begin, “namaste ji. Nandni Kishen-ji se baat karna chahta hoon.”

“Aanh sollunga,” I answer, “illenga, adhu en peyar illai. Nandini Krishnan.”

“Ji?”

I use my most obliging tone, and keep the conversation going, while my interlocutor gets bewildered, panicky and finally, hostile. “Madam, you can i-speak Inglish?” one of them barked to me.

It was the first time a telemarketer had displayed symptoms of human behaviour.

“Yes, I can, thank you, were you selling a Spoken English course?” I responded sweetly, and then hung up.

I had underestimated the constitution of these creatures, though. Encouraged by the dozen English words he had heard, the hostile telemarketer went on to make fourteen attempts at calling me (albeit from the same number) through the day.

Speaking Spanish worked slightly better, though. My “¡hola!¿quién?...Lo siento, pero no hablo ingles.¿Habla español?” (hello, who is this? I’m sorry, but I don’t speak English. Can you speak Spanish?) was met by a long silence, and then a telemarketer telling a colleague in an awestruck tone that I was speaking French. But I went on to receive five more calls from curious telemarketers trying to figure out which language I was speaking in.

It was while contemplating further evasive action that I came across that rare genius that makes you want to take a moment’s break from the rigours of life and pay obeisance in full.

I overheard a friend say, “yes, I am very interested in a loan…see, I am unemployed at the moment…Uh, I travel by bus…Well, I am leaving for the UK to try and find a job soon. I need a loan of three lakhs for my expenses here. I will pay it back once I come back from the UK…yes…yes…ok, I’ll wait for your call. But please don’t let me down, I’m depending on you for the loan…I’ll call you back at this number by five…hello? Hello?”

(With many thanks to a close Assamese friend who chose to remain anonymous, and a one-time schoolmate who gets too much publicity for his own good anyway.)