Positively Lowbrow

2007-11-16T21:15:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about writing a post titled The Slacker Ethic but I just couldn't be bothered.

2007-11-03T00:41:00.000-07:00

I know I should probably write something myself, but how do you compete with this?

2007-09-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Rock Paper Seizure

One recent Saturday, I left the house at one in the pm even though I'd planned to stay home and do jack all day. Riddhi had called asking if I wanted to go to school with her and seeing as I hadn't been to good ol' Jamnabai Narsee since the reuinion three years ago, I figured I'd go do some lines off the principal's desk, or at least pee in the staff room.

We parked in the middle of the street and walked in authoritatively. Riddhi teaches speech and drama there and I was "with her". Pale-faced six-year-olds ran after us tugging at her skirt as I tried to stare them off. Riddhi went to teach her class while I loafed around the premises marveling at the changes.

The chem lab's been poshed up. That is to say that there is now an illustrated set of 16 rules by the doors. The one at the bottom left says "no smoking" and the picture shows a bearded kid setting fire to an experiment with a lit ciggie in his mouth. What is this, Hippie High? No wonder they call it Jamnabai Charasi. I really don't see what the school's problem is with smoking anyway. The fucker who started it made all his money flogging lung cancer. The inscription on his bust on the ground floor says something along the lines of "a self made man who started Golden Tobacco and Golden Chemicals. His ideals live on in the service of society".

Between the first and second floor in the west wing, some enthu cutlet had put up a big collage about climate change. At each one of the four corners was a black and white print-out -– artily burnt around the edges –- of Ralph Wiggum with his finger up his nose. It read, in two million point comic sans, GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL.

But I digress. I went up the IB wing on the new fifth and sixth floors, was duly impressed by our school's ability to con parents into paying many lakhs for the illusion of their kids getting a "better" education, and then duly fucked off. First stop, beer at Sea View with Ghosalkar. Next, monthly visit to Janine's folks.

I rang the doorbell and Janine's mum said, "You've come just in time to take the kittens." Then she told me an achingly sad story about an ill kitten who had fallen down a crack behind the cupboard on which the litter lived. Janine's mum took her to be put down but she gave one feeble little kick, which convinced the vet she had the will to live. They put her on a drip, wrapped her in a blanket and watched. She promptly died.

Janine's dad said he was very depressed because he'd been asked to be in a play that wasn't happening anymore. When I laughed at the idea of Darius in a musical, he looked up from his computer, glared at me and asked what I though was so damn funny.

Fuck, I didn't know the guy was serious.

"Serious? I used to be in musicals all the time before you jokers were born. I remember, I used to come home late from rehearsal and sit on this chair –- this very chair -– and eat my dinner. Janine was only a year or so and she'd sit in my lap and I'd ask her 'why do you love your daddy?' and she'd say 'I lub your hair' and now I have no fucking hair."

Her mum said Kazan, Janine's brother, was born all hairy. "He was a green baby!" Then they both reminisced about going to some Worli disco called Hell in the old days. She went with her boyfriend, said uncle. He wasn't my boyfriend, I just had a massive crush on him, said aunty. And I had a massive crush on you, said uncle.

Anyway, so aunty and her crush were standing outside Hell, smoking a cigarette when some goon came up to them and asked the guy if his name was Chickoo. "Chickoo?" said the crush incredulously. "I'm not Chickoo."

"You're not Chickoo?" repeated the thug.

"I'm not Chickoo," said aunty's beau.

The thug obviously wasn't the sort to take a man at his word because he pulled out a knife and slashed the crush's stomach to ribbons.

"Can you imagine?" said uncle. "Here I am, with a huge crush on Sonja, and I have to take her and her huge crush to hospital and on top of that, he was bleeding all over the back of my car. I had to get it washed."

Aunty asked if I wanted a beer. "Yes, please," I said, like the well-mannered boy I've been brought up to be.

"NO! You're not giving him beer at four in the afternoon. Not in my house. Over my dead body! Give him tea." Later, after the episode, both uncle and aunty asked if that's what happens when I have tea instead of beer.

After a long discussion about whether to give me brewed tea or boiled tea, I finally got my chai, ate some biscuits aunty's mum had made and made like a tree. ("Was it the biscuits? Did you eat too many biscuits?")

Later that evening, I met Riddhi again and we went off to Razz. This was this first time in many years I'd been to Razz. Independence Rock elims were on and Riddhi was one of the judges. The previous night had been a fucking disaster. Hard Rock Café, 1000-buck cover, full of chuts of every description. That's not I-Rock: that's watered down, commercialised, sold out to the man, New India bullshit man. A little
beer costs 150, people have stupid emo haircuts and wear trendy, pre-faded t-shirts and you can't drink in their stupid souvenir shop. It's a fucking bar. Why can't you drink in the goddamn shop? And why the fuck can't I get a bill when I ask for it? Madarchod.

Razz was different. Here it was 150-rupee cover (which bought you a big beer), it was full of ugly, sweaty, hairy kids and the smell of pot hung heavy. The gig was great. I'm not a fan of metal, but the two bands I saw kicked ass. They had energy, they got the crowd going and they were pretty tight outfits. Now this was the I-Rock we all know and love: some kid broke a couple of ribs in the moshpit, some guy got so drunk he fell down and had to be carried to his car and some schmuck had a seizure and landed up in hospital.

That schmuck was me.

Here's how it feels to have a seizure: "What the fuck?" and "My head hurts."

This is followed by "I can't see."

Okay, enough with the single sentence paras.

Now here's what really happened. The guitarist of the last (and best) band, Scribe, was cutting a birthday cake. I was leaning against the bonnet of his car waiting for the festivities to end so that I could head with Riddhi and Mane. I think the plan was to get some beers and go sit in Janine's garden (next door).

As we stood there, the guy who'd had too much to drink fell down in the distance. I didn't see him because he was flat on the ground and surrounded by people. A little later, I caught a glimpse of him as he was being carried to a car and all of the sudden my stomach fell out of my body, the world started going black and I desperately needed air. I walked four steps up and down. This did not help. I had an
inexplicable feeling that that guy could have been me. The reason this is inexplicable is because not only can I handle my booze really well, I'd also only consumed four beers over a period of ten hours that day. I leaned against the bonnet of the car again.

The next thing I remember is vague black outlines, a lot of yelling and feeling like I was falling. Not falling like I falling to the ground, but falling like falling down a deep, deep hole. I remember feeling like I was trying, unsuccessfully, to wake up from a nightmare and realising it wasn't a nightmare, it was real. So this is how it feels to be dying, I thought.

The outlines began to take shape. Somebody put something white in my mouth. Like in a movie, where people crowd the frame from above, I saw a circle of heads hovering over me. Mane later described the look on my face upon my return to consciousness as a "typical Leo expression".

"What's going on man?" I had no idea why I was on the floor, why there was a handkerchief in my mouth and why I was surrounded by people. I felt sheepish, embarrassed even, until I realised I hadn't had enough to drink to pass out.

Mane helped me up and the world went black again. Riddhi, who'd been peeing and still regrets missing all the action, returned from the loo and unlocked her car, into which I was deposited. Some guy asked if I'd been drinking and then nearly put a pill in mouth until I told him I had. I later found out that this guy was the guitarist's friend, a
doctor, and he was the one who told Riddhi and Mane that an inaugural seizure at age 24 is definitely not a good sign. Sweating like a fucking Englishman in The Poonjab, I said I was fine and apologized for causing a scene. Obviously, I wasn't fine. To begin with, I still couldn't see a damn thing.

Riddhi started the car and asked if I wanted to go home. Of course not, I mumbled, always ready for an afterparty or, at the very least, a chance to regain my sight. We drove for a bit until we came to the gate of what appeared to be a beautiful hospital building fronted by a gigantic quadrangle of flowers, divided into four by two pathways. (It later turned out the building is concrete and hideous and the garden is a tiny circle of weeds.) Mane and his friend Tara spoke in hushed tones in the back seat and then ran off somewhere. "Um, is something wrong?" I asked Riddhi.

"Yes," she said, turning melodramatically towards me. "You."

Fuck, am I bleeding? Am I dying? What the fuck, man?

So she checked and I wasn't bleeding, which worried me even more. Once they finally coerced me into going in for "just a quick checkup", I relaxed. Until the night resident said, "If it's happened once it's going to happen again. We need to keep him under observation overnight."

No chance boss. I'm not staying here.

Half an hour later, some nurse very melodramatically ripped rakhis off my wrist so she could stick a fucking IV in me. So much melodrama. This whole thing was beginning to get damn filmy. My mum arrived and gave me a big hug, doing her best not to cry. My dad stood beside her, stoic as dads are wont to be. I said, "Dudes, I just fell down and bonked my head: it happens." As I spoke, I already knew that my life as I knew it was over. Glucose, B-complex, Epsolin, intra-muscular somethingortheother in my ass, a pillow made of solid granite and a couple of very worried parents later, I was out like a fucking light.

The next morning, I was woken up by a neurologist in jogging shorts. I don't know if it was just the drugs but I could have sworn he was warming down while asking my mum what the problem was. Anyway, he said I needed an EEG and an MRI (I don't know what the three-letter acronyms stand for either, I just do what I'm told) and since it was Sunday, I'd have to spend another day in hospital. Fuck. What a rip-off.

Being in hospital is great once you resign yourself to it. Every now and then somebody pokes their head through the door and offers to serve you in some manner or the other. Tea? Breakfast? Shave? Sponge bath? (No thanks, you hairy fuck. Where are the hot nurses? This isn't what I signed up for.) There's a bell by the bed and every time you press it, some chickie comes running up and asks what's wrong. Man, hotels don't have such great service.

The other fun thing about being in hospital was calling my boss on Sunday evening.

"Er, boss, I won't be coming in for the next few days on account of I'm in hospital."

"What!? Why!?"

"I dunno. I had a seizure."

"What!? Why!?"

"I dunno."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Who can say? I'm heavily sedated."

There are, of course, the downsides. I was supposed to get an EEG, for which they need a freshly washed head. Mum and I figured that instead of bathing and messing about with the IV and all that rubbish, I might as well go next door to her hairdresser's and get a nice shampoo. When she suggested it to the doc on duty, the doc looked at my mum like she was insane. "Ma'am, this is a hospital." Yeah man, but it's not a fucking prison. Later, I tried to pop down for a stroll and a smoke. A nurse caught me by the collar and threw me back into my room. Then she stuck another needle in my ass, just so I get the message. Jeez.

Talking about needles, my arms still hurt from the clotting around where they put the IVs. The veins have gone all hard and black. I hope I don't get fucking gangrene. That would be a real tragedy.

Riddhi and Mane came by later and cheered me up with tea, nachos, an apple and bad jokes about the Seizure Sisters, Seizure's Palace and Julius Seizure. There was also something about being a good fit but I missed the set-up on that one. Then they went for "a walk". Fuck you, I said. I have better drugs.

I lied of course. My drugs sucked. Even Valium, which I had such high hopes for, was rubbish. Not only was it not fun, it didn't even fucking knock me out. Why are none of the drugs they give you in hospital any fun? Why can't they at least add some fun side effects to cheer you up and make you forget the fact that you're in hospital? No
fucking consideration, man.

I slept a lot throughout all this, so I'm not sure when the EEG guy came by but that was a regular riot. He showed up, attached a bunch of wires to my head with silly putty and then looked at my brainwaves on a laptop. It was like the Nutty Professor meets Frankenstein. I mean seriously, who the hell sticks electrodes on someone's scalp as a serious medical procedure? Fortunately the MRI was a little more modern. They stuck me in a big plasticy tunnel and played trance loops without the music. Only the random ching ching beats. The results were great: you can see my eyes and optic nerves. On the downside, the neurologist said my cerebellum has atrophied. Stupid brain.

Nobody can figure out why the hell this thing happened. The quack at the hospital said it was a case of alcohol withdrawal. Dude, I'd had FOUR beers –- pay attention. The neurologist said that if it happens again it might be epilepsy but that's unlikely and anyway, the tests were all clear. Apparently, it was idiopathic, which is doctorese for "we don't have a fucking clue". Janine said, "They're fucking idiopathic, man."

I'm back home now and I've changed my lifestyle dramatically. In the words of riddhi's ex, Akshay, who's a doctor, I should "just chill on the chilling man", which is a helluva lot more painful than the seizure, falling on my head or being in hospital. I liked drinking and smoking very much, I really did. Having to cut down is like having my favourite activity taken away from me. But I find I have a fuckload of spare time on my hands (hence this long post), which is good I suppose. Also, I've discovered that I'm now saving a whole load of money so maybe I can pay off all my debts and go traveling again. Man, who knew drinking and smoking was so bad for you.

2007-08-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

First, apologies.

No, fuck that. If you don't like this shit, fuck off.

Right, getting on with it then, I've been damn lazy. I wanted to write about having a garden in Bombay. Three friends do, two who live close by but they're abroad and one who lives here but halfway to fucking Poona, man (Chembur). Never got around to that and now the moment's gone.

Then, I went to Delhi, figured out what I want to do when I retire and wanted to write about that. This basically involved a lot of bumming around at the India International Centre, talking walks in the garden, working on my memoirs and other assorted faggy shit in the same kidney (look it up, that's a real phrase). I couldn't be fucked to write that either. I reason that if I'm too bored to write something, nobody's going to want to read it.

Then I contemplated writing some deep shit about the human condition and the essential pointlessness of it all. But I figured it was futile.

Which brings me to the psuedo-apology above. This post consists of three emails exchanged between Charis Charalambous Jason Louca the Second and myself in all their (mostly) unedited glory. Backgound: CCJL2 came to Bombay and stayed with Janine over the new year. In the course of his visit, he attended parties, got drunk with Janine, Riddhi, me and other people who happened to drop by J's place, and gave Rs 500 to a beggar. That last incident led to a minor chase, much running, jumping into a taxi, more running (think Terminator 2), and finally, Janine bonking Charis over the head for spoiling our beggars. Then we all went and got drunk somewhere.

I've had the letters vetted by an outside observer. Her opinion is that they're funny even if you don't know the characters. At some point, I shall ask ol' CCJL2 if he minds that they're now in the public domain.

If you find yourself getting bored, skip directly to the third one and then comeback for context.

Okay, enough chit chat, Chet.

----------------------------------------------------------

On Tuesday, January 23, 2007, at 04:23AM, xxxxxxx@aol.com wrote:
Leo 'Boss',

This is just a quick email for you 'my friend' just to say a big thankyou for showing me and the other 'ferengis' around whilst i was in india (i include janine as a 'ferengi' in this statement as she seemed to know as much about sight-seeing as Steve Wonder did, she has unfortunately been well and truly anglicised) but anyway many thanks again for all your time and effort in showing us the interesting and not so interesting parts of mumbaii.

I have to say that i enjoyed my time immensely in india, and that i shall miss the dives and the eunuchs the most as we don't seem to have as many in London. And of course Leo 'Boss' i shall miss you 'my friend' and all your idiosyncrasies. Janine told me that you were very much lacking a 'role-model' or someone 'to look up to' in life, and i'm very glad that i could be the one to fill that void for you. And despite the fact that i may never see you or india again, i hope that i have very much left my impression on you both, in the same way as American Airlines left it's 'impression' on the Twin Towers. In leaving i say to you that im still on the lookout for a 'bling' pair of earrings and a brightly coloured jacket for you, so that you may one day look as cool i do. And also if you could pass on my thanks onto rhiddi as well i would be most grateful, and that i shall remember her for her occasional 'mal' smoking and careful driving, and that she was well and truly a 'cool-chick' (don't worry leo i think your cool too). And that i wish her good luck in her 'true calling' which i believed was writing children's books, or obtaining her own marijuana plantation. till the next time Leo 'dude', which may never be.
My gratitude.

Charis Charalambous Jason Louca the Second.

--------------------------------------------------------

From: xxxxxxxxx@mac.com
To: xxxxxxx@aol.com
Sent: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 1.22pm
Subject: Re: (no subject)

charris the two,

i was most gratified to recieve your email, for it is in your kind words that the beauty of humanity lies. had i know what a huge impact you would make upon mineself and mine lifeness, mine very lifeforce, i wouldst no doubt have strived/strove/striven to meet you in the few short months that i and you and j and 7 million other people shared a common physical construct known to world's wider populace as london, but known to us, the residents (whether permanent, temporary or transient), simply as "that ol' shithole".

you can imagine my joy then, when you visited mine very own shithole, this sinking island of 18m people we lovingly refer to as 'the dump'. it was, of course, entirely my pleasure to be honoured such and to be given that once in a lifetime opportunity to take you on a mind-numblingly dull tour of old colonial architecture - the sort you have in spades. i must apologise, however, for the barbaric acts of mine countrymen and citywomen, who, having seen in you and in your lavender/peachish jacket and your profoundly shiny earrings, and your oversize cross - that tribute to your faith - an aura, the sign of a true messiah, flung themselves upon you and your mercy, to the extent of chasing your chariot down one colaba backstreet, babe in arms and all that.

I can only hope and wish and pray that one day our little burg will be so privileged, so lucky, so honoured, as to receive Your Charrisness once more, and to be given the chance to shower upon the Charalambous, all our love and human excrement once again.

i remain, as ever, yours faithfully,
Leo
Oh, and about the earrings and jacket you wish to present to me, all i can say is a humble "bling it on, baby".

-------------------------------------------------------

Leo my friend,

You had sent this message to me previously and i had always been meaning to reply to it. But due to unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances my computer managed to befall a rather ill-fated end (I kicked the shit out of it). And hence i was unable to reply to your email. And since there is no time like the present, i decided to wait three weeks before getting round to replying to this one.

I hope this email does find you exceptionally well and that you have maintained your reputation as the young stalwart of bombays timeout magazine. I can assure you that all is well in the 'Britain the Great', and that the english people march the streets with great impunity, with only the constant barrage of rape, murder and terrorist attacks to occupy their trouble-free minds.

The greeks on the other hand are not thriving as we once did. Since the english are all fundamentally racist, they now seem to find it impossible to differentiate between us (the greeks) and any other race that inhabits this island (on a recent trip to a soccer match i was called a 'paki' and told to 'fuck off back to where i came from')

Tragically humous and olive sales are down, and the pitta bread industry is expericing a real low (against 'raised' expectation, 'half-baked' ideas, lack of 'dough', and any other bread joke you care to mention)

This of course has caused real consternation in the greek community, with numerous attempts by community 'elders' (old guys with moustaches) to improve matters. The fear being that if 'the english' start to tire of bread,olives and humous our need for being in the country will be made obsolete and we shall have to return back to our island in the sun, which ironically will be full of english people.

The most exciting thing that has happened since my returning from Mumbaii is i grew a ponytail; which i believed to be the absolute height of fashion. Unfortunately Janine in particular had other ideas and continuously mocked my appearance wherever i went. To the point that i could take the mental torture no more and had the pony-tail i.e 'the extension of my soul' removed forever.

I miss india and its inhabitants greatly and i swear to return again one day (though i fear that there will be many with fingers and toes crossed hopeing i do not) and the true gravity of my desire to return only hit the moment the jet airways plane landed at heathrow airport . I now realise how unfulfilling london truly is, where the girls are not as pretty and the eunuchs are conspicuous by their absence. So leo my friend i hope you realise how great bombay actually is.

I finish this email by saying i wish you well, and that you may one day attain a 'level of cool' that would make you acceptable in cyprus. Also could you also send my kindest regards to Rhiddi and also to janine's parents (the likelihood is that they may not remember me, or more to the point that they wish not to, so could you remind them of 'the hairy greek with earrings and mulitcoloured jackets that imposed himself on their lovely home, wishes them very well) and leo 'boss' i promise to send a 'care' package to you with janine on her return home, which will be filled with all manner of 'bling' and other hideous shiny things. Take care my friend.

Respectfully yours
charis Charalambous Jason Louca the second.

And now, if you could all rise for the Greek national anthem:

Σὲ γνωρίζω ἀπὸ τὴν κόψι
τοῦ σπαθιοῦ τὴν τρομερή,
σὲ γνωρίζω ἀπὸ τὴν ὄψι
ποὺ μὲ βία μετράει τὴ γῆ.
Ἀπ’ τὰ κόκκαλα βγαλμένη
τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὰ ἱερά,
καὶ σὰν πρῶτα ἀνδρειωμένη,
χαῖρε, ὦ χαῖρε, Ἐλευθεριά!

which is to say

Se gnorízo apó tin kópsi
tu spathiú tin tromerí,
se gnorízo apó tin ópsi,
pu me vía metrái ti yi.
Ap' ta kókkala vgalméni
ton Ellínon ta ierá,
ke san próta andhrioméni,
khére, o khére, Eleftheriá!

2007-07-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

I’m bummed out.

Last night, I went for dinner with four very smart people. Not rocket scientist smart or maths wiz smart but knowing what the score is, making the connections and understanding shit smart.

I barely said a word all evening. Occasionally I thought of a feeble pun or insightful observation of the sort that I could pull off it was just me and one of them, but with an audience of four, there was no chance I was going to say a damn thing unless I was absolutely certain it wasn’t entirely daft. Very intimidating this stuff.

An example:
Smart dude 1: Wasn’t MN Roy in Mexico with Trotsky?
Smart dude 2: No, no, wayyy before Trotsky. He founded the Mexican Communist Party.
Smart dude 1: Oh yeah, Then he had a falling out with Lenin.

Whaddafux? How the hell do you people know all this stuff, man?

If it sounds lame, that’s only because I haven’t given any context, so don’t get all self-righteous and begin feeling good about yourself. You pale in comparison to these fellows as well dude.

As I heard them go on, all the while spooning what I thought was good ol’ aloo but turned out be fucking baingan, I toyed with the idea of never reading non-fiction again. Or the papers. Or anything apart from pulp, really. What’s the point? These guys, none of whom burn brain cells on as regular basis as I do -– or at all -– know far more than I ever will. So why bother?

In the course of writing this, I looked up this MN Roy fellow –- nothing elaborate, just wikipedia -– and landed up reading the entire thing and wondering how and why I’ve never heard of him before. I encourage you to go to the site and check it out. It’s quite fascinating.

Suddenly all the cynicism has gone away. Man, this is not how this post was supposed to end.

How fucking left-liberal/agnostic (wishy-washy) of me.

For the record, I nicked the image from some chick's MySpace page. The image originally linked to something called Dia

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that we studied MN Roy in school. Pretty much everyone I have related this story to has said "You don't know MN Roy?"(right after they expressed astonishment at my inability to differentiate between two completely different vegetables). Look, I'm sorry, I don't. Get over it.

2007-07-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

“Will we fly? Will we swim? Will we get richer? Will we find space? The 1990s are upon us and a new decade must mean new trends, new people, new happenings. The ’80s seemed like years of indefinite change, years without a proper description, but it could be that we are still too close to them to tell. The ’90s surely will be different […] Here, we take a look –- sometimes irreverent, sometimes serious –- at what the coming decade might offer.”

So begins Bombay magazine’s January 1990 cover story. Predictions included “The mega boom at the stock exchange will have more shares spiraling upwards”, the political heavyweights were predicted to be Sharad Pawar and Bal Thackeray, cinema was meant to get more sophisticated, the media business was set to explode (but it was also optimistically hoped that it would “become more serious and committed”), and Hafeez Contractor was forecast to be “building his futuristic monoliths by the dozens”.

Shirley Bassey's "History repeating" just came up on iTunes. Creepy.

At a symposium called “Bombay –- the next 150 years” organised by the Times of India, RK Laxman said “the sewage, the flooded railway tracks, the uprooted telephone cables will still be there” in the next 40 years. That was 17 years ago.

I was at the Times of India archive last year researching some shit about the early 1990s and everything in the papers then sounded exactly like it does today. We were all whining about precisely the same things, Bush was president, there was a war in Iraq, Bombay was a mess, people were bemoaning the trivialisation of the media. I don’t get it. I realise the French came up with all that Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose bullshit, but it’s still pretty hard to come to terms with the fact that nothing really changes. We have the external indications of progress -- more money, greater choice for consumers, a large middle class, a thriving economy -- but at the most basic levels, things haven’t changed at all. We still have poverty and malnutrition and overburdened, crumbling even, civic infrastructure. What the fuck man? What's the fucking point? It's been nearly two decades -- 16 years of an open economy and much cashflow, but what does that all mean?

It means you now pay five times as much as you used to to watch a film, it means you're treated like a terrorist every time you attempt to step into a cinema hall, it means that India has finally figured out what makes the west the west and has gone full-throttle towards a culture of consuming. The way the capitalist system works is growth. Companies can't continue to make the same amount of money year after year. If their profit projections don't go up, their stock falls. So every day, every company is trying to convince us that we don't have enough. We need to buy more. We need to consume more. We need to help their growth, spur the economy, keep money flowing. We need to do our national fucking duty by going out to giant steel and glass boxes and buying clothes and groceries and pre-packaged food so that India can be like the countries we try so desperately to emulate. Go shopping. Do it for India.

2007-06-28T02:44:00.000-07:00

My job

People at my office clearly have nothing to do with their time. The lovely and charming Jana spent her week making a South Park-based comic strip about the office, which I present here with her blessing.

By the by, if you think it's self-indulgent to post something about my job, which most of you probably don't care about and might not find the humour in, may I point you towards Janine's hugely entertaining blog, which is solely about her art school critiques and her love for her tutor(s?).

<---(That's me.)

2007-06-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

I have inherited many wonderful things from my mother and one truly awful defect: like her, I have the memory of a doorknob.
To help me remember errands, birthdays and minor epiphanies, I carry in my pocket a small, brown notebook. In going through these notebooks today, I found no list of errands, no birthday reminders and not one epiphany. What I found instead was that my friends (and I) are idiots and we say loads of stupid things.

Karan on his love for Chinese women
They said Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai but they didn’t say anything about the women.

Musaed on his preferred company
The only people I get are people who don’t get people

Nandini on China Wok’s menu
These value meals are always expensive

Leo on remembering stuff
I forgot the mnemonic aid.

Karan on mistakes
In life, no one will remember your Ajoobas.

Leo on City Limits, Outlook’s rubbish Bombay magazine
Man, this is the badliest written thing ever.

Leo on clothing
This is why I never wear white. I never know when I’ll land up at the Ghetto.

Riddhi on nothing in particular
If you bring a horse to the water… (dramatic pause) …he’s going to drink it if it’s beer.

Ashley on frottage
Fake fucking is so much fun, man. (contemplative pause.) It’s the best!

Sheldon explaining Sydney's toaster building's unusual nickname
The reason it looks like a toaster is because on the other side, it looks like a toaster.

Riddhi on the crowd at Henry Tham’s
Riddhi (surveys the crowd, then pronounces loudly): I can’t see a single hot guy or chick here.
Leo: Stop yelling man
Riddhi: Who cares man. They’re too busy not being hot.

Akshay on the joys of studying medicine
Leo: So what drugs do you recommend?
Akshay: I don't recommend drugs. (pause for effect.) I prescribe them.

Sheldon on theology
Jesus was English, man. I'm telling you.

More Janine-isms

2007-05-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Celibacy is no joke. Mine, less so.

I lie. It’s a huge joke. Especially on Janine’s blog. But I finally cracked it. Lesbians are the way to go.

On my second (and also last) night in Melbourne, Mansha and I went to a drag king show at the Opium Den, a (lesbian?) club near Fitzroy. Or in Fitzroy. Hell, I don’t even know what the fuck Fitzroy is or if that’s really where I was; it just sounds familiar, is all. The show was most excellent, with numerous performances by women who dressed like men and lip-synched to cheesy pop songs. The only anomaly was a drag queen, whom I would have expected to be at a drag queen show, but maybe being a man who identifies as a woman gave him some leeway. But then he should have been dressed as a woman dressed as a man, if you get my drift.

In retrospect, I suspect that is exactly what happened to me. It happened as I was attempting (in vain, mostly) to get the bartender to give me a drink (no, I am not underage; yes, that hand-written, laminated booklet is a real passport; yes, I know it’s not fancy but we’re a third-world nation with a large workforce – we can afford to pay people to do the jobs you get machines to do and besides, don’t you think it adds a nice personal touch to the largely inhuman process of international travel?). A pudgy, little dyke came up to me, interrupting this fascinating but pointless exchange with the barkeep, and said, “Hey, we have the same hair.” This was not strictly true, since my hair was (and continues to be) definitely more out-of-control and most likely, far dirtier.

“Indeed we do,” I said, the very picture of charm (to say nothing of dashing good looks, sparkling wit and immense cool).

“So, are you here for the show?” she asked.

“Indeed I am,” I said (not really, but I don’t remember what I said).

“Are you having a good time?” she asked. I reassured her that I was having a smashing time and then went back to trying to order drinks.

“So…” said the pudgy little girl. I shall never know what she was about to say, because that was when I achieved a minor breakthrough with the barkeep. He finally stopped bugging me about ID and deigned to give me one of the two drinks I had asked for.

I asked for another drink and looked back at the girl, quite pleased with myself. I had my beer, and girls were coming up to me. Even if she was pudgy, not particularly appealing and, naturally, gay, they (well, one) were coming up to me. The magnitude of this cannot be stressed enough. (A related rant, one that’s begging to be written, is about the first question I get whenever I return from abroad. Namely, “Did you get any action?” Let me now, once and for all, set the record straight: NO. I did not get any action on my vacation, I never have, and most likely never will. Contrary to popular opinion, white women do not sit around their semi-detached suburban homes anxiously awaiting the next shipment of brown men with whom they can have consensual, uncommitted, animal sex.)

“Who’s that for?” she asked. I pointed out Mansha, to my right. “Oh,” she said, and then to Mansha, “Hello.”

Mansha greeted her enthusiastically and then the little girl went away.

In contemplating the events of the evening – described here with a disgraceful lack of detail thanks largely to the three beers, two Jack and cokes, half a bottle of red, one G&T, one Pimms and lemonade, two scotch, two surprise me, another beer and two glasses of champagne consumed by me the previous day – I surmised that the pudgy little muff-diver might have been hitting on me. Now, I’m the first to admit my inexperience in being hit on, mostly because no one ever does and I’m generally too oblivious to notice if they do, but I’m fairly certain that was what happened.

What worries me is why. She was clearly gay, and I wasn’t at my most manly. I was, in fact, clean-shaven (which, if you are familiar with the 16-odd strands of facial hair I refer to as a beard, shouldn’t matter very much), my hair was calm and, honestly, a bit gay, and in what I consider a masterful stroke of irony considering the venue, I was wearing a black t-shirt that said “I [heart] My Vagina”. Being brown and clad thus, coupled with being present at a bar that wouldn’t generally be on the average Indian tourist’s itinerary, leads me to believe that she either thought I was a somewhat masculine girl, a girl who identified as male or worst of all, a man who identified as female and, given that evening’s programme, decided to dress like a man.

All horribly complicated, I know, but the point is this: if I can fool one lesbian, perhaps I can fool more. And they won’t find out until it’s far too late. Muahahahaha.

Androgyny is no joke. Yet.

2007-05-15T02:51:00.000-07:00

The problem with returning from vacation is that the only thing you want to do is go right back on vacation. All that guff about how it'll rejuvenate you and make you more enthusiastic about work is somewhat inaccurate.

But why miss Sydney when you have Andheri.

[This picture was filched from Anarchytect's blog without his permission. Sorry, dude.]

2007-04-12T03:01:00.000-07:00

First Charles M Schulz, then Douglas Adams, now him.
What a fucking shame.

2007-04-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

My school makes me so proud (pics to follow, as soon as i find some appropriate ones)

From the Mumbai Mirror's cover story today
Jamnabai Narsee School 'Marks' Unruly Students

Sets aside 50 per cent marks for discipline to tame delinquent behaviour. Teachers have complained it's becoming near impossible to teach in class

Alarmed by a string of serious cases of indiscipline, Jamnabai Narsee School in Vile Parle, one of the city's most prestigious institutes, has decided to set aside 50 per cent marks for just discipline, a first among schools in Mumbai.

The decision, which will have to be ratified by the ICSE board, was taken at a staff meeting Thursday last after teachers complained that it had become almost impossible for them to teach in classes because of the students' delinquent behaviour.

"Teachers are heckled in the class. Sometimes they are even threatened. Clashes between rival groups is now common. Ever heard of ragging in schools? You must visit Jamnabai Narsee," said a parent.

There have been a string of serious cases of indiscipline on the part of Jamnabai Narsee students. Just last month, six students were suspended for not allowing teachers to teach in the class. One of the school's students was involved in a bomb hoax call in November. The call delayed a Lufthansa flight by around four hours. Two of the infamous J Boys gang that defaced cars and compounds walls with graffiti too were ex-students of Jamnabai Narsee.

The situation now has come to such pass that just three days back the school management asked three teachers to quit for failing to control classrooms. Most of Jamnabai Narsee students come from rich families. Many film stars’ children also study here.

A teacher, who did not wish to be identified, said suspensions and other disciplinary actions have not worked. “Now, we have decided to strike where it hurts. If students losing marks for bad behaviour, they will have no option but to clean up their act,” he said. While school principal J Vas refused to speak, saying she was not interested in discussing the matter, a former teacher said indiscipline among students has been a serious problem with Jamnabai Narsee for long. A couple of years back, a group of students had attempted to mix phenyl in the school's drinking water stock. A serious tragedy was averted as the contamination was detected in time.

Though details of how the 50 per cent marks earmarked for discipline in classes I to VII will be awarded has not been decided, a source said the school has broadly identified three categories — maintenance of notebook, uniform and behaviour.

The school will, however, have to seek clearance from ICSE Board, before the punitive marking system is introduced in this academic year.

2007-03-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

I don’t remember where I got the idea from. Maybe it was when Newsweek had Fareed Zakaria’s byline on the cover. Then there was one issue of Man’s World. Rauf Ahmed profiling someone. There was even an issue of Tehelka where they’d put some guy’s byline on the cover. Whenever it was, the idea lodged firmly in my mind: You know you’re a star if you get your byline on the cover. It’s like they’re selling the magazine/paper on your name.

I’m happy to report I have now joined this elite group. This morning’s YA!, which is DNA’s kids’ supplement (Young Adults) and is edited by the wonderfully charming and beautiful Riddhi, has my name in 24 point and highlighted, claiming authorship of a somewhat drug-tinged story headlined "High Times".

Journalistic stardom, here I come.

On an unrelated note, what is the deal with women? You shave, shampoo and even put on a clean pair of jeans and they leave the country without so much as a by your leave. Bah.

2007-03-03T03:38:00.000-08:00

Leaving Paris in August

The TGV ride from Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaulle is one of the most depressing journeys I have ever taken. Four days in Paris and I was sad for weeks. I sat in our London living room smoking and drinking beer and watching TV and trying to find a good reason to ever get off the couch. I drank myself silly the night before my flight to Lisbon, no longer excited about going to a new European city.

I sat on the metro, riding to Gare du Nord, eating a soggy panini. The Metro is nothing like the London Underground. It has large empty rectangular corridors and huge, pointless halls. It has rubber wheels. It has no happy people. Not that day, anyway.

Everyone on the Metro looks gloomy. A couple of boys asked me how much I bought my panini for. They looked like those kids you see in those depressing European movies at film festivals.

I sleepwalked through Gare du Nord. Out the Metro exit, in the RER entrance, down the stairs.

I waited a long time for that train. I stood on the dirty, dingy and dank platform underground watching people clamber in and out of other trains. The platform was sticky and brown and third-world like. One girl ran to a train just as the doors closed. She sighed and went away. I waited, getting sadder, waited to get the hell out of Paris.

I sat alone in the mostly empty train. A woman in a burkha sang a sad song in French. Or was it a man with an accordion? I know it wasn’t the guy with the curtain and the puppet. That was on the Metro earlier in the day when I was going back to Ariane’s from the Eiffel Tower. Whoever it was, I gave him/her a couple of euros. I think it was the man. He looked very sad when I gave him the money.

Out the window, I saw grey tenement blocks. I saw slums in a horseshoe shape in a yard. A clothesline hung between two houses. A lady in a burkha ran after a kid on a tricycle. I was in an Iranian film. Women in Iranian films are always wearing burkhas and running after kids on tricycles. I felt that tightness in my chest – you know, the type you feel when you think you want to cry but you don't really.

I got off the train at Charles de Gaulle and spent 15 minutes trying to figure out where the hell my terminal was. That seems silly in retrospect. I had taken a bus from the terminal to the train. I don’t know why I didn’t figure out that that was what I had to do to get back to the terminal. Lousy signage.

The bus to the terminal took forever. When we finally got to the terminal, they couldn’t raise the barrier. I sat there, 10 metres away from the terminal building, wondering what it would take to get out of that damn bus.

Checking in, I was fascinated by one of the check-in girls. She was white as snow, with a face so tight it looked like it might snap. She had her hair pulled back, the thinnest eyebrows I’ve ever seen and the sort of glasses that dominatrixes (dominatrice?) wear in porn. I sat on the pavement outside the airport and rolled myself a cigarette. A Sri Lankan Airlines plane rolled by.

A very pretty lady dropped her suitcase on the retro-futuristic moving walkway in the atrium. I picked it up for her and she smiled and said thank you. She stood behind me at immigration too. Also in the line were a few orthodox Jews, large families and two babies (one of whom had dropped her pacifier at some earlier point. I know this because a strange woman who reminded me of Donatella Versace came by yelling that she’d found a pacifier, offering it to everyone).

Once I got to the departure lounge, I still had half an hour before they opened the gate. I bought an awful half bottle of overpriced wine and drank it slowly. There was little I wanted to do but get entirely smashed and wake up back in good ol’ London. Two very cute little girls sat next to me in the departure lounge, playing with something. I don’t remember what. Stuffed animals, I think. I felt quite bad drinking wine in front of them. It wasn’t just the wine. It was the way I was sitting there: limp, tired, unfriendly-looking. Either way, I drank my wine and looked around and tried to figure out who was French and who was English and who was, like me, neither.

I don’t remember the flight back home. I don’t remember which side of the plane I sat, what I had to drink, whom I sat beside, nothing. No, I must have sat on the right of the aircraft because I remember looking out of the window as we flew over London. I saw the river, I saw Canary Wharf and the buildings of Parliament and the Oval. I was glad to be back, sure, but I wasn’t very glad in general. I bought two very expensive cans of Carlsberg from the WhistleStop or whatever and went home. The living room was empty. I think everyone was asleep. And I had to get to work the next day.

What had I done that last day? I’d woken up late, I know. I went down to the Eiffel Tower and sat on the lawns and wrote out my postcards. I climbed up to the second floor, drank expensive water and climbed back down. I asked someone to take a picture of me. I felt like a fool. I went back to Ariane’s and we drank some of that shitty beer she had.

She helped me buy some tobacco and mail my postcards. We went to the café round the corner where I’d met her the first day. I bought a panini and we had Earl Grey tea. That cracked me up.

We talked a little, but nothing of consequence. I was sad to be leaving Paris but relieved as well. And I was sad to say goodbye to Ariane. I really liked her. She walked me to the Metro gates and I kissed her cheeks in the awkward manner that I do. I’d only been in the damn country four days. I still hadn’t quite got the hang of all this kissing. I said thank you and with one hand holding my Panini and the other holding my bag, I walked away from Paris.

2007-02-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

It's my Mum's birthday today.

These typos are getting out of hand (but this one was damn tasty).

2007-01-24T02:53:00.000-08:00

So i finally fell off my high horse...

...and scratched my knee.

Now please go buy a copy of this week's Time Out Mumbai, or my most intelligent, talented, compassionate, reasonable and immensely good-looking (and single, ladies) boss, Naresh Fernandes, will make me take off the second image. As it turns out, I don't own the copyright to the stuff I write for work (I do, however, own copyright to pretty much everything else on this blog, so feel free to pilfer as you see fit).

2006-12-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

A: Where are you going?
Me: Malad
A: I'm so sorry man.

2006-12-24T00:13:00.000-08:00

The Parsi Posse

Parsis rock. I don’t know a soul who would disagree with that statement. There are many reason why Parsis rock: they’re all fucking bananas; their chicks are really hot and the men are really stupid-looking (which leaves plenty of scope for non-bav suitors such as me) and more often than not, Parsi friends’ parents are extremely cool and will give you free booze, good food and let you hang out in their palatial homes (unless you’re going out with their daughters, in which case they try to run you over with a Skoda).

But something is rotten in the state of Bavdom.

A few months ago, I went over to a friend’s place to play board games. This friend shall remain nameless for reasons that will soon become apparent, but let us call him Plum, because of the mnemonic similarities between that fruit and the one that makes up his name.

Plum is an amiable chap. He moved to Bombay from England and became this city’s bureau chief in a major news agency that I used to work for. Though I never worked with him, I still knew the other guys in the office and I drop by every now and then for a quick shot of the Irish whiskey he keeps in his desk. The reason the agency needed a new bureau chief was because his predecessor (my first boss) had been transferred to Baghdad. Incidentally, he has never received so much as a scratch in the line of duty (although he was kidnapped, but later released unharmed).

Plum invited a colleague and me over for a few rounds of Scrabble and the Indian edition of Trivial Pursuit (which he loses every time, seeing as he knows jackshit about Indian trivia). That evening, after many beers, a couple of bottles of wine and many miserable attempts to make words with scrabble tiles while shit-faced, Plum pulled out his trump card.

He played a 12-minute, secretly-shot video that showed piles of decomposing Parsis rotting away at Dongerwadi’s Towers of Silence. All manner of old bavs in various stages of decomposition fought (so to speak) for space to molder gracefully.

For those of you unaware of the problem Bombay’s dead Parsis face, Wikipedia comes to the rescue once again.

The video had supposedly been shot by some anonymous cameraman, dropped into the mailbox of some ancient bavi who was raising her voice against the manner in which the powers-that-be in the Parsi community were hushing up the disgraceful manner in which the dead were decomposing. That woman had been receiving death threats. Plum was given the video only after he assured her he would never show it to anyone.

A week after that board game evening, Plum went to Thailand to cover a bloodless coup.

On his third day there, he was hit by a speeding taxi. He’s still in traction and he’ll be out of action for another three months, at least.

Coincidence? I think not.

2006-12-17T04:21:00.000-08:00

It may be against everything for which this blog stands (drunkenness mostly), but last night I went to a western classical music concert thingamajig called Sangat ’06 (for the record, it was free). After spending much time wandering around Navy Nagar and NOFRA with an annoying, gloating cabbie, Amit G, Radhika and I finally found ourselves at the Homi Bhabha audi at TIFR (these Bhabhas appear to have a stranglehold on Bombay's cultural scene). We entered midway through the first movement of the first symphony and though I suggested we sit near the exits (all the better to make a quiet, if hasty, departure my dear), Amit G insisted on sitting in the middle, so he could see what was going on. That guy is seriously hardcore.

Q: What do you call people who talk about classical music a lot?
A: Verdi

At the end of the first movement, a bunch of people clapped. The other bunch shushed them.

“Unsophisticated,” said Radhika.

“How gauche,” said I.

We might as well have been drinking White Zinfandel and air-kissing.

So what’s the deal? You have to wait until the end of the symphony to clap? What if you like only one movement and the other two blow chunks? So much to learn, so little time.

Midway through the second movement, 29-year-old Amit G leans over, having surveyed the crowd, and says, “this is why I go for western classical concerts.”

Thus far, I had failed to grasp the beauty of the music or whatever and so had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

“It makes me feel younger,” he explained.

I should point out that Amit G is the oldest non-boss type person in the office. And he is constantly reminded of his advancing years.

Q: What classical composer would have made the best newspaper editor?
A: Chopin

The first symphony was Brahms. Or some other guy. Who can say. It sounded very familiar. I half expected Tom and Jerry to make an appearance from under the stage and scare the pants (and tux) off the schmuck playing double bass.

About that guy: I wonder about when he was in college. Was he a complete loser who made friends with the science and maths geeks? Did he organize “Bach Attack ’87” for his buddies? Did they all sit around smoking pot and listening to some long-haired dudes? I wonder what he’d say if he was trying to pick up chicks in a bar. “I play bass in a band”. That sounds so much more glamorous than “I’m the guy with the overgrown violin in a string quartet. No, not the cello, the double bass.”

By the second symphony, I was really beginning to get into this stuff. I contemplated ditching writing for a life as a musician. I can see it now: At a party they can introduce me as a “reformed writer and drunk, presently a classical violinist.”

Or pianist. I’d like to be a pianist because if I introduce myself really softly, people might hear “penis”. Hah. That cracks me up.

“This is Leo, he’s a penis.”

Q: Who was Schindler’s favourite composer?
A: Liszt

There was an interval between the two quartets and the octet, which, I suppose, makes sense in some strange simplistically mathematical way. They served vile chicken sandwiches and rubbish coffee. We got a chance to check out who else was at the concert: more bavs than you could shake a sadra at, lots of random white people and one cute chick. Sigh. Maybe this is why classical music concerts aren’t popular.

For some reason, I was humming Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture (which, I found through the wonders of wikipedia, debuted exactly 101 years before I was born) and none of us could figure out what it was or which cartoon it was from. Later, I thought it was the Blue Danube Waltz, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sure, I was wrong, but it’s interesting, I think, that all my classical music references (and those of the people around me) are from pop culture. The 1812 Overture, incidentally, featured prominently in the most excellent V for Vendetta.

I really do think that classical music could be made more popular if it was promoted without its stick-in-the-mud image. If it was sold as something you could listen to, or watch, while chilling out and drinking a few beers, I'm sure a lot more young people would get into it. And it's really important to see it, rather than just listen to it, because that's when you really appreciate its complexity. Besides, some of these violinist chickies are pretty cute. The one in the fitting red gown on the extreme left in the octet, for example, was quite a little hottie. And she looked like she was really enjoying herself, if you get my drift.

Illustration: nicked it off the net, so the copyright belongs to someone else. Fuck knows.

2006-11-17T04:11:00.000-08:00

PR people send the best emails. A sample:

“Big Boss” has changed Ravi Kishan’s luck by a night
What a TV show can change life of a star, even he is super star of a regional film. Perhaps no, but its true that today by the game show of “Big Boss” luck of Bhojpuri Super Star Ravi Kishan have been changed. English medium qualified girls, which had not seen Bhojpuri films, Ravi Kishan also impressed that girls and as a handsome Hero. Seeing in this game show a Bengali girl named Ankita Banarji from Kolkata had send a E-mail to Ravi Kishan write – ‘Ravi, you are my dream’. Rubee from Punjab had make a phone to Ravi and told – I am searching a handsome life partner like you, please when return from Big Boss then must talk to my Daddy. Madhvi from Bangalore, has written a letter to Ravi, “Ravi Kishan you are a cute man”. Suman Singh from Patna, has send an E-mail to Ravi Kishan and write – “I wants that you do next to me all that naughty activities which you have done in Big Boss, please you will do that”. Now you understands how “Big Boss” has changed lucky of Ravi Kishan.

2006-11-15T23:43:00.000-08:00

Oh ToI, thou art superbly amusing. Specially when thou taketh a moral stand(eth).

The tippler brigade is getting younger
Schoolchildren Celebrate B’days With Tequila Shots
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Sanaya Ardeshir got her first taste of night life when she went clubbing while still in school. At 15, she was a regular on the Pune club circuit. Now 17, and a junior college student at St Xavier’s, she’s already outgrown the regular discotheques. “Polyesther and Insomnia are very crowded. But Poison in Bandra looks very promising, and we prefer to go there,’’ Sanaya says with the expert air of a diehard party-goer.

School by day and disco by night is not a very unusual routine for many schoolchildren in Mumbai. Birthdays of school kids are no longer ushered in by cutting cakes in the presence of parents and friends. Away from the eagle eye of their guardians, even those in Class IX or X celebrate their march towards adulthood by downing tequila shots.

Whenever they have to throw a party, most rich kids book a disco for the afternoon and have their own do. “I celebrated my 17th birthday with friends at Lush, the pub in Phoenix mills. We danced and basically chilled out,’’ says Neha Dhawan, an undergrad at St Xavier’s. She has been to many pubs since then. Getting drinks was never a problem. “As long as you are paying, the bar tender doesn’t bother about your age,’’ she says.

On any given Saturday, boys head-banging to metallic music and girls smoking pot and throwing up in the loo are a common sight at some of the more popular clubs in the city.

All together now: GASP!

2006-11-12T00:06:00.000-08:00

HEADING: (Upper) Middle Class Guilt
or
Ohmigod, I'm turning into a bleeding-heart, psuedo-socialist lefty!

SUB-HEADING: Angsty Whining

Nov 11, Sea View, Bombay

A helicopter just flew around the world. Five minutes ago, VT-AZE flew due west over my head and disappeared into the horizon. Right now, it did the same thing again. I suppose it must be nice to be up there, in a deep blue helicopter circumnavigating the globe every five minutes instead of down here, sick of everything and everyone, reading a book and drinking a beer alone. That said, of all the places to be on this stupid island this Saturday afternoon, I can’t say there’s anywhere else I’d rather be. I like my job very much, I really do, but I don’t get any time to be alone anymore and that’s really beginning to bug me. That’s why I hate taking the train with anyone else or receiving phone calls once I’m in my room at night. Those are the only few moments I get to myself, and they’re important. Whether I spend that time ruminating or coming up with a cure for cancer or mentally vegging, that’s my business.

Four monkeys just walked down the beach, leashed.

There are days – like today – when I really want to get out of town, get off this god-forsaken island, flee this wretched city. It’s falling apart all around our ears, and it’s filled with stupidity, impatience and way too many people. There is so much fucking stupidity in this town – on the streets, on signboards, in hotels and malls and restaurants – and people are treated with such little respect, I’m shocked there hasn’t been some kind of revolt.

VT-AZE just circumnavigated the globe again.

The middle classes are treated like shit every time they go to watch a film or drive into a parking lot and they never say a damn thing, but what I really don’t understand is why the poor – and there are fucking gajillions of them – don’t stage an uprising. The security guard at _____, who opens the massive 20-foot-high door for the bar’s patrons from 7pm to 1.30am every night probably gets paid less in one month than most people spend there in one night. Why the hell doesn’t he load his fucking double-barreled rifle and take out a couple of designer-clad yuppies? Why have all the residents of the slums by Tulsi Pipe Road gone quietly while their homes were being demolished, even as Middle India – traders and retailers and small businessmen in Delhi – set fire to public transport buses and riot on the streets because the government wants to seal their illegally-constructed shops? Where the fuck is the justice?

Much as I may deny my middle-classness (middle-classity?), it is just that that’s responsible for the confused, fucked-up way I feel. I have absolutely nothing to whine about. I have a great job, some friends, lots of booze, an all-paid-for house in Bombay City. But even as I pay a hundred and eighty rupees for a beer at _____, I feel like shit: for spending that much money on a small beer, for not giving a fuck about the rickshaw guy with whom I haggle over ten rupees (ten rupees!), for hating everyone else in that goddamn bar and still going to it.

I have two theories, nay, predictions, about Bombay. One day, the proles will rise and say enough is fucking enough. That day, the smug middle class and the smugger upper class will finally get the carnage they deserve for every time they’ve yelled “Bola na, maaf karo!” at a begger. “I fucking told you to forgive me.” “Maaf karo” has lost all meaning. It doesn’t mean “forgive me” anymore. It means “fuck off and die, you filthy non-entity.”

If there is hope, it lies in the proles. Winston Smith said that in 1984.

Middle-class guilt. Actually, upper-middle-class guilt. That’s what I suffer from. My life is way too easy for my conscience to let me ignore everything around me, but I’m too greedy to give anything back to society. I’m not sure I even care enough.

Ironic interlude: my iPod just ran out of battery. I’m now listening to a fan in the background, an airplane in the distance and the sea when the surf breaks. Good stuff.

The other prediction about Bombay is that one day, there will be so many cars on the street that there will no longer be anywhere that they can go. Bombay will turn into the world’s biggest parking lot. On Marine Drive, at Bandstand, on SV Road, on New Link Road, the Western Express Highway, 5th Road Khar, August Kranti Marg, Princess Street, Hughes Road, St. Paul’s, Carter’s, everywhere. People will have no choice but to get out of their cars and walk.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bombay needs to be razed to the ground. Not all of it, of course, but most of it. Maybe a tsunami or an earthquake will hit and destroy everything that isn’t worth preserving. Maybe the GoI will declare this town No Man’s Land, like they did with Gotham City after the Cataclysm story arc. Maybe then we can all start from scratch and not make the same mistakes we made the first time with this wonderful little strip of land that 18 million people call home.

I once wanted to move to Nicobar islands and become a beach hermit. I realise now that that is not possible. Living off the land is no longer a viable option for people of limited imagination, zero seed capital and laughable physical strength.

VT-AZE appears to have disappeared. Appears to have disappeared. Heheh.

So I keep thinking of alternatives. Sometimes I feel like moving to Lucknow and working the nightshift at a McDonald’s. Sometimes I think about going to Hyderabad or Poona and joining a call centre. It might be fun working a dead-end job with zero career prospects, zero responsibility, zero imagination. To have 16 hours free to lead a nothing life. Vegging.

I know I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I’d probably attempt suicide with a butterknife is I ever even tried fully vegging. Despite everything, I do actually love this city. I have a great personal stake in it. Fourth generation and all that. Much as I hate to admit it, what happens to this little hell-hole deeply affects me. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t daydream about getting the fuck out of here.

Bah.

Illustrations: Scritch

A post-script from today's Indian Express.

Hammer man’s motive: A mobile phone
Sachin Dave

Mumbai, November 11: “All I wanted was a mobile phone,” said Vikas Taak— hammer man—who was arrested on Friday, in a statement to the Goregaon police. “I got a walkman, some cassettes, a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts robbing the women of their money,” he added.

The 19-year-old Vikas was caught when he tried to escape after attacking Prajakta Tardekar (34), a housewife and allegedly his fourth victim, with a hammer. The Bandra court has remanded him to police custody for seven days.

Prima facie the police say that Vikas has been influenced by television and is a victim of peer pressure.

“We talked to Vikas’ family members who told us that he kept watching TV and often got influenced by it and demanded certain things. When we asked him about his motive, he clearly told us that he wanted to have a better life style,” said senior Police Inspector AS Ingole.

According to police, Vikas had dropped out from school after Class VIII so that he could support his seven-member family, including parents and four siblings. However, he continued to have friends who were well off. “He told us that one of his friends had got a new cell phone and he also wanted to have one,” Ingole added.

A psychiatrist may be consulted by Goregaon police for an opinion. The police, after the first attack by the hammer man in Andheri in August 21, had told the media that the the accused is a mentally unstable person. The first three victims would be called on Monday to identify Vikas, say the police.

2006-10-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

So my good friend Andrew Croft is coming to Bombay. I volunteered to book him a room. I got him one at the West End Hotel (which has an awesome bar). I emailed them and they replied saying all is cool. At the bottom of the email, it said this:

Note: We reply to all emails within 24 hours. If you do not get our reply as above it Means we have not received your communication. May we then request You to resend the same or alternatively fax it on: 91 22 22057506.

I think this is the most brilliant thing ever.

------------------------------------------------------------

A word about Andrew Croft the accountant:
I once told him that my job is not as glamourous as it seems.
He said, "You know what's really sad? Neither is being an accountant."

------------------------------------------------------------

More general stupidity:
My mum is diabetic. Every month, she spends a small fortune on medication at Parel Chemists.
For Diwali, they sent her a token of appreciation for her continuing patronage of their store: A box of 28 chocolate bars.
Fucking idiots.

2006-10-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

A meandering rant about various people who get on my nerves. If you’re looking for coherence, I suggest you look elsewhere.

This city is full of idiots. I went to the Hard Rock Café this last Saturday night and was reminded of why I don’t go out on Saturday nights, why I don’t go to Hard Rock and why my circle of friends is growing smaller even as my list of acquaintances grows ever longer.

The thing is, I’m having some trouble putting my finger on what exactly it is about Hard Rock that bugs me so much. It’s very nicely done up, with the right mix of industrial chic and velvety understatement. But dude, the people, man. The people.

The place was packed to capacity with identical yuppies struggling to stay afloat under an ocean of hair gel, women with gorillas in diagonally striped shirts, and the pervasive, sickening-sweet smell of too much money. Oh, the bill’s hit 10k? Pish-tosh, darling, loose change. Here’s my gold card.

It’s not jealousy. I now make enough money to be able to enjoy an occasional expensive evening out without having to think twice. What bugs me is the wanton arrogance with which money is spent for something that, in my opinion, just isn’t worth it. It’s not the music, the shitty food, the lousy cocktails or the sight of Alice Cooper’s kinky leather outfit that people are paying so much money for. If that were it, it would have all been okay (says the self-appointed guardian of what’s cool and what’s not). I have a sneaking suspicion that the attraction, for these people, lies in being able to do something they've already done in London and Vegas and Bali. So they can now go to Hard Rock Mumbai and proudly proclaim: We’re like a major world city, dude. We have a Hard Rock Café.

I think what makes HRC so expensive, and so entirely full of idiots, is that everyone there is on the same trip: the belief that now that a major American franchise has trudged its way onto our shores, it’s some sort of validation of our import on the world stage. A few months ago, I worked as a fixer for a British journalist, tagging along with him for all his interviews and the like. He interviewed the principal of a Santa Cruz “international school” (I don’t know what exactly that means, hence the quotes). She said many stupid things, but the one that has stuck with me was this: “When I was a kid and I walked down the street, all we had were cornerstores to buy day-to-day stuff. Now, when I walk down the street, I see Levi’s and McDonalds and Subway and KFC and Esprit [and so on].”

Holy crap, woman! Are you fucking retarded? This is a sign of India’s fast-growing economy and increasing influence on the world stage? That we’re another market begging to be Coca-Colonised? What about getting our own brands on British high streets? The thought never crossed your mind, did it?

So there’s Hard Rock, which I suspect (although do not know for a fact) is more of a tourist destination than anything else in other cities, but which has become the place to be for Bombay’s millions of rich, young folk. (The older, more sophisticated crowd – or the same crowd on days they’re feeling older and more sophisticated – go next door to Shiro.) I’m told Planet Hollywood plans to start operations in Mumbai soon. I’m sure that will be equally popular. Meanwhile, we can all gaze at Britney Spears’s catsuit and get wildly excited about feeling like we’re in London or Paris.

~fin~

A post-script: I really do think the only way to save this city is to raze [most of] it to the ground and start from scratch.

Illustrations: Scritch

2006-09-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

Janine recently posted an entry about how the Munt and Anas are still pissed off about the column I wrote using them as an illustrative example. Here's the piece.

In which we discover that not all gay clichés are off the mark, that gay men can be homophobic too and why husband-wife stereotypes have absolutely nothing to do with gay relationships.

For six months, I shared a flat in London with a gay couple. For six months, I tried to figure out which one was the husband and which one was the wife. Hans, who was Danish, was obsessive about keeping the flat clean. He had a thing for chic cutlery, was obsessively neat in everything he did and never said a word if something was bugging him. On the other hand, Rocky, who was Indian, was a slob who pretended he was a neat freak, sat around at home smoking pot and watching television all day while Hans ironed his shirts in the kitchen. So Rocky, I figured was the husband and Hans the wife. Except Hans was the one working two jobs to support demanding Rocky and would do anything to make him happy. Rocky meanwhile, went partying with his friends and was always spiffily dressed and took great pains over his appearance. So was Rocky the wife and Hans the husband?

It took me six long months to figure out that my own stereotypes of a ‘couple’, the stereotypes I had grown up with, thanks largely to the conditioning drilled into our heads from the day we’re born, could not possibly apply to two gay men. Ours is not the most liberal of societies at the best of times and most of the couples I knew, whether straight or gay, generally had their specific roles and they adhered to them, by and large.

My great epiphany came in an alcohol and tobacco fueled haze in my final week there. ‘They’re both men, you idiot!’ a voice whispered in my ear. It was then that I realized I had finally (and entirely) overcome my homophobia.

The first time Rocky and Hans kissed in front of me, I couldn’t help but smile, no matter how hard I tried. It was one of those slightly embarrassed, slightly voyeuristic smiles, one of those ‘I sort of wish I wasn’t here, but I’m sort of glad I am’ smiles.

Pretty soon, I was completely comfortable with the gayness, or gaygiri as Rocky put it, that surrounded me. They walked around the house in tight t-shirts, black and pink striped boxer-briefs and shared all their clothes. Including their underwear. I hung around on the couch, quite blasé about the making out, semi-naked men. There were nights I heard thudding sounds coming from their room and mornings when I saw condoms in the trash and didn’t even flinch. My homophobia was cured.

But homophobia is a loaded word, a multifaceted emotion. I met the most interesting homosexual in a suburb of London. I forget his name, but I do remember him proclaiming himself a homophobic homosexual. ‘I can’t stand these gay cliques,’ he said to me. ‘I don’t understand gay men. All they want to do is hang around gay bars and gay clubs. They never go to regular clubs and they don’t want to have anything to with straight people. I just don’t get it.’ This is a man who had run away from home to join the circus, had swallowed swords and flown the trapeze until, at one point, he abandoned the carnie life to set up telephone chatlines (both gay and straight), made potloads of money, bought a villa in Portugal and, at some point, bonked his hairdresser. This man certainly had a point.

Rocky, for example, refused to go to a straight bar. The furthest he was willing to go was what he called a polysexual bar. A bar that, according to him, was frequented by both gay and straight folk. In reality, it was just a euphemism for a gay bar that wasn’t in-your-face gay (unlike, say, the G-A-Y bar on Old Compton Street; the gayest street in London)

The G-A-Y bar is another story altogether. Rocky and I went there once and the bouncer stopped me at the door. He looked me up and down and gave me the third degree. ‘You know this is a gay bar, right?’ I nodded. ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked. I told him I had. He didn’t seem to buy it. ‘Have you been to any other gay bars?’ I rattled off a list of names. He looked over at Rocky, who was waiting impatiently, dying to get into the bar, and in his element. ‘Is he with you?’ he asked Rocky. It was only when Rocky confirmed that I was in the company of a legitimate, card-carrying homosexual that the bouncer finally let me in. I still don’t get it. Either the homosexual community is militantly gay or they’re wary about outsiders. One way or the other, straight people aren’t the only ones who’re intolerant.

Rocky himself was quite militant about his sexual identity. Everything in the world revolved around it. When the tube bombings happened in London and brown people were being given ‘the look’ by fellow commuters, Rocky was sure no one would ever suspect him of being a suicide bomber. ‘I’m too clearly gay for anyone to think of me as a terrorist,’ was his theory. When he was mugged by seven kids at Charing Cross, he was dead certain it was because he was gay. The fact that he dressed well, flashed his fancy cell phone and was rather drunk had nothing to do with it, of course.

But while being gay means having a completely different outlook on life altogether, hanging out in the company of gay men and women is a bit like falling through the looking glass. My first night in London was spent at a lesbian joint called The Candy Bar. Unlike most men, I’d never been particularly enamoured of gay women. I figured they reduced the available female population for people like me. That first night though, was a revelation. Stepping into a bar loaded up on estrogen, full of women making out with each other without a care in the world and discovering a lesbian stripper in the basement led me to change my mind. This was only my first night and I hadn’t even begun to overcome my homophobia, but I’m pretty sure that the sight of a hundred women hooting and cheering on a female stripper had a lot to do with setting me on the path to sexual tolerance.

Illustration: Scritch

2006-08-27T09:56:00.001-07:00

Clearly, long rambling posts about politics do not find favour with my reader(s).

So here's some stupid shit i found in the bowels of my hard drive. Wow, that soounds obscene, gross and just plain wrong, all at the same time.

I call them Janine-isms, although not all these pearls of wisdom were uttered by her.

Janine on why the concept of seperate smoking and non-smoking pubs won’t work:
Come on think about it, all these non smokers are so bloody boring that they probably don’t drink either and they don’t go out so all the non-smoking pubs will never make any money.

Janine on going out with ugly chicks:
It’s practice. It’s like going for interviews for jobs you don’t really want.

Janine and I were watching some spaz on oprah when...
Leo: Janine, if you could be a vegetable, which one would you be?
Janine: Celery because then I’d be in a bloody mary.

Riddhi says:
Neeraj is ugly but it suits him

Janine on leo:
Janine: Help me figure out this theory man
Leo: mmmmm
Janine: What use are you? you’re supposed to be a man of thoughts and words. But you’re just a man on a couch.

Munty on his english skills:
I think I should pride my grammar

Karan on something inappropriate:
No dude says that to another dude, dude

Kurt on Class A drugs:
Cocaine's not addictive. I do it all the time.

And my personal favourite:

Karan says:
I love loopholes. They’re my favourite kind of holes. Wait. Not really.

2006-08-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This is far from the perfect piece I would have liked to write, but I think I can get away with it, thanks mostly to the fact that no one reads this now that I’ve changed the link. By the way, Nikhil, I’m writing this in Lucida Grande (although I’m not sure what font it posts in)

On Pakistan

The last Tehelka was a special issue on Pakistan. I did not read any of it apart from the Mohsin Hamid interview by Shoma Chaudhry. It bugged me. I’m not sure what exactly it was about it that got to me: how deluded Hamid seemed ("I think Pakistan is right now desperate for a peace deal on Kashmir. Musharraf — like him or not — is bending over to find some compromise. But India is completely uncompromising. It prefers the status quo so any time there’s a bomb in India, it can be blamed on Pakistan"); how defensive he is when asked what he doesn’t like about Pakistan ("It’s like a neighbour you don’t have nice relations with saying, what about your mother don’t you like?"); or how right he is about some things ("I think the biggest threat Pakistan poses to India is the threat to the Indian ego, as opposed to anything more substantive").

I’ve been to Pakistan. I was there for a week last December. I visited Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. It was odd. Scratch that – it was fucking weird. That entire nation, it seemed to me, is populated by weirdos, oddballs and raving lunatics.

A caveat: The people I met were, in my opinion, the Pakistani equivalent of Malabar Hill Jains. Those who have old money, enjoy positions of power, appear modern and urbane on the outside, occasionally even speak in accents and often hold foreign passports, but are, on the inside, conservative, old-school and uncompromising.

We were treated very well, my mum and I. Their hospitality was astounding, incredible. We had nothing to worry about, we were fed the most delicious food, shown around, indulged in every way. Hell, we were even flown there business class. Sure, it was on PIA, which doesn’t serve alcohol. That’s hardly their fault, though. But something is definitely rotten in the state of Pakistan. And I think it’s the disparity.

Pakistan started their reform process three or fours years ago. We started ours in 1991. China started theirs some 15 years before us. Pakistan, like India vis-à-vis China, is playing a game of catch-up. Meanwhile, there’s an intense divide between the rich and the poor. There’s none of that much-feted middle-class that we in India go on about. And that’s where the problem lies, I think.

This has nothing to do with Islam. The most striking example, for me, is of this Hindu man I met on my first day. He took great pride in telling me that he’s a Hindu and that he has been to Bombay – much the same way an Indian will try to impress an Englishman by regaling him with stories of his one visit to Bradford or second-hand anecdotes from a cornershop-owning relative in Southall. I noted this (and more) in my journal entries at the time. I reproduce it verbatim (typos and all): “He then went on to explain that he studied at or lived at ISKCON in Juhu and that he’s a Hindu and no, he’s not from India, he lives here really, in this land of Muslims, but what do you do. And it wasn’t one of those shrugging what-do-you-dos. It was a fuck-I-hate-these-bloody-mossies-what-do- you-dos.

Some other guy also came and told me he’s a Hindu. And they both asked, separately, and quite confidently, whether I was Hindu too. I said I was and they seemed quite relieved. And I’m not sure whether it’s my imagination, but I think they expected some anti-Muslim rhetoric from me.

Just now, as I walked up to my room, the maid (or a maid) said Hare Krishna. I said "Hare Krishna?" She said “you”. I said “no”, a bit more emphatically than I should have perhaps. She said, oh I don’t know, some other Hindu sect thingie. I ran.

Maybe it’s sort of like me wanting to say salaam maleikum and khuda hafiz. You take what little bits you know of a country or a culture or a people and you work with that. I guess. But does it have to be so fucking religion based? No man, it’s nothing like that.

You know all that stuff you read about how the Pakistanis are just like us? Rubbish. They’re a very odd people.

I had a conversation with the guy who dropped me home, nephew to the lady I’m staying with. He tells me that in his estimation, 80 percent of the women in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore aren’t virgins. And he said in a slightly conspiratorial tone, with a hint of “aren’t you scandalized?” I wasn’t. So he says groupsex is getting more and more popular here. As is daterape. I have trouble taking the word of a guy who also just told me that he’d throw his wife out if, on his wedding night, he discovered she wasn’t a virgin. “Who knows how many dicks she’s had,” he said. “Sure, she’ll say it was just the once, with her boyfriend, but what do I know? I don’t want someone who’s had ten dicks.” We got to talking about this because I asked him about alcohol. He said guys drink but then get screwed over come marriage time. I’m not too sure about the relation, but given this country’s tendency towards the decidedly odd, I’ll buy it. And this is a guy who drives a fancy Lexus with a fucking camera at the back and a screen on the dash so you don’t need to turn when you reverse. I’m assuming he forms part of the cream of Karachi society (going by his car). Oh, and he also said he’s aiming to become honourary Justice of Peace next year. His friend is handing him the title. Now he gets a police escort, fame and the power to decide which villager raped whose wife. And he’s 24.”

Then I went to Islamabad. And I met a very pretty 17-year-old girl and her 16-year-old male cousin. They live in a joint-family sort of household, except neither his parents nor hers live there. She grew up in London (although her accent sounded more Houslow than, as she claimed, Hampsted, but that’s just me). He had an accent I couldn’t place, and it led me to believe he was her brother and from Britain too, but as it turned out, he just went to one of Islamabad’s better schools, that’s all. That’s how they’re taught to speak. So I told him, “oh, I thought you were from London too.” He said “no, no, please don’t make me her brother. Don’t tell anyone this, but she’s my girlfriend.”

I thought, “great. Good for you dude, if you could land a chick like her.” As it turned out though, they were related. They were cousins. This may not be shocking for people well-acquainted with South Asian culture, but being the cultural pariah and ill-informed city slicker that I am, I was, to put it mildly, scandalised. And I used to think it takes a lot to scandalise me. So their family suspects, but hasn’t said anything yet. She’s grew up abroad, but isn’t allowed out of her conservative (but rich and ostensibly progressive) house without a salwar kameez and a man. The car drops her to school and back. She doesn’t go anywhere else. everything she does is a matter of “being allowed” or not. Holy crap. This is a family that falls in that fabled top five per cent and this is how they think? And I couldn’t figure out why this guy was telling me all this. I’d just met him. He knew nothing about me. He had no clue whether I was his aunt’s best friend or not. yet, he sought out my company, took me for long walks and told me about his entire life.

Cut to Lahore (and I’m not even going to get into the psycho driver who took us there, except that he used to be a white-collar worker in Saudi until he lost his job and suddenly found he was a driver in Islamabad. What’s he worse is that at the time, he was driving a couple of random Indians around the countryside. Can’t say I blame his animosity towards us). This is where the hospitality got a little creepy. We were “not allowed” to go to a hotel of our choice. “We will be very offended if you don’t let us take care of it,” we were told in far more polite and far less friendly words. So we landed up where we were supposed to land up (after much arguing with the driver who insisted he knew best). And we found a decrepit, run-down guest-house I wouldn’t recommend to anyone except those looking for a mattress and some cheap sex and nothing else. Naturally, we protested, and after much to-ing and fro-ing and cross-country cellphone negotiations, the oddball who was “in charge” of us agreed to let us go to the hotel we’d originally wanted to go to. His brother was supposed to “escort us” there. I jumped in his car. The first thing he told me was not to feel shy if I wanted, you know, some pot or any other drugs. Much as I appreciated the offer, I found this a little odd. He then regaled me with many stories about drinking in Dubai, drugs, sex in Lahore and so on. This is when he wasn’t trying to kill both of us by going the wrong way at a roundabout. I appreciate informality and casual male banter as much as the next guy, but I do find it a bit strange when someone I’ve just met offers me acid in a strictly non-druggie set up.

There are loads of similar instances of general strangeness, and very few instances of normalcy. There was the driver who, although very nice, like everyone in Pakistan is, stalked me on my cellphone back in Bombay for Sunny Deol’s number. There was the Pakistani soldier at the Wagah border who told me he's show me a restricted area if i gave him an "inam." There was the strange old man who got very drunk and told me about how his daughter came to Bombay to become a star, but then discovered what a sleazy world Bollywood was. “She was crying!” he yelled into my drink, like it was my fault. There was wedding I went to where all the men sat in a room at the back and drank Cutty Sark scotch while the women were at the ceremony. The groom eventually burst in yelling “Mujhe daroo do!”

I think Pakistan is a very confused nation, and one with a huge chip on its shoulder. The papers are full of India-related news. Everyone I met constantly told me about how they’ve been to India or know someone who has. The media constantly compares Pakistan to India in the subtle, insidious way that we compare ourselves to America and Britain. We are the big brother of this region. We are immensely cool, immensely powerful, immensely influential in our neck of the woods. What happens in India reverberates around the sub-continent in ways we are too oblivious to realise. Our neighbours care more about what’s going on here and what we think than they would ever admit to us, or even to themselves. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal – it’s different for them. they’re too tiny to even try and compete. But Pakistan sees itself on an even footing, even though it isn’t, much as we do (and aren’t) when we compare ourselves to first world nations.

There are things we don’t realise either. Like the fact that, as Hamid points out in his article, Pakistan is the sixth most populous nation in the world. That the Karachi stock index is, like Mumbai’s, one of the best performing in the world. That Pakistan is full of modern people who want exactly the same things we do. But they can’t have them. Because they’re not us, much as we’re not America and we’re not the UK.

Nowhere is the distinction between the two countries more marked than at the Wagah border. Every evening, shortly before sunset, the two nations put on a wildly over-the-top, mating-peacock parade they call the lowering of the flag. With foot-stomping, yelling and flag-waving aplenty, the entire thing is basically an exercise in saying mine is bigger than yours. People, tourists mostly, come from all over to watch this. On one side, men, women and children sit together in one large stand and hoot and cheer. Across the border, men and women, boys and girls, even mothers and sons, are seated on separate stands on opposite sides, kept apart by a road in the middle. No prizes for guessing which country is which.

To conclude, this is a paragraph written in my journal on day three of my excursion, in Islamabad. “I sincerely believe that India is far better off without Pakistan as part of us. And though I’m thoroughly fascinated by this country and its people, I also can’t wait to get back home. For all the Englands and Americas that we look at enviously and admire their liberalism and freedom, there’s a Pakistan that makes me so very grateful for all that we have in our great and glorious nation.”

2006-07-28T03:44:00.000-07:00

i wet myself
(click on the picture. i think it becomes larger)

2006-07-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

Q: How's Bombay these days?
A: It's a blast.

I can't wait to get to Delhi tonight and use that.

2006-07-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

Dear terrorist(s),
Please stop bombing our trains.
Bomb Andheri instead.

2006-07-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I’ve wondered where I would be when the world came to an end. For a while (and greatly influenced by Douglas Coupland), I figured I’d be in a mall. It’s turned out to be as banal. I was watching a movie. An animated film about a scheming raccoon.

Do I hear you say that 200 people and seven bombs don’t signal the end of the world?

This is true.

But what has followed does. The growing security at airports. The introduction of security at railway stations. The even increasing CCTV surveillance. The distrust. The furtive movement of eyebrows whenever someone gets into a train compartment.

The world, as we know it — in this town at any rate — has come to an end.

------------------------------------------

UPDATE:
Janata now has CCTV.
Damn those terrorists. Do they realise what they've done?
Like dood, man.

2006-07-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

For years (or months, at any rate), i swore i'd never get into this blogging business. it's immature, self-indulgent rubbish, i said. It's all a bunch of wannabe writers stoking each others egos in an incestous little community i said.

All of that was true.

But i have come to realise that that doesn't mean it isn't fun. And it is in that spirit that i now declare this blog a general ranty, rubbishy blog that has abandoned its superior attitude. A short post follows.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

A short post that has no point

I’m standing outside the Ghetto, smoking a joint with a man who has a feather in his hair, his chubby, short, baseball-cap-wearing, self-pitying blob of a friend and some white guy. I don’t know why he has a feather in his hair. I don’t know why his friend is wearing a cap in the middle of the night. I don’t know the white guy. I don’t like these people, but they’ve got pot and I’ve got squat so I put up with them.

“Leon, we should hang more often man. Like, give me a call. I’ve got some he-man,” says feather boy.

“For sure, man.”

“So, _____ has a new boyfriend?” asks the baseball cap.

“Yeah. some bav.”

“What’s his name?”

“Fuck knows.”

I take four drags in quick succession, then a long, leisurely one. “I’ll see you guys inside, okay?”

This is what pot does to you. Hard drugs make you share needles, get AIDS, beg, steal, sell a kidney, prostitute yourself, and die a lonely death. Pot forces you to hang with stupid people. And I fucking hate stupid people.

I also hate smart people and good-looking people and talented people, but that’s another story. That’s another kind of hate. That’s the you’re everything I’ll never be and I wish you’d all die so I could be considered smart and good looking and talented kind of hate. Stupid people, on the other hand, specially stupid people who think they’re smart, or know they’re smart, like ugly people who know they’re good looking, deserve to get hit by a bus. A big mother-fucking, double-decker with Chhatrapati Shivaji behind the wheel. But that’s never going to happen. No one gets hit by anything in this city. Bombay is the world’s biggest parking lot.

So I’m back inside the Ghetto, having avoided making conversation with Shukla by pretending to be on my phone. He’s always asking me for a ride home. I should just give him a ride one day and put me out of my misery.

It’s crowded and it’s noisy and it’s only Thursday night. Who the hell are all these people? The right leaning side of me says they’re all fucking upwardly mobile immigrants but maybe they’re just tourists. When the hell did I become so xenophobic anyway? Say hello to _____, the self-confessed corporate whore, exchange high-fives with [what the fuck was his name] who does something that has something to do with advertising, self-consciously ignore table of very attractive girls who watch me go by, join friend Karan at the corner by the pool table and steal a glance back at the girls. They aren’t looking at me anymore. They probably weren’t anyway. Goddamn them.

“Dude.” Karan screams to be heard.

“Yeah man.”

“That chick’s a fox, man.” He’s pointing at that table. I agree with him vociferously.

It’s been over a year since Karan last had a girlfriend or any form of action (that I know of) and it’s been um, three months since I last had sex but it’s such a distant memory it feels like a couple of years at a bare minimum. A lot of water under the bridge, maybe. A lot of rum and a lot of weed destroying my brain cells, maybe.

“Her friend’s pretty cute too.” I don’t know why we even bother having these conversations anymore. There’s absolutely no point. Neither one of us ever does anything about it. We spend all our time hanging around all-male environments like Janata and Gokul and we wonder why we don’t meet any chicks. Then we hang around bars and coffeeshops eyeing pretty girls like two old men on a park bench. That’s not how it works. To meet girls, you need to – oh fuck knows. If I knew, I’d be doing it. Karan, on the other hand, has a fairly good record with women. I don’t know why he isn’t getting laid. Maybe because he spends all his time with me. I am the anti-sex. I am celibacy incarnate.

A photographer with a Polaroid camera and baseball cap rolls on by, looking for some drunk fucks who want to immortalize this evening with a three inch by three inch reproduction of their stupid smiles and beer mugs.

“Do you want to take a picture?” I ask Karan.

He doesn’t respond. I don’t know whether he’s ignoring me or if he just didn’t hear me.

“Boss. Over here. Us two.” Karan looks surprised. I tell him I’ll pay. He looks even more surprised. I figure we might as well capture tonight for posterity. If things get any better, we can look back at the picture and appreciate all the bleak days. If they don’t, we can reassure ourselves that things haven’t deteriorated very much.

The photog tells us to smile. Karan flashes his best plastic smile. I put on my Bollywood shades and grimace. I’m thoroughly smashed. This evening started way too early. After work, I met Riddhi, who was meeting Sanjay, who had a couple of random schmucks in his car. We smoked a few, drank some, went to Riddhi’s in Parla, and eventually I landed up smoking another while getting a lift back to town with one of the randoms.

The Polaroid has developed. We both look like idiots. Big surprise.

“Dude.”

“Yeah?”

“I have a plan.”

“What?”

“I’m going to get very drunk tonight.”

“You’re already drunk.”

“That’s not the point. I’m going to get drunker. And then I’m going to throw up in the toilet and pass out in my own vomit.”

“You’re not going home like that in my car dude.”

“I’m not going home man. I’m going to stay here for the rest of my life.”

2006-06-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

i spent june, july and august last year loafing around england and europe, with not a care in the world. i saw new things, met interesting people, ate weird (but cheap) food, drank like a fucking fish and generally had a fucking amazing time.

at this time of year, i'd still rather be in bombay.

2006-06-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to find a text message from Anish Trivedi, banker, radio jockey, columnist, theatre person and all round high society guy.

It read 'My Play, Still Single, is on this sunday at st. andrews, 7.30 pm. Would be delighted if you could be there. I would be even more delighted if you would support the arts and buy tickets. But if you feel like being cheap bastards, will invite you. If you do buy tickets however, i'll buy drinks after. Anish'

I found this a bit odd, since i do not know Anish Trivedi and haven't the foggiest where he got my cellphone number from. Seeing an offer for free booze, however, prompted me to reply thus:

Dear Anish, my name is leo m and i don't know you from adam. You can imagine my surprise then, when i woke up this morning to find a message from you inviting me to your play. I will be delighted to buy tickets and come watch it, assuming of course that you do plan to ply me with plentiful, if inexpensive, alcohol post-play. The choice of location i shall leave to your discretion, but i am afraid the choice of drink (old monk), shall be mine. In anticipation of a favourable response, i remain, yours sincerely, leo.

to which he replied:

As it happens leo, we've met and corresponded. Which is why you got the message from me. You are clearly in need of alcohol, inexpensive or otherwise, to help jog your memory. I see this as an act of mercy to one in dire need. Of course once you see the play, your need will be direr! Come. Will buy the drink. Anish.

Excellent. Truly excellent.

UPDATE: So i'm back from the play. no free booze. i must say i'm quite disappointed. that'll teach me to trust rich people.

2006-06-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

a little rant that i will probably delete in the morning.
i havent read it since i wrote it, i havent check it for grammatical and spelling errors, i don't plan to.

The lives of the Indian elite are not very different from the lives of the British or American elite. I use these two examples because they’re the two countries we constantly compare ourselves to. Actually, the lives of the elite in this country are the same as those in Lagos and Karachi and London and Jakarta and Paris and New York and and Nairobi and Milan. Rana Dasgupta, whom I have never met, whose book I have not read, and whom I don’t know anything about, once said to a journalist named Jai Arjun Singh, “The Delhi elite is scarcely different from the New York elite in terms of their values, the houses they live in and their lifestyles. So it’s strange that people talk about other countries in exotic terms.” Now Rana Dasgupta is a smart guy. He was raised in Cambridge, he’s lived in France, the US and Malaysia. He’s seen the world. He moved to Delhi to write a book and he got an international publisher as well. I’ve seen it on prominent display at Borders on Oxford Street in London. Rana Dasgupta, I’m sure, knows what he’s talking about.

For the elite of these various countries, New York and London and Paris are where they have friends, where they have family, where they vacation, where they shop, where they go to school and college. These cities are their cities, extensions of Bombay and Delhi. These cities are where they go to party at night, where they go to do lunch, the way we go to Bandra and Colaba. These cities hold no fasnication or wonder for them. They’re all a part of the same global village. Rana Dasgupta is right, you know.

But then there’s us. Locally born, locally educated – never went to Doon or Sanawar or fuckit, Cathedral even – and raised on a diet of British books that the Brits don’t read anymore (Wodehouse? Enid Blyton?) and American television shows that I doubt anyone in America ever saw in the first place (Small Wonder). There is us, the tiny demographic that hangs around somewhere on the cusp between upper middle class and middle middle class. There is us, upwardly mobile, cellphone toting, mutual fund investing, spouse loving. The all round nice guys. We never did nothing to nobody, see. We pay our taxes, pay our credit card bills, try to avoid the debt trap, try not to fall off the property ladder, try to send our children to good schools. There is us, scholarship searching. We either saw the world when our parents took us along even though we were too young to really give a fuck. The Empire State Building? Big fucking deal. Where be my ice cream, dude? Or who want to see the world. The Empire State? Dude, did you know that the Chrysler building was taller than the Empire State for one year before the Empire State guys put a mooring pole on top? Did you know there was a competition? Did you know that most people still think the Chrysler Building is far more beautiful? Did you know he secretly raised a mast? Did you? Did you? Did you? Do you care?

So here’s a neat little paragraph from a post about Rana Dasgupta on Jai Arjun Singh’s blog: It’s just that compartmentalisation goes against the grain of everything his debut novel stands for. Tokyo Cancelled is a book that sets out to defy the universal tendency to romanticise foreign places and to put countries and cultures into little boxes. "Too much of contemporary writing," says its author disdainfully, "derives its frisson from the neatly packaged cultural differences between people and places." One of the striking things about Tokyo Cancelled is that there’s no attempt to exoticise a place -- be it Osaka, Buenos Aires, Paris or Delhi -- for the reader.

Jai, Rana Dasgupta; exoticising a city is what cities are all about. Clichés. Stereotypes. Pre-conceived notions. Travel would be robbed of its joy if you showed up without expecting something. If you arrived in Paris and didn’t carry those wonderful clichés of goatees and French bread and black and white striped t-shirts and berets and poodles, what would be the fun? If you arrived in India and didn’t know a thing about rajas and maharajas, snakes and elephants and cows, poverty and spiritualism, why would you even come here in the first place? And if you didn’t carry this collective pre-conceived notion with you, what would you tell your friends when you got home? How would you regale them with stories of Indian exotica and the wonderment of discovering a nation with electricity and running water and regular people. I’m not taking the piss. What would be the point of travel? Don’t you see, messers Dasgupta and Singh, the greatest thing about foreign places is how incredibly fucking romantic they are. If for no other reason than just because of the fact that they are foreign.

Incidentally, this is what really pisses me off about changing the names of our cities. If someone thinks that Mumbai is the original name and not Bombay, that’s fine, that’s great. But the name, the word ‘Bombay’ carries with it a million meanings. There are cities in this world, mostly colonial and pre-world war 2 cities, that have become a part of popular imagination because of all the things we associate with them. Bombay, Calcutta, Baghdad, Cairo, Rangoon, Batavia, Basra, Tehran, Istanbul, Karachi, Beirut. These names are sounds more than they are words. Like music, they mean different things to different people, but still find a common popular understanding in the common language of exotica. Mumbai means nothing to me. It holds no meaning, it harks back to no golden age, it reminds me of nothing. Mumbai is not a city where great things happened, happen or can happen. Bombay, with all its garbage and pollution and people and noise and grime and chaos, is still the exotic Bombay that was once a thriving port town, that once had a fort, that lived through an age of Jazz, that people from all the world came to. And still do. And that city is not Mumbai.

if you'd like to read jai arjun singh's post on rana dasgupta, this is it:
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2005/01/stories-without-borders-rana-dasgupta.html

2006-06-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

Holy Crap! I am very excited. this is the most entertaining thing to happen to me all week.

http://www.stevoland.org/slog/mr_wahabu_is_a_liar_a_fraud

http://flickr.com/photos/nic/87044872/

http://195.74.109.26:2029/news/johnballs/2006/may/7/bedford.lpf

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=4667913

2006-05-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

I wish I could remember where I got this.

2006-05-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

My 'guest column' in Maxim India.
What that basically means is that i don't get paid for it. woohoo!
Everything you read in this column is true, with the exception of Bhaskar's name, which i have changed because Heble didn't want pity sex.
Also, i really don't get the last bit:
Leo is a Penguin author/columnist.
I don't know where they got that idea, but they might just as well have written Leo is a Penguin. It would have been as accurate.

Illustration credit: Scritch.

2006-05-04T02:52:00.000-07:00

deep shit, this
(Bombay)

2006-04-25T04:31:00.000-07:00

And you thought Bollywood was cheesy.
(Lahore)

2006-04-20T00:17:00.000-07:00

Damn that Nandan.
He went somewhere I haven't been and took a picture of a roadsign I haven't seen.
Damn him, damn him to hell.

http://nonedone.blogspot.com/2006/03/greetings-from-lots-of-friend.html

2006-04-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

mine is bigger than yours
(Wagah, Pakistan. Beyond that white line though, is Attari, India)

2006-04-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

Pakistani political correctness at the Lahore Club
(Lahore)

2006-04-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

Paki trucks are the coolest trucks i have ever seen.
(I'm tired of going in chronological order)
(Wagah, Pakistan)

2006-04-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

Let's face it. I have no readers.

it's a fact. Janine is my one and only visitor. and you want updates. here you go.

this is a piece i wrote for tehelka this week.
let me tell you a little bit about tehelka:
i worked for them for a year (2004) and they have, of late, taken to asking me to write stuff for them.
for free.
i oblige, since they've done a lot for me, gave me my first job, made me vaguely respectable in the eyes of fellow journalists etc etc.
so i get back from london last monday to find an email from Sankarshan, the EE, sitting in my inbox, asking to write a piece for them.
he makes no mention of money and i don't bother asking since i know they don't have any.
they want the piece by the 28th, and i send it by the 28th, in the process almost missing two deadlines for pieces that I'm actually being paid for. But no matter. I ssaid i'd do it and i do. man of my word and all that.
it was meant to be for a 'youth special'

then i look at this week's tehelka.
no sign of my piece. no sign of a youth special.

that's cool. things change.

what bugs me though is that they:
a) don't acknowledge receiving it until i call and ask
b) don't tell me what they think of it despite my asking
c) and given that i did it for free when i could be working or drinking, never even bother saying thank you.

fucking idiots.

the brief i was given was to write a 1400 word piece on my personal experiences as young person in and out of the system

rant over, here's the piece in all it's unedited glory:

In and Out of the System

My first job came as a bit of a shock to me. The evening I received the offer, I went down to my neighbourhood café and spent the good part of an hour staring into the murky depths of the coffee flavoured water posing as a cup of Americano, trying to figure out when the hell I’d gotten so old. And I wasn’t. I was only 20 at the time, still in my third year of college and saw no reason to give up everything I held sacred (the right to loaf, the freedom to sleep till two, the liberty to watch television all day until my brain began to atrophy and so on).

I went to Delhi the following week, in the not unpleasant chill of January, and met with the features editor of this newspaper, a very pregnant Shoma Chaudhry, and, much to my alarm, found myself gainfully employed. A member of the working middle class. A bonafide contributor to the economy and to society as a whole, even. For the first time in my short and largely frittered life, I was going to be productive. The thought excited me and scared me shitless in equal measure.

I was young, sure, and apprehensive, definitely, but initially enthusiastic. I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to change the world, one article at a time. But the only reason I was taking the job, I told myself, was because it was Tehelka; one of the few media outlets in this country that I had any respect for. I had to delude myself into working somehow or the other.

It didn’t last long. I tried to quit for the first time within two months. Two months later, I tried again. Shoma, ever indulgent to the whims and tantrums of callow youths, made sure I didn’t make a decision I’d regret. By December of that year though, I had decided that enough was enough and with a masterful combination of cowardice, bravado and sheer stupidity, I quit over email and turned off my cellphone for the better part of two days. Not the brightest move careerwise, but one I’ve never regretted.

Since then, and it’s been about a year and a half, I’ve traveled around the world (the British Isles and Europe, at any rate), I’ve freelanced for nearly a dozen different publications and I’ve seen my writing improve. Since then, I’ve grown older, marginally wiser and much to my dismay, a little more cynical. I’ve also grown five or six gray hairs, a miserable excuse for a mustache and on occasion, a reverse Elvis quiff. (http://scritchproductions.blogspot.com/2006/03/leo-and-monty-play-part-2_09.html)

I’m not entirely sure what it was that finally persuaded me to quit. I know it wasn’t the tedium of the nine to five routine since I worked from home. It wasn’t the money since I had made a conscious decision to remain blissfully unemployed for at least half a year. And it definitely wasn’t Tehelka itself, since I loved working for this paper. It was just, I think, the fact of being employed. The fact of being answerable.

When Sankarshan, the executive editor of this publication, asked me to do this piece, he pitched it as a personal, first-person piece about what it meant to be a young person in and out of the system. As I write this in the middle of the night, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, listening to Chet Baker and smoking a cigarette, I like to believe I’m out of the system. I don’t have to answer to anyone if I decide, say, to hook off for a month and half. I spent all of last month in London doing very little apart from watching large doses of daytime television, drinking beer on the couch and occasionally dragging myself out of the house to meet friends for a drink. This on a budget of less than 20k. And there was no one from whom I need a signature on a leave requisition form.

Gloating aside, this doesn’t mean I don’t work. I work harder now than I ever did when I held a full-time job which assured me a fixed monthly income, which means that how ever much I may deny it, I’m still part of the system, even if ever so slightly.

The point I’m trying to make is that the system is about more than holding down a job. It’s about bills and rent and car loans and insurance and PAN cards and section 80C. It’s about all those things that we, the youth, didn’t even have to think about because, well, that’s what parents are for, aren’t they?

The system is about taking your assigned place in society, whether you’re an artist or an accountant. Whether you like it or not. In a nutshell, it’s about growing up. And that, if you’ll pardon my French, is a bitch.

I have a friend who studied history at Oxford and is now an accountant. He doesn’t mind. It’s what he’s got to do. A few months back, he quit his job for a better one and will do that again next year and a few years after that and a few years after that ad infinitum. His father, now retired, held down the same job for 40 years and has never traveled further than a couple of hundred kilometers from where he was born. This is not the world we live in anymore.

In the last decade and a half, India has gone through immense social changes and where a stable job at a bank or as an IAS officer was once the most coveted thing any well brought up youth could aspire to, we now live in an India that has more and more opportunity for alternative careers every day. The world is expanding and exploding around our ears and the opportunities, at least right now, seem endless. That, coupled with the fact that as you grow up, the minor choices you’ve made in the years before – what subjects you took in the 10th and 12th, what stream you chose in college, what you majored in, whom you chose to start your professional career with – all add up to severely limit your major choices in the years to come.

What does all that mean? Simply that most people of my age, at least most people whom I know (and I know a lot) have absolutely no clue what to do with their lives. Every single friend from college is in the process of either quitting a job, starting a new job or moaning incessantly about not doing what they really want to do. Not that they know what they really want to do. Very few of us do. In fact, apart from a two point agenda of getting very rich (in the long term) and getting very drunk (in the short term), there seems to be little direction in the lives of the urban youth in India today. I generalize, yes, but I do so out of a great deal of personal experience.

All is not lost though. A colleague who left Tehelka to seek greener pastures (green being the universally recognised colour of money) and is firmly entrenched in the system, working night shifts and wading through piles of largely incomprehensible PTI copy, told me this last Sunday about the mutual funds she has invested in. This set me thinking.

Clearly there are advantages to holding down a real job. A certain degree of respectability in the eyes of our old friend society is one, but more importantly, having a cheque to look forward at the end of every month is another. And savings. Wow!
But is it worth becoming a part of the system, giving up those beers for breakfast, languid lunches and dinners at dawn? Hell, for a normal life paying taxes, working eight hours a day and having weekends off, why not? Because sooner or later, the system gets to everyone.

2006-03-14T06:40:00.000-08:00

I dont generally do text, but this is quite brilliant.

From today's Guardian:

Sunny Delight burst on to the market in 1998 and reached the league table of top brands in 1999 by selling itself as a healthy drink, although its original recipe was only 5% juice with plenty of sugar and water as well as vegetable oil, thickeners, added vitamins, flavourings and colourings.

The health watchdog the Food Commission accused then owners Proctor and Gamble of a con for selling it from fridge cabinets. In 1999 paediatrician Duncan Cameron reported a new and alarming condition in the medical journals: Sunny Delight syndrome. A girl of five had turned bright yellow after drinking five litres a day. She was overdosing on betacarotene, the additive used to give the drink its orange colour, and the pigment was being deposited in her skin.

The marketing dream turned to a nightmare: by coincidence television adverts at the time showed two white snowmen raiding the fridge for Sunny D and turning bright orange.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1730387,00.html

2006-03-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

That Hector Guimard was quite a genius
(Paris)

2006-03-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

That German friendliness seems to have spread to Paris
(Paris)

2006-03-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

Carter in 'Jee-had' mode at the Great British Beer Festival.
(London)

2006-03-04T07:53:00.000-08:00

Nothing special, but I quite like this picture.
Man, I was so happy to get out of this country. Ridiculously dull.
(Ireland somewhere)

2006-03-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

It constantly amazes me how westerners turn EVERYthing into a tourist attraction. This is a bloody stone that supposedly gives you 'the gift of the gab' if you kiss it. People come from all over the world, climb up a castle, stand in line and kiss a stupid stone. Yeesh.
(Somewhere in bloody Ireland)

2006-03-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

The man who made regurgitation an art form. Brilliant.
(Killarney, Ireland)

2006-03-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

Not that this picture is of any interest to anyone, but it's so cool, I had to put it in.
(Cliff of Moher, Ireland)

2006-03-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

Political correctness at the Guiness Brewery. Sheesh
(Dublin)

2006-03-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

A really nice restaurant in an otherwise dull city
(Dublin)

2006-03-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

We had this cat for precisely two days. Monty and Janine thought it would be very funny to name him Leo. It wasn't.
(London)

2006-03-04T06:09:00.000-08:00

That's reassuring to know
(London)

2006-03-04T05:53:00.000-08:00

I thought this was wildly amusing. Turns out, so did Channel 4
(London)

2006-02-28T11:27:00.000-08:00

You! That's right, you!
(London)

2006-02-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

My favourite picture from the entire trip. It's so incredibly deadbeat.
Ah, the good life.
(London)

2006-02-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

Educational picture: this is the bridge that connects Denmark with Sweden.
Half an hour across the sea to another country. Fuck.
(Above Denmark [And Sweden])

2006-02-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

I love this. Click on the pic and check out the iconography for the condom. Only the fucking Danes.
Also check out the other items: more condoms, toothpaste, shaving kit and of course, the handy disposable breathalyser.
(Copenhagen Airport)

2006-02-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

Odd people, but Swede nonetheless. (hyuk)
(Malmo)

2006-02-28T10:40:00.000-08:00

Really cool art deco (or is it noveau?) cinema in, unlikely as it is, Sweden.
(Malmo. Oh right, didn't mention that did I? Dropped by Sweden for lunch, is all)

2006-02-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

Anders's living room, where i stayed. Five points to anyone who can correctly identify all the danish things about that painting. Oh, what the hell, you get five points just for being here. bring your friends, you can have all the points you want.
(Copenhagen)

2006-02-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

completely rubbish picture, but check out the colour of the sky. this is at 230am in scandanavia on the longest day of the year. trippy, eh?
(Copenhagen)

2006-02-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

a picture of my shadow in the waters of a port where all the sailors used to get drunk in copenhagen. or something like that.
(Nyuhaven, Copenhagen)

2006-02-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader(s),
When last I left you, we were in Copenhagen. We pick up now where we left off. Sooner or later, I hope to finish Europe, go back to the London pictures, come back to India, to Pakistan, back to Goa and onto Berlin.
Sincerely,
Leo

You know i'm just showing off, don't you?

2005-11-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you cross Film City and Legoland?
(Copenhagen)

2005-11-02T23:22:00.000-08:00

Who doesn't?
(Copenhagen)

2005-11-02T23:15:00.000-08:00

Tuborg Green
(Copenhagen)

2005-11-02T23:10:00.000-08:00

I really like this picture. And trains rule anyway.
(Milan)

2005-11-02T23:08:00.000-08:00

For two &*#^!@%@ coffees!? Yeesh.
(Venice)

2005-11-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

Cello cello, aage cello
(Venice)

2005-11-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Token arty picture
(Venice)

2005-11-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

More Commie Penguins
(Venice)

2005-11-02T22:02:00.000-08:00

Commie Penguins
(Venice)

2005-11-02T21:53:00.000-08:00

This one's as self-explanatory as it gets
(Venice)

2005-11-02T21:50:00.000-08:00

A condom machine outside a baby shop. I'm not quite sure exactly how that works.
(Venice)

2005-11-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

Friendly folk, these Venetians
(Venice)

2005-10-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Thataway!
(Venice)

2005-10-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

The train I nearly took to Venice.
(Venice)

2005-10-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

The train I took from Milan to Venice
(Venice)

2005-10-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

That's one ugly dog.
(Milan)

2005-10-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

Old fashioned? The Italians? Surely you jest.
(Milan)

2005-10-22T04:27:00.000-07:00

About these two wheels you sold me...
(Milan)

2005-10-22T04:23:00.000-07:00

Take that women's rights movements. So there! HA!
(Hamburg. The Reeperbahn. Or on slow nights, the Grim Reeperbahn)

2005-10-22T04:20:00.000-07:00

To think that all we get on train platforms in Bombay is wadapav and gulab jamuns. Dang it. Life can be so unfair sometimes.
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

I can't be the only one who finds this amusing. Really, I can't.
(Hamburg. Honest)

2005-10-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

see?
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T13:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know who they hell he is either, except he's all over Hamburg
(Hamburg. Surprise, surprise.)

2005-10-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

That balloon came pre-drawn by some random miscreant (although not random or miscreant enough to steal the sign, which is now in my room).
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

everything you need to roll a cigarette. added bonus: naked chick lighter
(Hamburg. But really, this scene has been recreated on tables across the world)

2005-10-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

Holy doner kebab, Batman!
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

obviously, these germans are very agreeable people.
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

20 euro. Cheap!
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

caution: falling stick figures?
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

Achtung! Uberwachung. I like that.
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

just in case you missed the first red guy
(Hamburg)

2005-10-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

No shit, Sherlock
(Hamburg)