I Prefer White Light To Yellow*

I found this mildly fascinating. Why does the lamp burn like so? Or does it merely appear to? Is it do with with the frame-rate of capture? Persistence of vision? I’m familiar with television sets flickering when filmed with amateur-grade video cameras, but I’ve never seen this before. The spooky (word used loosely here) thing is simultaneously watching the light flickering in the camera viewscreen, but burning solidly when looked at directly. What else are our eyes deceiving us into believing? Perhaps my satellite speakers are actually doing a non-stop rain-dance, but I can’t see it. My phone is doubtless vanishing and reappearing eleventeen thousand times a second.

My ex-physicist brain can’t handle it.

(Non-compact fluorescent lamp burning above Perakath’s bed. Filmed on an Olympus FE280 compact digital camera.)

Eerily, this lamp gave out just days after I took this video. Doubtless I stole its soul by capturing it on a CCD. Auntyji asked me to replace it myself. She’s even more of a cheapskate than I am. When I move out I’m going to take with me every fitting that I’ve paid for since I moved into this room– tubelight, regular incandescent bulb(s), CFL in the bathroom, new fan speed regulator, two new sockets, flush handle, toilet seat, and zero-watt bulb from the landing.

 

* Even the car headlights throw blue-tinted white beams, not yellow. I love them.

MTV– Enjoy

http://www.mtvyouthicon.in.com/nomineelist.php

Go on… feel just a little bit worse about yourself. About how much more people your age or younger have accomplished than you have. How they’re advancing themselves (and often doing great stuff like helping the poor and sick) while you’re sitting on the internet reading this crap.

Or you could check out MTV’s cool-ish new video site, MTVMusic.com, where you can be a minidork and watch music videos for free, officially. It’s good to see another instance of a media company embracing the glorious internet.

http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=48189

(I love Keane. They have cool names like ‘Tim Rice-Oxley’, and they make piano-rock.)

http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=18200

(And I still love Madonna, even today. This video does more for me than the average YouPorn clip. I’m running out of years in which to meet and sleep with her, though.)

http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=26726

(Eighties tight-panted cool.)

Drink Less You Must, Young Paduwan

After six months or so off the market, during which time I switched my loyalty to:

I managed to find a bottle of:

Maybe it’s all the:

and:

that I’ve been drinking lately, but the Fat Friar doesn’t agree with me like he used to.

Or maybe I’ve finally managed to OD to the extent that I don’t like the taste of rum anymore.

I’ve even stopped enjoying my standard:

Perhaps I should take a break for a while, and break out the old:

Pecuniary Obsessing, feat. Gupta Stores

The delivery boy asked for his “Happy Diwali gift”, a wide smile on his sweet face. Coming as it did at the end of a day of payouts, I sighed and reached for my wallet.

The two chowkidars made a fuss about how much I gave each of them today, but they’re slimy fucks and I was expecting them to. I stuffed the fifties into their shirt pockets and walked off. The garbage collector made a fuss too, but he’s a nice chap and I didn’t grudge him the extra note.

A couple of years ago I stopped to fill air with a girl on the back of my bike. She was shocked when I tipped the guy the usual buck, and actually gave him a fiver to ‘compensate’. She couldn’t understand how I could pay anyone so little for anything. I couldn’t make her understand that the air is actually free, that many pumps don’t even take tips, that one rupee is the standard tip for a bike (two for a car; its fifty paise per tyre), that I fill air religiously once a week, and that it’s just not on to pay five rupees for tyre air! She doesn’t drive herself, so I gave it up as the ignorance of the naive.

This delivery chap only brings me a canister of water every week (in summer) / fortnight (in winter), but he’s just a kid and the water weighs more than 20 kilograms. I never tip him usually, because I’m against the concept of tipping in general. Why should I pay these clowns for something advertised as free home delivery? What’s their salary for?

To be fair, I’m yet to meet a delivery guy who ever asked for a tip. A Domino’s guy actually returned his tip one generous-feeling day. But on the whole, they’re usually happy to take whatever you give them. I just refrain from giving them things because I don’t want it to become a habit, for them to begin to expect it.

I felt quite bad after the water boy had gone, though. I’d given him only ten bucks, because it was that or a fifty, and the water costs less than fifty bucks. I quickly locked up and ran downstairs, thinking I’d get change and give him another ten, but he’d gone back to Gupta Stores. I’ll just give it to him tomorrow when I pick up my half-pint of double-toned.

——————

I (rather rudely) dropped in to the Mad Momma’s house on my way home last night. I was a little hesitant to, partly because I hadn’t bathed that day after unscheduled-ly spending the previous night in south Delhi, and partly because it was Diwali and rather a family occasion. MM and her family are always ultra-sweet to me though (you too, Chandni!), and this time was no different. They took me in, gave me drinks and dinner, and let me have the joy of watching their little kids tripping on the fireworks lighting up the sky. (They were clapping and jumping around, the angels!) I love MM’s blog, and it’s in danger of closing down soon, so give her a try while you can, if you haven’t already. (The purpose of this paragraph!)

Cardsharp Speaks

It suddenly struck me that I could look up the rules of the most common Diwali card game, Teen Patti, on the internet. I might end up playing it tonight, and most people are as terrible at explaining card-game rules as they are at giving directions.

Surprise of surprises, it’s ”almost identical” to a British card game known as ‘3-Card Brag’. Stupid of me to have assumed we as a card-playing nation could have shown any originality. Okay, that’s not really fair– but I was under the impression it was a homegrown sport.

Heavens, though. The game is designed to bleed you. The initial dealing of 3 cards is quickly dispensed with, and then it’s straight to the bids, with no more cards to distract anyone. Bets are made incrementally, and the round must continue until there are only 2 (or 1) players left bidding, everyone else having decided to drop out! Unlike Poker, there’s no concept of equalising bets, or of a multi-player showdown. And hence no need to remain poker-faced. It’s essentially an auction– who’s willing to pay the most for the kitty. I now see how people lose lakhs at this game every Diwali.

Every few months, I’ll find myself with a Poker-playing group, and I quite enjoy it. I can sustain interest for about an hour or so, but then I usually hand my cards to a spectator and make my way to the bar area.

I learnt to play Rummy by watching my aunts, great-aunts actually I think they were. They’d come down from Mysore once a year for a checkup and to get pacemaker batteries replaced and such, and spend ALL their time sitting in the living-room drinking tea and playing serious Rummy for money. They have their own variants over in Coorg, and I’m sure they had a league of sorts.

In college we would spend hours and hours playing what we called Minimum– the stoner’s card game. It’s truly perfect for stoned playing– very little thought is required. You dump your cards as fast as you can, and aim to have as low a total as you can manage. Tips and tricks include saying out loud a particular card you want to see played. (“Pathrose, dude, King, man.” “Monts– King.” “King, King.” “Aha! A King!”) And also watching out for the joint wending its way around– it’s easy for a cheap shit to take more than his share before passing while everyone’s intent on the game.

My favourite card game, though, isn’t 28 or Bluff– two games I loathe. It’s a relatively little-known game called Literature, which turns out to have its own Wikipedia page. It’s a six-player game, played with two teams of 3, and is perfect for play on a sleeper train journey, ideally on the upper berths, with two facing rows of three players and a sheet covering everyone’s legs acting as the playing table. It’s slightly complicated to get your head around, but once you’ve figured it out it’s very addictive and a real joy to play. You need great memory and logical thinking to win. Or better yet, as with all card games, you need to be sitting next to someone who doesn’t know how to hide their cards. We’ll play next time we meet up, okay?

It Runs In The Family

My brother has brought a girl home for Diwali. And not as part of a group of friends, either. He invited her before telling my mom. She’s told her parents she’s travelling with her (female) roommate, but there’s no roommate at casa Perakath!

He’s quite unlike me, this Perakath Junior-Junior. Thick lips instead of thin. Beanpole frame instead of hunky stocky. Eighteen instead of twenty-three. Fifty-something kilos compared to my eighty-eight. (Yes, this is the most I’ve ever weighed in my life.) 174 to my 177. He’s good at basketball, table tennis, soccer, badminton… most sports, actually. I play all the above (with him), but with no real talent. He played State-level basketball. (I can probably swim faster than him, and my tennis is better because he’s a little too scrawny for that game. Ha!) He does nonsense like climbing trees, and poking under stones to look at the insects. As a child he was famous for breaking his bones: he once had both arms broken simultaneously. I don’t know if he bothered going to school then.

Unfortunately for him, I was a much better student. And reasonably notorious among our teachers for things like non-completion of geography maps, Tamil handwriting exercises, and biology record books– planting me in their memories. The poor fellow thus spent his middle- and high-school life being compared (unfavourably) to me, or so we suppose at home.

From what little gossip people our age pick up (usually from siblings in the same age group), V. Perakath seems to do alright with the ladies girls. He’s certainly more forthright than me, owning up to his dalliances, albeit only to my mom. (We’re not close, and the idea of him confiding in me is quite laughable.) My now-standard answer to parental probes of “do you have a girlfriend?” is “lots”, which reassures them enough to not press for details.

I have to say, though, it’s pretty fucking gutsy of him to take someone home like that. Mother dearest wasn’t too impressed, because they’re only 3 months into dental college, and she thought at the very least the girl’s parents should know that she’s going alone to a boy’s house. But she was cool enough to let her stay, although the brotherhood has to sleep in her room while the nun sleeps in his (and my!) room. She didn’t install the girl in the guest room downstairs because she’d rather have them both where she can see them! As Pop told maaji, though, “at least he’s telling you what he’s up to.”

Ten points to the Old Mother. She’s demonstrated her coolness in this regard before; coming down one morning to find me sharing the guest bed with a classmate who was then also her student, she didn’t ask any questions, ever. (Dadkins later asked me to stop bringing her over, though, because “I’m a professor and she’s a student in this college and it doesn’t look good if she spends the night here.” We had to sneak out at 5 a.m., after that.) (I may have written about this before.)

And a rather grudging… five points to the Young ‘Un. He’s outshone me, for once.

Ebenezer Perakath Ruminates

A little premature, perhaps, seeing as Diwali is on Tuesday. But tomorrow (Monday) is Chhoti Diwali, and Thursday is Bhai Dooj… these North Indians really go to town with their satellitic holidays. Thankfully, the tekas* are closed only on Tuesday. In all other respects, life is taking almost a week off– a really long weekend, from Saturday to Thursday. Four of my professors this semester have cancelled all their classes for next week, knowing that student attendance will be so low as to make taking a class worthless. The other fellow has developed an infuriating habit of taking only half a class, coming in at 11:00 for a 10:30 - 11:30 lecture. As a result, he’s nicely behind in the syllabus, as I knew he would be, and has to teach throughout the festive week.

Growing up in a Christian community in rural South India, these Indian festivals meant only one thing to me– school holidays. (School was in no way desperate to get us to come, in any case– until I was in 9th or 10th, any morning it rained would see us waiting for the telephonically relayed message: rain holiday. Someone on the school board finally saw the ridiculousness of this practice, even if rain was such a rare thing in Vellore that it perhaps did deserve its own holiday!) Holi is in any case a far more North Indian festival than it is Southern. Deepavali meant the Hindu sub-community would come around with sweets; the Christians would return the favour two months later with Christmas cake. We didn’t do any of the things usually associated with Diwali (as explained to foreigners in platforms like Wikipedia and Lonely Planet). We never bought new clothes for Diwali, nor went anywhere for the extended weekends. I don’t like Indian sweets, and since I ate the most in our house by far, there was no need to buy sweets or dried fruit or nuts for ourselves. We did always buy tickets to the Hindu-organised fireworks spectacle at the community hall (the 10,000-wala pataka stream was quite something!)– but it was in the nature of a social event, a chance to dress up and have dinner with your class boys, pre-puberty; and girls-and-older-kids, once we’d gotten past the cheetangoli** phase.

Christmas was the only festival our family celebrated with anything bordering on enthusiasm. My mom likes singing hymns and carols, so she’d make a rare appearance at the chapel, but that was and remains the extent of the religiosity we displayed. (I love Christmas carols myself, but I was too embarrassed to sing in front of my folks, so I’d stand there silently on the occasions I joined them.) Until 2002, Christmas meant a gathering of the extended maternal family at my grandparents’ Madurai Mansion, replete with Christmas tree, gifts from a bevy of aunts and uncles (including, invariably, an envelope of cash from thatha, bless his soul), and the best mutton curry Christmas lunch avva could cook. Which was pretty darn fabulous, I may add. In 2003 my mom was doing a stint in a clinic in London’s Harley Street (her clientele was mostly Arab sheikhs, she told me, and she claims to have seen Trudie Sumner once), and we went to join her for Christmas and New Year. That New Year remains the only time I’ve seen a roomful of WASPs drunk on champagne and warbling along to Auld Lang Syne with the television anchors… but I’m hopeful of being able to replicate that scene within 5 years. I must remember to incorporate it in my first personal Five-Year Plan. Since then I haven’t been back in Madurai for Christmas, and I sorely miss it.

It amuses me mildly, thus, to see the North Indian Diwali fervour. People here associate it greatly with taash*** card parties– something high in Ram’s mind when he was off doing his thing in Lanka, no doubt. The houses are resplendent with glittering lights. The chowkidars have begun clamouring for their handout, and my newspaper guy refused to return 200 bucks he owes me because ”the children know nothing of my difficulties; they just ask for Diwali gifts and I must provide them.” This year, thanks to the Delhi Police strictly enforcing security norms in the wake of the recent terrorism, fireworks are in comparatively short supply, and I’m thankful I can hear Eric Clapton playing over the sound of patakas, for once. The newspapers are full of accounts of woeful merchants lamenting the poor Diwali demand: a combination of Economicrisix and bomb blasts in marketplaces seems to have hurt consumer sentiment. I don’t understand that particular fear: the likelihood of terrorists striking the same market once more is within the realm of calculated risk, at the very least, non? 

My Facebook home page is full of happy-holidays status messages. This festival of Light and Magic is probably the preeminent pan-Indian festival, and if you’re lucky enough to be around family or celebratory friends, I’m happy for you.

But me?

Bah fucking humbug.

(Rather an appropriate Act to be studying, though; say what you like about inclusive Indianness, it remains at heart a Hindu festival:)

 

* Off-licences
**  To be cheetangoli was to be untouchable. It spread by contact, unless you had an item coloured green touching you. The standard practice was to stuff a leaf under your watch face, thus making you immune from infection. Not to be confused with leprosy, which was a similar affliction affecting (usually hot) girls. I was once sent to the Vice-Principal for making a girl cry with my accusations of her having leprosy.
*** Gambling

I Have A Mean Streak

This is a lizard alley cow, a bloody runty ugly one at that, chilling in the dirty, dug-up lane that runs behind chez Perakath.

This is an open bucket of water that my room-neighbour’s maid (I clean my own room and am proud of it!), who doesn’t seem to have heard of the flap that the Delhi government makes about dengue and chikungunya, always leaves on my side of the common balcony, along with her ultra-modern plastic replacement for the good old coconut-palm-stick broom. I’m petty about these things, but Diwakar is a nice guy and he potted-planted the balcony suo moto, so I let it lie. 

Should I?

Zorro Strikes Again

This more properly belongs on Zonuts, but the twain have different audiences. And I ceaselessly toil to increase the legion of Zorro’s wheaty followers.

—————————————–

This is what the Beatles sound like when played by top-flight musicians. Yellow Matter Custard could be called a supergroup, were they to stay together and perform as a band… but as Wikipedia says, they were more a project than a band.

Singer Neal Morse (ex – Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic) has one of my favourite voices in the prog universe. Paul Gilbert (Mr Big, Racer X) is recognised as one of the most talented (and fastest) guitarists alive. And drummer Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater, Transatlantic) is of course my hero. Matt Bissonnette is the only name I’m unfamiliar with, although I have of course heard of Joe Satriani and Electric Light Orchestra, two of the names on his CV.

Stick around for Paul Gilbert’s solo, which begins after timestamp 4:00. Portnoy kicks in with a bit of flair after 5:00. And is that a kurti-sherwani Portnoy is wearing?

Yellow Matter Custard – While My Guitar Gently Weeps [2003]
(Beatles cover) (or is it a George solo? I’m no bug-lover.)

(Thanks to ‘Me!!’ for putting the real me onto this video.)

Statutory Warning: Cigarette Smoking Is Injurious To Health

They need to introduce these pictorial warnings on Indian smoke packs pronto.