Sidey, Please

Crack knuckles, deep breath.
Baaju Hut shall live again.
An empty threat. Sigh!

 

Seeya Later, All Ye Waiters

 

I really can’t say what it is about waiters, but they really get my goat. Except of course, when they are actually supposed to be getting me my goat, in which case they ‘accidentally’ bring me cow. And that just gets my goat again, for which the lousy bastards expect me to tip them extra.

 

I wasn’t always like this, of course. I used to be polite and courteous to restaurant-workers, smiling benevolently at them as they gently trickled boiling potage down the back of my shirt. Graciously would I ignore the bungling oafs’ tendency to bring me my aperitif after my apple pie. I would tip them a generous 12.5%, fill in whole paras of panegyric in the feedback form (always mentioning names) and thank them profusely for suggesting the delightfully elastic cut of uncooked hippo meat that was my T-Bone steak.

 

And then, one day, I found that I didn’t need to take it anymore.

 

 

Now, I am not usually the discriminatory type. I do not judge people on race, colour, length of hair or dancing prowess. I am fairly tolerant of the unfortunate souls who drool when they fall asleep in cars or have moist under-arm patches on their shirts/blouses. I have even been known to smile through gritted teeth as a classmate rummaged through my cupboard looking for mock CAT papers! But I absolutely refuse to humour someone who believes you owe him for the fact that hasn’t injected your main course with his bodily fluids. The supercilious little eyebrow-raise, the smug “Regular water? Are you sure?”, it drives me up a wall.

 

So I now have a zero-tolerance approach. Cocky waitresses are called “aunty” and are asked to please remove the strands of white hair from my salad. Hoity-toity maitre d’s get impromptu grammar lessons. Incompetent waiters are asked to replace the finger-bowls until the water is precisely 77 deg C. And, I hit them where it hurts them most – I am a lousy tipper.

Occasionally, just occasionally, does a genuinely helpful waiter pop out of the woodwork – one who goes out of her way to improve your dining experience, is attentive and efficient and doesn’t fill cold water all the way to the brim of your glass. But wait, keep watching as she picks up your bill and scans the (adequate, or so you thought) 10% tip you’ve shelled out by way of encouragement. Watch her scowl, hiss, spit and curse the fudge out of many branches of your family tree. The next time you order a salad at this joint you can be sure it will be delicately seasoned with the fresh flavours of Morarji Juice.

Those Japshave it spot on as usual. Get little conveyor belts with automatic billing machines attached and send all the waiters to the massage parlour at the back. Also charge a couple of million yen for raw fish and rice. Wasabiautiful idea!

In Rainbows

I had decided to post something this week, and so there I was, sitting patiently in front of the laptop, waiting for Lady Inspiration to arrive. She was a little late this time around, even by her standards.

And then, I saw this.

Smashing, said I! The best band in the world is now, clearly, also the smartest! Whoop-de-doo and yipee-ya-yay.

As a business model, though,  I wonder why more people haven’t tried this out. If positioned right, and done not-too-frequently, I do believe it’d do spectacularly well. I’ve seen it work. Annalakshmi, the Coimbatore-based restaurant has been doing this for ages. (I admit, it works better in their case – they’ve got religion and charity on their side! Also, maybe it works better when you have someone look you in the eye when you leave.)

Tyler Cowen, an economist and author of immense sense, had this to say about the gimmick/experiment. There is much to find fault with in his rationalization. For starters, Radiohead is not an Indie cult band. His basic premise, however, I agree with – this will not alter the Music Industry.

The more I think about it, it seems to me that only a band like Radiohead could pull this off. They are a band with a deep - and not just wide - fan base. And they do appear to be genuinely curious. This is a bold experiment, a fantastic statement from a band that has just risen that little bit higher in my estimation.

An Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.
~William Safire, “Great Rules of Writing”
______

Whoever said ‘writing sets you free’ was a prize ass. There is, to me, nothing more arduous or mind-bendingly frustrating than sitting down in front of my laptop and attempting to churn out a simple piece of prose. I cannot simply hammer away at my keyboard or scribble on a sheet of A4, and emerge half an hour later freer, lighter, calmer. Nor am I capable of throwing down sentence upon sentence, abandoning form, flow and finish for a little skinny-dipping in the stream of consciousness.

It is, as far as I am concerned, bloody hard work. It is painfully slow, very tiring, and therefore, no fun at all. You celebrate the little victories, of course: the little turn of phrase that came out just right, the perfect metaphor that you’re sure you invented, the use of the appropriate punctuation mark, even. But until it is complete, and you are satisfied with the end product (or discard it outright), there is a gnawing vacuum, like a blocked ear that will not pop.

For long, I thought this was because my writing was not honest. I don’t write for myself, it’s always for The Reader. And very often, there is an involuntary attempt to give The Reader what he wants, to make him smile, frown, react. This playing to the gallery does not attempt to reproduce your inner self. It is showmanship, mere entertainment, and you are no more than a literary Humphrey Boggart.

But what does honesty have to do with anything? What is wrong with a little paperback promiscuity? And so what if it is hard work? The purpose, as far as I am concerned, is for it to be effortless, for what is written to seem like nothing more than a happy accident. And that, if you can remember the first time you clambered upon a bicycle, is not easy.

There is no point to this post. I was attempting to do precisely what I said I was incapable of. I was also trying to see if my powers of concentration were as rotten as I thought they were.

On both counts, I was right.

Pu Hao

A strange smell. Is it cigarette smoke? Smelly socks? A corpse? Ha-ha, I laugh nervously to myself. There now, Murthy, it’s a shady hotel, but this is not a movie.

I switch on the light and the aircon. It seems to be coming from the bathroom. A deep breath. Slow, measured movements and the handle is all the way down. I push the door open, look around. Sheepishly, I scratch “corpse” off the list.

The smell is a little more over-powering. Fear morphs to anger, now that I’m no longer in any perceptible danger. Where is this coming from?

______

“Room Service? Hello? Please come up, lah. Quick. Room 712. Chi bai Yi shi Er (The laowai can count in Chinese!)”

“Click zoo pop schwick pop bing”

“I no understand Chinese. Come up, lah. Urgent. Fly like the wind.”

“Um..you want…ah…Fly lice?”

“I DO NOT WANT FRIED RICE. I want you to come up. Fast”

Click.

______

Ah yes, come in please. In here, the bathroom. Can you smell that? You know what that is? Pu hao, Pu hao (Not good, not good).

Housekeeping walks into the loo. She shoots a curious look in my direction – what’s the fuss about? I point with both hands. My eyes widen, my eyebrows rise high above my curly locks, my nostrils flare. Pu hao, Pu hao.

And she laughs.

She sits down on the ground, and she laughs.

She speaks to someone over her walkie-talkie, is soon joined by another of the house-keeping staff, and they both sit down on the bathroom floor and they laugh.

I am not amused. I launch into a series of hand gestures and a random assortment of the dozen Chinese words I know. I am angry and they need to get it. I will not tolerate….

And then it hits me. Shit. They think I’ve done it.

______

The housekeeping staff very kindly cleaned the little plops of poo off the toilet seat, grinning as they did it. They greet me with a polite “Ni Hao” every morning, but giggle as soon as my back is turned. Indians, they say to themselves, are pigs.

Poo. How? I haven’t the foggiest. But they think it’s me.

Cheeni (Here I) Kum!

This post was written on the flight to Shanghai. I meant to upload it earlier, but the random censorship of websites in China meant that I could not access any blog site. Till now. Sheer persistence got me into WordPress! If this chokes, I might, God forbid, have to start blogging on Rediff!

This was intended to be a travel journal of sorts. You know, the kind of stuff Ibn Batuta used to do! Ibn, old chap, clearly didn’t have to deal with the Internet Policy of PRC, though! This might, therefore, end up being merely a sporadic reporting of events.

If it does, well, shucks.

______________________________________________________________

 

Oolong, and thanks for all the pancakes

Oolong, long time ago, it used to be pretty good tea. Not quite green, certainly not black, and with what Wiki calls a ‘nuanced flavor (sic) profile”. What that means is that it should, if brewed right, be strong and slightly bitter, with an extremely subtle light and sweet after-taste.

Sic is right! Yesterday, I tasted what was claimed to be a blend of some of the finest oolongs from the Fujian province. Oolong and ooshort of it was that it tasted like cough mixture. It was bitter and proud of it; it had the arrogance of a fresh MBA – naïve and ready to change the world, yet unable to make a sandwich without a process flowchart. Marketing will say it has enough anti-oxidants to put out a fire. Quite possible, but I’d much rather eat a bucketful of sand.

Not soolong ago, however, there was a bunny called Oolong that became famous (in and Internetty sort of way) for being able to balance pancakes on her head. Her owner was this Japanese guy who was accused of being cruel to poor, defenseless (and inordinately cute) furry creatures. His argument that nobody complains when poor, defenseless (and inordinately cute) models are made to do the same thing, was dismissed as being frivolous, sexist and generally quite crap. The rabbit died sometime ago and people refused to East’er.

So, as Kurt Vonnegut would have it, it goes.

 

Wuxi-Washy (wu:shi-wa:shi)

I will be spending much of the next three months in a town called Wuxi. I have never been to China before, and, despite all that I have read, have no idea what to expect. I am deeply curious, though. Is this industrialization without a soul, detached from their wonderful culture, spreading like a cantankerous canker? Or is there a harmonious blend of old and new, a purposeful march towards a better living? More importantly, are all Chinese born with table-tennis bats in their little hands, and if so, where do they get it from?

Equally fascinating is how the Capitalist West perceives China. Is it a James Bond villain or a market to be exploited, a threat or an opportunity? ‘SWOT is it? The truth is, it might be neither – both views are probably obsolete. As consumers, for instance, we have reason to rejoice: we will never have it so good. We will gradually come to expect the unmatched quality (Mattel was an aberration, these guys can manufacture!) and price that China can provide. Many of China’s consumers, however, will be cunningly reserved for its own domestic industries. It’s a wonderful little game of cat-and-mouse, and the Chinese own all the pest-control agencies.

 

My views on Philosophy

I recently got into an argument about philosophy. I’m normally not that stupid, it was a moment of weakness. I mentioned on Yohan’s blog that I was scared of philosophers and the universe they live in. It was a brave confession, not one that I am usually prone to. Anyway, that got me thinking.

This is what I really think about philosophy. It’s on many levels, and therefore, appropriately, is a knock-knock joke:

Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida who?
Precisely.