Whats in a name

As you guys already know... My name is Vinod... and my father's name
is Krishnadas. While most Mallus would be satisfied with this level of
information, the non mallus are already wondering what my surname is!
Well, I don't have a surname... I could add Nair or Menon at the end
of my name, but that's not really a surname. Ideally, if my mallu
roots could dictate my name, I would be just Vinod (maybe Vinoth!! I
actually had one mallu writing me an email calling me Vinoth!),
followed by my house name. But given that this type of naming (w.r.t
appending the house name) is no longer relevant (I mean Vinod
Block101D is hardly an ideal name) it leaves me with one field
(Surname) to fill in and a number of options to choose from... that's
always a fun scenario!

So, in my 10th standard form, I put in Krishnadas as my surname and
left my middle name blank. The supervisor called me out
Supervisor: "Why is this blank?"
Me: "I don't have a middle name"
"What's your father's name"
"Krishnadas"
"Oh, then it should be here... (pointing to the middle name field) not
there.. What is your surname then"
"Krishnadas"
"So, your father's name is Krishnadas Krishnadas??"
"No, its K Krishnadas"
"Whats K"
"Nothing, just K"
"Who the hell goes around with just 'K' for a name????"
"Its not his name.. its not like people would yell out to him 'hey K,
come here'"
"What is it then?"
"Its his house name"
"So whats his full name?"
"K Krishnadas"
By now the supervisor was sure I was trying to make her look like a
jackass.. so, angrily
"Put in whatever you want... just don't leave it blank!"
Happy about the little battle I had won, I put down my fathers name as
K. Cool name I thought. Just K.. Somehow it seems out of a 007 movie.
Agent K.

Now it's all well and good, me choosing my surname and what father's
name should be on the record. Trouble is, my sister chose differently!
So, as per records, our surnames and father's names don't exactly
match!

As if all this complication caused by lack of a surname wasn't enough,
we Nairs follow the matrilocal
system<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_matrilineal_or_matrilocal_societies>,
which means ideally, I should take my mother's house name after my own
name! Most Nairs abandoned this long back, coz when you are out of
Kerala, and provide different surnames for yourself and your father,
the clerk at the desk will put down his pen, think deeply for a
moment, shake his head ever so slightly and then look at you with
pity!

Coming back to adding house names into our names, its a wierd way to
merge your name and part of your postal address, and only a mallu
could have thought of it. Some other southie communities went
overboard with it and added village and district names as well,
landing up with names such as VVS Laxman. And I don't even want to
start about Sri Lankans!

We mallus are slowly discarding the house names but the mallu
fascination for house names never ceases. You know how you go to a
party and meet some one new.. You are like
"Hi I am Vinod"
"Hi! I'm Rajesh"
"Where do you work?"
"Oh I work at blah blah..."
and everything is happy.. hehehahahuhu
In a mallu scene, the first question you get after you announce your
name, is "Where is the house" and I'm like "Kalina" coz I am always
the smart wisecrack...and you should see the disappointment on them...
the fact that it wasn't immediately apparent to me that they were
asking for my house name (in Kerala) is so heartbreaking for them! The
next set of questions are mainly related to career and why you aren't
an MBA already... you get the drift.

All the confusion created notwithstanding, I love my name.. Krishnadas
sounds good as a surname and feels right. Its not the most common
surname you'd come across (unlike Nair or Menon) and plus it allowed
me to make that supervisor look like a jackass! (Evil laugh) :)

Sing.. sing.. Singapore!

I reached Singapore exactly a month back.. 20th June... It been a month... Seems to have just flown past... I remember on the 18th my boss briefing me and the other guys, telling us "Its going to be challenging..." The moment I got onto that Air India flight, I knew the challenge had begun. I entered the flight to find an old woman dressed in a sari, glaring at  me.. I scoffed at her, thinking Hmph! Grumpy Fliers... I looked around to find that there were more wearing similar saris.... All displaying varied levels of hostility.. I feared the woman in the sari would soon make me feel very sorry..

The in flight food was awesome and the flight was quite good actually... the service was not bad... Yes, I got no response when I pressed the Call Flight Attendant button, but at least they didn't hit me when I asked for a glass of juice or give me disapproving looks when I took a beer! The entertainment was well... Ajab Prem ki Gazab kahani, one episode from some English sitcom, and one episode of Tom and Jerry.. All in loop mode.. Of course, you could also listen to a single song for 5 hours and 20 minutes on the in flight radio, but the fake enthusiasm of the RJ had me reaching for the air sickness bag.

So here I am... in Singapore, missing family and friends but learning a lot about living in a foreign land. Its fun, but it leaves me with very little time to blog.. in fact I call home barely once in 3 days or so... The entire week whooshes past... But unlike in Mumbai, my weeks here are very structured.

My week is split into 3 parts -
Mon thru Friday - This part of the week is where I make it increasingly difficult for me to reach my bed. I do this by throwing around chargers, cups, chopsticks, headphones, cameras, pouches, clothes, hangers and basically any movable object. Soon the unswept floor is barely visible and by Friday night, getting to bed is a tricky task - a tiring exercise as I do combos of long jump, high jump... everything except the pole vault. Friday nights I sleep out of exhaustion.


Saturday - This day I become Mr. Tourist. I dig out my denims, cap and camera from underneath a pile of clothes and spend the day admiring Singapore, clicking pictures and having a blast.. I generally get home well past midnight and then stay up all night putting up pictures on FB!

Sunday -I wake up late... and not my daddy late (which is 8:15 BTW!) but L-A-T-E! 12:30 or 1 in the afternoon... Late start aside, this is by far the most tiring day of the week coz after cooking, cleaning the house and washing clothes, I need to tidy up my room and this is generally around the day of the week I miss mom the most.

But I am enjoying this a lot... Living as a bachelor is something every guys must do... Its just so much fun! And Singapore is easily amongst the best places to work in... Yes, Singapore is teaching me a lot of things.. I learn each day, the work is interesting and challenging, and I am having the time of my life roaming its streets... I learnt how the eat with chopsticks, how to make dal, and that mom does sooo much at home that I never realized..


But despite the joys of Singapore, I generally don't sleep very happy. There is a face I see which wets my eyes, I see that face each time I close my eyes, I dream of that face when I sleep, I even think of that face when I work... Nano... clinging to me on her birthday... fear in her eyes that mama will leave her side if she lets go.. Her face... a mixture of joy, excitement and happiness on seeing me, and an unknown fear.. Her face...

Marr-aiges

Two of my friends Deepti Deshpande (Now Deepti Suru) and Jayasimha Rachamalla (He gets to keep his name.. plus, this is too unique a name to change anyway) tied the knot last month (not with each other, my group ain't like the one in FRIENDS) and I wanna wish them good luck and the best fortunes ahead.. After all, fortune favors the brave.. Cheers!

I have always enjoyed attending wedding receptions. I don't know what it is about a wedding reception that fascinates me so much. Somewhere I think that this fascination stems from the fact that I am a Malayali
(not one of these pink lungi wearing ones.. but one nonetheless)



See, the thing is, as a mallu kid growing up, the only thing to look forward to in a mallu wedding is the reception (if it does happen). My mallu readers are at this point logging off coz they know what I'm gonna touch on.. PODAA.. may-ging funnof avar maar-ages! For my non mallu readers, here is the deal. For a long time, the mallu wedding function was known to be the quickest thing to wrap up; that is, until the Indian team landed in Zimbabwe.. now we are second best, and our pride is hurt... but i digress..

The mallu wedding is all about speed. No one cares to dance and sing, and the ones who do are chastised severely. No one wastes time wondering what colour looks good on whom. Cream colour for bride and for the groom. The groom wears a mundu (remember mundu?) so that in case he is late, he can fold it up and put in a serious sprint. The girl is almost buried in gold so that she can't change her mind and run away on seeing the groom with his mundu halfway up. The groom is not expected to wear a shirt either... buttoning up takes too much time... Also, since bhattjis take up too much time chanting shlokas, they are cut off the invite list.. I believe some wise mallu looking around for marraige pandal decorations had a flower of a coconut tree fall on him and decided to use it to grace the occasion and that is where the decorations were finalized. Of course, the abundance of coconut trees makes finding these flowers a piece of cake, keeping with the express nature of things. The band belt out slow numbers so that the guests don't go dizzy given the blurring pace, but speed up during the main functions to feed our "Need for Speed".

Oh yes, the pièce de résistance... You know how weddings have guy and girl walking around in circles (pheras) 7 times to get married? Well, we don't spend time with these saat phere. We have power-pheras which, the engineer in me tells me, is 233.33% more potent than the run of the mill pheras. So all we do is have 3 pheras with the guy leading. We mallus love our rice and people standing near the power phera taking couple throw some on them. I don't know the symbolic meaning, but if it means may God shower rice on you, I don't think that is a really nice blessing. How about throwing in some cash instead? Anyway, by this time, the aromas of the sambar and papadam invade the venue and the elders take turns in feeding the newly married couple banana in milk (Yuck!) so that the couple stay cheerful through whatever photo session there is to be. Here begins the longest (& most enjoyable I must add) part of the wedding - the sadhya (feast)..


I've cut out a number of small, nice things that happen in a mallu wedding... the bride being led in a procession of unmarried girls and other such stuff... That doesn't lend much to humour (although a lot of guy-readers are excited about the single babes), and if you wanna see it sooo bad, come over and watch my sis's wedding DVD.

IPL 2010 wrap-up

It has been a long time since I posted something. And while most would believe it has something to do with my lack of time or hectic work schedules, it is not the case. I have, in fact, been investing my time following the IPL. Investing you ask? Like hell yeah, I say. Check out what I learnt -

1.    When someone told Lalchi Mo he was suited for the job, he took it too literally.

Well, here is the scene – Lalchi is at Chennai's Chidambaram stadium… Its 39˚C but feels more like 139 due to the immense humidity… You take a look around, 40,000 cheering fans… 30 office bearers near him… 50 Journos, 15 commentators, countless celebs, 6 immensely hot (in every sense of the word.. Yeah, sweaty too…) cheerleaders… and yet he is not bothered by the fact that he is the only joker to have turned up in a suit. It is hot as hell, and he moves uncomfortably as sweat trickles into unmentionable places. But if its LM, he is either in a suit… or facing one… making him, the undisputed "suit-iya"

2.    Sachin and finals don't mix.

There is something about Sachin in a final that God doesn't enjoy. So you'll have fielders admiring each other (sick I tell you! Sick!) while the ball lands exactly between them, Zak dropping catches, and Abhishek Nayar not getting injured severely enough to ensure he doesn't play. But the master that Sachin is, always up for a challenge, he mocks the non-cricketing Gods, n says "Hey, look you… I am the cricketing God around here. And what you can do to screw up a cricket match, I can do better! HA!"

10 minutes of glaring between the cricketing and the non-cricketing Gods and then we see Abhishek Nayar leaving balls outside off stump, Bhajji coming up the order, Duminy getting preference over Pollard when you need 2.5 runs a ball and Amabati Raudu (all 5 feet of him) getting into an ego-war with Pollard (6'5") over a second run.

3.    Shit-do is best kept in solitary confinement – with his mouth taped up.

He has long surpassed the stage where he is boring; irritating even. In fact, I heard (unconfirmed news) that Mr. Venu Nair, from WSG, came clean on the money given after he was threatened that he would have to spend a day with Shit-do. Apparently, 5 minutes after the threat was made, he wept uncontrollably realizing his helplessness and confessed to receiving money.

A lot of my other observations are for mature audiences only, and do not find place here… Though this is hardly a blog you'd hear a father reading out to his kid, I like to ensure a (U) rating at all times.

My Name is Can't (act, that is!)

SRK and his fans please skip this post (Yeah, i believe SRK is an invisible follower of this blog)

So I went to watch My Name is Khan... All the controversy about the film made the democrat inside me wake up and take notice. I didn't see anything wrong in what SRK had said, and wanted to express solidarity by watching the film. Having said that, I'm no brave-heart, and I tread towards the box office with caution, despite there being more cops there than movie goers. Besides, the film had a 5 star rating from TOI!

5 stars??? boss, watch this movie and you will realize it's time TOI gets blacklisted; they should be, for giving MNIK a 5 star rating. But then maybe they meant the 5 rupees 5-Star.. coz this movie is worth only those 5 bucks. I guess Shiv Sainiks got a sneak preview of this film and decided Mumbai-kars should not be subjected to this.. And boy, if I ever catch hold of the reviewer, I'm gonna feed him some of the food from my canteen! That oughta teach him! But you never know, if he has loved the film, he may just enjoy it!

The movie is awfully boring... slow.. and goes no where... it felt much like being constipated.. You just sit there, while nothing much happens. You are hopeful that fortunes will change and that something will please you, but are disappointed time and again, as you go through an ordeal! SRK tries to portray the aspie something something syndrome patient, but comes across as comical, at best. He speaks like a robot for no apparent reason, freaks out like he'd seen Karan Johar in bed with a girl from time to time, and generally seems a total misfit.

Apparently, he is supposed to have trouble socializing and in recognizing and displaying emotions. If this is the character they wanted to portray, they should have roped in Chandrachur Singh.... it would have come to him naturally.. And if they wanted to cast someone to fall in love with a looney, then they should have roped in one of those contestants from that reality show.. some dimwit getting married.. what's the name of that chap?? Well, i guess you know! But, to their credit, I did feel like I was inflicted with Asperger's syndrome... there was no interesting point in the film I wanted to discuss, I felt no emotions except an overwhelming sense of boredom, and in general, I was clumsy with my popcorn coz I was dozing off!

Picture this... SRK zips across the US of A to save a family in the eye of hurricane Katrina. His immediate friends and family also have no trouble reaching the eye of the storm.. They see him on TV, and bang! two seconds later, they are wading through waist deep water.. risking their lives (???).. with rations in hand. You know what they say... No hurricane shall keep thy protagonist and anyone important in thy plot away from ground-zero. And while Mr. Khan, who by the way, is not a terrorist and co. hastily rebuild the threatening-to-collapse church, no one thinks of evacuating these chaps using the same hurricane resistant mode of transport they used to get there faster than a speeding train! (One of those high-speed French ones, not our 80 kmph Virar fast)

In the end, they show SRK meeting, what looked to be a guy acting like Obama.. hard to say.. the actor had way too much personality!

My name is Krishnadas, and I am not gonna watch another SRK-KJ combo.

Prejudice or common sense?

I was recently watching this discussion on TV… about the Aussies attacking Indians. Reporting on how skin heads have now started Indian barbeque with much success… Close to a billion people feel that the attacks are racial.. You only need a pea sized brain to figure this out.. The Aussie high commissioner, however, insists that here is not enough evidence yet to suggest that the attacks are racially motivated, and recommends that we wait for the investigations to complete…  Yeah Mr. Commissioner, when dozens of us are beaten to pulp by blokes twice our size, it is silly of us to think that the attacks are racially motivated.

To quote the high commissioner, “We don’t think that racism is a substantial motive or course in these cases. What we are saying here essentially is a pattern of urban crime”

And to think all this time we were concerned that the attacks are racially motivated… Whew! What a relief to know that we are getting roasted not because we are Indian, but because of a “pattern of urban crime”. Of course, all the chanting of “Go back to India!” and “Give me back my taxi” while the poor chap is beaten black and blue is only to trick us into believing that it is racially motivated, when actually, it is not… ta..nanana.. Oh, and the fact that almost every black and blue roasted piece of meat was once an Indian student is just sheer co-incidence… How dumb of us Indians to fret about this and issue advisories.

Anyway, to all my Aussie brothers who have no intention of smashing a face into a curb,

1. Thanks…
2. Pls speak to other Aussies about what an image is being created about Australia and its people…

And to my Indian friends there… Stay strong, and stay safe!

PS: Mr. High Commissioner, your line of reasoning is encouraging a lot of misbehavior on flights here in India. Passengers who have been caught feeling up the air hostesses are insisting that they were merely frisking them, which is an “urban trend” – what with frisking happening at all malls, stores, offices, etc. They now insist that future offenders should not be deplaned until all investigations are complete…

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Attacks-have-hit-Oz-image-in-India-Australian-High-Commissioner-/articleshow/5431721.cms

Happy new year...

Firstly, I wanna wish all of you a very happy new year.. and to all the pretty girls who couldn't be my date for an evening in 2009, I pray this year be more lucky for you...

I welcomed the new year with a party at home, with some family friends. Wine was flowing and I ate food, which was enough to have fed a small village in Somalia.. My stomach was full, and there was a sense of happiness creeping in that was hard to control. That day I learnt something... when you have gulped downed a dozen glasses of alcohol, the Michael Jackson in you awakens from his deep slumber, shaking his head violently blublublub.., and starts to dance... So, stomach full and my head feeling light as a bubble, I decided to turn up the volume and dance.

I know those who have seen me dance are scrolling to the end of this post looking for a video clip (and a good laugh!)... But it ain't there.. so hehehe... ha.. hum.. look its my blog.. I don't wanna get the treatment Elaine got for this.. (With people dancing like her whenever they see her)



All I can say is that people who have seen me dance don't find this video funny... Lets leave it at that..

My uncle was shaking a leg, but wearing a panicky face, kept a safe distance, as i kicked hard in the air.. like Ajmal Kasab was lying at my feet or something.. He didnt wanna risk his leg shaking for the rest of his life!

Some people usher in the new year in churches, others dancing romantically with their partners.. Some others hang out with friends.. All to set the tone for the year to come...
I however, have danced my way into Ripley's believe it or not.. Boy, 2010 is gonna be some year...