iFail

Steve Jobs is one of those chappies who knows how to make a point. If you ever doubted the fact that Apple has been born of Steve Jobs, nursed by Steve jobs and milked by Steve Jobs, you need to watch him unveiling everything new that is Apple. That wonderful first person singular pronoun flows off his lips like his very own inner being.  iPod . iOS. iPhone. iStore. iTunes. iTouch. iPad. And now, iCloud?
Touch , Pad and Cloud, indeed.
The first, to most of us, is a sense of the greatest importance. The second , those large things cricket players shove onto their legs before tooling off to bat . Alternatively, something applied to an unmentionable something, by women. The third , just one thing to most of us in this weather. Rain.
I'm willing to wager that, by 2020, we shall have iBone, iPot , iFoot and iSun. And we'll lap it up,  exclaim about its superior quality and praise the innovation of the great Jobs.
Because, ultimately, when something is packaged brilliantly, wrapped in shiny metal and radiating sunshine , we go ga-ga over it. It's our nature , we're human beings. And Apple has mastered the art of doing this, in addition to giving whatever utility they give, with a lot of foofaraw . Repetition , particularly cheesy, catchy repetition , has its effect.
What was the iPhone's Retina Display Caption? "960 by 640 by Wow". It doesn't matter if you just felt an excruciating pain in your stomach. You are never going to forget the caption.
Alas. My next phone is probably going to be an iPhone.

The Trial of Alcohol. Witnesses for the Prosecution, rally round.

Welcome, young gentlemen of the jury . Presiding over today's trial is I, Judge-Prosecutor Andrew, 22. Today , the defendant , Miss Alcohol Alcohol, is to be tried on seven counts. 

Gentlemen , you have a responsibility. If Miss Alcohol is found guilty on even a single charge, she shall face disciplinary action for the rest of her life at the hands us and the posterity of young men that will follow us - to dispose of her as we please.

The charges we bring against you, Miss Alcohol, are as follows : 

1. That you are a cheat and have been eavesdropping on the nefarious activities of your cousin, Mr Petrol.

2. That you have offended your deeply sensitive politician-husbands by flirting with young men, particularly in the city of Bombay. These husbands have vented their frustration on Baba Ramdev , making him disguise himself as a woman , detrimental to his status as God-Man. 

3. That you have now walked out on these young men to exclusively soothe the wounds of the whingy  husbands.

4. That you now intend to make us illegally chase you all over  town, at a dreadful inconvenience to our often  limited  means of transport, while making large holes in our often limited pockets.

5. That, while chasing you, you confront us with your  slaves round every corner, who are fat, always have a whiff of you about them, call themselves the Law, and need to be bribed.

6.  That you have no business sense and are causing bankruptcy to the fine men  who have opened pubs and clubs for the greater good of mankind.

7. That you are a racist and favour Pakistan over Bombay. 

What do you have to say for yourself? 

The India-Pakistan Circus

30 March:
Armed with two bags , one containing a laptop and the other, papers of no consequence  which I nevertheless lug with me daily to office, I sat tight in my rickshaw. My breath was drawing itself for prolonged periods of time and I was visibly shaking. The roads were as pleasant as Switzerland could possibly be and yet I had just exited my residence in Bandra, Mumbai. What , then , were the reasons for  this odd calm in the surroundings and palpitating tension within me? Well , imagine you are with me for a moment and I still won't tell you. Instead I will direct you to shut your eyes and concentrate hard on sounds from nearby. Within about two minutes of such concentration , you will have heard  two countries being referred to in a vastly different manner. In short , one  being praised gloriously and referred to as the Mother ; the supposedly possessing a mother whose genitals were being regularly referred to.

I felt no shame in hearing this coarseness. Across the border , I'm sure I  heard  folk yelling exactly the same thing about the same two countries ; only with the roles interchanged. Indeed , this lot are of a rather more dangerous temperament , though they profess to have 'big hearts' .

I reached my workplace and soon realised that no-one was even making a pretence of working. Laptop screens were were as black as night, desk chairs were the temperature of an ice-cube and the desks themselves , devoid of any belongings. Reached the cafeteria, the atmosphere change almost knocked me flat. It was buzzing like a stadium. Vaguely discernible was a painful explanation of the lbw rule being made by one of our senior male staff to one of our  female staff. She was nodding just  a little too vigourously to be following completely and I garnered the impression that all she wanted to see was the ball zooming towards the boundary, without getting into bothersome matters of 'offering a shot' and 'pitching outseide leg stump'. I have, indeed , observed this in nearly all members of that gentle sex.

National anthems were soon done and Umar Gul began bowling the most immaculate filth at Virender Sehwag. Each boundary was cheered like Sehwag had been straight driving perfect yorkers from Joel Garner for four. The elevation of Sehwag was something the entire city participated in and I overheard someone assigning him divine status. The honour of this status is slightly diminished , by every Indian cricket player from the past twenty years having been assigned it at some point of time in his life.

Eventually, Prateek came up to me declaring that he was an honest boy and would not waste office electricity when he wasn't working. I admired him plenty for that and proposed that we 'find a place' . He giggled a little and suggested someplace called Esco Bar where there was promised glorious rewards among which huge screens , hot girls, flowing beer , rolling pizza and jumping French Fries featured prominently. Some of these had an 'unlimited' tag attached to them; for safety, I omit to mention precisely which.

Very soon,  we were there, after a journey in which Prateek gave me his opinion about various intricacies of the game. He is a fast learner, is that old egg; during the previous match , he did not know the difference between 'wicket' , 'pitch'  and 'stumps'.

Esco Bar , itself, was a place where the overwhelming greatest feature, was not girls, beer or pizza but Sweat.
This demon followed me about wherever I tried to hide myself. 'There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother'  says the Bible. To that I say , as long as that friend is only one friend and is not from Esco Bar.
 Long after I had realised that finding a permanent seat amid scores of insane fans who had tied themselves into knots to protect seats for their fellow creatures was quixotic, I found myself standing in a corner. I tried to make myself look small and insignificant - doing so, I found that it was rather difficult to actually see what was going on on the big screen. I discerned that Umar Gul had ceased plying his filth and the Pakistani fielders resumed plying theirs every time Sachin Tendulkar was on strike. Shadid Afridi looked like all the butter than would not melt in his mouth had been transferred to the fingers of his fielders , where it was doing a wonderful job. This , and other incidents, led me to soon become absorbed in what was now a wild scrap between the two politically feuding nations. The quality of cricket, itself , was on the poorer side - this did not daunt my mates at the club in the slightest bit. An outside edge by a Tendulkar who had suddenly lost his fluency was greeted with a roar. Shahid Afridi's review was overturned and a volley of the choicest abuse was hurled at him. Indeed , it mattered not the slightest bit that both teams were rolling in muck and slogging it out a fist-fight in which no team really had the upper hand.

I , however , had a fight of my own to contend with . It was basically , Me vs  Everyone Else. The aim of Everyone Else seemed to be to apply as much sweat to Me as was possible. The aim of Me was to avoid this sweat.
A sharp observer will notice that we were at cross purposes.
A game of Hide and Seek , inevitably followed and indeed continued for a good one hour. The game, you will be forced to admit was Unfair. I was taking on over a hundred people single handed. It felt good , I may tell you, to be battling under those odds, like Achilles. However Achilles must have enjoyed his dead bodies more than I enjoyed my little battle. I soon quit , in this respect we(Achilles and I) are not so similar. In others , we are virtually identical.

As for the match - it went on with a few noteworthy Esco incidents . One was our continual problem of where to plant the behind; apparently over and above the twelve hundred that we had already paid , you had to pay some more if you wanted to avoid rubbing a sore back against a counter in a poor simulation of a bad massage. I was evicted twice , once from a group of youngish people who stared at me apprehensively before asking 'sir' if he would move because their 'guests had come' and the other by a bunch of middle aged Sindhi women who said, 'Hey, you move now ah, our guests have come'.
I rather think this line was a recommendation of one nasty looking waiter who made a pretence of giving me vodka shots every time India hit a boundary. I was dead sure that he was giving me none other than sweetened lemon juice adulterated by pure methyl alcohol.

This selfsame waiter also resulted in the burning of my upper palette when he served me my Venus-hot free pizza. With this burnt palette and the fact that I was swimming in a mixture of oil (from eating too many French Fries on account of having nothing better to do with myself)  and beer , you will excuse me if I did not partake of the overflowing cup of hot air that flowed through the country on India's victory.
The only entertainment at that place other than the cricket , in the midst of falsely euphoric and highly sweaty males was that provided by the girls in that place. You see, as far as this species goes , I instinctively react in a
different manner. It was with an indulgent eye that I viewed a nineteen year old who spilled a fair amount of beer on me during one of her random air-finger-pointing-coupled-with-woo-screaming episodes. It was with a benevolent eye that I witnessed a pair of them scream with fresh delight at the replay of a wicket that had fallen half an hour previously (it was now the Pakistani innings) . It was , however with some shock that I looked on as another one pointed a finger at the screen and shrieked wildly upon Shoaib Akhtar's appearing there , seated primly in the dressing room. This was followed by a slightly vulgar dance accompanied by very heavy panting.

We won , there was joy , exultation and madness. Keen to put as much distance as was possible between myself and that bar , I said a very hurried goodbye to the fellows I had gone there with. For good measure too, as, not long after , when I was curled up in my bed I heard such a mass of honking that it  could mean only one thing-every street in Bandra was jammed. That cleared up in a bit, however, the sound of broken glass and screeching tyres, not to mention a good many loud bangs tore its way through my much deserved sleep for the rest of that night.

Oh Ravi!

I must start off with an apology for all the heartburn that was caused on account of the non-appearance of a blog post for a while . I have been responsible for preparing the United States of America for a terrifying addition  in the form of an aspiring butcher of the unwell public. To make matters worse, the butcher has strong opinions about the Oscars.

Today , my topic deals with something very close to the heart of the  Indian - One Day Cricket. At this time , the World Cup goes through its motions and ESPN Star have assembled a commentary team of over fifty experts. None of whom display more expertise than one star, or more correctly , sun. This man is, of course, Ravi Shastri.

As the death overs drew close in the  exciting India-South Africa match , Ravi Shastri's astute observations were on air for the world to hear. The score was two hundred and sixty odd with the South Africans needing two hundred and ninety odd for a victory. Johann Botha landed bat to ball and the umpire lifted his arms in the air to indicate six runs. Simultaneously, the marvellous electronic scoreboard augmented the total by six and reduced the runs required by six. Even more simultaneously , Ravi Shastri yelled :
"Six runs! That's six more added to the total and the score moves to two-sixty-four. That's six less required and South Africa now need thirty more runs".
Knowing that Ravi Shastri's wit was now approaching its most penetrative , I called my sister(an unenthusiastic sports fan at best) to sit next to me and Enjoy. Ravi Shastri obliged almost immediately by observing that when "Johann Botha hits the ball , it stays hit" . We tried to interpret  that ; what we came up with is this, viz., unlike Bradman, Sobers, Lara, Ponting, Sehwag , Kallis and Tendulkar who regularly cheated the ball  after they had struck it , by magically extracting it's hit-quotient, Johann Botha truly 'hit em like a tracer bullet'.
Twelve balls left and eighteen to get. Ravi Shastri , dramatically waved one finger in the air, pointing out that while at the start of the innings the run-rate was under six , it had now  risen to nine an over. He triumphantly concluded that Wickets made all the Difference and that required run rates could skyrocket in a few overs. His co-commentator Robin Jackman tried to point out that it was the end of the innings and run-rates really did not matter. Our man was having none of it. With one over left and fourteen to get , he observed that the required run rate was now 14.00 and the game was slowly moving out of South Africa's grasp.
Four balls and four minutes later the game had moved rather quickly out of India's grasp. Ravi Shastri was comforting in his post match comments, though, with pearls of wisdom that included 'No team likes to lose' and 'After all it is a World Cup' and 'In fact, India are one of the hosts.'
Which brings me to the man's most singular characteristic. In sixteen years of hearing my idol intimidate  the spectators during the pitch report, chivvy the captains into making revelations about their teams at the toss, and yell  the dignitaries' names at the presentation I have realised that the word 'sorry' does not exist in Ravi Shastri's vocabulary. He uses , in its place the delightful phrase 'In fact'.
I quote :
"And that's the end of the over . It's two for eleven. In fact , eleven for two."
"Tendulkar running under the ball , Tendulkar watching the ball , Tendulkar catching the ball. In fact it's Virender Sehwag."
"That's the FIFTH time umpire Steve Bucknor has made a controversial decision against India in the match - the batsman was clearly not-out. The Indians would be Very Disappointed , and the captain may have something to say at the end of this game. In fact , it's Billy Doctrove, who's the umpire. In fact it's the first bad decision he has made, in fact he's been very very good. In fact it was Harbhajan Singh who was bowling and the decision has , in fact gone against the Australians."

Wallabies

When life gets uneventful and the days go slowly , there is often a need to liven matters up. This can be done in several ways , but the way of two good friends of mine ( one, an upright and dignified gentleman named C ; the other , a small, but gaunt and severe lady named N) is to be examined on this occasion.
C is rather a unique character.. He rides a bike at 7 pm daily around the streets of Bandra. However, he is extremely devious and outsmarts those who try to identify him, by changing his bike daily. This simple ploy has thrown me off guard on many occasions ; when yesterday,  a hooded figure stopped by me , and spoke my name in a  manner that was nothing short of chilling, I confess I wanted nothing better than to run from that place screaming for help. When the hood was taken of and  the dignity of C confronted me, I was relieved and almost dared to feel like throwing a good punch. However , he calmed me down , told me mollifying-ly that it was a new bike , and would I like a ride? 'No' said I. ' It's a new bike!' he insisted.
How the argument panned out is for another time, however. I digress.
N, boasts of somewhat different eccentricities. She is a teacher of rare gift, but uses her imposing manner and intimidating facial expressions to terrify her pupils into meek submission . The other day, a pupil was made to blow Bandra Fair bubbles for five minutes as a punishment because she did not do her homework. It scarred her forever of course and there are rumours that she still has terrifying visions of N bearing down upon her, majestically waving the box filled full of the liquid in one hand and the plastic ring in the other.
Of course, when these two get together in the rare atmosphere of higher altitudes, amply aided by a bottle of Immaculately Brewed Whiskey , the aforesaid livening up of life takes place. While N is highly intimidating, C decided that she sorely lacked the ability to hold her own in a physical confrontation. I , politely , beg to differ with Mr C, having been at the receiving end of a particularly nasty twisting of the fingers. But C must have his way; very soon he was coaching her in the art of punching.
To cut a long story short, C , realising that he did not enjoy the punches as much as he thought he would, decided, on a sudden inspiration from the memory of the remains of his fourteenth vintage bike, to divert them to the wall.
Pliable as she is when under the influence, with a roar of rage, N charged at the wall, fist raised . Reached there, she sank her fist into it as hard as possible.

For the last few days , N's punishments have been less severe. The cast, plaster and other such irritants have rendered her unable to do her bubble bottle waving act. However, it is to resume soon, and I have excellent knowledge that the first victim is to be none other than C.