Clichés aren't old hat

Twelfth grade English lectures were one of the high points of my otherwise humdrum school life. For one thing, English-Core was the easiest subject by a fair distance, at least for the scant few with the poor sense to opt for biology. For another, our classes were handled by a certain Miss Pretty. Miss Pretty, sadly, didn’t live up to her name, which, FYI, was due to her obsession with that annoying American usage whereby it is considered hip to replace ‘very’ with ‘pretty’ wherever possible and hipper(?) if you say it with a fake accent.

Argh, digressions. So where was I? Yes, Miss Pretty wasn’t pretty. Nor was she attractive by any stretch of imagination. But for the thousands of starved eyes that inhabited DAV Boys’ Gopalapuram, she was all that. And more. She was our answer to Rockford’s Nandita Das, the cute Chink from that Korean movie or the bikini clad lady from the Van Halen song. DAV Boys had more than its share of weirdos, each odder than the next, but if there was something that they shared despite all their bizarreness, it was a crush on Miss Pretty. The Bulk, of course, was an exception.

What made her classes all the more enjoyable, for me, was the rare distinction of Teacher’s Pet. She had her flaws too, like her annoying habit of referring to me as ‘Bella’. That apart, there were few who’d refute my position as her favourite student in 12A. The reasons weren’t too far to seek either. Miss Pretty and I shared a love for clichés, however tiresome everyone else found them. Long hours were spent in class with us firing clichés at each other, as I gradually took over as the apple of her eye.

My love for clichés, as the last line would have demonstrated, persists to this very day. It's all well and good to come up with new stuff, but I, for one, would rather take a riff on the familiar. Besides, expressions become clichés because they work and people like them, buy them and therefore writers use them. They don't become clichés because writers are lazy and it's easier to repeat the same thing over and over than to think up something different. On second thought, writers do use them because they are lazy, but that’s not the point. Love them or hate them, there is no denying the fact that every other day, we encounter a situation perfectly described by the very clichés we love to hate.

One of my personal favourites has always been, ‘so near, yet so far’, perhaps owing to the frequency with which I come across situations apt for its usage. Like how I made it all the way to London but could not take the 6-hour train to Manchester. I visited Emirates and Wembley, but that only made Old Trafford seem all the more elusive. Or the time I topped just about every subject only to be denied the Bulk’s magical tally of 493 by a dismal 84% in Hindi. All that notwithstanding, yesterday would go down as the cruelest instance of ‘so near, yet so far’.

Even as I type, The Dubai International Film Festival is on, with the likes of Salma Hayek, Kim Kardashian and Yvonne Strahovsky within striking distance of yours truly. As you would expect, I was there with the Timid Twins, hoping and praying for the 500-dirham entry pass to magically appear on our palms. A hundred yards ahead of us, a blonde strode elegantly on the red carpet. “Nicole Kidman”, informed the security guard, before rushing to get a closer glimpse himself, leaving us at the mercy of his Terrier. The blonde was safely inside by the time the Twins stopped cursing each other for not bringing along a pair of binoculars. “If only we could teleport,” exclaimed one. “Or get hold of Hiro Nakamura”, chipped in the other. The conversation went on for a while; my only contribution, though, was, “so near, yet so far”.

Society, you're a crazy breed

Only for the third time in seven years, I’m on the island I once called home. It is still home for all technical purposes, but a cancerous proliferation of concrete has left me all but an alien in the locality I grew up in, but I’ll get to that in another post. Bahrain, for the uninitiated, is the Middle-East’s answer to Las Vegas. That, of course, isn’t saying much, but for a person who has spent the last thirty-odd months in a ghetto with nothing remotely feminine within a two-mile radius, the Island of Pearls is no less than Paradise.

The prospect of spotting an East-European belly-dancer from your balcony, sadly, doesn’t appeal as much to the average forty-plus NRI housewife, leading them to engage in less-exciting pursuits such as the weekly desi get-together. Needless to add, attendance is compulsory.

A pool-side dinner, Himesh oooing away in the background, sugary tea and spicy achaar- desi get-togethers in this part of the globe are all the same. While the mums and dads make small talk on how much weight each of them has lost and the kids make the most of the trampoline in the backyard, the solitary 20-year-old is far from welcome.

Yesterday, thankfully, I had company in the form of a hexagenarian bachelor in bell-bottoms. Earlier in the day, Chel$ki had wriggled its way into the last 16 of the Champions League, Lindsay Lohan was spotted kissing in Vermont and Fox News was rife with pictures of Christiano Ronaldo’s new girlfriend. None of that, however, seemed appropriate for a conversation with a retired neurosurgeon, particularly one sporting a T-shirt that read, ‘Om Sweet Om’.

After the mandatory ‘who/what/why/where/how are you’s were exchanged, our conversation seemed to have hit a dead-end. Bell Bottoms seemed far from defeated, though. With topics of interest running dry, he hit upon an infallible technique to ensure our conversation’s continuity. Excerpts:

Bell-bottoms: “You lived in Bangalore, didn’t you?”
Me: “Yes I did.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy1?”
Me: “No I don’t.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy2?”
Me: “No.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy3?”
Me: “No.”
……….
……….
And so it went on.

Two hundred and sixty two ‘no’s’ later,

BB: “Do you know Random Guy 265?”
Me: “Oh yes, he was my classmate in Kindergarten.”
BB: “He was my neighbour. Isn’t that amazing?”
In the meantime, our tête-à-tête was cut short by The Good Host, who seemed troubled that I didn’t seem bored. “So Bell-Bottoms,” he enquired, “you seem to be having a great time with Dela.” “The usual, you know, old friends catching up”, replied the man whom I still know only as Mr. Bell-Bottoms.

The Hundred (and one) Days

It has been a while. In the truest sense, this too wouldn’t count as a post- a fact that will dawn on you by the time you’re done reading it. Yes, this is another of those SriP-esque posts on not-posting. Bon nuit.

I completed 100 days on the other side of the wall yesterday, or I thought I did, until Mom shattered my bubble and dutifully reminded me that August had 31 days, which made me 20 and a 101 days. Ah, technicalities.

A lot has happened since my last post. An eventful train ride with the Super Nerd was followed by a highly entertaining weekend at Facchaville on the pretext of recruiting minions. I watched Dark Knight for the five hundred and twenty seventh time and drew a lot of flak for my comment on Facebook that it was the greatest movie ever. The Morons set off on a historic trip to the City That Never Sleeps and spent an amazing evening at Hard Rock Café. I fell in love the very next day with a cap and splurged two hundred odd bucks at Adlabs on ‘Rock On’, the cliché-fraught band movie with a few hilariously stupid Hinglish dialogues (‘Tumour mere brain ka hissa ban chuka hai.’) providing some much-needed comic relief.

R-Land welcomed her heroes home with a TS, where the legendary Gee Kay Ess awarded yours truly a naught on twenty five. A long overdue epistle was sent home and I was declared the winner of the War of Words on popular demand ahead of His Wordiness Sheldon Cooper. Somewhere in between all that, I also managed to watch Bollywood’s magnum opus- Junoon (Hero fights with a tiger, Hero gets bitten by the tiger, Hero becomes a tiger.)

Lots of post-worthy material and yet, the only changes my blog saw in the last two months was an absurd Feed Tracker that went unnoticed by even the most faithful of my readers. (Special mention must be made of the Hirsute Hick who visits my blog ten times a day, at least when he isn’t hitchhiking across South East Asia and posing for ridiculous pics like this one and this one. )

Have I given in to the duresses of change already? Teenage Dela would have ranted on at least half a dozen of the aforementioned events. Dela the Tween, though, has all but forgotten about his blog. Maturity, I think, is the term I’m looking for. ‘Bull crap! You’re just getting lazier,’ retorts Bald Guy Junior. Another plausible explanation.

Men are from Mars, Kids are from Ceres

Popularity comes with a price tag, and an increasingly hefty one at that, a fact you'd be aware of if you have been following the meteoric rise in the prices of action figures since the days when we went, ‘Wow, GI Joe!’ every time the Real American Hero was on air (Coming to think of it, I still go, ‘Wow, GI Joe!’ every time he’s on TV but that’s a different story altogether) While I do enjoy giving myself a mental pat-on-the-back every time one of the twenty billion progeny of my ten billion cousins insists on singing Glory Glory Man United even during the Euro 2008 or throws up a fuss about combing his/her hair, my huge kindergarten fan base coerces me into doing many things I’d rather not- like attend their birthday parties.

One of my favourite videos of my extensively photographed childhood is that of Bird Brain’s tenth birthday. The spoilt son that I was, not getting the first slice of the cake and being allowed as much camera-time as my grandmother weren’t situations I faced every other day. Exasperated, ‘I hate all birthdays,’ I exclaimed, adding, ‘except for my own’, almost as an afterthought. Fifteen years hence, there is just one aspect of birthdays that I find just as abhorrent as I did then- gifts.

The days of waking up at six in the morning and ripping open the twenty odd boxes on the coffee table seem as distant a memory as my diapers. The other side of the transaction, sadly, isn’t one bit as much fun. I never have a problem with girls – the simple creatures that they are, Barbie and Candy will be the most happening things in their world even ten generations down the line. Buying gifts for boys is quite another thing though. What do boys play with these days? Are Hot Wheels still as popular as they were in our time? Are Batman figurines still in production?

The fact that my favourite nephew’s big night was merely an hour away didn’t help either. Nor did the fact that I had to turn up in a costume.

45 minutes. Putting off Kaley Cuoco and the rest of the story on Nerdmabelia Scattering for later in the evening, I made my way to Landmark, unsure and annoyed. I was back in the car-park five minutes later, poorer by a grand but armed with the most powerful man in the universe (and, more importantly, the cheapest superhero figure in the store- Spidey cost a whopping 1500 bucks.)

I reached ten minutes late, but I was left hoping I’d taken longer. ‘Musical Chairs’ was followed by ‘What’s the good word?” (which I won, by the way) and the latter by an absurd spoon-game with an equally absurd name. As the evening drew to a long awaited climax, Birthday Boy was curious to know what his beloved Uncle Dela had got him. “I’ve brought you the most powerful man in the universe,” I announced, in the most dramatic baritone I could manage. His eyes lit up instantly. “Superman?” he enquired. "Try again", I replied reassuringly. “Wolverine?” he tried, half hopefully. “Wrong again, this is HE-MAN”, I declared at a pitch that made the hall shudder and the entire audience gape with what I believed was a stunned silence. It wasn’t, as I would realize a couple of minutes later. “Who the heck is this guy?” enquired Birthday Boy.

Is DC Comics’ marketing division listening?

The clock ticks life away..

75 minutes to go...

Wikipedia tells me that I'll now be in the exalted company of Ana Ivanovic, Nicklas Bendtner, Anderson, Aaron Carter and Bow Wow, to name a few. The list goes on to list a thousand other names ranging from the strangely familiar (Michael Cera, Cybil..) to the completely unknown (Begüm Dalgalar?). As I went through it, I found myself wondering, not for the first time, whether I even deserved to be in that list, albeit with a million other losers for company. At times I wonder, is it just me or do all twenty-year olds love watching Tom and Jerry? Does Bendtner still wear a helmet and pretend to be Darth Vader? Does Anderson still spend hours playing with his Hot Wheels collection, painstakingly collected over 17 years of haggles and bargains? Life has been a blur. Age has come about far sooner than I would have liked it to, and sadly, maturity seems to taking its own jolly time to set in, leaving me stuck between a world where I don't belong and another where I shouldn't.

My melancholic reverie, sadly, was cut dismally short by the Envious Samaritan's remark, made more than half seriously, that I'm fast turning into a far gloomier version of the Decayed Canine. Scary thought that.

P.S: Contrary to what the title might suggest, I still loathe Linkin Park.

Footnote (courtesy Lefty): In a curious coincidence, HHH turned 18 this 18th, I turn 20 this 20th and Lefty 21 on the 21st.

Kaka, unfortunately, doesn't turn 24 this Thursday.

Five and out

Most forms of art have always been well beyond my modest comprehension capacity. The Guernica, to me, is no more than a bouillabaisse of weird shapes and even weirder-looking people. To the best of my sensibilities, the melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory are as profound as a Britney Spears solo. I firmly believe that, given the chance, my brother could easily better van Gogh’s wilting Sunflowers. The only strokes I found even remotely artistic are those off the willow of Sachin Tendulkar. There isn’t a masterpiece more beautiful than the one-handed backhand that won Federer the second set against the consistently erratic Safin. Maradona’s sixty yard run in that historic World Cup semifinal that led to Argentina’s second goal is more graceful than even the most stunning of ballet renditions. My indisposition towards all forms of art and dance notwithstanding, my loyalties in all sports have tilted towards the more artistic and graceful (with the notable exception of F1 where I have suffered from an inexplicable and often unreasonable predilection for McLaren right from the days when the penultimate page of The Khaleej Times was my sole link with the world of Ecclestones, Hakkinens and Schumachers).

The sad thing about sport, though, is that there is a lot more to it than mere grace. Resilience, strength and some luck is often all it takes to excel. Then again, success is one thing and greatness quite another. For all their talent, Johan Cryuff and his legendary Clockwork Oranje never won a major tournament. Despite being the more elegant and technically sound of the two, Mark Waugh could not compeer his prolific twin. More recently, Chelsea were inches away from lifting the Champions League earlier this summer. Indeed, a certain Geenius and a Kangaroo Cub would even argue, not entirely without reason, that they were the more deserving of the two sides. Yet, even if John Terry not succumbed to that historic (and hilarious) slip, a United fan would still have gone home proud of the many moments of genius displayed by his side. I could spend all day describing Scholes’ thunderbolt at Camp Nou. I could write pages and pages on Rooney’s inch-perfect thirty yard pass that nearly led to United’s second goal at Moscow. What memories would have Chelsea carried home from the tournament? Those of the two million own goals that the opposition defenders chose to score for them, realizing that such feats were well beyond the modest capabilities of Drogba and Sheva? Or those of the three million deflections that led to the few goals that Chelsea players scored for themselves?

Though it did in Moscow, fortune doesn’t always favour the worthy. Case in point: the Wimbledon finals. Though out-of-sorts initially, Federer’s game was as imperial as ever by the third set. He seemed to have clawed his way back into the game from two sets down, and with the third set in a row entering tie-breakers, I had a hunch that Federer was well on course to breaking Borg’s record. History, sadly, chose to repeat itself, with Rafa replacing McEnroe in the encore. To his credit, Rafa has come a long way from the brash teenager whose resilience was his sole weapon who made it to the finals two years ago. And yet, even the most loyal of the Spaniard’s supporters wouldn’t declare him a better player than the Swiss Master.

Claude Makelele can get away with a thousand more fouls and he can still not hope to equal Zidane even in his wildest dreams. MS Dhoni can endorse a zillion more products and he still won’t get any closer to the iconic status enjoyed by Sachin. Rafa’s energy and baseliners may win him ten more Wimbledon titles in the years to come, and yet, he’ll still be second best to Federer.

A year ago, 2008 seemed to be year that would be remembered in the history books as the one when Federer scaled Mount Sampras and Mount Borg. Sadly, nothing has gone his way and his grand slam tally has all but stagnated at 12. Mount Sampras seems to be slipping away with each passing tournament and Mount Borg now an impossibility. And yet, despite the prospects of retirement looming large at the mature age of 26, Federer can still walk into the sunset with his chest held high. "I'm happy the way I fought", said the great man after the epic battle, "that's all I could really do."

Burgundy Alert

For a good part of my childhood, I believed that the world was entirely black and white until a few decades ago, with seas devoid of their azure and meadows of their verdure. Colour, like TV, chocolates, Hot Wheels and most other wonderful things in the world must be one of mankind’s brainchildren (sic), I thought, deceived by the movies of that era. Realization dawned upon me soon enough, though, to this day, I often wonder if my apocryphal world would have a better place to live in. It would have been far simpler, if nothing else.

“It’s on the third row in the basement, a turquoise WagonR,” said my uncle, relenting to my innumerable requests for a drive. Now that I had his permission, I had a completely different obstacle to contend with. Not for the first time, the mention of a colour left me in a daze. Five minutes later, having tried the keys on every WagonR in sight, I learnt that turquoise is some weird shade of bluish-green.

I read a book by Sigmund Freud five years ago and decided to major in psychology, if only to prove him wrong. True to the middle-class values I was raised in, though, I took the road most travelled and ended up in R-land. I am as close to proving Freud wrong as Karan Johar is to making an intelligent movie, and the fact that psychology, philosophy and most other good electives have been done away with hardly helps my cause (Natural Disasters and Seismological Balances, anyone?) One of the few things I do know about human psychology is that we are all born with a voice within us that keeps telling us that there are millions out there superior in brain and brawn. Our entire life is spent fighting that voice. For some, this is all about leaving those around flipping through the dictionary at the slightest of opportunities (The Decayed Canine and his blog come to mind).

Having a good vocabulary is one thing. Dishing out ridiculously fancy terms like turquoise and burgundy like every other guy on the street knew them is quite another. What do you lose by calling burgundy dark-red? Or turquoise bluish-green? So the next time we converse, please bear in mind the fact that my vocabulary isn’t the best in the world, especially when it comes to colours (chromatically challenged, if you like). To the best of my knowledge, peach is a fruit. So is apricot. And I have no idea what mauve is.