Indigo Blues

I don’t want the first line of this post to be a Heavens be blessed! I am back!!! type thingy, since that is what every blogger says when returning from a brief hiatus. So, Heavens be blessed! I am back!!! A lot of water has flown since my last post and some of it, tragically, in the form of a killer tsunami causing immense destruction and the loss of precious lives. I express regret and profound solidarity with the victims of that fateful day.

I had been to Bombay for a week, ostensibly for participating in the largely self-proclaimed Mother of all cul-fests –IIT Bombay’s Mood Indigo, though, I had a much better time outside the campus, than inside. The post is a critical deconstruction of the travails of Der Pfeifer (for the uninitiated, that’s me!) at MoodI.

Ok so this is how it all began… My hitherto modest wanderlust, sees the IP on the Narmad notice board calling for applications to MoodI and, without much effort convinces me to take the plunge (into Powai??!!(pardon the sad pun )). As Forrest Gump would say, ‘and just like that I decided to go to Bombay!!’. Now, I reached B a couple of days prior to MI for I wanted to roam around the city (a BIG one, as I was to discover.) and of course to watch the pigeons near the Gateway of India and elsewhere. There were just too many and they were all over the place. So a couple of days spent rewardingly, going around the BIG city seeing the sights and hearing the sounds and of course devouring those heavenly pav bhajis dripping with ghee. (all that and more in another post)

Soon enough, it was that Monday morning (yes, O holy lasagna lover! It was a Monday!) and it was that time of the year when some crazy bovine drank ink and belched, I mean moo(e)d indigo. So there I was, all set for the indigo! The blues however began to settle in incredibly soon. First things first. There was the assistance and registration desk and some helpful hospitality folk who dutifully gave us a room number and also informed that, besides the three of us, there would be two others, sharing the room. All this, of course was done in a jiffy- the whole thing taking just a little over forty-five minutes. We walked all the way to the room indicated, which happened to be in one of the farthest hostels in the whole campus, from the main indigo area. That did not help us stay away from the blues, though. Those roommates of ours whom I never got to see (phew!, thankfully!!), had for some reason chosen to lock the room, preferring to take some other room instead. Now then, the reader might be prompted to think that D.P and his friends were three stooges, incapable of even asking a thing as obvious and as simple as the duplicate room key to avoid the quandary that we had walked into so effortlessly. D.P. would just like to add here that those friendly hospitality folk had assured us that the room would be open anyway – hail or high tide! Mercifully, we were not sans sanity and the sane man (that was me, of course :-P) in our midst figured out a solution that was thirty-eight million times smarter than 42! That was to leave our bags safely chained to the window grill in the next room, and go in search of our absconding roomies get a duplicate key from those friendly folk sitting at the you-know-where. Eventually, my friends managed to locate those a.r. and get the key from them at midnight, when they came for mattresses. I have to tell you here that the accommodation at the Mother of all cul-fests was nothing that my mother would feel pleased about. We were put in a room barely 10’by 6’ with only three mattresses and no blankets for the five of us and… actually the less said about it the better for in an attempt to give you the actual details, I might get to speak like one of those Now See This! episodes that I fervently despise.

The pro-shows were a free for all, provided one was ready to get the passes at three p.m.and again stand in a loooooooooooong queue for another couple of hours and go through a quick frisking procedure to get into that crowded open-air-half-theatre for the shows that were invariably ninety minutes late. The concert by Pt.VishwaMohanBhatt was special. There were of course shows by the likes of the Colonial Cousins and Remo, none of which were very engaging. There was supposed to be a rock-show, which got cancelled owing to the sad demise of Shri.P.V.Narasimha Rao.

Vogue is an annual fashion show conducted by IITB during MI. The finals were held at the open-air-half-theatre, and needless to say, the whole place was bursting at the seams. A lot of freebies were distributed then. I, of course held out my hand for a T-shirt or something and all I got was a handshake from one of the judges.

The quizzes at MI had questions like Hashan Tillekeratne holds two milestones in test cricket. What are they? The answer was that he was Kapil’s 432nd wicket and Warne’s 500th wicket! They were milestones, alright, but definitely not Hashan Tillekeratne’s! The audience quiz was another apology, despite being organized in an air-conditioned Audi. The entertainment quiz was the lone silver streak in the indigo lit-clouds.
The art and crafts events though, were very good and there were some displays that were too good to be classified in the amateur category. There were some good workshops and lec-dems by professionals and there were those like the Archeology lec-dem that had three people (not all cords!) other than the speaker in the Audi that could seat about 200 people.

Overall, the mood was bluer, with shades of grey rather than the anticipated indigo!

Careful with that axe, Eugene!

Like bad hair days, I seem to be having bad keyboard days when my keyboard absolutely refuses to let me type in peace. Actually, it is quite boring to go on with the story of My experiments with my keyboard. However, I would urge the curious reader to read my first blog – The Piper…for further insight. So here I am trying to make hay while the sun shines, writing out my blog while my keyboard is still on the helpful side!

At home, the TV is a viable means of entertainment, unlike, the Narmad common room where TV programs are limited to intellectual stuff like MTV’s extended chitrahaar or perhaps some contemporary gult rock. So with the regained remote control freedom, I was channel surfing this morning when a delay in the test match between India and Bangladesh, made espnstar telecast some city leg of the Dream Job- the hunt for Harsha’s heir (if I may say so!). I must admit, I like the way the espnstar guys handle shows. I mean John Dykes, Jason Dasey with all his CNN pedigree and of course our own Harsha Bhogle, not to forget Alan Wilkins and his Wimbledon-strawberry-and-cream-analysis with the redoubtable Vijay Amritraj. However this article is not aimed to be a eulogy to those guys (A Few good men…as they like to be called!). It is about the mushrooming of the TV Reality Series shows.

TV has been, among other things, a favorite of all those debate organizers who seem to run out of ideas. They are totally safe in throwing in a TV-boon or bane topic. The contestants are perfectly content to give all those clichéd arguments, while the judge finally rules that TV is indeed a necessary evil and hands over the best speaker trophy to the person who shows the best vocal and histrionic skills, for there would be nothing to choose between them on the basis of ideas presented. Coming back to the reality shows (coming back to life?!), the current reality is that they are very real and are a part of our lives (Gosh! Dubya would have been proud of that statement, but I shall not delete it, as this happens to be a reality article! I am not deleting anything. I am letting the article stay as I type it, correcting only the spelling mistakes) .

I am not going to bore you here (that’s if you are still reading) with all the trivia and statistics about reality shows like the first reality show on TV or who has won the most money in a given show. I shall however tell you what I feel about them. The show that probably set India on this reality craze was KBC hosted by the impeccable B. There were other shows before but none of them offered a crore to the winner! The green notes that happened to remain happy, despite it’s owners,( even the ones with digital watches,) being sad managed to set the shows rolling (wonder what DNA would have said about this). So you have the weakest link torn apart with pretty caustic remarks, you get to sms who you think would be the next superstar, vote for the national idol (if not for the PM), hunt for the next nightingale, the next pace sensation and of course for the next Harsha Bhogle. There are of course those survival shows, not to forget the sleaze.

That such reality shows have bred a whole new channel for themselves, is reason enough to suggest a qualitative evaluation on whether or not these shows are of any entertainment value, if at all they be reckoned necessary. The channel in question is, ostensibly devoted to promoting action and adventure in real life. The programmes dished out leave a real bad taste in the mouth and of course every one of them is preceded by a warning that asks viewers to take it all with a pinch of salt! They ensure that fortune favours the brave, offer you a half-minute appointment with dame luck, make you believe that the one thing you must fear is fear itself, and after all the make-believe reality they just say ‘Now see This!’

There was this friend of mine, a ‘bright’ chap, who liked these shows very much and the channel particularly for all the mind-blowing reality that it offered!(sic). He once said he liked that fear show because there were people made to drink maggot milkshake(sic) and eat tarantula sandwich and at the end of it all there were females who puked!(like he wouldn’t!).

If for people, that is entertaining, then I must say we have lost all sense of sense itself. Don’t get me wrong here, I am not for those silly soaps that portray Utopia and assert that it is real, nor am I for movies of a similar genre. What I feel is that the reality shows have been pulled a bit too far. To think that seeing a Eugene or a Mary struggle their way through some deserted ghost-house (but for the omniscient TV camera and perhaps the whole crew filming it! Nah! It won’t be reality then.) with a 15th century axe for ‘safety’ would match the excitement of a Sampras-Agassi five-setter just because the former is as live (and not deferred live as in DD!) as the latter is,is downright stupid. If the shows go on it must then mean that there are those desensitized morons amongst us who are happy to cheer those greater fools who have chosen to participate in them. All I could say is ‘Careful with that axe, Eugene!’

Is there ANYBODY out there?

About thirty meters from my study here, is the Officer’s Club, known popularly as the Kailasapuram Club, KC for short. KC is or at least used to be a major component in the everyday entertainment/leisure activity/hobby pursuing centre/ (the reader is urged to add similar words or phrases that convey a sense of) relaxing after a tiring day’s work or after a not-so-tiring day’s work. KC is replete with a library, a reading room, a swimming pool (Olympic size, of course!), a pool room, cards room, a mini gym, a cafeteria, a mini conference hall, a lawn, a badminton court ,a kid’s playing arena and an OAT(open air theatre, for the uninitiated). Oh! and did I mention the swimming pool (Olympic size, of course!).

I still kind of remember that lazy Sunday morning. I think I was five years old then, maybe six and my dad said -‘say, why don’t we go to the library and find something for you to read.’ I vaguely recollect asking him in all my five year old innocence, what a library was. I don’t recall his reply though. Before long we were on his Bajaj Super (then we stayed about a mile from KC) on our way to the KC library. After about twenty minutes, we took two illustrated children’s classics (if my memory serves me right, they were The Gingerbread Man and Three Billy Goats) and went home. Of course you would not want to know that I finished both the same afternoon (signs of things to come! More on that later), would you? I mean, I told it just in case you would.;-)

That was the first time I had been to KC and to say that I was madly excited would be an understatement. However for a long time KC remained to me, just a library and the place where we went for the Saturday movie. The movies were invariably kitschy 70s/80s stuff and being the cosmopolitan (!) place that the Township was, there was a good mix of Tamil, English and Hindi movies with an occasional gult or mallu movie thrown in. I don’t remember most of them but do vividly remember the patient explanations that my parents had to give me between every scene in Aaraadhana, or was it Sholay or perhaps both, actually all Hindi movies that they dared take me to.

Soon enough, I had Enid Blyton make way for Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, who were in turn replaced by the likes of Agatha Christie and A.C.Doyle. For the sheer kick that I got out of reading a six hundred odd page book, I switched to reading Archer, Robin Cook and the like. The madness thankfully did not last for long, and it was time for PGW!KC was always There!

I was soon learning to swim and it was the KC schwimmbad that had the privilege of catching me in suspended animation. When I was tall enough to reach the Billiards
Table, it was KC again (you would never have guessed!). (And now the mandatory senti line!)KC has seen me cursing, at my loss and on a greater number of occasions, seen me in high spirits, having won a game or some kind of quiz.

OK so you get an idea of the steeped past and if I might add the significance of my beloved KC.

So it is to this KC that I went to some time back with Kashyap, a school friend of mine and (need I say) who has fond recollections of KC. What we saw there was appalling to say the least. It was heartbreaking for us to see that the TT tables had vanished and some crazy dress exhibit taking its place, that the badminton courts have now become the scene of some marriage reception, that the OAT has stopped screening English movies, claiming a lack of audience while most people whom I know are sore about missing their regular Saturday fair, that the swimming pool is a shadow of it’s past self, that there are no more quiz contests at KC and what used to be monthly events have now been relegated to being held on special occasions like Children’s Day! The whole place looks eerie now. So deserted that one would not realize that one is in a club when just about the only sound one could hear is from the blaring FM radio in the canteen. Actually, I found it very tempting in a perverse way to shout the title of this article out, just to see if there was anyone there. I fail to understand if it is the lack of patronage or the lethargy and creative inability of the management that has lead to the once splendid KC, my KC, to its present state of affairs -a far cry from the halcyon days. Call it bigoted if you wish, but I tend to think it is because of the latter! Anybody out there?

Piper at the gates of an almost delayed dawn

Far, far, far away - way

People heard him say - say
I will find a way - way

There will come a day - day
Something will be done.

Now, now, now is the time - time
Time to be - be - be aware

Something in his cosmic art
And glowing slightly from his toes
His psychic emanations flowed

Actually not too far away from here, three hundred and thirty seven kilometers to be precise, people heard yours truly (a.k.a.The Piper, henceforth referred to reverently as
Der Pfeifer) say how there would come a day when he would find a way and something would be done. The less forgetful among those would, readily recall D.P. saying something about launching(sic) his blog on the seventh day of the last month of the fourth year of the third millennium since the birth of a certain J.C. (Ok, I could have put it simply as 7.12.2004, but then…)

D.P. is now seated smugly in his couch in front of his beloved (what the hell!) computer, listening intently to A Saucerful of Secrets and voicing out his echoes from within through his not-all-that-helpful keyboard. Not-all-that-helpful because it types out a “b “ whenever D.P. wants a space in his text and has the backspace key control jammed with the ‘t’ key control and return with ‘v‘ for reasons unknown to him. The conspiracy theory buff in him urges him to put fundaes on why his keyboard behaves with him thus… but being the devoted follower that he is of a certain lasagna-loving orange feline whose name he does not want to disclose, he decides to leave it to his fellow c.t.b.s and other c.t.b.s and other not-so-c.t.b.s (whatever that means!) to figure out plausible reasons.

D.P., as the knowledgeable reader would have guessed is at home now. He is here after completing his all-aftis-free third sem… after completing his grueling (he prefers to call them thus, solely for the purpose of soothing his pride) exams. D.P. personally does not like using ellipsis’s but then… Fine all he wanted to say was that likeable or not they provide the writer with a sense of conveying some deep thought, not doable otherwise and of course, they lead the readers to believe, well, whatever he wants them to believe in, besides frustrating them if they occur in excess. D.P. of course firmly believes in allowing as many ellipses’s as he cares to include in his text.


Bis morgen!