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It had to happen. I have finally got my comeuppance. A rash display of (attempted) orthographic superiority has reulted in me losing all my pseudollectual street cred. Golu and I disagreed this morning over the spelling of a word we’ve all learnt in, what, standard VI? Secure in my superiority, I mocked his spelling. Not surprisingly, he challenged me. This being the same Golu that still treats English as a dialect of Hindi, I accepted with a derisive sneer.
He spelled ‘polynomial’.
I spelled ‘polynominal’.
I shall no longer label his (pretty high) GRE verbal score a fluke. Dufferdom awaits me. Waaah!!
So Jambu and I were at the local mall over the weekend. Shopping, ostensibly. He is going to India this week and looking for gifts for his folks, while I was looking for a decent pair of flip-flops to replace my well worn and well torn pair of Rs 250 Lottos that I shall grieve over for some time to come. Deciding to get his lot done with first before exploring the exotic feasts and tastes of a nearby Cheesecake Factory and then finding me some footwear, we strolled into a nearby JC Penney.
Some Background. Jambu is my roommate, or rather flat-mate, who believes that the old adage of ‘Everything is bigger in Texas’ is also applicable to everything from New Delhi (mostly himself). He also fits the description applied to Mohanlal’s character in Narasimham: ‘Induchoodan innu oru vyakthi alla, oru prasthanam aanu’. Poor translation: Induchoodan is today not just a man, but an insitution (Don’t quote me on that, though). Similarly, Jambu is an institution among all of us, and many of us have come close to being institutionalized after encountering at close range his mastery of everything from language to logic to technology to conversation itself. He is also a fellow with no malice towards anyone and a good friend but, well, no one ever really talks about those things, do they?
Anyway, this story is not about Jambu or his many antics. There will be plenty of that to come, for sure. So, we shuffle into a JC Penney and our hero decides to buy watches for his parents. Touching, yes. Thoughtful, yes. Interesting for the onlooker, no. So Jambu spends half an hour chatting up the sales guy, while I amble back and forth between the women’s jeans section and the watch section. Jambu narrows his choices down to some four or five models and calls me in to help make his final selection. Having paid little attention to the banter between the two so far, I am now drawn into the conversation in which both are going into great detail discussing their respective parents’ exercise regimens and the price of gold in India. How, I’ll never know.
The salesman asks me which of the watches I prefer. I try to weasel out of parting with my two cents, but he insists and I tell him. Jambu is still looking deeply at the models on display, perhaps in order to find one of those hidden images among the array of similar looking watches. I wander off again towards a wonderful pair of women’s jeans, but not before I hear this snippet of conversation that makes me freeze in my tracks:
‘So you got any other relatives you’re planning to buy watches for?’
‘Yeah, maybe for my brother also.’
‘How about for the big guy over there?’
‘Hehe, no. He’s looking for, uh [forgetting the name of the precise item I had come in for], some other items.’
‘Oh, okay, okay. Sure.’
Oh Jambu, why can’t you choose your words more carefully, at least in this country? My penchant for trotting off towards the women’s wear section (look, the entire floor was a ladies wear floor; I just wandered off randomly. Honest) coupled with the fact that we were two men looking at nothing but watches (considered jewellery in this country, I think) for an hour was apparently enough to put the idea in the salesman’s head that we were, how you say it, barking up each other’s trees. And then Jambu tops it off with his unintentional innuendo. We were entering a world of pain. At least, I was. Jambu, oblivious to the implications of the salesman’s comments and my mortification, continued to pick out a watch for his brother as well.
Once again, I am asked for my comments. I keep my words to a minimum, wondering whether I should drop a joke that would clear the misconceptions that filled the air. ‘Heh, even shopping with MY GIRLFRIEND doesn’t take this long’ or something of the sort. I am desperate. But, as is his wont, Jambu continues to steer the conversation, which by now is listing in the duration of Jambu’s vacation and the time and cost to fly there (nonstop and hopover flights).
As Jambu finally pays for the merchandise and we leave, we thank the salesman who replies with a knowing smile and a, ‘Have a nice trip, though I don’t think he’s happy you’re going.’ One last shot sneaked into the net in the dying seconds of injury time. I skulk off the field to the restaurant with a blissfully unaware Jambu, wallowing not in the ignominy that he thought we were gay, but he thought we were gay. (Any who know either Jambu or myself or, worst of all, both will now be saying, ’Ick’. I couldn’t agree more.) And together. I kept my distance for the rest of the day. I think I shall continue to do so.
And I didn’t get my flip-flops either. The horror, the horror.
PS: Jambuism of the week: probablable
Edit: I realise, to my great chagrin, that I initially published this post without a title. My bad. Fixed.
As anyone who has ever owned a phone can tell you, telemarketing calls suck. Now that everyone has cellphones, you can receive telemarketing calls anywhere. I am sure the decision to bring down cell phone prices and network rates was influenced by the powerful telemarketers lobby. I can almost imagine the top secret meeting that took place in a heavily guarded warehouse by some dock (why is it always by the docks?). No, wait. Actually, I can’t. It was top secret. But I figure it may have gone something like this:
Cellphone makers: We shall not reduce prices. We do not want to indulge in large-scale frying of people’s brains. Just the rich ones.
Telemarketers: Do it. else we’ll swamp your offices with calls for magazine subscriptions and car insurance.
Cellphone makers: Hey, hey, we were just kidding. We’re all friends here, right?
Telemarketers: Right.
Networks: Don’t try that with us. We provide phone service to your operations. The more you call, the more we profit.
Telemarketers: Yes, and we want the rates down, too. If you’ll notice, this month’s tech support bills are due.
Networks: You wouldn’t dare! Also, that rhymes.
Telemarketers: I know.
Networks: !@#$. You win.
Telemarketers: Of course we do.
So, the telemarketers won. And now its quite impossible to go a single day without getting a call asking if you are interested in a BCCI Gold Credit Card or Prudish Life Insurance policy. While I do pity the poor sods who have to sit, dial numbers and repeat the same tired pitch lines thanklessly all day, I do reserve the right to be annoyed too. Especially when I am in the middle of a coffee break or, heaven forbid, lunch. To be interrupted during what is usually the best part of my day to be treated to two paragraphs about the features of a personal loan spoken in one breath while undigested food is coming back up my food pipe is an exhilerating experience, as I am sure everyone knows.
In the motherland, the calls generally are of the credit card/home loan/insurance variety. Now, being a decent fellow (a-hem!), I usually listen for about a half a minute or so before going, ‘Sorry, I already have a credit card.’ or ‘I’m really not interested in a home loan right now.’ And that usually would be repied with a resigned ‘Okay sir, thank you.’ But there are the more persistent marketers who then go on to extol the virtues of the service they are hawking. These then have to be put down with the, ‘Sorry, I’m really busy right now. Yes, boss, I’ll be right there’ kind of reply.
Then there are the really motivated marketers. The kind that probably end up with ‘Employee of the Month’ awards time and again by pestering, badgering and bewildering the poor would-be customer into buying their product with any and all sorts of justifications and questionable logic. I have had my share of these. One was a fellow who somehow had my full name in front of him and figured I was a fellow Keralite (This was an out of Kerala incident). After seeing that his regular spiel had failed, he went on to use his trump card, the M-word:
Telemarketer: Ohh, you are a Malayali?
Me: (Expecting the worst) Yes.
Telemarketer: (shifting to Malayalam) Couldn’t you sign up for the card just to help out a fellow Malayali? You don’t even need to use it. You can cancel it as soon as you get it.
Me: (10 seconds of stunned silence) …
Telemarketer: Sir?
Me: I think my boss is calling me. Yes, boss, I’ll be right there in a moment. Got to go.
Heh. Some Malayali he was. He didn’t even know the right protocol was to offer me brandy and beef fry before I could even consider his ‘request’.
The hands-down best, however, was this lady from ABC-Damru bank who was very insistent on selling me a credit card. Even after I told her I had other credit cards and was not interested, she continued by telling me the card’s main features: ‘Its a very colourful and trendy-looking card, sir’. She even went on to make an offer I couldn’t refuse: ‘I will personally come and deliver your card’. At which point I was tempted to ask and clarify exactly what ’service’ they were selling. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and I politely declined.
At the other end of the spectrum are the callers who you can tell are just waiting for their shift to end so that they can go home and get back to their otherwise interesting lives. These are the ones with the tired ‘Hello’ that you almost feel sorry for until they don’t even wait for you to complete your ‘Sorry, I’m not intere-’ before hanging up on you, leaving you foaming at the mouth at this excellent phone etiquette.
End result: in all my years of owning a cellphone in India, I never signed up for a credit card, life insurance, or a home/personal loan. I figured if I took the home loan, I would probably have to kill myself and let the life insurance pay for the loan. Not worth the hassle. Here in Amerikavu, however, most calls are from irritating IVRS machines that are good for nothing more than depleting my daytime minutes. Often, I get misdirected calls for people who are overdue on various bills, and it is quite annoying to have to be reminded that Daniela Rodriguez has not paid her gas bills or whatnot. I almost miss the ‘HelloSirIamcallingfromBCCIBankaboutcreditcard’ that I was used to.
I’ve always secretly envied friends and co-workers who could simply flirt with any (female) telemarketer who seemed to have a nice voice by stringing them along for minutes at a time and asking silly questions while still managing to not take the bait themselves. Guess you need to have a knack for that sort of stuff. I wonder where you can get one of those knacks real cheap. On the other hand, I never really enjoyed watching people get angry and sometimes abuse the callers. Stress, I suppose. Sometimes, though, a little fun isn’t bad. In that vein, I leave you with this nugget of a conversation that my dear friend Akru had with a credit-card seller:
Akru: Hello
Telemarketer: Good morning sir, I am with Estate Bank of India. I am calling about our Gold credit card. Do you have a credit card?
Akru: (in his deepest and most serious voice) From where did you get this number?
Telemarketer: Um, it was in our database, sir.
Akru: This is a top secret number. How did it get in your database?
Telemarketer: (in a weak voice) Uhh, sir?
Akru: Stay on the line. Do not disconnect. We are tracing this call.
Telemarketer: (voice getting weaker) But sir…
Akru: Our officers will be there in half an hour.
Telemarketer: (almost a sob, no clear words) …
Akru: (hangs up triumphantly)
Next time: calls from recruiters.
With everyone’s eyes focused on such big events of the day as the Beijing Olympics, the situation in Georgia and the American presidential race, it is my duty to bring your attention to the issues that truly matter, lest they go unnoticed. It seems the nice people of the UAE are getting all worked up about ‘God Tussi Great Ho’, a Bollywood film starring Salman Khan and Priyanka Chopra. The atrociously monikered flick is a remake of the Jim Carrey starrer ‘Bruce Almighty’ in which the protagonist (Bruce) and the almighty (Almighty) do a ‘Mudhalvan’. Apparently, the good citizens of the UAE are appalled at the fact that ‘God’ is played by Amitabh Bachchan. Seriously.
For a moment I thought the protest would be about crappy ripoffs remakes and silly song-and-dance sequences. But it seems they are content to be scandalised that Bollywood thinks the Big B is God, when clearly only Morgan Freeman can be. Tch, Bollywood.
I saw three (three!) movies over the weekend: the screaming swipe at Hollywood that is Tropic Thunder (watch out for that Tom Cruise), the very violent-yet-charming buddy-tale that is Pineapple Express and one of my all time favourites The Big Lebowski. All very excellent comedies with some wonderful characters, and very excellent timepass. And each with a great soundtrack. In fact, this is all about the soundtrack to The Big Lebowski. One song from the soundtrack in particular.
Years back, as a part-time aspiring guitarist and full-time first year engineering student in Kerala, probably the one question I was asked the most at the time was, ‘Can you play Hotel California?’. Specifically, the flamenco-ish version they played on the Hell Freezes Over album, which was more famous in God’s Own Country than the electric original. Apparently, Hotel California is accepted in Kerala to be the dividing line that you must cross to be considered a guitarist of any worth. Kind of like Summer of ‘69 or Neele Neele Ambar elsewhere in the country. A reputation built to scare the pants off any young fellow who happened to pick up a guitar.
Having been intimidated by the song since I first heard it, I was even more daunted by the endless requests from friends and seniors to hear it played. Not really knowing many chords or scales (not much has changed), I figured out the first few chords from somewhere, and then the rest from Danny, a kind senior, and then I realised that now I had a response for ‘Hotel California vaayikkeda‘ that wasn’t ‘ayyo cheta, ariyilla‘, which would be followed by the inevitable ‘nee pinne enthu gittarist aadei?‘. I was a ‘guitarist’. Or a ‘gittarist’, at least.
It was about this same time that people kept telling me about the song and the band having connections to Satan or drug use or backward-masked lyrics or something (I never really got what the fuss was about). So it was also kind of a ‘dangerous’ song. Everyone wanted to hear it, but would it damn my soul to hell to play it? Giving the Eagles the benefit of the doubt, I ended up listening to and playing the song almost tirelessly thoughout my first year and even after that, mostly for myself, to try and perfect the arpeggios and licks (the solo was out of reach) that Glenn Frey and Don Felder had by now etched into the back of my brain. Of course, I never got close. But as a result, I ended up tired of hearing the song and, backward-masked druggie lyrics or not, I have not played or heard the song seriously or in its entirety for a long time. Sorry, Eagles.
Wait, what were we talking about? Yes, The Big Lebowski. One of the best moments in this surreal movie filled with quirky, silly, borderline-unstable (okay, Walter Sobchak is clearly unstable) and memorable characters, is the cameo role of creepy latin-lover-pederast Jesus Quintana, passionately holding the bowling ball, licking it, then rolling a strike and celebrating – all in slow motion – with his boxer-like dance to the intro of the Gipsy Kings’ version of the song that can no more be named. I’d say its flat-out one of the Coen brothers’ finest moments ever.
Watching the clip over and over again yesterday brought back memories of learning to play the song and the sudden (if slight) increase in status I saw among batchmates as ‘the guy who plays Hotel California on guitar’. Suffice to say I never got any women or drugs playing that song, but it was a great boost in confidence for a young man working his way around six strings.
I think when I get back home today, I’ll give the song another listen. Just for old time’s sake.
PS. I initially considered, then quickly dropped, the idea of any references to Hotel Keralafonia for cheap effect. Kudos, though, to the true red-blooded Malayali who came up with those lyrics, documenting and forever sealing the connection between the song and the state halfway across the world that is crazy about it.
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