Soccer mania

Last year during the annual office picnic, someone had come up with the bright idea of having a soccer match. It was apparently good for team building. My team at Chennai did not have anyone who knew what soccer was (All of them watch cricket or at most football). However, no one was unduly worried. After all what was the probability of someone in the opposing team actually being good at the game.

It turned out the probability was pretty high. The other team was from Delhi and comprised people well over six feet who had put in two weeks of practice. Thanks to a token nod to gender equality a woman member was present in both teams. The lady from Delhi looked meaner than all the guys collectively in the Chennai team. P was representing the women of Chennai. P was dressed in pretty tracks and a cute sleeveless T-Shirt and a headband that let her tresses stream behind her as she ran. Unless she was going to beat the other team with sheer sex appeal, the chances of her contributing to the team did not look high. However in a team of 5 ft something-60kg men, she was not really bringing down the average quality by too much.

The match started. The Delhi team pounced on the ball with a vengeance. M, the only fit member in the Chennai team, bravely charged back and turned to the others to gauge a pass. This is what he saw – Ar was tripping over himself and falling. He picked himself up but again tripped after a few steps. Ar had had one too many drink the previous night and the results were showing. Within 30 seconds the disoriented guy went to the sidelines and sat and in another 10 seconds was joined by D who had given him steady support the previous evening. The subs had figured out that this was a losing match anyway and there was no sense in being mauled by rowdy opponents while losing. Within minutes, the team was short by 2 people.

P had been positioned somewhere at the back and after a while figured out that she better atleast run up and down to look like she was contributing. Good corporate philosophy obviously. S, who was the goalkeeper stopped for a brief second to comment ‘P you do know that the warm ups are supposed to be done before the match?’. P slunk back to standing at her place and watching the game. After a while she noticed that S was missing and looked around to see S in the midfield. Disheartened at the play in progress, S had clearly decided to take matters into his own hands and had deserted his post. P decided she might as well stand in front of the goal post instead of in the corner of the field.

The game meanwhile was exploring new nadirs. V bumped into K. M was still chasing the ball hopefully. Luckily he could manage to because by now the Delhi team was collapsing with laughter. After a while Delhi scored a couple of goals, which P could not stop. Of course since she was not technically the goalkeeper, it would have been pointless trying to stop the goals too. There had been six matches going on simultaneously and the commentator suddenly realised the comic potential in the Delhi – Chennai match. Within minutes he drew the attention of the entire crowd to the match. Nervous, V and K bumped into each other again. P started running up and down the field again given the number of people watching. S continued his position in the middle of the field. A and D had wandered off in search of some beer to recover from their hangover. The rest of team was scattered - all away from the ball.

The match came to an end. The Delhi team (the mean ruthless guys) jubilantly called out nasty things to the Chennai team. But if team spirit was what was meant to be promoted, the match had achieved its goal. The Chennai team tacitly agreed that it would never discuss the match again. Till date when someone mentions soccer we all grin and nod at each other quietly like members of a secret society.

Mujko bhi lift kara de

The first time I used the ‘Open’ button in my office lift and watched the doors close mindless of my command, I knew the lift at my office was not really State-of-the-art. In fact whenever you wanted the lift to remain open longer than its scheduled time you had to manually push back the two doors. The lift did not offer a smooth ride either. You could pretty much tell by the bumps on the way which floor you were on.

For a short while thanks to some general short circuiting, when you pressed ‘4’ you went to the fifth floor and vice versa. It took us a while to figure this out but being good adapters, we started pressing ‘4’ instead of ‘5’ to go to our office on the 5th floor. 5th floor houses very few people, so the secret was known only to a select group and other passengers in the lift who knew we worked on the fifth floor thought the whole team had decided to stay healthy by getting off on the 4th floor and walking a floor.

Incidentally, we have two such lifts. One fine morning the Facilities Management head decided that enough was enough and it was time to upgrade the lifts. So one of the lifts was shut down and the other one started making stops only in the basement, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th floors. This did not affect my life too much except I had to walk down occasionally to the 1st floor from the 2nd floor. The thought of a new lift however gave us all courage and strength and we bore the difficulty without too much of a fuss.

Two days ago the floor indicators inside and outside the lift stopped working. So now when I waited for the lift I had no way of knowing when the lift would arrive. Once I got into the lift I had no way of knowing if the lift was going up or down. Luckily, thanks to all the training we got in being able to judge the bumps on the way, we could instinctively make out which floor we were on.

Today, I came and stood by the lift on the fifth floor to find a small queue standing there. People were reading, some were cleaning their nails (and had cleaned quite a few) and some were staring wistfully at the horizon. I questioned the security guard about the foyer on the 5th floor becoming the new hangout in the office. He pointed out that the buttons outside the lifts had been gouged out as a part of the modernization. So there was no way one could summon the lift. Whenever someone using the lift pressed ‘5’ the lift would come up to the fifth floor. The bunch of people had collected over a period of time given the few visitors fifth floor got. Suddenly the lift appeared and everyone lunged into the lift. The poor chap getting out looked like someone trying to get off at Andheri on a Virar fast train (In case you do not know what it is, the sensation is akin to being run over by a herd of elephants).

I know I have been very patient with the lift renovation for nearly two months now. Though now I think perhaps I should just walk up and down the stairs till such time the lift is nursed back to good health.

Review of Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna

To be honest when I went to watch K.A.N.K (And what a weird sounding abbreviation that is), I had already made up my mind that it would be trashy and I could get a good laugh out of it. On the good side, it was not as bad as I thought it could have been. On the unfortunate side, while it was not corny enough to be laughed at yet it was tiring enough to give me a good headache at the end of… hmmm..almost 4 hours

When Karan Johar decided to name the movie ‘Kabhie Alvida Na Kehna’, boy, he really was not mincing his words. The movie stretches on forever like bubble gum – long after the taste is gone. But let us begin at the beginning. Which is – what exactly is Amitabh Bachan doing in this movie? With him and Kirron Kher’s character out, the movie could have easily been cut by an hour. But no, Sir, no. Rem this is Karan Johar and he will put in every marketable movie star in his movie (including special appearances for John Abraham and Kajol). This man is never is going to be able to make a great movie till he gets over his obsession of serving decked up movie stars in the correct proportion in great locales, with expensive settings and dancing to hummable songs. Hey, we all know Karan Johar’s movie is about catering to the NRI market where the big bucks are and formulas still work. So we cannot really complain that we did not know what to expect.

Well after that general piece of ranting (I hate to know that Rs. 60 crores was spent on this silly movie), here is the review. Dev (Shah Rukh) is married unhappily to the ambitious Riya (Preity Zinta). The duo has a son and Dev’s mom (Kirron Kher is yet another annoying role) stays with them. Abhisheik (oh never mind his character’s name) is definitely unhappily married to the tedious Maya (Rani Mukherjee) and the couple is childless. Dev meets Maya. There is chemistry (which we have to use our fertile imagination to visualize) and they both embark on a staid and boring affair. The respective spouses throw them out when they find out. After some confusion, Dev and Maya get together. And what about Amitabh you ask? – I told you he was irrelevant.

Maya’s character is probably the dullest and most irritating character in recent times. You are surprised that she has managed to snare a looker like Abhishek forget the fact that she actually embarks on an affair. Rani Mukherjee wearing rugs shaped into skirts and in grey make-up does nothing to spice up the character. Preity Zinta has clearly not learned how to age gracefully – she looked like a hooker in the promos but thankfully in the movie looked like the mother of a seven year old. Shah Rukh is his usual ‘Look at me I am Shah Rukh’ self and has some of the funniest lines in the movie. Abhishek’s character anyway is never developed (and thank God for sparing us another 15 minutes of torture).

There are a hundred faults you can find with the movie but the main one is that you need to show the lead couple actually having some chemistry. Both look like they were bored in their respective relationships and decided to take a break – not like they met their soul mates. Given that Karan Johar was trying to tell us all about soul mates and stuff, what a damn waste of 4 hours.

Let your NRI brethren watch this one.

Mumbai Rains

I love the rainy season in general and I love staying at home and watching the rains from a vantage point near the window. I love watching the sea when it rains. I love eating hot food when it rains. In short, the only activity, which I dislike when it rains, is going to work. Apart from having to get wet when wearing nice clothes, it also means spending the day cooped up in a soulless cubicle corner, oblivious to the weather outside. Luckily being in Chennai means very few opportunities for such regrets, given the sparse amount of rain we get most years. Fortunately my visit to Mumbai timed nicely with a spectacular cloudburst and I got to enjoy the whole range of rainy season activities.

The initial annoyance of getting out of the airport was forgotten once I hit the roads. I had spent twenty happy minutes in the lounge reading, quite appropriately, ‘Chasing the monsoon’. My friend, whom I had convinced to pick me up before we headed for lunch, had meanwhile been struggling to park his car. In the end he just parked his car in the middle of the still traffic and waited for me to hop on board.

Both of us agreed that it would be a perfect waste of completely good rains to sit in a closed restaurant. Being a true born Mumbaite my friend knew a not-so-popular place close to Band Stand where one could order cheap coffee and watch the sea.

Café S was a plain brick building with one wall lined up with windows facing the sea. The windows had no bars and were covered with transparent sliding panels that could be opened fully to get a good view of the sea. There were just a handful of people and we could choose from one of the many empty plastic tables by the window. My friend kept warning me that he had not been to this place in years and he was not too sure about the quality of food or service. I was too thrilled about finding a normal looking building in Mumbai that faced the sea and did not charge the moon and ignored minor concerns like this.

We sat at a slightly wet table. The windows had been closed on account of the rain. After positioning myself comfortably with my feet against the wall, I opened the window just enough to be able to see the sea without getting wet. A waiter came running immediately and chided me for getting the tables wet. He pointed out that he would have to wipe the table non stop if I kept the window open. I tried convincing him that he could just wipe in the end when we left and finally compromised by closing the windows just a bit more. Satisfied he went back to his task of chiding other erring patrons. The rest of our stay I noticed he pretty much continued to jump up and close the windows at the slightest sign of rains. Interestingly enough when people wanted ashtrays, he just asked them to use the floor. Clearly, he was in charge of cleaning only the tables.

The restaurant also did not believe in taking down orders in spite of its obvious surfeit of labour. One had to go to a counter to order the food and my friend had been doing all the hard work thus far. I guiltily took on the job and found the payment counter empty. The five waiters were spread about, twiddling their thumbs and informed me that I would have to wait while the counter guy came back from lunch. I was astounded by this perfect division of labour and the complete inability of anyone else to take down an order. Luckily the youngest waiter (and clearly the only one with some enthusiasm left to do the job) took down my order. I came back holding the receipt in my hands and my friend pointed out that I had to give the receipt to the guys at the food counter two feet away from the payment counter. All of them had been watching me walk away and had not bothered to ask me for the counterfoil nor had they bothered to get started on the food I had ordered. The mystery of why this café was not so popular was slowly beginning to get solved.

While I was waiting I looked around and realised the décor comprised photos of Brad Pitt and Elvis Presley. It suddenly struck me that perhaps all the waiters in the restaurant were just actors bidding their time. I began to look at them afresh with more empathy – strangers all stuck in jobs they may not have particularly liked.

After nearly three hours of staring at the horizon and watching the sea reflect the grey skies, we realised the place was beginning to get a bit crowded. Bombay’s usual crowd was taking over this haunt too and it was time to leave.

Bad/Good hair day

Last week I was in Salsa class as usual, doing my twirls and twists religiously. All the women get to dance with all the men in class and vice versa to ensure no one is stuck with a bad partner or no one hogs all the time of a good partner. So T ended up standing in front of me ready to go. T is one of those tall, dark and handsome types. He is also just out of college with nothing much to do, has a great wardrobe and clearly plenty of time to beef up his muscles. He has long, straight hair (a lot like Mahindra Dhoni in his pre-cut days). All in all the kind of guy who would have had any college kid tongue tied and who amuses me greatly by always looking in the mirrors on the walls while dancing. And out of the blue he asked ‘So how often do you wash your hair?’

This is the type of question that makes anyone want to pray for sudden death or a fairy godmother who can do a decent hair job before you can blink. Coming from one of those effortlessly well-groomed types, I was upset, tearful and irritated all within a span of 10 seconds. Then voila! It struck me that today my hair was at its bouncy best. I had spent half the morning washing it and then the evening getting it cut and set. There was no way my hair was a mess.

So confidently I looked at T in his eye and asked ‘Why do you ask?’ T just gave an enigmatic smile and it was time to switch partners.

The rest of the evening, notwithstanding my new hair cut, I kept wondering if my hair smelled. Resultantly half the time I looked like one of those possessed people who have their hair hanging over their faces. Worse still, like a person possessed by a dog since I kept sniffing at my hair too. If my hair had not been a mess to begin with, it definitely was by then.

In the end, my pride did not let me ask T what was with the question. Not to mention I wanted to maintain my cool working woman superiority and not display flashes of college-like vanity. After talking to a friend I just convinced myself T must have been looking out for tips on great hair and still being a kid did not phrase it better.

But I am waiting for the day when I can ask him ‘So do you ever look at anything other than the mirror?’