The Pizzazzy

As I mentioned before that my work hours hasn’t started being crazy yet, but the team stays at work atleast till 7:30 and here I am recently back from onsite and trying to take advantage of some unwritten priviledges one of them  is to leave early. Early as in around 6:30. Than it takes half an hour to fight the two major bottlenecks when one tries to drive out of Hinjewadi at rush hour.

In a week’s time we shift to our Baner home and my travel time will come down to 15 minutes wonly Some of you who might think of correcting this, this was intentionally trying to be racial towards the mallus in general. Yes, recently we have been making such a fuss about a trivial thing as calling someone “Monkey”. If this is being racial then my friend Megha is a big racist who keeps referring to her husband or kid as “Makad” day in and day out and and so much so that sometimes we fail to realise exactly which Makad is she referring to. For those who are at a loss at the word, this is the Marathi word for “Monkey”.

Since my childhood days which has been spent among the cosmopolitan crowd typical of Army, this crowd is a good mixture of quite many Panjus, Sards, Mallus, Gujjus, Marus, Marathis and a handful of Chinkies. Yes, this is the very word “Chinky” which I have grown up with. I really hated the word at the beginning but then I never thought this was being racial and on many occassion I have referred to my looks as “Chinky’ looks. Racial, am I?

The other day at home we had a big discussion on what is being racial. My definition of the word is “Generalising the behaviour of a group of people on the basis of their origin/color/country”. A lay man’s definition rather. Never before have I given such in depth attention to racism. Even when Shilpa Shetty won the sympathy of an entire nation and more on the Big Brother show and then the title subsequently. It was only the Bhajji and Symonds show down which has given racism a new height.

Some of the best Sard jokes that I have heard has been told by Sardars only. I remember reading Kushwant Singh’s collection of jokes and many of them were on Sards. while in Singapore I was told by friends that one can be caned for being racial. But I still believe that Indians on a larger scale are least bothered about racism in general. Calling people as Panju or Mallu is actually like referring someone with a pet name, in this case a huge group though. But isn’t it our love and familiarity with the group which gives us the priviledge of addressing them in this loving manner.

It is our love only that we refer to the Blacks as Kallus when we are in the US of A. This is the Indian love and not racism. So friends, countrymen and Symonds please note that racism is in the mind. Being called monkey might be racial where you come from but not in the land of Monkey God Hanuman. By the way the very human race are the descendants of Ape, the primitive man.

Now that we know how Nano looks, everyone is waiting for the later part of the year when Tata Nano will hit the Indian roads. Infact people are so impressed by the pricing that they even took the booking cheques to the Car Expo earlier this month. And when the veil was lifted off the revolution brought in by Tata, everyone was further taken in by the stylish looks.

Much has been written to criticise the car and a lot more about what a change it will bring in. As a target consumer, afterall it has been claimed by many that it will be more of a ladies car used mainly for dropping the kids to school or going to the corner supermarket, I am worried. Worried because right now I am finding it really difficult to drive on the roads with all potholes, the indiscipline and the bottlenecks due to bad infra-structure. And imagine when you would see nanos everywhere on the road trying to overtake the bigger cars and cutting lanes. I would any day prefer a better organised and maintained public transport like Singapore rather than driving myself.

I further hear that the rickshaw-walas are also planning to upgrade to Nanos. Are we all ready for this revolution and the concept of every home owning a second car. Many of my friends are planning to keep their bigger cars for weekend and buy a nano for weekdays. I am not against change, but before all this we need to pay attention to the infrastructure. I honestly liked the looks and the price.

The Indian infrastructure is not as bad as has been lately portrayed in all the international newspapers - brickbats and applause is coming in the same breath directly targetting the poor infrastructure. Nations who are also amazed at the world’s cheapest car and that India is the country and Tata is the company to be able to achieve this. The country of so called snake charmers where the car drivers share the roads with elephants and other animals has taken such big leaps. I never really liked that my country was referred in such a way but I am liking the context in which it is used, definitely a giant leap. Snake Charmers driving Nanos.. chuckle

Although I am one of the target customers but I am not waiting for nano. No sir, being in software there is one golden rule or you can call it fact that the first versions always has scope for improvement. Meanwhile I will keep happy with my Silky Silver Alto LXi which will be delivered in a few days. I’ll be happy getting some road sense and traffic discipline into me. And also wishing that some day in a few years India is actually in the league of developed countries with best of roads, traffic discipline and good public transport system. With this wish list let’s wait and watch for the Nanos of the future.

It couldn’t have been more eventful than it got yesterday. What began as a typical Saturday ended up being quite adventorous to the extent of being risky.

After a lazy morning and a leisurely lunch I left the house to meet my friends Smitha and Vaishali. Smitha I was meeting after 3 years, we were working together before we both got married around the same time and she left for UK. After that we were in touch through mails and I was pretty excited about meeting her.

The other friend Vaishali happened to join us, she is from the translation department of my previous company. A fun person to be with. Well, the original plan was to go for the Kerala Massage Therapy at DP Road. But fortunately it was closed and it gave us some time to catch up on old times.

Me and Smitha have so many things in common, we both met our respective husbands during college, they were our best friends before we got married, they are maharastrians and we are not. Well even before we had all these things in common we connected and have become good friends.

After some three four hours of non stop chatter and continous bursts of laughter and giggles over a few cups of cappucinos, garlic breads and ceaser salads we felt rejuvenated, so much that it was better than any massage therapy.

During all these good hours I was actually getting late to reach Di’s place. She had invited me and Anand for a barbecue party. Yes, it’s barbecue parties everywhere and I am not at all sorry to mention it every now and then in my posts. Okie, so the boneless chicken was perched up in the corner waiting for me to turn them into delicious kebabs. I decided not to follow any recipe and simply marinated them with the green marinade that we use for preparing fish curry.

The guys were busy at getting the fire started in the barbecue and since the coal was taking some time to burn and heat up the barbecue, the guys got hold of some spirit. So, here’s the beginning of the adventure. As soon as the spirit was put into the pit, the flames caught fire and shoot up. The reaction was so fast that the flames caught the spirit within the bottle, the next moment was crazy, the bottle was thrown and the spirit caught more fire and it started spreading in the gallery. The ladies were looking for water, the guys were into fire fighting.

We managed to find water cans and buckets and managed somehow to extinguish the fire. The flames in the pit extinguished after one final wild uproar. Finally we caught our breath and were totally shocked and the next 15-20 minutes went into cleaning up the coal marks and everything in the gallery. Thankfully no one was hurt and nothing was lost, and most importantly during all this chaos Urjit was busy in the bedroom with his Cartoon network and was saved from witnessing the accident.

Another half an hour went into post mortem of the horror while we switched to the electric grill. The drinks resumed with the great tasting grilled chickens, kebabs and some rice. Although we ladies had lost our appetite we managed to stuff our stomach with some of the food.

The guys kept repeating the morale of the story “Never to use spirit or rock oil to start fire” but in retrospect what I see is a family having good time together and fighting danger together with a perfect co-ordination and co-operation. You see those 2-3 minutes were really horrific and we acted really fast. Although I am scared to even think about the scene but after the storm I felt we emerged as a family more closer and more bonded.