Driving or drinking ???

It’s a common sight these days to see cops going with vigor against drunken driving  in big and small cities, Imagine a couple of decades back this was nonexistent in India , you only got charged by the cops if you could manage to mow down at least a couple of people sleeping on the pavements and got caught in the process . Among the Page three crowd and film stars it became a fashion to mow down people on the pavements with their big SUVs . The rich and the famous even then got away blaming it on their drivers, Well the scenarios changed and with technology  advancing  breath analyzers  have come to determine as to how much alcohol you have taken above the permissible limits and can cite the exact amount of alcohol in your blood.

Well recently one night a friend and myself had a couple of beers and we were heading back home after dinner,  when the cops flagged us down for the check. But thankfully it was only a couple of beers and it was fine with the machine and the cops let us go. It was the first time we ever got checked and my friend who was driving was a relieved man. The Cops were also relieved a little I guess by their expressions as they thought my friend who was driving a Toyota fortuner was a big shot and might pull some strings with their superiors, the rest of the people getting checked  there were either students in mobikes or  auto drivers.  Now this incident has made a star out of the lone teetotaler guy in our gang . He is now most sought after to drive us home after drinks  and everybody now makes sure that he is kept in good humor always. The menu and other stuff are let to be decided by him and he is thanked profusely while he drops us all home. He is now looked up with respect and fear the same way we used to avoid annoying the school bully when we were in school.

Now what if you are charged with drunken driving even if you had never had any?  what if there’s some sort of  vague evidence that pointed out to you..?  Or  worse is if you are a teetotaler and you are charged for it ??

Well this incident happened more than  12 years ago in December 99, I was a newly married then with stars in my eyes. Well sometimes i get to see the stars even now after 12 years but for a different reason.  They say marriages are made in heaven , well mine was made in Mangalore amidst our relatives and friends , not that I am complaining .

After the reception and other functions got over , One of my uncle invited me for lunch at his house in a remote village near Uppinagadi  or Ubar as it is called in the local lingo there. It has nothing to do with a Bar though.

 So after two days after my marriage we newlyweds made plans to visit him for lunch and another aunts house for dinner who was staying nearby.

On the said day we reached his place by car at around 11 Am driving down from my wifes  native place which was quite far. Now at that time my Uncle did not have a refrigerator not that it would have mattered as there was never any continuous power in villages either then or now. But very thoughtfully he had made an arrangement to get us chilled beer at lunch time for us . Now in these villages Jeeps used to ferry people and stuff to nearby towns and these jeeps would make several trips to the nearby towns  in a single day. So my Uncle had instructed a jeep driver to bring few bottles of chilled beer  at around 12.30 pm. He had told the driver to try to adjust his trip to suit our time . Normally it used to take about 20 - 30 mins to come from  the nearest town.

Now our wait for the chilled beer eagerly began from around 11.30 am hoping that the jeep driver might  some how turn up early .This anticipation was akin to the whole nation waiting a yearlong for Sachin’s  hundredth  ton. Believe me guys, In a remote village with very little to do to while the time away and your relatives always around you leaving no privacy with your new wife, there was nothing more tempting than a couple of cold beers at that point followed by some yummy non veg food.

My Uncle was excited too as he would be able to have some beer in the afternoon without my aunt nagging him as it was the first time we newlyweds were visiting him.

But to add to our woes there was no sign of the jeep or the beer even at  1 pm. Mobile phones were a rarity and a status symbol those days with vulgar incoming and outgoing charges, my guess is that only the Ambani brothers talked freely on the phone as we now do,The others just bought a phone as a status symbol and to pretend to talk on it when in the presence of the fairer sex and anyway the village dint have any network.

 After a long wait, Finally at 2.30 pm the ladies in the house who were hungry decided to do a Mamta Banerjee on us to have lunch and we had to give in reluctantly like our Sardarji PM. With heavy hearts and long faces we sat down for lunch reluctantly our ears aching for that sound of the jeep engine.

Midway through lunch we got some shocking news from some people of the town  that the jeep carrying our beer on the way to our village had fallen into a deep gorge and the jeep driver was injured and was admitted to a local hospital.

Blaming it on bad luck we carried on with the lunch and we went to my aunts place to have dinner and  rest for the night there, We promised my Uncle we would drop in briefly when we were returning the next day.

The next day as we visited him  he smirkingly showed me the local newspaper which had reported the Jeep incident promptly. It was mentioned that the Jeep driver fell into the deep gorge injuring himself and other passengers. Local Police reported it as a case of negligence due to drunken driving  as Police had found Broken beer bottles at the spot.

My Uncle informed me that the driver known to him was a teetotaler and had never taken any sort of  alcohol in his life. It was just his bad luck that he just kept those beer bottles meant for us under his seat.

 The Cops in that remote little town then did not have any checking facility to ascertain whether he was really drunk and just inferred at it with the visual evidence. The poor driver was booked under drunken driving.

Life indeed is strange, sometimes you get blamed for something you haven’t done and sometimes you get praised for stuff you don’t deserve. Sometime  you are the statue and sometime you are the pigeon.

Well to explain in a simpler language, sometime  you are Tendulkar and sometimes you are Rohit Sharma,   On the contarary you just have to thank your stars if you don’t end up a Sreeshanth….

Mumbai Spirits ....Very Intoxicating

A lot of buzz about the Mumbai spirits going on in the papers and from every politicians and news channel people now. It happens everytime a blast takes place in Mumbai, probably the terrorists favourite playground to showcase their talent on what they have been taught in their homelands . They do it with the same dedication like Diggy Raja trying to prop Rahul Gandhi and derail every anti corruption law to be framed.

Every tom dick and harry is speaking about the Mumbai spirit .Now are all the mumbaites drunk on the Mumbai or Bombay spirits always ? Some still call it Bombay. I have heard about a certain heady Gin- Bombay Sapphire though, this is not that i presume.

Well it certainly is a city that is intoxicating because for a small towner like me, i can never understand how so many people can fit in so little space You just wonder where so much people will fit in..And believe me a Mumbaikar will never like to settle in a small city or for that matter any city with a bigger house with rooms big enough so as when you swing your arms you don’t end up hitting your partner. I can vouch for it as my wifey was one of the species before marriage and was definitely high on that stuff. There was a lot of those spirits in her blood stream, the effects of which are now slowly wearing off now after all these years.

I have visited Mumbai many times at various stages in my life for short periods and each time you are surprised as an outsider . Lot of things can happen only in Mumbai and that too maybe because all are drunk on Mumbai spirit .

I am sharing a few observations based on the first hand experience of an outsider like me:

You can never understand how the local train platform fills up in 3 mins to the brim after you have not boarded the previous train as it was full and the next one was due in 3 mins.
People help you with directions even though you don’t speak their mother tongue and are busy a lot , No this is not a taunt to the chennaites.

People go to sleep in train standing with one hand on their briefcase and one hand on the overhead support and miraculously wake up just before their station turns up. This i have seen so many times and am sure a study must be done on the sleep patterns of the mumbaikar just like the study done on the dabbawallas.

Bars are called Permit rooms and found every nook and corner , none of the permit rooms are empty after evenings and During early days when some fun and frolic was allowed, The Gujju and Marwadi businessmen who obviously had big assed wives covering their head with pallu 24/7 back home would shower obscene amounts on gyrating young things with a 2 inch makeup and whose dancing would make Sunny Deols steps look respectable. And believe me the Girl would never take off a single item of clothing from herself.
In other parts of the world mostly west the poor girl would have to moonwalk like Michael Jackson on the vertical pole stripping off all her stuff even to earn a fraction of their counterparts in Mumbai.

The city never sleeps as you find the local trains crowded at 12.00 Am in the midnight.
Everybody adds a bhai or bhaiyya when speaking with strangers, particularly pretty young gals when they obviously don’t want to make friends with you as they already have plenty of attention from their boyfriends.

There is no legitimate way you can earn money in this planet to buy a flat in central Mumbai.

Half of the Mumbaites do not have access to toilets, Probably they like to do it admiring nature in places like beaches and the railway tracks .

All Mumbaikars are crazy about the film stars , but probably not devoted enough to build temples and fight amongst themselves like the Andhraites and the tamilians. Amitabhs house is a major tourist spot to be pointed out by the tourist operators.

The Famous Hanging gardens aren’t hanging maybe it appears so for them.
And so the list goes on and on. Its a magic world out there where stories of quick fortunes accumulated and lost makes the rounds.

what is this that makes the Mumbaikar different from others???
Is it the glamour? Is it the weather? Whats that thing which makes million struggle to settle in that city and continue to do so inspite of having so limited space and resources and braving so many bombs , floods and Raj Thackeray?
Its been a mystery, this Mumbai Spirits and one hard question to answer .

Turning Forty and flying high.

Well some days back i came across the news of a new movie by Gul Panag a favourite actress of mine named Turning thirty, which set my thoughts into my turning forty last year.

It was a bag of mixed emotions when you turn forty, you dont want to go there but you are pushed there. Thats why its also called turning thirties and then Pushing forties.

Forty appeared so distant when we were in our twenties, we never imagined we would be forty one day.

Our twenties was just fun,fun and more fun. We were not so responsible and focussed as the youth nowadays . These guys plan for an Infosys or a Wipro to pick them up paying a vulgar salary or will go to US for higher studies. All this they plan by the tenth standard and achieve it somewhat in the end.

They have more money at their disposals thanks to their parents , Fun means hanging out in the mall, coffee day , bowling etc. Everybody has a girlfriend/boyfriend at his/her disposal . And my thinking is that they also change quite a lot like they change their clothes . Our definition of fun was something else.

But these guys are also not seasoned to be as tough like us when it comes to some crunch situations in life...

Anyway i vividly remember my teen and twenties which just appear to have got lost behind the corner , but whoa where did the thirties go??

Its like a blur, Never realised the thirties could travel so fast. Marriage, kids and a career never made you aware of the fact that thirties were flying by..

In my college days i remember a forty plus Jeetendra advertising for thirty plus capsules.I dont know why they have stopped the ad , Jeetendra with his numerous facelifts can still advertise for forty plus i think.

Now coming back to the point, As you enter the forties you are like entering the twenties again , Forties are the second twenties ,you feel the same zeal and enthusiasm at life. You search for long lost old friends and connect with them again reliving your thoughts and youth..
You are at the twilight zone , you are not old like the fifties, nor are you very young like the twenties and early thirties..The pretty gals in their twenties cant call you uncle as you have not yet reached fifty and dont look so old, neither can they make you their buddies, poor things they are the most confused .

Most of the fairer sex think that you are a safe by now, and will flirt a lot assuming that you arent dangerous anymore.
The younger generation of the fairer sex is smarter too.

Recently in December i had to fly to Mangalore from Bangalore as i had to rush after attending a meeting in bangalore. Now though i am not a frequent flier i have travelled some in all types of aircrafts to faraway places, but this was the first time i was travelling to Mangalore from Bangalore by air and recently there was a major accident at the airport.

I wasnt bothered by this until i sighted the plane i was about to board. It was an ATR,very small, slightly bigger than the volvo bus.This happened to be my first time in an ATR too.

The only consolation was it was Vijay Mallyas and i beleive the airhostess are chosen to his taste.




Well i wasnt disappointed as the airhostess greeted me either. Even for an ATR,Mallya has the best he can offer. No pun intended.

My next seat was taken by a young girl who might have been just about twenty. She had already settled in her seat. I could find a family pack of cadbury Silk chocolate peeping out of her handbag as i sat down.

I just gave a smile and settled down in my seat still attending a call in my phone. As soon as i finished my call she introduced herself that she was a engineering student and had to rush to Mangalore to attend a function like me. i just mumbled my name to her and she dint ask me for more about myself then.

After an awkward silence for about 2 mins, the floodgate of questions opened from her side. It was her first time in a plane and she was travelling alone. She was both excited and scared .She bombarded me with all types of question about the takeoff , flight and landing. When the plane picked up speed she started saying she was very scared and it showed in her face too and i was afraid that she might let out a scream which appeared highly likely at that point.
I was sure that now my copassengers might suspect me for some mischief.

Luckily nothing of that sort happened and i told her take off was cool when compared to the landing which also depended on the pilots skill as if i knew a lot.

But once we were airborne she was enjoying the ride, but the questions just dint stop coming, Now she went further and was asking all things about wings , fins , altitude , air pressure etc and For a moment i cursed myself for taking up mechanical engineering instead of aeronautical engineering. Not that i can answer much in Mechanical either,But i was answering them all.
The Pilot surely would have had an heart attack if he would have heard some of my answers.

The questions and her chatter about the flight, clouds outside etc, just dint stop even after the giant sandwich served by the airhostess and the giant Cadbury silk from her bag got compeletely devoured . She even had doubts about lightening striking our plane in December.Her reasoning was that as we were among clouds something might just happen.
There was an young kid about 3 asking his dad similar questions and his dad was just mumbling something which nobody could hear. I bet he was using similar tactics like mine.

Her questions now veered around landing, Now about the landing part ,I wasnt very confident as well as the ATR was feeling like a volvo bus by now and given Mangalores table top airport it wasnt comforting to think about landing in darkness as it grew dark pretty fast in December. But nonetheless i informed her everything will be cool and the plane was behaving well according to me.

But as i said the young in the present generation are a lot smarter , she might have sensed my discomfiture about the situation and her questions , she stared at me for some time and suddenly out of the blue asked me whether i was married?
Now this i was totally unprepared for, and i was stunned for a while. I looked at her face but her expression gave nothing away. Now From all angles i look married with kids and she certainly wasnt dumb., Beleive me guys, All women can smell a married man from a mile.
I asked her to guess and she replied that she wasnt sure as she couldnt guess my age,
I then told her yes, i was married and that i have two kids, and then she went on to ask about my kids and if have pics of them in my mobile etc. She just did this to make me feel good about myself and also to take the conversation away from the plane and the landing part.

To cut the story short the landing was uneventfull as by now i had now grown accustomed to her nonstop chattering and questioning and also comfortable as she had made my day by now.

She made sure that there was never a dull moment in that flight or the fact that i was about two decades ahead of her. She will fly many more times in her life and she might find the truth about altitudes and airpressure but will never ever forget her first flight either.

Of Sea Fish and Onion Uthappas

It was another sunday morning and i got up late, not that i always get up early as most of you people are aware of.

Bad news was that our regular fish vendor in the TVS moped hadnt turned up,so i decided to visit the market to buy fish.

As most of you guys know we Mangaloreans are crazy about sea fish( it takes a lot of effort to keep us off from other peoples aquariums) and i am on the higher side of craziness when it comes to seafish.

Now the two women in my house, my better half and my mom knowing my weakness warned me of not getting carried away and buy sensibly.

They do this half heartedly as they know they are fighting a losing battle because everytime i do the opposite and bring in a whole lot.

I lose control when i see the fish lying there to be picked up, so inviting and so tempting.

Its like letting a woman free in a gold shop or a saree shop.

I feel like a bull in a china shop , only i dont destroy those lovely beings. And One time in Malpe port where the boats were bringing in fresh fish from the boats, they had to literally drag me to the car and make a fast getaway.

Its like in the movies , mainly like Inception, i forget the real world and am in a surreal dream world when i see fish lying around.

Now the main fish market in Mysore is a small one and has only 3 to 4 shops that deal with seafish, the reason being the locals arent great lovers of seafish, thank God for small mercies.

So you find yourself jostling with fellow Mangaloreans and keralites who have some thoughts similar about the fish.

The shopowner of the particular one i visit is a Malayali but can speak tulu fluently and knows me well.

I guess he has senses my weakness and he lets me linger in his shop as long as i like and attends to me only when i ask him to.

After taking a long time having various thoughts in my mind about what to buy and what not to i decide on three items .

Now my taste in fish varieties turns to be expensive and i realise that only when the shopowner punches on his calculator, The amount turns out to be vulgar enough to give a mini heart attack but nobody cares or gives a second glance when i hand over the money and take my prized possession.

There might be many people similar and more crazier than me who come into his shop on sundays i come to the conclusion.

Happy with my conquests and as i am driving back to home a call from my wifey informs that she wants me to purchase onions on the way back.

Now as most of you married men know, you can ignore or forget anything but your wives requests(orders) It is highly risky to do so.

Grocery shopping in my house is always done by my dad and i rarely take the risk. I knew from the papers and TV that onions were expensive but did not have the idea as to how much.

i stopped at a small grocery store and quite a few customers were busy buying stuff. The shop is owned by a North Indian guy and was being helped by his pretty wife. After dealing with 2 other customers the guy attended me and then the golden words came out of my mouth- 2 kgs of onions please ...

There was silence all over like something very rare had happened and everybody including his pretty wife stared at me in disbelief . It was as if time stood still and i began to feel like a star.
In my mind i silently thanked Sharad Pawar for making me a super hero.Onions which was such a common thing until recenty has suddenly made me a star.

Suddenly i was reminded of all onion jokes like that Men werenow proposing their women with onion rings.

How at Dhabhas now Roti is supplied free if you order onions.

The most favourite one going around is consdiering the amount Robin Uthappa was bought by Pune warriors in the recent Ipl auction, he should be renamed Onion Uthappa .

Now i am a Huge fan of Robin and RCB, it was disheartening to see him snared by the Pune team.

He is an explosive batsman and can tear into any bowling attack and influence the result on his day but the problem is his days come very rarely and knowing Vijay Mallyas shrewdness it remains to be seen whether its the Pune team or the Bangaloreans who shed tears because of this Onion Uthappa..