Postcards from Africa

I cannot travel without a plan. I’m not anal about it. It’s just that I need to know what I can and what I cannot do when I go to a new place.

Like you absolutely cannot carry a camera in public in Japan – hypocritical considering how a camera seems to be the natural appendage of any Japanese tourist – but well, you cannot. It’s frowned upon. (Also, if your toilet seat has a number of buttons and you’re too drunk to read any of them, DO NOT PUSH ALL OF THEM AT ONCE. It will only result in involuntary self soiling. True fact!)

Or you cannot call Mao a faggot in China. ‘Where can I find water?’ or ‘Can I pee on THAT side of the great wall?’ carefully enunciated with finger-goes-into-mouth or point-to-crotch-and-trace-pee-trajectory gestures get you no response. But ‘Mao’s a fucking faggot’ apparently means the same in Mandarin as it does in English and has them Chinks seeing red.

Point being, I cannot travel without a plan and I’m not being anal about it.

So while reading up on Malawi it was of mild discomfort when I read that in I could go to jail for farting in public. This is hands down the most ridiculous thing I have ever come across – criminal public flatulence.

The law - “Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

If this was ever contested in a court, the trial would boil down to bloody kindergarten squabble.

It wasn’t me.

Denial Your Honour! Denial! And we all know that he who denied it, supplied it.

Or circumstantial evidence perhaps?

Beer, fries and baked beans for lunch me lord! We have a sinner!

This did not sound right. Also, when all your travel companions are Caucasians, reports of albinos being mutilated in Zanzibar by witch-doctors did not help either.

Nonetheless, pseudo-undeterred we took off from our respective homes.

From the moment we landed it was clear that Africa is not black. It’s red. Retards at Airtel had taken the bit about ‘painting the town red’ quite literally. So having spent its entire budget on red paint, there clearly wasn’t any left to put up signal towers. (My way of saying - all those calls missed, messages not responded to – not me fault, mostly.)

On the main highway, almost medieval sights (a welding shop with the welder in front over an open fire) mix with signs of our time. A nightclub owner had heard of current events but had maybe not quite understood – his establishment was called the Afghanistan Bar. A barber doubled as a place to charge your phone, which lead to the not entirely trust-inspiring sign ‘Barber – Foni Charges’. A classifieds advert had a young woman named Yammie inviting people to her bridal shower with the warm note ‘Let’s shower’.

If you have ever visited the far east, you will notice that nearly every one has an anglicized or a catholic name so that most of us who are not Asian-Asian don’t choke while saying QingXao. The rationale used when choosing the name is simple – ‘Hi I’m Fat. Because I am Fat’ or ‘Hi I’m Fish. Do you like seafood?’

Fair enough I think. Not very inventive but fair enough.

However, the folks in Africa have decided that it’s most convenient to instead use a literal translation of their names. So Simpiwe Mazibuko calls himself Gift Mazibuko. Consequently, we have Bless Me Nkhata, Been Well Gawa, Wisdom Tasosa and the sisters Wonderful and Graceful Mkina.

Clearly, there was a lot of sense being lost in translation. But the Africans weren’t the only ones at fault.

We ran into quite some trouble with the locals because an enthusiastic Frenchwoman Sev (retro-shades woman in the 4th pic) tried to speak only in the local language, Chichewa, despite clear signs that English would do just fine. Just to make it clear – I’m all for learning the local language before new travels (BB for instance – learning Spanish just so she can be pounded to pulp by tomatoes – what resolve and all etcetra!).

But what a Frenchwoman does not realize is that no matter what she says, how she says, in whichever language she says – it all sounds French. So Chombo (fish) sounded like Chomba (hashish) and Chombe (tea) sounded like Chomba as well. And none of us wanted the waiter to dish out narcotics – especially not in a nation where breaking wind could land you in prison beside Sodomizing Siwombo.

It did not help that her refrain whenever she botched up Chichewa was - ‘This is the best Chihuahua I can do you know’.

Apart from a fortnight of linguistic hurdles, traveling with a bus-driver preoccupied with singing haunting Malawian gospels ensured that we were oftentimes lost in transit as well. And if not for better judgement and border patrol – we might have been lost in Transvaal.

Not that I’m complaining.

Just saying.

Honest.

Williaminder weds Katepreet

If only Lizzie and family were Punjabi

P.S. Please to check out Prince Harry towards the end of the video.

How to woo a Punjabi Girl 101

I have called its people and parties retarded, its architecture daft and its drivers mental. But Chandigarh really cannot be as fucked up as I make it out to be. Can it? As I leave this city, I try to find a semblance of normalcy here – in its lyrics.

I was recently gifted a collection of Punjabi poems by Amrita Pritam. In one of her pieces Main Tenu Fir Milaangi (I will meet you yet again) she says

“Main tenu fir milaangi.
Kithey, kis tarah? Pata nai.
Shaayad terey takhayul di chinag ban ke, terey canvas tey utrangi.
Ya khowrey terey canvas dey utey, ik rahasmayi lakeer ban ke,
Khamosh tenu tak di rawaangi”

“I will meet you yet again
Where, how? I know not.
I might become a figment of your imagination and fall on your canvas.
Or perhaps, spreading myself as a mysterious line on your canvas,
In silence, I will keep gazing at you.”

I am very dense when it comes to poetry or for that matter love as well. They both have a time tested methodology involved, yet almost contradictorily they’re supposed to express spontaneity (God forbid if you don’t – the bitch will skin you alive).

Both poetry and love have their lines.

There is always a line.

One that you absolutely should not cross - the iambic (short for iambecomingsick) pentameter. Or a line that you’re measured against, aptly called (?), the sexameter.

It’s not like the ‘modern’, free-er version of love or poetry is something that I can understand either.

What in God’s bloody name is free verse?

Have you heard of the ‘modern poet’ e.e. cummings? If you’ve not, let me tell you – he is a turd. Anyone who deliberately writes his name in lowercase is a bloody retard. Sample this. His “poem” titled ‘!blac…’. DO NOT adjust your browser. It is the title of his poem – ‘Exclamation point-b-l-a-c-Ellipsis’. Fancy the rest of it? Again, do not adjust your browser or your eyes -

“!blac
k
agains
t

(whi)

te sky
?t
rees whic
h fr

om droppe

d
,”

This is not free fucking verse. This is not fucking poetry. It is a deranged man with a botched up typewriter and in all likelihood he’s suffering from acute Parkinson’s.

One must never date someone who writes poems to live (not for a living; to live). You will be told that in today’s world, Love is like free verse. I never got it, I still don’t.

No rules. No boundaries. And what about line breaks? As you please.

I am told, one is supposed to feel the verse.

Not.

You just end up feeling worse.

!the re is;

ju st

to o-mu
ch

t(s)ex(t)ual
¿tension
;
¡

So I was saying, I do not get poetry.

But when Amrita Pritam wants to take the form of a line spreading across a canvas just so that she can gaze at her lover – I cannot help but think that this is where the Punjabis, and in essence Chandigarh, might have got something right – their lyrical expression of love.

Not.

For the last nine months I have never been to a club or party without cringing at the utter inanity of Punjabi song lyrics.

Take for instance the pop number Amplifier (Translation - Amplifier).

The song has the basic boy-trying-to-ask-girl-out theme. It has the usual ‘heartbeat-stoppage upon damsel sighting’ references in measured dosage; followed by boy trying to up the lyrical ante when he does not get a favorable response. And how he does!

Does he call her his moon? Nah – too mundane. How about his rose? Nope, very B-grade Bollywood. How about woofer? Perfect.

“Darling, you are my woofer and I,

am your amplifier.”

Why bother with bringing the girl massive lunar objects when audio equipment metaphors will do the job just fine.

In one of the break-up monologues I sat through in college, I was called an unromantic twerp. If she only knew my true feelings for her - I was her Dolby and she was me Bose.

While the Amplifier craze phased out, it gave way to an equally inane movie track – Dil Waali Kothi (Translation - The heart’s bungalow).

The song revolves around a man begging a woman to appoint him as the watchman of the bungalow that her heart is. Why the protection? He fears that the poor damsel, being fair-skinned and possessing precisely 40 whims and 84 fancies, might have her heart stolen.

This Punjabi obsession with numbers can even be found in the current ‘chartbuster’ and the most preposterous wooing song in recent times – Lakk 28 Kudi Da (Translation – The Girl’s Waist is 28 inches).

The song is written as an ode to the girl whose waist is 28 inches and weight is 47 kilos. It even has a refrain to that effect – “Waist is 28, and 47 weight”. We are given to believe that this muse is a ‘modern’ Punjabi girl for she sports a Lady Gaga tattoo on her white chest, wears ‘fit-dresses’ (versus two sizes too big?) and has a white i-Phone with a ringtone from LA on it. If you’re wondering how the said muse is so bloody white and is in general very ‘milky-milky’ and ‘silky-silky’ - the secret’s in copious amounts of body butter cream.

And lest we forget, we’re reminded in all 14 times that her waist is twenty eight and forty seven weight.

The Jehadis are promised 72 nubile virgins in paradise as a reward for martyrdom. According to the Quran, the virgins would have eyes like pearls and ‘large, round breasts that are not inclined to sag’. They would be eternally young, transparent to the marrow of their bones, sans unwanted-hair and have no bowel movements whatsoever. They would be chaste, albeit perennially nude, and restrain their glances. In general – they’d be splendid, pure and child free.

How bloody prissily precise.

And all we Punjabis could come up with is milky - silky - 28” - 47 kgs?

How to fuck up a city 101

For those who have not been here before (and you lurking Americans, Canadians and Herzegovinians), I have been living, rather trying hard not to commit suicide, in Chandigarh for the last five months. This and the last few blogposts are my way of asking this city to go fuck itself, royally.

Chandigarh, I’ve been told on more than one occasion, is a planned city. Will someone with even one-eighth of a brain please tell me HOW?

For starters, it is in the middle of nowhere. This is the proverbial No Man’s Land; at least not an intelligent man’s. We have the amiable Pakistanians a couple of hundred kilometers to the west and to the east we have Mr. Mao trying to pry open his eye-slits with chopsticks. So every time an Al-Qaeda junkie gets his panties in a bunch, I could be the first to die. How bloody convenient!

The airport’s not that great either.

I’ve traveled quite a bit to realize that a city’s essence can be gauged from its airport. Bombay – crowded, cosmopolitan, synchronized chaos. Singapore – organized, soulless sellout. Madras – functional. Abu Dhabi – concrete, kitschy, tailor made, man made.

How about Chandigarh?

Let’s see.

The airport in Chandigarh is only slightly smaller than the average Bihari cowshed (in case you were wondering, the flatulent, rotund policemen are rightful bovine replacements). The runway, all 200 centimeters of it, was once a cricket pitch for midgets. The last time I saw the conveyor belt operational, there were two moderately ginormous Punjabi women treating it like a personal treadmill. Agitated that their bags seemed lost, they were making their way to the hole in the wall that the baggage usually comes from. After all, if the mountain won’t come to Muhammed, then Mrs. Samarjeet Bhatia must go to her Samsonite, no?

A map of the city looks like this –


A Chessboard looks like this –


The retard, Le Corbusier, who was commissioned to ‘plan’ the city, looks like this –


Dear Mr. Le Corbusier,

Did you drop out of Architecture School after Lesson 1: Lines? Are you not aware of the existence of curves, arcs, bends, circles or loops? If we wanted you to draw a square, we would have asked you to draw a fucking square.

Also, Corbusier Uncle - if you are cocky enough to prefix a Le before your own name, why choose to be sedate when naming localities in the city? Numbered Sectors was the best you could come up with for naming neighborhoods; really? Sector 1, Sector 2 and so on.

And what is with the Mathematics you bastard? How does it help to know that you numbered the Sectors in a way that the sum of two adjoining Sectors is divisible by 13?

It’s Saturday night and I am monumentally sloshed. I’m on my way home and I cannot make out left from right because smartie pants Corbusier here decided to plan a city without landmarks, identity and character. I am lost somewhere between Sector 23 and 35 and I am majorly fucked. But lo and behold! All I need is the power of Math. In my state of alcohol induced incapacitation, I just have to figure out if 23+35 is divisible by 13 and I’m home. Right?

Why no imagination? Is it because you were Swiss and all you ever did was eat cheese and be intimate with cattle that you confused with your women?

And pray tell me what is this ‘monument’ that you have designed?


Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It is a hand? Is it something sticking out like a sore thumb?

You are lucky to be dead. For if you were alive, I would first kill you. I would then proceed to cut you up into teeny-tiny little numbered squares. And then I would feed you to 13 hungry, hand shaped birds.

Honest.

Regards,
Notgogol

P.S. I had specifically asked for stripes, not checks.

P.P.S. O wise one! Do not confuse this Chandigarh with the other hypothetical one existing in a parallel universe.

Recluse Driving

I don’t know if there are people like me around but I don’t like to drive. The thing is I do not enjoy any sort of multitasking.

I think I’m just not capable of driving. It involves just too many things all at once - looking at the road, flipping radio stations (which, by the way, Chandigarh has aplenty – TWO, that play only the latest Punjabi music of Harbhajan Mann, Babbu Mann, Gurdas Mann, Whatte Mann – surprising, no?), or honking at who are inevitably women drivers (for reasons which involve both lacking common sense and merely asking the good-lookin, wats-cookin?).

At times I’m left wondering about profound vehicular/motoring issues (in which century would a Bond movie need to be made for the Maruti-800 to be considered Bond-car material or was the designer thinking of a box or a garbage bin when drawing up the Wagon-R?) or trying to remember what my father, uncle, cousin, driver, teacher#1 and teacher#2 hollered into my head about the A-B-Cs of driving (A-B-C Accelerator-Brake-Clutch, right to left; no, left to right; no, right to left?).

If none of these, then I’m constantly reminding myself that it is not okay to run over cows that refuse to budge (what are these stupid creatures looking for on the roads – greener grass on the other side of the human-cow divide and why don’t they ever move? Observe the bastards, they never ever move. I could give you bovine facilitated directions to my house – drive past the Sector 33 signal, turn left at the fourth black buffalo, yank the tail of the third brown calf and run over the holy white cow blocking my house’s gate. People, we need to eat more steak in this country!)

So I don’t think I can multitask and, apparently, a ‘sure-shot’ way to tell if you are a good ‘multitasker’ is to see if you can rub your belly with one hand and pat your head with the other – at the same time. I’m not so sure about multitasking, but you’ll most certainly look like a bloody idiot if you did that.

So I was saying – yes, driving. I hate it and avoid it.

But there is the slight problem of roads. They stand between me and work, me and good food, me and my beer – which is a problem. Which is why I have someone to bridge the gap – Jasbir, my driver.

Jasbir, as it turns out, is mental.

His singular focus, objective, motto and aim in life is – ‘To reach fifth gear’. Period. Jasbir, slow down - there’s traffic ahead. I don’t care, fifth gear. Jasbir, there’s a guy dead on the road, right ahead. Like I care, oops… speed bump, fifth gear. Whoa, look at the fog Jasbir. Don’t drive above forty. Screw the fog. Look at me you fool. Look at my face. Do I look like someone who is bothered about some fucking fog coming between me and my fifth fucking gear? Fog it seems.

Jasbir, as it turns out, is tone deaf.

His taste in music (exhaustively) includes ‘Unheard of Bhangra Folk Music’ and ‘Unmelodic high-pitch rapid howling sounds’. He is clearly responsible for feeding over a hundred endangered rural artists in Punjab’s hinterland for he is the sole buyer of their music.

The only civilized song I’ve ever heard him play is a recent Bollywood pseudo-Punjabi number ‘Challa’. The problem is, as mentioned in a previous post, my understanding of Punjabi is akin to my understanding of what happens inside a woman’s mind, abysmal. However, the other day when the song and its seven different remixed versions were played in loop over and over again, I realized that it’s a song about living the Punjabi dream –

Punjabi boy wanted to be white collar
Said, ‘Fuck it! Let me just earn my dollar’
In Amrika I will drive taxi
Sleep with stripper girl Maxi
Blimey! If I am ever gonna call her!

Jasbir, as it turns out, has a brother.

His brother doubles up as the back-up driver and tags along with Jasbir when I need to travel for work to a remote nondescript town or village in the middle of Punjab’s nowhere (How very exciting! Don’t I just love my job). Problem is the both of them don’t get along very much and spend most of the time abusing one another. Their colorful insults include carnal intentions with one another’s slutty sister and forced fornication with the other’s mother. What they never seem to realize is that they share the same mother and the aforementioned lecherous sister; and acts that they ascribed to one another would most certainly amount to incest in most countries. (Before you get Dr. Skeptic on me, I’ve checked – they aren’t cousins. They are indeed brothas from the same motha!)

I have had a fair share of being driven around by loons but darling Jasbir is in a whole different league. Have you ever had a hangover two days after the binge? Not ‘FOR two days’ after the binge; binge – sleep – wakeupinthemorning – normalday – sleep –wakeupinthemorning – hangover! Have you ever run over a wild boar in a tribal area, made friends with the tribals and then gone on to cook it with them? Are you capable of driving a car looking just out of the passenger window?

Well, as it turns out, you’re no Jasbir.

P.S. (Bad date? Who better to help you with 'repairing' a bad date or petting a loved one than your local Maruti mechanic.)

Thongful Intightment

I have always hated tights, not that I’ve worn them – I just despise the sight of them.

The last girl I dated was always in tights – ALWAYS. No denim, no dresses, no skirts, no nothing – just tights. Plain and simple – leggings.

Tights. They’re just so very… very… er… tight. So body hugging and so freaking tight. Why are they so clingy? Why do they need to eat up all your space in the nether lands? Why are they so bloody needy; almost insecure? Why is there no space?

Where is my space?

The thing is now I’m cold. This sham of a city, Chandigarh, is moving closer to the arctic circle with every bloody day, with every bloody globally warmed iceberg.

For crying out loud - we are supposed to be a tropical nation, not Eskimo zone dammit!

So it’s freezing and I realized that everything southwards of my waist – ass, feet, knees, vagina – are becoming colder than Russia. To prevent any further posterior frigidity, someone recommended Thermal Underwear – Thermal Long Johns to be precise.

My momma always said, “Life is like a box of knickers. If they look like tights, feel like tights, stretch like tights, then they’re not damned Long Johns you fool – they’re tights.”

But oh bloody God – they’re so, they’re so, so, soooooooh… comforting.

They’re so accommodating, all encompassing, and warm and do everything to make you feel so very secure.

They just give and give and give and give.

It’s like their second nature.

They’re like Mother Nature – there is so much give.

So kids, I don't know how I met your mother, but when in doubt - wear tights.

P.S. Superman, Hulk Hogan, Robin Hood – thank you!

Still fearing and loathing in Chandigarh

(This is the city I see)

The only reason I go to parties is to watch people.

I love to tell a story. Most of my conversations are punctuated with, ‘You know I met this guy last week…’ If you ever have a conversation with me, you will learn close to nothing of me. However, you will definitely hear of the retards I’ve met in the run up to meeting you.

Also, I would have watched you, and would have walked away with another story – you. Does that make me depraved? Some would say so. But would the chat bore you? I really doubt it. I’m not saying that I’m good at conversation. It’s just that I’m just slightly above average when it comes to running into idiots and then telling others about it later.

But in my defence, I don’t take names, ever.

So, parties.

Since moving to Chandigarh, I’ve been to a few parties and I’ve met a whole bunch of new and improved imbeciles. One such November party, that I’ve wanted to write about, stands out.

The thing is I am twenty-something. Most of my friends are twenty-something. The only people I know who aren’t twenty-something are acquaintances I have no choice over – family, colleagues and women I fall in love with (generally well into their thirties, married, with multiple kids and IMHO a bastard of a husband; I know I’m so very sorted). The point I’m trying to make is that when I’m invited for a party, I will most certainly assume that the average invitee age is twenty-something. Worst-case scenario – average age 29. Period.

Right?

Wrong!

A month back, a Chandigharite friend invited me for a party that could easily pass off as a Geriatrics Anonymous (Chandigarh Chapter) weekly session.

Everybody was so… so… so… old. There were only three in the entire party who had black hair and one was a Labrador. Most of them did not know their own age – having been born in a time when calendars were not yet invented and sun-dials were used to tell time. The only accurate way of telling their age was either sawing through their trunk to count the number of rings on them or carbon dating. Pseudo-motivational pep talk one liners like ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life’ have no bearing on these people.

Uncle, if you woke up this morning and were able to stand with absolutely no assistance, without having lost bladder control overnight, today might, in remote probability, be the first hour of the rest of your fleeting hours, but maybe the last also; I can guarantee nothing and you just might die. Also, you might not survive the next sneeze.

At one point in the party, I was introduced to a couple of people in this odd manner - “This is Sethi Uncle. He’s Simran’s (the hostess) granddad. He’s an octogenarian.” The stress on octogenarian was so intense that it might have convinced a Normal-English speaking person into thinking that he’s a doctor of some kind; perhaps a vet who treats octopuses.

Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be an astronaut; or at least a sexagenarian.

Speaking of Simran (Name unchanged as it doesn’t matter. They’re a dime a dozen in this part of the world. Simran is the north-Indian human nomenclature equivalent of naming your dog Tiger) – what we have in her is a thirty-ish woman, born, brought-up and bred in Chandigarh, with an accent that is a cross between that of the Queen of England and the Maharaja of Patiala – plain and utterly incomprehensible.

I don’t blame her actually – in any case half the Punjabis think Punjab (Summer Capital – Chandigarh, Winter Capital - Chandigarh) is an island just off the east coast of England (Summer Capital – Southall, Winter Capital - Toronto) and the other half think Punjab (Summer Capital – Southall, Winter Capital - Southall) is an island just off the east coast of England (Summer Capital – Southall, Winter Capital – Southall).

The woman took it upon herself to spend her entire evening explaining to me the ventilation details of her house. She stood in the centre of her hall, arms wide open and twirled a couple of hundred times. She then mimed a swimmer attempting a butterfly stroke with one arm and breast stroke with the other and said, “Do you see? On a good day, the winds are allowed free circulation in my home. Otherwise, do you see those windows? When the weather acts up, I use them to control the winds.”

There are billions of dollars being spent in keeping scientists afloat on the melting polar ice caps that threaten to submerge the world in 2012, when all that is really needed is a little wind-control from our indigenous gusty wind goddess Simran.

Also, the woman had clearly traveled all over the world and made no attempt to hide it. She’d been to London, Southall, Birmingham, Patiala, Bhatinda, Pathankot, Southall, Birmingham, Southall and Singapur. The city that she loved the most was (to quote her) ‘the quaintly exotic Singapur’. And when asked about her favorite place within Singapur, I learned that she was floored by ‘the fabulous Santosha Island’.

There was more to come.

An extremely murderous looking man then walked up to me, introduced himself and out of nowhere spent an entire hour trying to find out my family’s bank balance and medical history. He was awfully proud of the fact that his daughter was my age (you have not read this incorrectly; he was proud of it, almost thankful to my parents), and that she had received the finest engineering degree from Punjab University and was now working as a mechanic in Birmingham. She was a prize catch, apparently.

After the ‘my daughter is purrfect phor you son’ monologue, dodgy uncle was expecting something to happen – an epiphany, an orgasm or a proposal? I didn’t know what. But there was expectation.

I was so scared I have no recollection of what happened afterwards. I think I might be engaged to a car mechanic in Birmingham.

Oh dear God! Chandigarh - I still loathe you.

P.S. Refined is not sold here