Superstitions: Mystic and mindless.

Hello people,

     This time I will be venturing into the universal topic of superstitions. A lot of them exist all over the world. Most of them are not superstitions at all, mere co-incidences. I will try to reason out some of the common superstitions that prevail in India now (Tamilnadu to be precise) and also give my thoughts on it.

1. “It is bad luck when a black cat crosses your way.”

On my way to cross yours.

     Now this is a superstition which had been in existence for a long time. It is because of the Indian mindset of associating anything absolutely black with bad luck. Like the case with the tamil movie “Sigappu Rojakkal” where a black cat is shown to be the embodiment of villainy and evil. But a black cat is like any other, only with a lot of melanin content in the fur. And the black cat doesn’t really intend to cross your way. If you keenly observe, it might just be on its way to snack or to meet the opposite sex. Stop him and you might just be depriving him of all the ‘fun’ he was about to have. That will add to your list of sins.

     You probably would not see a black cat during the winter season because that is the time they are busy with ‘other’ work. It is the summer season in which they are found restless and there is a reason behind it. Remember the concept “Black bodies absorb heat the best.”? Fourth grade physics. This must very well apply to black cats too. Since they feel too hot, they move about here and there and chances are fat that they come in your way. So, next time, when you are about to leave your home and they cross you, take it as an indication that the weather is too hot and try staying back. Give these black guys (no racism intended!) some credit and respect, for, they are your well-wishers. If you are really pissed off with the cat, get a box of Agsar white emulsion and paint him with it. That way, you will do a world of good for the cat and also take your revenge. But make sure this news doesn’t reach Manekha Gandhi or the Blue Cross.

Yup. She is the woman.

2. “A lizard falling on the human body will have certain outcomes according to the part of the body on which it falls.”

     This one is real fun. It is called ‘Palli dosham’ in tamil and its effects are given in the ‘Palli panchanga’. You might think what effect a small lizard falling possibly can have on you (Of course, other than shock, irritation, nausea, and in some cases, throwing up)? Well, our ancestors beg to differ. If you have ever checked out the backside of a daily calendar, you might have seen a space dedicated for this ‘Palli panchanga’ thing. It contains the list of body parts on which the lizards fall and its corresponding effects. I will give the following link for reference.

Palli panchanga

     Many of the results specified in the above link have no relevance whatsoever, to a lizard. For example, the lizard falling on your lower lip is said to result in a financial gain for you. Like the lizard was on its way to steal money from your dad’s pocket and fell on your lower lip en-route, hinting that there is a fat share for you in the loot. 

     And also what if the lizard falls on your ‘thighs’ first and you do a small jig to throw it away, during which it lands again on your ‘left arm’?. Referring to the link, falling on the thighs indicates ‘loss of clothing’ and falling on the left arm ‘may bring shame to you’. The message is clear. You didn’t wear your underwear. How did the lizard ever know that?

     Science says that there are millions of small hair called ‘setae’ on the feet of the lizard, which aide them to walk on the wall. If dust gets in between these hairs, it fails the intermolecular Van der Waal forces of attraction between the wall and the setae and thus can make the lizards fall. That is, if you see a lizard fall down from the ceiling, you can infer that the room is dusty and it is high time you cleaned it up.  If the room isn’t dusty, then one of the possible explanations is that the lizard had met another cute one and had fallen in love. Pun intended.

Classy.

     As a citizen of India, you need to learn the art of co-existing with these creatures. If they fall on you, throw them away and continue with your business and let them with theirs. If you still feel the urge to reach out for the nearest daily calendar, get all those calendars in your home and burn them. 

3. “New work must be started on auspicious days and hours.”

     This is more of an Indian sentiment, which is slowly turning superstitious. I consider this, the biggest mistake made by Indians. I don’t intend to hurt anyone’s sentiment, but I think auspicious days of the month are meant for starting equally auspicious works like marriage talks etc. But there are some people who go a bit overboard. They check the auspicious time for starting almost any work. Be it waking up in the morning, taking bath, eating breakfast and all the other daily chores, barring some exceptions like nature’s call: version 1 and 2, because these are processes that won’t wait for an auspicious time.

     There was this uncle I knew, who used to run a shop near my home. He was a freak who made it a point to run his business only on the auspicious hours and the auspicious days of the month. He didn’t work on Tuesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, and the days of the waxing cycle of the moon. And for the other days of the month, he had reasons like Ashtami, Navami, Ekadesi, Pradosha etc. Effectively, he worked for 4 days a month and had to shut down his business in a year. And still, he blamed his ‘Shani disha’ for this. God save such people.

     I am at dark as to why this superstition is still being followed in India. A line needs to be drawn between these sentiments and essential activities. I cannot dictate terms but I can request you to please give the least priority to this superstition.

4. “Rain is expected in a drought-hit land when a donkey and frog are married.” and related superstitions.

     This, by far, is the funniest and craziest superstition in existence in India. Whenever the monsoon fails, they go for this crazy ‘coupling’ thing. How the hell do they expect it to rain when a donkey and frog are married? If it rains by chance, it is because God is sitting in his living room, crying at the sight of the newly-weds.

The bride.

     By the way, I have a question. What if the monsoon didn’t fail, on the contrary, it flooded the area?  Will the flooding stop if the frog applies for divorce?

     In some areas, men replace the frog. This is further more pathetic. Anyway, donkeys make a terrible wife and that man will have to marry another woman. Imagine the plight of that poor girl. She will be married to a jackass husband who has an affair with a donkey. That is not a pretty sight at all.

     I could go on and on about the other superstitions that prevail in India and in the world. But I will stop here as I think I have enlightened you enough. Humans are the only race bestowed with good reasoning capabilities. Before following any such superstitions, find their utility value. Also find the rationale behind these superstitions and make a firm decision whether to follow them or not. The rest is in your hands.

Thank you for your patience. Comments are welcome.   

Love in 21st Century.

Hello again.

     This time, I will be talking about love in the modern scenario. I had been giving a lot of thoughts on the topic of my second blogpost and zeroed in on this. We are in an era where long distance relationships are the order of the day. This is very well understood by the Telecom industry and they are making it a point to connect the whole country (frequent digging of roads is the proof!). Not that the total country is covered, but you are never more than 1 km away from a telecom service (now, don’t ask me if the telecom service “works”. That will be the topic of a separate blog post).

     Okay, statistics apart. Now, let us see some common (and funny) ways people 'fall in' love these days. There is this one guy whom I knew for a long time. He is a perfect example of a lower-middle class teenager. He watches a lot of movies, sleeps late in the night, wakes up late in the morning, boards crowded buses to college and travels only on the footboard. It is in one such bus travel that he met this girl. She didn’t commit any crime other than being cute (which, by teenage standards, is a crime!) and had also got this guy his ticket, since he was standing a bit far from the conductor. After sometime he gave the ticket back to the girl. The girl threw him a questioning look and flipped the ticket. He had scribbled “I Love you” on the backside. The girl scribbled something and gave him back the ticket. Eager to find whether she had given her phone number, he flipped the ticket only to find “Congratulations. You are my 100^th ticket.” written on it. That is the last time he proposed to some anonymous girl.

     Such an impulse to propose is the product of watching lot of Indian masala movies. It is this media which promotes a lot of non-practical ways in which love can happen between two persons. A rich girl will fall for a poor ragamuffin. Sounds like a story just about right for Rajnikanth (in the 1980s). But does that happen in reality now? No. Maybe because rich girls today wear sunglasses all the time, which are peculiarly shaped like car wind-shields, barring them from looking at ragamuffins along the road, let alone look at the person in front of them. 

     Such love stories can have a successful ending only in movies. And it is solely possible only because Rajnikanth can hit 50 baddies at the same time, escape gunshots and grenades, punch through walls and save the heroine in the climax sequence. If you are not able to comprehend with what I say and think such things still exist in reality, try punching the nearest wall. That is when reality hits you 'hard'. Quite literally.

     There are a few others who act like they love someone, only to use their services. It is sad that most people under this category are women. This statement may sound a bit partial, but I bet some women will accept this too. Anyway I am not targeting all women out there, only a select few who behave in this manner. They usually are pampered rich women who are used to getting lot of attention from parents right from their childhood. It is only natural of them to expect the same attention from their life partners.

     So, they start their 'Suyamvara' from the time they get their first proposal. Then on, they are constantly in search of the perfect nutcase; one who would go out with them at any time, spend money for them without a question, wish them on their birthday, clean their car garage for them, soothe them when they are sad, and laugh with them on their extremely silly jokes. To be honest, these are only a part of the qualification that these women look for. The whole list runs for pages and is supposedly said to be archived in the government vaults under the tag 'strictly confidential'. It is so confidential that even the Government doesn’t know about it.

     And the guys who go behind these women are in my words: ‘Sore losers’. Get a life, guys, and try to know when she is beginning to use you. Expect something from her too. Stop spending for her. Stop running errands for her. And most importantly, stop gifting her with teddies. If you think boyfriends gift their female counterparts with teddies, think again. Have you ever seen their rooms? It is filled with teddies. I leave it to you to infer something from it. I know you are not stupid enough to call 1 + 1 is not equal to 2.

     The evolution of love in the modern times has given rise to a lot of jargon: relationships, break-ups, living together etc. (which made me think that love in the 20^th century was comparatively less confusing and easy). Perhaps the most important of them all is the term 'Dating'. It is also an intriguing topic. I too am at dark as to what exactly happens on a date. This is what Tamil Comedian Vivekh had to say about dating (loosely translated in English).

“Two people, who want to know each other, go to some resort in Mahabalipuram and spend some time there. They eat out of the same plate, share the same bathroom, and sleep on the same bed and return back to their respective homes the next morning, saying nothing ‘really’ happened between them.”.

     Now, it is the rich dudes who are more into dating. “Shall we go on a date?” is the next dialogue they say to a girl after getting her phone number. In my opinion, save the money you spend on 5 dates and you could buy yourself (or poor fellows like me) an Android mobile phone. It will stay longer with you than the total number of hours you would have spent with those 5 dates. Get your money’s worth, man!

     I don’t say that true love doesn’t exist in the present era. It does exist and it doesn’t expect anything, just constant care and sharing of life space. It lies in understanding the other person and also the situation around both. This is precisely what was done by our parents and the generations before them. This is how they were able to live together for a very long time. Guess we ought to learn a thing or two about living a contended life, from our forefathers. 

     Thank you for your patience. Your comments are welcome.

Auto-rickshaws: MTV of Chennai.

Hello people...

     This is my first blogpost and I will start with something  lite. Please do not mind any grammatical error. I will be talking about auto-rickshaws here, particularly the ones that ply on Chennai roads. As to the acronym MTV, its expansion shall be revealed at the end of this post (keeping with the norms of “elements of suspense”). But you may scroll down and check it out anytime (darn the scroll bar!). :P   

     First, let us see the reason behind shortening the name “auto-rickshaw” to just “auto”, particularly in Tamilnadu. In tamil, “attu” means “to shake”. Since auto-rickshaws here are the shakiest vehicles ever to be found on earth, we nickname them “auto” out of sheer love for the vehicle.

Now, there are three types of auto drivers in Chennai.

1.

2. Bad ones.

3. Devilishly evil ones.

Searching for the first option (the good ones)? Well, what is the point in talking about statistically negligible group of people.

    The most unused item in the auto-rickshaws is the electronics meters for calculating the fare. There were times when the driver’s hand went to meter even before touching the clutch. But now the drivers seem to have changed to a more manual approach i.e. bargaining. If you want to bargain with the auto driver, you need to pull yourself to a dominating stance. Start from 50% of the fare that he quotes and slowly increase it to 70%, in a voice that is half-troll and half-banshee. That ought to do the trick.

     The following will be a sample conversation between the driver and the about-to-be-passenger (loosely translated in english).

Driver: Where do you want to go, Sir?

Passenger: Anna nagar.
D: Ok. How much will you give me? 
P: How much do you want?
D: Get in, Sir. 150 Rs.
P: No way, it is after all 6 kms from here. 
D: Sir, petrol prices have gone up. We guys are poor and are struggling to meet our expenses.
P: I don’t want your lame stories. 80 Rs., Is that ok with you?   D: Give me 100. Now, don’t bargain for a petty 20 Rs.

     After this, you will be forced to either pay 100 Rs., or call it quits and reach your destination by a less costlier means (though, not before having your whole family damaged by the auto driver).

     The lives of these auto drivers aren’t great either. They have invested heavily in the vehicle and meet with financial crisis often. These financial problems are broadly categorized into yearly, monthly, daily and hourly. Yearly crisis is usually for the repairing of damaged auto parts and maintenance cost etc. Monthly crisis includes paying rent, bribe to the concerned authorities. Daily crisis includes the petrol drink for the auto and ethanol drink for the driver. Hourly crisis happens rarely and includes more bribes to the traffic policemen and also pan-parag for the driver. In short, these auto drivers are forced to be ROBIN HOODs in unbuttoned khaki uniforms, only that they get a small percentage of the total loot. And  that makes the autos, the (M)oney (T)hieving (V)ehicles of Chennai. 

Orampo - The coolest movie ever to be made on Chennai autos. 

Thank you people for your patience. Do post your comments. Your views are welcome. :)