Mallu detection squad

How do you recognize a desi abroad? There are no answers, you just do. There are ones who look same as you and those that would have looked firang in India are also and easy pick. For us all chinki's look the same, all americans might be indistinguishable but even the most blending of the Indians stand out.

My first experience with this kind of ability was not with any international exposure. It was during my days in Mysore when I had just moved in there. All southies spoke the same cryptic language which I could not understand. But I landed up with mallus as my room mates. Mallus have a peculiar detection mechanism which works without hearing the other person speak a word. I mean just by looks, most of my roomies would be able to locate another mallu. So in our house there were mallu hounds who at every bakery would find out that the bakery waalah was mallu, every taxi driver they meet they would be able to chaff out the mallus out of them. Even from a name they could classify a mallu.

But it took me no time to get into their squad. There were following simple rules (without offending any mallu who might have started folding his tund) :

If someone is wearing a white dhoti with a shirt, he has to be a mallu
If the name is a combination of Hindu and Christian. For e.g. Amit George.
If your name is any combination of George, Koshy, Urvin, Justin, Bobby. Nothing out of this syllabus.
If the person has curly hairs
If the person is totally nuts about girls in gym, or girls in white sarees. Wonder how many people will love to see women in whites, but mallus sure would die for it.
If he searches for a mallu mess in 50 km vicinity of his house and says its convinient to have the putt and egg curry and biriyani on weekend than to cook at home

Its been great fun with all my mallu friends who might themselves be currently puzzled how they smell a mallu coz they never came up with a formal approach.

And there are incentives for getting a mallu. Each one has such dearness towards each other that he can even give you your account number. I don't know how their practical experience is but for an outsider it sure seems that. So I think its all the more important to know whether the other person is mallu and ready to chat in his own language.

Am I right? Enda para?

Devil's Advocate

A lot has been said about reservation by all, but what even I as an un-informed common man was just hoping that the person behind that had some valid reasons. I mean I have no doubt that I am for the upliftment of the suppressed but I am seriously against any kind of reservation given on the basis of cast alone. In fact as many have cited out(1, 2) that reservation per se is a flawed policy, easily exploitable and hardly useful except to feed the vote banks of politicians. I wont elaborate on that but I want you people to read the following link on IBN Live about the Devil's Advocate-Arjun Singh ,which I wish I could have seen.

Does it convince you?


PS: Dabbu thanks for the mail.

The Da Vinci Watched

Just got to see the Da Vinci Code. Well there's been quite a hype around it in India. I think its quite a nice movie (Don't ask me if its better than the novel or not, as I don't think movies can come to close to the detail of the novel). The movie is good and a must watch according to me for those who have not read the novel and also for those who have.

Good acting by Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautau. A lot of French speaking English reminded me of the way those people speak English ( I have somehow developed a liking for that accent. Long to hear English that way. Its not the correct way to speak but sure it sounds good. Especially when you're not a pundit in English yourself.). The movie touches on every important part of the novel. Has nice graphic description of the history (perhaps they lifted this concept from RDB) where they go back to history in b/w and scenes of before Christ are shown in that b/w sketchy manner. All the turning points of the novel are kept that way intact and shown (Pardon me if I missed some intricacies as its been long since I read the novel and I am surely not known for my memory). Characters match the imagination.

One thing where the movie lacks is the details of the symbology which Dan Brown has done more justice in the novel. I need to hear one review from the person who sees it without reading the novel. Does it incite the same amount of interest in the subject of Symbology as the novel does?

And btw on the controversy, I guess one thing where the movie has tried to set its record right is the part of belief in Jesus as God. Robert Langdon does keep getting to the point back that this is all what people believe, the grail followers believe and this is a hoax which people believe in deeply. The message is little less forced as compared to the novel. So my guess is that there is no need for such debate about it hurting the Christian belief. It should be released peacefully in India.

Its different

This is exactly the feeling I am getting on entering into US. Its surely different to go out of India into any country which is developed and advanced in terms of social status but coming to US is even more different than that. Having seen Europe, I can't help but noticing differences between the two and my own homeland of course.

US is big for sure. I haven't had a chance to see anything beyond where I landed and within 30 miles (yes miles is what I have to adjust to) of it but one thing that's most obvious is that they're grand on everything they have.

A supermarket will be twice the size it requires to be. Parking lots are like open fields. This is one thing you wont find so much in Europe. People are obsessed with cars etc but somehow I have never seen such big parking lots there. At most restaurants, the size of the restaurant would be one twentieth of the parking lot around it. Give one parking lot to 100 farmers in India and they would convert each one of them to lush green paddy fields, have 200 children and be happy.

Vastness gives to me a great feeling of wastage. You can blame me as back in India you wont waste a single piece of land except of course where it matters for the business, clients. Beautification is one thing which is secondary to utility.

When you come to roads, it beats the sense out of your brain. If one of the expressway is evacuated and given to people of Modinagar then they can have the whole city settled without even any 'choplas' (that in modinagria terms is a crossing) in between. I mean you wont have to go to other crossing on the freeway before the whole city shall be happily finished. Also when someone tells you this 6 lane freeway crawls at 15 mph speed you feel like laughing. But wastness is what you have to get your mind.

No difference in currency notes. 1 $ goes as big as a 100$ bill. Its also grown. They did not even spare numbers, our humble little centigrade scale is now bigger in Fahrenheits, so 30 degrees Celsius become 85 Fahrenheits (don't remember the formulae, just guessing from the feel factor). One thing is miles which is shorter but believe me its psychologically bigger. You would be ready to walk 2 kms but never 2 miles.

Your country itself has 3 time zones. I never faced that when calling anyone in Europe/India. Atleast the country people are in the same time zones. You have a lot of Indian friends but its like one is in Kanyakumari and another in Kashmir.

So this grandoise is giving me the initial jerk of entering into the US of A. So till I settle properly things will keep on amazing me. Not in the sense of awe which you might get into any developed country as that has gone after my first travel but more in the sense of differences between the cultures of the East, Europe and the West. There's a lot that does meet the eye in terms of people and places which I'll sure pen down at a later time, coz people is what I am still figuring out myself. Till then its just the tomato ketchup feeling which I cannot explain... It's Different