Singapore-First thoughts

A trip to Singapore was on the anvil since March. After a long wait, my boss came up to me and said that the tentative date was Friday, July 23^rd. My VISA processing took up extra time because of which I had to get it postponed to Sunday 25^th . That meant 2 bad things – (a) I was losing out on allowance for 2 days. Given that allowance per day was substantial, the loss was actually not a small amount (b) The wretched Singapore Airlines flight leaves at 11-30 PM IST and arrives at 3-30 AM IST, which is 6AM SG time. So effectively Monday is screwed.I flirted with the idea of taking a Jet Airways flight on Sunday morning.3 of us were going, so on further persistence from team-mates, I ditched the plan and stuck to Spore Airlines.I packed more than necessary baggage for my first international trip and also weighed it to ensure I didn't end up discarding stuff due to excess baggage. I had another uphill task on Sunday - vacating my Kilpauk house. We were vacating in the 1st week of August to T.Nagar. I did the packing for Spore and shifting simultaneously and conveniently handed over the task of shifting my baggage to my roomies since I would be away on 7th.The usual hourly update calls from parents took place."Did you weigh your baggage?". "Double check the passport,ticket,hotel reservation.Take enough forex on hand.Call up paati before leaving,OK?" and so on were the instructions given over phone.I finally finished both the packing in the last moment and called out for a taxi. Since the taxi travel would be reimbursed, I explicitly mentioned "AC car", with the tone of a person who has never travelled in non-AC.I had fended off a few calls by friends in the day due to my hectic schedule. I spent the travel time to airport in catching up with the calls.Finally I reached the Anna International airport.

The airport looked anything but international. However, it is under renovation so a major overhaul can be expected.We finished the check-in early and had lots of time to kill in the waiting hall.The smoking zone there had equal no of firangi females-this was my first sign of things to come.I spent my time on phone and finally boarded the beautiful plane of Singapore airlines.The air hostesses were smoking hot chinkis.I just imagined saree clad fully decked air hostesses namasteying me and immediately patted myself on the back for not choosing Jet Airways.After settling down,I noticed the uncle beside me watching Vikram's Kandasamy, a wannabe Sivaji.Shriya was hotter than the chinki airhostess,so I just played around with the remote to catch the give-up movie, all along pretending that I was a seasoned traveler. Despite my best pretending,I just couldn't spot the movie.I thought the movies were different for each seat (:P) and continued surfing to spot other good movies. I finally gave up after wading through stupid movies and asked the uncle for Kandasamy.He showed some option,with a look on his face which suggested that it was easier than adding 2 and 2. I grinned and started the movie.I was already damn hungry by then.I also had to sleep considering that I would land at 6AM and had to go to work straight from hotel.But hunger kept me awake.The usual welcome drink was served but food was nowhere in sight.I was swaying from hunger to sleep and back.I half dozed off, but keeping my nostrils wide open to smell food.It finally arrived after what seemed like years and I gobbled it up.It was just tomato rice and raitha,but hunger doesn't know taste.It was yummy and I finally dozed off.

It was very odd to wake up in 2hrs as I was sleepy and full.Changi International airport was simply superb.Now that was truly international.The first thing that struck me at the taxi stand was the ordered and structured taxis and people in queue.We got into a plush Sonata , which was the most common taxi.The slightly less common were Innovas,Mercedes,Corollas etc.I was still groggy and dawn did not break out yet.The roads were broad and clean,with a good dose of greenery.It anyway was a highway, so I couln't make much of a difference. I didn't even see my hotel properly.I just went along to the reception, did the formalities but had to wait as my room still had an occupant. I directly went to my colleague's room and just jumped onto the king size bed.I didn't know anything else for 2 hours.I was finally woken up at 8-30AM by my TL.I slowly woke up and went near the window.The sight really woke me up with a jolt.I was on the 16th floor with a skyscraper in front of me and a swimming pool on the 5th floor.I was thoroughly excited.This, was a kick-ass start! Further kickassery continued when the female beside me in office was in micro minis. And it is called formal western wear. me ogle at the chinki beauties for a 3 weeks before returning to Thamilselvis with jasmine pinned to the hair.

PVR

I am quite peeved with PVR. at Ampa Skywalk near Anna Nagar. As of now, Ampa is Chennai's biggest mall. Situated beside the stinking Cooum, at the crazy NMR-Poonamallee junction with stratospheric levels of pollution and decibel count. Kudos to the location.Express Avenue (EA) at Royapettah, which will soon be the biggest, however is at a mundane cleaner location and center of the city while simultaneously bordering Citi Bank at the other end. Totally spice less. So going back to Ampa,my first irritation is with the name of the mall. Whoever has heard of a mall called Ampa? That is like calling a tech park Senthil Velavan IT Park. Add Peeliamman Thunai to it, and it sounds awesome. A small background on Thunai. All cabs,autos and taxis in Chennai think that their lives are in utmost danger on the roads. Hence they want divine intervention. So 9 out of 10 cabs/autos/taxis in Chennai have a bold so-and-so Amman Thunai. Thunai, I suppose is company. Since Amman always accompanies these auto drivers, they now have the courage to drive at break-neck speeds and flout the rules because Amman will take care of them. I propose that we discard the Thunai sentiment. I am sure the count of the erring drivers will reduce by 50%. So what were we talking about? Ennapa? Illa pa it is Ampa. Right.So let us add a Vaidhya Veera Raghava Perumal Thunai to it. Super. So what about the skywalk? Skywalk brings images of a bridge at the 50th floor connecting the twin Petronas Towers in Malaysia.An Indianised poorer version could be a bridge at the 10th floor. This Ampa Skywalk bridge, decked in yellow, is above the 4th floor, connecting 2 wings of the complex. Kickass I say! So we walk through the Skywalk and enter the red-light area called PVR Cinemas. There is Red everywhere. Red lights, red carpets, red counters etc. It resembles a red-light area literally and figuratively. The entire place is so badly done that it reminds one of some village mela. The PVR at Hyderabad/Bangalore is no better. The red aspect is equally overboard and flashy there.

The seating is actually pretty cool, of course in red. No cribs about this. But the seats were so close to the screen that I could see the hero's nostril hair. God knows what other hair would be visible from the chair. There were just 10-12 rows of seats in all with a huge screen in front. It was like a big screen in my hostel mess or common room. An aside - To all IT industry managers who want to give a motivational speech to their donkeys(also called reportees): Common is NOT EQUAL TO Come on. OK? Please take care while mailing. We checked out the food counter during the interval.part from the main pop-corn and free calories drinks counter, there were other vendors out there to squeeze out our blood. There was some hot-dog selling for 75 bucks. Thanks to the huge queue at the main counter, we decided to check out the non crowded HotDog. We ordered 1 veg Hot dog. I got 2 long loaves of bread with a pinkish stuffing. I wondered if that was dog meat, served hot and hence the name. I cross checked with the guys twice. Their repeated assurances did not satisfy me completely, but I still dug my teeth into that. A week-old rotten bitter gourd curry would have tasted better. Hot Dog it seems. Even a dog will not eat that.


We got back to our seats. Matter over, THE END and we came down. The mall issues an IT-company-access-card type token for parking, to be paid after the show. I gave it back at the counter and the guy coolly asked for 30 bucks. What the #$#$? "Why?", I asked. "20 rs for 2 hours, 10 for every hour above that", he said. So 30 bucks for a 2.5 hr movie. I made a quick calculation on the long spiral way out. 120 for ticket, 20 for online, 75 bucks for Idiotic Dog and 30 for parking.Close to 250 per head! I swore I would never revisit PVR. Sathyam is so so cool and better. It is THE BEST multiplex among Hyd-Chn-Bang in my opinion. The ticket costs 120, online is just 15 bucks, and parking 10 bucks, and the interiors are far classier. Totally looking forward to the new Sathyam at EA and hoping for one at Hyd also, the Gult that he is. For the record, the owner is the son of some Reddy MP from Nellore and stays at a palatial bungalow just 2 min from my office. Reddy garu, you rock! PVR - no comments. I think even this guy is Gult. Not sure

Give me a normal 50 bucks theatre please!

PAANCH POINT PETROL DAALO

A conference call with my childhood buddies on a non happening Saturday night reminded me of an epic phrase used in our school and early college days - "Paanch point petrol daalo" (Put 5 points petrol). A peculiarity of mine is that a Saturday night MUST have something happening - else it is one precious night wasted. Ok ? Anyway,in those days petrol bunks did not have digital counters, petrol cost 40 bucks, we were non earning 15-16 yr olds and SRK-Karan Johar combo sucked. These days petrol bunks have stylish digital counters, petrol costs 55 bucks and SRK-Karan Johar sucks even more. So yeah in the non digital days, 10 points(0.1,0.2... to 1.0) on the counter was equal to 1 Litre. And we had to go the grounds around 3-4kms away for a bet match. Obviously we couldn't walk down that distance. We had to take our dad's discarded bikes. I mean Chetaks, Kinetic Hondas and Priyas. That too triples (trikki in local lingo) because of the demand-supply inequality. Also a fact worth reiterating is that these Chetaks were exclusively for our use because their 45yr old dad drivable life was over and only rough and tough 15yr olds could handle it. We handled it with grace of a Laxman flick, style of a Sachin straight drive and economy of a Wasim Akram over. Since we had to take the shortest route in order to avoid the police mama,the 15 yr old Chetak was driven across many slums, untarred roads, shady dwellings and the likes one usually saw in the movies where 2 baddies exchanged briefcases after raping the hero's sister. All this was done trikki. A few enterprising pokiri kids from the neighbouring colony even went to the extent of performing stunts on the Chetaks to impress the 10th class girls in our colony. Sadly my dad had discarded his robust parrot green Chetak in 1997 for a non-spicy, dull Kinetic Honda, so I never really had a chance to change gears and become macho at 8th class.I think we have had enough background on the Chetaks.

So Sriram's dad had a green Chetak, Sharat's dad a blue and Shankar's dad a white. These were our primary modes of transport to the ground, movie, roadside pani puri and Chinese noodles. Let us check out the financial aspects now. As a rule of thumb , we invariably HAD to eat mirchi bajji/chaat/jilebi/manchurian followed by Mountain Dew or Sprite almost daily in the evenings. So that ate up 20 bucks per head. The matches were played in the mornings and as mentioned earlier at grounds around 3-4 kms away. Since the scooters weren't used by our dads anymore, the fuel filling responsibility was completely left to us. Mind you, it had to be done within the alternate day allowance of max 30 bucks. Since 20 bucks had to be saved for the evening, we resorted to the trick every second middle-class guy our age, across the world did - fill just enough fuel to last for this moment. Thus was born the epic "Paanch point petrol daalo" . I guess 0.5 on the counter needed a 'Dravid square cut' level stylishly name instead of a boring 'Chanderpaul defence' level name like Point Five Litre. Hence the name Paanch point petrol. This half litre usually lasted for 2-3 days. On the rare occasions where 50 bucks remained, the smart guys used to ask for 1 litre - half in the tank, another half in the bisleri bottle in the dickey for an emergency (which usually was very often). Awesome, right ? There were other ingenious but ethical methods to raise quick money on days where had to watch movies First Day or a grand meal at Papaji-Da-Dhaba. It was, hold your breath, selling newspapers. Total kickass. Assimilate the papers, go to the old thatha at the paper shop, and come back with a whopping 50 bucks. The other guys even sold whiskey bottles discarded by their grand dads. That also had excellent returns. The harvest of 50 was usually spent without a cent remaining. Ah, what joy! Just to contrast, I spent 50 bucks a few hours earlier for a mango milk shake. That was of course superb so no cribs. In the engineering days, my friends used to buy every textbook at the beginning of the semester and treat them with utmost respect, care and devotion. They took care not to deface any page or sully any parts. The reason being - textbooks(past and current) also served as a ready source of quick money, that too big amounts like 200-300. When the need for 300 arose, typically a birthday party with excess booze, the spic n span textbooks were sold off, only to be bought later at the same place for a throw away price before exams. Well, have you ever thought of selling current year textbooks? Genius move.

This might give some wrong impressions that our parents were the kanjooos kind and stereo typical Tam Brahms as portrayed in movies. On the contrary, they were quite generous and always gave money when asked. Just that we were more generous while spending and so it was never sufficient. I don't remember any instance of being denied money as such. However, I am sure that any amount of pocket money wouldn't have been enough! We used to travel 12kms just for chat at Jubilee Hills, followed by juice at Mayurs. We always needed more - more for movies, cricket, eating out, shirts and what not. Of course I don't repent even a bit because we had a huge blast, actually at nominal rates. Cut to the present. None of us use Chetaks or Kinetic Hondas. In fact Chetak production has been phased out. We graduated from 2 wheelers to cars to roam on the streets of Hyderabad. We take control of the bill and argue "I will pay". My Apache always gets a full tank once in a month, using a credit card. The paanch point days are gone. We only deal with paanch sau (500 bucks) on going to a petrol bunk. I am really curious as to what 15 yr old kids these days do. In all likelihood, their dads must be earning whopping amounts slogging in Infosys as AVPs. I am not sure if these kids play. I mean sports and not games. Even if they did, it would be going to coaching classes with a driver and unanimously agreeing that Yusuf Pathan is the best player in India. What a pity I say. A superb meal at ITC Sheraton or a plush seat at a PVR multiplex will not give me even 10% of the enjoyment and satisfaction I had then. The common answers to the best dialogue would be mundane stuff like "Mere paas maa hai" in Hindi; or one among many immortal Rajini dialgues in Tamil. For me, the one phrase that stands above all these dialogues for the memories associated is Paanch Point Petrol daalo.

CHENNAI 4/20- THE TWIN ATTACK

April 20th will go down in the history of Chennai as "Black Day".Chennai was bleeding from head to toe with a few ruptured ribs and non functional bones, thanks to the unprecedented riots,arson, vandalism, mob fury,burning of buses etc. The arson started just a couple of minutes after midnight.More than a 100 are seriously injured and public property to the tune of crores has been damaged. IT companies and BPOs were forced to shutdown,because they operate only in night shifts.Pubs anyway close by 11pm, so no damage was reported.The total loss due to stoppage of operations is said to be atleast 500 crores, but the actual figures could be much higher.

In a double blow that will put Hiroshima-Nagasaki twin attacks to shame, Chennaites got the shock of their lives when The Hindu and Hotel Saravana Bhavan(HSB) simultaneously tweaked their policy by 1%. Call it coincidence or conspiracy, but the shocking fact is that 2 such incidents have had to happen together.The Hindu has decided to post atleast 1 interesting article daily and HSB has decided to reduce all rates by 50p and increase all quantities by 1gm, with effect from 4th April midnight. Upon announcing this,crowds immeditaley thronged the various branches of HSB to get the last few morsels of overpriced food.Huge and serpentine queues were seen outside the main branch at Vadapalani and the police was called to control the crowds. The otthers meanwhile resorted to random attacks.

The Communist Party which was silent over the past few months mourning the death of their tall leader(actually short) Jyoti Basu, has decided to rise to the occasion and get back to doing what they are best at-Resist any change in the prices of any commodities without giving it a thought.They are planning to sneak in a few of their comrades from across the Kerala border in Coimbatore as well. They are planning to take the support of Liberation Cheetahs as well.

Meanwhile,the other hotels are watching the developments closely. The Sangeetha group, which matches HSB to the T, atleast in pricing if not the quality, has decided not to touch any of their rates.Particularly the Adyar and Citi Center branches have been given strict instructions not to compromise on the cost. For the information these are the costliest branches.Hot Chips,Murugan etc have also decided to stay put with the existing rates. Vasantha Bhavan is contemplating a hike in the prices, thereby putting to practice the make hay while sun shines theory.

It is rumored that both The Hindu and HSB,in the wake of stiff competition from TOI and Hot Chips respectively,decided to rope in McKinsey India to give their sagging sales a boost. An IIT Madras guy, Karthik Vaidyanathan, is said to have come up with the brilliant proposals after spending 5 months putting in long hours at work, roaming around Chennai in a suit, doing a thorough study of the existing policy and that of the competitors' and making secret trips to his house in T Nagar in the garb of work.Karthik has escaped to Mumbai but his relatives here are a worried lot.They have sought police protection.The dept has posted an officer at each of their houses and plans to escort his father to work too.Any case,the dept is adept at spending crores to protect a criminal like Kasab. Spending a few thousands for an upright Indian Overseas Bank manager will not do any harm.

Our reporters interacted with a cross section of the vandals to gauge the public pulse.An overpaid IT employee who was burning The Hindu furiously says - "This is ridiculous. After a hectic day's work,I use The Hindu to sleep. If it is made interesting, I am deprived of that small pleasure also.This is just inhuman." Another IT employee seen damaging HSB rues "I am used to spending Rs 30 for a cup of Pongal which is not more than a Tirupati ladoo. If he reduces the cost,how can we manage our expenses and financials? I have to spend hours to recalculate the family budget.This is just not cricket". A gang of mamas and mamis sporting naamams were seen conducting a funeral ceremony at Mylapore Tank with a garland on the picture of HSB Mylapore branch .A disturbed mama says, "This is nonsense. I mourn the death of HSB. It is no lonnger alive for us.I always used to love the 18rs coffee before a kucheri at narada gana sabha. Now with lesser rates less even other castes will come and spoil the sanctity of this place which is within 100 metres of a temple. The TAMBRAS has unanimously decided to quit going to HSB.We also plan to put up an obituary ad in The Hindu. HOTEL SARAVANA BHAVAN,born 1985, attained Acharyan Thiruvadi last night. "Another member of the mob, who belonged to the Health Club says ,"HSB did a great job of checking people's obesity with their minimal quantity. Now with the increased food, I fear all Chennaites will have a pot belly and it will be difficult to identify a policeman".

The HSB management is just flabbergasted."We totally don't understand, we are always famous for overpriced meals - you need to donate blood and sell kidneys to pay us .We also serve insanely low quantity that will get digested by the time you reach ground floor from our 2nd floor.The situation demands that prices be reduced, given the intense competition. Even after reducing ,we are still in tune with our astronomical pricing-minimal quantity policy. The riots are totally ridiculous"

Seeing the trail of destruction, Karunanidhi decided to go on a fast, after breakfast, upto lunch at Anna Arivalayam. He has called on a team of doctors too to monitor.He has a Plan B also ready, unlike his AP counterpart YSR who kicked the bucket plunging the state into chaos due to issues in identifying the new leader. Stalin will clearly be the CM and Azhagiri can continue screwing hapless women in Madurai.Btw CM has given strict instructions to come up with something concrete by lunch time so that he can break his fast. He is afraid that starving beyond 4 hrs at the age of 85 can put him on a permanent fast. Meanwhile DMK cadres have lined up from Guindy to the airport to form a human chain, braving the scorching Chennai heat.Another worker threatened to self immolate.It was only threaten- he just poured kerosene over himself.Little did he know that he had indeed immolated himself - the Chennai heat burnt him to death . Further development shows that Karuna has decided to negotiate with N.Ram to go back to square one and publish only stuff like poor runways in Indian airports, birds in and around Pulicat Lake, discovery of 11th Century frescoes in Peru etc.N Ram has agreed to talk to Karuna mainly because they both are atheists and have a mutual respect for each other. But HSB owner on the other hand, with a strongly theist and heist background, wants to poke Karuna with a Vel from the HSB logo. He is anyway adept at murdering, so taking a risk like this is like eating rusk for him.Karuna of course is suppressing a smile and delighted at the back of his heart for causing pain to Tam Brams.

Autowallas meanwhile are having a hearty laugh. "No one will protest if we reduce the rates.As it is we quote 60 bucks to go to IIT from Madhya Kailash.Make it 50-40 hell even 30 and we still will be overpriced. I only see protests if we start using meters because that would mean more than 50% reduction in prices. Anycase if the protests start, we can pacify the agitating public by promising them rigged meters so that they end up paying 10% less than what they pay now.Like our superstar, we also proudly say"Naan autokkaran,nyayam ulla rate kaaran".

The other persons who are having a hearty laugh , of course apart from autowallas, are Mani Ratnam and RGV. Mani has decided the topic of his next movie and also has plans to bring back an overfed Manisha Koirala. RGV meanwhile, has tentatively titled "Chennai ki Aag" with Big B, Abhi and Ash. Up a 700kms North, Rosaiah is absolutely delighted with the riots in Chennai and wants to poke Karuna in Face book and say "Take That. You laughed when Hyd burnt. Now we will laugh.Muahahaha. Take KCR for help if you want". Now IT companies want to shift back to Hyd. Finally an old grumpy thatha was seen shaking his head in dismay,clutching a worn out copy of The Hindu in tatters. He said "I will post an obituary of The Hindu in The Hindu"