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February 28, 2009
It's Not Just About Rs. 90
It’s just Rs. 90, but the request stops you cold. You think it’s a joke and walk in. A couple of hours later, you come out and hand over the valet slip. You are asked to pay Rs. 90. Incredulous, you blurt out, “You’re kidding, right?” But you already know they’re dead serious and so you hand over Rs. 100. Your car comes and the man returns with your valet slip and a Rs. 10 note. In disgust, you ask him to keep the Rs. 10 as well. You get into the car and drive away, with an irritated feeling that’s difficult to explain, but makes you wonder why a hotel of this standard has to behave in a manner that completely spoils the mellow tranquility of good company, food and wine.
And while you keep chewing on this incident all through the ride back home, a couple of neurons suddenly fire away and the truth of why they charge Rs. 90 and not Rs. 100 dawns on you. “It’s the tip, you fool”, your charged mind tells you. Some manager has probably realized that irritated or not, the chances are that you will not take back the Rs. 10, and thus the drivers will not be deprived of the usual tips that valet drivers in other hotels get.
Your wife thinks it may be a temporary phenomenon. It’s a new hotel and probably still finding it’s feet. But when you go a month later and hand over the car keys to the valet, you realize that your wife was sorely mistaken. It rankles and irritates.
You talk about this with your friends, some of whom are aghast, some amused. Some go to the hotel, just to see for themselves, whether this is true. Some are annoyed and others pass it off as an American idiosyncrasy. For some, “its just Rs. 90, forget it!” but many others are upset and say, “they have serious guts to take Rs. 90 after I’ve spent a good four-figure sum on the food.”
I must be honest though. The first time I went to the Four Seasons on E. Moses Rd in Worli, I was so upset that I refused to get into the car and went to see the lobby manager in charge. He was probably so used to this by now that he didn’t miss a beat with his polite answer, “Sir, we are different. We are the Four Seasons. We believe that each service has to stand on its own.” I looked at him, completely at a loss for words (which as you know by now is a big deal for me) and before I could come up with an apt retort, he said “And believe me sir, every hotel in Mumbai will start imitating us soon.” I couldn’t believe his guts and I just turned around and left. The Taj, the Oberoi, the ITC Grand…they will start charging for valet? The very thought...
The funny thing is that when I got out of San-Qi, I just couldn’t wait to tell all my friends about the great multi-flavored edamame and the brilliant vegetarian makis. The Rs. 90 incident just blew that thought away. And at least till six weeks ago, nothing had changed.
And I sometimes wonder, whether the reason why Phoenix is so popular as compared to Crossroads earlier and Atria now, is due to the simple fact that Phoenix does not charge for parking, whereas Crossroads used to and Atria does!
One wonders!
Posted by bhavinj at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2009
Life in a Facebook World
Five midnights back, I was awoken by an SMS from a friend that warned about the dangers of the new changes that Facebook (FB) had made to its Terms of Service (TOS). The implication was "THE WORLD IS GOING TO END". The next day saw similar emotional outbursts on FB. This was an EMERGENCY to end all EMERGENCIES! And what was the issue? That FB would have the right to user content, even after an individual had deleted his/her profile. After this WORLDWIDE protest, which also received a first page mention in the TOI, FB recanted and went back to the old TOS two days later. All very great and power to the people, etc, but dear Gurmukh, was this worth spoiling my precious sleep?
As a community of friends, FB is the best of the lot, especially for most of us middle-aged Indian fogies who have now achieved critical mass online as well as on FB. The amazing ability that FB provides to reach out to friends became really evident two weeks ago when I posted a query on the FB Wall asking for suggestions for a new piece for this column and virtually instantaneously received responses describing a variety of topics, including one related to FB (thanks Durga).
As the cliche goes, "man is a social animal". This is no better evident than in the various communities and groups that are popular online. Even as far back as 1994, in the dark old ages of the Internet, the India-D Listserv group connected Indians in the US, and each day saw both flame-wars and new friendships being forged. The more we are online, the more we actually want to connect with old friends and perhaps make new ones and this is FB's USP.
Once I found that my wife had joined FB, I didn't have a choice but to quell my innate resistance to social networking sites and I followed her into FB last month. Within two days I had found at least 30 odd people who I knew well, including a 15-year old nephew, who had no qualms letting me into his online life. I've also learnt since that a couple of friends have become single again, I have figured out when not to use the Wall and when to communicate privately and have also practiced and learnt the meaning of "unfriending", which is a word that describes the act of removing someone, who you no longer want to be friends with, from your friends’ list.
Perhaps the best part of FB is its Twitter-like feature, where active friends keep updating their current status; and so you learn that "A is in Delhi, wondering whether I'll make my appointment", "B is having a bad hair day", "C is just waiting for the weekend to unwind", "D is going to the Valentine party alone" or my favorite, "X is, just is". And you can also keep tabs on who your friends' friends are (especially my wife's...just in case).
Sometimes though, the Wall is not funny! Just last week, a Briton divorced his wife, by first announcing it on his FB Wall, which was perhaps a "first" not only for his wife, but also for FB.
For all of you’ll who think that this is all Greek and Latin, welcome to the new, connected world. And for those who are over-connected, it may not be a bad idea once in a while, to switch of your cell and Internet access and go back to being offline, alone. It helps maintain sanity.
Posted by bhavinj at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2009
The "Penguin Law" Holds
Here's a new one for the school rule-book: "If you want parents during the Annual School production to stay till the very end and not leave once their child's part is done, you must put on a musical with penguins and make sure that each child wears a penguin mask".
Each year, a gaggle of parents collects at the front of the stage during the Annual Day musical in the Don Bosco quadrangle, waiting for their son (or daughter, depending on what their son is that day) to make his appearance on stage. As soon as that happens, all of them become camera trigger-happy hoping to catch their respective sons at the "right" moment.
This year, all these “parent-proud” Kodak moments had to take a pause.
Last week, Don Bosco staged the musical, Happy Feet, which as most of you know, is all about penguins. Though the kids all spoke in human voices, except for a few cardboard fish that were shown as food, everyone on stage was a penguin. In a penguin suit. With a penguin mask. All the kids looked the same; they looked like penguins.
So here's where the parents had a problem. Except for the main cast of about 6-7, who obviously were "known" kids, the rest of the 200-300 odd penguins on stage, the "extras" and "dancers", were unidentifiable. Sure they came in different shapes and sizes and depending on their class, had different color patches on the front of their suits, but it was still virtually impossible to spot their sons.
Which was both, an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the parents' outlook. If their sons had not been cast in the production, the parents could still click a couple of photographs of the penguins and point to any one of the penguins proudly as their sons. If however the parents actually wanted to know for sure which penguin was their son, they had to wait till the very end, when all the penguins/kids finally took off their masks, during the credits. And even then, if the son was short and thin, it was still difficult to spot him in the huge crowd of penguins on stage.
And what a stage that was. It was up for at least a week before the production, stretching all the way from one end of the quadrangle to the other, with sloping ramps and convoluted passages, painted in white to simulate a snowy Arctic environment, with a faux-sea at the bottom with cardboard fish. In the evenings, my kids used to have a ball on the stage, playing "hide-and-seek", while using the ramps as slides to move deftly from one level to another.
My son was one of the penguins. My wife was the trigger-happy parent. From the rehearsals, we knew where he would be standing during his two songs, but even then it was difficult to spot him. Once he was unmasked, she did what all helicopter moms do these days - hovered over all possible vantage points to get as many pictures and videos as possible.
Now that we know that this law works really, really well, perhaps other similar musicals can be tried in the subsequent years
1. The Lion King - there will be different animals, but put them in masks and the parents will stay till the end
2. Madagascar - same logic as Lion King
3. Bee movie - all kids dressed as bees
I guess the list is endless
Posted by bhavinj at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2009
Baby Face and Pink Lips Laugh as KM Leaves HT
On Saturday, My wife smsed me, "KM is leaving HT". My instinctive reaction was "Good for HT...and for all of us".
Why? Here's a review that we’ve had to suffer, week after week...
"In the brightly colored, college canteen, over two cups of cutting, “speshal” chai, Baby Face (smile, smile) looks at Pink Lips (blush, lush) and immediately falls in love. Together the Ra-Ra couple heads out to the plush hills of Cheese-Land or is it Mahabaleshwar in disguise? Pink Lips' father, Raised Eyebrows (blink, blink) is dead against Baby Face. His sidekick Mr. One-Finger (poke, joke) is asked to separate them, but falls between the cracks (crack, smack, get it?)."
"After two songs and some Bhojpuri-like dialogues that do no disrespect to Mr. Kader Khan, we realize that the main villain is actually Mogambo II, who has a feverish tick and keeps snapping his neck sideways and front-back and keeps winking each time he sees Ms. Pink Lips. Eventually, he winks too much and his eyes pop-out (zing, zing), into Baby Face's hands, who promptly throws them into the Arabian Sea (or Dead Sea? Ha, Ha)."
"Suddenly a twin-brother, Plucked Chicken, crops up. He falls in love with Pink Lips' sister, Blue Nails. Mogambo II returns after the interval, having had eye transplants and hair-weaving; he looks 25-years younger and resembles the twins' father, whose only memory is a 25-years old, crumbling, black and white photograph. After an emotional reunion (cry, cry), the twins find that their mother, Mrs. Teardrops, has been imprisoned for many years by Raised Eyebrows and One-Finger. Our two heroes and their father get ready for the final rescue mission, which ends in a bitter-sweet, fireworks-laden climax (bam, slam and zing, ding), until all is right, except for one unfortunate surprise at the end."
"Is this the same team that gave us DDLJ? It's sad that the weakest link turns out to be the screenplay, which seems to have been written with a shaking hand, while on a swaying train-ride, following by a tonga-ride to Jhumri Talaiya."
"However, even with all these problems, the films rides on the broad shoulders of Mr. Shahrukh Khan as Baby Face, Ms. Sridevi as Pink Lips and Mr. Bachchan as Raised Eyebrows, who's one, just one raised eyebrow is equal to a hundred words. These three, along with Mr. Karan Johar's ersatz direction, lift the film up from its peanut-butter colored morass."
"Rating: 4 ½ stars (would have been 5, but for the screenplay)."
It wasn't always like this, but that was in another life. Eventually the contextual reviews and the intelligent dissections gave way to the use of just clever words, with no real content, which in turn compromised the value of the stars and rating. We would still read the reviews, but that was for the lack of anything better. Whether it was the TOI initially and then the DNA briefly and until now the HT...it just kept going from bad to worse with each week's review.
A good film critic cannot also be part of the industry; also being a film director obviously leads to serious conflict-of-interest issues and lack of dispassion while critiquing. This has been obvious even to ordinary human beings like us, ever since his first film. I thought I was the only one, but while Googling, I found others who agree even more virulently, for e.g. here - http://passionforcinema.com/khalid-mohmmd-wtf-are-you-writing/.
Goodbye, KM and hope Mr. Iqbal Masood's real successor comes along as soon as possible.
Posted by bhavinj at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2009
The Screams of Rock On
Exactly 2.51 minutes into the album version of "Pichle saat dinon mein", which starts with "Meri laundry ka ek bill", Farhan Akhtar, in typical rock-star fashion, screams out the word "roya" at the end of the line "kabhi khud pein hasa main aur kabhi khud pe roya".
My twins know exactly when that scream will occur and while singing along with Farhan, they too, strumming on their imaginary guitars, slung over the tummies, get that scream just right.
Having miserably failed in my attempts to inculcate an understanding of rock music in my 9-year olds over the last year or two, it's amazing how Farhan has been able to effortlessly get through to them; all it needed was one viewing of "Rock On" and a playing of the CD a couple of times at home and in the car.
It's quite funny. When we are all together in the car, there is an invariable tussle about the kind of music to play. My wife and kids want to listen to the latest Hindi film songs, whereas I usually want to put on my classic rock compilation. No guesses for who prevails and we always land up listening to whichever Hindi film songs are the current flavor of the month. On the rare occasion that I am actually allowed to exercise a choice, the kids immediately start wailing in the background "Dad...can we listen to something better?" It doesn't matter whether I am playing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" or Floyd's "Comfortably Numb"...the kids' reaction is always the same.
I haven't quite been able to figure this out, but I guess their affinity for Hindi film music has to do with comfort levels and what they are exposed to day in and day out, at home, in school, in their friends' houses and in the neighborhood. Hindi films songs are ubiquitous and pore out of every possible musical orifice in our environment; be it FM, Worldspace, television, the car stereo, elevator music, background music in restaurants, clinics, hospitals, during birthday parties and from Ganesh and other religious pandals.
The rule of Hindi film music is now complete. Time was, in the 80s, that all parties and "socials" had only English dance music mixes and if anyone even thought of dancing to Hindi film music, he/she would be an instant outcast. Today, it is a rare party where you hear English songs...it's much simpler and faster to get the dance floor alive with the remix version of any popular Hindi song as compared to an English number.
And yet, I don't really despair. Even when I was growing up, it was all about Hindi film songs; AM radio, Binaca Geetmala on Radio Ceylon, Chhaya Geet on Doordarshan and cassette tapes. My first exposure to rock was when I was way into my late teens after I had joined junior college, starting with the Beatles, but quickly moving onto Tull, Led Zep, Sabbath, etc.
What Farhan Akhtar and Shankar Ehsaan Loy have done is to kick-start my kids' appreciation of rock as part of a routine Hindi music phenomenon. To me that's terrific, the language be damned.
The funny thing is that their favorite "Rock On" number, the one where they love to jump and scream through the entire song, has not been sung by Farhan, but is actually the sole Suraj Jugan number called "Zehreelay", a snake-idiom parody. If Farhan's numbers are more Deep Purplish, "Zehreelay" is actually Metallica or AC/DC. So go figure the kids' choice!
Posted by bhavinj at 04:33 AM | Comments (0)
