Handwaving and the software proffesional

Everyday we witness strange rituals.

Strange amongst these are elections, where conservative elder statesmen

suddenly begin adorning various exotic hedgear (I mean, I have always seen

Vajpayee with a rather large bald spot. It makes me very uneasy to see him

on the TV nowadays, head covered in multi-coloured bathtowels, resplendent

in fascinating clothes and pontificating in general.)

Stranger amongst these are census events, where at the conclusion,

comissioners proudly announce that it has been discovered, ahem… that,

every sentient being in India has 3.5 legs and a hyena. Since this is

evidently untrue, census unfortunately do not happen nowadays, which is a

great pity because I do remember the time when the census taker was held

spell bound by my grandad’s gleaming eye (much like the other chap in the

Ancient Mariner), while my grandad furiously racked his brain to remember

his great-granddaughter’s name only to realize that well, he didn’t have a

great grand daughter, was thinking of some one else, and had made a pretty

thorough ass of himself, besides making the census taker wait in the sun

for an hour and half. I count this among one of the high spots of my life.

But strangest amongst these is the handwaving that software proffesionals

in Tidel Park Chennai indulge in after a satisfying lunch.

Having stood in line, to offer the disembodied hand behind the window, any

leftovers, having thus appeased the gastronomic gods such as may be present

in Tidel, they then go on to the taps.

This is when the fun begins.

The engineers who designed the taps at Tidel, had rather a bright idea.

Aha! they thought to themselves. Let’s put in sensors here, so that the

general populace will only have to put their hands before the taps and the

water shall break forth and erase any sins they have from their hands,

including the chicken tikka. Out, damned spot! and all that.

So they went forth and put in their sensors, only in a momentary oversight

caused by two extra large beers, and a rather heavy lunch they failed to

tell anybody where they had put in their sensors.

It wouldn’t have mattered much if they had put it anywhere on or near the

washbasin.

But since it was after said, rather heavy lunch and the two beers, they

have been putting it in rather strange spots.

The first pair of sensors is embedded between the bottom of the escalator

stars and the doorstep of the ICICI bank.

This is not bad per se, that water spouts from the tap whenever somebody

rides an elevator up to the bank.

This is bad ( for the hand washer), and amusing for the spectators as the

hand washer, waves his arms, scratches the pipe, and then resorts to

assault and battery in order to get water out of the tap.

The second pair of sensors, in a dramatic break with tradition is connected

to the first tap. Well, all’s well and fair you may say. But it is also

connected with the second tap.

Did I also mention that these sensors act a random amount of time after you

wave your hands in front of them. Many a times I have observed patrons turn

away with disgust from the second tap and as the next in line cautiously

approached the tap it would spurt out water at the guy.

But last of all is the third tap, my nemesis at office. Here the engineers

in a fit of devilry, embedded the sensors right in the washbasin, but made

it wander about the circumference of it. This has resulted in a lot of

people who have to wave their arms, in mounting frustration for this rather

errant god to provide water. And just as they are about to leave the god

obliges, with a spurt.

If fold your arms and pray, was the motto of my elders, the motto of this

generation seems to be wave and pray.

Btw, why is it that a line of software proffesionals waiting to wash their

hands eerily reminds me of our parents waiting in serpentine queues to get

into the temple?

Is it because they approach the taps with the same air of trepidation and longing, and subservience they usually reserve for the luckier of our gods like Sachin?

June 3rd, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments

Morning Masala

My dad has a penchant for repairs.

By penchant I mean that he likes solving problems.

His success in such endeavours is a different matter altogether. Life to

him is a succession of feature starved gadgets and interesting puzzles that

he must piece together or take apart in order to understand, and make

better the quality of his life.

I would like to emphasize the ‘his’ here. Rarely has his tinkering improved

the quality of life of anyone else concerned. The rare exception was when

he used to drop any implement on his foot thereby enriching my vocabulory

with the choiciest of Tamil phrases and thereby improving the quality of my

life.

There was a British poet who wrote a book called ‘Daedaleus Removed’. Well

Daedaleus was the Greek inventor who was immortalized by his son Icarus who

was immortalized for flying too close to the sun. My mom having read the

entire story decided to make it into a tale of morals and cut out the time

i played in the afternoon. Well my dad couldn’t be compared to Daedaleus

but more to a reticent and pugnacious Calvin, ready to go to battle with

any household implement that catches his eye.

If there is one lasting image of my dad, that i would pass onto my

grandchildren it is of him, stripped to his undies, and busily wrestling

with the water pipe and trying to replace a washer. He looked a splendid

workman, and had manfully succeeded in extracting the washer when Mom

opened the valve, and flooded him.

He walked out of the bathroom, dripping water, looking like Neptune, and as

angry as him.

Which reminds me. For a sufficient part of the day, our house is under

water. Living in Chennai, plumbing is strictly uneccesary. Since water

never comes in any tap except one, and that too for a matter of an hour,

most of the taps and the showers are showpieces. Do not attempt to wrench

those taps they may fall of and hit you on the head.

Early in the morning, when all is calm and life looks peaceful, and the sun

is just shining over the tree tops, and the little birds have gone to catch

their little breakfast, and all is well with the world, my family is busy

jumping up and around, scurrying around with a rubber hose and trying to

fill every single bucket, tumbler with water.

We leave the tap open when we go to sleep, so that at the sound of running

water we may jump to action posts and catch the water. Many an elderly

relative, has been frowned upon, when due to the exigencies of his age, he

was forced to errrrr…. pass in the morning and we would all rush up with

our hoses, and my dad would bellow in his rather large voice. “False Alarm!

False Alarm! It is only the bloddy so and so using the bloddy toilet. And

Ramesh you #@#$#!@!@ how many times do I have to tell you not to leave the

mike in the toilet!”.

And so the day begins here, with Mom rushing about with a hose pipe and Dad

rushing about with buckets and accidentally tripping each other up. Must

say that these early morning sessions have contributed a lot to my

vocabulory.

One of the primary differences between my mom and my dad is the fact that

dad is flustered by the details while mom enjoys them. Mom in fact is

meticulous and has the nasty habit of being a cleanliness freak. My dad’s

idea of clean is rather skewed even by my standards (remind me to tell you

about the cake and the two dhotis one day).

Well, one day i remember that we had this special water crunch.

How special?

well one of my neighbours, ( a college kid and his chum who live right

above our flat), rushed out of the house with a Bisleri can while his

friend was crying out loud for all the world to hear “Bring the water! I

can’t hold it in any longer!”.

Sufficient to say, that Mom was harried. She was rushing about. Plus this

was one of the special days when Mom wouldn’t allow any of us to touch her.

Whenever she gets frentically religious like this she would wander about

and not touch any of us. (Dad and I solve this problem by hugging her and

planting big wet kisses on her cheek.) So things were rather tense as

orders were shot off left and right to make us fill the water and all of a

sudden that fountain of happiness ( that single tap) choked and stopped

short.

Pandemonium.

Mom was running about like a chicken, and dad was well being dad, cursing

Vajpayee, to the watchman and being of no use whatsoever.

All of a sudden he had the brainwave that well, the only thing to do was to

replace that tap.

Well there he did his famous comic changeover to superman, and pulled out

the tap, with a mighty heave of his wrench. Good! All was fine and dandy. I

had closed the valve and so, no water issued through. Dad now set to right

the tap. He pulled out it’s innards, changed the grip, the valve, the

washer, the gooblecol, till what we had was a fresh new tap. In doing this

he was liberally spewing about dirt. I mean good solid dirt. And grease.

And oil. All over the place. All over mom’s nice kitchen which she would

only cook in if it resembled PC chip making facilities. Mom was looking

more and more miserable, and the time was like 8.30 and today she had to go

to office and well, things weren’t very pleasant…

All of a sudden he is like done. He flourishes the tap about, and is like,

well my boy. here is the way to do it. There you have it, a perfectly new

tap, all ready to get you more and more water.

He then fixed the tap back and made mother cry by putting his monkey wrench

bang right into the container which housed the rice, and tipping over the

sambar onto the floor.

Then he turned triumphantly to Mom and said the exact following words. “see

padma. all finished. the devil’s in the details you know. now go along and

check how the water flows into the tub”. My mom muttering black thoughts to

herself, left to go check whether the water was flowing into the tubs, when

all of a sudden dad and I were surprised by a startled squeak from Mom,

followed by a rather large thud, and the slosh of water.

Dad was joviallity himself.

“Go and check wether she has fallen into the tub”, he said with a rather

fetching grin on his face.

I hadn’t moved very far to the bathroom, just opened my bedroom door, when

I saw that the entire floor of my bedroom was about ankle deep in 3 inches

of water, mom had skidded and was wallowing about at the bottom of it all,

her neat silk saree all wet, hair bedraggled, and any number of lizards,

trying to vainly swim their way to safety, and regarding mom as the general

Noah’s ark.

In all the enthusiasm of doing stuff, my dad had managed to sever the

rubber tube we used to fill water, with the result that all the water that

was supposed to be in the tub had neatly spurted away unbeknowst and had

innundated my room. In fact, the tap was not to blame it was working

perfectly well. We had absolutely no chance of sweeping away all that

water, in the next 10 minutes flat, and Mom was looking like Medusa herself

and balefully glaring away at Dad.

A man of extraordinary spirit, my dad offered to clean the room and “dove”

in, scrubbing away the floor under the watchful eye of my mother.

Daedaleus may have been saved while his son drowned in the Aegean Sea, but

not my dad! He would rather follow me.

June 3rd, 2004 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments