Srini Chandrasekharan

Category: Laughing Gas

Nothing but the very best, of course

  • Whistle podu, machi!

    Last night, Chennai Super Kings beat Bangalore Royal Challengers with ridiculous ease to win their second and back-2-back IPL title. (more…)

  • Pint Sized Mug Shots

    Oh.. the little joys of living in India! How do I describe thee? 🙂 The topic de jour is passport sized photos. Is it me or is there an insane demand for passport sized photos in this country? In all my time of living in the US (a lengthy tenure), I must have taken perhaps a couple of sets. And they were only required when I applied for, well, my passport. In India, passport sized photos have very little to do with passports.

    The clamor started the day I landed in Chennai almost a decade back. Checking account. Cell phone connection. Gas connection. Phone connection. Electricity. Home loans. Demat account. Auto drivers. Well, on the last part, I exaggerate. But, you get the point. Everybody and his brother in law wanted a piece of the action. At first, I naively did runs of  6 or 8 prints. Pretty soon, wisdom dawned and I upped the ante to packs of 20 to feed the insatiable appetite.

    An aggravating aspect of this matter is that it is impossible to optimize production levels to exactly match demand. Complex algorithms and spreadsheet macros have failed miserably. Which means that you usually end up carrying inventory. Say you do a run of 20 prints. The way things play out, you end up giving 15 of these babies away. A small and odd number get left behind as unused stock. A few months later, you are applying for a permit to park where you work. The conversation with the security chap inevitably turns towards passport sized photos. You go home, rummage through your possessions and come up with nada. Another run of 20 prints is quickly ordered, and soon yet another small and odd quantity is misplaced. And the cycle goes on. It is quite likely that I have hundreds of these pint sized mug shots lying around, mysteriously hidden somewhere in the house.

    An amusing aspect has to do with taking of the photos themselves. The rookies (of which I used to be one) tend to shower, shave and wear collared shirts from this misguided belief that these photos are actually looked at. As time goes by, wisdom dawns. Once, a guy who came to pick up a credit card application casually pocketed my photos with nary a glance. And, to add insult to injury, his pocket bulged with photos of other clients. Seeing my 2x2s being subject to step motherly treatment, I enquired as to how he planned to match the photos with the forms later. “Don’t worry, Sir” was the response. Veterans of this game have been known to enter photo studios and  exit in 30 seconds flat with photos in hand. Shave and shower are most definitely dispensed with. The maestros of this game, I suspect, are dispensing even with clothing of any kind.

    Last but not the least, one has to touch on the quantities, not an insignificant line item which can dent the household budget. Statistical analysis suggests that the number demanded roughly correlates to the importance of the mission. Bank account app usually calls for two. Demat accounts could be more. Interestingly enough, a lot depends on the agent. Some are meek. You can push them to the edge and get away with it. “I have only two, they dont match and were taken when I turned six”. Others are defiant cowboys. “Sir, I need five or six”. “What the..? Why six?”. After intense nego, you can get some of these Quick Gun Murugans down to 3 or 4. Suspect they are compulsive-obsessive collectors. I can imagine the bragging in the back office “I got 12 out of a poor sod today”. I would also not rule out spot fixing and match fixing possibilities. Perhaps vast sums of money are being wagered on who can collect the most on a given day.

    I’ve often dreamt of landing the Bharat Ratna. The highest honor in the land. To do the nation proud. I walk upto the President. And she says “Congratulations on being the first Indian Nobel prize winner in Physics. You have done the nation proud. That new fangled theory of yours that makes Einstein look like a  four year old totally rocks!” I nod and bow graciously, and stretch out the hand, eager to grasp the award. And that’s when she says “Not so fast, buster. I’ll need to see 25 passport sized photos first”. I usually wake up in a cold sweat.

  • Conspiracy Theories

    Some one once told me that everything in this world is controlled by just fifty people. These fifty people, he said, determine everything. And he meant everything. As in everything  from stock market movements to oil prices to US presidential elections to opium trafficking and mujahideen movements in Afghanistan to installing the next puppet government in banana republics .Whew! I am running out of breath just from listing the responsibilities of those who shall not be named. Fantastic theory, and apparently it has its takers.

    Every one loves a good conspiracy theory. But, they relieve us from the banal and real world through imaginative concoctions that contain tiny morsels of truth and liberal doses of paranoid delusion. Life’s too short to be lived in the real world, I guess.

    Who killed JFK? The Russians? The Mafia? Lyndon Johnson? Wait a minute, Lyndon Johnson? Come on!

    Indian  conspiracy theories are inevitably about cricket, bollywood or politics and at times, all three. A colleague informed me that “3000 crores of money was bet on Sachin getting a hundred in the game against Pak” during the world cup. That, he explained, is why the Pakistanis dropped four catches of Sachin. I scratched my chin.

    “err, didnt Afridi take the catch finally? And, Sachin finally never did get his hundred”

    “That’s because Afridi is the *ONLY* clean guy on the Pak team. He doesn’t take money”

    “The *ONLY* clean guy? Afridi?”

    I had to pause to digest this nugget. This was like Lyndon Johnson all over again. If I had to pick the only clean guy on the Pakistani cricket team, I’d go with Kamran Akmal. His ability in dropping catches is genius. And that sort of genius cannot be faked. But then again, I wouldnt know. I am not in the nifty fifty.

    The most interesting aspect of conspiracy theories are that they are so far divorced from our day to day lives that they are not actionable. We lose nothing by believing. But, one does struggle to process the data. The first bite is usually juicy. But then, the morsels get lumpier and harder to swallow with each progressive bite.

    “Jesus really lived in Kashmir?”  Sometimes even the first morsel is hard to swallow.

    A reporter asked if Andrew and Kate had been tipped off about the planned assault on OBL. The question arose because the royal couple had postponed their honeymoon by a day, and the reporter wanted to know if there was a connection. I can only imagine the look of bemusement on the palace spokesperson’s face.

    Sorry folks, Hillary Clinton is in all likelihood a female. Osama is most definitely deader than a dodo. Yes, there is a fairly good chance that we landed on the moon. And oh yeah, Obama was born in Hawaii.

    Nevertheless, one feels obliged to tip the hat to these unflappable heros who find the unlikeliest of connections between the faintest of dots, and in the process prove that human imagination is indeed alive, unbounded and purposeless. May their tribes flourish!

    A note to the nifty fifty if you happen to be reading – I’d suggest punting on global warming, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, etc for now,  and instead, please please do something first about Donald Trump.

  • Winds of Change

    Live from BDA complex, Koramangala, Bangalore: Winds of change are blowing in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and across the Middle East. The latest scene of action seems to be Imperial Hair Dressers in Koramangala in Bangalore.

    I was shocked this morning to find that a coup of sorts was attempted 3 weeks back. Disgruntled elements in the barber mid management (read the ones assigned to chairs 3 and 5) had staged a protest in BDA square over the always prickly issue of salary raises.

    There are unconfirmed reports of a facebook page in the early days. Before discontent could reach wikipedia and massive twittering proportions, the ownership much like Gaddafi, moved preemptively to crack down. They had learnt from Hosni’s experience that inaction was fatal. In the dark of night, the entire mid-mgmt team (read barbers assigned to chairs 3 and 5) were shown the door. And, ripples cascaded through the bottom rungs as well.

    What I saw this morning was a new set of faces, new uniforms and even a new television set. An uneasy calm seems to prevail. The new crop is abstaining from idle chit chat with customers, and spoke in furtive low voices on conditions of anonymity when quizzed about recent events. The future of Imperial Stylists remains unclear, as an autocratic aging ownership struggles to maintain control.

    As they say, when kings fight, the soldiers get injured. My injury is especially severe. My 6 years of investment in training Mahesh (mid mgmt barber assigned to chair 3) have come to nought. Once you get used to the comfort of a barber knowing exactly what you need done as you walk in through the door “not too short, not too long, keep the side burns as-is, and a head massage at end of cut” – it is traumatic to have to start at the beginning all over again. The new guy who has been assigned to me – Manjunatha – seems like a bright bulb and appears to have a cowboy streak when it comes to wielding the razor. Certainly appears that he and I have a long road ahead of us.