I’m not sure if anyone stops by here
anymore but if you do, ohai! I have come back after a longish hiatus which
involved moving out of the smalltempletown. I am slightly sadface about this
because the smalltempletown was the best third world writer cred ever.
When people would tell me that they had an MFA, which back in the day I assumed
was some kind of urinary infection, I would say ohai I come from
smalltempletown in South India and even though they never really said
anything about this barring a ‘wtf?’, I knew in my heart that they wished they could
be like me. This is why I never missed an opportunity to put that up in
everyone’s face when they made the mistake of asking for a ‘bio’. Speaking of
bios!
‘Writer, big city-dweller, chaidrinker, bike
lover, foodie, wanderer, music aficionado, beer enthusiast, book-lover, serious
sense of humor, human being’
Who is this person? Is it every Indian
person in the internet today? Has it become the equivalent of ‘I love meeting
new people, traveling and hanging out with my friends.”? Why am I being so racist against Writer, big city-dweller, chaidrinker, bike
lover, foodie, wanderer, music aficionado, beer enthusiast, book-lover, serious
sense of humor, human beings? Is it because I am jealous because I lost my smalltempletown bling? Yes.
So anyway, I bid a fond farewell to the
smalltempletown and relocated to Bengaluru where all the cool people live. These
are some impressions, alleged conversations, and things that happened during
that first blush of Bengaluru when it was still making my nose bleed.
- People are not speaking Tamil
here. I don’t understand this. I am that gross species of person that thinks
everyone speaks Tamil or English and I am flabbergasted when they don’t.
- - "Ok wow you actually say ‘yougaiz’
when you talk."
"Yeah."
"It’s really irritating.
Like REALLY."
"Yeah."
"Because like at least on the blog,
you can close it when your lingo gets too irritating, no?"
"Yeah. That’s a drawback
of having to talk to me in person."
"Right. Because it’s REALLY
annoying."
"I know. Sorry yougaiz."
- -
Unrecognizable large green fruit!
Wtf, it’s like I’m in Africa or China or something! SO EXOTIC!!111 ok that’s a watermelon.
Nemmind.
-
- Sprite, muscular young man
crossing road in very short shorts. Ok those are clearly not shorts, this publicfellow
has come out in his undrawers. WE CAN TELL WHEN YOU DO THAT YOU KNOW!!! CROSS
THE STREET AGAIN!!!!11
-
- ‘And this drinking place is called bacchus?
Like tiny Hindi children people?’
-
‘No, like Bah-Kus.’
-
‘Then why is it spelled like
tiny HinHinihfsdHindi children
people? Hay, will everyone like me there?
-
‘Probably not.’
-
‘Oh. Tiny Hindi children people
never seem to like me for some reason.’
- - I had some dodgy pork and
contracted some kind of stomach food poisoning type thing and thought I was
going to die and now whenever I pass the establishment from whence I procured
said dodgy pork I shout ‘I HATE YOU!’ but I don’t think they care at all. Also,
LAZEEZ DOUBLE CHICKEN DOUBLE EGG ROLLS OMG I LUV YOU FOREVER
- - “Excuse me, can you tell me where *someplace I
can’t remember* is?”
“Yeah just like you can
proceed over here and you can take a left and just keep going straight for some
time then one Nilgris will come over there, like pretty big and you just don’t
want to miss it because you can head over there and you can get all the
information about that over there.”
“So you don’t know where
it is?”
“Yeah no I don’t know.”
“Ok thanks.”
“Yeah don’t mention.”
- - “Kuzhali? That’s an…unusual
name.”
“Kuzhali? It’s Malayalam
name I think so.”
“Sorry, I just can’t get
that, I’ll call you something else?”
“Your name is what? Ok whatever, I’m
calling you something else.”
Yes please call me
SomethingElse.
- LOL you’re talking to me in
Hindi like I know what you're saying and like I am going to reply in Hindi also LOL!!!111
Like many people who have
come to this coll city, I had trouble finding accommodation and I am going to
talk all about that in the next few posts because this is my blog. It is
also my hope that I will gradually start picking up some Kannada and this
Kannada will gradually infiltrate my polluted “English” and soon I will
suddenly discover I have some kind of Kannadiga ancestry and decide I am not so
much Tamil anymore and actuallytotally Kannadiga. In this way, I hope to
appropriate the cultures of all four Southern states, which is a close second
to coming from a smalltempletown.
There were some other
things I wanted to blog about but frankly, this blog post is already too long
so I will just go through them fastly here.
-The Ashton Kutcher Racist
Ad- Big ups to the righteous peeps who had to use multiple exclamation marks to
tell us Indians to Calm Down!! Because it was Just a Joke!!!! And My Indian
Friend Thought it was Funny so it’s Ok!!!! Also big ups to the righteous peeps
who took the time to remind us that India still follows caste system so who are
we to get offended by Ashton Kutcher in brownface. I for one was
confused for two reasons- one, I thought he was being Mexican/Italian/Spanish
so I was like STOP BEING MEAN TO MEXICAN ITALIAN SPANISH TYPE PEOPLE YOUGAIZ.
Then also we must consider, if he didn’t do brownface et al, how would we know he was Indian? There’s no other way for people to identify Indianness, isn't it? It is.
-Speaking of Brownface! I
saw a bit of a movie called Bhowani Junction, which featured wellknown
brownfaced actors Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. According to the summary, the
movie is about a half-caste. A half-caste is someone who has partial rights to
be offended by Ashton Kutcher’s racist ad. There was one gentleman in the
movie whose face bore a striking resemblance to a basted turkey, which meant
he was the brown dude, which meant he was an Indian. I was only able to see a
bit of this glorious bit of cinema and that bit featured a limerick type thing
which was about a girl from Sharkie who hooked up with a Darkie and they had
two white kids, two black kids, and two khaki or something like that. Or maybe her name was Sharkie. Could be that also because in the English culture they have strange naming habits. Isn’t it neat how English
people can make darkie rhyme with khaki? That’s so neat. It’s one of the
reasons why they had such colonial powers.
-I saw a trailer for a
movie called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which apparently is Slumdog
Millionaire but with old, white people. This movie also features brown people
but these people are naturally brown and not brownface so it’s not racist and
ok
Before I go, I
want to say that
And a verynice review
of my book appeared here
And now some ‘Oh My God This
Is Adele Right?’ Songs
okbai.