Eight New Ways of Predicting the Future!

Every new year we are bombarded with so many predictions for the future. Tarot card readers, astrologers, numerologists and coffee cup readers are just a few of these. Given the number of ways by which we try to predict and control our future, I think we should have a few more interesting ways of doing this. Eight new and innovative methods follow:

The Prediction for the Risers: A Rise Analyst studies the way your bed looks the moment you get up on New Year’s Day. All you have to do is a take a high res photograph of your Bed the second you get up from it and send it to a Rise Analyst. A Rise Analyst looks at the manner your Sheets, Pillows, Teddies, Women-whose-names-you-have-already-forgotten and other accompaniments look like on your bed. The Analyst is then able to give you a detailed prediction of your career, health and love life in the forthcoming year.

Reflectionologist: As the term indicates, a Reflectionologist is able to predict your future by looking at your Reflection. A Reflectionologist does not use a mirror, as a mirror has become a highly normalised item in which many people look into. A Reflectionologist uses special cutlery to study your future. He has a Bowl for men and a Knife for women and always invokes Freud before commencing on a prediction. Men and women look into a Bowl or a Knife respectively and the Reflectionologist studies the manner in which the Reflection appears. Predictions on your sex life, career and stress levels are indicated by a Reflectionologist.

Lime Reader: A Lime Reader’s first lesson to you will be to never curse the Pigeons. A Lime Reader will tell you that the way Pigeons shit on your vehicles reveals a lot about the universe’s plans for you. A Lime Reader will have to study your vehicle on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. She is going to study various aspects of Bird Lime and notice variations in colour, intensity and direction between the two days. Pay attention to what she has to say.

The Guess Oracle: The Guess Oracle specifically works with Guess products. If you have any original Guess product, then take it to the Guess Oracle and he will tell you what the future holds for you. But beware. You could not have bought the Guess product at a Sale and it cannot be a Ripoff and it definitely cannot be an Original Fake. If you goof up by offering the Guess Oracle any of these, then it’ll be your last time ever and you can never go to a Guess Oracle again in your life.

The First Bite Reader: No, don’t get any funny ideas. The First Bite Reader reads your First Bite of Toast in the year and is able to predict your future. The shape and depth of your Bite into a Toast will tell a lot about you. But, the First Bite Reader has usually a difficult job because most people get very conscious and try to take a perfect Bite of a Toast. Also, there are problems with packaging the First Bite. Worse, some people don’t stop with the First Bite and send the Reader their fifth bites or crumbs of what is left of the Toast.

The Ash Seer: The very sight of seeing an Ash Seer at work will tell you that it is serious business. When you go to visit an Ash Seer, you will have to take with you the Ash collected from your Ash Tray. Quantity, brand, quality...nothing matters. Even a small amount is enough to tell a lot about you. An Ash Seer blows the Ash into the air, observes the shape it takes and deduces the most profound predictions. Ash Seers, you should know, take great offence if you mistakenly ask them for a joint, of anything.

The Shuffle Expert: A Shuffle Expert will ask you to bring a music device with you. This could be an iPod, an mp3 player or even a mobile. You get your playlist out and you turn on Shuffle. Depending on the first song that plays, the Shuffle Expert will be able to foretell whether you are going to get laid that day or not. Shuffle Experts say that people really want to improve their good luck and so end up having Bollywood item numbers, Emraan Hashmi songs and what not but at the end of the day, what a Shuffle option does, no one else can do.

The Peerer: A Peerer, in my opinion, is the one who will be able to give you the most accurate prediction about your life. The Peerer achieves her prophetic task through beer bottles. You need to give her a Bottle of Beer (note: only Beer) you have just emptied. The Peerer herself, of course, reaches a certain higher state by inhaling and drinking a few beers. The Peerer studies the Bottle of Beer that has been offered to her, looks at you through the bottle and is able to make predictions specifically about your relationships.

No, I don't mess with my stars. If you have your own more interesting ways of foretelling the future, leave a comment!

A Certain Kolaveri, Machchi

I have come to accept that there is no escaping Why this Kolaveri di? What with reading about it in newspapers, discussing it with colleagues, finding facebook updates about it, avoiding tweets about it – it is as good as being stalked by the very Soup Boy that the song talks about.

The Tamil film industry is full of songs like these – jilted male lover, black-hearted fair-skinned girl who rejects him (when the reality is more like black-hearted black-skinned girl) and therefore the regular scotch for solace. Get a life, Soup Boy. Or become a better lover. Go learn Seduction 101. I want to see a woman crying with a glass of scotch for once in a Tamil movie. Over a person who is a good man but a dull lover.

Why this kolaveri di? is every grammar teacher’s fantasy come true. Here is a song so ripe with grammatical errors that the critical grammatician thinks her time has finally arrived and the world is ready to receive the spellcheck Messiah.

Before you accuse me of being a kill-joy let me redeem myself by saying I liked the song. Hell yeah I did! I mean, how often do you come across a Tamil song that everyone is talking about? My little egoistic Tamil genes are tripping with joy. Hallelujiah! Now, everyone is forced to know the meaning of that un-translatable word kolaveri. And it’s absolutely fine when a Tamilian is teasing the whole of the glorious tradition of us Tamilians and pronouncing ‘empty’ as ‘Yempty’. Perfecto! Is it bigger than SRK and Bib B? Uh....I don't care.

But, is it worth all the gaga-ness? Hardly. Unoriginal lyrics (there have been funnier Tamil songs), boring voice (come on, it’s Danush, who are we kidding), irritating tune (I personally wouldn’t sing this even on a drunk call). Seems like we are buying into a well-strategized marketing agenda. Raja Sen hails it as the vox populi that brings us all together. The Hindustan Times praises the song by saying that it 'has become a rage in not just India but also Australia and the Americas for its catchy tune, traditional Tamil percussion and amusing lyrical style.' The Times of India states 'After a buzz in K-Town, Why This Kolaveri Di... from Aishwaryaa Dhanush's 3 has become nothing short of a phenomenon across the nation.' Enough with the romance. If anyone should be receiving the praise, I think it should be the publicists and advertisers and not Danush, Aishwarya, Anirudh or Shruti Haasan.

Danush revealed in an interview, "I had a lot of free time on the sets of 3. I just tried to put in some dummy words in the tunes and everyone liked it." Lesson to be learnt: if you have free time, do something with it, you can be famous. Provided you marry Rajinikanth's daughter.

For now, I like the song. But I wish to get up next morning and forget its name. No hard feelings, Soup Boy.

Fairly a Fairy Day

On a recent trip to Matunga, I happened to pick up an author whom I haven’t read for almost eleven years – Enid Blyton. I bought myself Happy Hours Story Book on the spur of the moment and as an indulgence. A second hand, hard bound, coloured-by-former-owner book, reminiscent of childhood.

I couldn’t wait to read it, so I settled myself on the steps of a grocery store, the owner of which didn’t mind strange women occupying such spaces, and read the first story. At once I was reminded of the simple storylines, the natural twists in the tale and the utter joy of a storyteller at work.

I was given one of the volumes of The Secret Seven – my first Enid Blyton ever – after I turned six. It lay on a carved wooden table in the living room and being a very shy child I wandered around the blue book for quite some time like a curious puppy. After the parents had retired to their cares, I finally approached the book, took it to a corner of the house where I was sure no one would come and read the first chapter.

And after that, I went on to read some thirty odd books by Enid Blyton. All second hand, all mine.

I of course read the remaining staple for children – the Tinkles, the Champaks, the Gokulams, the Chandamamas. With Blyton and her very English world of lamb and apple sauce, women named Miss Plum, stockings, currant cake, grouse bushes, promenades, piers and children who went to snow peaked mountains for convalescence – it hardly felt alien at all. Perhaps, one of the achievements as a writer is to be able to tell a story that captivates irrespective of locale and specificity.

Happy Hours Story Book is part of a collection of books by Enid Blyton featuring brownies, fairies, pixies, wizards and witches. So, for a woman who is nearing thirty and who was obsessed with fairies for a major part of that life, I must say I was very happy reading Oh, Flibberty-Gibberty under a November sun.

Diwali De-Lights!

How can it not be about lights and colour? Like a moth to a flame, I went to Dadar West and captured some of the Diwali highlights. This season, the streets are galaxies and every heart is truly light-er! :)

Before and After Surf Excel :)

The Grotesque Kandheels

The Colour That Tried to Run

The Tower of Laddoos

The Disco-Tails of a Lantern

Lanterns and Lingerie

The Man who Spilt Designs

Dadar West, Near the railway station, Diwali eve... or any other day actually!

The Lanterns with the Heart of Light

The Object of Derelict

The object of derelict was an abandoned couch lying in the corridor. The foam was out, the gauze exposed, the bare wood showing. It was as if its guts were pulled out. But, in all the mess of wire mesh and stuffing, lay elegance and malleable beauty. A few photos of the object of derelict with details.

Grandmother's Concerns

Grandmother sent her sons into a world beyond her walls. She told them to go to lands far away and tell her what they saw. The sons knew the mother loved plant, flower and fruit. She never told them in as many words, but the sons knew.

When she was young, she would walk on meandering lanes collecting seeds, saplings, bulbs or stems. Wherever her fingers touched, a tree would spring from the soil and soar into the skies. It would unfurl green fronds and deck itself with coconuts. She would touch the smooth trunk and send men up to harvest the fruit. The tree was only eager to give, year after year, for it was a tree born of love.

The sons saw and the sons knew.

One went to an island and got her beautiful tropical plants. They grew verdant and tall and sprouted forth flowers in shameless colours – rich pink, red or a fiery orange. It was carnival in her garden.

The other got her fruit trees. Sapodilla, custard apple, lemon, guava and mango trees sprawled in her garden. She will pluck indiscriminately when her grandchildren come one day.

She herself planted chillies and okra and eggplant and spinach. Her kitchen was always full, always rich.

Grandmother is a concerned gardener. She will water, she will feed and she will nurture. And her sons will remember.

I recall a character remembering from her childhood the broken pieces of blue green glass that lined the seashore.

A hush fell on an enthusiastic crowd in the auditorium as soon as the lights dimmed. The event that had called for an audience of a thousand people was The Blue Mug, a production of The Company Theatre and directed by Atul Kumar. Enter onstage the talented cast comprising Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Sheebha Chadha, Munish Bhardwaj and Shipra Singh.

Inspired by the book The Man who Mistook his Hat for his wife by George Sacks, the play is a series of recollections by the characters from events in their past. Memories of childhood playtime, adolescent naughtiness and deaths of family members are strung together to form a play that was engaging in its coexisting pathos and humour. Ranvir Shorey plays Joginder Singh whose memory comes to a standstill at 1983 even while the world has moved on to 2011. His appointments with a psychiatrist reveal the manner in which his memory plays tricks on him. The recollections by the other characters parallel Joginder’s case in which they are able to recall vividly the past at the expense of the present.

If ever there was drama that relied heavily on lighting techniques, here was one such. The play involved the artistic interaction between light and shadow. Such a blending of light and dark mimicked the manner in which the characters slip in and out of memories. Sparse but strategic stage settings added to the visual drama. The visual appeal of the play was complemented by the solid and sober notes of cellos.

For some, the play may not appeal as it is a series of episodes placed one after another. Remove a few episodes or replace them, the play will still be what it is. Perhaps this is the charm of improvisation theatre where the actors lend their own lives and ideas to the characters and events featured in the play. The talent expressed by the actors shows what a loss Bollywood incurs in terms of quality owing to its stereotypical characterisations and narratives.

Why was the play titled The Blue Mug? My memory plays tricks on me now and this much I remember. Blue green glass and a woman in orange. The mention of a blue mug evades me.