Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Beer in your Ear

The two most annoying sounds from my youth had to be the alarm clock and Hotel California. Growing up in Bangalore pubs, you could almost set your watch by the good Hotel ... they played it every half hour.
It got to a point where we carried a placard to the pub: Hotel California closed for renovation. Luckily, the bloke who manned the DJ console, when he wasn't serving beers or drinking them, had a sense of humour. He just swapped HC for Bon Jovi. That's when we poured beer into our ears and turned deaf.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Cricket and coconuts

The Tams went to the Valley, the Andhraites went half way, the Kannadigas tried to create their own Valley in Bengaluru (few of them on Hosur Road into which whole cars disappear). Us Mallus went to the Dubai branch of God's own country. Of all stereotypes that exist in the world, we rank right up there with our Gujarati and Sardar bretheren.
We are generally good plumbers, tea sellers or toddy tappers who struggle with simple tasks like pronouncing simple.
We have been accused of many sins but never of being good at cricket. It's tough to strap pads to lungis, so we never quite bothered with the gendleman's game. Of course, the occasional Mallu madman slips out of hospital and plays cricket and gets slapped by the occasional sardar but cricket doesn't really rock our houseboat. Didn't anyone explain that to you Shashi Tharoor?

Tuesday, April 20, 2010