Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 1 Comment

CSK Ku Whistle Podu!

This IPL season I never followed a single match. But when Chennai Super Kings qualified for the finals I decided that I would watch my first IPL 2010 match. And boy, was it worth it!

Playing against the Mumbai Indians, the match took the animosity between the south and north Indians to another level! India may be united and all that jazz but the feeling of hatred or rather, strong dislike between the north and south Indians will never subside.

In today’s match the Mumbaikars showed poor spirit exiting the stadium when they realized that MI was loosing. This just goes on to show how rude and inconsiderate they are considering they are the host city.

Anyways, all that matters is CSK won!!

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen

KFC on Saturday nights is a full house.

Let me rephrase that.

KFC on Saturdays is an over full house.

—

Us Indians are still getting used to the ‘modern’ things. Thanks to globalization there is no deficiency of jobs. Everyone is able to afford a ten grand phone or a car (even if it does look like a mini matchbox and costs only a lakh). Families now go on annual vacations to exotic international destinations. We are readily embracing all this new found luxuries.

While the younger generation is easily adapting to these changes, the older generation takes a while to get accustomed to all the new-ness.

Example:

KFC Guy: “Sir is this for dine in or take away?”
Middle aged man: “Uhh no no.. not here”.
KFC guy: “Sir?”
Middle age guy: “Yes it is for take off.”
KFC guy: “Oh take away?”
Middle aged man: “yes yes take away”.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 5 Comments

The Smell Of Freedom

Freedom they say, smells sweet. But in India freedom does smell a little.. actually a LOT like pee.
Pee.

That my friends is the smell of freedom. The repulsive smell of pee is what hits you first when you step outside. No wonder “foreigners” are disgusted by us. The smell of pee is in the air you breathe. Its like how when you land in Singapore the first thing you smell when you’re at the streets is fish. In Bangkok it was swine meat. In France I guess its cheese? The same way in India its pee.

Probably half the population pees on the road but we are still very pretentious you see. The remaining half of the population act like they have never seen/smelt pee on the road. In my lifetime and I’m not that very old, I have see a lot of people doing their business in street corners, little slum kids squatting along the road or near a dump. This is what we see everyday.

A few days back when I got down from my bus and walked across the road to the pavement I found myself standing near that electric board thing that looks like its in a cupboard, surrounded by sick pee stink and funnily enough the smell came from near the board! People pee near electricity. They are not afraid to relieve themselves in public and if you catch them doing it then screw you! They are not going to apologize!

I accept peeing in public is disgusting but this is just what people do here. The more you tell them not to do it, the more the pee on the roads. Indians make the best of use of the freedom that they have. They do everything on the streets! We can keep talking about how sick and rotting this particular action is for years and years to come but no matter how sophisticated we become there will still be a bunch of people gracing the roads of India with their pee.

I think the reason why many prefer to do their business in public is because people do not trust them with bathrooms.

Take for example the restrooms in the trains. The restrooms are pretty small. The wash basin has an abnormal kind of tap system that is being used for God knows how many years. If you’ve traveled in an Indian train you know what I’m talking about.

Another thing about Indians are is that they are seriyana OC party which means that we love freebies and we are not ashamed of it. Sometimes the OC part might go to an extent of stealing. We love to steal things! Especially things that belong to the Government! When they clean man holes the lid is removed and kept away and there are a bunch of people who make shit loads of money stealing it and putting it to use some other way.

Hence they do not trust us with “MUGS” in the restrooms of trains. So they came up with a brilliant plan where they CHAINED the steel MUG to the wall. And its not even that long so basically it doesn’t reach where it needs to and with all the motion in the train the water is every where! And if you have to catch water in your travelling mug you have to life the top of the tap that is almost always rusted, hold the mug close and balance yourself as the train in thrown full-on onto the tracks.

“There!”, says the Railways.
“Try stealing that you jerks!”.
“And while you’re at it, TRY TO PEE!!”.
Evil Laugh.
The End.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 4 Comments

I Was At The A.R.Rahman Concert! Yes I Was!!!

On sunday I was one of the determined few who decided to brave it out to get to the A.R.Rahman concert!
Yeah, I was there!!!
And now that’s one thing I can tick off from my “to do” list that I created mentally. I have always always wanted to watch a live concert.
And I did!

We left home at around 2.45 for a 6.30 concert. Yes, thats how far Marg Swarnabhoomi is. Even before we could come within proximity of leaving the city limits we were starved and took a pizza on the go. Funily enough we were not the only people eating as we drove because there were hundreds of cars moving in the same direction – towards ecr with people stuffing their face with food. I guess nobody really wants to miss lunch.

My cousin filled up his SUV and we drove and drove for what seemed like eternity! We crossed ecr, then this lovely bridge place with the backwaters below it. Marg Swarnabhoomi is situated someplace between Pondycherry and Chennai and some say its around 100kms from Chennai and well, it is. We reached the venue by 6 and the place was already overflowing with people!

The first time I saw the stage I was disappointed. I heard that there was going to be some kind of a laser show but the stage looked so plain, so ordinary. Just as we were about to enter some VIP people walked in fron of us and we sneaked inside with them to the VIP seating area!

Yes! I was THAT close to the stage. But unfortunately the speakers were right in front of me. The concert was supposed to start at 6.30. It was 7.00 and Rahman was yet to come. I guess all celebrities HAVE to arrive fashionably late. Its like a law or something. By 7.15 people were restless and every five minutes there was whistling and shouting and screams of “Rahman is coming NOW!”.
“No, now he is coming!”.
“See there he is!”.
“Yedhuku pinnadi pakre? A.R.Rahman helicopter-le dhaan varuvare”
“Oh can you hear the siren? Ya, NOW he has come!”.

But he came at 7.30 and the crowd erupted into hysteria! His starting song was some song from Jodha Akbar. Having hated that movie I couldn’t care less for the songs. But the crowd was going crrazy! And Rahman started “athiradee kaalam” and thats all. Crowd was uncontrollable!!

Later he came up in one crane like thing right above where I was sitting! And he was all “vanakkam Chennai. Nalla irrukingala?”. Avaladhan. People were screaming “Thala!” “Thalaiva!!!” and he started singing that konjum weird song of his which I don’t like. That song with the free hugs campaign thing. And Chennai-aites are not very fond of anything Hindi. Let alone hindi A.R.Rahman songs.
BIG NO NO.

He was belting out one hindi song after another and the crowd was just being polite because it was rahman and they din’t want to be mean to him. But when this straight haired singer female whose name I don’t know started belly dancing to Mayya Mayya thats when people started to take notice.
Especially middle aged men.
Who came with their families and were making eyes at the pretty singers and those side dancer girls.

Then one super irritating Marg Swarnabhoomi- owner guy -I -think came on stage and was all “Oh religious heads from the three religions are asked to come on stage”. And the religious head for Muslims is the head man or whatever from Nagoor Dargha!
Ya!
A dargha!
And that was when my tolerance reached its peak!
Shame on you A.r.Rahman!!!

Coming back to the concert, after that lame guy blah blah-ed his way through, the last 20 minutes of the concert was mind blowing!
Eveyone were recovering from the lame guy when this guitar dude came and started plucking a few strings (chords?) and played our favourite cult song!
“Mustaf mustafa don’t worry Mustafa. Kaalam nam tholan Mustafa”
“Day by day, day by day, valkaiye payanam day by day. Mulungadhe ship-e friendship dhaan”

The 70,000 people there would have hugged Rahman if they let ’em. It was AWESOME!! I don’t know why that song is so popular but for some reason it just is!!
After that finished, the crowd was on a new high and to add to this rapper Blaaze or Blaze I don’t know what he calls himself came on stage and was all “Humma Humma can you say Humma?”

Oh ya! We could so say humma!
“Humma.
humma.
humma humma humma.
Hey humma humma.
humma humma humma.
Indhe arabic kadalorum oru alagaiye kandhene ..”

And that made our day!
There is nothing better than tamil songs I say!

As predicted he finished off with Jai Ho since it is a jai ho concert. I’ve heard that song close to a few hundred times that it now sounded stale to my ears. He then fused it with Vande Mataram and there were sparklers going off in the sky that just added multitudes to the experience! And thats how the concert came to an end with Rahman saying “Bye Chennai. Dirve Safe”.
And I tell you, people did NOT want to leave!!
Thats how awesome it was.

But people were leaving. And quickly.
The concert ended at 11.30. The drive back to the city would take around 2 hours and noone wanted to get stuck in the traffic.

We managed to (again) sneak ourselves in between tow VIP Ambasador cars and get out early. But we drove for so long and reached home at 1.30 am.
And it was worth every minute!

Here are a few photos i managed to take when the security guy turned the other way:






Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 4 Comments

Dig Harder You Morons You Might Just Find The Ancient Treasure You Were Searching For.

Oh My God, they’re at it again. Seriously what do they expect to be hidden beneath roads? Diamonds? Lost treasure?

The digging never stops. And I doubt if it ever will.

Chennai roads have been subjected to nothing but digging. Digging main roads, digging in the corner of big roads, digging in kurku sandus and basically digging anywhere the surface seems even remotely flat. I’m sick of the ‘take diversions’ and ‘men at work’ signs everywhere.

Maybe the Chennai corporation has gone bonkers and ordered the workers to dig the beautiful, wide Anna Nagar roads fringed with lovely old trees. zmy street used to be one of the most nicest, widest streets and now due to this stupid digging it has been transformed into a war zone like how the soldiers in war hide behind these mounds of sand. I have no idea what they’re called.

So just a month back they dug only one side of the street and promptly filled it again and layed the tar over it.

Umm hello?
It was the same even before the digging. The very reason for the digging is lost you dumb-heads.

Now the roads are going to be all bumpy bumpy. Ultimately some corporation head bum is going to pay for this.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen

SWEATING THROUGH SUMMER

I’m not a person who complains often but the heat in my city is killing me!! And technically speaking, its not even summer yet! Seriously, summers in Chennai are so awful. Sweat, heat, dirt, grime are all a part and parcel of everyday life for at least three months. We have only two seasons- blistering, sweltering summers and long, wet, water-logged, so-called winters. I don’t how we manage to survive here.

Just today as I was sitting in my bus waiting for the damn thing to start, I looked around and saw that not one leaf on the trees moved. It was so still! There was’nt a hint of a breeze. Sweat pouring down our faces we used what strength remained in us to open the effing window of the effing bus. When I got home I discovered a thick layer of grime + sweat + dirt smeared on my face. Actually, I’m used it.

The thing about our summers is everyone takes precautions to stay away from the heat and to be protected. But to what extent?!