The Short Story

Once upon a time there lived two sisters, Rani Puri and Pani Puri. Rani Puri was non-veg. She ate Pani Puri.

Lootie

What do you call a synonym that also sounds like the word it shares a meaning with, 'Same-onym'? Rght, let's call it a 'same-onym' for the time being. Interesting aside apart, I was watching the 'Loot-lo' promotion running for some brand being advertised on television. (Contractual obligations, forbid me from mentioning the name of the said brand.) Back to 'Loot-lo', do you see what I see? Already? Maybe not. t's coming.

What struck me about 'Loot-lo' is that 'loot' is a Hindi word that's also an English word and both these words sound the same but belong to two different languages. It's not like 'lo' in Hindi and 'lo' in English. It's a bilingual punstruction in which the punning word means the same thing in both languages. Unlike puns in other cases, where the word being used as a pun means two different things, 'Loot-lo' is less a conventional word pun than a - to the best of my limited knowledge - a unique language pun-meets-same-onym.

In other words, 'Loot' is an English 'same-onym' for the Hindi word 'loot'. No, stay with me. Don't zone out. Focus. I'm not saying 'the Hindi word for 'loot'' - which incidentally happens to be 'loot' - I'm saying 'loot' written in Hindi means and sounds the same as 'loot'.

You will find hundreds of homonyms like 'calm' - in English, 'calm' is peace and 'calm' in Hindi means 'work' - but few 'loot'-like 'same-onyms', apart from 'loot'. How many can you waste your precious time unearthing?

ps: 'Lootie' is what I call my girlfriend. It's a tamil word that means 'Naughty'. It's also a tri-lingual punstruction of the conventional kind. (Don't ask.)

Testing times

If I were a drink, I'd be a glass of red wine. If I were an item of footwear, I'd be a pair of fuck-me boots. If I were a colour, I'd be blue. If I were more secure, I wouldn't be any of the people taking all these tests to try and pin down what they are. But what takes the cake, in my opinion, is a test that tells you what you might be if you were a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Well, let me tell you what I would be if I were a Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle. I'd rather be dead.

Rants apart, what kind of person would someone not inclined to put themselves up for any of this kind of pop-psychology be? Serious, complicated, boring, messed up or just plain happy? This is why human beings fascinate me. But not much more. Finally, if I were a test, I suppose I'd be quite testy.

Much needed downtime

While most people will curse servers, sites and the like for going down to perform maintenance related activities, I quite thank them for doing so. At least, it gives me some enforced time off from these all consuming webs. When the internet is like a drug to you, these supply side downtimes are much like checking into rehab. Without these mandatory breaks, the sites on the net that I feed off and can't get enough of will destroy me. And they say, marijuana is a drug. I say, what isn't?

Who are you?

Different people have different reasons for using an alias. Most of the time, it's to mask their true identity and save themselves from getting into any kind of trouble, professionally or even personally. So why do I opt for one? Certainly not because it helps me hide who I am. Quite the contrary, actually.

I've been exposed by other points-of-view and aliases as a blog troll, someone who defends plagiarism, a person with no beliefs and a gadfly who is best ignored. Google the words 'Übermaniam' or 'The Daily Unusual' or 'Dopppsy' and you'll get to the posts by various people whom I don't know - in a manner of speaking - mouthing off the aformentioned opinions based on superficial experiences of my so-called sins. Needless to say, these attacks have hurt me in ways I haven't been able to fully comprehend.

The thing about not using an assumed name is you can never be yourself. As your 'Professional name', you've got to make sure you are careful with what you say. You've got to be, mostly, nice to people. You've got to cultivate an audience and so, you have to lie. Honestly speaking, I find that quite impossible to do. In fact, I find people who don't feel the need to hide their name, in a hard-to-explain way, rather difficult to trust.

I would argue that people with the ability to be in public what the world knows them as, are more adept at hiding their true selves than the people who are diseased enough to speak their mind and so feel the need to protect themselves with pseudonyms. It's a well-known lesson of life that if you want to be popular, you cannot afford to be frank. Put not-so-simply, be very afraid of taking a popular person at face value.

So, why do I choose handles? Two reasons. One, because they demonstrate my ability to proudly indulge my schizoid self. And two, so I don't besmirch the public image of a certain 'Mr. Avinash Subramaniam'. Happily enough, the latter is all over bar the shouting.

Us

While reading a confessional piece in the Times, UK in which the writer blames alcohol for ... umm, liquidating her mother, I wondered whether it's the vice that ought to be blamed for destroying the person or the person who should take responsiblity for letting it do it to her. The way I see it, the vice is just a device in the hands of the abuser who is allowing it to overcome her.

I've smoked a lot - and when I say a lot, I mean a lot - of drugs in my not-so-long life. From past experience, I can say that blaming the drugs is just another symptom of the foible that pushes people like me towards the substance and abuse. It's not the drugs, the liquor and the like that destroy you. It's you who let these things take charge of you.

I believe it's important to draw this distinction because saying 'Alcohol consumed so-so' or 'Drugs ruined my life' is avoiding taking responsibility for what you have essentially sourced, rolled or poured and then ingested, inhaled or ... well, consumed.

As someone who has spent a fair number of years earning a living crafting appropriate words to sell ideas of different kinds, I would argue that confessional writing - the purpose of which is often to help other people in similar situations benefit from it - might serve its brief better if it addressed this matter with a lesser degree of compassion.

If I were to ever get around to writing a book on the different things a drug addict goes through, I'd write it in the words of the drug and adopt a condescending tone of voice in which the substance mocks the devitalised abuser for her vice. Hmm ... now there's another idea someone with a little more skill and discipline might be tempted to do something with.

All that said and done, this round of introspection has been most humbling. It has dawned on me just how impuissant I must have been. How could I have sunk so low? Boy, this is most depressing. I need a toke.

The gloves are off

When people ask me ... no, make that, if ever people deign to ask me what kind of a writer I am, I'll start by telling them a few things I won't tell them. For instance, I won't tell them I'm a good writer. I won't tell them I'm a powerful writer. I most definitely won't tell them I'm a logical writer. What I might try and get by them is that I'm an unconventional writer.

Yawn. I suppose anyone with pretensions of being some kind of a wordsmith, would like to think of herself as, if nothing else, at least, unconventional. In that case, am I just a boilerplate slinger? After all, if every pen-pusher is in one way or another unorthodox, doesn't that make a writer who's not much more than different, same? It most ineluctably does. Yaysoos! (There, I even managed to, for a change, use words I just discovered the meanings of, properly. I think.)

In my brighter moments, I like to believe there's more to my writerly posing than just ... well, posing and atypicalness. When I look at my samples of writing, admittedly, with some trepidation, I see in them an Ali-esque quality. A jab here. Followed by a quick right hook. A step back to take stock. A sway to one side for a different point of view. A comeback from the other to restore equilibrium. A disarming moment of seeming weakness. A devastating counter. And much braggadocio.

Hold on a minute, did I just call myself the Ali of writers? Looks like I did. I guess all those punches I've taken on my head, in the gut and to heart during my years in advertising have ... well, gone to my head.

Girls from Mumbai just wanna have fun

As someone who has been a bit of a quizzer oftentimes and a misogynist other times, it gives me ... umm, immense quizzical thoughts when I look at the roster of top performers at the BQC. Why so few women?

I've known a few women in the Chennai and Bangalore circle of quizzers who'd beat the pants of my little quizzing ass, but what's with the women of Mumbai? Next to no finishers near the top of the table. Hmm. Out with it girls. Too busy doing other more important things than quizzing? And pray, what might these so-called more important things be?

I guess it would be hazardous to draw any hasty conclusions from this latest set of revelations, so I wisely shan't. Instead, I'll let you arrive at your own. Incidentally, if you want to check out some really smart female quizzers, you ought to check out my friend Unantha's quiz blogs.

PS: What's with the picture of the jugs? Well, when I typed the words "Female Quizzers' in Google Image Search, that's one of the images that came up. Nuff said.

When I met Sir Salman

As a wannabe writer, I was understandably over-the-moon when I discovered that Mr. Rushdie (then, not yet knighted) was going to be present at our New Year bash. I immediately imagined all the conversations I was going to have with him - about writing, about The Satanic Verses, about what it takes to be a published writer and about why I didn't care as much as the rest of the world did for his books.

Unfortunately, cometh the hour of the get-together, Mr. Rushdie didn't seem to care much for our company. Maybe he didn't find Chennai quite conducive to his otherwise ordered life. Maybe he didn't appreciate all the attention his then-partner, Ms. Lakshmi was getting. Maybe he was just too big for our little Ogilvy, Chennai party. Whatever it was, he looked far, far away from a happy camper we were trying our sincerest to help him be.

An hour and a bit after the buzz around him had dissipated, I walked up to him and introduced myself. Sadly, I didn't register one bit on his radar. (I suppose I was too low-flying an object to make any kind of impression.) A few uncomfortable minutes later, I fished out a table napkin and asked him for his autograph. Thankfully, he didn't decline my request. I made some hesitant noises about how much I admired him and such like, but soon realised that my words were lost in the air of indifference he had surrounded himself with. Still, I wasn't totally crushed - at least, I had something to show for my troubles.

The next morning, I looked expectantly at the coveted napkin Mr. Rushdie had signed his name on. What stared back at me was little more than a well-disguised 'S' and a careless 'l' somewhere in the midst of a slapdash doodle - I imagine he was worried I might try and sell it on ebay or something like that. All of which only confirmed the first impression I took away of Mr. Rushdie, as a cynical, highly vainglorious man who didn't care much for humanity. Here's hoping I'm never so scarred by my experiences.