I'm anal-ytical like that

Each morning, for the last couple of years, I have made a little health log in a journal about the previous day. This record comprises of any colds or niggles, exercise, weather, amount of sleep, medicines taken, and ends with a 'discomfort' & 'mood' rating (on a 1-5 scale).

(It sounds unbelievably anal-retentive, but I've always been a list maker: of normal things like books read & movies watched, and of stranger things like 'coincidences'.)

Harish, knowing of such heavy logging, pointed me to this Wired article about how many people seem to be doing this, and are using the Web to record & share such information. I began noting this info so as to better understand what influences my health and to spot & prepare for seasonal & other factors. I have a large mass of data now, but perhaps not a lot of insights.

Still, I continue to do so largely because I think I like recording information. Leading a trivia-monger's life smooths away any objections to pointlessness - why, someday, all of this may come in handy.

I'd really like to get my hands on some of the tools mentioned in the article - when, with each step I take, a bean counter wriggles in ecstacy.

The importance of an allegation

In recent times, eagle-eyed readers of the Times of India would have observed a curious typographical phenomenon in that newspaper. In stories such as this one about a crime in Pune, the word allegedly is italicised. Thus, in print, the article looks like this:

"The Haveli police on Saturday arrested Shekhar Shettiyar (28) of Kurla and booked five others for allegedly murdering Nathibai Chaudhary..."

"On June 26, 2001, the gang allegedly entered the shop posing as customers and stole the jewellery by threatening employees."

The motivation behind this oddity is unclear, and in the absence of the ToI style manual (if there is such a thing) in the public domain, it is hard to guess why this would be so. What is so special about the word "allegedly" that it needs to be highlighted thus?

Making it curious-er is the fact that there are many occurrences of the word in other ToI articles where it does not get such a treatment. Strange! (but not unusual for a paper whose curious 'case' of the perpendicular pronoun was remarked upon by this blog here.)

Notes
Incidentally, the ToI epaper doesn't provide the Pune edition any more, so I can't check if this formatting shows up in that version. It doesn't in the plain vanilla web version linked above.
Another blogger has made the very same puzzling observation.

Indian 'Word of the Year' - February updates

A note on the idea, words from Jan 2009, Feb 2009

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February 2009's words

1. Pink chaddis and other pinker-stinkers: February is the season of moralist protests in India, with forces for and against such manifestations of Western culture as Valentine's Day making headlines. This year took an unusual turn with a protest group launching a 'Pink Chaddi' campaign ('chaDDii'=='underwear') in reaction to an obscure radical group's actions. The coinage is clever and provocative, since it conjures up an instantly imaginable symbol and because 'chaDDii' is not always part of polite speech. From the point of view of this exercise, the phrase became even more interesting when counter-reactions applied the 'pink X' template to other apparel, including prophylactics. Is pink on its way to becoming the colour of Indian feminist action?

   Incidentally, the phrase moral police ought to be sent into some sort of Indian-ism 'Hall of Fame'. Though a phrase that is seen throughout the world, we seem to be the most fervent users of the phrase, as evidenced by a couple of anecdotal tests. 90% of the first three pages of Google search results for the word are India-related; this is also true of an archival news search.

2. Jai Ho!: Remember Chak De? A phrase that sports crowds shouted lustily, a phrase that became synonymous with a coincidental and short-lived revival of Indian hockey, a phrase that hardly anyone uses. Does a similar fate await the aptly titled refrain from the Oscar winning song from Slumdog Millionaire (which also gave us another candidate last month)? The phrase, which is easy to utter and not unfamiliar to Indians, appeared in some newspaper headlines unrelated to the film . Just how much damage the constant drone of TV stories on the Oscar triumphs have done to us will be clear in a year's time.

A question to sign off: some of us have been using Slumdog as a sly euphemism to refer to scatalogical situations, usually to piss off our queasier colleagues. Tell me if you have noticed anything like this elsewhere.

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January 2009's words

1. Slumdog: a word that still has no entry in most dictionaries but shot into prominence after Danny Boyle's film and has even caused a lawsuit. Wow! An auspicious start for this list.
2. 'Emosanal'/Emotional atyaachaar: A fertile phrase, coined by lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharyya director Anurag Kashyap, from the film Dev.D's soundtrack. I have seen several variants of this on some forums and music channels, using the phrase as X atyaachaar, which suggests a possible snowclone.

The fact that both of the above are connected to films says a lot about us Indians (or perhaps just me). We'll see how things evolve in the rest of this year.

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The Whys
As a language and trivia enthusiast, I've always followed the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year. Why not an Indian Word of the Year?

Instead of trusting my cheese-like memory at the end of the year, it would be easier to record possible candidates along the way. This also opens up the possibility that some random observer will correct errors and add to the list.

What qualifies to be the Indian Word of the Year? I'm looking for interesting words or phrases that have been sufficiently interesting or news-worthy. This is not to be confused with a pure term-based 'Zeitgeist' - so Satyam will not be considered. Newly coined words will be invited. I'm also looking for words with 'potential' - that people mutate or mix with other words to form interesting variants. Perhaps even phrases that can become snowclones. So if people start making interesting things out of the word Satyam, then I'll include it. I admit I don't have it all figured out, but will do so as I do this.

Only English words? Not really. But limited by my own readings, my candidates are likely to be limited by language and geography. I'm hoping I'll be pointed to words by others.

For instance:
In Dec 2008, the relatively unknown phrase non-state actor would have been on the list.
In 2004, feel-good factor would have shone right in.
In addition, we would have take note of dard-e-disco last year - a strange phrase with some flexibility for reuse.

So to summarise: words that are interesting, not just news topics; words that have character; words that have newly entered our lexicon, and so on.

He's always on a tangent

The adventures of English in India have always been exciting to observe. Yet another reminder was served up today when a colleague received a rather innocuous email:

Dear [so-and-so],
Please find the attachment of resume. He is my cosine brother. He is in a software Eng.

One could not help but laugh (Harish had tears streaming down his face).

On reflection, this spelling makes a lot of phonetic sense. Initially, I thought this was a case of "when spell-checkers go wild". But thanks to the wisdom of "English is a very funny language" (a.k.a अंग्रेजी बड़ी अवैज्ञानिक भाषा है), I can see why there would be quite a few Indians making that mistake (as this Google search shows).

Thanks to Niranjan for inspiring the headline

Death did them apart

A few days ago, I was reading this obituary of Harold Pinter. At the end of the article, this caught my eye:

Mel Gussow, a critic and cultural reporter for The Times, died in 2005.

The obit was written by Mel Gussow and Ben Brantley.

Obviously, Gussow had contributed to the obit a long while ago. Though seemingly morbid, keeping an up-to-date obituary of a notable personality even prior to his decease is common newspaper practice. That said, I haven't seen this inversion before.

Max Gussow was a NYT theatre critic, whose own obit can be read here. There's also this nice Washington Post article about the life of an obituary writer.

Flick of the wrist

While looking for links in my previous post, I found this rather interesting article on carrom balls and other spin oddities. On a site about hacking Palm Pilots!

Silky wrists, but what else?

What was the last successful cricketing innovation to have come out of India? This question came up during a conversation between Harish and me. To be honest, I couldn't think of anything since Ranji's leg glance! (and that was over a hundred years ago.

To give you some idea of what we're talking about:
The Pakistanis invented the reverse sweep (Hanif or Mushtaq Mohammad), reverse swing (Sarfraz, Imran, that generation, perhaps even earlier), the doosra (Saqlain Mushtaq). The Aussies invented day-night cricket in ODIs (Packer et al.), slow bowling in the death overs, the zooter (if you believe it exists), (perhaps) trying to score at 4 rpo in a Test. The New Zealanders, usually an innovative bunch, had Mark Greatbatch taking advantage of the then new 15 overs restrictions, Martin Crowe and lot invented "Cricket Max" that eventually inspired Twenty20, not to mention opening with a spinner in ODIs. The English had the googly, Bodyline (besides, they did invent the sport!), Duckworth-Lewis, TV innovations, switch-hitting. The South Africans brought in fielding revolutions and earpieces and (seemingly) choking. The Windies used pace attacks (that was enough), and the chinaman (probably). The Lankans invented dual pinch-hitters and now re-invented the carrom ball (and flex elbows). Zimbabwe seems to have invented wicketkeeper-batsman-captains! (let's see: Fletcher, Houghton, A. Flower, Taibu).

The closest that we could think of:

1. Srikkanth's over the top hitting in ODIs (a little weak, because it wasn't sold as a strategy - he was an opener and that's how he played)
2. (Harish) Sending the top batsman to open in ODIs rather than shielding him in the middle order (as with Sachin Tendulkar)
3. Playing a spin trio? (was a strategy, but hardly any alternatives existed)
4. (Harish) Perhaps the paddle sweep?
5. Day-Night cricket for a first class game? (unless it has been done elsewhere before the 1994 Ranji Final at Gwalior)

As you can see, we're clutching at straws here. Innovations often happen as a response to constraints or as a product of careful thought that challenges existing conventions. That rules out "the Great Indian batting collapse" as an entry.

Ranji: you win, unless we can come up with something better.

Update
How about "Mankading"?

Left pointing the other way

While using a mouse, I occasionally switch from a right-handed mode to a left-handed mode. Earlier versions of Windows used to call the relevant option under Control Panel -> Mouse as switch to left-handed mouse, but now they call it (confusingly, IMO) as switch primary and secondary button.

Which brings me to my point: software UI design, for all its comforts, still remains sinistral-unfriendly. On a typical GUI containing windows, there's no way to move the scroll-bar to the left (by default, the mouse pointer tends to rest on the LHS of the screen, but largely this could be a psychological perception of having to move to the right end of the screen). The minimise-maximise-close buttons will be on the top-right. Even the mouse arrow pointer continues to nod towards the north-west (IIRC, in earlier Windows versions, it would go north-east with a switch in mouse-handedness).

Here's an interesting little discussion between a left-handed user and a (left-handed) UI designer on the topic (look for the comment by "Sebastian").

And while on the subject, once again, all the main contenders for a US Presidential election are left-handed. The last time this happened was in 1992 when George Bush (the elder), Bill Clinton (the victor) and Ross Perot (the moneyed pretender) were on the ballot.

Hugga-baai!

Apparently, it's International Free Hugs Day today (I'd say it's probably more catchy than Bug Busting Day). Arnold is the nearest we have to a Rasta-quizzer that I know of (I mean it as a compliment), so it's not such a surprise that he has decided to do something about the comparative lack of free hugs in contemporary Puneri society.

As clearly described in a front page article in today's Pune Mirror (don't think it's available online), Arnold will be providing "free hugs" on M.G.Road from 6 pm until "boredom, tiredness, or hunger" intervene. (I was particularly happy to see that it was only under duress that he revealed he works in IT - bravo!). Since, unfortunately, I can't be there to watch and report, I thought I'd at least give him a little blog plug - so if any of you is reading this today, stop, and get out to Camp, somewhere near Wonderland.

(I must admit that it's a tough Saturday for Punekars: JM Road is almost off-limits thanks to a function involving the President of India, and on M.G.Road, you risk being accosted a strange man offering hugs for no compensation in these inflationary times.)

Still, all the best to the newest Chipko. This is exactly the kind of thing that the much vaunted (but ultimately colourless, IMO) Walking Plaze could have done with more of (ironically, the Plaza has just been suspended because of the monsoon). Hopefully, Arnold has perfected his technique and may even demonstrate a range of moves (an illustrative list here). He may even come up with an Arnold-ian varation of a new kind. Hold tight and don't let the bed bugs bite!

Flash of brilliance

How to light up houses in places where electricity is infrequent? Parvathi Menon observes an ingenious solution emerging from the darkness.

Bol Bachchan

He's good. Amitabh Bachchan has been blogging for almost a month, and as noted by one very devoted fan¹, he writes well. But more importantly for a celeblogger, the opinions seem to flow straight from those long fingers (via a Macbook). The punches that would sweep aside life members of Bollywood's Hall of Shame on screen aren't being held back.

The timing was interesting. AB has been in the news for much of this year², and crucially, much of it has been aimed at him personally or has just been obnoxious³. The feeling of 'being used', especially by the media, perhaps tipped over a pain threshold. It's a different thing that the same media has now switched to using the blog and its posts as fodder, but at least followers of the actor can cut the middlemen out. For a man protecting his dignity and his family, not to mention his 'brand', this is an astute move.

Not just 'shanivaar ki raat Amitabh ke saath'
More than the intensity, the frequency of the posts has come as a surprise. There is usually one entry each day (typically overnight), and sometimes follow-ups. The posts have occasionally slipped into overly sensitive refutations at times. But Amitabh is at his best when dipping into old memories, recalling his esteemed father, or providing mundane minutiae about a profession that I have always considered to be one of the most boring in terms of daily routine.

Footnotes:
[1] We do wonder if the fan got a response to his comment?
[2] A spike on Google Trends confirms this.
[3] The notorious Aaj Tak Amitabh Bachchan ko tha.Nd lagii 'Breaking News'.

Dare to Bare

"How We're Wrecking Our Feet..." is an interesting article which cites studies and sources to indicate that a life without footwear might actually be the kindest thing one could do for one's feet would be to let them as open as nature intended them. But be warned that it does forlornly conclude that it's unlikely that most of us will chuck our slippers out of the window any soon.

What I didn't quite know until I read the article is that Podiatry Management is an extremely serious vocation for many and that someone has actually written a book on the history of walking. So if you're thinking what to get M.F.Hussain for his next birthday...

G'mla kaa H'mla

Google's April Fool jokes can sometimes try too hard and end up tired, but this year's effort from Google Australia is quite clever and culturally relevant. G'd on you, lads.

RIP Bill Brown

RIP Bill Brown and Mankading

If you are a quizzer, chances are that you first heard of Bill Brown as being the man whom Vinoo Mankad famously ran out at the non-striker's while bowling but *before* finishing his delivery. This led to the curious dismissal sub-genre of being 'Mankad'-ed. Bill Brown passed away yesterday and a shower of tributes have poured since. Some of it can be read at Cricinfo. Interestingly, the dismissal was named after the bowler and not the batsman. This can possibly be attributed to the fact that some people did not think this to be an act of sportsmanship, and since the hullabaloo was in Australia, local reporters may have chosen to attach the name of the 'perpetrator' of the controversial mode of running out a batsman, instead of the Aussie batsman.

Of course, with recent rule changes, it is much harder to 'Mankad' anyone. A non-striker can now start 'backing up' (jargon for leaving the crease - a little misleading because he isn't going back!) "as soon as the bowler’s backfoot touches the ground in his final action stride." (quote from Bob Simpson's column, who disapproves of this rule). This alteration makes it even more unlikely that anyone will be 'Mankad'-ed: the bowler has even lesser opportunities to effect the run-out, because most Mankadings are done towards the end of the delivery action (after the backfoot has landed) unless the batsman was foolish enough to strand himself out of the crease so early. It's also a question of the bowler's balance to perform such unnatural acts mid-performance.

Gap Analysis

Gap Analysis

hamaare aur aapke biich me.n ek baDaa #gap# jo hai. #Generation Gap, after all!#

- Laxman "Lucky" Prasad Sharma to Bhavani Shankar Prasad, 'Golmaal'

The definition of the size of 'a generation' is somewhere between 25 to 30 years. But even within a single generation, several significant things change and are very interesting to observe. A little list to identify those from my sub-generation:

1.Rotary Dial phones: As much of a retronym like its recent cousin, the "land-line", these kinds of phones, usually black or in colours more appropriate for bathroom tiles, where you could watch the dial spin down have indeed disappeared. Its last refuge was the PCO booth, which itself struggles for survival these days. I remember watching TV serials where the astute sleuth could figure out the digits of a phone number just by listening to the sound or measuring the time between two numbers. Zero had the least importance in terms of hogging footage, as it was closest to base camp. The punch-button phones have bought in a sense of democracy among the numbers. If you can remember using rotary phones on a regular basis (that is, if you had a telephone at home after long years of being waitlisted), welcome to our sub-generation.

2.Black and white, sepia photographs: You're a kid, hair slicked down, in someone's arms or in the first row, thumb inserted somewhere. The medium is black and white, or a shade of brown. The nearest male has sideburns the size of an Amazon rainforest, the frames of your aunt's spectacle were made out of eight kilos of charcoal plastic. Nostalgia is best served greyscale.

3. s/'sexy'/'baby'/g: Leaving aside mobile phones and internet access and foreign cars, the biggest cultural change that I have witnessed is in the liberation of the word "sexy" in Hindi films. Even then, the stars (Kamal, Aamir) indulged openly in on-screen "lip" kissing (usually leading high sales of Filmfares, questions in Parliament, self-immolation attempts by lipstick manufacturers), so the trend that we see these days where people even in TV ads manage to steal a peck at the back of a car was quite "linear" and hence to be expected. However, if you were part of a generation that watched the supremely kitschy Superhit Muqabla (who even tried a version of the Grammies called the SUMO awards that awarded everything from "Best Remixed Ghalib Ghazal" to "Best Teen Taal rendition by an Octopad in an Usha Uthup Show"), you would recall the mighty double blow to Indian culture that was dealt by the Dulaaraa and the Paapii GuDiyaa. Govinda "One Tight Slap" Ahuja pre-empted the days of sexy kurtiis by declaring everything (yes everything!) on him was "that dirty word ending with a 'y', starting with an 's', with a 'x' and a 'e' thrown in for free, which isn't 'sxey'". It caused a huge uproar. I'm not joking. Around the same time, Karisma "That is Harish, not me" Kapoor expressed a view (in a fairly decent tune, actually), in a voice borrowed from a babydoll which was made in India, that she was like Govinda's shirt, only three times more so. "Uproar II - the Hungama" ensued, leading to a find-and-replace mission with "baby".

Such has my generation been scarred that we have hardly been able to think or utter such words. I'm showing the way with posts such as these. S-E-X-Y! There, I've spelt it out. Chi-Chi: zaraa khaTiyaa sarkaanaa.

The optimal pessimist

The optimal pessimist

The optimist shrugs it off knowing he's still got most of his life ahead of him. That he too has got most of his life ahead of him is exactly what the pessimist is worried about.

'Rahul' is back

'Rahul' is back

Since I don't remember the theatre in Bombay where I saw the Sunny Deol starrer Arjun (my first ever in front of the big screen), I consider Rahul Theatre in Pune as the place where I first saw films. Since we didn't go to many films then, it was an uncommon treat of sorts to go to Rahul for a Sunday matinee. I particularly remember watching a lot of classic Chaplin films, including The Gold Rush and One AM.

Later in life, when we came back to Pune, Rahul (along with the likes of Mangala) was still at the top of the pecking order when it came to city theatres. DDLJ was watched there. Soon, each college morning for 4 years, Rahul would be on my way to COEP. The two listed movies for the week would have their names spelt out in block letters outside (just one, if it was a real blockbuster). A particularly fond memory was seeing the names Satya and Hyderabad Blues unchanged for several weeks in 1998. Even then, I remember realising something had changed in Indian cinema. I also remember watching Lagaan soon after the exams that concluded our COEP stint in 2001.

In a couple of years, the multiplex revolution had swept through the city, led by City Pride, and followed by Inox. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was the last movie I saw at Rahul. Soon, the 5-screen E-Square hungrily towered over Rahul next door and that was the end of Rahul. For about two years, Rahul has been under construction. There was no announcement outside and it wasn't clear (to me) whether the place had been sold or was being refurbished or was changing professions. Last week, I saw Rahul open, without any fanfare, now apparently a little multiplex of its own, with at least two screens. This means it has gone the Mangala route, and can perhaps survive a little with the benefits that a multiplex can claim.

Whether this will make any real change to its current position - I do not know. The difference was stark in the last days: the service was ordinary compared to the new waves of "plush service" around us, and no wonder that the mall-tiplexes of the city have magnetically drawn people towards them. Still, a little crumb of nostalgia survives. I wonder if they still serve the expensive cabbage-stuffed little samosas. Does anyone know?

Green and white

Green and white

I'm just following 'current affairs', naturally. By now, all of us, voluntarily or forcibly, know that lady Kareena and the cub scout of the Pataudis are "together" (one report said: "they bonded over yoga" - which is an interesting choice of words, because one of the principal meanings of 'yoga' is "to join or unite" - but let me stop defaming the ancient practice by relating it to tabloid news there).

Anyway, what I want to draw your attention to is: did you notice that finally, after hundreds of years of trying to put one over Othello, Iago finally gets Desdemona?

All hail the baahubali.

Math for snakes

Math for snakes

When did "maths" become "math"? I hear a lot of people say and write "math", (short for "mathematics", not as in the "Ramakrishna Math") these days (especially at IIT-B). Have school teachers started using this term too?

Nothing really to get upset about, but still, it makes me uneasy. More subliminal American influence? I can see, since the cult film, how you started saying "may-trix" instead of "ma-trix" (as in good old Matric-pass). Perhaps you converted to "skedule" after watching "The Apprentice". But how did you drop the "-s" from the abbreviation? Pray tell.

A tense situation

A tense situation

A familiar meaning of the verb tense is "to become nervous, or uneasy" (definition courtesy WordNet), with its noun form as tension. In English, one would use these words in a sentence as:

"I became tense as I saw the dog with the foaming mouth approach."
"There was a lot of tension among the members."

So far so good. In day-to-day Hindi, we use such borrowed words instead of say "tanaav" or "tanaavgrast" (CFILT) as:

"Geeta bahut tense lag rahii thii"
(literally: 'Geeta very tense looked')
"aap kyo.n tension lete hai.n?"
(literally: 'You why tension take?')

However, from what I seen on Tamil television, the colloquial usage there is stranger. Instead of using the verb form "tense", people seem to use the noun form "tension". Like:

"nii yEn tension aaharai?"
(literally: you why tension become?)

In Hindi, you would say: "tum kyo.n tense hotii ho" ("why do you become tense?"). But to become "tension" itself - now, that's weird. I never hear "nii yen tense aaharai?", nor can I remember hearing the "why do you take tension?" version that one hears in Hindi and Marathi.

I wonder how this began, and what it is in the Tamil grammatical structure or language that has caused this to happen.