This is the sight I dread the most when I travel. Knowing my luck, I have no difficulty finding my seat on the flight even if I do not have my boarding card. I just have to close my eyes and follow the sound till it cannot grow any louder. Then I open my eyes and yippee I am in the seat right next to someone howling his (or her) guts out. What is worse is that this kid – the one crying and traveling next to me – will not stop until I have started running along the tarmac once they let me out of the plane.

It is a bit like I have my own version of Newton’s Law. The First Law of Travel that says, “A howling kid will always be seated right next to you – when the plane is full.” There is the Second Law of Travel that I have coined. “A howling fellow passenger will continue to howl until the plane has reached its destination.” Newton has three laws of motion. So do I. The Third Law of Travel says, “The howling fellow passenger is most likely to cry louder if you are feeling sleepy.”

Once I even gave the howling kid the chocolates I had kept for myself. The shameless fellow ate the chocolates amid loud sobs and then just resumed crying. The doting parents just looked at me and said, “He just doesn’t like traveling with strangers.” I tried explaining to them that the kid was right. They should not have picked up just any kid at random to accompany them. The mother just rolled her eyes and said to me, “We ARE his parents. You are the stranger that is upsetting him.”

Yeah yeah yeah… I know what all you unreasonable folks will say. We were all kids once. Be patient. Be nice to them. They represent the future. Well, if that howling piece of childhood is in any way representative of the future, it would be my turn to cry.

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Image Courtesy: Creative Donkey

Let me get the basics out of the way. This post is not about how to get certified to run some training courses. This is about how to deal with fear. Yeah, I am a big fan of overcoming your demons and motivational stuff like that. However, it is what I witnessed the other day at the neighborhood gym that is prompting me to write a few tips that will help the fearful learn how to deal with their gym trainer.

I was visiting Rusty in his swank neighborhood. We grabbed a doughnut and were walking back when we heard someone with a loud voice, learning numbers. The voice was that of an adult but he rarely progressed to counting beyond ten. The signboard told me that it was the gym. “I am a member here.” said Rusty. “You have a rigorous interview panel to deal with before they let you join.” I decided to stop by for a sneak peek. It had the usual suspects. A couple of guys and gals who were a bit “over-configured” were at the treadmill. It was a classic case of battle between man and machine. From the loud squeals and creaks of the treadmill I could make out, machines were clearly losing the battle as fatso after fatso trampled the machines into submission. Presiding over his kingdom was the slave driver who had personally supervised the building of the pyramids six years ahead of schedule. He had a shaved head and was wearing a T Shirt that said Just Do It.  After looking at the way he was making everyone sweat, I wanted to add, “Ask No Questions” to that tag line. To my right was a bloke trying to catch a few winks on an oversize ball but that was hard. Clearly he was struggling to keep the ball in the same place to prevent himself from rolling over the edge. Even a horse needs to stand still when it decides to sleep and this dude was no centaur. There was a rather aggressive looking woman lying on a mat and trying to kick some imaginary monster. What had the trainer told her that made her kick so hard, I asked Rusty? Without batting an eyelid Rusty said, “Imagine you are trying to stop Strauss-Kahn from doing to you what he did to the hotel maid if the media had to be believed.”

Rusty whispered, “These people do not realize that before you hire a trainer, you have to train the trainer. You have to train him to know what your limits are. Else he will give you the same routine that he gives to Mr Universe. Always give the trainer a lower number than what you can. Like if you can do fifteen crunches, start groaning at seven. Then pretend to collapse at the tenth one. That will give the trainer a feeling of accomplishment when he makes you do three more to make the grand total of thirteen. And you still have the energy to do two more.”

It was as if the trainer had an invisible whip which he would crack from time to time to speed up whoever was trying to put the calorie burner on a slow cook. One look at his determined face and you knew that he would soon burn up enough calories to power a Transatlantic flight by a Concorde. He was running the life of about ten people and driving trauma in their lives by just a raised eyebrow or a bloodshot eye. There was a middle aged meek looking man who had been ordered to lie down on an exercise mat and try to fold himself into two. Imagine trying to fold a heavily stuffed burger into half. Hard to do? Yes, that’s what the ambitious man was attempting, just to avoid displeasing the trainer. Every now and then on command, just as Mr Meek would raise his two disobedient feet together and coax them to go all the way up to his head, the layers of fat around his waistline would suddenly bloat up and assume monstrous proportions preventing his feet from circling the globe. They would return to the base like obedient homing pigeons. A few unsuccessful attempts later, the trainer lost his patience. He grabbed Mr Meek’s feet mid flight and before they could back and return to base, he yanked them all the way to the top of his head. I could see the imaginary jets of lard melting away as Mr Meek resembled a folded burger.

The young are easily distracted with dreams. Standing in front of the mirror in the corner of the gym was a thin lad in shorts that revealed legs thinner than celery sticks. He was wearing thick glasses and was giving himself hopeful looks as he groaned through the routine. He was here to chase his dream of discovering if he too had biceps that he could SEE for himself. Mr Celery had been given the task of developing his biceps by working with weights that resembled the rattle my three month old nephew wields in the cradle. It would be a long journey before he would discover those invisible muscles. “Gimme 10 curls!” screeched the trainer. Celery looked around for sympathy and like it always happens when you need friends, you have none. Celery groaned as he started the curl. The trainer was counting each one and I could tell, that Math had never been the slave driver’s strongest subject in school. He would often get stuck on a number for a bit before he remembered the next one.

“… three, four, five… five… five… five… six… seven. C’mon DON’T stop. Three more to go.”

“I did ten” said Celery, pointing to his biceps as evidence.

“No you did sevunn. I know my Math dude.”

“You counted five three more times. So that makes it three more added to the seven and hence ten.”

Celery was about to be thulped into submission. We were all holding our breath waiting to call the ambulence when sense prevailed over knowledge of Math. The thin lad started to do three more bicep curls. This time he counted the three loudly before collapsing into a heap of satisfaction.

Rusty and I walked back to his apartment. I finally broke the silence. “Do these guys have to pay the trainer or does he do it for free?” Rusty gave me a patronizing look and explained how this gym was the priciest one in the country and the fat blokes gasping on the treadmill were celebrities from the corporate world.

“I did not recognize any of them” I said.

“You are only used to seeing them in striped suits and starched shirts. Never in their shorts and puffing on a treadmill. That’s why you didn’t recognize them.”

I had to give him that one.

Every year, like any other average Bengali family, my parents would settle down to make an important decision. To decide where we would spend our next vacation. The process would be repeated every year. I would dread the moment when a family friend would suggest that we go to some hill station? I would silently recall the many traumatic hours spent climbing long winding roads at the hill stations and praying to God that my agony would end soon.  I hated long walks – even if there were in some fancy hillside resort. I would always recommend that we go to a sea side resort instead. But then,   whenever decisions were made in my family, my suggestions were usually ignored.

The night before daddy went to buy train tickets there would be intense lobbying. My sister and I would find magazine articles and photos from travel guide books to support our choice.  My parents always found some neighbor or colleague’s recommendation more believable than our pleas. They asked other experienced travelers and checked out the best train routes, the options available for accommodation and of course their list of recommended “sight seeing spots”.  Some years we got lucky and went to a place we had suggested. Most years the parents won.

No matter where we went eventually, I would find dozens of Bengali families who had already been there and had taken over the spot. We would make friends with them. Very soon they would tell us which was the best place to go to for lunch or dinner. The mashima dressed in saree and sneakers with shawl and monkey cap, all set to trek up to Tiger Hills in Darjeeling or at Rohtang Pass. The same mashima dressed in salwar-kameez when they were going up the mountain in Nainital. The male folks would be dressed in colorful hand knitted sweaters and the mandatory monkey cap (see picture of Monkey Cap here). In a monkey cap with only the face exposed to the whims of Ma Nature, the Bong meshomashai is ready to brave any temperature below 40 degrees centigrade. I believe that the monkey cap has contributed very significantly towards keeping our community warm and adventurous. As some of you may well know, we Bongs are paranoid about catching a cold. Ergo, the monkey cap is the weapon of choice when we undertake our annual journey to the hill resorts.

See the brilliant article called  Thanda Lege Jaabey (Trans: You will catch a cold). That is a fate worse than death for us Bongs.

As Outlook magazine said it so eloquently:

Come holiday time, and the Bengalis set off on their discovery of India. Proverbially clad in monkey caps and dhotis, in staid saris and stout sneakers; carrying capacious jholas stuffed with shawls and umbrellas to brave every possible vagary of weather, their voices high-pitched with excitement, you see and hear them everywhere– from the heights of the Amarnath glacier and the meadows of Gulmarg, to the beaches of Goa and the palaces of Rajasthan. No other Indians, with the exception of the Gujaratis, have such an insatiable wanderlust.

Have you ever noticed how the Bongs will always describe a place by the food they had there? Here is what I mean:

” Didn’t you go to Goa this year? Which beach did you find the best?”

“Oh yes, Goa was lovely!! The vindaloo at Anjuna Beach is fantastic. But Chicken Xacuti and Chicken Cafrel was much better at Majorda Beach. But it is All Spice restaurant at Arpora that I’d recommend.”

“Do you recommend the North Goa tour or is it better to do the South Goa circuit?”

“Where do you start… Brittos has very good sizzlers…at Gabriel’s Guest house the Chicken Chettinad is lovely. The fish is also very fresh & lobster is very cheap. But if you like Chinese then you should try Kim Faa. That is the best. So whether you want to do the North Goa or South Goa tour is really depending on what kind of food you like…”

That’s when the penny dropped. The vacation for the Bong is also a form of culinary sight seeing. The spot has to be checked for not just the sun rise but also for the shorba. It is not just the pony ride, but also about confirming what authentic paav bhaji tastes like when eaten with the natives. T=The thrill lies in being able to discover if one can get authentic Bengali cuisine in Almora (yes, you do).

If you have a Bong friend ask them to recommend a vacation spot. You will note how the spot is always described by the culinary experience. If that was good, the place gets a two thumbs up. Else it is just another average place populated by philistines who do not know how to cook a darn thing.

Our culture is full of stories the witty person – think Tenalirama, Gopal Bhand, or Birbal. The theater forms have all had the comic as an integral part of the story. Indian cinema – Hindi as well as other Regional language cinema have seen many shades of humor. As Indians have become more confident, we have learnt to laugh at ourselves. Only someone who is secure within can laugh at himself or herself. Self deprecating humor is reflective of a self assured person. That confidence for some comes because of prosperity. For some even strife leads to its own variety of dark humor. I believe economic prosperity and exposure to a global environment have expanded the variety of jokes we Indians laugh at today. You see more comedy shows on TV than we did a few years back. Youtube and the Net has given us access to more brands and flavors of humor. So as a country we are discovering the joys of a global fare.

Malavika Velayanikal of DNA newspaper spoke to couple of us on the question “Do Indians Have a Sense of Humor?” Here is the interview reproduced with her permission.

Let’s admit it. As Indians, we aren’t really famous for our sense of humor. It is a rather serious business, which, alas, we haven’t mastered. Not yet, at least. We reserve our peals of laughter for the jokes on ‘them’. And the ‘them’, obviously is Tamilian if you are Punjabi, Sikh if you are Malayali, or Nepali if you are Bengali. The pot of trouble is on high flame if the joke’s on ‘us’. For us Indians, humor is a vexing issue.

It could be because we are a very religious country. At least, Osho thought so: “For centuries sad people have dominated religion. They have expelled laughter – from the churches, from the mosques, from the temples….” To him, seriousness was a disease that has been praised, respected and honored; and Indians, “are serious people” – very religious, very holy.
Forbidden and dangerous territory as it is, a few brave men and women do test the waters. The ambitious ones tread on toes, and are quickly slain. The less smart ones are flayed. The perfect ones, survive.
Comedies are galore on television. Many are ghastly, but the pleasing TRP ratings have ensured more converts. Filmmakers are on to it too. So are stand-up comedians.

Author of bestseller Mediocre But Arrogant, Abhijit Bhaduri, feels we have learned to laugh at ourselves, as Indians have become more confident. “Only someone who is secure within can laugh at himself. Self deprecating humor is reflective of a self-assured person. I believe economic prosperity and exposure to a global environment has expanded the variety of jokes we laugh at today. So as a country we are discovering the joys of a global fare.”

While some believe humor has just arrived there are many who have been dabbling with it for years.
Of course, we have a sense of humor and a resilient one, argues Mahesh Ramchandani, a freelance writer for television, who has scripted several of the Movers and Shakers episodes. “In spite of all that the politicians have done to us and to this country, we still manage to laugh. I think everyone has a sense of humor, including Suresh Kalmadi, although you won’t see him laughing too much these days,” he says.

Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah, whose latest book, Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan, an international bestseller, has always peppered his crime thrillers with humor. After living in India for over a decade, he sometimes feels there’s more humor in India than in most other countries in the world. “I think perhaps the unique thing is that we who live in India often straddle multiple cultures at the same time. Somebody can be Bengali by birth, but grow up and live their life in Bangalore, and also be completely fluent in English. My belief is that the more complex your own cultural situation is, with a variety of influences from different sources, the easier it is for you to appreciate the comedy of life.”
We obviously knew how to laugh at ourselves in the past, says Reena I Puri, editor of the Amar Chitra Katha series. “Indian folktales are full of amazing humour. Look at Tenali Raman, Gopal Bhand or Birbal.” She believes that Indian television humour has a long way to go, but “if I think of some of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s movies with Amol Palekar or Utpal Dutt, they were simply great.”

For O’Yeah, the classic humor exemplified by RK Narayan or the naughty humor in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Kamalakanta are the highest ideals – both quite advanced for their time. He enjoys an occasional standup comedy performance “by intelligent comedians like Aporup Acharya, for instance”.

But playing with wit, and escaping unscathed is rather tricky. Shashi Tharoor tweaked Mahabharata – almost as holy as it could get – married it to history, recast it with politics and won worldwide applause. But one stray tweet on holy cows and cattle-class had him reprimanded instantly, and retreating in haste. So writers like Ramchandani are doubly careful. How far one can push the envelope is a tough call.

“One has to weigh one’s words all the time because what is permissible today was offensive yesterday and what is taboo today will become permissible tomorrow,” he says. No television producer wants to lose a TV show and so they keep a close watch on their writers and keep showing us pictures of starving people in poor countries; this motivates us to self-censor, he says, jokingly.

The moral police used to be the only police to watch out for earlier, but now we also have the politically correct (PC) police watching over us, Ramchandani says. “While the moral police gets offended if we take a potshot at their sacred cows such as god, religion, and so on, the PC has their own sacred cows and so, for example, at one time you couldn’t get a pro-gay piece into the media, now you can’t get a non-pro-gay piece in because the ‘liberal’ Taliban is watching. Some will say that is a good thing, which is exactly how the moral police defends itself,” he says.

“My humor is a survival kind of one,” says writer Shinie Antony. “I wanted to be a comedian when I grew up – partly because my report cards were a joke.” All her books and writings are humourous, but her wit, she says is very self deprecatory. “There is a thin line between offending someone and being funny, which I have never crossed,” she says.
So says O’Yeah: “Even if as a novelist I prefer a comic genre, my writing isn’t about having fun at some particular person’s [or a community's] expense.” He enjoys “a fairly gentle type of generic humour and which is mostly actually targeting myself [if it targets anything at all] or my own preconceived notions, or my own stupidity. In fact, I would like to claim that my humour is almost of the philosophical kind, but if I said that probably the community of philosophers would burn my effigy.” That was a joke, by the way, he quickly adds.
Politics seems like the favourite fodder of television humour. There is much entertainment in it, and on live Parliament debates, our politicians perform better than most comedians do. Laloo Yadav, Mayawati, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, and Mamata Banerjee top the charts for chiding comedians. But political sensibilities are also quick to hurt, and the ‘party’ often cracks down on the artiste as well as his subjects.

Once, a television show that Ramchandani was working on made some nasty jokes about gangsters. He recalls receiving anonymous calls telling them to take it easy. “We’re particularly careful not to offend the feelings of gangsters and terrorists, because they are very sensitive people and also own guns, certain politicians who will remain unnamed and George Bush – because a channel, which will remain unnamed, that was airing one of our shows had given us clear instructions that we were not to make any jokes about George Bush. No kidding!” he says.

Bhaduri too has ruffled several feathers with his wit. If you are a good humor writer, you would most certainly offend someone who is the butt of the jokes, he says. “One of the Professors of Mathematics at XLRI had told me I had caricatured him unfairly in Mediocre But Arrogant. A short story about the futility of New Year’s resolutions drew the flak of an erstwhile colleague who claimed that the work-shirking, scheming person in the story was modeled on him. At the alumni meet of XLRI last December, a classmate came up and said that the character of Ayesha in Married But Available was modeled on her and that she didn’t quite like that.”

The cultural elite of the country, after chuckling through hours of Seinfield, Monty Python and Woody Allen, are now sampling the slew of stand-up comedy shows live in the city. Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi often get to enjoy live performances by American, British and Australian comedians. The recent Russell Peters’ show in the city was sold out every day. Local comedians like Vir Das and Ruby Chakraborty are popular as well.

We could argue on the cultural divide of humor in India for hours, and get nowhere. A sense of humor is, after all, a very personal thing. “That’s why it’s called ‘a sense’, I suppose,” says O’Yeah. It will differ between different people depending on social class, cultural background and so on, he adds.

Everybody has a sense of humour. Only the degree of it varies, feels Shinie Antony. To her, humour is an essential defence mechanism of the mind. “How you cope with a situation without losing your sanity.” And laughter is addictive. “It is like applause,” she says. “But humorists must learn where to stop with the jokes.”
In their quest for chuckles, comics could get carried away. After all, only blurred lines demarcate the boundaries between humor, flippancy and offence. So, funnymen, beware, when you go searching for that funny bone.

What do you think? Do economically prosperous nations produce more variety of humor? Do people who laugh at themselves make better colleagues?

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Download my cartoon from here and feel free to use it.

There are days when you are the pigeon and there are days when you are the statue. The trick lies in getting an early warning especially on the “statue days”, so that you can take in a deep breath and last out when your head is being held underwater. In my case the pigeon days are few and far between. It happens ever so suddenly and if I do not immediately take advantage of that tiny sliver of an opportunity I have only myself to blame. Horoscopes are helpful to take a sneak peek into the future. I read them regularly. My newspaper carries two of them (written by two different blokes) on Sunday. If you miss one of them while being stunned by their editorial, you can always read the other one without having to flip back on the pages. Tip for you: If you do not like the prediction for your own zodiac, try reading the one which says what you are looking for. If being a Scorpio does not bring me money this week, I am OK taking the prediction for Pisces if they are the ones with cash in the wallet.

Like it happened last month when I was going to have an all important discussion on salary hikes with the Big One. I checked what the week’s prediction was for Scorpio (my zodiac sign). It was not pretty. It said, “You will have a difficult time convincing a colleague (ahem, someone is being cryptic) about your point of view. Avoid arguments. Money matters will keep you worried.”  Whoa! I needed a sanity check on this one. So I read up what the prediction for the week was for Taurus – my boss is Taurean. It said, “Avoid getting into an altercation with your colleagues about money matters.”  There was no reason for the prediction to come true, but it did. The Big One must be reading the same newspaper.

I have a simple solution to this problem. I am taking writing out predictions not by zodiac signs but by topic. This horoscope is about the twelve things that matter to everyone regardless of what zodiac sign you are – crab (Cancer) or twin (Gemini). It works even if you follow the Chinese calendar and you are a pig or rooster or monkey. Net net, no matter what beast you are, I have a prediction for you. What’s more, it s a prediction you will like. Read this on a bad day and it wll cheer you up.

1. Health: You are in the pink of health. If someone asks you start exercising, remember, this week is not a good time to start. After all the year has 52 weeks. Choose an auspicious time to start the regime, not now.
2. Money: Money is coming your way. If you are facing a temporary cash crunch, don’t worry, you will get bailed out – remember how everyone gets a bailout package just before they go bankrupt? So chill. Think big. You ARE rich.  
3. Romance: The opposite sex is called so because they have been going in the opposite direction. This week, your magnetic charm will work. So be prepared to read advice on money (point 2 above). So stuff will happen even to you. Honest. It has to…
4.  Office: This will be the best week you have had in a long time. Your projects will all finish in time. Your work will be praised – even by that nasty person who sits in the corner table playing Solitaire all day. You will be given a raise and made to be the big cheese so you get an unlimited expense account right away. (Read point 2 and 3, who do you think will be popular? wink …wink…) 
5. Shopping: Plan your shopping. You are going to be busy buying stuff all of next week to spend what will come your way this week. Some of the brands have strange spellings. Learn them. Remember your shoe size and color choice as you leave home. Credit cards will work. So go splurge.
6. Travel: This week will see you doing a lot of travelling to exotic places. By that I do not mean your long commute to the office. The Pizza Shop is not my idea of an exotic destination. Think out of the box or suitcase if you must. It could involve air travel – relax. Read section on Food to feel reassured.
7. Traffic: There will be no jams this week. You can drive like a maniac and everyone on the road will indulgently wait for you to drive past. You are in a hurry. You have stuff to do. We all understand. Read section 8 below. 
8. Parking: Parking will be plentiful. That is going to last for the next seven days from the time you read this prediction. So save this one for a rainy day. That is the time you really need to park someplace and run to the nearest washroom. If in doubt read section on Traffic.
9. Telephone: The phone company will waive off charges for you to use the phone. This is that wee of the year when telephone companies like to give customers a surprise. Nothing like having a 100 free minutes added to your account – evey minute. You can even call your microwave for an hour and you will still have minutes left to spare. Oh yeah, there will be no telemarketing calls to receive – unless you are making them. Remember this could lead to what section 3 predicted.
10. Food: This is your lucky week. Even airlines food will taste delicious. This is the count no calories week. No matter how man helpings of chocolate cake you have you won’t resemble any of the animals mentioned in the zodiac sign – leave alone the sixth one in the chart.
11. Television: TV will feature your favorite program (including those that you secretly tape and delete diligently). There will be no annoying ads at crucial moments of sporting events – unless you have made any of those ads. In that case only the ad will play all day on all channels. So no matter who watches what channel, your ad will get the highest TRP ratings.
12. Emails: The office email server will be taken down for maintenance this week. They are upgrading stuff. If you don’t answer mails for a week, the world will take you off their mailing list. You will no longer get annoying emails that assign work to you.

If you feel I have not given enough good news in a certain section, leave a comment behind. We need to build a horoscope around these twelve vital areas and not zodiac signs. 

If you want to read the usual stuff on sun signs, here is a link to Linda Goodman’s sun signs.