Thursday 26 January 2012

AUSSIES DON'T PLAY FAIR - PART II


Since declaring my intention not to do a fresh post on this subject, I have had some very interesting thoughts concerning the Australian. Like not letting the guests in their country win. Even once in a while. But a full blown post on this subject would tantamount to breaking my own promise which, since I am not a government, is sacred to me. Governments not only regularly break promises, but they are required to do so by their constitutions. Despite all this, it looks like it is PART II time after all....

This brilliant flash I have had is that one of the reasons the Aussies win is that their team is not truly representative of their society. They choose just the ones capable of winning. Show me an Aborigine in their team; show me a Greek or a Serb of a Croat or Vietnamese or our  own Anglo-Indians who migrated to "back home". Or a Chinaman. On the last noted item I could be on shaky grounds. There have been many Aussie left-arm bowlers some of whom could have bowled the Chinaman. I just cant recollect who.Aussies regularly bowl China-women, though. What the Chinese women find in the Aussies beats me. There is no accounting for taste.....

Aussie team has no diversity. They do nothing to advance the case of the Aborigine or the Christmas Islander, or the Bougainvillain or the Papuan.

But look at us: we strive very hard to uphold the principle of diversity and give a chance to everyone. We would ideally like to have a team much expanded beyond the 11 players the International Cricket Council permits so that every region, ethnic group, minority, and linguistic group is included. The ICC is a throw-back to the old imperialistic days when MCC (the Marylebone Cricket Club, another name for England) used to rule the roost. Mr Dalmia of Kolkata sent the imperialists packing. Right now it is run by a coconut (brown outside and white inside), one Mr Lorgat. Despite making concessions to the majority community in his native South Africa (yes, you read that right: it is the majority that needs concessions in SA. The minority rules the roost), there is not much diversity in his native team. They even all have the same English accent like they were all  male Charlize Therons. They are not as good looking though.

On the subject of diversity, the English are equally bad - in fact worse. No Welsh, no Scot, no Irish. Only proper Englishmen. But it is okay because they don't make winning such a big habit like the Aussies do. And they all don't have criminal ancestry - only some.

The Aussies are also biased against the "differently abled" . We Indians on the contrary do not only accommodate those who cant run, those who cant throw, those who cant see very well, those who cant think straight, mentally sub-normal, the overweights, the underweights, we actually seek them out.  Our Cricket Board chairman is a fine portly fellow who perhaps only runs when he gets the runs. One Selector ( named after a kind of nut used as a shampoo in the South) actually has a magnificently violent twitch of the nose which was fun to watch on the TV  and some other officials of the Board who cannot tell one side of the bat from the other. But all part of a wonderfully diverse collection.

It is easy to win when you only recruit the elite

But remember we are winning the game of Diversity......

AUSSIES DON'T PLAY FAIR

It is well known that the present-day Aussies are descended from criminal stock which the English wanted to push off the edge off the world. But some mischief-monger discovered that the world wasn't flat and, therefore, has no edge off of which which to push the undesirables. The next best thing was to send them as far away as possible, and to that end the English shipped them off to what was then the edge of the known world: way down under. It was also a very unpromising land. The British upper class was wetting its lips at the prospect of  their criminal underclass being thus eliminated for good and their society made genteel once again, cleansed of thieves, murderers, those born out of wedlock, deflowerers of the fair English maiden and general sinners from the lower classes.

Alas, they made one mistake. They taught them to play cricket in the penal colony.

Ever since, the Aussies' main mission in life has been to beat their former tormentors and rulers at cricket. As often and as humiliatingly as possible. Perhaps in a reference to the bad taste this left in the mouths of the English cricketers in particular and the English nation in general, they named the act "Ashes". Once in a while they too get humiliated, as during the last summer in England in which the ashen faces and taste of ash in the mouth belonged to the Aussies. In the good old days they had to cross five of the seven seas each way and there was no guarantee that they would reach England nor return from there if they did reach England in the first instance. The English of course delighted in this for, although it meant they could lose some of their own in these sea voyages, it was equally likely that some Aussies would be lost too; the chances were higher because the latter were illiterate and could not read the signposts along the way. For example the big strapping lad from Alice Springs could take the wrong turn (hence the name wrong 'un - see what I mean by illiteracy?) and instead of arriving at Sydney harbour, could very well get lost in the great Australian desert. He however could not become anyone's dessert for there were, and still are, no predators of humans in Australia which is really a pity -the lack of predators, not the wrong turn.

So in between creaming the best the English could throw at them and in order to break the long sea voyages into shorter ones and thus minimise the chances of getting lost at sea, the Aussies took to stopping by at Bombay. The fact that there were many a fair English maiden there who were desperate for male company of the "European" variety also made the stop interesting. After all most of the Aussies spent their time in the outbacks where the only female living things were ewes and she-kangaroos. With the latter prone to jumping around a lot on two legs, amorous intentions were hard to consummate. To get into shape for their English cricket season and to impress the English maidens on the Bombay maidans, they took to playing some cricket while in Bombay. Once in a while they would invite locals to play them.

Which was a bigger mistake;

For the local Bombay wallahs, I mean. The Aussies discovered someone they could beat regularly with consummate ease. Like the boy who gets kicked by the school bully coming home to kick the cat. Except that in this case they didn't come home, but got to kick the cat a lot earlier, on the way home actually. The revenge - it wasn't really revenge, but try making these fine points to the Aussies - was swift. Being illiterate they hadn't learnt that revenge was best served cold.Once they got addicted to kicking the cricketing cat -which had become Indian rabbit in their cricketing parlance - they started inviting the rabbits to Australia to beat them there so they need not be separated from their ewes and she-kangaroos for long stretches of time.  The rabbits were bludgeoned to death and fed to the cats - not the ones they intended to kick, for that cat had become a rabbit which was killed to feed the cat which was not a rabbit to begin with. The Bombay-wallahs, ever on the sharp lookout for some quick money accepted, lured by the promise that one Aussie Dollar was worth gazillion Indian  Rupees and you could bring back Audis, Rolls Royces, Ferraris and the like without paying any taxes. Occasionally they brought home an Aussie bride without taking dowry and realizing what the absence of dowry meant, sent them back later.

That was mistake number three.
Playing the Aussies, not sending the bride-sans-dowry back.
Notwithstanding the allure of Audis, Beamers and Ferraris and the prospect of not paying the government any tax in return for Bharatth Ratnas and like titles, engaging with the Aussies in a sporting endeavour is a dangerous game if you'll pardon my pun. The Aussie origins ensure that it wont be a fair game. Take thieving / stealing for example: they even had to steal a poor Welsh girl to make her their prime minister. Of course she has a better hair day these days than Welsh generally do and can't sing alone or together as is the Welsh propensity. She was so "Ozzified"  as to lead her senior and mentor up the garden path and shaft him  - not the other way round as nature intended. But I digress.

The Aussies are generally wood choppers, loaders, dockworkers, sheep shearers and aborigine hunters. They are not gentlemen. Like our players are. Our players are mostly from Nawabi khandaan or, when they are not muslim, its Hindu equivalent. In Tamil they would be knowns as "Raja veettu kannukkutty". Roughly translated it means the King's heifer: it leads a privileged life and doesn't have to earn its living by doing cart-pulling, hoeing a field or anything at all. All it has to do is to eat well live well, roam unmolested and uncontrolled,  grow up to be a big fat bull, and service sundry cows. In other words live the life of a gentleman. The muscular wood chopping Aussie cricketer brings to the field a very different attitude to our own boys whose principal aim in life, as befitting a "raja veettu kannukkutty", is to "make it large" and cavort & consort with sundry page three cows.

The Aussies steal our runs, murder our bowlers and lust after our sisters and mothers. Our boys are made to run and fetch, the poor gentle souls. Hands that are too delicate to hurt even a rose are made to twirl a rough leather ball hour after hour; to stop it and catch it when it is hit very hard; run after it when it is misdirected away from our boys instead of towards them as you would expect from a more civilized people.They have no respect for age or reputation. They have been particularly harsh on three of our most venerated players, one called the wall for his predilection to attract people who wail and the other, a "jewel of India" (no, not the restaurant in Worli, Mumbai, not even the one named after him); the third whose name sounds like aubergines (brinjals, you less literate ones !) and lentils in Tamil and whose name  takes longer to spell than the time he spends in the middle despite his being very very special. They are systematically treated harshly, unmindful of their status and standing, made to stand in the sun for long and not allowed to sit, and generally denied the treatment and adulation they are accustomed to. How dare the criminal bastards do this?

The illiterate ones call our graduates and double-graduates names and suggest an eagerness to cohabit with their sisters and mothers. The outback ogres give our boys nightmares on the field and get them drunk off of it. They tempt our boys with their temptresses who are only too eager for gentle and cultured company after years spent in the outback watching sheep and Flying Doctors on the telly.

The only way you can explain all this is through their predilection to not play  fair.



Friday 20 January 2012

HOW TO CATCH A FELON - PART II

Recently FICCI kindly suggested how to tackle black money (reported by The Hindu, Chennai: The Hindu : Business / Economy : FICCI suggests amnesty scheme to bring back black money). I must admit that I was so incensed by this that I wrote this piece: HOW TO CATCH A FELON - PART I.

I do believe that I may have been a little long on emotions and a little short on suggestions. I shall now proceed to make some suggestions now. But I must warn the readers not to expect any suggestions anywhere near comparable to the ones made by FICCI in its sweep, breadth, simplicity, elegance, audacity or implementability.

Let me start by complementing the FICCIon two things: Firstly for coming up with a simple solution which makes the crime itself disappear - no crime, hence no criminal, and we can all go back to normal life. Secondly for co-opting the abettor in the original crime - shortly to be non-crime and hence non-abetment on the part of the former abettor -  to co-author the proposal for tackling it. Perhaps a veiled threat to the powers that be that should they make so bold as to go after the stashers of black money, the Bank could be easily persuaded to release their names as well. What a master-stroke, FICCI. Do accept my unreserved compliments on this simple yet brilliantly audacious scheme.

Now let me address myself to what the government can and indeed should do.
We have had many amnesties and yet black money has only grown despite the amnesties. I dare say actually very little was disclosed. The incentives were all wrong. What incentive do black money stashers have to disclose their unaccounted wealth when they know yet another amnesty is just round the corner? Zero, zilch, zip, nada, kuch nahin. For an amnesty to be effective there are four simple conditions that must be met:
1. Cost of non-compliance should be very high
2. Cost of compliance should be minimal and "acceptable"
3. The enforcement will be certain, swift and without exception and
4. There shall be no further amnesty in the foreseeable future.

Where our previous amnesty schemes failed is on condition 4 above. Since  governments do not generally deliver on their promises, prohibiting future amnesties   must be through an act or even enshrined in the constitution . The prohibition should cover a foreseeably long future, say at least 100 years.
The enforcement must be not only guaranteed by law  but required by law with most severe punishments for the foot dragging officials and politicians in charge. Fast track courts must be set up so that the poor aggrieved black money holders cannot tie the government agencies up in court cases. The punishment (cost of non-compliance) must be confiscatory and not merely penal. Confiscate not only the black money assets but also ALL ASSETS of the felons. Only the fear of losing not only their illegitimate assets but also their legitimate ones will make them disclose their black money.

During the time the government has been posturing over the last year or so, much of the black money has been moved. Mostly to India. Everyone but the government seems to know where it has gone. Any half decent forensic accountant (even amateur ones like me) can trace the money backwards and identify their black origins.

We know what to do and we also know how to do it. Are we going to do it then? The answer is a resounding NO. We all know why. It is in no ones interest to do so. Which is why Lok Pal is attracting so much opposition.

Is there no hope? If I said yes there is no hope then I will have to kill myself for there is no point in living without hope. I live in the hope that the earth will continue to spin, that it will not get lethally impacted by a large asteroid, that a tsunami will not wipe out my home, that the Government of India including the babus and mantrijis will work together to eliminate the scourge of black money.

Until that last named event actually happens, FICCI rules !


Thursday 19 January 2012

HOW TO CATCH A FELON - PART I (PARDON THE FELONS !!!)

To catch a thief, set a thief goes the old saying. Being Indian we go one better and have found an even better way: listen to the felon on how to pardon them. Post-pardon, there is no felony and hence no felon. Its all squared so neatly, elegantly and without any tears...

The Hindu : Business / Economy : FICCI suggests amnesty scheme to bring back black money

It must be wonderful, being FICCI. Not only do you get to make a lot of black money as a business man, but you also get to tell the government how to tackle the black money menace by forgiving those who made it and stashed it away in Swiss banks. It must be even more wonderful being HSBC, whose Geneva Branch is said to be where much Indian black money is stashed away. As a bonus it's India Chairman gets to share the platform while FICCI makes the radical suggestion for an amnesty. I simply love this arrangement whereby you break the law and then get to tell the government how you must after all be treated with respect and all your transgressions must be forgotten and forgiven.

I suppose FICCI and HSBC must be right. They both have made, transferred handled and stashed away a lot of black money between them. To err is human, to forgive divine. The honorable members and FICCI want nothing other than the best for the Gvernment and the country. What could be a honor higher than being divine ? And that too through the simple expedient of forgiving someone? Especially if that someone is none other than the members of the selfsame FICCI and the bank that is reported to have done a lot of the stashing?

Life must be good, being FICCI. Being HSBC must be even better

MEN OF MADRAS

No, this isn't another cheap joke about the testicular fortitude of Madras men involving their dangly bits, a common zinc & copper alloy, bad weather and electrostatic discharges from the nether regions. Not that Madras Men are lacking in fortitude - of the testicular or other variety. Quite the contrary. We have amongst us many Captains, Majors, Field Marshals (the plain as well as the "revolutionary" variety). We however haven't many generals, however badly spelt, as in Jarnail Singh. You would have to be a Punjabi to spell "general" as "jarnail". We maintain very high standards of English spelling here in Madras. Chennai is sort of slipping, but that is the subject of another post. The absence of Generals is not accidental or unintended. We Madras Men may be hard but we are not rusty nor prickly like nails.

We are strong as steel. Hence our predilection to assume names suggestive of  steel (as did Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili of the former Soviet Union).

But we have a sensitive side too. We hurt when "kicked in the goolies", as a cockney would delicately put it, just as anyone else. We even hurt during the "cough test" administered during the annual health checks. We cry in the movies when the heavily pregnant wife is dumped by the protagonist ( for a fee I might let you have a copy of my patented "How to Dump your Wife in 5 Easy Steps") on his mother's say so. Some of you mother-haters (we are too gentle and proper to use the more appropriate expression suggesting sexual act on one's mother, so "mother-hater" will have to do) might revolt at this obedience of our mothers; but isn't the mother the centre of the universe? She cooks for you, cleans for you, cleans after you and feeds you until she makes a more permanent arrangement involving a younger woman when she - the mother I mean- is getting on a bit. All in all a wonderful being, is The Mother. Not to be confused with The Mother who was not from Madras, not even India, and made Auroville / Pondicherry her home. The latter was a wonderful human being by all reports but there is no recorded evidence of her having sons, let alone having cooked / cleaned / fed one. We also call women not umbilically related to us "amma" as in mother. Freud might have had a thing or two to say about that but there is no evidence that he had knowledge of our existence. Which is a pity really, for he might have found a wealth of material for his analyses, hypotheses and neuroses.

Our current Amma is not only our amma, but is also a Revolutionary Leader, Golden Star, Universal mother, shrewd, our North, South, East and West, astute, generous, magnanimous, and a general embodiment of all that is great in mothers / women / humans, if you believe the life-size bills (known locally as posters).  So she is really our poster-mom; not to be confused with the Tiger Mom Amy Chua who, industrious though she is, cannot even equal the specks of dust under our "amma's" feet. We love our ammas and we love our Amma even more. Unlike the umbilical amma, our Amma's cleaning after us leaves a bit to be desired - our wonderful city is sort of full of garbage  at the moment and can do with a good amma-like cleaning up. I also doubt if Amy Chua has ever stood under a raging waterfall in a transparent white sari. Even if she did I am not sure if Amy's build is such as to render such an event a crowd-puller. For wet sari scenes you need a bit of meat on the bone.
We also like our mutton biriyani. And sambhar (also known as "kolambu" - there is a subtle difference between the two which only a true-blood Madrasi can appreciate, but that is a matter for yet another post) in addition to wet sari scenes and heroines with a bit of meat on the bone. Truth be told, we like them with a lot of meat on the bone. That's why we gave the world "Thunder Thighs" before she was stolen by Bollywood and ended up staying permanently in Bombay with some guy who liked butter chicken.

That's why we introduced "Miss Silk", and made sure no one stole her. Then somebody went and made a movie on her life. To play the principal role they had to get a Madrasi woman who is also claimed by Kerala as one of theirs.

But then Kerala always claims ours as theirs. Like the dam that an Englishman built 100 years ago. Not to mention the water dammed therein. Our beloved Mater will have none of it. It is also rumored that she loves to cook up a storm.
But she does not and did not ever cook beef for herself or anyone else real or imaginary.

Friday 6 January 2012

TENDULKAR’S MONKEY



Those with a background in Physics might expect a discussion along the lines of the famous  Maxwell’sDemon thought experiment. Those whose knowledge of  Physics transcends the 19th century may even be reminded of Schrödinger’s Cats or the even Schrödinger’sKitten. This posting has nothing to do with felines or demons of any kind, real or imaginary. Or even simians, notwithstanding the reference to a simian in the title. We shall not go into, howsoever briefly, whether Maxwell’s thought experiment involving the aforementioned Demon does indeed violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as some doubt (Leo Szilard, one of the fathers of the atom bomb, did). What beats me is why a demon, even allowing for all his demoniacal energy and bent mind (surely you do know that Satan was lasciviously peeping Adam and Eve going about their apple business – some might even say monkey business) would want to sit inside a sealed box opening and shutting an imaginary door for “hot” or “cold” molecules beats me. I could think of hundreds of better things to do inside a sealed box or outside of it, each one a lot more interesting than looking at molecules to decide their state of hotness. Like looking up the Page three babes and estimating their hotness, an infinitely more pleasurable and useful occupation than counting hot and cold molecules.

The state of the fine feline friend in the later thought experiment - a blatant and unashamed knock-off of the Demon experiment, if I may say so – inside of a sealed dark box leaves me cold. Does it make any difference to the world if the cat is alive or dead or is simultaneously both dead and alive? I gather that the last named option is the accepted wisdom of 20thcentury Quantum Physics. While this might strike many as a weird assertion, Iam personally aware of many people who are both dead and alive at the same time– sort of walking dead. So a similarly weird behaviour in a cat does not surprise me. Suffice it to leave it at that noting merely that Schrödinger or anyone else does not specify what type of a cat it is: Siamese, Persian or alley or even feral. I suspect that therein lies the solution to the apparent paradox.All cats are insolent and are bound to look askance at the world of humans but some more than others, and therefore them playing dead is not at all  far fetched as it might at first seem.. Some breeds more so than others. I shall close this line of discussion with a firm reaffirmation of my dislike of all cats except the cool ones and regrettably no self-respecting jazz musician is called a cool cat anymore.

What has Tendulkar got to do with a monkey, I hear you ask.The former uses a bat and the latter is indifferent to bats – the flying variety I mean, although with sufficient training and inducement they (the monkeys, not the bats) may be persuaded to wield the willow. With considerably more skill and to far greater effect, I may add, than many of our cricketers.There is an invisible monkey on Tendulkar’s shoulders. No one can see it. But everyone is talking about it. In fact every one is only talking about it. But equally vehemently they deny the existence of a monkey. Much like HarbhajanSingh did, so ably supported by the aforesaid Tendulkar himself. This monkey,the one that didn’t exist in Harbhajan’s story, not the one which is not onTendulkar’s shoulders, was the subject of much inquiry and deep research even by simian standards and we all know that monkeys are studied a lot by lots and lots of scientists. With breathtaking brilliance, recalling John Bell’s fantastic explanation for the Schrödinger’s Cat,  Harbhajan postulated that the Punjabi “ma-ki”  became Symonds’ “monkey”. Tendulkar’s confirmation of this postulate beat the pants off Alain Aspect’s confirmation of Bell’stheorem - eat your heart out, Alain, and wipe your substantial mustache while you are at it. All done and dusted and apparent conflicts explained.

 Until Tendulkar went to Australiarecently when the Australian scribes took it up again. Poor fellows, they don’t have much to do once they have reported on the briefness of the  bikinis at Bondi beach and the indiscretions of their sportsmen and politicians. After all there’s only so much you can say about a very brief sliver of cloth which seeks to tantalize even as it tries to cover the modesty  of the wearer.Howsoever exciting this line of thought, we must drop it and get back to our main narrative about the monkey which is not on Tendulkar’s shoulders.

Is there a monkey (a general existential question)? Is there a monkey on his shoulders (a Schrodingerian paradox type of question)? If yes,what is it doing (or not doing?) If no, what is it not doing?  Quantum Physics apparently tells us that if you see the monkey you cant know what it has been up to and if you knew what it was doing, you cant see  where it is. Or something like that. And then some go on to say there are   infinity of Tendulkars and infinity of monkey sand infinity of Tendulkars with / without monkeys on their shoulders. This last line of thought says that the act of our “seeing” actually freezes the monkey on the shoulders (Tendulkar’s frozen shoulder had nothing to do with anyone seeing it, it froze on its own; like mine did except that I can’t bat or bowl or open gates for monkeys). A kind of “its all in the eyes of the beholder”sort of situation.

Ma-ki or monkey therefore depends on the beholder or, more accurately, the listener.
The apparent paradox solved.

That only leaves the other monkey – the one not on Tendulkar’sshoulders.
It has once again failed to get off his shoulders (if it was there in the first place)

Thursday 5 January 2012

CHENNAI ISN'T COOL ANYMORE

Before any of you Chenno-philes rush to savage me on the Netspace and beyond  let me clarify that I mean it  literally - Chennai has warmed up. This disclaimer is necessary given that the norm in Tamil Nadu these days appears to be to take the hatchet to anyone who disagrees with you; a trend my father who is an astute observer of all things Tamil attributes to the spread of what he terms the "arivaal -sickle -culture" or "urulakkattai - baseball bat- culture" on the TV. I am learning that there aren't many things worse in this place than disagreeing with the "established" viewpoints. More on that later. In Madras of yore we talked if we disagreed over something. And talked some more. Shouted at each other even. Then we enlisted neighbours and friends in support of our viewpoint hoping to scare the other side off argument with sheer numbers in support of our viewpoint. We even trucked them in by the busloads. If all else failed we wrote to the Editor of The Hindu a "stinker", trashing the other viewpoint; only we didn't call it trashing those days - we called it demolishing the other side's argument. But times have changed even as the city changed from Madras to being  Chennai; we now take a more direct and rather robust approach to disagreements. If you are a person we start with a verbal salvo or two and then wade in with a baseball bat equivalent, which is the weapon of choice among  us. Persistent or deeper disagreements are settled with a sickle (arivaal) with terminally permanent consequences. If you are a neighbouring state, we stop our tomatoes and bhindis and brinjals crossing over to your territory and your coconuts coming into ours. Whatever else you can say about us, you cannot say we don't have redressal mechanisms in place.

Where was I before I got side-tracked into expatiating on our preferred methods of settling disagreements? Ah yes, Chennai isn't cool anymore. Not in the metaphorical sense  but in the literal one. We were beginning to have some nice weather finally around the beginning of December. Clear and warmish-but-not-hot days followed by cool evenings and pleasant nights. The early mornings were especially nice and conducive for walks along our wonderfully littered streets and avenues. The cool-weather wear came out all of a sudden in December. Half-sleeved - Tamil-speak for sleaveless- sweaters came out; with women preferring the  shawl. Then came the monkey caps.

The monkey cap is a Chennai institution. I am even tempted to think that we must have invented it before some one from the great big bad North  hi-jacked it in a Harbhajan-like fashion: ma-ki cap, meaning mum's cap or cap knitted by mum. Some stupid anglophiles must have heard it as "monkey". I totally bought into the Harbhajan version of the ma-ki-gate, so much so I can't even bring myself to say it was monkey-gate. That the monkey-gate has now been superseded by "finger-gate" is neither here nor there. To get back to my narrative: yes, monkey caps are an essential element of Chennai winter wear. We make our little ones wear them first, then our elders and we ourselves, of all ages shapes and sizes embrace it whole-heartedly by the beginning of December. At the first hint of  coolness in the air we reach for our monkey caps. It is the acme of Chennai winter chic.

This season there has been a new addition to our winter wear collection; at any rate I am only noticing it now. It is the earmuff. Its use is no doubt based on the belief that cool air is bad for your ears and thence to your throat, sinuses and your well-being in general. My daughter will never forgive us for making her wear multi-coloured earmuffs on her walks to school in the depths of English winter when the wind and the rain can make your ears hurt badly. During her more recent sojourn in the far colder north-eastern US we studiously avoided suggesting the use of earmuffs lest we be banished from her life for good. But I digress. The earmuffs of Chennai is where it is at (whatever it means, I have found this phrase "where it is at", very cool, with-it and happening and I am trying to be all those things). These are not the run of the mill over-the-head types held together by a sturdy plastic band. These are  the back of the head types which leave your hair-do in tact and appear as if they were floating, glued to your ears by some mysterious force. And they come covered in camouflage-print cloth covers. Presumably we are concerned about the earmuffs catching a cold which could then result in our catching a cold through our ears and so on. By the way the fact that we cover our luggage in camouflage-print cloth is not meant so much to ward off the cold as to keep the luggage looking new. Don't ask me why make them look new when they never get to be seen in their own skin. I am still figuring that one out - you see I have been away for long and missed out on some of the key developments on the Chennai fashion scene.

I have even seen a hoodie or two where I walk (which place shall remain unspecified - I tend to come off second best in my encounters with baseball bats).

Then all of a sudden the weather turned (the proverbial worm, alas, is yet to). And Chennai has ceased to be cool. I blame it on the cyclone with a northern name - from where we are, north, west, northwest are all the same, they are all North. You cannot trust the Northerners, even if they are only cyclones. Tricky lot they are. You only have to look at Didi to know that. Or Maya. There are no more sweaters (OK, "jumpers", if you are so inclined) monkey caps, shawls or earmuffs.

I miss the monkey cap the most. Without it, Chennai  is no longer cool.