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This evening I was rummaging through backup discs of my old PC. Here is one gem I found, and I can't help sharing it.

A resounding left hook for the pacifists' cause.

Good luck, Mr. Gorsky
warning : Long post.

People always say, "You should have your money working for you."
I've decided I'll do the work......I'm gonna let the money relax.
Know what I mean? Because you send your money out there...working for you, a lot of times it gets fired.
You go back, "What happened? I had my money working for me."
"Yeah, I remember your money. Showing up late, taking time off. We had to let him go."

-Seinfeld, The stock tip.

Unlike Jerry, it won’t be easy for me to put all blame squarely on my money. Why, it was doing quite well last year. Not like it had suddenly developed a drinking problem or started doing drugs this January, which finally, would completely bring him down in October. Had I gone to his workplace to enquire, the response I’d most likely get should be, “Oh, we knew your money. Among the finest we had. A sharp kid, he was. None of his fault, actually. These are difficult times, sir. We had to close down the whole division he was working in.”

I know. This is all my doing. I should have called him back in time. “Son, that’s no place for nice people to be working in. I think you should stay home and keep warm under the mattress for a while. Heck, read something, get a degree if you will. I’m sure there’ll be openings for you at a later point.”

I have a friend whom for good reason I call the mad professor. He is somewhere in-between what you’d call piquantly eccentric and stark raging mad, leaning as far towards the latter as a demanding career in academics would allow. For apparently no fault of mine he insists on calling me the Corporate Honcho. Can’t imagine what I’ve done to deserve this. So, the other day, mad Prof calls and asks, so, how’s the Honcho doing? Had to tell him the Honcho is sitting on his haunches to closely observe the depths the stock market can plunge.

Have to mention another friend here. Now let’s call him Mr.Gorsky for reasons I’ll not get into until later. Like many a respectable bloke, he was patently skeptical of stocks till late last year. Then one day in cold January, the bug bit him. Everybody around him was making too much money too easily. He couldn’t take it any more. He was into a bit of liquidity at the time. As it happened, the market crashed down under the weight of his investment. It was like, he put some cash in, the stocks went down a little; he averaged, the market went mean. He sunk a little more, it dipped lower. In no time he was out of cash and the market, outside the standard range of deviation. Still our Mr. G was all tall talk.

“By January 2009 you’ll all see, the sensex will cross 25000.”

“I’m in it for the long haul, man, and I’ll clean up double my money in two years time.”

We used to snigger. This made G choose a quiet modus operandi. Every month, with his paycheck, off he goes, to throw some more good money after the bad. It would not be such a bad idea if he stuck to big blue chips, like every analyst on TV seems to suggest, though I don’t see them actually doing it. No, he is all into his Lando Infratechs and Warren Finances and God knows what other exotic stuff. In the matter of picking stocks, he blindly trusts his broker, who periodically feeds him all these tips. I know the broker; he is actually quite a nice guy, not a common trait among his tribe. Irony is, you can trust a nice guy only with things he has some control over. I tried to reason with Gorsky, “See, feller G, you can trust feller B not to defraud you or stab you in the back, but how can you trust him when he promises no rain on Thursday evening? Be reasonable, will you?"

By now I'm convinced bailing out Gorsky is the only bailout we need to put the economy back on track. We've discussed it among friends. We made an offer to G to raise among ourselves the amount he is in the red for, and let him quit at evens, if he promises to stay out of stocks. Doubtless it would hurt us all a lot in these tough times, but what's to be done has to be done. The economic situation can ease out only if G is persuaded to disinvest. But he would have none of it. He'd say, "Guys, don't you know, this money, quadrupled, would see my daughters through college?" And we'd say, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."

I think we should appeal to Mr. Chidambaram for mandatory implementation of the Gorsky bailout package. In case you don't catch the Gorsky reference, the original joke is at the bottom of this post.*

Since I started with Seinfeld, I thought it fitting to end it with another big influence from pop entertainment. But Peanuts was never big on economics. After much research, the best I could come up with was this:

*When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control.

Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.

Just a few years ago, (on July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mr. Gorsky pleading with his wife about something and Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

*Source : here

Listen easy

A friend sent the link to a long lost Panchamda number in Bengali. Lost to time, the fallibility of ferromagnetics or spring cleaning. Who would know?

Without preamble I share with you, then, the man and his song.



Surprisingly (it being such a wonderful composition) the hindi version is way lesser known. I don't think it was even a big hit. Maybe RD wasted it on the wrong film. Which film, which song? Quiz, anyone?

This weekend, I've also been listening to a bit of popular music. On that note, let me ask you, as is done in the blogging parlance, how fab is the music of Yuvraj? I would admit to having taken quite a liking to it. Especially the one least heard in promos. The opening of Zindagi Zindagi blew me because it sounds more like Gulzar saab and Panchamda than Rahman. The choice of woodwind, in this case a harmonica, harks back to nostalgia. From the next loop onwards Rahman takes over and it's into familiar territory. But the first four lines, wow, it's gold. The movie I couldn't bother watching. Not a fan of the Subhash the Ghai. The early reviews bear out the wisdom of my decision.

An fabulously enjoyable update on the movie and it's music you'll find here, and I quote....

Yuvraj is a film of Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan 2nd movie and in Yuvraj Movie Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif is going to be married. Everybody everyone in bollywood and salman khan and katrina kaif’s fan want to see they both married and work in films together as much as they can. Yuvraj Movie is one more movie where peoples can watch Salman khan and Katrina kaif Together in Yuvraj Movie.

Speaking of popular music, for some reason I'm unable to stop singing Tha tha karke from Golmaal returns ever since I was forced to watch it. I think it should get an award or something in the most addictive song of the year category.

In early listenings of Rab ne Banadi Jodi, it sounds easily the most lukewarm score ever for a Yashraj film, more so considering the movie presumably involves a lot of dancing.

A follow-up on me and the market meltdown will be out shortly so watch this space.

Other fish to fry

Did you miss me? I guess not.(then proceeds to drink a jug of water and leak from hundreds of bullet holes in his body to demonstrate the point) - The mask

Hello friends. In case you were wondering, which I'm certain you weren't, yours truly had been alive and well and in the meantime attending to generally uninteresting stuff. Been going through a dull phase, with nothing worthwhile to report, and the old creative ying dying a slow death.

On the duller side of things, fish in my daughter's fishbowl had been dropping off at a steady clip. Now, at the very beginning, had I googled a bit on the subject, like I do with most things including finding a proper euphemism for dying, I'd have known instantly that the most suitable fish for keeping in fishbowls are the Siamese betta. They are the piesces equivalent of career convicts who are most at ease inside their 8'x8' cell. The wide open world bothers them so much they keep doing bad things. I've seen a betta live in a wine glass for weeks in perfect contentment. The local pet shops curiously call them the fighter fish. I haven't seen them fight with anybody. In fact, in a multiracial environment, they are most likely to seek a nook and hide in it. We had one in our bowl. That fellow would hide inside a faux bush all day. Coming up for food once in a while seemed for him like too much trouble. One day the pearl gourami killed him. But we'll perhaps come back to that.

Back on the subject of choosing a fish, instead of doing a little research, at first we went by whatever inputs visual media gave us. And beautiful fat goldfish in bowls were all the rage over tv and print. What is it they have against the poor goldfish, these hateful media men, is something I might never understand. They have caused more deaths in the goldfish populace by inducing people to keep them in bowls, than perhaps Henry Ford did among the human race by introducing them to automobiles. Goldfish in a bowl is easily the most unreliable creature on the face of the earth. Now you see them having one helluva party, eating and shitting in wild merriment. You saunter off to the kitchen to fix a little snack, having gotten a little peckish yourself, y'know, just looking at them. What with having a snack, taking a call, catching a TV show, you might get delayed by minutes and next time you look, one of them will be belly up. Happened to me coupla dozen times. I never count on goldfish not to die on me without prior notice. Inconsiderate bunch of quitters, I call them.

Nowadays, we've gotten wise. We now keep only those fish which the pet shop boys call hard fish. I think they mean hard to kill. The Steven Seagulls and Bruce Willes of the fishworld, y'know? We keep Gouramis, tetra, assorted colored carp etc. Even these manage to die under mysterious circumstances. I suspect there are evil spirits of dead fish haunting that bowl. My daughter is keeping a headcount. The day we kill our 50th fish, we'll throw a party and feed them all some pork chops and tuna salad.

All these talk about fish reminds me of a scene from You don't mess with the Zohan, the new kickass comedy caper from Adam Sandler, ideally watched on the home theater on some evening when the kids have gone to some birthday party or something. It's not actually sexually explicit, but many scenes may not be fit for family viewing. Watch this where Zohan the crack agent of Mossad is about to capture a Palestinian terrorist, and they are challenging each other's pain endurance. Enjoy!

Holy water


Water Dress - Mattoni Spring Water Commercial

Loving this commercial. Somewhere somebody 'd said sex sells. Used in refinement, and higher quotients of soft titillation, it still delivers. Some viewer has asked why is the word "bitch" briefly superimposed at 39 seconds. Beats me. Watch and comment.

The inheritance of Payne

Meltdown is passe'. Finished. Beyond resurrection. It sounds so old it might have been Roosevelt talking about the economy.

The bottom has fallen off can go a long way, but in all the wrong directions. It's graphic, it's cute, yes, but it doesn't really cut the shit anymore.

That expression is clearly inadequate for what's happening in today's marketplace. Besides, the imagery always evokes in the mind something like above. Can't be taken seriously, if you see what I mean.

So the pundits now have a better description of things. Today they only have to say "the market is seeing a lot of pain" and be done with it. Likewise : "Europe's two biggest banks, felt the pain more than most" or, "the pain would only intensify in November with the gloom only getting darker." All these talk about pain has given a new lease of life to a mundane workaday word which was dying a slow death in the hands of oxycodone and acetamenophen.


Across the threshold of all this pain, somewhere I can see the silhouette of Max. His pain indicator inching up to the chin and his bottle of painkillers empty. He's started to stumble and fumble. One more spray from the Ingram of some goon lurking beyond the next alleyway, and he will be done for. He continues to mutter profundities in my ears like only Max Payne can :

You try to run from it, but the more you run, the deeper, more terrible it grows behind you, its edges yawning at your heels.

After a pause :
It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free.*

BTW, the film is getting all manners of flak from reviewers. Anybody watch?

* Not my fertile imagine running amok with Max on the stock markets. These are real quotes from the game cut scenes.

The Goddess in Autumn

A one-and-a-half-week spent in a daze of mellow wellness, not counting a minor throat infection afflicted by cold beer in Bong weather. Been to the Durgapujo in Kolkata after a gap of two years. Among many other things, a morning of pandalizing, an experimental cocktail, a dear friend paying for the whole crowd at Tangra at saptami lunch (his novel is out on a Pujabarshiki - his first step into big league, and a call for celebration) and rediscovering New Market.

Some photos. The first two at Badamtala Ashar Sangho, off Hazra road.

We gathered from the hoardings Prabhuji mithun-da is the brand ambassador for this Pujo. (Oh, yes, they all have brand ambassadors now.) Mithun-da would be proud. All in all, we liked the mood and ambiance of the setup. Very old-worldly and nostalgia.

See the old rajbari ( King's haveli) milieu on the sidelines? Update : An utube link for the pandal.

Ekdalia. Garish. I felt like calling it the moor's last sigh (at the moo-rals).

What with the recession, stock crash and all, the organizers at Selimpur Palli were of the grim view that it was the indeed the end of days, apocalypse, Armageddon, whatever. Why else would they think of putting the goddess on Noah's ark?

Rajib, the blackberry guy, was the host for ashtami evening. The inventory included a bottle of Stoli Vanil vanilla flavored vodka, one tequila (Pepe Lopez, not quite top of the line stuff, I hear), and also some VAT (but nobody was in the vatty mood). Rajib insisted that we do the Stoli first, and chase it down with Pepe shots. I suggested, on a whim, that we should try out some sort of a float with the vodka and some vanilla ice cream. Here goes.

1 1/2 oz vanilla flavored vodka

50 ml Ice cream soda/ Sprite

Two scoops vanilla ice cream

Mix the vodka, soda/sprite and ice cream into a smooth consistency. Pour in a highball glass and float a scoop of ice cream on top. Can be served with some strawberry or chocolate syrup topping. Suggested name: Stoli Scream.

The brand Tangra is now a pale shadow of what it used to be. At Kim Fa, the soup was passable, the noodle dishes (as famously put by J.A.P in recent times,) more Shyambazar than Sanghai, the less said about the Szechwan chicken the better. Maybe old man Kim was taking a nap. After all, it was afternoon during durgapujo time and the Bangali Bhadralok who wouldn't know their dim sums from their momos were all out in hordes.

Lately Rajib has developed this annoying habit of having a meal solely consisting of starters while eating out. After a coupla rounds of batter-fried chicken dumplings and babycorns, he sought to secure the kiddies' vote in his favor by announcing : All who want to eat starters only, say "aye", or something to that effect, which, sure enough, was getting some raised hands at the kids camp. Put down firmly by Subroto the mirthless girth with a gem of a statement : "Na. Ami food khabo." Which roughly translated to: "no i want to eat a proper meal", but easily became the best in hungry indignation since Major de Coverley's : "Gimme eat" in catch 22.

The Tangra Chinese are these days cheap neither. We paid 6000 bucks for a crowd of 20 not counting small kids. Sorry, Indranil the novelist payed. Not expensive really, but not dirt cheap by any standards. And the portions don't justify the rates.

The day before I was coming back, I needed to buy some red and green curry paste, lemongrass, nam pla, oyster sauce, bamboo shoots and other veggies I can't buy fresh at my small town marketplace. You can guess I'm trying to dabble in Thai cuisine. I was thinking maybe Spencer's but a friend suggested Hogg market. Hesitantly I went, probably after two-and-a half decades' hiatus. The place was a treasure trove, as ever. I got every item on my list, the way I'd wanted. Not only could I get lemongrass for Rs. 3 a stalk, (Spencer's charge 10, and sell stale stuff) every little shop at the back end alley was a revelation. I even ended up buying some Angostura bitters.

When we were little kids, people in Kolkata used to say that you could buy bat's wings and cheeta's milk at the New Market if you were paying the right price. Indeed. I perfectly see their point now.

Mouse on the house

It's a peaceful evening at the Pronto household. Ms. Ayushi is at her study table steadfastly battling her demons, namely : Averages, Angles and Decimals. At this particular instance there's a vicious quarrel brewing up between some stubborn supplementary and complementary angles who won't listen to to the voice of amicability. They insist on extracting their exact degrees of flesh from this squabble. Ms.Ayushi is in fact contemplating the prospect of seeking arbitration from daddy, who's in the next room in front of his PC reading worthless blogs. She doubts this will be a happy scenario, 'cause daddy, while pointing to a solution, has this nasty habit of running down people who are unequal to resolving such minor tiffs between angles. Those people include mommy, who has washed her hands off Maths ever since Ayushi went to standard five, into the grim world of fractions, geometry and other goblins. At this very moment, mommy is grappling with one of her endless phone calls, which threatens to eat into her appointment with sa-re-ga-ma-pa.

All in all, a pretty picture of blissful domesticity, with all indications that God has turned in a bit early for the night after a long week at office( sending another half a dozen i-banks packing), seeing all's well with heaven and earth.

Suddenly blasted to smithereens by a deep, lusty, soul-stirring cry of eeeeeeeek emitting from Ms. Ayushi's room. Followed by mommy slamming down the phone and running into cupboards and bedspreads with a broom in hand. Such a commotion that even daddy has to reluctantly abandon his schemes of changing the world, pondering on the latest entry in Dilbert blog.

Peoople will ask why all that fuss over a puny liddil mouse. What they don't seem to understand (to paraphrase John McCain), is that nothing can put on a homeowners' pride and self-belief a bigger dent than a rodent in the house.

The military attache' at the White House placed a frantic call to Pentagon : an wild moose is scouring the lawns, threatening national security. Get in touch with the Governor of Alaska ASAP......oops, wrong war story. Truth be told though, SOS calls did get made to various corners of the map. Ayushi's mom calling most of her relatives for advice on assault plan and damage control. It all ended with Daddy running to the nearest mom-and-pops' and heckling them into opening their store well past ten. A pack of ratkill was secured. Chuha jisse kha-kar, mare bahar jaa-kar. Ayushi promptly announced she'd sleep the night on her parents' bed. No, make that every night, till the mouse is gone.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dead at night, with Ayushi fast asleep save occasionally mumbling something about a mouse creeping over her pillow, the missus tells me she had wind of this. Well in advance. "Y'know, I used to get a mousy smell. Everywhere. In every nook." I'm like,"what, do you mean you kept smelling a rat? And I always thought that smell was about dead rats and financial scams only? Never knew live mice had a particular smell too."

For the next three agonizing days, the mouse kept eating the ratkill. Part by part. Only it didn't seem to be dying. It was very much alive. And it was having one hell of a bowel movement. maybe the Mortein company made sure their poison was full of fiber. Maybe it was meant to go out to defecate and die in the process. The mouse never made that mistake. Everyday, the missus would find inside cupboard and bed boxes, rat stool in quantities I myself would've been proud of as a homo sapiens. Oh for the iniquities of being!

"Hubby, our plan doesn't appear to be working."
"Who do you think you're dealing with, dear lady? It's a mouse, it should know all about the best laid plans."

"Y'know, dear, we should go get a mouse trap."
"What? No, no, no, not tonight, old lass. Tonight I'm not in the mood for Mrs. Christie. Tonight I'll be with Sir Pelham."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They say, (with apologies to The Boss)

You can't kill some vermin without getting blood on your hands
This gun's for hire, even as you're just dancing in your pants.

How the mouse was won, is not a pretty story. It involved gore, a broom, heroics from our maid, and other icky stuff.

Our maid is getting a hefty bonus this festive season. And we're driving down to Kolkata for Pujo after two long years, glum in the knowledge our books and blankets are safe once again. Wish you all a happy Pujo, Dussera and Navaratri !

My wife has information from the grapevine there might be bomb blasts this Durga Pujo in Kolkata. I doubt it. Militants never pick Kolkata. Didi is doing enough here already towards disrupting public life.