And change is what I got. Got married and got a car. Suddenly two females in my life. No more boring walks to home. It was me, my wife and my girlfriend (Chevy Spark), all in the happy family, dashing towards our home. Of course, I had a new share of frustrations now. Damn those two wheelers and pedestrians getting in my path in the most disorderly fashion. I’d miss hitting them, I’d cuss, I’d hiss with anger. When will we get civilized on the road? If this is the state of traffic on the “Cyberabad” roads, what will happen to the rest of the country? Somebody please widen the roads. Build footpaths, for Christ’s sake.

But none of that happened. Madhapur roads kept getting narrower and traffic kept getting unrulier. After a while, I guess I too became a part of it (or was I always) and driving back home again became monotonous. It was all programmed in the mind. Slow down in front of NIFT, someone’s gonna suddenly run across the road. Stick to the left in front of Hutch (Vodafone), someone’s gonna take a U-turn. Stick to the right in front of Cafe Nandini, buses are going to stop still. I could drive with my eyes closed, I swear.  Heck, I wanted a change!

And change is what I got. Four years hence, on this very fateful day of the seventh of February, two thousand and ten, yours truly realized he’s long due for a hair cut and decided to visit the saloon a couple of kilometers away. And as fate would have it, he decided not to take his car but save petrol and hence, took a shared auto. It cost the same ol’ 4 bucks. The same ol’ tradition of yielding your seat to the lady and sitting in front hanging out alongside the driver. Same ol’ Himesh blaring at the back, the obnoxious treble setting of the stereo (“Made in China”) thumping your heart out with every beat. Somehow, it all felt so good now. Anyway, the auto trip finished in a flash as I was slowly beginning to enjoy it. The hair cut also finished in a flash as I was slowly beginning to show nothing left on the scalp. Time to take another auto and dash back home. Crossed the road (Oh, how I loved hopping across the road with cars whizzing by. Boy, the thrill!). I wait for the autos to come. One comes but it ain’t taking me coz I ain’t going too far and he’d much rather take someone else who’s gonna pay more. Same ol’ calculative auto wallahs. I wait some more. Another comes but it’s not on share. Oh damn, how long do I have to wait. And then it strikes me. Bugger, it’s just a couple of kilometers to your home and you got all the time in the world. Sheesh, don’t you even remember you used to walk more than this not so long back. Now quit waiting and cussing and get your feet moving!

And so I started walking. The same ol’ congested road. With the same ol’ uncivilized traffic. But this time, I wasn’t bored. I wasn’t gazing aimlessly ahead. I started looking around. Boy oh boy, how things have changed. Where’s that apparel store who’d always have a “Buy 2, get 10″ offer? And who’s this Sarvy bakery? I thought it had a different name? Glad to see Mohammed’s book store still there. He doesn’t recognize me. I don’t want him to either, I still have the Archies comics I took from him on “rent”. Ah, so this is the new eatery where all the bachelors hog these days. Look at them in their bermudas and toothpaste borne tees hogging away at those idlies. And geez, look at those towering buildings that have come up. When did all that happen?And what’s with this new fashion all ladies (mostly unmarried) have of covering their faces with a scarf? It almost looks like a Taliban out here. Is it the dust? The weather? Ah, I get it, it’s us guys who have forced them to this with our perverted stares. Aww, how sad, I bet those big eyes have an equally pretty face to carry them.

I felt like I was visiting this place after ages while I was just there all this time. Never realised how things changed around while I was driving through them cussing and fretting. Yeah, it’s the same ol’ Madhapur alright, the same set of busy young professionals hustling and bustling along with their lives. The same narrow roads with the same unruly traffic. But after years of cussing, walking and driving along them, I felt to delighted watching it all again as a pedestrian today. And as I felt the delight and a smile came across my face, I hopped back on to the road to cross it, getting swore on at by the passing car. We never change.

Some usage examples:

• “Aarey, o ye te geche” (Oh, he has gone to ye) — when you can’t remember the place name.
• “Ye ke bole dish jeye ami eshe chilam” (Tell ye that I had come) — when you can’t remember the person name.
• “O boddo ye hoye geche aajkal” (He has become very ye these days) — when you can’t remember the adjective.
• “Ye, bolchilam jeye…” (Umm..I was saying) — Umm (the stop-gap utterance) is replaced by Ye.

Sometimes you don’t even have to get back with the correct word you actually wanted to say when you replaced it with “Ye”. The context of saying it conveys enough information to the receiver and he/she will reply to it in perfect sync.

• “Ye ta eshe geche ki?” (Has the ye arrived) — listener knows what the Ye you are talking about if the Ye has already been discussed and the context set.

So you get the drift, right? Ye your way into happiness when you speak Bong. Everyone loves it, everyone uses it.  You might have noticed that I always mentioned that this word is spoken. Yeah, “Ye” is not a gramatically correct Bengali word. Use it in your next Bengali essay and you are going to get back a lot of @#$$^&s or you know, “Ye”s. It is a popular Bengali-as-a-spoken-language innovation. A Ye here and  a  Ye there doesn’t break a purist’s heart and rather, it saves a lot of time while conversing and basically adds that casual, informal,  easy-going feel to the conversation which is what a Bengali always loves to do.

For more of such useless information on popular Bengali culture, visit my dedicated blog on this topic.

Today’s question is a topical one and has generous set of clues. Like some of my other questions went, X created something which later would have a very popular “usage”, Y was inspired by this creation to create another popular creation and Z has one of the most popular references of that “usage”. Identify all and give me a really nice story to bind them. And here’s wishing you all a very happy 2009.

Answer:

So here I am, a good 9 months after I originally posted this entry, coming back to update this post with the answer. As if someone cares. But anyway, as the first presenter of Mastermind series, Magnús Magnússon, would have said, “I’ve started so I’ll finish”, I too will do the same and bring a graceful demise to this post.

Now I thought the one picture in this question which was easily identifiable was “Z” which is nothing but the poster of the famous romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, “When Harry Met Sally”. BTW, such was the ingenuity of my framing the question, if you notice, the pics X, Y, Z appear in the order Z, X, Y. Genius, isn’t it?! Anyway, so coming back to the movie, they say the best moment in the movie is the ending when Billy Crystal comes running to this New Year’s party and confronts Meg Ryan and then they have this typical boy-girl crib talk and then the clock starts ticking towards 12 a.m. and countdown crystal keeps coming down and then as the new year arrives, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan make it all up within themselves and start kissing as the western tradition goes and then the moment comes which connects this whole goddamn movie to this goddamn question — a song plays in the background and Crystal asks Meg, “What does this song mean?  For my whole life I don’t know what this song means.  I mean, ‘Should old acquaintance be forgot’.  Does that mean we should forget old acquaintances or does it mean if we happen to forget them we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot them!?”

That song, my friends, is the creation in question - “Should old acquaintance be forgot, Auld lang syne”, a song which was orginally written by Robert Burns, our man in pic “X”. For whatever Robert Burns intended to write that song, the song, for some reason, became the anthem in Western countries to celebrate the coming of a new year. So come 1-Jan, 0000 hours and they all start crooning this song. But hum this tune to a Bengali and he would immediately retort back that this tune was originally composed by the greatest Bengali, Indian ever, Kobiguru Rabindranath Tagore (Mr. Y) for his song, “Purano shei diner kotha” (Those old memories). But truth be told, even the great Robi Thakur had his moments and actually had plagiarized this tune (as well as the song “Fule Fule” from another Scottish tune; mail me to get bored on that). But I am not complaining. Neither should anyone. It’s a wonderful tune and while I’m sure that a lot of Westerners would have fond memories singing it during New Year’s, I and many fellow Bongs would have our own singing/listening to the Hemanta’s rendition of Purano Shei. And to that, I am eternally grateful to all these great men.

If memory serves me right, my good friends, Rajorshi Biswas and Sourya Biswas attempted this question and either almost cracked it or gave the full answer. Kudos to them. They certainly don’t seem to have forgotten the Kothas of Purano Shei Dins.

I don’t really want to write an essay on how my Pujos went ‘coz there simply is so much to write and besides, the Pujo topic has been covered widely in all media. So I’ll briefly summarise the highs and lows of our Pujo experience.

Yay! -

• Rain Gods having mercy – the clouds were looming large as Panchami (5th day of Pujo) had set in and the weathermen were spelling doom for this year’s Pujo with cyclonic storms looming large. The satellite pics were all white washed towards the eastern part of India. Mahashashthi (6th day of Pujo) even saw some mild rains with gloomy and sultry conditions through out the day. The situation looked extremely murky. But as usual, the Met. department got it wrong and suddenly, the clouds cleared out of the way for some bright blue skies. We didn’t see a single drop rain till we came back which was two weeks later.
• Media coverage – Now, this is one big change that I, as a person who has moved out of Kolkata, got to realise this time. Media coverage of Pujo is no more confined to DD Bangla’s daily Pujo Parikrama, symbols of ‘Kaash fool’ and Dhak appearing along with the channel symbol, afternoon “Chooti Chooti” shows and some nice pics of Pujo in the papers. Pujo is media now. Every Pujo had some news or other television channel covering them with the same old questions being posed to the 15-mins-fame happy Pujo revellers – “Apnar ekhane eshe kemon lagche? Pujo apnar jonne ki maane raakhe?” (How are you finding this place? What does Pujo mean to you?). This would be responded to with the same answers having a lot of ‘”Darun, darun” (Excellent, excellent) utterances in between. Print media has undergone a huge change with the major newspapers publishing the route maps, emergency contacts numbers, Pujo articles, recipes etc. apart from the usual pics and reports. Radio also now has a huge presence with live traffic updates, Pujo pandal updates, special programs et al. I must say, all this has been for the better ‘coz they really added to the Pujo atmosphere.
• Pujo Traffic – Yes, this actually was good if you compare it with the previous years. At least, much better than the last time I had seen (that’d be 2006). Lot of traffic police were deployed at every point and they were ably helped by volunteer organizations, school scouts, civic volunteers, pandal officials etc. True, one still had to park their cars far from the pandals and lots of roads were closed or made one-ways and all this would only add to the frustration. But if you look at the larger picture, it was all done in a planned manner and traffic was indeed flowing throughout the city and there wasn’t a bottleneck anywhere. Hats off to the traffic department and volunteers who sacrificed their celebrations to make it easier for others. God bless!
• V.I.P passes – The sceptics may cry that everyone is equal in front of God and no one should get special privileges. Even I would have been tempted to say the same a month back. But then, my aunt handed me these pieces of paper with Pujo pandal names written on them with these words written in bold – “V.I.P Pass“. And she asked me to once go against my ethics and try them out. Next I saw myself breezing past a hapless queue of Pujo revellers, all sweating bucket loads in the Kolkata heat, only because I had this small yet extremely powerful piece of paper in hand. What more, even inside the pandal, I was in a separate section right in front of the idols with the best view of them and not a single sould around. Unity and equality can take a hike – give me them V.I.P passes!

Uggh! -

• Kolkata Humidity – It’s official. I have completely lost my adaptibility to Kolkata’s sultry climate. This,  or it could be that it was humid beyond normal levels during Pujo in 2008. ‘Coz I was sweating. And I was sweating good. Real good. And I wasn’t completely alone. People were pouring sweat dressed in their most pompous state in this kind of weather. It wasn’t a good sight, I’ll tell you. One really wished at times that it actually would start to rain.
• Crowds – Well, nothing new here. It’s Pujo after all. Yeah, yeah, the crowd is what makes Kolkata’s Pujo even more special. But 1) I can do with a lesser volume of it. 2) Amidst all this crowd, for the first time, I didn’t see a single pretty face through out this Pujo. Now that’s stretching my patience too much.
• Pick pockets – Somebody actually thought that my mobile phone is an expensive one and so decided to filch while I was all engrossed in taking one of my Nat Geo pics. The crook would have realised soon what a raw deal he had managed. It was a 2.5 years old Motorola L7 with a good set of scratches, a battered battery and a wiped off keypad. Only regret from my side, I lost all the contacts.
• Endless walks – As mentioned before, there was a lot of walking involved while pandal hopping. Again, nothing new, but is quite challenging for a lazy bum like me. Can’t say it did any good to reduce my waistline. But it certainly left me with two very sore feet.

It was a complete experience overall and now I can proudly say that I have indeed seen Kolkata’s Pujo. But like all good things, this also did come to an end and it’s back to normal life now. But as the popular saying goes in Bengal, “Aasche bochor, abar hobe” (Next year, it will happen again). And so it will.

- Yabber

Now the phrase “Oh! Calcutta!” has become popularly associated with the city and is used in many magazines, news reports, programmes etc. related to Kolkata as the title. There is also a popular chain of restuarants by the name “Oh! Calcutta!” in some major Indian cities including Kolkata (a must visit, BTW, for people visiting Kolkata. You get amazing Bengali cuisine there; a bit expensive though).

So the phrase “Oh! Calcutta!” would be the answer for the first question of my last quiz. X was the theatrical poster and Y a bird’s eye view of a significant part of Kolkata (you can see the Howrah bridge over the Hooghly, Eden Gardens stadium in the top right and Maidans below).

The two wise men in the second question’s pic are John Calvin, a French theologian and Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher. And they are the very men after whom the main characters of the popular comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, are named. Which is the answer of question 2.

It’s going to be “Oh! Calcutta!” for me for the next 2 weeks as I go home to celebrate Durga Puja. So this blog is going to see some even quieter times till then. Wishing you all here in India, a very happy Eid and Dusshera. Be good and stay safe. I leave you with a random strip from CnH. Enjoy!

]]> http://yabb.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/oh-calcutta/feed/ 0 yabber cnh http://yabb.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/sassy-girls/ http://yabb.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/sassy-girls/#comments Sun, 21 Sep 2008 07:29:07 +0000 yabber http://yabb.wordpress.com/?p=134 ]]> Seems it’s going to be this quiet in here for some time now. Given the immenesely hectic schedules I am going through. And you’ll are going though. Coz I get no responses for my questions!!

Anyway, moving on with the quiz questions. The answers for the last 2 questions:-

1. The connection is the popular South Korean movie/story, “My Sassy Girl“. This romantic comedy revolves around the chance meeting of a young guy with this stoned girl and how he tries to get her back home to safety dealing with all her histrionics. One thing leads to another and they fall in love and decide to meet underneath a tree someday where they have buried letters writing about how they feel for each other. I’m not really in a narrative mood today, hence such an appalling summary of the story. But do watch it if you get it. It’s good.

The man in the top left is Kim Ho-sik on whose story, this movie is based. He had actually published all his experiences on the internet which became so popular that a novel was made out of it. Which was then made into Korean movie. Which in turn has inspired the 2008 Hollywood flick of the same name (the poster). And also, it inspired the 2008 Bollywood flick, “Ugly aur Pagli” starring Ranbir Shoery and Mallika Sherawat (lady in pink). And that, my friends, is the connect!

2. Again, thought this was easy and was waiting for a correct response. The companies whose logos are in the question, have come together to create the India’s first hill station since independence — Lavasa near Pune, Maharashtra. The logos in order - Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), Novotel, Apollo Hospitals, ITC, Symbiosis Society and University of Oxford. 

Now to this week’s questions:-

1. X is the poster for a theatrical. The image in the poster as well as the name of the theatrical is inspired from something. And that “something” has also inspired “something else” related to Y. Tell me all.

2. An age old chestnut. Who are these and what did they inspire?

Today’s recommendation is actually a reasonably well known movie in certain circles, but again, not mainstream. I love world war movies. Heck, I love anything to do with world wars. Especially, World War 2. So a lot of my favorite movies, books, series etc. tend to be based on WW2. This movie is one of those WW2 movies, if you will. But it’s not your typical war movie with bodies of soldiers flying around and platoon leaders going bonkers over the radio. The movie Biloxi Blues is more about the lives of soldiers in the barracks and the little incidents and stories that go on between them as they prepare to go the battlefield.

The story revolves around that of new army recruit Eugene Jerome (Matthew Broderick) and his fellow soldiers in his platoon which is led by Sergeant Toomey. As Eugene learns the ropes of fighting, he matures to be a man and observes the various eccentricities of his fellow soldiers and records them in his personal diary. Really, one of the things I liked the most about this movie were the characters played by unknown actors. There is the God fearing Epstein (Corey Parker) who despises anything wordly, then the flamboyant Joseph Wykowski (Matt Mulhern) who thinks of himself as the most dashing man around. Then Don Carney (Casey Siemaszko), who’s the best mate of Eugene and finds solace in the fact that Eugene, like himself, is also a virgin and he’s not alone in his attempts to losing it.

But of course, the man who takes the movie to a different level is the veteran, Christopher Walken, who plays the character of Sgt. Toomey to perfection. Toomey is your typical strict sarge who has seen the worst of wars and is a man toughened by those many years seeing bloodshed and deaths around. He doesn’t tolerate any indiscipline nor any weak hearted soldiers. He’s tough and doesn’t mind making his men pee their pants to make them tough. But he also doesn’t like smart alecs and soldiers being too perfect for his comfort. He wants a reason to thrash his men and wants to be a hated man himself. He puts his men under the test by openly abusing them and wants them to face it tough ‘coz there ain’t any room for any mother loving pansy. In all this tough play, Toomey gets into some knotty situations with his men and finds himself getting a taste of his own medicine.

The movie ends with Toomey making his pet-hate, Epstein, punish Toomey himself. The best moment comes when Epstein orders to Toomey to “count off”. It’s these small incidents and characters which make the movie memorable. It kind of reminds one of the Beetle Bailey or MASH series. I’m not saying it’s the greatest movie you’re ever gonna watch. In fact, it’s far from that. But it is a nice, feel-good Sunday watch and if you are a war movie fan like me, you would want to watch this to see the world war from a lighter perspective.

How to get the movie – You’d be really lucky if you get hold of it’s rented CD/DVD or even torrent. At least I could not find it. But you might want to check out the listings of HBO or Sony Pix which have shown this movie a few times. Also, in case you find this in a store, buy it. Youtube will give you a few clippings.

Secondly, it’s been a very hectic week for me with work starting at 9:30 a.m. and ending somewhere around 10 p.m. almost everyday. Add to that, I have some exams coming for me in the last week of September and I desperarely need to get started with the preparations. But till now, it’s only been 4-5 lines a night before I doze off everytime. Bummer!

So anyhoo, let me reveal the answers for the last two questions :-

1. The words “Ecce Homo” would be the right answer for this one. Meaning “Behold The Man”, these were the words used by Pontius Pilate when he presented Jesus Christ to the people for crucifixion. The first pic is a painting depicting the same by Quentin Matsys. The second pic is a portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch. Ecce Homo is the title of the last book written by Nietzsche. And finally, Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) makes an appearance in the connect because Ecce Homo is the title theme of the series, Mr. Bean (non-animated one, of course).

2. Blistering barnacles!, someone should have cracked this. Is an “old chestnut”. These are the flags of the fictitous countries appearing in the Adventures of Tintin series. In order – Syldavia, San Theodoros and Borduria.

20 points to the quiz master. <clap><clap>

Now to the next two questions of this series. In my opinion, both of these are reasonably easy. Hoping for some cracks this time.

1. Connect (full story please)

2. Connect again. The following have collaborated to do something which is a first in India. (have deliberately shaded some portions)

Basically, the idea is to get maximum participation from all the readers of this blog. Yes, all four of you. “Regular quizzers” are ones who scour through all the other numerous quiz blogs, attend all major quiz competitions and quiz club meetings in and around their cities and win thousands of rupees, thousands worth Landmark/Odyssey coupons, scores of t-shirts and a few iPods each year. To challenge them, one needs to come up with tough arbit questions from not so popular domains. But such questions tend to to discourage the “non-regular quizzers” from participating i.e. peope who have the knack for trivia but do not pursue it as a hobby and may not have all the “old chestnuts” at the tips of their fingers. For them, good but old quiz questions are ideal as while they are challenging for them and encourages more participation, the quiz master also gets to enjoy all the “oohs” and “aahs” that come out when the answers are revealed.

So the rules are simple here – each quiz post would carry two questions and one can attempt any number of those. The questions, per sé, would not have any tag saying “for regulars” or “for non-regulars” but one of them might be slightly difficult/arbit while the other much easier. No points involved anywhere. It’s just the quizzing. But people with maximum answers would certainly get special mentions. So anyway, without further yaking, let’s get on to the questions:-

1. Connect

2. Connect (think fiction)

Again, a solo winner this time – Priyambad Pattanayak - the movie buff that he is, this probably was a piece of cake for him. Well done, Patt!