Jhumlasana, Hanko and Hypotenuse

“Accha, look,” my 11-year old son shouted from the tatami room. I turned back to see him lying supine on a pile of pillows with his head, arms, and legs stretched and dangling down. “Modiji’s yoga pose,” he said. He was doing Jhumlasana, a signature move that was conceived and popularized by Indian PM Modi. Modiji, we all know, performs his stunts on rough, inhospitable terrains such as on rocks and stuff, which is possible only through years and years of practice posing in front of cameras. So, ideally kids shouldn’t be trying those at home, but it has been a tough couple of months for my son. Ever since the coronavirus-related restrictions came into place and the consequent lack of entertainment, he has been restless around the house and frankly quite a handful – riding his RipStik blade inside, playing hoops with a small ball and toy hoop in the bedroom, making a metre-long straw to drink his juice, burning old birthday candles, remodelling his RC cars, and creating his own hip-hop bling jewellery with gem clips, one of which I had to wear on my neck for a few hours while working.

It’s been more than six months since $#it hit the Chinese fan in Wuhan, and almost four months since I started wearing a mask when going out. Back in early February, I remember driving my niece to a concert in Shibuya. On our way, we saw the infamous COVID-19 infected cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, quarantined in Yokohama port while crossing the Rainbow Bridge. Once we reached Shibuya, and after ensuring that my niece was safely inside the concert hall, we whiled away the time by strolling around the district taking in the sights, had coffee and cake at a café crowded with fashionable youth, and later just sat outside the concert place waiting for my niece to come out. The area was bustling as usual with hordes of people, many of them tourists, and mostly young. But one thing stood out. Most of them had masks on. 

This was in early February, as I said earlier. The pandemic was yet to overrun Italy and other European nations. Modiji, the masterstroker was planning to fill up a stadium later in the month for his phrend Trump the Two Dick (an honorary title bestowed on cowshed/stable geniuses; from the Hindi word Dho Lund). In fact, he won’t take out his next masterstroke, the one for saving India’s middle class, for another month and a half. However, based on a titbit of information released strategically in June, we know that Modiji was aware of the COVID-19 pandemic much earlier than anyone else on the face of the earth. Not only that, he had prepared a secret plan to tackle this crisis as early as January. He then secretly buried that plan under a neem tree in his backyard and, as is his wont, shot off a poetic letter to his mom. Neem tree, as per our ancient texts, has magical powers and on full moon days, when Jupiter is near Uranus and you feel the urge, dogs will pee on the tree at the stroke of midnight, imparting special powers on whatever is hidden under it. Anyway, after almost three months of keeping it hidden, Modiji pulled that magically-charged plan out on March 24 at 7:45 pm. That time 7:45, you see, is important. According to numerology, 7 + 4 = 11, and 11 + 5 of course is 16. Now comes the interesting part. 1 + 6… Voila, it’s 7. What comes after 7? Eight, obviously. So, at 8:00 pm on March 24, Modiji came on TV, secret plan in hand, and said “Mitrroon”. The rest, as they say, is history, as the country went into lockdown and slew that virus in 21 days. But, then there is the old Swedish Gir jungle saying, "Modiji hai to Moomin hai (Modiji is Moomin)," or something like that.

Sorry I got carried away by the Indian story. I was planning to write about what has been happening here in Nippon. The Japanese PM, perhaps taking a cue from Modiji, ordered a lockdown here in Japan in April. Well, not exactly “ordered”. Given his boob size, which is nowhere near 56 inches, all PM Abe could do was make a request. “Please try and stay home and do not go out if it is non-essential…”. So, many people kept going to work on crowded trains and buses, because they have to do this very essential thing called pressing a hanko on papers. The hanko is your personal seal. Everything in Japan needs a hanko. You may be tattooing 命 on your butt cheek or you may be buying a smartphone. All the relevant procedures will be completed digitally, but then they’ll print everything out and you have to press your hanko in at least 10 places to make it official. So, in modern, digitally-savvy Japan, workers trudge to offices in the midst of a lockdown to do this extremely “essential” act.

Anyway, we, as a family, decided to practice self-restraint and limited our trips outside to once a week to buy stuff. We switched from shopping at different neighbourhood shops to shopping at a big supermarket a few kilometres away. In the first week of lockdown, the place was crowded with people buying up things, and the checkout queue snaked around inside the store with waiting time of up to an hour. There I was, standing in a queue, thinking whether I should fart loudly if I have to cough for some reason, when a lady in the adjacent queue coughed. I immediately began making calculations – we are about two feet apart; she is four and a half feet tall; I am six feet; How do you find the frikkin’ hypotenuse of a triangle h = 1.5 feet, l = 2 feet? Fortunately, I’ve been teaching my boys and knew the formula for hypotenuse, ⇃(h² + l²)  i.e.  = 2.5 feet. Now, convert it…c'mon... my mind raced… 1 foot is about 30cm. Shit, the government said a minimum of one metre in social distancing and this is only about 75cm. Does the coronavirus float up like helium? Does it know about government guidelines and refrain from attacking sideways? I was not sure. Fortunately, going against Murphy’s law, my line moved and I heaved a sigh of relief. The next week was pretty much the same, but the shop restricted entry to one person from a family or group. And by the fourth week, nobody cared (except for masks and some social distancing). 

Right now, things seem to be under control. However, many new cases are being traced to hostess clubs, pointing to some guys losing control. Well, can’t help it, as they have been atmanirbhar (self-reliant) strokers for a while now. Meanwhile, nobody seems to know how this is all going to end. I too don’t know how to end this rant other than by chanting Go Corona, Go! 

Alternative Fact-ory

At times, I want to be Sivan. Not the destroyer god with three eyes, though I wouldn’t mind having that third eye. Especially when driving. Would love to incinerate some of the f#$%ing maniacs who magically appear in front of me when I am driving. The other day, driving from Rama Rao Lamp towards Palayam, easily one of the widest stretches in the city, my smooth progress was blocked by a woman on a scooter, two guys on a bike and a small van (engine power = 0.005 Mhp; Mhp denotes “Miniature horsepower” a new SI unit I just made up) all cruising in sync at 25 cm per hour, occupying three lanes – three f#$%ing lanes. Oh, for that third eye! Oh, for that frikkin’ third eye!

Lady on scooter, blissfully unaware of the havoc she’s causing around her… Poof! Ash!

Guys riding bike, carrying a sack, probably filled with 10 rupee notes given by the bank in accordance with the 56^th RBI regulation of the day… Poof! Gone!

Low Mhp, make-in-India van loaded with PVC pipes… Poof! Smouldering f#$%in’ embers!

And just for the fun of it - lady in small car going in the other direction, head barely visible, knuckles white from strangling the steering wheel… Poof!

I’d gladly give my eyeteeth for that third eye!

Enough ranting for now. Let’s get back to Sivan.

Sivan appeared before me some five or six years ago. I don’t remember exactly when. It was about six in the evening, and walking back to my house I saw him sitting forlornly on the steps of this deck-like extension of my dining room.   

I went up to him and said something like “Yo, ‘sup Sivan?” in Malayalam. Sivan is hard of hearing and in the twilight he could barely read my lips, but he replied. It was more of a statement. “I don’t have a place to sleep.” Till the previous day, he was at a neighbour’s and apparently he had had a tiff with the lady of that house. Sivan is always having tiffs - with walls, with stray dogs, with guava trees, etc. And from what I learned, he has switched his residence a few times in the last few years after having tiffs with the house owners. I shrugged and pointed at the deck and that’s where Sivan has been for the last five or six years – the longest he has stayed anywhere in recent memory.

Sivan does odd jobs in the neighbourhood like cleaning yards and dehusking coconuts for, literally, peanuts. He won’t accept more than 200 rupees at a time, which is probably enough to cover his food expenses for two days. No financial planning for him. His material possessions (he has the key to the shed in my yard) has increased to two bundles now, and for some reason he has a fetish for footwear. His footwear collection is reaching Imelda Marcos-esque proportions with 7 or 8 pairs of sandals of different hues lined up by the deck.

So, what I’m getting at is that Sivan was the one person I knew who was not affected by the Supreme Leader sucking cash out of the system. No banks to go to, no 500 or 1,000 rupee notes. Sivan didn’t care. And I wanted to be Sivan. I know that demonetisation is so 2016, but I started writing this piece back then and couldn’t complete it (as I was standing in the queue). Please bear with me.

Another thing that has been bothering me for some time now is the words being used to describe our rulers by their devotees. We have a supreme leader with a 56-inch body part and a state leader with dual organs. I haven’t heard anything yet about our mayor, who seems to be busy doing nothing. It’s possible that he too has an inordinately long organ – a 12-metre long small intestine, perhaps – and his devotees are waiting for the right moment to publicise it.

Anyway, with all these talks about organs in the air, I suddenly felt a nagging doubt about the adequacy of my organs. Being a science-oriented person, I immediately went for the tape measure and set about measuring myself. I am a reasonably big man. I’m six feet tall and can oscillate between well-built and fat f#ck in the space of few hours. The tape went around my chest and said 108! Wow! “I’m the biggest! I’m the biggest!” No, wait. That is in cm. Converted, it was just 42 inches. Pathetic. My self-esteem went poof like the lady on the scooter in front of my third eye!

I needed to come out of this dire situation and that’s when I got this idea of calling up the Central Statistical Office. They’re good with numbers, I had heard. The voice at the other end was brusque, “What’s your problem?”

I explained my problem and there was a smirk at the other end.

CSO man: “Where did you start your measurement from?”

Me: “Seerow…sorry, Zero..that was my mallu accent acting up..y’know unguarded moments.”

More smirking at the other end. Was that for the accent? Hmm.

CSO man: “Well, there lies your problem.”

Me: “What?”

CSO man: “Try starting from 15.” Click.

It worked. I’m a 57-incher now. My self-esteem zoomed. I was on par with Arnold Shivajinagar.. sorry Schwarzenegger!

I was happy. That was all that mattered, and as luck would have it, I had unwittingly become part of the hottest trend sweeping the world. I plunged headlong into the “alternative fact-ory” movement.

Though I wrote headlong, it was not that I didn’t think about it at all. I did get some insights from friends who made me see the light about reading such “alternative fact-based” news. The fact is that such news made them happy. These are good people, and like good people in many countries, they’re constantly worried about their country going to the dogs. Especially, dog forbid, to dogs from a different religion or dogs of a different colour. 

So, when they hear that a decision by their supreme leader (also known as the “master stroker”) has led to a drastic fall in cancer incidence in Rarotonga, which was verified by NASA’s sister organization NAUSEA (National Absurd & Unverifiable Story Excretion Agency,) they go overboard with happiness. They also altruistically spread that happiness around through WhatsApp and other media. Once it is posted in three WhatsApp groups, it becomes a universal fact. (Also, stop smirking at the word stroker. I didn’t mean that!)

Well, you can’t blame them. He is a Cisco Certified National Leader (CCNL). He came in fifth initially, but after some time, was revised upwards to third. More happiness. Cisco promised $100 million investment in India after giving the certificate. Unbeknownst to us, Cisco had promised 100 times that, i.e. a $10 billion investment in our bad-ass neighbour up north in China. Guess Xi Jinping pings at a higher level.

Then, there is Jason the Yankee Hindunaut. His greatest advantage is that his identity can’t be tracked down easily, unlike say, a Mark Tully. Jason is what they call a double agent, a RAW CIA agent. In his day job, he is the run of the mill CIA agent, but at night he turns into Trishul Subbu (scary rudra veena bgm). Happiness all around, again.

Now since I’ve jumped into this happiness-generating alternative factory movement, I thought I should dredge up my own stories from the interwebs. That is the great thing about this movement. There are no leaders. Anyone can come up with anything. If someone contradicts you, all you have to say is, “that’s your opinion.” Ultimately, everything boils down to your pursuit of happiness. So, here’s an alternative factory product.

Godse didn’t kill the pop of the nation for his Muslim appeasement as propagated. Some people say…could be Jason. I’ve been reading things on the net and lots of people are talking about many such things. In fact, I’m going to come back here and cite myself... well, some people say that Godse might have been a lovechild of a Ghandy, and was acting out his primal id to eliminate an imaginary father. Look at the names – Mohandas Ka"RAM"chand Gandhi and Nathu"RAM" Vinayak Godse. Scary, isn’t it? Incredibly, if you rearrange Nathuram Vinayak Godse, you get “u a very matka gandhi son”. These are things the mainstream media and the biased historians don’t ever ever want you to know.

So, don’t be fooled guys. Come aboard. Pursue happiness. Create your bubble.