'Why Won't Someone Think of the Poor Kids?'

There was a time when pathetic deadbeat lowlifes working in call centres and referring to themselves as ‘executives’ would call me up and request “a minute of my [fucking] time” to enlighten me about a new housing realty scheme or some great new offer in HDFC bank or about how I had “won” a brand new free caller tune for which I would just have to pay 40 bucks a month. Life was so much simpler in those days; it was uncomplicated. I could tell these morons that “I’m not interested” and hang up without waiting for a response. They weren’t complete boneheads though, or at least their bosses weren’t, so in time they would anticipate the “not interested” response and retaliate with a pleading tone to hear them out. OK, well played, but whatever. I could still hang up.

Then came that DND ruling which allowed consumers to stop these phone calls via some procedure that I don’t know too well. So companies stopped investing heavily in the practice of these cold calls. Instead, they began bombarding me with texts. No worries, brothers; I started blocking those numbers each time I got a text since my unsmartphone does indeed have the option of blocking spam. And yes, I get that they could always spam me with a different number. But at least I could feel superior about blocking every single number of theirs, like one of those first person shooter games. It was challenging; fun, nonetheless.

All good till now: ‘Perils of Capitalism’, I say. Until like ten minutes ago. Indeed, now the power has fallen into the wrong hands.

The newest trend consists of NGOs – those paragons of virtue and morality and integrity and honour and decency and other bullshit middle-management terms – that have diligently employed those same morons [call centre executives with limited language skills; any language] to inundate unwitting consumers into ‘donating’ money for ‘noble causes’.

Personally, I’m against the idea of charity (unless I’m the one receiving it), because it’s degrading, unbecoming, etc. However, I can understand how the concept appeals to religious nuts or wealthy philanthropists trying to sidestep tax regulations and converting black money into white or maybe just generating goodwill to hide their other more devious goings on. Whatever; not my place to judge, and not that I particularly give two shits about the whole mess.

But ultimately, the long-winded point that I’m trying to get at is that charity, fundamentally, should be natural. It should come from within. It can’t be forced, or at least it shouldn’t be.

So when I just got a phone call, from a Delhi landline number no less, even though I have a Bombay number, and I answered, I regretted my decision instantly. It was a dimwitted little shit of a woman telling me that she was calling from an NGO which helps poor kids in need.

‘Oh, the kids, yes, yes, the goddamn kids, they need my money.’

Notice how they never ask you for old clothes or medicines or food or other essentials? They always want your fucking money. Always.

And the ploy is to emotionally blackmail the consumer into offering that money ‘voluntarily’. And once the money comes in, they can buy those poor kids in need Parle-G biscuits and clothes from those hawkers peddling substandard shit outside Jantar fucking Mantar, and they can pocket the rest of my money. Well, technically not ‘my’ money, because I would never pay. But someone’s money. For ‘infrastructure’. And, of course, there’s always the tax rebates when you run an NGO. It’s a classic strategy, this whole social entrepreneurship bullshit that’s doing the rounds.  

But again, whatever. I’m making the very daring assumption that they do in fact help the kids just a little with the money they swindle off of emotional softies. So there’s profit and there’s social welfare, which is great, no shit.

So I told the lady in question, who had called me up to beg me for money, that I “was not interested”, and I was about to hang up. But no; No is just not an acceptable answer for call centre dipshits.

Back she snapped, “But why? Why don’t you want to help out the ‘poor kids in need’? Can you tell me why?”

To which, I asked her where she got my number; I would never voluntarily pass on my number to anyone even vaguely associated with an NGO and that’s the whole truth. She told me they got it from a ‘database company’ – my guess is that it’s called Justdial but I’d rather not speculate.

So I asked her whether she knew it was illegal.

She said, “Why don’t you want to help the poor kids in need?”

“What you’re doing is wrong and underhanded,” I said.

“Why don’t you want to help the poor kids in need?” she replied.

“You do something unethical and illegal and then you try to emotionally blackmail me into giving you my money?” I asked, sort of rhetorically. I was clutching at straws here.

“We aren’t emotionally blackmailing you, Sir,” she said. “We’re asking you to help the poor kids in need. Why wouldn’t you do that?”

“Thank you; not interested,” I managed, and hung up.

She won.

Rating: 0

'Music' Review: Coldplay

Band: Coldplay

Album: Mylo Xyloto

Over the years, it’s become hip for self-professed ‘serious’ music lovers to hate Coldplay; even vocalist Chris Martin has mocked himself and the band multiple times. Why, we hear you ask? Is it because Martin is a whiny and annoying man-child who will never reach the emotional depths of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke? Maybe, but Mr. Martin does his best to dispel all notions of Coldplay being an insincere and inferior version of Radiohead in Mylo Xyloto, and the comparisons should finally stop now.

The reason for all the hate directed towards Coldplay is most likely the simplest answer (Occam’s razor and all that), which is that they genuinely do suck. The album has its fair share of promising moments, but since the band has pimped it out as a ‘concept album’, we are forced to judge the sum, and not the individual parts that constitute Mylo Xyloto.

The Good, the Bad…

In an attempt at building up a semblance of street-cred, Coldplay has once again managed to rope in Brian Eno (pretty much the father of Muzak/ambient music) for a collaboration, and the album is littered with beautiful instrumental passages of serene landscapes. These strings and synthesizer-laden tranquil moods fade in and fade out, pockmarked as they are by Martin’s jarring interventions and his insistence on cheesy lines of painful faux-depth. “Paradise” kicks off with an imperial strings section and a groove that trudges along just fine, before Martin interrupts, crooning: When she just was a girl/ she expected the world…Dreamed of para-para-paradise (the album is filled with such profound ge-ge-gems of wisdom). We threw up a little in our mouths, but the infuriatingly catchy melody of the vocals kept us hooked, before the pretty strings returned for partial respite.

There is some stellar (but nothing more) guitar playing on Mylyo Xyloto, fitting in snugly with the overall just-a-tad-bit-experimental pop-rock sound that the bands goes for, with a charming guitar solo adding just the right amount of sparkle to a nice and lush backdrop towards the end of “Major Minus”. “U.F.O.” is probably the finest song off the album – a sweet little acoustic guitar-driven ballad where even Martin’s ‘vocals’ sound enjoyable over the up-marketly opulent strings. In fact, the album seemingly picks up in the second half, but don’t worry, it’s merely a false dawn. Also, a word about the so-called ‘concept’ behind Mylo Xyloto; it’s the story of Mylo and Xyloto falling in love in a dystopian world. “Princess of China” springs forth a pleasant surprise as Rihanna pops up in the otherwise predictable duet with some grating 80s synth sounds thrown in for good measure.

The songwriting tends to get predictable and banal once Coldplay-fatigue sets in, and the penultimate song “Don’t Let It Break Your Heart” showcases the band at its tedious and most contrived best. However, the gentle and bright early-morning soundscapes that are built up on “Up with the Birds” come as an amiable flourish to a distinctly average album. However, the band’s attempts at critical acclaim do provide another nice surprise in the last song, as they sample “Takk”, by the Icelandic post-rock wunderkinder Sigur Ros (it’s hip to love Sigur Ros, even if one has never heard them, which pretty much makes them the anti-Coldplay).

…and the Ugly

Chris Martin.

Rating: Ugh

Mogwai Revival: The Self-Indulgent Prelude

I moved to Bombay the first time back in ’09, just a day before I started to really hate the city. I remember the flight clearly; there were noisy people all around, the weather was terrible; the usual. It was raining, and there was lots of horrible turbulence. Honestly, I was scared shitless. But now that I think back, I have very fond memories of that flight. Reason being that a couple of weeks or so before I took that flight, I had bought (downloaded; whatever) this album called The Hawk is Howling by Mogwai, while in the midst of this massive three month long instrumental atmosphere music spree. The entire two hours that I was on the flight, I heard just the first song off that album on repeat, called ‘I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead’. Rumination and nostalgic remembrances rendered a miserable experience into a meaningful one, thanks in no small part to the song.

The flipside to Jim Morrison’s impact is that I could never get past that first track on the album; I invariably ended up playing the same piece on repeat and I never really allowed myself the chance to explore the album further.

A month or so down the line, after I had well and truly sucked all life out of that song, I decided to give the rest of the album an honest listen. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the third song, ‘Danphe and the Brain’, which again grabbed me instantly, so I just decided to give up. I heard ‘I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead’ and ‘Danphe and the Brain’ on loop for the next few weeks, and never really got the chance to hear the entire album, and then I just sort of forgot about it. Oh, such a fool I was back then.

Then, just the other day (three years later), while working on something, I decided to play ‘Danphe and the Brain’ since it had been playing in my head for a few days so I had to get it out. I sort of got lost in what I was doing after a few times of re-playing the song, and the rest of the album continued to play very slyly while I wasn’t noticing. And somewhere during my passive state, it hit me.

Words can’t describe the kind of impression this album’s made on me since (which is shameful since I write for a living), and in such little time too – just two days to be precise. So I’ve decided to do a review of one song off the album (soon to follow), and it’s as hard a decision as any to make, since I really can’t decide between ‘I Love You, I’m Going to Blow’, ‘Scotland’s Shame’, ‘Thank You Space Expert’, ‘The Precipice’, and a couple others. Shall try nonetheless.

Album Name: The Hawk is Howling

Rating: 10/11

Because this is one of those rare albums that truly deserves 10 rating points. Then again, it’s not the ‘greatest album ever’ either, and I can think of many others which would probably get a 10.5 or so on the same ratings scale. So this rating has been picked for the sake of both fairness and convenience.

Food Review: Dessert at Big Chill - II

I’m not particularly big on milkshakes, although I don’t mind them occasionally. I’ll get to the milkshakes later though.

So I ordered my Mississippi Mud Pie from Big Chill, or The Big Chill for pedantry’s sake, and asked for takeaway. They prepared this neat little tin foil box with the dessert inside, a small plastic cup filled with aforementioned chocolate sauce, and put both duly into a jute bag, because plastic is so 20^th century.

Now I’m all for saving the environment, and plastic is bad and plastic bags are the scourge of the new-age hippies. But sometimes – every now and then – plastic is necessary. I genuinely believe that in the service industry – particularly in the hospitality sector – one should always account for the lowest common denominator, or the dumbest breed of people that will flock to your establishment for nourishment. In this tale of mine, I belong to that class of society that I just spoke about.

You see, the mud pie I had ordered is set largely in a base of ice-cream complemented with a thick crust. Ice-cream melts. Jute leaks.

So I was left with a big bag of leaking chocolate milk (with just the right amount of peanut butter for optimum taste pleasure) on my lap for the better part of 40 minutes, which was the length of my ride to my destination from Big Chill. I was in a car, so I had to do my very best not to spill even a smidgeon of the formerly solid-state dessert floating around in the box on my lap, for which I decided to sacrifice my sole pair of jeans.

I actually had two options; one of holding on to the jute bag and hoping and praying (which is what I did), and the other of actually using those two feeble plastic spoons inside the bag and eating before the mud pie melted completely. I chose the former, since eating the dessert in the car would have meant risking complete spillage disaster. And more importantly, I would have had to share. So I suffered in cold silence as the chocolate drip entered my socks even.

While in the car, I didn’t quite realize the magnitude of the problem. So I got home and opened the box, only to find decapitated crust bits floating around in a sea of brown milk. It was massacre. I tilted the box and drank all of it like milkshake. The chocolate sauce in the little plastic cup was still completely intact, so I gobbled that up neat. Worth it, I guess.

Like I said, the fault’s probably mine for not thinking things through, but the restaurant isn’t completely blameless either. They should have the good sense to have a couple of plastic bags handy for people who want to carry ice-cream dessert for 40 minutes in a car in Delhi heat.

Verdict: Dessert good, packaging not so much. Get some bloody plastic – out with the new, in with the old.

Rating: 3/7 – Fine, be ecologically conscious all you want. But let’s not be greedy tree-huggers? Or daft? If you really must maximize profits at the cost of customer jeans, then why not at least warn the foolhardy about the perils of ice-cream in jute bags in advance? Would have saved me a potential ant-picnic inside my pants. 

Food Review: Dessert at Big Chill - I

I was in Delhi recently, and I decided to step out for a meal one day. I’m not much of a food person; most of the stuff I ingest usually tastes like my own foot. But I do have a weakness for dessert.

So I went to Khan Market to get something to eat. Instead of eating though, I ended up drinking a few beers (thanks to my very strong will power and poor taste in friends), by the end of which I was starving. And also terribly late. So I decided to pick up food (i.e. dessert). I went to Big Chill, which is basically an overpriced Italian-ish restaurant styled like a café. The place is extremely trendy, but it’s fair to say that the reason behind its grand success – good food at decent prices – has been diluted somewhat; a look at the RHS column on the menu should testify.

In any case, there’s this one particular dessert they serve there called the Mississippi Mud Pie. It’s this filthy (‘decadent’ is passé) chocolate based thing that I really love. They serve this hefty slice of cold cake, consisting of a peanuty, wooden  crust, some chocolate/peanut butter/ice-cream based cake thing, doused in thick, diabetic chocolate sauce, the last ingredient being a personal favourite. The coolness of the cake thing, combined with my own coolness, strikes quite a contrast with the hot sauce and the elegant long-handled spoon they give with it. I was ordering takeaway this time though, so no spoon (unless you count plastic ones).

It cost (or costed, since mostly Indian people would be reading this) a grand sum upwards of 200 rupees, although I’m not sure of the exact figure since I made my friends pay for me. And since this is primarily a review blog, I should get down to the actual review of the Mississippi Mud Pie Takeaway at Big Chill: 

(Meta) Review – Lost Syllables

First off, this is a terrible name for a blog. The internet generation is generally daft, and also quite inept at the art of spelling. “Syllables” is a difficult word to spell. So no, this doesn’t work. However, the effort that the author put into this is commendable, and the fact that he chose it ahead of the original, much classier and easier to spell title, “Free Stuff”, shows a single-minded dedication to his craft.

The reason “Lost Syllables” was picked was because this blog is pretty much inspired by one song (as mentioned before), called “Oscar Acceptance Speech”. The phrase has been lifted from a lyric in the song, and the blog was initially created as a means of reviewing songs. But it’s unlikely that that will happen too often – changing moods, etc. And this entire (quite underwhelming) post has been created only to procrastinate the writing of the review of the song in question. In fact, this entire blog could probably use the writing of that review as a Godot-esque motif; a review which the author talks about obsessively, but it never quite appears. Let’s see how it goes.

Blog Title Rating: 1/10 (The very poetic character of the title deserves a high rating. However, since it’s been plagiarized, and that too without any real context, in addition to the fact that it uses a notoriously difficult word to spell, this title gets a score of only one – that too out of sympathy. Try harder.)

What is Lost Syllables?

I’m a big fan of fruit juice, fresh or otherwise. I like all flavours bar none. Actually, that’s not true. The juice production company that I’m generally loyal to, called Real, manufactures tomato juice as well. Tomato is the prime ingredient in my most hated thing in the whole world, which is ketchup, so I detest tomatoes too by association. I don’t even understand why Real produces these godforsaken juice boxes. I mean, yes, technically (or scientifically or whatever), tomatoes are considered fruit. But come on, who are we kidding? They’re really not. I love this thing called fruit cream as well, which is basically a bunch of fruits floating around in a bowl of cream, which can be whipped, but not necessarily. Anyway, if I ever come across a fucking tomato in my fruit cream, I swear to god I will lose the fucking plot, and there will be hell to pay for the chef and anyone else who happens to be in close proximity.

Moving on, I happen to be a ‘writer’ (which is basically a euphemism for a person who does nothing, and excels at the existentialist idea of profound procrastination). I tend to write a lot of reviews (among other things) – of bands, albums, gigs, books, plays, films, food, etc. But that dreaded bitch, aka word count, in addition to house rules at publications, deadlines, and general sluggishness, means that a lot of stuff that I want to write usually gets dumped, slashed, or never written.

This page is just an attempt to rectify that. It’s a place where I will just review (I use the term 'review' loosely for convenience) whatever I feel like. For the sake of consistency (and also because not many publications want these), I think I’ll probably start off with song reviews. The inspiration behind it is this mammoth track called Oscar Acceptance Speech by Oceansize (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzDNPVGVBXw – I don’t know how to embed videos and stuff yet), which reminds me of mixed fruit juice, but I’ll get to that later. Basically, I’ve sort of developed a fetish for comparing music with food in my reviews in the past year or so, but these usually get rejected flat out. Well, in your face publications and a big fuck you, because there’s no rejections here on my own blog, are there?

Also, it’s my own personal dustbin. A lot of what I write tends to be trash, and I wouldn’t want any of it to be read in the context of polished writing or journalism or anything of the sort. The context here is just impulsive one-draft ‘blog writing’ (ugh) with no revisions. And there’s a very good chance that this will be the only post on this blog. I’ve started four different blogs in the past, each with a single introductory post, before binning them. It’s just initial enthusiasm that’s made me go through the effort of registering a blog, choosing a name, design, etc. FYI, I just so happen to be a not very big fan of blogs in general. So there’s bound to be lots of hypocrisy here if I do sustain it.