The Complete Uselessness and the Inherent Necessity of the So-Called Parking Attendant

Parking attendants may have a pretty well-defined job description, but if we go back a step further, why does the profession even exist? If it were purely a matter of money, the government could have simply hiked up service tax by, say, 0.3 percent to recover their cost and private contractors would have been busy finding other ways to dupe the public. No, it’s because the average human being is so fundamentally stupid and selfish that he cannot be trusted to drive into a parking lot on his own, find an empty spot, and park there without a) taking up three spots, b) blocking someone else’s way in or out, or c) getting into a 20-man brawl because someone looked at him funny (kya dekhra hai bhanchod?). The average human being is so daft that he cannot navigate the most insignificant of tasks without regulation and supervision, which is also why you have those guys who are specially hired to stand inside the men’s bathroom and hand out paper towels and awkward smiles to patrons.

If we look at it, the issue of parking itself evokes some pretty serious debates. Like how malls can charge 80 bucks or more just so you can leave your car and spend money on things you don’t need. (Is it just because of that fancy computerized ticket they give you, a ticket which, if lost, leads to a further fine?) I could talk about my own poverty, or the poverty of the guy who drives to Emporio mall in Vasant Kunj in a big car with AC and everything and spends upwards of Rs. 8k of his family money acquired through potentially questionable means on those ridiculous pointy shoes and then proceeds to complain about the high parking prices. Then there’s the guy who does the same thing but doesn’t even bother complaining about parking, and theoretically, he should be the hero of this little morality tale, but let’s be honest, we all hate that guy. But this isn’t about the pointy shoes and Ray Ban wearing chump, it’s about the guys (barely) standing on a rung much lower in the class ladder (oh no he didn’t.), the parking attendants.

Now, these guys are usually young-ish – in their twenties – with names like Ravi or Anil or Vicky or Raj or Vijay. Or, if they’re older, they’re called Yadav Ji or Sharma Ji or Gupta Ji or Pandey Ji or Mishra Ji. That’s all speculation really, because I don’t actually know their names, and I genuinely don’t care either. And why should I? First, I don’t entirely subscribe to the school of thought where you need to know the name of your service professional in order to boss them around and get your job done (not that these guys are ‘service professionals’ in any way). Secondly, they don’t care about my name either. At lots I frequent, to them I’m probably the silver Brio guy, or the checked shirt guy, or the guy who first litters then looks around sheepishly with guilt or embarrassment. So why should I be their friend? Is there any reason why I should allow some latent middle class guilt to rise to the surface? I don't have to be nice to them; it’s not like they’re waiters who directly control my external spit intake in a given week or pilots who are responsible for my future existence one million feet in the air. The worst they can do (besides stealing my car, which would totally suck) is to scratch the car a bit, something that I’m also quite the expert at. So why should we be pals?

It’s not a class thing (“I’m not classist, I know lots of poor people.”), it’s that these guys are complete assholes. They’re opportunistic slackers enjoying the benefits of a prolonged case of disguised unemployment. They sit around, sing songs, get into the odd fight or two, they jot down your number and hand over a slip to you, and then they ask for the money they’ve earned with pride. In fact, they have so little to do that they’ve universally mastered this technique of ripping out the receipt from the receipt booklet in such a way that the parking amount is expertly left behind in the booklet so you can never know exactly how much you’re supposed to give them. Oh, and when you park, they will always, always ask you to move the car forward, like, just a little bit more, and then they’ll tell you to stop. You know, because those extra four inches are the most critical part of parking a car, and it’s absolutely imperative that you stop when they tell you to stop and not when you think it’s OK to stop because they’re professionals and they don’t tell you how to do your job, right?

There is, of course, a percentage of employees in this fairly unskilled industry which tries to add a degree of skill and sophistication to their work. They’re the ones who’ll tell you exactly how to parallel park, or maybe even do it for you, and maybe even handle your car keys if you trust them enough. They’ll calculate the number of hours you’ve left your car parked at a spot and the money you owe them in real time so that you don’t have to.

(As an aside, the progressively increasing rate of parking bothers me. Yes, you’re blocking a spot for too long, but you’re also reducing your and in turn your country’s carbon footprint by not wasting fuel and taking up spots elsewhere, you're directly and positively contributing to the road rage woes of the city by making sure you're not on the road getting into a fight over lane changing. If anything, the longer you park, the lesser you should pay.)

And, as in the case of the main lot at Khan Market, they’ll create a zig-zag compendium of intricate shapes and patterns, expertly handling the flocks of cars coming in and out at an express speed at par with McDonald’s home delivery. These are the Mozarts and Picassos of the parking attendant world, which isn’t saying much. But it is saying something, but not much.

But on a whole, they’re a mysterious breed of humankind. You can honk at them and yell at them and ask for their help and gesture frantically and they have this smooth ability to completely ignore everything you’re doing, only to mysteriously appear just as you’re about to finish the process of parking, where they’ll tell you to move your car four to eight inches forward before heroically asking you to stop. Then they’ll make sure to give you the receipt with your car number on it. Then, when you’re leaving the lot, they’ll again be absent, probably off somewhere perfecting their ripping techniques. As soon as you reverse out of the lot and somehow manage to reach that last point in your journey before you're off, they’ll be there, knocking on your car door, asking for your money.

You could argue with them about their incompetence and how they don’t deserve to be paid, but somehow, at that point, they seem to be looking right into your soul. It’s an oddly embarrassing moment when they knock – they’re giving you an understated look that implies that you were about to speed off into the sunset without paying them even if that’s untrue although it usually isn’t – and you feel like you should just get it over with and go back home and not think about them. So you give them 10 bucks and they ask for 20. If you give them 20, they ask for 30. You give them 40 and, make no mistake, they will ask for 50. You give them 50…

Where Mogwai, Rave Tapes, Satan, Bands That Mean Something, Pitchfork, Music Reviews Collide

In summary of the first section that follows, a mistake was made, a beautiful mistake (to use a cliché that isn’t used nearly enough).

Mogwai’s new album, Rave Tapes, was heard, about a month before its actual release, around Christmas ‘13. To be fair, it wasn’t the result of some devious search of the deepweb – the leak was an accidental discovery following which a lack of will power kicked in. Rave Tapes was heard and reheard and reheard on repeat for the next 25 days; it was absorbed and internalized to a great degree. See, Mogwai, by virtue of its music and all the peripheral Scot humour and mystery and everything else, is a band that Means Something – with the appropriate capitalization, as reviewers, particularly the Pitchfork guys, have been so wont to point out in the past fifteen years, ever since Young Team first came out and confused listeners. So yes, the music of Rave Tapes does Mean Something to this writer, Something so significant that all surface layers of irony and facetiousness and self-importance are peeled off to reveal a deep, personal connect with a piece of art. It’s a connect that I and Only I share with the music – sure, the simmering tension of Heard About You Last Night is for everyone to consume, but not in quite the same way as I would (and vice-versa as applicable).

Cut to present day, where most of the reviews for Rave Tapes are out. Starting with Pitchfork and one Nick Neyland, who says: “Rave Tapes is the work of an oddly conservative band, turning away from the openness they once embraced.” Fuck you, Nick Neyland, and fuck you, Pitchfork.* Then, as I trawl the internet for further reviews, I realize that my well-formulated thoughts on Rave Tapes were in great contrast to the rest of the reviews on the internet too. Writers liked, disliked, hated, remained on the fence about the album, depending on personal taste and deadlines, but essentially, almost all of them agreed that this wasn’t that great a step forward for a band of Mogwai’s stature, that they’d played it safe (once more) and done more of the same and then some. That the tricks are getting old, the jokes write themselves, the dry humour is predictable, dated. Forget how different Rave Tapes sounds when placed against Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will, Earth Division EP, or Les Revenants, their past three releases because that’s going against the party line (or those three albums were anomalies and this is status quo). Fuck them all.

* Nick Heyland is a quite fantastic writer; even the Rave Tapes review, if looked at purely from a point of view of aesthetics and turn of phrase and language, is brilliant. Pitchfork, leaving aside their ridiculous taste in music (leaving aside their love, traditionally, for people like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or William Basinski or old Mogwai or Radiohead and so forth), is by far my favourite music publication. The pristine writing, the insightful analysis on every single review, the level of research conducted for even the smallest commission, Mark Richardson, their stature as Pitchfork, I love it all. But fuck Pitchfork.

Coming back to reality and the matter that’s being tackled here, I do agree – very, very begrudgingly – at some of the criticisms directed at Rave Tapes. Actually, I don’t agree with the criticism at all; what I’m trying to say is that I can somewhat understand the thought behind it – I’ve accused bands of repeating themselves plenty of times in the past and not moving forward musically – the cop-outs, if you will, who stumble upon a musical formula, repeat it ad infinitum, rake in the big bucks (or not), and disintegrate or slowly fade. So it’s only fair that that would come back to bite me in the ass.

But Mogwai is not your regular garden-variety band. It’s the kind of band that provokes deep, often extreme, reactions in people, the way that, you know, bands like Radiohead or Tool or Nine Inch Nails or Deftones or Miles Davis or Burial or Meshuggah or Pantera or Slayer or extreme metal bands or John Cage or Sonic Youth or Rihanna would. They fall into that category of musicians who just Know So Much More Than The Average Human Being. By ‘knowing more’, I don’t mean instrumental proficiency or an understanding of music theory or knowledge of current affairs or intellectual supremacy in matters of theology or political analysis or a degree in bio-engineering or intricate surgical chops.

Nope. They just have an understanding of that elusive Something Greater. It’s meaningful beyond this writer’s comprehension, and it manifests itself through the music. Like when Remurdered shifts focus and treads into a bouncing, dancing synth sequence, there’s still that ominous feeling that something’s got to give. It has to. And it does, as the drums collude with the wailing tones in the back. Or when the melodic guitar interplay reaches grandiose proportions such that it becomes overwhelming to listen and easier to shut off but impossible to shut off at the same time. Sure, it’s Mogwai doing what they know best, but they do it better than most. And while most other bands are not allowed to retreat as easily as Mogwai do in the transition from the red herring of Remurdered into Hexon Bogon, Mogwai are allowed. Because of that whole some people are more equal than other people thing, if I may get a little Dostoyevskian about it. And then there’s Repelish, once more reeking of the trademark Mogwai humour and their creepy obsession with Satan. Sure, it’s poking fun at the so-called subliminal message about Satan on Led Zep’s Stairway to Heaven – as an aside, the song is a recreation of a recording from a ’70s Christian Rock Radio where the anchor is utterly shocked and very angry at how these rock musicians are obsessed with the devil: Gotta live for Satan, Master Satan; the band wanted to use the original recording but they couldn’t identify the owners of the recording so they got a friend to re-recite the radio broadcast and chopped it up and placed it alongside the music; this is not first-hand information but I don’t have the source where I read the info originally to cite here and if this weren’t a blog post then this non-citing of sources would probably be called out as not ideal and some stickler for convention might even toss the old plagiarism word around – but there’s so much more to it than that.

It’s an old trick to laugh at people’s shock about the mythical singing in reverse on STH. But the point here isn’t to laugh at that and just that itself. The point, at least the point that’s been interpreted by the writer of this rambling blog post, is the unease, the absolutely chilling tension of the music, and how it works perfectly in sync with the surprise in the tone of the narrator. Ignoring the content of the spoken words in the song for a second, the complete shock and exasperation and earnest alarm and amazement that the speaker professes, interspersed with the fluttering on-off dynamics of the song add a degree of ominous fear and trepidation, a degree lower than the kind of fear you experience when you hear a loud noise inside your home post-midnight. The humour of the piece comes across as a secondary gain, not the primary one – as in, you experience the important emotions of the song first, and then you also laugh at how flabbergasted the guy speaking seems to be.

Also, there has to be an overarching meaning to the song names, especially as we have a song called The Lord is Out of Control, coming close on the heels of This Messiah Needs Watching, which was one of the many standout tracks on last year’s Les Revenants soundtrack.

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Moving on, the plodding snyth lines that appear often here, especially the slow, deviant lines as on Heard About You Last Night and the seventh song, which song’s name I can’t remember right now, showcase a Les Revenants hangover in the best way possible. Les Revenants was a landmark release (sort of) for Mogwai, exploring such unpleasant and yet such endearing spaces musically, so the new approach that was employed on last year’s release does find its way here, as does the token Stuart Braithwaite-sung number about train lines going nowhere (or trained mice, I can’t say for sure), and while old motifs that Mogwai have used – and possibly patented, only for God is an Astronaut, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, and many others to dilute that original dynamic, but I digress – in the past (vocodered singing on the album closer) do appear here sporadically (or often, if you read all the other reviews online), but there’s a lot of lateral progression, evolution versus revolution, and a cultivation and a very careful nurturing of a sound handcrafted by the Mogwai guys over like 15 years and more. And what a fantastic name for an album Rave Tapes is. 

Rating: 9/10

Thank you for your patience. Please hold the line. Thank you for your patience. Please hold the line. Thank you for your patience. Please hold the line. Thank you for your patience. Please hold––

Regular readers of this blog (just kidding; there are none – not even me) may remember my long-standing beef with the aviation industry and the People Formerly Known as Air-Hostesses/Hosts and the sneaky name changes they keep springing on us unsuspecting civilian passengers. There’s also the scorn and contempt I have for call centre ‘executives’ which has been an overarching theme in my evidently not very entertaining life. As luck would have it, now I’m being forced to take a little from here and a little from there to bitch about a new discovery.

I needed the number of a particular restaurant that delivers halfway decent butter chicken by the city’s very low north Indian culinary standards. My protest against smartphones and BBM and Whatsapp and being always connected and always manipulating touchscreens in public is still going full steam (plus eternal poverty), which is why I can’t access internet on my archaic cell phone without using a dated and dreadfully slow GPRS technology which would make the best of us cringe. Inevitably, I was forced to call up that information selling enterprise that also sometimes assists the general public with a few phone numbers and addresses. I can't reveal the name of this very well-known company for legal reasons (actually, I don't know if I can be legally implicated for taking their name but it's funnier this way).

So I justdial this company that I can't name for legal reasons. Firstly, credit where it’s due – someone from their call centre usually answers with a jovial greeting before even the first ring. But in this instance, there was a good five-to-eight second delay, which was a little unsettling. Nevertheless, the guy at the other end of my phone call did answer. He couldn’t find the restaurant information that I had asked for, so he put me on hold for a few seconds.

A little after the automated lady voice told me how important my call was, she happened to mention that “Our officers will be with you shortly. Thank you for your patience.” Officers? OFFICERS?

This needs to stop. I will not, no matter how insignificant this entire thing is, ever refer to the chaps who give me numbers and addresses of restaurants and give out my phone number to thousands of plumbers and electricians and key-makers as Officers. First of all, they don’t even have an office (not that I do, either). But they work out of a call centre – that’s very different. I can’t even call it a BPO out of the goodness of my heart because it’s not one. It’s most likely just an information-selling racket with a CSR programme that gives out numbers and addresses to callers. And what makes them deserving of being called Officers? Even our finest khaki dimwits aren’t worthy of that particular distinction, but that’s a can of worms that’s best left unopened.

Conclusion: I hate myself for saying this but I yearn for the good old days where these guys were happy living in their little bubble of all-night dhabas and calling themselves Executives. Or I could always just let this one go - chalk one up for dignity of labour or something.

The How-to Guide to Writing for the Internet

There’s obviously a loose template somewhere out there, which is why everything on the internet reads the same way. There has to be. And over time spent staring at my laptop screen, I’ve noticed that writers tend to fashion their pieces a certain way, latching on to collective quirks to lure unsuspecting readers into believing they’re having fun reading the thing. In the spirit of full disclosure, here’s me attempting to Wikileaks contemporary online writers.

1.      Drop Current Affairs References and Verbalize Them: Wikileaks isn’t strictly ‘current affairs’ but notice how I used it as a verb recently? Also: Verbalize. And Facebooking.

2.      Make Lists: A lot of people unfairly accuse writers of holding their readers in contempt by oversimplifying everything via lists; that they think their readers suffer from shallow attention spans. That’s expressly untrue. The real reason lists are so common is because it’s the writers themselves who have short attention spans and because there hap.

3.      Use A Straw Man Argument: “A lot of people unfairly accuse…” etc.

4.      Excessive Use of Irony: Sarcasm is too immature while sincerity happens to be really difficult to express and far beyond the scope of the average Joe. Lying in between is that special kind of feckless irony that’s the sole preserve of the budding online writer. It comes with either A) not having a clue what irony really means, or B) not being too sure what the purpose of its use is in context to the piece being crafted, or C) all of the above. It’s a postmodern conundrum is what it is.

5.      The Hipster Fixation: Call anything that pisses you off or you find threatening a ‘hipster’.

“The F7 key on my laptop is a fucking hipster.”

“My cook made black dal today instead of yellow dal; bloody hipster woman.”

“My hipster building has really old Schindler’s lifts.”

*As an aside, isn’t it time we – as dedicated consumers and self-professed content generators on the internet – begin phasing out use of the word? It’s been done to death and its overuse without any real context has pretty much blunted any potential impact it may have had – positive or negative – to begin with. I’ve personally tried using ‘coolcat’ or ‘hepcat’ on multiple occasions but it doesn’t seem to be catching on.

6.      “Self-Awareness”: In the real world, there are certain personality quirks that help one identify someone as being “self-conscious”. Online, that same thing passes off as being “self-aware”, which is considered quite cool. Less flattering terms include puffery and flash.

7.      ([{Over-punctuate}]): Usually; In-correctly…

8.      Excessive Use of Overdone Catchphrases: True story. Because nothing collects a herd quite like a dog whistle. Just sayin’. Keep calm and be ironic.

9.      Supposed Axioms and Clichés: Let’s all get together and rhapsodize about bacon wrapped in Nutella because nothing better has or will exist and fuck heart patients, diabetics, vegetarians, certain faiths but not all of them, and also people with different taste. Cue hilarious one-liner about bacon that makes it 2legit2quit.

10.  Be Meta: This is a two-step process: First, look up the word meta on an online dictionary and then be it.

11.  Name Drop TV Shows to Fit In: The so-called cerebral ones, particularly. For e.g., Community. It used to be Arrested Development earlier, which I happen to love. So I’m going with Community and its trying-too-hard-cockiness.

12.  Shift-F7 to Sound Intellectual or Witty: This is best used in conjunction with when the writer has no real point to make to begin with.

Exhibit A: I’m against corruption but I pay traffic cops a bribe when I jump a red light or talk on my cell phone.

Exhibit B: The act of corruption is preposterous and, fundamentally, it happens to be a direct consequence of a greed-infested world imbibed with values of capitalism, blind profit, and materialism, with blatant disregard, contempt even, for the true warriors – the working class. Power to the people and down with the government. Ultimately, the need of the hour is to destroy the multiple layers of protection enjoyed by the gentry, instead of focusing our collective energies fighting the little man paying a miniscule amount to get out of a speeding challan. That’s just a microcosm of a larger predicament, and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, especially when there are Coalgate (ugh) and 2G scams happening at the very top levels of our administration.  

Spot the difference. Although, in fairness, writers tend to get paid on a per-word system, so the more the merrier.

13.  Use of Tortured Analogies and Comparisons for the Sake of Contrived Comedy: “I had a dog when I was fourteen and in braces and I was applying acne cream four times a day. The dog ran away. I popped all my pimples that day. Eight years later, I discovered the internet, went on Stumbled Upon, and stumbled upon a video called 2 Girls, 1 Cup. That was far better than watching this government try to scam its way through its tenure.”

14.   Being Self-Referential: Refer to Point 10. That’s me being meta and self-referential.

15.  Overuse of Rambling Qualifiers, Colloquialisms, and Slang: This is just a sluggish attempt at sounding hip and cool (which leads to sounding smug often). For e.g., phrases like “like, y’know, you know, pretty much, really, really, etc.” Thanks a fuckton for that, David Foster Wallace. You’ve managed to inspire a generation of slacker wastoids to believe they can get away with lazy writing* by, like, sort of adding some colour and character. Also thanks for presaging Facetime video conferencing some 15 years before it happened. 

*Wallace is one of my favourite writers actually, and here's a piece that, while unnecessarily critical and contrarian, tries to explain this phenomenon. 

16.  Drop Token Infinite Jest Reference: See above.


(Not to say I'm not guilty of all of these, often together.)

An Impassioned Plea to Those Flight People: Pick A Name, Please

I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the world of aviation. Love because it gets me places. But I’ve had many well-documented (documented by me, of course) concerns and peeves about the industry – right from airports, ground staff, the planes, to all other associations and beneficiaries. So no surprise then that the fire’s been stoked again. This time, it’s those people who tell you to sit up straight, hand out food, and give you instructions on what to do in an emergency. In other words, the Professionals Formerly Known as Air-Hostesses/Hosts (PFKAHs).

I’ve always quite liked these PFKAHs (except for this one aged cow who once ‘forgot’ to serve me lunch and then taunted me by asking why I wasn’t eating). Other than that one, they’re all pleasant, warm, cheery, and they’re your one-stop solution for F&B. And it’s a job that can get tedious too – you can never step outside for lunch, for starters (unless you’re in Paris, maybe), and you have to do that annoying audio-visual instructional routine like three hundred times a day. Plus they’re trained to resuscitate people, tend to pregnant ladies, and so on, so there’s that benefit in case of emergencies. So they’re respectable people doing jobs that, while glamorous, are also just as competitive and challenging as most other professions. If anything, my problem inside airplanes is with those potentially drunk/sleeping wannabe RJs otherwise known as pilots, but let’s leave that for now.

Coming back to PFKAHs, several years ago, they changed their names. They didn’t like ‘Air-Hostess/Host’, which I found a bit odd because ‘Host’ has such a comely and welcoming intonation to it. But I think it was to dispel misguided notions that they were simply glorified waiters or busboys. Or maybe some reason I’m not quite aware of. So they called themselves ‘Stewards’. Not that I know what that means outside of an airport context, but fair enough.

You may have guessed where I’m going with this but I’ll spell it out nevertheless. Within three months of that name change, I found out that calling them stewards/stewardesses was also politically incorrect and frowned upon – it’s like how cell-phones keep going out of fashion; they’ll add a new letter at the end of an old model and you’re suddenly redundant and outdated. So like the 1x or the 1xPlus or the 4S or the 3390HD, these guys were now asking to be called ‘In-Flight Attendants’ or ‘Flight Attendants’.

Very cool, I thought. Another name change, but a definite upgrade, since ‘Attendant’ has that elegant professional aura that ‘Physician’, ‘Consultant’, etc. also have.

Fine, I still call them different variations of all of the above because, honestly, I don’t see the difference and I don’t get the fuss. But it is after all their profession and they all seem like very nice and kind people and they have the upper hand because they’re the ones who control my safety and comfort in airplanes and it’s just a word at the end of the day so fine: Fine, I shall call them In-Flight Attendants or Flight Attendants or Space Cowboys/girls or Aviation Sergeants or Aeronautical SkyDrivers or whatever they want.

But then, on my most recent flying experience, I discover that they want to be called ‘Flight Executives’ now…? What the hell?

When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a writer. Sometimes I say I’m a journalist. Other times I won’t. I don’t care whether they call me a writer or a scribe or a reporter or a paparazzo or a hack. I may sometimes correct them if they think I write for television or films but that’s about it, and that too rarely. Because who cares? Does anyone know what any finance guy in the world actually does? (Saying ‘number-crunching’ is ruled out for obvious reasons.)

--

I’m putting my foot down. I will not call them Flight Executives. And that’s not because they are or aren’t Flight Executives – that’s beside the point and maybe in their heads they really are.

I won’t call them Flight Executives because there’s no such thing that exists. It’s completely made up; it’s a hoax. You cannot keep inventing new professions as and when you please, while the job description remains static. The thing is, you’re the ones who’re making up all these flashy names, not us civilians. Please, enough of this madness; let’s just all sit together, develop, like, a huge thinktank with the finance guys and the ‘consultants’ and the ‘facilitators’ and the ‘strategists’ and the ‘policy’ guys and just decide on a final name once and for all, with no ‘Executive’ in there anywhere.

(Of course, if this is a feminist thing where the real issue is the gender-neutrality of job designations, then I concede that that’s a subject far beyond the scope of this blog, and not something that’s going to be dwelled upon even briefly here.)

And honestly – and I really want to know this – what does ‘Executive’ even mean? It’s a frivolous suffix with very little weight.

Epilogue: Maybe I should ask the next call centre ‘executive’ who calls me up but I don’t even want to think about the trauma that’ll involve: “Thank you for holding, Sir, my name is Steve Smith Jones. Before I answer your question, I would like to ask you if you are happy with your cell phone plan and your internet plan and your housing scheme and your credit card facilities and your bank. After that, I will go through my preset answer booklet and surely tackle your query at the earliest. Oh, and would you like to donate money for a charity helping underprivileged children and if not then why, Sir?”

'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