ATM Bomb !!!

Using an ATM here in Amareeka is boring. there is no flair, no drama , no fun. they have stuck an ATM machine just about anywhere they could. on a wall, corner of a building, even in the middle of a parking lot.Hell !! you can use the ATM without even having to unbuckle your seat belts. its just no fun.

Back home going to an ATM is almost a religious experience.the ATM machines are treated with reverence , they are enclosed in their very own individual shrines.like small temples to the god of wealth. they sit there  glowing in the bright cheerful lighting with promise of riches, like an oasis in a desert with better lighting and air condition though.

 If you are rolling your eyes saying I am being melodramatic! then sit down, take a load off. I am now going to school you on the step wise protocol of using an ATM.

Step 1 - Finding an ATM , sure there are plenty of ATM's the trick is to find one which works. and then when you do, ensuring you have met the VISA / MASTERCARD criteria is the next step (why can't they all just get along??!! )

Step 2 - Join the line and immediately memorize the Color of clothing of the person in front of you. vital step if you are going to be playing Angry birds or temple run, so when you look up between levels and see a different color in front of you switch immediately to Mel Gibson's Braveheart avatar and prepare to protect your ground . Peeing on the leg of the person in front of you to mark your territory is severely frowned upon.


Step 3 -  This step is where the you finally get to use the mathematics skills you acquired by solving those " If James can eat 3 apples in 4 hours how many apples can he eat in 29 minutes" problems from back in school. first count the number of people ahead of you [ X ] then  count the number of machines operational [ Y ] . next, time a person using the machine by counting Mississippily , convert the seconds to minutes [ t ]and then use the above information to calculate how long it will take for you to reach the machine [ T ]. This exercise not only keeps you from becoming impatient it also helps improve your IQ.  So you are calmer and also feel superior to the person standing in front of you staring at his phone. Mental Arithmetic Hell yeah !!... abacurse that Bi#@hes!!
 Okay back to business,here is the equation -
                                                                  T = ( (X * t /60) / Y )+ GD  
No no don't thank me i have always been this selfless and giving.

So T is the number of minutes you spend waiting for your turn, allowing you to plan the rest of your day with acute and precise planning. before you get all excited and carried away at your newly acquired knowledge and run to the closest ATM  clutching your card, let me  inform you about the constant i call "GD" , it is a very important constant without which you may end up having to constantly re calculate. GD is short for GOD DAMN!!! there will always be a few idiots in every line who will cause a pile up. they will either swipe the card the wrong way or too fast repeatedly, enter the wrong password, not have sufficient funds but still check three times because you never know at the third try the bank might feel bad for them and stuff a thousand bucks as a goodwill gesture, or you will have the one literary buff who will stand in front of the machine after the transaction and read every word printed on the receipt as if he was deciphering the secret coded answer to the meaning of life in that  tiny little piece of paper the machine scornfully spat out.

So look carefully at all the people standing in line front of you. No no you don't have to do a body language course to figure out who falls into the GD category. some basic tells are, holding the ATM card with two hands..... he is a newbie and does not know what he is doing . If he is reading the terms and conditions at the back of the card.... we have a reader here. If the person is restless, nervous or fidgety then all signs point to him not having money in the bank and is just trying his luck.

Step 4 -  Having arrived at the door, please tip toe past the sleeping security guard, do not make sudden movements or alarming noises, because that's the last thing you want to do is to startle a man with a gun whose only training with weaponry was to be informed which is the business end of a rifle  and which his end was.so exercise all caution as you would when trying to sneak past a dragon guarding a treasure.

Step 5 - Doing Pranayama or any other form of breathing exercise will help for this phase. when you have on an average of 15 people using a enclosed glass box per hour, the odds of one of them having a bad stomach and indiscriminately flatulent  is pretty high and by Murphy's law he will be one who uses the machine before you. so being able to hold your breath for extended durations helps.

Step 6 - Figure out if the Machine is a Push button or a touch screen. If you were pawing the screen thinking it was a touch screen then do not be embarrassed , nonchalantly pretend like you were cleaning the screen , pull out a hand kerchief and spray some on some Colin too on the screen to show conviction.

Step 7 - Pretend you are on Kaun Banega Crorepathi and answer all the questions like you were on the fastest finger first round.

Step 8 - On completion of the entire transaction , when asked if you require a receipt . press yes , on collecting the receipt crush it immediately and toss it into the waste basket without so much as looking at it.
Them trees are over rated anyways.(or are they??!)

 That folks is how to use an ATM. not drive in and  drive out.

My favorite part of using an ATM is all the drama that kicks in after typing the denomination and hitting enter, the dramatic silence which ensues. in That few seconds which stretch out agonizingly if you were low on funds, one rethinks their entire financial situation the guilt of not having started saving,anger at those impulsive buying spree and just when you have given up all hopes of getting any money, lo behold piercing the painful silence, is the metallic whirring, like a light dispelling darkness. the joyous whirring heralding the acceptance of your request and eminent arrival of cashhhhhhhhh!!! its like stepping into Vegas and winning on a slot machine everyday.

I did use an ATM to have a drink on a rainy night  a couple of times, but hey thats a story for another day ;)

Something Fishy !!

Fishing .... People really seem to take fishing pretty seriously here. I wandered into a sports shop the other day and was greeted with some hardcore equipments starting from some heavy duty boats to depth finders, sonars ,GPS , radio , tackle boxes , lures , rods , add in a automatic rifle and you have enough equipment to invade a small country , all this gadgetry to land a fish seems a little excessive , its like using the NASA server to update your status message on facebook. looks like the fishes are evolving into a smarter and more devious form too, hence the heavy artillery.

I suppose i could blame it on Mark Twain for putting the idea of fishing in my head, by painting those idealic pictures of Tom Sawyer and huckleberry Finn playing hokey from school and going fishing.

when I was kid I used to watch street urchins, string a fishing net across a storm water drain ( I call it a fishing net cos of its present functional usage , before the net turned into its present avatar of a fishing net it used to serve its primary purpose at keeping Mosquitoes at bay at nights, I wonder who the poor victim of this heinous Mosquito net related crime was , and pray he did not come down with malaria, i have also gotta add here that the storm water drains i mentioned weren't the squeaky clean types one gets to see in America where Travolta attended  drag races or Schwarzenegger chased down killer robots, this was a drain which was a mini Eco system in itself , filled with insects which ranked very high up on the disease charts ,algae had other forms of algae growing on it, the water was a pleasant shade of black and on a lucky day one got to see a bloated carcass of a dog floating by).

yes, back to the street urchins, I used to watch enviously as these Guys strung a net across the drain and came up with a handful of fishes , which they would safely deposit in a glass jar. This simple act blew my mind, I was hooked (pun unintended) I could not take my eyes away from them,the look of absolute joy and satisfaction on their faces was contagious , this was where my fascination for fishing began, I never did venture out into the drain to have a go at this wonderful sport with such a primal nature, but I knew for sure I would want to try it when I was older ,wiser and didn't have to take My mothers permission to venture out into the drains. I did buy the fishes off the urchins once though but ill save that story for another day.

Years went by and I got older and wised up enough to realize that venturing into the drains wasn't a very good idea ,but the enigma of fishing only grew stronger ,I was intrigued by the different types of fishing, not the trawling, dynamiting or mega sized fishing nets it had to be more one on one, more a man versus wild thing.

Picture borrowed (read stolen!)

 The Chinese fishing nets in the backwaters of Kerala, This i feel is the best example of Overkill..... its like constructing a intricate and complex device involving robotic arms ,motion sensors and titanium plates to kill a cockroach.... the catch was so miniscule compared to the engineering and thought that was required to build these nets. Hey don't judge me, but if i was building something that big or so cool looking i would want to catch me a whale. if they were really going to be catching that pitiful amount of fishes they might as well pull of their lungis and jump into the water i say!!

I was visiting Pondicherry  and did chance upon a lake with paddle boats for hire. so i did what any excited city slicker on a holiday would do....... I dutifully hopped on to one and paddled away. Suddenly i see a man in the distance standing in the middle of the lake..... no you read it right i will repeat with dramatic effects this time... i saw a man... standing... in the the Middle of the lake..... as i had never met Jesus Christ before i decided to paddled towards him and hoped to befriend and add him on my facebook. hey, doesn't hurt to have the son of god as your friend when its judgment day right?

so as i got nearer, i noticed that it wasn't a Jewish carpenter out for a walk on a lake but a Indian fisherman propped up on a vertical wooden log in the middle of the lake fishing using a rod (wooden stick). It was the coolest thing i had seen since i heard of ice fishing. i loved the concept. it seemed the purest form of fishing. a simple wooden stick, nylon rope, a steel hook, a wooden pole, and most important factor.... patience.
it seemed to me such a zen moment.
I approached the man slowly , he looked at me and gave me an annoyed look for scaring away the fishes. but i had to ask him a really important question so i braved past the scowl and paddled closer. i stopped paddling and allowed the boat to slowly drift towards him and finally bumped the pole. he looked down at me, the sun was behind him so it looked like he had a halo of brilliant light behind him, i looked up, squinted  and asked him in an almost reverent voice .... " Beedi irka ?" ( do you have a beedi? ).........
True story

I later did get to find out that these people plant the wooden poles in the lake during the summer seasons when water levels are much lower and they swim to these poles everyday, the catch is generally about half a dozen medium sized fishes for a afternoon of fishing.. Nevertheless This form of Old school fishing appealed to me.
  ( Picture only representative... this man did not give me a beedi )





I finally did get to try my hand at fishing few years later while I was sailing.
The vessel was anchored outside Malta waiting for clearance to enter Valleta harbor, was a pleasant Sunday afternoon when the big honchos decided to wind up for the day leaving us lesser important folks to hit the beer cans with a vengeance,after a couple of cans the worm of fishing was planted in out heads , thus began Operation Fishing , nylon threads were procured , hooks fabricated in a jiffy ( the workshop had never seen so many people actually working before) we all cast our lines and waited, not very patiently though. the beers flowed and time seemed to crawl, it didn't help that we kept pulling the line out of water to check if we had caught a fish every few minutes. we finally gave up in a couple of hours.
 But a few months later we tried again and this time with some very good tips given by our in house fishing experts, the Gujarati crew members who 9 out of 10 times were from Daman or Diu and were fishermen by birth and genetically engineered to catch fishes with annoying ease and nonchalance.
We were luckier this time and some people even caught some squids, though i must admit i have never landed a fish by myself, i would hold a line for 2 hours and nothing would happen....  I would hand the line to another person and within a few minutes he would have a fish at the end of the line. My chief officers 6 year old daughter landed more fishes than i did, my vegetarian Fifth Engineer was more successful than me (though he shrieked more than the lil girl if the fish touched him)
But i enjoyed it, the feel of staring out into the water lost in thought waiting for the bob to disappear, a chilled beer in hand and Creedence clearwater revival playing in the background.a Solitary Pursuit.

More ships were sailed on and  many more fishing sessions happened and i continued, my score undisturbed at a big zero, nevertheless always diligently trying. fished in the south china sea,bay of Bengal, Arabian sea, Indian ocean , Mediterranean sea ,North sea, black sea and even in the middle of the amazon too but still no luck. come to think of it i really don't know how i would react if one day the bob did disappear and i had a fish at the end of my line. Would i actually be able to reel it in?

I must admit though i only enjoy the hunt and not the kill. the thrill of fishing ends as soon as the fish is out of the water. and lies there glassy eyed tail twitching and staring into your soul. so i am all for catch and release. That is if i ever manage to catch one ... Ever!