Paradise Lost

I suffer from the Calvin syndrome - the Calvin with the tiger called Hobbes - all my real talents are undervalued. I am really good at doing nothing, but no one, not even my own wife, the love of my life (who married me following my tender entreaties involving among other things psychiatrists, loony bins and permanent postings) allows me to fully explore and exploit my talent of doing nothing. She is not really concerned that this talent of mine is getting wasted, in fact, she is fully up in arms against it. She treats it as if it were some kind of pestilence that should be eradicated. Consequently, my backside and our couch have grown further and further apart in recent times, getting to spend hardly any time together.

Things were not always thus, though.

I don't know why precisely it came to be, but early in my marriage, my wife made a rule (unilaterally, I must hasten to add), that when I was watching cricket, she would generally pester and nag me, but with no real intent of making me stop watching. Maybe this rule had its roots in the fact that my father-in-law is an avid watcher, maybe it was formulated because my wife read in a how-to-manage-husbands handbook that this was an essential to make husbands feel 'in control', but the fact remained, if I was sitting in front of the television watching cricket, she would, more or less, let me be.

Cricket is the ideal game for doing nothing. At worst it lasts for three and a half hours and at best for five days. When someone said he thought cricket a form of organized loafing, he never had in mind the millions of people watching it from sundry couches at home. It is a game built so that the 'doing nothing' of men has a structure to it.

Initially, my wife even took interest in the proceedings when I was watching cricket.

"Who's playing?" she'd ask.

"India," I'd say. 

"Who are we playing against?" she'd ask.

"Australia," I'd say and then we'd both settle down to watch some cricket. Me, for the whole duration of the match, she for installments of five minutes. Unless something drastic is happening like us winning the world cup, she finds it hard to sit and watch for more than a twelfth of an hour. She is extremely interested in winning, moderately interested in the game.

This rule of letting me watch cricket was not a declared rule, mind you. I happened to chance upon it through trial and error. I discovered that whenever I was watching cricket, things would turn to "I'm taking the kids out" rather than "You take them swimming" and shopping expeditions would be deferred to later "When the match is over" etc. etc. It was not all smooth sailing though. In reply to "Who is playing?" The answer always had to be "India" first and then someone later. Stuff like Brazil might have worked initially, till she wised up and realized that only about eight countries play at any genuine level of competition.

For the record, I never actually tried Brazil. Even Netherlands was subject to an audit that I barely came out of thanks mainly due to their having beaten England in the recent past.

Once I said that Sri Lanka were playing Zimbabwe. Nothing I said after that could convince her of the supreme importance of the match to the cosmic health of our known universe and alas! I was dragged off the couch.

The pocket of civilization that I inhabit, is one of extreme refinement. I can subscribe to about five different cricket channels, all of which show nothing but cricket or related programmes all day long. They also show repeats of old matches. Old matches can be anything that was played before I was born to something played in the morning today. Repeats, as any sports fan knows are hugely entertaining, more than the actual match on occasion, since the result is already known, you have none of the real time heartburn and threat of imminent crushing disappointment. All you need to do is to enjoy the game, savour the major moments (29th over just watch the cover drive), bask in the glory of victory and salute the game. Most reruns involve our team winning, if you subscribe to the correct channels.

And this is how I spent many a glad evening through my life. After marriage, it changed to watching only matches involving India, and this had a good run too. Till one fateful day. It was one of the happiest days of my life and also the day I can trace the loss of Paradise to.

My team had reached the final of a major tournament in a long long time. The build up to the entire tournament had been special. Me and my wife had watched a lot of these matches together. She could name and recognize players even of the opposing sides. She could name upto five different ways that a batsman could get out. She supported the late night matches all the way till the final. She broke a habit of a lifetime and watched all six hours of the match.

We Won.

Jubilation.

Two Weeks Later.

The euphoria had died down. I was sitting peacefully watching a repeat of the match, internalizing it, savouring it, remembering the key moments, reliving the excitement without thought of impending doom this time when my wife came and sat with me.

"Another match?" she asked.

"Just watch," I said, trying to be a little enigmatic. I was sure she would love to relive the night of glory again. "Sachin is going to hit two fours in the next three balls."

"Didn't we just watch it last week?" She asked, a little unnecessarily, I thought. "You remember every ball!" She said rather accusingly.

"Yes, we did, but it was nine days ago, not last week." I said, settling down peacefully, "Enough time to forget the nuances."

"How can you watch this again? You already know what is going to happen!" She exclaimed.

"Well, yes," I said, "But this time there is no pressure."

"Seriously?!" She said. "Seriously?!" It was maybe a question, maybe an exclamation. I never know. The only other place I have ever heard it on is on American television serials.

We went shopping that evening. And that was the day Paradise was lost.

From that day on, whenever she sees me watching cricket, the first question is "Is there a tournament on?" Followed quickly by "Are we playing?" Rounded up by "Is this match live?"

Sharing knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. You never know when something might come back to be the bane of your existence. Had I been a little economical with the truth and kept my mouth a little shut, one never knows, I still might be watching the second final of the Australian tri-series of 2009.

Paris Mysteries - Wine, Food and Toilets

I just returned home after my second trip to Paris, both visits about two decades apart, give or take. The first time when I landed there, accompanying my parents, I knew four things about France: they fought in the first and second world wars, they ate snails, they spoke French and they had the Eiffel tower and Mona Lisa. Paris was large, crowded and confusing, not aided by the fact that my parents (completely) and I (mostly) were vegetarians. Before going there I always wondered what people who ate snails looked like. I knew the answer before my second trip even began. They looked, well, like me.

Anyway, the week that I spent in Paris this time in the company of my wife, was something utterly diffrerent. It was a truly romantic getaway. We fell in love again and again. With the crepes, the wine, duck confit and various small patisseries. Some things had changed though. The Eiffel tower looked a lot smaller than I remembered it to be as a ten year old, as did the Mona Lisa (Small-ish in front of the other works housed under the same roof).

Having spent a week sampling various types of French food, I came to the conclusion that the French missed out on a business opportunity of staggering proportions. They could have become the preferred outsourcing partner for food of their neighbours from across the channel. Imagine some 60 million people eating three times a day at 3 Euros a meal. The math says it would have been nearly 200 billion euros a year. Even if you discount half of that due to the various Indian-Pakistani-Bangladeshi eating joints, there would still have been a potential 100 billion euros to be earned. That is definitely not a sum to be frowned at.

The English Channel is unique in that either side of it houses arguably the best and unarguably the worst food in the world. I can't fathom how that came about, especially given the intertwined history of both nations over the past thousand years or so. Had it happened early enough in history, the English would have been deprived of one of their most powerful colonising impulses and India might not have got railways till much later. Anyway...what was not meant to be..

My wife and I adopted a tourist procedure that was quite new to us - that of walking around, with no specific direction and only jottings in the margins of hotel notepaper to guide us. It was a most refreshing way of getting to know a city. The first day, we started early, had a huge breakfast and before ten were out in the streets of Montmartre, walking around, looking for a place to eat. The cafes were just opening. The chairs and tables were being set in the very Parisian way where everyone faces the street. I have seen this only in two towns - Paris and Ho Chi Minh City. Anyway, the cafes were opening and what should the first customers do but enjoy a glass of wine or beer. At ten in the morning. And none of them seemed to be in college, in fact far from it. It just didn't seem  right for ten in the morning. But then, these things grow on you and by ten thirty I was sold, having my first glass of beer washed down with my first glass of wine of the day, since there was catching up to do.

We liked the trial of the first day so much that we repeated it every day from then on. Basically me and my wife were eating at intervals of (what now seems be) every twenty minutes. Copious amounts of food. We walked the streets, saw a good place (often the result of laborious research by my wife followed by a less strenuous search for it on the map by me), sat down and ate. We repeated this about five times each day. Considering we were in Paris for about five days, we must have had, by a conservative estimate, about twenty meals. When we didn't eat a meal, we would stop at a patisserie and order something by the simple method of pointing at it in the display cabinet. We ate all sorts of things that we didn't know the names of, but which were all uniformly divine. Well, some more divine than others, but then when one is in the realm of divinity, relative divinity is just petty quibbling.

And if I failed to mention it earlier, or if my previous remarks were in any way unclear, the food was wonderful. Even as I write, the word 'wonderful' doesn't quite seem to convey the 'wonder' that the food was full of.

The people were friendly and helpful and generally well dressed. And thin.

That leads me to the main mystery that we unearthed on our trip to Paris. How can French people eat the food that is served in the country and stay thin? It seems impossible. I have a theory. And it involves the wine and the non-peeing.

As I said repeatedly, not too long ago, the food was awesome. Eating their food and looking at Parisians leads me to conclude that the inhabitants of the city do not eat there. Most people are thin. The food definitely does not in any way possible assist staying thin.

We know a French couple here. One day the daughter asked her mother for French food. She immersed her potatoes in cheese and said Voila! She said the secret to French food was to put lots of cheese in everything. One cannot remain thin eating that food. But Parisians are thin, which leads me to think that there must be layers to this mystery. Maybe the wine is a factor. So, presumably if one started to drink early in the morning and ate that divine food, one would not gain weight.

Maybe. Maybe not.

This brings me to the final element to the mystery. Toilets.

There is an acute scarcity of public toilets in Paris. Acute. There are street signs leading to the nearest public loo, in some cases from as far as a couple of kilometres away. And if this is a free public toilet, it is stated there in big bold letters. And if you are unlucky enough to have to pee and have not been able to find a free toilet, you might end up paying 2 euros for taking a leak. Two euros in the place I live is the equivalent of my lunch on a workday. To top it all, the people I found queuing up outside all these toilets were mostly foreigners. Which possibly means that the French have either decided to call toilets something else as a practical joke or that not taking a leak lets you stay thin.

Imagine what a diet that would be. Start your day with French wine. Eat four meals a day of French food. Do not take a leak and you have lost four kilos in a fortnight.

If my wife permits, I am keen to carry out this experiment. Downsize me! with French food.