"Now the female will start flapping her wings and circle around the male," he said pointing to the television in the corner of the fast food joint, which incidentally seem to always run either sports channels or "nature channels". I do not know what morbid fascination he had for birds, which he surely did not have for me. He had been talking about them for the previous forty-five minutes.
He was entirely delicious, the kind of guy one finds once in a neon moon, especially when one is alone at home. Initially during the conversation I told him how lonely it feels not to have anyone else at home, what with everyone busy visiting some relative or the other. I assumed he got the point. HE seemed intelligent, at least, smart enough to understand the suggestion. BUT NO! all he could talk abt was the mating dance of the flamingoes, he called it a waltz. I tried getting his attention and knew a few "discreet moves"-I tried throwing the spoon off the table and bending over to pick it, he didn't seem to notice. Damn those movies...none of those moves work in real life. He remarked how graceful the flamingo's legs were. I asked him if he liked long legged guys. He looked nonplussed and proceeded to explain how the anatomy of the human leg differs from its avian counterpart. I tried licking my fingers after i finished my sandwich, he told me that was unhygienic.
I had tried every trick in the book, and if there was chemistry it would show by now, otherwise the reaction was way off-balance. I passed the next half hour listening discovering a new dimension to the phrase "bird-brained". Having dated scores of men, I had a redoubtable reputation in the gay social circle in my home town. There were urban legends of me being able to bed the most recalcitrant of men with a wiggle of my finger. And here I was, unable to work sex into a conversation with an obviously gay man. I had a lot at stake that night. I had my reputation riding on this Hard hearted male (I was wishing for it to be the other way round).
He was paying for the meal so I decided to appear graciously interested. If I couldn't get sex, I might as well indulge myself with the menu and make up for lost carnal pleasures. I polished off quite an impressive array of dishes whose names sounded vaguely like they were children of a French father and an Arab mother living in Timbuktu. He seemed unperturbed , he had this stoic expression on his face which didn't let you know if he was hiding something or if he really was an idiot. He paid for the dinner and asked me if he could give me a ride home. I might as well save a penny or two, I thought. What happened later was just a blur-when one is fast losing interest in the other person, it's hard to keep track of all that he wants you to hear. Usually, I am told that my eyes have a glazed look and I have a disturbingly smiling demeanor when I am not particularly listening to people. He took it as a sign of my interest in the long beaked finches of Galapagos he was telling me about. Finally after suffering one excruciating hour of Hyderabad's traffic, we reached home.
I suddenly felt an uneasy pain inside me.... there was my gloriously lonely home waiting for him and here he was, unceremoniously dumping me. Just as i was stepping out of the car he hurriedly mumbled something. I thought he was sayin somethin abt some damn bird- I just smiled and nodded. "So where do I park my car?" he asked me. Why would I worry about his lack of a parking space. He asked me the same question again...I asked him if he didn't have a garage at home.
"It'll take me a good part of the next three hours to park my car at my home and come back here" he said. He had been mumbling about wanting to come up "for a cup of coffee". My heart leapt out...there was more uneasy pain in the chest....well, butterflies in the stomach..... its alright, its just the anxiety of sleeping with this fabulous guy, I thought. I took a moment to compose myself and with an awkward smile lead him to our garage. The butterflies in the stomach still wouldn't go away.
The scene shifted to my living room. I made him coffee, (the next day i was to find out that he hadn't even sniffed it). We talked about lots of things.....mainly birds. I asked him if he wanted to take a look at my room.
We went into my room, he tenderly ran his fingers up my back. Now my heart was beating faster than it ever had. Suddenly, I felt this inexorable urge, the light in my eyes seemed to dim....... My legs sprang with an urgency i had hardly ever felt........I RAN...........................................
............. I RAN and moments later, i was crouching over the toilet throwing up like I was a pregnant frog. All the butterflies in my stomach decided to fly away that very moment.
All the exotic ingredients of the evening's meal, made an appearance in the show, all at once.
After eviscerating to my heart's content, I fell back. I felt him holding my head and rubbing my back. He cleaned me up and helped me to my bed.
"You should have gone easy with the sea-food" he said.
I smiled.
After quite some time I asked him why he'd acted so aloof and uninterested all evening? The Waltz of The Flamingoes, every species has its own version of the mating ritual, this is the mating ritual of the human homosexual. Someone acts aloof, someone else makes a fool of himself.
P.S. We were together for the next two years. Flamingoes don't mate for life, I guess.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
NEW and IMPROVED- A Neutral Accent For Mr.Madrasi
Alright, so I am stuck with a familiar problem - how do I begin my rant?
A good idea would be to tell you how the Oxford English Dictionary defines what I want to rant against. But prejudice is far too familiar a concept to beggar the indignity of an introduction. So, let me begin by asking you who the person was that coaxed his prejudice into your face? If you are an Indian, a SOUTH Indian at that, was he someone that hid his ignorance behind a gaudy tie, the kind that seem so plentiful these days. Perhaps, HE also had an irritating over-confidence -- an air of smugness -- that seems to be the hallmark of everyone with a two-bit, third grade management degree from a back alley in DELHI. Somehow, HE behaves, as if HE were in fact the Archangel bearing the copyright of the one true gospel of GOD.
HE met me on a train, a bottle of mineral water in tow and some movie rag to keep his intellect occupied. Of course, on and off HIS cell phone would ring, of course he would lapse into ultra-loud conversations, of course in ENGLISH, of course peppered with four lettered words, and of course utterly endearing! As the norm for an Indian train journey goes, conversation transpires out of the nothingness, like a ghost out of the mists. You do not even have the time to anticipate its presence before you are inextricably trapped. Simple wordless bovine adjacency of the kind that the rest of the world treasures in the name of privacy is an anathema.
An elderly gentleman in the group of passengers, graciously offered tea to all his fellow travelers. HE refused, with all the practiced grace of a perennially smiling plastic doll. I, on the other hand committed a cardinal sin, I said "Ihad juSSSt noWW oNLy, uncle" all my south Indian upbringing pouring itself out, saturating my accent. For a brief moment I threw a glance at HIM, all-smiling. Yet, his smile was different, this time it was the triumphal smile of a wily python that is anticipating a wonderful lunch of a poor rabbit that had strayed right into its curls.
"You seem to be a local guy here," he asked me
"AF Corse, yes"
"Whaddyado"
"saari, i didn't understand"
"What do u do?" in ultra slow motion
"oh,i yam doo-ying my Ph.D under a joint Indo-GERRman pRRoject," I said with a fair measure of pride, trying to outdo his contempt.
"You didn't get through to a management school?"
"No, No, i waant to do this...In fact it is a good technical koschen that I am working on.."
"Waat do u do?"
"I work as an HR manager with I***l"
"What kind of career opportunities do you anticipate once you've done your....thing" HE
"I think I will join some AAR yand dee firm"
"Well, actually I run an institute as well, we are involved in Accent training, Accent neutralization, .........and we also place people with BPO's" HE
"You do realize that if you opt for a shift in your profession, the BPO industry will be a great alternative"
"Yesss"
" Give me a call, sometime, once you are back in hydRaBaD, attend a few sessions with us, I'm pretty sure you'll know the difference for yourself,"
"in waat?"
"In your Accent! once you are in the job market you will realize how hard it is for someone with a pronounced mother tongue influence on his language, to get ahead of the pack. I've seen loads of you guys face really bad situations. You know more than half of the South Indians that I interview, are actually, way underqualified . They SUFFER because of their accents." HE finally put a stopper in that verbal diarrhea.
"waat qualifikayshans aare reqoired faar the BPO jaab"
"A good command over the English language, competitive communication skills, great personality..."
"Oh, u mean like you,"
"Er...I think I am slightly over that phase of my career"
"So, you also got your accent neutralized..?"
"Well, I never had a problem in that area you see, we come from a cosmopolitan background in DELHI, accents are hardly a problem"
"So waat is a neutral accent"
"something that doesn't show traces of your mother tongue on your pronunciation, has clean vocabulary and great command on how to enunciate words... in the right way, internationally acceptable"
"means i should speak like Americans?"
"Lets not get ahead of ourselves.... no one is born perfect you see..... though many times my American clients have complimented me on how i managed to fool them"
"but i yam very proud of my mother tongue, i yam happy that it has the power to show up even when i yam speaking other languages"
"Well, it won't take you too far, though, will it?"
"No, its taking me to one of the world best cancer research institute....faar me that is enuff no?"
____________________________________________________________________
Well, let me do , what I thought would be a good idea to begin my rant with. Let me define a neutral accent.
(Keeping with the anti-Establishment tone i decided to use Wikipedia as my reference and not the Oxford English dictionary---very self-conscious, I know.....but hey its a rant. Also, i consider Wikipedia the modern day bastion of freedom; a slightly inaccurate, though wholly democratic, academic authority.)
Wikipedia defines neutral as the state of being entirely unbiased, free of any kind of typification or characterization, and not tending to any known position
Accent on the other hand is the sum total of all that typifies and characterizes an object or a process, provides it with peculiarity. Wikipedia defines an accent as a manner of pronunciation of a language by a certain group of people.
To my mind the phrase neutral accent is an oxymoron. Anything that is an accent by its very definition cannot be neutral. Indeed, when a falsehood is repeated long enough it starts to sound true....so does a neutral accent.
Only a group of culturally spineless people would speak a language in a way that is in complete dissonance with their learned phonologies. I am the lucky few who haven't had their accents neutralized....hallelujah for that. And everyone else that is in this great sheep trot to the neutralization center, good for them. I hope though, that because of the wierdo that Mr.Madrassi is, he will keep up his accent, even if as a charade for public entertainment.
A good idea would be to tell you how the Oxford English Dictionary defines what I want to rant against. But prejudice is far too familiar a concept to beggar the indignity of an introduction. So, let me begin by asking you who the person was that coaxed his prejudice into your face? If you are an Indian, a SOUTH Indian at that, was he someone that hid his ignorance behind a gaudy tie, the kind that seem so plentiful these days. Perhaps, HE also had an irritating over-confidence -- an air of smugness -- that seems to be the hallmark of everyone with a two-bit, third grade management degree from a back alley in DELHI. Somehow, HE behaves, as if HE were in fact the Archangel bearing the copyright of the one true gospel of GOD.
HE met me on a train, a bottle of mineral water in tow and some movie rag to keep his intellect occupied. Of course, on and off HIS cell phone would ring, of course he would lapse into ultra-loud conversations, of course in ENGLISH, of course peppered with four lettered words, and of course utterly endearing! As the norm for an Indian train journey goes, conversation transpires out of the nothingness, like a ghost out of the mists. You do not even have the time to anticipate its presence before you are inextricably trapped. Simple wordless bovine adjacency of the kind that the rest of the world treasures in the name of privacy is an anathema.
An elderly gentleman in the group of passengers, graciously offered tea to all his fellow travelers. HE refused, with all the practiced grace of a perennially smiling plastic doll. I, on the other hand committed a cardinal sin, I said "Ihad juSSSt noWW oNLy, uncle" all my south Indian upbringing pouring itself out, saturating my accent. For a brief moment I threw a glance at HIM, all-smiling. Yet, his smile was different, this time it was the triumphal smile of a wily python that is anticipating a wonderful lunch of a poor rabbit that had strayed right into its curls.
"You seem to be a local guy here," he asked me
"AF Corse, yes"
"Whaddyado"
"saari, i didn't understand"
"What do u do?" in ultra slow motion
"oh,i yam doo-ying my Ph.D under a joint Indo-GERRman pRRoject," I said with a fair measure of pride, trying to outdo his contempt.
"You didn't get through to a management school?"
"No, No, i waant to do this...In fact it is a good technical koschen that I am working on.."
"Waat do u do?"
"I work as an HR manager with I***l"
"What kind of career opportunities do you anticipate once you've done your....thing" HE
"I think I will join some AAR yand dee firm"
"Well, actually I run an institute as well, we are involved in Accent training, Accent neutralization, .........and we also place people with BPO's" HE
"You do realize that if you opt for a shift in your profession, the BPO industry will be a great alternative"
"Yesss"
" Give me a call, sometime, once you are back in hydRaBaD, attend a few sessions with us, I'm pretty sure you'll know the difference for yourself,"
"in waat?"
"In your Accent! once you are in the job market you will realize how hard it is for someone with a pronounced mother tongue influence on his language, to get ahead of the pack. I've seen loads of you guys face really bad situations. You know more than half of the South Indians that I interview, are actually, way underqualified . They SUFFER because of their accents." HE finally put a stopper in that verbal diarrhea.
"waat qualifikayshans aare reqoired faar the BPO jaab"
"A good command over the English language, competitive communication skills, great personality..."
"Oh, u mean like you,"
"Er...I think I am slightly over that phase of my career"
"So, you also got your accent neutralized..?"
"Well, I never had a problem in that area you see, we come from a cosmopolitan background in DELHI, accents are hardly a problem"
"So waat is a neutral accent"
"something that doesn't show traces of your mother tongue on your pronunciation, has clean vocabulary and great command on how to enunciate words... in the right way, internationally acceptable"
"means i should speak like Americans?"
"Lets not get ahead of ourselves.... no one is born perfect you see..... though many times my American clients have complimented me on how i managed to fool them"
"but i yam very proud of my mother tongue, i yam happy that it has the power to show up even when i yam speaking other languages"
"Well, it won't take you too far, though, will it?"
"No, its taking me to one of the world best cancer research institute....faar me that is enuff no?"
____________________________________________________________________
Well, let me do , what I thought would be a good idea to begin my rant with. Let me define a neutral accent.
(Keeping with the anti-Establishment tone i decided to use Wikipedia as my reference and not the Oxford English dictionary---very self-conscious, I know.....but hey its a rant. Also, i consider Wikipedia the modern day bastion of freedom; a slightly inaccurate, though wholly democratic, academic authority.)
Wikipedia defines neutral as the state of being entirely unbiased, free of any kind of typification or characterization, and not tending to any known position
Accent on the other hand is the sum total of all that typifies and characterizes an object or a process, provides it with peculiarity. Wikipedia defines an accent as a manner of pronunciation of a language by a certain group of people.
To my mind the phrase neutral accent is an oxymoron. Anything that is an accent by its very definition cannot be neutral. Indeed, when a falsehood is repeated long enough it starts to sound true....so does a neutral accent.
Only a group of culturally spineless people would speak a language in a way that is in complete dissonance with their learned phonologies. I am the lucky few who haven't had their accents neutralized....hallelujah for that. And everyone else that is in this great sheep trot to the neutralization center, good for them. I hope though, that because of the wierdo that Mr.Madrassi is, he will keep up his accent, even if as a charade for public entertainment.
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