mayday! brain overboard.

Gallo-Ballo!

2005-09-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

Gallo-Ballo, I yell, waving goodbye. My friends look at each other, perplexed. I smile at their ignorance. Doesn’t anyone know that Gallo-ballo is the cry of the native tree dwelling Tangawan tribe in the jungles of Ethiopia? Truly, the complete imbecility of the proletariat never fails to get to me. Gallo-ballo. How can they not know it?

My fascination with goodbyes arose a year ago. People used to ask me why I wrote such short mails. The fact was I had to spare time so that I could choose an appropriate way to end the mail. I would write three lines in five seconds and then stare at the screen for hours, searching for an alternative to ‘take care’. I had already gone through all its mutations ‘Take care of yourself” “You take care now” “You take good care of yourself, y’hear?” My friends began to take such good care of themselves that I felt positively uncared for in comparison. My girlfriend took very good care of herself by finding herself another boyfriend. No more take care, I decided.

But the non-concern filled goodbyes were also exhausted. I had used Ciao. (I never say chow. Chow is food, synonymous with grub, bite, khana-peena.. only uneducated Neanderthals write chow. The word is CIAO)., arriverderchi, au revoir, sayonara so much that I was receiving requests for royalties from these foreign governments. I used ‘Regards’ a few times. I started saying ‘with respects’. My friends said I was being formal. I tried putting ‘warm’ before regards and respects. They told me to go drown myself. I almost did, such despair I was plunged into.

I started using ‘Love’. I’m a Piscean. The word love is sacred to me. I use it very sparingly. Most people have never heard the word ensue from my lips. Seeing it glaring from the screen, incontrovertible and irrevocable, imbalanced them a little. Some people fainted at their computers. Other ran panic stricken to the cops and asked for security cover. Some people fell on their knees and prayed for immediate moksha from life and death. Some called up. ”Uh, Suraj. You know, you’re a good friend and all that… I mean good in a relative way… but…. uh ,.. you know.. I don’t have such feelings for you, and I am sure, speaking hypothetically of course.. that I never will. I hope you understand.” After three of these calls, I got tired of explaining myself. I just sighed and said “Too bad. We would’ve been great together.” I think the guys who called up had a worse time of it than the gals. It was all very painful.

I was at my wits end, and then it came to me, in a flash of divine and inexpressible light. The words appeared in flaming letters. I was transfixed. Four syllables, rhyming at that. So short, so sweet, so fully packed with meaning. GALLO. BALLO. Hallelujah! I was reborn.

Gallo-ballo says it all. It means fare thee well, it means come back soon, it means I will miss you, it means When will you be back? It means I’ll see you guys tomorrow, it means “drop dead” . As a greeting it can mean “there you are” “I’m so glad you’re here” “you’ve got something hanging out of your nose but I won’t tell you” “I saw you making out with someone else and now I’m going to nail something very precious to you to the ceiling”. It’s all in the way you say it. Did I mention that Gallo-ballo is the greeting cry of the desert dwelling Davarim tribe of East Sudan?

I also love it when people pretend that they aren’t perplexed by Gallo-Ballo. I’ve sent Suman Datta two emails ending with it. I’ve received no comment. I sometimes fantasize that Suman is searching feverishly, frenziedly for its meaning. Suman has ripped apart the Oxford, Webster and Cambridge dictionaries and is now learning old and dead languages, all to find out the meaning of Gallo Ballo. Suman has called up all the language bureau from here to west Sudan; piteously pleading for someone to please, please explain what Gallo-Ballo means. Suman will finally give up and come to me for the meaning. Should I let on that Gallo Ballo is the universal cry of the stone-hut dwelling Dongribaja tribe of Central Nicaragua? Maybe if Suman asks nicely.

(Anyone wondering why I refuse to use a pronoun while referring to Suman, have patience. I shall explain all in good time.)

I dream of a time on earth when peace will reign, when all humanity (especially female humanity) will open their arms wide to me and hail me as the harbinger of harmony. Gallo-Ballo, they will shout, bear hugging me. Gallo-Balloooooo, the chorus will intone in tones expressing unspeakable joy. A universal cry of brotherhood and togetherness will waft through the air. At this point, I will humbly refuse to take the credit. No, I will say, You must not worship me, It was not I who created Gallo-Ballo. I was only an instrument in the hands of the divine. Gallo-Ballo was always there, waiting to be discovered.

Gallo-Ballo, I will say, was actually the ancient, divine cry of the long-forgotten cave-dwelling, nature-worshipping Conjave tribe of what is now Northern Tanganyika.

-Suraj Kamath
http://surajkamath.blogspot.com

Complicated ways of committing Suicide #22019

2005-07-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

Instructions : Give the following speech at annual Amazonian Feminist conference.

Someone yesterday asked me how to get to the moon. I told him to go straight at about 7 miles per second and take a right when he got out of the earth's atmosphere. I even explained how he could land by making a 180-degree handbrake turn and revving the engine hard to generate reverse thrust. I guess I could've just said that I didn't know. But hey, I'm a guy. I never say 'I don't know'. It’s against the code, you see. Besides, he just might have reached the moon by now.

Why do you think we don't stop for directions, even when the female passenger (read, pest) nags us to? We know it’s just a scurvy way in which women try to make us think we don't know where we are. We always know. We know everything within acceptable limits of tolerance. Hell, I know I'm in the right country, don't I? Then it’s just a matter of time before I find 24, Hideaway Alley. Hell, it’s just around the corner. Whaddaya mean stop for directions? We don't do that. Pester us all you want. It’s always just around the next corner.

I know you think its stupid, that it’s just some macho quirk, but it’s really not. I've done lots of research on this. The fact is that we never actually don't know anything. As a guy, simply because I'm a guy, and precisely because I'm a guy, I must know something about everything. It’s true. We come complete with this a-priori knowledge base. Now, we may not know something completely. But you see, there's always a working hypothesis.

For example, if someone asks me how to make a bomb. I know Nitroglycerine is explosive, all right? So if you mix nitro (nitrate? Nitrite? Ammonia? Well, one of those) and glycerin, you get an explosive mixture. Then you pack it tight into something, and voila! You have your homemade bomb! Where do you get glycerin? Well, glycerin is what they use to make soap transparent, right? So go buy Pears! See? What do you mean I don't know how to make a bomb? And you women say we don't know. Bah!

Any questions? Yes? The lady in the leather jacket in the third row? What? Do I know how to load a shotgun? Sure. Open the breech, must be that catch right there. Yeah, that's it, now you gotta put two shells in the chamber. Now snap the breech closed. There, shotgun loaded. And I've only just seen Rambo movies and read war comics. See how we know everything? … Hey! Hey lady, you wanna point that shotgun somewhere else?

Uh-oh.

- suraj kamath
http://surajkamath.blogspot.com

The Curse of being a Halfway diner

2005-06-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

In a starling twist of gastronomic proportions to the saga of my life, I've turned into what I've always abhorred, A halfway diner. I guess the best definition of this ailment is an inability to eat without cribbing about how what you're eating is horrible for every part of your body, from the skin to the gills, but eating the whole damn thing anyway and going back for seconds. I confess, I confess. It is the end. I would kill myself but after I get through this fourth helping of butter chicken, I think I'll just sit and wait for my arteries to clog up and slowly choke me. What? There's Kulfi? Do you have any idea how much full cream there is in that stuff? And God, the way those guys make it…. Hey, where do you think you're going with that? I never said I didn’t want it.

You get the whole lamentable idea, I trust. I, the bottomless pit, I the meal monster, I the terror of all-you-can-eat buffets, now am relegated to muttering obscene threats to my wholly insouciant stomach, which thumbs an imaginary nose up at me and bids my hand pour the samosa-pav down the hatch and never mind the chewing, Jack. Oh, for a day when I could either eat with abandon, or else not eat and perhaps make some use of my exorbitant gym membership. Which is good? Which is best? Which path must my life follow? Shall I follow the path of renunciation, which will lead to health, wisdom, an undeterred view of my toes, and a wholly understandable desire to bite any person making their way through a Subway footer? Or the path of utter self indulgence, which will make my friends so happy, which will make me so obese. I will smile at the poor anorexic fools who waste their time in their gyms when I can be happy in my bed waiting for my poor overworked heart to give up the ghost and take that final bite. I'm sorry for the melodrama, but kulfi does that to me.

Alcohol too. Beer, man? Just a little, this stuff really packs in the calories man… uhhh, a little more, little more, almost there, yeah that’s it, five millimeters from the top of the glass. You know you just killed five days of my gym here, don’t you buddy? The guy walks away smiling and my buddies shake their heads and tell me that I get fat more because I agonize over what I'm eating. Still, I have the best built body among us, thanks to guilt induced gymming.

I say all this because I need help. I don’t want to be like this anymore. Somebody help! I cant live like this forever. I am doomed to rue the spirits of mealtimes past, and, more the pity, of mealtimes present. Mealtimes future just read back my last words. It seems, before I bite the dust, I say "This really cant be good for me.. "

Well, Duh!

- suraj kamath
http://surajkamath.blogspot.com