My Recent Experience With Modeling

My friend Femmo, the designer (who also models occasionally), has been hinting that I would be no good as a model. And she has this nasty streak in her and she taunts me often enough about my inadequacies.

So a few days ago, when an opportunity presented itself, I thought i would give it a shot. When most of the people in the house had left, I quickly got ready and started practicing the walk which (if you have noticed carefully) goes something like

                                X

                                X

                                X

                                X

                                X

If the reader is at a loss to make sense out of this, I can quite understand. I was trying to graphically show how a model should walk. The right foot should not be moved forward but should be moved at an angle of 45 degrees so that it is now directly in front of the left foot. Then the left foot is moved forward again at an angle of 45 degrees. The pattern of the walk should be like how you braid your hair, if you get what I mean. For those who are familiar with chess, you will know how the knight moves (distinctly different from how the rook moves in a straight line). As a model you are expected to walk somewhat like a knight. Part step forward and part lateral..

This walk has to be graceful and you have to especially careful when you are alone. You won't have anyone to help you out in case you end up in a tangle of legs.

(see this if you want to see a video explaining the walk.. Kangana learnt it from me. 
http://ishare.rediff.com/video/Entertainment/fashion-kangna-scorches-the-ramp-again/1975619).

I got properly attired and was practicing in front of a select audience when I found myself facing what is commonly known in the industry as "wardrobe malfunction". My audience wanted to play with me and vigorously tore something from me and there I was left standing in a 2 piece outfit (consisting of my shorts and one slipper; the other slipper being taken away by my audience much to my consternation). The astute reader might now have guessed that my audience consisted of one dog. And the dog wanted me to play with him.

And here I was, tense with my debut experience. And right then and there I took a picture of the stage and my audience. You can see the picture below..

The afternoon had started with the agenda being a catwalk. At the end as you can see in the picture, the dog had walked out on me..

While Femmo might giggle and come up with a "I told you so" sneer, I can tell her that I am probably the only person in the entire industry who can model and shoot a picture simultaneously while having part of my outfit come apart. So there.. Maybe I wont make it to Milan next Spring but...

Femmo - The Authentic Chicken 65

For a long time, I have been meaning to write about my twin, Femmo. Now Femmo is a designer who specializes in women's wear.

She and I are twin souls since we are both in love with people who went to a certain boarding school, we have lived with people who went to a certain college in Madras, and both of us IS passionately interested in lingerie. She focuses on the downstream end in production while my forte is measurements.

Now people have a definite opinion about my intelligence and I have heard them saying that PG. Wodehouse based the character Bertram Wooster on me. I tend to blabber while Femmo is a very guarded person who will not reveal much about herself. All that she has conceded over time is that she is as intelligent as I am pretty.

She is extremely fond of voluptuous people, especially of her mom, of HER & me. She dislikes her father and she uses two words to describe him. (Now since this being a non-adult site, I have to necessarily use euphemisms and the reader will have to decipher the actual words she uses.)

1. 1.   That he is an opening in the hind side of a quadruped; the particular quadruped itself is a synonym for a person's hind side.
2. 2.   The other word she uses seems to indicate that her grandparents weren't locked in legal matrimony when her papa was born.

     Femmo often says that she, her papa and I are twins. "Hum teeno judwe hain na" is her frequent comment. She is so fond of me.

Bright as she is, her English vocabulary isn't particularly good. Often, I would  catch her using words (which she would have hurriedly got from her mom) and then she would have a sheepish grin on her face then. She is a chicken when it comes to laying bets. God knows how many times she has chickened out of bets with me and how many times she has lost bets. Despite being FM, she is a nice girl.

It's my fervent wish to see her united with her papa and that I ride off to the sunset with her mom, slurp slurp. Wait a second... I have a strange feeling that a Hollywood script writer used this in the movie Mckenna's Gold where Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif ride off in two different directions in the last scene. Wasn't the same scene copied in Mummy?

Waiting for Femmo to get back...

Basics of Stock Market Behavior - Course 101

I have been hearing about the Indian stock markets and the economy for quite some time. With so many people saying many different things, I thought I will try to give it a shot and see what I come up with. With due apologies to people from my home land: udayan, amartya, here I go.

My guruji told me recently that the Chinese markets have been down 20% in less than a month. Once the bears in China head towards the poles and bulls in the china shop in Spain come to India and US, there will be a surge in the DOW towards the Nasdaq and the NIFTY towards the Sensex.

Considering that
1. Readers Digest US business is heading for Chapter XI (Bankruptcy).
2. Jobless rates have increased and GDP growth has decreased in the US.
3. Q1 results in India have been good.
4. Inflation in India is at all time low.
5. Monsoon has failed in india.
6. With the recent fall in markets indices across the world, Gold has fallen from about $1000 to about $935/oz.

we have a situation where different factors point in different directions.

As my guruji points out, when the bears are exhausted and wont sell, the bulls sell in order to book profits. Now when a bull sells, who is buying? It has to be a bear. What does it mean?

When a bear is exhausted, he ends up buying. And when a bull is exhausted he ends up selling. We reverse our stances when we are at our wits' end. Hence at that point in time the same market behavior continues as usual except that the bulls play the bear's role and vice versa. Pause for a moment and reflect on this point.

The fundamentals seem to point all over the place just like in the Maruti advt. where people point out the location of the nearest Maruti Service Center. Fundamentals currently dont provide any clue. A lot depends on how the US markets do today and the far eastern markets tomorrow. Each one will depend on the other one for a cue. There is apparently a double top with a single bottom also.

Finally, the markets will be determined by the behavioral pattern of the investors. If they choose the buy option instead of the sell, the sentiment will be bearish (remember that now the roles of bulls & bears have been reversed).

The role reversal also creates an identity crisis since the bears wont know whether they are now bears or bulls. Being at one's wits' end is rather subjective, hence we cant exactly track when a bull becomes a bear.

Having said that, let's see what will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow being Thursday and guruji's turn to cook, sentiments will be negative at home and elsewhere. I expect the market to open below today's close. There is a support at 4034.5 and at 16420.2. We expect both Sensex and Nifty to be range bound between the above figures.

I hope I have brought some clarity into the otherwise murky subject of market behavior.

Its a jungle out there.

Cooking Disasters in the Middle East

A Sindhi friend of mine from the Middle East dishes out some mean Pav Bhaji, Rasam, Curd rice, Alu paratha. And there is some suspicion that Swine flu and other gastro diseases have had their origin in the Dubai/Sharjah area.

As it happened, she & I would tell each other whenever we messed up some dish. And we started to keep scores also. The first day I burnt rice (I dont use pressure cookers like other housewives do), I had to throw it out. Even my puppies refused to taste it. But everything else turned out wow. Honest that I am, I mentioned the rice disaster to my friend. And the score was me 1, she zero.

And as time went by, the score changed progressively from 0-1 to 5-1. My friend would occasionally let slip (very guarded though she is) that something was "accidentally" burnt. I would immediately update the score in my diary. Later, the burning incidents became more frequent with the result that the Dubai fire engine service started scheduling their resources and activities based on whether she planned to cook.

The other day, she accused me of not cooking frequently enough and THAT being the reason why my score has remained at 1 while she being a more regular (!! we all know how regular) cook, her score had obviously increased. And hence demanded that SHE be considered the winner of the cooking contest.

Now here was a glitch. It took me quite some time to get my idea across to her. It was my contention that we were not measuring the success rate. We were only measuring who burnt dishes more frequently. Hence how often each one cooked was irrelevant.

Her answer was a silent "hmmmm". I took it as her strong disapproval of my theory. Meanwhile I asked another good friend of mine to adjudicate. She also said that the Sindhi girl was the winner. Strange is the way a woman's mind (I use this word rather loosely here) works.

So I devised a plan to convince my friend in Dubai. I asked her if she understood cricket and cricket scores. She said NO. I interpreted that (correctly, as it turned out later) to mean that she did understand cricket. I said "Let's say in a match, Sachin Tendulkar scored 55 in 100 balls. And let's say Dhoni scored 35 in 33 balls. I asked her who would be the highest scorer in the match. Without hesitation my friend replied "oni". "Oni"? Some sindhi name? Then I understood she was eating then and had her mouth full. She then explained logically that 55 runs in 100 balls = 55% strike rate and detailed the mathematical working. I had a saridon and then asked her after she had finished, whether my question related to higher SCORE or higher STRIKE RATE. She said "score, NO its the Strike rate, NO NO its the score".

In the same way if the question is: who burnt dishes more, it does not matter how often we cooked. We are only tracking who burnt dishes more often.

As usual after a lot of discussion she conceded the point with poor grace. I was too tired then to go out and inform the puppies.

And then I made a resolution and I told her.

"I have decided. I dont want to keep scores anymore. I want to compete only with people who are at my level. Aire gaire logon ke saath nahi". She was happy. No more tension.

An Ode to Mummy's Birthday in Australia

I have a baby friend from Malaysia whose culture, if calculated accurately, would fall somewhere in the Bay of Bengal. She claims that her ancestors were sikhs. She can almost correctly count from one to ten in Punjabi.

The other day she was quite upset that all her efforts towards writing poetry had come to naught. And her mum's birthday was that day. She was desperate. She wanted to cook something for her mum. She cooked chicken which (while on the stove) was alive and kicking just as her mum called and told her that she was on the way back home. I suggested Euthanasia to my little friend. She rejected the idea since apparently that's not quite legal in Australia; quite a backward country - that.

Since I dislike seeing a friend in trouble I thought I would write a poem (or what we Urdu lovers call a Nagma) which she could dedicate to her mother. Here is the unabridged original Malaysian version.

"

Mummy, oh mummy,

You are la the best mummy

Every time I see you, I want you

(someplace la else)

This new la house is so nice

And I am going to be a baby doctor in 5 months. ooh la la la (this isn't the maLAysian la)

Happy b' la day mummy.

"

This baby friend hasn't spoken to me after that. I wonder how she is.

On Stock Markets and Heart Attacks

HoursNowTV. Aug 18th 2009: A hacker inadvertently caused the death of a person 2000 km away. The hacker who is a timid person residing in Chennai hacked into the ----bulls site and tampered with the data which showed NIFTY to be touching 6300, when in fact it was at 4500. A lady (!!) was avidly tracking NIFTY data on the -----bulls site. When she returned, after a tete-a-tete with her sister-in-law, she suffered a sudden cardiac attack on seeing the NIFTY data at the -----bulls site. The owner of the site, when questioned by our reporter, vehemently denied any wrongdoing and said that this was a malicious attempt to discredit their site. Enquiries are underway to determine whether the website attack was actually aimed at the lady in question by the person in Chennai and whether the -----bulls site was merely used as an instrument to achieve an end. If this suspicion is confirmed, it is expected that there will be a bullish tendency on the part of persons wanting to get rid of rakshasis in this circuitous way.