When he did condescend to come to your doorstep, he would charge appearance fees, like any other celebrity.?? The rates varied, depending on what goodies he had on offer.?? Plain inland letters and postcards could go for as little as Rs 10 per mail, while parcels were usually Rs. 25.?? My brother’s CAT study material, though, was much more expensive - I think he wanted a Rs 50 ransom for it.?? (This was a decade ago, when inflation hadn’t diminished the value of a fifty rupee note from the price of a multiplex movie ticket to the cost of popcorn. I am sure his rates are much higher now.)

Sometimes, if we weren’t at home, he would throw mail, like my friend’s wedding invitation, into the storm water drain that ran in front of the house.?? Thankfully, my friend chose to get married in May, when the storm water drains ran dry and even the dead leaves that usually lined it had fluttered away in the hot winds.

I had always thought that Noida postman was a rare species, but it turns out he was not.?? Slate has a fascinating article about postmen - in the US, UK and elsewhere, who do not deliver the mail.

In 2006, the last year the U.S. Postal Service released figures, there were 515 arrests and 466 convictions for “internal theft.” That figure includes abandonment and hoarding cases, where the motive has remained constant since the days of penny postage: A worker gets overwhelmed or simply disinclined to finish his route. “It’s not a huge issue,” Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Office of the Inspector General told me. “We work on referrals.”

I admire the?? Postal Service’s nonchalance.?? Not a huge issue??? Well, certainly, not any more?? - because, after all, most of the mail we receive is junk mail. ?? Who uses ordinary post, or “first class mail” to send anything much anymore??? Even our greeting cards are mostly electronic.

Can you hear that clunking sound? Yes, it’s the sound of the post office digging its own grave.

I cut my teeth on Indian buses, and from a passenger’s perspective, these were the Rules I learnt:

Rule #1 is to never stop at a bus stop, if possible. If that is somehow not possible (say due to a traffic jam), then stop as far as away from it as you can, with a distance that is directly proportional to the number of people waiting for the bus.

Rule #2 is to seek safety in numbers. So buses will come in pairs, or not at all. Not only will 147 and 149 come together and block the stop, but the 147s will also come in twos or even threes. For the next hour, of course, you will never see a single 147, even if its supposed frequency is every 20 minutes.

Rule #3 is to load up with as many passengers as possible. In Bihar and other states, even the roof is considered a seat, but in other states people disdain the roof and think it is cool to hang out of the window bars. Perhaps we should send some of these people to try out for the Roman Rings.

Rule #4 is to travel as slowly as possible. The ideal speed is just a tad above the speed of a fast walk. So a passenger will be marginally better off staying in rather than walking. Although, he/she will look longingly out of the window and wonder if getting off would be a better idea.

Of course, this assumes that he/she has a view of the window. It is moot if the only view available is of the next passenger’s armpit. It is also moot if getting off the bus is only an option at the last stop, when the impenetrable wall of passengers surrounding you would suddenly turn into a wave that carries you to the exit (or to the floor if you are not careful).

Rule #5 is to come up with ad-hoc route changes. When the bus finally arrives, you will find that it will either take a detour and take longer to wherever you want to go, or stop well before your destination. The probability of this happening increases directly with how rushed you are.

Rule #6 is to have twenty different routes serving one part of the city and none at all (or very few) for another.

And of course, every passenger knows Rule #6, which is that you will get every bus in your stop except for the one you are waiting for. You will even see rare buses which you’d never known existed, and you will get hordes of those buses that you waited hours for yesterday. But the only buses you see in the route you want will be those following Rule #1.

I am sure there are some more rules, and I hoping you guys will remind me of those I missed.

Years later, as a student in NYC, these rules came in handy every time I had to catch a flight at La Guardia airport. From the Upper West Side to La Guardia, your options are really limited to a cab, or the M60 bus. I have tried the cab a few times, but at about $30 for a 20 minute ride, or $1.50/ minute, can you wonder it was not my preferred mode of transport? The M60, on the other hand, costed $2, and no, I don’t mean per minute either.

Picture courtesy: Mike

The M60 followed every one of the rules above, including Rule #1. In fairness, though, there were no people handing from the windows (Rule #3), and a “full” bus still did have breathing space.

The drivers also followed Rule #2 very enthusiastically, and I remember standing at the stop on many occasions, convinced I was going to miss my flight and berating myself for not arriving at the bus stop earlier. I think the M60 drivers have already run rigorous statistical analyses to find how late they can arrive at a specific stop. It goes something like this:

Max delay time ??? Max time customer will wait before calling a cab + Time taken to get a cab.

Of course, variable 1 (waiting time) will vary by passenger demographic , and variable 2 (time to get a cab) will vary depending on which part of the city you are/ one-way streets etc. So the equation is actually much more complicated than the simplistic version above.

I am sure the M60’s statistical models are pretty good. I don’t remember if I ever had to take a cab because the bus was late - maybe there was the rare time that I had to. But mostly, the M60 would arrive just as I’d finally decided that I was going to get into the next yellow cab I saw. The bus drivers had it down to a fine art (or science).

The M60 drivers also followed Rule #4 with missionary zeal, taking about 25 minutes on 125th Street alone (I’d think longingly that I could walk to the end of the street in 30 minutes). Their mission obviously was to stop at every single light on 125th Street. If, by chance, a light was green, they would promptly duck in front of the bus stop right before the light and wait there until the light turned red. I always wondered why the bus stops were always just before the light, and perhaps that too, was strategic.

Once they crossed 125th St, of course, they wanted to show everyone the sights of Astoria.?? Ditmars Boulevard does have some lovely houses. Finally, reluctantly, the bus would arrive at the terminals after 40 or 45 minutes, or double the time a cab would take.

But why am I saying all this? Well, this post about the Pokey awards reminded me of the M60. The Pokey awards are given by two transit advocacy groups to the slowest bus in NYC and this year, it was the M96 which received it.

I wonder why the M60 did not get the award. Is it because the awardors have never traveled by it? After all, who would take a bus to the airport? Even in public transport-friendly NYC, only students took a bus to the airport.

Or is it possible that the M96 is really even slower than the M60? Given that the M60 traveled at the rate of a brisk walk, how fast would that make the M96?

Here is how the “analysis” went.

- Did he really offer the position to her or did he not?

- Will she accept the offer, or will she not?

- If she accepts the offer, and if Bill Clinton is appointed an envoy, will he end up working for her?

- If she does not accept the offer, why would that be? Is it because she doesn’t want to be vetted?

- Who leaked the offer to the media? Was it Obama’s camp or Clinton’s camp?

- Why did they leak - was it a deliberate/ “strategic” leak or was it not?

- If it was a deliberate leak by Obama’s camp, what was the strategy behind it - did they want her to accept, or did they really want her to reject the offer, but be seen as offering it to her? Or were they trying to damp Kerry’s hopes or send a message to Bill Richardson?

- If Obama wants to really offer Secretary of State to Clinton, was it because he wants to put together a “band of rivals” like Lincoln? Was he taking the Godfather’s advice - “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”.

- Or was he floating the idea to see how his followers would react to Clinton’s appointment?

- If it was not a deliberate leak by the Obama camp, does it mean we can expect a lot more leaks from the so-far leakless Obama camp?

- If it was a leak by the Clinton camp, why did they leak it?

- When Clinton joked about the speculation in Albany, did she do that because she was serious about the offer, or because she wasn’t?

- Will Kerry feel bad? He gave Obama his first chance on the national spotlight. Will Richardson feel hurt? He endorsed Obama at a crucial juncture.

There was much more, and this went on for two whole hours - first thrashed out by Chris Matthews, and again rehashed by Keith Olbermann.

I wondered if this was what I should expect on television for the next four, or maybe even eight years.

Maybe it doesn’t matter - I have already torn out most of my hair.

I tried switching channels - but what are my choices? Another “analysis” on why the market crashed again, on CNBC? House flipping on HGTV? Yet another rerun of a program on the Grand Canyon (Travel channel)?

I think I shall take up knitting. Or Hatha Yoga. Unless you guys have better ideas?

1. Why don’t they declare a holiday on Election Day? Why do they force people to line up for hours before or after work? How many people can take so much time off from work to vote?

If you live in Connecticut and work in NYC, you cannot vote in an hour, or even during the day. If you start for work at 6 am and leave work by 6 pm, do you have to line up in the dark to vote either at dawn or dusk?

2. Why is it okay for candidates to campaign even on election day and for television ads from political action committees to run even on election day, but why, in some states, are voters not allowed to vote wearing a T-shirt or even a button with a candidate’s name? I am trying to understand the logic here - voters will not be influenced by the television ad they see just before they head out to vote, they will not be influenced by the affiliation of the campaign worker who drives them to the polling booth, but they will be influenced by the lettering on someone’s T-shirt or the tiny button they see?

3. Why do they not make voter lists easier? Everyone has a driver’s license or a state ID. They do check your immigration status when you apply for a license/ ID. Why cannot they add a line about citizenship in the driver’s license? Wouldn’t that be an easy proof and save the hand-wringing every four years?

4. Why do so many people have misconceptions about voting? Who spreads these rumors? Who spread the rumor that Democrats should vote on Nov. 5th while everyone else votes on Nov. 4th?

Who spread the rumor that you cannot vote if you have tax arrears or a foreclosed house or have a police record?

Why do political parties, who spend millions digging up and publicizing real and imagined dirt on their opponents, not spend a dime to put out television ads to set the record straight?

5. On a related note - shouldn’t the homeless be allowed to vote too? Given how many homeless there are, shouldn’t there be some system - like a letter from a shelter, or a social service worker? How can you have a situation where people are turned away because they do not have proof of address?

6. Why do they allow individual counties to design their own ballots? We all know how confusing Palm Beach County, FL ballots were in 2000. Yet, this election, Palm Beach county was again allowed to design its ballot and it came up with another masterpiece. Palm Beach believes in being unique, apparently. so they didn’t want the simple checkboxes or filled circles that other FL counties had. Their new ballot design had two parts of a broken arrow wth a gap in between - voters were supposed to shade the gap to make the broken arrow whole. If this sounds to you like a child’s playschool assignment, well, I take it you are never moving to Palm Beach county

This is a country where people believe in having one national standard for everything ranging from window panel sizes to store layouts. Why, then, don’t they have a standard ballot design? Why take the risk of disenfranchising thousands of voters - especially the poor, the elderly and the not-so-literate?

Do you think they will resolve these issues over the next four years? Do you also, like me, have things you find puzzling about the elections?

On election night, I watched McCain give the best speech of his campaign - the only speech where he appeared gracious and honorable and statesmanlike. Too bad he waited until his concession speech to show this side of himself.

Then I watched Obama’s victory speech, which was very inspiring too except for the Oscar acceptance part when he started thanking everyone from David Axelrod to his wife and kids. Does he have a dog? I wondered. Will he thank it next? Isn’t the average American supposed to have 2.3 kids and a dog?? Barack has done well on the 2.3 kids, so I was not surprised when his next line was about getting a puppy.

Watching all the campaigns over the last 2 years taught me an unwritten, but important rule of American politics - when you speak, you must always have an adoring spouse standing behind you, smiling broadly, clapping at appropriate points and generally acting like an NFL cheerleader (highkicking is optional).

If, on the other hand, you are a candidate who doesn’t have a spouse standing behind you at every campaign rally, there must be something wrong with you.? If you are 30 and single and we don’t even hear about your girlfriends, then you must be gay. That is exactly what the opposition insinuated about Ashwin Madia.? Not surprisingly, Madia lost the election.

If this election was a vote for change, it was obviously not a vote for too much change. It was sad to see Proposition 8 (which seeks to ban gay marriage) pass in California. ? Some minorities will still need to go a long way to become equal.

But electing a black President was a huge change for this country. It was historic because it would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. As Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post said with tear-filled eyes, even a few years ago, he would never have believed such a thing would happen. Not that he would have calculated the odds of a black president and concluded they were low - the very idea that a black man could become President was unthinkable.

I watched black men and women of all ages, columnists and college students, get teary eyed after the election. Middle-aged and elderly blacks, especially were more emotional than young people, no doubt because they had experienced much stronger racism. You could not watch the scenes without getting a little emotional yourself, and realize how historic this election was, not only for blacks, but for America in general, because the country had taken a significant step towards becoming a post-racial place.

So yes, it was a historic change. But when Obama said in his speech “America is a place where all things are possible”, I wondered if he wasn’t going too far. Obviously it depends on how you define “all things”. It’s true if you mean that more than a hundred years after black men got the right to vote, a black man had become President. Yes, that was now proven possible.

Gay marriage still obviously does not come under “all things”. But minorities aside, what about the majority - women? Was it possible in America for a woman to become President? More to the point, was it now finally possible for a woman to become President, now that an African-American had become one?

After all, African-American men got the vote before women did.? Women in the US were granted the right to vote only in 1920. Black men, on the other hand, had the right to vote with the passing of the 15th Amendment in 1870. (It’s a different matter that this legal right to vote wasn’t much help in the face of continuing racism). But my point is - whoever made those laws were convinced that women were on the lowest rung of the ladder of legal and political rights.

Attitudes towards women have still not changed, even if we are now in the 21st century. Just look at the reaction to both the women on the ticket - if Hillary Clinton was vilified as a shrew, if we saw people holding placards saying “Iron my shirt” or selling nutcracker dolls, we saw Sarah Palin being cast as an airhead.? I am not defending Palin’s competence or suitability for the ticket.? But VPILF?? Is that the way one thinks about a Vice Presidential candidate?

Ironically, being seen as ignorant and incompetent may have helped Sarah Palin to some extent, as she was less threatening to many men than Hillary Clinton was. After all, when there are men who think women are not capable of taking decisions about their own body and reproductive choices, how do you expect those same men to believe that women are capable of running a country?

We will certainly not see a woman President in the US in the next eight years. Will we see one in the next eighteen?

Perhaps we will. But when it happens, don’t expect me to get teary-eyed. All I would feel is satisfaction on a much-needed change. My own country, India, has had a woman Prime Minister and now a woman President. Women have been leaders of major political parties. They have been, and are, powerful women, not stooges.

I guess Barack Obama should add a disclaimer to that speech - “America is a place where all things are possible, but eventually, in the fullness of time, and maybe when humans live on Mars.”

I would like to believe too, that America is a nation where anything is possible. but for now, I will face the reality - that statement doesn’t apply to everyone. Maybe that’s why it’s called the American Dream - that’s exactly what it is.

- William Wordsworth, “The Daffodils”

Wordsworth is not the only one whose heart dances with daffodils. I fell in love with fall bulbs this spring when the tulips sprung out from my lawn in purple and red and yellow. They are still there, lurking in the ground and I hopefully see them again come spring. But this year, I planted daffodils - one hundred bulbs which should turn, magically, into those dancing white and yellow flowers.

Stacked in my garage were the boxes of bulbs. Daffodils, Narcissus, Hyacinths, Muscari, Irises of all kinds - Dutch iris, Bearded iris and Siberian iris and of course, the tulips. They had waited patiently through all summer, and survived the cold winter too, and it seemed cruel to ask them to sit out through another year. They had to be planted this Fall.

Planting in the perennial bed is so much easier than what we did last year - plant the tulips right in the lawn bordering the driveway. R and I cut tens of little holes in the lawn and it was really time consuming and not much fun. We ended up planting most of the tulips, but gave up on all the other bulbs. But all that effort was forgotten when we saw the tulips shoot up from the lawn, one by one.

When I wrote in April about eagerly waiting for my tulips to flower, Space Bar wanted pictures of the tulips. So, this one is for you, Space Bar

In our misguided enthusiasm and certain ignorance, we had planted some of the tulips in a ring around the large electrical box in the yard. We somehow thought these tulips would hide that monstrosity. It didn’t strike us then, that tulip plants are all flowers and hardly any leaves. You can easily mistake a tulip plant for a cut flower, with its long, single stem decorated with a few leaves and a single large, bright flower. The lawn looked like someone had buried vases of cut flowers in the ground.

When the tulips came out, even the ugly box in the background could not do much to diminish their raw beauty. They weren’t tall enough or bushy enough to hide that box, but they formed a beautiful necklace around it, in pink and yellow and red, and the beautiful purple tulip that was my favorite.

Meanwhile, the tulips planted in the flower bed did their best to bring some color to the otherwise drab looking bed that was filled with buried perennials still waking from their winter sleep, which hadn’t even started putting out leaves or shoots. This year, the bushy daylilies have grown bigger and the mulch is fresher, so it should be even more beautiful if the tulips flower again.

This year, the backyard perennial bed is a big savior. In every clear patch of brown dirt, I saw a home for a bunch of yellow daffodils, or paperwhite narcissus, or alliums or hyacinths. I planted bulbs in all the spaces between plants- most of my perennials will not start growing until late spring, while the bulbs will be up and flowering in early spring and start fading out by summer. That’s the plan, anyway.

I don’t like planting bulbs in straight lines, although some of this spring’s tulips did end up looking like they were going to march down to the road. I planted the daffodils in circles - eight of them per circle, seven in the circumference and one in the center, as if they were playing a game of dodge ball. If they stop playing games and come up in spring, I should get a bright swathe of color.

I have finished planting most of the bulbs. There are still a few laggards, like the Narcissus that are probably busy looking at their own reflections, but these too will go into the ground soon.

All that is left to do now, is to wait through the long winter and hope that when spring comes, my daffodils will dance.

For those of us in the US who have been reminded of the elections every day during the last year and a half, every time we switched on the television, read a newspaper or answered the landline, today will be a climactic end, or it will be an anti-climax, depending on whom we support. Half of the US is going to be disappointed with the results, irrespective of which candidate wins.

I can offer my own anecdotal evidence of why I think voter turnout is going to be high and people are very invested in this election. At the beginning of the campaign, I had a lot of visitors who had landed on this post after searching for “how to sell my vote” or something similar. I would feel sorry for them, given that the post is not about selling one’s vote, or even about US elections. But for the last few months, I have noticed that no one searches online for methods of selling their vote anymore. I’m assuming this means no one wants to sell their vote anymore, but who knows, perhaps it means that everyone who wants to has already figured out how to sell their vote to the highest bidder

I am confident I will be completely unproductive today, as will millions of others.?I still do not understand why they do not make election day a holiday in the US, as they do in India.? More so when voting times stretch into hours. I will also stay up until late night to watch the results come in. Election results always remind me of the time when I would walk down to the big board outside the Hindustan Times building in Connaught Place and watch the latest Lok Sabha election results. You are right, that was in the days when no mainstream Indian newspaper had an internet presence.

Much more recent is the memory of waking up in the middle of the night to check NYTimes and find that Ohio’s results had all come in and Kerry had lost. There are other memories, and I am not even going into the hanging chads and butterfly ballots.

At the beginning of the day, Pollster was predicting a landslide for Obama - winning 311 electoral college votes (against the 270 required), Mccain winning 142 and the remaining 85 being a toss-up. This map will change during the day:

If, like me, you find yourself checking back repeatedly to see how the map changes, here are a few hilarious ads to take your mind off the results

An Obama ad that’s a hilarious take-off on Bud’s famous “Wassup” ad series:

A beautiful song to the tune of “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” sung by a self-professed Hockey mama who doesn’t seem to like Sarah Palin very much:

And finally, John McCain’s appearance last weekend on Saturday Night Live, if you haven’t seen it already. I wish we had seen more of this version of McCain during the campaign. Things might have been very different for McCain then - the McCain I saw on SNL is so much more likeable than the one we saw on the campaign trail.

Whichever candidate wins, this election is going to make history for many reasons. This election has evoked strong emotions in many people, including in many of us who cannot even vote.

In the end, I do not know if I am going to be happy or disappointed. I do know, though, that I will be very relieved it’s finally over!

I am running away because I am scared of all the children who are going to land on my doorstep, shouting “Trick or Treat” in their squeaky little voices.

Come Halloween, my front porch will be besieged with adorable, gap-toothed little children.? But while I find them adorable and cute on other days, on Halloween evening, I am terrified of them.? They will be dressed as zombies, skeletons and pirates (or as Sarah Palins), but it’s not their costumes that will scare me.? No, I am scared of their antics.

I am not scared of every child.? There are lots of perfectly behaved children who will arrive to trick me, and leave happily bribed with the Mars and Snickers and Butterfingers and other bars that I, like everyone else, will hand out.? But there are other children who will leave me shaken.

These come in various shapes and sizes - from gap-toothed four year olds to defiant thirteen year olds, boys and girls, princesses and pirates.

Who are these children? Well, they come in five main types.

The Size-ists: These children only like large sized bars, and by large I mean 6 inches long and 3 inches wide. They will look distastefully at your bowl of 2+ inch sized bars and tuck their basket away. You will notice said basket is empty except for a few 6 inch bars.

The Brand Nazis: These children only like specific brands. “I don’t like Mars”, they’ll say, wrinkling their noses in disgust. “Don’t you have something else?” The child beside him will say “I hate Snickers, it’s disgusting”, and you find yourself picking out Butterfingers and Hersheys and getting their approval for each candy bar.

The Allergic-to-everything: These children will sweetly ask you to give them only bars that don’t have nuts. “I am allergic to peanuts”, they will say. Or “I am allergic to milk”. “Do you know which brand will agree with you?” you ask them.? “I don’t know, you pick something without peanuts”, they’ll say grandly.? You will find yourself standing on your porch and peering at candy wrappers in sudden panic, while a dozen kids clamor outside and more arrive every minute.

The Oliver Twists: These children are never satisfied. If you let them help themselves from the bowl, they will take multiple fistfuls. If you hand out candy, they will ask for two or three helpings. It’s hard to say no to a child. But as the last stragglers come in, you find that you are down to your last candy bar or two. It’s harder to find an empty candy bowl when the evening is still young.

The Alien encounterers: These children will pause and study your brown skin. “You speak funny”, they will say. They will grab the candy you hand them and flee.? Or hesitate to approach the bowl.? You wonder why those scary skeletons and ghouls are frightened of you - after all, you are just dressed as a human

Each year, I find myself desperately searching for the parents.? But this is a safe neighborhood, so the parents presumably are off to party.? The odd ones who come stand across the road and watch from a safe distance, or stand silently beside the group of children without a word of greeting or introduction.? You wonder which child’s parent this is - if it is the misbehaving child’s, perhaps it is easier to remain silent and disown all responsibility?

But the kids leave me running scared.? So this Halloween, you will find a bright light on my porch and a large bowl filled with more than a hundred candy bars on my doorstep. But you won’t find me.

Happy Halloween!

P.S. If you notice, the title is from Ogden Nash’s? “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker”.

I have summed up my Halloween experience in verse in the title - “Candy is dandy, but fifth gear comes from fear.”

So when you leave a comment, can you also sum up your Halloween experience as a verse? It should start with “Candy is dandy..”

Meanwhile, everyone will ignore the fact that Koneru Humpy and Harika Dronavalli are doing quite well in the European Club Cup championships.? Who cares about European clubs, unless it’s football?

After a few days, the newspapers will turn to Ganguly’s retirement and Gambhir’s elbowing of Watson and everyone will forget about chess and Anand again.? Until the next World Chess Championship, whenever that is.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why isn’t chess more popular in India?? I agree that chess is more popular in India than in many other countries, like say, the US.? But then, chess originated in India. In the US, chess is unpopular because it is considered a nerd’s game. Yet, there are probably more chess clubs in the US than there are in India.

But we Indians revel in being nerds.? We talk in lingos and jargon - techie jargon, stock market jargon, medical jargon, whatever our chosen field, we pick up the jargon first.

If we are not discussing our jobs, we are still finding other ways to show our nerdiness.? If we are discussing immigration, we will know all about arcane immigration rules.? We will have detailed discussions on form I-485 and I-140 and everyone will know what they are talking about.? If we are discussing politics, we will use terms like GOTV, IBD/TIPP and LV, discuss the latest Rasmussen poll result and its methodology, and what it portends for each candidate.

Take our sports.? We don’t love sports which have too much activity. Take Test cricket, for instance.? It is a game that I am certain is supposed to be played by senior citizens.? That is why they have those long lunch breaks where one can comfortably have an afternoon siesta, and those tea breaks when they can catch a short nap, and there are all manner of breaks in between.? Like the drinks break - you would think the players and umpires would be able to swig from a Gatorade bottle when they are standing idly in the sidelines, or waiting for the over change, or a new batsman to come in, or any such occasion.? But no, they have to set aside special drinks breaks when the players can walk around with their drinks and socialize.

Long story short, senior citizens’ game. But we increase the nerd quotient even for such a game by counting each run and catch and making the game a statistician’s delight.? The average nerd on the street can tell you how many runs Tendulkar has scored, who in the world is the next highest run scorer, or how many wickets Kapil Dev has taken.

We created other nerdy games like Scrabulous (or Lexulous), and millions of us play it every day.? Some of us (yes, that’s me) support even more nerdy causes like the Spelling Bee.

Even our grandmothers play quasi-nerdy games like “Antakshari” which involve having a memory bank of songs in the hundreds (thousands?).

We also love any activity that involves sitting motionlessly and staring at something - which is why many of us are software engineers and finance professionals, and we spend our free time surfing on our computers and watching television.

When I think about all this, I am puzzled as to why we don’t like chess more.? Sure, a lot more Indians play chess than other nationals, and perhaps a lot more Indians play chess than before.

Forget playing - a lot of us don’t actively play cricket either.? But we treat it as a spectator sport.? Why don’t we do the same with chess?

During this World Championship, there were many sites that offered free commentary/ analysis of each move by GrandMasters (Chessdom, Susan Polgar’s blog), showed each player’s move on a chessboard, or predicted what the computer “engines” like Rybka or Fritz were predicting for the next move (ChessOK).

Each game day morning, I would obsessively refresh all these sites every few minutes to see what was happening. It was great fun to replay those games move by move and see what the world champions were playing.

I am not much of a chess player.? I have never played chess in any tournament.? The high point of my chess career occurred at age 10 when I successfully drew a game with my cousin (who was several years older than me).? Of course, I lost the next game rather quickly, but we shall pass over that, shall we?

I have also never played cricket, and yet I religiously watch most cricket matches.

I was surprised at how few people were discussing the game online.? I didn’t read any blog posts or get any tweets about the game.? You would think chess is a game we would all gravitate to naturally, and happily discuss chess with all its jargon - about Ruy Lopez and Queen’s Gambit Declined and why Kramnik should never have tried the Nimzo Indian opening given his disastrous results with Kasparov.? Think of all the opportunities we are missing out.

You might say that it’s not the lack of jargon, but rather because chess is too boring.? Unlike cricket, where people elbow each other and leap like frogs and call each other monkeys, chess is just played by two quiet people in suits.

That is of course, completely ridiculous, as anyone who followed the Kramnik-Topalov bathroom saga a.k.a. World Championship will tell you.? Cricket can never reach the lofty levels that chess has already attained.? What this post really needs is a picture of Kramnik sitting in protest outside his bathroom during the World Championship with Topalov, and forfeiting the game because the bathroom was not unlocked.? I am relieved Russia and Bulgaria did not go to war over Kramnik’s bathroom, but I suspect they considered the idea.

So entertainment value is surely not the issue. Why then, do so few Indians follow chess?? Why is chess not even half as much a nerd-religion as cricket is?

Is it that somehow, chess does not have enough aggregates and percentages and “expert” commentators? Could it be that somehow, we think chess Is not nerdy enough for us??

I am going to shamelessly borrow my brother’s greeting to me to add:

“May the Markets recover, May the economy recover, May Paulson and Bernanke see light and usher in prosperity this year.”

Last Diwali, I was making sweets and ruminating about Ravana’s army.? I was pondering deep philosophical questions like why Ravana’s army actually fought with Rama. What were they fighting for - their king?s right to abduct unsuspecting women?? Was there a draft, or did people join the army so they could get subsidized home appliances? As I said, deeply philosophical issues.

This year, my thoughts are less on Rama and more on Obama, what with the election just a few days away and campaigning and reporting at fever pitch.

This year too, I made sweets for Diwali.? With no crackers to burst, Diwali here seems to involve pretty much making sweets and eating them.?? If eating sweets worries me, the idea of having to make them worries me even more.? But then, it’s Diwali.

I made gulab jamuns this year.? I have made Rasagullas so often this year that they are definitely pass?, and I have two unopened packs of gulab jamun mix that were purchased so long ago that if I don’t use them now, they will die of old age.

Do I have to even mention that I have never made gulab jamuns before, or that I am not exactly sure what the gulab jamun mix even contains? No, I am sure, if you are a regular reader, you will take all that for granted by now.

But I am a great believer in following instructions.? I am not saying I always do, just that I believe everyone else should.

So I took out this pack and read the instructions.? The good news - there were only 3 steps.? How hard can that be?

Next, I actually read the steps.? Step 1 asked me to add 50-60 ml of water to the mix and knead into a dough.? I did that.? I read on, and found that ideally, I should have added milk.? Too late.? These instructions were clearly written by a devious mind.? Why not say this right at the beginning: add 50-60 ml of either water or milk?

Step 2 wanted me to make the dough into exactly 20 round jamuns.? I wish they had been more specific.? How was I going to get 20 jamuns?? What should be the diameter of each jamun?? 1 inch? 1.5 inches? 2 inches?

The bigger mystery was - why 20?? The pack advertisied that the mix made “25 gulab jamuns of approx. 25g. each (after soaking in syrup)”.? So shouldn’t they ask me to make 25 jamuns and not 20?

Also, what exactly was a “25g. jamun(after soaking in syrup)”?? Was I supposed to weigh each completed jamun in a tiny beam balance (the sort I had last seen in physics/chemistry labs) to make sure it would be exactly 25g.,? or should it be 20g with a 5g. allowance for sugar syrup?

I gave up on the instructions and started making jamuns based on what I thought I wanted my gulab jamuns to look like.? I ended up making exactly 12 balls.? In hindsight, I could have probably made smaller jamuns; I would have been happy with golf ball sized jamuns, but these fluffed to become lemon-sized, or maybe just smaller than a small orange!? On the other hand, the jamuns were a lovely sight.

The instructions also say you have to make round and smooth jamuns without cracks in the dough.? My jamuns were smooth enough, but they weren’t round.? Try as I might, I was getting a spheroid with a distinctive equatorial ridge and squashed poles. In the picture above, you can clearly see the ridge in the jamun on the right.? Sounds familiar?? Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have solved the mystery of Saturn’s moon Iapetus and its equatorial ridge.? I hereby postulate that Iapetus is just a super-sized gulab jamun in space.

I warmed some oil and started deep-frying these jamuns.? More mysteries of Iapetus started to get solved - in this case, the two-tone surface of Iapetus. Iapetus has a bright hemisphere and a dark hemisphere.? These? jamuns were no different.? For some reason, they resolutely fried with one particular side always on the surface.? So while they were beginning to turn a lovely, velvety brown on the underside, the top remained golden.? Flipping them over made no difference.? They just flipped right back and floated lazily, golden crowns mocking me while the underside fried furiously.

The only option I had left was waterboarding, or rather, oilboarding - dunking the jamuns down in the oil, golden side down and holding them there until they turned brown.? I probably violated every tenet of the? Geneva convention (Delhi convention?) that applies to the treatment of gulab jamuns.? If there are any gulab jamuns reading this blog, I hope you don’t hold this against me.? I was just trying to get you to tan evenly

Step 3 was to soak the jamuns in sugar syrup for 30 minutes.? Dissolve 300g of sugar in 320 ml water, the pack directed.? Now I was in a quandary.? How many cups is 300g of sugar?? Here was a pack that was clearly targeted at the US market, with its “Nutrional Information” and whatnot, and yet the manufacturers were trying to insidiously foist the metric system on us poor US NRIs The deviousness of it all!

I searched online and found that 190g equals 1 cup of granulated sugar.?? So I had to add about 1.6 cups of sugar.

As the sugar syrup boiled, I drained my now-evenly-tanned jamuns on paper and then dunked them in the sugar syrup.

Then I used a technique my mother told me about today, which really saved the day.? Actually, it was probably partly responsible for the super-sized jamuns too, not that I am complaining

When the jamuns are boiling in the sugar syrup, spoon in a little ice-cold water on the tops of each jamun, she said.? They will absorb more of the sugar syrup and fluff up more, she said.? You should do this every 5 minutes and keep the pan covered at other times.? (Edit- you can also add ice-cold sugar syrup instead of water if you are worried about diluting the sugar syrup).

This made sense.? I suspect the temperature differential at the top of the jamun causes more hot sugar syrup to rush into the jamun from the boiling solution below.? Repeating this process a few times at intervals results in gulab jamuns loaded with sugar syrup.

My gulab jamuns pretty soon fluffed up so much they filled up the entire bottom of the pan, squishing each other and revealing only tiny gaps where I could see the sugar solution. They were also absorbing sugar syrup in such prodigious quantities that soon there was no solution left even in those tiny gaps.? I had to make another batch of sugar syrup to drizzle over the first one.? (Note to myself - next time, completely ignore pack directions on quantity of syrup needed).

In the end, despite following every instruction to the tee (what, didn’t I?) I ended up with gulab jamuns that can be more accurately described as jumbo jamuns

I am not complaining - they are incredibly delicious, but I suspect they will vanish in a couple of days, taking all my weight loss goals with them.