Golden Tales

A couple of weeks ago I went to a jewellery with my mother. She had been pestering me for some time and after running out of all the excuses I could think of and found from my research on the internet I finally decided to give in and go with her.

The dreaded hour arrived. My mom got ready. She was wearing so much more jewelry than she normally did which made my dad to joke if she was going to sell or buy ornaments. Mom gave him a stare so cold that I immediately swallowed a couple of jokes that I had thought on my own. Man, dad’s tea is going to be horrible for the next week.

Finally I, mom and my little brother set off to the Jewelry. Dad escaped saying he had work to do. I had used that excuse about 3 times already, so I had no other option. We reached the Jewellery. Owing to the fact that my mom doesn’t come to the Jewellery much and that I don’t have any girl siblings this was my first ever visit to a jewellery since I was a toddler. It was a really boring experience. It was like the worst four hours of my life.   

So from this experience and the observations I have made, I present to you amateur Jewelry goers who will have to accompany their mothers/sisters/spouses/girlfriends to the Jewelry, some tips.


Tip no.1 - The best thing to do is not go to the jewelry at all or postpone going as much as you can. Use excuses to drop out from going. For Eg: The one I used first was to say that I was not well. But you have to use this with caution because after you use this excuse more than two times your mom will go uber-protective on you and will blame a lot of things like your late sleeping, eating junk food, not taking proper care etc. She will also start putting subtle hints about smoking and drinking. This is a cue to stop using this particular excuse. Another excuse you can use is about how tired you are from your work and the long hours to put at it. This can be used more times than the ‘I am sick’ excuse but should be put to rest when your mom starts saying “If you are finding your work this hard. Why don’t you start looking for another job? You can write this exam, that exam etc.”

Other than these two excuses there are other small excuses you can use but eventually you will have to subside and go with her.


Readers, if you have any other good excuses other than these please mention it in the comments so that I can use them next time.   

Tip no.2- The second tip is about how you can spend the least time in the Jewelers.  My mom spent about 4 hours choosing a single set of earrings. The equivalent amount of shopping for me would have taken four maximum fourteen minutes and that is just if the salesgirl is really cute.

At first I showed some interest and gave her some opinions. After about half hour I got bored (This had nothing to do with the fact that a cute girl who was trying out ornaments sitting right next to us had left), got up and started roaming around. After almost three hours she called me and showed me some ornaments and asked which one I liked. I had no idea, so I told her that the blue ones are good. My mom got angry and replied “Blue? There are no blue ones in there. The only coloured ones are lilac and lavender. You are just like your dad. Not interested in helping me.” I wanted to tell her that I didn’t even know what lilac and lavender are and that it is all blue to me. But when your mom starts drawing parallels between you and your dad it is a cue that it is time to shut up. 

Finally after what seemed like eternity my mom selected one and asked the sales guy to bill it. After he brought the bill my mom asked to see another set of earrings and finally ended up taking a different one.

The only way to escape from this time is to come to the jewellery an hour before it closes so that the ladies are left with no other option other than to finish the shopping in an hour. The only other option is to learn all about jewelry and the names of all the colours out there.

  

Tip no.3 - The third tip is about money if you are buying the jewelry. As I told you already, it was my first time in a jewellery so I had no idea how much gold would cost. But when I saw all the prices in the shop I was shocked. Boy, gold is costly. My mom selected only something which was way lower than my budget but for the next time I am going to the jewellery I have devised a clever plan. I will go to the shop only in the last week of the month. By this time I will exhaust my debit and credit cards to the exact limit I am willing to spend on the ornaments so that you don’t give them any option.

This plan however has a chance of backfiring. That is if the person who you are accompanying wants something that is over your budget and she suggests that you can come back the next month to buy it. This is the worst situation to be in, not only will you be losing more money but there is also a prospect of spending 4-5 hours more in the jewellery. If such a situation arises then beg, borrow, steal, call your friend who are within an hour distance and get the extra cash and get them the ornaments they want because another 4 more hours in a jewellery will make you want to kill yourself.  


Tip no.4 - When the cute girl sitting next to you who has been trying on ornaments for hours says ‘oh, the gold is too costly nowadays’, please don’t reply “See it is because countries can either stock money in the form of American Dollars or Gold, but since now the value of dollars have gone down countries are stocking more gold, hence the rise in gold prices. Goldman Sachs says…” The only thing this will get you is a look of contempt from the girl, although on hearing Goldman, the girl will turn and ask “Goldman? Who is he? Is he a superhero who produces gold? Awwww, can I marry Goldman?”

Tip no.5 - Good jewellerys offer you soft drinks or coffee when you are shopping. When an attendant offered me coffee I rejected because I had had enough of this machine made coffee at work .That was the worst mistake I made that day. So friends, if you are offered coffee at a jewellery, please take it and drink and ask if you can get more because trust me, you are going to need it.

Gold costs so much these days that I actually fell really bad for the parents of girl children who have to spend so much on gold for their weddings. So girls, if you want to save your parents all this trouble, please sent a mail to me (with a full size photo). I will be able to help one maybe maximum two dads. 

THE MALLU

In this post I will try to explain what ‘The Mallu’ is to all those who are not from the bitter gourd (Karela, for the people from states that don’t have 100% literacy) shaped beautiful state in the extreme south of India. 

The word Mallu came into existence long back in AD 2002 when people from the north of India(referred from here-on as the Amits) realised that in fact ‘Madras’ constituted of two different states, One in which everyone is a Rajni fan and another one in which everyone ate, slept, bathe and shit coconut. The word 'Mallu' is used to refer to three things by any person who lives to the north of Bangalore (which incidentally is the capital of ‘The Mallu’). It can refer either to a person from the state of Kerala or the ‘tuk-tak’ language they speak or more importantly to the porn from the south of the country.

 So what really is ‘The Mallu’? The Mallu is all what is said above and much much more. In fact it is a phenomenon. God made the Mallu only after he had achieved 100% literacy, which means it is his most complex and sophisticated creation.

 Statistically speaking The Mallu is a person who is
a. Highly educated.
b. Will put lots of coconut oil on his hair.
c. Will drink a lot of booze.
d. Will become an engineer or doctor and eventually commit suicide.

 Dear Amits, to understand what ‘The Mallu’ are you will first have to understand how ‘The Mallu’ is being created and also you should have Sensibility, Sensitivity and Resistivity.

 A typical mallu when born will be given the name Arun if he is a boy or Lakshmi (This name can sometimes be preceded by adjectives like Maha, Mega, Giga etc) if it’s a girl. The girl child can also be named from random English words like Mini, Shiny, Clara, Chlamydia etc.

 After this naming ceremony the mother will love their children by putting copious amounts of coconut oil in their hair.

 Then they will be sent to an English medium school. A typical conversation of a mallu parent who has come to drop off their child in the school for the first time in their LKG is “Mone, you must be first in all subjects. If you don’t come first we won’t give you any of delicious food I make in coconut oil. See that kid over there; he is my colleague’s child. Make sure that you beat him in everything including studies, sports, singing, dancing, karate, kathakali, kalaripayattu, arabipattu and also Tamil padyam.”

 To the teacher “Miss, please take care of him. Also make sure that he doesn’t speak, read or write a word of Malayalam. And please start his entrance exam coaching classes tomorrow itself.”

 The only solace a Mallu child will get in is in the chocolates and toys their uncle in the Gulf brings them.

 After this rigorous education process all mallus will sit for the competitive multiple choice exams and will come top in everything. This is because ‘The Mallu’ is being trained from a very young age to take multiple choice exams. Even when ‘The Mallu’ is in LKG, the only alphabets which he was thought were a, b, c, d and e which stood for none of the above.

 So after excelling in the entrance examination we will eventually join a high ranking engineering or medical college. When in this college along with studying we will also get into politics. You see, we mallus are very politically aware. This is a straight effect from our 100% literacy. We demonstrate this high political awareness by electing a different political party to the government every 5 years.

 Also ‘The Mallu’ is very cool, calm and peace loving person unlike the Amits of the north who are very noisy and violent. The Mallu likes to demonstrate his non-violent methods by observing a special festival called Hartal or Strike every other day. During this festival mallus very peacefully and non-violently march towards the nearest government office and peacefully vandalize the office and throw stones at the police, also peacefully. The police will also peacefully throw these stones back. This stone hurling is the national sport of ‘The Mallu’. In fact it is the practice that he got during these stone hurling sessions that helped the greatest mallu among all the mallus, Sreesanth to be the best bowler in all of cricket.

 So for all the Amits out there, this is how a Mallu comes into existence. All this entrance coaching, literacy, political awareness and coconut oil go into making of the greatest entity in the world, ‘The Mallu'. So please be very afraid of ‘The Mallu’ because you don’t just meet a mallu, they happen to you.

 P.S: The last line is not at all nicked from a T-Shirt.

 P.P.S: I started writing this post as a serious one about my state and the problems it is facing. Then I realized that I am not Chetan Bagat and switched to writing it the best way I knew.

 I am somebody who believes that the answer to all the problems this world faces lies in proper education. Yet my own state which boasts of a literacy rate which is higher than that of most European Countries has the highest rate of suicide in the whole of India. We consume the maximum amount of alcohol among all Indian States and mine is the state which has the highest number of divorces in India. Even if we have movies which are nominated for the Oscar we still prefer to see movies in which either a 60 year old grandfather is falling in love with a heroine 40 years younger than him or in which a fat, liposuctioned snob is driving around in big cars chasing girls. I end this article with a question ‘we mallus are definitely 100% literate, but are we even 10% educated?’