Ha, ha, ha, there I go again with typical nonsense. How can there be any advantage in a city like Chennai, which till this date is not even sure of its real name and whose main river is nothing but a mucky sewer line? But even the harshest of critics of Chennai will accept that it offers plenty of unique experience, and one of them obviously being life in high-rise multi-resident apartments that somehow manage to come up on places that were previously home to single, simple houses.

When top-heavy line of flats erupts in locations, which were essentially serviced by facilities meant for a single house, only confusion and complexity ensue. Probably that is why they call it as ‘apartment complex’.

But there are many hardened souls who manfully go out of their way, take time off from their regular jobs to tackle the every-day issues that confront every apartment complex and make them more difficult so that they become raging issues dangerous enough to trigger a World War (neighbourhood version).

The men who perform this thankless task of converting every neighbour into a sworn enemy make up the residents association that are deemed mandatory by the law because it couldn’t think up anything worse.

Let’s delve deep into this fascinating set-up that make up the major chunk of life in a metro.

President

The president of a flat association is in most cases a ponderous old person who tries to speak in English to an audience, which also insistently attempts English despite the fact that English is not the natural tongue to either of them even in their vaguest dreams.

For reasons that cannot be fathomed by normal human reasoning, the bulk of association meetings are carried out in a manner and language wherein a speaker tries to convey something, the listeners understand something else while the actual and real meaning of the words spoken being not even remotely linked to both. And this is why there is not one even issue that has been resolved by flat associations to the utmost satisfaction of the residents.

The responsibilities of the president of the flat association are varied, and all of them involve conveying in clear terms to all concerned that his responsibilities are many.

For shouldering this work, the president enjoys many privileges in an apartment complex, the chief of which being the elaborate and starchy salute by the security man at the gate. This salute is at the core of the national work ethic, which is evolved out of the most basic of management principles: The man who has the highest chance of deciding your pay deserves the highest gratification. This is how office bosses get to be respectfully addressed publicly as ‘sirs’ while in real conversations between workers they get referred to with funny and derogatory nicknames. For the record, I am called a ‘crack’, an inelegant but obvious pun on this column. It’s a different matter that I have been known this way much before this column was even an idea in my mind.

Secretary

He is the backbone of any association and provides the vital support to the president by being his sole talking companion before any meeting starts, which needless to say is a full 45 minutes or more behind the scheduled time. Apparently it is a cardinal sin, punishable perhaps by flogging, to begin any meeting on time. If all the hours that are spent waiting for the meeting to begin could be actually converted into money, it will amount to something that even Bill Gates or Sultan of Brunei cannot aspire for.

In the fullness time, the secretary and president, from being bosom buddies, reach a stage when they can’t speak a sentence to each other that does not involve a questionable reference to the other’s parentage. In comparison to association meetings, Parliament sessions are droll gatherings of Rotary or Free Masons.

Vice-President

What role does a vice-president play? His function is as vital and strategic to the association as is that of the country’s Vice-President who has the onerous job of being the Vice-President.

The other important task of the association vice-president is to sit in the dais and seem extremely interested during meetings though he is at liberty to fantasize about a nubile actress, something which the other office-bearers are known to cheerfully involve themselves in.

Treasurer

The Finance Minister of the Association, except the fact that flat associations mostly don’t have any money, a reality that you will become insistently aware of whenever you strike a conversation with a treasurer, as the only thing he is programmed to speak is: ‘there are no funds’.

Resident: Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2.

Treasurer: But I tell you, there are no funds.

Residents

These sensible and helpful group works in close coordination to think up various problems to existing solutions. It is required by Constitution for them to turn up late for meetings and complain that no work is being completed on time.

Residents also lend their expertise in spreading good cheer by floating wonderful stories about how association office-bearers are swindling money, which, needless to say, are not paid by the residents in the first place.

Electrician

Among the very many tricks up his sleeve, the most often conjured up is his unmatched ability to vanish, almost from the face of earth, at the precise moment when his presence is required.

This is a trick that he seems to have picked up from the local MLA. Or it could be vice-versa too.

Plumber

This is a man with an enormous fetish to change the foot-valve. He will offer this advice even if you were just asking the directions for the nearest temple. Air-lock is another of his favoured usage. You take out foot valve and air-lock from his lexicon, you would have virtually made him a tongue-less individual.

Like electrician, he too is prone to do the vanishing trick. But he will eventually turn up to, well, change the foot valve.

Security

Apart from reserving the sturdiest of salutes for the president, this otherwise surly, morose man’s work is to strike convivial conversations with all the maidservants and the wife of the resident laundry man. Running errands for residents, procuring household items for them in nearby markets are his areas of specialization.

He has faithfully modelled his main operation on the lines of Shivraj Patil, the former Home Minister who could be trusted to look extremely saddened and perturbed whenever something went wrong, which was frequently. Security men at apartment complexes have the uncanny knack of catching, no not thief, but a glimpse of the intruder when he is escaping.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

So when you turn up for the election verdict you will be as clueless as the anchors, who think they are explaining things to you detail. So rather than let them take over, here we offer a careful primer on all things political and constitutional, which we hope will be equally befuddling.

When you feel thoroughly confused and confounded after watching all the election discussions on the telly, remember you got the first flavour of it here.

The Constitution: It is a multi-page tome that apparently is the user-manual of the country and is believed to contain all its warranty certificates. But there is no way to tell, as there is perhaps none in this world who has read such a book in toto and still retains his or her sanity. However, there are many who manage to give off the impression that they have pored over the entire text of the book. The Constitution of India itself mandates that you stay at least 10 kms away from these ‘experts’, who have become experts by virtue of wearing thick glasses and talking in sentences in which the minimum distance between two successive full stops is 2 kms or 4 kms (whichever is more). These experts will come out of the woodwork in time to confuse the public further during election verdicts.
The founding fathers have thoughtfully prepared the Constitution to be bulky so that it can double up as a handy pillow when feeling sleepy, an eventuality that is inevitable to any of its readers by the second word of the third paragraph on the first page.

The Constitution also contains all the inviolable laws and sacrosanct rules that cannot be changed or tampered with in any manner except by inviolable laws and sacrosanct rules sanctioned by the Constitution itself. The Constitution, it should be said, is full of such definitions and explanations.

The founding fathers had a legitimate reason for framing the Constitution in the manner they did: They knew for sure that nobody would want to read the Constitution. If the founding fathers had actually wanted people to read the book they would have put a nubile girl’s catchy photo on the cover, a strategy that ensured James Hadley Chase books became cult classics for teenagers across generations.

The first right that the Constitution has enshrined in its hallowed pages is the inalienable freedom to use uppercase while writing ‘Constitution’ even in the middle of a sentence.

The second guarantee, as can be guessed, could be about freedom of expression to allow for, say, ‘Article 19’ to be written as ‘Art 19’ so as to cover up the lacunae of no artistic merit anywhere in the book.

President: He or she is the person who occupies a royal, rambling building, which has been built and maintained using several crores of rupees to underscore the most vital aspect of democracy, which is public money can be wasted in any number of ways as long as people can be kept bored by the television channels.

The Constitution with so many clauses and edicts that have been thoughtfully numbered in detail sets the basis for the President to perform the onerous duty of solving Sudoku puzzles. For, it beats the hell out of our imagination to figure out as to how the President can manage to spend the entirety of the six-year tenure without the Sudoku puzzles.

The other important Constitutional duty the President is obliged to perform is to bravely travel alone in stretch limousines large enough to be a constituency in itself. The President is also solemnly bound to attend the most boring of functions that are apparently thought up just to remind the rest of the nation that it (nation) has a President too.

Vice-President: This post comes in two flavours: Vice President and Vice-President.

The country’s luckiest person gets to occupy this post. And occupation of seat is the prime and only duty of the Vice-President. Apparently, the post of Vice-President was thought up back in the times when the economy was booming. But since then it has been floundering, and the Vice-President has stayed ‘benched’ till now.

It is not to be churlishly thought that the Vice-President serves no actual human purpose. The Vice-President keeps the linguist and other drifters of society busy by making them wonder whether Vice-President or Vice President is the right way to describe his unmistakable role in the hierarchy of the government.
The flipside of this post is to remain serious without yawning even once right through the Rajya Sabha session. As they say, no pain, no gain.

Hung Parliament: It is a term that comes into play whenever no single party gets the mandate to spoil on its own the affairs of the nation. On such occasions, the largest party takes the help of likeminded parties, which usually is every other party in the fray.

Hung Parliament, it should be said, is only an euphemism and Parliament has no power to help hang (to dry) even a wet cloth leave alone a hardened terrorist like Afzal Guru. Some constitutional experts labour to point out the fallacy in some quarters to equate the post of Vice President (or Vice-President) with the status of Afzal Guru as both seem to be esteemed guests of government. Constitutional experts, adjusting their heavy glass frames (they are deemed experts just because they wear thick spectacles), say something that beats the heck out of our comprehension. But suffice to say, the situation must be grave so we take back any reference linking Afzal Guru to posts of sinecural value.
The days of hung parliament are certainly numbered as all parties work themselves into the majority that forms the government.

Alliances: The dictionary shows ‘bonds’ as a possible synonym for alliances. Since bonds are about money, alliances are only about money, except the fact we wouldn’t say that in print and incur the wrath of politicians. Both the UPA and the NDA have the word ‘alliance’ in their nomenclature. And since ‘alliance’ is common to both, the parties that comprise the alliance can also be common to both.

Psephologists: The version of the word processor that I use knows no psephologist as it underlines in dark red and throws up the alternative ‘psychologist’. This clearly suggests that psephologists are still to get elected into even layman dictionaries. And these are the high priests who sit on judgement over election patterns and trends of an entire nation.

Psephologists are those people who pass off for being intelligent and important just because their job is described by a word that is difficult to spell and pronounce.

Democracy: Nothing to do with people, but is helpful for politicians and TV anchors to use in their talks. You can’t find actual people using it.  The redeeming feature of democracy is: Anything goes. And that includes this article.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.