Pigeon mummies of Pisa bouncing on a wall

Spending 4 hours every day sitting in a bus can play havoc with your mind. After your initial despair regarding wastage of four precious hours of your life starts to dwindling, you devise multiple strategies to kill time. After all how much can a human possibly whine?

For a lot of people, those multiple strategies end up in a recycle bin and all they could manage is to get a nice sleep while the bus bobbles its way to their house. I usually end up reading and sleeping alternately. Sometimes I also take interest in cars running along with the bus and count the number of traffic rules broken by various vehicles in 5 minutes. I usually stop at 1000 or when I fall asleep with my mouth open, whichever happens first. Witnessing law breaking does get boring after a while. It’s like watching the same porn movie again and again. I also end up observing the people sitting around me in the bus, their necks moving to various positions as they try to push themselves into their wonderland.

So to kill time one fine day, I made a list of sleeping positions I have seen fellow passengers indulge in and a few interpretations based on that.

a)  The Pigeon: This category of bus-sleepers keep moving their heads back and forth at an alarming rate in the YZ plane as shown in the graph below. They look like pigeons walking on a railing. Mashed Musings believe that the people who sleep like this are bad decision makers as they keep moving to and fro and confuse everyone around them.

The Pigeon moves in the YZ plane

b) Shut up and bounce :  Remember those toys filled with air and no matter how much you punched them, they bounced right back? Some people sleep like that in a bus. They will move their head to the right and smash it on the window. The impact will throw their head towards the left and hit your shoulder. This will repeat in rhythmic oscillations. Even if you remove the window and your shoulder, such sleepers have this amazing capability to bounce off air on both sides of their head. Mashed Musings thinks that such people are selfish leaners and would always use another person for their benefit.

Shutup and bounce in the XY plane

c)  Laser dot on a wall : Remember those times when you are watching a movie in a cinema hall and suddenly a laser dot appears from somewhere and carves a devious, random trajectory on the blouse of the actress? Well, some people sleep like that laser dot. Their head wobbles in so many directions that if you steadily look at them, your eyes will hurt. They are like a mad bull poking anything that comes their way. Mashed Musings wonder how people sleep like a God particle ramming the walls of the Hadron collider. Such people are decision-less and spend the maximum amount of time in Big Bazaar.

Laser Dot moves in any direction in the XYZ plane

d) Leaning towers of Pisa : Such travellers lean on either their left or right and peacefully remain there. They might lean on your shoulder or a windowpane depending on your misfortune. The biggest disadvantage of such co-passengers is that if you try to change their leaning preference by poking their head with a finger and shoving it to the other side, they will fall right back to their original position like a detonated building. So, if they have nested on your shoulder, then your shoulder it will be. Mashed Musings thinks that such people have very strong likes and dislikes and are quiet stubborn. And try to keep a tissue between heads and shoulder otherwise you will be drenched in drool in the morning.

e) The Mummies : You are really blessed if you are sleeping next to a mummy in a bus. Mummies sleep like dead bodies and won’t make a sound. They are dream co-passengers and only a few chosen ones encounter them. It is needless to say that Mashed Musings belongs to this category. Such sleepers are highly focussed and most peaceful creatures and do not lean on anyone.

The saintly Mummy

You might be wondering why there is no category for the Snoring Devils. That is because snoring can be combined with any of the categories mentioned above (except for the Mummies). It is a nightmarish combination, the deadliest one being a ‘Snoring Leaning Tower of Pisa’. And imagine a ‘Snoring laser dot on a wall’. That would be like a short-circuited Darth Vader. Very unpleasant.

So, which category do you belong to? Now don’t be shy. Out with it.

Same City Different Light

A few days back I went to my office for an implementation. I had to reach office at 6 am which meant I had to leave home at around 4:45. The cab driver woke me up at 4.10 am because he could not find my home and I ended up being his GPS for the next 15 minutes and choked on my toothbrush in the process.

As I sat in the car and covered the distance to my office in 1 hour which I usually cover in 2 hours during peak rush hour, I felt disoriented. Dawn looked like a struggle to me. I hadn’t experienced Delhi in this light. I was expecting at least a façade of calmness.

The streetlights were wrestling with the Sun to maintain their dominion over the roads. I saw them fight a losing battle as the Sun attacked the roads the streetlights had held with such élan all night. It was a clash the streetlights fought and lost every day but that never dissuaded them from putting up a worthy fight.

There were hoards of trucks on the roads, especially on the highway and the Ring road. The car looked like a petrified deer passing through a herd of elephants. The driver was doing his best to remain wide awake, popping out his eyes and alarmingly touching them to the windshield.

A tired truck driver stopped his truck in a corner of the road, stepped down and laid on the footpath. He covered himself with the quilt of the bright yellow glow of the streetlight. He could not bear the weariness anymore. He had to sleep before he could carry on with his nomadic life. I looked at him and thought – he must be bone tired. How else can someone sleep on a stone? I wished I could turn off the streetlight but the Sun was already winning the war.

Traffic policemen were stopping random trucks trying to collect money for the future of their children. There was no remorse – only the crunching sound of a bigger fish eating a smaller one. Morality looked like a fish bone stuck in their throat. They either had to spit it out or die. In a way, the truck driver and the policeman were like the streetlamp and the Sun – each one fighting a battle of their own.

Patches of men, women and children were sleeping on the footpaths, covered with dirty sheets of cloths and plastic, just like dead bodies pulled out of a train wreck. The fight will be delayed in winters. There will be times when the army of Sunrays would not bother to come and someone will give euthanasia to the tired streetlights much before the battle begins. The humans of the streets will have to find some more tattered pieces of clothes to cover themselves up, burn a worn out tyre, find a shed, cocoon each other.

The roads were near empty once we crossed the Ring road. I noticed the symmetry – the equally placed streetlights, the blob of lights passing through the windows of the car like a heartbeat on a monitor, the lane markings blurring into a single line. It was tranquil without the chaos of humans, without the display of their feeble egos, without their bodies lying on cold stones. But then, a monster bird flew over the car, hiding its wheels and the momentary serenity was broken by its deafening wail.  

My office stood like a morgue. The usual receptionist was replaced by a yawning man, ready to devour the phone. For once, the lift moved towards me on my command, not jostling to serve someone else before me. The flight to the 7^th floor was effortless – a perfect cuboid being pulled away from Earth by pulleys without a halt. The floor was deserted; a sole tube light was taking its last breath.

I sat on my computer and did the implementation. In two hours, men and women started pouring in, filling the room with randomness. I looked out of the room. The city was recognizable now as the multitude churned in their chores. The Sun had won the war. The streetlights were picking up their wounded, getting ready for the battle in the evening. A battle they were destined to win. 

Open letter to the Indian film industry

Dear Indian Film Industry (IFI),

I am writing this letter with a heavy heart. There was a time when I loved you like crazy. Now all I feel is apathy. There are times when you still overwhelm me, but such times are like those solar eclipses. Rare.

IFI,

Consider this scenario – The city is taken over by zombies. They are killing humans and terrifying them. The humans are on the run, stuffing themselves in whatever holes they could find. Over time, the humans create barricades making it more and more difficult for the zombies to find a prey. Then one fine day as the zombies are sitting and twiddling their fingers, a human zombie supporter (who thinks zombies are the messengers of God and sent to make humans pay for their sins) opens up a cinema hall for them. The tickets are sold in minutes. The zombies fill the theatre and guess which movie is playing there?

A Zombie movie!

The zombies watch the movie with enthusiasm and go back out with greater vigour to hunt as many humans as possible. The zombie supporter is happy.

Now replace the zombie with an average perverted Indian male who has a brain development of a two year old Neanderthal and who goes into a theatre to watch an Indian movie where women are either objectified to glory or where Indian culture begins at one end of a sari and ends at the other. The already deranged pervert is deranged further. His misplaced cultural values are further misplaced; his firm belief that women need to be tamed like an animal is further strengthened.

IFI,

What do you think about these scenarios and the impact they leave?

• Rahul and Anjali are college chums. Anjali is tomboyish and so Rahul never loves her but finds another seductive girl. Years later when God plunks the seductive girl off the planet, Rahul and Anjali meet again. Anjali has transformed into a Bhartiya Nari (true blue pastel colours sari woman who loves children). In the end, it takes the flurry of a sari by the pagli pawan (crazy winds) and the accidental display of Anjali’s blouse concealing that part of her anatomy of which Rahul was always unaware of, which makes Rahul discover the Indian woman in her, the woman whom he could love and dance with in rain.
• There have always been Item numbers ever since Helen was discovered with extra long feathers on her head and back but nowadays if you leave all the leading ladies of Bollywood in a room and tell them that one of them will get to perform an item number in Salman Khan’s next movie, you will find loads of organs to be donated in 30 minutes and a majority of them will be eyes. Item numbers are the best way to parade women as objects. The filmmaker makes money and perverts get the kick to go out and fondle a woman after seeing an ‘item’ hanging from a rope amongst a horde of men trying to catch her skirt on the screen.
• Veronica is a bitch. She goes to pubs, have sex with random men but she is lonely and has no good friends. Our Hero flirts with her, beds her and they are cool with their fun relationship. Enters Meera, the perfect Indian woman, and our hero falls in love with her. Girls like Veronica are just there to have fun. When Hero’s Mom arrives, he had to display Meera like a trophy because that is what every Indian mother wants – a daughter-in-law dipped in our creamy culture, ready to be devoured. The Hero wants this too because our rich culture is rooted somewhere deep in his ankle.
• Adding more to Veronica – she goes to pubs and leads her life on her terms. And she is shown in a negative light. The director throws her at the audience like we throw a bone towards a dog and we lap her up. She gives us the psychological nutrition to believe that our culture still shuns girls who ape the west. Remember, we live in a country where we justify molestation of a girl who goes to a pub. In 2012. Veronica had to wear a salwaar-kameez finally in the hope that Maa would accept her. And Oh! it’s all right for our hero to ape the west. He can womanize and drink as much as he wants.
• The actress have to flutter her eyes, bite her lower lip, sway her body, bite her index finger between her teeth and pinch the index finger on her left hand with the thumb and index finger on her right hand when our Hero is around. I understand blushing but this induces nothing but the strongest urge to *face palm*.

I am not entirely blaming our film industry for the way women are treated in our society and for our medieval mindset. That will be like blaming Pranab Mukherjee for replacing Pratibha Patil as the brand ambassador of SOTC. But he did play a part, no matter how minuscule. Our society is heavily influenced by movies and the biggest movie industry in the world should try to find ways to change the mindset of the society, not to make profits out of it. Showing women as ‘items’ and portraying any deviation from an ideal Indian woman as black are subtle dangerous projections which helps in strengthening the way women are treated in India.

It will not be correct to say that the Indian film industry hasn’t changed over the years. There has been a radical change in how we portray women in our movies by giving them positively bold roles instead of asking them to scream as the hero beats the villain to a pulp, all thanks to the new breed of responsible directors. But there is a darker end of the spectrum as well. In a bid to make money, the mainstream cinema has severely started objectifying women with an equal ferocity. The number of item numbers served every year is now more than the number of train accidents that happen in India.

IFI,

In a nation which is as tasteless without its sexually oppressing Patriarchal society as Maggi noodles is without its special masala, is it so hard to understand the repercussions of an actress picking up her sari, doing pelvic thrusts and heaving her breasts simultaneously in front of perverts who then go out and look at every woman in the same light? Who then take every girl who goes to a pub as ‘available’ and someone who will enjoy the touch of any Changu Mangu? Who then go out and search for an ideal virgin Indian woman acceptable to his family, no matter that he lost his own virginity years ago? Is it so difficult to understand that an alarmingly huge population of India is not mentally capable of enjoying such a form of cinematic entertainment without obvious consequences?

No, it is not difficult. You just have to look beyond money.

Crestfallenly yours,

Once a fan.

A survivor’s guide to dodge Uncle-ization

As you hit thirties, you discover that your scariest nightmares are about to come true – Someone, somewhere is (accidently) going to call you ‘Uncle’ and you might die a Virgin. This post will not deal with virginity issues of stay-with-parents, pot bellied, balding, in his 30s Indian male whose face is hard to differentiate from his laptop screen. We are exclusively going to discuss the effects of being called ‘Uncle’ and their remedies.

The first thing every Uncle Above-30s-Man (ATM) has to remember is to be prepared. The word is going to hit you like shrapnel and you will run towards a mirror in a failed bid to ensure yourself that you still look vaguely in your twenties. A time will come when college kids will call you uncle. That will be the time when you will truly lose this battle (unless you are super rich like all our 50 year old Bollywood actors and know a good injection happy doctor), but this is not the time. You still have a few years, and here are a few steps which will help you regain your floundering confidence.

See the difference!

Mow down that Moustache

The first mistake ATMs commit is of growing a moustache to look manly. Now if you are not Anil Kapoor and do not have some sort of a hair malfunction disorder, you really do not need to have that hideous shrub on your face. In college, I was not able to sleep when a friend told me that I looked like an ATM because of my moustache. My dad was of the opinion that razing your moustache to the ground is equivalent to snipping off your dick, so I was left with no choice but to accidently slip the razor on the forbidden area. On my face. Dad came very close to saying – You are not my son anymore, but I discovered the younger, confident me. That was the beginning of a new era – The cute chocolate boy was born.  So unless you are not Ritesh Deshmukh, ATMs can drastically reduce their age by 3-4 years by this simple process.

Get those spikes

If your hairstyle resembles Sachin Tendulkar’s new hairdo, then 99.5% of the people around you (including your dog) will already be making fun of you and will be waiting for a chance to pull off what they think is your wig. The rest 0.5% is you and your laptop. Throw that 70s Rajesh Khanna (May his soul RIP) style in the bin. Get those spikes, colour the tips with a really eye-hurting colour, gel them hard like a rhino’s horn and become a Yo man. Get some smart shades (try not to wear them inside malls and while watching movies. That sucks) and see how the 99.5:0.5 ratio changes to 1:99. Well, your dog will still try to pull your hair. He is a dog after all. Attack him with your spikes and he won’t bother you after that.

Revamp that wardrobe

If your wardrobe contains bell bottoms and those polka dot shirts with collars as big as ostrich wings, you really need to come out of the cave. Try round neck T-shirts, collared striped T-shirts, Google, faded jeans, Converse shoes, Google, leather jackets, hand bands, Google and you might be in for a shock of a lifetime. Dear uncle ATM, a wardrobe that changes with changing times has the capacity to astound you and make you feel young at heart. You do not have to wear Govinda colours. Try milder tones with current trends.

The workout

Do a simple test. Try to pee and see if you can see your peepee. If you can’t see it, then your belly has turned as massive as Arnab Goswami’s mouth. Try this – suck in a lot of air and expand your chest. Now can you see your peepee? If you still can’t then it’s a miracle that you haven’t already exploded. The only thing which can save you now is loads of sex but don’t try that unless you want to induce multiple fractures on a poor soul. The next best thing you can do is to move your butt and hit a gym. Run on the treadmill as if you are stalked by Rakhi Sawant. Make sure you do not fatally injure someone by hitting them with the flab dangling from your body. The result will be worth it. There is no better sight than seeing your stomach go in and finally re-discovering the source of your pee.

Don’t do that burger

As you turn into an ATM, the worse you could do to yourself is eat junk food dripping with cheese and surrounded by potato wedges. A workout will not work if you are drowning in a pool of burgers and storing soft drinks in your belly as if you are going into hibernation for a year. We do not step on garbage (if we find a clean patch of road which is as rare as Priyanka Chopra not pouting), we do not drink sewer water (well, at least we pretend), then why do we eat ‘junk’ food? Can the name be more obvious? Do you want to look like a huge shapeless pile of molten rubber? And seriously, it’s a bit off-putting to see you open your mouth as if you are going to swallow a bus when you eat that burger. Try Sushi.

Think young

Change with time. Do not be a rock no one can move. Such rocks are finally removed by explosives. An ATM ages quickly if he stagnates. The lines on your face will appear more quickly, the hair will fall more rapidly. Every generation comes with its own set of problems. Try thinking like them. For example, try SMSing someone, listening to songs and crossing a road simultaneously and see if you are still not hit by a truck OR go to Yahoo adult chat rooms and pretend to be a girl.

Always remember, all these steps will work for you if you implement them simultaneously. An ATM wearing a tight T-shirt and displaying spiked hair but having a pot-belly will be worse than a regular ATM and so will be an ATM with a moustache and wearing bell bottoms even if he has a flat stomach.

Shedding a few years off you is not difficult. Homo sapiens are the only species capable of doing that. Now you do not want to let go of this wonderful offer of a lifetime, do you? Keep your laziness for another life. God knows, you might be a hippo in your next birth.

Now get up and enjoy your life.

How not giving a bribe lead to a Honeymoon in Paris

I was in Manchester when Geet and I decided to get married. It was an arranged marriage and our parents had given us a month to talk and decide. We liked each other from the first telephone conversation we had. It wasn’t awkward. It was like talking to an old friend. Then a few webcams later, we said yes. Just like that. Without actually meeting. Geet was in India.

I flew back to India for a small ceremony. That was the first time we saw each other in flesh and everything felt warm and happy. It was one of those days when the world seemed beautiful.

Our marriage was four months later and thus telephone conversations and Skype chats sessions started. We were never physically there during our courtship but we never felt the distance. After all we were going to spend our whole life together. There was sweetness in that longing. I sent her chocolates, teddy bears, flowers and romantic songs.

As the D-day approached, I started preparing for our Honeymoon. I was coming to India for three weeks and I booked a room in Leela Kempenski in Kovalam. The hotel was located on a cliff near the ocean and you could see the whole ocean from your room. It was heavenly. I kept it a secret. It was a surprise for Geet.

Marriage happened with all the riot of colours, dancing, food, loads of relatives and photographs which an Indian wedding happens to provide. Both of us were exhausted and exhilarated by the end of it. We slept like a log for two days. After we woke up, the plan was to get our marriage certificate done, go to Kovalam and then apply for Geet’s Visa on our return. We were relying on the assumption that the marriage certificate will be done in two days. Many of our friends asked us to bribe the clerks in the office so that it was not delayed. We reached the office, filed our application without bribing anyone and waited. Soon the main officer called us and asked for Geet’s residential proof of my house! I told him that we just got married. How was she supposed to have a residential proof so soon? He asked us to open a joint account in a bank and use it as a proof. Basically, we did not bribe the clerks and so they had decided to ruin it for us. After all, people had got their marriage certificates in the same office in two hours. So, we opened a joint account in a bank and submitted it as a proof. We finally got our marriage certificate in three days but there was no time to go to Kovalam. I called up Leela Kempenski and asked them to cancel my booking. The amount was non-refundable. I asked them to take the money. They were taken aback. Finally, they didn’t take the money. I figured someone else might have booked the room after I cancelled.

I was sulking. I was angry. Our honeymoon was ruined. Geet told me that it was ok and we could go somewhere else later. I promised myself that I would not let a loser ruin my happiness. We got Geet’s visa done and came to Manchester. And then I got the perfect idea of a honeymoon. It was a dream and I was scared to touch it. I kicked myself for not thinking about it before. I applied for Schengen and soon our tickets to Paris were booked. Take that for ruining our honeymoon you loser, bribe sucking clerk!

Paris was a different planet. It was utopia. We were like two wide-eyed kids lost in the streets of Paris, sometimes deliberately. We did all the touristy things – kissed on the top of the Eiffel Tower, visited Mickey and Minnie in Disneyland, bought expensive French perfumes, took a Seine boat cruise, ambled in the gardens of Versailles, gawked at Mona Lisa in Louvre, sat in silence in Notre Dame, marvelled at the modern art collection at Georges Pompidou, devoured mushroom and cheese croissants and travelled in Paris Metro but all this was not what defined Paris for us. It was a tune played on an accordion.

It was our first day in Paris. We got down from the automatic metro which took us from our airport terminal to the one at which we could get an RER train to our hotel. The train soon chugged in and we took a corner seat in one of the almost empty compartments. Two women were chatting in French a few seats away, a drunken beggar was sleeping on another and a man was standing near the door with an accordion in his hand. Soon he started playing a tune and suddenly there were goosebumps all over Geet and me. We looked at each other and smiled and then Geet’s head was on my shoulder, her hand curled in mine. The tune was so unreservedly romantic that somehow the moment stood still. We wanted him to go on forever. The tune dissolved effortlessly with the rhythm of the train. That one moment defined Paris for us, not the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or French perfumes. For us it was a city where two lovers could hold hands and melt away in the spell while a stranger played an incredibly dreamy tune for them on an accordion.

I gave the stranger a generous tip after he finished. He was surprised and said Merci. I almost asked him to play it again.

And then I did something I had never imagined I would do. I thanked the clerk who delayed my marriage certificate.

(image of accordion from – http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/texta/accordion.html)

[This post has been written for Indiblogger Incredible stories]

http://www.mahindraxuv500.com/

The Sentimental Indian

Dr. Grace Augustine: [to Selfridge] Those trees were sacred to the Omaticaya in a way you can’t imagine.
Selfridge: You know what? You throw a stick in the air around here it falls on some sacred fern, for Christ’s sake!

~ Avatar

When I heard this fiery interchange for the first time, moments before they blow up the Na’vi mother tree, I felt what Selfridge said defined the Sentimental Indian very aptly. Of course, we are as different from the inhabitants of Pandora as apples and oranges but for a second I though he was talking about us. The Na’vi was a much intelligent race, sentimentally attached to their soil. Being incredulously sentimental comes easily to us too but in a variety of ways the Na’vi can’t even begin to imagine. Consider the following scenarios:

When she heard the news of SRK replacing her

When SRK replaced Nirupa Roy

Indians are such sentimental creeps at times that it can give you the heebie-jeebies. Look at our glorious cinema. Our Bollywood heroes cry more than our heroines now-a-days. The way SRK cried like a lost puppy in the climax of Kuch Kuch hota hai could even shame Nirupa Roy. I really wish Shah Rukh Khan was never discovered and we would have still been drooling over Sunny Deol’s hand-pump uprooting abilities. Even Akshay Kumar and John Abraham cry. Yeah! That’s how bad things are.

Hiding women as pubs+drinks+women = Rapes

Being sentimental about our Indian culture and values is another way we love to police everyone who do not agree with us. A girl goes to a pub, drinks and gets raped and suddenly everyone gets sentimental over the incident. The Chief Minister of the state in which the rape happened gets sentimental about the future of her political party and blames the opposition for the rape. The guardians of our culture (who are avid porn fans) get sentimental over the fact that a girl was in a pub and drunk. The rest of the population gets sentimental about the safety of their mothers-sisters-wives and start debating on how we have to ensure their safety by not allowing them to go out of the house and stop them  from wearing jeans. The police get sentimental over the fact that there is another FIR in their kitty and they have to do some work and end up making a “clerical mistake” of revealing the victim’s identity.

You are turning your child into a steam engine

Drink my dreams child. They are tasty!

We get sentimental over the future of our children and almost choke them to death in the process. We make them study till their eyeballs hurt, reminding of the harrowing times we went through to make them stand on their feet. We sentimentally shove our dreams down their throat and remind them how they have to take care of us in old age. The children, oblivious of the albatross around their neck, shed a few tears and hug us, realizing a few years down the line that they have been sentimentally tricked.

Rainbows and fragile cultures

Gay and lesbian rights are also something which ruffles the sentimental feathers of a majority of our population. It’s against our culture, they say, secretly praying that their sons and daughters don’t end up with the “sickness”. The fact that a man can love another man horrifies us. Our underdeveloped sentimental brain refuses to understand that it is not a matter of “choice”, something similar to the fact that you cannot choose to have 17 nipples on your chest.

Prince eating Pauper food

Princes and Paupers

The politicians are sentimental about their votes. They promise quotas till there is no general category left. Promising something (like FDIs) and backtracking is the norm as such promises end up making the opposition froth sentimentally. It gives them a chance to overdramatize the situation and vouch to burn all the Walmarts. Votes make Princes of dynasties very sentimental and they end up eating food in huts with the poor people who are sentimental enough to vote for the prince for their 30 seconds of fame on national television. Politicians also are dangerously sentimental about their black money and they end up following their heart and do foolish things like

• throwing Anna Hazare in jail just before a protest is about to begin.
• ordering the police to beat and kick people sleeping peacefully at night at a protest venue.
• blaming Facebook and Twitter for any future riots.
• Trying to pass a Jokepal Bill which had more holes in it than Amitabh Bachchan in the climax of Coolie.

Suck my religion

Try throwing a stone up in the air and chances are that it might hit a sacred tree, a sacred animal or a sacred river and you might end up starting a riot where hundreds will be burnt alive. Yes, we are deeply sentimental about our religion. A wise man said once that religion is like a penis. It’s good to have one and be proud of it but please don’t open your zip and flaunt it in public and don’t shove it down our throat. Well, sentimental Indians believe that it is important to flaunt it in public (religion that is) and so we always have our zip down and we love gagging people with it. We throw writers and painters out of the country because they have hurt our fragile religious sentiments. We make foreigners apologize if they just mention any of our gods or religious buildings in a fit of good humour. We love shouting “Hail Mother India” with moist eyes even though we have no idea what it means.

A sentimental conclusion

Of course our sense of humour is as dry as the Thar Desert but we are as abundant as the oceans as far as shedding a sentimental tear is concerned. We turn dangerous when we are sentimental. We rape, butcher, burn and dance with swords in our hands. And then suddenly, there is war with another country and we stand united and shed copious tears for the dead soldiers. Ditto for a cricket cup.

Yes, that is how much sentimental we are.

Love Compatibility for same sex couples

Polly (my wife) and I sometimes puff up like a puffer fish (with pride, not alarm) when we remember that we got a love compatibility score of 33 out of 36 when our horoscopes were matched. For those who are not faint hearted, horoscope matching used to be a complicated process which required an astrologer who has studied the science of matchmaking. Based on the planetary positions at your birth time and 36 qualities in a human being, the astrologer calculated the compatibility and predicted if coupling was possible. It ended up with a number of charts which looked like a football field crisscrossed with a number of lines, something similar to the signs which lesser creative aliens have left on our corn fields.

Now a day, the whole process just needs a software. While our parents still go the old fashioned way, we always confirm the output on the software installed on our laptops in case the astrologer was too drunk to make out anything.

The software requires the couple to put their birthdates, gender, birth place and time (very important as a deviation of a second will alter the planetary positions and your life) and it will match the horoscopes. By the way, how do you determine birth time? Is it the moment your head pops out or the moment the umbilical cord is cut? Just curious.

Anyways, the software is useful after marriage too.  Sometimes, after a fight, Polly and I have re-checked the compatibility figure several times either to

• make sure that it is still 33 out of 36 (It will scientifically never change because it depends on the planetary positions when you were born.)
• check if there was a mistake initially and the astrologer was actually drunk and the software malfunctioned too which again is highly improbable.

It acts as a pacifier. After all, how bad can it get if you scored 33/36? You will always clink back like two opposite poles of a magnet.

This brings me to the point of writing this post. Yesterday Polly and I were discussing this whole horror-scope thingy and the talk steered towards providing a gay friendly addition to the software. Of course the software does not allow it. It recoils in horror and disables its buttons.

What if a guy wants to check his horoscope against another guy? There is simply no option. He can’t narrow down his search and has the whole ocean to fish. Now imagine how this can be successfully used in a lot of movies to show the anguish and confusion of a character. Imagine Nandita Das’s character in Fire using Kundli (Horoscope) matching software to understand her feelings towards Shabana Azmi’s character and finding to her horror/delight/something that the horoscopes match with a score of 35/36. Won’t this addition to the story make the characters infinitesimally poignant? Won’t it increase their hope for a better future and bring out the dilemma more vividly? Imagine Nandita throwing the horoscope printouts on her husband’s face and leave with Shabana towards the sunset.

Leave aside such complicated software, our very own good old Linda Goodman does not provide the solution. The tome does not talk about same gender love compatibility at all. There are numerous check-your-love-compatibility-now (!!!) websites also available, but you will never see something like this in them –

or this –

Now imagine Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain picking up a Linda Goodman in a bookstore and open the Scorpio-man-Leo-man love compatibility page and found that Heath Ledger’s character was tailor made for him. Although, the movie won so many awards that if you pile them on top of each other, you can make an award beanstalk to the moon, but that is beside the point. Linda Goodman’s love signs for Gay men would have added the written-in-the-stars angle to the love story.

One wonders that even though we are becoming such a gay friendly planet, why we are neglecting the homosexual angle in astrology. It’s a big market if anyone wants to make money. After all it doesn’t take much to fool humans into believing that there are only 12 kind of people in the world or the planets control our lives.

Images taken from:

http://www.astrosagar.com/article.asp?id=57

http://www.desivideos.net/2007/03/15/fire-movie-hindi/

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/linda-goodman-s-love-signs-id-0060968966.aspx

http://entertainment.ezinemark.com/most-impressive-animated-couples-773651103d6d.html

Facebook photos uploading etiquettes

A lot of people go on holidays so that they could upload pictures on Facebook for various reasons. Enjoying with their family is the last thing on their mind. The reasons for uploading photos might vary from –

• Making their friends jealous (Hey! Look at me! I am hanging in the air upside down! Stare Stare!)
• Making their relatives jealous (Hey loser! dream on!)
• Making their colleagues jealous (Work smart party hard suckers!)
• Marinate in the comments (Lovely couple!! Beautiful Background!! Where did you go? I am sooo jealous of you guys! Blah!)
• Collecting likes (A dislike button is the need of the hour)
• To achieve inner satisfaction because people are jealous because they are happy.
• Sharing them with their family and friends (Didn’t I tell you that this is the last thing on their mind?)

Now, We are not against all the photo uploading sho-sha but there should be a level of decency to be maintained. You really don’t have to behave like Mount Etna and erupt your trip lava on our wall. So, here is a list of tips which might help people actually go through your pictures instead of hurriedly liking them and putting bland comments and be done with it. Here goes:

1) We understand you like mountains and lakes and deserts and trees but can you please not click the same bloody mountain from all the sides and dump it on Facebook? Also, standing and giving different poses with the same tree makes you a retard. Mountain, mountain, mountain-man, mountain-sheep, mountain-cloud, mountain, mountain. Seriously?!?

2) We know you love your partner. You are madly in love. No one, and that means no one, can love each other as much as you two. But can you please not drip all of us in your honey scooped butter scotch love? We don’t like to see couples entangled with each other like two grasshoppers where you cannot differentiate where one starts and the other ends. And we don’t like to see people slurping each other like dogs.

That poor thing is going to drown!

3) Your dog and cat are great! They must be really unique but for us, they are just an animal. So, it gets a bit amusing to see your dog’s photo shoot in all its glory. We are sure that they could give more expressions than a lot of our Bollywood stars but that is no reason for them to pose nude on our wall.

4) Oh! You had a kid! That’s so adorable! The poor thing can’t even open his eyes yet, but you have already thrust a camera on his face scaring him out of his wits and forced him to make all those take-this-thing-off-me faces while you click him. Your kid is beautiful but try not to put a picture on Facebook of his diaper changing activities. That’s Gross. And also, try not to put those pictures of that white cereal paste hanging out of his mouth. That’s equally gross.

5) Sunrise and Sunsets! There are already millions of pictures of our only star popping in and out of the Earth, so please don’t bore us with another of those pictures unless you have taken them from a space shuttle on a mission to re-fuel the Sun. Ditto for flowers, birds and insects unless you have unearthed a new species.

6) We are sure you love adventure sports. So you went to this cool destination and enjoyed paragliding but can you please not upload twenty pictures of you flying over mountains? Honestly, we can barely make you out in those photos. You might have just googled them and posted them on Facebook just to make people jealous.

Are you sure you are in there?

7) We hate blurred and shaky pictures. It’s hard to understand the psyche of a person who uploads a photo of his left hand or his girlfriend’s breast or his kid’s foot. We understand you clicked such pictures accidentally and we give you a benefit of doubt that you uploaded them accidentally but there is ALWAYS a delete button. It’s not a nuke which you have deployed accidentally and can’t retrieve back. If you don’t have time to check your photos before uploading or after uploading them, then don’t fuc*ing upload them.

8) You went to a disc and had a lot of drinks and enjoyed with your friends. Great! Try not to dump all your evening on our wall. We really don’t like to see people getting drunk, dancing as if controlled by a random number generator, taking off their clothes one by one and puking on their friend’s face. You are not making us jealous. You are making us groan.

9) Pictures of Gods and weird Independence day and Republic day pictures also make us dizzy. “Jai Mata Di” is great but first make your life straight. And if you are uploading a “Proud to be an Indian” picture then stop bloody wasting your time on Facebook and do something worthy of being proud of. And those “Happy Diwali!!!” pics on our wall make us very dizzy. Our whole wall seems to be on fire.

10) Stop tagging us in every picture of yours even when we are nowhere in the pic. We are not your dog’s tail or your best friend’s ass. Spare us the embarrassment of moving our mouse on your sorry torso to find out which body part of yours is named after us.

I hope you understand the mental trauma we undergo while we browse through your photos and will try to make honest corrections.

Thanks,

Your fellow good for nothing Facebook addicts.

p.s. We must admit that we ourselves indulge in a lot of the above mentioned activities. So, don’t take the post seriously. Keep *groan* uploading.

Traffic control gadgets for the ASIRW (Average Stupid Indian Road Warrior)

India is a tough country. A wise man once said – If you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere in the world. From the unfinished roads in mountain passes to the under river invisible pebbly roads to dirt tracks in villages to the pot holed road-ish structures in every city to the dizzying video game roads in Delhi, India provides a plethora of experiences to the ASIRW. It’s not for the faint hearted. But these natural and man-made creations aren’t the only invincible barriers to become a legendary ASIRW. The real enemy is the one who is your fellow warrior. He is the one you should be afraid of. He is your real test.

Many have died triumphing the impossible. Sometimes by a bullet wound in the head, sometimes by being crushed to pieces, sometimes by knife wounds and sometimes by a rain of maa-behen expletives. Although this does not stop those who are spared alive by a lucky turn of fate to turn around and splash others with what had dragged them into depression in the first place, but then this is what the game is all about. You cannot stop fighting. As Gabbar said – Jo darr gaya samjho mar gaya.

Newbie ASIRW are clumsy at times and hence India amounts to more than 1,00,000 road accident deaths annually. And now the time has arrived to give the ASIRWs a rest. Too many have perished in the fires of their own foolishness. Hence, the Indian government approached our corporation to provide them some radical ideas to control the ASIRW. Here are a few gadgets we have proposed and which are ready to go in mass production to help the ASIRW follow traffic rules which they find too Manmohan-ish to take seriously. Of course, the Indian Traffic police can install a combination of these brilliant machines but if they are happy with the ongoing self population control, they can give it a skip.

1.  The Jolt Inducer wires(codename – Come to Papa)

This device comes in the form if a thin wire that can charge itself by cow dung and dust which are easily available on Indian roads. The wire is installed on a yellow line in the middle of the road which separates the traffic flow and also acts as a divider. The moment a car steps on the wire (many ASIRW tend to do this as they are divider blind) while over-taking or during jams, it discharges an electric current which can travel to the warrior’s body via the tyres of his vehicle. This can make him dizzy to the point of making him throw up. This will stop a majority of ASIRW from jumping in the wrong lanes.

2. The drag and drop Robotic arms(codename – Get the fu*k back in your lane)

These state of the art robotic arms are installed on cemented dividers in the middle of the road. They are very sleek and don’t take much space. They are fitted with sensors and cameras and move on a single rail track on the divider. As soon as they sense a vehicle which is not in the correct lane or going in the opposite lane, they pick it up and place it back at the end of the current line of vehicles in its appropriate lane. You can also program it to pick up the vehicle and keep it hanging in air for a predefined time before throwing it back in the correct lane. Turning the vehicle upside down while it hangs in the air is optional. It can also be used to pick up cows from the road.

3. The laser cutters (Codename – Red Queen(after the Resident Evil Supercomputer))

Traffic signals can be fitted with these extremely sophisticated laser cutters. A single laser light will appear on the road (approximately 0.5 foot above the ground and behind the pedestrian crossing) the moment light turns red. Any ASIRW trying to cross it will end up with tyres neatly cut in half. This will ensure mayhem for a couple of days but soon the terror will not let anyone jump a signal. You can adjust the height of the laser from the ground but we strictly suggest that it remains below the legs of the ASIRW.

4. Celebrity Signals (codename – Take a Munni break)

Traffic signals will be replaced by images of celebrities asking people to stop and go. This will be achieved by harmless vertical laser show images that will cover the crossing like a big movie screen. For example, A red signal will be replaced by Katrina performing “Chikni Chameli” or Vidya Balan performing “Nakka Mukka” while the green signal will be replaced by Manmohan Singh giving the Independence Day speech. Yellow will be replaced by Meira Kumar’s laser video of her famous “Shaant ho jaiye” monologue in Lok Sabha.

5. Weapon snatcher magnets (codename – Magneto)

We do not expect hardened ASIRW to completely let go of their valour and courage and not use weapons like country made pistols, acid and knives to fight road wars. For such scenarios, we have the weapon magnets which will activate as soon as they sense rage above the critical limit of 200 TMK (Teri Ma Ki) which will be calculated by a secret mathematical formula specially designed for ASIRWs which takes into account components like blood pressure, swear word usage, eye widening capabilities, level of frothing, reddening of face etc. Once the critical limit is reached, the magnets will immediately snatch away any weapon produced by the warrior and teleport it to the nearest junk yard.

6. Begging hover and money collection system (codename – Begging Angels)

A study has revealed that ASIRWs have a soft corner for beggars and they love to do some charity but beggars do pose a threat to life as they surf the maze at the traffic intersection. Hence they will be provided with the hover system where they will float around the cars like “Betal” and as soon as Manmohan Singh start’s his speech their distance from ground will increase automatically so that the vehicles can move smoothly. To avoid ASIRWs from fumbling to extract change from their pockets, we will be introducing single swipe signature-less credit cards system.

7. Magnetic wheels for manual vehicles (codename – Rickshaws will fly)

Cycles and rickshaws make ASIRWs very angry. To solve this problem, we will be providing magnetic wheels for such vehicles which can be activated by the touch of a button. This will attach the cycle/rickshaw to the nearest vehicle and it can travel with the same speed as that of the vehicle. Detaching it from the high-speed vehicle can again be a one touch operation. This will also reduce honking.

8. Alcohol detection Automatic Car Shutdown Chip (Codename – Dumb ass is Drunk)

A recent study has revealed that Indians Luuuuuve to drink and drive. They love hitting a speed of 120km/hr especially when everything ahead of them is blurred. Enter our automated car shutdown chip. The chip detects alcohol fumes in the car and instantly produces an electric spark the moment car keys are inserted in the slot. This not only gives the drunk jerk a jerk but does not allow him to start the car. We are in discussion with the Indian Government to make this chip mandatory in all the cars. It goes without saying that this will not be applicable to all the government vehicles.

9. Honk Slap (code name – Arnold)

To reduce noise pollution level on Indian roads, we have designed a microprocessor which includes various permutations and combinations allowed for honking in sensible nations. This microprocessor can be fitted in all cars and will assess the situation under which a driver honks. If no match is found, a robotic hand will appear from the dashboard and slap the driver. So, if you see every driver battered and bruised on the road, don’t be alarmed.

We sincerely hope that the introduction of these various equipments will smooth traffic flow on the roads of India. Of course, we cannot change the mindset of the ASIRWs, but we can always install a sense of terror by using lasers, robotic arms, slaps etc. There are a few problems like potholes, divider-less roads, lack of amenities for pedestrians, salivating for bribes traffic police etc but we have made clear to the Indian government that WE CAN”T FUC*ING SOLVE ALL THEIR PROBLEMS!

Hope you will enjoy driving with our new gadgets

Regards

ASIRWCS ( ASIRW Control Squad)

Coupling two Software Engineers…

..is a recipe for disaster. You may ask why? Of course, if you consider ‘making pots of money’ as a consolation, then it might work for you but keeping the money-mindedness aside for a second, here is a list of reasons why it would be better to put your hand in a pit of vipers instead.

1. Both of you might end up in different countries. It is not always easy to say no to an onsite opportunity when you have a home loan, a car loan, a washing machine loan, a diamond necklace loan and a pack of underwear loan and an over pressurizing manager. And then, practically speaking, the long distance SOS (Sex On Skype) fizzle out in a few days, simply because the ‘feel’ is absent.

2. Both of you might end up in different shifts which is worse than being in different countries. Leave alone SOS, you will not have the real one in days. You will wake him up after coming from office and crash yourself on the bed as soon as he gets up and vice versa. Your conversations will end up being – ‘Hi honey’. ‘Bye honey’. ZZZZZZZ

3. Completely forget any trips to Simla, Munnar, Singapore, Andaman or Malaysia. Getting an off together for 5 days for a holiday will be task more difficult than getting Katrina Kaif to act and Manmohan Singh to open his mouth. You can beg, rub your nose on the ground till it bleeds, pull out your hair but it just won’t happen.

4. On the rare occasions when both of you will be at home by 9 pm, you will bitch about your managers till 10 and vent out all your frustration and completely forget to cook. You will end up having bread with soup, which will be good actually considering your expanding bellies.

5. Home made food will be available only on Saturdays and Sundays, if at least one of you is not working on the weekend, which will be as rare as scams in India. You will end up eating pizza, pasta and punjabi thalis at malls. Whatever good the bread and soup were doing will adjust to inflation.

6. All the family functions will carry on without you. Your cousins will get married and will have babies. You won’t be there in their marriage albums and videos. You will meet them, maybe, once in 5 years and wonder where all the time flew away.

7. If you are planning to have a baby, forget about it, simply because you should get some time to ding-dong, which you won’t get. If you somehow manage, the she-engineer’s manager will make sure that the baby is delivered in office alongside the project deliverable. The baby will already be stressed out by the time he will come out because of your 15 hour shifts.

8. Your parents will wither away trying to make sense of what hit them. You won’t have time for them and they will end up cursing themselves for giving birth to a machine and then marrying him off to another.

9. If the she-engineer somehow manages to pop out a baby, the baby will grow up thinking that the maid is his mother. He will not recognise his father on the rare occasions of bonding simply because he has never seen him awake. The first word he might learn will be ‘Basanti’, which will be the name of the maid.

10. One day, while buying Cabbage at Big Bazaar, you will pick up one in your hand and wonder what the difference between both of you is.

p.s. Don’t take the post seriously. It’s a funny take on what I see people around me going through.