Say this hypo, mean that crisy

1 ## He drives really well.

He breaks every traffic rule, drives as if his car is a batpod, is traffic signal blind, experience orgasms by honking, derives sadistic pleasure by making people run in front of his car.

2 ## She is a homely girl

She knows how to knead dough, doesn’t talk to strange boys, loves to cry while cutting onions, worships Balaji Telefilms, comes with a remote control, has cobwebs between her legs.

3 ## He is a homely Boy

Does not know what an erection is, urinates in his pants when a girl comes and say ‘Hi’, puts loads of oil in his hair, stammers while talking to his father, eats food only from the hands of his mother, watches Jai Santoshi Maa.

4 ## He is very rich

He is malevolent, is politically connected, has goons available on the snap of his fingers, does not remember the face of his children, has an extramarital affair, has a sobbing sexually deprived gorgeous wife at home who is having an affair with the gardener, has a high-class bitch of a mother, must die of AIDS.

5 ## His wife is too modern

She goes to gym, wears body hugging clothes, shows her enviable cleavage profusely, has a social circle of spoilt rich ladies like her, does not cook for her family, has a very depressed husband at home, drinks like a fish, has a shocked mother-in-law who wonders what she has got her son into.

6 ## She is a very good actress

She has done loads of semi nude dance numbers, has worked with all top heroes, has big breasts, has the same laughing and crying face, is a virgin, is beautiful, is white.

7 ## All politicians are corrupt

I do not have as much money as those illiterate bastards have; I want a Swiss bank account, I want that power. I want to be a politician so that I could earn that money. My life is pathetic. God hates me.

8 ## My only solace is in the feet of Gods

I donate loads of money to temples, I donate my hair, I give milk bath to the Gods, I follow all the top religious gurus, I help build temples in parks meant for children. I hate other religions. My God bestest.

9 ## What was she doing outside the pub at 12?

How dare she have a life? How can others enjoy when I am suffering my boring miserable existence? How can a woman have such freedom? I completely support molestation of the bitch. She is a slave. Rape her. She deserves it because she is not my sister.

10 ## The maid is a part of our family

I give food to her in a separate plate, she sits and sleeps on the floor, she is not allowed to touch my food, she is a potential thief and I have to be careful, she might murder me for the gold I have bought with my black money, she is a low life.

11 ## Poor, hungry people!

Thank God it is not me in their place, filthy people, they are a menace to the society, that is where criminals come from, don’t encourage begging, let them die – that is the best way to wipe them out. Someone incinerate them!

12 ## What a marriage!

They spent lakhs on the decoration, they must have given a heavy dowry, the bride and groom looked like an extension of the red carpet, the quantity of food could have fed the entire population of Zimbabwe, pride = show-off = puffy chests, my marriage was pathetic.

13 ## What a movie!

The hero stood on two running horses, we laughed on comic sequences which won’t make a mentally stable person laugh; the heroine had bucket butts, the hero killed ten goons by throwing them at the moon, jeeps and tomato ketchup flew, there was a romantic song after the hero’s family was butchered.

14 ## I need a cultured girl for my son

I need a maid who works for free, I need a girl who produces male heirs, I need a hen who lays golden eggs, I need a slave who follows my finger. I am the queen of this 2 bedroom flat. I will die a queen. Only I will buy underwear for my son.

15 ## I belong to a cultured family

I don’t have a brain, I take permission from my parents every time I pick my nose, I don’t have any hobbies other than making money and watching porn, my parents have a long pokey nose and we breed girls as cows.

16 ## We don’t need any dowry

I hope you are wise enough to understand what we mean *wink wink*? Make sure your daughter is not visible under the layers of jewellery, don’t give any stupid middle class cars, our family is shitty because we sell our son, our son is a mule.

17 ## Your girlfriend drinks? Wow!

She must be good in bed, you must be having a great time in cinema halls. Lucky bastard! My girlfriend sucks. I want your slutty girlfriend.

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. 

Hell material

So the thing is that I died and stood somewhere between the gates of heaven and hell, with Chitragupta looking at me and opening up his magical books in which he keeps tab of all your sins down to the last cockroach you flushed down the commode for fun.

“Creature, you have to go to hell,” he said giving me a go-on-and-don’t-waste-my-time look.

“Excusez-moi?!?” I said. I looked around believing that he might be talking to a cow soul who was following me on my way up.

It was then that the clouds parted and Yamaraj descended like a feather from the upper floor of the floating city.

“What’s all this brouhaha?” he said raising an eyebrow at Chitragupta.

“The creature refuses to go to hell.’

‘And why is that so?’ Yamaraj said as he brought his huge nose sitting on a neglected garden of a moustache close to my face.

“What sins have I committed? Why am I sentenced to hell?” I said squeaking like a mouse.

Yamaraj told me that he was not supposed to give reasons and follow the protocols, which he admitted, have been changed in the last few centuries. I argued for more clarity but he was adamant. I stood my ground. This went on till eternity.

Suddenly the clouds parted again and a light shone through.

“YAMA! If you cannot do your bloody work of kicking creatures towards heaven and hell properly, let me know. I will replace you with Rajnikant. The next time you disturb my beauty sleep by your clamour, it will reflect in your yearly report card,” God thundered.

Yama shrank a foot and Chitragupta hid behind his tome. The spotlight moved on me.

“What is your problem creature?” it bellowed as it intensified.

“I am a human!” I said. Frankly I was disturbed beyond words to be addressed like a mosquito.

“Everyone is a creature here. You are not different from a cockroach in my eyes. It took me an awful lot of God hours to create both of you.”

“Surely humans are more complex to create?” I suggested.

“Do you fly?”

“No.”

“Do you have antennas?”

“No.”

“Can you squeeze through cracks?”

“No.”

“So there. A cockroach can do things you can’t do. Stop swathing in your false idea of supremacy, stop wasting my time and tell me your problem.”

I patiently repeated everything that I had patiently told Yamaraj. God laughed. It was like a mini earthquake. The spotlight shook.

“Have you killed anyone for me?” he asked.

“Excusez-moi?!?” I said.

The clouds grew darker. I was scared and close to wetting my Ariel white robe.

“No,” I said, now sure that God was not very good at French.

“Have you raped a woman in my name?”

“Holy moly. No.”

“Did you behead a man? Cut him to pieces? Did you kill people with guns for me? Did you explode yourself in a crowded market? Did you fly a plane in a building? Did you smash children on a wall? Did you torch a train screaming my name?”

“No. And that is why…”

“…you should go to hell,” God completed the sentence for me.

Stunned silence. I was sure I have landed in the wrong place – some sort of alternate villainous heaven-hell-swap reality.

“You see creature, I changed the rules a few centuries back. I realised that love would not make you remember me. If all the creatures cuddled and played ring-a-ring-a-roses, then I, their bloody creator, would vanish into oblivion.”

“But you sent prophets, avatars, your own son, messiah to teach us to love you and each other.”

“THAT was a mistake,” the clouds grew dark again and there were distinct sounds of thunder. Yamaraj motioned me to shut the fu*k up.

“But people are waiting for you to make a comeback.”

“Bollocks!”

I wanted to tell God that he was bordering self-blasphemy but I kept quiet.

“And after that I have sent more messengers of destruction than I could possibly accommodate in my office hours, I have instigated creatures to kill each other, to destroy themselves. Somehow, the fact that humans have multiple religions and brain of the size of a peanut helped me in my cause. People remember me more than ever. My name is a money-making machine, which gives me such a high. And since you have not done anything to keep my name alive other than maybe remembering me when the hour was dire, YOU are hell material,” God said as I stood transfixed in the spotlight.

“I have killed ants!” I said as I saw my inevitable doom looming large.

“2,34,453 to be precise,” Chitragupta said looking in his book.

“So many? Who are you? Hitler?” God roared, laughing at his own joke.

“It was an accident.”

And so I was sentenced to hell for not doing anything to glorify God and sitting on my ass all my life. Chitragupta assured me that I would be comfortable there as hell was half empty. It was heaven which was overburdened.

“Bad God. Bad Bad God,” I muttered as I moved towards the gates of hell.

The spotlight which had almost left me was suddenly upon me.

“I heard that,” God said.

“Doesn’t matter. I am already off to hell,” I said.

[images from here]

How to enjoy Monsoon in Gurgaon

Monsoon is such a cheerful season in India. We might say that it is especially auspicious for farmers who spend half of their lives looking at the sky like wolves during a full moon and develop serious neck ailments in the process but monsoon holds a special place in the hearts of city folks too who are oblivious of farmer suicides, droughts and food grain wastage and keep wondering why the middle class is in a perpetual state of inflation.

The slick dwellers of NCR have a special place for monsoon in their hearts. If you compare Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon, then Gurgaon wins hands-on just for the sheer brilliance of the way monsoon water is utilized for the entertainment of the people living and working here. Ever since I have witnessed the first downpour here, I am all praise for the Gurgaon administration for developing such unique ways to keep the mentally and emotionally bruised citizens happy.

Waterfalls and Free Car wash

Now if you have been to Gurgaon, you will know that NH 8 to Jaipur passes through it and most of it is elevated. So a lot of IT and non-IT slaves and masters pass under the highway to reach their camps. Any short-sighted administration would have put holes on either side of the highway and put pipes to the ground and into the drains so that any rainwater collecting on the highway can be drained out but Gurgaon administration are smart thinkers. We do have holes here but no pipelines. So when it rains, we see serene, multiple, equidistant waterfalls pouring gallons of water on the worker bees trying to pass below it. It is such a beautiful sight that you would be tempted to run under the waterfalls with a Liril soap in your hand. And it acts as a car wash as well. If you align your car in the correct position, you could pass it under a number of waterfalls and get it cleaned free of cost.

River Rafting

You can very easily come to the conclusion that there are no drains in Gurgaon by the near flood like situation after a five minute downpour. You will see wild rivers running on the roads trying to find a hole to get into and failing miserably. The situation is so overwhelming that it can give Rishikesh a run for its money for water sports. You can raft your way to your office, you could swim and be healthy or you could splash water on each other and sing Tip-tip-barsa-paani. Now what better start of the day?

Lovely Beaches

You can buy beach recliners and relax on any of the footpaths (if they are not already taken up by auto-rickshaws, cars or trucks) in a soothing man made beach simulator. As water is clogged in heaps on both sides of the roads, any vehicle which passes by will create artificial ripples similar to waves lapping the shore. You can chai-chapa-chai-chapak-chai with your loved one as the waves touch your feet and give you a romantic ambience. Please ignore the vehicular smoke and occasional mud splashes on your face and do not expect a starfish or sea-shells to wash ashore. There is a limit to which the Gurgaon administration can be imaginative.

Canoe and picnics

Now if you are one of the very few lucky ones who have purchased a ground floor flat in Gurgaon, you can enjoy a lake side family picnic right in your drawing room after it is flooded with rain water. You can buy a canoe for your kid that he can row around as you play cards with your wife on the floating sofa and eat sandwiches. You can skip pebbles on the lake, catch earthworms and play collect-cans-and wrappers (the person who collects the maximum amount of garbage floating in your house with the rainwater wins). After this, you can go and stand under the highway and take a bath under the waterfall.

Lessons in Patience

If you stand next to a road in Gurgaon and scream ‘rain’ four times, there will be a traffic jam in seconds. The Gurgaon administration has tactfully created very narrow roads all over the city so that they could conduct their own free of cost ‘art of living’ programme. A few years back, I got stuck in such a jam for seven hours – waterless and appleless. It was such a profound lesson in patience that I thank the administration of Gurgaon till date with humble tears in my eyes. You realise how important this lesson is when you reach your office and are surrounded by morons.

It has been such an enriching and entertaining experience working in Gurgaon. There are very few cities in the world where rain water evaporates instead of getting drained. There are very few cities who look after their citizens so passionately and with such care. I haven’t talked about the electricity situation here which is another programme under ‘art of living’ OR the fact that a lot of people go to malls to brush their teeth and take a bath because there is no water in their house. I am specially covering monsoon here.

And lo! As I finish this post, the heavy downpour has started again. Time to go and enjoy a few of the attractions!

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.

MasterChef hangovers

Television is not for me. There is a reason why a) it is called an Idiot box and b) the people who sit in front of it are called couch potatoes. Considering the fact that the whole concept of cable television works in India because of over dramatized revenge soaps where mother-in-law and daughter-in-law fight it out like angry birds and because news channels have the capability to freak you out for even the most mundane of headlines like a cat stuck on a roof, I prefer to keep my television switched off.

A few days back Geet was off to her mother’s house for a few days as my sister-in-law is here. I had ample time to stare at walls when I realized that the flat screen in my room was buried under a pile of dust due to lack of attention. You see I have three flat screens at home. Two of them are very happy as my mom, dad and sis are always keeping them busy. Dad watches Discovery channel (he loves to watch deer torn apart by all those lions), Food Food (so that he could justify that excessive red chillies in food is good for health), movies (Singham, Ready, Housefull); mom watches her daily soaps (and then complains that they are really irritating), Hindi news channels (especially the ones which show horoscope and Feng shui. She has a diary in which she keeps notes to experiment on us later); sister watches Hollywood movies of any kind. And they all watch Dance India Dance Little Masters, where Mithun Da makes faces as if he really needs to go to the loo and has been forced to sit and comment. That is why he has no words most of the time and all he does is get up and salute which is basically a way to pass out some gases.

So one day as I was following the trajectory of a mosquito in my room, my eyes accidentally went on my TV as the mosquito flew near it. I reluctantly opened the drawers and dug out the remote. I almost gave up as it was taking too much time. Archeologists dig out lost cities more quickly. Anyways, I switched on the television and went through some random channels –

• A guy was selling shoes. He was holding them in his hands and telling about their advantages. He sounded desperate. And I went – the recession has been really bad this time.
• A Bollywood song where the actors were gyrating and semi copulating as they expressed their feelings.
• A random snake killing a random frog
• A news anchor having intense debate with six important people and all of them speaking at once like kids in a play school.

It was something like-ish this

Then I switched to Star Plus where MasterChef Australia had just started. They had already selected their top 24 and were into the real game. I gave it a try and I have been hooked from two weeks now. Sometimes I find it a bit over dramatized but what I really like is what they cook. Let me confess that I cannot place 90% of the ingredients, but the technique, plating and the colors of the dish are amazing. By the time it ends, my room has almost drowned in my drool.

The other day, I got up really late and went in the kitchen to cook my breakfast. I had this huge MasterChef hangover and started behaving as if I was cooking for immunity. I took out onions (already sliced and kept in the refrigerator by the maid), 1 tomato and 1 potato (already boiled by mom) and two eggs. I sliced everything which was not already sliced and put it in the pan with a dash (chef-ish language here) of oil. Then after a few minutes when I was very sure that everything was on the verge of burning, I added the eggs and made a circular thing. I broke the formation when I tried to flip it but then I told the cameras that I have to re-style the dish a bit because the circle was not perfect and i was not happy with it.

Finally I got crispy scrambled eggs with a bit of fried onions, tomatoes and potatoes. I imagined the judges tasting it and hugging me with tears in their eyes.

I would like to watch this season but I am not sure. Monsoon has started and the shithole that Gurgaon is, we have horrible traffic jams here and I might not reach home by 9 pm most of the times. I hope my television is praying hard and god loves him enough. I don’t want him to wither away and fall off the wall.

With great power comes great stupidity

I have been able to sleep peacefully from the last two days with the air-conditioner throwing storms of cold unbearable wind on me. Last night my room was so cold that I thought it would snow. When such bliss was showered on me after painfully hot nights of power cuts and voltage fluctuations, I felt I was dead and floating in heaven. I was pondering why all of a sudden the Uttar Pradesh government has turned so kind towards its pesky subjects and then it was revealed by a newspaper that the Municipal elections on Wednesday were the reason. So will I be back to sleepless nights from today, when I bang my head on the wall and curse the day I decided to leave Delhi and move here? Time will tell.

If you do not know, NCR is under a severe power shortage. Two days back, half of Gurgaon was on roads – blocking traffic, throwing stones at electricity sub-stations and beating up its staff. Similar cases were seen in Ghaziabad too where the Uttar Pradesh government promptly ordered police protection to its foul mouthed staff in various sub-stations. But the magic was that from the next day, the power cuts came down drastically.

Moral of the story – In India, newspapers, television reports, consumer complaints etc do not work. What the government officials really understand is – a smack on the bum, a protest and a traffic jam.  And you will get what you want, at least for a few days.

Believe it or not – government officials produce electricity when beaten up. How else did you think the power shortage vanished magically?

*

Akhilesh Yadav lost his marbles two days back when he tried to pass a proposal according to which the MLAs in Uttar Pradesh can use 20 lakhs from their local area development fund to buy cars. According to him, his crorepati MLAs found it difficult to reach common man to understand their plight without a proper vehicle. Now even if the MLAs cannot afford a car (wait! Let me stop laughing and wipe my spit spray from the screen), have they heard of a car loan? Akhilesh really need to polish his crystal gazing skills. I am not very intelligent but I know that if I try to pass something like this, the whole world will be at my throat before I could say – Oh fuck! Sometimes I wonder if the politicians get paranoid if they do not see themselves on the television for two days and end up passing bizarre proposals or watch porn in assembly or blame opposition for killing babies in hospitals.

*

Beni Prasad Verma, our honourable Steel Minister, is a comical man. A few days back he was up at arms with Laxmi Mittal, who pointing out that red tape is killing India’s growth. In reply, Mr. Verma told the press that Laxmi Mittal never approached him to rub his nose on the ground in front of the Steel Minister and he should stop maligning Indian government.

Really Mr. Verma? After all those scams?

And the amount of time you have taken (6 years and still counting) to clear Mr. Mittal’s projects in India, it’s a wonder he has restrained himself and has not shoved his middle finger in front of your face. Reality check – He doesn’t need us. We need him.

*

I was watching some random news channel yesterday and came upon a very serious effort by Jamiat-e-Islami to increase tourism in Kashmir. The organisation has asked the state government to impose a dress code on the tourists who visit Kashmir. The women are too skimpily dressed for their taste. According to these standards, Goa government is run by immoral prostitutes as they allow women in beachwear to run on the beaches in the state. Strangely, the images of Kashmir shown on television were that of Indian women roaming with their families in the valley wearing kurtas, T-shirts, jeans and slacks. It will not be a surprise if bed sheets are distributed in the valley (with two slits for eyes) to cover up the tourists.

*

Let me confess that I have never enjoyed the Presidential elections so much. In fact, there were times when I had no idea when the change of President is due, when he took office and when he left. I thought you could give up Presidentship whenever you have finished the world tour which comes with the package or simply got bored of sitting in a huge palace where the washroom is like a mile away from your bedroom. And the only time I have seen a President is when he smirks at the guest sitting next to him the moment a huge missile passes by during Republic Day Parade.

Coming to this year’s election, before it gets really bad and the shit hits the fan, Pranab Mukherjee and P.A. Sangma should fight it out like real men in a boxing ring. I think that is the only excitement we are missing in all this mudslinging. I must confess that after all the tamasha I do not find Rakhi Sawant and Poonam Pandey exciting enough.

*

Common man has been enjoying this political masala from decades. While the prices of food items become unaffordable, what else do we have to feed upon other than ‘Pavitra Rishta’, ‘Byaah Hamari Bahoo Ka’ and Political buffoonery?

Moral of the story – With great power comes great stupidity. Spider Man’s uncle was wrong.

Reincarnation of the warrior king as a bus driver

Once upon a time, there was a king, who was fierce as a dragon, whose fighting skills were the talk of the realms beyond his kingdom, who was just and loved his people, who had the ability to create the most devious and cunning battle plans and who loved music and dance, for his court was always filled with artists from kingdoms far away.

His subjects were prosperous under his rule. His recklessness in battlefield never reached his level-headed decision-making in court. His enemies feared him and were terrorized by the prospect of facing him in war.

One day, while hunting a deer in the nearby jungle, the king did a mistake for which he paid dearly. He was aiming an arrow at the running deer as his horse chased it. He was oblivious of where his horse was going as he trusted him blindly while hunting. Their team had never failed but that day was different. The horse gave a sudden start as a sage came in front of him. The arrow left the bow and hit a tree behind the deer. The king controlled the horse and maneuvered him so that it curved away from the sage, but could not avoid the sand which stained the sparking white clothes of the learned. The king got down from the horse and asked for forgiveness with folded hands.

“You could have trampled me!” the sage said frothing at the mouth.

The king bowed his head to the ground.

“No! This will not do. You have to know the consequences of trusting a mere horse. You will drive a horse in your next seven births and you will see where it goes. Your seventh birth will be your actual test. You will have temptations. If you fail, the cycle will continue.”

The king was aghast. He pleaded for the curse to be removed but the sage was adamant. He kicked the king and walked away.

After he died in a battle a few years later, the king ended up being a horse cart driver for his next six lives. He was a good driver and never did a mistake, never crushed even a mouse under his cart. As time passed, sages went out of fashion and so did kings – replaced by people below poverty line and above it. The king was born in Delhi in his seventh life. There were no horse carts left, not even in Chandni Chowk. He contemplated moving to Agra where the profession was still in its bloom, but gave up as there was too much competition. But the curse of the sage had to be fulfilled. And hence, instead of a horse, destiny leads him to drive something which had horsepower – A bus.

I have had the privilege of travelling in the bus driven by the valiant king of past. I am sad that he gave in to temptations, but why should I blame him as he does not remember anything from his previous lives? Why should I blame him when bravery is in his blood?

He drives fearlessly. There are no speed limits for him. There never were. He was air. His horse was air. And now, the bus is air. He loves to bump his subjects to the ceiling of the bus by over-speeding over speed-breakers. His majestic aura stops us from complaining.

He slams the bus in wrong lanes as if trying to break a multi-tier defensive formation (ChakraVyuh) when a traffic signal stops working. Mostly, he is able to get out of it by performing a futuristic art equivalent to sword fights – Honking.

To add more feathers to his majesty’s crown, let me add that he swears a lot too. If not on diesel, the bus might run on the splurge of swear words dripping from his mouth. But can I blame his highness? Where else can a war cry be uttered if not in a war zone?

The king still carries his love for music in his heart. He has the largest collection of music cassettes you could ever imagine a bus driver could manage to keep in his overhead compartment. From “Achko machko Kaa karu raam” to “Sarkailo khatiya” to regional pop songs with jhankaar beats, he has it all. Sometimes, on really terrifying days, you can feel the bus dancing to the music.

The King always held the high ground in battle fields. Now imagine our king sitting on a proud stallion and running amok amidst the poor foot soldiers of the enemy forces. The pleasure he derived from flattening enemies under the foot of his beast was unmatched. In his seventh birth, the king has his hands tied. He cannot swat people but this never stops him from making them run. Oh yes! You have to see the sparkle in his eyes when he makes poor pedestrians run in front of his bus to save their lives. Add a few war cries to it, and you could almost believe that the mighty king remembers everything from the glorious battles he had fought in his past life.

He has sadly given in to temptations this time. He is human after all and he has controlled himself in the previous six births. The cycle of seven rebirths has to be repeated but it makes me anxious to think of the consequences. What if he becomes a pilot in his next birth? I have to decide whether to continue the cycle or not? Should I expose mankind to this disaster? He is not a king anymore but the blood runs strong in him.

I have to think. You must be wondering how I know the details of the mighty conquerer. Ponder and you will find the answer to the riddle. Who else could I be but the sage who cursed the king?

I am living the life of a common man now, thankfully above the poverty line.

p.s. The King is my actual bus driver and all the descriptions of his driving histrionics are true to my knowledge.

[image from 1]

When I met God in a Bar

I was drinking beer waiting for my friend in a bar when this gorgeous girl walked up to me.

She: Hi! How are you?

Me: Hi! I am good. How are you?

She : Great. Can I sit here? What’s your name?

Me: Rohit. And yours?

She: God.

Me (coughing in my beer mug): Which one?

She (smiling): All of them, I guess. Rolled into one.

Me: Listen, can I buy you a drink, dear lord?

She: Sure Earthling. I’ll have a beer too.

So, God and I sat comfortably on the sofa sipping beer, eyeing each other. She was a pretty God.

Me: So, God. What are you doing here on Earth?

She: Just roaming around. Checking how you guys are doing.

Me: And how are we doing?

She: You want me to answer that? All right. You guys are pathetic. I am thinking of ending your race. I am thinking of bringing the dinosaur back.

Me: Really? That is a noble thought. But we are an advanced species. We have made such scientific advancements in the last 200 years. Why would you want us dead?

She: You guys are in such awe of yourself! It’s amazing how being in awe can make you blind to everything else. Tell me something. Point out one thing in the world you would like to change.

Me: Whoa! That is a very difficult question. Hmmm. Let me try. Weapons. Remove all weapons from the world. Yes, that would be perfect.

She: Your stock markets will probably crash if I do that and half of the nations will either be bankrupt or lose their purpose of existence. Anyways, that was a noble thought human. *She smiled* What next?

Me: Vaporize all the terrorists, I guess?

She: What about the people in the position of power who actually fund terrorism? Do you want them to be vaporized too?

Me (emptying my beer mug and ordering another) : Sure.

She: Do you even realize what you are asking for Earthling? Your whole system will collapse if I do that.

Me (realizing that she was getting quite serious) : Relax. You need another beer?

She: Yeah sure. What else?

Me: You really want me to keep going, don’t you?

She: You are angry, I can see it pulse inside you. Out with it.

Me: Okay. You asked for it. I want people to stop littering. I want the spit of a person to fly back in his mouth the moment he spits on the ground. *She giggled* I want people to respect each other’s decisions. I want freedom to express myself. I want girls to be respected. I want politicians to understand the gravity of their position. I want all the black money confiscated. I want honking to be banned. I want poverty to be eliminated. I don’t want to see a single human die of hunger. I don’t want any farmer to commit suicide. I don’t want a single child to be blinded to beg or a girl pushed into prostitution. I want all rapists to be castrated. I want peace. I want people to love this gift of life and give it the respect it deserves.

God stared at me for a while. Her beer arrived. She sipped it thoughtfully.

She: That was quite a mouthful. Now say all this in one sentence.

Me: Ummm. I would like people to be more helpful, to smile at each other, to be honest, to respect.

She: Do you understand now?

Me: Yes. Yes, I do.

She: Killing terrorists and destroying weapons will not solve your problems Earthling. They are the manifestations of decades of wrongdoings. You have to begin from the beginning. One person at a time. From here. *and she tapped her finger on my heart*

It was my turn to stare at her.

Me: Who are you, again?

She: I told you. I am God. *She gulped down her beer in one go* My second glass of beer is over.

Me: And you pick a random stranger one at a time to have a chat and drill your point?

She (smiling): No. Not one at a time. I can appear at a million places at one go. Surely you know that? And besides, I get free beer. 

My mobile beeped. It was a text from the friend for whom I was waiting. He was not coming.

Me: Do you want to walk?

She: Sure.

We walked for a while. The air was cool. It felt good. I slipped my fingers between hers.

Me: Can I call you sometime?

She: Of course you can. *She turned and faced me, moving her fingers on my cheek* You were my greatest creation Earthling. You can always close you eyes and call me.

With that she started walking towards the next turn.

Me (shouting as she turned the corner) : I was going to ask for your mobile number.

She smiled and turned. I ran after her. There was no one there.

I started walking towards my car scratching my head. I saw an old man walking by. I looked in his eyes and smiled. He hesitated and then smiled back.

[This post has been written for IndiBloggers Time to Change contest

http://facebook.com/sftimetochange]

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