10 Honestly Useless Truths

Greetings, dear Earthlings!

I need you to do three things immediately

1) Step away from your computer for a minute.
2)Walk upto to your windows and swing them wide open.
3) Poke your neck out, tilt it upwards and look at the sky.

Do you see fireworks lighting up the sky?

a)Yes you do? Very good, that was as expected.
b)No you don't ? Please wait until darkness descends on your part of the world and then carefully repeat Steps 1-3 again. If you still don't see any fireworks, then please wait a while until Diwali.
c)So you looked up and the bloody Kauuva Rani ( Queen crow) chose the same opportune moment to take a leak on you? My sincere apologies, these darned crows think that the world is a stage and the sky is the bathroom. Someone needs to educate these crows, really. I'll talk to them. In the meanwhile, lets return to the narrative.

I'm sure at least 99.83% of the people who looked up at the sky right now would have seen a breathtaking array of fireworks dazzling up the sky. Those fireworks are there for a reason, my friends....that is because the world is rejoicing, everyone's celebrating. Why? Because moiself, Shri Parikshith Kumar, has just won an award!!!!!! Yes, thats right people. I doubt if you could hear me over the din of bursting crackers and popping champagne corks right now, but you've heard me right. The world's celebrating because their favourite human has won an award.... an award for honesty! Yaay-yippee-yo!! An award for 'Nonsense Aplenty' :-) . This is the award I've won :

Now don't ask me why its called 'Honest Scrap' award when 'Honest Crap' would have been a more appropriate bestowment for my blog. But hey awards are awards... they should be respected, they should be accepted as is, and more importantly they should not be questioned. I mean, have you ever seen an Oscar winner walk up to the stage, accept the golden statuette , take a look at it and gigglingly remark "Hey why does this gay little goldie boy wear no underpants muwahahaha" ? Therefore, I have accepted this award in all humility and with no questions asked.

Well this is not the first award I have received in my life. The feathers in my cap, among others, include the prestigious Nobel Prize for Nonsense, the Academy Award for Best Actor ( for my role in pretending to work in the cubicle everyday) and oh well, the list would go on and on. But I must say the "Honest Scrap" award is indeed overwhelmingly prestigious. It was presented to me in a lavish ceremony held at the Kodak theatre, which was graced by the presence of eminent World leaders ( Yo Obama! Wassup bro? Beer this Saturday?) , the who's who and who-the-fuck-is-that of Hollywood (I know you love me Pam but tch tch too much silicon, gal...) , and the usual bachchcas and Bachchans of Bollywood ( Oye Shah. KnightRiders ki toh vaat lag gayi yaar. Array Amit sir, kaise ho? Khana ho gaya?) . So in the presence of all the glitterati in their full splendor, I was called up to receive my award. It was an emotional moment. I cried. *Sniff*. Britney Spears pulled out her handkerchief and gently dabbed away the tears that had welled up in my eyes . Paris Hilton took off her bra and offered it to me , so that I could blow my nose into it. The world rejoiced and the spectacular firework display you continue to see bears ample testimonial to the worldwide celebration.

*Sigh* Alright, alright this post is supposed to be about honesty. Be darned, honesty. So in honest spirit, I must confess that some of the things mentioned above, ummmm, didn't really happen. I mean, the ceremony was planned and was pretty much on the anvil, but we couldn't get to book the lush Kodak theatre- only Sarvabhauma Kalyana Mandir was available to host the event. And thanks to recession, we didn't have the budget to serve complimentary champagne to the elite guests- we only had complimentary desi daru at our disposal. These logistical constraints led to the cancellation of the ceremony. So in lieu of attending the ceremony, I accepted the "Honest Scrap" award from Karthik, online. But let me promise you something. For the next award I receive, I'll host a grand reception ceremony and whats more - you all will be invited. Hurray!

Here's the citation for the "Honest Scrap" award:

" This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog's content or design is, in the giver's opinion, brilliant. When accepting this auspicious award, you must blah blah blah. And then you must blah blah blah and some more blah. Most importantly you need to blah and then blah blah. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!”

Oh house of horrors! I now need to list 10 honest things about myself? And oh villa of horrors! you, my dearest readers, will have to suffer the anguish of reading thru them? Ah! such a cruel planet we live in. Would Jupiter treat us any better? I don't know. But until we figure that out, here are 10 honest facts about myself, which should help you a bit in unravelling the asshole enigma that I am :

1) I hate reading books. I absolute loathe reading. Now this opening salvo may come as a shock to some of you. The man who talks rat-a-tat and writes like a machine gun hates reading books? Yes, that is true. In all my life I must've read only 3-4 books ( i.e novels/fiction/non-fiction/technical reference/self help and other miscellaneous crap in bound form) . While the world goes ga-ga about JK Rowling, Shiv Khera, Ian Fleming, Jeffery Archer and that Ludlum, Wudlum, Budlum guy, I choose to sit kilometers away from their works. I'm sure even if I were to take printouts of my own blog and bind them into a book - I wouldn't read it myself (Nobody would for that matter, but that's another story)

2) I may hate reading books, but I absolutely adore newspapers. My office subscribes to at least 5 English dailies and I gorge on every single one of them. Infact so serious is my newspaper addiction that if I don't get my daily dose of news, I feel like being enveloped in a strange sense of vacuum. No food? No problem. No water? No problem. No girlfriend?, no job?, no friends?, no bundles of joy? No problem. But no newspapers? Awwwmyyygaaawd!!! Calamity!!! National Emergency!!! Call in the Army, summon the Airforce, alert the Navy!!! Ask them to get me a newspaper from somewhere!!!

3) I am prematurely balding. I'm 25, but thanks to my receding hairline and shining pate, I look 250 years old. Can't help it really, because hair troubles run in my family... my baldness has been genetically handed over to me. I'm sure even the apes who were the ancestors of my ancestors had receding hairlines too. Most of the times I really don't care about my condition, but when it occasionally comes to dating pretty young things, the situation gets a bit tricky. I was out on a date with this beautiful (read dumb) girl the other day. Suddenly, out of no where, a herd of her female pals show up at our table. Amid shrieks of hi-hello and fake air-kisses, one of the girls notice me sitting there. Pointing at me, she tells my date "Wow your Grandpa is so fit even at this age yaar!!!" . My date turns an embarrassed red and screams back saying "He is not my Grandpa boo hoo....." and runs away, out of the mall, never to been seen again. *Sigh*. You know what, I sometimes hope that my toned physique, boyish charm and dimples on both cheeks would somehow camouflage my 250-year-old appearance. But I hope in vain, really. The girls now say "Oh Grandpa's got dimples too?!!!! "
P.S : Guys, baldness is sexy. Flaunt it. Girls, baldness means presence of extra testosterone. You get the hint? Wink wink wink ;-)

4) I am a teetotaler. I abhor alcohol. But that doesn't stop me from accompanying my alcohol-guzzling friends to a pub or a bar. Hey, after all friends are friends and friendship is unconditional. In a pub/bar, this is how my bevda friends summon the waiter and place their drinks order: "OK, three KF's, one Haywards strong, one Seagram Fuel, one Budweiser and one glass Bournvita for this little kid muwahahahaha!!!" . No prizes for guessing whom the joke was on.

5) I am a confident, headstrong, ruthless guy. The phrase "to forgive and forget" simply doesn't find acceptance in my DNA. I still haven't forgiven Pamela Anderson for breaking up with me. Oh well, Honest Scrap. Honest Scrap. Darn! I need to be reminded of it every time!

Whew.... five truths down, five more to go. Lets take a small commercial break now. Washing powder Nirmaaaa. Washing powder Nirmaaaa.. Oh cut the crap Parikshith, and move your ass to fact number 6.

6) My aforementioned ruthlessness aside, I can be very kind to beggars, particularly the old, frail ones (who, going strictly by appearance, are qualified to look like my Siamese twin) . I know there is a lobby of thought which says that one shouldn't encourage or give to beggars- but I don't really subscribe to it. One incident remains fresh in my memory to this date. An old, frail lady approached me at a traffic signal one day, begging me for alms. I didn't have any loose change, so with a sigh, I handed over the lone, solitary five-hundred rupee note in my wallet to the beggar. So alarmed was the old lady with my offer , that she reached into her dirty gunny bag, plucked out four hundred fifty rupees of change, and handed it back to me saying "Ye lo, change rakh lo sahib". A beggar asking you to keep the change in return. Has it ever happened to you? Its happened to me. I lead an eventful life.

7) I love taking long hot showers. At the end of a long tiring day at work, nothing can be more relaxing than a long indulgent stint under the shower. As clocked by my roommate, my average long shower lasts anything between 60-80 minutes. No matter how much my life sucks all day and no matter how much grime and dust I get to face, I am grateful that at the end of the day, my rickety one room paying guest accommodation has a hot shower that sprays generous bursts of water. It washes all my stress away. Sad, there's no luxury jacuzzi in my shanty bathroom yet, but the simple shower will do. ( There is a commode, but it sadly cant accommodate all of my 5'8" frame for bathing purposes)

8) I have been an atheist since times immemorial. Even as a kid, I was an atheist at heart. Of course growing up, I had moments of wavering faith in God ( specially when exams neared or when India needed 2 runs to win from 1 ball) , but on the whole, I've been very much at peace with my atheism. I still remember being spanked left and right by my sixth grade class teacher for wondering out loud in the classroom - "If God exists, ma'm , why doesn't he show up and do my homework?" .

9) I can competently play six different types of percussion instruments ( please note that 'competence' is a highly subjective word here, but take my word for now, will ya) . I will someday attempt to upload a video of me playing all the instruments together. Boy, now wouldn't that be fun? I can gleefully visionize the torture that would befall you, my dear readers. I am sure pandemonium will break out in the World Wide Web. There will be widespread clamor among the people to close the webpage window and people would surely be running helter-skelter , away from their computer screens. Now wouldn't I love that to happen? You betcha! :-)

10) I always eat cream biscuits by separating them into two. You know, the regular Britannia/Sunfeast ones? - I usually de-sandwich the biscuits, separate them into two parts, lick away at the cream like a cat and proceed to bite into the now naked biscuit halves. Whats the big deal, you may wonder? No big deal really, but this deep rooted habit of mine has managed to seep into my corporate life. I had to give a presentation to a group of American clients, the other day. Now this was a jazzed up, hi-fi presentation ( read as 'fake everything presentation'). So here I was, decked up in a crisp gray suit, with slick gelled err... hair, and with my teeth and shoes shining brightly in the amber projector light. The presentation went on flawlessly ( nobody understands my jargon, I tell you). After an hour or so, we broke for coffee. To my delight, I saw that they served some delicious sandwiched cream biscuits in the room. True to my habit, I went ahead with my carefully choreographed split-lick-eat routine. Pin drop silence engulfed the room. I then looked up to see 10 senior American heads stare at me with amazement and 10 senior members of the Indian staff stare at me with embarrassment. Unmindful of the business and cream biscuit etiquette, I continued to lick away biscuit after biscuit. These corporate rules, I mean I don't get them. Licking your boss' ass to get a promotion is OK. But licking cream from your biscuit is a strict no-no. I don't get it.

Anyway, the count has reached 10 and I've done my duty towards being a deserving recipient of the "Honest Scrap" award. I've had an overdose of honesty. I'm sure you've reached the end of your tether too. But you should count your lucky stars, my dear people. In this part of the world, Saridon and Aspirin are sold real cheap.

Until later,
Sincerely yours (no pun intended)
Parry.