Nonsense Aplenty!

My New Year Resolutions

2010-01-04T22:30:00.006+05:30

O ho ho!!! 2010 is here!! I’d like to wish my handful of readers a very Happy New Year 2010. Well, life fucked you in 2009 and life will continue to fuck you in 2010 – so in that sense the New Year will not be any different than the one which just sped by - but hey I hope and pray that life fucks you a little milder this year. Oh, please don’t take me seriously – I pray that the New Year showers on you roses and tulips, dollars and dinars, success and glory, love and peace, lots of smouldering beauties in 2-piece bathing suits (if you are a man), hunk after hunk resembling David Hasselhoff in his prime (if you are a woman), and Rohit Vermas and Bobby Darlings (if you are a eunuch). And I’ll be blogging lesser this year – so there you go, this New Year is guaranteed to be a happy one for you!

Cometh New Year and cometh resolution time. I’ve always been making New Year resolutions year after year like a compulsive habit. Until the last year, it used to be the same ol’ dope. I used to write down my resolutions on a piece of paper, beam with pride and religiously adhere to them for 24 hours. Then on the strike of the 25th hour, I used to tear out the piece of paper in frustration, crumple it into a ball and toss it on the floor for my cat to play football with. But this year, with my blog in place, I’ve decided to give my New Year resolutions a serious, longer run. What’s more, by sharing my resolutions with you, the World, I am hoping against hope that someone among you will be there by my side to remind me when I go astray.

So without anymore ado, here are my New Year Resolutions for 2010. Muwahahaha.... Hey no seriously, I have one hand over my heart and the other hand over my keyboard typing all this. Here goes:

1) I will not watch porn. That’s right, no more porn for me. I resolve to turn into a squeakily clean young man with moral values so rock solid that prospective mothers-in-law around the country will have catfights amongst themselves to bag me as their son-in-law. Yes, I am going to delete my terabytes of chee-chee stuff forever. Or wait, maybe not. Instead of deleting it, I will transfer all the files over to an external hard-drive, store the precious disk in a secure bank locker and instruct the bank to handover the locker keys to my future son on his 21st birthday. Yeah, that sounds right. I know I will make an ideal father. So my first New Year resolution ladies and gentlemen, no porn for me in 2010. No more kinky cheerleaders, no more kinky schoolteachers, no more kinky newsreaders, no more kinky mermaids, and no more of that kinky lady-whose-car-keeps-breaking-down-everytime-and-seeks-shelter-in-the-roadside-bungalow-with-an-attractive-landlord etc. etc. The only pictures of women I’ll be viewing on the Internet from now on are the ones which have them draped from head to toe in a nine-yard Kanjeevaram saree. The only ‘accessory’ I’d be expecting them to be adorned with will be pieces of traditional gold jewellery, bangles, toe-rings and copious amounts of sindhoor. The only ‘pose’ I’d expect them to strike would be a Namaste-pose. Oh no no no you bastards, by the saree I didn’t mean those barely-there, flimsily thin, transparent white ones waiting to be drenched with the first burst of cloud or second jug of water. Abey shoo go away you people and give me a chance to be a good boy, will ya?

2) As we are hovering on the topic, let me take the opportunity to make my second similar New Year resolution. I will not give any special tips or tricks to my teenaged or college-going male cousins this year. The special set of Parikshith anna’s tips/tricks/services which are so coveted by my younger male cousins are:

• Coming up with precise, innovative search keywords that would take them to some of the topmost Google-ranked porn sites.
• Sharing with them some of the absolute, rare gems from my collection mentioned in Resolution 1) above. Of course, this is proportional to their academic performance in school or college. The higher the percentage they achieve in their tests/exams, the more exotic will be the file they receive from their big brother. I am flattered when they tell me it is a tremendous motivation for them to do well in their studies.
• Getting me to write romantic notes or poetry for their crushes, which they pass off as their own, obviously. Getting me to counsel them about wooing their next new girlfriend for the week.
• Getting me to write witty stuff in the ‘fraandship’ requests that are sent to the babes in Orkut on their behalf. Sometimes the babes fall for it, but most of the times we end up with eggs on our faces.
• And then there are other common, trivial stuff like teaching the youngsters proper eve-teasing techniques, instructing them about the importance of saving for their illegal booze binges, teaching them the correct positions and angles needed to stare down at cleavages from the top floors of shopping malls, - you know, regular stuff which ideal big brothers teach the younger male lot in their family. Actually kids these days are smart enough to figure it out themselves, unlike the kids of my generation.

So my dear cousins, this year I resolve not to help you in any such activities, no matter how much you beg me. You have to discover the joys of being a man yourselves, kids. (Pssst... if you need any assistance, contact Sunil, my roommate. As most of you would know, his moral compass tilts in just about the same direction as mine and he doesn’t believe in stupid things like New Year resolutions. So get in touch with him)

3) I resolve to stop being a liar. That’s right in 2010, I resolve to adopt honesty as the bestest policy and embrace righteousness and truthfulness with the kind of vigour that would put the ghosts of Raja Harishchandra to shame. No more lying through my teeth this year folks– I am going to do away with a skill which comes to me as naturally as swimming to a duck or stripping to a Paris Hilton. It’s going to be honesty all the way in 2010, ladies and gentlemen... a spade will be called a spade, a shovel will be a shovel, and a pick-axe will be a pick-axe. So when my business unit manager asks for an honest opinion about his sucked up, bird brained, ass-tight management policies, you know what I’m gonna tell him. Likewise, when my obese-as-a-hippo female friend steps out of the trial room and asks me to honestly tell her if she looks a little fat in that new green dress, then you know what I will tell her as well.

4) I resolve to eat healthy and live better this year. No more junk-hogging this year. This would translate to no more than 3 visits to Pizza Hut per week and just one to McDonald's, that too only when I am really hungry. I will visit the Beijing Bites only to say hi to the waiters and will be resolute in my decision of not ordering any of the chows or the chopsueys while I am there. I will visit CCDs to just listen to the music and pop into the Baristas to only check out the floral decoration on the coffee table. Even if I'm tempted to order any of those jumbo tub popcorns during my mandatory weekly movie outings, I will eat only 10% of the stuff and then promptly pass over the tub to some random guy on the front row. I will tightly shut my eyes every time I pass by the street side chaat stalls, even if it means being possibly hit by a passing truck or something. I will eat on time and not play games of permutation and combination with my eating schedule – you know, the combining of breakfast with lunch, snacks with dinner, or breakfast with dinner and the like.

5) I will keep my ever-colourful swear and abuse vocabulary under check. For example, the word ‘Fuck’ will be used only in situations where extreme exclamations need to be conveyed under extreme circumstances. ‘Fuck’ will no longer be used as a sentence beginner or sentence ender in every conversation that I have. Likewise, I will no longer use the words ‘Madarchod and behenchod’ as expressions of endearment, affection, disappointment, admiration or as a mere exhaling sigh. They will be used only in moments of pure fury like road rage or quarterly performance appraisal meetings. I resolve to address people with respect in this year. Team leads and managers will no longer be called ‘Bastards’ when out of earshot. They will be called ‘differently born individuals’ henceforth. Also the Directors and Human resource executives who decide on the pay-hike policies will no longer be called ‘Madhafuckinsonsofbitches’. They will be called ‘kind souls with different sexual tastes’.

6) And the one resolution every single of you were looking forward to. I’ll strive to keep my yak-yakking tendencies under check and keep my posts short this year. Well, it shouldn’t be difficult, considering that I only write once in six months or whenever it’s time to vent out some steam – whichever is earlier. But you have my resolute word that I will make every effort to trim the length of my posts... its kinda chopping a flowing evening gown to make a crotch-exposing miniskirt, but I will try.

Alright, that’s it folks. That’s enough. I don’t want to make too many New Year resolutions because unlike the laws of the land, New Year resolutions should be strictly followed at all times. Plus, it is emotionally taxing to make up too many New Year resolutions since it ostensibly involves giving up something you deeply covet. One look at the list that I’ve drawn up, and I am already feeling low and terribly depressed imagining the stuff I have resolved to give up this year. Hopefully, a large slice of pizza over the latest video of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ should cheer me up. Hey no..... err... wait.

See you later friends, and once again, I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year or whatever.

Love,
Parry.

P.S: It was exactly this day one year ago when I decided to create a blog called ‘Nonsense Aplenty’. I can’t believe an entire year has sped by with me goofing around and the blog is celebrating its first birthday today. I remember feeling that itch within me last year. I always wanted to do something noble and contribute wholeheartedly to the society. I felt a fire raging within me; wanting and yearning to write something about raging social issues like gender equality, right to education, women’s rights, upliftment of the downtrodden, eradication of poverty and other evils and the importance of valour, honesty, sincerity, loyalty and self-esteem in individuals. Thus to address these issues, ‘Nonsense Aplenty’ was born. Err... worst mistake of my life. But thank you for reading my blog. It certainly hasn’t enriched my life in any way, but I hope it has touched yours. Thank you for supporting ‘Nonsense Aplenty’ and making a difference to the society in particular and the Universe and the entire Milky Way in general (As a side note, does Amul own the Milky Way?).
-Parry.

The Man Behind the Nonsense

2009-10-31T23:27:00.011+05:30

Sit down.
Sit down, I say.
Attaboy. Attagal.

All the boys and girls out there piercing the air with their shrill seetis and dancing dhoom-dhadakka to celebrate my return to the blogosphere - please, sit down first. Now that I have your attention, please allow me to offer my obsequious apologies. I am sorry, but this is not a blog post. That's right, this is not one of those usual long blogposts which you've come to expect from me... you know, the kind of posts that add a couple of rings to the halo around your head, purify your soul and take you closer to nirvana. I want to clarify this at the very outset because I don’t want people to later feel that they were promised a full-blown Pizza party but only got garlic breads in return. I am not blogging because I am on a vacation. A break. A holiday. From everything. You see, months of play-acting at my workplace in good ol' Bangalore had taken a toll on me , so I decided now was a good time to come home for a small Diwali break and make a well deserved pit-stop in the corporate rat race. Well, Diwali has come and gone, but I have no intention of going back to work anytime soon - I've already extended my vacation twice. Tell me who would want to go back to work when you can as well stay in your hometown, plop an easy chair in your garden, snooze from sunrise to sunset, and glutton on Mom's dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I mumbled an excuse to my manager (the usual one - about falling ill without warning, being admitted to the hospital to get a CT scan done for a common cold and how the kind Doctor's advised for a week of compulsory bed rest and how sorry I feel about missing all the work and blah blah blah) and decided to stay put in my hometown for another week. So that is why I don’t want to write a proper blog post; I mean think of it – a cricketer doesn’t play cricket on his vacation, a software engineer doesn’t pretend to work while on vacation, a labourer doesn’t labor while on vacation, so why should a blogger blog on a vacation? Logical, na?

So I was just idling around on the Web, browsing inane sites and casually hopping from one blog to another, when I found this little tag on one of the blogs. It is the usual kind of tag, which requires you to answer a few questions about yourself that no one would otherwise care a hoot about. I have always steered clear of doing tags; answering mundane pre-set questions about oneself never really interested me. But 10 months and 20 posts later, I realized that there will be people who would want to know a little more about me.... awestruck people who look at my blog and wonder Wow! who is this guy, what planet does he come from, what does he eat, what color toothbrush does he use, what size banian does he wear, when do I get to slap him etc etc. So I decided now would be a good time to do one of those tags. Being on a vacation with not wanting to write proper blogposts, I thought doing a question-answer tag that requires no application or creativity is a novel way of passing time. And of course, to remind my readers how much I and my blog actually suck. Heh heh heh. Anyway, without further ado, up up and away here we go:

1. What is your current obsession?
Mobile phone cinematography. I would like to believe that I specialize in wildlife. Here’s a sample wildlife clip that I shot recently with my loyal Sony Ericsson W800i which undoubtedly shows off my extraordinary skill in err… wildlife cinematography. Here’s presenting- Kittu, the cat. National Geographic, here I come. (Apologies for the choppy video streaming, but I hope that doesn’t sully my résumé)

2. What are you wearing today?
A kurta, torn at the armpits and a pyjama, not torn anywhere.

3. What’s for dinner?
As I said I've come home for vacation. I asked Mom and Dad, both excellent cooks, to make me a simple, spartan home-cooked meal of Noodle Soup, Masala Papad, Butter kulchas, Shahi Mutter Paneer, steamed vegetable Biryani with dal and boondi raita, French fries, Gulab Jamun and Mango Lassi. Let’s see. But looking at the incredulous smirks on their faces, it looks like the only thing I'll be having for dinner tonight is a plate of humble pie.

4. What’s the last thing you bought?
Hmmm... a Gillette Series Shaving Foam and a pack of razor blades. Sadly, not many approve of my rustic, caveman like charm.

5. What are you listening to right now?
"Kyoon Keeda Hai Aapko" track from the movie that ought to be India's next entry to the Oscars - QuickGun Murugan. Yes, I listen to such songs.

6. What do you think about the person who tagged you?
In short, he is God’s best gift to mankind. Actually, in trousers also he is God’s best gift to mankind.
Yeah I know. I tagged myself.

7. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
Does anybody happen to know if the White House is available for rent?

8. What are your three must-have pieces for summer?
A swimming trunk, a large banana leaf and a big stick.
The swimming trunk is needed when you decide to visit the beach and take a dip in the Sea to beat the heat. The banana leaf is needed when your swimming trunks slip away under you and gets lost into the Sea and you desperately need something to wrap yourself with immediately. The big stick comes in handy to shoo away hungry stray cows and goats who may be tempted to make a buffet delicacy out of your banana leaf.

9. If you could go anywhere in the world within the next hour, where would you go?
Which reminds me to take a bathroom break. I will be back shortly, excuse me please.

10. Which language do you want to learn?
Ok, I am back. New language eh? I'd like to learn an African tribal language like Zulu/Swahili. Actually, I've already learnt a few sentences like “Jingalala hurr, jhumbalala hurr, hurr hurrr”. Translated, that means “Good morning, what a pleasant day, would you bring me my tea please?”

11. What’s your favourite quote?
I like those little poetic quotes uttered by famous world personalities. Here's one such favourite quote of mine. This one begs a question... an enigmatic, mystic expression of doubt, a query of the unknown that seeks the answers from the powers that be. It goes something like

"Mary had a little lamb
The Black Sheep was asked if he had any wool
Lamb and sheep, never heard of 'em ever since...
Did they both end up under the butcher's tool?” - Sir Parikshith Kumar.

Among the famous simplistic quotes, here is my favourite

"I came, I saw, I'm still seeing" - Sir Parikshith Kumar

And this one,

"Three fourths of the Earth's surface is covered with water. Whether it is a bounty of Nature or loss of real estate is for you to decide" - Sir Parikshith Kumar

I've got more, but I think I should stop now.

12. Who do you want to meet right now?
I would like to meet Michael Schumacher and ask him to return the Ferrari he borrowed from me the other day.

13. What is your favourite colour?
Blue. After watching the movie Blue however, I am tempted to change my favourite colour to a certain shade of pink. Heh heh ;-)

14. What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own closet?
A multipurpose piece of cloth that doubles up as a floor mop on weekdays and as a faded, tattered pair of denim trousers on weekends.

15. What is your dream job?
Film Critic. Ah that is my kind of job. Your employer pays you handsomely to park your ass in an air conditioned theatre, watch flicks and stuff yourself with caramel popcorn week after week. You then go on air and tell the world that the best part of the movie was the intermission. Next, you puncture a hole or two in the screenplay, suggest to the audience that the movie script can be used as tissue paper, and lament the fact that the heroine didn't show enough cleavage. Voila! your movie review is complete. Now would you hand over my fat pay check and remove the fly out of my champagne glass please? Thank you.

Well, if there are no vacancies for the post a film critic, then I would prefer any kind of job that pays me to snooze 12 hours a day. I mean isn’t that literally what they call a ‘dream job’? :-)

16. If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on?
I would buy gifts for my dear readers for patiently putting up with me and my blog for ten long months. You want to know what I’ll buy for you eh? Fork over that $100 first.

17. What do you consider a fashion faux pas?
Men wearing lungis on a windy day and finding themselves convert unwittingly into makeshift Marilyn Monroes.
Women wearing tight little T-shirts that are naturally designed hover a few inches over their belly buttons - and yet for some strange reason, keep tugging at them every 30 seconds in futile attempts to cover maximum.

18. Who according to you is the most over-rated style icon?
I am not really a style conscious person, but to answer this question, I guess it’s got to be Malaika Arora. Just the other day I saw a group of lady colleagues in my office pouring over a fashion mag that had a photograph of Malaika aunty in a so-called trendy outfit and gushing about the lady’s sense of dressing. Trust me, that so-called trendy outfit really looked no different than a piece of hurriedly stitched up automobile seat cover to me.

19. What kind of haircut do you prefer?
A dreadlocked Mohawk.
Err... not really. With due consideration to my hairline which is receding at the speed of light, I think it’s better it to keep it short and neat.

20. What are you going to do after this?
Use my thumb and forefinger to hit Alt+Tab, move over to another webpage and upload a special piece of code that will percolate into the lanes and bylanes of the Internet and eventually hit NASA’s servers that control geostationary satellites that are orbiting up there. Once I have the satellites in my control, I will direct them to hover right outside your window and spy over your shoulder as you type your password on your Netbanking account. Once I know your passwords that way, I will siphon all your money from your respective accounts, buy a yacht and a mansion in Jamaica and spend the rest of my life there, sipping coconut water and doing the reggae with random hotties. Muwahahahaha. So basically it’s just the remaining questions on this stupid tag that’s keeping me from my little trip to Jamaica. So would you mind if I proceed, please?

21. What are your favourite movies?
Since I am a decent boy and this is a decent PG12 family entertainment blog, I will not name movies like “Reshma ki Jawani”, “Jungal Mein Mangal”, “Naughty Bahurani” , “Bhoot Ka Choot” etc here. Chee chee chee. So let me stick to the clean ones. Among my favourites are the Sanjay Dutt- John Abraham starrer “Zinda”, the legendary DDLJ and the Hollywood blockbuster “A Few Good Men”.

22. What’s your favourite magazine?
Again since this is a family place, I wouldn’t mention the Playboy. So I will lie and tell you that I like The Week, The India Today, Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha etc etc.

23. What inspires you?
Almost everything... from people’s stupidity- which inspires me to be different from them to people’s ingeniousness – which inspires me to do better than them.

24. Give us three styling tips that always work for you.
1) After three days of usage, turn your socks inside out, spray some deodorant on them and wear them for three more days. Yoo hoo! Same socks, but a different shade.
2) As everyone keeps hamming “Always wear something that you are comfortable in”. By that logic, you should be wearing your night dress to your office.
3) Never leave your house without a handkerchief. What if your dear bike needs immediate dusting?

25. Coffee or Tea?
Bournvita.

26.What do you do when you are feeling low or terribly depressed?
Watch any movie that features Tusshar Kapoor/ Hurman Baweja / Adhyayan Suman / Emran Hashmi / Kamal Rashid Khan or alternatively, watch the contestants of Big Boss or any other reality show on TV for an hour or so. Then walk upto the mirror, put on a big smile and say “It’s OK Parry, relax, there are far bigger losers than you out there.”

27. What is the meaning of your name?
Etymology: “Pariksha” (Hindi/Sanskrit), meaning ‘Tested or put to test’.
Parikshith means ‘the one who is proven’. The one who has cleared all the tests he was put through (includes University examinations). The one who is inquisitive and examines everything minutely. The one who has received a stamp of approval from the Gods. You’ve seen those little stickers on clothing, crockery and electronic gadgets that say “Tested OK”? Yes, that’s what my name is all about. “Tested OK”.

28. How many more questions to go before this rubbish ends?
Three or four.

29. Wow, really?
Shut up and read.

30. Which other blogs do you love visiting?
Anand Ramachandran’s Son of Bosey – which is one of the funniest blogs I’ve ever come across so far. With each blog post designed as a rubbish, satirical press release, this blog has undoubtedly provided me some of my biggest laughs on the blogosphere. If you like nonsense humor, then I strongly suggest that you check out this blog. I’ll bet the hyenas that you’ll laugh until your belly hurts.
P.S For the information of all cricket aficionados, this guy also writes some absolutely hilarious articles on cricket and cricketers in the Heavy Ball section of Cricinfo Page 2. Check it out too.

And then we have that incredibly funny, adorable mountain-witch called Silverine. Anjali Philip, with her witty, sarcasm- laced humour has provided me some really memorable ROFL moments on the blogosphere. The best thing about this blog is that Ms. Philip has a rib-tickling update every week (usually on Mondays, so one yaay! for that), so you can have one big ROFL moment guaranteed every week. Muuuuuaaaah Anjali, I love you. Please excuse my body odor and accept a biiiiiigg bear hug from me.
P.S: Anjali, if you love me too, please reciprocate the feelings by waving excitedly at the computer screen, squinting your eyes and touching your nose with the tip of your tongue – all simultaneously.

Apart from the two maniacs listed above, my other regular sources of smiles and laughter include G3, Bullshee, Barun, Blunt Edges, Shanu and a host of others. Keep rocking guys! You’ve made so many of my days!

31. Which is that one blog post of yours that you consider to be a personal favourite?
Now this is like asking me to sift through a garbage mound and identify the piece of scrap that I find most appealing, but to answer the question, I like the ‘Love Poetry on Valentine’s Day’ post I had written on, you guessed it, Valentine’s Day. I won the Nobel Prize for Nonsense for that.

32. Favorite Dessert/Sweet?
Rasmalai. For that matter, I am attracted to just about any sweet. I am an ant in human guise.

33. Favorite Season?
Friends – Season 4.

34. If I come to your house now, what would you cook for me?
Bheja Fry.

35. What are you afraid of most?
That this tag will never end, that I will go on typing and typing and typing, and you will go on reading and reading and reading, and we’ll all die typing/reading and end up as skeletons slumped on our chairs with cobwebs for company.

Phew! Looks like I am done.
I tag: Everyone who featured on Question 30. Well, depending on your levels of joblessness, all of you reading this are welcome to take up this tag too.

I will be back with a proper blogpost soon. Till then, keep yourself safe,healthy and sane. Have fun!

Love,

Parry.

Play, dear Boy!!

2009-09-22T23:40:00.009+05:30

Disclaimer: This post may offend you. Don't believe me? Go ahead and read it then.

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Today, I stand in the twilight of my bachelor life and my singlehood. Two more years to go before I take the reluctant, suicidal plunge into matrimony (Dad says one year- but I’ve bargained for two). I’ve had an eventful life so far. In fact, looking at the types of misadventures I’ve had as a student and a bachelor, I can only thank my lucky stars and my pseudo- good boy image for not having been thrown into a prison cell or something. One of my regrets is that time has passed too quickly. The only other regret I have is that I feel I haven’t expressed my gratitude to people who’ve made my life special. I have always been guilty of taking people for granted, and I haven’t said enough thank you’s to the individuals who’ve made a positive difference in my life. The time has come to set things right.

Today, I want to take the opportunity to extend my heartfelt thank-you’s to two such people who in their own unique ways, have made a significant impact in my bachelor life. I want to say thank you to Hugh Hefner- the creator of Playboy and Tiffany Taylor- ex Playboy playmate and one of the finest soft-porn divas to grace the planet.

Statutory Warning: Careful! If you are in your office, then please do not Google for Tiffany right now. If you are at home staying with your folks, then wait until your folks go to sleep or step outside of the house, and then Google for her. Or else, make sure that you shut and latch the door of your room before opening her wallpapers. If you are a girl, you may not have met Tiffany before today, but I guess by now you may have already Wikied or Googled for her, driven by your standard why-is-this-man-complimenting-another-girl curiosity. Well, if you hadn’t Wikied/Googled already, then I know you will surely do it now! And if you are a man, then bastard, I know that you know all about her... you probably know her vital statistics better than your company’s Q3 earnings. :-)

Anyway, coming back to the point, Tiffany and I go back a very long way. In fact one of the first female tits that I ever saw properly during my adolescent life were hers. So therefore the bond that I share with Tiffany is deeper and more sentimental than the connection that I share with, say, an Alison Angel or a Priya Rai (again, look left, right, aagey, peeche before Googling for their images). As Generation-X boys, we attended high-school in an era when Internet and electronic media (CD’s, 8 GB USB drives, .avi files or high res- .jpeg images) were not as rampant as they are today. The access to free online streaming or downloadable porn- something as common as bread-butter-toast today- was like an unthinkable, unaffordable luxurious five-star meal for us ten years ago. In fact during my high-school days, the only sources of porn for us boys were a) biology textbooks b) torn and crumpled pages from Debonair or Playboy c) video cassettes of Mallu porn – showing blurred images of ugly, fat aunties making love to uglier fat uncles in a dingy room with Carnatic classical music for background score. (Ladies- I know you may be shocked, but you don’t exactly expect boys to be interested in dressing up pink Barbie dolls and playing with cushy little teddy bears do you?) .

Taking a nostalgic trip down the memory lane, today I laughingly recall the concept of ‘half-boob’ that was so popular in my high-school days. You see, in my tenth standard, we had about 35 boys in our class vying for a single copy of Playboy – the only legacy copy which we had ‘inherited’ from our seniors. We boys used to compete with each other- usually by organizing rounds of arm wrestling- with the winner taking home the grand bumper prize of the solitary Playboy copy for an entire night of ‘private viewing’ . But gradually, as the testosterone levels shot up and the demand outgrew supply, a single copy of Playboy was rendered utterly insufficient. That is when we came up with the ingenious concept of ‘half-boob’ – in which a single photo of a topless model was torn right at the centre of her cleavage into two pieces. The piece of paper with the left boob was handed to somebody and the piece with the right boob was handed over to someone else! That way, we ensured that most of our mates had at least one boob each at their disposal every day. And it didn’t stop here – you see if you’ve ever torn a topless model’s photo apart at her chest ( it used to break our hearts, but we had only one Playboy with us, so we had to do it) you’ll know that the other unimportant parts of her body like face and hair would be torn into half too. Unfortunately, this made the identification of the photos very difficult. So, being the teenaged geniuses that we were, we came up with the idea of code-labelling the boobs. For example, if it was Alicia’s boobs that were being divided, then each scrap of the photo was labelled Al. R (Alicia right) and Al. L (Alicia left) at the bottom right corner. Similarly Betty’s separated pair of assets were labelled Bet. R and Bet. L respectively and so on. We made sure that the labelling was done with a very thin lead-pencil and the letters were marked as small as possible and as much to the bottom-right edge of the photo as possible – to ensure that the attention was not diverted from the main showpiece content of the photo. You may be wondering what happened to the photos that had full nudity. Simple – unlike the topless photos that were bisected, these types of photos were trisected. I’ll leave the rest for errr... your imagination.

And it didn’t stop here. We were a very bright bunch of boys (most of us have grown up today to become successful techies, doctors, MBA grads, air force pilots and wizards in the creative field) and we had our logistics firmly in place. We maintained a centralized register that kept track of all the ‘half boobs’ that were being circulated. This register consisted of a table that listed the name of the left boob, name of the right boob, current owner of the left and right boobs, due-date when the lefts and rights were to be exchanged between the ‘boob-buddies’ ( for ex. The boys who owned, say, Al R. and Al. L on that particular day were boob-buddies, who were supposed to exchange their respective half boobs within the due-dates listed). This centralized register actually was a sheet, which we had torn right off from our official class attendance register- because the rows and columns with printed dates on them made them very convenient to maintain our boob inventory. The responsibility of maintaining this centralized register usually fell upon the brightest lad in our class- the class monitor. Come on, he was made the class monitor because he was the brightest lad, and we knew we could trust him with the logistics. The exchange of the half -boobs usually happened during our lunch-breaks, in a clandestine, synchronized operation. The scraps of paper with the half boobs were innocuously hidden inside our Maths classwork notebooks and exchanged between the respective boob-buddies. I remember being really excited about this exchange program.... it was my long-awaited turn to know if Betty’s right boob really looked any different from her left counterpart. Anyway, this is when I saw Tiffany Taylor (code Ti L. and Ti R.) for the first time. Unbelievable! I was overwhelmed by that woman... had she proposed to me, I would have readily said ‘Yes’ to her then and there. She was the epitome of beauty, so smoking-hot that a piece of butter dropped on her lissome body would have probably melted away in nanoseconds. Even though I found everyone else ‘nice’, I was especially partial to Ti L. and Ti. R. My kaminey friends had even nicknamed me as Tiffany Kumar. Some sense of humor they had, I tell you.

Everything went like clockwork for about 6 months or so. But it took just one afternoon for our entire porn infrastructure to collapse. You see, I happened to study in a co-ed school. We boys took painstaking care to cloak our self-built porn network in a thick veil of secrecy and ensure that none of the girls in our class got any wind of it. We boys were actually worried that the girls in our class were not as sexually erudite as us and would freak out like hell at the thought of half-boobs being exchanged in their presence. We were convinced that those girls didn’t even know how to spell ‘sex’. At that time, we believed our female classmates’ probable idea of reproduction was something like: “Man gets married to a woman. During the first night, man and woman shake hands with each other and poof! , a baby drops right down from the skies.” And to add fuel to our suspicion, girls in our class had the reputation of being cribby, complainy little twats who could not be trusted to keep secrets. Hence we ensured that our network of porn was only known to the ‘men of the class’.

But one fine fateful afternoon, shortly after we were done with our customary exchange program during the lunch break, it so happened that one of our boys had carelessly left a photo of Jessica’s left boob (Jes L.) unattended on his desk. One of our girl classmates, oblivious to this rare blip, was quietly having her lunch in a corner of the classroom. As luck would have it, a strong gust of wind came through the open window and blew the photo of Jessica’s boob right across the classroom and straight into the girl’s lunch box! “Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!” . A bloodcurdling, high-pitched female scream echoed right through the classroom, sending shivers down the school corridors. That was it. The was the end of our story.

You need not be an Einstein to guess what happened next. But for the record- we boys were marched to Principal Sir’s chambers, made to stand in a line, and caned mercilessly on our bums until the brown cheeks turned scarlet red. Bloody Principal, he would have probably spent the whole of the previous night fondling his mistresses’ boobs, but if we students exchanged porn likewise, then it was a crime. Some justice, bah! Anyway, the punishment was pronounced and each one of us were suspended from school for 2 days (which we merrily spent playing cricket in the neighbourhood fields). However, the poor boy in the centre of the storm – the one who happened to own Jes L. at that point of time - didn’t have it so lucky. He was suspended from school for 5 days, a complaint letter was posted to his residential address, and was told that he would be allowed to re-join the school only if he summoned his Dad to the Principal’s chambers.

Let me tell you something- we boys were not the ones to take things lying down. We fifteen- year olds were all lust filled scumbags alright, but we were really feisty fifteen-year olds. We had tremendous guts, we were boys of integrity and we were united in our cause. We felt responsible for the poor guy who got caught, and so we set ourselves upon a path of redemption. Our first stop was the town post-office, where it took about 50 bucks to bribe the head postmaster, and about 5 minutes to nip the Principal’s letter from the postal room and tear it to shreds. Our next stop was at the neighbourhood pani-puri waala’s stall, where it took another 50 bucks to convince the paani-puri waala to pose as our friend’s Dad and meet the Principal. Man, you should’ve seen that guy’s performance at the Principal’s office- he would have won a Filmfare for sure!

We passed out of tenth standard soon after and dispersed into various colleges for our PUCs (equivalent to eleventh and twelfth standard-FYI) and subsequently to do our engineering/medicine/other stupid professional courses, and therefore our half boob network was unplugged naturally. My engineering college years (2001-2005) were pure bliss, I tell you. It makes me proud and patriotic to say that in any corner of our country, the words “male engineering student” and “porn aficionado” would count as true synonyms. In fact an engineering student is not considered to be an engineering student if he hasn’t seen a porn movie or two in his grad life (I am speaking only for the men. I have no clue about the female engineering students’ porn habits; you can probably enlighten me in the comments section). Engineering years were the time when technology around us truly changed trends. Internet became cheaper, faster and more accessible. No more half-boobs, we had the entire models for ourselves – movies, still-photos, wallpapers, animation, any category with any number of X’s – you name it, click, tap and presto there it was! The rickety 1.4 MB Sony floppies slowly made began to make way to CD RW’s and USB drives. But for people like me and most of my batch mates, who had an average of 10 GB porn stashed away in a hard-drive of 20 GB capacity (well, we used to save a couple of GB’s here and there for our engineering study files too) – those floppies, CD’s, pen drives- hen drives and other tiddly little pieces of storage junks were never sufficient. We generally used to take a screw-driver, dismantle the entire hard-disk drive from our CPUs, carry them over to friends’ places and exchange our files in bulk! Even during those days, Tiffany stayed close to me. Only now, I had the bonus of seeing her in 16-bit colour and various cinematic avatars.

The funniest part of engineering-day adventures was the way we guys stored and hid our files in our PCs. You see, during those days most of us lived with our folks at home and sometimes our folks happened to use our PC’s for browsing, checking mails etc. Therefore, we really had to take extra care and precaution in disguising our precious files. (Wish I had a personal laptop then, but back then laptops were not sold as cheap as bananas, as they are today). One of the common places to stash porn in was the Windows System32 folder. It was a perfect hiding place – trust me nobody other than you would have ever cared to peep in there, even by accident. And sometimes, if our personal hard-disks were packed to capacity, we stored the remaining of our colorful files in another safe hiding place – in the PC’s inside the computer labs of our college.

And then there were those innocent folder names that we came up with. For example I had all my Tiffany wallpapers and videos stored inside a hidden folder which was named as “Database_Project_Documentation”. Other folders that housed our sleazy bits-and-bytes were banally named as “System_Architecuture_Research” or “Java_Interview_Questions” or some other geeky name which would have never aroused the curiosity of non-computer savvy folks at home who shared the computer. And we were successful too. However, I knew one friend of mine, an absolute jackass, who stuffed all his hardcore triple-x videos into a folder, named it as “Devotional_Songs” and stored it, of all places, in “My Documents”. One day his Grandmother was apparently in the mood for some hari-bhajans and asked his Dad if he could play some religious music for her. The Dad escorted the Grandmother to the PC, straightaway opened “My Documents”, looked around and to his delight came up to this new “Devotional_Songs” folder which his son had created. Needless to say, he went on and double-clicked on the first available file. Well, I do not have the exact details of what happened next, but rumor had it that my friend spent the next two nights sleeping on a platform at the city railway station.

*Sigh*, those were the days. Time has marched on since then, in its own inexorable way. Today, I am a 26-year old who’s been there and seen that. Today, I live on my own, have a laptop, a broad-band connection and the goddamn liberty of doing whatever I wish to. But still, I miss those days, miss those crumpled sheets of half-boobs, miss those folder aliases and miss that clandestine, cat-and-mouse excitement that was such a part and parcel of my life. Just yesterday me and a friend of mine were casually browsing the Playboy site when we guys happened to chance upon an image of Tiffany. That brought all the wonderful ~~mammaries~~ memories flooding back. Today, as I stand in the twilight of my bachelor life, I want to pause and express my gratitude to these people who made a difference to me and million other men like me. Thank you Playboy, thank you Tiffany and thank you all other gorgeous divas for shedding your clothes and making a world of difference for me and millions of my ilk.

Until later,
Love,
Parry

P.S: For all you people who are itching to give me gyaan about how porn can be sheer gross and a manifestation of a sick mind and against the will of God and blah blah blah, you are welcome to go ahead and waste your time. You’ll only end up pissing on the wrong tree. :-)

Road Romeo

2009-09-11T23:25:00.006+05:30

Hello!

I am back. Now I won’t be offering any reasons for my month long disappearance from the blogging world, because by now everyone knows what keeps me away- yep, the dreaded W word called Work. Life continues to be busy for the late-working, dinner-skipping, acidity-suffering, Gelusil-chewing, excuse of a human being called me. However for the next three hours or so, I have no work to do, as I await a series of shit reports to be delivered to me. So rather than spend the free time scrounging for porn on the Internet, I decided to come online and vent some steam on the blogosphere. All at my readers’ expense of course hahaha.

Let me tell you something about myself today. I am usually a calm, unflappable character. I hardly get worked up, agitated or angry. Please don't heed the shaking heads, muted no's, and other forms of denial that may possibly come your way from people who know me (my friends, especially). They are ignorant little weasels who don't possess the finesse of judging human behaviour. So therefore, please take only my word for gospel - I am usually a cool, unflappable character who never gets worked up. I mean even if you were to wake me up from my sleep at 3 A.M, douse me with a bucket of cold water and poke my ears with a straw- I would never get mad at you at all. Instead, you will actually find me sporting a sweet smile, throwing flying kisses and giving you jadoo-ki-jhappis in return. Really. Nothing drives me mad. Well, you may often find me smashing a glass or two to the ground every other day- but that is not because I get angry... it’s just that I like to observe the rare arty-farty kaleidoscopic designs which the shattered glass pieces make on the floor. You may occasionally catch me smashing a mobile phone to smithereens against a wall, but hey I don't do that because I get angry - I only do that because I am sometimes overcome with unbridled fascination and curiosity to explore the innards of the mobile phone and discover how those little pieces of electronic junk assemble to form such a wonderful communication device. For the information of cricket lovers, I am like Steve Waugh - who just stands there, calmly chewing gum at mid-off, even as the opposing batsmen thrash the nuts out of his fast bowlers. For the information of non-cricket lovers, I am like Buddha- always serene and tranquil. For the information of film buffs, I am always as composed as ~~Dharmendra~~ Pierce Brosnan waala James Bond- who manages to sport the same deadpan expression and unruffled demeanor even as the bad guys threaten to blow his bums to bits with a bazooka. (Pierce Brosnan's James Bond was calm and composed even while having sex - I am not sure if I'd be able to attain that level of composure)

So given my ice-cool nature, you may be wondering what does it take to tick me off. What would you need to do to invoke the utterly uncharacteristic emotions of anger and fury in me? Well, do just one thing- meet me on the roads. And better still, drive recklessly in my vicinity and endanger a few lives here and there. And then top it off by breaking a traffic rule under my nose. That’s it- you’ll see fumes and lava spewing out of me. Whenever I spot someone jumping a red-light or honking incessantly behind me, or overtaking from the left side or zooting past me at 100 kmph in a 10kmph zone, it sends blood rushing to my head. Whenever I see an idiot around on the road breaking a traffic rule, I lose my temper.... the Steve Waugh in me converts into a Sreesanth, the Buddha makes way to a fiery Narasimha, and the Pierce Brosnan transforms into a deadly combo of Dharam paaji- Sunny paaji-and Zanjeer waala Amitabh Bachchan. What to do... I yam like this wonly! I have been paranoid about road discipline and road safety since long ages, since times immemorial, since... well, even before my parents conceived me. In kindergarten, when I heard that Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a pony, my prime concern was whether he wore a helmet. And trust me, had I been on the spot, I would have pelted that careless Engine driver with stones and had him thrown into jail for breaking the poor piggy’s bones. That right, I am a road romeo with a road rage.

In Bangalore – heck why only Bangalore- in the whole of our country, breaking traffic rules is a banal, commonplace affair. Most of us Indians pride ourselves on being the maharajas of the roads, and hey you don’t make rules for the maharajas do you? Anywhere you go; any road you travel on, you’ll see that the drivers follow few rules except “Me First”. Whether it’s jumping a signal, or zigzagging between multiple lanes or taking a quick detour into the wrong side of a one-way street while no cop is watching- you name it and we’ve done it. It also helps our cause that the winky-blinky traffic lights are usually defunct and the lane markers on the road are almost non-existent. Actually, lane markers on our roads are stuff which jokes are made of. I’m dead sure that a majority of you reading this are scratching your heads, thinking “Huh? What lane markers is he talking about?” No, I am not blaming you. Nobody gives a hoot about those insignificant lane markers anyway – they have just ended up being a waste of white and yellow paints and those reflector thingies, if you ask me. I think the Government should stop spending such obscene amounts of rupees on those white and yellow colored paints and instead utilize the money to fund a welfare programme for underprivileged software engineers (like me) . At least it will do some good to somebody!

Zebra-crossings are another of my pet peeves. Time and again, I have tried to randomly pick and educate my fellow citizens, especially the pedestrians on the road on the importance of using a zebra-crossing to get across a busy street. Needless to say, my pedestrian advice always falls on deaf ears. I don’t understand these senseless imbeciles – they would prefer to scurry across a busy intersection and get crushed like mice under speeding trucks rather than safely use a zebra crossing and live to die another day. Here are a few instances, where I picked on such erring, random strangers and tried to drill some road sense into their thick skulls.

Me: “Array sir, you should walk on the zebra crossing”
Sir: “Oh you mean that black and white piano thingy on the road? Sure someday I’ll walk on it and get a decent tune out of it. Muwahahaha.”
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Me: “Array Aunty, why don’t you use the zebra-crossing while crossing the road? It is meant for people like you...”
Aunty: “Haan? Kya bola?!!! Lafangey kahinke, do I look like a zebra to you? *SLAP!*
-----------------------------------------------
Me: “Array o bhai. What’s painted down there is a zebra-crossing, not an M.F Hussain artwork. You are supposed to walk on it, not stare at it”
Bhai: ????????
-------------------------------------------------
Me: “Yo dude, have you ever crossed on the zebra?”
Dude: “Huh? Come again dude? What bra?”
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*Sigh* . You know what, I have actually given up on advising people. I really don’t give a damn now- I mean if people are so hell bent on getting themselves killed, then who am I to stop them?

When it comes to our driving etiquettes, the less said the better. Every day, hundreds of deranged men and women drive amuck on our roads , endorsing the popular road safety maxim “The-roads-belong-to-my-father-in-law”. For these men and women, driving patiently in a single lane is considered to be an act of insult. Speaking of women, there is a common myth world over that women make terrible drivers. I certainly don’t buy that myth. You visit any joke website and you’ll see that hundreds of jokes have been made of women and their driving skills, especially their turning, reversing and parking skills ( Actually, I have created some jokes of my own and uploaded them too... but ssshhhhh...don’t tell this to anybody, if you do I’ll deny it straightaway) . Actually I’d like to go one step further say that women make better drivers than men- not just better, but more skilful, efficient and adventurous. Believe me. Seriously. While most of the men drive in the same old boring way with both hands on the steering wheel, the women actually have a riskier, daredevil style of driving – jostling through a busy street with one hand on the wheel and the other hand busy tucking locks of hair behind their ears - or busy applying moisturizing lip balm - or busy searching for tissues inside their handbags - or busy rummaging through the dashboard to find an elusive copy of the instruction manual titled “How To Identify the Clutch, Brake, Accelerator”. So tell me, aren’t they more skilful?

Hahahahaha. Alright, now stop going giving me those steely cold stares my dear ladies. Don’t go grrr at me. I’m sorry- no more jibes from my side- I will shut up. I parrrrramisssse. Actually just the other day, a few of my dear female friends, sick and tired of me constantly making fun of women and their mannerisms on my blog, gheraoed and threatened me with dire consequences if I didn’t mend my ways. “Ok smarty boy...” said one of my friend, wagging a threatening forefinger at me “.... one more wisecrack on women on your blog and that’s it. We’ll drag you to the marketplace, tie you to a tree, strip you naked and hire hundreds of gay men to ogle at you” . I was even forcibly made to take an enlarged printout of the Eleventh Commandment of Male Chivalry, attach a two-rupee revenue stamp on it, sign, frame and hang it on my wall. FYI – the Eleventh Commandment of Male Chivalry says- “Thou shalt not make fun of really stupid women.” Anyway, the whole point of raking up the issue about female drivers is to narrate this unforgettable incident I had on the roads with one of their ilk. Now this is going to unnecessarily lengthen the post, but if you’ve read this far, then chances are you probably don’t have anything better to do right now- so why not sit back and read on?

Circa 2006. There I was, merrily riding away on my bike, the cool wind whistling thru my helmet visor and a cool song whistling thru my lips. I spot this car on the road in front of me. A silver Lancer Cedia it was. "Wow! , what a beauty..." , I remark to myself, in all admiration. "Someday, when I stop earning peanut shells for money and get digging on real pay dirt, I'll have a car better than this adorning my garage..." I silently promise myself, thumping a fist over my heart. We approach a 4-way intersection, with me keeping safe distance behind the metallic diva, when its blinky right-indicator signal pops on. Then, the automatic window rolls down and a fair, delicate, freshly-waxed female hand pops out briefly and points to the right. "Wow!, what a beauty... smoothie pie...” I remark to myself, in all admiration. “Someday, when I really get oye-lucky-lucky-oye, I’ll have a hand smoother than that caressing my face...” I silently promise myself, thumping another fist over my heart. Anyway, I had to proceed straight ahead, so I slow down at the intersection to bid a farewell glance at the silver beauty. And then the unthinkable happens. The car, instead of turning right at the intersection veers sharply to the left, directly onto my path, knocking my bike over and sending me crashing down to the asphalt. I take a tumble, the bike takes two, and both of us- man and machine - lie side by side on the road, with almost the wind knocked off us. A few good Samaritans rush to my aid and help me and my bike on our feet. I shake my head to bring myself to senses and surmise the damage. My palms, forearms, knees and ankles were severely scuffed and had blood oozing out of them. My head had taken a conk- but thanks to the helmet and my thick skull, I survived to tell the tale. I thought I was fine- until I looked at my bike. That is when I lost it. My bike, my darling of my bike, stood there shedding tears of engine-oil and crying in pain - her handlebar lay severely twisted, her mud-guard had a gash, her fuel tank had a moon-sized crater on it, she was bruised all over and one of her indicator lights was smashed to pieces!

*Pop* *Kaboom* . A fuse goes bust in my head, rising the temperatures within me and sending my blood into evaporation mode. I look around for the bloody car and its nincompoop occupant responsible for my misery. Wow, I mean how did this driver even attend her driver’s license examination? Through postal correspondence? Indicator to the right, hand signal to the right, turn to the left! Fantastic! For a moment, I feel inclined to salute, bow down and doff my helmet at her Columbus-like sense of direction. The car halts briefly at a distance, and the driver pops her head out of the window, probably wondering what the hullabaloo was all about. “Ohoooooy!!” I shake my fist and let out a bloodcurdling scream at the driver, sending the Earth quivering and causing a few startled birds to flutter away from the nearby tree-tops. “Ohoy bitch! Get out of the fucking car”. Bitch comes out of the car, slams the door and glowers at me. That is when I first notice her properly. She didn’t look a day older than 19, her seemingly pretty face marked with distinct cockiness and insouciance. Her jaws were busy chewing gum and her hands were just as busy tucking large strands of wavy, unruly hair( highlighted with different shades of maroon, brown and hold on, purple?) behind her pierced ears. Dressed in a skin-fitting jeans and sleeveless T-shirt that had transparent bra-straps distinctly poking out of it, she looked every bit of a rich dad’s spoilt brat. Interesting side note- Ladies, what’s the theory behind those transparent bra-straps anyway? Girls probably wear them thinking they are invisible but yet everyone makes them out. Anyway, I don’t know much about all these things, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself. But just one more question- are those bras transparent only at the straps or do they have transparent cups too? Muwahahahaha. Oops sorry- I forget I’ve promised not to make fun of you. Sorry-sorry. Anyway, coming back to the incident, at that point of time I was in no mood to admire breast contours. I stood there injured and infuriated, and believe me, I would have probably devoured any man, woman or animal that dared to cross my path at the time.

“Come over here, you bitch. Look what you’ve done” I scream at the girl.

Her expression turns livelier and angrier. No one, apparently, had called her a bitch before. But then, it was my fault too. In that moment of fury, I forgot to abide by the Twelfth Commandment of Male Chivalry which said “Thou shalt not call a woman a bitch. Even if she drives a car over thy bum” .

“Hey man, what did you say?” she retorts, taking a few steps towards me.

“I said, bitch, if you don’t know how to drive on the roads, then you should keep your fucking car and your fucking ass locked up in your fucking garage” I scream back.

“Hey no gaalis dude, I come from an educated family” she says with a toss of her head.

Her response causes the temperatures within my body to shoot a few more degrees to the north.

“I will fuck your entire family...” I retort. “... And besides, didn’t your educated family teach you the basic difference between left and right?”

She casually casts a look at me, and another at my disfigured bike. She spits her chewing gum out, points a palm at me and says in a condescending tone “Array theek hai na bhaiyya. Ab kyun bekaar mein nautanki macha rahe ho. Sirf indicator hi toh toota hai. Ab jaan thodi na liya hai maine”

*Pop* *Kaboom* , another fuse goes bust in my brain, sending smoke billowing out of my ears. This was too much. First she veers the other way. Then she conks me off my bike. Then instead of giving me an apology, she gives me attitude. Then, she calls me “bhaiyya!” . Even for the otherwise calm and composed me, this was too much to handle.

“Oh! Aisa hai kya...?” I scream. I then take two paces sidewards, bend down and pick up a large stone from the pavement. And in one quick, slinging motion, I smash one of the indicator lights of her car into pieces!!!

Her cocky red face goes purple with shock. She stands agape. Time stands still.

“Whaaaaat thaaaa fuuuuuccckkkk....” she shrieks, her voice rising in a Philharmonic orchestra-like crescendo “Hey you, what the fuck have you done? Gone mad or what?”

I throw the stone away and puff the dust off my hands. Putting on the same condescending tone I reply “Array theek hai na behenji. Ab kyun bekaar mein nautanki macha rahe ho. Sirf indicator hi toh toota hai. Ab jaan thodi na liya hai maine”

“You b-b-bbastard, I will call the police”

“Call the Prime Minister, I don’t care” I say and limp away from the scene.

It’s now been three years since that road rage incident. Let me put this on print – I regret that incident today. I know I shouldn’t have behaved like that, no matter what the circumstance was. I wish I could go back in time, do a Ctrl + Z with a magic wand in air and undo that incident. But as I said, what happened was three years ago, and I was quite a petulant lad back then – unlike the aforementioned calm, composed, mature gentleman whom the damsels crazily fall in love with today. Err...Ahem. I mean if the same incident and scene of events were to unfold today, then the new, mature me would have handled it differently – I would have reacted by ~~smashing her windshield~~ turning the other cheek and offering her a bunch of tulips instead.

Now this may sound like a cow advising fellow cows against chewing the cud, but take my word folks, please keep your road rage under check – it is simply not worth it. I may have learnt and wizened the hard way time and again, but I have certainly come to realize that one of the most effective ways to live long enough to see your grandchildren is to maintain your calm, be responsible on the roads and reach home safely to the joy of your loved ones. So before you jump the next red light or scurry mindlessly across a busy street or drive like a possessed Rossi or Schumacher, please spare a fleeting thought for your dear ones waiting for you at home. Spare a thought for your poor folks- who worry for you, care for you, think about you and utter a silent prayer for your safety every time you head out of your gates.

Ok ji, chalo bahut ho gaya, ab dukan bandh kar dete hain. Adios amigos, see you later. I gotta get back to my work. Cheers! Remember to play it safe- wear your helmets, play it safe- wear your seatbelts, play it safe- wear your condoms. Errr... I know condoms have nothing to do with this post, but hey, what’s the harm in spreading some awareness anyway?

Thanking You
Yours obnoxiously,
Parikshith Kumar.

Travel Aplenty

2009-08-02T02:00:00.002+05:30

*Statutory Warning: Achtung! Long post! Please read it only if you are OK with lengthy nonsensical posts that add no value whatsoever. If long, ranting blog posts are not your cup of tea, then please refrain from reading this and go read a haiku or something. Don’t tell me later that I didn’t warn you :-)*

Hella yeverybaddy! Long time! It’s so nice to come back and breathe the air in blogosphere and flaunt my two-bit existence in this esteemed web space. I know I’ve been away for a while. I know I haven’t been blogging regularly. I know I haven’t been able to visit your blogs and leave you smiling or scowling with my unsolicited comments. My bad. Ok I admit that I’m not too happy about my irregularity and I kinda feel guilty about my prolonged absence from blogosphere (so please don’t rub it in by sneering at your computer screens and ask “Why the fuck have you come back?” ). I don’t get to show my cheery face (as cheery as the Joker in Dark Knight) on the cyberspace too much these days. My Orkut/Facebook pals think I’ve either vanished into thin air or ran away to the Himalayas. The entire legion of my loyal fans (mostly hot lingerie supermodels) is fretting about my unexplained disappearance. And my readers, oh, they’ve gone on a rampage, I tell you. There is widespread distress, concern and grief among the people due to my no-show on the blogosphere. Now don’t you roll your eyes, I am telling you the truth. Look at some of these distressed comments expressed by my loyal readers themselves, in verbatim.

“Ever since the Parikshith has blog writing stop, my the buffalo has milk giving stop”
-Ramu Pandey, the colony’s doodhwala

“It is so sad that Parikshith is not updating his blog on regular basis. His blog is an epitome of modesty and honesty and always makes very educative reading. He seems so busy these days that he doesn’t even visit my blog also”
- Muniamma, house-maid.

“Not a day passes without us wondering when Parikshith would come back and enthral us with his next post. Ever since he stopped posting, the light has gone off our lives.... as if the Lord has switched off a tube light in Heaven.”
- Dan Brown

“Forget the blog, Parikshith told me that he would visit me last night and promised me that we’d spend some cosy time together, but he didn’t turn up. He ditched me. I spent the whole night tossing and turning in the bed all alone and cried until my pillows were wet. Why o why o why, Parikshith?”
-Angelina Jolie

“Jolie, you bitch, Parikshith is mine!!!”
-Megan Fox

“My business has gone down ever since Mr. Kumar stopped uploading his blog. People would take printouts of his blog to use them as makeshift toilet papers, and I made great business selling printer-sheets. Now I am incurring losses. Please come back and write, Mr. Kumar”
- Mr.H.P Paperwalla, stationery shop owner.

“Parikshith, who?”
-Followers of Nonsense Aplenty.

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, these are only a few of the comments that I have received... there are plenty more, yeh toh sirf sample hai. My being away from cyberspace can be attributed to only one solitary reason yaar - the dreaded W word- Work! Yes, the past month or so has all been about work, more work and some more work for me, the poor old IT professional. I’ve been so busy working that I have to book my calendar to find time to scratch my back. I mean, forget visiting blogs, I don’t even have the time to visit the loo. Now let me not dwell into the details of my job partly because a) it is so boring that it would yawn an insomniac to sleep and b) nobody, not even Einstein’s father would understand the technical mumbo-jumbo involved. But if I were to honestly summarize my job, I can tell you that it is all about wearing crisp wrinkle-free formal wear and requires me to tap away at a few computer keys here, hoodwink a few gullible people there and convince everybody that I have the smartest dick in the corporate world. And mind you, all that takes some effort.

My work has brought me to Chennai this week, which is where I am put up and typing all this rubbish from. My work always brings me, the quintessential Bangalore boy, to Chennai- whether I like it or not. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve packed up for this city. My number of visits to this city so far, with no exaggeration, is probably equal to the number of ladder rungs it takes to climb up from the Earth to the Moon.

Anyway, the curtain raising event for the circus show happened earlier this week. There I was, in my cubicle, bum to chair and eyes into the computer screen, and into my 25th hour of work, when the boss picks on me and says
“Parikshith, you’ll have to visit our Chennai office tomorrow. The objective of your visit would be to teach our highly qualified software engineers there to count on the abacus.”

“Oh no not again man, why me?” I whine.

“You are the only bakra I could lay my hands on” he says with pride. “... and besides, you are important. This assignment is important”

Important, yeah right my ass. He makes it sound as if he is sending a Mossad agent on a Palestine mission.

“Come on Boss, why don’t you send someone else?”

“Sssshhh... stop being a little sissy, Parikshith, and go show your face in the Chennai office will ya? Your hotel, flights and cabs would have probably been booked by now... I don’t know, check with the Travel Department. Now off you go, shoo away from my chamber and let me have my nap in peace. Bye, have a great trip. Good luck.

Now don’t let all this fool you. For a random onlooker, travelling to another city on business class flights, having AC cabs ferry you back and forth and staying in star hotels – all on company’s expenses- may seem to be a glitzy affair. But not to me, not when this is the one hundred and umptieth time I am embarking on similar business trips to Chennai. It’s the same shit routine every time. A cab picks you up from home and drops you at the Bangalore airport. A flight crash-lands you in Chennai. Another cab receives you at the airport and drops you off at the Chennai office- where you spend the remainder of the day training astounded idiots on some shit technology or breaking your head in getting some defunct, gibberish bug-filled code to behave properly. After wasting yourself for the entire day, you check in to the same stupid hotel, order the same loftily priced room-service food and watch TV until you doze off to sleep. As I said, for a rookie engineer, all this ‘business experience’ may seem oh-so-glamorous and may have him all nippy and excited. (Why, he may even send a post card to his mother that says “Look Ma! I flew in an aeroplane once again, today”). But not me sir, I am a travel-hardened 26-year old and no spring chicken... and I’ve been enduring this magaj-maari for years now. So when the Boss sends me packing on my one hundred and umpty first trip to the same Godforsaken city, I am as enthusiastic as a dead dodo.

Realizing that my fate is cast in cement, I let out a long sigh and call up the Travel Department (T.D) of my office to get a status of my bookings. With all the interactions that we’ve had, the T.D guys are surely sick of my face by now. And vice-versa. Here’s the telephonic convo that ensued:

Travel Dept. Guy (T.D.): “Good evening, Parikshith. How may I assist you today?”

Me: “Array yaar, same flight, same place. Book the damn ticket for tomorrow”

T.D: “You mean you want an early morning flight to Chennai, sir?”

Me: “No. I want a late night flight to Timbuktu. Don’t ask stupid questions and give me a status of my bookings”

T.D: “We’ll have you on the 6 A.M flight tomorrow, sir. The cab will be at your place at 4.15 AM sharp for pickup. Have a nice journey and...”

Me: “Whoa whoa whoa! Hold on. Why the hell are you putting me on a 6 A.M flight? What happened to the regular 8 A.M flight?”

T.D: “That flight is completely booked, sir”

Me: “What happened to the 7 A.M flight? That one got sucked into the Bermuda Triangle eh?”

T.D: “I am sorry sir, but even that one’s completely booked”

Me: “Tell me something dude. Wasn’t my travel request been lying on your stone-age system since early this morning?”

T.D: “Yes, sir”

Me: “Then why couldn’t you book my tickets earlier, sir?”

T.D: “I am sorry sir, but we were so busy picking lint out of our belly buttons that we couldn’t find time to attend to your request earlier”

Me: “Excellent. So you put me on a 6 AM flight. You pick me up at 4.15 AM. And to think I have to wake up by 3.30 in the morning. Hey, why don’t you do me a favor and send some owls over to my place as well to wish me good morning?”

T.D: “Heh, heh, good one, sir”

Me: “This is ridiculous. I am not gonna be part of this stupid schedule. What would you do if I simply refused to go on that 6 A.M flight? What would you do then, huh?”

T.D: “We would then book you on the next available bullock-cart to Chennai, sir”

Me: “*Gulp!* Hey ok, ok, send me the tickets”

Trrrrrrrrrriiiingggg. My alarm clock goes off like a fire-alarm, breaking all the decibel barriers. The day of my travel finally dawns. 3:30 AM. I look out the window. Pitch black darkness greets me. Never in my life had I woken up at 3.30 A.M before. And to think I had to wake up now for something as stupid as my business trip. Okie-dokie, ho-hum another trip. What’s the big deal Johnny, it’s just another visit to Chennai after all, just like a visit to the super-market or visiting your Granny... all routine, all the same. Yeah right. Bloody hell. I toss my blanket aside and get up from my bed muttering curse after curse. I curse my job, curse my boss, curse the travel agent, curse his mother, curse the pile of clothes and bottles lying on the floor and stumble noisily into the bathroom. All my wee-hour commotion wakes up Sunil, my roommate. Now Sunil’s very first words when he wakes up in the morning is usually a devout “Hey Prabhu” and he then follows it up with a quick chant of a religious mantra. Today he wakes up and utters a classic “Abey betichod. Saale kya subah subah awaaz kar raha hai...”. But he notices my sleep-deprived foul mood and thankfully shuts up quickly. I zombie out of the bathroom, still more than half asleep, and get myself dressed. I collect my bags, mutter a ‘Gmmphhh’ (Goodbye) to Sunil and groggily trudge out of the room. Sunil sees me off at the door. He thumps my shoulders and says “Chal chal wake up dude, and have a safe journey... And don’t fall asleep on the air-hostess’ boobies. Chal bye...” and shoves me out of the room. “Gmmmpph...” is all that I can mutter back.

I approach my waiting cab, toss my bags in, crash into the back seat and mutter another “Gmmmpph” (Good morning) at the driver. In case you’ve been wondering why I’m being picked up so early, here is a piece of trivia for you – the new Bangalore airport is about 50kms away from the heart of the city... and even though its early morning, it still takes an hour to get your ass up there. Why is the Bangalore airport that far away? I don’t know. Ask the Government. Maybe the Govt wanted to keep their chaste little airplanes faaaaar away from prying evil eyes. So what did they do about it? They built one airport faaar away.

“Saaar... oh saaar, we reached ayer-port saaar” screams the cab driver until I jolt awake. True enough, I open my eyes and shield them from the bright entry lights of the departure terminal. Letting out a deep sigh, I enter the terminal, sleepwalk thru all the formalities and soon find myself inside the familiar confines of a flying coffin. “A very good morning and welcome aboard sir.” says a gorgeous air-hostess, welcoming me with her oft-practised plastic million watt smile. Now here’s a thing that you get a lot when you travel business class with private airlines – fake courtesy. Make no mistake, these private airlines, with their cute-as-a-button airhostesses; do offer pretty decent in-flight cabin services. I’m sure a lot of people will be overwhelmed by courtesy that they receive and will be bloating with a false sense of pride even after getting off the aircrafts. Well, good luck to such people. I am a simple, straight-from-the-heart desi guy and for me personally, there is no bigger a turn-off than fake smiles, artificial sweetness and put-on politeness. I cringe every time these airline people are so overbearingly nice to me in a fake, facaded way.

Anyway, I find my seat by the window, and quietly slip into it, in an attempt to catch my forty winks. “Good morning, how are you doing today? I hope you are comfortable sir, is there anything that I can get you?” inquires another sexy, stunner of an air-hostess; her genuinely beautiful face marred by a ridiculously phony smile. “No, thank you” I reply. This may sound howlingly ridiculous, but in moments like these, I really miss the Auntyiji air-hostesses of Indian Airlines/Air India and their no-pretence, no-nonsense, in-your-face ways of offering service. For example:

Aboard private airlines:
Me: “Excuse me, can I have some water?”
Gorgeous air-hostess: “Oh yes, surely, certainly, sir . I will get you a bottle of mineral water right away sir In the meanwhile would you like anything else sir? Do you also want some fresh orange-juice sir? No? Just the water, sir? Would you be able to drink the water yourself sir or do you want a tube to be inserted into your nostrils and the water to be poured down that, sir?”

Aboard Indian airlines/ Air India:
Me: “Excuse me, Aunty. Can I have some water?”
Auntyji air-hostess ( A.A) : “Aunty hogi teri maa”
Me: “Oops, sorry. Can I have a water bottle?”
A.A: “OK. Let me see”

Disagree if you want to, but I rest my case. But as an afterthought, I must say that we really need to appreciate the airline crew for the work that they do, especially when they work into such odd, ungodly hours. I mean, jeez, 5 AM in the morning- when an average sleepyhead like you and me can at max utter a grumpy ‘Gmmmph’, these men and hot women have to put on smiles on their faces and say nice English sentences to you. And when your early morning grooming procedure is limited to a pee, shave or a bath, these women actually have to spare time to apply layers and layers of make -up and look as fresh as a daisy. I’m sure it may not be easy for those poor souls.

Anyway, we taxi for take-off, the cute air-hostesses finish their customary little Bharatnatyam gig about the safety features. And then the Captain’s customary announcement spurts out from the loudspeakers. “Good morning, this is Captain Haddock and welcome aboard Kaput airlines...” the pilot announces. “...the weather outside in Bangalore is a pleasant 21 degree Celsius, although when you reach Chennai, it may be as pleasant as an oven. We will be flying at an altitude of 15,000 feet above sea level and darn, why does the proverb “The higher you fly, the harder you fall” keep hounding in my ears every time I say that. We hope you’ve paid attention to all the security features demonstrated to you by the crew. Just in case we crash into the sea, please be informed that the water is warm and the sharks are friendly. Thank you for flying with us, have a pleasant flight and we look forward to serve you again.” Errr... well, ok he may not have said all of that, but I was asleep by then and I am only guessing that’s what he may have announced.

Well, we finally land in Chennai (no wheel comes out of the landing gear, so I assume it was a safe touchdown) and I bid goodbyes to fake Colgate smiles. I know I am in Chennai- the hot winds blowing across the tarmac instantly make me feel as if I am inside an oven, indeed. I trudge to the arrival lounge, and search for the sign of cab that was supposed to pick me up. “If there is no cab sent to pick me, then I am heading back to Bangalore...” I silently promise myself. But I realize that it wouldn’t be necessary because soon enough I see a gentleman holding a large placard that says “Welcome to Chennai, Mr. Pratiksh Kumar”. I look at the placard and take a wild guess that it could possibly be for me. And as always, it turns out that I’m never wrong and I quickly follow the driver out of the lounge to my pickup cab.

So, that’s that folks. That’s where I am right now- cooped up in a hotel room in Chennai and that’s where I will be put up - for at least another fortnight or so. So until then, there is no guarantee that I can find any free time to visit the blogosphere (I’m sure you’ve had enough of me for now, if you read the whole post). I will even keep carrying work from the office to the hotel, like a doting mama Kangaroo. But I promise, I’ll try to smuggle in some free time here and there and intermittently visit the blogosphere. So before I say tata and birla for the time being, here is

My message to my dear male readers:
“Hi-five dudes!!! I will be away for sometime but we’ll catch up soon. Keep blogging, keep rocking and stay out of trouble you crazy bastards :-) . Chao! and catch’ ya later buddies”

And, my message to my dear female readers:
“Mmmuuuuuuuaaah, my sweethearts. I’ll be gone for a bit, OK? Awww, now don’t be sad, don’t pine for me. I will be back before you can say ‘Chocolate Cookie’”

Love,
Parry.

The Conversation

2009-07-03T21:20:00.001+05:30

“What kind of a girl do you want to marry, son?”

“Huh, come again? What?” asks the son, nearly choking on his beer, startled at the sudden salvo fired by his dad

Dad and son lie sprawled on the lawn, next to each other. A warm breeze, a desolate night sky, and a crate of beer cans give them company. An invisible choir of crickets chirps away in discord. An old tape-recorder plays out lilting Floyd.

“I said what kind of a girl are you looking to marry, son?”

The son closes his eyes and shakes his head. He casts one glance at his old man and another at the beer crate. “One, two, three, four, five...” he carefully counts.

“Just five cans and you are already out, Dad. I swear I won’t let you have more than two next time”

“I wrote my bloody Civil services examination with six beers inside me...” retorts the old man “...and I still topped my college. What does that suggest to you, son?”

“It only suggests that all your other classmates wrote the exam with seven beers inside them. Ha ha”

“Funny, huh? Some sense of humour you’ve got. I am perfectly sober. Now answer my question”

“What question, Dad?” asks the son, innocently.

“Your poker face doesn’t work with me. I’ve only asked you one question. I remember what I asked and I know you remember what I asked. Now give me a straight answer” remarks the Dad, taking another swig at his canister. He seems to be getting more and more sober with every passing sip of his poison.

“Oh you mean the question about you passing your exam with six beers and...”

“No, the one before that” grunts the Dad, cutting his son short.

Silence. The son lets out a big sigh that reeks of all the alcohol he’s had. He gives up. He knows there is no way out tonight. Daddy dearest has extended a vice like grip on him, which only threatens to tighten with every can of beer being emptied. He looks away from his Dad. More silence fills the air. The motley bunch of crickets continues to chirp away in disharmony. What’s with the crickets and their bad singing tonight? Have they been drinking out of the beer-cans too?

“Girl.... Ahh... any girl would do, Dad... I mean ... no specific expectation as such, just any girl would do for marriage... I mean, I don't know, you say...“ replies the son with slurring honesty.

“O ho just any girl will do, eh? Very good. You’ve made my search criteria narrower then. That rag-picker who comes to pick up the thrash everyday is also “just any girl”. You want me to ask for her horoscope eh?”

“Ha, must say your ripping sarcasm is improving day by day, Dad.”

“I know. With you for a son, I’m bound to go on and receive an A+ for sarcasm, someday”

“Well, I only have modest expectations for marriage, Dad. For a wife, I’d only want someone like Angelina Jolie… Heh heh”

“Anjali, who?”

“**Sigh*** Never mind Dad, can’t we talk about this when we are sober tomorrow?”

“No, you tell me right now”

Son falls silent. He looks down, shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. He throws up his head and looks at the sky. He doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know how to say it. It is so difficult to talk about the intricacies of relationships...he is just a man after all.

He takes in a slow sip and pauses for the sublime liquid to enter his bloodstream and catalyse his thinking. He stares vacantly into oblivion and ever-so-slowly replies “You know what Dad, I don’t want my wife to be a wife. I want her to be my friend, my buddy for life. I want to marry a girl who is nice but not too saccharine sweet. Someone who listens to me, but not in an overtly subservient housewifish way. Someone who’s naughty and adventurous, but not promiscuous. Someone who talks but doesn’t go yappity-yap and naggity-nag 24 hours a day. Someone who looks like a dream and smiles like an angel. Someone who laughs with me, cries with me and stands by me through thick and thin. Someone who loves me for what I am, for who I am. Ah! Love... that’s what everything boils down to, doesn’t it Dad? Love -pure and unconditional... That is all I need. If I can find love in her, and if she can find love in me, then I swear by you Dad, that’s all I could wish for... I really wouldn’t care about the rest of her.”

The dad looks at his son with silent astonishment. Wow, who is this guy... he wonders to himself. Wow, is he my son? Where was he hiding all these years? He smiles to himself. My boy has got his heart and soul in the right place. Yes, he is my son, after all. I’ve got to know what I wanted to know. He nods to himself and takes a celebratory sip , to raise a toast to the moment.

The son realizes that words have tumbled out. “Darn! What have I done!” he curses to himself and buries his forehead in his hands. He looks up, snatches the beer from his Dad’s hands and empties it in one overflowing gulp. “Don’t believe in what I said, Dad. It wasn’t true. You don’t believe all that do you?” he mutters. He stands up on his feet, kicks a stone, stumbles over another, and flings the empty beer can far away. “Don’t believe in all that bullshit I just said. It was all rubbish, bollocks, balderdash. I don’t believe in all that love and shit. You know I don’t, right Dad? I only want the standard specifications in a girl. You know, the size 38 breasts, the size 36 bums, the hour-glass waist, the endless silken legs, the milky skin, the high performance capacity etc you know.... that’s all. That’s it. That should do it for me. ”

The dad shakes his head and smiles at his son. He’s amused by the son’s desperate attempt to mislead him. He reaches out, grabs the son by his trousers and pulls him down to the lawn. “Of course I believe you, son” he replies with a wink. “In fact, I was wondering why that standard specification part didn’t come out of you earlier”

“Ha ha ha ha”. The son breaks into laughter. He knows that his old man is lying. But he still can’t help laughing.

“And you know what, young man... I am sure all your ex-relationships went kaput because you ran after your girlfriends with a laminated copy of the ‘standard specifications document’ hung around your neck! . Now do me a favor and pull out another beer”

“Aw, come on...” is all the son can sheepishly mutter as he pulls out a tin for himself and tosses another at his Dad.

Embarrassment. Smiles. Laughs. Guffaws. Clink of metal. Cheers!!!. Swig. Pause. Ponder. Despair. Sorrow. The son’s emotional clock changes position with every ticking second.

“I am a loser, ain’t I, Dad?” he asks.

“Oh yes of course you are, son!!!!”

“Ha ha ha ha ha”. The son erupts in more laughter. “Oh come on, man...!” he says “... couldn’t you at least say a few comforting Dad-words like ‘It’s alright son’ or ‘No, you aren’t a loser, you are a champion, son’ or something like that? That was supposed to be my cue for you. Ha ha ha... Dad you are too much. Ha ha ha.”

“What, you expect me to lie through my beer?” says the Dad. “Don’t worry I’ll say all those things when I am sober tomorrow..” he remarks, throwing a wink at his son. And I’m gonna get your horoscope out, first thing, when I am sober in the morning.

The two men continue to sip away silently. The sky goes on to acquire a serene midnight blue. The breeze gets stronger and the crickets get merrier.

“Tell me something Dad, why do you want me to marry me off so soon? . I have got so many things to achieve, so much to do. I have seen only half the colours of rainbow in my life so far...”

“You are 26 years old, you have a great job and you are leading an independent, well settled life. What more do you want? And what rainbow are you talking about. By the time you are done seeing the entire rainbow, you’ll be 80 years old”

“Marriage will snatch all my freedom and free will away. Do you think I can lead my care-a-hoot life after I get married? I will always be answerable to the Big Boss. And do you think I’ll get to come over here on Saturdays like this and have unlimited beers with you after I get married?”

“We can always have our beers, son and...”

“Yeah right...can always have our beer” replies the son, cutting his Dad short in mid-sentence “... Forget the beers, you know, after marriage I’d probably be spending Saturdays shopping with my wife in the ground floor of Big Bazaar , buying scrubs for the wash basin, curtains for the windows and toilet-cleaners for the commode. Don’t you think so?”

The dad pauses, ponders, scratches his chin and slowly replies “But toilet-cleaners are important, son. What’s the harm in shopping for that?”

The son throws his arms up. “Yeah, great, Dad. I knew I could always count on your advice. I’ll mix some of that liquid in your beer next time, you should be able to offer even better advice”

Both men break into guffaws.

“Think about it, son. Isn’t your life incomplete without marriage?”

“Right. And I get married and my life will be finished”

“***Sigh*** why is it so bloody difficult to reason with you?”

The son thumps his old man on the shoulders “Chip of the ol’ block Dad, chip of the ol’ block. It’s your genes that run in me”

The men shake their heads and smilingly look away from each other in opposite directions.

“Come to think of it, I know why you are in such a hurry to marry me off” says the son, sipping the last drops from his can.

“Oh really? Would you mind telling me too?” replies the Dad, throwing a quizzical glance at his son.

“It’s the babies. You just can’t wait to be a Grandpa and play toy-trains with your grandkid”

The dad smiles in realization. “Well, that is also true. Playing with my grandkid. Wow, now wouldn’t that be wonderful? You know, now I really think I should get your horoscope out in circulation, first thing tomorrow morning”

“Damn you and damn the bloody horoscope” sneers the son.

“Come on son, just think how wonderful it is going to be after the years. You, me and my grandson. I’m sure my he’ll grow up to be a fine man too. We’ll sit here on this very lawn and have beer together – all three of us. I sure hope I’ll be around till then...”

“Ha ha ha... you are right. But why grandson? I can have a daughter too right? But anyway, even that will be fun. All of us - Granddaughter, father and grandfather having beer together...” replies the son.

“Hey... you let my grand-daughter drink, I will kill you” retorts the old man.

“But...” objects the son.

“I swear young man, if you let our sweet little girl touch even a drop of alcohol, I swear I will kill you” fires the old-man.

“But what’s wrong in her having an occasional beer and...”

“Nothing doing” the old man continues his drunken tirade. He gulps his beer and slams the canister hard on the ground and stands up on his feet. “Your little girl will be such a darling angel. I am warning you son, if you dare let our angel drink, I swear I’ll bash your head up.”

“Ok fine calm down, calm down, Dad. Fine. I will not let her drink” says the son, standing up to his feet and getting to his stumbling Dad’s aid.

“I don’t believe you, liar” says the Dad, looking at his son suspiciously.

“Don’t worry Dad. Now just calm down will ya. Fine I’ll not let her drink. Even if she drinks, I’ll make sure she will not have too much.”

“See, you are lying already”

Silence engulfs the night. Even the crickets stop chirping, probably intimidated by two inebriated men loudly quarrelling over their nonexistent daughter/grand-daughter’s drinking habits.

“Now come on Dad, it’s been a long night. Let’s find ourselves something to eat. Now come on in” says the inebriated son to his inebriated father. The two men help each other from their lawns and into their house.

“Yeah, let’s go in and eat. I am hungry too. But don’t forget son, tomorrow morning, when I am sober, I’ll be getting your horoscope into the nearest marriage bureau.” says the Dad.

“We shall see about it tomorrow, Dad. I will remind you about it.”

“Now don’t you trick me son. I may be fully drunk alright, but I am still completely in my senses.”

“Yes, absolutely, I know that Dad, don’t I?”

“That’s enough. Let’s go inside”

Dad and son walk together, arms supporting each others’ shoulders and help each other stumble into the house, leaving the night sky, the crickets, the beers and their conversation behind...

A Day In My Life...

2009-06-11T19:07:00.005+05:30

Caution: Reader discretion advised. This post contains Hindi swear words. If you are averse to crude and foul language, then please close this window and read no further. If you are cool with foul language, and accept it as a part of bachelor life, then smile and continue...

07:00:00 AM: Trrrrrrrrinnnnngggg....

07:05:00 AM: Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiinnnngg....

07:05:59 AM: Sunil, my roommate, wakes up from his slumber, and groggily screams "Abey alarm bandh kar, chutiye"

07:10:00 AM : Trrrrrrrrinnnnngggg....

07:10:54 AM : "Abey Kumbhkaran ke aulaad, alarm bandh kar"

07:15:00 AM : Trrrrrrrrinnnnngggg....

07:15:30 AM : "O Parry Oye, uth ja saale..."

07:15:35 AM : "Zzzzzzzzzz...."

07:15:35 AM : "Abey Parikshith ke bachche...."

07:16:00 AM : "Zzzzzz..."

07:16:30 AM : Sunil casts a groggy look at his sleeping beauty roommate and mutters under his breath. "Bhutnika saala, laash ki tarah leta hai" .

07:20:00 AM : Trrrrrinnnnnggggg...

07:20:15 AM : Sunil mutters some more curses, tosses his blanket aside, walks upto my bed and slams my alarm shut. He tries shaking me awake. " Parry, oye Parry. Uth ja. Abey gym nahin jaana hai kya? " . He then lands a frustrated kick on my ass and goes back to sleep. Ten years of friendship and four years of living together in a single room PG accommodation has made him all too familiar with his roommate's living habits.

08:00:00 AM : Ta da!!! I wake up slowly. Like a ghost raising from a coffin.

08:04:00 AM: Groggily take a look at the clock. Jump up with a start and exclaim "Oye teri behn di, saala 8 baj gaya? Abey yeh alarm kyun nahi baja? Oye Sunil, abey saale utha nahi sakta kya mujhe??. Shit, I can't believe its 8. Oye, Sunil... "

08:05:00 AM : Sunil is peacefully having his shower. Sounds like "Laa laa laa... O ho hoooo.. and Tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanammmmmm" echo thru the room.

08:10:00 AM : I feel the first tingling sensation in the tummy.

08:15:00 AM : Bang on the bathroom door. Bang Bang Bang. "Oye Sunil, abey gaana bandh kar aur bahar nikal saale"

08:15:05 AM : "Oye ruk ja. Nahane de saale........ Laa la la... Pyaar hota hai deewana sanammmm. Laa la laaa"

08:18:00 AM: The tingling in the stomach intensifies.

08:19:00 AM : Bang some more on the bathroom door. " Oye chutiye kya Liril girl ki tarah naha raha hai. Abey nikal bahar "

08:19:10 AM : The echoing voice from inside the bathroom says "Ruk jaa, saale"

08:22:00 AM: The stomach goes into a tizzy. "Oye Sunil, o nikal ja bhai, badi zor ki 'pressure' lagi hai "

08:23:00 AM: Sunil comes out, dripping from head to toe, and says "Abey agli baar pressure lagegi toh diaper pehen lena, saale... Chal jaa ab"

08:25:00 AM: In the bathroom. Peace. Relief. Nirvana.

08:35:00 AM: Head to the gym. Head to the gym. Heck, where is the darned tracksuit?

08:45:00 AM : Reach gym. Thomas, my gym instructor and a close friend since years, is already there.... drumming his knuckles on a table and waiting for me. " O ho Parry sir, wow, kya baat hai kya baat hai! Aaj sirf ek ghanta late?"

08:45:02 AM : " Fuck, dude. I woke up late"

08:50:00 AM: Begin with the warm up exercises. Hate these warm up exercises. But Thomas never allows me to pick up even a gram of weight without doing the bloody warmup routine. Three minutes into the warmup, I casually look sidewards and am pleasently distracted by what I see.

08:53:00 AM: Thomas notices what I am distracted with. He comes upto me and slaps the back of my head, bringing me to my senses. He says "Yes, dude. She is a new joinee... joined yesterday. Abey badi pahunchi hui cheez hai yaar, don't even try on her..."

08:54:07 AM: Shake my head in disagreement and respond to Thomas. "Array nahi yaar, I am not trying on her. I was just looking at her ass. Don't you think the female posterior looks even better in tight, figure-hugging track-pants? ... Sahi mein yaar, chune ka mann karta hai!"

08:54:15 AM: Thomas closes his eyes and slaps his forehead. He warns me "Saale... tu agar uska chuega na, toh meri naukri gayi aur saath mein teri haddiyan bhi gayi". He then points at a 6 feet 6 inches brute lifting weights nearby... " Woh pehelwaan, bodybuilder ko dekh rahe ho? Tu agar chahta hai toh uska choo sakta hai!!! "

08:54:40 AM : Ha ha ha ha. Guffaws and high-fives are exchanged between the friends.

08:55:00 AM : Back to the push-ups. Hup one. Hup two. Hup three. Hup four. Hup five...

09:00:00 AM : Get up and bolt to the door. Shout an apology to Thomas... " Oye Thomas office ke liye late ho raha hoon yaar. Chal bye". Ignore his "Abey saale kya.... " . Turn back and cast one final look at the bum of my fantasy. Rush out of the gym.

09:15:00 AM : Reach room. Sunil is all dressed-up and ready for office. He is polishing his black shoes. Let out a wisecrack "Abey, woh shoe polish se tu apne baal bhi dye karle .. muwahaha " and scoot into the bathroom before he can fling the shoe at me.

09:20:00 AM : Hot shower. Ah nothing feels more heavenly, I tell you ( with the exception of Miss Fantasy Bum, maybe) . Stop suddenly. Abey soap kahan hai?. Darn! there is no soap, kabka khatam ho gaya hai. Forgot to get a new one. Koi baat nahi, shower without soap today.

09:30:00 AM : Open the rickety wardrobe. Just one trouser ironed. All shirts crumpled. Orange shirt, black trousers. Excellent! Aaj toh bilkul Govinda lagunga. Oh hell, get dressed up anyway, lock the room and run out. 15 minutes to go before the office cab zoots away.

09:34:00 AM: Oh shit yaar, ID card kahan hai? Run back to the PG, dash upstairs, unlock the room. Dhoondo dhoondo dhoondo.... Where the heck did it go. Ah there it its. Relieved to find my ID card under the pile of my underwears. Lock room. Get out. 11 minutes for cab departure...

09:41:00 AM: Breakfast. Reach Hotel Ganesh Upahar. Typical Bangalore style breakfast restaurant. No place to stand. No place to sit. Kya bheed hai. Saala hotel hai ya kumbh ka mela!. Fortunately Ravi anna , the proprietor, spots me in the crowd. I scream "Anna , the usual breakfast. Jaldi, Jaldi". Ravi anna takes out an idli from the oven and flings it at me. I catch it with my left hand. He throws a second idli at me. I dive and catch it with my right hand. Finally, a vada comes flying in my direction, which I promptly catch with my mouth. What spectacular catching skils. I am a Labrador in human form.

09:50:00 AM: Sandwich the vada in between the two idlis to form a makeshift South-Indian burger. Chomp on it and scurry to the bus-stop.

09:55:00 AM: The most wonderful event of the day unfolds. My office cabs zoots away in front of eyes, leaving me behind. Fuck. There is no other cab.

09:56:00 AM : Run after the cab like P.T Usha. Driver STOP, oye driver, *huff* *puff* *pant* *huff* abey oye driver, stop stop. *Huff* *Puff*

09:58:00 AM: My cab disappears into the horizon.

10:00:00 AM: Rush to the nearest parked auto-rickshaw and dive into it.. “Auto, abey auto.. Follow that cab. Follow that cab. Quick. Quick!!”

10:00:55 AM: Auto driver removes the toothpick from his mouth and says in Kannada “He he he… Yen saaar.. Neevenu James Bond aaa? ( He he What sir, you think you’re James Bond?)

10:01:00 AM: “Follow that bloody cab”, I scream. The auto-driver relents under my fury. He touches a Michael Schumacher’s photograph for aashirvaad, finds his need for speed and puts his rickety rickshaw into top gear. After three minutes of break neck zig-zag driving, we finally pull abreast of my cab and flag it down.

10:04:00 AM: Chalo, finally, cab mil gaya. I occupy my usual last row seat and switch on my iPod. It’s a one hour ride to office, provided the traffic snarls are benevolent enough.

11:10:00 AM: Reach office. The air-conditioned grave where the country’s elite software engineers die to earn their crumbs of money.

11:15:00 AM: Goooood morning!!!. Hi hello how are you. My colleague welcomes me with a handshake. “Beautiful morning isn’t it, Parikshith?” she says. Yeah right, I know how beautiful my morning has been.

11:20:00 AM: Boot the system. Straightaway open Nonsense Aplenty, my infamous blog page. Scroll down. No new comments… @%$#@$^@!! “Yeh kya saala, ek bhi naya comment nahi hai . Kahan mar gaye saare ke saare? Nobody reads my blog or what. Saala aaj se post nahi karunga”

11:30:00 AM: Coffeeeeeee!!!!

11:50:00 AM: Enter the office library. Newspapers. One after the other. Times of India? Done. DNA? Done. Hindustan Times? Done. Indian Express? Done? E.T ? Done. Vijaya Karnataka? Done.

12:45:00 PM: All newspapers done. There is one Tamil newspaper remaining. Don’t know a word of Tamil. But I still leaf thru its pages and stare at pictures. There is a photo of an elephant in the cine-entertainment section. Now what the heck is an elephant doing in the cine section? Journalism these days… Bah!

12:55:00 PM : Its 12:55. Kya karu? Should I head to the cubicle or should I go upstairs for lunch? Ponder, ponder, ponder…

01:00:00 PM : Oh by the way, I double check and realize that the photo in the newspaper is not of an elephant. It is the photo of popular South actress, Namitha. My bad. I need to start paying attention!

01:30:00 PM: Lunch!!! Inadequately subsidized office lunch. The rotis are like charcoal, the paneer seems to be carefully preserved since Ice age and the sambar tastes like sewage.

01:31:00 PM: Feel like murdering the food caterer and go to jail. At least jail food will taste better.

01:32:00 PM: Gossip with the group of male pals over lunch. Gossip topic ranges from economic recession to hairline recession. From IPL scores to Manchester United’s form. From Pulsar’s DTSI technology to gobar gas fuel plants . From Kalpana Chawla’s achievements to Kangana Ranaut’s boob size….

02:30:00 PM: Back to the cubicle after lunch.

02:30:55 PM: Time for a short nap.

04:30:00 PM: Wake up after the short nap.

04:35:00 PM : Coffeeeee!!! Drag a few reluctant colleagues with you to the coffee machine.

05:00:00 PM : Time for a quick game of TT. Drag another reluctant colleague to the TT room.

05:30:00 PM: Back in the cublicle. Chalo, let me tap away at a few keys and click the mouse in random and forward a few chain emails.

05:40:00 PM: Tap. Tap. Tap. Click. Click. Click.

05:45:00 PM : Tappity. Tappity. Tap. Clickity. Clickity. Click.

06:00:00 PM: After a hard day’s work, sweat and toil, its time to go home!

06:05:00 PM: Collect my belongings, sing goodbyes to everyone and rush to get hold of the departure cab.

06:30:00 PM: Another hour’s ride back home. Saala, lagta hai aadhi zindagi toh cab mein journey karte karte hi nikal jayegi.

07:30:00 PM : Head to the pani-puri stall, adjacent to my PG. Life always seems better when there’s pani-puri to eat.

08:30:00 PM : A hot shower later, plonk down on the floor (no chairs in our room) and switch on the TV.

08:34:00 PM: Flip channels. Flip-flip-flip. Bharatnatyam performance on Doordarshan. Flip. A python swallows a deer on National Geographic. Flip. A hero, 2 heroines and 2500 extras sing a strange song and do a jingalala dance on Sun TV Tamil. Flip. “Nahinnnn.. Mein tere bachche ki maa kaise ban sakti hoon. Tuney toh mujhe chua hi nahi tha….” type melodramas on Zee Cinema. Flip. Saas-bahus on Star Plus. Bang forehead against the wall and flip. Hedonic men and anorexic women on MTV Splitsvilla. Shut down the TV and throw away the remote.

08:35:00 PM: Our knight in shining armour, Sunil, comes back from office.

08:40:00 PM : “Yeh dekh mein kya laya hoon…” announces the jack-ass, and triumphantly pulls out three DVD’s from his bag for me to see. “ Chal Parry… chal saale laptop on kar”

08:41:00 PM : DVD 1 : Tom & Jerry cartoons. DVD 2: Baba Ramdev’s yoga sessions. DVD 3: Titanic!!!

08:42:00 PM: Let out a flurry of abuses. One after the other. Start talking again. “Abey yeh kya laaya hai. Saale aur koi dhang ke movies nahi mile?? Kuch action-vaction nahin tha kya?”

08:42:30 PM : “Ab bas yahin the… Aur saare free mein mile hain” comes the reply

08:43:00 PM: We decide to watch Titanic. Unfortunately, both our laptops have been recently formatted so there are no movies in store. And being the responsible adults that we are, we don’t watch triple-x flicks on weekdays. Neither me nor Sunil like movies with mush. And like idiots, we watch Titanic.

08:45:00 PM: The movie starts. Budhiya ka flashback shuru ho jata hai. Leo Di Caprio wins his gambling jugaad, hops on the ship and waves to strangers.

08:55:00 PM: Kate Winslet arrives on screen.

08:56:00 PM : “Abey Sunil, chal yaar, who painting waali scene tak forward kar dena”

08:56:05 PM: “Oye ruk ja tharki… Poori movie dekh”

08:57:00 PM : “Yaar, kya dekhega yaar, chal woh car-waali scene tak forward kar”

08:58:00 PM: We mutually agree to fast forward the movie till the scene where the ship hits the iceberg. Chalo, atleast yahan se thoda action dekhne ko milega.

09:30:00 PM: The ship snaps into two. So does our patience. “Abey aise kaise toot sakta hai ship? Pakka steel ki tensile strength mein koi kami thi” . Abey iron aur steel se bante hain na ships? Phir ek iceberg usme itni aasani se kaise ched kar sakta hai?... Kamaal hai yaar, kaheka design hai? Aur koi crash testing nahi hota hain kya ships ko build karte time??..… ” . This is what happens when two engineers watch Titanic together.

11:00:00 PM : The final scene of the movie is being played out. Rose on wooden plank. Jack in water, holding her hand. Rose cries “I’ll never let go, Jack” *sniff* *sniff*

11:07:00 PM : Scream advice to Kate Winslet on screen. “Oye kood jaa meri maa!!. Toh tu bhi kood ja!!. Chal dubki laga aur khatam kar kahani”

11:30:00 PM: We shut down the laptop, nursing a headache.

11:45:00 PM: “Oye rehne de na yaar, chodd” Sunil consoles me. “ Koi baat nahin chal khana kha lete hain…”

12:00:00 AM: “Sahi mein… Saala 12 baj gaye hain.. Khana kha lete hain… Mere pet mein toh choohe daud rahe hain”. Chal dabba leke aa.

12:02:00 AM: Sunil looks around the room. “Oye dabba kahan hai?”

12:15:00 AM: Biggest shock of the day! Our dabbawaala has not delivered our dinner. ( ‘Dabbas’ are boxes containing packed lunch/dinners. Dabbawaalas deliver the lunch/dinner boxes to bachelors like us. Rupees 25 per dabba). We are furious. “Uski maa ki, saala, abey yeh dabbawaala aaj kahan chudaane chala gaya?”

12:20:00 AM: No dabba. No dinner. None of us cook. Realization dawns.

12:30:00 AM: “Sunil, yaar, kahin bahar khane chalte hain chal”

12:30:00 AM : Sunil raps back. “Saale ab itni raat gaye tera sasur highway mein dhaba khol ke baitha rahega kya? Saareke saare hotels bandh rahengi…”

12:40:00 AM: Scratch my head. “ Shit yaar bhook lagi hai. Toh phir ek hi chaara hai. Nats ke yahan khaa lete hain”

12:45:00 AM: “Nats ke yahan? Time dekh raha hai? Abey marvayega kya?”

01:00:00 AM: Introducing Nats. Nats, a.k.a Natasha, is a close friend of ours, who lives on the third floor of our PG building. Nats is our emergency food provider. She feeds us with her delightful cooking during occasions like famines, bandhs, earthquakes, locust attacks, wars and on days when the dabbawaala’s food looks and tastes like dog poop. Well, even on normal days, it’s a common practice to visit her place and casually ask “Nats, khane mein kya hai?” . I have nothing but tremendous love and admiration towards Nats. A champion of a girl and blessed to be brilliant at whatever she does, she's been our bumchum buddy since years. Lekin ek baat hai. Nats has got a volatile temper. Oh boy! She can make any weak-hearted man pee in his pants with her ferocious nature. But not me and Sunil- we are two of a kind… hame koi fark nahin padta. But then, that’s Nats for you – as ferocious as a German Shephard from the outside, but as loving and vulnerable as a Labrador pup from the inside. Above all, a brilliant cook. That is what matters to us at this hour.

01:05:00 AM : Entrusted with the task of convincing Nats to make dinner for us. Sunil eggs me on " Yaar Parry, tu toh ladkiyon ko manaane mein number 1 hai yaar, tu hi baat karle Nats se... " . Yeah right Sunil, you rat. Ladkiyon ko manaate manaate kitne jhoote khaya hoon aaj tak, yeh sirf mujhe hi pata hai.

01:10:00 AM: Climbing up the stairs to Nats' room. Aaj maar dalegi Nats. I feel like a pilla heading to a sher's den.

01:11:00 AM: *Knock*. *Knock*. *Knock.*. Gently knock on Nats' door. She opens the door, pops her neck out, sleepy-eyed. She immediately knows why I am there. She grunts"Oye Parry ke bachche.. Khane ke liye kuch nahin hai. Sab khatam ho gaya. Aur mein koi khana nahin banane waali hoon is waqt. Good night" *SLAM* . She slams the door on my face.

01:12:00 AM: *Knock*. *Knock*. *Knock.*. Try again. "Oye Nats, suno toh yaar"

01:13:00 AM: Nats comes out and retorts "Go to hell. Bhaad me jaa, Parikshith".

01:14:00 AM: Give Nats a peck on her cheek and envelope her in a warm cuddle. Then take two steps back, put on my most innocent expression and rub my stomach in a clockwise motion. And in the meekest of voices say "Puhleeeeeasse Natsssss ?"

01:15:00 AM: The iron lady finally relents. She says "Theek hai, lekin sirf chaawal (rice) chadhaungi cooker mein. Aur kuch nahi. Achca theek hai. thoda sa daal banaungi. Bas itna hi"

01:16:00 AM: "I love you, Nats. Yaar, by the way tu woh aloo-pyaaz ki sabzi badi achchi bana leti hai."

01:16:15 AM: "Haan saale, aur maska maar. Do jhapad lagaungi. Theek hai banaungi sabzi. Aur jaa Sunil ko bhi bulale... Half an hour lagega."

01:20:00 AM: Woo-hoo!!! Score!!! Garma garam daal, chaawal and potato curry. This is like winning a lottery for us. Run down the stairs to convey the good news to Sunil.

02:05:00 AM: Dinner at 2 AM. We had enough snacks and biscuits thru the evening. Now literally dying of hunger.

02:10:00 AM: Nats lays out her wonderfully prepared dinner infront of me and Sunil. Bless this girl.

02:11:00 AM: Toot pado! Nats smiles in amusement as me and Sunil tear into the food like famished UNICEF kids. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Neither of us even glance up from our plates.

02:15:00 AM: "Array, kaisa hai khana?" Nats inquires

02:16:00 AM: Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

02:17:00 AM: "Array kuch toh bolo"

02:18:00 AM : Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. We hardly hear her.

02:19:oo AM: "Saale ek number ke bhukkad kahinke" says Nats and breaks out into a laugh. We know she loves us to bits.

02:35:00 AM: Done with the dinner. Fully satisfied. One of the best dinners I've had in recent times. Let out a burp.

02:36:00 AM : Sunil follows suit and lets out a second burp.

02:40:00 AM: Wash hands in the basin and say thank you's to Nats. " OK. Thank you Nats. Chal goodnight"

02:41:00 AM: Nats grabs the two of us by the collar of our shirts. "Not so soon. Abey kahan jaa rahe ho. Pehle yeh batao ki khana kaisa raha?" Nats ma'm now wants feedback (read praise) for her cooking.

02:45:00 AM : I let out a big sigh and reply. "Ab kya bataye Nats... Khana toh... Ok-ok tha.... I mean theek thaak tha. Nothing special. Taste bhi kuch khaas nahi tha. I mean, average tha..."

02:45:50 AM: "Kyaaaaaaaaa?" Nat drops her jaw in shock and lets go of our collars.

02:46:00 AM: Sunil picks up the hint from me. "Haaan yaar Nats.. Woh sabzi bhi kuch achcha nahi laga mujhe. Taste toh seriously kuch achcha nahi tha. Main toh kahunga ki below average hi tha khana..."

02:46:50 AM : "Huhhh????" . Nats' face turns a shade of purple.

02:47:00 AM: I continue. "Aur woh daal-waal woh joh bhi tha... Array woh kya banayi thi yaar. Bilkul bekaar. Namak, mirch kuch tha hi nahin. Array isse achchi daal toh hum log bana sakte hain"

02:48:00 AM: Grrrrrr.... Nats' face now turns a scarlet red.

02:49:00 AM: Sunil nods his head. " Nats, apni cooking sudhaar yaar. Aisa nahin chalega..."

02:50:00 AM: Smoke is billowing out of Nats' ears by now.

02:51:00 AM: Me and Sunil burst out laughing together. In one swift motion, Sunil gets up and gives Nats a big hug. I then land a big kiss on her cheek. We ruffle her hair, and still choking with laughter, say "He he he... Love you yaar. Khana zabardast tha. Bahut badhiya. Simply too good" . And before she realizes what is happening, I slap the back of her head and we run out of her room, still bursting with laughter.

02:52:00 AM : Run down the stairs quickly to our room, still splitting with laughter, lest Nats chases us down.

03:00:00 AM : "Ha ha ha ha... Yaar Parry. Main toh keh raha hoon kal Nats pakka maar dalegi hume" Ha ha ha....

03:05:00 AM: "Chal saale, bahut ho gaya aaj ke liye. So jaa. 3 baj gaye hain"

03:07:00 AM: Let out a big sigh. "Haan yaar so jao.. Kal mujhe jaldi uth ke gym bhi toh jaana hai. Alarm set karta hoon 7 baje ke liye"

03:10:00 AM: Sunil slaps his forehead. "Array alarm mat rakho yaar...Abey saale sun"

03:15:00 AM: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

------------------------------ THE END--------------------------------

10 Honestly Useless Truths

2009-05-28T23:21:00.001+05:30

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.

IPL, Cricket Widows and Workaholic Bosses

2009-05-08T09:40:00.000+05:30

Statutory Warning : This is a pretty long post. You are advised to plan your bathroom breaks in advance.

Greetings, dear Earthlings

As promised, I am back with the sequel to my previous post. Sorry for the long delay in uploading this post… I hope you were not wondering if I had vanished into thin air or fallen off the face of Earth ( you really wish that had happened? Yes? Oh you bad people) . One of the feeble excuses that I can offer to justify the delay in posting, is the IPL itself. You see, my work keeps me busy in the mornings, lunch and the subsequent naps inside the cubicle walls keep me busy in the afternoons, the IPL keeps me busy in the evenings and my trainee watchman duty keeps me awake and busy at night. Hey, by the way, did I tell you that I am training to be a watchman at the neighbourhood factory gates? Just in case the recession nips my techie job away, I can at least ensure employment by signing up for the attractive job as a night-watchman in that factory. And being a man with a remarkable degree of self-awareness, I know that I am very well qualified for the job of a watchman. I am rigorously participating in the pre-employment training. The training curriculum for the post of a gate watchman, includes:

Juggling and balancing an ill-fitting ‘topi’ on top of my head.
Wielding a ‘lathi’ that is as strong as a tooth-pick.
Chasing noisy street dogs away - the ones which utter more than 10bps (10 bow-bows per second) .
Dozing off in an upright sitting position.
Saying ‘Salom shaab’ , without giggling, and in a perfect accent.

I have my alternate profession all planned out, folks. See, I am a busy man with a busy 24/7 schedule. So from where do you think can I carve out time to pen blogs huh? *Sigh* Alright alright, I suck at giving excuses don’t I? Well people, the real reason for the delay in posting is that I simply couldn’t bring my lazy bum to the computer and type. Now that all three of us – myself, my bum and my computer – are in perfect harmony, I have the promised blogpost ready to be uploaded. In hindsight, my inability to come up with proper, believable excuses is a real worry, I must confess. In another three years, I’ll be a married man, and by then if I don’t have the skill to dish out proper excuses, then it is guaranteed that my life will be miserable. But lets worry about that another day shall we?… I mean why look ahead and worry about contracepting the future when you’re being fucked by the present. OK folks, enough said. Lets move on from useless nonsense to useful nonsense.

The IPL… ah what an absorbing affair is it turning out to be. At the time of writing this, we are into the second phase of the tournament. The contest is split wide open, predictions are going haywire and it’s a free for all. It seems to be anybody’s guess as to which four teams would line up to face each other in the semis. Given the unpredictable nature of the game and the inconsistent form of the teams, it is going to be a real tough guess to hazard. Heck! I’m sure guessing Shilpa Shetty’s real age would be an easier task than speculating on the semi-final line-up of IPL2. My favorite team Rajasthan Royals, lead by an extremely passionate man, is continuing to surge forward, even though they don’t have a reigning superstar in their lineup. The Royal Challengers Bangalore team, who until a few days back looked destined to graze the grasses at the bottom of the table, are now looking to be a contender for a semi-final spot. Honestly many a Bangalorean had given up on this team- me included. Many of us had felt that under Mallya’s tutelage, the Royal Challenger boys would have made better bartenders than cricket players. But hey presto! now they’ve surprised everybody with three wins on the trot. Bring on more action, baby, I’m loving it.

OK. Now all said and done, it should be realized that not everybody is a fan of IPL or T20 or why, even the game of cricket. This blog is written by me, a cricket fanatic, and read by you, who could possibly be a cricket fanatic. But the world does not comprise of just you and me, my friend. The world also comprises of people who hate cricket… you know, the kind of people who equate cricket with rat plague and absolutely abhor the sight of bat hitting ball. Surely some of those people may be reading this blog and nodding their heads in approval and acknowledgement. It is important that in this busy IPL season, we cricket fanatics should respect the presence of non-cricket watching public and not disregard their very existence on the planet. However, avoiding the non-cricket watchers is easier said than done, particular when they happen to be in your family or friend/acquaintance circle. For a cricket fanatic, for whom watching the game on TV during the game's peak season is his sole reason for existence, having to deal with the non cricket watching types can be a real pain in the neck and obstruct his viewing pleasure. Chime the bells and blow the bugles, because now I will introduce you two categories of such 'cricket obstructers' - Cricket Widows and Workaholic Bosses.

Cricket Widow : Definition (derived from the Web) : A cricket widow is basically a woman involved in a relationship with a male cricket fanatic who pays more attention to the game than to their female partner, during the sport’s season of play. Cricket widows (usually wives or girlfriends) usually have little or absolutely no interest in cricket themselves. The cricket widow simply does not understand the madness which overcomes their male partners during a cricket match.

Make no mistake, the husband or BF is not a heartless man from Old Stone Age.. he is usually a very doting partner. But it so happens that with the cricket season in full-swing, the game takes precedence for him over everything else in the world. So with the husband or BF glued to the TV screen and literally forgetting his wife’s or GF’s existence, the cricket widow is left to fend for herself. Now, Nonsense Aplenty is not a coochie-coo, Agony Unc, pour-me-your-heart-out-I-will-listen-to-you-sweety kinda blog, so don’t look for comforting talk here. Practically speaking, I must say that a cricket widow can be a real obstructing irritant for a cricket fanatic who is devoted to the game. With the IPL season hotting up and matches getting more interesting, the irritancy factor of a cricket widow can get magnified manifold. Here is an example scenario of one such household. The husband here is an IPL T20 fanatic. He is sprawled on the couch, glued full-on to the match being played out infront of him. His eyes are transfixed to the TV screen and understandably, little else matters to him right now. The wife (a potential cricket widow) can’t understand what the whole fuss is about. She is done with her office work, finished rounds of shopping, fed up with hanging around her pals, has browsed thru 6 Feminas, 3 Women’s Eras, 10 Filmfares, and the entire Internet. She has slept off. She has woken up. But she still finds Hubby dearest glued to the TV, cursing every dot ball and cheering every six hit. The disgusted wife tries to strike up a conversation. Lets join the action from here :

Wife : “Cricket, cricket, cricket. Ufff.. all you watch is this stupid cricket”

Husband: “Ummm… hmmm…”

Wife: “ You know I went to the parlour today….”

Husband: “Ummm hmmm…???”

Wife: “And I got my hair layered and permed and colored. First I got this strand colored dark brown and then this… “

Husband: “It’s a six!!! What a shot!!”

Wife: “What the… hey are you listening to me?”

Husband: “Yes yes…. And you were saying…. ?”

Wife: “Ya, I got my hair coloured. See, its nice na? And then I got a manicure and then I applied nail polish to this finger and….”

Husband:”Fouuuurrrrrr!!!!”

Wife: “Ufff…. You never listen. By the way what is this match. IPL?

Husband: “Yes”

Wife: “Ooooooh… so India is playing Pakistan?”

Husband: *gives an exasperated stare*

Wife: “Oh… so India is playing India?”

Husband: *silence*

Wife: “See such a yuckie colored uniform those players are wearing na. The color of their outfit is not at all matching with the color of their shoes and… “

Husband: “Ssshhh..”

Wife: “Sorry”

Husband: “Don’t disturb me. Don’t you have anything else to do?”

*10 seconds of silence, and then *

Wife: “Hey why is Kumble bowling to Dhoni? I thought they were in the same team”

Husband: “This is IPL for Heaven’s sake. They are in different teams. Now just shut up and watch for sometime"

Wife : " Yeah whatever. Hey, can you flip the channel once? I need to watch my serial"

Husband: "What serial?"

Wife: "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bevdi Thi"

Husband: " *Grrrr* Don't you touch the remote"

Wife: "Stupid..... *Hmmmpfff* "

*5 seconds of silence, and then *

Wife: “Hey, must those cheerleaders wear such short skirts?”

Husband: “Shut up and let me watch”

Wife: “And must those cameras focus right up their skirts?”

Husband: “Shut up and let me concentrate”

Wife: “Ewwww… is it the Indian Premier League or the Indian Porn League?”

Husband(losing it) : “ Cant you just SHUT UP, lady? Do I need to call a locksmith to lock your big mouth shut?!! “

Wife (in tears) : " *Sob sob* You just screamed at me? "

Husband(staring at TV): “ Oh good shot. Good shot. Come on boys, another 10 balls to go…”

Wife: “*Sob* You screamed at me?”

Husband: “Sssshhh quiet… 9 balls to go…”

Wife: “ *Sob* I am not gonna stay here. *Sob* I am going to my mother’s. D’ya hear me? I am leaving”

Husband: “Why? You don’t want to watch the second innings?”

Wife: "*Sob* What sort of a jerk are you? *Sob*"

Husband: "I am yet to classify myself, he he"

Wife: "Useless talking to you. I am leaving."

Husband: "Take my car, I wont be needing it today. Oh shot! Its a six! Yippeee!"

Wife: "I don't need your bloody car. I'm leaving forever."

Husband: "Shot! Hey on your way out could you just toss me a Coke from the fridge?

The wife literally tosses the can of Coke at her husband, which lands boink on top of his head. And then she proceeds to storm out, Gucci handbag in tow. The husband recovers from the blow, but is too occupied to think about it because the final over of the innings is being played out and the batsmen are slogging at everything.

Wife(at the door, holding it ajar and looking back over her shoulder) : "I'm leaving. Goodbye forever. Is there any final thing you wanna say?"

Husband: Fouuurrrrr!

*SLAM*

There you go folks! The wife in our story is the latest entrant into the cricket widows' club, albeit her mode of initiation was slightly on the extremes. Now the sequel to this story is also among common lines. A good month and a half later, with the tournament finally over, the husband gets up from his couch, clears the cobwebs from his body, puffs away the layers of dust around him. He then stretches his arms and legs, looks around for a minute, pauses and suddenly wonders "Hey, where's wifey?"

Alright folks, time now to introduce to you the second category of cricket obstructers - the Workaholic Boss.

Workaholic Bosses are the kinds of people who expect their subordinates at work to stay back late into the night and put in extra hours of work- whether there be a genuine need for it or not. What makes them the worst species of supervisors is that not only do they expect their minions to stay back late, but they themselves stay back late and choose to 'lead by example'. These sons of bitches have no social lives for themselves, have no interest in cricket and don't understand others' passion for cricket. They only fear that the skies would come crashing down on their thick skulls if their subordinates do not work late into the night.Now naturally, if you are the kind of employee looking forward to scurry an scoot home early to watch a game of IPL, the presence of a workaholic boss in your life can prove to be a real pain in the neck. But with a little skill and bravado, you should be able to navigate around these assholes like a smart, slippery eel. Here's an example:

Boss: "Hey, where are you going? Its only 5PM"

You: "I'm going home. The match begins at 5PM"

Boss: "What match?"

You: "The IPL"

Boss: "Bah! those two-hoot cricket matches. Don't you think you should rather stay back a bit late and finish off some more work?"

You: "But what for? I'm done for the day"

Boss: "But still, you can stay back and improve on your err... productivity?"

You: "But I need to go home and watch the match"

Boss: " OK fair enough, but can I ask you a few questions first?"

You: "Sure, sir"

Boss: "Do you earn any money by watching those matches?"

You: "No, sir"

Boss: "Are you playing in those matches yourself?"

You: "No"

Boss: "Is your girlfriend cheerleading for any of the teams?"

You: "No"

Boss: "Then why do you have to watch those matches? Why can't you stay back and work some more?"

You: "OK, fair enough sir, but would you mind if I now asked you a few questions?"

Boss: "Shoot, boy"

You: "Do you earn a multi-million dollar bonus for putting in a few hours extra?"

Boss:"Well, no..."

You: "Do you think they'll promote you to be the CEO, if you merely spent extra hours at work?"

Boss: "Hmmm... no"

You: "Working late, with no one around, do you download porn to your official computer, use the office printer to take sleazy printouts, and take them home to arouse your impotent wife?"

Boss: "Heavens!!!! No!!"

You: " Then why do you have to stay back and work late? Why can't you go home and enjoy those matches?"

*10 seconds of silence, and then *

Boss: "Fine, go home and watch your darned cricket match"

You: "Thank you, sir"

See folks? You can navigate around any type of human obstacle that prevents you from watching your beloved IPL. I pray that you don't get to face up with such 'cricket obstructing' specimens in your lives, but in case you do, I hope that my blog has endowed you with some related education. Have a great time, folks! Wish you a very happy cricket season.

Love,

Parry.

P.S: If you have read the entire post and desperately want to throw a shoe at me, please bear in mind that I am a size 8 and my favourite is Nike!

IPL's Calling...Where Are You?

2009-04-24T23:31:00.014+05:30

You are lucky. All of you, who are reading this right now are lord-be-darned lucky. You are lucky because you are only getting to read the contents which the author has typed out here - you aren't seeing the author himself. For those who want to know, the author is in a super excited state of being. He has donned an animated avatar. He is pacing back and forth, he is jumping up and down. He is unable to park even half a bum on a chair for a millisecond. He is shouting, he is laughing, he is cursing, he is chanting. He is hyperventilating. His adrenaline is pumped up to dizzying levels, he has generated enough amount of testosterone and estrogen to supply for the whole neighborhood. He is over-the-moon, over-the-sun, over-the-solar-system. The delirious author is doing an excited dance of the jingalala genre around his TV set, wearing nothing but a banana leaf and a matching bikini top. You are lucky you don't get to see the author right now. You only get to see what he has typed out.

Gljsdojfouflmdioaufeqjroiufsdlkjfajfeljraidfoiueriudflajfulwejlhalgjrkjehg. What the... Whoa! I mean, did you just see that? His excitement has reached such a feverish pitch that he doesn't have conscious control of even his keystrokes now. What the heck is wrong with the author? What's got him all happy, excited and delirious?. Nope he has not had cocaine for lunch, he is on a diet you see- so it can't be about dope. Nope he hasn't hired Paris Hilton to do a lap dance for him- so its not about girlfriends. Nope he has not got a multi-million dollar pay hike, his house is still built of bricks and not from money bags- so it can't be about money. Nope, he hasn't replaced Bill Gates at Microsoft or for that matter Hugh Hefner at Playboy- so its not about a new dream job. Nope he hasn't got a shiny new Ferrari for free...his garage still houses a sputtering old Ambassador 1879 model, with the paint peeled off and engine thrown away- so its not about cars. Nope, neither McDonald's nor the Oberoi Intercontinental has offered to supply abundant complimentary food for him daily... he is still eating out of roadside thrash cans- so it can't be about food.

Hmmm...lets pause and recap for a moment here. Dope? Check. Women? Check. Sex? Check. Money? Check. Hi-fi job? Check. Swanky cars? Check. Food? Check. What else can get an average urbane Indian bachelor male so excited? What are we leaving out? What are we forgetting here? Come on, lets think... drum fingers on the desks, doodle invisible thoughts in the brain, think hard... what is missing? Unless, oh dear, but of course, why didn't we remember that earlier? *Boink Boink Boink* - lets slap our foreheads thrice as punishment. There is C.R.I.C.K.E.T, amigos! The game! Ok, so what about cricket now, are they showing a test match between Scotland and Ethiopia on TV ? Hmmm.. not really. Unless, oh dear, but of course... *Patak Patak Patak*- lets slam our foreheads against the nearest wall three times as punishment. Why didn't we remember that earlier? There's the IPL on. What you don't know what the IPL is? You don't? *Thwack Thwack Thwack,* slap yourselves three times- twice on your face and once on your buttocks as punishment. The IPL is the Indian Premier League. The cricket version of the Super-Bowl. A hyper exciting brand of cricket. The 20 over –a- piece extravaganza. The razzmatazz which gets the cricket crazy nomads all nippy and excited. So now we know- that’s what's got the author so excited. We've found out. There...now Sherlock Holmes can rest in peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, ever since the IPL T20’s kicked off, I’ve been hooked. Of course, Season 2 has got off to a relatively rustic, yawning start, but I am optimistic that it is no indication of what’s in store in the coming weeks. For the uninitiated, this year is the second season of IPL and hence called IPL2. Last year was the first season of IPL and hence was called IPL1. See my math, ain’t I better than Aryabhatta? IPL1 was held in India. It was a roaring success. IPL2 is being held in South Africa. One hopes it will be at least a meowing success. IPL2 had to be exported to South Africa because the Govt. couldn’t ensure the security of the event if it were to be held in India. Fair enough. After all, the IPL2 clashed with another titanic soap opera called the General Elections. The Govt. told the IPL babus that it was more important to use your fingers to press buttons on the voting machine than use them to spin a doosra or count currency notes. “No security, no IPL, nothing doing, go cry to your mama” said the Government. Also, it was rumored that some of the team owners were reluctant to field their precious players in the blazing Indian summer because there wasn’t enough sunscreen lotion around. Well the smart IPL babus, amid desperation and simmering public anger, shifted the event into the first nation that offered to host it – South Africa. That is a shame, because when it comes to passionate following, crowd frenzy and media hype, nothing can match cricket in India. But, with the aforementioned situation on our hands, we cricket lovers were virtually told that we had only two options before us:
1) Watch the cricket out of South Africa.
2) Or spend your time picking lint out of your belly-buttons.

Option 1) was unanimously chosen, and boy was I glad. After all, it is the cricket that matters to us fanatics – the show had to go on and if it had to find a new stage in South Africa, then so be it.

(I'd rather watch Ashish Nehra bat than watch no cricket at all)

The IPL babus should count their lucky stars that South Africa came to their rescue. I’m sure with the amount of money invested in IPL, the organizers would have been desperate to host the tournament even in Antarctica or Somalia for that regard. In fact, rumors have it that they considered these two places to host the game, before South Africa appeared on their radar. Unfortunately, amid much reluctance, they had to rule out Antarctica as a hosting venue because the penguins went on hunger strike and the polar bears took out protest marches against hosting the event on their land. This implied that at least 50% of the potential on-field spectators were ruled out from participation. Then there was the issue of conflict of sponsors’ interests – they wanted iced tea, chilled Coke and vanilla chocobar sundaes to be advertised in Antarctica, which for some strange reason found no takers. And then there was the problem with cheerleaders – I mean who would have liked to see them dancing around in woolen pullovers, stocky trousers, leather overalls, thick sweaters, thicker gloves, mufflers and thermal panties? These issues ensured that Antarctica was out of reckoning as a potential host, even though the conditions for cricket was ‘perfect ‘. (Hey c’mon I’m sure the ice covered pitches would have possibly assisted good seam bowling) .

And then there was the second potential host – Somalia. I’m sure Somalia would have been great, but unfortunately the event couldn’t be staged there because the pirates threatened to kidnap Mandira Bedi! In hindsight, I think it would’ve been a really good thing had the Somali pirates kidnapped Mandira Bedi. I mean, the advantage would have been two-pronged. 1) The TV audience would have been spared of her apathetic cricketing knowledge and abysmal presentation skills. 2) Who knows, the pirates could have as well learnt some cricket from her. Ha ha ha ha… now that is funny… learning cricket from Mandira Bedi, ha ha ha… I’m sure the pirates would have rather preferred to jump into the sea than let such a day dawn upon them. Ha ha ha ha… Ok, so all in all, South Africa was the chosen venue for IPL2. Not bad at all.

(Presenting - The Numero Uno cricketer - Mandira Bedi!!)

You see people often wonder what the fuss is all about. What’s the big deal about T20, they ask. Why go ga -ga over it? Traditional cricket lovers have often sniggered at and chastised the T20 format as prostitution of cricket. “Slam-bang-thank you ma’m cricket” are their precise words. One of my friend’s grandfather, who is 186 years old, and an avid Test match lover, often tells me how watching IPL saddens his soul and rips the pacemaker in his heart apart. “Test cricket is real cricket. What is this IPL-BPL or whatever” he says. I agree when people accord the highest respect to Test matches. The Test format deserves all of it – it is still the purest form of cricket and the ultimate test of your cricketing skills. Make no mistake, I am a passionate Test match lover too – I always apply kilograms of super-glue to my ample posterior and park them firmly on the couch, while watching a Test match for all of its five days on TV. But I certainly take umbrage at the purists for according disrespect to the T20 format. T20 is a different game, it has a different charm. You see the primary, number one attraction about IPL T20 is ~~kinky cheerleaders in skimpy outfits~~ the fast and furious nature of the game itself. Twenty overs a piece, the batsman going hammer and tongs at everything thrown at them, the bowlers bowling their guts out, the power-packed shots, the switch hits, the paddle sweeps, no balls going for free hits, frequent toe-crushing yorkers, the screaming crowds, the dancing girls… it’s all there. And its all over in three and half hours. It goes without saying that the color, the entertainment, and the adrenaline rush offered by the T20 is unparalleled elsewhere. So what is my unsolicited advice here? – don’t try to mix up or compare the two formats of the game. Learn to enjoy both of them, in the way it is meant to be enjoyed. Enjoy Test cricket sipping a glass of wine and enjoy T20 by dousing yourself with beer. That’s exactly what I do – well, I douse myself with water instead, as I am teetotaler, but I nevertheless am charged as a bull while watching IPL T20.

Thank you IPL, thank you T20, for bringing in a splash of vibgyor to my otherwise monochromatic life.

Have a great time folks!

Love,

Parry.

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Note:

1) The IPL has not paid me to write this post. Pay?... ha ha ha.... my own employer is reluctant to pay me, toh IPL kya ghanta pay karega?

2) Coming up in my next post: IPL, Cricket Widows and Workaholic Bosses.

3) Today is the one and only Sachin Tendulkar's birthday. I salute you, master. Wish you a very happy birthday.

4) Talking of IPL, this blog called Fake IPL player is generating tremendous buzz and apparently, has been authored by an insider from an IPL team camp. Authentic or not, this blog is providing some absolute rib-tickling fun.

The Human Behaviour and Relationship Guide

2009-04-06T11:00:00.008+05:30

Foreword by Dale Carnegie:

Parikshith Kumar is one of the world's foremost experts in 'human behaviour and relationships' . Such is his expertise in this field, that it rumored that he's well capable of writing books like "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and Eunuchs are from Pluto" , even while lying in deep coma. Parikshith, or Parry as he is lovingly called (my wife calls him Hotty Pants) has wowed millions around the world with his deep insight on human relationships and gender behaviour. His classic books on human relationships have found their places in the hearts of millions of readers around the world and have smashed publishing records all over. His books have been made into psychologists' course materials, have found their way into MBA classroom case studies, and also been placed inside thousands of public restrooms around the world - so that people can read them when they go potty. From the stables of the great relationship guru and one of the world's most original thinkers comes another post which destined to change your lives and the way you look at people around you.

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At the very outset, I must say that I'm really humbled to have the great Dale Carnegie write a foreword to my post. Its an honor. For those of you who don't know who Dale Carnegie is - err.. never mind, ignorance is bliss.

Contrary to popular judgement, I am not the silver-haired, furry-browed expert on human relationship that I am purported to be. All that I do is to sit around and observe people around me. ( Applause! Applause! Holy Me! What modesty from the great skunk! ) . You see, to be a judge on human relationships and behaviour, you need to have an above average emotional quotient. Well, my emotional quotient is a zero drawn with a huge diameter. My emotional quotient, emotional remainder, emotional dividend, divisor - everything is a zero. I fall into a rare category of humans called 'Emotional Retards' - an oh so lovely bunch of people who are devoid of all emotions (except a few bare basic unmentionable ones), and bereft of all sentiments and sensitivities that are found in normal human beings.

To illustrate, let me tell you a fact about my self. The last time I cried or had moist eyes was 7 years ago. I can almost hear gasps from the other side of the computer screen, particularly coming from the women. "How can you not have moist eyes even once in seven years?!! You bloody robot!" , - I can hear them say. Now of course, women have tear glands that resemble the Ganges, I am not trying to compete with them, but the fact is even men cry. Yes, men do cry. According to a highly scientific survey I recently conducted, I found that an average male cried at least once a year (I have excluded Karan Johar, Roger Federer and my business manager from this survey- these men cry or are made to cry at a far more regular basis). So, once a year is the statistical tear-jerk figure for the men. ( The tear jerk figure for women is slightly higher - they only cry 365 times in a year and 366 times if it is a leap year) . Mind you, even on that one solitary occasion, men don't cry openly. Most of them lock themselves up inside a restroom and bawl their eyes out- often hugging the commode for comfort. I do this once in 7 years- so you can imagine my levels of emotional retardation.

Let me further my case. A couple of years back, a movie called Taare Zameen Par hit the Indian screens. Taare Zameen Par (TZP), a melodrama about a dyslexic little boy, his mentor, his parents, his classmates, his Sony Playstation, his pet alligator... -- is considered, till date, to be one of the most emotional tear-jerkers to hit the Indian screens. Such was the emotional impact of this movie, that the theatres screening this movie often had little puddles of human tears in their lobby-floors. ( Someone had told me that the puddles were genuine human tears- I had initially thought that it was dog urine). It was a common sight to see little boys jumping and splashing around in the puddles of tears and little girls trying to sail boats made of paper in them. Such was the impact. The scene inside the theatre was no better - it resembled a mass funeral- everybody was crying. Everyone, regardless of their gender, were going boo-hoo, sob-sob, waaaa, sniff sniff, mumme mumme etc, watching TZP :'-( Everyone except me that is. Sample the scene inside the theatre :

Protagonist (on screen) : "Boo hoo.. *Sob* Sob* ... * Sniff *" :'-(

The other protagonist (on screen) : "Boo hoo.. *Sob* Sob* ... * Sniff *" :'-(

Obese Aunty in red saree sitting next to me : "Boo hoo.. *Sob* Sob* ... * Sniff * So sad" :'-(

Her equally hideous daughter in the next seat : "Boo hoo.. *Sob* Sob* ... * Sniff *" :'-(

The old man in sweater : "Boo hoo.. *Sob* Sob* ... * Sniff *" :'-(

Everybody else : "Boo hoo.. *Sob* Sob* ... * Sniff *" :'-(

Me : "Hey, why does this fucking popcorn have no salt? "

Get the point? That is my emotional sensitivity for you. So that's why I say that I have no authority to write on this subject per se. But since one of my primary pre-occupation is to sit and look around at people, I have, through the years, grown tiny invisible antennae on either sides of my head that senses and gauges the way men and women behave in general.

Men are logical, decisive and practical. Women are caring, nurturing and emotional. Ta da , Ta da , Ta daaaaaaa!!! That's the breaking news-cum-enlightenment bulletin of the day for you. OK troops let's move on. Well, as I said, that's how men and women are wired up. Like it or not, agree or disagree, and discounting a few exceptions here and there - men and women always fit the aforementioned stereotypes to the T. Now its none of my business to pass judgements as to which stereotype is better - I'd rather spend my time scratching my butt than enter a boring gender superiority debate. But what interests me is the way the sexes stick to their stereotypes in whatever they do. Its only when the Mr. Logical clashes with the Ms. Emotional, does the stadium come alive, spark off fireworks and gives ~~jobless fuckers~~ interested spectators like me something to write about.

Men can be logical and practical to the point of crass even during their rare attempts to touch upon emotive topics. Here is a sample of a one such conversation between a group of male friends:

Guy 1: "Hey dude, do you ever get sad for no reason and cry" ?

Guy 2 ( responding) : "Me, cry? Asshole what do you think? I am some sort of a sissy bed-wetter? "

Guy 3 : " Of course, you can be a sissy bed-wetter. Maybe you should buy Huggies diapers for yourself... "

Guy 4 : "...Or borrow your girlfriend's Whisper napkins"

Guy 1 : Muwahahahaha...

Guy 2 : Muwahahahaha....

Guy 3 : Muwahahahaha....

Guy 4 : Muwahahahaha...

Women on the other hand can be highly emotional even while discussing something as direct and logical as Mathematics.Here is a sample of a one such conversation between a group of female friends:

Girl 1 : OK, everybody 2 plus 2 is 4. I think I am sure... Umm.. yes, I am sure.

Girl 2 : Wow, really?

Girl 3 : Oh so sweet na....

Girl 4 : Yeah really sweet. 4 is such a lucky digit na? It can never be lonely because it always has two and two together.

Girl 1 : Awwwww...

Girl 2 : Awwwww...

Girl 3 : Awwwww...

Girl 4 : Awwwww...

Now, it's not that these behavioural stereotypes have been existing since, like, yesterday. Men and women have been the way that they are, since times immemorial. Why, the behavioral tendencies can be dated way back to the times of Adam and Eve. History tells us that Adam just couldn't stop being the logical being that he was - and Eve couldn't help being the nurturing soul that she used to be. ( I print my own history books and no I'm not gonna show them to you alright?) . Sparks used to fly whenever their personalities clashed. Here is a sample of one such conversation:

Eve: "Adam, sweetheart, here... have an apple"

Adam: "Naaa... I prefer jackfruit"

Eve: "Now where will I go searching for a jackfruit tree? Have the apple na, sweetheart... Its good for you"

Adam: "I'm sorry. I can't have that apple. There may be maggots inside it and its logical that I may fall ill"

Eve: "Do you want me to wash it? Or do you want to make apple-pie instead?"

---10 minutes of silence.... And then again,---

Eve: "Adam, sweetheart, here... have an apple"

Adam: "I told ya lady, I don't want the apple. I don't like apples. Period.D'ya hear that?"

Eve: "Ohh... you don't like apple ?"

Adam: "That is correct. I don't like apple"

Eve(sarcastically) : "Would you prefer an iPod then?"

Adam: "Wow... okay!!!"

Eve: #@$%*^@$

See? Natural behaviour differences between the genders. It's an obvious fact. Along the same lines, it's also a fact that a woman demands undivided attention, perennial love and unadulterated affection from her man all the time - whilst a man can be distracted with other things and may not be able to reciprocate as per her expectations. Even this behavioral tendency of the genders can be traced back to the times of Adam and Eve:

Eve: "Adam..."

Adam: "Yeah..?"

Eve: "You don't pay attention to me?"

Adam: "Of course I do, dear"

Eve: "You don't care for me?"

Adam: "Of course I do, dear"

Eve: "You don't love me?"

Adam: "Of course I do, dear"

Eve: "I don't believe you. Tell me, is there any other girl in your life?"

Adam: "Who else can be there? Muwahahahahaha"

Eve: *Hmmpffffff*

Another behaviour tendency of the sexes is that a man always looks for action with a fixed goal in his mind, while a woman is also goal-oriented, but in a slightly different, roundabout way. Ditto was the case with Adam and Eve:

Adam: "Eve, sweety, come lets go out hunting"

Eve: "But its cold outside..."

Adam: "I know dear, but we have to hunt down something to fill our stomachs. Besides, we are new to the planet and we gotta go out and explore..."

Eve: "So, we have to go out?"

Adam: "Yes"

Eve: "But I have nothing to wear... "

Adam : #$@*#$"

Since 'Nonsense Aplenty' is such a widely revered forum and has a social responsibility(muwahahahahaha... oops sorry, just couldn't contain the laugh here... tee hee) towards its readers, I would like to offer some of my two bit advice to the sexes. The intention of my unsolicited advice that's coming up, is to help the sexes understand each other a little better. Mind you,I am not here to re-write the law of sexes. I am only here to ~~make fun and laugh hysterically~~ provide analysis and offer food for thought. I don't expect gender behaviour to transform overnight. I don't expect an average woman to understand the vagaries of the off-side rule in soccer, or for an average man to know about the primary causes of post-menopausal depression. All I am hoping is that my advice can help the sexes co-exist with more happiness and less friction, and as Jackson said, make the world a better place.

So in that spirit, here is my advice to the men and women folk. ( I know my regulars readers will be having an evil grin on their face by now :-) . They know whats coming up. Of course, some of them also feel that my arguments are totally biased, my logic is completely skewed, and that I should quit blogging, switch over to agriculture and make love to bullocks. Well, maybe they are right - but lets take that debate to a later day. I have an important social responsibility right now) .

Advice for Men:

1) Avoid picking your nose while in the company of your girl, no matter how desperate the urge or how great the twitch. If you really have to, then politely ask her first "Sweetheart, could you please look away while I pick my nose? "

2) Please remember all the important dates and anniversaries. Never forget your girl's birthday. Have the Intel guys install an extra chip in your brain if you have to - but don't forget the dates. And keep assuring your partner that you remember her upcoming birthday. - "Hey sweety, your birthday is on 32nd March right? See I remember" .

3) Work on your romance. Work on your mush-talk. Learn to woo her, sing her romantic songs. If you are confident that your voice doesn't sound like a donkey on its deathbed braying out its last prayers - then congratulations you can consider yourself a singer. Well, the track "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Sharabi" can be a good start- but its not exactly a very romantic song.

4) Take a bath once in a week, you idiots. A woman likes a man with good personal hygiene. Using a soap while bathing can be advantageous.

5) Never let your girl catch you ogling at other women's breasts. If you really have to ogle, then do it discreetly - but if she catches you, don't tell me that I didn't warn you of the consequences.

Advice for Women:

1) Never interrupt your man during a cricket/football/tennis/kabaddi/ludo match. Don't mouth lines like "Come honey lets go shopping for carpets,curtains,cutlery... " - when India is playing Australia and need 15 runs from 11 balls.

2) Please don't force your man to wear baby pink colored shirts/T-shirts. Even though there may be exceptions, a vast majority of men revolt against wearing pink. You may succeed in forcing your way and have him wear pink, but that will only leave him with a scowl on his face and end up making him feel like a cross between George Micheal and Elton John.

3) Please don't cry at anything and everything. I know, your crying ability is your ultimate weapon. It will bring any rigid man down on his knees and instantly wean him away from his trusted path of logic. But should you cry at everything girl? Cry sparingly, cry intelligently, and cry only when needed. Don't cry for stupid reasons like "Oh my pet grass-hopper died today" or mouth even stupider lines like "Boo hoo I myself don't know why I am crying- will let you know when I find out"

4) While it is your right to take your man out for shopping with you, but please hurry up with your shopping, finish things quickly and show some mercy on your poor man. I mean, please don't take half a millennium to shop for a pair of earrings. I can tell from personal experience. I went out shopping with this female friend of mine last week. I was crew cut and clean-shaved when I entered the shopping mall, and when I came out of it, I had hair that had grown up to my shoulders and a beard that extended till my torso.

Alrighty ladies and gentlemen. I hope the purpose of the post is met ( providing useless enlightenment that is) and I pray that less sparks will fly from now on. *Sigh* I know that I've got to be a really big jackass to hope like that.

Love,

Parry.

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Afterword by Dale Carnegie.

Parikshith Kumar had promised that he would pay me $100 for writing a foreword to his post. He is yet to pay and I have not seen him ever since. Could anyone please tell me where he lives? When I last called him up asking for my promised remuneration, he said "Jaa gaand marao bhutnike" and slammed the phone down. I know that was in Hindi, I couldn't understand it fully, but it certainly wasn't very gracious of him. Could someone please tell me where he stays. I need the money and I...

The Writer is Blocked...

2009-03-21T12:45:00.033+05:30

Writer's block...

All writers have suffered from it. Leo Tolstoy has suffered from it. P.G Wodehouse, Ian Fleming, Valmiki, Jeffery Archer- they all must have suffered from 'Writer's block' at some point or other during their glorious writing careers. Well its now the turn of one more writer in this illustrious lineage to suffer from the condition - Yours truly, Me!!!

Before, I trudge my ass further on this issue, a definition of 'Writer's block' is due:

Definition: Writer's block is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity. Writer's block can also be a hindrance even when the writer feels that they already have a story in mind but can get no further than part of that story.

(Note: I have copy-pasted the definition from Wikipedia. I have writer's block and can't write - Remember? )

I noticed that I've been hindered by writer's block since this morning. Coming to terms with it was a strange, unfamiliar feeling. I arrived at my computer this morning, all pumped up and feeling the usual urge to blog. My plan was to write a classic blogpost on a very serious issue that I hold very close to my heart - " Investment and Financial Advice for Jersey Cows" . After all, I had spent days after days doing my research on this topic. I had visited hundreds of cattle-farms, interviewed millions of cows about their preferred investment and money-management methodologies. For the record, I found that 62% of the jersey cows invested their money in equity stocks, 10 % of them invested in bonds. 8 % of the cows chomped at and swallowed all of their money, because they found the taste of paper too good to resist. 10% of the cows stashed away their money in the nearest pile of hay-stack and 5% of the poor bovines hid their savings in their dung. And there were 5% of utterly stupid cows, who blindly handed over their savings to their respective doodhwalas, trusting in him to make a secure investment on their behalf. And the doodhwala went ahead and just blew away all of that money in the nearest strip-club. So all in all, I had seen that there was gross financial mismanagement among the cows - and I wanted to write an article on my blog, that provided the poor animals with sound investment advice . It was a noble cause. But horror of horrors - before I could even type half a key, I discovered that writer's block had struck me. I couldn't think about a vowel to write. I realized that I just couldn't get the neurons in my brain to shimmy out of snooze mode and get them flowing as usual. I am sad and helpless- I feel guilty of having let down all the cash cows, and I am devastated. :'-(

Come to think of it, this is not the first time I have been affected with 'writer's block'. But calamity, as they say, always strikes in the most unwelcome of times. I clearly remember during my engineering college days, I was always bothered with writer's block during the exams. What an irony. I mean here I am-bang in the middle of an examination - and the writer's block virus would make its way into the hall, zero in on me, discreetly enter my brain and wallop the neurons into a state of inactivity. So the next time you have the opportunity to see my engineering report cards, please don't blindly attribute my abysmal grades to a lazy unprepared bum. Its the writer's block virus that has to be blamed ( Dad, are you reading this!?? What does it take to convince you, huh?) Here is an excerpt from an engineering answer paper of mine from the past. You can see writer's block in its full glory.

Question 17) Explain the computer database normalization process in brief and banian ( 5 marks)

Answer: The ...

I really did try to get past the 'The' , but I was helpless, the stupid writer's block virus was already at work. You know I often think, why is that only us- the poor writers- have to be affected with this condition all the time. Its so unfair. Why doesn't writer's block affect, say, a traffic cop when he is filling out your traffic violation form? Just picture this - the cop catches you riding your two- wheeler without a helmet and trousers. He stops you in the middle of the road. You try your best to smooth-talk or bribe your way out of the situation - but fail miserably. The cop is filling out your violation ticket. Suddenly he says 'Oooh I have writer's block, I am not able to write this thing any further. So go away young man, be free, have a beer or two and ride away happily." Sad. It seldom happens with those cops. But a well-meaning writer who earnestly wants to help the cows, has to remain tied-down and frustrated with the condition.

One of the first persons I confided with and broke the news of my sad condition, was my roommate. In bachelor lifestyle, your roommates are always the default, first-in-line victims of all your actions and reactions. My roommate, the bakra that he is, always happens to be the first person to read the new posts on my blog. That is because, as soon as I hit the 'Publish' button on Blogger, I make it a point to scream into his eardrums and say "Hey dude, I have a new blog post. Read it, read it... you get to read it first". I do this even at 3 in the morning. My roommate's reaction is usually the same. He jolts awake from his sleep, gives me a big, warm smile and says "Oh wow, thank you... I'm so happy and privileged, you rotten asshole" . You see, he is a true fan. Anyways, I told him that I was suffering from writer's block and would be unable to update my blog for now. His reaction was that of genuine sympathy. First, he jumped to the ceiling in euphoric joy. Then he ran out of the building in Archimedes style and distributed sweets to the entire neighborhood. I don't know where he is right now - I think he's probably on a pilgrimage tour of all the temples in Bangalore, offering devout thanksgiving prayers. Why do I need enemies when I have friends like him. Bah!

I went to the office yesterday, still reeling under the effect of writer's block. I am thorough professional. Needless to say, my block has affected my coding ability too. You want to know how my day was eh? Here is a sample of a conversation between me and my boss.

Boss: "So Parikshith. Have you finished your code?"
Me: "Yep. Here it is"
Boss: "Heck, what is this? I thought I had asked you to write a code to streamline our business domain critical processes"
Me: "Yes, sir."
"But the code that you've written here calculates the average turnaround time required to seduce and mate with Paris Hilton!! ?? "
"Yes, sir"
"Yes my ass. Enough of your tomfoolery. Where is the original code?"
"I didn't write it sir."
"Why the hell not?"
"I am having a writer's block"
"You what?"
"A writer's block. The inability to think of writing anything"
"Oh, I see... writer's block eh?"
"Yes, sir"
"Then, I think I won't be able to sign your paycheck for this month..."
"Why not, sir"
"I have writer's block too..."

Well, nobody understands. Idiots. Anyway,I visited a doctor, next. I was hoping at least he'll be able to diagnose and offer a cure for my writer's block. Here's what happened...

Me: "Doctor, doctor... I am in big trouble"
Doc: "Sit down, young man. Just calm down. Tell me your problem"
Me: "I am suffering from writer's block"
Doc: "What?"
Me: "Writer's block"
"Writer's block? Now what is that? I think I must've bunked my classes at medical school when that was being taught"
"Oh no!!"
"But relax young man, tell me what exactly happens to you during this writer's block?"
"I can't think of anything to write about. I am unable to write anything"
"Then stay with me for a few days and write out all my prescriptions na. That should cure you"
"No no... I am not that kind of writer. I am a creative writer"
"What do you write?"
"A blog called Nonsense Aplenty"
"Hmmm... can I have a look at it?"
"Sure"

I gave the link of my blog to the doctor. He finally emerged from his chamber, an hour later, looking a bit hassled.

Me: "Yes, doctor?"
Doc: "I read your blog..."
Me: "Really?"
Doc: "Yes. And I think I have a diagnosis of your condition"
"Oh God! Thank you so much. So you think you can cure me, doc?"
"Yes. Let me write you a prescription. Here, have this twice daily. You may not need this for more than a day"
"Oh, thanks, doc. Err... I can't read your handwriting. What's this you have prescribed for me?"
"Rat poison..."

No more comments, ladies and gentlemen. But I shouldn't be complaining too much. Hey, everybody goes through writer's blocks. But it is the literary world that really stands to lose. Lose a lot, really. I mean, God only knows how many potentially great books have gone unwritten, unpublished, just because their respective authors suffered from serious bouts of writer's block. Some of these books, that went unpublished as a result of this situation are:

"Oral Hygiene" - by Emran Hashmi
"How To Play a Cover Drive" - by Munaf Patel
"124 Ways to Press a Computer Key and Get Stinkin' Rich" - by Bill Gates
"An Expert's Guide to Virginity" - by Paris Hilton
"World Peace" - by Osama bin Laden

Anyways, this writer's block is not allowing me to write anymore. I hope to get over it as soon as possible to get back to my full-fledged writing form. But please be patient, dear people. It may not happen immediately- my chances of a recovery right now is as bright as finding living bacteria in dinosaur dung. But, as Arnold Schwhatsispelling said in Terminator - "I'll be back. Where else can I go, baby? "

Love,
Parry.

Pappu Can't Cook Saala....

2009-03-01T10:19:00.049+05:30

I suffer from 'cookslexia' . For the benefit of those scratching their heads and butts in perplexion, cookslexia is 'cooking dyslexia' - the sheer inability to cook. It is the condition where a man just cant cook even if someone were to point a Colt .32 at his thick skull. It is a condition where the poor male cant distinguish between sugar and salt, between tomato soup and tomato puree, or for that matter cant tell a jar of Glucose powder from a bottle of cocaine , just because they happen to appear similar. While inside a kitchen, the cookslexic male feels like Alice in Wonderland , going oooh and aaah at everything around him ( Oooh... is that thing over there really a potato peeler?..Wow! What do they use it for?)

I've been suffering from cookslexia all my life. Till date I don't know how to boil water, forget making a glass of lemonade. My room is reverberating with loud sounds of 'Thwack' - that's all you people collectively slapping your foreheads... I know I know... But, sadly, I still remain a cookslexic. All through my life I have survived gluttoning on Mom's cooking, roommates' cooking, roommates' girlfriends' cooking, inadequately subsidised office food, Hotel Swadisht Aahar, Kakke Da Dhaba, roadside thrash cans etc. Make no mistake, I am not trying to howl away my condition on the blogosphere in vain... There have been moments where I have tried to pull up my pants, turn a blind eye to my disability, and still enter a kitchen and try to cook. Unfortunately, the only person who had the courage, conviction and the will to taste a sample of the hotch-potch delicacies that I prepared was Golu - the streetside doggie. Even Golu used to refuse my dishes and take pity on my condition sometimes. "Bow wow, Parikshith..." he used to say to me "... you poor human being, you will have to eat that all that stuff yourself? Oh poor you, you don't have to. Here, let me offer a share of my dinner... Look what I picked from the garbage can for you. Have this, this should taste better than the stuff you made". Golu is a nice dog.

Anyway, despite my disability, I strongly believe that there are times when I can cook well, regardless of what others think. There are occasions when the dishes that I had prepared turned out to be truly tasty and mouth-watering. Since these occasions were very rare, I have photographed some of the excellent ones that I prepared, which I am proudly sharing with you all. Have a look.

Masala Dosa.

Green Salad

Pizza

Butter Chicken

(I'm sorry, but the chicken flew away before I could photograph it)

My female friends are quite aghast at my cooking skills, or rather the lack of it. They don't understand my fight with cookslexia. I have heard them say "That Parikshith, how can he be so dumb in cooking yaaa... and he doesn't even know how to switch on the gas stove. I mean how yaaa?? All he knows is computers, sports and sex" . Point noted, dear ladies. Well, speaking of sex, there is a gross misconception among womenfolk that sex tops a man's list of desires. That is incorrect. Sex comes in at a close #2. It is food that occupies slot #1. If you need proof, then go approach a genuinely hungry man at lunchtime and ask him if he wants to enjoy a dressed salad or an undressed Paris Hilton. You will always see him beggingly opt for the former.

To top my long list of ironies, I am a vegetarian. In other words, I don't eat anything that walks on its legs or crawls on its belly. And I would prefer to leave the fish in lakes, ponds and Oceans rather than convert my stomach into a marine aquarium. Strictly and technically speaking, the only non-vegetarian food I consume is the ubiquitous white liquid that is squirted out of a buffalo's nipples. But I must say, I have a grudging admiration towards the non-vegetarians. Hats off man!, I mean those non-veggies can survive anywhere, anyplace. Even if they were to be shipwrecked and marooned on a remote uninhabited island, they can still survive by eating 'tadpole manchurian' for dinner. But I, oh boy, am a masterpiece, ain't I? Can't eat non-vegetarian, can't cook vegetarian. Ha! Actually, I shudder to think what would happen to me, if my job requires me to be posted long-term in places where the availability of vegetarian food is as scarce as water on Mars. These places include parts of the U.S, Europe or why, even Kerala ( During a recent visit to Kerala, I approached a stranger on the roadside and asked him if there was any pure vegetarian Kerala-style restaurant nearby. He died of a lung failure caused due to excessive laughing) . Thus, common sense says that I should learn to cook. But I cant cook because I am cookslexic.

As I type away, flashbacks of a cookslexic incident from the past come rushing into my mind. It was a romantic evening in the winter of 2004, and I was flirting with a beautiful (read dumb) girl from college, at a swanky neighborhood diner. Like a typical man, I was in my elements, literally on cruise mode, interspersing smooth talk with boastful rants about extra-ordinary qualities that I possessed. Smooth talk included "Hey, isn't it cold in here? Let's go sit on the tandoor to warm things up". Boastful rants included " I have 24-inch biceps, you can't see it because the shirt is kinda thick at the sleeves..." , and " Hey did you know I am an artist too, I helped Leonardo draw Mona Lisa's eyebrows..." etc. etc. I could see from her rolled-up eyes that she was really enjoying my company and getting really impressed with me. And that is when I took it a bit too far. In a moment of pure foolishness, I told her how great a chef I was , and how friends just adored the wonderful dishes that I made. I realized my mistake a split second after I let the last syllable out of my mouth. "Oh shit, you fat-ass" , I silently screamed to myself. And just as I feared, the girl believed me and took up the matter.

Girl: "Wow, oh wow Parry. You cook too? Really haan? Wow, you know I love cooking too".
Me: "Oh nice, same pinch"
Girl: "So what dishes do you prepare? Any good Italian dishes?
Me (thinking in private:) : Italian, yeah right. I don't know how to roll a chapatti here and Mamma mia has reached Italy.
Me (responding) : "Italian, well I know just the pasta. That too only two or three varieties. Its so boring to make pastas, you know. And it is messy to make. Its been long time since I cooked pasta..."
Girl: "Oh... yeah pasta is messy. Hey you know yesterday I was trying to make samosas..."
Me: "Umm... hmmm?..."
Girl: "And I simply am not able to get its stuffing right..."
Me: "Yeah, you should know how to 'stuff it'..."
Girl: "Yeah, and I was trying and... hey do you know how to make samosas? Do you have a recipe?"
Me(thinking in private): No, no, Say no, say no - you moron
Me(responding) : "Yes, definitely."
Girl: "Oh wow! great... Can you share your recipe with me? Pleeeaase? Puh-leease?"
Me(thinking in private) : Last chance, say 'NO' , you idiot
Me(responding) : "Yes, of course! Making samosas is child's play. I know the recipe by-heart" Girl: "Oh thats great. Can you mail me the recipe tomorrow? Puh-leease!"
Me: "Sure"
Girl: " I am soooo happy"
Me(mumbling under my breath) : "And I am soooo fucked"
Girl: "Did you say something?"
Me: "No, was just wondering if I could kiss you"
Girl: "Of course not!"
Me: "Thank you."
Girl: "Ok, don't forget to send me the recipe tomorrow. Awww, you're so cute".. Nighty 'night.
Me: "Err... OK, bye"

I walked back home silently that night, fiercely resisting the urge to bang my head against every concrete structure in the vicinity. Darn,what a spot had I put myself into? Now this was a queer situation- I could not ask my folks or friends for the recipe- they would have laughed themselves to the moon and ridiculed me silly had they they got to know the reason. And I couldn't Google for it, as the girl wanted something original from me. Darn my honesty. Now- men would understand this bit of emotion- I had pride at stake. I mean here was a girl who had asked me for something , and was I going to wander about town asking for help? Certainly not, sir. I was going to do this myself. I had to do this myself. Sadly, that's what happens... when you mix boisterous male ego with unnecessary bravado and an unadulterated dose of stupidity- what you get is a dangerous moron like me. So, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote her the recipe myself. The original, delicious samosa recipe, straight from the kitchens of yours truly. I think I did a good job, I am sharing the recipe that I had sent her with you all. Have a look.

Recipe: Samosa.

Ingredients: Nothing specific, any choice of ingredients should be fine, as long as they all add up to make a samosa.

Description:

1) Take a clean pan.

2) Politely greet the spider and promptly chase away the cockroaches hiding inside the pan.

3) Pour some oil into the pan and heat it. Any oil should be fine- cooking, lubricating, sewing etc.

4) Make sure that the oil heats for a few minutes. Be patient.

5) Add 1/2 teaspoon of whatever powder that is in that little box on the shelf.. yeah that one. And then add 1/4 tablespoon of that whatchamamacallit green colored thing over there into the mixture. Gently keep stirring the pan.

6) And then pray, pray and pray. Pray to the Almighty. Light candles, chant verses, do whatever, but pray real hard.

7) If your prayers have successfully registered in the Internet servers of Heaven, then a blinding flash of white light will appear from the skies. And voila! the samosa will be found ready in the pan.

8) Serve hot.

I mailed her the recipe. Sadly, I never heard from her again. I don't know why. These stupid girls have no courtesy, I tell you. I thought she didn't like my recipe, so to make up, I sent her a lovely bouquet of cauli-flowers. No response, either. *Sob* :-'(

Well, coming back to me, I must say there have been near and dear ones who've tried to extend a hand of help , and made an effort to teach me the art of cooking. Mom was the first person to try, but quickly gave up after I burnt part of her kitchen down. There was however, one dear friend of mine- a fellow bachelor who happened to be a mindblowing cook. Now this guy was a bloody modern day aberration- a bachelor who cooked like a dream. Bah! Anyway, one fine day the great chef decided to take it on himself to teach me, his culinarily illiterate friend, the fine art of cooking. What followed next was a Commando-style training, which included fetching vegetables from the market, learning to wash them ( I always forgot this part) , using a knife in a non Bollywood-style etc. I learnt to deal with the mood swings of a pressure cooker, I went about identifying the right mix of ingredients to make edible food. Slowly and steadily I began to make progress. I started recognizing grocery items and vegetables.... the Radishes, the Beetroots, The Cabbages. I learnt to look at a Lady's finger without exclaiming "Hey no engagement ring, so she should be single!" .

But as they say, all good things must come to an end - and that's exactly what happened to my cooking sojourn. A week later, my trainer friend decided to test my knowledge. The bastard. The task he gave me was simple - "Make a bowl of sambar". That's it... I just had to prepare some sambar without any one's help or supervision. Okey-dokey, I thought. What's sambar for me... a stupid liquid that can be prepared in a flash. I sauntered into the kitchen with the kind of swagger, that would've made people think that I was Mr. Alexander going out to conquer the world. And that's when disaster struck- I had a severe attack of cookslexia. The brain went into screen-saver mode, the hands stayed firmly inside the pockets, and I stared around the kitchen, blank, perplexed, and wondering what the hell were those little boxes of ingredients doing on the kitchen shelf. I regretted the condescending opinion that I accorded to sambar a few minutes back- making sambar now seemed to be an exercise of Herculean magnitude. But I still went ahead and prepared it.

First, I boiled some water in a vessel and waited. And then I waited some more. Just before the water entered into the evaporation mode, I quietly added some yellow and orange colored Holi powder into the vessel. I stirred the mixture with a spoon until the mixture acquired a brilliant color. Then, I plucked some leaves from a nearby tree and added them for garnishing. Voila! My sambar was ready! I thought I had done a decent job. But my trainer buddy, who happened to taste it, certainly didn't think so. In fact, I had a tough time in restraining him from killing himself - he desperately wanted to jump off the terrace when I told him what the recipe was. I don't know why. But anyway, that was the last time I tried cooking.

Ok, now that you have read so far and empathize with my condition ( please suppress those smirks and the tee-hees, will ya?) , I have an earnest appeal to make. This appeal goes out to all the single and eligible ladies reading this post. Doctors say that there is only one possible medical cure for cookslexic men - MARRIAGE!!!! . No, no, I am not trying to be a chauvinistic pig here - this is really a scientific, medical opinion... I can show you the note from the illiterate doctor who diagnosed my condition. Well, all you wonderful ladies out there are so naturally endowed and blessed with extraordinary cooking talent. That is a wonderful, wonderful thing for you ladies to have. And cookslexic men like me need support, care, love, Butter Roti, Green peas masala and gajar ka halwa to survive. So, putting 2 and 2 together, dear Ladies, will anyone of you please marry me?... ( Just a sec, since this is an emotional moment, let me go find some canned tapes containing sounds of 'Awwwwww' to fill the background).

But please be forewarned, dear ladies, please don't get seduced by my rock star looks or my Greek God body. Please always remember that the package called myself, comes with a caveat of being a severely cookslexic moron. But one thing I will promise you. I will eat anything and everything that you make without a murmur of a complaint (at the count of 3, lets all go 'Awwwww'). I promise, I will eat the sandwich prepared by you, even its as burnt as charcoal ( 1-2-3 Awwwwww). I promise I will eat the curry prepared by you even if you've added all the salt from the Arabian sea into it ( 1-2-3 Awwwwww). I promise I will shower you with eloquent praise and sweet kisses, for each dish you've made for me ( 1-2-3 Awwwww) , ...even if the dishes you prepared caused me to spend an entire day in the lavatory (1-2-3 Aww... oops hold on hold on , this is the wrong line to go Awwwww) . So there, thats how it is, dear ladies. I am sure it will be a very long time before medical science discovers a new drug to cure cookslexia, so till then, I am heavily relying on one of you to marry me. :-)

OK, people. I presume the issue is settled, the matter is done and dusted. I have bared my heart, soul and stomach. I am a cookslexic. I guess that's how it will be. I am the Pappu who can't cook. And lets raise a burnt toast to that!

Culinarily yours,
Parry.

*************************** THE END **********************************
**************************** GO HAVE YOUR ASPIRINS*******************

Love Poetry on Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T12:03:00.028+05:30

Today is Valentine's Day. Today is the day when love flows more freely than water out of a municipal tap. Today, couples around the globe express their unconditional love to each other.

As for me, the sworn singleton and the blissful Champion of Indifference, today was just to be another normal, no-fuss day. I had brought home some work from office and had been feverishly typing away on the laptop , getting a particularly stubborn piece of code to work. My style of coding is similar to a trainer trying to tame a dog. The trainer keeps yelling away "Sit doggie, stand doggie... Doggie, handshake" ... and the doggie casually looks away, wags
its tail, pees on the adjacent lamp-post and goes to sleep. Thats how code behaves with software engineers like me.

Knock-knock Knock-knock. The sudden knocking on the door rudely interrupted me from my coding pleasure. Knock-knock-knock. The knocking grew more incessant. Irritated, I put my laptop aside, went up to door, and opened it. At the door stood two strange men/creatures who looked something like this.

"Yes?" I asked quizzically. "Who do you want?"

No answer.

"I said what do you want, who are you?"

No answer again. I was beginning to get irritated.

"Are you a kabadiwala (guy who collects thrash) or something? Or are you here to sell credit-cards? " I asked, hoping to get some reply.

"My name is Valentine... Saint Valentine" said the old guy, slowly.

"Excuse me?" I blurted out. I thought I didn't hear properly. "Who did you say you were?"

"St. Valentine. " the old man repeated.

"St. Valentine, who?" I asked, unsure

"The man after whom Valentine's Day is named and celebrated. I am the man who made Feb 14 famous" said the old man. He had a confident air about himself that was impossible to miss.

" Ooooh... that Valentine" I exclaimed in surprise. " But err... would you still mind if I see some identification please?" I asked.

The old man whipped out his driver's license, a ration card and a voter's card. All bore his name & address - Mr. Saint Valentine, Rome, Italy.

"Wow, so nice to meet you Mr. err. St. Valentine" I said. " But I thought you were dead!?"

"Oh no, I am very much alive" the man said, shaking his head. "It's just that I was in hiding"

"Why?" I asked, unable to understand.

"Too much publicity" he remarked. "I dont like publicity one bit. If I show up too much, then Archies Gallery will start pestering me to be their brand ambassador"

"Oooohh... " I said, enlightened.

I then looked at the other creature next to him

"Who the heck is that, I mean what is that..... tooth fairy??" I asked, pointing at the creature

"That is Cupid" replied Valentine.

"Excuse me? What? Stupid...?"

"He is Cupid" said Valentine. " He is from Italy too... He is the Roman God of Love. A buddy of mine... we often hang out and have pizza together"

"God of Love, eh?... I see... That explains his wings. But what is he doing with a bow and arrow? Discarded from the national archery team or something? " I asked, unable to hide my sarcasm

"The bow and arrow... " explained St. Valentine "... is his symbol, his weapon. He uses the borrow and arrow to spread love"

"How?" I asked

" Nothing special. He just aims his bow and arrow at a person and shoots it to inspire and arouse erotic love in that person" said St. Valentine

"Erotic love? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. We have a fancy porn industry out here to arouse erotic love. Why does he want to keep shooting arrows at people?" I said, bursting into an uncontrollable laugh

"Not just erotic love, fool" said Valentine in a serious tone. " But even the simple, non-sex love too"

"Oh, I see... But pardon me, what's with his attire? I mean, why is he wearing a thong? Is he gay or something" I asked

"Shut up. Not another word against my friend. And no, he is not gay" replied St. Valentine

I kept silent. It had been a puzzling last ten minutes for me to speak more.

"Now aren't you going to let us in?" said Valentine, breaking the silence. "Or are we gonna do all the talking at the door" ?

I ushered them into my room, getting more puzzled by the minute. Being the ever-gracious Indian host, I even ordered some pizzas from Pizza-Hut to keep their Italian taste buds happy. In between all the munching and drinking , we shared interesting bits of conversations... some of which I am highlighting below.

St. Valentine: "Nice Pizza you guys have"

Me: " I am glad you liked it, Saint"

St. Valentine: "Yeah. The topping is fab. What's this thing, paneer, eh? Delicious"

Me: "Ummm... hmmm"

"So, Parikshith... do you know why the two of us are here at your apartment?"

"You never told me"

"We'll tell you. But first, do you realize what day is it today?"

"Yep. It's Feb 14th. Valentine's Day"

"Ahem! Do you realize what you should be doing on Valentine's Day?"

"Oh I am so sorry... Happy Birthday to you... Happy birthday to you.. Happy B'day dear Valent"

"Cut it, idiot. It's not my birthday today"

"Oh ok. What do you think I should be doing on this day, then?"

"Take a look around, young man. Look outside your window. You will find couples deeply in love and painting the town pink and red. There's love all around. There are roses, balloons and ribbons everywhere"

"Yeah. Even the garbage dump would smell of love today."

"And look at you. You are cooped up inside this room and working on that dumb computer project of yours. I mean, what is that stuff anyway.... Java? .Net? VC++ ?

"Neither. It is COBOL"

"Ha ha ha ha ha... COBOL? Ha ha ha ha... They still use COBOL? Ha ha ha ha. I mean, they've been using COBOL every since I was in my nappies... ha ha ha ha"

"Do not poke fun at my livelihood"

"Ha ha.. OK, I'm sorry. So the point is you are sitting locked inside your room on Feb 14th"

"What else do you want me to do? And why the hell are you guys here anyway?"

"Me and Cupid have come here to make you fall in love"

"What???!!!"

"Yes. We want you to fall in love. That is our mission of coming here"

"Are you serious?"

"What, you think we came half way across the globe to kid ourselves? Plus, we came by a British Airways flight. You realize how painful that is? They misplaced all our baggage. They had misplaced Cupid's bow-and-arrow too. But we were determined to come here and meet you"

"To make me fall in love?"

"Yes, to make you fall in love"

So it had come down to this. I had never believed or been in real love for the 25 years of my life and then one fine day, I find these two ambassadors of romance hell-bent on making me fall in love. Anyway, the conversation continued...

St. Valentine: "Do you feel no love, young man? Look into your heart and tell me what do you see?"

Me: "Arteries, veins, ventricles, auricles and lots of blood. If you want more details, then I need to have an endoscopy done."

St. Valentine: "Never mind. So tell me. Is there anyone you like? Anyone special you have in your sights?

Me: "Ummm... yeah... there is this girl. But no love-schmove. Heck, I have not even spoken to her. I see her everyday in the bus. She's pretty, she's got beautiful hair and this really big pair of err.... eyes. "

St. Valentine: "Perfect!"

Me: "Perfect, what?"

"She's gotta be the one for you, Parikshith."

"Heck no. There's nothing...I mean I dont love her or anything. "

"You leave that to us"

"Shit"

"Don't worry. Now lets see, how do you express your feeling. What special talent do you have?"

"I play excellent table-tennis. And I can eat noodles using 4 forks simultaneously"

"Shut up. Oh yes, I got it. You write decently. Why don't you write her a love poem?"

"Write her a love poem? Have you gone completely mad? "

"Not at all. Write her a beautiful, mushy, romantic love poem. Buy some tiny ,red heart-shaped cushions.... And a little teddy bear, lots of lovely chocolates. Gift wrap all of them together and give it to her"

"Err... wouldn't she gift-wrap her chappal to me in return? "

"No. She won't. Let us be optimistic. Now write the poem"

"Write a love poem.Yeah right. You think I am a mushy adolescent? I am frickin' 25 now"

"Why not? Why not think like an adolescent and let the love flow?"

"Adolescence was the time when I thought that the beauty of a girl was directly proportional to the size of her boobs and inversely proportional to the length of her skirt"

"Ha ha, you pervert. Don't you believe the same even now?"

"Oh no no... Not at all. I am all grown up now. I have learnt to respect women and all that..."

"Anyway, don't digress from the issue. Write the love poem"

"Damn you. Ok fine I'll write it. What next, you want me to do prior literature survey by reading Mills & Boons?

"Not needed. You have it in you to write."

"And who will convey my letter of love to her? Will you give it to her?"

"I am St. Valentine, for Christ's sake... not an American Express courier boy. But anyway, yours is a special case. So I will ask Cupid to hand over the letter to your girl"

"Ok. Wow. Thank you... I mean, I am honored that you've come all the way from North Pole to do this for me"

" I don't come from North Pole, you moron, Santa Claus does. Anyway you better start writing the poem now. If you waste one more minute, I will ask Cupid to shoot an arrow straight up your ass"

So now it had come down to this. I was supposed ( or rather threatened) to write romantic poetry straight from my heart to woo the girl. With a sigh, I stared penning the poem. I've tried my best and I believe I have put in true, warm and genuine feelings of love. I am sharing the poem that I wrote, with all of you. Have a look at it:

I sit here, putting words to paper
To express my love to thee
I don't know why the heck I'm doing it
When I could've downloaded e-cards for free.

Maybe I love your smile
Maybe I love your eyes
Or maybe it's your posterior
Or the lovely, shapely thighs

You lend a helping hand
You lead a caring life
When Mary had a little lamb,
Weren't you the midwife?

My heart is beaten to pulp
My soul smashed to smithereens
I shed tears for you
Sometimes aided by glycerine.

With me you stay, night and day
Joys will be plus, sorrows will be minus
I promise I'll keep trouble away
Just like Norton anti-virus

My pockets are empty
I so wish I could buy you a rose
But my horse just lost the Derby
At the darned, stupid race-course

My love will grow on you
Slowly into your heart I will encroach
I will cuddle up to you, I will snuggle up to you
Just like a cute little baby cockroach

You'll have my undivided attention
For you I will long, care and wait
But not today honey, the match is on
Oh darn! India is 134 for 8

Do you love me too?
Do you find me handsome?
Please say yes, please say yes
This gay archer has held me to ransom

Into the sunset let us walk
Letting out a carefree hum
Sing a song, both together
Dum-titi..... dum-titi...... Titi-titi-dum!

That is it. I had written my first ode to love. I held up the piece of paper and triumphantly handed it over to St. Valentine to get his feedback. He took one look at it, stared up Heavenwards, let out a yelping scream and fell down to the ground unconscious. I dont know whether it was due to de-hydration or if it had something to do with my poem. Anyway let me try to revive the Saint and find out. Meanwhile, on his behalf, I would like to wish everybody a "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY"
With Love, literally,
Parry.

Hit-wicket!!

2009-02-05T00:02:00.026+05:30

Greetings!

This post is about cricket. No, not the the little green insect that goes chirpy -chirpy- cheep -cheep, but about the game. The Game...

Precautions:

1) Dosage: 1 paragraph at a time. Continuous reading of the post may cause violent behaviour (like wanting to kill the author)
2) Store the web page in a cool, dark, safe place, like err.. the junk mail folder.

3) If irritation and symptoms(like brain numbness) continue even a week after reading, please consult a physician or the local undertaker.

4) Keep out of the sight of children. I don't want little kids to be inspired by my writing and later ask me to author their school text-books.

5) If you like the game of cricket, then this post is recommended anyway. It will drive you so insane, that you may start finding even Duleep and Irani Trophy matches interesting.

6) If you don't like the game of cricket, even then the post is recommended for you. By the end of it, you'd wish that you had rather spent your time watching a game of cricket instead.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even if a space alien were to visit the Indian atmosphere, he/she/it would be overwhelmed by the following which the game of cricket gets in India. Visiting India and not recognizing the game of cricket is akin to going to Siberia and wondering if the white thing strewn all over the place is snow or salt. In a country, which presents a myriad, kaleidoscopic offering of people,cultures, religions and languages - cricket happens to be a single, unifying craze.

I was born a few months after Kapil Dev had held aloft the World Cup in 1983 , so unfortunately couldn't get to watch that epic Final match live in the stadium. My cricket crazy Dad was apparently hell-bent on naming me Kapil Dev, but relented only after my Mom dissuaded him from doing so. "What if he grows up to be a smuggler?" Mom is learnt to have asked Dad. "Would that name suit him then?" (I wonder how Parikshith Kumar would be a suitable name for a smuggler either, but then that is a different story.)

I too grew up with dreams of playing cricket for India. As a child, I too dreamt of adorning the Team India colors. Like any average teenaged boy in India, I too dreamt of playing cricket in front of packed-to-capacity crowds in large stadiums. I too dreamt of hitting big, huge sixes that would soar high into the skies, thud against Jupiter and fall back plonk down on the ground. I too dreamt of being a rich, sporting celebrity having endorsement deals worth millions of dollars and canoodling hot, smouldering babes, who were again worth a million dollars.

Unfortunately, many dreams go bust when you wake up and rub your eyes in the morning. My cricketing dream was also a similar one. I came to realize ( in my teens I think) that had it not been for my lack of skills in batting, bowling and fielding , I would have certainly made it to the Indian cricket team.

1) My batting: I had an elegant stance alright, and a stylish backlift to go with it. I used to execute my strokes with an almighty flourish of the bat. However, for all my panache and glory, whenever I hit a cover-drive or a square-cut, the ball never travelled a millimeter beyond silly-point fielder. So much for my ferocious hitting. Never the one to be coyed down, I switched over to bowling.

2) My bowling: I would've classified myself as an orthodox off-spinner. I had a classical high arm action, a decent wrist position, and a run-up to the crease that would have even had a Cheetah nodding its head in approval. Poetry in motion till now. However, there was a slight problem thereafter. Whenever I used to send down my off-spinners, the ball would always pitch two kilometers wide of the batsman. On either sides. And sometimes, my off-spinners would sail right over the batsman's head and land outside the opposite boundary rope. Just a tiddly little problem with my sense of direction, but the ball always spun as intended. I tried to reason with my coach, but he would hear none of it.

3) My fielding: My coach always made me field at the deep mid-wicket position. Not that I had a strong throwing arm or something, but he feared that my apathetic cricketing skills would spread to others like an infection. I still fielded in the deep with great fervor. However, there was one small problem. There was this all-girls school a few metres beyond the deep-midwicket boundary. Often in the middle of a match, when no one was watching, I used to quietly sneak out of the ground and visit the girls school. What do you expect? I was 16 years old, with freshly discovered hormones throbbing up and down inside me like curves of a sinusoidal wave. For all my effort, I did manage to befriend a pretty young girl from the school though. However, one day, my coach learnt about my escapade. When he came to know where the deep mid-wicket fielder had gone, he really blew a fuse. That was it... out of the team I went. I mean, do you believe that? I was debarred from cricket for bowling a maiden over!

I never had an opportunity to play competitive cricket after that. Unfortunately, studies took priority. But I should say that even though I was lacking in cricketing skills, I was never lacking in super- star quality and celebrity endorsements skills. What? You don't believe I have star endorsement power?! Let me dispel all your doubts, dear people. Make no mistake, I have the charm, sex appeal, stardom and celebrity endorsement power which would provide serious competition to the following Bollywood stars:

Tushar Kapoor and K.R.K (next to only S.R.K)..........

Johnny Lever................................... A.K Hangal

..... and these stars from the South Indian movie industry:

(T. Rajender, Jaggesh and Balakrishna )

.... and the following movie stars from the world of monkeys:

(James and Bond)

Well... what? You think there are no cinematic icons in the world of monkeys? Really? Then where do you think this one came from?

Sorry sorry.... I am digressing... This was a cricket post. So as I was saying, I couldn't make it to the Indian cricket team. But that hasn't stopped me from being one of the most fanatic followers of Indian and World cricket. I am not alone, there are millions of cricket fanatics spread across the length and breadth of the country.

I am sure many of you must have witnessed this craze first-hand. You may have also been a part of the craze. I am sure hundreds of marriages have broken down because the husband decided to stay at home and watch Bangladesh play Nicaragua rather than take wifey dear shopping. Also, millions of engineering students have flunked their University exams because they chose to watch a high-octane cricket series a week prior to their exams. You will meet people who wont remember what they had for breakfast, but would rattle off Sachin Tendulkar's statistics from an obscure series from the 1990's.

I am proud to be part of the cricket craze. The emotions it gives me and all other cricket fanatics can't be explained. I mean, I would have loved to explain, but India is playing SriLanka today. The match's about to commence and I gotta run to the television.

Will see you all later....

Until then,

With Love, Regards, Fours, and Sixes,

Parry.

The Conjunctive Saga

2009-01-27T20:29:00.000+05:30

C-O-N-J-U-N-C-T-I-V-I-T-I-S.

O-P-H-T-H-A-L-M-O-L-O-G-I-S-T.

The two words were added rather unwelcomingly to my vocabulary today. It took some significant wrestling with the pages of dictionary to even get the spellings right. Ladies and Gentlemen, the dreaded conjunctivitis virus/bacteria (/protozoa/amoeba/bunked zoology classes in college to know more) - which had been doing a recce of the streets of Bangalore, has consumed its first high-profile victim... yours truly, the author of Nonsense Aplenty.

Conjunctivitis (red eye) is the inflammation of the conjunctiva ( a transparent lubricating mucous membrane that covers the eyeball and the under surface of the eyelid ) and commonly characterized by the redness of the eye. Indications and symptoms include frequent itching, irritation, and the ability to suddenly look like a drunk Bollywood movie villain from the 1980's - grotesque appearance with angry red eyes and everything. Actually, it occurred all too suddenly. I was riding away on the bike, with cool wind in my receding hair, and whoosh, I felt something in the eye. I guess the virus was waiting right up there in the atmosphere, with its trap laid out bare. And I must've got suckered straight into it. I don't know why the virus chose me, when it had millions of other jerks at its mercy. Maybe the bloody thing watched too many Hindi movies, heard too many mushy romantic songs and so in true Bollywood style, fell instantly in love with my eyes. A visit to the ophthalmologist confirmed the infection. So here I am, ladies and gentlemen, confined to my room like a caged porcupine, and forced to be bedridden like a drugged undertrial.

Anyway, I then interacted with/rang up few of my dear ones, to break the news of my recently acquired condition. Not surprisingly, it elicited a mixed bag of response, some of which I have sampled below. Fasten your seat belts, take an anti-histamine and read on:

Reaction #1 : Parents @ hometown:
"Conjunctivitis?!!! What? How? Which? When? Where? Why? . Did you show yourself to a doctor? What did the doctor say? What did the nurse say? What did the chemist say? What did the lab attendant say? What did the lift operator say? How are you feeling now? Are you better? Worse? Does it hurt? It is going to last for 3-4 days isn't it? Have u stared taking medicines? Eye drops? Which eye drops? Now who asked you to go out of your room and contract the virus? Couldn't you stay put in room? Take rest now. Keep washing your hands. Don't touch your eye. Don't you get out of your bed, young man. Did you have your food? Now go and sleep. Nothing doing. No office-woffice. And don't forget the medicines, will ya? "

Reaction#2 : The old landlady here in B'lore
"Oooooh... you coochie-coochie , sweetie-sweetie thing... Look at yourself , my dear.. You go to your room and take rest OK? I will send some badam milk upstairs. And by the way, you are yet to pay last month's rent and electricity bill... When the hell are you going to... But Ok ok ok... You don't strain yourself. I will send some snacks too.."

Reaction#3 : Roommates
"Oh shit... Oh fuck... Conjunctivitis? It is contagious right? Will we get it too? Will we get it now? Have we already got it? Is the virus on its way? OK, spray disinfectant, splash phenol... Hey you go take bath with pesticide... Keep your clothes and towels away. Would you remove your epidermal layer and store it away some place? And isn't that your underwear hanging on the door knob? Remove it from there. OK, buddy now relax... don't worry... lie down on the bed..Where are your eye drops? Here now, we'll apply it for you. Don't go outside. We'll get you dinner, what would you like? Close your eyes and be still. "

Reaction#4: Friends(Male)
"Conjunctivitis? Since when? Oh ok... No tension macha... Clean your eyes, wear goggles, take medicines. 3-4 days, that's all. Relax. Hey wanna join us for a movie over the weekend? Oops , sorry we forgot. But OK, its some rubbish mystery movie anyway...heard its not good, so you will not miss it. And we'll let you know what the climax was all about later. You take rest. Chal bye. "

Reaction# 5: Friends(Female)
"You got conjunctivitis? Reallyyyyy? No kidding haaan? Seriously? Since when? Oh dear, sooo sorry. Does it hurt? Has your eye become really very red? Did you show yourself to the doctor? How are you feeling now? Its OK... If you feel like sharing anything you can let us know. See for conjunctivitis naaaa... first you should clean your hands regularly. Use Dettol soap to wash your hands. And then naa you should wipe your hands with a soft towel. Don't keep touching your eyes. Take Ketogate eye drops, 4 times daily, hey... are you paying attention to me? What are you thinking about? Concentrate when I talk. You never listen. OK, then take your eye drops without fail, wear shades, don't try to be a stud or something. Just take rest in your room. Understand? Give a call if you feel lonely or want to talk about anything. Hey you know that girl Geeta from college? I met her yesterday.. Oh my God, she has put on so much weight... I don't know, and she was wearing this dress... such a yuckie color, and some tacky footwear... Eeshh.. God, how did she become so fat and you know what..... "

Reaction #6: Priest from the temple across the road
"What happened Son ? Red eye? Hey Ram ram ram ram. I think you should consider stepping into the temple at least once in a millennium ,Son...Ram ram ram ram. Anyway will offer special prayers for you in the evening. God bless you. Ram ram ram ram. "
(Note: The priest then offered me a bag of rock candy, flowers and smeared some vermilion on my forehead... none of which, to the best of my knowledge, are world-renowned cures for conjunctivitis. )

Reaction #7: My manager
" You want three days leave? Conjunctivitis? Hmmm... Can you work with one eye closed? You can't? How about working with both eyes closed? No no no.. I didn't mean you should fall asleep in your cubicle. Hmmm... OK... Three days then... Please ensure due diligence and see it to it that your productivity and deliverables are unaffected. Please ensure that you delegate your work queue as per existing business contingency plans.. Are you done unit testing all your modules? By the way who is this again? Parikshith?.... Parikshith who? You are in my team? Did you say we've met before? Let me think... Oh are you the fair, plump guy who always plays table tennis? The same guy who crashed that network server last week? OK now I remember you. OK, I'll see you after three days then. Good luck. I hope you will miss being part of this wonderfully productive workplace"

Reaction # 8: Colleagues/Teammates @ work
"Conjunctivitis? Ha ha ha... Serves you right , you bugger.. Looks like you had overworked your eyes, ogling at female breasts all day.... ha ha ha... particularly the babes from H.R. Ha ha ha ha... You've got three days leave? Cool, you lucky con! Enjoy. Nopes, not possible to take up your work... I cant understand your rubbish code one bit, dude... What, you think I am Albert Einstein's love child? No way, you take rest, enjoy your vacation and come back. We'll think about your code later. Take care of yourself. Will let you know if you are issued a pink slip.

Reaction#9: Friendly neighbourhood dog:
"Bow bow? Bow wow wow? Bow bow wow bow wow bow bow. Woof Woof"

Reaction #10: Best buddies
"Conjunctivitis? Ho ho ho ho ho... Hey d'ya hear that? The ass is down with conjunctivitis... Ha ha ha... So what do you expect us to do next? Collect sandalwood for your funeral pyre? Ha ha ha ha ha ha... Anyways fuck everything, and come over to our place. We'll make dinner for you too... and then we all can sit down and watch some porn together. You will be alright. Hell with conjunctivitis being contagious. We don't give a damn. Now are you coming here by yourself or do you want us to pick you up?"
--------------------------------------
Reactions, as you just witnessed ladies and gentlemen, have been coming thick and fast. I can say that I have well and truly been overwhelmed. But all I can do is to remain confined in my room, flutter eyelashes and shed crocodile tears. I hope to get better soon, so that I can get to my feet, and perform my self-imposed duty of writing blogs that aim to radically change the face of the world. Through 'Nonsense Aplenty', I know that I know I am on the right path:-)

With abundant love and conjunctive winks ;-)
Parry.

Alternate Career Options for the Beleagured Techie.

2009-01-18T03:23:00.000+05:30

I am a software engineer working in Bangalore.. Ta da!! Yep , again, I know this is not the kind of breaking news which would bring frenzied news vans screeching to a halt at my doorstep or have journalists tumbling over each other to thrust microphones up my nostrils. This is merely the plain vanilla fact of the day- I am a software engineer , who works with a leading MNC that pays you just about enough to eat three square meals every day and buy a new toothbrush every other month. Like me there are millions of techies here, swarming all over the place like moths attracted to the IT lantern. That is not unusual because out here, becoming a software engineer is not really difficult. To graduate as a software engineer ,

You have to bear 4 years in a trauma center learning engineering and in the bargain survive a minimum of 8 rounds of torture, writing imaginary stories in the examination hall.

If the stories you cooked up were really good, you are awarded with excellent grades and along with it a roll of honor certifying you as the 'Best Chef of the Semester'.

If you go on to acquire top grades, then you are eligible to let yourself get a dogmatic rubber stamp branded on your bums, that spells 'Tested OK, Distinction' .

All the mice with brandmarked posteriors get to stand first in line to be gobbled up by smiling Cheshire cats, disguised as 'Campus IT Recruiters'.

If you are tasty mice, then you are recruited. Congratulations and welcome aboard. You are a software pro.

Thank you sirs and ma'ms. Your life is now a soap opera.

That's it. Simple right? Now, I don't want to be seen as the latest applicant for the post of the village cynic ( considering that I was earmarked for the post of the village idiot) . So let me switch on the exhaust fans and clear the air about engineers being an unhappy lot. Make no mistake, software engineers are 'happy' staring at computer screens all day, smashing foreheads against their keyboards and occasionally singing love sonnets to their code compilers, cajoling it to get to work. When not sipping Cappuccinos, when not practising table tennis serves, when not reading tabloids, when not debating on the vital statistics of the new hottie in office , when not idling away time and blaming the world for it- we techies pride ourselves in creating some amazing technologies that change the face of the world.

All said, every now and then however, there is this momentary flicker of thought which flashes across many a techie's overworked minds. It is like an irritating buzzing fly which you want to swat immediately with the nearest available roll of newspaper, but cannot. The buzzing fly says "Hey am I being a moron, sitting here and slogging my ass off in this way to earn my crumbs of money? Or is there an easier, better, faster and fun way of earning bigger bucks" ? No matter how passionate the techie is about his/her work, he would have certainly met this buzzing fly at least once in his/her computing lifetime. Some of them would have ignored this fly, others would have swatted it and still others would have simply asked it to 'buzz off'. I met the buzzing fly today. So rather than chase it away, or let it fall inside my cup of Cappuccino, I decided to take a moment off and answer it. Earning more (or at least equal) bucks with lesser pain in the ass is the objective eh? So be it. After a discourse with my talkative conscience, I have arrived at the following alternate career options for the beleaguered IT soul. If you promise not to throw empty flower vases at me, I am willing to outline and share those alternate career options with you. Here you go:

1) Bank Robber: The de- facto profession for you to achieve the insta-rags to riches status. Designed, developed and tested extensively by our forefathers, this method would have been the easiest and quickest way of earning money without breaking much of a sweat. However, today we are reeling under a severe economic crunch. The banks would not have much money stashed away in their lockers to make a decent steal. So, this erstwhile method of earning money has unfortunately run of steam today. Heck! I'm sure the robbers are richer and well off than the banks these days. So with a heavy heart and profound reluctance, I would like to sidestep this profession and move on to option number 2.

2)Weatherman: Is there any other job in the world wherein you see your calculations go horrifically wrong more than half of the time and still get to hold on to your job with peanut-eating nonchalance? I mean you predict a bright sunny picnic day, then sit back and see your predictions being washed away by cats and dogs raining down from Heavens, and surprise surprise... your job is as safe as a Swiss Bank locker. If anyone ever approaches you and asks for an explanation about the climatic mood-swings, you can get away by telling him/her that the Earth didn't rotate properly last night and the orbit needs lubrication. I wonder what Six-sigma, CMMI and other bull-shitting quality-compliance models have to say about this one!

3)Cricket Umpire: To be an international cricket umpire , you should be a senile old man armed with a medical certificate that proves you to be legally blind in one eye and blissfully deaf in both the ears. Add to the list of symptoms, an allergy towards the cricket rule book and sudden attacks of amnesia upon hearing a chorus of 'Howzzzzaaaat' shouts. But don't let these poorly precedented specimens discourage you from achieving your goal. Go ahead and be a young, fit umpire. And when in doubt, show 'em the finger!

4)Film Critic: Ah this is my kind of job. Your employer pays you handsomely to park your ass in an air conditioned theatre, watch flicks and stuff yourself with caramel popcorn week after week. You then go on air and tell the world that the best part of the movie was the intermission. Next, you puncture a hole or two in the screenplay, suggest to the audience that the movie script can be used as tissue paper, and lament the fact that the heroine didn't show enough cleavage. Voila! your movie review is complete. Now would you hand over my fat paycheck and remove the fly out of my champagne glass please? Thank you.

5)Artist (specializing in modern art) : Pardon me ,oh art connoisseurs, for my blasphemous ridicule of Modern Art...but this is one arena whose existence I've always failed to decipher. I mean I fail to understand why people would care to fork out billions of dollars to buy something that looks like a two-year old's first crayon scribbling? Without waiting for replies, I have ready started my career as a modern artist. To start with, yesterday I bought two whole cans of Asian Paints emulsifiers and with one toss, splashed them over a white canvas. To my artistic eye, my classic debut painting looks like two amorous amoebas having sex with each other. Depending on the price its going to fetch, I will decide upon a suitable title. You are welcome to start bidding immediately.

My room is a modern art gallery beyond compare. For example, I have a bedroom wall with entrails of recently squashed mosquitoes postered all over. It is a work of beauty. Due to lack of time, I couldn't reproduce this work on canvas. If any modern artist is interested, he/she is welcome to contact me and we'll haggle over the price, royalty and the sponsorship of mosquito repellents.

OK, people, I need to run back to my pigeon-hole... err I mean the cubicle to complete some coding and unit testing. I am happy that I have shared with you my conversations with the buzzing fly:-) As I near the end my rant session, I would like to leave you with the true, famous lines by the great poet Robert Frost to motivate you all :

"The woods are lovely, treacherous, dark and deep...

I have got promises and project deliveries to keep...

I have got lines to code before I sleep...

I have got miles to go before I sleep...

Doesn't matter 'coz I've got insomnia anyway, you creep... "

Love and Best Wishes,

Parry.

Energy & Natural Resources Conservation Tips for Bachelors.

2009-01-10T20:41:00.000+05:30

The story so far:

A brilliant, charismatic high school student with oodles of passion towards Science, finds his customized enthusiasm towards 'Energy & Natural Resource Conservation' sniggered at and scorned by teachers, scholars, ducks and dinosaurs alike. Undeterred, he returns years later, to broadcast his unsolicited opinion on his pet topic to innocent people. The abstruse story now continues... (To read the complete & interesting background from my previous post, click here )

----------------------------------------------------

Greetings, Dear Earthlings

I am back. As promised in my previous post, I am here to present to you the spellbinding , Nobel deserving article called ' Energy and Natural Resource Conservation Tips for Bachelors' . Many eyebrows were raised when I chose bachelors as a target audience for this mundane scientific topic. Why bachelors? Well why not. Bachelors (being one myself) , are arguably one of the finest specimens of homo-sapiens ever created. With their hearts at the right place and hands scratching the wrong places and with their simple, minimalistic but amazingly functional lifestyle... bachelors would make one hell of a case study. Bachelors are an endangered species... they are endangered because they become extinct when they get married. Therefore, without losing much time, they are in need of a messiah like me to enlighten them on the importance of Energy and Natural resources conservation. Ok, without any more ado, here are the much coveted tips for the bachelor brethren all over the world. I hope this will bring an increased degree of efficiency in their day-to-day chores :

1) Conserve Water

a) Efficient use of shirts and trousers: Do not hesitate to wear the same shirt/trouser thrice or four times before the next round of wash. If a colleague at work points out a stain on your garment due to its repeated use, you can easily get away by blaming the Government!!. Here's how:

Your friend: " Hi, dude... you've got a stain on your shirt"

You : " Huh? A stain? Where? "

Your friend: " Right there, at the back of the shirt, just below the collar. Yeah, there"

You (feign surprise) : " Oh no... Man, I had just freshly washed and ironed this shirt only today. Damn, this stain! Now how did it happen? I think it happened while travelling to office this morning...

Your friend : " Oh....... "

You: " I think it happened while coming up the elevator. Or, I guess this must have happened while travelling in the crowded bus today morning. Don't know how. You see this bloody morning crowd and rush........

That's it... The tone for your rhetoric has been set. Go on and blame the crowd, blame the traffic , blame the system, blame the Government. By the end of it , your friend would have forgotten that he had pointed out a stain in the first place!

b) Efficient use of socks: The same pair of socks can be used for two days consecutively without any fear or worry of causing plague at your workplace. Then, you turn them inside out, strategically spray deodorant on them and wear it on two more occasions. To be more efficient, consider wearing only one sock at a time. People, as they claim themselves, are so busy running the rat race these days, that they don't even have the time to look up at your faces and utter a word of Hello. Heck, they don't have the time to even smile at you. Then, why do you think would they care to look at your feet and bother to count the number of socks you are wearing? In the rare case that someone does count and point out, calmly tell them it is the fashion trend of the season - the latest haute couture straight out of the Milan Fashion Week.

c) Efficient usage of bed sheets: After six months, turn your bedsheets inside out and continue using for the rest of the year. What’s the point of washing them regularly anyway? You’ll always be fast asleep on your sheet and wont be in your senses to decide if its clean or unclean.

d) Always buy jeans that are black or dark blue. You can play Kabaddi in them during weekends and still wear them to work next day. Wash them only during the monsoon. ( Wear your jeans, lay face down on the road during heavy rainfall and stick your bum out. That should take care of the wash)

e) The natural ground-water levels have been receding with alarming pace and would continue to diminish further unless we have a remedial action implemented in place. So when thirsty, drink beer. Three cheers for water conservation. Hic! Hic! Huray.

2) Conserve Fuel

a) Conserve LPG: Avoid using LPG to cook your Maggi Noodles. Instead, use boiled water from your geyser to cook noodles. You pay an extra 200 rupees every month as electricity charges to your useless landlord anyway, so why not make full use of it? Make no mistake, it is important to conserve electricity also ( I will come to this in a minute) . However, using boiled water from your geyser to cook noodles should provide you with ample motivation to take a bath everyday. Therein lies the advantage. Remember: No bath for the day = No boiling hot water for the day = No cooking noodles and you go hungry for the day. Marvellous, isn't it? :-)

b) Conserve Petrol: The next time your girlfriend asks you to take her shopping, tell her that you’ve watched Aamir Khan's Ghajini (or Christopher Nolan's 'Memento') and the contagious short-term memory loss has been passed on to you through the movie screen. Tell her that you've now forgotten how the gear shift pattern of your bike works and so she will have to ride the bike herself thru rush-hour traffic if she wants to. (even if it is a Pulsar 250 CC) . If she says no, yell out ‘ Hurray’ and go walking hand-in-hand with her. Fuel conserved. Romance observed.

d) Use the word ‘bullshit’ with respect. Please remember that it can be a useful source of renewable energy ( As in gobar gas plants/bio gas plants) . Of course, if you feel that my blog is bullshit, then it is a different case altogether.

e) Consider the option of car-pooling while traveling to and from work. If your meager salary doesn’t allow you to buy a car, then don’t be disheartened – use a bullock cart as your transport. The advantages of traveling to office by a bullock cart are two pronged.- 1) It saves petrol 2) Since the bull is now your chauffeur, all the bullshit accrued from the length of the journey can be used as a renewable source of energy.

3) Conserve Power:
It is important to be abstemious in our consumption of electricity. The following tips, are thus in order:

a) Turn off the lights: Switching off lights when not in use is an important must-do item on any energy conserver's list. Remember to draw inspiration from pop-star Nelly Furtado's hit song 'Turn off the light'. The lyrics go something like:

"They say that girl ya know she act too tough tough tough

Well it's till' I turn off the light, turn off the light

They say that girl you know she act so rough rough rough

Well it's till' I turn off the light, turn off the light"....

Do you think the pop-star was highlighting foreplay, seduction or any other related naughty activity in her song? Heck no, she was hinting at energy conservation!

b) Fans & AC's: If you think you are naturally cool, then you don't need to use fans or AC's.

c) Turn off monitors: At work, turn off your PC monitors while not in use. Preferably, keep them turned off all day. If your manager or supervisor points out that you are doing no work, then plainly tell him/her that you are doing a service to the planet by conserving energy. Then go to your manager’s desk , and switch off his/her monitor too. Spread awareness.

The benefits of energy conservation doesn't end here, my dear bachelors. In fact, gigabytes after gigabytes can be written and documented about this noble cause. For example, you can save paper by bringing home all your useless project documents from work and using them as tissue papers. You can plant trees to ensure that romantic couples from your next generation could steal private, intimate moments hiding behind them.

Therefore, my dear men, arise! , awake! , save! , conserve! . The time to start is n*o*w.

My Best Wishes are always with you. You will certainly need it :-)

Parry.

My Love for Science, Energy conservation and other hocus-pocus.

2009-01-05T23:35:00.000+05:30

Twelve years ago, I was a high-school student. Ta da!!! This is not meant to be the day's breaking news, so let us proceed with the story. As a student, Science used to be a pet subject for me. I always used to score the second- highest in Science tests in my class. Yes... consistently. However, every single time I had to contend being the second highest scorer because I always used to end up making genuine, inadvertent and humane errors while copying answers from the class topper who used to sit next to me. I would have loved to top someday, but simply couldn't bring myself to stop making those errors - so resigned myself to being the second best in Science. Of course this spectacular achievement of mine was limited to class tests , unit tests , surprise tests, and other tiddly little farts of examinations only. For the bigger fiascos like the Mid-terms and the Final Examinations, our topper used to sit far away from me ( courtesy roll-number wise seating ) . So my scores in the bigger exams used to be second-best alright, but second from the bottom! Tragic - these roll number wise seating I must say. As a derived decision, I have decided that when I become a father in the years to come, I will never name my child with the starting letter 'A' . These A's ( the Abhijits, the Abhisheks, the Aditis for example) always end up being roll number 1 or roll number 2 in their classes, and always have to face the irony of beating seated in the front bench during exams. Poor souls! They cant even copy comfortably during their exams... neither from chits nor from classmates. I do not want my child to curse me in the examination hall for naming him/her with 'A'. Maybe I'll name him/her as Yuvaraj/Yuvika/Uday etc. to be safe. Anyways lets come back to the point ( remember there was one? )... the point about Science.

Even during my mass Ctrl+C - Ctrl+V scientific days from high school, there used to be an area of study in Science which used to raptly interest me. " Energy & Natural Resources conservation and Environment protection". For some untold, unexplained reason, my unbridled passion for this area of science would come alive when I went about answering related questions in my exam paper ( without Mr. Topper's help) . For example:

Question: Explain how Gobar Gas ( cow dung) can be a useful natural source of fuel/energy?
My answer: Oh what a bullshit question!

Of course my teachers never understood my passion for this wonderful topic. Time and again, red-inked exclamations, huge zeroes in the margin, summons from the Principal and complaint letters to my Mom were the usual courses of action that followed. Understandably (and I know you dear people may have understood by now) , this meant that a feeling of angst remained confined in me throughout my formative years of learning Science.

I have now grown up to become a software engineer. But my passion towards my old pet area of science still burns away quietly in a remote corner of my heart- like an old flame of a bunsen burner ( similar to the way it burns all day in a chemical lab when the lab assistant forgets to turn it off) . Through the revered forum of 'Nonsense Aplenty' , I now have the opportunity to rekindle my old flame and dish out unsolicited , personalized opinion on 'Energy and Natural Resources conservation' to anyone who's willing to listen without making loud yawning noises.

All through the years I have been an avid follower of white papers and research documents on Energy conservation and Environment. I am grateful to the authors of these papers because they've cured me of my insomnia ( to such an extent that I now find it impossible to wade through a paragraph without falling asleep) . But we cant blame the authors really. I am sure these papers are all written by well-learned and highly intelligent scholars with a Ph.D and no less. Whilst I am no one to contest the profound knowledge and good intentions of these scholars, I am willing to bet my monthly salary of 1 rupee 50 paisa on the fact that these scholars are among the most boring human beings who've walked the planet. I am sure that an overwhelming majority of these scholars must have been those typical poker faced, bespectacled University super-toppers who, without fail , warmed the first benches of their Science class every day. You know, the kind of super-studious types who used to jot down every single word that the Professor uttered in class. ( I am sure even when the Professor sneezed, these people probably noted it down too as 'Haackshooo!!' ) . Anyway the point is, their boring personalities reflect in their super boring research papers. And their super-boring research papers drives super passionate people like me to coma.

Lets take these scholars' research paper on 'Global Warming' as a random example. Before falling asleep, I read their take on the causes of global warming - the regulars - emission of carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic gases, deforestation, and a woeful tale on human pollution. But they dont know the real cause of Global Warming. I know. According to me, the real reason for global warming is the increase in the number of sexy and hot girls around the world. Yes you have read it right! Sexy, hot, smouldering babes are the real reason for global warming. Rising hemlines, plunging necklines, shrinking bikinis and disappearing thongs have all collectively contributed to 'global warming'. And add to the list of causes a decrease in gym membership fees leading to more toned, hot bodies world over. Will the University scholars agree to this basic cause? No sir! They continue to write boring research papers. And what do passionate science students do with the research papers? They take print-outs and use them to wrap vada-pav's. Sad!

Its time to do it my way. The time has come to lay out my old high-school passion for "Energy and Natural Resource Conservation" in electronic text. In my next post, I will be publishing a ground-breaking, path-finding, eye-opening and a Nobel-prize deserving article called "Energy & Natural Resources Conservation Tips for Bachelors" Now what the heck has this to do with Bachelors? And why choose them as a target audience? I will explain.

I hope I have enlightened you to some degree. I can visualize you people running to the medic to buy strips of Saridon and Aspirin by now. But that's OK. My Good Wishes, as always are with you.

Love you all,
Parry.

Greetings, fellow Earthlings

2009-01-04T16:56:00.000+05:30

Gentle Ladies and even gentler Gentlemen...
The latest escapee from the local mental asylum welcomes y'all to his blog page. I would like to promise you that this blog is going to be bigger and more famous than the Industrial Revolution encyclopedia ( That Pulitzer winning, #1 Bestseller called The Dummy's Guide to Industrial Revolution. Haven't read it? Go ahead and write it then!) For sure. Before I proceed, let me confess two things... 1) I have always bunked history classes 2) Promises are meant to be broken .

Ok, now that the perceived infamy of this blog has been set in stone ( lets ignore the possiblity that the same stone may be thrown smack back at my thick skull later) , lets proceed to get this show on the road.

RightO! Here we go. Traditional Indian customs require us to remember the Almighty before embarking on a new task...say a prayer to seek His Blessings.. Its 6.PM here in India right now. A beautiful evening... The Sun, after having blown hot all day, has acquired a serene crimson hue. A last few rays to go before it goes down, and proceeds to take its daily dip in the Ocean. The birds have returned to their nests in the trees. I wonder what the heck do they do all day anyway... I mean just fly around, eat nuts and worms and take undue advantage of gravity to pee down on innocent human beings? A bird's life.. Bah... Anyway returning to the point about the Prayer to the Almighty that I was to make, its 6 PM and God must be busy having His evening tea and snacks. Poor chap, He must be exhausted for the day listening to and counselling millions of requests which keep reaching Him thru several million prayin' devotees....."God give me this...God give me that...God take care of me....God make me successful... God make my girlfriend nag less..God give me a job...Hey Bhagwan yeh aapne kya kar diya...etc etc." And considering the times that we are currently living in, He must be working overtime. So I'll just give Him a well-needed break and let Him enjoy his tea and snacks. I can always pray later.

Chalo,now that the prayers have been taken care of,lets proceed to get this thing on the road.U see, yesterday in a moment of madness, I decided to start blogging.(My friends would disagree to that... only a moment of madness?They claim my moment of madness lasts 24/7. But then,thats a different story ..a different script which I feel is Ekta Kapoorable ( meaning Ekta Kapoor can plagarize it and make it into a soap or two) . I didn't plan to take this thing seriously... but then today,in another moment of madness,I decided to give it a shot anyway.

What am I gonna be bloggin' about? Nothing. Yes nothing. As you would unfortunately come to know, I have a very talkative conscience. As they say, ur conscience is ur best friend...and yeah, the dog comes a close second...Well I have a very talkative conscience which keeps hounding me all the time with all sorts of things...a little bit of "Main Aisa Kyon Hoon",as Hrithik Roshan put it in Lakshya....and a lot of "Baaki sab aise kyon hai"... Got me? Yes???!!! Gracious! I thought i was the only strange one.. its really feels good to have company. Didn't get me? Don't worry...i guess the dog's taken the first position. I intend to give you a peek into the conversations that take place between me and my talkative conscience. These conversations are legendary stuff , which when laid out in electronic text, would readily find a place in any junk e-mail folder of the world. In summary, it is 'Nonsense Aplenty'.

I invite you to let go and be part of the madness! . I invite to you to be willing victims of the epic called 'Nonsense Aplenty'. I am sure there will be times when you wont even understand what I write. But that's OK my dear people, there are times when I dont understand it myself. But I promise, you will be left scratching your heads trying to make sense of 'Nonsense Aplenty'. That's good isn't it? People, they claim, are so busy these days going about their daily work, that they dont have time to scratch their backsides. So by that logic, I am doing a service to the society by giving them ample scope to scratch atleast something.

My Good Wishes are with you. Until later,
Love,
Parry.