ALL I CAN SAY ON IT

I don’t know what to say about the Delhi tragedy that hasn’t been said already. I can’t offer any magic solutions, and it will not change the country you and I live in. It reeks of helplessness, and of a young woman whose nightmarish experience were seared into national consciousness, destroying the notion of Indian propriety that we’d been cuddling with all these years. Then again, neither does anyone else in the media and social media. That’s because incidents like this generate a series of reactions that are as predictable as a Rohit Shetty movie (Step 1. Be obnoxious. Step 2. “Look, flying Scorpio!” Step 3. Someone please introduce Ajay Devgn to a toothbrush.) The pattern in this case played out as follows:

1. A Medical student gets horrifically assaulted on the streets of Delhi after she boarded an private bus. A news channel airs the news, and soon enough, the news goes viral, displacing last week’s viral star, Rakhi Sawant’s divorced husband.

2. Talking heads start asking the right questions: Why was the girl on the road with a boy ? Was she drunk? Why are people asking us for opinions when it is clear that we have the brains of goat poop? The PCC president of Andhra Pradesh even said that “Getting freedom at midnight doesn’t mean to roam around roads at midnight”( the incident happened at 9:30 PM). Yes Sir, and your mom’s legs should have stayed shut on your parents’ honeymoon.

3. Then it was time for a BJP to jump into the fray, who did so with all the grace of a tightrope walker splattering against the ground. According to the official spokesperson of the party, Western culture promotes hooliganism and lust, while holy places are centres of peace and virtue. I’m sure devdasis, altar boys and people in Ayodhya would agree.

It is incidents like these that inspire a slew of “I’m ashamed to be an Indian” reactions. (Not that national pride is a great benchmark to begin with. Saying you’re proud of being Indian is like saying you’re proud of being 70% water. You had nothing to do with it.)

Having said that, many things – Delhi, Bombay, Gurgaon, religion, the caste system, dowry, Dahod – do make you want to move to someplace more sane, like Saudi Arabia. And according to a recent survey of the G20 nations, India is actually the worst place to be a woman, ahead of Saudi Arabia.  It takes real talent to fall behind Saudi, a country where a woman could get whipped for showing too much eyelash. Then again, in India you could apparently get raped for not dressing in a bed sheet.

Another example of idiocy was seen in Haryana, wherein a Panchayat outlawed love marriages, cellphones and common sense. It also banned women under 40 from going out unescorted, thus teaching perverts a lesson by forcing them to harass only old women. I think the only way for women to be safe is to not be born here. See, the Haryanvis were right all along.

It’s the kind of week that makes you wonder what would happen if we just relinquished governance to women. All of it. Everything, just run by women. Sure, I anticipate a sudden glut of inventions such as handbags that can hold smaller handbags, and there would be ambulances on hold to deal with bad hair days” and creams would promise to get rid of all Daddy issues in “just seven days!”, but all that aside, it might just work. Women can work wonders if we just let them be. Just look at Sherlyn Chopra and Poonam Pandey

WAZZUP THESE NEW YEAR EVE BRO

Christmas and December are fast approaching, while the actual date is a month away, I already started getting texts from friends saying things like “What scenes bro?” Apparently, the correct answer to this question is not “The Solozzo hit from The Godfather, and Faisal’s revenge in Wasseypur II.” (yes, it is a horrendous joke) You may also find yourself part of several Facebook groups, like ‘NEW YEAR AT MINEZ!’ and ‘DJ PUMPY LIVE AT THE PINK TOAD!’ etc etc ,But this time it is going to be different It is the collective sound of the world going “Whew, we didn’t end”.so i decided to party hard this new year eve . Unless the Mayans were right, and the world ends, in which case, this entire planning of parties would be futile. Except you’re dead, so ha. Unless you were on the International Space Station when it happened, in which case, go forth and procreate, and tell every alien you meet that the Mayans were a****les.
There are three main kinds of New Year’s Eve parties; bad ones, horrid ones, and ‘Makes the holocaust look like Coachella’ ones. The third one usually involves a crowded public-space, like a hotel or nightclub The third one usually involves a crowded public-space, like a hotel, nightclub, or in one hilarious instance some years ago for me in Goa, a ‘cruise-liner with two decks and an artificial beach’ that never showed up, and was replaced by an Rajahmundry ferry with two feet of space, and a forlorn looking lump of sand in one corner. Passes to that party cost “Did Steve Jobs price this?” rupees and irate party-goers who realised they’d been duped started wrecking the ferry and lobbing pieces of the sound-system overboard. The major irritation of these parties are drunkards who features performances by whoever had a hit item song that year, so I assume this year, the biggest one will feature Ajay Devgn’s Jiggly Pectorals™ from son of sardar. The alcohol finishes at 12:01 am, and the night finishes at 1:37 am, when Montu slaps Prakash for glancing at the door to the women’s loo, because Montu’s girlfriend is also a woman. So this time i am not attending that ceremony.

So the next option is the “Let’s get together at somebody’s house” party, because this way, I can invite my friends located close to me. Some of them will show up, you’ll never hear of the other again because they’ll reach Mozambique by searching for Dahod in Apple Maps
And my personal favourite involves getting out of town the day before, and holing up in a place where the weather’s better (aka anywhere past Dahod), and the food and Music are great. You get no traffic, you get to choose the music, and you can sleep as per your will and wish and come back two days later. And that’s what I’m going to do this year. Unless the Mayans were right, and the world ends.
 

MY NAME IS VAMSI KRISHNA AND I AM NON-VEGETARIAN

My name is Vamsi Krishna Reddy and I’m non-vegetarian. I’m not slightly non-vegetarian, in that odd Indian way that draws the line at chicken and egg. I’m all in, with both my feet. I eat any and all poultry, seafood, and, if you can manage to cook them right in a delicate honey-mustard glaze, both my feet. I considered going vegetarian once for an year recently, but luckily the LSD wore off before I could jump off that cliff.
Recently I made chicken Biryani and posted it on Facebook and Vegetarians started to ask me strange questions like “Will you stop eating meat?” or “Why not go vegetarian?” and “Want to go for Jab Tak Hai Jaan?” The answer to all three questions is of course “No. Katrina Kaif’s lips scare me.” The truth of the matter is more complicated; I respect hard work. And it took us millions of years of hard work to fight our way to the top of the food-chain. So to not eat the meat that our ancestors worked so hard to dominate would be to fail them and the ideals that they strived, spit and roasted for.

Except, it’s hard being non-vegetarian in Gujarat where I am living right now. Aside from the reproachful looks of judgment you get from the ‘ethical’ vegetarians, you have to deal with groups who judge you on grounds deemed religious and moral. You’re told that if you eat beef, the Hindu god will spank you. Do Indian vegetarians imagine a command-center up in the sky, where a giant red light goes off every time I eat meat? That would be cool:

Man at computer: Sir, we’re picking up chatter about some horrible goings-on in India.
God: Is it the UPA again? We’ve already cursed them with Digvijay Singh, I’m out of punishment ideas really.
Man: No sir. It’s much worse. A man just ordered a special mixed-meat grill.
God: May God have mercy on us all.
Man: Ugh, I hate people who refer to themselves in the third-person.
God: Stop fooling around. That man just ate crab-meat. Cancel my appointments on world hunger, infectious diseases, and genocide. Dear God this is serious.
Man: No seriously Prakash, stop with the third person.
I’d be okay defending my non-vegetarianism if it were something I had to do as a part of dinner-table debate, but it isn’t. We live in a country where what you eat can mean the difference between being offered or denied an actual life-choice.

And now, a school-textbook for kids in the sixth standard has been found, that says the following about us non-vegetarians: “They easily cheat, tell lies, they forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes.”
When I was in the sixth standard, you could have written “The world is triangular and made of chicken nuggets” and I would have believed it. Because I was conditioned to believe that textbooks contain academic certainties and facts, not the illiterate opinion of some loathsome uber-vegetarian. And this is what the kids reading these books are going to believe.

But let’s examine the arguments that statement makes; Apparently non-vegetarians “easily cheat, tell lies,” and are dishonest. It’s safe to assume that whoever wrote that book is vegetarian, so clearly lying, cheating and dishonesty aren’t concerns that are exclusive to non-vegetarians. Non-vegetarians are also accused of fighting and turning to violence, which is weird because Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler were vegetarian. Narendra Modi still is. (So is Shahid Kapur, but his crimes against humanity deserve a Blog of their own). And the final accusation in that line is that non-vegetarians “commit sex-crimes.” I challenge any vegetarian out there to be able to even think about sex after a great steak and pie dinner.
I’ve never worn my non-vegetarianism on my sleeve, because I didn’t ever think I had to. But now, as an act of defiance, I will. My non-vegetarianism is awesome. It protects me. From the sanctimonious idiots who believe anything. From housing-societies that thrive on intolerance and ghettoization. And most importantly, from Shahid Kapur.

DIWALI AWAY FROM HOME

I got to know the arrival of Diwali as the photo-tagging frenzy on Face book has begun, with me being in tagged in a million pictures of things that symbolise Diwali, such as diyas, crackers, light-bulbs, burn victims, the superiority of the Aryan race and so on. In an attempt to escape people's sympathies showering on me for not going to home, which is a fucking 40 hours journey from here , I've planned this holiday at Baroda. But I seriously missed my earlier  diwalis I celebrated back at home. Diwali is that once-a-year chance to catch up with neighbours and relatives, so that you can remind yourself why you only meet these people once a year.

 In Baroda I am left with little options left other than watching movies. With Telugu film "Damarukam" not releasing , I ve left with Bollywood films capturing homicidal urges and vapid consumerism, with its annual Diwali Box Office Showdown, which, in this case, is ‘Son of Sardaar’ vs. ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’. JTHJ is the story of SRK falling in love with Katrina and Anushka, because all the other ladies he used to romance are, in Bollywood terms, deceased. Meanwhile, Son of Sardaar stars Ajay Devgn, a man best known for brushing his teeth with dirt. I wondered which one to watch, flipped a coin and before it landed, decided to watch the new Bond movie. It’s called Skyfall and it was pretty great, because for once, 007 relies on his wits and charm, instead of a watch that turns into an invisible plane with great breasts and X-Ray vision so powerful, it can see through Nitin Gadkari’s financial assets. Skyfall is one of those films that you have to watch in theatres, because no Bond film experience is complete without jaw-dropping action, heart-stopping chase sequences, and one Gujarati man in theatre behind you explaining “Jo havve Gems Bond aavse” to his wife, every time things get tense.

I love watching movies in theatres, because the experience has evolved (and because it saves me some download space). Single-screen theatres are being replaced by the multiplex, which comes from the latin word ‘multi’ meaning ‘many’ and ‘plex’ which means ‘everything sounds cooler when it ends in x’. Multiplexes have more screens, so instead of settling for one terrible Akshay Kumar movie, you can now choose between three horrid Akshay Kumar movies, an even worse Jacky Bhagnani one, or a critically-lauded Malayalee film about a man having a six-hour long existential crisis about where the ‘a’ went from Ajay Devgn’s last name.
The arrival of the multiplex has changed the Indian movie going experience. Time was when if you wanted to buy tickets, you called the theatre and asked if they had any, and then took your chances waiting in a long queue, following which you paid Seenu Anna(who seemed to live in a bush outside the theatre) 200 bucks a ticket. This time though, I just booked tickets online, and then waited in an even longer queue to collect them, following which I paid the theatre 200 bucks a ticket and wondered when they made Seenu Anna general manager.

Following this I made my way to the ‘Candy bar’, a snack-stand that does not in fact sell any candy. But that’s okay, because unlike earlier, when all you got was six-day-old popcorn and a bottle of cola whose mouth looked like it had sex with a rusted iron rod, you now have a whole range of options. I know this for a fact because the guy standing in front of me spent a reasonable amount of time choosing from his. He couldn’t tell whether he wanted the cheese-salted-caramel popcorn, or the caramel-salted-cheese popcorn, but two days later he made up his mind and bought a samosa instead.
But then I sat down in that theatre, and waited for the movie to begin, so I could forget all my troubles. But first, we were warned that we must turn our cell phones off before the film, a warning that was obeyed by everyone but the guy sitting next to me. Then, we were warned that we must also not talk during the film. The warning at our theatre said that one must refrain from “talking generally”. Luckily, the guy sitting next to me obeyed that bit of advice. So he turned to his friend and only talked specifically about this queer rash he had in an odd place.

And then the lights went down and I got excited and settled into my seat, only to be told that I must now stand for the national anthem. Now I love our national anthem, but this idea of playing it before every single film to boost patriotism is roughly as sensible as a Kingfisher Airlines business decision. And honestly ,I HATE doing this drama
Because this is what happens in everyone’s head as the anthem ends; “I love India. This is such a beautiful anthem. I really should be more patriotic and pay attention to this great counOOOHHH LOOK IT’S JAMES BOND SLAPPING SOME BADDIE ON TOP OF A REALLY FAST TRAIN”
But Skyfall really is an excellent film, and for all the hoop-jumping theatres make you do, I’d recommend that you watch it in theatres. It has the best plot a Bond film has had in years; Bond goes to SMOKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH where he fights a CIGARETTES KILL and then he meets this beautiful CANCER CANCER DEATH CANCER, and in the end it is revealed that SMOKING CAUSES AIDS IN KITTENS SO DON’T SMOKE.

SHUT UP YOUR HOLE

Formal conversations bore me to death . “Man is a social animal”, droned our Social Studies teacher Mr Satyanarayana in school. Some kids repeated after them and took notes, while others, more inclined towards Biology, kept “accidentally” dropping their erasers and picking them up. I,on the other hand, was thinking ” Is being a social animal really a good thing?”.
It’s a thought that’s stuck in my head all these years. But let’s focus on the whole society thing for now, shall we?
Thousands of years ago, the concept of society was in its infancy. Primitive men, armed with spears and clubs, roamed silently through the wilderness, looking for Chinese food and pepsi. Grunting and scratching one’s crotch were the only forms of communication. As a result, the world was a nice and quiet place, where people spoke only when absolutely necessary.

For e.g:

Inacceptable conversation:
Primitive Man: Grunt Grunt?
(So..wassup?)
Acceptable Conversation:
Primitive Man: Grunt Jhinga Oooga Booga Scratch Scratch!!
(Look out…there’s a sabre-toothed tiger lunging at your ding-dong!!)

So far, so good.

But then things began to change. No one really knew how this happened, but suddenly everyone was supposed to be “civilised”. Why? Because everybody ELSE was being civilised, and nobody wanted to be a “social outcast”, even if they didn’t really know what the term meant.

This had grave repercussions on mankind. It meant getting rid of the body lice that men had grown so fond of. And if that wasn’t enough, “get-togethers” were also invented, where erstwhile grunters and scratchers had to actually TALK to other people. This practice evolved to become the modern social phenomenon called “Small Talk” or “Chit Chat” (I believe the scientific term for it is “Homicidal-Tendency-Inducing Vapid Verbal Ejaculation.”)

As with most people, I was introduced to this phenomenon at a tender age. There I was, a precocious toddler, busy sticking crayons up my nose, when all of a sudden, there appeared a voluminous mass of whale blubber wrapped in a sari. It pulled at my cheeks, messed up my hair (NOTE TO THE WORLD IN GENERAL: You NEVER mess with my hair!) and asked me if I knew the alphabet.

“Of course I do! “, I said. “F is for F*** You, Can I Go Play With My He-Man Now?”

Ok so I didn’t really say that. Blame my manners on the absence of cable TV.

Things didn’t really improve in the coming years, as random guests dropped by and amused themselves by testing my memory.

Uncleji: “Helllooo beta..remember me? Ehehehe..I had come to your parents’ wedding..”
Me(thinking): Hey retard..I wasn’t present at my parents’ wedding. They’re not exactly Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar  y’know.

Actual Response: “Umm..no Uncle, I’m sorry I don’t.”

Uncleji:“..then I saw you when you were one year old..you have grown SO big beta..it’s amazing!”
Me(thinking): Not really. You see, every night my parents bury me six feet under, and sprinkle on me water and fertilisers enriched with DNA extracted from Dara Singh’s earwax.

Actual Response: (a constipated smile)

And so it continued, the filling up of spaces with meaningless chatter. The lift, the grocery store and even my own bedroom – no place was safe. There were kindly senior citizens who asked me what college I went to EVERY SINGLE TIME they met me (VR  College Of Engineering, if you must know), while others discussed job prospects, the weather, Laloo Prasad’s third nipple and other such scintillating topics. The ‘civilised’ Me smiled and faced it all, thus saving the actual Me from getting thrown out of the house.

But then my generation grew up, and boring chatter ceased to be the domain of the ‘Unclejis’. The Internet, originally developed by the US Department of Defense as a storehouse for Jenna Jameson videos, degenerated into a fertile sowing ground for Small Talk. As a result, there was born an intrepid race of friends, foes and people you talked to for 30 seconds in 1997, that has made it their life’s mission to scrap, buzz, tag and poke the living bejeezus out of you. Armed with the intellect of a retarded snail, they leave their droppings all over the web. Like this:

1st Post:
Hieeee…wasssuppp?
(Two days later)
2nd Post:
Hieeee…u dnt reply 2 my scraps..bhul gaye?
.
.
.
.
(20 Messages later)

hieee…u still nt replied 2 a single post..y..wat happ..anyway wassup..
To this, the actual (ok fine, uncivilised) Me would say:
You wanna know why I haven’t replied? Let’s see now. Maybe I’m too busy having a life. Maybe you have the charm of a gooey butt-pimple. Maybe I’d rather have my pecker pecked by a woodpecker, than engage in a conversation with you. Get over it.
But of course, the civilised Me does no such thing. After all, I wouldn’t want to be a social outcast now, would I?

A love story_ Any resemblences are purely coincidental

Pradeep and I were friends, close friends. There wasn’t much common between us except that both of us were losers. We were two losers in an institute of achievers. I was not good at academics, nor was he. I could never make it to any sports team, nor could he. I didn’t have a girlfriend; same was the case with Pradeep.
You don’t know (if you never have been a loser) how painful a loser’s life is if he isn’t in the company of another. Loser compatriots, the real pain-killers, give you the assurance that every grape you can’t reach is sour, that every sport you don’t have the stamina to play is boring and that you’re a loner because none of the girls in this institute is pretty enough to be honoured with your company.
Ours was a peaceful world, built on our conception that achievers were achievers because they work hard, that we were no way inferior, just a little lazy; we didn’t hang out with girls not because we didn’t get dates but because we were still waiting for that dream girl.
Alas! One evening, all of it changed. News came in that a classmate by name Sukanya had attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She was taken to the hospital soon but her condition was serious even after six hours.
Now, this girl was the heartthrob of the institute. Beautiful, slim, with long dark hair, she was one of the best feminine ‘matters’ you could get in our institute. She was Pradeep’s lab partner in soil mechanics practical. Pradeep always had a crush on her but was never confident enough to ask her for a date… or at least I thought it was that way. In fact, Sukanya used to chat with him animatedly while Pradeep kept standing numb and nervous in lab classes.
I thought Pradeep never had the confidence to ask her out on a date but here I was proved wrong. News came that Sukanya had attempted suicide because Pradeep had rejected her! Let alone Pradeep’s rejection, it was tough for me to believe that she had fallen for Pradeep. He used to look dumb in her presence. However, the news was confirmed by her friends. She had tried calling Pradeep many times that day and even had some altercations with him on the mobile phone. ‘Pradeep’ was one of the few words on her lips while lying senseless in the hospital.
You never know what goes on in a beautiful girl’s mind and I kept wondering how she could fancy the noob that Pradeep was. Besides, she was always close to a guy called Anadi and we thought they were dating since a long time. I pitied Anadi. Anadi was one of those guys who was acquainted with all in the campus and had spent some quality time with most. Anadi was one of the few guys who were found in most friends circles in campus. He was a ‘stud’ but was a close friend of mine and Pradeep too.
Eager to find out what really happened, I rushed to Pradeep’s room to find him in the company of Somanchi and two other guys who don’t hold any relevance to the story. Of course, there are others in this circle of losers. Somanchi is a loser, albeit only in lack of female luck. There is a long list of girls – longer than this story is intended to last –Somanchi tried his luck with, without success. Unlike most losers who are sceptical of achievers, Somanchi acts like one. He often boasts of so-and-so girl he exploited and left after losing interest in her.
“If you are here to ask about the suicide, please don’t. As a friend, you are at least expected to understand my predicament,” Pradeep said as soon as I took a seat.
“And friends shouldn’t hide anything, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes! Even I have never hidden anything about my love life to you guys,” Somanchi blurted. Most of the tales about his love life being ‘tales’, his statement wasn’t really an expression of hurt feeling. It was evident from Pradeep’s expressions that he was serious, nervous and worried.
“Look guys, there is a girl in hospital and everyone thinks I’m the villain. It hurts me but I am not in a position to tell anything to anyone,” Pradeep said. “I didn’t think she would go that far” – this last sentence he muttered more to himself than to us.
Somanchi again blurted out, “You don’t know girls, especially the pretty ones. They can’t handle a single break-up easily. You know how Ayushka reacted when I broke up with her? I tried my best to make it easy. I explained to her that…” Once started, Somanchi wouldn’t stop unless his story was heard and appreciated. We all knew this girl Ayushka never existed, and if she did exist it must have been the other way round.
News in this institute spreads like wildfire. Overnight everyone knew that Sukanya had fallen in love with a guy called Pradeep and had attempted suicide when he rejected her. Pradeep became a star, a ‘stud’ in campus lingo. Words started floating in his praise –
“Who is Pradeep… oh that is him?”
“Lucky bastard. Must have used her a lot”
“Always maintains a low profile. Now I know why…”
“That’s why I was thinking why Sukanya wasn’t having a date for a long time”
“Must have done it with Sukanya before ditching her”
“Is she carrying or something?”
“Good for her. She thought only she could ditch guys”
Classes went on as they should but there was a marked difference this time. Pradeep had assumed heroic proportions among classmates, seniors and juniors. Those who didn’t know him just stared at him from a distance and whispered to each other; those who did came forward, exchanged a ‘hi’ and talked to him the way fast friends do. Girls tried to show anger and abhorrence but their eyes deceived them. All these years, Pradeep and I would move through the campus without being noticed by girls, without ever being greeted by any of the so-called studs. Now it was all changing, but only for Pradeep.
I hated being left behind. Before both of us were ignored but now it was only me. While walking together inside the campus or when sitting in the coffee shop, we met many others. They greeted Pradeep but not me. Those who did greet me talked to Pradeep about something or the other making me feel left out. I was filled with jealousy. I used to go to the institute on his bike but discontinued it when I felt that I was being viewed as an assistant. I started avoiding him as much as possible, both inside and outside the class.
And then news came that Sukanya was healing fast and was now ready to receive visitors. It became a big occasion for Pradeep and his new friends’ circle. There was a hot debate among Pradeep’s new-found friends and their girlfriends on whether he should pay Sukanya a visit. Finally he agreed to meet her. I had hoped that something awkward would happen there and I would get my friend back. But the visit went pretty smooth. Fresh news came in that Pradeep and Sukanya had decided to stay friends. The condition worsened. Girls, who earlier acted as if they scorned Pradeep, started talking with him. After all, he had apologized Sukanya and she had forgiven him. My distance with Pradeep further increased.
I had been introduced to Anadi by Pradeep but now Anadi and I became fast friends. Pradeep openly avoided Anadi. With me Pradeep made quite a few attempts to act as if nothing had happened and that we were still fast friends but I started avoiding him. The distance increased all the more as I was found in Anadi’s company most of the time and Pradeep was just avoiding him.
I consoled myself that I was happy. After all, Anadi was a great guy, was popular in campus and was a real stud. I avoided Somanchi also as Pradeep was still in his list of good friends. However, I couldn’t deny the fact that I was missing my old friends. Every time I faced Pradeep and gave him a cold ‘hi’ before showing him my back, I wished none of this had ever happened.
One day, after a fortnight or so, Pradeep came to my room. He was trying to be friendly but I talked to him as if he was just an acquaintance. We talked on various subjects – the electives and the summer heat – talk that seemed too formal for two guys who were best friends just weeks before. Suddenly Pradeep asked me not to be very friendly with Anadi. This infuriated me.
“Now, if you have a problem with Anadi, it is your problem not mine,” said I. “I never ditch my friends!”
“Neither do I but Anadi is a special case,” said Pradeep at perfect ease.
“As if Anadi is the only case,” I said sarcastically. I did lack the rationale then that it was I who had distanced myself from him, not he from me.
“Yes he is the only case,” Pradeep said firmly. It seemed as if he hadn’t even noticed the coldness in my tone.
“And can I know the special case? It is Sukanya, isn’t it?” I reasoned, “You stole her from him and then ditched her, so it should be Anadi who should avoid you. That guy often talks adoringly about you and is ready to reconcile, but not you!”
Pradeep started laughing and this irritated me further.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“I could never tell you the truth about Sukanya’s suicide because of the oddity of the situation. Look, let me put some things straight. I did admire Sukanya, but who in campus didn’t? You think she could have ever fallen for a guy who didn’t exchange more than a couple of words with her even though she was his lab partner for one semester?”
“That was the first thing to come to my mind. But she did. You can never understand a girl’s choice…”
“True, you can never understand a girl’s choice. Why else would she go crazy over Anadi, a gay?”
That came as a bombshell. “A GAY?” I exclaimed.
“Yes. You remember Anadi was really close to us before Sukanya’s suicide attempt. The truth is that Sukanya was madly in love with Anadi – believe it or not – and had even proposed to him! Yeah, he really is a lucky bastard but as the saying goes ‘God never gives horns to horses but gives them to tame cows’. Anadi is gay and when he told her that, she tried to commit suicide.”
“So where do you come in?” I asked.
“That’s the most embarrassing part. Anadi considered her his best friend and told her what he hadn’t told anyone else – that he had feelings for me!” Pradeep made a grimace while saying this. “And Sukanya thought perhaps she could change him. You know, people generally don’t understand homosexuals in India. She was upset, so she got my number from somewhere and called me. I was shocked the moment she told me about it. I always sounded dumb while conversing with her. She wanted me to find a solution and, dumb that I am, I could only assure her of my being straight. That’s it. That’s where my part ends. Maybe she called Anadi and had some altercation that we don’t know of. What happened between her call to me and her suicide, I have no idea. She was mumbling my name in hospital because perhaps my name got stuck in her mind while she was taking the pills…”
There was a short pause during which I was looking at him incredulously. “Can you imagine the embarrassment I was going through when I was forced to visit her in the hospital?” he asked me.
I couldn’t control my laughter and kept laughing for a long time. Even Pradeep couldn’t control himself and we laughed our hearts out.
Pradeep was too embarrassed to tell this to anyone but eventually blurted it out to me… he didn’t mind looking like a fool in my eyes. But the episode didn’t end there. I, true to my nick ‘notice-board’, spread the message far and wide. Some believed, some rejected the real story behind Sukanya’s suicide, but we – the circle of losers – got a good topic to pull Pradeep’s legs.

TALES OF MY BOREDOM

Today, at last I took the revolutionary decision to bunk office! this adds another problem to my already troubled diary , what to do at home???????, no new interesting books on shelf, no girlfriend , no theaters here ( except one mediocre theater playing  Gujju movies), after a lot of brain storming, i zeroed the option of watching television , and still repenting the decision i made.

Indian television is the stupidest thing on the planet right now. If George W Bush, Digvijay Singh, a bag of hammers and a Miss World question came together to form a giant super-robot of stupidity, it’d meet its match if it tried to out-stupid Indian television. Stupidity isn’t a crime though; not making even a basic effort to be anything else is a straight-up felony. And Indian television makes roughly as much effort as an Indian man on his 27th wedding anniversary.

In an era where television around the world is growing in scope and ambition, often surpassing cinema in its drive to be art, Indian TV is the guy in the back of the classroom with his finger in his nose. Everyone else has moved on to bath-salts and shower-gel. We’re still dealing in soaps.

Today, I caught an episode of one of those shows that comes on at 10 am and looks like all the others that come on at 10 pm. And 9 pm. And 7 am. The sort of show in which men show up once every six days, and all the women dress like they’ve just come back from Bappi Lahiri’s coming-out party. I think the name of the show was Kya Aapki Badi Acchi Kasauti Ke Baarein Mein Log Kahenge Vadhu Smriti Irani or something. And I am not making this up; in it, the bahu (Hindi for “person who is about to have a relentless stream of miserable things happen to her”) discovered a bomb while the family was praying. Except the bomb was stitched into the bandhgala of a child in the family. So she took him outside, bit the wires off with her teeth and then flung the jacket over the side of a cliff. As if Indian girls didn’t have enough pressure on them, now they’re going to have to add “defuse detonator attached to C4” to their list of “Things to learn for marriage” list.
If a writer anywhere else in the world came up with that, you would have only one course of action; call the zoo and tell them that their orangutan has escaped and come to your office again. But we put this on TV. You’re thinking “Why not just change the channel?” Because it just gets worse. Changing the channel takes you to “youth channels” that used to be music channels that now run reality programming where half the cast looks like it’s on heroin, and the other half look like they deal it. Another change takes you to sports channels, whose idea of post-match analysis is Sidhu dancing with three cheerleaders to Halkat Jawaani. A third change takes you to English channels, which you can’t watch because they’re like the Fill In The Blanks section of every school exam ever come to life. “She said _____________ to that _________, that _______ ____ ______” is what most shows sound like, because apparently, if we heard somebody say the word “gay” or “nipple”, god would drop the entire west coast into the ocean.
In pandering to what we condescendingly call “the lowest common denominator”, our own content diminishes us. It reduces us to a collection of our worst tics and stereotypes. It blows my mind that we currently have more TV channels on air than we ever did in the past, but somehow, at the same time, fewer unique ideas than we did back then. We need better TV. We deserve less stupidity. Though at this point, it’d probably be easier, less painful, and more fun, to be at Office.

HOME, LIFE AND LONLINESS

It's already four months since i came to Dahod, and I’m proud to announce that , I, for the first time ever, am living in my own house. King of the castle. Master of the domain. Walker in the nude. You get the idea.
I’m lucky because I got a big Government bungalow  in Dahod. My office is just down the road, which means I no longer have to spend hours in a local like those of metro cities, my nose buried in some stranger’s armpit (I prefer the armpits of people I know).

Certainly being in a remote rural place have its own advantages, metro lifestyle is not conducive to pursue any hobby. Well, duh. That’s like saying the Vatican isn’t conducive to abortions. A typical day in Metro involves braving a swarm of armpits in train compartments that even the Gestapo would’ve considered inhumane, with the rest of your time spent at a job that you hate from the bottom of your cholesterol-laden heart, but you dare not quit, because you need to pay the rent for an apartment the size of my friend's handbag. 

Apart from that i don't know anybody in Dahod, so i have to develop ‘My Network’. This is a common Bachelor thing, wherein you have a bunch of guys to do everything you’re too busy to do – finish the laundry, buy groceries, repair stuff, please your dog – everything. As of now, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows other guys, so it’s all going to be good.

This sudden availability of free time is most welcome, because as it turns out, living on your own involves a lot of work. Contrary to expectation, life is not like an episode of Friends. Or wait… it is like Friends, except that I’m Monica and I have to cook, clean, scrub, decorate, host and to make things worse, my domestic help looks nothing like Jennifer Aniston (although it would be creepy if he did)

Now there are many things in life that I’m good at, like writing, dancing,  performing, and having serious conversations with women about haircare. But cooking has never been my forte. However, I braved it out    (after being tormented by tasteless Gujarati cuisine) in the kitchen recently, learning to whip up tasty and healthy South Indian meals. Hah no, I’m kidding. My body composition is now 80% Chicken and 20% MTR Chicken Masala.

And there is a very good reason for my lack of real-world skills; it’s called The Indian Mother.
That’s right, because we Indian boys are the most mollycoddled and dependent species on the planet, possibly ahead of Norman Bates. In all my time at home, I never lifted a finger – not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t have to. Indian mothers will pamper their sons all the way into adulthood, resting only once they’ve made them Prime Minister.

On the upside, things like storage and decoration become a lot easier if you’re a man. For example, I don’t have a cupboard, but using only my masculine skills and bare hands, I’ve managed to create a fantastic garment-storage structure, technically known as ‘a pile of clothes’. Over time, this pile has evolved into an entire ecosystem and although I cannot be sure, I think some Bangladeshis have sneaked in and set up home there.
As far as decor goes, i’ve used a minimalistic theme for the drawing room, because I have no money  to buy extravagant furniture. It’s nearly bare, like a dinner table at the Hazare house. This emptiness inspires two very different reactions, described below.

Female Friends: Ooh, big empty room. We can decorate it with fairy lights, and new cushions and curtains and carpets and sofas and fabric – OHMYGOD I AM SO TURNED ON RIGHT NOW!

Guy Friends: Ooh, big empty room. We can play underarm cricket here. And this floor will be great for that spin thing I learnt in the 3^rd standard – OHMYGOD I AM SO TURNED ON RIGHT NOW!
. And if things get a bit too overwhelming, I’m calling Mommy.

My Ganesh Chaturdhi Celebrations

Amid  political uncertainty and price-hikes in the country, blessing in disguise is Ganesh chaturdi/ vinayaka chavithi. And i an celebrating it with my parents after a long time( in fact wthout them i couldn't have the fesitival food items). so i am happy . It’s easy to tell when Ganesh Chaturthi arrives. Giant mandaps come up in your neighbourhood overnight, office staff mysteriously calls in sick (‘Sir I have fever. For ten days.’) and most importantly, every single show on TV shoehorns in a plotline about Ganesha solving the entire family’s problems.
 

I love Ganesh Chaturthi. Actually, let me rephrase. I love lord Ganesha. He is, in my opinion, the coolest God we’ve ever had (sorry Shiva). He loves to eat, he has an elephant’s head, and he once broke off a tusk and threw it at the moon because it laughed at him. Anybody who is able to solve cosmological problems through amateur dentistry gets my vote. The next time your dentist tries to overcharge you, ask him if he’s ever been able to do that. If he says “no”, pay him one-tenth and leave in a huff.

We have several gods (one for every two Indians alive) in the Indian pantheon, but none of them have legends and stories as cool as Ganesha’s. My favourite Ganesha legend is the one in which he won his wife. His parents, who everyone knows are Krishnam raju  and Vanisri ( in the film vinayaka vijayam, which ETV telecasts on this day every year) , told him and his brother that whoever circles the world three times first would win the hand of a beautiful bride. His brother (manjulatha) set off on the task, dutifully circling the entire globe. Ganesha was smarter; he stayed home, finished watching all five seasons of Breaking Bad, and then walked around his parents thrice, claiming that they were his world. With this unique method, Lord Ganesha impressed his parents, won the maiden’s hand, and invented lateral-thinking and an IIM entrance-interview question, proving to everyone that he was Chuck Norris before Chuck Norris was Chuck Norris.
I love Ganesha because of all the gods in the Indian pantheon, he’s the only one whose intelligence is tempered by a wicked sense of humour. I have respected several gods over the ages, and I take away nothing from their wisdom, but with no offence to them, Lord Ganesha is the only one I’d consider adding on Facebook. In a typically over-reactive flash of bad Indian parenting, his own father cut his head off and replaced it with an elephant’s head, but Lord Ganesha just turned it into an advantage, and here we are today, celebrating him in a way nobody celebrates the gods with normal human heads.

I love Ganesha, but I wish I could say the same about his followers. Them, I’m not such a huge fan of. He is the remover of obstacles. The only obstacle his followers remove is the post-10 pm loudspeaker ban. His followers hire a truck the size of a house to immerse an idol the size of my fist. Not once do they pause to consider the irony of doing that for a god who, despite his prodigious size, happily chooses to ride a mouse. Ganesha is a patron of the sciences and the arts. The closest thing to art some of his followers have seen is Himesh Reshamiya’s last album. This is why they play it at 1,100 decibels all day at the pandals where they (ostensibly) celebrate him.
My point is simply this. You can love a god, any god, but that doesn’t mean you have to tolerate the nonsense his followers propagate in his name. And if they ever suggest to you that mocking them is tantamount to mocking the god himself, tell them that given that they worship the god of intelligence, it’d be good of them to get some.

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE

I live alone now, in a Government bunglow. This means I am now in permanent charge of making a few thousand square-feet of the universe not burn-down, explode, collapse, or breed Ebola. I have responsibilities; I need to make sure bills are paid, I need to know when the garbagemen come, and I need to figure out why neighing sounds come out of my neighbour’s window at 3 am. Like any self-respecting single man, I will probably destroy everything in a six kilometre radius while trying to stay on top of things, if left to my own devices. So, like every government employee, I got lot of domestic helps, they themselves are paid government employees (their combined salary is three to four times my own salary).

One is a cleaner, two others are cooks. They’re both really sweet ladies, and they have a lot in common. They both get sick a lot, mostly on weekends. 1 is their favourite number, because it’s the one on the calendar that means ‘payday’. And they both have very large families. My cleaner alone has six grandmothers and twelve grandfathers. Heck, seven of them died this year, two within 48 hours of each other on Janmashtmi weekend. But still, it’s a pretty simple system. Government pays them both good money, and in exchange, they cook, they clean, and they intensely hate each other.

When you first get household help, you’re taught the first rule of household help club; no household help may be allowed to like any other household help. The last time I saw two people meet and fall in hate so quickly, Rahul Mahajan was getting married on TV. Their hatred for each other is more bizarre because their jobs only require them to be in the same room for two hours every day. For one twenty minutes every day, the cook cooks and the cleaner does the dishes. I’m not sure what point in that process is so complicated and stressful that it led to a two-hour brawl that ended in one of them saying “Sir yeh chudail peeche se g** khaati hai.”

I’ve learnt since that most fights between the household helps happen for one of three reasons:

1) One of them does too much work and thus threatens the other one, who is afraid she’ll get fired and replaced entirely by the first one.
2) Neither of the two does any work.
3 One tells the other how to do the work.

Reason number three is the most terrifying. Because one thing that pisses a woman off more than being told what to do by a guy, is being told what to do by another woman. And the only thing that pisses a woman off even more than that is when she’s told this in front of a man. The brawl they had this week began when the cleaner told the cook to use a spoon, and not her wet hands to take out aata.

When she heard this, a look passed over my cook’s face. It was a look that said “There was only one woman in the world who could tell me what to do, and I know for a fact that you’re not my mother-in-law, because four years ago, I killed her myself, so how dare you.” She countered this attack by throwing a tantrum about not being able to work in conditions like this, and about how her pride had been bruised by this affront. This was impressive only because it was the first time I have ever seen her exhibit any sort of chef-like behaviour. On most days she just stands around overcooking things in one of two flavours; tasteless, or Flamethrower Filled With The Burning Souls of Sex-Offenders.

My cleaner responded with a salvo about how the cook was a liar, a cheater, and a back-biting she-devil who she would never speak to again. I will never ever do any work with her or help her in any way, she swore. And if she talks to me, she said rather unnecessarily, I will slap her. I wanted to say something, but she was holding a knife, and takes the local passenger every day. So instead, I gave them duties that will now keep them separated, and wandered back into my living room, massaging my head as I sat down on the couch and wondered where I’d heard this relentless juvenile squabbling before. And then my hand hit the remote and MTV came on, and I just knew.

ORDEAL THAT IS CALLED ROADIES

 Yes ! it , the inevitable happended again , being jobless ( synonymus to a Public servant) , and being in a shitty place named Dahod some where in Tribal Gujarat, these days i am watching Saas bahu serials regularly , in betweeen , i again was subjected to agony of watching " The Roadies"- Chandigarh Edition .If the Earth is a petri dish and human-beings are bacteria, then Roadies is the point where the bacteria go rogue and become a terminal disease. Roadies is, to put it simply, an indefensibly awful show. I don't even know why they call it Roadies. They could just call it "Stupid People on TV: Chandigarh Edition".

This is a show where contestants are humiliated, beaten, sworn at, abused and screamed at by a pair of judges who look like a malnourished version of Right Said Fred. If contestants survive that onslaught, they get put on TV, where they are humiliated, beaten, sworn at, abused and screamed at by each other. All this because they "want to be a Roadies".

More entertaining is the fact that these kids almost seem to enjoy being put through the ordeal, like they think we're laughing with them. This may also have a lot to do with the fact that the average Roadies contestant has the IQ of oatmeal. I mean, you have to be reasonably stupid to take shit from two guys who thought being in Tees Maar Khan was a good idea. How stupid is the average Roadies contestant? Well, one confessed she'd attempted to once kill herself. When asked why, she said it was because a friend did black magic on her. Another, when asked a question he had no answer to, simply pointed at his sneakers and says "Look, I am cool. I have Skechers brand shoes. Just got from US. Not launched in India also." Unsurprisingly, he went far on the show.

And the point is… well, the point is what exactly? If they survive the ordeal, one guy gets a motorcycle, another becomes a VJ on MTV, the one that comes third celebrates by going on another reality show, and two others realize nobody watches MTV anymore, so they go off and make an MMS and become properly famous instead.

In the end though, I'm as guilty as anybody else. I love Roadies. I'm transfixed by it in the same way that I am by the sight of two dogs mating; it's horrible, and yet riveting. It's like watching common sense hang itself live on TV, and everybody loves a good hanging.

JISM 2 , SUNNY LEONE AND ME

Guys my book is in final shape, (it sounds like “bomb is ready”) of course, final shape means, it got rejected by two reputed publishers, and was awarded for having maximum number of typographical/grammatical errors. What surprised me was a comment by the third not so well known publisher that “The literary content of my book is on the higher side of sexuality” (my god, I must commend his pre natal sex determination capabilities). Im still figuring out what he exactly meant, but issue here is of hypocrisy. This is a country where everyone likes to pretend sex doesn't even exist. Even though, with a population of 1.2 billion people, we are the world's second-largest evidence of the fact that it does. The other day I made a comment on Sunny leone’s Jism 2, one of my friend’s reaction was, sheesh ! U saw Sunny leone’s porn also????  As a matter of fact, I am a man. And men watch porn. It's like peeing standing up. It's what we do. If that surprises you, you should probably get back in your ship and go back to whatever nebula it is that you came from.

People might have remembered three ministers in Karnataka were caught watching pornography on a cellphone in the Karnataka Assembly. The resultant scandal has been dubbed porngate (on a side-note, great name for a website), and has got me thinking; we need a new way of naming scams and scandals. We've used 'gate' for over 30 years now, and it's getting a bit stale. Also, what will we do when a water scam breaks? That one's already taken, and even though we live in an era of reboots, I reckon it'll all get a bit awkward. While it is embarrassing, porngate is also slightly impressive because it proves that unlike Kapil Sibal, these men know how to use technology. It takes some navigating to be able to download and sync videos onto your phone, and I didn't think politicians knew that the 21st century had been invented yet. Then again, I can't think of a better way to get men to learn technology than telling them that if they do, there's hardcore X-rated action to be found on the other side. It's how the entire 20th century was won, and why should things be any different now? Some reports pause to point out the irony that one of the men caught watching the video was (until porngate) the Women and Child Development Minister. The media seems surprised and outraged because just a month ago, he'd said women should dress conservatively to avoid sexual assault. I'd like to step in here and say that his statements (and position) are irrelevant to what happened. He could advocate that we ban women altogether, and it still wouldn't matter, because he is a man. Also, his statement only proves that he's a hypocrite, and if a hypocritical politician surprises you, you are alien to this earth. Three ministers were caught watching pornography in the Assembly. What I love about this country is that we're outraged at the first half of that sentence, not the second half. A lot of the outrage seems to stem from the fact that they watched porn at all, and not at the larger issue, which is that they watched it in the Assembly, i.e. at work. I'm going to stick my neck out here and say grow up, pornography isn't the problem. It is not an inherently bad thing. Pornography is, for many, their first introduction to the very concept of sex. Pornography powers the digital economy. Pornography practically keeps all of Eastern Europe employed. What is outrageous is that they watched it in the Assembly. Not because it is one of the highest institutions in the land, or because we should hold it sacred (look at who we elect, it's practically the opposite), but because, very simply, they weren't focusing on work. If I watched pornography at work, and didn't alt-Tab the browser window fast enough, I'd get fired just because I was wasting work-hours. And hadn't been nice enough to tell my colleagues how to bypass the office-firewall. Their defense has also been lamentable. Some MLA/MP of BJP belonging to Goa, leapt to their rescue with "They were only watching it. Not doing it." I will leave that sentence there for you to understand the full horror of its implications. The ministers themselves have said that they were watching the video for 'research' on violence against women, and they were highlighting the point by watching footage from a 'rave party' off the coast of Karnataka. This is the political equivalent of "those magazines are not mine, I'm just keeping them for a friend." The ministers also said that rave parties are bad, and responsible for a host of problems. If by 'rave parties' they mean the BJP and the Congress, I have to say, I agree.