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.