Things that amaze me

Ever since my article on faking news about Foreigners getting amazed by our celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi completely flopped I’ve been stuck with this word amazed and plotting my revenge at this world. I mean, I thought it was pretty funny (OK maybe not as funny as original Rahul Gandhi speech, read it here) but most people didn’t think so, one friend told me it was neither slapstick or dry enough to be funny, another friend was blunt enough to comment that I should stick to my style of humour. To both of you and the other 7 billion people who didn’t find it funny I say this …Fuck You! Think of it one of those things which are only appreciated when a person dies, like Copernicus’ theory about the planets or Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. But anyways, till that article becomes a standard class tenth chapter of the NCERT English book, I am gonna tell you about the things I am amazed by –

Girls’ vocabulary:

An average 4 year old girl knows more and speaks more words than an average 6 year old boy. And it is no secret girls always score more than boys in any language exam. But I always wonder where does their advanced vocabulary and language skills go when describing things. A thing which is good is good and a thing which is breath-taking, awe inspiring, mesmerizingly good is just sooooo good. And a thing which is tasty is yum, but a thing which is delectable, luscious and piquant is just described by adding more m’s after yum. And the worst thing is when a woman starts talking “You know that guy was so…” and she completes the sentence with a hand gesture and a facial expression and all women nod because they have got exactly what she meant to say. But I am stumped! What is that? That guy was so what? Handsome? Square jawed? Putrid? Well hung? Short? … Whatever he was I am sure there are words to describe all that. I am amazed where their 1800 words vocabulary goes at these times…

People who write okay:

I mean what is okay? OK is a word, fairly common word, maybe the most common word… but a word. Maybe it evolved from Germanic languages as Oll Korrect or Choctaw or maybe West African in origin but a word nonetheless. Why expand a short word? And I am not talking about the Grammar Nazis, I am amazed by the people who write –  c u thr and then reply as ‘okay’. I am also perturbed by people who write LOLZ instead of just LOL, but that is a debate for a different time.

Nature Lovers:

Only a nature lover can describe a gutter as “a gushing torrent of water in which human refuse swirls and dances like little children with dross, oh what a beautiful tango!” Or the morning 8:10 Kurla local as “A sea of humanity placed so close together that they share the sight, smell and consciousness of each other”

I really can’t stand them, these are the people who ruin Goa for you. As soon as you spot a German in bikini from the latest Sports Illustrated and are about to point out her to your friends a ‘Nature Lover’ will shout out “Bhaai sunset dekh! Kya nazara hai yaar ! Dekh dekh wo baadal bhi ekdum red ho gaya hai. Yaar meri ek photo le le is sunset ke saath”, by the time you figure which cloud is he talking about and take that bloody photo the German is gone and you have to content yourself by ogling at Indian girls in white shorts. Or as you settle down by a nice turn of the road en route to Mussori and you are about to start passing the whisky these people will shout “Look look ! There!” and point towards the sky, and the time you waste in figuring out that he was pointing at an eagle is used up by other people in eating all the remaining chips.

And Nature Lovers I admit that the beaches in Andaman are nice and all but “The Sea touching the small island from all sides” does not make me think about “how we are so small in the ethereal play of heavens”. Remember man built the shopping mall, everything else just kind of happened.

Autowallahs:

There is must be some secret manual for autowallahs or maybe some exclusive training school for them in Area 51. There is no other explanation for how they all behave exactly alike. No matter who you ask for no matter where, they don’t want to go there. And I am not talking about asking an auto guy to come from GK II to go to Yakubpur (it is a real place in Noida) at 2 o’ clock in the night. I am talking about asking an auto guy near Hebbal to go to MG road at 2 o clock in the day on a Sunday. If they can’t get a return passenger from there, I don’t know from where they will. They do not say that they want extra money or if you want to go to the main road or the bylanes, they just flat out refuse.  And these guys amaze me by hogging bus stands asking people waiting for a bus where they want to go, but at the auto stand 50m away they refuse everyone.

I would really love to conduct a study of how much they earn sitting around so that they don’t want to earn by ferrying passengers. And not to be cavalier about it; but I think they can really do with some more money. But to them it does not matter, they will sit at the auto stand whole day reading newspaper but will not break the unity by reducing prices or agreeing to go to a place the first guy had refused. One observation I had though: “Bhaiya please chod do na” of girls for some reason works better than “Chaloge kaise nahi boss, police mae complain karun kya?”of guys.

Football fans:

If there is anything more annoying than a football fan then the devil has kept it for his private torture chamber. I acknowledge that it is ok to be passionate about a game, and social media sites are made for airing your feelings and putting your carefully posed and selected photos in the album ‘Random Clicks’ or ‘Fun with friends’. But there should be line-drawing somewhere.

I don’t mind the occasional ‘Sachin scored a century’ post, or being the tolerant, broad minded guy that I am; I can also live with ‘Rafa won the Wimbledon’ (Did he?) but I get really amazed by the people who write “Against the KOP... Arteta allowed Henderson to run into the D from half line like he were messi...its another thing he missed the shot....Yesterday Arteta closed down well comparitively... n rosicky had a meaningful game in ages hahaha...” and expect people to like or comment on it. Or when they blurb on twitter “Fuck Arsenal! The linesman were paid off to give Beckham (or any other ManU player, I don’t know anyone else) offside, otherwise were would have won 3 – 2!”. Ya either the linesman were paid, or the referee, or the evil space bats interfered in the game by reality warp, but they can never admit that there team played a bad game and they deserved to lose; and moreover they expect normal humans to understand and care about what they are saying. It is like I suddenly exclaim on Facebook “Fuck man my DF1 TR went into error because the object VBAP-IHKREZ was not moved to QF1 system. Fuck these lousy developers” and expect people to react to it, expect maybe thinking I suddenly suffered head trauma.  

So football fans please take notice of what spongebob is saying below –

Arranged marriage people:

I really did not want to write this one, thinking it was a bad idea, but my wife talked me into it. Ever since I talked her into a very bad idea (marrying me), she is just raring to get even with me. I have no intention to hurt anyone just because I did not have an arranged marriage, but if you feel offended then maybe I am right about what I am saying.

When I was in school I noticed this trend first. Being thin and having a small build I had to pick my fights carefully. I was wise enough to be friends with people who were friends with other people so I was protected in general, but the threat of instant and individual violence was always there and hence I started noticing this trend. The guy who shouted “saale maa c**d dunga teri. Tu jaanta nahi hai mujhe” numerous times was not be feared, he would either duck out of a fight first or start crying after two punches. It was the silent, staring and ‘who never initiates the fight’ guys you have to worry about. The same trend was in college, the guys who said “Andy bhaai aaj nadi baha denge” were the first to puke. And in office the people who complain about the workload the most while away their hours in gossip and in reading TOI.

Now there are people who are married a month back, have known their fiancé / fiancée for four more months before that through phone and start putting up tons of photos on Facebook and post statuses like ‘Happy Janamasthmi love of my life’ I can’t help but relate to the things I described above. I can’t help notice that only arranged marriage people hold hands everywhere, are in the front line of getting photos clicked together, call each other baby and eat in one plate. They seem to be more in love than the people who have fought their families for years to be together. No reason they can’t be, my parents had an arranged marriage and they seem to be doing ok. But then I am cynical, negative bastard who sees things this way, that there is no reason to poster your love for your spouse all over cyberspace. I mean people already are putting “oh my god my kid looks so cute while pooping” or “Please like this photo to end all wars” why add my ‘first karwachauth with the best husband in the world’ to the mix? But people still do it with so much tenacity that it amazes me.

Go Forth

I could say that I had another parathawala moment. But it was much more than that, much more subtle and much more long drawn. Well, I did have a parathawala moment but that was different. But let’s first get it out of the way anyways.

So, It was raining that day and I had recently started going to client’s offshore captive office these days. That office is in Whitefield and I stay in Indiranagar, both places are around 20 kms apart. My office is in Electronics City which is 20 kms away too, but I used to come and go in an office bus and used to sleep along the way both times, so I really didn’t mind the distance. Or maybe I did but soon I got used to it, like we humans get used to everything we are in. Anyways back to that day, that day it was raining. I stood in the rain for a while to catch the public bus from my office back to the bus stop near my house. The bus was crowded so I didn’t get a seat and as it always happens the traffic was terrible, because it was raining. So I was drenched, standing in the bus and was stuck in it for an hour and a half and getting more pissed off by the minute. I got down at the stop, started running in the rain towards the house in the rain, mad at the whole world. I was mad at the weather for raining, mad at the Bangalore traffic for being bad like it is, mad at office people to ask me to go to client office for no good reason, but I was mad at myself the most for acquiescing to their demand and for not having a cushy job where I could come and go in an office car, wearing a nice suit. If any of these things had been different I wouldn’t be in the rain wet and tired and unrewarded. As I was running along the sidewalk I caught someone looking angrier than me on the sidewalk from the corner of my eye.

He was a tall thin guy with a light stubble on his face, wearing a light colored non-descript shirt that most Indians wear while going to work, holding an umbrella. His eyes were darting here and there in the crowd expecting something from people. I couldn’t place what at first but then I looked down to something shiny and metallic at his feet. It was a big metal degchi containing boiled eggs that he was planning to sell. But it was raining and nobody was giving him any heed or business, everyone was just running like me. And that point I realized he HAD a right to more angry than me, he couldn’t go anywhere, he had to stand and he was not getting paid, not paid extra like I wanted but to earn at all. Suddenly I remembered that come and go in an A/C bus, sit in an A/C office and earn 5 times than him. I had no reason to be angry.

But it is a different thing I wanted to talk about. So as I said these days I go to a place called Whitefield, that is a office hub, all you see around that place are offices and offices, it’s a steel and glass city with roads running through like arteries and you catch glimpses of people wearing ID badges moving around once in a while. There is nothing else there, all offices and a few malls dotted in some odd localities. And buses and office cabs shunting around; more at office hours, sparse at other timings and it’s a ghost town on weekends.

It’s all clean and sparkling buildings with huge signboards hanging from buildings heralding some of the biggest corporate names. But one day I stumbled into one by-lane, it was lined up with food stalls. Most were selling tea and cigarettes, which is the biggest demand of office goers. They are restricted to smoke inside office and everyone without exception hates the vending machine tea. So apart from the proverbial chaai sutta stalls there were lots of kiosks selling food I was surprised so many street vendors selling idli & dosa in the mornings and rice & Puri Sabzi in the afternoons. I wondered who would eat here, all the offices had their own food courts with certified and closely scrutinized vendors and there was no dearth of restaurants in the nearby malls. But I got my answer when I went there to eat with my colleague. A few were laggards like me who had missed the breakfast time in office and were forced to eat outside. But most were men wearing either white shirt & white pants, or a Khaki one, a sort of uniform. These were the cab drivers. It’s only natural when tens of thousands of people commute to Whitefield everyday from far off locations; most of them avail the office cabs. So while these tens of thousands eat in their neat office food courts inside sparkling glass buildings what of the drivers of the cabs who are not allowed inside the office, but are required wait outside anyways? They would require food as well. This is where these roadside vendors came in. They are fulfilling the auxiliary demand of food created by these offices. It is almost a parallel economy. The employees get their money from the clients whom they service, rather the office gets that, the office pays the cab company which pays these drivers, these drivers pay the food vendors for the food, which in turn pay some other people.

So who are these other people? Not counting the cops of course, who would come once in a while threatening to demolish these illegal unlicensed structures. Thus supplementing their meager salaries with bribes and egos killed by saluting politicians. It is another economy as well, but let’s not get into that for now. So it happens that these vendors have containers filled with water and a tumbler to act as make shift wash basin, my colleague seeing that asked me if it was drinkable water, I said no it is tap water while looking for a tap nearby to point at. But there was no tap nearby, there was no tap anywhere at all. And why should there be one? It is a commercial zone and this a foot path which they have encroached, there wasn’t any tap built. So I was wondering where they got their water from, it is too cumbersome to carry all this water from their homes. I got my answer after a few days when I was eating there again. An old man came up to me and asked me in Kannada if the bike parked near the pavement was mine, I said no so he went to the next person asking the same. I wondered why he was asking that, the bike wasn’t bothering anyone, but I realized why when the bike was removed, a water tanker came in parked there and all this vendors made a line to fill their water containers. The tanker guy gave approx 15 buckets of water, took his money and went to the next bylane to repeat the same thing. The tanker guy has made his business to supply water to these illegal water-connection-less food vendors.

So when you call someone under-privileged next time, when you believe someone who says he didn’t get a chance till now, when you nod along to something like a Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or you roll down to your car window to give someone alms. Think of these people, think of the people who have made their space where no space existed, who have tapped the real market need without even knowing how Marketing is spelled or spoken for that matter. Who are only visible when you scratch the surface, who have no corporate ID badges and message boards to rant upon, no mails to point fingers at that they are whatever they are because of him and her. Believe in the Levis ad, which says – “There are ways out, you just have to look around for them”. Go Forth !

Dear Sir. Please permit dying.

I am a 31 year old Techie. I never liked this word when newspapers used this word – Techie robbed on Outer Ring Road, Frustrated Techie ends life etc etc. But today I am gonna use it because it would help you to guess what I do for a living, which otherwise is very difficult to explain. I have tried it with my mother in law, my Dad and some of my Businessman friends but I have always failed. Anyways back to the point, the Point is that I am dying. While meeting with a bike accident certainly has its plus points like No need to fight the insane traffic in the morning, not having to worry if you are carrying your DL, RC, PUC, NOC, PPP, XYZ and all the other documents that James Bond wouldn’t have got in one movie; not having to think which expense to cut every time petrol has a hike and you don’t. But it certainly has a bad side also, dying.  Though I didn’t die of that in the end

What follows are the emails that have gone back and forth between my office people and me before I died. And if you are wondering how am I speaking from beyond the great beyond, go watch Sunset Boulevard or American Beauty or Raaz

My dear wilted rose

It is not the end

Life gives a second chance

Take it and bloom

My dear wilted rose

That is forever behind you

Forget about the pain

It was good riddance

My dear jilted rose.

But remember what you hated

Or it you might become

As rotten, as twisted

As dry, thorny and tilted rose

I see the marks and prunes

But I won’t throw you out

Or confine you to a book

My dear mud silted rose

Instead I’ll be your sunshine,

Your water and your roots.

Till grow back. Don’t worry,

My dear wilted rose

My DoppelgAnger

I recently got to know that something horrifying was done to a person near to me. After that I have no rest, I can't sleep, I can't think of anything else, every time I'm not distracted it starts playing in front of me like a video on infinite loop. And then I start to imagine how it would be, but in the next 2 seconds I stop, because I can't take it, it's too horrifying to even imagine what it would have been.

Now I know what Joseph Gordon Levitt meant by the lines - 'to feel the anger inside in your bones' in the movie The Dark Knight Rises. That's the only true emotion I know now except maybe a deep sense of injustice. My laughs are forced and fake most of the times, happiness is a fleeting momentary misdirection, and I don't have the strength to feel sad for anything else.

So I let this anger be, it sits there coloring my every thought, guiding my every action, aiding my living. And I know I need this anger. I won't forgive and I won't forget. Because this anger contains something. This finite anger strangles the infinite grief it sits on top of. The grief that that happened and I could not do something to stop it. The grief doesn't understand the normal principles of cause and effect, it doesn't listen to any logic, it doesn't care about the basic problem of un-changeability of the past. It's like a beast showing it's teeth, waiting to come out and kill me. But the anger is the lock on the beast's cage. The anger doesn't let me sleep, it makes my lose my appetite, it makes my day dream in all my waking moments about the pain that I need to inflict back. But still I like this anger, I need this anger. This anger I can handle, I have been living with this anger for so long now that I won't know who I am without it.

The anger is my friend here, the only friend maybe. Because he only knows my burden and what I wish to do; no one else.

And what I want, what my anger wants; is not revenge, or some obscure meta-physical concept of harmony or justice. It wants to inflict punishment. Punishment for wrong doings. Karma is a bitch. When you do bad shit, bad shit is going to find you; and in this case it will be me.

If God exists, then he is unimaginably cruel, but even by that I hope God will give me this opportunity. And then I will demonstrate that there are no actions without consequences, that sooner or later it catches up on you. Sooner or later I would catch up to it. Then it would be understood by what Newton meant by - "Every action in this world has an equal and opposite reaction"

Why you should marry an alcoholic

All my advice till now has been for men, but now with the wave of feminism abound I guess it’s better to be called anything else but sexist. So this latest blog post is relevant for women; about how should they take the most important decision of their life. They should really, whole heartedly, thankfully marry an alcoholic.

Now I’m sure you must be eyeing this with the suspicion that all women eye everything men tell them, so let me recount you people the benefits of marrying an alcoholic – 

• He would never care if you don’t have your upper lip done, legs waxed, your  Errr let’s just say private area shaved and won’t judge you if you don’t wear a sexy dress in the middle of December
• He would be ready to drive 20 km one way in a 10Km/L petrol car at a cost of 75 Rs/L to find  table mats on discount you saw once in a store on the left side of the road near a store you don’t really remember the name of. Just reward him with a quarter when he comes back.
• The logic that you need to buy new bed sheets to match the color of your bed which was recently bought to match the new sofa whose upholstery was recently changes to match the new curtains which you got last week to match your walls which was recently re-painted to make the house Feng Shui friendly and thus increase your home savings; would make perfect sense to him.
• Alcoholic anonymous is easier to join than most dating sites.
• You actually have to never worry about his getting his shirt ironed properly.
• As long as you have train him right, the answer to: “Do I look fat in these pants?” “Is this dress too tight?” “Is this top too deep neck?” will always be no. Just give him a beer for every no he says without pausing to think for more than 3 Mili Seconds.
• No pressure to come home before he does, in fact the longer you stay in office the longer his friends can stay at your house and drink.
• After being disowned for drinking too much his mother, brother, brother’s wife’s sister, brother’s wife’s sister’s aunt’s best friend’s daughter will never come to meet you at your house, leave alone asking you to come to theirs. Problem with in-laws solved !
• After 5 large of Old Monk he will start appreciate the nuances of the plot of Diya aur baati hum, and understand the deeper meaning of showing the same slap 5 times from different angle in Kya hua tera vaada.
• He’ll pass out on most nights without eating, so you can order Kimchi Salad and Babycorn Manchurian with less oil and less spice as much as you want.
• He will never say you have too many cushions.
•  He will drop your blouse to some tailor that your sister’s best friend suggested, even if it is on the other side of town if there is a bar nearby
•  Alcohol causes short term memory loss, he won’t remember that you stood in front of your wardrobe for 30 minutes last night as well and complained you have nothing to wear.
• In fact he also won’t remember that issue you are arguing about today actually happened last month and you said ‘it was nothing’ back then.
• He won’t mind your buying cinnamon scented candles for 2120 Rs. If you tell him this is for lighting his cigarette.
• If you stop enough bars along the way he won’t be able to recall that you tow actually went out to buy a pair of jeans for you and came back holding two pair of footwear and a bell chime. 
• You can tell him “Jaanu bas bahut pee lee tumne, ab aur mat peena” any day anytime. I’m not very clear about the exact benefit of this to you people; but my experience has taught me that you derive some great pleasure out of it even, if the guy just had two drinks that too after an interval of 3 weeks.
• Anybody who had 9 drinks since morning will always be a good listener, he won’t be able to give advice on any of your problems but hey, you didn’t want that in the first place now, did you?
• He probably would be peeing all over the place, that pretty much settles the toilet seat argument.
• No matter how deep cut your friend’s top is, his eyes will never leave his drink at dinner.
• And lastly you people will never ever have to fake a headache. Anybody who downed a bottle of Royal Stag will require a crane to get it up.

Now if you like this, please write so in the comments, that way I can come and sleep at your house tonight. I’m sure to be tossed out of mine.