The day that Kotler failed

So it was a bright and sunny Saturday morning. Actually it was little too bright, a little too sunny and I was hungover and tired and sleepy. My phone was conked and the alarm which was supposed to wake me up at 5; never did wake me up at 5. So I woke up at 6:45 panicked and looked at my phone, it was switched off. I switched it on and called the person I was supposed to pick up at 7. It was my friend’s friend, or as my friend (Ashutosh) said; his business partner. So I was supposed to pick her up from K.P.H.B and drop her to ISB where she was going to have her first exhibition for newly founded brand Inky. She was the designer (She is a pass out from NIFT and has been working on designing for years) and my friend, Ashustosh was supposed to take care of ‘The Marketing’. And they were supposed to sell apparel, accessories, jewelry and the whole works. Online for starters I think, they have a portal and all too (See it here, even if just for the hot model).  Anyways I couldn’t care less about all this that morning, every part of my body screamed that it wanted more sleep, except the throat maybe which wanted something to drink. But then I remembered the days when I did used to sleep and Ashu used to give the proxies for me and the Sundays when we were supposed to go to coaching and I used to ask him to go alone and get me bottle of Limca instead. So my mind told me that I needed to do this.

So I got up and called her, her bus was a little late and she would take a little time, and I guessed since Saturday in an off day, there won’t be much traffic on the roads. What I didn’t realize that time a little late was only a little late and she reached 20 mins after calling me, and Saturday is only an off for IT people and there would be plenty of traffic in KPHB. So I got ready in a frenzied state and drove with the intensity of The Transporter on crack. And I was only one and a half hour late. So I picked her up and drove up to ISB. You see ISB has an entrepreneurship course (PEV I suppose it is called) and part of that course the students are supposed to bring an entrepreneur to campus, help them etc. etc… And the team who made the highest profit wins. Again I was least bothered about all that. We went in, met her friend in ISB and set up for the day.

She had brought up Kurtas, Stoles, Potli bags (don’t ask what or what for they are, I didn’t have the slightest clue), Jewelry (which was the highest selling and is what the ‘The Female Purchase Decision Making Model’ is based on) and a few other things. So we set up and got to work. And what followed was something akin to the Great Revelation of Saint John. I realized that my girlfriends had been merciful on me and never subjected me to the full torture which can shopping with girls be.

I was taught in my Marketing class that any purchase decision making model had five steps. One after the other and leading to some conclusion.

However what transpired next was an education is itself. Only a little, if at all, of what Kotler Baba told us was followed when a bunch of people from Venus (read women) descended upon us for buying an ear ring worth 50 bucks. And this is what I named ‘The Female Purchase Decision Making Model’. Which is of course, over simplified and based on the little understanding of these byzantine creatures that we mere mortals (read men) have. Comprehend it if you can -

Click on the file to see the full size

P.S. - Another revelation of the day was, ISB has a lot of hot girls.

Open letter to ... Umm... I don't know ( What the hell is an open letter anyway?)

So the blogosphere is rife with open letters, some Madrasan girl wrote an open letter to a Delhi boy, read it here, full of rants, overkill and absolute crass. Another Madrasan girl wrote a much more classier reply , here  and one Delhi boy wrote a self-apologetic reply which was very Un-Delhi like, not only it did not contain any references to Black label and Chicken Tikka, but also was subtle, a word I think unknown in that  region.

But nothing succeeds like a direct, blatant and obtuse hate letter. 2357 comments till last night and counting, it has actually become news material. I couldn’t sleep the whole night post reading the open letters, not that I was worried about the National Integration or why my blogs never get so many comments, I can swear I am more imaginative that Texas Chain Massacring someone’s face !!? 

My motives are more altruistic and grandiose.I was worried about my beloved Rajasthan, once more it’s been left out of the debate and publicity generating, mudslinging, thriving-on-stereotype pen wars. While the Madrasnas and Punjus are fighting and Bongs are either silently observing and not downgrading themselves by commenting on literature much below Rabindra Nath Tagore’s or maybe they are too strung out, and of course the Gujju Bhaai and Banes are too damn busy minting money sitting comfortably in ‘A-mae-reeca’, we poor Rajasthanis (literally and figuratively) are feeling left out as usual. It’s like seeing your neighbor having a party, music pumping, girls splashing in the pool, booze flowing but not getting an invite because you are so un-cool.

So being a true blue (blue blooded too mind you, nearly all Rajputs descended from Kings, doesn’t matter even if king of an one square kilometer village) Rajasthani I had to do something about it, even if nothing more than cry hoarse and wallow in self-pity.

First of all we don't have any cool nicknames for us like Punjus and Bongs and Madrasis. Ok maybe all people club us as Marwaris but that is more detestable than being a non-Punjabi Delhite and being called Punju and being a Kannadiga and being called Madrasi, blah blah blah ….. And for the record I have stayed 4 years in Bangalore and 1 in Hyderabad and can differentiate between Telegu, Tamilians, Kannadigas, Malayalis, can or rather could speak some atrocious Kannada. Have stayed 2 years in Delhi, again could understand leaving the most ‘theth’ Punjabi. Half a year in Calcutta, can understand a bit of Bengali. And in nearly most cases can tell which part of India a person is, after talking to him/her for an hour.  Now back to being Marwari, when I  was in Bangalore, my first out of Rajasthan time, I was always assumed to be being from Delhi, as much as they cry foul that all North Indians call them Madrasis and don’t understand the difference between the 4 states they are no better either, they assume all North Indians are from Delhi, all things North Indians as Punjabi and the likes. I had a tough time explaining that I was not from Delhi, Kadi is not a Punjabi Dish and people dancing in the baraat with their arms in the air happened in Rajashtan as well. In Calcutta when told I’m from Rajasthan next question with a crinkled nose was that if I’m a Marwari? Then I had to ask that did they mean the caste Marwari (the basket in which they place all Baniyas), the place Marwar (the belt containg the places Jodhpur, Pali etc) or what. And in Delhi, let’s just say that they either assumed I’m from some Gujjar –Meena highway blockade party or totally ignored me completely coz’ I neither had a car, a huge built nor the statement ‘Oye tu jaanta nahi main kaun huun, main yahan ke <insert any random high ranking bureaucrat here> ko jaanta huun”.

But this is not what saddens me. While they there are fighting over the superiority of Dosa and Butter chicken our Daal Baati and Gatte and Rabori are thought of nicknames in some alien language by others. While they have M.S Subbulakshmi and Jasbir Jassi to grow up on, best we could manage was Ila Arun, of ‘Choli ke peeche kya hai’ fame, whose mere mention in my house raised my mother’s eyebrows. Girls here never heard of Vogue leave alone Fendi and how severely Jimmy Choo can get distorted here in Rajasthan I can only imagine. 

Bharatnatyam and Bhangra have shot to national fame while Kalbeliya (yes the name is funny enough and yes it’s a type of folk dance) remains confined to shots of women dancing it to the background of the desert signifying the scene is from Rajasthan. They are fighting over who looks better Priyanka Chopra or Aishwarya Rai while we had to import Shilpa Shetty (a Bunt) as our team’s face in IPL . Delhi people start conversing in Hindi or Hinglish (You know this top looks very good peeche se but you know, it would look much better if it had a little red and a little peela color in this) if they are the upper class which they think is the default language of all Indians, South Indian people will talk two sentences in English and then two more amongst themselves in their local language and the Bengalis will coalesce into Bengali and ignoring outsiders completely after the second drink or the first joint. We on the other hand don’t even know proper Marwari, Hadoti, Mewari and other sub-dialects of Rajasthan.  We are sending truckloads of people into IIT and IIMs either directly (proper Rajasthanis) or indirectly (from the Kota coaching center network) and there is no mention of us being intelligent or intellectual anywhere, zero, zilch . We are deprived of Huge Statures and white complexion too (I am fair though, in case you are wondering, you can ask my good friend Ankur to confirm) and let’s just admit it that  bigger is better, always and in India fairness (of the skin) is valued much more than any other kind of fairness. There are not so many Mercedes in our whole cities as would pass me in South Delhi while trying to cross the road. We want Flashy SUVs, Ed Hardy t-shirts (fake or otherwise), Gadgets imported from the US and the Gulf, houses in NYC. We are not getting any action in this department, and in THE department, Rajasthan seems to be most sexually repressed state of whole India, UP people and Haryana people at least get to rape women across the state border.

So while Bengali people are having endless cups of tea over fish cutlets post 5 o’ clock and discussing politics, Madrasis are either working in US or Gulf in that time, or working for US and Gulf in that time and harboring money and dreams of wives dipping in gold , Punjabis are taking out their amplifier fired SUVS playing ‘Amplifier’ and pouring black labels and thinking which area to molest girls in today. We on the other hand are wondering why are hell are we here, saving up pennies and getting monikered ‘Kanjoos Marwaris”. Delhi has it’s cleavage showing female side of the population, Bangalore has them tattoo sporting, Calcutta has them parading their pierced belly buttons while here they are covered from head to toe to save themselves from the sun. It’s like never using your iPod as you never remove  the wrapping. And in Bangalore they are fighting for the discs to go beyond 11:30 while here they shut down liquor shops at 8! As Abhay Deol says in ‘Manorama: Six feet Under’ (a must watch film and has true feel of Rajasthan) “Is mardood raet ke jungle mae mae apni  choti-moti pareshaniyon ke saath, apni choti moti see gumnam zindagi jee raha huun”.

P.S. – Of all the REPLIES to the open letter I liked G.Khamba’s the best – Here

You might also like – Jai Rajputana

Lose You

I light the candles as I wait for her

And place the record gently on the turn table

As I think of our vows and happy times together

A part begs me to salvage this while I’m still able.

But I shut it out for one more time

And think about removing the deadwood,

An euthanasia for the dying love, far past it’s prime.

I resolve, If I’m gonna lose you, I’ll lose you now for good.

I don’t want a better life, I’ll settle for less.

I’ll take my punishments I’m writing in the scroll.

For taking from this comically tragic vaudeville, a graceful egress.

The Coup de grâce to the body with no soul.

She doesn’t know this of course;

That tonight is the glorious end of the abyss,

And only inkling of how our love took this course,

To utter misery from heart felt bliss.

I hear the music and a voice rich and forlorn

But save the last dance for her, I would.

What If I’ll have to wander this world alone,

If I’m gonna lose you, I’ll lose you now for good.

She left me first or love left us first

The prize question I never understood.

But tonight with her parting tears I’ll quench my thirst.

As tonight I’ll end it all;

Coz’ if I’m gonna lose you, I’ll lose you now for good.

A river runs through it

Warning : Long, meandering, spur-of-the-moment kind of post.

It is said that you can’t go home again; it is truer for me than for anyone. I have no home so to speak of in India, parents stay in Mauritius, we have our home in Jodhpur where all the stuff is kept and I had left from Kota when I left home last. 

It has been more than 500 days since I have left Kota, the night of 13^th July, 2010 to be precise when I had left for Bombay. I’ve gone to Bombay, Pune, Zaheerabad, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Delhi, Agra, Bangkok and Bangalore since but never to Kota again. In fact I had left Kota in a way on the morning on 18^th September, 2003 and I had told my mom that for practical purposes I am leaving home today and I never intend to come back. What my visits back home have been what my friend Chirag would call as Pit Stops. I never gave much thought to leaving, in fact I was glad to leave what my brother described as a ‘two storied town’ after the Bon Jovi song. My parents were in fact a little emotional, in fact more than they showed on the eve of my leaving, but I was drunk on the rush of finally being independent and with 3 bags, a big-ass music system , two thick novels and such excitement that only naivety could bring I departed for Bangalore.

Leaving home and especially going to Bangalore meant for me freedom, adventures, doing my own thing, not having to hide the booze on my breath, going where no one knew me and the exhilaration that only being totally on your own could bring. And I got all this, and more. I have drank sitting on the pavement outside a bakery right out of a Bacardi bottle, kissed on the dance floor of a crowded disc, been broke to the extent to be literally not able to buy food ,  been caught by police numerous times and spent time in the police station thrice, wheelied (jack-rabbited) my bike being drunk out of my senses, rode back on bike at 3 on the night in freezing Delhi winter after watching ‘Avatar’, played music out of the balcony on the farewell night and broke beer bottles in the college, got in fight with land lord at 1 o’ clock in the night, fell in love and got my heart broken, been made a fool of many times, humiliated and ragged. But I was happy; it was my decisions that lead to these, and to quote William Ernest Henley from my one of my favorite poems –

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

But leaving home is like any adventure sport, whatever excites you also scares the living hell out of you. The fear of having nothing to fall back on, no father to reassure you when you are scared, no mother to sympathize with you even when you were wrong, no one to rescue you when the shit hits the fan. And also the simple leisure in life that only your home can provide - not worrying about your next meal, the car always has petrol, the clothes are washed and leaking taps are fixed, the comfort and amenities of home, the familiarity of your surroundings, you parent’s name opening doors for you. And for all this and more I miss Kota.

It is no paradise let me tell you that; it has senseless traffic, bad roads, extreme weather, rains which bring floods, cunning people, rough sounding language, no natural beauty to speak of, a conservative mentality and the normal small town shit. But yes I miss it today.

Kota to me was my huge house on the outskirts; and it was big, especially by today’s metro’s apartment standards. It was a good old fashioned government quarter on the outskirts of the city, with three and half bedrooms, four bathrooms,  a garden in front and one in back, lots of trees and a separate servant quarter to boot. It had a huge driveway which doubled or rather tripled up as a cricket pitch and a basketball court.

Kota to me was the hustle bustle of Talwandi and Vigyan Nagar areas which had student on the streets as far as you could see all discussing which ‘Sir’ (teacher) had gone to which coaching institution, new books on the market, had yesterday’s DPP (don’t ask what was it if you don’t already know it) been done or not, which mess had the best dal and so on …. You know life for an average teenager in Kota, and I mean average in the Kota sense, life revolved around the coaching class you go to which prepared you for some kind of entrance examination, girls as the second priority, outing with friends as a distant third and school loomed somewhere back in list. And that was pretty much my life too for the last few years there. First preparing for N.T.S.E. (National Talent Search Examination), I crashed out in the final round and in retrospect I don’t understand what the big deal about it was. Then it was preparing for IIT, anybody half decent in Kota with Maths in his 11^th Standard prepared for IIT, and I was half decent, in fact I was above average so I prepared for IIT as well. I didn’t and nor did my parents probably knew at that time that there were more above average people in India than there were seats in the IITs. Especially in Bansal Classes which was like the Colosseum and the toppers of all cities of the neighboring states were the gladiators, and like in the fights, some of them got the thumbs down from the Caesar.

 But in the daily struggle it was meant to be we found quite a lot of time to do other stuff. Thanks to the fab 4 – Mr. Gaurav Mathur, Mr. Vaibhav Shukla, Major Kunal Sahni and Shri shri 108 Sankalp Vyas jee. And not to forget Mr. Tarun Bhatia, in his rented room I had my first drink. Vaibhav and Sankalp used to stay on the way from my house to place where the tests of Bansal Classes were held and we used to go together. And I back then I used to be late for everything, including that, so I used to rush to Vaibhav’s house with a few minutes left for the test to start and he would be standing on the road and curse at me, I would apologize and we used to go to Sankalp’s house, who at that panicked state (only of us two) would slowly come out and say “Abey jaldi kya hai? Kaunsa tumhe test mae kuch aata hai jo tum jaldi jaake kuch kar loge?” Then in our frenzied state we would give that test and in which we did used to get screwed like he had predicted every time, then we would come out the meet the other two; Kunal would then tell us about his elaborate plans of talking to a girl  “Aaj maine na apni bike us ladki kee gaadi mae fasa dee hai, aaj to usko bike hathane ke liye mujhse bolna hee padega”, Gaurav would then grin and then swear at us, the paper, the teachers and a few other people. Then we would wait for everyone to leave and chat in the parking or follow some girl and then would think to go for a pastry at Jai Shiv bakery or to eat Samosa or Kachori of Jodhpur sweets, Brijwasi, Ratan or others.  Or the Poha at Vigyan Nagar.

The mention of Poha reminds me, that I didn’t like it very much, in fact I never ate it home whenever my mom made it, I only had it on that Thela in the morning. And the reason for that is a long one. You see whenever I used to bunk school I had the same routine. I used to pick up my friend Siddharth from his house at around 6:30 or so, as I remember the school time used to be 7:15. We used to go this place by the river bank called ‘Mauji Baba kee Gufa’ or DP (Dying point) as he used to call it, though it was hardly any place to die from. We used to sit by the river bank and kill time; actually I have had my first philosophical discussion about life and its meaning at the age of 16, sitting by the river side throwing stones after bunking school. I had once thrown my Kiney’s key in the river instead of a stone and had to literally lift it from there to some other place, but that is a story for another time, back to my routine. We used to kill time till 7:30 or so as nothing would be open at this time, then we used to head back to that ‘Poha’ place and eat,  by then the pool parlors would open, so we used to play pool for an hour or so and I or we depending on the plan used to go to my house where my mom dad would have left for work and we had the house to ourselves and they wouldn’t realize that I was back at home by 10:30. There is this another ‘Poha’ story with Bengali, actually his name was Arjun Biswas and he was from Baroda but everyone called him Bengali. But for that story is for another time, speaking of Bengali -

Bengali had broken up with his girlfriend of a few years with whom he was very serious and lost his marbles. Unfortunately the movie ‘Devdas had also come out that time which inspired him in strange ways. In one of those days he showed up my house at 11 carrying two quarters on cheap rum and a CD of ‘Devdas’ . Did I forget to mention that it was 11 in the morning? And he knew I was home alone. After half an hour of movie when Paro gets married and he is one quarter down he starts “Yaar <beep> ye ladkiyan bhi badi <beep> hoti hai pehle to <beep> pyar dikhati hai fir sala <beep> pe laat deke nikal leti hai…. <beep> unko to koi dusra mil jaata hai, maa <beep> hai to hamari”. Aa yaar ek peg to tu bhi pee”. Back then as now I was too polite to say no to man offering a drink, so I accepted. When we had finished that second quarter my doorbell rang. It was only 12 o’ clock and way too early for my mom to come in so we had the glasses and empty bottles lying around. I panicked. My nerves were calmed by the sentence “Abey chutiyon daaru kee mehak yahan baahar tak aa rahi hai, kya kar rahe ho be tum?” It was my friend Siddharth (the above mentioned one), he too had dropped in. It took only 5 mins of Bengali’s time to convince him to drink. So they both set out to buy more booze at 12 in the afternoon while I cleaned up everything and prepared the room on the first floor. We started drinking over there and I and Bengali being newbies spaced out in 3 drinks. Bengali was not only drunk but also stupid, he pulled out two bubble gums and tossed them to us and said “Ye kha lena is se daaru kee smell nahi ayegi . This infuriated both me and Siddharth, as it was a strawberry flavored bubble gum, not even a mint and even that wouldn’t cover the stink of cheap rum we had had. Siddharth exclaimed “Theek hai. Aur ye tattoo kya teri gaand pe lagaye?” waving that free stick – on tattoo that came with it. “Nahi ye saale iski gaand pe lagao” he pointed towards me. I said “kyun tumhari mae kya burai hai?”. What transpired next was that three drunk guys at 1:30 in the afternoon were wrestling on the floor trying to stick that tattoo on someone’s ass. Now Siddharth is 5’11” well-built guy and Bengali was an average gym goer too, so as you would have guessed it by now finally that tattoo found its spot on my ass.

After that it was only bits of pieces of good and bad stuff that I remember, of course the high and low points stick in your mind forever. I used to come home for 15 days every 6 months, talk on the phone at nights, eat home food and go back.

Then I shifted back to Kota for 9 months. I remember becoming good friends with Somya Shringi who in his own words is my mirror image (soul wise), getting drunk and eating food kept on the trunk of my car, on the road in the middle of the city at 2 o’ clock in the night.  Driving alone in the roads behind my house listening to Bic Runga’s ‘Drive’. Finding wine and cooking pasta for someone, and getting my hand cut while opening the bottle of wine (the scar is still there). A jinxed new year’s eve, courtesy Mr. Akhil Babel where we finished the Vat 69 before reaching the place we were supposed to drink it.

Of course here Mr. Prateek Bansal deserves a special reference, he was my perennially busy neighbor who never had time to talk in the 5 years I have known him, but used to talk standing on the gate for hours, discussing philosophies of life, movies, books, the psyche of people we knew and taking my advice eagerly but never following it.

I’ve stayed in Kota for 8 years this is the stuff I remember and I miss the most.

When I was close my sometimes I have transported back to that place, sitting on river bank in a foggy morning, where the only sound was the water flowing and cigarette puffs, no worries in life than who’s gonna bounce the stone off the water more number of times, the promise of youth and Siddharth’s question “Bhenchod koi bhi aadmi life mae kya chahta hai?”

P.S. – To the people mentioned in this post. I have linked your name to your Facebook account, if you want that despite your ‘Kaali Kartuute’ you should remain anonymous just tell me I will remove the names’

The Tragedy of Being Single

 

See most men in my age (including me) don’t want to marry or settle down is they don’t wanna miss the chance of sharing a Jacuzzi with naked supermodels, flying off to Bahamas on a whim and hooking up with random strangers, having drug-fueled-bringing-the-house-down parties and retaining their freedom. The only problem is; that this is not happening to the most of us, and will probably not happen, ever. Most of us get home from office at 8, eat Maggi or whatever is in offer in the nearest mess, jerk off and go to sleep. And weekends are spent in either sleeping (alone), watching whatever movie you can get tickets of and sharing a drink with the same old friends in the same old place with the same old jokes. To every man or woman who has Joey, Barney Stinson or the Sex and the city girls as their idol ; are you really living like them?

.

Ya I think by now you know what I’m getting at. The tragedy unmatched by Oresteia, Othello or Doctor Faustus, the great tragedy of being single.

And I’m not even going to mention the lack of sex in my argument.

See even when you are single you are not free, so that argument goes right out of the window, you are supposed to match so many expectations, including your own, you boss’s, your friends’, your mom’s and a lot of other people.

When you are single or rather unmarried in this case your boss expects you to stay till late, come early, take no leaves, work on weekends and go to the farthest corners of the world in a moment’s notice. Whenever you raise the slightest objection he always greets you with this line “Arey ghar pe jaake karna kya hai? Kaunsa daer se jaaoge to biwi naaraaz ho jaegi?” Or “Abhi to bachelor ho yaar, abhi to career pe focus karna chahiye, baad mae settle ho jaane ke baad aadmi nahi kar paata kuch”. So much for your personal life. While you married colleagues always get away with excuses like ‘My wife’s brother is getting married’ or ‘My daughter is unwell’ or plain old work-life balance, with a sly smile and a smirk at you.

Anybody who has house hunted in a non-student , non-IT centric locality will know how big a pain being unmarried is. This goes for girls as well, though maybe in a lesser degree. The board ‘Families Only’, ‘Bachelors not allowed’ can be seen practically on the face of every landlord. Like getting married is some kind of character certificate. I really want to shout sometimes that Dawood Ibrahim is married too, so was Charles Manson, and Osama had more than one wife! And to add to that I won’t have children who will cry at night, ring your doorbell and run, break your glass with balls or sketch on the walls. I won’t have wedding at my house where bad quality music is played for days nor will I have Jaagrans which will keep you up at night. I don’t think that occasional loud music or vomit in the stairs is so difficult to deal with. But this is what it is. Married people will get better houses and for less.

Leave houses and landlords, even pubs and discs turn you away. Like being single is a crime. Or single people are not supposed to have a drink, listen to some music and enjoy. They want you to conjure up a girl just for entering inside, which might be your reason to enter in the first place.

On top of that your married or committed friends, whenever they are away from their spouses want you to share your wild sex stories, your adventures and hear your iron resolution to stay single forever. Even if you are having fun or not it is impossible to match that kind of expectation unless you are a Rock Star. The truth that being single sometimes sucks or you might be actually be thinking on settling down is met with such absolute resistance and lectures like you said you wanted blow up the parliament.

And on the opposite extreme your mom constantly keeps reminding you that marriage is such a good idea. So if you want the recipe of Palak Paneer it is prefixed with ‘If you were married you wouldn’t need it in the first place” or if you tell her that you got a raise then the Congratulations is suffixed with “Now I think you should get married”. This goes double for girls.

Whenever two guys or two girls enter a fancy restaurant they are met with stares like they have tails hanging out. And when you want to make a reservation for hotel or resort people automatically assume you must be travelling with wife, any difference causes weird silence or clarification and re-clarifications. And after that you are either branded homosexual, terrorists, freaks or all three. A bunch of guys can have more fun in a resort than a couple ever can, except on the bed maybe.

You don’t have a default partner to go the movies only you wanna watch, concert of an artist only you have heard of and for shopping trips where you are the only one who wants to buy something. Your spouse, if he/she exists in naturally dragged along and doesn’t even make a fuss, or at least not too much.

Be it the flight, train or bus you are always moved to the other seat as people come in and say “Oh we both are together” or “Bhaaisahab aap B-2 pe seat number 16 pe jaa sakte hai kya, wo actually hamari 2 seat us dibbe mae aa gayi hai”. And it is not even a request, it is like somebody read you the Indian Penal Code clause 19 sub section 2b which states all single people are hereby banished to the least desired seat in any mode of transportation. Don’t even try to argue that you purposely booked the Side Upper Berth or you came early especially for the window seat otherwise you will be met with bickering, awkward stares and general disapproval by everyone around you, even by people who have nothing to do with is. Even when you argue with a married couple every passer-by assumes you must have done something nasty and top of that you are not even apologizing.

And the biggest torture is going out for drinks or an outing with an all couples group. Especially after the initial 10 minutes of pleasantries and cheers are over and everyone recedes to their respective corners.

I have to cut short my description of the horrors of the singles camp at this point as I gotta go out with the boys for dinner. Adios.

Eplilogue – They are many single people out there, some willingly and many un-willingly, and note that I said single and not unmarried. And both men and women. Most of them want to pair up; it is after all our naturally desired state. But despite wishing otherwise most of them are stuck in rut. And I have no clue why. At least in India you can blame the social structure a bit, lack of places for singles to mingle, stigma about women approaching first and the likes. Other places I don’t know what. Many of my friends, guys and girls have resigned themselves to the fate of arranged marriage and all of them want to find someone they love. But they are not able to. My only advice to them is take a few chances, I know I need to. But still, something somewhere is pretty fucked up in this world

Idiot's guide to writing a book

Pre Script - Previous Image Removed as some copyright issues cropped up. Plus the guy had the decency to ask politely.

"The greatest trick Chetan Bhagat ever pulled was convincing the world that he can write. And like that, poof. Everyone's an author.... " – Prajith VM

Do you suck at your current job? Or that you like to blabber so much but nobody wants to listen? To much free time at hand but a slow internet connection? Maybe you wanna appear intellectual to a lot of people and finally finally get some respect. Or just plain want to get laid?

If the answer is yes to any of these, you need my advice. And the advice is to write a book. Yes you heard me right. Write a book. No no, don’t worry if you don’t have a story in your head, haven’t written a leave letter without googling leave letters before and can never be sure whether that was a ‘quite a show’ or ‘quiet a show’. That all can be taken care of. Basic necessities are that you should have done what most people in this country have done; done graduation from a college and work at a corporation, and of course have Microsoft Word installed in your computer with spelling and grammar suggestions on.

Of course it is going to be lengthy process, I mean writing a 100 page book even with a big ass font can be quite pain staking, and might take weeks to finish, but the place where you should be spending your anyways-worthless time is promoting your book. If J. R. R. Tolkien had spent 10 years promoting his book rather than writing it, he certainly would have died richer.

And the trick to this whole thing is writing something which your target audience can identify with. And who is your target market? Here being an MBA helps, no wonder they are churning out books faster than you can say “What the fuck! Another one?” But if you are from IIT, or been there, or appeared for it entrance exam or at least can spell it it’s a sure thing then. Then you too can add it in your book title or sub title or whatever like Love story of an IITian, Girls of IIT, Missed IIT kissed Russia and the likes, because once a Mr. C. B. wrote a bestselling novel about IIT guys and that has become a standard formula ever since, and we will stick to that formula now.

So the first thing is having a protagonist with whom everyone can identify with he’s your garden variety every-man a normal boy who has average looks, average money and slightly above average IQ and was a Ghissu in his whole academic life, not that their lives makes exciting stories but they are the people who are going to read your book, the really cool kids are out there having fun, they don’t give a shit about your book or anyone else’s for that matter. So this totally average guy (read Underdog) who’s life’s high points were eating Ratanlal’s hot samosas, scoring the highest in maths, mom’s secret recipe Paav-Bhaaji and scooter ride with friends is going to have something extraordinary happen to him. 

How is that? By meeting his dream girl. How he meets her is what sets the tone of the book. So after a struggle he enters starry eyed into a new world which like what is promised to every kid in India (get good marks in your 10^th class then you are set for life, get into a good college then you are set for life, get into a good MBA college then you are set for life, get a good job then you are set for life, get in your boss’s good book and so on….) holds infinite joy and the one thing what every boy long for, yes it’s what you think it is, a girl. Now your readers have done nothing more than asking a girl for notes, or scrapping them “Hi can we be frands?” and so would your protagonist be, he either runs into the girl by chance like she is looking for a maths tutor or gets a puncture, or wants to photocopy and nobody there to help but the photocopying whiz kid or the best is she is crying on the stairs after her good looking, rich and muscled but evil boy friend broke her heart and she is looking for a shoulder to cry on;  or she talks to him first, that’s another of their fantasies. And they hit it off instantly. Slight variations can take place depending on where your novel is set in, though it has to be in the sacred three; the engineering college, the MBA college or the office where the protagonist enters the dog eat dog corporate life for the first time. Don’t try to write something like ‘Love in the times of Cholera’ or having the American civil war as the backdrop, it’s fall down on its face.

Also important is how you would describe her. You can’t write she was a stunner with 36 Ds or she had dragon tattoo over her butt crack which peeked every time she bent over! No! It has to be something your mom would approve of, maybe a few struggles after but approves of. So it must go something like she had pretty eyes  and with hair falling over face she looked like an angel, or she looked very cute and pretty in her olive green t shirt and dark blue slight flared jeans (you need to add superfluous details like that to appear a real writer). You need to add in a couple of friends, losers like him but good natured and trust worthy and having a few personality quirks for comic effect. Doesn’t need to be realistic, just whatever tickles the funny bone of the average guy, it could be anything like the guy who does to Mandir every Tuesday on his cycle or the South Indian who doesn’t know chamatkaar from balatkaar. But all this is frivolous, joists to the BIG THING!

And the big thing is ….. …. SEX. Oh yes the grand daddy of internet searches, the king of movie interests and the Holy Roman Emperor of Book Sales. And why? Two words. Sex Sells. You need to have that. You can get a little creative here, no no don’t worry not really. Only about which flaw or rather spice she has which leads to sex, like maybe she goes overboard with vodka martinis or maybe she wants comfort sex after something tragic happened to her or she is plain vanilla nympho who sneaks in your room at midnight to do it. This is where you need to get descriptive, you can skip the details like which parts of anatomy went where or how you fumbled as it was your first time (which in reality everybody does, really) but you can say that it was magical or you like having sex in confined places. In case the boy gets the girl in the very end then you can throw in a couple of Cougars who lures the boy to have the big bang with them, and albeit being tempted the boy keeps his chastity. Of course the boy was not playing the whole charade for getting into her pants so the whole thing has to be unplanned and at the spur of the moment, like in the back of the car or on the roof while her parents are watching TV.

And the final touch is the antagonist. Yes like all formulaic stories this too needs a villain, he can be your austere HOD wanting to flunk you for dating her daughter, or your prurient boss who also has eyes on the office hottie who just magically fell for you or the seven evil exes or the plain old conservative would be father-in-law who doesn’t want you to marry her daughter because you are not of the same caste, religion, financial status or part of India. And he needs need to defeat him with his wit and thorough and enduring good nature (because he doesn’t have anything else), or his knowledge of how to deliver a baby with a vacuum cleaner. So that in the end Aal Izz Well. For comic effect keep adding delirious monologues about them in the narrative like “he looked like a cross between an orangutan and an ox with the brain of a mouse, his moustache was like a fig tree over which the crows shit” Or “seeing her hand in the Aniket’s hand my heart felt like it was dipped in oil in McDonalds fry their fries only it was being heated by the fires of hell and the lava of mount doom”. Your moronic readers will confuse these with wisecracks and being imaginative.

Add a few trite and contrived settings, a little baloney and few over simplified suggestions for giving the finger to the man, to appeal the anti authoritarian readers (or rather their delusions of being anti-authoritarian or at least their never ending fantasy of having the balls to say no to their boss or professors once in their life)

Almost as an afterthought, if you think that being a good author you need to have heavy words in your novel or you just want to differentiate yourself from the LS (low society) pulp fiction routinely occurring in the book stalls of the railways stations you can put in an Ill conceived and totally unrelated poems like:

In the morning I can’t see the light

Love for her is so big a fight

If she can give me hug that is tight

My life will be alright

No need to sweat, there are plenty of half wit poets all around whose poems or prose (you don’t need to even know the difference between those two) you can use and add them as special thanks. Or even better you can run the thesaurus on every word of your paragraph once in a while so that a paragraph like this can appear –

Her ethereal beauty shimmered in the iris of my heart’s eye for a fleeting moment but in the very moment I ambianced the full measure of my ardor ad infinitum for my lady. Even the angels crooned an enchanting tone for the entity known as me and everything in world abated. There was no febrifuge for this fervor and I knew I was going to scale any knoll for her as our souls minueted and my heart retorted to the pavlovian and my our eyes entered into an eternal shibboleth.

And Voila! You have a novel for yourself. Now go to R. Publications and prepare for book signings, launch ceremonies and criticism from assholes like me! 

I too had a love story

"Not everyone in the world has the fate to cherish the fullest form of love.
Some are born,  just to experience the abbreviation of it "

Ravinder Singh from I too had a love story.

Dedicated to the memory of the girl whom I loved but could not marry

Tere jaane ka asar kuch aisa hua mujh par,
tujhe dhoondate dhoondate maine khud ko pa liya.

Like him I also want to thank her for bringing out the writer in me. Without it I might have never know what existed in me or could exist.As a 21 year old happy-go- lucky boy I was too filled up with love for her and life in general. It is she who I made me hollow inside, which gave me a chance to fill me with something else.

I don't know how my life would have been and now after 5 years I don't care either. But what I do know because she left me I saw things in this world which I didn't know existed. And I want to thank her for it, because for better or worse I am what she made me into, a monster or a man.

In the misty peaks of love true bliss is found.
But in its deepest chasms of sorrow I found myself.