Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Does Anyone Need This? I Don't

The End of any Loving Relationship:-

1) I will do this for you, only if you do that for me

2) I am doing this rotten thing to you because remember the time when you did something similar to me?

3) I will see to it that I squeeze out your ego from you

4) I am free to do what I want, but you have to ask me before any step you take.

5) You should feel blessed that you have met me, you would never have met anyone as good as me otherwise

6) I will not behave normally unless you apologise 22 times, rubbing your nose on my feet.

Thursday, August 26, 2004

When Asha Parekh Came Home

At times one simply has to assume the role of 'the big bad evil uncle' who snarls at his nephew warning him of dire consequences if he dare comes within 2 feet radius of the new pet puppy Selfish. All because kids from age 0 to 10 just cannot handle little puppies, despite all the instructions and training on puppy handling methodology that one may impart to them.

In such cases the nephew sulks till the cows come home, frets sullenly, and at worst bawls inconsolably everytime evil uncle snarls after spotting him almost jumping on the puppy's delicate back.

To put bawling nephew at ease, guilty uncle takes him on a walk and does the mistake of passing by a local pet shop. After spotting it in a cage bawling nephew has now his heart set on a Parrot. A parrot for God's sake

To cut a long story short, after a lot of deliberations and family dinner discussions, we finally got a pet parrot for him three days back, to pacify sulky nephew and the home has become a MAD HOUSE now.

It squawks like a possessed one, we have to cover its head with a towel to make the bird from hell shut up. That she sounds exactly like my all time favorite actress Asha Parekh, makes life even more noisy.

Wait a minute, I finally got a name for her, after rejecting all those routine names like 'Mithu' and 'Polly'... now her name has to be Asha Parekh! Wow.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

How To Get Someone To Watch The News

Here I was minding my own business, living my own self-satisfied existence, being my usual bored self over the past weekend, when I get a call from an old long forgotten acquaintence, asking me if I would like to attend some rave party happening on the Saturday night at a remote and secret beach-house. You know one of those marvelously depraved debauched dos that promise uneneding psycho trance music, freely flowing alcoholic beverages of various varieties, a non-stop supply of illicit drugs and oodles of illicit sex.

After careful consideration, after realising that I had been more or less a well behaved and a rather very good boy for most of 2004, and after calling up a few of my favorite people to confirm their attendance, the very next things I found myself doing was a nifty surya-namaskar routine, some quick dumbell curls, and a series of furious ab-crunches to get in shape for the party.

Shaved, cologned, and gelled we hit the venue by around 11.00 pm that night I found myself home by afternoon the next day.

While I slept peacefully for most of the Sunday evening, I was jolted by a phone call (By the way, I hate cell phones) that said, "We have had it, Prem.. did you know there were newschannel cameramen there. Watch out for the NDTV 24X7 news this evening, and Zee News at night, its all over the screen."

I just wanted to sit down and weep, quickly recollecting if I didnt do anything too bad on the dance floor, or anything too slimy in the corners, or anything too bohemian on the beach, and was left wondering how was it that I couldnt notice any cameramen.

That resulted in me doing the unthinkable,.. watching newschannels!! Swapping between NDTV and Zee News in quick succession. Hanging on to the screen while I awaited to see glimpses of our night of revelery, only to find no such thing and instead got unecessarily educated about why Uma Bharti resigned, enlightened about the demands of striking truckers, notified about the 'Congress(I) something something ceremony' at Talkatora gardens, and such other dull and sundry matters, I lead a pristine life being blissfully unware about.

What a waste of my time and sleep. Dumb friends and their dumb ideas of jokes.

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Do You Banian Yourself?

"Why do you guys have to wear a banian?" a friend asked me once indignantly.

Why indeed, for a moment I was semi-perplexed myself. She further added, "I'm sure just because we girls wear bras, youguys just had to have your equivalent."

I was momentarily stunned. Was that a bitter jibe or a cruel suspicion? Should I laugh and share the joke or should I denythe charge? I did not know what to do.

"WHAT!!" was all I said, dumbfounded by this preposterous assumption, this vile accusation.

"I can understand you wearing underwears of course, but I could never understand banians……" she went on, by then I had tuned off, thinking of me, myself and my banians wondering why I wear them. I had never been this nonplussed before by such an inane matter. I used to simply fit into one before wearing my shirt, like an ingrained involuntary action, without even thinking the whys of it all.

---------------------------Why banians?---------------------------
As I thought I realized immediately that banians did give a warm comforting feeling, that I missed on the days I went without them. Moreover some shirt materials do not feel really good touching the skin, so again a banian helps. Also, the shirt of sheer material falls better on a banianed body. Banians also give an extent of fullness to a scrawny body. However one must not wear a banian under a very see-through shirt. The only people who do that are Chiman Kalia, Pappu Kangee and IqbalHatella. (Know them?)

For the guys who sweat profusely banians helpget rid of that wet feeling, or that wet look. Even those who don'tsweat a lot feel an icky enveloping dampness without a banian.Banians help cover the sweaty patch that is otherwise seen under thearms (very noticeable otherwise on Nanda, and Moushmi Chatterji. Ithink you know them).

--------------What I do not like about banians-----------

Since I prefer to wear banians with sleeves, I hate it when `Sunday is longer than Monday' Allow me to elaborate on that. When you are wearing a half sleeved shirt or T shirt, under which you have worn a sleeved banian and the sleeve of the banian creeps out of the shirt sleeve…….I'm sure manymight have noticed or experienced it. I dislike that entire exercise of continuously tucking that running banian sleeve into the shirt-sleeve. I discussed this grave matter once with my friend Kalpesh and he smugly said, "That never happens tome as I have large biceps which you don't have. Why don't you workharder in the gym like I do?" Kalpesh incidentally is one of those guys who can afford to kill themselves in a gym three hours a day. His daddy has a flourishing construction business, thats why. Baap builder,beta body builder.

I also dislike hole-formations in banians. Somehow happens to thebest of them, perforated after prolonged use. This means its time toget new ones. Another sight that is not very nice to see early in the morning whilegetting dressed is discolorations on my banians. I like them to remain white, virginal, unstained and unblemished. Let's not get intodetails of why banians get stained/blemished, let's just say itsplain unpleasant. Banians hide the cuts in a body which has a well-defined musculature,hence are not to be favoured when you want to show off your physique.Banians could also cause in hindrance in sex. Maybe not always,sometimes they could add to the fun in their own clumsy way.

Hmmm... pretty analytical here!!

Friday, August 13, 2004

Arguements with Auto-Rickshaw Drivers

In some of my usual crabby and irritated moods, I enjoy picking up fights with auto-rickshaw drivers. I have always found these guys a pleasure to be argumentative and pick fights with.

By and large, most of them have meters that are tampered to run faster than usual. Having spent a good part of my life traveling in these rattly things, gives me rough idea on the meter readings from various starting points to various destination points in my city. This rich & varied experience helps me immediately detect a faulty meter when I see one.

The best practice on detecting a faulty meter is to incite an argument mid-way through the journey aided by veiled allegations and mildly provocative words, albeit in soothing polite tones. Something on these lines, "Is your meter OK? You sure its not tampered."

Invariably this gets the auto-rickshaw driver's goat, and he vehemently denies it, saying that this was vile allegation on someone as honest as him. (Yeah yeah)

Next, one can make the same comment with more exasperation, more provocative words. "I'm sure you have done something to the meter, it can never be this high."

That does it. This begins a volley of exchanges, between passenger and driver. At this juncture, while the less vicious driver continues driving and takes passenger to destination, the more vicious driver asks passenger to get down immediately. The passenger need not alight, and its now time to strike and say the magic words, "Police Station"

"What do you mean get down from your auto? First of all, your meter runs too fast. Secondly, when I complain you start fighting and abusing me, on top of that you don’t even take me to my destination, and you are forcing me to get down, now this matter will be settled in the Police Station only, I will only get down there, Chalo Police Station."

Try it out, it actually works, the driver will just grumble a lot while taking you to your destination, then meekly accept the correct fare and not the overblown fare that appears on his tampered meter, as he knows that you know the right fare. And you can walk away with a smug face at having picked yet another fight with yet another cheater robber rickshaw-walla.

Sunday, August 08, 2004

Witnessing an Early Morning Mating

It is a pain to be woken up by 4 dogs howling away in your vicinty early in the morning on a sunday.

It is a pain to be woken up early morning on a sunday especially after you have had a particluarly late saturday night.

As I got dressed, this Sunday after being woken by the above mentioned howling canines, to leave for a few morning chores, climbing down the flights of steps from my home, before me was a dog and his mate in the middle of an orgasm, with two other dogs standing at their guard growling at me.

Frankly, I hate the very sight of stray dogs, especially when they are mating. From a water bottle in my bag, I flung its contents at the coital couple, while the rest of the pack nearly charged at me, I had to pick a stick lying nearby and assume particularly gruff tone to ward them off and chase them away.

Stray dogs and I have never been the best of friends. I make it a point to effectively disengage them when I see some in the middle of reproductive activities. Not because I'm jealous and am not getting much myself, but simply because I dont want more stray pups around my area.

Maneka Gandhi wanted to show the world what a dog lover she is and banned the killing of strays, but ask anyone who has had to work nightshifts and is dropped home by their company bus at the building gates. At 3am, that 2 minute walk towards your home is an endurance test, with 8-10 dirty, stinking, fang baring, diseased strays growling at you, or coming up to smell your privates. Its a NIGHTMARE!!