Meet Montu

Montu is a cousin of mine. The gender is male (just in case someone doesnt realise whether Montu is a male or female name, just like it happens to me with the name Manju)

Members of my family always have to have some pet name of sorts, and Montu's is .. well.. Montu!! So much so that, we tend to forget the real complete registered name and spend a lifetime referring to someone like Montu as Montu. I have forgotten his real name already, dont even remotely recollect it.

(At this juncture, it must be added that I'm not going to tell you my pet names, so please dont ask.)

Coming back to Montu, he is a couple of years older to me and has a daughter of those many years. Montu along with his mom, his wife and his daughter recently decided to do what most of my far off relatives from the northern regions decide to do when the winter there gets on to them... they come and plonk themselves under our care in warmer Bombay.

And then begins the saga of taking them shopping, showing them the new places, the "kissi disco mein jayein, kissi hotel mein khayein" routine and the extremely painful task of, "Arre Prem, koi filmstar toh dikhao yaar" and the embarassment of watching them accost small time TV actors/remix music video dancers for an autograph. Plus since Montu has a daughter and that daughter has a mind of her own, one has also to take her to the most dreadful part of Mumbai - Esselworld

Coming back to Montu, it is interesting what twists and turns a man's life can undergo. He spent long disinterested hours in his father's saree shop selling sarees to the local ladies of a remote district of Himachal, where he began spending time reading about astrology, nakshatras, jyotishshastras, etc , and slowly started pratcising these arts on the ladies. Women being forever interested in bunkum like that began to arrive as a throng at Montu's saree store and were driven to him like nymphos to dildos. Evidently Montu turned out to be pretty good at this work, word of mouth his fame spread far and wide, till such time someone suggested that he do a professional jyotishshastra course.

Leaving his fathers saree shop forever, Montuji enrolled into some astrology institute nearby, where after spending a few weeks under the tutelage of his guru, his guru announced "Beta Montu, tujhe kucch seekhne ki zaroorat nahi hai, tujhme toh yeh vidya pehle se hee moujood hai". Heeding his Gurus words, Montu set up an time astrological consulatation office that now occupies the larger part of his father's saree shop, where he charges not less that one grand for consulation, and this visit of his to Bombay, he treated as some sort of Business Development Visit and intends to start up a branch office in Bombay with doubled rates.

My mom's concluding words: "Look how enterprising everyone is, and you just know how to sit in front of the computer and laugh at the world in general!"