Save the tiger na baba

Save him.
Save him so that once in a while, twenty something boys get to be twenty something boys.

Excuse the trembling hand. I was not being big wuss in front of big puss. It was just a tad breezy okay. I know the tiger, tiger was burning bright and all. But believe you me, it was breezy ... err... windy okay. Very windy!

Newshance Makars Will Be Vekatad This Blog

Poster in a Bhopali cafe

Click to enlarge lest I Spit On Your Grave

AB, to your pulp-art taste I'm sure :P

I don't care that it's 47 degrees C and I have to hold an umbrella. I'm getting married today. So fuck you!

Who the hell do you think you are?

Dearest Hawtt dudie,

If you ever see this video, please know that I was very late for work because your entire family's favourite pastime is gallivanting to bhojpuri music on a National Highway in the middle of the day, in the middle of summer.

Also, while I was waiting for your highness and HMS* Equestrian Ass to pull over, I could think of but three rational reasons why you must get married in sweltering Madhya Frigging Pradesh on a Wednesday afternoon in May -

You get to sport these really sexy glares/cooling glass/goaggles while there is a horse between your legs
You can have the audacity to look like a clown who's really really so desperate to get married despite all weather-beaten odds that you're prepared too hold an umbrella over your head while there is a bloody horse between your legs
You get to lead the most gaudy and retarded entourage that decides to block traffic on NH-12 for over an hour just because you have a bloody horse between your friggin legs

Please know that I am pissed. Very Pissed.

Love,
Your biggest fan

*HMS - Haggard Motherf*****g Steed

Us and Them

I don’t like airplanes. I don’t like being disturbed when I’m asleep.

Don’t try to wake me on an airplane.

If you are a harebrained airline steward (as opposed to the fictional intelligent one, eh?) who particularly enjoys being at the receiving end of some nimble eye-gouging or clumsy rectal probing, ignore the warning.

My shoulder was nudged by a hand that ignored the warning. The hand would soon be involved in a fierce struggle to prevent involuntary colonic irrigation by a monkey with a squirt gun.

There was a voice. As I was roused, my ears were forcefully strained to tune into what seemed like a command. Over the acoustic rendition of Careless Whispers (ironic?) – the sort of airline music that would leave the world one less gay George Michael to worry about - was an emphatic command from the airline steward to pull up the window shades. I could hear myself asking why. Why must I pull up the window shades?

Windows. I like windows.

I like the windows in a suburban apartment complex.

Recently, a colleague moved into an apartment in my complex. She has spent a majority of her lifetime in South Delhi (apparently called SoDi by her and others who stemmed from a gene pool that primarily begets bigots, people who say things like mirror-mirror-on-the-wall and people who think Facebook invented ‘The Wall’. Mister Pink Floyd, I apologize).

Here’s the thing about people from South Delhi – I don’t like you.

Correction – I can’t like you.

But here’s what I do like - Irish Whiskey, cigar smoke, a 7th floor balcony view of a grid of windows lit up against the night and conversation with the condescending SoDi woman that is limited to pointing to positions on this fluid grid of lights - 5th floor, right wing, 3rd window from the edge, Aerobics Aunty; 10th floor, central wing, middle window, Chaste Chetan.

Some people talk. Some others poke.

But the both of us - we point. We peep. We peek.

People at work call us voyeurs. These, I think, are the sort of people that poke.

Once every fortnight, standing in her balcony, leaning against the parapet – we watch. We watch a microcosm of suburbia live, Live. We watch Aerobics Aunty running towards her bedroom’s left wall, on the treadmill – not moving an inch. An almost motionless motion. Four windows to her left, Protein-shake Pawar sweating it out on his treadwheel, runs to the right, runs to Aunty. Lovers unaware of their love.

Some lovers are victims of religion, some of society and some of Shakespeare. Our lovers were being kept apart by bricks, concrete and three windows.

Incognizant lovers - AA and PP, loving incognito.

Once a fortnight, we spend our evening with Scrawny Shilpa while she tries to learn Salsa (or Jazz or Kathak? Or whatever, I don’t really know! Not my fault, I can’t tell one from the other two feet away; at fifty metres they all look like conditioned epilepsy to me) or the Harridan on the 3rd Floor – the sort of woman who has perfected the art of nagging at a pitch that drives both men and dogs wild; on grounds of uncanny similarity - the sort of woman who most definitely gave birth to your ex or my ex or anyone’s ex; the sort of woman who PMSes during menopause. Here’s the definitive answer to all those Miss Worlds striving for world peace – Kill Her. Please!

Windows. I like them.

Cars - not so much. But car windows are a different ball game altogether. And speaking of car windows and games, try this one the next time you’re driving to work and are stuck in a bad traffic jam.

Peer into any vehicle that is below a car in the automotive food chain – bus, autorickshaw or a taxi. Say for example, a bus. Pick one window, perhaps the one framing the most seemingly docile passenger and preferably of the opposite sex. Look her in the eye and lock your gaze. Don’t blink. Don’t flinch. Stare.

Now that you’ve grabbed her attention contort your face into expressions that would put a Kathakali dancer to shame – lust, rage, envy, pity, resentment, hatred, awe or even epiphany. Once you’ve found the one that displaces her from her comfort zone – stick to it and hope that the jam lasts long enough to drive her to suicide but just short of her actually slitting her wrist. It’s the Moment of Mindfuck.

If you’re not alone in the car, stare together. All at once, four faces consumed by rage – stare. Stare at same pair of docile eyes. Stare till she is reduced to desperately groping for that elusive blade with her name on it. Mindfuck. Communal Mindfuck.

I like windows. Why must I pull up the window shades?

He commands me to pull up the window shades again. Why? Give me a logical reason to pull up the shades.

“Erm… hmm… Sir, so that when it’s dark, people outside can see the light inside.”

It’s summer. 10 AM. 43 degrees hot Hyderabad. It’s anything but dark. So, why must I pull them up?

“Sir, when the plane lands and if there is a terrorist on the runway, you will not be able to see him!”

Great! Why would I want to see him? I can’t see him. So he can’t see me. Right?

"Erm..."

Any color you like

Having finished with her board exams, my cousin (dog molester in the previous pic-post) came visiting last weekend. She believes she is a girl of limited needs. The metric system, having given up trying to measure these limits, believes otherwise. She was armed with a shopping list that had a mind, body, soul and even a twitter account of its own. And not any averagely active twitter account. An account with a tweeting frequency of milliseconds; littered with twitpics, retweets and hashtags for her own shopping convenience; but strangely enough, not limited to 140 items… er… characters, 140 characters.

Girl of limited needs, she believes. A good brother, I think.

I paid for all her demands, pun intended. Dresses that seem to be a whole new wardrobe altogether, her first prithvi play, her first and my only and last horse-cart marine drive ride (honest!), her first beer, her first long island iced tea, her first 3AM road-side tea.

Then she stopped just short of killing me – “Bhaiya, I want you to get me a tattoo. But you don’t worry; I’ll get it in a spot where not too many people will get to see it in my lifetime. If you know what I mean!”

She winked. She winked, again.

I do not have a problem with tattoos. I have a problem with my little sister wanting a tattoo. I have a big problem with tattoos wanting to be in a 300 kilometer radius of my little sister. I have a bigger problem with the intended questionable location of the intended tattoo. I have the biggest problem with her reference to the plural nature of the target viewership of this intended tattoo.

I do have a problem with tattoos.

I have a problem because this is what happens when you put an 18 year old girl, a tattoo drill and a ridiculous idea in the same room (watch the two minute video below; you bloody well watch it – my little sister’s sanity and skin are at stake here) -



A tattoo machine is but an electric drill. It is an electric drill with a needle at a speed of 9000 rpm (for all those who had a life and did not study engineering – it goes round-round 9000 times in a minute), which is only marginally higher than that of a Ferrari. Is one supposed to feel secure just because the needle is laced with multi-hued ink and is in the hands of a professional tattoo ‘artist’? I think not.

This brings me to a few questions I have for the starry-eyed Belgian girl.

Why would you let an electric drill moving at the speed of a Ferrari back-wheel get close to you let alone your face?

Why would you let a man who looks like this within a 300 kilometer radius of yourself?

How could you then conveniently fall asleep when a man who looks like this was working your face with an electric drill?

I get miffed at few things. But I have a constant bone to pick with stupidity; which brings me to ‘televised tattooing’. The only television I watch apart from racy Bhojpuri item numbers on the local cable channel is Discovery’s Travel and Living. One show that particularly fascinates me is LA Ink – it’s a reality show that follows the life and times of tattoo ‘artist’ Kat Von D and her human canvasses. The next time you have a chance to catch it, please pay close attention to the justifications people give for getting a particular tattoo. Also observe the persistent use of the words ‘like’ and ‘you know’ in these justification monologues. I don’t like and I don’t know.

(For greater reading satisfaction try to read along in the respective ethnic accents, especially the second one)

Hispanic woman getting a gecko tattooed on her lower back – “It was like you know, the first time like I’d been to like my motherland Costa Rica. And the moment you know I entered the hotel room was like the moment. I totally like saw the gecko on the wall, it like totally saw me and we like jumped together. I was like scared of the gecko; it was totally you know like scared of me. That was the moment. It was then I decided I needed a gecko tattoo to remember this visit to Costa Rica, like you know forever!”

I sure hope she doesn’t travel to India or want to remember it ‘forever’. I don’t think a cockroach tattoo is socially acceptable let alone sexy.

African American woman getting three purple lilies on her hip – “Ma name’s Lily. Ma grandma’s name is Lily Sr., ma mamma’s name is Lily Jr. and ma lil sista’s lil Lily. So I’m Lily getting a tattoo of 3 lilies for the gals in ma family!”

I will not dwell on the intelligence of the above idea for the woman is clearly as much of a visionary as Louis Braille’s three blind mice. My primary concern is the color of the tattoo – purple. Purple on an African American skin tone? Has this woman never heard of contrast? Would the average Punjabi girl tattoo a glass of milk on her face (left half – it is the only half washed with Dove soap day in and day out. After twenty years of taking the Dove soap challenge, she still doesn’t know if it is softer, whiter and moisturizer than the right half)?

White woman getting a fork and knife tattooed on her side torso – “I’ve been like dating this guy for you know a year. He’s like a really super cool chef (the two words I hate most in the English language – super cool). So I wanna get like a really cool tattoo for our anniversary. So I thought (I’m not so sure she is capable of thinking, but anyway she thought) why not you know, dedicate a tattoo to like the tools of his trade – forks and knives (I’m confused; is he a professional diner or a professional chef?). I hope he likes it.”

I hope he doesn’t dump you, because after that fork and knife tattoo you’re only eligible to date other chefs, butlers or if you fancy Indians – south Bombay Catholics (does any other desi culture set even know what a fork is?). Also, two of my past relationships have lasted for over a year. Does that mean, as an anniversary present, my exes should’ve gotten a tattoo of the tools of my trade – a Microsoft Excel sheet and Powerpoint presentation? Wouldn’t that be like you know super cool?

Long story short - girl of limited needs was not to become the girl with a dragon tattoo. A good brother? I don’t know.

P.S. @ Sowmya - Notice, I did not call my cousin sis, my cousin sis :P

Up for adoption

The things people do to get clicked and onto a blog.
Ok.
Clicked. Done.
Now will the both of you get off my bed. Now!

Slower, Lamer, Vancouver

Conspiracy theories. They’re so unbelievably preposterous, one cannot help but find them entertaining.

‘Elvis is alive’. No, he isn’t. Elvis has left this and every other building. In case you were wondering, that is actually Vivek Oberoi waggling his crotch in the trailer of Prince, it’s not the King.

‘The Wingdings font predicted the fall of the two towers’. How did you not know that? Even Nostradamnhim… erm us… Nostradamnus ‘prophesized’ that. Have you never received the e-mail forward that succinctly captures the brilliance of this scientific theory? If not, you’re lucky. You either have very intelligent friends, very few friends or a mom who cannot use e-mail. It is the most well-researched hypothesis after the Liberated Tiger of non-Tamil Elin (aka LTTE) theory - ‘The reason we have only 1411 tigers left is that there is this one tiger in the woods screwing up… erm around… screwing around for the whole bunch of us. He leaves behind nothing for us to do and quite literally so’.

As I had said, these theories are ridiculous but good fun.

During her weeklong break in Bombay, Nilo (the tripod hugger from the previous post) did precisely three things – slept, messed up my already disorderly house and watched the Winter Olympics telecast. She theorizes (and I now agree) that the Winter Olympics are a hoax. Why?

The Winter Olympics are but a mélange of the most nonsensical human activities in the guise of sport. If you did not know, here is a fun-fact - the Winter Olympics was born as the Canadians were pissed. Not at their own sheer stupidity for choosing French over English as their national language. They were miffed to constantly find themselves languishing at the bottom of the medal’s tally along with Kyrgyzstan and Moldova at the Normal People’s Olympics. Leap year after leap year, the board read Canada - zero Gold, zero Silver, zero Bronze, one Maple Leaf.

So they conveniently invented the Winter Olympics and the motley of absurd sports that are showcased in it. In the interest of time and average attention span of the blog reader, I make but three ludicrous cases in point – Curling, Biathlon and the Skeleton.

Curling - The objective of the game is to slide a granite blob (imaginatively named ‘stone’) on a floor of ice in the hope that it goes somewhere. Where? That has not been established as yet. But someone needs to ensure that the blob has a smooth slide while going anywhere, right? Hence, there is a group of humans who L-I-T-E-R-A-L-L-Y ‘sweeps’ the ice with a broom as the blob slides. Why? So that the blob doesn’t have a rough ride.

Bollocks!

Please watch the video below, with sound (Slow connection? Go have a cuppa, but come back and watch the video). Please do observe two things – how the rabid howling generates sound waves so intense that the blob pushes itself further and watch closely as blonde, bob cut aunty throws her broom in ecstasy at the end of the shot.



I have as much respect for the ‘sport’ as I do for the brides on Rahul Ka Swayamvar. For things to start looking up, you curlers first need to respect yourselves. Rehash the sporting nomenclature - please do not call your sporting instruments ‘brooms’ and ‘stones’. You are not out witch-hunting!

And why are we Indians not participating in this event? There must be at least one stone pelting Shiv Sena boy married to sweeper Gangu bai, right? I’d wager that their offspring is our next and only Olympic medal hope.

Biathlon - As the Canadian Winter Olympic Committee was running out of creative steam while coming up with events, they figured that it would not be completely unethical to ‘borrow’ a few from the Normal People’s Olympics. After long hours of absolutely no reflection, they zeroed in on the triathlon (swimming, cycling and running, in that order). Consequently, the Winter Olympic Triathlon took shape – swimming in a glacier followed by cycling and running on ice.

However, after thirty nine athletes succumbed to hypothermia during the ‘swimming in the glacier’ phase of the first ever Winter Triathlon in 1924, the sport was replaced by the less arduous and more bizarre biathlon – an amalgamation of cross country skiing and rifle shooting. Why? But why? At least the Normal Olympics’ triathlon can be thought of as a training ground for prisoners contemplating an escape from Alcatraz or Guantanamo. What conceivable human purpose can the biathlon serve? Competing athletes can now lug a rifle all the way up to the Arctic Circle and shoot a Polar Bear? Or perhaps, we could have a biathlon chase sequence in the next Bond flick – For Your Ice Only?

Bollocks!

From top (clockwise) - Curling, Bobsled, The Skeleton, Biathlon

The Skeleton – Apart from possessing a single-digit IQ, the dunderheads who are retarded enough to take part in a sport with a name like the Skeleton, are expected to slide down a frozen track, face first, on a sled thinner than an anorexic cockroach. The objective of the sport, which has its humble beginnings as a genocidal experiment in Nazi Concentration Camps, is to see how long you can hang on for dear life. If you come out alive, you win!

The same icy-track used for the Skeleton is also used for a sport called Bobsled. Watch the video below.



However, the critical difference between the two is that with the Bobsled at least there’s a questionably shaped sled. In the Skeleton there’s no sled; it’s just Bob!

One needs to be monumentally sloshed or a mental Canadian or both to either devise these events or take part in them. But the icing on the cake, the biggest joke of them all is not the Winter Olympics; it’s the Winter Paralympics - Winter Olympics for the paralyzed. What was the Olympic committee thinking? Were they even thinking? This Bob can’t walk on normal ground let alone ice. This Bob most definitely doesn’t need a freaking sled. He needs a wheelchair.

Will you please return the wheelchair to Bob?