Mallus, National Parks and Husbands

There is something about Mallus and me.

I have one theory about Mallus - All the Mallus are half crazy, and half the Mallus are All crazy.

You might be tempted to say that this theory holds equally true for Punjabis in general, and Sardars in particular. My friend, there is a difference between being crazy and being totally cuckoo, totally unhooked from reality...I mean you can't compare Sardars to Mallus. In fact you can't compare Sardars to any South Indians, or any Indians - not even the Red or West kinds. Sardars are the only people in India who wear lungies on their heads...imagine..!!

It is not that I hate or dislike or mis/dis-trust mallus.
In fact, its the other way around.
They are some of the most wonderful people I have ever met...nevertheless crazy.

One of my very good friends in School was a Mallu.

During my summer internship at Castrol my boss was a Mallu.

In Olam Uganda my first country head was a Mallu, the guy I used to stay with was a Mallu.
In Zimbabwe one of the guys I worked closest with, and who kept bailing me out of all kindsa trouble was a Mallu.

And at IIMB, one of my closest friends was a Mallu - Jubin.
A genuinely nice human being.

She got married sometime back, and just wrote in last week saying that she and her Australian Kangaroo (aka her husband, Kevin) had gotten a week off between Xmas and New Years - some nice things about working in Singapore, which is otherwise such a boring place. They have been spending this long break by visiting National Parks.

Below is part of my reply to her -
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

visiting national parks n all.....nice....our kango must be "hopping" with excitement at it all....
i don go near such parks....am afraid they will catch me and put me too in a cage, with some brown wooden plank reading outside my cage...

RARE ANDHRA FROG

physical characteristics - big, bulging eyes. Rest all features incidental.

habitat - survives in most places, so far tested in africa, thailand and all rural areas of south india (remember my castrol summers, where my loo ws the same size as my hotel room - in which i and the small bucket could not fit in at the same time....yeah bucket, no fancy flush.....was definitely the water-loo of all my glorified mba-images..).

diet - not much, basically survives on eyecandy.

weight - depends upon time of day. 4 times a day weighs more than the average human - breakfast time, lunch time, snacks time and dinner time. Once a day weighs less than the average shastry.

di-nocturnal creature. Sleeps during the night and dreams during the day.

unique characteristics -
intense salivation and pupil dilation observed when subjected to external feminine stimuli

---------------------

You know what, actually i think all married men should visit places like natural parks, zoos and natural museums more often.
It will be good therapy for them.

In all those places they will find creatures they can relate to - once free kings of the wild, now caged, tamed, or worse, extinct and stuffed - good only for display...

Imagine how much pain a man would be able to share as he sits next to an orangutan cage...and looks into the misty, poignant eyes of the ape - just above the nose into which he has stuffed his fattest finger - how they would reminisce with each other about the happy, free-swinging times, and how the temptation of a banana has gotten them both into a prison.
One got a cage
one got a wife
s..i....g.......h.........

if you think im just spinning a yarn,

do one thing....take a couple of pictures...

1) kevin next to a monkey(male, plz) in a cage
2) kevin next to a goat about to go gor a slaughter

you will uncover the eerie fact that all their eyes hold a similar pain.....a dull pain, one of resignation to fate...

u don't believe me ?
still don't believe me?
what? you say you can hear the truth in his voice when he says "i love you too sweetheart", "whatever you say love", "your wish honey".....hmmmmm...he is very sweet n nice n caring....takes care of all ur needs, never hurts you....always understands you...

lemme tell u smething..
go to a circus..
and understand what "well-trained" means...

see....husbands r the worst of all the lots...
animals in zoos/natural parks r caged,
in national museums they r stuffed with hay
in circuses they r trained to please and do stuff that they are not meant to...

husbands suffer all the three fates...at the same time...

believe me, if God indeed created woman frome the rib of adam, then it proves that God is a woman!
And having seen that happen the first time,
women, to this day, keep trying to wrench out the ribs of their men..

Now do you understand why women keep saying "i dont want anything....he should just have a heart of gold"....its not the end they are interested in, its the process.....how do u get to a man's heart? simple, pull out his ribs one by one....
"bas dil, achha hona chahiye" sure, why not !!!

------------------
<<>>
-----------------

Look, all that I said in there might not be true, except for the first thing I said.
All Mallus are half crazy and half the Mallus are All crazy.

(Dont be too surprised if you read in the papers in the coming week that the promising career of a young manager at Asian Paints got cut short by a mysterious flying coconut...... My current boss is a Mallu, and so is half my team)

This Ain't in my DNA

News papers – how much they have changed!! Now they are carrying articles and news which people like me – Engineer MBAs – can just not relate to.

Only the other day, there was this article in DNA, with a header like “No Eve on New Year’s Eve?” and detailed some 10 odd simple-easy-to-execute-failproof tips for getting a date for New Years. One question that immediately came to mind was that if each of those tips were so effective, simple and fail-proof then why ten of them? The first one should work just fine na…

And this morning I saw an article saying that with New Years approaching, the gigolo/escort industry in Bombay was seeing an upswing, and how the Y-o-Y growth has thus far exceeded industry expectations. It also went into the pricing dynamics of it and explained how prices continued to remain stable despite the heavy demand due to temporary capacity expansion caused by influx of seasonal labor – basically college students willing to hire out their services only for the festive season (this is what you call real social responsibility, no matter what we won’t let the poor couple miss out on a good new year’s eve in Goa, whatever it takes to keep them happy). An in-depth article that highlighted the intense, choking, performance pressures that exist in this profession. Everybody the paper spoke to confessed to feeling drained out at the end of a day’s job. It seems that they very rich people like to go for South African cricketers because of their “choking” reputations.

Now, these are things I can’t relate to. And am damn sure most of my friends too wouldn’t be able to – notable exceptions being Bhaskar (married, so out of scope), Rishabh (about to be married, as good as dead), Moron (the Guy is God, he is the Don Bradman-Symonds cross in matters of women – way above average with a deadly hit rate) and Appachu (the male equivalent of a dumb blonde).
Andy, I know you are trying very hard, but we only have hearsay so far, no hard eve-dence. So you are not in he hall-of-fame yet.

I mean, such things don’t happen in our lives.

In our days (surprising how early “our days” start for people who dont drink, smoke, dope or have girl-friends) we used to get news that we could relate to, identify with, and use. Things like –

“Onion prices continue on the rise”

“Shools closed due to state-wide strike”

“Leader Dead. College Closed.”

“CAT paper leaked”

“UPSC papers leaked yet again”

“Paula Jones says it was slightly bent”
(And they still call the damn guy straight. Now don’t ask how we could relate to/use such bent revelations)

“Clinton denies anything happened”

“Clinton denies everything happened”

“Vajpayee says Ye Achhi Baat Nahi Hai”

" Sonia retorts Ye tumhare bas ki baat nahi hai"

“Mandal Reservations”
(not again!!)

“Reservations for OBCs”
(When will these guys wake upto reality???!!!)

“Reservations for Women in Engg. Colleges”
(Finally, they have woken upto reality!!)

I mean that was news.
These days whenever I take up the paper, and see all these pieces on youth, style, women (without having to get married to), swinging, escorts, love, I just say to myself, “This ain’t in my blood, not in my DNA”

Fundaes to a Cousin

I have a cousin.
(Innner Voice - So?)

He is currently studying engineering in Surat.
(Inner Voice - Big deal. And btw nobody "studies" engineering. People "survive" engineering)

He would be sitting for CAT next year.
(IV - Hold on, hold on, hold on! Dont tell me his parents asked you to guide him. Shastry, listen to me carefully...very carefully.......you can't do that. More importantly, you should'nt do that. Just because you got through to IIMB doesn't mean you know how to do it. And knowing you, I am sure you wouldn't be knowing how you did it either. You guiding someone is like a hen teaching cats to lay eggs. And you are like that hen who doesn't even realise there was a rooster behind - literally - your success. Tell me you asked him to go to some professional people. Tell me you didn't speak to him. )

Well, I asked him to come over this weekend.
(IV - Screw you Shastry! Screw You!)

Initially I thought I will teach him a dew DI tricks, a little speech on why reading speed will make a difference, how to build a monster vocab and all.....but then with my damn Inner Voice ranting from within (wouldn't be wrong to say my feeble conscience is alive only because its on IV), I decided to show him the things that really work for an MBA aspirant.

(IV - This sounds worse than I feared)

I knew I had to keep it simple.
Down to some 2-3 basic points only.
Else he will forget it all, or get confused.
Did I tell you he is an engineer - basically someone who knows how to close his mind to information?

He came here on Friday.
After dinner that night, I took him to a movie - the 11 pm show.
There were 7 other people with us of who I knew only 2. They were all married but for one guy (my darned luck!!).
The movie finished at 2 am.
On the way back home, I told him the late night movie with 7 strangers was a MBA parable.
The learnings from the parable were thus -

1) Working in a group of people whom you hardly know and can in no way relate to.

2) Staying up late into the wee hours, whilst folks at home think you have been slogging all night, and thats why you sounded so groggy on the call from home the next morning


Next day morning, I took him to a Hanuman temple and a Ram temple.
There were three learnings here -

1) To stay happy, a bachelor must tag on to a married couple.
I know this was not an MBA funda. But I still gave it to him because it was a life funda. And
life fundas can be, and should be given anytime. This was the MBA funda - that MBAs are
giving life fundas all the time.

2) Once you are married, you have had it man! You are buggered for life (you can leave everything in between and read the bold parts as one sentence, it still makes sense). Relatives don't give a damn for you as you are no longer marriage material. You may leave your home and all and walk away into the jungles, lekin wo peechha nahin chhodegi. You will pick fights with absolute strangers because of her. And at the end of it all, you will turn to your bachelor friends who you thought were apeing around with life, for help.

She is not after your money, she is after your happiness dude, she is after your blood. Ask female mosquitos if you don't believe me. Women thrive on that. Have you seen the movie Monster Inc? It is based on the funda that monsters store the screams of little kids in huge battery tanks, and use that "scream power" to charge themselves. Similar is the case with women and men's happiness. Women suck all the happiness out of a man to charge themselves. It is one of the beauty secrets of a married woman.

Still don't believe me?

Well, there is an ancient yet secret Indian ritual I think I should tell you about, which might convince you.
Have you seen the movie Kalidas - the new one with Shahrukh and Aishwarya and Madhuri in it? In it there is a funda that the idol of Durga for the Navratri puja must be made with earth taken from the doorstep of a whore's house. The idea being that a man leaves behind all his goodness, all his "punya" at that doorstep before he enters the house of sin.

The ancient, secret ritual I was telling you about is on similar logical constructs.

The idol of the God of Happiness is made from the earth taken from the doorstep of a married man.

Such men leave all their happiness at the doorstep before entering the house of marital "bliss".

(IV - Another Life funda.....I wonder, what next)

3) And this is the most important funda -

Only God can help you.

Only He knows how to get you into an IIM, and more importantly, how to get you out of it in time.

Rest all is MBA Bull.

(IV - Hmmm....perhaps....you might have actually avoided doing any damage...Otherwise also, he is an engineer...he knows how to block information from his mind)

In Defence of Bald Men

"Tu Ganja Ho Gaya Hai"

Narayan sent me a deeply poignant message last night. He had just met Sachin Jain, one of our engineering batchmates, after a couple of months.
“Yaar, I am very sad. I just met Sachin and he said Narayan, tu ganja ho gaya hai. Not ho raha hai, but ho gaya hai”.

Narayan had been hearing that “ho raha hai” for a long time now. Not only had he been hearing it, he had been saying that to many others too – including me. It is like one of those things that people like us universally bond over – a smoke, a drink, girls, approaching baldness and paunches growing at the pace of an adolescent kid. Like one of my friends put it, “shrinking topline and exploding bottomline”.

The Many Faces of Baldness

Baldness comes to men in many ways. The most graceful of them is the receding frontier. Akshay Khanna is a famous example. In fact, for some lucky dudes it serves as a heightened forehead.

And the worst is the shiny spot that springs up like a desert in the midst of an oasis. That is the kind that can’t be hidden, can’t be camouflaged, can’t be modified or mollified.

If you look at the top-view of a male head you will notice a round spot where the back of the head seems to stop to climb, and the skull starts sloping in a convex to end in a forehead. All the hair seems to grow out of that single spot in an expanding spiral. That spot is the epicenter of this center-baldness.

It is like drying out the source of a river, like choking the water supply of a city.

It is like hitting in an enemy in the balls – no balls, no more kids to carry on the struggle. Its like a siege – the enemy is not allowed to replace resources. When one falls, you are irretrievably one less. Death comes as a calendar – an intercalary death. Each day you rip off one page, cross off one date, and brush off one more strand; knowing there are only a limited number of pages, a finite no. of dates, just that much more hair left. It’s a remorselessly losing battle.

Men who lose hair in the centre lose much more than a few strands of keratin. They lose their place in the world of possibilities and excitement. They lose their right to delusions. Even a fat, black man with a face like a ball of dough kneaded by a disgusted house-wife will look at a woman and sometimes fantasize that she noticed him, gave him that fleeting look, that had he not been so shy he could have won her over. A balding man has no right to such illusions. The hair lying in bunches in his wash basin when he combs it in the morning speaks to him much louder than does his potato-nose in the mirror. He sees all those individual, prone strands, and feels the same desolation that a WWII general might have felt at the sight of so many fine youth, or parts thereof, lying strewn on the battlefield, hanging from the trench wires, spread out on each other on the muddy-bloody grounds. What cruel loss! Ahhh!, the pain that wrenches the heart! How the sight stings the eyes! Can’t see it and can’t take the eyes off it either! A balding man sees death every day. In small parts, and whole in each part.

Couldnt you Think of Something Better?

The most common strategy resorted to by such balding men is also the worst possible. They grow the hair on the fringes of that barren patch to ridiculous lengths. It is almost as if they are afraid to cut it. That fear is understandable, yet irrational. They grow those long beauties and then pull them over carefully to cover the empty patch. It only makes it worse. It not only fails to hide your loss from the world, it exposes your shame too. It tells the world that you are ashamed of what is happening to you. It breeds guilt. It is like saying to yourself “I know I am balding, and damn it, I feel so bad because of that. It’s all my fault. Now no one will love me, and everyone will make fun of me. And they are right to do so, because I am balding. I am ugly because I am balding”. They don’t even stop to think for a moment as to why balding should make them not beautiful.

Ahhhh! The Big Question on the Big B..

Actually, come to think of it, what is beauty?

How do you know what is beautiful and what is not? Why is white skin beautiful and black not? Why is black hair considered beautiful and white is not? In fact, even that is not correct. Black hair is considered beautiful only in certain parts and among certain people of the world. There are places and people who find white hair or yellow hair or blonde hair or copper-coloured hair more beautiful. That is why all those hair color products. Even white skin is not considered the most ideal. Else there wouldn’t be the sight of delicious women trying to catch that tan on sun-kissed beaches, and our campus comps would never have been graced with interesting wallpapers. A slender figured woman might take the heart of Gujju bhai, but an African hunk would ditch her any day for a wide-hipped full house. How do we know what is beautiful?? Why is a big eye more beautiful than a small, slanted one? Why are brown/blue/green eyes more bewitching than simple, plain black ones? Beauty, it would seem, is as subjective as food.

The problem, accompanying thought, expands.

No, Dear Holmes, It's Subjective, not Obvious..

Even values are subjective.

What is right and what is wrong is not the same across the world.
A teacher can be killed, “in righteous public indignation”, if she names a teddy something in a country, whilst in another bar dancers wear star-spangled, blue-striped bikinis – perhaps in a tribute to the intensely patriotic men manfully swinging beer jugs.

So, food is subjective.
Beauty is subjective.
Values are subjective.
Religion, we all know, is subjective.

Back to the Big B Question.

Yet, that doesn’t answer our initial question.
How do you know what is beautiful?
There is one simple answer to that (Of course, there are more complex and logical ones too, but I leave them to 204 to provide those. Btw, 204 is the anonymous, enigmatic, mysterious, sole commenter on my blogs).

You believe something is beautiful if a lot of people tell you it is.


If you are fed a lot of stories in which men die for women who have 6 fingers and are cross-eyed, you will find that beautiful. In fact, and I am not fibbing here, the Mayans used to tie a small plank to their foreheads so that it became slanted like a bird’s. For the same reason they used to hang little pieces of thread between their eyes, so that looking at them they would gradually get cross-eyed which was again considered a beautiful “bird-feature”. Just like, say, a “lion’s mane of hair” (remember the Jap prez who was always described as the prez with the flamboyant mane??).

The idea of Beauty, like that of imperialism, is a poet’s to define and glorify.


Instead of being labeled brutally as ujada chaman center-baldness could be made into an ideal of beauty, if only there was a poet to take up cudgels for fallen bushels.
Beauty not just lies in the eye of the beholder, it is born there.
Like some one very famously said, (though not famously enough for me to remember his name) – I don’t love you because you are beautiful, you are beautiful because I love you.

Gay men are standing up for their rights and all, then why aren’t bald men?

I very strongly believe that women should find bald/balding men very attractive – more so because I am also “headed” the same way – if only they look at them in the right way.

Hawa chali, aur baal ude, to unhone gungunaaya, "Chand fir niklaaa..."

If eyes could be “deep blue pools in which my soul drowns”, and lips could be “rose petals rubbing sensuously against each other” then a bald head too could be something very beautiful if described in the right way.
Just think of that shiny pate, hidden behind those carefully combed strands of black hair……and you could be thinking of…….

A lovely plain fringed by swaying poplars,

Or as premchand said so sweetly,

Baadalon me chhupa chand

Or

Ghoonghat ke peeche lajaati nayi bahu

Or

The gently rippling, shimmering, wet reflection of the moon in the dark waters of a princess’ private pond

Or

It could remind you of shining, glittering silverware in a split open, half-buried treasure chest in black earth

Or

Van me ek chandramani jiske chaaron aur ek makdi ka jaal buna hua hai..

Or

A pearl sleeping in black velvet.

In fact, baldness, along with paunch-ness, is considered a sign of arrived or approaching prosperity in many parts of the world (probably those parts where men go balder faster – definitely not those parts where head bangers come from).

So next time a pretty young thing giggles at your empty patch (which incidentally is shining like a big silver coin) you tell her sweetly

ये गंजापन नहीं है पगली, ये तो आते ऐश्वर्य के देवी के निर्मल पद-चिह्न हैं;
ये तो लक्ष्मी की लैंडिंग के लिए बना helipad हैं

And meanwhile, the struggle continues to prove that
Bald is Beautiful
(only in men)

Fire-fly Loves of Mumbai

My dear friend 204, the brilliant voice couched in darkness,
had left a comment on my previous post with the same name as this one.

I sensed the answer floating within me then, but could not entice it to the surface.
Now, something has come up.

By "fire-fly loves" I meant those many momentary romances in the busy city of Mumbai, where young people living away from their families, in stressing jobs seek solace in a faint semblance of love. If there is not total commitment, its fine. They are not seeking a cure for life, they just want a pain killer for loneliness, a band-aid for other relations - family, friends - torn thin by distances.

These loves - in the intense, empty darkness of overcrowded Mumbai - seem to burn as true and bright as sunshine. There is a false, yet glowing warmth in them. Its easy to fall in this love, and far less painful to get out of it.

And for some people that is not only sufficient, but perfect.

These people are veterans of such loves.
With someone this week, and someone else the next.
Chance meetings ending in crumpled bed spreads.
Burning brightly now, dead the next moment.
Its perfect.

What really hurts them, what burns them, is when the embers of one such dead love continue to burn in their memories.
When they frighteningly realise, that perhaps, they have actually fallen in love. The purity of it is a scary thought.

sunshine I didnt seek, for it
binds me
blinds me
The small, glowing, ephemeral intensity
that hugs you tight for a moment, then sets you free
a falling feather from a flying dove
I just wanted a fire-fly love.

---------------------------------------------

पिशाचार हूँ मैं
निशाचर हूँ मैं
आस नहीं थी मुझको सूरज की
प्यार नहीं माँगा था
पाक नहीं माँगा था
बस एक भूख थी निर्लज सी

तुझ संग खाए कुछ फल यौवन के
पी कुछ बूँदें तेरे तरल मन से
कुछ बूँदें
जो उस रात मदिरा बन छलकी थी
अब कंठ में हलाहल बन जलती हैं
जलती हैं
गीली आग सी पिघलती हैं

बस दो पल साथ चलना था, फ़िर अपने रस्ते जाना था
तुमने भी तो इस शर्त को माना था
.......................फ़िर क्यों ?
फ़िर क्यों अब भी जब भी सांझ ढलती है
तेरी याद मेरे संग संग चलती है........
>>
>>
>>
>>
प्यार नहीं माँगा था
पाक नहीं माँगा था
आस नहीं थी मुझको सूरज की.

Happy Birthday Dear Sarwade,

I have been very fortunate to have had a very crazy set of friends right thru life.

And just like young people anywhere else
all of them had nicknames they proudly wore,
but at which their parents swore..


In school it was Kartik (Jacko the Whacko),
Bhaskar
( Bas Kar flirting - whose biography titled "International Flirt to Domestic Husband" Or "Kingfisher Airlines acquired by Air Deccan" or "Sher bhi Ghaans Khaate Hain" OR "Once Upon a Time....I was happy" should hit the stands some time soon),
Sanjiv the Sadist Humorist,
Santosh (aka Limca, Kundali Baba, Santoshi Mata, Lottery, Theda, Pepsi - and I swear to GOD these were all (extremely popular) real nicknames of this fantastic, mostly-intense-mostly-funny guy),
Shinda and quite a few others.

In engineering it was the 5 S.

In MBA, it was the blokes of the block.
E-Block Rulzzzz man !
Evil Genius.
That was our block name..

We were 7 guys - of which just 2 had any serious intent to finish MBA in 2 years....for the rest 5 of us it was a small miracle come true...2 years and done.

Hehehehehe....thats all that comes out when I think of these fellows

• Andy (this guy from Mussorie was also called Nanga Parbat for his two loves - mountain climbing and roaming half-naked in the block after his gym sessions),

• Kedar Deshpande (Desi Pondy, Encyclopeedit - a huge cesspool of random facts and strange theories about Jats and all),

• Rahul Adak (words that changed his life - "Udita Goswami kitni lucky hai na, jo usne John Abraham ko kiss kiya"..hai meri Jon......),

• Hari Kishan Mowwa (Murgiyon ka dushman, whose plate on wednesdays - when non-veg was served in the mess - looked like a mass burial grave for chicken),

• Kiran Babu (the oddity among men, a soft-spoken, gentlemanly son of a telugu politician),

• me (Kabutar...yeah that was my nickname...long story, some other time) and

• Sarwade (perfect warning for having a balanced exercise regimen which does not miss the small details....else you have this big superstructure supported by a tiny, puny, buttockal-region mounted on teeny weeny spindly legs.....he looked les a man, and more a balancing act....i remember that his swaggering walk used to remind me of a teetering beer bottle balanced upside down on a finger's end).

The Sarwade

The Sarwade.

Simplicity, I love you - thus spake Sarwade, always.

Dec 11 was his birthday.

On campus we had this tradition of writing birthday mails for our close friends on their B Days.
I wonder how it would be if Sarwade wrote his own B'Day mail - guess it would come out something like this.........

वैसे मुझे ये mails पे birthdays wish करना बिल्कुल पसंद नहीं,
ऐसे cake पे मोमबत्तियां लगाना
उन्हें जलाना
फ़िर बुझाना
मुझे बिल्कुल पसंद नहीं


ये happy birthday के गाने गाना
कागज़ के तूते बजाना
घर मी कागज़ की लड़ियाँ सजाना
दोस्तों का घर पे तोहफे लेकर आना
उनका अपने साथ बीवियों को लाना
और बच्चों को खुल्ले आम हड-दंग करने के लिए छोड़ जाना
मुझे बिल्कुल पसंद नहीं

ये हमारी सभ्यता नहीं
इसमे हमारी सम्प्रदा नहीं
और जयाप्रदा बिल्कुल नहीं
(sorry for the PJ, मुझे थोड़ा control नहीं)

मुझे अच्छा लगता है प्रातः समय मी जागना
माता पिता के चरण लगना
ठंडे पानी मी नहाना
हर लोटे के साथ हर-हर-गंगे लगाना
फ़िर धोती पहन के मन्दिर जाना
माथे पे तिलक लगाना
और अन्नदान का पुण्य कमाना


मैं बहुत simple आदमी हूँ
30 ml मे संतुष्ट हो हो जाता हूँ
60 ml मे तो रुष्ट हो जाता हूँ
और 90 ml मे तो भ्रष्ट हो जाता हूँ
मुझे ये नखरे, बाजे गाजे पसंद नहीं

आप लोगों ने इतना simple सा मुझे wish कर दिया यही बहुत है
कोई तोहफा देकर मुझे शर्मिंदा न करना
हाँ पर treat मांगने मे मत डरना
---- आपका सभ्य, संतुष्ट, सरल sarwade.

When wedding bells become alarm bells

Got a mail lately (actually this blog is quite late considering the mail under discussion is already about a month old...how time flies, especially when you are getting a bad screwing at work) from Rishabh Sinha, that pseude-pseudo-bihari friend of mine from maniacal engine-erring (otherwise known as mechanical engg., that course of great penance where one finds out the true meaning of "sex-starved", with nothing for even the eyes to feast on) - one of the 6 S's, the others being narayan swami (who has been heaped with false praise elsewhere in this blogpage), soni (who has been reported LOST in all friendly neighborhood police stations ever since his marriage - whoever shall FIND him shall be immediately put behind bars....married sardars who have been in totally un-ludhiana like places such as bhubhaneshwar for more than 2 years suffer from a double trauma which makes them very very unstable and dangerous), Shantanu Somani (yeah, being the true marwari that he is whose blood pressure rises and falls with the sensex, he has got 2 S's where the rest of us are managing with one. Little does the fat one know that the amount of S you actually get in life depends upon the size of P you got - i.e., in more pragmatic, less exciting terms, success depends upon your personality - anybody else got better expansions [you frigging raging, raving, infatuated fatso, stop reading it as expansions ;)....its just simple "expansions" i am asking for the S-P relationship] shall get a horrible thrashing in the next post if they make it the Shantanu-Pradeep relationship), Sudhir Gulati (who belongs to that very rare species of Punjabi men with a great sense of humor, decent height, [reportedly, by Shantanu, who claims to be able to read men like books......which essentially means, in the pot] impressive length, and a bearing of dignity [which has always, always evaded me somehow......truly, i will fall to any depths to achieve some dignity] in his manner and speech, yet without a consort (female - temporary or otherwise).....a girl-friendless-punjabi-born-delhi-bred-engineer!!!!! Can you imagine his secret shame and ignominy???? How left out he must feel when with this cousins or others guys of his breed ! No wonder, he hangs out with our gang of mis-shapen, mis-spoken, mis-behaved-with, mis-girlfriend blokes.

{How many brackets, and brackets within brackets, in the above passage, OhMyGod!!!, Excel is getting to me.....lemme just quickly check if I have closed them all}

Well, coming back to the mail, Rishabh sent it informing us all that he is getting married, to a lady from MIT (Mahila Institute of Technology...No, you wouldnt find it in the ratings that include the Massachusettes' one. You are more likely to find it in the ratings measured on the Richter Scale....man!!! an engineering college full of women, Delhi women, !!! Ho Ho Ho baby, nothing feels like a bigger earthquake than entering such fecund grounds. You step into that college, look around at all those pretty women with books tucked under their arms, and you curse yourself for not being born a T-Sqaure, to be moved around all night on a white sheet by those delicate fingers. Massachusettes, on the other hand, is just another engineering college for bright nerds who can get its spelling right. Actually, it sounds like a strrong, native hindi abuse about mother-and-all not yet mastered by the english tongue).

Unexpectedly it is a love marriage.
Between two engineers.
And we thought such things happened only with doctors.

Trust Rishabh to break stereotypes.
Like that of the pan-chewing, stone-throwing, eve-teasing, lush-underarm-foliage-waving-in-the-air bihari.

But then, Rishabh has something about MIT ladies.
All the cute ones there seem to like him.
Just to correct any 6 ft tall, fair, handsome, broad-shouldered image of Rishabh you might be building up, let me describe him.

He is dark, not-so-tall, with a pot belly, and hair he never combs.
None of his muscles have seen a gym.
The only sports he plays are on the comp.
And no, he doesnt do any of those romantic things either like writing poems (I do, what a waste!), playing a guitar (reminds me that narayan plays a violin, but the only people he has been able to impress with that are starched-white-lungi-clad uncles, their wives and their 6 yr old kids) or dancing (BWAHAAHAAAAA.....dont even let me describe that).

Yet, all those pretty women from MIT kept falling for him.
And he was the only one of all 6 S of us who ever had a girlfriend.
His having had more than one; in sequence - never in parallel - to be fair to him ; made him much more than an achiever or a role model for us. It made him a figure of envy. Great envy.

So, his marriage was like always on the cards.

And so his mail came.
Rishabh was getting married. In Feb 2008.

And so is Narayan. In March 2008.
I am sure Rishabh's love story, whenever it is told, shall be interesting, but it would be nothing - absolutely nothing when compared to Narayan's. We will, hopefully, be talking about it someday too.

And Soni, as mentioned above - far above - is already married (albeit under some very suspicious circumstances)

So that leaves only me, Shantanu and Sudhir Gulati.

After spending a few reflective, silent moments on that thought, I wrote Shantanu an open letter.

In that letter I had refrained from discussing Gulati's predicament (perhaps one that needs an ointment) as he is very demonstratedly-capable of giving me back much more than I can humbly offer him in terms of repartee.

Before I submit to your kind attention my epistle of pain and doubt and fleeting time, let me put Shantanu in your imaginations - which, I assure you, is much safer than you being in his imaginations.

I shall try my best to avoid any references to his physical appearances, as far as possible.

He is short, pudgy, with a huge paunch, and a face that looks as if it were born thirty-five years before the rest of his body.
(phew...that is how far it was possible)

Now, let me turn with all my soft kindness towards other endearing aspects of his persona.

He has been often suspected, and sometimes convicted, of being gay, of having had improper relationships with his maid servant who happened to be an innocent boy called Damodar.
Now thats what you call a man-maid disaster.

Now that you are well acquainted, and in some cases duly warned (Shantanu's and Soni's, to be specific) of all the bearers of the names mentioned in the mail, please find below the entire text of it.

Dear Rishabh,
तेरा खरबूजा तो कब से दर्राती पे रखा था, लगता थी का अब कटा की तब कटा, चलो आखिरकार कट तो गया.....

सोनी का टिंडा भी कटा,
नारायण की लौकी भी छिल गई,
गुलाटी का तो तब जब वो करेला अपने रस को लगाम दे....

रह गए (रहे गे बोलेंगे तो भी ज्यादा ग़लत न होगा) मैं और तू शांतनु

तेरा कद्दू कब फटेगा?
मेरे अनार दाने कब फूटेंगे?
अपने खेत मे हल कब चलाएंगे? बीज कब बोएँगे?
अपने नस्ल की फसल की कोई उम्मीद है की नहीं?
या ये जवानी की बरखा खाली ज़मीन पर बरस कर, गाँव के नालों से बहकर चली जायेगी?

यौवन के सावन मे
ये हलके झोंके पवन के
सिर्फ़ सूखे पत्ते ही हिलायेंगे???
औरों को हरियाली दे,
हमे सिर्फ़ आती पतझड़ की आहट ही सुनायेंगे?

क्या हम दोनों की किस्मत मे औरों के पौधे बड़े होते हुए देखना ही लिखा है?

कब तुझ बरगद के पेड़ से कोई कोमल लता लिपटेगी ?
कब मुझे पे बेल चढेगी?

"Baby Uncle" कहते थे लोग तुमको..
Uncle ही रह जाओगे?
Baby कब बनाओगे ?

ज़िंदगी है दोस्त, कोई बैंक अकाउंट नहीं,
की जब चाहा डिपॉजिट डाला, कुछ तो इन्टरेस्ट पाओगे..
इक बार वक्त निकल गया,
हथोडे मे से लोहा फिसल गया,
अपने बांसुरी मे चाहे जितनी हवा फूंक लो,
एक धुन भी नहीं बना पाओगे...

कहीं ऐसा न हों की मियाँ गालिब के लफ्जों को कुछ इस अंदाज़ से कहने के दिन आ जाएं हम दोनों के....
"engineering ने गालिब निकम्मा कर दिया,
वरना हम भी आदमी थे"
(काम के तो न तब थे, न अब हैं)


---------------------------------
By the way, A Very Happy Birthday to Narayan and Shantanu !!!!!
(God must have had a bad day - 2 mistakes in a single day, damn man !!)

This post I dedicate to you 2 dudes on your bithday.
Cheers!!!!

Fire-fly loves of Mumbai

My feelings are shallow,
yet the pain is deep;
If you were just a bad dream
why can't I go back to sleep?

Dreams stare at the empty skies,
sitting in my empty eyes;
If you were just a passing star, a falling one
Why does the sky still burn?

WHY AM I HURT????
Why this pain??
If it was just a dance in the rain,
Why are my eyes still wet?

If it was one of those ephemeral fire-fly loves of Mumbai -
now-burning-now-dying -
just a fling,
Tell me, my sweetheart, tell me
Why does my heart sting?

Teri Ek Muskaan

रोज़ ओस इकट्ठी करके उसमे रखी है भिगोके मुट्ठी भर चांदनी,
बारिश के निकल जाने के बाद, तारों से झूलती कुछ बूंदों को पिरोया है,
पहले पहर में जगते एक नन्हें से गुलाब के कलि की अंगडाई चुराई है,
एक छोटे से बिल्ली के बच्चे के डगमगाते कदम हैं,
कुछ गजलों के अल्फाज़ हैं
एक तनहा समंदर की आवाज़ हैं,
जिनके साथ बैठ के लिखी हैं ऐसी कई नादान नासमझ कवितायेँ
उन रातों की खामोशी लाया हूँ,
और लाया हूँ मेरे दिल का वो बचपन
जिसे एक नज़र, एक बात भी कर दे ज़ख्म.


इन सब के बीच बैठा हूँ,
कुछ ज़मीन पे फैअली पड़ी हैं,
और कुछ गोद में रखी हैं,
ये सब चीज़ें जिन्हें देख कर मैं कभी मुस्काया हूँ,
और फिर संजोके रखा मेरी यादों के संदूक में,
ये कुछ पल - मेरे जीवन की पूँजी,
सोचा ये सब तुझे दे दूंगा.

यही तो दौलत हैं मेरे पास
जिससे खरीदने निकला हूँ....


तुझसे तेरी एक मुस्कान.




-----------
(May God bless Kedar, and Google Indic Transliteration)

In New Delhi, a few kilometers away from the Parliament House, two roads cross each other at right angles – Shanti Marg and Satya Marg.
I wonder if that’s always true in life.
The road to truth has to cut away from the road to peace?

Bombay would be...

Do cities also have desires and ambitions?
A sense of destiny, dreams troubled by visions?
Does a city say, when I grow up,
I will be so gross, that people will want to throw up
(kolkata)

A city that feels that discipline is all that the world needs
A straight jacket to fit all human greeds
For licentiousness too a license
Rules! Yes rules! whether or not they make sense
Walk the line
Else pay the fine
(Singapore)

Pining for the unrequited love of that imagined beauty divine
Chewing on words
And spitting out verse
the colour of heartbreak and wine
Does a city want nothing but a poet’s life
Never mind the spit marks, and the querulous wife
(lucknow)

ever ready with a clap-on-the-back or a slap-on-the-face
wearing idiocy without disgrace
swinging between “Saale ke do thappad maar”
and “Kee farak painda hai yaar”
a loud guffaw
an eternal faux pas
The democracy of fun, food and boisterous..err....sex…ahem..
the world laughing with them, for them, and at them
A city that will grow up to be a joker,
And so absolutely hopeless at poker
(chandigarh, punjab)

An elegant, extravagant beauty
Loved and hurt
Desired and burnt
A smile trampled to bits
Lovely, long, wet, downcast lashes
As little men fight over the ashes
Of this burning phoenix

Free from being coveted…Free from being owned…..FREE!!!!
A beautiful lady who just wants to be.
Queenhood she doesn’t want,
she pines not for a king’s stares
Her dream, is simply
to be free of nightmares
(Srinagar, Kashmir)

Does a city want to grow up to be a historian (Delh)
Or just a coarse mouthed ruffian (Haryana)
A delighter of senses, a belly dancer (Goa)
A worshipper of death – a necromancer????? (Kabul)

If cities can dream, if cities can desire
to make it big, or in peace retire
If a city can choose between
steady love and a passionate fling
Then Bombay is the mad genius
that wants to be everything.

What an irony – Hinduism’s colour is orange, just a shade away from the red of blood.
This for perhaps the only major religion in the world to advise non-violence towards all living beings.
And Islam’s colour is green, a peaceful, content, agrarian green - for a religion that has had to fight every step of its way to definition and determination.

(P.S. - this is not to imply that Islam is a militant religion or anything. Remember that a lot of Indians embraced Islam because they found it to be more humanitarian than the caste-ridden shackles of Hinduism)

Disappointment is always measured in cms of expectation.

A lot of people when they say “I love you” actually want to say “I want you to love me”.

Sometimes I feel Life is a big Hoax.

They make you run around, as if caught in a big moment, where every decision you make could mean the difference between life and death. At the end of it, you realize it was all for nothing.
There was no bomb.

It was just somebody’s idea of fun.
God’s?

In a soft voice, leaning a little close to her I said,

Every night, I think of you before going to sleep ........
(she smiled)

........ It takes something really boring to put me to sleep ...
(I couldn’t help smiling)

Why did you marry him?
Oh, for his wealth.

Why did you marry her?
The first time I saw her, I was like, this is the woman of my dreams. I was completely lost in the blue of her eyes. I saw the turgid pale pink of her lips and felt a parched thirst I have never known before.

She was beautiful man, amazingly, breathtakingly beautiful.

------------------------------------------------


Is marrying for looks any better than marrying for money?

If I fall in love with a women because she looks so lovely, or angel-like, or amazingly cute, would I be any better than a woman who falls in love with a man because he is oh-so-rich?

Actually, that woman would be better than me. Because she has fallen for something which speaks something about the man’s will, desire, his character and his ability to achieve,

whilst I desire her for something for which she is not even responsible.

A man’s ego is like his shadow. Its size has got less to do with the man himself, and determined more by the time of the day (or life).

Rain in Mumbai is like an assassin’s hit – a few brief seconds of life-shattering intensity in a busy street.

Thanks.

Vishy,

Thanks.

As always, you grab my hand, just when I am about to slip into the muck.

Children of a Divorce

Narayanan and I are getting divorced.

I would be moving out this Saturday. Moving out from Narayanan and moving in with Palash, my lovely little elf.

Narayanan and I have spent the last month like a long-married couple. We slept in the same bed without sex crossing our minds once. We fought for bathroom rights every morning, before work. I would often stay up late reading a book while he dozed off. We wrote down all the expenditures of the day before going to sleep. And I snored.

We are not gay.
We are worse.
We are bachelors working in the corporate city of Mumbai.
Gays are brought together by love – in varying degrees.
Bachelors in Mumbai are brought together by cold necessity.

When you are an MBA working in Mumbai, you feel the smell of puke hitting your insides everytime you read those business magazines shrieking about the exorbitant salaries that companies are paying at the “top institutes”. For all those “exorbitant” salaries, no MBA in Mumbai can afford not to share his room and life with a guy he hardly knows. It is a lot like arranged marriage. You allow a complete stranger to become a part of your life and intrude all corners of it. And like arranged marriage, it works great most of the times.

Narayanan is one of those genuinely good people who are neither naïve nor harmless. Most “good” fellas are essentially confrontation-avoiders. They are nice because they don’t want to pick fights. Narayanan doesn’t shy away from slang-fests. He calls a spade a spade, and will also tell it how dirty, old and bent it is. He can be angry, harsh, make you feel like an idiot, scold you like you are an idiot, and worse, prove it that you are an idiot. But I have never once seen him lose the respect for an individual’s dignity even in the smallest of ways. He genuinely cares for you, but won’t spoon feed you. He will help you out and expects you to appreciate his help, but doesn’t like you to express your gratitude.

I know him from my engineering days. We were together at Delhi College of Engineering, studying to be Mechanical Engineers. He is one of the twin reasons – the other one being Shantanu, that philosophical bean bag – for making me finish my engineering in 4 years. We were a group of 5 friends in D.C.E. And it was a funny group. There was me - a fraud gult, born in Andhra and brought up in Delhi; Narayanan – as core and orthodox an Iyengar Tam Brahmin as you could find; Shantanu – the Baniya of Baniyas; Navjeet Singh Soni – the ever excitable Sardar and Rishabh Sinha – the psuedest Bihari I have ever known (and being an engg. Grad I have know quite a few).
If it had not been for Narayanan and Shantanu I would have become a Studying Super Senior at D.C.E. (It’s a rare species in engineering – the Studying Super Seniors, but let me briefly say here that it describes all those people who keep coming to college for more than 4 years because they couldn’t finish their degrees in time. I shall elaborate on this later in another post. Just remember to remind me).

The lives and times of Swami (aka Narayanan) at D.C.E. are chronicled in “Swami and Friends”.

After engineering he went on to work at Tata Motors, and I joined IIMB. 2 years later he joined IIFT and I went off to Africa. 2 months back he post-graduated and was offered a position with SBI Caps, and I left Zimbabwe to join Asian Paints.

We joined our jobs within a space of 10 days. Both in Mumbai. And both wanted to stay together. I wanted to stay with him because I knew he would do the worrying and organizing while I could focus on the freaking. And he, probably because he has this strong desire to reform hardened freaks.

Well, both of us did succeed, to a certain extent, in our motives for staying together. He does the accounts every night. He bought the iron-box and the ear-buds, and the shoe polish and the brush. And I keep rushing him to movies in all parts of Mumbai straight from the office. There is the organizing and freaking part I wanted.

I brush my teeth every night (also) now, and cut my nasal hair every week.
I move to a distant seat, if available, whenever I fart during the movies.
There is the reform part that Narayanan wanted.

He sits down after his bath every morning, says his prayers, changes into his office wear and then leaves for work.
Rushing from my bath, stuffing my shirt into the hungry open mouth of my trousers, I say the first half of my prayers which essentially mean “God, please help me”. The other half I say in the local, and they mostly consist of “God, please forgive me”.

At office, we pretend to work.

Around 180 degrees past six, I give him a call asking him what time he shall be leaving office, and cook up dinner plans. Then we meet at home, or some restaurant, stuff ourselves and then head for home in the sweaty clothes of corporate toil – he a project financier and me a purchase manager.

Once home,
he does the accounts.
Then watches the night’s half-hour quota of his current movie, and dozes off.
I read while he is sleeping.
Then I switch off the light, lie down next to him. And I snore.

Now it is to be all over.
Both of us have to move out.
No we didn’t have a fight.
The Mumbai that brought us together is now doing us part. I am moving to Vashi and he to Andheri.
I shall be moving out this Saturday and he a couple of days after that.

Starting day before yesterday, we have 6 days together.
And in these 6 days I have decided that I will take him to as many movies as possible. And I shall review those movies, for him.
I have never written reviews before. I hate doing that.
But these reviews I know I shall cherish for long.
They are the children conceived in our divorce.

So far we have done Shivaji, Cheeni Kum and Life in a Metro.

Just a few thoughts on them here. Detailed reviews to follow later, hopefully.

Cheeni Kum
When I first heard about Cheenie Cum I thought it was one of those cheap, Chinese porn flicks.

Life in a Metro
Konkana Sen has very quickly carved a niche for herself in the industry – as the leading lady opposite gay men. She did it in page 3, she does it here again.

Shivaji
When you spend 200 bucks on a movie you feel like you own a part of it. You come out, and criticize or critique the story, the cast’s performances, the stunts, the comedy (in most Indian movies it is still comedy, only a few like Cheeni Kum and Pyaar ke Side Effects have achieved humor). You can say, with no hesitation, that the heroine has gone fat, she looks wooden, or just as easily declare “paisa vasool” for the smooch-shots.
Shivaji doesn’t let you feel like that.

You don’t own this movie – not any small part of it.
You can’t critique this movie; you can’t call it good or bad – it is beyond that, it is above you.

P.S. I am not a Rajni fan. This is the first Rajni movie I have seen for more than 5 minutes.

Mumbai ki Baarish...

Dil tha mera kala samandar sa,
Sannata tha isme bhayankar sa..
Lekin aaj is samandar se ubharta
attahaas ka tufaan nazar aata hai..
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota....aasman nazar aata hai

Aaj subah se ek khushi bewajah hai,
Ek chanchal bechaini naache hriday ke satah pe
Uchhalti, Khelti....Taaron se jhoolti, Sheeshon pe fisalti
boondon me natkhat muskaan nazar aata hai
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota....aasman nazar aata hai

Ye chhaaton ko katoriyan banati purzor hawa,
Pyaari si ladkiyon ke baalon me ulajhti munh-zor hawa..
Rahgeeron ke beech daudti,
chhedti,
Hawa nahin, ek bauna shaitaan nazar aata hai
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota...aasman nazar aata hai

Yeh geeli barsaati subah
Yeh meethi khushi bewajah
Yeh Khelti boondein natkhat
Yeh daudti hawa sarpat
Mumbai ki barish ka rutba
alishaan nazar aata hai
Yeh faila seena, yeh chhota asman,
kisi ka....ehsaan nazar aata hai

Mumbai is a straight-line city,
where the people keep moving in spirals and circles - dizzingly upward spirals of immense opulence and downward spirals of crushing, dehumanizing poverty....or just circles of survival.

It is a city that will make you run very hard just to stay in the same place.

It is a city that works on a huge amount of grime and human grease.
It is life accelerated.

Mumbai sometimes scares me. But what scares me even more is when people say, "Three months in Mumbai, and then you can't live anywhere else. This city grows on you."

I always beleived that there is no city in the world that I can totally hate.
Do I hate Mumbai?

No, I am still struggling to come to terms with its intensity. With its accelereated densities.
How can I bring myself to hug this giant when its immensity and rawness still awe me?

I am suddenly, brutally shocked - like hitting the cold water of a pool flat with your chest - into the realization that there is no other city like Mumbai. There is nothing you can point to and say, "this is a bit like mumbai, with perhaps this and that changed, intensified, decreased, enlarged" No.....you can't compare Mumbai with anything. It is a concept in itself.

Perhaps, I need three months.

Till that time I shall continue to impress these pages with whatever Mumbai hits me with.
If these small images turn out to be the footprints of my reluctant love story with Mumbai then let it be so.

Integration (of the Calculus kind) is a show of great music and fireworks on a lakeside.


It has all that beauty, wonder and majesty.

"Virginity is not dignity...not security....nor a sign of purity.
Its the lack of opportunity."
- William SexFear

(contributed by my dear elvish friend Palash)

Just as V.Good is short for Very Good
S.hit could be short for Super Hit!

I wish I could be as satisfied as him

"I wish I could be as satisfied as him",
he said, in the same calm, measured slow manner in which he had been spooling out his words for the last half hour. He was an old man, past fifty. The few remaining grey, oiled strands of his hair lay down lazily across his head like the arms of a palm tree. Just as you can see the moon through its leaves you could see his bald, oiled pate shining through this last, long hair.

He had contentment about him - a sense of never being in a hurry. He spoke slowly, as if measuring out the words that left him. A small chest and a hanging paunch. If RK Laxman's common man had a paunch, this would be him.
If the ancient, wise monkey of Lion King had a few hair, this would be him.

Languorously, with hazaar ancient anecodtes, he took us through the problems of working with contract manufacturers - sometimes with touching sympathy and sometimes with prickly cynicism. A twinkling, impish humor kept background score for his soft recital. It was then, as a part of that tapestry of many colourful stories, he told us about this immensely laid back, content contract manufacturer who refused to expand his plant to take on more work.
"Saab, jitna milta hai usme khush hain", was his mild rebuke to compelling economic logic. It was then that our gentle old Aesop remarked,

"I wish I could be as satisfied as him."

I wish I could have told him then....that,

Being happily satisfied is not a choice that we make.
It is a choice we choose not to make.

This un-choice is what makes successful men. And unhappy men.

This un-choice is the stuff from which dreams spring.
And inhuman, brutal greed.

This un-choice makes conquerors and barbarians.

It is a strange force this. It makes us. It destroys us. But it never completes us.
No ambitious man has ever died "satisfied".

Mumbai, wet and dirty, sucks.

Not in the way that makes you want to come.