yeah, yeah, see u on sunday....for sure...
...and i guess, the day u write that big mail to me about all the things that you have been wanting to tell
would be the day you will see an Al Jazeera exclusive video footage of Bush and Osama kissing each other outside a niche marriage court in California....
:((
i got into such trouble today...
and not for much good reason too...
my room mate had forgotten his mobile at our home, i went back at home during lunch for some small work,
and saw his mobile lying there,
i took it along intending to return it to him
but then my conscience balked at the thought of returning back the phone unmolested and its owner unconfounded,
so i just typed an sms
"Call me immediately"
and sent it to the first 7-8 female names i found on his list
and then gave the mobile back to our guy...
and in a couple of minutes he is getting calls from relatives long forgotten
but the worst part was
when a couple of women he had been seeing for marriage, but where the talks had collapsed unceremoniusly much like Israel-Palestine peace talks,
started calling him up and asking what the shit he was upto after such a long time....
as would seem logical from the above delineated sequence of events
our man got mightily pissed off
and the first hints of it came to me
when he passed by my desk in office, and made a certain twitching gesture of his right hand fingers
which somehow my mind inchoately processed as a demand, and far less a request, of wanting me to meet outside...
his soft body language, and soft grimaces notwithstanding, i deduced --- drawing from my deep
experience in studying and understanding finer human emotions of not-so-fine humans--- from his cryptic words
that he was not happy with me :
"What were you thinking!!!???? This is deep shit now !!!!! You have gotten me into deep shit !!!!!
You are @#$##^& &^%**((*&&^^%%$%^& ))(*&^^&^%$$$$$
I don't want to discuss this here,
we will go home and talk about it "
He is already at home
waiting for me
And i sit here, typing this mail,
trying to work off my state of fear through my trembling fears on this keyboard...
he is a soft-spoken guy
what i am concerned about is that
he might not be such a soft-fisted guy.....
Friday, June 27, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Wish You a Happy Married Life - The Longest Oxymoron in the world????
I looked outside the big windows and realised it was night.
But it was not dark.
The thousand, mundane lights of Mumbai sat sulking outisde like rows of sullen, tired beggars.
My fingers made some rude love to my heavy eyelids, rubbing them this way and that on the water bed of my spent, watery eyes.....I looked again at the computer screen and let out the 3rd one in a long line of royal sighs.
Late in the office, I was checking out my yahoo mails before leaving for the day when I came across a marriage invite from one of my friends at B. Satyam Darmora, Captain Satyam Darmora - a leader of men, with a staunch following of one.
Satyam Darmora - one heck of a hell raiser, but the kind who is very likely to get thrown out of hell for his troubles rather than be crowned its king of mischief..
Nevertheless a guy who is good fun and adventure to hang around with....Satyam Darmora was getting married...and he had sent an e-mail invite - one of those strange creatures with a BIG head and a small body - to the entire batch.
The Head :"All Good Things Come to An End"
The Body: And so has my bachelorhood. :-(Please be there to support me on this occassion. Iwould like to invite you all to please come & shower your wishes and blessings on this rare occasion. Attached is the wedding invite and following are thekey metrics :
[key metrics not inculded in this blog]
----------
I sighed, closed my eyes, remembered Darmora, and the following words literally poured out from my sensitive (and a lil leaky) soul..
-----------
Many Many Heartiest Congratulations yaar!
Even though time, space and their child - circumstance - conspire against any possibilities of my presence at that really momentous occassion, I assure you that as the tiny stars spin like paper boats in the blue street waters running thousands of miles over blushing maids and cowering grooms in Dehradun, I shall be looking at those very same stars sitting on the bar-grilled bal-cony of my Mumbai flat, currently shared with a couple of guys getting too late for marriage, and as the jewels of time tumble and the moment approaches when you shall be tying yourself into knots as you put those 3 knots around a decieptfully delicate neck I shall close my eyes and breath a deep sigh, the mists of which shall haze the air below my nose making some of my prodigally long nasal hair shiver like fir trees in an icy winter night breeze, and shall remember with respect and awe and a sense of homage the great Captain who never heard an "Aye" the entire heroic part of his life, the Great Captain, who almost won the Lead India Campaign. Now that Captain shall be leading a train of kids, himself lugged by the engine of a wife.
Yeah, my friend, yeah, I shall sit on that lonely fateful black night in my green shorts on the grey balcony, looking beyond the emptiness of air into the inviting, embracing hole of the mouth of my beer bottle, i shall look down its slender, smooth neck and into the sudden yet graceful expanse of its chest, and I shall look down into the tiny bubbles of joy and beauty and promise and hope, and on the tiny, ephemeral, dancing surfaces of those froth bubbles, I shall see mirrored your entranced face as you partook of the same beauty of a beer bottle on L Square nights, with a delicate fervour which made seem that you were kissing the bottle instead of drinking beer from it.
And as the soft magic of the beer spreads warmly in my memory, I shall remember how happy simple things made you - which from that momentous moment in Dehradun would be like poison to you - things, such as a women's legs. Nay my friend, at your very sights they stayed no more legs, but turned into flaming torches, which lighted fires in your eyes, and melted your heart which dripped down your open mouth, and your yearning, burning sighs blew like smoke from a burning coconut hemp. In those moments my friend, I tell you, I could smell a man's conscience burning. But no more shall such heat and fire and light burn you...no more......
...But even in this difficult passage of time, that makes you swallow so difficultly...I know that you can still hold your head up and proud, and say to all those that have gone before you on this path - Hari kishan Mowa, Kiran Babu, Sagar Sahu, Jabba and many many others - you can say to all of them, in the very words of the venerated Shree Atal Bihari Bajpayee....
"Maine ab tak shadi nahin kee,
par iska matlab ye nahin ki maine brahmacharya ka paalan kiya hai"
Happy Married Life Dear Satyam Darmora Captain Saheb,
Your memory shall be enough to give us courage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He hasn't yet replied to my words of homage, but I guess he is busy with other things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. - This blog is dedicated to Zahra, another anonymous reader, whose kind words made me put this mail up here.
But it was not dark.
The thousand, mundane lights of Mumbai sat sulking outisde like rows of sullen, tired beggars.
My fingers made some rude love to my heavy eyelids, rubbing them this way and that on the water bed of my spent, watery eyes.....I looked again at the computer screen and let out the 3rd one in a long line of royal sighs.
Late in the office, I was checking out my yahoo mails before leaving for the day when I came across a marriage invite from one of my friends at B. Satyam Darmora, Captain Satyam Darmora - a leader of men, with a staunch following of one.
Satyam Darmora - one heck of a hell raiser, but the kind who is very likely to get thrown out of hell for his troubles rather than be crowned its king of mischief..
Nevertheless a guy who is good fun and adventure to hang around with....Satyam Darmora was getting married...and he had sent an e-mail invite - one of those strange creatures with a BIG head and a small body - to the entire batch.
The Head :"All Good Things Come to An End"
The Body: And so has my bachelorhood. :-(Please be there to support me on this occassion. Iwould like to invite you all to please come & shower your wishes and blessings on this rare occasion. Attached is the wedding invite and following are thekey metrics :
[key metrics not inculded in this blog]
----------
I sighed, closed my eyes, remembered Darmora, and the following words literally poured out from my sensitive (and a lil leaky) soul..
-----------
Many Many Heartiest Congratulations yaar!
Even though time, space and their child - circumstance - conspire against any possibilities of my presence at that really momentous occassion, I assure you that as the tiny stars spin like paper boats in the blue street waters running thousands of miles over blushing maids and cowering grooms in Dehradun, I shall be looking at those very same stars sitting on the bar-grilled bal-cony of my Mumbai flat, currently shared with a couple of guys getting too late for marriage, and as the jewels of time tumble and the moment approaches when you shall be tying yourself into knots as you put those 3 knots around a decieptfully delicate neck I shall close my eyes and breath a deep sigh, the mists of which shall haze the air below my nose making some of my prodigally long nasal hair shiver like fir trees in an icy winter night breeze, and shall remember with respect and awe and a sense of homage the great Captain who never heard an "Aye" the entire heroic part of his life, the Great Captain, who almost won the Lead India Campaign. Now that Captain shall be leading a train of kids, himself lugged by the engine of a wife.
Yeah, my friend, yeah, I shall sit on that lonely fateful black night in my green shorts on the grey balcony, looking beyond the emptiness of air into the inviting, embracing hole of the mouth of my beer bottle, i shall look down its slender, smooth neck and into the sudden yet graceful expanse of its chest, and I shall look down into the tiny bubbles of joy and beauty and promise and hope, and on the tiny, ephemeral, dancing surfaces of those froth bubbles, I shall see mirrored your entranced face as you partook of the same beauty of a beer bottle on L Square nights, with a delicate fervour which made seem that you were kissing the bottle instead of drinking beer from it.
And as the soft magic of the beer spreads warmly in my memory, I shall remember how happy simple things made you - which from that momentous moment in Dehradun would be like poison to you - things, such as a women's legs. Nay my friend, at your very sights they stayed no more legs, but turned into flaming torches, which lighted fires in your eyes, and melted your heart which dripped down your open mouth, and your yearning, burning sighs blew like smoke from a burning coconut hemp. In those moments my friend, I tell you, I could smell a man's conscience burning. But no more shall such heat and fire and light burn you...no more......
...But even in this difficult passage of time, that makes you swallow so difficultly...I know that you can still hold your head up and proud, and say to all those that have gone before you on this path - Hari kishan Mowa, Kiran Babu, Sagar Sahu, Jabba and many many others - you can say to all of them, in the very words of the venerated Shree Atal Bihari Bajpayee....
"Maine ab tak shadi nahin kee,
par iska matlab ye nahin ki maine brahmacharya ka paalan kiya hai"
Happy Married Life Dear Satyam Darmora Captain Saheb,
Your memory shall be enough to give us courage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He hasn't yet replied to my words of homage, but I guess he is busy with other things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. - This blog is dedicated to Zahra, another anonymous reader, whose kind words made me put this mail up here.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
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)
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)
Saturday, December 29, 2007
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”
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”
Sunday, December 23, 2007
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)
(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)
Sunday, December 16, 2007
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)
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)
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