Random Thoughts from a Confused Mind

70mm annoyance!!

2007-10-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah! I know I owe an explanation. To the remaining kind readers of this blog and to the kinder commenters (especially XYZ) who I've been bad towards. So what was the reason for the absence - well take your pick - it was either (i) I was being hounded by beautiful exotic women and found it difficult to give equal amount of time to all of them and blog or (ii) I was neck deep (actually make it mustache deep will ya) in work or (iii) the aliens abducted me. I'll give you a subtle hint - it wasn't (i) or (iii) - so now put those gray cells to good use and figure out the reason folks.

So I love movies (duh, you didn't figure that out from my blog yet). And I actually pay and watch them in the true big screen experience. I do not download movies and hardly ever rent DVDs. I do not write movies off before actually watching them and I give every movie a chance. I also have no pretension about my movie taste being extremely base. I don't know anything about difficult to pronounce European directors and I value MTV movie awards more than the Golden Palme. I just watch movies for entertainment. My logic is simple - I'm giving you $10 to make me not think about things I would've otherwise thought about for the next 2 hours (three and a half hours if it is a Karan Johar movie). If you succeed in doing that then you deserve my money. Simple.

So I was in India recently and true to my nature I watched a bunch of movies and the Indian movie goers gave me enough reason to write a rant post. I know, I know. Another Indian specific rant. You think I'm that guy - the one who stays in US for three months and brings soap for neighbors and tells them stories about how backward India is and how he can no longer tolerate India - "yehaan AC nahin hai", "mineral water milega?", "mineral water thanda nahin hain - probably because yehaan AC nahin hai" ... Sadly I'm not that guy and even if I was, I clearly wouldn't admit that on my blog - duh!! So I shall put forward my points as to why Indian movie goers piss me off and then you can correct me - deal?

For starters, what's this with Indian movie goers and the guessing game? Do you get extra points for guessing the next scene in a movie? No seriously, what's the prize? "I think he is the murderer." "No no, she is the murderer." "No no. She is a he." Guess what? I have two words for you - "Duck Odd" and yes I know I got my Ds and Fs mixed up. So if the fifteen over zealous people who were sitting behind me for Dhol (which is a very bad movie btw) are reading this - I really don't care where you thought the Dhol was. I rarely am tense about mysteries in movies because I KNOW THEY WILL REVEAL IT IN AN HOUR. So shut up and let me watch the movie will you. What is it about movies alone that makes us do this? Have you ever seen people do this during a cricket game - "I think Sachin will hit a four." "No No I think Brett Lee will get a wicket". We never do that. But give us a movie and we suddenly put a Sherlock hat on. And it's not just for mystery movies - we do it for any movie. Even while sitting in US I had 4 very annoying people sitting behind me when I was watching Chak De India, trying to guess what will happen in every hockey game. Grrrrr!!!

Ok. My next rant is specific to Indians in US. Children. Yes, children. They are soooooo cute. Awwwwwww. But PLEASE KEEP THEM AT HOME WHEN YOU COME FOR MOVIES. Now correct me here. Have you ever seen Americans bring their one year old infants to movies. NO. They spend on a nanny and make sure that they enjoy the movie and let others do the same too. Now ask your self. When was the last time you went for an Indian movie in US where a kid didn't start crying? I think we all get angry but just keep quiet because its a kid. Would you keep quiet if a forty year old man started crying while you are watching a movie and started telling his wife that he is hungry - no you would beat the crap out of him. So parents of toddlers who bring them to movies - please be considerate towards others. How will you like it if I went to your house and shouted while your kid was trying to sleep - get it?

Talking about kids and movies its time for some digression. What is so sweet about grown up actors and actresses trying to play with under dressed kids from third World countries in their movies? How many Indian movies have you seen where the actor and actress, in the middle of a song, just walk into a bunch of street kids playing soccer and join them. The clip then normally gets into slow motion mode and everybody is shown having such a nice time. Occasionally there will be water in the form of rain or a water hydrant. All the kids and actors will then get wet and dance around even more. Now even American movies have started using this concept. I saw the Heartbreak Kid last night (funny in parts) and even they used the exact same concept. Grrrrrr. I have actually played cricket on the streets and never remember any sweet couple joining us for an impromptu party. If at all anything, all the couples in our area hated us because there was an outside chance of getting hit by a ball while they tried to go on sweet walks. Hmmmm.

Oh I have sooo much more to rant about. The annoying bunch of teenagers who think they are really witty and fill the movie up with smart ass comments (now that I have seen in US as well). Newly married couples who choose the movie as a way of showing affection - "You want popcorn? You want soda? You want pastry? You want popcorn, pastry and soda ..." People who have business deals on their cell phone while others are trying to figure out where the Dhol is - "Haan Sharma ji. Aaap sign kar dijiye. Abhi khatam hoga picture ... mein adha ghanta mein aata hoon ... aap popcornn lengey ..." So much to rant about but alas the aliens are here for abduction again - so later :)

P.S. Next post will be absolutely rant free :)

Dance with me baby ... won't you dance with me tonight ...

2007-07-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

Aaaah. I repeat myself. Another visit to a night club and another post about the all familiar sights. Only this time, the event was an Indian one and hence the sights were radically different. And no, I'm not saying that because the DJ, after a round of expletives and "Are u ready for some rocking music" roars, finally unleashed a Himesh crooning. That was hardly what made the night in an Indian party different. It was the characters who flooded the dance floor that made the Indian flavor of the night stand out and boy did they entertain me. And this was the second time in a month that I noticed this. You spot them once, they are probably an anomaly. You spot them twice and I smell a trend. So here's to them and here's to them ...

1. Twenty's a crowd.

Those who thought three's a crowd, think again. People from my generation who learnt about singular and plural from the DD spot of "ek anek" would love to see anek single Indian men in groups in these parties. Now don't get me wrong. All night clubs have single people. For some that is the whole reason for hitting the clubs. Get one and get some - that's there hope. For that they come armoured with button opened shirts, an over dose of cologne, money to buy drinks to all and sundry and a shiny pack of protection. Sometimes, the quintessential wingman accompanies them too. But in Indian parties the scene is very very different. We are no longer talking of A wingMAN, we are talking abt a freakin army of wings. A group of twenty single men???? What were they planning, an orgy fest?? And boy do they dance. Groups of men assume roles of women and play the female fiddle to the beats as the remaining men churn out manly moves. Then then pause, laugh, elbow each other, nudge and point out women who had dared to show a little more skin than others and then swap roles of men and women and continue their dance routines. Seriously, if you have no idea how scary this image might be, imagine this with me - ten men playing Madhuri Dikshit, as a remixed version of Chaney Ki Khet Mein blasts. Bad enough for you? No. Well then imagine three shirt opened heavily moustached, libido oozing Indian naujawan playing Helen and sizzling to Piya Tu Ab to Aaa Jaaa. Duh! Why do you think Piya is nowhere to be found. Grrrrrr!!

2. The Desi Dude.

It's all about contrasts. After the anek lets shift the focus back to the ek. Singleton rules. There are some self proclaimed dudes in the desi parties who were major studs in their hometown of Bhulbhulaiya. The same guy who had perverted uncles repeatedly pressing his cheeks in family gatherings with lines like "Arrey, he looks just like a young Dharmenderrr". So Dharmenderr grew up believing all Hemas are waiting for him round the corner but never reaffirmed his claims. The same guy who always thought he has all female attention focused on him but never actually spoke to a girl. He normally has a look; a look that he thinks does best to his chiseled profile. That with the gel. That with the shirt tucked in carefully only on one side. That with the collar raised. Seriously, the guy wearing the obnoxious green shirt last night - if you are reading this (which I doubt because reading this would involve, errrr, reading), you have no idea how many times I had the urge to just go and pull down your collar, especially because you looked extremely uncomfortable in it, tilting your head at a strange angle to avoid the collar from acting as a capillary tube to your dripping sweat. Yanyways, I digress. So there are these dudes who position themselves in various parts of the club, buy the one drink for the night and just stand and there and sip it. I like that abt them. They do not make moves. They are not there to pick up women. They just stand and look at women and give a nod stating "I know you think I am hot". Then they turn towards the towering mirror and go through the checklist - collar - up, chiselled Zoolander look - there, twisted neck angle - there and return to identifying unsaid fans from the audience.

3. Uncle and Aunty - ahoy.

Please. Please. Please. And in case that aint enough for you - a fourth pretty please. Can you please stop wearing sarees to night clubs. The saree is less sorry if it is an Indian Mela. It is ok if it's Patel Bhai's daughter's birthday and you want to look all traditional. But wearing a saree (and no, not the chic ones but more like a bridal one) to an event where the DJ is called Percussion is just WrOnG with a capital W O and G. I mean there were some young ones dancing last night who made me feel old but then when I spotted the throng of uncle jis and aunty jis doing the jhatkas and the matkas, I felt like a toddler and almost felt guilty being in a club instead of getting my homework done. Seriously did you have to take the ChaCha part of One Two Cha Cha Cha literally. Also, I would like to add to this list the newly wed wives who HAVE to wear a salwar with way too many bangles adorning them to prove their nouveau married status. I mean come on, I am happy that you found someone to dance to your tunes but do you really have to make that statement when dancing to somebody else's tunes (or is it beats)??

And then there were so many more. The one solitary guy who hasn't learnt a move since Mithun rocked with I am a Disco Dancer. He is always there. Churning out one 80s move followed by another. Then there are those first time visitors to US who have heard fancy tales of how clubs are great places to get laid. That's their game plan. They just think they'll come and get laid. They come with so many stories they've heard from friends who returned back to India and during the course of the night their expressions change from that of lust to boredom. They even raise their collar as a final measure of desperation but alas nothing helps. I can write on for a while or maybe I can't and just want to use this as a way to end this post. Whatever it is - I have written a long post and homework awaits me :) So bye.

Anatomy of a bad joke

2007-06-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

It all started with this joke. We were at a party at our PM(Product Manager)'s place. T and I were as usual occupied in various useless conversions.

Me: Isn't it funny how adding an O at the beginning of PM makes it sound like Opium.
T: You know what. We should have a rank called OPM ... maybe Organizational Product Manager or something like that.
Me: You know what kind of a rank that'll be?
T: What?
Me: A very "High" rank.

Arrrrrghh! Another sad joke bites the dust the queen would've said. But somehow the joke sounded so much better in my mind. But I have to accept that the joke when cracked, lacked the punch of a classic and that made me think back abt all the failed jokes I've cracked and the idea for this post came to mind.

Now come on. To the readers of this blog (to who I'm extremely apologetic abt the long delay) it should come as no surprise that I know a thing or two abt bad jokes. Hey! I almost completely own the right to really bad jokes. So why (and how) does a joke become a bad joke? Let's get into the skin of it - shall we?

No joke begins by being a bad joke. Even when you begin your sentence with "Ok, wanna hear a really bad joke ..." what you really secretly mean is "Hey, I found this joke funny but in case you don't then don't blame me later." So why then does a joke that was good in your mind become bad suddenly??

The number one reason for the annihilation of a good joke is context. Without context a joke is like a woman's short dress. On the right person and situation it would be a treat. But then give it to someone not meant for it and you are inviting visual harakiri. Take this joke for an example. I was talking to a friend and she showed me the photograph of another common friend's boyfriend who the common friend thinks is very good looking (whoa. what a confusing background). The first thing I noticed was the really long nose the guy had and my first reaction was "Wow. He makes Pinocchio look like an honest man." Not to be overshadowed by me, my friend chipped in with "Right. And the wooden expression just adds on to that." Now, I know what you are thinking. That it is wrong to make fun of ppl. And that's where context comes in. The guy in question is rumored to be a jerk and so we didn't feel any remorse while taking a dig at him. Also the images were posted with gooey captions that screamed for our comments and hence not only do I not feel bad abt the joke, it was indeed quite funny given the context.

The next biggest reason for a mutilated joke is kind friends. And by kind friends I mean drunk friends and luvahs. Drunk friends should never be trusted as a yardstick for jokes. Get a guy sufficiently drunk and he will laugh at anything. "This hot dog is so bad that they must have cooked it with the dog's poop in it." Now come on. That's just sad. A single line offending pet lovers and food connoisseurs. How bad is that? And yet your drunk friend will laugh hysterically. Not only will he just laugh, he will also repeat it to all the other drunk friends. "Hey, hey, listen to what he just said. Ha ha ha ha. So funny man. Ha ha ha. This hot dog is ..." And before you know every one in the party is laughing at your joke and you are convinced that it is a masterpiece. Next morning the same drunk guys are sitting there and having hot dogs for lunch and you come and crack the same joke and they shout back at you. "Why would you do that to us Raj? You just freakin spoilt lunch for me man," they yell. "What the fudge. You thought this joke was hysterical last night ... and my name is not Raj."

And yes. Never judge a joke based on what your luvvah thinks abt it. I have laughed at some reallllly bad jokes in the past just to make people I was with then happy. Some of those jokes damaged me permanently but I still laughed and I am sure the favor was more than returned. Like even now my mom cracks the lamest jokes in the World and my dad laughs like it is a Tom and Jerry skit. Then he asks her to repeat it one more time. And my mom does. On one hand I feel happy to see my parents so much in love and on the other hand I feel sad for my dad. Sob!

To end this post, another conversation that when taken out of context is just dumb but was quite funny if you were there.

Me: I feel most movies have stories that can be said in a line.
T: Like?
Me: Give me a movie.
T: Terminator II.
Me: Bad robot. Good robot. Good robot wins.
T: Harry Met Sally.
Me: for i = 1 to 10 { boy and girl meet; } They get together.
T: Arrrrrgh!
Me: Hey, there is a movie where the story is the same as the name.
T: What?
Me: Robo Cop.
T: That I will give you.

Peace.

Nostalgic Foreign Affairs

2007-04-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

Ta Ra Rum Pum was watched yesterday. For starters, the movie makes my previous post even more relevant. Please go and watch the movie as a complete validation of my post - every word of it, including Mama Shona's nice advice "Khushi ho ya gum .. blah blah karengey hum ... ta ra rum pum pum, ta ra rum pum pum ..."

But the movie had something else too. It was another entry of India's recent obsession of basing their movies in New York. Manhattan, Queens and other parts of NYC was used aplenty and there were lots of international artistes jigging their booty. This made me remember two stalwarts whom we, as Indian movie goers, never gave their due. It's still not too late - lest we forget later - let's talk abt my homies Tom Alter and Bob Christo.

For starters, if you dont know who these two ppl are, you should be ashamed of yourself. You know the guest list of ASh-Abhi's wedding and the fact that some sweet seller distributed tons of sweets to bystanders, but you morons couldn't care a little bit abt your heritage and the role Tom Alter and Bob Christo played in it. How will you feel if your children ask you fifteen years later, "Who's Rakhi Sawant?" Will you be able to look into their eyes ever again - NO, right? So in case you don't know who I'm talking abt - put your favorite search engine to good use and figure out first, will ya. Yanyway, back to reminiscing.

When I talk abt TnB (Tom and Bob is too monotonous to type every time), I talk abt two really talented business students. They were the fathers of market analysis and emerging market studies. The Britishers forgot that they ruled India for a few hundred years and it was just a matter of time before Indians would get back at them in their movies. But who would play the British baddies in these movies? TnB saw a gold mine here and stepped in. T had a square jaw and B had a clean shaven head - and we all know that in Bollywood these are the best assets after a padded breast size and carved torsos. Shetty had retired. Hindi movies needed a new menacing baldie who could get beaten up by Dharmendra and the angry B. Bob Christo volunteered. He had it all in his favor. Tall, muscular and zero knowledge of Hindi. So when he uttered "Kutte ... kutte ... baccha kutte" (yeah, his Hindi sucked), Hindi movie goers relished him getting bashed up. T on the other hand did not look very physically menacing and was also more gifted with his Hindi. So he became the shrewed higher ranked Brit baddie who got to speak more lines and play the scheming strategist. The one who would actually get a close up shot; the one who would then say "tum ha ree mummy hum ar ee pass locked hai ..."

The movies in the 80s only helped the cause of these two greats further. These two were the NYC of the 80s. That statement doesn't even make sense you say??? Hear me out. Today film makers show that they have great resources by moving the story to NYC and giving the audience an international feel. In the 80s money was scarcer and the only way to infuse internationalism in the movie was to infuse a "foreign smuggler" angle. Remember, the baddy whose face would never be shown till the end of the movie but whose accented voice could be heard from behind a silhouette. The one everyone referred to in awe and say "Mr. X India aaa rahey hai". Yeah, that's what I'm talking abt. What this meant was unlimited roles for TnB who lapped up every foreign character that came up. Also, something that fascinated me abt these characters is that they never had full names. They were always referred to as Mr. something. We never heard of a baddie called Peter Andrews. It was always either Mr. Peter or Mr. Andrews. Why were we so parsimonious with our names :(( The least we could do for these people is give them full names, right?

Incidentally, as an uber interesting aside, a point worth mentioning here is the importance of our very own baddie Prem Chopra in these movies. In all these movies where we needed foreign villains, we never gave up the central villain's role to TnB. They were always there but the main bad guy was someone else. And that someone else was more ever that not - Prem, Prem Chopra. There was something very malleable abt Prem uncle's face that could be twisted to make him look like any race. I've seen him play Chinese, Brit and even Portuguese characters in various movies. Does anybody remember that??

Anyway, TnB flourished in the 80s and early 90s. While B was better suited for leching at the women, attempting molestation and getting the crap beaten out of him, T was more suited for roles that required him to be sinister and shrewed. And then Aamir Khan and Salman Khan appeared and brought along a fest of mushy romantic movies - movies where the foreign baddies were replaced by evil uncles and aunts and feuding families who wouldn't see eye to eye (somehow that sounds like someone who is dyslexic - he he). Yanyway, these family mush fests had no scope for TnB. There was no role for Mr. Peter in a movie that was abt Khanna Uncle and Kapoor uncle's feuds over who is richer. Yuk!!! I remember the last big role I saw B in, was where he was reduced to playing a lusty villain in Sridevi's Gumraah. As he lecherously looked at the heroine and made passes her, I sadly shed a tear - realizing that this might be one of the last performances of a great!!

The final blow came in early 2000s. The new millennium brought in new cash flow in Hindi movies. We could now actually afford second tier foreign actors for actual roles. Lagaan started this trend and a bunch of movies (Dil Chahta Hai, Salaam Namaste, Rang De Basanti etc.) continued this trend. Take a second and imagine Tom Alter playing the evil cricket captain in Lagaan. Or Bob Christo playing a gay man who replaces the girl to play the character who teaches Aamir Khan how to play cricket - wouldn't that be cool? Or imagine Rang De Basanti to feature a Mr. Tom who wants to shoot a documentary in India. How nice would that be? But NO. We had to spoil it. We had to get pretty women and Shakespearean actors for a niche market that was once dominated by just two guys. Aaaaargh!!

TnB - no matter what they say. I will miss you.

No Kidding!

2007-04-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

Me and Hemo were having our standard "once a week movie catch up" session and today's topic was kids in Hindi movies. We both agreed that we hated Hindi movie kids. They are disgusting. Yeah, we both liked Masoom and I think the kids in Mr. India did a great job too but barring these handful of exceptions most Hindi movie kids are as pleasing to my senses as someone dressed in red and yellow polka dots with a silver tuxedo is.

For starters, Hindi movie kids are way too wise. I think it might be my lack of intelligence but these kids are way wiser than their age and always have a lot of knowledge to impart. And you know where all this knowledge comes from? Yup! Their over pious folks who were either (i) separated from them at birth or (ii) killed or (iii) never paid their remuneration and hence chopped off from the script even before they appeared. Hence it is always either "Meri maaa kehti thi ke sab log blah blah" or "Mere papa kehtey thein ke har insaan blah blah ..." You know what my dad told me and my sister as kids? "Don't mess with other kids. Chances are they'll kick your ass. And if they do I won't defend you coz chances are their parents will kick my ass" My mom was a tad bit more protective. Every activity of my childhood was peppered with the one advice of being careful lest I get kidnapped. "You are going to play cricket? Don't play with anyone you don't know. It might be a kidnapper" "You are going to your aunt's house. Don't eat anything anybody else gives you. You might be kidnapped." Come on mom. It's our aunt's house. We'll go in the car with you and come back the same way - so unless you want to kidnap us - I'd say we are pretty safe. So you can imagine why I hate Hindi film kids all the more - coz I can't share no "Meri maa kehti hai" advice coz the line "Meri maa kehti hai ke beta kidnap mat hona" is not the best line for an adult conversation.

Next comes the songs. How come every freakin family in Hindi movies has a family song. As a kid everytime I sang, my mom would gently rub my hair and nod sadly, accepting that indeed the musical talent was missing. Sometimes she would add "Don't sing too much. You might get kidnapped ..." Arrrrgh. Seriously, I don'y even remember us singing the Indian National Anthem together as a family, forget any "yaadon ki baraat" type trip down memory lane.

And finally all the Hindi movie kid romance. Yeah sure. Every time I see a movie where they show two kids share an innocent childhood lovey dovey moment I get yukked out. Remember the 80s when kids would fall in love in their childhood itself, get separated and then grow up and actually find their childhood love (Betaab, Disco Dancer), or the 90s when kids would innocently hold hands and occasionally peck each other's cheek (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) - a trend that seems to be continuing even now (Honeymoon Travels). Yeah sure!!! As a kid my parents sent me to an all boy's school. I was told if I talk to girls I'll "have a baby" - a thought that I thought was true till I left school. By then all my classmates had talked to multiple girls and some of them I think even had babies (hmmm, so maybe my parents were right).

So yes. You might shed a tear when the obnoxious kid from KKHH holds on to SRK's hand and says "tusi naa jao". You might even say a "cho chueet" to make the moment even more gooey but all I can think of then is "Tusi jao and saath mein in saarey bacchon ko bhi le ke jao".

Straight talk!

2007-03-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

So over the weekend me and a male colleague of mine decided to go shopping. "What and Why?" you question with a raised eyebrow. Brace yourself - you aint the first person to question the activity. Another friend of ours raised similar questions too with the "Aren't both of you confirmed heterosexuals" look. So I did what any sensible man facing such a question in this century would do - post on my blog abt it.

I think the society is strangely skewed in its choice of activities the sexes are allowed to do together. Every time I hit the malls, I see tons of women who come to shop by themselves. Two women, all dressed up, giggly, trying out different clothes and asking each other questions like "too short?", "too low?" "does my stomach show?". Perfectly fine. No one questions them and their motives. Now imagine two guys doing that. Imagine me walking into a store with my male friend and trying out a shirt and asking him "too tight?" "will this go with green?" Yeah!! You can't imagine that - can you?

So let me spell it out again - two fully dressed men in an attempt to dress themselves further will appear queer in our society but (yes, the quintessential but) boxing - that is just fine. Seriously. The act of two almost naked men, wearing nothing but literally boxing shorts, touching each other while sweating is perceived to be an act of oozing machoness but the thought of the same two guys buying shirts together is strange!!!! The same holds true for working out. Two buddies pumping those heavy weights in the gym is completely fine - where one man in his sweaty T shirt standing right above his buddy's face, helping him do bench press is fine - but the same two men if seen in a classy restaurant, eating dinner together in formals, will be questioned. Oh yes, that brings me to restaurants. Isn't it strange that we draw the line across some special kind of restaurants - two men having burgers in a fast food restaurant is cool (coz they are buddies grabbing a quick snack) but if they go to a sushi bar by themselves then it is not (coz then people think that they are just buddies try to grab each other while they snack).

Which is why I love Indian men. Coz we all know that Indian men hate it more than anybody else to have their sexuality questioned. At the same time most acts Indian men (or Indian men I bump into) do together are ... err ... quite questionable - going for Friday night movies together, always having their arms around each other while taking photographs, going to the sea beach all by themselves and then running into the water and splashing each other??? Sounds familiar? Yes, these are some of our favorite bonding moments. But we never come across as questionable because Indian men follow the rule of the jungle - whatever you do, DO IT IN HERDS!! Yes, Indian men flock in large quantities. Coz we know that two men hugging and taking photographs is queer but twelve of them doing it is just plain old weird and we are fine with weird!! This is the same reason why you can safely go to any night club in areas with high desi population and see a dozen Indian men dancing together and still not question their sexuality. Pretty neat, heh?

Society and its biases - I will never understand :(

Shhhhhhhhhhh ... shhh!!!

2007-02-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

Oh a million thanks to the kind woman who recommended the subject of this post. The "famous silent treatment" that women have forever ushered on the male specie. The weapon that can penetrate hearts that even generous bottles of free alcohol couldn't. The weapon that my grand mom used effectively and passed on to my mom. The same weapon that my sister uses on her boyfriend now and my mom secretly smiles, revelling in how the student has caught up with the master. If the bard was here today he would've said "Oh what a million words could not attain, a moment of silence did ..." Ladies and gents ... my one fiftieth of a dollar on one of womankind's most lethal strengths ...

No trick of the book is as deceptive as this one. All you have to do is keep mum!! Say nothing. It's that simple. Ideally all of us should be able to do it, right? This is when the buzzer rings and the red bulb flashes. Wronggggg!!!! The Silent Treatment is a master's art. One which is subtlety at its best. There are so many parameters and nuances - how long do you keep quiet, when do you start, how do you make the man realize that it's the silent treatment he is being subjected to and not just a peaceful day, what do you say to finally break the silence ... get it? What seems like a simple two step process (keep quiet, speak) is actually more complicated than tying your shoe laces with your arms tied behind your back.

For starters, silence will not buy you the reaction of remorse you want to see in your man. Because just silence will reveal it instantly that you are upset and the man will start with his acts of seeking (or is it pleading) forgiveness pronto. The silent treatment is like coffee - real pleasure requires prolonged simmering. So the trick is to not be completely silent but instead, be decreasingly vocal.

"Wanna go out for dinner?" the man would ask.

"No," you reply. Not a word more. Don't explain anything. Make him wonder if it's actually the beginning of the silent treatment or if it's just a terse reply.

"Wanna go for a movie?" he'll ask you soon, to reaffirm his fears.

"No," you reply again.

That's when the man gets freaked out. He's almost sure that he is being served the mother of all doses but he still has a spec of doubt.

"Are you angry?" he'll ask. Now you will be able to sense the urgency in his tone.

Don't say NO this time. Just nod your head. Maybe add "No, I'm fine."

This is when the man officially freaks out. See the reason why the silent treatment is so effective is because men never know what the woman is so angry for. It's the suspense that drives us nuts. Now all men know they screw up. More times than they should. So there is the guilty moments playing medley in their mind. However, they are just not sure which one blew his lady up.

"Is it because I called up your friend?" "Is it because I did not wash the dishes after eating?" "Is it because I called your mom fat and dad fatter? WHAT IS IT? Tell me. Tell me." They go berserk in no time.

And that is amazing for the ladies. Without saying anything they figure out all the things they should've been angry for - and that just adds on to their aggression.

At this point ladies, turn up the volume of the act. Gesticulation is thrown in. Start twitching your lips. Do the fake "I'm abt to cry and my eyes are almost red" eye motion. Maybe even sniff and breathe a few sighs. That'll scare the crap out of the man. Coz as I mentioned, the beauty of the Silent Treatment is that men have no clue how severe their blunder is and how long the ordeal will continue. It's like watching a Hindi soap on TV - ever week you think that the drama has reached it's peak but things still go on for fourteen years!!!!

And finally the outburst. Don't mess that up ladies. Then you have a great movie with a lame climax. Don't just blurt out "You forgot our five month three day anniversary" and spoil the classic moment. Either shout out loud or shed a few tears when you finally speak - but whatever you do pose the crime back to him as a question - "You don't know why I'm angry? Right? Ask yourself ..." Yes, this will just blow up your man. Then he knows that he is standing in the face of a canon - just waiting for you to blow it up!! And then .... go for the kill.

Sorry men. The silent treatment does NOT work on the ladies. They just think it's blissful silence. Also if done for long enough they don't serve you dinner and just say "If you were hungry, you should have just asked for food." So face it - we might score one up on them by peeing while standing - but when it comes to winning the battle with minimum words - they say(?) it best!!!

Massive Rant!!!

2007-01-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

Shilpa Shetty will beg India to forgive Jade Goody. Big f-ing deal. The article goes on to add "And she said she would even help Jade, the 25-year-old mum-of-two to her quest when she returns home". How chueet!

Now let me refresh some memories here now. Who is Shilpa Shetty? Errr, maybe I'm a lil lost here but when was the last time Ms. Shetty did something that caught public attention? I think it was 1938. Or whatever!! Bottom line, if at all anything, the media and Ms. Shetty and all her remaining twenty three fans should be thankful to Jade Goody for bringing her back to limelight.

Now get your bricks and barbed cynicism ready to hurl at me but to be very honest, I think that NOTHING strange happened in Big Brother. Why are we so freakin sensitive abt anything and everything said abt Indians? Big freaking deal that some half baked celebrity called our la-deeh-luh heroine "Shilpa Poppadum". I just find the whole thing to be a lack of imagination of Indian slurs. Seriously, Poppadum? That's the best you could do? Dudette you need serious coaching in the art of insult hurling. But then I digress.

So where was I? Right, on the whole Ms. Shetty "the victim of racism" debate. Let's analyze this a lil bit more. I believe the last group of people talking abt racial slurs should be Indians. As a group of people, we are probably one of the most racist in our outlooks. We take racism to all new levels. The granularity at which we perform racism is appalling. "Wow, you have South Indian friends?" "Woah, you are dating a Bong guy?" "I want my son to only marry an Iyer", "I will disown you if you do not marry someone from our sub caste" ... Sounds familiar. That's US. Yess. We carry on racism at state, city and language boundaries. We are the exact same nation where engineers stand days outside a college protesting against reservation, only to come back home and have their mom's put up matrimonial ads that read "Wanted girl from So and So state, Blah blah community and Yada Yada locality." That's how micro-granular our racism is. Anybody who has stepped out of their own states in India for college will be familiar with the terms - Illad, Gult, Bongs, Gujjus, Ghati, Marus etc. etc. etc. And that doesn't bother any of us - right? What bothers us is when somebody who is in a Reality Show that screams "we Want Controversies" calls one of our own Poppadum. Duh! Duh! Triple duh!

Gazillion ones amongst us have tried to mimic the British accent and made attempted humorous statements on how it sounds. And all that is fine - right. But when two Brits make fun of an Indian's accent we turn into a rebellious jingoistic lot - huh? Grow up people. Ask yourself honestly - have you never made fun of the way Bongs say "O to everything" (Obhishek and not Abhishek, Onita, Ojoy etc.), have you never made fun of how Tamilians say "Haich" for the letter H? Haven't you ever made fun Panjabis by cracking three borrowed jokes abt Santa and Banta? So why all these protests against Jade Goody? She's just like you, only with a different accent and a lesser repository of jokes. Seriously, I hate to see dalits being paraded naked in some Indian village and the news making one corner of the second page of the newspaper with no follow up actions, while Shilpa Shetty getting a second shot at stardom courtesy a show that showcases second tier celebrities and then sympathizing with her as a miserable wretch because someone called her a Poppadum.

Grow up ... or I'll just throw up.

Err .. what was I thinking abt ...

2007-01-20T09:18:00.000-08:00

Woke up in the morning and had some thoughts. Shall sleep again now ...

Update!! Added the last one. It came up during a conversation today.

* While most men exude sex appeal, I let out an appeal for sex.

* They say, behind every successful man there is a woman. Now you know what women look forward to.

* If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, then apples must be barred from doctor households.

* A woman wrote a note to me that read "Are you single?" I was bold over.

* There is a great movie called The Scent of Woman. Do you think they'll ever make a movie called Odour of a Man?

* I went to a bar and picked up quite a few women ... Then I put them back on the stools they were sitting on and they continued drinking.

* They say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Why can't it just be honest instead?

* I wrote this awesome spam blocker and sent out 1000 emails telling people about it.

* (New) One who laughs last ... probably didn't get the joke!

Cut to the chase!!

2007-01-15T20:50:00.000-08:00

"Haircuts!! Oh haircuts! What a pain in the rear side you art." I think Billy Skahespeare said that in some classic play. Ooops. My bad. It wasn't the bard. I think I just said that line instead. Seriously. Oh dear haircuts, what a scene maker you are!

I admire (or maybe envy) women for their haircutting ease. They know exactly what they want. I was once accidentally allowed inside a women's beauty parlour where my sister had gone for a haircut and I was awestruck by the preciseness of her requirements. "A step cut ... till here (gesticulating a point below her shoulder) ... I'll also get highlights ... blah blah shade ... only this part out here (once again using extremely precise gesticulation) ..." Wow! I said to myself. Boy, does my lil sissy know what she wants. As a man I'm always at a loss of words when I enter the barber's shop. Let me elaborate.

See the biggest problem with men is that they are not very sure what they exactly want. Like I know I want my hair spiky (coz there is no other freakin style that I can try with it). But I'm scared to tell my barber that. "I'd like to get a cut that helps me keep my hair spiky ..." "What kind of spikes?" he cuts me short. "What?? They have kinds of spikes? When did that happen?" Darn! There goes that adventure. So I give in to my standard "Cool. Just cut it short then" routine and he readily obliges.

Occasionally we know exactly what we want. It's that thing So and So actor did in So and So movie. I know. But then as member of the group of men who are always insecure abt revealing that they are aware of any kind of style, I too am embarrassed to ever make the statement "I want a cut like blah blah did in that cool movie." So once again I put my creativity into play and try to describe what exactly I think the cut is like and the result is disastrous more often than not. For example if I try to tell them that I want my jute like hair cut like Hugh Grant's in some movie (Oh come on all you men, you must have wanted some Hugh Grant hair style at some point), I end up saying "Well ... err ... I'd like to keep it ruffled but ... err a lil spiky as well ... like err ... well ... you know ... errr ... you know what, just make it short"!!!!

The funny part is that the barber's always try to help us out by having a chart of different hairstyles on their wall. This kinda seems to be a Universal trend intended to alleviate the aforementioned problems. You know what I'm talking abt, right? That strange collection of extremely happy looking guys in all sorts of hairdos. Personally speaking, I feel, that these models are normally from the bottom rung of the fashion industry. Seriously! Do you think any model ever wants to be a hair style model whose only moment of fame is on walls of barber shops??? But that's a separate story! For now let's go back to my plight - have you seen these charts? They all seem to be from the seventies. They all have that one gleeful guy who sports the Travolta Grease look. Ahem! Ahem! Now I know I'm not that young ... but Travolta is still old enough to be my father (or at least my uncle)!!!

There are other things that men have to deal with abt hair cuts that women don't have to deal with I guess. For example the whole after the haircut show the back of your neck using a mirror routine. I've got myself haircuts in quite a few places around the World and they all do this. Just before they are done, they bring a mirror and hold it close to your neck and you are supposed to see the mirror in the other mirror and pass on some compliments or at least acknowledge a job well done by giving a gracious nod. No seriously. What's that whole routine for? Have you ever seen any guy who has said "No that's not what I wanted with the hair on my neck!!" Coz by the time they show you the mirror - the haircut is done. It's not like the hair that you can see during the cut and actively give suggestions abt. I must have seen a few thousand men go through this act and not even once have I seen anybody complain after this whole two-mirror routine. You know why? Coz we don't have a freakin frame of reference. What are we comparing this too? Do we really care? You must have heard men express their dissatisfaction abt the haircut in front ."No, I want it a lil shorter here" or "I want the side burns trimmed thinner" etc. But have you ever seen a man who said anything after the two-mirror routine? NO! Coz we do not care. I think the whole thing is a marketing gimmick. That way the barber always ends the cut with us feeling that we have nothing to complain abt. Hmmmm!

Such hair raising stories these are!!

Tales of the Idiot and the Idiot Box!!

2006-12-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

So I've been super busy and then I'm also planning to go to Kolkata later this week. So those are the basic excuses for the delayed absence :) Not that I had a dearth of writing material though. I feel the list of yesteryear Hindi movie cliches that I plan to write abt, have a lot of potential - I'd say at least "15 comment worthy" (yeah, I'm gonna classify my posts in terms of how commentworthy they are). But then I wrote this pretty interesting email to a friend and the idea of this post came to my mind and I just had to get it down before I forgot it. So here it goes ...

Sundays are very different for me right now. I try to keep my Sundays free. Fridays and Saturdays normally involve a fair bit of staying up and driving. So Sundays are lazing days. I normally indulge in an afternoon nap. Maybe go for an early movie. Do my laundry in the evening. Call up home ... Sundays, now, also give me the "Tomorrow there's work" feeling. All in all Sundays now are characterized more by stray errands than anything momentous. But things used to be very different as kids. And as I thought through Sundays from the past and their meanings across multiple time frames - it struck me how big a role TV had during my growing up days!!!

I was very young then. Maybe ten. Maybe twelve. Maybe nine. Young enough to not remember too well what age I was. At that time Sundays were "Hindi movies in the evening days." Every Sunday Doordarshan would show some Hindi movie in the evening. Those were simpler times. There was no cable. There were no reality shows. We didn't even have Rakhi Sawant hogging news coverage all the time. All we had on Sundays were the movies in the evening. I remember that I used to open the morning newspaper with phenomenal anticipation to find out what movie they were screening that evening. I would then run to my father with a curious face. "Dad, they have some movie called Professor starring Shammi Kapoor. Is it any good?" The suspense used to be tremendous, as dad would pass a judgement on the movie and that meant a lot to me. Occasionally he would praise a movie and give me some additional trivia (I remember he did that for Mehmood movies). And then there were days when he would deem a movie completely unfit for my childlike innocence (I remember he did that for Ek Phool Do Mali). That would mean another week of waiting and I'd blast the Doordarshan honchos for spoiling my Sunday evenings.

I remember Sundays also had a regional language movie in the afternoon. The one that followed immediately after the news for the hearing impaired. But those movies had no charm for me. Coz the only regional language I spoke was Bengali and all the Bengali movies they ever screened in that slot were very depressing with famines and an unattractive woman always playing a central role :( So yes, Sundays then were only "Hindi movie in the evening days"!!

By the time I became fourteen, Sundays had changed a lot. VCRs had penetrated into mainstream India and watching movies on Doordarshan was loosing its charm. But the Sundays reacted well to this change. We had entered the 9-10 Ramayan/Mahabharat era. Life would reach a standstill as the entire nation came together on Sunday mornings to re-live the countries biggest epics. I used to have lunch at 1 in the afternoon those days and my Mom was kind enough to allow some lunch time TV watching too. So Indradhanush and Space City Sigma were hot topics for Sunday afternoons. Occasionally when Mom was a little more lenient, I would slip in an episode of Stone Boy too (does anybody else remember that show?). So effectively the Sunday TV extravaganza had moved from an evening affair to a morning/afternoon affair.

A few more years passed by. I was a little older then and considered the then Sunday craze Jungle Book kinda lame. I was probably the only one in the country who found the song "chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai" obnoxious. So while everybody raved abt the show, I kept it away from my morning staple. The other craze then was Ducktales, another children's favorite. But let's face it, by then I was too old for animated ducks without clothes below their waist!!! My favorite Sunday attraction had once again moved to the night time slot. It was a show that in many ways changed Indian television by introducing us to the notion of countdowns - the one that started it all - Superhit Muqabla. Yyup! I watched that show and am not ashamed to admit that I even participated in one of their competitions (if you care for more details then lemme tell you that I had voted Romeo Naam Hai Mera from Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja as my song of the week). With a host of erstwhile forgotten personalities like Baba Sehgal at its helm, the show found super success and I was part of the audience that waited all week long to find out who would reach "Hall of Fame" next weekend.

As I said in the beginning - Sundays are so different now. No TV whatsoever. Occasionally a movie. A lot of reminiscing though and that's what I did with this post. Whatever!

Remembering the Titans!

2006-11-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

I just saw Dhoom 2 and Hrithik and Ash play the "gorgilicous" team of baddies in it. As the suave baddie Mr. A, Roshan Jr. does all things a hero is supposed to do - sing, dance, lip lock and get a happy ending. He also gets ample scope to reveal his toned and tanned body. In one scene of the movie, where the Jr. B and Jr. R get involved in the quintessential good vs evil fist fight, the girl accompanying me to the movie screamed out "Kill him Hrithik!" That blurred the line for hero vs villain for me totally. Agreed, that The King Khan himself had played the baddie in a spate of mid 90s hits. But remember what happened to those characters? They stammered, they got beaten up and they eventually died. A very different scenario from the new Dhoom and Don movies I'd say where the bad guy walks off with the loot and lot. That's when I figured that Abhishek, with his leather jacket and rugged countenance, could never kill the baddie. Coz the baddy had died years ago. Yes, ladies and gentleman, whether you accept it or not, the Hindi movie bad guy has died a silent death and it's time I pay my homage.

I've been adding a dose of Hindi movies to my diet since the age of eight. I grew up watching the likes of Amjad Khan, Amrish Puri, Shakti Kapoor and Sadashiv Amrapurkar. Things were so different then. Like Ranjeet. If he was there he would try to molest a girl and if he would try to molest a girl he would get the crap beaten out of him by the hero. Ranjeet was in some ways the predecessor of Dhoom's Mr. A. I guess he somehow convinced his producers to give him a chance to flaunt his muscular body. Ranjeet always had a few buttons of his shirt open and when he tried to molest the gori in a gory moment, he would open a few more buttons. Too bad he didn't ge a chance to sing and dance ala Mr. A. I miss you Ranjeet uncle.

Then there was Shetty. Aah, what a character he was. My father, who's a phenomenal resource on B tier characters of A tier movies, gave me so much information on the subject. If Dharmendra was in the movie, Shetty had to be there too. And if Shetty was in the movie, then he had to be killed by getting hit with an iron object (varying from rods, to chains, to drums ...) on the head. Years before the Silpas and Sunils brought the Shetty name movie fame, this bald and dutiful villain had done his part quietly (literally, coz he hardly ever spoke any words) in many a hit. We will always miss him.

The villains in eighties and even the early nineties had another trait. They had an evil family and friend circle as well. These days the few villains we have are too much in love with hogging abundant screen time (of the little time they get, that is). The old school villains were all family men. In my early visits to the cinemas, nothing thrilled me as much as an evil Kader Khan tormenting a village that had Jitendra as an "officer" (I loved how he never had a designation other than being officer sahaab) having equally evil conversations with his evil but dumb scion Shakti Kapur and the dedicated munimji Asrani. There was always a moment when Shakti Kapur tried to mimic the same moves on the heroine that Jitendra tried (oh, some moves they were) and would get beaten up black and two shades of blue in the process. That would lead to Kader Khan sending his "men with sticks" to pick up the girl, her blind father, polio struck brother and a motley of other characters from the village of Stereotypepur. Innovative torture techniques like hanging the brother upside down and the getting the heroine to dance under a home made waterfall were then employed. And then there was the icing moment, just before the officer sahab's entry, where Kader Khan would try to force the heroine to marry Shakti Kapoor. Oh where have those movies gone Dinu Chacha?

Sadashiv Amprapurkar was a "family villain" too (unless we are talking of Sadak). However bad Mr. Amprapurkar was he always allowed his college going son to do whatever he wanted (it was sad that all the son wanted to do was to tease girls sitting on his motorbike). There are countless movies where the son is the one that brings the hero and villain against each other. That's what would then bring the "home minister" into the equation too. Oh, where have those movies gone?

And if there is one thing that I miss most abt the villains of yesteryears - it's their names. When did we start naming our bad guys Raj, Rahul and Aryan (aka Mr. A). What happened to Gabbar, Mogambo, Dang, Dong, Raka, Zabisco, Zulmi Singh and the likes? What happened to their trademark gestures. Be it Gabbar's tobacco chewing laughter, or Mogambo getting khush, or Gulshan Grover adding a "bad man" at the end of every sentence. Why did we kill these characters? Is it just me or does anybody else feel sad when they see Gulshan Grover playing the honest brother in a movie now? Come on! That guy used to be every brothers nightmare. What have we done to him??

So this is my appeal to all you kind readers. Bring back the baddies. Bring them back with captions like "badder and better than ever before". Coz we all know, that as cool and suave Roshan junior might be - he can never pull of a "Arre o samba, kitney admi thhe?".

P.S. I'm almost tempted to make the next post a list of 20 ultimate Hindi movie villain cliches. Lesse.

Take a step back!!

2006-11-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

Update 1: Backups are a unisex concept, i.e. all the things that I mentioned about male backups hold true for a female backup as well. It is just painful to write man/woman, or boy/girl-friend across a post. To all the people who thought that I was saying that only men are backups - duh!

Update 2: There are some really hostile comments in the comment space. I find them very funny. Please take some time to read them. Someone has addressed me as man-child - that is so cool :D :D

So we all know the boy friend. He's the sweet guy who gets you popcorn in the middle of the movie and also gets to put his arm around you for the rest of the movie. He's also the guy with the highest probability of getting electrocuted if he forgets your birthday. We all know him. We also know the guy who stands no chance whatsoever. The guy who was whisked away with the line "Sorry, I don't think of you that way." The guy who called you three times and you didn't even care to return one of those calls or even make an excuse to why you ushered such behavior on him. We all know him too. But then there's a third category. A somewhat hush hush and lesser discussed one - that of the backup (oft referred to as a stand by in India).

Society doesn't like to talk much abt backups. The same father who once shrieked with the line "Women in our house don't go out with guys" and has now finally acquiesced into letting the apple of his eye get bitten and chewed by her biker lover, still maintains that "Women of this house don't have backups". Coz let's face it - backups are like comfortable night suits - it's great to have one (or maybe even more than one) but it's not something you want to flaunt in public.

So why even have a backup, you ask? Coz backups have many uses. They can be asked for sudden favors. Remember the day when your boyfriend had a meeting and you didn't have someone to pick you up from college? The backup gallantly escorted you back home in the cab and did not let you continue with the fake act of "I'll pay for my half of the fare" - remember that? Or remember the time when you needed someone to go and pick up the dress you had given for dry cleaning and the backup jumped in to say "Oh, the Dry Cleaners are on my way to work"? Or the time the backup actually spent more on your birthday gift than your actual man luvvah did? So face it, backups provide tremendous utilitarian value. They also come with excellent shoulders that they offer whenever it's asked for. "Raj has gone out with his friends again. These days he behaves very differently ..." that's all the backup needs to hear. You don't even need to dangle a carrot for him. Just tell him that you have a carrot and that you might use it some day and he'll come running around. Not only will he offer you sympathy abt Raj and his meandering ways, he'll support and instigate you and make you realize that there are plenty of other fish in the ocean and all you have to do is leave the shark you are with right now. Oh, how sweet. And let's not forget the greatest value add a backup provides. That of being the rebound guy. We all know how bad the first few days of break ups can be. When both parties use third parties to find out if the the first parties have moved on and are partying. Use the backup wisely then and stick it up to your man ladies. The backup is just like adopting a five year old child. You get an instant child and it comes potty trained too. Wohoooo!

But it is not all easy to maintain a backup. It's quite the tough job I'd say. Coz, face it, no man wants to be a backup by choice. It's like being the ball boy in Wimbledon. You are right in the middle of the action but then you don't get any action yourself. So one has to provide the backup with ample incentives. You can't afford to not return calls to your backup like you would do for a "cast away". You can do that for a few calls but you have to take control of your act before the backup backs out. SO for every five phone calls he makes, you have to return at least three. You can however, then use excuses like "I'm really sleepy" or "My father is getting angry" to curtail the conversations. That's fine.

The backup also has to be given hope every now and then of a possible promotion. He should always believe that he is thiiiiis close to landing the plum job. You have to make him feel that he's doing an internship - that a good display of workmanship will eventually elevate him to a permanent status soon. For this you have to do one of two things - (i) go out just with him on what almost feels like a date every now and then and/or (ii) sprinkle occasional sordid stories of how you are not completely happy with your current man. Never (and by never I mean N.E.V.E.R) heap praises for your boyfriend in front of the backup. Bottom line, even though the back up is a tasty dish, you have to remember that there's no free lunch!!

Finally, a word of caution for all the ladies - One backup is great. Two is tolerable too. But be cautious when you over indulge in backups. A close friend was once part of a quartet of backups. And then one day all four met. They soon figured out that they were all competing for the same position (that kinda sounds kinky). Verbal battles were fought and before anyone knew it - ALL FOUR resigned from their job. The girl in question now has to actually pay for the cab rides herself on week days when the boy friend is out for work. So remember, that too many cooks spoil the dish ... especially when the dish is hot!

A cup of HonesTea

2006-11-13T23:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all the kind folks who expressed concern over my absence. I was and still am ... errrr ... hmmm ... well, how do I say this ... suffering from that thing they call A Writer's Block. It had to happen. The signs were there. I've seen several bloggers go through this myself. First, the post frequencies go down. Then you observe some uncharacteristic posts. Funny people turn philosophical. Sarcastic bloggers go mellow. Chic bloggers discuss societal evils. The last straw is when, an otherwise original blogger, responds to a tag. That's it. You clearly know then that the hiatus is coming and a lot of times you just keep revisiting the blog to reaffirm your fears.

So I woke up and looked at the date of the last post. October 26th it said. It was the first week of November then. "Aaaaah! Just ten days," I said to myself. I often spend two weeks between posts. "No problem at all. I'll surely think of something tomorrow." The next day I sat down to write again. I wanted to write on a variety of topics - "Changing fashion for women in India, When to know a relationship is over, the Metrosexual Man ... etc. etc." but I of all people knew that each one of those posts would've been really lame. It would've been just like a Suraj Barjatya movie where I would've just taken one of my old posts and presented it again, only this time with worse songs and an actor who at best can be described as a good backup of my regular star. "In the age of Multiplexes where the cost of a ticket is comparable to a month's school fee, my audiences clearly don't deserve this crap," I honestly said to myself. I still had two days before it was officially a fortnight. So I didn't force crap down my kind readers.

The next day I wanted to take the escapist route. That of headLINES. Lame lines feature aplenty in my day to day conversations (much to the chagrin of people close to me). All I had to do was take a few of them and "stick it up to you". Lines like:

* Studies reveal that too much time on the cell phone can reduce one's sperm count. So I called up all my friends and warned them about it.

* I can't believe that people like Angelina Jolie and Madonna are actually outsourcing adoption.

* A college in India has reserved more than 60% seats for the SC/ST quota. Am I the only one who sees irony in the fact that the college will have a majority of minorities?

came to my head. But by then twelve days had passed. Kind readers who had waited so long did not deserve this. So I decided to wait. Wait till I had nothing less than a classic in hand to unleash to the World. "I would rather have the canvas blank than splash it colors that would scar it. This canvas deserves nothing but the most inane modern art and I shall wait till I deliver it," I convinced myself.

But let's be honest here. As a writer I'm at best mediocre. I'm like Raja Hindustani where I might be a hit suddenly but even I know that I'm kinda crappy. Moreover that thing called age is catching up too (OK, being self critical is one thing Sagnik, but falsely calling yourself old coz you have nothing to write is not a very good thing!!). Most people who started blogging at a time when I did, now have children who are blogging. I have been to Bloggers meets where I could easily pass of as a strict father who was sitting there to escort his young blogging daughter. Let's face it - I have reached a point where I can finally make statements like "What do you people know. I used to blog with your father. We worked hard so that you guys can reap the benefits of a ..." So it is kinda sad.

Bottom line, I still have nothing to write but I surprise myself by writing four paragraphs on that. And that is exactly why I will not shut down this blog. I will not post an obscure post telling you "Enuff no more. Tis not so sweet now as it was before ..." That would mean shutting down the possibility of pouring never-ending amounts of crap on you kind readers and I don't want to give up on that chance. But at the same time I'll be honest. Don't come back here everyday expecting anything good. Treat me, at best, like a Ramgopal Verma movie - there'll be a ton of bad ones. So many, that you'll stop reading me. But occasionally I'll surprise you with a sudden blockbuster. If not for anything else, just to ensure that I can repeat the whole cycle again.

The Usual Suspects!

2006-10-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine from the fairer sex recently made this statement "It doesn't matter what you're wearing, as long as you have the right sunglasses to go with it." Another friend of mine spends fortunes on purses. 30% of the women I know have spent more time in shoe shops than in classrooms. All this made me take some time off to think abt these feminine extravagances and I even discussed it with a few other male friends. The result was unanimous - Women, you've got it all wrong. Agreed, Sex and the City was a cool show. Agreed Carey and her friends were trend setters. But allowing these Emmy winning fictional characters to perform magic tricks with your money - it's just insane!!!

Seriously. I think television has totally manipulated the female mind. Why else would they worry so much about shoes? Do you realize that of all the things you wear - that's the one item that has the highest probability of coming in contact with real sh!t (I'm assuming basic hygiene from you when I make that assumption) and still you spend a week's worth of food money on shoes? Shoo away! High heels, pencil heels, slip ons, hooker boots - why o why o why do you need one of each variety. And it's not just one of each variety - it's one of each color in each variety. And it's not just one of each color of each variety - it's one of each brand in each color of each variety. Now come on! I agree that variety is the spice of life but do you really want your food to be that spicy????

Now let's analyze the second culprit - purses. Please don't get "purse-onal" here ladies. Think rationally. The objective of a purse is to HOLD money and NOT blow it. If a small engraved label at the corner of your purse makes you shed a couple of big greens then I'd say go old school and keep your money close to your heart woman. My wise dad always told me that if you ever wear something that's more valuable than you are, then a thug won't think twice before attacking you for that thing. Now, let's be honest hear. Dad also thinks that Libido is a form of exotic dessert. So let's not over value every word he says. But in this case I think my old man does make sense. So keep your purses light, crappy and empty - will ya?

And now sunglasses. You know why they are so bloody dark? Coz the moment you spend a fortune buying one of them you are no longer in a position to make eye contact with anyone. You know you are ashamed and the shades just help you hide the shame. Seriously. One sunglass is fine. Two is cool too. But twelve freaking sunglasses to go with every dress you have???? All I can say is "I've shade enough on this topic" (note to self - Sagnik, your standard of puns is fast decreasing)!!!

Seriously. Look at us men. If we have a lot of money (I have no idea how that feeling is though) we buy cars. They take us from point A to point B. They move. They are big. They can hold a lot of purses. They can hold a lot of sunglasses. They can hold a lot of women with a lot of purses and sunglasses. That's what I call an investment. If we have even more money then we spend it on a house and we all know that these houses can hold many such cars!

I agree that occasionally we men have been known to spend a lot of money on alcohol but then if you're drunk enough, you reach a level so high where shoes, purses and all other things appear immaterial to you. That's us men. Ain't we deep?

P.S. Can some discerning female reader please explain to me the obsession with shoes, purses and sunglasses.

You gotta be kidding!

2006-10-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

A lot of traveling and driving has been taking place. Kind readers who offer free leg massages can contact me and I'll avail any deal they offer :) Strict instructions had been sent from parents to leave aside my (what they think is) snooty self and do all things touristy with my sister. My consent towards this act was lapped up by my sis, who made me stop in front of every thing worth taking a photograph next too, and made me go clickety click. By the end of the day my legs were aching and the heart was echoing a similar pain, while my sister was still all agog and going "Ok, now one photograph with King Kong!" But however bad I feel abt walking and driving around LA, I feel sadder for the little kids I saw. Walking around the studios I noticed a zillion little children, who could barely understand the difference between their fathers and Shrek, being pushed around endlessly by their parents. Some of them were crying, some just decided to doze off and others looked around haplessly. It's then that I thought of all the things that we as adults do to children and it amused me a fair bit.

We all love children. They are small, cute and blow split bubbles - what's not to like? But do you think they feel the same way about us adults? Have you ever wondered what two little ones discuss when they are left with each other by their respective parents?

NB1 (Newbie 1) - Wassup man?

NB2 - Don't even get me started man. I feel no one understands me. I'm so glad I found you.

NB1 - Seriously!! What's wrong with these adults. Why do they all forget that they were all like us once too.

NB2 - Seriously. I've been crying all day and they have no freakin idea what I'm saying. Can you believe what my mom did to me? She has started putting make up on me. I'm eight months man!! Why would anybody put some black charcoal like thing on my eyes that I'll smear up in two minutes. It's freakin insane.

NB1 - What? Make up? And that too you are a boy man. You are so going to be confused when you grow up. *Chuckle chuckle*

NB2 - No kidding. I guess my mom misses dressing up a girl. That doesn't mean she makes a Boy George out of me buy making me wear little pink dresses. Whatevah!

NB1 - And what's this with the diaper crap dude? Which moron invented that?? A pant that ensures that you remain in a puddle of your own sh!t? It was so much easier when I would just crawl to the mom's part of the bed and take a dump there. Now it's like carrying a back pack on your a!s@ ... and to top it, the backpack is full of sh!t.

NB2 - Oh the diaper I can still deal with but it's the cheek pressing that drives me nuts man. I hear that people get jailed when they do that without consent once you grow up. Why can't they have the same law for us? Do you think I enjoy rough hands pulling my cheeks.

NB1 - Seriously. And what's with the whole cooochie poochie crap they say when they pull your cheek. Come on man, I am the one who is one and can't speak - not you!!!

NB2 - Hey cheek pulling is still harmless but one of my uncles think it's very cool to throw me in mid air and catch. If he's that interested in catching live human beings he should do the same with his fat wife, not a tender eight month old. They should have a law against that ... and against tickling. I don't want people tickling me on my baby fat. It's just not done man.

NB1 - Yeah! These adults seriously have no idea about safety. My dad makes me sit on his neck as he walks me around. I suffer from vertigo already.

NB2 - Hey hey. Shhhhhh! I hear them coming. Sounds like your dad. They will probably take us to the other room and have people press our cheeks again. Pretend to sleep. Shhhhhh!

NB1 - I hate pretending to sleep for fifteen hours a day man. It is boring. But I see your point. It was nice talking to you man.

NB2 - Same here. We should do this more often *wink wink*

Sounds possible???

Worth the Wait!

2006-10-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

The sister is here and will be here for the next three weeks. The brother being the doting brother he is, went to pick her up from the airport. The sister being the sister she is, was the last one to arrive, after making the brother wait for more than half an hour at the arrival section. The brother didn't mind though. It was wonderful to observe the multitudes walk out of those gates ... wonderful and varied enough to deserve a blog post he thought.

There's something magical about the arrival section in airports. You see all kinds of people. Different ages, languages, relationships all crowd around a small gate, that, like the womb of the mother, lets out a face that cheers up several anticipating faces outside. I was reminded of the last scene from Love Actually, but Denise Richards's cameo was distracting the material for this post and hence I shook my head a few times and got back to enjoying the sights.

It is interesting to see how different waits can be. The kid next to me was waiting for his dad and the mother next to him was waiting for her husband. She kept glancing at her watch. She had dressed up more than usual. Clearly she wanted to look special for her man. The son was less interested about the arriving dad. "When will daddy arrive?" he asked a few times. But when his slightly tense mother gave the same "The plane has arrived. He'll come out any moment" answer for three consecutive times, he focused his curiosity on other things. "What's that man wearing mom?" he asked abt a kilted gentleman. "What does that sign mean?" "Can I go to the bathroom?" and the likes followed.

The young man on my other side, however, had a very different look on his face. Clearly he was waiting for a woman. His woman. The flowers in his hand left little room for questioning my conjecture. With every single passenger that came out of that door, the frequency with which he unknowingly hit the flowers by his side increased. His lips started making worried gestures and his finger followed the tune too.

An old Chinese couple just walked out of the gates and a huge group of people ran up to greet them. The crowd comprised of a good mix of children and grand children. They all took turn to exchange hugs. Sitting at least twenty feet away, I could still feel the warmth of the moment.

The Sardarji couple came out next. They looked like they were in their seventies. You would think that in their age they must have seen it all. But the moment they saw the three men who were diligently waiting just next to the railing (I'm assuming they were their sons) they echoed the same smile that the Chinese couple had let out.

And that's when I realized that there's something universal about these moments. No one teaches the child to run up to his dad when he walks out of those gates. No one taught me. No one taught the boy sitting next to me either. He forgot all abt his questions the moment he saw his dad walk out and ran up to him. The mother looked relieved too. She got up and started smiling.

Similarly, the moment someone comes out of those gates, and there's someone waiting for them, the first thing they do is to offer to take care of the luggage. It's universal. An act that crosses all cultural barriers. The first thing the three Sardarjis did was take the hand bag away from the old man. The first thing the eagerly waiting guy next to me did when he saw his lady love walk out (she was worth the wait and flowers btw :P) was to tell her "I'll take care of that".

These moments make me very happy. They make me realize that it's wonderful to be have someone who waits for you. It's wonderful to feel jaded and tired but to know that there's someone you'll soon see that'll wipe off all your lethargy with the blink of an eye. It's wonderful to return to those who missed you. Which is why you don't see people getting angry if they have to wait for three hours in an airport but see the same people get ragingly agitated when they can't locate their luggage in the carousel. Because by then the wait has reached its peak. Familiar faces are only a few steps away and every second matters. Which is also why you'll never see people who travel to new places and have no one waiting for them waste any time after they come out. You'll never see someone, who's all by himself, come out and take a little rest before carrying on. They all leave the airport asap. They know they are the minority there and they clearly don't like that.

It's wonderful to wait for those you miss. Waiting for my sister out there, I forgot abt the terrible traffic; I forgot abt the mess in my room; I forgot abt a lot of stuff that had occupied my mind. Seeing her walk out of that door (FINALLLY) just made things feel so right and it felt nice. Hmmmm! It's that time of the month when I get emotional I guess. Or as I like to say - man problems :D

p.s. Check this spam I received. Yeah baby. I have arrived!!!

Have I seen you before?

2006-10-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

So I rant a lot abt lot of things. Earlier I used to feel bad abt inflicting my complaints on kind readers. Now some of the kinder ones actually expect me to rant. And to all these kind readers, I have my famous bedroom line that I plan to use on my wife during her labour - "Baby when you are expecting, I will try to deliver"!

So what is it that is bugging me right now. To understand this irritation you have to be a member of some social networking site - which for most of the readers of this web log will be Orkut I am guessing. Is it just me or are other people bugged by people who put up photographs of celebrities as their profile snap???

My sister received a message (aka scrap) from someone who thought they had similar interests. Now once you get past the twelve spelling mistakes in the fifteen word scrap this guy left, there's something else that'll catch your attention - it is the picture of this guy. Standing shirtless with his sunglasses on, the dimple in the cheek looked almost uncannily familiar. Hmmm! Who is it? What?? Ohhhhhhhhh! Wow!!!! My sister just got a scrap from none other than John Abraham. Wow!!

So what do we all learn from this scrap and a quick visit to John's profile? a) John Abraham likes my sister, which is not very surprising given his fondness for Bong babes (Ria Sen, Bipasha Basu ...) b) John Abraham can't spell too well and hey that shouldn't matter - coz when you can bike ur spellings can take a hike c) John Abraham likes to make extensive use of bright jarring colors when he writes scraps (hey what's showbiz without a lil sparkle) AND d) John Abraham studied commerce in some college in Gujarat and now works in the BPO industry in Calcutta (ahem, have nothing smartass to write for this one)

And it's not just John Abraham. A quick scanning of Orkut will reveal that Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu, Celina Jaitly, Shahrukh Khan and the Junior B is on it too. And these publicity hungry public figures are not just happy with one profile. They have multiple profiles - I for one have seen 10-15 Aishwarya Rai profiles. Celebrities, I tell you! They will do anything for a little screen time (even it is a laptop screen).

Jokes apart, what the F letter word are these users thinking? Do they seriously expect readers to fall for them thinking that it is their photograph? Yeah sure. I can completely understand when reticent users go for scenic photographs to hide their true identities. A small house is fine. A set of clouds matching your name does justice too. Flowers ... excellento. But Angelina Jolie???? Who are you kidding babes?

And you know what is even funnier? These users seem to attract each other. If you visit their profiles - you'll see three sets of friends who are there on their friend list - a) South American women who have added everyone who sent them a friend request b) some girl called Nidhi or Rita or Nidhi (what's happening to my collection of standard Indian women names) who have seven thousand (oops it just became seven thousand and one) friends - all of whom leave her a scrap saying "Though I haven't met her in person she is a wonderful woman and great friend and very intelligent etc ..." AND c) OTHER CELEBRITIES. Now that sums it up. Our Indian celebrities are anyway known for their snobbishness. So it is understandable that they will only be friends with foreign beauties and other desi celebrities. I mean, come one, isn't it but obvious that Bipasha Basu will have Johny papa on her friend list too (his desires for my sister not withstanding).

So to all readers of this blog, puhleeeeze spend some time on these profiles dear readers. It can be your dose of afternoon mirth. The joy you'll get when you see Salman Khan scrapping Kareena, asking her "Want to make frandship with me beautifool?" is worth the effort.

Peace!

Under-stand

2006-10-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

So every year India produces some very bright managers. Graduating classes from the top notch B schools are almost equally divided amongst the would be financial gurus and the marketing whiz kids. The best marketing talents are lapped up by companies that make them weave dreams out of thin air. The second tier marketing folks try their hand at mediocre branding initiatives where they try to put a 'Z' at the end of names (or is it namez) to make things sound cooler (ala DreamZ and GetZ). However, there is a group of marketing graduates who are recruited by the bottom rung of branding initiatives and this is the group where Indian Men's Underwear feature. Yeah, no kidding! Moi is convinced that the worst minds of the World try their hand(!) in naming Indian Men's Underwear. Wanna read more? Proceed at your own risk ...

"Hey babes, what's playing peekaboo through your T shirt?" you playfully ask your girl friend here.
"That's a Secret. A Victorian Secret if I may say so," she smartly answers.

Now imagine this same conversation, the other way round in India.

"Hey hunneee what do you have behind that pair of torn jeans?" the girl asks.
Her lover, the moustached hero, answers coyly, "I have Raju inside my pants"!!!!!

GROSSSSSSS! Yup! Grosssssss! Why, why, why - did somebody name an underwear brand that gets placed directly on the arse with the same name that belongs to a quarter of our country's male population? What was the rationale? What were they thinking? No man can anymore tell his lady love during a moment of flirtatious seduction, "Baby, what say tonight we have nothing between us. Not even a Secret ... and definitely not Raju" :O

And it doesn't end with Raju. My kin, the Bengalis, took it one notch higher. The most common Bengali brand of underwear for men is called Bapi, which, hold your breath, means FATHER!!!!! Seriously, this one marketing disaster is enough to send an entire generation running to the shrinks. For the select few who still haven't got shocked enough, imagine this - You are sitting in a restaurant having food and the guy in the table in front of you bends down. For starters, men should seriously never (NEVER EVER) assume/presume that their hairy butt crack is a sight worth watching. So puhleeeeeze, keep your ifs and butts well hidden. But, just in case you ever happen to catch a glimpse of this horrific shot, the last thing you want is to have your dad's name on an elastic next to it. Aaaaaarrrrghhh!!!!

And it's not just Raju and Bapi. There are countless other examples of shoddy marketing disasters in this area. How abt VIP Bonus. "Baby, be good to me and you can have a peak at the Bonus??" Is it just me or does Bonus, in context of an underwear, sound like a combination of Bone and Ass. Yikes, yikes. Or how abt our Frenchie?? For all the people who've asked me why I don't grow a French beard (affectionately called a Frenchie in my homeland) - go figure now. Then there is Amul. Now come on. Amul used to be my favorite breakfast spread. I could eat any volume of Amul with my bread. Did you have to spoil it for me by launching Amul briefs. Toast was never the same for me after that :(

Now compare this with "Babes, I think I have some Gap left for you inside?" Which one sounds better?? I rest my case.

headLINES from the weekend

2006-10-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

The farmer boy had strong objections against me converting weekend conversations into cartoons. "Why don't you just get lost?" I snubbed him. He left quietly and returned two hours later with this!!!

Of Bengalis and Dr. Know's Foe

2006-09-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

For people who've complained abt the lack of posts - here goes two at one go. If you are Bengali, then read on coz to appreciate (or rather abhor) my next few observations you have to be a Bengali. So the twelve Bengalis who read this blog, can continue reading, while the remaining sixteen please listen to this boring podcast on the man with steel balls that can do tricks.

So I went to a true blue Bengali gathering after a looooong time. I didn't know too many people there and hence I spent a lot of time observing the people around me. It soon occurred to me that there are some things that happen in almost every Bengali gathering that are very very amusing.

1. Every fifteen minutes the men disappear in one corner together and light up a smoke. Seriously. I joke with my dad that the one thing which is characteristic of Bengalis around the World is their love for chemistry. I've never seen a university anywhere in the World whose Chemistry Department doesn't have a Bengali professor. It's like the universities have a Bengali professor quota or something. From Bombay to Budapest - there is a Bengali professor in every Chemistry department in every university. But then I digress. My point being, if there's any other stereotype that I'll put Bengali men in, after their love for Chemistry, it has to be their love for the cigarette (which is ironic given I don't smoke). Bengalis are voracious smokers and by voracious I don't mean "light one cig after another" smokers. By voracious I mean "come I'll show you freakin magic tricks with my cigarette freakin talented" smokers. So in all these Bengali gatherings the men excuse themselves periodically and light up a cig. Has anybody else noticed this?

2. The next thing is very very annoying, Will Bengali men please stop referring to wives as "Missus". It sound very strange when one man asks another one "Is that your missus?" What's wrong with "Is that your wife?" "Ota ki apnar stri?" etc. Someday when I'm married (which seems eleven years away right now) I want someone to ask me - "Is that your missus?" just so that I can answer back saying, "No, I'm a man of cheap morals. That lady is actually my miss and my neighbor's missus."

While on the topic of people asking "Is that your misses", there's another thing I want to request. If you see a child with a couple, I think it is safe to assume that is is THEIR child. So why (and it's not just Bengalis who do this) ask them "Is that your son?". No. That is not my son. I bring other people's sons with me for occasions and then make them sit on my lap. Obviously if a lady, who has put on three and a half tons of make up, is allowing a child anywhere close to her saree - be rest assured that it IS her child.

3. Note: This is the part that is most Bengali and any non-Bengali who has read on till here will feel completely out of place now. So be warned.

What's this with Bengali wives standing next to the door, seeing ppl enter, and then saying "Oma Topoti di - tumi ekhon eley?" "Oma Rijuda tomra ei matro eley" (roughly translated to - oh!!! you guys just came in?" What are they thinking? You see them walk in so OBVIOUSLY they just came in. Duh! What answer are you expecting from the twelve and a quarter killo ornament wearing lady? That she'll say "No. We fooled you. We were actually hiding behind the door for an hour and chose to enter just now. Gotccha!"???

All Bengalis, especially dad, who are offended after reading this post - forgive me plish!

Say cheese ... please!

2006-09-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not one of those people who loves posing for photographs. For starters I look terrible in most photographs. Secondly, I look drunk in all my photographs (for a teetotaller that's not a compliment). And thirdly, my eyes are open in one out of ten photographs. Hence, I normally play the guy in the group who says "Go go. You guys stand. I'll take the photograph."

However, I have friends who love to be clicked. They carry a camera to every freakin place they visit. They want to capture every restaurant, house and lawn they've been to. Even public restrooms are not spared from their passion. They take the photographing bug to a different level altogether. Every event has to be captured twice. First they'll take a photograph of the golden moment themselves. Then they'll ask someone else to take the exact same picture but this time with them in it. Then they'll come and take a look at the just taken snap and sulk for twelve seconds before saying "hmmmm! the angle is not right, errrr, hmmmm ... do you mind taking another photograph?" and pose again. Quite the ordeal I'd say.

But seriously, with the advent of digital cameras, there's this whole new specie of photographers now. What used to be an art form is now a standard. My dad has a Pentax camera which he took (and takes) great pride in showing off. I was raised with the notion that you have to be a genius to even come near that device. Every snap he took was preceded by careful planning and a looooooong lecture ("No no. Mampan .You are facing the light source the wrong way. One, two, three, smile, four, five, Mamapan move to the right, six, seven ...") During family weddings, Bubin would get only the very special level of treatment. All the family members would try to remain in his good books so that they got clicked a few extra times. Then there was always be the hoard of annoying children who'll follow him and somehow appear in every photograph that was taken. My dad had the liberty of bullying some of them. "Go get me a another Thums Up," he'd tell one of them. The kid would try to strike a deal. "If I get you that will you take one photograph of just me?" he'd plead. Sometimes my dad would agree. Other times he'd just press the flash (yeah, we were innocent enough to assume that a flash meant a photograph) to hush up the crying kid. All in all, my dad occupied a different pedigree, courtesy the shutter box he carried. Aaaah! The good times.

Then in mid eighties a company called Hot Shots came and spoiled it all for him. They advertised themselves as the common man's camera, one that everyone and anyone could use. And suddenly my dad was no longer getting the extra ice cream he demanded during wedding ceremonies of distant aunts. People half my dad's age would take out a small camera and go clickety click. "Go get a Thums Up for me," Bubin would tell the glug wiping kid and he would snub back saying, "Even my dad has a camera. You go get your own Thums Up."

Still there was an element of mystique surrounding cameras. Once the photographs were taken, they would get sent to the studio for development. The whole process took two-three weeks. In that time people would wait in apprehension. Aunts who had taken their daughters all dressed up as future brides would queue up the moment the photographs appeared to see how well their damsels looked. The success of a group photograph could be gauged by how many "copies" of it was ordered. And then ... then the digital camera arrived.

Things changed again. Now people could take a snap, see what it looked like and take another snap pronto. Couples who were shy of even hugging for photographs, lest the creepy film developer keeps a copy of their intimate moment, now readily shot pics that would put playful bunnies to shame. If mp3s were what filled up the hard drives in the late 90s, then digital photographs became the major space occupier of the modern computer. People would have hundreds of carefully labelled folders of photographs, with names ranging from "Trip to Japan 2003" to "My new bathroom I, II and III". People like my father were almost ashamed to take out their cameras lest people start referring to them as grandpa.

You would think that would be it, right? You would think that as a generation we would be happy with a camera that allowed us to save thousands of images in it - right? But naaay! We greedy bastards wanted more. A lot more. And thus, some bright guy came up with the idea of adding a camera to a cell phone. And that did it. At least people were posing for a digital camera. But with the cell phone camera people started taking photographs of anything and everything they could see. "Darling I saw a dog pee on the road. It reminded me of you. So I took a snap and mailed it to you." "I'm watching Munnabhai again. Here is a snap of Sanjay Dutt standing ... here is a snap of him sitting down ... look, the guy next to me is wearing a red pant!!! Sorry it was a brown pant. Here, take another look at it ..." Yessss, that's the level of subjects we choose for our photographs now. It's no longer the wallpaper worthy flowers, or the Shhhhh! saying baby or even your smiling girlfriend. The subject of modern photographs range from dog poop to fornicating love birds ... and that's not what is scary ... what's scary is the question "What next???"

Coming Next: What people do when they get their photographs taken!!

Whose side are you on?

2006-09-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

This is a post close to my heart. I've seen various variants and sides of this topic and consider myself an authority on this issue. Even now ,when other people face similar issues, they contact me for my invaluable advice on this front. Yeah baby, I'm that good :) So what am I talking abt? The answer to the all important question of - whose side do you take when a couple that you know breaks up!!!

A seemingly simple question. Raj and Simran were your friends. You knew them for a while. You shared dinner with them, went for the stray movie and indulged in the dream of every Californian a.k.a A Yosemite trip, with both of them. And then one day you hear the news. "Hey, whats up with Raj?" you ask a friend. "Welllll," he begins. You know that any well as deep as a watery well means only one thing ... Raj and Simran have broken up. Raj calls her a slut and Simran feels that Raj doesn't know how to treat a woman. So they do not hang out together anymore. So whose side do you take now???? Sounds like a very simple question on the surface but experience tells me that there is more to it than meets the eye. Hence we shall analyze.

For men who are single, the answer is simple ... very simple. Do not waste your time any further. For all you know, you are already late. Call up Simran instantly. "Hey, I heard abt you guys. I'm sorry ... loooooong pause. Wanna go out for dinner sometime?" No seriously. If you are a guy and you have always wondered which of the numbers in your address book actually deserve the space they occupy - just break up with your girl friend (though that'll be a terrible reason for a break up and I'd much rather have you say - it's not me, it's you"). Before you know half the people you thought were your friends will disappear. "What Raj did was not right" ... "Raj was never serious abt you" ... "He has gotten over you. I think I saw him with this other girl" Raj would hear. Single men are like the lion who performs the trick with the goat in the circus in the ringmaster's presence. They seem friendly ... BUT let the ringmaster disappear and then it's a different story altogether baby!!

For women it is simple too. They divide themselves into two groups. Group one, who instantly reach the girl's house with sympathy in their bags and offer it in generous doses in return for gossip. "You can do much better Simran," she would say. "So just out of curiosity ... you did not sleep with him, right?" You have no idea how vulnerable women are in moments of a break up. A simple hug and approval of their decision would get payback in secrets so harmful for the guy that he would spend the next three years fighting crazy rumors abt himself.

The second group of women are those who might actually be interested in Raj. But women are very different from men in this department. They would never leave a friend to hopelessly flirt with a guy. First they would gather all the information on the guy. Find out if he is even worth the attempt. Once they have their dirt in place, they'll approach the guy with more information than he can handle. "You don't want to know Raj what Simran has been saying abt you. I mean, come on, I don't know you guys but ... but ... well forget it." "No tell me," Raj would insist. "No I can't. I was not even supposed to know this ..." "No tell me". This request will go on for a while and will pave way for a first dinner date. Ah! Such a wonderful scheme.

The trickiest situation arrises for the couples though. All couples have these "couple friends" with whom they indulge in "coupley" things like double dates where the number of credit cards used to pay the bill are half the number of attendees. These couples don't fall into any of the above categories. Some of them will just let go of both Raj and Simran. They never meant anything to them. It was never abt the individuals but the two together. They don't want a single whining man or a sobbing woman with them. They'd rather be making out in a movie theatre by themselves. So they'll offer the customary "I'm sorry" phone call and slowly distance themselves (only to reappear when Raj starts dating Nisha). Then there's the other couple where the guy might just have a little interest towards Simran. He always liked her but stayed away coz of Raj. But now with Raj gone he might want to re-evaluate the situation again. Trust me, his girl friend will protect him from Simran more than Bappi Lahiri ever protected his foreign CD collection. She'll make sure that Simran never crosses their path till she has one of Raj's loser friends with her again.

It is however toughest for couples where the guy was a genuine good friend of Raj and the girl sincerely cared for Simran. They would be in a soup literally. They would try to talk both of them into reconsidering their decisions. They would try to throw a party and invite both of them to it. They would wait for fifteen days and try again. And after every attempt they would exchange notes - "Has Simran said anything?" "IS Raj ready to apologise?" etc.

- Written by Couple Dev Nikhanj on 18th September, 2006.

Profound thoughts from a hungry mind

2006-09-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

The following three excerpts are from actual lunch time conversations I've had. The other parties involved in these conversations have threatened me with dire consequences. I think they are over reacting. You judge for yourself.

Conversation number one.

Me (to T, who is from Taiwan): It would be so cool if your name was Sirius and last name was Lee.
T: why?
Me: Cos then we could have this entire conversation where I'd say "Hey, what's your name? And you would be like "Sirius Lee" and I'll be like "Yeah, seriously" and you would be like "No seriously it's Sirius Lee."
T: And given that I'm Chinese, my wife's name could be Annie How.
Me: Nice!

Conversation number two.

X: Wow! You are just having beans for lunch?
Y: Yeah! Look at these beans - they look so depressing.
Me: Do you know why they look depressing?
Y: Why?
Me: Coz they've bean there done that.
Everyone else: Aaaaaaarrrrghhhhh!

Conversation five (don't even ask me why I skipped three and four).

X: Me and my girl friend are planning to visit Japan. Hence we want to learn Japanese.
Me: Why would you learn a whole new language to visit a country. Actually wait. I take that back. A lot of the Indians I know learned two new languages to come to US.
X: Two? Which two?
Me: C++ and Java.
Everyone: Let's beat him up!

When traditions are broken ...

2006-09-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

Quite a few people were shocked by the content of my previous post. A lot of them thought I had mellowed down :( So I thought I'll shock them further with the title of this post. But wait! Looks and titles can be deceptive. So read on.

Times change and make traditions obsolete. Habits of the past appear ludicrous and make way for would be ludicrous trends. This post is to thank and celebrate the slow disappearance of one such trend.

India has changed a lot over the past 5 years. Be it the language, tech-savyness or fashion sense - the country has taken massive steps towards changing times. One of my favorite fashion changes (or maybe its a cultural change) is something that many of you might not have even seen - that of women using their lingerie as purses.

I grew up at a time when most aunties wore sarees. The few who wore salwar suits were termed progressive. And almost all these people would keep something or the other in their bras. Mostly this was money. Some other ladies used their cleavage as a locker for house keys. Other women would have their grocery shopping ToDo lists hidden in their bra straps. Am I not glad that I don't see this happening any more!! Boy! It was sooo freakin embarrassing. Middle-aged ladies and people you referred to as aunties would suddenly put their hands inside their blouses and like a magician pulling out a rabbit from a hat - tan tan tanaa - something would come out. For me, it was mostly aunts giving me money to have soft drinks (yeah! I grew up at a time when a Thums Up bottle was still considered to be an incentive). "Wait beta. Don't go," They'd say. And then they would put their hands in their blouses, wait for a while to allow me to build up an expression of excitement, and then reward me with a five rupee note. I remember feeling extremely awkward in those moments.

No seriosuly. I've seen ladies in crowded buses taking out money from inside their "you know what" to give it to the conductor. That's not very good conducting, I'd say. And the worst was when they could not find what they were searching for. Coz some women would take this to an art form. They would have item A on one side and item B on the other side ... and somewhere, during the hustle and bustle of the day, the two items would mix up. People reading this post who haven't seen a sixty year old woman searching for that extra amount of change she was sure she had kept "there", feel happy, will ya?

Interestingly, men, in-spite of the several allegations of crudeness against them, have never done something like this. My twisted mind has always imagined going on a perfect date where I take the woman to a wonderful restaurant. We eat, we smile, we giggle. I even reuse a lot of the old material from this blog to make her squirm and fake smile. And then just when it is time to pay the bill (the point where she does the whole fake "how much" act) I put my hand inside my underwear and pull out my credit card. "Please, I insist that dinner is on me," I smile and tell her. Very classy. And wait, it's not over. Then I put my other hand inside the underwear, search around for a while on the other side, and wohoooo! what do we have? A nice red rose!! "That's for you bebeh!," I tell her with my trademark wink. How cool is that, eh?

Wooof!!

Ten Minutes ...

2006-09-02T16:08:00.000-07:00

Based on my lunch time conversation. Must mention that the food was good too :)

Just ten minutes. And that can change it all.

My parents had a love marriage. My father was trying to catch my mother's attention for a looooong time. Finally they bumped into each other at a common friend's house. What if mom didn't go to that house that day? What if it was one of those days when my dad woke up in the morning and just dint feel like doing anything? You know, the days when you wake up and think of excuses to avoid your entire day's commitments. But they both felt like visiting that friend's place. They both landed up at the same time and somehow, at that instant moment, my otherwise reticent dad gathered enough courage to ask my mom out.

Two unknown people bump into each other in an empty classroom. Somehow they arrived early on that day alone. They got ten minutes to spend with each other before hundreds of pairs of eyes started pouring in with slanted looks. And they fell in love. Ten minutes is all it took for him to lose his heart.

She woke up and her parents showed her photographs of seven new "prospectives". She was getting tired with this daily drama. She randomly chose the clean shaven guy from the top. They met. They spoke. They had abundant amounts of coffee. They laughed. They cried. They got married. She now thinks no man could keep her this happy. Ten minutes of frustration is all it took to set the ball rolling.

I've heard of chance encounters in coffee shops. My sister's love life began with an accident she got injured in. Movie-like romances have originated in dark movie theatres where one single guy, after deciding for ten minutes, decided to take the seat on the left as opposed to the one on the right. Fifteen minutes later the rest of the theatre filled up except for the one seat next to him. Five minutes later she walked in and was forced to sit beside him. Three hours later they were the only ones who walked out smiling after the movie with the sinking ship finally got over.

But what if ... what if my dad got cold feet in those ten minutes and my mom had left? What if that guy didn't feel like attending a Physics class that morning? What if the girl shouted at her parents for bugging her every morning with proposals and stormed out of the room instead? What if the girl in the movie theatre came in early and sat in some other place?

Somewhere there is a man/woman for all of us that we might eventually end up with. Someone we never knew till one instance of time. Someone who we'll never forget thereafter. And even ten minutes before we first meet (met) this person, we have no idea of what this was going to be the beginning of. And that thought is so overwhelmingly powerful and fascinating to me.

"What if my soul mate just crossed my cubicle while I spent ten minutes boring you people with my thoughts?" I asked my lunch mates. MJ, my group mate, smiled. "Maybe if you wait here for another ten minutes you'll see your dream person." I looked around for the next thirty minutes. Unless my dream woman was a forty year old visiting lady who was searching for the receptionist's desk, I don't think I found her.

"Which is why you should go home ten minutes early tonight. Maybe you will meet your soul mate then," J, said.

"If I go home ten minutes early tonight and find my soul mate sitting at home, indeed I'll be overjoyed," I said. "But then I'll instantly call the cops and freak out because how did my soul mate manage to sneak into my house when I was not there????"

Now deal with this crap!!

2006-08-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Yeah baby. Presenting my grossest post everrrrrrr!! Just when you though that you had seen the worst of this blog, I shock you with a new nadir. Never underestimate the depths of inability :)

So go and deal with this crap!

Don't tell me that I didn't warn you :D

Friends for evah!

2006-08-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

Male friend groups are boring. Yess! I'm a man (or so I claim) and I'm a desi - so by virtue of these two traits I hang out a lot in "all male groups" and yesssss - WE ARE VERY BORING. There's very little variety in male friend groups. It's the same kind of characters and its the same kind of stuff that we do - there is either the "let's go and watch a movie" or the "wanna go to a bar and get drunk (with the false hope of getting laid)". These two stereotypes sum up all male friend groups. I've been told that there is a growing trend of Friday night poker buddies but that's not specific to the men. So unless I'm educated otherwise I think I don't need to provide any more proof to the boring quotient of maleus friendus.

Women on the other hand have the most amazing friend groups. Every group is different. And the diversity is not just across groups but within the group as well. There are so many unique characters in women friend groups. For example the "wannabe misfit"! She's easy to spot. Every female group has one of them. She's the girl who doesn't quite fit in to the group but always wanted to be a part of them. She is either the non party girl amidst a bunch of party freaks. Or she's the posing geek in a group of academics. She's always there. Go to a club and check out any of the groups of women who are dancing. Four hot women with very little clothes covering very little flesh. And right between them is the overdressed misfit (you can spot her coz she is clearly uncomfortable wearing what she is wearing and is either pulling her top up or skirt down to cover up). She would much rather be at home and watch Wheel of Fortune but NO. She wants to be the party girl and hence she accompanies her friends every week. She tries really hard to fit in. Every time the girls say "let's get drunk" she is the first one to gulp in the peg but BOY SHE HATES IT!! Occasionally she voices her true opinions. "Let's all sit and talk tonight," she would sheepishly suggest. But just then one of the other girls say "There is this really cute DJ playing in Siranos. Let's go there ..." and her voice gets lost is a deluge of affirmative screams.

And with every misfit in the group comes the mastah teacher. The girl who has been there, done that and taken others there too. Yeah yeah! They are easy to spot too. Often they are the reason why the misfits even manage to enter the groups. It's this one (or two) girls who always have some advice to offer. They are an insatiable resource of wisdom. "The secret to a man's heart is to not look at him." "All men are bastards." "I think you should dye your hair red." The teacher always has some advice to offer. And she IS a perfectionist. No matter how hard the misfit apprentice tries - the teacher is never satisfied. "I like what you have done to your hair BUT ... you should probably get a tan," she'll say.

Then there are the two girls who don't get along at all but still hang out in the group together. Hey, I have a sister. I've seen this happen in abundance. X calls Y and finds out that Z is joining them too for dinner. "Aaargh!" X X-claims. "Y does Z have to come?" she adds. "You know what she told W abt me right? She is such a back stabber." Fifteen minutes after the conversation finishes, Z and Y have an identical conversation. And yet X and Z love to hang out. To them the best part of the group is to gather ample things abt each other to bitch abt and take it up with Y. Nice :)

And there are so many others. The girl who always backs out last moment because "something urgent came up". The girl who always talks abt her boy friend who none of the other girls like. The girl who cries easy (even if you tell her that she is looking thin). They are all there. And they are the ones that make the female groups so much fun. Which is why you have Girls Night Outs. Which is why you have Sleepovers. Which is why you have Boyfriend criticism sessions (men never have these coz they are scared that some friend will go and leak the details to the women concerned). So my sincere thanks to the innumerable women friend groups around us - for the sheer variety they provide. And some say that variety is spice. No wonder you gals are so hot!!!!

Peace!

Forgive me oh blog!

2006-08-17T01:13:00.000-07:00

I almost feel like I'm cheating the few remaining dedicated readers of this blog by my prolonged absence. As I sat down to write a new post, I imagined what it would be like if this blog was a woman that I was dating.

"You don't spend any time with me anymore," she'd tell me.

"Baba, you know how busy I've been, right?" I'd say without blinking.

"So what? Are you trying to say that you weren't busy a year back? Even then you worked late in the night. But I never felt neglected. You would always find time to visit me at least once a day. And don't even get me started abt the early phase of our relationship. There were days when you would come and meet me twice ... maybe even surprise me with an occasional third visit. I haven't forgotten anything Sagnik Nandy (I'll never understand why women say the full name when they are angry)"

Deep down I'd know that the blog is right. So I would use every man's solitary defense technique for these moments.

"Hey, it's quality vs. quantity dear. Look at some of the stuff I gave you then. Posts on all sorts of inane topics ... dogs, crap and stick figures, what not ... but now I offer you nothing but the best that I have to offer."

"I don't care," she would cut me short. At this point one can smell the prelude to a tear drop. Now tear drops are super critical in relationships. A single drop of tear can turn the tides. From what was a well placed debate between two individuals would quickly morph into a one sided melodrama. So I try to stop her from saying anything further.

"You know what you mean to me. You stayed by my side when everyone else left me. I remember those days in grad school when I would sit all alone at home waiting to spend some time with you. You were my window to the outside World dear."

"Yess. I know," she would agree instantly. "And now you don't need that window anymore, right? New doors have opened and the window seems too small for you, huh? Don't think that I don't know what is happening!! It's those kiddie blogs of twenty something young girls from Calcutta right? That's what you want to go for now, right? My mature musings are too mundane for you, right? Go. I won't stop you. But remember, some day those blogs will all disappear, and you WILL come back to me. But maybe I won't be waiting for you then. Maybe I'll be with someone else. Maybe No URL LEFT will be a commercial blog offering cheap Rollex watches then. As if you care."

In these tender moments men can do one of two things - continue being rational and prolong the argument OR just accept the fault and make promises so tall that they would make an NBA basketball player look like a dwarf. I speak from experience friends - option one is not the "Sahi Jawab." As tempted as you might be to follow the path of logistics - refrain!

"Ok. Ok. I AM SORRY!"

"I don't want to hear your sorry. Go. Go and create a new blog with fancy sidebars and design templates and spend time with it. (At this point she starts crying profusely and you really want to tell her that glug flowing from the nose to the mouth is not a pleasant sight). Go away. I don't want to see you anymore. I will deactivate comments. That way you will never hear from me or anyone else who cares abt me."

"One chance baby, just one chance," I'll plead. "From now I shall visit you at least twice a week. Irrespective of however much work I have. I'll even reply to every comment that you make. Now forgive your Coochie Pooochie. Come on. You know you like me. We make such a great team. So many people like us. Give me one more chance honey bun*."

And then she smiled; a smile that put several other smiles to shame. And she came and hugged me while wiping her flowing glug on my new shirt.

Seriously, I will be more regular with my blogging from now :)

* Honey Bun (n) - Term meaning "my sweet dough". Was put to use by senseless romantics in the late twentieth century. Was responsible for single handedly reducing the IQ of a generation by 5%.

Lights, sound and some love please!

2006-07-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

This post is a result of a conversation I had outside a movie theatre this weekend. The topic in question was the various kinds of lovers that flock to the movies. Now come on, we all agree that there's something very love-ly abt the movies. Just go outside a movie theatre and look at the phenomenal number of couplings that come out. Tall, short, old, bold, feeling cold - you'll get every variety. Each one of them has a story and this post identifies some of the key characters of some of these stories.

* The abt to date couples: Every relationship that I've known of, has involved a movie date before things finalized. Always. Coz as I said, there's something magical abt the movies and love. When the lights go off and the hands rub against each other while trying to get the last few flakes of pop corn, there's something very romantic that is triggered. The gentle whisper of "How are you liking the movie?" or "What? What did she just say?" just adds to the mood. Not to forget that movies often have kisses (or as my sister likes to say - tak taks) which make both parties go into their little "what if" dream sequences. Bottom line, every would be couple goes to the movies and they can be identified by the time at which they show up. They are there 60 minutes before the movie begins. They buy their tickets in advance and stand next to some railing (every movie theatre has a railing) and exchange sweet smiles. She repeatedly keeps asking him when the show will start and he offers her popcorn, soda and all things less expensive that'll impress her. How chweeet.

* The dated for too long couples: These are just the opposite of the previous variety. These are couples who've hung out for way too long without going to the next level. They are not close enough to spend Friday nights in the bed and at the same time the romance lacks the charm of the initial days when he would take her to the best restaurants. The guy and the girl know that they HAVE to do something on the Friday night and they both agree to the movie plan. However, both parties are reluctant to spend too much time together, lest it brings up important and controversial questions like "Where do you see us going?". So they decide to go the movies instead. They can be identified because in this phase both parties land up separately. If the movie begins at 8 - he lands up at 7.50. He uses the ten minutes to buy popcorn and still appear chivalrous. She arrives at 7.55. They smile, watch the movie, exchange the customary "How did you like it", "I though this was better than ..." etc. and then they both head back home. Mechanical romance at its best.

* The "Go get a room couples": If the nouveau lovers arrive an hour before the movies begin and group two just make it on time, there's a third variety that always arrive five minutes after the movie begins. They are the couples who can't keep their hands off each other. They are the couples who are all over each other. They are the couples who have popcorn, soda and each other's tongues for refreshment. Clearly they could not get a room for themselves and did not want to spend the extra bucks for a hotel. So they land up late for a movie and enter the theatre after everyone else. They don't care for the movie. They normally choose movies that nobody would like in the first place, just to ensure that they are not bothered. They even leave ten minutes before the movie ends. I've watched many lousy movies that were rated PG but the show going on at the back was anything but that and have nothing but gratitude towards these lovers who make many a boring movie interesting for us by their sounds and visual effects.

* Take out your single best friend couple (+). This group is not just a couple but comprises of a couple and either the guy or the girl's best friend who's still single. Things were all fine when the two best friends were both single and they would come for movies together. Now one of them is dating and hardly meets the other one. So they all land up for the movie together for the obligatory "for old time sake". The guy tells his girl friend, "I've asked Raj to join us. I haven't met him in a month. I hope you don't mind." The girl does mind but she agrees. The three land up for the movie together. Poor Raj always gets the corner seat next to his best friend and is left out of all the lovey dovey coochie cooing.

* The "endearing long term couple": There are several other groups that can be mentioned but I'll end with my personal favorite - the "been together for years but still young at heart" couple. Every time I visit the movies I see a middle-aged or old couple who are completely blind to everyone else and are there for the movies just to enjoy some good old times. The are always smiling. They take time to choose their movies. Sometimes they even ask the guy in the ticket counter for advice, "Is the Woody Allen movie any good? No? What abt the one with the five dogs? Darling, which one do you want to watch?" I love this group but what is more important is that they love each other a lot more.

Wooohooo to the movies.

P.S. Sometimes posts that you write come back to bite you. I recently bought this and though I'm totally in love with the baby - this post is biting me hard :D

Languages I don't speak

2006-07-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

The venue was a downtown Mountain View restaurant; three beautiful women and two men nobody cared for were waiting for their food. It happened then ... One of the girls nodded her head slightly to the side and raised both her eyebrows. One of the eye balls did a quick sideways move. The other girl brought her chin close to her neck and closed her eyes in unison. Then both the girls smiled. The first girl then went on to do some more eye rolling with the second girl nodding her head and raising only one eye brow. I watched in awe - a conversation was taking place right below my nose (actually it was more like in front of my nose) and I had no clue whatsoever. I have studied cryptography and encryption but here were two women using a form of communication that kept me completely clueless. Later, next day, I was told that the conversation between the two women went something like this:

A: What's the deal with this guy?
B: Shhhhh!
A: No seriously! Are you interested?
B: Shhhh! I'll tell you later.
A: Ha ha!

Amazing. A few eye movements, well planned eye brow raises and opportune giggles and so many words were conveyed. French, German, Spannish and now this language ... the list of languages that I don't speak seems to be ever increasing. However, this was what I like to call a Social Language. One that no school teaches - one that people just learn. Very similar to the Nouveau Lover's Language.

Seriously! Haven't you seen new lovers exchange jumbled mumbles which no one else can hear or decipher but still they manage to bring a smile on both their faces. A lot of times they even turn their heads in opposite directions. The guy might even cover his lips with his fingers, gently moving the fingers to let out enough whispers. You can see small movements of his lips hinting at the words being spoken. "Hmmmm! Phishh whisshhh. Hmmm nnaaaaa beautiful," you hear. You could vouch that no other words were spoken and the girl still smiled like she was given a day's worth of free shopping money. Sometimes there will be a few elbow pushes and below the table footsie steps to assist the whispers. I've tried doing similar things when I was in love many eons back, when I tried to smile and whisper too. "You ate too much. I'm not paying for both of us. Now shell out some money," I've tried whispering. I even tried the whole elbow thing to get hold of her purse. Somehow the girl in question refused to understand what I said. To add salt to the injury she even moved her bag to the other side. And then when I tried to call her later she played hard to get by not answering my calls. And finally to teach me a lesson she married another guy. Aaaarghh! Another language that I do not speak.

And these are just two of the several social languages that I've failed to comprehend. Another classic one is the whole garbling thing adults do with children. All I hear is "Guju buju Hooochoo Poochooo. Ujee baba. Coochie Coochie." The kid smiles and glees and blows out spit bubbles and everybody is happy. I am always surprised by this. If kids anyway don't speak the language, how does it matter what gibberish I say. So I might as well just speak in English and make funny faces - right? Why is it that important to make all the funny sounds accompanying those faces. Why can't I just say "Oh you fat baby pooping all day. I hate the way you keep me up all night ..." Why can't people say that? Why do they have to make funny sounds?

So many things that I do not understand. Hmmmmm!

On an unrelated note and adding on to the previous post, this office conversation merits a mention.

P and I were playing foosball (we are both very good at it) and one of the guys was broken. Another friend mentioned that he will spread the word that a white 5 ft 11 guy and Indian guy broke the player. All of us smiled. "You know what the newspapers will say, right?" I told P. "What?" he asked. "The Five Eleven guy and Seven Eleven guy breaks foosball players." Aaaaarghh! Double Aaaaargh!

Moi is back!

2006-07-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

OK! Sorry for being suddenly away for a while. Was busy and occupied (in a good way) - the combination is quite entertaining I gathered. Have tons of things lined up in my mind that I want to write abt but that'll have to wait for just a little bit more. For now I leave you with three lunch time conversations that I had in the past few days.

Conversation Uno

Me (to office mate T) - So what's a good sushi place?
T - There's a sushi joint in Pittsburgh that's really good. They actually ship the fish from Japan.
Me - That's plain stupid.
T - Why?
Me: Coz fish can swim. They could have just asked the fish to swim by themselves and saved money on shipping.
T - Aaaaaaarghhhhh!
Me - Talking abt fish and seas - fish swim in the oceans that have salty water - so why do we still add salt to fish - they should be naturally salty - right?
T - Aaaaaaarghhhhh!

Conversation Deux (between T and me again)

Me - Newton was a great thinker. If it wasn't for him high school physics would have been sooo much simpler.
T - Seriously! What kind of a man sits below a tree, gets an apple and wonders why the apple fell down. If I was sitting below the tree, I'd be like "Whooa. Free food!"
Me - Right! I'd be shaking the tree for more apples.
T - Seriously!
Me - Come to think of it, sitting below an apple tree is quite risky - what if the apple fell on my head??

So what would you do if you got a free apple?

Conversation Three

A: Wow! How many naans do you have for lunch?
Me: You know what I like abt naans?
A: What?
Me: When they are over, I have naan of them left.

*This particular joke has given rise to a series of jokes at work - including the likes of "his name is NAANdy", "look at Sagnik eat a baNAANa" etc. It's just a matter of time before naan jokes achieve the glory and fame touched by Knock Knock jokes!! And then I will just refuse to recognize you people!*

headLINES returns (so what?)

2006-07-05T00:15:00.000-07:00

Many many years ago, before I was touched by my father and he was touched by an alien (or in other words, before my superhero days) I use to be an amateur cartoonist. Those days, like the ownership of the plant the man had planted, are his-tree. Some kind readers asked me to go back to that hobby and I tried. The result is for all to see and generously criticize. So here we go.

I will spoil your mood but there are no other spoilers ahead!

2006-06-24T01:43:00.000-07:00

For a movie buff, I rarely write abt the 70mm experience. People who know me can vouch for the fact that very few people can speak Filmese the way I do. I remember, that in the early days of this blog, a large number of my posts were movie reviews. So the blog is demanding a movie based post and hence this weekend post will be a set of stray movie related thoughts churning in moi mind.

For starters, some trivia. Who, probably after Gandhiji, do you think has been arrested (or faced similar ordeal) the maximum number of times in the history of India? Let me spare you the trouble - I think the answer is Shilpa Shetty. Can we please stop issuing arrest warrants against the girl who gave us innumerable classics like Pardesi Babu and Hathkadi. Seriously, Manu Sharma is walking around on the streets of India after committing a murder in front of a room full of people, while every second month some district court in India is issuing a warrant against Shilpa Shetty?? That too at a time when the Shetty girl hardly appears in movies (she said that she has become extremely selective and hence nothing less than a Khamosh or Garv will lure her into acting I guess). So please, spare the Shetty babe - will ya?

The remaining part of this post is dedicated to Krrishhhh (is it just me or does anybody else get confused by the number of r and s in the title - it's like that famous poster of the kid saying Shhhhhhhh.... where I always tried to count the number of h and the number of trailing dots, to figure out how much silence the kid actually wanted). Anyway, Krrish was watched and the movie is very reminiscent of the the mid 90s masala entertainer. I've always said that Papa Roshan is the only man who still manages to do the old school masala flick and set the cash registers rolling - Karan Arjun, KNPH, KMG and Krrish are all very 1990-ish and yet they somehow connect with the audience. Blah blah. But this is not abt Krrish - it is abt things that came to Urmi and my mind while watching Krrish. And don't worry - my intellect is too low for me to actually reveal anything worthwhile abt the movie - so be assured, no spoilers ahead.

* One thing that irked me strongly was Rekha's selfishness. Throughout the movie she wears an exotic collection of sarees. But what does she give her grandson??? Nothing but a sleeveless torn shirt and a pair of very strange looking pyjamas. Not fair or as we say it in Hindi - gora nahin hai.

* In a tender moment of the movie our superhero offers his lady-love a ring. The girl smiles coyly and blushes and then says - "sirf dogey? pehnaogey naahin?" (You'll just give me the ring? Won't you put it on for me?" I felt the movie could capitalize on this line and make it a part of cinematic history (the same way Kunal Kohli thought aab tumhe darr lag raha hai will captivate audience). According to me, at the end of the movie, the heroine should have gifted the superhero an underwear (coz we all know that no super hero is complete without an underwear). At this point Hrithik should have returned the line - What? You will just give it to me? Won't you put it on for me?" How cool would that have been? Sadly, he didn't and a classic movie moment was lost before its making.

* There's a scene in the movie where Krrish tells Priyanka Chopra's character that he wants to be friends with her. Urmi was quick to point out that nobody does this mushy crap anymore. Ideally, Krrish should have just asked Priyanka for her Orkut id, gone back home and left a message on her scrap book saying - want to make friendship? That would've been a classic moment too but Alas! we let go of that too.

Have a nice weekend and remember to forget - it helps!!

P.S. I almost feel guilty for the kind of crap that I write here and inflict on you guys. Hence to atone, I shall point to this post. Truly brilliant.

Can't think of a title ... hence this post shall be called Popu!

2006-06-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

I know a post on marriage from an unmarried guy sounds strange, but trust me that marriage is in my genes - coz both my parents are married.

The weekend was very well spent. For starters this (and this) happened. Eeee Haw to that! Quite a few old friends from San Diego were revisited and moi also attended the big man V's pre-wedding party. The party was a truck load of fun with V getting bombarded by various questions concerning pre-marriage jitters. Now everyone knows that I'm a very good friend (ahem ahem). So, as a good friend, I gave V a very interesting preview of what I thought his married life will be like. And given that most of the readers of my blog are people who are married and use my blog as a one-stop resource for marital bliss, I thought I should share some of the weekend's invaluable words of wisdom here.

One of the first things V should do, I feel, is take his wife for a surprise shopping trip just after she arrives in US. Now I know what many of you are thinking - why is Sagnik sounding like a nice person suddenly? Simple answer - coz I AM very nice. So all you desi guys who bring your wives to US for the first time - please take them shopping soon - but but but, TAKE THEM TO ROSS. That's the key. It is important that you set the bar really low. You try to impress her with a trip to Macy's and you my friend are inviting a Looooooot of trouble. Coz the next time when you take here to Macy's after a fight, she'll be like "Hoooh! Whatever!" So take her to Ross and tell her it is a biiiiiig brand here. She'll probably ask you why then does their tagline reads "Dress for less" and the trick is to tell her that it actually means "Dressing for a lesser, and hence, more elite group." Someday this tip will save you a lot of money my friend and when your eldest child goes to college, you can thank me for the money I saved you towards his/her education.

If you are working and your wife is not in US, then the chances are high that you'll occasionally (changing soon to frequently) get a phone call at 5 in the evening. Your darling will start of by saying "Hi!!! What are you doing? Nothing. I just called to say Hi. I love you and miss you." The big thing to learn here is to NOT think that this is a general phone call. The actual translation of this phone call is "Why are you still at work? I am feeling sooooooo bored. You better come home fast." So never reply to this call with a nonchalant "I miss you too. See you at eight." coz then my friend you will be screwed (or maybe you never will be ... hmmm).

You'll often get underhand questions that'll sound like simple pursuits for knowledge but in reality they are anything but that. Things like "How much does a Mercedes cost?", "Have you ever been on a cruise?", "Is Hawaii very different from California?" and "How much does a two bedroom house cost?" should never be answered. Learn to dodge them skillfully with a "Oh! shi!t. I have to make a very important phone call. I'll be back in a sec." Coz what these questions really mean are "Why don't you sell your jalopy and buy a cool car?", "Let's go on a cruise", "We are going to Hawaii for the long weekend" and "It's time to call the realtor." So don't tell me that I didn't warn you.

There are several other rules to follow. Many of which have been taught to me by my dad. Some that come to mind are:

* Never criticize her cooking. Cooking to women is like sex to men. Even if they suck at it - they never want to know that piece of info. So, according to Bubin, the right way to criticize cooking is to actually praise it. "Hmmmm! I like the fact that you have put a lot of salt in the rasgullas. Very different. Hmmmm! Very different." This way you get the message across and make sure that even if things are a lil too salty, you at least don't make them bitter.

* Never praise a friend's wife. "Don't you think Raj's wife looked gorgeous in that red top?" That statement is a disaster. Coz it'll be instantly followed by "Then why didn't you marry her only?" Face it, Raj is married and so is his wife and even if his wife looks well red, you don't have to read into it.

* And the GOLDEN RULE - she NEVER NEVER NEVER gets fat. Even if your double bed has no space for you to sit on - it is never her fault. If you want to tell her that she has put on weight - you might as well contact your divorce attorney before that - the rule is simple - weight and watch my friend!

Gotta run now (actually it's more like a leisurely stroll). Peace!

Apu, Ash and the cabbie who dropped me home!

2006-06-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

I used to think this is a very Indian thing till I realized that everyone does it. Just tell someone that you are from a particular place and they'll instantly try to show off their limited knowledge of that place, culture and celebrities hailing from those parts. Try going through the hard disk of your past experiences. There'll be ample situations like the following:

So where are you from?
Mumbai.
Juhu beach? Bollywood?

You are left wondering "What abt Juhu beach and Bollywood?" but the other person is all agog, given that he has just managed to prove it to you that he is no alien to the city of Mumbai.

If you are a Bengali (which I am) and you went to a college with a large number of people from South India, this can be all the more amusing. I'm not making this up, but at least 5-6 people at different points of time have had some variant of the following conversation with me:

They: Which part of India are you from?
Me: Calcutta.
They: You guys have this red-light area. What is it called? Errrr! Hmmmm! Sonagachi, Sonagachi? Right?

Now I'm no expert on either Calcuttan landmarks or skin trade in the city but I'd definitely like to believe that Sonagachi is not Calcutta's most popular landmark. Also, every time a person from way South of India asked me this question, I'd view them with the very "Eeeew! How and why do you know that?" look. It was almost after a year of repeated bombardment of the question that I delved into the dept of the matter. I found out that in some Tamil movie featuring Kamal Hassan(Mahanadi, if my memory serves me right), his daughter was sold off to some dude in Sonagachi and Mr. Hassan came down to the city of joy to save his daughter. The movie, it seems, was a huge hit. As a result, everyone in Tamil Nadu now knows abt Sonagachi and uses it as conversation starter with Bengalis. Very amusing indeed. So it has been a long standing desire of mine to make a Tamil movie with Mr. Hassan (or is he too old now in which case I'll use Madhavan or Vikram), where he plays a raging sex-maniac who comes to Calcutta to visit Sonagachi. Throughout the movie he visits actual tourist attractions of the city and asks people where Sonagachi is and they rebuke him saying "Calcutta is not that kind of a city". I know the plot of my movie sucks, but anything to revive my city's image - what say?

So why am I posting all this now? Simply coz I'm trying to address a much broader issue - that of mouthpieces of locations. As an Indian, who has a fairly large number of non-Indian friends, I get asked several questions about Indians and Indian culture and many of these questions arise because we have the worst mouthpieces of our culture. So who is the most popular Indian outside the Indian community? Think abt it. There is no clear cut answer. Seriously. Who is it?

If I was asked this question, I'd probably say it's Apu from the Simpsons. Some people will probably say it's our Father of the Nation but a few years back someone actually asked me "wasn't he the guy from the Gandhi movie?" - so I wouldn't count on that. So who is it? If India is a brand - then who is our brand ambassador. Is it Aishwarya Rai because she has giggled on Oprah and even been the coveted "second guest" in David Letterman? Try going up to your first non Indian friend and asking him/her if they know who Aishwarya is. You'll be surprised that they have no freakin clue as to who she is. Then try telling them that she is really famous and is doing a spree of second tier English movies that'll never get mainstream wide releases. So we are back to point zero.

I can sense the uneasiness with my non Indian friends. They sincerely wanna talk abt India and ask me questions but they don't know anything to start with. Once they realize that I'm not feisty abt India, they open up and clarify the one doubt that all of them seem to have - DO YOU HAVE ELEPHANTS IN INDIA? And I nod my head tell them "Yes. In the Zoo!" Then there is silence. Some of them are bold enough to ask me abt the Kamasutra and if it is popular in India. Then we have some awkward silence and then we quickly change the topic to basketball and Star Wars and whether Michael Jackson is actually ET who can dance. And I don't blame them. For an outsider, all that they see or hear abt India are engineers, cabbies, elephants and movies where everybody dances - quite the range I'd say.

Our only saving grace comes from the grand uncle of all monuments. The Taj. But there too, my lack of travelling across India, removes any chance of continuing the conversation.

"So have you seen the Taaaaj Mahaaal?"
"No, I haven't," I reply in a demure fashion. "But I have seen Sixth Sense. That was made by an Indian too. Manoj Knight Shyamalan." I scream out.
"What? Em. Knight's from India?"

So back to square Uno. Tell me, who is India's brand ambassador? Please.

Why I want to be a female blogger!

2006-06-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

Yup! That's quite the radical title for a post I'd say. But then it is true. Being a female blogger seems to be a lot of fun. You can really try radically different types of posts and get away with it. Look at me and my blog. Extremely mundane I'd say. The same old social commentary. Men do this, woman don't do this, desis are like this, here's a list of five reasons why ... yada yada! Absolutely no variety. But then that's the case with most male bloggers. As men, we have very little to write about that would sound remotely interesting. Social commentary, contrived humorous situations, tech and gadgety stuff and ... errr ... hmmm ... errr ... yup! that's pretty much it I'd say. But being a female blogger can be sooo much more exciting. The stuff you can write abt and yet have a roaring readership is mind blowing. No wonder, a very popular male blogger I know of, also masquerades as a fairly popular female blogger (I'm so tempted to provide links here :))

So, having introduced the topic, let's delve into it a little bit more - shall we? Why do I want to be a female blogger? What is it that I want to write abt but can't, being the man that I am? Here are a few ex-amples:

* The Anonymous Exciting Female Blog: Oh these are soo much fun. A large number of the popular female bloggers are people who have that element of mystique abt them. "There's a guy in my office who wears a blue shirt that I have a big crush on." - Now that's a jolly good line to come from an anonymous female blogger. Every man reading that post, who has ever put on a blue shirt, is put into the "Is it me?" alert zone. You walk into the office thinking every girl in your office could be that particular female blogger :D Aah! The control you ladies have on us, I say. No wonder there are sooo many anonymous female bloggers. Whether it's relationships, friends or general candid tete-a-tete - anonymous female bloggers manage to make it sound soo much nicer. What does she look like? Is she hot! Is she not! So many questions. Almost no answers. Wow!! Men on the other hand don't have much to offer as an anonymous blgger (and the Hawk doesn't count). Coz the rules are simple. If a woman talks abt a make out session or a night of revelry, it's an exciting read. A man doing the same? Well, who cares for such a creep? eM, M, primalsoup, qs.gemini, bakerzdozen, xxfactor ... and an unending list of others. I salute ye all for making blogosphere so much fun by keeping your identities hidden. Way to go!

* Abstract blog. I have this very strong urge to write absolutely trite and meaningless posts where people will still read the posts and go "Wow! This is so deep." A few men have tried this genre (and I shall once again resist from giving into temptation by not linking to them) and failed miserably. But quite a few female blogger's have made abstract blogging a truly recognized art form.

A gentle touch,
A delicate squeeze. Aaaah!

Yes!! That could be a blog post. And not just any blog post but one with 22 comments. This one still had two lines. I've seen posts that had just two words and people found two pages worth of stuff below that line called "Comments" to write abt those two words. And surprisingly, all these so called abstract posts were by women. Is it a coincidence? Is it an art they have mastered and we have faltered with? I dunno. But I do want to try it out at some point.

Milk, wine.
Bastard, swine.

* Do the whole chirpy tippity-top post!! Have you ever seen a male blogger write a "boyish post"?? A post where he goes "Oh! It was just like I was fifteen again"? A post with words like "Tickety tat and frickety frat"? People will be like "Yikes! What's wrong with him? Has he lost it?" But there are soo many posts where women seem to rediscover their inner child and reminisce abt dolls and skirts and all things pink. Have you ever seen a post where a man reminisces abt the first time he shaved and how different things were when he stopped wearing half pants to school? I rest my case!

* Write a post abt the STARE!! What's with my sex of the human specie? How badly do we ogle? There seems to be more blog posts on "He gave me that stare." and "I was feeling uncomfortable by the way he just looked at me." than on World Cup football!! Now don't get me wrong. I agree that a lot of men look at women the way a hungry tiger looks at a goat. But why is it that no men ever get the Mrs. Robinson stare? Are we that unattractive as a group? Imagine a guy writing a post going "She stared at me nonstop for 30 seconds. It was starting to get awkward ..." Can you imagine the reaction he'll get. Women will be like "Yeah sure! He must have been the one staring I tell you. She must have just given him the look to teach him a lesson." Fellow men will be even worse. They'll go "Who's he kidding dude. A guy? And he got the STARE? Who does he think he is?" And hence, every now and then I want to be a female blogger. Just to write abt the STARE and emotionally move an army of men and women who would then have sympathy and advice galore to offer. Hmmmm!

The list can go on - but actually it can't - coz I have nothing more to write now. So read and forget and read again!

No Goals Achieved!!

2006-06-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

"So do you follow soccer? Oh, wait. You guys call it football in India, right?"
"Yeah! It's kinda strange. Given that you hit a Ball with your ... err ... hmmm ... your Foot!!! the naming does sound a little strange!"
"Oh shuddup! No seriously, is soccer big in India?"
"It's bigger than big - it's BIIIIG!!"
"So how come you guys don't feature in the World Cup?"

Very true! How come we guys don't feature in the World Cup? We are a country of one billion people. Couldn't we find eleven people who kick a round piece of air filled leather blob the right way???? Come on now! What are the chances of that. Given our population and gusto for the game, we should send two teams for the World Cup. "In a thrilling semi final match, India A beat India B. We know that half a billion people are happy and rejoicing right now. What say Mike?" Now that's what we should be hearing on TV. But no - the reality is quite sad. So sad that we are all busy picking favorites from other countries. My dad is supporting Argentina. My sister is supporting "the team David Beckham plays for". My uncle likes to pick lesser known teams and support them - so it's gonna be Costa Rica for him. Blah blah!

And it's not just football. Basketball, wrestling, tennis, swimming ... you name it and we suck in that sport. Lemme repeat the point. WE ARE A COUNTRY OF ONE BILLION PEOPLE. We have snow, water, rain forests, everything. Combining these two statistics we should win gazillion gold medals in every freakin sporting event - Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, Olympics for the people in moderate climate zones, Wimbledon - whatever! But No! The only games we seem to excel in are the ones that got surprisingly left out from every big sporting event - or which in common man's lingo means - GAMES THAT NOBODY CARES FOR.

It's like they had this auction going on for all the big games and the Indian dude representing us landed up really late. The auctioneer took a quick look at him and sighed.

"Too bad Appu! You are late. We have nothing left for you. The Americans came in early and took most of the good stuff - athletics, basketball, tennis, boxing, everything! The Chinese sent a lot of people too and they got a decent deal as well. We had the long distance races left for a while and we gave them of to the people from Africa. The South Americans sent in a big delegation for soccer alone. So that was theirs. Too bad Appu. We have nothing left for you."

So Appu becomes all dejected and whimpers.

"What abt snooker and billiards?" Appu asks, albeit in a subdued tone.

"Those are gone buddy. We have carrom left though. It's the same thing, just less interesting."

"Ok! I'll take that," Appu sighed.

The guy in charge of distribution felt sorry for Appu at this point. So he cut him a deal.

"What abt cricket?" he asks. "It's this game like baseball but the players have to be more dressed than a man attending a business meeting. It's like you are going for a luncheon but stopped midway to play some sport. Not too many people wanted it. Only the English and Aussies claimed it. And remember no women will ever get associated with it. Not even cheerleaders!"

So Appu becomes all excited hearing that the Brits play it. We were ruled by the Brits for centuries. The very mention of the word England gets us excited. So he readily agrees to taking cricket. He even agrees to share it with everybody else in the sub continent."

Just as he is about to leave, the auction master calls him again.

"Hey, do you want khoko and kabaddi as well?"

"What's that?" Appu asks.

"I dunno. No one else did either. I believe you have to hold your breath and repeat Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabaddi till you faint with breathlessness. Oh! And there will be a lot of dirt too. Want that?"

Now we know that as Indians we don't let go of anything. You can give us a free blue whale and we'll take it and put it in our living room and flaunt it to every relative. "My son got this blue whale FREEE! He did not have to pay a single penny for it." So Appu lapped up khoko and kabaddi as well.

Once again he was about to leave and the auctioneer called out again (how dramatic).

"Want this game called Chess? Well! To be perfectly honest, it's not exactly a game. It's more like an indoor thing. The Russians love it coz it's cold in Russia and they can play chess inside their rooms. We have some chess shares left. You care for some? But we believe that you need a high IQ and boredom tolerance to be a master in it and ..."

Appu was all ecstatic at this point. "A thinking game did you say? Oh we love thinking games. That way parents can fool their children into playing this game while what they are actually doing is preparing them for engineering school. My people will love it. Thank you. Thank you," he exclaimed.

And that is how we got it all. Hmmmmm!

They can flush and still make you blush!

2006-06-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

The Rimi lady can get quite angry I've been told. And hence I shall honor her request pronto. That would make this my first "suggested by other" post. For those of you who are unaware of what moi is talking abt, a lil black and white flashback - a few days back the old lady asked me to write a post abt things that women can get away with but men cannot. Aha! I exclaimed to myself. So finally someone actually accepts that women can indeed get away with stuff that the male specie can't even imagine trying. Rimi also mentioned as an example "like women can wear pink but men can't ..." No! I said to myself. I'm not going to go the fashion route - that is soooo obvious. Instead I will talk abt other social phenomenon that the fairer sex can get away with but men shudder to even think abt. Here it goes:

1. Go to the bathroom together and not look strange. I remember mentioning this years ago in a post and lemme repeat the point. What's this with women accompanying other women to the loo? It's like a social gathering in there. One woman has to say "I'll be back from the toilet" and before you know it's like a freakin picnic in there. All the other women join in with "Wait a sec. I'll come along too." Men will never dream of making a statement like that. Can you even imagine a guy telling another guy "Hey, I'm going to the toilet. Wanna join me?" Noooooo!!

2. Be in a group in a club by themselves and NOT look desperate. How does this system work? A group of girls dancing all by themselves in a club is a sexy thing and the same scene enacted by the male specie is a sight of sadness???? If you see a group of men all by themselves in a social gathering people instantly exchange smirks. "Look look! Despos." ... "That's sad." ... "Man, how lame are they?" you hear. But put a group of five girls by themselves and the nudges and expressions change . "Wow! Look at them man." ... "That's so progressive" ... blah blah!

3. Add sexyness to something as mundane as eating. This one completely amazes me. A woman eating a banana or gently licking a lollypop is supposed to be an erotic activity. So a girl could be without make up and just have a banana in her arsenal and still break hearts? But men? Nada! Is there any food that you can imagine a man eating and adding anything remotely sexy to the situation - think - burrito, spilling burgers, dosa, chicken legs - nothing. The only effect we can produce is that of disgust when we have sauces and stuffing dripping from all sides and try to cover it up with a smile that only reveals spinach stuck between our teeth - aaaaargh!

4. Proudly proclaim that you have a Best Friend. Every girl it seems has a best friend. Now it was all fine when I was in kindergarten and shared tiffin with my best friend. "Who gave you that red pencil?" my mom would ask and I would reply with "My Best Friend!" But as I grew older I became more reticent to even accept that I have "close male friends". Don't get me wrong. Men have friends but we can't talk much abt our proximity without sounding strange. Can you imagine me making this statement. "Oh! I'm going to spend the night at my best friend's house. We will change into our night clothes and talk all night long!" Naaaaaaah! But the women have it different. Every woman seems to have a "Best Friend" story dating back to less than a week. "Me and my best friend, we spoke for hours last night." "My best friend and I went for a tan together." ... yada yada. And sometimes it's not just limited to best friends. They take it one notch higher. "Shilpa and I are the bestEST of friends. We've known each other for years and share everything with each other!" Now try replacing Shilpa in that statement with Sanjay and ask yourself if it still sounds right. I rest my case.

There you go Rimi girl. I have kept my word and now it's your turn. Send me the phone number of your best friend and take her to the toilet and put in a good word for me. Will ya?

P.S. Random conversation from the weekend:
She: I once got angry with my ex and kicked him out there.
Me: Lemme get this right. You got pissed with him and made sure that he can't piss no more?

Out-dated!

2006-05-31T23:33:00.000-07:00

This post and the next post will be courtesy Madame QS and the aging Rimi. I've decided to write stuff that is stolen, suggested or inspired by these talented ladies. The first post is courtesy this brilliant post by QS where she lists out top ten ways in which men can spoil a date. I must confess that she does a great job in capturing the male behavior. But alas you get to see just one side of the story. Think abt what's going on in the male mind. Agreed that as long as the woman in front is a woman, the man will be pretty happy. But the woman sure CAN make things difficult for the male specie. So here it goes. Top five ways in which women can spoil a date for a man. (why five and not ten you ask? Well simple, coz I write excruciatingly loooong posts and want to spare you the trouble).

1. She makes you wait and wait and wait and wait ... And it's not just the wait. It's the way they build up the whole wait that bugs men the most. The feeling that the wait it almost over and ... and ... and ... more wait. So you drive all the way to the other end of the city to pick her up and she told you that she'll be ready at 630pm SHARP. You ring the bell and she opens it hastily and says "Give me JUST ONE MORE MINUTE!" And then she disappears. The seconds hand of your watch makes a twenty second round of the circumference and still she doesn't come back. Ten minutes later she comes and says, "I'm soooo sorry. My friend called me up just before you came and her ..." You cut her short with the contrived smile and say "No problem. Take your time." And she does. She disappears again and returns fifteen minutes later looking exactly the way she did when she opened the door first. Please freakin explain it to me what feat was accomplished in this time period. Anyway, that was techniqo UNO in which women can spoil a date even before it starts.

2. Spend an hour deciding what she wants to eat. Men always know what they want to eat. We don't think twice and we DON'T mix food varieties. Our answer is always "Chinese" or "Indian" or "Pizza" or whatever - but it is always one word. For all you know we even have a restaurant in our mind and if the guy is like me - he even has the menu chalked out. But then we are gentlemen and we ask the fairer sex what they want and there begins round two of the wait. "You know what I feel like eating? I'm in a very Pizza-ish mood ... but I also want to have this amaaaaaaaaaazingggggg chocolate ice cream they sell in this shop on the other side of the city ... Actually you know what'll be great? My friend went to SOME Japanese restaurant where the sushi was great ..." Yup! Date spoiling technique Deux.

3. Have another appointment for the same evening. Ladies - this is a simple dating rule - when you go out on a date you JUST go out on a date. Don't start with, "I have to be back home in two hours. Coz my friend's sister is getting married and her fiancee ..." That aint fair o fairer sex. When a man goes out with a woman he hopes at the bottom of his heart that something exciting will happen at th eend of the night. And for that he is willing to wait for years if need be. Ask your male date if he is willing to accompany you to the other end of the country and say that with a wink and he WILL accompany you there - with nothing but a faint hope in his heart. That's how desperate my specie is. So please return the favor by keeping the date "other engagement free"!

4. Eating the other person's food. This is another female classic. As I mentioned earlier - men have their menu all chalked out in their mind and they stick to it. Women on the other hand, always experiment with their food and then fall back on the man's plate for the safe meal. Who the fudge asked you to order "Apple with chicken broth in the first place?" And now that you have ordered it - suffer with it. Don't eye my Sweet and Sour Chicken dish please. And it always begins with, "Can I take a small bite from your dish?" You smile and say "Yes" and she obliges and the bite is instantly followed by "Wwwwwoooow! This is sooooo good. Do you mind if I take another bite?" And if that was not enough, they then add salt to the wound by gracefully offering you their discarded dish. Aaaaaarghhh!

5. Keep the cell phones off - will ya? I don't know abt other guys but if I'm out with a woman, the only calls I receive are from other cuter women :) What's this with the annoying best friend calling every fifteen minutes into a date. Here you are talking about how you love Apple with chicken broth when her phone rings. She says the customary "One sec!" and then continues for ten minutes and at the end you get a 2 second summary. "It was my best friend. They are going for a movie." What?????? That's what you guys discussed for ten minutes. What was she doing? Telling you the story of that freakin movie or what?

Evidently there are other things that can go wrong. But men are easy to please. Even if you have messed up the whole evening you can make up for it by leaning towards him at the end of the evening and just when he thinks it's a dream come true - your best friend will call you coz her movie just got over :) Peace!

Wake up, the youth of India!

2006-05-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

I can see my writing maturing. Look at my previous post. I discussed the burning issue of reservation. And with this post I'm going to pass on invaluable advice to the youth of India again. Such a priceless source of information this blog has become. Wah wah! The blog is indeed doing its bit for the society and the matured me is so happy for that. Wah wah to that again!

This post was conceived while spending (or is the term wasting?) hard earned money on this monstrosity called Fanaa. Dashing hero (albeit evidently old and overweight) jumps from the top of a bus and serenades blind girl. I could sense young somethings in the audience renewing their faith in dream love stories that begin like magic. But the fact is that this only happens in blissful celluloid love stories. The same ones where the heroine can run in ice capped hills wearing nothing more than a chiffon saree and still not catch a cold. Chances are high (tending to certainty) that you'll never find love in a bus. Or in a train (where some girl's undergarment mysteriously make its way below your suitcase). Or in any form of transportation for that matter. The Hindi movies are feeding you crap and this post is dedicated to break certain myths of Hindi movies for the youth of India.

* You will meet your love in a moving vehicle (repeating point already made earlier to increase size of this post): NO YOU WILL NOT!! No one knows this more than I do. Every time I board a plane I fancy a Pooja Bhatt next to me ala DHKMN. But no - it is always the old lady who is hard of hearing and likes to make conversation in alien language that finds me. Now I know that some of you freaks are hoping that this too can be the start of a love story but alas, I don't swing that way. So remember, public transport is for travelling only. You can search for discarded magazines and half eaten oranges in them but if you're indeed searching for love in it - then you my friend are more blind than Kajol of Fanaa.

* A sleek car will stop in front of you in the first day of college. The door will open and a long pair of mini-skirt wrapped legs will peek out of it. Yeah sure! I've always wondered which Indian college this scene happens in. I guess it is the same one where everybody wears color matched fluorescent clothes. Let's be realistic here. If a car does stop in front of you and the doors do open on the first day of college, you are likely to see a girl in a salwar kameez with her mom giving her precious "first day in college advice". If you go to an engineering college (like moi did) then most attractive women there are in need of help because they are probably travellers who got lost. In which case you should promptly go and find out where they actually want to go and send them there. And ladies, you be careful too. Don't think that you'll be greeted by a hunky man in sleeveless Ts who will dance for you at the drop of a hat. Your dream prince, in all likelihood, will be wearing a loose T shirt to hide his growing belly; will obnoxiously stare at any form of cleavage while talking to you; and will keep gauging how tight your pants are and if he can ever get into them!! So there, myth number two - that of finding love in first day of college - is a myth too.

* There is a happy family where everyone sings and dances and wears a lot of make up and jewelry. Yes, that family actually does exist. And they are called the Barjatiyas. But the chances are that you are not one of them. You are probably a Kumar or an Iyenger or a Singh or maybe even a Nandy. You always blame your dad for shouting at you when you didn't study. Sometimes your dad shouts at you even when you do study. You secretly harbour the desire to have parents who maintain the steady ambiance of a wedding party in their house. A house, where everyone except for that one evil distant aunt played by Bindu, is nice and singy-songy. Too bad dude, that aint gonna happen. So when your old man threatens to stop paying your college bills, don't wish that Alok Nath was your dad, coz I'm pretty darn sure that he does the same thing to his kid too.

* The hero(ine) magically returns in the second half of the story. Nopey dopey. If they are gone, the chances are high that they are INDEED gone. Don't think that things will be any different two emotional songs later. Coz while you'll be busy rendering ballads s(he) will be putting up his/her profile on MarryMe dot com and the only time they'll probably return is to invite your for their marriage (where Alok Nath and his family will sing and dance). So stop waiting and use that time wisely to watch more Hindi movies.

* Someone very rich will marry you just for love. Ha ha! This one is a personal favorite of many of my friends who see marriage as a career option. Please read carefully. If some girl/guy who is much richer than you are, is agreeing to marry you inspite of you being a pathetic loser, then there is Definitely something wrong. For all your know she might be a he. Or he might be a she. Or he or she might be a schizophrenic psychopath. So if you are planning to make a career out of marriage, GET OVER IT!!!

There. $22.38 worth of free advice given away in single post. Wah Sagnik. Wah! Keep up the good work in educating the country's youth!

I have my reservations!

2006-05-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

OK, so I had to write this. The few kind regular readers that I have, expect, what they kindly refer to as, funny material from this blog. But I am a human being too and I too have emotions, opinions and in rare cases like this one, rather emotional opinions. Hmmmm! Yes, after much deliberation, I've decided to touch upon the issue that's making every Indian squirm these days - RESERVATIONS! And if you care to read through this entire post, I think I might just have the solution to the problem.

Many years ago I innocently walked up to my dad and asked him what my caste was. My dad explained it to me brilliantly. "You are an ALMOST SC my son," he said with what I believe was an almost drop of tear in his eyes. "You are effectively screwed!", he had then added, though maybe not in those exact words. This was followed by a very long and probably boring explanation, the summary of which was the following - my dad's side of the family just missed being SCs. If you look around enough you'll even find a few Scs sharing my last name. Sadly, we were not SCs. Thus, as dad explained, we were the true downtrodden of the Indian caste system. Consider this. My mom's side of the family snickers that we are not from a high caste like them (my Mom is a very high class Brahmin). Actual SCs and STs laugh at us because we do not qualify for any reservations. The common man who is unaware of my predicament is unsure if I'm an actual SC/ST or not. He thus attributes all my successs to undeserving quotas that I apparently benefit from. So, as dad had suggested, we get screwed from every angle and by every one. How very entertaining.

And it is this lack of concern for the middle tier that worries me. People who are neither here nor there. The proud members of the middle zone of societal apathy. The ones that nobody care for. These people were born with an average bag of talents and somehow we assumed that they are happy being where they are. Everyday TV channels have a "brilliant kid" deriding the quota system and advocating a meritocracy. His interview is immediately followed by a heart wrenching tale of "Dinu from the village" who has never seen electricty but dreams to be an engineer. The camera then zooms into the anchors face who then says "Aap kis ke saath hai?" And then he adds that you can "call in and leave your opinion or SMS it at Re 2.5 and that the lucky vijeta ko milega humarey aur se ..." And who do you think is being fed all this media hyped baloney? Yes!!!! Our very own middle tier. Somehow our policy makers have assumed that the middle tier is happy being in the middle and hence all our policies are aimed at either keeping the rich rich or at making the poor rich.

So this is what I propose. A seemingly ludicrous idea, that I feel, if implemented, will make everyone happy. I say we continue with our entrance-exam-based-system for 50% of the students (as the current plan suggests) and for the remaining 50% seats - let's have a freakin LOTTERY!!! Seriously, that'll make EVERYBODY happy. Top tier, middle tier, bottom tier - every freakin one. Coz everybody will then have an equal chance of making it to these colleges. And let's not just make it any lottery - let's make it the flavour of the season - A freakin REALITY SHOW. Let India vote who it wants as an engineer. Let Indians SMS their opinions for "Agla Lawyer Kaun?" After all we are a democracy, right? What can be more democratic than choosing our very own doctors and engineers and lawyers and chartered accountants?

Seriously, you might think that I'm joking, but a lottery won't be much worse than the present system. Given that India has more poor people than rich ones, by simple probability more poor people will make it to the colleges using a lottery - so the govt will be happy as they'll serve their claimed purpose of improving things for the poor. And the remaining population will be happy too coz they'll know that they too stand an outside chance of making it. Thus, they can no longer raise a voice against anyone or accuse the system of being partial.

And these quotas should not just be applicable for academics. I think this way the quota system itself discriminates against several arenas of social life. We should have quotas for everything. Cricket, movies, affected Ms. India participants - everything. Seriously, I think it's high time we have an OBC quota for our beauty paegents. Why do we assume that the backward castes can have aspirations to study engineering but not one to be Ms. Indias. And look at the good that'll come out of this. If someone from Pachandapur village actually gets up on the stage and says that she'll do something for the poor and downtrodden when she wins - no one will even doubt her.

To sum it up - quotas aint bad. We need more quotas. We need quotas for everything. We need quotas for everyone. And we need Mandira Bedi conducting a lottery show based on quotas. It's all peace then.

He has the wings ...

2006-05-21T22:15:00.000-07:00

Everyday you learn something new and in the past week I was taught abt a topic that I, courtesy my Indian upbringing, was completely unaware of. Let me now, like a good blogger, pass on the immense volume of knowledge that I gained on the topic of the NIGHTCLUB WINGMAN!!

It all started as a harmless invitation to accompany a friend to a posh SF night club. Now I wont deny the mild shock that this offer gave me. After all this is me that I am talking abt. The same me who got rejected from a workshop in undergrad that TEACHES dance - yes, they found me unsuitable to even LEARN dancing. So the invitation to accompany someone to a night club did mildly amuse me. But then we stay in a society where Britney Spears nearly dropping her baby gets more news coverage than the share market actually dropping. So I wasn't surprised too much. Blah blah!

We arrived at the club. We were greeted by a lady whose bosom would have made Pam Anderson feel like a teenage girl desperately wanting breast implants. We squeezed our way into the night club through a throng of drunk men and women from the present generation who were trying hard to produce the next generation. I tried to make myself invisible. I failed. My friend spotted me and tried to pull me into the dance floor but I did the whole "coyly let go off me" act that Indian actresses do when the mustached hero tries to kiss them for the first time behind a tree. This went on for a few times. My kind friend would come and try to drag me into the dance floor and I would give him the "Aiiyyo! Kya karte ho ji?" look and run away. Mind you, all this while I was thinking that my friend was feeling bad for the fact that I wasn't dancing and was trying to ensure that I have fun too. It was all going well (as well as things can be for a non dancer in a night club) till my friend got all angry and agitated and informed me that I was a terrible WINGMAN! What? What? And in case I haven't stressed on my lack of awareness - WHAT? What is a freakin Wingman?

A wingman, it seems, is the quintessential hero's friend. The guy who shields away the heroine's nasal pouty friend by romancing her. Hmmmm! Very interesting indeed. It seems that girls mainly visit night clubs in groups (I have indeed noticed this in the past). So if a guy goes up to a group of girls and asks one of them for a dance then not only does he look like the "lone loser", he also stands close to no chance of getting her, given that the girl would almost never leave her other friends for him. So he is expected to bring more men along with him so that the friend(s) can keep the other women busy while the hero tries to woo the lead heroine. I was also told that the Wingman has to be a man of caliber himself. Simply because these second tier friends of the heroine can be quite fussy themselves. They wouldn't want to hang out with a man of debatable credentials while their friend dances away to glory and probably finds the future father of her child. Nope! That cannot happen. So even if they don't get the best man, they want a good enough replacement. It seems that if the Wingman aint good enough for the remaining women they will simply drag their dancing friend out of the dance floor and say "Let's go"! Thus, while the Wingman is definitely a supporting actor in the cast, he is an essential one; one who has quite the control over the central story.

Wow! That was some new knowledge for me. I grew up in India and I did frequent some night clubs in my time. We had no notion of Wingmen then (correct me if things have changed). Unlike US, where the larger fraction of the nightclub population is single people willing to mingle and jingle, in India the most common clubbers are groups of people who are already hooked up. "Hey, me and my boyfriend are going to Tantra tonight. Why don't you and Jay come along too and we can also pick up Sheela and Sanjay." That's the majority of Indian clubbers that I knew of. Moreover, in India, men hate competition. They never go for the hunt with another hunter. Coz we all know that single women are difficult to find and when you do spot one you don't want to compete with your friends for their attention. The only group of guys who go without women to Indian night clubs are the ones who have no chance whatsover to impress any woman. In that case it does make sense to have your friends come along so that you can distribute the blame of failure. You can easily spot this group in the corners of night clubs where they will have their all boys dance party. Yeah! That's how things were and I'll be surprised if they have changed much now. Please Educate me!

P.S. A line from the weekend that I'm particularly proud of - My car is so old that it was bought second hand by a dinosaur. Ha Ha!

So what if you look mighty in a tighty?

2006-05-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hemo and I were talking the other day and we figured that the Indian would-be mother-in-law is one of the most difficult person to impress.

The whole conversation started when I asked Hemo (who is happily married) how her mom would have reacted if Superman had come over to ask her hand for marriage. Now let's be honest here. If Superman came to marry any of you ladies, you wouldn't give it a second thought. Yes, would be your answer. And I don't blame you. If Superman had come over to my house to ask for my daughter's hand, I would be thrilled. Imagine all the money I'd save. I'll no longer have to pay for my daughter's honeymoon travel costs. Plus Superman as a son-in-law will come extremely handy for household chores. You wake up early in the morning and you see water dripping from a pipe. Earlier you would have had to inform the plumber, wait for him to arrive, negotiate a deal and then get rid of the dripping. Now all you have to do is call up your daughter and ask for Supy (come on, you will give your son-in-law a nick name - wont you?). And before you know Supy will fly over to your place. "Ok now do that whole laser beam from your eyes thing and fix that crack," you'll demand. Supy will follow orders obediently. "Ok! Now you can go. One sec, since you are anyway here, can you fetch me some groceries?" you'd ask. And before you know Supy will get you the best coffee you've had in a while, handpicked from the plantations in Brazil. Not to forget Roma tomatoes from ala Europe. Impressive, right? Nope! That will not be enough for the Indian mother-in-law.

Let's take my own mom as a sample case study. My mom has this thing for educated people. The first thing she would have secretly whispered to my dad is, "Flying and all is fine but why didn't he complete his graduation. What will we tell all our relatives?" My mom is also a closet conservative. "Did you see his clothes," she will whisper in a loud tone. "Too tight. Specially that underwear. Very obscene."

When I mentioned this to Hemo, she agreed too. Hemo's mom it seems has a special affinity towards the underdog. She didn't want a son in law who was poor. She did not want a son in law who had rich parents either. She wanted a son-in-law whose parents were poor but the son turned out to be rich. Now that's a good story. So when Superman would've tried to impress Hemo's mom by flying to the kitchen and helping her bring the dishes over, she would have casually asked him "What did your father do? Was he poor? Did you study under street lights and still come first in class? Did you, did you?"

And this is just with Superman. Don't even get me started with good ol' Spidey. "He is wearing a mask," my mom would have said. "I am very sure he has a scar or something. Ask him to open it and show us." she would have asked my dad. And boy she would have gone wild when she would hear about Spidey's various romantic escapades. "You had a girl friend? Not one but two? And you kissed one of them while hanging upside down? Pummy let us go. You are not marrying this mask flaunting, tight wearing, loose character fellow." And that would have been the end of the story.

Things will get far worse if you consider the female superheroes. All you guys reading this post, imagine Wonder Woman in front of your mom. "What is this," she will shriek. "She is almost naked. No no no! We cannot let our son marry her. Plus she doesn't know how to cook either ..."

Seriously. Think about all the virtues that your parents care for and try to search for them in our superheroes. You'll be shocked to see that they could stop moving trains with a finger and fly you away to dizzying heights but when it would come to impressing your mommy dear, they would be a miserable flop. Ahem! Ahem!

A friend when not in need ...

2006-05-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

Visit any of the popular social networking sites - Orkut, hi5, MySpace blah blah! There's a huuuuuge number of jobless men who are scavenging around these sites with the noble intentions of "making friends". I often look at these people and feel proud of my generation. We must have done something right to produce such a "friendly" lot of people. Yess! Now that I think about it, it does make complete sense. Why wouldn't a hot woman sitting in Boston not want a friend in Balampur India, who can't even spell the word friend right. I'm pretty darn sure that it has indeed been a long standing fantasy of hers to "make frendsip" with random strangers in Indian townships. I salute all ye friendly ones, without which we would not feel so comfortable in this planet.

But then don't categorize all these friends into one big group. These friends, though having a common philanthropic underlying goal, all have different styles. The other day I was categorizing the various "friends" to a friend and it might be worthwhile to mention some of them here:

* The dude: This breed makes extensive use of the modern day SMS lingo. They are super busy. They can't complete their words. "Hi thr, wuz doing rnd browsing. u r cute. wanna b frnds?" That's them. And then there'll be the customary winks and fellow smileys. I don't blame these people for their terse sentences though. They are understandably super busy. After all they are the ones who want to be friends with hundreds of thousands of people. Maintaining so many friends sure takes effort - so pardon their haste kind ones.

* The resume dude: This variety has a lot more time in their hands. Given a chance, they'll leave an entire resume as an initial note. "Hi, I was your neighbor during your three day stay in Ranchi. I am currently doing a computer course in NPTTCS. I saw you like Tom Hanks. I am a fan of him too. I liked him a lot in Titanic. Titanic is my favorite movie. Will you be my friend?" You can fall asleep while reading their messages. You can grow old while reading them. For all you know, you can even finish watching Tom Hanks's Titanic before you can read through the entire message. But there's something that is very earnest abt this variety of friends - they seem to make a sincere effort and I honor them for that.

* The lame complimenting guy (aka the Reproducer): This guy doesn't believing in knocking the door of your heart. He breaks it open. That too with a bang. "Hey cute pic. Nice smile. You are really beautiful. You have nice hair. Wanna make friendship?" If you are feeling low and need a morale booster, just put your best snap in one of these sites and before you hit the upload button you'll get these meaningful praisers responding to your photograph. Click on their profiles and visit some of their "other friends" and you'll get shocked to see the exact same lines with the exact same spelling mistakes reproduced. Clearly these sincere men do not want to differentiate between any of their friends and thinks of them all with an equal amount of love and honesty. Aaaaah!

Three simple points before I end this post. (i) You cannot MAKE friendship. If you pour the right amount of chocolate sauce and flour, you might bake it; for the right kind of gifts you can fake it; but puhleeeeeeeeeze - you cannot freakin make IT. (ii) Why don't we have friendship making women? How come I see absolutely no female counterpart of any of the aforementioned species? Why? (iii) And finally, please read this post, which is very similar in content and much better written. Sadly, I wrote this post a while back and couldn't resist the temptation of posting it - despite the similarities in content.

Living up to this blog's name ...

2006-05-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

This post will be a collection of random lil snippets, none big enough to fit the bill of my otherwise excruciatingly long posts, but together they shall be quite the lengthy challenge provider.

* My dad (who seems to be better liked than I am by many (or is it most) of my readers) narrated this conversation he had with a customer service agent the other day:

Girl: Hello, is this Mrs. Sandhya Nandy's house?
Dad: Yes.
Girl: Who am I talking to?
Dad: I am her husband.
Girl: Ahaa! So you must be Mr. Mukut Nanda?
Dad: Madam. How can Sandhya Nandy's husband be Mukut Nanda? You obviously got the name wrong.
Girl: Sorry. So which part should I correct - Mukut or Nanda?

* While on the topic of my darling Mom's name (Sandhya), this has to be mentioned. Both me and my sister have fairly uncommon names (sis is called Sangsthita) and the reason behind that is Mom's name. I know this might come to many of you from non-Bengal parts of India as a shock, but Sandhya is a very non-classy Bengali name (specially when pronounced with the trademark Bengali accent, making it sound like Shondha). To make matters worse, every second Bengali household, it seems, has a helping hand called Sandhya. My Mom had shuddering experiences of visiting houses where the owner ordered "Sandhya, get us some tea" and my Mom would inadvertently get up to follow orders. Hence the resolution was made to give her children fairly uncommon names. Thanks Mummum :))

* Met up with fellow blogger Urmi over the weekend. She is quite the delightful character. During the course of varied inane conversations, the revelation was made that a good Hindi movie is one that actually has a character that could be played by Jimmy Shergil? Obviously Urmi, like many of you, didn't believe me at first.

Me: So what was the last movie that was a hit?
She: Rang De Basanti?
Me: See. Jimmy Shergil could have easily done Madhavan's role. I think he would have been a good fit.
She: What abt Sholay?
Me: Very simple. Who do you think would have been the best fit for the blind man's son now. The role that Sachin essayed. Can you think of anyone better than Jimmy Shergil?
She: DDLJ?
Me: Oh, it's just that Karan Johar knew the Chopras and played the cap wearing friend of Shahrukh Khan? Who do you think was the original choice for that role? Imagine Deewar - who do you think will be today's Shashi Kapur?
She: But then how come all movies actually featuring Jimmy Shergil are flops?
Me: That's coz there is no role for Jimmy Shergil in an actual Jimmy Shergil movie?
She: *The puzzled whatevaaaah! look*

Re-semblance

2006-05-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

So how many times have you had people stare at you and tell you that you have your father's eyes, mother's eyebrows and uncle's smile? Yup! I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one on this planet who cannot detect glaring similarities between people. Is this a gift that everybody else has? Just imagine the last time you saw a new born crying out aloud. I can bet that there was a family member, standing right next to you, who commented on how the infant "exactly" looked like his/her mother!!! What???? Am I the only one who thinks that all babies look alike? They all have small eyes, chubby cheeks, make spit bubbles and cry every now and then. Obviously, the baby's mother was no different and I'm also quite sure that the next door neighbor's mother was no different either. So when an army of elderly uncles and aunts and strangers that I've never met, stand around and regale over the fact that "he has his grandmother's smile" I get shocked. To make matters worse, I'm a Bengali. Every Bengali family gathering has that over zealous relative who discovers a new physical trait that reminds them of someone else. Over the years, I've heard things ranging from "I have the exact same nose as my mother when she was getting married" to "I have my father's legs". Wow! These people are good when it comes to finding similarities between different body parts. Interestingly, however, these are the same people who don't recognize me when they bump into me on the streets. That's it. I have decided. The next time someone meets me in a family gathering and my mother forces me to go and touch their feet and they look at me all confused and wonder who I am, I'll just lift my trousers and say "Guess who? I have my father's legs you said. So now guess."!!

And it's not just limited to family members. As Indians we love to compare our children with movie stars. While some parents are modernists and settle for "He looks just like Amir Khan", others go old school and talk abt "his hair is like Jeetendra's in Himmatwala!" Whatever!

Sometimes these similarities freak me out completely. For example, everyone tells me that I look like my mother. Great! However, I also have relatives who tell me that I look exactly like what my father did when he was my age. Ok! Rewind back Let's get this straight. If my dad looked like what I do now when he was my age, how come we have zero resemblance now? But that's not it. If I look exactly like my mom now and my dad looked exactly like me when he was my age - that means my dad looked exactly like my mom when he was my age. Eeeeeeeeew! Eeeew! Eew!

Finally, for all those people who have siblings and have secretly wondered which of you look better, you'll never get an honest answer if you just ask people. "You both look nice!" That's the baloney that you'll get. The trick is to go to a family member and ask them which of you resemble their side of the family more. That'll do it. Every family member will stake claim of the better looking sibling. It'll always be "Oh! X is just like your mother and people say that he looks like me too. You on the other hand have taken after your dad ..." Get it?

Bone of contention!

2006-04-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

Please explain this to me - what's so cute abt dogs???? I don't dislike dogs (even though they seem to bear some dislike towards me and have expressed it in terms of emotions ranging from barking to using me as a lamp post). However, I do turn a mild shade of envious green every now and then courtesy the barking specie. Today, on my way back from lunch, I noticed a little crowd around a pillar. A little brown dog was tied to it and a wide range of people had gathered around the pillar to exchange "Wow!", "Ooooooooh!", "Awwwwwee! Shoooooo shueeet!" and the likes. This is not the first time that I saw such a scene but it was probably the first time that I took time out to evaluate the whole situation ... and, well, I failed to fathom any bit of it. I tried to imagine myself tied to a pillar, on all four limbs, with a leash around my neck, maybe even with very little clothing on, and also imagined the kind of reaction that I'd evoke in all likelihood.

"Oh! finally they chained him. Good!" I can imagine bystanders saying.
"They should have done it a lot earlier." Another one would add in.
"He looks a lot thinner with his shirt on!!"

Seriously. I can't imagine anybody stopping and offering me food. I can't imagine anybody using sugary superlatives for me. I can't imagine anybody asking the person standing next to me how old I was or whether they owned me. (On a separate note, have you noticed how everybody assumes that the person standing closest to the dog is the owner? I've often contemplated just standing next to a tied dog and claiming its ownership, just to strike random conversations.) Bottomline, I don't have an iota of doubt that a tied and underfed me would evoke very little sympathy and love from people.

So what else could it be? Is it the fact that they are furry?? Do people like to see naked furry creatures. I instantly imagined Anil Kapoor, all naked, tied to a lamp post. Naaaaaa! I wouldn't be very thrilled to see that and correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think too many others would either. For that matter, I'll pay NOT to see that.

So what else could it be? Do we find their wet nose endearing? Then how come when I have a cold, people shy away from me? How come no one that I know of would find me cute if I tried to smell my own buttock? Dogs (and almost all other pets) never brush their teeth and one of the first things that women do when they spot a dog, is go right in front of their mouth and do the whole "Uuuuuju bujjjuuuu" garble act. These are the same women who ask you early in the morning when you sweetly offer them breakfast - "Have you brushed your teeth? Have you brushed your teeth? Have you ..."

And to make matters really bad, the other day I saw two dog owners taking their dogs out on a walk. While the two men exchanged pleasantries abt how the weekend was going to be spent, the two canines vigorously tried to engage in acts of sexual pleasure. Acts that would scandalize any man, woman, child or Samit Basu's Eric Seagull. And yet, the two men were highly amused by this and commented on how this was soo funny. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Many Indian kids are a lot more sexually frustrated compared to domesticated dogs. Have you ever seen two such kids on the road with their respective parents, trying to grope each other, with their parents saying - "Oh! Mrs. Kapur, it's so funny to see them kiss and fondle. We should do this every more often!"

I give up!

The Shield!

2006-04-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Aha! I recently spotted one more of these. The specie that I like to call "the Protectors". A fairly large and prevalent group that we've all seen but just didn't categorize. So let me do the honors, will you?

There are men who can get a particular woman instantly; so they pursue her pronto. There are men who most definitely cannot get a certain woman; so they give up pronto. And then there are men who think that they have almost no chance with a woman BUT take the "almost" part of the statement very seriously; these people refuse to give up and often become the ... tan tana naaa (my fake reproduction of honking trumpets) ... the Protectors.

The Protectors don't try to woo women with their charm (they often don't have it to start with). The Protectors don't take the lavish exorbitant route either. Surprisingly they aren't romantic fools either. They, quite contrary to popular romantic abilities, are gifted with the rare talent of the triple Ps - Patience, Perseverance and Protectiveness.

Haven't you often seen that one guy who always hang out with the hot girl and wondered how this bloke got a girl like that? You asked your friend and realized that "they are not dating". She openly acknowledges that "he is just a good friend". So you try your moves ... BUT there's one Big problem. Whenever you try and whatever you try - the protector is always there. He has pretty much booked every day of the girl's week. "Hey, you wanna catch some dinner tonight?" "Sure, but my friend Raj will join us too. You know Raj, right? He said he'll come by and borrow some books. It'll look odd if we leave without him." Be it borrowing books, returning them, forgetting an important file in the girl's house, "accidentally" being in the same area, feeling very depressed for some "personal family reasons" - the protector is always there. Their strategy is to shield away all men from the girl's life. Then, one day when she is old(er) and less bold(er) and all the wooing men start trickling in numbers, she would realize that the protector has always been there for her and then they will indeed sing a dream song with background dancers sprinkled in aplenty. It doesn't always happen, but is commonplace enough for the protectors to keep trying.

In the past I've had to battle it out with protectors myself. This one guy in college was like glue to the girl I dated. I'd even started questioning whether I was trying to see the girl or him. I learnt so much abt the Protector specie from him. The following are some golden rules that protectors should follow:

* Show initial romantic disinterest towards the girl. This makes her feel comfortable and safe in your presence and allows you to spend a great amount of time with the girl.

* Be of some use to the girl. This is a must as it will (a) earn you the much needed "very helpful" and "really cares for me" tags and (b) will also allow to be around the woman a lot more. Homework and "let's exchange notes" seems to do wonders. It used to amaze me in college how the "Protector" that I'm alluding to would study our subjects with us even though he was a BATCH SENIOR TO ME!!!!

* Be shameless! Yup! If you want to win a girl by being her protector - you've gotta be shameless. You can't do the math that the "couple types" do. "I called her the last three times, she should call me now!" Naaah! You can't afford to harbor such sentiments. You should call her everyday. Even if she never calls you. You should meet her everyday. Even if she never wants to meet you. The trick is to make yourself completely invisible to her so that she doesn't mind your presence any more. Coz trust me, even if she doesn't realize you are there, the men who are trying to woo her will and soon they will disappear, giving you a clean field to play in.

As a parting note, I oft wonder abt these two questions - (i) Why is it that women never realize that someone is trying to be a protector? Confront them with these allegations and they'll always tell you how "there is nothing between us. He just likes me as a friend." There is something super brilliant abt these guys that convince the women of their "non romantic aspirations" and I can't seem to fathom what that is. (ii) Why don't we have women protectors? Seriously, I've seen tons and tons of male protectors but NOT ONE of the other sex. Why? Why? Zed!

Anger Management

2006-04-18T21:56:00.000-07:00

Ok! So I think I've cleared my name from being someone who just writes abt men and women. I've touched upon food (and made it dirty), discussed desis and discussed desis discussing me discussing desis (say that aloud will ya) and have even spoken abt sports. So now, having redeemed myself, lemme talk abt the man-woman relationship thing again. Get your books out and turn it to page 137. Today we'll study the rare phenomenon of male anger and also how it backfires instantly.

If you are in a relationship and if you are a man then you pretty much completely sacrifice your anger. It's almost like they have an "anger detector" that they inspect you with before you enter the hallowed doors of a relationship. "Excuse me Sir. Do I sense a little hidden rage in your heart? I'm sorry but you'll have to leave it here before you can enter. You can take it back (and most definitely use it) on your way out, when we let go off you."

However, once in a while, onceeeee in a rare while, we men too get to be angry. Amidst all the "You don't care for me", "You don't love me anymore", "You have changed", "You were looking at that girl", "You were looking at that guy" etc. we men too occasionally get the chance show our anger. The moment is so special to us that we almost lose our anger in joy. Yes, it's that overwhelming. Men reading this post will know what I'm talking abt. One fine day suddenly you realize that you too can actually afford to get angry and not get shouted at for it. It can be one of those rare days when she has made you wait for three hours. You sense a veryyyyyy tiny bit of remorse in her face and you know that you might just actually pull off an "anger display" here. But then again, anger is an emotion that we men have seldom used in relationships. So we don't even know how to express it. In the past I've tried using the silent treatment but given the fact that I talk a lot, women don't seem to mind it much and lemme just be that way. You can choose between the "crazy hysterical shouting", "clenching the fist and biting your lips" or "vigorously wiping your face with a handkerchief" moves. Each one of them might work based on how well you do it at that point. A little extra emotion can help you too. "I was supposed to pick my Mom up today." Yeah! Trump it with the Mom card. That always helps.

But alas!! Since we men rarely get the chance to be angry, we soon lose control over the situation. We either underplay it or we completely overdo it. We're not skilled like women in the art of anger display. How many stories have you heard of your dad buying your mom some gifts because he messed up? Recall any stories where dad actually got anything??? Nope, that doesn't happen. Coz women know the art of getting angry. ART - yes. They know how to raise their eyebrows just right. They know how to bring a drop of tear in their eyes - enough to melt your heart but not enough to spoil the eyeliner's magic." Face it people. Even if we men get the chance to be angry we don't know how to continue with it. It's just a matter of time before we give the women a chance to be even more angrier than we were and they take charge of the game from there. For me the blow always was shouting. Before I knew it, the woman would shout back at me with twice the gusto saying "No one has ever EVER EVER shouted at me and you did it. I hate you. I feel so humiliated." I would try to remind her at that point that she was shouting at twice the decibel level but NO - by then the balance had tilted. That is what I love about women. They always have the skills to turn the tables in their favor. If you are shouting, they'll tell you that they've never been shouted at. If you are cocky they'll tell you that no man has ever treated them that badly. If you make facial expressions they can ignore you long enough to make you shout - so that they can revert back to using the "No one has ever shouted at me" technique. And before we know, we men are brought back to doing what we do best - asking for forgiveness. Yeah! That's our forte. Gifts! Cards and more gifts, sprinkled with a promises of never repeating the fault. Yes. We men have taken the act of asking for forgiveness to the level of art. ART - yes! But that's another story.

Are you game for this?

2006-04-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

I don't like sports much. Much of my dislike (maybe apathy is a better term) can be traced back to my inability to play any form of organized sport. I pretty much tried playing everything (starting from cricket which every Indian tries, to golf that very few Indians do) and have successfully been unsuccessful in almost everything. Not that I didn't try. When I was five or six, I cried like a baby (because at five or six I WAS a baby) when my friend Jojo was enrolled in a cricket academy and my parents didn't follow suit. Years later my father justified his actions by saying that it was this act of his that led to me becoming an engineer - but I never bought that baloney. My parents killed my cricketing career before it was even born. Like a thin robot in the Star Wars movies, my cricketing career was destroyed even before it made it to the limelight. Sadly, with soccer, I killed the career myself. I realized that my skinny legs were not conducive for kicking bloated pieces of leather. Hockey was a no no too. It appeared like organized violence to me. Why else will they equip twenty two people with sticks and let them loose in a small ground? My parents convinced me that I could not make a living out of tennis unless I was a hot girl. I tried showing them the same skinny legs that ruined my soccer career but they pointed out my thin shadow of a moustache instead. So I couldn't be the next Sabatini. Chaaah! Then I wanted to learn karate. I wanted to learn how to break bricks with my bare hands and teach all my detractors a lesson. Then one day, while accidentally chasing my sister, I punched a wall. My fist turned red in pain; my cheeks turned red with shame and my eyes turned red with some form of saline liquid in them. Nope! I couldn't imagine taking weekly classes to inflict the exact same pain upon myself. Then my father suggested that I play chess. And I did. I was actually pretty good at it. Till I realized that you could never impress a girl with the fact that you play chess. While friends boasted to their girl friends abt how they single handedly vanquished seven opposition batsmen, I tried to woo the women with my knowledge of Sicilian Defense.

"Don't go! Don't go. It gets interesting after this," I would shout out, trying to stop disappearing women who would sulk and leave with the sturdy rugby players of my school. I tried telling them that no other game uses the phrase "Check Mate". "That's got to mean something," I screamed. But alas! Like a man trying to sell me "Cheap Rollex watches for $10" via spam, my efforts would get no replies either.

Every year I made it a point to try something new. Something that gave me the feeling that "this was gonna be my forte". I can be an ace swimmer I convinced myself once, but when I soon needed the help of an actual swimmer to prevent myself from drowning in knee deep water I knew the proof was wrong. For years my friend Abhik and I visited the same swimming club in Kolkata. We were there in the "beginner's pool" for soooo many years that mothers of toddlers had started saying "Hold on to uncle, hold on to uncle" pointing at me (people from Anderson Swimming Club in Kolkata from a junior generation can tell you about Sagnik Mama *affectionate term meaning uncle*).

Years later, I found someone at work yesterday, who shared a similar disgust and apathy towards sports. He pointed out that most games are a result of failed conversations. Seriously, all sporting events should be replaced with bilateral talks. We don't want countries to fight. We avoid those situations by getting their leaders to talk it out. I feel that we should do the exact same thing with sports too. Leaders of Australia and India should meet in a room and come out all happy for the photographers. "We have decided that this year Australia has won the Test Series," they should say. "In return our rugby team will be given two extra victories during their next trip to the continent." How cool will that be. Won't it?

P.S. On discussing this issue with my dad last night, he mentioned a true story he heard from my grandfather. My grandfather had taken someone to watch football and the man asked him "Why do they give so many people just one ball to play with? Can't they just give them a few more balls so that everyone is happy?" Veyr true I must say!

Food for thought when you are not thinking

2006-04-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

No more talking abt desis in this post. No relationship advice to offer either (though I'm open to receiving some myself). Nor am I going to talk abt blogging rules or my dad. Lest I sound trite and hackneyed, I decided to write abt something I've never dealt with before. Something which is alien territory for me. Something fresh. Something that is ... hmmm, say straight out of the oven. Oven? Did I just say that? Great. Let's talk abt cooking. Yeaaah! Don't worry - this isn't a new blogging subject. People like her, her, her and her have done it with great dexterity. So why should I be left behind? So let me teach you how to cook. Seriously. Just a post abt culinary skills ... with a little extra zzzing!!

Chorus (best enjoyed when imagined to be sung by three scantily dressed lissome lasses)
Hola hola! We have some oil in the pan
Ladies and gentleman, you see I'm ur man
Hola hola! We have some sauce in the tray
Hush hush! Hoosh hoosh! I've got somethin to say

Main song begins. Imagine a bevy of hot women wearing kitchen aprons and hats dancing around trees. Why trees you say? Coz we are gonna use fresh stuff for our dish.

Put your cooking hats on, so we can make a hot dish
It's called Chicken egg kebab, Any questions? Capiche?
Now take a bowl of minced chicken, and two eggs to go
Some tomatoes, chillies, mashed potatoes and some more
A lil cilantro to garnish, and some oil to varnish
Some salt to taste, and soy sauce that we'll waste
We'll take half of an hour, and the dish will serve two
So if you are feeling lonely, Baby I can join youuuuuuu

Hola hola! We have some oil in the pan
Ladies and gentleman, you see I'm ur man
Hola hola! We have some sauce in the tray
Hush hush! Hoosh hoosh! I've got somethin to say

Now put that oven to preheat, and the egg whites to batter
And some butter on the tray, if you don't mind gettin fatter
Now mince the red tomies and add them to the chicken
Slowly add the eggs, and the mashed potatoes to thicken
Add a sprinkle of soya to the mixture and then you just knead
But make sure you wash ur hands girl, coz you'll use them to feed

Hola hola! We have some oil in the pan
Ladies and gentleman, you see I'm ur man
Hola hola! We have some sauce in the tray
Hush hush! Hoosh hoosh! I've got somethin to say

Now make balls with the mixture, coz dough and dough makes chaar
And if you've got it right till now, girl you'll surely reach far
Now put the stuff on the tray and don't forget that silver foil
And bake it for 20 minutes, coz any more and the dish will spoil
Then take out the dish when it's brown and let it just cool
And sprinkle it with chillies and your guests will baby drool

Hola hola! We have some oil in the pan
Ladies and gentleman, you see I'm ur man
Hola hola! We have some sauce in the tray
Hush hush! Hoosh hoosh! I've got somethin to say!!!!

/It's all about this/

2006-04-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

This is a post that I've been planning to write for a loooong time but some how didn't get around to doing it. So here it goes ...

All of us who blog, probably like comments. One can even say that some of us luuurve them. A steadily growing number below your post body, indicating the number of people who had an opinion to share abt what you wrote, almost always makes you glee like a twenty one year old girl in a clothing store on Thanksgiving Day. Sometimes replying to a comment is great fun too; maybe even more fun than writing the post itself. I've seen comment spaces being used as chatting services with innumerable replies and counter replies ending in a state where neither party has anything more to add to the conversation but are afraid of being impolite and continue exchanging mandatory (";)"s and "ha ha"s). Sometimes commenters leave annoying messages. There is this one commenter called "anonymous", who is especially notorious for his/her antics in the blog World. I've often read his irked out comments below posts, not just on my own blog but on several other blogs as well. Bottomline, comments are always fun ... comments are always reassuring ... comments are always cool!

Sadly, it isn't always so. There are those posts that stand barren. Like a solo-hero movie of Jackie Shroff, they keep expecting a hit, but never get it. You check your site, hoping that someone will praise you for your thoughts or maybe agree with you ... or maybe even oppose your views. But alas! No! I don't know abt other bloggers, but often while writing a post I have felt that it would be a great hit with the readers, only to find only the stray comment abt "check out cool dating services on my site" appended the post. Seriously, I've stopped trying to guess the reader's mind. There have been times I have suspected that I'm churning out a masterpiece; a post that'll adorn the pages of all the Pundits in its true Uncut state. And nothing, zilch, nada happened. On the other hand I've also written, what I thought was fairly mediocre material, and surprised myself with a fast growing two digit number between those magical braces. What is it I wonder that appeals to the average commenter? Seriously! Otherwise, how in the World do you explain this weird post getting more comments than this post that I really liked or even this one that I am very proud of. Maybe people comment heavily abt something that they can relate to. At least that's what I do. But then how do you explain this???? I don't think anybody relates to my dad's dreams - not even him. So what is it then? What do I do to lure you kind readers to writing something too? I thought for a while, scanned through some of my "popular posts" and even visited the blogs of some superstars. Naaah! There seems to be no rule but these pointers might just help.

* Write abt something that will get a "Choo Chueet" reaction.
- e.g. posts titled "My Forgetful Wife and how I find her so cute", "My little niece pooped in her pants", "My boyfriend bought be a thousand roses"

* Write abt things that will surely get a "Boooooo!"
- e.g. posts titled "My Forgetful Wife and why I will divorce her", "Let me describe my little niece's poop", "How I am repenting sending my girlfriend a thousand roses"

* Put some photographs
- e.g. posts titled "Here is a snap of my Forgetful Wife forgetting her husband and running away with another man", "Here is a snap of my little niece's poop stained bed", "Here are the thousand roses that I just received"

* Pose a question to the discerning reader (helps if you are a woman)
- e.g. posts titled "Do you want to marry my Forgetful Wife?", "The poop stains on my dress aren't going. What do I do?" "I found my boyfriend with another woman. What should I do with the thousand roses that he sent me?"

I am not saying these posts will get you a lot of hits. But for all you know, they might just :) Lemme know what you think.

It ain't funny no more ...

2006-04-01T18:45:00.000-08:00

Wow! Quite a few comments for the last post and quite a few of them from irked out readers who are disgusted by the fact that I dared to make a post abt the traveling habits of fellow Indians.

"He is a rascal. Very big rascal. I will never visit his blog again," a gentleman was heard saying.

"He had the audacity to make fun of Indians. We Indians. Hasn't he seen Sohail Khan's I-Proud to be an Indian?" the slightly overweight aunty screamed into the microphone.

Two guys in lungis were seen jumping and howling "Saale ka no-url ko actual no url status de dengey baap!" Their better halfs were seen standing next to them, equally interested in jumping, but in an age of fashion fiascos, that is a Big NO NO.

A few kind ones seemed unfettered. "I found it quite funny," Megha was heard saying. "Same here," said Tele, but asked us not to quote her in public. Gamemaster was busy with the women, but he did say that he'll get back to us with something positive.

Hmmmmm! I sighed on a slightly gloomy weekend evening. What do I say to all these people. What can I say to prevent the glares of fellow Indian travelers (in suits) from now? How do I express to the World how sorry I am for what I have done? Hmmmmm! I sighed on a slightly gloomy weekend evening again. "Let me blog abt my reaction to some of the comments," I finally said.

* "c'mon tis not that bad....these are too cliched!" ... Well, great then! At least now, no one can claim that I'm the first one to have observed these things. My hackneyed state but does reflect how many others have seen what I claim to have seen. So, they should be blamed for passing on the baton.

* "Insufferable Jerk!! This is called confirmation bias." ... Nope. I call it ConfOrmation bias :)

* "let me get one up on you mentally..I am superior because I am wearing such and such... I am superior because I don't ask for an extra drink,...I am superior because I contain my excitement..I am superior because I listen to such and such music...I am superior because..." ... you got all of them wrong. I am superior for just one plain simple reason - mere paas maa ka diya hua ashirvad aur papaji diya hua radio hai! So deal with it.

* "... now are we going to make fun of people's english?? feeling very proud of being able to speak a borrowed language?" I would have responded to your accusation ... if only you had made it in Hindi my friend.

* "Thought it was pretty cheap and cliched myself. The fact that it is humorless too makes it not worth responding to on the blog." (This one was made on Desipundit) ... As you can see that all the points that you have raised have been raised by others already. So I find your comment pretty cliched. The fact that it is humorless too, makes it not worth responding :)

So, to all those who found the previous post unfunny, trite or a personal reflection - please do not stop reading my blog. In the weeks to come I'll give you equally unfunny and offensive material again. And then ... AGAIN. You'll be given ample chances to express your angst again. Your acerbic comments will be given a chance to decorate my blog again. So please, oh disgruntled commenter, don't give up on me ... again!

Travelogue ... or the closest I can come to writing one

2006-03-28T18:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not saying that "YOU ARE" or "YOU HAVE TO BE". All I'm saying is that there is a very (VERY) high chance that you are an Indian traveler flying abroad if you do any of the following things:

1. Carry home cooked food with you on the flight.

2. Wear a suit even if you are not going for any business or business related work.

3. Ask the person sitting next to you in the flight where they are going (pleaseeeeee people, it's a flight and not a bus. The chances are very very very high that you are all going to the same place!!!)

4. Have a hand written gigantic sticker on top of your hand bag and carry on luggage that discloses your name, age, email id, phone number and hobbies.

5. Introduce your better half as your "Vife" and then add that even she is "Wary excited"!

6. Sit next to random foreigners in airports and start telling them why you are going abroad.

7. Ask the air hostess if you can get an extra meal.

8. Spend the time in an airport clicking photographs next to every possible shop and then outdo yourself by posing next to the restroom.

9. Explain everything in great detail to your wife even though it's the first trip abroad for BOTH of you. If the wife actually nodds her head in agreement and awe then you don't even have to think twice before you make the conclusion :)

Feel free to add more to the list or accept the ones that you have done yourself. I have been guilty of 1 but I had a very good reason behind it :D

Random Thoughts from a Jet-lagged Mind

2006-03-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

Apologies to all those who don't speak Hindi and to those who actually speak the language and will hence have to tolerate this self made PJ. I have finally come up with the names and tag lines of my trilogy for path breaking movies:

1. Kamseen - the story of the girl who was rarely seen.

2. Kamseen Tu - now the story of the girl who was rarely seen with you.

3. Kamseen Teen - our baby is no longer a baby.

Blogservations ... a blogger's guide for the layman!

2006-03-23T23:13:00.000-08:00

So, I've been blogging for a while. I've been reading blogs for an even longer time. I have even attended a few blog meets. I'm also friends with some "blog celebrities". So it's OK to say that I'm qualified enough to make a few blogservations now. There are rules in the desi blogging world. Rules that are not spelled out but are well established nevertheless and this post is a compilation of some of these rules ... take them with a pinch of salt and tobasco sauce if you may please.

* If I link to your blog then you'll link back to my mine. I remember how one of my close friends "punished" someone from his blogroll when this rule was not enforced within two weeks. Another phenomenon that once existed (thankfully, it's fading now) is two random ppl, who hardly know each other or their blogs, cross linking each other to increase link counts. Very amusing.

* If I leave a comment on your blog, you too will read my blog (and maybe even pay me back with a comment). A comment in the blog-world is like a stamp of your presence. And if you take the troubles (read "typing url OR clicking on a link") to visit my blog, you will expect me to do the same.

* If you are a regular then you'll assert your regularity by leaving occasional (even if they are meaningless) comments. I had earlier touched the topic of "present madam bloggers" where you have to leave occasional "lovely post" ad "I agree" comments to show that you have been there.

* You shall reply to comments. Come on this is a matter of social decency. However, some times you will see comments that are highly generic and you should not be deterred by the difficulty they pose when you reply to them. In occasions such as these emoticons come handy as they combat generality with obscurity.

* Regulars will be treated with additional warmth and so will newbies. He he. Yes, if hot_baby is a regular on my comment list, I am expected to make my fondness for her more visible. I will greet her with extra smileys and even ensure that all her comments are answered. An occasional term of endearment might help :) Similar treatment should also be given to the first time visitors. "Hello madam, hello sir. Welcome. Please come again. What will you have? Such a wonderful observation ..." These sweet nothings are like good wine and crisply fried wantons for a first time visitor ... or so we will say.

Wanna add to the list ... old timers, newbies and the sporadic visitors, please leave a comment :)

One more to the flowing cheese

2006-03-20T01:51:00.000-08:00

Ok, please read the comments of the previous post made by the likes of Devyani, Kusum, Brown Magic and the lot - they've pretty much touched upon all the points that I wanted to make in the planned second post. So much so that they've successfully reminded me of moments from my cheesy past and made me shy away in guilty embarrassment. Hmmmmm! Yanyway, there's still one aspect that remains untouched and I shall reproduce the advice I gave toddler and her man love the other day on this matter. Kind and bored reader, I present to you the concept of the "giggling friends".

An integral part of any cheesy romance is the validation of the girl's choice by the giggling friends. The giggling friends are normal people. They too, like us, eat, sleep, drink and love Ektaa Kapoor's night-time soaps. They too, like most of us, have an element of apprehension in them when they switch on a music channel, fearing that it'll be Himesh Reshammiya in action again. However, it's the first few weeks post the blossoming of a cheesy romance, that these gigglers assume additional importance and inspire insipid writers like me to write abt them.

Every girl, post two to three weeks of finding the man of her then dreams, seeks validation from a close (group of) friend(s). Every guy on the other side of the court has to be prepared for this judgment. The gigglers (I'll soon explain why they are so called) will be invited to meet the unsuspecting hero in a venue where much money can be spent and banter can be indulged in. The hero has to be in his best behavior. He has to be on time (maybe even arrive early and wait), greet all jury members with a smile, offer to buy all of them lunch and compliment each one of them in a special manner. Safe lines like "I've heard soooo much abt you", "You look very different from your photograph", "Ooops! I think I fell for the wrong friend" always helps. Then you have to show your special talents by nonchalantly mentioning "how you might have met the friend when you were working with the local shelter for protecting stray dogs". After 20-30 minutes of his performance, the girl friend will subtly ask him to leave and give her and her friends some lone time. "Vijay, can you get us another lassi," she'll say. The guy has to understand that the girls need lone time and leave immediately and not hurry back (this might be a good time to make that much needed loo trip).

The next ten minutes are of paramount importance to the relationship. The women will judge the man in instant decisions. "I dunno, I think you can do better." "He is OK! But you two don't have too much in common". "I like him. He looks cute." Lines like these will flow across the table. A big joy of a cheesy romance is acceptance from the friends and if this lacks then the woman in question will raise a few questions herself.

However, if things do work out well, then the next few weeks will be of immense entertainment. The friends will then develop their own little language and exchange mysterious smirks, giggles and eye-rolls across crowded class rooms to find out excruciating details abt the new relationship. The girl has to bring new news every second day. "A small raised eyebrow movement with an air kiss will ask if the first kiss has happened. The girl will smile coyly and the remaining friends will giggle and make her blush. The following week will see more eyebrows raised in order to question what happened over the weekend. The girl will have to work extra hard to keep up her friend's interest in her relationship. Kisses have to be followed by a little more coochie cooing and if she smilingly shows the new pendant on her necklace, then the friends will open their mouths in carefully enacted awe. That's always a good sign. Everyone will be happy this way.

Sadly, the importance of these friends only remains for the first few weeks. Thereafter the relationship becomes boring to follow and the friends and their nudges, giggles and winks fade away. But till then - ahh! it's some well made cheese.

Are you in Lau?

2006-03-16T09:10:00.000-08:00

I was advising a toddler the other day on a definitive set of things she and her man love should do to conform to all the cheesy love norms. Come on. It doesn't matter how mature you are or how often you pass snide remarks abt those gooey couples on the road - at some point you have to be a part of the system yourself. You HAVE TO do all the acts of love that'll embarrass you on a reminiscing spree five years later and make you squirm in saccharine disgust. So I looked back into my own past and that of several other lovey couples that I've known closely and assembled this list of MUST-DOs that every cheesy couple should do at least once:

1. Have nick names for each other: That's a must. You might be gifted with names as gallant and smooth as Vikram and Sneha, but to each other you have to be Toto and Tuti. The names have to be so imbecilely in content that you'll feel coy to even mention it to any adult beyond the age of five. A simple rule of thumb always helps - the closer your name comes to resembling a pet dog, the closer to that red spot in the target sheet you are. Remember!

2. Hanging up the phone should be a pain: Never just say "Bye, love you ..." and put down the telephone. Prolong the conversation for ages. Add in "I'll miss you ... Come to my dreams ... Naaah! I don't want to hang up ... You first ... Ok! Now you say it again ..." Continue this routine till the telephone company informs your dad of potential bankruptcy and then you know that you've done it right.

3. Hand made gifts: Ok! There are people who specialize in making good gifts that can be put to good use. Most of these gifts are affordable and useful. So what? Forget the expertise of all these gift makers and plunge into the bandwagon yourself. Every cheesy couple has to gift each other hand made gifts at some point. Forget the Hallmark cards that are well made, funny, affordable and worth treasuring - make one yourself. Smear your brown lipstick on a piece of paper and draw perverted cartoons and chip in a badly written love ballad where you searched three hours for a word that rhymed with "darling" and finally ended with "Your love's more precious than two hundred and fifty sterling". Yeah! That's what I'm talkin abt!

I can think of many more examples but right now mom is pampering me with a back massage and I shall therefore stop and probably make this a two part post.

Let's meet over meat mate!

2006-03-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

The kind Teleute and romantic Gamemaster have agreed to a blogmeet this Saturday afternoon where lunch will be had and people attending will be subjected to new levels of boredom. So don't miss out and suggest possible venues please!

Ok, children now write an essay abt your trip to the zoo

2006-03-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

A trip was made to the Kolkata Zoo - after almost a decade. Now the present generation with all their malls, multiplexes, fast food joints and game parlors don't know what the zoo meant for us. I grew up at a time when every city of India had 1-2 major sight seeing spots and the Zoo was the definitive weekend hangout spot in Kolkata. Sunday mornings would see loooong unending queues of determined visitors outside the swiveling doors of Alipore where peanut sellers and straw hat salesmen lured waiting visitors. A half an hour wait was commonplace. And then we would enter. Uncles, aunts, cousins, friends ... We young ones would carry a truckload of cricketing gear; the colorfully dressed up moms would bring a truckload of mouth watering edibles; and the dad's would come prepared with a truckload of their childhood stories along with well chalked out plans for the day.

The trip to the tiger enclosure was a must. That was usually followed by a visit to the two cute elephants who loved being fed peanuts. There was also the highly popular Children's Zoo that boasted of a baby elephant. There was a time when I actually knew the names of the animals in the zoo (Rangini the Tiger, was a favorite); it was also a time when I boasted of knowing the difference between the tigon and the litigon and could rattle the scientific name of the red butted baboon.

Ten years have passed by. The zoo, now, is a distant reflection of what it used to be. The children's zoo is gone and so are the children. The place looks battered. Poor couples who cannot afford the lofty prices of multiplex darkness make out in obscure corners. The tigers looked underfed - so much so that I even volunteered to offer my sister as meal (but it turned out that the hungry beasts had good taste) :) The BJP had a rally in the city and many of the volunteers who had landed up in the city for the first time were brought to the zoo as part of their welcome political package. Maybe some of them will stay back and return next week as part of another party's rally. A tea seller followed us for a while, reading out fresh delicacies that hadn't been touched in weeks. Even the Himachal State Apple Juice stall, a childhood favorite of mine, was gone. The hoarding was there, but the fascinating spherical juice maker and the huge crowd in front of it was gone.

We left soon to play a game of pool, a relatively newer pastime for the City Of Joy. As I reminisced abt the countless knocks of sheer cricketing brilliance that I've played in those premises, my sister expressed her apathy towards the projection of the zoo as a city heritage. Her boy friend regaled at the result of our game of pool. My father kept calling up to find out if we were safe. It was very different from those childhood trips to the zoo. One generations delight is another generations boredom. Hmmmm!

The Number Paradox

2006-03-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the sudden uninformed disappearing act and thanks for all the concern. A sudden emergency brought me back to India for an unplanned trip. Anyway, thanks to GOD, the complications seem to have been mostly resolved. So now I can hopefully get back to blogging. And in case any of you still care to read this part of the web ... welcome back!!

~-~

Over the past few days I've been privy to some very amusing relationship tit bits and it has reaffirmed a long held opinion of mine - before marriage men have lots of relationships and women mostly have none ... or so they say.

Seriously, ask ANY unmarried man if he's had any relationships in the past. To us it's a vanity number. Ages back it was the moustache that defined the man, but now it's the number of women they can call their "girl friend". I've seen friends of mine mention "relationships" that lasted two group dinners and a refused telephone number exchange :) It's not too far fetched to imagine this conversation for a man:

Man: Will you be my lover?
Woman: Nah!
Man: Will you at least sleep with me?
Woman: Nah!
Man: Can we be just friends?
Woman: Nah!
Man: *I think she secretly likes me and is playing hard to get. Good. One more to my list. Now I have dated ten women.*

Hence men (and I've been accused of this too) flash back to stories abt their exes. Number One did this, Number Two didn't do this, Number Three might have done this ... :) That's us. Virility is no longer abt sperm count ... it's the ex count that puts the ex in sex for us :)

HOWEVER, women are very different. Chastity is the order of the day for the ladies. Ask a girl, "Were you and X dating?" "Dating? We barely knew each other *for ten years*" In my limited experience, women adopt a much milder tone when it comes to classifying past paramours. "Friends" takes the cake most of the times, often appended with a "good" to give a slightly elevated value; sometimes they say "we almost dated" and occasionally they'll gush out a "yeah! We dated briefly BUT IT WAS NOTHING SERIOUS".

To sum it up, I propose the number paradox - if every single man has dated ten single women and every single woman has never dated a single man then something is wrong ... hmmm!

P.S. I'm gonna be in Kol for two more weeks and if any of you readers are here drop in a comment and we can meet up.

Love, marriage and why I am not ready for it ...

2006-02-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

It might come as a surprise to many of you, but it seems there are people (and to top it, of the opposite sex) who are willing to marry me. I spent a good part of an evening this week trying to convince a lovely girl why I'll be a terrible choice for a husband. Initially she didn't seem too convinced, but persuasion is indeed my middle name (even though many people think it's Kumar).

If there is anything that Bengali relatives like, it is to evaluate people behind their backs. "Did you see the way that girl was looking. I didn't like her glance." "She was wearing pants. Very shameful." "He didn't touch my feet. What kind of manners does he have" - these are all lines I've heard in family gatherings. And to all these judgment mongers, I'll be a terrible choice for jamai (son in law). For starters, I've inherited a very straight face humor from my dad, and that doesn't go down very well with the middle aged Bengali folks. *As an aside story, my dad once severely upset a newly wed family member hailing from Sundarban, when he very seriously asked her how many tigers they owned. The entire side of my Mom's family teamed up against him for that one harmless joke.* So I know it for sure that if they make me bend and touch the feet of ten elderly gentleman, it's just a matter of time before I feel like pulling one of their dhotis - not an actual pull but just a gentle shocker to scare them. How do you think that'll work? Also, in all Bengali social gatherings there are these sisterly figures who are so overly dressed that you can easily mistake them for ready-made-brides. It's a strange thing. It's like they dress up to flirt with you but the test is to treat them with utmost respect. This dichotomy always evades my logical boundaries. So it's just a matter of time before I crack one of my non-veg jokes to them and I can just imagine what'll happen. Julie, who is Shanta aunty's daughter's second cousin from her father's side will run to her mom and complain against me. Shanta aunty, who is already angry with me for telling her on her face that the word is "desk" and not "deks" will take this opportunity to complain to Ranjit Kaku (uncle). Now Ranjit kaku had his dhoti at risk when I touched his feet, so he will join the team too ... you see where this story is going. Interestingly, I'll provide the icing on this cake. Bengalis love to spend an extra hour at the door of the house - seriously, I've seen gatherings where the main gathering ended after an hour but people spent a fortnight saying goodbyes. Both me and my father escort people to the gates and assume that the story ends there. So we both promptly come back to the television AND THIS will add fuel to the glowing anger of the Shanta aunties and Ranjit uncles. Woof!

So what do we have? Upset old and young relatives. That just leaves the little kids. But, they'll hate me too. I'll not give them chocolates (they spoil the teeth and more importantly give ammunition to the young ones to leave finger stains on the walls). For the same reason, crayons will be a Big NO NO. And I am very protective abt my childhood toys and no way am I letting them play with those valuables. I can also imagine that some of them will ask me to change the channel to Cartoon Network. But that's not happening when I am watching VJ Cyrus - is it? So the kids will hate me too.

After all this reasoning, the girl in question kinda agreed. She said she'll contact Shanta Aunty and her husband before getting in touch with me again. Hmmmmmm!

There she stands ... with a heart so cold!

2006-02-10T22:37:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the fairly long absence. In the limited time that I spent at home over the past one week, I had the choice of either reading blogs or writing them, and chose to do the former. RIght now, I'm trying hard to decide between the three different topics I want to write abt and can't make up my mind. Lesse! Hmmmmmm! Ok - mannequins win.

So it all started last week when I went shopping and had my attention drawn towards some of the mannequins on display. Boy! When did they become this pretty. I almost proposed to one of them. Silky hair; perfect feature and what more - totally believable - there she stood - urging me to buy a short skimpy top for $60. "You gold digger!" I said to myself and walked away and that's when the rest of the stuff in this post started playing in my mind.

When did people start concentrating so heavily in making mannequins. When I was young(er) (now come on! it wasn't that long ago; just rewind your minds by a decade), all mannequins looked the same. I remember this wig shop in Kolkata that had two unisex mannequins. Yes, you read it right - Unisex mannequins!! The only thing differentiating them were the wigs they sported. Occasionally the shopkeeper would draw a pencil thin moustache on one of them to make it look more manly but soon the moustache would disappear - or even worse - we would see a mustached mannequin with a girl's hairdo. I remember that several shops didn't even go through the rigor of getting a mannequin. They would just stuff clothes with newspaper and put it on the window or have one of those "blowup doll thingies".

But those days are gone. Girlfriends now not only prevent their knight in shining armours from looking at other princesseses. Mannequins are as much of a threat to them as that next Jolie look alike. The boyfriend looks at a dress on a mannequin and wonders "Whoa! What a hottie." Soon the girl friend puts on that same dress and you see that all's not well in wonderland. The same thing holds true for us men. Have you seen the abs they give to the male mannequins. I vaguely remember trying to count the number of stripes on a male mannequins stomach and giving up after ten. And it's not just the shape. Shopkeepers now have multi-ethnic mannequins. They have "happy family mannequins" (where an entire family of varying age groups are shown). They have mannequins that have robotic limbs that occasionally move. It's not long before mannequins are full blown robots that'll escort you into shops, help you shop and if need be strip down to bare essentials to send you home better clad.

There's so much writing abt the changes around us - computers, cars, music systems and what not! Somebody ought to mention these glaring changes in mannequin technology. So I thought I would. Peace!

And now you are Pissed Off!!

2006-01-31T22:30:00.000-08:00

Ok! A word to the few women who read this blog - you'll probably NEVER come back to read it again. I'll miss you all. And just to let you know - this post is not supposed to be gross AND you can ask your male friends that.

I've been wanting to write on this topic for a while now, but it's just that work and other stuff kept me busy. I wanted to write abt the phenomenal tension in a men's urinal. Seriously! I've never been to lady's urinal BUT from what the ladies tell me, it's supposed to be well compartmentalized; a place where individuals get the privacy they need; a place that I believe even plays host to some very interesting conversations. In contrast, men's urinals are a very disturbing area. Read on!

For starters, men have to stand and get their business done. So this is what you do. You face a wall and wait and wait ... and then you get done and then you run (not before washing your hands though). This period, when you face the wall and do your stuff is nerve wrecking. You have to either look at the wall or look down. Now obviously it's better to look into the wall. But I don't have to explain that, if you do this pretty regularly, it gets quite monotonous. Come on, you can't just look at the wall and not think of anything. Every man, I believe, has his special bathroom thought. My thoughts normally include tunes of songs (not Hawa Hawa) or finding patterns in the tiles of the walls. I'd be happy (actually NO) to know what other people think abt.

The next big thing is to avoid any kind of eye contact. Any kind. As men, we are taught to think that nobody else is in the bathroom when we are finishing business. Unlike women, we don't socialize in the toilet. It's never "Hey man, what are you doing here?" for us. However, every now and then, the moment gets the better of you. You hear the new entrant enter and you give a quick look. Under normal circumstances, the new entrant too is careful to not make any eye contact. BUT on a highly chance driven instance - EYES DO MEET! And then ladies and gentleman, you get the most awkward smile exchange ever!

The final thing that I wanna discuss on this issue, is what many might consider gross BUT I have to say it - it's the peeing sound. Some are noisy pee-ers, others like to be discreet. Yet others are situation driven i.e. when left alone they go on a roll BUT in the company of others they learn to control the volume. What is really disturbing is when two people land up next to each other, in an otherwise silent zone, and the only sound they hear is ... you know what. Can you imagine the amount of judging that can go on? "Is the other guy thinking that I'm too loud?" ... "Man! He is soo loud. Does he have no control?" "Wow! He is really quiet!" ... and the likes.

There's so much more that can be discussed on this topic ... but I don't want to piss you off any more :)

Where have they gone?

2006-01-29T17:59:00.000-08:00

I have this habit that can best termed as "one song for the moment". In simpler words, at any given instant there's this one song that I'm obsessed with and repeatedly (and by repeatedly I mean 20-30 times) play that song. My college scrap book mentions this, my ex apartment mates faced the brunt of this and ex-girl friends used this habit to further justify their ex status. All in all, not a habit that has gone down well with too many people I must say. Yanyway, my current obsession is Khoon Chala from Rang De Basanti (which I felt rocked). However, till five days back another song had held this coveted position and that song, dear friends, was ... Hawa Hawa.

Yup! Judge me. Call me crass. You can even call me crass. Or if it pleases your desires - call me crass BUT the fact remains that this song has very fond memories associated with it and when I saw (or heard) it in a remixed form I JUST COULDN'T RESIST it :)

This blog has mainly two age groups of readers - one, who can be called my peers and the other, that I like to call "blog toddlers". While the latter group ridicules me for this post, let me take the former for a ride down memory lane ...

It was the mid 80s. TV had one channel - a time that I like to describe as "jab cable ek channel tha". It was the age before the Ekta Kapurs. When Buniyad ruled. When Ramayan and Mahabharat defined Sunday mornings. When Chitrahar defined Wednesday evenings. The generation that I just described as "my peer" will remember the impact Chitrahar had those days. It was the only form of video advertisements movies got and the "first song spot" of Chitrahar was a coveted spot. Hawa Hawa was one such song. The movie was a dismal footage called Don 2 but this Hassan Jehangir number rocked the nation. So huge was the success of the song that they had released an English album in India using the tunes of some of the songs (the lyrics for the Hawa Hawa tune went ... feeling dizzy uneasy don't let me down today ... feeling funny oh honey ..."). Every roadside shop in Kolkata played this song and at least ten Bollywood songs got "inspired" by this tune.

However, there was something else abt this song that lacks in songs these days. This was a song that could only be sung in a rowdy non musical way. If you are reading this post alone, let your musical talents flow for a second. Try singing "hawa hawa" like a ballad and you'll fail miserably. A dear friend recently tried to croon this number in a lovely voice and realized that this is a rare song that is sung best by the crass - and I miss that trend in current songs. I miss the fact that "crass hit" songs are fast diminishing. Where have the Hawa Hawa and Oye Oyes gone? Why isn't Altaf Raja singing Tumto Thehre Pardesi anymore? What happened to Anand Milind and there "one hot song per movie" regimen? What happened to these songs?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind ... or if I may say - in the hawa hawa ...

Doesn't even make sense

2006-01-25T23:21:00.000-08:00

* I once met a self loathing narcissist.

* The couple divorced because he believed he was better than his better half.

* I am tired of telling you that I hate repeating myself.

* My dad forced me to believe that restraint was a good option.

* He was quite optimistic abt his chances of failure.

IYKWIM

2006-01-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

Now this is an expression that I use a lot myself and I just realized that it is completely useless. The expression being "... blah blah blah (pause) if you know what I mean". Yup! I feel that "if you know what I mean?" is right up there in the list of rhetorical useless expressions along with the likes of "You won't believe who I saw the other day (coz once they tell you who the person is, they don't expect you to doubt their honesty)" and "Guess who I saw the other day (where you are never given a chance to guess a few responses)".

For starters, nobody ever says "if you know what I mean" and expect a NO for an answer. Seriously, have you ever heard anybody say No to this question? Try imagining this conversation:

"She surely didn't fall for his charm. She very well knows that she can BANK on him ... if you know what I mean .."

"No, I don't."

"As in BANK on him. A pun because ..."

"No I don't understand ..."

Nay! That never happens. This phrase is to a conversation, what extra tobasco sauce is to a Mexican meal i.e. the food was already spicy and even if you didn't add the sauce the zing would've still been there. I tried thinking back where, when and how I picked up this expression, and strange visuals seem to come to my mind. I somehow imagine a young girl saying this line and adding an elaborate wink to it (I wish I could show it to you guys). I'm pretty sure that no such thing ever happened for the simple reason that my personality hassn't ever evoked the interest of young winking women. But still, I'm indeed confused by the origin of this habit. So if any of you folks know me in person, feel free to snub me the next time you hear me say something like, "He wears such short shorts that you BARELY (accompanied with air quotes) notice him ... if you know what I mean ..." feel free to snub me.

Peace!

One Two - cha cha cha!

2006-01-19T20:33:00.000-08:00

Guess who joined a samba class?

Ok! Given that it's My blog, and the tone of that question was purely rhetorical, I'd say it wasn't much of a question. Hmmmm!

Now, I've taken dance lessons in the past as well. What was it??? Hmmmm! Yess, ballroom dancing. I remember almost killing a few people with my "one-two-three, one-two-three" movements. The instructor used to make us switch partners every two minutes and the expressions on the face of the women who would get the chance to be my partner was click-worthy.

They would greet me with a nervous "Hi" and wait impatiently for the two minutes to get over. They would then say the most jubilant "Bye, see you". It was funny. I always imagined the conversations they had after I left them.

"Are you OK? Did he squash your feet too?" one of them would probably ask.

"Not just the feet. He almost broke my waist. Have you seen the way he turns? Wooof!"

Then one fine day the instructor told us that the way to position your palm on the girl's back is to place it just below her bra strap. Can you imagine how scared I was that day? Given the amount I fumbled while dancing, one false move and I would have been termed a perv. To cut a long story short, I left the ballroom dancing classes mid-way. The girls probably threw a party and celebrated in what better way but by dancing :)

So why then, you may ask, did I enroll for samba classes now. Simply coz I think it'll be fun. I've already realized, after the first day of class, that samba is much easier than ballroom dancing ... for the one simple reason - that it's ten times more difficult. Yes, the dichotomy is the answer, Watson. The dichotomy IS the answer. Ballroom dancing is a much a simpler art form (or so I think). There I was the only idiot who didn't know how to dance. Everybody else appeared like Vanilla Ice on roller skates in front of me. My inability would get easily noticed and doubly magnified.

BUT now it's different. Half the people in my samba class (and that half includes me) had no idea of what's going on. Some of the moves the instructor did were humanly impossible. I'm not kidding, but for a second out there, we thought that she had three butt cheeks - and that's freakishly fast dancing people. So half the class would try to mimic her and fail miserably. I can easily be in the better half of the class by the virtue of not dancing and just standing still. I even had people in the first class who were trying to copy my moves for the simple reason that they were easier :)) Yeaaaaah!

Phir Bhi Dil Hai ...

2006-01-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

It's fun explaining abt India and Indians to non Indians.

"The Indian accent that they depict in international movies is exaggerated," I told a non Indian friend of mine. I even did a little imitation of the accent we Indians are supposed to have. "The overall Indian accent can be broadly divided into the North and South Indian accents. And neither sounds like this!"

The conversation then went on to how I'm part Bangladeshi (or Bangal for the Bengalis) and how that's a very common thing in West Bengal. Details were given as to how the Bengali spoken in Bangladesh is quite different from the one we speak in India.

"So how well reached are the Bengalis?" he asked me.

"Naaaah! Not as well reached as the Gujratis and Punjabis I'd say."

"What do you mean?"

"For example, if you mess with a Gujrati here - that's it. You can be shunned from all the motels here :)" I joked.

"What abt the Punjabis?" he asked.

"Well, then no Seven Elevens for you. And you can also say goodbye to all the curry food you like."

"What abt people from down South?"

"Then you can wish a software career good bye my friend," I warned him.

"And what abt Bengalis? What if I mess with them?"

"Well ... I might stop talking to you ... and ... naaaah! That's pretty much it."

Shout out!

2006-01-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

New apartment for yourself - $$$
TV for the apartment - $$$
Furniture and kitchenware - $$$
Internet connection and cable - $$$
Using that internet to finally write a blog post - priceless??? Naaaah!

Yanyway! Time to blog again. There are lots of things that I wanna blog abt. For starters, my ordeal of setting up a "home" (not "house" mind you - *and how cheesy is that*) by myself. But that blog will have to wait coz, before I get back to my standard variety of posts, I have to make a public statement on my blog aimed at my father - Bubin STOP READING my blog. I'd earlier mentioned that my dad knew that "I write on the internet" and now he seems to have found that spot. Terribly pleased by the fact that he can access my blog, Bubin has decided to look into the matter of many of my posts with more than just a discerning eye.

"You mentioned the other day that some girl stole both your wallet and your heart. Is it who I think it is?" he asked me.

Not a very subtle way of letting me know that he has accomplished the not so difficult task of locating my blog. Is it?

"Bubin, that was a joke. I didn't mean it literally. You know that she never quite stole my heart," I protested.

"Heh, heh." I told your mom abt it and we tried guessing who you were talking abt.

Excellent. Now mom knows abt my posts too. I can totally imagine the senior Nandys having their evening laughs at the expense of my inane posts.

"And that T shirt with all those PhD names in it. Who are they?"

"They are part of my PhD tree dad."

"Ok, don't wear that T shirt outside. It might get dirty."

"Bubin, I wasn't planning to wear that outside ..."

"... and between you and me ... was I right abt the stole my wallet and heart person? Heh heh."

"Yikes. Stop iiiiiiiiit!!!"

So Bubin if you are reading this (and I know you are) then don't read my blogs any more. They are not meant for kids and surely not meant for people who had me as a kid. :)

Call Out!

2006-01-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

Me left San Diego last night
Me will reach Bay Area hopefully tonight
Me will start job hopefully from tomorrow
Me very very excited
Me might be busy and without Internet at home next week
Me might therefore not blog too often next week
Me signing off now
You be good!

Who's the fairest of em all :D

2006-01-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

Ok! How many of you'll agree that there are way too many young single female blogs with phenomenal readership? Ok! You out there have your hand raised. Yes sir, you too. That makes two of you. Ahaa! We have some more hands raised at the back. Brilliant! We have some women agreeing too. I'm sure you must be married madam - or taken - what? You don't blog? I see ... and suddenly we have a fair number of people agreeing to my observation. Good!

There's something very attractive abt these single female bloggers that makes them hot property. Is it the fact that they are single? Does that make them more candid? Or maybe it makes them more desirable? Who knows and who cares. The bottomline is that some of the most popular bloggers that I know are female and are ready to mingle. So I had this idea, just a tiny winy idea ... what say we screw around with their popularity a bit? What say we get the number of comments in their blogs down just a tad bit? What say we just mess around with their ooh laa laa tags for just a few days? Hmmmmmm! Noble thought BUT THE QUESTION IS HOW ...

I suggest that we create this extremely hyped competition and make these popular young things fight it out between themselves. Yesssss! Have the mother (or girl friend) of all battles where the successful female bloggers fight it out on blogosphere.

Well! That was the idea. Now lets study the rationale behind it. Single female blogs are driven by the fuel of attention and I say we raise the gas prices. I've ranted earlier how two of the biggest group of readers of these blogs are (A) other single female bloggers who empathize/sympathize/traumatize with the blogger and (B) men who come and offer the sweetest of words to these women :) I conjecture that if we have enough categories (JUST abt enough though) then we can attack both these groups. We should have some awards like "The best female blogger", "The creepiest male commenter", "The hottest female blogger", "The most dedicated commenter" etc. and that should do the trick.

Just imagine that X and Y are two popular female bloggers and Z is a guy who endlessly comments on both their blogs. Now the moment X beats Y to be the hottest female blogger, the jealousy angle will come to play. Y will reduce her visits to X's blog. "Ever since she got that award she thinks no end of herself," Y will think. Soon X will stop visiting Y's blog too. The next thing that Y will do is secretly keep a count of Z's activity in both the blogs. "That guy!!!! He left two comments in my last post but left three in X's blog," Y will notice. Soon Z will fall down in the list of Y's favorites. The other men will get scared too. A bird in hand is better than two in the bush they say. So why try to impress two female bloggers and upset them both. All these "commenting men" will pick their favorites. Plus the awards like "Creepiest male commenter" will scare a few commenters altogether. Ahaaa! Such a delight it'll be.

P.S. I was discussing this idea with a very popular single female blogger and both of us wondered what such a competition will do to a certain male blogger that I can't name here. I've seen the guy comment in at least TEN different "single female blogs" but not a single married female or male blog. Any guesses who????

The Mingle Jingle!

2006-01-03T23:02:00.000-08:00

Ok! This idea struck me when I was in Vegas. A Gujarati family and an Asian family walked past me from two sides and I realized that the two languages are so similar. So if you wanna hear how Gujarati will sound like (albeit in my opinion) when mixed with an Asian language - this podcast might just be what you wanna download :) Peace!

The Opinion Zone !!!!

2006-01-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

To start with - A wonderful New Year to all of you. May 2006 be full of joy, love, smiles, happiness and excitement for all of us. Keep reading this part of the web and feel free to send me cash, food, ornaments and spam whenever you want.

Yanyway, I had this most interesting realization sometime last night. I conjecture that it would be wonderful (and most amusing) if people could just listen to what individual couples (or small groups) say as soon as they leave a big social gathering. I'm sure that all of you reading this post must have attended some large social gathering sometime or the other. So read on and you'll understand exactly what I'm trying to say.

Imagine a room with thirty people. You are sitting. X is standing. Y is talking to Z. You bump into A. "That's a lovely shirt," A tells you. "Wow! you have lost a lot of weight," X tells Y as Y's face lights up. Z tells everyone he just landed a new job. Everybody congratulates. The evening goes on and everybody seems to be adhering to perfect harmony. Sounds like a familiar scenario? You can come up with several other such setups. A blogger's meet, farewell parties, dinner treats, college reunions - it doesn't matter what the occasion is - as long as there are enough people who pretend to be all nice and happy and sweet in front of each other the rest of the post will hold true.

All that I'm saying is that it'll be wonderful to overhear what all the "small individual groups that form the moment these gatherings break up" have to say.

"So what did you think abt X's dress?"
"Somebody should buy her a mirror."

"So what did you think abt Z. I don't think he is anything like his blog ..."
"Oh! I found him weird!"

"Do you think A and B make a good couple?"
"I think B looks too old for A?"

"Abt B's job ..."
"Aah! His father must have got him the job ..."

A deluge of these comments bombard the air the moment the gatherings break up. I've seen the tendency in me. I've seen it in my sister and her once teen battalion of friends. I've seen it uncles and aunts. I've seen it in ... All that I'm saying is that in all these gathering we turn restless being nice to people. True emotions, opinions, criticisms, wise-cracks build up like molten lava inside us waiting to be let out and cooled down. And the moment we leave these places of neutral meanderings we search for our own little group where we can let out hours worth of controlled opinions and afterthoughts. Aaah! What a pleasure it would be to hear them all - or would it?

Delighted!

2005-12-30T00:13:00.000-08:00

I went out for a wonderful Japanese dinner tonight with my darling advisors. Many interesting discussions were had. Topics ranged from magic to maths to movies and even Indian names. I was informed that my Erdos number is 3. BUT but but the icing of the evening was the delightful gift that Jeanne and Larry got me. The photos are given above and below and I must say that it is one of the sweetest gifts that I've received in recent times. For those who can't make out what it is - it's a T shirt with 225 years of my PhD lineage imprinted on it and in case you can't read it - it includes the likes of Euler, Poisson, several Bernoullis, Lagrange, Leibniz to name a few. The child in me is doing major somersaults and the man in me is saying "beta sweater pehen lo" :)

P.S. If you are among the kind readers who are coming back for my usual stock of inane stuff, they'll be back pretty soon. As of now I am enjoying the end of the year and I hope you are doing the same too!

Back Again

2005-12-29T12:15:00.000-08:00

So I'm back from Vegas. Vegas was fun. Lots of fun. Lots of lessons were learnt as well. For starters, for the first time in many years I saw the desi in me in full action when, enamored by the unimaginable opulence, I took photographs of everything around me. Chaaah! Now I can't poke fun at Sid for this habit of his. I also fell prey to the popular adage that "the House ALWAYS wins". Moi thought that I had the better of the House and that was indeed the case till the last 30 mins of my stay, when I lost all that I had won and more. The final realization dawned upon me on the strenuous journey back when I realized that for someone recovering from acute acidity, a sixteen hour stretch without food, followed by a cheesy (and I literally mean it) meal at McDs, is NOT recommended. All in all, still a wonderful trip where much food was devoured, David Copperfield was seen in action (the show, I felt, was great but overpriced), Madame Tussuad's museum was visited and a lot of gambling and casino hopping was done.

Yanyway! Subs made this astute observation in Vegas that deserves mention. "Whenever a common word is misspelled it means one of two things," he said. "The resultant product is either sham and all cheap or bloody expensive." Profound and bloody true. I remember the innumerable take offs on the already misspelled Kwality ice creams on the streets of Kolkata - Kwaliti, Kwwality or good old Quality, we'd seen it all. While the original fake was the most expensive ice cream in "those days", all the remaining spellings were bloody cheap. In my undergrad days I had a friend who was the king of fakes. His wardrobe boasted of classic fakes but the one that swept me off my feet was a T Shirt by "Kevin and Clein". We saw several other examples in the streets of Vegas. Every time a shop said Parfum instead of perfume (yeah, yeah, I know that this spelling is valid too) we knew that you would have to spend a fortune for that extra s(cent). Ditto for the shop that said Restoranto instead of Restaurant - for the few extra letters they charge you many extra dollars. Moral of the story - spellcheck your brands and save money or trouble. Peace!

Happy Holidays

2005-12-23T19:11:00.000-08:00

The blogger is off to Las Vegas soon
Will be back only on Monday late noon
So all you readers do please make merry
And enjoy your holidays very very very
Please do pardon the very childish rhyme
Blogger has to pack now - so not much time

Musings

2005-12-21T19:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some stray musings that moi had. Hate it or hate it.

* Sometimes during romantic feuds I wish that love was deaf and dumb and not blind.

* Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder but alcohol helps the beholder lie.

* In most of my relationship fights I had the last word ... and it was normally "Sorry!"

* If you hate me for who I am, you are just being unimaginative.

* I once knew a girl who treated my heart and wallet the same way - she stole them both.

* Between a woman with looks and a woman with brains, I'll settle for the one who'll buy me dinner.

The Games People Play

2005-12-20T20:45:00.000-08:00

My sister has been fighting with her boyfriend. "Why?" I ask her. "Oh, no reason. It's no fault of his. But you should just scream at the man every now and then. It keeps them on their toes, you get some added respect and the apologies are always fun. What???? This is my lil sis talking ladies and gentleman and aghast is the word that comes to my mind.

I've always been a mere witness to the games between the two sexes and have been terrible at playing them myself. At best you can call me a good observer. Sometimes I've been an unwilling referee when two dating friends came up with "Ok! You tell us whose fault it is?" But when it comes to playing these games myself, I've always been at a loss of moves. And I don't think it's just me - I think that men in general are at a slight disadvantage when it comes to relationship games. I've seen some of my male friends play the marriage card successfully where the man emotionally blackmails the "by-then aged girlfriend" with the line "Give me few more years and I'll surely marry you." But that's all that I've seen the mustached sex do.

So I decided to list some of the classic moves women use (or at least I've seen them use) that completely unnerves men; makes them jittery; makes them rush for the closest bar or bathroom; makes them realize that the battle of the sexes is hardly a battle but more like an action movie climax - where you know who'll win but still watch it, just in search of possible novelty.

1. You have changed. Yes! A classic line that completely shocks men and women use it with such dexterity. Men have no idea what this means. Every now and then you see your lady love all serious and grumpy and on questioning her all you get is "You have changed." But that's it. There's never an accompanying explanation to how you've changed. So you are left with the dual task of figuring out how you've changed and how to redeem yourself and till you do that, the woman rules.

2. I'm having girl problems. Now please don't think that I'm an unsympathetic wretch. I know women and men are different (thank you high school for explaining things to me). All I'm saying is that men get very jittery when women use this line. Coz men have no idea what women go through at these times and they also have no idea how they'll react. So we get completely freaked out. One of my exes used this line more often than I thought she should and EVERY time it gave me the shivers. Coz I knew she could get away with murder then (and trust me she did try it a few times). All I'm saying is that maybe even men should be given a day or two every year (JUST a day or two) when we can do stuff, and if questioned, bluntly reply "Man problems bonami, man problems!"

3. Nobody has ever treated me this way (said best when you add a "not my mother, not my brother, not my ex ..." at the end). Another classic. Every man who has been in a relationship long enough hears these words at some point. And to be very honest it means nothing. For all you know it might be a good thing. Something like "You treat me so well, nobody has ever treated me this way." But NO. It never is. It always means something scary and men know that and the moment they hear it they know that it's apology time.

4. You don't love me any more. They should just ban this line. Or have something similar that men can use. For three years you could be cleaning her doormat. Forget doing it for one day and she'll tell you "You don't love me any more". If it's your bad day she'll even add No. 1 i.e. "You have changed." Aaaaaah!

5. You should learn something from XYZ (and XYZ is normally a close friend whom you dislike). That's it. This one freaks men out completely. Coz not only do you feel inadequate, you also feel threatened by XYZ. And women just love that.

Quite a few more techniques come to mind but this post is already too long and the women readers stopped reading quite a while back. I agree, I have changed a lot :)

Arghhh Lee!

2005-12-19T19:42:00.000-08:00

We all have some talents ingrained in us. Agree or not, but we all have a film critic in us. Earlier that critic was limited to terming movies as just "good" or "bad" BUT these days we are far more equipped. In the recent past I've heard analytical remarks like "Parineeta was very well shot. The script was beautifully written ...", "Neal n' Nikki is catering to urban sensibilities" etc. The movie critics in us have surely gained more experience. Ditto for the cricket coach in us. Every Indian male (and the occasional female) now has an opinion about how the Indian cricket team should function. Similarly we all have a view on World Peace and how it can be achieved.

However, this post is not abt any of the natural talents mentioned above but an altogether different one that I've been reminiscing abt since yesterday - that of "creating ugly celebrities". What? How could I say that? Hear me out. I'm not saying that we are "ugliterians" but the example I'll cite next will explain my stance.

Have you ever seen random magazines lying around? Just put a pen next to it and you'll get a proof of my conjecture. Barber shops, house of friends, libraries - any place that has magazines lying around carelessly will scream witness to my claim. All of us at some point in our life have done it. Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgan, Rani Mukherjee or even the mighty Big B - they have all fallen prey to our pens and imagination. And in all these photos you'll see our love for making celebrities ugly take center stage. You'll see the beauteous Ash smiling, but you'll ALSO see an unevenly placed moustache above those Kajra Lips. Occasionally you'll spot a matching goatee. And don't even get me started on our fascination for the "missing tooth". I once saw a depiction of a toothless Rani Mukherjee and that was the last time the Bengali damsel knocked in my dream sequences. And the men aren't let out easy either. I've seen innumerable scary artwork performed on a popular shirtless hero. From giving him an added layer of chest hair, to giving him organs best suited on women - I've seen the mighty Man in many unthinkable forms. I have seen Anil Kapoor in a skirt and choli with humongous earrings and I have seen Jeetendra's white attire scribbled black. The list goes on. And it's not just celebrities. I've had girl friends and sisters who've tried testing my feminine charm by putting Microsoft Paint to commendable use. I've seen myself with lipstick and long hair and it took me a disturbed three years and Tulip Joshi to recover from that trauma :) Similarly, I've tried checking out women I fancy with various forms of facial hair too. And even though a few of them later adopted those styles and looked better *ducks*, a majority of them looked better otherwise.

But have you ever seen any truly praiseworthy artwork in any of these magazines? Have you ever seen a good hairdo applied to anyone? A good moustache on Sanjay Dutt? A nice pair of Sunglasses? Nope! Never! And I refuse to believe that nobody with artistic ability is never near these magazines. Then why? As I mentioned, I think somewhere deep down in each one of us there is a lover of ugliness and this post is my salute to that side in us!

P.S. While on the issue of ugliness, a quote I made a few years back comes to mind and this might be a good place to place it. A female friend of mine was raving abt this guy who I didn't imagine to be good looking from any perspective. "He is unconventionally good looking," she shouted. "Sure," I agreed. "But he is also conventionally ugly."

Random Thoughts Again

2005-12-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

* How do you greet people caught doing boink boink in a barn?
- Hay Hay!

* Do you think Pamela Anderson ever turns on her biggest fan?

* Why did the lonely girl go on a robbery spree?
- Coz she dreamt of being Wanted.

* Does anybody notice the irony in the amount of Buzz the Big Bee and Small Bee generates these days?

* Neal n Nikki has fared dismally in the American Box Office. The collections can be described as ranging between Nil n Nickel.

Sleep Over

2005-12-15T20:44:00.000-08:00

It was two days back that I decided to write this post. Then I discussed it with two members of the opposite sex. One of them assured me that no woman will ever marry me after reading this and the second one refuted my case. So the initial intended tone of the post will be changed. What was initially supposed to be a more confident tone will be replaced by a doubtful and conjecture-posing style. What say?

So, I feel that *and looks around and hushes the voice* most men IF GIVEN A CHANCE would like to sleep in their own separate beds *Wooof, I said it*. Now lemme make a few clarifications here. Moi is not saying that men don't like women in their beds. Moi is not saying that men want to sleep alone in a room. I'm just saying that IF we had two situations - (A) where a guy and a girl sleep in the same bed and (B) a guy and a girl have two separate beds in the same room with a little (say 2 feet) distance between them - then most men will go for option (B); that given an option most men would like to stay awake in the same bed with a woman but sleep in a separate one by themselves. Now the explanation.

Have you seen those movies where they show a romantic couple in bed together. What's the scene that comes to your mind? Yep! The girl is hugging the guy, who is on his back facing the ceiling. The girl is all happy and snuggly. She has a smile on her face and the camera captures that wonderful moment of love and tenderness. Do you have any idea why the camera never shoots the guy's face? What do you think the guy is thinking at that point? So many question plague the male mind then - (i) Will it be very rude if I ask her to move her hair off my face? (ii) Can I tell her that it is only so long that a man enjoys playing the role of a side-pillow (iii) Can I tell her that her head is not that light (iv) Can I tell her that it is unfair to pull a man's chest hair and there is nothing romantic about that either??? Also have you see something very weird that happens in all these movies? They show the couple going to bed all naked after a night of passion but when the girl wakes up in the morning she makes an on-the-fly night gown with the blanket, leaving the poor man all cold.

And hence ladies and gentleman I propose that there be two beds in every room. Two beds next to each other but separated by a lil distance. So that the man can have his blanket. So that the man can have his comfort. So that lovebirds can do their thing and sleep away in true happiness. So that we don't wake each other up when we toss and turn. So that ... the list goes on ...

Booked

2005-12-14T23:52:00.000-08:00

I was in the library when I walked past a shelf that was in one of the not-so-accessible areas. One of the books caught my eye. It was jutting out. For a second it appeared like the book was waiting to be signed out. As if it's been a while since its pages got flipped; a while since it lay wide open on someone's coffee table; a while since some damage was done to its pages, and for a second I thought it was urging me to take it home. And that's when it struck me that we are quite similar to these books ourselves. Most of us have a major "pick me" complex. It doesn't matter what it is - we like to be chosen. Remember the times the teacher in high school said that five students would be chosen? It didn't matter what the chosen group would do. It could be as exciting as a field trip or as mundane as posing as props for a story. However, for a fraction of a second it always ran in our minds "will it be me?" and we would all sit up upright and make ourselves a tad bit more visible. And it's not just high school. Be it women, teachers, friends or career - we are often like the book, eagerly waiting to be picked. Every prospective "picker" is looked at with anticipation and excitement and when they pass by and we realize that we weren't the chosen one, we sigh. Sometimes we console ourselves and soon we jut out again for the next round.

And it's not just this desire to be picked that makes us like books. Like books, we all fall in categories. Some of us are the funny ones. Some are pro adventure. We too have reviews based on which people choose us. "You are dating that girl? I have HEARD that she can be very dominating." "Well, he is a good starter but then you will lose interest in him in a few weeks." Haven't we heard these "reviews"?

And the similarities go on. Some of us are good for momentary entertainment. A few parties, three dates, two movies and then you grow out of them. Some leave a lasting impact. Some take their time to grow on you, while others are "just not your type". Some of us have good social presence. "Never judge a book by it's cover," they say but at times the nice air, expensive jacket or blue eyes is all we see. Hmmmm! No wonder we feel that some of us, much like those bestsellers, are over rated.

As I was thinking all this I realized that the library will close. So it was time to leave.

Guest Appearance

2005-12-13T22:59:00.000-08:00

It was 7 in the evening. I was watching TV and Subs was browsing for laptop deals. There was a knock on the front door. Brought a stranger trying to sell magazines to our house. Brought delightful memories of childhood to my mind.

These are stories from a loooong looong time back. Many of you reading this blog might not even identify with the premise of this post. So the young ones like UI - lemme warn you in advance :D I must have been in the third or fourth standard then. Not too many people had telephones and the internet - duh! Yanyway! Those days everytime the door bell rang it would be a new found excitement for me and my sister. Especially in the evenings. Coz then we knew it wasn't the maid, or the milkman, or any those innumerable ladies trying to get old clothes in exchange for shiny cutlery. A knock or bell in the evening meant surprise guests ... and that spelt FUN. There was phenomenal anticipation associated with it. Was it any of the close uncles and aunts? A door knock instead of a door bell meant even more fun coz then it was probably a cousin who couldn't reach the bell. He would have ran up before his parents. Pummy and I would rush to the door and there was always excitement while opening it. Everybody had their own way of ringing the bell. Some pressed it for too long. Others played their own tunes. Mom and dad would often play a little guessing game as Pummy and I ran to find out who the winner was.

I remember the time when we put one of those safety chains to the door. It was literally like a surprise gift. As Mom opened the door partially, the face of the guest would get revealed. Our expressions would change accordingly. A relative or family friend with kids meant that we wouldn't have to study any more that evening. That brought a glee to our faces. Occasionally it would be a false call. Given the rectangular layout of our building, we often had lost folks trying to reach the other side. Oh, we hated them. But whatever it was, a knock on the door or a ring of the door bell was always fun.

Times have changed so much. Nobody is excited by these petty joys anymore. Everybody is super busy. Everybody has a cell phone. Surprise visits don't surprise no more. They scare us. Nobody wants to put in that much effort. It's so much safer to make the customary cell phone call before dropping in. At least then the food will be good. Sometimes I see my sister carefully screening her calls. "Don't pick the cell phone if it's XYZ. She wants to come over and go out for a movie. So don't pick the phone," she instructs.

Even in US things are different. I can't remember getting a surprise visit in ages. Why would anybody do it? People plan meetings three weeks in advance. "Hey, man. We haven't met in like ages. What say we go out for dinner next weekend?" "Sorry, dude! I have a Final the following week. What say the weekend after that?"

Times have changed. We have changed. Memories remain.

Chivalry?

2005-12-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

So sometime back I had ranted abt the tradition of the candlelight dinners and how it's probably a "man concept". Recently a similar thing hit my mind - it's those petty acts like opening a door, pulling the chair and helping with the coat, that men do and women term as being classy and chivalrous. Yeah sure!

Now think rationally - what's so bloody classy or chivalrous in holding a door for a lady. Before you jump to conclusions lemme state here that I always hold the door for ladies and quite a few of them have been kind to compliment me for that - but seriously - what's the deal? Are we trying to say that the women can't even open a door or pull a chair? Or are we saying that these are such mammoth tasks that a man deserves kudos for doing them? Seriously! Taking a bullet for your lady is chivalry. Fighting the most feared knight in the land for your lady with bare hands is chivalry. Sitting through two hours of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days for your lady and laughing when she does, IS chivalry. BUT opening a freakin door with one hand and holding it for ten seconds? Naaaah! I don't see anything remotely chivalrous with that. And guess what? A lot of men are getting away with not doing the above mentioned daunting tasks (specially the chick flick bit) by just pulling chairs and holding lame doors. And that's not a good thing.

Now lemme hypothesize what must have happened. Some guy and girl must have got into one of those "What have you done for me?" fights. The guy would have ran out of things to say and quickly thought of something inconsequential like "I always hold the door for you". Given how insignificant the whole thing is the girl would have been like "What? You do that for me?" and the guy would have nodded a diligent nod. Thereafter the guy always had to do this petty act and the girl raved to her friends abt it. "My boy friend doesn't even let me open the door," she must have gloated. And that's how it all started - where friends of the girl and their friends and their friends and their friends made their boy friends act as make shift door men. Nice!

The Indian Man's Sob Story

2005-12-11T22:07:00.000-08:00

Face it - the Indian guy has it tough in the dating market. I was talking with a girl abt the perils of the Indian man in the dating game and she agreed. I told her that the English have their accent and the French have their knowledge of art, food and wine. The African American community is believed to be well endowed, while the Aussies get drunk famously. The Americans have money and the Chinese are better gadgeted than anybody else. The girl pointed out that Latin men are supposed to be great lovers. "Ah, sure! That too," I sighed. What do we Indian man have? Zilch! What's our strength? Zilch. What is it that makes us desirable to women all over the World? Zilch again.

Yup! Face it. We Indian men are at a disadvantage when it comes to wooing women. Our accents are - well - ahem - well - ahem. We aren't the tall, mane flowing breed either. Now there was a time when it was rumored that we men knew the Kamasutra inside out but it dint take them long to figure out that all that most Indian men knew abt sex is actually just - Inside and out. So what do we do? If you still don't believe me - let's be objective abt this. Let's take the three biggest strengths Indians have in the eyes of outsiders and judge ourselves - (i) we provide cheap outsourced labor (ii) we are good with spellings (yes, we Bharatiyas put the B in Spelling B) and (iii) we are good with math. Now, just imagine the following three pick up lines and judge for yourself.

Indian Dude One - Excoose me beautifool. I couldn't help but notice the wonderful dress that you are wearing. From the fine craftsmanship and peeping label, I would say it's a Gucci. My guess is that you have spent a good $400 on it. What say you date me and I contact my cousin Raj in New Delhi, who works for an Indian design house that actually deals with outsourced fashion products and I can get you a similar dress for just $50. What say baby? Sounds like a deal?

Indian Doodh Two - Hi Huneee Bunny. What's your name?
Hot girl - The name's Linda. Linda McMillan.
Indian Doodh - Aahaa! Is that McMillan with an MC or an MAC. It is rumored that names beginning with Mc are actually Irish while the Scots like to spell it with Mac. Which one are you? Actually don't tell me. Give me your name in a sentence and I will tell you where you are from.

Indian Dude Three - Hi baby. Why don't I take you to the side and show you a trick that I can do with my fingers.
Hot girl senses a night of passion and goes to the side.
Indian Guy - Now give me any number between One and Five Hundred and I can find its square root using just the lines on the fingers of my right hand. Tell you what - make it between One and Four hundred and I won't even use my thumb. What say?

What will the Indian man do?

Update

2005-12-08T17:23:00.000-08:00

Stress, prolonged bad food and more stress has made the blogger unfit and he as decided to take a 2-3 day break from blogging. Hopefully moi will be back on Monday with lots of new rants. Till then take care and I'll try to do the same.

Ex-pectation

2005-12-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

For all you people who like tricky situations - deal with this. What do you do when your ex asks you for your opinion on his/her present? Hmmmm! I've faced several variants of this problem and made people face it as well and I think it's second in my list of awkward moments, following the "fart smell when you are out with a girl and you know it's not you" very closely. Yanyway! Back to the original topic of discussion.

So what do you do when your ex shows you his/her latest love and asks you for an opinion. What if the guy/girl doesn't impress you one bit? You can't just say that. Then it'll be an absolute case of sour grapes - grapes so sour that they can be squeezed to make lemonade. And what if you are really impressed by the person? You can't say that either, coz then you are accepting that "yessss, you were right in leaving me." So you always end up saying the either the standard "Nice. You guys look ... awkward pause ... nice together. Wish you guys all the best." or "Well, it's your opinion that matters. As long as you are happy it's fine."

Does anybody else have a better answer???

A PhD Defense in Pictures

2005-12-05T16:13:00.000-08:00

An hour and thirty minutes before it all begins (and yes, I look tense).

Ten minutes before it all begins - in the place where it all begins.

Fifteen minutes since it started.

Fifteen minutes before it ends.

Fifteen minutes after it ended (and yes, I look drained).

On groups and more ...

2005-12-01T17:16:00.000-08:00

Two disjoint incidents form the inspiration for this post. The first one was witnessed when moi was walking to the food court for lunch. Three hot women were walking in front of me (some detractors might claim that I was walking behind them). As an aside, the women were dressed in the most amazing motley of colors. Yanyway. One of the girls said, "You know what I feel like doing?" The other two echoed the customary "what" and the girl said, "sing OUR song." As soon as she said that, the three women broke into a little jig. Some pathetic song was sung in unison, along with a very complex high five exchange protocol. Very entertaining.

The second incident was narrated by a friend the other night. She told me, "Oh the four of us went out and we were just like the Sex and the City Gang. We form such an amazing group. X is like Samantha, Y is like *whoever the lawyer is* and I'm like ..."

If you are wondering how I plan to tie these two separate incidents together, the answer is simple - "Women are a lot more into group formation." Once again, I'm not judging men and women here. All I'm saying is that it's one more aspect in which the two sexes differ. Women spend a lot of time and energy forming and maintaining friend groups. Their groups have names, they have their own set of movies ... they even have similar dress codes. I remember popular "female groups of Pilani" where three or four women would even hold hands together and walk. Have you ever seen four men do that? How many of you've heard of incidents when a whole bunch of women landed up in someone's house to get ready for a party together. There - you have a group already. I've seen this take place countless times with my sister and her friends. "Oh no! All of you are wearing red. I just have a black skirt. Pummy can you please lend me a red skirt?" These are all familiar lines to me. But have you EVER heard of two men getting dressed together in one of their houses? Have you ever seen two men claim, "Oh! We are like Batman and Robin. He's more acrobatic. So he is Robin and I am ..." - Nope! NEVER.

Personally, I think group formation takes a lot of time and energy. For starters you need a Unique Selling Point for your group. A girl I dated ages ago had once remarked, "We are the Cool Gang of our college. The other women either hate us or they wanna be like us." See. That's a unique property. Men find it very difficult to locate these qualifiers. Just ask a guy, "Hey, why do you and X hang out together?" and he'll probably say "Coz we are both free in the evenings". That's it - that's all the commonality we need to hang out with another guy.

As a final proof I'd like to present the striking differences between a "guy's night out" and "girl's night out". A girl's night out is normally a lot more personal - like a potluck, or watching dvds at home together, or a sleepover where only "the group" is present. Whereas all forms of activities termed as a guy's night out - be it going to a bar and guzzling beer, or watching strippers perform gymnastics on a pole, take place in locations that have plenty of other such "groups" present. Coincidence??

Nostalgia

2005-11-29T23:02:00.000-08:00

Sid leaves for India tomorrow. If things work out the way that I hope they do, then it might be a while before Sid and I meet again. Sid and I've stayed together for a little more than two years now and ... I'm digressing. This post is not my sentimental goodbye to Sid. I can do that in person while forcefully keeping some of his valuables with me :) This post is abt change. Change that is not necessarily good or bad but is like the car that zooms past a flock of pigeons munching grains, making them fly away in a jiffy. You always knew that the grains will finish and the birds will eventually leave, but it's the suddenness of the moment that surprises you.

It's been four years and a few months since I came to San Diego. Just a flashback in black and white down memory lane tells me what a different person I was then. People who knew me then and have been kind enough to not shun contact will vouch for that. Four changing digits of the calendar witnessed dearest of friends becoming complete strangers, while unknown faces turned friends. I remember Rishi, Vineet, John, Satya ... that was 2001. I remember G, G and G ... that lasted till 2004. And Shubhra, Sid, Vipul, Siddharth, Rakesh and Dipu ... that's gonna last till tomorrow. Then Sid leaves. Dipu leaves on the 9th. Then I plan to leave.

We are men. We don't go for weepy goodbyes. Those are best left for Kate Hudson movies. We've already planned out how we'll meet in February. "Don't worry, we'll just drive down to your place," Vipul said. I told Shub that I will come down too. But will we? Or will this be like the time when a whole bunch of us from Pilani promised to meet up in Bangalore? Or like the time when a group of eighteen year olds, in navy blue and white, exchanged telephone numbers and "lines for me" in cheap diaries outside a Central Kolkata school? Or the time when a guy and a girl stood in a Chennai railway station and did the whole "You won't forget me, na" routine? That girl and guy don't speak no more. I've probably bumped into many of those navy blue clads on the roads of Kolkata and not even recognized them. The people from Pilani have an e-group where we wish each other on our birthdays. But the number of e-mails is fast decreasing.

WE ALL FORGET. We all move on with new friends. The old ones fade away from our memory. Wives of the new friends invite us over for dinner. "The chicken is awesome," I say, while taking another piece from the steaming pot. "Where did you learn the recipe?" "Oh this friend of mine from high school called Sid taught me. He was a great cook," the bhabi shines in praise.

"Oh! I used to stay with this guy called Sid," you add in. "I was supposed to meet him last February."

More on marriage

2005-11-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

So this is what happened. My apt mate S (and I'm sure a lot of people will think that S and I are the same person) showed me some profiles on a matrimonial site that looked identical (please don't ask me why S checks out matrimonial profiles - specially coz he's not planning to get married anytime soon). It was like multiple women having the exact same profile and demands. So I jokingly told S that I can automate the whole process :) Finally this afternoon I decided to take a break from preparing for my presentation and built this. Please try it out :)

P.S. The objective was just to show that genuine sounding marriage profiles can be created in an automated fashion. The profiles are fairly dynamic i.e. you will get something new if you redo the exact same search. There are lotsa other cooler things that can be done but I have a PhD to complete - so do it yourself :)

P.P.S. And many thanks to Teleute for beta testing the initial version of this :)

Under Where?

2005-11-27T16:37:00.000-08:00

I'm confused again. This time the topic of confusion is "underwear and the media". Yup! Moi is totally confounded by the way underwear is advertised, and it's time to speak up.

It all started when I read the line "she is a Victoria Secret model" in an article. Accompanying the article was the picture of an oooh la la woman, dressed in ... aah ... hmmm ... well, lessay she came with almost no strings attached. Yanyway! This visual made me think of all the undergarment ads that I've ever seen and I realized that the media probably got it all wrong. And it's not just female models that I'm talking abt. I've seen women drool over all those CK hunks. Those guys don't have six packs - they have more like fifteen. Chiseled jaws, pecked chests, sinewy torsos and nothing but a skimpy underwear on. Standing all wet with an unshaven look. Women going "whoaaaaa, just look at him."

Sadly, it's not women who buy men's underwear, but men who do so and (the same logic holds true for women's lingerie). And what do you think the average man is thinking when he sees this ad - he's like "Hmmm! Even with that pair of undies I'm not going to get those whistles. For all you know it'll just make those women realize just how different I am from these men."

Yup! The average man is likely to get terribly intimidated by six packed underwear models. Hunky bare chested men don't appeal to us (or at least most of us). Naaaaa! We want to see some flab. Give us six packs but fill those packs with some butter and cheese man. Show a balding guy with a tattoo gone wrong, standing with his red pair of boxers on ... with the line "Didn't the red take your eyes off his belly?" Now that's what I call a killer ad. You show me that ad and you have a red underwear customer in me and I'm no exception mind you.

The same logic holds true for women too. Isn't it ironic that they always use models for promoting lingerie that men would rather have naked in the first place. Why do that? I can see people screaming "Oh! Men want their girl friends to look like that and buying those skimpies will accomplish that!" Yeah sure! If I were to believe that some girl dating me will turn into a Gisele Bundchen if I spent $100 on her ... well, it doesn't speak volumes abt my intelligence - does it? So really - keep it real.

P.S. And what's this with men flaunting the elastic of their underwear? The day is not too far when all that men will care abt their underwear will be the elastics and trust me - that wont be a pretty sight :)

They finally got me :(

2005-11-25T01:53:00.000-08:00

Casablanca is convinced that I'm using my blog for wife hunting! First the posts abt marriage (if any woman falls for me after hearing my shallow advice on gifts I'll be most amused); then the podcasts (I can speak = I am not dumb baby) and now I have put up my photographs (incidentally I've been posting photos since last year). Why else will a guy do all this, if his inner intentions are not to find matrimonial bliss using his blog?

Yeah sure :) And all those suckers actually thought that desi matrimonial portals were the way to go. How daft! Don't they know that the first thing desi parents do on waking up every morning is go blog-hopping?

"Aji sunte ho? Did you find anyone worthwhile for our beti Dhanno?" the doting mom asks.

The agitated father shouts back. "Oh no way! All these bloggers have been writing abt IIPM and what not! No blogger has posted his views on marriage or his photos. How can we find a good husband for our beti this way?"

"Jii, what abt that Nandy chap? You said that he had posted his voice and photo and even hinted that he has a sweet father?"

"Oh please. His podcast was abt sleeping beauty and kissing and what not! Too modern for our beti. I don't think he will be a good choice for Dhanno. We should go for someone with a more serious blog. Maybe one of those journalists. Kya bolti ho?"

Now doesn't that seem like a plausible breakfast conversation?

Hmmmm! Now let's just step back here and rationalize abt my objectives. I must be obviously thinking that some girl (or even better - girls) will fall for me after reading my blog. Now that I have millions of suitors, who've read my views on a wide range of inane topics, heard my voice and seen me eat, they'll obviously contact me. Blog readers will send me emails reading:

"Dear Sagnik. I've read your blog and want to marry you (or at least make friendship with you). Obviously you are all that I dream of. You can write (or at least type), you can speak and you baby, will treat me to tikka kebabs as well. Now how do we go abt the whole marriage thing from here?"

Now I don't even have to try and explain how excited I'll be on receiving this email. I'll instantly reply back saying:

"Aaaah! This is wonderful. It is like we were made for each other. Why else will you like my blog? All my rants on topics ranging from mid-80s Hindi movies to similarly dressed twins have come to use now. Please send me the link to your blog so that I too can make up my mind. We can then have our families read both our blogs and make the final decision."

Yada yada yada! I'll obviously love her blog. Leave comments on it. She'll reply. I'll comment back. Our families will leave comments too. At some point a random guy will come and say that he likes our blog and he too has compiled a great site for dating. We will realize that it is a spam and turn word verification on. By the end of the year we'll get married. Next December we'll have our first child. We will put his/her photo on our blog and even call him Blogu ... wow ... this is so freakin exciting ...

4 Steps to a GREAT Thanksgiving Lunch

2005-11-24T21:48:00.000-08:00

1. Waiting for food!

2. Aaaah! Food Arrives.

3. So does sweet deSSert!

4. You can't desert the dessert!

Papa now knows ...

2005-11-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

My dad now knows that I have a blog.

"What is it that you write on the Internet?" he enquires, making me visualize the Internet like a scroll of paper where I scribble.

"It's a blog Bubin. It's like a web diary. It comes from the term web log ..."

"Do you have to pay for it?" he cuts me short.

"No."

"Very good. You anyway spend too much money on movies."

He then bombards me with some more questions. "Who reads it?", "What is the link (he still doesn't use the term URL)?", "Do you have your photos on it?" and the likes. Blah blah!

But the coolest thing now is that every week he suggests things I should write abt on my blog. Whatever comes to his mind, the old man tells me, and then adds - "You should write in the Internet abt it" :))

"Have you written abt how Sourav Ganguly is being victimized?"

"No Bubin. I'm not writing abt Sourav Ganguly on my blog."

"Then tell me the link. I will go and write."

"Dad you can't write on my blog."

"What abt my observations on drunk people? Have you written abt them?"

"No Bubin. Trust me, you've been given ample footage on my blog. But I'm not going to write abt your drunk friends."

"At least write abt my latest observation. How children of actors and politicians in India make it big in the profession of their parents but singers and sportsmen traditionally don't. This just goes on to show that you need genuine talent to be a singer or sports person and nepotism can't help you much in these fields!"

"Ok! I'll mention this on my blog."

"Good! And send me the link. I will double check! And don't spend too much money on movies."

Southern Spice

2005-11-21T15:17:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems to be South Indian Movie Week on desi blogosphere. First this and now this. So I shall follow them and post this genuine question I've had for a while - is there any simple way of determining from South Indian movies who the hero is and who's the villain? I mean, if one is ignorant of the star system (defined as a simpleton who doesn't know the difference between Superstar vs. Megastar) and doesn't speak the language, can one still figure out who plays what, just by looking at the movie??

It all started years ago when my dad was posted in Chennai. Cable TV was a dream then. TV came with one channel that played a mix of local and national programmes. It was only a matter of time before dad became completely bored and started watching Tamil movies. What made this exercise very interesting was that Bubin watched movies without understanding a single line of what was being said. He concocted a story in his mind, based on what he saw, and then cross checked it with the land lady in the morning. On one such occasion, my dear dad saw a movie which ended with one moustached guy (A) killing of the other moustached guy (B). Based on this scene he traced back the story to be one where A was the hero, B was the villain and that at some point in the movie B had forcibly had sex with the heroine (which explained why A killed him). It was only later that Bubin found out that he had got the story all wrong. The movie it seems, was a tragedy (sob, sob) where the villain kills of the hero and hence the sex scene was actually one of love making between two lovers. All very interesting.

I grew up watching Hindi movies and they are very kind in this department. The hero always looks good and the villain always looks bad. Even when we have Tusshar Kapur as the hero, we make the villain look worse than him and trust me, that's a very daunting task :) We also normally keep our heroes clean shaven, while the villains sport fancy facial hair. There are exceptions to this rule though - like Anil Kapur, but in those movies we make the villain look that much more grotesque. Case in point Mr. India - remember how we gave Mogambo a golden hair dye and matching uniform to make it easy for the viewers. Remember Beta? Once again, to ensure viewer understanding, the villain Anupam Kher was given a huge bald patch, with electrocuted hair and even had a few teeth missing. Nope! We never went for subtlety - did we?

Sadly things don't seem to be so simple in movies from down South. Contrary to what you might think, I've actually seen quite a few Tamil movies (I used to date a Tamilian) and from the little that I've gathered, there seems to be no simple rule. I've seen movies where the hero had a moustache and the villain had a moustache, where the hero had a moustache and the villain dint have one (Shiva), where the hero dint have a moustache but the villain had one (I think it was called Run), where the hero was fat and the villain was thin, where the hero and villain were both fat etc. etc. etc. Come to think of it, I've even seen a Tamil movie where the hero and the villain were the same guy (some Kamal Hassan movie). So clearly there seems to be a rule of thumb missing. And with the thumb missing, there's lil I can do but just hand waive. So please help!

p.s. please read primalsoup's brilliant comment to this post - it deserves a post by itself :)

Audio Rant Again

2005-11-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

I tried go-karting this weekend and to be perfectly honest and modest - I rocked baby. I beat the second guy buy 2 laps and gloated abt my achievements to all and sundry. Also tried Peruvian food. Hmmmm! How did that go??? Well, lets just say that very rarely have I had one dinner and followed it up with another one instantly - ahem! Yanyways, recorded this audio rant as a response to something that I saw in the morning - listen to it if you want.

Part Three - return of the king (for his queen)

2005-11-17T20:56:00.000-08:00

Women have stopped talking to me thinking it was me who trained their men. Men have stopped talking to me thinking I've betrayed their trust by letting out their secrets. Animals give me dirty looks because that's what animals always do. And still I write the third part of this post as promised. Yes! ladies, gentleman and little Buzo - it's time to touch upon the all important topic of gifts. (For all those who haven't read the posts leading to this one - read this and that.)

Gifts are very very important in the "guy abroad and girl in India" romance. Gifts are the key to all the reservations she has in her mind against you. So play this card carefully. You have to keep in mind that you are trying to woo someone who hangs out with a lot of people whose boyfriends stay just next to them (sometimes even on top of them). So while these gal pals boast abt how "my guy surprised me with a bunch of roses last night" or "my guy is the most amazing kisser", your lady love has little to show off abt her long distance wooer. She tried mentioning the name of your university once or maybe she mentioned the salary you draw in your job but the moment her best friend's bike riding boyfriend got all her friends tickets for the latest Shahrukh Khan movie, everyone forgot abt you. Some day the thought will pop in her head - "it'll be so nice if my guy is here too". Bingo! That's when the gift helps.

The first gift is very important! You screw up with the first gift and you might not get a second chance. Don't start with flowers - if sent from US, they'll wither and if sent from some company back home, it wont impress her that much. Please don't send her a dress either; coz if you get the size wrong, you are dead - nothing hurts a girl as much as a beautiful dress she can't wear. Send her something that you still don't get in India OR something that is very expensive in India. Perfumes are as good as it gets. You make her smell good and she'll remember you everytime she smells that scent. Don't be cheap - go for one of the brands - nothing less than a Chanel or CK please. Play the first card well and thereafter you can be cheap and give her local brands and say "It's a new one that just came out and all the women in my office are raving abt it." But no compromises with the first one please.

The iPod Shuffle can be a great first gift too. A tad bit expensive mind you but a lot cheaper than what it is in India. Not only will the iPod speak for itself, it'll speak for you too. The next time her friends talk abt how their boyfriends did blah and bluh, all she'll have to do is plug the ear phones in her ear. All eyes will open and all mouths will shut. Yeah baby! If the Shuffle is too expensive for you - buy her a Palm Pilot. If that's expensive too OR if you are really cheap - settle for the best alternative - exotic chocolates. Mind you - the term is Exotic. Don't send her Nestle bars coz she can get that in India too. Go for Godiva. If you are really reallllly cheap - even a truck load of Ferrero Rochers can help. Coz these are chocolates that are still considered to be exotic in India and are much cheaper when bought here. So remember - the first gift should reinforce the notion that "my guy is a catch"!!

But the first gift is a double edged sword. A very expensive first gift increases expectations for a second one. And it's just a matter of time before her birthday comes and you can't blame her for expecting a big ring then (maybe even with a woman's best friend sitting in the middle). So the trick is to send one of those "cho chueeeet follow up gifts" just after you send the first gift. Say a big soft toy or flowers from India. This gift, if sent soon enough, will ease out her expectations, while keeping the first gift fresh in her memory. Thereafter you can send her three small gifts and a big one for every two months and she'll be happy.

Wooof! Am I glad that this topic is over???