All of you “bow” to the nude ladies.

Yesterday BBC reported a news item about Pamela Anderson’s letter to the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai. Before going any further into PETA, POTA, PEDA, SAMOSA etc, let me tell you that I am not a huge fan of such organisations except for the fact that they get celebrities to shed their clothes off pretty much without breaking a sweat. Although these organisations increase awareness among people regarding animals that are facing extinction, I have not read a piece of news in which an animal right activist group has proactively done anything to save any animal. I seriously suspect the very basis of existence of such organisations is to get good looking girls out there in the “open”. If my suspicion is true, I really am sorry for what follows.

A big warm Fuck you to all the so called pseudo animal lovers out there. I have listened and read through many debates on stray dog killing in many parts of India including the vehement vocal diarrhoea of another female similar to Pam although she never sheds any clothes. Yes Sir I am talking about Maneka Gandhi. All these shmucks come up with protests, interviews, debates and what not when a Municipality takes some action to control the number of stray dogs in a city. These so called animal lovers can ramble about how it is inhuman to kill a rabid dog or to kill stray dogs to prevent attack on human beings, when they travel around in their “oh so posh” luxury cars and have all their needs fulfilled by their servants. These morons do not understand the plight of a common man who has to actually walk on the streets or ride on them on a bike or a cycle.

I live in Bangalore and I have to wake up to news articles saying 1 year old babies have been bitten to death, old people wounded severely and bike riders having accidents caused by stray dogs. I have a question to all these SAMOSA parties, what about these people? Do you feel sympathy only towards rabid dogs? Hmm love for nude girls and rabid dogs. Have the thought crossed your mind that you might need help? My tasteless sarcasm aside, what have you people done to keep cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai etc to resolve this issue? It is very easy to blame the government for not controlling the stray dog population in the cities. What should the government do? Send half of their staff out to catch dogs and sterilise them? Spend money that they have set aside for various other works to tag dogs and make sure that the ones that copulate are sterilised? If Pamela Anderson or for that matter any rich celebrity feels so strongly about the stray dogs, and wants the government of some developing country to do something about it, they should just go and donate half of her earnings to the Municipalities so that they don’t have to look into the sky and weep when the Court orders them to catch hold of the dogs and sterilise them. I have a big circle of friends and many of them including me love animals and almost all of us hate Maneka Gandhi with much passion. It is not because she loves animals; it is because of the fact that she springs into action only when there is some publicity associated with it. People like her are a real hindrance to a dream of our streets ever being safe for people like me. Many of us are genuinely afraid to walk the small galis of Bangalore after 10 pm. It is not because of the threat of mugging but the threat that a pack of 10-15 stray dogs might attack you. Like I said before it is easy for these celebrities to get out of their clothes and preach about not killing stray dogs but when you look into it these people have not done anything for a cause they feel so strongly about.

If Pamela had made a donation of say 10,000 $ to the municipality, which would not have been very difficult for her, I would have had some respect for her. Instead she writes a letter saying dogs cannot wear condoms. I wonder if their next demand would be to allocate additional staff during the dog mating season so that they can hide in small bushes and pounce on the dog holding a packet of Kamasutra/Moods/Durex when it gets ready to do the business because clearly these celebs will not allow the dogs to be killed and our government is not rich enough to throw money away to sterilise and tag every stray dog in India.

I have one request to all the pseudo animal lovers out there. Go ahead and love the animals in whichever way you want, I would not question that. But if you guys have ever used a mosquito coil in your house do not stand and complain when my municipality is taking steps to make me feel safe you fucking hypocrites. Also if you want people to take you seriously, please nude girls is not the solution. If you have not learned it by now dont learn it any time soon and keep the nude girls coming. We shall always “bow wow” to them and you but we will always say fuck you too.

DEJAVU

I am not a pessimist in many ways, however, when I think about the safety of an individual in India in the future, sugar, spice and everything nice gets drained out of me. After my relocation to Bangalore, I have also become a part of the large crowd of people who spends their time watching news, following updates, chatting with friends about how cruel the incident was, calling everyone you know to find out if they are safe, as soon as a terrorist attack takes place. A crowd that can never fully understand the pain felt by people who were victim to such attacks, a crowd that wants to be the first person to blog about the incident in his blog. Being part of such a crowd suffocates me. It causes anger to boil inside of me, causing every cell in my body to despise and hate the terrorists.

But I see what is going to happen one day after the events settle down. The opposition party will cry foul about how the ruling party has handled the issue. Some social activists/writers/journalists will say how instead of throwing stones at each other, all should come together and fight terrorists. The news channels will run 30 second clips of blood smeared pavements/floors/walls in never ending loops. Online discussion forums will have idiots belonging to different religions ranting about whose father’s dick is bigger. World leaders will come up with statements strongly despising the act of cowardice. Some extremist religious group will stand up and claim responsibility. People will hate the extremist group with all of their heart guts liver etc.

I also see what is going to happen after one week. News channels will hold interviews with the relatives of the unfortunate people who were in the middle of the attack and these people will put on a great show fully utilising their 15 minutes of fame. News channels will run talk shows with people discussing the inefficiency of the government, with BJP, Congress and SP representatives yakking about how they controlled terrorism better than the other. The news papers would try to dissect the origin of the terrorist group and the motive behind the attack. The anguish and the sense of being unsafe shall reduce a bit. Intelligence bureau would miraculously discover the entire plot and publish it to the media including the main hideouts of terrorists even before raiding such places. High profile religious leader’s would condemn the act and say it is against the teachings of the religion. Irrespective of all the statements made by religious leader’s people will continue to hate the religious group and the religion. The whose father’s dick is bigger discussions will continue.

I can see what will happen one month later also. Channels and news papers will remind everyone that one month has passed on since the terrible events took place. Political parties would continue blaming each other. The false sense of safety settles back into the minds of people who fail to comprehend that they could be the next target. The people will continue to hate the religion that the attackers belong to. The whose father’s dick is bigger argument would turn to whose mother is a whore argument.

I have some questions.

The first one is to the terrorist dumb fucks.

Why don’t you people sit back and reconcile what you are achieving out of terrorism? People in India will forget about your heroics in just one month. People will never remember your faces, your names or your existence. All you achieve after blasting bombs killing people in the name of religion is that you become successful in demeaning your own religion in the eyes of the world. DO you seriously think you are succeeding in your fight for your religion?

The second is to the dumb fuck religious leaders.

Why do you come and preach after the blasts rather than preaching against terrorism and guiding young minds in a more constructive direction?

Third is to the dumb fuck politicians.

Would you bastards ever do anything good for this country?

The last question is to you.

Do you think you are safe?

Think again.

NB: I felt like writing a lot of things I know that happens in UP that, if controlled can really set back the terrorist activities in India. But I shall write about that in a later post.DEJJAV

That’s a bunch of Bull.. or avante ammommede…

The blogger in me was dormant for the past few weeks as I have been quite busy with my life and was totally engrossed in some games that I really wanted to finish playing during my free time. As far as I am concerned, my blog is a medium to express my opinion and share it to the world at large and the urge for me to blog comes when I feel the need to express my opinion about stuff I encounter daily, if I have time for it that is.

My friend shared an article about World Philosophy Day hosted in BBC magazine site and written by one Mr David Baine who is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. I had absolutely no qualms with the beginning paragraphs of the article where the author is telling what the world expects of philosophers and what they really are and all. However, as the intro came to an end, the author came up with 4 “pesky arguments to apply your minds to”. I read through all the four questions and their arguments and my reaction is “avante ammommede $%@%”. The questions and the so called philosophical arguments given bellow each are nothing but absolute nonsense. I like philosophy even though I’m an engineer and I like listening to debates, sometimes even taking part in friendly ones, although after a few arguments I come up with nonsensical arguments that irritate the opposing party and the entire debate turns to an abuse fest. When I started reading the article I was genuinely interested and as I finished it left me terrifically irritated. Here are my reasons

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

First of all the subject itself is pure idiocy and the arguments that the idiot comes up to painstakingly try and create an atmosphere of argument is pathetic. Everyone in the world would say no to the question above. Oh but wait, the philosophy expert has some clever scenarios that are VERY similar to the case above or so he thinks. He talks about a kidnapping scenario and a people tied to the tracks scenario. First of all what idiot kidnapper would give a loaded gun to the person he kidnapped? To the guy in the tram I would say “Does the word brakes mean anything to you?”. I stand corrected if the first scenario was out of any one of the Saw movies and in the second scenario, the author himself was in the tram. If that’s not the case the answer is obvious, you kill the one person and save the remaining five.

However, I fail to understand how these two scenarios are the same as killing a perfectly healthy person to save five other people when there is no influencing factor involved. The 6 characters are not even remotely connected, the six characters need to have the same blood group and the most important thought does a human body have that many organs, that can cause death, which can be replaced? I am not great in biology, heck, I sucked in biology except for the ninth standard class about reproduction, but even I know that the replaceable organs that unless replaced can kill a man are heart, kidney, lung and liver. The other organs that can be transplanted from dead donors are pancreas, intestine, penis, cornea etc and none of these transplants can save a dying man’s life. So when I applied my mind to the first pesky argument the reaction I had was “avante ammommede…”

2. ARE YOU THE SAME PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE?

Like my very good friend, who has a nasal problem, I like chaos, relativity and stuff like that. Even when I was a kid I was always fascinated about my existence as an organism, how my brain works and all. I believe that what gives us our individuality is our brain and that what is stored inside it. Like I said before I am not good in biology but the sentences this philosopher dude writes pains me. Philosophy is interesting when the philosopher is intelligent and imaginative and it can be unadulterated irritation when idiots attempt philosophy because they could not get admission for a better course. The author is rambling incoherent stuff and his so called findings are inconclusive and illogical. He talks about wiping the brain of 2 people and loading it with recorded brain mappings and then he talks about relativity, matter etc. Person cannot be in the two different places he says. How the hell would two people become one if their brains are remapped with the same recorded info? Even the arnie flick the sixth day showed the scenario pretty decently.

3. IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?

This is the most idiotic of the four arguments. Had mastermind philosopher used the refraction and optical illusion argument to come to the conclusion that how we perceive stuff with our eyes may not be how they actually appear, I would have been amused. But the idiot connects that with existence of items and says that the computer screen that you are looking at does not exist because of the arguments. Saying that the green colour seen by me would not be the same as the green colour seen by Obama would have been a nice argument. Like stuff that looks green to me may look blue to someone else even though we both call it red. What the author uses as supporting argument for the statement that the computer screen is not in front of me is not at all supportive like a 36 DD size bra worn by a 32 A size woman.

4. DID YOU REALLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE?

I like this question the most as the sarcasm in it gave me a brief moment of happiness in the middle of the pain this article had caused to my brain. However, my happiness came to an abrupt end when I knew that the author did not mean it the way I perceived. The author elaborates on one Mr Fred, very similar to Joe the Plumber of Mr Mcain, who could have predicted before big bang that I would have read the damn article. Ok how does some dude knowing that I would read this shit today billions of years ago affect my ability to choose what I read? Some of the lines irritated me so much that I had this feeling that question 3 would come true very soon. I buy Skoar magazine for the free games that they give. There is an interesting piece in their letters section called “retard of the month”. The section showcases the most idiotic letter of the idiotic letters that the magazine receives. There is a small Japanese cartoon strip that shows a sweet looking girl smiling and the subtitle says “you are a fucking retard”. The author’s arguments reminded me of that picture.

There is a conclusion also and the first paragraph of the conclusion made me think that I had been wrong all the time and the author was trying to show how meaningful arguments are needed for the right conclusion to be arrived at. I realised that was not the case when I read the paragraph again.

It is people like these who give the general public the opinion that philosophy is nothing but bullshit arranged in an incoherent and disorderly fashion. My views about the article may be incorrect but the conclusion I have drawn is that indeed it has “Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt”. The ironic fact is that the arguments that I relied on while arriving at this conclusion does not provide sane, rigorous, and illuminating accounts of central aspects of our existence: freewill, morality, justice, beauty, consciousness, knowledge, truth, meaning etc. I may be pardoned coz I bullshit you not I am not a philosopher. Not even close.

Mr. Venkat! this post is the result of our company’s stupid ad..

Advertising always attracted me, even from the time when the only channel you could watch was far sight. I used to thoroughly enjoy the ads of Boost, Complan, Nirma, Maggi, Campco, Lijjat Pappad lifebuoy etc. Even now, when the 200 channels of my television are jammed with different channels showing programs ranging from totally irrelevant news to 13456^th episodes of saans bahu soaps and the thousands of ads that come up between them, I remember what Campco chocolate ad’s jingle used to be. Unfortunately the advertisement brainiacs now-a-days don’t come up with sweet jingles like “Aao bachchon thume khilaaon chocolate hindustaan ki….”, instead we have lines like “Kit Kat mehnathi naujavaan cowboys banaathe hai”, with video clipping that shows shirtless, Brokeback Mountainish guys crushing chocolate and nut in ural using ulakkas, with their sweat dripping onto the chocolate and nuts, which makes me squirm in my seat and to end the ad a cacophonic voice tries to croak “Kit-kat break banta hai”. Seriously? I mean Seriously?? To be fair to the companies like Bajaj who still come up with good ads, I must say not all ads that are made now-a-days are bad.

Occasionally do companies come up with ads that are as bad as the ad with Mr Venkat and Mr HCL that too from a company that came up with the line “our numbers do the talking”. The first ad showed that from the micro bacteria that rest in your unwashed underwear to the dirty paan stains that adorns most of the govt. offices in UP, HCL is behind everything and everyone. This is the best example of how to make an ad that not only tarnishes the image of the company but drives away potential customers who might be even remotely interested in the company.

Here is the full ad with dialogues that they censored. The words in italics and the words that are struck off were strategically edited off from the film or overlaid by good dubbing artists.

Mr HCL: Lift Please

Mr Venkat: Sure hop in.

V: Oh computer guy eh?

H: Duh! Dude I work for HCL

V: Oh ok so you don’t know anything about computers?

H: That’s not what I meant.

V: That’s what a common man would understand.

H: So what do you do?

V: Im an investment banker

H: What the hell are you doing driving in the middle of a desert?

V: What the hell are YOU doing in the middle of the desert? I was only driving by.

H: Ok Ok leave that. Did you know that we power the stock market.

V: Dude you seriously think an investment banker is that dumb?

H: Oh and guess what the stock market just crashed!!

Mr Venkat suddenly applies break. The car skids a bit and comes to a stop.

V: Pha panna $#@%$#$% mone. Ninte ammoommede $#@$#@#%$. You don’t even have mobile network in the middle of this desert and you suddenly say stock market crashed. What do you take me for?

Gives one tight slap to Mr HCL.

H: Oh sorry Mr Venkat I didn’t mean to scare you.

V: Scare me? You are bloody irritating the crap out of me! And seriously who wears pink shirts to work? Are you like gay or something?

H (with tears in his eyes): Yes

Mr Venkat feels sorry for him and decides to go easy on Mr HCL from now.

H: See that ATM? We connect it to the bank.

V: Ya ya you are great.

H: See that laptop that kids are playing with? It is our company’s school PC program.

V: But I thought that was a Compaq laptop.

H: Nonsense Compaq does not make laptops; they are a movers and packers company.

V: Sigh

H: Mr Venkat my ride is here.

V: Is that bull your ride?

H points to a helicopter

H: No I am going overseas for a live science project and Mr Venkat, that is a…

V: Ya it’s a cow. Ha Ha. You peeked between the animal’s leg this fast? And what the hell is the helicopter doing in the middle of nowhere. Who is your boss? Osama?

H: No Mr Venkat you see my company couldn’t afford to buy me tickets to USA so I was hoping I could hitchhike all the way to US. First it was a cycle, then a bike, then your car and now the helicopter. I hope to catch a plane next. Oh and in India the latest fad is for the groom to arrive in a helicopter for his wedding. Most probably the pilot is waiting for the bridegroom party to arrive.

H: Oh I forgot to ask. Where are you heading Mr Venkat?

V: My wife is pregnant. I couldn’t get train and flight tickets so thought would drive all the way.

H(running away from the car) : Oh Mr. Venkat did you say your wife was pregnant? Our team at HCL was behind it. When did she test positive? Was it last month? Then I myself must be behind it.

V: Bastaaaaaaaaaaaard!!!!

H (to Helicopter pilot): Hello bhaiyya. Lift milega?…

I wish they would have stopped it with that single ad. But no, for the love of God how could they do that? They went ahead and made a sequel. I can understand the need of filmmakers to make sequels to shitty movies where producers try hard to get back some of the cash they lost the first time. But a sequel to an ad that was unbelievably irritating, oh man that’s unbelievable.

When the first plan to hitchhike to US failed, Mr HCL takes a loan from a reputed banking firm at a very low rate. Since HCL was behind the stock market, they just told the bank if they didn’t reduce the interest, they would turn off the screen on which the stock data runs. As you can see the bank had no choice. Mr HCL gets the tickets and is sitting in the waiting area and guess what? guess what? Mr Venkat sits opposite to him and when the boarding call comes, accidently takes Mr HCL’s jacket.

V: Damn!! Suddenly my jacket smells like my feet!

Mr HCL gets up from his chair and wears Mr Venkat’s jacket.

H: Wow! the air-condition in the waiting area is good. My jacket is as good as new.

In the mean time Mr Venkat is on his way to the plane.

Sardarji and his wife: Oye Paajee Thank you. Our business was small your IT has changed our life. After my wifu bought HCL computer our bhainssaa is giving extra 3 litres of milk pajee. Your company is great pajee.

Kid from bus to the flight: Hey you are the guys who made this game and the software and the machine that the game is running on and the hands that are holding the machine and the body the hands are attached to. Oh wait. Daddy…..!!!

Pilot of the flight: Oh because of you our flys flights have become a lot safer. The tip of our penis plane does not get stuck and it is never left open causing an embarrassing situation.

(The Sardarji and his wife is understandable, the bastard kid in the bus is imaginable but, a pilot roaming around in the aisle? Well maybe it’s a low cost airline and the pilot may be multi-tasking. My bad.)

By the time Mr Venkat finds his seat and sits on it, Mr HCL follows and says a sentence which no sane man who got his smelly jacket replaced with a fresh one from a guy whose wife’s chastity was questioned would say.

H: Mr Venkat can I have my jacket back.

V: Mr HCL!!!! I was thinking how come my jacket became this smelly!

H: On second thoughts you better have it on.

Hot girl with HCL laptop: Oh you work for HCL? Just look at this damn laptop, this is not switching off! The pilot just came by and told me to switch off all electronic equipment.

V: But I.. I don’t work… I am not….

Mr HCL gives a wicked grin from the back seat.

If Only..

The life of a middle class youngster in India mostly passes through a predetermined track set by the society and the educational system in India. The Times of India reports that only 10% of the Indian students are able to get higher education. The statistics clearly states that the higher education system in India is inadequate to cater the needs of the millions of students of this country. This is the prime reason behind the difficulty level of entrance exams to institutions offering higher studies. We see news of youngsters with 97% being denied admission to institutions. What do these youngsters lack? Is it intelligence, hard work, perseverance or luck? I believe what they lack is the support from the government in the form of more educational institutions so that they are not denied the right to obtain good education. Till such time, the rat race that we all are part of shall continue unabated.

The path that a student treads in India does not differ a lot as a good portion of the youngsters are slaves to the norms of the middle class. This is very true in my case. When I was in 10^th class the most important thing in my life was to get a good percentage in the final exam. In 12^th the most important thing was to get a good rank in the entrance exam. Thankfully, my college allowed me to take a short break in the rat race, but by the end of the college days the most important thing was to get a job and so on. Now, when I look back at my life, there are  two events when I wish I was not just a stereotypical Indian who has the need to be financially secure and safe always running in the back of the mind at all times.

Event 1:

This happened back in college days. A couple of girls from my college and me were travelling back to the college from the nearby city. A drunken man was in the bus and while he was getting down at a stop, he brushed onto one of the girls. I should have reacted and should have broken his hand but I don’t know what happened to me, I remained stiff in my seat. Somehow it was like I didn’t give a damn what happened to my friend. Even today I cannot correctly place the reason for my cowardice. Maybe it was the fear of getting into a police case and ruining my career, I do not know. Although I do not remember the reason for me being a statue at the time of need, I would never forget the look that my friend gave me after the bus started. In my mother tongue we say “to melt down in shame”, I understood the exact meaning of the phrase that day.

After that incident when I got back to my hostel, I felt so bad that I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t let such a thing happen again in my presence. Similar incidents took place in my college life and I had reacted upon the miscreants rather strongly. Whatever I do as a penitence for that day will not erase it from my life. Even today sometimes I think “If only…”.

Event 2:

The event above is the only instance in my life when some chemical imbalance in my head prevented me from thinking the right way and helping someone. After college when I got a job and was posted in one of the worst place in India, I came face-to-face with another face of the Indian society where women are treated like slaves with utmost disrespect. During that period another event happened that would leave a scar in my heart forever.

I had a small gang of friends in the project site who were as crazy as me about travel and tourism. The major coordinator of all these trips used to be a Bihari guy (B) who was 30 something, unmarried and desperate to have some fun. Some of the drivers and mechanics who worked in the company gave him a very beautiful picture of Nepal which had nymphomaniac girls waiting to fall on you in casinos, massage parlours and “cabin bars”. He was very enthusiastic about the trip and we made a group of 4 which included him a similar guy from Orissa (O), a senior from my state (K) who is one of the best human beings I have encountered in my life and myself. Details of the journey shall be told in another post. We went to Pokhra first, where my good friends B and O tried their level best to convince me and K to allow them to call call-girls to their room. We protested and he conceded, this sequence happened in every place we visited. K and me thought they were joking with us and playing pranks by asking us to allow them to go about their business. Finally, when we had some time to spare in Kathmandu after shopping, B wanted to visit a “cabin bar”.

I take a break to explain the picture of a cabin bar that the drivers gave to my good friend. They told him that a cabin bar is like a normal pub where sexy girls in skirts serve you beer and you can coochie coo with them without any problem and they will ensure you have a good time with the beer. In India we only have King of good times and the thought of girls of good times in plush bars where you have the privacy of cabins, looked very inviting to him.

He said he wanted to go to a cabin bar and O said he is game. K and me were totally against the idea and refused to jump into the bandwagon, and told them to carry on without us. This irked B a lot and he started saying we came together for this trip, till now I have listened to whatever you said now u have to come with me etc. The situation was getting bad and it seemed our trip would take a bad turn from there. Finally K and I reluctantly decided to accompany them to this cabin bar thing. After much searching and walking, B finally located a cabin bar in a poorly lit street off one of the markets in Kathmandu. He forced us to go through a door that seemed a lot like the doors of old barber shops in Kerala, multicoloured glass panes on a wooden frame. What happened next is best described in screenplay format.

Scene 1

B guides the travellers towards the cabin bar door and opens it.

TRINGGGGGGGG [shrill sound of alarm]

Me: What the Fuck. An alarm!!

K: Do we look that bad?

M[panicks]: Hello! This is serious. What if this is a trap?

K: Relax.

B: Chalo [come] lets go in yaar [friend].

O: Chalo [come].

The gang follows B’s lead and go into the bar. What they see is nowhere near the picture of a cabin bar given by the mechanics and drivers. It looks like a shabby toddy shop with small cabins. The bar was filled with a musky odour and looked damp and unclean.

M: Seriously! This place is bad. Coming here is not a good idea.

K: I told you. But you thought if we don’t come we may spoil this trip. You reap what you saw.

Once the sound of the alarm bell subsided, shabbily dressed girls rushed in from different parts of the bar and starts inviting us inside.

M[whispering]: Hey K sir, we both will sit in a cabin and drink beer. Let them sit in another cabin and do what they want.

K: ok

So K and M moves into one cabin and B and O to another. After a while 3 girls come into the cabin.

Girl 1[almost imitating Helen in mannerism and tone]: Kya Chahiye? [what do you want?]

M: Er.. Beer. Beer Chahiye. [want beer]

Girl2 [trying to lean onto M]: Offo! Beer peen eke liye aaya yehan par? [what? You came here to drink beer?]

M[to K]: Sir.. help. Please.

K: Sorry dude. You handle.

M: Yes yes. Ham beer peene ke liye aaya. [we came to drink beer]

All three girls starts laughing and mutters “beer peene ke liye aaya. Hee hee”

G1: Theek Hai. Bas beer chaiye? [ok. You want only beer?]

M: Yes yes. Two please.

M starts sweating and K seems to be enjoying M’s discomfort. The girls giggle and leave the cabin to get the beer.

M: K sir.. this is betrayal. You should help me.

K: Ha ha. You are handling it very well.

In the mean time muffled sounds of laughter and words like “oye kidhar ja rahi hai?”, “mere saath aaongi?” etc can be heard from the cabin of B and O. The girls come back with the beer.

G1: Khol doon? [shall I open?]

M: Yes yes please.

G2: Ab kya chahiye? [Now what will you have?]

M: K sir… Please ask them to leave.

K: You tell them no?

G1 [edging closer to M]: Aur kuch naheen chahiye? Eh? Eh? [sure you don’t want anything else?]

M: Naheen wo saab bathayenga. [no that sir will tell you]

K: What the…?

M: Ha ha.

G1 [now moving closer to K]: Haan to aapkpo kya chahiye tha? [what is it that you wanted to have?]

K: Kya milta hai? [What do you get here?]

G2 [Helen syle with fake shyness]: Sab Kuch [Everything]

K[looking at the menu]: Pakora milega? [Can I have pakhoras?]

G1: Kya? [what?]

M: What the? You were supposed to send them away.

K: I wanted pakora.

The girls giggle and leave.

M: This is too much. I will ask them if you can’t.

K: Go ahead.

After some time the girls come back with the pakhoras.

G2: Ab bataiye aapko aur kya chaahiye. [now tell us what else do you wish to have]

M[in a single breath]: Dekho behan ham yehan sirf unke saath aaye hai aur humko wo naheen chahiye jo unko chahiye. Hamko bas beer or pahkora chahiye aur kuch naheen. Isliye please aap us cabin mein jaayiye.

[Look sister, we just came here with them and we dont want to have what they want to have. We just want our beer and pakhora and nothing else. Please go to the other cabin]

The girls leave dumbstruck and slowly leaves the cabin.

M: See see. I told them to go away. Ha ha. I did it.

K: Ya I admire your courage. Finish the beer.

M: I feel like killing B for bringing me here.

K: Ya well it’s another experience.

The door to the cabin opens and G1 enters.

G1: Dekho sir. Aaapne hamein behan bulaya. Yehan pe first aadmi hai jo haemin behan bulaya. Aapke saath aaya aadmi humse bol raha hai ki uske saath sone ke liye hotel jaane ko. Main us type ka ladki naheen hoon. Ghar mein paisa naheen hai isliye haemin ye sab karna padta hai. Paisa hota to ham ye sab naheen karte. Kya aap hamara kuch madad kar sakta hai?

[Look sir. You called me sister. You are the first person who has called me sister here. The person who came with you is asking me to accompany him to the hotel to sleep with him. I am not that kind of a girl. At home we are short on cash that is why we have to do all this. If we had cash we wouldn’t do this. Can you help us in some way?]

I stop the screen play here.

Now the girl might have changed the tactic to extract some money from me knowing that K and I are not there for the usual business. But at that point I thought otherwise and I assured the girl that my friend was just joking and that he didn’t mean anything he said. I really wanted to shomehow help her and the rest of the girls out of there, but I didn’t know how to do it. I am no fictional hero of a bollywood movie who could take on a gang of ghurkas attacking with kukhri singlehandedly. All I could do was console her and give her some money and get the very drunk B & O out of that place with the help of K. When I turned back and looked, the girls gathered together and waved their hands saying bye to us smiling and I came out of that place thinking “If Only….”.

Journalism – News = Reality TV?

There was a time when I used to be awestruck by the efficiency of the TV news journalists covering news about everything under the sky. I used to stare at the screen and mutter “man these guys are good!” This was a long time ago, when seeds of 24 hour news channels were beginning to sprout on a barren range of frequencies. The appreciation of these channels and the shows they aired started deteriorating the moment I saw a late night news item in a news channel which covered the attack of a chudail (witch) in a local public school. This reminds me of an episode of my college life and a rather amusing timepass that we had.

There were many B-grade crime/detective magazines available that had mastered the art of linguistics at par with Godess Saraswathi (Hindu Goddess of knowledge). These magazines came into prominence when they published leaked pictures of some girls having fun in their hostel rooms in a very famous college in Cochin. The magazines used to publish stories of missionaries/swamis having illicit affairs, unsolved crimes, missing people etc. What attracted us guys to these magazines was their ready availability, minimal cost and to top it all semi naked pictures of women ranging from heroines to pot bellied aunties. However, once the pictures on the magazines were ogled at, our attention went into the elaborate wordings in the magazines. To keep the government from banning these magazines, the pictures were censored by strategically placed black bars and the stories were narrated in sentences that hid chee chee words in clever double meaning sentences.

The most entertaining read of the entire magazine would be an unsolved crime being autopsied and dissected to itsy bitsy pieces. Say a person, mostly innocentvillagebabe02, was missing or killed by either a kaamaveriyan (sex maniac) neighbour or a vithukaala (bull used for breeding) missionary/swami. Based on the relevancy of the characters in the stories the article used to have pictures of where they used to have their chaaya and parippuvada (tea and lentil fritters), the road they used to tread to go to college/school/bath/do potty etc. These articles were so damn funny that we used to sit together, read the magazine and laugh our brains out. I was missing out on these stupid timepasses till I saw news programmes being aired that seemed vaguely similar to the way the articles were presented in the magazines.

This brings us back to the story of the chudail that send jitters down the spine of hapless gaaon ki chorees (village girls) when they had a tough exam to crack. This news piece was aired in the “best Hindi news channel” and was done with so much enthusiasm that I sat down and watched the entire coverage for a whole 60 minutes. They had intricate details about the chudail with video clips of a young girl babbling stuff like red saree, daanth (teeth), khoon (blood) etc. The girl said that the chudail scared her and said some unparliamentary stuff which she refused to tell the camera person. At this point I was laughing so damn hard that I toppled the can of beer that I was drinking. I was thinking, this should inspire the Ramsay brothers to come up with a movie that has a chudail in red saree, fake jumbo canines and chewed bubblegum spat all over her face. Unfortunately, it seems no one but me was crazy enough to sit through the whole 60 minutes and watch the journalist trying to play Sherlock and the local village guide playing Watson.

This was the beginning. Later on I started surfing news channels after 11 pm daily to find numerous such programs, where such dare-devil journalists risked their lives and wives to come up with great stories about paranormal activities affecting the otherwise normal lives of poor villagers. I once saw a show where the journalist hid behind a bush near an old haveli at 12 midnight under the cover of the harsh spotlight shone on him by the cameraman/men to see if ghosts came out of the haveli. I salute the courage of these men who risked their lives to give us fully lit shots of local bushes near the haveli in the middle of the night. It even had Blair witch project style clips where the journo crept towards the haveli, still gloriously lit by the spotlight to get a better look at the ghosts of the dilapidated building. Other than the fact that everyone and their mothers saw the blue underwear of the journo flashing under the spotlight when he was crawling in the bushes on national television, the scariest thing about crawling in bushes is the fact that in rural areas, such bushes are places where people go to do their business with a lotta (small pot) of water.

If that does not scare you, you have to send your resume to “~” (You will understand if you are quick enough). The ghost stories soon turned into broke love affairs, cheating house wives, miracles of bad photoshop etc.

“Hamara khullasa. Do sar waala aadmi. Kya aap vishvaas kar sakte hain kudrat ka ye karishma? Kya hamare scientist logon se pehle cloning jaanti thee prithvi maa? Aise daravne tasveer jo aapke jigar mein ek kaamp jaga degi.”

Translation:

“Our scoop. A man with two heads. Can you believe this miracle of nature? Did mother earth know cloning before our scientists? Such horrifying pictures that will rouse a shiver in your heart”

After this garbage they show a badly photoshopped image of some local villager + a cow + a deer and you bend down and puke.

The editors of the magazines were talented enough to invent stories with so much intrigue and twists that you feel really amused after reading them and sometimes you might even start believing that in every ashram and convent nothing holy happens most of the times. The on screen counterparts to such magazines, although subtle in the content, were not convincing enough and my roommate and I often wondered if anyone could believe such idiotic stories in the first place.

One evening after office when we all sat down for chai and chatter, a supervisor from a rural village of Punjab who we all lovingly called khotiya (donkey in Punjabi) asked me

“Sirjee!!! Aapne kal TV me dekha? Saamp ka sar wala ek ladki ke bare mein news tha! Dekhke to mera hosh ud gaya!”

Translation:

Sir!!! Did you see the TV yesterday? They showed a girl with a snakes head in the news! It blew my mind!

After a whole minute and half of dumbfounded silence which followed by thundering laughter, which left poor khothiya perplexed, I realised that such programs were made for a target audience and not for sarcastic sceptics like me. However, this has not stopped me from watching such shows because its not everyday that a journalist flashes his blue colour “SINDHU” underwear in search of ghosts from underworld.

Do start laughing. This is reality TV.

You have Encountered an Error

This interview has inspired me to write the following.

I have a minor fault in my circuits. My opinion about news articles keep changing as frequently as the costumes of heroines in south Indian movies during song sequences. I felt very happy when I saw the news that the people responsible for the bomb blasts have been shot dead and the entire mystery behind the bomb blasts solved. My initial happiness changed into doubt and while watching the news the ungreased gears in my head started cranking and rotating. I had told MBH that the police is not showing any proof that the people killed are the actual terrorists and its not a fake encounter. Other than the views expressed by Doc Zafarul, one factor that attracted my attention was that the entire police force (2500 according to the doc) were standing in and around the area where the event took place and they were acting as though they were in mafti when they were fully dressed in their uniforms and acting normal. Some policemen on balconies of buildings, some policemen on the streets, some in nearby latrins etc all very casual and routinely. My understanding of how policemen should act in a hosstage/terrorist situation is heavily dependent on hollywood flicks and some old malayalam movies. That is, send in an expert and kill off the terrorists one by one. Nevertheless, I found it interesting that instead of deploying every available men behind the two escaped terrorists and going after them himself, the DCP was busy explaining to the media what exactly happened. Minute by minute detail was being given to the media when hundreds of policemen were zimbly loitering around in the area. Somehow the DCP seemed unfazed that two wanted terrorissts had escaped. This was lying in the back of my head till I read the interview.

I wish to highlight an event I witnessed when I was working in UP. The National Highway was blocked by some local people of a nearby village demanding action from the police with regard to a murder that took place in that village. Upon enquiry, one villager told me the story.

Pappu Singh (name changed because I have no clue as to what the real name is) wanted to start a small business and he needed about 20,000 Rs to start off. As he had no cash on him, he decided to borrow some cash from Tejpal Singh (again name changed because of reason previously mentioned). Tejpal is happy to oblige and gives Pappu beej hajjaar ruppayya. Pappu being a naughty naughty boy spent all the cash drinking “Cannon 10000 beer”, pauuas and lavising cash on ravishing local prostitutes. Tejpal wanted to marry off his daughter/his cousins daughter and asked Pappu to give back the cash after some six months. Pappu, as I had explained before,had spent most of the cash on pros and cans of beer and and when he checked his dibbas where he used to keep money he found chillar which sent a chill down his spine. More than fear Pappu was overcome by anger as in his mind he thought Tejpal had no right asking back the money as the small “businness” he was engaged in had no returns. What happens next is something straight out of a grindhouse movie scene. Pappu invites Tejpal for a party and gets Tejpal so drunk that he is close to anesthesia. He then takes out his chaakku and makes mutton chops out of Tejpal. The remains of Tejpal are thrown into a nearby canal.

The reason why I wanted to tell this event is to make everyone realise that the quantum of evil resting in the minds of men should never be under estimated. How can we be sure that the informers in these cases are not people like Pappus? Having seen a good number of Suresh Gopi movies which has given me extraordinary courage to look into the face of any policeman and shout “Pha pulley!!!”, I will most definitely be shot dead, wiithought the slightest hesitation, the moment someone like Pappu, having borrowed money from me, misinforms the police that I’m a terrorist. This risk would have been raised to a mindnumbing figure had I been born in a middle class muslim family. So if you are a non-extremist, non-terrorist muslim living in a congested area, who has lent some money to someone, your life expectancy will be greatly reduced. You could either die in a terrorist bombing or you could die in the hands of some extremist hindu faction or the Delhi Police may be informed that you are a terrorist and they will encounter an error.

This is assuming that the information received by the police is wrong and they killed non-terrorists. What if the informant was not Pappu but someone else? We shall never know.

Notwithstanding the above, the doc should have protested in a proper manner, rather than requesting for investigation of such encounters, he has gone on record saying that the bomb blasts were done by extremist hindu wings. I do not have an inkling of understanding of what he is planning to achieve by these comments. People like him are adding fuel to the fire that is already burning in this country for many decades. What I have noticed is that right after terrorist attacks, the people lose boundaries of cast, religion and economy and come together as one and within a few weeks of the incident, people like the doc/political parties do post mortem of the event and start blame games reintroducing the boundaries, only that every time, the boundaries get wider and the terrorists get more recruits.

MBH – My Better half

Pauua – Local hindi word for quarter bottle whisky

Chaakku - Knife

The origin – Explained

I had tinkered around with the idea of blogging for quite some time now. I guess the main driving force behind my desire was the amount of free time that I had at my disposal. Before relocating to the garden city, I used to work in a place that has given the world gems like Flowery Devi and Soft Singh Yadav. Although people from the area are named as they look when they are born (or so it seems), they do not tend to grow up giving justice to their names. There was a guy who worked in my company who was called Arimardan Singh. He didn’t even have the courage to say boo to a bunny rabbit leave alone beating the hell out of some rice (Ari in my mother tongue stands for rice and mardanam stands for a solid thrashing). Anyways, the place that I used to work gave me so much free time and so many experiences that I was always compelled to write about them. There, I had a room for myself and although my free spirit should make me hate sitting in a cabin alone, the fact that I had a decent PC with adequate graphics card and RAM made me feel so at peace in my office. I used to keep myself busy helping the allies win over axis, stealing stuff, preparing myself for experiments going bad, killing computer controlled entities etc, all without anyone over my shoulder, scanning my screen, every 10 minutes. I predominantly used keys like W, A, S, D, spacebar and the arrow keys and never gave much thought to the other alphabets in my free time. Hence, my writing remained confined to occasional emails that I used to write my friends and some work that I did when the situation demanded it.

I had relocated to the garden city six months ago and the scenario has changed drastically. The confined freedom that I enjoyed in my room was taken away and I was placed in a cubicle (I hate them – more on that later) and by some strange laws of astrophysics, playing games in office is seriously looked down upon. I got married recently and my better half gets this unbelievable rritation whenever she sees me playing anything on my computer. With 8 hours at my disposal and nothing much to do other than reading comments on rediff news articles even moderately touching islam/hinduism, BJP/congress, Gay/straight people etc, the old feeling of starting a blog slowly started creeping back into my mind. With my companies blocking access to most of the websites I used to frequent and a gentle nudge from one of my good friends I have finally decided to start writing. Hence, this blog.

This blog may not have punctuation marks when required, it may mix past participle with present principle, it may seem too sarcastic, it may not make sense. You have been forewarned.