The Generation Gap

Every time an old song plays on TV, my Dad will be ready with the same monologue that has been echoing in my house since time immemorial. He starts off with, "What a great song! Those days..." and he closes his eyes as though he's going into a state of semi-enlightenment and continues,"Those were the days, golden days..I watched this movie in Shivaji theatre. It was so moving, so good. See Sharmila Tagore, She looks so beautiful". My eyes were transfixed on the beehive. Did you just ask "What Beehive?" then, you must be from my father's generation. Please ignore my comment.

Then he gives a break till the song is over and now comes the much awaited salvo, "These days, I don't know what songs they come up with. They are absolutely meaningless". He changes the channel and he stops at MTV, scrutinises the songs, looks sadly at us like we are some unfortunate urchins starved of the wonderful culture that his generation had.

Every generation is the same I guess. I'm sure when the TV made its first appearance on the hall table, my grandmother would have looked at it, fretted and disgustingly told my dad that listening to the the radio was a lost art. It was something his generation would never understand, even though reception in the radio was a result of a thousand agile karate chops sensible enough not to break it, but make it play. It was a skill, something that my father's generation would never understand.

This tradition can be traced back to early men, I guess. The earlier men would have sulked at the sight of a wheel. They would have gasped, "gujumb gujumb gujumba" which roughly translates into, "Oh my god! Do we now have to rely on this nonsensical shapeless things for god knows what! By the way, why was this invented in the first place? Shoes ought to have come before this. These bare feet, killing me, I tell you!"

Who knows apes would have frowned at the "missing link character" who was suddenly developing something that centuries later was called a backbone. "Tch tch, see how these youngsters act, trying to stand up with their front limbs, no respect at all!". Imagine if that hadn't happened, I would have been on some tree plucking berries and my ears alternatively. Thank god for the missing link! I can't imagine how the granny apes would have reacted to the opposable thumb. Lets not go there.

I don't think any generation will be free of this curse. Every day I get a mail saying you are a 90's kid if you watched Shaktimaan, if you read Chacha chowdary, if you played lagori, if you pooped on the road, and other convoluted cornucopia of things. What if you haven't? I know many people who have the gall to ask if Chacha chowdary is my actual chacha! But they are 90's kids! I know their birthdays.

So today I want to make a resolution to never comment on my next generation, no matter how much they rot in facebook, live their lives out of potato chip packets, the amount of pocket money they get that equals my monthly salary, the way they strut in front of cafes in skimpy clothes, the unfortunate souls who'll never know what a single screen theatre would look like, who may think that Shaktimaan is a character from Ramayan which is a bloody gaming extravaganza like counter-strike, I mean if they know counterstrike that is.

Wait! Did I just break my resolution?

Ah well!

Mamata's marriage bureau and its consequences

Along with your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother, brother's friend, neighbour, neighbour's dog, and the nightwatchman, guess who else has joined the menacing matrimonial advice bandwagon (MMAB, pronounciation: Imagine how Laloo Prasad says mob, Maaaaaaab), it is your chief minister.

Are you asking "Whaaaat the f"? Rolling your eyes while yawning?

If so, go and read today's newspaper. Oh you don't get it at home? Not even the newspaper that makes you smart?? No wonder, you are reading my blog

Anyway, here is the link: Mamata's marriage bureau

Okay you are not a Bengali, so you think you are spared? You are so wrong. Apparently, according to my un-unreliable sources two negatives make a positive, the move has inspired people across the country. So in a few days now, you'll have to take the lawful permission from the lawless topboss of the state before you even plan to get hitched. The horoscope, along with gotra, rashi, pashi, and other fishy things also will have the CM permission, as a requirement.

So in future, this is how a pre-meet-up matrimonial talk will happen:

Moms will call up each other.

"Our children's horoscopes matched..But I have one more doubt, before we formally meet"

"Yes, please don't hesitate"

"Are you? Are you?...."

"Yes, please go on"

"Are you leftist?"

"Ya..why?"

"Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii..yeh shaaaaaaaaadi nahi hosakti hai!!"

Why do we need this advice, pray tell me? Already it is so difficult to find decent guys with decent quantity of hair-on-the-head in this world. Ask my parents, if you want proof. And now, we have to go behind people's political affiliations!

Wait a minute. Maybe this will replace the old caste system, since they are going so out of style, now politics may become the new caste. That Mamtadi, she is a pioneer, I tell you. What brahmin, gowda, baniya! So ancient. From now on, it'll be BJP, Congress, JDS, BSP, AIADMK etc etc.

Sometime in the near future, you will see two aunties wearing saffron salwar kameezs, parking their cars in middle of a crowded street. That's where they park their cars usually, the intention is to block the road, sometimes leisurely throw a carpet on it, get a mike and make senseless talk. That's one of the commandments of this wonderful caste.

They catch hold of a lone young loser passing by, and interrogate him,

"Are you BJP?"

Before he can rip off his orange shirt and show his cool lotus tatoo on the chest, they go on,

"Even I'm BJP, we are so sacred. I love my country, I wear khakhi shorts and do unwanted exercises, I usually crave older men, men at the brink of death, and befriend women on the brink of insanity. I cannot stand congressors Yes, its a lame name, just like the congressors. They think they are too sophisticated with all their faux foreign people and their dramas, So not hindu!..Hindutva ki Jai!"

Then in another corner one sardar uncle and a suspicious looking man-child sipping tea from a road side stall and trying to make a life event out of it,

"Beta, Let us share tea with me"

"No mom told me not to give you anything"

"No Beta, You have to share it with me, I have to share the tea with the tea stall owner, the cleaner, the faggot at the end of this road, and the maggots on this table. You see Beta, we include anyone and everyone in our caste. That is our Dharam. We include them, we discuss with them, we let them sit on our heads and we let them dance away to glory. Arey Beta, don't you remember Mamtadi, she was the first nincompoop who celebrated a tenure long Durga puja on our heads, got away with it, and thats how our caste Congress came into existance?"

"No Mommy told me not to give you anything. Get away from you, you old man......Goooooooooooo, or else I'll tell on you"

"Noooo Please don't do that!!"

I don't even want to get down to the nuances of the hundred thousand other parties and what about independents. My god! This may increase the number of castes that are actually present now! As if that were possible!

And reservations! Oh my god! I never thought of that one!

And caste certificates!

What about caste based discriminations?! Who should we discriminate now, since everyone of us is more criminal than the other!

Mamata! What the hell are trying to get us all into!

PS: Though the comments on CPM and trinamool unholy marriages didn't come directly from the Mamata mouth, I'm taking creative liberty here. I hope I don't get thrown into prison like the sad professor.

Anatomy of an Indian TV serial

I'm thinking of making a TV serial.  Will that work? I'm pretty sure that most of you are mind fucked by all the shit that goes on in those serials, so maybe you wouldn't even want to watch mine. But believe me, I have grabbed hold of this amazing script, I'm telling you it'll blow your lungis off.

You'll come running back to read what happened next. This is by far, the most amazing thing that can ever happen to the Indian TV industry. I wish I could tie up with a TV network, and ask Jackie shroff/Govinda to sell my serial that is worth a gazillion bucks at a discounted rate of 42 Rs 25 Ps, but people I don't care for money. I am a generous soul. So here it is, unvieling to you, the mind blowing serial:

Kroorvati Ki Karva Chauth

If you think the title sucks, I'm open for suggestions*

*Conditions apply: Only if you are willing to finance my serial

Enter the good girl, Kanyeshwari always wears pale yellowish or peach nylon salwar kameezs, even when the sun is burning brighter than that damn tiger in the epic William Blake poem. She will not even give up the Salwar Kameez even when she treads the Mt.Everest. She loyally refuses to wear mountaineering gear and she tells the sherpa Memsingh Norway, that she'll use her dupatta as the rappelling rope. Her wonderful, amazing dupatta which usually saves her honor, this time it saves her life. This is the good girl people, she is the good girl. The one that never gives up her dupatta, the one that on the way to the summit, stops at the base camp which she redesigns as a durga mandir and she takes a bloody one hour to sing "Om Jai Jagdeesh Harey, Swami Jai Jagadeesh Hare" in between ads for all things ranging from maggi to harpic.

But wait, my serial has another character.

This heartrending bhakti geet causes her husband to drool a little, either named sujal, or prajwal or harbhajanwal I'm confused or whoever it is after the hundredth plastic surgery, and who's now in a coma because while he was getting his plastic surgery done, Rakhi sawant walked into the room demanding a breast lift procedure, and the doctor suffering from multiple muscular cramps after lifting her breasts a thousand times refuses point blank, she goes crazy and jumps on the doc. Sadly, our Harbhajanwal is in between. So this guy now is suffering from complications from Rakhi Sawant injury due to which he contracted a brain disorder and he's now paralysed from waist down. Don't you guys get it? Thats the reason the good girl is climbing Mt. Everest in the first place, to celebrate Karva Chauth from the highest point on Earth. What else can be more "Pavitr" than this?

But wait, Again you've to wait.

Waiting on top of Everest is our Bad girl, Kroorvati . She is wearing a black leather mini skirt, and eagerly awaiting the arrival of Kanyeshwari. She'll push her from there, of course. You see, both of them are fighting for the vegetable Harbhajanwal's affection. She has a snake running up her forehead, it's made of all crazy colors ranging from puky pink to vampish lavender. She was born with it, and the color depends on the day of the week or availability of cheap colors in the market. She is waiting patiently, during which time she gets lost in some of the most beautiful thoughts, Flashback. Two hundred and fifty episodes ago, Kroorvati trips good girl when she was going to the temple. Point to remember, good girl only leaves her house when she goes to the temple, and every single time bad girl also follows her, but no credit to the bad girl. Good girl falls, and there are cymbals in the background, as good girl lifts her head five dozen times to see what happened. Everyone is laughing, the whole world, her honor is at stake. She gets up. Now this is a critical moment, the exact moment at which I get to know if the new stock of glycerine that I got from China is working or not. Thankfully, it does. Tears roll down her eyes, and she runs in slow motion from the temple to her house. This point is a moral dilemma for the me, I want to show the entire run, from the temple to her house, I know there are people like my mom and grandmom in this world who would give up anything to watch the glorious run, but I am also aware of people like you who will curse me and my future generations till eternity with all the cusses you know and some which you don't, that I'm just not willing to take that risk. Finally, the cuss words win.

What happens next?

Will the Karva Chauth happen? Will Kroorvati kill Kanyeshwari? Will Harbhajanwal wake up from his coma?
Tune in to Star TV, Zee TV or any other damn TV and continue to watch any serial to know what happened.

Disclaimer: Resemblance to any person living or dead, is purely coincidental as the atrocious things explained above are physically, sensibly, and astonishingly impossible.

Kaamu, her vacation and Jeera soda

For all those fortunate souls who don't know Kaamu, she is my imaginary pet. Yes, you read that right. This information is enough for you to continue reading this scam of a post. However, if you still want to know about the cat-extraordinaire, go ahead and read these:
Of Therapists and Kamakshi, the cat
The cat and the bollywood bedtime story
All about cat poop and other catty crap

So Kaamu went on a long vacation with her gal pals to some catty beach resort somewhere in South Calungate. I was ecstatic about the catless week and made a hundred plans with myself. I wonder why my friends don't hang out with me anymore.

I was sprawled on the sofa with a half empty bottle of Bindu's fizzy jeera soda lying on the table. Its not mine, you losers. My granny suffers from gastritis, it is supposedly her "medication". The way she gulps it down reminds one of the pepsi ad, "Yeh dil maange more".  Anyway, I was midway through a movie marathon, somewhere between Aaj ka Naya Yalgaar and Veerta the Power. You must be unfamiliar with these classics. Let the lame-movie fanatic educate you. Behold, these are telugu movies dubbed in Hindi. You see, I have watched all dumbass movies in hindi as well as in telugu, so I'm mixing them now. 

Anyway, I'm lying there on the sofa, sneaking looks at the perversely tempting Jeera soda which would take care of the Rakhi sawant dance in my empty stomach till the queen-cook-cum-mom comes back from her kitty party (no cats allowed there), and guess what? In walks Kaamu, with a tan that would have caused the beefy John Abraham to shriek like a high school girl and frantically rub on her, his Garnier anti-tan shit cream that he's endorsing, and in wierd hippy clothes that even Sonam Kapoor would have thought twice before wearing. My taste in clothes must be rubbing off on her.

"Kaamu!! You are back. I thought you'd be gone for a week!"

"Yeah, I am..So what? Will you throw me out?"

"No, of course not. Why did you cut your trip short? Did you miss me?", I winked at her

She made a disgusting face which I ignored and continued my rant.

"Okay, before you answer that, listen to this. I had written a post about mad people and normal people and all sortsa people in my blog, and guess what people loved it. It got like insane number of hits..I mean I did indirectly mention about low page counts and how they can increase it and stuff like that, but still..."

"Of course, people are mad. They read your blog, don't they?"

"Shut up Kaamu, Why can't you be happy just this once?"


"Wow! Amazing! come lets celebrate..yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

"Okay, stop the overacting. Tell me why are you back early?"

"My wish"

"C'mon Kaamu..Tell me pleeeeeeeeeease!"

"Fuck off!"

"Okay don't tell"

I sit there and wait patiently for the matinee idol of a cat to open her mouth. I try whistling, "Mohabbat hai mirchi, mohabbat hai mirchi", the damn cat's favorite song, even though the bitch-cat is too damn proud to admit it. I try to teleport the Jeera soda into my mouth, so that it'll save me the embarrassment of the actual  physical act.Normally it works, this time it gave kai*. I'm actually selling a book about it, on amazon. Its called "How to teleport your granny's tasty gas medication into your stomach". Its cheap, 300 bucks only. Reading it will help you more than this dumb post will. It will also help me buy the jeera soda franchise

I try all sorts of dramas and a little dance too, which the cat ignored royally. Finally when I couldn't take it any longer, I yell.

"Damn you, you bloody cat. Just once in your life, gimme a straight answer. Why the fuck are you back from your fuckin' trip so early? Tell me, damn you, or else I'll make cat sambar out of you and feed it to Tommy. Understand?!!!"

The cat goes psycho at this. Have you ever seen a psycho cat? Man, its the worst thing ever. She jumped on me, scratched my damn face and blurted out.

"You foolish woman-child!! I never went on any fuckin trip, don't you understand??? I come whenever you want me to!! Bloody, I'm imaginary, you dimwit! Now shut your hole and pass me the soda!"

She gulped down the soda and went running into the loo.

I guess we'll never know why she came back early..


PS: *Someone "gave kai" means someone "gave hand". In simple words, they didn't keep their promises. Remember how your GF/BF promised you "saath janmon ka saath" and ditched you? They gave kai!

The madness of Normalcy

Principles. They are sad, scary things. The human mind is programmed in a such a way that it appalls a fellow's principles. For example: Tell your friend that "as a principle", you do not eat at KFC because of all that chicken cruelty and whatever going on, I will bet a hundred bucks that he's gonna lecture you shit for another twenty minutes that you are eating a dead chicken, doesn't matter if its tortured or not. He can't stand you or your principles. Its true. I don't know why. Sometimes, its out of sheer boredom, sometimes its because that annoying friend of yours can't keep his mouth shut, but most of the times, as a principle, everyone hates, despises, is scared of and will do anything to let another live with his principles. Why? Because people are normal.

Normal means different things. When I call someone normal, they are the ones who seem to me like they have figured everything out in life. They seem to know they'll have a smooth transition and they are definitely the ones who'll all have a discussion over cold coffee, cold because the canteen guy refuses to reheat the milk, and conclude that I'm mad. I just smile at them and say, "Yes, I am"

Normal itself is insane. I don't understand what normal means anymore. There was a time in life, where everything around was spookily crazy and I wanted things to be normal. I think the "normal" that I wanted is there right now, but now I crave for madness, some kind of madness that leads me somewhere. I need madness to drive me. I don't want normal anymore. Like they say, the grass is always greener on the other side, but if you never get to the other side, how will you even know the comparison between the two greens? If the guy who made up this saying never crossed over, there would be only one shade of green. No light green, dark green, bottle green, parrot green, goo green, poop green etc etc. Imagine, a world without greens, no one would want that. I wouldn't. I need the madness, I need to discover another shade of green.

I think one section of the so-called normalcy belongs to people who are descendants of a special genome of parasites that lived not-so-long-ago, one generation ago. These parasites don't have a life of their own and they try to suck others' out too. The principle-attackers are one such group, the other group belongs to this prospective groom that my friend met last weekend. He asked her what her expectations are, and like any other normal person that belongs to another section of normal, she just shrugged. So this guy started his list. I work, so I expect her to work, I don't eat Non-veg, so I expect her not to eat, I take bath twice a day, so I expect her to do it, the list went on and on, but thankfully my friend escaped before the inevitable, "I pee standing up, so expect her to do the same". I think I'd rather be mad than belong to this section of normal people.

There is one more section of normal people in Bangalore who "complete their engineering and get a job in good MNC, get married and settle in life". Yes, this is one normal section I'm supposed to belong to. There is another face to these normal people. They hate their jobs, they hate their bosses, they sit and sulk inside while maintaining a plastered happy face outside, and they are eternally ready with a bucket in their free hand, the one that's not slapping their own faces, and one step behind their superiors, so that at the "opportune" moment, they are ready for a stinky discharge. In an alternate universe where Gotham city exists, they all can be the "Jokers", they have a thousand motives for a sadistic life, but so many Jokers can dissolve the brand of its integrity. That's why they shut up and try to be normal. I think I'd rather be mad, than try to concoct an alternate universe.

In my dysfunctional family, its normal for girls to get married at 20 and boys at twenty three. They are considered assets and the younger they are, the more benefits they reap. That's full blown pycho, isn't it? But here in my family, its normal and hence, they call me mad. Now that I think about it, I'd gladly be called that while writing this peacefully, rather than be called normal, and be writing this while a three-year old poops all around the house.

I am supposed to write something funny, right? Usually, I try my best to put a joke or two, and drag it till the very end, so that I can never reuse it for more laughs, but today I cannot come up with a single joke. Think of your own. I have an intolerable philosophical side and that has burst out of the seams today. I am forcing myself not to publish this post, but I don't think I can. I have absolutely no material and my pageviews are drastically down. If you don't want to read this, just keep on opening and closing my blog. Nurse my bruised ego, consider it a form of wheelchair charity. When you can drive that Kony guy out of Uganda by clicking on your degenerate keyboard, you can do this too.

Moral of the story: When any one calls you mad, just smile. When anyone calls you normal, smile and call them worse names.