Crazy Lil thing called Lurve.

Have you noticed the amount of crap we say to each other? In fact we really seem to believe most of it because we say it so many times that we tend to fall for our own bullshit.

Life.

Anyways. Here goes the list of lies we tell to each other in a relationship and we believe it to be the truth.


I love you just the way you are.

Of course I don't mind if you go out with him/her.

I trust you.

No, I dont think you are being silly.

Theres not a single selfish bone in my body.

I dont know why these things happen to me. I dont deserve this. I have never harmed anybody.

Of course Iam not jealous.

No I really dont mind.

Theres nothing to forgive.

Yes son, there is a god.

Rambo ( the gold fish) is in heaven now. No, it doesnt matter that I flushed him. No shit does not go to god.

Iam not angry.

Not today, I have a headache.

I cant live without you.

Life is meaningless without you.

Iam fine.

I never think of myself. Its always about you.

You complete me.

We are soul mates.

What girl? I wasnt paying attention.

Of course I wasnt looking.

Iam listening.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I miss you all the time.

You are always on my mind

I dont mean to hurt you, but...

No offence but...

I love you but...

Its not fat, its muscles.

Iam not upset with you, Iam just having a bad day.

I dont lie.

I never lie.

Honestly,...

To be honest...

Trust me, ...

No son , it wont hurt.

Nothing bad will happen to you, son, as long as Iam alive.

I will learn to love him/her.

I will never hurt you.

I understand.


If you think life is crazy, all you need to do is listen to the nonsense we tell each other. Isnt love the craziest thing there is? Admit it. We are all guilty of this.

Your turn.

Man-aging Fatherhood

When my son turns 12 , Iam going to encourage him to go in for vasectomy.

Wife has gone to India for a week on some sort of business related thingy; which in my books means, 'away from Tys' time. This leaves the rein of running the household in my hands.

Did I tell you we have a maid from Nepal? Well we do. I don't understand a word she says and I have to resort to miming and dumb charade to get my tea every morning.

1 word. 3 letters. Sounds like :

Then I cup my man boobs.

I don't know how long she is going to stay.

So this is my human resource to handle my 2 kids.

I have , like a good manager, delegated my jobs. Considering that I make 50% of the human resource, I too have some role to play, other than prancing around like a monkey, much to the collective delights of the said children, trying to get the maid to clean the house.

Iam in charge of the sleep time and also the school run of the eldest one.

My son, the Object in Perpetual Motion, is mercifully run down by around 8 pm. This means that I can knock him out with a feather and he will sleep through till 5 am. At 5am I wake him up and he is at this age where he can brush his teeth, do his toilet and dress himself and sit on a chair with the expression of a zombie while I place his breakfast in front of him. At around 6am his school bus comes. At the bus stop downstairs its always the fathers that bring the kids down. So we have a School Bus Stop Dads Community.

Men are strange. When men become dads they are stranger. All of us are dressed in our night clothes. None of us know each others name other than in regard to Angel's Dad, or Jaydon's dad or R's dad. That is our identity. Our conversations are limited to the weather ( its hot/ humid/ getting cooler); to recession ( hows business? Picking up/ Fucked up ), parking woes and traffic. Once our wards are herded off into the bus, we get back into the lift, hit our respective floor buttons and stand in uncomfortable silence till we get off, bidding a parting that always goes ; Have a nice day.

Dads don't have much to say to each other. Unlike mothers. Mothers are a different story all together. My wife when she goes to the park with the kids ( this is her duty, since it involves activity), she comes back with stories about new families who I know will end up becoming close friends in the coming days where I will again be face to face with another dad, where the conversation will start and end on weather, work, parking and traffic.

The in charge of the sleep time for the 1.5 yr old mama's Velcro is a new one for me. Every morning when I get up I see my wife is already up and the 1.5 is on the divan with a milk bottle in her mouth. Every morning I cheerfully wish my wife a great morning and is replied with a wane smile and when asked , she will respond that Velcro has been giving her trouble in the night.

I do the necessary sympathetic gestures and get on with the day.

How much trouble can a 1.5 yr old girl give you!

A lot.

I found out the hard way and its only been one night. I have another 7 more to go.

She wakes up 4 times every night. The woken state is accompanied by loud howling which can only be abated by walking her around in my arms. The howling will in time (around 20 minutes) reduce in volume to a whimper and then to a slight snore. This is when I will try to put her back on the bed. Which will wake her up again and I go back to step 1.

4 times a night.

Iam seriously considering spiking her milk in the night.


I sometimes doubt the intelligence of a god who would make things the way he has made it. Now if it was left to me, children would have been born 21, with their own apartment.

Men tal

How does a man respond to a question posed to you by a woman about the looks of another man?

Coming a close second to ,' Do you think I look fat in this?' is the query ' Is he good looking?'

How the fuck do you expect me to answer that?

I have no clue.

If he owns a beat up truck, throws back 5 pegs of JD after a hard days work, is comfortable in jeans and t shirt, stands up for his friends in their absence and doesn't hit on his friend's wife or sister, is in my book, a great looking guy.

Hell, I would marry him.

You might see a balding, going fat dude but I will see a real man.

In tribute to the dying breed of real men, I would like to dedicate this post to such men. The ones you will miss once you have gotten over the excuse of a man who you have to hide your make up from. The man you have created in your image. The man who is the stand in for your girlfriends.

The metro sexual man. The joke in the tree of our ancestry.

To a Man, his house is his castle and the couch is his throne. He rules the roost from it, he eats sitting in it, is entertained within it and most of the time he also sleeps in it.

In fact to a real man the only friend he has is his couch.

A real man is a mans man. In the midst of his friends, a real man will have a skill that is appreciated by his peers.The spitting champion, the furthest pissing champion, the loudest burp blaster... There will fables about him. Songs will be sung about him. In the midst of his friends, all real men are heroes.

A real man doesn't cry. His lips might tremble but no tears will spill when his cat dies. He will be a rock of solitude when a dear one passes way. Pinching the corners of his eyes with his index finger and thumb to prevent a drop from spilling. Men don't cry.

They only cry for good reasons. Like when their team losses a match or when someone spills a beer.

Men do ask direction. I don't know from where this myth originated that we don't ask direction. We ask directions all the time. We don't ask you for direction. That's because you are more lost than us and moreover if you do know the way, we will never hear the end of it. So we choose to be lost and sane than be found and insane.

Men like being men. They wouldn't have it any other way.Truth is even an inkling of curiosity to be a woman has been killed off by your horror stories of being a woman. I personally would have loved to see how I looked with boobs .

Anyways.

People who knows me always wonder how I walk since I have my foot in my mouth all the time.

My latest exploits involved the below :

This was in Kerala at the IISE. I was talking to Sabriye and an old friend of hers. Both are visually impaired. I was regaling them with a story about the time when I was in Delhi and I offered my seat in the bus to a girl who in turn turned on me as if I had insulted her . So Sabreye enquires : Was she blind? and I say : 'Nah, she was normal.'

Right.

Another incident. Same venue. My younger brother tells Sabriye that I had blogged about her institute. So she asks me what I wrote about. I tell her that I have been really nasty and have written that she runs a tight ship and is called Hitler in campus.

Oh, did I mention she is German?

Someone should just take a gun and put me out of my misery. I doubt if I will ever get invited back there again.

Man dated BC.

Theres a whole school of thought out there regarding marriages in general. But my favourite will still remain the statement made by a famous Malayalam literary giant at a party at my mother's place, where in answer to my brothers query, he replied that marriage is an institution that has outlived its purpose and will not survive in its current form in the future. He gave it a life span of about 100 years max.

According to him man has progressed in all the spheres around him in regards to his life, comfort, ethics, laws etc but marriage still remains rooted to the past without any changes to accommodate the new thinking man and woman. He goes on to state that all the evils that you see around you in some ways are contributed by this unnatural coexistence.

:)

Don't you love this guy?

I wanted to give him a standing ovation but my wife beat me to it.

Personally I dont mind being married. Its not the perfect environment considering that theres a certain level of adjustments required for its smooth sailing but Iam kind of okay with it since Iam not fixated with this loss of my individuality thingy.

What is this individuality we keep harping about? When did we ever have it? We are moulded from the time we became aware. This individuality is nothing but an imitation. So my take is what you dont have you cant loose. You can of course pretend you had it and then go on a search for it but since the very act of searching means you never had it will bring you back to my initial conclusion.

The real problem with marriages is none of these, its the unspoken ground rule that governs it. It is called ownership.

Marriage works for men. It used to work for women but that was because we had created an environment where it was difficult for a woman to sustain or survive without a man by her side. Women of today can do without husbands.

Sometimes I feel sorry for the men of today. The ones that suffers for the sins of their fathers. If we are possessive, we are uncouth brutes that lives in barbaric times, if we are not, we are uncaring. The men of today have been rendered speechless lest they appear primitive.If they feel insecure, it is a selfish need to control, if they become passionate, they think with their dick, if they appear jealous, its their lack of broad mindedness.

And you blame us for our lack of emotional IQ. It seems to be best seen only in movies,crappy fictions, other women's husband and the old childhood flame. I have seen women crying watching those movies where a situation similar to their life is unfolding in front of them , blissfully unaware that the only difference is that their husband does not look like Clark Gabel.

Today's man cant win. And the bastards who have created this situation we find ourselves in, are now random atoms floating in ether awaiting bonding to become ; hopefully; turd.

Apparently the way to render woman power is by bashing men. Most men finds this okay.Even justified.

But this man begs to differ.

Its funny when the joke is on the man. Really. Men are funny. Any species that looks absurd naked is funny. But those " typical male" statements are really tiring and a tad bit boring.

Iam a man and Iam not about to say sorry for what my previous generation did to your grandma. Deal with it. Iam truly glad that you are making a stand and not backing down . Iam proud when you send pink panties to those who beat you when you drank in a pub. I love your devil may care attitude, I love the way you are comfortable in your skin, I love the fact that you are respected for your work and I love the way you broke the glass ceiling. I love it when you become a mother and sometimes decide to go by it alone. I like it that you can do without us and that you sometimes wants to be with us only because you want to. I like it.

But you hit me, I will hit you back.

Equality is a bitch.

And if this makes me a male chauvinist, which in today's world means any man who begs to differ from a women's point of view, then please make sure you spell mine in capital.

When did feminism become anti-men? I dont get it but I do appreciate your anger considering that its a man who invented a bra. I would personally put men on spikes after that.

I have friends who are of the fairer sex who are more men than men. Somehow in this drive to be treated equal, they chose to become the perpetuater. Imitation is the highest level of flattery and if that's the case, then you are rewarding the cause of your misery.

But here's my take. You can stone me afterwards and I promise not to unleash Fan of Tys.

All these men were sons first.

Which means that the first imprint he had would have been from his mother, who incidentally is a woman. Where did this guy go wrong? And if he did, what was his mother doing?

For arguments sake, lets blame the father. But honestly, how important is the father's role in a child's life until he turns 6, by which his personality is to a large extent set?

Lets now blame the society. Iam for this. I like blaming society for everything including the estranged sock in my laundry. But society is a collective group of individuals. That means you, me and the rest.

I think; I could be completely wrong here, but chances are Iam right, like always; that a man could have been conditioned to see no difference between the genders beyond the obvious biological ones if you wanted.

The argument I throw to you is this : How much are you responsible for the shit that floats around?

Now while you figure this out and go about changing the future men , my request to you is to let the already damaged men out there do what we do best :

Switch on the TV, puff up the couch cushions ,open the beer can and stay out of your way.

The art of dislodging your head.

So my brother in all his juvenile wisdom , had heard about my dark phase and then decided to bring me down to this place.

For your information, next time you want to kill yourself, please don't inform your mother about it . It just kills the purpose.

But it did get me a free holiday. Man, I should have tried this earlier. Hmmm

Amma, I feel like killing myself, totally depressed, life is not having any meaning, so goodbye. By the way, I heard Paris is great at this time of the year.


So I have been here for about 3 days now and I should be really depressed.

Trust me, its not easy to get your head out of your arse once you have managed to put it there.

Thing is this place is doing something to encourage young people who have gone through some terrible events in their life, survived through it and now wants to give something back to the society. Man, Iam just depressed typing that.

Now hear their stories.

There is a young guy from Tibet, blind, who was sold off to be beggar when he was a child. He was rescued later on by an NGO. Now he wants to start a Braille Library and a Braille printing unit in Tibet.

There is this lovely girl from Kenya who is an albino. In Kenya, albinos are considered lucky. So lucky in fact that they are normally murdered and their body parts are harvested as lucky charms. It gets worse during the election, when the budding politicians wants to have lady luck by their side, even if its a piece of her. She wants to go back and start an awareness programme back in Kenya about people with her condition.

There is a guy from Liberia who when he was a kid, watched his family being murdered by the rebels during the civil war and was made to watch the rape of his sister and then was made to drink her blood. He wants to go back and start a center for rehabilitating the war orphans.

There is a guy from Sierra Leon, whose family had to escape to the bush to avoid being killed by the rebels. They survived in the bush , coming to the town to forge for food in the night. One such night they are captured. His sister was dragged away. He escaped. He later on learned that she was raped and then killed. He wants to go back and set up a center that can give micro loans to war widows so that they can sustain themselves.

There is a young blind girl from Tibet, where blind are considered as bad omens. Their condition is thought to be the result of their evil deeds in their past births. People cross the streets to avoid them and to reinforce their intention , spit on the ground. She grew up along with her blind twin younger brothers and a blind father in that surroundings. Only her mother was sighted. She grew up friendless. She wants to start a kindergarten in her village in Tibet, where blind and sighted children can come to.

There are more. Victims of human trafficking; victims of mine explosions, of war, of human violence.

I sit in the corner of their class, away from everybody, absorbing. Iam just here to heal. They are here to prepare themselves to go out there and realize their dreams. Their experiences are going to be their sales pitch to some potential funders.

This is the world we live in. In an ideal world, they shouldn't be here.

I can see the worst side of humans in their tales. Which kind of men would throw all the children of a village in a well and seal it? Where one can hear their cries for three days before it dies out? What kind of men asks a pregnant woman to predict what sex her child will be and then verify it by cutting open her stomach to pull out the foetus?

Then you see these bunch.

From situations that can destroy souls, these came out stronger. They see no need to let the situations overcome them, they overcome it by raising above them. They do something about it. They are all going back to the same situation that made them. This time they are going to fight back.They are going to save as many as they can.

They are warriors in training.

If this cant get my head back where it belongs, ie on my shoulders, I dont know what will.

I think I will go swim in the lake at the campus and pretend to be a hippo for a while.

That always cheers me up.

Mallukutti Days

Why do people look at the content of their handkerchief after they have blown their nose in it?

What do they hope to find?

Oh, there you are ! I was wondering where you went.

Why do they do that?

I was in a party some time back and there was this person who sneezed into her handkerchief and then looked at it before folding it and pocketing it.

What the fuck!

What do you expect to come out of your nose? Your brains?

People are funny. You cant help but like them. Even if they are just viruses. (yep its not virii; that just sounds plain stupid)

My favorite specimen as you know are the mallus. I cant help it, they are just too adorable.

Iam in Kerala right now. Healing.

If you want to get out of a self induced depression go to Kerala.Its the most funniest place ever. There are no depressed Keralites in Kerala; they have all killed themselves. It has the highest suicide rate in the whole of India. Now there only remains happy mallus.

Come on , you cant take a place that is named after coconut tree serious!

Ever noticed a mallu on a mobile phone?

Iam sure you have.

By now you along with all the people in 3 miles radius from him will know that his father is going through a by pass and that gopalettan, his brother in law, is a drunkard and that he is much better after his piles operation.

My younger brother says that America has its CIA, the Russians their KGB, the Chinese their Kang Sheng and India has Mallus.

You want information , ask a Mallu.

They know everything.

What your father did in 1947 to your favorite sexual position.Which is funny since, if you have ever had the misfortune to watch mallu porn, you will notice that apart from the missionary position and the accompanied breast kneading, mallus dont seem to have any other positions.

I have been told once that the term Mallu is very degrading. Buddy , Nigger is degrading, Mallu is an upgrade. I mean , you would rather be called a Keralite, which in reality means a Coconut Head? I dont know pal; I think I will stick to Mallu. It sounds more appropriate.

We hold hands.

I recall once my sister in law, who is a German, came down to Kerala and thought that we are all gay.

You see two guys walking down the street holding hands, its natural that you will assume this. But this is Kerala. In malluland we hold hands and we are 'just friends'. Really. This is also why, if you are a Mallu and gay, you have to resort to acting like a girl.

The hand holding was already taken.

It is uncomfortable to watch a man with a mustache acting like a girl.

On second thoughts, I think I will retract that statement, since mallu girls have mustache. Some of them even have a beard. I think this is why when they travel by the local buses the mallu men feel them up.I think they are just confirming.

Mallu men has also been unjustly termed as the worst eve teasers in India. I beg to differ. I think eve teasing is a national phenomenon but Mallus are the most unimaginative ones.

Correct me if Iam wrong. Which woman out there finds a man, who gives a wolf whistle as you walk by and then makes a comparison of a body part of yours to some vegetable, attractive?

Anyone?

I didnt think so. Then why in fucks name do they always do that? Where did this evolve from? Did it ever work? Was that the mating ritual when we were in the coconut trees before we climbed down and started growing them?

And for heavens sake, whats with this breast kneading?

Today a European guy was asking me if it is considered impolite to look at a mallu girl in the eye. I told him that she will just be surprised.

They are so used to being looked at anywhere but their eyes.



Apparently this chap read in some tourist info booklet in Europe that if a Mallu girl looks a man in the eye then that means she wants to sleep with him.

Damn.

They knew this is in Europe and we were wasting our time looking everywhere else.

I want to meet the publisher of this guide to Kerala.

Iam telling you, its hard to be depressed in Kerala. One day here and Iam already cracking up.

Just ignore the pun.

Kill Joy.

Do you know how impossible it is to kill yourself if you are in the UAE? Well, just take my word for it.

Now India is a different story all together. If you are planning on snuffing out yourself, India is the place to be. Almost all the drug stores will sell you any number of sleeping pills you want and they might even throw in a paracetamol for free. Personaly I think killing yourself using sleeping pills is way too gay.If you are planning on extinguishing probably your only chance of existence, then I say you need to get creative.

Ever tried hanging ? Its impossible in this country. There are just no fans in any of the flats here and its silly to even try hanging from the airconditioner. I dont think it will even hold. Where do you tie the knot? How will you kick off the chair? Where will you place the chair? Should you keep the AC on while you do the deed?The whole thing is way too complicated.

Shooting yourself seems like a great idea. There is something very manly about sitting behind a large walnut desk, with a shot of JD in a crystal glass .Its late evening, the whole room is dimly lite by your desk lamp and you have this loaded gun on the desk in front of you. Very decisively you gulp down the JD, pick up the gun , put the nuzzle under your chin and pull the trigger.

Now if that paragraph doesnt make all of you jump into the car and head for the local gun shop, I dont know what will.

Thing is, this is the SandCity. I dont even know where one goes to get a gun here. I probably will have to steal it from a police guy who will probably put me out of my misery for all the trouble. Hmmm, now thats a thought.

Long ago a friend of mine had tried to kill himself by slitting his vien and lying in a bath tub. The only problem was that he didnt have a bathtub. He realized that after he had slit his vien. So in order to salvage an already bad situation, he opened the tap in the wash basin and held his wrists under the warm flowing water. We found him thus, the determined would be suicider trying his best not to faint from the loss of blood standing with his two wrists under the tap.

We havent let him forget it 15 years later. The cause of his turmoil was of course a girl who probably would have just died laughing if she heard of this.

Now if you are the sort who is not afraid of heights, then jumping off a building is the best way to end your miserable life in this country. Infact apart from driving to work, jumping off a building is the prefered mode of untimely demise in this country. This country is filled with skyscrapers. If you need a long descent where by you have all the time to have your life flashing by in your head before you become a splat on the side walk , you only need to go to Sheik Zayed Road. The choices are fantastic. You can select from 'you hit the bottom before you can complete Geronimo' to the long haul ' fall asleep by the time you hit the street' ones



Now all you need to do is find a balcony.

This is the problem. Its like going to the red light district near Dam square in Amsterdam. The mouth watering wares , in this instance the long way down, can be viewed from behind a glass barricade and thats about it. There are no balconies here. The only balconies you can use belongs to residence apartments and I dont think they take very kindly to strangers who ring their door bells asking them permission to the use of their balconies.



Forget trying to crash your car. With the kind of traffic jams here, you will be lucky if you get a whip lash injury. If you are lucky, you have more chances being run over by a teenage arab kid driving his father's 4WD while trying to cross the road.

Infact the only way you can hope to kill yourself in this country is to cross the road. Do it at the zebra crossing. Cars here speed up when they see someone using a zebra crossing.

If you sit back and then look at the situation , you will realize that killing yourself is a stupid idea. Truth be told , it is highly unlikely you will survive your death. You didnt even exist prior to your birth. So to kill yourself with the hope that it will mean an end to all your problem , means that you will not be there to face any problem. You got to really hate living to want to kill yourself.

Left alone people dont kill themselves. They seem to do so only when they come in close contact with others.Like I always said, you dont kill yourself, others do. In my case I dont really value my existence , I think its the curiosity that keeps me alive. Wondering what the next day will bring.

Thats when it struck me; in order to die, all you have to do is keep living. It is bound to get you in the end.