Life and more such Nonsense

The final exorcism of the past VIII

2012-02-01T02:05:00.000-08:00

Travels.

Treks.

Agasthyakudam revisited.

I had been there before. With a group. My uncle, my cousin and some of my uncle's friends. I wanted to do it again.

Namesake seemed pleased and became more solemn.

Cousin and I. Same modus operandi.

Walk when we felt like it. Stop when we felt like it. Rest when we felt like it.

The forest had reclaimed the trek route. We were the first allowed in that year. It was a new year. I don’t recall the year.

Fragments.

Realizing we were lost.

Following painted arrows some previous traveler had smeared on rocks and trees. White. From one arrow to another arrow. Like connecting dots.

Arrow takes us through the jungle and onto a mountain. Arrow points upwards. We climb. Arrow goes further up. We climb higher. It doesn’t look familiar. Cousin notes this. Casually.

We climb. The rock face is covered in moss. The climb is almost vertical. We crawl up using our hands, finding notches and cracks to get a footing.

We see the arrow.

A U turn is drawn.

We sit down near the painted joke. We can’t sit upright, because of the incline. We lean back and face the horizon.

Tree tops. Forest stretching as far as the eye can see. Mountain peaks. Cousin points out the Agasthakudam mountain on our left. It is shaped like a face. Face of a hermit. We light beedis.

We sit there. Smoking.

We start laughing.

We climb down. Slowly. Sliding down on our back.

Agastya is silent. I recall no thoughts. None. Nothing.

Fragments.

A yellow and black speckled snake. Taste of the water from a mountain spring. Big eyed giant flies that hover around the shit as soon as it hits the ground.

Agasthyakoodam.

Elephant tracks. Waterfalls. Sitting with the tribals to watch a herd of elephants coming down from the forest to cross the stream. Squatting in the forest.Watching.Seeing a herd of elephants at a distance of 200 meters disappear in front of my eyes when they stop moving. I hear sounds. Branches breaking. Looking carefully at the spot the tribal boy points. I can’t see anything.

Then I see the outlines. They emerge from their surroundings. Eyes identify and recognize the pattern and they emerge. Appearing.

I watch. I see my cousin. Still. Rock.

Ashrams.

Amrithandamayi. The hugging saint.

Boat ride to the ashram. I hear the comments of another passenger to the boatman. It’s about me. In Malayalam. He says 'Check out Raother'. A Malayalam movie villain’s name. I recall the movie. Trivandrum . Theater. Right side Amma is sitting. There is a packet of chips in my hand.

The boatman rows silently.

The ashram is crowded.

I stand back.

I watch rows and rows of people going up to the lady who sits on a stage dressed in a white sari. The lady hugs each one of them. Most cry. She hugs them well. Holds them close. She pats their heads. Whispers in their ears. They cry.

I watch from the back. I do not stand in the queue.

She goes on hugging. The whole day goes by. The people never stop coming. I wait for something I know will happen.

I sit outside. A stray dog joins me. She is brown and thin. She wags her thin twig like tail. Her whole back curves to the side when she demonstrates her friendliness. She comes towards me, in an awkward amble. She lies at my feet. Reaching her head out to be patted. I comply. I feel her yearning for affection. Her submission. It radiates from her. I sit with her. On the parapet next to the ashram library.

Inside the hugging continues.

I see from where I sit the ashram library office. Inside sits an old man behind a desk. His long hair is white. So is his beard. He is slim. He radiates a calmness that attracts me. I go inside.

There are others talking to him. I sit in a corner. He notices me. Looks at me. Then continues the conversation with his guests.

I wait. I don’t listen. I sit. I tune to Agastyan. He is behind me. I hear him. He asks me what I plan to do. I reply that I do not know. He says that is good. I ask in contrast to what. He is silent.

The ground is covered in red coir carpet.

I sit there for a long time. More guests came and went.

Then there was only him and me.

He nods to me. I get up and sit on the chair opposite to him.

He asks me why I am here.

I say that I want to become a sanyasi.

He says that nobody becomes a sanyasi.

I understand.

I say that I want to stay in the ashram.

He asks for how long.

I reply that I do not know.

He asks me if I have met Amma.

I say that I haven’t.

He says that I should. That maybe it will give me the answers.

I say that I have no questions.

He says that neither do you have answers.

I don’t respond. It didn’t require a response.

He asks me about me. Asks me what happened.

I tell him that I am empty.

He thinks that I mean in some spiritual lack or something like that. He starts talking about paramathma and soul and things like that.

I cut him off. I tell him I am empty. Really.

He asks me how I know that.

I see what he is asking.

I have no answers.

I say that I want to become a sanyasi.

He says that there is no need for me to go towards sanyas.He says that sanyas is something that will happen if it has to happen. It can’t be forced. It’s not a goal.

I get up. Bow before him. He sits behind the desk. He bows.

I leave.

I go and sit at the parapet. The dog finds me. She is calmer. I am already claimed.

It is night. Late.

The auditorium where the people wait to be hugged is still crowded.

A man approaches me. He tells me that he needs to leave with his family and that he is a volunteer for the ashram. He wants me to take his badge and place at the stage. My job is to stand on the stage and control the flow of the people who are coming on stage to be hugged.

I nod my consent. The man thanks me profusely. He fixes the badge on my shirt and takes me into the auditorium. He takes me on to the stage. He tells another volunteer there that I am replacing him. Then he leaves.

I stand on the right side of the stage near the steps. People come up one by one. When the hug is over, I let the next one go. I watch the lady.

She shows no sign of tiredness. She receives each one I send in.

The crowd trickles out. It is the volunteers turn. I am told to go to her.

I walk towards her. She opens her arms to me. I am enveloped within her hug. She asks me where you have been my son. I don't say anything. She smells clean. No odor. Nothing. She asks me what do you want my son. I say that I want to merge.

She releases me and points to the back of the stage. She tells me to sit there.

I do. I look around me. There are some monks sitting there in meditation. They wear ochre. Their hands worry the rudraksha beads. They are silent. Their eyes are closed. They are still.

I copy. I do not know what I am doing there. I don’t like this. I sit. Center is getting worked up. Ripples.

A man comes and touches my feet. I spring up and step back. I walk down. I leave the auditorium. I sit outside. I recall agitation. Inside. Swirling within.

I recall bits and pieces.

Sitting inside the empty auditorium, leaning against a pillar. Eyes closed. Meditating. On what ? I do not know. I am copying. I am pretending. I am doing nothing except keeping my eyes closed. I hear laughter. I think its Agasthya.

I open my eyes. A man stands in front of me. His long black hair is matted. His beard is scraggly. He wears a thin cotton towel. He holds in his hand freshly wrung saffron dhoti. He had returned from a bath. He stands now in front of me and laughs at me.

I feel naked. He sees right through me. I feel redness spread from my ears to my throat. I feel the need to hide. I feel. I feel. I constrict within myself. Becoming smaller. Hiding.

He continues laughing as he walks away.

I drop my pretence and go to sleep.

I am ashamed.

The final exorcism of the past VII

2012-01-29T03:36:00.000-08:00

I grew my beard.

Long.

I let my hair grow. Long

The beard complied. The hair didnt.

It grew at the back and bunched up there like a neck pillow.

I didnt mind.

I was restless. Within I was empty. Just reponses to stimuli and nothing in between. The voices had dwindled to 3.

When the rest went Iam unable to say. I dont recall.

I recall the time when there was just three.

Agastyan does not chatter. My questions are answered by him.

The rest two talks among themselves most of the time. I listen. I rarely participate.

I read.

When I read Iam absorbed in the words. Everything around me falls into silence. I absorb. No voices. Nothing. Not even me. Just words connecting, creating images inside. The images remain for sometime and then slowly dissolves away.

I read the same book sometimes, realizing midway that I have read it before when the words trip on a stray image lying within and turns it around and recognizes it. Then everything floods back in.

I dont force it . It happens sometimes. I have lots of books.

Religion fascinates my state.

It talks to me.

Agastyan approves.

Agastyan is totally external. I ask him if he is me. He asks me if he is me then I should be able to tell what he is going to say next. I cant. He says, see?

I dont connect with the voices in the sense that they are a part of me. They stand aloof, totally despite me. They will be there even if I wasnt. Their presence is comforting sometimes but sometimes it negates me.

I feel the need to find myself. I exist but it seems like watching myself in the mirror. There is a disconnect.

I grow my beard. I grow my hair. I wear black. I put on the first of many mask.

I absorb the books. It talks of vibes , energy and it immediatly manifest itself for me. I read about sanyasis and I become them. Their words become mine. Mine become theirs. I become.

I tell Achan that I would like to go to Sabrimala.

He is pleased.

I do the 42 days fast. I pray.

I do not know what I pray for. Agastyan speaks. I repeat what he says.

I go to Sabrimala with my cousin.

We go along with some of his friends. Iam a kanni swami.First timer.Novice.

We take a bus to Erumeli. I dont enjoy the crowd. I dont like my cousin's friends. They are loud. They find a roll of money on the bus floor in the night. They show it to my cousin and me when we get down for a tea break. Cousin says that we need to return it. They argue that how we will find the rightful owner. Cousin says we should just drop it in the temple donation box. They say that its Ayyappans gift. God works in mysterious ways.

Cousin feels my distance. He feels my reproch. I feel his simmering disgust.

We get down at Erumeli.

Crowd. Seeting mass of humanity. Wave in black and saffron. Its stifling. I am not enjoying this. My center was off. I feel anger. I feel crowded.

We walk with the crowd to a mosque.

We light lamps. Rub ash on our forehead. I copy. I watch and I copy. I feel nothing.

We walk . Erumeli .

Girl selling peanut, swaying lusciously at the pilgrims. They cry louder. Swamiye Ayyapoo! The noise to scare away the lust full thoughts like elephants with a fire crackers.

I watch the girl. She smiles. I smile . Cousin and I buy peanuts from her. She calls us swami. I feel elated.

We walk. We get pushed out of the way by other swamis that walk up with cries of Padham! Padham! , which I believe means , make way, make way.

Iam irritated. Angry.

We stop at a river, to take a dip. Its ritual. Shit covers all walkable area. I dip in the river and to my right there is a rock that juts out of the river upon which is a heap of excreta, dripping into the water. I scramble out. I wipe myself dry. I wipe myself dry again.

I watch my disgust.

My legs are paining. The old broken bones in my right leg had never healed completely. The fibula had formed a false joint that had a mind of its own.

I tell my cousin that Iam going back. My legs prevent me from walking for long. Its painful.

I return to Pamba by a bus.(I do not recall this part. But my cousin told me this is what really happened. Sequences are difficult.)

We decide to meet up at Pamba and walk up to the temple.

Cousin and friends meet me at Pamba.

We bathe in Pamba. The flowing water is dammed and is stagnent with floating black dhotis and religious muck. The water is viscous. No amount of piety is going to make that water wash away my sins. I dip myself nevertheless. I surface disgusted.

We continue the climb. Iam done. I had enough. I dont feel correct. It seems pretentious. Not natural. I dont want to go further. My cousin says he will go with me.

His friends are shocked. They say it will offend Ayyapan.

Ayyappan can go and fuck himself.

I dont feel like seeing him now.

Agastyan laughs out loud. I smile at him.

We leave. I feel light.

We travel freely. We get off at a place called Laha because we found the name quaint. We post us a postcard from there. Have lunch and sleep under the rubber trees that lines the road.

We stop a bus and reach Trivandrum.

Its night.

We go to a road side stall for some food. Theres a lady serving. She calls us swami. She fusses about us. She finds a seat for us. Feed us. We pay. I call her daughter when we leave.

The transformation was complete. I had absorbed and made a new me.

I had a personality. Of my own.

My cousin sniggered in the auto back home to the hills of Nedumangad.

Daughter!

I smiled with him. I had a foundation, now I can build on this.

I feel light.

We reach home. We continue the fast. We leave for Sabrimala during the rainy season. We travel light. We travel free. We stop when we feel like it. We walk when we feel like it. We sleep where theres place. We speak to strangers. The world opens up and welcomes us right in.

Old man in the bus with a coconut sapling. Cousin initiates the conversations. He comes to Sabrimala every year. Many years. I do not recall the number. He plants a coconut sapling there every year. A marker to his devotion. My inside fills with a warm glow. The old man asks me how many times I have come to Sabrimala, I say never. He asks me who is my Ishta Devata. I reply Shiva.

He says look.

I look out of the window to see a huge statue of Shiva in meditation, surrounded by wilderness. I look.

The old man has his eyes closed and his lips move in prayers. I recall he had travelled these roads many times.

Agastya sighs.

We reach Pamba.

Its the rainy seaon. The river flows wildly. It is choppy and rough. Its raining. We wash ourselves. This time we do no dare take a dip, the river is too rough.

We start the climb. We go slowly. It is drizzling. We take our time. I recall being completly alone save the 2 of us. But that cant be correct. But thats how I recall it. We reached the Sanidhanam. It was dark. Not many shops were open. It was still raining.

We went into the temple. We were alone there.

I stood in front of the temple and saw the small statue , for whose vision scores of humanity had struggled for , for centuries. I stood there for a long time. Taking it all in. Agastyan spoke. I watched.

Light from the lamps reflecting off the metal shine of the idol. The smell of the incense. The orange glow within the inner santum. I must have prayed. I dont recall.

My cousin did a saina pratista around the temple. I ensure that there are no obstacles in from of him while he rolls around the temple . I walk beside him , correcting his dothi when it slips too high.

We finish our prayers and go to the shops lining the temple. Few are open. We have dosa at one place. We decide to spend the night at the temple.

We sit near a milestone that says Sabarimala 0 . We lean against it and lights our beedi.

We smoke in silence.

We hear a sound. We look to see a huge wild boar step out of the forest. We watch each other. For a long time. He steps out onto the road and walk towards us. We continue smoking. Privilaged. We watch. The boar stood at about 4 feet in height. Big. It stopped near some banana leaves that had been discarded by the road side.His eyes never left us. It placed its front paw on the leaves and tore the leaves with its snout. It ate in silence. All the time regarding us.

We watched. We smoked.

The boar gave a grunt and disappeared into the forest.

My cousin looks at me. We smile.

We return home the next day.

I am a swami.

~~My aim is to find myself.~~

~~to find the purpose of my existence~~

~~to seek ? to find the answer to a question I have never asked?~~

I am a swami.

I am indulging myself. In that indulgence, that activity , there is me. I exist in the confluence between thought and action. Without one of the two I cease to exist.

If that is so, asked Agastyan, where are you?

Thus the search began.

The final exorcism of the past. VI

2012-01-25T01:50:00.000-08:00

Honesty.

Its difficult. I always come in the way.

Its complicated only because of thinking , which involves including others. Effects. Causes. Results.

So you make rules.

About what you portray. What your reveal. What you obscure , hide . Its about others. I could add fear but its not the fear of consequences to you, not about how you will be perceived. Those things are pointless because its someone elses indulgences based on perceptions that are not in your control. The real fear is something that will involve and effect another, through your thoughts, actions or words.

I guess you call that love.

So you must forgive if you perceive gaps. Treat it as things I don't wish to reveal. We do have choices.

Interactions are inevitable. You are never alone. You are shaped; and that always involves another.

I recall.

My father in Udupi. Looking for a restaurant that will serve biryani.

It was the twilight zone of restaurants. After 3 pm. The time between lunch and dinner. No place open.

We had left my younger brother's place. Now we were waiting for the bus to take us to Mangalore . From there , train to Kerala.

I wanted my biryani.

Achan found a place. I do not recall how he managed it.

I ate the biryani. The chicken pieces were not cooked through. I didn't say anything. I ate the whole thing. Effort require acceptance.

Train to Kerala.

One incident. Registered.

Me on the upper berth. Achan below , on the side that faces me.

A sadhu sits next to him. Old , clothed in saffron.

Iam smoking. I finish. I lean down and give the stub to Achan to toss out of the train.

Achan takes it and throws it out.

I lean back on the bag that I am using as a pillow. I must have been reading a book. I am not sure.

End. Memory over.

Years later, my father told me the rest of that incident.

Achan says to me that the Sadhu asked him why he allows his son to smoke in presence of his father. Achan had replied that he wanted his son to do what he wants , as long as he is not ashamed of it. If his son smokes, then he didn't want that to be something his son has to hide from his father. The sadhu replied that we all shit but we don't need to shit in front of our parents to show that we shit.

Interactions. Society. Flock. Rules.Conform.

I still smoke in front of my father. I dispose the stubs myself.

Nedumangad. Home.

Off medications. Voices are my company. They talk. They answer my questions. Mostly with more questions, until I arrive at the answers.

There are no questions that you have an answer to already. Questions are just answers that you have already derived that requires validation. Your questions are as limited as your experiences. Its all in your head. Just a mental masturbation. Affirmation of self.

I digress. That came from now. I am indulging.

Then.

I trusted the voices. 13 of them. Each distinct.

Nedumangad.

Shell. Empty. Hungry. Horny.

Nothing defined. Difficult to recall the state. Memory seems to require definitions.

I recall images.

Lying on the sofa. Afternoon. Alone. Reading? Perhaps.

I see a woman, standing by my side. She wears a black skirt, the one that Indian girls wear underneath their sari. Her blouse is black too. Hair untied but neat. She is dark. I find her appealing in a physical sense.

I watch.

She comes besides me. Lifts her skirt. Straddles me. Holds both my shoulder and looks into me.

I startle. Invasive. I am aroused . Shes no longer there.

Memory. Its there.

Voices.

We are now familiar. I am just ears and some sort of processing. Not sure if there was a me understanding. I remember , in a watching sort of way. I don't recall a me being there. Me seems to be different from I. Words. Definitions. Sorting. Memory. i.

Created. Not immortal. No beginning, no end, because it never existed in the first place.

Illusion.

Voices. I realized was me. Splintered. Observing a me that was no longer there.

Yet I must have been there. If not who is writing this? A memory? An accumulated , embodied garbage of experiences ?

I dont know.

Then.

Elder brother's marraige. Arranged.

Reception at the house.

Elder brother married. Trying his best to assure me that nothing has changed. Family is still his biggest priority. I see that he is assuring himself. It does not matter to me. I absorb.

They leave.

Achan and me. Home

Achan joins law. He is in his 50s. He studies.

I read.

I see my emptiness. I see it.

Its a sort of void that needs to be filled. It lacks the ability to exist in absence. It needs filling. With what? Every thing I believe is retained remains within like a collection of dead butterflies. Dead. Captured. Some stay, some blows away. I am not affected.

Panic attacks are no longer there. I stay in a silence that is deafening.

I seek answers to my state. I turn to direction. I look outside. I grab religion.

I devour it. I try on all the masks. I keep it on for long periods. I become the books I read. I become whatever anyone wants me to be. I see it now. Then, it was the only way.

No recollection of what or how I was before the shedding. I see it. I have no memory of the feeling. I know there were emotions. There had been laughter. Tears. Anger.Lust. I see it but I dont experience it . It is like someone else's life.

Then the voices started leaving.

I do not recall when they started leaving.

My dialogues with them, was dominated by one voice which seemed to silence the rest. I am not sure but I recall him the most. The voice was male, deep, calm.

I bestowed on him a personality. I made him Agastyan.

Religion had become my crutch.

I sought validation. Identity. I sought a reason. I sought for myself.

Religion, in its abstractness , gave me some more porn to wank off with. What attracted my interest became my reality. I immersed myself in it.

Companionship. Elder brother being married rose within me a need to get anchored. It seemed logical. Sex and a reason to exist. Anchor.

I told Achan.

Now to find the girl.

I looked within the recess of my mind to find an available candidate. An ex flame. During school vacation days. A neighbor. Christian. Nothing beyond great long prose written hastily on note book papers, passed between each other by my cousin in whose house I was spending the vacations. She was my cousin's friend. The engulfing affair flickered out with time.

I inquired after her. Spoke to my cousin. She in turn got in touch with her friend. I wrote a letter saying that I am back , explained what had happened and that I want to marry her.

She accepted.

Cousin brought her home one day. We met face to face for the first time. We spoke for the first time.

I was lost. I found no connection. I looked, tried to fan back some memory of what I had felt for her once. Nothing came. I pretended. When she left I was tired. The effort of feeling a feeling that is not there is draining.

I carried it on. There seemed no other way. I had wanted marriage and she had accepted. That was that. Anchor.

She had theories for my state. I listened. She was doing medicine and I became a text book case study.

I was PMD. Three alphabets.

I did not mind.

I was eager to know too.

Staying focused on something or someone that does not hold your interest is very hard. They talk and it goes through you.They stand in front of you and you see through them. Nothing registers. I sit in front of her and I am elsewhere. I recall a day when I was called out for some reason and she was with me in the living room. I left her there and went out. I came back in the course of the day , much later , to find her in the house. I had forgotten. If she was upset, she never showed it. That was kind of her. She wasnt registering.

She spoke to her mother about us. Her mother did not disapprove. Her mother brought it up with her father. Mother returned with a swollen cheek for the trouble.

I needed to get away. I needed to get out. I had spend the last few months within the confines of my house. I stepped out only to ride out to the market place. Video shop. Back. Book shop. Back.

Religion gave me the escape.

Enter Swami Tys.

The final exorcisim of the past V

2012-01-15T01:40:00.000-08:00

Sharjah.

Grey. Pills dull me. I experience outside through grey sludge. Things reach me slowly, dulled, like echoes. I struggle to comprehend. Everything comes in twisted. Losing interest. Losing the sense of me. Senses dulled. My reactions, actions almost sloth like. I exist. Barely.

Achan quits drinks. Response to a passing comment by Amma. I hear about this later. I don’t notice then. I don’t notice a lot. My attention is within a close perimeter based on immediate interactions and required response. Alone there’s nothing. Voices stilled. Nothing. Not even the awareness of nothing.

I exist only in response.

I am the response.

Presence of people affects me. I find people difficult. My body reacts to people. Suffocating. A crushing within followed by sheer panic if I don’t get out and away.

Rajan chettan. Cousin.

My getaway man.

Drives in silence. Long drives. Car window. Watching. Outside. Outside. Silence. Nothing interpreted. Watching. Memory calls forth beach...long stretches of sand, parking at a restricted rocky area near the sea. Rajan chettan peeing into the sea. A big house, perched on top of the cliff which, I recall Rajan chettan saying, is a palace. We drove back. End.

Stray memories. Flotsams. Not anchored.

Doctors. Doctors. Doctors.

Judgments. Pronouncements. No return. Advice to be institutionalized. A memory:

Achan and I. Night. Sitting in front of a desk behind which sits a man whose hanging double chin fascinates me. I recall he wore a pale blue shirt and his head sat on top of the shoulder on a soft cushion of flesh.

Mind is like a balloon. One prick and it collapses. There is no return. Pronouncement. Definite.

I feel Achan's anger in the car. He swears.

Achan quits his job. Farewells from his company. He had started as sales person and finished as the commercial manager. He brings from the farewell party a gold watch.

I become his job.

He chalks out a plan.

Get me back to college. Complete the course. Stay with me at my younger brother's place. Look after me. Treat me at NIMHANS.

I am not ready. I feel rushed.

Manipal.

College. I feel disconnected. I don’t connect. Unable to recall my old self. Unable to revert. Friends seem like strangers. I recall them but I don’t feel anything. I am gone.

Classes. Unable to focus. I watch. I listen. Things go through me. I hear sounds and see sights. Comprehension requires tremendous effort. I let things wash over me. I sit there. Alone. I walk out and go to the hostel. My old room is now occupied by someone. The door is locked. I find an unoccupied room. I sleep on the concrete bed. I wait for the day to end. This becomes my routine.

Evening. I go back to my younger brother’s house. Achan waits there. He tends to me. Medicates me.

He is disappointed. I feel it. He feels helpless. I feel it. My brother is irritated. I feel it. He feels crowded. He brings biryani every night for my dinner.

Voices come back. I welcome it. I sit in the living room watching the lizards on the wall near the naked tube light, preying on stray insects. I wait for my brother's return and the biryani.

I feel my brother's contempt. This I, am repulsive to him. He doesn’t recognize it. He does not like it. He reacts to it. My lack of response incites him further. He feels bad. I see that. He tries. He tries hard.

A big bottle filled with coins. Brother's girlfriend. Brother's car. The cook who puts live wire in the garbage pit to electrocute the stray dogs that come to pick through it. Snake in the courtyard lawn. I recall my bike but I am not sure. I watch. I watch.

Voices keep me company. I listen. They carry on without me. I listen. It is comforting.

National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore

Every fortnight. Achan and I.

We stay in a hotel near the institute with peeling wall paper. It’s clean. Vegetarian fare at the restaurant below. We get the same room every time. We eat the same food every time. We go through the same choreographed routine.

Every fortnight.

I don’t get to lead.

I go through the routine. Doctors. Pooja?

Tests. Psychometric Tests.

I am told that I figured within the 4 highest score. I do not know if that is good or bad. Achan seems proud of it. He clings to that like a chance. I hear him say that to Amma on the phone from the hotel room. He sounds proud, as if I had passed in some difficult test. I enjoyed the test. I do not comprehend its purpose.

Counseling.

Same questions. A very long bearded man whose face peeks out from a riot of hair. I can’t stop staring. I feel his arrogance. It radiates. He asks questions for which he has his answers. Mine are in conflict. He pounds on. He wants me to arrive at his answers. I don’t. I see it, yet I don’t.

I is stirring within.

He is stuck on my drug habit. He wants me to deny that time. I can’t since it happened. He wants me condone it. I do not see his reasons. It was already done. He wants me to say that I do not remember it. I do remember it but I can’t attach to that memory any emotions. Pulled out, it comes sans its essence. It comes as a response minus the me who had experienced it.

He asks me if my friends offered me poison, will I ingest it knowing it is poison. I am unable to comprehend. It is what I would later identify as a rhetorical question. Opinion on a possible scenario that does not figure in your realms of actual experience. It was and still is the most difficult question to answer because there is a certain element of dishonesty in the answer, since the truth is, I do not know.

He keeps asking that question. Every time. I keep saying I do not know. The face that peers from within the hirsute frame is annoyed, impatient.

I feel Achan's irritation with the man. He knows that I cannot answer it.

The dance continues. Every fortnight.

Until the day I answer him.

I tell him I will take it. I feel a rush of red within me.

He makes certain that I understood his question. He asks me if my friends offer me poison, will I drink it knowing it is poison. I say again, I will.

I am angry. I had enough of this man.

I exist. Barely.

I tell Achan that I want to stop everything. That I want to leave Manipal. Leave NIMHANS. Stop all medication. I want to go to Nedumangad. I want to go home. I want to figure me out.

I want.

Achan agrees. We return to Manipal, pack up and leave for Nedumangad the same day.

I am leading my dance.

The final exorcism of the past. IV

2011-12-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

Morning found me still awake.

Numb.

I don't recall the pain. I am sure that there must have been pain. I don't recall it.

I don't recall how I was feeling. I must have been scared earlier on, later it would have morphed into indifference because there is no sense fearing the inevitable. But I don't recollect it.

The barred gate was once again opened. I was told by the cop who opened it to step out. I stepped out.

The row of cells opened out into a balcony. We were on the first floor. I occupied the last cell. Next to mine is the room that is occupied by the guards.

There might have been about 8 cells. Each occupied by more than 2 people. I am the only one in mine. I was also the only one in underwear. The rest wore simple clothes like mundu and shirts.

A thin middle aged man in the cell next to me cleaned the floor of his cell with his hand. I watch him. He carefully brushes the dust to a pile outside the cell and then very carefully puts that dust into a small plastic bag. Once done he stands next to me, holding within his palm the bag.

We stand in a line outside our cells.

Head count.

No one talks but there is no tension in the air. It’s a normal day.

All of us walk down to the courtyard.

A shallow large tank filled with water. Away from that are small rooms, which I assume are the toilets.

People brushing teeth. Washing themselves.

I am used to this. Boarding school training.

I sit on the wall of the tank. I wash my face.

I do not use the toilets.

The plastic bag man comes and sits next to me. He pockets the empty plastic bag and takes out a packet of beedi from his pocket.

I reach out for one and am graciously given. He lights my beedi. We smoke in silence.

A whistle blows .Everyone walks back into their cell. I sit in my cell. I ask the guard if I can have my pants. He opens the cell and asks me into the guard room.

His partner is also there. It is a regular room. A wooden table stands pushed against the window with 2 chairs which served as a makeshift dining table.

The balding, pot bellied guard places a plate of idlis and chutney in front of me. He nods his head indicating me to eat.

I sit there with plate of food in front of me.

There are sparrows outside the window. I broke the idli and threw some out. The crumbs landed on the ledge of the window. The sparrows hopped onto the ledge and pecked at the idli.

I watch. I don't eat.

I wore my pants and my t shirt. Reached into my pant pocket. Sticky. The peda I pulled out was little crushed. I extend it to the guards. Hesitation. Each reaches and pinches a small piece from it. One touches it to both his eyes before popping it into his mouth. I ate the remaining left in my hands.

I walked back into my cell.

I sat there.

Called out by the guards. My cell doors are not closed.

I am told to go with them. I stopped at the cell next to mine and pulled out the copper ring from Mookambika temple that I wore on my finger. I gave it to the plastic bag man. He took it. Looked at it and then wore it.

Debt repaid.

I went with the guards.

I was taken to an office. There was a big desk, behind which sat an angry man. Someone senior. Hegde? I do not recall. He was angry.

In front of him sat the Principal of my college, Mr.Hurbert. Next to him sat my younger brother.

The officer started shouting at me. I just listened. I was told the range of things I am accused off. Everything. He kept shouting.

I listened him out.

My brother was talking to the officer. My principal interjecting on my behalf. I don't remember the conversation.

Outside the office.

I am sitting on the bench outside the office. I am crying. My head is down and tears come out like blood from a neck wound. I watch it splashing onto the terracotta tiled floor being absorbed almost as quickly as it fell. I watch it for a long time.

Went back to college.

The music group. No drugs. Music. Lots and lots of music.

Rock shows.

Invitation to perform at Rajputana, Jaipur.

Sponsored by the Welcomgroup.

Thrilled. Part of the group. Vocals. Western.

Kindness. Head master's wife. Kindness.

Jaipur.

Colors. Cold nights. Palaces. Classmates from the royal family. Temples. Kindness.

Colors.

Babri Masjid comes down.

I start to unravel.

Reasons? Just the randomness of events. Probable. Perhaps.

Sharjah. Parents. Doctors. Concern. Kindness.

Tons and tons of kindness.

I see that only now. On reflection.

Then. I am oblivious. Wiped clean. Gone. Splintered.

The final exorcism of the past . III

2011-12-18T01:35:00.000-08:00

Definition.

Making sense out of the senseless. Putting things within a frame.

Definition.

The art of losing sight by giving things names

Definition.

A way to understand by bringing something within our own perceptions.

Definition.

Meaningless to the thing being defined.

Home. Sharjah.

Doctor. Doctor Rajan.

The effeminate kind one. The graceful one.

Questions.

The search for a reason.

I have none. I didn’t then, I don’t now.

Drugs?

I don’t know. I have done drugs. It was there and I was there and then there were we. I don’t know why.

Regrets?

Now? None. It happened. That’s all there is to it. Then? I don’t know. I do not recall the feeling. I do recall the events and the color scheme is bright orange with tinges of grey.

No. No regrets. No guilt. Nothing. No self pity. No anger. A desire to understand. To ponder. To wonder why. To risk taking this to mean some sort of uniqueness. A motivation due to the vain wish to be special? I don’t know. Now it no longer matters. It happened. That’s all there is to it. Nothing came out of it. Just me the way I am now. With no reference to how it was before. So nothing. Pointless.

Chemical imbalance.

Perhaps. Brought on by? I don’t know. No incidence of such in the family line. I do recall that in school in St.Joseph's in Coonoor, being sent for counseling by a bald headed malayali psychiatrist, who wore a maroon color sweater and was peeing loudly in the bathroom while I was told to keep taking about something. I recall that. I recall grinning.

Misanthrope. Antisocial. Tags earned in school. A suspicion of adrenalin over load. A case of blacking out when overtly angry. Once. Wore it like a badge. Seemed to have made survival in a boarding school easier.

Chemical Imbalance?

Probably.

Reason? Trigger?

Riots. Possibly.

Suppressed anger? Disappointments? Seeming injustice? Perhaps.

College. Manipal.

Friends. Drinks. Fights.

Lots of Fights.

Fights with seniors. Fights with class mates. Fights with other colleges. Fight with locals.

Fights with each other.

Friends being hauled up by police.

Never mess with the locals.

Accusation of robbery. Mugging.

One local had lost a chain in a fight. It was not us.

I was not in town. Bangalore. I think. Came back to a scene of weirdness.

Tales of friends being taken to police station and being beaten up. Being made to sign confessions. Tales of all fingers now being pointed at me.

Amused.

Scared but amused.

I recall that fear. Like a curtain of waterfall that hides a cave. You walk through. Now it’s behind you.

Waited on the road for the local gang to come to me. Disarmed. No knives. No drugs on person. Waiting.

Diwali night. Natasha, class mate ,passing by. Handing me a sweet. I pocket it. I tell her friend and her to keep moving. I don’t want them to see me humiliated. I see her looking back. Concerned.

White Sumo. Screeching brakes. Fat guys pouring out like constipated shit in white clothes.

Anu anna.

The joker of the pack. Or is it king? I don’t know.

Knife being held at me. Still sheathed. Monologues. Tiring monologues. Threats. I don’t respond. I am bored. I want to them to get on with it.

Younger brother arrives there on his bike.

I am sacred again.

I don’t want him there. But the goons are scared of him. He studies in MIT, a bigger college, known for their violent methods in solving problems by their sheer numbers. I am amazed. Humbled. All my life I felt I needed to protect him and today he is there alone. He is by my side.

Police. In mufti.

Manipal police outpost.

Anu Anna.

More threats. More accusation. I am searched. Nothing except my lighted. Anu sets my hair on fire. I sit not reacting. I feel nothing. I see his sheathed knife lying on the table next to me. I see how easy it is.

I do nothing.

Udupi subjail. Same night

Brother trying to get me out. Phones college. Principal refuses to come. Replies that a day in jail will be good for me. So that is that.

Stripped. Blue underwear.

Jail. A small square room. An Indian toilet separated by a low wall. Near the metal bars on the corner, on the floor, a bed made of cardboard and sack. A pitcher containing water sits near the toilet. I am alone

Mosquitoes.

I sit on the bed my back resting on the wall. I wet my body with the water from the pitcher. Mosquitoes are attracted to heat. I am hoping this will lower my body temperature. Mosquitoes haven’t read what I read.

Two cops walk in opening the barred door. Or is it called a gate? I don’t know. I know what to expect. I stand up.

They begin.

I think about a sweet that is in my pant pocket and remembers that it is diwali . I laugh. I laugh.

I feel good.

I keep getting up. I find the two cops silly, in their khakhi pants and their white vest strectched over their pot bellies. I feel a kinship. A repulsion mixed with wonder. I take their hits as it comes. They avoid my face. They aim for my stomach , my sides and my back. They use elbows and side of the fist.

I keep getting up.

They go out.

I sit and wait.

The other occupants of the jails beats on their bed when the beating is arriving. I am thankful.

They come. One asks me to sign something. It is written in Kannada. I shake my head.

They begin again.

They seem bored with the whole thing. Like clock work we start the waltz again.

With the bedding beating of my partners in crime, providing the perfect music.

The final exorcism of the past. II

2011-12-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

Sharjah.

February 14th, 1993, my parents got a call from India. From a friend of my elder brother.She explained to my father that she had met up with me after hearing about my condition. She told him that there is something happening with me. That I was not acting normal.

I do not recall meeting her or any conversation. Edited. Deleted. Gone.

Parents decided to bring me home.

Manipal.

The Canara Bank manager called me in one day while I was roaming on the street. I used to go to the Kasturba Medical Hospital and watch people come and go. Sometimes I gave blood to patients. Iam O+. One some days , I used to walk into the Cancer ward of the newly built Satya Sai Cancer hospital. I do not think anyone stopped me. Death seemed to have become some sort of a magnet.

He called me in and explained that there was a recurring account that I had started a year back and since I had not been putting in any deposit, he wanted me to close it and take the money.

I walked out with around 500 rupees.

Voices said to head to the Himalayas. I paid heed. I went to the hostel to give away my shoes to the cook.

I sat on the cement bed of the hostel room when my younger brother walked in.

He told me that he was taking me to Sharjah. I did not believe him. He was angry. He looked into my wardrobe to pack my stuff. He was angry when he could not find anything. He told me that I should go with him. I was glad that he was there. I felt good to leave with him. Though I did not think I was going to Sharjah. He said we are going to Calicut and from there we will fly to Sharjah on Indian Airlines. I could not comprehend. Indian Airlines is a domestic airline. How can it fly to Sharjah. My brother was lying to me but I did not care. He could do what he want with me, take me where he wants to. Nothing mattered except leaving with him.

No shoes.

I took my friend's shoes that was lying outside his door. He had taken lots more. So I reasoned this will even the debts. That's what the voices said.

Calicut.

Stayed in my brother's friends place. Confusing. There was nylon threads tied and threaded through the banister of the stair case. I could feel the curiosity of the family there. I was shown a room. I saw a hand woven cotton shirt hanging behind the door. Details. Eyes capturing everything.

Too much information. Too much assault to the senses. Loud. Loud. Loud.

Ride to airport. Long. Dark. I had put on the cotton shirt from behind the door when I was leaving. My brother took it off me and put it back behind the door. I wore my black T-shirt without question. My brother's irritation was amusing to me. He was confusing but I enjoyed the game he seemed to be playing.

Reached the airport. I decided to play along with this charade. I felt a part in a cosmic prank. Everyone was testing me, tricking me, seeing if I can see through this elaborate prank.

Airport Lounge.

My brother buries himself behind a book. I sit beside him taking everything in. I see a water cooler with a sign that says 'Do not drink'. It seemed odd that there is a water cooler whose very essence was being denied. I walk to drink from it. A security woman says something loud. I hear her but I keep walking. I drink from the tap. I bestow upon it its purpose of existence.

Brother and I called in back to the security check.Questions. I am searched. My shoes are taken out and looked inside. I am unconcerned. Brother is embarrassed and angry. I can feel it as a flux around him. A blast of field around him.

We board the plan.

Edited. No recollection. Nothing. I weigh 48 kilos.

Sharjah : Home

Anger. Directed at a man sitting in the living room. A friend of the family. He is staying with us. I do not know him. Never seen him before. But he emits a sickly field of greenish yellow smell that reeks of conceit. I take his bags and leave it outside. Parents arranges for him to stay with my cousin on the floor below.

I do not see him again until much much later.

Anger. Books of Sai Baba in Amma's room. I throw it across the floor. Elder brother is annoyed. He shouts. He is told to back down by my parents.

Younger brother leaves the next day. Back to college.

Elder brother sitting at the dining table using cello tape to repair the torn books. He feels sad. Confused. I smell blue in him, with traces of red and gold. A taste almost metallic and sharp.

The smell of fear from my sister who brought us up , when she walked into the room where I was sitting. I was naked. I feel enormous grief. A self loath.

Waking up to an empty house. My cousin brother who is for all purpose my eldest brother, tells me that theres nothing to worry but my father is in the hospital.

Iam not worried.

Iam taken to the hospital . Achan is in the ICU. I find an empty wheel chair and rides on it. I see Amma standing at the waiting room door. Her head is leaned against the door frame. She had aged in a day. I look at her and I see my actions. I see . I see. I feel helpless. I feel held within. I feel responsible.

I feel responsible.

I am called into the ICU. Achan is lying among lot of tubes and wires. There is an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose.

He beckons the nurse. She leans towards him and lifts the mask. He whispers something to her.

I smile. My father. Always the drama queen.

I feel the crushing of my heart. Like a giant fist squeezing it. It is painful yet enjoyable. I feel it again years later . Now I know the name for it. It comes at the moment of a realization of the possible loss of a person who has become so valuable to you without your knowledge. This crushing feeling in the middle of your chest.

Home.

Doctors. Achan welcoming a person in. I am at the dining table. Sitting. Waiting. I hear my father saying to the man : I want my son back. The way he was before.

I hear the consolation from the man. I recall looking with in and not finding anything there. No memory of the person I am. There was nothing there. Just some memories that can be taken as and when required but with no emotions in it. Nothing to illustrate that this happened to me.

The man sat next to me . He was introduced to me as a doctor. I liked him. He exuded concern.Kindness. There was a feminine vibe from him. Almost woman like.

He talked to me. Asked of me things. I do not recall the conversation.

It must have been of no relevance because these conversations had not penetrated. It has not stayed. Parts and bit of it can be recalled.

Medication.

I take medicine only from my sister. I do not want her to fear me. Fear has a salty ammonia like smell.

I am convinced that I am being given codiene pills.

I sleep.

I sleep.

I wake up. Do not recall eating. I take pill. Then I sleep.

There are dreams. I know they are dreams. Because there are no voices in it. No visions. No person where noone should be. Only of me walking through grey. The only sound is of my boots pounding on the land. That is the only dream I have. Sometimes there's only the sound of my boots.

I wake up.

I am fuzzy. I feel dead within. Voices incoherent. Dullness. Nothing. No feeling. Everthing coming in through a sieve.

I do not like the pills.

I get violent.

I want to go back to sleep. I know the pills given now are just placebo. I know that.

Iam awake. Theres no me anymore. I do not know me .

My heart beats erratically. I feel like I am suffocating. I gasp for air. I try to focus. On something. An immense sense of fear envelope me. I lash out. I lash out at everyone.

I see the hurt. I am not in control .

My school friend comes to pick me up. He takes me out for a movie. Cliff Hanger. Crowd. I feel the feeling of utter panic coming up within me. I sit through. I sweat. Cold sweat. I feel nauseous. I sit through.

Iam relived when I get back home.

Elder brother take me out with his friends. We stand outside a restaurant in the night. Crowd. People on the street. Noise. I tell my brother to take me back. I plead. He is angry. But he takes me back.

I stay within my room. I shy away from people. I sometimes feel immense generosity and give away things.

It is difficult to give away things in Sharjah. No body needs anything.

I give anyway.

I give away my mothers saris by putting it outside. It gets put back in the evening.

We laugh about it.

We laugh about it.

I join in.

It is funny.

It really is funny.

The final exorcism of the past. I

2011-12-02T09:31:00.000-08:00

The craziest thing that has happened to me was going crazy.

My younger brother once wrote that blogging is like masturbation but with the only difference in wanting to be caught doing it.

He is right.

So here Iam wanking off in public.

Why?

If you know me then you would also know that I do not need a reason to do anything.

So stand back.

If you had the misfortune of knowing me closely , you will find me to be a little aloof. Its not intentional. I dont seem to have the ability to connect beyond right now. Friends who have borne me for this long know this about me. Iam not capable of keeping in touch or such sentimentalities that seems to accompany relationships. It almost seems like out of sight out of mind. I cant do anything about it. I function on a day to day basis with less than a 4 hour future in front of me.

Iam incapable of long term plans. Much to my wife's dismay. So she does the planning and I am in it for the ride. Thankfully she seemed to have reconciled with what she got herself into. She breaks down things for me to complete. So like Hansel, I follow the bread crumbs until I reach the destination she has planned. It works for me.

I do not think I was always like this.

Something happened on that new year day in 1993.

When I took off from that bike parking area in front of Ambassdor Pallava , in a state of utter panic because I felt a sudden unexplained sense of self consciousness . Like I was being watched by the Universe. Like there was this spot light on me. I can theorize about that state today. But at that time I felt absolute panic. I felt watched. By everyone.

I needed to get out of there.

Looking back now is almost clinical. If you ask me what I felt, I can tell you but I will not be able to relate to it. Past seems to be linked to a memory bank that I can access if I try. If I want I can even tell you every single detail of it. Visually. But its like recollecting a movie. I dont seem to be there.

This masturbation is getting complicated to explain.

But I will persevere much to your disgust.

I shoved some money in the hands of my friend who was with me and I left. I took an auto to the railway station and boarded the train to Thamburam , to my friend's place where I was put up.

The train journey was confusing.

This is the best part of madness. You know that something is not right.

You see, reality as we know it follows rules. There's a comfort that we derive subconciously in your senses functioning what we percieve as normal.

I boarded a crowded train. I think. Because my sight was playing tricks on me. I sat on the berth facing a young couple who during the passage , I could feel, was becoming concerned about me. I believe it was mostly due to my refrained reactions to seeing a crowded coupe becoming empty when I blinked my eyes and opened them again. One moment there was a crowd and the next it was me sitting alone. Not even the couple who sat in front of me.

You know that cant be happening. It is scary.

I see you. Now I dont.

Then I blink and the whole crowd, the worried couple , everything burst back. It is a tad bit confusing so forgive my edginess. Fuck , I dont know if you exist.

I recall seeing the fireworks welcoming the new year through the train window. With that it ended.

I must have reached my friends place. I tired reading in the bed but Iam not sure if I did. I slept.

I woke up the next day hearing a crowd outside my door. I could hear a multitude of people talking outside. They seemed to be waiting for me. I must have been worried about it because I recall the hesitance in opening the door to my bedroom which opened to the courtyard. I recall the call of courage it took to open the door.

There was no one there.

Just a sunny midmorning sun beating down on a barren courtyard. Bright yellow.

I must have been a bother. I recall the look of bewilderment in my friends' faces. I recall the need , the compulsion that drove my actions and words. I recall the confusion when the world as I know started crumbling.

Seems like I can recall all of it. Without the emotions. Its pretty neat.

My friend with whom I was staying put me on a bus to Bangalore. Why Bangalore? I don't know. I do not know how but I reached another friend's house where only his mother was there at that time. I had been there once. Stayed there once.

His mother took me in.

I collected all the knives in the house and kept it inside one draw. It must have seemed strange to her. I can only guess at her reactions. But I sensed a calmness in her. A sense of fragrant cloud that surrounded her. A sense of sadness that seemed to envelope her. I cried uncontrollably. I knew I made no sense but I cried.

She took me back to the college . Met my Principal . Left me there to my own devices.

Then the voices started.

Looking back the voices had started back in Madras.

But I had not realized that the source was me. I had heard my name being spoken in my presence and I had even once gone in search of my mother whose voice I had heard outside my bedroom window, telling my friend's father how long she had searched for me. I was certain she was in Madras. I could not understand why my friend's father who was a Policeman hide the whereabouts of my mother. I had taken a cycle rickshaw and went in search of her. I gave the rickshaw wallah the gold amulet that I wore, which we call a raksha, as his payment.

Back in the college, I woke up in my room, hearing a full fledged conversation around me. I opened my eyes to an empty room. There was silence . Then the voices just resumed the conversation. There was around 12 distinct voices. I seemed to have accepted this because I do not recall any fear of this. I listened to them. Most of the time what they spoke was not directed to me. It was like I was an incidental presence in their midst.

As days passed, I could bestow upon each of the voices a personality. There was one voice which sounded a lot like my mother. Not exactly but very similar. She was commanding, teasing, sarcastic. Very unlike my real mother. She was one of the very few who spoke to me. Her power over me was overwhelming. I could not resist her orders. I was told to jump from the open air auditorium to the pool one floor below because she told me that I need the purification. I jumped . I surfaced from the pool to a party that was going on which was not there when I jumped in. My Principal's eyes followed me when I stepped out of the pool and walked up the stairs to the lawn.

I accepted the changes that was happening to me. I was told that I should walk in the light in the corridor of my accomodation and avoid the shadows that fell on the floor. I did that by walking on the wall in a crawl, using the ledges of the windows that opened into the corridor. I recall the ease. The speed. The way my body was now responding.

The voices now spoke to me. I was part of the conversations. I found that I need not verbally voice from my part but what I heard was being heard with my ears. I seemed to not have wondered if others could hear what I was hearing. I do not recall the others that much. My friends had left me. I did feel abandonment . I felt alone for sometime. I also saw the apprehensions in their faces when they were with me. I remember once sitting in a friend's room and sobbing. I remember him trying to comprehend me. I recall this wave of grief that swept over me.

I lost track of time. I would wake up at wrong times when the meal times were over. I had no money. I had given away or had lost all my clothes, except a black pant and a black t shirt and a white dothi that I used as a bed sheet and also as a towel to dry myself after my bath. I ate the left overs from plates that was left outside the hostel rooms by students who ate in their rooms.

With the voices came the visions.

Nights turning to day and vice versa within hours of each other. Time becoming meaningless. Stars rearranging themselves in the night sky. The guitar shaped nebula. The soft beat of a drum to which I danced on the terrace of the C block. I recall carrying a sofa up the metal ladder to the top of the water tank and sitting there watching the sky while being told the nature of the universe.

Every question that I posed was answered. Mostly with more questions. Then the questions stopped. I felt fragmented. Like split into several. I understood the voices. I accepted them. Made my peace with them. From the accusatory tones, they became caring, concerned, protective.

The universe and me was now in dance where I could not make out who revolved around whom. Every thing was perspectives. It is in the division that we sense the unity. Even that became meaningless.

I became god.

Eagles that fed on the offal thrown from the hostel kitchen lost their fear of me. I would sit on my sofa surrounded by the wing beats of the multitude of them flying around me, barely missing touching me. They flew . Sometimes I flew with them. They hung around me like a cloud.

A sense of all importance pervaded me. A sense of specialness.

Now I was truly alone.

Filled to the brim.

Like the old saying : this too was going to end.

Living with the gap.

2011-11-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

Iam not an avid reader of newspaper.

Don't watch news on TV either.

I live my life within a 2 meter radius. What happens in front of me is my news. Sure, you can judge me but it wont make me pick up a newspaper.

I don’t do news.

I can only recall a few times when I watched the news with some sort of morbid interest.

Once I was meeting up an ad agency,run by these two amazingly creative brothers, to discuss a rejection which in my perspective was due to the artwork and in theirs was due to our failure in noticing it. I walked into their office, already anticipating the needless, fruitless arguments that lay before me. When I walked into their offce reception, I saw the whole office which consisted of about 12 , standing and watching the TV which was mounted on the wall.

Everyone was quite. The television showed the image of a familiar looking tower which seemed to be on fire or something. There were huge clouds of black smoke bellowing out. I was searching in the meagre crowd for my client, when I heard a collective gasp. My eyes went onto the TV ,where I watched in a numb silence a plane crashing onto the second tower.

We stood there, 12 arabs and one Indian, watching the tragedy happening in real life. We saw people jumping out of the building, like specks of raining black dust. We saw the towers' collapse, sending a tidal wave of dust from which people screamed and ran. We saw people walking around stunned, dressed in suits , carrying suitcases, their faces not comprehending the events that was happening around them, how a normal weekday became this madness.

We stood there , watched in silence. One of the brothers caught my eyes and I nodded towards the artwork I held in my hand. He came and hugged me. There was nothing for me to do. I went back to my press and did a reprint.

That night I watched the news.

I followed the news while it turned from a human tragedy into a crusade. Who is right , who is wrong but someone has to pay for it. I watched the sadness, turn to anger , then to hatred.

I watched the aftermath. I watched the war.

Again the killings.

News papers carried pictures of dead children. I collected it. Made a huge collage of dead children, bodies disbowled, eyes vacant, blood mixed with dust. I stuck it all onto a canvas, then I gave over it a coating of opaque white acrylic paint. Then I put it deep inside my cupboard.

I remember a similar situation long ago. The collapse of another building. This was December 6th , 1992. I was with our collage band performing in Rajputana Hotel in Jaipur. It was a week long celebration for the annual meeting of all the major heads of the Welcomgroup chain of hotels. That evening there was supposed to be a Rajastani jewellery and fashion show to be held in the roof top restaurant. By evening there was a tension in the air. The Rajasthani troop had cancelled. There was talks about riots. We were on stage and watched our guests whispering to each other, most got up and headed to their rooms. The music slowly puttered out, we all gathered around the television in the restaurant.

We saw a crazed crowded razing the ancient Babri Masjid brick by brick to the ground.

There was a sense of shock. There was a silence. We went to our rooms to pack. We were told to get out as 'Old Jaipur was burning'. There was talks about Muslim and Hindu families who goes back centuries, now killing each other.

We reached the airport to find that our flight had taken off early due to the riots . We arranged a bus to take us to Delhi. The journey was like a horror ride. I had the window seat.

I recall feeling numb. Not fear, not anger, nothing. Just an overriding feeling of numbness.

From Delhi, I flew to Madras.

I stayed with a friend who worked in Ambassador Pallava. Once in a while I performed with the hotel band. I stopped watching the news. I had seen enough.

On the eve of the begining of 1993, outside the hotel, I was sitting and watching the crowd. As I sat there, lost in just the watching, I saw the most amazing thing.

I saw crowd seperated in the colors they wore. I saw a huge crowd pass by , screaming and shouting ,all in saffron, then I saw people doing the same thing, now in green. Pink. Black. Yellow. White. There were just colors. Changing like some sort of psycedelic disco bar. And screams.

I recall the feeling. Intense fear. Its like an overwhelming feeling of panic that strikes you paralysed. I stood there and watched my mind crumble.

It took me 2 years to climb out of something which the doctors called Psychotic Maniac Depression. I had snapped. I had to rebuild my personality since I had no recollection of the person I once was. I no longer identified with him. I dont even remember him as a person, rather as an observer. I recall his feelings but its like something that I have watched as an outsider. Something I have no direct experience of.

You see, I dont understand religions. The day it justified killing each other, fighting each other, distrusting each other, it stopped being divine in my eyes. Its just another invention to control. Theres no god in it. I use the term god very loosely. Religion has nothing in it than past.The religions are dead, memories. Nothing can be added onto them, nothing removed.

If there is a god, then we must be his religion.

I have seen people being whipped up into a frenzy by a few mad individuals with personal agendas. I have seen people revealing their most base nature when they see an opportunity to do so and get away with it. I have seen people justifying their actions on the basis that everyone else were doing it.

Yet in the midst of it all, all I recall is when the tragedy occured. When the first domino fell, there was only a silence. In that silence we existed. In that silence we were all one. It was happening to all of us.

From that silence, some acted, some reacted.

Some stayed

The sound of a man

2011-11-03T01:07:00.000-07:00

I snore.

So they say.

I have never heard it. Never been woken up by it. Never lost my sleep because of it. Never wanted to smother a pillow on my own face while screaming 'Stop snoring you bastard'. That part is also kind of impossible to do.

But they say I do and so it must be true. I am a very trusting guy. I never doubt what others say about me. Most of the time what I hear from them about me is a revelation even to me. It’s always nice to know what others think about you. Giving a fuck about it is another story.

Back to snoring.

It was first brought to my notice by my wife.

She had one day woken up to the sound of a Harley Davidson in her bedroom and discovered that the sound was emanating from a large piece of human lard, her husband, who had also stolen the blanket.

Jesus said that faith can move mountains. But then he hasn't woken up next to me.

10 years later major sleep deprivation have made an energetic lovely woman into a bundle of nerves.

Scientists have recently done a study ( on the same line as the research to find if the penguins actually look up to watch a plane flying over them until they fall over. They don't. They actually cross their three toes, since it’s considered unlucky by them to watch anything that stiff fly) on women and men who are sleep deprived.

The studies have shown that women can be dangerous when sleep deprived.Even murderous. Sleep is a necessary part of their make up. Men on the other hand do not seem to suffer as much. Aren't we the lucky ones!

I believe this research.

A woman who is not rested is an evil thing. They are down right scary. Ask any man who had to deal with a woman, who had been kept up all night by a colic baby, the next day. Deal with that and man, facing a firing squad will seem pleasant.

Go on, tell her what a beautiful day today is and ask what’s for breakfast.

Then watch your arse explode beneath you.

Sleep deprivation is a bitch.

Ask any woman. Now they got science to back them up.

Another step down for men. So along with chest hair, lord of all he surveys status, non existent emotional IQ and other sundry things that gives having a penis such a pleasure, we lose the I am more tired than you battle.

Well we still have the stand up to pee bit.

Hooray.

Back to snoring.

Last time my friends and I went camping, I woke up to find a lynching crowd gathered around my tent the next morning. I had a wonderful sleep. Mountain air is so refreshing. I had apparently also cleared the place of all wild animals in the vicinity, who had gathered around the Al Ain zoo wanting to be let in.

My friends exaggerate.

I have always had great flights. Never have I had to face a rude hostess. Never have I not been helped to stove away my baggage into the overhead cabin (which is every time), never have I been insulted, cuffed or had hot scalding liquid poured on my lap.

That’s unless I sleep.

There’s always a chill in the air when I wake up on a flight. Nobody is actually rude. But there’s definitely a change in the attitude. I get these looks from my co passengers like I was responsible for something bad. The same looks you get from the guy who steps in when you exit an elevator you had farted in. It’s that look which that girl gave while she slipped off Stallone's grip in Cliff Hanger.

Oh, come on. You know that look. It’s the one that says: How could you do this to me?

Actually the look I get on the plane is the same as the one the guy who I met in the lift would give if he saw me again another day. In the same lift.

It’s the post betrayal look.

It’s cold. It’s accusatory. It’s judgmental.

And I would be wondering if there was an alien takeover while I slept.

Now I know.

It’s the snoring. It must be. Aliens’ taking over people’s body while I slept is so far fetched. It has to be my snoring.

Thing about snoring is that it’s a lot like demonic possession. You have no idea that you are doing it. You cannot be held responsible for something you are not aware of. Our justice system supports that. That’s why you can kill thousands and say God made me do it where the judge will go like, oh why didn’t you say so? Now off you go.

Technically I cannot be held responsible.

But try saying that to that woman who looks like that girl from Grudge, who is sitting at the foot of your bed staring at you when you opened your eyes.

Scared?

You should be.

Gay pride and me

2011-10-27T04:16:00.000-07:00

Having studied in a boy’s only school for a major part of student life, I would have thought that I will be fine with gays.

I am fine with gays. But I think thats because I don’t know any.

Of course we did have the occasional touching feeling and in some case boys who went about as couples in our school, looking back I think it was more a case of making do with available resources. And like prisoners, when they stepped out of the restrictive situation, everything fell back in the right places and things went where they are meant to go. It seemed like a temporary lapse, nothing more.

Except even now, I shudder when I drop the soap in the bath and bend down to pick it up. Hopefully it will pass with the unavoidable Alzheimer’s that is due to make its presence felt in the next 10 years or so.

Age brings along with it certain mellowness. I would have loved to say wisdom but that seems to be elusive. You tend to recognize that most of your ideals and prejudices were all handed down to you and that you been just chewing someone else’s cud. Being a jerk, I tend to avoid the popular thought that is prevalent just because I can.

I do realize that now it’s all about right of freedom to do what you feel like. I have not problems with that. As long as it’s not my arse on the line, I don’t have any problem who is shagging who.

But by god, am I curious.

I want a gay friend. I have so much to ask.

You do too, don’t you?

That’s the problem when you start patronizing people. You make them into strangers. You might think you are on their side but your very support is the wall that separates you and them. Because in reality, your acceptance doesn’t require any expression. And if that acceptance is there, they would not be feeling like freaks.

Personally I find naked men nasty. Especially if I find one in my bed. Sex would probably be the last thought on my head. Whatever doubts I have had about my sexuality disappeared the day I was introduced to Adv.Anjali in the Debonair magazine in school. I was hooked. Fat bottom girls made my world go round since.

Then came today.

Everyone’s coming out of the closets. Hell, I think there are more people in there than clothes. There are parades. Sexuality is celebrated. It is now shown in mainstream movies.Basically people’s sexuality will soon become a non issue. Its really great.

Nope. You still can’t fuck a goat.

Yes, I know you think that it’s unfair but if you wait maybe a decade longer, we perhaps will get our head around to it. Yes, we do see your point. Yes, we do notice that the goat is really attached to you but somehow it’s not bringing good vibes to me buddy. That’s my food you are fucking.

I really think sexuality should be a non issue. Like the color of peoples skin. I mean, it’s really stupid if you think about it. It’s amazing how it lasted so long as it did. But then stupid ideas have a tendency to stick. Eh, god? You concur?

But for all the gays out there, I know absolutely no one. I mean personally. I have no gay friends. Which is a shame. I do get hit on once in a while. It’s kind of flattering. And I feel very weird when I say that I just want us to be friends. And the sound track in my head is going Man, feel like a woman...

We did have a college friend who was very feminine. Then we realized that he is a bhartanatyam dancer and a real sneaky womanizer. He catches them unaware. They all assume he is gay until too late. Almost like Jaws.

Well the truth is it would really not matter if my friends are straight or gay (why can’t it be straight or zigzag?). The way I am going, I doubt if I have any friends left.

Thing is I believe that a gay friend will be my ticket to finally understanding women. Of course this very inspired thinking came from my assumption that since a gay is a man who likes men, then it stands to reason he will be like a woman.

Brilliant deduction I must say.

Now to find a gay who will hopefully help me with this and will not try and seduce me.

This brings me to the next question:

Can a gay and straight be just friends?

Watch this space for the answer to that question.

Gay? Call me.

I dont do curtain calls

2011-10-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

I am not into self analysis.

I love myself a little too much to indulge in such fool hardy pursuits. The hesitance could also have stemmed from previous futile attempts at trying to understand my inner nature by ticking all the relevant boxes in those - Are a real man or How to know if you are satisfying in bed etc. - columns in my sister in law's ample collection of Cosmopolitan magazines.

Yes. I read women magazine when I get a chance. Understanding the enemy is always a good strategy. Isn’t it weird that in men’s magazine we have girlie pictures and in women magazine, they still have girlie pictures. You would have thought otherwise, but no. No wonder there’s a general amount of male bashing going around; women have all turned lesbians.

Anyhow.

The readings from the ticking, which in the end will require some amount of mathematical skill, will be given at the bottom of those articles.

90 - 80: Boy, are you good! Just bronze your dong and declare yourself as a national monument.

80 - 60: You need to work at it. You need to express your desires and bribe the girl into accepting them. No. Blow jobs are not as exciting to her as it is to you.

60 and below: Just go and kill yourself. And while you are about it stop playing with yourself.

Invariably I realized that I was wasting my time finding out things about myself that were not exactly endearing.

I don’t do horoscope either.

Indian horoscopes are not your run of the mill Linda Goodman gushing about how you are the gift to the universe and how perfect you are.

Indian horoscopes are scary.

They make it so by making it appear to you that there’s a whole lot of calculations and enough symbols to give Dan Brown a hard on, going on to arrive at the answers to your puny existence.

Then in the midst of some gibberish that stands for a language that seems to be all but dead, they reveal to you your destiny.

I kind of lost interest when they started talking about some planets in somebody's houses and other such strange things. The only thing closely resembling a planet in my house is my father.

I get it. The logic behind it all. The usual argument of how moon affects tides and how we are 80% water etc. My question is only this.

What’s this big deal about us that we think our destiny is somehow very important to us?

I am scared of horoscope because it probably has nothing nice to say about me. I plan to read mine in my death bed. Just to check which parts came true. That would make an interesting read.

Thing about trying to find out about yourself is like opening your father's diary. You really don’t want to know all what you might find. Life is best lived with as much ignorance as possible. It keeps you in a state of wonder.

But when you do get the masochistic need to give the stick to someone to beat you, you tend to give importance to what others think about you.

Some of the saddest people I know are the ones who are trying their darn best to rise to someone's expectation.

And some of the real bastards are the ones who let them.

Yeah. I know you are reading this. You know where you belong.

Very early in my life I have learnt that if you want to be happy, you should give two hoots about others opinion about you and your action. As long as what you do is not affecting another adversely, I think you have all the right to go ahead and do it.

Others feelings don’t count. How someone feels about your actions is to a large extent based on their own needs. It’s not a bad thing but that’s how it is. Ideally it should not affect you if your partner cheats on you, but it will if it happens, and that feeling of hurt is more about you than about the other. So feelings don’t count when you know you are on the right track.

Hyper sensitive people are leeches. They feed on the desire to be hurt. You can’t win with them. The whole world is against them any way and the sun always shines out of their arse. It’s about their feelings and their actions and their fuck all mind where every other person has to bend themselves backwards to accommodate them.

I don’t mind sensitive people. I think they are just a little bit more fragile than thick skinned rhinos like me.

Suggestion?

Walk away. Don’t put up with it. Let them know that. Of course they will be hurt. But you are giving them what they want anyway. So in some karmic way you are being kind.

I don’t do hyper sensitive. You wouldn’t either. Hell, even sensitives don’t like hyper sensitives.

You like being insulted? Get an opinion.

Like I did. I came to know about this site from this girls blog and it piqued my curiosity.

and this was the result.

Make place girls, Big Mama is in town.

Guilty as Charged

2011-09-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

Its not every day I put my foot down.

Those who have the unfortunate luck of knowing me on a personal level are, I presume, aware of my laid back approach to insults and confrontations. It’s not easy to piss me off. But when I do get my arse off the couch and decide to fight, I never back down. I pretty much stay at it no matter what. Don't know why but must be the lack of excitement in my life.

Well, that's pretty much enough of my dick is bigger prelude to the tale that follows.

I have only one enemy. I hate it with passion. Apart from the man made concept of god, no other concept, in my opinion, has done more damage to the human fabric than it. It’s the faceless, bloodless, and unavoidable, in your face organization called the bank.

I try to keep my distance with banks. I don't like them but they seem to love me. At least they pretend like they do.

Long ago, in fact about 5 years ago, my wife and I decided to buy a SUV. We sold my wife's Volkswagen Golf for the down payment and financed the rest through a bank known then as Me Bank. Talk about a personality disorder. Of course I knew it was a bank when I walked into it and had to suppress the instinctive desire to brandish a cross.

Of course I got the loan. We were good for it. Of course for the next 5 years we religiously paid the EMI that was owed to it. We, in the meantime, named our steed Ben and then I promptly fell in love with it.

5 years passed.

I go to the bank to get a clearance letter. Lots had happened in those 5 years. Water was found in Mars, we found out that god men can have sex and so can really old Indian politicians, governments were ousted, some were reinstated, a nation held their collective breath while an old man fasted and ranted, ,Mebank was swallowed by Emirates NBD and I gained 10 kilos.

So there I am, feeling really cold, in front of one of those suits whose smile never reaches their eyes. I let him know that I have cleared my debt and now want a clearance letter. He keys in some commands on his computer, thereby perhaps nuking some unfortunate family's life and turns to me saying that my account is still open. He says it with a relish. I could almost feel him sniffing my blood.

I ask him to check again, considering that I had given a million cheques covering the number of months in 5 years ,all of which had been cashed by them. He strikes another bunch of keys. I can almost hear screams in the distance.

'There's a balance of AED 387.75 in your account. Pay that and we will provide you the clearance letter'

I am, as you know pretty stupid, so I enquired why I have to pay that amount. Upon which I am told that it is there on the statement, so I have to pay it.

Now that pisses me off. I hate being told that because it’s written, that's how it shall be. Fuck, I have been fighting that almost all my life.

So I requests him to tell me why that charge is there.

He can't. Why? Because he does not know. He says that it could be a charge due to the integration of the bank. So I asked him if I have to pay when Emirates NBD decides to carpet their office.

Now he does the finger pointing routine. This is where he will tell me to run pillar to post. I told him that I refuse to go anywhere. I want to know where this charge came from and that I am pretty sure that he can find it out for me without me having to go on a pilgrimage for it. Then he asked me to call up the contact centre. I told him I won’t since I am already in a bank.

I am pretty irritating, no?

So he calls up the collection center and asks someone there to check my account and revert back to me. I tell him that since I have met him, he will be the privileged one who will have to deal with me. He grudgingly tells me to call back in 2 days.

I do and am told that he hasn’t got a reply. So I call their contact center. There I am told the amount is AED 239. Amazing. The amount seems to have a life of its own. So I give the contact center chap for whom I have the greatest respect, the same spiel about how I am not planning on paying a single penny unless someone tells me what the charge is for.

Accrued interest I am told. On what? I ask. He can’t say. Funny since I always thought that you need something to charge interest on. He requests me to pay the amount. I say I can’t. I ask him to give me the number of the collection center. Which he gladly gives.

So I call the collection center. The phone is answered by a guy with an Arab accent. So I give him my details. He tells me I have to pay AED 139/- The dancing charge!

I ask him why. He tells me because the banks can charge as and when they feel like it. I ask him to repeat it. Which he does. So I ask him why can’t he just call it a bribe. Now the man is angry. So am I. So I tell him we can do this dance on the newspaper. He gives me his Assistant Manager's number.

I call the number and am answered by a very cheerful man who in the beginning does the friendly Arab intimidation act. This is where he is all smiles and laughs and treats you like an errant client. I am from sales. The trick is lost on me. He sings the same lines. Integration charge, accrued interest etc. I give him my reasons as to why I think the bank is trying to get me to bend over so that it can slide it in and have me thank them for the courtesy. He realizes that I can go on. I am polite but annoying. He promises to get it waived. Tells me he will get back.

He does. After 2 days. Every thing sorted out. All charges waived. I am to contact any branch and get the clearance letter. I do and I get my letter in 2 days.

I thanked every one concerned but one thing still puzzles me.

I am yet to be told why that amount was there in the first place. What was the charge for?

I am aware that many customers who have already shelled out thousands every month just want the whole thing behind them and therefore will pay what ever the bank tells them to; no questions asked. Not many are jobless like me to make a fuss over this.

From what the loan officer told me, no one ever questions this and when you do I guess it gets waived.

Well, that's all folks. Check your statements. If you find a shape shifting amount in your loan statement when you go for closing it, call me. I am your man. I have got all the numbers you will ever need.

And I wont charge you a penny.

Return of the King

2011-09-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

Onam.

A festival the ignorant think of as a harvest festival but in reality is a yearly reminder of a divine PR stunt that went wrong.

Let me tell you what really happened.

Long long time ago, during the times of constant heavenly interventions, there lived a king called Bali (not related to the other monkey Bali who too was screwed by the gods. They don't seem to like the name).

Our King Bali ruled Kerala. (Come to think of it, if the geographical evidence of Ramayana is to be believed, so did the other Bali. Damn, there could be a divine conspiracy here).

Maha Bali as he came to be known was a great king. He was loved by his people. This in itself is a great thing considering mallus don’t like being ruled. They may put up with it but that's just a tactic until each of them figure out how to become the ruler.

During King Bali's time, there were no locks. Why you ask? Because there were no thieves. Yes, contrary to how it might appear now, there was a time when mallus were honest. We didn't need to covet since we lacked nothing. There were no castes and people were treated equally. You just had to fall into the category of being humans. There was no deceit and men always told their wives that their arse looked fat in that dress.

The mallus were so happy with the abundance of food, toddy and great governance that they did away with the gods and worshipped their king instead. This was rumored to be the Tamil influence.

Being gods, this made them feel a tad bit insecure. If humans started becoming good, what purpose will gods serve? It was and still is a valid point. So all the gods went to the big honcho Vishnu for a solution. Vishnu who had a penchant for intervening in human affairs in disguise was delighted to be consulted. This gave him an opportunity to try out a great disguise he had been thinking about while whiling away couple of thousand god years on his 5 headed serpentine sofa cum bed.

So at the behest of his sidekicks, Vishnu dons yet another disguise which he insists on calling Avatars. This time he goes down as Vaman, a Brahman midget. I know that was politically incorrect, but remember this was the times when we were used to calling a spade a spade.

Maha Bali was at that time doing what all kings do when they had a little time in their hands, which was performing a Yagna. This is basically were we throw all sort of things into a fire and chant unpronounceable sentences. This brought out the inner child in us and of course these were the days before the west started making us feel guilty about the global warming they started.

Since Brahmins get their wishes granted (here the story is confusing because I thought all people were treated equally...hmmm), Vaman gets to present his heart’s desire, which turns out to be 3 step of land. Bali, being a mallu, knows a great deal when he hears it and agrees to grant him his desire. That’s when; true to divine nature, Vishnu aka Vaman reveals the card up his dhoti.

He starts growing. This is symbolic of every short person's wish but I am digressing,

Soon he grows out of the stratosphere, and with his head playing for space with the moon, spoke then, in a thunderous voice, "Bali! In my first step, I traversed all of Earth and the Nether worlds. In my second step, I covered the heavens and all the celestial bodies therein. Thus, I have now covered all realms of your dominion. You promised me three paces of land. Tell me where I should place my foot for the third time."

Upon which Bali realized that he been punked.

So he kneels down and offers his head.

And Vishnu squashes him down the netherworld which is not in any way to be misunderstood as Netherland.

Since Vishnu realized that this act could affect his divine image among the mallus, he decides to do a little damage control. So upon the great kings last wish made from the Netherworld, he gets to vacation in Kerala once every year to watch the deterioration of his kingdom on yearly frame by frame basis.

And mallus for centuries lay out the most amazing welcoming party every year for their king's return. Now of course he will have to distract them from the celebrations in Asianet,

Well, that’s Onam for you.

If it wasn't for the Sadya, mallus would have led a procession to the pearly gates. The toddy didn’t help either.

For the popular version of the story please go here

The short falls of metrosexuality.

2011-09-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

The beauty of a short vacation is that you are in and out of the place before everyone gets tired of you.

I am not easy to live with. Hell I am so difficult to be around with that most of the time I am figuring out ways to kill myself.

Thing is I am a very sensitive person.

I take offence very fast. I am of the opinion that everyone out there is some way or the other trying to insult me.

Thing is I am a short, balding, overweight south Indian guy. There is probably something you will say to make me feel bad when you talk to me.

'It's a short walk from here'

'Overhead conditions are clear'

'That's heavy stuff pal'

'Don't sweat the small stuff'

See? It’s better to just keep quite when you are with me but then I might feel you are prejudiced towards me because I am a short, balding , over weight south Indian. That can offend me too.

There’s just no winning when you are dealing with sensitive people. I should know.

Don’t agree with me because I know you are just being patronizing because I am vertically challenged.

Anyhow.

Someone somewhere said that you should do something that scares you at least once in your life. Apart from getting married, I recently went to a unisex saloon in the smog city of Bangalore to get a pedicure and manicure to put that saying to test.

Yeah. Call it my futile attempts in getting in touch with my feminine side. The only thing feminine about me are my man boobs. Sometimes I turn myself on if I happen to catch a sight of myself naked in the mirror after a bath.

I am digressing. Talks of boobs always do that.

Anyway, for moral support I dragged my father in law with me. He is one of the few men who has had whatever feminine side he might have had drained off him by having lived his whole life in a household consisting only of women. His wife and two daughters. He has held onto that masculinity like a drowning person clutches onto to a lifebuoy. Not the soap you moron.

So when attempting something which can scar you emotionally, I deduced that, having such a man by your side was like going to the butchers with Lady Gaga. It’s kind of a win win situation.

There’s something about having a woman marinating your pedis and manis in a bowl of warm water with antiseptic and soap, prior to clipping your talons. It’s embarrassing. It feels nice but it’s still embarrassing. Call me old fashioned but it’s strange having to pay someone to cut your nails. Especially when you have a good wife at home who can do this for you free. Only hurdle will be convincing her to do it. I have heard that compliments works well with women. Maybe I will go with:

That tent you are wearing compliment your figure. Could you cut my nails?

That should work.

Unknown fact: We were the first men in that unisex parlor to have ever done a manicure and a pedicure. So metro sexuality is still a myth in India. I knew it, you lying, cunning bastards.

Once we got our feet and hands to a presentable conditions, the visibly disgusted ladies where requested to give us a facial on a whimsical desire by the pop in law. I totally understood him. All our life we have been hearing about this beauty salon visits by the fairer gender, now was chance to find out what the fuss is all about.

Women, we found out likes choices.

They are the reasons why menus were invented. Think about it, when you walk into a restaurant, a man has only one thing on his mind. Hungry. Must find food. Give him any choices; you have on your hand a confused man. This is why men have affairs and always comes out looking like a bastard. They just don’t know what to do when there are too many choices. When life presents it like that, men like to have everything, including the one he really wants. Bastards. Precisely.

Women on the other hands, likes choices. Ever seen a woman with one handbag, a pair of shoes and 3 sets of clothes? Men can manage it, well, without the handbag but then who am I to judge fashion? For a normal, fully functional woman, she needs choices in her men too. She will need that ex boyfriend who was someone she cared for, she will need that blogger male friend who is the only one who understands her, she will need that college mate who is her best friend and the only one who really knows her and she will need her husband for whatever reasons. Women like having choices. They handle it better.

Men like it too but unlike women they just don’t understand things like right occasions and perspectives.

So when the ladies started listing out the various facials that are available, we were understandly confused.

There was, I swear, something which involved gold. In today’s economy!

We decided on something which involved just putting creams on our face and rubbing it in and then wiping it off. We had seen this on TV. It had looked silly but if Mel Gibson can carry it off, so could we.

We couldn’t.

For one thing, it’s boring. Then there’s this scrapping they do on your nose which is downright painful.

Before my masculine conspirator could suggest waxing for his academic research, we got out of there.

Verdict?

Will definitely do the manicure and pedicure again. It is indulgent and great. We felt like a million dollars for a whole day, while we kept waving our hands and keeping it on top of the table for a change.

Facials?

Probably not. We looked at each other and figured it’s not really worth it. But then they didn’t have much to work to begin with. Pop in law thinks that they charged us a lot because we had more face for them to work on.

Just Friends.

2011-07-29T01:27:00.000-07:00

There are questions and then there are questions.

There’s the unanswerable, “Do you think I look fat in this?"

The mind numbing, " Are we there yet?" asked by a 3 year old and her 7 year old brother with 3.5 minutes frequency from the back seat of the car.

The inconsequential ones like “Is there a god?”, “What’s the meaning of life?" which stands proudly alongside other idiotic ones like “What’s your religion?”, “If my god and your god has a pissing contest, which one would win?"

The weird ones, “What do you do?”, "How are you?”, "Does it hurt?", "Are you sleeping?"

The leading ones like, “Have you ever been in love...really?”, “Are you happy?”, " Does he/she understand the real you?”, “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?"

The 'none of your business' ones like, “How do you plead?”, “What’s your qualification?" “Are you married?" “Which part of India?" “Where are you going?"

Then the stupid one: "Who are you?"

But the one question that generations have been forced to confront, even though the issue probably must have been one ancient one is:

Can a man and woman be just friends?

It all started with that chick flick movie 'When Harry met Sally”. Never has a movie raised such a level of self introspection, except perhaps Blue Lagoon, which gave raise to that often repeated probability question, "if you were stuck in a deserted island who you would like to be with you?"

For me it’s a basket ball. But I am digressing.

So can they be? Just friends?

I believe they can be, under certain conditions. After years of research and several months of banishment to the couch, I have the answers that you seek, thereby putting yet another question to rest among ones like "Does size matter?"

The conditions for a man and a woman to be just friends the below criteria have to be met.

- Both are committed to someone else they still care about.
- One is committed and the other is just plain undesirable.
- No one is committed to anyone else but one is just plain undesirable.
- Both are uncommitted and both are scared of rejection/humiliation.
- Both are uncommitted and one is scared of rejection.
- One is committed and the other is scared of rejection/humiliation/end of friendship/physical harm.
- One of them is gay. (This is same as point 2 and 3)

Okie. Let the lynching start. But before you let your self righteous cloud your judgment, please be honest and decide for yourself, where do you fit in the above criteria.

There's no rule saying that man and woman has to be just friends. No matter how much we like to peg, identify and label relationships, for the sake of yourself, others ,the mysterious society or for that inherited baggage we like to call our culture and heritage, the truth is that it really doesn’t matter, does it?

There is also another set of criteria that seems to work also.

- Both are committed to another, who they may or may not care about but one does not want it to go beyond a good friendship.
- Both are committed to another, who they may or may not care about and both do not want it to go beyond a good friendship.
- Both are not committed to anyone and each does not want for whatever reasons go beyond a god friendship.

What is this good friendship?

Does it mean only no sex?

I was talking to a family friend of mine about this. A woman.She says that eventually there comes a time where the relation reaches a stage where, normally its the man, shows an interest beyond just friendship. She just sleeps with them. According to her most men cannot differentiate between lust and love and this is a phase they have to cross.She has got lots of friends she said with a smile.Just friends?, I asked. She just smiled and said, between a man and woman who are friends, there are only degrees.

I guess that's true of any friendship, irrespective of gender but I doubt I will ever sleep with Dog.

I mean, I fall in love with all my girl friends. I don’t see how I cannot. They are great people, great company, great sense of humor, and they are girls. I love them. Nope. I have not slept with any of them. But I am married to one (brownie point alert!)

Here's my take. Man and woman make great friends. I have not met a single woman who says otherwise. Women like having male friends. They feel they are less complicated and more fun. As long as they are not married to it. Marriage seems to sometime make a friend into a prison warden.

It must be the same with us too. Once we get over our initial very male feelings, we can make great buddies. It’s like having a dog. We just need to be put in our right place and taken for walks. After that it’s just party and great fun. But watch out when we start talking about our doomed marriages and misunderstanding wives, we are probably trying to get into your pants. We can be persistent.

But you knew that when you wanted to be just friends, didn’t you?

That is what friendship truly is. To accept instead of expect. No other relationship has that much freedom. To label it will only cheapen it as we have already done to so many of our relationships.

So, can a man and a woman be just friends? Hell no. But that's probably the beauty of it.

But how many of us will admit to it?

That was a leading question.

Surviving Life's Sucker Punches

2011-07-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

I am into survival these days.

It’s my latest addiction.

Don’t even ask me why. I have no logical reasons for the things that I do. It may have something to do with the movie 2012. But thats rubbish. If the world as we know is coming to an end, I would rather sit on the balcony with a drink in my hand, waiting for it.

No.

This latest madness is unexplainable. But if and when I am stuck in the middle of a desert or a jungle or a deserted island, I will be ready.

You see I am prepared.

I have always had this thing for camping and trekking. Both the activities suit my misanthropic nature and my inherent yearning to be independent of the trappings of a society. Of course I will still need the tents, the can foods, the bottled water and the car to get to where I plan to do this getting away.

That’s what I love about being a misanthrope. You need the presence of a society to get away from it. Like the child who has that parent to hate.

Right now, my Ben (my truck who think it’s a car), is stocked with two 3 people tents, a foldable mattress, 2 sleeping bags, 2 lean to shelters, a foldable spade, an axe, 4 survival knives in various parts of the car (yep, I am also taking into consideration a Zombie invasion), a medical kit, a survival kit which consists of thermal blanket, fire starter, hooks and nylon thread for fishing, a compass and a whistle. I also have a SAS Survival handbook, nylon twine for making snares and traps, bungee cords, Velcro straps, 1 torch with batteries, 1 torch that can be powered by Ben, garbage bags, 2 tarpaulin sheets, rope and 2 fleece blankets.

Over the past 2 years, I have been studying up hunting, making bow and arrows, how to put up snares and traps. I have all the theoretical knowledge on where to find water in a desert, how to make a water sill and make potable water from shrubs and sea water. I can make fire with Coke cans and with water in a condom (when you are surviving, unprotected sex is fine).

I can make a dug out shelter, even a lean to if it comes to that. I know better than to ration water if I am stuck in a desert. I know that sooner or later I will need to get myself used to eating insects, but I am willing to postpone that for some time.

Now all I need to do is to get lost.

Thing is I am not a paranoid person. It’s just that I like being prepared.

This is the reason why I always base my lie on a truth.

Prepare.

Now my fear is that I will die of a heart attack or fall off a ladder before I get to try my skills out there in the wilderness.

This is because, like it’s said in that book Black Swan, you can never be prepared because life changing occurrences has the habit of coming at you from a direction you are not expecting it to.

Now that could be true. But me? I am brilliant.

You see, me finding myself in the wilderness with a condom and a flint stone is the unexpected direction. Since I am prepared for it, I think I will now die in my sleep.

This could be my middle finger to destiny.

It’s like learning karate. Until then you are getting your arse whopped by every senior in school and the day you enroll and finish your martial art classes, you find that there's absolutely no fights anymore in your life. It’s like finally finishing and understanding Stephen Hawkins’s book only to find out that the bible was correct; god did bury those dinosaur bones just to test our faith.

It’s what I would like to call, Life's Sucker Punch.

This is what makes a non smoking, teetotaler, jog-5km-a day bloke, keel over and die of a heart attack when he is shaving.

You don't see it coming.

So this is my lesson to you my friends, prepare for your worst case scenario. Chances are that you will never face it. And if at all by chance, fate decides to call your bluff, you will still be prepared.

Told you.

It’s one hell of a middle finger.

Vivir la vida como un tonto

2011-06-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

I am a very pro choice guy.

This is why I am all for abortion.

Actually I should not even be giving my 2 bit here since I will never have this happen to me but since the world is mostly run by my gender who seems determined to regulate and lay down laws on things they have no experience of, other than how it effects them, I think, I need to come out right and say this.

I am one of the men who think that the choice of abortion should be with the one who intends to do it.

Yeah Yeah...I know what you are screaming. Female infanticide.

Think.

Why are some women aborting female embryos? Hmmm?

Yep. Precisely. Because we have made living difficult for women. They feel a dead girl is better than a live one. A live woman is costly. Dowry. Marriage. No return on Investment. Anything else?

Why do these reasoning exists? We put it there.

Now how many of these reasons can be solved? Almost every one of them. Hell, it has already started. There will come a time when it won’t matter what gender the child is because both will have the same opportunities or lack of them in life.

Denying a choice is not the answer.

Now the moral questions.

Let me answer this as politely as I can: Your morals are an inward compass. It applies to you. You think something is morally wrong then don’t do it but to apply your morals onto someone else is like rape...keep your morals and allow others to maintain theirs.

Religious reasons.

Damn that. Religion is just politics. It is a frame work build to control people of similar beliefs. In my book it’s like the gang colors. So fuck religion. We really need to keep religion in its proper place. I don’t do religion. You can by all means. Just don’t let it step into my porch uninvited. It works for me not the other way round.

I have heard this respect for life argument. Now this one has me stumped.

When do you think life becomes life?

Is it during conception? Or is it somewhere in the mother’s womb, if so when? Or is it when the child is born?

From what I have seen in The National Geographic Channel, those sperms don’t look dead to me. Man, they seem to have a purpose, a goal and speed. That buddy sure sounds like life to me.

This brings me to my next question.

Can masturbation be a male version of abortion?

Is there an ongoing genocide happening everyday in every man’s life?

I don’t know. I would really like someone to enlighten me about this.

But I really think that people should have the choices. They should be able to choose what they want to wear, who they want to sleep with, who they want to spend a life with or a night with, who they pray to, what they do with their body or even when they want to die.

Small choices that do not in any way interfere or affect someone else’s choices.

Sure some of these will hurt us, make us feel bad, perhaps sad but if we are able to respect the other person's choices and understand the reasons behind it, and then it will be a great world to live in.

It’s not much to ask, is it?

Note about the title: Isn’t Spanish sexy? I mean even the most stupid sentence sounds like a bedroom drawl in Spanish.

Romancing a stone

2011-06-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

One of the side effects of being liked for your virtual scribbles in the cyberspace is that you attract attention. Apart from the usual comments like,

'Nice.ROFL.Now visit mine and say the same thing.'

'you &$##**&% , who do you think you are?'

'I named by dog tys and then I kicked him to death. Die motherfucker die.'

, you also tend to get some readers who will mail you and try to get to know you.

This is very flattering.

I am that guy who in college would do the bidding of a girl for a long time, only to be told, while she hooks up with my best friend, how she has always seen me as a brother.

In girl code, that means you are ugly as hell and she won’t be seen dead going around with you.

Why is that no man has ever said to a girl who throws herself at him that he sees her as a sister? If he has ever said that to you, either you really are his sister or you are just plain ugly. I mean really ugly because men, trust me, are not very picky in certain of their requirements.

Or he could possibly be gay.

Either way it doesn’t flatter you, nor does it improve your self esteem.

So having a stray admirer, who is a woman, who thinks that you are worth getting to know does a lot for your deflated ego. You also know that this person has seen your profile picture which looks as I am lighting fire to my beard, and did not report it to BlogSpot.

For a guy who has, perhaps a handful of friends who I can treat like shit and still count on, I seem to have made some good friends through my blogging. I have met some of them and they are not the weirdoes I thought one normally meets in the cyber world. They are, in fact, really nice.

And they all prefer my wife to me, once they meet us.

I have no idea why, but apart from one male blogger, all the rest who have contacted me are women. They later on tell me that their husbands are my biggest fans.

Bastards.

I take the plunge and spend about 90% of my married life sleeping on the sofa and these guys probably download my site and leave it accidently on for the wifeys to 'discover'. Women being women will always sympathize with a man who is probably going through the same things her husband is going through, as long as it’s not her husband.

You don’t believe me? Let me see how you react when your husband says that he think pms is just a monthly get out of jail free card for a woman.

Now, please drop that knife and give the poor man his balls back. And, do call for the ambulance.

It’s easier when there’s a fall guy.

That’s me.

I still don’t get it when women say they like me and my writing. There must be something seriously wrong somewhere. I am a bloke.

But I aint complaining.

It’s not every day; someone contacts you and says that she admires your writing. Who doesn’t like that?

So this must be how Brad Pitt feels.

Wonder if this ever made Angelina Jolie feel insecure?

Now my marriage is based on trust. She trusts me not to do anything to jeopardize our relationship and I trust her not to take me up on that.

But being an idiot, I end up telling her everything.

Word of advice to all men who are on the threshold of marriage. Do not discuss your past with your soon to be wife. When she asks you if you have been with other women, trust me, she’s not asking you to confirm. You pulling out your sexual conquest souvenir book to give her an exact figure is not going to help your case either.

Ask yourself first; if you were in her shoes, would you have liked to know? And now that you know, do you sleep better at night?.Knowing that in today’s world, all the exs can be found in one place, called the face book or the orkut or some such flocking area. Nowadays old flames are like those trick candles, it just keeps lighting up no matter how hard you try to blow it out. So you can’t blame her insecurity.

That’s one of the reason I don’t do face book. It makes life too complicated and crowded.

Now I am one of those possessive kinds. But I am also that kind who doesn’t notice anything until my wife comes and tells me about it.

While we drive home after a party, me drunk and happy, wife, cold and distant, I turn and ask her the question which men asks that takes them down the rabbit hole: What’s wrong?

What’s wrong with you? She will retort

I try to surface my consciousness from the lake of alcoholic lanquidity, where it had been peacefully swimming in, to find a reason for that question or the answer to it (if it really requires one).

The sound that comes out from me while it’s being coaxed ashore is a perplexedly spluttered:

What did I do?

'It’s what you didn't do, you big oaf,' she says, ' you didn't even notice that guy who was hitting on me. What’s wrong with you? Do you even love me?'

Now, folks, this is tricky area.

You didn't notice. That much is true. But if you had and had reacted like a gorilla on a war path, which I had done once, things will not change much for you. The question will still be asked.

What’s wrong with you?

So I continue driving. Quietly. My chin hardened. With a grim look on my face. This is my fierce some look. It also looks a lot like my constipated look. This forces her to ask again.

What’s wrong with you?

So I reply. Each word measured. I had seen this being done with convincing effect in Terminator by the governer who has helped himself to the help.

I.will.kill.him.

I continue looking ahead. I can almost feel that smile on her face.

Yeah. They don't want us to fight for them, but they just like to be told we will, and when the shit does hit the ceiling, most of us actually will.

Trust me on that.

Can somebody tell why the women like that song : Hold a grenade?

" To give me all your love is all I ever asked cause
what you don’t understand, is id catch a grenade for ya.
Throw my hand on the blade for ya,
Id jump in front of a train for ya.
You know I’d do anything for ya.
See I would go through all this pain take a bullet straight through my brain.
Yes I would die for ya baby, but you won’t do the same."

This is not romantic man, its macabre. Not only do you want to kill yourself, you want the poor girl to do that for you. Shes probably right now getting a restraining order against you. Go find a small corner, curl up and die you fool. Let me not hear you giving my girl any more stupid ideas.

Hold a grenade. Really.

Bring it Home

2011-06-13T06:19:00.000-07:00

I must be the oldest Indian man staying with his parents now.

Age: 42.

Domicile: With Amma and Achan.

Now, I might as well chop my balls off and feed it to a camel.

As you might have noticed, I have not been very regular here for the last month. I am of course assuming that there are millions around the world, who finds my absence disturbing. There must be a whole bunch of twitters, twitting around desperately asking: whatever happened to tys?

One can dream in a self inflicted delusion of one’s own importance.

Anyhow.

Truth is my wife and children have gone back to India for good.

Now those who have been regulars here, (yep, you two), this is a regular occurrence in my house hold. My wife leaves me once in every 3 years. The reasons are mostly to do with children's education, illness in her family etc...

Truth is , anyone who has had the misfortune to be with me on a continuous basis will understand the desire for a long, really long vacation. Why do you think my parents put me in a boarding school when I was 4?

But I am kind of addictive like a bad habit, so she always comes back.

During the few days that she’s away, I run around like R.K.Laxman's dog. I walk around in my boxer shorts, eating directly from the fridge, peeing in the sink ...well, behaving more or less like a bloke.

3 days later it gets boring. There’s no fun in being undisciplined if there’s no one to thwack you on the head.

But this time she’s really gone for good. To make the point clear we have even shipped off everything from our apartment back to India. This time it’s really about the children's education.

Most Indians like salmons, return to their country of birth for education, marriage and death. Well, not entirely like salmons, since they just come back home to lay their eggs and to perhaps shop for banana chips.

That left me in an empty apartment with a mattress on a pallet, a table lamp, a table for the lamp, 15 books, one bottle of Jack Daniel, 1 glass ,a cat and a turtle called , wait for it, Shelly.

Paradise.

Living in an empty flat is like being a squatter. You occupy a tiny corner in a large place. When the night falls, with the curtain drawn, you feel almost like Robert Neville of I am Legend. Tanked up with enough booze, one can feel truly alone. As if you are the last man on the planet.

I have the flat till the end of the month.

The plan was to move in with my parents after that. Being parents, they couldn’t resist the idea of having their errant middle child back home, even though he now sports grey chin brush and a humongous beer belly. So I was forced to move in earlier than I thought. My lil bachelor pad remained there as a place of refuge if things got outta hand.

Outta hand it did.

You know what’s the scariest thing to happen to you when you are middle aged? No, it’s not waking up to find Angelina Jolie sleeping next to you.

It’s waking up one day to realize that you have turned into your father/mother.

Somewhere between 5 and 14, most parents would have already fallen from their children’s pedestal. From super mums and my daddy the strongest, they tend to become a bothersome necessity, then an embarressment, that slowly evolves into everything wrong the society stands for and finally a liability.

By the time, we reach adulthood and have our own family, our parents become the vacation place, or they in their bid to cling on to the only life they by now know, (you), will become your children’s nanny. This is how it is. It’s not a sad state of affairs; it’s just a kink in the wheel. There was a reason why in ancient times, the old , after having dispensed with their responsibilities as parents , retired to the jungles to spend the last of their days immersed in self enquiry.

Which probably would have been repeatedly asking themselves: Why?

Now, in absence of jungles, we have retirement homes.

Now, in my case, things were different. We never did spend too much time with our parents. My brothers and I lived a major part of our lives in boarding schools and spending most of our vacations shuttling from relatives to relatives. It was by no means a deprived childhood. In fact it was a rich experience. We were loved and parented by so many people. So it was pretty cool. Moreover it gave us a perfect weapon to hurt our parents with our so called abandonment issues. Yeah right.

Spending time with parents was the high light of our lives. For short periods. After having spent a lifetime being independent, there’s only so much one is willing to bear in the name of love. We were probably, that minority, who could not wait for the schools to open after 20 days of being with our parents. It’s not we that we were not enjoying the time we had with them. It’s just that we were not used to it.

So you grow up watching your parents and promising yourself that you will never become like them. It’s not meant in a mean way. It’s like knowing that there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet and you can become a limerick if you want, even if your parents are novels. It’s like you are aware what you are dealt with, by just observing your parents.

And you may be proud of them, you may love them to bits, but whatever happens you do not want to become like them.

I didn’t too.

So my first day in my parents’ house, brought the weirdest news home to me. I am my father's twin.

This is scary. I had spent 42 years consciously trying not to end up like him. He’s a great father, but he looks like a silverback on a good day. He overindulges himself on every habit he has. When he drinks, he drains the bar. When he had a heart attack, he lit up the moment he was out of the ICU. He feels that his life has to be lived according to his own yardstick. He is self centered, arrogant, given to sudden flare ups that can make you run a mile, and can surprise you with great acts of kindness and sacrifices when he’s in the mood for it.

The worst part is he even looks like me.

And to clinch the deal, we can’t spend 15 minutes in the same room together. This man is me. I totally can’t stand me.

That bachelor pad of mine is beginning to look more and more attractive.

Even that stupid cat.

Probably Shelly too.

Killer gadgets and other things ..

2011-05-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

Normally I am a very calm guy.

Ask my wife.

No much can ruffle my feathers apart from the usual. Which is everything that involves others. Then there are those everyday thingies that irritates the shit out of me.

Metal Hangers : Who is the sadistic freak that thought up a way to bend a piece of wire with a hook and say we can hang our clothes on it? Why is this implement a favorite of the laundry guys? I hate those things. It makes a racket in the wardrobe when it’s denuded of its garments. It pokes me when I try to take them out. It tangles with its fellow compatriots making itself into one of those irritating puzzles that is sold in the Global Village.

My day starts with dealing with one of these and then my day goes steadily downhill from there.

Toothpaste cap : Why are manufactures still insisting on sealing something with a cap that when opened is separate from the body? This is the era of can tabs that stay on the beer can after it’s opened. I have seen those click open and closing toothpaste which I think is marvelous. It rekindles your hope in mankind.

Then wife brings home those stupid toothpastes that have those fucking screwy caps which always fall and roll under the sink, which upon attempts at retrievals will ensure a close encounter of my head on the bottom of the sink, which will make me belt out a stream of expletives that results in my kids making a poem out of it. The next thing you know, the wife is calling the lawyers.

Hands free sets : I can’t use those blue tooth thingies. I handle a lot of calls in a day. The last one I had heated up and gave my ear a third degree burn. So I use that headphone stuff with wires.

I hate it.

Half my work is done from my car. So I have my phone held onto the windshield with a sort of clasp that came along with the phone. There’s a name for it but it’s probably an acronym TTTIBGFTTIWBTPSTHWTHHGHAB (The Thing That Is Being Given Free To The Idiot Who Bought This Phone So That He Will Think He Has Got Himself A Bargain).

To the thus suspended phone I stick the hand free in from one end and the car charger, which has those coiled wires, to the other end. Thus totally gang raped, my phone stares at me mournfully as I drive.

All hell breaks loose when I actually do get a call. This is when the phone, the charger and the handset conspire to kill me.

The hanging wires of the handset will get caught up on the steering wheel, pulling itself out of the phone. The yank of the wire will dislodge the phone to make it fall near my feet. I will then try to retrieve the phone by fishing it out with the phone charger that is still lodged in its orifice. While all this is going on I can hear the metallic 'hello!, hello!' of the caller. Around then, the charger dislodges itself, hurling the phone under the foot brake pedal of my moving car.

After hand breaking the car to a stop at the nearest parking area, I will proceed to rip the wires apart, throw the errant phone on the floor and kick it for good measure.

I do not take lightly my gadgets trying to kill me.

Sales person in clothing stores : Why do these guys stalk you? It’s not like she is going to help me try on my pants. No, that you will have to do by yourself. So why do they follow me? Last time, I wanted to see how far this can go. So I decided to do a Rambo on her. I pretended as if I am going to the pant section but quickly turned and disappeared into the women’s' section. From there I did a belly roll into the shirt section and hid among the racks. I could hear her breath as she came closer, where upon I jumped out of my hiding place with a g string in my hand to garrote her.

I am not allowed there anymore. I buy my clothes online. It’s more private and I get to browse the lingerie section without being labeled a perv.

So what about you? What gets your goat? Tell me the things that can make you go from Dr. Bruce Banner to the Incredible Hulk?

Tom Foolery.

2011-05-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

Isnt it grand being a man?

I mean the standing up to pee bit and scratching what we want when we want, are just fantastic perks. The way we can laugh off a fart or a loud burp. After all we are men and thats our birth right.

Isnt it great being a man, in a world, of our making, expecting everything around us to revolve around our fears and thoughts? Sun does shine from the great male butt.

We cover our woman up to protect her from people like us. We are truly the best of gods creation.

Sometimes , I look at myself in the mirror and get a hard on. Its hard not to when you are a man.

Look Iam not for the women.

Hell, I dont even understand them. I dont think Iam required to.

Personally I think pms is an overrated thing. If I had to inevitably deal with a particular issue every month for a period of approximately 40 years, I would learn to deal with it instead of treating 4 days of a month as some sort of get out of jail free card.

But of course this comes from a guy whose understanding of pain was a year with piles and a life time of hangovers. I think that qualifies. Why? Iam a man and I say so.

Pregnancy? Dont even go there. I wouldnt be expected to understand something that I have no way of knowing. But carrying a baby inside your stomach isnt a big deal, neither, I believe ,is being able to stand up while peeing .So this great man - woman divide based on who is better is a bit of joke for me. I just dont get it.

Look, my take is this. None of us can claim credit or discredit for what we are born as. It just is.

But I do have to admire the way man ruled the roost.

The guy totally rocks!

Throw in a train compartment labelled women only, allote them 4 seats in a 75 seater bus, give them some representation in the government, put up an extra counter and call it women only and there you have it; our version of equality.

If this is nothing sort of genius , I dont know what is.

Throw them some bones. Then pay them lesser for the same type of work. Create a society where a woman has to struggle to reach anywhere where we can stride in.

A society where a woman chooses to kill her own infant daughters because we have made her accept the belief that man child is somehow better. Brilliance.

A society where the mother in law, assists her son to kill her daughter in law , a role she herself once adorned. Her fault? Hardly.Look closer, you will see a man's hand.

If she is raped, it must be her fault. If she is harassed, she must have asked for it. If she succeeds, she must have slept her way there. If her children fails, it must be her fault. If the husband strays, its because she didnt know how to keep her man. If she is left with an unborn child by a spineless lover, shes a whore. If she aborts, shes a killer. If she keeps the child, shes the mother of a bastard.

The smartest thing we did was when we pitted them against each other and then invented the coolest saying : A woman is a woman's worst enemy.

We even got them believing it. Can I just shake my own hands?

I dont get it. Why such complexities? why dont we just call her god and blame the whole thing on her?

Lets face the truth, if the world affairs where left to women, I think the maximum we will have to worry about will be about putting down the toilet seat.

Have you noticed something strange around you?

Where are all the tom boys gone?

You recall the time when we were kids, there used to be atleast one girl who did everything we did, sometimes better than us? That was the times when it was cool to be a man. Being a man meant somehow better.

Look around you. No tom boys. Just a lot of metro sexual men.

Nature is turning the tables boys, better make the effort to treat them like equals and put a fucking lid on understanding them. You cant. You are a man and the only reason you say that is to get inside their pants. Treat them like you would like to be treated, just dont be a man about it.

Iam onto me.

Kneaded Here.

2011-04-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

There are things that can totally shake the ground that you stand up on. Like finding out one day that Gandhi was a foul mouthed Nazi or Jesus finding out that Joseph really was his father.

For me, it was when Soumya told me that Shakeela chechi is actually from Tamilnadu.

Thats like saying the peacock is the national bird of Great Britan.

People should not play with other people's faith. Its bad manners. I bet she was punishing me for being rude to her. Jerk.

I have nothing against Tamils. If I do, you will not find me saying it here. Never mess with a population who takes their cinemas seriously. The last time I said something about a certain actor whose name starts with R and ends with t, my girl child became a boy. Now unless I want my marraige to become a lesbian alliance, I should probably stop this paragraph here.

There.

But Shakeela chechi?

Tamil?

How could this small detail of birth have been missed by her mallu fans? There is a whole generation of men from that prawn state whose epitome of sexual adventures were performed by others on the celluloid and the object of that lust was always this woman with a remarkably small head on top of gigantic assets. Shes the only woman I know, who could make a sexual congress ( my vote is on that) look like a piglet trying to suckle its mama. Its like the joke where the fly makes love to a Rhino and then asks her, did it hurt?

Mallu men who acts in mallu porns are elisted from the Kerala Tattukadas. I think this must be the day job. I came upon this revelation when I was sitting, sipping my black tea one night, waiting for my order of Parata and beef curry, watching the parata maker at his finest. He was kneading the dough. And I was going :

Wait a minute, I know that movement.

It was deja vu.

Images flickered by in my head like Amir Khan's in Gagani.Memories streamed out like a freshly squeezed Colgate toothpaste. I opened my shirt and looked at my tattoo. Shakeela chechi and the Kerala kamasutra number 79.

The boob kneading.

I had spoken about this earlier. The copyrighted sexual move of all mallu porn movie, which is followed by the nosing of the pleasuring womans body who lies supine like a fell oak, where only sign of life is the constant rubbing of her two feet like shes got a case of athletes foot.

And who can forget the visible display of a mallu girl in the throes of passion? The self biting of her lower lip with the eyes rolling back like a person suffering from an epileptic fit.

This was education to a generation whose daily lust fix was watching discreetly the women taking their bath at the temple pond from a distance of 1 kilometer.

There is a reason why we rank high in imagination. This is also the reason why mallu men hold hands. With each other.

This is also why we sport a moustache.

Its to brush away any dust while we do the nosing of our women.We have no idea what we are supposed to be sniffing for but if thats how it should be done , then thats how it will be. We are afterall a nation known for following the leader.

Sex is an important factor in Kerala.

Its like food in Ethiopia. Or health for a sick person. We dont get enough.

The result shows itself in public transports, bus stops, any crowded place, with embaressing regularity. This is why we need great individuals like Shakeela chechi. She will ensure that the horny mallu men will stay inside a theatre, like the sex trade in Amsterdam, where it can be controlled and dissipated in a healthy , socialy acceptable way.

Considering that Kerala gave Tamilnadu one of their most loved politician,MGR, its only fair we adopt Shakeela chechi as our own.

Its a fair trade.

I would like to leave you with a lovely picture of chechi in a pensive mood. ( If you are reading this at work and your boss is a mallu, make sure he is standing behind you while you scroll down; sure fire method to get into his good book)

Pussy Galore

2011-04-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

Its not like I hate cats.

I dont. I just find living with something which has an expression on its face as if it knows my inner most secrets, a lot like being married to the damn thing.

Its unsettling.

Iam a man. Atleast I think Iam. After hitting 40, there has been a tendency to cry in movies, have temper tantrums and a penchant to behave like , god forbid, a woman. This , I have read, is due to the reduction in the production of testosterone, which is the chemical within us, that makes men men. Funny when you think of it. That the only thing stopping men from becoming a woman is a chemical.

Anywho. Now that my boobs are bigger than my wife's and my stomach eclipses the only identifiable male part that I may no longer have, since I have taken to sitting down when I pee, Iam not very sure when I claim that Iam what Iam because Iam a man.

But I find any man who likes cats a little strange.

Iam currently residing in the Sand City. Here , unlike , in the home country, when one takes a pet, its for life or untill it is release onto the concrete jungle where they become part of the road reenforcement plan or gets taken in by some misguided do gooder who then gives it to an animal shelter like Feline Friends or K9 Friends etc, where they are recycled to live their potential road kill destiny all over again.

Life sucks if you are a human but its double suck for an animal that is not a horse or a camel here.

Iam proud to say that I belong to that breed of men who has made the ostrich approach to life a lifestyle. When Anna Hazare fasted, I was rooting for him with beer and pizza. When Japan quaked , I expressed my sympathy with 5 pegs of JD. Iam like that Nero. You will find me fiddling while the world burns around me and it will be easier because I will be watching it on TV.

But all that was spoiled when wife went out and came back with an animal that was animated only when you open a can.

Now I need to live with this fur ball for its life time which can be around 15 years. Being a cat, you will also need to multiply that by 9. So Iam not liking this one bit. My conscious and the fear of my wife prevents me from releasing the object of my wrath to play dodgeball with hurtling metal coffins on wheels.

Cats are useless as pets. It doesnt fetch. It doesnt roll. It doesnt save you from fire and robbers. It doesnt act like a 4 year old boy on speed when it sees you after you have stepped out for 5 minutes.

Men need that. We like knowing that we are missed. We like thinking that we somehow makes a difference to someone or something.

Cats dont give a fuck.

What it does is sleep 18 hours of a day in your wardrobe , snuggled amidst your black clothes covering it in unremovable cat fur, waking up only to shit or when you open a can. Then they spend the next 1 hour walking around the house at 3 in the morning making noises that sounds like Lady gaga being strangled.

I have always felt that the amusement in the eyes of a cat is it wondering how on earth it managed to have a human as its pet.

Therefore its a mystery what still makes these buggers a welcome addition in some houses.

I think theres a reason why the Egyptians used to worship these feline spongers. Any animal that makes you clean up its shit is worth worshipping.

Theres an old saying :

Women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

I think I will just pour myself a drink.

Naked Games

2011-04-03T01:31:00.000-07:00

I don't understand cricket.

Could never get the unnecessary passion behind 2 guys wacking a ball with a piece of wood and 11 guys running around trying to catch it. It seemed as stupid as that other game where 22 morons run after one ball.

All that changed with the promise made by one Miss Poonam Pandey.

Any game that promises to have a naked woman at the end of it, is a great game in my book. That was all the motivation I needed.

I was cheering myself stupid for India all day yesterday.

My eyes are however yet to be rewarded for the effort.

I like naked women.

I cant really explain why.

Its one of those things that defies logic.

I like women but naked ones are better. Somehow better. Beats me why. Naked men dont hit the right note but naked women are another story all together.

Anyhow. The important lesson here is that it got me watching cricket.

I still dont get it but the anticipation for the rewards of sitting through it is just great.

Its my opinion that there should be a naked woman at the end of every effort.

Women are great motivaters.

Every one might think that it was dedication, patriotism and team work that won the day for India but we men know the truth.

It was Poonam.

Shes our Evita.Our lady of liberty. The shining Icon of everything great about a woman. Her body.

Of course the Indian middle class morality might be offended because according to us, naked women are a myth. They dont exist. Its a western propaganda. Any woman comfortable in her own skin is answerable to the society of fat holy cows who dictates her fate.

Indian woman. Symbol of purity and chasity.

What does nakedness have to do with that? Purity then must be dependent on the layers of clothes that cover it. Hmmm doesnt strike you as correct does it?

If a girl wants to strip, I feel the Indian society should stand back and let her.

After all shes doing it for her country. Others blow themselves up among others for the same reasons. This is a far better option.

Wars could have been ended this way.

What if George Bush said that he will strip himself naked if Osama Bin Laden was'nt found in a weeks time?

History might have been different.

I think this Poonam girl is onto something.

She could be the answer to world hunger.

Mamta Banerjee promises to strip naked if the hungry Indian mass are not fed.

Religious intolerance.

Manmohan Singh threatens full monty if the one thousand religions of India doesnt bury the hatchet and promises to live in peace and let others live in peace.

World peace.

Abdul J Kalam decides to get into the picture by baring it all if the world leaders dont get into one room and come out with a solution.

Poonam could be the new age Gandhi. Her idea could get results for age old problems. Fast.

I say let her do what she wants to do. Lets cheer her on instead of judging her.

From my side, I promise to strip naked in public if India ever loses another world cup.

There! that should solve that problem.

Bullshits : Chapter 2

2011-03-29T02:42:00.000-07:00

Amid all the questions that a human will ask in his life time, yearning for understanding of his existence, his purpose, his meaning, theres one that stands out.

Why do people blog?

I have no clue.

But I can tell you why I blog.

I blog for the same reason some people unleash their creativity on bathroom walls.

I blog for the same reason why some people pee in the pool.

I blog for the same reasoning behind the person who writes to the editor of a newspaper thinking that words printed will mean that he was able to make a difference.

I blog for the same reason as Jesus, when being confronted with people who were bent on stoning to death Mary Magdalane for adultary, wrote on the sand with a twig before answering : He who has not sinned, let him cast the first stone.

Jesus was a blogger.

I blog because most of the thing I say ,you will listen, only because you dont know me. I blog because I know that you dont care about me and I have no real place in your life, therefore whatever I say here will actually get to you.

See? Who said that an uncaring world isnt a positive thing?

This is why, we dont listen to our parents, our spouses, our friends but will worship the words of a stranger whom we dont know but think we do. Blogging makes everyone a guru.

See. Lets put a spiritual spin on this.

How does god exist? It relies on its existence to the believers. You might disagree; but if none of us believed in a god , then the question of its existence will never have risen.Its like the question of the existence of Maragosepinia Kolakutz.

It didnt exist untill I made it.

So, if god really does exist, he totally relies on us to keep him doing the things he does, being immortal souls and all. So as long as god exist, mankind will exist. It is codependent. So if he really existed, then theres no reason to fear, is there? Its all peachy. But is it?

We know in a deep rooted way that we are screwed. We write books about it, makes movies about it, talk about it , dream about it, have nightmares about it and some people get to have sex because of it. We know that our days are numbered. So we pray. If we cant control it, then there must be someone who can. Its called hope.

The last I heard, hope floats.

Shit also floats.

So you see, when someone asks, why do people blog? its because we can.

As long as there is a natural tendency in us humans to be curious, to be interested, to be questioning, to be alive, there will be seeking , there will be listening, there will be reading. That will give rise to the seen, the speaker, the writer.

They are codependent. Its expressions might be many but its reasons will be the same.

I blog because of the few who reads it.

Bullshits. Chapter1

2011-03-23T22:35:00.000-07:00

Nowadays I feel like that guy who cut the branch that he sat upon.

Never have I felt so alone. Never have I felt so free.

I was talking to my mother yesterday. A friend of mine from college days had died of drug abuse couple of days back. He was in some former life a football captian but later he stayed on years after years in the same college completeing a course that had no end. He died in the university town. What upset my mother was when she heard that his parents did not want his body returned home. The college buried him in the university town graveyard.

Mother could not understand. Death is supposed to be a leveler. What happened here? Are disappointments so unforgiveable? Who is the victim here? I dont know.

Iam finding that its becoming difficult for me to take any sides. I seem to have lost the sense of discrimination.This is making me a bore to have a conversation with, because I do not seem to 'get it'. Most of it.

Question.

Do you feel that emotions are indicators? I mean , do you sometimes observe the areas in your body where emotions act out of? Fear in your belly, anguish in your throat, emotional pain( sometimes felt as intense love) in your heart? Dont you think sometimes the heaviness or lightness or constriction is there in these areas but the actual emotion associated with it is uncertain?

I find myself paying attention to the body. I feel it guiding in some ways. I have felt that all emotions are self directed. Its focus or rather the catalyst is external but the associated reaction/emotion is the filtered reality. Your true nature can be experienced by observing your emotions. Dispassionately. It is filtered, so I guess knowing that the filter will effect your observation is helpful.

Emotions in that sense is an indulgence. It is you asserting.

Then there are those emotions that are self generated. Seemingly without any outside catalyst. The feeling of anxiety, the sudden heavy feeling or the unexplained feeling of joy. But when looked closely, it too has an external source.I think emotion is the true language of the body.And like all language it can be misinterpreted unless we have that level of honesty to see ourself as we are.

Why is all this important?

No reason.I dont even think this is important. It helps pass time.

If you pause to look, you too, perhaps, will see how utterly alone we are. Its kind of beautiful how contained we are , within ourself. We hear what we want to hear, see what we want to see, be who we want to be, be not who we want to be. Every interaction, experience is your own unique thing, because there will be none like you ever again.

Does that make you feel better?

I didnt think so.

Yesterday I was talking to my mother. One thing lead to another and we were talking of orphans. Mother was telling be that she feels she should spend more quality time with the children she has been sponsoring.The last time she went to that school, her kids were standing at the gate waiting for her.

She was telling me that she is grateful that she is in a position to help.

Grateful to whom? I asked.

To all the paths that led me to now. She said.

Its a safe answer. I know. But its a beautiful real answer.

I can't comprehend the life of a child who upon grazing her knee in the playground has no one to blow on that wound.

But I do know that we all will become orphans one day.

Sometimes I find myself thanking the beggar I give money to. Its a reflex. Iam embaressed by the whole thing. Iam annoyed because the out stretched hand shows a lack that Iam in a position to fulfill. Who is the beggar? He who does not have it or the one who gives it because he has it? Where is the so called beauty in charity? There is none. It is an ugly reality. Giving is not a noble act or a virtous act. It is an act of guilt. Of shame. Its our way of redemption.There is no beauty in redemption , only a sense of justice. The very act of giving makes the other a beggar.

Rather provide. Act on a want before it is presented to you. Do it in silence and be done with it. Its a privilage. Bestow dignity. Poverty sucks and it will be a lot kinder if they are not reminded of it.

It is becoming hard to take myself seriously.

Iam so full of shit.

Slip And Slide Away.

2011-03-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Its off late that I happened to see my feet.

Having a midsection that has its own zipcode and climate, prevents me from seeing a lot of other things below the belt. But one day, while stepping into the shower, my gaze happened to fall upon my feet.

It looked a lot like a drought hit river bottom.Not a pretty sight.This is why I keep a lot of things out of sight; it saves me the embaressment.

Anyhow; I came out of the shower and declared to my wife that my lower extermities has been hit by a drought. She retorted that some other neighbouring parts have already turned into desert.( Point to ponder: do you think that the reason we find oil reserves in desert is earth's way of moisturizing?)

Moisturize! My wife declared like a wild prophet from the Mount of Sinai , holding up a container the size of a milk bottle.

Iam a bloke. We don't moisturize.

We shave after we lather our face in the shower with the soap. Once , during a camp trip, I have even shaved using mint toothpaste. The result was a fresh clean shave. Its not everyday your breath and face becomes syncronized.

When a bloke is dry, we oil ourself.

We dont rub on some cream made out of a fruit cocktail. We strip to our bare necessities and have someone oil us down.

When you are married and the children are too small to be trained in the menial tasks that are expected of them in the future, that someone will be your wife.

That is unless theres something you are not telling me.

So I stripped down to my boxers, spread the picnic matt in the living room, handed over to wife a bucket full of heated coconut oil and lay face down on the matt.

Then I waited.

Upon not feeling any reassuring oiling happening, I looked up puzzled , to see my wife looking at me with disgust.

The reason?

No. Not my naked body, which trust me, is the reason she keeps in shape.

It helps with her diet.

Olive oil.

Whats with girls and olive oil?

According to her, coconut oil is for banana chips.

There were retorts I could have come up with for that comment, but Iam against domestic violence.

Babe, olive oil is a dressing. She is Popeye's girl friend. Its such a girly oil that it has got a girl's name.

Coconut.

Now thats dude oil.The word rolls in your tongue. Coconut. Theres nothing feminine there.

Theres one thing you learn when you are married to a woman for a long time. They complain that we dont listen.

Its true. We dont.

They listen.

Then they go ahead and do extactly what they want.

So ultimately, it was Popeye's girl friend who filled all my cracks with her greasiness.

After being marinaded for a period of one hour, I skidded my way to the bathroom, where I spend 2 hours trying to open the door, which kept slipping. Upon entering the shower , the process which nearly killed me, I proceeded to shower, washing Bluto's lust off me.

Now my feet looks like a broken chinese vase that has been put together with quickfix.

Moisturizing, I maintain , is over rated. Feet and hand needs the threads, which gives it a good grip. Greasing that is as stupid a pouring oil on your car tyres before taking it for a spin.

You know how that is going to pan out.

Whogivesafuckism

2011-03-07T03:07:00.000-08:00

For a guy who seemed to have spend almost all his life trying to find the meaning of life, you will think, would by now know how to live.

Well , my friends, I do.

Anyone who knows me, I know, will disagree.

I invite their gaze towards my raised third finger.

Now, that my friends, is how I live my life.

As I never tire of emphasising, my way need not be your way. My meat is in all probability poison for you. So let me , my poor captive audience, go further into my journey in whogivesafuckism.

You probably know by now that my wife has prohibited all talks that revolves around my work and my state of mind inside the house ( not my state of mind inside the house, which is largely a state of confusion but rather discussion in relation to the state of my mind is prohibited within the four walls of my abode).

This ban has resulted in a sudden silence in the house, since beyond this, I seem to have nothing else to speak about. Point made woman!

So thats where you come in.

Call it farting in the wind ( which is what any talk about life really is. One hopes that someone , somewhere will sniff the stink)

According to me, theres no way anyone alive can ever know the meaning of life. Now that does not mean that we will know the meaning once we are dead. I wouldnt know. The last I checked I had a pulse and have no particular craving for blood.

Actually I dont think theres any meaning to life at all. I mean, the very question is a meaningless question. Think about it.

Its like asking, whats the meaning of wind.

Fuck if I know.

Heres my paradox, I didnt witness my birth and theres a plausible chance that I will not witness my death. Yet Iam told I existed for all eternity. And you call me drunk.

Face it.

We are the body. Every perception , every experience , all that makes you you are within this body. No matter how many theories are thrown around and how many times some guy with a beard says otherwise, you cannot exist outside your body and be aware of it. You can, of course fool yourself into thinking that you do, but tell me something-

when you think, do you hear it? or do you see it?

Tell me something.

What the fuck is choiceless awareness?

I have no clue. But I dont pretend that I do.

Now, therein lies the core of whogivesafuckism.

As long as you ask a question for the sake of asking a question, there will be enough and more cunning little bastards out there trying to convince you that they have the answer.

But they cant possibly know you.

They can theorize about you, they can even assume that they know you. The result thats you due to the combination and accumulation of the billions of recycled atoms, willed to a certain extent by the genetical code that could be the nearest thing to an immortal part in your whole body, is unique.

One of a kind.

Yet we are told to believe in a fit all sizes salvation.

And you call me mad.

They tell me that we are all the result of our experiences, that is in reality past. Which makes me a dead man walking.

They tell me that we are exactly where we want to be due to the choices we have made. We are in charge of our destiny.

And I tell them take their mother for a walk on a leash.

Tell that to the 4 year old kid who was raped and killed in the rest room of the mosque during ramadan. Tell that to the girl who was locked up by her prevert father to be his sex slave for an eternity. Tell that to the palestine father who tried miserably to shield his son from Israeli bullets. Tell that to the millions of jews who were murdered while their neighbours watched.

Choice?

Yep. Now is when they throw the whole karma thing at me and this is where I tune off. I find this whole karma thing boring. Iam I the only one who sees that it actually serves no real purpose in the actual business of living?

You are trying to find a reason when there are none. You are trying to find a meaning when there are none. You are trying to find a purpose when there are none.

What is the purpose of a karma when you have no idea if you had a previous life? It is a speculation.

Here is the foundation of whogivesafuckism.

I do not know.

But Iam a king of living. I have been doing it for 41 years with no special effort.

Just have to wake up.

Off with her head!

2011-02-23T01:58:00.000-08:00

Trust the government to come to your rescue and put a smile on your face when you feel down in the dump.

I have not been able to look at another shop window display the same way again after reading this.

This got me thinking.

Yes it does happen.

Who makes these laws? I mean, what is the provocation behind this? Is the society a little safer due to this? It also makes you wonder about the person who is 'bothered' when he sees a plastic female figure in underwear. But to be fair, men are also known to get turned on by pictures of female figures. Go figure.

So as a mean to entertain you, I decided to find out some more of these strange laws. Yeah. Absolutely jobless.

In Virginia,USA, chickens must lay their eggs between 8am and 4pm.

In UK , a pregnant woman can legally urinate anywhere she wants, including if she requests, in a policeman's hat.

In Hong Kong, a woman can kill her husband if he has cheated on her. She must use her bare hand though. This isn't a requirement for the man's lover, who can be killed by any means necessary.

In Samoa, it is illegal to forget your wife's birthday.

Portugal makes it illegal to pee in the ocean

In South Carolina unmarried women are not allowed to buy edible panties.

In Singapore chewing gum is illegal

In Israel, you could be prosecuted for picking your nose on Sunday.

In Sweden it is illegal to use the services of a prostitute. Prostitution is legal though

In Thailand, it is illegal to leave your house without your underwear on.

In Lebanon, If a man is caught having sex with a male animal then the penalty is death- sex with a female animal is ok

In Bahrain, a male doctor may legally examine a woman’s genitals but is forbidden from looking directly at them during the examination; he may only see their reflection in a mirror.

In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation.

So I guess as long as society exist we can be assured of a good laugh.

Even if it will get us jailed or worse, decapitated.

Too sexy for your love.

2011-02-13T23:46:00.001-08:00

There’s this myth that is been going around for a long time which I will proceed today to dispel.

- Indian men are not sexy.

I have no idea about the origin of this myth but I am sure it’s been around a long time. It was already prevalent during the colonial times and the trip Gandhi made to London in his loin clothes didn’t help the image much either.

Now, that’s not to say Gandhi wasn’t sexy. He was. No man who isn’t sexy can have the confidence to meet the English Prime minister in his underwear. That man was sexy and he knew it.

Thing is, if you actually think about it you will realize how stupid one has to be to believe this biased allegation on my Indian brethrens.

We all know that Indian women are known as the most beautiful in the world. They have won beauty contests, acted in movies and are lusted by men/ women of all races. (My blog is whichever-way-you-swing supportive).

Further proof can be derived by the sheer number of porn sites that will open up if you Google 'desi girls'. I myself have verified this as research for this post.

Now consider this.

Enquire on whom 90% of these Indian women will marry?

Indian men.

Case closed. Bara boom Bara bam.

I know the existence of rumors about the character of an Indian man. I am shocked by the generalization of a whole population due to the flaws of a few. Never the less, let me take the time to make you see it from another perspective.

Rumor 1: Indian men treat their women badly.

This in my opinion adds an edge to the Indian men. We are the Rhett Butlers of the world. Now we all know that women tend to sway more towards men who treat them bad. Don’t ask me why they do it but they do. Ask any of those nice guys who finished last.

Rumor 2: Indian men do not know how to pleasure a woman.

What!? Man, you are talking about the guys how invented sex. We made religions around it. We have even given the world the maximum permutation and combinations possible in doing it. So in the midst of all this wonderful research for the benefit of the humankind, we kind of missed the clitoris and the g-spot. Big deal. The maximum pleasure for a woman is in pleasuring a man. It is written.

Rumor 3: Indian men are all mamas’ boys.

I fail to see the problem with this. The last I heard there’s no way papa can give birth.

Rumor 4: Indian men are horny.

Of course they are. You try living in a country where your women are declared as the most beautiful in the world.

Rumor 5: Indian men lust after white women.

Actually this is true and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the western media. Until an average Indian man reaches adult hood, the only naked women he has seen would have been a white woman. This is thanks to the prevalent western porn industry that caters to our collective Indian lust. Moreover our Indian national pledge has made us feel a little incestuous in having any 'dirty' thoughts on our Indian sisters. So that kind of leaves only white women for our fantasies. This problem, however, is normally cured by marriage to a nice Indian girl from a good family selected by the mother.

I have observed, in my years of study on sex and its relevance in Indian society, that there are basically 3 types of Indian men. They can be termed as:

1. T man.

These are the ones who have been stereotyped by all mallu naughty movies as the master of the house or the son of the master of the house who is always staring down the blouse of Shakeela chechi, playing the maid swapping the floor. They can also be recognized by their inability to have a conversation with a woman without their eyes dropping 6 inches below her eyes.T-men are just grown version of a boy who has not been weaned yet. Fascination towards an anatomical part of the female body whose sole function is to provide nutrition to its young cannot be termed in any other way than being the result of an early weaning.

2. A man.

These species can be found in all Indian Public transport services. In their highly active stage they can be found groping, pinching, touching the derriere of Indian women who are unfortunate enough to catch their attention. In their normal stage, these are Indian men whose attitude towards sex are normal and are focused on procreation. They wear their intention on their zip. Women are advised not to drop anything in front of these guys; worse try picking it up.

3. The T&A man.

A balanced individual. Indian version of a metro man. To this man the only criterion is that the focus of his passion just has to be a woman. Nothing else matters. What can be sexier than that?

For the Indian men reading this, a simple test to determine your type:

If you saw boobs, you are type 1
If you saw a half exposed pair of buns, you, my friend, are a type 2.
If you saw a boob and wondered what her arse will be like is a type 3
If you closed your eyes when you saw the picture, then my son, you are way too young to be googling 'Indian cleavage'.

Godless in the Gods own Country

2011-02-09T01:49:00.000-08:00

You would think at this day and age, people would have evolved enough to move away from religion.

Come on, you have to be really stupid if you think that religion gets you closer to god.

Even if the version of the said god is of a big man in the sky who is partial to a segment of his creation, who is as sensitive to slight as a PMSing girl, who is jobless enough to keep a tab on if or not you have masturbated in the morning and who finds delight if his mad fans kills off some of his creations as a PR stunt to further his name.

Come on. Seriously.

Personally I am of the belief that believing or not believing in the existence of a god is not a necessary criterion for a human to lead a civilized, social life.

By no degree am I an atheist. I am whatchamacallit, a 'who gives a fuckist'.

But it wasn’t always so.

Few know that there was a time when I went in search of an external god and found myself.

I know. Anticlimax.

Sanyaas had caught my fancy. I must be honest enough to admit that the attraction was not due to any spirituality from my side (this is on reflection, though at that time I was under the impression that the brightness of the halo around my head was the reason why people couldn’t stand the sight of me). I was actually recouping from my stint with drugs during college days and like any scoundrels had only two refuges.

I chose the one that involved the least work.

Having crammed my head full of second hand versions of the supposed divinity, I thought I was on my way to becoming the next messiah.

The things people do for popularity!

So one day I found myself in front of an ashram, head shaven, waiting for the darshan of a lady who is called Amma and who hugs every single person she meets.

Why? Well, this was the only thing I could get at such short notice.

Now if you are familiar with religion, you would know by now that it’s an epidemic. Half the state of Kerala was there getting their share of hugs while the remaining half was probably at home enjoying their kappa and fish curry washed down with toddy.

Being a tad bit of a misanthrope, I find crowds unsettling. So I waited outside, until the hall became almost empty. Then, very self consciously ,approached this lady who sat on the dias, wearing a white sari. I couldn’t help noticing that she looked a lot like the maid we had when I was small, Kuttiamma. As I hugged her (again very self consciously), she asked me in my ear almost whispering: What happened to you, son?

It wasn’t a question.

I replied: Nothing.

Then she asked: What do you want?

I replied: To become one.

She told me to sit next to her on the stage. So there I was, sitting , very uncomfortably, along side the God woman and a sundry mix of some 10 or 12 other holy bunch from different sects.

I tried my best to look holy. This involved sitting cross legged, keeping my eyes half closed and ignoring the itch on my nose.

Thus I passed the next hour or so until everyone left. Since there was nothing much to be done after becoming a holy man, I continued sitting there ignoring the itch. I was startled to my senses by someone touching my feet.

I must have jumped about 2 feet while still sitting cross legged. I opened my eyes to find an equally startled man who must have been as old as my father still lying supine on the floor with his hands stretched reaching out to a place on the floor where my feet was about 2 seconds ago.

That’s when I left. I apologized to the man and left.

Who is the worshipper and who is the worshipped? Both are fools.

That in short was, my friends, one of the steps towards me becoming a who gives a fuckist.

But then who really gives a fuck?

Smokin'

2011-02-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

Now Iam the kinda guy who will not judge you for your persumed vices. Hell, Iam not even sure which of the things people do are vices or versa (couldnt resist, though it makes no grammatical sense). So it kind of get to me when I see the frantic waving of handkerchieves and opening of windows when I light up my cancer stick, in areas Iam, by law, permitted to smoke.

Hell, it aint fart.

If second hand smoke bothers you, I wonder how you react to a kiss, if you were aware that colds, glandular fever (kissing disease), herpes infection, warts, hepatitis B and meningococcal disease may all be transmitted by kissing.

Remember that the next time you pucker up.

Have you seen the area where a smoker is allowed to smoke?

I mean, heres a habit that brings in millions of dollars to the government, and you would expect some sort of courtesy rather than be treated like some sort of freak show.

Why on earth would anyone ban smoking in a coffee shop? Or for that matter in a pub?

I mean people who goes there already give two fucks about living life like an organic pumpkin, they live like a real human should; dangerously.

How in hell does someone drink a coffee or a larger without the accompanied toxic intake?

Thats like having Pamela over for dinner and deciding to spend the night watching porn together. Hey, Iam sure that works for you but why dont you sit at home to do your stuff?

What I dont understand is why can't we have coffee shops and pubs that has licence for smoking , while others that caters to moral sniffles can have establishments which do not allow smoking?

There! That my friends, is called liberty, pro-choice, anti- putting-your-finger-up-my-nose-to-pull-out-your-snot kind of freedom.

But nooooo. You will sue the shit out of the smokers joint because you want to sit amid smokers and want us to respect your bubble of air. You , my dear, are like what we mallus call a dog that lies on the haystack; you wont eat it and you wont let the cows eat it.

Let us get the logic straight. When you walk into Dam Square at Amsterdam, you are going to be confronted with ladies in various stages of undress standing behind windows . Now if this bothers you, theres the Van Gogh museum nearby.

What I mean is, certain things go hand in hand.

Pubs and coffee shops goes well with cigarettes. Let it be.

If the smoke bothers you, go outside. Iam sure we can arrange service there for you. But wave another handkercheif and it will be you that goes out of the window.

Look, like I had told earlier in some long ago post, Iam all for raising hell against the moron who lights up in an elevater or in a train. Infact I find the fucks who smoke in public transports and public places needs to be put in their place; outside. But I draw a line when someone tells me I cant smoke in a coffee shop or a pub.

Now you are pissing on my territory.

So heres what I will do. When you come to my house, I wont give a rats arse if you are pregnant, have an allergy, wants to die with a lung as pink as a salmon or that you just cant stand the filthy habit. I will light up.

So there!

Photo courtesy : http://mathurakalauny.blogspot.com/

Props to help you through another day.

2011-02-01T03:27:00.000-08:00

Its been a month. Another year has been ushered in.

Actually I think the year tends to come in irrespective of whether we usher or try to shoo it away. Damn the fucker.

Anyhow; 2011 is upon us and while the world has been making resolutions or making resolutions not to make any further resolutions, I have been trying to live with the resolutions I have made in the last 41 years.

Recently I was part of a conversation with a married couple who was talking about how they should have just kept at having a live in relationship instead of tying the knot.

Translation: I want to wake up with someone else.

I mean what the fuck is the difference?

Being Indians, Live in relationship still does not mean that it will be just the two of them. There will always be 'the' families or 'the' friends. All relationship comes with a whole string of genealogy.

Of course, there will no longer be any of those stupid invitations to your niece's birthday parties or the mother's 60th birthday. If you do make the effort to connect with either of your families, you are going to be a source of embarrassment to all those born on the wrong side of the century and an envy to everyone on this side.

What’s the big deal in a live in relationship? For that matter what’s the big deal in a marriage either? The only difference seems to be in how fast one can get out of it.

So when couples say that they wish they never got married, what they mean is, they just don't want it with that person they are married to.

Yep. You heard it here first.

What’s with couples and the constant berating up of an institution like marriage? Personally I am not much into any type of institutions but I am not burning any bras over marriage either.

Living with a woman is hard enough without having to try deciphering the relationship. My antidote to an early visit from the grim reaper is not to wonder about a woman. You are never going to figure it out and even if you do, there’s no one there to verify if you are right.

Yeah, you try getting a woman to say, 'You are right.'

So among the other pertinent questions like; does the tree that fall in a forest, with no one to hear it, make any noise? Or do dog dream in color? Or is what I see real or just a neurotic translation of something else? ; I bury this deep.

Now those that have the misfortune in knowing me will be aware that I am a cheerful person.

Really.

You guys just happen to catch me in a bad mood.

All the time.

Make you wonder, doesn't it?

Thing is, off late, I am not finding too much to be cheerful about. So I decided to make a list of things to do this year.

It’s not a bucket list. The way things are going and the absurd sense of irony the universe seems to have, I am probably going to survive 2012.

No.

This is just 10 things to get done this year. And if I accomplish all of it, I plan to consider the year as a successful year.

I even made the rules:

The list should contain:

- Something foolish
- Something dangerous
- Something new
- Something considerate
- Something naughty
- Something painful
- Something scary
- Something bad
- Something life changing
- A good deed for a total stranger without his/her knowledge.

I got my list ready about 7 days ago and I have already stroked off one. Only 9 more to go.

The things we do to wake up every morning!

As you are aware I am a very goal oriented individual who’s planning ahead span is about 12 hours. This means that I get through the day with the thought of spending the evening with my friend JD.

Now, for the ones who are shaking their heads and saying, that’s no way to live one’s life, I would like to politely ask; why the fuck not?

Thing is off late I am getting kind of tired of this blog. I feel like I have compromised. Like I have chickened out. I feel I am writing all this with the (2) readers I have in mind. I feel I have been diluting what I want to say. Sugar coating it.

This is why no one knows the identity of the Vendetta. He’s not like the wimp Spiderman who gets his tights laundered by Mary Jane. Vendetta dies unknown and therefore he can do what the fuck he wants. Say what the fuck he wants. Be the fuck who he wants.

When I started this, I aimed to laugh at everything. I wasn’t looking for friends. I was looking for people who will smile and say 'he’s got a point.'

I think I let them down (not that I care too much for that). More than that I feel I let myself down (this bothers me).

Truth is important to me. And I like it neat.

So thats how its going to be from now on.

So thats 2 things off the list now. Only 8 more to go.

In the end

2010-12-28T02:09:00.000-08:00

Few things in life can give you the satisfaction of a job well done than passing out in a party.

The above sentence have no relevance to anything you are going to read further. I just felt that I should impart these nuggets of knowledge to you folks.

Lets call it enlightenment capsules.

My wife decided to have a small get together at home this Christmas eve. As long as there is alcohol, Iam kinda okay with any kind of gathering. The day Mac Donalds introduces the Mac JD Splasher in its beverage section, is the day Iam going to start attending my sons birthday parties.

There are few things that is more tortureous than attending some ankle biters 3rd birthday do.

I should know.

We had thrown one for my son, and I lost half my friend circle, which for me is practicaly the whole lot. I have been thereupon , rather unsuccessfully, trying to convince my wife to celebrate only the significant years in our childrens' life.

Celebrate birth,after which the next party should be when the child is 5, after that give it a long brake and give the key to your apartment and your booze cabinet and leave the city for the child to celebrate his/her 18th birthday. 21 should be celebrated as a 'get out of the house' party.

4 parties. Out of which for 1 you dont even have to invite any of your friends. Think about how fondly you will be remembered.

There are few things in life that will mean nothing to you in the end but for which you have lived your life, than being remembered fondly.

Anyways, back to the Christmas party.

I like celebrating a dead man's birthday. I mean we have been doing it for the last 2009 years and who am I to change the tune? My theory in life is not to fix anything that isnt broken. I also have great regard for a man who held the job description for just 3 years , the result of which changed human history.For the better or for the worse is anybodys guess. You need to admire that. I do realize that if this man takes a look at how his words has been interpreted , he would nail himself down on that cross again.

Fuck religion.Lets get on with the party.

Wife had, very intelligently , invited an ecelectic group of known suspects. There was my elder brother and family, and then 2 other couples where the respective wives were my childhood family friends, which in India makes them my cousins.

For an Indian, a cousin denotes any relationship with a member of the opposite sex whose respective families are close. This is the term used for giving the said relationship an innocence that it might not always deserve.

One of my 'cousins' is married to a guy who does holistic healing ( Yep, you know the kind), the other is married to a guy who is in the Tourism business. Then there is my elder brother, who is fondly known in close circles as Atilla the Hun and his wife. Finally theres me and my wife. Iam leaving out all the kids because they are not important in a Christmas party other than being recipents of gifts.

Some where along the conversation steered towards the 2012 . The holistic chap is convinced that theres going to be a change because we are going into some sort of age. We are now in Iron age, which is not that great because quite sometime back we were in the Golden Age. Its almost like the Pakistan cricket team. Human kind has been declining. According to him , these few years are to force us to change. As you know nothing motivates change than the threat of total annihilation.

The tourism guy says that nothing will happen and the whole thing will be like the Y2K thingy ( remember that?). Holistic says that is an ostrich approach. Tourism says that is called hope. My elder brother thinks we should make a plan to celebrate the ending, because either way the party is bound to be a success.

My take is why bother?

Each day we get up not knowing if we are going to see the end of the day. Life is a fragile thing. Easily begotten , easily forgotten. However we choose to see life; as a gift or as an incident or as an accident or as a natural cause when all the necessary requirements are in place; the end result, we all know, is that this will come to an end. Iam not interested in this deathless part of us which we claim to exist because my knowledge of it is second hand. I know I exist. I also know that what I call I is a thinking,walking, talking ,breathing animated bundle that is a culminated result of everything around me.

Iam the result of you.

If it was possible to peel away the layers of influences, experiences, exposures then perhaps like an onion you might end up with naught. This bundle has an expiry date. It ceases to exist one day. Period. No after life for Tys. Whatever that exists after that, if at all it does exist, will not be tys.

So why bother?

You know what I will be doing on the day the world ends? The same thing as Iam doing today. Living it in a very ordinary way.

But for those who wants to be prepared, please go here.

A very merry christmas

2010-12-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

I turned 41 sometime back.

Have you noticed how when you are in your teens, your future plans are in the span of 30 years or more?

By the time I reach 40s, I will be a millionare and would have screwed half the state of Kerala.

The planning years keep coming down as you age. In your 30s, it is about 15; by the time you hit 40s, you are down to 5. My cousin who is in his 50s confirms that it stays at 5 for him also. My father who is in his 70s says that for him it is about 1 year.

Age is inversely proportional to mortality, even the hope of it.

Did you hear about the new fad that is taking over the Dubai roads?

Its called chucking a live cat out of a speeding car.

Why would anyone want to do that? I mean this is cats we are talking about. They are as good as dead even when they are alive. The only signs of life I see in mine is when I pour Whiskas into its feeding tray.

How on earth does someone throw a cat out of a car? Actually dont answer that. In a world where rape and genocide exist, working out a system for disposing live cats out of automobiles will be a walk in the park for us.

Since another year is coming to an end, bringing the inevitable 2012 even closer, let me regale you with the random snippets of my life which has stood out among the utter ordineriness of my day to day existence.

I had told you earlier that I was caught by cop ( Iam not sure if he really was one, but he flashed me a badge which could have been an Airmiles loyalty card for all I know) for buying booze from Ajman ( where it is sold legally) and bringing it to my home in Sharjah ( where alcohol is prohibited). I had also told you that I was sure I was being scammed and therefore refused to bribe the said cop who there upon informed me that he can make life miserable for me by saying that I bad mouthedhis religion. Whereupon I requested him eagerly to lead the way to the nearest ATM.

Well, what I havent told you was that the same guy caught me another 2 times in the course of this year.

What can I say, Iam consistent.

The second time he caught me, I reminded him that this has occured about 1 month back and that he can have the JD but I will not give him any money. He then looked at me very closely ( we must all look the same ) and then recognition struck and he graciously let me off the hook with a warning.

The third time, I actually caught him before he caught me. I kind of saw him waiting so I stopped the car, got out ,went upto him and said hi. My son was with me and was impressed that I had a local friend. He was very uncomfortable and took off pretty fast.

I have never seen him hence.

Iam still drinking so I guess our path is bound to cross again. I think I will invite him home.

I did tell you that I had this bad case of a nerve disease with a long name. Well I went to the dentist for a dental xray he discovered that my molar was split down the middle. He treated it like some medical wonder since he had xrayed it a week earlier and have declared it as healthy. So he extracted it and kept it in a bottle. I have no idea what gets dentists off. What he didnt know was that I had been biting down hard to bear the pain that I ended up spliting the tooth.

Great news is that with no tooth there to bite down , I think the nerves felt a little betrayed. So nowadays when it makes it presence felt, I treat it like an old friend who calls in once in a while to say hi.

With indifference.

Philosophicaly I have hit rock bottom. The older I have become the more Iam beginning to realize how little I know. Stupidity is hard earned.

Greatest news I have heard in along time was that Harley Davidson has come to India. It has been a dream of mine to bike the whole of India on Harley with Mads. Looks like Iam one step closer to realizing that dream. Now all I have to do is make up my mind and make the time.

And perhaps inform Mads.

Life, I have come to realize ,is pretty good. Of course there is enough to crib about but there is also a shameful knowledge that you yourself got you here which helps curb any such venting. I have long ago let god and other such things off the hook for the state of things. How long can we keep finding scape goats for our own mistakes?

Talking about scape goats, Merry Christmas.

Show me the money! *

2010-11-08T03:14:00.000-08:00

The craziest thing in the world is where , you give your money to someone to hold and then you pay him money everytime you want to take some of your money back from him.

There must be an ancient mallu proverb that wraps up the situation aptly but I would rather go with : What the fuck!

Welcome to the world of banking.

I had opened up an account with Mashreq bank in their easy saving scheme, which is a lot like tying up your saving in a sack and then dropping it into a well. There is no ATM cards, or cheque books. So the only way you can get at your money is by climbing down the well. In short, I will have to go to the bank and withdraw it personaly. Being a lazy bum, with a dire requirement to save, I decided that this is a great option.

So each time I wanted to dip into my honey pot, I had to go to the bank, write a slip and have the teller do a third degree on me to check my identity ( as if god would dare to make someone else in my image) , ending with some money in my hand.

It worked for me.

Thats untill a few days back.

I wanted to go skinny dipping in my honey pot again and was confronted with a sign in front of the cute teller that said the bank will be charging aed 100 for every withdrawal that is less than aed 9000.

This is to supposedly encourage people to withdraw using their atm cards.

Did I tell you that my account scheme does not provide me with an atm card? I did , didnt I? Now its like paying the ferry man after you die. Raw deal.

Tell you the truth I was amused. I first thanked the universe for finally giving me something to rant about, then I called forth the manager.

So, if I want to withdraw AED 100 from my savings, do I give the bank 100 dirhams and they give me 100 dirhams, or do they take my 100 dirhams and then thank me, leaving me empty handed and puzzled?

I dont know.

Anyways, to cut a long story short, I withdrew my entire savings. I think its wiser and probably safer to just keep it under my pillow.

Truth is I dont know much about the world of banking. I also think not many people in banking have any clue what the whole shit is about. I once spoke to my brother and he told me that money is no longer valued against a country's gold reserves. Infact the value of money today is based on what some guy in some bank decides it to be.

I dont understand money. As long as it can buy things Iam kind of okay with it. But each time I look at it, I cant help but wonder that , fuck, its just paper. All this fuss for something which actually will have no relevance if found by some alien archeologist 50 millions years hence.

I think, Zerco, these primates used to eat this. Thats why they have so much of it and every fossil we unearthed has this on them. This was their food.They survived on paper, which they made , perhaps more palatable by putting designs on them. Perhaps these design has some religious significance. The face of the primate on these papers, must be their way of imbibing the soul of their leaders each time they ate it. The numbers on it must signify their calorie content.

Hmmm, Chirco, I believe you have a point. Lets call these species, Paperophages. The paper eaters

Come to think of it, they wont be that far from the truth.

* The title is in honour of Tom Cruise who is currently in my city doing some Mission Impossible sequel. He should have just tried getting home every evening on Sheik Zayed Road.

Guess who?

2010-09-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

Don't you just hate it when someone calls you and starts playing the guess who game?

On a good day, I don't remember names. The worst is when Iam forced to put a face on a name.

Parties are a nightmare. Apart from people I know intimately, names don't register. Wife says its because I don't care. Probably. But I think the reason is more simple. Its the drinks.

Its a total cut trip when someone comes upto you, while you are among friends in the midst of a great story that involves a stripper, your best friend and a hat, and starts indulging you in a full on conversation while you are trying to figure out who this intruder is.

You know him. He looks familiar. He seems to know everything about you. He even remembers your children's names. But you on the other hand could might as well be conversing with someone after a lobotomy.

You are now frantically looking for clues. You know that there will come a time when you will have to stop referring to his wife as wifey and his kids as kids ( does he even have kids?). Normally this is the time when I will do my distract and disappear act.

This involves grabbing my phone and saying "Oh Damn!" with a look of agony on my face and then rushing away from the scene leaving everyone confused.

Then I find my wife.

Does anyone really like going for these alumni get together? Whats with people and their intense need to connect with people from the past? Do you really want to know what that snot nose kid who used to sit behind you in class 5 is doing right now?

My school life acquaintances can be divided into two. Those who I have beaten up and those who have beaten me up. I don't want to meet either for good reasons. Nothing good is going to come out of it.

My problem is that I have studied in many schools. So I guess I haven't had the chance or the time to take any roots. Moreover I haven't felt the need to make any great friends. In fact if I strain my brain, I can remember only 3 names from my school. Joe : he was a good friend of mine and he was also related to a major crush of mine, Rekha : the crush , Leena : great legs.

That's it.

Is it only me or are there more like me who has no sense of nostalgia? I mean I have had a great life so far. Nothing much to complain about. But I don't look back at my school years and sigh. Neither do I look back at any point of my life and sigh. Iam sure there are more like me. Nothing is more annoying than sitting around and reminiscing about a period of life that you no longer belong to. Do you too feel completely unattached to the person you see in the photos? Do you look at that image of yourself and see it as another? No nostalgia. Nada.

So if I cant even remember myself from those days how on earth am I expected to remember a voice from the past? That too after 31 years?

I had a call yesterday from someone who said that we were in school together and then goes : Can you guess who this is?

How on earth am I supposed to figure out who the fuck it is when the last I must have heard him speak , he definitely wouldn't have had a baritone?

Then comes those clues.

'Do you remember 'kelavan' ? ( the word is Malayalam for old man and therefore must be some one's nickname but I still have no fucking idea what he is talking about), I used to hang around with him.'

'Do you remember that I used to shove pencil up my nose and pretend to be a walrus?'

'Do you remember Gigi? I used to sit next to him in class'

WHAT THE FUCK!!!

Now, Iam a very polite guy. I don't like being rude. But there comes times in my life I feel compelled to let people know that they are beginning to seem like the ones who takes their mothers out on a leash.

Its 31 fucking years ago man. Gimme a break.

Whats stopping you from calling a person up and saying , Hey, this is Robin, I used to study with you in school. I got your number from Joseph and was wondering if we can meet up.

Was that fucking so difficult?

Or do you just happen to enjoy 20 questions every time you call someone on the phone? Do you seriously believe that the person at the other end of the line is jumping up and down with glee at the very thrill of finding out who he or she is speaking to?

Do you seriously think you are that important?

Introduce yourself. Each and every time. There might be people whose life doesn't revolve around remembering you. Have the courtesy to let people know who they are dealing with.

Its nicer.

Blow Dry

2010-09-01T02:15:00.001-07:00

When you stepped out your door , did you notice that the welcome mat needed a dusting? That the air was a little balmy and that cute neighbour had left her bedroom curtains open ?

Of course you did. You are a man.

Then why is that the wife's new haircut or her new wardrobe , just doest fall under that amazing radar which never misses anything of significance?

Its a mystery.

Whats with these girls and their haircuts and their feeling if you fail to notice it? Whats the big deal? How is that in any related to how you feel about them?

Imagine this :

Rose after letting go the frozen stiff Jack from the wreckage , watching him go down into the depths....thinking ; Bastard, he didn't say anything about my hair!

Yeah, Yeah, I know. You are doing it all for us and that it is insulting and humiliating when it is not even given a nod of acknowledgement. I actually get that.

But seriously. Next time , just jump us.

We are men. Getting our attention is the easiest thing there is. Especially for a woman. Just drop a pencil and pick it up. There , you have attention.

Being in a relationship with a woman is like a game of chance. You should never let her out of your sight.

'Cause you will never know what she will go and do, which then you will have to spot.

'Do you notice something different?'

Fuck! You let her out of your sight!

Ask any man, there are few words that when strung together , can make a man sweat.

Others are,

We need to talk

Do you think I look fat in this?

Ssssshhhiivvver!

Iam a middle child. I know what lack of attention can do. I had once, at a tender age of 10, ran away from home, leaving behind, on the writing table, a note to my mother expressing my despair of being an unloved , unwanted child. I spend the whole afternoon in the mountains around my house, heart aching with glee over the agony my mother must be going through. Towards evening, hunger drew me back to the house.

There were no worried crowds outside my house. In fact it was peacefully quite inside the house. I went in to find my mother taking a nap. I could faintly hear my brothers playing among the cashew trees in our backyard. My lunch was on the table , covered. My note still lay on the table , unread. So I did the only thing that was left for me to do. I picked up the letter, tore it up and threw it in the kitchen stove fire. Then I sat down and had lunch.

Next time ,I decided, I was going to tie up and hide my younger brother in the mountains and leave a ransom note . Then become the hero by bringing him back home after about 2 days.

Attention, I had decided, needs drama.

So if its a haircut. Go full out. Make a statement. I promise you, we will notice.

What I dont understand is this. This is for you men out there.

When was the last time you had your woman say something on the line of , 'hey, you are looking way too cool in that suit babe' or ' I love what you have done with your hair' ? When has anyone told you why she is with you or why she agreed to have your baby?

Hmmm?

Thats what I thought.

So, are you losing any sleep over it? Do you think she loves you lesser because she never says it?

Yeah, that's what I figured.

Then Why? I ask, why do you doubt our intentions, due to our inability to verbalize our feelings for you?

Don't you understand that the reason we don't notice the smaller , subtle things you do is because we are caught up in the glare of the larger you?

Gods must be crazy

2010-08-23T02:18:00.001-07:00

Its Onam.

For all the non malayalees , who in my opinion are just people on the way to becoming malayalees, let me enlighten you on the origin of this festival.

Long long time ago, Kerala was ruled by an Asura named Mahabali. This was during the times of heavy caste system among the gods. Mahabali was a good king and was so loved by his people that, the gods became jealous since the people were pretty happy with the king and didn't need much from the gods. To make matters worse the guy was an Asura, whose role untill then was to give Brahmins headache, cause trouble to the gods, once in a while meditate and get great powers from the gods, who then gets a chance to come down to earth and kill the said Asura with the same powers that was given to him.

Gods ,when they don't have people clamouring all over them with petty needs and prayers, tend to become pretty cranky and petty. Just read your books.

So one of the big honcho who goes by the name Vishnu, came down to visit the king in the form of a dwarf. Why a dwarf? Beats me. This guy seems to have a major identity crisis and keeps visiting us in various guises. Maybe he just loves the get up. Who can blame him? He spends eternity lying on a snake with his wife at his feet. Enough to drive anybody nuts. I guess this comes under the label of entertainment.

Anyhow, the dwarf reaches the king, while the king is engaged in a yagna. Yagana was what our kings used to do. It basically kept our Brahmins employed and primarily consisted of polluting the air by pouring all sorts of stuff into a fire , while making noises in a supposed language only the brahmins understood. Why? I dont know. It was supposed to appease the gods.

So as was the custom, the king offered the dwarf a wish. The dwarf asked for 3 paces of land. The king was amused but agreed. Immediately the dwarf started growing in size. Somewhat like that Mallu child actress Baby Anju.

Then:

Now:

With his first step he covered the underworld and earth. That explains this guy's flattened face:

With the next step he covered the heavens. Since everything was kind of covered, Mahabali offered his head for the god to place his last step. Hence the famous mallu come back line when asked 'where?'. Ente thalayil ( On my head) or Ninte Thalayil ( On your head) or Avante thalayil (On his head)

So before stamping him down to the underworld, the god, being very pleased with the king, probably as a PR stunt, gave Mahabali the boon of coming and visiting his kingdom once every year.

So, to add insult to injury, after stomping down a great king who was loved by his people, for being an Asura, the god ensured that he gets to see the steady decline of his country and its people for a day every year.

Talk about a crappy deal.

But it kind of makes up for this:

The second greatest thing to have come out of Kerala.

The greatest is this :

(shakeela chechi)

Note : All actress,porn stars and underworld kingpins depicted here are fictionary and any resemblence to any living or dead characters are coincidental.

See

2010-08-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

A test.

What are the first thoughts that comes into your head when you see this guy?

Would you trust him? Is he nice? Is he the kind of person you can trust when you find yourself stuck in the lift with during a power cut? Is he someone you could depend upon? Can he be cunning? intimidating?

Gullible? vulnerable?

Can you figure out a person by just seeing?

Or is this person just seeking validation? Its possible.

Or is this person putting enough thoughts in your head to get the answers he knows he is going to get? Does he appear to be the kind of person who can manipulate you?

Is he bad? Is he good?

Does he look like the kind of guy you can be friends with? Friendship is a powerful thing. It has no expectation. Only acceptence. Will he reciprocate? Will he invest?

Can you see?

Is he vain? Is he tricking you? Is he covering all the gaps? Is he influencing your answers?

The real question is :

Can you judge a person by his words and his looks?

Now see this man:

His name is Joseph Merrick.

He was and always will be a better man.

Do we really see? Can we really see?

Imagine him being stuck in the lift with you.

Would you prefer me?

More dust in your eyes.

2010-08-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

It's the time of the year for retrospection. I have decided to include some fruits into my life. So for this month I have given up Jack Daniels and has taken up Vodka with Orange Juice.

I need the vitamins.

I have had the time to sit and reflect on many things. For one thing, being Ramadan, everything closes early. Which means that I reach home very early in the evening and have absolutely nothing else to do than watch my cat watching me. Somehow this time, Iam not particularly enjoying this being alone bit. Iam also beginning to get to know me a lot better. Iam not particularly liking myself a whole lot either.

Iam absolutely indisciplined.

This is very surprising. Considering that I have spend a larger part of my life in places where I had to follow orders. I used to shine in those environments. Put me in the army and I would become Rambo but take away someone who can show me what I can do, Iam like a dog in the park.

Normally I let my wife lead me. She tells me fetch and I fetch. When shes in the car with me, I just stop thinking. She has to even tell me the routes that we have travelled a thousand times before , much to her chagrin. I guess, given a chance, I can totally surrender living to someone else. My only problem is when others tries to influence my thoughts and words. Then I become rabid.

What I found out is that, if it wasn't for the fact Iam married, I would have destroyed myself long ago. Not that Iam doing such a great job of preserving myself now but I have slowed it down a bit. Like I don't mix my pills with my drinks anymore. Its a big step. Trust me.

I seem to love instant gratification. My life has no five year plans. Hell , it doesn't even have a 1 day plan. The maximum I can see forward is to the end of the day . I need to put something I enjoy at the end of that day, so that I can motivate myself to get there. I read somewhere that there are people trying to achieve this by reading books and paying self help gurus (!). Iam , what you call, living in the moment. In a semi daze.

I also cant seem to do anything that I don't like doing. I bet its the same with everyone, but the difference is that I don't do anything I don't enjoy doing. So if Iam doing something, Iam enjoying it; or trying it out to see if Iam enjoying it. If I don't , I will not do it and if Iam forced to do it for reasons beyond my control, I let everyone know that I hate what Iam doing. Iam very honest that way. This exasperate my wife but she somehow manages to deal with it.

Iam affectionate but not very demonstrative. I am scared of intimacy. I guess I was like that before. Iam not sure now. I was always scared that I will find someone who will coax me to reveal everything about myself to her only to have her pull the plug on me one day. It has happened to me before and I don't like being vulnerable. I have a tendency to protect myself because Iam a selfish, cold hearted coward when it comes to my emotional safety. I cannot afford to go down that road again. I almost didn't make it before. Iam also aware that this can be a self fulfilling prophesy. So loving me must be very tiring.

If left to myself, Iam inaction.( Isn't that word ironic? In action should mean being in action, yet it stands for an action less state).Most of my thoughts when Iam alone is about immediate requirements. My wife is aware of this. She knows that if Iam left alone, she will almost always find me in the same spot 3 days later. She drives me to action.

I don't mind.

Shes the one who normally will point out that I need to go and interfere when some boys are being harassed by security guards in a shopping center; or adopt three kittens that were going to put to sleep or pack food to drive to the railway station to feed an old lady or take on a potential eve teaser or visit a friend in the hospital or wipe out her savings to help someone. I need to be told. Otherwise I don't act. If I do, I do it without thinking and it doesn't register. She is the Rama to my Hanuman, the Draupadi to my Bhim, the Parvati to my Shiv.

Or the kick to my lazy bum.

She seems to have the road map and Iam just in it for the ride.

...and perhaps to change the tyre once in a while.

Its good to have a role in life I guess. Not that it really matters...but it helps.

I have this disgusting habit of mirroring.Which means that I have a tendency to mirror anything that's put in front of me. If Iam reading a book, Iam that book until the next one is placed in front of me. It could be a book, a movie, a person...It last only as long as it is in front of me. It leaves no trace when its removed. Iam not influenced, just merely reflecting. So most people tend to like me because I seem their type. Iam very good in becoming what ever it is you want me to be. My younger brother, I suspect, is aware of this. I bet he finds it amusing. I think the real me is silent and likes trekking;

.. if he can get over his drinking.

One more thing, isn't it amazing that all organized religions have become what they were fighting against? I guess when one looks the beast in the eye for too long, one risks the chance of becoming it.

Ramadan Kareem.

Plugging : Swayamvar 2010

2010-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Its that time of the year, I have to earn my keep in marrying into his family.

If you are in Bangalore and likes good theater, please do go for this. I will not be there but hopefully you might get to meet my muse.

Say Hi to her for me.

So here you go . I hope you enjoy it.

If you were able to make it, could you please return and tell me all about it?

Thanks.

Dont mind me, its just heat stroke.

2010-08-04T02:13:00.000-07:00

I could never figure out these Arabs.

If I had oil and lived in a desert, I would have bought Switzerland ,named it UAE and moved my whole brood there. Perhaps send the Swiss down here to pump the oil and deposit the money into my account on a regular basis.

Will it still be called Swiss Accounts, I wonder?

Man its bloody hot here.

I got third degree burns on the bridge of my nose from putting on my sunglasses which had been left in the car. If you hang around parking lots in the afternoon, don't be alarmed to hear blood curdling screams every once in a while.

It doesn't help that Iam bald at the top of my head. Its like a landing site, trimmed all around the edges with short hair.

Somehow while watching Transporter I kind of came to the conclusion that I would like to have the hairstyle that was being sported by Jason Statham.

Now I look like a condom.

Iam one of those strange race of men who does not have any neck. My head is directly connected onto my shoulders. This means that when I wear a tie , I risk gagging myself. On windy days I also run the risk of getting chocked by my chest hair. Its not pleasant when your mouth is that close to your chest.

Thankfully Iam in shape.

Geometrically.

My chest size is equal to my waist size which is equal to my height. Iam a bloody square.

Wife has gone to India for her annual sabbatical from me.

She will be back in a month's time , all rejuvenated so that I can spend the rest of the year crushing her spirit and destroying her beliefs.

Any how, I thought why not get into a more attractive shape while shes gone. So I got my dusty cycle out from amidst the other miscellaneous, unused exercising products which serves other functions than the one they are intended for; much like the expats who work in this country; and hooked it up behind my SUV.

My plan was to go cycling every evening in the Mushriff Park, followed by a swim in the park's swimming pool and then return home to dine on a Cup A Soup and then hit the sack.

In 1 months time, when wife comes home , shes going to be greeted by a rectangle.

The problem now is the 2 bottles of Jack Daniel that graces my booze cabinet.

Being a man who has a tendency to finish what he started, my ideal is keeping me back from striving for health.

The irony! Who would have thunk that being principled might probably kill me?

What am I saying? Sticking to your principles are the best way to get yourself out of the gene pool in today's world.

Oh well, I guess if I drink lots fast enough, I probably will be able to get into my fitness regime in the next 4 days. That's if my liver doesn't decide to do the Madeleine.

But man, its hot here.

Heat sucks.

How much do you think Switzerland cost?

I could never understand why people who live in hot places are dark. Black absorbs heat doesn't it? Why does god always get the basics wrong? First he goes and puts boobs on women...

I feel the whites should move to all the hot areas in the planet. Their skin will reflect off the heat. Iam sure nature intended all dark skinned people to live in colder places. We are biologically more suited for it since we will naturally absorb heat.

So what do you say? Wanna swap countries?

Snake in the Monkey's shadow.

2010-06-29T02:07:00.000-07:00

There are things in the spoken words that I find irritating. Especially when its being used with reverence as some sort of answer to all problems.

Tolerance.

Be tolerant of another's belief, they say. Live in tolerance of others.

Iam tolerant of my cat. I come to nearly killing it when I find it has used my cupboard as a nesting, thereby turning all my black clothes into tweeds. Iam merely tolerating it until it completes another 7 years and die of old age. If it uses its 9 lives, Iam fucked.

To me tolerating means living with it despite not liking it (Dang, that sounds like most marriages). This is somehow supposed to be the way to be. What the fuck!

My theory is don't be tolerant. Don't tolerate me. Know that neither you are me nor me you . If you don't understand me or what I stand for, that's fine. Its natural. Don't let anyone make you feel bad about it. I don't understand you either. Iam fine with it. How about being nice to each other? How about ACCEPTING instead of EXPECTING?

Better, nah?

Compromise.

Whew, this one is really tough. I have seen this being thrown around all the time.

I cant stand my husbands side of the family. I think my mother in law is actually Indira Gandhi in disguise!

Compromise, dear.

Drunken husbands, cheating wives,conniving relatives...

Compromise dear, for the sake of the children.

Loss of individuality, depressions, feeling mired in?

Compromise , for the sake of stability.

Compromise.

You know the problem with a compromise? The problem still remains, only you have now from the role of a perceived victim became a martyr. Soon, you will need acknowledgement of your sacrifice. When that's not forthcoming ( why should it? since the problem is yours to begin with and the solution you have found is a burial of self), resentment will set in.

I have a problem with compromise.

I never compromise.

If it appears like I did, then I probably did it because the problem was bigger than me and I chose the chicken way out. I compromised because I had no other choice. I don't like it but I did it nevertheless. I don't expect a standing ovation for it.

Ideally, I think, there should never be a compromise in a relationship. Of course there will be. Its a relationship, nobody said it was easy. If you compromised for a relationship, then I will have to assume you did it because that relationship is important to you. But if that compromise is eating into you, building up as resentment, then you haven't compromised , you have buried. A compromise aims to beget a reasonably amicable solution for both parties. If its only amicable to one but not to the other, then its not a compromise, its a surrender of self for the sake of a respite.

In human relationships "compromise" is frequently said to be an agreement that no party is happy with, this is because the parties involved often feel that they either gave away too much or that they received too little[1].

Please , for heavens sake, don't compromise if something is important to you. Just acknowledge its importance in your life . That should be enough. There is more than enough guilt in the world as it is with out further additions.

You probably don't agree. That's okay. We will work out a compromise and be tolerant of each others opinion.

See what I mean? Ridiculous isn't it?

Anyhow.

Today I killed my facebook page.

Its actually pretty simple. They have a link ( google : Deleting Facebook account), where you log in your details and you are officially deactivated and after 14 days it no longer exist. Only hitch is that during this period, you are not permitted to go to your account. If you do, it gets activated again. Its a little like mercy killing. You are given a chance to chicken out.

I have never understood the reasoning behind letting the world know blow by blow account of your life. Then there are people you have avoided all your life wanting to become your friend. Yesterday I realized that I have more friends now than ever before and the worst part is that I don't even know most of them.

Theres a saying that an enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine. Here the case is any friend of my friend is a friend of mine.

How on earth is that supposed to work?

I really never did like Cobra ( I swear that's what he called himself. My college was a bloody zoo) . He could be St.Peter right now but as I recall him , he has made a girl stand underneath a rain water drain pipe in white salwar in the name of ragging. I refuse to forgive him. I know what he was when he had a chance to be different. He represents to me the staid, safe, docile society around me which turns into murdering, raping, mindless mob given half a chance.

He is not my friend but according to Facebook he is.

Hell, I cant even tolerate him.

Shot Nerves

2010-06-21T00:35:00.000-07:00

The last week has been painful.

I had very kindly been the receptacle for an ear infection, donated to me by my son, which not satisfied by the damage it was doing there, decided to shift its focus to my middle ear and then take permanent abode in my facial nerves which resulted in a kind of pain , which can, I think, be described as having hot lead injected into my face; (not that I have had that done to me at any point of my life).

I can actually draw the position of all my nerves on the left side of my face. It ends underneath my second last molar on my left side which feels like a perpetual tooth ache.

Burning face with a tooth ache.

Its called Trigeminal neuralgia.

I have been showing off ever since. I have never had a disease with that many letters.

I don't think I have ever had this much attention since I broke my right fibula and tibia long time ago.

Theres nothing like good old pain to make you realize the futility of all preparation. Pain consumes you. Here are some of my findings found in the midst of pain.

- Pain lessens when one is held by someone you love.
- Pain experienced alone is frustrating and never ending.
- Here's the most pathetic truth : Another's validation or acknowledgement of your pain brings you some relief.
- Alcohol is a great pain reliever. Especially when administered orally.
- Pain brings out your innate emotion. Mine seems to be anger and sometimes laughter.
- Pain makes you realize how alone you really are.
- Pain makes you very appreciative.

All of the above are only reflections after the pain has receded. In its embrace, it consumes you. It brings you into a total focus of that pain. It is unrelenting. It makes you dance to its tune. It makes you smash the wall, it makes you want to curl up and cry.

Iam now on some very strong painkillers. Their effects last for a certain period of time. I almost feel like the incredible hulk. I know when the effects are wearing away and the next episode is going to start. I sometimes wait for it. Sometimes I let it come on thinking that I will able to take control of this one. I fall back on the pills all the time.

This got me thinking. Pain is a great deterrent. Iam sure we can find some practical application for it.

How about injecting a similar virus into the facial nerve of a person who wants to give up smoking or drinking or any such thing, which then will get triggered when one indulges in any of this. We will have to train the virus though. I wonder if we can genetically modify virus to do that. Iam sure we can. We do have evidence in the form of George Bush.

We can do similar thing to convicted rapist and paedophiles. Where they are in excruciating pain even if they look or think of a potential victim. Nah, on second thoughts, we should let the victims decide their fates. Pain is too soft for these guys. Bastards may probably like it.

Anyhow.

The damn thing is going to be there for a long time. So I plan to get acquainted with it. Its easy to sit here and be very cheerful about it after being doped up with pain killers. Lets see how I feel in about 1 hours time when it starts to wear off.

That's another thing about pain;

It looses its edge in its remembrance.

Ask any mother.

Buy your own pack.

2010-06-09T04:45:00.000-07:00

There are sheer moments of pure genius in religions that never stops to amaze me.

Today being one of those days when I have a little time in my hand , a smirk on my face and sheer evil intentions in my mind, let me burden you, my dear readers , with some of those characters who have changed the world and beyond with the most absurd of statements and had a whole bunch of idiots living and dying for it .

The 1st prize should definitely go to the chap who invented the caste system. Imagine the persuasive oral skill of the man to actually convince you to dig shit and then to make you believe that this is your god given duty to do so and finally to make sure that all your future generation does the same!

Give the man a standing ovation.

Then there is the bunch who is convinced that there are 40 virgins waiting for them in heaven if they strap a bomb and blow themselves along with some bystanders , if they call their insane activity Jihad.

Come on, this deserves the wave. All together now.

It never fails to amaze me how stupid we really are. When I need some cheering up,I just open the first available holy book . For 100 great stuff it says, there will be 50 of the most stupidest statements ever in it.

Deuteronomy 20:10-17 "When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. . . . This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you."

To think, we are supposed to worship this guy. Hell, Iam better than him. What the fuck, my English Teacher in school, Mr.Beal , is better than him.

Ephesians 5:22-24 "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything."

Now, we are talking.

Manu 111.14 " A Brahmin male by virtue of his birth becomes the first husband of all women in the universe"

Fuck me blue! Blanket agreement! No wonder these guys loved to be Hindus.

Manu IV.206 ' Sacrifices performed by women are inauspicious and not acceptable to god. They should therefore be avoided '

I knew it. God is a MCP. Welcome to the fold, buddy.

( more here : http://www.bhagwanvalmiki.com/manu-smriti.htm )

Personally I think this post should no longer be valid in today's world. Today we all know that religion is a man made culture aimed to suit ourselves at that specific time. It gets scary only when it is prevented from evolving with the population practicing it. Today the above seems amusing and unbelievable, yet these were the codes upon which generations lived and died.

I think religion should always be about people. Not of an unknowable god. We have used that excuse too many times to justify all the crap we have done in the past. God didn't will jack shit. We did.

So today I propose to you a new religion.

I call it Tysism.

Its mine.

You go and find your own.

Heart Locker

2010-05-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

Ever said the wrong things at the wrong time in the wrong possible way to your wife?

You have haven't you?

Apart from the house becoming as cold as the Arctic, theres also the silence that is so thick, that you walk around the house as if its filled with treacle. Whoever thought out that phrase: 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned', must have been one screwed mother fucker.

This post is your guide. Its your Hurt locker.

This is all about how to diffuse your pissed off wife.

Right in the beginning gauge your situation.

In order to diffuse anything, you need to completely understand the situation you are in.

You probably are now sleeping on the couch, so you have all the space you need to think and visualize your situation completely. Observe it as an outsider would. See your pathetic state devoid of feeling. Understand and accepts the facts. This will aid you later.

Fact 1 : You are screwed. This situation can go on indefinitely unless divinity interferes by making your infant fall down the steps and cutting her lips. The resultant emergency parental mode will provide you the opportunity to do the great heroic father act and pronto!, the episode is pushed into the background.

Diffuse idea no.1 : Push your child down the stairs.
Do this only if the child has not yet started speaking. The wrath of a mother is something you wouldn't want to find out first hand. It makes the fury thing seem like a round in the ring with Woody Allen.

Fact 2 : Everything you say is going to be used against you. This means that even if there was some amount of reasoning behind some of the things you had said in your argument , it is of no value right now. Try and recall the exact words that turned an amicable conversation into World War 3. Remembering that and avoiding that subject in all future conversation would mean the continuity of your nuts in its respected place .

Diffuse idea no 2 : Throw yourself down the stairs.
Hurt yourself. Totalling your car in the bargain is not a great idea.Avoid excuses like a bad head ache and any pain related to your stomach. Both are patented pains of a woman and theres no way yours are going to exact any sympathy. You need to go for something a tad bit serious. This will make the wife go on her mother/caring mode. You need to accept the caring gracefully, preferably with a bit of teary eyed appreciation ( pocking your own eyes when not being observed is a simple but effective way to get teary eyed fast). Don't overdo the teary eye bit, its really nauseating.

Fact 3 : If you are still reading this then you are aware of the silent treatment. You cannot break the women's code of silence. They decide when it should be called off. So your offhand make peace comment about the wonderful smell from the kitchen will only increase the duration of the silence. Do not , under any circumstance, feed the silence. When given the silent treatment, accept it. If you are not a believer in god, now is a good time to start. Prayers can give a man hope.Thing about silence is that it make a man feel guilty. With no apparent reason.

Diffuse idea no.3 : Throw her down the stairs.
Try not to make this serious. Cutting the break line is a bad idea, so is puncturing the gas line. It will be better to get her sick. Basically get her in a position for you to take care of her. Then go full out as if shes got only a week to live. Over do this. You will be forgiven.

Fact 4 : Truth is today's marriages are claustrophobic. In the olden days, a woman's energy could have been dissipated in varied other persons like the mother in law, sister in law, brother in law, nieces, nephews etc. The nuclear family has ensured that the husband and wife now has to get along with each other 365 days without a break. This is enough to make anyone go a little mad. So take consolation in the fact that even though it may appear that you are the cause of the problem,you are only a small part of a large problem. That makes you feel better, doesn't it? The world screws her over and you get the treatment.

Diffuse idea no.4 : Pretend partial amnesia.
Proceed with your life as if that particular incident did not happen. Go on as if you have no idea why she is changing the weather in the house. Whistle when you shave. Tell her she looks beautiful. Come back from work and tell her all about your lousy day.This will drive her nuts. Wives hate when the message they send out is not getting adequate responses. In this case proper grovelling and behaving like the dog that has bitten its master.She will be forced to bring it up with you and this is where you go :

eh? When was this? I have no memory of this? Are you sure you didn't dream this?

That is sure to confuse her. In about a years time, she will just think that shes crazy.

Fact 5 :Women are just guilt in skin. They are reared from childhood to be that way. We need to thank society , her parents , her relatives and men like us for bringing them up believing that the fault must lie with them. Bravo. Its easy to make them feel guilty.

Diffuse idea no. 5 :Kill off an imaginary friend.
With the amount of plane crashes and disasters around, theres a likely hood you may not have to make this up but if you are the sort of man like me, then the odds of the few you have dying by anything other than old age or liver related diseases are stacked very high against you. So kill off someone whose name sounds like someone you might know.Base your lie on some amount of truth. Study the dead friend in the face book. Be grief stricken . Start sobbing on the breakfast table. Don't reveal everything right away. Let it be wringed out of you. Remember the fact 5. She is going to feel dreadful placing her feelings above yours.

Fact no. 6 : All relationships are based on needs. Every single relationship is based on some sort of need or needs. There are no other kind of relationships. If you are in a relationship, theres a need thats being fulfilled. Even a seemingly unhealthy relationship is still maintained by needs. Nowadays we got fancy terms for it, like love, desire, passion, wants, security etc. These are all the same needs masquerading in different gears.

Diffuse idea no. 6 : Just say sorry and mean it.
Tell her why you said what you said.Talk to her. If she still chooses to continue the same way, accept the fact that for some it takes a little longer to regain themselves from hurt.

Be kind.

The Great Indian Circus

2010-05-06T23:22:00.001-07:00

I have been silent last week.

No. Really.

I took on this advanced course in art of living which involved maintaining silence for 4 days.

Is it just me or is there more out there who thinks that theres something weird about doing a 'course' in the art of living. Hell, if you breathe,you are alive, stupid.

Anyways. It was nice.

Saw a lot of butt cracks.

There should be a law against people doing yoga wearing low waist track pants and short t shirts. Silence doesn't help either.

Thing about art of living and Sri squared Ravi Shankar is that you get what you paid for. Its absolute value for money.They have an agenda and they need money for it and they are selling you the ticket to enlightenment. I like it. Its in some ways very honest.

The rich shall gain heavens and the meek will be the only ones remaining to inherit the earth. How poetic.

If you are an obnoxious ,anti religious, anti cult, anti social being like me, then all you need to do is skim away the guruji nonsense,learn the skills , thank the dude and move on.

I have nothing against people who walks around with a look like they are having their nether region tickled .

Truly I have nothing against this.

Each one to themselves.

But I understand this obsession with God men.

They seem to be the only ones who seems to be getting any action.

Thing is I have no idea why people are so bothered by this.

I have seen no job description of a Hindu god man that says that he cannot have sex. There is no commandments that states that the day one joins the saffron brigade, one has to curl up his ding dong and put up a Not In Operation sign on it. I dont understand the fuss. The clans in the Mahabharata started with the progenies of a Vyasa Munni.

I do know what the real problem here is.

You fuckers are jealous, aren't you?

You just cant stand the fact that there could be guileless , vulnerable women out there who will do it to you and still worship you, if only you were a god man. You are green with jealousy. You are incredible hulk green. You just cant stand it. No wonder you are ready to rip apart a man and a woman having consensual sex and the only problem you can find is that he is a god man. If you are going to use the argument that these guys are exploiting the vulnerability of these women, then I will kick you in your groin.

Which one of you fucks has not used the vulnerability of a woman?

We are constantly exploiting vulnerability. Each time you on the TV your vulnerability is being exploited. The marriage that you hold so dear is vulnerability being exploited.Your religion, your politics, your relationships, your roles as parents, your status as a child are all thriving on exploitation of the said vulnerability. So boo hoo to your crocodile tears for the vulnerable woman in the man's bed.

So admit it. Go on. You are so fucking jealous.

But if your are into orgy, then you need to become a politician.

Ask Tiwari

Personally I think we should give this guy a standing ovation.

The great escape

2010-04-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

Nothing is more irritating than a middle aged friend of yours who has turned a new leaf.

Whats with these morons who has a minor heart problem and the next thing you know, the guy is eating like a cow instead of eating a cow and has given up the finer things in life like a good glass of scotch and smokes. Why would anyone want to live a life like that?

Die , you bastard , die.

Worse than that guy is the romantic husband .

These fakers should be lined up against the wall and shot.

No man who is happily married is romantic to his wife. Show me a guy, who writes notes to his wife , gives her flowers every morning ,whisper mushy nonsense in her ears and holds her hand in public; and I will show you a man who is creating a smoke screen to cover a guilt.

Men who are content in their status as husbands are not romantic. Romance is a mean to attain the woman. Once the woman is attained we go about providing and protecting. We see no need to waste time on repeatedly pretending to attain something that is already attained. Any married man who is romantic is an insult to his wife. It means either he is still wooing you ( which means he is not secure in your love for him) or hes cheating on you .

Allow me to elaborate.

Men don't talk to other men about their wives when they meet up. We don't sit and chat about how great our married lives are or what a great lay our wives are or what great cooks they are.

We don't.

We don't talk about you. We don't talk about the state of our marriage amongst ourselves ( we save that for another man's wife). Contrary to popular myth, men don't discuss sex when they get together.

Watch out for that guy who waxes eloquence about his married life. That man is not happy in his marriage. He is just trying to convince himself that he is. Men hate men like that.We pity them. We wish he would shut up so that we can carry on our conversation about our cars.

We love our cars. We treat our cars better than we treat ourselves. We service our cars at regular intervals, wash it regularly, spend pots of money on it but we probably will never give that kind of attention to ourselves. Why? This is how men love their possession.

Marriage means to belong. It means to possess. It means you will always come before us. So the day you start cribbing about love being about freedom and craves for the ridiculous non possessive love (wtf?) , we start paying more attention to our cars.

A loving man owns his wife. That's how he relates to his wife. That's what makes him your husband. Marriage is ownership. Each owns the other. The difference is in the ways we treat things we own.

Women somehow never seem to be happy with one pair of shoes do they?

So there you have it.

How to know if your husband loves you?

He will not talk about you. He will not waste money on buying you flowers and guilt gifts.He will take you for granted.He will treat you like his car.

So if your hubby is the sort who makes other men gag , then I suggest , its time you start checking his collars and ramaging through his pant pockets.

Maybe I dont have to line up and shoot 'em after all.

Lost & Found

2010-04-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

One of my blogger friends called today to tell me that her ex has lost his mother.

I curbed my first instinct to ask her, 'where?'.

Years of married life has taught me to be polite and the art of pretending to care.

After going on for sometime about the suffering of the poor woman, she consoled herself by telling me that she must be in a better place ( Not my blogger friend,who is still alive, so she must have been referring to the 'lost' woman).

I have a problem when people tell me things with certainty about things they possibly can have no clue about.

Better place?

Let us go with the popular assumption that we are all some sort of energy expressing our self. In which case the body is the vessel through which we choose to do this expression.

With me so far?

Since the body to a large part is a sensory device, this world we see around us then must be perceived through the functions of our senses. More or less. So it stands to reason that when we die; if this energy actually exists and this energy is what you and I really are; then devoid of the body everything around us will cease to exist because we cannot perceive it anymore. Its not that it does not exist but it just cannot be perceived anymore. This should be death. Right?

Actually it cant be that simple. But it sounds nice because it ties everything up very nicely. Problem is , will we be able to perceive us as our self? Possibly not. Without a reference point, which the duality of body and soul concept conveniently provides, I cannot point to one and say this one is me. Therein , my friends lies the paradox of death. For all practical purpose, it seems that with death, you and I cease to exist.

Better place? I have no idea. I cant even my bend my mind around the concept of a world without perception. You try it.

My friend thinks Iam cold. Iam not.

She thinks Iam morbid. Iam not.

She feels the dead should be respected because life is sacred and a person's death leaves a void. That effect of a person's life on another should be respected.

You think? I have no idea.

I dont know this person. Neither does my friend.Atleast not intimately. Any void she must feel is probably self induced. In this virtual voyeuristic world, where one can be kind to a nation by swiping a card, its probably self satisfying to assume that we care because we can shed tears in front of the TV screen.

We care.

Iam not belittling anything. Emotions are emotions. But lets be realistic. I certainly didn't lose my sleep when a plane went down and 96 people died.Some one's parent, husband, wife, brother, son, daughter..what have you. The only void they must have left is in the thoughts and life of those whose life was intertwined with theirs intensely. That void too will fill up.Eventually. The dead are carried only by the living. Like Siva carrying the body of Uma until the rotten carcass fell piece by piece on earth. Dead do not leave any void. The void is in the living.

As for respect. The dead don't seem to care too much for it.

So my question, my friend, still remains :

Where did your ex lose his mother?

i cad

2010-04-04T03:29:00.000-07:00

I bought my laptop in 2006. My mobile phone is around 4 years old too. I think the tech savvy part of my personality died around the same time.

I think I just gave up trying to keep up.

My current plan is to wait it out and see all the new fads come and go until we develop a technology that will make us Omnipotent, where we become part of the cosmos and each part of us is aware of the action and thought of another.

Who needs Apple ipad after that?

The only competition will be from heaven.

How cool is that? I can just picture the advertisements. On second thoughts, it wont be necessary since I would have already known it by the time they had conceived it.

Iam a potato and gravy kind of a guy. I have never been that into gadgets.It could also be due to my low IQ which cannot process the instruction manual that comes along with those gizmos. My first mobile could be used as a dumbbell but its functions were simple; you press the required numbers, talk on it and then press another button to disconnect. I still don't know most of the functions of the one I own now. Its 4 years old but I heard it can replace my wife if I had bothered to read the manual properly.

I like gadgets. I like that it exists. I may not like to own it. Since owning it will mean having to learn to operate it. My learning curve went south when I was around 10 and its showing no signs of returning anytime now. But I like that there are things out there which can take a Britney up skirt picture, help Paris improve her nocturnal moves, record ex presidents make racial slurs, calculate the exact date when the banks will put us on the streets, listen to the latest about Fergis' lovely humps, watch the latest beheading from the Islamic independent movie makers , google 'nude muscled chicks' and call the supermarket to send home 5 sodas and a packet of Marlboro lights for the evening session with JD.

Life!

I like progress. I have no idea where we are headed but its great to know we are moving. Its a heady feeling. This thing called movement. I like to think that progress means theres some sort of movement involved. That we are all going towards something. Heading towards the end of the rainbow or something. Iam pretty optimistic about things. Even though Iam in the cheering squad for the 2012 deluge, I still feel theres something beautiful being concerned about something so simple as wanting to google 'naked muscled chicks' on a gadget that floats to the ground should you happen to drop it.

My workmates have been trying to convince me to buy a blackberry.I don't even want to know what that one does. If it makes jam, Iam willing to give it a try. I wanted to go in for a Wii Fit. I thought that if I can lose a couple of pounds playing video games then I should give it a shot. But technology had brought sports indoors. If I wanted to sweat I would have had sex you fuck face.

I have to go now. Its a long drive back home and I think I will listen to the radio like I always do. Theres an element of surprise in a radio. You never know whats going to come next. I like radio.I like drives.I like long winding roads leading home.

Happy Easter.

More on knots..

2010-03-25T00:10:00.001-07:00

People have often wondered why I incessantly talk about marriage.

Actually they don't ,but I would like to believe what I write here is read by millions ,sparking global debates and that there are millions waiting with bated breath about my wise opinions on current matters.

Truth could be less flattering, Iam sure. For all I know, Iam probably as insignificant as the blond pubic hair on the nonexistent panties of Paris Hilton.

Thing is, I have always felt that marriage is one relationship that needs tending. Every other relationship ,you are more or less stuck with irrespective of your thoughts or opinions on it.Friendship not included but see what can happen to that when you put conditions on it that needs your signatures. Marriage is a different matter all together. It requires constant shifting, nudging, positioning, pushing, pulling etc to finally find a comfortable coexistence.Commitment to a relationship does not need a law, it only requires a want. Marriage is , to me at least, a companionship made legal.

Theres something wrong with that.

The moment something like this is made legal or made to fit in with some rules and regulation, the whole thing ends up becoming a game.

A game you either win or lose.

I think this is why all most all marriages don't survive and the ones that does are the ones where one of the partner is beaten down to level of nonresistance or absolute indifference.Then there are the ones who has fought themselves to a stalemate, where theres a functional coexistence without feeling. The few that does blossom into beautiful relationships are the ones who don't care if they were married or not. The marriage is not their focus. The relationship is. Marriage is man made. Relationships are choices.

Marriage , like any law made by man has average people behind it. The reasoning behind any law is always fear. Let me explain how it all began.

In the beginning was our Neanderthal ancestor ,Err.

A handsome hunk of a specimen, who also towered 2 feet above his average male peers. He was the terror among the saber tooths to whom he became akin to a bogeyman when putting their long fanged cubs to sleep. It came as no surprise that he had the females of the herd (his own kind not the sabertooths', but it would not surprise me if proven otherwise) bending over backwards at the sight of him.Such was his stature among his herd that he, very obviously ,evoked intense jealousy and suspicion from his average brethren.

Since average is always the majority, one of the most average among the lot, who was known as Forr, who had the hots for a neanderthal lass called Eve, decided to call in the council of averages to protect themselves against the valour and might of Err and others like him. He had also noticed that its just a matter of time before Err notices Eve and then all will be lost for Forr who will then have to be satisfied with the pleasures that his opposable thumb can provide.

The council put their simian heads together and came up with the idea of marriage. This way their rights over their women was guaranteed .The majority can ensure that the rules of engagements are carried out by threats of punishments, outcasting etc. The average man does not have to compete with the alpha male nor the average female compete with super Eves. So who cares about the evolution and that the future generations will be spawns of averages. All Forr cared was for Eve.

Thus marriage was born.

Like the saying goes,

To Err is human but to Forr Eve is divine.

I want to believe

2010-02-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

I have been awarded.

By Hip Grandma none the less!

For a guy who has spend most of his educational years, ( I use that term very loosely) standing on the bench or outside the classroom, this is a great deal for me. This means at the age of 40, teachers are finally beginning to like me.

My mother will be so proud of me.

Anyhow.

Here are the required 7 little known things about me. (Does this mean I should write 7 little known, things about me or 7 little , known things about me? Thing is tags like this makes me realize how little there is to me. I would like to believe that my life has been an open book. There are not many skeletons in my closets that can come back to haunt me. Here's the trick to discourage potential blackmailers, don't do anything that you have to hide from yourself and if you did, then don't care if anyone finds out. Theres more to life than being held accountable by others for the mistakes you make in your own life. Come to think of it, it seems like a mistake only when you consider an other. Without another, there are never any mistakes, only events.

- Iam quite. Really. In the intervals between my ranting theres nothing really happening in my head. Even when I speak its almost spontaneous.So being afflicted with foot in the mouth syndrome is to a large extent a malady. This is not some thoughtless stage. You are the some total of your thoughts.Not meant in a philosophical sense but when you think about it, you are. You are a bundle of memories of events and actions. I bet you cant feel for that child when you look at your baby snaps. You remember him but you are not him anymore.I don't connect with my past. It always seemed as if it happened to someone else. I recall it , remember it but there are no great emotions attached to it. It seems to be just was.

- Rejecting things and ideas comes naturally to me. It also helps being undisciplined. Iam not blessed with the faculty of learning from an other. It seems to also help that I dont blame or is grateful to something other than myself. I have made many choices that might seem like mistakes to others but I feel that it was somehow required to make me what Iam today... a completely stupid man.

- Iam not ambitious. I have no competitiveness in me. You want to win, go ahead. I have never tried to be better than anyone. But I do enjoy doing the best I can but most of the time I don't. I probably use about 20% of what Iam capable of but I don't care. There seems to be no point in using the remaining 80% apart from proving it exist. Its also wonderful that it only requires minimal effort to survive this life.

- Iam persistent. Iam like that Hockey masked guy from Halloween. I keep coming back. I can keep getting up no matter how much Iam beaten down. There must be a real masochistic streak in me. I normally see things through.Iam very stubborn.I do things my way. I cannot take orders. I just don't. If I ever do, it will be with real resentment and it will come through one day.

- I have spend a day in jail during my college days. I got beaten up the whole night by 2 cops who wanted me to sign an FIR they had written of things I have never done. I never did sign it. Refer previous point.

- Iam not an easy person to be with on a continuous basis. Ask my wife. Iam OK in small doses. Kinda like tequila shots.

- Iam not here.I think I died in 1996.

Iam not tagging anyone in particular but I would advice anyone reading this to take it on. It kind of gives you an opportunity to indulge in yourself. The best part will be trying to believe it yourself.

Check out any time you like but...

2010-02-22T04:26:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who is recently divorced.

I like the guy but if he doesn't stop flaunting his suddenly acquired bachelor status, I will probably have to accidentally drop the bowling ball on his tender regions the next time we go blowing.

Please don't attribute my seemingly violent reaction to a case of jealousy. Theres hardly anything worth being jealous about a guy who no longer has someone to tell him when to stop his sojourn with the bottle and eat his food.Without a woman by his side, a man is like a loose cannon; aimless, reckless and carefree. How can any normal married man be jealous of something like that?

Give me marriage any day.

Being committed is what marriage is about. Iam aware that being committed is something one normally associate with suicide and institutions the like of one flew over the cuckoos nest. But Iam not afraid. I like being married.

Whats with a recently demarried person that makes him such an in your face dating machine. Aren't these guys required to at least have a decent period of mourning accompanied with lying in the gutter drunk,with at least an acceptable level of suicidal tendencies? I feel its vulgar to be so damn happy about cutting ties with a burden that you have promised to love for life so help me god.

One day he landed up at my place to borrow my knapsack because he wanted to go on a backpack trip to Dharmashala. I like my knapsack. I have full intention to use it one day. I like surrounding myself with things that represent a healthy lifestyle. Its all about visualization. You will know if you have ever bothered to read the book 'The Secret'. My wife says that Iam out of shape. I don't think so. Iam very much in shape. It may not be her conventional idea of a shape but its a shape nevertheless.

Anyhow.

So this guy takes my knapsack and goes. Later on I find out through the desperate housewives gossip vine of my friends that he has taken off with a girl. I don't understand. When you decide to annul your divine contract, I thought the last thing you would want is a female company. What is it about a human that makes him repeat the same mistakes again and again? Or is female company more pleasurable when there are no contractual agreements attached to it? I don't know. I love being married.

I have always thought that man invented marriage for free sex,housekeeping and food. If he thought he had it made, Iam afraid he was way off his intended goal. Sex is the first to be sacrificed in the altar of marriage. As for food, unless you happen to be Tiger Wood, your survival is a necessity for your wife. Theres a probable chance that somewhere along the way your diet is going make you wonder if you should get up in the morning and moo. But ask any married man and he will tell you that he wouldn't have it any other way. No. We are not scared. We are just deliriously happy.

Ever noticed how contagious marriage is? I remember when I was just out of college and working, one of our classmate got hitched. Within a week, another 2 got married. By the end of the month the number had increased to 20. It was like being in the midst of the 13th century black plague. By the end of 2 years only about 3 remained. They had some sort of immunity. Since misery loves company, we , the espoused, would spend hours at parties extolling the wonderful institution of marriage to these 3 pagans untill it dawned to us that we were casting pearls before swines. They were gay.

Now that gay marriages are permitted, I don't think they will survive the infection long. Eventually we all seek to anchor ourselves.

Then there are these anomalies. The ones that has broken away from the society established method of documented love. We see them at our parties. We notice their high pitched laugh. We condemn the fact that they are the last to leave a party and when they do they have a member of the opposite sex driving them home. We notice that there are no bags under their eyes ; they sleep through the weekends.

We notice. Inwardly we feel immense pity for these lost sheep. We invite them home for them to get an inside view of a joyous union. We encourage them to play with our children. We hope that somewhere , when junior pukes over their polo t-shirt, a paternal/maternal spark will be ignited. We let them bathe in the glorious light of our divine communion. We hope that we will be able to save their souls and lead them back to the light.

We like being married.

In the meantime, I want my fucking knapsack back.

Love the one you with.

2010-02-09T18:41:00.000-08:00

I really love it when science catches up with what I always knew.

Despite being a modest sort of fellow, I would like draw your errant attention to a study that has been done in some country where people can afford to spend money and time on such important things other than on mundane stuff like hunger and poverty.

The case in point is about parenting.

Considering that we have been at it now for close to a couple of 10,000 years, we would think that we would have got the hang of it by now.

Apparently not.

The new study shows that loving your spouse and paying attention to your marriage is more conducive to having your children grow up to be balanced, happy individuals. In short, if you love your children, fix your husband a drink. Preferably wearing spandex.

I always knew this. Its like other things I know. Like that god died in 1546, in a landslide off the coast of Hawaii when he was on vacation with Venus, and his body was never found. One day they are going to dig deep enough and find that body and the world is going to go: Ah, Tys told us so!

But in regards to parenting, I believe that Iam an expert. It comes from being in a position to observe. My wife does the running around,slapping her head in frustration bit etc while I watch and learn. As you are aware , in order for true wisdom, you need to distance yourself from the activities. The distance gives you a 360 degree perception. Laziness also helps.

I have noticed that today's parenting is mostly what has been aptly termed ; by the same people who gave us 'window of opportunity', 'weapons of mass destruction' and 'misunderestimate'; as helicopter parenting.

This is where the said parent hovers around their child/ren, ensuring that they are safe, protected, loved, isolated, bubble wrapped and made ready to face the world.

According to the study this raises a generation of adults who are neurotic, selfish, anxious and depressed. I know it sounds like the general description of a normal human being but this can be changed.

How you ask?

By loving your spouse. This creates an environment of a stable loving relationship that provides a nurturing ground for children who watches and learns the values and ideals of human interaction and relationships, which is what living in a society really requires.

This is why people in Bombay are loving people. ( Note that I didn't say Mumbai, and I wont be out there trying to kill you if you prefer calling Thiruananthapuram, Trivandrum.)

In the majority of Indian homes , which consists of a single room, parental loving is a disturbing reality for its children. So we grow up ,wanting to barf at the mention of sex due to the memory of our loving parents, but nevertheless, balanced and a shining role model of an ideal human being. This is also why we boast of the largest number of people who prefer to become celibates and god man. Nothing kills good old sex than your parents and god.

So, to all the parents out there, next time the ankle biter fails in his 1st grade exams, or falls and grazes his/her knees in the play ground; drop everything , grab your spouse and kiss like theres no tomorrow.

This is what the world needs now. If not for anything, lets do it for our children.

A Loo Chat

2010-01-13T05:59:00.000-08:00

There are only 2 types of people in the world.

Those who read in the loo and those who don't.

Iam of the former and it gladdens my weary heart when I go to a house and finds that the occupants have some well thumbed books in their loo. Theres comfort in books when you are doing your business. Knowledge through one end and disposal through the other. Theres some kind of poetic beauty in the whole thing.

Of course there are those who disagree. They find it disgusting.

Disgusting!? You are okay with taking a bath in the same place, your tooth brush is also exposed to your poo fumes if that's what you are worried about. Pray tell me, how ,in all that's holy, is reading a book in the loo disgusting?

Has anyone ever wondered where all that currency you hold in your hand has been? Trust me , you will be doing a Lady Macbeth if you knew.

Being an Indian, I have heard the weirdest reasons not to read in the loo.

Books are supposedly Saraswati.

The Goddess of Knowledge.

You generally don't take a lady to the loo with you. Going with the kind of stuff I have seen on the Internet, I guess this cannot be termed as a rule but taking Saraswati to the loo is bad news. You will probably be reborn in your next life as a lice on Yul Burner's head.

But come on; how long can someone stare at the tiles? What do people who don't read in the loo do? Apart from doing do do? Ever wondered about the origin of bathroom graffiti? Give a man a pen, a loo and 15 minutes and he either becomes a poet , artist or Larry Flynt. Give him a book.

I come from a glorious line of bathroom readers.If it wasn't for our bowel movements, we would have had the IQ of Paris Hilton.

A special thanks should also go to John Harrington, who invented the western style toilet. There was something very ungraceful about the times prior to that when combined with a book. I shudder to think back at those days.

The reason why I honour this practice today is due to a visit we had from some friends of ours some time back . One day after they had settled in and over a glass of Chablis, they revealed to us that they felt right at home when they noticed the books in the loo.

I had never realized. I wanted to throw my arms around them and cry with joy.

Soul mates.

What I love about reading in the toilet is that you read in small doses. Its a lot like the Atkins Diet. You think you can eat all the meat you want but you really cant eat too much meat in one sitting. Iam reading 'Lets Kill Gandhi' which is a monster of a book .A book like that in normal situation would intimidate me but in the loo it becomes something like a husband who is gradually disposed off by the arsenic wielding wife.

Now here's the question of the week.

Which is the best book to be read in the loo?

(Life and other such nonsense is not yet out so it doesn't count)

Late Bloomers

2009-12-25T23:34:00.000-08:00

I like choices.

I bet we all do. But somehow we seem to take pride in our ability to deny ourselves things.

Iam not getting into the monogamous institute of marriage ( it need not be, depending on where or into what you are born or even what you choose to be). I know you would love to get my foot in the mouth and make me sleep on the couch for the rest of my life but I will refrain.

Take for example food.

I do not understand vegetarians.

Why would anyone choose to be a vegetarian? I don't know. Our dental structure clearly shows that nature never intended us to be that way. We were meant to eat what we get. We were never meant to be choosy but in some weird quirk of evolution, cockroaches lost the battle to supremacy and the mantel of Lord of all that he surveys fell upon us and then some prehistoric monkey developed a taste for vegetables.

I don't get it.

I like those guys who one day gave up meat because they decided on humanitarian grounds not to be part of taking life... but lets face it; Fried chicken is far more tasty than your soul.

What I do have a problem with Vegetarians is something I was discussing with a couple of vegetarian friends of mine. They haven't really helped in the ecological balance of earth, which they could have if they had enlarged their menu. You see, its my earnest belief that we tend to conserve what we think is important to us. We seem, somehow, to have an aversion towards dying.

Now if the vegetarians increased their diet to include the salads made from the nut or leaves of trees from the rain forest or made soups from the root of the cedar, oak or silver wood, we would have had a greener planet. Instead they left it to the meat eaters to protect and breed their meals on legs which now threatens to fart us out of our planet. Vegetarians could have been the saviours of our planet.

I have always maintained that, for wild life to survive we just need to start developing a taste for them.

A tiger steak anyone?

My plan to save our planet is very simple. I have been thinking... Yes, it does occur.

Now we all know that death is a great business. Funeral services are the only business that can claim year long supply of customers. Recession or not, people has to die.

So , my plan is this. When we bury someone why don't we insert a seed of a tree into the corpse's heart before we do so? Think about it. You have one tree per dead person. You replace graveyards with forests. And we can use the cremated ones ashes as fertilizers.

Personally I would like to be the worm food for a banyan tree.

Man, Iam so damn brilliant.

Now all I have to do is create a religion around it so that you will take it seriously. Nothing better than a bit of brimstone and fire and some infidels thrown in to motivate people to do the right thing.

Sun is still in my bum

2009-12-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

Vagina.

I like that word. It sounds like what it implies. It sounds correct. Maybe its conditioning but vagina sounds nice. Clean. Medical.Text book. Almost clinical.

Cunt.

Hmmm..

See what I mean? Same thing, different words...different imaging.

I taught my son to call his penis Pepe. Don't ask me why. I just did. I regret it. I should have just asked him to call it a penis.We really don't need several words to name the same things. Yet somehow we seem to do it. Its like Gandhi's word Harijan for the untouchables or the low castes. Over time the very word which was supposed to elevate them, give them a sense of pride, became a label. The very word , which meant God's children, became synonymous with being of lower caste. Now its illegal to call anyone Harijan. Its Scheduled Caste. Hopefully in the future we will just call them Indians. Or how about people?

Its the same with Negros who are now called Blacks. Its the same word. Same meaning. Different associations. Different history.Funny when you think about it.

Rose by any other name...

At 40 I have realized only one thing as a certainty. I have no clue. Everything is so confusing. Now we need to gauge every ones reactions prior to any actions. Now you will think twice before you go to comfort a crying child in the playground. Now you will refrain from correcting a misbehaving child. You will watch a husband beat his wife because its none of your business. You will not act because of what others might think. We have become so politically fucking correct that we have become eunuchs. Ooops. I forgot. I cant use that term anymore. Its fucking politically incorrect.

Truth is I don't know anything. Really I don't. Its not everyday you wake up and realize how stupid you are.

The last 30 odd years have been spend accumulating so called knowledge, experiences, cells and fat.

I have spend 30 years becoming a fucking hoarder!

So, during the last few years I have been doing a sort of spring cleaning. Basically cleaning out the attic. Now that almost everything I have accumulated is gone ( the fat remains) , Iam as empty as a retard. Ooops. Cant say that either, can I?

Tell you what I do know.

I exist.

The indention in the shape of my bum, much like the image in the Turin Shroud, on my couch ascertains my existence.

Truth is that's all I really know. I don't know if Iam the only one that exists and that all of you are just figments of my will and imagination. There is also a chance that all of you think the same way too. But Iam not sure. I can only be absolutely sure of my feeling, my pain, my love , my anger, my frustration...your emotions and feelings are concepts. I cannot and do not get a first hand experience of it therefore, it will always remain an empathetic understanding. An outside perspective compared with my own feelings , emotions and actions. No matter what I have read, or heard or been born into in the name of my heritage and culture, I still remain separate. This supposed existence of a unifying mystical formula is beyond my reasoning.

All I feel is : It must be the same for you.

Maybe its our separation that is the common factor. Imagine the fucking irony in that!

Breaking it down.

2009-12-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

If you want to know the nature of time, you need to stand in a lift that is slow and the number of floors it travels to is more than 15. To make it more exciting, you and the bunch of people who takes the lift from the ground floor should not be added by people getting in from different floors. It causes distraction to the discomfort in experiencing time on a first hand basis.

Notice your stance.

You probably will be standing still, erect, looking ahead, almost not breathing. Or you will be looking at your feet or at the numbers on the floor display panel. You will feel the others behind you, like the breath of a spirit and theres almost a guarantee that you will not turn back to look or acknowledge.

When the lift door opens, you step out with almost a relief.

Now imagine getting stuck in one with your girl, just the two of you and not much of clothes between you both.

Time, my dears, hence, is relative.

See? My post is educational. Wasn't that way better than understanding it through some dead unfeeling formula?

This is what I have a problem with. This effort in making the most simplistic of things complicated.

Take life for example.

Now you don't need a PhD to live it. Hell, you don't even need a licence. You just have to be born and viola! you are carried away in its flow. Simple. Along the way, others in similar positions as you will come your way. You will exchange ideas, you will analysis each others methods to live, you will find some lives lived more attractive, then, abandoning your unique life, you will try to ape another life. From there starts your life of disappointment.

My wife disagrees. But I really think that there is no meeting ground in regards to individual. We are different. In every way. Similarity might exist in regards to our physiology, which helps in identifying us, pegging us, marking us as a species or some other such labels but we are different. Our lives are different, our experiences are different. Every emotion that we feel is different. My anger could be different from yours. My love is different from yours. The way we see colors are different. The way we smell the same thing is different. Our deaths will be different.

Then why do we think that there is a single path to a single source?

My enlightenment, if there is such a thing, is bound to be different from yours.

Maybe, just maybe, the Hindus got it partly right by having their 1 million different gods. Which then went on to become a mess.

Why cant we celebrate our uniqueness? Why is there this need to willingly come under a banner of religion, country, race, gender? Why is there this need to believe that my way is better than yours? That its only through my way you will find yours?

Think. Doubt.Question. Break it down. Tear it down. Then rebuild.

Only then , I think, can you call anything your own.

Even yourself.

Faith, without questioning is akin to slavery.

Have a great year ahead.

Facing the 40s

2009-11-27T07:05:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Kerala has the highest suicide rate in the country?

"Kerala, the country's first fully literate state, has the highest number of suicides. Some 32 people commit suicide in Kerala every day." - http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/apr/15spec.htm

I don't find that altogether surprising, considering that it is called God's Own Country. We all know that people who are on back slapping terms with the Big Man in the Sky , has a propensity to kill themselves; most of the time taking a whole lot of unwilling people with them for company.

Stupid Fucks.

I killed God sometime back.

Strapped her to a chair in a dark room, with an unshaded light bulb hanging above her.

I then sat across him and worked on its face with my fist.

One thing I have to say about God, its dignified in its silence. I could also sense the danger of being caught up in that dignity I had attributed to her. It was like beating my reflection with all my wannabe traits. He was everything I thought I could be or would be. Now.

Now, I see him more clearly.

He is just a reflection.

I untied her hands and placed the knife into her hands.

It was something my brother had given me as a gift.A fold able bayonet that also served as a handheld fighting knife. Beautiful thing.

He held the knife in both his hands. Looking at at. As if weighing it. Then she looked at me.

I sat back in my chair and lite my cigarette. I inhaled deeply its arid fumes. Filling my lungs. Then I blew it out. Straight into Gods eyes.

There were tears in her eyes.

There were tears in mine too. But hers was because of the smoke.

I told it to finish it.

Her eyes pleaded with mine.

A corner. A spot. You will hardly know Iam there.

I told no.

Recall the times when you needed me. The times I have been there. Guiding you, comforting you, answering you?

I got up to pour myself a drink. These emotional stuffs always tire me.

Lies , I said, without turning back, you were never there, I believed you were there, I hoped you were there, but you were not there,I gave you the credits for all things good and took upon myself the blame for all things bad in my life,I created you from my ever present loneliness, shaped you, gave my breath to you... I was always alone.

I took a sip of my sour mash whiskey.

With the glass in my hand , I returned to my chair. I dragged it closer to her. I looked at it , up close, eye to eye; then I whispered:

Do it.

She tilted her head back, brought the knife to her neck and with a graceful swipe, cut its throat.

God bleeds.

I pushed back the chair.Finished my drink. Then I picked the lite cigarette from the makeshift ashtray which in its previous life was a Horlicks Cap. I leaned on the table and smoked , watching the death of god, feeling lighter.

I had destroyed Its home within me long ago. The cursed dwelling of hers whose walls were made up of scriptures dreamed up and written by dead people. Today I killed its King.

Now Iam alone. Truly alone. No more invisible crutches for a man who has two legs. I have never been more free. I have never been so lost. I have never been so alone. Yet I know that, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I left god there. Dead. Sitting on a chair with its head thrown back, blood coloring the front of her white T-shirt red. I had picked up the knife, wiped the blade clean on his t-shirt , folded it and tucked it into my pant pockets.

I turned 40. A nice age. Good round figure. Easy on the tongue. A great age for new beginnings. From here on its the start of my sheddings. The age of loss begins.

Read my tits

2009-11-22T00:25:00.000-08:00

You see that guy who walks down the street carrying the burden of perpetual guilt? Thats me. Guilt is my middle name.

What is the required etiquette when confronted with words like ; Juicy, Angel or Booty printed in bold cursive script on the seat of a tight fitting track pants which is attached to a female form?

Are you allowed to read it?

Will it be deemed lecherous?

Being from the printing industry , I read things. Its kind of an automatic thingy. There are no thought process behind it , its just a conditioning, almost similar to our other curious habit of feeling the grammage of the paper of any magazine that we read.You see that guy who is going orgasmic in that dentist waiting room with that Vogue magazine? Printer.

I read. I cant help it. Then I catch myself looking at the writing and realizing the area of hoarding. Instant guilt.Its worse when Iam with my wife. The chills have given me frostbites.

Then there are those T-shirts.

What do you do, Jack, what do you do?

I read. Then I start blushing.

Thing is I think I offend the wearer when I stop to catch up on my literary fix. This is what I don't understand. What am I supposed to do? Pretend that you don't have something interesting printed on your t-shirt and that your breasts are just incidental?

I asked my wife about this. Yes, Iam suicidal.

There was a drop in temperature and I think some parts of my extremities are cryogenic ally frozen.

Wisest thing to do will be to keep my eyes on the ground.

So I decided on the next best thing.

Dark glasses.

My question is not about why a woman should wear something like this if she doesn't want to be stared at. In fact I think women should be able to walk around naked ,if they want,without having to worry about how shes going to be perceived. The real question is why the fuck am I feeling guilty if Iam only reading?

I have been to a party once where a family friend of ours claimed that girls are asking for it when they wear mini skirts. I had to hold back my wife from ripping that moron to shreds. Question is, why does what a woman wear ,be about men?

You know what I think? Maybe I should keep my eyes on the ground until I learn to read the writing without seeing what its written upon. Then perhaps, they will not be offended and I wont be feeling guilty.

The question , my friend is, do you see words printed across boobs or boobs on which words are printed? Does boobs even figure? Is the boobs even there? See? Its a profound situation; almost religious.

I tried bringing this up with my wife. Yes, Iam persistently suicidal.

She felt that its not helping that Iam going over grounds that has already been overcome and covered. She feels posts like this may evoke some sniggers in some quarters but overall it just pushes back all what women have achieved in the last 100 years. To summarize, she is in fact telling me that Iam back on the couch for the next 2 weeks on the warrior diet; which essentially is how the Spartans ate, only in the night. No wonder the bastards were in a bad mood all the time.

Thing is; my wife is right. I hate to admit that. But once in a few years, she does stumble upon the truth and Iam man enough to give her the credit. Okie, I also like to have my meals on time.

So here is the Tys fact on the issue.

You could wear a abhaya and you will still be gaped at. You could wear nothing and you will still get gaped at. Gaping at women is some sort of evolutionary precondition hotwired into our genes; it has nothing to do with your clothes or lack of it. So you might as well use all that gaping and get the men to read something while they gape.

At least it will be an exercise for both our extremities. In short you make it educational. How else can you get a message across, when all else have failed?

This one kind of tells it all :

* all pictures courtesy of http://www.tshirthell.com/hell.shtml

Need a lil help from my friends...

2009-11-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

If life is measured by the number of friends one has in their life, I will be around 5.

I don't make friends easily. I lose them fairly easily. Its just me, I do stupid things like writing a blog about it which guarantees that I will probably lose the 5 that remains.

Since I seem to be on this mode of making list, here is the Tys' guide to losing your friends.

1. Lend them money. You don't like one of your friend , the best thing you can do to yourself is to lend them some money. You will never see them again. It is weird. Now they are here and then they just disappear off the planet. It is magic.

2. Let them know that their wives talks about their sex problems to you because you are the universal father figure in your friend circle. Must be the grey hair and the air of perplexity that hovers around me, I seem to attract confessions from the fairer sex. Since my memory isn't that great when Iam drunk, which I seem to be perpetually, they think I can keep a secret. Problem is when a memory surfaces like a whale coming up to breathe once in a while and I happen to be around the offending husband aka my friend, which them prompts me to enquire : 'So , you still into wearing her panties to work?'

Silence. Sudden chill in the air and then I never see him again. Magic.

3. Take sides in their marital problems. Listen to this very carefully : You will be the loser in this. Most of the problems a couple has will resolve by itself and when that happens they will one day sit down , cuddling in the couch and talk about that 'silly fight' they had over him wanting a child and she postponing since it will interfere with her career. Then that idiot friend of yours will say , ' You know what ? Tys told me that I should be a man about it and 'forget' to wear the condom...haha..think about that...hes such a jerk..haha...'

Silence. Sudden chill. I never see them again. Then theres this rumour floating around that Iam a real prick. Wonder where that came from.

4. Forget their names. Trust me ,this happens.I have met some of my greatest best friends from my school days (or so they say) and I have no idea who this back slapping guy is. He talks about the time we supposedly sneaked out of the dormitory and stole carrots from the neighbourhood farmers and how Singaparaja was caught and was tied to a pole etc. You recall all this but you cannot for the life of you remember this guy's name. So you go like : ' and you are?'

Silence. Sudden chill. You never see him again.

5. Remember too many details about your friends; and if you do, please , for heavens sake, do not, I repeat, do not tell that as toast at his wedding. Somehow the story about his misadventures with the local lady of the night and the resultant trips to the clinic may seem funny to you but his soon to be wife may not find it very amusing. The resultant pin drop silence as you deliver your punch line should be a fair indication that you are now officially off the list of toast makers in all your friends' weddings and also off the list of friends to be invited to their homes in the future. But the great part is your faux pas will live on and will liven up many parties in the future where your absence will not even be missed.

6. Make commitments that you have no intention of keeping.

Its my firm belief that friendship is probably the only relation apart from being a child where you can treat the other party in the relationship like shit and get away with it. This belief stems from the fact that friendship is not tied down by any preconditions and expectations ( which no matter how great that sounded, it is total bullshit- as my experience has proven).Never say yes to something you have already decided to be a no. If you did, then please don't make a habit of it.

I, my friends, am guilty of this. In my defence I can claim that it was never intentional but I almost never turn up for any dos that I have been invited to. It has reached such a point that if I ever do turn up, the party becomes in honour of that.

I treat my friends badly. I don't keep in touch. If not for my wife, I wouldn't even have the remote sense of social life that I currently have.If its any consolation, I treat my family even worse.

So, today I would like to thank those 5 that still stands. Despite my erratic treatment of them, I think they know that deep inside this callous heart of mine, Iam grateful for their acceptance of me. That in an other week I will still be only 5 years old.... like I have been for the last 15 years.

Tys' guide to surviving marraige

2009-11-03T22:49:00.000-08:00

Having been with one woman for 10 years, gives you a perspective that is unequal to any theory based knowledge about relationships. I must , however, confess that even these years, that somehow seemed to have passed by so soon, still does not enlighten me on the subject of what a woman wants. That is a mystery which hopefully will be answered in a flash of light when I breath my last and I truly hope that the answer does not appear to me in a neon lite sign that says : Louis Vuitton Hand Bags!

That would just kill me.

For the sake of the lesser mortals which goes by the name, man, I would like to provide a list of instruction, which hopefully will guide them and enable them to live side by side with a woman, without major damages to his psyche or physique.

1. Do not pretend to understand a woman. You don't. Deal with it. The sad part is they have you figured out pretty well. So the element of mystery or the surprise element are only in your dreams. Since you are in the dark, do what is the most logical, manly way to overcome this problem: Deny.

Deny that you don't understand them.

She :You don't understand me.

You : Of course I do. I understand you more than you think.

See? Simple technique. The last sentence you spoke is actually a brain twister. It is also illogical so it will buy you grace time.

2. When in doubt, say I love you. Women are softies. You knew that the day you had that fever and she treated you as if you were dying of cancer. They are suckers for affirmation. Almost all the crap you do can be brushed aside if you throw that three letter sentence where ever you can.

- Waking up in the morning. You turn towards her and say : I love you . Trust me, she will not bring up the part about you being drunk the previous night and puking on the carpet her mother gave on the day of the wedding. You will even get black coffee and a hug later on if you maintain a vulnerable front.

3. Practice on the vulnerable look. This is important. Borrow a dog and eat your lunch in front of it and then watch it. See that look? That's what you should be aiming for. Trick is not to over do it. Contrary to their appearance, women are smart. They can see through an act but this is where nature has been kind to our gender. We have been blessed with a gene that makes us believe that whatever we say or do is very important and real. So you do that look of hurt and in a second you feel as if you are really hurt.

She : I don't want anything to do with you. Iam going back to my mothers.

You : the vulnerable look. Bordering on tears

She : stands there uncertain. Then comes back and hold you.

You : trying hard to hide that grin.

4. Return the dog.

5. The trick to having your woman love you passionately is to love her a little less. Hold back on over expressing yourself too much. Women don't like men who seem too much in love. You see, that's their department and trust me, you don't want to go there.So you love her but let her see that in doses, when it counts.

So go and whack that guy who dared make a move on her and then pretend as if you didn't really care.

That ought to do the trick.

6. Women don't know what they want. This is the truth. Iam yet to meet a woman who knows what they want. Iam also yet to meet a man who knows what he wants but the difference is that men don't know that they don't know what they want. Women think they know what they want but what they want is really not what they really want, which they realize when they get what they really want. What they want has no defined borders, it doesn't even exist in this dimension.

So if you think they like it when you go ballistic on that guy who tried to buy her a drink in the pub because last night she had said that she doubts if you really loved her because you are not possessive; well, you are in for a rude shock. Now she thinks you are a brute.

So don't try to be anything that you are not just because it seems as if that's what your woman wants. Shes with you right? You are what she wants. Really.

7. Don't lie to her. Seriously. Don't. Its insulting. Moreover they find out sooner or later. God is on their side, so you are fucked anyways. My theory is don't do anything that you have to lie about. This is because liars need a great memory which I don't have. But if you must lie, base it on a truth. Example;

She : Did you love her?

You : No.

See? The question didn't state a time line, therefore in context to the exact moment the question was put forward, it required an answer which need only tally with your immediate circumstance and current emotional state, which in this case is No, because the last thing on your mind when you are asked such a question by your woman is love or her; its your poor vulnerable balls.

8. Make her laugh. A macho guy can make a girl notice him but its the guy who makes her laugh who will win her heart.

Damn. Someone should make a T-shirt with that line. Fuck, Iam in the wrong industry.

Anyways. If you really believe that, then most comedians must be happily married. Well, they are not. That's not because they were not funny but because they need an audience to be funny, preferably ones that buy tickets. The guy who makes his woman laugh is not a comedian. He is not the funny guy with great one liners. He is the chap who will laugh at her jokes and makes her laugh at herself and at him. He is the guy who will help her pick up the dinner she dropped and then make her laugh about it. Avoid laughing when she slips and fall in the shopping mall. That's the kind of things that will take a long time to repair.

9. Learn to say sorry. It doesn't even matter if you are right. Just say sorry. In fact when you wake up in the morning to turn towards her and say I love you as instructed in point 2, just follow it up with Iam sorry. That way you would have covered all angles. Being wrong is part of being a man. Nature only got it right in its second try anyways. Take consolation in that. She crashed the car? Say you are sorry. She wakes up in a bad mood? Say you are sorry. The kids got fever? Say you are sorry. Earthquake? Sorry. End of the world? sorry. Hunger in Africa? Sorry.

Theres a high probability that you are responsible anyway.

10. Don't get smug about the survival of your relationship. Don't pat yourself on your back. Don't take it for granted. Don't get too secure. Don't get too arrogant about it, proud of it. I have seen people being held together only by the legal thread of a marriage but with miles of distance between them. I have seen people drifting apart without even being aware like a unanchored boats in the sea.I have seen people clinging to the other, suffocating, stunting , killing and naming it love. I have seen people being together yet with their heart residing in an other. I have seen people not seeing each other because they are caught up looking else where. I have seen people caught up in themselves that there is no place for another.

Whatever your tale is , know that you are one part of the hands that claps. Dont let her weather it alone.Know your place.You are a man. You are clueless.God help us all.

In your life I hope you get a standing ovation.

In the hands of the gods

2009-11-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

You know that you are getting fat, when parts of your body starts having its own climate. Its currently hot around my equator and cold on my poles.

Australia is doing fine thank you.

I really need to join the gym. Since my birthday is coming up, its the best time to do this. Joining the gym is my annual must do thing. I either do it on my birthday or just after the new year. I normally discontinue and get back to my JD and couch lifestyle in about 2 months after that. So technically my body survives due to the effort it is made to go through for 60 days to endure 300 days of abuse. Let me tell you, it works. Iam still alive albeit a little beefy. Which means that theres more of me to go around.

Did I tell you that I went to a Nadi Astrologer when I was down in India? Well I did. Why I didnt tell you earlier was probably because the stars were not aligned.I don't want to sound judgemental or skeptic but what the hell, I will tell you anyway. Captive audience. How I pity you.

Anyhows.

So my mother takes me to this place where there are these 2 characters ,with pictures of half a dozen gods and a picture of Mecca and Christ and a statue of the laughing Buddha thrown in for good measure, sitting in a small room.

My younger brother was also with me, which means that if astrology really worked, this was the day these two guys would have taken a vacation or gone to watch a good Shivaji movie. But they didn't, so I had my doubts from the start.

Heres how it works. First go this link and this and this.

Good. Now you know what the fuss is all about. Excited? Unbelievable?

Yep.So is the advertisements for increasing the size of my penis.

Anyways. First our fingerprints are taken. So in the occult society I can be identified. Then my address is taken. My full name, with complete detail of my birth ( not the gross stuff, the date , place and time). Then the guy goes inside to search for my leaf.

Iam thinking : GOOGLE!

Here's the funda, if you have been too fucking lazy to go to the links I had kindly provided.

Apparently 2000 years ago some jobless sanyasi decided to write the details of the lives every man and woman that has been born , are born and will be born. How do you identify yourself from these leaves? Its from your finger print. The whorls in your print gives an idea where the search should begin from. Then they get warmer by asking you questions which you answer and then viola! your leaf is found. Then the fun starts.

So the guy brings some bundles of leaves, which apparently are copies. Think about that! Not only some guy wrote this , now theres some odd guy copying this. Man, people have too much time.

Then the questions start.

You have siblings?

Yes.

1?

No

2?

Yes.

One is a girl.

No.

You are one of 3 brothers.

Yes.

You are married.

Yes.

Your wife's name starts with Aaa, Baa, Saa

.... by now Iam onto this guy.

So this goes on. At the end of it, you end up giving him every single information, while his partner feeds all my birth information into some astrology software and you have the ultimate Hindu Scam.

To think this has been going on for 2000 years. Going by the cave drawings the penis enhancer has been there longer.

Half way through the guy giving you back what you have told him , interlaced with some Sanskrit mambo jumbo, he will say that theres this problem in your destiny. Which is always blamed on this poor planet who is in the Hindu bad books since time began; Shani aka Saturn. Of course in order to remove the obstacle, you will have to do a pooja in a temple in Tamilnadu, give clothes, 9 type of fruits, 9 type of sweets etc to the said astrologer. Once these are done, Saturn obediently steps aside for you to go out there and fuck the princess and kill the king. If the corrective steps are not taken then more than you, the people you love around you is going to be fucked. Bummer.

By now, we are onto this guy, mainly because we have seen the pattern. First they had 'read' my mother, then it was me and then my younger brother. So we kind of knew when Saturn is going to be introduced into our life story and how Tamilnadu temples are going to come to our rescue.

I think he kind of realized; something which we mallus say, which when translated means ; that this beans is not going to cook here.

Then he got nasty.

My life from where I stand is now licked by a dog ( mallu saying. Which is not meant to be a nice thing, I mean getting licked my the dog bit). Then he took off on my brother. Now he is more screwed than me. This situation was like taking the snake from a fence and wrapping it around your waist ( another mall saying) , also a lot like giving a stick to get beaten ( I think this is an international saying).

So we came away, laughing our guts out. Apparently mother got calls from there for nearly a month, asking her to do the puja.

I wasn't impressed. Truth is I don't think this is even relevant. Astrology is our means to make sense out of our fear of uncertainty. I have heard the argument that the gravitational pull of planets can have an influence on our body, since we are mostly liquid. If that is the case then the doctor who was the nearest to me probably would have had a stronger pull than Saturn for heavens sake.

Me being fat is probably influencing all of your future.

Look, Iam not a believer neither will I slam something I do not know too much about. But Nadi Astrology is just hogwash.

Even if it isnt, what exactly did you gain by knowing that in your last birth you were a merchant in Karnataka, who is cursed by a woman? Or that you were a Tantric Brahman woman who used your black magic on some innocents?

Man, I can tell you anything I want to fill in the gaps of a memory you don't even have. Which includes your future.

But what I cant tell you is if your penis will increase length in the near future. Now thats something which is best left in the hands of the gods ( no puns intended)

Crazy Lil thing called Lurve.

2009-10-26T00:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-25T01:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-01T02:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Kaboom!

2009-09-28T01:44:00.000-07:00

Its all over now. Iam done. Thank you for your interest.