Suck up to ‘em, Sreesanth!

The Indian media is picking on Sreesanth like a pride of lions attacking a calf. Aaj tak actually spent half an hour ridiculing his aggressive behavior. And god knows how many times they will telecast it.
They are right. We don’t need an aggressive bowler. Although he is arguably the best bowler India has right now, we must concentrate more on his bursts of aggression. We don’t need to take the Australians head on. We need someone who listens to all the sledging and feels happy about it. Someone whose reason-de-etre is to invite opponents to kick his ass and thank them for it. Aaj tak will be happy then.
Aaj tak would much like this sort of conversation:
Symonds: There is not much of a difference between the ball and your mom, mate. I thump both of them all over the park.
Sreesanth: Hey thanks mister. I am so grateful that of all the bowlers, you chose me for this treatment. As a show of gratitude, let me take my pants down and you can hit my ass with your bat. To please you and my Indian media even more, let me suck you before you hit me for a six off the next ball.
Spare the people who got balls, Aaj tak. Go get real news.

Sick of Pepsi Ads, sick of ourselves

Pepsi ads are sick. It seems that Pepsi owns the indian cricket team. We people are a bunch of asses. Did you really believe that we could have won the world cup? And yet we allowed Pepsi to brainwash us into believing that our cricket heroes are infallible. 
Shame on us. 

Bad Bribe, Good Bribe

Yesterday, I violated a traffic rule and was promptly caught by a traffic policeman. What happened next, you may already have guessed. Broadly, this is the sequence of events: He tells me that the fine is Rs.300 and takes out a book to book me. I plead, and he says 200 will do. I finally hand him a 100 rupee note. This, of course, took quite some time, and by the end of it, we had almost become friends. He asked me my salary, and I laughed in response.
His parting remark was that he gets 5000 rupees for his job, while I must be getting 20,000.
Some things come out of the incident:
1. That he is grossly underpaid, especially since he is around 35, and probably supports his wife and kids
2. That I deserved to be fined for the violation
3. If I have to pay the fine in any case, should I be happy to give the money to the govt. or to this policeman?
The answer is easy: the policeman. These are the reasons:
1. First and foremost, I am selfish, and would rather lose 100 than 300 rupees
2. Second, this guy gets some money for his needs. Thus, he too is a winner
3. If I give this money to the govt, I have no way of knowing if it will not end up in some minister’s pocket. Even if it is allotted for development purposes, only about 30 rupees will actually reach its intended destination. The rest will be eroded in the long process.
Now, is bribe such a bad thing?

How to Sing Like Himesh Reshammiya : A tutorial

Himesh reshammiya is everywhere- Radio, TV, conversations, girls’ sighs, auto rickshaws, barbers’ shops, T-shirts, crush lists….
For those who always wanted to sing like him, but failed every time they tried, here is a step-by step tutorial.

Part1: Intro of the song
This is the first part of the song. There are no lyrics, and you have to sing oooohoooo… in a melody.
Step1: Think of a melody, or copy from somewhere. Better still, find some from different sources and mix them.
Step2. Now you have to produce the sound. To do this, first position your face as shown in the picture below.

Step3. Close your nose with one hand
Step4. Now let the sound come out through the nose. No, it doesn’t contradict step3. Just trust me and give it a try.
Step5. If you followed these steps honestly, you should now sound like himesh reshammiya..

Part2: The song
Just apply what you learnt above. This time, instead of oooohooohh, you will be singing the song.

That’s it! If you benefited from the tutorial, don’t forget to thank me. If you didn’t, you did not follow the steps correctly.

The Das-Munshi Code

Priyaranjan Dasmunshi is highly envious of Arjun Singh. Now he also wants his share of controversy or attention. And what better way to do it than bringing "communal sentiments" into focus...The movie has come out at a good time for Dasmunshi.

On Reservations

By increasing the percentage of reservations, are we acknowledging that these castes are worse off now than they were 50 years earlier? In that case, what benifits has 50 years of reservations brought to India?

Curse of the Nurse: The Hospital Experience

A few days ago my body invited some pathogens from Saturn and offered them to stay inside it for as long as they wanted. They were thrilled and planned for a long holiday.
The result, as you could have guessed, was that I had to be admitted to the hospital. The doctors had seen no such disease, and could never detect their presence. On the contrary, the pathogens studied the different doctors who came to see me, and who merrily charged huge amounts for “consultation fees.”
But that’s not what I am here to talk about. The most unforgettable experience was that of nurses and injections. Every now and then I would wake up in the middle of the night, only to find a nurse on top of me. Only if it could stop there itself. Sigh.. And she would pierce my skin and inject some fluid. And I would go back to sleep.
These fluids came in all flavours: black, yellow, cold, warm, fast, slow, pain killer, pain giver, pain-giver-and-then-killer, etc etc.
I learnt a lot about nurses- the beings. I had always thought of them as soft-spoken keralites with a funny accent whose job was to keep patients happy and, of course, give them medicines. My perceptions have now changed drastically.
There was always a nurse at night duty. And the poor creature had to stay awake the whole night, even when everyone was sleeping. After spending some time on the mobile phone, and some on flipping patients’ papers, she was totally bored. Like you were bored on afternoons of summer vacations when you were in school. And I figure she had only one activity left to keep herself amused: Give injections. That would probably explain the frequent visits at nights. I suspect it was also a way of disposing off expired injections..
At day time, it was a different story. There were quite a few nurses, chatting happily while keeping an eye on the lift for signs of doctors. But then even at day time, they all had one vital function: giving injections
I had read, in 10th standard history, about cutting of the Chinese melon. How USA, Russia etc had their own “spheres of influence” in the country. Well only now did I grasp the full meaning of the phrase. The nurses had agreed upon their own spheres of influence- One took my left arm, another my right arm. The third one had my left buttock to herself. I don’t know how, and I am still intrigued, but my right buttock was left untouched. And another thing I learnt about them: Nurses are ferociously territorial animals. One *never* transgressed into another’s “sphere of influence”. One of them was so proud or possessive that she put a circle with a ball pen around the place she had punctured my skin.
One injection I remember particularly well. I had a mild back-ache and was not able to sleep. When I told a nurse about this, she offered to give an injection, but it would be a “little painful.” A gallant warrior that I am, I said that I could take pain. And then it happened. An excruciating pain. Which made me forget how cruel the world is, and how painful love can be, or how hell would be....
To their credit, the nurses always warned me before giving injections (if I was awake that is). They said, “I am going to prick you, and it will be a little painful.” Now, in all my sickness, I somehow found it very funny and gave them meaningful smiles. And I tried it with every one of them. But they seemed only confused. In a matter of seconds, my smile was transformed into sobs.
And then there was this blood test. The nurse had to take some of my blood, and had an injection ready in hand to suck out the blood. My vein was hidden deep inside my arm. The nurse then cajoled this vein to come out but rubbing it gently, tapping it, and wetting it. Well, the vein did come out. Little did it know what fate awaited it. The tragedy is that it allowed itself to be fooled again and again.
Well, the doctors did never find the pathogens. When their time was over, they bode a tearful farewell to my body, promising to come back whenever they found time. And the doctors proclaimed success. And I came home, the sweet memories in my heart..

The Art of Crossing (Indian) Roads

I was cutting through the city traffic when I almost collided with a person trying to cross the road. Joy’s bike, with its superb handling, saved itself, me and the person. Clearly, this guy had not mastered the art of crossing roads. He was continuously twisting his neck from left to right and then back to left, in order to look out for the traffic. He was unsure of himself, and kept moving back and forth. An amateur. This is how a master does it:
He stands nonchalantly at one end of the road, never giving any indication when, or if at all he is going to cross the road. But his eyes are moving and gauging the traffic. They are estimating the speeds of the vehicles coming from both sides. It is here that experience plays an important part-more experience means better estimation. The master knows exactly how fast he can run. There are parameters of safety defined for crossing the road: If at any point of time, you are away from the vehicles by at least 1 meter, you are safe. But the master can, and often does, push this limit. When he finds an opportunity, he suddenly takes off like a cheetah, surprising those around him. He may change direction, but never the speed (It is here that the guy had committed a blunder- he had stopped). His ears filter out all the honkings. Within a flash, he is at the other side of the road. Once there, he again goes back to his nonchalant state, ignoring the angry drivers. He never looks their way, leave alone answering them.
There are some losers who wait and wait till the road is reasonably clear of traffic, look left and then right, and then walk across the road. Glory is never theirs and they die unremembered.

The Call

Drrrr…. My cellphone vibrated and danced like crazy on my desk. I quickly took it in my hand and looked at the number. Nope, none of my contacts, and I didn’t recognize the number either. There was no STD code, so it wasn’t a landline.
“Hello”, I said.
“Hello..” said a sweet voice of a female from the other end. My mind raced to guess who it could be.
“Good afternoon sir, this is Natasha calling from HSBC…”
“Aaaah,” I thought, “not again.”
“…would you like a free credit card...”
“No”
“Sir, this is a lifetime free card, so you will not have to..”
“Fuck off”
“I beg your pardon”
“Yes, you heard me. Don’t you have anything better to do than bugging people?”
“Sir, it hurts to be talked to like that.” She sounded calm and composed. But I could sense she was uneasy. And there was something else I felt. But I couldn’t place what exactly it was.
I got back to my senses. I had been really rude.
“Sorry” I apologized,” I didn’t mean to say that”
“Its all right, you must be really irritated by these calls”
There was something in her voice, and I tried hard to guess what it was.
“Well, normally I am cool about this. Its just that.. I guess it’s because my boss shouted at me this morning, and I was venting out my anger at the wrong person.”
“Yeah, I understand. It happens to all of us.”
Is it her accent? Is it the way she is pronouncing her R’s? I tried hard to guess from her accent where she could be from. It’s becoming foggy. Meanwhile, I had to find something to say.
“I am sure you are not irritable at all” I said, “I mean, the way I talked to you, and you are still calm”
“I can’t afford to be. My job depends on it”
“Your job?”
“Yeah,” She stretched “yeah” in a way people do when they show surprise at your ignorance. “Of making calls and offering people credit cards. It’s a 9-6 job, and I get a salary for it.”
I was stunned. I had never seen it this way before. It’s her job? Just like I have mine? I had always thought of them as “the credit card people”. They came in different flavours, “personal loans” being the latest. I had often ridiculed them, sometimes on their face (on the phone of course). I would narrate to my friends, with pride, how I had got rid of these people. For instance, I had once told one of them, “It’s none of your business.” My friends would then tell their experiences. These stories were meant to be funny. And the meaner you were, the funnier your story would be.
“Hello…” She said, “Are you there?”
“huh?,” I was taken by surprise” yes, yes..umm...I had never thought of this before. Hey, I am really sorry for how I talked to you”
“As I said, it’s all right. I am used to it.”
“You are?” I was surprised.
“Yeah, of course. You think you are the only person I called? I make 150-200 calls on an average day.”
“And they all talk to you like that?” I felt miserable
“Of course not, But on an average, 20 calls are worse than you could imagine”
“Are they worse than me?”
“As I said, you can’t imagine”
I didn’t know whether to feel better or worse. Better, because I am not the worst. Worse, because she handles all that filth. Wait a minute, why do I care? Do I even know her name? She did mention it when she called, and it did register in my mind for a while, but I had forgotten it now.
I was still struggling to place what I was feeling about her.
“Vikram, I have to make other calls now”
“You know my name?”
“I knew your number.. Bye Vikram”
That did it. The way she said my name. Yes, it has to be her. My childhood crush, Natasha. The girl I used to think about while turning restlessly in my bed.
I suddenly felt a surge of emotions. One part of me was angry at myself. Another was even angrier at those 20 people. Another wanted to make her feel better, And yet another wanted to ask her where she had been all this while, and why she was doing this….
The fog had cleared, and I was restless.