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You can go ahead and blame Teddy bhai and Kush babu for this folly, if you like.
1. Last movie in a theatre
Rock On! And I want to shoot all those movie reviewers. Rock On! should have been titled Suck On! Or better still, 'Now, suck on this!'
Imagine, a 40 year old rich guy hiding his dark past from his wife, the murky 'dark past' being the sob-story of a broken Rock Band. Could never figure out what was so secretive, sad and dark about a Rock Band splitting? Doesn't that happen all the time? Add to that some joyrides to self-discovery, screechy music and some horrid singing. You get the picture. How senti and angsty!
2. What book are you reading?
Nothing. I read in spurts. Last book I read was 3 months ago and I forgot which one. Last year I must have read at least 50 books this year that count must be less than 2.
3. Favourite Board game
Indoor games bore me.
4. Favourite magazine
Outlook. And a few girlie mags too.
5. Favourite smells
I like the 'no smell', odourless feeling.
6. Favourite sounds
Kids playing and laughing. And the least favourite sound is that of parents lecturing kids.
7. Worst feeling in the world
The sense of disgust I get when I see someone bullying a weaker person. I can not stand people who intimidate those who can not fight back. Like gaddiwalas slapping rickshaw-pullers.
8. What is the first thing that you think of when you wake up?
Drink 3 glasses of water and visit the loo, with the newspaper. The 'thinking' stuff happens only after that.
9. Favourite fast food place.
Karim near Jama Masjid in saddi Dilli. Tunde Mian in
10. Future child’s name
I have never named any kid. That's something the womenfolk at home do.
11. If I had lots of money
I would sit around and do nothing.
12. Do you drive fast?
No. I drive painfully slow.
13. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
Oh yeah! I wear purple g-strings and pink ribbons. I also jingle pom-poms and wear 'Kiss Me' t-shirts. Geez! How cheesy can one get! Apart from that, that is an impolite thing to ask to married people.
14. Storms cool or scary?
Cool.
15. What was your first car?
WagonR. I dislike driving, by the way.
16. Favourite drink
Anything that contains ethyl alcohol.
17. If I had the time, I would…
Do nothing. I have always had plenty of time, actually I consider myself an absolute genius at Time Management.
18. Do you eat the stems of broccoli?
This question should be marked 'N.A.' on a desi blog. Firangi veggies like broccoli and asparagus are hardly available in
On second thoughts, next weekend I will cook some cool Indianized versions of these Firangi vegetables. 'Dum Alu Broccoli', 'Asparagus Masala' and 'Ice lettuce kachoombar'. Served with 'Tanduri Caviar' and 'Kadahi Mattar Mozzarella'. To be washed down with Guru: the super strong beer. All are invited.
19. If you could dye your hair, what colour would it be?
What do u mean 'if you could ?' I can still do it, right.
20. Name all the cities /towns you have lived
I am sure this has been set up by the high school teacher. What next? Name all the districts of Haryana?
21. Favourite sports to watch?
Used to watch cricket, soccer and tennis. Now, hardly anything.
22. What’s under your bed?
A floor where the jhadu does not reach, I think there is a hell lot of dirt there. Wifey claims it's really clean and all.
23. What would you like to be born again?
I don't believe in rebirth. Even if it happened I would still be myself.
24. Morning person or a night owl?
Both. I don't need too much of sleep.
24. Over easy or sunny side up?
Both.
25. Favourite place to relax?
Home.
26. Favourite pie
I don't eat anything sweet.
27. Favourite ice-cream flavour
I don't eat anything sweet.
28. Who would your dream date be, Sonia, Condolezza or Queen of
Condolezza Rice, just to share our collection of Bushisms.
29. Of all the people you tag this to, who do you think is most likely to respond?
Don't really know. I will not even tag anyone.
30. Are you a vegetarian?
Yeah, that too.
31. Do you sleep in the buff?
Used to, during my sex-crazed teenybopper days. Does that make me sound sexy enough? There is another flip side to sleeping like that in saddi country sometimes u end up catching cold and sometimes u face some serious mosquito attack. Now, I am sure that sounds sexy as hell.
32. List some of your fascinations and tell of them in brief.
Painting. Visual arts in general. People. Cultures.
33. Did you have fun?
Yawn!
34. Do you think that is the last question?
Get lost.
Random Muse on the go.
A very sloshed post on the go! But I think I could write a separate post about each one of them butt… what the hell!
1) Just 2 hours to reach
2) The cabbie wants to chat about the smoking ban. He says bans never work. I agree and share a bidi with him. It's really rarely that I enjoy a smoke so much. No reverse-snobbery here I love Dilli!
3) I hate the fact that the pedestrian spaces in Indian cities either don't exist or they have been encroached upon by thelawalas, panwaris, chaiwalas.
4) But I guess that is only a reflection on the general state of affairs. Our cops get paid peanuts, and they are left with no other option but to ask for a 50 rupiya ghoos. We throw peanuts, we get monkeys. Baki sab bakwas.
5) Dilli, in spite of the population explosion, surprisingly, seems less polluted and smoky then what it used to be 10 years ago! I wonder why. Is it because of the CNG thing?
6) Experienced a quick check-in this time. Dilli airport is improving, no matter what the cynics and newspapers say! Privatization seems to work. Even the immigration babus have finally learnt some politeness.
7) How much I hate airline food. Next time I will ask wifey to pack some parathas and nimbu ka achar.
I want to sleep but the entire experience sucks. I mean, whenever I travel, why is it that I always end up with some fat bloke snoring next to me? Is it some kind of a celestial conspiracy? Oh Lord, why can't you ever send a hot babe to sit next to me!
9) The in-flight entertainment channel has Tare Zameen Par and Bow Barracks Forever on offer. Tough choice!
10) I like Taare Zameen Par. It is difficult to make such Bollywood movies without sounding preachy. Aamir does manage to entertain and inform without preaching too much.
11) I think the SEZ referendum at Raigad was a good step.
12) Poor Buddhadeb babu. How much I feel sorry for him. History repeats itself with a reverse sucker punch! Eagles talked about folks who are the 'prisoners of their own device'. The world is narrating stories about the legendary Bong disdain for commerce and bijnes. As the old Kolkata legend goes, only Maarr-waaris to do bijnes, the Bhadrolok owaarks (works) for the Gobharment (Govt) and also does a hell lot of 'culture'. Politics, I guess, it is more than the 'good M' and the 'bad M'. The second 'M' being Marxism and not so much Mamata di.
13) Our GDP must increase 1000 folds.
14) The current global economic crisis is a serious job threat to cyber coolies like me. Kya hoga? Indian cyber coolies are over-hyped and overpaid anyways. It will come around, may be in an year or two. Paisa is one big deal, I must add.
15) Shucks, forgot that book again!
16) Did anyone ever actually manage to read, understand and finish James Joyce’s Ulysses? I never could. I mean one needs to smoke some real hard stuff to be able to write like that. Amazing writer, I must add. The last issue of the Outlook mag confirmed it, no one fisnished that book. It is still a classic. Problems with my Angrezi, I am so duh!
17) I feel positively sick and plain 'J' whenever I see the rocking infrastructure in these firang countries! I hope we will also reach there someday. Someday. Dil ko khush rakhne ko Ghalib yeh khayaal achcha hai!
18) Yet another dingy hotel room. Thank God for the good old Old Monk bottle.
Hic!
Significant Names
The other day, one of wifey's female friends had come visiting and the two women were giggling away to glory, cracking girlie jokes that the male of species is singularly incapable of understanding. Wifey's friend had a son too; a real cute little bloke who was trying all his stunts to impress my 5 year old daughter. I asked his mom what the little bloke was called. She said, "Arsh". "Oh, Harsh. Nice name." "No, no. Not Harsh. His name is Arsh. A-R-S-H", she clarified and went on to explain the meaning of Arsh. She said that it means the Sky, the Seventh Heaven or something like that. Good word. As a response, I had this stupid thing to say: "There is another meaning to that word. You see those Chandsi Dawakhanas and aphrodisiac clinics which operate from tents. They sell exotic medicines and claim to cure sexual diseases or Gupt Rog. You know stuff like piles and premature ejaculation. They write this word on their posters too… this word arsh means bawasir in that context. Bawasir is what they call an anal fissure, piles or something like that." The gentle lady was suitably disgusted at my cheap attempt at showing off my superlative vocabulary. Wifey killed me for that comment. No wonder she, my 'First Class MA in English' wifey, asks me to keep my stupid 'Second Class Science Bachelor' opinions to myself. Height of impoliteness and sick conversational skills apart, I have been wondering what is it about these unusual sounding names that is gaining mass following. I have been observing this hot new trend of naming kids with the most exotic (or should I say 'ethnic') words one could find in the dictionary. This is a super cool trend and is especially popular with urban middle class Indians who find that their kid's 'ethnic' name is the only connection with their glorious past. Incidentally, these are the same parents who slap their kids for speaking their mother tongues and make sure they only speak Angrezi all the time. The result is quite amusing. The old Maheshs, Sureshs, Reenas, Gitas have been replaced with Ekalavyas, Dattatreyas, Prathams and Neelambaras. Simple funda. The more complicated the name is, the more 'cultured' you become. Nothing wrong about that, really. It certainly adds some variety to our jaded lives and also provides good tongue twisters to help keep our tongues flexible. Add to that this super trend of changing spellings of names, fiercely promoted by the celebrity numerology-inspired-name-changer Jumani couple. Bollywood and TV personalities have acquired super success just because they appended an extra vowel or consonant to their names. Now I know why Tushar Kapoor (sorry, Tussar Kapoor) is so supremely successful. Super hot babe Kareena Kapoor became hotter after she became Karriena or something. Of course, it is an urban legend how much benefit one gets by adding an extra 'K' to a TV soap name. It guarantees super TRP ratings and over 5000 episodes of dead people coming alive. I think it's high time I start calling myself BhiTi or VeeTee instead of the boring VT. Or better still; please call me kVkT (K silent). That probably will provide some cosmic connection to my name. May be it provides a short cut to the rock star status I have been longing for. Who knows.
Being Politically Correct
Over an year of hanging around on this iLand, I feel I should share a few general observations.
This can be called the Part-1 of My Experiments with iLand. Readers are advised not to attempt to relate these observations to any specific event, person, comment or interaction @ blogspace.
Warning: Too many 'strikethroughs' in this post. A bit of an overkill actually; so may be difficult to read for some.
Me and my bloody big mouth; it does piss off offend a hell lot of people.
Finally, I have decided to be politically correct like all other prudes sensitive souls. I will always post and talk goody-goody stuff. I will always say nice things, sing praises about everything and make sure none of the crap words I speak pisses off offends anyone.
But then, what will I post? Heck, I can't even write poetry in praise of Nature.
Some prudes gentle souls have even suggested that the Nursery Rhymes should be modified lest they do not piss off offend anyone. You know, things like:
'Ba ba black sheep ' should be changed to 'Ba ba coloured sheep '. 'Three blind mice ' should be changed to 'Three visually impaired mice " and so on.
That will be when the most (yawn) perfect day will dawn, and we will all be bored and happy forever.
PS. I am bored already. Enough to this politically correct crap I will stick the usual rat-ass giri. Prudes, please go ahead and wince.
The Avatar and the Living Room
They did it again. Put me on the home page, that is.
Now, I will not say I love or hate that. Just that I am bit curious about the criteria part of it. How do they decide what goes to the home page? If the quality of a post is the sole criteria then I think I need to redefine my quality parameters. Sigh!
Anyways, here is yet another post about my blogging persona and what I imagine my blog to be.
Those who have already clicked the back button or have already moved to the comment window may please do so. The rest may carry on with this self indulgent gibberish.
First things first, some of you have said a few nice words about me and my avatar. Shyama was kind enough to mention that I actually look very dashing (the avatar, I mean). Thank you.
Actually the channel surfer in the Avatar is a character called Peter Griffin from the animated TV series The Family Guy.
Peter is a rather corny character, a bit stupid actually. He heads has a somewhat weird family; dysfunctional is too strong a word to describe it. He lives with his wife and kids. And of course Brian, the family dog who drinks martinis all the time. Peter is quite a bloke, the blue-collared, hoi polloi types.
He becomes my avatar. The common guy as common can be. No hi-funda, only chats. No supernatural, only natural. No paranormal, only normal. So much for my blog 'positioning'- as the marketing dudes would say.
I don't know how people see a blog. I see my blog as my living room. With me sitting on that green couch, surfing channels and sipping beer. The family hangs around, as Brian the dog helps himself with yet another martini.
People who land into the living room are my friends. We have free flowing conversations about anything and everything. Try to avoid gaali-galauj and personal insults, that is the only code of conduct.
Anything else works fine in those conversations. The last thing a living room conversation needs to do is to make any attempt to 'change the world'. Any attempt at that makes it sound like gyan, and conversations tend to get boring if there is too much of a gyan-giving happening.
These are the leisurely conversations that become the posts to my blog.
Of course, my living room has an endless supply of chai and beer, essential ingredients to an ambling conversation. Drop in anytime, feel at home and may be we can end up having some fun in the process. Some fun. That's all and that's everything.
Gardaniya Passport
Just a chotu tit-bit post about something I have been told. [Authentication required, I am not sure how far the Indo-Bangla border fencing work has progressed.]
Have you folks ever heard of a thing called a Gardaniya Passport?
Okay, here are the clues:
(1) Gardan is the Hindi word for neck (the rear of the neck, to be more precise). The back of the neck which cops/thugs/bullies hold to give a good shake to someone.
(2) It has to do with illegal immigration.
We all know that illegal immigration is a problem in big-mighty-rich countries like Amrika too. Poor Mexicans (Desis in US call them Makkhoo) walk or sneak over to the Land of the Free to work as gas station attendants and stuff.
Similarly, in
Now, a Gardaniya Passport is something which quite a few Bangladeshis are supposed to possess when they enter
The Bangla guy would casually try to stroll across the border. The Security guard, (to make himself heard), would scold him loudly. He would give the poor fellow a few shoves. Hold his gardan (neck), shake well and throw him back into the territory. On the wrong side of the border, that is.
Welcome to
December NRP, I Also Ran.
Okay, this is what I call an NRP. That's a self created abbreviation for a Non Required Post. This NRP gets posted because of a simple reason: I don't want December to go blank. This has perhaps been my least active blog-month so far.
I wish I could provide you the "I've gone dry, nothing to write about", "I am detoxifying myself from this blog addiction. (this sounds super cool)" or "writer's block" kind of reasons. Sorry, there are no such kewl reasons. Simply put, I am jacked and screwed at work. No reason cooler than that, just work and work related travel.
Come to think of it. I think I am incapable of having a "writer's block", because I don't fulfill the pre-requisite. One needs to be a 'writer' to suffer a writer's block, right? I don't write, I yap. In Americanized Hinglish. And there is nothing called a "yapper's block" that I am aware of. Regarding the detox part, well the blog is my detox, the other facets of my life is way too toxic in nature. You know toxins-toxins everywhere, many drops to drink and all that.
Cutting this crap and beginning with a different one.
Sitting in this screwed up hotel room in an obscure teen-tappal small town in the
Imagine spending the better part of the day deciphering strange accents, and the evenings sitting in the pathetic pigeonhole of a hotel room, surfing obscure TV channels, hunting for restaurants in over-sanitized streets without a living soul in sight, and drinking alone. As if I could die of this adrenaline charged, happening and ultra cool life. Sigh!
This is what makes me miss all the action back home. So much to yap about back home, how can anyone have a yapper's block? This month has been particularly interesting (again, which month is not?). As we jump from controversy to controversy, election to election, one goddamn cricket series to another, fillum to fillum we get all the fodder for yap-bloggers all year round.
Of late the
Yes, back home in
Another pile of crap, slightly on a tangent, goes like this.
I have completed an year of blogging a couple of months back. It has been quite an experience blogging here and a self appraisal is due. I think I will do a post about that too sometime soon- the iLand platform and also the kind of blogs around here.
In brief, without going too much into stuff like humility; let me confess that I rate myself a reasonably 'good' blogger (not great or excellent, though). Given the fact I have tried to yap about a variety of subjects and never really stuck to any particular genre, subject, agenda, intellect or class, I have not done too badly.
That is not bad for someone who finds the day-to-day, seemingly mundane happenings around us interesting enough for musings and conversations. Probably that explains my interest too, hoi polloi and riff raff, which I have not changed for quite some time and neither do I plan to change it in a hurry.
'nuff said.
PS. I may be irregular with my posts for some more time, but will try to read you whenever possible. Here's wishing you a Happy New Year in advance. Merry Christmas. Teri bhi Christmas.
