Ten million, and I was the fastest?

DELHI (Apr 30) Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the chronicles of one of the nation's supposedly crème de la crème.

This guy, India's hope, is trying to use his dashing new washing machine for the second time. All is hunky dory, the wash-cycle is on, only 38 minutes remain, the dude eats his dinner in peace, and waits for the washing to finish.

Only it doesn't. A trip to the machine reveals that it is stuck at 22 minutes and the rinse cycle is desperately trying to start. The spin cycle which comes after it has no chance in heaven. Totally flummoxed, the dude opens the lid and surveys the scene. Two seconds after watching the filthy goo floating around the tub, it strikes him. All his clothing posessions are in that tub, and if the #@%!@#$## machine doesn't resume, then his idea of Casual Tuesdays will become a tad more than just an idea.

Desperate, he tries Plan A, also known as the Microsoft Windows Plan. It involves switching the machine on and off rapidly enough to beat the living daylights out of the poor microchip but not fast enough to actually cause a meltdown. Just like Microsoft Windows, the plan doesn't work.

Switching to Plan B, he tries the mechanical way of things. That of physically knudging the tub clockwise to incite it to rotate. A gentle, and later, a harder nudge on the side is also added as an extra bit of measure. The tub, however, has other plans, mostly involving cosying up to the electric motor and spending quiet quality time of stillness amidst all the washing frenzy. Beads of nervous perspiration quietly form on the dude's forehead.

The time comes for Plan C. This mostly involves reading the manual (or RTFM as we comp geeks call it). Now real men never read the manual. Infact real men would rather sever their reproductive organs and neatly wrap them in cellophane than read the manual. The first thing that real men do when they buy an appliance is to roll joints from the manual's paper. But obviously real men haven't ever been forced in an only-baniyan-and-shorts-to-wear situation. So dude searches for the manual, only to discover that the manual is at a friend's house. Panic starts settling in, as even the internet refuses to locate an online manual. It is 10:45pm and uneasiness grips the dude, and understandably, he feels the need to use the restroom.

Plan D is now employed. It is not so much as a plan, rather a ritual. Consisting mostly of cuss words, about how this Indian nation can't prosper if they make crappy machines like these, and how LG sucks bigtime, and how he's gonna stick it to those lousy customer reps and service engineers, and how the dealer is gonna get more than an earful. The censor has a hard time bleeping out the diatribe. Totally exhausted after this verbal diarrhoea, the foolproof Plan E is now rolled into action.

That of physically transferring the clothes to a bucket and rinsing them manually. Totally shattered, the dude starts his ordeal and manages to clean all but one piece of cloth in a seemingly endless stretch of 20 minutes so far. It is then that he realizes that the drain pipe of the machine is still hooked vertically up instead of lying down by the drain.

Mixed feelings of euphoria, relief, shame, and anger rush in instantly. The Hindi phrase kaato-to-khoon-nahi seems apt for the situation. The drain pipe is unhooked, the cycle finishes, the machine beeps gleefully and everything is silent once more. Everything. Except the shattering of the pride.

Tomorrow I shall shave with Occam's razor.

The New Jersey Turnpike

[Warning: Not for those who are afraid of turnpikes, or for that matter, footnotes]

DELHI (Apr 12): Us citizens, tourists and expats living in this allegedly great nation have to ask this question once and for all: Do we have to report every lame-wad news such as this?

Now I have read the news that I trashed, and evidently managing the New Jersey Turnpike is a big thing. So, I will no longer trash the above mentioned news item, and instead recount what happened to be the eighteenth most memorable incident in my life ¹.

It so happened that during the last fourth of July weekend, I found myself in the New York City area. In the past, I have found myself explaining my driving to a cop, sharing a bed with a fellow friend, programming on a calculator or doing something equally disgusting, but this was different. I was in the US for a conference and halted in NYC at a friend's place. Well technically it was across the river in New Jersey, but thats one tinsy tidbit the East Coast NRIs conveniently forget to mention in their tourist brochures.

Another one of my friend was driving alone from Toronto, little knowing that he would initiate a ghastly sequence of events in the hours to come². Being a true follower of Murphy's Law, he covered 485 miles out of 500 without any glitch, making only one stop on the way -- to buy an adult diaper. It was at the crucial mile no. 485, that he decided that he was lost 'somewhere around the Alexander Hamilton Service Station' and called us to come pick him up. Now that was a wise thing to do (calling us, not getting lost), and one would assume that a rescue mission would be trivial. Well, one would assume wrong.

My NYC New Jersey friend and I took a cab and left for the fateful Alexander Hamilton Service Station (AHSS). After driving for 20 minutes, we realized that the Hispanic cabbie knew more about rap music (which was blaring loudly in our ears throughout)³ than the AHSS. Ofcourse, his prison tattoos and his 300 pound physique precluded any questions from our side. We figured that a guy like him would never need to go to a service station, he would just lift the car with one hand, look underneath the chassis and repair the fault with the other hand⁴.

So we reached the famous turnpike and saw a deadly sight. That of a zombie black African-American tollbooth operator waiting to pounce on us and rip our kidneys apart unless we paid the 1$ toll. After the driver duly paid the toll ⁵ and crossed over, he realized that he had come the wrong way. Two miles and a U-turn later, we paid the toll again, and precisely six minutes later, we landed at the exact tollbooth again, manned by the same operator from hell. Unfortunately, this was not our last rendezvous with the tollbooth, and like a toll-addict, we made six more stops at the exact same booth. The operator had begun to wonder if we wanted to ask him out but were too shy to ask. If anyone was watching from above, s/he would think that we were doing F1 laps, except that our Ford model cab was so dilapidated that even Henry Ford himself would have felt ashamed to step into it.

Meanwhile, our Canadian friend had called up a gazillion times asking for our status, liberally sprinkling his queries with the four letter word. So after swallowing his burrito and then his ego, the cabbie finally decided to ask a local for directions. Only that it was around midnight, and the local turned out to be a 60-year old African-American⁶ crack addict, and the neighborhood turned out to be a ghetto. I mentally prepared to ask the question -- "If you don't shoot or mug me or try to sell me crack, can I ask you where the AHSS is?", but luckily our cabbie did the honours -- by furiously banging on the crackhead's car and asking "YO!! 'SSUP? Y'ALL KNOW WHERE THE ALEXANDER HAMILTON STATION IS??". The dude pointed us towards the direction, and we drove off before he could ask us for any spare change.

All was finally well, we picked up our friend one hour after we had promised we would, and as a reward we got our butts kicked and got to eat his prized leftover chips. And for old times sake, we took the NJ Turnpike on the way back and paid a 1$ toll for, what I hope, the last time in my life.

¹ As an ex-IITian, I reserve the right to publish a highly mediocre book about my top ten, so don't wait up for me to blog about them. The title of the book will be on the lines of "Anything for a night with five point something ma'am at a call center", so something equally risque.

² Eight hours to be precise. He passed time via eating chips and refueling his car. Or did his car pass time by gorging on Lays and feeding him gasoline? I really cannot recall.

³ Thanks to rap music, I realized that every girl in New Jersey is a bitch or a ho'.

⁴ All the while eating a burrito. Yes, we believe in racial stereotyping. I have personally taken a 2-week stereotyping course.

⁵ For some reason, he had a roll of 1$ bills. We thought he was taking us to a stripclub containing some of them bitches and ho's.

⁶ Well la di da! I feel so politically correct now.

What makes you sicker?

[Warning: No humor, only rant. Read at your own risk.]

India's pre-mature exit from the World Cup? Or the thousands of post-mortem analyses written by nincompoops with access to a keyboard?

For me, it is the latter and in this post, I shall strive to join the abovesaid thousand idiots, but not by posting a why-I-think-India-lost. As an engineer, I know the fallacies in making a judgement from a handful of data (two losses). And frankly speaking, I watch cricket with the naivety of a three year old child. I have no idea what a green grassy pitch implies. I have no clue how reverse swing works (although I have read about it a couple of times, and I keep forgetting), and frankly I do not break any sweat over my ignorance of the technical aspects of the game. There! I said it.

What I do not understand is this: When India lost a series each to Sri Lanka and West Indies, and badly I might add, there were no such inane analyses. India lost four out of five games against West Indies, there is a lot you can say about the teams and their shortcomings based on this data. Now India lost one game apiece to two different teams, and suddenly every self-appointed know-it-all jerk in the nation seems to have a rock solid theory about what exactly the pain points were, based on only two games.

I am no fan of the Indian coach, or that idiot who has overstayed his welcome in the team (Sachin), but calling for their heads is totally uncalled for, based on these two games. We played, and we were outplayed on both the occasions. Get over it already! Why do we find it so hard to accept that one side has to lose, and unless we are not careful, that side will be ours. Thats all there is to it. Atleast for me, that seems to be simplest explanation.

Rat's behind and city rankings

[Warning: Longish Post. Sorry rahega.]

BOMBAY (12 Mar) Living in Delhi for 9 years and in Bombay for almost 2 has made me an expert in the hot emerging area of "city-comparison", according to people. Everywhere I go, I am swarmed with hordes of strangers who think that asking a Delhi vs Bombay question is a helluva icebreaker, which is really good because otherwise they would ask embarassing questions like "Is your wife in Bombay too?" (No such entity), and "How is your PhD?" (Excruciatingly slow). This post is dedicated to such noble creatures. I present some sample conversations; the dialogues marked "Them" are real, and the ones marked "Me" are the ones I would have really liked to make:

Them: Wow! Bombay eh? City of dreams? Bollywood-Shollywood eh? How many film stars have you seen?
Me: Oh I see them all the time. Living in an IIT hostel sure has its perks you see. My next door neighbour is Abhishek Bachchan, and I can hear him making threatening phone calls to the tree that Aishwarya married.
Them: Oh stop kidding! So tell me, have you witnessed any gangster shootouts there?
Me: Yes why not. I moonlight as a country liquor merchant in Dharavi and have shot a few non-paying customers myself. Ram Gopal Varma is dead-right about this gangster thingie. Everyone in Bombay is shooting either a film or a fellow gangster. Infact, Mumbai police provides every resident
with a revolver for self-defense.
Them: So how do you find Bombay as compared to Delhi?
Me: I will mail you a 500-word laminated report, so you can read my expert opinions at your leisure.

Them: DELHI!! SAHI HAI OYE, BALLE BALLE!!
Me: ...
Them: Balle Balle ummmm.
Me: I am waiting for the question.
Them: Oh I thought you are a Punjabi, aren't you?
Me: Yes, all Delhites are required by law to be Punjabi. Infact people from any other races are shot on sight. I, however, have Haryanvi roots.
Them: Still, its the same thing na?
Me: Yes, as interchangeable as Gujju and Marathi.
Them: I see. So you must have found Bombay culturally very....whats the word for it...different. Isn't it?
Me: Yes, at first I couldn't put my finger on it, but after a few months, I realized that I am in a different city.

Them: Yaar, Bombay girls are very easy going na? I mean not like these god-awful Delhi girls.
Me: My easy academic life has given me plenty of chances to talk to plenty of girls (three in all). One of them switched teams after talking to me, another one put her matrimonial plans on the fast track, and the third one refused to return my calls. So I have no conclusions.
Them: No, but its true na that Bombay girls don't refuse if you ask them for a dance, they flirt back, and are generally looking for a "good time". (This is usually accompanied by a wink, or if I am lucky, a nudge in the elbow, or both.)
Me: Well I don't know about that because I am usually denied stag entry in the clubs and paying a hefty cover charge is against my second principle. (My first principle is that a beer-night should never go by sober). And I think if I try to flirt with a girl, she will most probably interpret it as the initiation of a possible molestation.
Them: So how would you rate the girls in the two cities?
Me: You are not listening. My policy is that be it Delhi or Bombay, I don't bug the girls and they don't bug me. Until the time for marriage comes, when I will choose exactly one girl to bug for the rest of her life (or mine, whichever is shorter).

Them: Cool man! You live in Delhi. There are a lot of parks and stuff na?
Me: Yes, every house has a lawn, including my first floor flat.
Them: And there are a lot of cars too, right?
Me: Yes, Delhi is trying to beat Los Angeles in the cars per capita metric.
Them: And wide roads too!
Me: Sure that too. All roads in Delhi, including the bylanes and services lanes are twice the width of the Western Express Highway. And all Santros and Zens that are sold in Delhi are as wide as an ATR airplane. We sure have it going on in Delhi.
Them: Yeah yeah! We Bombayites pay 1/3 of the taxes and you Delhites reap the benefits. Not fair!
Me: There are two ways to remove this disparity. Either Delhi pays as much tax as Bombay or vice versa. Which one do you think is more feasible?

In all fairness though, I would never have the guts to say all this, because like everyone, I too would hate to be beaten up. Frankly, for me, both the cities suck and rock equally. The "spirit of Mumbai" provides as much fodder for laughter as "dil waalo ki Delhi". Whats that you say? Bombay is safer for women, including at night? Well we are working towards correcting that pal. Everyday, hundreds of our brethren are descending in Bombay from exotic places like Etawah, Rohtak, Azamgarh, Munger and Darbhanga to cater to the eve-teasing needs of the women in Bombay.

So as far as the Delhi vs Bombay question is concerned, I will answer that as soon as I get my face out of the armpit of my co-passenger and get off this local. It will most probably be that I don't give a rat's behind.

I will leave you with a Bombay FAQ for now:

Q. When does a Bombay-man get an orgasm?
A. When he finds an empty seat on the Churchgate-Virar fast local during rush hour.

Q. How do you know where a particular Mumbai guy hails from?
A. Pick up a fight with him. If he yells at you continuously for 43 minutes, he is a Marathi. If he argues with you for 2 minutes and leaves for his office, he is a Gujju. If he bashes you up and gives you multiple fractures, he is a Sikh cab driver from Sion Koliwada. If he sends goons to beat you up, he is Bal Thackeray (a mutant sample of the Marathi population).

Q. What should I eat when I am in Bombay?
A. The food ordinance permits only Vada Pao and Dhokla. If tea must be partaken, it should be asked for in units of "cutting". Asking for just "ek chai" will make you look like a damn fool from Delhi.

Q. Why are Marathi food portions so small?
A. So that you have room for the main course -- Vada Pao and Dhokla.

Q. Can't I just drive to work everyday in Bombay?
A. Sure, if your office operates only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Q. REALLY!! Does it take ONE DAY to commute??
A. No. You will reach your office in three hours tops. But it will take you another fifteen to find a parking space.

Q. Where in Bombay, can I get, ummm..., you know, get physical with the ladies?
A. Try entering the ladies compartment of any local during rush hour. You will get more than you bargained for.

Anatomy of an Indian Bachelor Party - II

BOMBAY (Feb 22) This is the second installment of a two-part post on the tradition of the Great Indian Bachelor Party (BP).

Hmmm, so where were we? Yes, we, i.e. the friends of the soon to be ex-bachelor were ruing the fact that hiring strippers in India is not only illegal, but also impossible for mortal folks.

So the BP minus the lady starts like any other party on the block. One by one, the visitors start trickling in. The ones already inside the house look at the door in eager anticipation that somehow a stripper has been magically procured, while the ones entering (who bear no resemblance to a stripper I might add) invariably ask -- "Aw man! You guys didn't arrange for any ladies tonight!!" with the nonchalance that only pimps and dandies possess.

The rest of the night is planned out to consist of three major events --- raunchy music and dance, porno talk and last but not least, borderline homoerotica. The third event is often used as a substitute for strippers, and all objections and complaints against it are usually drowned in a pool of alcohol. Now, the chronological sequence of these three events is usually decided impromptu, judging by the "mood" of the party, but often it is also dictated by the loudest (and usually the most drunk) member of the group. For the sake of brevity, we shall call this member LM. Note that the identity of LM changes continuously with the passage of time and the drinks tray.

Now to get the mood started, some nice chap, may God curse his soul, plays such an item number that any man worth his testosterone would need atleast half a litre of alcohol to gyrate on it. Shining examples of such songs are -- Mera chain wain sab ujdaa (aka Kajra re), Chadhti jawani meri chaal mastaani, and Husn ke hazaar rang..kaunsa rang dekhoge. After fulfilling the minimum drink requirement for these songs, a bunch of guys hit the dance floor usually in the form of a central dancer aka the alpha male, who is surrounded on all sides by the "extras" aka the beta males who try to seduce the alpha male with their *hot* dance moves.

A word is in order about the dance moves here. These moves would never see the light of the day if it were not for these BPs. Mature sober men turn into orang-utangs, and the bold and naughty ones metamorphosize into a deadly mix of Amrish Puris and Gulshan Grovers. Random hands grab random waists, and cozy ballroom dancing ensues, periodically interrupted by lusty thumkas. Oodles of pot-belly flesh are paraded in public when a few banians are taken-off/ripped-off the dancers, initiated usually by the LM. In short, such choregraphic masterpieces are created that would make even Rakhi Sawant snort her ugly little nose with disgust. Ofcourse, like in every alcohol-aided dance party, there are people who take undue physical advantage of others, this time without paying any heed to the gender parity.

During this moment, all the fencesitters, who are trying to look casual by sipping gracefully on their drinks and making light banter, are secretly thinking -- "Shit! If I enter this dance-floor of death, I will definitely lose my virginity the wrong way tonight!". They resist all attempts by the alpha-beta male dancers to pull them into their midst, using excuses like "Aw its ok, I gotta get me a drink first" and "No you guys go ahead, you guys rock! Woohoooo!!", while the drunkard inviter goes "kjdgjkhag lmjf gjhh eqoiowe, kajra re! kajra re! mera kaale kaale naina!" twisting his not-so-supple waist the entire time.

I should state here that all efforts notwithstanding, by the end of the song and dance sequence, there is not a single soul in the group who hasn't been fondled and groped by his fellowmen. So, one way or the other, all the gropers and gropees are slightly tired at this time, which leads the party into Phase 2.

Phase Two deals with all the BP folks, having put their banians (or shreds thereof) back on, calmly resting around the TV set. A poll is now taken as to whether the time is ripe for doing a pondi-quiz or watching a pondi movie. Now we all know about pondi movies, don't we? So I won't say too much about them, except that watching a pondi movie with twenty other chaps is perhaps the sorriest sight ever! I will not discuss the pondi-quiz too, lest my blog is swarmed by sex-addicts and is perma-filtered by blogspot. But just to give you a brief idea, at the end of the quiz, one realizes that all his friends are perhaps the most perverted sickos to walk the planet, and hence, are perfect companions and equals.

Finally, after all this is over, enters the optional Phase Three. This is the deadliest phase of them all. It decides whether one will return home like a normal man (viz. more than half-dressed and with atmost 1 litre of alcohol inside), or like a naked homeless guy. For you see, this is the free-for-all phase, where one is allowed to do almost anything to anyone. And that includes dousing with alcohol (but not setting on fire, thats not cool), re-ripping the banians or even shorts, wrestling, and even doing stuff that is driven by hormones. I personally didn't have the misfortune to find out more about Phase Three, but I have seen pictures, and my life has never been the same again, to say the least.

This brings me to the end of the BP. I must admit now, that I have broken the first commandment of the BP, viz. you don't talk about BP. As a punishment, I might be murdered, or worse, cast as the alpha-male in the next BP. And to that I say:

The BPs are gruesome, cruel, and *beep*,
But I have many invitations to keep,
And thousands of banians to purchase before I sleep,
And thousands of banians to purchase before I sleep.

Anatomy of an Indian Bachelor Party - I

[Warning: Longish post. Will be posted in two installments]

BOMBAY (29 JAN): If you have a friend getting married and have been given the onerous burden of throwing a bachelor party for him, or if you are a non-Indian looking to mock us Indians, then look no further because the buck stops at this post.

The Bachelor Party (BP) is yet another Americanism that has been twisted and amalgamated into the Indian society, much like the Kadahi-Paneer Pizza and McAaloo-Tikki burgers. During the import of this noble concept, many of the aspects have been altered or dropped and new ones have been added to cater to the needs of the Indian males.

As a member of the elite group, who has attended one such party and missed two, I consider this as my duty to reproduce factual accounts of what actually happens behind closed doors in such scenarios.

The saga usually begins with discussions over beer (another priceless import), and two guys are nominated whose sole job is to generate excitement about the BP, about how good its going to be, and how anyone who doesn't attend the BP is such a loser that he shouldn't have come out of his mama's womb. You could say that they are almost, but not as good as, the Microsoft PR and Marketing professionals. Such guys are usually required to have a superficial knowledge of the black-ghetto vocabulary, and anyone who has lived in South Central Los Angeles or New York Harlem is a natural qualifier. You can expect these fine human beings to spout periodic utterances like "yo dawg! This parteh is gonna rock!" or "We gonna pimp tonight dude!" and so on.

By this time, people are so excited about the party that they start peeing their pants off, consequently causing an increase in the sales of Lee and Levis. Adult diapers have yet to take off in this country, it seems. Anyway, I digress, but the point is that by this time, every virgin in the group starts believing that this night is his night, and every veteran thinks that he is gonna have that elusive menage-a-trois for sure.

The next step involves planning the logistics, which in India means arranging for Old Monk, Royal Stag and Romanov, along with 10 kilos of namkeen and 5 kgs of Paneer Tikka. In the ten days leading to the BP, the drama increases exponentially, with lunch room banters, urinal conversations revolving about the party instead of "that hot new chick in HR, who, I am positive is giving me the eye".

However, as the days pass by, it becomes the duty of every guy in the group to moan about the fact that how not being able to hire strippers sucks. The virgins are usually the most vocal in voicing this complaint. This is usually followed by brainstorming session on "what to do now?".

The answer to this question varies from city to city. In Bombay, till last year, it meant going to a dance bar with a few wads of Rs 10 notes. In Delhi, it meant and still means going to the sole cabaret place in the city where it seems Rs 50 can buy you "Sharara Sharara" (a sleazy Indian song, admired by all desperadoes including married men). Yeah I know, it is not the same, but it is pretty much what you can do short of traveling in a cab adorned with blue-tubelights (Bombay), and driving past Connaught Place at night with the car windows rolled down (Delhi).

However, the BP organizers are an enterprising bunch. They are usually not bothered with trifling minor irritatants such as the lack of a stripper ruin it for them. Their 'improvisations', for the lack of a better word, will be described in the second part of the post. This, and much more, when we return after these messages.

I am alive

BOMBAY (Feb 7): No, all ye faithful readers of this blog, I am neither dead nor without an internet connection. I was and still am busy with a paper submission deadline. Sigh! the things that people do in the name of higher studies. In order to not lose my meagre readership, I thought of giving a not-so-brief update.

I turned 27 a couple of weeks ago, amidst considerable fanfare, sponsored by my partners in crime at IIT. A couple of eggs were gifted to me, in the hope that atleast one of them would find its way on top of my scalp, but my ninja moves ensured that it was not to be. Some highly unconventional gifts were received, including one that questioned my sexuality, but moi loved them all equally nonetheless. This was the first of the series of birthdays that I have officially decided to hate. Twenty seven, as it turns out, is on the wrong side of twenty five, especially for a single man suffering from hairloss.

In other personal news, I managed to finish the Mumbai marathon in a decent (for me) 2 hrs 14 mins and this is the last sentence I will write about it, lest you all tie me to a stake and burn me for this shameless piece of self-advertising.

Finally, an old undergrad friend of mine has started a blog. So if you came here looking for examples of good penmanship, then please proceed further. I, for one, am looking forward to discussing gay topics like HTML templates, comment moderation, lack of readers and low pagerank with him. Ofcourse mutual backscratching in the form of inter-blog comments with him is tacit.

Asterix
PS: I had drafted the first half of a post on a topic, which I feel is spicy and cheap enough to attract comments. No wait, not just spicy, but TOI spicy. Something that the esteemed newspaper would be proud to carry on their front page. So please look out. And as usual, thanks for stopping by.