Gabbar, Thakur, and the rest of them

"How many men were they?"
"Two, chief."
"Hmm... They were two. You were three. Despite that you are back. What did you think? Chief will be happy? Will slap your backs? Sons of swines!!!"

Sadly, this is what my posts have been reduced to - making impressions of classic, immortalised dialogues of the holy grail of Indian cinema, Sholay. That is not to say that it has not been done in the past. In fact, that is what makes it such a nadir of creativity. When your brain cells are completely dead, you turn to Sholay.

Self-loathing aside, what made me allocate some disk space to Sholay on my blog was this bolt of enlightenment I was hit by a couple of nights ago after some frenzied sexual activity. Well, yours truly is now a married man. And that means he has the social licence to do it whenever, wherever though, unfortunately, not whoever. Ah, the vagaries and travails of life!

Driving the point home, or at least making an exercise in slipping to the abyss of writing by using phrases as hackneyed as this, the question to ask is whether Gabbar really cut off Thakur's hands. I know in the movie they show us he did. But then, they show a lot of things in the movies. We can't go around believing everything we see on celluloid, can we? What if Gabbar did not cut off Thakur's hands? Does that not leave a new line open for alternate thought?

Picture this. Gabbar has Thakur by his balls, not literally of course. The only way out is for Thakur to give Gabbar a handjob, literally of course. Thakur, like any man facing a life and death situation does what any man facing a life and death situation would do. It was not the handjob that was disgusting. It was the aftermath of it. Not everyone is smart enough to use as hair gel a body fluid that has had no precedent of being used this way before Cameron Diaz. The fluid spills over Thakur's hands. And Thakur was so grossed out by it that he could never bring himself to use his hands again. Ever.

Now, that sounds like a logical explanation.

Much ado about nothing

Guys like me can make their entire careers out of making mountains out of mole hills. No wonder then that it has never happened. Partly because as a race we do not appreciate mountains enough, but mostly because there aren't guys like me. And do we even want to get started talking about me? We could but then we would never get to the point where the conversation ends, such is my all pervading aura that binds those around me. How aura should relate to end points in conversation I cannot elucidate as of this moment. Suffice to say, that it is there. The aura, that is.

Now that we have brought that thought out in the open, I am not sure there is anything that as a race we appreciate enough. As a non-race? Well, that is completely left open to interpretations depending on one's predilections. What those interpretations and predilections should be I should not say. Not that I 'cannot' say, I 'should' not say for there is not much that I believe I won't be able to say about. But if you believe that keeping your mind open and your legs closed if you happen to be a woman or your legs open and your mind closed if you happen to be a man is the road to eternal happiness and bliss then I must say that someone went wrong terribly somewhere or something went wrong'ly' terribly somewhere, depending on (what else?) your predilections.

For the longest time, there has been this eternal confusion about predilection and predisposition. I am not one to rant and rave over incorrect usage of words. I usually bite anyone's head off who does not know the basic nuances of language. Say for instance, the difference between beside and besides. I would definitely love to sleep beside Mary should Mary happen to be a smoking hot biologically active woman. And I would definitely more than love to sleep besides Mary should Mary happen to be a cold frigid maid. If you don't get the difference now, you are never going to get it in which case you will probably end up sleeping beside a cold frigid Mary, and sleep besides the smoking hot biologically active one.

Followers of my blogs (I am not sure she is alive any more - may her soul rest in peace - but it is the thought that counts, right?), would recollect that there are things in the paragraph above that I have already stated before. Actually, they wouldn't for anyone with a memory span greater than that needed to remember where the bookmarks are stored would have a life. That would make the exercise of sojourning on these pages redundant unless they are one of those self-righteous masochistic sods.

PS: This post is dedicated to Twigrl. She seems to be the only reader I have left. Attagirl!

Losing my religion

There are events in a man's life that make him lose his faith - painful heartbreaks, bankruptcy, and E! becoming a subscription channel. Note that I have spoken entirely in the masculine gender on a blog that is completely anti-sexist. No, I have not changed my outlook. I am only talking about the male of the species.

Why don't we talk about men? All 'they' seem to be bothered about is the fairer sex - glass ceiling at workplaces, unequal pay, exploitation, trafficking, etc. Has anyone ever thought about the everyday agony of men? Trying to find a pair of matching socks, dishes piled a mile high, eating without the tie getting into the soup bowl, getting through office firewalls to find the good internet porn, picking out curtains that go with the sofa? Okay. Strike the last one. Let us pretend I never said it and move on.

In the midst of all this, there is an image to cater to. We are not supposed to cry during a movie. So what if I cry buckets even in movies that can only be termed plain pathetic? At least I don't not cry in movies that are truly moving. No pun intended, intentionally or otherwise. That brings us to a bigger question. Is something happenning better than something not never happenning? Sample this.

An optimist and a pessimist are walking down a street. A pigeon does its thing on the optimist, and he is smiling about it. The pessimist looks at him quizzically. Basically gives him the 'you must be freaking out of your mind, gone bananas, lost your marbles' look. The optimist is simply happy that elephants can't fly. This goes beyond the 'half empty and half full' shenanighan. It is plain nuts. QED.

Except that, there is more. There is always more with me around. More not sugarcoating, presenting things as they are. That is why children are so difficult to please. They see things for what they are and not for what you want to make them out to be. There is nothing more misleading than the phrase 'child-like innocence'. 'Grown-up ignorance' is more like it.

Spoon and Lemon

Some of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths. I am not sure why anyone would want to be born that way. Does it not get in the way of breast feeding? Come to think of it, may be that is why the silver spoon people have traits of retards, delinquents, sex offenders, child molesters, serial killers or a multitude of other things that even I consider unprintable. That does not happen. Ever. That is not to be constructed to mean that I don't consider many things unprintable. I do. I print them anyway.

For instance, my sojourn in a strip club. I would never have put that in black and white, or in zeroes and ones as is the case here, had it not been on this space since this is a space where I consider nothing about myself unworthy of being put on. Besides, the very notion of losers being the only frequenters in a strip joint is as real as George Bush's balls for the green you splurge can only rival Swiss bank account balances.

Having used two most over-abused metaphorical references in this day and age, and topping it up with a phrase only more hackneyed than 'From time immemorial' (which is not all that cliched save for the teeny weeny fact that I have used it often enough to cause permanent brain damage in a friend of mine) things can only go one one way. Downhill. And not only as far as the quality of this post is concerned. My life too. But that is not something people are usually bothered about.

Even if I have said this before, I am jaw-droppingly apalled at the increasingly falling standards that we have started making peace with. As if the boy bands were not enough proof of the decandence of the human race, we now have the onslaught of the ugly people to contend with. Lest anyone should misconstrue that statement (a feat that would need the thought capacity of an amoeba or that of Einstein depending on the level of misconstruing), I am a staunch believer in having only beautiful people in showbiz. Seriously. Fat rappers? Balding newscasters? Wrinkled grammy winners? Or Oprah Winfrey? Hyuk! There used to be a world where genetically favourably disposed people ruled. What have we done in the name of progress?

To mangle a quote from 'The Third Reich', a thousand years shall pass and the guilt of equality shall not be erased.

Save the planet

'Save water - shower with a friend'. Oh, the brilliance of that statement! It almost pardons the travesty of making covers of eternally immortal songs. Almost, not quite, especially when it is a Floyd cover. But that did make me think of the friends I would love to share the shower with. Perv, am I? No. Just a man.

Statistically, a man spends one-third of his waking hours thinking of sex. No wonder that statistics are like bikins - what they reveal is exciting but what they conceal is vital. Men don't trash their time on such banal activities. They make the best of it. The remaining two-thirds is spent thinking of ways to think of sex.

Over the last almost twenty six years that I have spent on this planet (I say 'this' planet because whatever I did outside it is irrelevant) I have come to the one conclusion that usually takes years of dedicated meditation to come to. Thought is the cause of all suffering. Any surprise then that there is a phrase in the English language for it - Eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas. Well, okay. No context there either. But is not a beautiful statement made out of context better than an ugly one made in context?

There is not much I can say about this post except that making it felt like a good idea at the time. That and it was Sunday evening. Outside of a Monday morning, the Sunday evening is the most clinically depressing time of the week. You are too wasted with all the drinking on Saturday to go out, and too bored with all the cranial atrophy to keep your sanity. The latter does not apply to me. I lost mine a long time ago - it is easier to live that way. And I rather enjoy intellectual inactivity. What I enjoy even more, however, is vanity. Shocking then that I have never mentioned it on this space. At least not in a vehemently offensive way. Anything else does not count.

Shall we dance? Over my dead body! No, no. I have nothing against dancing. I rather enjoy it myself. But that movie was sickeningly mushy, and I say that despite not having seen it. Make no mistake. I am a sucker for those over the top mushy romantic comedies that the dream merchants dish out to us off an assembly line. I draw the line at 'How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days'. And only because I saw it in a theatre where I was the only man. Everyone else was a woman.

Whoa! That was nearly as emphatic as 'Indira Gandhi was the only man in her cabinet' descriptive. And yes. As Einstein said, 'Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love'. Neither is Sir Isaac Newton who in his most famous speech said all of two words three times, "I conceive. I conceive. I conceive." It took a woman to tell him of the futility of that sermon. He conceived thrice and produced nothing, and a woman conceived once and produced Newton.

Hair today gone tomorrow...

They say a Nation can show her might but for this she has to fight. Who are 'they'? And why do they keep saying things? Kirsten Dunst did manage to satiate a part of my curiosity when she said that 'they' are the inimitable collective or something of the sort in Elizabethtown - a silly romantic flick starring the chick Orlando Bloom.

That reminds me of facial hair. Basically, of guys who need to keep facial hair to constantly restate their fledgling manhood. I know of at least two of the male species who are like that - Aftab Shivdasani and Abhishek Bachchan. And not only am I not in the habit of mentioning anyone by their names on this blog for the very simple reason that even my whining gives them a higher rating on search engines, I don't ever wear a habit either. Whether that statement is grammatically correct is questioning (I have read and re-read it a thousand times over and I still am not certain of its grammatical integrity) but I am too darn fogged up to reconstruct. So it shall stand as it is, which is a first. It is also a testimony to the standards I am now willing to put up with. Perhaps five and a half months of celibacy does that to a man.

I don't like hair of any kind unless they happen to be on the head of bald women. Since I have not come across bald women other than those who have gone bald of their own volition, I can't say that I like hair. I certainly don't like armpit hair (really, what was Julia Roberts thinking when she wore that lovely dress on unshaved armpits!), and I don't want to talk about hair in the nether regions. I shall only say this to all the women out there, 'if you don't want men to treat you like animals then please don't look like one down there'.

Being a man has its advantages. For one, we can pee standing up. We can pretty much pee anywhere we want. And we can pee just for the heck of having a contest. Not like I am saying that I do any of these things or even that I do not. But that is about the only upside of being a man. Whoever says it is a man's world has no idea what she is talking about. Look around you. Who does the world belong to? Brock Lesner or Jessica Simpson's perfect breasts?

And with that, I rest my case.

A lotta nonsense...

Oh, well. The last two days have been spent under house-arrest. And, no. That is not to be taken to mean literally. My life is not that exciting. Sad!

This one time I am being sensible about it all. That is the difference. The gubernatorial elections were held on Saturday. What amazes me, nay baffles me, is the sheer gazzel-like swiftness with which the results were declared. On Sunday! See, I am from India where we use Electronic Voting Machines. Even those take about twice as much time to pronounce the verdict - the calculations are checked, re-checked, and then checked a few times more just to be absolutely sure. And here they could manage to hand count the paper ballots in a jiffy. Fast, like George Bush in the Lincoln bedroom.

Forty-eight hours of confinement makes a man think. He starts to wonder about the existential theories of treadmills that clock a lot of mileage without getting anywhere, of the futility of intelligent conversations that have the power to enthral but leave you with that sense of longing, and of the brilliance of Baywatch. In short, he starts to question all that is of no consequence whatsover. With the exception of Baywatch. That show started a whole new debate on the importance of floatation devices, sun tan oils, and skin cancer. Well, the first two anyway.

Either I have a sense of appreciation for a varied spread or I have no opinion of my own and choose to be moulded by the elements. The other day I watched Dirty Dancing and Blood Diamond in quick succession, and the day before that I went for 300. Loved them all. 300 left me with goose-pimples, Blood Diamond filled me with a sense of speechless frustrating despair, and Dirty Dancing gave me that glow of a pregnant woman. Sometimes, I am not certain if I am coming or going. At others, I am in a conundrum over sugar and cream. And occasionally, I talk sense.

Like today. I opted for Indomie with egg over Khichidi. Okay, not many would label that sense. But they would not have the complete context of there being no Ghee and Dahi at home. Khichidi without Dahi, Papad, Ghee and Achar is like having sex without a condom. The pleasure is not considerably greater but the thought of potentially contracting STDs means you spend many a night tossing and turning. Just not worth it.

Instead, I will tell you what is worth it. Nothing. Nothing is worth anything other than itself. We all pay for the consequences of our actions. There is no escaping karma. But there is escaping mediocrity. And with that thought, I shut up.

Vodka, Rum or Me?

Those who know me, and I mean really really know me, are aware that I am usually one for making tall claims. It is a different matter completely that I, more often than not, live up to those claims. But when I make a claim to the only woman who I have never had anything but platonic thoughts about, and I do something completely to the contrary, then that is something to be reckoned with. In fact, it is more a force to reckon with than Naomi Campbell bending over in that oh-so-hot pic in German HQ.

The claim is not important. Well, it is. But I am not up for discussing it on this day in time. Or night, depending on which side of the international date line you are on. But the fact remains that I am in serious danger of becoming one of those I despise. They are the ofay people. Put simply, they are those who behave like Simi Garewal does in that schtick of a show of hers called Rendezvous. Sample this. Whenever I can blow my trumpet, I do. It is either the house I live in is fabulous or, wait, I just got the bedrooms carpeted. Look at me. I am so cool, types. Wouldn't you love to kill me? Or if you are kinky enough, make love to me!

That said, let us not walk down the road of making love. I have been bloody celibate the last few months, and much of it is of my own volition. Basically, I am in love. Yes, yes. I have already dedicated enough disk space to proclaiming it to the whole wide world, or at least that part of the world that happens to chance upon these pages. But the thing is this. I am at a place where I am happy with the way things are, even if she has made it more than clear that I am standing against on-coming traffic. And, though I have said it before on this space, didn't The Architect say, 'Hope. It is the quintessential of all human emotions consequently the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.'?

At any rate, when you have had as much Vodka and Rum as could otherwise have taken care of the needs of a small country, even if that country happens to be Vatican City, then it is completely pardonable if your fingers choose to type against the grain of your thoughts. Seriously, are there any thoughts once an alcohol-induced mindfreeze sets in? Then again there is no mindfreeze as of this moment, provided I am not held accountable for whatever has been said so far or will be said from this point on.

Pity that I have to resort to old theories to fill up pages these days. Or what is that stupid song? Nikamma kiya is dil ne... Now I know how.

Stupid E!

When E! makes a list of the 101 most shocking moments in entertainment and chooses to place Michael Jackson's burning hair ahead of the day the music died you know that the world is no more a safe place to live in. Well, when you start watching E! you know that, safe or unsafe, you are no longer sane enough to live in the world.

Good for me then that I have neither been sane nor been alive. But more about that later. Partly because I like keeping people guessing. Mostly because I have no idea how to go about reasoning that. As a friend of mine once told me after he made a grotesquely unbelievable statement, "I have said it. I will think and tell you how it can be." And voila what do you know! He actually managed to give me a plausible explanation. Don't expect that of me, though.

Whoa! That was my first non-woman quote on this blog outside of the person being Douglas Adams. That really does not mean that I have oodles of respect for him. I have called him non-woman after all. Just that quoting him felt like a good idea at the time, and I don't like using the backspace key. I would much rather go back on what I say. There is a certain charm in doing that.

The same way there is no charm in feeling exilarated during a world cup cricket game not because the underdog is winning but because the team you hate is losing. But there is not much else that charmless people do. Either way, do they have to take it to the extreme by strutting around the house in flaming red tracks and a white vest? And that when they happen to be men? Hyuk! Not satisfied with that they keep up with their endless chatter. Blah blah blah blah blah.

What do you do when you come across the matrimonial ad for someone you know? Probably no different than making such extremely disconnected statements. No, seriously. Do you tell the guy she was dating that her parents have put her on the marriage market? Or do you hold back for reasons of preserving personal dignity? Who would want to be known as the kind of person who reads matrimonial advertisements? Especially when they appear in the Sunday papers! More importantly, what are you supposed to do if the ad is for the girl you want to spend the rest of your life with? Obviously she is willing to go through the pains of screening three million guys just so she does not end up with you. Does it mean you are really pathetic or is she being plain stupid? Questions. Questions. Questions.