Ordinary Sunday musings

It’s amusing to watch TV on the day next to a world cup final. Apparently, all men who had ever been near a cricket bat had been shaken out of their beds , shipped to the studio , offered free coffee and salted biscuits and told by the director “Ok guys , now just talk , but do not pick your noses .You are on TV.”

So there was a man with a cumulative experience of seven minutes (Including a drinks break) in being on field in international cricket , clearing his throat , scratching his left ear and saying “Well..ahem..based on my experience as a player , I would say Australia is the best team right now .”

Not to be outdone , and with a burning desire to impress all the ladies from his colony watching this show , the other guy on the panel who could not tell a cricket stump from an electric pole to save his wife , commented ‘Yeah , and trust me when I say this , Gilchrist’s 149 played a huge role in this victory .”


So while these men who think a leg cutter is some ancient chinese torture mechanism spent the day discussing things my three year old nephew could tell , I spent the day reading a book , cleaning my apartment , doing dishes and watching MTV on the telly . I know the part about cleaning my apartment and doing the dishes would have appealed massively to the ladies reading this blog, so yes, I am pretty much husband material.

In another incident , recently a friend told me only ‘Creeps’ go to a movie alone . In fact , she being a girl , did not say ‘Creep’ , she said ‘Creeeeeeep’ , reaffirming my faith in girly pronunciation .

So , if her definition is to be believed , I have been a creep , and a double creep . For the second time in a week , I went to a movie alone . But blame it on a disturbed childhood or too much FTV , I actually enjoy being alone . Just to wait in the café outside the hall with the ipod and a cold coffee for company , it is like watching a range of different lives . There would be young couples who come only to sit on the corner seats , whisper things , giggle and say things like Hehehe,Sshhh,Abhi nahi , chodo bhee , haath mat pakdo . There would be fully loaded families which are a dream for Suraj Badjatya and a nightmare for family planning commission with the Dad asking loudly “Sabke paas ticket hai na ?” , the ladies trying to count the kids while the kids appear all happy and say “Mummy ! sabse aage wali seat lena !.” There would be the college boys who laugh loudly , check out anything that moves and resembles a girl and laugh again .

Not wanting to detail it too much , watching so many different people , with their different lives , needs , attitudes as they walk into that hall is interesting to me , maybe , in a strange way .

Coming to the movie – TaraRumPum , I went pretty numb by the intermission due to a storyline which seemed like a desi remix of The Cinderella Man . To make sure I walk out with no faith in humanity , the guy sitting next to me decided it was perfectly legal to stick out his elbows till I was sitting in a space a coke bottle wont fit into. And I won’t even mention I could not find a single auto after the show and had to walk 4 kilometers with unshaven , scratchy men commenting on my curvy legs.

Anyway , no self respecting young man blogs at 2 in the morning , so will I wrap this up now . I admit I need to reply to comments , and I shall not rest till I do that . Starting from this post , I shall reply to all the comments . I knew I said the same thing when the last post went up , and I myself say my photo should be included in the official definition of procrastination.

And one last thing . Earlier this day , while browsing the net for something young single men generally browse in their free time , I read that Mandira Bedi has apologized for wearing a saree with the Indian flag featuring below her waist . For those who were not too busy drooling at Katrina Kaif in Namastey London , in a scene from the movie , the wind blows away Rishi Kapoor’s lungi revealing his underpants made out of the Union Jack , the national flag of UK . If the British shared even half of the nationalist fervour we Indians exhibit , by now the British army would have cleaned up Rishi Kapoor ( with emphasized damage to what was underneath the union jack ) , Akshay Kumar , Katrina Kaif ( Or maybe , they would have taken her to Charles ) , and the rest of the movie unit , down to the last spot boy . I mean , we Indians really need to find something to do , or we will just keep harassing girls who are brave enough to host a cricket show without knowing anything about cricket .

Naya , naya, naya , teeveeeeeeeeeeeeee.....

If you read the last post here , and more importantly , since then did not undergo some ‘bada hee bhari sadma’ which took away your ‘yaddasht hamesha hamesha ke liye ’ , you would remember that there was something wrong with the sound of my TV at my apartment . I mean , the sound of the TV had gone poof . Star movies dekhne mein tho problem nahi thee , because I did not understand what they were saying anyway , and the himesh videos actually felt better without the voice , but I was missing out on all the hindi movies .

So the owner of my apartment took away the telly to get it repaired. It had been three long days and three long nights without a TV for me when I unlocked the door and walked in after office today. And there it was , a gleaming Philips 52 inch flat TV sitting proudly on the trolley in my living room.( 52 inch hee lag raha hain , kaafi bada hai , Adnan Sami and Arjuna Ranatunga dono saath saath iske andar reh sakte hain ). So it was like , a Bunty who entertained himself by playing saanp seedi had been given a Xbox. It was like a nerd who had last talked to a girl in 1984 had suddenly found a Sridevi sitting on his bed , complete with the ‘haldi wala doodh’ ka glass on the side stool . So all those reading this , please pause for a moment , close your eyes , look up at the stars ( Oye , eyes close karne ke baad stars ko look kaise karoge ?) , and send a little thanks to the owner of my apartment .

And after a long time , something went perfectly fine in my life . After spending almost an year in Kerala , where I ate so much dosa sambar that during the last blood test they found sambar in my veins and the nurses saved it for some flavor during dinner , I have been transferred to Delhi . So all you Delhi guys , lock your girlfriends in refridgerators , for the hottest guy in the country is coming to your town . ( Abbe sacchi , you should have met me when I caught that 103 degree fever in 2003 , I was so , so , hot .) And as I type this , I see the South African team is struggling like a Mahima Chaudhary surrounded by the izzat looting trio of Amrish Puri , Gulshan Grover and Shakti Kapoor . At 98-7 , these guys need to be Shaktiman clones to beat the aussies from here . So considering a Aussie-Lankan final this time around , I will be rooting the Lankans . Australia tho itna door hain , Sri Lanka tho ekdum India ke bajoo mein hain . So I will be hoping our friendly neighbourhood Lankans take away the cup. Apne paas biwi nahi tho kya hua , padosi kee biwi dekh kar hee khush ho lenge na.

Ayyyyyyyyyyyyye Huzoor , pehchana mujhe ? Nahi ? Arre , samjho na , kuch tho samjho na . This is me , Himesh , before I threw away my shaving razor , put on a topi , and decided to show the bilady kuttas of my colony that they are not the only ones who can howl . Ab main bhee aise howl karta hoon ki mohalle ki sabse pyari bitch bhee attract hokar ghar ke saamne aa jati hain .

And one thing I am awaiting as desperately as Engineering students await the kissing scene in a Emran Hashmi movie , is the biggest blockbuster of the year , which is going to blow away the ‘cap’ from the dark and brooding ‘mohabbat ke zakhm’ his heart carries , is Himesh Bhai’s - “Aap Ka Suroor”.

( Abhi ticket book kara le bhai , early bird prize hain ek shaandaar leather topi autographed by Himesh bhai himself )

The country may laugh at him , there are endless jokes about his topi , people imagine everything from a tattoo saying “mera sar takla hain’ to a size 10 footprint under his cap , and his voice sends the colony dogs into a frenzy who fear a new entrant into their territory , but in spite of all this , I am sure a lot of people will go and watch his upcoming movie , even if just to have fun at his cost .And that brings in the moolah . Thus , underneath that tattered white cap which says Banana Republic on the front , I see a very astute and smart brain .

And last week , for the first time in my life , I watched a movie alone – The Namesake .(Haan Haan I know that sounds creepy , but Kerala mein akela rehta hoon tho movie saath jaane ke liye kya Priyanka Chopra kee wax statue lekar jaun ?) . The good part about watching a movie alone is that nobody bothers you.When the heroine and the hero are looking into each others eyes searching for eye infection and slowly moving their lips closer , there is no friend on the next seat who pokes his elbow crushing three of your ribs and whispers “Abbe kasam banana wale kee , kissi aane waleee hain !” and you say "accha ? Mujhe laga badminton khelne wale hain". So when alone , you can watch the ‘kissi’ in silence and wonder why the hero needs to be paid for doing such scenes .

Abbe gudgudi singh , MTV pe Himessss Bhai is crooning “Tere binn dil naiyyo lagda” with so much pain in his eyes , I feel like pushing a couple of pain killer tablets under his eyelids .So bhaiyon aur behanon , abhi main bhee apna dard apne dil mein samet kar log off kar leta hoon .And as a friend told me , I think I will resume replying to comments from this post onwards .But now , it’s time I enjoy the extreme machine my new TV is. Bhagwan mere apartment owner ko Himesh ki movie ki do tickets dilaye.

Karate that Racist Dog !

What would you do if after a tiring day of minimizing solitaire windows and installing yahoo messenger at office , you get back home at 8.30 in the night , ring the doorbell of your apartment , and the apartment caretaker ( who , by the way , is a mallu . Racist me.) answers the door with an expression which is on the lines of ‘hai-mai-lut-gayi-barbaad-ho-gai’ and says..

“Saar..TV..speak..go.”

If you are a 6’3” broad shouldered north Indian ‘tired-after-office’ guy , you yell “What the duck are you trying to say?” , and without waiting for the answer , smash his nose with your laptop case just like Sunny Deol , and walk in as he lies on the floor clutching his nose and screaming ‘aiyyoo’.

However , since I am almost as tall as a sitting Rani Mukherjee , I chose to murmur a “Eh..ok..that’s wonderful” and walked in without any bloodshed when I faced this situation this evening . Soon I discovered that what my profoundly verbose caretaker was trying to say was that the sound in my TV had conked off. Now I am real good at lip reading , but just could not do it as well as I would have liked when I tried to watch what the judges on American idol were trying to say during the four minutes I tried watching the TV without its voice , so I decided to get back to good ol’ racist blogging tonight.

Now , lately , a lot of people have been pretty angry with me on this blog , accusing me of being racist . People have quoted clippets from Indian Penal codes supposed to make me go “Mommy!I don’t wanna go to jail” . Comment after comment has labeled me a jerk as insensitive as a paralysed elbow . Little pink Kids all over North East are being trained in Judo to grow up and take revenge from the racist and wicked blogger Abhi. ( See , with such sarcastic statements , I still can’t stop being wicked ).

Now , initially , I was amused . I was mesmerized by the innate ability of people to dig out a national issue out of a blog post .I mean , I was like “Wow. When were these guys born ? During some riots ?”.I was like “These dudes are really concerned about this country , such passioned emotions about four lines on a web page ?”.And to be honest , I still am . I mean , honestly , it takes a huge amount of passion , vocabulary and free time to write such focused comments , dissecting me , my sexuality , my sense of belonging to this nation , and my significant contribution to the scum of this country .But somewhere , a little bit of irritation took me over too . I mean , it’s not everyday work for me to be blasted apart on a public forum.And then , sometimes I don’t think clearly ,like when faced with such disparaging remarks after a hard day at office. So during one such moment , I allowed myself to get irritated over this .

But now , after eating a full dinner of a steaming bowl of Maggi ( and watching four minutes of soundless American Idol ) ,as I sit on my bed , with the ipod crooning a dreamy lucky ali’s voice in my ears , I know it was my fault . It was my fault because I expected people would not judge me .I expected perfect strangers to see the world the way I see it. I expected some unknown guy I would never meet to keep aside his self-importance for a little while , for over the three years I have been writing this blog , I have laughed at the cost of myself , my as-high-as-a-side-stool height , my as-low-as-Amrita-Rao’s-neckline grades , my as-outdated-as-a-fossil cellphone , my as-crashed-as-a-MIG 27 relationships , my as-twisted-as-a-roller coaster life. And in writing this blog over the last three years ,from a lazy engineering student to a more lazy manager , I learnt to laugh at myself , but perhaps , I forgot that people still judge me here . I forgot that people judge my words, they judge me . Now I can’t change the attitude of anyone who reads my blog , hell , I have trouble changing my socks ( I have been wearing the same pair to office over the last three days ) , forget a person . But still , all I ask you , is to lighten up . Life is too important to be taken so seriously.

Now before anyone screams “He is still so racist , bring out that Indian Penal code book please ! ” , let me log off now , wait for “She hates me” ( Kinda situational , isn’t it ?) on the ipod to finish off , and then watch reruns of Friends on the laptop . Much better trying to lip read what that black judge on American Idol was saying . Oh shucks , did I say ‘black guy’ ? Am I into apartheid now ?

Ps - Anyone working with TOI/HT/NDTV/any of media houses ? Need some help for a friend .Please mail me. Do not worry , mailing a racist isn't a legal offence.

Main aisa hee hoon

A couple of days ago , as I stood before the mirror trying to decide if I look like George Clooney or Matt Damon , my cellphone rang . I glanced on the number as it ran across the screen . It was a friend , and a female friend at that . Never the one to turn down a girl's call , I picked it up , flipped open the phone and said a seductive 'Hi' . Now she is not the kind who would wake up , clean the mandir , water the tulsi plant and then proceed to sing Anoop Jalota's bhajans all day . So I wasnt expecting her to recite anything too religious from her , but as soon as I said a 'Hi' , she exhaled loudly and said -

'Munnu , tune apne last blog pe comments dekhe ? Duniya walo ne teri le li !.'

Now , for all engineering students and other spoilt people , I dont need to explain what 'duniya walo ne teri le li' means. As for the beautiful minded people of this nation , it means , well , that the people did not like what they read , and I am very polite when I explain it that way.

Now , I need to be somewhere in about an hour , so cannot explain much , nor do I need to , but sach , I am beyond the stage when the admiration or abuses affect me . So bhookh hartaal karo , buses jala do , tamaatar maaro , jo karna hai kar lo yaar , good or bad , this is me .

Main noodle ka stall kholna chahta hoon

I have trouble speaking english . At school , my english teacher used to taunt me regularly . In a moment of seclusion in a lonely corridor , she even tried to suffocate me while screaming "Itti gandi english bolne wale to jeena ka koi hakk naheeee." I still keep a pocket sized edition of Rapidex English Speaking Course in my backpack for emergency situations like interacting with english speaking pretty girls.Hence when I share such an uncomfortable relation with a universal language such as english , it is downright unfair on the part of blogger to expect me to work with dutch.

When I logged into my blogger account some eleven minutes back , I discovered that due to some reason , my blog language settings have been changed to dutch . As I type this , I see two buttons below the tying area . One says - Als Entwurf Speichern. The other says -Veroffentlichen.Ab this is like my mummy saying to me "Munnu Beta , aaj tinda khaoge ya gheeya ?." Ab I dont know which means 'Publish Post' out of the two , but if you are reading this , veroffentlichen means "Publish Post". Dekha , baithe baithe dutch seekh gaye na. Ab holland jao tho seena thok kar bolna veroffentlichen.

And why are there so many north eastern people in Bangalore.Yesterday , as me and a friend roamed brigade road and wondered why every pretty girl has a nasty looking boyfriend who looks like a cross between Crime Master GoGo and the african striped Owl , it suddenly struck me -

Me : " Oye , yahan noodle ka stall khol lete hain."

Friend : "Kyun be , tujhe sapne mein hanuman jee ne yeh aadesh dia hain ?"

Me : "Abbe mamta kulkarni ki kasam , dekh kitne saare bruce lee jaise log hain yahan , meri bijness sense cheekh cheekh ke kehtee hain ki a north eastern food stall is the next big thing on this road."

Friend : "Haan yaar , yeh tho sach hain . Aisa lagta hain china ne attack karke brigade road ko india se cheen lia hain."

Me : "Sacchi . Tho abhi 'Bruce Lee memorial noodle corner' kholne ka business plan develop karte hain.Baad mein ek 'jackie chan memorial karate coaching center' khol kar aur paisa kamayenge."

I have suddenly noticed a north eastern guy sitting on the next computer.He has long hair and a tattoo on his biceps says "Born to Kill" with dragons on both sides. And I dont enjoy the vision of me being karataed into seven pieces by him , so I will save further details for a later date.

But saugandh ganga maiyya kee , I will have to hand it over to Bangalore when it comes to the 'Dude and Dudette' quotient of the city . Pata nahi , maybe it is because I have been in Kerala over the last nine months or maybe because I am as much as a dude as Rabri Devi is a Dudette , I look around in this city and say "Mar jaawa khatta kha ke ,inn sab ka janam beauty parlor ke waiting room mein hua tha?". I mean , guys have bulging biceps , long hair , tattoos all over.The same "duniya mere baap ki hain" expression on their faces. Girls look like shrunk versions of Bollywood extras .Their clothes are so tight . I mean , I can visit Vaishno Devi and get back and I bet a girl would still be struggling to get into that oh-so-tight low waist jeans.I mean , theek hain bhaiyya , 21st century hain , cable TV generation hain , india shining hain , but phir bhee , are we out of girls who have a mind of their own and are self confident enough to wear a salwar suit because they want to , even if the girls around her go around looking like vamps in their haltar tops and mid riff exposing jeans?

Now all you dont jump around screaming "Bloody shiv sainik" and write me death threats . It is just my opinion , and I said it. I somehow admire a girl more for her strength to be herself.I mean , chill yar , mujhe kya farak padta hain .Mujhe thode hee chote kapde pehnkar aur baal khol kar bhangra karna hain , I am cool anyway.

And yeah , I deleted the last post because half my relatives and friends read it and concluded I was seven minutes away from a suicide and just needed a strong nylon cord to facilitate the process.I agree , the post came out thoda dark dark and all , but when my sister called me with a "Munnu ! Kya hua tujhe ? Dekh , sambhaal apne aap ko" and my ludhaina wale mamaji called me with a "Dekho beta , aatmahatya karna paap hain" , I thought "Abbe hatao iss post ko , warna meri condolence meeting ka card bhee chap jaega".So all you who wrote to me, thanks , and chill , I am the kind of guy who can run over three guys with my car and then brake to see if my car has a scratch.So I was sad , but now , I am all fine and ready to make others sad .