Pappa ! your car is in the bageecha !

In 15 days , I will leave home to start my first job . On June 7 , I take the morning flight to Calcutta and land at ganguly-land in two hours , along with the in flight magazine I always smuggle out to my boost my 'Yah I am a baddd boyyy' component of personality. Just received a big parcel from the company . The courier guy was like "What's in this parcel ?? Inzamam ul haq ???". For the first 10 days of my induction , I will be staying at a 5 star deluxe hotel , so I better start knowing a sweet couple called Mr.Fork and Miss.Spoon . Right now , a video involving my table manners can be nominated for the top 10 most disgusting videos of the decade , just below a mms involving Paresh Rawal in a shower scene .

And yesterday was a jet black day in the history of my driving . Early in the day , I was reversing the car out of our house and I barged into the hedge around our garden . Dad was like "Shucks !!! All those scratches !! Looks like a crocodile used my car door for her manicure . " and ma was like "Ullu !!! You killed my jasmine plants !! Their fragrance was so lucky for our home as per vaastu shastra !". Last heard , dad was telling ma something about getting my class VIII wali bicycle cleaned and repaired .

In fact , I have been getting a lot of 'Be responsible' talk from my parents . I swear on Kareena Kapoor , I don't want to increase their problems , but I don't know what to do to come across as 'responsible' ? wear a space suit ? Talk about the war of 1971 with them ? Maybe I should give in to the fact that the atmosphere at home is a pretty no-nonsense types . Like this morning , as dad was getting ready for office , he remarked " My employers may post me to some other city in a few months . If this happens , I will resign ".

And I said " Yeah do that . Then Rohit Bal's son will say 'My dad is a designer' and I will say 'My dad is a resigner' ". I don't even know if 'resigner' is a proper word , and I know , my financial accounting book's index is more amusing than what I said , but I thought it was better than a simple "Yeah , ok". But my dad just blew up and declared I can never be serious in life . I don't know what to say . I guess it takes a lot to understand why a guy slips on a banana skin and gets up and curses every banana in the world with frequent mention of the banana's ma and behan. And why another guy slips on a banana skin and gets up and grins sheepishly . Most of us have the same circumstances , the same mix of 'kabhi khushi kabhi gham' , but it's the attitude which defines our lives .

And I have been hitting orkut lately . One thing I don't get is that why people put up pictures of filmstars as their profile pics . I know my picture can induce bed wetting in kids upto eleven years old , but putting up a Salmaan Khan pic as my profile pic is like saying "Ok . This is me . I know the guy who starred in Hum aapke hain kaun resembles me ."And I sure won't look at some girl's profile pic and say "WoW !!! Laetitia Casta is on orkut !!". I know you guys would be looking at the hitler's passport sized foto staring at you from the sidebar on the right , but hey , that's not me ok ? I need to visit Shehnaz hussain for three years to look that good .

I am listening to 'Aankhon mein tera hee chehra' from the aryans right now . It came out sometime when I was in school , class XII maybe . It was like the 'teenage love anthem' for me at that time , a song which was like the background tune everytime I came across anything resembling a female . Man , I feel as old as a banyan tree remembering all those days , to think that I am turning 25 this year . It's another matter that I still ram cars in garden hedges . Hata saawan ki ghata.

Go regret it

There is something about the 'Kal ho na ho' title song . It makes me fall into a contemplative mood amazingly fast . It's like :

Me : How can the pepsi people be stupid ? Do they eat stupidity pills in lunch ? how could they create something as intellectually challenged as Pepsi TV ?

* Somebody in next room switches on the TV . After a jumble of sounds resulting from violent channel surfing , such as 'Bharat aaj vessht endeej mein..' , 'Nahi !!!! Kehdo yeh jhooth hain' , 'And datz a sixx' etc etc , the person settles on a channel and the soft sound of kal ho na ho floats in *

Me : Why am I born ? Reincarnation happens ? Do I have spirits watching me right now ?

I mean , you get the idea . Songs like these take my mind off the small things in life . Like Pepsi TV and my maid's family plans and the shining new potato peeler ma just bought . Songs like these make me slow down , pause , step back a little , look at my life , and say "Hmm.Maybe I should have done this ? This could have been better ? Should I do this ? Am I happy ? ". Songs like these make me look at my life as a whole , and not the insignificant and hurried things that clutter life . And whenever I do that , a bunch of little slimy green creatures scratch the inside of my skull with their little pointed claws and say " Hi ! Remember us ? We are the regrets you have " . Now I am not a guy who mulls over my regrets with the devotion of a teenage girl choosing a lipstick shade . I don't take them to heart . I hardly think about the bulky lady I pushed off the elevator because she was putting on a very irritating and fake angrezi accent . But still , there are things I wish I had ( make that a red sports car with three blonde models sitting cramped on the backseat and the frontseats stuffed with smelly wads of dollar notes . Make that four blondes if you are in a real helpful mood .) , things I wish I could do ( Breakfast with Priyanka Chopra , Lunch with Rani Mukherjee , Dinner with Aishwarya Rai , followed by an informal meeting with all three ) , things I wish I did not do ( Ok , maybe , I should not have pushed her off the elevator .Maybe .).

Like I wish I had the good looks which would make me get up every morning , look into the mirror and say "Phew . You should be in a movie , boy ". Right now , I am like "shit ! Which shithead invented mirrors ?". Especially in a place like Delhi , where every second guy roaming in a mall looks like he just slipped off the Lakme Fashion week ramp . I hope the ITC people post me to some remote village where every male looks like an accident victim , so all the 'gaon ki choriyan' go crazy over the shehari babu . My filmy knowledge tells me every rural romance starts with the guy asking the lass for some water from her matka , so I guess I will hang around the village well with all my rugged looks .

And I wish I would not have caused so much hurt to people . To make a promise and then break it comes naturally to me . "I will call you" , " I will send over a gift" , "I will take out your dog for a walk" , I keep saying things only to discover I am watching star world when I should be doing these things . I really have disappointed a lot of people , with rather violent repurcussions . I promise I will get a 'Highly unreliable' tattoo one of these days , so that people know .

And I can't dance . While the rest of the people scare away traffic with their gravity defying dance moves in a 'baraat' , I shuffle around nodding and smiling at relatives I last saw in the stone age . Even my dad would jump in and do some real disturbing jig with kids half his age , but I just don't have the rhythm to pull it off . The only creature around who may come to understand my pain is the horse , what with a well fed groom perched on his back , a thousand watt band blaring in his long ears , and a road full of dancing maniacs facing him .

Anyway , this is just a very superficial skimming of my regret bank , the proverbial 'tip of the tuft of hair on the top of a fly sitting on the top of an iceberg' . I haven't even started about the bigger and whackier skeletons in my cupboard which when let out can make for one big week long round of discussions over cups of coffee and rounds of cheese sandwiches . I am talking about my little teeny weeny mosquito bites when I can talk about the seven bullet shots all over me . And I don't even want to talk about them and plunge you into a 'dukh ka saagar' lest you spend the rest of your lives gulping anti depression pills .It is just that this song makes me go all dreamy and sigh-sigh and I type down stuff which is a disgrace to any trace of logic , grammar and sense . I guess I will just switch over to some raunchy remix number now , and go back to the million dollar and thirty three cent question - How could they create something as stupid as Pepsi TV ....

Hum sach dikhate hain

Like most mornings , I checked my mail today . Till now , I got the usual 'get bigger' mails .Now , I guess my credit card guys have been selling my email address to diamond dealers in Senegal . There was this mail in my email inbox with a subject line ' I need your help to relocate my diamonds from Miss Chisolu Fodeh' .So , Miss Chisolu Fodeh , agar aap yeh post pad rahee hain to please batao na heere kahan hain . And there was this mail from a particular person :

Hey Abhinav, why didn't you reply to my messages? Its true that you would be a hell lot busy and have no time for losers like me, but then for god's sake don't project yourself as a nice guy with a no ego, who's out to help others as you mentioned in your last post. I looked at your blog, n I'm like so finally heres a nice guy specimen who claims he has no ego and he will talk to me(n others) without being snobbish n all. I wonder if you are after all a hypocrite like all of us and befool others by writing sweet things.(after all ur from IIM, so ur hell lot intelligent and know exactly what people need and thus create a blog that gives it to them and thus earning u comments, popularity n all). I'm sorry to say all this, maybe u really didn't get the time, its none of my business poking my nose into ur matters, but then u turned out like all of us( that includes me).

I am not explaining why I did not reply to this person . This is just so that you know what I may be like . You know , it's like the 'reader feedback column' in magazines where mails like 'Your magazine sucks , your columnists have horrible grammar , and your editor's daughter is ugly' are published . Kinda clears up the heart . Comments disabled . Don't ask why . Miss Chisolu Fodeh se diamonds laata hoon ab .

Tussi IIM se ho ?

Free time offers a nice opportunity to reflect on life while putting on weight . So ma woke me up at 5 this morning . She says I should go on morning walks with her. She has this neat way of waking me up . She came over , ruffled my hair , and said "Bete , sone ka mann kar raha hain ?". Ma , I need to be undergoing labour pains to not feel sleepy at that hour . Anyway , I don't hate morning walks with ma , but the walking part irks me . But while returning ma stopped at the mother dairy and I made her buy me a Amul Kulfi . It was so pleasant with a cool breeze , ma and the thandi thandi kulfi .Looks like I have found a motivation for my morning walks .

And in view of my driving skills , my parents are getting me some kinda insurance policy . An insurance agent came over to our home yesterday . I will put in some money from my salary every year and will get a big amount when I am forty five . If I am dead by then , my wife will get it. ( To all you girls , I am dropping hints , silly ). The insurance agent made me feel good , without touching me , I mean . He was filling out this form about my details and asked "Bete , padayi kahan tak kari hain " . I was like "Jee , abhi mba poori huee hain" . So he asked "Oho , kahan se" , and I was "Jee , IIM calcutta..umm...calcutta mein hee hain" . For the next three minutes , his entire being was immersed in announcing to anybody in sight that I will be a rich guy and have three cars longer than the Nile river and a microwave oven and all the things rich guys have , illicit kids and all .

You know , that's the good part about coming out of IIM . Over there , I am with a batchmate and I think "ok , I will brag now" and say "Know what ? I got a percentile of 99.74 in CAT ( The entrance exam for IIMs )" and he would say " Oh , bad luck happens . Another answer wrong , and even my percentile would have been that low". But when I get out of IIM and have not many IIM guys around , people look at me and think "Ooh , he is from IIM ? He must know everything about why gold prices are rising." while I try hard to calculate the square root of 1 .

At the same time , we IIM guys have this image that we guys have bricks of extra ego strapped to our heads . It's like I don't call this friend because I was in a coma and then I wake up and call him and he says " Oh yeah , thanks for calling , you inflated ego-know it all-consumer robbing golden owl from IIM."

And once I was to meet this girl . I was like totally out of clothes . I had a choice between wrapping my ashwarya rai poster around my torso or wearing an IIM tee shirt. Considering the ashwarya initiative to a little anti social , I met that girl in a dark blue IIM tee . And she was like "shucks , you know what those waiters are talking?" . And I was "I guess about Govinda's role in saajan chale sasural" and she was " No . I know . They think I am with you because you are from IIM . I know" . I was like "Someone stuff this masala dosa up my nose . I want to die" . The rest of the evening was spent in my trying to scrape off every mention of 'IIM' from my attire . I never did wear anything with as much as an 'I' on it with her after that , and she is a nice friend now . ( Oye , If 'you' are reading this , I din't mind that ok ? It was natural .)

And the social interactions get a lot more predictable coz of this IIM thing .It's like I should have a '9th fail.10th fail.11th fail.12th fail.CAT crack kariye' sticker pasted across my front . I give a lift to this guy and he is "I wants to get to IIM . Tell me how or I will yell you just tried to kiss me". Imagine everyone asking you 'What do you say about Italy's transport minister's nose digging habits ?' . Because answering it is as 'umm..err..ahem' as answering "How did you crack cat?" for me . Frankly , I still get up in the middle of the night and go " man , what was it ? a mix up in the answer sheets ? Did the hundred bucks I placed in the answer sheet did it ? ". It's not that I don't like people asking me this . I am just stating what happens to me , not judging it . People helped me when I was preparing , and I not passing on the knowledge will ensure me a double bedroom apartment in hell . And hey guys , I know some of you have mailed me asking the same . However guesswork it may take , I hope to answer them soon .

Yeah , being from IIM , things look good on the professional front . at 24 , I have a found a job in a field I love and I have got a pay package cool enough so that I can say to my kid " Ok buddy , you can buy another butter scotch and give that to the girl you like , I can afford that for your girl" ( Ladies , this pay package thing is hint no 2 , in case your IQ dint let you notice ) . And you read about IIM guys all over the newspapers and think "All right , for a guy who won't find a place other than the obituary column before IIM , my chances for being in the papers some day look better now".

And the expectations shoot up and go through the roof and then the ozone layer . I have a distant cousion who did his MBA from IIM C some six years ago . And things like "He still doesn't wear Armani ? You sure it was IIM ? Two I's and M , right ?" are said about him .

Anyway , I can be like typing till the 22nd century about this , but then I may look like another of those IIM bastards with their bricks of extra egos strapped to their heads , right ? So I will just stop now and get back to deciding which model of mercedes to buy once I start getting my salary . ( Ok , this is it , miss , this is hint no 3 ) .

Note @ all the ladies : Don't take this seriously . Don't contact me . And don't complain about me to your brothers .

Oh no ! These are tears !

Has it ever happened to you that you just cry without knowing why ? Infact it's not crying . I mean , not the sort of crying I indulged in as a kid when Dad punched in a banana sized injection in my butter bottoms . Yeah , this injection thing happened a lot . That happens a lot when your mom and dad are doctors . You know , it was like this when I was a kid :

I hear the car horn , fling away the he-man toy I am playing with and run towards the door yelling "pappa aa gaye , pappa aa gaye".

I would run straight into dad , cling onto his pants , look up with expectant eyes .

Dad : " Bolo munna , pappa aaj aapke liye kya laaye ? "
Me : Ummm !! Chocolate ???
Dad : " Nah ! Guess ! "
Me : " Ahaaaa !!! Ice cream ???"
Dad : " Nahi munna !"
Me : " Oho ! Batao na pappa !"
Dad ( Pulling out a fresh smelling pink and green pencil sized packet ) : " See ! Pappa got a state of the art , fresh off the shelf , just launched hepatitis B vaccine for munna dear. "

I got so many vaccine punctures in my body , I can be substituted for the sieve in your kitchen . Anyway , that's not the point , or nariman point . The point is that I am not talking about the crying I did when this injection entered my body . I am talking about a more silent and confusing kind of crying . A couple of nights ago , as I tried to sleep , it happened to me . I was just looking up at the ceiling and tears just started flowing down . I swear on every one of jeetendra's dance steps , I could not fathom the reason . The tears just kept breaking away from the eyes , finding their way across my cheeks and merging silently with the pillow cover . I just lay there as confused as a monkey in a playboy photoshoot . I was like "man ! Am I crying ?? You sure this isnt a optical hydraulic malfunction happening ? ".

And a couple of posts I typed down have got published in Jam again . I am not the kid with a football sized ego who walks around with the 'My dad owns a sports car' tee shirt , but I am telling about this Jam thing because a couple of guys thought I had copied the post from the article in Jam .

And I had this real thick wave of a 'End this blog' emotion last night , and it was only a timely intervention by neetie which stopped me from rolling up this blog , put it in a doggie bag , cut it up into chote chote chote chote tukde , and feed it to my paaltu kuttas in blue blooded filmy style . It was like , I wrote the last post about the mahajan thing , and someone comments "Seriously abhi , you could have done far better". I mean , I have got myself in a position where everything I write is judged . Even if I am choking on a bone , some guy will stand up and say "Naaah , the way you fell on the floor all gasping could have been funnier ". I know I have created things to be this way myself , but chill yar , give me break . I am just a guy who writes a blog like millions out there . Just let me be . As if I haven't had a tough life already . Try counting the injection punctures on my body someday .

Ps : I need to reply to the comments on the last post . Will do that soon . And one of the comments was by a lady who was expecting a child within a week ! I hope a little angel has entered her life by now . Congratulations to her ! :-)

Added later , after a deep introspection of life , three hours of watching pogo , and forgetting all the introspection results :

I realise the above post was written in a dark greyish maroon kinda mood inspired by a terrible breakfast and my cable operator taking star movies off the telly for a day . The breakfast was much better this morning and to make things better , no one commented on my table manners . I feel creepy about the stuff I wrote yesterday and advise you to ignore all of it . And with such nice people commenting here and mailing me , I am amazed you guys dont have the angel wings on your backs . Have fun . And Thanks .