My Kind of a Girl

I never felt that I was missing something in life until I realised that i am still single. So if you would ask me whether i would be ready to mingle; the answer would be a loud NO. I find it really hard to handle myself (No pun intended in this line)and i do not want to think about settling down now . There should be only one chatterbox in the family and i strongly believe that it should be me. So should i find a dumb girl? I guess this has nothing to do with my latest attracton towards blondes.Sharapova, Kournikova,Ivanovic; Are you girls listening?
I wanted to marry Sania Mirza, because if she had become my wife, i could accompany her to the grandslams and sit in the crowd and start a conversation with a pretty girl in the crowd. But things did not go as planned and Sania got engaged. I was still ready to accept her. But when she was blanked in the US open second round 6-0,6-0 by Flavia Pennetta, i changed my mind. I dont wanna marry Sania anymore.
It is really hard to find a silent, calm girl. So the probability of me finding a calm girl is nearly nil. Hence I am finding alternate methods to adjust my life, if I end up with a chatter box as my wife. This is the kind of car I would buy. I would make it sure that my wife never gets to drive the car.
Do I have any other options? Should I marry a call girl? err... I meant a call centre girl/ telemarketing girl. I have got a very poor rapport with telemarketing girls. Being working in the IT Industry, i used to receive regular phone calls from telemarketing girls. I didn't have a clue how they used to get my phone number. I would at least get two calls every week. I soon found a way to deal with them. I am gonna write about three conversation-incidents I had with telemarketing girls (TMG).
1) The caring girl

Me: Hello! Who is this? ( I did not know that it was a call from a telemarketer)
TMG: Hello Sir! How are you today? (I hear a girl's voice. My eyes go big)
Me: I am fine. Can I know who this is? ( In my best tone)
TMG: Sir I am calling from ABC company. Is it a right time to speak to you? (My eyes go small now and I have had more than enough from telemarketers. So I think of playing along)
Me: Yes! This is the perfect timing to talk with someone. I wanted to talk with someone. You know onething; No one cares for me these days. I am glad that you called.
TMG: But sir! I called to inform you that...
Me: What is your name?
TMG: Oh sorry sir. My name is Suneeta
Me: Wow. that is a lovely name. I had a classmate. Her name was Suneeta too. She is dumb. Hope you are not like her.
TMG: Sir I called to inform you that we have an offer
Me: An offer? Wow! You are so sweet. How thoughtful of you. Is it a free flight ticket to Australia?
TMG: Excuse me sir. But i called to inform you
Me: Hey Suneeta. I need to go and pee now. Why don't you give me your mobile number? I would give you a missed call tonight. We can talk freely. I would pour my heart out to my new friend
Bang...

That was last time I ever received a call from Suneeta.

2) Airtel Customer Care girl

Back then,I had a hutch phone connection. So i used to get calls from Airtel customer care girls on a regular basis. At first, it was fun to receive calls from them. But when it became an habit, the calls became an headache. One day a girl named Binita called me and tried to get me to sign up for the Family and Friends Plan.When I replied in a husky voice, "I don't have any friends. would you be my friend?" she hung up.

3) Shilpa
Once I got a call from a telemarketer and she sounded like one of my friend Shilpa. I kept on insisting her that she was indeed Shilpa. I asked to stop playing a joke too. "Come on Shilpa, cut it out! I found you, How is your hubby? Why didn't you name your son, Neo?". The caller hung up. Now i think it was really Shilpa at the other end.
My tryst with call centre girls has yielded negative results so far and hence I decided to call my friend Jenson to give me gyaan about girls. Jenson was my college mate and he is like the Will Smith of Hitch. He recently got married. I rang him up.
"Hey Neo buddy. How with you? Long time bro".
" Yes Jenson! How is married life?"
" It was good in the beginning. Now its boring?"
" Why? You were very good with girls and you ditched every girl in college. Now your folks found a cute girl for you. Why is it boring?"
"Marriage is like a bodyspray bro. It is fresh and nice in the beginning. But very soon the scent mixes with your sweat and combined effect is bad."
" So should i go for an arranged marriage or should i go for love marriage?"
" Well! Let me tell you something. Marriage is like a river. The bridegroom is a creature who doesnt know swimming. Arranged marriage is an art in which the bridegroom is pushed into the river by his folks. Love marriage is the art of committing suicide in which the groom takes the plunge all by himself"
"That is sad. I am scared of getting married now"
" Well. Let me tell you some thing more about life. Life has only two paths.1) Career and 2) Love. Career is nothing but building your career. Love is nothing but building your love"
"Err. How many pegs down?"
" Now pouring my 7th peg bro. Lemme tell you about two more things about life"
" I'll call you laterz bro"
Moral: Never ask advice from a drunk friefnd.

choose your colours and paint the rainbow

Sometimes things are so impossibly beautiful that it gets difficult to accept them. Today is one such day. Perfect.

Fluffy clouds intermittently hide a blue sky, letting the sun play peek-a-boo. I get up and survey the mess in the house. Without a maid, it's getting difficult to maintain a squeaky clean home. Last night’s dinner mats are still lying on the dining table. The kitchen sink is half full of dirty dishes. The sunlight is passing through the green beaded curtain and each bead is looking like a jewel.

I get down to clearing the mess and cooking some food. And as any manic Monday requires I am rushing through breakfast, grabbing my keys on my bike for a long drive to work. Driving to work is a tricky thing now. While some days I make it comfortably and walk in smiling at everyone, there are days when the tall glasses of water and juices I have in the mornings catch up with me. I pray for traffic to disappear and my bladder to hold. But on an over-one-hour drive, prayers need miracles too.

The now familiar roads allow the luxury of observation. The fiery gulmohurs along a stretch, the rows of streetlights aligned neatly when I drive on the extreme right. A little change in the road position and the alignment changes! And then the weather, oh, so beautiful! I love it that every day is different. I long to go with the changes... why should I be doing the same thing when everything else changes, when seasons too change...?

Shouldn't I have filled up my life when I am ready to exit this world? Forget the bladder, the backpain is getting serious. I need to take care of it, heal it once and for all. Or maybe I should just try and do other things and have the backpain disappear on its own. That's what happened the last time.

For now, the pleasure is in this gorgeous day and towards different planes ahead.

Solution to hairfall marriage !!

“Tensile strength should be divided with or multiplied with Young’s modulus-- keeping elasticity as variable ....Hmmm .., You are too late for physics.!!! ?!?!” – This is what my mind was thinking when Chaoudhari Aunty was sitting on the couch at my home. I was trying to calculate the time required by her to rupture the poor sofa apart. By the way, people who do not know Chaoudhari Aunty – she is 56-54-56. I guess this description is ‘big’ enough.:)

My friend Vineet was there at my place too. So, as the conversation struck, Vineet consulted – “Auntyji, baal kaafi gir rahe hain aajkal. Koi upaay batao?”

“Beta,jaldi shaadi karlo warna problem ho jayegi. Abb toh halwaai ki kadhai chadwao aur shehnaai bajwaa do beta” – replied Auntyji !...."What the hell is happening – For all the bachelors – they have a common solution for all their problems" - Vipin mumbled to me. But as I think now, I found this answer quite relevant in what I see in my daily life.

Weekdays : 7AM - I am standing on the bus stop for the office bus to come, listening to the sweetest girl on the planet – RJ **** on radio-one. And I see lot of young girls, jogging and doing brisk morning walk. All these r in 24-25 age group. The other category is of 50+ age oldies. The oldies I can understand are greasing and oiling their crank shafts. The young girls - Perhaps sitting on marriage time bomb so wanna be perfect before the D-day. But very less people in age group of 30-40!! My point is that after marriage, many of us don’t feel the need to be ‘visually lookable’ anymore – Baal gir rahe hain then what – i don’t need them anymore. They have already solved their purpose by getting me my wifey!!!

Future FLASH : Year 2035 – I m driving my Black Honda Accord - lost in thoughts , listening to a powerful, deeply-meaningful , soul-stirring song ...”Tak.tana.nana...Tandoori nights... Tandoori nights.... Tandoori nights...” :) ... Suddenly I m surrounded by Police cars all around me. Officer on the siren is shouting – “This is FIA (Fitness Investigative Agency) - get out of the car now. Put your hands on your head. You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent”. I came out of the car, with my shivering voice i asked– “What I have done officer?”... Officer Smith-“You have been charged for developing that XXXL sized bean bag on your tummy.” ... Suddenly my face lits up with a wicked smile ...I burst with laughter - “Haha...hahha... I got you officer Smith ...I got'ya”.... And I point my fingers towards my car ...The side mirror slides down and the camera zooms onto my WIFE sitting inside the car ...“You see officer Smith, do u see that – I m married. I don’t need to be slim anymore. And also, i m loosing my hair too but I won’t care for them – I’ll be a fat-bald moron. . You see, I have got the license for it. Do you have a problem with that? DO YOU ??"

[Saamaaj mein faili ek kureeti ko mitaane ke liye , meri ek chhoti se pehel :-) ]

The lost world...

sorry guys for being lost for almost a year....new job and lots of assignments make u feel like a poor father with a pale grey complexion who used to say "jawan beti ki shaadi ki chinta......blabalabla..." . So i couldn't post a single blog.So wish me a good luck to start with new flavour..

Who needs a title .

Things have been happening at work , in personal life , at home . Two months back , there was the same domestic problem at my home – my sister’s iPod has been stolen . Now , under normal circumstances , if anything goes missing in my home or in a radius of 20 kilometers around it , my mother just walks up to me and says “Where is it ? Bata kalmoohe ! Tell me if you want to get dinner ! ”

But this time around, I am clean, because when the thing went missing, I was busy with my freinds. So after re-watching the six CD collection of Byomkesh Bakshi and stung by the prospect of having to live a life without music, my sister declared that it was the ‘kaam wali’* who has stolen the iPod. Not me , not the postman , not the milkman , but the most important person in the history of Indian womankind – The KaamWali .

*Kaamwali= The maid . You know , the lady who cleans up your home , washes the dishes and is loved by your mother more than you are .

Now, all of you have hopefully grown up in Indian households, and it is an insult to your intelligence if I start telling you how important a peg a ‘kaam wali’ is in the workings of the world and your household , in particular . Just to provide an illustrative example, my mother once threw a five year old me off the balcony because I called the maid a ‘moti’. And she actually was so fat .

So coming back to the case of the missing iPod, my mother has taken an immediate offence to my sister accusing the kaamwali, and if my sister was still a child, she would have been flying out of a balcony too. Ma has refused to question the kaamwali and has warned anyone in the household against doing so with drastic consequences including self immolation and totally screwed salt amounts in food. Infact just the next day of the mentioned incident, my sister claimed the kaamwali was humming ‘KISS ME’ while doing the clothes , which was placed suspiciously on the iPod’s playlist too . But protected fiercely by mom , the kaamwali continues to roam around the house unfettered and my sister continues to hope she will have her revenge some day .

On a personal front , I guess things are never supposed to be smooth for a guy who is 28 and is staring at a future which is still as clear as the climax of an art movie (I don’t know about you , but I rarely understand how these art movies end . I mean , when ‘The Namesake’ ended , I was like “What ? Why are they turning on the lights ? Where is the rest of it ?”) . Things have been kinda intense on the personal front , but every time I think I know what I want and what will be good for everybody , I flip out two days later.

I mean, how do you know who is the ‘right’ person to be share a life with , or , as they say , marry ? I know I have already got a ‘Anti-Neo Women’s Cell’ going all over the nation due to the emotional mess ups I have been through , but nobody understands that my own heart too looks like it was crossing a road and a truck hit it right where it hurts. Knowingly or unknowingly, I know I have hurt people, but it’s an emotional battering for me too. People , including those the closest to me , may dismiss it as a ‘Oh-it-happens-to-everybody’ , but I have had my share of dark clouds and I think I need to move someone to the center of my world (Right now , I got my parents ,brother,bhab and sister there) and build my life around it , make people happy , create a good life for everybody , you know , rainbows and butterflies . But before that, I need to decide who that person is, and that makes all my college exams look like little walks in a park.

About situation at work , after almost two and a half years of corporate world including ‘Another one , and you are fired’ as well as ‘Great work , so unlike you !’ emails , all I can do is offer a big brotherly advice to those who are yet to order their business suits – Love your work .At least try to love it . But remember you are just a guy filling a job profile for them . The day you don’t punch out the right result , they are going to help you pack your stuff and take it home in a cardboard box . So know what is important.

Anyway, it’s a Sunday , and it’s time I check out what’s on HBO . I anyway need to move from here because the kaamwali needs to sweep this room, and she just gave me the ‘Move-you-unbathed-jerk-or-I-tell-your-mom-you-called-me-moti’ look. I don’t want to be flying out of a balcony anytime soon.

Kuch tum kaho kuhc hum kahe

Back when I was in school, maybe 7th standard, the teachers were always trying to “Develop My Personality”. For some reason, they believed that everyone should be an “all-rounder”, and my complete lack of mastery in even one of their standard fields (marks-scoring, drawing and a bunch of other inconsequential fields) must have been worrying them.

So, when it was the time of the annual school fest, the teachers tried to persuade me to join the debate competition, and when I resisted, “volunteered” me to participate in it.
There was little I could do to resist it at that point, and found myself up on stage with 4 other participants. I was bored as hell, but the teachers had also forced the rest of the school to sit there as audience to watch the showdown. Making kids sit down silently when they all want to go play cricket, and making them listen to 4 kids argue about things no one has any clue about. Oh, this was going to go very smoothly.

The moderator opened up some slip, and read out the topic “What is the best way to stop pollution?”
Predictably, the other 3 kids got hyper, and starting fiercely arguing amongst themselves:
Kid #1: “…and the buses are spewing out black smoke. If I were the Prime Minister, I’d ban exhaust pipes in vehicles. No exhaust pipe, no black smoke…”

Kid #2: “My esteemed friend makes a very good point there, but river pollution is a bigger problem. The oxygen levels have fallen to 2% over the last few years, and the fish…”Me: *yyaaaawwwwwnnnnnn*

As the kids started discussing whether small fish can swim fast enough to avoid the sharks, who had apparently come to the rivers because the seas were getting polluted too, I was slipping deeper and deeper into sleep. To fight off the urge to lie down on the stage and sleep, I thought it a good idea to speak up in the debate.

Me: “The real problem is some kids that fart all the time in class. The farting is an enormous source of air pollution around the school”
The audience let out a collective gasp. For a second, everyone was silent trying to figure out if I was being serious. Everyone started looking at me. This unexpected attention, for some reason, charged me up even more, and I felt like continuing to talk…

Me: “That’s right! I don’t want to take names, but some people whose names rhyme with Dakshay should be questioned every morning about what they’ve eaten, and if…”
Some kid, presumably Akshay, screamed out from the audience:“Well, it’s better than wearing stinky socks everyday!”Now this remark was clearly aimed at me, but Kid #1, who was well known for stinky feet took it personally, screamed back, but this time at the audience instead of his fellow debaters: “At least I take a bath everyday, unlike my esteemed friend Rajesh, who…”At this point, the debate became enormously interesting, with the introduction of a flying shoe into the scene. The flying shoe originated from somewhere deep in the audience, and the previous owner undoubtedly did not regret loosing this shoe because it was really really stinky. It landed right on Kid #1’s podium and knocked it off. But instead of going on the backfoot, he jumped out of his podium and went to face the audience head on… “Ha! Your socks stink so bad that even your shoe can’t stand the rotten smell!”

No sooner than he’d finished saying this, another 100-page notebook was hurled from somewhere deep inside the crowd. The teachers sensed trouble at this point, and one of them came out on stage to try to control the rapidly deteriorating situation, but the damage had already been done. Several water bottles, class work books and homework books were hurled in the general direction of the stage, with the owners of these books only too glad to get rid of them.
The event was talked about for days later in a very negative light by the teachers, but I thought it was a great success! The entire audience got involved in the debate in the only way the knew how: By throwing crap at the stage! They should have declared me the winner!

Someday……

Someday...i would like to climb mount everest and looking at the thick blanket of clouds below, see sunrise from the top

Someday...i would like to be a new born baby and start it fresh all over againSomeday...i would like to join back perfectly a broken glass

Someday...i would like to swim in the blue ocean and play with dolfins

Someday...i would like to fly like a bird on vast unending land, then cross borders without passport and visa, and think what i had lost and gained being human

Someday...i would like to go to the moon, point my finger towards beautiful earth and say "do u see that blue planet?.... you know i have been there..."

Someday...i would like to go straight, take left then go straight, take left go straight, take left go straight and then wonder how i reached the same place again

Someday...i would like to live in a jungle, get wet in rain and then drink hot fuming tea

Someday...i would like to grow very very old, and then sit in a chair and tell big...big...stories to small.. small.. children

Someday...i would like to sit relaxed in sand, sipping orange juice listening to the music of waves

Someday...i would like to become a crow and join weekly meeting of crows on our terrace, discussing about rain conspiracy, 'Yeh saajish hain boondonki...'

Someday...i would like to become a music director, deremix® 'oooo hoozoooooor...' and make a new album on gramophone

Someday...i would like to discuss with Albert Einstein about solution on corruption and see all his hair standing up straight

Someday...i would like to run alone in olympics, and win first second and third place at the same time

Someday...i would like to dive deep into ocean where Titanic sank and find the diamond necklace dropped by Rose

Someday...i would like to lie down below clear open black sky on a cold night with a blanket, counting stars, wondering how small we are...

Someday...i would like to find the key, open the door and run through vast open grass field and shout, 'i.... am...... free...'

Someday...i would like to know, why HE made me?...