Amazing people who make me go on n on n on:)

28 December, 2008

The most Dangerous thing in the world is an Open Heart!


Well, I thrive and yearn for observations like that made in our everyday life to coerce me to wear my thinking cap....which is otherwise also never stacked away... very much there actually but functioning invisibly and on the weirdest of routes.

Well, a dear friend of mine said so in some context which is not worth mentioning here but the grains of reality hidden in it came spilling before my mind. The heart was supposed to be just a bloody body part assisting in the smooth metabolic functions (ok, I suck as much in science as I do in maths....so whatever may be its scientific manifestations) ...however like with everything else, human beings have over glorified it to make it the axis of our life system and our mere existence itself.

The ‘dhak-dhak’ of the heart in not just an example of imagery....it is the gateway to a world of imagination....The consciously beating heart can send you into a flurry of sensations and dreams that only you can fathom. And any journey to any other world, no matter how momentary, puts you in that switch-on and switch-off mode...scraping off some elements of peace from your basic constitution. If your heart has the capacity to “beat” ...well, it has the ability also to “beat” you at any game from thereafter. An open heart ready to imbibe or rather in a layman’s term, single and ready to mingle, is often also running about with a placard printed on it.... ‘On the road to self-destruction’. It was not for no reason that Shakespeare wrote...love is blind and lovers cannot see....

You are so concentrated in unearthing that solace to your open heart that you often fail to judge the legitimacy or the conducive influence of the source it is coming from! On open heart can barely be hidden, no matter how much you try to cover it behind the facade of smiles or the edifice of an on-the-move life...
It surfaces like the dead body buried deep in the arms of the lake, which refuses to clutch it from prying eyes. Ya, the open heart is dangerous and bloody evident!

Often each one of us battles with the bafflement between the heart and the mind. The stronger ones are deemed those who listen to their mind while invariably and categorically, the weaker ones are guided by their heart. What makes our heart so weak? Are we the superior specie among those sauntering on the paths of the world, by the merit of our brain...or are we the inferior ones radiating all the negativities in the world by the demerit of our heart? Our heart not just pumps in blood but also pumps in life breathe to our well being, and we are not talking in physical terms here for a change! Logic is always a tad weaker before emotions, rationality a teeny weenie bit succumbing before passion....This is how we were structured and the sooner we come to terms with it, the better we would be able to combat it. Ok, even logically speaking for many of you intelligent specimens here....Can you deny the existence of air just because you cannot perceive it with your naked eyes? Well, no rocket science explanation there, but I guess I got home the point.

So then, is it more imperative to win over the mind or more momentous to have a control over the heart? This is almost like asking who came first in this world- the hen or the egg. But then each one of us would have to carve a niche for ourselves...analyse and debate within till we arrive at a conclusive order, either by a balance of both or by clearly establishing our priority. Don’t be ready to settle for anything guided by fears and insecurity... Don’t be in denial for what you can give or extravagant in what you should hold! Let the heart be open but the mind walk hand in hand with it.

When we stride ahead in life, we must be cautious of our open hearts...don’t let them guide or control you. Be vary...for an open door is an invitation for anyone to walk in....Keep the circuits at a high alert for whoever walks in would never leave until he or she has left indelible footprints on your life!

Remembering Gandhi...

2nd October: Gandhi Jayanti. This date comes each year and goes like all the other days of national holidays. But this year, I saw a fresh realization of a man and his ideals, lost perhaps in the pages of history. I was watching this movie on the television ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara’ and was quite stuck by the brilliant narration and the fact that it effectively roused a question in the viewer’s mind…Have we really forgotten ‘The Father of our Nation’?

For the generation next, our knowledge of Gandhiji is limited to what we study in our history text books or watch in the recent gamut of critical movies. Whatever these mediums want us to believe, we end up staggering on those paths. It would be so much better if children were made to read some of Gandhiji’s self written books at school, to allow them to understand what kind of a man he really was! Some people denounce him for being responsible for the present communal disharmony… while few others sigh at our present state of affairs, saying this was not what he would have liked. All this has left the younger lot completely baffled. Most of us have become mouthpieces to what we hear others saying, be it political leaders, corporate magnets or even the so called social friend circle who are just as ill informed….Suddenly it’s hip to criticize Gandhi! How I wish, there was some better way of introducing him to Indians!

Everyone seems dissatisfied with the present political scenario, but equally unanimous is our helplessness in getting it solved. Today, The Mahatma’s pictures in the newspapers are being carelessly flung in the bins, while his statues await the politically significant dates, when our national ‘leaders’ would come to confer the honour of a few garlands, flung around his neck… the messages on mobile phones mock his dress and the pearls of his wisdom, that he so generously bestowed. We are handling our freedom too lightly, forgetting that whenever something is taken for granted, it is lost, eventually.

I remember my talks with my grandfather who passed away some seven years ago. He had migrated to Kanpur in 1947 from Multan and had been a silent witness to Indian history-in-the-making. He used to be filled with an unnamed and unimaginable sadness and used to say…..I see the young generation crammed with disgust for what Gandhiji did. It’s probably because they have not experienced life under the ruthless rule of an ‘outsider’ and partly because they have closed the doors to reasonable thinking. If you feel that India is too large now to be effectively administered, can’t you also imagine how tough it would have been then, for one Gandhi, to wake up an even larger India, to stand, without arms or even basic knowledge, against those mighty foreigners, who had snatched from them, their own rightful homes and lives? Why should we forget, he was only a man with the same amount of conviction, tolerance, patience, resources and energy that anyone else has?

So it’s little wonder if a crisis comes again… Can we find among our ranks someone to match up to that kind of sacrifice or stand strong before the dilemma of taking such decisions, that determine the fate of a country….?

Today, if we ask a young Indian to tell, what is Shahrukh Khan’s ranking in the 50 most powerful people of the world, he would not take a second extra to answer! Ask this same Indian if he knows that Gandhiji featured in The Times Magazine list of ‘The 100 Most Influential People in the world in the last century’ and he would look back at you as though you’ve been talking in air. He would be able to tell what all, the great physicist, Albert Einstein invented, but would not know how greatly even he revered this tiny and unassuming Indian.

While we have got our freedom, we still have not imbibed his ideals. While he taught us ‘ahimsa’, there is not a state left now, which the brutal hands of terrorism has not disfigured. While he preached ‘truth’, there is no working office anywhere, which is not ridden with corruption and dishonesty. Where did we start from, where have we come today and what hope do we have from the future to come?

I guess forgetfulness is a habit that has become an inseparable ingredient of our character… so this thought would also pass… as would perhaps our life itself!

21 December, 2008

15 things I have learnt about men in the last 15 days...

1. You just can’t get them to read....period...they suck at reading anything beyond the bills, financial records or work bull-shit...n with their deflecting interest, I don’t know how they succeed even at that!!!!!!! Uff and for some of these obnoxious ones of our species, I had to literally beg them to read my blogs... ‘haan, ya sure, ji bilkul’ were the responses which still remain to be redeemed. Baki some of you who do read my blogs are the only worthy ones here of your kind....so clap, clap!

2. You can take the man out of his family but you can’t take the family out of him....most Indian guys at least, are momma’s boys whether they admit it or not, show it or not....they somehow are so damn deeply rooted that they’d put to shame that Peepal tree in your courtyard, that’s been there since the arrival of the British East India Company...yup that bloody deep.

3. Tell them to take you out two nights in a row and get that most helpless expression on their face... ‘oh the work pressures, my bulging tummy, the next day early time table’ and another dozen set of excuses fired with amazing rapidity and spontaneity...and just then tring-tring comes a call for a boys-only night out and.... ‘You do understand honey, don’t you? This could ease the work pressures, get me fresh for tomorrow, I need that breath of fresh outside air’.....@#$@#$@#$%^%#$^...ya sure we do!

4. Rs. 1500 is too bloody much for just a ‘womanly teeny weenie bit of a t-shirt’ but a booze bill of Rs. 1800 for one night is... ‘A little expensive ya, but look at this way I feel so wonderful from within...you want that, don’t you....?’
Ya...LITTLE expensive for sure...! N you are the only mortal on the planet who wants to feel wonderful!

5. Men would look at anything in skirts...in jeans, in suits, in sarees, n most preferably in nothing at all...she’s got to be a woman alright with the right assets at the right places and she becomes watchable just by the merit of it.

6. Men just can’t help gloat and bloat...yup, the infamous male ego working overtime and big time....they get this most inane of pleasures in proving their might over the weaker sex...not physically....as if we’d give them a chance for that....mentally....it’s always a game of scores and 1/2/3/4...-love is how they’d like to see it...and once they do get us to put our foot in our mouth...oho...then the gloating...the intolerable devilish smile at its wackiest best unleashes more merciless missiles of offences...

7. Men watch the television with a complete ‘switch off’ of all their brain and auditory circuits...you can scream yourself hoarse before him while that dumb match is on and he’d not even bat an eyelid...in fact he doesn’t seem to bat an eyelid at all through the whole of it...the remote becomes a closely guarded treasure and anyone who speaks in between could well be thrown of the 7th storey building if he had his will...and for all he cares.

8. They just luuuuuuuuuuv to hear the voice....ya but only their own....women have for ages suffered attacks and defended ourselves for being gossip mongers but then these guys work so inconspicuously that you just have to be dumbstruck, literally ...they don’t give you any alternative at that....they can go on and on and on and on....bakar-bakar, chitter-chitter, blah-blah and all the rest of such addresses...and you can just forget about saying anything in between because it would not reach those ears....you are only allowed to blurt ‘huh? Oh! Really? Hmm! Ok!’ in the course of these sermons and that too with sufficient spaces in between. However, and there’s the catch...get then down to a ‘serious’ conversation of explanations of sorts and the monosyllables surface in the most nerve racking of ways.

9. They fall flat out at being polite where it is most required...your distant aunt from Palampur or the bizarre teacher from your college or the over friendly neighbour from the eighth house where you lived during your childhood....beg him to be polite and that’s exactly what he would not do! Tell him not to go over the top elsewhere and watch him go not just over it but even topple down from there. They have amazing selective memories too...they would remember that there was extra salt in that particular dish, last year too, but completely oblivious to the fact that they had forgotten to pay your pocket money last month.

10. Their over obsession with logic....hello!...there are certain things that you’ve got to accept at face value...but no, not in a man’s world...they have to dig and pierce and excavate and probe till they find a glimmer of logic in it...and that too...god bless our dear souls....is THEIR logic...you may completely disagree or point out how stupid it really is or argue your head off on it...but logic there is for them to feed on....you are wrong simply because he is right!

11. They are compulsive flirts....they love to reek of charm and yearn to be the sole hot objects of pursuit of women or at least the focus of their conversations, desires and fantasies and would perpetually make quantum and desperate efforts at it....With men they may be loud and vulgar...but with women around...you just have to see them metamorphose....complimenting, offending, jeering and throwing those prying eyes and mouthing the oddities to catch your attention....they just have to make you laugh, never mind if they have to perform their best friend’s character or appearance assassination in the process of it.


12. Sex is THE only thing on their mind....men love just two things in this world...sex and more sex...period... and stamped as the universal truth unaffected by any age or nationality bias. Porn is like god’s gift to ‘man’kind and kinky is the only way to be....

13. Men look at the mirror bloody more number of times than women could even think it were possible...they always have a pocket comb, need to use the men’s room more frequently (only they can tell for what) and for the longest of times.... and surprisingly many get those eyebrows plucked and chest waxed and regular manicures and pedicures....to look like the likable cake...that they sometimes succeed in pulling through...the six packs are no longer enough, with every tom, dick and harry entering that bandwagon. And my man takes longer to dress than I do, with half the effect as I do...ok...thoda zyaada ho gaya yahan!

14. Men are obsessed with BIG and in their own way interpret the epithet...size does matter....and before the dirty minds have a field trip here...let me clear the air....big mobiles, big cars, big bank balance and alright big boobs too...This, when they completely seem to overlook that for the female species the same epithet could hold just as good....but they are too busy flaunting their material goods to go to that material. And yes, small matters sometimes with equal urgency- small conversations, small market trips, small family dinners, and small size of the female brain with suspicion devices

15. And the weirdest of all is the slogan that they have so profoundly engraved on their faces ready to be thrown at you on all occasions.... ‘I am a man and I can do it...but not you’....hey, I can look around, I can gape with my tongue hanging so low that it cleans that spot on the floor, I can flirt, I can have an extra marital affair, I can be forgetful, I can have those days
When I want to tear apart anything coming before me....but you can’t do that, sweetie...’

Ya, man alright...do you mind acting like one now for a change...!
Men, men, men... can’t do with or without them now, can we?
Love them or hate them but we just can’t ignore them (as if we have a choice here!)

Imagine so much in just 15 days...another 15 years if God allows me on this planet, I think I could virtually create one....wishful thinking you may say and some of my dear dirty minds already have their mind spinning overtime on this one to have a field day....!

Suruchi went up the Stock Market hill and the hill came tumbling after....

Ok first things first...
This is not statistical or technical as it sounds....
Numbers, data and figures are scary imps for me that I steer clear from... lest they gobble me in their maze and thank god for calculators and computers that I am still surviving as an individual of some worth! A revelation here is not so required but I’d like to give an opportunity to my benevolent readers to have a nice laugh at my expense...
I still use the blocks inbuilt in our fingers for minor mathematics and therefore any number going beyond 30, is expectedly a mental challenge...
Now... feels much lighter after getting it off my chest and you can laugh those guts out!

What this is here then, is a ‘poignant for me and hilarious for some’ account of my entrĂ©e into the stock market world and what my ‘so-called’ friends would like to believe as the disaster that struck the fate of the Dalaal Street...

Sensex was for me for until a while ago....the elder, wilder brother of well...ahemmm...sex... cause the way they mentioned sensex went up and down and surged and peaked....god bless my dirty mind! Alright not until a while ago...this was when it was just a while that I had initiated into the outside world from my mother’s womb... (Now don’t ask me to be too bloody specific here)

Bottom line is that.... ‘Sensex...what sensex?’ I would say with the most dazed look on my face as though I was sleep walking...
This till when a couple of years back lady luck had a flirtish, girly interest in me (by the way, why do they call it lady luck and not a ‘gentleman luck’ cause I seem to be doing better with the men). Anyways, I was showered with loads of money and no suitable place to put them in a return worthy mode. So a dear friend here again came into the picture and guided me to give up on mutual funds and directly attack the bull.
Before I could fathom where and how I was to tackle the horns single-handedly, he cautioned me that a bear may also soon follow....

Hello! I squeaked...this is share market or a brutal circus out there where you are letting me lose? And the dear friend jeeringly and prophetically remarked that I needn’t fear the share market... as it was the share market that should be trembling by my uncalled-for entry in its domain.

So I got myself a pan-card made, signed a few documents to open a trading account and put in Rupees thirty thousand to begin with....piece of cake so far! Little did anyone trouble to inform me that the brownie cake walk could be slippery and the cream on top could damage my insides as does that wicked edible brownie that I try so hard to evade!
Upon the suggestion of my fund manager I began my early investments and purchased all cash worth of stocks. And now with bated breath, I waited for the graph to climb...my heart would flutter at the slightest movement of my shares without knowing any rhyme or reason behind its brand’s existence. I invested even because....well I liked the name of the company...is that so bloody unbelievable?

This was I think somewhere in early summers of 2006 and would you please believe it when I say that a hitherto safe and heaving share market crumbled in the very next couple of days....Within the first week of my sojourn, I was down by half my assets and worth (no pun intended).

I pulled up the sleeves of my ‘dear’ friend and the very pants of my fund manager (well not literally)...This is what I get for my blind faith...?
Et tu brute...yup, not this dramatic actually and I was consoled that the bears have risen....bloody hell would you please talk in Hindi or English or even a god forsaken sign language would do here to explain to me exactly what was happening....

Instead of a full-fledged explanation and profound apologies for gambling with my hard earned dough, all I was offered was a key....
And the key was of ...patience....
!#@$%^&^%$#@!@#$%

So I did....patiently waited for six months and on dumb suggestions even invested more....getting flirty with every rise and surge on the Nifty and the Sensex and transforming into the angry housewife who discovers her cheating husband at every downs and dips. Yes, I did recover my money and made profits, didn’t book them, thinking there’d be more...there's a bloody reason why 'greed' is included in the seven deadly sins....watched all the bloody stock market reviews on the idiot box and flaunted my knowledge among the lesser mortals... even got unsuspecting friends to open trading accounts....!

All was going so well...just then...fate intervened again...it was the day I signed out the biggest of my purchases into the most mammoth of stocks...
And lo! Just then, as it happened before, the economy tumbled and this time made a headlong crash and suruchi came tumbling down with it....the DLF I purchased for Rs. 450 and had gone till Rs. 1250 is now resting at Rs. 240....wow, and my dearies, this is just a preview because the rest of my portfolio is a full bloodied horror story on the loose with massacre and bloodsheds all over....

So what am I doing now...? well, the stock market channels are shut down, the fund manager has been given a kick in the butt (not literally again...please, non violence said the great Mahatma) and I’m holding tight to the key again... remember the key of patience....Amen!
As for the hundreds and thousands in the economy who suffered because of my liaisons here...my profoundest apologies and a promise that I shall not dare to cross their paths again (though I do dare to cross my fingers behind my back, all the same).

Are you interested?

Well, for all those of you who are still not hooked to the internet and Facebook bug...Are You Interested?...is a feature or application there that helps you get connected to a vast horde of men and women, guys and gals who are looking for fun or friendships....some are looking for relationships and some others I still cannot fathom are looking for what....!

Well, with my advent into Facebook, I came across this wonder land and just for curiosity’s sake got myself registered...there’s nothing more soothing and pleasing to a woman’s heart than flattery and the constant reminder of how good her market value is....oops....bad metaphor....that is to say....the number of clicks you induce can well, tell you much about yourself.

So making it an issue of my pride and prejudice...with skipping heartbeats and a nervous flutter, I refreshed my account to check my status...literally...
And viola! I was not disappointed....Arrey waah! I said with a pat on my back and with the raising of my collars...not bad....and went through the list.

Of course it was a mixed bag...men and boys and some even toddlers (bloody hell just 18 years old and clicking on me...what’s the bloody point here I am scared to even imagine)...so they were all there having clicked on me....yaar, this makes me feel like a bottle of whipped cream with toppings on the confectioner’s counter on which people come and click... ‘Yeh wala ek bottle dena bhaiya ji! (Give me one of these bottles) ....but dismissing such offending propositions, I ventured ahead.

It was quite a global expedition...I knew there was no destination but the journey was going to be damn, damn good....there were men of all shapes and sizes and from random parts of the world...thank god for the reasonably attractive photo I had uploaded....I was tempted to replace it with some hot chick’s just to see the transformation in responses...
After all I was never going to meet them...but like the 110 other temptations I encounter everyday...I let this one also pass.

Well, to start on a good note, there were some cute guys with nice, big, disarming smiles....oh how I luuuuuuv good, genuine smiles....! ‘Ghus to gaye fb mein, aage kya....?’ (I have made a grand entry here but what next)
There was a line of options that said I could click back a ‘yes’ to, send a wink ...huh...why should I wink at someone whom I don’t even know?...I’m not the road side Romeo or Juliet to bring in the right gender...and after I wink would they ask me to whistle too...?
Anyways, also I could view their profile or send them a message...

So I sauntered through the names....choosing at my whims and fancies...felt a bit like our ancient counterparts... the royal maidens who moved with the wedding garland in their hands, in the royal court in a swayamvar, to choose a suitable groom...only in this case, there was not one to be chosen and there would be no wedding to follow...thank god for small mercies...!
Ek nahi sambhalta theek se...Yeh poori fauj to mujhe nigal he jaayege (can’t handle one properly for now and this battalion would probably gulp me down).

Unfortunately here again...the wise crack... ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’...doesn’t hold good...like a friend of mine retorted recently ‘...yaar cover acha hoga tabhi to book padhne mein maza aayega’ (if the cover would be appealing only then would the book be worth picking up and flipping through).
So there I began my process of selection and elimination....cute ones with a great, warm smile....ok...in...I mean ‘YES’.... snaps of over pompous buffoons...hahahah...next....I mean here was a guy who clicked his picture before a mirror so that there would be a twin image of himself....hello...you think the world can handle two of you so much in love with yourself....

Then there were guys with big moustaches and bigger paunches....oh my god!
They were all like South Indian film stars ready to take out a pistol at the first instigation and mouth out ‘vandappa’ –don’t know what it means but sounded very like what my Southie bhais would say, no offence intended. Waise, like a dear friend of mine says...call anyone a ‘bhai’ and the offence is already done.
Anyways, there were some other profiles with whacky snaps clicked at weird angles...ok for an inane day I guess...but I let them pass too...
Did I mention the smug content in my heart at this precise moment, that here were 50 of cute guys, being reinforced everyday...ok mostly cute guys...alright...some cute guys, thinking that I am interesting....hahaha....it is said when no one else flatters you, it doesn’t harm to push your envelope yourself....

Then there were whole lot of winks and ‘I think you are cute’ and gifts of wine bottles, roses and ya even lips...the virtual world...you can buy and sell, give and take, just about anything here....waise, I must mention at this juncture that soon I was informed most of these these guys go about clicking on every gal’s picture in the hope that someday, somewhere, someone out there would click back on them....
OH MY GOD again! So much for pricking that big fat balloon of my ego that was just building up!

Well, how did this end you may ask...well, it didn’t....it’s an ongoing process of discovery and inventions...made a couple of good friends on the way...had some of my best ‘message exchanges’ conversations and a few of unforgettable, dumb ones....but it is fun....!
Like I tell my dear beloved....just catching up on the chatting fun I missed out in school and college....and like my dear beloved says...I’ve lost it...with a big, warm, disarming smile of course....!

14 December, 2008

Fidelity in Marriage!

You just have to watch the movie ‘Dil Kabbadi’...if not just for Konkona Sen and Rahul Bose, whom I adore...(add Rahul Khanna and Irfan Khan also to this list)...then for it’s hilarious theme of fidelity in human relations after tying the knot....
Again a reference of a movie here because I have to admit that crappy Hindi movies would continue to rule my roost...that is THE only ritual I religiously follow every weekend and not in the teeny weenie bit ashamed of it....ok, you could add that McDonald’s burger to this sacrament too...
Oh come on....few things in life that we must be conventional about!

Anyways, fidelity is a common place issue which has been overtly debated and interpreted.
Is there really such a thing as a committed married man or did this breed get extinct on the heels of the dinosaurs?
Can there really be a balance between the craving of the mind and the itch of the body?
Are women still in the closet or is there someone edible hidden there now along with them?
Is there a Bill Clinton struggling to subside in every man and a Monica Lewinsky simmering to rise in all women?

Well, judging by the standards of the fast evolving issues and morals, there is no longer a broad based accepted standard that we can relate ourselves with.
It’s a social jungle out there and if you want to be a part of it, you’ve got to mingle! The degrees of mingling and blending and merging, is up to your own premise to maintain.

A recent unearthing I made in this context did not shock me, which became a shock in itself eventually. A very happily married couple friend of ours has her husband going out on frequent trips even abroad, where he has no qualms about visiting the fantasy lands of the alluring women, attained of course at a set cost. This is not oblivion to the wife who chooses to discount it in the name of giving her husband space or the consolation that eventually he would have to return to her...

There is yet another, who allowed her husband to take a solo trip to Bangkok with his ‘kabbabi-shabbabi-sharabi’ battalion of friends!!!!!!!!!!!!! We call them the K2S gang...all ‘K’ things are anyways over the top and the abbreviated KS or the Kamasutra is just a coincidence by the way, purely not intended.
So there I was all aghast at how could she do it? (Well, not so dramatic actually and that’s a different matter that when he returned I pulled their legs to get him tested for AIDS first!)

Men will be men...period...there’s just no way you can stop that tongue from lolling or those eyes from popping or those legs from continuously shifting as though their pants were on fire. Some just gape, others conquer and few lucky ones actually become ‘mates’.

Even we, as women are perhaps becoming more open to letting our husbands be...ok, you can have that boys night alone for a change, once in a while...as long as that ‘while’ doesn’t come too often and more importantly...probably because we have so many of our own little pleasures to indulge in during the absence...see, despite all the hoopla over the magnanimity of a female heart and her forever ‘giving’ exterior edifice....deep down, women can’t help being selfish....if she’s apparently doing a sacrifice for you, as it deems there....be sure my friend, there is an underhand mission formulating about there somewhere right that minute....not very flattering for us...huh? True nevertheless in most cases...most normal cases that is!

Harmless flirting is the beeline for all Page 3 get-togethers...women prefer to sit with the men and the latter are all ears for the girly gossip and desperately attempt to be the solo focus of it....lavish compliments are exchanged, down to the fact that the body seems leaner or fuller at just the right spots; and the traditional hand shake and hug and a peck on the cheek to the opposite sex on public display, is no longer such a scandalous transgression. My dear beloved often pulls my leg asking why I have to greet the men with a handshake when most of the women would generally suffice with a coy ‘hello’....I tell him why the bloody hell then has the almighty bestowed soft hands on me for....and so he smiles as also, when he sees me chatting sometimes on the internet...he’d just add.... ‘You’ve lost it’ and I’d add back...’I never had it in the first place so where does the question of losing it arise....!’

At another time, I remember distinctly how I had stopped many a beating hearts when I jumped into a solemn men’s only discussion to take my beloved aside and show him the hot new chick on the block, who was so much the talk of the town at the moment....it’s another matter here again that it was no short of an orgasmic pleasure for me to see the faces of many other husbands whose wives would jerk their heads off to look in another direction when a pretty young thing would pass by!

So there we are, a race of mixed up, screwed and baffled buffoons often irrational ones to boot. We seek solace in the arms of our upgraded appraisals. We give each other space and often take liberties without really willing to give the same to our better halves. We venture out sometimes to take some risks as long as the chances of tripping down the steep valley are grim. Some of us even cross the line justifying ourselves on our paths to it....so far so good!
But then who are we again to judge others when they do the same? In the fragile worlds that each one of us has built around us, can we afford to throw stones on others with so much vehemence?

Commitment is a word that has been stretched and extended in its definition as well as its horizons...to each one his own...but let’s just behave like mature adults finally and stop that rising eyebrow from going up in smug disdain each time when we encounter a human folly....
That’s exactly my point, my friend...
...it’s only humans who make mistake and some even learn from them...that the mistake does not become one, till it is discovered!

07 December, 2008

It's in his kiss...That's where it is!


You must be wondering where I got the inspiration for this one...
Well... listen to this....
“How about the way he talks?
- Oh no, that’s not the way... you’re not listening to what I say....
If you wanna be sure, if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss....that’s where it is....”
.....something to this effect was being sung by the diva- Cher on a music channel that forced me to adorn my thinking cap....

And yes, it got me thinking alright...imagining, fantasizing, shrivelling, fretting, comprehending and doing ever more....not necessarily in this order. Before it would take any fearful manifestations, I thought I’d rather channelize my energies into constructively writing about it instead.

A kiss....
Hmmm...Don’t we all crave for it?
When Shahrukh khan kisses the nape of the seductress in bloody every Hindi flick he stars in...Don’t we just droll and erase the poor woman from our mind frame catapulting ourselves firmly there.....?

When the other Khan....Aamir Khan gave that looooooong kiss to Karisma Kapoor in ‘Raja Hindustani’ or Malika Sherwat came up with murderous passion packed battle-of-the-lips.... I was well past the threshold of my overflowing youth and it was a great tutorial for me, I must admit... and the first ever mystery that became clearer as well as more intriguing by mere observation...not to mention here the contribution of Hollywood in broadening our horizons in this perspective.

When the whole world is in the hue and cry of diminishing water levels and masses dying of thirst...how many of us cannot think beyond the wet kisses as the perfect antidote to such rampage...?

And yet again, don’t we all just stand and stare with a gaping mouth unabashedly if we catch someone in a public display of such an intimacy...of course being done aesthetically....and then later, in the privacy of our thoughts, close our eyes and mind to everything else and re-run the reel and feel the goose bumps everywhere....

Ah ...the kiss....
Ever wondered how it must have originated....
Well, well we’d have to call our great grandfather Adam and granny Eve in the witness stand again( they started the human cycle and they would have to bloody pay for it by being disturbed in their graves every now and then and be at our disposal for a quickie....that’s a quick history check, by the way) imagine Eve roaming about the Garden Of Eden with protruding lips that slowly, seducingly would have taken a mouthful....of the apple, yaar....n then licked up...the apple juice, yaar....

There’s a reason why they were made so protruding...almost self inviting with an invisible sign ‘come and get me’ pasted on them...to top that God in His inane mischief makes some of these lips naturally pink and full...so that it would be a sin not to pounce on them.

From a guy’s perspective, it is actually not fair to chastise them, when women wear blood beckoning red or the melting mouth watering maroons on their lips....remember how that cherry on the ice cream top is always the first temptation...to be guzzled first.... (Never mind those of you who are thinking of the wafer....dirty minds may please rest in peace...this is a family wholesome education programme)

Ok then...the kiss!
Recently at a bizarre discussion, like always, a friend of mine profoundly confided or shocked us out of our wits claiming that there were over a dozen ways to kiss....
What!!!!!!!!
Quickly came the badgering comments and exclamations....
Oh come on...it’s just the locking of the lips...what more can you do with them? (I told you general awareness in our country is ...well exactly...very bloody general) Well my friend didn’t elucidate but I thought maybe we could research on it and come up with something:


The Peck-on-the-Cheek Kiss:
Please....does it really qualify here in the category of kisses of any reckon?
Yes it does...I’d like to call it the ‘mwaah kiss’ as a term I recently learnt...it’s of great significance for those who pine silently for the other...it’s his first brush with her person, the grasp of the alluring scent of her body and feel of the soft feathery skin...it’s amazing that it may be just for a few seconds but it leaves you tilitated for sure.


The Barely-there Kiss:
This one is at the start of a relation (assuming things are not on fire yet) when the lovers just touch each others’ lips in a nervous gesture of a prelude of things to come. Needless to say, it’s a tender and brief and just about termed a kiss...lacking the essentials or the definition of it otherwise. But then again, it’s a start alright.


The Hungry-Gulping Kiss:
Ok, this one takes us a step further...like from a hug when it becomes an embrace...a full bloody hooked on embrace...it’s sudden and a declaration of ‘alright, we’ve reached there!’ ...and here we get the complete grasp of the other (and knowledge if the beloved suffers from bad mouth odour). It feels as though a bid is being made to gulp down the lips in quick, hungry actions. It’s passionate alright but often we gasp to take in air, in the fear of being suffocated or pulled inside a tunnel....it’s like getting into a car and pulling on all the buttons and gears to jump start to the next level...hey, we are not complaining...it’s a jerky bounce alright.


The Mouthful-Encompassing Lock:
Yup, this one is looooong and if there’s any consolation it’s also slow and all pervading...it’s as though the mouth has a plethora of hidden treasures just waiting to be discovered...it’s teasing, poking, playful just like taking a slow bite of a sumptuous meal and savouring it all the way...you want to feel every spice lingering in your taste buds...well something like that....there’s no rush and the kiss becomes the mission not the path to it. It requires the closure of the eyes and a slight tilt of the head...of course accompanying hand movements come along in the package deal...just cup...the face... to stop any kind of pushing back from there...yeah...that’s where it is!


The Ah-so-wet French Kiss:
This requires no introduction...I don’t know how many of the French kiss this way but the entire rest of the bloody population of planet earth is guilty of indulging in it...it’s when the tongues come into action too...why should they be left behind just because they are...well...behind. They say that it’s the ultimate form of expression of your passion as you are ready to take down the taste of the other person literally...it’s like a mini act of the ‘real’ thing and requires an essential slurping and licking of the lips at the termination of the process. It’s the key to open up...well literally everything else there may be.


The Raw-Tiger Kiss:
Ok this one is wild...the tiger on prowl finally finds a victim and intends to tear it into complete submission before eventually devouring it....it’s hungry and greedy and urgent and raw....(hopefully ‘experienced’ raw for small mercies) bringing into play the teeth along with the rest of the jing bang fitted in our mouths...
It gets so engulfing that often traces of these as ruminants lay resting on the grounds after the battle is lost and done....simply put...it leaves cuts and marks and blue lips as a victory flag of the conquest....here I must add about a school chum of mine who used to perpetually declare that she suffered from an anaemic disease that caused the blue-ing of her lips and we would empathize with her....bloody hell...anyone takes you for a ride when you are ignorant. Her adventures would have certainly shown us a glimpse of the tigress I so talk of here...merciless and unforgiving.


That’s it guys...lip to lip service...that’s all I can think of at present...not a dozen but at least half way up there and enjoying the process of it, is good enough for me.... but then if you still insist that I look up for that friend of mine to share more pearl of kissing wisdom, I just might oblige...and if there are more suggestions coming in that fertile brain of yours....well, do share in here....for although we all walk alone in the journey of our lives, who says we cannot slurp on our way to it....
So until next time....mwaaaaaaah!

02 December, 2008

Who the hell invented the idea of cooking?

Yes...why? I ask blatantly here....WHY?
Why couldn’t we just be pleased with eating raw fruits and vegetables yanked off the branches like by dear great grandfather Adam and granny Eve...?
They were content, weren’t they? (...ok at least till the weird apple arrived...)
They never cribbed that the potatoes are not fully boiled or the meat is not yet tender when the much fretted over meal is served to us on our platters...
After all, they didn’t have much brainwave of what should be grilled or steamed or double boiled or marinated....sautĂ©ed or frozen...
I can pronounce this with such surety, cause me the great- a distinguished female specimen and a kind of house manager to boot, has no clue to some of these terms in all their practicality...

So it surprises me to no end when I see other female samples who seem to be sharing the same physicality and assets as of my own, yet yards apart from me when it comes to their retorts and outlandish behaviour around food or even the mention of it...I could almost say those women are from Mars and I must be then from Venus...I also state publicly here that I have nothing against food...in fact I am guilty of over indulging on several...bloody more than just several occasions... skirmishing that endless battle with the bulge....but I don’t see the validity of putting myself through the process of standing over the burner, just to satiate this urge for food. I mean if we’d all just cook mouth watering dishes in our humble abodes, what would happen to those poor chefs who have put in years of diligence to acquire their posts and perfection?

Here, for example...
A dear friend of mine would pour that chicken schuezwan she just cooked and taking a ladle full close to her nostrils, she would savour its aroma with eyes closed and then with deep breaths, tilting her head slightly sideways, would seem rapt in just the god damn smell of it for a good bloody 2 minutes....for heaven’s sake! Had I seen this upshot in the actual ‘act’ in the cosy confines of her bedroom steaming with passion, I would still be a bit bewildered....but this swooning on the heated platform of her kitchen seems to make me dizzy like... where do I vomit....?

Then again in this list of irrational fools come many more of my dear friends, relatives and chance acquaintances...they would swear by their kitchen skills and drills and don’t care a damn if they weren’t recognized for anything else....
This particular breed took their feigning mothers too seriously when they told them that ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’...tch, tch...
Little did this momma know that this way is more exciting if you go a wee bit further down.... I mean how stimulating can the stomach get? -a round (ok even six packs...) but still a barrel like flap...ugh!

But many of my dear ladies spend many a sleepless nights in strategizing in their minds how to bring into play the left over bread crumbs tomorrow or what miracle to perform on that curd that turned sour.... and voila surprise, surprise! They do end up conjuring some magic alright the next day, as their hubbies and clans of little kids or the complacent mothers-in-law gloat with pride, after having a second overflowing refill of whatever was served to them.

No matter how much I try I just can’t ask get myself to ask the hostess after a sumptuous bite into the dish she transpired.... ‘Wow! How did you make this? You must share the secret!’ let’s just suffice to say that if I take a second helping and then mutter orgasm-ically.... ‘Mmmmm’...please take that as a compliment enough. I’d rather kiss those magical hands of yours than to put you through a narration of how you sweated over it in your kitchen. Also women please stop discussing recipes in social duos to make the layman less uncomfortable...if I have still not deterred you...I hope you do know that you smell like garlic after conniving that Chinese vegetable in garlic sauce ...

Hey by the way just to clear the air that does not mean I CAN’T cook...when I do adorn that chef’s hat, well I do carry out the role to almost perfection...minus the fuss...trouble is I hide that chef’s hat into caves unknown, so that I take ages to discover it again...though generously of course my social circle finds it back for me more often than I expect....

Aw...those magical hands and that frenzy for cooking...shouldn’t they have come inbuilt along with the female structure when it was so besotted to our spirits by the almighty....
Alright, we settled for a beautiful face, our ‘man’-handling skills or an intelligent mind instead... But then we didn’t really cross off upon the option box that asked if we would like culinary skills added to the list.
Food for thought you’d say....I would have enlightened you even more on this my friend...but sorry I think my Spanish crème n mushroom Peking soup has come to a boil and needs my immediate attention....!

The wonderful world of unmentionable local lingo

Ok, this one comes straight for my local friends-family, students and chance acquaintances please skip this for I fear the outlandish usage of vocabulary here might require parental guidance and even an ‘A’ certificate and may be also a rethinking of sketching out my character certificate for some.

Being from a small town of the interiors of the country a bowl full of colourful language is served magnanimously to you in a daily dose... and whether you choose to be a listener to it or not, it hardly qualifies...
After initial fits of shock you slowly get used to it as it merges into your own lingo so conspicuously...

Recently I was at this social gathering of friends, intoxicated with all the fun and idle gossiping that we were indulging in....when all of a sudden someone mentioned something inane and before I could really reflect on how I should respond, I blurted out ‘ghanta!’... And much to my surprise the room burst out in guffaws and I even noticed one of our sheepish male friends nudge another. ‘Ghanta’ for the layman-me till now was the local way of saying ‘ya sure’ with sarcasm thrown in a good measure. My jaw gradually dropped but sometimes (happens very less often though with me) things take time to register, so I must have mentioned it again during the course of the evening....till finally my dear beloved took me to a corner and explained it refers to the ...mmmm.... ‘Manhood’....the veritable middle finger...!

WHAT? n why didn’t you dear beloved think about mentioning this to me before coining it at every possible prospect in our conversations....sorry I said to him (hey not for what you think!)....sorry my dear, it suits the mouth too well now (no pun intended) to give up on it...So I continue to use it, of course more discreetly now. Anyways, that’s as far as I go...an occasional bloody, f##king or holy shit and ‘sala’ don’t really get included in this category, do they?

‘Sala’ by the way is a favourite with the public here....now how do I translate this into a word with an actual meaning is like a mammoth task I fail to be skilled in....but I hear it all the time.... ‘Bhak sala’, ‘abe sale’ 'oye sala' 'sala yeh' and 'sala woh' ....it prefigures in many forms....
The Hindi dictionary defines ‘sala’ as ‘a brother of the wife’ ...but then the Oxford dictionary’s meanings of some words are equally misleading...let’s just say it’s the Indian way of putting a ‘bloody’ in almost all situations...

Then of course.... (This feels like a refresher course in ‘What language not to use when trying to create an impression!’.... ) there is local terminology for a good-for-nothing kinda guy...this one is from my dear friend who loves this word so much I wonder if he’s heard it or uttered it more often....chichora...
Add to this is ‘shudai’...shudaiyon da pind (duffer’s family )... maghaiyya... howlett... ch##### and sometimes when things go beyond one’s power of expression, my friends here just suffice to say....laberi chand agarbatti....which is supposed to tantamount to an abuse but makes my sides burst at the bizarre way it’s mouthed.

Then of course are the bigger ones...MC and BC....these my dear are not...M C Hammer or the Bachelor of Commerce....
These are the ultimate in ridicule...!
And to our horror, recently there was a friend’s four years old son babbling these words in full form round the house because he had heard the bus driver call it to the bus conductor twice that day...and there, he thought of displaying how quick he was in his grasping and titled everyone thereby...so now there were MC grandpa, MC grandma and yes momma you are an MC too....he went around the house in these proclamations in his gala way....
Till... chatak (slam) came the chapet (slap) and the boy learnt his lesson for life....he called everyone MC thereafter when they weren’t around...!

Aye lo (take this)....ek kantap raseed kar do kya (should I give you a whack across)....bhaisahab and bhaiyaji (mr)....are some more....
Another dear friend of mine has a ready retort of an opinion of anything you ask about on this planet....how was the movie dude? ‘fuddu yaar’ ....oh sorry!... n the date....'fuddu' again...and beyond that I am afraid to ask what this word means but take it as an indecent elder brother of faltu (useless)...and another would call the same experience... ‘ekdum rapchik or jhakaas’ (completely out of this world).... ‘Solid hain’ if someone says...means it holds substance and ‘bhankaar’ means it’s as good as the garbage....

So there my friends...I think that was enlightening enough and I’ve ‘maar le’ enough of this side of the world....
That by the way means I’ve screwed up things full and final now for poor Kanpur, my dear hometown and myself...
This pot purée of Hindi-English has got me quite tumbling...
So use these freely guys and ‘duniya ke bajate raho’...n screw the world!
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