Their Story – Episode 9 (The return of the hopeless romantic)

There is something erotically romantic about waxed legs. Apart from the smoothness, they make for a flauntable texture. Prashant’s incessant fascination for the same grew to a maddening high the day he saw her in the black shorts as she walked out on the sandy beach near Aguada fort in Goa. Now, the aforementioned black shorts are as important as ‘the blue denim skirt’ we will talk about in some time but their magic was two-fold. The definite demarcation of color and the inherent frenzy-ness of being short in the first place only added to the sunny charm. Ah! You should have seen her walk with the black purse hanging loosely from the sides and swaying as a swift boat does in rocking waters. You should have seen the look in Danny’s eyes as she pushed down her glares from over her head to cover her eyes. Hey, I never told you about Danny either! Ah! There is so much you don’t know. I guess I am the one to blame!!

There was a tree. The tree was strong and solid. It was old. Very old. Prashant liked the tree. He also liked Karuna. Well, he more than liked her. He enjoyed being with her and some would say that it is equivalent to liking someone but he hated the fact that ‘liking’ was not the verb that defined his disposition. It was a mere word and as all love stories, it was not a surprise that he upheld his position beyond the comprehension of words. He had developed this strong hatred towards words and he avenged himself by writing crappy lines and mocking it. “Ahh!! See bastards. I hate all you words and this is my revenge. I will make you look pathetic.” The silent laughter was loaded with a lot of hatred; wait I guess it was disgust. Or was it disgruntlement? Aww!! These words got me too, now didn’t they? No wonder the poor kid perished.

So I will tell you another episode from their story. It is of the time when the world was creating a ruckus over a lot of things. There was a batsman’s century, a politician’s cheek and of course there was a song. There always is a song. The song that interests us today ladies and gentlemen is called ‘Kolaveri’. Don’t ask me what it means. Like all hypocrites, get boggled by the beauty of the word and that would suffice for now. Prashant was a hopeless romantic. Truth is we all are. Some are too proud to accept. Some are too modest to humble beneath it but it is those who have mastered the art of bearing the fact and letting the ruckus pass that interest me. Well, it’s another fact that my interests don’t bother Prashant and I detest that the bastard has not shown any affection towards my diligence. Well chuck it. So here it is:

“Bye. I think I will miss you.” Of course he knew he was lying. He was sure he would miss her. The thinking just gave you some face.

“I might miss you too.” Ahh! Clever reply Karuna. Well done. Playing by his rules are we? Let me tell you something readers. ‘Might’ is dangerous territory not just because it briskly dwells on indecision but because it plays with your expectations and fans the air of dilemma. Stay away. Stay safe. True story!!

“Aren’t you sure?” this game was far from over.

“I don’t know”. SWEET!! Keep him wanting you more. Karuna; you heartless wench. You sure know how to keep someone wanting you and wanting you more.

“When will you know?” Dumb question. Isn’t it? Read again. Stress on the ‘will’. It is impregnated with content, his question I must tell you. Not only does it estimate the time of knowing but it assumes a hard fact of ‘YES! I will know’ in the first place. Not such a dumb moron, now is he?

“When the time is right. You will know and so shall I.” She tilted her head at exactly 22.5 degrees to her right and blinked once after a long pause during the course of which her eyes not once left his constant gaze save the one time while she quickly glanced at the clock as it was 2 o’clock and it was time to leave school. Friends were waiting. He walked to his red cycle, kicked back the stand and drowned himself in the crowd of the five dozen cyclists leaving school. He stopped once near an open heath that the government called as airport. There was just air; no port. Amandeep stopped along side and took to the cold water hand pump quickly as if out of routine. Silence scares people. Try it. People will treat you with respect and accord more seriousness than required to whatever you say. Prashant enjoyed the heroism for some time before he got back to the present.

That was over six years ago.

Presently he sat in a well lit office’ doing math’. Trust me! By the looks he bore on his face he wanted to ‘do’ a lot more. Shujit walked up to the bay with his callous walk and his stupid head. Silently, like a snake approaching its prey he walked to his seat. Prashant sat unarmed for the merciless torture he was about to undergo without sign or warning.

“So tell me Prashant, what do you call a guy who can suck an entire army?”

“I have no clue. But I am pretty sure it is not me.” The lack of interest would not deter Shujit’s enthusiasm. He would respond; for a question asked has to be answered. Acting otherwise would defeat the purpose of asking the question in the first place.

“It is suck-sena…vibhav saxena” Ahh!! Brilliant. That will make his day. Prashant looked up and retorted with “Dude! You are lame aren’t you?”

“No! I have two legs. I guess you have an eye less. Tell me something, if you can see two legs with one eye, then based on the laws of unitary method, will you see four legs with two eyes?” He left before Prashant raised his head, hand or voice.

Shujit was Prashant’s flatmate. He was a hopeless romantic just like we are but he confided in few and rightly so! He rode the streets with a ‘Bullet’ between his ass. Oh and yeah! The ‘bullet’ referred cost him a third of the savings he would have attained had he ‘done’ math for half a decade. But why the fuck are we talking about Shujit? He is not Prashant.

Our hero turned to Shaila (the short girl with eyeballs so prominent that you are tempted to pluck them out and put them back given that you do not know what to do with them) and said “I need your laptop for this weekend! I am planning to see her after a long time.”

She smiled. He smiled back for he knew that she knew. He was after all a hopeless romantic, now wasn’t he?

*****End of episode****

5 simple steps: How to pretend being busy when you are not?(Part 1)

Before-note(i.e. before being fired in case higher echelons read this):Time and now, people have crossed me saying that my writing is funny and that it leaves them with smiles all over their pimpled faces. Well, I am not satisfied. I am still waiting for Katrina to come and confess the same(only the pimpled face gets replaced by silk ). It’s not that she has not read my blog, but that when she did, she was dating Salman Khan who threatened to kill me in case she goes out in public acclaiming my writing skills. And stung as she was with my infatuation, she restrained her words which these days are adding moisture to a lot of teen dreams. Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to brag about my writing skills. Its actual mission is to brag about how Katrina is smitten by me although she would not admit the same in public. Seriously, Kat, no offence. We can catch up later after you are done pampering kids like Ranbir and Imran!

Comprehension is a waste. I miss those days when I heard people praising Shakespeare without understanding one bit and claiming how (after hours and hours of roting on guide books) they came up with the idea that Caesar was gay or that Cassius conspired against Caesar because in teenage Caesar had hid his underwear in Calpurnia’s cupboard who finding the dirty piece of crap had incurred such wrath on Cassius that Shakespeare had to annotate how:

‘Hell hath no fury as a woman scorn’d over dirty underwear’.

Of course the latter part was removed to sanitize the saying and to allow dumb morons provide ample proof of their so called intellectualism in cocktail parties by wooing middle aged women with this stupid line. The joke, morons was on you. Only if you were Cassius and had not washed your underwear until the Ides of March. The purpose is not to deglamorise the Bard either. He rests happily in someone’s strong arms in peace.

The purpose my dear readers of this post is two-fold. Step one is filtering. The filtering is to filter readers who without having ample intellect have trampled upon my blog and have posted crazy comments (7 in total). I will employ Shakespeare, Dumas, Doyle and Kazka(I bet none of you morons have heard his name) to filter the people who have no consideration for the fact that Arundhati Roy has a weeping heart and that Anna Hazare is secretly conspiring with the Russian government to overthrow the British empire (Russians have finally acquiesced that the US is a pretty heavy enemy and they would much better concentrate their attention on the smaller countries which apparently have been playing really good cricket these days) Sources have also revealed that Dhoni had a small chat about the same after their terrible loss and that the fast is to divert too much of attention from India’s ignominy in the cricketing realms to the more important issues i.e., our favorite subject while travelling in trains, buses, tongas and auto rickshaws with morphed pictures of Aishwarya Rai with really enlarged boobs on one side and that of a God on the other: the System!

P.S.: The sentences will be really complicated and would herefore employ strange means like paraphrasing Shakespeare, Milton or Dumas and would encompass multiple subjects and talk of them glibly at the same time : for instance the rape of Lucrece which also affected the loss of virginity of Helen; the Greek Godess Elma’s step mom’s second cousin’s fifth daughter brought out of an alliance between the demons and the sub demons from the latin porn industry. The idea is to scare off the non intellectuals away and to retain the real jewels who are worthy of the important knowledge I am about to share with you. So if you are wondering why the text is still continuing in the post script and are trying to place the ‘script’ itself, off you go! Go home you idle creatures! Get you home! Go play with you sister’s Barbie and woo Himesh’s songs. Go study for high school and dance to the numbers of Elvis or bang your head on Heaven’s doors. The remaining who have appreciated this amalgamation of the Greek mythology and the Latin porn industry and feel Elma was wronged and betrayed I welcome thee with all my love and hereforth lead you into 5 simple steps to pretend being busy at work. It’s not that you people who have so ardently supported my writing in its troubling times, have no work. It is just that the phase of lack of work for you does not bear enough forbearance to dwell into thinking how to pretend being what you are not given that you are so true to yourself all the time!(Bazingaa!!)

Step 1) Ground Research is an important foundation which holds your employment in strong support. Do it more often.

I know the statement makes absolute sense to you. I know I do not need to speak more about this and that saying anything further or expatiating the bullet would only be an insult to your melon sized intellect which I have so solemnly patronized minutes ago. Yet bear with me my readers. I wish to speak!

The three keys to success are search, research and research some more. You have Google for the first point which searches almost anything from ‘nude scenes in Murder2’ to ‘Abhishek Bachhan’s secret gender change operation’. When you don’t have a lot of work but the pretence is necessary, try this. Type in all the even words of your Project’s name followed by the color of the west wall in your bought/rented/leased/usurped house and add a number which makes sense to your project and divides the total number of alphabets in your project title name leaving a remainder of no more than 5. Open all links in separate tabs. This you can do by right clicking on the link and clicking the ‘Open link in new tab’ options. Don’t be overwhelmed by the content. It is not for you. It is for your team to figure out unless you work alone in a secret chamber writing speeches for Sonia Gandhi. Copy the links and send it across to all your team members adding the subject line: “Additional resources for the project research”. This works instantly creating chaos in the team’s mind leading to an instantaneous representation of the pain you undertook in finding such random shit on the internet given that it’s full of so much useful information. Now shut down your laptop and hide it in the bag leaving the charger outside. Go get some tea. You have had a really tiring day and an extremely thrilling experience at work. Confused? That is step 2. Read on!

Step 2) Practice an appropriate abstraction and an even more appropriate exposure of hardware resources.

Now that you have come down to the tea stall wondering what you just did hiding your laptop in the bag and leaving the charger outside, just Relax! You are doing just fine. You are practicing the second most important step in ‘being busy’ representation (which I must say is completely different form being busy!! Ahh! The semantics of language!!)

What you did just now with your laptop (assuming that your employer is rich enough to provide you with one! People who work with desktops can forego this step! You have been wronged my friends! Go join hands with the ‘People’s Animal Lovers Society’ and crib about the lack of an appropriate multimedia device to work faster! Demand an i5 processor enabled laptop with high end graphics and faster i/o precision at 48.4X10^16 gigabytes of processor bandwidth, preferable in matt black color to boast of your company’s affluence) is called as ‘hardware abstraction’ and what you did with your charger is called as ‘hardware exposure’! Baffled? Don’t be!

You would have obviously heard of ‘data abstraction’ (not the one where we hide actual data from the client and churn numbers by applying a ‘rand()’ function in excel sheets). ‘Hardware abstraction’ is similar although. It means accidentally/intentionally hiding one/more of your resources which once powered on has the capability to print images, do calculations and make absurd noise when you try to poke your finger in the orifice at its side which apparently consumes the other resource which provides power source to this already powerful and complicated device. Now that we have our basics clear lets get to the point. When you are not at your seat but your laptop is out in the open has a possible syllogism attached: you have taken a pee/lunch/coffee/gaze at the girl in red break! Now when we are busy we would not let such theories thrive! Not over our dead bodies! So let’s hide our laptop. This tells that the disappearance has been an outcome of a compound effect of a need so immediate that the person forgot to carry his charger. This reeks of importance and of being busy. So all the while that you have been enjoying your tea under the shade of the banyan tree, people upstairs have been contemplating and associating your absence to an important meeting/presentation/rhetoric of your immediate requirement. See, you abstracted one resource and exposed other with utter regard for dishonesty but it made you the hero of the day in the minds of the people upstairs unless they are like you and have done the same and are sipping along side you staring at the same chick/guy in red!!

(Coming up next! Three more steps to practice pretence of busyness and to get the author fired, given that he has not been fired still! Until then chew on this sneak peak: ‘Mask your countenance with grieving and ailing faces when you come back from your tea break’)

P.S.: The following is not aimed at spreading any sort of chaos around office and is a fictional attempt of the author to write something on a windy Saturday evening. The purpose of the same should not be extended into other domains and should not be linked to any terrorist/anti terrorist activity outside. Also, the author holds all the celebrities, politicians, social activists, authors and Abhishek Bachhan mentioned in the post in high regards. Any distortion of the facts can lead to immediate suspension from the blog premises!!

Things People Say (Part 1)

Have you ever seen people talk? Have you seen them sway their hands and spit in the listener’s face as and when the enthusiasm gets over their reason? Have you seen them swear at the sound of the aircraft passing over which makes them inaudible over the din? Have you seen them sitting in coffee shops (my readers would be wondering my connection with the coffee shops! I just can’t avoid them!) munching over nuts and talking to their girlfriends as if they own the place?

Let’s get one thing straight. Idiots or non idiots, people love to talk. Some are fine with a quiet ‘Hello’ while some revel in loquacity. Some enjoy the cool breeze from a distance while some like to get right into the thick of things. So, when people are involved in the active or passive version of this verb, they throw signals to the listener. It’s not that the listener is stripped of this seemingly horrifying joy, but that his role switches across modes and that the reference to the listener is only an alias to a pacified speaker who as and when his role allows him, dons the mantle and does what people love to do: talks!

Now, when people are involved in this surreal act of self rejuvenation, it is important to see how they react to motions. However, before moving into motions, please go through a set of headers, which I have bundled without any thought process into merged sections for the shit people splutter.

1) The 'Crazy Guy' Talk: This, by far is the easiest to do. You need (at least) two idiots, some shade, cigarettes and/or tea (optional) and a hot chick’s image to discuss upon. The ingredients, though stereotyped are very much interchangeable with cricket, college or an irritating professor. The notion probably varies across nations and regions but the centrality of the theme preserves the ferocity of the talk. Now, dear readers, don’t be misled by the adjective ‘ferocious’ which here is used just to express the vigor and not the pattern of the talk. These talks are smooth as silk. The participants in such a conversation end up discussing some serious matters like the (in)appropriateness of nudity in Indian culture, the distorted ass of some random chick/guy or the impact of Bollywood on the use of birth control measures amongst the youth. The glibness is surprising but the intensity is not. However, paradoxical it sounds, these seemingly important talks end up in some crazy conclusion which is discarded with the butt of the cigarette (I was so tempted to ‘use’ the butt of the chick) and the disposal of the tea. Hence the name ‘Crazy Guy Talk’


2) The 'Cool Dude' Talk: Now, this one is tricky. It is tricky because it deals with the hip and the cool. You will find these leaders of stupidity everywhere. You can easily identify them with their loosely hanging t shirt which seems appropriate enough to house two and a half of them inside, untamed, intractable hair, pants which cling to the sides for their lives ; which these cool dudes keep pulling up every now and then as a reassurance to their asses. They have mastered the art of compaction. Not only are they compact with their sentences, but they have extended this act into the domains of words too. They break ice with a “’SSUP?” with a perfected (by years of practice) upward nod of head inclined at an optimum angle to avoid the sunlight into the eyes and bent enough to observe the listener. These guys discuss sports, music and cool arts like “shittin’ in ya pants” , “mah cool dad’s super cool car” or “’scaping to the trance”. Their ‘Ts’ are heavily pronounced and they try to miss the beginning of the words because of their resolution to compaction. These guys’ discussions are frenzied about cool things. (Dear, readers please bear with the frequent use of the word ‘cool’. It’s really un-cool to talk of them without their sacred word.) Then there are the cool parties and the catch phrases. A hot chick is ‘hoot’ and a slightly uncooked/overcooked pizza is ‘deep shit’! A word called as ‘dictionary’ does not exist for them and grammar ‘ain’t that buzzer either!’ A participant can join only after he has mastered the act of breaking things into incomprehensible shit to the average brains and coding into them, with an expressed denial to normalcy, the fervor of indifference and haughty-ness of a seven year old. Above all, it’s not cool to be uncool, dude! Hence the Cool Dude Talk!


3) The ‘I-HAVE-READ-IT-ALL’ Talk: These are dangerous conversations. Not because they allude to a bombing or terrorist activity, but simply because the conversations are so ‘mature’ and so stuffed with ‘content’ that the lesser mortals might die of overload. Specifically, the participants find themselves in a situation of boastful boredom flaunting their boring life about books and knowledge of arts to such a level that the discussion seems an over exaggeration of an epic saga. These talks normally proceed with “Hey! Did you get to come across the book….?” The conversations delve thereby into metaphysical domains of epistemes and unexplored knowledge domains with utmost display of clarity and an unprecedent back up of ideas. These are the hollow conversationalists that you will find in every classroom and every office. They are dominantly found discussing Newton’s theory of motion with a slight hint to Arundhati’s, ‘Inheritance of loss’ with an air of seriousness hitherto unknown to the aforementioned “Crazy Guys” and “Cool Dudes”! Trust me people, these guys don’t know shit about stuff but they can speak with such clarity that the third person is confused if the guy came up with the concept , in the first place. They will blow up things that they can easily understand and worship an unknown ‘subject’ with religious sentiments. These are the hypocrites you would want to escape. These are the intellectuals who apparently ‘have read it all’ but have not comprehended shit! They praise Foucault and Rand with an equal capacity and talk of Deleuze as if he was their first cousin who stole their ideas. Arundhati Roy is shitty to them because they could understand her Preface in one go and Chetan Bhagat is too simple to be taken seriously!!


(coming up next- 'The Gossip Girl Talk', 'The Big Intellectual Talk' and more....)

Episode 8 (The Moves)

“Nice perfume, Ma’m!!”

It’s hard to ignore a lady’s perfume; especially, when it’s hot; the weather that is. The sun was beating down heavily with an enlightened intensity as the smoke came out of the chimneys nearby. The aura was neither intensively invigorating nor fresh. Everyone was waiting for the rains. Rains have this enchanting and romantic aura around them of cleansing every soul that they pour upon. The notion was borrowed across nations and continents but it never occurred to him before that incident. His wait for rains was limited to gaze at her as she walked in the room ‘soaked’! The word does little justice to the sight as it belittles the joy and I am very angry at the word. This sight, pertaining to the so solemnly referred ‘soaked joy’; he would thereby enjoy from hidden corners of the dimly lit room. This however was in store for the future as the rains hadn’t come and he hadn’t met her either until today. I can understand the misleading presumption that might creep into the reader’s mind taking the lady with the perfume as the lady we have so frequently talked about. However it might or might not leave the reader at the mercy of a surprise or shock. Who knows?

******************

They sat silently in the balcony of a coffee shop. He hated the bills at these shops. It seemed rationally irradical to pay such an amount for something so meager. It was absolutely insensible to go by what Karuna liked to use in defense of such kiosks. She used to add with an air of expressed chivalry that these places ‘Make memories!!’ He remembered the CCD at Infocom and the incident that took place there a couple of years ago and enjoyed the sweetness for some time as the waiter made his way towards the table. His thoughts kept oscillating between the tender kiss and the pink top she wore right now as he looked over at an aged family sitting silently over her shoulder. He liked the pink top and the black shorts. She had recently met his friends and they had a wonderful outing apart from a mishap which we will definitely discuss in some other episode for it has less to do with the present and more to do with the future. But do keep it in mind, for it’s an important incident that would make the ‘Train journey’ viable and justify the ‘hit by a train….’!!!

The waiter had made the distance. It is difficult for waiters to decide the right time to intrude a date. When a couple has voluntarily chosen silence, it could mean either of the two things. One, that they are enjoying the silence and would thereby not like to be disturbed and any action to disrupt the same might cut the waiter’s tip in half. Two, that they fought on the way over and when the sun went too hot for their brawl they moved into the coffee shop without any proper inclination for coffee and thereby asking about the same would lead to a tip less transaction. So, our hero (it’s the waiter in a white shirt under a black apron, who surprisingly is not Prashant for the episode) announced his presence to our sidekicks Prashant and Karuna who sat opposite to each other. He chose his words very carefully. He began with a small welcome and left it at it. Their lack of response did not deter his determination to take an order at the earliest. He left the ‘Menu’ at the table and exited saying “Whenever you feel comfortable sir! I will be in that corner!” Now, the words ‘that corner’ were tactfully chosen. We must compliment our hero for the same as these words forced Prashant to lift his eyes and to look into the ‘desired corner’. Our hero exited seeing that he had to play the game silently. He gave them some time as he watched from the corner their hands fighting over the ‘Menu’. At this moment exactly, he made his second move. Idly, passing near them he dropped a small piece of cutlery on the floor near their table and bent down to pick it up glancing at her waxed legs and keeping the spoon on their table. It was smooth. The act of glancing was impregnated with a multitude of motives but the primary idea preserved the sanctity of the act. He had broken ice twice where Prashant was struggling to hit the right spot!!

“Any developments on the order? Sir….!!!” Said the waiter as he moved close to their conversation about the night before last and they went hush to cover up the agony best left in the dimly lit room.

“Well! We are still looking..!!! I think that ‘Paneer Croissant’ looks delicious” Prashant took to the charge of answering the waiter. Ahh! That moron!! Little did he know what was about to happen…!!!

“I want dessert!” Karuna suddenly announced. Suddenly, nothing made sense. The dinner had just begun, or was it an impromptu way to end the date?
The waiter seemed non-perplexed. He retorted with an equal amazement.
“You might want to look on the 7th page under ‘Sweet Treat’ section to quench your anachronic requirement!!” Nothing beats sarcasm when it’s wrapped in the translucent sheath of respect.

“Well there is nothing that I find lucrative here!!”

“Well!! What according to your gourmet taste will suffice as a ‘lucrative’ dessert Ma’m?” The waiter’s seemingly pretentious respect had now turned sour and he was jumping at every opportunity to be satirical.

“Well!! Truthfully, it has to be different with every bite!! That would be an ideal dessert. Something that tastes different every time I bite into it!!” Karuna was trying to fight him off..!!

“And what according to you is ‘Different’ Madam??”

“The way her tongue works and the way her lips do when she kisses me..!! That’s different!! You dumb witted moron!! Now get back to your fucking den and get me a fork!! And while you are at it try getting some etiquette as well, you son of a bitch!” Prashant jumped in to save his lady love. He had enough of the dumb waiter. She was blushing. The ‘you dumb witted moron’ and ‘son of a bitch’ had not unruffled her one bit. She found it utterly captivating, the way he had jumped in to her service.

The waiter was gone, the dessert was served and the dinner enjoyed. The boundaries had been set and territories had been protected. Ladies (read lady) won and conversations conversed. The sun was setting somewhere in the skies of Ahmednagar as he was getting dressed to take her out. They were trying some new ‘kiosks’ tonight, let’s say some new flavors lay on the table to be enjoyed!!

What he did not know however, was that someone else was making a move tonight too..!! I wish he were ready for it, just like he was ready for the ‘train’…!!!