People I tell you, they come in different shapes, sizes, and configurations. But the basic difference lies all in the wiring, sockets, and circuits. Some have their circuits acting more cranky than the others; while some others have problems in their sockets; the plug just dosen't fit in- however hard you try. There are still others with major problems in wiring. You understand, right? Problems with wiring as in the positive, negative and the neutral wires; and the entangling, and sometimes the direct contact of the positive with the negative, and then the sparks and the crackers and the celebrations.

Let us assume that its your birthday, and bearing in the mind the fact that you are such a generous gem of a person, you throw a big big party inviting all the people around. All the people as in all the people irrespective of their problems of wiring and short circuits.
You play a good host, and everyone gets an amazingly huge serving of ice cream to it; and that too, to each his own flavour. Yummy, simply delicious, and that too with some dripping hot chocolate sauce and a cherry on the top.
Ahem.. Ahem.., now what do I say; well, just that I want to be invited to your birthday party too.... Hmmmmm
We better get back to the point now. You go around serving ice cream to people, and they all give you their biggest sweetest of smiles, and obviously, you nicely reciprocate all the gestures. And then, not that you are boasting of your nice hospitable nature, but still you do go around talking to people and ensuring they are having fun.
There are people laughing away enjoying every bit of the ice and the cream, before it melts away. There are people licking and biting and smiling and singing, there are people who are eating very very slowly lest they should finish it very quickly; and these are the ones who ask you if they can get another one once they are done with the first serving. You assure them that they can have as much as they want, and they thank you and enjoy their creamy treat. But, their are still others, who are having one bite very very slow lest they should finish it soon, and the very next bite very very quickly lest any bit of it should fall down. These are the ones who are asking their friends "what if the cherry falls down", "what if the ice cream melts before i can finish it", "what if others enjoy and have their face full smeared with the cream", "what if my face is all smeared with cream and others all look squeaky clean", what if I want to have another ice cream after this"; and on hearing this last "what if", you suddenly spring into action knowing that there's someway atleast you can make them happy, and you immediately tell them they can have another full ice cream; but then they'll ask you "what if all the others are eating more quickly than us", and "what if each one has already had a second serve before we are done, and there's none left for us", ant there you stand without an answer, but then you tell them if that is the case, you'll go run, and buy them another big bowl of ice cream, and then they are suddenly not sure if they should be happy, or there's still something left to worry about.

They think and you think...... thinking about...

(To be continued...)

With love... to my fellow Indians....

We Indians have our way of making into news and things of more sensational nature. And why not? We are a nation of poor people and we are proud to be poor; we are a nation of communal dischord, and we are proud of it; we are a state of education deprived youth, and we are proud to be learning from life, rather than learning in life!!

We are poor, we live in slums, but we aren't poorer than our next door neighbour. We got more assets than him, and we make sure to let him know that he's floating on thinner, much thinner ice than us. And when Danne Boyle comes and insists that he should make a movie on us; on us poor, famished, barely living, but... still living beings, we immediately tell him that he shouldn't underestimate us. If he finds our neighbour poor, we are still poorer; if he finds a superstition ghastly and inhuman, we have another one of a more gory nature that'll make him pukish to his utter insides.

If a firang asks us if it really was true that girl child was killed soon after she was born; we tell him that' first of all, its not that we used to kill the girl child, we still do it at times; and then it's not that we kill our girl child after she's born, sometimes we do it even before she's born; and at other times, of course, if we let her be born, we can always make her live a life as if she were dead always. And, if the interviewer is still not content, or has got any courage left to take more, we can even tell him how we go about killing the girl child, exact particulars, tools, implements, precautions and things. After all, its about a book being written, or a movie being made, and why should we hide our achievements, when we have collected them over the ages, and nursed through the centuries.
And its not my or your colleague who's asking; that he'll go and tell around to his kins, polluting our name. This is a matter of international consequence and no facts, figures, pictures or details should be missed, lest we should fail to get the highest rank in the International Hall Of Shame, which has got the highest acclaim amongst all the organizations of such order.

Is the Indian system always like that?
No mam, definitely not. Sometimes, its even more slow and screwed up.

Do these rikshaw drivers always demand such high sums for small distances?
No sir, its just that they are more prone to show how ill-bred they are in front of people as refined as you.

Where can I go and submit the papers for a Visa extension?
Right here sir; Please attach a five hundred rupee note each, above and below your papers.

Why do you have such a big queue for everything?
Where is the queue mam, get aside Bob. Can't you see mam waiting here.... you moron you blah ... you blah blah... beep beep... (and no offence taken.)!!

I would like to travel by your popular transport. Is it the local bus?
No mam, local bus is for local people mam, those who do not have the etiquette to travel by finer means of transport. Definitely not for you mam.

But then, its not like we always have Americans and Europeans swarming over us to write books and make movies. In times like these, it becomes very difficult to give justice to our extraordinary abilities of self shame. But then we are practised and well versed, and we resort to publicity techniques like different celebrations.
Like, when the entire world celebrates Valentines Day and basks in the warmth of love; we go a step further, and declare that we come out on the streets and conduct marriage ceremonies for all Indian couples celebrating Valentines; for, we must show the world that if they got love, we got more love; if they celebrate togetherness, we celebrate matrimony, forced or enforced!!
And then inadvertently, we make it to the news... first page, headlines... LIGHTS!! CAMERA!! ACTION!!
Proud to be INDIAN!!

The last thing you should do when you are watching a theatre performance is doze off; and more so when you are watching theatre for the first time, and when you have told your friends that you are more than interested in watching theatre atleast once, and when the same very friends are sitting next to you,and when there's a probability that the moment you doze off, you are going to be laughed at for the next two days or three or maybe four days atleast.

Assuming that the play is very very boring,(which most of the times is not the case though), there are tactics that you should employ to keep yourself awake...
Ahem... ahem...but these tactics come after you have exhausted the options of having coffee and popcorn, and yeah.. even throwing popcorns at people.

So option 1, a good idea would be to look to your right side, where your friends are sitting, catch them yawning(make them yawn if you cant catch them yawning, otherwise)and scream with surprise and sarcasm, "someone prefers to sleep in air conditioned theatres and halls... huh!!" And this should leave them embarrassed enough to not even look at you throughout the rest of the performance, for they are gonna be busy adjusting their eyes to the widest size they can open.

Another good option, option 2, is to get up , take a walk down the aisle, and give a missed call to one of your friends, then go back and tell them very very seriously that cellphones are required to be switched off through the performance, and that they should respect the artiste on the stage. And, nobody's going to ever doubt the point that there could be any other soul, more interested or more engrossed in the performance than you were.

Another option, the best one, as I see it is to tilt your head to one side, adjust the angle nicely so that you face towards the stage, lean on your arm your back towards your friends, and peacefully go to sleep. And, in case they happen to call out your name in the middle of the show, let them assume that you are just too busy and too engrossed to even listen to them...
But do make sure, you do get up in time to give a big round of applause to the artists, once the performance is over. Rather, a standing ovation is what I would say....

Cheers!!

the guy who was gay...

Walking down the street, err... jumping down the street, I met dis guy
i called him gay; and he said "please don't"... so i asked him why

i told him you look happy... and you do look gay...
he told me "no ... no mam .. no way...."

so i reminded him that he did laugh and he did jump and sing
he told me "he'll even dance and jump down the ring..."

he told me "he'll eat, he'll even cook and bake"
so i asked him whenever he was gay,did he always cut the cake??

he again told me "that he never was gay...
not now, neither never, nor any other day..."

I was getting all confused , so i asked him one last time...
why did he think that being gay was a crime??

he got irritated and frustrated and said "he couldn't bear..
being gay was not his thing, and on that he would swear..."

I had had enough and more I couldn't digest...
so i told him a bye and asked asked him to take rest

No rest he said as he showed me the way...
the place where he would party since he was happy that day...

Happy it seems, and I heavily sighed as i walked down the way..
that was the happy guy who refuses to be called gay!!

Its not like I get lost whenever I go out… or wherever I go… Its just that I have got this exquisite talent of getting lost at places... at times… on occasions.

N to tell you how I get lost…
I go to this place I have never seen before, haven’t heard of before. Its like real far from my hostel and; and before you get your imagination going, let me make this clear, I am a good student who studies and studies and most of the times stays in her room in the hostel which in turn is very much inside the college campus. So as you see, no going out often and no chance that I should know the ways, roads, and such things around and about the city…. So I do deserve a chance to lose my way and therefore, my friends going out with me shouldn’t really hate me for that, nor make faces, and not even go around teasing me. I am sure you do agree with me. Poor little me lost on the streets, trying to figure out her way to this ice cream shop to have this extremely tasty cream fudge, which I obviously don’t get to have very often. Sad isn’t it…. ?? No ice cream for people who get lost, for by the time they find the way to the ice cream shop, its way too late; and time to go “home sweet home”.

Oh... but listen, lets not talk about this girl for now. I totally empathize with her. She hardly goes out and then too loses her way. Pheww!!

Lets rather talk about me. I love ice cream as much as this girl does. And I d rather take out time and run away to grab choco mint fudge at this Corner House, the moment I get a chance. And again, before you get any ideas, I ll admit I go out to this place very very often, and I do know I could do just as well if I dint have half as much of ice cream, for then, I wouldn’t be half as fat, as you see I am now.
And in case you promise you won’t tell anybody, I’ll also admit that I love dragging people to give me treats out there…. Icilicious ice cream treats…
And then I have these nice friends of mine who offer me ice creams by themselves.
And I take them along to Corner House. And we have a nice lovely walk, chatting, hitting , punching, and littering the road; when we realize that its high time to realize that we are lost, and that the ice cream parlor wasn’t that far at all.
And then, my nice friend here asks me few nice questions,…. Like “dint you say you come here very often”; and ”isn’t it like you said you know all the ways round here ”
And then I give one of my best, favorite, innocent most smiles, and scream at the top of my voice that it wasn’t me, but him who got us lost here and should figure out the way back, for I must have the ICE CREAM.

Ahem ahem…. And then it dosent take as much time for him to figure out the correct way, as it had taken for me to lose it. Anyways, we jump a wall, walk down a road, and there we are…. Ice cream waiting for us. ..
But since we lost a lot of time walking and walking and walking… around and about and about and around the place, we must not sit and have ice cream now. But yes, we could get it parceled and have it on the way back. For as I said time to go home sweet home.
And , sorry buddy, you don’t get to taste the ice cream here, for I must rush back , because, there s always a possibility of me losing my way in the roads I have seen a zillion times and walked down everyday….Cheers!!