Happy Friendship Day

Roughly 14 years ago I was in college, trying to gain some acceptance into any one of the groups around. It wasn't an easy thing for an average guy with not enough pedigree or pocket money.

Then out of nowhere senior students barged into our class and beat up a batchmate (that asshole is an IAS officer today). I volunteered to be a witness at the police station. It was the first time I was seeing the insides of a police station.
Looking back it was a turning point for me. New friends, politics, ideology. Things did a 270 degree turn after a couple of years but the memory still remains.
Needless to say after graduation all the rival gangs compromised the case on realization that survival matters more than the politics.

A few days ago I visited a local pub alone. My regular drinking buddy was touring Europe with his wife and I was missing my vodka. The stench of the place is unbearable but you get adjusted in minutes.
After the drinks I was riding my scooter home when I saw police on the curve I was stopped and asked to breathe out and was caught.

I sat morosely at the station as the in-charge asked me to call up a friend as I realized to my horror that I had none.

Guys as a word of advise take pains to cultivate friends. We easily tend to recline into a self-coccoon. But over the years we will not realize all the good times you would have missed .

Stories from the cockpit

Have you heard of girls speaking disgustedly about guys who do public exhibitionism. Ah well I am one who doesn't do it in public but have done a few in private.

I  derive considerable pleasure talking sex or remotely sexual topic online. Thanks to the deluge of social media, I have never been starved off the pleasure.

Many of my office colleagues and friends have been subject to my weird engagement. I have lost count, but quite a handful have seen my little guy in different stages of erection. Some have outright blocked me, some have threatened and some just curious.

I am writing this because I haven't posted anything stupid in a while. A few weeks ago I found this wonderful person in Twitter. I tried many things to heckle her off and sometime ago (although unintended) she had to see my little guy.

The poor thing might not have seen anything uglier in life and I thought she might have said fuck off. But no being the wonderful person she's, she still speaks to me.

All I want to say is , it's quite lucky to land up with a great friend

The daily thought- Back from a trip

Hello there

I not been into the space for the last two days. Reason was a few days ago a good friend pinged- We plaaned a sudden trip to Palakkad

So I dropped everything and set off to Palakkad. Reached here  today morning. The first thing that struck me was the cold wind. The wind had been blkwing through out the day. No wonder these guys buikd windmills.

We set off to a mini trekking. We did it some 5 years ago when we had come to attend a wedding. And here we are all single.

Signed off the trip with Apple flavoured vodka

Good mornings 29/ 07 / 2013

Another week. I am already dreading it.  Yesterday spent an evening with an old friend.  Had a real candid talk on life.  Years are rolling by and there is nothing but gloom

I was talking to a friend. He helps poor weavers with loan which is subsidized by the government.  This guy inorder to meet his target makes them take mutual funds out of their margins.  Such a sad world. There is no longer place for any ethics.

Meanwhile there was no fixing or corruption in BCCI. All is well with IPL

Hey Sam!!!

That was a time , when the popular question among the kids was ' Who's your best friend?'

Oh God and I used to sweat on all these questions on best friend, favorite color, favorite food...

So as not to be left out , I looked around. Best friend is defined as one with whom you can share all your secrets and who's going to be there in times of need.

I looked around. There was this guy with a very very wide grin. He spoke very little. I decided this was the guy with whom I will share all my secrets. So I kept on talking and he kept on listening. And he was such a handsome guy.

Later he took me to his home. He had a father who ran some business in Gulf. But he seemed to be here more than there.  Although he didn't tell me much, I could make out the strains of a dysfunctional family. His dad was pretty much strict man who tried to pester him to greatness (more like mine ). His two sisters were at peek of marriageable age.

By the way, his name was Sam. Internet rage had only started hitting my place. The broadband wave hadn't hit yet. There were internet 'cafes' doing brisk business. I thought creating an email account was as difficult as creating a real post office address. I asked Sam for his help. He led me to the most popular cafe and within minutes I had a hotmail account. And later on with a lot of shyness I asked him to show me how to browse porn. I had read in the magazines that internet porn had become a rage. He taught me the basic steps. Desibaba was the most popular site back then. I went on to become a die hard desibaba fan.

Years rolled on, I totally lost touch with Sam. A few days back, thanks to Facebook, I met him again virtually. He gave me the good news that he's getting married to a girl from a different caste, language.  I wonder how his dad gave the green signal in the first place.

I was stunned. How much life has changed from all those horny teen days. Internet cafes which were reaping huge profits back then died a slow death. Every home went on to have their broadband. Then PC started dying out to sleeker laptops. Right now I'm blogging in from a handheld phone while in a train.

No one uses letters any longer except for the document ridden government offices. I moved on from one email account to another. I can no longer remember my hotmail account. Years ago I fell in love with gmail and am continuing the affair.

You do well Sam. Have a great sexy married life, like all the porn movies we saw

Love in the texts

Its late into night. Both the SMSes are about to crash into bed

I: One last qn. Why haven’t u fallen in love yet? Why have the boys spared u, with all the killer looks.

She: :D Have u ever fallen in love?

I: Yes, I have fallen and I have hurt myself

She: Y? What went wrong?

I : Nothing. I didn’t have the courage to tell her. Besides I fell in love with bachelorhood

She: So she never known?

Me: No

Silence

Silence

Silence

I: Hey an advice… Should I tell her how much I love her. But I cant marry so soon. I need time.

She: Its up to you to decide.

I start thinking furiously. May be if I tell her, I would lose a great friend, a great bitch, But at some point of time you need to take the risk and live with it The Send button was longest ever I clicked

Me: Jasmone I Love You

The first time I proposed anyone in life. Wish it was bit more romantic!! But ‘She’ is a tough nut to crack

Things that wont simply go off

She texted me up yesterday. It has been sometime we have been in touch. I did deliberately put a full stop, as her marriage had been on the cards for sometime.

She sounded a bit flustered. The guy was showing up his real ‘face’. He put up a lot of restrictions on her- attire, joking, going out. He seems to be disenchanted of the future. He doesn’t open up. She sounded ultimately confused on where this is leading. I knew her persona very well- a very romantic, sensous, humorous person. The fate might be coming up with just the opposite.

I didn’t bother to console her. Is there any point in doing so? The combination of tough horoscope and huge dowry market makes it tough for her parents to get a match. I asked her to face the song.

Its so sad to see even after all the years of female empowerment, we see the total exploitation in the so called institution- marriage. The enormous dowry you have to come up with plus the expenses, it just drains the sanctity off. Earlier the love matches were exempted from dowry, now it became more prevalent there. I recently saw a very old couple mortgaging their home for their daughter’s marriage. The mortgage rates are very high in India, you’ll have no scope of repaying it. The funny part is the couple aren’t poor. They might come into the upper middle class and still they cant afford the ‘marriage’.

Speaking about the horoscopes- I don’t know. There are people who believe in it. I am not questioning the faith. But when the horoscopes becomes an indirect tool for exploitation, is it a right thing?

Moment by Moment

Yesterday a friend texted me. It was her Papa's death anniversary and she was feeling wierd.

'Wierd?' I replied. 'yeah. I don't know how would Papa feel to know her daughter reached nowhere.'

She was not bad in her studies. But she successfully messed up her graduation. She had a disasterous fling. The guy is married to someone else and is trying hard to coax her into an illicit affair. To top it all she made some bad investments that made hee indebted to wrong guys.

I have seen girls messing up big time when their dads passes away. I wouldn't want to generalise but it might have something to do with the feeling of security.

I found no words to console her. But in my short experience success is a very relative term. The success at this moment might turn sour in the very next. So its pointless moaning or gloating. I know a group, once it had some of the biggest engineering contracts in the country. A few bad investments and the owners have no house even to stay.

Let's live and build life moment by moment

I, the villain

When I split the milk in the morning, I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be a great day. Naturally, my instincts said that I might mess something up at the office. Strangely nothing went bad. I was wondering if anything was yet to come up or had the angel passed over me? The buddies called me for dinner. That’s when the axe fell.

There was this guy, who did hang out with a girl. Someone else asked me what is going on. I spiced things up by blurting out that I heard stories too. I never knew that this jerk would jerk off soon.

All hell broke loose and I was pretty sure that the dinner buddies are going to bash me up. My only worry was about losing the dinner. I chose to stand and listen while I was being accused of gross misdemeanors. The one thing I fail to understand is if there were nothing at all except friendship then why bother?

Besides there comes a point in life, when you grow up enough to differentiate between the two. As for me I spent the night getting verbally bashed. Still believe in the school of thought that there is no friendship between the opposite sexes with out an element of sexuality.

Good Mornings 03082011

Good Morning everyone!!!

Yesterday we had another bachelor’s dinner and promised to have more. But this time it was simpler than the last one but fulfilling. I promised to chip in more.

The last night we had a more meaningful conversation about family. However diverse we are, we have one thing in common. We badly miss our parents. And no doubt they might be missing us too. The moment they see their kids moving out, they realize they are no longer young and starts ageing. The little quarrels we pick up infact brings down their age!

Another pilot have died, thanks to air crash. It seems India manufactures more martyrs off the battle fields. I had a very interesting argument with an old time class mate who is into Air Force now. We signed off in a huff. Hope she will remember me when the news came out. When’ Rang De’ came out I was very much against it. But after some more maturing up I think our armed forces might not be so clean.

Thankfully opposition has stood up this time around in Parliament.

Good Mornings 27072011

Yesterday I enjoyed, what was for the first time in my life, a bachelor's dinner. Three of my friends invited me over for dinner provided I share with them my induction cooker. Induction cooker is not a heavy weight so I carried it along. I was only hoping for a minimal dinner of gruel and pickle. I was stunned on seeing a variety of dishes.

I was ashamed that I had not even taken the baby steps at cooking. I loitered around fetching them the plates and doing the cleaning. But it was a wonderful and satisfying experience- when you eat the bread out of your own labour.

There is a tea shop just outside our apartments. I there the mornings for the morning cup of tea to set my bowels moving. A newspaper boy comes around in the morning and throws the daily into the shop. A couple of old men hustle and bustle for the newspaper and at exact 7 am they walk out with the newspaper to the bus stop and do rest of the reading there. I kept wondering why these guys don't finish reading it in the shop itself.

I got the answer from a friend. At seven the school bus comes to pick the kids up. That's when young beautiful looking mothers escort the kids to the bus!!!

Good Mornings 26072011

Yesterday night I had a chance to chat up with two different girls.

One is the lovely baby face . A gorgeous babe, I have no doubt she would have fans all over, of which I am one too. But the killer looks mask her brilliance in academics!! It would be rare to see a beauty with brains.

And the second one was petite silent one back from college days. She joined the Air Force and I saw her online after a long time. God!! I made fun of the Air Force and there she was literally eating me up. I can't understand why an impression is nurtured that the people who are not in the forces are lazy and good-only-with -the-mouth, while those in the forces risk their lives day in day out. I just can't digest the attittude of these people. You suck bitch. You and your whole system.

I wrote about a girl dumped by a best friend of mine- it was long ago. I just found out yesterday, the poor thing got married. Don't know hoe good are the either of them in forgetting.

Elixir

Yesterday was a deja vu day for us.

We a couple of friends met together at college and got close soon. I joined the gang towards the end of the tenure. Soon after the college we separated ways and joined different places. We had high hopes in mind, only to be shattered soon.

After many months, we joined back at square one. We ended up meeting most evenings and didn't get bored talking of the same things over and over again.

And soon one by one relocated out of the place. The gang went on shrinking. Yesterday we had a party which sounded like a farewell until we meet again. Suddenly I feel I have lost my youth and feeling bloody lonely.

Thankfully I successfully flirted with a perfect stranger today morning while on the train. A sign that all the youth is not lost yet.

The marriage sites saga

When it comes to marriage we Indians are still traditional- atleast in this southern tip of the country. Even among the ‘progressive’ families there is rarely a marriage borne out of love, dating. The process goes something like this- the boy/girl dates someone in high school and promises to live happily ever after. Then they realize at the college that it was a puppy love and decides to make a more matured decision. Throughout the college they come across some 8-10 suitable people to share the rest of their life with. They may end up living with the last one at the end. Or, as commonly seen, they ditch the last one after college and leave it all to parents.

The tough thing for the parents about arranging a bride/groom for the child is they may not be able to find the ‘right’ person soon enough. In the process the best age to marry off may pass away leaving the parents and the child in dire straits.

So the marriage sites come very handy to these poor souls. When I relocated to Ernakulam, I had to stay with my long time friend as a temporary solution. So he told me about this new trend. But the marriage sites don’t come cheap. It will burn a cool 5k bucks annually. And the religious denominations have started versions of their own to see the sheep in their fold doesn’t stray away.

But it’s not easy to simply put up a profile. Obviously people have exaggerated their qualities a bit to get ‘interests’. Blessed is the man who believes without seeing. So my friend fished out some beautiful girls. Sadly, his parents discovered that he has some minor defects in his horoscope. Now horoscope is the greatest villain in Indian marriages. Even the ‘madly-in-love’ dare not defy the horoscopes even if they defy their parents. My friend laments that he had to forego any chance to wed a beautiful wife and is waiting for the rare occurrence of a matching horoscope.

But he narrated the plight of another friend of his to forget the sorrows. This guy is short in stature, average looking and is not a high earner. He dreams of marrying a Miss India or someone with close resemblance. So every day he logs on to his profile and ‘expresses interest’ in every good looking girl. The next morning he finds out every one has turned up the ‘no interest’ flag. Out of grave frustration he hits the bottle that night and invites his friends to share his misery (everything on the house). The next morning he wakes up a new man and ‘expresses interest’ to a fresh set.

So one day he comes across an over aged girl with no job and hot looks. Now this was the chance to hit the bull’s eye. Apparently she must be frustrated like him, searching. He surely would fix this one. He ‘expressed interest’. He waits for a day or two with no reply coming. Surely this is going to work. Sadly on the fourth day she too expressed horror. He hit the bottle with a vengeance that night.

Wine and Cricket

I took a sip from the wine glass. There was an entire bottle of beer on the glass table. I turned around to take a look at Ajay. In the dark interiors I strained my eyes to make out Ajay slipping more and more into the cushions. No diet seems to be working on him. He was growing huge every day. He had finished almost two packets of potato chips and masala peanuts. Now I will have to finish up my wine and his beer and there was one entire match left.

On April 02^nd India was gearing up for its final in the cricket world cup. Cricket is the only team event in sports India has got real chance in. So everyone was making plans to watch the finals together- with friends and relatives. Pubs weren’t preferred in Kerala. Here people prefer to drink at home. That’s when Ajay calls me up to Purple Lounge, the only hip pub in our city. I was reluctant as they were no other friends to share the cheers. And I am not a drinker. I usually prefer the girl’s drink, wine. I am not a good ‘glass-mate’.

The harder I tried to dissuade him, the more he persisted. I relented. It would be a change to watch the finals drinking wine. I was eternal optimist when it came to meeting desperate girls in pubs. I reached there well before time. Suddenly he calls me up and says he’s coming in a transport bus. The next second he says he is on his bike. I asked him, ‘Dude are you really coming?’. I prayed no one will see me getting into the Lounge. This was my first time here and I hoped I wouldn’t end up with the label alcoholic. Ajay reached 10 overs late.

We have an impression that in a good pub we get to see a humble, loving, caring bar tender. But the guy here thought we ended up there by mistake. He announced the price list for all the drinks plus an entry charge of 150 bucks per head. The wine costs 250 bucks. Thanks to the faulty system of my company, I was a wage-free worker for the last month. I begged Ajay, ‘Dude we can buy the bottles from somewhere and watch the game at home’. He offered to take the bills and we stayed. He ordered beer and wine for me.

Then the funny thing happened. He ordered a mineral water bottle and ate up the touching. He announced that he had had enough. Now I will have to finish the beer. I took turns in taking a sip from each. Anyway the combination of beer and wine proved to be lucky for india that night.

I hate I hate luv stories

Considering the proximity of V-day and my inability to celebrate V-day all the 25 years of my life, I decided to watch a pucca Bollywood love story with a very strange name ‘I hate Luv Story’. Well, there is a history behind my choice. The girl whom I went with for ‘Golmaal3’ promised me it was a ‘chweet’ movie. After seeing the movie I’ll have to redefine the word ‘chweet’ in my vocabulary.

I have very much limited knowledge in Hindi but I hope my grammar is right when I say, ‘Kitna Khattiya film hain yaar’. The movie is supposed to be a funny take on the clichés in romantic concepts of Hindi film. Strangely the movie is over burdened with clichés. Please do not mistake that I am doling out a review. It has become a passion and fashion for us to beat the hell out of badly made movies. I think it’s sadistic than the half hearted attempts from so called directors. There are movies which deserve criticism and the ones which have to be ignored. (To be frank I too love those reviews in Hindustan Times where the writer takes pleasure in doing autopsy on the dead-born child)

The good part of movie is the balanced acting from Imran Khan and Sonam Kapoor. Imran is a wood work wonder. Even a bull dozer about to mow him down cannot extract any ‘acting’ from him. When I pointed out his skills in JTYJN, my friends assured me he will do well. Strangely I have got a chance to see all his movies thereafter- Kidnap, Luck. He is doing a research on’ how badly you can do it’. Speaking on Sonam- she is tall and handsome. She wears the trendiest of clothes. But the bloody smile has started getting onto our nerves. She is said to have done her acting lessons out there in New York. They should have told her it’s not good to grin throughout a movie.

On the other facts on the movie-there is no such thing as a sub-plot. So there are no other characters except for the hero and heroine. The cinematography and editing is one of the most ordinary I have seen. Then there is this humor element, which is a sort of surprise. There were a few good jokes which were badly missed out due to poor timing. Then there was this double entendre. It has become quite fashionable to crack out a dirty joke. It gets assured laugh from family audience and the kids know their parents are enjoying something they will understand when they grow up. Even the scissor friendly censor boards do not bother about the cultural impact of these films.
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Okay anyways, I am going to tell you a better love story. The love story which lasts for life time.
We were a batch of students who joined our company fresh out of college. We were given training on software engineering. We were from different parts of India. There was this guy from Punjab and that girl from Delhi. She was already hitched to her college mate. But then it’s quite a popular knowledge that when you rate the girls from various parts of India on their ‘faithfulness’- the ones from Delhi fall into one extreme of table and the Tamils fall into other. The guy, Sagil, was quite bravado. He proposed the girl, Sriti, knowing very well that she was hooked. She rejected it with a heavy heart. Sagil was not the one who easily gave up. He hung on, well of course as a friend. But every once in a while he did remind her of her boyfriend’s relative poverty.

Then all of a sudden the villain ‘recession’ struck. The boyfriend lost his job. Sagil got the opportunity of lifetime. He rammed into her head the hazards of having to put up with a jobless guy. The story goes that Sriti called up the poor boyfriend and told him that she was too ashamed to tell people that her fiancé is jobless. Well of course he had seen it coming and tried his best to get some kind of job. But ‘some kind of job’ wouldn’t fool Sriti.

Recently I came across Sagil’s and Sriti’s engagement photos in FB. They looked well and happy. One hell of a love story from a land of immortal love.
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Speaking of sweet naughty jokes, I tried to put smiles on my friends’ face by sending out a joke last Saturday:

Just a reminder that if you want a child in 11/11/11, you know what to do tonight ;)

Well an unmarried female friend of mine was mighty pissed off. She threatened me with dire consequences. Where have all these sense of humor gone?

Let's 'Rock'

My place, Kerala, always stood at the cultural cross roads. Simply because, it’s slow in catching up with the changing tastes- be it in fashion, movies, music or any other form of arts.

When it comes to rock music, I can safely say, India as a whole has been very reluctant to catch up with the ‘Rock’ music. And the majority who have chosen it safely reside in the select metros. The population who despise the ‘Rock kids’ label them as Satanic, drug peddling, unclean couth. And the Rock kids regard the rest as under developed, prehistoric sissies.

There was a time when the churches labeled Rock music as Satanic chants. There were even ridiculous rumors like reversing the Rock songs will produce Satanic chants. Today many new age churches have chosen Rock over old age hymns to attract the Gen-X. It’s pretty amusing to see, the pastor’s son spotting a goatie and flashing a bull’s horn for the camera.

Last week something interesting happened in our workplace which resulted in the clash of these cultures. On the D-day some flex boards announcing a ‘Technofest’ suddenly materialized in the amphitheatre of our IT Park. We were bit amused because no prior announcements or advertisements were made. But still a few hours of entertainment is what anyone would love to get the minds out of the dreary deadlines. Sadly, no detailed list of programmes was given. Thus everyone assumed that there would be some musical performance from a celebrity, a few hot item dance numbers and a fashion show. After all this is the normal itinerary for any program in the city.

And the crowd assembled at the open air theatre by 7pm (Note: I use the word ‘crowd’ and not ‘audience’). There was no one to be seen in the stage for a program that was supposed to begin at 7. At 30 minutes past 7, a long haired guy came on the stage to do the ‘sound check’. The crowd thought he was there to sing. On the top of it the sound systems resembled the quality of a radio. The patience of the crowd was stretched. Then started the catcalls and boos. The crowd entertainment continued even when the real show started. Now it was the vocalist’s turn to get his patience stretched. Right from the stage and through the microphone, he gave choicest names to the genealogy (mother & father to be specific) of the crowd. He challenged them to come out in front for a confrontation. The division was like this. Some 20-25 head bangers in front who stood with ‘heavy metal’. A few people in the dark space who had no idea what ‘heavy metal’ was about and wanted to have a gala time booing. But no one dared to make it physical, resulting in police action and ultimate job loss. The ‘heavy metal’ band left in a huff and peace reigned as usual.

My good friend happened to be the manager of this band and I got a clearer picture from his ‘note’ in facebook. The fellow rock lovers lamented with him on degradation of our culture and the persecution a common rock fan suffered from the society. Here are a few excerpts.

1. always happens.... retards

2. Rock is religion.. so dont let down d religion.. fight fight fight....

3.Sadly the word "rock" has taken on so many disgusting meanings thanks to the god damn dumb fuck MTV culture....anyways fuck those re-turds.......may the metalheads live on...

4.This is the shit we go through everyday. But we have to agree, metal is for a niche section of society.....those who dont understand it, should just stay away.