My Daily Routine!

6:25 A.M. - First Alarm of a sequence of alarms and first curse of a sequence of curses.

6:35 A.M. – Imagine a world without clocks and alarms.

6:40 A.M. - Remember the horrible face of the Boss and wake up.

6:45 A.M. – Sitting in the loo think how beautiful it would be if one could sleep again.

6:55 A.M. – Ah! Flush!!

7:00 A.M.– While bathing, try and struggle reaching all parts of the body.

7:15 A.M. – Smell the shirt (make a ‘who-cares’ face), remember the boss’s secretary (make a ‘I do care’ face) and put a lot of perfume.

7:30 A.M. – Re-evaluate the face in the mirror. Smile a little. Think something on the lines of ‘You-

Handsome-Little-Thing’ or ‘Perfect-10’.

7:45 A.M. – Board the bus and start shaking. Rub the hips with strangers (all men).

8:10 A.M. – Reach the office and remove the clutter from previous days.

8:20 A.M. – Have a delicious south Indian breakfast (Idly and sambhar, dosa and sambhar or vada and sambhar). Remember mom and aloo parathas (with parathas in prominence).

9:00 A.M. – Walk infront of boss’s office, make a silent prayer, give a weak smile to the secretary (who winks as if this is going to be the best day in the world) and go inside.

NOTE: In general interest I am not writing the constitutionally incorrect language that my boss uses for the next half an hour after which his wife (presumably) calls him and he makes a gesture with hand that I chose to interpret as dismissed.

9:30 A.M. – Emerge from the office with nothing to say to secretary who looks expectantly for a little gossip.

10:00 A.M. – Imagine the boss drowning in his own tea cup and various other violent things causing possible hazards to him.

12:00 Noon – Go for lunch. Eat rice and sambhar and wonder why I was ever born.

12:30 P.M. – Talk to girlfriend, listen to how her make-up went all wrong today and discuss why Loreal is a better brand than Garnier.

1:00 P.M. – Try to imagine a girlfriend-without-misery. Impossible to even imagine.

1:15 P.M. – Stop imagining and return to reality. Analyze the pending work.

1:30 P.M. – Chat with friends how Rajasthan should suck at IPL.

3:00 P.M. – Try not to fall asleep out of complete boredom.

3:20 P.M. – Enjoy the free coffee and samosa and discuss how the company should provide free kachori as well.

4:00 P.M. The wait begins.

5:00 P.M. The wait ends. Leave the office.

5:30 P.M. Start shaking in the bus again.

6:00 P.M. Sleep.

8:30 P.M. Have dinner (something with sambhar). Wish there were no taste buds in the tongue anymore.

9:00 P.M. Start writing the blog no one reads.

11:00 P.M. Wish it was Sunday tomorrow and sleep.

The Worker

It was a cold winter night. He looked around the place, the place he was born, where as a kid he had amused himself in the mud, fed on cement, and threw bricks at his mates and now the same surroundings where he worked. He could see piles of concrete in the distance and the toxic waste in the corner where many a workers had died. He saw the chisels, the cement, huge cranes, big machines looking ominous in the silence of the night. There was so much that went unnoticed in the chaos of the morning, but now, with nothing to disturb him, he felt free. Finally he looked above him. The building was tall now, though still half built.


It was late in the night and no one was around. Only a few stray dogs could be heard in the distance breaking the chilly silence, fighting, may be over the little piece of bread constructor’s son had thrown out of his Mercedes.


Nothing much had changed in this building industry since his father’s days. They still used the same production material and equipments. Equipments which could easily take your life. The constructors were still mean and fat, and they still owned the most expensive of cars and the most disgruntled sons. The worker class hadn’t changed much either. They were still fighting to live, in poverty, in rags and in misery with little to survive or to look forward to.


Inspite the chill he felt very warm inside the old rags he was wearing. There, at the place where his past, present and destiny belonged, he sat and thought…


He could only think of one thing..home. He was already late and he knew that his wife must be dreading his return from work, fully drunk when he would beat her, hurl abuses at her and when she, finally exasperated would abuse him back. This was the story of their everyday household since the past 15 years and with no hopes for change. There was a time when he felt thrilled about changes, about exploring new potentials but not anymore. He was too tired for a difference now.


He wasn’t always like this. “No, I wasn’t”, he thought. Infact, he had been a totally different person all together. He had been, much unlike his father, a very compassionate and a loving person and more than anything else, he had loved his wife. He could still recall the day they were married, how he had blushed red, like the color of her sari. It was only after their fourth child was born that he had started drinking, though he couldn’t remember why. After their fifth child he had first beat her, still he couldn’t remember why (With a memory now fading with time, he could only summarize his life in ‘when’ and not ‘why’). Reasons had somehow betrayed him.


He loved his children but for the fact that there were too many to be loved. So he loved the first three, he decided. The three who would take care of him in his bad times (his father had similar thoughts about him, he remembered). The others just wailed and cried all the time, irritating him, making him hate them even more. But even this little thought about his children brought a smile on his face. After all they were his blood. “I must be getting home soon”, he thought.


The bell chimed once somewhere and he kept sitting absorbed in his memories. He thought of Raju, his neighbour, his child mate who had worked with him right here. He was a simple God fearing man of family. Infact, Raju was no different than him in any way. They both had grown up from naked children to tough men together. Poor guy had died in an accident when he fell from the 12th floor of the building. Raju’s family had moved to some another place, he didn’t knew where.


The ‘theka’ was just around the corner. He could go there. No, No… he had to go home today. Why would he even drink, he often thought. Well, he drank to forget his own failures He drank to forget the guilt. The guilt of going home with no money in hand, facing his children who would again ask him to go to the mela, guilt of looking into their innocent eyes and telling them to shut up and sleep, that they weren’t going to any mela. The guilt of beating his own wife every night. It went on till this guilt short lived his habit of drinking and violence. He drank, like million others, to forget.


In this state of daze and confusion he thought of his mother. Trying to sleep outside their hut looking above in the sky, she had often told him that their conditions would change, and that her children would work hard for their better times. He remembered the stories she used to whisper to him. The stories of fairies and princes, places where dreams were realized, a world where imagination ruled the hearts and nothing was impossible. He always used to sleep before the ending, so he had no stories to tell his own children. He remembered how she had died. In pain and agony of poverty with no one to take care of her.


By the time he was 17, both his parents were dead. His father had died of lung cancer while working with hazardous waste. He had always considered his father a loser and felt nothing when he died. He wondered if his own children would feel the same when he dies. Thrown into poverty and uneducation, alone, he began his life at the only place he had seen, the construction site.


Born poor, he lived poor. But he was a motivated person back then. Living life at a knife’s edge and with nothing to lose he was confident that one day, sooner or later, he would make his own stand in this cruel world, that he would not let his children grow up the way he had. But he was soon to learn that this world doesn’t play fair to just determined people.


The nightmares, the pain, hate, all came back to him. He looked at himself. His shriveled hands could no longer hold the bricks. In his early thirties, his hairs were already stark white. His eyes had started eluding him, showing him the ghosts of past and the mirages of present. His fragile frame could no longer carry the weight of both labor and his family. Only bones were left, hammered since decades of hard work.


Whose fault was it? Was it his mistake that he was born to poor parents? Or were his parents at fault to keep him uneducated? Would he be a different man if his parents hadn’t left him so soon? Or was it some pre-determined destiny playing games with him? It is the destiny, he said to himself. Destiny forced upon him not by the people, the society or the government but by God himself. He looked up at the starry sky, cloudless and clear. He wished that only if, like the stars, he could see the Gods, talk to them, complain and ask Him why life is so unfare only to a select few. But he knew he won’t get any answers. An equal world was probably not what God had in mind when he created humans. Could he defy God? Could he be a different person all together? Why does his self-conscious call him today?


But there was no time for God or self-conscious today. He could think of it later. Today, he will just go home where his wife and children waited for him. He may also stop at the ‘theka’ for a drink or two. “Today I will try to keep myself sober though”, he promised himself. He gave one final look at the building above him. It was almost a sky-scraper now. He smiled with-in. His blood and sweat flowed with-in these huge concrete blocks. He was proud of himself. He thought of Raju again and how he must have felt falling from such a height. Somehow, he thought he knew. It was time to go home. He stood up and walked home leaving his frail body behind, walked to his wife who waited for him forever…

The UnderWorld

The problem I am going to discuss with you today, is far reaching than the misery of inflation, a problem that has captured the imagination of every house-hold in the world, a problem that consumes us more than the rising oil prices and a problem that could easily change the very face of earth and humanity all together. And this very grave problem that we all have encountered atleast once in a lifetime of worthlessness is – ‘A Cockroach’.

It’s been years since ‘The Great War of Roaches’ was fought in my house and it was during those perilous times that I learnt many valuable lessons about cockroaches which I am going to share with you today, free of cost and labor. During the early periods of Great War, I was given the responsibility of murdering those very unfriendly looking, hideous creatures while my mother tried to intoxicate them with some poisonous spray.

Recent studies and my deep analysis on this topic reveals that a cockroach could have been really cute had it not decided to part ways with its distant cousin – ‘The Mighty Crocodile’ who is rather very charming in his own special way as many of my friends (who later ended up in it’s not very friendly stomach) told me.

Cockroaches can now be found in every slimy corner of a house in all proportions of ugliness. But, though ugly, a cockroach is a very smart creature. Millions of years of perils have taught them the espionage techniques against the human race. Very minutely, I noticed that a cockroach has the unusual habit to turn upside down as soon as you try to kill it. It will always try and seduce you with it’s 8-pack oozy stomach and fine-polished tentacles. The virtue of patience was also learnt during those times. Cockroaches, which are very much into modern arts of yoga and meditation can pretend to be dead for hours. When finally you throw them out, they would simply turn over, show you a middle finger and find a way back into your closet.

The Great War was lost but a recent James Bond flick inspired me to launch my own offensive. I decided to spy on the formidable enemy myself. I used my charm to befriend a very sweet and good-looking female roach – Tim-Tim who, as it turned out was also former ‘Miss Roachistaan’. Over an exotic dinner of stale bread and rotten tomatoes she told me an ancient secret well kept by their ancestors for over a million of years which, though under oath from Tim-Tim, I am going to share with you now.

The forbidden secret is that of a daily (read deadly if your specific parts don’t work in right order) fest known as the ‘The Great Carnival of Fornification’. This great Carnival is the ‘milan’ of underground civilizations where giant societies of cockroaches, rats and various pests assemble for a common cause – ‘Family Planning’. “Hum Do Hamare Emm… Who Cares” seems to be the spiritual motto as it is during these times of joy and drunkenness that male and female roaches ‘socialize’ to do something which can be closely related to an activity we don’t tell our children when they ask us how they were born. They even got the name for this sacred sport – ‘The Holympic Marathon of Reproduction’ where scores of rats and roaches compete everyday to find who has actually ‘got it’.

A cockroach, among its various other ‘virtues’, also has a very sweet voice. Together with frogs they have this habit of giving background music during very romantic conversations happening in beautiful gardens, as a very pretty girl once told me during such a conversation. Indeed, I meditated, a roach has the capability of producing sounds stranger than Himesh Reshamiya and if you listened very closely you could even hear extracts of Anu Malik in it.

Though many above the surface are not aware, cockroaches played a bigger role in our freedom movement than we choose to remember today. When hordes and hordes of European cockroaches were marching inland, our own breed of ‘Gandhi-following-roaches’ launched a country-wide Satyagraha against them. These moderate peace-loving roaches would often march in thousands towards British houses and would often scare the hell out of oh-so-sophisticated British house-maids and later happily sacrificed their own life. More on the extremists side roaches fought with the elite British roaches. It is rumored that some roaches even participated in the round table conference in London. Detailed proofs of Panditji himself honoring these brave cockroaches could be found at the ‘Rust-Library’ of ‘Roachistaan’.

I have come to love and respect Cockroaches and when lonely, I often wished Tim-Tim was unmarried and though polyandry is not an issue for them, I was in no mood to upset General Jham Jham. I also considered the fact that inter-species romance could sometimes be, well, very hybrid.

My report on cockroaches was well received by both my family and the roaches and the long awaited peace treaty was signed with the General (with Tim-Tim very glad in the background). I was even offered the Kut-Kut-Nobel peace prize which I very humbly accepted. A huge extravaganza was held in my honor in the city of ‘Roachistaan’. My mother, on her part accepted not to use the environment unfriendly and cockroachically hazardous spray and in turn the roaches agreed to be found in the kitchen whenever ‘unwanted relatives’ decided to show up for dinner.

Sara came to my house today. We were there, sitting in my bedroom when she suddenly shrieked, held my hand and jumped all over me. She kept hugging me and shrieking, hugging and shrieking. But then, who cared for the latter. From the corner of the room Tim-Tim winked at me and I gave her a thumbs-up. It was our own little agreement. Life is very good sometimes.

BUY-CYCLE

People now a days have found a new pass-time in the form of debating – there is the ‘rising food and petrol prices’ debate of the ‘common man’, the ‘Women’s Reservation Bill’ debate of the Parliament, ‘Will the world end someday soon’ debate on IndiaTV. But one debate that caught my eye and in my opinion is much above the ideas of national and social interest is – ‘what to really call this present generation’ debate.

In recent history, people of various social standards who have no other better work to do, have debated on the status of the present Indian generation. They have come up with names like – Gen-X, Gen-Y, Gen-Rowdy, Gen-Useless etc. Since I realized that I neither have a social standard nor any better work to do, I should come up with one common thing that could define the entire generation of India and eventually turned up with the name that I am sure is going to change the way we look at the youngsters in India. Hence, I proudly present to you what I call, the Generation – F.

Even Ballu didn’t understand the meaning of my research and study. But then Ballu was always more interested in food than any research. Since you people look more interested (this I gather from the fact that you are still reading inspite of my bad English), I had like you to perform a simple but effective test to better understand what I mean by Gen-F.

Step1: Stand in-front of a full length mirror.
Step2: Stop admiring your face.
Step3: Look at your stomach.
Step 4: Try to conceal the horrid expression on your face realizing how fat you are.
Step 5: If you still think that by Gen-F, I mean ‘Generation-Facebook’ then repeat Step 3 and Step 4.

After a long session with the mirror, recurring steps of looking at your tummy and constant denials you will, like poor Ballu, realize that you, like million other Indians, belong to the ‘Gen-Fat’.

It has been a tradition in India, politically motivated by relatives and neighborhood aunties to call a child healthy only if he is the size of a small baby elephant. If they had their way, they would change the definition of ‘healthy’ from 8-pack to 1-large-sack.

Marriages, I have come to understand are the biggest sources of food for the entire Indian Gen-Fat. Marriage is one place where even the size zero freaks would lose self control simply because everything is free. The families in India are sometimes so huge, that you have the chance to grab some free marriage meal almost every weak. Mothers would specifically instruct their children to eat everything they can. You can even find there the grandmothers, who have been instructed by the doctor, sneaking away a cup or two of ice-creams. Just who said that nothing comes for free?

Ballu often used to say that he never exercised because he was worried, like many plump people that increased physical activity might increase his appetite. I was horrified by even the idea of increasing his appetite. I mean the guy was already half the size of Khali. But when I searched the topic on Internet, I found that a controlled study of overweight individuals did not reveal a proportionate increase in appetite with exercise, lending support to the positive role of physical activity in reaching the goal of a negative Caloric balance and resulting weight loss. Ballu, however didn’t understand a single word I said (The problem with Ballu was that he only understood things that revolved around food or similar content).

There are many small and big problems that form the part and parcel of being fat. People get tired easily now a days, they feel old at a very young age, fat people complain about rising oil prices the most because they do not want to use the power of their fat legs to walk even small distances, there are the heart problems, sugar and various other medical terms that I chose, long ago, not to learn. Also, I wouldn’t want to give you an early heart-attack by giving you the statistics of people dying of heart diseases in India (dare Google it huh?). You wouldn’t believe that people are actually having kids sooner than they had planned because they are not sure if they are going to live long enough to see them getting fat! (Please don’t believe that. Because of the anti-social element that I am, I made it up)

Well! as pessimistic as it may sound and as optimistic as we may want to be, it is a hard reality that we must gulp down our throats like poison – WE ARE FAT and we are getting fatter day after day - using our big sedan just to impress neighbors, sitting in office (mostly lazing around and chatting) and lying on sofa watching IPL. Ballu, meanwhile, sitting in the heavens, cursing his wife why she cooked such wonderful ‘parathas’, must be wondering why I didn’t write this article earlier. My dear friend, that’s because I never liked you anyways and had a little crush on your wife as well. For all you guys still reading this article please follow the advice Baba Ramdev forgot to give (because he was busy shaving) – BUY CYCLE.