Wishlist 2012

There has been no bakwas from me in more than 5 months because honestly I have been getting a lot of it in my everyday life. Off late I have discovered new realms of human stupidity which I had never thought even existed. And to add icing to the cake I have discovered why stupids continue to be such a pain in the ass. The theory is "a stupid goes the proverbial extra mile to prove that he or (in most cases) she is not stupid and in turn ends up doing such blunders one may have never imagined or prepared for". To add a few I have seen an engineer entering ‘username’ and ‘password’ literally when I asked her to enter her username and password, I have overheard people thinking FDI is a part of Jan lokpal, I have seen people who have only read Revolution 2020 discussing English Literature, people saying Ra.One is a super movie and that it deserves awards and well I have seen Kapil Sibal trying to make us believe that Facebook status message is a bigger threat to national security than terrorism. I rest my case.

So 2011 draws up to a close in a couple of weeks and people are getting ready to welcome 2012 with those super shit, age old, copied, plagiarized or forwarded smses or the new but equally irritating technique of putting up an e-card photo on Facebook and tag people in it. Also, a huge number of people will be busy drawing up a set of new year resolutions. Some of those resolutions like ‘work hard’, ‘do charity’, ‘practice yoga’, ‘quit smoking’, ‘no alcohol’, ‘learn to play an instrument’ etc. will be made public on the Facebook walls soon, whereas the resolutions like ‘eat less’, ‘bath at least thrice a week’, ‘not fart in public’, ‘stop chasing the girl I have been chasing from high school without success’ etc. will be filed and placed in secret cabinets where no one else can access it. New Year Resolutions have never been my cup of tea. Not that I have not tried but none have lasted more than a week. But given this year 2012 may actually see the end of the world I wanted to have something to look forward to do in it. So, instead of a New Year resolution I draw up a 2012 wishlist. If at the end of the next year (given that world exists and also I am still alive) if I have checked half the item of this list, I would be able to say this was the good year. So here is my wishlist:

1.Punch someone, who uses the word ‘ideally’, right in his or her face.
The world is not supposed to be an ideal place but then it does not stops some moron to use ideally with each and every sentence they use. Add to it whenever they use ideally these idiotic souls will invariably follow it with ‘you should’ or in a more politically correct corporate way make it sound ‘we should’ (which essentially means the same). Here is a sample

Him: “Ideally we should finish it today”
Me: “But its not possible. It’s already 8 P.M”
Him: “Ideally you should have finished it before. However, ideally we would like this sent before EOD today”
Me: “But you gave me these just five minutes back and EOD has already happened”
Him: “Ideally we should be ready to go the extra mile. Ideally we should not complain. Ideally it is our responsibility. I need to go home and watch the game but ideally we should finish it ASAP. Ideally you should finish it off today. Ideally we should question less and finish task at hand.”
Me: “FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!”
Only thing I should be doing ideally is punch such a person’s face so many times that next time he says ideally it comes out as band-aid.

2. Roughen up at least one employee of India TV
I will very dearly like to do this for all the shit they keep churning out 24x7. I know news quality has gone down but seriously ‘chajje par billo rani’ (cat on the roof) in a news channel. Why do we even allow such a channel to exist and also use the word India in its name? They know when the world will end, what fruit does Ganpati like, who does black magic and basically anything which is not news.

3. Kick the ass of one rash driver
If there is one sect who is worse than the terrorist it is this sect of rash driver for they too kill innocent people each year. I don’t know the reason behind their rash driving, whether it is bad parenting, mental disease, piles or just a lack of bladder control, but these should be hunted down and eliminated. For once I even advocate the Hitler’s gas chamber for these assholes. My target for this year is to at least get hold of one such moron and tie him on his belly to his vehicle and get his ass stoned by the crowd.

4. Slap a SRK fan
Need I say more? The whole 2011 was a living hell as wherever you go all you saw was Ra.One, and then finally when it came, and we thought it was over came the Dont' u or probably Don2, which is again likely to continue for some time. Obviously neither I nor anyone else can slap SRK, I would love to slap one of his fan for the sole reason of being so stupid to be his fan.

5. Put a piece of burning charcoal in the mouth of one public smoker
I have nothing against smokers as long as they take their cigarette home, lock their rooms and smoke their lungs out. It’s your lung go ahead and burn it but why the hell do it in a public place and take others with you? Due to these sons of bitches I have to do away with roadside tea, something which I really liked.



6. Write an app which automatically registers the email id of those, who post OMG shit on my Facebook, to a gay porn site
Self explanatory for everyone who uses Facebook. If you click on those shits to know ‘who viewed my profile’, or to check whether or not ‘you look funny in the picture’ and by your bad luck you end up posting those shit on my wall, be ready for changing your email address.


7. Beat the daylights out of someone who talks in a fake accent

“A fake accent and a low IQ are usually found in the same head” Anonymous. (Its actually me, but quoting some source gives one more credibility)

In a society where ability to speak a language is perceived as intelligence, stupids have gone the extra mile to acquire a fake accent. It gives them a sense of bravado and importance as the listener is not able to make any sense of what they just said. I admit, I have daylights confused out of me when I am in conversation with such people, and thus this year, come what may I will beat the daylights out of at least one such retard. If not beat up, I will at least replace their tomato ketchup with a bottle of red-chilli paste.

8. Break the mobile/TV/laptop/ipad/any other valuable belonging to a person who says to me ‘look at the bigger picture’
I have lost count how many times I have been exposed to this irritating phrase ‘look at the bigger picture’. Whenever I am sad, dejected, disappointed, feeling life has been a bit unfair, angry, frustrated, or simply disagreeing to a stpid logic, someone or the other has asked me to ‘look at the bigger picture’. I am just sick of it. Where is the picture even present, where is the smaller picture first of all. Next time, someone brings it out, I swear I will do the above mentioned, and then say, oh don’t worry about the broken stuff, look at the bigger picture. If they happen to ask what bigger picture, I will calmly reply ‘same one which you asked me to look at’


So here was my list for the next year. Does your list even match up?

Philosophy 101: The new national pastime

I return to blogging after more than four months break and lot happened in the time I did not blog and seriously I had a lot of topics to have a take on. A team with Sreesanth in it won the world cup despite Ian Chappel’s brilliant pieces to win the world cup for Aussies even before it started, Poonam Pandey did not keep her promise, Osama was killed in the greatest country on earth, Facebook patriots sent me cause invites to click and support movements by Anna Hazare and Ramdev and obviously Rahul Gandhi, naam hi kafi hai. So what really kept me away for all these days? The reason is not difficult to guess, a job which sucks and leaves your mind so much cluttered that you may lose a truck in it. But I will not go in details of that here as those things are meant for Facebook walls to gain some sympathy. And anyway it’s not that bad, though I do not like what I do, this was probably best I could have done with my life, given that I am no IITian and moreover I did not spend my college life locking myself in a room and reading all those geeky stuff. Add to that the salary is high enough to make some people jealous.

Before I deviate further let me come to the point why I started this. I don’t want to deviate further as I told you my mind is cluttered and currently I can’t think straight. Oh wait, I did not mean that, I meant my thinking is not very clear and precise at this moment, I still think straight though. In the past era philosophy was left for leaders, thinkers, poets, politicians and people who did not get laid. But all of a sudden philosophy has quickly and subtly become a new national craze in the nation which till now was obsessed with cricket, movies and some shitty saas-bahu serials. As a matter of proof, take the following tests.

1. Goto your Facebook wall and see the updates, if you do not see couple of motivational quotes by retards and clicked like by bigger retards, I respect you.

2. Go to a book stall and try finding good fiction (this does not include CB’s books) to read, it will be like finding a needle in a haystack of all Deepak Chopras, Robin Sharmas and Shiv Kheras stuffs .

3.On top of this blog click next blog around 3 times, if you do not get to a blog which talks about life, relationships, dealing with change etc. lady luck is sitting by your side and now is right time for you to buy a lottery ticket.

4.Join twitter, follow some obscure folks, you know the rest.

5.Pick up your phone and call a few friends and ask for some advice.

6.Sign into google talk and read status and you will be confused if it is actually Google gyaan.

Obviously when I talk of philosophy I do not talk about originality in it. I know at some time you may have read some status message and felt how come this guy/gal who struggled to pass in English in school is suddenly writing lines like Wordswoth or John Keats. Answer is obvious.

Now let’s come to the point. So why did I call this philosophy 101. So did you think I was going to give you some gyaan on how to be philosophical? Well that was a trick, and if you fell for it, this is the time you get lost from here. I was fine as long as philosophies was there on Facebook, for I could simply hide such people for timeline, Twitter was even better, I can unfollow, I could have switched off the TV, I could have chosen not to read stuff. But then this rage spread like wild fire and people seem to bring these on right into your face. There seem to be this issue with most people; they seem to believe that they always have an audience. They talk in quote and prose and often modify quotes from eminent leaders. These people seem to be ashamed of sounding practical. Let’s dissect the practicality of couple of these philosophies and people who do that.

All of us have some friends whose existence in our lives is like our orkut accounts, something which we enjoyed some time back, but have outgrown but still have it. On my last visit to my hometown I met one of those and we caught up on some old times. I realized he taught Mathematics in some school and ultimately I told him about my job and how demanding it was. So now he switched on “You know, one should not work for money. There is more to life than money; your job should have some meaning attached to it. I think one should just do what one loves”. So precisely he chose to become a teacher as he loved teaching. A little strange, that he gave numerous Engineering entrance tests for 2 years, before doing a B.Sc in Mathematics, then sat for numerous Bank P.O exams, took UPSC once, tried to bell the CAT before going to do what he loved. I replied “But didn’t you love watching porn too, why did you not become a porn-star, I guess you would have got a higher salary and may have loved the job more, or maybe even a CD shop where you could have given expert opinion also.” He laughed out unable to see the sarcasm. But the point is, what was the point in philosophizing his job so much, obviously it was not his job description, since he teaches Maths, and there was no audience around to listen to his brilliant and spiritually enlightening speech. But then that is how it works. Gone are the days, when if you felt low a friend will join you and accompany you to a restaurant or pub to make you feel better. No sir, he will first throw in a few Martin Luther Kings, Abraham Lincons, Mahatma Gandhis, Deepak Chopras in your face and then finally start ranting about his life, to prove his/her life outsucks yours.

The glorification of failure seems to be the cornerstone of many of these amateur philosophers. I have always maintained that girls are allowed to be a bit stupid, but then some of them seem to abuse this privilege. There is this friend of mine, who writes numerous written exams for various jobs and keeps blowing them up. And then on each of her result day for some reason she used to give me a call. Initially I used to be sympathetic but then it turned irritating, for none of her discussions were practical self-assessment, they were just for glorifying failure. So instead of working out what is going wrong what she would do is buy herself another ‘chicken soup for some stupid soul’ and come up with motivational lines like ‘If you want to succeed double your failure rate’ or her favorite ‘Failure is a stepping stone to success’. Seriously, how many stepping stones do you want, or are you planning to build a stone mansion. Finally, I let go off my hidden agenda (isn’t it obvious) and stopped taking her calls and blocked her from google talk. Last I heard of her was the day when CAT results came out and with it a new philosophy which stated ‘you don’t need a exam result to judge yourself. Even Albert Einstein was thrown out of school’. And that was it, my admiration of Einstein and her comparing herself with the great man sealed it. I am sure she would come up with something like ‘laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone’ when someone mentions me in a conversation with her.

And just to further prove my example I just opened the Facebook app for android, which unfortunately does not give me option for hiding people from timeline, here are the few I see (In case it was your status, let me offer my apologies first)

1.Life is confusing, Sumtyms u donno, Whether u shld b smiling or be worried

2.A group of Donkeys led by a lion can defeat a group of Lions led by a Donkey....Leadership makes the real difference

3.Life is not so simple...are yaar to y dnt u make it simple...?

Now, seriously if only someone can give me a penny each time the word life appears on my timeline, I would have been richer by quite a bit. Some of you may argue if you have problems why you don’t remove them from friend list. In truth, this is not so simple, most of them are actually friends and totally likeable in many other ways, and this one irritating trait is not solid enough a reason to end friendship. 'Things are not plain black and white, sometimes they are grey'. (This is infectious, see I philosophized it too)

I don’t have much idea what has made it a rage. Was it the impact of social networks? Or was it suddenly realized that being intellectual is of primary importance? Was it the effect of shitloads of self help books available? Was it a result of overall depression and frustration which led people to try and philosophize their miserable lives? I have no idea and neither do intend to get idea.

The point is with so much of philosophical advice being constantly poured on you, it is but normal to get confused, depressed and frustrated once in a while. That is the time you need to find the counter of it to overcome it. So next time when your friend gives a philosophy you know where to look for overcoming him/her. If you don’t, go figure.

Seven special days that mankind really needs

At the start of this year, I had made a silent resolution (silent in the sense that I did not use it as a status update) to not to mock anyone, i.e, say no to sarcasm, which, for some reason, had suddenly became associated with me. For more than a month I did keep the resolution. So, even when someone posted stuff like “lyf s much lyk facebuk..people will like your problemz n comment , bt no1 gonna solve dem..bcoz everybody seemz so busy in updating dere own...” or even “the most terible situation is wen u stop luvn ur best frd coz u knw 1 step behind ruins ur frnsp n 1 step ahead mak u fall in luv !!! best frdshp is nthng... jzt a sickk state of mind...!! dedicated to oll whu belive dey hav bst frds...!! its sheer waste...!!” I let it pass without adding a comment that would hurt. Even when someone posted this monstrously lame status stating “I like Bear Grylls for he is the only intrepid man on the planet Earth who's jst anxious of the word "Impossible" & nthng else in the universe!!” and also clicked like on it himself, I let it pass. (These are real status messages I have seen on my Timeline, and if you are the one who updated it, screw you, I am not giving you any apology).

I held on, at times, even miserably to my resolve of not mocking at anything, but then came the week Feb 7 to Feb 14, which I didn’t know till yesterday, is probably the WTF week of the year, for every day is supposed to be a ‘Day’. I had known about the 14^th being the valentine day, and someone had once told me that 7^th was Rose day. But then on 8^th , someone on my twitter timeline said it is the propose day. Add to it, on further googling I also heard there is something called as chocolate day, and finally somebody sent me link to this newspaper pic, http://twitpic.com/3xsk9q on twitter, which almost made me poke my pencil into my eye, for this whole week was marked as some ‘day’, which included a teddy day, a promise day and also hug and kiss day!!!!! Call me ignorant, but in all these years I have been on earth, I had not known it.

I was about to break my resolution and go ahead with a sarcastic take on it, but then I thought about it, and then suddenly I realized, mankind needs these special days to survive. A person needs Mother’s day to send text messages to 10 people asking to forward to another 10 people in case they love their moms. A nation needs Children's day to remind politicians like Rahul Gandhi to talk child rights and elimination of child labor. A country needs women’s day to remind about evils of dowry, domestic violence, female foeticide and violence against women for a day. Independence Day and Republic day are needed so that you can wave flags on Facebook. New year day is needed so that you can post a e-card picture and tag people in it. So what’s wrong with having days to gift chocolates and make promises and spend some money on a rose as long as it serves a bigger purpose. So, on the same note, I thought of drawing a list of special days, which will serve mankind much more than the days already available. I have finally concluded my list and will love to hear more from you intelligent people.

1. Poison day: Let 15th of Feb be marked as poison day. In case you ended up spending half your salary on a girl for all those seven days preceding it, and still she rejects you on Feb 14th, you do not deserve to die unknown. Let that be known as a sacrifice made on poison day. You will even get special discount on rat-poison on this day in case this day is marked as posion day.
2. Slap Day: Let April 25th be marked as a day when you are allowed to slap people publically. You may ask what is so special about this day. In 2008, on this landmark day in history, Harbhajan Singh had slapped Sreesanth right in middle of Mohali stadium and reduced him to tears. Just imagine having a day when you can go and slap each and every moron who is screwing your life right in his or her face. Had Sreesanth been slapped each year once, we would have been spared the horrible dance show he had put out last month in revenge of not being picked for world cup. Add to it he would not done the black magic to get innocent Praveen Kumar injured to get himself a place in world cup. Imagine yourself slapping a moron bike rider who was riding a bike very rashly and endangering others for his sole aim of getting laid, or slapping a fat ass who is for some reason standing aimlessly right in middle of narrow footpath of a busy street and has no intention to move. Don’t you need this day even more than new year day?
3. ‘Abuse your boss’ day: We all do need such a day, right? Let this day be 1st March, just a day after union budget screws you again, and lets you realize the imbalance between salary and inflation. This will give mankind an opportunity to vent out some frustration with bosses who have screwed up their lives for generations.
4. Inactivity day: This day you should just sit and do nothing at all. If you feel like doing anything, just sit and wait till that feeling goes away. Just pull out your chair and sit in front of the window and keep looking at the distant horizon. It will build patience to bear your screwed up life the way it is. Just tell screw you to people who talk about hard work, smart work, etc. and say screw you twice to people who tweet stuff like ‘early bird catches the worm’. I propose 26th September to be marked a Inactivity day as on this legendary day in 1932 our prime-minister Manmohan Singh was born, a person who has redefined inactivity at the last stage of his career.
5. Junk food day: How many times have we heard the irritating talks on harmful effects of junk food? Doesn’t a person still die even without eating junk food? Isn't chocolate bad for health too? Then why this crusade against junk food especially if junk food gives you 10 minutes of happiness. Let there be one day which can be declared as eat only junk. Let’s vote for the date.
6. Vent your frustration day: This will be a day when you can sit and complain about all things that have literally screwed up your life. You can say all stuff like ‘I was born to win but conditioned to lose’ or blame your genes or blame your colleague, but blame you must. If you feel like, you can get on top of building and grumble all your frustration out. You will be allowed to tear your hair out, bang your head on the wall or even smack your TV when you see another Docomo ad. You can take out the sim from your phone and put it under a crusher after seeing another promotional message. Any date will do, but this day is a must.
7. ‘I’ day: I did not mean the Independence day. It’s a day, when you accept yourself the way you are and do realize that you probably suck at anything you do. No matter, how much self-promotion you do, how much motivational lines you try, the fact remains is that you suck, which is evident from the fact you are still reading this blog, which in all fairness stinks. So, why not celebrate one day a year on occasion that you are still alive despite being an inconvenience to so many people around you. So, I propose let’s first settle on a date, then key a text message with any line you get from google about stupidity, moronity, assholeness, etc.etc. and add the last line as ‘If you love yourself forward it to 10 persons’ and send it 10 times to yourself. Repeat the process until you are convinced that you suck and you probably can do nothing about it.

This was my list of days I feel should be there. Off course this won't be enough. We need more such days so that each day of the year can become 'dayworthy'. However, I'll leave the decision to all of you to add more such days.

Eleven things you may see in 2011

This is a set of predictions which may happen in 2011. This is not a list of utopian dreams which I wish to happen in 2011. None of this is based on position of stars, planets or for the sake of it, satellite image. All of it is based on pure observations of things happened in past year. It has come late by a week to make derivations based on the early trend and also due to the reason the author was busy bashing people who were making public new year resolutions on social networks and those who were uploading image of new year e-cards and tagging people and assuming it to be a unique way to wish new year to someone. All these are mere assumptions of things that may happen, and in no form I take responsibility if anything does not. So here goes the list.

1. Suresh Kalmadi will walk scot free. No matter how much Kalmadi jokes are made on social networks and how much Arnab Goswami yanks on his news channel, no shit will happen to Suresh Kalmadi. Ultimately by end of year everyone will forget about him and he would be sitting coolly over the heaps of money he has made. After all, what has he done apart from making crores of rupees from public money? Isn’t that what is expected out of every bureaucrat in our country.
2. Mercy petition will be filed for Kasab just as it was filed some time ago for another terrorist named Afzal Guru. The signs are already there. Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened on 26^th November 2007 or was it November, 2008. Congress is a great party, they think of common good. Forgiveness is a virtue known to them. So they will sit pretty and take no action against the country nurturing terrorists. After all none of them and neither their close ones have ever been killed in terror attacks. So why worry of death of a few common people.
3. Shahrukh Khan will continue to whine after his team would yet against crash out of IPL. As I write this he has not picked Saurav Ganguly for his KKR. No wonder he may need police protection next time he goes to Kolkata, if he ever does. Add to that he will also lose out on the profit as people in Kolkata in most likelihood boycott all the matches. He will again flop on small screen as he has not learnt from his mistakes in KBC and another shitty kids show and is again coming to host a show which he himself mentions as ‘meri tarah pagal’ but media will still keep referring to him as King Khan.
4. Ravindra Jadeja will win a Man of the match award, given to him for ‘lack of cricketing ability’ quota by the winning team (Isn’t it obvious that he will be a part of losing team). He will continue getting picked for Indian team despite all Jadeja jokes (While I was writing this he has been picked for IPL for almost a million dollars). He will also be awarded with Ajit Agarkar award for all rounders this year.
5. Shitloads of stupid self-help books will be written and there will be buyers. There will be countless sessions on Spiritual healing, anger management, stress management which will be attended by people somehow believing this will improve their quality of life where the gurus will talk of not valuing money and in turn will make a lot of tax-free money. Chetan Bhagat will write another novel and sell it at Rs 95, and this will become a good seller despite having storyline and mellow drams of a bollywood movie simply because Indian readers want to buy something cheap and light to read on train which is expected to run late. So mediocre writers will still have a great year as no improvement is expected in services of Indian Railways. Add to that a few airlines like Indigo and GoAir do not give any magazine to read on the plane, so even if people start using flights instead of trains, they will still need to carry their own stuff to read.
6. Reality TV contestants would be specially trained in public crying skills and abusive language speaking skills. The beep sounds in Big Boss 5 will be replaced by fart sound so that contestants can be allowed some freedom of gas exit without anyone realizing. Ekta Kapoor will make four new shitty saas-bahu programs and people will continue to watch them. Rakhi Sawant will get a image makeover and this year she will host a new show called 'Rakhi karegi ghar saaf' in which she will go to each house and inspect cleanliness there. News Channels will continue to hold debates which will not result in anything. Sony TV will stop showing anything apart from CID. ACP Pradyuman will not be promoted this year too and he will still continue to be the ACP despite serving as ACP for past 11 years and cracking each case ingeniously. Daya will however be awarded the best 'darwaza todak' award.
7. Ian Chappell will write more articles whining India’s number 1 rank in Test Cricket and will demand for a better ranking system which can ensure Australia remain on top. Australians will still continue to screw up Indian cricket system. If Greg Chappell’s planned destruction of promising players and Buchanan’s Four captains theory was not enough, this year will see much more of Marsh, Lawson, Bevan and others who will complete what Chappell started and the effect will be seen during IPL4. Australia may continue to lose and India may continue to win, but Ian Chappel will be writing about flaws in ICC ranking system, and in each of these articles jingoist and jobless Pakistani cricket fans will be putting their expert comments, completely forgetting their own fuckups. Sachin Tendulkar will complete 100 international hundreds, yet there will be debates on who is the best batsman, and Australians will say he made his runs on ‘flat’ tracks, conveniently forgetting that on the same ‘flat’ tracks the average of Ricky Ponting is less than Harbhajan Singh. In other sports (no one cares a damn about) Sania Mirza will continue to lose in 2^nd rounds and still believe she is number 1 player. Hockey players will still continue to lose but will beat Pakistan occasionally. Charu Sharma will continue to haunt viewers with his fake ascent and his expert comments.
8. The Pakistani cricketers will find new ways of ball tampering, as ball biting did not taste too good. A new committee will be formed of former and present Pakistani cricketers along with underworld mafias to discover new ways of match fixing which cannot be caught. Cricketers will be trained to use the morse code to communicate with bookies as mobile phones have been found to be too risky and unsecure. PCB will ban the fixers for life and in two weeks overturn it. If all goes well Pakistan will only appoint 3 new captains in this year. The Pakistani cricket fans will continue to blame India for their fuckups.
9. More people will learn to use Photoshop or other image editing softwares. The sale of digital cameras will go up. For what? Did you guess it? Right. For picture uploads on Facebook. People will put their touched up photos more frequently than ever. Some people will continue to click on like on all status messages which do not make any sense. Traffic on google will increase as more people will google for status message. There would come forward a web based startup which will provide status messages to people at some price and will guarantee minimum number of likes.
10. The number of Man U/Chelsea fans in India will increase as the more village kids will come to cities and start believing the only way to show that you are not a villager is to start following Man U or Chelsea but not both, no matter whether or not you understand anything about football and no matter whether or not you know which country is Manchester even in. Colleges across the country will include a six week course on 'English Premier League for Villagers' in their curriculum in which they will be trained to learn the league table and made to swear their allegiance to one of the clubs preferably ManU or Chelsea. On current counts it seems there will be higher increase in number of ManU fans than Chelsea fans. However, there will be no improvement in Indian football and not the knowledge of Football among Indian youth will increase.
11. ManMohan Singh will continue to do nothing and still be the PM of the largest democracy on earth. More people will start using Bi-Cycles as price of petrol and diesel will continue to rise. Investment companies will come up with new investment schemes where one can invest in food grains and vegetables. Price rise will continue to happen and people will start locking up the bought food vegetables in lockers when they get home. Onion smuggling scam will be brought to light with the medium of leaked phone conversation between various politicians and Nira Radia. Poor people will struggle for food items and education will become more expensive for them. Then someone will make a Facebook page against all these and send cause invites to everyone and in a week the page will have 245467 likes. On the other hand India will be making a bid to the Olympics as possibly the only reason that China is more powerful than India is that China has hosted Olympics and nothing else. Off course who cares about the facts that China has a higher literacy rate, higher quality of living, lesser number of people under poverty lines, better defense system and other such things since the world only sees the Olympics. And on January 26^th, August 15^th and maybe October 2^nd we will be patriots for a day and watch all those patriotic movies coming on television.

Obviously I hope none of this happens in this year. May Kalmadi get nailed and terrorists do get punished. May Chappell brothers be ignored by rest of cricket world and may we see Pakistani cricket out of the turmoils. May the media finally get its act together and may price rise get controlled. I would have loved to end on this positive note but, honestly, you can’t bet against my predictions, Can you?

The Farewell of Varun Shyamak

Hi All,

I had not blogged for quite some time now, and this too would not have come soon, had Gaurav not reminded me by posting on my Facebook page. Well Varun Shyamak story series had been fun but I think it has lived its time. So here I decided to finish this off by giving him a fitting farewell. For all those who have not read me before and have not heard of Varun, you can still read this story as there is not much relation between previous stories and this one except the characters, however, if you want to know more about characters you can read "Weird Weird Varun Shyamak", the first story of the series.

As this will be my last post this year, wishing everyone a merry christmas and a very Happy New Year 2011.

It was true. Varun Shyamak was finally going away. It had all started when one fine day he had barged in, looked at us, looked around for some strange object and to our surprise had announced that he had ‘cracked’ the GRE, a phrase which I always find slightly incorrect, for I have not yet met anyone who had not ‘cracked’ the GRE, for the simple reason that unlike combined entrance exams for Indian universities, GRE score is not a sufficiency but a mere necessity to get an admission to a foreign institute. Varun had found this the hard way last year and finally did not manage to get through, but this year he had fared much better though not exceptional enough to earn him an easy call. But after some exhaustive search and numerous letters he had finally managed admissions to some unheard university in South California. In South India, especially in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, it is almost customary to have a foreign degree, not necessarily a MIT or a Harvard, any ‘foreign’ would do. It is like a criterion here for how much dowry a man is worth (same being ‘Government’ job in North India).

The time for Visa processing was there and for some reason Varun wanted me to come to Chennai with him for that. Off course, Ramesh had already prophesied that Varun is not going to get the Visa. “Hey Jeet, Please yar, come with me. You know the city more than me.” He had said, as I had done my engineering from a college just about a 100 KM from Chennai and had visited the city a few times.

“No, no chance. I don’t want to have anything to do with that city in my whole life.” By chance or fate or bad luck all my previous visits to Chennai had not been good and I could only expect worse if I had Varun for company.

But then, this was no ordinary person trying to persuade me, it was the Varun Shyamak. He would never give up unless he is made to give up. He would go to the height of quoting exceptional quotes from Wordswoth, Einstein, Buddha, Vivekanada or recently even Barack Obama to convince all. So he started “See Jeet, so much of bitterness in not good for you. It’s high time you make you forget all that happened in your past in the city. I agree you didn’t have the best of your time there, but for how long you will carry it in your system. That’s why I’m telling you to come. It’s for your own good.” The theory of pseudo-righteousness and the peace of mind, works today on most people as is evident from some innocuous self-help books becoming bestsellers and pseudo-spiritual gurus plagiarizing Vivekanda’s words becoming highly revered, but then this was not a spiritual guru, nor was he a monk who had sold his Maruti leave alone a Ferrari.

I simply replied, “It has got nothing to do with it. And so still no, no chance.”

But then he was not going to give up, he continued giving me the lecture. Soon others, except Vikash, joined too. Seeing this, Varun changed stance and started proposing a group outing. “Guys! This might be our last trip together. Soon I will go, then Ramesh may follow too, even Saurav is looking for a new job, Jeet has plans, and Vikash Sir will soon move his family here and may not have time for us. Let’s go to Chennai together. My interview is on Friday then we will be free for weekend there. We can also go to adjoining places on those days. What say?” he said and paused.

“Hell no” said Ramesh and soon everyone, except Rachit, declined. Rachit had never taken a stand in his whole life so I was not sure which side he was on.

So, he left alone, and when he returned back, I slightly regretted our decision, as Varun Shyamak’s Visa application was rejected and I just missed another fun story for we never got to find the real reason. We drilled him, but the only answer he gave was “the interviewer was an asshole”. To this day we don’t know the reason as to why his Visa got rejected. Meanwhile, Varun got his interview rescheduled, this time in Mumbai and for a change his Visa application got accepted.

Very soon Varun Shyamak’s luggage was packed. Sunday was supposed to be the day we will wish him good bye (good riddance as it turned out to be). He would go to his hometown, Mysore, and will plan his travel to US sometime next month. The emotions were mixed. Varun with his weird activities had often given us moments of real fun, be it him wearing one underwear for six consecutive days and live the Sunday without it so that it can be washed and dried, or getting accused of misbehaving with a cute waitress at a Pizza joint when in reality he had just asked if she was happy or rather ‘satisfied’ with her job, or be it touching the feet of a hot female student at his first music class assuming her to be the music teacher.

On the Saturday morning, a day before he was supposed to leave, he came to us and said, “Let’s go for a party tonight”. This was unexpected and was not a good idea. Last time when he had invited us for a party he had chosen a roadside eatery and to top that at end of the meal he had refused to pay the full amount which was only 300! Friendship had turned sour for some time following that. So now when he invited us again it was fair to be skeptical.

“Are you on tranquilizers?” asked Ramesh, mocking subtly.

“What’s wrong? Let’s hang out tonight” Varun replied.

“I still remember the last time, so clarify that you pay the whole amount.” Ramesh said.

“No. I did not say that I will pay. I said that we party tonight” he said and paused to add some effect amidst the confusion, looked around and after some ten painful seconds of silence added “… each one pays his expense”

Ramesh gave him a stern look, looked around at me and then at Saurav, shrugged his shoulders, took a deep breath and said, “Tell me you sick moron, how come is this party if everyone pays his expense?”

Varun was unmoved and replied in a very calm manner, “Well, grammatically there is a difference between a treat and a party. What you are asking is a treat and what I suggested was a party. As you see a treat is a word which has its root in …”

“Ok shut up!” I had to interrupt, “we all know that you are a sick miser, so no need to modify theories to suit the facts. And I am not joining you. I have some work tonight. I have to go somewhere else in evening” I lied.

But Ramesh for some reason took the baton of convincing everyone and when he is out to convince, you can do only one thing, you agree. And so we did.

“Where do we go?” asked Saurav. Rachit suggested a place and no one agreed at first, but at the end everyone settled on that, a trend which I had noticed each time.

“So let’s say we leave at 7:30 tonight?” Vikash Sir finally said something.

“Can we leave a little early? I have a little shopping to do.” Varun almost begged.

“Seriously? You have shopping to do?” Saurav mocked, but not subtly, for on each previous occasion he had wanted to shop, it had been like we would go to mall, Varun would go to each shop, look at each thing with a kid like I-wish-I-had-that-lollypop look, and finally come out without buying anything, leaving us all exasperated.

“Even I have to buy batteries for my camera, old one is not charging. We will need it today, so let us leave early by 6:30” Saurav added. It was obvious. It seems like a mandate in social-networking era that whatever you do needs to be captured to be put on Facebook. It is but obvious that at a time when everyone spends the majority of his or her time contemplating how to make his or her life more Facebook worthy, capturing the moment has become much more important than actually living the moment.

So we agreed to leave by 6:00 P.M. And ready we were by 6. Varun had again pulled out his age old green T-shirt, too small for him and having a lame slogan stating “I am going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes”, his rugged, and by rugged I mean rugged with overuse, low rise jeans, which scarcely hid the underwear he had been wearing since Monday.

We took the Volvo bus despite some opposition from Varun, who was of opinion of travelling with normal bus, as it ‘costs less than one-third of volvo’. Once in a volvo bus in Bangalore you can see three types of personalities. The silent ones, who will be in majority, will just sit idle, sometimes with earphones to shut everyone out, and not care about anyone or anything and occasionally showing a lot of frustration with traffic. Next there will be a few confused and excited types, most of them new in city and somehow believing, “wow, this is amazing”. Thirdly, and more importantly, there will be ‘I-cannot-live-a-moment-without-show-off’ types, whose only agenda will be to show off, foolishly believing that people are really interested in them. These will either be talking loudly with co-passengers giving gyaan to everyone around, or talking super loudly on phone so that everyone knows about how important they are, and if they happen to possess one, they will be pulling out and I-POD or a smartphone and using it with an eye of an aesthete, intermittently looking around to see the effect on co-travellers, as if they are the only ones who possess that. Varun belonged to the third category.

So Varun started endlessly talking about U.S., his future plans, American food, American girls, American universities and whatever he could to ensure that everyone around him knows that he is going to U.S. Saurav and I wasted little time and moved to a seat as far as possible to avoid hearing his droning monotonous voice, but then there was no respite, for right in front of me sat another guy, who was talking loudly on the phone about his miserable job. In some 20 minutes of the ride, I came to know that he works for oracle, his job sucks, he wanted Java but got .Net, his seniors at work suck, he has now got an interview with google (which I doubted), a girl is flirting with him (I doubted this even more), and all such fucking details without talking to him once. I was mighty relieved when my stop came as I was on the verge of snatching his phone and throw it out and ask him if he has no one at home to talk this stuff to.

We had to cross the street to go to the mall. The only rule to cross the street in this city is look left, look right and run for your life and thank god when you are done. Before we could cross the street, Varun said, “Hey I need to find out about the air tickets from Bangalore to Mumbai next month, I will just check with the agent and come” and pointed to a small board on first floor of a building which read ‘GEO travels’.

“Why don’t you book this over the internet?” Vikash had made the mistake of asking him.

“No, internet banking is not safe; you know recently there was an article in the paper …”

Before Varun could complete another excellent piece of information Ramesh interrupted him, “Ok Ok! You check and come back fast”.

Varun looked angry on being interrupted but simply walked off without a word.

Fifteen minutes passed following that but there was no sign of Varun. I called him and he said “That fellow was asking too much commission, I am checking at another place and will be there in 2 minutes”. Another twenty minutes passed but he did not return. We tried calling but he did not answer. Saurav then said “I think I will go and get the battery for my camera, in the meantime. Rachit, why don’t you join me? Ramesh, you give me a call when Varun comes and then we can decide.” Both Rachit and Saurav trudged off and Harpreet joined them too.

“This guy is a pain in the ass. Jeet, I think we need to remind him of Jog Falls before he leaves” Ramesh was getting irritated every passing moment.

“What Jog Falls? He never joined us for that trip. It was Coorg” Vikash Sir said. Off course, he was unaware as to why he did not join us, which in fact was known only to Ramesh, me and obviously Varun.

Finally Varun appeared after some five minutes but before we could heave a sigh of relief, we saw he was running and three people were running behind him who caught a hold of him by scruff of his neck soon and there seemed to be a heated argument around.

“Let’s see what is going on” Vikash sir said and as we were about to rush, Ramesh said to me, “Let him be on his own, let us get out of here.” Before I could say anything Vikash Sir gave us stern looks and we reluctantly rushed towards him. I wish I had taken Ramesh’s advice that day.

“What happened? Why are you manhandling him?” Vikash Sir tried to raise his voice amongst the confusion. They ignored him and simply went on arguing in language which was greek to three of us. I pulled one of them aside and asked “What is wrong?”

He replied in a husky voice “He said Bangalore-Mumbai ticket book maadi. I booked, and now he is not paying and after we asked him to pay he was running away”

“I never told to book the ticket. He did it by himself” Varun shouted.

Before we could figure out anything they again went into alien language fighting mode. Ramesh tried to free Varun from their hold and said “Let’s talk decently here, why you people are manhandling him?”

But one of them pushed Ramesh and asked him to mind his own business, which invoked anger from Vikash and me as well and we too started arguing.

One of them who seemed sensible tried to defuse the issue. “We do not want to fight. Just ask him to pay the cancellation charge and the commission and we are done. How can you ask us to book the ticket and not pay for it? It is 3500 bucks ticket and 300 is our charge, however at least pay the 1000 Rs cancellation charge.”

“Why should I pay?” Varun had found his voice again and looked much more brave as he had got us for company.

“Why did you ask to book it then?” the man asked.

“I never asked to book. I simply asked to reserve the ticket” Varun replied leaving all of us stunned.

“What is the difference between book and reserve?” the man looked clueless

“Reserve means I just wanted to block the tickets for a day” Varun had done it again.

“Let’s get out of here. Leave this idiot here to sort it out with them” I whispered to Ramesh and Vikash but they did not follow.

“You pay him the cancel charge or you take the ticket, anyway you had to take it. And it is your mistake, reserve and book do mean the same thing and firstly, domestic tickets cannot be blocked” Vikash Sir made a sensible suggestion but Varun seemed to be determined to mess this up, so he continued arguing and in to time police was there to settle it out.

Now we could not even walk out as they have asked us to stay too. A big fat policeman with a monstrously large belly seemed to be in charge. He listened to both sides and it was obvious who was wrong, and to add to that he might be also getting a share from the shopkeeper every month.

He came to us and to our horror said “Handcuff all of them”

“What? Why all of us? There is only one here who did the fraud” I panicked.

“You all came together right? And then all of you have been seen fighting. Take them all” he replied.

“What is your problem? We never fought. We were just asking what is wrong, you just take Varun.” Ramesh said in a very high voice which clearly did not amuse the policeman.

“You are shouting at me? I am your father’s age and you are shouting at me” he said. I don’t know he was sarcastic or emotional.

“Sir, how much do you want to end it here?” Varun was speaking again!!!! Even a thief does not want to be called a thief in public and here Varun had offered bribe to a policeman in public.

As expected this pissed him off. He held Varun’s collar and pulled it upward and said “What do you think? I will make you learn all the lessons tonight in lockup”. Saurav and Rachit had also come in meantime and had understood and did not want to get involved.

“I will pay the ticket cost” Vikash sir said, “please finish it off here, There was just some confusion”. The shop owner agreed to not press any police complain if he got the amount. Varun said “Why are you paying, I will pay”.

“Fuck off!” Vikash Sir said, two words I had never heard him use before

Thought he policeman did not like Varun questioning him the amount, he asked me to silently slip 2 five-hundred rupee notes into his pocket, which I immediately did and they were gone in no time. As soon as they disappeared and Vikash sir moved in the shop to pay him the money, Varun said “I will pay Vikash sir later. Sorry guys, but it was not my …” before he could complete Ramesh punched him hard right in the abdomen and mouthed an expletive and walked off leaving Varun reeling, while Harpreet and Saurav ran behind him to calm him down with Rachit watcing silently from distance.

Varun soon recovered from blow, “What is this attitude?”

“We were about to be handcuffed because of you” I said

“So? They were just looking for money” he was dangerously nonchalant.

I could not bear it and I pushed him hard and he fell on the ground. Harpreet ran and stopped me. I said “Just get lost from here. Do not come near me again before you leave”

“I would love to choke you to death. Don’t you come near me too” said Harpreet pointing his finger to Varun and then he asked me to leave from there and he was about to leave with Ramesh and me when Varun again spoke “Hey guys let’s forget it. Let’s not spoil the occasion. Let us go to the party now.” Of course this was not taken lightly but then something amazing happened. Something which we never thought we would ever see in life. It was Rachit who jumped out and ran and tackled Varun to ground and kicked him in butt twice before Saurav pulled him over. For what we have known Rachit he had always been someone who did not get angry and did not take stands. Normally in such situations he would start laughing aloud leaving everyone aghast. And to add to that the sight of a lanky 48 Kilograms person pouncing on a rather healthy person weighing over 70 and dusting him to ground was something I had never seen before.

Tears rolled down Varun’s cheeks. Rachit was fuming still and somehow all of us apart from him started laughing. Vikash Sir had paid and come back by then and he too had seen the cat-fight and even he could not hold back his laughter.

We never went for the ‘party’, we all returned to home leaving Varun there who came back after some time. Some people chose to put the incident behind and did wish him luck when he left for good the other day. I was not one of them, neither was Ramesh nor Harpreet.

We have neither seen Varun nor heard from him for more than a year now as none of us kept in touch with him through any medium, my last memories of him being, Rachit standing over him after dusting him on the ground. We never came to find out whether he paid Vikash Sir the money for that air ticket. However, it would be a lie to say we did not miss him after that. For whenever in future we look back at our first two years in that city most memories will be of Varun making it all go wrong. The plans never got executed, we did often end up in places we did not want, but overall it did give us some unforgettable memories.