This guy went to the gym, WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL SHOCK YOU (and also give you kidney stones)!!

Yes folks, it’s that time of the year again. The time for you to remember the great sacrifices made by our foreparents for our country’s freedom and then cry yourself to sleep while lying in a fetal position. No, wait! Sorry, wrong calendar!! It is in fact, a time for fun and frolic and reckless partying. But most importantly, it is the time for you to finally buckle down, pull your socks up and make steadfast new year resolutions and thirty six hours later break them like a candy piñata kept in the ultra-violent ward of an insane asylum. Which is why, the best way to keep a new year resolution is to never make one.

However, I’m proud to announce that after several excruciating days of putting my shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone and ass to the grass, I have finally filled my gym membership form. Regular readers of the blog may know, provided they have taken all their medications correctly, that there’s absolutely nothing I love in the world more than exercising unless of course you consider any other activity such as eating, watching TV, sleeping, standing, walking over burning coals, covering my bottom with honey and squatting on an anthill etc. In fact, there have been several times in college when I have, without sparing a single thought to my comfort or safety, avoided the lift and descended all the way from the first floor to the ground floor via the stairs. Or take the countless occasions when I’ve walked all the way from the couch to the television because the TV remote batteries were down. So, it wouldn’t be amiss to say that I am no stranger to rigorous physical exercise.

But despite treating my body like a temple and religiously following a healthy balanced diet of oats, milk, tobacco, weed, rum, Tabasco sauce etc., I was still considerably short of achieving my childhood dream body with 28 inch biceps and 36 pack abs. Hence, the drastic measures.

Ask any serious professional bodybuilder the key to bodybuilding success, and without wasting breath he will say “ Dedication, determination and diet”. Now ask him the causes for WW1, and without wasting breath he will say “ Dedication, determination and diet”. This teaches us to never ask serious bodybuilders anything as their brains have been corroded into useless lumps of rotten tissue by the various protein shakes, protein bars, protein injections, protein enemas etc. In fact, in my quest to discover the ultimate secret to bodybuilding and achieve a greek god figure, I carried out some in-depth, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, no-nonsense, no-brainer research by looking at the various emails in my spam folder. And voila, one email with the subject “This guy took a bodybuilding pill, what happened next will SHOCK YOU!” informed me that, hold your breath till you pass out, drumroll…………… cymbals clanging……………… heavy double bass solo kicking in ………………….. scientists in China have discovered a shocking new revolutionary amazing miracle breakthrough drug that can add 30 pounds of muscle to your body in just two weeks!! Without you touching a single weight! Of course, being a man of science I was a tad skeptical about somebody making such extraordinary claims without offering any proof but the email was sent to me by one Bulldozer Bob, who claimed to be the head of this Chinese team of scientists. And you have to ask yourself the question “If you can’t trust the head of a Chinese team of hi-tech scientists who calls himself Bulldozer Bob, who can you trust in life, really?” Bulldozer Bob further went on to clarify that the drug is a muscle activator with anabolic actions that replenishes ATP for optimal protein synthesis by spiking insulin and insulinotropic amino acids while replenishing glycogen without adding any calories. WOW! DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THAT MEANS??!! Well, neither do I. But, I know that if there’s one drug out there that can get me jacked more than Arnold Shwarzenegger going through an eight course meal of high end anabolic steroids while I sit at home dumping dollops of deep fried high calorie sugary grease directly into my mouth, it has to be this. And I could get this shocking new revolutionary amazing miracle breakthrough drug by just paying 100$ upfront at which point Bulldozer Bob will personally ship it from China using his hi-tech supersonic unmanned drone or pet carrier pigeon, whichever is available. So, haha! I’m quitting the gym already!!

I know what you are thinking. Why am I sharing bodybuilding tips with you, when women all over the world as they themselves proclaim would definitely prefer a good sense of humour or intelligence to a chiseled herculean physique.
Which is clearly true of course, as you can witness at any movie theater across India where hordes of women can be seen screaming and ripping their clothes off whenever a fully-clothed Hrithik Roshan comes on screen and tells a bunch of jokes, or when an unshaven Shahrukh Khan recites the value of pi upto a thousand digits. Which is why I’m delighted to announce that psycho-neurotic research carried out on this shocking new revolutionary amazing miracle and not to forget breakthrough drug also helps in improving brain function. So, go to China and call Bulldozer Bob today.

I know some of you are still wondering why I am taking time from my busy weekend schedule of boozing, doping and gaming to pimp out a shady chinese bodybuilding product. Am I a sinister Neo-Nazi gearing towards world domination by promoting biologically hazardous products? Or am I just another selfless good Samaritan sharing invaluable information with others, without any regard to personal gains, hoping to bask in the knowledge that my work might help atleast one billionaire become healthy who might then decide to transfer all his life’s earnings to my name??

Neither actually. I’m just drunk as fuck. Also, heil hitler! I mean, Happy New Year.

Far from the madding crowd

Living in solitude, many writers and philosophers say, is a wholesome enriching experience that allows you to quietly reflect on your life and develop yourself both holistically and spiritually. Now ask them about ‘death by gasification’. Death by gasification, they will say, is a wholesome enriching experience that allows you to quietly reflect on your life and develop yourself both holistically and spiritually. Which is why, you should never pay heed to these fools. These are the same people who write fancy prose about the unbridled joy of living in isolation while attending wild drunken parties in the evenings and sleeping with their doors open at night so that they can atleast hear the neighbour’s dog barking. If you ask me, living alone and friendless is a horrible traumatic experience unless you have internet access to connect to the rest of world with the help of social networking websites such as adultfriendfinder.com, webcamsingles.com, and most importantly, orkut. Haha, no! I’m kidding about orkut of course. I meant zoophilebook.

But, seriously speaking, the sight of your hostel corridor all empty and soundless is a truly depressing image and the only thing worse is the sight of your hostel corridor all crowded and noisy with cricket-playing M.tech students who are, and I mean no disrespect here, lousy lowlife unwanted scum of the planet. Many times when I’ve completed my weekly ablutions and daily constitutionals and I’m walking down the corridor, I can spot several matkas stripping and dancing wildly without the aid of alcohol or any form of music. That too, in the wee hours of the morning. And in my own room! Of course, many of you may argue that I’m generalizing here, but as is so often the case when I tend to generalize, I don’t give a rodent’s furry posterior. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who as ever lived for long durations of time in close proximity to M.tech students once they manage to jump over the walls of whatever mental institution they currently reside in and they will tell you the same albeit with more colourful adjectives.

Other than that, life has been remarkably uneventful. And by uneventful, I mean boring-to-the-point-of-wanting-to-kill-myself-by-sucking-on-the-exhaust-pipe-of-a-emission-test-failed-automobile. However, being an engineer, this is not my first taste of joblessness and in my struggle to beat it I have put in my four years of engineering experience to use, namely by sleeping. I have slept more in the last month than most comatose patients sleep in their lifetimes. I’m not saying that i just lay in bed doing nothing all day but vampires must have done more during the day than I have. Yet, mere acute hypersomnia seems to be no match for the scourge that is utter joblessness. It is at times like these, when in the face of utter joblessness, characteristic ineptitude, a plethora of unaccepted facebook friend requests sent to random chicks, and an appalling lack of porn websites not already on your bookmark list, that one is forced to look back on his life and take the ultimate step. A step no thinking man should ever be made to comprehend. Yes, I’ve started going to the gym. This was facilitated in part by the taunting memories of my school days when I had an athletic body and I could, without breaking sweat, do several pushups, pull-ups, auto-fellatios etc. Yes, it was a wonderful time when my sex appeal was not just limited to my gorgeous hunk face like it is at the present.

I’m not saying that I look thin or skinny or chronically malnourished presently but starving homeless kids routinely give me money whenever I walk past them on the streets. In fact, that formed a major part of my monthly allowance until now. But the final straw was when I was walking to the mess last week and I spotted several hungry looking vultures swooping down at me only to come close and cover their eyes with one wing and fly away without looking back. It was then that I decided to give up a sybaritic lifestyle based solely on alcohol and drug abuse in lieu of a disciplined, determined approach to procure necessary high-end anabolic steroids so that I could set right my life-priorities and go on a radically different lifestyle based on alcohol, drug and testosterone abuse.

So, last week I packed my bag, filled up my water bottle, changed my underwear and set forth for the gym. Going to the gym, as anyone who has done so and is not suffering from permanent paralysis or limb amputation will tell you, can be a thoroughly enjoyable experience once you get past the severe muscular pain developing in your body, the nauseating aroma emerging from the armpits of others, the huge slippery puddles of sweat lying on the floor and most importantly the horrible Punjabi rap music playing on the speakers. But being a professional existential thinker and a part time global domination conspirator, the only semblance of regular exercise that I had until that point was scratching various hard to reach body parts. Mostly mine. So you can imagine my consternation when I realized that I was stepping into an arena where most members performed several hundred crunches and routinely benchpressed domestic livestock. And that’s just the girls. The guys are even worse. Nevertheless, I put aside all my fears, pulled up my pants and walked inside. At this point here, I will not spoil the suspense of the story by telling you beforehand whether I succeeded in my attempt to become the next cover model for BodyBuilding magazine or whether I died in the process from acute internal injuries. No sir, I am not that sort of a party pooper. You will just have to read on.

So, I walked with my head held high into the gym where I immediately slipped on a huge glob of sweat, fell headfirst onto the ground and subsequently died from internal brain injuries. Haha, no! Just joshing! But I did suffer a near-fatal fall much to the amusement of my fellow gym-mers. However, I swallowed my pride and began gymming. Soon, my heart rate was soaring, I was panting like a bitch in heat and huge quantities of sweat were pouring torrentially from my body. And this was after just weighing myself on the weighing machine. So I went to the gym instructor for help. If there’s one thing that gym instructors and fitness experts from all over the world stress upon especially if you are a beginner, it is that before involving yourself in any strenuous physical exercise at the gym, you must, without fail, take a deep breath and find a safe place to hide your wallet. This is because several gym-goers, even advanced bodybuilders, have been known to spend too much time crunching abs and admiring their various muscle groupings to notice their wallets disappearing with their entire life savings in it and eventually succumb to depression and commit suicide by drinking up all their protein supplements in one go. In fact, larceny in the gym is one of the leading causes of India’s budget deficit. So, I went around the gym searching for a suitable place to hide my wallet. After twenty minutes of meticulous searching, I finally hid my wallet in a place that no one would dare search – my underwear. At least, not unless they were perverts of some sort. Then I went to the gym instructor who told me to begin my warm up by taking a deep breath. Breathe in and out, he told me like it was some sort of a mantra. ‘Breathe in’, he kept saying intermittently which remarkably was followed by ‘out’. ‘In’ he yelled, and then, GET THIS, ‘Out’! I was really glad that he was there to help me remember this complex pattern, failing which I might have breathed either in or out continuously till my lungs exploded or I died of asphyxiation. After I was done with warming up (yes, I breathed in and out alternatively), he told me to go do whatever exercise tickled my fancy. So, I went to the weights room.

 The weights room, if you are not aware already, is that section of the gym where the truly passionate bodybuilders, the ones who live, breathe and sleep bodybuilding, work out. One foolproof way of identifying these bodybuilders from amateur enthusiasts is, and I base my results on in-depth research that I carried out by looking at them for several seconds without blinking, to count the number of bandages on their heads. The greater the number of bandages, the more passionate the person is about fitness. These bandages are a direct result of wounds caused to the head by bumping into things as the person has to constantly look down at his body and assess the development of his biceps, quadriceps, tetramilliaicosahedraceps etc. even while performing routine activities such as working out, pooping or sleeping. Which is why going to the weights room can be very dangerous especially for beginners as these bodybuilders are often bumping into walls, mirrors, the weights and sometimes into each other. As I stood there, looking at the massive muscles of the many manly muscular macho males, I felt a familiar feeling stir up inside me, a feeling of – and I say this with an unblemished* record of uncompromising heterosexuality (*unblemished as of 1^st Jan, 2013) – wanting to throw up everything I’d eaten since kindergarten. This is because for all their rippling muscles and ripped abs, they were grunting and sweating it out like pigs in a slaughterhouse. But what I did realize on standing there and taking in all the sights was that I wanted to be just like them – a massive, iron-pumping, chest-thumping beast of a man with more bandages on my head than a mummy with a fetish for bandages. It was then that I truly understood what my true calling was. I picked up a 60 pound bench-press bar and lay down. Twenty eyes looked at me with open disbelief. I looked back at them unflinchingly, took a deep breath and heaved the bar straight over my chest and then, in full view of the other bodybuilders, passed out completely.

Nevertheless, I have been going to the gym regularly ever since. And in a matter of only ten days, I have noticed some amazing changes in my body. For example, I can no longer walk without a limp, my vision has become blurry, tufts of hair keep falling into my plate whenever I sit down to eat, and I have developed stomach cramps like I were in labour with the Devil’s baby. On the plus side, my penis seems to have become bigger. So maybe, auto-fellatio is still not out of the question. But all kidding aside, going to the gym is a wonderful experience and I cannot recommend it enough. Whether you are a thin kid reading this, or a fat slob, or a terminally ill nonagenarian on your deathbed, or a highly intelligent Labrador, you should definitely go to the gym. Unless you really are a highly intelligent Labrador reading this. In which case, straight to Ripley’s Believe It or Not you go!

I could you give more reasons to go to the gym. But I have to go now. Those bandages on my forehead are starting to come off.

What’s in a game?

Every day, millions and millions of netizens from across the length and breadth of the world spend hours scouring the uncharted recesses of the internet in their quest to find that one elusive blogger who writes about nothing in particular yet whose words contain a deep, underlying subliminal message that only a chosen few can decipher. And with all the recent advancements in search engine optimization technology, all you have to do is enter a google search for the same, at which point google uses its infallible set of unique and complex algorithms and in a matter of just nanoseconds, redirects you to an illegal underground 7X bestiality porn site where you will invariably download a virus and your computer will crash. Which is why, you shouldn’t be shocked to find my comments on several videos of such websites. It’s only to promote my blog, I assure you.

But I digress. This post is a tribute to one of the greatest joys of mankind, second only to the inexpressible joy you get on saving young innocent bunny rabbits from the hands of wicked hunters, and then stomping them to death with your bare legs. I speak of course, of gaming.  

So, all of you who have never played video/computer games (let’s call you, say, ‘girls’), this post is not likely to strike a chord with you. So, in the interest of not wasting your time pointlessly, I urge you to stop reading this blog post immediately and without wasting breath lock yourselves in your rooms with nothing but a GTA installed PS3 for company till you spend every waking moment of your lives thinking, breathing and living the game and then come back and read this blog post. Like I said, all in the interest of not wasting your time pointlessly.  

Anyhoo, I still remember the first time I got a videogame console. I was at that young, innocent, playful age when I used to find mud delicious and my idea of funtime involved making paper boats and sailing them in the commode. No, wait! That was last year! I got my first videogame console as a present on my tenth birthday. The console was an original limited edition Tintendo PlayBox 360 directly imported from the United States of Armenia which, despite its modest cost and shoddy packaging, was made of genuine low-grade recycled plastic. Immediately after unwrapping the box, I propped myself in front of the TV. And then for two days, TWO DAYS STRAIGHT I TELL YA, I sat in front of the TV without food, water, hard liquor, illegal narcotics or clean underwear even as my mother lovingly tried to coax me into giving the bathroom a visit using playful devices such as cattle prods and bull whips. Then finally, on the third day when I finally got the damn thing to work, I played it feverishly for all of eight minutes during which I got killed by special ops commando ninja bunnies a record 72 times before conducting a harsh and unsparing introspective self-examination and concluding that gaming was for losers. So, I quickly changed all the names on the saved score list to my sister’s and hid the console in my attic where none of my friends would ever find it. Then my mom and I drove in our unwashed, dusty car to the car wash where using high pressure sprays to remove multiple layers of accumulated grime, dirt, and grease, I was finally given a bath. But this unfortunate preliminary tryst with gaming apart, the times that I’ve spent gaming have been some of my most memorable. So much so that even today, well over a year after I played my last official AOE match, it took me just 20 minutes and some serious facebooking to remember the names of my erstwhile gaming partners. Still, it is times like these that take me back to my first competitive AOE match on campus.

I was a rookie fresher who had just about learnt the basics of the game. And my opponent was a veteran final year student who through years of intense practice, regular all-nighters at the computer centre, and after mastering every trick in the book had finally cleared MA-102. But he too sucked at the game. So what we had there was, to use advanced gaming jargon, ‘a very sucky contest at hand’. But, never being one to back down from a challenge, I went to his room armed with my laptop and gaming equipment. For the first twenty minutes, we were going at it neck to neck with the domination passing back and forth quite regularly. But soon my skill, stamina and practice began to show as I took complete control of the situation and whipped his ass. After that we got dressed and began the match. Where he beat me in thirty minutes flat, of which the first ten he spent cutting his toenails. The humiliating loss notwithstanding, I walked out of the room with my head held high predominantly because I had developed a neck sprain, what with all those satin binds and leather straps.

Four years on, I have come a long way since then, even if I say so myself. It is not for no reason then that even one year after my retirement, my name evokes fear in the hearts of gamers across the campus. Also several pet-owners. But that was because of a huge misunderstanding which is completely irrelevant to this discussion and there is no reason to delve into that here.

Anyway, at the risk of sounding presumptuous, I think I can honestly say that the secret to my success as a gamer can solely be attributed to my dogged determination, patient persistence and the secret stash of cheat codes in the DoNotOpen-UglyNakedGuyPicsHere folder in the C drive of my laptop. It was owing to these very qualities that on more than one occasion I successfully took my gaming clan from the brink of absolute disaster to mere comprehensive defeats. For instance, take last year’s AOE tournament. We were playing against a professional gaming clan who in their eight years as a team had never once lost an AOE match in a major tournament primarily because they were CS players and had never once played an AOE match in a major tournament. So when even their armies started routing ours in less than twenty minutes, I decided to stop taking it easy and rose up to the challenge by putting my foot down on the LAN hub and later groaning loudly and visibly shrugging my shoulders for all to see when the match was deemed cancelled. Or the time in my first year when my rookie clan was faced with the best clan of our college – a set of hardcore AOE addicts who like die-hard gamers usually do, spent at least twelve hours every day glued to their laptops watching Pokemon Hentai porn. But they had a lot of gaming experience too. We, on the other hand were the underdogs and we knew it. But that hadn’t stopped us from believing in ourselves and challenging the very best. The match began on a remarkably competitive note with both sides battling for survival while several people watched. At one point, it even looked like we would achieve the impossible and pull off an unbelievable upset before, in what many spectators later called a ‘decisive strategic turning point in the match’, the two remaining members of their clan came back from class and joined them. They then easily beat us in the next ten minutes while googling for saucy pictures of Pikachu on the side. Being a truly sporting person, I, for one, was extremely gracious in defeat and even hugged and congratulated their leader before pinching him on the forearm and twisting his nipples and punching him in the balls till he was forced to admit that there must have been a mistake somewhere and that we were undoubtedly the real winners of the match. Like I said, I’m nothing if not sporting.

Or take that time when the highest ranked AOE gaming clan in India had thoroughly beaten us in a practice match and their leader had gone on to publicly proclaim that nobody from our college had any chance of beating them. I was deeply offended by this and had gone up to him in full view of the spectators and, in a moment of inspired self-confidence, spectacularly lost complete control of my bowels. No wait, after re-reading the previous sentence and realizing the full implications of writing it in a public forum I seem to recollect that it was actually a teammate who had done that and definitely not me. But the point I’m trying to make here is that even that tournament was cancelled because of the subsequent evacuation and fumigation of the gaming arena. And also that, despite what many of my so-called friends may tell you, my pants have been potty free since ’93.

So as you can see, I’ve had a pivotal role to play in all these instances except for the last one in which I only had a pivot-adjacental role in securing the result that my team wanted. Which is why, it didn’t come as a surprise to most when after three years of painstaking hard work, utmost dedication, and a horrible mistake on the part of the officials that I’m sure got someone fired, I was crowned the highest ranked Indian player on Voobly. It was then while I was in the prime of my gaming career that I decided, in a rare moment of epiphanic realization, to stop wasting my time on worthless activities like gaming and instead own up to my other important responsibilities.

After all, all those pokemon videos weren’t going to watch themselves. 

Why should babies have all the sleep?

If three years of travelling back and forth from home have taught me anything, it’s that life is quite like the long distance journeys that you make. Most of the times, long and arduous as the journey may be, you reach your destination without much incident. But sometimes, just sometimes, you reach your destination only to find all your luggage bags ripped open and your favourite undies stolen. And then because life is too short to be worried about such things, you roam around for the rest of the day wearing unwashed underwear. Like all embarrassing situations of a particularly humiliating nature that I unabashedly admit to on my blog, this once happened to a friend of a friend. But, just to be on the safer side, before coming home I left my pink bunny underwear in my table drawer back in my hostel room. However, I digress. This blogpost was supposed to be about the biggest thing that’s happened of late that will alter the course of my life in unimaginable ways – Hassan Sheikh Mohamud just became the first president of Somalia since the dissolution of Transitional Federal Government. Also, I just became an uncle. Yes, you read that right. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud defeated incumbent president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed comprehensively in the 2012 Somalian elections winning 190 of the 269 votes. All exciting news for the family no doubt, but since I adhere to a very strict policy of keeping this blog apolitical, I shall talk about the other recent development here. Namely me becoming an uncle. My sister recently gave birth to a preemie baby girl very creatively pet-named Nikku because she was in the NICU section of the hospital for the first 45 days. And it’s been almost one month since she was brought home.

As most of my close friends who know me very well will tell you, once they are done serving time in high security prisons for horrid unspeakable crimes, there’s nothing I love more than being around kids as long as they are more than 75 feet away in the closed, protective environment of a cage. Preferably in a zoo. So yes, I admit that I have mixed feelings about them. Mixed because usually I don’t know whether to ruthlessly torture them with rusty medieval age devices before brutally cutting them up into pieces or whether to gently hold them in my arms and lovingly choke the life out of them. So yes, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with this new development.

However, as the Dussehra holidays drew near, I packed my bags and took the first flight home. Call it a coincidence, divine intervention or a fabricated piece of horseshit just to spice up the story and get more hits for the blog, but my co-passengers were a fat, sleepy lady and her not so fat, not so sleepy kid. The flight had hardly taken off when the kid started wailing uncontrollably. The mother, who obviously could not bear to see her child in such a pitiful condition, lay there snoring away to glory. Methinks far too blame is given to the kids these days. The parents are equally at fault. It is my earnest suggestion to all moms to take some tips from Mother Nature. For instance, certain species of birds have been known to spend weeks incubating their eggs without getting up even once irrespective of the temperature, weather or the presence of dangerous predators nearby so that when the time is due, the mother bird can witness the eggs hatching, and without any disturbance can finally eat her young ones. Now, that is the kind of maternal patience I’m talking about. I sincerely believe that if every human mom on this planet puts aside the traditional beliefs and makes this sort of effort, the world will be a much better place to live in until 2080 when all human population will be wiped out.

Anyway, soon the kid decided to switch from the window seat to the middle as he realized he was scared of heights. I’m not saying that I hate sitting in closed, confined spaces with five year olds but I’d rather get a concentrated glucose solution enema and sit on an anthill than spend the same amount of time with a kid. Okay, so I am saying that I hate sitting in closed, confined spaces with five year olds. Which is why despite the presence of two adequately stacked airhostesses I spent a good part of my flight in the restroom. And by a good part, I mean the entire three hour flight duration plus an extra fifteen minutes just to be sure. What the hell, the two airhostesses could’ve been doing naked somersaults all over the aisle and I still wouldn’t be convinced to step out of the restroom as long as the kid was onboard.

Anyhoo, my folks at home as they always do whenever apprised of my imminent arrival, had painstakingly cleaned up my room, redecorated the house, painted the exterior, and sold the house to the first bidder online and moved to a new locality without leaving any forwarding address. Okay not really, but I’m sure that’s only because the real estate market is in a slump right now. On my next home trip perhaps. So, I entered the house to much excitement and joyous cries of “Oh no! Not again!”, “Back already??!”, “QUICK, EVERYONE HIDE IN YOUR ROOMS. MAY BE HE’LL THINK NOBODY’S HOME AND GO AWAY” while tears welled up in my eyes as the pungent aroma of freshly produced baby poop wafted through the air.

If anyone of you ever decides to bring home a baby for any reasons whatsoever such as you are thoroughly tired of long peaceful nights of uninterrupted sleep, have had enough of pleasant smelling fresh air, or are in general completely bored of painless lifestyles, let me give you a general piece of information – Babies have roughly the same bowel control as a choleric central African tribal afflicted with a bad case of amoebic dysentery would, after an eight course meal. Of high grade laxatives. Only worse. So, the baby poops at regular intervals. Such as after a meal, after sleeping, before a meal, before sleeping, after pooping, before pooping, while pooping etc. Right this morning, nikku just wasted a few trillion dollars of CERN’s money by violating the Law of Conservation of Mass – she pooped slightly more than her entire body weight.

However, the past week at home other than being a sleep lover’s nightmare has been a wonderful learning curve. For example, it was only yesterday that I learnt that it is now frowned upon by the medical community to add a few drops of alcohol into the baby’s feeding bottle to help the baby get drunk and sleep peacefully through the night however justified it may be as the baby is previously known to wail loudly and uncontrollably without showing any respect for the time or the person sleeping in the adjacent room EVEN IF THE SAID PERSON IS TRYING TO CATCH SOME WELL-DESERVED SLEEP AFTER A LONG TIRING DAY OF HECTIC TRAVEL OF WHICH, OF COURSE, THE BABY HAS NOT THE SLIGHTEST IDEA. And I’ve stopped doing that ever since.
So yes, being an uncle is not easy. But I’ve taken up the task with characteristic responsibility by doing various uncle-y things such as not taking the baby out to the orphanage and dumping her, not selling her to the human trafficking black market even at special bonus Dussehra offer prices, not running away from home and starting a new life in a human devoid area such as the jungle where there is no possibility of a baby wailing or emitting full on bodily blasts that if utilized properly can be used very successfully in biological warfare. Not that such despicable thoughts ever cross my mind more than thrice every minute. Just the other day, Nikku started crying when my sister was running some errands and I was in charge of taking care of the baby. And like a thoroughly responsible uncle, I did not panic and took full control of the situation by immediately walking up to the living room and solving that day’s Sudoku puzzle completely thereby giving the baby enough time to stop crying on her own and teaching her an invaluable life lesson on independence and self-reliance. But then as her piercing cries echoed through the living room, despite myself I started to get a little worried as the darned Sudoku’s solution just wouldn’t match. So, I went up to her room, closed the door to shut out the noise and switched to the ultranoob dickhead level Sudoku app that I’d just downloaded. I do that every time she starts crying now. That takes my Sudoku toll to 36. And that’s just in the last two days.

But all that apart, nikku is a great kid whenever she finds time from farting, pooping, screaming her heart out, making weird grunting noises even when fast asleep, trying to get her hands completely into her mouth etc. Which is why it will be especially hard on me when two days from now, I shall give up all this, say goodbye to her, pack my bags, and throw them in the incinerator because my undies have been re-used up to the point where no airport on the planet would allow the bags to be checked in unless the flight passengers are all special ops force commandos equipped with hi-tech, state of the art gas masks with in-built breathing apparatus. Well, at least the pink bunny lives to see another laundry day.

Uh oh, I can hear Nikku crying again. Time to solve another Sudoku.

Don’t cringe. She’ll thank me for it someday.

P.S: If any of you have any use for a baby such as a baby model, child actor, human baby vaccine tester, crash test dummy etc and are willing to pay money for the same, preferably in cash, then PLEASE DO NOT EVER CONTACT ME AS I LOVE MY SISTER AND HER BABY VERY MUCH and can hear her footsteps as she makes her way to my room.

P.P.S: The vitruvian baby

Men are from mars, women are from venus, internships are from hell Part 3

The first thing that an internee, especially one who’s far away from his family and friends, does on coming to a big, hostile city like Bombay is immediately look for an affordable apartment in a respectable area that would become his home for the next couple of months. Okay, so the first thing that such an internee probably does is hit all the swanky new pubs, snazzy strip clubs, borderline legal kinky fetish sex dungeons etc nonstop till he’s broke, has no place to live and has to peddle his ass on the streets for some beer. But apartment-hunting comes a close second.

I hadn’t found any of those dungeons yet so I could still afford beer. But only just. And I sure as hell wasn’t gonna spend my six month worth of saved up ‘beer and hookers only’ money on some stupid apartment just so that I could lead a hassle-free, cockroach-free, disease-free life for the next 45 days. Luckily, when you have forefathers who went at it like rabbits just out of prison, you are bound to have a smattering of cousins, aunts and uncles in every major city of the world. And by smattering, I mean a number ranging in the early hundred thousands. And when you are as popular with your family and relatives as I am, you cheerfully pack all your bags and go to their house where you have to plead, beg, offer to do all household chores on all days except weekends and national holidays, offer to do all household chores on all days including weekends and national holidays before one of those kindly souls takes pity on your plight, reaches into the depths of his sensitivity and decides to call up the cops. So after much soul searching, family tree tracing, facebook stalking, telephone directory rummaging, familial string pulling and emotional appealing to relatives from far and wide, I finally found out the contact details of ‘Jai Maratha sex dungeon. Cheap and best. Special discount for IITians’. Incidentally, while I was at it, I also found out the address of my neighbour’s fifth grade classmate’s uncle whose second cousin once removed had played cricket for the same U-15 school team that my grandfather’s nephew had been the captain of, who lived right next to my office and was ready to welcome me into his home with open arms. Oh, and by some sheer coincidence, he also turned out to be my mom’s first cousin or some such close relative. What did I tell you about those horny forefathers now? Sheesh! Anyways, never to pass up such an offer, I thanked the heavens for saving me so much money and immediately started searching for my college ID card to quickly avail the discount.

So, after I was done with erm…. some intern work shall we say (hehe) in the most satisfactory fashion, I decided to go live it up at my uncle’s place. However, one of the things I hadn’t accounted for while deciding to stay at my relatives’ place was the extreme danger of living in a house with two kids. Hey, don’t get me wrong. Normally, there’s nothing I like more than watching smug ten year olds go all weak in the knees as I cock my head, crack my knuckles, pull up my sleeves, flex my biceps, and pull out my gamepad to obliterate entire armies of bloodthirsty zombies and with it the high score list in the neighbourhood gaming parlors. But my cousins’ idea of playtime included fun activities like tenderly electrocuting your private parts while you are asleep, hygienically crapping on your laptop when you are not looking, carefully washing your laundry in the commode when you are not around etc. Of course, when you’ve spent as much as time in a hostel as I have, this is all a hoot, really. But since my hectic internship project required me to spend long hours hunched over my laptop doing what serious internees always do – browsing Wikipedia, making presentations, downloading porn, stalking single chicks on facebook, stalking committed chicks on facebook, stalking committed chicks about to become single (and vulnerable) on facebook etc, I decided to do something about my situation here. But kids, I tell ya. You can’t live with them. You can’t live with their bodies hanging out of your closet. So, I did what any sane person would do in these circumstances, call up my buddies in the Mumbai underworld and tell them to brutally murder the kids, cut their bodies into a thousand pieces and feed them to the dogs. Haha, I’m kidding of course. What do you think I am – some kind of twisted sicko who would feed his own little cousins to the dogs? Everyone knows that dogs get indigestion from eating human meat.

So, what I indeed told my buddies was to brutally murder the kids, sell all their organs at the local black market and barbeque the remains ala Hannibal Lecter with rare greek herbs and spices. Also, much Tabasco sauce.

But sadly, they were all on vacation in dubai or something and I had to make do with what I had. So, after much consultation with the local mercenaries, international hitmen, ninja stealth assassins, esoteric cuisine specialist chefs and revising, re-revising, re-re-revising my budget, I decided not to be stingy and relocate to my grandmother’s house which was a completely kid-free zone. Of course, this meant that I spent more time travelling in the bus everyday than working in the office, but atleast now I could sleep without the constant fear of waking up with my nuts stapled together. Also as daily commuting goes, there’s nothing more fun than travelling by bus. Unless you have a convertible, and you drive to work with the top open everyday. Even then, it is only in a bus that you can truly take in the linguistic diversity, indefatigable spirit and cultural ethos of the vibrant, bustling city which is NOT limited to watching co-passengers spit chewed paan all over hapless passers-by, laugh cruelly at them, abuse their mothers generously in two or three languages and then make sex faces as the bus zooms off. Although all of that forms an integral part, I’m told. But what makes a Mumbai bus ride unique is the co-passengers you meet, the anecdotes you narrate, the numbers you exchange and later, the bloody fistfights you get into to decide which IPL team is the best. Idiots all, if you ask me. I fail to understand why even in this free, democratic, T20 society of today, sensible, mature individuals cannot look past their differences, let go of their personal biases, and just accept the fact that CHENNAI SUPER KINGS ARE THE TRUE GODS OF IPL.

But all that apart, Bombay of course, is a beautiful city with many spectacular places of tourist significance that you will never get to see because of the horrible traffic, endless rain and that free subscription of that shady semi-porno Russian channel you get on cable. Yes, you name it. Juhu, marine drive, nariman point, the bandra-worli sealink, Sachin Tendulkar, Aishwarya Rai, Big B, Small B, the baby, I have seen them all. But only in photos. If I had to write a Lonely Planet review for the city in short, I would say that Bombay is quite the quintessential modern Indian city intoxicated with an inebriating mixture of crass capitalism and grinding poverty, as is evident from the eclectic blend of swish bars, exotic restaurants, glistening malls and rundown vada pav centres all over the city. Which brings me to a question that I’ve been dying to ask all along – what is with the hard on that these bombayites (bombayites/mumbaikars whatever) have for vada pav, eh? It was all good for the first few days. In fact, in the evenings after my daily 10 km power jog and rigorous weightlifting session I used to eat the odd vada pav or two. As much as I hate them now, I have to admit that those vada pavs filled my belly with considerable delight then (and also, a little bit of gas). But nothing that good ol’ gelusil could not take care of. Soon however, things just got out of hand (this vada pav business I mean, not the gas. That was very much under control). Everywhere you go, all you get is vada pav. You go to the beach for relaxation after a long tiring day of uninterrupted sleep in the office AC lounge, and as you are admiring Nature’s beauty, mainly in the form of long legs and comely bodies, you come face to face with sweaty vada pav vendors thrusting those buns at you “BUY ONE, GET TWENTY TWO FREE. Vat extra. Conditions apply. Condition – eat the first vada pav without throwing up”. You go to that new continental restaurant in Bandra to suitably impress your female colleagues and order the chef’s special there as nothing on the menu card makes any sense and voila, the waiter emerges with one plate of ‘Grilled cheese vada pav sauté Catalonian style’. You go to the Hard Rock Café to get lucky with drunk chicks for some hard liquor and order some snacks on the side and surprise surprise, you are treated to the rich, sublime taste of crispy vada pav as you sip on beer. You go to a restaurant named ‘Vada Pav International’ in a place called Vapa Pav Nagar and order one plate vada pav with extra chilly, in pure Marathi and what do you get? Take a wild guess, genius. Yep, that’s right – a sizzling hot plate of authentic, traditionally made Neapolitan Italian Pasta. Hahaha! But, I swear that if anyone ever offers me vada pav when I get back home, I’m gonna stick it right up their sorry butts. And I ain’t going easy on the spicy chutney while I’m at it, either.

But for all its gastronomic foibles, Bombay offers interesting sights like the one below.

Now, isn’t she something! I mean, look at that fab body. Like really, look! It took every last bit of my self-restraint not to push her down on the ground, and have sweaty, backbreaking, brutal sex with her right there. Also, her owner kept giving me suspicious glances.

But, apart from fantasizing about doggy style sex with local doggies, I did spend a considerable amount of time visiting the various tourist spots in and around Bombay. The most memorable of them of course being the Gateway of India.

I’ve never known myself to be patriotic. Hell, even in school, I used to avoid reading whole chapters on Indian freedom fighters and sometimes even Indian history. So, it was with a great amount of reluctance that I dragged myself to this place that most tourist guides described as the place to be. And there it stood, a magnificent edifice that spoke volumes of the colonialisation, the subjugation and subsequently the resilient struggle that our ancestors had to go through. The sight sent shivers of patriotic fervor down my spine.

If there’s one memory that will remain with me forever, one constant reminder of my days here, one epiphanic realization of immense profundity that will keep me up sleepless nights while the world sleeps its peaceful dreamless REM slumber, it is that moment right after visiting the Gateway of India when Anil Mr.Mission Impossible Kapoor decided to walk out of the Taj shirtless in all his hirsute glory.

I think no matter what I do, that memory will stay with me forever. Just like herpes. I MEAN HERNIA!! Yes, definitely hernia. In fact, I can feel the hernia beginning to act as I type this. So, bye. And remember, say no to VDs.

P.S: Image sourced from the Internet. However, I did see Minissha Lamba trying to do a Paris Hilton carrying her pooch in her bag, otherwise looking all hot and glamorous. Sadly, her dog wasn’t.

P.P.S: Still hate to admit it, eh Nisha??

Men are from mars, women are from venus, internships are from hell Part 2

Howdy readers! Long time, no comment. Most of you must no doubt, be complaining about the recent lack of posts on my blog and be worried sick about the effect it might have had on my erstwhile supreme writing abilities. But after my exemplary performance at the recently held Blogomania, where in a very closely fought battle for the top spot, this blog finished a respectable 427th (out of a gargantuan 438) losing by just about 50,000 votes, I realized the abject futility of trying to use unjust means to win in a democratic, meritocratic society where talent is clearly the only deciding criterion. But I took it all in my stride with my characteristic fortitude and decided to give up blogging from the sole perspective of garnering attention and instead, become an anti-social, anti-democratic, anti-establishment, anti-everything, sociopathic, psychopathic, misanthropic jihadi constantly contemplating on the various ways to get back at society.

Dear motherfucker readers, I have to ask. Would it have killed you to create a few thousand fake e-mail ids to vote for me and spend a couple of dozen hours every day trying to think of different ways, legal or otherwise, of making sure that all the other 437 participants were somehow incapacitated and prevented from participating in the competition? With a readership as wide as mine, I expected my blog to be the runaway winner. Yes, I’m talking to all three of you. Bastards all. Now, look at what you’ve done.
I even spent my end sems drawing up simple, easy-to-carry-out-especially-on-weekends plans to destroy all of mankind. But as the days went by, I realized that I just wasn’t in the mood to cause any gratuitous deaths, meaningless massacres and wanton bloodbaths of completely innocent people this wonderful summer.
For me, that’s always been more of a spring thing.

But anyway, summer’s here. And with it brings newfound hope, an unbridled joy for life and a repulsive, puke-inducing body odour. Unless of course, you’re a third year engineering student. In which case, the body odour is in fact the best part of your summer. Goddamned internships, I tell ya! What a glorious waste of one and a half months! 45 days of my youth gone just like that. And doing what? Learning the ‘globalized modification processes optimized to give the best output in a rapidly technologically advancing fertilizer industry’.
I swear that if I ever die six weeks right before an important event, like say accepting the Nobel Prize for Economics, winning a 100 million dollar lottery, getting a break in Hollywood as the lead actor alongside Megan Fox and Rakhi Sawant of a action thriller erotic film with copious amounts of threesomes and bondage sex, or the unveiling of Sony Playstation 4, I will look back and blame this stupid internship for wasting my precious time.
Now, I can only hope that the fertilizer process thingie appears as a 25,00,000 question on that stupid KBC show.

The metaphorical first nail in the coffin of an internee who has come to Bombay in search of knowledge, work experience and a little hanky-panky on the side is the abysmal internship timing – 8.00 a.m to 5.00 p.m. Six days a week. With compulsory attendance. Couple that with horrible humidity, terrible traffic, and an intern mentor with all the impressive qualifications of a prison warden, and you have all the makings of a concentration camp here (the chemical plant produces all the requisite gases anyway). How is one supposed to find the time for badass threeway action serious studying with that time schedule, eh?
I thought life would become better after the first week. But as I spend my time here marking days gone by like a long term prisoner reaching the end of his sentence, I realize that some dreams are just not meant to be.
If I had to choose one day that marks the very worst of it all, one particular moment of time that stands head and shoulders above the rest in its suckiness, one telling incident that makes all other embarrassments seem inconsequential, could I do so? No. That’s because the previous question lies in the same league as asking yourself ‘Which is the worst fart you’ve ever smelled?’. After being at the receiving end of a particularly bad one, you tell yourself that you’ve seen (smelt?) the very worst of it. But the illusion lasts until the hostel mess workers get their hands on another batch of rotten potatoes, and then you have to reset the record books again (Not that I keep a track of such things, of course. Just making an educated guess as to how things might turn out if one were indeed inclined to do so). This internship is no different. One day, I am working my ass off on a high level project on ‘optimal optimization of the un-optimized production process by optimizing the optimization variables to get optimized output even in an un-optimal scenario’, thinking about how much easier life would have been had I even been born a jew in the 1930s (in the posh localities of downtown New York) and the very next day, I’m called for a viva. If that is not punishment enough, i have to then participate in a mock drill. And submit a report on the same the next day.

One person who has consistently, in leaps and bounds, been moving up places on my hit list is my intern mentor. Like Russel Peters says, ‘Somebody gonna get hurt real bad’. But he still has my certi. So maybe later. Just this morning as I was about to complete my afternoon siesta at the workplace (2.00 to 3.30 only), this guy pulls me up for another viva. Now, really! Here I am, trying very hard not to alienate fellow internees and employees with my impeccable work ethic by spending most of my time in the office lounge sleeping, and this guy wants to question my dedication to work! Very little trust at the workplace, if you ask me.
Anyway, vivas (vivae?), for the uninitiated, are the verbal equivalent of a complete rectal examination. Without the lube, mind you. And the questions? Holy crap! Schrodinger’s pussies haven’t got anything on them, I tell you! So, it was no little amount of trepidation that I entered his office. I hadn’t even closed the door before the inquisition began.
“If ten men can complete a piece of work in ten days, then in how many days can twenty men complete the same piece of work in ten days?”
“Er… ten days?”
“WRONG! THE CORRECT ANSWER IS 32.624 KILOGRAMS. THAT WAS A TRICK QUESTION, BLOODY FOOL! Now, time for some quick mental math – What is the square root of X?”
“Errm… and X is?”
“COMPLETELY USELESS! Always asking for hints. And you call yourself an IITian? When I was in college….”
Luckily his phone rang, and I was saved the ignominy of answering more questions. Apparently, the result to the finals of the TVS Sa Re Ga Ma children’s special was being declared and it was a close fight between Pinky and some other kid. Or so he ran about shouting as he gathered his fellow colleagues and rushed to the TV room. Losers, I thought to myself, wasting away their lives watching the finals of a children’s singing competition. As far as I was concerned, the show was as good as over when the judges decided to kick out little Sonu in the elimination rounds itself.
And I walked out of the room, picked up the pieces of my scattered pride, threw them into the dustbin and ran to the TV room. What the hell! Pinky was my second favourite anyway.

P.S: As the more intelligent of you would have noticed, part 1 of this post was never published. Yes, marketing gimmick and all that. Just like those oracle guys. Epic business plan FTW.
P.P.S: Part 3 will be published soon. Very soon. So watch out. 😉

Close encounters of the fourth kind

Now, before you bang your head on the wall and say “Not another excruciatingly long blogpost full of pointless gibberish put into extremely long sentences with many GRE-esque words with astutely subtle references to the global economy and current affairs in order to create a false sense of erudition by an unbelievably good looking, smart and modest IITian who takes extra caution not to mention the fact that he is India’s reigning AOE champ, unless otherwise asked.”, let me clarify- it isn’t.

Instead, this post is a celebration of life in all its pristine glory and an introspective journey to self-discovery in order to overcome an solipsistically driven existential crisis, co-founded on an epistemological understanding of nihilism, and swim freely in the cosmic void. Also, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious honorificabilitudinitatibus antidisestablishmentarianism.

Okay, now that I’ve used verbal douchebaggery to cunningly drive away all the blogomania voters who will rush back to brush up their GRE/ CAT preparation after voting for me, let me get back to what I do best – spewing forth verbal diarrhea.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when one gets a phone call from a random number, is then accused of being a kidnapper and goes on to become a legend of sorts in the kidnapping circles. Such a time came in my life a couple of weeks back.

It was a somnolent Saturday afternoon and I was in bed, exhausted after a long and tiresome night. As everyone who has ever resided in an all male hostel with a bunch of horny teenagers with doubtful sexual preference knows, Friday night is the night for some WILD, VIOLENT, RELENTLESS, DEVIANT ludo. And I was sleeping smugly, basking in the glory of having brought everyone down to their knees, my skilful hands getting the better of their wagging tongues when suddenly, like a death knell, my cell phone rang.

Mr.X: Tell me your name and your address, quick.

Me: The fuck? Who’re you?

Mr.X: You tell me first.

Me: The fuck I will!

Mr.X: Tell!

Me: No.

Mr.X: TELL!

Me: Booya!

Mr.X: Okay. I’m blah blah from blah blah blah. Now, tell me who you are.

Me: The name’s Varun.

Mr.X: Not the world famous AOE player who plays by the name of $ickMyDuck and regularly trounces expert players online?!

Me: The very same.

Mr.X: ZOMG, it’s an honour to speak to you. Now give me back my son Vijay.

Me: Huh?

Mr.X: My Vijay whose voice still echoes in the deepest crevices of my heart.

Me: What the ?

I was beginning to realize that it was one of my stupid friends upto their lame ass pranks.

Mr.X: My son Vijay whom you kidnapped five months ago and who made a call to me yesterday from your phone.

By now, I was certain that it was indeed a prank. Probably, one of the losers from last night was still pissed with me.

Me: Oh that Vijay! Sorry, I accidentally sold him off to a slave trade racket in Addis Ababa where they make you eat food out of human baby skulls and drink iguana blood daily and work for 17 hours a day during weekends and national holidays and 21 hours a day during weekdays when it is forty five degrees in the shade before you ultimately die, not from the abject humiliation that you are forced to endure everyday but from the daily iron tire beatings, and then all your organs are shipped to different parts of the world. Oops. My bad, I guess.

Mr.X: NOOOO…… I WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR YOUR SINS AND REGRET THE DAY YOU WERE BORN EVEN IF IT’S THE LAST THING I EVER DO. Btw, I’m your biggest fan.

I was halfway out of my bed to search for the foolish bastard who was responsible for this inane, childish prank when I realized it wasn’t worth the effort. Soon, lady slumber got the better of my choler and I went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later I got another call.

“Varun?”

“Yeah”

“ This is supergenius lady inspector Sherlock Poirot Nancy Drew of the International High IQ Police force, and I’ve called to tell you that I am going to make you SUFFER. I’LL MAKE SURE YOU GET CAPITAL PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. YES, THAT’S RIGHT. CAPITAL, GETIT? WANT ME TO SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU? K-A-P-E-E-T-A-L .”

“ Ermmm…. You know, the thing is…..”

“ OF COURSE I KNOW WHAT THE THING IS. THE THING IS THAT WHICH DECIDES IF ONE IS  A BOY OR A GIRL. DUH.”

“ Haha, Of course. Well, you see…..”

“ YES, I SEE. IN FACT, I’LL SEE YOU AT THE POLICE STATION FIRST THING IN THE MORNING.”

And she hung up. I was amazed at the extent to which some people would go to make a prank successful. But I decided not to lose sleep over it.

The third phone call came the next day at the ungodly hour of 12 P.M when I was of course, sleeping.

“YOU EVIL DEGERATE ROTTEN PIG. HOW DARE YOU DISOBEY MY ORDERS AND NOT COME TO THE POLICE STATION. NOW, I WILL MAKE SURE YOU DIE, AND WILL THEN RESURRECT YOU AND GET YOU HANGED AGAIN.”

I was quick to see through the whole thing and finally understood it for what it really was. Clearly, it was a high level international anti-zionist Jihadi conspiracy with deep Masonic, Illuminati and Shiv Sena ties to overthrow the existing national governments and create a new dystopic Marathi world order. And I was the only one who could stop them. And I would. After I was done sleeping. And I told  supergenius cop lady to come pick me up at my hostel in fifteen minutes.

True to her word, supergenius lady cop arrived at my hostel in fifteen minutes armed with a minigun, hand grenades and accompanied by a set of five fully grown, police trained, ferocious, sniffer Chihuahuas. Her expression seemed to imply that she was perpetually pissed. Or badly constipated. Or both. I was confused, I couldn’t really tell. Upon seeing me, she immediately called up higher authorities who in turn informed the INTERPOL who in turn informed the CIA who in turn immediately shut down all incoming air traffic and placed the White House on high alert.

“ Full name?”

“ Arasu. Varun Arasu” ala James Bond.

“ Madrasi, eh?”

I immediately caught her by the collar, and delivered two tight slaps.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STEREOTYPING BITCH! I’M FROM BENGALOORU, ALRIGHT?”

Okay, I’m kidding of course – I said ‘Bangalore’ like any self respecting kaddu would.

Then, like every major head honcho, criminal mastermind, evil kingpin who has ever got caught by the long arm of the law, I was taken to the police station in a cycle rickshaw.

Upon my arrival there, the police began grilling me. Supergenius lady inspector started showing me photos of ppl and asked me to identify them.

“ Do you know random person#1 ?”

“No.”

“ Do you know random person#2 ?”

“No.”

…….

…….

…….

“ Do you know random person#999 ?”

“No.” (cough) Uncle senior IAS officer (cough)

“ Do you know random person#1000 ?”

…….

…….

…….

Eleven hours, thirty two minutes and 3,302 random photos later,

“Do you know random person#3303?”

“Yes, he looks suspiciously like that bihari guy with the incredibly small penis, residing in room no.666 of my hostel.”

“LIAR, SHUT YOUR FACE! THAT IS A PHOTO OF MY UNCLE’S SECOND COUSIN’S NEIGHBOUR’S PET DOG TAKEN AFTER HE WAS THE VICTIM OF A MAJOR FLEA ATTACK ON HIS FACE. I PUT HIS PHOTO THERE JUST TO MISLEAD YOU. MUAHAHAHA!”

“But he looks exactly like…”

“I SAID SHUT UP!”

After that, she tried the good cop, bad cop technique. With one modification – she took turns being the bad cop and the good cop.

“Tell us where the kid is or I swear I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your life doing hard labor in a rat infested, flea-ridden, cockroach friendly hellhole of a jail.”

“Please tell us where the kid is. Please, please, pleeeeeze. If you tell me, I’ll be your friend for life. Motherpromise.”

“WE’LL SUBJECT YOU TO THIRD DEGREE CHINESE WATER TORTURE, RAT TORTURE, FLAYING, DENAILING, TOOTH EXTRACTION AND WATERBOARDING IF YOU DON’T TELL US.”

“While we’re at it, would you like a foot massage, a back rub or some chamomile tea?”

This was followed by some hindi expletives which when translated to English word to word meant “I will make your mother and sister into one.” I’m not familiar with the details of this proposed unification of mother and sister but I’m sure that supergenius mensa cop lady had it all figured out. Which made me wonder – what if one day somebody else in my family decided to unite too, say my grand uncle and my niece? Or maybe my cousin and his pet dog. What was I supposed to do then? Being a man of science, I was all for cloning and stuff, but I drew the line at this. And I was about to tell supergenius lady cop exactly that when she suddenly stormed out of the room. The questioning room wasn’t as soundproof as I thought it was, and the painful grunts emerging from the toilet cubicle somehow brought back memories of a donkey castration video I had seen a long time back. Well, at least I wasn’t confused about her expression anymore.

She came back after an hour or so “Aha, I’ve finally figured it out. Your family runs a mafia syndicate dealing with slave trade, snuff pornography, human organ black marketeering, gambling and you ppl kidnap little boys for your child prostitution ring.” I was of course deeply offended by this vile accusation. My family had absolutely no interest in gambling whatsoever. And I was about to break her neck with a killer karate chop and it took twenty three of her colleagues to hold me back.

It was then that my nemesis, the root of all problems, Mr.X made an appearance. And he looked nothing like the evil mastermind I had pictured him him to be. Instead he was a wizened old man, well on his way to celebrate his 111th birthday.

Me: Did you get a ransom call from my number 9999999999?

Mr.X: Yes, I got a call from your number 1111111111.

Me: But my number is 9999999999.

Mr.X: That is exactly what I’m saying –  1111111111

Me: 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

Mr.X: I know. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

It took another five minutes to clear things out. As it turned out, it was an honest mistake on the part of the old man, and my name was immediately cleared. Super genius cop lady immediately called up higher authorities who in turn informed INTERPOL who in turn informed the CIA who in turn relaxed security at the White House, and I was let free. I was heading back to my hostel when I got a message from eBay on my cell phone – Kidney sold for 25,000 U.S.D.

I felt evil. (Ominous music playing in the background – $ickMyDuck ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi, naamumkin hain)

P.S: True story. Well, in bits and parts.

P.P.S: Yes, it’s that time of the year again – when Blogomania rears its ugly head again, and every blogger worth his salt gives up blogging in order to create fake email ids and aliases to vote for himself (These are the same bloggers who would sell their mothers for a few votes). I of course, find this to be a lowly act demeaning the sanctity of the blogosphere and sincerely advise my readers against doing so. Instead, what you can do is write a program that keeps logging on to the cognizance site and voting for my blog – cyber booth capturing if you will. You can also start chain mailing all your male friends with emails like ‘Grow your penis 4 inches in 4 days’ which secretly redirects them to my blog link on the voting page. For your female friends use ‘Never seen before proof that girls can’t do math’.  If any of you receive such an email and conveniently choose to delete it without opening, let me warn you – it contains an embedded worm which on the deleting the email, sends your recent browsing history to all your female friends and family members on Facebook. Your choice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2012 presented by watchkart.com – India”s leading online store

How yours truly got drunk, got wild and became a superstud in the annals of R history

Howdy, ppl. Long time no blog, i know. But, in case you thought I was wasting my otherwise worthless time watching pointless Hitler reaction videos, stalking random chicks on FB, and listening to Psychotic Death Pop songs by this band from Burkina Faso instead of blogging, well, you’d be right. So, let me just cut the crap and get down to business. The two incidents that I’m gonna blog about today will be spoken of for centuries to come and will determine the very future of our descendants. Ok, not really. But now that I have your attention, go on, read.

So anyways, exams were around the corner and being a responsible student of one of the county’s finest academic institutions, I was doing what I generally when do when faced with exams – getting drunk. And by getting drunk, I don’t mean drinking a couple of those James Bond-esque martini shots. I have been regularly known to be single handedly responsible for the bars and pubs in town shutting down before the set deadline. Friends have also suggested that I’m the sole reason why a douchebag like Siddharth Mallya gets to date someone as hot as Deepika Padukone.

So yeah, I was at this Daaru Party (or binge drinking session for all you firang readers) After the usual toasting, head banging to badly remixed Bappi Lahiri songs, and making observations on life, the universe and everything, I decided to spice things up. No, I didn’t strip and go  streaking around the campus. If that had been the case, all I would’ve done is ask others for my pics to upload on FB, and laughed about it the next day and been secretly proud while all my FB friends  complimented me on being so well endowed. No, dear readers, I did something way more embarassing.

General piece of advice- After downing eight beer, two vodka and three whisky bottles, the last thing you’d wanna do is have a long winded conversation with someone over the phone. Especially a girl.

But when a girl calls on your phone, you have to answer. If girl in question happens to be hot, and you have a huge crush on her, you answer real quick. And if your cell phone ringtone happens to be a Spice Girls song (whom you secretly listen to and own a poster of) and everyone else is around and waiting to take your case, you frikkin answer immediately.

Sadly, this line of defence didn’t seem to work, as I was told the next day, that it was me who had drunk dialed P.  So yeah, I called her up. Most of you must be wondering what we talked about. Go ahead, take your pick –

a)      We discussed the global economy and the impact of bailing Greece out on the coffers of the EU.

b)      We discussed AOE strategies and the relevance of a Dark age rush in a predominantly Feudal age assault game.

c)       I asked her out

Subtle hint: Not option a,b, or d.

So, rack your brains and figure out the answer for yourself. Okay, dumb fucks, I asked her out.Hardy har har, I know. Whatever. So, the conversation was something as follows…

Me: So, would you like kinda sorta go out with me sometime soon?

P: Of course I would! A girl would be crazy to say no to a smart, charming, funny, witty, hot stud like you who happens to be India’s highest rated AOE player, and is also Hendrix’s reincarnation when it comes to playing the guitar and is modest enough to make an effort not to brag about it especially on his blog. The only reason I haven’t asked you out, or for that matter, no girl has asked you out yet is that everyone thinks you are way out of their league.

Me: Yeah, come to think of it, maybe I am. So, bye.

Okay, so you guys probably didn’t fall for that. Was worth a try though.

Anyways, what really happened was probably something like this-

Me: Would you like kinda sorta go out wi…….

P:  No! And you needn’t disturb me again tonight. Or ever again. Goodnight!

Okay, this probably never happened either. The only person who remembers what happened that night (and who is soon gonna die a slow, painful death) is this bastard who was constantly egging me on to make a fool out of myself  so that he could laugh about it the next day. Anyway, I got drunk some more, passed out that night, and then went on to ace the exams the following week. (Stop sniggering, you dumb fucks. A guy can wish, can’t he?)

Anyhow, it should it come as no surprise to you guys that when P finally came to R, she didn’t care to tell me about it. But I, being the shameless cunning bastard that I am, found out about it and decided to go meet her anyways. Well, she bore with us for a couple of days before unveiling her noble intentions of encouraging women empowerment by going where no girl had ever gone before –RKB. Obviously, Bagga (three time Param Veer Chakra awardee, seven time National Bodybuilding champion- sub junior high school girls category, and founder and chairman, iHIPS) was made in charge of operations. After going through the blueprints of the building plans many times and conducting several Reconnaissance operations, he came up with his POA – that P, Jaggi and I drop in onto the rooftop through choppers,and bungee jump onto my balcony while he cut off the power supply to the hostel causing a blackout. Once we reached, he would restore the power, and then simultaneously hack all the laptops in the hostel, download and play porn videos on them to distract everyone while we break into our room. He would then proceed to dig a hole from the basement of the hostel to help us escape. Although this sounded like a perfectly reasonable plan, and was so obviously foolproof, we were put off by its absolute simplicity. So, we came up with a slightly more complicated plan – that P wear a turban and oversized jacket and sneak into the hostel through the canteen. Of course, unlike the previous plan, this required split second timing and was fraught with mortal danger but we decided to throw caution to the winds and risk it.

Once we were in, and by sheer co-incidence of course, all the hostel residents were up and about, we decided to hang out at my room. So, when we finally reached my room, and I saw guys lining up outside my room by the dozen, I was sure it was to congratulate me on completing my 42nd week at the top of the AOE leader standings and had nothing to do with the presence of the pretty young thing there. I quickly signed the autographs and rushed back into my room. Where we had a highly intellectually stimulating debate on science, religion and Bagga whenever we weren’t cracking crude jokes about Shobhit’s wiener and Jaggi’s boobs. Yes, P met Shobhit. And fed him Viagra. Shobhit (or Rockstar Shobhitwa as he’s popularly known back home), whenever he’s not letching at stray cows and dogs, or trying to steal undergarments from his neighbour, is invariably ghissing. And goes bat shit crazy while he’s at it. I mean, give the Pope one viagra capsule and even he’d probably be pulling up his frock like a two-penny whore. But not Shobhitwa. Apparently, a little re-direction of blood flow in his body doesn’t really affect his mental concentration. Then again, he is Bihari. So, there’s probably not much change in flow to talk about anyway.  Jaggi, on the other hand, has resigned to his lot, it seems. When you have three viagra pops, and your thoughts still revolve around Cogni finance rather than Megan Fox’s rack, it’s finally time to accept the fact that your appendix is not the only vestigial organ in your body. In his defence though, when you have a rack like his, it’s really hard to think of someone else’s. We’d gotten around to cracking another round of corny Shobhit wiener jokes when P’s bodyguard supreme Punni (Fluorescent pink belt in karate, world weightlifting champion in the 81.46525 to 81.46527 kg category, and three time winner of the world book cricket championship) decided to play party pooper by employing his superhuman senses to locate P and barging into the hostel.

Bagga (yes, the three param veer chakra awardee) and Jaggi, fearing disciplinary action, were scared out of their minds. And quite rightly so. I mean, its not like public beheadings and castrations haven’t been known to occur in R. Disembowelment, waterboarding, and chinese water torture are routinely meted out to students who forget to bring their pencil boxes to class, or to those who do not cut their nails. And sneaking a girl into the guys’ hostel ranks pretty high on the list of heinous crimes one can commit in R – just below mass toddler cannibalism, and just above throwing chalk at each other in class. So, it was indeed understandable that everyone else was scared shitless. But, one of the major benefits of being a kick ass gamer who has regularly been India’s top player for quite some time is that you can brag about it all over your blog your mind has been trained to deal with such sticky situations with panache. So it should come as no surprise that while everyone was running around crapping their pants in worry, I was stoically using my brilliant mind to come up with a way out. And Voila! What could only be characteristic of my genius, I instantaneously came up with an ingenious and elegant solution – that we immediately sneak out of the hostel. This seemed to buoy everyone’s spirits (Bagga almost wept with joy) and we came out of the hostel via the canteen.

Ri and Viggy seemed to be tagging along uninvited for some reason, despite everyone throwing not so subtle hints that they were not welcome. We headed off to KIH to get drunk, and got bored to death instead. We then decided then to go to Rishikesh where we got bored some more. And we came back to R, and were on the verge of setting a new world record for getting bored, when I decided to leave as I was running late for my early morning powerlifting session. True story.

P.S I have now been immortalized in the annals of RKB history. Last I heard, students have my posters on their walls, and have begun worshipping me. If my sources are to be believed, my statue is being erected in the hostel as I type. Which seemed all fine. Till a friend showed me this. WTF. I could still get rusticated from the insti!

So, why exactly am I blogging about this? Beats the hell out of me. Or maybe it’s because P loves my blog and thinks guys can score chicks by blogging (Mannodi, are you reading this?). This of course, is a desecration of the sanctity of the blogosphere, and insulting to those who only use it as a medium of online self-expression. Ergo, it is imperative that we prove her wrong. That would only be possible if all the hot girls in the country join hands and decide to settle for one blogger, and flip off all the other wannabe bloggers. For the sake of the blogosphere, I’m ready to be that one blogger. Only for the sake of the blogosphere, mind you.

P.P.S : ❤

P.P.P.S : If anyone from the admin is reading this, my name is Ravnish Bagga and I live in room no.692, and this post has absolutely nothing to do with the resident of room no.645, who is just awesome btw.

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Death of a cell phone

I still remember the first time I bought a cell phone. It was just after my 10^th board results. Yes, back in those good old days when I still thought of Einstein as the old dude with the funny looking hair, the only calclulus I knew of was the one in tintin,  and any mention of the Hell Volhard Zelinski reaction would only have elicited a response of ‘what the hell?’. Yeah, right around the time when I was a champion weightlifter, a part time supermodel and a football legend in my own right. Guess I’ll save that story for another day though.

Being brought up in a family where Nokia was considered the alpha and the omega of cell phones, even the thought of buying any other brand was heresy. In fact, I had been using a Nokia phone till then, a 3310, a relic of a phone (with a two hour battery life and seven working keys) that had probably been invented right after man was done with the wheel. It found itself in my hands only because no person with the smallest iota of self respect was willing to buy it from my dad. So it was with no little amount of trepidation that I told my dad that I wanted to buy a MotoRazr, and not a Nokia. To my surprise, he told me that he’d gladly pay for it. After which he’d disown me and sever me from his will.

So, Nokia it was to be. Atleast I had been eyeing one particular model for quite some time – 7610. Surprisingly, I had not even considered buying a Sony Ericsson phone. Besides, Hrithik had just become the brand ambassador of Sony, I think. And after watching his magnum opus Krishh, I wanted no association with him whatsoever. No, not even one as tenuous as buying the brand he endorses. I, in fact, remember telling a friend that I wouldn’t buy a Sony Ericsson even if Hrithik were to offer me one himself. So, when I walked into this shady little place where you supposedly got cell phones cheap, I expected it to take no more than a couple of minutes. As I had already decided the phone, my part of the transaction was over and dad got down to the haggling. It was then that I spotted him there. Hrithik Roshan!! I mean, what are the odds, right? Seems too good to be true, eh?

Yeah, that’s right. I just made that up.

But what I did see was a lifelike poster of him holding a K750i. I wanna say that it was love at first sight (And no, I am not coming out of the closet. I meant the phone, you idiots). But it wasn’t. Nonetheless, it didn’t take Sherlock’s genius to notice that the K750i had a whole lot more features than the 7610 and was a whole lot cheaper. I was torn between my principles and the K750i’s 2 MP camera (as opposed to 7610’s 1 MP). And as everyone who has been in that situation knows, the line between rigid moral principles and the desire to buy a funkier phone is a thin one, and transgressing it is no biggie (especially if you are a 15 year old waiting to show off to your friends). A couple of grand saved meant that dad also saw my point clearly. And I walked out of that place with a k750i in my hand. It’s been almost five years since then and there has not been a single day that I regretted the purchase.

Whether it was to kill time during boring lectures, bug the first bencher nerds with long, silly forwards in the middle of the class, secretly listen to Himesh Reshammiya’s songs, password protect and store images of Rakhi Sawant, receive supari calls from friends in the Mumbai underworld, detonate IEDs previously planted in the lecturers’ staff rooms, or secretly store my plans for global domination– my phone had a part to play. But if there was one thing that made the K750i stand apart from the others, it was the wide variety of games one could play on it. From the time I completed the first level of Hangman (dickhead easy mode) in a record time of 2hrs36mins (okay, I admit, I used cheat codes), I knew that my tryst with cell phone games had just begun. It was not like I had not played cell phone games before. On my previous phone, I had already reached beyond godlike levels of pro-ness on snake. So it was just a matter of time before my fingers revealed their magic. I have downloaded hundreds of mobile games since. And the high score in every one of them bears the name of yours truly. Or one of the monikers I had adopted thereof. As a testimony to my superhuman gaming skills, it was on my phone that the Undertaker and Kane first became the runners up of the WWE tag team championship. The fact that they lost to Tori and Stephanie in the finals is a different matter altogether.

It was on my phone that Ajit Agarkar first completed an over with an economy rate of less than six. And no, for the hundredth time, it wasn’t a gully cricket test match against a team of high school girls. Guys, give him some credit. It was an ODI. It was on my phone that India achieved what soothsayers, cynics, pessimists, optimists, analysts, astronauts, particle physicists, serial killers, metaphysical solipsists, transcendental perspectivists, and everyone else who is not this guy, or on high-end hallucinogenics thought was impossible- India routed Brazil 8-0 to win the FIFA world cup. So after creating and recreating history many times over, you can imagine my consternation when my phone started getting cranky, the games became a bit laggy and the frequency of world records seemed to be going downhill. Also, the lens had become foggy, the speakers inaudible, the battery all but dead, the memory card corrupt, and the various viruses meant I couldn’t make phone calls or type messages without pop-ups appearing constantly. But all that I could live with. What I could not live with was my name not adorning the high score list. So, I did what any sane person would have done in my place to fix my phone- get a sledgehammer and hit it continuously before placing it boiling hot water and sending high voltage electric currents through it. Haha, I jest. But what I did do was take it to a Sony Ericsson dealer. Who looked at it for all of one minute before telling me to buy a new phone. He even went ahead to offer me two hundred rupees for the phone. I was already shaking with rage and this sealed the deal for me. I reached across the counter, caught him by the collar and delivered two tight slaps, “YOU BLOODY MOTHERF@#$%R! HOW DARE YOU PUT A PRICE ON MY PHONE? DO YOU PUT A PRICE ON YOUR MOTHER TOO?”

Okay, I exaggerate. Poetic license, I think it is called. But astute readers may laugh and point out that my skill in writing poetry is matched only by that of Shantakumaran Sreesanth, and my blog contains all the poetic eloquence of “tandoori nights”. Yeah, well, screw you. If you want poetry, go do it on your own blog. As usual, I digress. Coming back to the story….

I beat him up some more, and performed a couple of pile-drivers on him. Two hundred rupees, I ask you. How can anyone be so cheap to put such a price on so many years of cellular fun, frolic and adventure when the phone so selflessly offered its services and in lieu expected nothing but a few watts of power to recharge itself? How can anyone be so vile to put such a price on a phone after buying it in its prime and sucking its life dry? Don’t bother answering, they were purely rhetorical. Although I must say, it would have been a different story altogether had he offered me three hundred rupees. I finished off by choke slamming him to the ground.

For all the beating he took, deep down, I knew that he was right about one thing. My phone was dying, and there was nothing I could do about it. Alas, the Undertaker and Kane would never win that championship. India would never again win the FIFA world cup until 2999 A.D. And about Ajit Agarkar, who am I kidding? The high school team won the match in his next over itself.

Cell phone hunting seems to have lost its charm now. One ipod, a couple of mp3 players, two laptops, and a host of earphones and other assorted accessories later, I knew that gadgetophilia still runs in my blood. But I seem to have lost interest in fancy phones. I mean, everyone has one of those goddamn funky touch screen phones nowadays. Maybe I should have taken a leaf out of the ex-chairman’s book, who had had sought out a particularly awful Dell phone just to be different. Oh, what the hell! Even I would’ve bought that Soni erikson iblackberry N95 (available at rs.500), had it not gone out of stock. So, I settled for the next cheapest thing available there – this

Looks like shit, eh? But don’t be deceived. Coz it’s shittier than it looks. Why aim for mediocrity when you can pay so much lesser and be the proud owner of the shittiest phone in town, eh?

P.S: RIP K750i. You will be missed.

P.P.S: Leaving for R in a couple of hours. Packing’s a bitch. Snake’s keeping me company though.

P.P.P.S: Fachchas, line up outside room 645, RKB.

P.P.P.P.S: If you are from the administration, please ignore the previous line.

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Pointlessness is the point

If Dante was right, and sloth is truly a mortal sin, then I have booked my one way ticket to hell already. If there’s one thing I can never get enough of, it’s sleeping. That and rolling in the hay with Megan Fox. But since the latter has never happened YET, let’s stick with the former for now. In my previous post, I had mentioned that I had broken all personal sleep records. I stand corrected. Make sleep an Olympic sport and you can rest assured that India will have a continuous supply of gold medals every time. I like to think of it as a superpower. Superman can fly, Charles Xavier can read minds, I can sleep. And sleep at will. And with my newfound superpower, I have already conquered ennui and hostel sickness. And I’m well on my way to tackle supervillains and thwart their evil plans of global domination by err…… snoring in their faces. (okay, I admit, I’ve been watching far too many superhero movies for my own good).Anyway, apart from exercising my superpower, I usually spend my otherwise worthless time introspecting. I contemplate about the various maladies plaguing human society, do research on global economics, and reflect on epistemological nihilism and other existential philosophies. That is, whenever I’m not watching CID, Fashion TV, or on a Kanti Shah movie marathon.

Driving lessons have been remarkably incident free. No one has been killed yet. Atleast that I know of. The unearthly timings make me kinda grumpy. But I’m always cheered up by the sight of early morning joggers running about madly and screaming their hearts out the moment I place my foot on the accelerator pedal. The sight of the red, gleaming sedan approaching at 80 km/hr has been known to send shivers down the spines of traffic cops and pavement dwellers alike. My driving instructor, for his part, has decided to wear a crash helmet on realizing that seatbelts weren’t safe enough. Lately, he has also resorted to praying. He comes armed with a litany of new prayers every day and never forgets to remind me that he has two kids and is the sole breadwinner of the family. Pussies, I tell you! Should the authorities deem it safe enough to issue me a Driver’s License, I think I might participate in the Greater Noida Grand Prix this October. On second thoughts, maybe not. I wouldn’t miss out on those informal events at Thomso for all the money in the world (Yeah, the Grand Prix is on October 30^th :().

The only thing I have done that has any resemblance to any form of productivity whatsoever is that I have finally removed my rusty guitar from its dusty cover and started playing it. And achieved remarkable success in the process. I mean, I can tune the guitar and tell all the strings by their names already. Plus, I can play the D chord. Quite an Eric Clapton in the making, eh? I think I may finally fulfill my childhood dream of forming a modern classic folk hindustani carnatic alternative punk poprock electronica metal band, and perform concerts in Jhumri Tilaiya with Metallica opening for us. w00t!

One of my gazillion fans commented on my previous post that I should take up writing full time. I can’t deny that I’m flattered, although I’d like to clarify that as far as a career in wordsmithy is concerned, I think the best I can manage to write are ultra-violent erotic fairy tales for kids. Which may not be such a bad idea. I think it is an unexplored genre which has great potential, and is just waiting to be tapped. I mean, which POGO watching, candy eating eight year old wouldn’t wanna read about Snow White doing the seven dwarves, or about what it was that little Red Riding Hood really rode. Or was it only me?

As you can see, my tryst with utter joblessness continues. And for all my lethargy, I shall continue to spew forth such pointless articles (or as Nisha claims ‘verbal diarrhea’) unless I find something worthwhile to do. So, dear readers, pray that something worthwhile turns up for me. Else, suffer the consequences. I might post again tomorrow. Or maybe I won’t. Either of the two. Till then, be good kids and don’t wet yourself in anticipation.

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