Saturday, April 08, 2006

What a fall was there...

That we are a jobless nation, is proven off and on by things we keep doing in the name of keeping ourselves busy. But for some strange reason, the government and various organizations in Maharashtra seem to have an even higher degree of joblessness. In the past, it has been the omnipresent hoodlums of Shiv Sena who had nothing better to do than to tear up film posters and make sure that no couples could have a peaceful meal on St. Valentine’s Day. In the name of moral policing, they did whatever they could to make sure that they were heard loud and clear. Infact, logic points clearly to this being the sole reason for their activities. It is pretty obvious to the whole nation that if they really cared about morals so much, they would first learn to shut their trap and learn to co-exist with human beings.
But the recent issue of wardrobe malfunctioning takes the cake in whatever stupid this nation has perhaps done. We have a million issues to deal with.. 40% of India lives below poverty line, there is a very visible dearth of water, electricity and similar basic amenities, but that doesn’t prevent us from scaling up a few incidents in a fashion show, to national level, where there have been debates in the parliamentary bodies about the possible conspiracies behind these incidents. Really, such a fucking spiritual and holy society we are that the whole world now wants us to become deprave and immoral, thereby leading to our total degradation and downfall – Al Qaeda, are you listening? There’s no need to train terrorists to blow this country apart – in these people's opinion, just a few nude women are perhaps enough to bring our GDP growth rate down from 8% to 0%.
And now there are government officials who will “study” this matter of a few falling clothes. To even the most casual observer, it is obvious that all these officials will do in the process of investigation, is to glue their depraved eyes to the screen as they put those footage videos in infinite repeat mode. And I can bet that half of these loser babus would be jerking off at least five times a day to the falling tops and splitting skirts, all in the name of getting to the “depth” of the matter. Their poor wives are of course well aware that their useless husbands have now got the official license to satisfy their most incestuous fantasies.

It is still not clear to me what exactly has fallen… It’s not the clothes. It’s us. A society as a whole that should be ashamed of all the shams that we create, and thrive upon.

And more ashamed should be these officials and the aforementioned self-appointed moral guardians of this country. But the irony of it all is that these very people are so degraded and sub-human, that shame as an emotion has been obliterated from their system. They are living proof that Darwin’s theory of evolution has failed miserably in this country.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Alcohol (Part IV) -- The sad love stories

The last (and as is customary to add), but not the least, is the “drunken my-love-story-is-sadder-than-yours” session. To err, as they say, is human. And every man worth his alcohol has, at some point in his checkered life, made the mistake of either actually falling in love, or believing that he was in love.

Now the species of males (displaying a striking similarity to pigs – refer this post) have a rather limited vocabulary and can always be found short of the right words (thereby being reduced to uttering “oink, oink!” at the opportune moment). But under the influence of ethanol, even the most reticent of men find themselves gifted with a cornucopia of words.

And this is how these sessions proceed. A typical conversation goes thus:
“Bahut lambi kahaani hai dost, kya karoge sun kar”. Translated, it reads, “It’s a long story my friend, what will you gain upon hearing it?”
The reply comes as follows:
“Abhi to raat jawaan hai huzoor, har jaam ke saath apni kahaani sunaate jaaiye”. Translated again, it means “The night is young, sir. With every drink, pour away your story as well”

What follows is a half-hour monologue, starting right from where he met that unfortunate girl to the time they had their first “pav-bhaaji” on the streets, and then moving on to irrelevant trivia such as “her mom thinks I am a total scumbag”, or “I have spent ten thousand rupees on her till date”

I have of course, consoled many such lovers, and in the process have realized the healing touch that this liquid provides. It is not without reason, therefore, that it is offered to the Gods in prayers. It’s worth it. Absolutely. It can do wonders and can even lead to miracles (waking up next morning, still alive, seems like a miracle to me everytime!!)

Alcohol (Part III) -- The conference

The next form of group alcohol participation is named “drunken conference” which is what happens when a bunch of men get together and decide to hold a meaningful conversation while partaking generally high quality liquor. This is one of those sessions where all things terrestrial and extra-terrestrial are discussed with equal ease, and the information that each participant possesses on each topic is nothing short of extraordinary.
At one such session that I attended, we addressed the following issues of immediate global concern:
1. The rise and fall of the Mozambique currency.
2. Mating rituals of the African red spiders.
3. Life on Neptune twenty years hence.

The order of these action-items is of course, immaterial. As some of you will recall from personal experience, after the fourth drink, one suddenly acquires the amazing capability to hold the fort on more than one topic simultaneously, which is precisely what could be observed after an equivalent amount of alcohol had safely found its way into the blood stream of all the players.

Alcohol (Part II) -- Drunken Revelry

The most common form of alcohol consumption is called “drunken revelry”. All participants in this process consume enough alcohol to:
a. lose track of how much they have drunk
b. lose track of the two essential dimensions, viz. time, and space.

As a consequence of the above two, the behavior of such persons is extremely unpredictable and ranges from howling at the moon to repeated attempts at climbing the wall. At the end of the revelry, the concerned parties end up either in a ditch, or some such suitable location where they find it very convenient to spend the wee hours of the morning, generally muttering an old song to themselves, though of course, not without causing much annoyance to the near-stationed dogs who also choose these same hours to complete their daily ration of rest.

Alcohol (Part I) - A brief intro... (??)

Surprising (to me) that I have decided to touch upon this topic so late in my blog. Considering the ever increasing count of allegations which I have to field every day, I should’ve been inspired to write this earlier. Well, better late than never. Or as they say among the alcoholics, better drunk than sober.

There came a movie once titled “Sixteen years of alcohol”. How apt, I’d thought when I first heard of it. But I strongly opine that merely sixteen years are perhaps not enough to understand the spirit of the spirits.

And so this time, we shall be discussing at length the various modes in which alcoholic consumption can be witnessed.

(Continued in next post...)

Cherish

It’s true that most of us would rather want that one moment to culminate into something more wonderful, but I suppose it’s best if we understand that life is a lot more meaningful if we learn to appreciate and understand the beauty of these individual moments; and more importantly, to not lose these moments in the pursuit of “goals” and “destinations”. Or with reference to what I said earlier, milestones are important, but not at the expense of miles…

You can’t ignore the smell of earth after the first few drops of rain, to worry about the number of inches by which the water table will rise…