rain comes down
pitter-patter

quenching, invigorating
dislocating, destroying

... like the love
that once drenched me

For a change I thought it would be nice to talk in the adulterated version of the English language made popular by our TV channels, which is fast becoming the unofficial national language of the country.

Pope Benedict XVI ka kehna hai ki we Catholics should have more babies. Apparently he feels it is "for the good of society". And though he went on to say that "having children is a gift that brings life and well-being to society" we know all too well what his cleverly camouflaged message to his flock is -- "Outnumber them before they outnumber us, godammit!"

Well, mujhe lagta hai ki most Catholics would be only too happy to oblige His Holiness, but what about the extra kharcha, boss? Bills kaun pay karega? Idhar toh gaadi mein petrol bhar-bhar ke I've become fully kangaal, and now he wants us to have more children! No-no, nothing doing - the Vatican will have to take up the responsibility and support us financially.

And more children will not be possible without more wives, hai na? Hum expect kaise kar sakte hai ki one girl should go through the rigours of childbirth again and again ... poor things! they are not machines, you know. Nahin yaar, chaar-paanch biwiyan toh lagenge. And they should also throw in something like that Musalmann log ka Triple Talaq. Kya mazaa aayega boss! .... Don't mess with me darling or I'll talaq your ass outta here!

Hang on folks ... my buddy Aloysius Lobo (aka Ally, who still thinks he's Portugese ) wants to say something.

.... But seriously dude, doesn't he sound like Heini saying that??

Yeh Heini kaun hai bhai?

Aare, woh Nazi black-shirt walla, dude - Heinrich Himmler ... you didn't go to bleddy school or what? He was Hitler's chief of the Schutzstaffel - pyaar se they were known as the SS ... no connection to Shiv Sena. He was responsible for the massacre of over 5 million jews in those camps at Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald ... aare, what a bugger he was, I tell you!

Haan haan, uss badmaash ka naam suna hai. Yeah I guess Once a Nazi, always a Nazi. Saala! Pope ko abhi "Heil Hitler" bolna padega!

Not Hitler, duffer - Ratzinger!

Yes, yes I know yaar ... "Pope Joseph Ratzinger" kitna accha sound karta hai na? ... ekdum Nazi General jaisa!

Aare but dude, my dame Sandra will kick my backside man, if I talk about having more than one wife .... these modern girls bhi na, they bleddy want every damn thing, and we buggers have to slog like kutta's. Even daaru they don't want us to drink ... cigarette piya toh they threaten to leave us only. I say the Vatican should issue a Pontifical Decree allowing, no-no in fact insisting on polygamy. Then see how their bleddy tails become straight!

But you know Ally bhai, I think ki this Pope is a very chalaak fellow yaar ... dekh na, if this more babies walla thing is implemented, we'll end up killing teen panchiyan with one patthar - three birds with one stone!

What bleddy three birds are you talking about dude? ... for me handling one chick only is such a big headache!

No-no, see: if he permits polygamy, women toh sab line main aa jayenge; we will be ekdum khush because jabhi chahe we can talaq them if they start to khau our brains; and, all the kharcha will be sambhalofied by the Church!

Wah Blues! you're a genius man bugger!

Yeah, yeah! Chal, I gotta go ... Millee serial ka time ho gaya. Tu Millee watch karta hai kya? Sahi main yaar, har aadmi ke paas aisa posh housemaid rehna mangta, what say?

Hey dude, I don't see all this Millee-Billee hindi crap .... You watched Sania's match or what yesterday? Aare, she showed that pasta-eater Maria whatshername what our bleddy hot Indian curry can do ... those balls were going to the bottomline like bleddy missiles, man ! Just see, woh semifinals mein definitely aa jayegi.

It's called baseline yaar, not bottomline!

Whatever dude! ... Chalo, catch you later man bugger. Heil Ratzinger!

*click of heels* Heil Ratzinger!

Hurricane Katrina (such a sweet name for such a bad storm). The grim pictures on CNN probably tell us very little of the real effect it's had on people living in the states of Mississippi and Louisiana .... this time next year New Orleans will really be new.

And I bet our man Osama has currently shelved all his plans to wreck havoc on the infidels and their cities ... because nature has gone and done such a brilliant job for him.

***

Newspapers. I won't be surprised if very soon the only real use our newspapers will have is to replace the now banned plastic bag. I read two papers today - the first this morning was The Times of India. I know there will be always be days when they don't have any headline material, but I think it's crazy to have headlines that shout: "India beats China in arms race". It seems the lumbering elephant has overtaken the fleet-footed dragon in arms purchases - we shelled out 5.7 billion dollars on defence contracts in 2004 as compared to the 2.2 billion the Chinks spent, which, the article seems to suggest, is something we should all be proud of (consolation because we lag behind in every other department). Surely the guy who wrote this article must know that the only reason we spent so much is because we're having to replace all that worthless aging junk we've collected over the last couple of decades ... a problem the Chinese obviously do not have and hence are spending less. What I find really absurd is that somebody can actually proclaim we've won the arms race only because our expenditure in the previous year was higher! ... makes me wonder if the people who write these articles ever bother to read their own bludy newspapers.

I say if you don't have a headline story, splash a picture of Bipasha Basu in a string bikini ... that way your readers would at least get their moneys worth.

Then this afternoon the girl at the traffic intersection got me to buy a copy of today's Mid-Day. Now what can I say about Mid-Day ... once again, good substitute for the plastic bag. If you're the kind who needs to know how many times Shahrukh Khan farted yesterday, then Mid-Day is the paper for you.

Front page story talks about how the residents of the century old, dilapidated (and declared unsafe years back) buildings of Botawala Chawl in Mazagaon (Mumbai) refuse to go to makeshift government transit camps. They provide all sorts of reasons, but the real reason everybody knows: most of them are tenants paying ridiculously low rents and are scared that if they move they will lose whatever rights they have to those flats. Hence I say the authorities should just let them stay put ... let those buildings come crashing down and bury the buggers alive.

The Botawala's must be dancing with joy at the prospect of getting their property back ... because only in India will a court decide in favour of a tenant who refuses to vacate. That's how we lost our ancestral house in Goa.

But is this front-page news? Again, give us Bipasha.

***

That's it. I gotta watch Sania ... her tennis I mean. Hope I haven't missed it.

Y'know, it surprises me to see how many people land up at this here blog by doing a Google search for "Sania Mirza naked" and "Sania's boobs" ... she's just a child, for cryin' out loud!

Peace, love and weapons of mass distraction.

The scissor blades of time
keep snipping away
at my life.

I have to hurry.
I must find peace, love
and a hundred other things.

... and somewhere in there
I must find myself.

The art of living
is not to succumb
before your time here is over.

Relax, said the nightman:
we are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
but you can never leave.

"I had just leased this house out on the beach at Malibu, I guess it was around '74 or '75. I remember sitting in the living room, with all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day. I had this acoustic 12-string and I started tinkling around with it, and those Hotel California chords just kind of oozed out.

Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos parts and something great just plops in your lap." -- Don Felder (The Eagles)

Y'know, I didn't see as many blaring loudspeakers by the roadsides this Independence Day as I did last year and the years before. Wonder why? One reason could be the fact that many of the hitherto lukha youth (who would go around collecting money for things like this) are putting their energies to better use in the call centers - many of which couldn't let their employees stay home to observe the anniversary of our nations independence. But I am told they get a holiday on the Fourth of July.

***

I'm having some trouble getting out of my head those graphic images shown on the news the other day of that Manipuri girl lying dead in a pool of blood in front of the Gateway of India after some lunatic slashed her throat. These are things we're expected to forget as quickly as they happen, and we would if it had happened in some village in Uttar Pradesh, but happening as it were, closer home, you can't help thinking that it could have been you, or one of yours, instead of that girl. And that's the scary part.

And I'm going to send an email to the news channels telling them that showing such scenes on prime-time news (where you have children watching) is highly irresponsible and serves no purpose whatsoever. Our newswalla's certainly appear to have forgotten where to draw the line.

I think it's important for people, women especially, living in a jungle like Mumbai where you have all sorts of unknown dangers lurking around, to take adequate measures to protect themselves. I've carry my keys on a Swiss Army Knife keychain and I can tell you, the damn thing is extremely handy (the knife especially). It has got me out of some very inconvenient situations, and I have no doubt it could even save my life if the need arose.

***

I will be going over to Dee's in just a bit (we've all been invited to dinner - I stayed back to do this blog post). Initial reports indicate she likes the guy. Allah, Jesus, Ram, Sita, Laxman be praised!

But she's liked guys before ... until they revealed themselves to be bludy madmen!. So we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed .... any more surprises and you might just see this in the headlines soon: "Sane woman butchers madman"

BFN. Hey Bun!

she is
the brightest flower
in the garden
of my life

but the brightest
is not always
the most fragrant

... and the fragrant ones
often have thorns

I'm thinking perhaps I didn't frame that question correctly. Or maybe the question is ok ... its just very difficult to answer.

In management school (I haven't been to one) they teach you that the first step towards finding a solution to any perceived problem is to correctly identify the problem. So when you don't quite know why a man behaves the way he does, how do you get him to change that behaviour?

If you ask me, I'd say its a man's general upbringing and the attitude towards women that exists within his own family/community (education would be a secondary influencing factor) that play a decisive role in shaping his behaviour and future relationships with the opposite sex.

It was when I tried to sing along with the national anthem that was played before the movie Parineeta that I realised I'd forgotten the words.

I beg to differ, however, with those of you who think that this is something I should be ashamed of. Because most (I reckon 8 out of 10) of the other people in the cinema hall didn't seem too interested either. In fact the girl next to me continued sipping her cola.

And quite frankly, I don't see what the issue is. If singing the anthem will help rid this country of even 0.1% of all its problems - hell, I'll sing it till my face (and everything else) turned blue!

I've said it before: I am proud to be Indian, but I am not the least bit proud of India.

And if others (like Meghna Naidu) are that eager to exhibit their patriotism, I'm sure there are better, more productive (and less convenient) ways than singing the national anthem before the next movie they watch.

***

PM Manmohan Singh's recent comments on how the British Raj benefitted our country were frowned upon by many. But after reading the editorial column in last Sunday's Times of India, I think he is absolutely right. Sure, they took their pound of flesh, but if it wasn't for what they left behind, we'd have been nothing but a bunch of savages (can you imagine the plight of women and the so-called lower castes?), and this nation would have been divided into God knows how many little lawless states .... countries like Rwanda and Angola would have had a higher GDP than ours.

And in spite of everything the British left us, we've still done a very fine job of pushing this country into a no-win situation.

How many of you are aware of the levels of corruption in our nation's Armed Forces? I've seen it first-hand and it filled me with revulsion. I tell you, those urchin kids who sell paper flags at traffic junctions on our national holidays are probably a hundred times more patriotic than many of our men in uniform.

Truth is, the country means nothing - to most people. If it did, you wouldn't find our brightest brains working at Redmond and Silicon Valley.

There's been so much talk about brain-drain, and I don't understand why. We have just one life to live (reincarnation, to me, is all humbug) and nobody has the right to prevent another from living it good.

Do I love this country? Not really. (though I'd like to)

... and if you say you do, then PROVE IT, GODDAMIT!

Peace, love, and a little less hypocrisy.

The gentleman who is conducting this course I'm attending is a graduate from IIM Ahmedabad. He has kind of taken to me and vice-versa. I guess that's because all the others (all future Chartered Accountants) are a bunch of bludy duffers. And it's not that I'm a big genius or anything; but anybody interacting with them will tell you they're absolutely atrocious ... how they pass the exams is something which could be featured on Ripleys - Believe it or Not!

Anyway, today he got talking about Management & Superstitions (it is a 2 week course on management and communication skills ... because the Institute of CA's very recently realized that many of its members cannot draft their own résumé's). And during his talk he said something that quite shocked his audience, and woke me from my sleep.

"We Hindu's," he says, "have for thousands of years, been mistaking mythology for religion"

In his opinion, a lot of what is considered part of the Hindu religion is nothing but a bunch of tales thought up by some very enthusiastic writers in times gone by. He believes that people like Ram and Sita and Rawan never existed; it's all just make-believe. And the confusion arose because the chaps who wrote these stories used the names of real places... like Ayodha, for example.

And he says most Hindu's don't even know the reason why they do certain things. "For example," he says, "did you know that the breaking of a coconut is taken to symbolize the splitting of a human skull? ... and the water that spills from the core symbolizes blood?"

Others in the audience (mostly Hindu) just sat there with an expression of disbelief. I, on the other hand, was most intrigued by these revelations. So I said to him, "are you really telling us that millions of Hindu's the world over believe in things some storyteller just made up??"

"Yes, he says. That's precisely what I'm telling you."

The first thing that came to my mind was: What a monstrous bludy scam!

".... and other religions are no better," he went on to add. "There are lots of things in the Bible too, that don't quite add-up."

***

I think Suzannah said it very beautifully in her post the other day. It seems Karl Marx once referred to religion as the opium of the masses. And interestingly enough, in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, every single person is hooked on to an intoxicant called Soma (the daily ration of which is supplied by the State). It is what helps them discard those negative, undesirable thoughts/feelings and lets them be happy all the time.

You know, I've always wondered why we Catholics are taught that if you don't do everything by the book, you will surely burn in hell; and if you do happen to do everything right and something terrible still befalls you, then it is simply God's way of testing your faith!

In other words: you just do what is required, and be willing to accept any outcome that the Almighty might deem fit to serve on you. (Talk about a raw deal!)

I was thinking about these things in Church today. And then it struck me: If I am getting such a raw, shitty deal, why the hell am I here ... sitting in this pew? Nobody's holding a gun to my head and making me - so why am I here?

And the answer came as quick. I am here because I have nowhere else to go.

It's like Suzannah says "To reach for an invisible higher power, call him what you will, does make life easier. And maybe, in some ways, it is tearing the world apart, maybe it is the cause for a lot of the external turmoil in the world, but it may very well be the solution to the turmoil within us… or something like that!"

Religion, myth, half-truths - who cares what it really is? As long as it serves the purpose. Our purpose.

And wouldn't you agree that many of us treat love in much the same way?

Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma;
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
Love's as good as Soma.

Peace, love, and the Emperor's new clothes.