My mom and her daughter-in-law

First thing first, since my elder cousin brother has got engaged a few months back, I have become the ‘torch bearer’, the ‘most eligible bachelor’ of my extended family. This has recently sprung up a lot of discussions about my to-be-wife, and surprisingly I have participated in them sportingly, asserting my own views and choices.

Now a few words about the leading lady of this post; no, it’s not my to-be-wife but her mother-in-law i.e. my mom. Indian moms of our generation, i.e. the ladies born in 1950s and 1960s have a few unique characteristics acquired by them being a part of both the worlds, the old India and the Westernized India. They are a perfect blend of traditional, culture driven, religious housewives and educated, widely travelled, open-minded liberated women. They are, in true sense, the ‘Super-Moms’. With host of benefits attached to such a persona, one is of particular interest to me as far as my mom is concerned: She is a great cook. Like all my friends, I also most definitely believe that my mom is the best cook. There’s hardly any delicacy which I have eaten elsewhere that my mom cannot prepare at home. Even if she doesn’t know the recipe, she would somehow find it out. Being a modern housewife, she has got the time and the interest to watch cookery shows and attend kitty parties to shell out a new dish every now and then.

Though my physical buildup doesn’t suggest it, I consider myself a connoisseur of food. And I am already skeptical about my to-be-wife’s culinary abilities. This brings me back to lady no. 2 of this discussion, i.e. my mom’s to-be-daughter-in-law. Recently, while enjoying one of my favorite homemade snacks, called ‘dhope ke vade’ (I’m sure nobody has even heard of it) at home, me and my mom had this interesting conversation-

Me: Maa, this thing is just superb. I think I am having this after a long long time.

Mom: Ya, these dhope leaves are hard to find in the market these days.

Me: Thanks Maa. It’s amazing how you make all these efforts to serve me my favorite dishes.

Mom: Hmm. But it’s highly unlikely that that your wife will know this recipe.

She has said this for many dishes hundreds of times, but this was the first time I realized the gravity of the issue. A simple thought of extinction of these dishes in my married life sent a chill down my spine. But after a short pause, the dialogue continued-

Mom: But don’t worry. Cooking skills will be my top priority when I go hunting a bride for you. At least in your case, it will be more important than her educational qualifications.

Me: (with a sigh of relief) Actually Maa, you can go about this way; whenever you go for bride hunting, carry a list of my favorite dishes and ask the protagonist how many of them she can cook.

Mom: (smiling with agreement) That can be a great idea.

Me: And the applicant below 90% score would be ruled out for further consideration (I chuckled).

Mom: (revealing a harsh truth) That’s a utopian thought beta; you are expecting too much off her. With the girls of this generation, you’d be lucky if she could even serve you simple four meals a day.

With those admonitions, I am already worried if some of my taste buds will turn into vestigial organs after marriage.

Incredible Lies

This story is one of the folklore that I’ve heard dozens of times from the oldies in my family. The lore is originally called ‘Safed Jhooth’ in Hindi and is a sequence of highly ‘disproportionate’ and implausible events. Though Safed Jhooth was setup in a bygone era, I’ve tried to modernize it. Read on.

Once upon a time, in the province of Dylanabad (yea, they were all Dylan fans), lived two of the most ferocious wrestlers of the world. Wrestler Of the East (aka Woe) lived on the western hill and Wrestler Of the West (aka Wow) lived on the eastern hill. The mismatch in their names and the position of their hills is another legend which is beyond the scope of this story.

One fine day, Woe was coming back from the city departmental store. He was pulling a hundred carts, attached to one another, all filled with groceries, vegetables and his wife’s cosmetics. Suddenly, while climbing up the hill, he found it immensely difficult to pull the carts further. So he stopped and went from cart to cart checking the wheels if something had stuck on it. On the hundredth cart, he found Wow sitting idle on the grocery listening to his Ipod. Watching this, Woe shouted, “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my cart? You have interrupted my journey and if I’ll be late for home, my wife is going to kill me.” Hearing this, Wow replied, “Sorry for the inconvenience dear, but don’t you remember me? I am Wow, your greatest opponent. We have fought 99 wrestling matches before, all ending in ties. I have come today for the hundredth one and to win the coveted championship. Are you ready for it?” Seemingly recalling the last fight, Woe said, “Oh yes. Sorry friend, but the body building supplements available these days are have lot of side effects. They surely pump up the body, but enervate the mind. None the less, I am becoming listless doing the daily chores at home and want to get back to wrestling. Though I am feeling a little weary, I appreciate your gesture of coming all the way to see me. Let’s have that wrestling match right now.” “Ok”, said Wow. “But we have a small problem here. We’ll have to find someone to judge the winner.”

Fortunately, they saw an old women passing by, going down the hill. Woe identified her as the one who lives downtown and goes uphill daily for an evening walk. They asked her to be the judge to which she said, “I don’t mind judging your match but I have left my young son at home. You see, since they started airing Roadies on MTV, he has got this habit of running around girls in the evening and swearing at our neighbors. So I got to be home before dawn. We can do one thing though; if you guys don’t mind, I can carry you both on my palm and watch your match on my way. Is that ok?” They both agreed and climbed on her palm for the fight.

A few miles away from the hag’s house, his son, who was grazing camels in a field, saw her coming with the two wrestlers. He thought, “Oh darn! May be she has seen me applying for the Rakhi Sawant’s Swayamwar yesterday and is bringing these wrestlers to beat me up. I should better run away and save my life.” He hurriedly packed up all the camels in a luggage bag, put it on his head and started running away. While he was on his way, a vulture flying high in the sky saw him running with a bag. “There may be something in it for me”, the vulture thought. He quickly descended down, grabbed the bag and snatched it away. Another few miles into the sky, the vulture realized that the bag it zipped and he doesn’t know how to unzip. Perplexed, he thought of asking his friend for help and reached out for his mobile phone. But unfortunately, the bag fell from his claws into the palace of Dylanabad’s king.

In the palace, while the queen was having her dinner, this bag fell into her pudding and went in her mouth in a bite. Munching the pudding, she heard screams of camels inside her mouth. Terrified with the sound, she threw up on the floor. While cleaning the mess, her housemaid found this zipped bag and thought that since it has come out from Her Highness’s mouth, it may be something precious. So she plugged the bag in her ear and waited for her shift to be over.

In the evening, when she reached her home, she took out the bag and showed it to her husband excitedly. Disappointed with her act, he said, “Look dear, you don’t have to resort to stealing such stuffs. How many times have I told you not to steal petty things? You must learn to embezzle bigger things, jewelry, credit cards, electronic gadgets, etc. Even mobile phones are not worth the efforts these days. Anyhow, since you have already brought it, let us open it and have a look.” As she unzipped the bag, dozens of camels burst out into their house and started smashing everything around. One kicked the TV, another tumbled the fridge and another started paying with the AC remote control. In a few moments, the house looked like a riot hit place. Looking at the mess, the husband said, “Oh shit, we don’t even have riot protection clause in our home insurance. We are screwed. This is all because of your stupid bag. You women are good for nothing.” Hearing this, the maid started crying. The man went on scolding and she went on weeping. Within a few hours, her tears flooded the whole city and everybody drowned eventually.

Looking at the city from the sky, the vulture said to himself, “What a stupid story”.

Utterly Bakwaas Story

(Read it at your own risk)

Note: The story below is purely fictional and has no connection to anybody alive. The dead don’t bother anyways.

Yesterday, on my way from mess to hostel after breakfast, I noticed a small blob on the edge of the hostel’s wall. You know, the ones which you usually get when you forcibly scratch a pimple off your cheek. So here I was wondering the justification of me and the blob facing each other at the most unoccupied hour of my day. There must be some divine wit behind it, I thought. So I took it as the first task of the day to explore the existence of that blob on the wall and the two of us pitted against each other, not as enemies or friends, but as onlookers staring at each other, sharing the same destiny for a few moments.

It seemed to be full of some viscous fluid whose contents I wanted to determine. But it was very small in size, hemispherical, about half an inch in diameter and I was too big to go inside and explore it. I assumed that if there was some cosmic purpose to this event, the God must have bestowed upon me a few extra-terrestrial abilities. So I called upon the heavens to reduce my size to that of an ant. In a usual mythological Bollywood movie, such a prayer will be answered with lightning and thunderstorm and aakashvani from the heavens. But in my case, it didn’t turn out to be so glamorous. Instead, a brick fell from the top of the wall and landed on my head. The very next moment, I found myself ant-sized but under the brick crawling to find my way out. Somehow managing to do that, I stood on my tiny feet, which were still discernable from my hands unlike a real ant.

But now, I was facing the biggest challenge of the day. When I was tall, the blob was just a foot away from me and was within my reach. Now it seemed to be miles away, hardly visible from my tiny eyes. Also, it was a few stories high from the ground level for my new 10mm height. Since the normal ants do not have a public transport systems or elevators to climb up a building, I decided to get to the blob hitchhiking. So the task was to find a suitable mode which could get me there. A fly would be too small to carry my weight and a bird would not perch on a wall. Suddenly I saw a big grasshopper, suspiciously hopping on a cemented floor instead. It looked bulkier than the usual lot and had legs folded like an inverted V sticking to its stomach. The chap was greenish yellow in color with blood red patches (were those just spots or real blood was to be discovered later) on its wings.

Here was my big chance. If I could persuade him to at least fly me to the top of that blob, I could jump on it without my helicopter to land. Wow! I thought, what a golden opportunity to play Tom Cruise in real life. But again, as in case while doing business in different cultural contexts, communication was a problem here. Though humans self proclaim to have developed the most comprehensive languages for communication, there have been studies showing that other species too exchange messages through sounds and signs indiscernible to humans. Thus I decided to ask for yet another divine favor to grant me the power to communicate with that unfortunate grasshopper. This time again, a tiny hard disk, fraught with grasshopper vocabulary, flew from a nearby tree and landed inside my brain.

Puffed up with confidence, I went closer to Hoppy (I already gave him a name assuming it won’t have any) expecting to strike a conversation. But Hoppy turned out to be smarter than I thought. His (yes, it was a ‘he’ as told by him) name was #a!z@o (that’s how he pronounced it in his dialect, and I could too). And it was he who started the conversation by asking curiously, “Are you a human? And if yes, when did humans invent this miniaturization technology?”

I was stumped. “What do you know about technology? You are just a grass hopper whiling away your life hip-hopping.” I asked. Of course I didn’t know that this conversation will turn out to be an unforgettable and enlightening one.

“First thing first”, he said, “never mess with someone ten times your size. And secondly, I am not a grass hopper but a locust, now one of the critically endangered species on earth, thanks to you humans.”

I retaliated, “Sorry to address you rudely (by now I had realized that I cannot crush him under my feet anymore while he can do it), but I don’t see how humans are responsible for your extinction. After all, its survival of the fittest on this planet and we have proved ourselves worthy of it.”

“For Christ sake dude, don’t give me that ‘survival of the fittest’ crap. That’s the philosophy you humans have developed to fool yourselves and to justify your misdemeanors in the higher court of God. This earth is made for everyone to live and procreate and only nature has the right to destroy the unfit. Do you know that species extinctions have increased to an unprecedented rate since humans’ technological advancements started. And it is predicted by some of your fellow humans that half of the current 1.5 million living species will be extinct by the end of this century. What do you have to say to that?”

I realized that locusts have very high IQ and maybe humans have never discovered this. Whatever maybe the case, I was heading for a clear loss in the discussion. Moreover, I wasn’t here to waste my time on trivial discussions but to seek his help. So I asked him straight away, “#a!z@o, maybe you are right, but I don’t have time to discuss all this at the moment. Actually I want to get to that blob you see over there. Can you offer me a lift?”

I was afraid that he might refuse. But instead he offered an interesting proposition, “Ok, I will carry you there, but only if you answer my three questions. And mind you, the questions aren’t going to be easy.” Already disappointed, I asked him, “But you are much more knowledgeable than me. Can you reduce the number of answers required or make the questions easier?” “That is the problem with you humans”, he said, “you have lesser brain than the tiniest of creatures. Let us make it simpler; if you can answer any one of the three questions, I will take you there. Agree?”

I did.

“Ok then. My first question: You are standing on a roadside that leads to the railway station. A passerby asks you, “Where does this road takes me?” What should be your answer?”

I thought this insect was over smart, so I should try to match his wits. I replied, “I’ll tell him that the road doesn’t take anybody anywhere”.

“You are really a dumbo. Haven’t you learned in Business Communication that words have contextual meaning and if you don’t understand it in this case then it’s your fault not the other person’s. You should have told him that the road goes towards the railway station; and not the smartass answer that you gave me. We are 1-0 now.”

“Ok, ok. Move on.”

“Here’s my second question: Your father is 50 years old. What’s your age now if your dad will be twice as old as you after 10 years?”

I quickly calculated and answered, “20 years.”

“Again wrong. Aren’t you 24 years old? Why should you change your age just because I asked you a silly question? So now the score is 2-0 with just one more to go. I don’t think you’ll make it.”

“Let us see.”

“Ok, here’s my last question: What should be your answer to this question so that the score becomes 2-1 and I take you to the blob?”

While I was still thinking of the answer, suddenly the alarm rang up and broke the dream. I’ll try if I could continue with the same dream again sometime to reach that blob.

Trivia of my life

Midnight Lovers

This one is dedicated to all the lovers whom you'll find chatting or talking on phone even long after midnight. 

This is my first try at writing a poem. So please excuse my grammar, conjunction, preposition and 120 other mistakes which I have made to maintain the tukbandi. And I hope the lovers' pain tickles your funny bone. Critical comments are always welcome.

I'm not sleeping in the night,

And I'm dozing all the day.

 

Before I met you online,

My life was just fine;

I'd sleep for 12 cozy hours,

And laugh at other sleepless lovers.

 

But once browsing through the Facebook,

I stumbled upon your account;

And quickly scribbled you a message,

As if you were a treasure I've found.

 

The next 15 hours were dreadful,

I thought you passed the message by;

Refresh, refresh, refresh all day long,

Just waiting for the reply.

 

Suddenly a new mail burst into my gmail,

Though I didn't read the whole body;

The subject said, "You've got message in your Facebook inbox",

I knew that would be you, my dear lady.

 

Your amicable reply started something,

Which I had never dreamt of;

And it surely made me one of those,

Whom I always laughed off.

 

Chatting, SMSes and phone calls, all started,

And would never end before 3;

My dear you can very well imagine,

How would the next day's classes be.

 

But still the first few days were great,

And I felt like a rock star;

I even composed a song for you dear,

Though I haven't learnt to hold a guitar.

 

There on I'd think of you all night,

Even before the calls and after;

My roommate thought I've gone crazy,

And he took me to a doctor.

 

The doctor did blood, piss and many other tests,

And declared me an 'insomniac';

Though I bet you one thing,

It definitely sounds better than a 'maniac'.

 

And now even after you've left me,

It doesn't matter it’s a weekend or a weekday;

I'm not sleeping in the night,

And I'm dozing all the day.

Mediocrity at Its Best

Mike Litman once started addressing a 200 odd audience on the topic 'Say goodbye to mediocrity' by saying “You weren’t born to be in this room tonight.” What he really meant was "You, I, we…we weren’t born to be average. We weren’t born to strive for mediocrity in life. And we weren’t born to spend our lives at jobs we can’t stand."

That makes me realize that there are not two but three kinds of people in this world: the winners, the losers, and the mediocres. While the first two are easy to locate, the world is actually full of the third ones who largely go un-noticed. At least 90% of us belong to this category. And we always make desperate attempts to get out of this mould. But don't we question ourselves sometimes that am I truly a mediocre? Who is a real mediocre? And is it a curse to be one? I am just trying to explore these thoughts here.

Lets define mediocrity first. Oxford dictionary put it as 'Moderate fortune or condition in life' or 'A thing equally removed from two opposite extremes'. I see it as a relative term. A student or a piece of art may be mediocre among one set of peers but may be a genius or a masterpiece in the other. The choice is yours: to be called a genius in a group of dimwits or challenge yourself among intellects. 

Now, let us see how bad it is belonging to this category. I have got used to analyzing things from both the perspectives: optimistic and pessimistic. Lets see how it fits here.

Pessimists say a mediocre's life is dreadful. On the one hand, they have a perennial urge to climb up the ladder, which they are not able to given their mediocrity. On the other hand, mediocres always have a fear of falling into the dungeon of losers. Its like a game of snakes and ladders with too many snakes and too few ladders.

Once during my school days, when I was among the toppers in my class, one of my friend, a so-called average student, told me, "Atul, I study a lot to displace you from your rank". To this I replied, "Can you imagine how hard is it to retain the spot." And he really did achieve his goal in the very next exams. That brings me to the optimistic side of being a mediocre. I think mediocrity is easy to sustain and even improve. The losers don't care and thus hardly pose a challenge. And success is difficult to maintain once achieved which is why winners get nightmares of dropping down from the pinnacle. All a mediocre needs is to give that gentle push.

So is there a way out. Sure, I say. But the process should be strategic, carried out with patience and determination. Have a long term mission to be a winner, but make achievable goals towards moving up tier by tier within this mediocrity. And finally when your mediocrity is at its best, you can give that extra push to replace the winner.

A Perfect Itinerary

(Dedicated to Ani and Lincoln)

*Based on true events.

It was the 5^th day of November 2003 when The Matrix Revolutions released in India. Like all movie buffs, after watching the first two parts of the amazing Matrix trilogy, we were waiting for this big day. But to our dismay, we lived in a place called Warangal where English is the third language, after Telugu and Hindi. So leave alone English, the movie wasn’t even released in Hindi there. And I had promised myself, that I will watch the final part only in a theatre. So as ridiculous it may sound, I decided to go to Hyderabad (which is 150 kms away from Warangal) to watch it. Luckily, two of my dear friends, Animesh and Lincoln shared the same emotions for the movie and thus we grouped up to go and watch it first day in the IMAX screen at Prasad IMAX theatre. For those who don’t know it, Prasad IMAX was one of the very few IMAX theatres in the world and had the largest IMAX screen in Asia.

And thus the journey began. The plan was simple: we’d catch East Coast Express from Kazipet at 2:30 pm, reach Secunderabad by 5:45, quickly rush to the IMAX which is a couple of kms away from railway station and get the tickets for 7:30 pm show. Then we can easily catch a train by the night and get back by 2 am.

We started as expected. Right after our classes, we went to Kazipet, the nearest railway station. The train too was right on time and we managed to catch it easily. The journey was comfortable except that we had to keep standing all the time since there was no vacant seat. The train reached the destination timely and as soon as we got down we met our first trouble. While walking through the platform, a ticket inspector stopped us and took us to his office. I don’t know if he judged it by our speed of walking but he was right; we had no journey tickets. After acting stupid and making lame excuses for some time, we had to surrender. We paid Rs 100 per head under the table and bid farewell to the inspector.

Barely discouraged by the event, we quickly caught an auto-rickshaw and reached IMAX by 6:30. Ani rushed to the ticket window while I paid the autowala. There we met our second problem of the day. The lady in front of Ani bought the last ticket for the 10 pm show while the 7:30 show had already been sold out. We were not as stupid as you might be thinking right now; we had earlier tried to book the ticket on phone but they turned us down saying they don’t do it on credit, hence the risk. Now we were left with two options; either to buy tickets for next day morning show or look for another theatre. As we did not want to spend money for the night stay, we chose the latter.

With crushed dreams of watching The Matrix Revolutions on the big IMAX screen, we reached another theatre screening the movie. It was still around 7 pm. But again thanks to our destiny, the next show would start only at 10 o’ clock. That would mean that we’d reach college back only by 5:30 in the morning. Puffed up with our love for cinema (and to avoid embarrassment of returning without watching the movie) we went ahead and bought the tickets. While we were standing outside the theatre thinking how to while away the time, something pleasant happened. A car entered the premise and a scantily dressed beautiful young lady, with her face shining bright, stepped out of it. It’s amazing how our nervous system can quickly divert its attention. For the next few minutes, we forgot all the day’s events and just stared lustfully at her till she went away.

With enough time to get bored, we decided to go to Paradise restaurant and have the so called ‘best biryani of Hyderabad’. But the Murphy’s laws followed us there too. There was a long queue at the restaurant and we waited for an hour, standing, till we got a seat. Luckily the food was great and we ate like a bunch of slumdogs (lexicography courtesy Danny Boyle).  

It was the happiest moment of the day as we caught our seats inside the theatre and we kept ourselves fully engrossed for the next 130 minutes of the movie, except the small naps that Lincoln took while watching it. I and Ani were self proclaimed movie critics within our group of friends in college and the movie would definitely invite a lot of critical discussion of how disappointing it was. But as was the call of the moment, we pretended it was nice to keep each other’s morals high. With everything gone as wrong as possible, it was the time to get back to college and have a long sleep.

Though destiny rarely plays games with commoners like us, it plays well whenever it does. As we reached the railway station, we found out that no train was scheduled for Kazipet till the morning. With Lincoln already dozing off in the auto-rickshaw, we reached bus stand at around 1:30 am hoping to catch a bus. But there was no bus either till 3:30 am. We had no option but to sleep on the small benches, lying on each other, for two cold long hours.

We reached college by 7 in the morning, had breakfast in the mess and went straight to bed for a much deserved sleep. We never told anyone about the great excursion we had on that fateful day and would always recall it as a perfect itinerary.