The Charge of the Light & Sound Brigade

My TV is a humongous idiot. Having stated the obvious, I will now sip my burnt coffee as I recount the epic (possibly #fail) story of a hero: a hero who in the face of adversity and trouble still managed to advocate ribald dumbness.

In the beginning there was light. Accompanied with sound. Quite a lot of both in fact. When my TV pirouetted with my remote, the whole apartment shook with the screams of football fans, skimpy heroines singing in foreign beaches about Jalsa and of course curve-less models parading to techno. I could make the TV jump through channelized hoops by the mere movement of a finger; it was an epistemological zenith. That sensation of playing God remains, until now, unparalleled, the closest one being the toilet flush knob. Everything was perfect, as my stingy neighbors suffered from occasional cardiac arrests, until the day the love story between my TV and remote ended in a Samsung-ian tragedy. It was, in the risk of repeating myself for no reason, really tragic.

My remote stopped working. The situation hit me harder than I thought. It eventually led me to start watching Desperate Housewives on my laptop. My  pseudo-shy friend found me three days later, wallowing in pink pillows and rotting apples. He failed to understand why I had that sitcom stored in my laptop in the first place. I explained to him that it was a mistake that arose out of a misnomer which currently I do not wish to elaborate (this is a family-known blog and they communicate in the Queen's English). He understood and promptly tweeted the news to almost all my friends who were alive. In 1 hour there were 24 new messages, most of which were concerned about my well-being with a small number of them, making fun of me. I tend to lie. All of them made fun of me.

Driven to absolute humiliation, I consulted a number of experts in the field of Remote Sensing before finding that they were as related to the situation, as Angelina Jolie and her adopted kids. Finally, I turned to my pseudo-dramatic friend who gave me a brilliant idea, an idea so brilliant that it made Google Buzz look like, well, Google Buzz.

He told me to buy either a couch or a bean bag. Now, giving me options is neither a brilliant nor a dramatic idea. You can't ask your son whether he wants to marry Padmanabhan or Balakrishnan and expect him to say 'Krithika' do you? Ok, bad metaphor. That was brilliant and dramatic. Must make a mental note to kick pseudo-dramatic friend for polluting my nuclei with Balaji Telefilms' taradiddles. Meanwhile, the conscious part of me uprooted all my hair out and almost touched the barriers of a drugged Britney-dom. Bald and TV-strung, I went back to my intelligent, pseudo-philosophic friend for advice. He started on a discourse on the anodes and cathodes of owning neither, that lasted three hours, during which 34,781 babies were born in India, some romantic trash called "Will you jump over the Sky?" got released and the Union Budget increased excise duty on unsold TV sets. At the end of it, I thought I was better off watching Trisha insipid women jumping in the sky. Or over it. Or around it. Whatever.

Having exhausted myself of any more grey-cell usage, I went in for the same decision that current Reliance cell-phone users took five years ago - go for the cheaper option. I bought a bean bag and immersed myself in Positional Dynamics of Particle Re-alignment For Effective Relative Positioning of Bean Bag to Idiot Box. I really spent time on it. It is not like deciding on a design where you save the world by wearing your underwear inside or outside or inside out. This was much more important for the simple reason that my TV was stuck at Udaya news and I don't speak jalebi. Especially with the Fourth Estate.

The selected version looked complicated enough to make me proud of my rotting Engineering Degree and no charges for guessing which one. I wasted a whole day in implementing it. Once it was all set, I armed myself with a King-size dosage of fluid donated by fishermen and sat down to watch "Metti Oli". My remote remained impotent.

I was beside myself with anger, and (as all people do when they are breaking up or when they are told that they have Herpes) I threw the remote. It bounced off the wall and lay on its backside, like an electrocuted frog. I stared at the pieces lying on the floor in a jigsaw puzzle and then it clicked.

Fifteen minutes later and 24 rupees poorer, I happily watched the season finale of Desperate Housewives on Star World.

There was an empty Duracell wrapper next to my bean bag.

A Dingbat in Love

Dhrit's auricles and ventricles were playing beach volleyball when they were suddenly hauled rudely by the whirring of the phone signaling a new message. Swearing, they let themselves be tossed hither and thither, as Dhrit visually recorded the contents. It was a simple two-word message. He was not a man who was normally bound to make mountains out of simple messages. He believed in cold logic and rationale.

He also believed in hope which is a completely irrelevant fact. But the current case was different; all the letters were in uppercase. They either signified importance or ignorance. After subjecting his brain to some extreme Nokia torture, he settled on importance. Logically, he wanted to reciprocate. Violating the punch dialogue copyright of most Tamil heroes he decided to give more than actually take. There were only three words that could effectively communicate what he felt at that instant and he decided to do it in person. All this happened in exactly fifteen seconds after he saw the message.

It said, "GOOD NIGHT".

Ignoring desperate pleas from his instinct, he blundered across the room pocketing the phone. He slipped into a pair of jeans along with a clean T-shirt, emptied half the contents of a half-empty deodorant can on himself, grabbed the bike keys and flew outside the door, love-light glowing in his eyes. Let me tell you, Hell is no fierier than a man in love.

Minutes later, he was on the road, polluting the Chennai night air with free deodorant samples. He played the words again and again in his mind with her saying it in her high-pitched shriek that seemed to make nails scratching on the blackboard, music. Queerly though, each time she did, she held a bowl of 'mayo' that she offered to him on a glass plate.

After fighting with a policeman who initially refused to believe that the 18-year old headshot of the wanted convict on the driver's license was himself, Dhrit finally reached the Watershed Apartments. Addled on by gallons of adrenalin that pumped through his rather shapely muscles, he parked the bike amongst the bushes (actually flung the poor vehicle). He reached the base of the apartment and pressed the button for the elevator. While waiting, he adjusted his bangs so as to cover his ample forehead of a football field, hitched up his trousers and checked for sprinkles of dandruff; he found nothing. But he had to look good to feel confident; and vice versa. All was set but something nagged at the base of his hair follicles and did not see it. He blamed it on the testosterone-induced butterflies in his belly and punched the button for the topmost floor.

Bored inside the lift, he started reading the lift specifications. He wondered tangentially, 'If specifications are referred as specs, can't gratification be called grass?' The lift pinged at the 10th floor and he walked out of the elevator and up to the door that said 106, leaving the cognitively-high debate unanswered.

Dhrit Ramakrishnan knocked on the door of Geetha Kannan, belligerently.

He knew that she lived alone with her roommate. After what seemed like the time taken for a grounded Air India flight to take off, she opened the door. Dhrit blinked taking in the splendid visage that threatened to choke him with emotion and spit. It held him spellbound; pink nightie, sleepy eyes, fluffy slippers and hair tied a tight bun to boot. A voice that mixed equal amounts of a trombone and heavy earth moving machinery said, "Who is it? What do you want?"

Our hero mustered all the wants of puberty, all the pangs of a first-time-lover, all the retarded butterflies that now flew drunkenly - bottled them in three simple words and uttered them in some ancient Mayan dialect.

"You, aaa.. Eh..."

She got exasperated. Her concept of an ideal man did not contain anybody who comes knocking at 1 'o' clock in the morning and speaks ancient Mayan dialects. "What is it that you want?", she asked again.

He finally managed to get them right. But seconds after he said those words, five phalanges materialized out of nowhere and landed smoothly on his right cheek, leaving a burning red mark in its wake as our hero let loose an expletive that can come out only after a brilliant slap. The slap made his eyes see Mohabbatein in reverse and trust me; it is not exactly a pleasant sight either way. The door exactly behind him opened; the right one that said 109. He turned 180⁰ to see his actual love fuming at the actual door, looking as angry as a Facebook user who just discovered that Facebook has changed its layout once again. Our hero believed in cold logic and rationale. As 109 shut itself before he could cough up an apology, he knew that Geetha was over.

Important Fact: You can convince the woman you think you love of anything; even that you can kick the crap out of Flying Action King Arjun, but never of uttering the three stupid words. To somebody else.

Equally Important Fact: No man, starting from the Stonehenge construction workers, till date, has understood that statement. It simply does not make sense. Like Action King Arjun flying kicking all the time, instead of acting.

Anyway, coming back: our hero found everything falling in place: the sign-board, the license photo, the bass voice, the mayo on a glass plate and the blurred traffic signal.

He had forgotten his spectacles.

He turned back to peer into the imposing figure of a middle-aged woman whom he had never seen before in his life. As disgrace and humiliation engulfed our hero, who continued now in some vocal version of hieroglyphics, he heard the tinkling of bells. The bells were in beautiful Tamil and were seductively drowsy.

"Who is it, Amma? What is all the noise? Is it the police? Did we get caught for watching My Name Is Khan, today?"

The body attached to the voice came cantering up to the front door; pink nightie - check, drowsy eyes - check, fluffy slippers - check, paranoid - check, and hair let loose - uncheck. That could be adjusted as bad hair debt.

Our hero smiled. He still believed in hope. He also started believing in potential.

PS: This story borrows heavily from this pathetic Hero Honda ad.
PPS: This story was written for http://www.thebanyantrees.com by me and is edited largely.

The Ultimate Washing Method (Regd.)

It was the last leg of the Mumbai marathon and there was just half a kilometer left. I was putting in whatever I had, which might be illegally termed as reserve energy since it was mostly fueled by a weekend dosage of cheap whiskey. Every step that I took left a puddle of sweat in its wake, quickly attracting hordes of flies who probably thought it was an aphrodisiac and went about increasing the entomological population of Mumbai calmly. As if they needed a reason to. Anyway, 15 minutes later twenty people saw me raise both my hands in victory and cheered. The others had obviously left. Two of them came running to me holding pepsi cans which turned out to be deodorant sprays. Anyway, overwhelmed by my elation, I removed my dark brown T-shirt in preparation for the ritualistic victory dance. Dark brown? I had started off with a white shirt. My senses stopped playing musical chairs at my behest and the T-shirt still remained brown. Realization dawned upon me like the due diligence reports of Sriram Chit Funds' balance sheet along with a rather clamorous bell chiming loudly.

I roused myself from the nightmare with the pillow sticking to my face and the doorbell conducting a gong thani aavarthanam. The peephole revealed a stooping dark figure who bore faint resemblance to Luke Skywalker seconds after he was told about his exact relationship with Princess Leia. Gingerly I opened the door to my dhobi. He dumped a bunch of dirty washed clothes on me, snorted, thrust a shrinkled finger into my solar plexus and made me swear never to call him again in his, his missus' or my life and bolted. All before you can say, "Deferred Tax".

That's how started, my search for the Ultimate Washing Method.

The ultimate washing method is an overrated sequence of events whose single main objective is three-fold

a) Clean, fresh, lavender smelling clothes
b) Minimal usage of user-generated calories and
c) I forgot the third one; something to do with Bengalis

EXPERIMENT #1:
My search took me to unexplored terrains of supermarkets, hypermarkets, capital markets, hot neighbor's kitchen, hot neighbour's hot daughter's study, drab maids, marathi training courses and public washrooms. But everything has a starting point: like equity capital. Not quite a fan of do-it-yourself, except when it comes to pulling wire over the cable TV operator's eyes, I decided to take the moral high ground. Armed with 1/2 a kilo of 1 kilo Tide detergent (courtesy:hot neighbour), a bucket (courtesy: hot neighbour's daughter) and a smarting rear (courtesy: hot neighbour's husband), I proceeded to follow the instructions given behind the packet. 


EXPERIMENT #2
#1 was destined to be a bust. To start with, I ended up washing myself up more than my clothes. Secondly, there was the Inverse Law of Soaking: The more you soak, the more it stinks and the less you soak, the dirt stays. After a lengthy discussion that I had with my mother, involving several, rather all possible allegories to the lackadaisical routine with which I was conducting myself, there resulted a few significant changes. Experiment #2 was supposed to be fail-proof, IMHOTBS certified and maa-approved.

EXPERIMENT #3
However, #2 had a major fault; entirely unrelated to the Adyar flyover and the Bandra-Worli sealink. Too much muscle movement. At that rate I would burgeon a hunchback and haunt the streets of Anna Nagar singing, "Sudsway to Heaven", "November Dirt" and "Hey, Nee Romba Azhukka Irukka". Exercising my final option, I bought a highly advanced (periodically not technologically) washing machine. Most of the buttons were Greek with occasional Latin and Tulu thrown in. I rose to the challenge and studied the wrong manual for three days. In fact, I knew every line in the wrong manual so well that I could have sold the machine to a naked aborigine without blinking. Many days later, after the discovery of my error and earfuls to customer care reps at Videocon I obtained the right manual and continued experiment #3.
To sum up the results of experiment #3: The Google-Wave effect. Too many choices spoiled the froth.

I was nearly at the end of my clothes-line. I lay on my couch, silently ruing the fate of the UWM, thwarted by my own dirt as SunTV replayed the trailer of Sherlock Holmes (Tamil). I could see my future dimming from zany, Louis Phillipe shirts to a brownish, blackish mass of sober, dark shirts that made me look like a walking coffin. 

Holmes..???!!! How could I have been so blind? The discovery was so brilliant it made Archimedes look like a streaking freak.

It was elementary dear reader. No, seriously elementary. You see it was all in that Tide detergent packet. The only problem was, it did not contain detergent.

It contained our dear, old sodium chloride. (courtesy: stupid, hot neighbour)

Mixing Peanuts and Cricket

Gulping down the insipid coffee to inoculate me against a Saturday hangover, I ran pell-mell down the apartment stairs out into dawn and jogged to the road. I tried flagging down the first auto; he refused point blank. I waited in my adidas sneakers for ten more minutes before Autorickshaw #2 acquiesced and off I was to play cricket after a really long gap of seven months.

As the rickshaw sped across the non-existent hustle and bustle of a sleepy Sunday morning on the Lokhandwala roads, early morning joggers, sleepy tea stalls and paid toilet booths flashed by. The significance did not strike me. I leaned out of the auto to get a glimpse of the glorious sun, rising across a clear blue expanse and some retarded bird shat on my clean-washed T shirt. Denigrating the process of digestion and in turn the lineage of retarded birds, I moved to a more central position inside the auto. The auto-man took double the time, triple the distance and four times the fare. Cursing, I jogged my way through tall apartment buildings that concealed a well-laid ground. And by well-laid, I mean it in all the senses possible.

But currently, it was as deserted as the premiere show for Vettaikaran. There was just one plumber/watchman who started toe-carving kolams on the earth on seeing me. Disgusted, I fished out my phone and called the organizer.

"Dude..!!". I said.
"Thood", he mumbled.
"WTF are you??" I screamed like a scorned PMS-struck teenager.
"Eh?", he said.

I realized it was futile and called the next in command. His wife answered the phone promptly. I told her that the situation was one of national importance. She understood quickly; a bit too quickly. The reasons were unclear; was it because I usually charm the pants off any middle aged woman I talk to or because she wants her spouse to get some dosage of good exercise? With no intention of stealing Tiger Woods' thunder I settled on the latter. Ten minutes more and the ground was littered with paunchy, grumpy men cursing wives, kids, marriages and for some reason, Aamir Khan.

But cricket is that sort of the game where you end up liking the game irrespective of all that aforementioned balderdash. I saw a marked increase in the players' confidence levels as they pranced and danced across the ground, literally violating what was left of her. The transition seemed so wonderful that I started believing in the true spirit of cricket. Cricket runs in our blood, cricket is everything; it can cure breakups, beat the hell out of a Chuck Norris flick on the television and create bonds so strong that chemists in Kazakhstan are still conspiring to develop a bio-weapon out of it to unleash it on Antarctica. I squinted at the sun and suddenly realized all my beliefs was just bovine excreta.

The main reason was that the apartments around had come to life with mushroomed spectators. Most of them were bored housewives whose husbands were still snoring the ceiling plaster down. Anyway, half an hour into the game the first innings was nearing its end. My stomach rumbled as I took my menacing approach of a bull on steroids to bowl the last over. I graciously gifted 17 runs in one single over. My ancestors turned in their graves as the humiliation lost me my so-sought after mojo. I could feel the audience sniggering at my plight. It had to be redeemed. I beat my belly and swore to get even. As I was walking back to the pavilion, frustrated, a vision holding a plate of peanuts and a goblet of lime juice rose. It was a benevolent-looking Maami, resplendent in a brown madisar who had come down from the apartments. I thanklessly gorged on the peanuts without thinking twice or even thrice.

Our innings began disastrously, chasing 83 runs in eight overs with 6 batsmen. Our openers got out so quickly that it looked like a trekking expedition to the pitch. After that, a decent flow of runs poured due to some exquisite stroke-play from our penultimate batsmen. There was a brief scuffle sometime during the game, when the hormonal drool content in the ground attained an all-time high; the only difference being, I have never seen punches being hindered by paunches (excluding Sam Anderson). Anyway, just when we looked like we were going to make it easily, there was a rather an unfortunate mix-up effecting a run out. Methinks, the batsmen were just running to get closer to the Maami who sat benignly, pacifying the returned batsmen who were only too pleased to be worried over. The score stood at 70 runs in seven overs. 12 was required off the last over as I went in to take strike.

My team of MBPs hoisted me and delivered swift kicks to my butt in celebration. Little did they know what they were soiling their hands with. I wrenched free from all of it, the team, the now-Chimp-scored audience and the lovely Maami (who winked while she was consoling the captain of the MHPs) and flew to the apartment gates. And then the pieces fell into place. That scheming Maami! But in her defense, it was all for the greater good(s). And yeah, she was also very pretty.

However, invariably, as luck would have it, autos after autos turned me down. I started running in the general direction of my house hoping to get a lift. And lo and behold! My apartment tower was right behind the ground! The grinning chipmunk of an auto-man, coiled in a hammock in Goa, recounting his exploits in the Mumbai underworld outsmarting rich, stupid kids with his ultra-sub machine autometer and impeccable driving skills as the bunch of loosely-clad auto-women oohed and aahed in pseudo-orgasmic pleasure; loomed in my face. My stomach burned, literally and figuratively.

I was steps away from the door when the Bhakra Nangal dam broke.

Pazhani Malai Steps

My Dad looked at me disgustedly. Random commuters looked at me disgustedly. I looked at myself, acting disgustedly. There was a noted level of apprehension that hung in the air like a squeezed fart. I was sure it was not going to happen. But my Dad is a hardcore fan of self-help books like, "You Can Win"; "I Can You Can", "Pepsi Recyclable Can" and the like.

It all started when my parents landed in Mumbai to pay me a surprise visit. I was not not totally prepared for it. There were enough empty beer and vodka bottles lying around in my house to buy a year's supply of whisky. I had just two hours notice to fumigate my house and keep it spic and span; whose meaning I have never heard of or never intended to use in the same sentence as my house/abode/den/tree. However my parents were least bothered about the state of the house. It was something else that bothered them that found us in this present situation.

The picture: Imagine a 25 tonne MCGM garbage lorry travelling at 70 kmph on the Western Express Highway. There is a small bicyclist coming in the opposite direction. There is also a small tea-shop somewhere in between the two. Now, continue imagining what happens next while I quickly explain my embarrassing situation before you have time to understand what the bloody dickens I am talking about.

My belly had grown so big that I cannot bend down and tie my shoelaces without breathing like a beaten walrus. True story. My parents, when they first saw me after almost six months, came close to throwing a public fit. For two whole days I listened to the incessant drivel on Improper Eating Habits, Not Eating Nutritious Food, Sleeping at Weird Hours etc. Beyond a point, I was so frustrated that I started watching reruns of Splitsvilla, which I would probably do only if there was a fully-grown moustache suspended somewhere around my head attached to a man wielding a hacksaw. But my parents paid little or no attention to the psychological post-teenage depression that leads to inadvertent increase in muscular fat, concentrated mostly near the intestinal region that might be partially due to enormous intake of fermented barley water ominously named after a Royal Carnivorous Avian species (quite stupidly) and partially to lack of consistent muscle displacement.

Thus started Operation Slim Down. My Dad is not necessarily a fitness freak. But he strictly believes in screwing me up. Somehow, he managed to hoodwink me into going to a mall where he suddenly started fussing about wanting a tote bag and completely changed once we entered an Adidas store. My Mom came out with the big guns and walloped a load of worry that made me feel so bad, that I allowed them pamper to me into buying a good looking pair of Adidas sneakers. They looked quite cool when I wore them. My parents were happy, I was happy, the dealer was happy and all's well that still has a lot more to go before it does not end very well.

Two days later, I came home really tired. My parents wanted to go someplace where I could relax. I could of think of only one place that I could relax but that would mean me getting signed out of my Dad's will. And they wanted me to wear my new sneakers. I was a fool of the highest order as I gave in.

Half an hour later, after winding in and out of Lokhandwala market's by-streets we finally landed near a board that said, "Fame Fitnass Center". I almost took to my heels if not for the fact that my Dad weighed a couple of hundred pounds more than me and he was taller than me by at least a foot. Mutely swearing at genetic randomness, I was iron-gripped to the reception and was made to sign up. That was that, for the time being.

And so started the regime. But there is a twist to the tale. What began as a "Amma, I have a flea in my eye. I dont think I will be able to see the question paper. Can I bunk the Half-Yearly exams altogether?" affair slowly evolved into a, "Amma, where's my multi-purpose pen pencil? If I have to score the first rank in the Half Yearly exams, I will have to underline the botanical names of animal genetalia." The second I come back from office, I used to set off for the gym slinging a bag and wearing my brand new sneakers. Credibly enough, I also used to come back drenched in sweat and perspiration. But, contrary to the old bloke, Darwin's theory, the process was quick and not long drawn out. It eventually led to the sowing of the seeds of doubt. In due course, the seeds sprouted and flowered to become a full-blown mega-whopper of a Tree of Incertitude.

Exactly two days before my parents scooted out of Bal Thackeray's province, my Dad decided to investigate. Donning a Rs:50 worth deerstalkers cap that was haggled off from Saravana stores, he shadowed me, right up to the gym. What he saw there rendered him so speechless for days, that he could have acted in Raja Harischandra without batting an eyelid.

I had to take the help of my Mom to paraphrase his feelings exactly:

Once my son reached the gym, he went into the changing room and changed into his sneakers. He then came out and waited for some time. After ten or so minutes, a pretty number walked up to him and they went together to the treadmill. My son just stood there yapping a dime a dozen, as the pretty number started jogging. This went on for almost an hour. After which, my dear son went back to the changing room, removed his sneakers and walked out of the gym. Once out of the gym, he took out his bottle and proceeded to empty its contents over himself, shaking his meager scalp like Julie Andress. And then he saw me......

I lasted four more days. My sneakers are collecting dust now, as a full-time profession.