Hyderabad, biriyani, condoms and acid!

Just prior to my trip to Hyderabad for a friend’s wedding, I was talking to helpful bro #2 and he was suggesting that I eat biriyani at Paradise hotel and blog about that and other touristy stuff so that I could get more random hits on our blog. But events occurred that put all thoughts of biriyani to the back of my mind. I did end up eating the famed Paradise biriyani but a review of it became quite impossible! (Also I realised that mentioning Paradise biriyani a few more times will actually still help with the hits, so I might do that a bit.)

                        Okay, so let’s start at the beginning. My college class mate and my telugu guru (especially of the bad words) was getting married! At 22!! After getting over the initial shock and after a lot of WTFs, my friend Kay and I decided to make it to the Big day, bunking office… I also got it into my head that being friends of the groom, it was our sacred duty to provide the groom with protection for the first night, honeymoon and stuff. Coz getting married at the tender age of 22 is one thing but a kid at that age?!

So after a tiresome 14-hour bus ride where we braved a crazy storm, we arrived at the wedding hall even before the groom and braved a host of unknown relatives and a slightly scary father-in-law. Deciding that escape would be the best idea, me and Kay gave vapid reasons and entered the streets of Hyderabad and there began our quest for condoms!

                        Now Kay is this idiot who is usually all talk and no action (if you are reading this Kay, no offense. But you were really of no help with the condoms!) So the delicate task of going to a shop and asking for condoms fell onto my fragile shoulders. After I lost all my gusto when I saw a little kid near the counter at one pharmacy store, we enter pharmacy store #2. Or so I think, after trying to get the attention of the store guy who was on the phone I turn to Kay to roll my eyes at, and find that he is still outside pretending to talk to someone on the phone!! Of course all vestiges of gumption left me and I slunk away from the pharmacy. Thankfully the guy at the counter did not notice the slinking away, just like he didn’t notice me entering, talking or anything!. This is when it hits me. How truly alone we are in this sad world!

            We continue prowling the streets, when I notice this bustling super market. Light bulb hits me, super markets have condoms! I need not ask for them, all I need to do is get them to the counter and pretend not to cringe at the stares that the counter-lady gives me. We enter supermarket, frantically search for condoms, almost lose hope but then on the right lower shelf just below a row of aftershave, there were condoms! There was a variety of brands and types to choose from. I ask Kay to choose. From a distance he points to pack of Skore condoms and says those are the latest. He refuses to pick them up and put it in our cart. I do it. Get two boxes, just in case. We buy some more stuff, just to seem normal. We head to the counter. Counter lady stares but does not say a word to trying-hard-to-be-nonchalant-me. She asks for two rupees change. Since I don’t have it I turn to Kay, who is of course ten metres away and pretending that I don’t exist. He gets a bark from me and coughs up the dough and we leave. I told you he was of no help! But important thing was: I had successfully bought my first box of condoms! I think that officially transitions me from boy to MAN! I open the cover to look lovingly at the first box of condoms I bought and discover that they are blue! Okay maybe not the best wedding gift ever but most probably the most useful one our friend got that day!

                        Buying protection should seriously not be this tough, though. Open up a bit India! (Yes, yes.. I know.. That includes me and the treacherous Kay!) We should start treating sex as a normal phenomenon more! So come India, especially counter-lady-at-random-supermarket-in-Hyderabad-whom-I-will-thankfully-never-again-meet, let's decide not to judge innocent young adults who buy condoms! We should, in fact, appreciate them for being aware of safe sex and following it (or propagating it as in my case.)

 Now what has all this got anything to do with Paradise biriyani you ask? Well nothing actually. I just wanted to tell you about the time I got condoms. But there is another adventure behind that biriyani. Look out for Hyderabad, biriyani, condoms and acid – part 2!

You are truly One in a Million!

The lights are upon you… The drums are rolling… “And the winner is….” Drum roll, beat, and it’s YOU!!

Let’s face it we have all had this fantasy. Walking on stage to receive a coveted award... My favourite involves winning the Nobel prize for literature and medicine at one go. (I’m thinking of including one for peace as well… I’m getting there, really!) Many boring lectures, lengthy queues and the omnipresent power cuts have flown by with me practicing my thank you speech. (I swear, ARR somehow learnt my starting and used it for his Oscar:/ )

Now, among many other things, I also believe I am a good psychiatrist, with my favourite (and only) patient, being me! And the reason I feel that I so enjoy these little interludes and day dreams, is because they bring to fore the feeling that I’m special. Unique! Just like every damn person out there! (I also have lot of other fantasies that bring forth a lot of other stuff, but this may not be the right forum for those! God, I just realized how dirty that sounds!!) Getting back to the point at hand.. Wait even that sounds a little dirty! I might also be slightly considered to be a little bit of a pervert sometimes… It has been said of me, that I can take any sentence out of context and make it dirty! A talent I share with some close buddies. Yes, the ones who catch your eyes and laugh out first along with you… But seriously, I digress! Getting back to my distinctive and matchless personality…

Lately, I have begun realising how peculiarly normal I am as a person and how surprisingly similar my life is. It all began on the first day I was joining a project in my IT company (after an arduous yet amazingly fun training at Trivandrum). I did not know the way to the office and like every guy I shirked away from asking for the route. In Google maps, I trust! Halfway through the journey though I realized that the maps were not necessary in the slightest, my office was showing its own way!! No, we didn’t have helpful signs along the way showing us the direction to take… The signs were the people! Everywhere I went, every step of the way, there were at least four others wearing the same ID tag as me! All I needed to do was follow the crowd! So I literally just observed the people around me and made my way successfully to what was not an office, but a town by itself! It was that huge!! Maybe it was at that moment when I started realizing that I was just another IT guy. Look at my life graph till now – good-at-academics-school-student, engineering college, IT job! All that was left was: trip to the US, marriage after becoming coveted US maaplai and then coming back to India and complaining about how ‘hawt’ it is! Well I was halfway there, exactly like all those around me! I hate my job and I look for people like me and half the company stand behind. I look for aspirant writers and there is an internal community for such people with thousands of those! I look for bored-to-death-aspirant-writers, from my college, of my age, and still turn up with a good crowd!

That was when it hit me! With over one billion people in India alone, one in a million just doesn’t cut it anymore! Think about it – if you are really one in a million, that means there at least a thousand other people just like you!! (Yes yes… The math is right. I’m an engineering student!) And that’s only in India!! Think of how big the world is! We have enough people that bizarre and really rare probabilities could be realities somewhere out there… And most probably there would be three or four of those too!! No wonder there is so much crazy shit happening!

And finding your doppelganger could actually be a reality! Heck, you and I may even look the same!! All those movies where random people who look exactly the same (and like the hero), don’t seem so stupid anymore, huh? Other than the death and gravity defying stunts (and the unrealistically beautiful women and perfectly synchronized sudden street dances), all those can actually happen!!

The silver lining to this sudden loss of my ‘special’ status of course, has been that I find a lot of similar minded people. And maybe as a group we can form an identity that is unique! Also, by realizing my non-uniqueness, I’m now unique (the catch-22, strikes yet again!) If you just went – ‘I have thought that exact same thing!’; please proceed to go ahead and kill yourself! Dying at my hands, will not be easy... I will find unique ways to kill you!

God Loving And Dick Fearing Indians

                 We Indians do love bargaining and try to pay as little as we can,especially in situations where we are in position of power,against street vegetable vendors etc. who sometimes are barely surviving on the money they have,he must be cheating us,that evil evil vegetable seller ! To me it seems that we have a fictional place in our minds where the the prices are always cheaper than what the vendor tells us.You never know as he might be trying to a build a vegetable selling empire by robbing us of our 1-2 rupee.Then at a Mall we turn into millionaires,shelling out cash faster than the ATM can say enter your PIN. no second thoughts of bargaining or being cheated there because it has a brand's name on it and they don't cheat *wink*.Well,local vendors should brand their Cauliflowers etc  "exclusively from GUCCI's vegetable summer fashion line" that might help(Oh! wait do i have to pay royalty for using that name "GUCCI",hell did i use it again).

So,a few incidents (which obviously i will generalize to death) happened which made me realize that shelling out a bit of green to help someone who is doing actual work is not in our culture.We only help people, who shout God,or scare us etc and then in turn we want the God to help those in need.

While travelling from Jaipur to Delhi,it struck me that there are a few situations where wallets come out faster than the gun of a gun slinger from the wild west and a few where the wallets stick like a chewing gum in someones hair and i was lucky to experience all of them on a single journey.

In my compartment of 8,there was ,a sikh old man,I said sikh not sick,he kept muttering prayers throughout the whole journey.I imagined turning to him and saying i know you are scared but don't worry the plane won't crash and we'll be safe, as goddammit we are in a train ! A generic family,parents and 2 kids (yep the one that gets really annoying the moment you spot them in the parking lot and you just wish they don't end up on the same train) and a bunch of college students.After i was done analyzing them (new way to say, judging them) i blocked off the environment around me and started reading a book.

Out of nowhere,not exactly out of nowhere, but i was startled.A beggar appeared and screamed  "SHANI MAHARAJ",on top of his voice leaving Robert Plant singing in my headphones feeling inferior to this holy man's voice,he extended his hands out to collect money.Looking at us as if we were obligated to pay him now.Meanwhile, not long before these two magic words were about to finish coming out of his mouth, all the passengers had already reached out for their wallets in that classic move that men do, i don't want to get up, so i'll do the fart maneuver to take out the wallet,so wallets were out and everyone paid  2 Rs. and as some of us, not so God fearing human beings out there would have experienced ,he stood there waiting for me to pay up. I did not flinch.Everyone's eyes leaking with feeling of disgust as if i had no compassion towards fellow human's suffering and or for God.

Taking me on a guilt trip to pay didn't work,but foolishly enough,i started smiling.I could feel them being disgusted with every second that passed.But the smile was not because of me getting away without paying (now i am the person the first paragraph of this article defined).But because in my stupid mind, thoughts like these popped up,what if i had said in a very calm voice "Atheist in the house,bitches !" (like zooey deschanel from the series New Girl) or what if i just stood up and shouted 'SHANI MAHARAJ' .Will they just take out their wallets again.No i suppose ! .So this has nothing to do with SHANI(God),or not so to being poor too and i didn't like half-hearted efforts by him and the false advertising that it is in the name of God.So no paying up the these extra charges that Indian Railways encourages.

I wondered,is it the guilt of all the evils that they have done relative to their holy teachings.So they try to wash them away in 2 Rs. by powers of SHANI MAHARAJ vested in the beggar or by taking a dip in Ganga once in every few years.The Indian way of starting with a clean slate of sins or is it compassion.And why does it goes away in situations where it is actually needed.

While all that was going through my head, a eunuch(shemale/transsexual) came in and i reckon that it was a scam between "SHANI MAHARAJ" and him/her to make every one pay.( i don't know the politically/grammatically correct way to address them) .So,he/she singles me out  "Ey ! Chikne Tere Bache Sukhi Rahenge,Tera Parivaar Khush Rahega" (Ey!Clean Shaved,your kids will be blessed,your family will be blessed) the people looked at me bit satisfied,but this time around a bit deterrent to pay and avoiding eye contact. Then it happened, the event every Indian Railways traveler should experience once in his/her life. (Let's name the shemale ,Mohan) Mohan threatened me to pull up his saree and show me his dick ! (Yeah let that sink in) If i don't pay him then and there.Although i'm no stranger to a dick but to a stranger's dick ,YES ! and considering the height that we sit at in the trains,the show of dick flailing ,would have been precisely at the height where my face happens to be.Seeing this my terrified wallet came flying out to the rescue,trembling and slipped out a 10 to Mohan,thanks to my wallet's quick thinking,a life long trauma was averted.

The two incidents made me think why do we pay,is it the love of God,need of blessing or just the Fear of Dick (the latter did it for me).

After a while,I see a kid with a broom and a big plastic bag filled with garbage,cleaning the aisles first and then standing with his hands out for a brief moment in every compartment for the hand outs.But he was so fast to retract his hand and move on to next,as if he knew that nobody is paying attention. How degrading it is to not look in the eye of a person while he stands with his hands out is impossible for me to even imagine.He moved to the next and repeated the same and none of them payed.So think about it he did actual work that the railway staff fails to do on a regular basis and no one paid him,I thought i wish i could give him a sound business advice that don't work ! Just say "SHANI MAHARAJ" and they'll pay you as these fools love God and fear the dick.Although i think i saw three of them standing together later.

(After thought: does that capital g rule in English to address God applies to me or not)

New Beginnings

Beginnings are always considered very auspicious. It is said that a thing well begun is a job half-done… It is also said that all’s well that ends well. So one really can’t decide based on proverbs! When you really think about it, proverbs may have been the Old World’s answer to punch dialogues... There is one for almost every situation and there is no real good come-back – unless it’s another proverb! It’s nice to imagine a sort of cave-man Rajinikanth spouting proverbs, right? So, let’s keep it that way!

 Now coming back to beginnings! Beginnings signal hope. They are filled with the things that can be, heights that can scaled (& the light in our eyes say ‘we will’), goals that can be reached and surpassed... Beginnings are about dreams (the good part, before DiCaprio takes over!) This is why we place such importance to beginnings. We wish each other luck. We pray fervently for success. We celebrate the anniversary of a beginning (mostly these are just called birthdays), and form a new beginning then and there… Each New Year we resolutely begin resolutions and promptly forget them until the next one. Yes, we like our beginnings... More importantly we like celebrating our beginnings! Any situation in our lives that changes us ever so slightly, can be (and unfortunately, often is) considered a beginning. We humans are addicted to a drug we call hope- not all addictions are bad of course - but do we tend to gravitate more on defining and celebrating beginnings than in the actual process itself?

I remember clearly, when I was young and my Dad bought our house a vacuum cleaner. During the initial days, me and my brothers (I have two elder brothers. So yes, I was trained for the battle of life!) used to fight over who gets to clean the house and use the coveted vacuum cleaner. We ran it almost thrice a day and everyday we used all the possible accessories that came with it (especially the water-spraying one! God, those were good times!) Anyway, as you can probably guess, after about a month or so, the vacuum cleaner lay forgotten. I would like to say that I was the one who persisted the most, but my memory fails me there. It became an occasional thing to use the vacuum. Our ever-fickle minds moved on to the next thing. At the age that we were, that may have anything from the neigbour’s new car to the new blue tennis ball that we bought! But this little anecdote is to drive the point that the beginning here was basically pointless. Which brings me to the point that I have been trying to make – what should be considered a beginning?

Very often when we look at things from a distant sort of perspective, our idea of the thing itself changes. This maybe true with beginnings too! We may think something began at some point of time but when we think back to the thing it may really seem like it began a long time ago. I know that sounded totally Zen (I can get that way sometimes:P), so let me explain with an example. Uncle Ted decides to tell his kids the story of how he met their mother. He thinks of starting with the actual moment he met her, but then he starts thinking about the events that led up to that moment. So he decides to unravel back. He unravels till he reaches another important moment. That was the beginning he thinks... But wait, how did that moment come to pass? So he unravels a bit more and eight seasons of a hit TV show are done and yeah we still have little/no clue about the mom! Now I wouldn’t really advice you to follow Ted as a role-model. (If you have to choose a role-model from HIMYM, please, choose Barney. He is legen-wait-for-it-dary, right!!) But if you really did follow Ted’s line of thinking, you would keep going until the big bang (whose theory of course, is another hit series). And that is just how far science goes. Depending upon your religious views and your notions of human society, the true beginning that you think of may vary, like crazy! 

                             
So yes, you see my point. You have laughed across the way. So now, dear reader, we come to what is another staggeringly important part - the conclusion. (All’s well that ends well, right!). My conclusion is that we really need to start celebrating the middle a bit more. Doesn’t it make infinitely more sense to celebrate when you don’t have a reason to? For starters, it gives you a reason to! So, here’s to a new beginning celebrating the middle! Amen to life:)