New year resolutions for 2014

14 resolutions for 201314

Smarten up to give my smartphone some competition.

Work out ways to avoid working out ways to avoid workout.

Tag 50-odd people in every pic that I upload on Facebook starting right from New Year's eve, hoping 20 people would be forced into liking it even though the rest of them cringe and mentally ask me to buzz off.

Use an unrelated quote and a '<3' as appendage to each and every picture. A saying on dogs would go well with a selfie. And 'Pic Courtesy' is a must. It doesn't matter if the picture makes me look like an asshole.

Comment 'cute' for everything related to a girl's profile. I don't know how, but it will help me get laid.

Watch 'Sasural Simar Ka' on loop. 

(readers be like meh)

Take offence. I will break your bones because you wore pants that hurt my religious sensibilities and refused to take them off. Better still, I will vandalize the entire town and burn a few buses because they are somehow related to your pants.

Take an unprecedented interest in Football prior to the World Cup although I don't know what constitutes enough ground for a send off other than smashing a player's balls.

Take up a course in HTML from Govind Tiwari and get myself blinking.

Kill a few TV-soap script writers and pocket the entailing humanitarian award.

Stop procrastinating. Yes. We start the stopping tomorrow. 

Open a Facebook page titled 'I was alive when Dhoom 3 happened', spam everywhere, beg for and gather a few likes before posting age-old SMS jokes on sex that even Sidhu refuses to acknowledge anymore, saying 'my fart is louder than the phuljhadi that is Dhoom 3'.

Get a life. "You like Counter Stike? You are a big gay nerd these are for losers I have 6969 friends OMG WTF get a life." Okay, will give it a shot. 

Make sure one long held resolution stands the test of Poonam Pandey high resolution.

Continue writing stupid blog-posts that hardly anyone reads.

(Image courtesy)

Contentious? Wrong. It is spelled contentment.

My mother would treat me and my sister to one packet of bhel puri each on our way back home from the twice-or-thrice-a-week outing to the nearby park in Mumbai. Packet is a catachresis, because I don’t know if a word exists for the newspaper cut-outs that are rolled into things that look like a bad replacement for conical birthday-caps. Anyways. Now, as soon as I could lay my hands on that overflowing treat, trying my best not to think about the one-or-two grains of moori falling off the brim, and take my eyes off the children on the streets coveting my prize, I would try and make a mental note of whether my sister had received a greater bounty than I had. Then I would try to ensure that I ate as slowly as possible, for finishing last in this race meant that you enjoyed for a longer period of time, and that somehow gave me satisfaction. Satisfaction of what, I don’t have a clear idea. Because, even a crude estimate would tell that I had the same amount of moori as she did. Probably eating longer was confused with eating more. And in this process, all the attention would be on her packet, and I would try to make sure that I ate as slowly as possible.Then one fine day, I tripped, lost balance, and then had a hard time telling the moori from the dust around.

In life too, instead of enjoying what you have, you try to figure out what others are up to, crave for stuff that isn't yours, and that makes you sulk. Then one fine evening, you trip, and can’t tell the moori from the dust.

Brace yourself, winter has come!

Boro-Plus hasn't yet made the official declaration regarding winter. 

But the fact that rukhe-sukhe-twacha-and-phate-honth, which roughly translates into bone dry skin than turns into a blackboard when scratched, and lips that look like Indian roads, suggests that Mr Bachchan should have been chanting Pro-Boro-Plus hymns already.

It is, so as to speak, a strange period of time, especially so when you are talking about fans.

No, not the ones Salman Khan snubs, but the electric ones. 

Off or on, you need a blanket nevertheless.

Turn them off, and you find yourself perspiring under the blanket. No pun intended.

Turn them on even at the lowest possible rpm, and you’re gone for good, especially during the night when it gets nipple-hardening cold and you are cringing awkwardly while trying to avoid your own palms and under-feet because they-are freaking-ice-cold-and-you-would-rather-chop-them-off. 

Even the bed-covers get cold. Can’t think of any other time when fabric conducted heat, or the lack of it. And you find yourself powerless against nothing in particular, so you would bear the chill than switch that thing off. 

Relaxing in the caffeine-supplemented-hebetude resembling the quintessential Lord Vishnu pose, all people do is watch sitcoms and stalk people on Facebook and do nothing in particular the whole time. 

Shorter days and longer nights. You go to work/college when there is barely enough light, and come back when there is none.

Sweaters, jackets, hoodies are out and about and thankfully, nobody can make out whether you are wearing a clean t-shirt or not. (At times, one woolen garment doesn't suffice. In that sense, it's probably awesome being Anil Kapoor.) Everybody looks (sort-of) dandy. In that sense, winter is a great leveler. Same goes for beanies, they hide my dandruff. So much for hair products.

All this when winter hasn't struck us properly! It’s just the onset, and you can find people carrying out a MUL (Marginal Utility Analysis) every morning to determine the marginal utility of sleeping for some more time against getting up for breakfast or for the first class of the day. And sleep it is every time.

Okay. It's time for the second blanket to be garrisoned along with the first one. But it proved difficult last time around. The superimposition gets awry.The torso gets both, and legs get none and lie somewhere in between the two blankets, much like a thigh-cut-ensemble. Got to get this thing right.

Odisha diaries

What happens in Odisha stays in Odisha.

No, not as in Vegas. In fact, Odisha is as far removed from Vegas as Manmohan Singh is from Dolly Bindra. The thing is that media houses do not generally give a fuck about what is going on in the eastern state which is, at best, an algebra problem for most people. They just don’t know about it.

They can probably point it out on a map, and that is the best case scenario. If you attempt to collect details about the state from them, they would most likely do a Rahul Gandhi and start proclaiming that Odisha is larger than UP and Rajasthan combined.

Some have this notion that it is a part of the neighboring West Bengal owing to the linguistic similarities, or that a now-imprisoned-politician from another neighboring state once was at the helm of its affairs. True, both the states are absolute-and-perennial underdogs in matters of money and literacy, but that doesn't warrant such bullshit that both are one and the same.

24 fallacies of 24

     Watching the pilot as well as the second episode of Anil Kapoor's new TV series 24 was a refreshing change for Indian TV viewers. But, there were loads of things that were new, in the sense that such things were unheard of previously in relation to TV soaps, 24 of which are:  

    (1) You cannot have a title that short and expect the show to work. A 4-letter abbreviation is the bare minimum. Plus, there are no K's in 24. 

    (2) You cannot fit in events spanning one hour in real time into an hour long episode. Either you stretch, say, a 5 minute Saas-Bahu confrontation into an hour long saga accompanied by drum rolls, customized music and people turning their heads thrice in shock, or you try and leapfrog 7 years in a matter of one episode.

    (3) You cannot have an Indian lady in your show (Tisca Chopra) portraying a wife who is audacious enough to vent her anger to her husband.

    (4) You cannot show a hot female assassin making out with a male assassin in the washroom on board a flight before killing him. That 10 seconds long clip would qualify as porno in Indian TV. Plus, this has the eerie  undertones of female empowerment: travelling alone, choosing your partner, taking up employment opportunities (that too of an assassin) and shit.    

The Original Bihar-Ke-Lala

(This first appeared on AmreekanDesi)

I remember this guy from high school who was cheated out of an opportunity to cheat in the exams.

He had stashed micro-photocopied reproductions of the textbook inside a defunct cistern, and was biding time, trying to guess whether the time was opportune yet to rush out under the pretence of an urge to urinate and have a cursory look. But one of his classmates, Pappu, who was aware of such machinations, excused himself earlier, went to the toilet and extricated the photocopies.

(Continue reading here)

My Best Friend(s)

Friends are everywhere, just like pigeon droppings. But true friends are very rare.

And what is this concept of best friend? A best friend, inasmuch I understand, is someone with whom you are most comfortable, and who is amenable to adjustment to accommodate your eccentricities, much like underwear.

You can talk to him/her on anything, everything. Crushes, love, music, porn, poop, politics... the list goes on and on endlessly. He/she will stand with you through thick and thin. ‘High’ and low.

But is it necessary to have a single best friend? For me, for the time being, the answer is no. There are, in fact, loads of people around me with whom I share the same level of retardation. I can talk absolute crap in front of a multitude of friends, and have that bullshit appreciated, thought upon, and discussed.

Perks of being a teetotaler

I don’t wish to claim that being a teetotaler makes me a resolute person. I mean, when people all around you drink the shit out of themselves all the time, it’s pretty difficult trying not to give a fuck. In fact, resisting temptation, Cadbury or otherwise, hasn't been my forte. With alcohol, it has been more like SONY broadcasting CID, read ‘for no particular reason’.

And if someone asks me why don't I loosen up, or that one drink won't hurt, I just tell them that untying kachche ka naada while sleeping loosens me up alright. I, therefore, find alcohol redundant.

(well, obviously)

My mom used to tell me, in fact she still does, that those who don’t abstain would end up in narak. It is only now that I realize that ‘narak’ might have meant Bigg Boss.

Most of my friends indulge themselves twice or thrice a week and those of us who don’t, well, our number is falling faster than an-imagined Dolly Bindra in free fall. Nevertheless, I partake in these daru-parties, barely having any idea as to what I am doing at a place where I am not supposed to be. Sometimes, I feel more out of place than Avika Gor essaying an adult, married woman.

Saas, Bahu, and Nonsense

(This first appeared on AmreekanDesi)

Finally, I am home after what seemed to be an eternity.

Well, I do have doubts as to whether 47 days qualify as an eternity. But the burgeoning pile of untidy clothes (which warranted the purchase of a room freshener to help Set Wet’s cause) that threatened to bury me alive in my own room failed to suggest otherwise. To Mom and her washing machine then!

Nothing much has changed in these intervening 47 days save the state of my wardrobe.

Apart from the fact that onions now cost almost the same as underwear, and that the PM talked (yes he did, about the most ideal candidate to be his successor as a puppet), things have remained the same more or less, especially on the soap opera front.

These soap operas have become the raison d’etre for many news channels too that provide news feed about a popular TV actress indulging in manicure, or the latest development in a soap dealing with child marriage. Well, Syria can wait.

(Continue reading here)

The Kings of Hard Times

We, Indians, are in for hard times.

Well, by no means am I an economist. Or a philosopher, either. In fact, I am as close to being a philosopher as Viveik Oberoi is to making a sensible film. This is to say, pretty close, like a typo-free Manish Tewari. But joblessness can make you do things, like thinking.

The writing is on the wall-coloured business newspapers, which double up as notebook covers, that carry with them gory tales of bloodbath on the stock markets, of some random Government policy going wrong, and much more, that make as much sense to hostel dwellers as the mess food.

In fact, the writing has been there for quite some time now.

Much ado about pooping

The remnants of vada, kurkure, bhel, and the infamous IRCTC-approved meal from last night slithered down his large intestine. Like a snake that approaches its prey furtively and then at the very last moment strikes with such force that catches the toad unawares, the snake within him was already in position.

It was any moment now.

He was not someone who was easily bogged down. He fought with all his might, moved about the compartment in order to slacken himself, even tried to sleep in the hope of passing time.

But the damage had been done. A fart or two here and there did provide momentary respite, like a wicket or two when Dhoni is batting at the other end. That, however, hardly changes the overall scenario.

He, however, was determined. There are instances in people’s lives that make them apprehensive about doing things, like catching sight of the vendor picking his nose before serving golgappas. The solitary view that he had of the toilet in his coach while peeing last night had strengthened his resolve about not using it for ‘heavier’ purposes. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

What's in a name?

Now, it could be misconstrued. But to make it clear, I am fond of my name the way our PM is fond of his silence. Or the way CSK is proud of RP Singh.

Mallikarjuna Kalika. Yes, yes, I know it took you more than one attempt to get it right.

No, I don’t get pissed. I have seen first timers produce variants such as Mallik Arjun, or Mallik, or something as far-fetched and off the mark as the Telugu old-timer Nagarjuna.

Even when available in the written format, people generally have trouble trying to make sense of what it is supposed to sound like, the same people who proudly cry aloud ‘Schwarzenegger’ in an apparent attempt to display their contemporary outlook, but start peeing their pants when trying to articulate ‘Mallikarjuna’.

Once Upon a Local Train in Mumbai

This post first appeared on AmreekanDesi

People in the front, those standing at the very edge of the platform are virtually a fart away from death. Behind them, a crowd builds up: a motley mix of smartphone wielding persons engrossed in flinging birds at pigs. A few others loiter around with their gadgets in hand and earphones in place, ostensibly listening to music, actually trying to be flashy.

Almost invariably, everybody, irrespective of gender, resembles a newly ordained mother. The bags lie to the front of the commuters, much like the bags hassled new-moms use to carry their babies.

(Continue reading here)

Romance of galli cricket

This post first appeared on Sportskeeda.

No sooner than the clock strikes the designated hour that kids, even adolescents, start trickling in and soon the paltry area between two buildings or the open parking lot lying in abeyance becomes the center of commotion and clamor, much to the relief of kids who couldn't afford an afternoon nap despite the repeated pleas of their mothers, lest they miss out on the action.   

Dead branches and bricks serve as stumps, with a solitary piece of rock doing the needful at the bowler’s end.  Lack of enough bats means sometimes the non-striker runs for his life, er wicket, empty handed, and the batsmen are again forced to meet midway through the pitch, if one can call that strip of dust and stones a pitch, where the bat is handed over.

The batsman at the non-striker’s end also has to dispense of his duties as a makeshift umpire, and is at the center of scandalous accusations of corruption and partiality. Hell, even the players don’t add up.

Name calling takes up more time than the game itself in case of brick-stumps. Because the imagined height at which the ball floated over them is different for different players, leading to oblique reference to the non-striker cum-umpire’s lineage.

Virat Kohli vs Hashim Amla: Comparing the two ODI run machines

This first appeared on Sportskeeda.

Kohli and Amla? Too many runs and too much consistency in one sentence already.

When it comes to batting in ODI internationals, very few names crop up when it comes to matching the level of consistency that Amla and Kohli have displayed throughout their careers.

Scoring runs, prolifically at that, has become such a differentia with these batsmen that a 30-odd score is subliminally thought of as an off day for them. And if a few innings pass by without being adorned by a sizable enough score, the anticipation building around those two is palpable. And invariably, they deliver, with eerie regularity. These similarities apart, who makes for a better ODI run machine?

IPL 6: Both Mumbai Crowd and Kohli overreacted

This first appeared on Cricket Tadka

They had booed when Sachin was dismissed after crawling his way to a tardy 1 after batting for 34 long minutes. They didn’t spare Yuvraj when he did a Jonty to deny the MI a last ball victory. And now, it was Kohli’s turn.

The Mumbai crowd, a traditionally miffy one, apparently took offence when a Kohli direct hit had Rayudu scrambling for space to make it back in time to the bowler’s end. Pollard had hit the Vinay Kumar delivery to the cover region, and Kohli effected a direct hit. There was an ugly tangle involving Rayudu, and Kumar who was backing up the throw, and a grappling Rayudu failed to get his bat back in time. The collision was without a hint of doubt unintentional, as Vinay Kumar had his back towards Rayudu. Rayudu was, incidentally, yet to face a delivery.

Kohli went ahead with the appeal, and the television umpire had no hesitation in ruling Rayudu out. And this did not go down very well with the Mumbai crowd.

The dismissal was, as such, a fairly legitimate one. Kumar was in no position to be aware of the fact that he was obstructing Rayudu. But the fans were in no mood to relent, and started firing a barrage of jeers towards a cornered Kohli, and possibly even called him “cheater”.

Abraham Benjamin de Villiers – Defining the AB and D of cricket

This first appeared on Sportskeeda

The customised ‘wall of fame’ is the only raison d'être of my existence in an otherwise nondescript and dingy hostel room. Made up of carefully torn Sportstar posters that I managed to sneak in from the hostel common room, the assortment boasts of Sachin kissing the World Cup, Alonso atop his mean machine, Graeme Smith with the test championship mace et al. And in the midst of this league of extraordinary gentlemen (and a pretty lady in Azarenka holding aloft the 2013 Australian Open Trophy) stands a marauding de Villiers, ‘the man with the magic willow’.

Bursting into the international arena at a relatively tender age of 20, he has carved out a niche for himself that few others could have dreamt of. Speaking of dreaming, I remember reading an article on AB on how he dreamt of being the world’s best batsman. Nine years after he first made an appearance in SA colours, he is third in the list for test batsmen. And as far as the best one day batsman goes, the answer is shorter than ABC.

Of medals and gol gappas : The sorry story of Sita Sahu

This post first appeared on Sportskeeda

Sita Sahu, a mentally challenged teenager from Rewa, is busy nowadays helping her mother sell ‘gol gappas’ in their nondescript ghetto settlement. Well, that is nothing out of the ordinary, considering there are millions of children in our country faced with a similar bleak fate, and their state of living narrates the same old story.

What, then, prompted a leading newspaper to carry a front page article dedicated to delineating her hardships?

Well, she is a precocious talent. Representing India at the 2011 Special Olympics in Athens, she did the nation proud by bagging two bronze medals- in the 200m and 1600m. She was faced with a deluge of congratulatory messages and cash prizes. Her life seemed to have taken a turn for the better.

Sadly, the hollow promises are yet to materialize into something substantial.

Not Very Indian Premier League

This post first appeared on Cricket Tadka

The Indian Premier league presents a point of statistical interest and intrigue. The teams in the fray seem conspicuous by a general lack of Indian skippers. Out of the nine teams battling it out for glory in this season of the Indian Premier League, five are being led by foreign recruits.

The four teams that are currently being captained by Indians are the Kolkata Knight Riders (Gautam Gambhir), Chennai Super Kings (Mahendra Singh Dhoni), Rajasthan Royals (Rahul Dravid) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (Virat Kohli). And for the remaining five, three are being captained by Sri Lankans and two by Australians.

Sri Lankan presence as regards captaincy in the league is as prominent as India’s. Kumar Sangakkara has been at the helm of affairs for the Hyderabad franchise (formerly Deccan Chargers) for quite some time and Mahela Jayawardene has been appointed as the Delhi Daredevils’ captain this season. And as Michael Clarke was ruled out for this season following an injury he picked up during the Border-Gavaskar trophy, the team management zeroed in on Angelo Mathews as their new captain. That makes him the fourth captain for the Pune team in three seasons, and the third Sri Lankan captain for this year’s IPL.

Is anyone jumping at all?

What is the single most retarded piece of shit currently doing the rounds on Indian television? The question barely leaves the lips, and pat comes the obvious and unanimous reply: ‘Dil jumping jhapak jhampak jhampak, thumping thapak thampak thampak , gili gili yeah’. No, seriously. Farhan Khan (and of late her brother too) have made it a habit of theirs to openly insult our intelligence.

The promotional videos that are a part of this year’s IPL feature Farah Khan in a series of TV ads barging into unknown households and offices with her band of acolytes, followed by full-blown harassment of the occupants. The one featuring the small family of three is particularly pitiable.

She storms into their house, brandishes a cudgel, and scolds them for being just a mute spectator (‘sirf dekhneka nai’ she says) and forces them to dance to a tune that is as retarded as it gets. Really, it is so annoying that even Justice Katju might not approve of it, leave alone pardon her.

Being Ravindra Jadeja

This first appeared on Cricket Tadka

“Sir Ravindra Jadeja or Ravindrasinh Anirudhsinh Jadeja (born 6 December 1988) is a philanthropist, a Nobel Prize winner, a double Laureus sportman of the year and the nearest human to being God. Other than that he is an Indian cricketer.” Wikipedia had to lock the article on Ravindra Jadeja after it became evident that, obviously, one of the readers had a wicked sense of humour  when it came down to describing someone who is easily the most 
hated Indian cricketer as of now.

The three test old Saurashtra player, who blasted his way into the test team on the back of two triple centuries in a single season, has become an internet phenomenon of late, albeit of the sort one would not want to pride oneself on. The cyberspace and most notably the social media is inundated with parodies, jokes, memes and what not that cricket aficionados, as well as the ignoramuses, use relentlessly to express their ‘deep respect and love’ for Jadeja. Everything involving the cricketer (including his love for Audi cars, and the Hayabusa in his possession) seem to have become a matter of public interest and ridicule.