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.

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)

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.

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)