I am tired of the cwap people adorn their Orkut profile names and status messages with. One I recently read reads – Life is a virtue. Earn it. It is all the more irritating when people who have such profile names scrap you on Orkut. The email notification in your inbox in such cases reads ‘WHO LET THE DOGS OUT has sent you a scrap’ or ‘BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMZ has thrown a Huckleberry Fig at you.’
The next half an hour is spent in identifying the owner of the dogs and calling up a dream analyst. Now this is another wild goose chase because where I expect to see the face of the person who scrapped me, I see the picture of a semi-nude John Abraham or a depressing image of a blade inserted into the tongue. So much for the warnings Orkut gives you before you upload pictures. It’s proven. No one really reads the T&C while signing up.
(Oh and among my other friends are R. Madhavan, Eisha Koppikar, Raj Thackeray, Anil Ambani, Rani Mukherjee, Brett Lee, poster babies, the Khan khaandaan, the Bachchan family including the downloaded Tulu codec and Baba Ramdev. Don’t believe me? Take a look at my friends’ list.)
I admit that I don’t know the exact purpose of status messages. The ideal purpose would be to put in something that you think is amusing out in everybody’s face so they could have a chuckle. But I am sure about one thing and that is that using the status message space to put up stuff like – ‘Enjoy life today yesterday is gone, Tomorrow may never come’ is a heinous crime. People doing this must be sentenced to three months in jail and/or fined with three thousand rupees or at least tattooed with such a warning.
Another punishable offence reads – ‘Life is an ice-cream, enjoy it before it melts.’ Someone else’s status message tells me he is ‘enjoying the nuances of life’. The same someone was yelling “Life is a play and I am an extra” last week. When will life cease to be such a STMC (Shit Status Message Creator)? Life this, life that. It’s either life or the other extreme.
‘Till death do us apart’ has asked you to kindly fill in your personal details including credit car number and DOB so she could buy you a birthday gift using your own money!
‘Death is a calamity’. Dude. *Looks for the number of the local asylum*
‘Death is a catastrophe’. Ya, you go with that guy. *Points at calamity*
‘I’ll die in my love for you’ You sure will, especially if you say that to more girls.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Bag(h)ban
People who travel in trains have a platonic relationship with their bags. There are people who love their bags a little more than their spouse.
This species gets into the train, hands you the bag and waits till “the guy in the ugly black t-shirt” has kept my bag safely on the shelf.” It is this species that asks for the bag to be placed on his lap, when he sits, so he could take ample care of it himself.
This species has a strain of creatures that are a bit superior to it. These creatures keep the bag with them, come what may. “Darling, take your most precious thing and rush out! It’s an earthquake!” *rumble rumble* *CRASH* “Well, well, let’s see, I got my bag. Honey, the kids are with you right?” Get the drift? Somehow, I think I fit into this species. I like to keep my bag to myself.
Then there are those with an obsessive-compulsive disorderly behaviour. They prefer their bag to slant at an angle of 67.85 degrees- nothing less or more. These people often ask others to maintain the perfect tilt of their bag or give up their seat so they could do it themselves with a pocket protractor.
There are a few others, who would rather leave their bags in the train and tell their wives how the Al Qaeda stole it during a mock hold up session at the office. This tribe of people likes to stand 50 feet away from the luggage rack and throw their bag making sure that it hits the guy in the window seat and gives him a spondilytis of the neck. One would think it is an accident, considering the profuse way he apologises after the fiasco, every time. But the number of times I have been witness to this game of basket-bag tells me that this is the kind of story he would tell his grandchildren. “…and then I aimed the javelin at the lion and broke his neck!”
Some people are strict parents, even to their bags. Wherever they go, their bags need to follow them. They let their bag rest on the first empty spot in sight. Then the guy thinks, “There’s another spot there. May be my bag’s future will be more secure if I put it there.” The bag is moved from here to there. But then the guy has to get down soon and the previous spot was closer to the door. So the bag is moved back to the previous spot.
So which one of these is you?
People who travel in trains have a platonic relationship with their bags. There are people who love their bags a little more than their spouse.
This species gets into the train, hands you the bag and waits till “the guy in the ugly black t-shirt” has kept my bag safely on the shelf.” It is this species that asks for the bag to be placed on his lap, when he sits, so he could take ample care of it himself.
This species has a strain of creatures that are a bit superior to it. These creatures keep the bag with them, come what may. “Darling, take your most precious thing and rush out! It’s an earthquake!” *rumble rumble* *CRASH* “Well, well, let’s see, I got my bag. Honey, the kids are with you right?” Get the drift? Somehow, I think I fit into this species. I like to keep my bag to myself.
Then there are those with an obsessive-compulsive disorderly behaviour. They prefer their bag to slant at an angle of 67.85 degrees- nothing less or more. These people often ask others to maintain the perfect tilt of their bag or give up their seat so they could do it themselves with a pocket protractor.
There are a few others, who would rather leave their bags in the train and tell their wives how the Al Qaeda stole it during a mock hold up session at the office. This tribe of people likes to stand 50 feet away from the luggage rack and throw their bag making sure that it hits the guy in the window seat and gives him a spondilytis of the neck. One would think it is an accident, considering the profuse way he apologises after the fiasco, every time. But the number of times I have been witness to this game of basket-bag tells me that this is the kind of story he would tell his grandchildren. “…and then I aimed the javelin at the lion and broke his neck!”
Some people are strict parents, even to their bags. Wherever they go, their bags need to follow them. They let their bag rest on the first empty spot in sight. Then the guy thinks, “There’s another spot there. May be my bag’s future will be more secure if I put it there.” The bag is moved from here to there. But then the guy has to get down soon and the previous spot was closer to the door. So the bag is moved back to the previous spot.
So which one of these is you?
Saturday, February 07, 2009
A supernatural drama in the building
I won’t claim to have seen all possible events that are disturbing for mankind but I think I considered myself a little stronger than most when it came to feathers of the supernatural kind. The idea could have been ‘seeing is believing.’ Have I been a witness to an incident of the supernatural kind recently?
I don’t know. I have been witness to a disturbing incident but would ponder over it for a long time to come before I would term it ‘from outside the world’ or otherwise.
A young neighbour’s wife eight months knocked up has been trying to run away from home at odd times – in the middle of the night, in the dead of the afternoon and so on. Her husband and her father in law tried to restrain her but she objected with such frenzy that according to me, an average human is incapable of. She pulled herself and her two supporters down the set of stairs screaming her lungs out, flailing her arms, kicking her feet back and forth, hitting her engorged tummy with her hands and banging herself on the walls. She managed to get her mouth bleeding somehow- whether she bit herself or if it was the result of some impact on the walls, is still unknown.
Somehow she was pinned down on the floor in the middle of the staircase. ‘Holy water’ from a durgah was brought (they had a stock of it at home) and poured into her mouth and sprinkled over her head. The frenzy ceased. I put it off as rehydration, she was possibly thirsty from all the effort she had put into screaming. But her arms and feet were still alive and kicking, literally.
Incidentally, a family on the floor where this person now lay believe in the miraculous powers of the Son of God. They swiftly brought out the Hindi translation of the Holy Bible and placed it gently under the moaner’s head. Surprise, she was quiet but still moaned and muttered.
Considering that she was now fine, her relatives tried to pull her back to her feet but the power was back again. They let her lie there making way for people to pass by over her legs.
The head of the believing family meanwhile propounded the theory that this phenomenon was nothing but ‘hawa’. The ‘patient’ had recently got back from her native village and surely might have gone to a nearby water body where the ‘evil hawa’ had gotten into her. (It seems, it’s inadvisable for pregnant women to venture anywhere near water bodies even when remotely pregnant.) And according to him, the only way to field this hawa was to call ‘Uncle and Aunty’.
I wondered if this pair was Bunty & Bubli. Uncle and Aunty soon arrived. Uncle looked like a darker version of Alan Tudyk and Aunty looked like the caretaker of a rural church in Kerala. Everyone stood up in reverence of the holy couple. They themselves stood looking at the patient, probably trying to judge her symptoms. They let out a disclaimer that they have been doing this for the past 10-12 years and that they only pray for the interference of the Son into matters of evil activities.
Uncle and Aunty soon began to call upon their deities with such fervor that I couldn’t help but record a part of it. The patient who by had found some peace lying on a mat in the believer’s flat, suddenly found it impossible to lie in such noisy surroundings and sprang up. Everyone gasped. The evil spirit is trying to get out because of the power of the prayers! A few curses and spits later, the patient lay down again to be fed a little more of the water- this time from some other place.
She slept again, giving in to exhaustion (or exorcism as many others would like to believe). Now it was time to talk about why the Son of God was more powerful than the others and how he had miraculous powers. The others in the room were requested not to feel offended, for Aunty was talking from experience. They asked the patient to be brought to their place the next day, where a powerful pastor was coming to preach and assured that he would surely relieve the patient of all her qualms.
What brought relief to the half dozen people in the small flat was that the patient was now responding to whoever talked to her instead of the curdling swears and gibberish that she spewed earlier.
What is wrong with her? I don’t know. What I gather is that she is a patient suffering of severe depression and might also be delusional. She has attempted suicide a few times including one recently when her family found her on top of the building’s water tank considering a leap a 100 feet downwards. I also understand that things like this happen to people when being pregnant.
Why am I writing this? I seem to think this will help me get rid of the habit of re-enacting the violent scenes in my head. I don’t know what to make of this. I don’t know yet if prayers help achieve anything. I don’t know…
I won’t claim to have seen all possible events that are disturbing for mankind but I think I considered myself a little stronger than most when it came to feathers of the supernatural kind. The idea could have been ‘seeing is believing.’ Have I been a witness to an incident of the supernatural kind recently?
I don’t know. I have been witness to a disturbing incident but would ponder over it for a long time to come before I would term it ‘from outside the world’ or otherwise.
A young neighbour’s wife eight months knocked up has been trying to run away from home at odd times – in the middle of the night, in the dead of the afternoon and so on. Her husband and her father in law tried to restrain her but she objected with such frenzy that according to me, an average human is incapable of. She pulled herself and her two supporters down the set of stairs screaming her lungs out, flailing her arms, kicking her feet back and forth, hitting her engorged tummy with her hands and banging herself on the walls. She managed to get her mouth bleeding somehow- whether she bit herself or if it was the result of some impact on the walls, is still unknown.
Somehow she was pinned down on the floor in the middle of the staircase. ‘Holy water’ from a durgah was brought (they had a stock of it at home) and poured into her mouth and sprinkled over her head. The frenzy ceased. I put it off as rehydration, she was possibly thirsty from all the effort she had put into screaming. But her arms and feet were still alive and kicking, literally.
Incidentally, a family on the floor where this person now lay believe in the miraculous powers of the Son of God. They swiftly brought out the Hindi translation of the Holy Bible and placed it gently under the moaner’s head. Surprise, she was quiet but still moaned and muttered.
Considering that she was now fine, her relatives tried to pull her back to her feet but the power was back again. They let her lie there making way for people to pass by over her legs.
The head of the believing family meanwhile propounded the theory that this phenomenon was nothing but ‘hawa’. The ‘patient’ had recently got back from her native village and surely might have gone to a nearby water body where the ‘evil hawa’ had gotten into her. (It seems, it’s inadvisable for pregnant women to venture anywhere near water bodies even when remotely pregnant.) And according to him, the only way to field this hawa was to call ‘Uncle and Aunty’.
I wondered if this pair was Bunty & Bubli. Uncle and Aunty soon arrived. Uncle looked like a darker version of Alan Tudyk and Aunty looked like the caretaker of a rural church in Kerala. Everyone stood up in reverence of the holy couple. They themselves stood looking at the patient, probably trying to judge her symptoms. They let out a disclaimer that they have been doing this for the past 10-12 years and that they only pray for the interference of the Son into matters of evil activities.
Uncle and Aunty soon began to call upon their deities with such fervor that I couldn’t help but record a part of it. The patient who by had found some peace lying on a mat in the believer’s flat, suddenly found it impossible to lie in such noisy surroundings and sprang up. Everyone gasped. The evil spirit is trying to get out because of the power of the prayers! A few curses and spits later, the patient lay down again to be fed a little more of the water- this time from some other place.
She slept again, giving in to exhaustion (or exorcism as many others would like to believe). Now it was time to talk about why the Son of God was more powerful than the others and how he had miraculous powers. The others in the room were requested not to feel offended, for Aunty was talking from experience. They asked the patient to be brought to their place the next day, where a powerful pastor was coming to preach and assured that he would surely relieve the patient of all her qualms.
What brought relief to the half dozen people in the small flat was that the patient was now responding to whoever talked to her instead of the curdling swears and gibberish that she spewed earlier.
What is wrong with her? I don’t know. What I gather is that she is a patient suffering of severe depression and might also be delusional. She has attempted suicide a few times including one recently when her family found her on top of the building’s water tank considering a leap a 100 feet downwards. I also understand that things like this happen to people when being pregnant.
Why am I writing this? I seem to think this will help me get rid of the habit of re-enacting the violent scenes in my head. I don’t know what to make of this. I don’t know yet if prayers help achieve anything. I don’t know…
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