City Slickers

I love cars. Of the few things I love, I hold four wheelers the dearest. Maybe after my parents. and... maybe my sister. Goodness, now I sound like a pussy. But yeah, I bloody love cars. Mind you, I'm skipping out on the lady I'm wooing, because honestly, I don't want to jump to conclusions. Whatever that means. 

But here's the deal about cars. I don't love all of them. In fact, I hate a few of them. Two of them, in fact. One is the Maruti Swift Dzire. The second car I've come to hate is the Honda City. My hatred isn't baseless though. 

Starting with the Dzire. I hate it for its ghastly name. It's grammatically incorrect. So are another dozen car names, you'd say. And I wouldn't give a rats arse. My question is "What's so desirous about the Dzire?" Chaps who drive the car don't like being seen in a hatchback. And they are living in the false premise that their car is a sedan. Sorry sir, it isn't. And yes, the Swift is a beautiful looking car. Why destroy something which looks good, and turn it into crap? More importantly, why are all Dzire drivers, I mean "All Dzire Drivers" so bad at driving? Hey! I'm not a great driver myself. I say that because I have seen good driving. But I know when I have a bad driver hovering around me on the streets. These godawful creatures, in their hatchback-grafted-with-a-boot go helter-skelter in the middle of the highway. The change lanes like it's their life's motto to make the life of other drivers hell. And goodness, don't they have a spine! You feel bad for these people because they can't buy a proper sedan? Damn, what are you? A social worker? Get a job or something. 

Coming to the Honda City. The car is simply legendary. Sorry, the name is. The car is just a vestige of it's predecessor. Here is a car that went from being a rockstar, to a bigger rockstar, to a mouse, to a bigger mouse, then to a good car, and finally to something that people want to buy because the first car was so fucking awesome. It does everything fine, looks decently 'contemporary', looks good inside, drives fine on the road, and comes fairly priced. Sounds like a good car, right? For most, it does. In fact, it sounds too right. I'd say obnoxiously clinical. Sanitized. And boy do the chaps at Honda showrooms feel over-confident about their car's sales. Arrogant bastards. 

The City feels so squeaky clean that it makes you doubt yourself. It ticks the right boxes, and yet, there's something that's amiss. And you can never say what. Unless of course you were won by some other car you drove before or after driving the City. In my case, it was the Ford Ecosport. 

Crazy shit. That's what I describe the Ford Ecosport as. No, it isn't a mad car. It's a good car. A very good car. It's a hoot to drive. It feels like an extension of yourself. And the best bit? It's got flaws. The exposed railings of the front seats, the bad plastic, to name some. But sit behind the wheel, and let the foot do the talking. You shall sit with a smile on your face for as long as you can remember. Specially the diesel car. Cross 1600 rpm on the rev-counter, and the awkward little car shoots ahead like it's nobody's business. And you definitely don't want to stop it from doing what it is doing. The gears feel smooth. You feel fully in control. To the point that you thank Henry Ford for giving Ford to the world. Yes, there are downsides to the car. It looks a bit awkward. A little too trendy. But that's not an issue if you don't give a shit about what onlookers think about your ride. Interiors don't feel worth the ten-plus lakh that you shell out for the car. And yes, even otherwise, it feels pricier than it should be. After all, it measures less than four metres. Where has all the government-exemption for small cars gone on this one? However, all of this gives the car some character. The buyer's dilemma, the fun-filled drives, the not-so-heartening fuel-bills. Yada-yada-yada. In the end you say, Fun thing though. 

Most people will still buy the City because it makes more sense. Where the City is a well-thought out purchase, the Ford? Well, that's a car with a heart. 

On Stupidity

Stephen King wrote "On Writing". Sigmund Freud wrote "On Dreams". Richard Hammond wrote "On the road", "On the edge", and "Is that Just me". The last one is what I keep asking everyone. Meh, moving on. Virgia Woolfe wrote "On being ill". I wonder why though. So I had to figure out what I could write about. After a lot of contemplation, I came up with this post's title.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. Wow! This one phrase perhaps made "being foolish" cool. Especially after Steve Jobs's Stanford commencement speech. Because before that speech, people wanted to become engineers, scientists, astronauts and what not. Now, any half-wit who's seen the speech goes like "Let's be foolish!" It's like an Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy cartoon. Everyone's on acid.

But there's a close cousin to Foolish. It's called 'Stupid'. Foolish is oftentimes aloof about stuff. So is stupid. But you know foolish from stupid by this.

This is stupid.

And stupid is what you realize just moments after shit has hit the roof. That's again if you have half a brain, of course. Stupidity otherwise goes unnoticed. It's like wearing those long, draggy, kingly robes which randomly caught fire, and no body noticed. Until the king died.

You know what's troubling here? If there were a test for stupidity, I'd ace it. Straight A, sure shot. What's more troubling is this. I'm afraid my parents will be happy that I at least scored an A in one subject.
Oh yes! A bit about shit here. There are two phrases.

1- Shit hits the roof/ceiling.

2- Shit hits the fan.

Do you notice that the chap who conceived the second phrase must have had a much more vivid imaginations? Or is it just me? I mean, just imagine how the dynamics of the entire scene changes with the mere addition of a fan! 

My way, the highway

The title sounds like a cliche, doesn't it? Even I think so. Sadly, my creativity's short-selling me today. Besides, how do you tell someone that you drove over a very long distance, on a highway of course. Yup! It sounds lame.

You can't technically be in my line of work if you can't drive properly. Driving people crazy doesn't count. I wish it did. Then I could ask for a very dramatic hike in pay. The sort of pay-hike that you cannot imagine. But yes, I'm not a very good driver. And I'm probably the first man to admit that.

My dad's good behind the wheel. Good enough to put 99% of Indian drivers to shame. Not that he can do mind-boggling stunts in a car. Maybe he can. I don't know his wild side, which kind of sucks. You don't really know your parents, do you? They have lived a good 2-3 decades before you could even take a shit in the world. A topic for another blog post, perhaps.

Yeah, my ace driver dad lets me trot around in the car. Nowadays, a little more, thanks to my job description. So today morning, he handed me the keys and told me... "Let's go for a long fucking drive, kid!"
Okay, he didn't say that. He did not use the word "Fucking", and he wasn't exactly enthusiastic about  I being at the helm of affairs for a distance of over 150 kilometers, that between Bombay and Pune. Especially since he'd be sitting in the passenger seat. I half-chuckled to myself, and half-shat in my pants. Whatever else was left of me said "Let's do this shit!" Mathematically, that can't even happen, you know?

So off we were. My mom sitting in the back seat, my dad by my side, and I commandeering the er... vessel. Let's not get overtly dramatic. My mom has blood pressure issues. My dad is the don't-angry-me-types. I seemingly have issues too. I told this girl I'm wooing that she looks sexy. And that's what she said.

"You have issues. :p"

Devastated! You never know what to tell women. I mean, I don't.
Back to driving. I went about doing hand-brake turns, driving my dad bat-shit crazy, the car close to the edge of the road, and my mom to the prayer room. Only that I didn't do the first bit about the handbrake turns.
The city was fine, the highways were cool. Overtaking felt better than well, a lot of things, to subtly put it. My dad turned on the music. Indian songs, I tell you. The first thing, actually the only thing they do is put your romantic interest right in front of your face. That's a good thing. Mine's got good boobs. If this female I'm talking about reads this, here's what I'm going to get in true-blue 1960s Batman style....


Where was I? Oh yes, Hindi songs. Bad idea when you're driving. Another bad idea for songs in the car are ghazals. They put you to sleep. Agreed they are lyrically very intellectual to listen to. But that sort of stuff is best kept for times when you want to go to sleep. Because that's what ghazals do. They put you to sleep.
On a second thought, Adam West, the 1960s Batman had puny arms. No?
I crossed the city, I crossed the long straights, and came to the bloody ghats. Then, I STALLED! Thrice. Devastation. Again. Well, not exactly. My dad took over for the next 20 kilometers. Even he stalled once. Phew!

In those 20 kilometers, I sat behind, thinking. Thinking about all the cars that went past me. Damn! We are living in the past! As in, humans made the internal combustion engine over a hundred years ago, the stuff that powers cars. Cars are a ruddy old concept. And fundamentally, the car hasn't changed one bit. Yes, we can plug our phones into our cars. We can make them go bloody fast. But save for the pure-electric ones, all our cars are still four-wheeled contraptions that rely on a constant set of explosions under the bonnet to move us from point A to point B. Literally no change in technology. Don't even bother arguing that we have made the engine more efficient.
Here's what I think. We stay as we are because of our unwillingness to change. This is as true for cars as is for humans. Big car makers can possibly influence how a country runs, merely with their clout. Not just car makers. Take 10 brands you use in a day. Most of them can be traced back to 2-3 conglomerates.
Here's the deal. The bigger you get, the more sluggish and stagnant you become. And so, if we are looking to develop, bigger is not necessarily better. It's the small places that hold the secret to the future. The big guys just clog the arteries and leave you to die.

With that thought, my dad's 20 kilometer stretch came to an end. If it hadn't, I'd have been tripping balls. But then again, you either trip balls, or don't trip at all. And now, reports from the driver seat!

I was back on the straights! And I fucking floored it. Till I got to 120kph, that is. My dad's a little apprehensive about high-speeds. No problem. His car, his apprehensions. So, I kept things south of 120. And he remained happy. And I drove all the way home. Brilliant. *Ting*

Enjoyable drive. Cute female in my head. Weird ideas about the future. Cute female in my head.  Sexy Santa, would you be my girlfriend?

What if?

It was late in the evening by the time I got out of work. It's been this way for a while, but stepping out of the office felt like I was inside for eternity. I strolled out of the building's compound, wondering about a myraid of things, all of which felt indecipherable.

I looked to the right, then to the left, and then again to the right. Road crossing, you know. Road crossing in India. You never know the side from which a monster-truck shall come at you and smash itself to smithereens against your palms. Anyway, I crossed the road. Well, almost.

I could see her, I thought. 8.45 in the evening, and she was loitering near my office. With a guy. I blinked four thousand times, just to make sure that what I was seeing was what I was seeing. She had her back to me. I wouldn't describe this woman that I was so shocked to see. Too many snooping wolves around. And I feel a little vulnerable at times. Bollocks!

This woman, the one I think about a lot, wouldn't come across as striking at first. Thankfully. But there's something very endearing about her. It's probably the way she moves. No jerks. Everything feels fluid. The way she keeps fixing her hair, her nervous ticks. Even the glances she clandestinely throws. Maybe I'm imagining the last bit. Maybe I'm not. And her derriere! Poof!!

Such thoughts are unhealthy when crossing the road, I'm sure you realise that. And then, I saw her with this chap. For a moment, I was shattered. Yeah, shattered. That's something I've picked up from my workplace. Anything good that happens, is shattering. Someone gets beaten up? Shattering. Someone about to get beaten up.... Shattering. Someone went and took a shit yesterday..... Shat-tering. Well, literally. Can't you just sock these chaps right in the cunt?

Moving on. I couldn't grasp what I was seeing. And I still hadn't reached the other side of the road. Damn slow-motion! I mean, the open hair looked right, the  tapering waist was nearly there, the hind-side and thighs looked the same, okay, a bit smaller than usual(I wondered why). But the face remained hidden, for some goodness forsaken reason. The lady has a spring and a healthy pace to her walk. The one I saw across the road, I couldn't see her walk. My head said yes. My madly thumping ticker said NO. The head then raised an ugly question.

"What if?" The mind's a bastard.

Bloody hell, it felt like a dream, where you never get to see what's on the other side of the wall, no matter how much you peer over.

For a moment, maybe for a quanta, I thought to myself.... "Does the chap at least look okay?" I of course dispelled the thought the very moment it struck me. I mean how?

Then, IDEA! I just walked faster to get ahead of the woman, just to see her face.  I was so sure it was her. Rarely do I not recognize people with a mere cursory glance. Anxious few moments passed. I got ahead of her, looked for the familiar face. It wasn't her. My anxiety quelled.

Honestly, after seeing that the lady in front was not her, I suddenly had the energy to go through the entire day another four times without batting an eyelid. I feel bonkers at times. For a lot of things. I don't know why she smiled when I told her that I felt bonkers every time I saw her. Should I have told her that? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows.

Hag diya- Week 1

For my Hindi-averse friends, "Hag diya", it's a phrase that means botching shit up when everything is laid out to you on a platter. The word "Hag"(Pronounced HUG) means shit, and "diya" means 'to give' per se. In this context, the phrase translates to 'taking a shit' where you usually aren't supposed to. I still don't understand why taking a shit is so looked down upon culturally. What were people thinking? To live  perpetually constipated?

I must say that I feel I've had more than my fair shots at botching shit up, especially when it comes to dealing with ladies. My sister says that you're supposed to make attempts to know the woman you're wooing. I fall asleep by the time she reaches the word 'attempt'. Leaving the usual lady-talks aside, there's another thing I've managed to botch up... WRITING. Here I was, thinking that writing is about stringing words together that make sense when read in a sequence. It's not that I'm wrong, because you see, no one is ever wrong, at least not admittedly. But writing is a lot more than that, as I've come to know in the last few months. 

In writing, there's supposed to be thing like structure, flow and that sort of nonsense. All this to make sense to a bunch of people who just look at the fancy picture atop your 400000-word piece of crafty-wafty verbosity. I've seen the chaps who go through magazines. They blankly ogle some half, or completely nude female that they can find, and then, simply flip the page. However, there is a small gang who read the bollocks that you've tirelessly written. And oh my word! How it is worth watching someone read your sweat and blood! It is in beguiling times like this that you wonder to yourself, "Damn! I get paid to write. I must be onto something."

I mean, I still can't get the sweet girl to come out for a movie, but blimey! The pleasure of seeing someone buying a piece of your hard work is otherworldly. I almost cried when I saw four people on my flight clutching onto the magazine I write in. 

Talking about flights, I've never had much luck with flight seats. No good looking female has ever greeted her derriere to the seat next to me. To the extent that if there actually is a good looking lady on my flight, she'll be sitting at the further most corner of the cabin from where I sit. Either that, or she'll park her bums next to this chap who can really chat up his women. Sucks. I on the other hand am not the biggest fan of the window seat. The sight through the smaller-than-my-head window may sometimes be worth dying for. But by the time such a view comes by, I must have already died of claustrophobia. That's because I usually get a seat next to obnoxiously fat men who either snore, or fight with me for elbow space all throughout the flight. Sometimes, just for fun, I wonder how these poor lives got so rolly-polly. Do they just eat their while away, or do the countless parties they attend, a 'proof' of all their hard-work, just pile onto their front and sides till the point they can see their pricks no more? Take care of yourselves, my fat uncle-buddies!

Oh crap! This isn't an advisory forum, of course. Especially not after proclaiming to my dwindling readership that I'm a professional botcher of well, everything. So what do we talk about next? How about a ride in a rickshaw? It's a fun-little three-wheeler, and no-one knows why it exists. It pollutes the heavens out of any place, and is not allowed in the best parts of my city, Mumbai. Yeah, I plan to rule the place in some time, hence 'My City'. Coming back to auto-rickshaws, these machines are to mobility what Quartz watches were to the wind-me type watches of the past. Just enough automation to have the word 'auto' prefixed to them. Here too, lady-luck has evaded me so far. If big lads were a problem in flights, it's big ladies who squish me in rickshaws. It's like this.... 

I sit in side this three-wheeler, which is ideally suited for four people, including the driver. But carefully notice. On an average, there are 24 people sitting inside a rickshaw at any given point. You see, it's the result mindset of the lower, middle, and even upper middle-class of our country to get as much as possible by spending the least amount required. And in the process, four ladies get into the vehicle with three children each, and I'm told to sit in front with the driver. Ha ha. Not funny.

In case the kid's are playing at home, and the ladies are on their day out, they come to the rickshaw, find me inside, give me an abhorrent look, and shovel themselves inside anyway, although trying fruitlessly to maintain distance with my, just in case I'm a rapist. How can people confuse criminals with victims so badly? 

This is when I think, chuck everything. Let's buy a motorcycle. 

Never mind the bollocks

Goodness, where are the Sex Pistols? If hurtling around a racetrack at 240 kilometers per hour is the only time you remember being one with yourself in the last two months, then there's something wrong. Although I cannot pinpoint exactly what's gone awry, but there's some loose nut somewhere. If this is followed by a morning where you randomly wake up, and manage to do a hundred push-ups without breaking a sweat, well almost, then you are superman. Batman's still cooler, though. Follow this with a five-star lunch and a big-ass smile from the cute female, and what you have is UNBELIEVABLE. Random streams of thoughts aside, a few observations here...

Firstly, this world is waiting to give exactly what we ask of it. At the same time, the world is also waiting for a chance to suck the life out of us, and all it needs is  for us to give it a chance at that.
More importantly, the day your railway pass expires, which happens to be the same day that you forgot to renew your monthly ticket, is the day when the ticket checker will step into the compartment you happen to travel in. How convenient! Since I knew this would happen, I renewed my ticket on the morning that it expired. And the ticket checker did not come. That was last month. Today, exactly a month later, my pass expired. I forgot to renew my ticket. And the rest is history. So are my 200 bucks. That sucks.

A little about 'Aunties' now. I mean why not? How different are aunties to season tickets? Knock knock! That was a rhetorical question, and quite a useless one at that. But yeah, as nosy as they are, aunties are a lot cooler than what they are credited for. Unless, unless, unless, they happen to get into the same rickshaw/taxi as you. Here's what happens usually. You're peacefully sitting in the taxi/rickshaw. This slightly older, aunty-type woman comes around looking for a ride to some place, and is utterly disappointed to find you already sitting in the ride she thought was rightfully hers, and hers only. Sadly, it was not. What she thinks, you can make out from her countenances, The slight frown, or scowl, whatever you wish to call it; her incessant search for an empty ride (which is not going to come any time soon), and of course, her apprehension as she finally, and hesitantly steps into the vehicle that you're already occupying. Even the way the woman half-sits next to a young chap is a sure-shot indicator of the fact that she considers the fellow a rapist.
"Oh my god! I'm a woman, and this young bloke sitting next to me, as sexy as he is, is vermin!" Aunty, Aunty! You drive me crazy.

I doubt I should elaborate on this topic any further.
Meanwhile, something called graduation just drove by like a Tesla Model S, or more like a silent fart. To officially graduate, we have a ceremony called the convocation, which is basically a huge parade of juveniles wearing an unnecessarily square cap and a black gown, who walk up to a stage to collect a sheet of paper, which is proof of your three/four years of utter joblessness, quite literally. Do you know why convocations happen about half a year after you write your last exams? Neither do I. But this is one event in life where for the first time, you can think straight when you're stoned. Besides, not all convocation speeches are anywhere nearly as cool as the one Steve Jobs gave at Stanford. This is all the more so true if you happen to belong to one of the best colleges in the country. Here, they just bore you with more pointless statistics about things that were as important to you as the chewing gum you stuck under the teacher's desk in class 9. So yes, the convocation speech, more often than not is a stoner movie with very bad SFX, and a protagonist who is yet to come out of his mother's womb, or worse, is trying to get back inside. Now that makes things more gory, you see? So sit back, relax and enjoy the high. It won't last the entire length of the ugly speech anyway.