Whingings and Happenings

Another one bites the dust. So… who’s the one? Well.. if u ask me even I’d be at a loss to answer. The defunct parliament for one.. the esteemed upper house as well. Them biting the dust is no big deal. The moment the septuagenarian of the fairer sex was installed on the office that once boasted of the guy who made India a nuclear force to reckon with.. the credibility of the process of electing the first person in the country got lost on me. Many would argue that even the installation of “Giani Zail Singh” on the highest office was a similar situation.. but then theres a difference .. I wasn’t thinking or voicing my opinions at that point of time.

A group of good for nothings met and we got our nth president and the first one of the fairer sex for that. Pratibha Patil was installed in the “Rashtrapati Bhavan”. Nothing of note has actually been happening except work at my end and a few glances at the idiot box lets me know whats happening in the world. The most refreshing part in the last few days was that there was no HR or RS in the news (for those who didn’t guess it.. one is a singer that cant act .. and the other one is ??? well description fails me so I’ll let it out. RS = Rakhi Sawant”).

The eternal ciggy smoking puppet churned out a fourth film in the last 17 odd years in which he played the character and not himself , and in absence of HR or RS making news the media projected it as some sorta nationalistic crap. Jingoism at its best. It was a good movie but that’s about it. Are we so short of pride that we need such crutches to showcase nationalism or pride in our country? The idiot box isn’t any good either.. how else can u explain the box airing Rolnald Emerichs “Independnce Day” on 15th August. Its been reduced to just a couple of words now.The law finally caught up with a couple of bollywood actors but then there’s always a way out and so is Dutt.(he’s already out) and who knows the Khan may be out too…

Then the biggest one to bite the dust. “Club BCCI” has competition from another guy who’s got lotsa money. Wait and watch that one.. that’s gonna be interesting at least for some time.

The fifth estate have been giving us lessons in sleaze and grime for ages now. Ever since Rajat Sharma has got his own channel he’s gone haywire. But this time round after the blasts in Hyderabad they all went haywire. What were they doing showing decapitated corpses? I mean it’s one thing showing the scene of the incident. But then showing the gory details is just not done. What was being shown on TV was severed hands, a headless body etc.

The reality shows continue unabated with participants and judges unabashedly showcasing whatever they can. There’s yet another one called “The Biggest Loser” or something like “Biggest Loser Jeetega” the theme here is weight loss.. and the rest is the same old crap.

AHAK’s quit the organization for good in the quest for higher knowledge. Me n Komodo wish him luck in his quest in the journey ahead. So now its just me who’s remaining in the organization and I guess im gonna stay on for a wee bit more.

To round off on a brighter note... In the midst of all this coercion, apathy and chaos the ray of light at the end of the tunnel is in sight… Antya (Jr) will arrive in this world by the end of September. That’s something me n the missus are looking forward to.. Wish me luck folks..


Antya.

An Incident

Firstly, a few opinions,
Friendship day: I somehow feel the entire friendship concept is a little over hyped these days. I do go around wishing my friends on that day, but somehow feel we don’t need a day for that… more like we don’t even need to wish each other. And then there’re always these people who I hardly even know who wish me and give me their opinions on what true friendship is… quite weird and unnecessary I tell u.
But then it’s quite harmless and people like it, so its fine the way it is.

Independence Day: This I’m clearer in my opinion about. It seems a big farce to me. All the pretense of patriotism, plastic (no biodegradable remember) flags and all. If you really are patriotic, then how about probably cleaning the road you live in? Or simpler how about avoiding chucking mint wrappers or cigarette butts anywhere you feel like.

The incident:
This happened when I was 8 yrs old and involved 3 characters.
A: a fairly huge kid (around twice my size then) but timid like crazy. I’d beaten him up more than a few times (and I left that place when I was 10).
B: the nice kid in that place, loved to talk to parents and all that. So was generally the voice of the group.
K: me. Generally quiet, shy chap except when it came to bashing ‘A’ up, oh that was fun heh heh.

OK, I had this habit of threatening to hit ‘A’ with the bat every time we had a fight in our cricket games. After around 4-5 such warnings, ‘A’ got his retort going. He used to stand in attention and ask me to take a swing. Now I obviously couldn’t do a thing after that.

The entire problem with all this was I was addicted to threatening him and getting my way. So it was real hard to stop that.
This one time, I threatened him and he stood in attention again and I decided to swing the bat real close to his head so he gets real frightened and realizes that I mean business.

I missed.

That is I missed missing his head.

“Clunk” Some good quality wood came in contact with some bad quality head and ‘A’ started yowling like crazy. I was stunned. Things had suddenly gotten real out of hand. I had just bashed a friend on the head with a cricket bat.

B decided to take control of the situation and dragged us both to my mom.

B goes… “auntie, do you know what K just did?”

Mom: What this time?

B: auntie, he threatened to hit A on the head with the bat and A told him to hit. So K hit him.

---------x---------x---------

Thanks mom for being such a bad actress. I mean yeah you put in your best efforts to avoid laughing. You tried to look angry and all and were fairly convincing. But you smile through your eyes mom and I knew it even then.
I don’t remember the other incident (which happened when I was 3), but I can imagine your expression when your cousin told me “hhelllelelelo… glug, glug goo…” and I told her that I know English and Kannada and please speak to me in one of those 2.

Happy mothers’ day mom (whenever that is).

Needless to say, I thoroughly deserved the thrashing I received that day (the bat incident I mean).
I mean had it been me in mom’s place, I’d have been paranoid. I’d have been more like “oh god, my son is showing signs of psychotic behavior. Will he grow up to be a psychopath?
I mean, who goes around clubbing people’s heads with bats? Something must be done… and quick.
Else he might end up like those demented people we read about…
Consider this, he might go on to perform anti social deeds like kicking out at fellow artistes in college plays, pretending to be a dad, getting caught, writing “mothers’ day” posts on some arbit date between friendship day and independence day
This is real frightening, mustn’t panic now…”

And so on… you get the drift.

-KD

Stupidity and punishment

‘A deep look into the mind of a moron’

I guess most of this one is our usual.
Like I’ve said before, the entire concept of equating bachelors to criminals when it comes to letting your house out or being forced to living somewhere in their vicinity by neighbors who let their houses out to bachelors kinda annoys me.

And everybody knows our take on stupidity anyway. Check AHAK’s review of TDH for a glimpse of that.

But then the part of this one which is not our usual is that, we’re not hitting out at stupidity that’s generally displayed by others, this is more a take on myself… in retrospect.

And yeah, the attitude was displayed in India and not here.

Guess I might as well get to the bloody incident rather than put u’ll to sleep with my descriptions of its haves and have-nots.

Before which, something you all don’t know (even the other 2 sharks), I’m married and have a son who’s 3 months old.

I live in this part of KL which is infested with a whole lot of Indians. It’s more like the designated Indian spot in KL. And we fellow countrymen carry our prejudices wherever we go. So most decent condos are for ‘families wonly la’.

Now my company arranges for my accommodation and are really nice folks in that they put in the extra effort to get me a good condo and not one of those tragic ones which are meant to be inhabited by folks who swam across from India and survive doing odd jobs here.

Let’s be fair here, “thank you company. honest”

Here’s the scene… we’re walking to the flat I’m supposed to sign the papers for and start living in, and I’m told that the story presented to the landlord had me as the chief character and a wife and kid.

Oh btw, that entire deal about me being married or being a dad is a lie.
My word you all have a short term memory, remember the aunt trying to get me married?

Now I’m terrible when it comes to acting off stage.

I’m a good actor on stage btw. Why I once played a tree in one of my college plays. It was a sterling performance I tell you. I moved the audience to tears when I kicked out at that nut that played Yudishtira (Kannada pronunciation) for landing on the tree too hard when he was only meant to sit there... slowly. The audience found it odd to have 2 legs wrapped in trousers suddenly replacing the trunk of a tree. Odder still was the upper segment of the tree staying in place. The real tear jerker being the tree suddenly administering the then just dethroned king of India a severe hiding on the rear side with its left leg. They (the audience that day) still believe deforestation in India had started a long time ago… way back.

Ok back to the topic, bad actor off stage!!!

We walk in to this house. Me all sweaty about the part I have to play.
The landlord starts off… “Hello Mr. Dragon, I’m #LL name# ” (and the rest of the formalities… I didn’t handle that part well).
A while later, he hands me the paper I’m supposed to sign on and says “here’s the agreement, why don’t we celebrate, come over for dinner.”

Me: Thank you sir, could we meet up some other day plz. Need to shift in today, might as well grab a bite somewhere close by. (it was around 9pm then)

LLord: Fine, we can meet in a hotel then, I’d like to introduce you to my wife.

Me: Thank you sir, really. But I don’t want to bother you, I’d hardly be around for 5 mins, need to shift…

LLord: Oh OK…

He then starts showing me around the house.

Me: isn’t this washing machine tap working (I meant the connecting valve, it was leaky)

LLord: (his face suddenly brightened up) YESSS!!!! I tried to set it all day, couldn’t. Only my wife knows how to go about it. I’ll call her and she’d come over and get it done right now. Or you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the plumbers to turn up.

This is where I was real stupid. I said “Fine… if it isn’t a prob. Thanks”.

He was rejoicing. I didn’t seem to understand why until the LLady turned up. And when she did, it hit me with the full force of a Bombay local train hitting a brain dead clown (soon to be completely dead clown) who likes crossing tracks by running over them.

When you’re in a situation like this, she’s like a walking talking Murphy’s Law. Just walking and talking were still not bad enough, she talked a hell of a lot and everything she spoke was a question. She’s the kind who answers a question with another all day long if it’s her day.
And man, it WAS her day.

I won’t go into the gory details as it rattles my nerves to think about it. I’ll skip to the part where I finally got a bit intelligent.

After the initial banter (where I got grilled), LLord tells me he’s forgotten the screw driver downstairs and went to retrieve it (with a snigger).

So now it’s Murphy’s Law and me trying to do something about the damn valve.

Murphy’s Law: So Mr. Dragon what’s you wife’s name?

Me: glug glug… err hrmm Mrs. Dragon heh heh

She gave me a look that seemed drill through my eyes and tamper with the back of my skull. I resolved to cut down on pjs for the time being and thought up a name in no time. Phew.

ML: you have a… son or a daughter…

Me: Son

ML: (in Tamil... to herself. But loud) I thought they told me daughter. (then in english) you’re from Karnataka right?

Me: y…yeah.

ML: so u don’t know Tamil.

Me: No, hardly.

This is something I’m proud of. This was the point where I got a little smart.
(I understand Tamil quite well. Most Bangaloreans do)

ML: (to herself, in tamil, but loud enough) Let’s check the ego (in english) So, what’s your son’s name?

Me: #arbit name that began with the same alphabet as wife's name#

ML: (to herself) hmm he looks like a kid, is it possible that…

Me: Ma’am is there any laundry place around, she (referring to wife) might have a tough time, the baby’s clothes etc. (to myself) first bird: showing concern for the wife.

ML: Oh no no, i’ll fix this valve, it’s very simple really. Just need the screwdriver…

Me: (to myself) second bird: getting ML to get on with the work she’s here for. Heck.

ML: So you were telling me…

Me: (thoughtful frown) hmm this manual says… oh you were saying.

ML: no no tell me… what does the manual say?

Gave her a truck load of garbage till LLord turned up. And they got it done. Phew.

With all due respect, they seem real nice folk. But with my luck I’m not assuming too much here. And I have to also dream up excuses for my wife’s getting terribly delayed in coming here.

Things we have to do to live… wish me luck.

-KD