1. Very few people in the world carry around CT machines.
2. Radiologists are largely incompetent.
3. A friend of my sister bought a pug for an undisclosed amount. Research tells me a golden Labrador retriever is about twice as expensive. Not counting your ability to bargain, discount holidays and family connections (not with the dog, silly) of course.
4. I have to go to the gym every so often.

There you go. The explanation for why it is that the pretty girl falls for the caveman with the 19 inch biceps and 13 inch triceps. And why you keep sitting at the salad bar of the dessert buffet. Thing is, if she knew, she’d ‘see’ that your insides were scrubbed clean with Dove and your soul changed its underwear every year before National Biohazard Day. But do you think she does? Answer me when you’re done with the carrot.

Also why fairness creams sell. You should ‘know’ by now that if you haven’t been using one of these little gemsies, you really have no chance of getting a job, true love, laid, confident, dazzlingly white, laid, sun burnt, on TV, laid and yes, laid.
They say good advertising is about not leaving even a shard of self respect in an individual. I disagree. What shard?

This is also why blondes have more fun. I don’t think the population of India is very happy with that. Well, maybe except a few people in Greater Kailash M block market… (Rated best place to birdwatch by the National Goggly Eyed Pervert magazine. My friend has a copy.)

Q.E friggin’ D
So let us have no more of this ‘love me for myself’ bullshit. It’s clear how we’ve clearly been deluding ourselves from the start of time and Color television (whichever comes first).

P.s. The gym called today. They were unhappy with how I’ve been irregular lately. So I said to the girl, “I miss you too”. Remind me not to joke with the girlfriends/employees of people who can beat the posterity out of me.
P.p.s The carrot goes in your mouth, Himeros.
3P.s. It’s called sarcasm, sweetie. No, I think the blonde hair really work on you.

Edward Cullen and party
A friggin’ glowing vampire? Isn’t he made fun of at the “Dark Creatures R Us” yearly convention? Plus, I can never hope to imagine how he fights off the pregnancy rumours and the persistent Dove marketing team (Never age beyond 17 or some similar crap).
I’ve been told by very reliable sources than his girlfriend is 18 something. Don’t they have entrance exams in Bella-land? Or is she just content being a woefully unqualified immortal who hangs out with her road-runner vampire crowd on weekends?

Generic pretty female as tortured bahu
There’s actually some show on TV called “Main kab saas banoongi?”. Now we know what teenagers and newlyweds the world over dream of before going to bed.
That, of course, is when they’re not caught between the turmoil of horribly matched saree-blouse combinations and psychotic doodhwallas. Kinda makes you wonder why the market for horse sedatives isn’t climbing faster.

Self-help books
My social calendar is particularly unimpressive. But that’s only because I take out most of my free time to go to “The Rhonda Byrne book burning club” meetings. It’s just that the books don’t burn all that well because of the sheer amount of sap dripping off the pages.
If Paulo Coelho is reading, please do an Alchemist 2 though. I don’t care if it’s about everyday life at the Oasis for the stinking rich. Or about the intricacies of Bad breath on kisses thrown on the wind.

Supremely annoying movie characters
Very few times have I thrown popcorn up in the air with the weak, pathetic intention of it hitting the actor on screen; hopefully resulting in grievous injuries. Episodes have been induced by:
a. Govinda (In whatever he does). As funny as an overdose of lignocaine.
b. Orlando Bloom (Troy/Pirates trilogy). Stop taking the female hormones, bitch
c. Frederick Zoller (Inglorious Basterds). Friggin smug’ German. She’s way too pretty for you.
d. Generic whining kid. Shut up you idiot… the aliens are gaining on us.
e. Phoebe (Friends). She made me fast forward through borrowed DVDs.
f. Rahul Mahajan and Rakhi Sawant. WTFungus?

Seriously though…
A friggin’ glowing Vampire?

What remains is hugely unappealing too. Who cares if Mr. Mahajan laughs like a manic Mogambo while getting married to half his age Close-up models? I don’t. Can’t even get me to publicly admit I had to watch the finale because even the home shopping network was showing it.
Or for that matter… Who gives a flying frig if Parvati, Tulsi, Vishangini, Durbhagini or some other tormented paragon of womanhood is going through yet another trial in her never ending life?
I couldn’t be paid to even make jokes about Hindi News Channels. Direct quote: “Do aliens drink cow’s milk?” and “This cow could be yours”. All this under the friendly “Breaking News” banner.

Has anyone seen the newspaper recently? I mean the standard 22 pages of bad news and one page of obituaries (add one more page if you can’t stand the idea of having a paper with an odd number of pages). Makes you wonder where all the happy stuff in the world is happening.

And the people around me… I just don’t know… I usually have such nice things to say to/about them. But as things stand, everyone is now perfect. Nobody left with the endearing flaws that I was just so used to. Well, when in doubt, be sarcastic.
Though personally, I wish people would smile more. It’s been so long since I’ve seen someone smile genuinely. I would do it, but my teeth are out of line and I strongly suspect the dentist needs to put a kid through college. So there.

All hail the fragmented psyche!

And having actually abandoned all semblance of civilized thinking since said revelation, I’m feeling somewhat destructive. This is not your wimpy “I think I’ll have some green chutney instead” destructive. This is more like “Let’s start a war to maintain peace” destructive.

I’ve another wedding to attend. Weddings in my part of the world are glorified song and dance routines. Turns out, you really can’t sing and dance enough if you’re happy.
Then there’s the small talk. I hate small talk. Who cares if there’re a lot of weddings in Delhi today? Who cares if your Urinary tract infection isn’t going away? And you know and I know that this friggin’ dress makes you look fat.
Also, there’s this mind boggling statistical anomaly that I’ve been witnessing. The amount of pretty females at any given wedding will drop in direct exponential proportion to how good my hair is looking at said wedding. That said, I’m not very hopeful about today – I may have used conditioner.
Of course, there’s also the alleged “true love” angle to the whole thing. But thinking in terms of what it means to humanity as a species… all weddings come down to the following:

I) Two ugly people come together.
II) Blinding flash of light
III) Three ugly people. One of them crying. The other two cursing.

I’ve always wanted to be a pirate. Long John silver type with the whole fake wooden leg. Only I’m afraid I’ll end up with a sarcastic parrot who I’ll have to end up shooting because he won’t stop doing woody woodpecker jokes.  Sorry… that’s random.

Ah yes… weddings…
Well, I hope this couple finds they got married for all the right reasons. And that nobody involved is an axe murderer. Whatever. Amen.

P.s. All hail Shrikhand! The Gujaratis are geniuses.

I stand today in very familiar territory.  Another chapter in a very good story is about to end.
And this isn’t your average story… It doesn’t have any of the usual melodrama, or the usual action sequences and sadly enough, the usual bedroom sequences… In fact, the only distinctive thing about it is that it’s “our” story.

Like any obscure writer… I look around a lot. (It’s what we do, we obscure writers)
And I see a lot I was always intent on missing before…

There are no new wrinkles on my Grandparents’ cheeks. And yet I know they’re getting older.
These people have given me my parents. And the most horrible baths a kid can ever hope not to have. They’ve given me 10 bucks a day for everyday I’ve spent at their place, so that I could bake under the sun while waiting to play video games.
Not to mention the most effective dressing down ever for throwing about 24 eggs on the nearest wall after a singularly inspiring Tom and Jerry tape.
I know I’m not a bad kid. But I guess right now I’m left wishing that life were somehow less complicated. And that I could again play cricket with everyone in the backyard. You know… God bless his heart, my Grandfather always used to let me have 7 balls in every over I played. : )
There are just so many people who never get to know what they’re loved the way they are. What is worse is that there are just so many people who can’t tell they love the way they do.

I simply had to become a doctor. So I’ve been in the same place for five and a half years. And suffice to say, I’ve hated every brick in the place. Every vocal professor, every non functional geyser… everything.
And today… five and a half years later… I find that it is just these things that have taken a new hue. One I wasn’t particularly convinced existed.

Imagine yourself glad to see people you couldn’t stand to see before just because you saw them every day. Or talk to pre-ordained absolute polar opposites just so that you don’t miss out on it. Eating food Hell itself declared unsafe just so that you can bitch about it… All of it… someday… years later… over a fireplace that has gone out, and people who’ve only just come in.

Life is a series of random occurrences. But then… so are me and you.
And there is no friggin’ reset button.
P.s. My Grandfather only took 5 balls in every over he played. : )
P.p.s. That’s latin. I think, therefore I’m depressed.

But take these factors into account, and there’s an indecent probability that you’ll end up meeting someone who falls into the following categories. **

1. People who’ve mortally offended you, your family, your pets and your polka dotted chaddis.
2. People who’ve you’ve added on facebook because you wanted to be popular with other people who think you’re popular with the other other people I just mentioned.
3. People who you owe money to.
4. Ex Girlfriends/Boyfriends/“turned-you-down-because-you’re-a-fugly-person.”
5. The “Chape Crowd”. Will stick to you like an overenthusiastic post-it stamp cross bred with a hungry leech.

But since you are around them for so long, “the fly-be-free-!” ceases to be an option. Through intensive studies of Gorilla behavior when faced with David Dhawan movies, I’ve come to the conclusion that most people react the following ways when under duress.

1. The en-passant
   Staring casually into the middle distance when passing each other. It helps if you can get an old western soundtrack to play in the background. Me, I also like to imagine horses and chariots. But then you probably don’t have access to my medications.
2. The Shift-delete
   Permanently erasing said person from your fragmented psyche. Includes deleting phone numbers, talking only to other people when present in groups of three and above; and creating imaginary friends when faced with groups of two and below.
3. The body-language
   Non verbal communication excluding judicious use of the middle finger. Staring up, left, down and right during conversations. And doing all at once if the dislike is especially strong. Look for the weird circular motion of the head if in doubt.
4. Excuses
   Killing off relatives and contracting uncurable diseases at random to get away. Justifying such slaughter in the name of sacrifice; and eventual reincarnation.
5. Show off
   Strongest indicator of the “I-don’t-need-you-anymore”, you “someone-I-can’t –do-without”. Sounds like a bad Celine Dion song when explanations are tried in blog posts.
   Includes new jeans in old posterior, new gadgets for the old idiot and new company for old personality disorder.

**I normally recommend “vice versa” with all such lists. But I know you’re never listening.

P.s. Now experimenting with tags. : D

Reality checks:

1. The pretty girl didn’t look at you. She has to see where she’s going. Next thing you know she’ll bump into someone else and you’ll get a premarital divorce out of sheer jealousy.
2. You’re not a Jedi. Do not try to make my car stop by palming your hand at me.
3. Brushing off the 2 stray hairs that made it onto your face will not put Brad Pitt out of business. Chances are, you’re uglier now because more of your face is exposed.
4. Yes. That dress does make you look fat.
5. God will probably not change the Divine Plan because you didn’t study for your test tomorrow. Start praying for a kitten instead.
6. There’s no such thing as wind energy, The Indian Government and intellectual property.
7. Direction in blog posts is for wusses and little girls.

P.s. Pardon the cynicism. It’s late at night and Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s like me winning the Nobel for Physics because I once solved a numerical sober.

Yes, at 12 midnight. I cannot begin to grasp the consequences.
I’m led to imagine pathetically hammed action movie sequences where I come crashing though electric wires. There are people shouting “Swine-zilla” in the background; and the lip-syncing is straight out of a dubbed north korean flick. I pick up the first maiden I can get my hands on to with the dire unspoken threat of sneezing in her face.

Oh, the horror…

Other parts of my fragmented psyche are rejoicing at the thought of anything close to 5 days of holidays. Something like this usually fits in perfectly with my dream of an egalitarian society. I get to avoid everyone equally.
Notably, four out of five interns are vehemently against the idea of having to work when they can just as easily not work. The fifth intern has probably taken a casual leave on the date of this poll.

Part of me is finding itself lost to the “what did I do to deserve this?”
Understandable. Considering that all I did to get this thingie was to sit with somebody who was a confirmed flu positive and grade women out of ten during a fashion show. My pain now compounded manifold by the memory of the fact that no one in particular crossed 7.5 (Though if you were dressed in orange last Thursday and are managing to read this by some strange twist of destiny, take a friggin’ hint).

Sigh. More oseltamivir for the wicked then…
No rest still.

They had this debate about how social networking websites are invading our privacy. And since I have this endearing knack for getting offended about the strangest of things, I decide to participate.
I also win, considering how the rest of the competition was too confused to see someone wielding a stethoscope get onto the podium.

And since all good turns deserve at least another half more…
For the first time in remembered “me” history and generally the history of the world, this “Apsara brand” woman (I’d like to think so) walks up to me and says…
“You speak very well… and I’d like to interact you” (sic).
“Also I’m not that kind of girl”.

I remember being far too stymied to correct her grammar. I remember “Rockstar” playing in the background. I also remember her not calling once.
Sigh. When women suppress good taste.

P.s. They also thought my love letter was the least desperate sounding of the lot. Remind me to post that here sometime.