Bitch Please..

I recently attended an interview and it went quite well, that is until the woman started asking me questions from my own chosen branch of engineering.

After the customary ‘tell-me-about-yourself’ for which I had a well rehearsed custom-built answer, I was starting to feel very much at ease with the interviewer. But then she stumped me with a question about DC motors. After almost four years of slugging it at the Electrical and Electronics Department, I should’ve known the answer. I’ve never been ashamed of saying ‘I don’t know’ and so I went ahead and said it.

She was not one to give up. She started helping me find the answer giving me clues and all. I should’ve been relieved, even thankful that she had chose not to lecture me or aggravate my deep-seated sense of inadequacy regarding my own branch of study. Surprisingly, I felt offended that she would try to help me find the answer… as if she was helping a blind man cross the road.

‘Ma’am…’, I bit back condescension and cut her short, ‘I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.’

‘Okaaay’, she said.

‘Infact… If you are planning to go down the road of DC or AC machines, I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to give a proper answer to any further questions.’

‘That’s too honest an answer for a job interview.’, she was smiling ear to ear clearly amused at the specimen sitting before her.

‘I am a strong proponent of radical honesty.’, I countered with a grin to match her smile.

‘But, isn’t it a failure on your part that you don’t even know the basics of what you’ve been studying four years..?’, now she was going below the belt.

From there on it became like a therapy session and she had trapped me with that question.

‘Totally…. It’s my fault……. But um….. in my defence, we don’t have the best of teachers.’, I managed a pathetic explanation. Then I started bitching about MGU, MACE and Engineering in general and she was prompting me with ‘hmmm’ and ‘how do you feel about that…?’

‘Where does that leave you with regard to B.tech…?’, she asked me after sometime.

I thought for a while and said, ‘I am fed up of what I thought I was supposed to be doing… I am not very good at what I enjoy doing... And I hate people telling me what I should be doing...’

She flashed a sympathetic smile, extended her hand for a shake and said, ‘Well…. this was fun.’. I shook her hand(so soft…) with a perplexed expression as if trying to say, ‘ Over already…?, I was just getting started’.

The list of selected candidates came and sure enough I was not there on it. Bitch please…. As if I needed your validation…(Read ‘Why didn’t you take me..? you were so pretty and I liked you very much’)

Masks, capes and bodysuits

Lately, filmmakers have been gripped by a sort of superhero frenzy. Men with colourful long flowing capes are being seen much too frequently on TV screens. Add an adjective before ‘man’ and you have a brand new superhero, whoever came up with this idea must have been a really lazy man. I mean if he could take time to draw up a ‘Super’hero with such awesome ‘Super’powers he could’ve taken some more time to create a name which was more creative and less obvious than ‘Super’man. And what was the purpose of the cape…?, if anything it creates more air resistance and makes it more difficult to fly. Thank God the creators of Flash had the common sense to get rid of it. Lastly, how can one forget the Red- underwear-on-top-of-a-bodysuit design. It couldn’t have been more tacky.

Indians have always been interested in astrology and rotation and revolution of planets. But “Shaktiman’…?, point towards heaven and turn yourself around like a top…?

Come on guys…, we are credited with the creation of ‘zero’. A little more originality and something less embarrassing would’ve been better.

Leave it to Rakesh Roshan to carry on the legacy of Shaktiman and what does he do..?

He adds a dollop of extra power to a normal guy, gives him the ability to run real fast and climb mountains and jump off tall trees. Commendable effort right..? People approve of it and he thinks about a sequel. You give him the benefit of the doubt and what does he do..?, gives the same normal guy super-fucking-human abilities. He can now fly like superman, run like flash, catch falling multi-storeyed buildings and come back from the dead. Frankly Mr Rakesh and Hrithik Roshan…… HOW DUMB DO YOU THINK WE ARE…?

‘Hey, you remember the day we met..?’

It had been days since they had a proper conversation. Too much time together can do that to people. For five years they had been telling each other every single thing that happened in their separate lives and every single thing that they wanted to happen in the life that they were building together, one step at a time. At first it used to be things like how she didn’t like the three-day stubble that he always had on his face. It was not like he was growing a beard. He didn’t like being clean shaved, but he did it anyway because she wouldn’t let him kiss her otherwise and that he knew was a sacrifice worth it.

Sometimes when there was a match that he really wanted to watch till the end, he would ignore her calls for supper. Then she would come sit beside him on the sofa with a plate, he would absent mindedly open his mouth and she would feed him while he cursed the umpires for an unfair decision with that mouthful. She didn’t particularly like it but she knew he appreciated it because it reminded him of his mother. Now, five years later it was like there was nothing left to say. They felt at ease just sitting there leaning on the bedrest reading their separate books, not talking. Just knowing that the other was there on the opposite side of the bed was enough. But something was different tonight.

‘Hmmm..?’, he hadn’t heard what she had asked.

‘You remember the day we met.?’, she asked again.

It struck him as odd that she would ask this question just before bedtime. He kept aside the book he was reading and looked at her. She had her eyes on a book that she was pretending to read and she was fidgeting with a strand of hair that fell on her face. He knew there was something on her mind.

‘I think so, why..?’, he said weighing his words carefully.

‘This book I’m reading, the guy and the girl meet exactly how we met.’, she said without taking her eyes of the book.

‘On a train..?’

‘Yes, they see each other for the first time and they fall in love.’, she looks at him and attempts a smile.

He had seen her smile a thousand times and had been proud that most of the time it was him that put it on her face. But tonight he knew right away that she was faking it.

He reached out and held her hand. It was cold and she was shivering.

‘Is there something you want to tell me..?’, he asks her feeling her getting tense.

She waits as if searching for the right words,

‘I’m scared… .. I’m afraid I’ll scare you too if I say it.’, she looks away.

‘Hey… come here.’, he pulls her into a hug and kisses her forehead.

He caresses her hair trying to calm her down.

‘You know what…. you gave me the biggest scare of my life when you took five seconds too long to say yes when I was on my knees with a ring five years ago. I promise you there’s nothing you can say that can scare me more.’

She let out a faint laugh and sat upright. Now she was smiling and he knew it was real. She was staring at him as though she was upto some mischief and she said,

‘You remember the other day we went shopping and you had to pull me away from a baby buggy that I thought was too cute.’

‘Hmm, I think I do.’, he said still oblivious.

‘Well, in a few months you’ll actually have to buy it.’

Gays, Transgenders and Indian Railway

I hate crowded trains, and I don’t mean crowded as in you don’t get a seat. I’ve travelled in trains where if you turn your head sideways for some reason, you might find your face in an awkwardly close proximity to another man’s face. A few times it got too crammed that I had to make telepathic pacts with strangers like… ‘you keep your foot between my feet and I keep mine between yours and we pray to God that the train doesn’t jerk’. To quote the hilarious Mr. Russel Peters, “In India grown ass men hold hands and walk down the street as if there’s nothing gay about it” and like most other stereotypes this one too is true to an extent. I mean us Indian guys, we may start off with a handshake and may end up holding hands and idly swinging it for the entire length of the conversation. We don’t realize that by international standards, it is as gay as it gets.

Don’t take me wrong. I bear no prejudice against gay people or any other community for that matter. Infact, my rapport with the Transgender community of the various railway stations of Andhra Pradesh is a legend of sorts within my friends circle(I wonder where the hijra’s stand on the telengana issue). There are forgotten memories that you wish you could remember and then there are those you wish you could forget but can’t. This particular story belongs to the latter category. I was returning from a trip to Kolkata and at a station some hijra’s got on the train  ‘begging’. Well, it was more like extortion. I feigned sleep wanting to be left alone, but they would take none of it. One of them caressed my cheek(on the face, to rule out any confusion) and the other started clapping her…. Errr, his…… errr, fuck it… the other started clapping her hands in front of my face. I awoke from my feigned sleep with terror at the touch.

‘Paisa dena Raja…… dena….’, they started talking in their ugly sing-song manner.

To get rid of them, I start frantically searching my pockets for change. Finding a two rupee coin, I give it to them.

They stared at me with contempt and said, ‘2 rupayein jaake tere amma ko de, ab toh das rupayein nikaal’.

However frightening the situation was, demanding 10 rupees was outrageous. So I said,

‘Nahin doonga’, and crossed my arms across my chest.

The taller among the two glared at me, pulled me forward catching me by my collars my face mere inches from hers and said,

‘10 rupayein nikaal, varna lip kiss de doonga!!!!!’

 I saw bright red lipstick engulf my vision and gave up.

Thankfully, before I was lip-raped, my friend(to whom I owe my life) who was sitting beside me gave her a 10 rupee note and my lip-virginity was spared.

They say you never forget your first…….

I say you never forget what could’ve been your first…