So Cute! (Or Not.)

One of the biggest advantages, I think, girls have over guys is what I like to call the “So Cute” safety net. If a girl does something well, that’s great – she comes off a winner. If she does something badly, she always has the option, if skilled, to come off looking “So Cute”! Guys don’t have that. They can either pull something off or appear like a loser.

For example, karaoke. A girl who sings a karaoke song well is loved by everyone. So is a guy. But what if they fuck it up? How often have you seen a girl go on stage, rape a song, do a little hip dance and almost everyone in the audience thought that was just “Sooo Cute”! Quite often, I’ll bet, and probably more than that. Now when was the last time you saw a guy manage to do that? Never, right? Imagine a guy who messes his song up. There’s nothing he can do, except maybe find the back door and make as quiet and quick an exit as possible. Same thing with reality shows on T.V. Sanjaya Malakar was not “So Cute”, he was “So Gay”.

Or consider a party. A girl can go up to the guy she likes and botch her opening line up as much as she wants and chances are he’ll still think that was just “So Cute”. Or she could go up to him and ask him for a light, light her cigarette, take a puff and end up coughing – “So Cute”. If a guy did that, it’s plain gay.

Girls can cry while watching a movie or get scared of the dark, and get away with it because someone somewhere will think that’s just the cutest thing they ever saw. Girls who like driving fast are cool, girls who don’t are just being “cute”. Why aren’t guys allowed to get away with that?

You just can’t lose when you’re a girl, I tell you. Us guys have it tough all the way. We have no choice but to be the very best at what we do. There’s no “So Cute” net to catch us if we fall. Who wants voting rights! Bah!

Virgin Problems

I am often asked rather embarrassing questions by kids around me. They always bring back memories about embarrassing questions I used to ask when I was a kid.

For example, once when I must have been about 6, I realized that we refer to the mother of Jesus as the “Blessed Virgin Mary”. I could figure out what “blessed” meant and “Mary” was obviously her name – but what the heck was “virgin”? I used to attend Sunday School as a kid – yes, a very­ “Catholic” upbringing – and that’s where I was when I realized this.

So I picked the nearest adult around – one of my Sunday School teachers – and fired it at her. “Why do we refer to Mother Mary as ‘Virgin’. What does that mean?”

For those of you’ll who have never been to Sunday School, let me try to describe the average Sunday School teacher in one line – “Be-spectacled, old prude who never quite managed to get any in her time.” (Ironic that my question dealt with the meaning of the term “virgin”, when you think about it! Who better to answer!) And being the type that they are, Sunday School teachers embarrass easily. As soon as she heard my question she sucked in a sharp breath and turned as red as a monkey’s bum. I knew I had hit a winner.

Looking back at it now, I just appreciate the difficulty of the situation I had just put her in. How in the world does someone explain “virginity” to a kid without first explaining “sex” to them. (Actually how do you even explain “sex” to someone when you haven’t ever done it in your life? But let’s not get into that.)

“Well son, you see,” she started off gamely after recovering from her initial shock, “Joseph and Mary weren’t married. And yet, and yet Mary gave birth to a son.”

“You mean like Hollywood!” I was eager to show that even though I was just a 6-year-old, I was right up there when it came to following celebrity gossip. “Ma’am, is Hollywood full of virgins?”

“No. No. Not at all. You see, son, this birth was special. Mary and Joseph weren’t staying with each other as yet.”

“I see.” It was plainly clear that I didn’t quite see. But she wasn’t going to take any chances. “Class is up for today. Remember to do your homework for next week kids. Have a nice day!”

Can you blame me for believing then, until I was about 10, that children were born when two people – man and woman (whether married or not) – just happened to be living together?

“Need To Change Your Balls!”

Most of us hate going to the mechanic because we know we’re going to get screwed and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s because most of us don’t know squat about our cars or motorcycles and when we take them to the mechanic we’re as much of a sitting duck as anything. He’ll throw fancy terms at you -- “fan belt”, “radiator hose”, “bevel gears”, “Gossamer sheets”, “monkey piss”, etc. To be very frank, these sound like nothing that could possibly be in my car -- but what the hell do I know? I’m not the mechanic now, am I?

So I reluctantly agree that “Yes, my wanker shaft does need to be replaced” and “Yes, it is indeed a wise option to be ‘on the safer side’ and put in a new set of lubricated balls”. All the while I’m trying to add up in my mind what this is going to cost me and I wind up with my mental calculator displaying the words “You’re fucked!” Then I ask the mechanic, “How much is this going to cost me?” and get a reply that’s about twice my mentally calculated estimate. (Double fucked!)

But I’m a poor (even poorer by the end of the day), ignorant idiot who has no clue what’s causing that irritating noise somewhere in the trunk and if the mechanic says he’s got to put in new headlights to get rid of it, then I really have no choice but to agree with him. And if fitting a new rear-view mirror can help avoid the grinding sound that comes whenever I shift from third to fourth, then yea - I want that done too!

The point I’m trying to get at is actually this -- how is a mechanic any different from a doctor? I personally hate going to a doctor because I don’t know much more about (the internal functionings of) my body than I know about my vehicle. And if my mechanic can screw me over with a smile on his face, then so can my doctor! When I go to him with a certain problem or just for a general physical (the equivalent of servicing your car), he throws weird medical student terminology at me. Prescribes enough medication to keep the entire population of Colombia high for a month and sends me on my way with a huge hole in my pocket. Just like my mechanic does.

In fact I suspect they probably even use the same words (what would poor, ignorant me know!).

“Your wanker shaft needs changing and you’ll have to lubricate your balls! That should get rid of that headache!”
“Right on, Doc!”

Most people never understand why I hate seeing a doctor. Now I’ve stopped going altogether. (Sometimes I’ll break an ankle or something and the pain will so bad that I have to attach a pair of crocodile clips to my nipples just to take the focus of it, but even then I’ll staunchly refuse to pay the doctor a visit!) Hopefully, after this post people will understand why I’m so scared of going to the doctor. (And also, why I sometimes have two weird protrusions sticking out from under my T-shirt.)

Near-Death Experiences in Bombay

I was in Bombay this past weekend and being the “when in Bombay, do as the Bombayites do” types, Friday evening found me at Dadar railway station trying to board a local suburban train in the direction of the evening returning-from-work rush. I’m not new to Bombay or the experience of traveling in such trains -- which incidentally can almost be considered an X-treme sport. But this time I not only had the disadvantage of having to fight the evening crowd but was also handicapped by a rather cumbersome travel bag that I was lugging around.

The train comes in, I grab onto the pole in the middle of the doorway with my right hand and try to squeeze myself into the compartment (already occupied by about a gazillion sweaty individuals). My bag is in my left hand trailing behind me.

There’s an old Spanish saying, “Donde comen seis, comen siete”. (Or something like that.) It translates to “Where six can eat, seven can eat.” This might seem like good logic. But I found out that evening, that “where a gazillion can fit, a gazillion plus one can’t always”! So the train starts moving, and I find that my only physical contact with it is my outstretched hand holding onto the bar in the middle of the doorway and about three toes of my right foot that have managed to find about three square inches of free space somewhere on the foot board. (I always knew real estate in Bombay was ridiculously hard to come by, but I was finding out just how bad it really was!)

“This won’t do,” I think to myself. “I’ll just take the next train. And if that’s too crowded, then the one after that, or the one after that...” Death by falling out of a train was never on my list of “Cool Ways to Die”. So I crane my neck around and what do you know -- suburban trains in Bombay can accelerate! And how! We were already moving too fast for me to get off under the best of conditions, and certainly not jumping backwards and with a heavy bag in hand. So much for Plan A.

That’s when exactly two thoughts hit my mind.

The first was -- “Think of something clever to say to these people around you. Last words are always important.”

The second was -- “Ummm, one hand’s keeping you alive and the other is holding onto your [very important] bag! What if someone reaches into your pocket right in front of your eyes, removes your wallet, takes out all the cash and the cards, waves them in front of you, stuffs them in his pocket and then puts your wallet back in! Which hand do you use to punch him?”

The people of Bombay are a good lot though. The guy in front me yells out to some people in front of him, something about “the person behind him being as good as off the train” and “what the hell were they doing not moving forward and giving us some space?” and were they “waiting for him to fall and die before they moved?” It was an impressive display from him, I must admit and people did inch forward and I managed to move from my three square inch hovel to a relatively decent one room house -- enough space to keep both my feet and somehow rest the bag on top of them. I was still by no means safe -- too close to the door, but at least not outside it any more). I had no idea when the next station even came (the platform was on the other side).

The station after that one, however, was on my side of the train. I got pushed out and then pushed back in again and was now living in a (comparatively) luxurious one bedroom apartment! I was just planning my house warming party when I realized it was time for me to alight. I used the good old “float-and-drift-with-the-tide” algorithm there and managed to escape alive, carried more by the crowd than by my own feet.

That is Bombay. And I love it.

At Least He Was Honest

It’s time to get back to blogging -- even if all I have to offer you today is a small snippet.

The other day, a bunch of us had gone to one of these small dhabas next to our office. The food in our office cafeteria is unworthy even to puke out -- so such places run a thriving business. We sat down at an empty (and surprisingly clean) table and tried to decide on what to order. (This, most of you’ll will agree, is an NP-Complete problem.)

Finally we settled on an order and summoned one of the waiters -- a young lad of about 12. He hurried to our table, pen and pad in hand, looking ready to jot down anything we could throw at him. One of us started calling out our order, one dish after the other. He didn’t put any of it to paper but instead, I could see each name was adding a further ounce of confusion and befuddlement to his face. After about four dishes he was completely lost.

“See,” I started kindly. “You have a pen and paper. Why don’t you just write down the order? There’s no way you’ll retain the entire thing in your mind.”

He just gives me a shyish smile.

“What’s the matter?”, I asked.

“Sir, I don’t know how to write!”

The mystery of why he was toting a pen and paper around may never be solved.

Best “Not Real” Sony Ad Ever

This evening, after work, I’m in the Sony showroom--looking around in a perfect blend of awe, excitement and lust at all the “cool” gadgets they have on offer.

Behind me a salesman is giving a family--just a mother and two kids, actually--a demo of one of those Surround Sound Home Theater systems. He’s playing the video of ‘Punjab’ by Karunesh on the huge Flatscreen and the audio is blaring from a multitude of speakers spread all around the place. It’s actually quite realistic--and deafening.

Just then, I receive a call on my phone from R. I’m in conversation with a salesman, so I receive the call and tell her, “I’m busy. I’ll speak with you later.”

For a second, I believed she might think I’m at a party or something. But then she sends me a text message, a few minutes later to the tune of this: “Are you watching a movie? I swear I’ll whack you if you’re in a theater watching a movie!”

(By way of an explanation, I’d should probably tell you that I’m not a big movie fan, and I almost never watch a movie at the theater. Numerous attempts by R to get me to go see a film have met with mostly [but not quite absolutely] no success.)

And then I’m thinking, “Is this just the BEST ad for Sony or what?” I’m in the showroom, there’s a Home Theater system playing in the background, someone calls up and actually thinks I’M (of all people) in an actual theater!

Germany

I will be traveling to Germany next Saturday—21st July, where I shall be for the next two months, approximately. Blogging from Germany ought to be good—but I cannot guarantee anything.

Cheers and hoping for the best.

Addendum: It is precisely stories like this that tickle me in just the right spots and ensure that I can barely wait for Saturday! (HT: Lara)

BarCampPune3 - A Snippet

I attended BarCampPune3 [blog link] today - well, technically yesterday since it’s 3 in the morning now. It was interesting, due in larger part to the people I met than to the knowledge I gained from the sessions/discussions. Meeting people is always fun - and I didn’t really network as much as I should have.

Here’s the highlight of the day though.

It’s about 4.30 in the afternoon, and we go to the cafeteria to have tea. We grab our cheese sandwiches from the guy handing them out and pour ourselves a cup of tea each. Then Salil notices this huge vessel of thick red liquid lying next to the tea.

“What’s this?” he asks me.

“Tomato soup,” I reply. Saying “I don’t know” doesn’t come easily to me and that’s exactly what it looked like - tomato soup. Why anyone would serve tomato soup at tea was beyond me, but BarCamps are strange places and funny things do happen there.

“I like tomato soup,” Salil says and proceeds to pour himself a cup.

We carry our stuff to a table and sit down to talk. Midway through the discussion, Salil looks takes a couple of sips of his soup and tells me, “This soup is terrible! It tastes like ketchup!”

We don’t pay any attention at that point. When we’re done talking and eating and drinking, we go to place our cups and plates in the dirty dishes tray. That’s when I noticed at all the plates kept there had a thick red liquid in them. I glance around. Yup, everyone’s got the red stuff in their plates and they’re eating it along with their cheese sandwiches!

“Dude,” I look at Salil. “That WAS ketchup!”

Heh!

One of the Great Mysteries Possibly Solved

I have written before about my not being able to understand or appreciate poetry. I’ve often wondered exactly how poets could make a living—no one I know (certainly not myself, for sure) would consider paying money for “poetry”. Or maybe that wasn’t true—because didn’t some really famous poets exist at various points in the past? Maybe the problem was within me. Maybe only I couldn’t understand poetry, while everyone else could. That could be a possible solution.

I have a new theory—one that actually came about because of something a certain female friend told me recently. Here’s the theory:

Your ability to understand, and more importantly appreciate, poetry is inversely proportional to the speed at which you normally read.

Here when I talk about “speed”, I refer to it on an extremely low level—words and sentences. I don’t care about how many novels you read a year or how long it took you to finish The Lord of the Rings. I’m talking about how fast you read your words and sentences. How many seconds (or milliseconds) did it take you to read this paragraph?

When it comes to reading speed, I’m on the faster side. I speak fast and I read fast. Poetry demands a slow reader. One who can let the words sink in—one, two, three, four at a time. One who gives each line the time it demands, to convey the deeper meaning it holds, instead of rushing hurriedly on to the next one, as a prose reader might do. And that’s where I fail.

Today, I tried reading some poetry slowly—painfully slowly, it seemed to me—and it worked. I understood more than I ever had. It actually seemed beautiful—almost as much so as a Michelangelo fresco or a Michael Jordan fade-away. Or Alicia Silverstone.

So here’s the thing—if you think you can’t appreciate poetry, just try carefully observing how fast you read it. I’ll bet you my cat, it’s probably because you’re reading it way too fast!

As a corollary, I’m guessing guys are naturally faster readers than girls. Proving it is left as an exercise to the reader.

The Washroom Measure

There’s a lot to be learned inside a washroom. For example, I have a theory that goes as follows:

The smaller the separating partitions between the urinals in the washroom, the posher the place is.

That’s my theory.

For example, a public washroom on the street will have partitions the size of Shivaji’s fort walls. You couldn’t get through them with an army tank if you wanted to. They measure about seven feet by three feet by six inches. Superman would struggle to see through them and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar couldn’t peer over one.

A decent restaurant will have urinal separators about half that size. If you’re an extremely tall guy with flexible neck muscles you might catch an unwanted sight of your neighbor’s sausage and meatballs. But for most of us average folks, not suffering from pituitary abnormalities, they suffice. At least here—unlike public washrooms—you don’t end up feeling claustrophobic.

An upscale restaurant, or a really posh office, will have separators that are “separators” in name only. Two feet by one foot. I think the primary aim here is to avoid getting sprayed unnecessarily by the guy peeing next to you. Really, that’s about all the separator can hope to achieve. No consideration at all is given to visual barricading or interception.

And finally, at the extreme other end of the spectrum we have the best hotels and the really big offices. Here there’s no separation at all. ‘What’s mine is yours and suchlike’ seems to be the motto. Or ‘let our dongles dangle together’. There’s literally just a line of urinals fixed along one wall or sometimes not even that. I love the sheer “naturalness” that such an arrangement offers.

So my point it this—whenever you want to judge how upscale a restaurant or hotel might be, just check out the men’s washroom.