Badhai Ho

It is a natural progression, parents producing offsprings... Thats perhaps one of the few things on which Darwin and God wouldnt have an argument.. because thats what evolution is all about..

It is not as though when parents grow old, they cease to be useful to the community or are ill equipped to survive in the world.. after all thats what they would have been doing for years, but after a certain time, nature has a way of bringing to the fore an offspring that is better equipped to handle the world than its parent could evolve to be..All parents would love their offspring to be better than them, in every way..

and so the parent would have been pleased when people claimed that its offspring had better features and at least from the first few days of experience, the people familiar with the parent claimed that the offspring had qualities they had hoped the parent would have.. of course,it wasnt a perfect being, but it definitely was better...

And so, while some firang geeks would care to describe it as the second Greek alphabet, at least those of us populating this country and speaking the language should realise it for what it is, and offer our congratulations to the service we use, when we get to know (as they would say in Bollywood) "Aap ko Beta hua hai" ..

until next time, springing surprises..

Reclamation cost

If you have been watching the cricket series or i guess, even television in general around this part of the world, you couldn't have missed a (literally) screaming red Tata Safari asking you to reclaim your life.. I have seen around 3 print advertisements of this, and the copy is amazing, have a look here if you havent seen them yet... in fact i liked the entire concept of'reclaim your life', i would have even bought the SUV, but it starts at 6.4 lakhs..

And hence a small issue with the enire concept.. if i do decide to buy that awesome red colored machine, i'd have to take a loan, since old man Ratan doesnt know me from Jack...that leaves me paying off a reasonably big four figure sum as emi.. now assuming that most parts of the machine would be non edible, that necessarily means i have to be working on a salary that allows me to also spend on stuff that i can eat, and wear and all those other things that unfortunately are the hallmarks of civilisation...

that reminds me of the old joke about the city guy who sees a man sitting by the river, fishing,and asks him whats his daily catch.. then goes on to teach him a thing or two about business, on how he should invest in a bigger fishing rig, get rich, build a processing plant, get richer, start exporting, get even richer and then take a vacation, and maybe go fishing, at which point, the man quietly points out that thats exactly what he is doing now...

so the point being, if its all about reclaiming life, is buying an SUV worth 6.4 lakhs exactly the best way to start? or maybe i am just not the target audience :)

until next time, wonder if the ad has a disclaimer..

Them Remembers...

In a job interview

Them: Its a marketing profile, but you'll have to help out the sales guys too. They have a lot of promotions.

He: Absolutely fine, so long as i get promoted too, once in a while..

A year later

He: Its been a year, i think i need a hike.

Them: Go ahead, take one

until next time, work @ humour...

Clothes make a man

I strongly believe that its one of the smarter sayings that came out when they used to make such sayings.. and the reason is nothing but the fact that it is so open ended and can be made to fit any situation, the statement, that is...Among the mallrats, a discount sale would make the statement 'Clothes make a man happy' (at the moment of purchase) and 'Clothes make a man broke' (after checking the card transactions).

On a sidenote - gentlemen, i am sorry, with the mall age, those shopping laws apply to men too, and its still okay to be in denial..

in the context of all those wet sari sequences in Bollywood which they have now replaced with music videos, clothes make a man____.....Those were just examples to illustrate the usage of the saying.. Getting back, in my case, it can be suitably altered to 'Clothes make a man disturbed'... and this is not a recent phenomenon..

it started from when, a couple of decades back, my favourite pair of shorts was converted into what could pass of as a short skirt with a slit, by a maid who had her own ideas about the stitch in time.. the stitches were so meticulously removed that not even ninety stitches could mend it, forget nine.. couldnt sew it, couldnt sue her either!! One of my other disturbing memories is that of a nice black shirt being converted by a washing machine into what Snow White could wear to a funeral.. a jet black shirt with puffs of white all over.. by the time i knew about inside out and floss, the flaws made the shirt unusable..

These days, we have a washing machine who comes in everyday morning, and wreaks havoc on my clothes.. She adds dark colors to light shades and vice versa, on close inspection, i think i can see floral prints too, the choice of colors definitely makes her a Govinda fan...and my trousers, when i see them flapping around like Thakur's sleeves on the clothesline,i shudder.. not for anything else, but for the subtle chinese-like designs that have been added to them by punctilious use of the bar soap.. yes, i guess the stories they have of chinese tortures using bars of soap after removing the trousers must be true..

yes, clothes make a man disturbed... next time, you see someone with clothes which shouldntbe having floral prints or weird designs, and a disturbed look, it could be me, or is it just me?

until next time, some issues cant be ironed out..

World of Sports

Doordarshan, Sunday, 4 pm.. remember? In the days of only 'Distant Viewing', this was what i used to wait for on Sunday evenings.. before the days of live transmissions, this was your portal to get glimpses of international matches.. i used to curse them when they chose amatuer wrestling, billiards, chess and inane stuff i never knew could be classified as sport, and the entire show went without cricket, the only game i had an interest in..

Times have changed, and tennis, Formula 1 have been added to the interests, and therefore last week is an eventful one to me... early in the week, my favourite Las Vegas gamble in any tennis tournament, the one i used to bet on in any match, despite whatever odds- Andre Agassi, played his last match.. he lost the game, set and match, but in a larger picture, there would be few who could match him.. i was a fan from when he said Sampras looked like something "that swung off a tree" to the time when he said "Sampras, Sampras, Sampras, Sampras, Sampras" when asked who were the five greatest players the game had seen.. Of course i hated him a for a few days when he married Graf, but then that was only a few days...in the sport that starts with 'love all', he ended it, loved by all..

Monza witnessed a great race last weekend, Schumacher is now a couple of points from Alonso,and there are still 3 races left.. But that was not the only reason why Monza was eagerly awaited for, this was the place where Schumacher would make an announcement about his future.. and announce he did, his retirement. Another favourite, on a different track.. In a sport that starts when the 5 lights go off, and ends when the chequered flag is waved, he had a career chequered with controversy, but more brightly lit than any other..

They leave behind empty spaces in an ordinary fan's mind, empty spaces that cant be filled again,because in a different corner of the world, he grew up with them, cried when they won and cried when they lost.. Matches and races created memories that were special, memories that reminded him of how it was when they were the icons, they were the supermen.. they were the ones who he thought would last forever..

and so, their departure also tells him that times have changed, and a new generation is busy creating its own heroes.. its a new age, one that also has virtual XBox heroes along with real ones, its an age thats isnt so easy to belong to, when he is used to a different league of heroes..and so, like with every other thing, he relies on memories, bittersweet memories... he closes his eyes, sees the stadium, hears the frenzy and remembers the days that used to be, and the times that used to be....and applauds an era that has just made a final bow..

until next time, game over

And that would explain a lot of things..

"..They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say,to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment - a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger's face seen in a bus - a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much of suffering and ugliness inthe world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer.."

until next time, ain't Rand right?

Jab Tak Suraj Chand rahega...

Remember BJP's "India Shining" campaign? While it didnt exactly help them shine in the elections, it was perhaps the first time in a long time that an actual campaign was carried out based on a central idea.. the only other ones i can think of were by Indira Gandhi - 'Garibi Hatao' and 'Indira is India', but 'India Shining' was at a different level and aimed at a different target audience..A few days back, i saw an ad by Happydent, which i thought would have been a great ad for the above campaign too- because it ended up with a lot of people smiling and getting the city to shine withtheir bright teeth.

Which made me wonder if thats the future of Indian politics.. ad campaigns executed by the country'sbest agencies after going through the whole hog.. i can imagine Laloo briefing Piyush Pandey on his party's vision, guiding light (himself), the manifesto, the gambhir samasyas which they would like to address, the audience they would like to speak to, the budget for the campaign, all over a clay cup of buffalo milk that Rabri treats her special guests with... the brief would perhaps be given in railway compartment or Laloo's home in Bihar so that Pandeyji can soak in the ambience and the true spirit of all that Laloo stands for.....

and somewhere in Delhi, Manmohan Singh is quietly spelling out the points that Madam has carefully jotted down for him, and patiently trying to explain to the hotshot creative guy why making a video featuring him and Soniyaji with the song 'Rock and Roll Soniye' would not be such a bright idea, especially considering that Amitabh appears in the original video... because Amitabh is so close to Amar Singh's Samajwadi party.. Amar Singh, who is so thankful for his khushnaseebi, because his ad would feature the Big B, Small B, Jaya B and if he could persuade Anil,even Tina Bhabee...

Buddhadeb hoping that his cadres wouldnt see red on Rituparno making an ad with him and Bipasha, so that in Bengal, Mamta has 'No Entry'...Down south, Chandrababu Naidu would be making a laptop presentation to Nagesh Kukkonoor on his plans for Hyderabad and almost ending the story when Nagesh suggests it should be called 'Hyderabad Blues'..and Narendra Modi arguing that he has enough troubles already and cannot allow a campaign that goes 'Kem Che' because of its guerrilla warfare and revolutionary connotation..

until next time, if they think, they Cannes :)

Dual Duel

He was tense, not surprising, considering that this would be a historical event for him, a milestone... And he had worked hard for it. There were times when he had thought he would fall by the wayside somewhere along the journey. Before the moment was on him, he wanted to close his eyes and travel the path all over again in his mind, for the moment would pass in a flash, and he wanted it to be always momentous in his mind.

The numbers hadnt reached 199 just like that. Each one was worked for, with diligence. What was more significant was that he wasnt a hard hitter, so there were no boundaries, no sudden leaps in the score, it was an accumulation process. He had been tired in between, sorely tempted to stop, but he had willed himself on, for he knew that he would be happy at the moments to come, and he wouldnt really want to miss them.

Thankfully he didnt have any major critics who might have dampened the enthusiasm, though he didnt have any major fans either, but then he was doing this mostly for the joy of it, and not for the accolades.Yes, he was happy, a double century didnt come everyday, and he hadnt forgotten the joy he had felt when he had got his first century.

until next time, two much? :)