A Lady Ghost In My Bedroom

See I am not going to argue on this. The confirmed gender of ghosts is 'female'. 

Perhaps, that is why, ghosts have always fascinated me. 

Recently, I had an extra ordinary...ekdum dil ko dehla dene wala...encounter with a real ghost.

I have a strong faith that, a ghost is residing with me, in my room… bedroom actually. Inanimate things play ‘hide and seek’ most often. There’s always someone playing with the bathroom tap, kitchen utensils and million miscellaneous things inside the shaft. The lady upstairs produces strange moaning sounds at almost unthinkable hours of the day. I always make sure that, all the lights of my flat are switched off before I leave for office; only to find them switched on when I return home.

My roommate has thousands of possible justification for all these activities. This is the real problem with science and education. They sometimes make things unnecessarily complicated and boring. Why enter the vicious circle of reasons, logic and explanations, when you can simply choose to believe. ‘There’s a ghost in our room.’ Ignorance is such bliss and most often vastly interesting.

Only if, we had known, that, this scientific knowledge is not only complicated, but far more dangerous too. To cut the long story short, we decided to keep track of the ‘light’ thing.

Day 1: We both switched off all the light before going to office. Nothing happened that evening.

Day 2: No miracle happened.

Day 3: Same story repeated.

Now, this made him conclude, that, it was nothing but the usual ‘chemical locha’ in my head.

Today was the fourth day. My roommate was still in his office. I came home early, only to find all the light switched on this time. And not only that, this time, the fan was also running in full speed. The same fan which was not repaired throughout the entire summer.

I narrated the story to my roommate. He expressed his concern in perfectly religious terms, but I guess, he didn’t actually believe in the story. So, I decided to write a blog on the incident.

I clicked the above picture. Now, in order to give the readers, a real feel of the spookiness of the place, I opened the window and then clicked the image.

‘The image could not be found in the gallery.’

I checked all kinds of settings that my phone could afford to have. I checked memory status, battery status and everything. I took almost ten trials…no success. Somehow, I gathered courage, took my roommate’s phone and clicked. Still no image in the gallery could be found. Now, I was so afraid, that, I used the hand fan to shut the window and then I clicked using my phone. Crystal clear image in 3.2 mega pixel was the result.

After all these, I have two questions.

1.     Are you really able to read this blog?

2.     Are you able to see the above image?

Do tell me, whether I am actually writing a blog, or it’s just hallucination. Or at least pinch yourself once. If you think, that you are sitting in front of a real computer and reading a real blog, then maybe you should…think again.

PS: My Supernatural Girlfriendwas perhaps the sister ghost of this ghost.

Pops I want to Marry

Dear Pops,

What is the upper age limit for marrying?

This is an inevitable question and you can’t procrastinate it anymore. And please don’t tell me, there isn’t any. Well the Indian constitution does define the lower limit of 18 for females and 21 for males, but I guess that needs an amendment. There must be an upper limit as well. Or else, we would continue to see those hateful 40 something beasts marrying the under 20 damsels.

I hope you do remember all those qualifications we were looking for, while we were finalizing the groom for my sister. We made sure; he was not very aged and balding. The girl that you will decide for me is also someone’s daughter.

I know, you still think that I am not mature enough and you will continue to think the same way all through your life. After all I am your son. And so does every Indian father for their sons. But trust me; our whole life is a journey of growing up. People get mature by experiencing things, not by just attaining age. Some desires also are inevitable and unfortunately they lead people towards profane behavior. I hope; you do understand what I mean.

Financial stability and social security are just a state of mind. Life will always seem to have urgent temporary issues to deal with, everyday. Life will never tell you that you are financially stable and socially secure enough to marry. So, please don’t tell me that, when marriage is destined (programmed) it will happen spontaneously. We are human beings, not programmed devices. We have to decide and actualize our destiny.

I know; sad memories of some marriages haunt you, which were performed at early age. But I have thousand examples of marriages, which were performed at later stage of life, and even they weren’t successful. Honestly age doesn’t determine the success of a marriage. What actually does is the conviction.

People should marry at an age, when they are still young at heart, mind, body and soul. And I am totally convinced that this is the perfect time for me.

So please, take your time (considering the urgency of my emotions) and decide what is suitable for me.

Also remember that the latest iPHONE is amazing and it would look great in your hands.

Love

Your Son.

My Anna-shan Against Hypocrisy

‘Jaanu…what are your plans for this Sunday and the holiday on Monday? Let’s do something different na…’

‘Yeah baby…I was thinking of joining the ‘Anna-shan’…You see corruption is at its peak.’

‘That’s a great idea. Let’s go shopping today. We need to buy few Indian flags, a carpet, candles etc.’

‘Yeah…Certainly…Please remind me about the ‘I am Anna’ Gandhian cap also.’

‘Please do check in Google for some of the catchy slogans going around there.’

Indians are very poor, less creative and hypocrite when it comes to protests, in support of or against something. We are left with very few ideas;ranging from Bhookh Hadtaal Till Death (Which rarely capitalize to death), Candle March (Blame the Rang De Basanti bells, still ringing), Jail Bharo (The Munna-Circuit philosophy that, going to jail is not bad at all), Dharna (I won’t move my ass till you kick on my butts) and the evergreen Peace March (No comments on that), whenever it comes to protest against some social (read politically active) cause. And the real problem is, we don’t even realize, how boring our ‘Anna-shans are.

The latest hot flavor is the ‘Anna led Anna-shan’, against corruption or black money or the ruling government or something…I really don’t give a damn to their agendas. That’s an issue for high ‘Pseudo-intellectual’ debate. This old man is refusing to eat. I guess because, he has reached an age, when he needs to fulfill his self actualization needs. Or maybe, after the death of the father of ‘Anna-shans’ (I am sure you know the name), after almost 64 years, there is a void for the post. This old man is just filling in for him. I really don’t know how this is going to benefit the so called common man. Or, how he is going to stop me from giving undue advantage to the sexiest colleague I work with. Or, how he is going to stop all mediocre boss shitting over their smart juniors. Shit reminds me of another ‘Anna-shan’.

Another recent bullshit was the ‘Besharmi Morcha’ aka ‘Slut Walk’, performed by around 500 odd girls and few human beings of the middle sex. The very mention of Slut Walk brought the pictures of the march, that was celebrated in Toronto, Canada and the world over; in some part of my highly responsive retina. I was so excited about the march, that I made so many changes to my ever busy schedule to make sure of my presence there (Obviously I don’t give a damn about their hypocrite issue. I just wanted to see the abundance of fatness in right places). For the first time in my life, I felt that India is really growing up. And, what I was presented, is well known to you all. I have aptly named it as ‘Delhi’s Behenji Morcha’. I felt so cheated by all those hypocrite women. None of the girls could be seen in anything better than jeans and t-shirts. All you ‘Besharmi’ supporting girls, if you really want me to change my thinking about your issue, pay me back all my money and time that I have wasted in that wild goose chase.

The only creative protest march that I came across, off late, was the Chaddi March done by young kids in the movie 'Chillar Party' Something like that has to be done, to bring back India on the tracks.

PS: Top 5 wacky ways to protest (Courtesy: www.google.com)

1. Mismatch and wear the most outrageous coloured clothes (eg pink pants, parrot-green shirt and orange shoes).

2. Wear funny hats (with horns, bells or mushrooms) to work or school.

3. Stage Eat-all-you-can strikes (but still call it a 'Hunger Strike').

4. Spray perfume at places with stinky walls.

5. Mass meditate under the Peepal tree in New Road.

6. Build whatever was broken down during previous protests such as pedestrian bars.

7.Symbolic demonstration: carry broomsticks and make everybody sweep the streets to signify 'cleaning up whatever needs to be cleaned up'.

8. Go swim in Bagmati, Bishnumati, or Tukucha.

9. Hug, shake hands, and give a candy to all the policemen you meet.

10.Wear a tyre (truck, car, cycle, according to your size) around your waist and do a collective hula dance in Tundikhel.

                                        

Friends Freedom and Magic

It’s 12 a.m. of 15^th August2011.

Sharique is explaining to me about the pros and cons of a bureaucratic organization. What is the real meaning of bureaucracy and how bureaucracy forces the employees to work in their level of incompetency? You keep on getting promoted to the next level, if you are efficient in the previous level. And your promotion gets stuck or delayed at a level where you are most incompetent. So you end up spending more time at your level of incompetency.

This is definitely a privilege to be friends with an IAS aspirant.

‘Let’s go out yaar…’

‘Yeah sure… Let’s call Aariz, Chunni Babu, Naiyar Jaan & Sabahuddin.’

We reached Okhla head, only to find out that none of the faggots has reached there before us, and it started raining. As usual, Pillu bhai’s tea aggravated the sensible bakwaas that is always present in abundance inside my newly found cute pot belly. It was still raining, and that was slowly, but certainly killing the chances of our esteemed night out. We were hiding inside a shed, puffing out the frustration when I spoke.

‘You know something. When you give unlimited authority to someone, there are 100% chances that he will misuse it.’

‘Yeah…that’s true.’

‘See the case of God. We did give him unlimited authority. Now you see his cheap trial at ruining our night.’

‘Poor fellow…He does not know that our spirit can’t be shaken.’

‘Yeah…make a call to those faggots.’

He rang Aariz, who is still a male person.

‘You fucking bitch…why haven’t you come yet?’

‘Yaar…it’s raining!’

‘Are you a ‘maati ka putla’ that you will dissolve in the rain? You slut, come soon.’

‘Okay…15 minutes…Well…10 minutes’

Who says, only your girlfriends can be demanding? He did come within 10 minutes, all drenched, and suddenly, all my fears of getting wet, vanished. We voluntarily moved out of the shed and hugged each other. It started raining heavily. We started walking in the rain from Okhla head to Jamia College to Batla House to Zakir Nagar to Bharat Nagar.

Bharat Nagar was calm and silent except for the music of the rains. Strangely I was feeling as if I was marching towards eternal peace. We moved, splashing, jumping, and singing; rather yelling at the misfortune of those cowards who were rotting in the comforts of their rooms. We weren’t walking as if we were the king, rather as if we didn’t give a shit about, who the king was. It is one of those times when you really feel that you could conquer the world, but you don’t give a damn about the world too. You feel as if you are at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

We went to a shop in Zakir Nagar called ‘Javed ki famous Nihari’…famous indeed it was. Literally people were bustling and jostling to get the ‘Paaya’ and ‘Nihari’ as if this was some delicacy which would make them immortal. You could not buy it, you had to achieve it. We got a coke bottle, cigarettes and moved further.

That was one time of the day, I felt really free. If I wished to piss on that bottle and throw it at someone, I could do that too, though we didn’t do that. But we did piss to irrigate the saplings of trees, nicely protected by MCD officials, with both our arms wide open and looking up above the sky. I tell you, you can never match the joy of pissing like that in such a situation.

The rain slowed down a bit. We were walking silently now. A thought crossed my mind. I was just arranging the words to make a sentence, when Sharique spoke before I could.

‘Yaar…this is more entertaining than fornication.’

I was dumbstruck. A loud, but a half shout came out of me. This was exactly what I was going to say. Before Sharique could realize the amazing coincidence, Aariz yelled even louder, and this time a full shout.

‘God damn it…even I was going to say the same.’

We all started hugging each other in disbelief and frenzy. A loud shivering commotion followed. And then, we started enjoying silently, getting a feel of the chilling breeze. Some integral part of my body shrunk to a couple of inches, almost one third of its normal size.

Perhaps out of shame.

Perhaps I will always remember this night, when we celebrated the true spirit of Friendship, Freedom and ‘Paaya’…

Pathos of an Engineer

Engineers are one of the most underrated professionals in India. And the reason behind this, are the Engineers themselves.

“Engineers have made the life of people unnecessarily easy and simple.”

Any retard becomes eligible to use a smart-phone, just because he has enough bucks in his wallet. This is just not done. You have to be smart to use a smart-phone.

Take the case of Doctors. These useless creatures used to carry some herbs in a jute bag and used to roam around in villages to loot ailing people. We gave them stethoscope, syringe, needle, forceps, X-ray machine, ECG machine and what not. And today, these buggers are making twice the money we make.

Any common retard is enjoying all the luxuries, we engineers developed after years of hard work. And then, they underpay us for our genius efforts. We just won’t let their life be simple anymore.

How easily they read the number displayed in a bus, and cause unnecessary unimportant crowd? The number displays of public buses should read like this.

First solve the above equation and then get to know the bus number and the desired route. And obviously, if you are unable to solve the above equation, you do not qualify to use a calculator either. To buy a gel pen, you have to tell the chemical composition of the pigment used and the working mechanism of the ink reservoir and the barrel. To get a bottle of mineral water, you at least have to know the atomic numbers of hydrogen and oxygen. All the cold drink cans should be password protected after you buy them. You can get the password only if you solve the puzzle printed on the can itself. And you will get only three trials. After the third trial, the cold drink will turn into shit.

To buy a calculator, you at least have to be a diploma holder in any engineering discipline. To buy a smart-phone, you have to submit your B. Tech mark sheet along with a written test. To buy a laptop, you should have a PhD. thesis in your name. To be able to sign up for Facebook, you should have invented something of large social use or given any scientific theory duly acknowledged by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And to be able to sign up for Google+ you should possess all the above qualities.

Jokes apart. India is not a very technologically advanced country. And the reason is that, we do not celebrate technology or creativity. We celebrate politicians. We celebrate movie stars. We celebrate cricketers. And then we celebrate corruption. We celebrate money (The commerce guys make a living out of that). We celebrate kinship. But we never celebrate technology. Mark Zuckerberg is a celebrity in America. I don’t think Sir Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Dr. Har Gobind Khorana and Dr. Subramanyan Chandrasekhar were ever considered as celebrities in their own country. They are often referred as boring creatures in the cool language. And that is why we don’t see a Mark Zuckerberg in India. Very rarely people want to go to the research field. We are alienating ourselves from the real deal and making ourselves dependable on the cold countries.

Today, as a part of my anti-boredom campaign, let’s celebrate the spirit of technical education and let’s celebrate being engineers.

All Izz Well...2

Every morning I get up and decide.

‘Today I will stay happy.’

On most of the days, I am happy. But as a matter of fact, there are days when I do not live up to my expectations. And that is because; my happiness is related to the happiness of few more persons. So today, I take the pain to educate all these ignorant people about the simple fact in life that, ‘Situations may not be at your control, but staying happy is completely your choice.’ 

Let us understand this by using Stephen Covey’s 90/10 principle.

10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react. We really have no control over 10% of what happens to us. We cannot stop the car from breaking down. We cannot escape getting drenched or falling in a ditch while going to office. We cannot escape getting stuck in a traffic jam. We cannot sometimes escape bird shit falling over us. (My bird shitting accident rate is 3 Nos. per year.) We sometimes also cannot escape our boss shitting on us. We cannot escape a flat tyre, a common cold, an ATM failure or a pimple. We have no control over this 10%.

The other 90% is different. We determine the other 90% by our reaction. You cannot control a red light. But you can control your reaction. Don't let people fool you; YOU can control how you react. Let’s take an example.

Your boss is shouting at you for no genuine reasons.

Reaction 1: You start an argument, trying to justify your point. You forget that your boss is an ass. You come to your desk. You punch over your workstation. The coffee spills over important documents. You shout at the housekeeping boys. (Next time, they spit on the coffee before they bring it for you.) You leave from office. You shout at the driver for traffic jam. Your roommate has arranged a surprise for you. You shout at him too. He does not allow you to have pleasure with him that night.

Reaction 2: Graciously you accept whatever your boss says. You come back to your desk. You make a cartoon of your boss and upload it on Facebook. (There are many other ways too:Fire your boss.)You get numerous funny comments on it. All your friends curse your boss together. You show the cartoon to the housekeeping staff as well. They sympathize you. You feel nice. You leave office, enjoy the drive. You get stuck in a traffic jam. You enjoy Facebook. You reciprocate the surprise arranged by your roommate. And you spend the night with pleasure, with your roommate.

Always try to make yourself believe that, things could have been even worse than they are. Your daughter has failed in exams. You can choose to curse her, shout at her and cut down her pocket money. Or you can choose to believe that things could have been even worse. She could have been addicted to smoking, drinking, drugs, boyfriends, had sex with a stranger and get pregnant and stolen all your money and gave it to the stranger. You can choose to encourage her or promise her an i-phone. She can do exceptionally well in her exams next time.

Never let the ‘It’s okay’ attitude die within you. Always remember, life is what we make it. At every point of your life, you will have only two options. Either you react with a smile or you react with a frown.

The choice is yours. Learn to say.

All Izz Well....!

Imperfect Love Story

Old Delhi railway station never looked so beautiful. I had my semester exams after 36 hours, and I had not slept since past 36 hours. The entire electrons in my body were violating the basic law of atomic physics. They were in the outermost orbit, all of them. I had never felt more alive than today. And all of these were, because I got a text message, a couple of hours ago.

“Hi
Going to Jaipur via Delhi…
Just boarded Rajdhani…
B-6”

20 more hours to go… Could not wait at home…What if there happens a vehicle strike. What if I fall asleep and never wake up. 20 hours is nothing. I have waited 7 years.

7 years must have changed a lot of things. Let me close my eyes. Let me picture, how she would look. What she will be wearing. Blue was her favorite color. But she looked divine when she wore white. And that 440 volt smile in her entire face. Those ever twinkling eye would be absolutely ethereal.

Does she still remember those crazy moments and those silly fights, which always gave us a reason to like each other? All the time spent beneath the trees, disputing, agreeing, bullying…growing up in love. I remember every bit of it, every single minute detail…

10 more hours to go…Someone has come here with a bouquet, may be to receive his regular wife. Why the hell I haven’t brought anything for her. She likes public display of affection. Oh God she will speak nonstop, about nothing. Why the hell the gap between the two trains is only 4 hours. I want to listen to her nonstop. I can do this for my entire life.

Why the hell, even Rajdhani Express has to be late for 4 hours.

The cacophony of one siren brings my heartbeat to maximum. The jostling and bustling seem so immaterial. Why can’t I move my feet. Why does everything seem to move in slow motion? Why there are so many people in this world. I must make sure I am in front of B-6.

There she stands in all her glorious pink. I look into her eyes…deep, very deep. She does not smile. She does not even say any socially accepted greetings. Why the hell I am not saying anything. She has applied ‘kajal’ in those already beautiful eyes. How come her face is almost expressionless? Or may be, I don’t know, what this particular type of expression is called.

Another siren brings my heartbeat almost to a stop. I rush to take her luggage; we both run to another platform…another train…perhaps another 7 years.

Why the hell is she still silent? She takes out a gift from her bag for me. It’s a watch…like the one shown in Rang De Basanti. I look at it, with clinical detail. The train starts moving. Oh God, my vision has blurred. I look up to see. A teardrop falls from her eyes. And finally she speaks.

“I love you.”

The train moves…far away from my gaze. I look up in the sky and speak, almost silently.

“I love you too.”

Bhookh Hadtaal Till Death

Baba Ramdev is more popular than Facebook these days...!

Reason: He does not want to eat.

This reminds me of my own childhood days. Whenever I needed to get approval for some of my illegal expenses or wishful demands, this was the easiest weapon. Just refuse to eat or drink anything. Sooner or later the demand was met with. Oh those were the days. But I guess I could not milk those days properly. I should have asked for much valuable things. I wasted all my trials in silly ice candies, chocolates or video games, while I could have asked for land property, a flat or a bride.

But no worries...Now I have the government of India to fulfill my demands, which is much more powerful and richer compared to my parents. Now I can ask for real big things.

Thus here is my list of demands which has to be satisfied within 24 hours as per any standard quartz based clock, failing which I will obviously go on a hunger strike undo death.

1. I want all my white money back, which I have lost throughout my life either due to pick pocketing of my wallet, stolen by a thief or being deliberately given to the corrupt officials in order to gain some favor from them. Also in the same line, I want all the persons responsible for stealing my money to be traced, arrested and sentenced for life imprisonment.

2.Sanskrit should be accepted as the official and national language of India. Facebook should be redesigned in Sanskrit. In the same line, all the programming languages like C, C++, and Java etc should be rewritten in Sanskrit. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe should be banned to sell their products in India unless they release their software in Sanskrit. All Bollywood movies should be made in Sanskrit only. Anyone who cannot communicate properly in Sanskrit should be treated as an outsider and later on should be considered as a traitor.

3.All notes below the denomination of Rs. 500/- should be banned. This will encourage people to give more and more money to the beggars, as they will not be having any chillars left with them. This will also help in transferring the black money from the rich to the poor. And the most important thing. All currency notes should have my photo on one side and my photo with my girlfriend on the other side. The currency note should be a symbol of youth, not old age baldness.

4. All the persons responsible for corruption in the country should be traced, arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

My earnest request to the countrymen is to support me in this national cause. My appeal to my disciples is to join me in large numbers in the hunger strike undo death and make it a success, so that I get popular and bag more and more brands to endorse.

PS: Any political party who want to cash on my hunger strike as their agenda to curb the ruling government in the name of corruption can contact me through my Gmail account.