Care-ful

Man: So, what do you look for in a man?
Woman: Well, he should be caring, sensitive, successful and above all, he should make me laugh.
Man: Thats three and a half men and two of them gay. What do you want in one?

One of the cruelest cliches perpetrated on mankind by womenotsokind has been the the whole, 'I'd like a man who makes me laugh etc.' routine. Cruel, because its as blatant a lie, if there ever was one. Its purpose is to throw off innocent guys who believing the lies, rack their brains for funny anecdotes while they marry the first investment banker or power magnet they meet. (Note how these two fail miserably on criteria 1,2 and 4 mentioned above). Its a clever ploy which works nicely.

Take for example, the two pictures below:
Now ask yourself, which one of these two is more likely to be gentle, funny and sensitive. And remember, Kareena had the choice.

"I could't hurt a fly b'cos I feel their pain"


"I had blackbucks for lunch
and I dont mean illegal money"

Or better still take the case of software engineers in Bangalore.

Are they caring?
Of course! they wear ultra-tight faded jeans so that others feel cool and comfortable around them.

Are they sensitive:
Yes. They move around in groups of ten or above talking loudly, so that your own worries are drowned in the din.

Are they successful:
Why else would their company give them a T-shirt which says, 'Global Embedded Technology Multimedia Worldwide Champions Conference'. They have success written all over them, literally.

Are they humourous:
Are you kidding me, they are a walking joke unto themselves. Imagine your funfilled life if you marry a techie,
'Honey, my new jeans has only eight zippers and seven pockets!
HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Yet, what do you see? Poor techie guys spend half their non-work lives sitting in a row outside 'Forum Mall' watching one woman go after another with the meanest looking thugs, rockstar types and fat uncles.

For the benefit of my fellow men, let me dispel some myths regarding this whole caring-funny business:

A. Caring, Sensitive, gentle, loving etc: We men were not genetically designed to be all this nonsense and women know this. Remember we are the guys who gave the earth two world wars, holocaust, global warming, genocides, suicide bombing, sexually transmitted diseases etc. We dont have a caring bone in our body. Women, all too smart, use this to make you go running helter-skelter looking for qualities, nature didnt want you to have.

B. Sense of Humour: This is a double-edged sword. Most women look for this in men but not without laying down several pre-conditions. All sexist, racist, castiest, potty, lewd and sports jokes immediately disqualify you. It's stupid to even bother trying.

I would have proceeded to tell you what women really want but I have to rush to Forum to get good seats outside.

Of Dilbert, Dealers and Dancing

In case you haven’t read a book called The Dilbert Principle, I suggest you run to your nearest bookshop and buy one copy. I'm sure by the time you turn to page six, you would want to send me a thank you note with a bouquet of flowers, mach 3 razor blades, size 40 formal shirt, toothpaste, shoe-shiner, socks and mortein.

Darn it, I had to go shopping not blogging.

In the book, corporate victims relate dilbertesque moments from their workplaces. Heres mine.

Top management decided to fly down distributors/dealers from all over India to a city where these distributors truly belonged, Agra. Occasion: a 'Distributor Meet". The company's overt and distributors’ covert agenda for this meet was the same:

"A platform to promote bonding with channel partners. To celebrate the successes of the past year and plan for the next". Alternatively, "Free booze and short skirted emcee"

The meet began in the lawns of a posh hotel. A large stage was set where a dance troupe would entertain the guests and after the bar opened, vice-versa. We were seated around several round tables, region wise. I was ordered to sit with my Andhra distributors. Before long, speeches and presentations were in full swing and everyone was concentrating on the bar table being set up. Important prizes were given away like the second best South Andhra Distributor for sales of epidural anaesthesia kit.

Then, we were all handed over a large candle. Our GM came onto the stage along with other top management. Everybody was asked to light their candles and stand up holding them high over our heads. Then repeating after the GM, we recited a pledge, in chorus, on how we were one big loving family and that we will destroy all competition in selling intravenous neonatal cannulas, stop cocks and urine collection units. All this in dead earnest.

I looked around to see if my friend SB saw the farce that was being played out here. He was repeatedly stabbing himself with a dagger. As the evening progressed, drunken distributors hit the dance floor, literally. I was watching the fun from a safe distance when somebody hissed into my ears, "Don’t stand here alone. Why don't you go dance with your distributors.” Best prom night ever.

I reached the dance floor to see my regional head doing a close dance with one dealer. He then moved on, signaling me to take over while he serviced others. I tried to copy the neat steps of the distributor by shaking my arms and legs in different directions and bobbing my head back to front making fish faces.

Seven of us eight new joinees quit the company before the year was out.

It's different

If this was Amit Varma's blog this entry would end right here.

People from all over send him all the interesting stuff and he hyperlinks away to glory on his blog aka ‘India Uncut and Paste’.

If this was a hidden identity blog like The Compulsively Constipated (an obliquely evident reference to eM) then I would talk about my bohemian banking lifestyle and search for sexual innuendoes in opening accounts, bouncing cheques, closing balances and 24-hr call centres.

If this was a techie blog. Shudder. It will never be.

Heavens forbid if this was a woman’s blog. Most women write the way they talk. Too much.

I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt about a blog’s gender and the self becomes too much, then follow this simple test and you will find all your doubts melting away. Recall the last blog you read. Did it go something like…

Yak yak yapp yap ratitottoo ti wooti tak tak tak …long word…longer word…yak yak yap yap…clichéd clichés …wapater hokti boo tak tak tak Yak yak yapp yap ratitottoo ti wooti tak tak tak …long word…longer word…yak yak yap yap…

Or , Did it have an exasperating rhyming scam disguised as a poem

“ Oh, the soul of those haunting eyes,
Intermingled with my cold sighs,
Searching for meaning in this existence,
Rodents are the cause of pestilence.”

If yes, you were reading a female blog.

If this was a humour blog ala Sidin Vadukut or Rahul Phondke, then why would I be trying so hard?

If this was just any other blog with a crackpot fake name like killerbazooka or flyingmongoose, where people ejaculate about the latest movie or book and then let it die a natural death only to come back intermittently and apologise for the hiatus. Then you would'nt be reading it. Er..You dont read this.

But because this is my blog, so I can do a brazen copy of everyone’s style and present a mish-mash of balderdash.

Grounded Stars

Gentlemen, keep your wet hankies aside. Ladies please swipe your nose on the sleeve.

I’m attempting to do something which no human or banker has done before: an unfavourable review of taare zameen par (tzp)

Please lift your jaw and put the eyeballs back into their socket. No, I’m not an insensitive freak, nor was I born in a lovely teachers-supportive family-encouraging system utopia. I fail to understand why are people going ga ga or in this case waaah waaah over tzp.

I went to see tzp with my flatmate Nik, and you couldn’t find two more sensitive guys than us in Bangalore. I mean Nik once helped a blind man cross the road, forcibly, thirteen years back. So, naturally we were hoping for a moving, touching experience. Like we usually do.

Aamir Khan, who obviously had made up his mind to make everyone cry, had us at the ticket window only. At 300 bucks a ticket, the two of us were left tearjerked. But then God gently reminded us that getting tickets for a new release on the first weekend without booking at PVR in Bangalore is the kind of miracle that would have given Mother Teresa sainthood.

Now, as two broke, shaken and faith-in-god-restored men sat in the cinema hall, AK unleashed his first weapon. He took soo loong ,over one and half hours, to establish an important, but obvious-in-five-minutes-of-the-movie, fact: ‘dyslexic child’, that by the end of the first half I was dyspeptic.

Thankfully the film picked up very well in the second half with some good songs and performances to match. But soon AK was at it again. He had already given us the exaggerated stereotype of the pushing father and wailing mother. And further reinforced them with the hairy Hindi teacher, accented English teacher and brawny sports teacher to it. The scene where AK tries to convince the Principal of the child’s special abilities by quoting Oscar Wilde is so corny, you have to see it to believe it.

Be that as it may, people were busy sniffling whimpering and sobbing all over. Now, I believe there’s a simple explanation for that. I mean how hard can it be to make moms, moms-to-be, wives, girlfriends and metrosexual men to cry. Just put a struggling child up there and make him cry in every conceivable pain and position. So, the kid cries in his bedroom then a quick sob in the school, one kneeling down on the bed and even while running on the basketball ground. One of these is bound to tickle your ancestral monkey instincts and soon you follow suit.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for crying in movies. When Rajesh Khanna sang a song heaving up and down on his dying elephant’s belly in Haathi Mere Saathi, I cried my eyeballs out. Or when in ‘Kishan Kanhaiya’, Shilpa Sharodkar did that….No wait, that was a different.

Ahem…well. Now that this post has firmly established me as a sexist insensitive imbecile. I would urge you to watch Polish film director Kuzwipo Polsjki’s ‘Ustyer jOkrma de childe’ before forming your opinion. Chances are you will not be able to sit through the movie, simply because it does'nt exist. You are also requested to not take my opinion seriously as I suffer from film-dyslexia. But more on that later.