The 1-hour torture called ‘Chemistry lab’ is finally over. I’m always glad to get out of the Chemistry lab, because it makes me feel like a witch mixing all those acids and salts and whatnot together. And a bad witch at that, because my potion never turns out quite the color it should.

Anyway, as I’m walking out, I see Diridhar talking to a girl. A fresher. And a pretty one at that. Diridhar is the kind of person that seems to know a lot of girls
around campus, and is always talking to them. I’m insanely jealous, but I have to pretend to be civilized and so just smile at it. But not today. Today, I decide to do something about it.

I want to introduce myself to this girl, but I’m going to seem like a weirdo if I just go and interrupt the conversation. And so, I hatch a master-plan. I’ll just go up to Diridhar, tell him someone wants to see him urgently. He’ll have to leave, but before that he’ll introduce me to this girl, and I can take it from there. What a brilliant idea! What could possibly go wrong?

I walk up to Diridhar.

Me: “Hi dude! The HOD needs to see you right away. She is in the lab, waiting for you.”
An awkward moment. I am facing the girl, and she has the “Who the hell are you?” look on her face. With Diridhar barely acknowledging my presence, I am now in a very awkward position. But I’ve been in worse situations.

Diridhar: “You carry along; I will go see her later”.

Notice how cleverly Diridhar has worded his response. It asserts that I should leave immediately, but there is no commitment on his part to leave the place. Brilliant! A worthy competitor. He has definitely done this many, many times before. But not to be outdone, I decide to pursue this battle to the next level. I choose a triumph card.

Me: “It is about your student assistantship assignment. She seemed pretty upset!”

Nothing stirs up things like adding a dash of urgency into the situation. Nothing shakes you up like finding out you are on the wrong side of the HOD’s anger. This would have been an excellent victory where Diridhar has no option but to leave, except for a small oversight on my part.

Diridhar is not a Student Assistant.

This fact dawned on me a little late. Actually, it was too late. I look at Diridhar. The statement has had absolutely no effect on him. Oh dear! This mistake is going to cost me!

Diridhar: “The HOD can wait. I will go see her later!”

And Diridhar has come out looking like the knight in shining armor that has defeated the HOD dragon. This kinds of things impress Juniors, who, for some inexplicable reason, are mortally afraid of the Profs. Anyway, the girl is in complete awe of Diridhar. She gives me the “Get lost, I want to gawk at my handsome prince” look.

Diridhar nonchalantly tells me something about getting lost. The right thing for me to do, at this point, would have been to just walk away. But it’s me of course, and I’ve rarely done the right thing.

I’ve heard that chicks dig it if you handle defeat with grace. With this goal in mind, I decide to say a goodbye to the girl, so that I may rationalize this as a moral victory later on. I turn to the girl and say…

Me: “OK then. See you later. It was nice meeting…”
As the word ‘meeting’ comes out of my mouth, I realize that she’s barely acknowledged my presence, and using the word ‘meeting’ here would be inappropriate. I try to change the word on the fly
Me: “….talking…”
Even worse! Only I’ve been talking and she’s only given me looks. Oh my god! What do I do now? I’m in a complete internal panic, and I don’t know what I’m saying. In retrospect, what the girl probably heard was:

Me: “It was nice meetalkaaaiiieeeeeeee!!!!”

One can’t really blame her that she never even looked at me again! Ever!

• 11 Comments

A Tribute to the AutoRickshaw

Look around, the roads seem strangely quite and peaceful
No noise and Pollution? Nothing running amok like a mad bull?
A flash of lightning, and it jumps out from the frying pan,
Here comes the AutoRickshaw, so watch out Super-Man!

You glide through the roads with poise and grace
Spewing poisonous smoke onto eveybody’s face.
Millions of devotees call out to you every day
You will come only if the driver feels like going that way.

You feast on petrol, kerosene and maybe even Jet Fuel,
You could put Schumacher to shame in a racing duel!
You draw your prey in, promising to make the day sweeter,
Then cheat them out of their money, with the tampered meter!

Preaching through portraits of fables and holy messages,
Bad drawings of Rajnikanth and other Bollywood sages!
You fearlessly roam the city streets like a giant toad,
You truly deserve the title of THE KING OF THE ROAD!

• 9 Comments

Doesn’t it seem like whenever the Indian cricket team visits Australia, there is some controversy or the other. The latest one, this time, is the really bad umpiring. I mean, how can the umpiring be so stupid? The ICC has to get up and take notice. And as usual, the ICC is out of ideas, so it’s up to me to come up with some solution to the bad umpiring problem. In fact, I’ve come up with three!

(1) The “Gabbar Singh” solution
This solution is called so because it is inspired by the classic Bollywood “Sholay” movie. This movie has solutions to all the world’s problems, but that’s another blog post. The solution is to keep as hostage, something the 2 umpires hold dear to them – Maybe their ugly-white-hats. The solution also requires the umpires to be renamed as “Thakurs“.

You can see that this solution works: When the bowlers appeal, instead of saying the ridiculous “Hooowwwzaaaaattttttaaaaaa???????“, they’ll use the more elegant “Yeh Wicket Hame De De Thakur!“. At this point, several Basantis run out to the center and start singing and dancing. If the umpire then refuses to give the batsman out, the bowling team repeats “Yeeeh Wiickkeett Hammee DE DE THAAAKURRR!!!” to increase the intensity. If the umpire still says “Naaahiinnnn….“, the bowling team then sacrifices the hat by cutting off it’s sides. Imagine the consternation of the umpires at having to wear hats with no sides! I’m convinced that this fear will lead to better umpiring standards. The Basantis are strictly for entertainment purposes, which, in my opinion, is entirely missing in cricket today, especially in those 5-day versions.

(2) The “8-year-old” solution.
This is my favorite solution, because I think it is, by far, the most effective. The rules of cricket will be changed slightly – The bowling team will supply the bats and the batting team will supply the balls. The game proceeds normally, until the point where there is a controversial decision. If either party is not satisfied with the decision, they can snatch the bat/ball from the opposing team and walk away crying. The crying is important, because it adds a certain drama. A vast majority of the “saas-bahu-watching” crowd seems to enjoy it a lot.

I have personally been at the wrong end of this situation several times, and I can assure you that this opens up several avenues for negotiation between the playing teams. This will, no doubt, work well. In fact, we can get rid of the umpires altogether!

(3) The “Road Runner” solution
This solution is inspired by the ever green cartoon. The solution is simple – We’ll place a 200 Ton steel ball on top of both the umpires, suspended by a thin thread, and a knife ready to cut it. The control to this knife will be hooked up to the stadium audience.

When an appeal is made to the umpires, the crowd will monitor the decision carefully. If the umpire then refuses to act according to the crowd’s wishes, they’ll all yell the secret code-word : “OOoaaaaaoooo“. When this happens, the giant steel ball falls on the umpire’s heads. This will surely control the bad umpiring, because no one wants to annoy the bad and evil crowds. Besides, it’ll also provide some entertainment to the crowds when the steel ball falls.

As you can see, all my solutions work well and also provide additional entertainment. This is always a good thing. ICC, are you listening?

• 10 Comments

Earlier this year, I had resolved to see what could be done to avoid watching all the top-10 worst movies this year again. I discussed the situation with the wife, and she skillfully convinced me that it is my own fault that the movies are bad. Not only that, she also proved to me that watching bad movies improves memory, reduces cholesterol and fights global warming.

And so, reluctantly, I agreed when the wife announced that we were going to watch the movie “Welcome”. But all was not lost yet. I am not the one to take defeat lightly, and I had been working on a master plan to do something about this. The plan of action this time, is to stall and delay us so that we arrive at the theater late and end up missing the movie. Oh, what a brilliant plan! I am so proud of myself!

Soon, D-Day arrived, and it was time to go to the movie.

Wife: “Come on, come on, we’re getting ready. Are you dressed yet?“
Me: “In a second. Almost ready.”

I am sitting in front of the TV.

30 seconds later, The wife comes into the room.

Wife: “You said you were almost ready!“
Me: “Yeah. I said I’m almost ready to start getting ready.“
Wife gives me a cold stare. I try to resist the soul-penetrating tension she is creating. I can hold out for 4.5 seconds, and then I have to get up. Every second matters. My strategy is already working.

After much dilly-dallying, I am unfortunately at the door, ready to go. I look at my watch. We still have plenty of time to catch the movie. I need to stall. I put into action my master-plan.

Me: “What shoes do you think go with this outfit?“
The Wife looks at me strangely, trying to evaluate what I’m up to. I think she’s got a wiff of my plan. I have to be careful now.
Wife: “You have one one pair of shoes. There isn’t much choice now. Just put them on!”
Me: “That’s pretty bad. Oh wait! I can’t go out like this! I need to iron my shirt. Look at how wrinkled it is!“
Wife: “You’re wearing a T-Shirt and a jacket!“
Me: “Yeah. I want to iron my Jacket!“
Wife: “Nobody has ever ironed a jacket. Let’s go!“
Me: “Ha! That’s what they told Einstein when he was working on the theory of relativity. But he didn’t get discouraged by the negativity of others. He went on to do great things!“
Wife: “You want to do great things by ironing your jacket? Have you ever used an iron before?“
Me: “I’ve never used one, but that’s what discovery is all about!“
Wife: “What’s the matter with you? Come on, let go. We’re getting late!“

The wife is hurrying it up. Time to turn up the strategy to ‘evil genius’ level!

Me: “Wait, wait! My hairstyle is not right. I need to apply Hair Gel. I’ll be back in a minute!“
Wife: “You don’t even have Hair Gel. You’ve never used it.“
Damn! Why do I keep bringing up stuff that I’ve never used?
Me: “But we can’t go out now! There is Rahu Kala going on. It is inauspicious to leave the house between 5:00 and 5:45 PM. It said so in the horoscope today! Please don’t bring upon us the wrath of the planets! We’re all going to DIE!!!“

It got a little pathetic at the end, but one cannot be choosy when one is fighting battles. What matters in the end is victory. And I had mine! Oh Yes! My cunning strategy of stalling at the last minute worked, and we were a full 12 seconds late for the movie. I am going to keep working and refining this strategy. My goal is to raise it up to 45 seconds by 2010.

• 11 Comments

Back in school, they had this really weird concept of maintaining a different notebook for each subject. Not just one notebook, but several per subject – Home Work, Class Work, Neat Work and whatnot. I didn’t believe in this system. Instead, I just had this one 200-pages long note book that I called the “Universal Notebook”. It contained everything. At least everything that I managed to write down. Needless to say, the teachers were not very impressed with this radical innovation.

But the real problem is that I used to forget to bring my Universal Notebook as well. I would come to class like I was on a picnic. This would irritate the teachers no end, and I got screamed at a lot. Fortunately, I have a very thick skin, and these kinds of trivialities don’t affect me.

This one time, I was sitting in the last bench telling some silly jokes, when the teacher yelled at me.

Teacher: “ADITYA!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?“
Me: “Not much, actually. I was…“
Teacher: “Come to the first bench and sit! And bring your notebook!“
Me: “Hmmm…. OK!”

The fact that the teacher had explicitly asked for my notebook worried me a little, because I didn’t have any notebook with me. The teacher had turned towards the board. As I sat down in the first bench, I was wondering how I could get hold of a notebook. I looked around. Next to me was Drinivas. Regular blog readers will know Drinivas, but for those of you that don’t, Drinivas is this super-nerdy, obedient, teachers-pet, first bench sitting, fully-homework-doing goody goody boy. The kind that actually will raise their hand to answer questions in class. Anyway, Drinivas is sitting next to me:

Me: “Pssstttt….Oye. Oye? Hello?“
Drinivas is busy writing down whatever the teacher is writing on the board. I nudge him.
Me: “Do you have a notebook?“
Drinivas: “Which notebook do you want?“. He opens his seven-and-a-half-ton backpack of notebooks and starts rummaging through.
Me: “Any will do.”
Drinivas: “What?“
Me: “I just need to open a book and keep it in front of me.“

At this point, Drinivas experienced what is popularly known as a culture shock. His central nervous system just froze, unable to comprehend how someone could live without having 27 different types of classwork and homework notebooks. As he stood there, just gaping at me, I figured a joke would be appropriate to cut the tension.

Me: “Tell me, if the teacher makes a spelling mistake, do you copy it down as is? Hehehe…“
Drinivas: “Yes, and I circle it with my red pen so that I can go to the teacher and point it out after class. It is good to give constructive feedback. Everyone can learn this way!“

At this point, I experienced what is popularly known as a culture shock. He was actually serious! Man!

Seeing that my notebook request had not gone down well with Drinivas, I put my hand into his open bag and pulled out one. “This will do!“, I say as I help myself. “GIVE ME BACK MY NOTEBOOK!!!!” Drinivas screams, almost like someone has deeply insulted him. We tussle over the notebook, and just as the teacher turns away from the board and towards the class, I snatch it from his hands and open and keep it in front of me.

Teacher: “…so write down the solution to this problem, everyone…“
Me (Looking at Drinivas): “Psssttttt…Oye. Do you have a pen I can borrow?“
Drinivas: “Grrrrrrr…..“

The rest of the day doesn’t go so well sitting next to Drinivas, so I’m really glad when the day is finally over and I rush off. But Drinivas catches up with me outside in the parking lot.

Drinivas: “Where’s my notebook that you borrowed earlier?“
Me: “Oh, I submitted it as my Physics homework.“
Drinivas: “WHAT?!?!?! But that was my Computer History classwork book! How can you submit it as your homework?“
Me: “Well, the teacher came around collecting the homeworks, and I didn’t have any other book, so I submitted it. Don’t worry. You should get it back in a couple of weeks!“
Drinivas: “AArrrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!“

I don’t think Drinivas slept for the next couple of weeks. But that’s OK, because these kinds of experiences build Character, and I’m sure Drinivas is indebted to me for that. He owes me one.

• 16 Comments

To all my dear “Orkut Friends”,

I really appreciate all the new year’s wishes that ya’ll have left so thoughtfully. I was especially touched with how personalized each message was. In this age of mass emailing and SPAM, you all have really moved me with your thoughtful scraps. And that too on Orkut! A public forum bordering on voyeurism used by bored-out-of-their-skull people wanting nothing better than to read other people’s scrap books all day. What a great place to wish me a happy new year! Thank you. Thank you so much.

In fact, I’m so impressed with these messages, that I’m going to post one here that particularly touched my heart.

Wishng U a Very Happy New Year!!!?!?!!!?! 2008!!!! Woo Hoo! U are da gr8!!!!!!!
2007 sks!!! 2008 ya da blst!!! Happy NEW Year!!!!!!

And I’m even more impressed with the tools you have used! Pasting some random javascript into your browser while logged into Orkut? Never mind that most virus and trojans use this technique to steal your data and lock your account. Getting your account hacked is a small price to pay for posting bulk new year wishes. Well done!

Seeing as to how popular this technique has become, I have created an orkut script of my own to help you with your online popularity contests. The script goes and scraps all your friends with this message:

“Hello! My psychiatrist says I have low self esteem, and to increase my confidence, I please request all of you to call me and tell me how much you hated watching Saawariya. Please talk for atleast 20 minutes, so that my inner self can listen carefully. I can’t wait to hear all of you complain about the worst movie of the year. It’ll make my day!”

I’m sure all of you will take up this offer.

Thank you once again,
Aditya

• 4 Comments

This new year started with a bang for me. Literally. Since this was the first new year since the wife and I got married, I thought it would be cute if we exchanged gifts on new year’s day. I made a big fuss about how the gifts had to be thoughtful and how the gift had to mean something.

If there is one lesson that life has repeatedly thrown at me and I’ve repeatedly ignored learning is never to make big-shot statements like these. They have a way of coming back and biting you when you are not looking. In this case, I completely forgot about the gifts until the wife handed me her gift right after midnight.

Wife: “Look what I got you!”
Me: “What? What?”
Wife: “A train set with tracks!”
Me: “Wooo hooo! Wow! What a thoughtful gift! Thanks so much! I’ve wanted this since I was 12!”
Wife: “You’re welcome!”
Me: “Thankfully you didn’t get some silly gift like a mug or something..”
Wife: “…and I also got you a mug with our picture on it!”
Me: “Did I say mug? I meant pug. As in a small dog – pug. That’s a real word. Look it up in the dictionary if you want!”

Wife gives me a mild THE LOOK. I pretend to have not seen it and turn to my brand new train set. I start assembling the tracks and building bridges and I’m soon lost in it. The wife waits for a while, and then:

Wife: “OK. Now your turn!”
Me: “Oh?”
Wife: “You got me a gift right?”
Me: “OH!”
Wife: “So, what did you get me?”
Me: “Hmmm….. You know, I don’t really believe in this new year thing.”
Wife: “What?”
Me: “I mean… We’re just celebrating the arbitrary position of the earth in orbit around some silly ball of burning hydrogen on a day decided by an arbitrary date line.”
Wife: “You forgot to get me a gift?”
Me: “Besides, I don’t really believe in the western calendar. I follow the ancient Inca calendar. The new year starts after the next solar eclipse.”
Wife: “You forgot to get me a gift!”
Me: “And what is this date and time stuff anyway? Physicists have been trying to explain Time, but no one really understands what Time is anyway!”
Wife: “How can you forget?”
Me: “Did you know time and space are curved? Time is relativistic! Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Wife is giving me THE LOOK now.

Me: “Time is moving REALLY slowly for me right now!”

After much apologizing, I finally convinced her that I would come up with a gift the next day. But don’t worry – I’ve already thought of a thoughtful gift – I’m going to give the wife a certificate that says “I owe you a gift!”. She can use it the next time she forgets to get me a gift! What a thoughtful and cunning idea! Brilliant, no? I think she’s going to love it!

• 12 Comments