“You don’t do any work around the house!” the wife said, making no effort to hide her obvious displeasure.

A conversation that starts like this is rarely going to end agreeably, and at some level, I already knew that. But my consciousness thought it could squirm out of this one too, just as it had done for the last 25 years of its existence.

Regular readers of this blog will remember my brilliant strategies to avoid cutting tomatoes that has worked with reasonable success. Being lazy and avoiding work is a high risk strategy, because you may end up doing more work that you’re trying to avoid (I’ve discovered this through my extensive experience in this area), it is the morally right thing to do. As the great Socrates once said:

He who strives to be lazy,
Will live life nice and cozy.
Doing do work, that’s just crazy,
That’s the secret of life my dear rosy!

Translation: “Lazy == Good”.

I decided to take the path shown by enlightened souls like Socrates and Deve Gowda, and was ready to stand firm by the principles I believed in.

“No more excuses. From tomorrow, cleaning the dining table after dinner is your work.” the wife said.

This is one of the great injustices of life that nobody focuses on. A dining table takes costs a fortune to buy, not to mention the several years of visiting furniture shops. After doing all that for the dining table, you’d think the wretched thing would be grateful to you, but NOOoooooo! You have to clean that damned thing. What injustice! The media should be focusing on these real issues - issues that matter - instead of just going about hyping irrelevant things like Global Warming.

Anyway, I was in a no-win situation. I simply looked the other way and said “hmmmmmm……”

“You’re also going to make the bed from tomorrow”.
“I protest!” I say feebly, without any conviction in my voice whatsoever.
“That’s fine. You can protest all you want. But just get the work done.”
“I don’t want to make the bed. I don’t like to do that.” I said, trying to make a squeaky voice to gain her sympathy. I’m going to try and push my luck to see if something comes out of this conversation that is certainly heading towards a showdown.
“Well, that’s too bad.” The wife says, not biting my sympathy maneuver.
“OK, I’ll trade that with you. You make the bed and I’ll do some of your work.” Brilliant! I had found an opening, a way to wiggle out of this!
“What work of mine can you possibly want to do?” the wife says, in a deeply cynical voice.
“I’ll clean the table after dinner today.”, I say. Getting close… one more strike and…
“But I’ve already cleaned the table!” she says, exasperated.
“And whose fault is that?” I say, triumphantly.  SCORE!!!!

For the casual observer, it may seem obvious that this argument had gone in my favour. I could have almost said “Hence Proved!”, and the force of logic and reason was with me. But logic and reason don’t count in situations like this, apparently. The wife then proceeded to PROVE to me, in her own special way, that I was going to do both chores in the house for the next month.

This battle had been lost, but the war has just begun. I started to hatch my next brilliant scheme…

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Although during the last month, I was not writing about my usual misadventures with life, that does not mean that I was not suffering the various tragedies of life that so predictably come by my way. Yes, that means that I watched several movies during this period.

One of the movies that I watched was “Sex And The City”. This was the most mind-numbingly boring movies I’ve seen recently. For those of you that have not watched it, its a 2-and-a-half-hour long parade of 4 old aunties wearing really weird clothes (with bird feathers in their hats and stuff like that), moaning and groaning about their lives. In short, its a standard soap opera.

But that didn’t seem to stop the hundreds of people (me and the wife included) that showed up at the theatre. At first, I was shocked that so many people would want to watch pointless stories that don’t go anywhere, but then carefully observing the crowd solved the mystery a bit. I realized I could classify the crowd that had come to watch “Sex And The City” into three broad groups. The first group consisted of gangs of college girls, at who the movie was obviously targeted, and they predictable “ooooohhh”ed and “aaahhhh”ed throughout the movie. The second category were bored husbands/boyfriends that had been forced into the movie theatre, while their significant others were desperately hoping that their hubbies/boyfriends would learn how to treat a woman and how to buy presents etc… from the unrealistic depection of men from the movie. I mean, in the movie this dude buys his girlfriend a huge house just like that, and another dude buys his girlfriend a huge diamond. Now seriously, who does that in real life?

Anyway, the third category of people were the most disappointed. These were the middle aged “gentlemen” who knew nothing of the movie beforehand and had shown up at the theatre hoping this would be some sort of a soft-porn movie. Their day must have been especially ruined.

I also went and saw “Sarkar Raj”. Do any of you have Ram Gopal Verma’s email ID? I want to mail him and tell him that “color” cinemas have been invented about 50 years ago, and that he can now stop shooting movies in black-and-white. Seriously, this whole movie is black-and-white, and all the dialogs are in whispers. And by God, what a horrible ending he’s come up with. *Spoilers Ahead*. So, at the end of the movie, Aaishwariya Rai’s character  becomes the next don. But that scene is so horribly shown, that I couldn’t stop laughing. Now, what dialog would you expect from a new Don? “Kill him” or maybe even “Don’t call me babe!” or something like that. But do you know what Aaishwariya Rai says? She says “Chaai Le Ke aana?” That sounds more like she’s landed the job of a head-waitress in a beedi-chaai shop instead of being the next don! Absurd.

The one good movie I watched (yes, that’s very rare) during the last month was Iron Man. It’s a silly, comic-book-super-hero movie, but it keeps you entertained. But I might be biased in my reviews, because I’m a huge comic book fan, especially superheros. My idea of an intelligent conversation is discussing who would win in a fight between spiderman and batman. (More interesting than global warming, definitely). And oh, if you go and watch this movie, stay until the end of the credits. Something very interesting happens

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I am alive. I’ll bet a lot of you folks were getting worried that I had returned to my home planet and left you earthlings alone with the curse of global warming. But I’m not that kind of person, and I’m not going to rest until I solve this Global Warming thing once and for all.

So now, the question is, why did I ever stop blogging. I feel like I owe you an explanation. In fact, I can give you several explanations, and you folks can then pick the one that you like the most! Talk about choice!

Why I Stopped Blogging: Reason #1: I got kidnapped by Drinivas, Chitradeep Chetty and Gang.
The story goes like this: I was out on my daily exercise routine (jogging) when a couple of armed kidnappers, jumped on me from the back. They tried to put a big blanket over my head to hide their identities, but I bravely fought my attackers, and managed to land them a few punches on them (using the kung-fu skills I’d learnt in a previous life). But just as I had managed to overcome my attackers, I tripped over my shoelaces, hit my head on the pavement and because unconcious. The Evil Drinivas ans Chitradeep Chetty took this oppurtunity to kidnap me and take me to their secret hideout. They proceeded to torture me by making me watch “Kingdom of the Buffaloes” documentary on Animal Planet over and over again, until the image of the Buffalo king had deeply affected my mind.

Why I Stopped Blogging: Reason #2: The Wife discovered my blog on the internet.
This story goes like this: It had been a pretty good year for my writing career. I was writing funny stories on the web about my life. The blog was getting a little popular, when The Wife accidentally discovered all the stories that I’d written about her on the internet. That day, when I got home from work, she gave me The Death Stare From Hell (TDSFH), and I was turned into a frozen rock. For those of you unfamiliar with TDSFH, it is an advanced curse that lasts about a month, during which time the victim has to perform all household duties (like making the bed and folding the washed clothes). And that’s why I couldn’t get back on the web to continue to write my blog.

Why I Stopped Blogging: Reason #3: The Internet Electrons went on strike.
Taking a cue from the Gujjars, the electrons from the internet decided to go on strike against my blog. They were protesting the unfair representation of some casts of electrons on my blog. The allegation was that the Global Warming electrons and the Exercise Electrons were getting unfair representation on the blog. The Crappy Poetry electrons were also being promoted aggressively on the blog, but the Funny Electrons and the Cartoon electrons were completely missing out on all the action on the blog. So, they went to a strike. I promise to you that I was writing articles all through the month, but the electrons refused to stick to the blog and kept jumping away to a temporary camp they had setup at the Unofficial IPL Blog. The IPL blog was harboring the refugee electrons, and so that’s where all the action shifted to.

So there you have it. Three perfectly good, normal and sane explanations as to why I wasn’t blogging for over a month. Go on and pick your favorite reason. But anyway, I’m back now, and I assure you I’ll continue to write stories here.

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