This is part 2 of a series. First part is below

Saturday morning is here, and I’ve calmed down dramatically since my mouth accidentally promised to go to the GYM on Saturday morning. I’ve managed to convince my soul, my brain and all my other schizophrenic voices in my head that it isn’t going to be so bad, we’ll just fake it. My plan was to fake it all the way, and just pretend to go to the gym, and take a detour through the mall. Plenty of timepass places in the mall to keep me busy for an hour.

And so, I got ready to head out when the wife stopped me.

Wife: “Aren’t you going to take your GYM clothes?”
Me: “Eh?”
Wife: “You know, your exercise clothes. I hope you’re not planning to exercise in your jeans!”
Me: “No no, of course not. I just forgot, that’s all. So, hmm…. Do I have any gym clothes?”
Wife: “No, You don’t.”
Me: “Oh, no! Then I can’t go to the gym! Man, I was looking forward to going, but unfortunately now I can’t. I guess I’ll just sit and watch TV then…”
Wife: “… but I bought you some GYM clothes yesterday!”
Me: “Oh? Well, OK then. I guess I’ll have to go to the GYM in that case.”

And so, I trudged out of the house, carrying a plastic bag with track pants and some T-shirt. I walked across to the mall. Malls are so much fun. I first went to the food court and ate bhel puri, then bought some ice cream. I found a store that had an XBOX kept for demo, and I played at the XBOX for most of the hour (after finishing the ice cream,  of course). I did some more time pass, and before you know it, “gym time” was up. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning! I could do this every day! And the best part is, the wife things I’m at the GYM. Am I a genius or what?

Just as I walked back into the house, the wife switched off the TV and comes up to me to find out how my first GYM session had gone.

Me: “Oh, it was awesome! I enjoyed it tremendously!”
Wife: “Really?”
Me: “Yeah. I did some exercise and it was all very easy for me.”

I was feeling good. My brilliant plan of skipping gym was making me feel very proud of myself.

Wife: “So, you ran on the treadmill? How fast did you run?”

Having rarely run to anywhere, my brain wasn’t entirely aware what speed people usually run at. I began thinking: “Well, lets see… Airplanes take off at 200 kmph, but when people run, they don’t take off, so they must be going slower, so…”

Wife: “Well?”
Me: “35!”
Wife: “35 kilometers per hour? That’s very good!”

What do you know? This is going rather well. My ego is feeling good. It starts blabbering…

Me: “That’s nothing! I also went to the lifting-maching-thing and lifted 40 kgs weights.”
Wife: “That’s impressive!”
Me: “Ha! That’s nothing! The GYM instructor was so impressed, that he said I am a complete natural, and ShahRukh Khan and his precious 6-pack had better watch out!”
Wife: “Really? So the instructor was very impressed huh?”

The wife is nodding and paying attention to my boastful claims, and that strokes my ego even more. Man, this is fun! I’m starting to get carried away…

Me: “Ha! That’s nothing! The weight lifting thing was so easy for me that I asked them to put on more weights, but they ran out of weights! I even answered my cell phone while lifting the weights in one hand.”

Wife: “Very good! Then they were all very impressed then!”
Me: “Oh yeah yeah. It was a breeze… HaHaha! I left the other people gasping!  They must have been thinking: This guy has natural gym talent!”
Wife: “Really? Well done… Here, let me take your gym clothes. They must have gotten dirty, no?”

This was a really big clue that the wife knew something that I had missed. But in that moment of self-heroism, the huge clue completely missed me. My ego was enjoying the show-off so much, that my brain failed to notice such a big hint. Unfortunately ego wins over logic every time.

Me: “Ha! The GYM was so easy for me that I didn’t even work up a sweat! Look at the clothes, they’re as good as new!”
Wife: “So, you spent the full hour at the gym?”
Me: “Yeah. All of the 60 minutes! In fact, the instructor got tired at the end of it, you know, fetching me weights and putting away dumbbells and all that stuff.”
Wife: “That’s very interesting. So do you remember Janavi from the 3rd floor? Her husband was also going to join today?”

Uh Oh! Something is not right.

Me: “Yeah yeah, he was there too. I saw him. I said Hi! Nice chap!”
Wife: “So, apparently, he went there, but it turns out that the GYM is closed today for renovation.”

Oh, bugger! Crap crap crap! How could this have happened? Why didn’t I go and at least PEEK at the gym? I would have found out that the GYM wasn’t open today. And oh my God! All the stuff I said earlier! This is a very bad way to get caught! No No No!!!! Hopeless Hopeless! And on top of that, my brain makes a half-ass attempt at recovering from this impossible situation:

Me: “Did I say I went to the GYM? I actually meant I went for a jog AROUND the gym. Yeah, that’s what I meant!”
She’s giving me The Look.
Me: “Aahh… I mean… I was going to go to the gym, but… err… I mean… hmmm…. Have you lost weight? You’re looking FABULOUS!”

As you’ve probably figured out, I’d dug myself into such a deep hole, that escape was impossible. And now, because of my big big mouth, the wife takes me “walking” around the apartment every night. 4 rounds! But the worse part is that I still haven’t got a plan to avoid watching the movies, which is how this whole thing started in the first place!

Moral of the story? “Don’t talk about the GYM. It’ll always get you into trouble!”

• 11 Comments

Regular readers will know that I’ve been desperately trying to avoid watching movies. My several previous plans (plan 1, plan 2, plan 3) have not been very successful, and even my writing harsh reviews (Race, Saawariya, Om Shanti Om) have not done anything. Things were getting desperate for me when it seemed inevitable that we were going to watch “One Two Three”. I decided I was going to put up a fight this time.

Wife: “Tickets are available for the 10:10 show Saturday Morning”
Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t go. I have something to do Saturday Morning”

I could tell that this surprised the wife. My usual Saturday morning plan is to sleep till 10 AM and “forget” to take a bath, so this was obviously something new. The only problem was that I didn’t have any “plan”. I had to think of something really fast.

Wife: “What’s so special that you can’t come to the movie?”

I hadn’t expected her to ask the question so directly. My brain was running in hyper-fast mode.

Me: “Aahhh… I am, actually, a little busy… eerrr… because I’m going to… aaahhh….”

The wife had started to give me THE Look. I think she suspected that I’d give some fake reason to try to get out of the movie. This was not good. Now my excuse had to be even better! Even as my head was trying to think of a good alibi, my mouth blurted out:

Me: “I can’t go to the movie because I’m going to the GYM!!!”

WHAT!??!???!!!

My brain was like “Excuse Me?!? Do you even know what that means? GYM?”
And then my soul was like “You know that is against the religious principles of Adityaism, right? I’m not going to the GYM. You’ll have to go without me!”

The prospect of my soul leaving me because I went to the gym was a grim one. I really like my soul, nice chap. As I was thinking about how to get out of this mess, the wife interjected. She seemed very happy.

Wife: “You’re going to the gym? How wonderful! Which gym are you going to?”
Me: “Uuhh? I mean… yes… yeah, the gym over there… Talwalkars… Right opposite our building.”

Thankfully I had recalled that there indeed WAS a gym in the mall opposite our house. If I had failed to name the gym, it would have been the end for me.

Wife: “Wonderful, wonderful! Oh, I just remembered something! Actually… What a co-incidence!!!”

Oh NO! What had happened now? Had she also signed up at the same gym? Was she going to come to the gym and make me run on the never-ending-running-machine-of-death like a mad scientist does to his lab mouse? I imagined me running on a hamster wheel… just round and round and round for all of eternity. A shiver went down my spine.

Wife: “You know Janavi? 3rd Floor? I was talking to her and she said her husband was also going to start going to the GYM from Saturday. The two of you should go together!”

Phew! At least she wasn’t coming. I couldn’t recall who this Janavi or her Hubby was but that was the least of my problems right now. Bigger things were already happening. My brain had called an emergency meeting of all the schizophrenic voices in my head, and they were already planning a revolt. My soul was giving a speech to them in my head.

Soul: “We will not tolerate this indignation! Our principles MUST be upheld. We MUST fight….”

This was very bad news. I could have said so many things! Why did I have to say that? I could have said I have a meeting at office, I could have said I had an appointment with the investment agent, but noooooo… I had to go and say “I’m going to the GYM”. Hopeless! Hopeless!

What am I going to do now?

[Update: Part 2 is here]

• 5 Comments

You folks will remember that the wife and I were hunting for sofas a while ago and it was a horrendous experience, but we finally managed to agree on one particular sofa, and we bought it. The thing is sitting in our living room now, and the wife is very fond of it, and takes rather good care of it. The other day, I was sitting on the sofa and drinking my morning coffee. The cup was a little hot, so I kept the coffee cup, filled with coffee, on the edge of the armrest.

I can already hear several of you (especially the ladies) sneering and saying – “Don’t keep the coffee cup on the sofa, it’ll fall!”, and, coincidentally, that’s exactly what the wife said at the time too. But you know, I don’t really subscribe to that viewpoint that coffee cups filled with coffee should not be kept on sofas. I mean, I’m not entirely convinced about this whole gravity and falling-objects thing. The story of Newton and his apple sounds very suspicious, and I have reason to believe that it may be a staged hollywood fake! That’s right folks, this whole concept of gravity is a fraud. More on that some other day, but as I mentioned, the wife was not too happy with my keeping the coffee cup on the edge of the sofa’s armrest.

Wife: “Don’t keep the cup there. It’ll spill!”

I was trying to be a little smart then, which, by the way, always seems like a mistake only in retrospect – and always a good idea at the time. I started playing with her, pretending to have spilled the cup, saying “whoops…. hahaha… oh! I almost spilled it… hahaha” etc.. etc.. I even moved the cup closer to the edge, and and waved my arms about the vicinity, pretending to knock it over. The wife gave me The Look. But it was rather amusing at the time.

Just as I was playing the “oops I knocked it over… hahaha…” game, my phone rang. My phone is usually somewhere on the sofa, and I turned around, trying to look for it. At that moment, the entire universe suddenly decided that it would teach me a lesson. My elbow accidentally touched the coffee cup (full of coffee, if I haven’t already mentioned it).

As soon as my brain received the message from the receptors that contact has been made with the coffee cup, which I had kept at the very edge, it caused a level of panic in my brain that hasn’t been seen before. All my brain’s processes – from heart beating, phone searching and sub-concious dreaming – all of them jolted into alert and tried to catch the coffee cup as it toppled over.

But it was too late. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the coffee cup was well beyond its equilibrium state and was on its way down, towards the sofa, and was going to dump the full load of the freshly made, hot coffee right on the sofa.

Oh, Crap! This was the end of my life.

The 25 years that I’ve spent on this planet all flashed in front of me, as the coffee cup was completing its irreversible journey from the edge of the armrest to the sofa. I prayed simultaneously to the Gods and SuperMan, hoping someone will come to my rescue, but, as is the case in most such situations, no help was immediately available.

The cup fell on the sofa, spilling over half of the coffee on the sofa, then bounced once, turned 180 degrees and fell off on the floor. The wife was watching this whole scene from her vantage point from right across the sofa. The cup hit the floor and shattered into several hundred pieces.

Silence.

Deafening Silence.

It would probably have been appropriate at this time to apologize and clean up the mess, but my brain, in its infinite wisdom, after searching over the near-infinite space of excuses, decided to send the signal to my vocal cords to say the following:

“I don’t know how that happened!”

Once my head overcame the stupidity of the previous statement, it had no option to brace for the inevitable moment that follows such accidents – The utterance of those three dreaded words by the wife, the three words that are the declaration of defeat, the three words that indicate a life long fall into slavery, the three words that will always haunt me for all of eternity, the three words that cut through me like the blade of a ninja sword:

Wife: “I TOLD YOU!!!!”

As you can probably imagine, the rest of the evening didn’t go very well. Luckily, there was no violence, but an infinite amout of gyaan was handed to me, and I fully expect this incident to be recalled and invoked on every possible occasion in the future as a conclusive demonstration of my incompetence.

• 13 Comments

Back in college, I knew this fellow called Dabhishek. What he was doing in an engineering course was beyond me, and in many ways it was beyond him too. He was very absent minded, but equally determined to get through Engineering, even though I suspect he didn’t really care so much about computer science.

The universe seemed to be conspiring against him, but he always found a way out. During the first exam, he forgot his hall ticket, during the next engineering-drawing exam, he forgot the drawing board and for the third exam he forgot to bring a pen. But each time he successfully managed to figure out a way and came out unscathed. He had real brains!

During our first year, we were studying the “C” programming language and we needed to write actual programs during our exams. But whatever he did, poor Dabhisekh just couldn’t figure out just how to write the programs. He felt safer with the theory, because you can write something… anything… in a theory exam, but when the question demanded a program, he just couldn’t figure it out. As usual, he used his genius to figure out a solution to this problem – He began memorizing programs like 8th standard poems.

if j equals getTotalRecords open bracket
x equals j multiplied by number of packet
if x equals equals boolean of prolon
return total plus x semi-colon

Dabisekh also had a backup plan to make sure he scored well in these tests. Right after the exam ended, he stopped eating, and for the whole week didn’t eat anything. By the time the prof was ready with the corrected answer sheets, he had lost 4 Kgs and looked seriously ill. This evoked great feelings of sympathy with the prof, and this sympathy was very valuable during the marks negotiations phase. He was a very very successful negotiator too. Always managed to be on the top of the class.

All the semester went fine and dandy for Dabisekh until the practical exams. This was particularly problematic, because we were expected to actually write the program live on the computer in front of the examiner, and then demonstrate its working. The day of the practical exam came, but Dabisekh didn’t seem to be nervous at all -  not even a little bit. Only one of two things could have happened – Either he had learnt all of “C” programming overnight, or, more likely, had figured out a master plan that would get him through the exam.

The exam started, and Dabisekh got his question: Write a recursive program that will calculate the factorial of a given number. Dabhisekh was sitting on the computer right next to me, and he got to work immediately. He started typing furiously, and, more shockingly, he was not just playing pac-man on the comp, but actually typing the program in! In record time, he was done, and called for the examiner to his workstation. Had he been able to figure out the program faster than anyone else?

The examiner came over and sat by his desk. Dabisekh quickly described the problem and went into a philosophical discussion of “recursion vs iteration” in the manner of a well practiced speech. After the examiner was sufficiently impressed, he ran the program and said “The program is now running and we will now enter a number into the program and it will print out the factorial. Lets pick a number to enter… some random number… maybe 5. Lets input “5″ to the program and …. volia! It prints the answer as 120, which is exactly equal to 5 factorial.”

The examiner was nodding and clearly impressed with his skillful presentation. Dabisekh thanked the examiner and picked up his belongings and left the lab, the first one to finish his program. The rest of the batch was also duly impressed.

But I just couldn’t help wonder how he had managed to get his program done so fast. I peeped over to see his program on his workstation. And there it was:

#include <stdio.h>
...
... 100 lines of code that looks like its doing something...
....
printf("The number you entered is 5 and its factorial is = 120");
...
... 100 more lines of code that looks like its doing something...
...

Holy Crap! He had hardcoded the input and the answer, and had cleverly managed to convince the examiner that he was entering a random number, when, in fact, the program was printing a predetermined answer! What a brilliant idea!

Dabisekh found his true calling right after college. He earned an MBA from IIM Ahemedabad and is now selling luxury Villas to unsuspecting folks in Bangalore.

• 11 Comments

Something very interesting happened to me today. I got up at 5:15 AM in the morning! I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking – “Hey Aditya, What are you doing up at midnight?“. That’s a good question, but there were some unavoidable circumstances. But getting up at 5:15 was very educational for me, because I made some very interesting discoveries.

Firstly, I found out that breakfast doesn’t just magically appear on the dining table, like the newspaper does at our doorstep every morning. It turns out that the wife actually gets up and COOKS breakfast in the morning. That is pretty disappointing for me, because after paying so much for a dining table, I would have thought “magically appearing breakfast” was a feature of the thing.

I also made another shocking discovery – Did you know that sunrise is just like sunset, except in reverse? Yes, it turns out that the sun indeed does rise in the east, and doesn’t just go up in the sky like a light bulb. I’d heard about this dawn thing earlier, but it’s good to confirm these things yourself, especially with all the scams like Global Warming going around. I also figured out why vaastu says that your bedroom windows shouldn’t face east – It’s so that the sun’s rays don’t disturb you in the morning.

I’ll admit that I’ve not thought much about the mystery of how the milk comes to the house every morning. I always wondered how the cow could climb up the 9 stories to our house. But it turns out that the milk is actually DELIVERED by the milkman in the morning in packets, which has been extracted from cows beforehand. Wow! What cool technology, no?

Lastly, I figured out a disappointing truth. No matter what the time in Bangalore, there’s always traffic on its roads. But getting up early and seeing the dawn was a good educational experience for me – Just like my trip to Las Vegas was.

• 5 Comments

I was out sick for most of this week, and it was pretty bad, and I couldn’t get to work. I don’t like to miss office because it’s a lot of fun (and the food at google ROCKS!) but this was not the case back when I was in school.

I absolutely hated going to school, and I’d try to exploit every single opportunity to bunk school. This one time, I think it was during the ’96 Cricket World cup, I absolutely had to watch the India-Australia match. It was a Tuesday, and I couldn’t believe that our Principal hadn’t given the day off to watch the match. I mean, India vs Australia in a world cup! How often does that happen?!? I hated the Principal.

i figured that the Principal must be an alien, because he showed absolutely no interest in Cricket. After much cursing, I also concluded that the the Cricket gods would curse the Principal and send him to Cricket hell – where he’d have to bat without any pads or guards. That would teach him. But that, however, was not going to get me out of school, so I decided to do the next best thing – Pretend to be sick and bunk school.

My plan was to moan and yell and scream until mom bought that I were sick. So the next day, I woke up groaning. I held my tummy and pretended to be in great pain.

Me: “Aawwwww… My tummy hurts.”

I’ll bet my Mom’s kid-alarm went off, and she immediately suspected that I was pulling some stunt.

Mom: “Now what happened?”
Me: “I don’t know… My tummy hurts. I might not be able to go to school today.”
Mom: “Why? Is there a match on TV today?”
Me: “No Mom! Really! My stomach hurts. I really want to go to school to learn and become a better person, but if I’m not feeling well, what can I do? Don’t you believe me? You don’t trust YOUR OWN SON?!?”

I suspected that my mom had figured out my plan by now, but she couldn’t come out and accuse me because then I’d end up throwing a fit of fake crying, and that would definitely put me out of school for the day. So, it seems, she tried out a new strategy.

Mom: “All right. I believe you. Let me give you some medicine and you’ll feel just fine. You’d better get dressed because you’re going to feel just fine before 8:15.”

Ah! Smart move. The medicine in question tasted worse than karela juice with raw tamarind, and there was no way I was going to stuff that thing down my throat. I’d have to admit that I was feeling better to avoid the medicine, and that meant I’d have to go to school. Interesting move. But 8:15 was when the school bus came, and that was the cut-off for going to school. If I managed to get past that deadline, I’d get to bunk school! Just as I was figuring out what to do next, mom literally dragged me out of bed and thew me into the bathroom to get ready. I’m dilly dallying as much as I can, but it is clearly not working! It’s 8:10 and I’m fully dressed! This calls for drastic action!

Me: “AaaieieoeoooaaaaAAAAAAAAAAOOWWWWWWW!”
Mom: “Now what happened?”
Me: “My left hand hurts. Owwwww!!! I can’t put my tie, and without my tie, I can’t go to school!”
Mom: “Come here, let me tighten it around your neck.”

I just remembered that my tummy was originally supposed to be paining and I still haven’t gotten the medicine.

Me: “My tummy is ALSO still hurting, by the way.”
Mom: “Allright, let me get the medicine for you.”

Oops, bad move. I hadn’t thought this through. Mom was using the bitter-than-hell medicine as an offensive weapon. Time to change tactics.

Me: “Mom… There’s a phone call for you!”
Mom (from inside): “What? Who? When did it ring?”
Me: “It’s Aunt Bobby from USA! Come quickly quickly!”

Just as mom comes in running, I point her to the other bedroom that has the phone. She’s forgotten then medicine in the first bedroom. It’s now 8:13.

Where is the Damn Bus? How is it that the bus is always early when I’m not ready to go, and I have to run with shoes in my hands to not miss the bus, but now that I’m waiting for the bus, the driver’s probably stopped for tea. Damn Damn. I can hear Mom saying “hello” to a non-existent phone call.

I run into the first bedroom and see that Mom has already taken the the medicine bottle out. I have to hide it. That’s the only way to escape it. I take the bottle cap and put the lid back on it, and roll the bottle under the bed. Bad move. The cap is obviously too loose and the medicine starts to spill out while the bottle is rolling under the bed. Crap! I’ll have to invent some story about the medicine bottle later. I hear mom coming out, so I rush out.

Mom: “There was no one on the phone!”
Me: “Ooww… It must have aaahhhh… gotten cut. You should aaiieeee… call her back”
Mom: “I’ll do that later. Let me first give you the medicine first. You’ll definitely feel better then.”
Me: “Oooowww…. Yeah, good idea.”

I have to send mom off to another bedroom because I can hear the school bus coming. Just as Mom goes inside the first room, I rush out to tell the driver to go away.

Me: “Go! I’m not coming. Go go go…”
Driver: “What’s wrong?”
Me: “Nothing. I’m not feeling well. Go now. Go Go!”
Driver: “You don’t seem ill. Have you asked your mom?”
Me: “Of course, do you think I’d play tricks? She asked me to tell you to go away. NOW GO!”
Driver: “Well… OK…”

And thankfully the driver goes away. 8:17. A few more minutes and it’ll be too late for mom to put me in a rickshaw too. This is looking very good.

Mom screams from the inside saying she can’t find the medicine bottle, and asks if I had anything to do with it. I tell her that she took the medicine bottle with her to the phone. She goes from one bedroom to the other looking for it. That should stall her for a while.

Mom: “Why isn’t your school bus here?”
Me: “Oh, he was here, and he asked for you. He waited for like 15 minutes and then he left!”
Mom: “Why didn’t you tell me?!?”
Me: “You were talking on the phone to Bobby Aunty”
Mom: “THERE WAS NO ONE ON THE PHONE!”
Me: “Really? It must have gotten cut!”
Mom: “Arrggghh… What am I going to do with you?”

8:22. I’m well beyond the safe zone now.

Me: “I’m starting to feel a little better now! I think I’ll watch TV.”
Mom: “I’m going to look after you REALLY GOOD today.”

I got to stay home and watch the match. Mom yelled at me intermitenly through the day, but it was well worth it.

Happy times.

• 4 Comments

As all you already know, I’ve been working on strategies to try to avoid watching movies. The wife is a big movie buff, and she drags me along to watch ALL movies. Her theory is that watching movies together helps us “connect and rejuvenate” our relationship, but the only thing I’m connecting with while watching these movies is with my boredom. To try to solve this problem, I’ve been trying to come up with some good strategies, but the previous ones have not been very successful. Recently, I stumbled upon a new strategy.

So the other day the wife emphatically announced that we were going to watch the movie “Tare Zameen Par”. The wife had already watched it once, but I was (un)lucky enough to have missed it, and so the wife wanted to show the movie to me. I didn’t register any protest, and quietly went along. This somewhat pleased the wife, but that was a part of my plan.

The appointed day came, and we went to the theatre and found our seats. Just as the movie was starting, I asked her

Me: “So, what movie are we watching?”
Wife: “??? Tare Zameen Par. I already told you.”
Me: “What is it about? Is it a sci-fi thriller about how to create nuclear-fusion-based stars in earth laboratories?”
Wife: “No… No… It’s a sensitive story about special children.”
Me: “What’s special about the children? Do they have super-powers? Man… I wish I had some super-powers when I was a kid. I could have used them against the princy…”
Wife: “Shhhh… Keep quite and watch.”

The movie starts and jumps into the subject right away, where they show how a small kid is having trouble at school. The director has made a huge fuss about how the kid doesn’t get anything happening in school, and I don’t understand this. Aren’t most kids like that? They don’t understand just what the hell is happening in school, they just pretend to do what the teacher tells them to do, all the while really worrying about why The Undertaker didn’t open the “Casket Of The Dark Side” on the WWF show last night. At least that’s how I was when I was a kid.

Anyway, the wife is totally engrossed in the movie, and is paying full attention. I make my next move.

Me: “When is the car chase?”
Wife: “What?!?”
Me: “You know, where the bad guy drives a fast car through the streets like a F1 driver on steroids and the good guy chases after him?”
Wife: “This is not that kind of movie!”
Me: “WHAT?!!? No car chase? What kind of boring movie has no car chase?!?”
Wife: “Keep quite and watch…”

My plan seems to be taking effect. Not only is the wife getting irritated, but so is the crowd around us. Several more minutes go by where the director makes even more fuss about the kid’s supposed dyslexia. And then finally, Aamir Khan makes an entrance. Now the movie moves to the part where Aamir Khan is helping the kid.

Me: “I think Aamir Khan is an alien.”
Wife: “What?!?”
Me: “He’s an alien in the movie. He’s brainwashing the kids so that they don’t resist when the Alien Clone army invades the planet. Aamir Khan is their leader.”
Wife: “Sshh….”
Me: “That’s why the movie is called Tare Zameen Par. The Aliens from the Stars will come to the Zameen and invade the planet. You just watch… I’ll bet in the next scene Aamir Khan takes off his mask to reveal the alien inside.”

At this point and old-ish looking lady sitting in the front row turns back and gives me a stare. Just as she’s trying to say something, I interrupt her…

Me (Looking at the lady in front): “Besides, I don’t know why the kid just doesn’t kick the princy’s ass? I mean, come on.”
The Wife is mortified, and tries to elbow me to keep quite.
Me: (undettered): “Ha! If it was Rambo, he’d have killed them all with a pocket knife and taken the President hostage by now. This is a lame movie. It’s been 3 hours and no one’s gotten killed! I mean, COME ON!!!”

By now, everyone around is looking at us. The wife is horrified, and profusely apologizes to the crowd around us and gives me a cold stare that could have frozen The Terminator. Fortunately, the movie soon ends. I think the wife is having second thoughts about taking me to movies again. My plan might have just worked!!!

By the way, did you know that you can fill your stomach by eating just bananas for dinner and breakfast the next day? I made this monumental discovery after going home that day.

• 12 Comments