Statue of Puberty

Would you believe it? I just won a Windows 7 Ultimate DVD Licence with 32 & 64 bit DVD included.

Our kids (in particular, the Ghoshs, the Iyers, the Kunders, Mehtas, Manniges, Palanys, Yederys, Raos, Joshis, Nadkarnis, Mathurs, Tanks) would one day exhibit a part of our genome (time to go woohoo) when their nursery rhymes go like …

Iyer’s kid
twinkle twinkle little star
how i wonder how you are
up above the world so high
appa amma in the sky
yeh jo chaand hai na ….

Alap’s kid
johnny johnny
yes papa
eating sugar
no papa
telling lies
no papa
open your mouth
go F#*$ yourself

Baangd’s kid
mary had a little lamb
little lamb, little lamb
mary had a little lamb
to kya mein naachu?
daaad, i want busta rhymes

Mannu’s kid
Baa, baa black sheep
Have you any food
Yes sir, yes sir
Three bags full
Sahi hai Sahi hai
Ma, i’m hungry, gimme thepla and undhio

Andy’s kid
Row, row, row your boat
Gently Down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
I will still not tell Krupal’s kid
ki woh roti kyu khaata hai

Abhi’s kid
London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
Lamba story hai, baadmein batayega

Paro’s kid
Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water,
I willin’t tell you what happened afterwards

Bird’s kid
This old man, he played one;
He played knick-knack on my thumb.
With a knick-knack, paddy whack,
This old man, hey he’s my own dad.

Apoo’s kid
A B C D E F G
H I J K Let me go pee
Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O,
Now I know my ABCs

Pully’s kid
Ring-a-ring o’roses
A pocket full of posies,
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down.
This is not helping me Pa
Can i please study for my SATs

Harshal’s kid
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
AMD struck one
Intel struck nine
Hickory, dickory, dock
I want to clock my block

Alpu’s kid
Spiderman, Spiderman
Friendly neighbourhood Spiderman
(Interrupted by Dad)
“That’s not a Nursery Rhyme”
I know dad, I was teasing

Pals’ kid
Humpty Dumpty
Sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty
Had a great fall
Waaaaaaah Waaaaaah
MuuuhMeeeeee

Krupal’s kid
I’m a little teapot
Short and stout
Here is my handle
Here is my spout
When I get all steamed up
Hear me shout
I sound like my daddy
and bloj in my shorts

This post attempts to illustrate the choices made by us and their inherited follies. With that knowledge in order, it may also hurt sentiments of all those mentioned above and also turn nasty with riot bombs being hurled towards me by respective spouses. Worry not, coz I promise to bring their genome pools into a fresh batch of Nursery Rhymes as well. I sure can wait till everyone above ties the knot.

Also a third version will be created, which will have a mix-match of the husband-wife combined gene pool and direct attempts to assassinate their characters is quite obviously imminent.

Disclaimer: If any of the above families feel the need to dispute on the Rhyme selected and it’s inherited style, they may do so by actually procreating (usually takes nine months and a couple of years at least for the first few words to pop out) thereby proving that their respective kid sings the rhyme differently. All qualms of suing me will be taken in light spirit with mixing agents like cola or soda to be consumed at Alap’s place.

I would also like to invite you all to post alternatives to the above Rhymes in the comments section below, in true spirit, exhibiting all possible characteristics of the aforementioned (including me) with no qualms on holding back on assassination attempts.

Why would you bet on anything you have no clue or control on whatsoever. Like this boy, who on a cold winter morning in Wales haplessly placed a bet with his classmate on the varied force of nature. By the time it was afternoon his sister came looking for him in school to find him sitting in the breezy chill of the day on a lonesome park bench. She asked him, “What on earth is wrong with you? Why are you sitting here in the cold?” to which her brother meekly responded “I had a bet with Roy this morning. The bet was that if I urinated on my seat, the urine would freeze and I wouldn’t be able to get up. And well, he won the bet.” “Sis, would you happen to have a match?”

I wouldn’t do something as stupid and frivolously benign (I think). I’m sure none of us would too (I think). But lets take the case of this air cargo shipment fiasco that came to be 4 years back. The cargo to be shipped was live food stock (Chickens & Goats – both alive). One of my acquaintances (not so direct), was an aircraft maintenance engineer (AME) with that shipment firm and was filling his duties to fix a section of the ATR engine which went bust on the last landing. He placed a bet with the crew that he would fix it in a couple of hours. Now, the crew who he was quite pally with, wanted him to come onboard. He wasn’t really keen of course. And so the bet was raised that if he didn’t fix the engines in 2 hours, he would fly with them. As luck would have it, It took him just over a whole day to figure the issue out. (Unlike some Nepali engineers who preferred sacrificing goats to make their airplane fly – Link). When he finally did manage to fix it (traditional AME style) he had no option but to hitch a ride to the destination drop point i.e. Sydney, Australia.

There began their epic journey, the pilot, co-pilot, 4 to 5 crew members and our fellow friend who fixed the airplane engine(s) and lost the bet. The rest of the aircraft was filled with cargo i.e live fowl and goats. About midway through the journey high over the Indian Ocean, one of the engines scuffled in and decided to move into low revs. Within minutes the other one bellowed and folded in too. Panic struck the crew as they scampered to figure their jump & p’shoot options. Our fellow AME friend in the meanwhile inspected the engine (no airborne acrobatics, just data gathering). He realized that the load was a bit too much and that the engines would be in working order if the load came down to a bare supplement.

They unanimously turned around to look at the hapless herd of fowl & goat with vicious beady eyes. They almost carried that “I’m gonna throw you off this plane” look. Little did these poor animals know what was in store for them. They were happily looking forward to being on someones dinner table, but now instead stood to live a massive free fall into the almost infinite Indian Ocean. In desperate last minute crib sessions, some Fowl shouted at their elders for not giving them flight lessons. As far as the goats were concerned, they had no hope really, except that they heavily out-numbered and out-weighed the crew members.

Now, my friend (AME) wasn’t really a heavy builder, well actually far from it. He was once blown to the other side of the hall when a test steamer engine blew out a shaft of excess steam, while his fellow team combed their messy hair and tried to salvage him from the broken plates stored at the back of the hall (he was heavy enough to break some China). Coming back to this airborne fowl play, the goats as I said were huge ass meat balls by themselves, they easily outweighed our fellow scrawny AME twice over (also explains the load). But he and the crew somehow did manage to struggle past pulling them down to the open hangar (the crew strapped in belts of course) and mercilessly pushed each meat ball into the ocean.

Now we’ve seen frogs (or tadpoles) showering in from the skies above and sometimes schools of fish too (Link), but imagine the plight of some innocent wandering ships and their crew when they see thunderous showers of goats and chickens falling down on them (and some of them brave souls alive … if free fall didn’t shock them to death). We don’t really know if this happened, but I can’t help but imagine the state of shock that these seamen would have been in when their ship in pretense had been belted by these huge ass goats and fowl. Imagine this scene where the seamen are having dinner in their open air diner, cribbing as usual to the chef that their chicken and meat are stale and stink, when that huge ton of a goat comes crashing into their plates, takes down the table and bores a hole three layers down to their ship’s cold storage. “Take that for fresh meat!!”.

News has it (since our friend AME lived to tell this tale), that they did manage to bellow out each and every goat and fowl from the aircraft, which got the ATR to rev up and land on the nearest coastal airbase, where he was almost fired by his overseas bosses. He told me that he quit that job a few weeks later and has been since working as a back-office systems engineer in a seafood shipment firm (more on flying lobsters, crabs and fish in the next post).

When he narrated this story to me, I couldn’t help but recount the story of the Nepali Goat sacrifice (Link), spelling out the fact that he should actually have sacrificed a couple of goats before the plane took off. This way, he could have fixed the aircraft, won the bet, wouldn’t have had to travel to Aussi and of course could have skipped the firing line, not to mention the majority of fowl and goats would have managed to fall into dinner tables in the manner they had hoped for before the flight took off.

He laughed it out and a couple of “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes later told me that one of the crew members with him on that fateful flight actually moved out from that shipping company. He now works with Nepal Airlines.

A long ass time since I’ve plotted the ink stand and benched my chair. Actually, it’s been long mules since I’ve done a mighty deal of other stuff too. Most notably of those involved …

1. Throwing balloons on hapless bystanders in a shopping mall and when really bored bench not just water in a plastic bucket, but the bucket itself. (Note: name of the shopping mall has been hidden for security reasons – if anybody asks, “I didn’t do it, no one saw me do it”)
2. Throwing a cat off the building terrace – 8 floors (again Bakshi was the primary protagonist and not me and pals, we’re innocent, trust us)
3. Throwing a brick near a 4 year old kid playing on her tricycle (Bakshi again, but to our defense we were kids ourselves and gravity and its effects were being experimented)
4. Torturing ants (big black ants) by picking them up and putting them inside an ant eater farm made out of a shoe box filled with sand. To top it, we then went on torturing our own bacha party kids by making them try the same with big red ants and giving them bull that this will one day make them famous (Bakshi again).
5. Breaking all the ground floor window panes and shattering glasses playing Gully Cricket, Frisbee (sometimes with stumps) and sometimes (Bakshi once again) throwing water balloons, and then running off with all our inventory before the owner could set eyes on us.
6. Doing #5 above only to have Apoo come down at exactly the same time and get a beating (verbal) from the respective uncle. Note: Apoo used to study a lot then and not play as much for some reason or maybe he knew we were gonna break glasses or maybe he just likes arguing – we’ll never know. Of course Apoo wouldn’t go down without a fight when the uncles caught him. He was our man for the occasion (which he seldom involved in) and would argue to the fullest that kids needed to play and breaking of glasses shouldn’t stop them from doing it again (or playing actually). At no point would he say that he was not even there when it happened (which in Apoo’s case is true, unlike my above claims).
7. Filling buckets of water (no, not to throw at the above-signed shopping mall, but) to carry the same to Late Mrs. Estranged’s house as an errand. Oh wait, now this I really didn’t do. Apoo has had the knack of falling in trouble with all the weirdoes of the world and Late Mrs. Estranged was one of his earliest hookups. One fine day, whilst Apoo was happily playing, this lady comes up to him and asks him to fill buckets, which Apoo (good boy that he was and is) complied with. He lifted them and took them all the way to the 6th floor and when the lady told him he had to do two more; Apoo fled home, never to set eyes on the lady again. Story has it that Apoo fled home for reasons other than that mentioned (strange voodoo perhaps). Alas! We will never be able to verify this.
8. Breaking water leveler pipes on the terrace tank in an attempt to win a bet on a box of smokes (Bird was the culprit of course, apparently though he didn’t do it either – his brother was named prime culprit).
9. Breaking into the terrace without keys but using innovative methods to fool the elevator and our watchman. You see the elevator had the terrace button blocked from inside. The catch which we picked on was that the elevator would come up to the terrace if someone hit the button on the terrace. So all we needed was an eight foot long bamboo, three people to hold it and push it into the wing and right on the terrace button from the grill gate in front when two of our clan stood inside the lift. We hit the button, the lift comes up, the bamboo gang hides the bamboo, calls the lift back to the 7th floor, get on it, the two people who’re already up on the terrace call the bamboo gang up. And tadaaa, we’re all up there. Of course it didn’t stop there. We threw water on the watchman just to irritate him from the terrace and he would freak out on the fact that we got up there minus keys.
10. Getting oneself handcuffed by Nitish (my elder bro’s best bud) for sabotaging, mutilating and completely drenching Sr. Anna on a Holi week with balloons and gooey water. Yes I admit being a part of the sabotage activity on Sr. Anna, which led to the revenge plight by our seniors (my bro included) who were far more advanced and used handcuffs (real ones) to catch, drag and drench me and Sthalu with shampoo and muddy water in front of the building. Our Holi celebrations were truly wild.

Coming back to the present, our current bacha party in Nandanvan have found a new way to broaden their views & knowledge about air-pressure, sound and basic gravity principles. Unfortunately for me, they found my car to conduct these tests. I head down to the garage on my way to office on a Tuesday morning to find that three of my wheels were completely flattened out with incense sticks dispersed around. Not a very bright way to start office especially so if you are reduced to taking a cycle pump to pump air into those wheels. It continued into Wednesday when they successfully managed to damage the tube of my rear wheel. I welcomed my stepney to the streets of Mumbai, although I’m not too sure if it was too keen on hitting the roads with the onset of monsoons (really guys, my wheel speaks with me).

I deduce that the current world bacha-party have taken strides to try and avenge all the kidaas we did when we matched their age (actually a lot less, but good attempt). I intend to let them have their fun of course. I miss my old days big time, I’ll let them make good use of theirs.

PS: to avoid damages, I’ll probably team up with them and do someone else’s wheel this weekend, and if and when asked …

“I didn’t do it, no one saw me do it!”

Yesss, my brother and bhabhi are proud parents of a healthy baby girl. Both mum and baby are doing just fine. This easily is the happiest thing that has happened for a long long time. God bless!

Mannn … I can’t wait to buy tiny baby clothes (and shoes) for my niece (ah! just to say my niece is such a world of joy)

Dhammal .. before I get too senti .. lemme get my ass to the hospital ….

More updates to come by …

Dudes, dudettes, respected married folk and Iyer,

Once again, it’s that time of the year when the drunken masters and lords of the land get together and make merry. This year though, with wayside commitments from a bulk of the community (and innocent kids getting married), our plans have taken a drifter into older habits (So no Matheran).

Nandanvan (now available on wikimapia.com), is proud to host a New Years party (don’t ask stupid questions like “when is it?” – they will not be entertained). This party promises to bring back the glory days of the late 90’s where new year parties in Nandanvan were a crazy botch. This time round we’re planning a theme event, the title of which will be announced soon (along the lines of something like a Sholay theme, where each of us gets to play a character in the movie and dress and behave in that manner thru’ the party – imagine Iyer playing Thakur with a shawl on his butt and Bird doing a Samba on t-top).

All other party elements – raunchy music, slurpy food, drinks in plastic bags and lighting (dance floor mayhem) are being worked out and we should find ourselves in trouble with the law in 7 days time.

Hope to see you all soon … you know where I live

Tootle for now

The following incident has true citation to all characters and names mentioned and all references to the same must be deemed as correct representation of events as they unfolded.

22:08
Dec 10, 2006
Nandanvan
Mumbai

Abhi: f*** man
Bird: cant
i am tired
Abhi: dimaag hurting
yea i wont either
Bird: my head & my body exist on different planes now
Abhi: hmm
Bird: if ranjit would’ve got the stuff yday, i think we would’ve died today
if this is what happens after booze
kya paani piya mein aaj
raanti ki tarah
Abhi: easily … our conversations wud be on .. during our journey to the otherside
wudav been interesting .. hopefully we wudnt have this ache there
Bird: yeps
do you know why i keep hearing “abhi to mein jawaan hoon” in my head?
Abhi: im not too sure .. must the same reason why i hear beedi
Bird: hmmm
atleast you get sunidhi chauhan
i get alisha chinoy, f*** i mustve had the worst of the daaru
i quit drinking as of now
no after goa i quit rinking
Bird: mask apna rape karne waala hai
Abhi: yea .. im sure it’ll be far more enjoyable than what we’re going thru now
Bird: & believe it or not, we both have the most valid reason of all for not going
i swear, mein baangd ko yehi bola…
if mask comes & stands witha shotgun to omy temple…
i’ll still puke on him
Abhi: yea well … this happens with us only i suppose
we’re the only two besharam nanguys who’ve always been on Bird Standard time and Abs Standard Time respectively
all our lives
Bird: i’ll tell mask that he decided to marry on the wrong day
Abhi: yea … and thats true too
Bird: the question is do we move to world standard time or do others move to our time?
Abhi: he couldav consulted us at least
Bird: yes
Abhi: its all his fault man
Bird: or kept his wedding at the bungalow at madh
Abhi: i think we can put the shotgun on his temple now
Bird: we’d have been there
sleeping but we’d be there
yes
Abhi: yea .. totally out of taste this .. mask … we’re gonna hunt u down for this
Bird: wrong timing & wrong venue
yes
we are
Bird: lets call mask home for this, i cant go out hunting
Abhi: yea man .. i’ll email him
u think he’d check his mail on his marriage nite?
Bird: my account is sometimes hacked by entities from other dimensions
depends
Abhi: im not sure where that came from? but if it makes u happy .. im happy for u
Bird: if his wife thinks keeping mask out on their first nite is romantic
Abhi: im not too sure mrs mask will think so
Bird: no thats was my excuse if mask ever decides to read our mail
Abhi: but if mask does … then we dont need to to shoot him afterall
Bird: she is mrs.mask
she is capapble of whatever mask is capable of
Abhi: excuse the missing dot
Bird: ok
Abhi: my head is not really on my neck today
Bird: hey mrs is a login id of my office colleague
we call him missus nowadays
Abhi: is he a she or a he?
Bird: we asked him that & he looked confused, checked his i card & confirmed that he is a he
Abhi: why does it sound like someone’s blowing a trumpet near my ear
Bird: does that mean he has posed naked for his i card foto?
its better than alisha chinay singing
sorry madam “chinoy”
Abhi: i agree .. anything is better than chinoy
Bird: she got angry & started to sing even more louder
yes, in the singing sense right
Abhi: alrite there’s gonna be two shotgun murders tonite ..
Bird: she does look attractive otherwise
or used to
we are going to commit suicides?
Abhi: careful there … u’r going the baangd way .. i think she’s 200 years old or something
Bird: if my body & my mind dies, does that mean i’ve killed 2 entities?
no man
she must be 45
Abhi: we wudnt want a second PILF hunter coming our way man
Bird: ok i am slowly becoming the baangd
Abhi: its difficult enuf handling one
Bird: yes sorry
Abhi: chal bhai ..
Bird: does alisha chinoy have a daughter then?
yo
Abhi: im off trying to neutralize my blood off IB+
Bird: gud nite
take an aspirin
Abhi: pray for me
Bird: you are going out?
Abhi: and we shall do the shooting tomorrow
Bird: dont bend
Abhi: my out for now is 2 mts across
Bird: world spins faster when the head nears the ground
Abhi: which pretty much is my length rite now
i will take that advice
Bird: plus dont look up either
Abhi: gud nite
Bird: it just proves that world really does spin that fast
Abhi: tootle .. blind man signing off
Bird: ok
Abhi: advice taken

10:40
Dec 11, 2006
Mumbai
(Early next morning …….. over email ………)

Masku: I was a disappointed not to find any of of my chaddi-buddies at my reception. I’m not going to get married again.

Abhi: A hundred million apologies masku … we (bird and me) promise to make it up to you and smriti.
We had an emergency blackout which cannot be explained here and is still no excuse i’m sure ….. we will make it up to you bhai … clean dishes, wash clothes etc. anything you tell us to do except drink daaru again (that we cannot do).

Bird: Dear Mrs. Mask & Mr. Mask,

In addition to abs’ apologies, my million apologies to you & smriti, we are ashamed of our behaviour man, in fact i came to office wearing a plastic bag on my head to hide the criminal face. And like abs said, we’ll do whatever to make it up to you & smriti, i am good at polishing shoes btw & good with children, if in the future you need help with babysitting little masks.

I know that nothing that we do will put things right, but pls do understand & apne ko maaf kar de, if possible. Tu bole to we can plan a small get together when both adit & appoo are in town, have dinner someplace.

Now that you know i am shameless can you please send accross the leftover mithai & stuff?

Once again Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Mask, have a happy, peaceful & prosperous life together.

Warm Regards,
Bird
(989xx xxxxx), the population of irla bridge at peak hours)

PS: Dont get married again, we are running out of excuses.

—————— dab (dab) dab ——————

We love you Mask, and wish you and Smriti all the very best in your journey ahead. Be good to wifey and don’t pull your wise cracks and bore the crap outta Smriti. And Smriti, if you’re reading this, we’re gifting you a chaabuk (whip) to whack Masku if he shells out his tall tales.

Happy marriage celebrations once again …. and yes, don’t get married again

Baangd: kaisa hai
me: full fit

Baangd: had booze last nite
now listening to rock songs and radin the guru’s advice
reading*

me: abey
i was with u boozing last nite at Alap’s
waste

Baangd: i know, i was just saying so

For someone to be placed in the “…busier than a page 3 socialite…” category and to top it, have it published in a business paper, it takes quite some beating (or at least upto the point of having Income Tax professionals shun into their houses).

Yes quite right, I’m in the news folks. Priyanka Joshi (not related to Apoo) from Business Standard chatted up with me over the week (last) and put me in the tabloid.

BTW, the page 3 part had me doing flips. I was down and out with tummy cramps when I read the article. A bit of a history, the friend’s mom I was talking about there is Apoo’s mum, but she was more than nice to us during the time. It was Apoo au contraire who would bully us because of his size (huge kid).

I went home with a smile the day I saw the article …. well, here’s to small fame (and glorifying it on my blog) <- I was raising a toast to meself there in case you missed it (read: stupid)

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_supp.php?autono=265172&leftnm=2&subLeft=0&chkFlg=Features

and

http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/nov/18spec1.htm

or just google me (how besharam can I get!)

For those of you who despise URLs ….

“With the release of the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), things can only get better,” exults another gamer, Abhijeet Kunder. For this 27-year-old, gaming began at “a friend’s house”. Kunder was 10 years old when he picked up his first console.

“There were days I used to be holed up at my friend’s place for hours playing console games.” It was only when his friend’s mother told them to get out and get a life that he realised that he was hooked on to games.

Working now with Hewitt Associates in Mumbai, Kunder’s off-hours are busier than a Page 3 socialite. “I run gaming communities, LAN groups and have seen a steady escalation in terms of participants and game penetration,” he says.

Technology has been our friend for a very long time now. Right from the time our Neanderthal friends started using the first of hand tools (which BTW, is pretty handy now, mostly used to scare pigeons that want to hump in your bedroom and on occasions to pelt away at your boss when he’s not watching), thru’ to the weapons age which carried a history of pain inciting methods and finally on to the computer age (and very soon perhaps the robotic age).

We invented the airplane a hundred years back. People could now travel the world (with a hole in their pocket) just for kicks, make business trips, flirt with stewardesses and on occasions drop bombs on unsuspecting countries.

A subsidiary of the above meant that people could travel to remote places of Africa and hump monkeys and just for fun hump humans immediately after traveling back. Humpsters that we are, HIV and a pleth of other monkey-hump-cycle-invoked diseases (which otherwise sat pretty inside the monkey) came out to travel in airplanes. In case you know the person responsible, and if he traveled by road, just for information … the motor car also stands as a technological aid. If he walked his way to another country, he was a loser anyway.

Speaking of motor cars, this again was a brilliant wheel merchant in the invention scale. To the numb, the motor car in principle started off with the basic principle of the wheel (which to me is the greatest invention). We now have the luxury of not just one wheel but millions of tiny revolving rivetty structures designed specifically to meet the needs of our daily commute. We can now not only run over innocent bystanders, but also make a mockery of property worth plenty and if we’re bored, shout at hapless commuters for being stupid.

The microwave ‘wave’ took the cookstorm world by surprise too. People could not only have their food ready instantaneously but also warm their undies for that special day feel.

Theater and Cinema followed closely by Television all gave us the entertainment that was promised. Who could have come up with innovative methods to execute people, derive innate pleasure with sadistic plots in soaps based upon an even more sadistic looking mother-in-law.

The internet marked a more recent technology wave. It has revolutionalized the way we seek information and gather courage to speak to a stranger without knowing rats ass (sometimes literal) about them. We could now stupefy our persona to a level not thought of earlier. Some of the other benefits include writing crap about anything and everything you want in the world and not giving a damn (as is the case now … also refer the links on the side for more crap).

Coming to the present … news is just in that a blind pair of mice have had their eyesight restored with the first of light-sensitive cell transplants. This quite obviously means that I still have hope, and in a hundred years, I’ll be able to enjoy the wonders of science (or robotic pornography over the internet as it exists then) just like the rest of you.