Statue of Puberty

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!”

I’m usually used to the same set of insane habituated anomalies that any of us here would typically find ourselves in.
Well, on a bright day anyways…

This day I choose to give you a common side of the story. Unfortunately it’s not quite so much a bright day today (I’m talking literal here … its too freaking dull today).

Ok then, as it should go, the typical day begins with what we like doing when up. Yup scratch. The pleasure of scratching never fails to amuse us.
On a bright day anyways…

And then we come to the next best thing that could happen to mankind. Rinse your mouth with booze. Aah, the pleasure of spirits cleansing your nightly evils (I think I was evil last night … yes I was … heh).
On a bright day anyways…

The toothpaste does wonders too I’m told. And so I malform the squeezy contents onto a bristled strange surface area and start massaging my tooth. Don’t really understand the true waste of water though and so too the useful resources your mouth otherwise holds. (Do not do this after the spiritual rinses BTW … this is a total waste)

The next thing happens to be a top brass activity and I shall choose not go into detail. Bloj it is. We all have to bloj cause it’s usually shit that we eat anyways … not really advisable to keep all that inside.
On a bright day anyways…

Only if the bloj goes well, will the rest of your day follow solid grounds. Not that we reclaim land or something while walking (that job’s Krupal’s).
Doesn’t quite matter if it’s a bright day or not, you’re in trouble if ur half done with Bloj.

Breakfast is the best meal of my day with dutiful preferences going towards eggs, bacon and good chai (Rum/Whiskey on Kellogg’s go well on weekends)
Everyday…

We go to work and eat crap there too (not literal this time, but it’s sundry really) I’m told, first on our way to our workplace (travel’s always the big momma), then the workplace itself (don’t have much to say there) and finally if and when we decide to head back home (yes travel again). There are healthy doses of crap all the way.
Everyday…

Back home its party time with salad, attempts at survival cooking, inventing new cocktails (sometimes with ice cream) and also wondering at times, who the f*** gassed the Gym room.
On a bright day anyways…

It’s then time to call home and lie to them that I was a good boy all day/week. They fortunately believe me.
On a bright day anyways…

Sleep always takes the cake (I prefer the rum cakes here too though) and The Creator was kind enough to have my slumber habits spelt on paper (and some tell me, it’s also written behind a garbage can in Dharavi).
All this, on a nice calm night…

This cycle repeats itself in succession, day after day (bright and otherwise … and the nites too)

PS: Pretty sure I wont mention my weekend activities here … (no intentions of pulling out scandalous endeavors) …………… Well at least for now ……………

I’m done pakaoing bout’ this un-bright day BTW, and in case you’re still reading this line you might want to hit ur head against the nearest of hard hedges/walls.

I hope it turns your sunny wheel though … be good and have a good one you all … life’s good … always good