The haircut

I am an introvert. It doesn’t mean I hate people but only that I am not really good at conversations. I don’t talk much when I am with my friends and avoid talking with strangers assuming they all are Amway agents. I have always wished my barber to be an introvert like me and to me it seems it’s not love but haircutting where opposites attract. 

Today being a Sunday I decided to read few filmi magazines and hence visited a barber. When my turn came the barber asked me to sit on a chair and I told him I want a haircut and a shave. This should have been the end of discussion but unfortunately it seems ability to speak non-stop is an essential requirement for working in a Men Saloon. 

The barber half-way through the haircut asked me where you live sir. I wanted to say just do your job but the guy was giving me a haircut. Such a curt reply may lead the barber to shape my hair like David Beckham and I think I don’t have clothes to go with such a stylish hairdo. Unable to afford a new wardrobe I told the barber where I live and the barber told me he lives just 2 kms away from my home. In reply I said, “No wonder it’s such a nice locality”. 

The next question barber asked was what do you do Sir. I wanted to say currently I am working as a Gigolo. However, I was unsure if the barber understood this particular English word and I have no idea what a Gigolo is called in Hindi. So I told the barber about my work and the barber told me if the payment is good then it’s not a bad thing to do. 

The barber asked me few more questions and I dexterously replied all thereby ensuring I got a haircut appropriate for a guy who works in an office and not a rockstar. I left the barbershop hoping google will be able to answer one question which I have been asking myself ever since I started chatting with the barber and the question was how to cut one's own hair. 

My mother is addicted to TV serials

My mother is obsessed with the saas-bahu shows. For her the time between 7:30 pm to 10 pm is more sanctimonious then her pooja time. During this time she is glued to tv like you and me when Sachin Tendulkar is batting. With so much tv watching I have started fearing she will soon start weighing more than the sofa on which she sits. 

I remember when I was a child my mother told me money cannot buy happiness. She then proceeded to tell me stop watching cartoons on tv and study because no studies means no good marks which meant no good college which meant no good job which meant no good life and wife. I think I must tell her to stop watching tv but unfortunately she doesn’t have any homework to do. 

The reason I think I don’t like my mother watching so much tv is because I have slowly become jealous. Sometimes I think my mother cares more about Aanandi (of Balika Vadhu) than me. Her tv obsession makes me believe she is more interested in the life of people in Big Boss house than the people in her house; people who eat her cooking and wish they could order pizza instead of eating dal-roti-sabji every night. I think the only reason my mother watches so many cooking reality shows is to learn how to properly criticize my dear wife’s cooking. 

The biggest problem arises when India plays a day-night cricket match. We have two TVs in our house and she being the boss of the household orders me to watch the match on the smaller tv which I think my parents purchased when I was in school. It’s so old that I think it must be solely used to watch saas-bahu shows. Watching a cricket match on it is nothing short of a torture to me whereas in the next room my mother is learning tips on how to be a perfect monster-in-law. Things like this make me angry and motivate to write such blog posts. 

Another problem I have noticed is my mother is highly susceptible to ads. My home has every biscuit that is advertised on tv. I think we are the first people in the colony to try the exquisite new flavor of a biscuit that costs just one and a half times more than the regular one. It’s not that I have a problem with eating new variety of biscuits everyday but what I really want is some pizza chain to open shop near my home and start advertising heavily on tv. 

To sum up

TV was invented to pass time and not to ignore your family members. 

How corrupt are we?

Watch any news channel on TV and they are talking about corruption. Read any newspaper and it’s full of graft charges. Log into twitter and you find people who believe every party is corrupt and full of criminals except the one which they support. 

As a common Indian I am angry and more than angry I am baffled. How did I vote for such cronies who treat politics as a business? It’s not that India is a unique country facing corruption on such a rampant scale. If you think our Indian politicians are bad then just look at Pakistan. 

It’s not that corruption became visible just in the last few months or years. I am sure when my father was young the politicians were corrupt and my father indulged in mini-corruption by bribing the ticket checker in railways to get an unoccupied berth, I too have done the same few times and looking at the way corruption has become part of the government machinery I think my children will do the same (unless they joins politics, get elected to public offices and become beneficiary of some railway quota so that instead of mini they can do real corruption. Unfortunately, this is highly doubtful because I plan to educate my kids and try my best to keep them away from criminal elements.)

Every third or fourth day Arvind Kejriwal comes on tv and says this politician is corrupt. Congress says Kejriwal is BJP’s agent; BJP says Kejriwal is Congress’s agent; and Digvijay Singh (using the time tested foreign hand theory) says Kejriwal has got a contract from foreign agencies to clean Indian politics. I don’t trust anyone of them because as a common Indian one lesson I have learned after so many years of disappointment from our leaders is that never to trust them. The foreign hand interested in damaging India is usually imaginary and most of our problems remain unsolved because our politicians waste time and resources on foreign trips.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”. It is us and not our enemies sitting in Pakistan who elected these politicians to the position of power. The solution to our problem is not television fights but better governance which we can have by punishing the corrupt and ensuring safeguards that public money gets spend on public and not private good. I know this is easier said than done. When my father was young he had the same thoughts and today he understands the system and finds bribery though a cancer of society ensures that the work gets done. Today as a young Indian I am writing a blog telling you corruption is bad but the next time a traffic cop stops me for violating a traffic rule I am gonna say, “Sir, I accept my mistake and I am extremely sorry. Isn’t there anyway through which we can adjust this? Thank you”.

To sum up

Corruption is the cancer of our society which is spreading because just like smokers we are doing things which are heavily injurious to our health. 

Sick Sunday

Yesterday was Sunday. When I woke up I found my mother making tea and my father with his nose burrowed in the newspaper. I wished my mother good morning and told my dad he needs to take me to a doctor. In reply my father moved from the editorial to the cartoon section and asked, “Why?”

I think my father is the coolest person on earth. But he also has one quirk. Sometimes without any intimation he shifts from The Cool Mode to The Homer Simpson Mode. In reply to my father’s why I wanted to say because there is a new doctor in town about whom all my friends say she is super hot. I think I must check her out. Speaking this would have made Homer Simpson strangle me like Bart Simpson. So instead of the wisecrack I said the truth. I said, “Because I am sick”.

My father took me to a more-than-a-clinic-but-not-yet-a-hospital type of place. The place had nameplates of four doctors on the door and I think they had enough degrees among themselves to cover all the alphabets of English language. Along with the nameplates there was a mention of when the medical representatives can meet the doctors and several posters about which I am sure were put up by medical representatives. The most interesting poster had a man standing behind bars with the caption ‘Doctor is not God. Beating the doctor is a criminal offence’. Not very confidence inspiring in the abilities of the doctors I must say.

Among the four doctors, the least educated one diagnosed me. He was so poorly educated that he had only four alphabets in his degree. And even among those four alphabets one was repeated. He was just an MBBS.  

When the doctor called me in, my father stood up and entered the doctor’s room. That’s my father in the Homer Simpson mode. He doesn’t appreciate the concept of physician-patient privilege. Physician-patient privilege aka client confidently means the doctor can ask me how many times you masturbate during a day and in reply I can say, “Look doc, I am a young man. I don’t have a girlfriend but I have super fast unlimited broadband connection.  You do the maths.” The doctor will never reveal this to anybody (There is some grey area. This concept might not work if the doctor decides to become a standup comedian). The doctor can tweet ‘Just met the weirdest/craziest patient of my life’ but my name will appear only in his DMs. 

The doctor did the check up and said you will have to change your lifestyle. My mind immediately went into red alert and started broadcasting at full volume the following message throughout my body ‘Do not listen to the doctor. Your browsing history is the proof that you are 100% straight. Stay that way. I repeat do not listen to the doctor’. I said okay to the doctor and collected the prescription. 

After the doctor me and my dad visited the chemist. The chemist had a look at my prescription and said, “Damn it. You should have consulted the MD.” WTF man. How serious I am that I need an MD. When did the druggists changed their profession from selling medicines to scaring the shit out of their customers. 

After collecting the medicines me and my father walked towards his bike. I said to my father there is one more thing we need to do. He asked what and gave me a look which I immediately decoded as ‘You donkey. You didn’t say yes when your mother said can you bring some vegetables’. 

I said I want to buy India Today.  My father took me to the nearest magazine vendor and I told the guy sitting at the counter to give me a copy of English India Today. In response the guy smiled and gave me a magazine which had a half nude model on the cover with the caption “Porn@home’. “WTF man” I asked myself. When did give me English India Today became a code for Debonair.  I smiled back at the guy on the bookstore counter and said, “You know ... I think I will read Business India this week’.

Yes. That’s my life. It’s full of surprises. Surprises which deeply embarrass me in front of my family.