Jumbo and Dada

Jumbo and Dada ,

Indian cricket is left poorer without presence of its two magnificent warriors. It was a pleasure watching you play.

Best wishes.

Laughter challenge.

I was watching TGILC season 4 episode recently. One of the contestant was making a joke about NRI's drinking only bottled water in India and tap water in USA. Well, over the years and specially after my visit to India, I take NRI jokes sportingly. So it did not irk me.

The joke states that NRIs insist on bottled water in India. Well, it was opposite for me, I preferred cool and sweet tasting water from earthen pot (matka) instead of bottled water. However I did use bottled water when necessary like traveling in trains and that too because I didn't want to spend my small vacation (3 weeks in 3 years) being sick and not being with my friends and family.

Also, we NRI's behave identical to resident Indians when it comes to drinking water. We just
store the tap water, filter it (in some cases tap water is clean enough to not need filtering ) and drink it. We go out we fill up water bottles or buy bottled water. It is exactly the same as my family in India. Why? because thats common sense. It might be the case that the joke was about NRI's showing off their wealth. Well thats a more of "Indian" trait than "NRI" trait. Don't we love to show off. Read any article about cricket, movies and outsourcing and you will know.

I understand its hard to change public perception and as stated earlier NRI jokes dont irk me.
If it helps people to have a laugh or two then good. What irked me while watching the show was the remark by esteemed judge Shatrughan Sinha. He said NRI's are "non required indians".

This comes from a B-grade actor who later joined politics and now instead of working public welfare and his constituency, judges a stand up comedy show. This piece of shit actor had total of 5 expressions throughout his entire acting career and he decides to label approximately 1.5 million Indians as non-required. And while saying so he conviniently forgot that during last BJP government in India, the Prime Minister Mr Vajpayee actively reached out to NRI community to invest money in India. This moron did not have guts to say such things then.

Phew, rant over. I feel light now.

Stupidity.....

......knows no bounds. Wanna know why? Listen to this. Careful not for people under the age of 18.

My favorite line: You are on periodical for 25% of the time.

Enjoy.

Of stereotypes and bikinis.

Indian men suffer from many stereotypes. They don't cook, they are lazy, they demand dowry, they are very narrow minded, they don't want their wife to earn more salary etc. I happen to know few of stereotypical men ( or MCP's as most of the gals refer to them ). I was lucky to know couple of Indian men who are not MCP's and decided to model my behavior on them. One of them was my DAD and other was my brother in law. Learning from them along with studying in USA made me wiser and hopefully non-MCP.

So when I met V, I decided I would try to be as non-MCP as possible. As with most desi gals, she also had a notions of stereotypical desi men. Initially, it was a cautious approach, saying thing which would not in anyway offend her and making her feel comfortable. Later on, it was just great to see her happy when I would suggest something or agree to something that an MCP would not. She would often ask me random questions in middle of a conversation and listening to my reply would make her immensely happy. Here is how it used to go.

V:Can I work after marriage?
Me:Of course you can.

V:What if my salary is more than you?
Me: Even better.

V: Can I support my parents in India?
Me: Yes sweet heart why not.

V: What if I don't work and want to send money to my parents back in India?
Me: Doesn't matter, they are my parents too.

V: Can I wear shorts ?
Me: Yeah why not , in fact you look better in shorts.

V: What if your friends are around, can I still wear shorts?
Me: Absolutely.

V: Will you cook for me?
Me: sure.

V: will you do the dishes?
Me: Anytime.

Isn't this great. Every time I answered the her question, I would could see her smile and that made me immensely happy. But the thing with women is if they love you, they will push you to the limit. They just wanna keep testing you until you break down. So one fine day:

V: Can I wear a bikini on the beach?
Me: Errr...... Ok. yeah you can.

V: Can I take snaps in the bikini and upload it on the internet.
Me: Absolutely not. Why the fuck would you wanna do that.


The thing is V couldn't take it that I was answering each of her questions in affirmative. She would have gone on and on until I said NO. Now, that I have said no I have become little bit like those stereotypical men.

Indian men, might have many stereotypes but women have just one. "They drive the men crazy"

Celebrity visitor.

Q:What makes Tashan infinitely better than Dhoom2 ?
Ans: Despite criticizing Dhoom2 so much, it could not give me a celebrity visitor for my blog.
Look who visited my blog after yesterday's post about Tashan.


Cheers.
P.S. I hope it was not Uday Chopra. If it was indeed Uday Chopra, my apologies to him. Although, I hope that it was Rani Mukherjee. :)

Tashan

Q:What makes Tashan better than Dhoom2 ?
Ans: It doesn't have Uday Chopra in it.

Q:Why is Dhoni missing Australians?
Ans: Because his Chennai team is losing every IPL match after they left.

Scraps are crap.

Here are few of the scraps I got recently

1> hey kya bhai kya haal hain...online??? (Same question 3 times in 4 days)

2> How r u?Kya chal raha hai?
How is life and what r u doing>
Kabhi kabhi scrap kar liya karo yaar?
(Same scrap sent to 87 ppl using some software, I don't know whether it was for me or not)

3> congrates for your commitment ??
(Was it a surprised question or congratulation or both?)

4> bhai bhul gaye kya ?? mail nahji scrap nahi phone nahi ........
kya ho gya hai .. ishq vishq payar var huh .......
(This dude spoke to me on International phone call for 1 hour previous day)

5> hey congrats !!
(Congrats for what? )

6> hey hello how r u?
Kya kar raha hai.
Tujse ek favour kaha tha wo bho nahi kiya yaar.
Maine tujse US universityies ke bare mein batane ko kaha tha .
Ya koi link jahan hum search kar sake .thik hai.
chal bye TC
(US University ke baare mein. Not for a friend :( )

7> hi dost how is u its long time seeing u meeting u interacting with u...........i hope u are fine and doing well in ur life

missing u
(Some crazy dude sending it to entire college, such scrap is usually followed by "Check out my new photos scrap" )



And people wonder why I don't reply to there messages.

Life is too short....

...to hold grudges on anyone for the long time. We all commit mistakes and get into fights. Sometimes we are wrong and sometimes other person is wrong. Sometimes both the parties concerned are wrong. While its not always easy to admit to our mistakes and say sorry but we can at least leave the matter and move on. What pisses me off is some people don't want to move on and still hold the same grudge against you years later.

I have often gotten into fights with people. Maybe thats because of my jackass attitude. But most people have forgiven me and some people simply did not care. However, I have still not come to terms with people who continuously keep harping on the past.It leaves me flustered all the time.

I know I have moved on...I hope that annoying person does that too.

Paradox

Life is full of strange facts. However paradoxical they might seem you have to admit to things the way they are. I recently discovered another one. Without delaying any further I will lay it out here right away.

If you compare India with most of the First world Christian countries, you will notice many behavioral differences. One of those many differences is attitude towards quick fixes. Indians are known to be sucker for quick fixes in many aspects of life. We believe in acting first and resolving the issue temporarily and not completely eradicating it. Take a look at any aspect of life. If we build roads we don't think how the traffic would shape up in next 20 year. We just think that it should be broad enough to work for now.

How to solve the problems of poor farmers in India?
Thats easy, give them subsidies and relief packages in current fiscal year instead of implementing a long term policy.

How to have a world class cricket team?
Simple, hire a high profile coach instead of spending money on domestic cricket structure.

How to make a powerful military?
Again, buy some sophisticated weapons from Russia and Israel instead of building our own.

It can argued that most of these quick fixes are politically motivated and Indian population has got nothing to do with it. I disagree. Most of above mentioned things happen becoz we get too excited at some of the smallest of things ( or quick fixes ) and ignore the larger context. It takes us few minutes to say Indian cricket team is best in world after we win one series abroad. We proudly start talking about India being outsourcing hub without considering the fact that 30% of out population is under poverty. Even our education system usually prefers marks scored in final or last exam to an aggregate score.

All this is strikingly in contrast to some of first world countries like US, UK and Australia. The people there are a lot more skeptical about any new change. There are usually long and meaningful debates on policy changes so that issues doesn't arise again in future. Even the road and city landscape is developed keeping future growth in mind. If you see the USA education system there grading system is cumulative using 4 point scale.

The objective of this post is not to compare different cultures and asking which one is better. It is however to bring to notice one strange peculiarity about the religion followed by the above mentioned countries. Reading about Judas Iscariot and subsequently talking to a friend who follows Christianity and is quite familiar with Bible, I found out that Jesus before crucification pardoned a criminal who repented for his sins and thus he went to heaven. So the Testament (Old or New, i don't know ) says that even if you have been sinner all your life but if you repent for your sins in the end you go to heaven.(This piece of information is as told by my Christian friend )

This notion is quite opposite to notion of Karma we have in Hinduism. Hinduism says that you have pay for all your sins in your lifetime. It doesn't matter whether you repent in the end or not.

If you still haven't been able to grasp where this is all leading to , lets summarize everything in this paragraph. Going to heaven according to Hinduism warrants that all your sins are accounted for which means taking look at all the things in past and deciding the best course of action for a future.On the other hand Christianity takes a shorter route, going to heaven requires you to just repent your sins at the end which is more like a quick fix.

In short, quick fixes and short sighted policies should have been Christian phenomenon and not an Indian concept but sadly it is not so. Had we followed the concept of Karma in our government policies we would have been in much better position I think.

Disclaimer: The above mention opinion are strictly part of author's ramblings and are not meant to offend any religion and are definitely not intentional. The author's minuscule knowledge about the religions makes him just another weirdo in blogosphere and doesn't warrant a backlash in form of angry comments.

Its a dog's life.

I was preparing to file my taxes for the year of 2007. The most simplest way to file the taxes for us Indian students is to fill up 1040NR EZ. "EZ" stands for well "easy" as it is a short form however what caught my attention was NR. It stands for Non Resident obviously. After 2 and half years in this country I am still classified as Non Resident alien, whereas back in India I am referred to as an NRI (non resident indian) albeit sarcastically.

Question is, where the f**k am I resident of ? As they say in India, dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka, na ghat ka. ( A dog who runs after two bones catches neither )


Ouch.

Closure

S:Although I am happy with my current boyfriend, I can never forget J.

Me: So are you still in love with him?

S:Nope definitely not. But how can you forget the person that meant so much to you at one point of time? I allowed him to be part of my life because we connected at some level.

Me: Aren't you complicating things in your own life. Don't ruin your present because of your past. Move on.

S: Yes dumbo I have moved on and getting back together with J isn't possible now. But I cant throw him out of my life. He is not commodity. We spent so much time together, shared laughs , sorrows and great deal of camaraderie.

Me: So you still miss him?

S: Yes.

Me: Does your boyfriend know about it?

S:Nope, I don't think he would understand.

Me: Would you?

S:I don't have all the answers.

====================================================

I don't think things are gonna be like this forever. She will eventually forget him. All she needs is a closure. There are no specific ways to have closure. Burning gifts/cards and deleting SMS is just a temporary relief and isn't gonna help. what is you need is an acceptance that sometimes things don't workout amongst two individuals. The process of closure can be painfully slow. What does it mean for S's current boyfriend? It means he has to be very supportive and patient while she gets her closure. Cribbing about it or not talking about it will make it difficult. It can hurt like hell but there is no other way.

HIp Hip Hurray.

India won the 3rd test against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar series at Perth. Hurray.
Nice rebound after the Sydney test. Even though I think the events transpired at Sydney test were rubbish and hypocritical and current show of good faith by Australia is temporary, it is time to move on.

I spent half of my Saturday watching Ishant sharma bowl to Ricky Ponting and it was awesome. I wish these new Indian fast bowlers all the best and lets hope that they don't lose their head and fitness with the fame.

The victory sent Indian media into overdrive ( they always seem on the edge anyway) and soon came up the proclamation of India becoming one of the best sides in world. I just hope that Anil Kumble asks his team to hold on the celebration till the job is done. And somebody please tell Indian media to shut up.

A great victory nevertheless and lets kick aussie ass in Adelaide.