Sweet Child O' Mine in Czechoslovakia

When our policy makers had allowed a 75% FDI in the insurance sector, little had they known that this move would impact the parenting habits of Indian parents. If you have seen the latest Max New York Life Insurance ad, you wouldn’t agree any less. Now here’s a guy who has a zaada ka iraada, and wants his toddler son to pronounce Czechoslovakia. No doubt the advert is fun to watch, but for a moment let’s try to analyse the latent message that it is trying to impart into the psyche of the Indian consumer: expect your one year old kid to pronounce Czechoslovakia. Expect him to top in class each time, every time. Expect him to crack the IITs and then the IIMs. Thrash him if he doesn’t. Make him that brick in the wall. Karo Zaada ka Iraada….

Then there’s this HDFC Standard Life Insurance ad, selling the very same product (some child benefit plan) to the very same target segment. Even the backdrop of the two adverts is same: a young, happy family of the Great Indian Middle Class idling away in the living room on a Sunday afternoon. What distinguishes the two ads, though, is the content. While the former advert portrays the typical Indian dad as a pet-trainer, the latter puts him in the light of a facilitator of learning: encouraging his child to dream big, giving her the wings to fly, to be independent, self-made.

There are scores of other insurance ads playing Morpheus to the married (read confused) Indian male. Like this one. Or this one. Even this one. Youtube is uploaded with 79474587834 such insurance adverts (Okay, I made up this figure. The true figure is actually 546735439 :P) in which the role of the Great Indian Daddy varies from the clown to the ring-master; from the mentor to the meteor. The Uber-sexual Papa is spoiled for choice as never before.

Fortunately, the matter of choice was limited for my Dad. It was either Bata or Liberty. Fiat or Amby. Raymonds or….Raymonds! Just a few nationalized banks. And a single player in insurance: LIC. So my Dad had limited scope for experiment. With life insurance. And my grooming. Pretty much summed up by yet another advert: this one.

Come Undone

The bitch walked into my hollow room.
She handcuffed me behind my back.
I did not hesitate.
She made me swollow the key.
I never even so much as flinched.
Then she wrapped my head in a transparent plastic.
I gasped for air.
I gasped for life.
I turned red.
I drowned.
I asphyxiated.
I turned blue.
I became numb.
I came undone.
I turned white.
Knowing all the while that the key to liberation lay well within me.
All the while she laughed.

She is a bitch.
Love is a bitch.
So is Mary Jane.

I Pee Ale!

Sexually frustrated men in the West become serial killers.
In the Middle-East, they do hash.
In India, we watch various forms of this game called Cricket!

The problem with life is that we tend to wait for good things to come to us. And by waiting, we miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn't fall inyour lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps.

Time to pick up my bucket and my ass, and work.

Run like hell.

About 5 AM when mom barges into my room. I'm busy working on the Schindler's List theme on my acoustic. The look on her face tells me what's in store. No. I didn't sleep last night. Yes. I did drink my cold coffee. Okay. I'll deposit the electricity bill today. Yes, definitely. I'd love to have a glass of Tang.

"You'll ruin your body clock this way." I'm tying the laces of my sneakers. "How will you be able to work through your job with such a schedule?" I'm gulping the Tang in one sip. "Don't you think you need to get your life in order?" I'm closing the gate of my house behind me.

Hardly have I started jogging when I encounter this neighbour.

I wish him.

"Hello Beta! How are you? When is your job starting?"

Next month, I tell him.

"That's nice. But you need to tighten up. Look at you! You look like an underworld don in this beard and dishevelled hair. You need to polish yourself up before you start working!"

I muster a frustrated grin and resume jogging. I turn into a lane that takes me away from my home. And I start running. I run. I run like hell.

I could have offered him a million answers, all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person, but that's going to change, I'm going to change. This is the last of this sort of thing. I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm going to be just like you: the job. The family. The fucking big television. The washing machine. The car. The compact disc and electrical tin opener. Good health. Low cholesterol. Dental insurance. Mortgage. Starter home. Leisurewear. Luggage. Three-piece suite. DIY. Game shows. Junk food. Children. Walks in the park. Nine to five. Good at golf. Washing the car. Choice of sweaters. Family Christmas. Indexed pension. Tax exemption. Clearing the gutters. Getting by. Looking ahead. To the day you die.

I stop. I pant. I bend and rest my sweaty palms on my knees. Drops of sweat form on my forehead and drop on the gravel. I pant. I rub the sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my Tee. I pant. I start running again.

Run. Rabbit, run!

Mr. Mojo Risin?

are you like Jim Morrison? created with QuizFarm.com
Are you a Rider on the storm? Well, I certainly am :) This is what my results on the above quiz say : You scored as Jim Morrison Wow you are Jim to the Bone. You are very Out going and not really anyone understands your needs. You listen to music to get away from it all and imagine yourself some where else. Jim Wanna Be 100% Jim Morrison 100% the doors group 75% Jim Who? 31%

Just finished watching The Life of David Gale. Kevin "Keyser Söze" Spacey has, as always, done a commendable job in pulling off an intriguing plot.

Here are two dialogues from the flick that kinda hooked on to my grey cells:

"Fantasies must be unrealistic. The minute you get something, you don't, you can't, want it anymore. Living by your wants will never make you happy, what it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you ever attain in terms of your desires, but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice.
To exist, desire needs absent objects. So desire supports itself with crazy fantasies...

This is what Pascal means when he says the only time we're truly happy is when day-dreaming about future happiness. Or why we say, 'The hunt is sweeter than the kill' or 'Be careful what you wish for.' Not because you'll get it, but because you're doomed not to want it if you do. Think about it next time you're at a wedding."

And.....

"Death is a gift. We spend our whole lives trying to stop death. Eating, inventing, loving, praying, fighting, killing -- choose a verb. All to stall this evil, Job's 'king of terrors.' But what do we really know about death? Just that nobody comes back. There comes a point in life, when your mind out-lives its obsessions, when your habits survive your dreams, your losses... You wonder, maybe death is a gift."

Pigs on the wing

If you didn't care what happened to me,
And I didn't care for you,
We would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggars to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing.

You call, I pick up the phone
You talk, I listen
while you recieve another call....from him
I hold the line
cursing the pigs on the wing.

You know that I care what happens to you,
And I know that you care for me.
So I don't feel alone,
Or the weight of the stone,
Now that I've found somewhere safe
To bury my bone.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

Walk the (straight) line

Kyle: Dude, there is one thing you should never do to your girl!

Stan: ?

Kyle: Never, ever ask her if she's virgin.
And even if you somehow do that, never laugh at her if she says yes!

Stan: Jesus Virgin Christ!
Dude, every girl says she is virgin. What's the point of the question?

Kyle: Hmmm
I guess it's just like us guys, who are never "drunk."

Stan: No. This is different

Kyle: ??

Stan: You can't ask her to walk in a straight line to prove her virginity!

P.s.: never ask your girl if she's virgin, cuz as an aftermath, she will irrevocably bounce the question back to you. And then, if you say yes, you are no good, and if you say no, you are no good!

Hotel California

Once upon a time I had an Orkut account. It had some four thousand odd scraps, three hundred something friends, a fan count of 95 (yes, I was about to hit a century!), and some eighty odd photos of me standing in front of various Gothic buildings all across Europe. Then one fine day, I deleted it. And the reasons? Well, there are no reasons. Who needs reasons after a weekend visit to Amsterdam only to discover that the scrap count hasn't increased while you were "mushrooming" away to happiness!

And did it make me feel good? Man, I felt liberated. I had found liberation in self-destruction. And what better way to self-destruct than killing your own virtual self?

As the soul of my Orkut Avataar rested in peace, I had started living life in it's actuality, discovering the adventures that lay on "the other side" (and by the other side I DO NOT refer to FaRcebook!!), when about a fortnight ago, I happenned to graduate from B-School (now how I manged to do that is yet another interesting but slightly long story which you might soon find at news stands, titled: 4 Point Someone: What NOT to do at a premier B-School.)

That is when the peer pressure started applying itself. How to keep in touch with old batchmates? How to keep old promises? How to know who switched jobs? who got promoted? who bought a new car? and which one? who got engaged? who broke up? who cheated on whom? who.....? who....? who......?

And I succumbed.

Last week I created a new Orkut account.

And Rao was able to capture the essence of it all very aptly in my scrapbook: "Welcome back to the DARK SIDE my son.....it's just like the hotel california..u can check in any time u like...but u can never leave!!"

Tyler Durden said:

" The things we own, end up owning us!"

I say, the things we own, end up owning us, but the things we want to own, end up owning us all the more....