Of Prudes, Ashok Singhals, that idiot Bangladeshi imam and other such despicable creatures

Something’s been the matter with me the last few days. I’ve actually been rather serious – a lot more serious than is my wont. Instead of spouting unadulterated bilge that is supposed to elicit guffaws of mirth, I have been spouting unadulterated bilge that is supposed to shock and provoke introspection (though it seems to provoke hasty mouse movements towards the right hand corner of the screen in order to click on that nice, big, red X).

I was racking my brain, trying to think of some inanity that I could wax eloquent on. It was as I was putting my brain through exercise that it was unaccustomed to that I stumbled upon this post by another blogger. (Note: I don’t have her permission to derive inspiration from what she has written, but I hope she approves, and that the judge will not give me more than twenty years of penal servitude for copyright infringement.)

The post was all about a holier-than-thou moral policeman chastising the author for being ‘chalu’ (though honestly, I cannot figure out for the life of me how chalu fits in in this context), for having violated every norm of Indian culture by doing everything that a good bharatiya naari (that’s Indian woman) should never do – cuss, drink alcohol, raise her eyes when faced with an Indian man, show her cleavage and then dare to expect that the Indian man will not grope her… the list goes on.

I spent around an hour laughing at the chap and his rather archaic view of women. After I had finished laughing, I realized that this chap is probably not alone. Hell, as an Indian guy, I have encountered many of these standard bearers of (what they define as) Indian culture.

Though I have thankfully never been groped (though I am perfectly amenable to a pretty woman doing so if she so desires – caste no bar), or had roadside Romeos display their wares to me on the street, I have met enough Ashok Singhals and other apologists of roadside romeos and their ilk to write a post about. These are a few of the theories that I have found of great interest.

Theory # 1: The Slut Theory

The Slut Theory is one of the most interesting theories that I have heard one of our home-grown fundamentalists propose.

By this theory, “Any woman who has violated the 2500 year-old tenets of ‘Indian culture’ by wearing tight clothes (display of cleavage is not necessary, but can hasten classification into the depraved slut category), talking to more than one man, laughing when a man cracks a (often terrible) joke, or consuming alcohol was a slut, is a slut, and will forever remain a slut.’

Corollaries to this theory include: If a girl has been classified as a slut according to the above theory, then it is perfectly okay to call her a public toilet or a corporation playground – as all three of them are free.

It is perfectly alright to grope a girl who fulfils anyone of the aforementioned criteria. She likes it, y’see!

To be perfectly honest, when I was younger, I did partly believe in this theory. Though, honestly, not in the third corollary. In any case, I apologize to the whole of India for that.

Theory # 2: Pure and virginal Indian girl theory

The day is somewhere in the year 2005. The age of enlightenment and reason.

The place: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom - one of the few countries in the world where freedom of speech still exists.

An Indian popsy drops in for dinner. During the course of the dinner, a fellow desi spills a bit of curry on my jeans. None too pleased, I utter a ‘b****c***’. Harsh, I know, but I do have conscientious objections to decorating my trousers with curry – particularly because I have similarly conscientious objections to washing them (the jeans, not the curry).

I was fully prepared to receive a ‘b****c****’ or a ‘M****c***’ from the chap I had just insulted, considering he is one of those blokes who wakes up in the morning with a cheery ‘b****c***’ playing on his lips, and is never found searching for the right abusive term to use.

But what he said shocked me.

‘Shut up, you idiot!’, he hissed into my ear.

Calling me a Ba*^!@#!@ would have been perfectly acceptable. In fact, I would probably have expected a m*^(*&(&*( or a co&**()&)(*() as well, and brushed it aside.

But idiot!? I would not have been surprised if he called me a ‘terrible person’ or ‘you evil blackguard’ next.

‘What the f*ck do you mean - idiot? You f*cking spilled a whole dollop of f*cking smelly curry on my f*cking jeans, and you f*cking expect me to f*cking shut the f*ck up? And yeah, please refrain from using such puerile insults as idiot – they jar on a man of refined sensibilities like myself.’ said I.

He merely glared, as did the others, leaving me to finish the meal completely perplexed. When I attempted to ask one of the chaps how he was getting along with his hangover, I was shot down equally unceremoniously.

After I had retired to my room to chew on a meditative stick of gum, the aforementioned chap stepped in.

‘Dude! That was an Indian girl you were talking to.’

‘No, I was not talking to her. In fact, you know that I’d rather climb Mount Everest naked than talk to her about anything, inclusive of the situation in Papua new Guinea.’, said I, rather wittily.

‘F*ck that, you m&*(*^(*^()&^*!’

This was interesting! For a person who had glared at one for far milder language (okay, not far milder, but still…) just a few minutes ago, he seemed to have made good progress.

He continued in a rich vein that turned the surrounding air blue with its refreshing candour, ‘There was an Indian girl present when you used the F word, not to mention b****c***! And then you spoke about alcohol!! She must have felt terrible.’

To say that I was surprised would be understating it. ‘But I did not use the F word on her, and neither did I call her a B****c***. I was not even looking at her. In fact, I was referring to your monumental ineptitude.’

‘Now you listen to me! I do not think you have ever lived in the real India. You have no respect for Indian culture. You do not understand that Indian women are not like the morally corrupt and loose European women that you see here. A ‘pure’ Indian girl like Priya is not brought up in the kind of filthy environment your female friends were probably brought up in. She does not even understand the kind of words you used.’

Ignoring my question as to how a word that she did not understand could hurt her, he then continued a long diatribe about how Priya was not the kind of modern (contempt-intended) jeans-clad girl who would laugh lightly at profanity, indulge in using profanity herself, refuse to cook and clean for her husband and *gasp* ask to be allowed to work after marriage.

He concluded with a plea to me to attempt to respect Indian culture (around other women – an Indian male is allowed to be as prurient as he wishes when the right kind of woman is not around), however I wished to behave with my future wife.

As is clear from the aforementioned prude’s stated ideals, a good Indian woman is pure as the driven snow, has never heard a swear word, and is most definitely a virgin. In fact, I would not be too surprised if he plans to physically assault his future wife if she actually knows that babies are not produced by kissing.

To him and other torch-bearers of Indian culture, all I have to say is that I do not care if a woman is pure, virginal or both. I will not use profanities against one who prefers not to hear them, but I reserve my right to freedom of speech in the privacy of my kitchen.

Besides, nobody – irrespective of sex – is so pure as to be completely shocked by people who think and act differently from them. If they are,

1. They need to grow up.


2. They need to realize they are perfectly capable of handling the situation themselves. They do not need self-proclaimed male guardians to protect their virtue.


3. Alcohol is not forbidden/prohibited by Hinduism. If anybody thinks it is (and can prove it), they’re welcome to take the bottle of Russian-made vodka that I hide in my cupboard. I’ll buy another bottle, but you better start drinking unless you are capable of thinking for yourself and do not drink as a personal choice. What a wise man said five thousand years ago cannot dictate your life. He would be disappointed if you are incapable of arriving at a decision for yourself.

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna

It is rather a shame that I had forgotten all about this poem all these years. I'd read of Kaakorikaand and Ram Prasad Bismil in history lessons in school - however the passion that ignited young men of his ilk to sacrifice their all for their country was something I could never understand, much as I tried.

I could never put myself in the place of these young people who perceived within them a concept of India that is almost irretrievably lost to me (and most others I know).

It is not that I am not patriotic. It is not that I do not feel a surge of pride when I see the tricolour flutter proudly in places where the Union Jack once stamped its authority upon us, the conquered people. It is not that I do not feel a flutter within when I see a young man in green fatigues, rifle in hand, to ensure that the tricolour continues to fly high for all eternity. It is just that I have not ever felt the kind of fervour people like Azad, Bose and Ashfaqullah Khan must have felt just sixty years ago.

It is just that it takes a song from a movie to remind me of this rousing bit of poetry. It is just that it takes a movie to arouse within the feeling of being a stakeholder of my country. It is just that it is but rarely I think beyond mundane, petty divisions of the concept of Indianness.

I paste below an excerpt from the poem Lalkaar, penned by a man who has long passed beyond the veil, having sacrificed his life in the name of freedom, humanity, and all else that is noble. Do we have it within us to appreciate the magnitude of his sacrifice today?

hai liye hathiyaar dushman taak mein baitha udhar
aur hum taiyyaar hain seena liye apna idhar
khoon se khelenge holi gar vatan muskhil mein hai
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai


haath jin mein ho junoon katt te nahi talvaar se
sar jo uth jaate hain voh jhukte nahi lalkaar se
haath jin mein ho junoon katt te nahi talvaar se
sar jo uth jaate hain voh jhukte nahi lalkaar se
aur bhadkega jo shola-sa humaare dil mein hai
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

hum to ghar se nikle hi the baandhkar sar pe qafan
chaahatein liin bhar liye lo bhar chale hain ye qadam
zindagi to apni mehmaan maut ki mehfil mein hai
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

dil mein tuufaanon ki toli aur nason mein inquilaab
hosh dushman ke udaa denge humein roko na aa
duur reh paaye jo humse dam kahaan manzil mein hai
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai
sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai


My Hindi is rather rusty, but I shall still attempt a rough translation into English for those of you who do not speak Hindi. (If there are any errors, as I am sure there will be, I request native speakers to point them out to me. :) )

The enemy waits out there, his weapons at the ready,
But we stand here, without a qualm in our hearts,,
There will flow a maelstrom of blood if the country is in trouble,
The desire to sacrifice our all now resides in our hearts.

Hands which hold the power of righteous anger can never be chopped by swords,
Heads held up in pride shall never shirk a challenge,
Hands which hold the power of righteous anger can never be chopped by swords,
Heads raised in pride shall never shirk a challenge,
And the righteous fire that burns strong in our hearts shall erupt,
The desire to sacrifice our all now resides in our hearts.

We walked out of our homes, shrouds tied around our heads,
We have taken these steps, filled with desire (I’m not too sure about this),
Life is our guest at the party hosted at the doorstep of death,
The desire to sacrifice our all now resides in our hearts.

Storms rage within our hearts, and the revolution flows through our veins,
We shall blow the enemy away, do not come to stop us,
Nobody dares stay away from us,
The desire to sacrifice our all now resides in our hearts.
The desire to sacrifice our all now resides in our hearts.

I think this is the first post in a long, long time where I have not attempted to be funny. For it is not often that I write when in a meditative mood. It is not often that I am so strongly affected by just three stanzas of verse.

Falling off Goatfell - The Arran Trip, Part II

Falling off Goatfell

We landed in Arran in due time. A few lingering suspicions I had of whether I had actually docked in France by mistake were dismissed when I realized I could understand what the blokes on the shore were mouthing (unless of course the French had seen sense at long last and decided to switch to English).

Arran is a huge island, and does not have as many roads as a lazy city slicker like me would have liked. However, since it is huge, walking everywhere is not an option either. This leaves one with two options - of getting onto an overpriced bus, or selling your soul to raise the funds to rent a car.

Since I didn’t know if I had one of the latter, I decided to clamber onto a bus to travel to a place called Corrie. It was as I settled down on the bus that I realized that the buses were marginally less comfortable than the trusty 100 year old steeds they use in Chennai, and the roads were as good as the euphemistically named IT highway is after a storm.

I also realized that the bus driver suffered from the delusion that he was at the wheel of a Jaguar. He was convinced that the only way he could give his passengers their money’s worth was by giving their collective stomachs a good churn. He was aided and abetted by the twists and turns of the wonderfully surfaced road.

As we neared Corrie, any thoughts I had entertained of making terrible jokes about Poories in Corrie had all but vanished. All I wanted was a quiet corner where I could relieve myself of the contents of the stomach. The coffee was fighting with the ham and cheese sandwiches for an out, and all of them picked my esophagus as the staging point for breaking out of my body.

One of my friends tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Are you sick?’, she asked, rather unnecessarily.

‘No, I usually turn green on a whim. It amuses me to no end.’ Bitter words, no doubt. But there are times when a man is amenable to stupid questions, and times when he is not.

‘I just thought of a funny joke.’, she went on, unaffected by my remarks which were meant to bite like an adder and sting like a bee. ‘You’re a sick individual in the normal course of things. But now you’re a sick person who is incidentally feeling sick.’

I turned to her with an expression that had disgust, disdain and annoyance written on it. I was about to make another scathing remark which would have shut her up (for thirty seconds, at least), when the bus went up in the air after climbing up a steep incline a little too fast. Belying the driver’s expectations, the bus did not stay airborne but descended to terra firma with a resounding thud. And the lemonade that I had sipped the day before joined the party that the coffee and the sandwiches were organizing in my esophagus.

My friend looked at me with sudden concern. ‘You’re going to puke, aren’t you?’

I nodded weakly, in the hope of garnering some womanly sympathy.

‘Please turn away. Don’t puke on me.’, said she, brutally.

If I were an old man, I would have said, ‘They don’t make women the way they used to in 1950.’

But I wasn’t (and am not) an old man. So I turned away, thinking dark thoughts and hoping for the depredation of all womankind.

Cut to: Goatfell Mountain

It had been fifteen minutes since I had let the coffee, the sandwiches and the lemonade make their way back to the womb of the nature that created them. As the climb got harder and harder, my backpack seemed to get inexplicably heavier and heavier. In a few minutes, I was almost climbing on all fours.

I shouldn’t have carried those three cans of beer, goddammit!

In keeping with the spirit of the previous post, I summarize herein the lessons learnt during the climb to, descent from and fall on Goatfell.

• If somebody asks you to carry three cans of beer, don’t listen to somebody. In fact, go a step further and tell somebody that he’s talking through his hat.


• If the somebody happens to be yourself, kill somebody. The world doesn’t deserve somebodies of this kind. *searches frantically for a noose or a few capsules of cyanide*


• Snow looks nice and feels nice to the touch. But that doesn’t make having snow stuffed down your shirt an enjoyable experience.


• Snow is slippery. But do not avoid the snow to walk on the adjoining wet, icy rocks. Ice is slipperier (a message to the purists here – if Lewis Carroll could say curiouser, why can’t I say slipperier. So there!) than snow, and falling down on a rock hurts more than falling down on snow.


• If you’re five feet and seven inches tall, weigh around 63 kilos, have black hair, Indian, and called Siddhu, don’t go mountain climbing. There are several other pursuits you will be significantly better at – like, for instance, being a roadside romeo and whistling at passing pulchritude, sleeping, or drawing Nazi Swastikas on bus stop windows.

Help!!

Some chap sent me an invite to contribute to his blog. I didn't want to contribute to his blog (especially after I had seen it), nor do I want to now. But I have unfortunately been added in as a team member (primarily thanks to my monumental stupidity).

Well, what's done has been done, but I'd like to get out of being a team member of that blog. Anybody knows how I can do that?

A trip to Arran - Part I

The isle of Arran is supposed to be somewhere on the west coast of Scotland. I am not sure exactly where, so don’t ask me where it is if you aren’t either. That’s why God created Google Earth.

Irrespective of whether I am sure of its exact coordinate position or not, the fact remains that I did spend the weekend there. Two days during which I speculated if I was closer to France than I usually am, twisted my ankle six times, developed a convincing, almost arthritic crick in the knee, and slept in a pub, on a dining table, on two different buses, in a bus stop, and on the deck of a ferry.

By this time, the reader has probably left – being, as most normal people are, completely disinterested in the weekend activities of a somnambulist. But if you haven’t, (and in case you’re reading this, you haven’t) let me hasten to explain that Arran is an island which is supposed to be a miniature model of Scotland – the island contains, among others, thick forests, waterfalls, a 2000 foot mountain, crazy bus drivers who think they’re driving roller coasters, and rubbish bins exclusively for dog poop*. In fact, the only thing I couldn’t find were large numbers of friendly Scottish drunks looking for someone to talk to about how Englishmen are evil incarnate (something one expects to find as a matter of course in every Scottish city).

Part I – The Trip to Arran

The day that I got onto the bus to begin my trip to this little isle dawned fresh and beautiful. It didn’t appear all that fresh and beautiful to me because sleeping just two hours results in one having a rather jaundiced view of things.

After drawing a small Nazi swastika on the condensate on the bus stop window (and hoping to alarm some pacifist or idiot into thinking that it was time to wear yellow stars around their arms again), I got onto the bus and staggered to the most comfortable seat I could find.

It was then that I found that I had forgotten to zip my fly up. Finding oneself with an unzipped fly when almost completely surrounded by women is probably the kind of thing some people actually enjoy – strippers, streakers, and miscellaneous other perverts.

But, being none of them, and on the contrary, being a nice Indian boy, I found myself in a highly uncomfortable situation. After having settled into the most fetal position I could possible contort myself to settle into, I slept fitfully – dreaming all the time of most unpleasant occurrences. All of which involved me accidentally stretching my legs.

Two hours later, I found myself being woken up by a few rather impolite jabs, and being pushed into a ferry.

And talking of coffee served at the lounge where one waits for a ferry (not that we were, but let’s assume we were), I had an argument of great pith and moment with someone over why it is alright to leave a coffee cup on a chair if one cannot find a dustbin anywhere in sight. As I walked away after having lost the argument, I decided that this unnecessary attention to detail is probably why Asia looks all set to supplant Europe in the world stage. You wouldn’t find an Indian or a Chinese bloke spending hours looking for dustbins when the whole world is at his disposal (pun intended).

As I watched the ferry move slowly towards Arran, I began to wonder if that landmass that I sighted yonder was France. I turned to a friend of mine, who happened to be contemplating similarly deep thoughts, and spoke
‘Hey, is that France that I see out there?’

She laughed. I am often used to girls giggling at my witticisms, but this didn’t sound right. Girls, when they giggle, do not often sound sarcastic. And neither do they look like she did just then.

‘We’re sailing to the west of Scotland. How on earth do you expect to find France here?’

I was perplexed for a bit. West, according to me, was a perfectly natural place for France to be, unless it had moved since I heard from it last. After all, I’d been led to believe all along by my geography teacher that France was a western country.

But before I could say that, realization dawned upon me. Us Warriers are not perplexed for long. I turned towards her and said, rather snappily, ‘Ah! We’re on the Pacific then!’

A long silence, punctuated by hyenasque gasps, followed, as she held onto the railings trying not to fall over. Dashed inconsiderate of her, I must say.

‘No, you idiot! This is the Atlantic! And what you think you see is Northern Ireland.’

I was not convinced and decided to consult a local, as Scotsmen are unlikely to double over with laughter when one asks them a question of great pith and moment. I found a local yokel leaning over the railing, smoking a meditative cigarette.

‘Er, excuse me, mate, but are we on the Atlantic Ocean?’

‘ARRh…nayy, we aRe on the fiRth of <some word that has slipped my mind for the nonce>. If we tRavel another hundRed miles, we would be on the Atlantic, aye! And that theRe is the isle of ARRan. ’, said he, enunciating each ‘r’ loud enough to wake the dead.

Ah! I knew we weren’t sailing to Ireland. It had to be the isle of Arran.

I turned to my friend in triumph. ‘See? See? It’s not the Atlantic! We’re at the confluence of the Pacific and the Atlantic. And the firth of whatever it is called is just Gaelic for the Pacific. Almost everything is called a firth of something or the other around these parts’

(Cut to: Fifteen minutes later)

A long geography lesson punctuated with condescending and funny remarks which weren’t remotely funny (though the other hyenas seemed to think otherwise) culminates.

Lessons learnt:

1. Do not argue with a woman. You’ll lose.


2. If the captain says you’re sailing to the Isle of Arran, believe him.


3. The Atlantic is closer to the firth of whatever it is than the Pacific.


4. The firth of whatever it is is not the Gaelic word for the Pacific.


5. I should never have passed my geography examination in school. Somebody made a big mistake.

Will our intrepid hero be thrown to the sharks for his ineptness in Geography? Will he fall off the Goatfell mountain, and add to the multitude of goats that have already fallen off it? Will he continue to write such arrant nonsense? All this, and lots more, in the next episode of this breathtakingly boring travelogue.

*Vilasrao Deshmukh must have, at one time, been mayor of Arran.

Of Douches, casanovae and all that

I am no Don Juan. Casanova would probably squirm in his grave if someone compared me to him. My charm, erudition, politeness and keenness may be bywords in the circles that I frequent - but remarks on my way with women often provokes a hiss or a peal of unrestrained laughter from the worms who happen to be my comrades-in-arms.

I can well imagine this conversation between an egg, a bean and crumpet who know me.

The egg says, as the three of them nestle close to the electric heater, ‘Ah, Siddhu! That’s a gentleman. Doesn’t miss a thing!’

The bean nods sagely in concurrence as he quaffed his fifth whisky down in a hurry, ‘Oh yeah! Ol’ eagle-eye Warrier about sums it up. Even if he does make pathetic attempts to imitate that chap called Wodehouse that slips my mind.’

The crumpet then speaks, ‘That’s all very fine. But what about his luck with women – or should I say, his way with women!?’

(Egg, bean and crumpet roll on the floor laughing, until the crumpet burns himself on the heater coil. Serves him right, the bastard!)

But the egg, bean and crumpet – even if they are struck down by lightning or eaten by bears for their blasphemy – weren’t too far away from putting their finger on the nub of the whole thingummy, as I illustrated yet again a couple of days ago.

I was all a-twitter. I was off to watch a terrible movie that is better left unnamed simply because a little chickadee, so to speak, was supposed to be watching it as well. After gelling my hair, adjusting my glasses for the umpteenth time (wait a second, I don’t wear glasses – so let’s skip that bit), and spraying enough deodorant to create a sizeable hole in the ozone layer, I walked away toward the bus stand.

Having become unaccustomed to getting anywhere on time during the course of 21 misspent years, I reached the bus stand to take in the wafting stench of diesel as the bus sped away – without me.

After a long, arduous journey which involved walking half a kilometer to find a cab, I managed to reach where I was supposed to meet the aforementioned popsy – to find that there was no popsy waiting.

It was a perplexing puzzle. I deduced that if there was no popsy where there was, technically, supposed to be a popsy, something was wrong. With my immense powers of ratiocination, I divined that any of the following could have happened –

The popsy had not arrived yet.
The popsy was sick of waiting for me.

She had been abducted by aliens who were in cahoots with the Iraqi insurgency.

After having dismissed the third as impossible, primarily because there are no Iraqis left outside Guantanamo bay and Abu Gharib, I began to consider the first two possibilities in all seriousness.

A swift glance at my watch told me that I was fifteen minutes late. After listening to a few well-chosen words from my friend whom I had dragged along for the ordeal, I got onto another taxi to go to the theater directly. The cost incurred by self appeared to be assuming terribly monstrous proportions – the monstrosity of which grew with every ‘tick’ of the taximeter. I finally arrived at the theater – five pounds in the red already – and met the damsel I have spoken in such glowing terms over the past two pages.

I don’t know what it is about female temperament that makes a fifteen minute wait intolerable. And the damsel was displayed every sign of the female temperament that has befuddled philosophers over the ages.

Trying to make amends, I offered hastily to buy the tickets, and rushed ahead towards the counter butting a woman in the stomach on the way.

‘Er… two tickets, please’, said I, in my most suave, debonair and charming manner.

My friend who had reason to remonstrate with me previously tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to get another two for him and his friend.

‘Er…another two tickets, but he’s paying for them.’, I muttered to the rather retarded chap selling the tickets.

The retarded chap, stung to the quick, told me to conduct my business dealings first and then rejoin at the end of the queue. Which I did. As I walked back to the end of the queue, I noticed the damsel muttering something to her friend - harsh words which were indubitably not coated in milk and honey.

Ticket counter again. No mishaps, this time. Until the retard asked me for the money. I paid him what my friend had just handed me, and then took my wallet out with a flourish.

It was empty.

‘Er…’

‘Don’t you have the cash, mate?’, asked the ticket seller, now looking more like a gorilla than a retard.

‘Er…I think I accidentally forgot to visit the cash machine. Can I pay by card?’, said I, very sheepishly.

‘Sure, mate.’, said he, smiling once again – if one could call that vacuous expression he had on a smile.

After handing the card over to him, I leant on the partition with the confidence of a man who knows he’s ahead of the game. It was as I was musing on nothing in particular that the chap rose up again, looking like the Angrezon ki zamane ka jailer (which was probably what his grandfather was).

‘Your credit card has exceeded its credit limit.’, said he, coldly, and pushed the card back to me.

The damsel came hurrying, wondering what all the commotion was about.

‘What’s wrong, Siddhu?’

‘Er…a trifling logistical issue. I seem to be experiencing a slight, temporary liquidity crunch!’

‘You mean, you don’t have enough money.’

The idiot behind the counter piped up, ‘That means he has no money, Ma’am. Can you please pay for him?’

With a stare that Roget would call baleful, malevolent and sinister she paid for her tickets – and mine.

After everything, we walked into the theater where, thanks to what the damsel called ‘my dilatory tactics’, there were two pairs of two seats separated by an abyss wider than the grand canyon.

‘So what do you want to do now?’, asked she, tapping her foot in irritation.

Then, her friend resolved the situation by saying, ‘I can’t sit up front. I’ll sprain my neck, and then I’ll have spondylitis, and then I’ll have to wear a collar, and then I’ll be in a wheelchair all my life. (er…she didn’t say the last bit)’

It was then that I was struck with the biggest brainstorm to hit a human being since when in 2003 Dubya decided to ‘liberate’ Iraq in two weeks.

I said, ‘Okay, myself and my (male) friend will sit up front. You can sit up here with your friend.’

The friend who expected spondylitis giggled rather loudly as I walked downstairs.

As I walked down, I heard my friend whisper in my ear, ‘Douche!!!’

And then it struck me! Goddammit! Douche was right!!


Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Douche, I may be, but such a big douche I definitely am not.

Note: People can be as big douches as this. Trust me!

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

People of the Year 2005

It has been over a year since I began to write unadulterated, Grade-A rubbish for this blog of mine. As I trawled through my blog, I discovered that I rang in 2005 with a list of the people of the year 2004 . It is therefore in keeping with tradition that I continue this year by presenting the Siddhu Persons of the Year 2005 – a list of people, organizations and animals that made 2005 an unliveable, intolerable and painful experience for those of us at the bottom of the pecking order.

In the year that went past, hurricanes, tsunamis, torrential rains, obese chief ministers and equally obese female police officers gave stiff competition to American soldiers, George W Bush and Osama bin Laden in entertaining the populace.

So, without further ado, I present the Siddhu persons of the year 2005.

1.Air India

Air India has contributed more to providing me with my share of pain in a year where the usual suspects continued their good work in Guantanamo bay, Abu Ghraib and King’s Cross.

I travelled five times on Air India in the year that has just passed us by. The first flight was to Singapore. The flight taught me the value of patience and meditation as I spent eighteen hours waiting for the plane that would take me to that well-loved dictatorship next door (a distance of three thousand kilometres, by the way), and two dollars writing about my experiences at an uncomfortable and slightly smelly Internet cafe in Chennai Airport. Before anyone tries to blame Air India for its inefficiency, one would do well to remember that an airline cannot do much else when one of their forty-five year old lumbering leviathans decides to go on strike, and the only other available fifty year old replacement is currently on safari in a Kenyan jungle (which, by the way, o incredulous reader, was the reason given us for the delay).

The second flight was from Heathrow to Bombay, via Modiland. Due to a conspiracy of right-wing Hindu nationalists conspiring to establish a Hindu Rashtra (while merrily massacring ethnic and religious minorities on the way), one of the engines of another Air India plane – a veteran of a hundred thousand sorties during World War II, and a witness to the Hindenburg fire of 1936 – decided to take a break. Before anyone tries to blame Air India for being manned by a bunch of incompetent nincompoops, one would do well to remember that our average public sector airline cannot do much else if Narendra Modi decides to start another merry orgy of communal rioting – precipitating it, this time around by engineering the failure of an Air India engine.

Apart from these delays, Air India worked assiduously to being selected in this list by hiring obese air hostesses who cannot help brush huge rear ends on unsuspecting aisle seat passengers and disturbing their sleep and recruiting baggage handlers who have done their utmost to lose my luggage – twice!

2. The Moral Policemen

The moral policemen that one saw spreading misery in 2005 were not all clad in the reviled khaki. One of them even called himself a Vice Chancellor.

They worked day and night to prevent the corruption of Indian culture, and ensure that India begins to look more and more like a bombed-out armpit named Afghanistan did when under the Taliban. They protected the lecherous male Anna University student from the desire to rape a desirable young lass clad in a (gasp) tee shirt and jeans by instructing women not to wear western clothes any more. They protected the easily blinded Anna University lecturer from the harmful effects of the colour red on the female body by banning red altogether. (Note: All female Red Indian students would have been expelled, if there were any.) They protected young women who allowed themselves to be corrupted by embracing a male by getting policewomen to beat the young women up. The policewomen, it is worthwile to add, were of a kind that no right-thinking straight male would touch with a ten foot pole.

Gay rights groups the world over have lauded the moral police for the curbs imposed on heterosexual activity in India. As Elton John, five-time recipient of the prestigious Faggot of the Year award, stated, “Right thinking individuals in Indian polity realize the folly of men and women getting together. This is a major step in the direction of a homosexual world.”

Mr. John went on to add that he would be happy to demonstrate the joys of homosexuality to the Indian male, in order to cure him of his disturbingly heterosexual taste. Gay rights groups attribute these moves in the recent past to demonstrations of a similar nature by Elton John and his comrades-in-arms on the persons of the Anna University vice-chancellor and certain individuals of indeterminate sex enforcing the law in Uttar Pradesh.

3. MMSi

MMSi (or MMSes, if the reader so wishes) have definitely been the hero(in)es of the year 2005. The intrepid DPS girl started it all when she performed facial contortions while her mouth was full. It will be remembered that she was much appreciated by this author last year for her lucidity and clarity of expression, even as she worked energetically with hand and mouth.

And India's beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) women have not looked back ever since. Riya Sen followed in her illustrious footsteps, as did India's answer to push-up bras and Pamela Anderson, Mallika Sherawat. It was but a short while before Sania Mirza purportedly made a release of her own - a release which unfortunately turned out to be one of Sania Mirza's look-alikes.

MMSi have done a good job bringing cheer and joy to desperate, under-sexed (and extremely available) men like the writer of this tome. Until the Vice-Chancellor of Anna University banned all forms of heterosexual activity (including heterosexual pornography) on-campus, engineering students across its campii entertained themselves through several boring classes by means of these MMSi.

Scientists suggest that these MMSi have contributed greatly to an increase in the frequency and duration of visits paid by the young Indian male to the toilet. As an evidently virile engineerin gstudent on the way to one said, "The Taj Mahal is no longer man's biggest erection for woman.".

Resurrection!

The worst thing about trying to get yourself three degrees is that it does away with a lot of your time – time which could be spent pursuing the better things in life – like sleep, women, alcohol and a literary career. Particularly the first, as I never had what one would term stunning successes with the opposite sex, and a literary career may come quicker to a dyslexic than to me (as the award of the Booker Prize to my old friend whom I don’t like illustrates).

The grapevine brought to me, as grapevines are oft wont to do, news of a tag. Having battled a book tag with reasonable success and having come out tops, it was a grim prospect for the Warrier soul to be confronted with. A sea-serpent had tagged me a few weeks ago, asking me to torment the world with twenty random things about myself.

I faced two problems – the first being that I had written so many technical reports and research reviews of late that I knew the first words I wrote would be along the lines of -

It has been stated by several scholarly sources [1,2] that the life of Siddhu Warrier is not one that would spark great interest in most living creatures. The reasons for his insanity are chronicled by Boneh, Durfee and Frankel in their seminal work in 1998 [3] in great detail However, to go into this is beyond the scope of this report, and this report will therefore not delve any depper into this topic.

This report is organized as follows. The first section describes…

I can hear the multitudes (all 8 of them) scream out for mercy. The word goes around, this is not what we want of our young Warrier. (What we want is his complete extermination, which is unfortunately beyond the sphere of practical politics – unless one is an armed member of the London Metropolitan Police with a healthy disdain for brown skin)

And therefore, I waited, biding my time until the pressures of Java, CORBA, Xenoservers, Combinatorial Auction Algorithms and other unsightly creatures I would not share my bed with eased a bit.

And then, I put fingers to my ugly new Chinese keyboard and began to type. And realization dawned upon me that I can still be as boring as ever. So without further ado, leave me descend upon the aforementioned tag. Twenty wholesome facts about me (in no particular order) -

1. I admire Eminem, and have often been reprimanded strongly by some prudes whom I associate with for my excessive usage of the F word (and the B, and the S and the U and the Z words). But I persist, for I wager I am one of a dying breed of biggas.
2. I can’t stand women who attempt to paint a picture of themselves as nuns who would die of coronary haemorrhage if they were to hear unparliamentary language or an off-colour joke – the propensity to do this is unfortunately high among women of my country. 
3. I once attempted to burn my house down. Before people start boarding their doors to protect themselves against a raging pyromaniac with a torch in hand, let me hasten to explain – how on earth was I supposed to know that the wrapping of a pack of butter contained aluminium? Even more importantly, it cannot be expected of a man of my commitments to think of things like switching off the power to the microwave.

But, may it never be said that I played the fiddle while 65/5 West Mains Road burnt itself down. Displaying the utmost sagacity (and a burning desire to avoid paying for the house, the microwave and the people residing therein – not to mention the desire to save what remained of the burning butter), I ran from room to room at six in the morning, attempting to wake its sleeping denizens with my ringing cries for everyone to join in on the bonfire in the kitchen.

And be it never be said that I did not thank the kindly person who switched the microwave off. I was exceedingly kind to him (and did not play Rammstein at twelve in the night for three days), even if he unfairly labelled me a ‘certified chootiya’.

4. Unlike an idiot friend of mine named Jormund Elver, I would never turn down a girl who wished to make out with me. It’s a simple matter of asking, girls! I’m waiting…

5. The world is full of short-sighted women who do not understand the enormity of the opportunity that they have missed out on all these years.

6. A lifetime of reading Archie comics has turned me as clumsy as Archie. Like the Boy Scout who basks in the joy of having done a good deed everyday, I spend most days under the shadow of my latest act of clumsiness – the act, as of even date, being spilling a whole glass of Pepsi on a girl’s jeans (and trying to blame someone else for having scratched their left nostril).

7. The most famous line that I ever mouthed was – ‘Ma’am, Siddhu was a good boy, Ma’am. Peyi eriduthu. (A ghost took possession of him)’. I still await an Oscar for that brilliant and melodramatic performace , executed off-the-cuff immediately after having been caught drawing my vice-principal dancing the Charleston in his underpants.

8. I am no Fred Astaire. My dancing style has oft been compared to a pig’s, Gandhi’s and the obese driver of an Onyx dumpster – to the latters’ advantage.

This entertaining and insightful glance into the depraved and debauched life of Siddhu Warrier will be continued, as soon as the author returns after a bacchanalian night of revelry in the company of SQL, PHP and XML.

A new blog as well

Hello everyone,

For those of you who may have thought that I have gone into hiding, been shot seven times in the head while travelling on the London tube, or met some equally miserable fate, I have bad news.

I'm alive, well and kicking. Well, to temper the bad news with some good for all the sadists out there, I'm not physically in the pink.

Anyway, I write this to notify all of you that I have a new photoblog at http://sidspics.blogspot.com, and this week's instalment is a few pictures I have put up - of London and the bunch of lunatics (myself included) who travelled to the great city.

And now, I return to my arcane, and often hideous, world of totient functions, Corbas and FDs. Comment allez vous, as always. :)

A tale of two countries...

As this author pens this piece, he realizes that he has been terribly inactive on the blogging front for the last couple of weeks. But I must hasten to explain that it is because I have had to be terribly active in the real world – something I’m not particularly keen about, but something I have to do to justify the faith that the European Union has (mis)placed in me.

To get down to actually writing (and trying to figure out if I still remember to write in languages other than Java), here goes…


The Glaswegian, myself and (part of) an unfortunate Englishman

Around three weeks ago, a young Warrier packed his little all and scooted to a not-so-little place called Glasgow.

Glasgow was, to sum it up, rather a disappointment. But then, living in a place like Edinburgh prejudices you against most places (unless of course you’re visiting El Dorado or Shangri La).

But that doesn’t take away from it the fact that Glaswegians are terribly interesting people. If one were to be a little more unkind, one would use the word ‘weird’ – but being the nice, well-bred and sweet young man that I am, I will not say so.

Standing by a bridge in Glasgow at two in the afternoon, I asked my Nigerian friend to snap a picture of me and an English friend of mine. As I primped myself to look even more dashing than I usually do, I did not notice a slightly inebriated-looking middle aged man walk towards us.

But the inebriated-looking middle aged man did notice us. Before I could say a word (or two, for that matter), he put his arm around me, pushed Ian (the English chap) out of the frame and plastered a very drunk grin on his face. It was a laughing self that posed for the camera with the old soak. The normally reticent Ian was too shocked to say much, but merely looked a little more perplexed than he usually looks.

After my clearly amused friend had snapped a picture of us, we assumed the old soak would go along to whichever pub he haunted at this early hour. But the friendly neighbourhood Glaswegian had different ideas. Energetically shaking me by the hand, he asked me,

‘Where ya from, mate?’

‘Er…India…’, said I, for I had still not overcome my initial surprise.

‘Welcome to Glasgow, mate! We’re SO glad to have you here… Have a great time in Glasgow!’

He asked Deji, the Nigerian bloke, the same question, and welcomed him equally effusively - the ridiculous grin still in place.

And then, he turned to Ian, who looked like he would have much rather preferred to have been in a cave in Afghanistan hunting for bin Laden, butter knife in hand.

Ian is as English as the English get, if not even more. The ‘Englishness’ of his English accent would probably put the Queen to shame – what with his erudition oozing out of every syllable. He is, to cut a long story short, the kind of chap who’d never have caused Queen Victoria to raise a cultured eyebrow and snort a nasty ‘We are not amused!’ (though Queen Victoria would have been equally likely to bellow an uncultured ‘Off with his f***ing head’ if faced with our Glaswegian hero.)

‘Oh, rather, I’m from England, what what?’

It was the work of a moment for our hero to wipe the grin off his face. He glared balefully at Ian and said,

‘You’re a ruddy Englishman! Go away, f*** off!!’

If Ian had looked perplexed til then, he now seemed a trifle shocked – as shocked as he ever gets.

‘I say! What?’, was all he could come up with.

The Glaswegian continued, ignoring Ian’s protests that he could not possibly f*** out of Scotland at such short notice.

‘You!’, he said – the grin back on - pointing a stubby finger at me, ‘and you’, this time looking cheerfully at the Nigerian, ‘are invited to the pub – free drinks on me. You’re visitors to Scotland!’

Ian had by now lapsed into silence, and was probably wondering when the Glaswegian would pull a carving knife out to expedite the process of his f***ing out of Scotland.

The Glaswegian turned to him and said, ‘NO Drinks for You, mate.’

And then, with a parting wave to us, and a muttered ‘go back to England’ to Ian, our cheery Glaswegian took leave of us.

And he never did tell us what the name of ‘his’ pub was…

I’m leaving on a short tour of London during my mid-semester break next week. It promises to be a fun trip – what with six of us haunting the old metropolis for three whole days. But unfortunately, before I can leave, there are pressing issues such as an assignment that I have to deal with. So the next week will presumably be spent in writing in a little-known but much-hated foreign language called Java. So, until then, adios amigos…or as the Scots are wont to say, Cheers Mate!!

A Scottish photoblog

Weekdays being what they are, I did not have any time at all to get down to penning a blog. But since my weekend begins on Friday and I don't plan to get up before 12 tomorrow in any case, I spent hours toiling over my first photo blog on The Blog of Small Things

This photoblog takes the reader/viewer through the whole of my last Saturday, which was - to put it very mildly - a great day!

So, please do scroll down and look through the images I have painstakingly compiled, and maybe read the corny captions that I've penned.

(Of course you can leave, but you won't, will you? Huh huh?)

Till then, comment allez vous monseuirs et mesdames. (Pleeease!)

Motoring down the A-720 towards a little place in the middle of nowhere called North Berwick. The beginning of one of the greatest days I’ve had in recent times. 

At North Berwick, right next to a mouldy old ruin that you have to pay three pounds to see. Fiscal prudence and common sense prevailed, and we decided to climb a beautiful (and free) hill instead. 

Zonka (I’m sorry but I really can’t spell his name right L ), Arnav and Rohit standing next to the wall that separated us from a very picturesque beach (and an even more picturesque girl). 

Steven from Germany, flanked by an incredibly handsome young man from India…er…Oops, wrong photo. 

Spending a Saturday morning walking down the long, beautiful and easy road to Perdition, when we should have unraveling the mysteries of TCP/IP or some other such unpleasant creature. 

Scotland is so incredibly beautiful that I can’t think of anything derogatory to say about this photo. 

A typically unfit CS student after a breathless climb of fifty feet. 

John from Germany and Eva from China