Wax

I don't know if someone has already been through what I am about to narrate, or if someone has already pretended to have been through what I am about to narrate, just because what I am about to narrate is such an obvious thing to have happened and if it hasn't yet happened to anyone, I would be extremely surprised, but I will still narrate it regardless. So I was sitting on a bench in Madame Tussaud's wax museum in New York resting my back on which the weight of the world rests. And I saw this woman walk up to me and she stood there subjecting me to intense scrutiny for a while and then got startled out of her wits when I looked up at her and she said, "Wow, you had me fooled there".

If this story had not actually happened to me, I would have made it up anyways so basically, I don't know if other people have already made it up and recited it to other people, thus reducing the humor content of it, but in this case, it actually did happen to me so in my opinion, keeping that in mind, I feel that this episode certainly merits a few chuckles from you.

Thank you in advance.

Don't be surprised

I don't understand the people in all these commercials who still get surprised when they encounter an inanimate object equipped with the ability to speak. It's like, here is this guy, supposedly living in the twenty first century and yet, when his bedroom heater speaks to him in a sensual feminine voice (turns out that bedroom heaters are female), asking him to use her more often, he is like, "hey girl, how come you can speak", and "but you're a heater, heaters can't speak", and then, continuing in the same vein, "but you don't have a biological larynx like me, how is it that you can speak", until you feel like telling him, hey buddy, are you ever gonna let her get to her sales pitch? Are you? For God's sakes man, keep up with the times. Everybody knows that in the world of commercials, heaters and bedroom furniture and coffee mugs and even parts of your own body (except your mouth, which could already speak), have long since developed the capacity for intelligent conversation and impeccable social etiquette.

So act like a goddamned professional. Don't keep wasting the first two minutes of every commercial acting all amazed and requesting elaborate explanations from the kitchen faucet on the hows and whys of his ability to sermonize. Instead, get out more often. Watch more commercials. Do your homework on your own time and quit wasting ours with your unpreparedness when the rest of us just want to know what it is that the faucet has on his mind.

Thank you, Munnabhai

Thank you, Munnabhai. I take back every nasty thing I've said till now about Bollywood.

Also, thank you Mohandas. I think this thing definitively proved your continued relevance in today's world.

Finally, thank you lawyers and your class action lawsuits. I wish I could find a suitable way to repay you. What's that you say? Oh ok, cash it is then. Although personally, I would have gone with gratitude.

Beating people up

One reason I began to work out in the gym is because people took undue advantage of my frail physique and kept beating me up. For example, I had an acquaintance in high school who had a habit of picking on me for one reason or another. One day it would be for criticizing the peculiar walk of his lady friend, the next day it would be because he didn't like the peculiarity of my walk after being beaten up the previous day. It was always something with this guy.

When you are thin and weak as I was and your body is devoid of any substantial muscular tissue, your only recourse is to defend yourself using your wit. I did just that. Those days, the hot new craze in school was to slap the air with a wet handkerchief akin to cracking a whip. The point of this exercise was to derive pleasure from the loud sound it produced. Usually this slapping was not directed towards a human being because early on in the game, someone had come to realize through excruciating personal experience that in addition to the high decibels, this slap also produced a severe welt if applied to the human body.

So anyways, after having been beaten up by this acquaintance for a couple of days in a row, I decided to exact vengeance. I said to him, "I bet if I were to slap you with this wet handkerchief, you would cry like a newborn, notwithstanding the formidable bulge in your biceps". Now because this guy had an ego the size of Mt Kilimanjaro back when it was still covered in glaciers, and also an irresistible urge to disagree with everything I said, replied, "Ha, you think so? Here, take a crack at me, and I'll prove you wrong."

The ensuing moments were quite possibly the most exciting and enjoyable of my entire life. I lovingly bathed a handkerchief in ice cold tap water, positioned myself for the assault and then proceeded to inflict wave upon wave of violence on his forearm, the likes of which would have made Hannibal proud.

I whipped him. I whipped him good. The air was thick with loud cracking noises and flying skin. After the initial maniacal desire for retribution within me had subsided, I then relaxed enough to enjoy the experience and even took the opportunity to hone my handkerchief whipping technique on him. In order to prevent my subject from quitting midway, I kept speaking to him in a soothing manner, saying things like, "I see blood on your arm, are you sure it's not hurting?" And this only made him more determined to withstand the pain and he stiffened his lips some more and allowed me to keep going at him. Finally, I had to stop due to sheer physical exhaustion but by that time, I had inflicted enough mayhem on his arm to last me a lifetime.

Later on in life, I made some more violent friends, for example, zambezi, who, every time I met him, would always beat the crap out of me, although in a friendly manner. It was his way of expressing joy at the meeting. And even though with zambezi it was easier to ward off violence by threatening to do bad things to his face (he is someone who takes inordinate pride in the beauty of the contents of his face), I was still relatively vulnerable to assault. And as time went by, my brain eventually began to weary of this constant responsibility of defending the rest of my body from attack and pleaded with it to do something about it. Therefore, at some point, I began to work out and have been periodically doing so ever since.

Now my body is stronger and better equipped to launch a credible defense against bullies. But now I have a different problem and I don't know if this is a common one, but whenever I go out looking for trouble, I realize that if and when trouble arrives, my muscles will be so tired from today's workout or aching from the previous day's workout that there is no way they will rise up to the occasion. Thereby, defeating the very purpose of working out. Some days I can barely summon enough strength to lift even a mere grocery bag. This leads me to ask the question, how is it that those well-toned people you see kicking all that ass on-screen manage to do it?

My solution to this is the following. I have modified my schedule to work out on alternate days, lets say monday, wednesday and friday, leaving tuesday and thursday free to engage in street combat. I realize that the reduction of gym time will probably retard my muscular growth, but what use are muscles if they never get a chance to engage in battle?

Tagged

I was tagged here a few years ago, or so it seems after the green card fracas / fiasco / fuckfest. I will therefore present 8 random facts about myself.

0.> I cannot cook Indian food at all. I have no idea how to put those flavors into a curry. I have tried and failed miserably. Every time I cook anything, I get the distinct impression that the ingredients of my dish are unhappy about being used in my creation.

1.> If I am walking on a tiled pavement, I deliberately avoid stepping on the boundary between two consecutive tiles. If an uneven gait in the manner of a three-legged dog with an alcohol problem is required for the achievement of this objective, I have no qualms about doing so, amused onlooking be damned.

2.> There has been one time in my life when I was literally terrified for my life to such a degree that my brain was called upon to choose between two different forms of death, based on the relative terror caused by each. It happened while I was walking with a couple of friends in the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in India on the banks of the Tadoba lake. To our left were a bunch of Bison a hundred feet away in the jungle. To our right was the lake with a number of loitering crocodiles in the water (A sign on the lake proudly stated "Swimming is prohibited, survivors will be prosecuted"). We were standing and staring at the bison and every passing second of nothingness that followed was augmenting the nervous tension in the air and that was a good time for one of the bison to snort loudly and lunge towards us. That was when all hell broke loose and as my mind went blank and my youthful life flashed before my eyes, I actually remember thinking that I was going to die in the next few minutes. And then we were all running mindlessly towards the lake where the crocodiles lay and the few seconds that separated us from the crocodiles allowed my mind to estimate the amount of pain that would be caused by a raging bison as compared to that caused by a crocodile and I chose the latter. And so I continued running towards the lake. And just before I plunged into the water, I allowed myself the luxury of looking back to see how many seconds I had before I turned into mortal remains and I saw that the fucker had not moved from his previous position. Then I saw his neighbor say to him, "Bless you" and he replied, "Why, thank you kind sir", and the courteous exchange of pleasantries between the two bovines made me realize that the entire episode had been a mere sneeze.

3.> I am an extravagant tipper. I calculate the tip by dividing the bill by 4 and adding a dollar. I use this tip-calculation formula even if I receive exceptionally bad service or if the waiter throws a glass of water in my face after spitting into it. That's because I know how it is to be a college student living in the US on a meagre allowance and sometimes, you really need to spit into a glass and throw it at somebody's face.

4.> I love trains and railway tracks. If I see an abandoned railway line, I feel an urge to follow the tracks on foot just to see where they lead. Sometimes I pretend I am an engine and whistle at people. I possess the extraordinary ability to whistle continuously for long periods of time without having to pause for breath. The key is to alternately breath in and out through the whistle.

5.>The most fun thing I ever did in my life was during my engineering days when the entire mechanical department took an "educational" trip down to South India. During the train ride from Pune to Bangalore, me and a friend, we dressed up as beggars (torn banians and lungis), with myself as the musically (dis)inclined one and he as the blind one wearing black sunglasses. We roamed the entire length of the train at night, with me banging on an Indian drum I just happened to have with me and singing in a high octave as is the custom for Indian Railways alms-gatherers, requesting cash donations from our fellow passengers. We even managed to fool one of our professors into coughing up money. Some amount of blunt-fingered coat-tail scratching was required, fortunately, all of which was handled by the blind guy.

6.> I am a night person. There was a period of two months during the graduate winter of 1999 when I did not see the sun at all. I love how the night air smells. Sometimes I stand on my balcony at night, just sniffing the air for long periods of time. People accuse me of being deranged for doing this.

7.> I have not purchased a single new item of underclothing in the past five years. I am bewildered by the ability of the male undergarment manufacturing industry to stay financially solvent in spite of customers like me. I attribute this to most of them now having switched from male undergarments to feminine intimatewear as their main line of business (For example, Hanes, who now has television commercials showing women wearing their product with the tag line "look who we got our Hanes on now", where "who", stands for women.)

Apparently I have to tag 8 other people. I don't know is there anyone left who has not yet been tagged by this meme? Ok then, you're it. Go, have fun typing. Also, it appears to be incumbent upon me to add the following rules to this post.

Here are the rules:
1. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.