How To Waste Your Saturday?

Let us get this clear first. It is important that you decide you are not going to waste your weekend. Unless this decision is taken, all other things that you do, words that you speak, shows that you watch, are simply meaningless in every sense. Why? Simply because, the absence is felt only when you know something should have been present. We mourn for people who died, not for those who were never born.

Hmm. So this Saturday, you were planning to pay those bills, once for all, finally. The government gives a shit about your work timings. It does not care if you need to be at office from 9 to 9. All it cares about is the money that you cough up for the service that you normally do not receive. Which is why, you end up paying for the broadband internet which is either too slow to respond or too bothered to respond. So what is wrong with the online payment? REALLY?! Why do you think the bills are pending for the last how many ever months they are pending for? You see, the online payment system just almost always has some severe fault lines and only those people who have suffered at the hands of this atrociously inefficient form of bill payment system know what kind of a health hazard it is. To explain with an example, let us see what usually happens on a step by step basis.

1. You are in love with the internet. After all, it allows you to pay your bill online. Which means, you do not have to go in the horrible sun to stand in the horrible queues, look at the man behind the counter who is taking your money and giving you that horrible attitude.
2. You login. You still have that smug smile which says, "Fuck the queue. Long live internet"
3. You type in your card number. You type in your name and passwords. And with a content look on the face which can beat that smug, proud face of the teenager who has just experienced his first kiss, you click on submit.
4. You realize that there is an unexpected error.
5. You also realize that money has disappeared from your account.
6. Now you wonder, if it is not in your account and if you have not received the payment receipt, where the hell is your money !
7. After all the ramblings, the whines, the curses, and the load of anti-everything statements, you pledge that you are going to do something about it soon, probably next Saturday.

Half of your Saturday is now chopped and the bits thrown to the dogs. You see those blood thirsty mongrels pounce on the half that was thrown to them. The half that is not thrown but as ravaged as the eaten half stares at you like your parents who have just caught you making out with your girl. Ewww. Sick. Why could they not just leave?!

You have an urge to do something about the wasted half, you search for any washed clothes that you have so that you can go out, find that there aren't, which is unsurprising as you have not gone near the washing machine for exactly 33 days now, abandon plans to go out, and firmly tell yourself, "This is it. I am washing everything TODAY. NOW". You search for the pile of unwashed clothes, which is not hard to find as there is a small mountain of dirty, stinking, greyish brown clothes in the dark corner of the smelly room. You grab them all, carry them to the washing machine, pour a handful of extremely powerful detergent liquid, fill water, and switch the machine on before you dump the clothes in.

The machine doesn't run.

You switch it off. Check the wires. Check the connection. Gently tap the machine and switch it on again. The machine does not make even a sound. No whizzing. Nothing. You shake it, softly at first, very hard later, and still it stays the same. Silent. It just does not show even a semblance of life. Dead. As simple as that.

Exasperated, tired, depressed, you trudge into your room and slump on the floor like a wet towel. So, the bill cannot be payed because the internet hates you, you cannot go out because the clothes hate you, you cannot wash the clothes because the washing machine hates you, and you muse, "Why oh why, the world has so much hatred, i feel like a stale fish fry".

You decide against calling the repair man. You shudder at the prospect of trying to call him, being unable to reach him, and believing that even he hates you. No. That is for tomorrow. For today, you are just going to rest your tired back, lean it on the couch, take control of the remote, and watch Doctor Who. Ah. At least, he does not hate you. Phew !

So, by the time the shows are over (the obsession is not just with Doctor Who, which leads to the fact that there were many shows that captured your attention which led you to be in a reclining position till 9 in the night), it is 9 ! It is 9 !!!! The sun has set and you did not even realize. You killed your Saturday! You utterly loathsome son of a lovable mother! You strangled it to death! Why don't you cremate it? At least you can respect your dead Saturday in its death! You cruel Jabberwocky... Off with your head!

You are not a party animal. Well, since you are a cruel Jabberwocky, it's obvious that you are not a party animal. Anyway, since you are not a party animal due to various debatable reasons, you finish your dinner in a place run by Vijay Bhayya who has come from Uttar Pradesh - sometimes you wonder if he is a god sent person as he provides you those hot samosas with scalding tea - which is another debatable question, and you leave it at that. You walk back to your house, cursing yourself all along for the time that you wasted just by relaxing, lying on the comfortable couch, watching Doctor Who decimate the Daleks, and then you stumble across the question that you stumble across on every Saturday night....

... well.... I did relax, didn't I?

Wish You A Happy (?) New Year (&#@!)

It is that time of the year again.


There are celebrations marking the death of the year. Some claim that the death had occurred precisely 360 days ago, but in this world of conspiracy theorists, happiness-shredding-optimism-chopping sadists, professional party goers, these sort of claims do not tend to seep in. After all, if you cannot celebrate the death of the year where your resolutions died a natural death - probably 360 days ago - what can you celebrate? Death of your wife ? You got to be kidding. Do you really think she will leave you alive after that ?


This is that time of the year when there is a general optimism around the normally sulking cubicles. The smiles are radiant, the faces are hope-seeking (yes, it was supposed to remind you of heat-seeking missiles), the tone is very much sing-song, the walk almost looks like a foreplay for a dance. Secret Santa invariably makes his presence, whether some of the 'What the heck are we celebrating' people really give him a damn or not. Gifts fall from the skies, from 'Landmark's, from the 'Fancy and Gift Shop's, and from the old cupboard where the old gifts were stored. Well, don’t cringe. It is the spirit of giving that matters. Not the spirit of newness.


No. It is not that I hate this time of the year though. I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it too. In that regard, I am like an atheist who is interested in understanding religions even though not keen on joining any of them. An outsiders perspective of something that is unexplainable and illogical is always more refreshing than being a part of the queue which is leading to the school of irrational studies. December 31st to me is no more exciting than November 30th or February 28th. It is much more exciting than September 20th though, for the simple fact that I get paid on December 31st while September 20th for me is still ten days away from an exciting event. The dawn of yet another new number that is going to stay with you for fifty two more weeks, give and take, is to tell it in a very frank way, is more or less as exciting as saying, "This is the girl you are going to live with for the rest of your life and you can do nothing about it". If you are the 'Yay!' types, you have my sympathy for you know not what you are getting in to. If you are the 'Aarrggh' types, you have my sympathy too for you know you have been sentenced to death as the constitution very specifically bars your existence.


Now, in this short outburst of agony, surprise, and probably as you might have started wondering, ignorance, if I have managed to spike that glass of 'I am happy' drink with some god-knows-what bitter potion, I have done my job. I know that these bunch of thoughts look half cooked, under baked, malnourished, incomplete, but right now - I am just too bothered to even think about the new year that every one is really ecstatic about. It is enough hard work writing, it is a thankless job writing about things that you hate thinking about, and you expect me to go gaga about the new year celebrations? Huh. By the way, is it ok if I hate Lady Gaga as much as I hate new year celebrations too ? Because I really do.


Wish You A Happy (?) New Year (&#@!)

Digging goes bonkers

You pull out some boulders first. Then you find out that under the boulders are iron rods which are rusting. There is also a cement mixer, a sand-loaded lorry, a top-blown bus, a wheel-missing auto and a headless body of a young man.



"What am I digging here? Is this a historical site or a man-machine graveyard?" you ponder.



You also discover some pieces of marble. That white-stone which has made Taj the moon on earth was a surprise you are not prepared to receive. But then, you are not even prepared to find a body under the boulders when all that you are looking for is some copper coins and bronze vessels. Well, if you are lucky you might stumble upon coins made of gold and silver, but yeah, that is that. You don’t really want to discover a tomb full of jewels, nor do you want to uncover a truth which might change the world, that is not what you are digging for. A few not-so-precious possessions is all that you desire, for the more precious things you possess the less precious is your life and the lives of others connected with yours.


There are some pieces of plastic which have remained the same after all these years. God knows how long they have been here, you have dug pretty deep now, dug under the headless body. They still seem fresh, like they were manufactured a couple of months back in a brand new plastic factory which also manufactures plastic for those nauseatingly perfect, rather, trying to be perfect, Barbie dolls. You look at them with disgust, you now know why people in general, green people in particular love to loathe it. It just never goes away. Even if you dig deep. Even if you burn well. Even if you dump them in a sewage which ends up in the pristine blue ocean. It just never ever goes away.



You dig deeper. You don’t intend to find skeletons in a cupboard. You actually don’t expect to find cupboards there. But there it is. A nice, shiny, grown-up human sized cupboard. You don’t want to open it. You have strongly smelling suspicion that opening it will open a can of worms which will only multiply once they come out. There is an urge to still peep into it, but finally your mind wins over your heart. You push it aside, without opening the doors and dig deeper.


You dig deeper till you realize the dug hole is so deep you cannot get yourself out of the hole. Damn it. You aint got a rope. You aint got a ladder.


You look up and scream. You hope there is someone who will listen.


You despair. You realize.

 Before you get in, ponder. Have you brought a long enough ladder?