Deathwish

"OK, OK, I admit! I do not take life seriously enough. You happy now?" As I slammed the door behind me and walked towards my motorcycle, I murmured - "I wish I wouldn't have to come back to this place again".

I had thought life would be a breeze now that I had finished college and landed a decent programmer job. The money from one job was not enough to fulfill my materialistic splurges, so I was working 3 jobs; on 10 to 5,  6 to 10(pm) and  11 - 2(am!)  time slots. The third job was for a friend, so working and partying went hand in hand. The only glitch in my otherwise smooth rolling life? I was living with mom. I was away from home since high school - for 7 years - until I found a job in my hometown and of course, the oasis of home made food and all chores being taken care of lured me in to stay.

And then, on a perfectly normal Sunday,  a call from my manager interrupted the verbal warfare between me and my mom. You see, Sundays were special since I would be home and it would make a perfect occasion for mom to make me realize how goal-less I have been throughout my life and that I needed to man up to take up big responsibilities. Anyway, my manager wanted me to get to the office to resolve a bug in the software we were supposed to deliver the next day. "See, everyone is just taking advantage of you!, why should you be working on a  Sunday. You just don't realize the seriousness of it."  I could see that  my mom's verbal floodgates were opening - so I grabbed the keys to my motorcycle, shouted those words, slammed the door and left.

The motorcycle's throttle saw all the rage in me. I was zipping past intersections and traffic (which was very light on that Sunday). Helmets were not enforced those days, so I did not bother to wear one. The wind string on my face calmed me down a little bit. At the end of an overpass, I came up behind an ambassador car. I wanted to overtake it, but I could see that the driver was deciding whether to take an illegal turn or not. After a moment or two, he decided (or it seemed to me) to call it off. So, I gave a strong twist to the throttle, bend down with my chest close to the fuel tank to apply aerodynamics, and proceeded to go around the car.

OK, now freeze frame. Pan camera and lift up to a slight aerial shot. Start slow motion.

In a split second, the driver decided to take the turn anyway. It was too late for me to slam on the brakes. My motorcycle hit the car head on as I was screaming at the driver of the car. The impact was huge. I was thrown out of my motorcycle into the air and I flew above the car. The motorcycle having the advantage of being heavy, fell and slid under the car. As I wandered my gaze, I quickly realized I was headed for landing amidst numerous sign posts (all made of iron!). I closed my eyes and prepared myself for the inevitable. I think I even squeezed out a couple of swear words in between.

Stop slow motion. Zoom out of dust rising from the road. Zoom in to show car driver's shell shocked face. Stop narrative.

No, your whole life does not flash in front of you as they show in the movies. It all happened so freaking fast. Like a miracle, I landed right in the area that lay in middle of all the signposts. I landed on my back and therefore the lack of a helmet did not affect me much. I was bleeding profusely, but in the end, it turned out I did not have any broken bones or any serious injuries.

I guess that was the teaser trailer to my desire to have things change drastically.

So the next time you wish for things to change drastically from status quo, think twice. All it takes is a wrong turn for it to come true. That too, from a total stranger.

Photo Courtesy - http://www.electrical-res.com/motorcycle-accident-attorneys/

Hail to the curves!

If you enjoy driving, would you have more fun driving a road with curves or a straight road? I thought so too.Yeah, as said before - "Straight roads are for fast cars, but curvy roads are for fast drivers".

But this post is not about roads. Or cars. Or cars on curvy roads. This is my official outrage post on the obsession that the media and the fashion industry have with sticky thin women. Where are the curves? The biggest moneymaker tag line for ads these days is "Lose Weight". The corporations are arming us up with shoes, equipment, motivation and even yogurt to fight the fat. Now I am not losing sight of the obesity epidemic we have in this country. I realize that if I keep up my current eating and drinking habits, I will be part of it. But what is wrong with healthy, curvaceous figures? Why would someone lose their chiseled curves (and working hard at it, mind you) to achieve a straight line with no details attached to it? Aren't humans supposed to be the most evolved of all species? If so, I am sure the curves have evolved as evidence of nature's belief that these will indeed guarantee the survival of the human race. At this pace, the ramps of fashion shows may as well be built by cardboard in a couple of years.

When I turn on the news, the news anchor has her cheekbones  and collarbones protruding out of the TV, screaming for attention. So instead of thinking "what's up with the world?", I am thinking "why won't somebody feed this woman?". When I was on the verge of entering my teen years, I would sneak out to watch hollywood movies to watch the lovemaking scenes which were not present in Indian movies. Now that I can go to one these movies or rent it on my own free will (or to be more clear, whenever my wife lets me), I cannot tell the difference between the guy and the girl (To the couple of naughty readers, no, I wasn't watching "Brokeback Mountain").

The next time you walk around, pinch yourself whenever you see or hear "low fat" or "no fat" - I bet you cannot play that game long enough to get you through your day. There is a mad rush to get to size "zero", but sadly, when people reach that size, they look more like a "one". So all you models and movie stars wondering why your partner left you for a more "real" woman, there lies the real answer. (Ok, Ok I do realize that not many models or movie stars read my blog - but I am just sayin').

Yes, I like my car with a stick shift, my rice with gravy and my women, curvy. (I know it sounds too cheesy, but it rhymed so well I could not let go of it). I am married, so I am not on the lookout for more women - but you get the point. Really, I am not (Honey, you should be reading this). And I apologize to folks who saw a ray of hope.

So here's to hoping that curvy models will make a comeback and we will see more healthy people in our day to day life. The day is not far off - it is the same day we will be receiving Universal Health Care.( Ha Ha)

P.S - Take a look at this  - "Bald model opens Fashion Show". Now that they have got rid of the fat, they are coming after your hair. Run!

Lost, but not found.

Have you seen my new posts?

Neither have I. And I have been looking; trust me - Oh, I have been looking.

Nearly a couple of months back, I was on my merry way trying to add posts to my blog. Then it struck me - Aren't there enough blogs in the blogosphere already? What value am I going to add with my little scripts? There must be somebody else who sees the world the way I do and blogs about it. So I started looking. I began by subscribing to other blogs, then started reading what google suggested I would be interested in.(How do they know me so well? Its like we have been blood brothers.) There were some that matched my thinking.As I read through them in detail, I found myself disagreeing on a bunch of stuff and accumulating more thoughts in my brain (afterthoughts, to be precise). I could leave comments, but then the space wouldnt be enough and who knows if the author looks at them?

Right about 5 minutes ago, I gave up. Just because millions of people voted the way I did does not mean that I should not vote. I may not be entitled to to my own facts, but I am definitelty entitled to my own opinions. And with the marvel of today's technology, I can broadcast them from the comforts of my home (actually my small apartment is not that comfortable, but you get the point.) I apologize to all of you for flushing down all those posts down my brain instead of sharing it with a wider audience. I will try to suction out and salvage some of the important ones.

Meanwhile in the real world, the holiday season was anything but that. A whirlwind tour of Disneyland and Universal studios with 2 kids and 3 other families (9 kids in all) during the christmas weekend can never pass as a holiday trip, no matter what it is disguised as. No, I have not yet watched Avatar and 3 Idiots like the rest of world. I have seen so many idiots (if you must know - yes, including the ones in the mirror), so I figured, what's 3 more? As another year rolled by, I am glad I am this old - I don't worry that much about the down time of facebook or the number of friends on my internet social networking circles. I have real friends and they don't need to check their phones or their tweets to know where I am @. I guess I am lucky not to be in gen z(or gen me for that matter).

In closing, let me point out that I am not closing (shop, that is).

Image Courtesy : http://turntablephilanthropy.com

The mind wanders...

A "pretend intellectual" piece on how a most recent ad reflects the hangovers of the caste system in India never made it here.
There was this piece where I wanted to write about how life plays itself out for a man who has more than his equal share of hair on his body.
Then there was a scribble about how I was mistaken for a gay man one evening.
Afterthoughts on a successful stint of 14 days of Bikram yoga never made it out of my head onto here.

Point being - As with other things in life, my plans on writing more posts remain half done. If I put my mind to it, I could get it done, but then that would be compulsive blogging - why would I want push out literary posts into a platform where bloggers graze abound and theres a lot of other stuff for people to read?

And yet, the mind wanders, tirelessly churning out thoughts, what ifs and why can'ts. It seems as though that a less than perfect world serves as a perfect amusement park for questioning minds.

For what it's worth, at least you got a preview of what is to come in this space in the near future.

Don't be a disaster journalist...

at least when chronicling life, that is.

Today, I was showing my daughter (who is almost a year now - time has the pace of a concord) the pleasure of being thrown up in the air. She was pleasantly surprised as was evident from her smile revealing her two small teeth. There is something in a baby's smile that attracts you like none other - may be its the innocence that they seamlessly possess or maybe its the fact that they are so un-adult (I know, its not a word) like.

The sun was shining bright through the window and its rays ignited a sparkle in her eyes. There it was - a moment I would  like to cherish and store - my daughter and I having a great time together.

But then , the inevitable afterthought had to ruin it for me. In life, we tend to be like disaster journalists when we chronicle our life. Flip through the photos in your mental photo album - have memories of unfortunate events registered  more than the pleasant ones? We tend to remember how friends, kith and kin were mean to us, how we got the short end of the stick in our lives and how hard it is to get through a normal day. When we grow old, will we talk about our kid's rebellion or will we talk about  all the fun time we had with them?

I don't know the answer, but I sure would like to capture the beauty of the moments that were pure joy and bliss, rather than focusing on the spectacle and ruin of moments that I would rather forget. The  truth is that bad moments hit us hard and the more we try to forget them, the more etched they are in our brains. Maybe the key is trying hard to forget the pleasures we own now, thereby digging it deeper into our memories.

BTW, did I tell you about the motorcycle accident I had? Oh wait...

The inevitable break up

Yes, it had to happen. She is too much in demand to be tied to one person. Plus, I could not hold on to her for ever. So goodbye, dear hiatus; looking forward to having more flings with you in the near future.

(Refer to my previous post for more hints on what I am talking about.)

To all of you whom I forgot during my getaway - my most sincere apologies. It is not that I forgot about you, but the fun I had did indeed fill up my brain space (and I am not known for having a big brain - ask my wife!).

So thanks to all of you who kept checking in and inquiring about more posts through visits or emails - I am humbled and indebted to you because you spend some of your valuable time checking up on what I am up to. I am finally back to the daily grind and its antidotes(especially this one).

Good to see you, real life! I can't say I missed you, but I sure can say that I look forward to your companionship.