The "wild wild" west

It all flashed in my mind while reading Purba’s post about stereotyping. How do people around the world recognize us, Indians with absolutely no difficulty at all? Have you ever given it a thought? Given the fact that we are a billion people, with at least a million different ethnic group and culture, caste, color, creed and etc. etc. People get to know that a person is Indian within no time. Not because of our physical appearance or lexis, I think it is because of the behavioral competencies that we all possess. Be it good or bad, but it is true.

Just brood over these things. These are some of the exclusively patented Indian essentials, which no one else can even envisage in their wildest dreams. Naming your pet dog or cat as “Tiger”. Assume the freedom to spit and shit anywhere and everywhere. Call someone in the wee hours and ask if you were sleeping.

 On the Contrary, my boss in US, who has adopted a dog because he’s got no kids (Yes! It is true), carries a plastic bag with him whenever he takes the dog out for a walk, just to dispose the shit off in case the dog shits in public place. Once he called me when I was on vacation and literally apologized to me for having to ask about official work while I was on vacation. How many of us Indians do this?

I’m not getting into blame game and start off comparing Indian managers (I know they are under tremendous pressure to be bad) or question their customs and habits. But it just makes me think. What we need to learn from west is this: Love and care for things around you. Not their awkward junk food habits from KFC and Big M or hopeless fashion statements of girls or guys’ low waist jeans with undies visible. I hate to say this and we never accept this fact; but Indians (Well, most of us) are the most self centered, selfish creatures on this planet. He who said that egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity must have said it after his visit to India. But I know that I can’t put the whole blame on us alone. On the other hand, see Gods too are fond of jokes. Look at the way Gods have balanced the socio-physical disparity in the world. He gave Indians big brains. But instead of using it for the big purposes, we use it, most of the time only to wonder why Africans have big dicks and no brains. I’m surprised by the rapidity at which we are changing the “Indian”ness in us and inheriting the unwanted elements of western culture.

 Why are we forgetting the great musical heritage of India and inserting a holy piece of western shit called rap in every goddamn Indian song? Why are the junk and unhealthy pizzas gaining more popularity than the good parathas ? Why is the divorce rate on the rise? Why are Indians spending so much on things that they can’t even afford? If an Indian can stop himself from shitting in public places in Singapore, why can’t he do it in India? If you can follow lane discipline in interstate expressways of USA, why are you not doing it here?

 FYI, in reality west was nonexistent just 500 years ago. And here we are; leaving the legacy of our own 8000 year old customs and traditions and imitating them in all possible way and becoming heir to western nonsense. Whatte a tragic irony..! Instead of unwanted things, for a change, keeping the “wild wild west” at bay, why can’t we adapt something good from them?  Let us inherit car pooling from west. Let us adapt their love and care for the neighborhood. Let’s learn to respect the system. Let us practice to follow the rules everywhere. Let us get a feel for cleanliness. Above all, let us start behaving as humans. What say..?

Image courtesy: http://www.arbitspeculations.com and http://sites.google.com/site/rastrindia

Tips for NRIs to get back to Indian milieu

One thing I’m not able to comprehend, and of course, put up with, is the behavior of some middle class Indians after coming back from abroad. I’ve always wondered how just one visit can change the perception of a country in which you’ve lived for ages. Its a nice country. We agree. But even they know the value of freedom that they enjoy in India. Just for show off, they’ll start criticizing our practices in each and every moment. You’ll put so much, so much and so much of hypocritical mediocre melodrama only to make an ass of yourself. You might have visited US and UK, but you just can’t camouflage the “bachat-bencho” in you. He just comes out in one way or the other. Here are some tips exclusively crafted for the Indian foreign returns to get back to Indian milieu.

Bargaining: Before visiting US/UK, you were doing amazingly well with resident phrases like benchos and gaandus. After coming back, all of a sudden, you started using fuck, dick and suck even while talking in mother tongue. Why? Just because an Indian roadside vendor honored you with bencho and gaandu, it sounds so downcast and local to you? Then shut the fuck up, stop bargaining and pay him properly in India also (just the way you pay there). You come from a nation where scams account to several million dollars and you bargain for 10 bucks..?? Shame on your NRI rank. Bargaining with roadside vendors and vegetable sellers is not saving money. It’s a euphemistic way of begging. Teri NRI ki.

Calculations: You tell everyone about how cheaply Asians are treated there. But did you tell them about how cheaply you tried to dodge from giving a 5$ tip? Your mind swiftly calculates the value of 5$ (5x48.5 = 242.5) faster than Shakuntala Devi and you realize that you can buy a pair of Poombukar underwear or evade the tip another 39 times and buy an iPhone for yourself. Your 5$ saving won’t bring any fortune to Indian economy. So please behave like a Human Being, everywhere.

News update: When the citizens of US and UK is only not interested in knowing what is happening around, you have utmost and  divine interest in knowing what is going on there. So you sit in the loo with your laptop/tablet on and read Washington post and The Guardian online. And you want to tell the whole world what you read just now. So you compare India with that and put it on your facebook wall. How useless you could get..? Truly, reading a vernacular newspaper will at least tell you whether there’s going to be water scarcity today in your locality which is one hundred times better than reading Washington post and Guardian in the toilet and ending up without water. 

Change in lifestyle: Right from your childhood, you roamed every street and played every game in barefoot. But just because those noble Englishmen pulled the wool over your eyes and incepted the shit of cleanliness and hygiene in your guttery head, you start wearing floaters inside house also as if your palm is coated with Gold. I’m not against Hygiene, but use your brains you goddam lame ass dumb witted shithead moron; if you can live without wearing floaters inside home for 25 years, so can you for the rest of your life.

And the mother of all exasperation is your comparison: You see traffic jam, a public function, a mob, a stray dog, a marriage: you start off. “In UKKaaaaaaaaaay”, “In USSaaaaaaaaaaaaaay” and my mid fingers get an urge to involuntarily foxtrot in front of your face until you shut the holy fuck up. I lose my control when you compare the sophisticated and disciplined western beggars and their Indian counterparts. I really want to say “You better get the fuck out of my country before I kick your ass so hard that you won’t be able to s(h)it and beg”. I can tolerate Navjot Sidhu’s commentary and speech (at least he speaks FOR India). But I can’t stand your comparison. For heaven's sake, spare India. We really can’t take it.

In so many endeavors like Yoga and Ayurveda, the whole world is realizing India’s true potential and here we are, losing our originality and getting influenced from west because of morons like you. You show your Na Raha Indian (NRI) skills in foreign countries only. When you come back to India, just be a proud Indian. Either way, we know that you are Not Required Indian (NRI) only.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

Are you smarter than a 5^th grader? No... You are absolutely not. No second thoughts about it. Today’s 5^th graders outsmart us in all the possible ways. Their lifestyle going so exuberant, things around them changing so rapidly, their adaptability to the techno world has amazed me. But on the contrary, I feel they’re really missing something that we all enjoyed. Even though it’s my nostalgia that’s doing the talking here, I refuse to accept that they have a better upbringing than we all had. These are some of the things that I feel, that contemporary kids are really missing.

Mother tongue: I’ve seen kids playing on my street most fluently using the “F” and “B” words. Frankly, I learnt the word fuck in 8^th grade and until high school; I was under the impression that fcuk is misspelt. At that time all I had was the magas, machas, sisyas. I enjoyed it so much. And the best part is my parents never forced me to get into rat race. Today’s urban kids don’t even know the meaning of the most common words in their mother tongue, because their parents insist them to use English everywhere. Just look around and you can find such great parents who attended cockpit parenting classes to give their kids best they deserved, whose kids LOL at their own parents’ vocabulary, at their back.

Nick names: Hucha, Baba, Mowgli, Dicchi, Pirie, cable, motor.. These are some of my friend’s nick names. I still call them with that. But today’s Sandeep is Sandy, Madhav is Maddy and Radha is Randy. I know one of the Harry Potter follower whose name on facebook is Albus Severus Vishnu. Any comments?

Games: All the games we played on road: Cricket, Lagori, Eye-Spy, board games like Business, Snake and Ladder, they’re all not extinct. But they’ve been moved to virtual space. You can find them on android market and iStore. And contemporary kids play them on their iPhones and tablets. Today’s kids are physically non existent and active only virtually.

Gizmos: No words can express how grand the feeling was when I got a PC at home. Today’s boys don’t think PC is cool. Reason: PCs lack mobility. I’ve seen school going kids talking about privacy and other big words. How much we struggled to look at desibabas and the desibabes on a dialup connection? (I hated sound that dial-up modem made). Today’s kids have most easy access to the legendary porn of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, and that too at 3G speed.

We had walkman with audio cassettes. They have Cloud. We played super Mario and contra for years. But even Counter Strike is obsolete for them. Technology is advancing so rapidly that Film camera, Landline phones, pagers and typewriters we used for ages are extinct gadgets for gen next kids.

If you closely scrutinize, from games to names, we had a “desi” touch in everything we did. What the contemporary Indians have failed to realize is the essence of this very “desi” flavor. After 30-40 years, the street smart, vigorous kids might just be extinct. And as always, we let things go beyond control and when we realize it, our jaws touch the floor with an expression like Tusshar Kapoor’s in every movie, surprised how it happened. This is a mediocre Indian mentality: Unless our ass is on fire, we never take off.

If you please excuse me, I’ve to get some tips from my nephew to complete angry birds, before he goes offline. Bye for now..!!


Image courtesy: pltprincess.wordpress.com

An open letter to Chetan Bhagat

Dear Chetan,

Thank you so much, for you’ve made me realize the “value for money” premise in just 2 days, which my parents couldn’t in 20 years. I’m feeling fucking dejected for spending money on the most worthless object in India. I’m such a loser and never felt this low in my life. Haven’t I purchased your book Revolution 2020, I never would have realized the value of 140 bucks in life. After I saw your book for 86 bucks on flipkart, Damn, I felt sadder than SRK learning that Ra-One is liked by No-One. Thank you for teaching every fellow reader, the value of your worthless stories. 

Who do you think you are..?? An IIT ian turned IIM ite turned writer? That’s like Obama claiming himself as an African Tribe turned US president. Your quitting of Investment banking to be a full time writer is like Sonia Gandhi quitting politics to become a bollywood item girl, creating only more trouble for Indians. Did nobody tell you that excluding five point someone, all your other masterpieces has got nothing, absolutely nothing other than being smeared with rotten dirty bollywood masala shit? Are you sure nobody did?  I would suggest you better work for Sajid Nadiadwala in disguise and write screenplays for him. 

With a prologue as long as your motivational speeches (I’ll come to that later), your love stories are worse than a kannada movie. And when the world has forgotten Subhash Ghai, including Vivek Oberoi, you get inspired from him and feature yourself in all your works. For whose sake.? When the whole bunch of Indian readers are expecting something from you, you come up with this masterpiece of wholesome shit, a dumb fucking, characterless triangular story and give it the title “Revolution 2020” (Thinking of my 140 bucks and crying…). 

You motivated all the students of Symbiosis, that’s great news. It doesn’t mean you put up an advertisement in your website to invite you as a “motivational” speaker. And you say that all your speeches are customized for the particular audience you address. Does it mean you’ve mugged up a speech for every type of audience..?? I just hope not. You studied core technology in IIT, core management in IIM and become a writer only to rant about the need to change the education system in India on twitter and TOI editorial. How dare you do that?

You had all the chances to make it big. NY times quoted that you are making India read like never before. Five point Someone was a hit. You had received enough accolades and fame. If you really had flair for writing and with some brains (I’m not talking about your eating books and puking it on your IIT and IIM answer scripts), you’d have written something real, really real. You missed it, Chetan.

Writing really isn’t your cup of tea. So for fuck’s sake, go back to Hong-Kong and invest your time and effort in your banking domain. Spare Indian readers. PLEASE.

P.S: Having "Bhagat" in your name doesn't make you patriotic hero of India. So stop assuming that you are making India proud.

Image courtesy: chakpak.com

Diwali special: Indi YEAH shining

It’s time to celebrate and rejoice in India. After all the fiascos that gripped the nation, including the national loss of collective shit on facebook about Steve Jobs’ death, finally the gods of lights have indeed showered some light on us. I’ve got the feeling of ‘its good to be great’. 

The SMART act: For the first time or rather after long time (whichever comes only one time) our cops have acted before it is too late to avert a disaster. Delhi Police have seized 5 kg of RDX before they went in wrong hands. If you know what tremors a whoopingly fucking 5kg of RDX can trigger, you’ll fathom the intensity and importance of it. This time, as a diwali gift, Delhi police just got some luck.

Bangalore Metro: Finally Bangalore is a “Metro” politan city. The reach one of Namma Metro is thrown open to public, in ishtyle. And the news from the Indiranagar is that it is awesome. BMRCL is grinning. After spending 6000 crore, BMRCL was skeptical whether it would fetch a smile on 6000 Ulsoor residents. And whether Yeddi missed the Metro or Metro missed Yeddi, only time will tell.

Yeddi in Jail: For all the developmental works he did for his family, oops I mean Karnataka (for him, his family is state), he was treated with due respect by the court; Bailing out everyone except him. Yeddi’s mindset was like Lance Armstrong thinking if he could win Tour De France, he could win f1 on is cycle. But this Diwali, he ran out of his stock of luck. Well, R.Ashok is all alone outside and hopefully, as a Diwali gift by namma lokayukta police, BSY will have a companion. He was only happy to come back to jail from Hospital. Damn his Astro palmist. After all, if Kalmadi can get Dementia in Jail for 70,000 crore, If Telgi can contact AIDS worth 36000 crore, Docs think Yeddi’s chest pain was worth every penny. 

CBI’s almost close to making Raja and Kanimozhi’s current place, a permanent one. Telangana strike has ended for good. India taking a fantastic revenge on Englishmen, My Company surprised me with a festive bonus and what else you need. It’s Indi YEAH shining..!!!

Oops.. I just realized, since its Diwali, I’m afraid I can’t say “Have a BLAST”. Enjoy the good days :o)