In addition, I was asked to shift out of the house I used to live in for the first eight months of my stay in Gurgaon and the need to move out four days before I was to leave the darn place for over three weeks meant that my entire setup was in shambles.

I am a compulsive loner so far as my accommodation situation is concerned and despite having had the time of my life on my trip, I was dreading getting back home and opening the door to see a house not settled into, with dust and cobwebs all over the place.

The scene that I encountered was no different from what I’d imagined. An unclean floor is always a bitch and a dusty one with white tiles that my landlord placed despite all my protests just compounded my misery further.

The weekend was spent in reorganization of my entire setup and this week has been spent in honing my cooking skills once more. The washing machine, microwave oven and fridge have made my life beautiful and have rendered me fully independent for the most part.

The inconvenience of having to open the door to a maid who might have to be micromanaged has instead given way to a twice-in-a-week cleaning that I will have to stick to. The need to cook dinner for myself, instead of the cook in the previous place who used to give me tasty food on average has also increased the burden on my daily life, while also bringing about a stronger semblance of full and complete independence.

Some of my friends remarked that I was scarily domesticated and that I was almost married in terms of the routine that I follow.

I was unable to interpret it for my mind thought of it in two ways – Am I domesticated to a point where marriage or cohabitation with a partner would not bring about too many changes into my life style? Or was it that the life style changes that marriage brings about in people have already set in within me and therefore the very task of having to “settle down” has therefore been rendered null and void?

In any case, the complete independence and therefore complete responsibility that I last enjoyed in Bangalore before I went to B-school has now once again become the story of my life as I go about doing all that I need to do to get by. I am my own cook, cleaner, washer man and man Friday and the time saved by outsourcing these activities is offset by the convenience with which I am able to work on all these activities, thereby making me more disciplined overall. Or so I hope.

I am still to document my review of 2010, wherein the total distance traveled will feature prominently in my log. In addition, I also need to work extensively on my travelogue to document the fruition of my long cherished and long awaited trip to Israel.

I think travel is my writerly muse and my mojo has returned. Please look forward to a barrage of posts in the days ahead. It will not be too boring, on that you have my word.

So, on Saturday evening, I left Bangalore for Mangalore via train and returned on Monday morning. It had been almost two years since I had visited Mangalore, and that was in January 2007 for the wedding of a certain friend named Vinayak Kamath, during which time, some of us had walked like Egyptians as the photographer was busy clicking photos of the newly weds.

In the interim thereafter, there were two trips each to Bombay and Chennai, a few to Bylakuppe (as a day tripper), one to Gokarna, one trip to Seattle and I hadn’t had the time to visit Mangalore due to that. My cousin was getting married, and I thought that it was a convenient time to go put ‘O Hai’ to all my relatives.

Little did I realize what was in store for me……..

Now, I’ve suddenly noticed that my showcase is threadbare, save for the obligatory mini-idols of a few Gods, and of course, my public books.

The funda of public books is particularly interesting, and I am sure quite a few people follow it. I hate lending out books, and there are very few people I wouldn’t mind giving out my books to. I have no qualms in saying this when some people have wanted to borrow books from me, but the major look of pain which I sometimes got, which seemed akin to my having shot them in their leg with a shotgun was something I didn’t really want to put up with.

So I have, since April 2007 when I moved into this house, split my bookshelf into the public and the private. The former rests in the showcase in my hall (which also serves as my drawing room, TV room, dining room, guest bedroom and so on), and contains books that I’m ok with losing. They include all my magazines, some random books, and mostly textbooks, which give any visitor who doesn’t know me the impression that I am nerdier than I look.

So, as I was mentioning, my showcase looks quite sparse, and I wanted to put in some interesting stuff into it (that was also cheap). So, I had been to McDonalds in October, and I noticed that they’d be giving out Star Wars toys with their happy meals, and I wanted a couple. However, they were scheduled to be given three weeks later, and hence I decided to wait.

Life, the universe and everything made me forget about the Star Wars toys, and when I eventually got around to going to McDonalds, they had stocked some arbit new set of toys.

Dear Reader, if you are connected in some way to anyone who works in McDonalds, or have some sort of contact, would it be possible for you to help me scrounge some of those Star Wars toys for my showcase, please? I am willing to pay good money for them.

In return, I promise to treat you. The treat will be proportionate to the number + variety of the Star Wars toys you can help me lay my hands on!

KTHX.

As defined in the wiki page that I hope you haven’t been lazy enough not to click on, a Roast refers to the opportunity to make uninhibited fun and this is precisely what I am about to do. The entire idea to do a roast was brought about by a discussion I had with a certain Palash Mehrotra (who has incidentally been in the news along with the likes of Aravind Adiga, Tarun Tejpal and Nandan Nikelani – alliterative names all – for getting atrocious advance sums for the books they plan to write).

Now that the name dropping is out of the way, Palash and I were in conversation regarding whether the movie was good for the music scene in general or was it just trying to define a Bollywood-ish view of rock, in order to cash in on the latest trends. I presented him with my take on the movie, and I thought it would make for good material to blog about.

Let me start with the positives of the movie. It tries to break the stereotype associated with someone who is part of a rock band. The previous view that one would’ve had of only junkies / social misfits / psychopaths trying to use rock music as a release is now being questioned. As evinced in the movie, it is quite possible for an investment banker, a jeweler’s son and for people in other such respectable professions to get together and play in a band. Ladies, it is now (more) acceptable to take home to your folks someone who plays in a band, without your folks worrying about having to commit you to an institution.

While it is true that there are musicians who get wasted like nobody’s business, that is true even of people in all other professions that one can think of.

The movie does try to make rock music socially acceptable. Thanks to the movie, rock isn’t something that the kids listen to in order to headbang away, and even people in their mid 30s and beyond, as shown in the movie seem to be able to groove to such music. Those who have attended concerts in Bangalore would no doubt certify to this claim anyway, but now the additional facet of mass appeal attached would make such a claim even more believable.

The movie is slightly different from most of the standard issue Bollywood fare, and is able to differentiate itself with a certain amount of class. Full respect to Farhan Akhtar for having learnt to play the guitar and for singing all the songs himself, and Prachi Desai and Nicolette Bird are cutemax. Seriously.

Now that the praise is out of the way, I wish to begin the roast. The band, named ‘Magik’ does not have a bassist. I wouldn’t really have a problem with it, except for that I play the bass guitar for a band myself, and if the movie is to be believed, my instrument is redundant and someone with a keyboard can ‘program the basslines’ and be done with it. Yes, and the peon can double up to be a project manager on the side, should a company face a shortage of employees.

Arjun Rampal’s character is considered to be one of the best guitarists on the planet. So much so that he can, with one hand, play everything that Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai need two hands to play on. His immense talent is lauded through the movie, and is highlighted by his incredible ability to play every song on screen using two hand positions that I have named the ‘Tiger Claw’ and ‘Fingering’. Imagine what a stud he must be if he can ‘play’ every song ever known to man by simply using two positions of his hand.

The band’s onstage performance looked more like the ‘Mock Rock’ performances that seems to be the rage in most VTU colleges, where people ‘play’ musical instruments to a previously recorded soundtrack. Magik would’ve become the undisputed mock rock champions of the world, had they deigned to participate in all these competitions.

Lastly, I am peeved with the lyrics of the songs in the movie. The songs sound like they had been written by the band in class three, and rediscovered by them fourty years later in a dusty attic. Despite that, they seem to have gone ahead and used the same content to ask questions like ‘Why isn’t two plus two equal to five?’ and ‘Sinbad the sailor’ and ‘I lost my lunchbox every day in the past seven days’. With all due respect to Javed Akhtar who has come up with stud lyrics, this isn’t the kind of stuff that most self-respecting rock bands would like to come up with.

Having said that, considering I play for a Hindi rock band, our songs aren’t too stellar by any stretch of imagination either. However a certain amount of self-realization, combined with some intense brain-washing might just aid us in making a better job out of what we intend to come out with.

Lastly, I think I’m just jealous of ‘Magik’, considering our band doesn’t even enjoy one billionth the popularity they seem to have achieved. Maybe that is why I did the roast in the first place. Oh whatever, to hell with it.

Prom, short for promenade is a social gathering that marks the end of a particular academic year. Initially started off as a formal affair in the US and Canada, this has been now been widely acknowledged as the night that most school seniors lose their virginity, if they haven’t lost it already.

A night of uninhibited carnal exploration, prom night is the first step that earmarks one’s babysteps into a hedonistic society, as the entire American Pie series and other such movies would have us believe.

Now, while reading through this post on India Uncut, it suddenly struck me that we have our own version of prom night.

In fact, so much so, that is isn’t so much as a single night, but nine nights consecutively. Yes, I am referring to Navratri. And, whoever in the entire frigging nation that wants to, can go ahead and celebrate it.

Instances of unmitigated debauchery have been reported for ages now, and in an atmosphere where members of the opposite sex can mingle the way they do during Navratri, it is hardly surprising that such a thing occurs. While Valentine’s Day and other so-called western influenced celebrations can be curtailed swiftly by the unforgiving hand of our self-appointed moral police, it would be sacrelige to prevent Navratri festivities from going on, and it is this lack of control over proceedings that makes this festival our answer to Prom night.

In fact, the creators of ‘American Desi’ were clever enough to include a Ras / Dandiya / Garba thing in their climax, since brown people don’t have prom night.

Who needs prom night anyway?

Yes, all of us that live and take pride in the awesomeness and modesty of south Bangalore now don’t have to suffer the indignity of going all the way to the Forum, to Garuda Mall, to Lido Mall, or God forbid, to that horribly distant Innovative Multiplex to watch a movie.

Not just that, as an added bonus, we don’t even have to hit any of the aforementioned parts of town in order to get to a good bookstore.

True, Jayanagar does have a few bookstores that stock textbooks for all courses, but it doesn’t have a Strand, a Premier, a Crossword or a Landmarks. I wouldn’t count Sapna Book Store as a good book store per se by any stretch of imagination, for all that it would serve to, based on the type of books it stocks, is to remind me of how technically challenged I am, despite having been an engineering student for four years, and an employee of the IT industry for four more years (and counting) thereafter.

However, this too has been remedied by the unveiling of a Landmark’s bookstore within walking distance from the Jayanagar 4th block complex, in the same place that the multiplex is located at.

All this has been made possible due to the coming up of a new mall which is called the Swagath Garuda Mall, which is located where the Swagath theatre originally stood . I am not a big fan of malls, or of any other places where all the Amit_123s (and their equally arbit female couterparts) of Bangalore tend to hang out at, and unleash like nobody’s business.

But the presence of an Inox multiplex as well as a Landmarks bookstore in such close proximity to whre I live acts as a suitable anodyne to this particular predicament. My only worry is that all the HTs of South Bangalore, that live in Jayanagar, Banashankari and BTM will make a beeline for this mall and forsake their regular hang outs in favour of this newer mall.

Now if only someone would demolish the Big Bazaar in Banashankari 3rd stage and instead construct a multiplex there, it would result in removing that monstrosity from our area and put something awesome in its place. Should this ever happen, my cup of joy will surely be overflowing more than I ever imagined it could!

However, some evening, I was to lazy to go do something else and I ended up watching the first few minutes of the serial, only to see helicopter shots of the Space Needle, the Seattle Center and 3rd Avenue, after which my sister told me that the serial was based in Seattle. It was kinda cool to see an overhead view of the city and visualize myself having walked along those streets for the various arbit activities I’d undertaken.

Familiar streets, some shops I’ve walked past, references to Broadway and more shots of the over-rated Space Needle were enough to bring about feelings of nostalgia. The movie itself is something people can watch when they’re feeling brain-dead, and still enjoy it all.

I’ve gone through only about a hundred pages of that book, given my currently pathetic reading speeds, but so far its not been a bad read.

On my last evening in the city, I had been to a birthday party thrown by some of my ‘native’ friends (I used to refer to American citizens as natives) and while sitting out in someone’s backyard surrounding a fire, sipping slowly on one beer for four hours to as to maintain levels of sobriety necessary to ensure I was at the airport on time the next morning, I was introduced to a S’more, and I can’t honestly think of something else I’ve eaten that’s so brilliantly sweet and tasty at the same time. I gave it my own name at that time, I called it a Hershmellow, because I guess I didn’t think too much of the Graham cracker that was also part of the S’more.

Never pass upon a S’more if given a chance to consume one. In fact, ask for more.

The times they are a-changin, but the memories remain.

Words from Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” that just endorse my theory of self-deprication being better than someone else pointing fingers and berating one self.

The idea is, if X is a loser, it is better he admits to it himself rather than have anyone else point fingers and say that to him. Dulls the pain.

Self realization just takes one that much closer to enlightenment.

Rohit Barker’s Cruise Control was on air, and he was playing some decent songs such as ‘We didn’t start the fire‘ and some other songs that I liked that he labelled ‘classics’, making me feel much older than my current 24 years of age.

He then switched the playlist to some ‘dhin-chak’ contemporary hip-hop that I just didn’t like, and I consequently switched FM channels, trying to sift through the other stuff to see what I could listen to, until I chanced upon Radio One which was playing ‘Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast‘ from Mohra.

I was 11 when the movie released in 1994, and I have recollections of watching the video of this particular song umpteen times on Philips Top 10 on Zee TV which was hosted by Satish Shah and sometimes had Ratna Pathak Shah co-hosting, in a skit-like format with gags or random jokes between tracks, (complete with an irritating and super-artificial laugh track that made you want to close your ears and bang your head against the wall till you fainted so as not to hear that sound ever again!). This song from Mohra remained on the top 10 countdown for ages, and I know this because used to follow the countdown diligently at that time.

Once this song slipped down the charts and eventually exited, hopefully making way for other songs, another version of this song from the movie, which was shot on Raveena Tandon’s character – ‘Main Cheez Badi Hoon Mast‘ came into the countdown. Though it didn’t last as long as its predecessor, it nevertheless stuck around enough to irritate those that wanted to listen to and watch other songs.

Once tis song was out, yet another one – ‘Tip Tip Barsa Paani‘ also showed its face, also from the same movie. This song went on to become so popular that the music from this track was used by Channel[V] for their program – ‘First Day First Show’ and one had to listen to it substantially.

Rajiv Rai and Viju Shah made for some deadly combination with movies and music respectively, as is evident from Gupt as well, and Skimpy had a belated post on the music of Gupt, which, regardless of having had some hit songs copied from some famous english tracks of that time, did really well in, doing another Mohra on the Philips top 10, with multiple song entries into the charts, one after another.

It was then that realization dawned upon me about how I had so completely misconstrued the notion of movies being ranked in a chart order, whereas it was actually songs that were being graded. However, it made no sense that two songs from the same movie never made it to the top 10. I presume they had some sort of intricate exclusion principle applied in their scheme of ordering the tracks.

This nostalgia filled rambling would be incomplete if I didn’t mention songs from other movies that I had listened to back then – including that song ‘sexy sexy‘ from Khuddar starring Karishma Kapoor which had the censors up in arms, leading to censoring that part of the song and finally having Alisha Chinnai re-record it to replace the offending words by ‘baby baby‘, though the move was as effective as recalling Kaavya Viswanathan’s book on Opal Mehta.

Songs from the movie ‘Rakshak’, ‘Takkar’ and of course ‘Rangeela’ amongst others still make cameo appearances among the songs that come arbitly out of the blue and reside in my head for fleeting moments when I am not actually listening to a particular song or focussed on singing / humming out a particular tune.

TV nowadays doesn’t have much of the kind of programs they did ages ago, though one must say that the good shows are really good whereas the bad ones suck totally, making choices easier for us viewers as and when we can get time off LJ-ing or blogging to actually sit and watch the telly.

I am the law, and in my own little head, when I ride bike from office to work and back, often staring at numbers and trying to see why they are cool or unique, or trying to find relationships between numbers of adjacent vehicle license plates, all these thoughts manifest into mine head and require some venting out, and consequently this post is it.

This is not an exhaustive list of Fatwas, and will be updated from time to time, or so I say. But you can rest assured that my laziness will get the better of me, and I will engage in more fruitful pursuits like doing the ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ walk near the Big Bazaar at the Banashankari Ring Road, or alternately switch off the traffic signal during rush hour and stand by with a video camera to watch the mayhem that ensues, or perhaps I will just not shave and go the Rip Van Winkle way for all its worth it, only time shall tell.

Without further ado, here is a list of offences that are criminal in my book, and deserve the harshest punishment possible.

Of course, harshest punishment is subjective and varies from person to person and the standardization fundaes are not really applicable given the various kind of idiots that walk the earth, and it would indeed be a pleasure for me to smite them down with my vengeance in a customized fasion, or alternately write about it and have that little version of me in my hand rub my hands in imaginary glee at the plight that would have befallen these offenders, had I only had the chance to put things into action.

1) Offence: – excessive usage of the word ‘leverage‘ in every arbit context possible like – “I am going to leverage the excess milk in my bowl to have an additional serving of cornflakes without needing to add more milk” OR “I am going to leverage my strengths to heal the world and make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race” and so on and so forth. You get my drift, don’t you?

Punishment: Life imprisonment in a cell that has a Bose audio system, that plays only Vogon poetry for eternity or until said person dies of a brain implosion. Talk about ‘leveraging’ on a super audio system’s extreme capabilities to cause inflict untold misery on said person who uses that word copiously.

Feasible Alternatives: Try using monosyllabic words like ‘USE’. That might rope in the hot women, or in the worst case prevent you from dying a painful death.

2)Offence: Having an MS Dhoni like haircut. It is reported that MSD lost a bet in the cricket dressing room when he was ogling at some random chick during a Bihar – Mumbai Ranji trophy match, circa 2002. Dhoni was dared to get her number, failing which he had to keep the same kind of hairstyle that she had for a period of five years. Needless to say, ladies and gentlemens, you already know the outcome of that bet. It is hard to fathom that people would actually want to look like some Bihari chick who actually sat through and watched Ranji trophy matches, at least from the back. It is our cricket One-Day captain, not Samson, for the Lowwe of God!

Punishment: Put tar balls on their hair, and no, I am not referring to Linux source files here. Chewing gum or Monkee poo would also do. But substance has to be sticky and should cause them to pluck off their hair. Another good idea would be to play a prank on them by sticking their head in a guillotine and then chopping their hair off – give them a tonsured head which for them would be worse than death that they would inadvertently expect.

Feasible Alternatives: Get a life. OR at least get a proper haircut.

3)Offence:Using SMS lingo while sending out SMS or full blown emails, or God forbid – company power point presentations or official emails. “U r nt as smrt as u thnk u cum across as.” God, that was definitely the worst sentence I have ever composed in my entire life. It is NOT cool, it is NOT hip and it is definitely not something that sane people even in the third millennium would approve of.

Punishment: Death. Of course. No question about that. This is the most interesting part of the punishment. Make them read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged out loud for the rest of their lives. Should they finish reading those books and still live, make them repeat ad infinitum ad nauseum. To further compound their misery, they should be made to copy down letter by letter, with appropriate punctuation the content in these three books as well, for the rest of their lives. Jst4kix!

Feasible Alternatives: Have a little patience. It is easier to type out full sentences rather than spend time eating up vowels and find out arbit numbers to substitute good words in their place.

4)Offense: Cutting lines during breakfast/lunch/snacks at the office. People are supposed to be “professional” (another oft abused word, though nothing beats leverage) while at work and the hallmark of professional behaviour doesn’t really require cutting food lines cheaply, something that people have inadvertently developed a tolerance to and as a consequence indulge in actively, at the drop of a hat.

Punishment: Death by starvation or death by chocolate. Their choice. Either way it will be painful and a lesson learnt well to sustain them in the afterlife.

Feasible Alternative: Behave.

Somehow this Fatwa Time post seems to be much longer than expected, and consequently, I feel it is time for me to bring this one to a halt with four categories of people that need to be annhilated from the face of this earth on a priority basis.

There is more to follow from my stables, and the quest is on for material that does not reek of redundancy and genuinely deserves max punishment. More revisions and additions and edits to follow – watch and wait!