Time with the TV

If BITSian life has changed one thing, that is the addiction to Television. Over the entire semester, other than the occasional cricket match or the hyped up EPL matches(I am just a beginner to football viewing, only watching when one of the big 4 plays, and am still confused about what an offside is), the idiot box is left to itself. 

So when I come home during holidays, and there's nothing better to do, channel surfing is the best hobby, and things have changed. 

Where the one channel for all times used to be Cartoon Network, it's now Zee News. It's taken the prize for the most entertaining channel by far. its amazing how even the silliest of news items are reported as earth-shattering catastrophes. Remember, that Shiv Sena crap few months ago(of course you don't, too much has been happenning in Mumbai to keep count, but still..) its a fact that there were more television reporters there than activists. Awesome right.

Then, there's the reporting and re-reporting of statements of cricketers and celebrities. Once there was this one line that Aamir Khan said about Shahrukh, and they had a half hour show on it. Its a defficultdeed, mind you. Having so less content but wasting an hour of the viewers' time. Barack Obama is an expert at this, give him one line to present, and he will embellish it with talk of change and how we must all stay united and blah blah blah... and the crowd will go wild regardless of what he says. Brilliant fellow.

Then the ads. Oh, they just make my day. Just yesterday, I saw this ad of Microsoft. The dad buys his son original mocrosoft ofice(stress on original, we college students know why they stress it right.. hehe) and then he became bright and his cupboard began filling with trophies and certificates. Imagine that... and parents actually fall for it. If that were true, apan PCr waale, who work on office all the time, would be all 10ps man. I'll tell juniors to advetise next time, "Join PCr and see your CGPA go through the roof"

Another of my favourite ones, is the mother having two sons, one brilliant in acads, and one great at sports. But the bitch still wants them both to be all-rounders. So she feeds them Tiger biscuits with IronZor. This ad epitomises parents' attitude in India. They want more more more.

Its ads llike these that are responsible for children commiting suicide after results.... Guess I've gone too far so lets leave that.

But the thing occupying prime time these days(other than the saas bahu serials, which I detest so much and consider to be such a time waste that I am going to ignore them, not wanting to waste my blogging time. I am even considering suing Ekta Kapoor for the time I have wasted waiting for my mother to serve dinner and for the unnatural slowness of the storyline, not to forget stupid cinematography and plots that defy the laws of Physics and Biology... but that's for later). 

Yeah, I was talking of the singing and dance shows. All of a sudden everyone in India is a singer, every fucking one. The barber, cobbler, the coolies, the office clerk... all of them. They all come onto Zee, Sony, Star where they study from Gurus(most of whose credibility I doubt, imagine Himesh Reshammiya teaching the next generation of singers, I'd prefer to be guillotined, at least its more dramatic) and are criticised everyday and are put to vote, so that the janta can choose their next superstar. Here the contestants plead for votes saying things like, "Mere bacche bhookh se mar rahe hain, meri maa ke operation ke liye paise nahin hain, Mijhe AIDS hai.. " and crap like that. And if that wasn't enough they've got children into the act too. God save India!

But the cream of the cake is... Tele... wait for it.. shopping. Yes, Teleshopping Network. The best thing on TV since the news of its invention. It so much fun, watching stupid silly white people showing cooking apparatus, cutting and slicing their way through carrots, acting shocked one silly demonstration after another, and that too dubbed in Hindi. Its hilarious... and the fact that it is not meant to be so, makes it even better.

Hot models who are so thin that I bet their daily diet includes smelling.. yes just smelling other people's plates, standing proudly next to the The Supertrimmer, and giving that brilliantly sterotyped "pehle main aise thi. par ab main aise hoon" speech week after week, each time with a different instrument. Then the voice comes on saying that if you order right now you will get this and that free along with a discount. The same ads come on every week. I wonder if anyone has ever actually orderd anything from these people, if you do know someone, gimme his number, I'd love to talk to him.

Chalo then bye for now. This topic is not yet exhausted but I am.... and probably you are too. So lets just call it a day... or night... or... whatever. Just go! 

I failed my driving test

For most people, especially those in the North and most especially in Punjab, famed for their bribe-hungry and corrupt Punjab Police, this would be akin to failing a blood test. But yes, whatever I say, or do now, however much I defend myself, it's gonna be on my record and it feels totally awesome (.. actually I feel like a huge ass, and this feeling of awesomeness is just a feel-good tactic).

If you have been keeping up with my posts lately, and are wondering whether I did it on purpose just so that I can blog about it.. there, there,  know how you feel. I know you are a fan, and worship me. But you see not everyone is perfect, and same for the guy taking my test. The guy made a mistake, and I forgive him. 

Actually I am proud of our RTO(Road Transport Office) for the fact that the test is so comprehensive- they made me reverse into a bend, change gears a few times, and even stop on a slope and restart from there- and even for a small error like not letting the clutch down fully when stopping the car(it was the first time I was driving this car, after having learnt from our car and not practicing for over 5 months, I guess it can be forgiven) I was failed. Though I failed the test, it felt good that he didn't just ask for a bribe in front of everybody and act like any other corrupt government office.

Waise, I am going to get my licence tomorrow. HEHE. He didn't ask for the bribe, but that was because he had been bribed already, but still I am proud. :)

I realized that my last post was too long, so this one's short. :)

Conversation with a pimp

Hi all, sorry for the delay. The net in my house is down and so I have to come to dad's office and pursue this blogging hobby. One strange thing I have noticed about my reader count. It seems to spike whenever I write a new blog. Now if I was a very popular blogger, this would have been an easily understood trend. One or two people checking, then news spreading out, and count spiking whenever there is something new to offer.

But being a struggling blogger(an analogy for struggling actor, as opposed to star-son) its a little hard to imagine how this goes on. Obviously news doesn't float around that there's a new post but that my fans check regularly. Also once a post is read, I don't expect people to refresh 10-15 times, meaning that each person reading equates to one addition to the count. Now the only explanation I can think of, is that every time someone finds a new post, he/she looks around here and there, and in turn increases the count. But even this sounds silly because what newer things can you find on a blog than a new post. If anyone has anything to say to this do comment.

IMP NOTE: In case after reading the entire post, I hurt or misguide anyone please don't consider me to be an ass on the pretext of this incident (... if you though so before, I have no problem) I wasn't drunk when I did this, and it was just for a some adventure, as I was a little bored that nothign interesting had happenned. The story has been extremely exaggerated, and just to reiterate I am still the nice, sweet, smiling Arjun that you all know and love, just a little more adventurous.

Coming back to the point. Yes.... ROADTRIP. As I said before, and if I didn't let me say now, about a dozen of my friends, wingies at some point of my BITSian life, and who had been to Goa for PS-1 and who obviously hadn't had enough of this place, despite my terrible hostship during their stay(I was never with them, which in a way was good, because after their time here, they know more about Goa than I do... woh kehte hain na, ghar ki murgu daal barabar) felt that they needed to return despite the short span of holidays. And December being the peak tourist season, the incentive was more the stuff on the beaches, than the beaches themselves. Running, sun bathing, playing and moving freely on the beaches, as nature meant them to be. :)

The first day was a roadtrip, and just that. People from PS-1 will realize how silly the route was that we took, but this was because it was meant to be a roadtrip and nothing more. So we went to Panaji from Margao, shifted to our rooms, and came back all the way to Palolem and biked our way back.

At the end, the bikers.. that is me, Karan, Raghav, Manav and Karthik had our pelvic regions screaming for rest, but we went on. The weather was great, the roads even better and with the wind blowing and natural scenic sights left and right what more could you ask for. Most of the time we went through places where there was just the green of trees, brown of hills and blue of the sky all around us, and not having to deal with the usual rain water pelting downfrom above, was just what we needed to put the accelerators on full throttle and just sway to the curvy roads.

We reached Palolem, walked and talked for some time, and came back to Colva(near Margao) for dinner. the dinner was great, and what happenned afterwards even better.

After dinner, when we were walking back to our bikes, I noticed a slip of paper tucked near the handle bar of one bike. What I saw shocked, surprised, roflmaod and gagged me. Shocked because it had never occurred to me that we decent looking 20 somethings looked like that sort of people, surprised because the slip proved that we looked otherwise, roflmao and shocked(for e-illiteates rolling on the floor laughing my ass off) because the whole thing was too good and funny to be true. This is the second type of incident that I spoke of im my previous blog. Now I still have the slip tucked inside mywallet for proof. Let me type it out for you. On one side was"Waiter" and on the other, "Priya Madam, All Girls, and a phone number"

We all looked at each other, we had here an opportunity to make this day truly memorable. Needless to say, though we would state otherwise, at one point of time we were hesitant. But I was determined to make the most out of this opportunity. Also we had plenty of phones that wouldn't be of any use later, so Barun handed me his phone and I volunteered. I dialled the number and waited for the ringing. The call was busy. A few wanted to back out, but I said let's try again and this time it rang. If we had thought this through, probably the idea would have sounded really stupid and I would've cut the phone now. But being so spontaneous, we went through with it.

Don't ask me how but from what I heard, I could tell that this was a young teenage girl, with a dark complexion and black uncaring and staring eyes, wearing a yellow salwar with a green dupatta, with two pony tails with red ribbons on them. This is the mental picture I had of this girl, more from the image that Hindi movies have given me than from a proper knowledge of things.

Me: Hello, actually hum 13 log hain, Punjab se, Goa aaye hain. Humein yeh number mila and...(I just let my voice trail, this wouldn't even out me in a bad light in case it was a wrong number and also the point was conveyed to the right number.)

Girl: Abhi Priya madam hain nahin. Main aapko rates bata deti hoon. (Now by now I had figured out the first point, and the second confirmed our suspicion)

Me: Haan, to batao.

Now she asked me a whole lot of questions, which were mainly to confirm my authenticity as a potential customer and that I wasn't a police officer or any threat. It was easy to dodge them. So basically we were a group of 13 people, students form a college in Punjab, Punjabis by origin(mu indi is really that good you know :) ) come to Goa for two weeks for... ahem fun. We were staying in Mapusa and had come to Colva for dinner, when we received this note from a waiter of XXX hotel.(hehehe... did you think I'd tell you that too. We had two bikes and a car.

Girl: Theek hai(with a satisfied sigh) so rates hain. indian ka do hazaar aur foreign ka teen.

Me: Foreign mein kya kya hai?

Girl: Indonesian, Nepali... and a few more random countries.

Me: AIDS WAIDS ka koi certificate hai kya.

Girl: (Now this is a prize winning line) Agar darte ho, to karte kyon ho. itna hi dar hai, to mummy papa se bolkar shaadi karlo. itna risk to lena hi padega.

I was shocked at what she had said. Obviously she was hardened by life and didn't hesitate from showing it. She didn't try to woo me or try to impress me with cheezy lines. She bluntly stated the facts and the risks. While most advertisements and publicity material today, try to get the customer on their side, hiding even the smallest of risks, she was candid about such a big one.

I stammered and stumbled, I had no answer to this.

By now I knew that I had been found. I just murmured a few things, said that I would call back and put down the phone.

We later joked about the whole episode over ice-cream, and I returned home with an experience to blog about and a new found respect for the oldest profession in the world.

PS: If you want the number, send me an e-mail request along with an essay stating why I should give you the number and why I am the best blogger to have ever roamed the earth :)