Children, irritants and torture

I remember myself as a child very vividly. I was quite, obedient, well behaved and trained in social etiquettes and manners. I had a code of conduct, which my mother insisted that I follow religiously in any social occasion, or I faced the risk of a nice thrashing when I came back home. Not that I enjoyed being all goody too shoes all the time or even getting thrashed, but at least I never made a nuisance of myself, and I am proud of it.

Ahh, those were the days…when my mothers glare was enough for me to whimper away in a corner, her stern admonishments were substantial enough for me to mend my ways.

Alas, the new parenting rules have wreaked havoc on the personality of the upcoming generation. The children today make Damien look like Mary’s little lamb. They are noisy, rambunctious, belligerent and just plain annoying. They shout, screech, throw tantrums, spoil their clothes, run around bumping into people, ruin the environment and just make nuisances out of themselves. A misbehaved child is Gods way of suggesting reintroduction of corporal punishment in contemporary parenting.

Public places are the worst backdrop for any misbehaved child to lose his nut. When I see those raucous little beasts clinging to their parent’s dear life, or running around in the metro, howling at the top pf their voices, while the helpless, desperate parents look indifferent, I am filled with the urge to deliver a few tight slaps across the brat’s despicable face, and perhaps threaten him with stuffed chillies in his mouths and eyes, and also do at least one and at the same time, cane the parents for their poor parenting and training.

I am sure that most of you have guessed by now that I dislike children. Well, no, that is not the case. I merely despise the ill mannered ones. You know the kinds I am talking about, those who come to your place and ruin your new upholstery with their filthy little appendages, or break your child’s toys, meddle with your delicate crystal and china, run around in circles, shouting and screaming and touching things you haven’t let your own flesh and blood touch with bean poles. The uncontrollable and unmanageable little nasty devils who keep barging in and out of rooms and talk rudely and caustically… Yes, those are the ones who deserve absolute and pure torture as their comeuppance.

Hanging them upside down, raining them with belts and chappals, pinching them and poking them with needles are just some of the way that they can be dealt with. Other innovative ideas discussed by my friends and I are pulling their hair, making them frog jump for 10 hours on an empty stomach, locking them in the bathroom with chillies in their mouth and switching off the light. Making them sleep outside the house on a cold bitter evening…you get the idea, right?

D-Day Cameth

Ok, so results out. But none of us know about it because the fucking fuck excuse of a university I study in, decided to spring a surprise on poor li’l kids like us. Bloody fools I tell you!

Well, I have been entertaining calls from frantic friends, worked up about the damn result, to the extent that I began answering the phone by snapping “Yes, the result is out, and I don’t sodding know what it is.” Phew! Plebeians I say, what an excitable lot!

This examination result is a very queer thing to deal with. Just today in college, we had the English honours result being put up. Some of my friends looked practically ill. They were looking as if someone had reached into their gut and knotted their intestines. Quite hilarious though.

I call it queer because it has the potential to wipe of the smiles from everybody’s face. It holds the potential to murder your sleep and kill your appetite. Make you jittery and nervous, worse than a first blind date. Sigh, this examination result, bane of student life! What amuses me most is reaction this ‘result’ evokes in people. They become frantic, panicky, rabid and start foaming at their mouth… ok maybe that’s gross (literally) exaggeration, but you get the picture.

Okay fine!

I am nervous too, in fact I am neurotic and equally jittery, because my papers were what you will call ‘catastrophic’ and as cool, calm and composed I might appear ( which, I obviously, am not) I am anticipating the worst but hoping for the best. I get these petrifying thoughts of failing either statistics or maths, or worse, both and sitting next year, with my juniors, giving essential repeats, looking aghast and embarrassed. I like being cool, composed and nonchalant. I hate relinquishing equilibrium and most of all, despise showing that I have lost my nerve. It so, so…well, so… not me!

Sigh! Alright, I am just too paranoid to go on, will go and meditate (symbolic for shedding my atheism and begging the lord almighty, holy be his name, for his divine love and mercy)

Please pray for me and all my friends…

Sleepy head....

Its one a.m. and I am really sleepy. But somehow, the desire to go and lie down eludes me. I feel exhausted, yet resilient, light headed, yet centred, delusional, but focussed. Fuck, this is so surreal. It’s like being stuck in a limbo, it’s not hell, but its not, not hell either.

I just feel like drowning myself in a sea of alcohol. Probably completely let myself go to seed, fat, blood shot eyes, lungs choked with smoke, unkempt, unwashed and unhygienic, just lose control over my life; and then, one day, just snap out of the dream world, remerging with a phoenix like majesty and grace, all clean and washed and pretty…that sort of shit.

I had gone for a family dinner today. As much as I didn’t want to, am glad I did. I sneaked off to meet my best friend, it was ages since I had last met him, was feeling terribly blue and knew he was the only one who could help. We met, and chatted for an hour, may be more (somehow, when you are with the only man you ever loved, time seems like an inconsequential astrophysics concept), we didn’t part with any great laughs or sharing some raucously vulgar jokes, we just talked and talked some more. Its quite uncanny you know, some how the time I spend with him alone, is much satisfying than spending time in a group (I know it’s a very wifely thing to say, but the feeling of having him all to myself is just too good :-p)

The family dinner was preceded by a series of annoyingly, well, annoying events. They (family) spent half an hour at the fruit vendor, buying enough mangoes, pears, plums and what not, to survive the Bengal Famine two times over. While they haggled and bargained and bullied the last drop of sweat and profit margin from the poor fruit seller, I impatiently stood outside and listened to my music, which was not that bad excepting for my astute observation of the degree of misery and tenacity they showed in bargaining. I mean, people, seriously, let the poor bugger earn a bloody living yaar, he wants an income, not an income tax official (I know its non funny, but please, don’t push my buttons right now).

And then there was the incredibly adrenalin suppressing pursuit for air (for the car tyres, not ourselves). We were waiting in at the end of the line for 15 minutes, till my excited caustic tongue could not help but make a semi- malevolent remark. It was 8:20 pm, we had left home at 7:30.

“You guys cannot reach anywhere before 9 pm, can you? No matter what time of the day you leave, its just not possible” I snapped, almost unhinging my jaw to swallow them whole and that too, without a scruple.

My father, took the remark very personally (thank heavens, mission accomplished) and drove off, not letting retorts of a young whipper snapper such as mine, become fact. I was more than overwhelmed at the power of my tongue, I felt so… vindicated!

The rest of the night was quite uneventful, excepting for the short, impromptu bonding session I had with my cousin and my rendezvous with Nitesh.
Probably I am not trying to do anything constructive here, except pass your time and mine. Its 1:30 am, and I am as excited as a 90 year old in his marital bed. College starts on Monday, finally, I will again have something unconstructive to do like letching after good looking people and bitching about the ugly ones. I have been so utterly aimless in my vacations that I actually did the effort of restyling my wardrobe and getting rid of all the obscene and unsightly looking clothes. Thankfully, I have only the wearable aesthetic garments left, all the unflattering ones have been rubbished.

My wardrobe is the prime focus of my existence. More than my wardrobe my shirts take up most of my attention. The amount of attention I have for any given issue is inversely proportional to the number of shirts I have to obsess and fuss over. I have a fairly impressive compendium of shirts, almost 60 at my last count. Nitesh thinks some of my clothes are, how do you say, quite jazzy and I agree wholeheartedly. Some of them, in fact, many of them are quite ‘Bling and boisterous’.

But then that is me, boisterous, bright and brilliant in my own little ways, and abashedly, shamelessly so. Sucking every drop out of life, just as my family sucks every penny out of the poor fruit seller. Though life seems to have lost a lot of its juice all of a sudden, yet, I will keep trying, as Gloria Gaynor famously crooned in her anthem of liberation, ' I will survive..."

Finally, my patient readers, dreamland beckons….good nigh

SUGGESTED COMMUTER POLICY REFORMS FOR DELHI METRO RAIL CORPORATION

SUGGESTED COMMUTER POLICY REFORMS FOR DELHI METRO RAIL CORPORATION

1.There should be an intensive screening process for selecting only those commuters who are
a) Aesthetically appealing and do not pollute the others commuters line of sight with their obscene looks
b) Well dressed and are wearing only branded and fashionably suited clothes, all garments bought at
weekly markets, road sides or without price tags, must be surrendered at the security check

2.All women with undone eyebrows, unwaxed arms and legs, moustaches, beards and hideous
sideburns must be disallowed from using the metro.

3.All annoying children must either, be anaesthetized or bound, gagged and put in trunks.

4.People with Body odour must be fumigated/ given a bath/ sprayed with a deodorant, depending upon the
severity of the stench.

5.All those wearing hair oil (especially the smelly variety) must be shampooed from head to toe

6.All those who sit on the metro floor, taking up twice the space they should, must be beaten with Hawai
Chappals till they are black and blue.

7.All those who rush into the metro at speeds of greater than .5 kilometre an hour, must be amputated, and
put on the metro tracks to meet a horrible, painful, bloody end.