Whatte Bookshelf!

After a lot of searching, it finally dawned that the Dream Bookshelf does not exist in a furniture shop, but has to be designed and made at home. And so it was that a friend and I embarked upon a search for crazy designs and finally mashed all our ideas together to get the above result. The carpenter took less than a week to build it.

Looks cool, whatsay? It can hold about 150 books in total, though I used the bottommost shelf for my DVDs and music. Efforts to fill the shelf with books are in full force too - vigorous biblio-retail activity, if you will. With four hours to kill Gurgaon last week, I spent them at the Landmark store and impulse-bought a few Bill Bryson titles and two more Jon Krakauer books. Added in a travelogue of Pakistan by American journalist Ethan Casey. Combined with the earlier William Dalrymples and Paul Theroux books, my collection of travel books is finally beginning to look good!

Airport lobby dynamics

We are living during times when all people waiting at airport (or hotel) lobbies have only two books to read - The Secret or The White Tiger. Books that a friend calls 'essential reading for the non-serious reader'. I don't mean this in a judgmental way (it goes without saying that when one says judgmental, it always means negatively judgmental), because with all due credit, the female variety at airport lobbies has progressed from the time when for about four and a half years, they were stuck with that other lobby-book 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. In hallways spread across this vast country - women of all sub-40 ages and pedigrees could be spotted gawking into the pages of Tuesdays with Morrie. I use the word 'gawking' confidently because they were always alternating surreptitious glances at the book in their hands and their surroundings - people in particular. One could almost transcribe the happenings within their minds: "So where was I? Third paragraph on the right-side page. But wait, look at that pink-clad elephant of a woman and her non-matching shoes. Such absence of dressing sense. Reminds me of so-and-so, that obnoxious friend of so-and-so. Back to paragraph 3. The man with the pink-clad elephant too has a potbelly. No wonder both..." No wonder their part-time glances at the books looked like gawking. Only that now, the subject of this timeshare gawking is Rhonda Byrnes' The Secret.

This overhaul in reading monotony from Tuesdays with Morrie to The Secret is by all means an achievement in the chronology of insignificant reading.

Men waiting at airport lobbies on the other hand had nothing much to pass time with until America introduced laptops to the world, except gawking at the women who were gawking at the books and at other women gawking at books. The advent of mobile phones then added a third occupation for the male kind. After going through the farcical modalities of security checks at our terrorist-friendly airports, our typical suited booted corporate-type pot bellied business development manager dude now finds an empty seat in the lobby and with a quick sprint of his handbag's zipper, flashes out the Lenovo laptop. Presently, the other hand reaches for the mobile phone, the screen of which without much delay is propelled towards the ear and stuck there. While the laptop boots up, he indulges in the habit of habits, and with one sweep of the eyeball surveys all the women gawking at books before returning his gaze to the laptop screen.

From here commences the intricately tripartite occupation, multi-task of multi-tasks - of talking loudly on the mobile while gawking at the book-gawkers and then passively at the laptop screen. Any expectations that the laptop screen might have an Excel sheet or a business proposal are quickly unfounded when you hear musical beeping sounds of balls bouncing against surfaces. The subject of our regard is playing one of those games called "Stupid games for pea-brained morons waiting in lobbies or traveling in metro trains." For those without laptops, these games also come in mobile versions, the juggling of which along with loud talking on phone is made easier by hands-free kits or Bluetooth headsets.

Moronic retail in mid air

One of the most amusing inventions to have found a place inside budget airlines of our times is the In-Flight Shopping Mall booklet. Every seat pocket contains apart from the safety instructions pamphlet and the in-flight magazine (these days containing articles fiercely running for that widely coveted prize called 'The Worst Travel Writing in the History of Mankind') a 16-page brochure listing down about two dozen extremely pointless items targeted towards abject morons. Passengers, all of whom obviously have an IQ of minus 150, are expected to marvel at the dull objects and be thrust towards indulging in the act of birdbrained retail 30,000 feet above sea level. As I perused through the brochure, I could not help but run through a few of them and examine their utility to mankind.

The Digital Musical Photo Frame is 'the most upto date way to store your photos. It's 7" screen allows perfect viewing while pleasant music plays in the background. Stand out from your friend's with this advance photo frame.' Must we mention that using this photo frame renders severe punctuational retardedness in you? Anyhow, the manufacturers of this musical photo frame have in a very focused manner targeted the shy and strong silent type people amongst us who while showing photographs of their childhoods or vacations to friends have nothing much really to say or narrate and consequently must break the awkward silence by playing music from the photo frame. I can imagine people sitting in the flight gasping in awe at the booklet and exclaiming, "Finally it is here! Music playing from where it always should have been - a fucking photo frame!"

Let us investigate the 'Bite Relief' gadget now, which is a palm-sized plastic object with a pointy rounded probe at one end and a button at the other and looks like one of those tops that when rolled on the floor emits light in various colors. The 'Bite Relief' gadget promises (and I quote verbatim) 'instant relief from mosquito bite. This genius gadget, relieve pain irritation when applied to effected area, simply click once and feel the pain disappear.' This contraption is unquestionably a boon for all masochists who love getting bitten by mosquitoes in order to use this gadget rather than use any one of the various kinds of repellants. If I were the owner of the company that manufactures this innovative gadget, I would serve this niche market of non-believers of 'prevention-is-better-than-ecstatical-scratching' better by also producing an electric mosquito that will first bite the skin so that the pathbreaking 'Bite Relief' can be used.

Among other whatsits that the In-Flight Shopping Mall booklet attempts selling to the nincompoops amongst us are nylon travel belts that cost Rs 960 and rucsacs that cost Rs 575. According to the creators, people who can afford travel belts worth Rs 960 will buy cheaper rucsacs. This must clearly be that emerging segment of customers who like to buy Rs 20,000 ice-cube trays that they will use in Rs 10,000 refridgerators.

New tagline for home pesticide

Beast or Pest, Baygon Spray is the best.

ʇı puıɯ

˙ɐƃoʎ ɥʇıʍ ƃuıƃƃolq xıɯ ɹǝʌǝu

Tumach

X - Thanks for the tip.

Y - Why just the tip? The whole iceberg is yours.

*One Tight Slap*

The last words of a dying ant

So long and no, thanks for all the squish.

The Happening or It Has Happened, Frendo

It's finally happened. I had heard of it happening to others but always found it absurd and attributed it to a flaw in those people, their conduct or their ways of existence. I abhorred the cribbing and complaining of these people and they invoked images of sissy pop song videos in me. I was sarcastic, satirical, unrelentingly caustic and singularly captious about them.

And now I am on the proverbial other side, a subject of the affliction, stressed, compressed, distressed and helpless at that. A soft corner for this state of being has suddenly sprouted within me and from looking down from above, I have plummeted to looking at myself while being down below.

I am finally Friendless! Yes, that I am, as opposed to Friendful - which I was until not very long ago. At 27, I should have seen it coming, because I have been a bystander to seeing others see it coming since long.

So this is what happens as you near the age of 26 and a fraction. Half of your friends have had more than two halves the luck in finding suitable prospective spouses and off they go spinning in marital bliss. A few more finally give in to the persistent telephone calls originating from home and fill those endless forms about their 'hobbies' and 'expectations' to be harangued into the other kind of spun bliss - the arranged marriage - not before long. All promises of singleton behaviour on their part post the event fall flat on the floor. About to be married people have a tendency to tell you, "Don't worry yaar, how can you even dream of me being a tied-down guy? You won't even notice the difference." Rubbish. Immediately ridicule it as empty bravado. Do not set yourself up for emotional disappointment by believing in their lies. The fact is - those whose after-work lives dwell on grocery purchase cannot be good activity puh'dners.

The rest? You finally realise you've grown out of friendships, you fight and call it quits. Yes, it happens at 27 too, as I have Eureka!-ed upon recently. You fight and you say tata to (or are said tata to by) friends at 27 too!

So that leaves you, 27, lonely, derelict and deprived of social stimulation. I still have memories of the time when I didn't need to call beyond two phone numbers to be already munching popcorn in a theater with good company or to already be out on a spin on the highway. But today, I am contemplating watching a movie alone. ALONE! Asking for only one ticket at the Box Office; buying half a popcorn and half a Coke and having strangers on both sides of the seat. I'm not used to all that, ya know. Being chronically commitment-phobic adds to the woes, so dating can often become the Frankenstein that I must avoid, avoid at all costs (excuse for not putting effort).

To those about to second-guess me: this is not mid-twenty crisis. This is all a fault of the silly institution of marriage which plunders people of their beer partners and one which I cannot escape myself for too long (you did not read the last phrase).

Having reached this point, I have a Heart-of-Darkness type insight into the human psyche. It is this state in - or because - of which most people give into the spinning bliss of marriage.

I however, have still given myself more time to enjoy singledom. And now when I spent my last couple of years in singledom, I find that I have to do it alone. Duh. Do be do be duh.

Never mind. This is the moment I can deservingly pat myself. They taught us about saving for a rainy day. This is my rainy day. Doubly the rainy day (telling you that it's Monsoon and raining would be admitting to have cracked a PJ). And my saviours - instead of putting them in the 'hobbies and interests' column of the matrimony form, I will execute them.

An arsenal of things to do will get me by, or I will try hard to get the by past me. I am soon starting a guitar class in my office where I will teach the instrument to the four disciples already signed up. My camera lenses need to be rid of the fungus and then out I must go clicking in, around and outside the city. I will now confess the potentially embarrassing fact that of the approximately 35 books I bought in the last year, I have read only four. This domination of the retail addict over the bookworm must be ended with haste.

Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. Every minute it rains in the hills, they get beautifuller. Each time I look around, the walls moving nearer. Must climb those hills, must leave town on weekends and explore the jungles, watch more birds and capture more nature in my D80.

Any more ideas for a single guy trying to fight loneliness in Bombay?

Sarkozy-m

The President of a country should symbolize what the nation stands for and I'm glad that the French have found the right one.