Taking Matters to Heart

Chewing the Fat

I turned 55. I don’t think that’s old, a lot of really famous people accomplished great things after 55. For example, Mr.Morarji Desai discovered the secrets of urine therapy and went on to become Prime Minister of India. And it was ex-Prime Minister Deve Gowda who discovered that sleeping in the opposition benches in Parliament produced enormous amounts of drool.

When I turned 50 (5 years ago if memory serves me) my Doctor Uday, who is a pretty decent guy ordinarily, made me promise to get a complete physical every year. He called me into his clinic, put on a scary rubber glove and made sudden lunges at my personal regions, all the while asking me to cough. I have decided therefore to space out my physicals only to those times when I actually experience physical pain, or my hair falls out, whichever is the latter.

Also Uday has a lady nurse who works with him – a charming young thing – but one who belongs to the Transylvanian Vampirical Society (Motto: Do not let patients leave the clinic with any of their blood) She distracts you with charming conversation, subtly sticks a needle, with a large tube attached, into your arm, and the next thing you hear before you pass out, is a gurgling sound from said tube that leads to a huge overhead tank with the word BLOOD stencilled on the side.

I thought I had come through my physical in great shape. However I hadn’t counted on Uday’s adherence to the medical code which states:

“I swear by my Mercedes Benz, that I will find something medically wrong with any person who steps into my clinic, even the postman.”

The precedent to this of course is the Hippocratic oath, named after the famous Greek Philosopher Aristotle who became known as the Father of Modern Medicine after he invented the following phrases :

- you may experience some pain
- we have to run some tests first
- the tests were not very clear
- we are going to have to carry out some more tests
- does your company reimburse your medicals or do you have medical insurance?

As one can see, without those phrases, modern medicine would be impossible.

And so Uday, realizing he would probably have his Medical Association Gymkhana Pass revoked if he declared me medically fit, called me to say that my blood cholesterol was on the higher side. I told him to check with his nurse, since all my blood had been suctioned out by her anyway, but Uday insisted I needed a change in my food habits.

Uday also sent me an informative animation CD for the layperson, explaining what bad blood is. Cholesterol looks like a little Spongebob-shaped guy with bushbaby eyes, running around in a small tunnel, which represents your blood vessel going to your heart, which is a little smiley face in the background. Sometimes Spongebob gets stuck between boulders which appear in the tunnel, and this causes him to become blue in the face, and your blood vessel starts to look like Mumbai Central Station at rush hour. When a whole lot of cholesterols get stuck, your heart gets a sad face, and a doctor with a face mask (to hide his identity) comes in with a Bob-the-Builder mechanical shovel.

To prevent this from happening you have to be conscious about foods which you can or cannot eat, they are :

BAD FOOD GROUPS: Meat, milk, cheese, butter, desserts, fried foods, pizza, foods cooked by grandma, snacks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, munchies, beer, birthday, wedding and Christmas cakes.

GOOD FOOD GROUPS: Low fat grass, non-aerated water, rice husk and wood shavings.

Following this diet has been really, really hard for me. The worst part has been giving up steak. I love steak. I’m the kind of person who can gnaw through a whole chunk of tenderloin the size of Adnan Sami. But methinx today, thanks to all that sacrifice, I have developed blood again and that my cholesterol is a lot lower. Uday asked me to come back and have it checked, but his nurse will never take me alive.

On turning 55 ?? – oh! I decided I would keep it quiet, don’t want that pretty thing next door, hugging me and saying,” Happy Birthday UNCLEJI !”

WARNING:Contains the "B" word

A Pair of ...what?


Guys! Drop whatever you’re doing right now (unless it’s a baby) and check out the new Enamor ad doing the television rounds, involving man’s favourite subject “brassieres & bosoms”.
Every few seconds you hear the slogan, “I feel so beautiful inside” conjuring up all kinds of imagery of the male hormonal kind. Although it does feel nice to use the words “brassiere and bosoms” in the same sentence.

I hear tell that the Chinese are designing a special “Combat Bra” for it’s People’s Liberation Army and that our Ministry of Defense is “looking into it”
I recommend we write to our local MP or MLA to take up this issue in Parliament and undertake a large wasteful military research program to match China’s military programs.
We must always, “support our troops” and “keep abreast of our enemy”, and I am sure that our political arm will take a personal interest in its’ development, so much so that we can surge ahead of China by developing the Tactical Field Stealth Uni-Thong,(one size fits all)

Which reminds me of an “investigative” report in one woman’s magazine headed, “ARE YOU WEARING THE WRONG BRA SIZE??”
One would think that women were dropping like flies in the street from wearing wrong sized brassieres. I am therefore, genuinely interested in this problem, despite the fact that I do not even wear a brassiere except on very special occasions involving more than four bottles of beer.
I would also like to know why we say “a pair of shorts” or “a pair of trousers” but NOT “a pair of brassieres”?
My friend Milind, who has a keen interest in these issues, read the complete magazine report and informed me that it focuses on the tragic habit of “women who wear brassieres that are five sizes too small for their bosoms which leaves said bosoms with no choice but to spill out into the camera lens, a la Janet Jackson.”

This I then suspect must be the reason why one of our concerned legislators brought up the subject of the “menace” of topless sunbathers on Goan beaches.

Nadia,( remember her?, my beautiful ABCD co-conspirer!) who is from Los Angeles also tells me that they have a bosom problem there, but the California Tourist Bureau claims that most of the L.A. ones are artificial.

First of all, let me state on behalf of all the citizens of Goa and Goan Beaches that although there ARE topless women sunbathers in Goa, by no stretch of the imagination is this a “menace” and they are not “everywhere.”
If it were “infested” with topless women I would have definitely noticed, and it would have also featured on Voyager TV and the local weather report: “Reporter: The forecast for today is to look out for warmer temperatures and a proliferation of naked bosoms everywhere, so the public are advised to stay indoors with paper bags over their heads.”

Most of our topless sunbathers are European tourists. Europeans are of course immoral; they think nothing of toplessness or drinking warm beer.
For instance you can hardly walk around Europe without seeing topless marble Greek and Roman statues the size of elephants stating the classic concept: “I cannot find a marble brassiere or fig leaf in my size?”
So European women and men sunbathe topless, often with nothing covering their Euros either.

On my research trips to Goan beaches I’ve noticed that Europeans do not seem to notice that they are almost naked. But the Indians definitely notice THEM.
Indian women are subtle about it; they have the ability to notice a man’s Euro region with a Stealth Glance, so you can never actually tell what they are looking at.

Indian men, on the other hand are about as subtle as wild boar rooting in horse manure looking for truffles.
When an Indian male catches sight of a bosom, his head locks on to it, his eyeballs click and zoom in and you can almost hear an alarm-like siren in his head go, “BOSOM! BOSOM! BOSOM!”
As long as the said bosom is within range (about 10 kilometers) he has to look! He will not be able to think of anything else, will remain psychologically incapable of ignoring it, and physically his head will remain pointed towards it; this is the cause of the freighter River Princess running aground on Candolim beach.

I am therefore constrained to issue this following warning to tourists: IF YOU COME TO GOA AND GO TO THE BEACH THE RED BLOB MELTING ON THE SAND MAY BE A TOPLESS EUROPEAN SUNBATHER.

Three Flights and a Wedding

Safe Landings (either way)

I haven’t attended a wedding for over a year:

Missed the Pam Anderson wedding – but got the consummation video off the internet.

Missed the Nicole Kidman / Keith Urban wedding

Missed the Katie Holmes / Tom Cruise wedding

Got thrown out of the Liz Hurley / Arun Nayar wedding

Slept through the Aishwarya / Abhishek Bacchan wedding

Did not make it to the Rahul / Shweta wedding.

But darned if I was going to miss the Anupama / Rohit wedding at Cochin.

The other alumni of the 24 GNC brat-pack, Amit, Ronni, Nandini, Rahul and his wife also planned to be there. How could this pervert resist not being there to check out Rahul’s new bride!

Getting to Cochin was an entirely different kettle of fish.

For those of you planning to travel by air, here are some interesting statistics about the Indian airline industry.

This year, Indian carriers will fly a record of 700 million passengers, 23 million frequent-flyer kilometres, each person will sit in an aircraft on the tarmac for an average of 3 hours, and every one of them will pay a different fare.

Airline fares are calculated by the airlines random fare generator, Polly the Fare Parrot, after determining passenger loads, the distance from City A to City B and whether City B has a landing strip, whether the pilot drinks 12-year old scotch or plain beer and the cups of re-useable yoghurt leftover from previous flights.

Nobody eats the yoghurt, my guess is there are airline yoghurt containers still circulating dating back to pre world-war Dakota flights.

Yes, Indian carriers are cutting back on food service as well, but their record of safety is among the highest in the world; the only country with a better flight safety record is Tibet, which has only the one plane and has yet to figure out how to start it.

In accordance with airline procedures,you should always arrive 2 hours before the scheduled departure time so that you can then stand around, visit the loo at least thrice, and be among the first ones to know that your flight has been delayed due to mechanical problems (usually pilot-hangover).

You pass your baggage through the X-ray machine so the guys sitting at the monitor can laugh at the holes in your underwear.

Laptops are allowed on board as cabin baggage, but have to be turned on, to prove it is not a terrorist bomb. Hah! Any eighth grader can tell you that a terrorist can program a bomb-loaded laptop to turn on.

You are also forbidden, on pain of imprisonment, to carry a nail clipper, it can be used as a skyjack weapon.

Of course those stainless steel forks and knives which accompany your tasteless food tray on board Jet Airways do not count – any self respecting terrorist would not be seen dead trying to use THOSE as hijack weapons if he can smuggle a nail clipper on board.

The flight was scheduled to go from Goa to Bangalore and then on to Cochin, but in Bangalore the situation deteriorated further, we sat on the plane for 2 hours before takeoff – they didn’t let us off the plane for fear that we would run away. So we sat listening to our stomachs rumble.
One woman broke down and drank her baby’s formula. Another asked if they had any leftover yoghurt.

We took off, the flight now had to be re-routed via Mangalore to drop off some spares for another grounded flight,(the “official” reason for our delay) our pilot “Captain Kangaroo”, suffering from alcohol withdrawal pangs, banged us down on the runway and I swear the plane bounced… twice. We landed, took off again and landed an hour later in Cochin, where we dropped to our knees and gratefully licked the terminal floor.

Then an hours drive to discover dinner was almost over, but I got to meet the groom Rohit, the gang, and Anu’s Mom and Dad before they went to bed.

Need I mention that both mother and daughter are breathtakingly beautiful, and looked absolutely ethereal & stunning in their gold bordered white saris at the wedding ceremony.

I also met Shreya, the lovely Nandini’s gorgeous school mate.

NO, I’m not going to tell you how handsome and macho I thought Anu’s dad and the groom looked, it was a wedding not Brokeback Mountain.

Play-gere-ism

The copycat phenomenon

Congratulations Chief Judicial Magistrate Dinesh Gupta of the Jaipur High court, Poonam Chand Bhandari and Pawan Surana for the launch of Bade Bhai, the Indian version of Big Brother.

The object of THIS new serial is basically the same: Get Shilpa Shetty into a confined space (read prison) with no contact with the outside world and humiliate her, but in her OWN country, why should the Brits have fun at the expense of Indian women when we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves!

I’m sure Bade Bhai will upstage the Bacchan post-wedding bacchanalia, and detract from the pain of the Great Indian World Cup 2007 Disaster.

Wonder whether the Honourable Dineshji, Poonam and Pawan know about the erotica of the Konark Sun Temple and Vatsayana’s Kama Sutra.( Maybe they can start a book-burning club and launch an agitation to bring down the temple “Ayodhya-style”.)

But, case in point - we have no originality.

I went back in time ( about 12.30 pm) to see if I could find more examples of Indian plagiarism and I hit a mother lode…….

Plagiarists 8 – The VHP and the Shiv Sena - feeble attempts to ape the Afghan Taliban with their versions of Indian History & Culture and its defense. (Oops! now THEY know about Konark and the Kama Sutra. Darn!)

Plagiarism 7 – Indian Contemporary Pop Music and dance ( American Rap, Hip Hop and Disco right down to the “Yo Mon”, “Wassup Dude” and the hi-five hand slap)

Plagiarism 6 – Bollywood, Tollywood & Kollywood ( D-uh): wonder if Dineshji watches all those item girls in Hindi movies.

Plagiarist 5 – Bappi Lahiri – The original plagiarist.

Plagiarism 4 – Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who wants to be a millionaire)

Plagiarist 3 – Kaavya Viswanathan, Harvard Sophomore who has now switched names on her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild & Got a Life to How Shilpa Shetty Got Kissed, Was Summoned & Became World Famous soon to be a major Bollywood motion picture starring Dev Anand as Richard Gere.

Plagiarism 2 - Dhoom 1 and 2 (The Fast and The Furious meet The Matrix), and Krrish (Superman, Batman and other Comic Book Heroes – shaken not stirred)

And at the top of the list:

Plagiarist 1 - Rahul G. proclaiming his family the best AND so strong as to have divided Pakistan – Hah! Jokes on you Rahul. My family is better, and guess who divided India, and Korea and Germany and….

Future Plagiarism : Indian Idol with Host Govinda

Copycats: Call Centre employees with their fake American accents and names

Decaying Leftovers from the Raj:

Bad English accents ,worse grammar: ”But Saar, vee are like this wonly!”

Men in Three Piece Business Suits with Necktie nooses for formal occasions (Indian womanhood I hail & salute you for retaining the graceful Sari AND for improving on its originality)

Red Tape, Bureaucracy & Corruption (Dating right back to the Rig(ged) Vedas)

Khushwant Singh

Gotta run ,there’s the James Laine book –burning I just HAVE to attend. How dare a British Author pre-empt one of ours by claiming to know more about our own dead heroes indiscretions.