Let's Get Physical.

I signed up to learn how to dance the Salsa with Jason and Sylvia; the hot dancing couple who also have perfect bodies….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJIGHRvIJQg&feature=related

Speaking of which, I have some bad news for all you folks out there. First, the bad news: You CANNOT have a gorgeous body like the one belonging to Sylvia. Sylvia - like that famous actress Kareena Kapoor with the size-zero figure; wears a stretch outfit that, if not occupied by Sylvia, would contract to the size of a deflated party balloon.

In the movies Kareena Kapoor dances around various countries, singing something and posing in colourful figure-hugging costumes. You can’t hear what she’s singing because, when you’re watching Kareena in a particular scene, your brain concentrates and directs the energies of all your nervous systems to your eyes. Anyway the premise is that if you exercise (or in my case, dance) a lot, you will look like Sylvia, or Jason, or one of the hunks dancing with Kareena in the movie.

To this end I have seen a lot of people staggering along NH17, trying to get in shape. I used to think they had the right idea, because, as I discovered when attempting to do the Salsa, I am definitely out of shape.
However walking or jogging, is not the way to go. It is an undisputed scientific fact that jogging kills your brain cells. The Indian army has known this for years; it forces recruits to jog for miles every day until they lose so many brain cells that they’re ready to travel to the distant Siachen Glacier and stand in front of enemy machine-guns.

Neither is body-building. Body-building is for guys with low self-esteem and small packages, said small packages contributing to their low self-esteem. It makes them smear coconut oil all over their bodies, wear a bathing suit no larger than a biggish band-aid, and by exhibiting huge muscles bulging from other visible body parts, try to convince you of their manliness. These guys do not jog. I think they stay indoors lifting large heavy objects because they’re afraid that if they did go out their muscles would lunge and kill innocent pedestrians. However I fear that in addition to the small package issue, body-building also congeals the contents of one’s brain into pasta. But they (the body-builders) do look as if they’re in great shape, which is what’s important.

If L.K Advani had spent his time body-building instead of his rath yatras and voice mails to mobile phones he could have been PM today. Who would have opposed him if he had just stood there, coconut oil shining off his muscles, smiling benevolently at his audience?

Okay! So today we start on a physical-fitness routine to make us slim and attractive like Sylvia and Jason.

I’m kidding of course. Genetics has decided that it is infinitely better for the human race that only a select few can look like Jason and Sylvia, or Kareena and the hunks, and YOU are not one of them.

These chosen few are destined to have kick-ass bodies even if they eat double-cheese pizzas all day, drink buckets of beer and the only exercise they do is pressing the remote button for the television. Others can exercise till they sweat blood and eat nothing but organic sawdust, but they will still have the bodies of Beluga whales.
This is probably a good thing. Think of how dull life would be if we did not have variety in body formats. I mean take crows for instance. They all have perfect dull-grey crow bodies, and I’m sure they find each other boring.

I mean, think about it. How would you feel if you lived in a world where every member of the opposite sex had the same perfect body? Wouldn’t you crave something different? If you were a crow you would maybe, check out a passing pigeon. If you were a male crow you might even make a pass at a passing female vulture despite the fact that she is ten times your size and can tear you from limb to limb.

I rest my case, having proved my point that genetics, in its infinite wisdom, required us to be different. This means that if you are basically a stocky individual, you can workout all you want, and you will still be basically a stocky individual.

But that’s no reason that you should be unfit.
Now, Step One in my physical fitness programme says that you should have a healthy heart. A healthy heart is the key to fitness.
If your heart is healthy, you can still continue to drive around on Indian roads, long after your brain has become senile and your other major organs are wandering around aimlessly with no idea what bodily function they are supposed to perform.
To know if your heart is healthy, first take your pulse.
The way to do this is to drink Bloody Mary’s till you can hear the pounding in your head. That's your pulse, and it should correspond to a number of beats per minute. You can check this by crawling over to the nearest pharmacy and asking for a sphygmomanometer.

You: Hic! Gimme a sphincteramoliter.
Storeperson: A what? We don’t sell those. We sell vegetables.
You: Then whaddyacallthish? Huh? Huh?
Storeperson: We call that a tomato. Are you drunk or something?
You: No way! Can’ you shee I’m trying to check my pulshe here?
Storeperson: With a tomato?? Get out of here, before I call the cops.

Ok, then take a large tomato and top up the level of that last Bloody Mary, then remember to look at the second hand of your wrist watch. Count the number of times your head pounds per minute. If it’s a 2 digit number your heart is healthy.

Start your exercise routine after this by turning on the television and switching to the Yoga programme. Now watch those people in skimpy outfits do their asanas. I said WATCH: on no account should you attempt to do those exercises. After this take your pulse again and get ready to go to work or back to bed.

Now for the REAL reason you should exercise. You need to prepare your body for the aches and pains that happen when you get older. Surprise!! You’re going to get old. No doubt about it. Unless you die first.

Right now you’re young and the only pain you feel is after a heavy night of clubbing at Mambo’s or Cavala’s or Ivy, where you imbibed huge quantities of feni, inhaled other partygoers’ toxic body odours and woke up next morning in Pune. But as you grow older, you come across arthritis, income tax audits, and dental appointments and you need to prepare your body for this pain, which is why you need to exercise now.

Take the Churchill Bros football team, Boxer Vijender Singh or Badminton ace Saina Nehwal. You see them exercising and sweating and hating every second of it and you think: What’s the point? Years from now you will be your struggling to adjust to your aches and pains. They, on the other hand, will be able to endure with less discomfort… unless of course they have committed suicide.

So without further adieu start on that fitness programme today … or buy Baba Ramdev’s Yoga Book and try to read it while standing on your head.

Blistering Barnacles! It's those Blithering Budgets again!

Picking up this months issue of Business Goa, I perused Prakash Kamat’s “bird’s eye view” of Goa’s additional budget for 2009-10, and harkened back to the one presented at the centre in July; immediately after which the markets tanked. I noticed with pride and pleasure a marked similarity in both budgets – neither made any fiscal sense.

So while we play “Here- we- go- round- the- Budget- Bush” again, I imagine many of you readers, especially the ones with smaller brains, are still eagerly awaiting my annual guide to how you should handle your fiscal deficits for the rest of the year - not counting alimony payouts.

Listening to Pronob (A phor apple, B phor Bhejetoble )Mukherjee made me realize what a crashing bore he is; it also made me realize that if I went around looking for an interpreter to translate the Budget and decipher all those acronyms such as MAT, FBT,GST,FRBM,UID and FRBM I would end up losing money in the process, by having to shell out service tax AND education cess to a government which neither provides any service, and collectively, has all the education of the primary section of a school of village idiots.

Those of you who fortunately read my column last year where I advised you to cheat and give less money to the government, thereby helping reduce government spending… no wait! That was the year before. Last year was spent trying to find my stockbroker and I profoundly apologise for disappointing my loyal fans who look forward to my annual tax-advice article.

Anyway I’m proud to report that many of you went all out to support the Prime Minister, and re-elected him, and I’m sure he will thank every one of you personally... once global oil prices go down and the stock market goes up, or he finds out who has been messing with his turbans.

In the meantime we have an entirely new budget. This year Pronob Babu needs all the money he can get, because when going over the figures with his finance secretaries Santa Singh and Banta Singh, they noticed that the government was going to be short by something like 6.8 % of GDP (which means that the government wants to spend more and more money by giving all the babus increased salaries once again, and buy additional exploding devices to defend you with)

I’m not kidding, in a show of great unity and camaraderie Diggu K. (taking time off from his busy schedule of inaugurating new bathrooms in Government buildings, along with longtime opponent Manu P. (who also deferred inaugurating a couple of questionable beauty parlours) unanimously passed a proposal for MLA’s in the Goa Legislative Assembly, with cheers all around as follows :

Daily Allowance: hike from 750 to 1000 when on duty (Huh?? When ARE these guys on duty?)

Assembly sitting fees: 300 to 700 (Shouldn’t it be sleeping fees?)

Housing Advance hike: 12 lakh to 30 lakh (Can’t they just house them in the assembly? They sleep there anyway!)

Constituency Allowance: 26000 to 55000 (Said constituents being their family and relatives)

Four Personal Assistants: 18000 per month to 32000 per month (not including file-forwarding “fees”)

Meanwhile Dr. Tamba’s 19 contract staff; hired to deal with the H1N1 swine flu have been told that there are no funds to pay their salaries any more , much less to treat patients…..at the time of publishing this I hear Dr.Tamba has been conveniently replaced with his compounder, and transferred to some unknown location for being a whistle blower.

But this year we have a new tax plan. The government is ecstatic about raising taxes once again. It believes that if God did not want them to raise taxes, He would not have created the Income Tax Department. So since time immemorial governments have seen the importance of taking money away from the public.

See, if you were allowed to keep the money you would not spend it on the maintenance of your local MLA’s children’s education at Harvard, or to pay off his debts at the Casinos. You’d just use it to buy another cow or something. But the government will spend it, thereby creating jobs.

In this case the government will spend crores of rupees in a major security program, creating new factories to manufacture high security registration plates for all vehicles in the country.Examples from Karnataka given below which require either 1) A multi-lingual ability or 2) A portable bar code reader.

This will not only ensure that, in the event of you being carjacked, your car can only be sold for spare parts; it will also create a new auctioneering forum for collectors of antique registration plates.

The government will also spend lakhs of rupees on a major publicity campaign, for television and newspaper ads that go like this:

TRANSPORT MINISTER RAM “DAHI” LICKER ......and the Department of Transportation are pleased to announce that for the next 75 kilometers there will be road blocks all over the place and hundreds of relatives of a contractor who manufactures high security registration plates in the factory premises owned by……. TRANSPORT MINISTER RAM “DAHI” LICKER standing around with lathis and red flags and directing traffic so casually that they may occasionally direct your car into an oncoming tanker loaded with LPG, so please bear with us ,we regret the inconvenience, but as…….. TRANSPORT MINISTER RAM “DAHI” LICKER pointed out when he flew in by government helicopter to make a speech taking credit for the 3-year long ongoing 102.37 crore landslide repair project at Porvorim NH 17, we cannot allow our national highways to deteriorate especially ones that will provide access to land which will be grabbed by…….. TRANSPORT MINISTER RAM “DAHI” LICKER

The best way to look at this whole issue is to understand what the government does: It takes away money from a few people, keeps a major chunk of it, and then gives away the rest to other people.

So basically you will find that there are two types if people in India: A) People who pay more to the government than they can ever hope to get from it, i.e. the taxpayers. B) People who get more from the government than they give to it: Politicians, elected governments officials, rich farmers, government contractors, arms brokers, government employees, statue sculptors.

So, if you are an ordinary taxpayer, the only way this annual tax-advice column of mine need really concern you is for you to be aware that: In some way or the other the government is going to waste more and more of your money; the question is, where is it going?