Heart and body, mind and soul... (part 2)

First off, I saw the Visa ad again, it's actually Mind and body, heart and soul. My bad.

We rejoin our motley crew sprawled across the mattresses in the other room, after having succumbed to paratha power. India Today Office Spotter had fired up some random tennis game and was losing to Federer, when he remembered cricket. This was the first sign. He replaced the tennis game with a cricket one, and started playing as India. Not so Hungry Sir Sleep-a lot called out play pakis, which we all silently acknowledged. At this point Ralph suddenly called out War! Huh!... Yeah... What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! It wasn't a number I had saved, so I handed it to the Upstanding Religious Individual. I wasn't sure why I'd kept Ralph with me that day, he just rang and rang and pissed me off all day. I had to remember to dump him on JD when I got home. Calling Ralph however, turned out to be the religious one's mamu, Mamu.
Mamu wanted to watch the match on a large screen in CP, with the company of alcohol, and all of us being of empty wallets were inclined to decline. When Mamu offered to foot the bill, we all screamed out We love Mamu! and got up. Sutta Break Caller and myself needed to answer vicious bowel movements, but couldn't do so at the residence of the office spotter, as there was no water, so we told the other idiots to get to TGIF and grab a table, while we went to my house. There was still a good hour and fifteen minutes before the match was to start, more than adequate time for them to get there, although my stomach was complaining a little more audibly.
I got home in record time. My beloved Silver Zen, Aurelia, made me proud.
My bowel buddy got a bit shy and clenched when we got to my place, as my mother had reached home by this point. As I attended to my woeful stomach, he managed to get himself and the office spotter an invite for a home cooked dinner after the match, which he was only too happy to oblige to. Having finally set out for CP, I stopped off at my beloved Pushpanjali gas station, the one next to The Grand, and while I filled my tank, the smoker went into the Acha lagta hai store and fetched me one of those canned Nescafe cold coffees I like to drink while driving. With a good forty-five minutes on our hands to get to CP, I of course, took fifty-five, having taken a wrong turn at some point and winding up at Gol Market, where I took another wrong turn and wound up at Karol Bag. At this point the religious one texted to check if we were near, and we replied back with our orders of Guiness and Kingfisher, with Mozerella Sticks. Having finally reached and deposited my beloved Aurelia in the Palika parking at a nice open spot, and memorizing that spot, we got lost two more times, once winding up near India Today, and the second time at India Today. Wait a second... We finally reached TGIF, getting ready to bypass the giant crowd as my reliable buddies would've got us a nice snug table fairly close to the screen, only to find them standing outside with Mamu.
Now Mamu's fairly fond of me, each of the last four times he's come down to Delhi to visit, I've gone along to pick him up from the airport, all the while singing the Mamu song with the religious one from Munnabhai.
Mamu rushed ahead to meet me before I could wring the religious one's neck and explained how they'd decided to check Ruby Tuesday instead, but managed to get lost in the giant expanse that is Inner Circle. What they quite wisely forgot to mention to me was that they could've written down their name at TGIF and gotten seated in a mere 15 minutes, but the religious one insisted that Ruby Tuesday would be empty, on the day of a world cup final.
We spent the next hour approaching every nice bar, every lousy bar, every shady bar, and eventually every coffee house to get to see the match. To calm Mamu down, I periodically checked the score on Ralph, who's capable of providing me with the internet. Finally, we relegated ourselves to watching the last few overs of India's batting at Wimpy's, surrounded by equally pissed off people picking at their shitty food which they had purchased just to get a seat at a place with the match on. My two (undeserving) dinner guests and I then left to catch the last couple of overs at home, and upon entering the Palika parking, promptly forgot where I'd left Aurelia, all alone, in the dark. For a few seconds an image of myself running around wildly pushing her buttons (not again!) the central locking's button yes, that joke got old last time until she called out to me flashed through my mind, but I quickly subdued the image and hopped over the barrier to where I hoped was sure I'd left her.
About forty five minutes, hour, many arguments about the music, and a few more cans of cold coffee later (the HP next to Khan has them too), we were speeding down the home stretch of Nelson Mandela and got in with enough time to spare to catch the last six frantic overs. There was much screaming, hissing, booing, and cursing, followed by abject depression, when Misbah quite arrogantly got on his knees to deliver a last pelvic thrust six and win the match, when our Mallu fielder got under there and won us our first world cup in over a quarter of a century. Much, much, much screaming and jumping and shrieking like little girls war crying in a manly, testosterone-filled way later, we sat back down to catch Dhoni a la paunch take off his shirt and put it on some kid, who I'll assume he knew, after which the camera shifted to a rather confused Shahrukh Khan a la scary abs fiddling with his own camera.
The rest of the evening (with JD suspiciously absent, even though I managed to leave Ralph behind for him, HA!) involved a mother-cooked dinner of khatti-meethi daal, bhindi, and pyaaj pulao, with much tattling-on-Renovatio. We then spent a little while making a CD for Adelina, Aurelia's music system, from office spotter's laptop, into which he quite slyly snuck in some Justin Timberlake, Mika and Akon, along with a few dozen Punjabi tracks. He did however, manage to put in at least one song I wanted, Chunbawamba's only known number, which provides much sing-along fodder. I do suspect he made that CD more for his own listening while on the road with me, but I will candidly admit I've been trying to sing along with Mika.

Heart and body, mind and soul... (part 1)

What a day.
It began with awareness. I found myself in the college parking lot. The sounds of Apocalyptica from the speakers, and the smell of FCUK wafting off my freshly ironed shirt as my Beloved Silver Zen eased into her parking spot. She let out a contented sigh, followed by a bit of a jealous growl from her engine as she caught me peeking at the swanky new Accord we had parked next to. I was waiting for the last few notes of Inquisition Symphony to play out before I killed the ignition, when Ralph, my socially inept cell phone started buzzing with excitement. Now Ralph had a bit of an accident at the Nokia factory, due to which he was unable to speak. He could only beep and vibrate for lack of coherent sentences, or else he could sing entire songs out to me. He could also display words across his outer face. Ralph had a troubled youth, and so devised a 'clamshell' existence, where he hid his true face to all but those he trusted most, and showed his outer face to the world. At this point, his outer face was indicating that Upstanding Religious individual was trying to get in touch with me. I was informed that I need not climb the stairs to class, as there was none, rather I ought to join him and Visiting Student at the panwaari outside the Sainik Farms gate. Maneuvering my most Beloved Silver Zen out the long winding trafficky straight road, I joined them outside, and was intercepted by another classmate of mine, Hungry Sir Sleep-a-lot, and the lot of us decided to drop by at the residence of Arbitrary India Today office spotter, as none of us had the required credit in our phones to check if he was home.
Once we had been let in by a rather cheap sycophantic room mate, we found our dear office spotter curled in a fetal position sleeping softly and soundly on his mattress, under a motionless fan. Finding that rather adorable, we proceeded to shake the crap out of gently and play loud music close to his ears softly nudge him awake. The religious one, easily fascinated by shiny objects, ducked into an adjoining room to identify the source of blue light emanating from the floor of the (almost) pitch black room, and tripped over a passed out napping Sutta Break Caller, though not before discovering the blue light to come from a tiny laptop mouse. After bodily hauling the tired smoker to the room we were in, only to discover me now apparently passed out on the mattress next to the one our office spotter was on. Before any spooning cuddling teamwork-in-sleep could take place, we were all woken up by Ralph giving us a hearty rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Isn't she lovely," the ringtone I had set for the butt ugly 'charming' but annoying department secretary who calls us individually on our phones to give us new instructions regarding class over the days to come. This was cue for the rest of the occupants of the two mattresses to pull out their own phones and turn them all off, while I answered the phone in my sick voice. Realizing I had already been to college and wasn't putting off showing up there, I resumed my regular voice and reassured her that I would be unable to turn in my script as I was still at the observations stage. I also informed her that I had absolutely no clue as to where the rest of the class was, the fact that more than half of it was in the room as we were speaking notwithstanding.
Here began a period of forced tranquility, During which the five of us uncomplicatedly lay on the mattresses in a pattern resembling those funky optical illusions, each thinking of the same thing, each with the same yearning, each with the same question on our minds: What the hell are we gonna eat, and when are we gonna eat it?
The silence was finally interrupted with a great rumble from the stomach of Sir Sleep-a-lot, in answer of which I hopped up and very in-your-face-ed-ly exclaimed "See? I told you so! We need to get some food right now. I'm tired of telling you guys."
Five frantic minutes passed, where we turned the entire room inside out looking for the keys to Beloved Silver, only to find them perched atop the fridge, leaning precariously into a wall. Rescuing the keys from a fate worse than death, office spotter and I then went down the stairs to get food. Pushing her buttons just the way she likes it the button to the central locking was rewarded with an enthusiastic toot-toot! from Beloved Silver. I then fired up the engine and enjoyed a few moments of cooing in that sexy voice of hers, and we were off, being informed on the way by the one hit wonders, The Vapors, about how they seemed to be inexorably "Turning Japanese."
Half an hour yielded 16 assorted parathas from the guy across Passion in Saket, which, clutched under my arm as I sprinted away from Beloved Silver, pushing the button for lock which was answered with a saddened toot toot [:( ], and up the stairs, only to toss the parathas at the religious one, while office spotter and I transferred the aloo sabjee to a suitable bowl. That first bite of gobhi paratha left my stomach grumbling, Oh shut up, I just want a paratha or few, which it was rewarded with. Once the coke arrived, in the arms of a cricket enthusiast delivery boy, we proceeded to top off our food orgy lunch with a little bubbly. The non-alcoholic high-on-pesticide variant. As we all began to succumb to a good-food induced coma, there was only one thing known for certain. The seed had been planted. The India-Pakistan match was going to have to be watched.

Alright, the plan was to write about the whole day, but I'm going to have to continue this later.

Of Late Night Escapades

There are times in my life when I find myself so mind numbingly bored, I would just like to kill myself. Due to principles and an itchy trigger finger as regards the honor and comfort of the women in my life, I find myself getting into rather peachy scrambles at times. Due to some unforseen circumstances, fate had it that my previously injured lower back was to make contact with a metal frigging pipe, hoisted by a spineless assailant, referred to as, the bastard, last night. Needless to say, I'm in excruciating pain, and being held in a bed against my will, without any books, a computer, or access to a usable oven.
To provide for my comfort, though I suspect more to keep me resting, a number of my friends, including said lady took off from work and spent the day with me at my friend's place, where I was forced to come back to. Post bed allotments, I found myself sharing the (very short) double bed with my lady friend, who I am glad to say, has finally, fallen asleep. To celebrate, I hoisted myself out of bed and decided to alleviate my lower back pain by resorting to some of my pseudo-ab inducing physio. It being rather late at night and rather silent, I decided to amuse myself by doing my physio off the backrest of a chair, as opposed to on the floor.
As my bedmate happens to sleep like a log floating through a river of treacle, I first visited the kitchen, and whipped together batter for a chocolate cake, which I had wanted, but nobody could come up with a feasible recipe for. After transferring the batter to a cake tin, I approached the flying saucer oven. Now this damn thing I only understood to be an oven after my friend pointed it out to me. As its ergonomics defied use in seven different ways simultaneously, I resorted to the manual, which was written in Italian. Now those that know me are aware that I have a fascination for languages, which led me to pick up words and phrases in a number of them. That meager knowledge has armed me with the confidence to attempt to decipher the manual.
By resting my most lovely sculpted butt on the buttrest of the chair and using my calves to keep a firm hold on the top of the backrest, I did the crunches advised by dear Doctor Marya for my physio, while trying to make head or tail of the manual. Due to a spasm in my left leg, I relaxed my hold on the backrest, while my body made a rough (upside down) 120 degree angle. This led to me losing all balance on the chair and falling off, rather loudly, waking up my bedmate, whose shouts led to a waking up of the other occupants of the aparment, to a general crescendo of even more pain. I was screamed at, much, and fussed over, even more, until I got rather tired of it and got up and actually got the damn flying saucer oven to work.

I'm lying on my stomach right now, with a ziploc of ice cubes on my lower back, finally being handed a god damn laptop with working internet, with rather interesting smells of chocolate cake wafting into the room. Who knows, I may even sleep soon.

The Recount Continues...

We step back further back into the weekend... Certain unfamiliar terms just might have a helpful tooltip.

Getting tired of the mandatory half hourly sutta break, one complains, that not everyone present is a smoker, at which point an upstanding religious individual comes up with the genius idea to visit Bangla Sahib. Since one doesn't like to interfere with peoples' religious tendencies, and being outvoted by the rest of the group, one decides to visit the Mentor, the man who sowed the media seed in a very confused and depressed individual coming fresh out of the boards, very unsatisfactorily, and whose office happens to be on Barakhamba Road.
As two cars are filled up, one requires sustenance, particularly double mutton single egg kathis with hazelnut coffee from the aptly named 'The Kathis' in GK. As none of the occupants are rather unaware of how to get to CP, one leads the way to India Gate and begins circling it, looking for the KG Marg turning. One full circle later, it is discovered that the roads around India Gate have obviously changed their names since the last time one visited CP. Discovering the kathi on hand to be rather excellent, one decides to concentrate on it, expecting the rest of the occupants to find the turning, without being told to do so.
So begin the three slow circles of India Gate, with one concentrating far more on the kathi on hand than the road, giving it nothing but a token glance, if only to avoid hitting the car in front, and to keep moving in a circle, as opposed to turning onto the wrong street. All this while being informed by JD Fortune about how he'd like certain hot girls to ruin his life and whatnot. Halfway into the third circle, one realizes that there is a long line of cars moving equally slowly, honking and cursing, as are the occupants of the car, and the upstanding religious individual on the other side of the phone call. Going up the central road instead, and turning onto Central Secretariat, the route one assumes also leads to CP, one finishes the remnants of the hazelnut coffee on hand.
Upon reaching CP, one receives a phone call from the upstanding religious individual, as the latter's car seems to have misplaced the former's.
So begin the seven slow rounds of inner circle, pointing out the various landmarks the various occupants of the two cars can see, including, a suspicious number of times, the office of India Today. Much ranting and screaming(on the part of Sweaty, whom some of you may remember, who had to visit a toilet ASAP) and weeping(on the part of sutta break caller, who had consumed the majority of a rather potent green chilly) and cursing, including the most vile swear one is known to fling at upstanding religious individual, Indira Gandhi, which is not to say that one has anything against her, rather admires her immensely. The swear is only akin to that used by Trey Parker and Matt Stone's characters in invoking the name of Barbara Streisand. Either way, once all of the niceties were done with, arbitrary India Today office spotter came up with the commendably brilliant idea that one stop the car at the Palika Parking and wait for upstanding religious individual to catch up.

Needless to say, neither car was able to find a parking spot close to the other. Finally, one car was placed on the ground level, and the other, somewhere in the lower basement. A fact even more needlessly obvious, not one individual managed to remember where either car was parked once the three hours the cars were left there had passed.

A Recount...

Monday morning, one wakes up with a very heavy weight on one's chest, despite lying on the stomach, and a level of discomfort. As the hands seem to be inexplicably pinned down under the chest, one reaches for the pillow with the teeth, and bites down to pull the pillow closer. On a clamping shut of the jaws on the pillow, the pillow gives off a whimper. Finding that at least a bit strange, the teeth then attempt to banish the entity hiding inside the pillow case by shaking the hell out of it like a dog does to a newspaper. Finding that method to lead to more whimpers, and an eventual Fine, I'll make breakfast, just stop biting me, one decides to get up and figure out their immediate surroundings.
By locking the arms in a push up position, and lifting off, the weight is lifted, and it rolls off, grabbing the arm of its significant other, who had occupied the couch, pulling him off as well. The resulting commotion woke up the last bit of sleepy flesh, thrown across a corner, but still occupying very little space given the 5 foot flat stature natural selection had chosen to spare her with.

Here follows a converation between Little One(LO), Myself(R), Pussy whipped guy(PWG), Bloody weight across my chest first thing in the morning(BW), and Birthday girl aka pillow(BG).

LO: Renovatio, what the hell's wrong with you?!?
R: Screw you, none of you even drank anything, can't you sleep still? Look at him, he slept on the couch and kept to himself.
PWG: Dude, when you live with a woman, you'll learn to do that too.
BW: Shut up and go back to sleep.
PWG: Yes darling.
R: No, get up, it's seven, and we all have work and stuff to get to. It's gonna take us two hours to get to frigging Delhi from here. God damn middle of nowhere place you live(to pillow).
BG: Well I'm sorry about that my lord, and what would you like for breakfast.
R: No, shut up, happy birthday, I'll make something. Where's your bloody fridge.
Chorus: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear pillow...
BG: Shutupshutupshutup! he's right, I didn't have any alcohol in the house, but you're all making me feel like I'm having a hangover.
PWG: What the hell have you been drinking, you feel like that after shrooms.
LO: Why is it always about shrooms with you?!?
PWG: Dude, shrooms ro-...
BW: Pussy whipped...
PWG: Sorry darling.
R: You know what, I found some cold bacon here, this is mine, you guys find your own damn breakfast.
BG: Just make some of your omelettes Ren, or pancakes or something. Pleeeeeeease.
R: Oh bloody hell, fine. Someone make some coffee, I refuse to make it sugary and shitty like you retards drink it.

Some time later, I'd managed to finish putting together a modest breakfast for the five of us involving pancakes, the bacon(cooked by this point), fried eggs, coffee and juice, and once having finished eating it, we left, with much complaining about the choice of music in my car.

I will relate more of the last weekend soon.


In unrelated news, I know those online IQ tests are bullshit, but I took one for the hell of it anyway.

Your General IQ Score of 149 shows how able your mind is in general. Anyone with a General IQ Score this high is considered to be a genius. This score is better than 99.95% of all persons taking this test. All known occupations can be comprehended with a General IQ this high. You should be able to handle any academic challenges.

Holy shit.

On owning one's first car...

Saturday:
Welcome to Maruti Service Masters, Okhla. We hope you had a pleasant time finding the damn place, which should have taken you no less than an hour, while remaining in a five hundred meter radius the entire time. Please remove everything not nailed down, and figure out a way to remove your brand new speakers as well, or we will screw them up. Your car is in excellent condition, and we appreciate that you decided to come in for a servicing to start the service cycle, so that we can mess up your car and give you reason to come and get it serviced hereon. Oh, and we forgot, speakers can't be removed. Very well, we'll just have to screw them up. Enjoy the auto-rickshaw ride home considering we shall neglect to inform you of our value-added service of providing you a car for the day we keep your car with us for servicing, and remember, that not only will we call you over the day to tell you your brakes are close to failing, something you didn't notice because of your habitual double clutching and double braking as a result of spending time with drag-racing types, but that we must replace nevertheless with our exorbitantly expensive genuine Maruti parts lest the result be a mild case of, well, death for you. Remember, bring a credit card or lots of cash, and keep in mind that you will be back to see us in a matter of days, since your car shall begin to wobble when you cross speeds that we don't touch on, completely neglecting the fact that a fellow your age will never drive his car at 60 on an empty road. Especially not at fifth gear, as we prescribe for most efficient fuel management. Thank you, and have a great day.

Wednesday:
Welcome to Maruti Service Masters, please sit in our sub-standard lounge and eat stale patties while we screw you some more out of your hard earned money. Today we shall take over forty five minutes to send someone to attend to you, and then take another hour to re-balance and re-align your wheels. Once that is done, we shall take you for a road test, only to find out that your car still wobbles at 80. Very well, you shall return to the lounge for another thirty minutes during which time we shall discover that your wheel's bearing and hub have worn out and need replacing, something we couldn't possibly have figure out last time you were here for a full car service, considering we're only certified Maruti car technicians. This process shall only take us another forty five minutes to complete, during which you can try and scrape together something over thirty five rupees so that your friends who accompanied you for the 'half hour' this was supposed to take can get to Nehru Place and an ATM. Once you have sent them off, we shall take you for another road test, to discover that once again, your car continues to wobble. After sending you back up to the lounge for another obligatory thirty minutes, we shall discover that one of your wheels, which we allegedly removed and balanced and aligned and played musical chairs with no less than three times, has, on the back side of it, well, A BIG BLOODY GASH. This wheel will have to be changed, and we can't put your spare tire there instead, as it is also completely worn out. We will now treat you like a retard for no less than fifteen minutes, all the while dropping hints, but not acknowledging that you are already aware of the fact that you will have to replace at least four of your wheels or else you'll find the ones you replace wearing out far too early. Oh and while we're at it, we'll arbitrarily point at something on the underside of your axle that you, being a lifetime car owner and all-cum-car technician ought to recognize as the suspension arm, which we also must replace. And before we forget, we have to change the entire steering frame of your car. Did we mention we're going to charge you through the ass for all these spare parts? And we'll continue to commend you on the amazingly well maintained five year old second hand car you bought with only 30k clocked on.
If you would like a car to take home while we keep your car overnight, follow Prashant, the incredibly inept car technician overseeing all the work on your car to our loan-car fellow and waste yet another forty minutes waiting for him to tell you that he just gave their last car to someone, and that if you wish, you can come any time this week with the car, all the way to Okhla again, and sit for another five hours waiting for us to discover other problems in your supposedly well maintained and smooth driving car.