Saving My Skin!

Disclaimer: This account is in no way meant to offend any race.


Baggaged back to India from England in accordance with my dad's decision to retreat to the homeland, me, my thick british accent, and culturally ignorant self found ourselves in Calcutta. I call myself ignorant coz I was just 7 and pretty much believed everyone was british, white, and had british accents, and I similarly was british, brown coz i played in the mud, and had a british accent. One day early in our return to India, Miku wanted to start our new lives on a good note by paying a visit to the Kali Temple close to Dum Dum Airport. The Temple was next to a neverending field, and while my parents went in to the temple to pray I was set loose in the field much like a little dog. However, when a master sets his dog loose he hopes that the doggie doesnt poop all over the place and thats exactly what this doggie did. The story of the biggest shit I ever took is what follows.

Wandering around the field I came upon this gentleman dressed in white, with a little white cloth on his head bending over in a posture very similar to a somersault attempt. I watched him for a while. He bent over on his knees, hands forward, and touched his head to the ground, and then at the last minute as if he was scared to somersault, just held the position, and then gave up and came back up. He then, took a deep breadth, looked left, and right, as of to see if anyone was watching his failed somersault attempt and repeated the motion failing yet again. I couldnt take it anymore. I remembered my first somersault and how tough it was, and being the sweet child that I was I decided to help him out. I first went right up next to him, kinda got ready the same way he did and then rolled over on my head and looked back at him to see if he had gained any confidence. But, he dint even look at me, maybe he was shy of being a grown up who couldnt do a simple stunt. I gathered that the shy man needed more help, so I took matters into my own hand. I stood up, went right behind him and when he bent over, I pushed him to help him make him the happiest somersaulter ever. Everything that ensued is a blur due to the intense screaming. But in short, the dude, kinda fell on his side when I pushed him, way short of a somersault, started screaming at the top of his lungs till their were several (hundreds) of people dressed in the same attire surrounding me and screaming in some foreign language. They definitely dint sound british.

Miku and Dada, amidst the screams must have realized I had taken a dump in the middle of the field. They came to my rescue. The Muslium dude, who was in the middle of his Namaaz shouted at them as he explained how I had defiled their religion. At this point I was rather shocked why I wasnt being handed out candy for being so helpful with my stunt tutoring. All explanations my parent handed out to the white clad army seemed to be ineffective in subsiding the shrieking. Then miku, the lady of the day, came up with the answer. She said "Maaf kar deejiye, beta, mand hai!," translation: "Forgive us, for the child is retarded." The crowd quietened down a bit but dint seem to buy the argument, so my mom urged them to talk to me to figure it out for themselves. So one guy said something to me that i dint understand so I started wailing in my british accent " Mommy what are they saying? i was taking me walk and I helped the lad take a sault and he screamed at me face!" The moment I finished talking the crowd started nodding, as if something I said convinced them that I was really retarded. Some of them even patted me on the head?!

So that's how my own mommy saved me calling me retarted, if she hadnt what would have become of me is beyond my imagination! I was telling this story to a friend a coupla days ago, and she said I should be grateful coz my mom saved my skin. It hit me that yes, my mom literally SAVED MY SKIN that day!!! (Get it??????)

ConfuseUs Says

“I believe in love, coz its all we got, love knows no boundaries, costs nothing to touch, I believe, I believe in love” --- Elton John.

I guess since the day the first musical note escaped a man’s lips, songwriters have poured out their hearts writing about love; its hopes, its power, its joy, its betrayals, its agony, its heartbreak (I use the word heart but it’s truly the brain that knows, loves and wants). No amount of singing about love will ever beat it to death coz everyone has so much love to give. Our ability to love probably makes us the most sentient species on earth. Our ability to love and understand others, and more so our ability to love and understand ourselves. Understanding others may seem a daunting task, but understanding your own love for others is a far more intricate attempt. Surviving in this huge ocean of different kinds of love, loving a partner stands/floats unique. Why? Almost every other relationship in life we are born into. We don’t choose our parents, we don’t choose our children. Love is there. However, we don’t just love our parents because we are born to them, but becoz of the love they shower on us and show us, coz nothing, nothing invites love like being loved by someone. But falling in love with someone is different. All the love we have to give is flooded upon this one person our heart sets itself upon. This power of choice makes this love the most tangible, the most intangible, the most painful, the most confusing, and the most fun.

I don’t know if love is our capability or was it defined by the elders to make sure the species survives the test of time by enforcing the institution of marriage whose survival recently seems to be highly challenged! But it sure does feel real! Given the pressure these days to find a mate, do people rush into being with someone they wouldn’t be with given exposure to someone more to their liking/"loving"?

"She says she is in love with him, cant find a better man, cant find a better man! " ---Eddie Vader (Pearl Jam)

When you fall for someone and sit around telling your closest friend how much you are in "love", and want that person to be with you, that is probably an intense liking merged with the whim of having her and having someone. Spending time together, loving each other is what gives rise to love (rather cyclic). What determines the success of this choice is; was the whim of having her far more than the whim of having someone. However,love seems to be powerful enough to accomoadate the whim of just having someone enough to let loving lead to love which justifies arranged marriages leading to as strong bonds as love marriages if not stronger.

But I believe the fact remains that the person you love is in your head (lets call her SHIVANGI) not just in front of you. Through culture, tastes, feelings, etc all of us have some idea of who we wanna love. People we meet, people we know, people we love, people we loved mould this notion in our head of our lover. When we meet someone whom we choose either by heart or arrangement or a combination of the two (lets call her Shivani), Shivani replaces/becomes SHIVANGI. The beautiful relation that follows involves love, caring at every level, sharing of every possession (thought and things), but always includes an attempt, a desire to mould this person into the lover in our head coz that is who we love. As Shivani shapes into SHIVANGI, she also changes the lover in our head ( who SHIVANGI is) , and that’s when the two people we love come close to blending into one. Along the way, disappointment stems from Shivani’s failure to match SHIVANGI, my heart breaks when Shivani doesn’t do something that SHIVANGI would do for me, and when Shivani does something that SHIVANGI would never do to me! This beautiful struggle though bumpy does not come close to the pain of a breakup. When Shivani leaves me, I have the pain of dealing with Shivani not being there, but I feel like SHIVANGI is gone too and that I can never love again coz the person in my head is gone. When thinking about the lost love, I think about Shivani a lot, but I think about SHIVANGI even more coz I was and will always be in love with her, I only remember how close to SHIVANGI Shivani was and hate the fact that she is gone, while when she was around I hated the fact that she wasn’t more like SHIVANGI. The pain is less if Shivani was very different from SHIVANGI, but if Shivani was a shadow of SHIVANGI the pain is unbearable. Yes, we miss the person we lose, but even more the idea of the person we lose. But in case we can never get Shivani back, there is hope coz SHIVANGI never dies, she always lives in my head and one day someone walks into our life and makes SHIVANGI flood my body and mind again and the journey continues. While pondering and confusing myself what confuses me more is that if Shivani never left me, but I met someone who is closer to SHIVANGI than Shivani is. What do I do? Should I love SHIVANGI or Shivani? Am in love with SHIVANGI or Shivani? I wish I knew, I wish I knew, but I’m glad I love, coz

Without love, I Wouldn’t believe, I wouldn’t believe in you, and I couldn’t believe in me, without love, love, love …. I believe in love ---Elton John.

PS. Shivani is a figment of my imagination

Shivangi is also a figment of my imagination but I love her

Sucky, Sucky, Five Dollars!

“Yes, I’ll take it,” I blurted out as I concluded my extreme negotiations with my travel agent.
 Summer, 2001, I had just acquired two tickets to visit India from Alabama. One for me, the other for the biggest luggage I have ever carried on a flight, my cousin, Nintendo. The tickets to see my parents and friends back home cost us $850 each. What a buy! Well, I can’t leave out the fact that the route was Birmingham-Atlanta-Los Angeles-Tokyo-Bangkok-Kolkata, Bangkok-Kolkata being on Air India. It didn’t matter, I was 20 and I was going home, nothing could touch me. The majority of the flight was smooth as ever, fights for window seats, Nendo, 13, tasting Vodka for the first time, changing planes, falling asleep at airports, boarding the wrong plane, the usual. But then came Bang-cock (This joke never gets old!)

“Jesus Christ, hell no!” I screamed out as I walked out of the airport.
We had a 16 hour lay over in Bangkok, the shady sex capital of the world. We were pre-booked into a Comfort Inn, and leaving Nendo outside the Terminal to watch our luggage I had gone back to call the Comfort Inn to send us a cab. The first thing I heard when I walked through the automatic gates was Nendo chanting “Sucky, sucky, 5 dollars!” The first thing I saw was two hookers with pouting lips circling him. That’s when the Jesus Christ exclamation happened. And then one of the ladies says “For the 5 dollar, we sucky sucky both of you.” I cant explain to you how hard it was to pull a 13 year old away from the prospects of his first sucky sucky, on one hand I kinda wanted him to have his fun, but on the other I pictured my aunt chopping me into pieces for allowing her angel the pleasures of fellacio!

“Give her money?” I asked given the receptionist’s statement.
We had squeezed into some variation of an auto rickshaw and made it to the Comfort Inn. A suite, with loaded booze awaited us. Not having much to do, Nendo went for late night swim, while I hit the gym. Later I cooled off in the pool too. After this midnight workout we made our way to the reception to get our room keys back. While handing me the keys the receptionist smiles and says “ Do you want a pom-pom for tonite?” I had no idea what she meant, I really wasn’t in the mood for cheerleading! “What are pom-poms?” I asked her. “The pom-pom” she continued, “She come to room, give you the massage, then you give it to her!” This rather ambiguous statement prompted my verification of what I was supposed to give this pom-pom. “No, no, not the money, you have the nice body, u work out, she come and give you the massage and you give it to her, on the house!” Oh my Lord! We were in the land of sin. I don’t know if I’d call it heaven or hell, but my cousin was jumping up and down chanting “Take the pom-pom. Take the pom-pom!” Well, I didn’t take it, I didn’t give her anything! The next day sulky face (Nendo musing about how he almost saw a hooker in action) and I went to board our Air India flight. The flight was 13 hours late, and our names weren’t on the list. We had forgotten to reconfirm our confirmation for our confirmed tickets?????

“Its all your fault, its your genes!” screamed my Mom at my Dad.
 After intense flirting with air hostesses, sweet talk with Thai managers I managed to secure us two seats on the flight which we boarded with Indian smugglers begging us to take some of their stuff in our bags. It was horrible. The air hostess (she doesn’t deserve to be called that) looked like a fat ward matron, while the smugglers pulled at her aanchal for more whiskey. Off the plane, through customs, awaiting my parents, I needed a smoke after 2 days of insane traveling. I pulled out a stick, lit up, and in the cloud of the first puff I saw my Mom walk towards me, her face full of shock as she turned to my dad and rebuked him for being an ex-smoker and passing on the smoking genes to me. Yup, this was the first time she found out that I smoke! There were lectures, but the fun of being home and the royal treatment commenced.
But nothing, nothing erases the horrendous trip. It can be well summed up by a Chinese woman ( pronounces "R" for "L" ) wishing you while you board the flight, "Sir, have a nice Fright!"

aanchal: The hanging part of the sari behind a woman's back, sometimes accidently falls forward in hindi movies when the hero stares too much.

"Have a nice fright" -- copyright Beer n Lost in translation!

Attack on the Clones

Disclaimer: I have watched all 6 Star Wars Movies with my cousins within the last week, so if you hate Star Wars, exit now you must! The references will just keep flowing, Help it, I can't! It is the force that is to blame since it compels me to do this!

Sitting on a plane, listening to music, blogging: my laptop rules! So, I paid a much desired visit to sweet home Alabama . It’s weird to live in Maryland and dream once in a while about Alabama the place at one time I was dying to get out of. However, 3 years of undy-grad life in bama has made me quite a southern boy. I can't get enough football on tv, country fried steak makes me drool, and Southern Belles with the Southern drawl make me have to take a shower 5 times a day. The Southern hottie is quite the woman: flowing blonde hair, wandering blue eyes, a flirtaceous yet elusive smile, sexy hoarse voice, southern drawl, and friendly enough to make you think she is coming on to you the first time she meets you. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the bod! Breasts so well shaped that gravity has accepted defeat, dark legs that beg you to stare and get caught staring. All in all, a lady, a woman, a girl! However, the intriguing part is that every belle who catches the eye seems to look just the same, as if they are clones. Same complexion, same voice, same accent, same smile, clones all clones. Are they similar to the clones in Attack of the Cones, Episode 2? Well, some of them are in the dumbness area.  Neways, I boldly subjected myself to this clone army on the streets, in the bars, in the shopping malls for a week, until a tri-variant of Order 66 was executed on me while I used the force, lots of force.

Back to the real clone wars, Star Wars was a huge part of the week. Appalled by my failure to watch Episode 5, 1 previously, my cousins took it upon themselves to rectify the situation. We went through episodes 4,5,6, Empire Strikes Back (5) being my favorite. Then we tackled the much cursed The Phantom Menace (1). In my opinion the movie was a delight. Excellent plot, exceptional acting, mind-blowing pod race, Natalie Portman, and an awesome light saber duel. I did have the advantage of seeing the movie after being familiarized with episodes 2,3 though. Attack of the Clones (2) still remains the disappointment featuring the whinny Aniken Skywalker who looks more like Nick Carter from the backstreet boys, with a voice that could never compare to the great Lord Vader. The only saving moments in the movie were Yoda wielding his saber, and Natalie Portman. Return of the Sith (3) was up their with the oldies barring a slight jester like performance by Obi-Wan, lack of focus on the dark side of the force, and the movie overall was a ADD’s dream come true. But undoubtedly Lucas is a genius; his picturization, the accents influenced from cultures far off, and the close to impeccable tightness of the story are to be marveled at. The only issues with the splicing I have found or been pointed out so far are:

1. Larce, Luke’s Uncle does not recognize 3PO in Epi 4 though 3PO serves him in Epi 3, by the way 3PO is one really gay droid
2. Leah says that her real mother was kind, but sad etc, whereas epi 3 shows that her mother dies within minutes of giving birth, but she may have been talking about her foster mom.
3. Can't remember the last one, damn!

If any of you know of more, do lemme know. However, while watching these movies I was taken aback by the resemblance to American Politics and Religion in this dual trilogy. The Sith Lords, as powerful as the jedi, one with the dark side of the force, wish to bring peace and order to their empire by ruling the galaxy their way and imposing their will on their subjects. They believe in absolute power though they want the war to end too. Sound familiar? The Jedis on the other hand believe that democracy is the way politics should be decided and plot to overthrow the Chancellor (The Sith Lord.) I would hardly want to label George W. Bush as a Jedi but again America ’s attack on Saddam (the Sith Lord) resulting in mayhem, and formation of separatist groups (terrorist orgranizations and bittered nations) still loyal to the Master do strike a common chord.

On a different note, the force is omnipresent, within us all, around us, omniscient, omnipotent. Mmm define God? Anniken Skywalker’s immaculate birth, his infant display of special powers, the prophecy of the Chosen One to bring peace to the empire by slaying the Sith. Are we watching the Bible? But wait, have the story of Jesus and the antichrist been muddled up. The Chosen One turns to evil, but finally does fulfil the prophecy by overthrowing the sith ok literally overthrow, hee hee. So was Aniken the son of God, the good side of the force with highest midichlorians ever, or did Darth Plagueis, the sith who could control midiclorians find a way of reincarnating himself after being slain by his treacherous apprentice Darth Sidious. My take on it is that Darth Plagueis taught his apprentice, Sidious how to create/sustain life. Plagueis did not create Aniken, Sidious/Palpatine did by using the force to will the midichloreans. Given his evil creation he was always prone to the dark side (impulsive, greedy, whinny), however, in ROTS when Anakin is dying, Palpatine uses his sustaining powers (touches his brow) to prolong his life as Darth Vader though he never teaches Vader this trick. In any case, it was an amazing ride, enjoyed it I did! I’m sorry I did the yoda thing again. Sorry, I am! Again? stop it, no you stop it, no you stop it …………

-Conghoolius

P.S: Went to watch Episode 3 at Birmingham , Saw some people with sabers, 3 dressed as Vader, and one dude as a Storm Trooper. Who on earth decides to dress up as a retarded, insignificant clone? Seriously? Which Storm Trooper was he? Number 766 from Episode 4 or Number 67 from Episode 2?

Update on Thursday, June 16, 2005 at 11:41PM by bandy

My Star Wars Pick-up Line:

"I really wanna lay ya, so that I can end my hand solo days!"

When Nature "Calls"

Darwin Darwin! Beware! The Evolution process is either breaking down or a new species is on the verge of attempted existence. I know becoz I am the chosen one. I have become too hot for my own comfort. Nature can’t keep her hands off me.

To make things more lucid, I will translate. I am being molested by trees! Yes, those things with branches and leaves, not as docile as u think. They have spotted me and are trying to impregnate me against my will. It all started 3 weeks ago. Came Spring (Nature coming in to heat i.e. nature’s horniest moment) she spotted me and decided I should have her baby. This is where the evolution theory is collapsing. Me, the male, is being stalked by nature (trees), the female, and she is the one letting out her minions of reproduction, pollen, and that too lots of it, to overwhelm me by her lust. This deluge of pollen, much like sperm is unleashed upon the world. And some of these motivated swimmers make it to the desired target, me the egg, via my nasal orifice!

I do wonder why does this pollen thingie, meant to reach other trees/seeds or whatever, regard me as a prospective mating target? I have reached the answer; 1: coz I am just too hot, 2: Trees want to start this new species with humans, botanica sapien mobilus. This is their attempt to save themselves from breaches in the ozone layer, and from being chopped down coz you can’t really take down a tree that runs away or puts up a fight! Mmm makes sense!

In the midst of this molestation I show several signs of clinical torment. I sneeze profusely, incessantly, sometimes it hurts, though it feels great when I let it out. And the sound I produce is similar to “aaaoonchchchooooo, aaaooooonchchoooo”, which in gujrati means: I am cuming, I am cuming! So this sneezing event seems to be analogous to the pleasure and pain associated with intercourse, and the translation of the sounds I make justify that nature is good, real good at what she does! A second sign is intense fatigue, well, I guess you do feel tired when you get banged all day, and last but not the least, my eyes itch and water, this is probably my way of showing that I feel used by nature as she bangs away at me without any consideration of whether I am in the mood or not!

But here comes the saddest part, I was ready to put up with all this, even though there are so many trees involved in this gang bang, coz at least she chose me. But recently it has been brought to my attention that I am not the only one!!! She is has been with another, and another, even my own roommate! The bloody slut is molesting half of America. Damn, she gets around! Well, since I don’t really have a choice in the whole matter, I must use protection, I need to go on the pill. My doctor has said that the pill Zyrtec will help me out, and Flonase a nasal spray (analogous to KY jelly) will help ease the pain of the bitch’s attacks on me.

To help myself and other victims of this predatress, I am starting a support group called the Garden of Pollegamy. Feel free to share your experiences on this forum. We shall not go down without a fight! Well, we won’t go down period. She doesn’t deserve the pleasure ;). Be safe and use protection. No means no! And if she comes for you, remember Tom Hank’s movie and scream to yourself, “Run, from the Forrest, Run!”

Just a thought: If date palms let out pollen and I was the victim it would give new meaning to the phrase date rape!