Remembering the 80s !!!

Its been a while i have written on Hindi Movies... I was reading a few blogs yesterday relating to this Hindi Cinema. Now, I speak the language filmeese quite fluently too, and wanted to add my 2 cents on this topic. The 80s in Hindi movies were, to me, "different" aka "hatke". I grew up watching Dharmendra bashing up alleged dogs and Jeetendra inadvertently advertising detergents for their sparkling ability. So I just reminisced abt movie moments from the 80s that faded from silver screen and lest they fade from common memory, this post was made:

1. The bad father-in-law: I can't believe that the heroine's father is no longer the villain in Hindi movies. Remember the 80s when every movie had the heroine's father indulging in all sorts of notoriety. The fallout between the hero and his damsel would always take place when the hero accused the heroine's father. The heroine would then shun the company of the man who pointed a finger at her dad. But soon she would find out from a secretly heard telephone conversation (I guess cell phones killed this concept) that her dad was indeed an animal (read darinde) and all peace would be restored. The part that used to shock me the most was the calm demeanor of the girl in the climax when her father would get killed. Very disturbing. But now they are gone. Hmmm!

2. The multi-colored smoke bomb: I don't know how many of you remember this one. It used to be a stock moment in 80s daku-based movies. They had these bombs that would explode and there was no fire - just a lot of multi-colored powder that would be shown. If you can't remember what I'm talking abt, try imagining a scene where the hero is riding his motor bike (yeah, cars were expensive then) through a series of explosions - none of which remotely hurt him, coz none of them were explosions in the first place, but just red-brown dust instead.

3. The two-villain-vamp dance - Remember vamps? Not the Helen-who-we-all-know vamp BUT the 80s "dance in mini-skirt shaped saree" and "appear in only one cheesy dance" vamps? And they always had two villains (one of which was always Ranjeet) who would suddenly join in for an impromptu shake-a-leg move. Karan Arjun was the last movie where this stock situation was used before killing this trend. Why why?

I can just go on and on and on - the helpful dog, the "sister who gets married to a bad guy and hence hero cant beat the sh!t out of her husband", the evil munim-ji (played by Kader Khan) who was both a comic relief as well as the villain's right hand (literally) man - but I have work to do now. So peace!

And now you are Pissed Off!!

Ok! A word to the few women who read this blog - you'll probably NEVER come back to read it again. I'll miss you all. And just to let you know - this post is not supposed to be gross AND you can ask your male friends that.

I've been wanting to write on this topic for a while now, but it's just that work and other stuff kept me busy. I wanted to write abt the phenomenal tension in a men's urinal. Seriously! I've never been to lady's urinal BUT from what the ladies tell me, it's supposed to be well compartmentalized; a place where individuals get the privacy they need; a place that I believe even plays host to some very interesting conversations. In contrast, men's urinals are a very disturbing area. Read on!

For starters, men have to stand and get their business done. So this is what you do. You face a wall and wait and wait ... and then you get done and then you run (not before washing your hands though). This period, when you face the wall and do your stuff is nerve wrecking. You have to either look at the wall or look down. Now obviously it's better to look into the wall. But I don't have to explain that, if you do this pretty regularly, it gets quite monotonous. Come on, you can't just look at the wall and not think of anything. Every man, I believe, has his special bathroom thought. My thoughts normally include tunes of songs (not Hawa Hawa) or finding patterns in the tiles of the walls. I'd be happy (actually NO) to know what other people think abt.

The next big thing is to avoid any kind of eye contact. Any kind. As men, we are taught to think that nobody else is in the bathroom when we are finishing business. Unlike women, we don't socialize in the toilet. It's never "Hey man, what are you doing here?" for us. However, every now and then, the moment gets the better of you. You hear the new entrant enter and you give a quick look. Under normal circumstances, the new entrant too is careful to not make any eye contact. BUT on a highly chance driven instance - EYES DO MEET! And then ladies and gentleman, you get the most awkward smile exchange ever!

The final thing that I wanna discuss on this issue, is what many might consider gross BUT I have to say it - it's the peeing sound. Some are noisy pee-ers, others like to be discreet. Yet others are situation driven i.e. when left alone they go on a roll BUT in the company of others they learn to control the volume. What is really disturbing is when two people land up next to each other, in an otherwise silent zone, and the only sound they hear is ... you know what. Can you imagine the amount of judging that can go on? "Is the other guy thinking that I'm too loud?" ... "Man! He is soo loud. Does he have no control?" "Wow! He is really quiet!" ... and the likes.

There's so much more that can be discussed on this topic ... but I don't want to piss you off any more :)

Ctrl + S Private Ryan !!!

For the few kind ones who enquired, I've been amazingly busy with my lumberyard office and will continue to be busy for the coming few weeks. So my posting habits may become more irregular. Blah blah. Yanyway! Blogging is a good relaxation and let me indulge in it a lil bit now.

Think abt this. One of my dear friends is walking the arranged marriage route. But you know what they say - "arranged marriages are so passe". Nobody agrees to having an arranged marriage these days. They're all like "oh we met over the net and then we fell in love and then we married" - all in 30 days and under the constant regulation of doting mothers and over-inquisitive aunts :)) Yeah sure! Yanway, like always, I digress again.

Wouldn't it be nice if like most computer applications we could have a Ctrl+S option for relationships? This very dear friend of mine is doing the whole "My name is so and so and my favorite actor is so and so" followed by "what are your future plans" followed by "I'm doing this because my mother asked me to" routine - aka the "babu steps to arrange marriage". It's the first time he's doing something like this, and boy does he feel the pressure. You spend 12 phone calls just to reach the comfort level where you can finally tell her "You know what, I'm a graduate student and I frankly don't make as much money as you think I do" and the next thing you know is "Accha, I don't think this thing is working out bhery well. So let us be just friends." So my friend wants to know - what then? Will he have to start afresh again? Start from scratch? Again call up some random stranger and say "My name is ... I went to school in ... My father has a blah blah figure salary ..." I feel for you dude. I seriously do. The Ctrl+S option would make it really cool where you could save definitive romantic states and the next time around just start from there.

Save romance. Save love. Save a poor graduate student's marriage dreams.

Matched # Deux

As promised earlier, here are some really funny things that I spotted on the two matrimonial sites that I visited with my friend. I have tried to choose the ones that wouldn't reveal anything abt the actual people and in case I have offended anyone - go remove your profile :)

1. Two guys mentioned that they want girls who are "adaptive". Is it just the geek in me or does that really sound like a software specification?

2. Almost on the same lines - quite a few girls wanted men who are "reliable" (just for them, coming soon Manware 1.0b)

3. One Girl Started Every Word Of Her Sentences With A Capital Letter Like I Have Done For This Sentence :)

4. One guy described himself as "Myself is cool" (how cool do you think is that).

5. Quite a few women and men wanted their partners to be "open minded". Now the term can mean a range of things and if not specified leads to really fancy (or is the word vivid) images in my mind.

5. One girl mentioned her hobby as "talking on the telephone". Now why would someone want that information when choosing a partner? Unless of course you are a phoney!!

6. My sis mentioned this one to me (so don't question me abt the authenticity). Apparently a leading daily in Mumbai has an ad that mentions that the guy's father owns a flat on the tenth storey (Now that's some unneeded "storey") Now who needs such specific information?

7. Another one courtesy darling sister. The same daily boasted of an ad where the guy dint divulge his salary but mentioned that his father has a seven figure annual income.

8. This one goes out to all those people who had ids that tried to reveal more abt them than their profiles. Whatever happened to subtlety? Since I've respected the privacy of all these people I shall not reproduce exact ids but there were people whose ids resembled cool_engineer_nyc. Do we even need a profile after that? I suggested to my friend that he should choose an id on the lines of handsome_rich_guy_hunky_japan_visited :)

9. Finally for all the lovers of irony - some guy wanted a "homely working girl". Go for it dude!

Matched # Uno

One of my friends is considering marriage and has surrendered himself to one of the innumerable marriage-based websites floating around the web. We were discussing what to put up for his profile. So we checked out some of the existing profiles on these sites and figured that most of them

(i) sound similar
(ii) sound unreal and
(iii) pretty much says that the guy/girl can do everything.

So we prepared a standard write-up that combined anything and everything that each of these profiles had to say.

Guys: Hi. I am Blah Blah and I do Blah Blah. I believe in the simple joys around us (and what might they be). Honesty and sincerity are two virtues that I strongly believe in (you can never go wrong with these). I'm modern and yet I have strong traditional roots (half a dozen people said this and though it makes no sense whatsoever, it seems to be the in-thing). My hobbies are music, movies, reading (aha! the aesthetic side is revealed) and I also like outdoor activities (lest you offend the more adventurous ones). I like to laugh and make others laugh (the sense of humor card is played). I'm looking for a girl who will be an equal partner in every joy that awaits me (clap clap).

Girls: It is very difficult to describe myself in one paragraph (some five hundred women started their profiles with this line without realizing that they are already wasting some of their limited space by putting this line in). I am a simple girl who loves to love and be loved (aaaah! cho fu@@ing chueeet). I have completed my blah blah (educational qualifications). I like to cook (come on you have to say that), sing (yeah! I can entertain you too) and love art work (I will save you valuable money on decoration). I have strong Indian roots and yet I consider myself Westernized (once again this means nothing). (And now comes the part that I don't understand but almost all the women mention) My father works as a so and so. My mother is a very nice lady who does blah blah. My elder sister is married and based in so and so. My brother-in-law works for a reputed MNC in blah blah. My youngest uncle graduated from ... yada yada yada (can someone please explain it to me why we need to know the entire family tree).

P.S. Coming up next - 10 funniest things that I spotted in these sites!!!!

Let's just be Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Ross ...

I'm not the first person who is irked by this issue and I'm sure that there are others who feel strongly abt it. So ladies and gentlemen, let's join voices and discuss once again a line that all of us have heard at some point or the other - "Let's JUST be friends."

Have you ever realized that this line always comes at the most inopportune moments? You find out that your girl friend is secretly dating someone else. You confront her. She unapologetically tells you that "things are not working out" so "let's just be friends". Your boy friend has been avoiding your phone calls. Finally you manage to get hold of him. He doesn't apologize. He looks into your eyes and says, "Well, let's just be friends from now."

What? Seriously, what?

Ironic as it might sound but this line is always used in the most unfriendly situations - making it completely useless therefore. Would you normally wanna be friends with someone who's cheating on you? Someone who's abusive? Or someone that you just figured out wanted to "save herself till marriage" but never told you that the marriage dint involve you? Why can't people just say, "I've anyway betrayed your trust. So let's not fool ourselves anymore and let's just get lost." Nope! You cheat, beat and retreat and that doesn't bother you. But at the end of all this you turn into an epitome of grace and gratitude and offer the other person the envied option of being "just friends".

And while on this issue, can someone please explain to me what the term "JUST" means? Why is it always "let's JUST be friends"? Was there another associated option? Has anybody ever said "Ok! Let's be friends, study partners and gym mates?" to which the other person replied saying, "No! I can't study with you. So let's just be friends"? No! There were no other options. So what do people mean when they add the highly stressed JUST to their statement.

Is this just?

Or-Deal !!!

Venue : A shop selling only womens apparels in an up class area of Bangalore
Date : Some time 2 years back
Situation : I'm really exhausted!!! I'm making panting sounds that are comical and depressing at the same time. Poof!!

And why am I in this state? Women's SHOPPING!

Now I've ranted aplenty in the past about going to shop WITH women but this day's situation was very different - I went shopping alone but FOR women. Lemme explain! I spent the entire morning shopping for my darling sis and my mom. Now shopping for mom is simple - she has a thing for fragnances and those aren't difficult to locate and buy! Also people are less reluctant to try out fragnances coz it's kinda difficult to completely mess them up (or that's what a guy feels). However, for my sis, I needed to buy clothes ... and they are a Pain In the A#@e to get. You can't just buy anything coz if it's not nice, lil sis wont even try it out. The red top will then sit next to that orange skirt that some cousin gifted her (which she refuses to either wear or throw out). The problems don't end if she likes the clothes coz they have to fit her too. And you think it's "game over" if the clothes pass the fitting test? Nope! Coz the final and most difficult stage is where the clothes go through a strict censoring process headed by "Papa please preach" and "Momma don't screech"!

So, have you ever tried being the only guy in a shop full of girls? Ok! You did spot those two guys in the corner - but they have girls accompanying them. So what abt you? You are alone. You look lost. You have no idea what you want. Forget your wants - you don't even have an idea of what it is that you are looking for. So you aimlessly wander around the store - picking up things, putting them down and picking them up again. Just then the store attendant comes up.

"Sir, can I help you?"
*Of course you can. Can you make me invisible for the next 30 minutes*.

"No, I'm good."
*No, I'm not. I have no idea what I'm doing here*

"Ok Sir, I'll be just round the corner. Lemme know if you need any help."

You see the store attendant leave and the moment you turn around, you see a crowd of eyes judging you.

"Is he a pervert who's here to check women out?"
"Does he cross dress?"
"Who is he shopping for?
Is he trying to surprise his girl friend. Yikes! Look at his choice."

The roving eyes ask a million questions and the one answer you provide to all of them is to keep your head so low that you can't see anything other than your own shoes.

30 minutes and six items later I appeared in front of the payment counter, gasping for breath; longing to see the Exit sign that'll take me outside the shop; counting seconds before I become a "man" again. All the clerk has to do now, is charge my credit card and let me go. That shouldn't take more than 30 seconds.

Did you find everything all right, sir?
- Yes, I did
*I don't care, just lemme go*

Are you aware that we have a special discount on skirts - buy 2 and get 1 free.
- No, it's fine
*Lemme go! Momma lemme go*

Are you aware of our return policy, sir?
-Yes, I am
*I don't care. Lemme go. Just lemme go!*

That's a lot of clothes. Girl friend?
-No, sister
*how does it matter to you. Charge my credit card and lemme go*

How old is she?
She is 22
*She is two hundred and thirty seven years old. How does that matter to you? Do you want to marry her? Just lemme go*

Do you want a gift receipt sir?
No (almost in tears). It's ok!
*I'm accepting. Yes, I'm accepting. It was me who forgot the lines in the class 2 play. It was me who spilled water on the floor in class 7. I agree that when I told my ex I was busy working in January, I was actually watching an episode of FRIENDS. I accept it all. Don't torture me any more. Just Lemme go.*

Another five minutes and the customary "do you want the receipt in the bag" and "please come back again" later, I saw the outside World again.

You might not believe it, but the feeling was similar to what Will Smith experienced after his heroic escape from the space ship in Independence Day

Wooof!!

There she stands ... with a heart so cold !!!

Right now, I'm trying hard to decide between the three different topics I want to write abt and can't make up my mind. Lesse! Hmmmmmm! Ok - mannequins win.

So it all started last week when I went shopping and had my attention drawn towards some of the mannequins on display. Boy! When did they become this pretty. I almost proposed to one of them. Silky hair; perfect feature and what more - totally believable - there she stood - urging me to buy a short skimpy top for Rs 3000. "You gold digger!" I said to myself and walked away and that's when the rest of the stuff in this post started playing in my mind.

When did people start concentrating so heavily in making mannequins. When I was young(er) (now come on! it wasn't that long ago; just rewind your minds by a decade), all mannequins looked the same. I remember this wig shop in Mumbai that had two unisex mannequins. Yes, you read it right - Unisex mannequins!! The only thing differentiating them were the wigs they sported. Occasionally the shopkeeper would draw a pencil thin moustache on one of them to make it look more manly but soon the moustache would disappear - or even worse - we would see a mustached mannequin with a girl's hairdo. I remember that several shops didn't even go through the rigor of getting a mannequin. They would just stuff clothes with newspaper and put it on the window or have one of those "blowup doll thingies".

But those days are gone. Girlfriends now not only prevent their knight in shining armours from looking at other princesseses. Mannequins are as much of a threat to them as that next Jolie look alike. The boyfriend looks at a dress on a mannequin and wonders "Whoa! What a hottie." Soon the girl friend puts on that same dress and you see that all's not well in wonderland. The same thing holds true for us men. Have you seen the abs they give to the male mannequins. I vaguely remember trying to count the number of stripes on a male mannequins stomach and giving up after ten. And it's not just the shape. Shopkeepers now have multi-ethnic mannequins. They have "happy family mannequins" (where an entire family of varying age groups are shown). They have mannequins that have robotic limbs that occasionally move. It's not long before mannequins are full blown robots that'll escort you into shops, help you shop and if need be strip down to bare essentials to send you home better clad.

There's so much writing abt the changes around us - computers, cars, music systems and what not! Somebody ought to mention these glaring changes in mannequin technology. So I thought I would.

Peace!

Age Old Stuff

So I just heard from someone that one of our friends in the group has been "concealing" her age. And it's not one of those "hide a few months to still be a teenager" kind of concealing. If rumors are to be believed (which I'm tempted to) - she has been hiding her age by a good two years . This made me wonder - are we really that old??? Has the grey hair finally caught up with the grey cells?? Should we be hiding our age too?? Hmmmm!

A lot has been said abt the enigma concerning the fairer sex's age and the darker (?) sex's salary. We are now part of a society where it's ok to flaunt breast sizes but uncouth to ask a woman her age. So I shall comply to these societal norms and not delve into the topic of women and their age but instead deal with the issue from a male perspective.

To be perfectly honest, men lie abt their age too and here are some classic situations when they do so:

1. The Boy Genius - "I was sixteen when I finished undergraduate chemistry," a friend of mine would boast. Screw you! We all knew that you turned sixteen on your twenty first birthday - so shut the baby mouth up! This btw, is something very "male"! A lot of men love to reduce their ages to make their very ordinary accomplishments sound brilliant. "My son knew how to spell when he was three," the father would boast. "Very good! Too bad you dint know how to count then - didya?"

2. To Eliminate the Creep Factor: The sweet girl sharing dinner with you claims she is twenty two. You are twenty nine. You know your grandmom and grandpa had an age gap of sixteen years and that didn't stop them from providing you with innumerable uncles and aunts. But still! 29 vs. 22 - naaaah! "So how old are you?" she asks you while licking the sauce from her upper lip using her tongue. That's it. It's lie lie time. "I'm twenty .... twentyyyyy six" you say. You see the girl taking a moment to do the mental calculations herself - she adds her nicely hidden two years to her advertised age and decides that 26 vs. 24 is not all that bad. Everybody is happy!

3. Maturity Oozes: Barring faking age to get into night clubs or to buy yourself that much needed beer, there is only one other time that I can think of when men actually increase their age and the reason is simple - to sound more mature and to be taken seriously. "So you think that India should disinvestment even more? How old did you say you were?" your colleague asks you with that all familiar tone of sarcasm. "I'll be turning thirty this year," you say without a blink, calmly adding the two years to your age that my friend has been letting go :) "Wow! You look a lot younger," the colleague replies, almost sounding apologetic. The same trick is used when you meet a woman who fits your bill but is a few years older than you.

So you get bold, turn a lil old and a lie is told. :-)

Reality Check

I started the weekend with a fairly lively discussion on childhood aspirations. I was probably four when one of my uncles returned from US with a whole bunch of toy guns for me. This led to a frenzy of sorts where my good friend D and I decided to become gangsters. However, this was also the time when one of my dad's friends owned a bus service and gifted me and D a set of crisp bus tickets. The two of us were thus plagued with equally strong desires of being a bus conductor. At one point we combined the dreams and decided to be bus conductors who would also rob the passengers. We spent a considerable amount of time over the weekends - robbing D's father (who was the only other participant in this game) and also selling him bus tickets. Ah! Good old days. The whole incident makes me feel like doing a reality check to see how close I am to any of my other childhood ambitions:

1. Rickshaw Driver - As a hefty kid I admired the fact that the rickshaw drivers had amazing muscles to pull the lever & get the engine rolling. I always wanted to join the community as an option to later be well built - hmm!

2. Pilot - I was talking to a friend born & brought up in US some time back on what the most common childhood fantasy of children in the US is and she mentioned it is probably to be astronauts - well in India it has to be a pilot and moi was no exception.

3. Cricketer - actually on second thoughts I think every Indian kid wants to be a cricketer as well. Thankfully for me I figured out pretty soon that my chances of being a rickshaw driver were brighter than being a cricketer and this ambition was given a back seat.

4. Superhero - I wanted to be a superhero but was aware of the fact that I don’t have superhero abilities. So I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out a way to get around this limitation. I came to the conclusion that I'll carry lots of body powder that I'll release to create a temporary distraction and since I would be wearing glasses, I could just disappear then. It was a perfect plan till the prototype made the floors of my house slippery; causing my mom ample stress and that was the end of Powderman.

Well, it's not difficult to see that these dreams haven't been realized. They obviously appear childish but what scares me is the thought of me sitting twenty years down the line and jotting down my current dreams and arriving at similar conclusions about them - hmmmmm!

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You know you are ...... not thinking right when you take out the packet of sugar, put it next to your cereal bowl and get completely confused as to what you are doing; then wait for a while and put the sugar packet back in the microwave !!!