It’s a good thing I don’t write for a living. If I did, either I die of hunger, or you die from reading the massive quantities making up for the quality. It’s not that I am bad at writing. Just that I am more of a stand-up comedian with stage fright. I can talk junk on and on, one explaining the other and needing to be explained by yet another, but to have guts to do that in front of an audience each with a pair each of arms and legs is not so easy. But I think I d make a good stand-up comedian. I like going to pubs but won’t get drunk. I have a suit, I have a straight set of teeth that get polished now and then (actually they have to be scraped whenever ‘Gobi Manchurian’ is served in mess) for that dazzling smile, I know lots of fat lady jokes and, the master stroke, I will always have a fat lady in the room to use them on. Anyhow, of late, my attention has been grabbed by the many modern day Rhett Butlers among us who seem to have this I-don't-give-a-rat's-ass-or-mosquito-fart-or-anything-disgusting-animals-have-about-it attitude. At some level, it is cool, cos then you don’t have to apologize for taking someone’s stuff and breaking it. They in turn would have broken someone else’s and so on till it comes around and pinches you on your bottom. But(t) still, I am against it. The reasons? As follows:1) I hate travelling with family guys on trains. They take virtues to higher levels; virtues like planning, punctuality, paranoia. It is good if you are getting down about three stations before they get down, else you might as well travel on Ekadasi day and go directly to heaven after you die, which might happen when you get the impulse to rip off your brain, cell by cell, once the uncle or the baby (it’s not the actual babies, they are cute and mostly silent, these are the ones who were called babies since the time Silk Smitha made her debut) starts talking of the snow in Buffalo or the miracles performed by Sri Sri Sriyo Sri Govindashtapathi Neelakanta Varaprasada Swami at 4 am in the morning with all the lights on. Buffalo? Sriyo Sri? Silk Smitha, you smile to yourself as you take a tranquilizer.
2) I have to put up with the loads of trash around the place. There are only so many egg shells and licked-up-coffee-tumblers people can pick. If you think the All India Malayalee Collector and Compactor Manufacturers' Association is gonna felicitate you for the business, am sorry, much as it sounds legit, the association is fake. Even if it were legit, the max you d get is a mundu and sandalwood garland.
3) It is the reason behind products like Qatar Pafkis (Imborted and Marketed by Falcon Global Impex, contains corn meal, palm olein and cheddar cheese free from animal rennet). Animal Rennet? Hmmm.. I guess it goes right up there with the rat's ass. Anyone who has tasted Qatar Pafkis will agree with me that Qatar Pafkis : Corn Puffs :: Snotty Handkerchief : Bindu Appalam. The only reason I might be willing to have the Pafkis in my party is in case somebody spills a drink and I don't have anything else to mop with.
Of course there are multiple other less sexy, mundane reasons like lack of sleep due to somebody nailing some bloody thing together at 3 am in the morning, scratching your nose till you become Rudolph cos the maid is trying to move the dirt off the floor up into the air, and of course, the glorious food that comes at 100 bucks a day. It’s a tough world I agree, but you smart guys try to be less cool, else I will have to send you to... obviously not Sri Sri Sriyo Sri... hmmm... maybe I 'll stuff your mouth with Pafkis, this time, though, with the rennet. Let's see how less rennet you care this time.
