Goa.

Off to my spiritual home. Be back with tales in the telling.
Amen.
Oh sorry.
Cheers.

pepsi

Imagine.
Not the Lennon wala imagine.
Normal, small-scale imagine.
You're back in school, and it's the summer holidays. If you are a schoolkid reading this, I and my readership hate you. So there.
Haan, so school time, summer holidays. 11 in the morning. You've just got up.
Had breakfast. Now that we're imagining anyways, I vote for sheera. With pickles by the side.
Breakfast done, and the first yell comes up from down below.
Gully cricket time.
Until everybody assembles, there are around three or four of you, who practise shots, talk of this that and the other. About how Tendulkar scored that awesome century the other day. And got out like a duffer in the next match. As an aside, do you realize that three different generations have grown up saying exactly that?
About the match that you played last week in twilight, the one that went down to the last over, last ball, with only one wicket in hand.
About your classes and tuitions. About that awesome vada-pav. About the hot girl in the next building.
About other equally crucial stuff.
Until slowly but surely, there are around ten to fifteen of you guys, all ready to play cricket. And within the confines of your locality, by the rules forced upon you by the architechture, you start to play game after game of that great Indian past-time.
And then you shall quarrel, and dispute, and fight and play, and yell and appeal, and spend the next three hours playing match after match after match, changing teams, breaking windows, losing balls and in general, having the time of your lives.
And then, when it's all over, you shell out whatever coins you have your pockets and pool in to get fifteen pepsis.
Not the bottles.
You remember those long lollies of ice, wrapped in plastic, flavoured with cola, orange, and chocolate? Priced at Rs. 0.50, Rs. 1, and Rs. 2.
Bite open at a corner at the top and suck. Sit with buddies and talk again.
Day after day of this, until school strikes again.
Nostalgic and all.
But I wouldn't mind a pepsi right now.

BBKTK

The funda I'll explain later. For now, we're going to call them the BBKTK buddies.
Now, buddies is fairly self-explanatory, no?
The guys who get you home when you have puked at a pub. The guys who tell your mom "Yes, Aunty. He was with me the whole night. Just now only he left for home." And then start searching the city.
The dependables.
But for all of us, even within that circle of close buddies, there are a couple, maybe more, of buddies who are absolutely beyond everything else. Beyond friendship, beyond family, with a level of trust that just is.
BBKTK buddies.
You may quarrel with them, God forbid, you may have tiffs, and sometimes, the Good Lord may throw sterner challenges.
But BBKTK buddies are there. Always.
They'll be there with you in your downest (yes, that's a word. I say so.) moments. They'll be there to get piss drunk when you want to celebrate. They'll be there when you want to go for a long ride. They'll be there with you in your "Because." moments.
Brothers, basically.
And I don't quite know whether I believe in Him or not, but Sirji, if you exist, thankoo for the BBKTK's.
Amen.
Haan, now for the explanation.
You have seen Munnabhai MBBS no?
Ess, ess. Wonderful movie and all.
Haan, to in that movie, there's this part where Munnabhai tells somebody to go do something that's thoda impossible. So that guys says that it's not gonna happen. Impossible and all.
Enter Circuit.
With an expression that conveys in equal measure, amazement, incredulity, sorrow, anger, and plain pure confusion.
How can you even for a moment, you poor sap, think of not doing whatever it is that Bhai told you to do? Kaisa possible?
Because rule no. 1 in life is:
"Bhai Bola Karneka, To Karneka."
Figure out who they are, people. And hold on to them with all you've got.
The beer tastes a lot better when they're around.

That Non-Bugger Barrie...

For the record, I stand corrected.
Wonderful movie.
Finely etched characters, wonderfully scripted tale, lovely cinematography, plenty of moving moments, and that boy Peter deserved an Oscar.
And yeah, yeah, yeah.... Barrie was awesome. Johnny Depp, ladies and gentlemen, can act.
Subliminal after all, dammit.

Zen and the Art of Sundays

Haan so see.
You've heard of those Zen guys and their insistence on calmness and sereneness and thinking about your face before you were born, and contemplating a rock garden and other such "Arre but!..." stuff?
All supposed to cultivate a state of nothingness, emptiness, and everlasting peace with oneself. They go to great lengths to get there too.
Missing the point, those guys. They do stuff in order to not do stuff.
Consider, on the other hand, the typical male Sunday.
Correction.The typical bachelor male Sunday.
Get up in the... no no.... wrong already.... get up in the afternoon,have grub.
No bath.
Sit in front of TV, watch Mithun act in inexplicable movie.
Feel rumblings of hunger.
Order pizza.
Open cans of beer.
Nod off to sleep.
Come out of hibernation, watch Schumi defeat somebody.
Open cans of beer.
Order rich oily Moghlai food. Watch Manchester United defeat somebody.
Open cans of beer.
Have Death by Chocolate, watch some late night movie.
Need I say it?
Sleep.
The globe over, millions of young people practice the art, albeit with suitable variations, with zeal and unflagging enthusiasm, day after day, as often as they can.
Who says they ain't religious?
Course they are. Zealots, for all practical purposes.
God bless Sundays.
Amen.

Are you ready boots? Start walking!

I know I want beer. A date with Angelina Jolie wouldn't hurt. Throw in a Suzuki Hayabusa for good measure, and while you're at it, add a bungalow in Goa... right on the beachfront.
In that way and like that, I know what I want from life.But not that way and not like that, me be thinking, me exactly like you, the reader.
I mean, when you're a couple of beers down, and the beats of "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" fill the room, biting of lower lip and ponderous nodding of head, no?
Most of us are doing well enough in life. A decent enough education, a nice cushy job, or awaiting one, family nicely settled in and all. And yet, deep down, when confronting yourself about what it is that you want to do with your life, there isn't half a decent answer forthcoming.
Most of us, including me, don't know, haven't felt, that kind of passion, or single-mindedness. You see it, you hear of it, but experiencing it is thoda the impossible... apparently.
Meet Pradeep Apte, professor of economics at Fergusson College, Pune.
A reluctant commerce graduate, a teacher by happenstance, one of the most fantastic beer drinkers I know (and given the company I keep, that is saying something, trust you me), an avid enthusiast of classical music, an awe-inspring knowledge of history, knows Maharashtra inside out, an acknowledged WTO expert, amateur wine-maker,self-taught mathematician, cine enthusiast, Sanskrit scholar and not that he has much of a choice, mentor to a certain Ashish Kulkarni, among other varied things.
Well, OK, that last bit isn't really a talent that he has as such, but ain't he lucky? I mean, imagine mentoring me.
Jokes apart, the point of that little paean was to let you know that Pradeep Apte, till date, has no clue about what he wants to do with his life.
Seraphic smile in place, Professor Apte has a rocking time, 24/7. If there
be an apt description of the man, it is that he is benignly curious.
If there be something that he knoweth not, he tries and changes the status quo. And if it doesn't change soon, that's ok.
With that remarkably laidback phiosophy unswervingly in place, Apte Sir has had a rocking time of it, thank you very much.
Moral of the gyaan session?
Not knowing what you want, come to think of it, may not be such a bad thing. The world is your playground. Go explore.
Comprenez-vous?