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Don't Be That Guy 5

Don't be that guy: Professional Candy Crusher

This guy was at the bus stop. His bus was on the other side of the intersection stuck in a traffic jam. He realized it would take eighty more seconds for the bus to reach the stop, so he took out his phone and started playing Candy Crush. Right there on the road at ten in the morning with twenty other people rushing to catch the bus!

I was impressed with his commitment to crushing candies and his Zen-like demeanour while he was at it. Maybe that’s his passion in life. Like how Sivamani makes music by clinking his morning coffee cup with a tea spoon.

So I installed Candy Crush on my phone to see what hidden gems it has. And by the time I was on level six, I couldn’t help but wonder how boring that guy must find reality that he cannot bear sixty seconds of it. What exactly is his brain subconsciously avoiding? Excel sheets? Emptiness? Original thoughts? We may never know.

Don't be that guy: Birthday song charanam singer

Don't be that girl who uses the phrase 'Golden words are not repeated'

What the hell does that even mean? It doesn’t make any sense. I first heard it when I was 6 years old. I found it extremely annoying. I recently heard someone say it again. It still sounds as gross as a hippo in a thong.

Don't be that guy: Vegetarian Thoughts

Don't be that guy who orders Mocktails at treats

I know as a teetotaller, you volunteer to double check the order, collect all the 'lost and found' things, make peace when things get boorish, nod profusely when the conversations get “deep”, check on folks who lock themselves up in the rest room, give water to the dehydrated, take care of the tips, and finally herd people into their respective autos/taxis late in the night. We are ever so grateful for all your sober services but do you really have to order those mocktails?

I mean that thing named ‘Designated Appletini’ is actually Tropicana mixed fruit juice in a funny shaped glass. ‘Queens Punch’ is Nimma soda. No one should be paying 350 rupees (plus tax) for Nimma soda. That too from the drinks budget. Seriously, don’t be that guy!

If the real reason you order mocktails is for the selfies, please go kill yourself. Just eat a holy religious book of your choice and choke on it and die. No blood. No gore. It’s very elegant. If you want to take it slow, go to a forest and handcuff yourself to a tree and throw away the key and starve to death. That would be interesting too.

Or even better, you can sign up to my new web based start-up www.dropmypiano.in. Just give us your name, email and mobile number. Specify a place and a time and we’ll drop a grand piano on your head. Money back guarantee if you don’t die!

To pee, or not to pee

To pee, or not to pee, that is the question –

It’s been hours. The pressure was building up. So is regret over the recent glass of sugarcane juice with ice. But for the moment, things are in control.

I looked for a proper place to mind my business. The footpath was the first thing that came to my mind. Why? I don’t know why. It's my male instincts perhaps. Humans have been shaped by millions of years of evolution to relieve themselves on a tree trunk and walk away as if no one noticed. That's who we are. (Of course, by humans I mean human males)

Now some people consider doing it 'out in the open' like that a disgusting habit. I understand why they feel that way. Just step out of your house for half an hour anywhere in this country, you'll see a Desi Dude urinating on a wall. That wall is part of someone's house. A house with TV serial sounds, filter coffee smells, Sai Baba calendars and an old women in the living room.

But that makes no difference to the Desi Dude. The Desi Dude doesn't give a shit. As far as number one is concerned, Desi Dude is like Tuco from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

 
"Don't be that guy! Things are still in control. There is enough time to find a proper place", the rational part of my brain assured me. I walked past a row of independent houses combed apart by narrow lanes. I could sense a public toilet fifty yards away.

Now public toilets are not for the faint-hearted or the sensitive-nosed. I am both. This one was like a fortified castle with a protective moat. Except that the castle is a modest PWD construction with questionable water supply. And the moat is filled with unidentified organic material in various stages of decomposition.

After inspecting the toilet from a safe distance, the idea of peeing on a stranger’s house sounded more appealing. Moments like these make me feel thankful for being male. Being a man is clearly better than being a woman. It is considered rude to say it out loud but that is the truth. We have outdoor options!

I searched for an appropriate wall, preferably one that belonged to the Central Government. Why the Central Government? I don't know. Instincts again. Pissing on the Central Government seemed like a right thing to do.

And so I did. It was a good spot. No street lighting and right next to the staircase where everyone spits. I stood under the starlit sky amidst croaking toads, fluttering moths and cricketing crickets. And sprayed my Mountain Dew coloured wizz on the concrete wall. Blisssss.

Okay, before you start judging me with the usual 'Being an educated person blah blah blah-muppaavala...' let me assure you that this has nothing to do with my education. It is human nature. When people have a choice between the responsible thing to do and the convenient thing to do, they always do the convenient thing.

Imagine you're on your way to the grocery store. You're in the parking lot. You put on your helmet and then realized that you forgot to carry the jute bag. Do you go back to the apartment to get the jute bag? No way!

You know that's the responsible thing to do but you have to take off the helmet, park the bike in a corner, wait for the elevator, go to the fourth floor, unlock your house, search for the jute bag, lock your house again... It’s too much effort. It's not difficult. It is inconvenient. You'd rather pay the grocer two rupees extra for a polythene bag. We all do.

Or look at weddings. There are a thousand guests at the reception. And everyone gets their own little half a litre bottle of Bisleri. What the fuck is happening there? It's a sanitized wedding hall. With food, flowers, family and friends. Not an RTC bus. We can drink water there. The caterer is already serving 24 items in steel buckets using steel ladles. He can surely handle a few more steel jugs and steel glasses.

But he doesn't. Because it is extra work. The glasses have to be washed, dried, counted, stacked and maintained. Thankless work. Because there is always an off chance that some fussy wedding guest will find a little smudge inside a glass and make a big deal out of it.

The caterer doesn't want to take that risk. The bride's father doesn't want to deal with that shit. And so 3000 bottles of plastic are permanently buried in mother earth's belly. All of them from a single wedding party.

The wedding lasts for 2 days. The marriage, maybe for 40 years but the plastic? 50,000 years! That's not a very bright thing to do as a species. But it is convenient.

You cannot argue against convenience. We rarely face situations where we have to choose between good and evil in the course of our boring lives. Most of our choices are between responsibility and convenience.

Standing in the queue at the RTO office is responsible. Hiring an agent who will “manage” the process is convenient. Exercising regularly is a responsibility. Sitting on the couch and ordering pizza is convenience. Paying attention to human beings in the room is polite. Staring into our phones is convenient.

Speaking the truth may be the right thing to do. But lying to avoid awkward situations is convenient. Being nice to a stranger requires empathy. Being an asshole is incredibly convenient.

Chasing your dreams is risky. Holding on to that job is convenient. Risking rejection in a relationship takes balls. Stalking the girl online is convenient. Doing something about issues we care about is hard work. Twitter is convenient. Speaking out against injustice is the right thing to do. Silence is convenient.

Selfishness is convenient. Peer pressure is convenient. Giving up our privacy for an online discount coupon is convenient. Sending kids to IIT coaching is convenient. Times of India is convenient. Corruption is convenient. Hypocrisy is convenient. Consumerism is convenient. Patriotism is convenient. Obedience is convenient. Status quo is convenient!

And that is why the Desi Dude pees on the road. It has nothing to do with his education, qualification, culture, sun sign or conscience. Peeing on the road happens to be ridiculously convenient. I am not kidding. If women could, they totally would!

For the record, I am not condoning unabashed public urination. One should not pee on someone's house. I don't encourage that at all. I myself try not to. But if it is very very urgent and there are no good toilets around, what else are we supposed to do?

Convenience is the real enemy.

Laundry Day - Documentary Short

Laundry Day from gtoos on Vimeo.

P.S: Watch it in full screen and, if possible, on HD

Earth Day Message from C2

The Toothpaste Conspiracy Theory

You going to the neighbour's kitchen?

Yes, I smell Mangalore style fish curry.

Can you get me some toothpaste?

What?

I asked if you could get some toothpaste on your way back.

Why should I get it?

I'm out of toothpaste. I thought I'll borrow some just for the day.

You go get it yourself. I don't like stealing things.

You steal food all the time!

That is different.

How is it different?

It's different because you're a human. And I'm a cat.

That is why I asked you to sneak in through their kitchen window, walk up to the attached bathroom and get the toothpaste. You can put it back in the same place once I am done.

Sorry I can't steal toothpaste. It's against my principles.

Stealing is not against your principles.

Stealing is not but toothpaste is. I don't believe in toothpaste.

What is there to “believe” in a toothpaste?

Why do you need toothpaste?

To brush my teeth.

Exactly. I don't believe in that.

You don't believe in brushing?

No. I am not against brushing. You should brush your teeth. Humans have always brushed their teeth. Not with the modern plastic bristled brushes you use today but with Neem twigs, rough cloth, pieces of leather, something or the other. Brushing is useful. Brushing is important. I am just not convinced about toothpaste.

Why?

Look at the statistics:

Correlation doesn't imply causality. Bad dental health in modern societies is because of the exceptionally high starch and sugar (and cola) content in our diet which our hunter-gatherer genes have not evolved to handle.

Alright, let me make an economics argument then:

What is this, a new conspiracy theory?

I'm not saying it is a conspiracy but think about it. In the last 20 years alone toothpaste companies have made your toothpaste green, blue, red, pink, orange, mint, peppermint, spearmint, vanilla mint, fennel, cinnamon, clove. They made it a transparent gel, half-gel half-paste, multi-flavored, multi-layered, multi-textured, added crystals, added fluoride, added sugar, added salt, added activated charcoal, bleaching agents, glycerin and a lot of other chemicals along with the the extra goodness of natural herbal extracts and then started removing them one by one saying sugar-free, low fluoride, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no non-veg, no crystals, no glycerin, no bleaching agents... what exactly is going on there?

Do you really need those advertisements having futuristic dentist labs with transparent touchscreen control rooms, college boys with low self-esteem, hot chicks with creepy sparkling teeth, ocean surfing stunts, concerned mothers, lazy fathers, four out of five dentists, 3D graphics, sciencey jargon and that forever-alone germ?

What forever-alone germ?

hehe

Here's a fun fact. The toothpaste actually plays a very marginal role in your oral hygiene.

Marginal role?

Yeah, it is the physical action of the brush against your teeth that does all the cleaning. Scientific studies have shown that any abrasive agent like rock salt or activated charcoal will work just as fine as any toothpaste in the world.

So The toothpaste doesn't matter?

The toothpaste doesn't matter.

All that foam?

Totally non-functional.

The blue crystals?

Just a placebo.

The 24 hour freshness guarantee?

It's a bamboozle.

The sugarcane-ripping, green-apple biting strong teeth?

Total humbug.

Mouthwash?

An outright hoax.

Damn it!

I know.

That explains all the advertising. If the toothpaste companies do not advertise as aggressively as they do, we will all go back to a no toothpaste world and it would make no difference whatsoever.

Some things exist only because they sound good in an advertisement.

That is true.

I was going through your kitchen stuff the other day. There was a jar of Boost and it had some weird tasteless yellow and blue crystals in it. The label says that they are “Envita nutrients that give you 3X stamina”. Now I’m not an expert on nutrition but that sounds like bullshit. I mean how is something blue in color even edible?

You licked my Boost?

I do it all the time. Here's the interesting thing. I ripped apart a packet of Surf Excel. And even that had little blue crystals in it. In fact, the same shade of blue. And the same weird taste as well. The label says that they are “power surfactants that remove the toughest of stains” and I was thinking, “Wow… these are some versatile crystals!”

They're everywhere, G2. Facewash, toothpaste, soap, chewing gum, ice-cream, shampoo, shaving gel, energy drink powder... these blue crystals are everywhere.

I know. Procter & Gamble is using these blue crystals like Mallus use coconut.

Why are humans working on improving soap and toothpaste like it holds the key to the cure for cancer? Haven't you, as the most intelligent species ever to walk the earth, noticed that a "New & Improved Formula" makes NO DIFFERENCE whatsoever?

We know but advertising is not exactly a democratic medium. People don't get to choose the ads they want to watch.

I mean why can’t all humans arrive at a consensus saying, “Look. I think we have improved toothpaste enough. We don't really need green tea flavored toothpaste. Let’s put our limited energy and natural resources towards solving more important problems.”?

Oh, that's not gonna happen. It goes against the very logic of advertising. They're in the business of making us buy things we don't need with money we don't have. It is their duty to throw that shit.

You know what, you should protest against this system. Show them the finger. Boycott toothpaste. It'll be fun.

No, I'm not boycotting toothpaste.

You should.

Get out of here!

What is the big deal? Even Gautama Buddha never used toothpaste. Is he not worthy of emulating?

Sure... I'll meditate but I'm not giving up toothpaste.

He meditated under the Bodhi tree for 49 days. Do you think he took breaks in between to brush his teeth twice a day? No. He would have never achieved enlightenment if he listened to his dentist!

I am not eliminating toothpaste from my life.

You know who else never used toothpaste?

Prophet Mohammad?

Yeah... yeah... the prophet too (peace be upon him) but let's not go there.

Disclaimer: No toothpaste tubes were stolen in the making of this post.

Don't be that guy - Jan

Don’t be that guy who thinks street food is unhealthy

Our parents, teachers, doctors and other noble professionals right from our childhoods told us that street food is not good for our health and that we should not eat pani puri, bhel puri, masala batani, samosas, kachoris, bajjis, peanuts, bhutta, pieces of raw mango, amla, pineapple and guava on the roadside because they might be unhygienic.

Yes, it is true. We would be better off by completely avoiding them but what we have done is we replaced the unhygienic roadside food with a more hygienic combo of Lays, French fries, kaati rolls, burgers, and aerated drinks at fast food joints and there lies the irony.

The worst thing that can happen to you if you eat pani puri of questionable integrity is an upset stomach and maybe a little inconvenience to roommates/family members for a couple days. That is it. It is completely treatable and our immunity system may even get a little robust in the process but regular consumption of processed foods like chips, French fries and colas give us obesity, makes us susceptible to heart disease, diabetes, kidney problems...

You see the difference?

If you eat pani puri twice a day for five days in a row, your body tells you're doing too much pani puri. Your stomach makes a 'I-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this' noise on the sixth day and you'll automatically stay away from it for a few weeks. There is no such biological red signal for too much Pepsi.

Street food is unhygienic. Fast food is unhealthy.

Middleclass doublethink

Don't be that guy who drives a super bike in the city

Just because your bike can go from 0 – 60 in 5.2 seconds doesn't mean you should do it on Bannerghatta Road. Dude, don't get me wrong. The bike your father gifted you can zoom at 220 KMPH on an abandoned airstrip and that is awesome. It literally inspires awe in my mind.

Having said that, I feel it is my duty to point out that on city roads you come across as a source of attention-seeking noise pollution. You may want to work on that. The way you startle uncles on Honda Activas by overtaking them in your typical rich kid my-dad-has-connections-so-I-can-hit-and-run-and-no-one-will-arrest-me driving style doesn't help at all. You may want to work on that too.

Don’t be that guy thinks anyone who hasn’t shaved in 2 weeks is depressed

No, they aren't. They're just too lazy to shave.

Don't be that guy who promptly changes the date at midnight

It's the next day only when
i) You have slept and woke up
OR
ii) There is sunlight

Don't be that guy who tells the driver how to drive

This happens a lot doesn't it?

Some people just instinctively take that responsibility to critique the driver, constantly giving him constructive feedback and instructions to the driver... “overtake the bus” “nice turn” “ikkada left” “speed breaker” “switch to the right lane” “now slow down...” “look at that asshole!” “horn kottu.. horn kottu” “put 4th gear” “goyya undi choosuko” “Tchah! We would've crossed the bridge by now if you switched to the right lane then.” ...

Self-appointed captains of the ship these people are. And while parking or reversing... the only time when the driver actually needs his help, they're on their dumb phones!

Don’t be that guy who dislikes cats because they are not loyal

Okay, what makes you think that animals should be loyal to humans?

Why do humans deserve loyalty from animals? Look at what you are doing to us. There are barely any large mammals left on the planet. Those that are still alive are imprisoned in “National parks” and “Forest reserves” where you poach them one by one. You kill them for their fur, for their horns, for their teeth, for their ivory, for their skin, for their balls and sometimes just for fun. These things are not even required for your survival! That is why animals in what you call "the wild" don’t trust you.

And look at the lives of animals that obey you. Bulls for instance have evolved in nature to graze all day in large groups on open grasslands occasionally defending themselves from a hunting tiger or a pack of wolves. You domesticated them and for the last ten thousand years, you’ve been cutting off their balls, making them plough your fields, pull your carts and generally torturing them for your needs from the moment they are born to the day their bodies are too old for that kind of slavery. And after you extract everything from them, you replace them with the next generation. It’s the same story with chicken, horses, pigs, sheep, donkeys and pretty much every species that is obedient to humans. This process gets unimaginably horrifying with the rise of mechanized food production. This is what happens to animals when they trust you.

Dogs are the only species to have benefited from showing loyalty to humans. Dogs not your best friends. They are your only friends. The rest of the animal community considers them back-stabbing sons of bitches anyway.

Hey, we don't use that sort of language on this blog.

What? All dogs are either bitches or sons of bitches. It's biology!

Psst. Check this out - http://win.blogadda.com/view-blogs-voting/humor_satire/gtoosphere/

Clockwork C2

Why is there so much time around?

Time? Who has time?

I mean information about time. Why are there so many devices that tell you the time all the time?

There is an alarm clock by your bed, another clock on the wall behind the alarm clock. In fact there is a clock in every room of your house and also in your phone, tablet, Kindle, camera and computer screen; on every photo, email, status, tweet, pin, scrap, fork, and cart; on your wrist watches, car dashboards, FM radios, mp3 players, TV channels, DVD players; in every shop, restaurant, public place, traffic signal and heck even on refrigerators, microwave ovens, and induction stoves!

It is almost impossible to look anywhere and not see a clock. You are a species of obsessive time-keepers!

That is because we have so little of it.

If there is one thing that everyone… humans, cats, dogs, trees… has equal amounts of, it is time. All have 24 hours in a day.

Yeah but between a coconut tree, a pet cat, and a human being, the human has much more things to do. We can't afford to waste much time.

But you waste so much time! And other people's time too. And you're always ten minutes late for everything.

Hey, I am always exactly ten minutes late, okay? That is punctual but just off the mark. That consistency deserves some credit, don't you think?

That “just off the mark” is what your boss calls “always late”. Why can't you make a small adjustment to your daily routine?

It's not that easy. I tried. I set my watch to run ten minutes faster. Setting the watch was easy but believing in it was difficult because my phone is synced with the network time. So I set my phone 10 minutes fast. And then I realized I had to set my computer too. And then my office computer and my tablet and my Kindle and...

Wow, you did that?

Yeah. I set all my clocks 10 minutes fast and tried to follow my new personal clock but these social networking apps just won’t let me. When someone just replied to a tweet, the twitter app would show it as “10 minutes ago”. Every time I try to really believe in something, the internet ruins it instantly. Soon I was mentally subtracting ten minutes every time I looked at my watch. The whole purpose is defeated.

You never fail to fail.

In my defense, my failure was inevitable. Those days are over. My grandfather had only two clocks – his wrist watch and another “grandfather” clock. If my grandfather wanted to get more punctual, all he had to do was to set both his clocks ten minutes fast and believe in it. That's it. It was that simple for him. But it's much more complicated now.

It's weird... this human obsession for precise time-keeping.

What do you mean weird?

It's not natural. I mean cats don't believe in it. I rely on the sights and sounds of nature to keep track of time. The sparrow's morning invitation that says “bite me”, the warmth of the sunlight in the afternoon when I nap near the kitchen window, the secretive squeaks of mice as they pore through your trash at midnight... these are the things that tell me the time. We rely on our instincts.

Yes, wearing a watch is unnatural for cats. If I saw a cat wearing a watch, I'd shit in my pants and call the Army. But what is unnatural for cats is not necessarily unnatural for humans.

What about your great-grandfather? He didn't have much use for a clock. He probably just followed the rhythms of nature just like cats.

Humans for thousands of years before him kept track of time only through the natural cycles of day and night, the movement of the sun, moon and constellations in the sky. They didn't care about the exact time. It didn't matter whether it was 6:40 AM or 7:20 AM. It was just “morning” but seasons mattered a lot. They anxiously watched out for the signs of changing seasons, growth of plants and migration of birds. What they did on a typical summer day was vastly different from what they did on a spring day which was completely different from how they chilled during Kaartheeka Maasam. That is what I call natural.

That is a very vague definition of natural.

Forget about the definitions. I'll tell you what is not natural: Your life where you are stalked, hounded, judged, chided, rigidly monitored, intimidated and enslaved by your own clocks. That is not natural.

Oh come on, it's not as bad as you make it seem.

I'm telling you... clocks are the real masters of mankind.

That is bullshit.

Oh yeah? Who woke you up in the morning?

I woke up by myself...

Abba cha!

...with some generous help from four different alarms.

See! You begin your day by begging the clock for 20 more minutes of snooze time. When you eventually wake up, the clock reminds you that you have overslept by 14 minutes and makes you feel guilty about it.

For the record, I never feel guilty about too much sleep.

Do you wake up moments before your alarm clock actually goes off?

Sometimes...

Do you know why?

I don't know... I never thought about it.

It's fear.

Fear?

Yes, fear. All your life, you've been conditioned to wake up afraid of being late to work or school or some other appointment. Your day begins exactly at 9:10 AM. Then you have a 5 minute shower, make “2 minute” noodles and catch the 9:40 bus for a “25 minute” commute to reach office exactly 10 minutes late for the meeting that starts precisely at 10:30 AM every morning. Everything you do... what you do, when you do, how to do it is all dictated by The Clock.

At least I don't sleep when it is time to sleep.

I'll give you credit for that but don't you see bigger picture?

You eat lunch not when you are hungry but because it is time for lunch. Students open their books not out of interest or curiosity but because there isn't much time before the exams. Parents want their daughters to get married early because they think she is running out of time.

People go to the gym and run for exactly 30 minutes till a beeper announces that their workout is over. Friends try to wish each other on their birthdays at the stroke of midnight. You make resolutions to exercise, read, and spend more time with loved ones not because you feel from within that you should become a better person but because it is that time of the year when everyone makes resolutions. No wonder they all crash in the first two weeks. The list is endless.

Thank you. Happy new year to you too!

So how did you end up like this?

We invented clocks for obvious reasons

Yeah but in those days, each city had its own time based on local sunrise and sunset cycles.

It changed with the industrial revolution. It made transportation faster and with it, synchronization of clocks became very important especially for the railways. It was so important that the British govt. passed a law in 1880 that required all timetables in Britain to follow the single time of Greenwich. It was the first time in human history that the population of an entire country was obliged to live by an artificial clock.

It is the norm now.

Trust me, it feels completely “natural”. The assembly lines along which modern industries are organized also require thousands of employees and machines to work in tandem following precise timetables. From those modest beginnings, the whole world eventually got tuned to GMT.

Unfortunately the assembly line mentality was not limited to industrial production only. It percolated into almost every sphere of human activity. Strict timetables are imposed on schools, hospitals, restaurants, prisons and everything else. Scientists are even debating if we should really follow the movement of the earth around the sun for our time.

That is the story of humanity. You just keep withdrawing from nature at every step. You biologically evolved to be hunter-gatherers in open grasslands and moderately dense forests. Then you domesticated animals, figured out agriculture, invented the wheel, learned to extract metal, started trading and ended up living in towns and cities so that you don't have to depend on the wilderness for food.

The Industrial Revolution and faster communication channels implied that your reach is not limited by geography. Air conditioning and other things ensured that you don't have to care about the weather or the seasons either.

You reached a stage where you eat genetically modified organisms, drink corn-sugar solutions in plastic bottles and live in houses with smooth monochromatic surfaces and right angles. The end result is a life devoid of organic experiences. A life that involves an endless loop of waiting for weekends and then wondering where the hell it went!

Finally when the body and mind complain about the dreadful monotony of rigid timetables under the tyranny of clocks, you realize you need to take some time off to “unwind”... much like rusty old CLOCKS!

I don't like the way you say clocks anymore.

The idea of a modern vacation is itself quite funny. It is not a coincidence that the most popular holiday spots – mountains, beaches, lakes and the countryside – are places with the least number of clocks.

What is your ideal holiday? Let me guess. You wake up when you feel like waking up. You eat when you are hungry. You stare at the clouds, hear the birds, smell the flowers and feel the fleeting wind all at once. Your senses are working at their peak capacity.

You lose track of time. You do things that excite you, maybe even things that exhilarate you. You introspect and try to make meaningful connections with your identity, religion, people, and nature. Just in a short while, you begin to feel really alive, momentarily free from the clock. You wonder why you don't do this more often.

But not for long because time flies, especially when you are on a low budget 3 days-2 nights package holiday. And then your holiday comes to an abrupt end with the hotel charging half a day's extra rent for overshooting the check out time by 35 minutes.

Welcome to The Clock!

The Sleeper Class Protocol

The Sleeper Class Protocol

I was in a sleeper class compartment from Bangalore to Rajahmundry last week. I got an upper berth. A family of four occupied the two lowers and a middle – 4F (a little girl), 28F (her amma), and 55F (her ammamma) and 31M (her father). There was a 27M in the other middle berth and a 37M in the opposite upper.

The family of four, like any other family in a train, made themselves at home by occupying the entire place under the lower berths (3 large suitcases, 2 large bags, 3 small bags, 2 jute bags with bamboo handles, and a polythene bag), on the lower berths (hand bags, magazines, food, toys, stationery), and between the lower berths (footwear, 5L water can, stretched out legs, more food).

They didn’t just occupy physical place. They have created an emotional space around their two lower berths forcing the lone male passengers to the fringes. The 37M settled in his upper berth even though it was three in the afternoon and he was in no mood for a nap. The 27M with the middle berth occupied my upper berth and I sat on the side-lower with my legs stretched out.

29F, the side upper lady, got in at Whitefield. Her husband had a side upper in S5. We sat in our respective sides of the berth with our legs respectfully folded. I spent most of the afternoon and the evening staring out of the window looking at the rugged Rayalaseema landscape. The excellent monsoon this year has brought life to an otherwise barren Deccan landscape. It was nothing like the neatly manicured green of coastal Andhra or the wild greens further up north in Orissa but rather an inhibited green of wild grasses and semi-arid vegetation heroically growing out of the loose cracks in solid Deccan rock punctuated by large puddles of water in what used to be an excellent network of storage tanks. It was beautiful nonetheless.

The TTE came to check the tickets around dusk and that was when the side-upper lady realized that the side-lower berth was not mine. She immediately called her husband in S5 and told him that the side-lower is free even though I was sitting barely 2 feet away from her. I knew right away that she was planning to usurp me.

I went to the toilet, stood at the door for a little while and came back to see the side-upper lady encroach about six inches of my half of the berth, a subtle but noticeable assertion of territorial ambitions. I was cautious for the next one hour.

There was another joint family consisting of two brothers, their wives, kids, and a bachelor babai (chacha) having a nice family time in the next cabin playing Housie (Tambola) and munching on snacks. Their first few games were played just for fun but when they started playing for money, I felt like intruding. Now I couldn’t just go and ask them if I could join. It was a family thing. So I had to work my way into the game, first by teaching their little girl how to doodle Mickey Mouse, making an occasional eye contact with the players, smiling at their jokes once in a while until they got the point and invited me. Each ticket was 10 rupees.

For the next one and a half hours, I ate their food, played with their kids, made fun of the babai, and sucked at their game. I never thought it was possible to suck at Housie but now I know. I lost thirty rupees.

I returned to my seat to find the side-upper lady occupying almost three-fourths of the berth. I gestured the news of my arrival by clearing my throat and she responded to my gesture by reluctantly withdrawing into her half of the berth. The animosity was out in the open now. It’s funny how we knew nothing about each other except that the hatred is mutual.

Twenty minutes later, she called her husband and asked him to come for dinner. Her husband was not in the mood for dinner. He probably ate a few samosas at Kuppam. She asked him to "first come and then we can decide when we want to eat” in an impatient tone. Being an excellent eavesdropper, I knew right away what was happening and predictably her husband came and she requested me to sit somewhere else while they eat dinner. I could see the husband. I could smell the biryani. There was nothing I could do. I had to move.

I now sat on the side upper berth reading a book and they did not open the dinner for the next one hour. I knew it was unfair but what can I do. I can’t protest against a couple talking to each other. I read my book without being too worked up about it. Sometime later, the husband left and I thought I’ll go back to my side-lower. She was sitting with her legs stretched out comfortably and refused to move.

Me: Excuse me?
29F: What?
Me: I want to sit here
29F: Is this your berth?
Me: I was sitting here before you requested me to sit somewhere else while you had dinner. I notice that you have had dinner.
29F: Why don’t you sit in your place?
Me: The middle berth guy is sleeping in my berth. I’ve been sitting here since the beginning.
29F: This is not your berth.
Me: This is not your berth either.
29F: Mine is side-upper

The argument went back and forth for a few times. She claimed the right to the side-lower berth because she, as the side-upper berth passenger, already owns half the berth and it is logical that the other half belongs to her if it is free. I argued that someone was supposed to come to side-lower berth but did not. So the berth belongs to those who occupied it first, which in this case happens to be me. The side upper person only owns half the berth till 10PM after which the side-lower passenger has the right to ask the side-upper passenger to retire to her berth.

We agreed to disagree and sat on our respective halves of the berth intensely hating each other and plotting the next move. Half an hour later, she announced that she wants to sleep and that I should go to my berth. I told her I didn’t think so and took 45 minutes to eat 3 puris for the next 45 minutes while tweeting on my phone leisurely.

A gentleman from the next cabin who has been silently tracking the conflict since the beginning interfered. I reasoned with him my position that the Sleeper Class protocol states that an empty berth belongs to the first occupant. That is the rule in the general compartment. That is the rule with Waiting List tickets. Why would it be any different in this case? He agreed with me. A couple of guys from the Housie game also agreed with me. I was building the public opinion for me and was reasonably confident till she said, “Rules antha saray andi kaani ladies request chesthe koncam adjust avvaali kadha?” (Rules and all are fine but when “ladies” request, he should adjust a little don’t you think?)

The word “Ladies” has special status in Andhra culture. It’s a euphemism for respectable women and the plural is used even if it is just one woman. The rules of public behavior are very straight forward. “Ladies” should not be inconvenienced in anyway. 

I protested that she is a woman equal to me in all respects. She has no children traveling with her, she is not a senior citizen who has trouble getting to the upper berth, and she doesn’t have much luggage either but no one bought my feminism. There is no recovering from the L-bomb. My public support literally vanished and soon the public too.

I went to the wash basin to wash my hands and by the time I was back, the Evil side-upper lady has marked her territory by covering the side lower berth, my side lower berth, with a floral pattern bed sheet.

Less than ten minutes later the train stopped at Katpadi junction and the rightful owner of the side-lower, a lanky college student from Kakinada, showed his ticket and told the Evil side-upper lady that it is his berth. My lips automatically curled into a smirk which she noticed. The Katpadi junction college student from Kakinada had no chance. Some noble wars have inevitable collateral damage. He slept on side upper and I stole his side lower the moment she got down at Vijayawada.

***

Bonus (if you have come this far):

Don't be that guy 3

Don’t be that guy: The Awkward Wallpaper guy

Have you noticed that there are a lot of people who have "hot" pictures of models and actresses as desktop wallpapers? What's the deal with them? I understand if they are teenage students first time away from home and got a new computer in a Boys' Hostel but a mid-twenties guy with wallpapers like that on his work PC? What is the school of thought behind that?

Some guys even put a slideshow so that they don’t have to stare at the same picture all the time. It doesn't matter if it is early in the morning, late afternoon, just after dinner or past midnight, they just want to see cleavage all the time. Now they even have them on their phones. I find that fascinating.

At one level, I am impressed with their commitment and their perseverance but I always wonder, what exactly are they trying to tell the world with those wallpapers? That they are horny all the time? Or is it a subtle message to their parents that it is time for them to search for a suitable "traditional girl with modern outlook"?

Don’t be that guy: Consumer Loyalty Activist

Let me ask you a question. Do you really think Pantene shampoo has a unique pro-V formula that nourishes and protects your hair from deep within the roots? No? Then why do you think business people mean it when they say, “Customer is King”?

“Thank you for being a loyal customer” is typically the kind of bullshit they tell you when they are trick you into spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need. You shouldn’t have believed it in the first place. Common sense.

Besides why are you investing your loyalty on a corporation? Corporations don’t have ethics. They have mission statements and their objective is to make as much money as possible in whatever way possible without ever compromising on the bottom line (look it up). By definition they don’t give a shit about your loyalty, your rights, your safety, your health, your happiness or your general wellbeing. The only reason they say they do is because they are legally required to say that they do. Common sense again.

And did you just say consumer rights? What the hell are you talking about dude? You live in a country where Human Rights activists are whacked off by the police, where RTI activists routinely die in road “accidents”, where artists singing songs about songs about child malnutrition are arrested for “allegedly aiding and abetting Naxal activities”, where speaking out against superstitions can get you shot in the head by unidentified gun men and you want justice for a dispute over an online order consisting of a ballpoint pen with an LED flashlight cap? Which parallel universe are you from? Just walk across the street, stand in the queue and pay with cash like everyone else.

Don’t be the guy who uses ‘common’ when he means ‘come on’

Come on people, you shouldn't be making such common mistakes.

Don’t be that woman: The disruptive shopper

Don’t be that woman who goes shopping, makes the salesperson unfold 74 pieces of clothing before deciding that she didn't like any of them and moving on to the next section. I am probably entering dangerous territory here but why do you have to look at so many clothes, especially when you weren't even planning to buy anything in the first place?

I know window shopping is fun but what about the poor guy who has to fold all those things back?

Yes, it's his job but that doesn't mean you go to his workplace during office hours and give him more work. How would you feel if a stranger walks into your office and makes you sit through two hours of extra meetings for no reason?

Don’t be that guy who thinks he is saving the environment by taking notes on an iPad

An iPad requires about 15 kg of various raw minerals and 300 liters of water as raw material. An iPad weighs about 650g and the rest of the material goes to a landfill as toxic waste. Most of our gadgets require trace amounts of rare metals like Tantalum, Tin and Tungsten which is fueling a deadly war and genocide in Congo. The manufacturing process overall releases 15,000 liters of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Shipping is not free, so include the amount of fossil fuels burned to move the iPad from China to US and then to India through a cousin who is coming for the holidays.

Finally when Apple releases the next version, you "upgrade" yourselves by dumping it somewhere and it eventually makes its way to a slum near Delhi where the electronic trash is dismantled by hand by slum dwellers, often children, who are exposed to a range of toxic substances and we have no idea about the long term effects on their health for cleaning up the mess for us. And we'll never know because we don’t fund hospitals and researchers to study those kinds of things that happen to those kinds of people (unless they die in sufficiently large numbers for the media to milk a story on a slow news day).

But hey, the product comes neatly packed in a cardboard box that is made entirely of recyclable (but never recycled) materials. It even has a green colored picture of a tree on it. So we're cool!

Comic by Andy Singer
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/singer_andy.htm

*All numbers from: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/04/opinion/04opchart.html?_r=0

[This is a public service announcement]

Don’t be that relative: The Wedding Small Talker

Don’t be that relative whose first (and only) question to any twenty-something year old woman is, “When are you getting married?”

I understand that you ask about her marriage with only the best intentions in mind. I know you want her to get married, settle down in the US, give birth to US, give them Anglicized Sanskrit names, invite the baby’s grandparents for babysitting, and live happily ever after but not all women believe in that American dream.

People these days tend to have different career trajectories, personal ambitions, education loans, childhood dreams, office shit, relationship stuff and a lot of other things to deal with before they can “settle down”. You really have no idea what is actually happening in her life, so you have no right to put peer pressure on her parents to marry her off before some imaginary Sravana Maasam based deadline. Such questions serve no purpose except causing extra stress for everyone.

You are basically the reason unmarried people don't like attending their cousins' weddings. The next time you run into a twenty-something-yet-to-be-married girl at a wedding, just compliment on her saree, inquire about her grandparents’ health and move on to the next person. If you want to extend the small talk further, you can discuss the weather, other relatives, your childhood stories, Telangana and something else.

[End of public service announcement]

Whose Mother-in-Law is it anyway?

I always get fascinated how the real owners of society have managed to raise armies to fight their causes for free.

The war in Syria?

No. No, looking at the "SAVE Attharintiki Daaredhi" campaign. I am really impressed at the majestic display of power that our leaders have in controlling the minds, thoughts and actions of the people. It's truly remarkable.

Save what campaign?

Attharintiki Daaredhi (translates to “Which way to my mother-in-law’s house?”) It’s a Telugu movie starring actor Pawan Kalyan. Scores and scores of young Pawan Kalyan fans around the world took to the streets and social media to “save” the movie.

Save the movie from what?

From internet piracy

How do you do that?

By raising awareness about the evils of internet piracy. On how by the act of selfishly watching a pirated version of the movie in the comfort of our bedrooms, we are no different from pickpockets, robbers and dacoits raiding and stealing from the movie producer’s coffers.

They are posing the most important moral question of our age: What kind of assholes deliberately do things that affect the lives of so many hard working actors, directors, producers and crew and their families?

That sounds like bullshit a Hollywood lawyer would throw at Pirate Bay. How did it all start?

Some guy with a wicked sense of humour, allegedly an editing assistant who worked on the movie, leaked high quality footage of the first 90 minutes of the movie onto the internet even before its release.

The fans (mostly males in their early teens to late twenties) were horrified at this news. They shook their head in sacrilege disbelief and wanted to fight this injustice. They took to streets, got on twitter, and formed an army. They fist-pumped, chest-bumped and high-fived each other, made resolutions to fight this war and defeat those cyber pirates.

They were not going to rest till the last pirated copy of the movie was removed off the net. They are going to make everyone go to the theatres and watch the movie there. They are going to ensure the profits for the producers. They will to use this opportunity to showcase their collective strength and establish their superiority over fans of other heroes. They will make their hero be proud of them.

Thus the campaign "Kill Piracy – Save Attarintiki Daredi – Save Telugu Films" was born.

You guys are nuts!

That is only the beginning. Telugu movie fans all around the world spontaneously burst into action. Some fans have taken resolutions to watch the movie two or three times in the theatre just to pay for the sins of their fellow dishonest Gult citizens and green card holders. They organized themselves on the social media to report links to the anti-piracy cell so that those links can be taken down and legal notices sent if required. Pawan Kalyan’s fans have formed an alliance with Mahesh Babu’s fans to raid CD shops selling pirated mp3s and shut them down.

They have shared, put up and walked around with Save Attharintiki Daredi, Save Telugu Film Industry posters and banners. Some NRIs even released videos of them wearing PAWANISM T-shirts and trying to articulate the power and greatness of their hero on their way to watch the movie. And finally when news reports emerged that the movie broke box-office collection records, they celebrated by bursting crackers on a weekday afternoon.

What is this PAWANISM?

PAWANISM is a way of life that involves watching celebrating every Pawan Kalyan movie that releases, following and worshipping the stunts, dialogues, dance and charisma of their leader Pawan Kalyan who is rumoured to be an intellectual because he was once seen wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt inside a shopping mall. The intellectual part thankfully is just a rumour.

Is he that good?

No, nothing like that. They just idolize the fictionalized persona of a mediocre actor who happens to be the younger brother of actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi. It’s not just Pawan Kalyan. Every movie star has a religious following like that.

I don’t know why but part of being a fan includes praising the actor’s masculinity. All the characters in these movies make unsubtle references to the hero’s manliness, ferocity, tiger-like agility, his lion-like courage, the mass appeal of his family, his forefathers’ virility and the awesomeness of his fans and followers in general.



The fans are really into what metaphors are used to praise the power, stamina, influence and the greatness of their hero. It is one of the aspects of the movie they look forward to and compete with fans of other rival heroes on this idea of masculinity. This even forms the basis of college politics in a lot of colleges in Andhra. These manhood issues are a very recent phenomenon.

You people are nuts! I understand hero worship. Europeans break each other’s jaws over football rivalry all the time. I am all for people punching strangers in the face but fighting internet piracy like this is a little hypocritical, don't you think? I mean when was the last time you Googled "XYZ movie songs free download" and felt guilty about it?

Exactly! The hypocrisy is Himalayan. I want to take yoga classes to expand my consciousness so that I can fully appreciate the supreme irony of all this.

I know you humans and I know you are not a very honourable species to begin with. You guys aren't acing any moral-science exams just as yet. You routinely lie about what you are and what you do to your parents, bosses, girl-friends, the income tax department, traffic police and pretty much everyone. You cheat like it is your birth right if you can get away with it but two days before the release of the movie, you people are out on the streets lecturing everyone about rights and wrongs… screaming about protecting intellectual property of Telugu film makers?

That's the thing. What is so "intellectual" about these movies that warrant "protection"? The Telugu Film Industry is not oozing with original ideas and creativity by any standard. Scripts, story lines, jokes, action sequences, and music scores are routinely ripped off with impunity from Hollywood, Hong Kong, Korean and other world cinema and suddenly, this special group of anointed fans get a sudden attack of conscience, grant themselves moral worthiness, act like cyber vigilantes, shutting down shops, reporting links…

So they are trying to protect the intellectual property rights of people who have no problem stealing from others?

Pretty much. Let me make one point absolutely clear. I have nothing against this movie. I have not seen the movie. I haven’t even seen the trailer. Bits of it are probably funny. I heard that the second heroine is hot. In fact, I respect the talents of writer-director Trivikram Srinivas. The quality of the movie is NOT my concern here at all.

What is amusing to me is the total lack of perspective in these self-organized armies of fans that have formed to defend the financial interests of the movie's investors. If you look at their hard disks, I bet you’ll find a lot of Allari Naresh movies, contraband Hollywood movies and illegal porn. They didn’t buy those original DVDs. They downloaded them from the internet, just like everyone else. Let them first pay for all the HD movies, the HBO series and for all the times they jerked-off for free, maybe then I'll listen to their lectures on “The honourable way of watching a movie”

Every movie industry in the world has been reeling with the problem of piracy for a couple of decades now and Tollywood has solved it. Their efforts of building the mythology of macho star power seemed to have paid off. The most interesting thing is that these people spend their own money in droves and then take pride in the profits it generated for someone else. Even Apple cannot dream of such obedient consumers!

Here's what I find really pitiful about the fans. If anyone of the ethical self-righteous movie-going fans, after all that they have done to save the profits of the movie, walk up to the producer for a chat or something, he would most probably treat them with the same contempt as a shepherd treats a goat in his herd. The industry doesn't care about the fans. They don't give a damn. All they care is how to take their money as easily as possible. And they are already doing it quite efficiently.

Think about it. If the actors and the directors really had even the tiniest bit of respect for their loyal fans, they would at least have the decency to put an honest effort into making movies instead of selling the same recycled misogynist machismo drivel shot in a foreign location.

Instead we have fans trying really hard to say nice things about the movie with a sense of duty. And mind you, all this action is happening when the state itself is going through the worst political crisis in decades.

I totally forgot about it. Wasn't your state supposed to be split into two or three?

Yeah, ever since the central government declared in August that it is proactively considering bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh, a huge political turmoil ensued in all parts of the state.

Schools and colleges were shut down, protests and strikes were enforced, banks refused to open for business, industries became inoperable, government employees are on strike, public transport is paralysed, and politicians are making trips to Delhi contemplating in their business class seats if they should threaten to resign and yes, the release of Attharintiki Daaredi itself got postponed for the same reason.

This Samaikhya Andhra paralysis is happening at a time when the economy is already at its worst with the collapse of the manufacturing sector due to the power shortage, the on-going agrarian crisis, and massive unemployment. The postal department made an announcement for two hundred odd clerk posts and more than ten thousand people – many of them unemployed engineers with education loans on their head – applied for those clerk posts! That is the future.

A lot of these fans themselves are staring into the same uncertain future but reality doesn't seem to bother them at all. The box office fortunes of their hero's films continue to be their biggest concern in life.

Am I supposed to empathize with them?

Do you want to?

I am not answering that question.

Most of this is written by Flawsophy

Ahead of the curve

"My favorite hero made more money than your favorite hero" seems to be the latest trend in Bollywood. This validates my theory that Gult people are ahead of everyone and are leading the nation in things that matter the most.

For instance, we sang “Aa ante Amalapuram” way back in 2004. Bollywood copied it when, 2012? We inappropriately ogled at Genelia D'Souza in 2003. They only started doing it only a couple of years before her marriage. We are way ahead!

Between 2001 and 2008, our movies blew up more SUVs into the air than America did in Iraq and Afghanistan during the same period. Bollywood discovered the magic of flying Tata Sumos only after Rohit Shetty happened to it.

By 2009, district-wise collection numbers of recently released mainstream movies was Breaking News on TV9. NDTV reached that state only recently. Based on these trends, I am predicting frenzy caste based violence between Akshay Kumar’s fans and Salman Khan’s fans in London by 2016.

It’s not just in patronizing useless movies (where we clearly kick ass) that we lead the nation. Among separate state movements for instance, movements for Bodoland, Vidarbha, Kodagu, and Gorkhaland etc. are just waking up now, after we crossed the finish line and Telangana is waiting for the presentation ceremony.

Our students have consistently dominated (dowry fuelled) migration to the US for at least two decades now. We are also the first ones to detect America’s decline and started migrating to Germany and Scandinavian countries because a foreign degree is cheaper in those semi-socialist countries. Again, ahead of the curve!

Narendra Modi’s paintings of a glorious “developed” Bharat may look new to you but Gults are not really impressed to be honest. You know why? Because our ex-CEO Babu Chandrababu already showed us the same neo-liberal dream in 2001 through his vision document called Vision 2020 which had visions of Hyderabad looking like a cheap 3D animated knock-off of Dubai. It was probably the first PowerPoint presentation to be shown in all movie theatres.

Multinational Corporations dictating laws in the country may be catching up now at a national level but we hired McKinsey & Co. back in 1999 to give us a road map of how to implement neo-liberal policies dictated by the World Bank and IMF. So all this talk of development and growth… its déjà vu. We’ve been there, done that. It ended in a lot of farmer suicides and 10 years of Congress rule (from which we may never recover).

The only regret about our Swarnandhra Pradesh phase, if any, is losing to Maharashtra in farmer suicides. We finished at a close second position just behind Maharashtra which continues to be the undisputed champion of Agrarian Crisis. All credit for this must go to Sharad Pawar. I give credit where it is due. 

All this talk of politics is useless banter. We don’t really care because we know God is on our side. Which other state can boast of a temple that patents its prasadam and commercially sells it in select outlets across three states? Some of our Churches gift eight cement bags to anyone who attends the Sunday prayer for six months without fail and our mosques make news only during real estate disputes and communal disharmony. Tax-free enterprises all of them!

We are also pioneers in preferring English education to our mother tongue. Parents take immense pride of the fact that their kids cannot read or write anything but English. In fact, we started this trend way back in the 1890s. It is beautifully captured in the literature of those times but we abandoned much of the progressive literature, theatre, and music of the last century, so we wouldn't know much about it.

What we do know is that our news media is the best. Did you know that there are over sixteen Telugu 24x7 news channels that look the same, feel the same, and make the same hysterical cacophony about the same non-issues at any given point of time? No other regional language or state has that many news channels. We are spoiled with choice.

The cross ownership of national media is something that is being debated in recent times but in Andhra, conflict of interest has been the norm for over 30 years now. Tamil news media however continues to define the term Conflict of Interest.

Our news channels have been leading the nation with their radically disruptive journalistic practices too. For instance they routinely barge into pubs, restaurants, hotels, bedrooms, bathrooms, and hospitals to shoot videos of people minding their own business and edit them to look inappropriate so that they can blackmail them. This ‘Either black money or TRPs’ business model is what seasoned entrepreneurs call a win-win situation.

Same trend in the paid news department too. What Telugu media was doing during the 2004 elections was quite ahead of its time. It took five more years for the national media to internalize this election rigging business model and stoop our level.

Forget politics, religion, the media and other things. India's greatest asset is its human capital and when it comes to raising the next generation, we are the all-time undisputed heavy weight champions in school education and parenting best practices.

As trailblazers in the education sector, our corporate schools and colleges have done some ground breaking research on how children spent their time and how each activity affected their performance in standardized tests. Studies have shown that children with healthy childhoods scored slightly less marks than children with no childhood. And “slightly less” is not acceptable for a competitive Andhra parent and thus the Apartment Complex High School was born.

The Apartment Complex High School is a really simple idea. I wonder why no one has ever thought of it before. It is basically a high school packed into a four storeyed apartment building. The first two floors consist of 2BHK apartments converted to class rooms. The third and fourth floors are hostels. The parking lot is converted to a kitchen and the balconies are fitted with iron grills to prevent depressed students from jumping to certain death.

The school ground is a token half basketball court with a rusted hoop and no net used for parking white SUVs belonging to the administration. But that’s okay because the kids are not allowed to play. Yeah, we abolished the games period in school sometime between 2004 and 2005. Playing games doesn't help kids score better in math, so what’s the point?

Literature, languages, social sciences, arts, games, craft and library periods also had to go to make way for “study hours” where students mug up printed notes and All-in-One guides because that is what is required for success in exams and success in exams is the ultimate goal of education in this country. Let’s not pretend any other way.

This paradigm shifting bottom-line education with focus on math, physics and chemistry marks alone has reaped us rich dividends as we can see from the number of Gults flooding the IITs each year who ultimately serve the country by doing an MBA and/or get married, hopefully with a huge dowry.

Vijayawada got its first apartment complex school more than 10 years back. Bangalore is getting them now, and we are the ones building them! Parents in other states are slowly appreciating the convenience of locking up kids in an apartment complex school from 7:30 AM to 8:30 PM. Besides, it mentally prepares them for the dead end corporate jobs they will have to do when they reach adulthood. Now that is preparing the next generation for the economy of the future.

If you are wondering what India will look like in the future, look no further than the soon-to-be erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh. Gultisthan Zindabad!

Oh my Dog!

Over the last couple of months, I have been doing some independent research on dogs (you know collecting statistics, normalizing the raw data, drawing probability density curves, adjusting for bias in fill conditional distributions and shit like that) and I think I have reached a level where I can look at a dog and its surroundings and predict with a fair degree of accuracy whether it will chase me or not. I am here to share some wisdom. Read the full post here http://www.the-nri.com/lifestyle/item/3691-my-dog-days

Genie's cat

My Worst Nightmare

Don't be that guy either

Continued from: http://gtoosphere.blogspot.com/2013/05/dont-be-that-guy.html

Don’t be that guy: Deodorant Commercial Guy

Men (most of them) like women. All men like looking at beautiful women. Women also like looking at beautiful women. Beautiful women are nice to look at. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, however, is the way men look at women.

Do we really have to give that aggressive, lecherous, leering stare that involves a 180 degree sweep, full body scan, mental undressing and lusty ogling every time a women passes by? I am not talking about the eve teasers and other assorted jerks near the bus stop. Everyone from class VIII kids to 50 year old happily married uncles in this country stare like they are starring in a deodorant advertisement.

I am not asking you to stop looking at women completely. It is okay to subtly steal a glance once in a while but don’t make them feel uncomfortable. And don’t think even for a second that women like that sort of attention. They do not. I have the inside information. Women do NOT enjoy being stared at like that under any circumstance. Not even a little bit… even if you are Ryan Gosling or whoever that Hollywood Mahesh Babu is.

Don’t be that guy: Dr. U. Salaha

Some people are so very knowledgeable about health, beauty, healthy living and life in general that they feel that it is their duty to educate other people about it, even if they are complete strangers. It doesn’t matter if you have just met and are doing some polite small talk. They have to slip in a piece of totally unsolicited medical, beauty or diet related best practices based advice.

These Dr. Salahas (Salaha = advice) don’t just randomly throw advice. They do a preliminary diagnosis by scanning you from top to bottom, identify some obvious flaws (that you are already conscious about), point them out in public and then offer free solutions.

 
If you are a little patient, the conversation will eventually steer towards natural, herbal remedies chiefly propagated by Eenadu paper’s Vasundhara supplement.

The more you entertain their advice, the more incredulous it gets.

If you’re not fully convinced about the magical properties of everyday ingredients, they present relevant peer reviewed empirical evidence

And if you endure long enough, they get carried away and might even refer you to their favorite doctor. (This happened to me)

How do we deal with these uncles? 

Don't be that guy: The unofficial Brand Manager

Don’t be that guy who corrects people when they pronounce Volkswagen with a V instead of ‘Fau’. I know it is pronounced Folks-wagon. I just don’t give a shit about the correct pronunciation.

Don't be that guy: The Tip Nazi

Notice how some people are extremely fussy about restaurant service, especially when they are dining at posh restaurants?

They complain about everything. The list goes on and on. They have to complain about everything. People who normally don’t bother washing their hands after peepee demand hand sanitizers after touching a shiny brass door knob. These are some of the profound consequences of our “paisa vasool” mentality.

Then there are Tip Nazis. Tip Nazis are not just fussy about the service. They take it one step further and take it out on the waiters.

When you tell them to relax and calm down, they have a self-righteous tone about it, “It’s their job. I am not asking them anything out of the world. I am just asking them to do their job properly”

Sometimes the “issue” with the waiter “escalates” and the manager has to step in. The manager being experienced in these matters offers a fake smile, an empty apology and a complementary milkshake and Tip Nazi feels like Che Guevara who stood up and showed it to the system. Don't be that guy.

I understand that you’re paying for the ambience, the service and the experience blah blah blah but you’re paying the restaurant, not the waiter! The waiter gets 8000 a month for taking shit from people like you. If you really have the balls, refuse to pay the 14% service tax to the restaurant and tell them you’ll pay when they hire well trained and better paid waiters.

Don't be that guy: The Wedding Uploader

What is the deal with people who spend the first three days of their married life uploading wedding photos on Facebook? Why are they nostalgic about something that happened day before yesterday? And what is with that grand stage, the diamond ring, the kneeling down, and the cheesy proposal during the engagement in front of your parents? Do you have any idea how lame that is?

And people in the audience, why are you saying “aww” in a chorus even though deep down you know that it is an arranged marriage and they are acting out some weird Bollywood dream sequence? Don’t encourage such unoriginal behavior. It is not good for society.

Even more to come...

Don't be that guy

Going by Flawsophy’s Via Negativa principle, there are two ways to become a better person. There is the MAXIMIZE GOOD way i.e. you are inspired by people of great courage, integrity, perseverance, wit, charisma, compassion, empathy, humility, kindness, magnanimity and want to be like that. Or you can simply MINIMIZE BAD by trying to ‘not be an asshole’.

Our mythology, popular culture and even self-help books are full of MAXIMIZE GOOD stories of inspiration, determination and the triumph of human spirit but (unfortunately) there isn't much emphasis on the MINIMIZE BAD approach.

Most of the challenges we encounter in the course of our mundane lives are domestic in nature where the stakes are not big enough to force us to “Rise to the occasion” and be a “hero” in the traditional sense. These domestic encounters however leave a lot of scope for people to act like assholes and get away with it and they do it way too often.

I believe that the world will be a better place if everyone consciously avoids being ‘that guy’ who does ‘that thing’.

Don’t be that guy: The Lift Caller

I was in a Schindler’s Lift the other day with six strangers and this fully grown man walked in talking on the phone. It wasn't an apologetic hushed “Okay… okay… I’ll call you later. Byebye” phone call. He was talking on the phone like a boss giving a full-fledged Knowledge Transfer session on the tax saving investment plans he has purchased in his 8 year old son’s name.

Everyone says Indians have no respect for other people’s privacy but they’re all wrong. We are yet to respect our own privacy! Respecting other people's privacy comes much later. I mean look at this guy. He walks in, stands right in between six awkward strangers and has a personal conversation like he was strolling in a coconut grove in Amalapuram.

It didn't end there. Once he was inside the elevator the phone’s reception got worse. A normal person under this circumstance would think, “Oh, I am in a metal box that is dangling in midair in the corner of a tall, large building. I should probably hang up and call back later when I am not surrounded by these creepy elevator people” but not this guy! This guy believes in freedom of speech in its purest form – noise.
 

Don’t be that guy: Obsessive Compulsive (Missed Call) Disorder

Don’t be the guy who gives 80 missed calls in the 90 minute span when his girlfriend is away from her phone. If she’s not answering the phone, she is probably busy with something, or having dinner, or sleeping, or watching a movie, or reading something, or just doesn’t feel like being on the phone right now. Women have a life outside their relationships too, you know?

As a general rule, do not give more than two back to back missed calls unless large numbers of people are dying in a short span of time (like an earthquake or a Zombie apocalypse).

And girls, stop counting the number of missed calls as a measure for how much he misses you. That is pathetic. If a guy is spending an hour of his free time giving 40 missed calls, it clearly means that he has no hobbies, no interests, no imagination or thoughts of his own. Why do you even like him?

Don’t be that guy: The Street Parkers

When it comes to parenting, parents really suck

I do not wish to contend C2's statement. I would just like to add that society sucks too because there are some things which even parents cannot control.

This gentleman in our colony for instance has two cars but only one car parking spot, so he parks his second car on the street. (It is amusing how people buy cars without figuring out where to park them). Now that he has parked his car on the footpath, it becomes his marked territory. He also gets furious at anyone who doesn't treat that space with the reverence and respect he thinks it deserves.

Thanks to gentlemen like these, there is an endless line of parked cars on every footpath on every street in every colony of every city because of which kids cannot play cricket because “the ball might break something”, cannot burst crackers because “it is too dangerous”. Edu penkulaata (Pitthu/Satoliya), Guti Billa (Gilli-danda) and a hundred other street games are not even in the vocabulary of the next generation because "if something happens to any of the cars, whose father will pay?"

What used to be a nimble, lively, and defining aspect of childhoods in our culture is now a parking lot – a cheap parking lot.

And then these car parkers meet up in social gatherings and reminisce in nostalgia, “When I was a kid, I used to play on the street all the time. In fact during summer vacations, we used spend more time on the street than inside the house… this generation kids toh… they spend all the time in front of the computer and Xbox only baba.”

More to come: http://gtoosphere.blogspot.in/2013/05/dont-be-that-guy-either.html