ते पुन्हा आले...

It's a Saturday morning, and you are having your morning tea.
The newspaper is lying on the table; untouched, but you are not interested to even peep into it - कारण रोज फक्त बैठकाच होतात, निकाल कही लागत नाही...

So, you switch on the idiot-box, and while changing channels, you coincidentally tune into a Marathi News show (yes, in this TRP Hungry era, News broadcast is also a kind of a show...)

”सरकारबांधणी अजून कगदावरंच... पण मुख्यमंत्री मात्र, एक मुंबईकरंच होणार, हे निश्चित!” the news anchor reads. You are not bothered, you wish that they should come to a decision soon. After all, it's almost a month that the results of the election are out and no government is formed yet. And it's a bad sign for the जानता to know that the administration is running without a CM.

But then, you tell yourself, “मित्रा, तू कशाला टेन्शन घेतोस, ती powerबाज लोकं बघतील काय करायचं ते... तू तुझं बघ आधी...” and you go to your favourite morning destination, after all, चाय पीने से pressure बनता है, भाई!

After enjoying your time in the washroom, you see that the same news show is still on but, there is one significant change in the Breaking News which was flashed a few minutes back and that which is shot right now.

All equations had changed...

बघतो तर काय,
ते पुन्हा आले...

तरीच पु.ल. म्हणून गेले होते,
“खरा नागपूरकर हा नागपूरला राहत नाही...”

असो,
पण politics काय असतं
आणि, ५६ सीट व ५६ इंची छातीत काय फ़रक असतो,
हे आज समजलं...

P.S. When I am entirely apolitical,
जे सुचले, ते लिहिले...

With only one hope that this alliance of completely different ideologies should last for the complete 5-year term.

JAI HIND!
JAI MAHARASHTRA!

What's in a Name?

I had once said that whenever any business becomes popular, other small companies try to harness its brand power by using the same brand name. WhatsApp Ladies Tailor seen in my vicinity was one such example.

The same logic is being applied in the case of our cities as well. Especially when you are in Mumbai, places like Parel and Lower Parel or Worli and Upper Worli for that matter have become common household names.

The latest obsession among the cities is Thane!

I vividly remember the days when the city of Thane meant going till the Teen Haath Naka and coming back but that’s almost two decades ago. Today’s Ghodbunder Road (or the G.B. Road as they call it) was a mere jungle then. (I wonder if no trees were cut down to carve a city out of Ghodbunder because I don’t recall any protests or agitations happening as they are now happening on account of Aarey! Maybe because Social Media was not popular then. But, that’s a different story for some other time)

Though Thane is not a part of the Mumbai district; being at a centre of Mumbai and since all the major cities like Borivali, Navi Mumbai and even the far fetched cities like Kalyan-Dombivli (villages-as the South Bombaywallah tend to call them) being nearby, everybody wants to live in Thane. But with the real estate prices going sky-high, it's not everybody’s cup of tea to buy a dream home in this city.

So to lure the common man, builders have come up with an idea of constructing houses in the outskirts of the city and calling them with some fancy names.

That's why you see Godrej calling some outer area of the city as Thane-Extension and Lodha calling the same as Upper Thane!

By the way, just while entering the Republic of Kalyan, you see The New BKC!

No, not the Bandra Kurla Complex, it's the BHIWANDI KALYAN CORRIDOR!

If Shakespeare would have lived to see this day, he would have definitely said,

“It’s all in the Name!”

The Art of Gossiping

You can't deny the fact that everybody loves gossiping.

Now, some may argue that females are more prone to this chattering.

If you feel that Men don't gossip; then it's the biggest myth!
The fact is, gossiping is never gender-biased. This starts from the very beginning of your life, be it in school or college, you tend to gossip. And this ’foreplay’ reaches its peak when you enter your workplace.

“सुना तुमने, राज और सिमरन के बीच कुछ चल रहा है...
दोनो रोज़ ऑफ़िस के बाद पानी-पूरी खाने जाते है...”

“इस काजल का नाम काजल नहीं बल्कि मक्खना होना चाहिए था... बॉस को मक्खन लगा-लगाकर प्रमोशन ले लेलिया...”

Such conversations are a part of the daily routine when you come to the office.

Once upon a time in one such office in India...

Yawning, you are trying to concentrate on your work when a colleague comes to you,

"Hey Dude, I heard something about you...”
(Now this is a very deadly statement to hear. When somebody tells you that he or she has heard 'something’ about you, your mind races towards hundred-odd things which could correspond to that something.)

"And what that something is?” Suspiciously you ask him, fearing what is kept for you in-store.

"I heard this... I heard that... and yes, I heard that as well!", he blushes, as if he has read the book on your life.

"And who the hell told you, all this nonsense?" you ask him a bit surprised.

"What’s his name? I don't remember.
Arnold Par...? I happened to have lunch with him today, but I don't know him", he confesses.

"Arnold Parkerson? From Sales and Services?" you ask, stressing on the name.

"I guess yes, Arnold Parkerson! Right! But I don't know him personally. Neither does he know me", he confesses again!

So the point here is, Arnold and your colleague don't know each other personally, but still, they tend to share gossip about you.

This anecdote proves that Men do gossip!

But while gossiping one should not forget the two basic rules -
1. Always gossip only in your closed circuit and not with any Tom, Dick and Harry.
2. Don't forget rule number 1.

These two rules were forgotten by Arnold while chattering in front of your colleague - a total stranger to him.

Because if you keep gossiping with anybody and everybody, then there will be some notorious elements in society who will make sure to make a gossip of you by writing about you in Media, Social Media and wherever possible!

An urgent call

(Though this is a work of creative fiction, then this may happen with anybody and everybody. Parental guidance is advised for reading this piece of shit)

You are visiting a tourist destination. The place is of historical importance and is a part of our national heritage.

They are playing an informative video singing the glory of the place when you receive a call.

No, it’s a call neither from your loved ones nor from your friend. But still, it’s that call which you can’t ignore.

When NATURE CALLS, no matter you are a kid or a full grown adult, no matter you are a मर्द or an औरत, you have no choice but to address it!

Though they are providing some really interesting information in the video, your heart is really not into it. Your mind is busy, devising the further action plan.

The moment the video gets over, you run helter-skelter (as if you are running for your life) in search of a washroom. The security guard in the premises is kind enough to guide you towards one of the makeshift toilets made at the other end.

Happily you break open the door which has GENTS written over it in black paint. But there seems to be some problem, you don’t go inside. In hurry, you then open the adjacent door. Horror strikes when you realise that both the toilets have only urinals and there is not a single pot available for potty!

In dismay, you run towards the same security guard. He pities at your condition but then he understands.

“Ladies में चले जाओ!” He suggests.

You look at him amazed as if asking him,

”Are you crazy?”

He gives you a look in response as if asking you,

“Do you have a choice?”

And you run again, this time towards another makeshift toilet which has “Ladies” written on it.

There, you see a lady waiting outside for her small kid to come out.

Desperate, you ask her -

(Next few lines are better expressed in Hindi so the language switch)

आप जो हर लड़की को, फिर उसकी उमर १६ हो या ३६, अपनी होने वाली Girlfriend की नज़र से देखते है, इस बार मजबूरी में कहते है,

“दीदी, वह बगल वाला toilet खाली है क्या, देखो ना दीदी”

She looks at you in disgust and shouts-

“भैय्या, यह ladies toilet हैं!”

“दीदी, मैं guard से permission लेक़र आया हूँ!” You respond, controlling all the pressure which has befallen you.

And those expressions on your face are enough for the lady to get convinced and just like the security guard, she too understands.

She nods and makes a way for you to enter your palace (heaven?) of the moment. You get inside quicker than the speed of wind and shut the door from behind... thud!

Next few moments which you experience; no words in any language can describe that feeling - eternal bliss!

Contented as you are done with the act, you look around, and then you shout the F word aloud!

What else can you do?

When you find out that there is no water in the toilet!

Being Virgo

Tuesday morning seems no worse than a Monday morning when you have had your Birthday celebration a night before.

The hangover still isn't over yet!

When you are a teetotaller and when you have lovely ladies at home who are no less than Master chefs and to add to it when your wife herself is a Home Baker, the hangover you suffer from is of Food, Desserts and Cakes!

Once in the office bus;
With sleepy eyes, as you try to concentrate on the morning newspaper, a fellow commuter asks you,

”Hey! Why are you still carrying an umbrella? It's a sunny day, boy!” (No, he doesn't address you as ’boy’ but having recently celebrated your 32nd Birthday, you wish he does! Because, दिल तो अभी बच्चा है, जी!)

You smile at him; not at all bothered to reply in detail.

But, then in your heart, you are already replying to him;

You tell him -

That you are a September born!

Being a September born, you are a Virgo!

Being a Virgo, you are overprotective about things!

Being overprotective, you don't take chances!

And since you don't take chances (not at least with weather), you are carrying an Umbrella!!!

And you know what?

In the late evening, as you return from the office,

It starts raining!

Artificial Intelligence, Indeed!

In an era obsessed with AI, virtual characters like Siri and Alexa are on the verge of becoming common household names.

Be it Google, Alexa or Siri, one thing which is common among all these Virtual Assistants is that they are supremely intelligent. They use your own data and demonstrate their intelligence in order to assist you.

On the night of October 1, as you prepare for your bed, Siri pops up on your phone.

Yawning, you ask her,

“Hey, Siri, What’s up?”

In a very caring tone, she suggests,

“My calendar shows that tomorrow is a government holiday. Please put your daily alarm off.”

You look at her in awe, then in dismay and then in anger and scream,

“बहन, Corporate Employees का दर्द तुम क्या जानो बहन!”

You will be admired and You will be missed, ALWAYS!

You reach home late from work. For a change, you are not active on Social Media and choose to sleep as soon as possible.

It is only when you wake up in the morning, you are shocked to know, what a loss that nation has suffered overnight.

Although you are not a keen follower of politics, neither are you a staunch supporter of any particular political party.

But still, you feel it like a personal loss.

In an era, when there were no takers for the concept of "Women Empowerment", when nobody thought of ”Beti Bachaao, Beti Padhaao”. Since then, you stood firm, portraying what an Indian Woman can do! You were not only an excellent orator but also a heavy hitter when it came to the action! You never forgot to empathize with the citizens of Motherland, whenever and from wherever they sought your help.

You will be admired, and you will be missed, Always!

ॐ शान्ति...

What is Life?

With wrinkled clothes and tousled hair, as you collapse on one of the ‘not so comfortable’ bus seats, it’s already dark.

The sun has set a few hours ago. You recall that it was still dark when you had left for work in the morning. You had a long tiring day.

“The sun also has lesser working hours than the corporate employees...” you curse the situation.

In this tiredness, too, the sleep deprives you. The dim lights inside the bus don’t let you read. The aimless scrolling on Facebook walls and checking unnecessary WhatsApp statuses of random people makes you feel bored.

Tiredness + Boredom - Sleep = Catch 22

It is when you decide to peep out of the window. And observe nature, that nature which is polluted because of the vehicular traffic.

“The bus is moving faster than usual...” Hardly did this thought strikes your mind when you come to know that the bus has come to a halt. The city traffic never betrays its commuters.

Outside the window, you see a small truck standing adjacent to your bus. It is like any other goods carrier truck, then what’s so novel about it?

But, still, it’s different for it carries discarded pipes, titles and other debris of remnants from a construction site and amidst this construction waste, you see men!

Men who are tan skinned, dusty haired and torn clothed.

Men who look just like you.

Like you, they too have had a tiring day.

But, there is one difference, one striking difference!

No, not that of the attire, attire is just a second skin, beneath which all humans look the same.

Then what’s the difference?

In the polluted air, amidst the honking horns of heavy traffic, on the bed of dust and dirt, all of them are sleeping, sleeping peacefully.

And you? With wrinkled clothes and tousled hair, sitting on one of the ‘not so comfortable’ bus seats, you realize,

“Life is what you make it...”


The Lunchbox

It's 6:33 am,
You have a bus to catch at 6.37 am, and the Bus Stop is 3 minutes drive from your place.
Yes, you are an Engineer, and it proves when you are quite habitual of doing things at the eleventh hour...

So, you are in the elevator with your better half (She is the one who will drop you on her Royal Enfield 'Jupiter'), and you have four floors to get down.
It is when the elevator has reached the third floor you realise that you have forgotten your lunchbox back home.
You ask (to be read as 'request') your wife to make the ride ready, and in the meantime, you decide to take the same elevator back home to collect the lunchbox...
When the doors of the elevator open on the fourth floor, you hear your neighbour shouting, "Son, your father has already gone downstairs with your lunchbox..."

It's 6.36 am by now...
You are absolutely in no position to catch the bus now. Thus, you call your friends who have already boarded the bus, requesting them to further ask the bus driver to wait for you.
Horror strikes when you realise that the elevator; instead of reaching the floor zero has reached level twelve! The doors of the elevator open to a school going girl who blocks the automatic doors of the elevator by standing between the two doors. And you are like "what the hell is happening!"
"Uncle (looking at your potted belly, that's what the kids call you these days), please wait for a moment, my Papa is coming."
You tell her that you are in a hurry, but your pleading goes on deaf ears. Girls, no matter how young or old are always tricky to handle! (No offence!). She lets the elevator go down only when her Papa enters the big box.

It's 6.37 and 30 seconds, and you remember the great cyclist Lance Armstrong who once said, "Every second counts..."

Meanwhile, outside your building, it's still a bit dark, and in this smoggy darkness, your wife who is waiting for you on her scooter sees a five feet tall figure running towards an auto rickshaw. She misjudges him to be you and starts chasing the auto rickshaw; your lunch box hung on the front hook of the scooter.

Thanks to your benevolent friends, your bus is standing idle at your bus stop, but you are nowhere near it. Feeling guilty, you ask them to let the bus leave.
Now, with the bus gone, you decide to take a lift from a friend who goes to the office in his car.

Your wife is back by now; damn upset with you (to be upset with you is her birthright! She is born with it).
She rides you to your friend's place; a distance of 2 to 3 km which she covers cursing you for your stupidity. You are all ears, but you don't dare to utter a single word. (You may call yourself a lion, but you very well know that you are a lion from the circus and you also very well know who the ringmaster of this circus is)
And as you reach your friend's place, you ask (to be read as 'plead') your wife to leave. You are worried that you may faint due to her curses...
And for the first time in your life, she agrees and takes the road back home at a top speed of 10 km per hour.

Husssshh... You feel that the drama is finally over...
But, hang on...
Where's the lunchbox?

It's still hanging on her scooter which is now parked outside your building...

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’

Disciples of God are followers of the King today!

“There are long queues of people waiting outside a TV shop. All the box-shaped devices, big or small are displaying the same picture - A five feet five-inch-tall figure is manoeuvring the ball in all the directions of the field. As the young and old, with their eyes glued to the Television screens, watch in awe, the stage is set for yet another Tendulkar Century!”

Giving nightmares to the bowlers as he redefined batting, Tendulkar as a bowler too, was a treat to watch. He may get hit for runs, but then he would ensure to take wickets, he was every captain’s safe bet when it came to breaking the long partnerships of the opposition at the crucial stage of the game. After all, it's not an easy feat to take 200 wickets in International Cricket.

As Sachin remained the pillar of the National team, he along with his teammates, Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag and Laxman, collectively termed as the ‘Fab 5’ formed a team which taught us to win matches consistently not only in the subcontinent but also outside it and thus brought Team India to a formidable stature which it enjoys today.

Tendulkar: From a boy-wonder to Child Prodigy to the Little Master to God. His journey was awe-inspiring. His cricketing career, a 24-year long walk on the 22 yards was the entire childhood for the kids born in the early nineties. Thus, Tendulkar remains even today, in their hearts not as a mere cricketer but as an emotion. The mere mention of whose name gives them goosebumps.

When Tendulkar hung his boots in 2014, there was a strange vacuum in the hearts of the cricketing enthusiasts, those nineties kids who were all grownups now. This void, however, was soon filled by a Delhi boy who was once himself among those nineties kids who grew up watching the great Tendulkar bat. And thus the stage was set for Virat Kohli.

As his career progressed, he proved to be a more lethal weapon of the Indian squad, a deadly combination of Ganguly’s courage and Tendulkar’s discipline.

Being Virat is not easy though, when every day you are being watched closely and when you are always compared with the Master who is your admiration in cricket. But, Kohli did not let the outer world hamper his inner self and kept scoring runs, breaking records after records. Very soon he may go on to break Tendulkar's record of 49 ODI centuries which at one stage seemed unfathomable.

As Kohli remains the cornerstone of India’s success, he with the likes of Dhoni and Rohit Sharma are taking the reins of the team further whose seeds were sown by the Fab 5.

Kohli: From a Star Player to Captain to the King, the journey is on at it’s going on a rapid pace.

As we approach 2020, there are no more long queues outside the TV Shops. Thanks to the Digital India movement, every hand now has got a big or a small device which can now store a plethora of apps and an unimaginable size of data. And at the end of any cricketing day when people browse through the cricket news, Kohli has already hit yet another century.

When they look at the ease with which Kohli scores runs, these people who were mere toddlers in the nineties, who in the cricketing arena call themselves as the disciples of God, they are followers of the King today.

Little Things...

Mornings in Mumbai, though not really cold but are dark. In this darkness, the street lights are consorting with the moon, which is yet to set, to spread the light.

There is enough traffic on the road to refer this time of the day as ‘peak hours’.

The watch on your wrist seems to be deceiving as it shows 6.30 am.

Just 6.30 am and yet another ‘busy’ day in the life of ‘Mumbaikars’ has already begun.

Amidst the plethora of auto rickshaws, school buses and milk vans as you hurriedly make your way towards your bus stop (that place, where you will meet your daily commuting agent, the company bus which will further take you to your workplace), you come across another bus stop where the kids are waiting along with either of their parents for the school buses.

It is here you overhear a voice,

“आई, आज bus आलीच नाही पहिजे...”

(“Mother, I wish, the bus should not come today”)

Unable to resist your smile, you look in the direction of the voice, the little boy must not be more than six-seven years of age. This reminds you of the famous Marathi nursery rhyme, “सांग सांग भोलानाथ, पाउस पडेल काय?” (where the kids pray to the Lord Shiva, to tell them if it would rain so that they will get a holiday from school) But, it isn’t monsoon and the sky shows no signs of rains so the school kid can only pray that the bus shouldn’t come.

Somewhere in your mind you pray to the God that the little boy’s wish should come true.

Somewhere in your mind, the song, “सांग भोलानाथ, पाऊस पडेल काय?” keeps playing and you realise that you have reached your bus stop.

“Hi, Good Morning... what’s up?” One of your colleagues who has already reached the bus stop greets you.

“You know what?

“आज bus आलीच नाही पहिजे...”

You reply spontaneously.