Porn Nights - The epilogue

The response to porn nights was overwhelming. So much so that now I have become a Dr. Phil to a young student from Manipal. He considers me his sex guru.
He is my favorite. Because he is a big spender. I like people who come and spend money in my place.
I like to spin stories to him because when he gets excited, he sways in his seat like the Titanic,becomes hot and sweaty and guzzles my Mint mojitos like beer till his main course arrives. It usually is a large pizza – an all meat extravaganza or a sausage lover or chicken supreme. The large pizza is just a ploy to sit here as long as possible. I am plainly jealous. Here I am on a detox diet and still ‘ delightfully plump’ as someone kindly put it. I go on that diet at least once in six months. It’s a crazy diet. No alcohol. No caffeine. No meat. Removes all the toxins. And here he was loading himself with all the toxins and yet slim and trim.
Seriously I don’t really mind as he keeps my cash register ringing. Can’t really complain since the business was bad what with the exams and all. So I keep spinning. And if some one things I am being unethical, I cant claim the patent to that trick. It started long back, from times immemorial , when man discovered fire and invented wheels and Go Go bars. And when the girls there found how stupid men can really be. Its business really. You don’t have to be in Harvard to understand that.
But Yesterday he foxed me. He looked around surreptiously and in a whisper asked me if I had ever used Viagra. I asked him why would I. He was on his second Mojito as he said that he had heard that all old people needed it. Me old! I cheerfully told the waiter to add two slices of green chillies to his mojito.
“ Gives it a zing.” I said cheerfully. As he persisted , I asked him what was his age. He was sweating as usual as he chugged thirstily, “ Twenty”. Well at twenty, if he was so curious about Viagra, I thought something was really wrong there ( No Pun).
But he was anything but stupid. He suddenly said something that clearly left me speechless.
“ You know somewhere deep within all of us lurks a peeping tom. This peeping tom drives us to into other people’s lives and their bedrooms. Else there would be no porn and all those porn stars would be jobless.” I was speechless. Damn I knew he was a smart lad. But this coming from him?
We were quiet for a moment. Then he asked me that inevitable question. Did she meet you?
I was silent collecting my thoughts. What could I tell this youngster with raging hormones. His brain was in his pants. Such was his age. How could I tell that there was more to life than sex.
Its been more than a month since we met. That was a special meeting. Two strangers yet not quite. When we hugged each other, it felt like I had known her since long.
Honesty has a cascading effect. we sat for hours. From my restaurant to a bar and back, sharing all our inner secrets. She spoke about her drugs, rehab and countless teenage issues. I about…. Well lets us leave it for some other day. I looked at her with respect. She wasn’t afraid of her past. We all have our pasts. How many have the courage to own it?
Her name was Anagha. “Call me Anne”. Whats wrong with our wooly NRIs. When in India, they are more westernized and when abroad, they suddenly become more sanskritised. Why couldn’t they have named her Anne?
“ You know you are my best friend. My friends are all jealous of me.” She smiled again. I smiled too.
There was nothing extraordinary about her. But her beauty lay in that ordinariness.
I just loved everything about her. Her thick glasses, her braces ( Since when have people looked so pretty in braces! when she smiled , she lit the room. ), her trampish clothes and above all her honesty.
She let all her skeletons out. I am not disclosing them to any peeping toms.
As she got up to leave, she hugged me , her eyes moist. “ you are not half as ugly as I imagined.” We laughed. Her tears shone in the light making my throat choke. I was seeing a little girl not so long ago, hugging me as she hurt her toe. I had picked up my neice and kissed her toe and told her that her pain would evaporate and vanish in thin air. She believed it. But would this pretty girl believe me?
The randy boy poked me. What happened when you met her.
I stood up and smiled.
“ea venit, ea vidit, ea vicit” she came , she saw and she conquered.

Goodbye Anne,Hope your life is filled with happiness and sunshine and hope you remain as weird as ever and I as ugly as you thought me to be.
For that is what brought us together.

Porn Nights - The interlude.

Ten days of vacation and I have been made as redundant as the sofa I am sitting on. Except for the mandatory signing of vouchers and reconciling the bank statements, I am not needed. When I left I was the fulcrum. Today I am sitting on the periphery, a mute spectator. But I must confess that I am watching not without pride. Two months back these very boys were hesitant, stammering and stumbling. Now they walk with confident steps, smug in their ability.

Everything around is moving with slick precision. The meter reading from the cellar has been taken. The dine -in is spick. The cutlery is clean. The pasta is ready. The soup is boiled and ready to be served. The ovens have been switched on. The inventory has been checked. The monthly report is being prepared. Not much variance. No wastages. Losses within limits. The auditor has given them 96%.

One small glitch. I am delighted. I notice that both the ACs in the dine-in are on. With a knowing air, I tell Sandeep that we don’t switch on both the ACs at 10am. Politely, he informs me that they will run it for some time till the room is cool and then switch off one of them. My ego has been pricked. I sit down. They have built a wall around them with their skill and dedication which I would be unable to pierce and find my way back to the old days. Nothing much to do I simply observe.
The ice delivery boy comes. As usual he is carrying the ice in the right hand and with the left hand he is playing on the window as he walks leaving a sweaty trail. The shift –in- charge shouts. I smirk. This is routine. The kid doesn’t change. He has seventeen rupees and seventy five paise change, the balance of his bill. Sandeep groans. He has to be paid every day and he brings the same amount every day. We requested him many times to take the money weekly or fortnightly. But no.
Reitesh is as usual late. I know the precise moment when his hand would caress his hair. At the door he would wait momentarily, cough and then open. After the second window, his hand goes up. I smile once again.

No one is aware of my birthday. i have guarded it well. I feel proud like a virgin bride. As one grows , birthdays become more of an embarrassment.

With nothing much to do, I think of our date tonight.

Just then the mobile rings. It’s a new number. “ Happy birthday, writer.” I jump with a start. Its weirdo I am sure.

“ Hi there.” I pretend nonchalance.

“ Don’t pretend. I can see you jump.” I am sitting near the window and there is just the greenery.
“ I am watching you.” She giggles. Is she weird. She is watching through a pair of binoculars from one of the apartments of Premier green woods!!!

I am fazed. So to change the subject , I ask, “ what time are we meeting.”

“ we are not. Birthdays are meant to be celebrated with near and dear ones.”

I tell her we are a long distance family. Our love oozes out when we are far. When we are in the same house, we sit in different rooms and chat on gtalk.
Our family never meets in the living room. It’s the facebook. And we don’t laugh. We lol.

She has an easy laugh.

“And I thought I am weird.” Ok so are we meeting?

She signs off saying she will give it a think. My bet is she wont come.

I am sure I will be left with my bottle of Chivas Regal, which my partners had thoughtfully packed when I was leaving. And I am not complaining.
We both make a great pair. I mean Chivas Regal and me.

I couldn’t agree more with her. “Birthdays are meant to be celebrated with some one you love.”

Porn Nights II

If I were asked to name the biggest sadist in the world , I would unhesitatingly name Dr. Martin Cooper. This guy has single handedly destroyed more homes by inventing mobiles than all the liquor in the world put together.
I can imagine all the young ladies sneering at this perfectly personal and logical theory with a monosyllable , “Duh”. Now Duh is to women, what fcuk is to men. The Norwegian nobel committee should seriously consider awarding a nobel prize for literature to those great men who invented these words. The world of literature would have been that much poorer without these great contributions. Half the world would go dyslexic. How many words can we toss up, which can be used in every conceivable way- verb, adverb ,adjective, gerund(now I got a little carried away).
Coming back to those lovely damsels, I do understand that the mobile to them is a life saving appendage more important than even a pacemaker and that they spend almost half of the day on it, but seriously girls ,have you considered the risks associated?
A couple of examples would suffice. A man is cheating on his wife. Pangs of guilt have destroyed his happiness. So he decides to give his wife a day to remember.
He comes home early, with a bouquet of her favourite lilies and food ordered from again her favorite, Mainland china. They have a great candle lit dinner with Frank Sinatra and Champagne for company.
Everything is picture perfect. The tense husband , afraid that nothing goes wrong ,decides to have a shower before the last act. His bad luck, that when he is in the shower, his flame, whose number he has so imaginatively saved as ‘kitten’ because she is so soft and cuddly, calls up. The wifey, who normally doesn’t give a damn about his phone has now been softened by all the pampering, lovingly picks up the phone. She feels its her duty to help her ‘stressed with business’ husband.
Now, God , while creating Kitten wanted to be fair. So he reduced the size of her brain to that of a lima bean while showering her with bigger assets elsewhere. “ Hi Duhling. Hope that old bitch is not listening.” The kitten purrs seductively not for a moment thinking . The old bitch is not only listening but listening loud and clear. The kitten can say good bye to her Tomcat for ever. There would be just one mouse left.
Consider another situation. You are in the train and are an insomniac like me. With a great difficulty you fall asleep. Suddenly two phones scream. The one having the ring tone of ‘Gayatri Mantra’ has woken up the gods in the heaven and the another, “ my name is shiela” has woken shiela sleeping in the third compartment from where we are. As for your jangling nerves, they are further jangled by the incessant chatter into the wee hours. You can say good bye to sleep.
On return to india , I had managed my life beautifully without a mobile or a watch or a pen for almost six months till I started this business. My bad luck that Dr. cooper had a bigger competition in the field of sadism. They call him Apple.
It was on this iphone while I was returning from Thailand after a sun soaked, mobile less vacation that I received this mail.
My anonymous fan was reaching Manipal on Tuesday and would I be free to meet her for dinner. I was left chatting with her for the rest of my journey. I am Skipping the details of this chat, because I remember the advise of my young friend when I started first blogging.
Keep the posts short. KISS. ( Keep it short, stupid). People have very low span of concentration.
I am in a quandary.
I am not sure where to take her. Guzzlers inn or Blue water, if she drinks. Opium if she smokes hookah. Or just a plain old fashioned pizza at my place. It is difficult to position her. Maybe i will leave it to her.
One good thing about going on a vacation is that the staff doesn’t depend on you. They are running the store better than I was doing. So I wouldn’t feel guilty of ignoring my business.
Waiting now for the D Day and more weirdness.

" Porn Nights"

A young reader complimented a recent article that I wrote. Pleased as punch I continued to read. He sheepishly added that he, however, read it because he had read Prom as porn in my article ‘Of Prom Nights and more’.

I wished that he could have been a little dishonest. I really am not against Porn. Much of my brothers from across the border come and read my blog only when they feel a whiff of porn. Sadly writing porn is not my forte. That kind of imagination really has eluded me. But he robbed me of my two minutes of happiness. “ Well I too was searching for my two minutes of happiness.” He added. I had no answer. He had a point. “ Each to his own poison.” My boss would always say.

If we could celebrate sex in the temples in Khajuraho and write reams about it, he could also celebrate sex the way he thought was right. After all we all live in a free world.

Any way sex for me , is more between the ears than in the groin. I told him so and requested him that next time better appreciate my posts for what they really mean and not what he perceives them to mean. But he has an amazing sense of humor. He asked me , tongue in cheek, if he knew anyone as slutty as him. His candor was totally disarming. He was young and hence not a hypocrite. I laughed loud.

Seriously I told him that enjoying porn doesn’t make him slutty. He asked back if I watched porn. I candidly told him that I did when I was young but now I feel it more like monkeys performing in a zoo. “ Horizontal jogging” I remarked, borrowing from that master piece, “ Yes Prime minister.” I passed the test. He too liked my humor.

We must have chatted for over an hour which was remarkable since I no longer chat . He asked me if we could be friends. I thought about it. Why not? I had not laughed so much for quite sometime. And any way it was only a virtual relationship.

Revels is the largest cultural and musical fest of South India. It is hosted annually in Manipal. He informed me that he was visiting Manipal too attend it and maybe we could hook up for a drink or dinner.

My fingers were tired of tapping the keyboard. I said let me think it over and wished him a good night.
He stopped me and said he had another confession to make.

Now what? My first thought was that he had broken up with his girl and wanted to discuss a broken relationship. Why else would anyone sit and chat with a middle aged man. But I was not going to play agony aunt. I braced for his confession.

“ What would you say if I told you that I am a girl?”

We are meeting next week. Now nothing she tells me is going to shock me. She could be a transvestite or a junkie or simply an old bored bag! There is just a tiny hope.
Maybe she is just a normal girl having fun being anonymous. whatever she was, she had tossed me like a dead rat the whole night and played like a wild cat.

Just as I was going to sleep, a thought struck me. Why is it always me?!!!!

When the bug bit my ass!

I am not a very tall man. I measure just 960.127mm from the sole of my leg to my butt.Some times I like to be reminded that I am an engineer.So I checked the length with a vernier caliper.
This length is very important.It is the metaphorical difference between my life in Miami and India. on any given weekend I would be resting either on my butt or my back depending on whether I was in the Pub or the beach. After coming to India, if my butt and my back were on the desktop, they would have been archived by now, so seldom are they used. I am most of the time on my two tired legs.
So why and how did the proverbial entrepreneurial bug bit me. honestly it didn’t. it was a Hobson’s choice. I had no other option. No one across the two continents thought I was fit enough to be hired. I lasted in my last job in USA for barely forty eight hours. I knew then, that my career is over. Now I have to look for something that I can enjoy.
But I can say that with confidence that being a entrepreneur has widened my horizons. Till now I thought that Sonia Gandhi was the best known Italian import to India. wrong. It is Pizza. She is not even second. That is pasta. I am glad. As long as both these are popular, I am in business.
Being your own boss has its own privileges. Like you could, if you wanted to, get drunk even on a hot sunny afternoon. But these priveleges are liked the air miles given by various airlines. They are hardly ever used. I stand there the whole day counting the pizzas that are being consumed. It is hard work. The pizzas cant be eaten that fast!
The worst thing is that everyone thinks that life is a Hawaiian Salad for me . one girl even commented, “ you are a lucky man. You don’t have to work!” really ! what was she thinking? I am Manmohan Singh?
I don’t think we have settled yet. Our deliveries are way behind our targets. In fact they are so bad that I think the local hospital delivers more babies than we deliver pizzas per day. I thought that we needed some aggressive marketing. So I decided to do it myself. The other day a doctor, a gynecologist came. I suggested that we also deliver. He stared at me and said disdainfully, “ very smart.”
What is it that makes a great entrepreneur. I don’t know really. And I don’t really care. I only know that as long as I am in this business, I can never sleep hungry. There is always some order messed up by one of our staff ready to be gorged.
Many youngsters come to me for advice. ME AND ADVICE! If I was that smart I would have got myself a job.
But this job has its perks. For instance, when you see a happy customer gushing that the food was awesome or overhear a staff telling his friends that he works for a great guy. Or when young Donald sends an sms that uncle your connizza is fabulous or Rehan comes and says that his dad is out of town and he told his mother that I was feeling low. So let us go to uncle’s place.
These are times when I feel a lump in my throat. Feels like it is worth all the trouble. I know i miss my writing.I am letting my readers down. But still it feels great.
My butt and back can get archived for all I care. My legs will surely not complain.

Musings.

The construction workers gape from about eighty feet down. They are awestruck. Half naked, they stare at the procession of people who visit my place. The distance is metaphoric too. Perhaps its as much the distance between the economic levels too.
They try to comprehend though. They are half clad because they cant afford. But the rich have no such reason. I sit there half clad too. Ever since I am in this God’s beautiful place, I haven’t worn a full pant many times. In fact the times I have worn, my employees stare at me like they have seen a ghost.
I am not a great believer in God. But somewhere I cant deny that I share his benevolence. He gifted me two things unique. He gave me an incredibly wonderful readership and then he gave me this wonderful city.
Every one who visits my place, compliment the fantastic view. Its breath taking. But recently some moron carelessly threw a lit stub into this beautiful dense forest causing a mini fire. It left the ground charred. The ugly mark on this beautiful forest seems like a question mark tossed by the mother nature at us , “ Are you really that evolved of species.?” We can only hang our head in shame.
I have suddenly become very busy. The Americans have a very special jargon which is not only very eloquent but very charming as well. I would like to borrow the colorful ‘ Busting my ass’ here. It perhaps conveys more than a thousand words. So readers may forgive me for the irregularity.
What is that drives the Americans to use their posterior in almost every third sentence. So you could move your ass if you are leaving or keep your ass off if you do not want to interfere. But I am going to park my ass here till I finish. No doubt about that.
It’s the love of some loyal readers that is persuasive. Thoughts come cascading but fall short of words. It is plain fatigue. Fever has quietly come as an unwelcome guest and now refusing to leave. It doesn’t help that it is almost one in the morning. The eyes are red.
Yesterday was a disturbing day. A German Shepherd had perhaps strayed from his home and was lost on the busy street. He was bewildered and blinded by the oncoming cars and lorries. The security guard and I tried hard to rescue him. But he was afraid and would suddenly run up the road. We gave up after a futile attempt of more than three quarters of an hour. I was praying all the time that he would be run by some drunken driver.
I am sure his anxious owners may have rescued him from his torment. Only a dog lover would understand the anxiety. I had one youngster last week with long hair refusing to cut his hair to get the job. He told me that he loved his hair more than anything in the world. I had to apologise since MNCs have their set of rules. But the next day this boy was there with his hair cropped. He explained that his dog had died.
It was touching. Love is priceless.
We had a lot of birthdays celebrated this month. I calculated nine months back to check the reason. Maybe it’s the summer vacation!!!!!
Keep smiling people. Life is too short to sulk.

A crisp New Year - Not Quite

There is nothing more risky than predicting future with the benefit of hindsight. I had thought nothing could be worse than 2010; a year of corruption, rising prices and non governance. We have a PM with the best resume but who gave every cynical reason to a cynical like me to believe in professional politicians rather than professionals as politicians. He almost made me nostalgic for Deve Gowda. And that means something!

Yet I was so wrong.


It’s the third day of a new year and still my cup of woes refuses to brim. My cup is what the Americans so eloquently describe while selling soda – bottom less. Miseries keep piling.

I woke up on the first day of a cracking new year with a sore throat. Then the servant bunked. While cleaning I broke a glass. One of the shards injured my hand.
As if that wasn’t enough, I woke up today with high fever. Worse I am cribbing too much.

I think I know the name of the disease. Its called old age.
Help me God. I need an extra drink. To all the youngsters reading my blog and thinking that male menopause is a myth, Think again. Or better wait till you reach there. Trust me its not funny.

There is something really funny about genes though. Yugesh, my nephew ,is imbibing some of my not so charming qualities by no fault of his. His only mistake- he is born in our family. But for me its hilarious to see some one else go through the same torment.

So , here he was booked comfortably in 2nd AC and woken up a good one hour before the train. He was to leave for Doon and there was so much time that he could even have walked to the station. A blessing really when your train is at 4 am. But people like us ,who are an evolved species, taking the comfortable trodden path is anathema. So he calls up the station, they tell his train is late, he relaxes a bit more than necessary till he knows that his train has already left. A havoc follows. i wouldnt want to embarass him with the details. I love you kid!

Be warned son, your life is full of such adventures just because of one folly. You are not even responsible for that. GENES.

The company who is doing my texture paint is owned by a very garrulous lady. She is one god’s creation. She is like a Bose sound system with no off button. She can really sap me off.
She was bugging me about my new year resolution. Chivalry forbade me from being honest.
When will people learn. If screaming was marketing, Dolly Bindra would be Rocket Singh!