The Party Pains of Silver Shell

I live in a quiet neighborhood. Once its past 11pm, there's a warm, comfy blanket of tranquility that covers the colony. This pleasant peace, however, was bludgeoned to death by the new family that moved into Silver Shell a few months ago.

Partying is a great stress buster. Everyone needs to freak out once in a while. I do too. The only difference is that people like me and many of you are aware of the 'somewhat insignificant' process our body performs every night, called sleep. The new family that moved into Silver Shell (yes, I will keep referring to them as 'the new family that moved into Silver Shell', because I wouldn't want to take names, knowing the company they keep) assumes that they live in the heart of a deserted town and allow themselves to party like maniacs at every available opportunity. To our dismay, their favorite opportunities happen to come along post 11pm, which leaves everyone else frustrated and ensures that I suffer a day long migraine the next day.

Obviously, approaching the Police isn't an option since a 'certain member of my family' favors them much more than that member favors me (you know who), so my last futile attempt at getting them to quiet down resulted in me getting the dirtiest look of the century from '***** dear'.

Their parents really take the cake. They are unreasonably supportive of their children and they take pride in the way their children abuse the freedom given to them. I remember one particular party that lasted through the night, till eight in the morning. The last party was on Sunday (which miraculously ended by 01:00am), so you can imagine the plight of all the people who have to wake up to Monday morning blues, with an additional headache.

I've hit a dead end. Yelling at them to "STFU!" was my one and only option which has been ruled out thanks to a 'certain family member'. I could really use some tips here, or I might just pick up a chainsaw and decide to attend their next party.

Men’s Underwear – In Advertising (India)

“I’ve come up with an awesome brand of men’s underwear. It isn’t the least bit different from any other underwear that you can get at half the price without the fancy packing and the big brand name. Yet, the foolish folk out there will choose my brand over the other brands, because my advertisement shows a bunch of half naked goris sticking to the main male model, coz he’s wearing fancy undies.” This is probably what began the wave of selling everything that an underwear cannot do, through underwear advertisements.

From Lux Cozy’s banned ‘puppy around the pool’ marathon to Amul Macho’s “Yeh toh bada toing hain” madness, the underwear advertising industry as gone from unreasonable to vulgar to ridiculous. Yet, common man (strictly ‘man’ in this case) seems to fall for their cheap gimmicks and actually makes the brand work.

Can anyone explain how wearing a particular brand of undies can bestow upon a loserly guy, mysterious kung-fu-plus-karate-and-goodness-knows-what fighting skills (unless the underwear was bitten by a radioactive spider)?

Wouldn’t girls cling to any guy who had that kinda hot body irrespective of whether he was wearing the underwear or not? I bet he'd get more girls if he just lost the underwear.

Brands like TanTex and Dixcy Scott do come up with comparatively decent advertisements, yet they aren’t exactly the popular hit among users. (Trust me, I live in a colony where guys wear jeans to reveal ‘certain’ brand names, so don’t you judge me.)

A decade from now, ‘ridiculous’ advertising ideas will most probably hit extinction, so here’s what we might get to see –

• Man wears underwear and flies to the moon "without" an oxygen mask.
• Man stands at border and strips down to just his underwear. Terrorists do not enter out of respect.
• Woman gets an orgasm by merely washing a certain brand of men’s underwear by the lake. Sincere apologies, Amul Macho’s already got that one covered.
• Man saves Earth from Aliens. Yes, the same terrorist trick can work here too.
• Boy goes to college in his underwear. Scores full marks in vivas.

This is as far as my imagination is willing to take me. On the brighter side of things, women get an opportunity to see hot, half naked male models (fully waxed, but anything looks good after Shah Rukh Khan's item numbers) and men get (more than enough of) their quota of bikini clad desperate women. Who bothers to look at the underwear anyway?

Iris 2009 - Musical Evening & The Riot Act

Do you think Junkyard Groove is freaking awesome?! Its freakin awesome-er than awesome! I, however, shall get to JYG’s mindblowing performance tonight at St. Francis Institute of Technology’s IRIS ’09 Riot Act (no, I couldn’t remember the entire name all by my little ol self, I refered to the pass. See picture) a little later. The other concert definitely deserves its share of applause.

This awesome college festival began exactly one week and one day ago, with Anuradha Pal and Indira Nair’s “Musical Evening”. Moreover, I got “free” passes :D (thank you Amal Nicholas, I owe you!). Anuradha Pal was divine. People as dumb as moi, knowing head nor tail nor flea about Indian classical music, had the time of their life. Ah! Cut out the ‘classical’ part. The music was electrifying! No wonder her new album’s called “Recharge”. Despite the whacked up sound system (yeah, sound people, this better NOT happen next year), the evening was magnificent. The artist on the sarangi played to perfection. Dammit! Can’t remember his name right now. Then again, you don’t need people to remember your name, when you’re talent is your true identity.

The sound improved by the second half of the evening. Indira Nair’s melodious voice had us swaying to soothing sufi sounds. The crowd went insane with “Jhum Barabar Jhum” and the original version of “Allah ke Bande”. The night ended with the police playing spoil sport, but the overall experience was beautiful.



One week and one day later (29th March, ’09) and the Riot Act was all set to blow us all to bits!! The concert began by 06:15pm and we got there no sooner than 06:45pm, so we had already missed Zodiac. Black was awesome, but got a poor response from the crowd, since it wasn’t in the mood to play covers. “Field of Thought”, however, was better than any cover any day! Their originals may do better next year.

Rock Water began with a big bang! From Pink Floyd to Jimmy Hendrix, they had most of the audience swaying to their tunes. “Comfortably Numb” was covered really well. Barring one ‘throw-socks-on-stage’ incident, the entire Rock Water experience was good. Then, unfortunately, John Hegarty took the stage and the crowd went cold. Not that we doubt his singing skills, its just didn’t work for this audience. During his performance, we got a glimpse of a mini-mosh pit, as my friend Rohan Naravane described it (who came to my rescue or I’d be stuck way back all through the concert).

Rock Water’s lead singer took the stage again. The crowd gathered again, and it was Junkyard Groove time!!!

If you were there, you could hear the anticipation in every “WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” that must have echoed through the entire school. Nobody budged as bands changed and Junkyard Groove took the stage. The lead singer, Ameeth, skipped his usual 5minute chit chat before the performance and got down to playing some insane MUSIC! From ‘Imagine’ to ‘Thank you’ to ‘Let You Go’ to ‘Rock & Roll’ to ‘Feel Like a Knife’ (my personal favorite), they had the crowds screaming their lungs out in excitement! This was sprinkled with a few jokes between songs, requests to buy their CDs up for sale on our way out and sound checks. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say, “Ah! Buy it, download it, share it, do what you want!” I guess that line must have sold more CDs than the awesomeness of their album!
Craig was heavenly on bass. I stood hypnotized by the way his fingers moved on that gorgeous musical machine. The guitar is worth a mention too. There can’t be a sexier guitar in existence unless its still part of someone’s imagination. Sid had the crowds screaming everytime his fingers moved across the strings. Leaving the concert was the worst part of the evening :( If only last night could have lasted a few hours longer. Then again, there’s the 10:00pm deadline and we don’t want a police performance, so all the little black sheep had to return home after a fun filled evening of crazy music and crazier head-banging.

Overall, Iris ’09 was a huge success. Sure we missed bands like Zero and P.D.V but we weren’t complaining after Black and JYG either. Looking forward to Iris 2010. Keep up the great work guys!

Funny Bits:
CDs from Black weren’t exactly accepted by the crowd and some of them made it back to the stage.
Ameeth’s ‘twinkle-twinkle-little-star’ performance before the actual song began.
One of the event co-ordinators, Melwin Chiramel, was seen doing a little air-guitar jig backstage, while JYG played its last song for the evening.



The Team that made it happen:

Staff Co-ordinators - Mr. Sunil Pansare, Mrs. Prachi Raut

Joint Event Co-ordinators - Melwin Chiramel, Flevin Marattukalam

Joint Heads of Publicity - Pratik Chitre, Rufus D'souza

Joint Heads of Marketing - Vernon Mathias, Karen D'souza, Vaibhav Gupta

The Post-Holi Morning

'So, here we are, investigating the murder of the watchman of our building, but the murder has taken place in Bandra, which is freakin far from where we live, but we’re still investigating it. Good riddance to the watchman. I just knew he’s better off dead because he must have done something wrong that made me feel that way, and at that point of the investigation, I actually knew what he’d done.

The next day was the day off, so I did what I do best, pick up a camera and run to the beach, only the beach was this gigantic stretch of black rocks, much like Bandra’s land’s end. I spend most of the evening taking pictures. I know its evening because I can see the sun set. I get pictures of people on picnics, girls and boys roaming about and the perfect black and white picture of a grandfather, grandson and their dog. The grandfather, however, doesn’t come within the frame. Just a bald patch of his head makes it. The boy must be five or six years old. The dog is fluffy and caramel colored.



Anyway, something reminds me about the case and I head home, fortunately, this time its not Bandra. I sit discussing the case with my mother when I noticed the couple living across the street spying on us, though their windows have dark glasses (X-ray vision I guess). They notice me noticing them and all hell breaks loose. They try to send us bouquets, tones of ‘em. Then they threaten me with shinny toy-like pistols. Now under normal conditions, I’d have turned my living room into a bathroom, at the very sight of guns (or whatever they were) but here, I’m brave. I barely flinch. As a matter of fact, I don’t flinch at all! I just slam the door on their faces.

Then the church choir comes and sings at my door on their behalf. (whacky where this is going, isn’t it?) After I manage to interrupt their singing with my (very justified) protests, I explain to them that I’d be calling the police since the couple’s harassing me, and they’d better leave unless they want to wind up in the lock up too (choir in the lock up! The thought itself is just downright amusing). They freak out. One of them apologizes and tells me that they were told that UTV and UTI (?!?!) would be covering this, so they came. They left. I see the husband of the couple hiding beside the door. When he realizes that he can be seen, he says “Ooops” and walks off. That’s when I recognize him. He’s my friend Nikhil (aka Gobi).'

Fortunately for me, I woke up. The dream was freaking confusing and I was more than happy to get rid of it. That, however, was the good part of my morning.

My real morning begins now. I wake up to find my face unusually swollen. It might have been because I tried waking up in the middle of the night to watch Manchester United (yes, I like using the entire name instead of just ManU) play, but kept dozing off so I skipped it. I got off the bed and realized that my download speed had dropped from sucky to suckier. Only 10% got done through the night (heartbroken). Then it happened.

Something began to rumble in my tummy. Must be last night’s raajma (kidney beans for all ye sophisticated readers), dammit! It was time to GO! I scamper around searching for a pair of slippers, coz the bathroom’s definitely wet. My eye still pokes. I can’t find my slippers. I can’t find my hairclip. My tummy’s making insane noises and doing its earthquake thing inside. I swear, if someone tells me that we have tectonic plates inside our tummies, I’ll believe them! In all the hurry, scurry and confusion, I dropped an open safety pin (yes, there goes the ‘safety’ part) and stepped on it. The moment I stepped on that pin, I knew that this morning was blog-worthy. I spent the next 5 glorious minutes ‘doing er… morning stuff’ and I sat thinking of this article’s title. This is exactly why today’s title sounds so ‘crappy’ :(

On the brighter side of things, my friends, who non-miraculously downed around four litres of ‘bhaang’ with ‘thandai’, will be having one heck of a morning themselves – way worse than mine, come to think of it :D

Building Blocks - Part One

(This is a true story. The characters' identities may be revealed in future posts)

A few decades ago, a man married a woman, and had three sons. The man had a serious drinking problem and was rarely willing to take up his family responsibilities. His wife was left helpless, to fend for herself and her children. Miraculously, her in-law weren’t cruel and a taunting lot. They helped the man’s wife and her sons, even though their own means were limited. The man passed away. All three sons grew up well, are married happily and quite successful in their respective careers. One flew abroad and works there. One of the three sons struggled through the hardships life flung in his path and rose from being an auto-rickshaw driver to a successful builder. One owns an estate agency. Let us name him Mr. A.

Today, Mr. A lives in the city and has a comfortable life. His paternal relatives, however, aren’t that lucky. Polio struck one of his father’s sisters at a very young age, deforming both her legs to a great extent. Thus, she never married. One of his father’s brothers has always been mentally challenged. His father’s mother, somewhere in her 90s can barely get off the bed. These are the people who have looked after him, when they could have just turned a blind eye to his condition. His father has two more siblings – a brother and a sister, who have run from pillar to post all their lives to make sure that their aging mother and unfortunate siblings spend the remainder of their days in livable conditions.

Let me elaborate the ‘condition’ of the house that they live in. Village houses have always been simple, with leaky roofs and mushrooms bursting through the cow-dung floors. In addition to that, the entire compound floods every monsoon, till the bed has to be mounted up on whatever is available so that the mother and the brother are not adversely affected by the muddy water gushing in. Repairs have been undertaken by the man’s brother, but his means are limited too. The people who helped Mr. A and his family when they were in dire need of support are suffering day in day out. All this can end though. The compound that they live in is family property, so it will have to be divided among the children equally. If the property is sold, the aging mother, her mentally challenged son and his sister will get an opportunity to see better days. The value of the plot may run into crores, but there is a problem.

Mr. A knows the worth of a good piece of land when he sees it. If the land is sold and the money divided now, there will be more shares made. However, if the mother, the brother and the sister pass away, it will mean 3 less shares, which will mean more money for Mr. A. So Mr. A plays his cards as well as his worldwise-mid has taught him to play. He postpones the fixing up of the house. The entire is cost borne by the rest of the family. When his uncle (father’s brother) asks him to sign the property papers, so that the house and the plot can be sold, he assures him that he will do it, as soon as his brother arrives in India. So the sale is postponed again. Mr. A’s father’s mother’s and brother’s condition worsens by the day, yet Mr. A’s heart does not melt. When his brother does return from abroad, his uncle approaches him again, but Mr. A assures him that he will sign the papers soon and even find them a customer. As time goes by, the papers do not get signed and the promised customers do not show any signs of showing up. His uncle, now quite old himself, asks Mr. A again.

This time, however, Mr. A has a plan. He tells his uncle that he will help build up the house that is now nearly in tatters, instead of selling the plot. If the plot and the house on it are not sold, there is no money. Fixing the house will only cost the aging mother and her children more money, which they do not have. ‘Everyone is familiar with the issues a joined property brings along – the best option would be to sell it off, in everyone’s best interest’, his uncle tried explaining to him. Mr. A, however, will stand to lose if more shares are made. He puts his foot down, ‘I will not sign those papers. Forget it. I will not sign them, even if you kill me.’ So a dejected uncle leaves and turns to his married sister for help. Maybe she can talk some sense into Mr. A.

To be continued…

(Mr. A's identity shall be revealed, right here, on this very blog, if his plan of action does not change. Stay tuned for future updates.)