There and back again ....



There and back again ..... As the half burnt cigarette in my fingers is turning hopes and dreams into ashes, I am trying my way best not to turn cold to my feelings at this midnight epoch.

“You need a break.”

That’s what I told myself when I decided to go on a trip to Lahaul-Spiti. Okay let me just fast forward in 8x speed so I can reach up to the main part.

Enter the valley of Lahaul-Spiti and you won’t find any welcoming lush green alpine vegetation or a soothing road ride. No. It was a stimulating bungee jumping ride all along the way where my emotions were playing seesaw between ecstatic excitement and anxiety, bordering at times on panic and craziness. I am not kidding. At times on the hair-pin turns of the road when I could feel the adrenaline rush on my finger-tips and cheeks because of the depth I could see from the window, I thought to myself, this is it, time to die, it’s been a pleasure world; oh and please tell my parents I love them. Not that I showed, I was in any discomfort of course, this was an all-male establishment, any girly screech noises were strictly forbidden.
But somehow the caravan kept on going. As it always!

Staring at contours of a far more complex nature, while clicking mental pictures of endless layers of powdery maroon and glowing ochre slopes loomed in the distance, with the beautiful River Chandra drawing patterns in the lap of an ever-widening basin! The road and the mood was ON. With its steep jungle clad hill sides, gargantuan, sheer rock faces and a great company of six hobbits, the experience in all made me feel incredibly relaxed and glad to be far away from the hee-haw madness and chaos of the city.
It’s really a fascination for me to think how these roads were build. The workers must have one of the most difficult, dangerous and least desirable jobs in the world, especially at higher altitudes where the temperature drops to below freezing.  I hope they got paid well, although I suspect they did not. Life is unfortunately very cheap in India.

Past the few and far between milestones of Rohtang, Gramphu and Chhatru lies the wind-swept Batal. Our first night stay.

I imagine it’s the sort of place where Satan’s staff stay when travelling between hell and purgatory. My heart did drop a little when I first glimpsed our small, dark, smelly windowless room with no solid cover on top. The quilts were dirty like they haven’t been washed since their “invention”. The mattress on which we were supposed to sleep had sand particles sprinkled on it. In short, it just felt like I am back in my room in Gurgaon except the fuckin freezing cold part. But to my surprise none of the damsels uttered any anguish or the sad smiley towards the condition of that room.

It was a very uncomfortable night. None of us could sleep well. The time literally froze in that room with us. And I can’t remember the last time, when I so impatiently waited for the morning. Turning sides in every two seconds. Kicking the person who’s sharing quilt with me. Asking for water. Not getting any response. Searching for water bottle in dark with naked hands. Stumbling on a dog who had managed to crawl inside during night. Taking him back to my side. Sleeping with that dog.
Hell of a night. We all got to know each other a little more now. I learned a lot of things about my company and they learned that I snore like a bear.

The next morning finally came with the promise that the worst is behind us. This is as bad as it can get.

From Batal to Chandertal lake to Kaza (World’s highest retail outlet) to Key Monastery and to Kibber (World’s highest motorable village) …. the time flew by, our level of ecstasy and eyebrows increasing exponentially on each sight and on the last day it snowed. I couldn’t have asked for any better ending except if any girl would’ve fallen in love with me. Well that didn’t happen but all in all it was an awesome trip.

Among many great things about this country side, one particular thing that clicked me is the way these hilly people live. In quiet, peace and comfortably slow life. After 7pm you won’t find a single shop open. The lights are out by 830pm and the whole town is in deep slumber by 9pm. During daytime, in the streets you can always find two people chit chatting little things while by passing each other. I am pretty sure they all know each other. And that ever welcoming glowing smile on their faces (especially monks), it just makes you wonder if, we the city people with metro speed life, cars, grandeur malls and buildings have got it all wrong. 
I really wonder.….. 


The Complicated Relationship



If it’s not the most taboo subject in the modern India, it is most certainly frowned upon and considered as an utterly uncomfortable and useless topic to talk about. So for the sake of creating a new fuss and bombarding my boredness with a fresh set of puns, here goes my yet another irrelevant and censored blog post about:

Problems men have from ‘untimely erections’ or as you might have heard ‘man wood’ or ‘involuntary standing ovation’ by your honour Mr. John Pee-Pee.

Now the way we go about sex education in this country is appalling. I mean, until about I was 13, I was convinced that my ‘garden of good and evil’ (balls) is used to store pee. You can imagine what kind of other impending issues I might have with Mr Pee-Pee.

I mean, this has to be the most complicated relationship a guy will ever have. You might have heard them saying …. “oh… I have a very “complicated” relationship with her/him”. Well obviously, they haven’t tried peeing with an erection.

Talking about sex education and women always yelping about their period problems, well I surveyed 100 women and asked them what kind of problems they face while peeing and you won’t eberrr believe, 98 of them said: "How the hell did you get in here?"

Anyways let’s keep this discussion about men problems only.

So what’s with it showing ‘up’ for work, without invitation, every-single-morning when you wake up, huh! I mean you haven’t activated any launch sequence and yet the rocket is ready to burst into flames trying to come out of the ‘Pajama-Hemisphere’. And I think I don’t even need to tell you how awkward and un-comfortable it is to hold on to your thing for 5 minutes (or more) on the bed, before you can take a piss, doing all kinds of breathing exercise to get the blood flow out of it.

I tell you, this one time, the bad-ass-stubborn I am, I tried to pee regardless of how colossus this Goliath-Python was looking ‘above’ from the ginormous hippie bush I have supported, at me angrily ‘all-red’. But I showed him no mercy, I went into the bathroom, stood above the iron throne, looked down and I peed so freakin hard. But, as you might imagine, evidently, that upward-parabolic-stream short-circuited the bulb hanging above in the bathroom. Go figure.

So next time if you're having trouble making the ‘wee-wacky’ because of the ‘woo-hoo’, just stay put and admire this behemoth creature and give him his due respect, that he obviously so desperately craves for.

*rolls eyes*
Aghhh !


PS: If tying a Nimbu Mirchi helps ward off evil. I think men should never have to suffer from any evil. I am jusst saying.


Religion - The pain in the wrong place




I hate festivals. There….. I said it. And now I can imagine you all giving me that infamous ‘saas-bahu-serial-SHOCKED-wala-reaction’. You know where a particular shocking expression of some hausfrau is repeated like 100 times from all the 360 angles with Taabad-tod music score in the background. But… but before you go all sanctimonious-judgy on me, just hear me out!

It all starts with “The Religion”. When one man does stupid things, its called stupidity; when millions do stupid things, its called religion. Yup stupdity. I tell you, religion’s a huge throbbing pain in the wrong place. I mean even if you choose to ignore all the hatred, the riots and going bat-crap crazy to blow up innocent humans. Every time people gather to celebrate some old-ass tradition or some hula-hoops festival, every other thing gets messed up.

Allow me to explain.

Let’s start with the “Kaanwar Yatra”, shall we? So where should I start? Okay let me tell you a bit about this Yatra. Apparently it is some sort of a build up for MahaShivratri where people in Fanta-colored clothes with decorative stuffs walk by in ants-formation to get the ganga-water. Now in one year of my pathetic existence back in Haridwar, I once got stuck in a traffic jam for over 3 hours because of this. I tell you the road was traffucked worse than that chakka-jam scene from ‘Nayak’. Now I don’t have anything against celebrating and doing stuff like walking 387654321 miles out of devotion for a bowl full of water. But man, three hours of traffic cluster-fuck was slower and frustrating than the IRCTC website on Vodafone 3G. Really, DaFaq man!

Let me not even get started with JAGRATAS. People in my neighborhood get all cranky if I play ‘Pink-Floyd’ a bit loud coz apparently it is not “music” and apparently there are some “old people on ventilators” who will just stop breathing with a single extra decibel sound. And yet they don’t blink their eyes twice before organizing a DJ Jagrata in the middle of the road blocking all kind of traffic. And then on top of it they go on playing all kind of crappy Mata remix of chutiya Bollywood songs aaaaall-night-looooong. You want to cross the road? Well boo-hoo! You can’t! Coz ugly-bald uncles and fat aunties are busy SCREAMING songs in falsetto with their lungs out. I mean, Mata-Rani is not deaf, you know. She will hear you even if you whisper the songs.

Now you might think that you know all about Holi, that there is to know about. But let me give you a news flash, my brada. It’s not what you think it is. I have read this somewhere in Vedas annotated by ‘Maharishi Makuna Hatata’ that Holi is originally derived from a Sanskrit word named ‘Asshole’ which means “Yoooo-Hooooo-I’ma-gonna-put-gulaal-in-your-mouth-Yo!,-Rip-off-your-shirt-Yo!-and-guess-what?-put-hideous-Terminator-wala-silver-paint-on-your-body-Yo!.-Now-quit-whining-like-a-baby-about-allergies,-and-be-SPARTAAAA!”. Yup, Holi is the most playful form of molestation and sexual assault, found in India. Holi somehow also means getting hit by eggs and water balloons and gobar by random drunk guys in cars and bikes that proclaim their OBC affiliation.

And at last but not the least, the king of all festivals. Nothing brings out the terrorist-aspirations in children and adults alike, like Diwali. You need to watch where you walk because you might just step into a Nazi bomb. Or you might get surprise-buttseksed by a random-ass rocket. And by the end of the evening if you still haven’t gone deaf, it will be taken care of by more Jagratas and Mata remixes.

So if you have read till here, I would like you to thank you for not bursting into a firecracker. But if you are one of those who insist on scaring the neighborhood dog just to impress the girl next door, I have one advice for you. Light one rocket up your behind and see the city with clouds from above. I am pretty sure you will find that it looks pretty without all the smoke and noise.

PS: Maybe religion is Gods typo.
PPS: I don’t know who this ‘Maharishi Makuna Hatata’ is but I’ve heard he is like awesome and intelligent and other things.


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