How I Got My House: Episode 2 - The Landlord

Luke and Lea are quiet. After reassuring myself that they had stabilized, I decide that it is safe to put the gun away and start with my story. Just to keep things so, I call R2D2, the family droid and ask him to aim at the kids while I narrate the story with all my histrionics. And so I begin..

Me: It was the first day of our house search - The first Sunday after the day our Landlord- let's call him Doggy,told us that he had decided to throw us out because he did not want bachelors as his tenants anymore. Doggy was the quintessential landlord - about 5 and a half feet tall, the darkest shade of ebony,had a protruding belly, moved around with two mobile phones in his hands and two bluetooth ear peices - one in each of his ears . We had several reasons to believe that he was a blood sucking vampire and hence we always kept garlic by the door to keep him away. Doggy had a terrible anger management problem and to top it all , he was a lawyer. It was common knowledge that Doggy had stopped going to the court several years ago and had taken up blood sucking as a full time job. He owned over 40 appartments in the city which he had rented out to his victims. He also owned 2 hatchbacks, 1 SUV, 1 motorbike and 1 scooter. No points for guessing that he moved around on the scooter. I still remember the first day we had gone to meet him to talk about renting the appartment. Doggy had a special dedicated room for blood sucking. If you were a tenant , you had to be in that room every first day of the month to pay the rent, which he would accept as if he had accepted the price for letting you stay alive for another month. So the first day as we entered the room, we noticed this other guy sitting with an expression that reminded me of a squashed tomato. The squashed tomoto was trying his best to argue his case with Doggy and it appeared to be a money issue. Doggy was however not interested since he had two fresh - still full of life young men waiting for him to suck their blood. We should've seen it coming that day, but we chose to believe that the squashed tomato had probably goofed up really bad to deserve that treatment. It was the second big mistake we had comitted with regards to Chennai .The first ofcourse was coming to Chennai.

There after every month , for 10 months we dutifully went to Doggy's blood sucking room on the first day of the month to pay our rent for the house. Doggy on the other hand never showed up at our place to bother us which we believe was due to the garlic. Never, unitil the day he announced that he was looking for fresh blood and we should start packing our bags.

Lea: So, what did you you do? Did you find another house? Was it as good as the previous one?

Clearly, Lea has found herself completely engrossed in my narration and can not wait to get to the end. But I am no ordinary reconteur. So I ask her to be patient.

Me: Hang on..hang on...this isn't getting over fast. Finding a house is no easy job! One has to take care of several things. Why dont we grab a cup of coffee... this will take time..

To be continued..

How I Got My House: Episode 1

The year is 2050. I am sitting on a chair and my children are seated in front of me on a couch.They are called Luke and Lea ( I have an uncanny feeling that some hollywood director might just like these names and name his movie's protagonists after them. Also, I feel that the movie might have something to do with space age et al.) Both Luke and Lea are into their teens and have plans with friends, but I, have forced them to sit and listen to a gripping tale of "How I got my house"
Me: So kids, today I will tell you an interesting story of how I got my house.
LU: Aw C'mon ! I've got to go and catch a movie today with Lonku! He's always made to watch The Dark Knight with Uncle Manku and gets an off only on Saturdays when Uncle Manku is busy shooting kids in the neighbourhood..
LE: And I have a lot of geekwork to catch up on with Parthibha, she's managed to get hold of Uncle Partha's Geek gadgets ! He usually hides them under his pillow and we seldom get such opportunities!
Me: I know , I know.. but I've got to tell you this story and you both bloody listen...
I point guns at the kids' heads and they sit back tight to enjoy the tale.

To be continued.......

House That!

In the month of February this year, Murphy struck more than once. First our Refrigerator conked off and then our landlord asked us to vacate the house. Though both these incidents appear to be very innocuous, they have both gone on to become epic tales which I shall narrate to my grand children some day to establish myself a hero in front of them. I will write more on both these issues on some lazy Sunday afternoon, but for now, here's a classified ad that you might come across if you were looking for a rented accomodation in Chennai:

The picture was clicked and shared by a colleague, and apparantly Mr. Champak is a popular broker who is known for his innovative copywriting. The grapewine is that several ad agencies have tried to rope him in but Mr. Champak prefers to operate solo.

I have a house now but I am sure that if I had come across Mr. Champak's ad before I would've taken a house through his services only.. after all, not everyone can offer you houses of Milk and Jaggery!
Sincerely,

The Blah Man

What's that!

I was in Pondicherry last weekend. I thought I would draft a post out of my experience in Pondy and put some sensible stuff on this seldom updated rotten blog which I had hoped would fetch me a lot fo money some day (Sigh...!). Well as it turns out, I was made to realise this yet again that sensible writing is not my forte.

So here it is the most remarkable part of my Pondy experience; While on a beach (locally known as the Paradise beach) I saw this:

I could infer the following from this sight with reasonable amount of confidence :

1. Aspiring to be a mermaid is not a prerogative of only women
2. As our nation progresses through an increasingly liberalised economy , it is o.k to use your underwear as your swimming trunk ( Don't question the connection between economy and underwear here, it's a complex mathematical calcullation; too esoteric to be elucidated here)
3. Indians are not dark skinned, it's just that we like to lie in the summer sun at noon wearing our underwear and unknowingly get more tanned than we'd like to

A closer look into the picture would reveal that our friend also tried to rub some sand on his body to add some oomph to the look. Baywatch babes , watch out!

Sincerely,

The Blah Man

SHIT!

Almost one year into Chennai, I am still amazed by the sheer volume of content Chennai land can provide me to write about. Here’s the latest:

TATTI. No,I am not expressing any disgust here. I am actually spelling out the acronym for TAMILNADU ADVANCED TECHNICAL TRAINING INSTITUTE; an engineering college in Chennai.

If you were to analyze the implications of being associated with the institute, you could spend an entire day discovering the countless repercussions of the association. I have put down a few below:

1. To start with, you would be called a TATTIan
2. If your uncle asked you – “Beta, what are you doing these days?” your reply would probably be - “ I am currently in my first year at TATTI”
3. If you had to put in your ambitions , you would start by writing, “After 4 years in TATTI, I intend to join a big software company”
4. You could get the “Most outstanding performance in TATTI” award
5. If you were a topper through out, your certificate of merit would say – “ Mr. Chintu topped TATTI consecutively for four years”
6. You would refer to your friends as –“ My friends from TATTI”
7. After graduating, you would fondly remember your TATTI days
8. If you were to come across an old friend from college years later, you would introduce him to your family by saying - “ Pooja and I go back all the way to TATTI, back then, she was known as Poo”
9. You would - over a period of your four years of association- say “I love TATTI” several times. Alternatively, you could also be saying “I HATE TATTI” but then who doesn’t!
10. It wouldn’t seem weird if someone asked you -“Kall TATTI Jaega?” (“Will you go to TATTI tomorrow?”)
11. Also God forbid if you were to miss college for 7 days, you would tell your friends – “ Its been 7 days since I went to TATTI”
12. You would be leave writing leave applications for not going to TATTI when you are sick or travelling home

There are several possibilities, and I leave it to the readers to add on to this. Any more of this from me and I would be prosecuted for bull-shitting

For all the non-believers, here’s the link to TATTI’s website: www.tatti.ifline.com

Sincerely,
The Blah Man

Important Announcement

I have decided that I am going to abstain from writing long posts. This is a result of an in-depth analysis done by me over the last few weeks. I would spare my readers of the details since they are too esoteric for the common folk and sum up the reasons for this decision. Though there are 5 reasons, I will explain only the first two and not elaborate the other three since they are too controversial and might damage my reputation as one of the finest story tellers of this generation

1.I am too indolent to write long posts at higher frequency
2.It’s easier to talk intellectual bullshit in spurts
3.Reason number 3
4.Reason number 4
5.Reason number 5

For the sake of clarity, the aforementioned reasons are in their order of priority.

Sincerely,

The Blah Man

It's a GOAL!

It is around 10 in the night. I don’t have a very clear idea of the time but my super human sense of time indicates that it is close to 10 pm. I can feel the heat of the situation; my calf muscles are pulled up and are begging for rest, my heart is racing and the adrenalin is rushing as if it’s chasing the last local train out of CST. Yet, I ignore all of this. All I need now is to keep my focus going for a few more minutes and then the glory shall be mine.

Standing underneath the bright floodlights on a green carpet of soft grass, I look around at the cheering crowd in the stadium. The chants of my name by thousands of fans, banners reading - “We love you No.10!”, and security persons lined up on the upper stands’ parapet to keep my female fans from jumping off in excitement; all these elements urge me to carry on. All 11 of us are dressed in blue, the official color of the Indian cricket team. But this isn’t cricket. This is football, a game that was never a forte of Indians.

I am not probably the best person to comment on how things changed for India and me. I have a feeling that I have the entire story intact in my subconscious mind but somehow after that fateful incident when I was hit on the head by a load of bird shit I forgot all about my past life (I will share the details of the unfortunate incident some other time). Anyway, let me just sum it up in one breath before I start sounding unbelievable - “India is playing the finals of the world cup. The venue is probably Eden gardens, the rivals are some random team dressed in yellow. Our team is in blue and although I cant recognize all of them, I can definitely identify Ronaldo, Rooney, Ballack , Beckham and Bhutia.

At the moment, we are into the last 50 seconds of the game. The scores are tied at 2-2. I know that if we don’t score another goal, our chances of winning are as good as zero. Our goalkeeper ‘D’ was once a wicket keeper for the Indian cricket team but could never do much to keep the small cricket ball from escaping him. He thought he had a better chance at collecting bigger balls and landed into the national football team.
Beckham is taking a shot after a player from the opponent’s team grabbed Ronaldo inappropriately while trying to tackle the ball. As Beckham takes the shot, I can already see the opportunity slipping out of our hands. The shot clearly doesn’t match up to the international levels of professional football. I make a mental note of kicking him out of the team after this match since he has lost his sheen after being dumped by Posh. However, I need to make up for the bad shot and give my best to the moment. I keep a close eye on the ball as it flies almost opposite to the opponents’ goal post, hitting Ronaldo on the face (I suppose it’s just not a good day for him). Bhutia , who is standing just behind the centre line hits it back using his chest in a movement resembling the way our Tennis icons Paes and Bhupati used to celebrate a point by hitting their chests against each others’ . The ball flies almost half the length of the field and sensing an opportunity, I make a dash for it. The ball lands in the opponents’ D and I slide a good 10 feet to make a contact with it and push it through one of the rival players (who I believe is Andrew Symonds). With no time to waste as we move into the last 10 seconds of the game, I get back on my feet and run with the ball towards the goal.

The goalkeeper along with 4 other players, charges at me forming a human wall between me and the goal. I weigh my options quickly and decide to get in my super acrobatic skills into play (I acquired these skills while I was a super hero in Cambodia). I hold the ball in between my feet and perform a semi somersault. As a result, I am on both my hands and my legs are up with the ball caught between my feet. The next moment I toss the ball above the human wall using the momentum of my legs.

Everybody watches with bated breath as the ball clears the wall and soars into the goal post. A blanket of silence covers the stadium for a few seconds. The world has just witnessed an act of unprecedented athleticism. The crowd erupts into a victory roar and all my team mates rush to hug me. I acknowledge the crowd, I toss the ball and with all my might hit it to the stands…..

…… There is an unbearable pain in my right foot. The right big toe is throbbing and I am trying hard to stop a scream from escaping my mouth. As I slowly get back to my senses I realize that I had hit the wall next to my bed in full strength.

I missed the Gym and limped all day. The pain subsided but somehow the memory has refused to get diluted. I take it as my moral responsibility to apprise my readers with this because I have chosen to believe that this incident is only a harbinger of bigger things to come.

Also, please do not be appalled by the mention of international stars in the Indian football team. My extensive research of the dream tells me that this was probably because these are the only names I know from the world of football. My apologies to all football fans if I have hurt their sentiments in any way.

Sincerely,
The Blah Man