I get back from work one day and notice that the wife is in a very good mood. She’s singing and all, and generally in a happy mood. This instinctively puts me on the defensive, I smell a trap. But even after some time, when I don’t get assigned to cut tomatoes, I’m begin to think that she really is happy. She’s probably looking forward to something. Her general humming is making me very nervous, and I’m trying to rack my brain trying to figure out any obvious causes that might make her so happy.

None come to mind. She’s still humming, and asks me if I want any coffee. Oh my God! Something is definitely up. Did I promise her something? Why is she so happy with me? What have I done right? I’m trying to search all recent memory in my brain, but still nothing. Did I promise to watch a movie with her this weekend? Noo… I certainly wouldn’t do that! Aaaarrrghhhh! The suspense is killing me. I decide to try to “fish out” the information from her.

Me: “So……”
She looks up and looks at me, smiling.

Me: “Life’s all good?”
Wife: “Yes, yes! Very good! We’ve come a long way, eh?”

Long way? From where? Her office is only 5 minutes away.

Me: “Well, if you take into account the traffic and the buffaloes, the office does seem far away!”
Wife: “Hahaha!… You’re funny… That’s not what I meant, silly!”

She Laughed at my Joke!?!?! Something is not right! I’m starting to sweat now!

Me: (laughing nervously): “Heh heh! Yeah… So… where have we come?”

Wife: “Soon, its going to be a year! One year! It seems like yesterday when…”

What is she talking about? Just as I’m pondering over what the hell happened a year ago, the epic light of dawnling realization shines on me. Oh, crap! She means our wedding anniversary! How could I forget!

I have a tragic flaw in that when I’m thinking, my face becomes twisted in a weird way, and my neck buckles to make my face look slightly upwards, as if looking into the sky. Its a dead giveway that I’m in a conference call with my brain. The wife has learnt to pick this up, and has probably realised that I’ve forgotten our anniversary.

Wife: “You do remember, its our Anniversary this week, right?”
Me: “Of course, yes yes…. I remember! It’s our Anniversary on the….”

Is it the 5th or the 6th? Oh, gosh! My mind has blanked out. I think it was the fifth! No, but I was on leave since the 1st, which was one week before the wedding, so the wedding must have been on the 6th. But I remember the wedding hall was booked from the 5th. Oh man! Oh man! I have to say something soon…My brain instructs my vocal chords to say fifth!

Me: “on the fiiiiiiiiffffffff…..”

The wife raises one eyebrow. Oh, no! fifth is the wrong answer! Damage Control! Emergency Emergency! Abort instruction! Override!

Me: “fiiiffffff….a.aaaa.aaaaaachchooooooooo! AAaaahh! Excuse me!”
Wife is giving me The Look.

Me: “Anniversary is on the sixth!”

Wife: “Well, at least you remembered! I hope you’ve got me a thoughtful gift too!”

Whew! That was a close one. If I’d gotten the date of the anniversary wrong, that too on our very first anniversary, I’d be made to remember it for the rest of my life. Lucky escape! But wait! What’s the thing about the thoughtful gift?!? No matter… Disaster avoided for now…

Me: “Oh yeah yeah! I’ve bought a thoughtful gift! Its so thoughtful, so thoughtful that it’ll leave you thinking! Haha!”
Wife: “Well, that’s good! I’m so looking forward to the sixth!”
Me: “Oh yeah, me too! I’ll bet my thoughtful gift kicks your thoughtful gift’s ass. You’ve got serious competition lady! You’d better come up with some spectacular gift for me to match my super-duper-ultra-thoughtful gift!”

Regular readers will immediately recognize that this is my super-inflated ego speaking. I had absolutely no idea of ANY gift, leave alone a thoughtful one, but that hadn’t stopped my big ego from making unsubstantiated claims. This was going to get me intro trouble!

Now, where am I going to find a thoughtful gift!?!?!

To Be Continued…

• 4 Comments

You’re all probably wondering why I’ve not been posting on the blog for the last couple of weeks. Well, it was because I’ve been holed up in deep meditation, pondering  one of my deepest religious principles - How to avoid exercising. As ya’ll probably know, I’ve been under tremendous pressure recently to start doing SOME exercise. Not satisfied with my current strategies, I’ve been trying to cook up a fool-proof, permanent strategy that will solve this problem once and for all.

And I’ve succeeded!

That’s right folks! I’ve now come up with a spectacularly brilliant strategy that will save me the pain of exercise for a lifetime! And I’m going to tell you how it works!

The strategy is centered around the somewhat unreasonable assumption that the pharmaceutical companies will soon invent a pill that will cure all diseases all at once. I think this is inevitable, don’t you? Soon, they’ll have a pill to reduce cholesterol, improve muscle strength, reduce fat, increase attractiveness to the opposite sex and make taking baths outdated. I did a careful statistical analysis of past trends, and I predict that this pill will be invented by March 19th, 2018. That’s close enough in the future, so its all good.

So, lets review the strategy so far. A magic pill will be invented that will make all the people that are exercising now look like fools. But lets say that this doesn’t happen. I don’t see how, but let us, for arguments’ sake, assume that this simple-enough pill doesn’t get invented. Then what?

This where the brilliance of my strategy comes in. To balance out the risk of not inventing the magic pill, I’m planning to short the stocks of pharmaceutical companies in the long run. Selling short is a technique of stock-manipulation that will make you money if the stock falls. So, if the pharma companies make the magic pill, then I buy it and become healthy. If they don’t make the pill, I short the stocks and become rich. And as we all know, being rich is somewhat better than being healthy, because when you are rich, you can buy yatchs and IPL teams and that sort of stuff, but all you can do when you are healthy is eat apples, because, you know, you don’t want to become unhealthy. It’s a brilliant fail proof plan! The ideal win-win situation.

I’m planning to patent this brilliant idea, so if you plan to use it, you need to send me some money. Rs. 5000 only. Think about it, you can’t get a more brilliant plan. As they say,

Short-sell stocks and hedge your health against exercise,
Become healthy or wealthy, but certainly not wise!

• 6 Comments

There comes a time in every married man’s life that he is faced with the difficult prospect of having to cut tomatoes. If you have had any experience with vegetables, you’ll know it is a painful and difficult experience. I’m sure making someone cut violates some fundamental human rights, but I’ve not been able to find the relevant law yet. I’m still working on it.

In the meanwhile, I’ve come up with some innovative strategies that I’ve been using over the past few months to avoid getting assigned any work, especially cutting tomatoes. I call these strategies Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance or PETA.

Strategy #1: The preemptive denial
The preemptive denial is a very effective strategy, but it needs to be executed very delicately. The core of this strategy is to avoid getting assigned the cutting of tomatoes in the first place by making oneself seemingly unavailable. And for this strategy, I must extend my most sincere thanks to Mr. Lalit Modi for creating the Indian Premier League matches. You see, the IPL matches are all highly optimized for PETA (Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance). All matches are in the evenings, exactly during cooking time, the time when you are most likely to get assigned tomato duty.

Here’s an illustration of how to use this strategy:
Pretend to be deeply engrossed in the match while simultaneously keeping an eye on the tomatoes.
As soon as the Wife approaches the Tomatoes and is about to say “Can you please….” scream like this:
“WOOOHOOOO!!! Hohooo!!! WHAT A SIX! This McCullum dude is awesome! Did you see how he hit through the line by picking the ball of the bowlers hand and turned his wrists along with the anticipated spin on the up? Too much….”

It is important that you use the appropriate cricketing jargon so as to make it convincing that you are really engrossed in the match. If you don’t time it right, then this will happen:
Wife: “Can you please cut the tomatoes?”
If you forget to scream at this point, or if the wife completes her sentence, you will have to respond
You: “The Tomatoes? OK, I guess…”
GAME OVER.

Strategy #2: The negative learning variations
This strategy has existed for a very long time and is already widely practiced, but I have come up with some innovations of my own here. Basically, the strategy involves doing such a bad job that you don’t get asked to do it again. But this is not as easy as it seems. You have to be quite thorough and meticulous in doing the bad job. You have to do a good bad job, otherwise it won’t be bad enough and the tomatoes will come back again the next time.

To do a really effective and efficient bad job, you foremost need to have a calm mind and think clearly. The first strategy involves taking the Tomatoes, and saying that you just saw an amateur jugglery show on TV and have learnt how to juggle. You then take a few tomatoes and throw them into the air, and let them fall and generally make a mess. Bonus points if the tomatoes fall on the sofa, because if that happens, you won’t be allowed anywhere near a tomato for several years. Mission accomplished.

Another useful variant is to say that you saw a show on Discovery Channel that showed how to properly cut tomatoes using a food processor. Now, if you try to cut tomatoes using a food processor, it makes a royal mess (and some tomato soup, but no cut tomatoes). Don’t ask me how I learnt that you can’t cut tomatoes using a food processor. Anyway, when it is realized that you’ve made a mess, then you won’t be asked to do it again. Success!

Strategy #3: Gross incompetence strategy.
This is actually an extreme version of Strategy #2. In #2, you demonstrated that you can’t be trusted with tomatoes, but this strategy takes it to the next level by demonstrating that you can’t understand instructions. You have to act and behave like a complete idiot. Again, this is not as easy as it seems, and it takes a lot of will power and discipline, although it comes naturally to some people like me.

According to this strategy, when you are asked to cut tomatoes, walk up to the fridge and take out some cabbage. Then proceed to cut it. Experienced foodies will immediately realize at this point that cabbage and tomatoes are not very substitutable, and that annoys the hell out of the person in charge of the cooking. So much that they will do the cutting of the tomatoes themselves.

Another way this can be accomplished is to do the following. When you are asked to cut tomatoes, run down to the local grocery shop and buy 2 Kgs of tomatoes. Now you have twice as many tomatoes, and none of them are cut, increasing the ratio of uncut tomatoes substantially. It is my repeatable experience that this almost certainly leads to you not being asked to do ANYTHING again, which is really the jackpot.

Now that you’ve learnt all the PETA tactics, go ahead and use them. I wish all of you a tomato-cutting-free life!

• 12 Comments

I’ve recently been presented with a very serious moral dilemma. At office, a new gym recently opened this week, and it is on the same floor as my desk is. But that’s not the problem. I have enough will power to resist the nudges and bribes that my team mates have been offering me to go to the gym. The problem is in fact, a more serious one.

You see, the gym has several treadmills that have a TV on them along with a cable connection. And that means Cartoon Network too! This is a serious ethical issue in Adityaism. You see, going to the gym is a sin, but watching TV is a virtue. And unfortunately, thanks to the deteriorating moral fiber of society, increasingly more technological advances of the 21st century are mixing sin with virtue.

But, as is allowed in my newest religion, I am allowed to take only the good parts of all the things and ignoring the parts that I don’t like. I’ve been trying to figure out how to watch the TV on the treadmills without subjecting myself to the humiliation of exercise. I’ve been thinking for several days and I came up with a couple of plans.

Plan #1:
Fortunately, the chair that I have at my desk has wheels, and I thought I could just push the chair to the gym and sit next to the treadmill. I even thought I could put up my feet on the treadmill’s dashboard (you know, the part that shows your heartbeat and stuff) and watch my cartoons.

Plan #2:
My second plan was to put up a web cam on the treadmill and hook it up to a computer and broadcast it to my desktop. This way, I can enjoy the cartoons in comfort at my desk without going anywhere near the evil place. I even planned to take one of those tall stands from office that they keep the whiteboards on, and mount the webcam on top of that. It even makes the correct angle to catch the TV properly on the webcam.

Unfortunately, both my plans flopped. Apparently, there is a evil monster guarding the first level of hell (he calls himself the “gym instructor” though), and he laid out some rules which didn’t fit my plans. He wouldn’t let me sit in a chair in his gym, and he certainly wouldn’t let me put up a web cam on a stilt next to his precious treadmill. And so, I came up with THE MASTER PLAN to defeat the evil monster

MASTER PLAN:
Since the instructor’s two conditions were that I needed to be ON TOP the treadmill with the treadmill RUNNING if I was to watch TV, I decided I was going to satisfy both his precious conditions, but in my own special way. I’m going to wear ROLLER-SKATES to the gym, and stand on his stupid treadmill. The treadmill can run as fast as it wants, and the only thing its going to move are the wheels of my Roller-Skates.  All the cartoons I want to watch, and without even breaking a sweat! Muahahahahahaaa! Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

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A friend of mine works at this cool company that’s created this new social networking thing. Its called LifeBlob, and a part of it shows what’s called your “Timeline”. Its basically a history of stuff that happened to you it uses that to link up people. Its pretty cool actually, but that’s not the point of this story. When I saw this thing, I got thinking of my own life’s timeline. I tried to document what all I’ve done so far in my life:

1982: Born on Planet Earth. A lot of things went wrong that year.

1983: On my first birthday, I was telling stories apparently. No one else understood them, but it seems I myself found them incredibly funny.

1985: First day of school and I tripped and fell on my head on my way to class. Had to skip school that day. I bunked my first ever class on day 1.

1988: Pushed my Sister into a bucket of Gulab Jaamons that were to be served at my Aunt’s wedding.

1989: For the hell of me, I can’t figure out how to write the cursive letter “s”. I hadn’t seen Taare Zameen Par then, else would have claimed to be dyslexic.

1995: Introduced to computers through “Dangerous Dave” and “Prince of Persia” video games. I’m totally hooked.

1996: Set fire to my computer, literally, with smoke and all. I was trying to overclock the CPU because my computer wasn’t fast enough to play Doom. Tried to convince Dad it was a computer virus that burnt the motherboard and melted the CPU without success.

1998: A friend and I co-invent the reverse-proxy method of attendance acquisition. Forget to get a patent on it, now everyone uses it.

2000: Time to decide between Engineering and Tobacco farming. I pick Computer Engineering. Big Mistake.

2002: Bomb hoax at college, incidentally, on the day of the exams. I swear I didn’t do it, but if it wasn’t for that call, I’d definitely have flunked.

2004: Bought a PS2 on ebay with my first salary.

2006: Lost 6 Kgs on a trip to China because I couldn’t find anything to eat.

2008: Writing blog posts on a Friday night and trying to figure out how to get all this online on the lifeblob site. Yay! for all things 2.0!

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If you’ve been following the IPL, the tickets at several stadiums went on sale today. Check out the details of ipl tickets here. Pretty reasonably priced, in my opinion!

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It’s nearly one year since the wedding day, and it has been a very interesting learning experience for me. I have made the startling discovery that there is a secret code-language called “wifeese” that the wife speaks. It sounds and has words just like regular language, but has hidden meanings that take a lot of time to decipher. I’ve figured out quite a few of them, and here I present to you the “Top 5 Wifese Statements and what they really mean”

At number 5, we have: “There’s nothing on TV today. *yaaawwwwn*”
What it really means: “I’m really really bored, so stop writing your stupid blog and take me out to dinner tonight. You married me, not the blog, damnit!”
This one was pretty obvious for me to figure out because if you didn’t get it the first time, progressively agressive statements get made until the last step, which is to get hit by a thick book in the head.

Number 4: “Hi Sweetie…. How was your day?”
What it really means: “I got us tickets to the latest movie for Friday Night. If you try to resist or make up an excuse, you won’t get breakfast for a week.”
I had to learn this the hard way, after my several attempts at avoiding the inevitable friday night movies. I’ve come to realize that breakfast is much more valuable than spending 3 hours sleeping in the theatre.

At number 3:  “How does this dress look on me?”
What it really means: God only knows.

Heck, I think even He won’t know how to answer this question. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is not really a question, but more the signal of an impending storm. Kinda like if you see a shark swimming towards you. It’s too late to do anything about it.
And at Number 2: “Do you have a minute? Can you come here please?”
What it really means: “Cut these tomatoes.”
The first few times I was called like this, I rushed expectedly, hoping it would be some new gift. But like Pavolv’s dogs who figured out what the ringing bell really meant, I have come to figure out what that invitation really means, and try to avoid it as much as possible.

And finally, we have The Top Wifese Statement And What It Really Means:
Number 1: “We’ll Talk about it later!”
What it really means: “We will stop discussing this issue now, and I will wait till you forget about it, and when the actual time comes I will convince you that we had talked about it earlier, and you had agreed to go with what I want to do.”
I totally didn’t get what this really meant for a long time. I always thought that the matter will duly come up for discussion later and promptly forgot about it. I began to get suspicious when I “discovered” that I had agreed to buy the wife 7 pairs of shoes, a sofa, a dining table and had also “volunteered” to vacuum the house twice a week.

• 13 Comments