How to...

1....shuffle around inconspicuously in class when you have not studied for your Maths test

• wear your school uniform for a change so that you blend in with the others
• ask to be excused to go to the loo - once out, stay there
• "sprain" your right wrist and pretend your brain cannot work either due to the breakage of the essential connection.

2....pretend you are working when you are really not

• look agitatedly at your notes, then back at your computer, scratching your head at intervals and muttering expletives under your breath. If someone asks you what's wrong, tell them you are trying to make the company's balance sheet.
• when someone asks you to accompany them for a coffee break, make a big show of missing valuable time for work. But accompany them anyway, and ensure you stay in the pantry till its time to leave.
• Surf all possible educational sites - booking movie tickets.com, shopping online.com, eauction.com, crosswords online.com, post an ad online.com and look with extreme concentration at your computer, especially when you are on the joke of the day.com site.

3....appear to be generous without ending up being generous

• when its time to offer a bite of your collosal icecream sundae, suddenly slap your hand on your forehead and say you forgot to bring an extra spoon. Then keep asking everyone if you can go and get them a spoon. Of course they will demur and you can speedily finish off that icecream
• keep offering to loan a book or a CD that you don't have. And then keep saying you have forgotten to bring it.

Woo hoo!

Tring Tring

Everybody has a cellphone these days. The brother, the cat, the friend, the aunt, the beauty parlour maid, the milkman, the rickshaw driver, the roadside vegetable vendor, everybody. I decided it was high time I went ahead and got with the times. I decided to buy myself one gadget real quick.

I am a careful and cautious buyer. I did 3 weeks of intensive research on the internet and magazines trying to find the model with the maximum features and minimum cost. I finally narrowed down to 3 models and started going from store to store comparing best prices and haggling over accessories.

After another week of extensive shopping (I lost about 5 kgs walking from shop to shop), I became the proud owner of a brand new cellphone. Another week of meticulous research on networks and connections and I bought a SIM from the best network provider.

How's it going now? Alas....I have been sitting and waiting for my cellphone to ring.

Fly away yonder

Once upon a time, people looked aghast when someone offered the idea of flying to their destination instead of using cheaper alternatives like the bus or the ubiqutous train.

Today, its exactly opposite. Not only does your uncle, sis, cousin, friend, friend's friend travel in an aeroplane, but so does the paan-waala, chai-waala and doodh-waala.

Thanks to the wonders of modern science, a booming economy and a flood of bold innovative entrepreneurs, flying away is no longer a dream. Its affordable to one and all.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, begins the problem, the nightmare. Though there has been an exponential increase in the number of airlines and aircrafts, the poor little airport remains the same - poor and little. Right from the entrance of the airport to the plane, you are walking in a sea of people. The asphyxiated airport can barely sustain the burgeoning populace.

Fat people, thin people, rich people, poor people (yes, them too!), nice people, bad people, pickpockets, chain-snatchers, rock stars, fashion models, businessmen, foreigners, the neighbourhood cricket team - all can be seen rubbing shoulders with each other - literally!!

I was sitting in a corner of an especially packed departure hall, looking more like furniture than a person (the slightest movement resulted in my elbow poking into the eye of an enormous Punjabi woman who looked too dangerous to mess with), counting the minutes to my flight. As usual, the flight was delayed, this time by one hour. I looked around watching people, trying to get rid of my boredom. As the minutes ticked by, so did my patience and I found it very difficult to sit quietly. Finally, the boarding announcement came and I rushed for the gate, swallowed by the wave of humanity.

I looked around for the vehicle that transports passengers from the building to the aircraft. A public transport bus came and stopped right in front of me. I blinked. Talk about low-cost!
We were crammed into it and taken for a ride (pun unintended) to the plane. We had to stop about five times on the way to let the other aircrafts take off (yeah, looked like all planes were parked along the runway, some even on it).

The rest was relatively smooth. We were bundled into the aeroplane and whisked off to the destination.

My supposedly "fast" journey from Bangalore to Mumbai had taken 6 hours. My friend, meanwhile, opting to travel by train, reached a few hours later, refreshed and rejuvenated by the luxurious journey but bored to death due to lack of people to talk to.

You can't have it all.

Sigh, what a looker!

There he was, all 6 feet of him, a magnificient hunk of masculine masculinity. Those black eyes, those rippling biceps over six-pack abs, that fabulous bronze toned skin, those sinewy legs powerful enough to crush you to death, that slicked black hair falling alluringly over one perfectly shaped eyebrow - ah! such wonders of nature. I lapped up the scene enthralled.

And all for me too.

I was exercising in the gym and decided it was time to hit the showers. I walked up to this door meaning to open it and being the perfect gentleman that he was (along with being about the most perfect looker I had seen in ages), he offered to open it for me. I demured, coloured and shyly waited for him to open it.

He curled his long fingers (no ring, thank god!) around the handle and gave a gentle pull. The door didn't budge. But my hero, he is a powerful man. He pulled harder. No result. He asked me to stand back a little further, and immersed himself into the task of getting that nasty door opened if that was the last thing he would ever do. He put both his hands together and pulled again.

I was transfixed by those powerful muscles rippling under the skin, like trapped beasts straining to get out.

But the door seemed to have a will power of its own and didn't give in.

He flicked his hair away and I saw a tiny bead of sweat covering the small frown on that magnificent forehead and smiled encouragingly. Sigh, is he a hunk or is he a hunk!

He continued to strain and heave and I continued to drool over the gorgeous scenery, complimenting God on his excellent taste.

After about 10 minutes, he mopped his brow and sadly shook his head, incredulous at no results.

I decided it was time I took matter into my own hands. I walked up to the door and gave it a gentle push with one finger of my left hand.

It opened like a breeze.

The door had to be pushed to open.

Too many cooks....

...spoil the broth. Full marks for your amazing knowledge of kindergarten proverbs.

Let me tell you by my experience - all this stuff about too many cooks is utter rubbish. Nonsense with a capital N. Balderdash. Poppycock. There can never be any such thing as too many cooks. And I'll show you exactly why.

I decided to cook one day. The stuff they pass off as food in our canteen is enough to make even the most seasoned pig puke and I am but a mere mortal. I figured if I can manage to eat the canteen food, I will definitely manage to eat my own cooking without dropping dead of food poisoning. So I enthusiastically go to the supermarket and buy some vegetables, some flour and some salad items. I come back home and the nightmare starts.

I want to cut open the flour packet. Damn thing is stubborn, but me, I have the muscles of a Rambo. I tug viciously and finally open it. Unfortunately, in this process I spill half of it over myself. My dream of being fair and lovely has just been fulfilled. The other half is lying on the floor and the platform. The remaining that's left (yeah yeah, forget the math will you) I carefully scoop into a bowl and start kneading.

I end up putting too much water.

Then I put more flour to nullify the effect of water and end up putting too much flour.

Then I add more water to make the mixture smooth.

I repeat these steps for about half an hour till all the flour's exhausted and suddenly decide that the mixture is perfect anyway. I cover and keep it aside to soften.

Out come the veggies now. Let's see, is it going to be ladyfingers or potatoes? I think for a while and pick on the ladyfinders. Green vegetables are good for the skin, or so they say. I wash them and look for the knife. Damn. I could have sworn it was here someplace. I look around my kitchen intensely but fail to spot it.

I open the cabinets one by one and start digging around. Half an hour later, I am exhausted. I close all cabinets and decide to lie down for a bit. To my dismay, the kitchen is littered with the stuff I had forgotten to put back in the cabinets. Oh well. I put things right and suddenly hear my phone ringing. I run to my bedroom and see the knife right next to my phone. How the hell did it get there in the first place? Anyway I politely tell the telemarketing fellow to get the hell out before I beat his brains to pulp and get back to the task of cutting the vegetables. Another half an hour and a few nicks and cuts later, things are finally ready to be cooked. I put the vessels on the gas and start the task.

If you have never cooked ladyfingers, let me tell you there's still time to hire that maid. Nothing, but nothing takes about as much time to cook as ladyfingers. I darkly wonder if the word "lady-fingers" had been meticulously thought up after studying women's behaviour patterns, especially in the putting-makeup-on department. I stir and stir and stir and still no sign of it getting cooked. I decide its high time I took that 5-minute break and walk to the sofa plonking myself down it with a huge sigh. I pick up an Archies and flip the pages. Suddenly I smell something burning and rush back to the kitchen in alarm. The food is, well, cooked. Slightly overdone, but cooked nevertheless.

I now start with the rotis. With agonizing slowness I roll the roti to something resembling the island of Bora Bora. A circle is a boring shape anyway. I cook it and finish with the rest.

Believe you me, at the end of this "simple" task of cooking my dinner, I was so exhausted, my kitchen was in such a mess and my hands were so like the war ravaged Serbia that I decided enough was enough. One person alone can definitely not manage all this mess. It will need about four and a half people to be able to cook a dinner deftly.

Now its back to the canteen for me.

Morons

I thought the title may be a little familiar. If you are a working professional, I am sure you can envisage about a million characters who fit this description to a T. And hats off to you if you happen to be in IT. Then this seemingly innocuous little noun is an all-pervading omni-present environment bacteria you encounter every waking moment of your life.

Let's take a few quick examples from your everyday activities:

1. Milkman is supposed to turn up at 7 to deliver milk. He happens to "forget" that he has to deliver milk today. Oh, and by the way, you have this super-important presentation to make at 9 AM to the boss' boss' boss' boss. Oh, well, skip the tea. Its bad for your health anyway.

2. You are driving on the proper side of the road, at the proper speed, giving proper signals. Suddenly, someone zooms by and not only honks at you, but gives you one of those classic you-idiot-can't-you-see-where-I-am-going glares. That he should have been driving on the opposite side of the road is altogether too small a point to bring under discussion.

3. You are standing in a queue to pay your electricity bill. The man behind the counter asks you if you are here to pay your electricity bill. Of course not, I just love hanging around stinky crowded government offices, standing for hours on end, sweating like a pig, rubbing shoulders with all the rif-raff in the world. It builds character.

4. You send daily email updates to your boss, along with printouts, in-person discussions, reminders, storing all of the above in complex IT repositories without fail, every single day of the week. Your boss, keeps asking you the same questions you have answered at least 5 times in all the communication modes above, without fail. Your performance appraisal marks you as the dimwit that needs to be able to manage stakeholders better. Oh well.

5. You weigh about half a ton and have to be poured into your clothes every morning. The only places you can acquire your outfits are the lifestyle stores that sell bedsheets. You decide to get a little figure conscious and enrol in the neighbourhood gym. You are all geared up in slacks, tee, sports shoes, complete with a wrist band and sweat band for that added touch of class. You walk into the gym and this big hulking mass of beef wearing a T-shirt with the words "Gym Instructor" written over it approaches you with a friendly smile. "So, you have come here to lose weight, eh?". Nah, I just like to puff around like a steam engine with all my flab doing the disco dance to provide these poor anorexic souls with some wholesome entertainment. Pun intended.

The GYM

What kind of an idiot wakes up at 6 in the morning only to go to a gym where they make you run miles and lift more weights than the normal coolie?

Yeah, me.

But before you write me off as a complete disaster, there is a much deeper mystery behind my seemingly idiotic behaviour. Can't believe me? Read on, skeptic, read on...

The normal human is awakened rudely by the tintinabulation of a telephone. Or the shrieks of an alarm clock. Me, I'm awakened by a combination of both. Oh, well.

What motivates me to get my lazy butt off the bed? The gorgeous hunk who picks me up in the morning.

Ah, getting interesting is it?

Still finding it difficult to believe anyone would wake up at 6? Join me in the gym and find out!

I disappear

Ooohh!