Petrol Carticide - A societal menace

       

             I wish i too had a diesel car like the next door IT guy. Every day, i would watch my neighbour, religiously bathe it in the morning, and towel dry till it sparkles, and its metallic armour reflects the glint of envy from my prying eye. All those who own a petrol car can understand this angst, we the unfortunate feel, who have been selected by the almighty to bear the burden in this life for the sins committed in their past lives. The discrimination is embedded in our society, and the bias deep rooted, where a diesel car owner struts about displaying his prize, while the petrol car owner, walks with his head hung low in shame and his shoulders drooping with the burden of a lifetime. The petrol car owner faces a life of humiliation and is an outcast within their home and community.  He has to face the nagging at home for the monumental blunder committed after a carefully researched analysis and the condescending pats from his friends, on his back with a reassurance that 'God only selects the most brave to bear his heaviest burden'.  

         The social fabric has also disintegrated. The cases of Petrol Carticide is now rampant in the society, with the law cracking its whip on the losers who could no longer take the burden and had taken the easy way out of their misery by taking their car to the crusher and watching the painful destruction.  There were some, according to unconfirmed reports, who couldnt even manage a decent crusher and had gone to a deserted field in a nearby village, doused their painful possession with diesel (oh, how cruel can that be!) and put a match to it.  

            This is atrocious. We have to educate our society of this evil, and create awareness, that taking the easy way out is not the only option. A petrol car should not be considered as a burden and is in no way inferior to the diesel car.  Whatever a diesel car can do, the petrol car can do and sometimes even better.  We could explore alternate ways to ease the burden, like, asking the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to carry petrol from their country whenever they sneak in, where it is available at a measly 43.50 per litre. We could even marry them into our households wherein you can demand it as a right. We could then sponsor their distant and not so distant relatives and hide them in our various cellars, thereby increasing our quota.  A new organisation has also come up called 'Save the Petrol Car'' which is now doing yeoman service in creating this awareness. Amir Khan has recorded the latest episode of Satyameva Jayate, which talks about the travails of a petrol car owner, and will prod the government to enact a law to provide 30 percent reservation to petrol car owners not only in government jobs but also in the private sector (for the first time in independent India).  He will appeal on his programme to the viewers to sign the letter and send it to their respective MLA's.  This will then be passed in the next Parliament session.  

                I have already put in my papers in my current job!!

Butt Seriously!!!

     

                                         
   

        While I celebrated my sequel, created to tide over my bouts of intransigence, by visiting the nearest Ganesh mandir and breaking a coconut (gathering the pieces carefully later), the UPA decided to celebrate the anniversary of their sequel by having a 'Dine and Dias' show (they decided against a sound and light show due to austerity measures).  So I had the opportunity to watch the glee on Arnab's face while Navika was incessantly driveling on the position of Mulayam's Butt at various time lines during the show (a la the new profile page of Facebook). She screamed into the camera, that at the beginning it was next to Chidambaram, and then voila, during dinner it was next to Sonia! (I happened to catch Arnab just managing to sit back after he had fallen of his chair in excitement, when the camera panned onto him)

             Now, I must confess, that though I am not an intellectual, who being a song writer or sports journalist, could come on Arnabs show and comment on multifarious subjects ranging from the new BPL benchmark to India's preparedness of the nuclear triad as a deterrant,  I do understand the importance of Tashreef Rakhiye in Lucknow parlance.  But what i failed to understand was that, how the tashreef, which Mulayam had so graciously brought  from Lucknow, was a matter of national importance and interest, and how its position in the national capital during an event, which the whole nation was following with bated breath would decide the fate of this great nation.

           I was then enlightened by the intellectuals on the panel, that this tashreef assumed great significance as it was carefully positioned as a countermeasure to a bong who had gone bonkers (now i thought bongs dont have to go bonkers, they are just manufactured that way, but that is another story).  I was also informed by this elite panel that it even had the powers to decide the next President of India! 

         (Now this reminded me of an old joke, where the different parts of the body argued as to who should be the Boss. The brain said that since he controlled the entire operations, he should be the boss. The heart said that since he ensured regular supply of blood to the brain, he should be the boss. The stomach said that since he provided the energy for both the earlier contestants to perform he should be the boss. The lungs argued that since they are the ones who decided whether the entity should be alive, they should be Boss. The asshole wanted to contest, but then the others laughed at him so much that he felt offended and decided not to function any more. In no time, the stomach couldn't do his job, the brain got clogged, the heart felt weak and the lungs found the going difficult. So they all decided to let the asshole decide the future course of action and anointed him as the Boss.)

     So we now have a Tashreef who will decide the Head of this poor Nation!!!!

UPA II :Three Years of Kitsch

       


        The UPA anniversary celebrations has provided us with an interesting insight. A peek at a partner change. A whiff of displaced loyalties.  I thought Ekta Kapoor had a copyright to this plot. A meaningless charade that never ends with an overdose of overt and covert flings, surreptitiously changing partners, dalliances with the villain who would then support the heroine to seek revenge on her boyfriend, blackmail.....all woven together by a "K"! She would call it KKKahani UPA II ki.  How do i know all this? Aha, you see, when i have been raving to my friends how i enjoyed watching the recordings of the ULFA cup or the Ryder cup, I was secretly watching prime time Ekta ( Now this would be a scandal if it comes out and so i would appreciate if you could keep it a secret)

        Let me now see what we have in common. I am doing this as a favour to Ekta, so  that she can use this carefully researched data to sue UPA II for stealing her ideas. (and maybe offer me a role in her next project)

• An elderly head of the family who hardly gets to speak and when he speaks nobody listens, for the house is controlled by the all powerful Saas.
• A daughter-in-law who has found refuge in the house after her father had been thrown out for criticizing the saas of the house. She is now torn between the love for her sasural and devotion to her father who desperately needs the support of the Saas for becoming the headman of the village.
• An educated 'Swami' who is the villain, who keeps digging up dirt on all the past affairs of the household and then publicly releases them making falooda of the khandaan ki izzat.
•  A revenge of the spurned loyalist who had faithfully amassed wealth for his masters and is then unceremoniously thrown out of the House.
• A social crusader and an idealist with a band of young followers, who tries to put some sense into the family by encouraging them to mend their evil ways and follow khandaan ki maryaada.
• A couple of loud mouthed, arrogant and vocally polluting damaads who berate all and sundry, who would dare question the Khandaan.  
• A total stranger knocking on the doors one fine day and claiming that one of the grand old chachas is actually his father and the patriarch refusing to prove his paternity claiming it as a plot to usurp the khandaans wealth. 

       I think that these similarities are enough for Ekta to claim intellectual (!!!) property rights. Chetan Bhagat had done it with far less for Three Idiots!

The Return of the Marine!

        Sequels are in vogue these days, and if they could churn out balderdash and call it as 'this time double the fun'  or 'they are back' of some previous tripe, why can't I do the same. And for the record, I have a valid reason. It is not just because my mailbox couldn't handle the voluminous fan mail. I have a far more principled and sober (just put in these words as they sounded good and don't mean anything to me) reason for  (re)starting my diary and calling it 'Mariners Dairy II' (with the tag line - 'Brain Dead - Once more').  Well, the reason for this affront of using up valuable storage space of some rich company's server, is that my memory had failed me again. And i found out about it under not so pleasant circumstances.  One fine evening after my rum and coke, and a not so brief hiatus from my diary, in a moment of uncontrolled rage after watching Arnab Goswami at his usual worst behaviour, I wanted to sit and finger away (the middle one) on the keyboard to relieve the stress. And to my chagrin, i found to my utter dismay, that memory can not only elude an angry man in his time of need (as i have often discovered during any argument with the fairer sex)  but also take benevolently to the object of your anger and prevent you from finding solace by venting out expletives in the most democratic (and safe) manner available at your disposal. I could not remember the password to my blog and Google sternly and steadfastly refused to entertain me, in my hour of need. So my helplessness and my subsequent defeat at the hands of Arnab when i couldnt respond in equal measure on my media (my diary) led me to my decision to create a sequel. Thus emerged the more stylish and refined (phew) new diary which i intend to fill in regularly and use only the expletives which have already been cleared by the censor board.  In addition,  to safeguard against dementia and other popular debilitating options, I have stored the password in a secure area (classified!) And now i am ready. So Arnab and other imbeciles, beware! The marine is back in town!!!!!