Of apple juice, Godrej and old age

I really get shirty when my friends get nostalgic all of a sudden, not that I have a wooden heart or something. Its just that I feel that we are too young to be feeling all that shit, just yet. So whenever someone goes "You remember... ", my inner voice screams "Ah! There they go again! Get over it!"

All this until a few days ago.The old adage that "Kids can be cruel" - very true.


Just the other day that 2-feet-tall-wannabe-power-ranger-brat-cousin of mine called me "Godzilla". I believe his exact words were "Gaajilllaaa".

Little Runt! Despite all the practice in the world with this sort of thing, it was still a very sharp barb nonetheless.

So when I was walking along and i saw yet another prototype 8 yr old runt running my way and eying me warily I was ready. Or so I thought!

And just then he smiled.

"Cute kid!" Thinking I'd been too quick to judge him, I smiled back.

He waved and although public displays of affection are never my thing I waved back.

And then he said

"Bye Unggeel!"

WTH.

Not too long ago, I was the 8 year old (maybe not your typical runt, but still) who thought people who lived in the 1950's must have lived in black and white worlds and those in the 70's must have lived in eastman coloured worlds and so on. You get the drift.

Just as he said the dreaded word I remembered the Old Godrej Hair Ad that goes Auntie... Auntie... Auntie... . Damn it! Now I'm doing it. Maybe its time even I started doing this nostalgia thing.

In the words of Vivek,

"Epdi irundha naan ipdi ayiten. Crazy bugger. Dei payya andha apple juice'a konda!"

Of how the thundu guy became just another guy

Just another dreary Saturday afternoon on a slow moving L70. I'd boarded the bus very near Ambattur (its starting point) and hence was able to secure a seat in the only place with enough leg room - the row at the very end, which is usually the very last place that other non-leg-room-challenged folk would choose because of the innumerable speed bumps.

But me, no, I don't get such luxuries and I've actually kindaa gotten used to it. Although my fellow passengers always have a weird look on their face whenever they see me decline a seat for so trivial a reason such as lack of leg room. Anyway thats beside the point and I will probably talk about it in a future post.

So there I was minding my own business seated at the fag end of the bus when along came the Thundu Guy and sat down right beside me. I wasn't too perturbed because these guys aren't much of a problem after they've attained nirvana ( in their case it is the act of securing a seat). Boy, was I wrong!

On a crowded bus waiting at a traffic junction in the sweltering Chennai heat it can be said with certainty that the likelihood of a good ol' fight is very high. And hence all personnel not trained in the fine art of bus banter and bickering must make way for worthier competitors. We'd just reached Padi and the bus was boarded by Bijli. I have no words to describe her. Suffice to say that even if Narasimha were to touch her then either Captain would be the one electrocuted or the entire Universe would implode. She was Vijay Shanthi + Sornakka + Neelambhari , all rolled into one.

Now the back row in a bus is a topic of fierce debate between the two genders of commuters. Whether its allotted to the fairer sex or if its free for all is still unclear. Me, I don't take any chances. I'm used to standing in buses, so what difference does it make if I were to stand for that extra couple of minutes. Unfortunately I'd just then gotten a call and was pretty busy on the phone when suddenly I realised I was about to be caught in the cross fire between Bijli and the Thundu guy. The initial barbs had already been thrown and bijli was ready to unleash her rage. Having seen a few such scenes in person, I did what every guy on that back row should have done. I fled that area. The fact that bijli's arguments were drowning out my mother on the other end also weighed pretty heavily in my decision to move to quieter surroundings.

By the time I'd disconnected the call I could see that bijli was really at the very top of her game. And the Thundu guy, was not gonna just sit around when he was being dis-nirvana-ted. When cornered, the two options available to any organism is Fight or Flight, and in choosing the former, the thundu guy made the biggest mistake of his life. What followed was a verbal bashing of the 2 generations on either side of the thundu guy's family. The thundu guy just about managed to drop the cliched 'Do you know who i know' line only to be confronted with an astute listing of possible characteristics that he and his 'political' friends possessed.

I am a good fan of a well paced "Podi" like the one in this song, but to use that as your only convincing insult repeatedly after the kindaa barbs that you've been getting. Lets just say that the journey from Padi to CMBT was a lot of things for a lot of people.

Entertaining as hell for everyone but one soul.
Hell for that one soul.
Educative for me.(all those new word-combos I wasn't imaginative enough to think up earlier...)
Life Affirming for bijli.

Much like Padayappa's thundu which falls to the ground at the end of the most amaklamatic scene of Tamil cinema, everyone on that bus saw that metaphorical thundu fall to the ground. And right then... the Thundu guy became just another guy.

Why women are dumb...

See what happens when you mess up and accidentally miss just a couple of words like anything and but. Quite contrary to what the very misleading title might imply I wanted to argue the very opposite, that women are anything but dumb.

Saying women are dumb is like ... is like saying... ( ran out of an analogy for the very first time in my life, hope that captures the extremity of such an outrageous accusation ) Hence the only thing that is like saying women are dumb is saying women are dumb. (That is one very confused sentence)

I will now explain why women are anything but dumb. First lets begin by analyzing the word 'dumb'. Now Oxford defines it as

1 being unable to speak or lacking the power of speech. - Yeah rite. Like that's ever gonna happen with women. Right from the days when I was short enough to wear shorts upto the days shorts were a form of wearable torture device, if there was one thing that I'd learnt during that time, it was that, women like to talk. Period.

2 temporarily unable or unwilling to speak. - Again. No more questions, You Honour.

3 informal, chiefly N. Amer. stupid. - Aah. Although this has been listed at 3, this is the meaning the feminist inside you jumped to when you first read the title. I will not frown upon your bias as it is fairly common to do so and also because I believe the origin of this particular meaning is closely related to the earlier two. I say so because when someone is struck dumb and rendered speechless it is equated to being not able to give an appropriately intelligent enough response. Hence it has come to be that temporary speech impairment will forever be associated with being deficient in matters of the mind.

Now that we have established that as a fact, I will regale you with the tale of when the Thundu Guy met his match, in the next post.