Good Guys Finish Last

They say that good guys finish last. Of course they do – they always wait for the woman to finish first. Nobody will ever call you good if you finish in two minutes before rolling over and going to sleep. You might get called ‘Two Minute Jack’ though!

If you think about it, the world would be a much better place if only it had more good guys. But of course, that's not going to happen anytime soon. And you know why? Because the very people who like good guys and want everybody to be good actually promote a different kind of behavior.  I know a lot of women who date or are married to good guys. But these very same women who found the goodness attractive to begin with want their guys to be good only to them They are forever egging them on to be more assertive, to bargain more for better prices, to not let anyone cut them off in traffic and so on and so forth. What they don't understand is that a guy can either be good or bad. If he's beating up errant taxi drivers, then it's only a matter of time before he exhibits similar behavior at home.

It's the same at work. All of us say that we like the good guys, but people are constantly told to be more aggressive, to take tough decisions, to not care what happens to their co workers as long as they get the job done. When you keep hearing the same message over and over again, at home and at work, it's bound to leave an impression. I think that we should all encourage the goodness in people a little more - it will eventually lead to world peace.

Diwali is around the corner and there's a big party on at A's place as usual. This has become a tradition of sorts with us where a bunch of friends all meet at A's house for a night of alcohol and firecrackers. It's a little bit different this time though. In the bustle of her day to day life, A has forgotten to invite us. She's not forgotten us, she's simply forgotten to invite us. I know she hasn't forgotten us because my name figures on her list to get the booze and the speakers. I mention this casually to S and he must have ratted to her because two minutes later my phone rings. The caller ID tells me that it is A and I presume that this is my formal invite. I pick up the phone "You bastard, I'll kill you if you don't come" she growls in my ear. "Of course ma'am, wild horses couldn't keep me away after that loving invite".

The party is already rocking by the time we get there and I find that I have lost my wallet. It had some cash in it and a lot of plastic. Sherlock is alive and kicking and I deduce that I must have left it behind at the grocery shop that we stopped at to buy batteries. A few frantic calls later we find that the wallet is not at the shop. It's gone. You can't keep a good man down for long (that's not strictly true - a 'good' guy will go down on you for as long as you want) and I am soon back on my feet with my cards blocked and a glass of rum in my hand.

The party is hotting  up. There is a bunch in the corner doing shots. They have the glasses lined up and are repeating them at about 5 minute intervals. One, two, three and then I lose count. I wonder what the heck they are thinking - they look too ugly not to be smarter than that.

The firecrackers are a blast. There are a lot of them and the kids go berserk. The sky is filled with light, the night reverberates with sound and the air is foggy with smoke. Finally Se says it's time for the grand finale.  It's a box about three feet long and a foot wide and high. What is it I ask him. It's supposed to go up he tells me. Well, this is getting interesting: It's big, it goes up and then it explodes!  Hmmmm it almost sounds obscene.

We make our way back inside to find that I have been right about the shots. There are horrible sounds coming from the bathroom and I see a couple of people passed out on the beds. That does not deter the rest of us and we continue with our karaoke. The night ends in the wee hours of the morning with some excellent dinner. Another great Diwali; Except that I have to be at work the next day!

The door bell rings early the next morning and a good Samaritan has brought back my wallet. It's missing all the cash, but at least my cards and my license are intact. Thank you God.

Happy Diwali.

The Son God

The Son God

The music in our  house has changed. In fact, it has changed so much that it sometimes almost doesn’t feel like home anymore. And it’s not just at home either; the music in the car is different too. I look around to find the reason for the change and I realize that I now live with the Son God who seems to decide what music gets played. I switch to the radio and find that his influence extends there too – the radio station seems to own a similar metronome. If the music is cacophonic, the lyrics are worse. The singers seem to be in competition to make the songs dirtier. They are all speaking English but I nevertheless cannot understand. There is an upper limit on the number of letters in each word and it is set to four. And the ideas and what is considered right and wrong is even worse. Rap music must have been very popular in Sodom and Gomorrah.  

My hearing has been slowly failing with age and for the first time I realize what a boon that has been. I think that God makes us hard of hearing as we grow older so that we don’t have to listen to the music of our kids.

But I can sometimes be an atheist, especially with regard to this particular God. I find an old DVD of Dire Straits and sit back with a glass of the best. The drumming intro of ‘Money for Nothing’ fills the room and then the guitar takes over and I wonder why I thought the drums were that great anyway. The song changes to ‘So Far Away From You’ and it fits my melancholy mood (brought on by the wife being in Thailand). I lose myself in the song:

“Where are you when the sun goes down,  You’re so far away from me ……”

And then it goes on to:

“I'm tired of being in love and being all alone
When you're so far away from me 
I'm tired of making out on the telephone,
And you're so far away from me”

This reminds me of another song that has been playing a lot in our house lately. It talks of pretty much the same situation but oh what a difference in the approach. It’s called “I Like It” By Enrique and it goes something like this:

“Girl please excuse me if I’m coming too strong
But tonight is the night we can really let go
My girlfriend’s out of town and I’m all alone
Your boyfriend’s on vacation and he doesn’t have to know
No no no, oh oh!”

Sigh! I’m beginning to feel my age!

An Open Relationship

Am I in an open relationship, I wonder. The wife left yesterday to Bang-kok (is that the right spelling? Or maybe it’s the atrocious grammar!) and I am beginning to think that I may be missing something here. (As you can probably tell, I am home alone and bored out of my wits).

L has got a hair transplant. Why someone with a harem and a house full of kids wants to grow his hair again is beyond me. I mean, all the reasons that caused his hair to fall out still exist around him, so I don’t see much point in growing it again. I have one question though. L was totally bald to begin with; where then did he get the hair to transplant from?  This may be low thinking but I’m not touching his curly head ever again. But then again, this may make it a lot easier to get him by the short and curlies.

Geetha is running the Pondicherry marathon and we decide to scout out the place in L’s new BMW. It’s a nice ride but why wouldn’t it be – it costs upwards of 80L (that’s USD160K). We get lost. There is a man standing beside the road with his back to us and we stop to ask directions. L rolls down his window and calls out loudly “Thambi!”. (For those who are not familiar with Tamil, Thambi means younger brother and is used to address kids. “Kiddo” would be an apt English translation). The man turns around and smiles – with his wizened face and snow white beard he looks like he could be a hundred. It is extremely disrespectful to call such an elderly person “Thambi” and L is immediately apologetic. The rest of us can’t stop laughing.

Cock on the Bedside Table

Dave calls me up out of the blue and asks if we want to go to Hampi. I mention it to the wife. “Can’t you guys think of anything else?” She retorts. Hampi with an 'a' honey, I tell her. Oh, the women of today – they have a one track mind; not that I’m complaining!

We set off in Dave’s Scorpio. The car is packed with seven of us and his luggage rack is put to good use. The bags piled up on top limits our speed somewhat but we still make good time. Our plan on leaving early to avoid traffic works and before we know it, we are checking into the Hotel Malligi in Hospet. The hotel is set among what appears to be the ruins of Hospet but you leave the squalor behind as  you enter the gates. The rooms are spacious, the food is acceptable and the service is superb. They have a full bar – they even stock Johnny Black – and at prices that I havn’t seen since I was in high school.

Come evening, we are driving around the ruins of Hampi. A police car coming in the opposite direction stops us and asks us to turn back. There has been too much mugging lately and they don’t want us driving around lonely roads in the dark. It’s a sobering thought and we turn right around.

Hampi is impressive : Huge temples carved out of solid stone. A lot of it has been done by just one king over a span of 20 years. I wonder how many men it took to make all this; what looks like ruins today must have been teeming with activity a few hundred years ago. What must have been a rich and vibrant empire has been reduced to almost nothing now. It just goes to show that whatever wealth you may amass it will still be in ruins in a few hundred years.  I change my life motto : Don’t worry about building stuff in stone. Get stoned instead!

The queens bath is impressive; it’s as big as a football field. Either she was a big woman or there were many queens. I suspect that it is the latter. There is also a bunch of musical pillars. These are stone pillars that emit musical noted when hit with a stick. Different sections contain different sets of pillars that are set to different scales. Simply amazing!

All that walking in the heat is draining and I fall into an exhausted slumber (some may call it a drunken stupor ………….. and they may be right) I am woken early the next morning by the cock that the wife keeps on her bedside table. I don’t know where she got it because she picked it up when I was away in Singapore a few months ago. I was agast when I came back and found it staring at me. “Can’t you at least hide it away where it can’t be seen, honey?” I ask her. “No,” says she. “I need it here every night”. I resign myself to it even though I hate it. And get your mind out of the gutter – it’s just an alarm clock that cries ‘cock a doodle doo’.

One crow less in this world

Summer is here. Ah, long days and even longer nights! We have visitors from Corvallis and the time seems to fly. We do a few road trips to show them the sights – Belur, Shravanabelagola and of course, the Mysore temple. D is fascinated by the traffic. “How can they not hit each other more often?” he asks. I have no answer; I have wondered that myself a hundred times.

We end up at the elephant ride behind the palace which is clearly marked with different prices for Indians and ‘foreigners’. One of the mahouts taunts the elephant too much and it takes umbrage. It simply steps in his foot and does not let go. The other mahouts beat and berate the elephant and he finally steps away with one last squeeze leaving the mahout massaging his injured foot. Serves him right for torturing an animal in captivity! We get out of there, however; an angry elephant we can do without!

G is teaching a weekend class in Chennai and she has volunteered me as her travel agent. Of course, I am nowhere near perfect as she would like me to be (I am a work in progress) and she end up with no tickets for one of the weekends. But this travel agent has a good customer service policy - unlike the corporates of today who simply don’t seem to care – and I offer to drive her. We wonder which of the Hondas to take and it’s a short discussion – size and comfort wins hands down over economy and environment.

We have killed a dog on every trip to Chennai in the recent past and I am determined to watch out for them this time. It’s not that I care that much about the dogs; but they take out a bumper each time and bumpers are expensive. My diligence pays off and we reach there without incident. We set a speed record of sorts, at least for our family. We have driven 385 kilometers from home to the Cosmopolitan Club in 3 hours and 50 minutes; that’s averaging about 100 kilometers an hour and some of it through city streets. Midway through, just when I am beginning to think that I can qualify for the F1 trials, I am rudely brought back to the ground by a blimp in my mirror. I am flooring it at this point and the speedometer is hovering around 180. Nevertheless, the blimp quickly metamorphizes into an Audi Q5 which passes us and disappears over the horizon. The wife now knows exactly what she wants for her birthday. Damn!

Chennai is dry. The election results are to be announced and there is a big sign at the club telling us that all liquor is prohibited. Oh no it’s not; it flows freely in my room. Boy, am I glad I’m packing! We are up early the next day and head for the beach. The beach in Chennai is crowded. There are all kinds of shapes and sizes taking in their morning breath of fresh air. There are a whole bunch of people sleeping; apparantly they live on there. We notice one family of Dad, Mom and two daughters. All their worldly possessions seem to be crowded onto about ten feet square of cardboard packing laid out flat on the ground. All of a sudden that Q5 doesn’t seem very important; I say a silent prayer thanking God for the abundance that He has given us.

The bad luck with animals continues; or should I say, the bad luck for the animals continues. We are sedately making our way back from the beach when a crow takes a fancy to us and does a kamikazi style dive straight into our windshield. Wham! Blood, gore and feathers and one crow less in this world. No damage to the windshield, at least. A friend of mine once told me a story of how an eagle dived into his windshield and created great damage. I thought it was pretty funny, especially when he told us how he ducked instinctively; well, it’s funny when it happends to someone else; I didn’t find this funny at all.

We watch a lot of TV. Not having cable at home has its advantages; we have not seen any of the ads and laugh hysterically at some of them. There is an old cricket match playing and we watch. Bangladesh is bowling to Pakistan; the bowling lacks bite and the batsman takes a mighty heave at one sending it out of the country I think.

It’s a short trip and it’s time to head back soon. Dave and his family are coming over tomorrow and we are all off to Hampi.