braIN damAGE

What is it with short sleeves?

For a long time in the brief history of mankind, men and women have done everything they could to be different from each other – men from women and women from men. They marked roles and responsibilities to support their collective survival, they reacted differently to similar situations which usually caused bewilderment to the other and they dressed completely differently although they lived in similar sweltering heat or spine chilling cold.

(Science digression: Neanderthals were supposedly a much more intelligent species than Homo sapiens. Whereas Homo sapiens divided their job responsibilities, Neanderthals wanted to do everything on their own. The Homo sapien men hunted the goat and the women collected bananas. So they had mutton Biryani for main course and banana pudding for dessert. But the Neanderthals, they all went for the goat and ended up throwing spades and spikes at each other and perished.)

But somewhere along the line, some woman with a tiny little chromosomal shakeup wanted what was inherently men's; in addition to what was hers. She wanted to do everything that men did. She wanted men's jobs; so she took it. She wanted men's clothes, so she wore pants. She wanted to be man, so she had sex with other women. This change caught on and before we knew a fair number of women folk wanted everything that was historically men's.

If I were to represent all men, I would have recommended that they relinquish everything wholeheartedly and keep only the TV, the PS3 and the couch for themselves. But some moron wanted a tit for tat and that is where everything went wrong. First came the low waist jeans. And then slowly one after the other the manicures, the chest waxes, the ear rings and the pink shirts came trickling along. That is all okay as long as we, the ones content with what we had, have a choice to be as we were.

But it is not to be. You no longer get a regular sleeved t-shirt that easily. (It is easier to buy a full sleeved t-shirt and cut the sleeves to the length you want.) T-shirts have to reveal biceps, however malnourished they may be. (It is not long before men shave their armpits and wear sleeveless t-shirts.) It is not a pretty site if you don't want to wax your biceps. And some of us with furry coats, that is not what we want to do. The fur is for winter.

I can manage with short sleeved t-shirts but I fear for what is to come in ten years. I could tolerate bearing my midriff but I couldn't tolerate piercing my belly button – from the looks of it, its going to hurt a lot :(

(Photo nicked from Dominik)

Dreaded Questions

It was 10 years ago when someone first asked me this question. Since then I have had many people ask me the same question and I have done everything other than hide behind a bush to avoid it.

What is your hobby?

When I first left school to study in a college, the seniors wanted 'to get to know us better' and so they asked us what our hobbies were. They were not particularly impressed when I told them I did not have one. Some of my untruthful friends told the seniors that their hobbies were to listen to music, to watch tv etc. They were all lying. Some dictionary suggested that a hobby was the thing you did in your spare time for pleasure. If you go by the definition all my friends were doing something else for pleasure during their spare time and they were not mentioning it to the seniors. Someone who was slightly inventive said his hobby was philately. But why would one want a collection of his or her saliva under stamps? When I become health minister, I will deem it unhealthy.

When I left college, I assumed real world people asked real questions. But I was wrong. Job interviewers asked me the same dreaded question. So did the landlords. Atleast the landlords had a case. If I told them my hobby was gardening, they had every right to suspect and investigate what I was growing in the backyard.

If I suffered due to the 'what is your hobby?' question in India, I suffer more from the 'what did you do in the weekend?' question in the UK. UK is a land of weather and weekends. The natives and the aliens trying to assimilate into the local culture just can not stop complaining about the weather. When the weather is good, they talk about the weekends; which is most of the time in a year.

To the British, a good weekend is when you took a long walk in the park, or went rowing or cheered your son play football or any one of those activities that I don't really take pleasure at.

'Raja, did you have a good weekend?'
'Absolutely'
'What did you do?'
'Huh, nursed a hangover on Saturday and watched some porn on the Sunday. Good weekend
really!'

Unfortunately, they don't think so.

Herd behaviour

Well, I am now officially a project manager. I was shown my new desk and sent to scavenge everything else. So I went around looking for unused phones, monitors, cupboards and chairs. Lunch break is a good time to build your inventory. A lot of things in the office are unused when everyone is queuing for their roast (sliced pig bum). I also found something that looked like an iron whip with a lock at one end. I swear I don't know what it is but I have a suspicion that it could be something to induce bondage tendencies. A closely bonded workplace is always a good place to work in, isn't it?

My work is very simple. I have to come up with an idea that is as revolutionary as the iPhone. In the mean time,I have to take the other less revolutionary ideas, develop less revolutionary products out of them and get the hapless sales guys to sell them to unsuspecting customers.

If I come up with an iPhone like idea, my job is done. Why would the company want to keep me when it has got what it wanted from me? So I guess I will have to keep my mouth shut and not blurt out that one brilliant idea.

Getting the less revolutionary products out to the market is not as big a deal as I initially feared. I do not have to go to a workshop and build spaceships with my own hands. There are worker bees who will do it for me. My job is to make the worker bees build the spaceship that I want while they want to be busy collecting nectar. Similar to a Shepard's job making sure that my cattle graze only in the neighbour's property so I can sell my grass to him. At least now I can explain in a line that my job is similar to a Shepard's job but instead of the cattle, I Shepard men and women!

My herd is a motley group of friesian cows and break-inspector buffaloes.(Have you ever crossed a herd of buffaloes without slamming on the break? For those of you who have never seen buffaloes on road, you definitely don't know how mince meat is made. The burnt rubber after taste must have crossed your mind at some point of time).

Anyway, my friesian cows, like all friesian cows give me more milk than I would have ever imagined. And my dear buffaloes, like any thorough bred buffalo will not move an inch even if I threatened to whack his back.

Now I have this idea. What if I give one hard knuckle in the head if I can't get something done from them? I hope they are grown up enough not to complain to the teacher that I hit them in the head.

Short of brilliance

He was not the best player in the team. Infact, he was only the 7th best player in his 6-a-side football team. He stood by the sidelines and hoped that someone would ask him to substitute for them, as he watched the other players run around. Nobody ever seemed to tire. Or at least break a leg so he could play. He stood there as the cold winds tore into his jacket and crushed his bones. He stood there as the rains drenched him to the skin. He stood there for the entire winter and it was the last game of the season that day.

The captain walked in with a new lad and said 'This chap is new to town. And can apparently pass a thing or two. He will come in as first change if someone has to walk out.'

The captain broke his leg that day.