You Name it!

I am bad with names.

"So what was your name again?" That is something that a lot of people can associate with me. However, a deficiency in one area is always compensated by an ability in another.

My ability is to make up names.

I first started naming things when I was two or three years old. I named my dad's motorcycle Baaki. The motorbike did not look anything like Bhagyaraj and I have no clue as to why I named the bike Baaki.

Spot the difference

Then I went on to name my yet to be born sister Saamitha. For reasons I can not fathom, my parents did not like that name which is why my sister is now called Baveeshna.

What do you do when your parents don't approve of the things you are good at? Wait till you can earn your first bucks, break away from them and live your dream.

So after the Saamitha episode, I had to wait for a full 17 years before I got my first job and thus my first salary. I had to name something but did not possess anything that was mine.

So I went back to where it all started. I bought myself a motorbike and called it Snow White.

Snow White

That was not enough. 17 years of suppressed ability needed a vent. So I bought myself a mobile phone and called it Rosemary Telesco. Then I went on to buy a laptop called Isabella. This continued and I am now with Rosemary Telesco VI and Isabella Jr. A few years down the line, when I bought my first car, I named it Red-dy.

Reddy

When I sold my first car and bought another, I had to call it Jackson - after all Jinku Jackson has been sponsoring me all along since my financial independence.

Ask him and he is more likely to say my-financial-in-depend-ence-on-him

A picture is worth a thousand words

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cold start

It is a bad idea to spend New Year's eve with a bunch of strangers in an unknown watering hole and in an unknown country. Do not expect any positive turn of events when you are blurry brained by 9pm. But if you have those rare genes to stand up against any amount of brain-wipe, things can get worse. It is a social stigma to be born with sticky feet and even the least attractive of all female species can turn you down on the dance floor. There is a reason why people queue in front of cash machines before a long night of brain damage. You may find out why on another sober Saturday afternoon. Bartenders leave for home at 4AM and bouncers are capable of bouncing you out of a pub. It is not in a bouncer's job description to hire a cab for you. Your bank balance can crash to a scary single digit number and you may walk around the road asking passer-bys for a 5p on New Year's day.

Wedding season

The flavour of the last one year has been weddings. Over the last six months, anyone I call and anyone who calls me has the news. They are getting married soon. So, these days, I invariably start all telephone conversations with a 'congratulations'.

What about the ones that I know are already married? There is a congratulations for them too. They have either taken their first steps towards spreading the human race or have just succeeded in doing so. Why over-crowding our already over-crowded trains, buses and airplanes requires a congratulation is a question which when asked will turn you into a social outcast. So instead, congratulate them and there are good chances that you will be invited for a meal.

That I begin phone calls with congratulations and that more often the congratulations turns out to be real has turned some of the more persevering and therefore not so lucky friends of mine to ring me very frequently lately.

A message to all those of you. Stop calling me. I am losing my new found super-power because of you.

But don't despair. There is a way out.

Turn to god.

Jose has always told me this - When you want something, turn to god. I realised only half its meaning when I found out that gopal turns to god when he wants free sakkara pongal and full meals. But I guess the human mind offers limitless possibilities and gopal was just scratching the surface.

You guys on the other hand can dig a little deeper - wink at the mums or drop your heads at the site of the daughters - and you may end up giving me a call from the temple.

If things don't turn out to be as you expected, you will atleast walk away with a plate full of sakkara pongal!

Confessions of a shopophobic

I hate shopping. That is rather incorrect. I am very lazy. Every week, when I shop for groceries, these are the exact four things I buy - Milk, bread, pizzas and apples. Everything else in the supermarket remains blurred in my vision and it is not until someone tells me that the supermarket also sells Maggi that I find Maggi. Can I say that my wants are limited? May be.

The same goes with clothes. Not that I would like to relate myself with early men and shun my clothes, it is again down to pure laziness. It is also due to my inability to choose from an ocean of similar looking shirts, t-shirts and blue jeans. It is the same dilemma and exasperation of having to pick one gorgeous woman amongst a roomful. I am not telling you that that is a dilemma I face every day. So I let my shirts collars break, my waist outgrow my jeans size and lose all the pairs of socks I have until I have to shop again.

Why do people look at you weirdly when you wear a pair of different coloured socks? Yeah, you lose one in a pair and what do you do? Do you chuck the other in the pair away? That is discrimination. So I give these socks another partner so they can have yet another chance at my smelly feet.

(By the way, don’t tell me you didn’t notice my philosophical intones.)

So I am a shopophobic; until the Internet came along and someone invented the Amazon.com

The Internet changed the way I looked at shopping. You see the November Rain video and three days later, you also see my new Keyboard! Wouldn’t it be great if I shot a similar video, say hello to my new handy-cam. Are handy-cams the only way to shoot? Why not get a gun? Tishauyun... (By the way, MI6 and CIA, I know you are reading this. You should know that this is only a model gun. The rest of you, if you ever wanted to see Captain Jack Sparrow’s gun, you know where to come ) What if in a skirmish, my side is defeated and the enemies take me as a prisoner of war but then turn me into a slave. I know what they do to slaves. They make the slaves row ships and beat the ones that are not strong enough to endure hours and hours of rowing. What do I do? I must prepare for any eventual situation and my new rowing machine is what is going to help me.

This is what happens when I have two weeks of holidays and I am sat at home with nothing but an Internet connection. I need to get out of the house and do something. But how? There is no public transport on Christmas and Boxing day.

How would you like to go for a spin in my new car ;)