Doodles of a crazy man!

Sanathkumara once asked the revered sage Sutha Mahamuni - “Oh knower of all knowledge, oh teller of great stories, can you please explain me in less than 4000 words as to when this ‘Sibling Rivalry’ started”. Sutha Mahamuni cleared his throat, as he usually did before giving lengthy answers, a habit he had acquired by insisting on additional answer sheets during his exams in Gurukul. “Oh Sanathkumar, the man who comes up with more questions than Siddarth Basu, the one who takes listening skills to different levels, listen. This sibling rivalry is existent from time immemorial. When Narada was telling Krishna the story, in which Samba Sadashiva answered a similar query from Nandi, this story was not told. Because I am making this story up for you. So please listen.” Ganapathi and his brother Subrahmanya once had a dispute as to who was the elder of the two. The matter was referred to God Shiva for final decision. Shiva decided that whoever would make a tour of the wh...

I dont know when I developed this fascination, but it has stayed with me from quite a few months. I keep reading online about Indian mythology. I am seeing the old stories I had heard from my grandmom in new perspectives. To me, the mythology is not a collection of moral stories. My sense of morality is based entirely on my thinking, so to read it just from moralistic perspective would be boring. The good thing about Indian mythological stories is that they dont picture even divine beings as perfect or without weaknesses. Even Gods have anger, jealousy, lust, insecurity - which somehow appeals to me very much. In a strange way, it makes these stories all the more human and relatable. The trick to enjoy is not to fall into the trap of categorizing everything into two big boxes of "good" and "bad". Between black and white, there exists a wide sea of blissful gray. My imagination runs wild when I think of so many possible stories we can make up. Here is one imaginary s...

Now, let me tell you a story. During 1929, people were affected by "Depression". Or "The Great Depression" as it was called. Thousands died because of it. People across sections were affected. No one knew what the "Depression" was then. There were no CNBC, no economic blogs. Depression from the markets had entered into people's lives. One fine day, there was a cool dude walking on the roads wearing a black T-shirt with the words "DEPRESSION". All the people caught hold of him and started beating the hell out of him. They cursed him, that because of him the world economy was in danger. With just an ounce of life left, the cool dude started explaining people what "Depression" is. Depression is not a slogan on a T-shirt. There was so much depression in their lives, that they had stopped shopping, which was the only known catharsis for the modern man. This had created a huge imbalance in demand supply chain which in turn had caused depr...

I often overrate my instincts. I do have huge self-destructive tendencies. On such days, I pick a really bad movie to watch. Today, it happened to be "Dus Kahaniyaan". I had no big expectations from the movie. The movie was just 2 hours long. That makes it a mere 12 minutes per story. Even if 3 stories are good and a few are not unbearable, I felt it was not a bad choice and it did not seem too risky. How wrong was I! I would not bore you by writing about all of them, but definitely a few that got on my nerves. Strangers In The Night Mahesh Manjrekar and the lady with the longest face, Neha Dhupia are a weird couple who spend their anniversary day disclosing their past infidelities. Neha discloses that she had kissed a stranger in a railway station before meeting Mahesh. Flashback, we get to see Neha kissing the stranger's palm, her chin touching his elbow! She kisses his palm, his fingers - some of the most innovative ways of kissing never seen before on celluloid....

When was the last time I had met U? (No, I am not a messaging freak. So, U does not mean "you", U means "U") U looked majestic as she walked, her Irish skin glowing in that evening sun. And there was I accompanying her. (For the uninitiated blog readers, I does not mean "me", I means "I") Both U and I offer me handshakes and we sit on a bench nearby. All of a sudden, U asks me "Can I get some pepsi for us?" I looked surprised. It surprises me too. U was the laziest person we had ever seen and completely surprised by this question. "What happened Madame Lazee?", me teases her. "Hey dumbo, I loves searching vending machine, he will get the pepsi for us. Me aint goin' nowhere no more" My guess was that she has been listening to lot of R&B nowadays. I gets up and goes searching for the vending machine. "Know what, I have never told this to anyone. But, I was in love with U since the college days", I ...

The dark lady was sitting on a chair in the opposite row. Next to her was an innocent kid in weird red pants. Must have been her son I guess. He had a story book in his hand. The book did not have many pages and each page had a colorful picture with a sentence describing the story. The lady was translating the story into Kannada, which the kid listened to with astonished look on his face. The story was something like this: Peter (looked like a small bear or rabbit or some animal - could not figure out properly from a distance) was strolling around near the forest. Peter stopped for a moment as he saw a car parked there. He thought for a while and approached the car. He noticed that the car was unlocked. He got into the car and turned it on. He pressed the accelerator as the car sped away. As he was going down the road, he tried to apply the brakes. The brakes did not work and he panicked. He shouted "Help, help" out of desperation. Finally, he jumped out of the car and fe...

December 2002. It was when a lot of people were quitting the company where I was working. Everyday somebody used to come to my cubicle and say "Today is my last day...I have not yet decided where to join...well, keep in touch" Then, I think I had the concept in the back of my mind. While I was listening to some country song, I just happened to utter the line "Admiration's the name of the feeling that I had". I thought for a while and the second stanza was ready. By evening, I was done with the whole song (including the tune!) Until late 2004, nobody was even aware of the existence of this song! One evening, there was power cut at my home and I recorded this song in my mobile out of sheer boredom (which I had intended to delete later and forgot!). My brother listened to the song the same weekend, when he was looking at my mobile and he kind of liked it. Even a few of his friends and some of my colleagues heard it and they also liked it. Finally, I developed great...

Year 1999...class ten in some high school...there were 4 friends... Sheetal Udupa - The sports star of the school. She was a natural athlete and was the best basketball player in the city. The only games she did not like were indoor games like carrom and chess. Nah, they were too boring for her. She was 5' 11'', a cool half foot taller than the second tallest girl in her class. Nazneen Baig - The class topper. Biology was her favorite subject. To her, parthenium was not just parthenium. It was class 'Magnoliopsida' and kingdom 'Asteraceae'! Sushmita B - The most 'enthu' girl in the group. There wont be a dull moment if she is around. Her high energy would have made even the punjabis look sober! Chaitra Narayan - A very normal girl. An average looking girl, moderately intelligent and not particularly talented. You would not have noticed her if she was in some other group. 7 years later...they are now at a "marriageable" age... Sheetal - Now ...

It was late evening. He stood there in what was famously known as the smoking zone of the cafetaria. He loved watching the city from the seventh floor of his company - from where even the chaos would look to be in such beautiful order. But, he was not happy today, not happy from quite a few days actually. With a cup of hot coffee in his hand and a cigarette in the other, he went into the flashback mode. He was married for the last four years - and happily for the last three years ten months. Was it a love marriage? It did not really matter, all that mattered was there was love in marriage. He and his wife went to the same college. But, they had not talked much to each other, other than the usual "Hai" and "Bye". It was during their final year project that he got to know her. She was no stunner, no supremely talented. But, there was something likeable about her - she was exactly the kind of person who would appeal more with time. By next year, they were married to ea...

Got this idea when I watched the movie "You've Got Mail". This is not a spoof per se, as that movie was quite good. Its just that I got this weird idea - well, I must say, its my version of "You've Got Mail". Our heroine is X (as per the biological conventions and it also reduces typing effort) You can call her Kathlene Kelly. Or Pooja Malhotra, Simran Oberoi or Sonia Agarwal - if you are a huge bollywood fan and it suits your sensibilities. Our hero is Y. Or Joe Fox. Or Raj Singhania, Vikram Chopra or Rahul Saxena or whatever. X is a typical fun loving girl, taking life as it comes and living every moment (whatever that means!). She likes to tell that she loves travelling (to prove that she is passionate and fun loving) and her favorite book is "The Alchemist" just because it is one of those over-hyped books and gives you an "intellectual" image. She is considered beautiful because of her ability to carefully choose far far uglier...

Disclaimer: All the characters in this story are fictitious and an outcome of the writer’s retarded imagination. Any resemblance to any person driving an auto, traveling by auto or unaware of auto is, as usual, mere coincidence. It was late Friday night. No, it was almost early Saturday morning. I got down from Airavatha and hired an auto. The driver looked very familiar. I could see a similar flash of recognition on the driver’s face. Yes, it was Manjunath, also known as Manja. I went into an instant “flashback” mode. It was in the mid 80s and there were not many houses in my locality at that time. Next to our street lived Manjunath. Manju, as we called him, was a year elder to me, though he looked 4 years elder. He was well built and always short-tempered, a trait which was hereditary. I used to call him for playing cricket with us in the evening. He was a match winner, not because of his superior batting or bowling abilities – but because of his ability to fight. He would come in h...

I had heard a lot about Chennai (mostly bad things!), but never been there before. As I reached there, I realized how true they were. If Bangalore is the 'hot and happening' city in India, Chennai was just 'hot'! Chennai looked a cool 10 years behind Bangalore - the railway station, the flyovers, the autos, the buses - everything looked so 1990ish. I checked into one of the better looking hotels in Wall Tax Road. But, the hotel room did not have any towels. "No towelz. Khatam vogaya saar. Paisa do. Main tumko laatha", was the reply I got from the receptionist. Even the lift there had a major bug. It would go from ground floor to fifth floor properly, but while coming down, I had to walk down to fourth floor and take the lift from there to ground floor! By afternoon, I took an auto and reached the visa consulate. As I was walking towards the consulate office, a policeman near the gate asked me, "Do you have mobile or any electronic devices?" "Yes...

He walked into the crowded bus stand of Bangalore. He was in his mid thirties, and looked totally out of sync with the city, which was his home just five years back. This was the first time he was coming to India after he had settled in New Jersey. "Uff...too many people here", he said to himself. He walked towards the inter-state platform, which looked empty. He approached the old ticket issuer sitting behind the counter, to check the timings of the next bus. "Excuse me, is this inter-state platform for Coimbatore?", he asked with a slight accent. "Yes", replied the ticket issuer, in a bored tone, even without lifting his head. "Are there no buses now?", he asked politely, a tone which he had learnt hard in the last five years. "There are, please wait for some time". "Okie, what time is the next bus?", obviously not happy with the reply. "Cant say, we dont know what time the buses arrive...", trying hard to control ...