The Life and Times of Candy Bhatia

When Candy Bhatia was being born to a comfortable West Delhi family, frantic activity was taking place up above. Venus was canoodling with members of the opposite sex, Cupid was queuing up for an orgy and Kamadeva (the Indian god of lust) was riding a parrot to chase his consort Rati (a vision Candy’s admirers often saw). As the young doctor, a resident of West Delhi himself came to check on her after 48 hours, baby Candy checked him out instead. She winked at him charmingly from her basket and kept staring till he blushed. The flustered doctor gently warned the parents about future possibilities, who claimed much later that this creature of boundless lust must have been switched at birth.

Since then there was no looking back. No man, particularly from West and East Delhi felt safe. Mothers and wives warned their boys and men against the charms of this man-eater. From Shahdara to Raja Garden, from Preet Vihar to Vikaspuri, men of all ages found it difficult to hold on to their virtue with Candy around. In her sleeveless salwar-kameezes held at the bosom with flimsy buttons or lacy ribbons, she would be found in the neighbourhood chaat shops, seductively biting into aloo tikkis, gulping down pani puri, blowing sensuously at hot samosas, lust dripping from her.

Candy Bhatia’s unique charm lay in the fact that her predatory manner was offset by her feigned innocence. She fooled the men into thinking that their getting laid had to do primarily with their good-looks, intelligence, affluence etc. In reality, once Candy marked her target, there was little they could do to escape. Like the dog that doggedly pees to mark his territory, the very potent Candy Bhatia sultrily established her territorial superiority across West and East Delhi. As a result, by the time she turned 21, mothers of young Punjabi girls from the said area looking for virgin grooms started actively considering neighbouring states for chaste matches. 

Finally, in an effort to tame her free run of hormones, her family tried to get her married. She married a few times, promptly deserted the men and moved on in life with the sure footedness of a gazelle looking for her foliage to bite. 


At ABC Corporation where she worked, Candy Bhatia rose from a mere receptionist to the Admin In-Charge in a few years. She was a roaring success. She delighted the men by walking around sensuously in office, swaying her hips, flaunting colourful dupattas (that slid more than rested on her chest), gamboling about, as she organized Miss Lohri, Miss Diwali, Miss Holi competitions all of which she proceeded to win, hands down. As time passed and Candy gained a few pounds and grayed, her skill in the art of seduction peaked. Additionally, she became a great counselor too.

Client Relationship Manager, Mr. Sharma: “Arey Candy, I missed the train to my hometown.” 

Candy: “It is sign of sexual frustration. You constantly keep missing impotent things. It is happening in all marriage these days. I know some good divorce lawyer. Take number from me.”

Rekha, the young engineer: “Candyjee, look at me. How will I attend my friend’s marriage with these zits on my face? How will I show off?”

Candy, sympathetically: “My dear, I understand. Tits on your face. Not good. Your tits should be on another’s face na. And what use if you can’t show them around during someone else’s marriage. Here, let me give you card of Tansukh clinic...Hari Nagar, not far. I know the owner.” Winking and whispering conspiratorially “Go today only. Big thing happen in small money.”

Khannajee, the accounts in-charge: “Listen Candy. I couldn’t sleep last night.” 

Candy gives him a you-naughty-boy smile.

Khannajee: “No no. I dreamt of a hanging cobra in my sleep. What on earth could it mean?”

Candy, smiling knowingly, “Cobra is felic* symbol. You know felas*? One that fellow Freewd* invented? You need more action dear. Come to meeting room after lunch. I will give home remidy. After, no more cobra hanging in your sleep. Only beautiful ladis like me.”

*(Phallic, Phallas, Freud)

Finally, when the disciplinary committee gave her the golden handshake, a pall of gloom descended at ABC Corporation. A few men contemplated slitting their wrists as a mark of protest, some wrote her farewell letters in blood and others turned celibate. Overall productivity in the organization fell drastically. 

Because of her good graces, one of her admirers referred Candy for a job at the rival DEF Corporation. At the interview:

Boss: Candy Bhatia. What a unique name!

Candy: Sweet to taste sir. Like the candy.

Boss, clearing his voice: So Candy, your CV has everything else but doesn’t say where we can find you?

Candy, innocently: Why? The Badroom sir

Boss: No, I mean your CV doesn’t have your address, where do you live?

Candy (dupatta slipping from the chest): Ohh. Wast Delhi sir 

Boss blinking: When can you join?

Candy, fluttering eyelashes: I’m totally avlabel sir. When you want, I come…Always

Boss, gulping: See we have a very different work culture from ABC… 

Before he can complete, Candy: I’m totally flaxible sir. When you want, I show flaxible, when you want I show hard to get

Boss’ pencil drops in shock, Candy bends over to pick it up, a button on the chest of her sleevless kurta pops open:

Candy straightening up: You asking for more sir? 

Boss: What?!

Candy: Quschun sir? 

Boss, sweating: Oh yes, Are you a team player?

Candy: Full team will be too big to play at once no, sir. I can play 2-3 people one time 

Boss: No no, you misunderstand, are you friendly? Do you get along with people?

Candy, in all seriousness: Yes sir, vary frandly. Totall frandly. I’m a vary lonely woman. So frandship is always must.

As sweatbeads break out on the Boss' forehead, he is confronted with a vision of a thin, good looking God riding a bright green parrot with a luscious red beak, charging towards him full throttle.

Needless to say, Candy Bhatia landed the job. Today, rival DEF Corporation is scaling heights with its workforce of happy men. And the HR at ABC Corporation is spending obscene amounts of money in motivational initiatives to bring its male employees back to life. 

What do you mean again?

Innovative names/messages from random places: 

AFC 
– Fashioned exactly like KFC, this is an outlet in Port Blair. But of course its called Andaman Fried Chicken. With the motif of a Rhode Island Red smiling benevolently at the world, this outlet gets a lot of curious first timers.

"Ice cream, fruit, fish and chips, drinks must not be consumed in the bus. Passengers can drink water in the bus."

- SOME thought went into drawing this list. Thank God for not letting us die of thirst. This should have been on a bus in Nazi Germany, but turned out to be a poster on a bus in Singapore.

"Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians"- Somewhere, on a man’s T shirt. Thought provoking. And boy! VIVID.

"Your mother does not work here. Please clean up after yourself."

- Admonishing the sloppy in a very ‘Tere Maa ki Aankh’ style. Should have been found in India. Found taped at the cafeteria of a Sydney office.

"If you sprinkle, while you tinkle, 

Be a sweetie and wipe the seatie"

- At VOX FM loo in Wollongong, NSW, Australia. The artist behind this work is on his way to participate at a rhyming-poetry-contest

“A to Zee Problems - Come for solution for Lifetime - 

Way you want Will happen.

Solve your typical problems through powerful remedies of Lal Kitab (Red Book)

Suggestive Remedies: Business, Litigation, Childless, Disturbed life, Bad/Late/Wrong Marriage, Career, Depression, All Sex problems...

Also, help in getting Elongated Earlobes (because of wearing long, heavy earrings) back to Normal. Without any stitches, Painless!”

Baba Mayur Ram jee - Its Not Magic!.............But Almost!!!”

- Ad on a Mumbai local train. An almost-magically gifted baba with his 'suggestive' remedies. Just hope he doesn't mix up his potions. Fixing earlobes for those wanting their fertility fixed.

John Steinbeck on two kinds of love

                            John Steinbeck writes to his son who has fallen in love

Source: The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/01/john-steinbeck-on-falling-in-love-a-1958-letter/251375/#.TxCLlEV-NE8.twitter

Thank you - Rishi Shankar for sharing.

A day in the life of a corporate

The day a few junior executives were called to attend and be on standby at a leaders’ meeting:

Guptajee, the pervert IT man sauntered into the conference room lazily at 9:50 am. He had the face and mannerisms of a porn star. Shirt fashioned out of pink spandex, camel coloured trousers with horizontal stripes, tight at the crotch. He smiled lustily at the juniors as he went about pulling wires and dialing some numbers on the Polycam audio conferencing equipment. A few voices sputtered on the conference call and some faceless people introduced themselves and confirmed their attendance.

While setting the stage, Guptajee squatted on the pretext of looking for something and tried to peer between the HR executive’s legs. She kicked him noiselessly. Above the conference table, a guttural sound was heard as Guptajee emerged from under, heel imprints on his fluffy cheek.

She-Man, the manly HR head entered the room and gave everyone a fake smile. She had a bulldog's jowl and biceps of Arnold S. She proceeded to summon her team to a corner to ask what the meeting was about, who was attending, what she had to speak and why it had occurred to no one that they needed to make notes for her slides.

She was followed by Bald-Patch, a bespectacled academician-turned-R&D-head who had lost his mane in his academic pursuits and thus suffered from a low self-esteem. He entered meekly, tripped on the carpet, fell flat on his face, laptop, phone and all. A few ‘be careful’ ‘easy-easy’ went around the room. He lay prostrate for a few minutes waiting for someone to help him. His juniors quickly started talking on their phones and looked busy. He got up dusting himself, apologized to everyone, settled in nervously and started making last minute changes to his presentation.

Young, arrogant Business Analyst (BA) strode in next, talking on a contraption that looked like a cross between a Tata Sky remote control and a matte black shoe, size 10. He took a seat close to where he thought the Big-Boss would sit, hardened his jaw and started giving everyone tough looks.

My Lady-Boss, the head of Corporate Social Responsibility entered panting and asked no one in particular if she was late. No one responded. She then proceeded to try various chairs in order to select the one from where she could see the screen best (she had forgotten her distance reading glasses).

The miserly Financial Advisor (FA) from down-south with a deep hatred for people and places north of Deccan came in sulking. 'Bleddy fools wasting the combeny’s money..they should be made to jemb off the building and die,' he muttered under his breath.

At that moment, all ears perked up at the sound of a pig wading in slush, moving slowly towards the conference room. It turned out to be a stuffed overnighter trolley-bag being dragged coarsely over the carpet. The Big-Boss had arrived, after traveling non-stop for the past fortnight to various countries and cities. He entered looking tired and hungry. He adjusted his glasses and started the meeting by saying – Are we ready to start?

Moobs (male-boobs), the Head of creating unprofitable New Businesses by wiping out old profitable ones entered the conference room the last. With his 42 breast size, he was considered by majority as handsome. Tall, dark and handsome, Moobs eyed a couple of ladies keenly and a couple of ladies looked back keenly at him.

She-Man stood up, smoothed her man-pants, flashed her canines and began:

“Glad everyone’s made it on time. We have a long day today and a lot of stuff to go over.”

Four people yawned, five others had watery eyes. As people secretly wiped their tears, the meeting began.

She-Man continued, “But first the ground rules. Let’s keep our laptops closed. No checking emails and messages on smartphones either. It shows utter disregard for the presenter.” 

Everyone agreed, promptly acted like they were shutting their laptops, only to keep it open at a 20-degree slant. Lady-Boss spent a few precious minutes balancing her Blackberry strategically on her thigh and started chatting.

She-Man started by talking about talent and skill gap in the labour market, employee engagement scores, our rank in the 'Great Places to Work' Survey (which was in the global top 100, from the bottom) all of which was very encouraging she said, but needed lot of working on.

This was followed by a few presentations where BA spoke strongly about everything that we were doing wrong, which turned out to be everything that we were doing. FA spoke angrily on the urgent need for cost control, austerity, travel freeze and cutting down on wasteful expenditure - at which he looked meaningfully at all of us. He shared with us a forecast of business numbers and gave each team their stretch targets. We thought of heroes from Satyajit Ray movies, broken cheeks, sunken eyes, toiling from dawn till dusk without food or water, a mere loin cloth covering our modesty, getting caned periodically on our emaciated asses, yet not reaching anywhere close to the stated stretch targets. FA finally left us with murderous looks and veiled threats of a year without bonus, increments falling south and office lunch of barley water.

At this point, Candy Bhatia, the 40-something, single, Admin Officer walked in wearing a sleeveless kurta and churidar. She was the office-fantasy. Especially, of the over-fifty, married men from West Delhi who delighted in her swaying of hips, swearing at the office boys and telling them fifty-something-men naughty jokes at lunch. She had an enviable reputation of winning 'Miss Diwali' contest each year for the last 23 years, leaving the young MBA types in their trouser-shouser with no chance of winning-shinning.

Before entering the room, Candy pulled up her assets (that had begun their downward climb since her last birthday), applied a generous dab of an oil coloured lip-gloss and smacked her lips. She entered looking like she had eaten chole-bhature for breakfast. She smiled broadly, excused herself for interrupting and led two office boys carrying coffees, teas, chocolate chip cookies and few plates of potato wafers. Before leaving, she said coquettishly, 

“Lunch to be served at 1. If you need me for enthing als, i will give service happily."

As the distraction swayed sensuously out the room, all eyes focused on the placement of the wafer plates. BA snatched the HR executive's plate. Moobs sat confidently, knowing he would get offers from all sides. Lady boss nudged me and said “Pass me the chips na. I’m staaaaarving.” Big-Boss grabbed a plate and told everyone to focus. Bald-Patch finished his presentation in double-time and raced back to his seat only to find the wafers polished off.

Next was Lady-Boss’ presentation where she exhorted everyone with flared nostrils to participate in the company’s save-the-poor-by-donating-your-salary campaign. We were taken back to the S. Ray frame in which a bare roti was snatched out of our hands to donate to the poor. Those that refused were awarded more welts on the backside.

Suddenly, her presentation and our nightmare was disrupted by a loud chuckle. Assorted giggles erupted into the air-waves. It came from the audio conference line as faceless people miles away seemed to be having a good time. As pin drop silence ensued in the room, someone faceless hushed another one and proceeded to mute the line. She-Man rolled her eyes in exasperation, Big Boss woke up from his shut-eye and FA looked like he would pour kerosene and set fire to the conference room and its contents. 

Thankfully lunch was brought in and everyone attacked the food with a vengeance.

Outside Candy Bhatia was going through a crisis of sorts. She was complaining to the receptionist that the new tailor she was trying had made her armhole bigger. Guptajee misheard armhole, took a few steps back to check Candy Bhatia from behind. At the same time, Moobs called Candy to say his 6-inch (subway sandwich) was oozing mayo and mustard while he had asked for mint and ranch. Simultaneously, FA threatened to go on a hunger strike if he didn’t get his dose of curd-rice. Candy Bhatia hurried to fire the hell out of Subway and scour Haryana for authentic curd-rice.

Post lunch, it was the turn of Moobs to present. He waxed eloquent about value innovation and blue ocean strategy to create an uncontested market space. After 45-min of talking strategy, when no one showed any sign of life, Moobs wrapped up passionately:

“Let's dream of going where we haven’t yet! Let’s DO the Blue Ocean!”

I dreamt of doing the Moobs in a blue ocean. My reverie of silvery beaches and frolicking with Moobs in warm frothy water was rudely interrupted by an elbow in my ribs. Lady-Boss hissed in my ear.

“Why aren’t you paying attention? Check the email I have sent. It is urgent.” She went back to drawing flowers in her diary.

I sneaked a look into my email. As I pressed the send/receive button, I received 33 emails, mostly from the bosses in the room who were playing mail-mail. They were zealously flicking emails to each other, keeping us juniors on cc:

“Please have your team look into this.”

“I await your comments.”

“Please give it a shot.”

“We need to discuss this”

“It has been pending for a while now”

Giving Lady-Boss’ email the first priority, I saw she had forwarded an email from the Big-Boss who had in turn forwarded an email with a complex matrix on employee contributions for CSR activities.

Lady-Boss’ email to me said solemnly, “Does this make sense to you? I need to have figured this out in an hour. Do the needful quickly please.”

I tried to catch Lady-Boss’ attention to demonstrate my ignorance on the subject. She ignored me trying to catch her attention and continued with colouring flowers.

Helplessly I looked at the know-it-all BA for help. He was engrossed in playing Angry Birds in silent mode and happened to be losing. I resignedly launched into copying the matter out of Lady-Boss’ email, entering it in google and pasting the results to make an incomprehensible document. I would stop at nothing short of 2000 words, I encouraged myself.   

Meanwhile Big-Boss had woken up and had begun passionately, “These are difficult times for the organization and the industry. But despite the challenges we have done well. So we need to congratulate ourselves.” He smiled. Everyone looked at each other distrustfully and inspected their nails. “Our consumers are undergoing a metamorphosis. We need to constantly reinvent ourselves, through unconventional thinking, customer-driven innovation and retooling. The world is going 'glocal'. Let’s look at locally relevant product and service innovation. Let's develop winning products for emerging markets.” 

It was a war cry. A cry of distress. Everyone relaxed knowingly and went back to peering into their emails. Few endless hours passed. As Lady-Boss was adding finishing touches to the flower pot, She-Man was finishing up with more fake excitement.

"Hold the date!! We will soon be circulating the detailed agenda for the exciting and thrilling leadership offsite to the hills! However, there’s some pre-work to be done as part of the learning lab.” At this, all the bosses signalled their juniors to take notes. 

Finally, as the meeting ended and everyone weighed down with heavy bladders and heavier eyelids tried to wrestle out the door first, Candy Bhatia came up to the Big-Boss and said in a liquid voice:

“Shall I get you some strrrong coffee and muncchhhies, sir?”

As Big-Boss nodded gratefully, Guptajee while putting back the wires had overpowering thoughts of munching Candy Bhatia.

Meanwhile, the pigs in BA’s Tata-Sky phone who killed the angry birds were having the last laugh. 

Note: This account is exaggerated and fictionalized. It shouldn't be used to stymie any chances of any future employment.

Love in the land of LGBT

Real love or love that we have read about in great classics, seen in moving movies, felt through great story telling doesn’t exist anymore. It is dead. For most urban opposite-sex loving creatures. For them love is attraction. Love is a motive: Romance. Sex. Family. Respect. Squabbling. Marriage (suicide). Tedium. If unrequited, heartbreak hotel for a while and then moving on, for good measure.  Suffering is unhealthy, they say. Love should be in moderation. Extremity is bad. Desperation is worse. Love should be practical. Love should be proper. Love should have boundaries. They have ended up making love very mediocre.

Then there is what they call Queer love. Improper Love. Or loving improperly (with accessories that don't fit).  Love that leads to ruination. Love that makes you want to give up your secure life to scrub floors for another one. Another one Your type. Maybe with a short crop, unlike your long hair. Butch. Effeminate. Bitch. Fag. Have your say. They won’t give up on love. Not for your definition of moral turpitude. They will love. Standing on a cliff’s edge. Walking on broken glass.  Getting solace from holding you so tight you get half moon marks from their nails. Her nails. His nails. Queer love is like loving your-own-self. Unsullied. Selfish. And deeply comforting.

For a brief while, I lived in a townhouse across the rail tracks of North Wollongong station, in New South Wales, Australia. Every Saturday night, as ruckus would emerge from the North 'Gong pub across the street – drunken brawls and general disorder, I would pat myself on the back as I would sit in my room with my drink, a few uni hometasks or leftover work assignments from a Sydney PR firm where I was a part-timer. It suited my hard working Indian middle-class morality.

That night as I settled, his shout pierced the skies. Lightening struck and a shudder went through me. His scream was more of a cry. You could feel hurt pouring out of him. Intrigued, I switched off my room light and in the dark, opened the window a crack to see. He and Red-shirt stood at the railway platform going through a lover’s tiff. They were both drunk and crying. It was freezing, windy and raining. Wollongong in August. Cars whizzed past with flying trails of water.

An empty Jimbeam n Cola can glistened under the platform light. An empty packet of Hungry Jacks, medium sized, fluttered in the wind. Someone medium-sized well satiated in that place. Before desperate, hungry, queer love took over.

He screamed again and kicked the Jimbeam can. It flew in the air and hit Red-shirt on the knee. Red-shirt winced. He kicked again. He abused Red-shirt. He spat on him. He said he was fooled. He had loved Red-shirt with all his life only to be cheated on. Red-shirt was his strength. Red-shirt was his life. He had known no other. He would know no other. He rained blows on Red-shirt’s chest. Red-shirt kept wailing, kept clarifying, kept holding him. One head on another’s chest, one pair of hands pulling closer, another pair of hands pushing away. They howled together, they held each other, they kicked each other, they wailed together – one blaming, one clarifying. In this way, they passed the night - pouring their grief out, their love, their story to each other; oblivious to the world, the rain, the wind, the witness behind a dark window.

Towards morning, he finally succumbed. Sobbing profusely he collapsed on Red-shirt’s chest. Red-shirt cried with relief and held him tight. They stayed like that for a while and when the day broke, they walked away, holding each other, swaying, limping and drenched. In love and rain.


---

While in New Delhi, I had known her for some time. She and her July-girl who ditched her. Her July-love - a golden girl. An intense lover. A manipulative bitch. Typical of July borns. A moon-maiden. Tender, wispy on the outside; heart of steel on the inside. These July borns, she would say - delicately loving, discreetly ruining. Will get what they want without a care on what they step on. ‘I don’t care a rat’s ass’ July-girl would say during fights.

Turned her into a rat’s ass in the end. Small, inconsequential, abhorred. Left her to get married. To a worthy man. On a hot summer night, standing on the terrace, she had held her moon-maiden one last time. To love her. To worship her. To memorize her. She could. She was an expert in rote - she would come first in her Indian school. Upturned nose, pretty lips, angry eyes. Tiny fingers, closely trimmed nails, tight fist. Nails that had left half-moon marks all over her on nights of passion. Fist that hit her when she had called her July-girl a slut, a gold-digger.

The slow slipping into quagmire after July-girl kicked her free. Letting her turn into a gutter rat. Or a gutter rat’s ass. Preying on whatever she could find. Being preyed on by whatever could find her. Waiting till the end for July-girl to rescue her from shit. July-girl didn’t look back. Not even once. Others moved away. Too much stink in your life, they said. Dubious sexuality. Don’t cast your gloom on us. We have husbands, babies, jobs and sunshine. Don’t draw strength from us. We will become weak. On good days, she would go about her life mechanically, deep dark circles under her eyes and an occasional strained smile. On bad days, you couldn’t go near her. She would spit fire or cut you to pieces. On one of the bad days, she flew away. A mere 5 feet dash off the ceiling fan did it. Unceremonious. What a good life wasted for a mere girl, they would all say in the end.

Desperate in love. Love akin to worship. Solace from suffering and betrayal. Our brand of 'real love' is safe in the land of LGBT.

Thirty to Farty meet at a Party

"Skinny and Fatty lying in bed, 
Skinny lets a fart, Fatty's dead, 
Skinny calls the doctor, doctor says, 
One more fart, we'll all be dead" *
*With due credit to the great fart poet who goes anonymously on the web by the name MdM.  

I am thinking Skinny must have been in the age-group thirty to farty because that's when they fart the most. Big, bloated ones to relieve themselves. Exaggerated ones to torture others. This thirty to farty is a critical age. Critical because at their age all they do is fart around, mock and criticize everything under the sun. They think they are cat's whiskers. They know-it-all. And know better. Everything is beneath them. They are older than the silly, air-headed under-farty. And younger than the fumbling, senile over-farty. If they are in India, they call Indians living abroad, a bunch of idiots missing out on the emerging economy ride. If they live outside India, they call those living in India, a bunch of illiterate, sentimental idiots living in that country going to rot. They are smarter than their spouses and their spouses are smarter than them. Don't believe me? 

Here's what happens when Thirty to Farty meet for a Party:


Skinny, Fatty, Moneyman, Geek, a few others and their respective wives at an Indian yuppie get-together lunch at a sea-facing Sydney apartment: 

Moneyman, with a tragi-comic face: 
"Companies are shutting down overnight, man it’s scary, one day there is a role for you and then there isn’t…my wife just quit her job, how serious are these women about working? One Sunday night I ask her what time are you going to work tomorrow and she stretches her arms, yawns and says 'will see how I feel when I wake up tomorrow morning.' And she sends me a text next morning – i'm thinking of quitting my job today. And wanting to sound like a truly supportive husband I say – I'm happy with whatever you decide. And then the next thing I know she has quit, no second thoughts, about the baby, the trip to Uluru planned in August. All my life she didn’t take my advice, but for this, it was instantaneous!

Giggles all around. 
Moneyman's wife butts in: ‘I didn’t want to let go of the opportunity…that’s why I did within that second’

Half an hour later, sipping a Barossa valley, there's over-farty bashing taking place.

Skinny: "My old man says when you send me an email, text me so I can keep my laptop open."

Guffaws

Skinny's wife: "No no, not funny. Seriously, his mother says you need to get us a Hoondi car when you are back in India, she means Hyundai."

Knowing chuckles go around the room.

Fatty's wife in a complaining tone: 
"This husband of mine has a fixation for buying clothes from India…he wont buy anything from here, not even on sale…he will buy his yearly stock from India…idiot. (all eyes on idiot Fatty's faded brown checked shirt and dull beige trousers). 
All he carries in his suitcase when we go to India are a pair of shorts and a couple tees."

Fatty butts in, "Ya because I can borrow my father’s tees or shirts in India…i'm not a woman who will need a bag only for shoes."

Fatty's wife: "Yeah right! your Daddy’s tees…" (she screws up her face, turns unrecognisable, till her nose and lips ungroup again). 
"His father’s T-shirts have every imaginable curry on them." 

Polite squirms go around the room

Fatty: "Oh for heaven’s sake leave my old man alone"
Wife: "Areyyyy don't get hyper, I'm only saying he is so cute"

Geek with bloodshot eyes who was zoning all this while, suddenly speaks, realising his wife is not in the room:
"My FIL sends a messge this morning at 6:30 am saying Come on Skype. I was like, FUCKER, you can’t sleep of old age, at least lemme sleep. I blocked him on Skype."

Primed by the in-law comments and not willing to be left out, the hostess too joins in 
"Oh, all of them are the same when it comes to technology. My MIL has all the instructions written and taped on the wall next to the computer. It goes > press start, click programs, select ms word and so on..hahhaaahaa sooo sweet they are.."

Murmurs of 'Awwww' around the room

Note: When the thirty to farty are done calling their folks fuckers, they call them cute, sweet, hugworthy and go 'awwww'. 

Digging into roast lamb, paneer pie and fondue, they look irritatingly at the under-fartys. Their kids are running around, pulling each other’s hairs, hitting each other with tennis racquets, screaming with joy.

Geek lamenting, "Man, I took my son for a soccer training this morning and he kept complaining of the rain and cold.. And I was thinking, FUCKER if I had these facilities when I was your age, I would be called Maradona." (Fucker looks up from his video game disbelievingly at his dad).

Skinny jumping in: ‘Yaaa man I know what you mean’
Skinny's wife doing the double jump to speak first: "Every Sunday when he takes our girl for tennis he comes back with a horrible mood and we end up fighting."
Skinny, loudly: "Well what else do you expect. Every kid would be playing and she would just stand with her head inside my sweatshirt refusing to move. Any application of force means wailing. So damn embarrassing this kid of mine is! Look at these Aussie kids man, how sporty they are, and look at our whimpering idiots." 

Everyone looks pityingly at their non-Aussie whimpering idiots. 

Skinny, not letting the topic die down adds: "And $75 for a one-hour class! Just spent standing and crying. And the moment we get home she promises to make me happy the next time. And the same story repeats."

Moneyman, grabbing his little girl with her two braids, pulling her cheeks, "Beta we will have to sell your toys now…your mother has quit her job...how will I pay for childcare?’

More guffaws.

Skinny, just not wanting the topic to die down: "And can you imagine I bought the silly girl a HEAD Tennis Racquet! A HEAD Racquet! And she still wouldn’t play?!"

As Skinny takes a break from cribbing to attend a phonecall, the thirty to farty now move to their favourite subject - Bollywood and Adult jokes. 

Geek's wife: "Okay! Tell me, What will Sunny Leone's husband tell their kids?" 

All the kids drop what they are doing to listen

Geek's wife: "Easy! How I rate your mother!!"

Hahhahahaa around the room.
                                                                                                   
Fatty's turn now: "Neha Dhupia has an ass the size of a door"

Geek: "Oh ya we like it that way…It’s a door no less. Open and ready."

Loud roars of laughter. 

Fatty's wife to Geek: "Shoosh,my son is here"

Geek, in a drunk voice: "I'm going to get your son under my wings…won't you come under my wings sonny boy?"

8-yr old sonny boy giggles with anticipation at the thought of going under uncle Geek's wings

Geek: FUCKER, his own father’s wings are large enough.

More laughter. 

Note: When the thirty to farty are done calling their babies idiots and silly fuckers, they turn their attention to other easy targets. Like neighbours.

Skinny's wife: "Oh god, you HAVE to hear this. My Aussie neighbour had a dog and they found a murmur in its heart on a routine check-up and they put it down. I was appalled. I mean they could’ve treated him, but my neighbour said they didn’t want to prolong the suffering. And within a week they had another dog for their kids."

Tch Tch around the room. "How heartless that can be", says one. "How unethical", says another. "We Indians have values, these goras just have dicks and dollars" says a third. 

Geek concluding: "Fucker would have realized that a single scan to find the murmur was 500 bucks, regular treatment would’ve ripped him off."

Roaring laughter around the room. 

After a few more minutes of mocking the world and their great grandfathers, the party packs up. 

Thirty to farty return home exhausted with a day of farting around.

Note: Being in the said age-group, all that I do nowadays is mock the world from my armchair.


*Coming soon: Thirty to Farty in an Indian Party