Bend it like…er..Hitler!

With our publicity hungry Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, going all out to promote Yoga with his high-decibel International Yoga Day, my friendly neighbourhood club, decided to do its bit by starting free yoga classes for its members. 

Full of enthusiasm, several members like yours sincerely signed up, hoping to intake some fresh oxygen, amidst light banter and gentle stretching of limbs, in the mild morning light.

The intention was noble, the outcome, fearful. Like the proverbial man proposing & God disposing, the club got an instructor, a mere five foot-er, who laughed like a hyena, spoke a strange version of English Vinglish and inspired terror with a capital T.

Our days on the mat started at dawn with sun salutations (Surya namaskar) in tandem with instructions booming out of the pint-sized yoga monster.

“DO YOGA POSES WITH GRACES!!” she bellowed at the lovely morning, with murderous rage. The sun shrunk and any grace that we might have had, was replaced with dread. 

She commanded, we obeyed. And the poses followed.

“COBRA!” she hissed in anger. We recoiled in fear.

“LOWER DOG!” she growled next, sounding like she was about to give chase to a pack of wolves. We became lower dogs, hanging our heads in shame.

“UPPER DOG!” she barked at us impatiently. Like a flock of sheep that had turned slow-witted with fear, we complied.

“REVERSE DOG!” At this, I lay on my back, hands and feet in the air hopeful of being tickled like dogs do, when they are in the said pose. Instead, she yanked my leg up rudely and accompanied it with a volley of colourful language.

“TABLE TOP!” the devil howled through the wind next, and we turned ourselves inanimate to stop feeling the pain that Cruella De Vil inflicted.

“RISE ABOVE…STRETCH...AND RELIEVE YOURSELF!” commanded she. 
I think she may have meant RELEASE, but a fellow member started slipping away quietly to relieve himself. 

“BACK!” the terror boomed. Some birds that had just woken up and were chirping among themselves flew away and the fellow member was returned to the concentration camp, full-bladdered.

  

Her terror was such that during the 5-minute window for meditation, as I tried to focus between my eyebrows, I saw no one but her. In my third eye’s vision, I could see her standing in a pair of crisp bermudas, the iconic Hitleresque moustache stiff over her pink lips, as she swished a hunting crop that cut sharply through the air, and reprimanded me for my lack of graces.

In reality, the unending one-hour class was continuing and the Yoga-Nazi was shooting stranger instructions. (In red were my thought crimes).

“PALM OF HAND ON HEART!” 
(Heart? Do we have one, commander?)

“NOW, PALM OF FEET ON BUM!” 
(And what on earth would that be?) 

As I lay pondering what this meant, the brute of my early morning poked me and yelled: 

“YOU!!! NOT UNDERSTANDING??” “DISGRACEFUL..” and muttered few other expletives that I couldn’t catch as I lay paralyzed with fear.

“BECOME...THE MOUNTAIN!” she roared next. 
(I didn’t know which mountain exactly I was to become, but I raised my backside up saluting the sky, resembling more like a clumsy heap than a graceful mountain.)

“STARE AT YOUR NAVEL!” was the next commandment. 
(She may have meant ‘look at your navel’ but it was all the same. I stared despondently at my ruined morning.)

“WALK YOUR HANDS!” 
(I had definitely walked my wits far, far away to bring this upon myself, I thought mournfully, walking my hands.)

“SAY 'OM' FROM THE NAVEL” 
(My navel usually does not say things, but if thou insist, it shall honour thy wish!)

“TOUCH YOUR BRAIN TO THE GROUND. EVERYTHING ELSE UP!” 
(With the skull or without?)

“TOUCH YOUR NOSE TO THE KNEES” 
(With just one nose in possession, touching both knees together may present a technical problem.)

But this was not the time to question any logic. The sun was trying to rise again and with that my spirits lifted. It looked like the end was somewhere near.

It was Dhanurasana time. The devil coiled herself into a neat bun, to demonstrate what she wanted.

I contorted myself into an unappetizing, few-days-old pretzel and tried to jog my memory on the dreadful crimes I had committed in my past lives to deserve this.

The hour was finally up. The imaginary whip lashed through the air one last time. 
This time the hyena laughed and said menacingly,

“LAUGH AND BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU GOT!”

She must have meant 'smile' but no effort could stretch my facial muscles to get the desired impact. But I sent up my thanks for surviving the ordeal in one piece and cursed Modiji with the choicest words I have known in my 36 years. 

Show and Tell

Show and Tell is a typical kindergarten activity in many countries where toddlers get an item from home, show it to the class and tell them about it. In India, we have our adult version, as we love to show (off) and tell everyone about the cool, expensive brands we are wearing. Being a poor nation has never deterred us from our brand love, if anything, with our spirit of ‘jugaad’, we have been showing and telling with pride and impunity, our counterfeits paraded as luxury.

My favourite story of counterfeits goes as far back as the time I was born. Which is very far.

At the dawn of 1980s or thereabouts, my U.S. returned aunt lovingly got my little elder brother a Tommy Hilfiger jump-suit, and gloated to the lesser mortals of the family that she was dressing her nephew in legendary brands. Barely born then, yet with a discerning eye, I didn’t think much of the dress or the brand. I suppose that was more to do with evolving feelings of sibling rivalry than evolved preferences (read The Fallen Woman for more on sibling torture). But I shouldn't digress. So, the pale yellow jumpsuit had a happy yellow mango on the breast pocket with deep green leaves jutting out. Our very Bengali household started referring to it as the 'AAM PANT'. (If only it had survived, my brother could have been the original Aam Aadmi, I rue now).

The brother was made to wear it you could say, almost daily, probably to recover its brand value. But it was due to my sharp abilities as I learnt the letter that I spelt it carefully (and in as booming a voice as my tender tonsils would allow) as T.O.N.N.Y.  H.I.L.F.I.G.E.R. Everyone promptly gathered around the degraded 'AAM PANT' to catch red-handed, the ns cleverly joined as ms. Consequently, I earned the aunt’s lifetime wrath and my brother lost rights to the 'AAM PANT'. Ignominiously stripped of its brand value, the 'AAM PANT' thereafter, must have donned various hats of a household duster, swab or had a persistently leaking nose wiped on it by a helper's boy.

I recollected this anecdote while reading an article on Counterfeit Luxury Products at the Economic Times Retail blog. The writer well-versed with the business of fakes, rightly assigns the mindset of desiring otherwise unaffordable brands, as the primary reason for brandishing counterfeits. He also provides a – ‘Spot the genuine from the fake for dummies’ guide in the article. All done, luxury brand custodians have a difficult task cut out in a country where fakes are mass produced & consumed, to the extent that you often have hilarious encounters with counterfeit 'brand'ishers.

Few years back when I moved into a newly constructed apartment complex in South Delhi, I rang the neighbour’s doorbell to ask for, I can’t remember what now. What I remember clearly, was a gaunt and bony ‘Abercrombie & Feech’ sweeping the floor, humming merrily, ‘Tumse milne ki tamanna hai...pyaar ka irada hai...’ as I stared aghast.

Another time, I was witness to a dare-devil Michael Koarse joy-riding on a busy street, coarsely braking his Activa in time to save himself from becoming road kill. Fairly regularly, I have spotted comforting lunches of alu-puri come out of Guchhi jute bags or some lady in the restroom pouting for a coat of her Macx lipstick.

If you are the elite-type who has passed elementary school spelling tests, there is another set of 'elitist-fake' wares in the market called 'True Copy', which is comparatively expensive, probably to cover for proof reading. I spotted these recently, on a visit to a local designer, whose assistant paraded various fakes of Givenchy, Cartier, LV and what not, proudly claiming those were 'Original True Copies'! 
(The icing on the cake was this - on feeling up a particularly soft overcoat, I asked 'Faux fur?' The assistant replied with some pride "Yes. Absolutely. Fox Fur. Very hot.” 
“Lomdi?” I asked again helpfully.  She nodded vigorously).

There is little you can do to tame a nation that loves its aspirations, jugaad, salesmanship and shows off its fakes while telling the world – We are like this only!

A Mid-Summer Night's Dream

As my head sank into the pillow, I drifted into a soundless slumber only to be woken up by the bright lunar shine on my face. The moon was full and overhead, smiling brightly and made me fuzzy. 

I decided to take a walk in the garden. A gentle breeze blew with the scent of summer night flowers.  A handsome man from down South sat under a banyan tree. He alternated between crunching numbers in his head and frantically looking for something. On being asked, he said humbly he was looking for ways to pull out the Indian economy from the dumps. He was  in charge of the country’s central bank and he looked a tad despondent.

Feeling sorry for him, I walked a few steps ahead and stopped short, hearing sweet nothings being whispered by what looked like, lovers. As I walked closer, I realized that this was a new game where the protagonists alternated the same notes of passion with different partners. I went closer to get a better look. Under the breeze and the stray clouds, a cute boy called Ranbir held a tall dusky woman in his arms; within a blink she was replaced with a full-bodied Brit girl with dubious Asian roots. I rubbed my eyes and blinked once more to now find the tall dusky woman rolling in the hay with a crazy guy called Ranveer. (Ranbir-Ranveer..they even chose similar sounding names so they wouldn’t get slapped in the act when they moaned the wrong name, I thought).  This game was called musical beds. A popular gen Z game like Angry Birds, Candy Crush Saga, Serious Sam.

Scandalized, I returned to my room. Here I was shocked to find an overgrown Assamese school-boy in a black suit, red tie and bulbous eyes glaring at me from an idiotic looking box. His name was Arnab Goswami and if only he didn't lean at a 20-degree angle, one could spot his half-pants under the table. He was the nation’s conscience keeper, who would call 6 panelists to his show every night, not let them speak more than 6 words altogether, subject them to abject humiliation and then hiss and yell at the audience the remaining time. Presumably this Arnab (pronounced Ornob) was angry because he could never spout a full-grown manly moustache. Which is why he chose to spout venom on prime time instead.  

Presently, this terminator flashed a piece of paper at me with a smug smile. The pencil sketch mush cast a light shadow over his pink lips. In his war room voice, he proceeded to yell. “Mr. Jha…Misterr Jha…Misterrrr Jhaa…MISTERRRR JHAAAAAAAAAA” (at which a couple of panelists wiped their brows, two others suffered failed bladders and one of them said ‘Hello hello..I think I’ve lost signal’). Unfazed, the fear evoking monster proceeded to demolish them one by one. He waved a paper victoriously at this Mister Jha and said with murderous rage – “I have a piece of paper with me today. I haaave a pieeeeece of paper with me today that the whole country will see. The Nation wants to knowww!! Misterrr Jhaaa with this paper you will be disrobed in front of the whole nation!!” On impulse I shut my eyes to the indignity of a Sanjay Jha without his robes.  I have seen better in my youth. I could do without trauma in middle age. Maybe if my name was Hasiba Amin I would have enjoyed the party's strip show.

Shaking my head, I decided to step out on the street for a gulp of fresh air. Potholes glistened under the moonlight. The streetlights that were forgetfully left switched on during the day were turned off. Suddenly the peace of the dark silence was shattered with a growl of vehicles and laughter. It sounded like a Roman victory parade - soldiers, horses, women et al, fast approaching with their spoils of war. 

Turns out it was no less a war. Haryanvi men wrapped in designer blankets, drenched in Dimple whiskey, riding Harleys and brandishing axes were chasing 3 women in a Meru cab, who along with the driver cowered like lambs to slaughter. That the women were Ugandan just added to the apathy of the watchers and the testosterone of the chasers. It was our very own Wild Wild North. Smart women had already taken care to avoid such a plight. At dusk, they had slipped into their chic made-in-China iron vest and lower, put on a chastity belt and tossed the key in the dry bed of Yamuna. 

As the climax progressed, I woke up with the sound of the dramatic chase and gun shots. 
It was winter, there wasn’t a moon, the Romans were gone and I had had too much to drink.

English Vinglish

When mega star Amitabh Bachchan said confidently 'I can walk English, I can talk English' in 'Namak Halal', he was speaking for most Indians. With the debate in the national media over Nitish Kumar's insistence on Indians doing well without knowledge of English, I started to think if there was some truth to it. Needless to say, you can't survive in a global economy without the language and after all we just need working knowledge of English, are valid arguments. However, language lovers often think of it as a disservice to any language to not learn or practice it the proper way. However, the peculiar Indianized English ('see below in connection to my above'; 'I live in your backside'), the wrong grammar that we are taught in schools, compounded with the sms generation, are majorly to blame for the state of English we speak. Then there is the urban, semi-urban divide in learning and exposure that widens the gap, terming 'English speakers' as snobs and non-speakers as bumpkins. 

So here's a page from the diary of the snobs (in red are my thought crimes):   

When we were 21ish, the best friend, a true blue Bangalorean who had grown up in England, rolled her eyes and said with great firmness:

“Whatever I do, I wouldn’t date a guy with bad grammar.” She spoke clipped English, watched Brit comedies and would say ‘cut me some slack’ in those days.

I hemmed and hawed. Of course, I could never set such standards I told myself silently. My English was heavily influenced by Maharashtra and North India where I had grown up and I spoke with a Bengali accent, which is what I am by birth. I argued with her mildly in English, 
“English is not our first language na. It’s an acquired language. We don’t think in English, we don’t speak the language at home…our expression is bound to be different. Aren’t we supposed to go for the person and his content?”

She dismissed me, “You have no idea, dating someone with bad grammar is like a verbal assault, day after day.”

Over the next decade, I was verbally assaulted a few times to finally bow down to the bestie's infinite wisdom. Now I remember one particular case, where the candidate under consideration was perfect in every other way except for his peculiar grammar. After a month of active consideration, during which we crossed the stages of eye contact, silent communication, basic greetings and started speaking finally, the cookie crumbled: 

One morning, by the water cooler at work, the candidate asked:
“Why dint u came to the office yesterday?”
Something like a current (not remotely arousing) passed through me. ‘Dint came’ grated on my nerves.

“There was a problem with my car,” I said, refusing to meet his eyes. 

"Oh" he smiled, "So you are not having car today?" (he was strategizing a drive back together).

"No. I’m having car today” (and dying of gastro). I said looking at my feet and went home in a taxi.  

                                      Pic courtesy: Patricia West, Creative Monsoon

Another morning, a text message arrived: "Morning medam, your not in office"

"I'm running late" I responded solemnly.

"Haahahahhaaa..are you like the bus or the train that you run late?" was the reply. To which reply I did not reply.

Finally, on a dinner date:

“Who do you live with?” I asked and immediately regretted not asking in Hindi.

“I live in my mummy papa,” he said warmly.
(In Mummy understood, and about 30 years back or so. But Papa? Howwwwwww?)

The conversation went downhill from there. He lit up a cigarette, offered one and asked me graciously, 

"You like smoke??"

(Yes, only when I set you on fire). 

"No" I shook my head fiercely. 

Over soup, he asked me: 

“You being to Goa?”

Ignoring the being sitting in front of me, I told the soup, “Yes, just a flying visit.”

“Flying visit? There’s a direct train, dint you knew?” (the bad sort of arousal again)

“Yes, there is. I mean, it was a short visit for work, dint get to see too much.” (dinting was infectious).

“Oh Ho, Goa is famous for its biches! Wait till you throw yourself to the biches of Goa.” he said brimming with excitement.

“I am shivering in anticipation at the thought”, I said sarcastically.

Over dinner, I insisted on speaking in Hindi and he, in English. We were finally having a good conversation on multinationals targeting B and C cities, when he said: 

“See, there’s hell lot difference in urban and rular India. So the pograms must be different.” He then spoke for a while about the characteristics of rular India and the different pograms, while I tried to keep my anger in check. (If I was your teacher, I would make a pogram to spank your backside red with my ruler everyday, I told myself glaring at the dessert menu).

I wasn’t supposed to be nasty like this to a nice & intelligent guy, but this was how I was feeling. Golden heart, my foot. I ordered a couple lemon tarts to calm my angry nerves.

“What this  fart you order?” he said genuinely impressed.  

Here was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I clutched my purse and shot out. No amount of ‘why dint you stayed’ was going to get me back.  

Come let's conference

I was reading some blogs and asked myself, what’s with me. Why can’t I write deep, reflective, non-vulgar, mature blog posts? The truth is I may try. I may struggle in my head to get out those calm, unruffled, deeply philosophical stuff. Such as a woman reflecting on the quality of life whilst sipping her chamomile, being a woman in a man’s world and such. A man writing on corporate resource allocation and sustaining successful businesses in economic downturn. Or vice versa. Being a man in woman's world sipping whatever...you get the drift.

When I write, only nonsense tumbles out. Petty observations about people, cheap humor and the disorderly tragi-comic way of the world in general. So that’s my voice then. Of a vulgar writer. And on that note, let me share a petty account of a conference on road safety I recently attended in Delhi.

At the thinly attended winter-morning, inaugural session, the only moment of excitement occurred when the young usher’s sari almost caught fire during lamp lighting. As the entire auditorium looked on in anticipation for her sari to unravel, some backstage boys quickly carried away the damsel in distress. In utter despondence we focused on the conference, that began with deep discussions on the dismal state of road safety, by Indian and international presenters in bad accents. 

Before the tea break, an eager beaver asked – “So when can we expect central funding on road safety?”

“I hop soon,” said the speaker from the stage gravely. Ignoring his hop, people wrestled each other out for tea and pakodas.

As the following session presumed, a man in the audience dropped some pamphlets that were balanced precariously on both his thighs. The papers from thigh no 1 fell and spread silkily on the carpet. The man (presumably lazy) didn’t wish to spare the effort of bending and picking up the papers. Innovatively, he tried to pull the papers closer with one foot. As he stretched his leg forward to gather the fallen sheaf, the other pamphlets resting on thigh no 2 slid and fell. All the participants across the aisle and others, by craning their necks, focused on this welcome distraction. As the speaker on the dais droned on, all eyes eagerly waited to see the lazy man’s next move. 

Now with all papers on the floor and both thighs freed, he stretched both the legs in a synchronized effort to pull the papers closer. With the effort, his right shoe gave away and lay footless on the papers. It was clearly not his day. Now he stretched his left leg clumsily to bring the papers closer. The truant papers shifted position and went hiding under the chair of a beautiful woman to his left. Keen to help her struggling neighbour, the beautiful lady asked ‘Shall I spread my legs?’ She was not just beautiful, but was generous too, I noted. 

The lazy man nodded solemnly and said ‘Yes please. I need those papers.’ (like those old jokes where a man attempting to mount a camel out of sheer frustration, saves a naked woman from a demon, and when the woman offers her booty in return, the man says – just hold the camel for me). With the papers finally collected and the generous neighbour’s legs closed, the audience tried to focus on the graph on the screen yet again. Finally a dapper presenter headed to the stage and started by saying ‘Relax I don’t have a presentation.’ As we were starting to clap and walk away, he launched into a diatribe on road safety audits, the various stages it needs to be done in and the types of audits. He spoke for 45 minutes sans slides and breath.

The post lunch session was a pure torture with soft paneer and succulent mutton rolling in our bellies. The wily organisers had kept the torturous ‘exhibitor sponsor session’ post lunch. Foreigners from Europe, Australia and Norway came and spoke relentlessly on new technologies for enhancing road safety, in an effort to convince the govt. departments to buy their solutions and consultancies. The govt reps on their part slept peacefully in the front rows, displaying their cavities to the world, from where flowed rivulets of drool. 

A speaker from Norway was pointing enthusiastically at the screen and saying, "Lukh at z line on z graph in z sthatisthics representhing z road inzury data percenth over z last thwen years". Zzzzs was all he got from the audience. In my immediate neighbourhood, an older man and a big eyed girl were getting to know each other in hushed tones. They whispered about their lives, their growing up years, joys and sorrows, likes and loves. The older man spoke about his successful career and the big eyed girl about her father’s contacts and money. 
The man then asked the girl, “So has your father retired or does he work somewhere?” The girl gave it some thought and said “No no, he hasn't retired, he works somewhere.” Sadly the balance conversation was drowned, when the Norwegian raised his pitch in a passionate rendering which went like - “The TC 226 is in charge of the European normalization concerning the road equipment markings...." 

Somehow the hours passed, they seemed like days and months. Finally came the valedictory session where everyone individually thanked everyone else and their great grandfathers. In his vote of thanks, the chairperson alternated between calling the sessions valuable and invaluable. Some awards were given out where the awardees hung precariously near the edge of the stage, since flower pots occupied most part. 

Finally at 6 pm, people wriggled out the hall with bloodshot eyes characteristic of disturbed sleep. As I made way to the washroom pushing through the crowd that was clutching the free conference kits like family jewels, the beautiful woman (of the spread my legs fame) walked slowly in front of me. 

Bright sunflowers adorned her yellow sari. Two large flowers sat snugly on her bum. I wondered if I should race with her before the sunflowers hit the pot. To my good luck, she stopped momentarily and stared at the men’s door. She seemed confused, tempted probably...it had been a long day. I took advantage of her indecision and raced ahead by elbowing her. The day was finally over, I could whistle.  





Serious note: This, like everything else, is written in jest. To those that sponsored my visit to the conference, I attended not one but all three days, in all earnestness and took copious notes (some of which have found their way into this). Please do continue to send me to future conferences.  

http://www.hypersmash.com/

Sex and the Indian woman

*Not suitable for children, contains explicit adult content

Strange, that the subject matter of making of children happens to be non-children content. Thinking of such ironies of life, I start my adult piece. 

Its 9 am and probably the best time to write this. So I start thinking of morning shows at Regal, Connaught Place in Delhi. Talking of Regal, you must checkout the regal facelift it’s got. From its crumbling, pornographic look in the 90s, it’s undergone a fine transformation. Today’s Regal is white, shiny and slutty like Sunny Leone. Talking of Sunny, she has turned out to be the most searched Indian celebrity online beating the likes of Aishwarya Rai hands down, rather pants down. Okay no more digression....

Very late in life I understood that being horny has nothing to do with being fertile. Turns out I have been the former majority of my life, and the latter for a much lesser time. In the pursuit of horniness, fertility takes a backseat and vice versa. Being a woman has its disadvantages. And if you are an Indian woman, you start a few notches down. For starters, you can’t talk of your sexual appetite, experiences or preference, except in blogs like this that no one reads. If you are talking sex, you better stay anonymous, they’d say, or at best use asterisk to take the sting out. You can’t talk about the bronze chest you were distracted with at a meeting (but men can casually joke about your rack). You can’t say you envied a friend in college who was dedicated the song Nymphomaniac Fantasia by her then partner. You can’t say you are distracted by women whose last names are Kant. You can’t say a lot many things, funny things, dirty things, serious things. The Indian woman is supposed to have repressed sexuality, and carry it around as her biggest virtue.

This is how the typical desire cycle runs through an Indian woman’s life - In your teens, you are so busy guarding your physical security that sexuality is mostly an unwanted or feared phenomenon. We jump the exploratory phase that is crucial to defining our sexual identity and assertion. In your twenties, love starts rolling into your life and alongside your horniness quotient becomes directly proportional to your position on the ‘loose girl’ index of the society (considering the mostly inseparable linkages between love and sex). Of course, with a high quotient you will have more loves, more heartbreaks, more life. But to beat the ‘loose’ tag, most girls try and behave on the face of it. That’s the cause of more repression and exploitation. 

Then you start your work-life, of an independent modern Indian woman who likes her whiskey and pays her own bills. In this phase, you get to call the shots in almost everything about your life except for the four and three lettered joys (love and sex) that never seem to come together. If you are worthy of an Indian man's love, you can't display uninhibited passion. If you express passion, you are just good for that. You can't be taken home to mum. So if you are in love, it will do you well to keep your sparkling sexual conversations in your head unless you can handle being judged harshly. And if you've given up on love, you might as well give up on sex. Keep the scenes where you pick up dashing men with your dashing pick-up lines confined to your fantasy. Indian men don’t like to be picked up. They like to pick their target, fool around, chase, hunt, and later, sit on judgment. 

Along the way, you may meet an evolved man who will know you and love you for your spunk and original passion, but don't bank on them. They are as rare as - I heard somewhere recently - the 6th finger, the 11th toe and the 3rd nipple. Majority you meet for dating or keeps, get excited by, as a matter of concept, the wild woman or the sexually assertive. But prefer the cloistered variety, the semi-puritans who keep their eyes shut, like their lights off and save bedroom talk for out-of-town (with capabilities of packing a gratifying four-course meal in a tiffin carrier the morning after).

Then marriage happens for most and post marriage action by both partners are for various motives – hopeful of an offspring before the female of the species runs out of eggs (offspring - offspringing like a byproduct); as an accompaniment to the vivid fantasy of Sunny Leone or Hugh Jackman or a real-life Sunny or Hugh you’ve been eyeing; or to keep your machinery in working order. Everything else, except love and sex for love and sex itself. 

And before you can say Jaaaccckkk Roooobbbiinnnsoon, you would be running downhill. Whether you have a bundle of joy to distract you, or are free of such encumbrances, your hormone switches start turning off and your balance life is spent in consolatory, loveless-sexless pursuits.

Given the bleakness of the situation, in my next birth I would like to be someone like ND Tiwari, the posterboy of unabashed sexuality - a Y chromosome, with the ability to buy choices and wave the stick of morality in someone else's face; all along enjoying fucking blessed longevity. 

And to the Gods reading this (since human beings are not), please throw-in a lifetime membership to mile high club...