Sapnon ki gaddi

I have been driving a 92 model bajaj chetak for 10 years now. People always tell me I am crazy for not buying a bike but I dont care. I love my scooter though it broke down leaving me in situations which would lead to nothing less than a social disaster. Recently , while I was returning after watching "rang de basanti" , it broke down in a red light zone( anything worse on this planet ?? ) . A more recent incident (rather accident) was of the rear wheel coming out while I was driving. I know how lucky I am. I love my scooter.

I always thought I would leave the scooter only if a car was replacing it. (nah , I will never sell it ). I am on the lookout for a car for the nth time , 100! < n < 200! .
In the past two days, I have changed my mind so many times that it refuses to think and shows me a virtual "fuck you" signboard for every plan change. I admit that I have this habit of getting excited about things ultra fast. This time, its real bad.

I have spoken to 100 banks (ok , 5 actually) , 3 financers, 5 showrooms,15 auto agents . I took test drives of two vehicles on the same day. A second hand maruti 800 in the morning, and another brand new Santro xing in the evening. I didnt drive the maruti 800 fearing serious dents to the car that would eventually leave permanent holes the size of "grand canyon" in my pockets. ( Come on, what can be worse than banging a test drive car and having to pay for it , a perfect example of khaya na piya, glass toda , 12 aane.).

For some reason against "principles of marketing", the guy from the hyundai showroom brought a "yet to be sold car" as the test drive car was not availabe. Ironically, I drove it and this was an experience of a lifetime. Now I have some prior driving experience, a maruti 800 (800 Before Christ model ) , an ambassador, and fiat that I owned and sold as scrap for 7.5k. This was more than enough confidence to test drive a benz.

We went to necklace road and the drive was fun. The "kindness" atoms inside me we pleading me not to take the steering, but all in vain. Now this is a long road with hardly any traffic and it went on well. Then we took a U turn by cutting accross a car, narrowly missing a collision . I quickly told to myself "I was too occupied with checking out car's performance while turning",but frankly , it was a big mistake. The lady who was driving the other car had basic driving sense and it was them who avoided a collision. The lady's face had the greatest form of surprise which I cannot express in words here. Had the other car hit us, the best I can imagine myself doing is to pioneer improvisation of the begging industry with IT enabled services.
My search for the dream car is still on!!.

Hansi ke hansgulle

I was excited like a monkey when I heard of a live performance by Umer Sharif in Hyderabad.
Me and my friend decided to give it a shot. We reached the venue half hour before the mentioned time . There was lot of armed police force for the "bandobast" . I am no criminal , but the very sight of the long lathis scares me.
We had to sell of the extra ticket we had, and it didnt look like a great idea to me, looking at the armed men. We gave up soon and got two relatively expensive tickets in lieu of the 3 cheaper ones.

The gathering at the entrance clearly looked like a swarm of bees to everybody except the organizers. They maintained, "please come in a queue". We had to become part of this dhakka dhakki because there were no seat numbers. I wanted to ensure that I get the best possible view. We finally entered the venue, which was actually an open air theatre.
The whole setup was anything but organized. The arrangement looked like it had survived no less than 3 hurricanes. I felt that the old plastic chairs they had might have been stolen from a stone age museum (what an irony, plastic chairs from stone age!! ). It took me an hour to discover that the chairs might have been white in colour orginially. They had all sorts of dirt on them and I am sure a significant part of it is on the back of my trousers now. So the next time you see a nice looking guy dressed in designer trousers with dirt stains on his ass, you know whom you have found.

Each time I moved to adjust my ass in the not -so-comfortable weather condition, the chair trembled like anything . This I knew would lead to a disaster, given the fact that I am overweight by a margin equal to my desired weight. I feared that if the chair collapsed, at best I would have a broken hip bone and a lot of bad bruises who knows where.

To nobody's surprise, the performer was late by two hours. In other words, we were early by 2 hours to have reached on time. We wanted to kill time and nothing is better when compared to eating. So I hurried to a counter that would look like a stall to me if I were blind. I purchased two plates of what they called "ragda samosa". The asshole didnt have change and I had to forego a whopping 5 rupees. For god's sake, I have never tasted shit, but if there was a
way to compare, then this should have been closest to that.

We looked towards the stage.There were a few "bai" women sweeping the stage floor while singing to themselves (nah, I cant tell u what they were singing, coz i was no closer than a kilometer from the stage. What could i have expected for a ticket worth 500 bucks).
When they finished sweeping , they walked in a staight line with broomsticks in their hands. We couldnt see how they looked, but reminded ourselves that we were not watching women doing catwalk with broomsticks as props. There were a couple of projectors projecting arbitrary shapes on the screen. This made me feel that we have been fooled, for it was april 1st.

After forever, a show anchor appeared on stage. Program started with a classical dance by a 9 yr girl, followed by a dance item by a group of boys wearing pants that were shit yellow in colour. Me and my friend were blaming each other , and u know why.

Then came Umer sharif. He started in his own style and went on an on as people held their stomachs laughing. Many jokes were repeated but I enjoyed them anyway. The banner came half hour after the performance started. Just when we started to feel that it was worth it in any sense, the show was over . I desperately wanted to kick my friends ass, but didnt dare to, for he might have had the same feeling , albeit more stronger than mine.