The not so Immaculate Conception

It’s how we define good news defines the various stages of our life. We all start as our parent’s good news and continue being the harbinger of good news in their life. After all, this is the sole purpose of our lives, to be our neighbour’s envy and parent’s pride! It’s what good news is all about, to induce various shades of envy in people who mean little or nothing to us.

As a trying-to-be-funny-blogger once said – one wo/man’s good news is another wo/man’s cause for acidity.

There comes a stage in our life when we fall in love and get married (not necessarily in that order). In India, once you’re married, your sex-life becomes a matter of public discussion. Whether it’s your colleagues commenting on the dark circles under your eyes, or the snide comments the hickey on your neck invites or the knowing look in your friend’s eyes as she surveys your expanding décolletage – your bedroom antics become the source of entertainment for one and all. As the months turn into years, your love turns into a responsibility to keep the family lineage alive. If you dare ignore it, everyone you know and might not know takes it upon themselves to constantly remind you of your failure to contribute to the world’s exploding population. And then one fine day you’re so fed up that you walk up to your husband and say – Darling, let’s do it, I’m ovulating.

So, when you are finally ready to make the announcement, it’s news so good that it doesn’t give acidity to others but you – an acidity that doesn’t last a couple of hours but nine whole months!

When I first held the lab test report confirming my pregnancy, my hands were trembling with joy. Yay! We were finally going to have our own baby, who will be only too glad to take on the responsibility of becoming the caretaker of our joy. Phew! What a relief.

I celebrated it with a neat little puke in the corner.

Do Pious Women Go to Heaven?

Image courtesy - Google images

With her eyes downcast, as she follows the man she has promised to love till her last breath and takes the seven circumambulations around the sacred fire, a woman has no idea this is what she’ll be doing for the rest of her life – running around in circles. Only the sacred fire gets replaced by the ones she loves and will learn to love with time. After all, she is the nurturer, the one who makes the house a home, the banisher of dust and her family’s moody blues, the expert haggler who returns victorious with an extra bunch of coriander, the Sunday morning Aloo-Parantha maker who brings cheer to life of others.

With time she learns to stop protesting and start appreciating his unusual taste in movies and gives up her love for Chinese cuisine because he can’t think beyond dal makhani and karahi paneer. His sisters become hers. His Mom becomes her Mummy dearest who insists on regaling her with exploits of the greatest thing alive – her son. Even as her eyes glaze over as she hears the story of how Bunty won a year’s supply of Bournvita when he stood IInd at the Quiz Contest, for the 35th time, she doesn’t grumble because she knows this makes her ma-in-law happy.

She was conditioned to believe that children are gifts of God. So, when all she experiences is revulsion at the sight of runny noses and smelly diapers, she castigates herself in front of the mirror and proceeds to surround herself with posters of overweight photoshopped babies with blue eyes.

Over the years she and castigation have become best friends. She still can’t over the guilt when she felt like banging her head on the wall for having created monsters who look like her in-laws… For harbouring violent thoughts when her husband innocently asked – isn’t this the second time in the week we are having lauki koftas? For faking sickness at office just so that she could get a few hours alone, at home…Feeling secretly relieved when he said that he’d be gone for a fortnight….

Not all women are natural born givers, who gladly sacrifice their happiness for the sake of others. Not all of us are adept at pushing our needs under the carpet. Some of us play along for the sake of pretences, some of us protest too much, while a few seek retribution by making life hell for others. Some of us try to have careers that our education demanded of us. But what we all share in common is that awful sense of guilt for not being a good-enough mom, daughter and wife.

Axe Them If You Can't Beat Them

Also on The Unreal Times

It was a fateful morning when Kumari Ashanti Kumari (KAKU), chief agitator of Peedhit Nari Bachao Yojana, chanced upon a revolutionary product. A spray that claims to make ugly, jeans hanging-underwear-showing, hormonal and insecure boys, desirable to all the hot aunties of their locality, but in reality does exactly the opposite. Mostly preferred by boys who think bathing is so last century and attempt to mask their body odour by dousing themselves with copious quantities of this deodorizer, they are able to have a universal effect on women – make them breathless.

What a divine coincidence that this product is called Axed!

A light bulb lit up right above KAKU’s head! What if she could tweak the deodorant’s chemical components and make it stink so bad that when sprayed on oneself, it makes people around you literally breathless and senseless! With a spray that makes you reek like an open manhole, she could save her sisters from the clutches of lecherous men with no self-control or conscience.

After months of painful research and development, she finally had a product that could make you smell like a Mumbai commuter’s armpits. Ashanti sprayed 177 girls of all shapes and sizes with this vile product and discovered much to her delight that it had the desired effect on men! It knocked their breath out of their lungs.

It’s Love, Stupid!

Google images

There’s an imbecile in all of us, dying to come out at the first hint of love. My first brush with the incredible stupidity much in love couples display was as a 10 year old on a summer trip to Mount Abu. It was one not so fine morning, when we stepped into the sightseeing bus crammed with eager tourists armed with cameras and Uncle Chips, that I first encountered this strange species - a motley group of honeymooning couples coochie–cooing like crows in heat. One of them must have spotted the terror in my eyes. Before I could scream Mummy, save me, I was perched firmly on their laps. The next few hours I was privy to the most inane conversations ever heard and embarrassing public displays of affection. Every time the bus halted they would scurry off to the nearest cliff and pose Khajuraho style with me as the hapless spectator. Needless to say I was traumatized.

Love spares no one and I knew I was infected when Nadeem Shravan and Altaf Raja songs started making sense. I discovered the true meaning of insomnia in “Mujhe neend na aaye, mujhe chain na aaye”. With a stupid smile plastered on my face, I would walk around aimlessly, often banging into pillars. A firm believer of keeping my options multiple, I would be in love with at least 4 guys at a time. A lost- puppy look on my face and a playlist of the cheesiest romantic songs constantly playing in my head, I was dying to feel like a heroine in a Mills and Boons novel, touched for the very first time.

I was in search of my tall, dark, obscenely rich and brooding, silent and tortured hero! When I did find a guy with looks to kill, he’d open his mouth and spoil it all. The silent brooding one was dull and the rich one was yet to be born! But that did not deter me from crushing over guys I had no intention of confessing my love to.

Finally I did find love and with it the imbecile in me. Every time the phone rang, I would run towards it like PT Usha on steroids, sink into deep depression if he didn’t call me every two hours. I would look for pathetic excuses to call him again and again. Mind you, these were the pre-mobile days, so I had no way of driving him up the wall with “do you miss/love/care for me?” texts! I found everything about him incredibly endearing including his body odour and would feel hurt if a friend passed a snide remark on his cute flappy ears. Silly girl, she’s just jealous!

If poverty is a state of mind, fodder is food for thoughts that cross the mind

Courtesy NDTV.Com

The union of Murderers Arsonists and Rapists (MAAR) registered a strong protest after ex-Bihar chief minister Aloo Prasad was taken to Ranchi Central jail. The jail, named fondly after Birsa Munda who died here of cholera, will be home to Aloo and his 44 thieves. MAAR spokesperson Sushil Gunde expressed concern at this alarming trend of disqualified elected members invading their sanctum sanctorum and promised to dismember the members’ members.

In a country where criminals get more protection than law-abiding citizens and a judicial system that’s so slow and complicated, it is a miracle that criminals actually get convicted. Getting into jail is no cakewalk – it requires a clever combination of perseverance, enterprise, willingness to get caught and pissing off influential relatives or elected members, disqualified or otherwise. “Just as we were looking forward to enjoying the fruits of our labour and spending a peaceful, bribe free, inflation free and rent free existence in prison, our peace of mind is shattered with the arrival of these VIP inmates. It sucks that jails are now reserved for former politicians and businessmen. Where will poor run-of-the-mill murderers, thieves and rapists go?” exclaimed Gunde.

Besharam Kundu, a long time veteran who has spent 26 blissful years behind bars for stealing his neighbour’s goat rued: “there was a time when the high and mighty were forced to sup with petty criminals like us. Be it a serial killer or a pick-pocket, we were all made to share the same stinking lavatories and have the same watery daal with undercooked rice. My stomach still grumbles at the memory of that momentous day when all 420 of us went down with cholera after feasting on six day old kheer served in honour of the jail-warden’s birthday. Not anymore!” he spat. “We now have to put up with disgraced barons, real estate magnates, high profile ministers who arrive with much fan-fare and are treated like damads visiting their sasural. I fear, they will damage our cholera reputation ”.