The Ai-yern Maiiiiiidennn

For the second time in eleven months, the band that I loved more than any other from around 9th grade to 12th grade (and even into the first year of college) are going to rock my world.

Give thanks, with a grateful heart…

 

Plus, I love Bombay! See you in February.

I’ll Catch Them Before They Turn 55

This morning’s Sunday Times of India had a Page 10 article on how there’s a glut of Indian Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) holders in the market, and how there aren’t enough jobs for all of them. Ha, I say, HA! I foresaw this, two years ago. Every Tom whose Dick is Hairy ran off to become a pilot when the papers began carrying articles on the hundreds of Boeings and Airbuses ordered by Indian domestic carriers. I know at least 6 people who (all after graduating around the same time I did) packed in their lives and ran off to the States or the Philippines to learn to fly.

It’s hard for me to be objective here, because truly, flying is all I’ve ever really wanted to do. Yeah I know, all little boys think that, but I really did. I used to spend my 3rd grade recess periods taking off and landing on the basketball court lines. I was greatly inspired by the Disney series TaleSpin, which featured Baloo, King Louie, and Shere Khan from The Jungle Book in a completely different universe.

 

What an absolutely gorgeous ‘plane. Or, to be more precise, flying boat.

So ya, in brief, Launchpad McQuack from Disney’s Duck Tales, the Sea Duck in the picture, the Biggles books– I loved the concept of being a hotshot pilot.

Unfortunately, although Learning To Fly is easy enough to sing about, and to do, it requires a rather significant capital investment. 25 lakhs is what, nearly 65,000 US dollars? How can you ask your parents to pay that much so that you can spend your life as a glorified taxi driver? No sir, if I was going to fulfil my destiny, I would have to get the government to pay for it. I harboured ambitions of joining the RAF for years. That eventually changed to the IAF, when I became older and less of an angrez.

So what’s my excuse? My eyes. Perfect vision is a prereq for fighter pilots anywhere in the world. LASIK surgery wasn’t really an option until a few years ago, and I’m not sure someone with a power of only -1 D even qualifies for it. God hit me good and hard, he did. Vision bad enough to not be able to fly for free, and yet not bad enough to be able to be corrected, either.

But I’m older now, wiser, all that. I don’t even want to be a commercial pilot, okay? Flying Delhi-Bombay-Goa-Chennai-Kanpur-Delhi? GTD, glorified taxi driver. I’m sure I’m missing out on some great airhostess sex, but hey, there are more attractive journalists around. Smarter ones, too.

I will get a private pilot’s licence at some point in my life, though, I surely will. Just after I’ve had a threesome with Madonna and Pam, I’m sure.

By the way, if you want to hear a song with a young(er) moi on the dwums, it’s now showing at the Zorro On Doughnuts theatre, on Blogger Lane.

Webcrawling

Oh, there’s just so much out there.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the last line of the second paragraph.

The poor guy.

Water Woes

I’ve just stuffed myself with half a loaf of bread, had with scrumptious apricot jam from Herbertpur (a real place, near Dehradun) and Amul “Yummy Plain!” cheese spread. I’m back to eating cheese spread after a long period of abstinence. Every serving has almost 17 % of the recommended dietary value of saturated fats, and saturated fats are bad for you. They control your blood cholesterol level far more than dietary intake of cholesterol does. I wouldn’t normally give a shit about cholesterol, fat, and the like, but my dad’s repeated warnings that I eat too many eggs for safety (I looooves eggs) led me to look up egg yolk and cholesterol on the internet. I now have an “Egg Safety” folder in my My Documents.  

It’s the 24th of January. Delhi is as cold as London (according to the regular high/low reports on Capital Radio).

So how can there not be water in my taps?

(I may have blogged about this before.)

Arun Mathur, CEO of the Delhi Jal Board, should be thankful he’s not likely to ever run into me on a dark street corner.

I didn’t bathe this morning, because I was late for class. Actually, I was late for my third and final class of the day, having slept through the first two. This fucking cold– highly soporific, it is. I didn’t bathe after coming back from class, either, because there isn’t much point bathing at 3 pm when you’re heading to the gym at 5.

For God’s sake, Mr Mathur, the least a guy can expect when he comes home after huffing and puffing on the treadmill is to be able to have a bath! ESPECIALLY in the middle of winter. How the hell am I going to manage when summer rolls around and Delhi has an actual water shortage??

I blame my landlady. Stupid auntyji. This house was built only 3 years ago, and it was designed with boarders in mind. There are 4 north-easterners on the floor above me (technically the roof, I suppose). There’s a (north-eastern) couple on my floor, and another guy who lives next door. (Or there was, until he left for a job in Saudi Arabia, the land of no alcohol. God help him.) There’s me. On the floor below me, there’s an entire family– auntyji’s son, wife, and two kids. And on the ground floor, there’s auntyji and her live-in maid. Let’s count: 4+2+2+4+2. 14 people in one 3-storey building.

True, Delhi is on the banks of a “river”, if you can call that polluted drain a river. But everyone knows this city has water problems, being far away from all things coastal.

So why couldn’t auntyji have sunk a borewell?? Every other house on the row has one! We’re the only ones dependent on the vagaries of the DJB and its pathetic inability to clean up its act. I am so moving out next year.

Don’t you go feeling sorry for the DJB– numerous newspaper articles have pointed out that 50% of the available water is lost due to transmission leaks.

Aaargh! How can the government live with itself in the face of that statistic?

Of course, it’s because nobody important ever has to contend with taps running dry as you’re standing shivering under the shower. Sometimes I hate this fucking country and its fucking uneducated moron politicians.

(Don’t worry, I’m smart. I have almost 80 litres of water stored– enough for about 2 days, including two baths but only one toilet flush in that period. Or one bath, and one extra flush. But that’s not the point.)

And, Since It’s The Season For Twice-Daily Posts

Why would anyone tell someone in all earnestness, “You’re looking fat?”

Saale bhehnchod. Have I ever told you YOU’RE looking fat? Have I ever told ANYONE they’re looking fat?

(No!)

Bambi-Thumper-What did your father tell you-If you can’t say anything nice…

Alright, Own Up

Who was it?

“The following search terms have been used to access your site.

“Today: None.

“Yesterday: ‘perakeet masturbation’.”

Errrrrrrr.

(1) My name is spelt Perakath.

(2) I don’t masturbate. Don’t even know what it means!

(3) Even supposing I were to, I wouldn’t write about it. Thode se limits honge, bhai-saheb!

(4) WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU INTERESTED IN ME JACKING OFF??

Arrey, yaar

I can’t do anything more than be myself, can I?

My greatest fear is probably solitary confinement. It’s horrible living alone. At that party the day I arrived back this year, the one thing that struck me more than anything was how much fun it was the next morning, with people you’re completely comfortable with in the same house. No-one in a hurry to go anywhere. Happy to just be with each other. Aargh!

I’m going to get hurt again, aren’t I? Is it worth it?

Yeah, of course it is.

I’ll feel better in the morning. The one truism of my life. Thank God for that.

Hahaha

I love this blog!

Ai Ai Ai

I’m no saint. In fact, I’m a big choot*, in many ways, and more than any of you think I am.

But I would never do this.

The entire blog could be made up, but who’s to say? I doubt it.

It was evidently dog mating season a few weeks ago, because a couple of weeks ago there was suddenly an outburst of puppies in Outram Lines. In my lane, near my gym, near where we used to score– puppies everywhere you looked.

One of them has suddenly become lame. Looks like a car ran over his left front leg. The poor thing wags his tail every time he sees me, and tries to follow me sometimes.

I am SO a cat person, but who doesn’t like puppies? I read an article about it somewhere– no wait, it was in a Michael Crichton book. How all young animals (in that case, young Velociraptors!) have a disporportionately large head, and a clumsy gait, and that leads adults to find them cute and feel affection for them.

Should I kill the puppy, or myself?

* Since (wow) I seem to have non-Indian readers: Hindi for cunt.

Oh, Btw

(This merits a fresh post, IMO)

I finally found an electronic weighing scale.

84.2 kilos??

Jeeeeez. All this time I thought my gym scale was completely bonkers. I simply refused to believe it when the needle went over the 80 mark. Or rather, the 80 mark on the plate spun past the needle painted on the glass. I told myself I was somewhere between 74 and 77 kilos, like a couple of years ago.

84 kilos in a (just about) 5-foot-10 frame.

I hope to God all that bodybuilding schpiel about muscle weighing more than an equivalent quantity of fat is enough to explain this.