Never Sleepless In Delhi

The old joke about adoption being the height of laziness does the rounds of my mind each time anyone talks about the modern-day panacea – the Viagra Pill. My meddling mind wanders to the Biblical injunction against the deadly sin. No, no, I am not referring here to the sin of Lust. What I am alluding to is another of the Seven Deadly Sins – that of Sloth. Or plain laziness, if you prefer a simpler term.

Unlike my illustrious grandfather (who industriously ran our family chemical industry and oversaw the working of our family farm till the day his 90-year-old body gave up the ghost), or his equally worthy son, my sire (who doubles up as our plumber-cum-carpenter-cum-electrician-cum-mechanic-cum-odd-jobman even at almost 65), I am an extremely lazy individual. Maybe it was just the caprice of Mother Nature, but by the time it was my turn, my ancestral legacy of industrious capacity had exhausted itself.

I sleep (my daily quota of ten hours) in the same jeans and tee shirt I wear to office, because it is too much of an effort to change into any shorts or pajamas at night. I prefer poached eggs for breakfast, because it is too much effort to make omelettes or to boil the eggs – you have to chop onions for the former, and remove the shells to eat the latter). In the old days before office lunches took care of the problem, I used to have Maggi for lunch and dinner. Not because I liked it (in fact I detested it), but because it is too much hard work cooking even the rudimentary khichdi. And as you must have guessed, anything that requires effort is an anathema to my sensitive soul.

Unlike me, Neel is no Accident of Nature. She is, as she claims, the culmination of centuries of effort (in avoiding any sort of effort) on the part of 17 generations of the honourable family. This pinnacle of sloth, the marvelous end product of impeccable evolution, has Rip Van Winkle as her revered idol. 

Neel claims that her four-hours-a-day afternoon siestas are not indicative of any deep-rooted idleness – they just reflect her fervent belief in the principle of conversation of energy. And why does she need to conserve her energy, you may well ask. With a gentle smile playing on her face, she will reply: so that she can prepare for her twelve-hour nightly sleep with great gusto!

I Will Buy a New Ear

Another year has passed. I'm a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit rounder, but still none the wiser.
All optimists stay up until midnight to see the new year in. All pessimists stay up to make sure the old year leaves. But both categories insist on making new year resolutions, and what is worse, insist on telling you what their resolutions are. They forget that good resolutions are simply checks that you draw on a bank where you don’t have any account.

So here’s my New Year's Resolution - to tolerate fools and fishes more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time! Entirely for your perverse pleasure, here is the list of my ten alternative New Year Resolutions. I considered each of them carefully before settling on the one finally selected:

1. I will answer my snail mail with the same enthusiasm with which I answer my e-mail.
2. When I hear a funny joke I will not reply: "LOL... LOL!"
3. I will balance my chequebook properly. How about balancing it on my nose?
4. I will not look at pretty girls. It’s depressing to find out exactly how many people there are who will never notice you.
5. I will not look at pretty boys either. I am neither a deviant nor a paedophile.
6. So many women, so little time. I will make more time. Only to be disappointed again.
7. I will not tell the same story at every get together. I will think of new ways to torture my few listeners.
8. I will not encourage the kids in my society to pee down from the top floor at the people passing below.
9. I will remember it isn't worthwhile wrestling with bulls - you get all muddy and the bulls just love it!
10. I will take neither myself nor any of the above seriously.

Maids in Leather Pants

At lunch today, I overheard a few women colleagues discussing their maids animatedly. One of them suddenly piped up in a sarcastic tone: "These maids have turned so modern nowadays! I saw my maid on her off day shopping in the local market, wearing jeans, lipstick, and high heels!" As the others on the table went “ooh” and “aah” at the apparently scandalous behaviour, I started thinking.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you are saying: “Arnie and thinking? Is that not a contradiction in terms?” Well, all I have say to that is that just because it is office, that does not mean that I sleep all the time. I do have to wake up sometimes, especially when I am eating. Otherwise there is a tendency to push food into my nose, and that is not really an elegant sight. And when I am awake, and the food is in front of me, I have to think of things other than food. So maid servants are as good or as bad a topic to think of as any other.

Which brings us back to what was I actually thinking about maid servants. No, you filthy minds, I do have not that kind of perverse thoughts about maid servants. Even if those maid servants are cleaner than normal and stylish enough to wear jeans and high heels.

What I was actually thinking is why do people have this tendency to fit everyone else into comfortable stereotypes? What is so wrong in a maid wearing jeans? Or, for that matter, in the maid wearing leather pants and tank tops, if it pleases her? Not only will it be a pleasant change from the coconut hair oiled middle aged sour-mooded specimens that are the norm in Delhi, it is also a striking a blow for equality of the sexes. After all, the guy who comes to wash my car in the mornings and the guy who delivers the newspapers both wear jeans, and no body seems to find that shocking in the least.

So what's so wrong in a maid wearing jeans? Isn't she a human being with her own likings, her own aspirations, and her own young heart which wants to follow the latest that the so-called social superiors claim as their birthright? Especially when the social inferior is in better shape than the scandalized social superior, who, charitably put, resembles a giant pumpkin as she is 5 foot tall and 4 foot broad?