Post 10- The winner of Miss America is NOBODY CARES!

Sajid Khan's favourite round in a beauty pageant 

I completely understand the backlash in the US over declaration of Indian-American Nina Davuluri as the new Miss America. 

As if brainy jobs weren't enough, now we are taking over all dumb jobs from Americans as well. For instance, Miss America. If I was an American I'd be pissed too.

The strong and adverse reaction of Americans is pretty valid as the only person who will benefit from Nina Davuluri winning the American beauty pageant is Sajid Khan, who probably has found his prospective girlfriend in her and perhaps, Housefull 3's new female lead.

Post 8 - Everything you ever wanted to know about Navratri

Indian Godess of unrestrained sexual odyssey

Navratri is a festival dedicated to the worship of the Hindu deity Falguni Pathak. The word Navaratri literally means nine nights in Sanskrit, nine nights of promiscuity, of casual and unrestrained sexual odyssey, of backless chanya-cholis and wanton behaviour. During these nine nights nine forms of Shakti/Devi are worshiped, basically Falguni Pathak in nine different tom-boyish clothes every night. After the year long hibernation the omnipotent goddess Falguni Pathak miraculously appears in Garba nights across West India showering testosterone-high youth with her bad singing and grotesque body shape. Navratri is considered as a significant factor behind India's high population growth. But, what the heck! As long as we all are getting laid. 

Post 5 - Pushkar: Yoga, Hummus, joints and trance.

Like every other Hindu religious town of India, even Pushkar is all about bathing in open, smoking pot, eating Falafel with Hammas, and taking pictures. Considered one of the oldest towns of India, Pushkar was founded by Lord Brahma, the real estate tycoon of mythological era. Let's call him DLF bhagwan. Little did he know what he thought was an appropriate place for Mahayagna would turn into a cheap-getaway for hippies from all over the world some hundred centuries later. Honestly, DLF ji could have chosen a better location for his Mahayagna say Ambergris Caye, Santorini, Bora Bora or Isle of Man, but he chose humid and sultry Pushkar. Obviously, travelling wasn't his forte. Or, may be, he thought smuggling Afghanistan opium into Pushkar would be much easier than say Bora Bora. Fair enough.

Lord Brahma's view of Pushkar

  
One reason why Pushkar is so popular among broke foreign tourists is the low cost of living. One can rent a dingy hotel room with a lake view for around Rs 5000-a-month. (In dollars, it is so less that it's not even worth converting). The market area is flooded with Lebanese cafes. Eating vegetarian-only Lebanese food in Pushkar makes you brood over the evolution of mankind from hunting. According to an unreliable study, Pushkar consumes more Hummus than Middle East, Turkey, North Africa, Morocco, and Middle East put together. Though, another study shows that the guy who did the 'Hummus study' on Pushkar was stoned on smuggled opium that he bought at exorbitant rates from Pink Floyd Cafe. In fact, the name 'Pushkar' refers to the art of pushing weed into rolling paper joints. Pushkar market is also known for its hand-made leather products and other Rajasthani handicraft. Most shopkeepers in the market think they can speak English. If 'Hello, how are you?" can be considered 99% of the Queen's language, then surely most shopkeepers can dazzle with their facile tongue.
 

Evening jam outside Sunset cafe.

Everyone in Pushkar is a musician. Some of them are bloody good at that. The ghat opposite Sunset cafe (one of the 52 ghats that Pushkar boasts of) is known for its unpretentious evening jams featuring local Rajasthani musicians and anyone with an instrument. However, many of the innumerable road side cafes in the Pushkar market are known for their bad taste in religious trance, which is often sold to hippies as a shortcut to salvation. So, when these hippies aren't consuming Hummus with Pita, and attending Yoga shivir by quacks, they are often seen grooving to 'Govinda Jaaya Jaaya' (in American accent) at Sunset cafe.
 
The best time to travel Pushkar is anytime when Pushkar mela is not on. There's no best time to travel Pushkar if you are an Indian. You will be treated like shit by locals who prefer hosting fair, hot-legged, tall firangs instead.

 

Post 4 - If Seth MacFarlane hosted Filmfare

Opening Monologue

Welcome everyone to Filmfare 2013. Yash Chopra is dead, so is Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna and Shammi Kapoor. So, there's a little bit of crisis on whom to confer the Lifetime achievement Award. Thank God for AK Hangal. Well, he's dead too. So, let it be. 

The quest to make Vineet Jain wealthier begins now. 

We have a surreal array of adapted, copied, remade films on display tonight one of which will take home this black statue, again adapted from the Oscars. So apt. We have Anurag Basu with us, the guy who put together a lot of scenes from Charlie Chaplin movies (and a dozen others) and called it Barfi. Before Barfi, Mr Basu directed the hugely popular Hollywood movie 'The Notebook'. We know it as Barfi. Also, he's the one who directed 'That Apartments'. We know it as 'Life in a Metro'. If nothing else you have to admire this man for his movie library subscription. Who cares? Pritam doesn't. Pritam is nominated tonight under the 'Best Original soundtrack' category. To be honest let's call it 'Best adapted Soundtrack' category. Pritam met me backstage and behind all those facial and head hair of his, he's actually a human being. Also, to clarify, he isn't the same guy as Anil Kapoor. Pritam told me he's honoured merely by the fact that AR Rehman isn't nominated for this. 

Vidya Balan, as she sees herself

Vidya Balan, as we see her

Also, we have Anurag Kashyap with us. He made seven original movies last year out of the total of seven original movies made in the Hindi film industry. Of course, he named all seven of them Gangs of Wasseypur. He bought violence back in the mainstream cinema, he also bought unattractive, short, puny men back on the screen as 'lead protagonist' after the departure of Jeetendra and Raghupal Yadav from the scene. Our jury went to see the movie when it was released last year but they are yet to return from the screening six months into it. Update is that they are way past the interval, as we speak, and shall be back before Nawazuddin Siddiqui grows up to be a full-fledged hairy Indian man. 

Talking about hairy Indian men, Akshay Kumar is here, sitting besides Anil Kapoor. Together they are like this one-big-waxing-bill. Akshay Kumar is nominated for 'the best supporting actor' for Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra's first child aka OMG!

I have the honour of introducing Irrfan Khan, who has been nominated for his role of an Indian athelete in Paan Singh Tomar. He's a Khan, but he can actually act. He couldn't attend today's function as he's busy getting the VISA for the Oscars. Since, he's a Khan, he's having issues getting one. You guys wouldn't know but Irrfan Khan is now an internationally renowned actor and has played key roles in movies such as The Namesake, New York, I Love You, A Mighty Heart, Slumdog Millionaire, The Amazing Spider-Man,  Life of Pi and most importantly, Aliens and the Cowboys, he played a horse in that movie. He's the real global face of the Hindi film industry. Let's call him Aishwarya Rai Bachchan sans the Oprah Winfrey interview. 

We also have John Abraham present tonight, whose film Vicky Donor has been nominated as the best 'release' of the year. Also, John Abraham has been nominated for 'the best sex screen of the year' with his fairness cream. Last year's winners 'Katrina Kaif and Mango Slice' shall present the award this year.

If you think Aamir Khan isn't with us tonight, think again. I am Aamir Khan playing Seth Macfarlane as the host. I am that good. 

Post 3 - Indian Railways, everyone's home

Tatkal tickets are a myth. I am yet to meet anyone who has successfully logged on IRCTC’s website at 8 AM three days before his journey. In fact, Ripley’s Believe it or Not once featured this guy with facial hair who claimed he had managed a Tatkal booking on his own only to realise later that he was Mamata Baneerji. According to a study, booking a Tatkal ticket on IRCTC’s website is one of the five most unachievable things to do, if you are travelling within India. The other four are escaping gastrointestinal tumour after consuming railways pantry meal, getting an RAC (reservation against cancellation) with a pretty-looking thing, not have a 8-year-old boy in your bogie howling endlessly on a 16-hour long journey and hearing a TC say, “yes, we have spare unreserved seats. How many would you want?”

An off-season train journey in India.

Despite all the hassles we, Indians, still manage to spend half of our lives travelling with Railways. We all have bribed a TC to get half-a-seat on the reserved coach so that we don’t have to travel like exterminated-Jews-under-Hitler on the unreserved one. Before every trip we all pray to god or Sachin Tendulkar, whosoever we believe in, to have a damsel seated facing us so that the two us don’t have a choice but to fall in love and live happily ever after. I don’t know anyone who has ever got laid because of a subsidised Indian Railway ticket. By the way, there’s nothing called as a pretty lass onboard an Indian rail. Or may be, all damsels grow a lot of facial hair, and start resembling porcupine, also known as Indian uncles, for the much coveted journey on railways. I have only seen coaches full of voyeuristic uncles wherever I have travelled on Railways as if IRCTC has a special reservation quota for men with potbelly, hairy navel, unshaven underarms, and disfigured faces.

Much like the Indian society even the Indian railways is subdivided into classes. Lowest in the runk are unreserved guys, also known as the untouchables of travellers incorporated. These unfortunate guys couldn't wake up early enough to book a tatkal reserved ticket and they also couldn't plan their travel well in advance, say Before Christ. As a result, they travel on an unreserved bogie, also known as the train to Pakistan. An unreserved bogie often looks like a wild gathering involving excessive drinking, smoking and promiscuity, much like Roman deities. Some of these gatherings are often termed as the largest mobile orgy ever recorded.

Next is the reserved class in general coaches. There’s no AC, no complimentary food, fresh air, better countryside view, freedom to travel on the steps and cheapest fare among reserved coaches. In fact, these are the safest places to be at as somebody’s fart isn’t recycled and served to you as conditioned air, neither are you under a compulsion to eat rodent excreta in the name of evening supper. People who travel by these coaches are known for their inquisitive nature and by the end of an overnight journey often co-passengers know every minute detail about each other including the anatomy of each other’s bowel movements.

This is how Leander Paes got a confirmed ticket on Rajdhani Express

Top of the class runk are the air-conditioned reserved coaches, which is again sub-divided into RAC, 3-tier, 2-tier, and coaches for really fat people, aka 1-tier. These coaches are habitually filled with city-dwellers who believe it’s impossible to survive on fresh air. The members of the AC club are not known to be chatty and spend long journeys staring at the air-conditioner. In fact, the only time they speak is to express displeasure about food, cleanliness, comfort, pollution, stock market, corruption, traffic jams, rising prices, and preferential treatment given to Rajdhani over the other trains. In fact, they all secretly wish to travel by Rajdhani someday, the most coveted train in the country. Studies show that the only way to get a reserved ticket on Rajdhani is to book way in advance, most preferably when you are inside your mother’s womb.

Fun facts about Indian train travel

a) Everyone sleeps by 8 PM onboard as if it's a meditation retreat.

b) Sleeping is the most popular time kill except if you are a Gujarati. You munch, endlessly.

c) Gujarati is the most spoken language in the train and khakhra, the most spoken word.

d) The luggage secured with chains is the most stolen.

e) RAC are the Schedule Caste of trains. Everyone cringes at the sheer sight of them.

f)  Ticket-checker can be bought anytime. 

g) Everyone is family. We eat, sleep and suffer together.