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 9 - Thank you for not using wifi

The answer to every problem in the world

Like every other typical Indian family, even we are a close-knit family. Like so close that sometimes it gets a little claustrophobic. So what? We have intense conversations, whenever we are at home, over dinners, in our bedrooms, in the loos, the kitchen. We are always talking, and chirping, and chit-chatting, and sharing. Unless, of course, wi-fi isn't working. In that case we talk on the phone with our ISPs, requesting 'em to restore our Internet service. So that we talk again, living under the same roof.

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 7 - Everything you want to know about Friendship Day

Today is International Friendship Day, also known as Happy Fraaandship Day in the most parts of Delhi. Like other important days - Happy pepper n salt look day, Happy Who let the dogs out woof woof woof Day, Happy I want to see you cry Day and Happy Fuck this shit day, even Happy Friendship Day has an important, to be worthy of attention, story behind it. Get some popcorn.

Here it goes. Once upon a time in 320 BC, right after the birth of Christ, eight people - Rachel Green, Monica Geller, Phoebe Buffay, Joey Tribbiani, Chandler Bing, Ross Geller, Kareena Kapoor and Amrita Arora were chilling at an unknown place watching 'Friends with Benefits' or something. While watching the movie they realised if a naked Justin Timberlake can make friends, then why can't they upgrade from being acquaintance to friends? So, like everyone else around them they used their Airtel 'Friendship Data Plan' and Googled 'the best way to make friends.' The first search result read - Go to Archies. Buy overpriced friendship band. Tie it to the person sitting next to you, even if she's Amrita Arora. And, the rest, as they say, is history. And, since then, to mark the occasion, we have been celebrating the Friendship Day every August 4, because that was the only day not yet taken by Happy Anything-You-Can-Think-Of-Day organisation, also known as the United Nations.

Here are ten quotes from legends who redefined friendship.

1) Friendship is good. It leads to love triangle. ~ Kunal Kohli (Mujhse Dosti Karoge)
2) If your wife dies, you can always re-marry your tom-boyish best friend from college ~ Karan Johar (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai)
3) Only when three friends do a Goa roadtrip together, they stay friends for life ~ Farhan Akhtar (Dil Chahta Hai)
4) The odds of a spoiled young adult living in Mumbai making friends are higher than anyone else ~ Ayan Mukheerji (Wakeup Sid)
5) The most important test of any friendship is whether it can survive a bachelor's trip to Spain ~ Zoya Akhtar (Zindagi Na Milegi Doobara)
6) You fall for your best friend the moment you start pimping love for him/her ~ Abbas Tyrewala. (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na)
7) Best friends should be able to switch between being homo and straight to get an apartment and a girl respectively. ~ Tarun Mansukhani (Dostana)
8) Friendship is fun only if Tushaar Kapoor is mute ~ Rohit Shetty (Golmaal)
9) Aamir Khan knows it all. Be friends with him ~ Rajkumar Hirani (Three Idiots)
10) Aamir Khan knows it all. Be friends with him ~ Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra (Rang De Basanti)

Post 6 - An open letter to teenagers

Hello or as you call it whaaatsup,

I am pretty sure you won't get to read this unless and until someone will post this on Facebook via Bitstrips. Hoping somebody does that. I must admit how much I admire you people for your sheer ability to change your display pictures thrice a day on every social network. By display pictures I mean DP, for better understanding. It's a proven fact that nobody can make their DP look cooler than teenagers. Your DPs are like leading ladies of soap operas - always behind shitload of cosmetics. If an alien had to judge us based on teenage profile pictures then I am sure he would conclude that this planet is one big Sunburn festival. Also, they would think every teenager is an illegitimate child of Curtly Ambrose's pout. Dude, what's with the pout? I mean even PV Narsimha Rao had one, but trust me that didn't make him any hotter. I hope you know that every time you pout, your lips walk a mile ahead of you, and that makes them look like as if they have an erection. Trust me some of those pouts need a two-piece of their own.

Curtly Ambrose, aka teenage pout.

I also admire you for the unique lexicon you have invented over the years. The best of them all is the coinage of the word - awwww. Nobody had thought that the answer to every problem in the world isn't 42, as Douglas Adams would like us to believe, instead it's 'awww.' For instance, Question: Hey, do you love me? Answer: Awwww. Question: Hey, don't you love me? Answer: Awww. Question: How much wood, would a wood chuck chuck, if a wood chuck could chuck wood? Answer: Awww. Most of the times ‘Aww’ makes so much sense that you start wondering how come nobody else thought of it earlier?

That's the most intelligent statement a teenager has ever said, online or offline.

Everyone makes fun of your punctuations and spellings, but little did these ignorant fools know about your contribution to the rich day-to-day language we all speak. Here are some of the teenage lingos or as they call it #ShitTeenagersSay

Chill: Teenagers are always chilling. They chill more than K2 (the second highest mountain on Earth) ever could during peak winters. You take a teenager to Ethiopia and expect them to even chill there.

Epic: as we all know means anything that surpasses the ordinary. In a teenager's world everything surpasses the ordinary, hence everything is epic. For instance, Hey I just woke up and I feel so epic. Dude, I downloaded Games of Throne via Torrents, and trust me it's an epic series. Hey, it's epic how much I can eat. Hey, that epic is so epic na?

Dude: In teenagers' world everyone is a dude. For example, Look at that dude, he's so shady *points at a Banyan tree*

Bitch: Anything, but a female dog.

Whatever: Like awww is the answer to every problem in the world, whatever is the answer to anything that you don't understand, basically everything in the world. Question: Why Sun rises from the East? Answer: Whatever. Question: Hey, where do yo see yourself five years from now? Answer: Whatever!

Answer to all problems in the world.

Wicked: isn't morally bad, as you ignorant laureates would think, it means 'very'. Hey, check out ma wicked cool hairdo!

Your mum: is the reaction to every abuse in the world. For instance, Abuse: Hey midget, nigga, whitetrash. Reaction: Your mum.  

Random: This random teenage lexicon can't be complete without the word 'random'. Random is often used as an adjective to define an attribute of everything in the universe. For instance, Dude, we are so random. We cracked these random jokes and then laughed so randomly as other random people stood randomly amused.

In short, I love you guys. Without you this world would be such a Duh! place. If you think I have missed out on something relevant, kindly comment. It wasn't done on purpose, it was purely random.

 

Regards, as you know it muah!

Anoop Chugh

 

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. 

Post 2 - A short history of Kala Ghoda aka Suneil Shetty

Yes, I attended it too. Like every other immigrant in the Mumbai city, who has no life on weekends, even I attended the biggest festival of DSLR-owners-who-can’t-handle-the-camera. It’s known as Kala Ghoda. The festival started in 1999 when Suneil Shetty was spotted at the street area of Rampart Row doing crunches. To celebrate the acrobatic skills of what people initially thought was a black horse, they started a festival of food, art, culture, music, stampede, hippie clothes and DSLR cameras. To nobody’s surprise they named it Kala Ghoda (a latin word when translated in English it means Suneil Shetty). Since then every year hordes of people with Facebook accounts throng the festival so that they can upload variety of colourful pictures on their FB profiles to add to the usual honeymoon albums, drunk summing pool party pictures and look-now-I-have-a-cleavage pictures self-clicked in badly maintained society elevators.

A statue of King Edward VII with Sunil Shetty aka Kala Ghoda

So, what is Kala Ghoda festival all about? It’s about the expensive DSLR cameras and clicking multiple still shots of art installations which 8 million other people have already clicked a day before you did and another 10 million will click a day later. In fact, if you search ‘Kala Ghoda festival images’ on Google you’d get the same picture on the first 10,000 result pages all clicked by different ‘artists’.

An installation clicked by Rahul, Prakash, Ruchi, Priyal, and 1,50,000235 other visitors

When I got off my taxi at the Rampart Row street near the over-charging Rhythm House I could hear the crowd’s collective sigh as I didn’t have a DSLR strapped around my neck. Some of the stunned witnesses thought I was an Australian tourist, so they handed me a copy of Shantaram and pushed me towards Leopold Cafe. But later, I showed them my hairy Indian legs and convinced them that as per the festival norms I shall be taking 15 pictures of anything standing still for more than 3 seconds with my humble camera phone. So, they let me in.

The festival is also known for its zombie walk which visitors do at all popular venues including Asiatic Steps, Cross Maidan, Horniman Circle, Jehangir Art Gallery and but of course, Rampart Row street. In fact, visitors on the weekends actually believe that the festival is all about walking through a crowded alley with your nose on the shoulder of the person walking ahead of you. They have been following it for years like a religious practice. As a matter of fact, the festival has proved to be a social experiment on a variety of subjects. For example, the festival has helped us figure out maximum number of people that can fit on 37 flights of stairs (Asiatic steps) without looking like the core of a neutron star, or the number of ways an object can be clicked in a period of 9 days or less, and most importantly, does attending Kala Ghoda festival with a DSLR and cargo pants help single boys get laid.

An installation after smoking up a joint.

So here are some FAQs on the festival that might help you avoid it

What are the dates for Kala Ghoda Arts Festival this year?

Whenever you see a lot of Indian young men and women in pink and red pants roaming around the town you’d know it’s Kala Ghoda time.

How do I know what to see and do?

Follow the guy with the marijuana joint.

How do I buy tickets?

It’s a free event. Perhaps, that’s the only reason you’d be attending it apart from the fact that you have recently bought a DSLR that you can’t handle.

How do I Register?

By taking multiple shots of the venue using your DSLR.

Where exactly is the festival taking place?

The Kala Ghoda festival is conducted over 9 days and across several locations that you can’t reach unless you are Gregory David Roberts. So forget about it.

Post 1 - Mahakumbh, India's Rio equivalent

It's that time of the year when we go to Allahabad with a younger sibling and come back alone. It's called Mahakumbh, backpacking Jews in India would know. Or, as Manmohan Desai knows it Nirupama Roy-is-going-to-lose-all-her-kids event.  If you have no clue what I am talking about, obviously you are from Bandra, born in 1990s, sport Justin Beiber hairdo and believe Ben Kingsley is the father of nation. This piece isn't meant for you. BTW, it's 70% off at Zara.

Now, that the pretentious Bandra crowd has left I'd like to confess something - I can't afford a place there so I hate them. Anyway, for everyone's benefit, who isn't a tree-hugging hippie, and who doesn't live in Haridwar on a fake passport, basically Bangladeshis, here's a short history of the largest stampede in the world - Mahakumbh.

A glimpse of the Indian Baywatch. No, don't rub your eyes, certain parts in the picture have been blurred. 

Mahakumbh, also known as the Indian Baywatch, is a Hindu pilgrimage of faith in which people with no water connection at home gather at a sacred river for a bath. The festival is usually attended by people with expensive cameras and producers of ugly people porn genre. The festival takes place at a gap of twelve years at one of the four sacred places: Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik and daily between 8 AM to 10 AM and 6 PM to 8 PM at Dadar and Kurla. The main attraction of the festival are Naga Babas. As the name suggests they are naked and they are related to versatile tone-deaf rapper Baba Sehgal.

It's very easy to identify a Naga Sadhu in a crowd of 100 million (number of people expected to attend Mahakumbh at Allahabad). Take Bob Marley hairdo add Robert Pattinson's pale skin, Hugh Hefner's wrinkles, playmate Sherlyn Chopra's wardrobe and Tommy Lee Jones' long beak. Put all the ingredients together add complexion of Samuel L Jackson, shake it a little and Naga Sadhu is ready.

Robert Pattinson + Bob Marley + Hugh Hefner + Sherlyn Chopra + Samuel L Jackson = Naga Sadhu 

Naked Monks (that's how I shall refer Naga Sadhus henceforth keeping in mind South Bombay crowd) smoke pot, not like the neighbourhood boy with a Furtados guitar in tow, but more like Syd Barrett, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison put together. The belief is that smoking chillum will lead them to Nirvana (not Kurt Cobain's album), but instead results show that post smoking weed these monks end up attaining blondes from Nelson, British Columbia region. In fact, these sadhus can be seen teaching yoga sadhana to some of these blonde western hippie chicks during night at riverside camps. Though, it is highly coincidental that the sadhana position is similar to that of 69, as described in holy book of Kamasutra.

These sadhus are known for their man-are-you-high rituals. For example, some Naga sadhus wear eleven thousand Rudrakhsa beads in sheer respect of Lord Shiva. But, most tourists mistake them for beads shop at Janpath and start bargaining with them. Some Naga Sadhus are believed to practice copulation with the dead. Actually, it's not true. This rumour started when a Naga Sadhu was spotted having intercourse with Arjun Rampal.

These Naga Sadhus belong to different Akharas (camps) - for example Yash Raj camp, Karan Johar Camp, Salman Khan camp and Rohit Shetty camp. The sadhus of Yash Raj and Karan Johar camp are always naked under their heavy Manish Malhotra attire, while sadhus of Salman Khan camp are mostly bare-chested unless they are in their Being Human tees. Sadhus of Rohit Shetty camp are known for their acrobatic skills including pulling a car with power of their testicles. 

Mahakumbh is popular among all sections of Indian society. While, the middle and lower middle class call it Mahakumbh, the upper middle class know it as Kalaghoda festival. More on this in another post.