A beefy story

I find it difficult to explain to people that I do not believe in Ram, Krishna, Shiv, Vishnu, Parvati and the gang. To me, they are stories. You know, like batman, james bond, ethan hunt, chacha choudhary and so on.

Some guy woke up one fine morning and decided to write a story. He wrote about a guy named Ram who was supposed to be the ideal man in the society at those times. Ram was the ideal which men in those times should strive to be - respect their parents, never go back on a promise, pack their wives off to the forest and so on. For effect, he was awesomely cool with batmobile kind of vehicles, flying buddies and super powers. This story was passed down through the ages and people were expected to be like Ram.

Fair enough...

...Till I am expected to fold my hands and pray to him. He is an ideal man (that too, not in my opinion). He is not God. I will not pray to him.

Again, this is my opinion and the same holds true for Krishna, Shiv and the gang. For that matter, the same holds true for Allah, Jesus and the others.

At this point, I would like to clarify that I believe in God. Only she has no name or form for me. She does not live in a temple and she would not hurt me if I don't suck up to her.

Coming to the point, I keep having these religious faith discussions with some hapless souls who cannot pour petrol on me and burn me because I'm their friend and they basically love me enough not to do that. (Thankyou Ram, Allah, Krishna, etc :P). One such hapless soul happens to be sho who is a religious Muslim. I keep attacking him with my usual arsenal of questions: why do you have to pray 5 times?, why can you marry more than once?, why do you starve for 8 hours everyday for 40 days?, and my favorite - why can you not drink when you can smoke?. So much so that he wants to name me 'why'. (For the record, sho does not agree with everything his religion says. Please don't kill me, sho.)

And then one day, tables turned and sho asked me - why don't you eat beef? Nice comeback, I must say. I don't eat beef because I'm a hindu. I don't know why hindus give such a special place to cow and not to any other animal. Even buffalos are perfectly nice animals, even goats or even hen. Cow is supposed to have some very special medicinal or curative qualities which nobody uses in today's date. Hell, I don't even like cow milk.

The end result of it all was that now I'm a beef eating Hindu. (I only had a couple of bites and must say it was yum!)

God, I'm sure, doesn't discriminate between her animals. If I'm going to hell, I was enlisted the day I ate my first chicken dish.

Feeling European

The sky's been overcast here for past couple of days. Cloudy and cold. Grey and gloomy. Some people love this weather that makes them wanna sleep till late and sit with a hot chai. I, on the other hand, am a sunshine person.

I love the sun even if it means higher temperatures. I do not like grey and damp days. Clothes don't dry, towels don't dry, the walls are cold, the floor is cold, everything is damp and has that weird wet smell to it.

Well, in the afternoon today, we did have the sun pop out for a few minutes. Instantly, as if on a subconscious urge, I wanted to go out for a walk and soak up the sun. And I did. Enjoying my walk and the mild sunshine, I remembered all those tales that my "friends"* from Europe tell me about how at the hint of sunshine, people dress up in their smallest clothes and come out to enjoy the sun. I never in my weirdest dream thought that I would do so one day. We are in the tropics and the sun here is not funny. And yet there I was, walking outside only to feel the sun and the warmth on my skin.

The whole incident made me feel so Europeified. I didn't dress skimpy, though, but only because no one else around me was europeified.

* The "friends" above is in quotes because though I call these people who are in Europe right now friends, I would rather see them in an eagle's claws. There they are, sitting in Europe and telling me how the place is so beautiful or how they are having so much fun or how nice the weather is. You didn't expect me to wish otherwise.

The fridge and buffalo milk

The weekend before the last one was not particularly a good one. On Friday night, 10 o'clock, a transformer blew up nearby, but not before severe voltage fluctuations that led to my refrigerator compressor getting shorted and tripping my mains. Not to mention that I was forced to go to bed at that early hour on a friday. However, I did not mind it that much because the earlier 10 days had been hectic with lots of partying, eating, drinking, travelling and suchlike.

Cut to saturday morning and still there is no power and ofcourse, no water. Somehow I managed my morning chai and waited patiently for power and water. I had to go out in the afternoon and a bath was mandatory. When there was no sign of water till 11, I went down to get a bucket of water from the underground tank and took a bath in icy cold water. Right then, at 11.50, water supply was back. What luck!

Eventually, when the power was back, I realized my refrigerator was not working. Now, a fridge should be dispensable and a fridge not working should not be a big deal, except that it is. A fridge not working in this part of the world means no milk. How you ask? Well well. That is an altogether different story.

Where I stay, I do not get buffalo milk. The only milk I can buy is some watery form of cow's milk, which I can't stand. I have had buffalo milk all my life. Infact, when we shifted to Powai and the milkman only used to bring cow milk, I pleaded with him and offered him extra money per litre if only he would bring buffalo milk. Here, even that doesn't work because buffalos are not even to be seen here, forget milked.

When I shifted here, I found it quite incredible that in whole of banaglore, there is no one selling buffalo milk. After months of searching, I settled for a store that sells tetra packs of milk. Not quite like the fresh/packet type but anyday better than cow milk.

Hence, I have to travel to far and wide places and stock up on milk because apparently I can't compromise on the animal in the dairy. A one-litre pack is good for 2-3 days and not having a fridge means I have to finish it in one day itself. This task is quite daunting and thus, the fridge becomes indispensable.

Add to it the fact that when and if I cook, I eat the same food for 2-3 days. Again the indispensability of the fridge is quite evident.

All this put together made me quite miserable the next couple of days. I had to live with cow milk, dine on protein shakes (because I cannot cook small portions) and run after the videocon guys to repair the fridge. Finally, after almost one week and lots of cash, they fixed the damn thing.

And I can stock up on milk again! Life's little pleasures!